Monday

There is a deliberate non-use of guns in good films. I noticed this first in The Bourne Identity. Here, however, there is a reason: he doesn't want anything to do with violence, and is trying to repress his previous life as a killer. Although this is never stated, it is understood. Whereas, in Children of Men the main character avoids weaponry without reason - a gun would, in fact, help him out a lot, but he never even considers using one. James Bond does use them, but I would like to suggest sparingly. Obi Wan Kenobi famously disliked them. Indiana Jones has perhaps the best scene in cinema concerning guns, or not being able to use them. This last example indeed points to what I think is one of the main reasons for their non-use. For a script-writer a gun is a terrible thing. If a character has a gun he can end a confrontation quickly and easily. Thus in all situations script-writers attempt to get rid of guns - they accidentally slip out of a character's hands into a deep chasm etc - because they are not very good for the plot: confrontation is necessary to keep us involved. It's much more interesting, and affects the audience more profoundly, to have someone stabbed or strangled, or (best of all) to not kill them at all. A dead character is a dead end. Thus we must remember for movies the maxim: Guns don't kill people, script-writers do.

Sunday

The Aviator puzzled me. What was it about? There seemed to be several angles to Howard Hughes' life: his film-making, his flying, his women, and his mental condition. Of course they are all connected, and they are all him, but I couldn't help thinking that a focus on one of them would have been sufficient. Instead we are jumped around, never really getting an accurate picture of any of them. The film begins as he is trying to make his first film, before he has met many women, after he has learnt to fly, but before his condition begins to affect him. Why do we start then? I was confused. I don't know the details of his life, and I think this film relies on me knowing more than I do. I felt certain moments were being highlighted as important, but I didn't know why. We seemed to be shown random unrelated incidents - as if Scorsese was just filming all the interesting rumours and stories about Hughes, and not shaping them into a coherent narrative. I didn't like the 'radio' narrator who dominated the beginning of the film, and kept reappearing. In this instance, it definitely was a weakness. The story should be capable of being told without it. Also, why does the movie end where it does? Overall, I was confused by this film. It was of course remarkably well made, but didn't offer anything coherent. It seemed scrappy. When interesting things happened I thought 'what a remarkable man', not 'what a remarkable movie'. This is the problem I always have with biographies. They are very hard to get right. In a way, I think you have to destroy your subject in order to portray him accurately. Scorsese was too in awe of Howard Hughes to be able to do this.

Saturday

Inland Empire is an astonishing film. The theatre was reasonably busy - did all of them know this film would be three hours long, and contain very little narrative sense? I had been avoiding seeing it for this very reason, and only chose it because it was a Saturday and I knew the cinemas would be busy. Well, about five people left after half an hour, but the rest, amazingly, staid with it. The first ten minutes are confusing, but it does become incredibly gripping. Soon enough, however, in fact for more than the last hour, you get lost in scenes that seemingly bear no relation to the ones before or after them, and have characters playing multiple roles. As one of them at one point says 'I don't know what comes before or after'. Entertainment might be had in comparing this to For Your Consideration. However, David Lynch's work is demonstrably the better, and leaves a far more devastating impression on your memory. Art and life become horrifyingly confused in this film. 'These sound like lines from our script', she says in one scene, then turns to realise there is a camera filming her, and she was acting all along. You are never quite sure. Perhaps it is a cheap trick to play on the audience, but at one point a camera on a boom drops into view, then creepily slips away, as if it were alive itself. But, despite all this, it is the type of film I can never fully understand. I am too logical, or too focused on narrative. This movie is the concise development of an atmosphere, or a mood. I don't know how to criticise it, or talk about it sensibly. The performance of Laura Dern dominates. She is incredible. In fact, it was rather like an extended screen test: now do 'angry', now do 'happy', now do 'someone has just put a red shirt in with my whites'. Anyway, I was astonished by this movie. It is difficult, and it does stretch the meaning of the word 'film', but I believe that was Lynch's intention. Seeing it is the only way for you to decide for yourself.

Friday

What don't you know about Darren Aronofsky? By lazily summarising an article in the guardian yesterday, I'll tell you what I didn't know: it took him a very long time to make The Fountain. He had originally cast Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, until the former pulled out. The version that was released was a dramatically scaled down version of what he had planned. He is engaged to Rachel Weisz, who he put in The Fountain reluctantly, and who has a new Wong Kar-Wai film coming out called My Blueberry Nights. Warner Bros asked him to come up with some ideas for Batman Begins. I believe they rejected all of them. His next film is going to be about Noah. He hopes one day to make a teen drama.

Thursday

I hadn't heard of the film Equilibrium until I saw it on the TV schedule. Intrigued by the premise, the review on IMDb.com, and the casting of Christian Bale, I decided to watch it. I was badly disappointed. This, like the strangely similar Aeon Flux, was terrible. It regurgitated every good idea from science-fiction, but through simplification and without reference. Most obvious of all was Fahrenheit 451 which, as far as I was aware, received no acknowledgement. This was almost a remake of that film. Then there's Logan's Run and, well, everything else. The connection to The Matrix I feel was more stylistic than conceptual, and I have to admit the fight-scenes were ok. The son of Bale's character was interestingly creepy, and has a nice twist at the end. But with such science fiction films you have to invent an entire universe and engage your audience thoroughly with it. The universe created here was very poor (a future earth where feelings are banned, policed by highly trained ninja-like 'clerics'), too simplistic, and probably only appealing to frustrated teenage boys. Although I generally agree with movies that refuse to give the lead character the girl at the end, burning her alive ten minutes before then is clearly not the right way to go about it. Overall, they really needed to acknowledge, or even watch, their predecessors and learn how to do this sort of thing subtly. Instead, it lacks any appeal for repeated viewings.

Wednesday

In my post about films with bad titles last week I forgot to mention the upcoming Next. There is a large poster for this movie underneath the bridge at Waterloo. Nothing about this film sounds or looks good (except that Nicolas Cage is in it). What you will discover, however, is that it's adapted from the book by Philip K. Dick, called The Golden Man. Does this then make it worth watching? Perhaps. Philip K. Dick's work has been adapted to the big screen about 12 times - none of which he ever got to see, dying as he did just before the premiere of Blade Runner. He was never truly successful in his lifetime, but modern cinema has become quite fond of him. In many ways I think this is because of The Matrix, even though he himself is the source of a lot of its ideas. Most of his books are about reality, and that reality collapsing. The problem has been for a while over his titles. Blade Runner was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and Total Recall was We Can Remember it for you Wholesale. The change is debatable. But Next is definitely worse. Hollywood likes big, easily understood in a sentence, concepts, and that's what Philip K. Dick gives them. The greatest adaptations of his work, however, Minority Report and Blade Runner, have paid attention to the subtleties of his ideas.

In a related issue, tomorrow I'm going to talk about the terrible film Equilibrium.

Tuesday

I think there is indeed a difference between when a film ends and when a film finishes, as discussed last night. A film ends when the credits start rolling, but has it really finished? (We shall leave aside movies such as Austin Powers that include jokes during the credits, or X-Men: The Last Stand that has an important plot point after them.) What this has to do with is consistency, coherency, and completeness in the plot. The audience has to feel satisfied (not necessarily 'happy') when they leave the theatre. For studios, the walk of the moviegoer from the cinema to their car/bus/train is very important. If you're talking about the film then, they've got you hooked. And the best way to get you talking then is to have made the ending impressive. Now it doesn't have to tie up all its loose ends, be funny or clever. On the contrary, I think the best endings are those which leave things open. It's how they leave them open that's important. Manhattan is perhaps one of the best examples for this. In many films, however, you can't help but feel uneasy. What happens after the end of Return of the Jedi? Many directors/writers resort to killing their main character. But does this finish everything, or merely end it? Often when I'm enjoying a good film (because I do enjoy bad films too) I begin to worry about the ending. It could ruin everything that has gone before. It, in many ways, forces into the open the philosophy/outlook of the writer, which had been concealed up to that point. It's the mark of a good filmmaker.