May 14th, 2008
Posted by
Ian W |
Drama, Movie Reviews |
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I’m a bit of a Kurt Russell fan, in fact I get a bit of ribbing by family members over how big a Kurt fan I am. That’s not to say I think he’s the greatest actor to walk the earth, far from it, but he is consistently entertaining. In fact he’s been entertaining me since his Disney days (Now You See Him, Now You Don’t) and I have fond memories of his one season wonder western series The Quest (anyone else remember that?). He’s one of those actors, and there aren’t that many, who can be equally convincing as a regular guy (Unlawful Entry, Breakdown) and a tough as nails, cold hearted killer (Escape from New York). Plus he starred in one of my all-time favourite films, John Carpenter’s The Thing.
One thing Mr Russell can’t do though is make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Winter People feels like one of those Hallmark Channel TV movies, set in the ‘30s it features rugged environments that somehow still manage to look like greetings card pictures and beautiful people made up to look like they work outdoors, who look just that – like beautiful people made up to look like that work outdoors.
April 9th, 2008
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Ian W |
Drama, Movie Reviews |
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Films that give us a child’s view of the world often seem to touch something in the audience, a little glimmer of the child that dwells within each of us I suppose. That innocent perspective often shows the so called ‘grown ups’ to be more thoughtless and uncaring as any child, they just have bigger feet to stomp when things don’t go their way. While it’s no guarantee of success, the idea of telling an adult story through the eyes of children has produced some classics, with both The Night of the Hunter and Stand by Me making the IMDb Top 250 (at 156 and 160 respectively). Also making that list (at 45) is To Kill a Mockingbird, a film which has some things in common with those already mentioned, namely it was based on a book and all features strong performances from the pint-sized cast members.
As Jem, Phillip Alford is at the point where he craves the freedom of adulthood but still has a boy’s sense of fun and adventure. He’ll question his father’s rules (he thinks he old enough to have a gun, Dad doesn’t agree) but he respects him. That Alford captures that so well is a big part of the films success.
April 7th, 2008
Posted by
Ian W |
Drama, Movie Reviews, Thriller |
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Not really a spy movie as such, Syriana does feature a spy as one of its central characters. Bob Barnes, played by a bearded and slightly podgy George Clooney, is an aging C.I.A. operative with knowledge of Middle East affairs. When an assassination attempt on an Arab Prince goes awry Barnes is tortured, and when he’s turned loose he’s used as a scapegoat by the C.I.A. for the botched mission.
Now that may sound like a regular spy story but it’s just one strand of Syriana’s web of intrigue, that encompasses big business, terrorism and the Middle Eastern way of life. It’s a film packed full of political ideas, perhaps too full, there are so many strands here that it’s at times hard to keep track of them all. There are moments when you’re left a little bemused as to how such-and-such got to so-and-so and while it’s nice to have a film that doesn’t baby it’s audience, filling in everything they could possibly need to know about a character, the film jumps around so much that you may miss important information as you try and get your bearings.
Writer/director Stephen Gaghan won an Oscar for his Traffic script which had a similar multi-character storyline but for me it worked far better in the earlier film. Syriana feels far preachier than Traffic, concentrating as much on the message as on the story, rather than let one flow from the other. It’s a film that for all its depth still has clearly defined bad guys – the American oil companies, the C.I.A. (who, as one character observes, is just another multi-billion dollar business).
March 26th, 2008
Posted by
Ian W |
Comedy, Drama, Movie Reviews, Thriller |
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There isn’t really a lot to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, two ageing sisters, a crippled former Hollywood icon, Blanche Hudson, and a child star gone to seed, ‘Baby’ Jane, live together in a rundown house. ‘Baby’ Jane is slowly going off her rocker and when she learns of Blanche’s plans to sell the house and put her into care her mental breakdown goes into overdrive with disastrous results.
What makes the film work isn’t the plot but the performances, with the inspired casting of fading stars Joan Crawford as Blanche and Bette Davis as the grotesquely comical ‘Baby’ Jane giving the film a far greater resonance than it would otherwise have. The two stars detested each other in real life and, while that must have made director Robert Aldrich’s task far from easy, it adds greatly to the performances, particularly Davis’s.
Davis’s ‘Baby’ Jane is a childlike version of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, resentful of time and an industry that thrives on youth and the presence of her invalid, and vastly more talented, sister gives her someone to take out that resentment on. Davis it seems decided on the method approach for the scene where she brutally kicks Blanche unconscious, actually landing a kick to Crawford’s head that required stitches (Crawford allegedly retaliated by putting weights in her pockets for the scene where Davis drags her across the floor).
March 21st, 2008
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Ian W |
Drama, Movie Reviews, Thriller |
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Sean Connery gets the abbey habit as the very Holmesian William of Baskerville (even his name is a nod to the greatest of fictional detectives) in Jean-Jacques Annaud’s film about murder in a Fourteenth Century monastery, based on the novel by Umberto Eco.
Rarely has history seemed as grim as it does here, this isn’t the fairytale history of Arthurian-style movies, this is a cold, dirty place that’s about as welcoming as a sleepover at the Texas Chainsaw Massacre family home. Some of the residents could give Leatherface a run for his money as well, with the flagellating monk who looks like a fat sweaty version of Uncle Fester topping the list, along with the always welcome Ron Perlman as the loopy hunchback, Salvatore.
Yet for such an outwardly bleak film its script has a wonderfully playful sense of humour. “That’s elementary, my dear Adso” states Connery early on, in another reference to Doyle’s famous sleuth, and he gets some great dialogue with his apprentice Adso (a youthful stand-in for Dr. Watson, played with admirable restraint by a very young Christian Slater ) including a Bond-like quip when one of the brothers turns up dead, stuffed headfirst in a barrel.
Connery may be the main focus but there’s hardly any member of the cast that doesn’t seem perfectly suited for the part. Perlman steals every scene he’s in, and that’s saying something when you’re up against an old pro like Sean, while F. Murray Abraham is hissably bad as Bernardo Gui the Inquisition’s answer to Moriarty.
January 30th, 2008
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Ian W |
Drama, Movie Reviews, War |
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Given the tragic death of Heath Ledger last week this film sort of picked itself out of the pile of DVDs I‘ve got lined up for this series. I can’t say I’m a huge fan of Ledger’s work, of the seventeen films he made (eighteen with The Dark Knight) I’ve only seen eight and, while he was certainly a good actor, he was often overshadowed by his co-stars - Mel Gibson in The Patriot, Billy Bob Thornton in Monster’s Ball and Paul Bettany in A Knight’s Tale - but I’ve yet to see his most acclaimed performance in Brokeback Mountain.
A.E.W. Mason’s novel has been filmed no less than seven times but I’d only seen the classic 1939 version with Ralph Richardson and John Clements prior to watching this. Given that the film has an Indian director in Shekhar Kapur it would be fair to expect a slightly different take on this tale of love and daring-do in the days of the British Empire than previous versions, and, in that regard, the film doesn’t disappoint.
While it shares the central love triangle with previous takes, this isn’t a film about heroics but rather the horrors of war, with the British no better than The Mahdi and his followers, and certainly more arrogant. Rather than being about Harry Faversham’s quest to regain his honour after his friends brand him a coward, the film uses that as a devise to show the suffering war brings and how it brings out the worst in men.
January 27th, 2008
Posted by
Ian W |
Drama, Science Fiction |
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Aiming for the cool indie weirdness of Repo Man, The Big Empty comes up way short. Its title is half right though, the film isn’t big but it certainly is empty.
To go into the details of the plot would be pointless, it’s both convoluted and at the same time vacuous. It feels like writer/director Steve Anderson woke up one morning and decided to write the most outlandish tale he could just for the sake of it. The film is populated by oddball characters from an FBI agent/frustrated actor to a cowboy clad serial killer but none of it has any real point.
Some of the performances aren’t bad, Kelsey Grammer has fun playing it straight as the FBI man and Sean Bean gets a dry run for The Hitcher as an English cowboy nutjob. But it’s all just wasted effort in a film as pointless as this.
The best thing about the film (by a long, long way) is the soundtrack, with both the songs (from Lazy Lester and John Lee Hooker amongst others) and Brian Tyler’s score providing more pleasure than anything in the film. This is one DVD that should have had a music only track.
January 27th, 2008
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Ian W |
Drama, Martial Arts, Movie Reviews |
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It’s been a while since I’ve watched any of the Zatoichi films and with half the series still waiting to be discovered I though it was about time to renew my acquaintance with the blind swordsman.
This is the thirteenth in the series and features everything I’ve come to expect - a beautiful woman fallen on hard times, a masterless samurai, an evil Yakuza boss with a seemingly endless supply of henchmen, superb swordplay (with a trick or two from Zatoichi) and plenty of eating and drinking. If there’s one thing our blind masseur enjoys it’s filling his belly.
They say it a fine line between comedy and tragedy and Shintaro Katsu straddles it brilliantly in these films. He’ll make you laugh one minute and bring you close to tears the next, not to mention displaying his own unique sword fighting style.
While Ichi leaves a trail of dead and wounded in his wake the fight scenes are oddly bloodless. This film features a rare (at least up to this point in the series) glimpse of the red stuff, not as you might expect, as Zatoichi slices and dices his way through the bad guys, but from a nose bleed he suffers while taking a beating.
While the films may be as formulaic as the Bond movies in the west, they are always watchable thanks to Katsu as the downtrodden blind man who always wins the fights but can never seem to find happiness.
January 25th, 2008
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Ian W |
Drama, Horror, Movie Reviews |
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Two thirds of the way through this atmospheric Korean horror I was struck by a feeling that I’d seen something similar and not too long ago at that. It took a few minutes for the old grey matter to make the connection, the fact that the two films, at first glance, wouldn’t seem to have much in common no doubt slowing it down some, but it finally produced the answer - Spider. “What could David Cronenberg’s drama about a schizophrenic man have in common with A Tale of Two Sisters?” you may be thinking…or possibly “Ian’s finally cracked up, better call the men in white coats”. Before you make a booking for me in a padded room let me explain…
Both films chuck you in at the deep end and expect you to swim, by which I mean they don’t go the usual route of explaining who everyone is, how they got where they are and, well, basically setting the scene for what’s to come. It’s up to the viewer to figure things out; this of course requires the use of something often neglected by modern moviemakers - a brain. All too often these days we are encouraged to “leave your brain at home” when paying a visit to the cinema, as this will impair our enjoyment of the movie, so it’s nice to watch a film every now and then that doesn’t require a lobotomy to get the most out of it.
January 22nd, 2008
Posted by
Ian W |
Drama, Movie Reviews, War |
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Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel is a love story with a political backdrop. Michael Redgrave plays the bitter and cynical reporter Thomas Fowler opposite Audie Murphy’s idealistic young American with the pair competing for the affections of beautiful Vietnamese girl Phuong, played less than convincingly by Giorgia Moll.
This love triangle is mixed in with the First Indochina War fought between the French and Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh over Vietnamese independence. Apart from providing an interesting and unusual setting, it also anticipates American interference in the region which would lead ultimately to the Viet Nam War.
Despite all that though the film is at heart a love story, with our lead protagonists all doing what they do for love. The contrast between seasoned pro Michael Redgrave and Murphy, who stumbled into the profession after his World War II heroics got him noticed by Hollywood, mirrors their onscreen characters.
Few actors have been as convincingly world weary as Redgrave is here, there’s a hopeless desperation about Fowler, you get the feeling that his love or desire for Phuong is all that’s keeping his from a total breakdown. Yet given how things play out it’s hard to feel sympathy for him.
The boyishly handsome Murphy can’t really compete in the acting stakes but he doesn’t show himself up either. The American is a slightly ambiguous character; we’re never sure if he’s just the do-gooder aid worker he paints himself as or if he’s secretly working for the US Government. This must have made a pleasant change from the B western heroes Murphy usually played.
