Former crook Juan 'Johnny' Ramirez (Paul Muni) manages to work himself out of his Hispanic slum and become a lawyer. Encouraged by his mother, he sets up his own office and faces his first court case after wealthy socialite Dale Elwell (Margaret Lindsay) crashes her car into the cart of one of Johnny's poor neighbourhood friends. Crushed and embarrassed by Dale's white, costly lawyer Brooke Manville (Gavin Gordon), Johnny attacks him, getting himself disbarred. Vowing to make something of himself in the world, Johnny hitches a ride over the Mexican border, becoming a bouncer and advisor for club owner Charles Roark (Eugene Pallette), eventually earning himself a partnership through his wits and business know-how. But Roarke's bored wife Marie (Bette Davis) has other ideas and sets her sights on running her own club, and seducing Johnny to her cause.
This Warner Brothers vehicle for star Paul Muni uses racial stereotypes - of which would be highly condemned nowadays - to portray a damning indictment of the American system and the idea of 'The American Dream'. When Muni is humiliated in court by Manville, he resorts to his fists, something that ethnic minorities back in 1935 no doubt had to do to survive in their slums. It is common knowledge that America, self-declared land of the free, has a brutal history of racial oppression, and Bordertown is impressive in its bravery to tackle a subject when the Hollywood system itself was guilty of neglecting black or ethnic actors. It also dawns on Johnny that America is ultimately ruled by money, and if you rely on honesty and simply doing the right thing, you'll ultimately left licking the shoes of the rich man.
Yet for all it's promise, Bordertown is ultimately rather dull. Muni, one of the finest actors of his generation (and an actor now unfairly left in the shadows of the likes of Cagney and Bogart), is thoroughly unconvincing as Johnny, wildly over-acting and never looking comfortable in make-up and with a dodgy accent (Muni was Jewish). Davis, however, is a revelation in what is perhaps a smaller role than the poster and billing would suggest, puffing smoke through her nostrils like a dragon in one of her early scenes, embodying the icon she would later become. But Bordertown tends to shuffle along aimlessly, passing over a late plot development and fizzling out into nothing, arriving far too late in the day for me to really care.
The most iconic and popular film that came out of the acid-fuelled 1960's was undoubtedly Easy Rider (1969), with the clip of Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper riding their motorbikes to the sound of 'Born to be Wild' now embodying the very spirit of the hippy movement. Yet, as good as Easy Rider is, it followed very much in the same footsteps as Roger Corman's The Wild Angels, out four years before and following the same attitudes and ideas. A lot of the less successful independents from the 1960's have seemingly disappeared from popular culture - movies that deserve a lot more recognition and respect from more mainstream audiences. One of the finest examples, is Head, released the same year as The Beatles' Yellow Submarine, but sharing little of the Liverpudlian quartet's success, perhaps due to it being a vehicle for The Monkees, a band manufactured from actors for the purpose of a bubble-gum sitcom, and who received very little adoration from fans of 'real' music.
The Monkees TV series ran between 1966 and 1968, and was a massive success for the band and its co-creator Bob Rafelson, which makes it very strange given the direction Rafelson (directing here) and co-writer Jack Nicholson chose to take them. Head follows the Monkees - Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, Michael Nesmith and David Jones - on a studio lot making a film. They wander aimlessly through different genres - war, horror, adventure, western - playing out surreal and comedic vignettes throughout. The Monkees are tired of their studio image, frequently attempting to disrupt the proceedings as they are followed by an ever-present camera, and repeatedly find themselves locked in a large black room, while a giant Victor Mature tries to squash them. Sound fucking strange? Well, it is.
I would imagine people either loving or hating this film, depending on their attitudes towards acid-trip art and the youth culture of the time. Head is complete with psychedelic negative imagery, screaming female fans and a dreamy, Pink Floyd-esque score, all the elements that can now be considered as clichés of the era. But where a lot of these types of surrealistic films were there to mean nothing, Head very much means something, and lays out its attitudes and aims at the beginning, as The Monkees sing a strange diddy about acknowledging their manufactured reputation and ponder their destiny. The film then switches to the opening of a bridge, where the announcer struggles to operate the microphone when the Monkees dash past him, desperately fleeing some unknown danger. They then jump off the bridge, killing themselves, and the titles play over images of their lifeless, floating bodies. These images would hardly endear them to their young, screaming fanbase, therefore finally breaking out of their squeaky-clean shackles.
The film has many satirical focuses - war, politics, America, the studio system, advertising, the World War II generation - employing everything from flashing images of napalm bombings and the famous execution of Nyugen Van Lem, to scenes of outright farce such as a foreign army surrendering to an unarmed and shirtless Micky Dolenz in the desert, no doubt signifying America's bullying attitudes to world politics. It's the sheer anger of the satire that makes Head so good, even though it's usually peppered between seemingly light-hearted, playful comedy. There's a few nice songs (although the soundtrack is nothing ground-breaking) and features a wonderful song-and-dance routine featuring David Jones and Toni Basil. I don't know why history has been cruel on Head, as it is as memorable and as outright bizarre as the better-remembered films from this period, but hopefully soon this film will find itself with the cult following it deserves.
I knew nothing of Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein before seeing Derek Jarman's 'biopic' of the great thinker, and after the film, felt I didn't really know much more. Wittgenstein came from Vienna, born into an aristocracy that produced many geniuses in various mediums. Although his great mind would have no doubt seen him become prodigious in whatever he chose to do, his real love was philosophy, the only subject that gave him any true satisfaction. Through his publications and teachings at Cambridge, he amassed an almost disciple-like following of those who understood his radical musings. Plagued with a psychological affliction that saw three of his brothers commit suicide, he was often ashamed with his privilege and sought refuge in the working man, who he romanticised through the literature of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
Most of that knowledge I gained from internet research after watching the film, as Derek Jarman opts for a more interpretive approach - less of a timeline biopic and more of a quasi-abstract work of art. Jarman strips back all conventional cinematic methods and employs a plain black background, with the only presence on screen being the actors and few minimalistic props. He also ignores period detail, having the characters dress in costumes from various periods, often in bright, outlandish colours, using objects that had yet to be invented (similar to his excellent Caravaggio (1986)). This is successful in attempting to portray Wittgenstein's obviously haphazard look at the world, almost like being trapped between his deep ideas and reality (something that is observed by Maynard Keynes (John Quentin) later in the film), but this also makes the film so visually unappealing that it can be rather dull, like watching a small drama group enact a live play.
Yet although the film is rather un-inspirational in terms of cinematic techniques, Wittgenstein is undoubtedly intriguing, putting a fresh outlook on the tired sub-genre of the biopic. Welsh actor Karl Johnson is fine in the role of Wittgenstein, embodying the disconnection his character feels with the world. There is also fine support from Michael Gough, Jarman's muse Tilda Swinton, and Clancy Chassay, playing the narrating young Wittgenstein. His life was rich and full of incident, and Jarman's failure to really grasp the enormity of Wittgenstein makes the film ultimately a disappointment, focusing mainly on his relationship with a young philosopher called Johnny (Kevin Collins) - as though Wittgenstein's torment could have been the result of sexual repression - and only the skimming the surface of his time fighting in World War II, and the physical abuse he inflicted on his young pupils during his time as a schoolteacher. So Wittgenstein will remain somewhat an uncelebrated mystery, even though he is remembered as one of the greatest in his fields by his peers.
Contrary to the film's title, this is, of course, not the final chapter in the Jason Voorhees franchise, which has up to now reached ten movies, as well as a re-make and a spin-off. But the huge success of the series meant that production company Paramount Pictures could not turn down such an easy money-spinner, given the movies cost around a mere $1.5 million to make and usually grossed $20-30 million. Although the movies generally range from bad to awful, it is easy to see why they were a huge success - simple plots, lots of tits, plenty of gore, and a truly memorable killer in Jason. The Final Chapter is widely considered the best of the series by fans, deviating slightly from the repetitive plots of the preceding movies, and giving the film a recurring hero in Tommy Jarvis (here played by Corey Feldman).
Picking up straight after the third instalment, Jason (Ted White) is believed dead and is taken to a nearby morgue, where a doctor and a nurse are having a sneaky fumble. Naturally, Jason miraculously awakens and butchers them. Meanwhile, a group of horny college kids (where would this franchise be without them?) are making their way to a rented lodge on Crystal Lake, which is located next to the home of the Jarvis family. After daughter Trish Jarvis (Kimberly Beck) breaks down, she is helped by mysterious hitch-hiker Rob (Erich Anderson), who has rather secretive reasons to be in the area. As the college kids start to party and try to rub up against each other, Jason begins his slaughter.
Having up to this point only seen up to this movie, I can categorically state that this is the best so far, and although it's still pretty basic by normal standards, it certainly elevates the sheer mundanity of the previous instalments. Tom Savini, back for his second and last job on the series, creates some memorable moments of gore, including a cork-screw to the hand and special mention must also go to the craziest actor since Klaus Kinski, Crispin Glover, for his spectacular dance scene - it is one of the most bizarre moments I've ever seen on film. Yet the film only really seems so good when compared to the rest of the series, and, ultimately, is still a formulaic slasher film with no real moments of tension or originality, blandly directed by Chuck Norries-frequenter Joseph Zito.
The Pentagon and C.I.A have been inextricably linked to Hollywood since the 1920's, offering their "advice" and influence on many productions. According to a spokesperson for the intelligence agency, Todd Ebitz, the C.I.A. even post story ideas on their website. Usually their collusion with the film industry is a propaganda tool to promote ideologies, or to glamorise, and mystify clandestine organisations. In Ben Affleck's Argo, a declassified (in 1997) narrative develops in a secret collaboration between wily Hollywood producers, and the Central Intelligence Agency, in an effort to rescue six diplomats from Iran, during the 1979 to 1981 hostage crisis. Whilst the story used in the film is a footnote to the eventual complexity and over-long nature of the whole event (which lasted for 444 days, with 54 American hostages in total), it could be argued that this "little moment", is more enticing as a narrative about organisations (whether political, ideological or mass media), and the power of western (specifically Hollywood) popular culture around the world.
In 1979 the pro-American Shah of Iran (Mahammed Reza Pahlevi) was forced to flee into exile after a series of increasingly violent protest against his regime, by Islamic fundamentalists. The US embassy in Tehran was targeted by the revolutionaries after Jimmy Carter saluted the exiled Shah in a toast, stating that Pahlevi was a friend of the nation. Argo opens as the embassy is stormed, paper documents are frantically shredded, computer files hammered into fragments. Six diplomats exit and find refuge in the Canadian Ambassador's home. C.I.A. agent, Tony Mendez (Affleck), determined to extricate the escapees, is enlightened with an idea to create a fake Hollywood science fiction film, create false identities for the six, and act as a film production, scouting for locations in Iran. Mendez's connection to Hollywood, is special effects veteran, John Chambers (John Goodman), who is most famous for designing the simian prosthetics for Planet of the Apes (1968). Along with ageing, and out of work, director, Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin), - who might or might not be Don Siegel, I'm not sure - they create a script and concept artwork for a "cheap science fiction Star Wars rip-off", with the title Argo (a reference to the ship in Greek mythology, sailed by Jason and his Argonauts).
I'm not a particular follower or fan of Affleck the actor, finding his abilities to be somewhat one-dimensional, but it is always an intriguing prospect when an actor makes the move to directing. This is my first experience of this with Affleck, having never seen Gone Baby Gone (2007) or The Town (2010), but I have heard encouraging things about his previous films, so I was looking forward to watching how he worked with other actors. Whilst not a great actor himself, he understands the acting process, and casts brilliantly, particularly the very undervalued Bryan Cranston. Chris Terrio's dialogue is sharp, effective and referential (with many nods to contemporary sci-fi, to salivate the generation that Affleck is a part of). Science fiction aside, Argo is a project that understandably fell into the hands of an actor/director (even George Clooney co-produces with Affleck), much of the mid-section of the film is about the acting process, the six escapees having to become the fictionalised characters that might get them back to America. When it's a life and death proposition, this process seems excruciatingly hard. To fully portray these people, they have to become every aspect of that person.
Throughout the film, systems of hierarchy and levels of bureaucracy are eluded to, from the offices of the C.I.A., through the dealings with Hollywood, to the levels of security and multitude of check points found when attempting to leave a fragile, destabilised country. The latter of these systems is used to great effect towards the end of the film, where the Mendez-led "film crew" pass through increasingly excruciating encounters with Iranian security at an airport. Argo juxtaposes the machinations of the openly narcissistic Hollywood industry, with the more secretively narcissistic C.I.A., whilst they are inextricably linked to the heightened processes of government, these intelligence agents almost appear comical at times, unstable, with a tendency towards incompetence. The audacity of Mendez to assume he could pull off a legitimate looking fake film, shows this innate narcissism, and Chambers even relates the concept when asking him, "So you want to come to Hollywood and act like a big shot, without actually doing anything?" When told yes, he says "You'll fit right in."
Of course Afflect's character is morally stable, but an ineffectual sub-plot involving an estranged wife and son, is like an unnecessary, staid, use of cheap emotional manipulation. Towards the end it becomes uncomfortably saccharine, the image, music and text utilising generic, over indulgent climacti-wank, using the common signifiers of the worst kind of Hollywood drivel. However, this is a very small indiscretion in a smart and enjoyable political thriller. Frightening Argo also highlights the fact that the west's relationship with the middle-east has changed very little, with heightened hatred of the west from Islamic fundamentalists, and the nature of terrorism having not altered significantly with the current hostage crisis in Mali. But then again, bully's (i.e. the United States), eventually fall through retribution.
It has been stated before, here on 'The Wrath of Blog', and no doubt it will be said again, that Italian genre cinema (particularly through the 1960's, '70's, '80's and '90's) has had a tendency to emulate (or rip-off, if you like) successful American cinematic tropes. From the imitations of Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977), to the multitude of "re-imaginings," mainly of lucrative box office horror's, Italian film producers would regularly ask of a proposed project, not what the script is about, but what Hollywood film is the script like. Whilst Zombie Flesh Eaters' screenplay was conceived and written before the release of George A. Romero's uber-special zombie masterpiece, Dawn of the Dead (1978), the script was altered to "cash-in" on the success of it's American counter-part.
Written by Dardanno Sacchetti (but credited to his wife, Elisa Briganti), and originally titled 'Island of the Living Dead,' the film was at first conceived as an adventure yarn, with elements of horror. Sacchetti was influenced by older, pre-Romero zombie films, such as I Walked With a Zombie (1943) and White Zombie (1932), films that looked towards the Caribbean mysticism and the then largely unknown pseudo-religion of Voodoo. In these narratives, the zombie could easily be seen as victim rather than outright monster (like the somnambulist in the seminal The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)), who is ultimately under the control of sinister magic, and dominated for nefarious purposes. The screenplay's influences are further illuminated with Zombie Flesh Eaters's Dr. Menard (Richard Johnson), the mad scientist, who's original conception was taken largely from H. G. Wells's science fiction novel, 'The Island of Doctor Moreau'. However, much of these more "classic" horror devices were thrown aside in favour of an attempt to address the same audience that saw Dawn of the Dead (but more specifically for the more national cut that Dario Argento released in Italy as Zombi).
Whilst the majority of Zombie Flesh Eaters is set on a Caribbean island, the first and last scenes have the backdrop of Manhattan, New York. According to Sacchetti and director Lucio Fulci, these scenes were added to the script to attach it to Dawn, acting as the codification of American zombies. These scenes could either represent what the Italian producers would have called a sequel, but it could just as easily be reviewed as a prequel. The film opens as an unmanned yacht enters the waters surrounding the big apple. Coastguards board the boat finding a pit of decaying food, and eventually a zombie. It is a fantastic opening, creating tension through simple static camera shots. Fulci and cinematographer, Sergio Salvati, take their time to get to the gore in this opening, and seem to have been visually influenced by Sergio Leone's cinema of pro-violence. Like Leone, Flesh Eaters makes the audience wait for the violence that is inevitable, the masts and the New York skyline acting as the onlookers, or the eventual witnesses to the devastation to come.
The abandoned yacht leads its owners daughter, Anne Bowles (Tisa Farrow) and pushy British journalist, Peter West (Ian McCulloch), to the mysterious and locally vilified island of Matul, where Anne's father had been, and where they discover these zombie's originate from. The dead, it seems, are rising to "tear the flesh of the living". It would be impossible to talk about Italian horror cinema without discussing the graphic nature of blood and gore. Argento and Fulci are the masters of this kind of imagery, and Flesh Eaters delivers these moments with glee. From the ripping of flesh from the neck of a coastguard, to the infamous scene where Mrs Menard's eye is pulled towards a wood splinter (eye gauging being a particular relish for Italian filmmakers, acting - like Bunuel and Dali's eye-slicing Un Chien Andalou (1929) - as a literal assault on the audience, who's eyes are essential to the viewing of cinema), the excessive blood-letting of Italian horror will delight fans of the genre, but more specifically gives Italian Horror its raison d'etre, and (at the time) distinguished it from American horror - although the influence of these directors would inevitably transfer.
Whilst the cinema of Fulci is easily lambasted, with his narratives becoming increasingly incoherent, there is no disputing his visual flare (incidentally, Argento has been accused of the same unintelligible narrative structures). Seeing Zombie Flesh Eaters in its original aspect ratio highlights his love of the image. This was a problem for Italian horror in the 1980's, as it was served badly by pan and scan video releases. Whilst this is no cinema classic, it is a whole lot of fun. Fulci's zombies look fantastic, dripping with vulnerable flesh, clearly only recently exhumed from the dusty grounds, oozing with maggots, worms, and newly ripped flesh. As with the opening scene, the closing moments frames the Brooklyn Bridge, pointing towards the world famous city, as the marauding dead slowly move towards apocalypse. A chilling final image, as the sound of a radio presenter is devoured by the intrusion of flesh eating monsters.
Although he is better known for his 'body horror' work and scenes of squirm-inducing gore, the most prominent theme that runs throughout the career of David Cronenberg is the idea of finding an extra stream of consciousness through sexual release. From his serial-raping zombies in Shivers (1975), to his portrayal of Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud and Sabrina Spielrein in A Dangerous Method (2011), he has adopted a psychoanalytical aesthetic between scenes of exploding heads and killer tots. His début, Stereo, is his student film that is an early reflection of his fascination with psychology, made on an obviously shoe-stringed budget, shot in one location.
The film begins with the arrival at what looks like a research facility of a man wearing a black coat. As the narration begins to explain, the man is a telepath, a product of a social experiment to observe behavioural patterns between three telepaths in a closed environment. Having had their ability to speak removed, they must communicate only via telepathy, and through this telepathic bonding, begin sexual experimentation. The experiment is being carried out by the unseen Dr. Luther Stringfellow, who hopes that the powerful relationships which are forged through the telepaths - that evolve to deem such things as sex or physical attraction irrelevant - will come to replace and stabilise the traditional family unit.
If you could label Stereo as anything, it would have to be ambitious. Although the subject is purely psychoanalytical, the approach is very sci-fi. The film is black-and-white, featuring no sound at all apart from the near-constant narration, which is spoken in the same dreary tone as you would expect from a student vocalising an essay. It's quite clear than Cronenberg was held back by budget constraints and equipment, and although you could forgive the film's narrative flaws, the lack of visual appeal combined with the monotonous, jargon-heavy, quasi-intellectual narration, make the film a struggle to get through, even at only 62 minutes. It would be harsh to say Stereo is for Cronenberg die-hard's only as it is often intriguing, but the film ultimately feels like struggling to stay awake during a University lecture.
Before Peter Jackson almost exclusively worked with a CGI backdrop in the land of Middle-Earth, he began his film making career in the realms of low budget comedy-horror. Utilising the 1980's trend for splatter cinema, and no doubt the influence of Sam Raimi's tongue-in-cheek zombie film, The Evil Dead (1982), Jackson's debut feature film was entrenched in a very American tradition, but beholds the humour of his native New Zealand - which incidentally is part of the British commonwealth, meaning much of the uniqueness of British comedy is transposed onto the antipodean nation, the influence of Monty Python being one particular aspect of the film that made it such a surprise success. Bad Taste was clearly a labour of love, with Jackson bringing friends and family in to contribute to the making. The nature of the films production adds something quite special to both the narrative and the humour. The home-made special effects and props (Jackson used his parents oven to bake the handmade armoury used in the film) work both as farce and as actually quite an achievement of authenticity.
Set in a small, isolated town, a group of misfits, "The Boys," ordered from a shadowy government department, have been sent to investigate an invasion, where aliens have wiped out the inhabitants. What transpires is an alien fast food corporation have discovered that human flesh is the galaxy's newest taste sensation, and are accumulating cardboard boxes of flesh to market and sell to planets. At the centre of the government group is geeky scientist, Derek (Played by Jackson himself - he is also in the role of the alien Robert), who "can only relate to birds". He salivates at the sight of dismemberment and artillery. As the group discover the truth about the alien invasion, their mission is to stop them from leaving the planet. On a narrative level, Bad Taste is as simple as they come. But underneath this simplicity is a wealth of brilliantly formed characters, with their own idiosyncrasies, and a range of beautifully crafted one liners and references.
There are some stand out moments created with gruesome, cheep, but effective effects. The aliens seem to be mostly influenced by the zombie cinema of George A. Romero, with their slow moving mannerisms, and like Romero and Savini, Jackson delights in slicing them up with sharp tools and exploding them with guns. One alien has the top half of his head chopped off, a scene that displays Jackson's talent for editing, as he seamlessly cuts from the actors legs stumbling, to the rubbery half-head spurting copious amounts of blood and gore. Derek provides some of the most grotesque, Grand Guignol elements after he falls from a cliff, leaving a skull flat that exposes his brain matter. After this event, he constantly battles to keep the brain inside his head, strapping it closed with a belt. These scenes merge those ideas the comedy of the absurd, with the horrific splatter of giallo or the ridiculously over-the-top gore films of Herschell Gordon Lewis.
Considering the limitations of the incredibly low budget (according to imdb, the films budget was estimated at 30,000 NZD), the film looks good. Of course the film stock, the acting and the special effects aren't up to some of the more expensive American productions of its type, but with an insanely funny script, and the excessive nature of the violence, it is a film that should be loved. I do remember first seeing this film on video around 1989/1990, no doubt initially attracted by the latex alien on the video cover flipping the bird. It was soon the talk of the playground, as school friends would delight in the gore. But more specifically, I, along with my peers, were fundamentally reacting to the outlandish and on-the-money comedy, which holds up today as much as the first two Monty Python films. Gross-out comedy on this scale, has not been so much fun as this since. It's a shame Jackson hides away in Middle-Earth so much these days, it's about time he was funny again.
The focus of screenwriter Tony Kushner and director Steven Spielberg's Lincoln biopic is very specific, following the presidents administration for a short period of around two months in early 1865. It is a significant moment in Lincoln's term as president, not just for the passing of the 13th amendment to the United States constitution, that would free the thousands of black slaves, but for a change in Lincoln's opinion of the black population. It is also a significant period for American culture as a whole. Lincoln's image and reputation are wholly constructed from this short time. In the opening scene, Daniel Day-Lewis' Abraham Lincoln, discusses the black experience, and a previous speech he conducted, with two black soldiers on the front line in the civil war, still raging five years since it began. This opening is critical to the change that he experienced when he saw young black men fighting for the Union against the Confederate army. Before this face-to-face encounter, Lincoln had been involved in the Emancipation Proclamation (passed in 1863), but actually had plans to deport the blacks out of the United States, if slavery were abolished, as he felt that blacks and whites could not co-exist.
It is typical of all adaptations of Lincoln, "The Great Emancipator," is that the 16th president has been mythologised even by many history scholars since his death in April 1865. Spielberg is no stranger to revisionist historical cinema, of course (Schindler's List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998) instantly come to mind), as the director tends to hold onto an idealised sense of sentimentality, a heightened range of emotions. It's often a cheap trick in Spielberg's cinema, but in Lincoln, the screenplay does hint at a man who is a little ambiguous on the subject of race. Day-Lewis, in a scene on a porch with his wife's ex-slave confidante, Elizabeth Keckley (Gloria Reuben), he plays Lincoln with an awkwardness. He asks her what he thinks will happen to the black population if slavery was abolished. Is he uncomfortable because of his views on deportation, or is he exploring the idea of absolute freedom? This is another scene that leads me to believe that Kushner and Spielberg were aware of the more dubious history concerning Lincoln's possible racism before 1865. That is not to say he wasn't against slavery, he was, but as a lawyer, it appears he approached it totally pragmatically.
Lincoln focuses it's attentions on the debates both in congress and behind the scenes within the seemingly cavernous rooms of the White House. The arguments and anecdotes about the meaning of freedom, and the race differences. The film attempts to show the bureaucratic and labyrinthine nature of policy change, let alone the grievances of changing the constitution written out in 1776. Tommy Lee Jones plays Thaddeus Stevens, a staunch opponent of slavery, and advocate of total freedom for blacks. As his story unfolds in congress, his secret personal life reveals itself almost revelatory in its conclusion. Small moments of comic vignette are provided by James Spader's Lobbyist W. N. Bilbo, and his crew, as they attempt to persuade democrats and republicans to vote for the passing of the 13th Amendment. Bilbo is seen in congress, sitting in the public seat mezzanine, providing character exposition, commentary and funny observations with his cohorts, like the two old men, Statler and Waldorf, in The Muppet Show. However, these escapades offer nothing more tangible than a little relief from the seriousness of the politics. Of course, with Spielberg attached to this project, the politics is also backed up with the emotional core of the Lincoln family. Sally Field plays the grief stricken wife, Mary, who is struggling after the death of a son.
Lincoln shows an ambiguous family, whose inner conflict juxtaposes the husband and the politician. In scenes with Mary, Lincoln is defensive, conflicting with the emotional stability of his wife. He has emotional detachments from his youngest son, whilst the visiting Robert Lincoln (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), battles with his father to join the civil war, a path that the president does not want for him. The American civil war was a brutal war, mechanised by the rise of the industrial revolution, leading to hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded. Whilst the scenes between son and wife are well scripted and acted, their presence seems secondary to what will, in part, contribute to awards heavy adulation of the Day-Lewis performance. Not only does he portray a president adored throughout history, but the script gives the actor a series of hyperbolic and anecdotal monologues. In practically all of Day-Lewis's performances, he has a moment in which he orates a lengthy, passionate speech, bringing stories to their emotional peek. In Lincoln, he almost explicitly has one of these fervent, impassioned moments, in every scene in which he is sitting. They are often humorous, but after a while, the obvious pleas for Oscar recognition, and fundamentally, to over emphasis the man as a great orator, and a man of complete honour and tolerance.
Undeniably, the film is sumptuously beautiful to look at. Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski conjures up a dark, candle-lit and fire-lit image when photographing inside. The minimal light, and contemporary decor, produces a palate of ochre's and earthy colours. When shooting outside, the grey of January winter bleeds from the sky into the skin of the characters, and the spacious clutter of buildings. The film juxtaposes these primitive images of the mid-ninetieth century surroundings with the very modern debates of morality and enslavement. There is a clear reason why Lincoln has been made in 2012. Lincoln's status as the emancipator of the black population, his image (still exploited for financial gain today in America), and his outstanding myth, were used during current president, Barack Obama's, presidential campaign in 2008. His myth is enduring (his Washington D.C. monument being the sight in which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke publicly about the failure of the Emancipation Proclamation to truly free black people in America), but his (and Day-Lewis's) performance as a saviour and saint, would always win over a nation of people whose emotional attachment to their history can be easily manipulated and perpetuated through mass communication (newspaper, film, television, Internet), and fact and fiction merge to create an acceptable narrative.
Lincoln is an interesting film. The machinations of politics are a subject that should be relevant to most people in this period where nefarious politics are happening in plain sight, but whose unknown activities are most likely darker and fundamentally scarier than is possible to imagine. This Lincoln has very slight moments of enigma, his character is at times inscrutable, but the film doesn't offer insight into these confusions of intention or social outlook. However, when these ambiguities present themselves, they are soon reversed by ever-present adoration of the historical figure, this is perfectly illustrated in the closing moments. The film uncomfortably and unnecessarily attaches Lincoln's death scene at the end (which occurred two or three months after the time period the film is set). A tactic that opens the film into stomach churning celebration and lionising, where his famous speech lingers over the ghost on Lincoln, the generic emotional music of John Williams echoing into the credits. It's a shame the filmmakers perpetuated the myth instead of penetrating a character whose true identity is clouded in over a century of storytelling, and pseudo-religious worship. A missed opportunity perhaps, but Lincoln seems to have been made at this time to simply highlight to the world the social and political progress that has been made in America, from the passing of the 13th amendment, to the inaugaration of Barack Obama in 2008: Well done America, you're so enlightened (sic)!
You would be forgiven if, during a screening of Quentin Tarantino's latest Django Unchained, you believed that one of the many directors the film plays homage to, is John Ford. After all, Ford all but made the American western genre his own, from early silents such as The Iron Horse (1924), to well-established classics like My Darling Clementine (1946) and The Searchers (1956), he brought critical adoration to a genre that was then seen as nothing more than popcorn cinema. But Tarantino hates John Ford, to quote - "to say the least, I hate him [...] It really is people like that that kept alive this idea of Anglo-Saxon humanity compared to everybody else's humanity." So, in Django, do we have a post-modern, anti-Ford American West, where a freed black slave is the hero, and the White Man the devil? Well, kinda. But this is Tarantino, and from what was clear from his previous film Inglourious Basterds (2009), he doesn't do things the regular way.
In 1850's Texas, shackled slave Django (Jamie Foxx) is released by dentist and bounty hunter King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), who bargains Django's freedom for information about the Brittle brothers, Schultz's latest bounty. Schultz is opportunistic in his outlook, but makes it clear to Django that he despises slavery. Django informs Schultz that he must find his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), who he was separated from by his previous plantation owner. Moved by his story, Schultz agrees to help Django as well as take him on as an associated bounty hunter, after Django displays a natural ability for gunfighting and killing. Their search leads them to the plantation of Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), a slaver who deals in 'Mandingo' slaves, along with his own freed slave Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson).
Very much like Inglourious Basterds, the most intriguing thing I found with Django is its sheer unpredictability. The later work of Tarantino have elected to follow very much they're own path, ignoring narrative convention or story-telling tradition in favour of certain scenes or ideas that the director wants there, or focusing on a certain character when they really have no purpose being there. For example, August Diehl's Major Hellstrom appears from nowhere in possibly the finest scene from Inglorious Basterds. He has no other scenes, but his character is instantly intriguing, whereas such a scene and character wouldn't have been given neither the depth or the screen-time if done by somebody else. It is a basic cover-gets-blown scene, seen in a thousand other films, but in Basterds it becomes a masterwork of tension, and features some of Tarantino's best ever dialogue. You could call it indulgent, but Tarantino sees the opportunity to squeeze as much as he can from every possible moment.
Django follows the same idea, but whereas this approach complimented Basterds' chapter-based structure and plethora of supporting characters and extended cameos, Django has neither the wealth of central characters, nor the sheer scope to be a complete success, or to justify it's massive 165-minute running-time. The narrative hook of Django finding his wife is given very little screen-time or focus that by the time this becomes important, its very difficult to really care. The more intriguing relationship that comes out of the film is in fact the one between Django and Schultz - polar opposites in terms of societal position and background - yet both in a situation that calls for them needing each other. The main bulk of the first two-thirds follows the two in the tradition of a buddy-movie, only they get along, and Tarantino manages to eject some fine comic moments into these scenes, as well some actually quite touching ones.
Although he doesn't possess the sociopathic charisma as his Hans Landa from Basterds did, the character of Schultz is another triumph for Tarantino and Waltz both, the latter being recognised again by the Academy and receiving a Best Supporting Actor nod. Like Landa, Schultz is a social intellectual, a man able to use his wits and charm to lure his victims into a false sense of security before either blowing the top of their head off, or outwitting a town's marshal. But it is Waltz - and DiCaprio's maniacal plantation owner - that comes out of this most memorable, not the film's protagonist, Django. Foxx is perfectly fine in the role, as angry and posturing as you would want ("you gonna let me pick my own wardrobe?"), but sadly just as un-memorable. Tarantino seems so wrapped up in Schultz and the film's extreme violence that Django gets left out in the rain, lacking the iconic costume or the stand-out scene that, say, Uma Thurman's The Bride in Kill Bill (2003-2004) had.
Spike Lee has said he will be boycotting the film, claiming the slave trade is not a subject for exploiting or trivialising, and opposes the excessive use of the 'n' word (something he complained about in Jackie Brown (1997) - a film that celebrated one of the most important era's for Black Cinema). It's a shame he will never see the film, as he would realise that not only does Tarantino take the matter seriously, but is the most brutal and explicit depiction of it I've ever seen. The violence is often over-the-top and cartoonish, yes, but is also disturbing and genuinely horrific (the Mandingo fight and dog scene being particular memorable). Tarantino also mocks the KKK (or an early version of it) in a scene which is in direct reference to John Ford playing one of the charging KKK in The Birth of a Nation (1915). Before the charge, they argue about the badly made eye-holes in their masks. It's a light scene given their intention, but goes on far too long to remain funny.
As much as I dislike Tarantino (as a person), his films will always be irresistibly intriguing. Regardless of whether they're self-indulgent missteps such as Death Proof (2007), or strokes of genius like Inglourious Basterds, you will always be getting something profoundly different to anything that any other director is even contemplating. Django is no different, setting out on one path and ending up wandering several detours, like a fat kid happily chasing the scent of gingerbread. When we do get to the end, it suffers from a serious anti-climax - disappointing given the 150-minute build-up. This is not the great film it really could have been, due to the neglect of its lead, a lack of real focus, and a final half hour that seems to strive for super-cool moments of iconography, rather than giving the film the satisfying ending that it really deserves. Ennio Morricone's title song is amazing, however.
Nick Millard, director of obscure cult favourite Criminally Insane, must have been ashamed of himself. As well as this schlocky (yet quite enjoyable) effort, he has notched up as many Z-grade soft-core flicks as he has had aliases, such as the classics Fraulein Leather (1970), Pleasure Spots (1975), and, most hilariously, Sex Weirdo (1973). He has named himself Helmud Schuyler, Otto Wilmer and Alan Lindus, and here goes by the name of Nick Philips. Although he displays a unique talent for ineptness, Criminally Insane proves to be almost charming in its embracing of trash, and although features technical standards akin to Herschall Gordon Lewis, it channels the Midnight Movie sleaze of John Waters.
The obese and mentally ill Ethel (Priscilla Alden) is released from a mental hospital, where she moves back in with her mother Mrs. Janowski (Jane Lambert). Having been warned of Ethel's physical health and dangerous over-eating, Mrs. Janowski places her on a diet, locking all the cupboards and emptying the fridge. After being refused the key to the cupboard, Ethel stabs and killer her mother, and orders a big delivery (with extra ice-cream). Unable to pay the bill, Ethel kills the delivery boy as well, dragging him and her mother into the back room where they begin to rot. Things become complicated when Ethel's sister Rosalie (Lisa Farros) moves in, bringing her prostitute lifestyle as well as her sleazy pimp boyfriend John (Michael Flood), in with her.
From the synopsis alone, one could predict what they were letting themselves in for. This is shameless exploitation, made on an obviously tiny budget, and filmed in mainly one location (probably the director's grandma's house). Millard's takes people's natural disgust for obesity (now a much more sensitive issue in these PC days) and turns it into a movie monster. Alden, clearly possessing no acting ability, is nevertheless memorable, and more disturbingly, believable. I could imagine watching her on the Jerry Springer show being crane-lifted out the side of her house. At only 61 minutes, it doesn't demand much, but if a film this short can feel dragged out towards the end then you know you're in trouble. But ultimately, there are plenty of logic-defying moments that provide much-needed hilarity, and the thickest fake blood you've ever seen, and deserves it's place on the cult circuit.
Ada (Holly Hunter) arrives at a rainy New Zealand coast to meet her new husband - the gently-spoken frontiersman Stewart (Sam Neill) - along with her precious grand piano and her illegitimate daughter Flora (Anna Paquin). Ada has been a mute since she was 6 years old, and as she explains in her narration, no-one knows why. Stewart's friend Baines (Harvey Keitel) takes an interest in the piano and offers Stewart land in exchange for it, as well as lessons from Ada, to which Stewart agrees. Offering the chance to earn her piano back, Baines wants one visit per black key on the piano from Ada, who he is seemingly infatuated with.
Australian director Jane Campion's erotically-charged gothic love story was a huge success back in 1993, winning the Best Actress Academy Award for Holly Hunter and Best Supporting Actress for Paquin, who became the second youngest recipient ever. Hunter's shadowy Ada is the backbone of The Piano, and while it may appear that it is her piano that fuels her passion, it is very much her own mind and experiences that dictate her actions. She is quite a fascinating character - not merely the put-upon mute who longs for love and her piano - she is actually rather subtly manipulative and sexually powerful, weighing up the two love interests in her life, and playing a dangerous power game with her increasingly jealous husband.
The contrast between the two men in Ada's life couldn't be any obvious - Stewart playing dutiful, business-minded and quite inept in courtship, while Baines is hulking, living out in the forest, his face spotted with native Maori tattoos - but it is quite clear as to where Campion's preferences life. Ada's scenes with Baines, in which he listens to her play, become the centrepiece for some highly erotic moments, playing out more like animal foreplay than anything human. Ada seems not to bat an eyelid when Baines lies on the floor by her feet, fingering a hole in her stocking, or simply walks around the room completely naked. While these unconventional actions are there to channel Ada's sexual repression/release and Baines' animalistic nature, these scenes often appear forced, filled with lazy or nonsensical metaphors passed of as spiritual film-making.
As with many Australian period films, The Piano looks stunning. The exotic location is not filmed through a sun-tinted lens, and nor does it capture any of the colourful wildlife (something you would expect if Terence Malick had directed it), but is grey, wet and muddy. Like Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and Gallipoli (1981), it has that lived-in feel, with Hunter's beautiful, ghostly face evoking a 19th-century photograph, where everyone looks grim and pale, and Campion's occasionally snapshot approach captures the mundane, everyday actions of the period. The performances are a revelation, with Hunter and Paquin deserving their accolades, and Keitel proving a formidable presence (I'll not mention the accent). The Piano is personal film-making, but too often the film seems to be striving for that mystical atmosphere rather than actually capturing it, occasionally getting lost amongst Campion's obvious adoration for her protagonist.
After the huge success of the first Faces of Death film in 1978, John Alan Schwartz wasn't going to turn down the opportunity to capitalise on audience's unquenchable thirst for death and returned to the 'director's' chair in 1981 to make another collection of grisly events. Michael Carr returns once again as our host Dr. Francis B. Gross, this time sporting a shirt and jeans combination, rather than his doctor's jacket (he was fooling nobody). We have more animal slaughter, decomposing bodies, shoot-outs and executions, as well as a large focus on stunt accidents, a fatal boxing match, animal experimentation, and the aftermath of an avalanche.
While the first entry was mainly a collection of badly-filmed and thoroughly unconvincing staged scenes, the sequel has much more real footage, and only the police shoot-out scene, where director Schwartz plays one of the criminals and proves himself to be as useless at acting as he is at directing, is seemingly faked. While the staged scenes was the main factor I criticised from the first film, the distinct lack of them takes the (should I say it?) charm out of the film. The clips are simply thrown in together, lacking the first's narrative structure, taking whatever 'meaning' the FOD series tries to convince us it has and coming across as simply low-rent exploitation.
One of the longest scenes focuses on the boxing match between Welsh Bantamweight boxer Johnny Owen being knocked into a coma by Mexican champion Lupe Pintor. Gross' narration fails to really acknowledge Owen as anything other than a face of death, but knowing that Owen's statue stands in Merthyr Tydfil not far from where I live where he is fondly remembered (the statue was unveiled by Pintor), it hammers home how bad taste this film really is. So, certainly not as 'good' (I've never used so many inverted commas) as the first, which at least provided some unintentional laughs, but this series will still remain a curiosity to me, and will no doubt reluctantly seek out the rest of the series in time.
So finally, after becoming the highest grossing film of all time in the UK, grossing over 1 billion dollars worldwide, and amongst chants of "best Bond ever!", I finally got round to watching Skyfall, Daniel Craig's third appearance as the re-invented British spy, following the excellent Casino Royale (2006) and the somewhat flat Quantum of Solace (2008). Ever since Paul Greengrass picked up the reigns of the moderately successful The Bourne Identity (2002) and gave birth to a franchise with his sequel The Bourne Supremacy (2004), action cinema has been significantly affected. We no longer expect cheesy one-liners and long-haired villains being thrown over tables, we now look for damaged anti-heroes, spectacular but realistic stunts, and messy hand-to-hand combat. Skyfall is Bond's most emotionally engaging movie yet, but it's also an alarmingly underwhelming experience.
After a botched MI6 operation in Istanbul, a lone mercenary, Patrice (Ola Rapace), escapes with a computer file containing details about undercover agents working within terrorist organisations. James Bond is accidentally shot by his partner Eve (Naomie Harris) and believed to be dead. Back in London, M (Judi Dench) finds her position threatened by Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes), who urges her to retire in the aftermath of Istanbul. When the MI6 headquarters are bombed following a threatening cyber-message to M, Bond returns, facing questions about his mental state and his physical ability. But when Patrice is tracked down, an assassination leads Bond to a casino in Macao, owned by cyber-terrorist Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem), a former colleague of M's.
If I can say off the bat, I've always been in favour of this re-invention of Bond. As the 'old' Bond films were progressing, they were becoming gradually more ridiculous and fantasy-laden, leading to the inexplicable invisible car in Pierce Brosnan's last film as Bond, Die Another Day (2002). The films seemed to be losing sight of Ian Fleming's source novels, and although they remained commercial hits, Brosnan's outings (with the exception of GoldenEye (1995) were becoming increasingly dire. Casino Royale set the tone early with a moody black-and-white sequence that gave birth to Daniel Craig's colder, brutal Bond, less concerned with how his Martini's were made than going to extreme (and illegal) lengths to bring down his target(s). Royale's reinvention showed a darker side to the beloved character, yet staying with tradition, still kept him at an emotional distance.
Director Sam Mendes made the bold decision to reveal more about Bond's past and childhood, risking fanboy wrath and damaging Bond's almost mythical characterisations. The main crux of the film focuses on his relationship with M, a stern authoritarian that risks career and her own soul in putting national safety and the success of a mission above the lives of her agents. Bond, being a willing soldier, follows M blindly, and when Silva announces his intention to enact revenge on M for a former betrayal, Bond takes M to his childhood home, Skyfall. Bond facing his childhood allows time to develop on Bond's tormented psyche, but it all seems quite out of place. One of the most intriguing things about Bond is his almost suicidal willingness to risk all for his job due to his almost complete lack of emotion, but Skyfall is unable to make any grand revelations so it all comes to nothing more than a distraction. (Saying that, the only previous Bond film to try and engage Bond emotionally led to one of the most devastatingly cold climaxes in the series' history in the underrated On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)).
As well as the Bourne series, it seems that Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy (2005-2012) is a major influence on this film in particular. Mendes delves deeper into the workings and hierarchy of MI6, rather than just a boss sat behind a desk, and adds a modern, more 'real' bad guy in Silva to the mix (even stealing the Joker's voluntary arrest in The Dark Knight (2008)). Silva is a technical genius, able to hack MI6's database with relative ease, and also proving himself more resourceful and intelligent than Bond and M realise. Bardem is wonderful in the role (as you would expect), but sadly his character is not. Labelling him simply as a cyber virtuoso seems like a very lazy way to allow Silva to repeatedly outwit MI6 and their own technical marvel Q (Ben Whishaw) to the point where you wonder if Britain's finest could really be so stupid. The film is therefore full of plot-holes and distracting MacGuffin's that stretches out the running time to more than it really needs to be.
Skyfall also asks a lot of the audience, especially when it comes to suspending their belief. Before the frankly bizarre opening sequence appears and we are treated to Adele's drab title song, we witness an already wounded Bond get shot with a rifle and fall over 300 feet from the Varda Viaduct into water, only to emerge alive and romancing a mystery woman. No explanation is given as to how he manages to survive the ordeal, and given the revelations about Bond's diminishing physical prowess, it seems rather insulting. As questions are raised by his superiors over Bond's ability to his job given his age (it must be the grey in his stubble), Bond is put through various tests in which he struggles with, yet half way through the film, this seems to be simply put aside as he competently shoots and fights his way through various bad guys. Again, no real explanation given.
Like I stated before, the most suitable word to describe this film would be underwhelming, especially with the critical adoration that the film was lavished with. The action scenes are dull, with nothing matching the free-jumping opening of Royale. They are also quite strange - was anyone expecting a henchman to be eaten by a CGI Komodo dragon? How about death by underwater funky chicken? It all leads to a very unsatisfying climax at Skyfall, where a simple shoot-out and foot chase fail to justify a 2 hour-plus build-up. It feels like the entire film is building up to an explosive climax that never comes. I found the whole experiencing really quite baffling, with the attempts to mix the old with the new Bond never really convincing or flowing. The film is competently directed by Mendes however, and everything looks suitably crisp and clean. What direction all of this means for Bond, I don't know, but given the film is currently the 14th highest-grossing film of all time, and the film somehow being lauded by critics and audiences alike, it won't be too long until Craig dons the suit once again.
This Warner Brothers vehicle for star Paul Muni uses racial stereotypes - of which would be highly condemned nowadays - to portray a damning indictment of the American system and the idea of 'The American Dream'. When Muni is humiliated in court by Manville, he resorts to his fists, something that ethnic minorities back in 1935 no doubt had to do to survive in their slums. It is common knowledge that America, self-declared land of the free, has a brutal history of racial oppression, and Bordertown is impressive in its bravery to tackle a subject when the Hollywood system itself was guilty of neglecting black or ethnic actors. It also dawns on Johnny that America is ultimately ruled by money, and if you rely on honesty and simply doing the right thing, you'll ultimately left licking the shoes of the rich man.
