Reviews

This much vaunted French horror movie turns out to be a total mess, suitable only for those who are ashamed of liking gore movies and so want (very) juvenile intellectualism thrown into the mix to justify watching them. Not exactly ground breaking, for instance the objects of our gaze are scantily clad nubile young women having bad things done to them(there is an attempted justification for this later on - it is like much else of the plot infantile). The film has a strange structure - the first part is Haute Tension without the tension; this is done reasonably well but is full of clichés (do bodies really fly yards through the air when being hit by bullets? The law of conservation of momentum holds the answer and it ain't whats on view here), still it will appeal to fans of the colour red who don't mind watching killers cry endlessly (interminably is much the more accurate word here), rather than laugh demoniacally or eat their victims. At half way there is a sudden change of pace and tone, all of a sudden the maker is attempting to make Hellraiser as it would have been made by the great Danish filmmaker Dreyer. Of course it lacks the kinky fun of Hellraiser to say nothing of the spiritual charge of the great Dane. In fact the second part comes out much closer to Hostel than any of it's lofty aims; Hostel, that is, without the cheap laughs or bad acting, which all means it is a lot less fun than Hostel but takes itself so seriously that the immature will think it a work of art. BTW the level of gore in this movie was not as high as Inside - still the best of recent French horror.

I have to state at the outset that I lasted 30 minutes with this film. Is it it still fair to comment on it. I would say yes, as the inability to finish a film is the most serious comment of all on it. It was not boredom that stopped me watching but the sheer stupid, juvenile imbecility of what had transpired. Perhaps if I had stayed with it to the bitter end there may have been some great revelation but frankly I don't care. Anti-materialistic in the most idiotic way, this is basically a masturbatory fantasy for teenage boys. If you think that a wife will go off with a lad half her age who breaks into her house this is the film for you (all a battered wife needs is a nice boy!). On the plus side much of this is virtually silent, on the minus side it features a truly horrible bit of Korean MOR. I have watched a fair few Korean films in recent years - I'm a sucker for hype - and most of them have been pretty worthless, this film is certainly is down to that standard (the only two I would wholeheartedly recommend being "Untold Scandal" and "Memories Of Murder"). It does not even have the benefit of being truly odd like the similarly inept films of Park Chan-wook.

Contrary to the rubbish spouted by many real sex has been a feature of films almost since the medium was invented. The pornography industry packages it's sex in flimsy plots and bad acting, knowing that the potential audience is little interested in them. With "9 Songs" Michael Winterbottom has made a film that has all of the three features of classic pornography - a plot that is so thin it constantly threatens to disappear, acting (and improvisation) of a truly laughable nature (this is not the sort of film that actors with talent or a reputation would appear in), and plenty of uns(t)imulated coupling. Does that make it pornography? Probably not since porn is made with the honest and (dis)reputable intent of getting it's male audience to exercise their right hands, whereas the intent of Winterbottom's mess is anybody's guess. The rash of supposed "art" films with explicit sex is well known over recent years. Filmmakers will witter on about reality and honesty but I suspect the old adage that sex sells is more applicable. Almost without exception the films have been pretty dire (a lot of uber-pretentious French twaddle comes to mind) and "9 Songs" is no exception. Much like violence, hardcore sex in films is done best by the exploitation industry, they at least have an honest attitude to their product.

Eric Rohmer has fashioned a film that perfectly mirrors the main character Delphine. It is by turns annoying, insightful and moving. With improvised dialogue the film has a more naturalistic feel than some of Rohmers other work, he also shows more interest in nature than usual making this one of his more interesting films to look at. Delphine, brilliantly played by Marie Riviere, is lonely (and seemingly pining for her ex-fiancé) and her attempts at a vacation form the body of the film. She travels to various places but not until the end does she find something like happiness. She can be very maddening - ignoring people (presumably because they are "not the right sort" - just plain rude to my mind), and lecturing a family on her vegetarianism as they tuck into lamb chops. She does though seem a very real person, and many viewers will find themselves rooting for her anyway - she is like many people we know in being full of faults but you still like them anyway. The greatest weakness of the film is that for all her self-absorption Rohmer does not really provide any evidence of self-insight or change (a serious fault in that drama is all about characters changing), Delphine talks a lot about her problems but her explanations often struck me as trite. An oddity among his output, this should be seen by any Rohmer fan, I would not recommend it as an introduction though. (The mark of 6 may seem low by inflated IMDb standards but it is relative to Rohmers other films).

Looking for all the world like a something shot on a mobile phone while falling down a flight of stairs this has to be the most horrible looking film ever made. Greengrass shows little faith in the plot (which is just as well because it is totally unmemorable) and so films in a manner that negates any possible plot. Shaky cameras, ultra-quick edits. It's all great if you think film is just a gimmick akin to an amusement park. It's a style that doesn't invite emotional involvement which is just as well because Jason Bourne has to be the dullest super-assassin-secret-agent in film history- he fits in with the the general tenor of the film very nicely though - everything is treated as solemnly as an Ingmar Bergman film. Watching this I began to yearn for some humour or camp, even a little suspense would be nice, as the film is clearly a money making package, rather than anything else, so sequels are inevitable, suspense is hard to generate. I watched this and then watched "Crank", which is cheap, very stupid and a lot of fun. The only thing this film had in common was the stupidity.

Sean O'Casey was born John Casey, so a film about his early life that calls him John Cassidy makes sense in a sort of way. The film is based on his autobiographies (there are 6 volumes I believe) which are apparently quite readable but not entirely trustworthy. As a committed socialist (even a communist) and protestant O'Casey was to find he had no place in the conservative, catholic Ireland of De Valera. This is the great central irony of the man's life (and of the history of Irish literature of the time), that one of the few great Irish writers to deal directly with the Troubles was eventually driven from the country - so much so that he spent the last 35 years of his life in England and never once went back home. The film "Young Cassidy" is a pretty decent attempt to capture the man and his oddities. Rod Taylor looks nothing like the man but gives an energetic, likable performance. Other performances are OK and it is always nice to see Michael Redgrave, here as Yeats (he looks as little like the real man as Taylor does). Started by John Ford this looks like one of his Irish pictures but thankfully never descends into the blarney that films such as "The Quiet Man" did (Jack Cardiff who directed most of the film deserves more credit than he is usually given for his role). Filmed in Dublin it has a very authentic look. The main problem is in toning down O'Casey and his politics, he was far more radical than he was portrayed here and also far more of an irritant (to whatever country he lived in). In summary a decent biopic, overlooked but worth watching by Ford fans or those interested in Ireland.

I am no fan of Stanley Kubrick and consider all of the films he made after "Dr. Strangelove" to be cleverly made, imbecilic rubbish. The basic problem was his world-view - apparent in the few interviews he gave - deeply anti-humanist and incredibly arrogant. That the later films are so devoid of intellect or passion may well be why he has become a favourite of so many who want films to be arty without actually being truly difficult. This has little to do with "Paths Of Glory", made before Kubrick had developed the deadened style of those later films. Perhaps the secret ingredient is Kirk Douglas, here at his muscular, intelligent best and obviously deeply committed to the material. The gliding camera in the trenches and the battle scenes are amongst the best filmed moments of 1950's cinema - realistic in a way few English language films of that time were, the only comparison being in Japanese films such as "Fires On The Plain". The film is very cleverly constructed, playing almost as a two-acter of trench and aftermath, with a coda that is surprisingly moving. There are a few gripes, as always, the first one is Kirk's hairdo which is pure 1956, slightly more serious is the loading of the film against the generals - maybe this sort of thing is needed in cinema, but compared to literature it is quite crude. I would disagree with those who see this as an anti-war film - it seems to me to be simply a film that takes place in wartime. It may explore what war can lead men to do, but, like it's hero, there is little suggestion that it explicitly condemns war. Overall I would rank this as a great film, to my mind it is certainly Kubrick's finest.

Imamura is younger, and less well known, than those Japanese directors who came to international attention in the 1950's. He was for a while a trainee of Ozu's, though there are few stylistic indicators of that in "The Pornographer". This is quite clearly a new-wave film with hints of Godard and Fellini. Freeze frames, fantasy and a habit of framing scenes through windows means that this looks unlike the earlier classic Japanese films. Subu the eponymous pornographer initially believes that he is a public servant, providing for the less salubrious needs of his customers - photos, films and potions. He has a bizarre home life with a widowed hairdresser and her two children. Both the making of pornography and his odd home life provide some moments of rich black comedy. Other elements, such as the interaction with local gangsters, appear less central to the film and don't always fit in easily. This is not the sort of film where acting is of great importance, here it varies from good to acceptable. The main fault of the film is the length. 127 minutes is not necessarily long, it's just that it feels too long here by about 30 minutes (around midway there are some tedious patches). To sum up an interesting film by a director still little known, if it does not reach the heights of Kurosawa, Ozu, Kobayashi or Ichikawa at their peaks, the truth is that no post 1960's Japanese film has. It is certainly better than the three films by Oshima (the only other Japanese new-wave director with any international reputation - possibly more for the "pornograhic" nature of his films than any real quality) I have seen.

With a title "borrowed" from Werner Herzog and liberal helpings of Kubrick, Haneke and Noe it is painfully obvious that Thomas Clay considers himself a cut above the usual sort of rubbish our British cinema churns out. "Robert Carmichael" (for short) sets itself up as a realistic study of youthful alienation and at the same time seemingly a critique of the Iraq war. The problem with the realism is that the characters are so patently unrealistic and atypical - contrary to the fetid imaginings of "extreme" filmmakers most teenagers are not drug addled rapists. As a critique of the Iraq war, a film about youth violence (by a talented classical musician - subtext society has damaged this sensitive individual)is so infantile as to hardly bear thinking about. There are signs of technical ability but some reviewers have overstated this. Like Kubrick and Noe he does show that the desire to shock linked with supposed serious intent may be the worst cinematic con trick of recent film. People liked "Clockwork Orange" and "Irreversible" because they liked the rapes and the violence, but most of all they liked feeling culturally superior for liking things that most hated. So too much Kubrick and not enough Haneke (a serious and moral filmmaker) here labels this as one of the most moronic films in years. (I am not against violence in film. To do it seriously is a hard trick though - people in cinemas cheered Alex in "Clockwork Orange" showing how Kubrick's supposed intent was missed by miles. Gratuitous violence is much easier to achieve and is less offensive than the pretensions of many art-film directors.)

"Apocalypse Now" is almost impossible to give a numerical grade to. The reason why is simple, while the first part is very good, the film simply falls to pieces once Marlon Brando appears. Full of unforgettable scenes and images the first part might qualify as great cinema except for the need for a narration to make sense of the material - a sure sign of the mess the script was in as shooting began. Brando in the end manages to destroy everything with a mumbling, mannered wreck of a performance. If Brando had given Coppola one of his great latter turns in "The Godfather", here he gives the worst performance by a name actor I have ever seen. It stinks and anybody who tries to persuade you otherwise is deluded. Apparently Coppola was influenced by Herzog's "Aguirre", and certainly both movies are a mixture of the great and the awful, what lifts Herzog's film though is Klaus Kinski's performance. In my dreams I have an "Apocalypse Now" with Kinski in the Brando role -it's a much better film even though I'll never see it. The "Redux" version adds running time but detracts from the film by much more and should be avoided.

Pauline Kael in her famous essay on this film tried (wo)manfully to give all the credit to Herman Mankiewicz's script and Gregg Toland's camera work. It persuaded few at the time and is hugely unlikely when you look at the work both did outside of this film. Kael as a critic was always a doubtful proposition, her chumminess with the makers of many of the films she reviewed was on an ethical level with those internet reviewers who take cash to rave about Hollywood's latest mindless blast ie "The Dark Knight" - an adolescent film for adolescents. The credit for this film is almost entirely due to Orson Welles, less a man than a legend even then. That said though, Welles has to take the blame for the film's shortcomings as well. The story is little more than the usual homily about money not buying happiness, wealthy Hollywood dished up this message gleefully to an audience that had no chance to test it's truth. The script contains some great lines but lacks depth. The psychology second rate Freud. The acting is variable, only Welles himself really managing to put any gusto into the film. Despite this the film is close to the masterpiece many have proclaimed, a fitting testament to old Hollywood's ability to turn trash into great cinema on a par with "Casablanca". How it manages this is hard to pin down (if it was easy to describe other filmmakers could achieve the same results with equal ease). At root it comes down to the sheer cinematic nature of the film, none before or since has used the medium's possibilities with such abandon or genius (this is one of those rare films that is unimaginable in any other medium). In the right mood you can surrender to this film and become convinced it is a work of art. Of course it does not stand up to serious textual analysis - few films can - but this is an American film that does not insult it's audiences' intelligence -a rarity then and even more so now.

Asian extreme cinema is little more than a marketing ploy as this episodic film clearly shows. The episodes have little in common and vary wildly in quality. To start with the best, "Dumplings" is more a black comedy than anything else. It's theme is ultra-misogynistic - women will do anything to stay young (the male director may have been better advised to look at the steps men take to retain their potency but hatred of women sells better) - and what is happening will be obvious to anyone with a few brain cells very quickly. It is though quite well made and passes it's time painlessly enough. The full length version is to be avoided as it is stretched out to tedium. Overall an OK film but I would recommend grisly French shocker "Inside" over it any day of the week. Park-Chan Wook's segment "Cut" is more palatable than his full length films - shortness helps enormously. It contains the bad acting that all of his films have but a tighter plot helps. The whole thing is very similar to "Saw" (almost certainly a coincidence) but fails to provoke or entertain as that film did. As a piece of cinema it's no better than average, compared to Park's other films it seems like a masterpiece. Last, and very much least, is Takashi Miike's segment "Box". This is the only segment that qualifies as extreme in any sense, in that it is extremely boring. Miike seems to have started believing the press saying that he is a cinematic genius - that is the only excuse I can think of for the farrago he presents here (at his best he was a maker of good off-kilter genre pieces - a man to rank with Dario Argento rather than a true cinematic master). All in all this film's most important legacy is in uncovering the stupid hype that has surrounded Asian cinema in recent years, of course good films were made (ignored by most they always have been), but just like Hollywood mediocrity has usually prevailed.

It's a sign of the ignorance of most professional film critics that few of them seem to have noticed that this film is a blatant rip off of Dreyer's 1955 film "Ordet" (with a little of the earlier "Day Of Wrath" thrown in). "Ordet" is a film that for most viewers moves quite slowly, next to "Silent Light" it feels like a Jason Bourne film though. There are some beautiful images and the non-professional cast do very well. None of this can save the film from it's leaden pace. What moments have heightened emotion tend to be lost in the whole stodginess of proceedings. Spelling out Johan's dilemma so blatantly and so early on is a curious piece of exposition that does not fit in this kind of film - Reygadas should have showed us this instead he tells us (the film is certainly long enough to have done this). It does not help that Reygadas cannot generate the sense of transcendence that Dreyer achieved in "Ordet". What was an intensely spiritual moment in that film seems like cynical sleight-of-hand here. While it is encouraging that younger filmmakers have actually seen films by a neglected master like Dreyer, there is though a world of difference between imitation and influence. Reygadas's first film was Tarkovsky lite, now Dreyer lite. The suspicion must be that he does not have an independent voice.

Like all of the great westerns since John Ford this is a film about western films as much as the west itself. Long and leisurely, by the time it starts Jesse James is already part of a mythological west being sold to impressionable young men like Robert Ford. Ford gets close to the myth and becomes part of it himself. Starting brilliantly with a train robbery the film proceeds to deconstruct the myth and in doing so takes it's place alongside "Unforgiven" and "The Wild Bunch". Brad Pitt has never been better than as Jesse James, he remains a mystery somewhere between an outlaw and family man. Acting honours go to Casey Affleck, just as in "Gone Baby Gone" he shows how effective quiet acting can be. Beautifully shot and scored. This is up there with "No Country For Old Men" as the best US cinema had to offer in 2007.

This is Gus Van Sant's best film yet. Hypnotic and apparently simple, it's long takes and shifting time frames create an atmosphere of normality always tinged with dread. Very economically he manages to create portraits of a group of teenagers just through banal everyday dialogue. In a lesser film we would have been bombarded with back-story and attempts to create characters who are "sympathetic". The characters in this film just are. Van Sant makes no attempt to explain what happens. Rather than a weakness this is a profound strength avoiding the simplistic moralising and posturing that usually pass for explanations in movies. He is after all a filmmaker and not a psychologist. Some have criticised the film as exploitative. This is based on a real event and frankly most people seem happier when violence in films comes in the form of masturbatory fantasy (see the career of Tarantino). This is one of the few films that makes violence real through understatement, and it is all the more shocking for that.

Terrence Malick is the director who became more and more revered the longer he refrained from making films. What this meant was that when he finally started making films again critics had invested so much in his legend that whatever he turned out would be acclaimed a masterpiece by some. So it turned out as people fell over themselves to praise the not very good "Thin Red Line". Some of that effect still lingers with "The New World", but noticeably more muted. It's as if people are finally waking up to the truth that Malick's film-making gifts have actually atrophied in his long lay off. "The New World" is a not very accurate retelling of the Pocohontas story. It has the usual Malick traits of flat acting, voice-overs and stunning cinematography. Unfortunately the weakness of the film merely shows how limited pretty pictures are in their own right. Some have described this as poetic (always a dodgy term in cinema). If it is it's poetry on the level of a Patience Strong not a Tennysson (let alone a 20th century poet). Malick refuses to challenge his audience as a true artist would (unless you count the challenge of staying awake). If you want to see a masterly updating of Native American stories see Michael Mann's brilliant "Last Of The Mohicans". This film is merely for those who want art-film made easy on the palate.

I watched this after "The Royal Tenenbaums". I thought that film was a pile of cutely self conscious rubbish. Star packed, in fact there were more of them than there were laughs. Trying to be fair I gave Wes Anderson a second chance and watched "Rushmore". Lo and behold it was self-consciously cute rubbish. The only thing that made it slightly more watchable was the absence of Gwyneth Paltrow. Jason Schwartzman is annoying as I'm sure the intention was. Bill Murray does his standing still and pulling a face routine. The script is adolescent. Although the film is about an adolescent from supposedly adult filmmakers one would expect an adult viewpoint. Some have compared "Juno" to this and I can see where this view originates from: "Juno" at least beneath it's over-cutesy-cool surface had something resembling a heart. If you like comedy without laughs, drama without drama and have failed to develop emotionally I wholeheartedly recommend this film.

This is easily the best film I've seen from Judd Apatow's stable. Crude, but not dumb, and with plenty of laughs. Jonah Hill and Michael Cera provide most of the highlights. Hill in particular is funny for the whole movie, a feat that John Belushi often struggled to achieve. The only major fault is that it goes on too long, the last 20 minutes feeling drained - this is a fault it shares with "Knocked Up". As a comedy this is much better than "Juno", it also feels much more real than that overpraised cute fest. If you think that a comedy's main function is to make you laugh, then this was the best American comedy of 2008.

How "Juno" became a cultural phenomenon is more interesting than the film itself. A mildly amusing and mildly dramatic film it miraculously made many critics lose their minds. The movies faults come down largely to the screenplay. To put it bluntly everybody speaks too much and too "wittily" (the "wittily" is attempted rather than achieved much of the time). Their is little rhythm to the dialogue. The film improves somewhat after a truly dire opening scene in a pharmacists where the banter between Juno and the always unfunny Rainn Wilson is embarrassing in the extreme. The opening exemplifies the faults of the film though - the script is simply not as clever as it thinks it is. What saves the film are the performances. Ellen Page is fine in the main role. JK Simmons and Allison Janney (both exceptional character actors) have little to do as over-nice parents but do it very well. Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman though provide whatever emotional pull the film has, Bateman in particular got nowhere near the praise he deserved. Michael Cera turns in another of his patented George Michael performances - it's all very well but it is impossible to imagine him and Juno having sex which rather negates the point of the movie. A tepid indie soundtrack adds to the underwhelming niceness of the project. Like "Knocked Up" this is diverting enough, if you get through the opening you will likely enjoy it. The film does not stay in the mind though and it's main achievement is to make unwanted pregnancy "nice".

"Angst" seems to have picked up some interest since Gaspar Noe singled it out for praise. It is more interesting than Noe's pretentious films, but fall far short of being a lost masterpiece. The plot is simple as a killer released from prison feels an unbearable urge to kill again, eventually picking on a family in a large house in the woods. There is very little dialogue but a voice-over by the killer provides his background, unfortunately rather than providing an insight into his mind this is mostly sub-Freudian gibberish (not surprising in an Austrian film, and yes he does blame his mother!). Erwin Leder has been praised for his role but really all he has to do is look bug eyed for most of the film. Kargl shoots the film informatively but he lacks any narrative skill and completely mishandles the killings - they look more laughable than anything. The only scene that develops any tension is early on in a café and involves eating a sausage!. That Kargl never directed again is really no surprise. To sum up an interesting one for exploitation fans but not really worth seeking out for anyone else. (True crime fans may note that some elements of the film are similar to the later case of Jack Unterweger).

Transgressive has been an in word for some time now. In movies it usually comes down to sex and violence with pretensions. It's hard to know which was more laughable, the pretensions of the film makers (I believe they think really this is art) or the outraged response of respectable film critics. At base "Baise-Moi" is exploitation (and very base indeed). As that it actually works brilliantly. Filmed with anarchic enthusiasm - code for amateurism - this harks back to such (non) classics as "I Spit On Your Grave". The sex is real but yet oddly false in that porn movie way. The violence is done very badly and looks ridiculous. Why non-simulated sex and phony looking violence is more offensive than the Hollywood formula of phony sex and real looking violence is beyond me. Detractors will point to the nihilism of the piece, but when did "Pulp Fiction" or "Kill Bill" offer anything else (Oh I forgot - clever dialogue excuses everything). Acting is as you would expect from porn actresses, but oddly they seem to have more fun than the mannered gurning that passes for great acting in so many films (think D Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood). Despite it all, taken as a video nasty this is fine, taken as art it is the most stupid film since Walerian Borowczyk's "La Bete", as an indicator of the hypocrisy of film critics it approaches genius.

Is Stanley Kubrick the most overrated filmmaker ever? He certainly had prodigious technical gifts, "Barry Lyndon" may not be be the best looking film ever but it certainly comes close, stunning at times in it's use of natural light. He acted like an artist, slow-working and perfectionist. He was certainly uncompromising. In short Kubrick looked and acted like a genius, luckily for him in the world of cinema this was enough to get him proclaimed a genius. All of his films were met by gushing reviews - witness the response to the execrable "Eyes Wide Shut". Yet any true critical response to his films should attempt to explain the utter emptiness of his post "Dr Strangelove" work. "Barry Lyndon" is important here because for all its beauty this is as vapid as film gets. Kubrick drains all life out of characters, the wit and irony of Thackeray totally lost. Ryan O'Neal shows that TV support roles are his natural home (Paper Moon is the only film he didn't ruin), and the rest of the cast are forgettable. Kubrick is art-cinema for those who are scared of real art - it challenges one after all, he is great cinema for those who believe that great cinema consists of nice looking pictures. He is intellectual cinema for the simple minded. There is more life and art in 10 minutes of a Jason Statham film than in this bore. So yes I believe he is overrated and this piece of dross is first exhibit in the case.