The Hateful Eight

Tarantino has said he'll only make ten films, and then retire. I don't know if he still stands by this statement, and if he does we won't know for sometime if he'll fulfill it. Either by choice or (probably knowing Tarantino) by design, The Hateful Eight is his eighth film. The gaps between his films have tended to be around three years, although the gap to Kill Bill was longer, and the gap to his next film will almost certainly be so as well. Given that, he can expect to have done ten films by the time he's sixty. Still young enough, certainly, but I think a lot depends on what kinds of films he gets to do over the next few years. As you may know, The Hateful Eight almost didn't happen after the screenplay was leaked. His turn to westerns after Inglourious Basterds wasn't too surprising. He could be trying to make the perfect film in each genre (somewhat like Kubrick). A science-fiction film could therefore be a possibility in the future, although we know his next film will be about the Manson family. This film certainly feels like an attempt to make a perfect, conceptually complete piece. The intensity of the setting, action and dialogue heightens this. It is, if anything, perhaps too contrived, but that is only on reflection. The experience of watching it is immersive. Your allegiance does shift through the film, as your suspicion lingers on different characters, but I wonder what this would be like on a second viewing. Why the narration halfway through, though? The fourth-wall is broken, but to what purpose? It’s almost as if he did it just to remind us we were watching a Tarantino film. Every time I think I understand Tarantino, however, he surprises me. His influences are so vast and peculiar than you can never quite know what to expect. This, perhaps, is his greatest genius.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

As I said about Rogue One, I will love almost any Star Wars film that gets released. I am virtually incapable of being critical of them, as a whole, although I do now look back on the prequels with a sense of regret - they could have been so much more interesting. These latest films are of course better, but, like a fine wine, we need to see how they age. Are they too contemporary? Appealing only to our particular interests now? The Last Jedi does this perhaps even more than The Force Awakens did. It hits right at the heart of globalisation, at nostalgia for a lost past, and at the lack of clear cut right and wrong answers. We're in a post-ironic age now, and Rian Johnson understands this perfectly. Beginnings are always the easiest to do, so J. J. Abrams didn't have as tough a job as some might have thought. Johnson's job, though, was particularly difficult. He had to continue, but not finish. He had to tag on to what had been left open in The Force Awakens, but also leave everything open for Star Wars IX. This has unfortunately led to a lot of criticism from fans. Strangely, though, critics have loved it. I am sure part of this is because critics (and I vaguely include myself in this group) tend to look at a film from the point of view of a director. They try to see what the director was trying to achieve, and ground their judgement on what he has or hasn't done in the past. Thus, having an understanding of Brick will really help you appreciate The Last Jedi. The humour and intelligence is very similar. The complex actions and emotions are there, and yet Johnson doesn't let go of the simplicity and pure exhilaration of a Star Wars movie. The opening sequence is still fantastic. The final battle on the salt planet (Crait) is visually stunning. And there are plenty of throwbacks to the old films (that battle on Crait itself evoking memories of Hoth). However, I fear it is because he is not faithful enough to the old films that he has drawn criticism from fans. He seems to disregard old notions of what the Jedi are. He dismisses any notions of the Force being purely hereditary. And he adds in some new notions, like being able to fly in space, or transporting an illusion of yourself across the universe, or running out of fuel but still being able to outrun Star Destroyers, or Porgs. Even though I think each of these criticisms can be countered, the most important thing for me was that the film just worked. It worked on the level it needed to work and, perhaps as important, I'm curious to see what's going to happen next.

Mr Brooks

Unlike some of his fellow stars from the big movies of the 1990s, such as Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks, Kevin Costner has struggled to escape from his career defining roles of that period. Perhaps more so than the two of them, it is hard to see anyone else but Kevin Costner in his roles. Some of his harshest critics have said that he simply can’t act. But then came Mr Brooks. This is an eerie American Psycho-esque serial killer film. Perhaps following Robin Williams’ dark turn in One Hour Photo and Insomnia, Costner decided to do the same. He is suitably creepy in this role, for the vey reason that he is Kevin Costner. Unfortunately, however, there is a lot about this movie that doesn’t make much sense. A much better film could have been made here, but it was sacrificed to some tired cliches, and some unnecessary side-plots and characters. Apparently the intention was to make a trilogy, and you can see there was some potential here, but poor performance at the box office put an end to that. It is a shame, especially as most money in Hollywood is being pumped into super hero franchises rather than original stories, but equally the writers here could have done so much more with this (or rather so much less), to have made a compelling film and character that people would’ve wanted to see again and again.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

I find it almost impossible to give a truly critical appreciation of this film (or perhaps any Star Wars movie). The amount that's been written about it already makes any comment I might have either inevitable or insignificant. After all, even the trailers for new Star Wars films are analysed over agonisingly (see comments about the trailer of The Last Jedi for proof). There is something in particular about Rogue One, however, that makes it difficult to assess. Although I'm sure the writers/director aimed for the film to be able to stand on its own in some way, it can never really do so, and certainly not for someone who's seen the original films many times. Rogue One is so inextricably bound up with A New Hope that you can't pull them apart. Yes, the plot sort of makes sense on its own, but from the bigger picture of the Death Star, the rebellion, Darth Vader himself, right down to characters glimpsed on the street, games played in the background, and homes built in the same style, you can't escape the original Star Wars here. Even the word 'hope' becomes the key theme of this film. So, I would like to say that the acting is not brilliant, that some of the speeches are poorly written (particularly Jyn's speech before battle), and that the CGI characters are unnecessary and distracting. Nonetheless, the interweaving with the original film is so cleverly done, and in a way that it adds to but does not detract from it, that none of these criticisms seem to matter. The film is almost like an annex to another book. It gives you all the information you wanted, but leaves you wanting just enough more, and leaves you wanting to return to the original again. Give that this, I guess, is what the creators of the film intended from the start, then we have to say they've done an amazing job.

Blue Jasmine

Woody Allen has always had a difficult relationship with California. I think it is half-expressed and half-suppressed in this film starring Cate Blanchett. She is absolutely outstanding as 'Jasmine', a New York socialite who has fallen from grace. I can't say much without ruining the film entirely for you. Needless to say, she ends up in California with her sister. Is the choice of location deliberate? Is it where, in Allen's eyes, New Yorkers go to die? Even in Annie Hall we had this dichotomy. Or is it just an innate uncomfortableness that Allen has with the location that seeps through onto the screen? The typical musical montage of beautiful sites, that we're used to from New York (and more recently London, Paris, Barcelona), feels half-hearted and empty here in California. And it's when we flash back to Jasmine's recollections of life on the East Coast that the film suddenly feels alive again. This is where Allen is at his most comfortable. Fifth Avenue. Central Park. The Hamptons. The music, the movement and the people seem to fit better here.

The film itself is superb, if somewhat too short - which is itself a rare blessing with cinema nowadays. It feels like a study piece that could easily be extended. The dialogue is slightly awkward in places, either because the writing is artificial or the acting not pushed to its limits. There are some clear, crude exposition speeches and convenient meetings that perhaps could have been worked out. I don't know if Allen's self-imposed film-a-year routine helps or hinders in this respect. But the twists and turns of the plot are sudden and unexpected, and I would easily rate this as one of his best films of the last ten years (although admittedly I haven't seen all of them).

Lymelife

You may not have heard of this (I hadn’t), and I’m not sure whether to recommend that it’s worth watching. Certainly the film achieved a lot of awards and critical acclaim, and is rated 63% on Rotten Tomatoes, but it left me feeling largely unmoved. A teenage boy in Long Island in the 70s struggles to come to terms with the tension between his parents, being bullied at school, and his love for his next door neighbour’s daughter. Meanwhile, lyme disease is spreading in the area, and so is the subsequent paranoia. It is supposed to be ‘darkly comic’, although I hardly noticed this. As you can tell, the plot is not exactly revelatory and lyme disease doesn’t really play a prominent or meaningful part of the film. It is merely an incidental aspect of the story. Rory and Kieran Culkin are both very good as the brothers – natural and easy with each other (as you’d expect). Alec Baldwin, despite apparently having the role written for him, really feels a bit flat here (perhaps I’m too used to his character from 30 Rock, though). The film is shot with that certain filter that makes things look older and richer in tone than they really are – otherwise you’d hardly notice this was actually set in the 70s. The father’s ambitions to sell plots of land on a housing estate appears to be meaningful, but ends up revealing nothing, much like the lyme disease. This film, really, is profoundly anti-climactic – perhaps someone’s description of it as ‘darkly comic’ is just another way of saying ‘not really funny or serious’. Culkin’s relationship with the girl is rather predictable (even though she dates an older boy, she likes him really), and the ending of the film doesn’t resolve any of the important issues, but rather starts new ones. Overall, this film misses its marks in several areas and yet it would be a shame to disparage it completely, as there is value here, and the director, Derick Martini, surely has promise.

Before Sunrise

A young American meets a French girl on a train passing through Europe. They strike up a conversation and he convinces her to get off the train with him at Vienna, spending the day together before he leaves the next morning on a flight home. This is a beautiful, poignant film and if you’re not on the verge of tears by the end, you must have a heart of stone. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy are the stars. He is rather irritating, but then that is perhaps what makes this movie work. They very much feel like real people. Delpy herself is brilliant. We spend almost the entire time with them alone – one long first date as they discover this strange city. The conversations they have are rather student-like – philosophising, setting the world to rights – and it seems they disagree in a lot of ways (he is pessimistic, she optimistic). It’s a simple film but brave because of that, and the only obvious directorial statement comes at the end, which I won’t ruin. The back stories are not perhaps greatly convincing, but that doesn’t matter. They have the day together, and that is all. They explore the city and learn about each other, falling helplessly in love as they do so. At times it takes a bit of patience to put up with what is essentially an hour and a half conversation between two strangers, but you’ll be rewarded by the end as you realise how involved you’ve become. I would’ve liked to have seen this film before they made the sequel in 2004 (called Before Sunset), because the ending here is open. Now, however, we know the ending is in some way closed (unless we ignore the sequel, which is possible). As it stands on its own, this film will strike anyone who’s ever been young and in love (which must be most of us), and anyone who’s ever felt the inevitability of something special ending (ditto). I’m not sure if I could bear to watch it again, though.

Me and You and Everyone We Know

Written, directed by and starring the artist Miranda July, this is one of the most astonishing films you’ll ever see. To say that it is quirky, quaint or off-beat I think is to demean it. Likewise, to simply describe the plot does not do it justice at all: a woman falls in love with a recently divorced man; a young boy talks to an older woman in an adult online chat-room; a man develops a perverse, but ultimately innocent relationship with two teenage girls on his street. All the characters are connected in one way or another, whether they know it or not. As I said, though, this is hardly a good description of the film. It has a language of its own. The scene with the goldfish on the car roof is extraordinary, and perhaps would better encapsulate the nature of this movie. Likewise the young girl with her hope chest, the man setting fire to his hand, or the tapping of the electricity turning on every morning. It is not impressionist, or predominantly visual, although there are certain tableaus that remain fixed in your mind. The characters speak with a simplicity that is at times shocking. It’s a naivety, however, that belies the complexity of the film. It is like a piece of installation art, except with a plot. The whole thing ends before it feels like it has been tied together, some of the dialogue seems stilted, and the characters’ actions are implausible at times, but then this was never a film that was going to give easy answers or solutions, or offer an accurate picture of real life. It is funny, disturbing, shocking and revelatory. A highly original, breathtaking movie that you won’t forget in a hurry.

Near Dark

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow twenty years before her big success recently with The Hurt Locker, you’d find it very hard to see any similarities. This is a dark, fairly brutal vampire film from the late 80s, rejecting the comedy or light-hearted, mainstream nature of thrillers that had gone before it (like Fright Night or The Lost Boys). In fact, the word ‘vampire’ is never mentioned – hinting almost at an embarrassment, or an attempt to dissociate itself from other movies. A young man in an American Midwest town meets a girl and offers her a ride home. When he leans in for a kiss, she bites his neck.  Both actors are unknown, and you think at first they won’t last much further than the first act, but they are in fact to be our main characters. As the man begins to turn into a vampire, he is picked up by the girl and her sinister gang (including a very creepy kid who has stayed young despite being very old). As with most vampire literature, the vampires here represent the dangerous underside of society – here a biker gang of punks/rebels. This is highlighted when a policeman interrogates the young man about what drugs he’s taken, or by his father’s concern that he’s dropped in with the ‘wrong crowd’. Likewise, as with a lot of vampire movies, time seems to advance very quickly (either during the day so it can be night, or during the night so it can be dawn). This is generally due to poor script-writing, but in a certain sense just can’t be avoided. The scene in the bar is exceptionally brutal, especially the shocking moment where the reason for the spurs becomes evident. It is undoubtedly Bill Paxton who steals the show throughout. There is also great music by Tangerine Dream, which is much emulated. Unlike most other vampire movies, however, there is a cure – although this is never explained or fully justified. As you can guess this film has a huge cult following (and deservedly so), and is worth watching now to catch up on the history of Bigelow (note the cinema showing Aliens in the background of one shot), especially as her next film about Bin Laden seems set to make a lot of headlines.

Ned Kelly

I’m not sure when seeing Heath Ledger on screen will stop being moving. His role here is particularly poignant in retrospect: Ned Kelly died when he was about 25, only a few years younger than Ledger. This film is directed by Gregor Jordan, the man who made the very strange Buffalo Soldiers - so don’t expect a ‘straight’ version of the story. There are lingering shots of the Australian landscape and wildlife, along with a dreamy narration by Ledger. Indeed, the film is based on the book ‘Our Sunshine’, which purports to give us the internal monologue of the man. The problem is, there are certain facts about Kelly which can’t be ignored, and which this director seems to play down. If we were to take this film as truth, Kelly was an innocent man, abused and persecuted by the police until he was eventually forced in to becoming an outlaw, reluctant to hurt, kill or rob anyone. A quick Google will tell you this was not true at all. There is so much information about his life, in fact, that Jordan seems to have taken the position of giving us an impression only of the character of Kelly. It certainly does that, although the inclusion of a love interest (played by Naomi Watts), should have been avoided. Ledger, at times, seems too soft for the type of man Kelly was. As with all films based on real life, it is hard for the director to detract from the interest of the story to impress upon us how he’s told the story. I expect if you already know the history of Ned Kelly there are few surprises or points of interest in this film. The accents are variable, especially from Orlando Bloom, and of course the story is told with a modern, humanistic perspective (when the man himself was probably far from it). The ending is something of an anti-climax – there is no great vindication or real showdown, no great speeches. Kelly just seems to give up, and the resignation of his last line is thought-provoking in its way, but deflating. It feels like Jordan was compromised between his attempt to film an impressionistic movie and a historical one. The result is consequently ambiguous.

Father of Invention

What is Kevin Spacey doing? It feels like he’s not making many films, spending all his time at the Old Vic, but actually his work rate is the same as it’s always been (in 1999 he made one film – American Beauty). Perhaps the films he’s making, then, just aren’t as good as his old ones? Or the roles he’s taking in them are minor? In Father of Invention, from 2010, he plays a disgraced inventor, who has spent ten years in a federal prison, trying to restart his life and career. It’s a comedy that’s not really funny. He manages to convince his daughter to let him live with her while he rebuilds his life. Her flatmates, I assume, are supposed to be quirky and funny (they’re not). The film plods along fairly ordinarily, but it is enjoyable enough. Probably the funniest character is the man now sleeping with his wife, played by Craig Robinson, who is secretly his biggest fan. Johnny Knoxville also makes an intriguing distraction, even if not especially funny, as the supermarket manager. The music video at the end is a weird aberration, not really in keeping with the rest of the movie. The world of the film is not as well crafted (people and places come and go randomly) as it could’ve been. You won’t be surprised to learn that Spacey’s character manages to restart his career and rebuild his relationship with his daughter, whilst learning what is truly important in his life, and possibly beginning a romantic affair with one of her flatmates. The context and the characters might be new here, but the premise isn’t, and the writing isn’t good or funny enough to pull it above the rest of the films competing for your attention at the moment.

The Big Lebowski

Every time I see this film I like it more - except for last week. Last week, having enjoyed most of the length of the film, I reached the end somewhat disappointed. Why is this? The film is strange in more ways than is obvious. The narration by Sam Elliott which bookends the movie, and his brief appearance in the middle of it, is one of the more bizarre aspects. The film could easily exist without it. Yet it is a narration which purposefully tells us nothing, and does so from a explicitly biased perspective. We the audience are not supposed to relate in any way with the Texan. Is he voice of authority, morals, the outsider or society? It was something he said that left me disappointed, but I’ll get to that later. The Dude, Jeff Lebowski, played by Jeff Bridges, is assaulted by two men who have confused him with another Jeff Lebowski – a far richer and more important one: ostensibly the ‘big Lebowski’ of the title. From this confusion, The Dude becomes involved in a supposed kidnapping and ransom demand. All he wants, really, is a new rug. He has little to no ambition or intentions. He is just trying to get by, or, as he says: the dude abides. It feels, however, that he is a private detective in a plot from the 1940s (something like Chinatown). The actual private detective that he meets spells this out: he’s playing one side against the other, in bed with everybody, including the beautiful woman. This couldn’t be further from the truth, of course. The Dude has virtually no idea what’s going on. It is a brilliant performance by Jeff Bridges, but we shouldn’t forget John Goodman and Philip Seymour Hoffman (compare him here to his role in Mission Impossible). The music is excellent and the dialogue is a perfect example of the surreal-deadpan style of the Coen brothers. What happens, though, at the end? The Texan’s narration closes the film off, and it was this remark in particular that perturbed me: ‘things seemed to have worked out pretty well for the Dude’. Did they? When you look at it, he is actually worse off than he was at the beginning: one of his closest friends has died, he lost his rug, and didn’t get paid anything by Lebowski. Perhaps the comment is ironic, perhaps the Dude is happy because he can go on bowling, living his life his way with no disturbance. It would feel wrong if he suddenly was given a lot of money, or found love. Something here feels wrong. Can the film be ended satisfactorily? Did the Coen brothers do the best they could with the character and the plot they had created?

The Jacket

A soldier in the Gulf War is shot in the head, but somehow survives. He suffers from amnesia and blackouts, which leads to him being sent to a mental asylum when he can’t remember how he ended up on the side of a road next to a dead policeman. The chief doctor in this asylum has developed a particularly brutal treatment for some of his patients (those whom he believes are criminals): he feeds them drugs, ties them up in a straight jacket, and puts them inside a morgue drawer for several hours. Inside this drawer, the ex-soldier, played by Adrien Brody, suffers from vivid, painful flashbacks. However, he soon realises that as well as flashbacks, he can also have flash-forwards. In fact, these are not so much memories from the future, but actual visitations in that future. He can interact with the people there and change events. As you can tell, the concept makes little or no sense. You either go along with it or you switch off (which, given the film’s rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I think a lot of people did). It is intriguing, but the acting, especially from Keira Knightley, is heavy handed. Brody, usually excellent, is a little vague and uninteresting here. His character is doomed from the start, so it’s hard to get behind him or engage with his character much. What’s more, many of the other characters (played by some well-known actors) do not resolve their stories in any meaningful way – Daniel Craig, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Kris Kristofferson all seem wasted here. As with any time travel story, the logical flaws are hard to overcome. It reminded me in some ways of Source Code. The coincidences of the story seem to override the logic. He just so happens to visit a point and a place in the future where he meets someone crucial to his life. This would be ok if the dilemma of the main character is at all compelling or interesting, but unfortunately it isn't. Why is he never vindicated for the murder he didn't commit? We leave the film somewhat confused and disappointed.

Pretty Bird

I found myself watching this film late the other night. Unable to stay awake, but intrigued, I recorded it to watch later. It is a strangely alluring film, but one that makes little sense in the end. Billy Crudup is a man with an idea – an idea to build a rocket pack. He ropes in an old friend as investor, and an out-of-work engineer (Paul Giamatti) to do the actual science, whilst he tries to market what they’ve got. This is a comedy, in case you’re wondering, but its humour is subtle and weird. The ‘where would we be if Oppenheimer hadn’t invented the nuclear bomb?’ speech is brilliantly dark. We’re never quite sure if Crudup’s character is a genius, mad, evil or stupid. When they realise they have actually invented something that works, things start to get weird(er). It should be the point where they start to make money, but instead their friend/investor goes bankrupt and Crudup disappears with the rocket pack. This is based on a true story, which makes it even stranger, and perhaps explains its lack of dramatic completion at the end. In real life, the belt can never be found – in drama/film, however, it has to be. We need some sort of completion to the cycle of the action. So the film ends, and we are as puzzled as we’ve ever been about human behaviour. Crudup is exceptional, and the film never tries to be anything that it isn’t. It reminded me of Primer in many ways – quietly brilliant and disturbing.

Savages

For the first time in the history of Stranded Cinema, I have an exclusive. Despite it not being released until late September in the UK, I have already seen Savages. In fact, I saw it at a free preview screening several months ago. Although the agreement not to discuss the film at these screenings is hardly enforced, I have held back. However, as it's been released in the USA, I feel that I can now post my thoughts safely. It’s the latest project from Oliver Stone, developed from a novel by Don Winslow. The first thing to say is that this is a terrible film. Two marijuana growers in California, who share a girlfriend called ‘O’, get into trouble with a Mexican cartel who want to take over the market. Their girlfriend is eventually taken hostage and they must struggle to find a way to release her. The plot, as you can tell, sounds like a Tarantino film from the 90s, and that’s exactly what it feels like it is trying to be. The narrative starts, however, with little or no set up. Why do we care about these characters, who are little more than drug dealers with heart? What interest do we have in them? We’re given a narration by ‘O’, but rather than helping it is annoying. It continues far too long. ‘Show, don’t tell’ is the classic imperative of good cinema which Stone has ignored here. The audience isn’t stupid, unless you want them to be. The narration is drifting and vacant, over slow motion or blurred shots, portentous in its content, with pseudo-intellectual insights such as ‘I had orgasms, he had wargasms’.  Salma Hayek plays the Mexican cartel leader – a deeply flawed, unbelievable character, badly acted. Someone can’t be a heartless psychotic businesswoman, and a loving mother. There is an extent to which this can’t be stretched. Travolta is good enough as a slimy federal agent, but the best thing about this film (as in most films he’s in) is Benicio del Toro. He plays the right-hand man of Hayek’s character, and tours California with a gang of Mexican gardeners, turning up at people’s houses and torturing/killing them. He is so good it’s almost funny. Even his character, however, is stretched to breaking point towards the end. The one powerful moment of this film is the revelation of the rape, but what is the point? It means nothing and has no implications to the plotline. Lastly, the double-ending will annoy almost everyone who sees it, and is again pointless. The final conclusion of the film is deeply unsatisfactory. Nothing is resolved. It is escapism as its worst – they leave the country and all of their responsibilities to live happily ever after. It may be that the film was improved with further editing after the preview screenings, but there are fundamental flaws here which I don’t think can be ironed out. Any work of art that at some point resorts to the dictionary definition of its title for any sort of meaning, as this film does, has lost all hope.

The Hunt for Red October

This film has one of the most frequently misspelt titles of all time – there is no ‘the’ before ‘red’. Despite knowing who was in it and what it was generally about, I’d never seen it fully, and thus was unaware it formed part of the Jack Ryan story, the character from Tom Clancy’s novels who also features in Clear and Present Danger and Patriot Games. It is the first in the series (although apparently contains many references to Patriot Games, suggesting it was written later). You don’t need to know this when watching the film, but it does help. Ryan’s character is far more interesting than your usual action hero. Here he discovers that the Russians have launched a new, silent submarine, capable of avoiding sonar and that it’s heading for America. What he soon learns, however, is that the officers are intending to defect. Connery does his best to restrain his strong Scottish accent, but it is not very convincing. There is a strange, very heavily signposted transition between the languages as the camera zooms in on a man speaking Russian and zooms out on him speaking English. I don’t think there is a better way to disturb your audience and disrupt the flow of a film. Connery’s character itself is somewhat unlikeable, and it is only with some extremely improbable plot-turns that Ryan (played by Alec Baldwin) gets to meet him face to face. It is a complex story, although there are some rather obvious devices to help it on its way: ‘I know how he’s going to get them off the submarine’ Ryan says at one point. He then doesn’t tell us, but keeps it a secret until the critical moment. It is ultimately a hollow film – teasing us with a deeper meaning, when there really is none. It is not especially tense, thrilling or dramatic, but good enough – which, most of the time, is all we want.

River of Grass

This film is the debut of writer-director Kelly Reichardt ,who has since gone on to direct Meek’s Cutoff. All of her films so far have created excitement in the film-world, but she has yet to intrude into mainstream consciousness (if that is even her intention). River of Grass is a small-scale, independent film about a bored housewife who gets involved with a younger man in a small town in Florida. Everything is told from the perspective of the woman, and we hear throughout her narration on events in a relaxed, monotone drawl. It feels at times like a homemade movie. The camera is shaky, the picture grainy, and dialogue mumbled (and could be one of the inspirations for mumblecore). Despite this, after watching I was surprised the film was as old as 1994. It feels fresh and modern (in comparison to other films from the same year, like Speed for example). The characters are casual, even after they think they’ve killed someone with a gun they find. We’re uncertain throughout how we’re supposed to judge their actions, and who we are supposed to support, or reprehend (she leaves her children at home alone to go out to a bar; he threatens his grandmother with a gun). The ending is sudden, but not exactly shocking. It’s only surprising perhaps that there is no sexuality involved in the story. They are two bored characters, beyond being desperate and lonely, lacking any purpose or meaning to their lives. There is a raw sound to the movie. It is intoxicating, sometimes painful to watch, and impresses indelibly on the memory. A strange, beguiling film that will alter you imperceptibly, but permanently.

Sorority Row

A film like this has to be judged by its own standards, or those of its genre. Any attempt to compare it to cinema more widely, or art and literature as a whole, would result in calamity. There’s no mistaking who this film was made for and why. Five final year students at a sorority house in an anonymous University in the US accidentally kill their friend. They decide to hide the body, but nine months later, when they are graduating, something starts picking them off, one by one. This may sound very, very familiar, and it is. I Know What You Did Last Summer did this twelve years earlier. However, as I found out after watching the film, Sorority Row is a ‘reimagining’ of an 80s original: The House on Sorority Row. So the claims of which came first are perhaps moot. Nonetheless, Sorority Row cannot be said to be original or innovative in anything that it does. To a certain extent teen horrors aren’t expected to do this, but the best, and most famous, always stretch the boundaries of what’s possible within their limits. As with Lesbian Vampire Killers, it may seem relatively easy to make a film like this. There are, as Randy from Scream might say, certain rules that one must abide by in order to successfully make a horror movie. Sorority Row fails on several counts. Who, for instance, is the main character? We’re never really sure. This needs to be defined fairly early, unless you want to constantly tease the audience with who will or won’t survive – but this is a risky step itself. Is the killer frightening enough? Are they supernatural or human? Do they have a certain unique style, or way of killing? It seems some of this has been considered (the tyre iron), but not all of it. When we discover who the killer actually is, the reason for the killer to have acted the way they did becomes meaningless. This ‘reveal’, in fact, is one of the hardest things to pull off in these films. Here it is done poorly (someone spots something in someone’s conveniently open bag), although there is at least some surprise as to who it is. The murders themselves are so obviously flagged that they’re not at all frightening, gruesome, or even funny (as they sometimes are in the Scream franchise). It seems we’ve become so used to films like this, that we need them to be more and more extreme, leading to the torture porn in Hostel and Saw, which even I refuse to watch. The end of the film has multiple, anti-climactic conclusions and we leave it feeling we have experienced very little style, and virtually no substance. Even by the standards of the genre, this film is poor.

Total Recall

Total Recall has been remade and will be released next week. It is perhaps an obvious choice for a remake – contemporary CGI, modern taste for realism and irony, and better actors (Colin Farrell, Jessica Biel and Kate Beckinsale), have the potential to make it a huge, rollercoaster of a blockbuster. I wonder, however, how much of the sinister play with reality and memory the new version will retain. The strap-line on its posters says ‘What is Real?’, suggesting that this will be a major theme in the film. In the original, we remain uncertain until quite late in the movie as to whether anything we see is actually happening or not. There is a scene in which the people trying to capture Quaid/Hauser (played by Schwarzenegger) attempt to persuade him that he is dreaming, that he is not really a spy on Mars, but an ordinary construction worker on Earth. He sees through this lie and manages to escape, but the dilemma is crucial to the film and how it manipulates its audience. We are the real construction workers on Earth, fantasising that we might be spies on Mars. We are placing ourselves in the shoes of Quaid/Hauser, and this scene in which he is told he is dreaming is ultimately directed at us. It speaks directly to us, and the lie is actually the truth. The film as a whole rather than encouraging us to believe we can be more than construction workers, in fact reinforces our position as such. It gives us this fantasy, allows us to play with it for two hours, so that we might accept reality more happily. I’m also fascinated by the many questions that Quaid/Hauser’s identity raises for us. For Quaid, Hauser is a different person, someone he cannot be, and this is in fact how all of us treat our past and future selves. They are distinct from us, yet we recognise whilst repressing the inevitable links. There’s an metafictive play with the names, too: Quaid is Irish-American and Hauser is German-Dutch. The film was directed by Verhoeven (a Ducthman) with American money. Significant? I don’t know. I await with both excitement and concern this new version. It will have lost the quirks of Verhoeven’s direction – the fast changes of situation, the panning camera, zooming in from a distance on its target – but what will it have gained?

Shalako

Despite the successes of some Westerns in recent years, cinema audiences still seem ambivalent about the genre. In the late 80s and early 90s there was quite a resurgence with Young Guns, Dances with Wolves, Unforgiven, Open Range, and Tombstone. More recently we’ve had There Will Be Blood, True Grit, Appaloosa, 3:10 to Yuma and Cowboys & Aliens. The genre has expanded to include revisionist, noir, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, futuristic, contemporary and comic book westerns. Despite this, you will still occasionally meet people who’ll say ‘I don’t like Westerns’. For a genre to be discounted entirely seems rather dramatic, and may stem from a European distance to these movies (despite the efforts of Sergio Leone). It is perhaps down to films like Shalako, made in 1968, that the reputation of Westerns still sometimes suffers. Starring Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot, it purports to be a more sympathetic Western – the Indians are not unreasonable savages, they just want their land. However, they are still men in wigs, their faces painted brown, screaming as they attack, simple-minded in their intentions. The film reminded me a lot of Zulu, made four years earlier, but with much more success. The title, Shalako, probably put a lot of people off. The entirely miscast Connery as the main character doesn’t help, nor does Bardot in a strange, uncharacteristic role (one of the few American films she’s in). It feels very much like, and probably was, a cast put together before a script. The film is in fact far smaller in scale than it purports to be. There are sweeping landscapes, but the plot follows only a few characters for little more than two days. They are attacked and surrounded by Indians and try to escape. Eventually they are caught again by the Indians and a final showdown is expected. What we receive at the end, however, is highly disappointing. There is no substantial conclusion or resolution. The real enemy, of course, as in all these movies, is the in-fighting between the white men. Shalako is as tremendously flawed as a film can be. We never have sympathy for any of the characters, despite Connery’s natural charisma, or Bardot’s beauty. It is in all a weird movie, probably better forgotten.