So Manny (Ray Romano), Sid (John Leguizamo), Diego (Denis Leary) et al return for yet another instalment of the hugely successful Ice Age franchise, to explore themes that have been re-cycled from previous films, and re-hash familiar plots. With the continents breaking up around them after a calamitous act by the returning Scrat, Manny is separated from Ellie (Queen Latifah) and his teenage daughter Peaches (Keke Palmer) and washed out to sea. With the world seemingly becoming an ocean of floating glaciers, they are picked up by the maniacal pirate Captain Gutt (Peter Dinklage), a gigantophithecus who wants to make them walk the plank. They escape, and must form a plan to seal Gutt's boat in order to meet up with Ellie, Peaches, and their wandering herd.
Similar to the plot strand in The Meltdown (2006) involving Manny and Ellie, who was torn given that she thought she was a different animal, Diego meets one of his fellow species Shira (Jennifer Lopez) aboard Gutt's ship, who is dedicated to Gutt's tyrannical rule regardless of how he treats her. Again the writers seem unable to come up with something inventive for Diego so have lumbered him with a shockingly uninvolving love story. Shira is merely one of many new additions, and apart from Dinklage's impressive Gutt and Nick Frost's hilariously brain-dead Flynn, none hit the mark. The introduction of Peaches, who arrived in the third (and best by far) instalment Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009) merely causes the film to explore TV-movie themes of family and generation, played out like a middle-class suburban family. Peaches even says to Manny "I wish you weren't my father," before they are separated - yawn!
The creators seem to have lost all respect for themselves and the series after the hopeful third instalment, and have opted for an MTV/Disney Channel aesthetic, bringing in awful pop stars such as Lopez, Nicki Minaj, Drake and Heather Morris to satisfy the young generations' lust for these conveyor belt voices rather than some genuine voice talent. It's quite mystifying as to why they opted to leave out Simon Pegg's Buck (although he is glimpsed for a split second), who was the best thing about the previous film, and instead introduced this endless wave of forgetful characters. Even Scrat, usually a welcome diversion to the central action, is lacking any real ideas and fails to raise a laugh. And the film is wrapped up with an awful rendition of 'We Are Family' sang by the whole cast that caused me to instantly turn the volume down and stop the film as my body was uncontrollably cringing. Simply dreadful, and I doubt I'll continue with the series from now on.
The movie starts with the death of Mike Donovan (Alfred Allen), who is watching over his two children Roy and Sylvia, whilst unbeknownst to him, the present Hawkes (Wallace Beery) is plotting against him. Roy runs outside, believing his father and sister dead, while Hawkes flees with Sylvia, who believes the same of Roy. Fifteen years later, Roy (Raymond Griffith), going by the name of The Kid, is scamming people with his mechanical chess player. Hawkes returns to England with Sylvia (Priscilla Dean) and witnesses the automaton at a wax display, and hatches a plan with Roy to take the chess player to America, where they can pull a giant scam on the upper classes. After pulling of a robbery, the trio flee to a remote cabin, where paranoia and greed start to take hold of them.
Though he is now best remembered for his work in horror, most notable Dracula (1931) - arguably the greatest adaptation of the story ever made - and the excellent Freaks (1932), a macabre and twisted horror that would see itself banned for decades and tarnish the director's reputation, Tod Browning enjoyed a hugely successful and busy silent period directing, amongst others, caper films, focusing on small-time crooks and their schemes. White Tiger is one of these such films, and one of many collaborations he had with star Priscilla Dean, who was a huge star in her day, now sadly all but forgotten. The title White Tiger refers to the animal that lies inside of criminals, eating a way at them with guilt, uncertainty and paranoia, and we see this unfold in the second half on the movie as the lead trio hide out. I suspect the movie thinks itself as a window into this fascinating world, but after an entertaining first half, becomes a tedious and rather ridiculous melodrama.
The print I watched of this was so old and grainy that the film would often jump, making certain scenes difficult to follow and title cards often unreadable. But should the film ever be given a re-mastering, I doubt it would do anything to improve the dullness of the film. After spending forty or so minutes setting up an intriguing story, we spend the next forty minutes in one location, where unconvincing suspicions arise about the true identity of Hawkes, and they needlessly bicker amongst themselves. It is something Browning would go on to develop further in the commercially successful The Unholy Three (1925), but White Tiger was so incoherent that it was shelved for over a year before the studio released a new edit to an underwhelming box-office.
Notable perhaps only because it was the producing debut of the B-movie king Roger Corman, Monster From the Ocean Floor is one of hundreds of dirt-cheap monster movies produced in the U.S. in the 1950's. Atomic testing had opened the floodgates for many a wannabe film-maker to throw someone in a rubber suit, and build a generic story around it for exploitation purposes. Many of Corman's films were about unknown dangers lurking in the vast and unexplored ocean, and produced/directed many profitable pre and post-Jaws (1975) horrors, and here, the beastie is a giant one-eyed octopus skulking amongst a coastline in Mexico.
While holidaying in Mexico, Julie Blair (Anne Kimbell) learns about a mysterious monster who has eaten various residents of the sea-side town. The only clues it leaves behinds are massive drag marks that resident Pablo (director Wyott Ordung) describes as "not a seal." Marine biologist Steve Dunning (Stuart Wade) picks her up in his mini-submarine and the two hit it off, only Steve is unconvinced by Julie's concerns about the mythical creature. With Steve moving on for further exploration, Julie is left on her own, with one of the local residents whispering in Pablo's ear that a human sacrifice may cause the creature to go back into hibernation.
At only 64 minutes, Corman's beginning to what would become an extraordinary career (he's still going), is a massively dull affair. There are long moments of exposition that drags the film along while it struggles to come with anything remotely inventive or entertaining. The misleading poster that depicts the monster bursting out of the ocean is laughable given we only glimpse the creature twice throughout the whole movie (though this wasn't anything new - dazzling posters brought the audience in under false pretences). The film doesn't look half bad given its obviously modest budget, but even a giant rubber octopus can't save this film from becoming a damp squib.
The term 'accattone' is an old Italian phrase intended to brand a character with an aura of absolute repulsiveness. Thieves and low-lives would usually coin the term when referring to a character that is so despicable, so without moral or social decency, that even the criminals would look down upon them. In Pier Paolo Pasolini's incredibly assured debut, 'Accattone' is Vittorio (Franco Citti), a low-life pimp who when he is not sitting around squeezing money out of people with wagers and tricks, is abusing his lone prostitute who cannot work after breaking her leg in a motorcycle accident. It's a tale of a despicable scumbag, set during a dark period in Rome, where men viewed working as slave labour, and enjoyed themselves by beating prostitutes to within an inch of their life.
It's an incredibly bleak tale, told without sentiment and moral preaching. Pasolini's doesn't seem to want to dictate a larger social message, or make Accattone a sympathetic character who is the victim of political or social oppression, but to simply tell a tale, a real tale, of a group of low-lives who are the way they are because they want to be. After all, the true soul of neo-realism is to portray life the way actual people experience it, not to romanticise or sentimentalise it with the kind of scripts Hollywood are responsible for. Of course, many neo-realist directors would almost betray the genres roots the kind of way only auteurs can manage, and Pasolini would go on to make more surrealistic and interpretive movies, but this is true neo-realism without any kind of magical reward for the audience, or a moment of redemptive enlightenment for its protagonist. It's a story of grit, one that is thrilling and fascinating in equal measures, and with the stamp of a great director.
The film I felt it more akin to is Luis Bunuel's Los Olvidados (1950), a film of equal disregard for cinematic wonder, and one that is also punctured by an impressive dream sequence. Whilst Bunuel's sequence came around the middle section, and was a burst of absolute surrealistic beauty amongst social depravity, Accattone's comes during its climax; a strange, moody set-piece in which Accattone witnesses his own funeral, amongst other things. At first I felt like it was almost betraying what came before, but then I realised it was Pasolini's way to try and get into its characters head, and the outcome is as confusing and as futile as Accattone himself. Though I haven't seen much of Pasolini's work, this is the best I've seen, beating even the distressing brilliance ofhis final film Salo (1975).Though he would move away from neo-realism, Pasolini achieves more with his debut than some of the greats of the genre would manage to achieve.
Very few Japanese films exist from the silent period. In fact, statistics show that only 1% of around 7,000 productions are represented in the modern catalogue of the silent cycle. Director Teinosuke Kinugasa's Kurutta Ippeji (also known as A Page of Madness)was thought lost (and perhaps forgotten) until he himself discovered a print in a warehouse in 1971. He diligently produced a new music soundtrack and re-released it. This is the first example of a silent film from Japan that I have seen, and have to say that the world should be thankful that Kinugasa discovered this avant-garde little master work.
The film was produced with an avant garde group of artists, known as Shinkankak-ha (School of New Perceptions), an experimental art movement that rejected naturalism, or realism, and was highly influenced by European art movements such as Expressionism, Dada, and Cubism, and evidently uses the techniques found in Soviet Montage, particularly Sergei Eisenstein - fundamentally, as this project deals with madness, it would be easy to draw parallels with Robert Weine's seminal horror film Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920). What the art trope bring to this extreme nightmare are those exaggerated, pointed and alarmist movements like the expressionist acting styles being used in European film and stage work - but happens to find its own stylistic flourishes, and colloquial "voice" (for want of a better word).
Kurutta ippeji's simplistic story focuses on a man (Masuo Inoue) whom has taken a job as a janitor in an asylum, so that he may be close to his wife (Yoshie Nakagawa), who has been condemned. His aim is to aid in her escape from the dogmatic institution. However, when the break-out is orchestrated, her madness has enveloped her, and she is unwilling to leave with her husband. The couples daughter (Ayako Iijima) visits the asylum to advise her mother of her engagement, which leads to a maelstrom of fantastically abstract flashbacks, giving light to the reasons the mother is condemned.
The films style is so incredibly complex and technically brilliant. In the opening sequence, the jarring compositions (both beautiful and haunting), superimposition's, and quick montage editing, creates an assault on the senses that is difficult to break away from - torrential rain falls across the scenery in shots of the asylum; expressionist compositions of wind-battered tree branches clashing with windows, and the sight of a woman riddled in madness. The use of superimposition becomes greater as the film moves into crescendo, and these layers portray climatically the merger of madness and modernity. Do we witness the ghosts that haunt the corridors of the asylum? Or are these the devastating spectre's of modernity, and the destruction of tradition? An ironic speculation perhaps, considering the mechanics of cinema production and exhibition.
To a modern audience, silent cinema is often a difficult watch. This film is of particular note for this argument. Kurutta ippeji has no title cards describing dialogue, or internal action, which makes it difficult to follow at times. But as with all 1920's Japanese cinema, the films were always accompanied by narration - a storyteller known colloquially as a benshi. But this small infraction does not hamper an incredibly dazzling piece of early experimental cinema, and one that should be viewed by any film enthusiast, at least for posterity - if not for a formative education on the stylistic diversity of film as art.
In the past fifteen or so years, there has been plenty of talk of Ridley Scott returning to the world he created in his masterpiece Alien (1979), be it a sequel, a prequel, or a spin-off of some manifestation. Since the early 2000's, Scott has had a script entitled Prometheus, a story that would set out to depict the origin of the Alien species, but along came the dire Alien Vs. Predator (2004) and the project sort of went out the window. But Scott's interest was never completely lost, and in 2009, the script was re-written to form a plot that would be set in the same universe, but following its own story and mythology, and would attempt to delve into humanity's creation, taking inspiration from wall paintings, ancient scripture, and the religions of ancient civilisations.
Archaeologists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) discover an ancient cave painting in Scotland that they believe as final proof of alien astronauts visiting the planet, to be received and worshipped as gods by long-dead civilisations. Forming a map to a distant constellation they believe to hold the answers, Shaw, Holloway and a crew of geologists, soldiers, corporates, and android David (Michael Fassbender), set out on a two-year trip to reach it. When they awake, they wander into a large structure where they find the dead body of a large alien, lying untouched for thousands of years. They believe this to be an 'Engineer' - one of our creators. Unbeknownst to the crew, David takes a sample of a strange black fluid they find covering a set of strange cylindrical blocks and begins his own secret research.
While this has received general unfavourable reviews from the critics, I have admire Ridley Scott's decision to avoid the obvious and tackle a much more existential, thoughtful approach to an ambitious story. After the massive success of the Alien franchise (now a mockery of itself with recent ...Vs. Predator incarnations), expectations would be that the famous beasties would make an appearance to appease fan-boys and audiences wanting to be spoon-fed shit they've seen before. But Prometheus is very much a completely new vision, and Scott has created an old-fashioned space opera that harks back to the philosophical pondering of the golden age of sci-fi, and one that opts for suspense and atmosphere rather than blood, guts and killer aliens.
Yet while the approach is extremely admirable, the film over-reaches itself, struggling to contain the massiveness of its ambition into a feature-length running-time (I would have much preferred a patient, three-hour film), and inevitably becomes a bit of a bumbling mess. It asks far too many questions that it can't (and doesn't) answer, leading to many scenes and occurrences that become downright confusing, and makes some plain odd decisions (why employ Guy Pearce to play an old man? What's with the Janek (Idris Elba)/Vickers (Charlize Theron) sex-talk scene?). Things becomes so baffling, that during its sagging middle section, I found it difficult to work out exactly what the film was trying to be, as the action ground to a halt and Scott's attention goes from one thing to the next, never really falling on a subject as its focus.
If the film has one ultimate saving grace, it would be in Michael Fassbender's phenomenal performance as the android David, who styles himself on Peter O'Toole after spending two years watching Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and appears to know far more that he is letting on. He is so good, that his co-stars suffer in comparison. While I found Noomi Rapace's career-making performance in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009) to be as excellent as I was made to believe, here, she struggles to make an impact. Her character is bland, and doesn't have the charisma or the action-hero chops of Sigourney Weaver's Ripley to be a credible lead, and Charlize Theron, playing the corporate bitch-in-charge, can't raise her character above that of a faceless stereotype.
However, I found the films philosophical aspects irresistibly fascinating, and Scott takes ideas and theories published in the 1968 novel Chariots of the Gods? by Erich von Daniken, that attempted to apply scientific research to the author's own theoretical studies to argue the existence of alien visitors, documented in artifacts such as the Egyptian Pyramids and Stone Henge, ancient artwork from many global civilisations, and texts including the Bible. It's just a pity the film can't hold this plus the many other plot strands together to make a coherent movie. The visuals are absolutely stunning however, from the cold interiors to the even colder alien landscape, Scott blends gaunt, minimalistic restraint, with stunning explosions of CGI wonder. Hardly worth the wait, but certainly worth your time.
This British gangster film was originally intended for director Guy Ritchie's typically heavy-handed approach, but thankfully, duty took him elsewhere and the gig landed in producer Matthew Vaughn's hands. Vaughn is now well-established amongst the Hollywood elite, having since gone on to direct the underrated Stardust (2007), the hugely entertaining Kick-Ass (2010), and the rather hit-and-miss X-Men: First Class (2011), but he made his name with this now-cult and extremely stylish little thriller that also paved the way for star Daniel Craig to become James Bond and an A-lister in one swoop. Vaughn's ability to stamp his quirky humour onto relatively familiar grounds is clear from the off, with Craig nameless protagonist (credited simply as XXXX) giving us the narration to his world, only this protagonist is about to get a massive life-lesson, and one that is quite suitable to our times.
XXXX is a successful cocaine dealer who, along with his cohorts Gene (Colm Meaney), Morty (George Harris), Terry (Tamer Hassan) and Clarkie (Tom Hardy), is on the verge of making the big deal that could see his retirement. "Have a plan, and stick to it," he tells us, only crime boss Jimmy Price (Kenneth Cranham) has different ideas. He sets XXXX the task of finding the daughter of larger crime lord Eddie Temple (Michael Gambon), a promising girl who has taken to drugs and since gone missing. Meanwhile, in Amsterdam, cocky gangster Duke (Jamie Foreman) has made a huge ecstasy heist but has stolen from the wrong person. All roads lead to XXXX, who finds himself pulled into a labyrinthine crime world where he starts to truly know his place.
This world of loud-mouthed gangsters and powerful old men in expensive suits that London (and the UK film industry) seems to enjoy mixing itself up with is frankly tiresome and has been done to death (especially in the straight-to-DVD market). Yet Layer Cake has less of the colourful, wise-cracking cock-er-neys and slow-motion bloodshed of Guy Ritchie's back catalogue, and shares more with the sleek, neon-lit world of Michael Mann. Although it does quite often border on style-over-substance, and the multi-stranded plot is not quite as clever as it thinks it is, the film is funny, entertaining and frequently surprising. The final moments especially pull the rug from beneath you when you think everything is nicely wrapped up.
The title refers to the social stratification of XXXX's world, and shows that it applies even to the criminal underworld, as well as business, social and political systems. XXXX thinks of himself as top dog, and in the opening scenes, we see him coolly going about his business - shades on, snappy suit, and he even takes the girl (Sienna Miller) of Duke's ridiculous nephew Sidney (Ben Whishaw). But his world, like our world, doesn't quite work like that. In the past year or so, we as the public have learned that we are mere cockroaches in a crushing capitalist country that vomits luxury onto the rich and powerful, and steals from the tax-payer. Like us, XXXX is chewed up by the system, giving him a slap-in-the-face dose of realism that he didn't see coming. The system is embodied by the towering Eddie Temple, in an effortlessly brilliant performance by a ridiculously fake-tanned Michael Gambon. This aspect is the main reason why this film stands out amongst its imitators. An introduction to an interesting film-maker and its intriguing star.
In the opening credits of David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis, the bottom half of the screen gets increasing doused with "action" art, the Jackson Pollack drippings of various coloured paints, an American artistic icon, whose paintings fetch millions of dollars at auction, are the symbols of opulence, and social status, to that one percent of the West's population who are inconceivably rich - those financial elite that the worlds ninety-nine percent aim their contemporary anger at. Whilst this topical subject matter could well have been wholly conceived after the 2008 economic crash, but it is in fact adapted (by Cronenberg himself) from the 2003 novel by Dom DeLillo. (But then, these suited elites have been targeted hate figures for some time, but with the crash came hard evidence of their financial greed - and crimes for that matter.) In Cosmopolis, the protagonist is Eric (Robert Pattinson), a billionaire asset manager, whose cold, detachment from reality, his alienation a product of his corporate exclusivity, operates his working life (and extra-curricula) from the inside of his technologically advanced limousine.
To the outside world, Eric is extraneous, but his interior world, the back of the limo, with its screens, curves and luminous sheen, reflect that consumerist fetishisation of technology - reminiscent of those chrome engines, erotically cleaned and poured over in Kenneth Anger's Kustom Kar Kommandos (1970). Eric occupies this space for much of the film, a hermetically sealed protector from the real world (customised so no sound can enter), where he lets in colleagues, friends, and a doctor for one-on-one conversation. It is this erotic space, where he communicates, fucks, and destroys lives, a space gleaming with technical-sexuality, is like a womb, the ultimate space of protection. In the few scenes exterior to the limo, - such as his encounters with his wife in eating establishments - the occupants are rarely heard, their insignificance obvious for the character.
But, like Joseph Conrad's Charles Marlow in 'Heart of Darkness', Eric is on an odyssey into the dark, and an apocalyptic journey into destruction and madness. But unlike Marlow, Eric's is a self inflicted destruction. This duality manifests itself symbolically, he is skewed, divided and unbalanced; his hair is only cut on one side, he shoots a hole in his left hand, and the visiting doctor advises Eric that his prostate is asymmetrical. The odyssey - his literal journey across Manhatten - is held up in traffic, a busy day that sees the President of the United States visiting the city, the funeral of a rap star, and an anti-capitalist "riot". Parallel to the increasing binary characteristics, Eric's detached wishes are often denied. In one scene he is informed of the death of his favourite rap star, but is disappointed that he died of natural causes, instead of a gun shot - a media-friendly representation. Juliette Binoche, Eric's art consultant, turns down a request (whilst copulating) to purchase an entire collection of Mark Rothko paintings, along with the space they occupy - an arrogance of ownership. Throughout the passage of Eric's car, he loses billions of dollars, his advisers philosophically, but dispassionately discussing these complex calculations and consequences.
In an early scene (and a quote from Zbigniew Herbert's poem 'Report from the Besieged City' at the start of the film), Eric proposes a fantasy future of finance where the rat becomes the worlds currency. In a restaurant, two anarchist protesters storm in holding rats by their tales, declaring "A spectre is haunting the world", before hurtling the rats at the patrons. That spectre is of course capitalism; the limo is grafittied by the protesters, Eric cocooned in perfect anonymity, but this is simply another pseudo-delight to the destructive dimensions of Eric. He knows he walks to danger, - he created it himself - a manifestation of possible psychosomatic invention? like American Psycho's (2000) Patrick Bateman, another satire on the financial elite, but one in which he is internally, mentally imploding, instead of externalising violence into a fantasy of psychotic whim. Here, Paul Giamatti's disgruntled forgotten work colleague, becomes a potential source of ultimate destruction, or he may simply be a manifestation of his deteriorating psyche.
However, unlike the sharp satirical whit of American Psycho, Cosmopolis is simply too cold, it's characters without depth. But then this could also be a purposeful emptiness. For Cronenberg, it is a return to that clinical aesthetic, and gaunt characterisation of Crash (1996) and eXistenZ (1999), but is too surreal in terms of its non-narrative structure to fundamentally clarify the sardonic elements that could have been so much more interesting. It is a very well made film, as you would expect from Cronenberg, his compositions and its movements and segues are beautifully constructed, but this odyssey into quasi-madness simply didn't enlighten me, or excite me in the way its central idea could well have, and simply is not cohesive enough to produce any major dramatic tension. As with the vacuous, clinical aesthetic of the film, it left me a little cold.
Bob Balaban's narrator begins, - the Brectian mannerisms of distanciation, talking directly to the camera - provider of information on the small fictitious New Penzance island, its topography, and landmarks. It is 1965, and in a few days a great storm will hit the island, a storm that could literally and metaphysically wash the islands stilted problems away. Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) - whom we later discover to be an orphan - escapes from the Khaki Scout camp, and rendezvous with Suzy (Kara Haywood), an island girl with emotional issues (a meeting that was organised the year before, when the met at a church play of Benjamin Britten's opera 'Noye's Fludde'). The pair of young lovers escape to go on an adventure together, and the island's inhabitants, including Suzy's overbearing, attorney parents, Walt and Laura Bishop (played by Bill Murray and Frances McDormand respectively), form a search party - the Khaki scout camp residents also form a militant party, in search of Sam, none of whom like him because he is "crazy" due to the death of his parents.
Wes Anderson brings his usual aesthetic idiosyncrasies to the film, his wondrously controlled tracking shots, tilts and pans; and the films narrative settings fill the screen with beautifully vivid, saturated autumnal colours - incidentally Suzy lives in a house at Summers End. As you might expect from the Khaki Scouts, led by Edward Norton's Scout Master Ward, their costumes are suitably coloured, and the costumes say much about the strong divisions between the adult and child world. Whilst the fugitive lovers form an incredibly poignant and mature relationship - and they are the most "adult" characters in the film - the literal adults simply force their own problems and insecurities on the young, particularly Suzy's parents, who's profession in law is brought into the home (amusingly McDormand's Laura, uses a megaphone to communicate in their family home).
In an early scene, the camera dolly's across the Khaki Scout camp, following Norton as he surveys the morning activities of his camp. Anderson's camera (as with the majority of his films) has presence in his films, practically becoming an arbiter of the comedy value in a scene. Here, we review, for example, a treehouse project of humorous proportions, as a collection of the boys build it precariously at the top of a very tall tree. Anderson's iconography, his frames and compositions also provide humour, and his aesthetic attention to detail is also highlighted in the sequence where Sam's escape from camp is discovered. The interior of the tents are set up like a bedroom, replete with decoration, seating, carpeted floors and storage. A small hole is discovered as exit point - a farcical moment indeed.
Aside from the aesthetic and character comedy, the films colour pallet perfectly reflects its more tender and meloncholly narrative moments. The somber and laconic police captain Sharp (Bruce Willis) is informed by Sam's foster father that he is no longer welcome back into their home, and he is left in his custody until Tilda Swinton's authoritarian, by-the-books, Social Services (that is her name, this is who she is) collects the boy for institutional correction - i.e. orphanage - perhaps electroshock therapy. In Sam and Suzy, we have a pair of troubled "problem" children, who find solace and connectedness in their relationship - away from the restrictions, and socially conventional "normality" of the seemingly more "problem" adult world. It is the culmination of these many strands that Anderson brings together so beautifully, in a film that knows when to be amusing, laugh-out-loud funny; when to be melancholy and poignant; when to be tender or forceful.
Along with the adult cast, who are typically brilliant (Murray has been a regular to Anderson's ensemble since 1998's Rushmore - and including Harvey Keitel's Scout Commander), have their performances outdone by a fantastic young cast. The film is, after all, one about children. Besides the terrific performances from the leads (at 12 and 13 years old, they show incredible maturity and humanism in their methodically minded characters), but also from the band of eccentrically uniformed Scouts. Anderson's previous film, the excellently frenetic Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), was his first foray into animation, and looking at the dynamics of Moonrise Kingdom, the techniques seem to have influenced him slightly. Combining with his other idiosyncratic techniques, makes this one of the most delightfully charming films I have seem for some time - and could arguably be one of the most beautifully touching of 2012.
Explorer Robert J. Flaherty spent the majority of 1914 and 1915 along the Hudson Bay, doing research and exploring for a Canadian railway company. Being a keen photographer and potential film-maker, he took a camera along with him. He shot 30,000 feet of film, of the native Eskimo tribes and their alien, hunter-gatherer lifestyle. The test footage was met with universal excitement, only Flaherty dropped a cigarette on the highly-flammable nitrate film-stock whilst editing, and lost it all. He would return, only this time with the sole intent on making a narrative-driven documentary, about one specific family of Eskimos, and their highly-charismatic leader Nanook, a legendary hunter.
Though it is now widely heralded as a masterpiece, and the film that gave birth to the documentary genre, the film is often criticised for its obviously staged dramatic scenes, and truth-manipulation in the search for a coherent narrative and to inject the film with an air of excitement and wonder. Personally, I have no problem with this approach, after all, one of my favourite directors Werner Herzog frequently does this in his documentary films to create a sort of artistic truth, opposed to the point-the-camera approach of cinema verite. In the modern age, we are treated to high-definition, sweeping footage of some of the most exotic and hostile corners of the planet, so it's a marvel to see where it all started, and Flaherty, faced with early, clunky film equipment and relatively little experience of film-making, created a magical documentary for an audience that, back then, knew little about the world outside their own country.
Amongst the many set-pieces we are treated to, the greatest (and much-celebrated) is the building of the igloo. We watch Nanook build it with skilled precision, slab by slab, and even incorporate a window feature, in order to give the igloo some warmth, and a chunk of ice by the side of it to divert the sun's rays. With many Eskimos now adopting Western aspects into their livelihood, the film is definitely a window into the past (the Eskimos had in fact already done this, and even wore Western clothes, but Flaherty persuaded them to revert back in order to give the film more of a sense of wonder). For a film-maker who had only taken a three-week course in cinematography prior to Nanook, the film is rich with beautiful imagery. The scene that watches the family trudge into the distance as the mist blows over the snowy surface like fleeing ghosts, gives the film a gorgeous, eerie quality. If you can forgive the film's manipulations, then this is still one of the greatest documentaries features ever produced, and Nanook (real name Allakariallak) proves to be a charming protagonist.
After Sam Raimi departing from a fourth Spider-Man project, the news of a "reboot" of the franchise was met with cries of anger from the plebeian fanboys. Only ten years after Spider-Man (2002) was released, and five years since the debacle that was Spider-Man 3 (2007), it did seem like a project that would be a bit too soon for comfort. But as these angry diatribes filled blogs and chat rooms on the inter-web, I considered these conditions. After all, the fanboys that are so very antagonised at such things, are the same bedroom boys who lap up everything that the comic book world has to offer - including the many, many, many "reboots" of comic book characters over the decades by the major comic book publishers. So I asked myself, is this really such a major issue? Now that Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy has finished there will be no doubt that Warner Bros. (owners of DC comics and all of its "contents") will be "rebooting" the Batman franchise, and it seems that The Man of Steel may tread a similar path at reinvigorating a character.
Of course, because of the success of the Dark Knight triptych, the prerequisite focus from those idiot executives would have been that this new film will ultimately need to be "darker" - a tone that has been used in the media since the early '90's, but which has been actually realised in the first decade of the 21st century. I have no issue with the "darker" approach, but often it is simply a synonym for violence. In The Amazing Spider-Man however, story/co-screenwriter, James Vanderbilt, - whose previous Zodiac (2007) script was a revelation - has managed to instil this concept of dark into the protagonists anguish at discovering insidious science from his long-dead parents. The Spider-Man origin story is a very well-known, and well trodden story arc, but Vanderbilt (along with co-writers Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves), and director Marc Webb have dug deep into the mythos and found a deeper focus of Peter Parker's distress, and a more interesting and probable path into his arachnid genetic future.
Living with his aunt and uncle (Sally Field and Martin Sheen), Parker (Andrew Garfield) discovers a leather suitcase containing secret scientific papers owned by his dead father (played by Campbell Scott), a scientist working in Marvel universes science corporation, Oscorp. It's contents suggest a project involving cross-species genetics, and leads Parker to the offices where his fathers partner, Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), whose arm was severed and he searches for a cure using reptilian genetic splicing. On his first visit, Parker is bitten by a spider (obviously), in a scene flooded with blue colour, and one that has more visual drama than the accidental approach in 2002's origin story. Parker's obsession with the science work of his father leads to an equation that solves issues with the experiment, and he offers this to Connors - an action that is later regretful.
In high school Peter's persona is slightly less dorky than the Tobey Maguire incarnation. He still has bully issues from the Flash Thompson character (Chris Zylka), but he is more intense, aggravated, and intelligent. His lack of knowledge of his parents demise, and his isolation gives the character more depth. Deleting the Mary-Jane and replacing with Gwen Stacey (the always electrifying Emma Stone) is a slight, but alternative change, but their relationship becomes more engrossing - and one which becomes more exquisite on discovering that her father, Captain Stacey (Denis Leary), is the police chief pursuing the spider-dude.
In the first major set-piece involving Spider-Man and Connors' later genetic manifestation, The Lizard, they don't actually clash, but creates a tender and beautiful moment as Spider-Man rescues a child trapped in a car dangling from the Brooklyn bridge. In this reboot, Parker never seems too reluctant to take the mask off, and offers it to the young boy as a placebo to move his terrified body into action. The father of the son later gets the opportunity to give back to the wall crawler, in another touching moment, and one that reflects the New Yorker united moments of Raimi's trilogy.
Of course, Parker is pushed into his crime fighting ways due to the murder of his Uncle Ben, and the screenwriters attempt to write the same message but without stating "with great power comes great responsibility" is tackled rather well, if a little convoluted. Ifans' Connors is often wooden, and seems too villainous, when in fact he shouldn't be - in other words his villainous attitude does come on a bit too fast. The CGI Lizard's characterisation and face was unsatisfactory and could have done with being more fantastical than reptilian-realism. But these are minor infractions to an interesting, exciting, and character driven re-start to a franchise. I would have preferred more screen time for Stone's Gwen - Stone's comic acting is excellent, and should be used here more often (in a scene where she attempts to hide Parker in her bedroom from her father, sees this comedic acting, but could have been utilised so much more). I actually look forward to seeing where a sequel may go, and hope that the screenwriting duties go to Vanderbilt again - he certainly knows how to write characters; and since the bar for superhero movies has been set so high this year by The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers, it is intelligent writing that the genre so dearly needs.
At the Uneeda Medical Supply warehouse, new employee Freddy (Thom Mathews) is shown the ropes by manager Frank (James Karen). In an attempt to impress the brainless but loveable punk, Frank takes him down to the basement where he claims lies the remains of the result of a zombie outbreak, stored by the military, that was the inspiration for the movie Night of the Living Dead (1968). The sealed drums that contain the zombies begin to leak, causing a gas to pour into the warehouse and awakening the dead. Owner Burt (Clu Gulager) arrives in disbelief at the awakened corpse stored in the freezer, and after an unsuccessful attempt at killing it, they take the butchered corpse to the local mortician Ernie (Don Calfa), who incinerates it, causing zombie smoke to leak into the city, and into the nearby cemetery.
After the success of George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead, co-writer John A. Russo and Romero agreed that Russo would obtain the right to any film with the title ...of the Living Dead in it, while Romero will continue his own zombie series. 18 years later, The Return of the Living Dead was made, a film that embraced Romero's 'rules', yet making certain tweaks to form an original zombie film in its own right. Here, the zombies can run, speak, think, and having a craving for brains. This film is also a comedy, and a very funny one at that, that both pokes fun at the genre and embraces its charm. While Romero's zombies drag their feet and gaze gormlessly in their eternal search for meat, here we have zombie 'characters' such as the Tar Man and the Half-Corpse - the latter of which manages to explain their longing for brains to the horrified Ernie.
Such is the silliness of the film, and it's an aspect that makes this one of the funniest and most effortlessly enjoyable genre films of its type. There isn't the usual bunch of stock stereotypes that make up the gang you wait eagerly to be killed, but a gang of loveable throwaway characters performed by quality actors (especially Gulager, a former star in the 50's and 60's who took full advantage of the low-budget horror boom in the 1980's). It also has the sexiest zombie ever, not that I can think of any others. So if you like your horror with its tongue firmly in its cheek, and chocked full of clever set-pieces and darkly funny humour, as well as enough blood and guts to satisfy the casual gore-hound, then this is probably the best film ever. For most other people, this will be one of the quickest 90 minutes you'll ever experience.
The Soviet Union's political and social journey throughout the first few decades of the twentieth century presented a wide and rich palette for film-making innovators to work from. The most popular of the Soviet visionaries was Sergei M. Eisenstein, master of the montage, and champion of the working-classes. So breathtaking was Eisenstein's work, that it is easy for other great film-makers to be relatively forgotten. Although it would be extreme to label Aleksandr Dovzhenko, director of the magnificent Earth, as forgotten, time has been unfair to the director who was arguably as visually innovative and socially aware as his counterpart.
Earth begins with the death of a farmer, Semyon (Nikolai Nademsky), who says his goodbye's beneath a pear tree, blissfully ignorant of the turbulence his death will cause. The village is cut down the middle. One half are the kulaks, private-land owning peasants, who were seen to be growing rich in their greed by Stalin, personified in the film as Arkhip (Ivan Franko), who discusses with his group the idea of collectivisation, to a united resistance. The other, is the sceptical Opanas (Stepan Shkurat), father to the pro-collectivisation Basil (Semyon Svashenko), who is a member of All-Union Leninist Youth Communist League. The arrival of a new tractor lifts the communities spirits, but a murder sparks off a feud.
One of the many social revolutions to come out of the Stalin-era Soviet Union was the idea of collectivisation. After Ukranian peasants were given rights to own land at the turn of the century, Stalin saw them growing rich beyond their means and vowed to eliminate what he saw as its own social class. Collectivisation was to bring land back to the community, therefore generating more product and boosting the economy. But the Soviet army met stubborn resistance from the peasants, who were seeing their land and goods seized and distributed.
Dovzhenko's film has a somewhat ambiguous message, focusing more of the individual plights of a select group of characters. The collectivists and communists are clearly the more sympathetic groups in the film, but the film is more human drama than political propaganda. Like Eisenstein, Dovzhenko treats us to a simply brilliant montage scene, as the delight of the farmers at the arrival of a new tractor (which they urinate in to get going) is juxtaposed alongside the mechanics of grain production. This feeling of the metaphorical prevails throughout the film, as the seemingly endless grain fields and growing fruit are filmed as if tiny gods, watching the human drama unfold beneath them. The film had a mixed reception upon release, forcing Dovzhenko into depression, but is now rightly heralded as one of the most important to come of the Soviet Union, alongside Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925).
Directed by German-born American citizen William Wyler, depicting the plight of the British Home Front, Mrs. Miniver swept the boards at the Oscars, collecting five wins including Best Picture. It is now clearly a piece of propaganda film-making, made at the time where the U.S. were edging closer and closer to war, but this doesn't do anything to dampen what is an often gripping, moving and stirring film. Wyler's views are clear as day - American needed to enter the war before the threat of Nazism becomes too powerful to overthrow - and wanted to show the American audience of the stubborn, stiff-upper lipped efforts of its British allies, from the soldiers on the front lines, to the defiance of the women and the elderly at home.
As World War II draws inevitably nearer, middle-class housewife Kay Miniver (Greer Garson) journeys home after shopping to learn that station-master Mr. Ballard (Henry Travers) is naming his potentially prize-winning rose "Mrs. Miniver". Her husband Clem (Walter Pidgeon) has just indulged in an expensive new car and the two patter around admitting to their lavish spending. Their son Vin (Richard Ney) returns home from Oxford and falls in love with Carol (Teresa Wright), grand-daughter of aristocrat Lady Beldon (Dame May Whitty). But when war is announced, Vin joins the Air Force, and Clem volunteers to assist in the Dunkirk evacuation.
What is most surprising about Mrs. Miniver is its depiction of Britain. With an American director and a cast made up mostly of American and Canadian actors, the film is alarmingly successful in its realism, and doesn't look out of place amongst the many British films made during this era with similar settings. The cast border on perfection (apart from the slightly hammy Richard Ney), and Pidgeon, Wright, Whitty and Travers all receiving Oscar nominations for the efforts, with Garson winning. They manage to juggle a mixture of middle-class kitchen-sink drama and some naturalistic humour, with some playful scenes managing to alleviate the doom-and-gloom subject matter.
The film is keen to explore themes of social divide, and how this apparent barrier seems to vanish and diminish during wartime. Vin arrives home from his college spouting a new-found enlightenment about his fellow man, and how the wealthy live comfortably in ignorance while the lower-classes suffer, but has nothing to say when challenged as to what he's doing about it by Carol. It is only when he goes to war when he is truly with his fellow man, a revelation shared by the snobbish Lady Beldon (in a powerhouse performance by Dame Whitty) during the village flower show in an extremely moving scene.
A true milestone film, now admitted to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, that President Roosevelt heralded as being as important to the war effort as the soldiers on the ground, as he rushed it straight into theatres shortly after being completed. The film's famous final scene that shows a powerful speech on the country's unity by the Vicar (Henry Wilcoxon - whose brother Robert was killed in the Dunkirk evacuation), was transcribed and translated by Roosevelt and dropped into allied territory as a morale builder, and is now known as the Wilcoxon Speech. Historically important, but a magnificent film in its own right.
Beginning in 1899, ageing samurai Saito (Koichi Sato) brings his child into a doctor's office. While the doctor's wife tends to the sick child, Saito and the doctor, Ono (Takehiro Murata), begin talking when Saito notices a photograph of his old colleague and master Yoshimura (Kiichi Nakai). Saito begins to tell his story from his first meeting with Yoshimura, a gifted swordsman, during the era of the Tokugawa shogunate. Yoshimura has brought shame on himself by leaving his small town clan after realising he cannot support his family, in order to join the Shinsengumi, a samurai police force that is slowly building a reputation and small army. Seen as a miser and a clown, Yoshimura slowly gains respect due to his loyalty to his clan, and his fresh outlook on life, just as war approaches.
Rarely have I seen a movie shift in quality so much as When the Last Sword is Drawn. After a solid, exciting and intriguing first 70 or so minutes, the tone of the film shifts so drastically for the remainder that it threatens to completely ruin what preceded it. Winding down into a seemingly endless conveyor belt of emotional and highly sentimental scenes, the film quite frankly becomes a bore, and often feels like it's trying to desperately squeeze tears out of you. Although the performances are impressive (especially lead Nakai), the script is so chocked full of cliches that this becomes redundant.
Yet the film as a whole does have much to admire, as it explores themes of loyalty and family, and asks whether you can ever truly know someone. Sairo and Ono both have their sides of the story to tell, and have slightly conflicting memories of Yoshimura. Often his character can betray his own beliefs, creating conflicts within his personality, whether this is to show how memory can betray you, or the complexity of the human character I don't know, but Yoshimura is a fascinating character, and different to the usual brooding samurai. This would have been a very good film had it been shaved by about thirty minutes, or didn't spend so much time on tearful goodbyes and sentimental monologuing, But director Yojiro Takita is intent, and the film sadly doesn't have the scope or the quality to justify its 140+ running time.
Similar to the plot strand in The Meltdown (2006) involving Manny and Ellie, who was torn given that she thought she was a different animal, Diego meets one of his fellow species Shira (Jennifer Lopez) aboard Gutt's ship, who is dedicated to Gutt's tyrannical rule regardless of how he treats her. Again the writers seem unable to come up with something inventive for Diego so have lumbered him with a shockingly uninvolving love story. Shira is merely one of many new additions, and apart from Dinklage's impressive Gutt and Nick Frost's hilariously brain-dead Flynn, none hit the mark. The introduction of Peaches, who arrived in the third (and best by far) instalment Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009) merely causes the film to explore TV-movie themes of family and generation, played out like a middle-class suburban family. Peaches even says to Manny "I wish you weren't my father," before they are separated - yawn!
