(Here be spoilers if you are yet to see the James Bond movies...)
The Mission
SPECTRE are still smarting from the defeat of Doctor No in the previous film, so they hatch a plan to steal a prized decoding machine from the Russians that uses James Bond as an unwitting pawn. MI6 is sent word of a defecting Russian agent in Turkey who will only supply the decoder if Bond is sent to bring her in... they suspect Soviet duplicity but send Bond anyway. What neither the Russians or British know is that SPECTRE is playing them off against each other.
Jimmy Bond yo!
Bond (Connery) is introduced to us post-coital after bunting through Oxbridge. He's a bit cocky and sheepish when called in to MI6 for work but remains a resolute charmer of women. He also demonstrates his more gentlemanly qualities when he politely asks for a gypsy catfight to be stopped. Connery is more self-assured than ever throughout From Russia With Love, the stakes are raised in comparison to Dr. No but he still remains calm and confident for the most part. It's worth noting that he incapacitates quite a few of his enemies but never kills unless he's forced to.
Villainy
Blofield makes his first 'appearance' here as the enigmatic Number 1... we hear his voice and see his hands (stroking a white cat... something that has now become synonymous with the James Bond films and their knockoffs) and he is seen at the film's beginning and end - setting up a recurring supervillain for the franchise to build on.
Rosa Klebb (Lotta Lenya) features throughout the film as the main villain, a Soviet colonel who secretly works for SPECTRE as their Number 3. She stays in the background for most of the film, orchestrating the fake defection and double-crosses. It's heavily implied that she's a lesbian - she shirks from a man touching her early on in the film, but is later seen putting on a hand on Tatiana's knee, who she refers to as a 'fine-looking woman'. She also strokes Tatiana's chin, and physically fits the stereotype of a butch military lesbian despite her diminutive stature.
The other main villains are Kronsteen (Vladek Sheybal), a Russian cheessmaster who comes up with SPECTRE's plan, and Red Grant (Robert Shaw), a muscular blond henchman who poses as a British agent. Grant takes centrestage in the last portions of the film, with Shaw looking suitably imposing whilst employing a disarmingly chummy British accent.
Buddies and Babes
The main Bond-ally here is Ali Kerem Bay (Pedro Armendariz), a Turkish ex-circus strongman who works with MI6 and has a seemingly endless gallery of sons who work for him. He also has ties to the local Gypsy community, and is the kind of colourful fatman character who would turn up in later Bond films. Bernard Lee also reappears as M, and Desmond Llewelyn makes the first of 17 appearances as Q, Bond's trusty gadget-man.
Russian defector Tatiana is played Italian model Daniela Bianchi. Bianchi had trouble speaking English so all her dialogue was overdubbed, but it isn't really all that noticeable. She's clearly a better actress than Ursula Andress in the last film, and she's also suitably glamourous.
Locations
Most of the film takes place in Istanbul, Turkey, which is depicted as the point where the East (Russia) meets the West (the UK and America). The climax of the film takes place on a trans-European train that travels through Belgrade and Zagreb in the former Yugoslavia. This is followed by a boat chase off the coast of Greece and some final scenes set in Venice.
Gadgets and Tricks of the Trade
Bond gets some decent gadgets this time round - namely an unassuming-looking briefcase that conceals ammunition, a fold-up sniper rifle, a throwing knife and some gold coins. It also dispenses teargas if not opened in the correct way.
Bond also has a camera that doubles as a recording device, and he checks behind the chandelier and pictures in his hotel room for bugs. He uses a bomb attack to distract the Russian embassy whilst he singlehandedly storms it to steal the decoding device and rescue Tatiana. He also gets Red Grant to talk by flattering his brilliance once he has been captured, something that has since become a well-worn cliche of the genre.
Licence to Kill
A more impressive kill tally in this film compared to Dr. No. Bond shoots at least three Bulgarian lackeys during a full-scale battle between the Gypsies and the Soviets. He also stabs and garottes Red Grant on the train, and shoots a helicopter pilot (causing said helicopter to crash in spectacular fashion). He probably also kills some people when he blows up a series of boats by using barrels of gasoline and a flare gun.
Shag-Rate
James Bond is clearly post-the-business with Sylvia Trench (his casual girlfriend from Dr. No) when re-introduced at the film's beginning. He clearly doesn't value the relationship all that much though as he isn't shy of other girls later in the film.
He shags Tatiana almost immediately upon meeting her (it probably helps that she contacts him by disrobing and crawling into his bed). They also shag again on the train, though Bond is later somewhat disgusted when he learns that their first tryst was secretly filmed by SPECTRE. It's implied at one point that he has had a bit of a good time with the two Gypsy women he stops from fighting, but it's probably a bit far-fetched that he would risk offending the Gypsy man they are fighting over by actually shagging them.
Quotes
ALI KEREM BEY (getting Bond to look through a periscope into Russian headquarters): How does she look to you?
BOND (seeing only her legs) Well, from this angle things are shaping up nicely.
BOND (after enemy-agent Krilencu appears through the mouth of a giant film poster and is promptly shot): She should've kept her mouth shut.
How Does it Rate?
Regarded as one of the best Bond films of the franchise, it's pretty hard to argue against From Russia With Love as a prime example of Connery's James Bond at his best. Compared to the more low-budget Dr. No, it's almost like an entirely different series... the sets are grander (note the giant SPECTRE chess room at the beginning), the locations are more visually appealing, and the emphasis is placed on more serious spy business rather than the pseudo sci-fi fluff that characterised the previous film.
From Russia With Love memorably starts out by showing things from SPECTRE's point-of-view, contrasting the previous film's low-key introduction of MI6 with a broader scale of enemy-planning via fierce training exercises and dour-faced Russian-styled intellectualism. Despite being a lot more realistic than Dr. No it's still not without humour (such as M and his cronies listening to Bond's meandering recording of Tatiana) or excitement (courtesy of an exploitative girl-on-girl Gypsy fight), and it plays out as an entertaining game of traps and counter-plays.
Visit my James Bond page.
DIRECTOR: Terence Young
WRITER/SOUCRE: Richard Maibaum and Johanna Harwood, based on the novel From Russia With Love by Ian Flemming.
KEY ACTORS: Sean Connery, Lotta Lenya, Robert Shaw, Pedro Armendariz, Daniela Bianchi, Bernard Lee
RELATED TEXTS:
- The novel From Russia With Love, which ends a bit differently to the film!
- A lot of Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery takes it's cues from this film - Dr. Evil is heavily based on Blofield, Frau Farbissina is clearly based on Rosa Klebb, the use of 'Number 2' as a designation in Evil's organisation, even the climax with Random Task is modelled after the hotel scene near the of From Russia With Love.
- It's probably worth mentioning that Dr. Claw, the villain from the animated series Inspector Gadget, seems to be a cross betweeb Blofield (unseen and always stroking a cat) and Dr. No (metal hands).
- The train sequences are more than a little remniscent of The Lady Vanishes.
AWARDS:
The cinematography won a BAFTA and British Cinematography award.
The theme song was nominated for a Golden Globe.
This all-star action bonanza didn't get a great deal of favourable reviews, which surprises me a little. Red may not push the boundaries as far as action films or comic-adaptations go, but it's a thoroughly entertaining and unpretentious piece of fun. I've read that this film is a somewhat Hollywoodised version of it's source material (a graphic novel by cult writer Warren Ellis), but I think it's forgiveable as Red doesn't set out to underachieve by any stretch of the imaginiation... instead it becomes something else; a delightful mash-up of comic book roots, all-American mythos and the great Hollywood tradition of teaming up a whole gaggle of recognisable actors.
Bruce Willis plays Frank Moses, codenamed 'Red' (Retired, Extremely Dangerous) by the CIA. Karl Urban plays the CIA operative wiping out Frank and his former team-mates... it seems that Frank and his old friends know something that makes them a liability to America. Frank is just trying to lead a normal life, but his blossoming relationship with phone-jockey Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) is rudely interrupted by a CIA wetworks team, meaning that the two are forced to go on the run (something that doesn't exactly endear Frank to Sarah). Frank tracks down his surviving former associates with a view to fighting back, with the result being a somewhat motley bunch of skilled but eccentric retired spies.
I know it doesn't exactly sound original, but this conspiracy film is elevated by three things. It's funny without betraying the genre, the A-list cast is clearly having a lot of fun from start to finish, and the film builds its familiar story on the CIA folklore that has become part of our modern pop culture. Black ops, shady characters, forced 'retirements', LSD experiments, conspiracies, Soviets, the camraderie of shared experience between Cold War veterans... it's all there, and it gets mined for some unexpected laughs and more than a few nice points of characterisation.
Red also deals with the idea of what action-hero archetypes like Bruce Willis do when they stop saving the world and just try to fit in with normal society. For several decades now we've been fed a steady diet of these super-capable gung-ho heroes flipping off colossal badguys with cheesy one-liners... Red asks the question: What happens when these guys try and reintegrate into regular society? Frank's rehibilitation is both awkward and endearing, with Willis reigning in the machismo during his scenes with Mary-Louise Parker to reveal an eager sensitivity that's encourages both our sympathy and amusement.
The dyamic of the supporting cast is also a big plus in the film's favour - making this the Blue Brothers of action/espionage films. Morgan Freeman's wise elder character even says what the audience might be thinking, "We're getting the band back together". John Malkovich steals his scenes as Marvin (a paranoid ex-CIA LSD experiment), and Helen Mirren also does a great job as Victoria (a retired top-line assassin who still does the odd job for kicks). My favourite piece of casting though would have to be Ernest Borgnine as the Records Keeper... he might only have two scenes but I was just chuffed to see him on the screen (and sharing a scene with Bruce Willis), the guy is 93 and still seems to be in great health!
Anyway, this is a fun and smart action film. It doesn't have pretensions of being anything deeper than what it is... it's true to its genre stylings without coming off as shallow, which is no mean feat in an age of endless empty blockbusters.
DIRECTOR: Robert Schwentke
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Jon and Eric Hoeber, based on the graphic novel by Warren Ellis and Curt Hamner.
KEY ACTORS: Bruce Willis, Mary-Louise Parker, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Brian Cox, Richard Dreyfuss, Karl Urban, Julian McMahon, Ernest Borgnine
RELATED TEXTS:
- The Losers is another recent graphic novel-to-film adaptation that deals with similar themes in the same slightly tongue-in-cheek manner.
- The Good Shepherd is a more serious and dramatic attempt to address the history of the CIA.
- John Malkovich previously appeared in more cerebral CIA comedy Burn After Reading.
- The espionage genre has long been a healthy staple of Hollywood, some notable entries include Hopscotch, The Three Days of the Condor, Spy Game, The Falcon and the Snowman and the Bourne trilogy.
- True Lies and Mr. and Mrs. Smith also deal with assassins and secret agents in a comedic fashion.
The Left-Handed Gun starts out like any other western - with a very traditional-sounding ballad sung in a crooning fashion. Arthur Penn (who would go on to make the groundbreaking Bonnie and Clyde) directs for the first time, and subverts the genre with a revisionist take on the story of Billy the Kid. Riding the rise of the method-acting fad (this film was originally to have starred James Dean), The Left-Handed Gun takes the myth of the old west and lets it pale against the sordid reality of how things really were. Gradually, as the film goes on and Billy becomes less of a mystery to us, we come to see the falsities of the romanticized west.
Billy (Paul Newman) is, initially, a quiet young wanderer looking for work. He finds work with an English cattleman who takes a liking to him and lends him a bible. However, when this cattleman is murdered by a bent sheriff and his three deputies Billy takes it upon himself to take the law into his own hands. He becomes an outlaw, and finds himself conflicted when a delicate amnesty is issued to calm the powderkeg caused by his cycle of vengeance. He is befriended by Pat Garrett (John Dehner), an older one-time outlaw who sees himself in Billy and tries to help him. But Billy is unpredictable, and his continuing quest for revenge will put the lives of everyone around him in danger.
In comparison to a lot of other westerns in the 1950s, everything in The Left-Handed Gun is more brutal, harsher, and more vivid.The film also has an anarchic sense of humour, and it doesn't shy away from the violence of the real west. For example, a man is shot in the spine and squirms around on the floor in paralysis, whilst others are shot in the back or while begging for their life. One scene memorably has a little girl laugh at a solitary boot standing in the wake of it's owner's death before being slapped by her mother and dragged away. Penn is eager to make his mark as a director, and despite some of its 1950s heavy-handedness the film shines with the promise of a fresh talent... there's a nice slow dissolve/double-exposure where Billy outlines his plan before executing it, and the scene where he faces off with a man named Joe Grant is positively electric.
Newman is also keen to make an impression in this early role inherited from James Dean. When we first meet Billy he's squinting and drawling like a man who lives in the sun, but as the film goes on Newman takes a typically 1950s rebel-character and gives him all the dimensions of a bad kid gone worse. He can't read, but he's eager to share what he knows, and he's eager to learn. Under the guidance of the English cattleman at the film's beginning he might just have come good, but injustice gives him an excuse to go to ruin. He's hot-headed, horses around with his friends, and acts dumb to disarm his enemies. One character even refers to him as a 'wild boy' when he's finally captured.
We initially see the character of Billy the Kid as a piece of western myth, but Newman is just the right person to play such a legend as a morally-grey human with realistic flaws. The film really nails it home when one of Billy's fans catches up with him towards the end and incredulously remarks, "You're not like the books... you don't stand up for glory. You're not him". It's a sad moment of abject disallusion, especially when this fan then goes to rat out Billy's location and pathetically refuses the reward on grounds that other people would just take it off him. Eventually all of Billy's mistakes catch up with him and he's forced to face the fact that his own brand of justice has its own consequences. For most of the film he refuses to acknowledge that his revenge-killings are 'murder'... in fact, for most of the film he seems to live by a contradictory set of rules that makes it very hard for anyone to stay friends with him. It's an interesting take on the 'heroic' western outlaw, and exactly the sort of boundary-blurring that would go on to make Newman a star.
DIRECTOR: Arthur Penn
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Leslie Stevens, based on a script by Gore Vidal.
KEY ACTORS: Paul Newman, John Dehner, James Best, Hurd Hatfield, Denver Pyle
RELATED TEXTS:
- This film was based on a telemovie by Gore Vidal called The Death of Billy the Kid, also starring Paul Newman and made in 1955.
- Gore Vidal remade his version of the story as Billy the Kid as a telemovie in 1989, this time starring Val Kilmer.
- There have been a lot of other films featuring or made about Billy the Kid, including but not limited to: Billy the Kid (1930), The Outlaw, Young Guns, One-Eyed Jacks, Chisum, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.
This early talkie classic casts Greta Garbo as the peerless Queen Christina, a princess who comes to the Swedish throne at a very early age when her father King Gustavus is killed on the battlefield during the Thirty Years war. Brought up as a male heir, Christina becomes a powerful and accomplished orator, a hero to her people and a good-humoured, intelligent and outspoken idealist ahead of her time. She's mindful of the war's mounting casualties and financial cost and wants to end it despite her glory-hungry nobles clamouring for more bloodshed. And as if this weren't enough, her people are also pushing her to marry the Swedish war hero Prince Karl, eager for her to produce a rightful heir - something she has no intention of doing.
Queen Christina takes an intriguing slice of European history and turns it into something of a fairy tale. Through this world of court intrigues and treaties we're memorably introduced to Garbo as a serious-looking monarch flanked by massive hunting dogs. She's a larger-than-life presence, remarking "I have so little free time, to spend it sleeping is a waste" as she devours volumes of reading in her bedchamber. She's already enjoyed a series of affairs with members of her court at her own whim but doesn't believe in true love. When she tires of the pressures of her life she masquerades as a swaggering lad in order to travel incognito across the countryside by horse, and it's while she's out riding in the snow that she meets Antonio (John Gilbert), a Spanish envoy on his way to see the Queen. The two cross paths again in a hospitable inn where they enjoy each other's intellectual companionship, and when Christina reveals her gender they embark on a night of unforgettable passion and fall in love - a love that is too good to be true.
This section of the film lends itself to a Twelfth Night-ish comedy of misunderstanding based on disguises and sexual suggestion. The film then introduces a fatal complication - when Antonio learns who Christina really is it puts him at conflict with his mission to Sweden. Furthermore, when Christina begins to flaunt her relationship with Antonio it angers her people - they want a Swedish king, not a Spanish one. Queen Christina finds herself in an unfortunate position, she must choose between her own happiness and what her country wants. Either path is marked with tragedy, and the film certainly doesn't opt for the easiest way out.
Queen Christina is full of opulent sets and grandly recreates a historical era to great effect. The real Queen Christina was allegedly uninterested in men, and not very good-looking. There are more than a few allusions to the Queen's unorthodox sexuality in this film, though it can perhaps be forgiven for it's overall historical inaccuracy as it doesn't really set out to take a documentarian approach to history. It's a bit more fabulous than that (and I mean that in the most literary sense, IE. Pertaining to fables), and the final enigmatic shot of Queen Christina's face is one of the great close-ups in film history. Garbo holds onto that look of deep thought and ambivalence so perfectly that it's easy to see why she was such a star.
DIRECTOR: Rouben Mamoulian
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by H. M Harwood, Salka Viertel and S. N. Behrman. Some of the story was also contributed to by Margaret P. Levino. Loosely based on 17th century historical events and real life historical figures.
KEY ACTORS: Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Ian Keith, Lewis Stone, C. Aubrey Smith
RELATED TEXTS:
- The Abdication is a more accurate film about the life of Queen Christina, starring Peter Finch and Liv Ullmann.
- The more recent films Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age tell a similar story of a female monarch refusing to bow to the pressures of their courts.
I can't say I'm really that much of a fan of the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. I can see it's value and I like how relentless and complete it is in the way it deals with these big political concepts, but at the end of the day I always preferred the more parable-like Animal Farm. I just thought I'd say that as a kind of apology before getting on with the review. This film version of George Orwell's masterpiece is probably as faithful an adaptation as you could possibly put on the screen. But this also begs the question as to why you would bother to do such a thing... if there's an argument for not using certain texts as a direct basis for films than this film would be one of them. The book is fairly cerebral as it is, it's a novel that relies on internal monologue and there isn't really a whole lot that happens during the course of the protagonist's journey through the system from unquestioning cog to political pawn. It makes for stimulating reading, but as a film it's not particularly engaging.
Starting out with the quote, "He who controls the past controls the future, he who controls the present controls the past", Nineteen Eighty-Four mumbles it's way onto the screen with an image of the feverish fanaticism this futuristic state instils in it's subjects. Winston Smith (John Hurt) is a worker in the Ministry of Truth who becomes obsessed with ideas of lovemaking and attraction that transgress the totalitarianism of his world. He begins an affair with Julia (Suzanna Hamilton), and the two entertain ideas of joining the Resistance. It doesn't take long for Smith to make contact with O'Brien (Richard Burton, in his last role), an Inner Party member who apparently works at counter-purposes with the state.
As anyone familiar with the book will know, the rather slim plot is merely a contrivance that allows the author to explore the idealogy behind his depressing vision of the future. Along with the rather hapless Smith we're shown the layers of deception used by the state to control and neutralise any resistance offered by 'thought criminals'. The last thirty to forty minutes of the film are particularly hard to watch as a result of this - the disturbingly realistic torture sequences demonstrate the dispiriting notion that no one could really hold out from confession if faced with their greatest fears. Beyond this we're shown the full process the state employs to keep it's stranglehold on the populace... it's not good enough to capture those who oppose you, you must also break their spirit and then brainwash them for use as propaganda. I'm not saying that all films should end in a cheerful manner but it just doesn't help that we spend nearly two long hours to get to this point without much in the way of drama or action. It's not exactly the film's fault - the text just wasn't written in a fashion that's conducive to visual storytelling.
On the positive side, Nineteen Eighty-Four is an absolute dream from a designer's standpoint. The film uses 1940s fascist iconography to bring it to life in a way that even the doubly-dour Orwell himself would've marvelled at. It's all vibrant navy greys and faded reds, with the media footage always presented in oddly clear sepia tones. It's also grotty, war-torn world of concrete beautifully photography by celebrated cinematographer Roger Deakins, which probably goes a long way towards explaining why this film looks so good. John Hurt does a decent job in the rather thankless role of Winston Smith, his haggard pre-naturally aged face and small frame makes him perfect as the worn down creature at the centre of this cautionary tale. Suzanna Hamilton does well in getting across the brainwashed parts of her performance without falling into lazy sci-fi zombie territory, though it seems a bit odd that she spends most of the film naked. In the only other major role, Richard Burton gives a calm, zen-like performance of a man resigned to his job. His torturer sequences are matter-of-act and without showmanship... it matches the tone of the film and what the text requires but (once again) it doesn't exactly make for an exciting film. His melifluous voice however is ideal for the voice of this reality, soothing the audience as much as it soothes Smith. It's hard to tell though if Burton intended to give such a weary, underplayed performance or if was just a side effect of his rapidly declining health at the time.
Overall Nineteen Eighty-Four is frightening, depressing, tiresome and without a lot of incident. There's some nice use of surveillance camera-styled angles to help ram home the themes, but it's ultimately all just a bit too obscure. They might've done well to introduce the idea of the Resistance and the Proles a bit earlier or more clearly but I think the creative team were just too afraid to break away from the source material in any significant way - leaving the film a singularly dreary experience.
DIRECTOR: Michael Radford
WRITER/SOURCE: Michael Radford, based on the novel by George Orwell
KEY ACTORS: John Hurt, Suzanna Hamilton, Richard Burton, Cyril Cusack, James Walker, Gregor Fisher, Roger Lloyd-Pack
RELATED TEXTS:
- The novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, obviously.
- Adapted as an earlier film version in 1956, starring Edmund O'Brien and Michael Redgrave.
- There have also been at least three television adaptations.
- The film version of V For Vendetta (a graphic novel that riffs on Nineteen Eighty-Four) features John Hurt in the Big Brother-like role of Adam Sutler.
- Other films that take their inspiration from Nineteen Eighty-Four include Alphaville, THX 1138 and Brazil.
AWARDS
Nominated for a BAFTA for best production design.
John Hurt won three Best Actor awards at other film festivals, tying with Richard Burton at one of them. Michael Radford also won for Best Film at two minor film award ceremonies.
It's the early 1980s and Michael Jackson's popularity is so huge that it even reaches the isolated Maori rural community of Waihau Bay, New Zealand. Boy (James Rolleston) is an 11-year old boy who lives with his grandma and with his younger brother Rocky (Te Aho Aho Eketone-Whitu) on a small goat farm. Boy idolises both Michael Jackson and his erstwhile father, Alamein (Taika Waititi), whilst his brother thinks he has special powers because their mum died whilst giving birth to him. When Alamein returns from a stint in gaol and comes looking for some buried loot, Boy and Rocky find themselves faced with a father they've never really known - a man who doesn't quite match up to the heroic figure Boy imagined him to be.
Over the last few years writer-director Taika Waititi has been quietly paving a pathway to auteur status through his involvement with the cult comedy series Flight of the Conchords and hilarious New Zealand indie film Eagle Vs. Shark. With Boy Waititi finally takes centre stage as writer, director and star, and delivers an incredibly likeable and moving film about reality and responsibility. It's a more dramatic effort than Eagle Vs. Shark but Waititi hasn't lost that gentle, quirky sense of humour either - making this a very satisfying film with just the right level of nostalgia for anyone who ever grew up at the arse-end of the world.
Not being Maori, or from a rural New Zealand coastal town, I can't really claim any intimate connection to the film, but I could certainly associate with the impact of Michael Jackson and E.T. on my Australian childhood, and I think there's certainly some shared cultural heritage between Australia and New Zealand in terms of our social history and the way we relate to the rest of the world. If Boy gets at least one thing right it's the attention to detail that makes it feel like it's 1984... the kids hopelessly trying to moonwalk, the way they ape Michael Jackson's fashion, the way that Alamein idolises the book Shogun, and the references to E.T. as a unifying experience. The film also goes beyond getting the pop culture right though, it captures the essence of life at this time... I liked how it didn't pass comment when one of the younger characters showed evidence of domestic violence (a black eye), or when Boy is offered a sip of his dad's beer. It's just how it was back then, and the film including this kind of thing without condemning or condoning it is a big part of how it captures that elusive sense of time and memory.
Boy isn't just about nostalgia though, a lot of it's charm comes from the central performances of James Rolleston and Taika Waititi. Rolleston is an enthusiastic and natural performer despite his inexperience... his character starts out the film as the man of the house in his father's absence. But when his dad returns, Boy is eager to make a good impression on him as he fears that he might leave again. Waititi gives an endearingly selfish performance as Alamein, a character very much cut from the same cloth as Jarrod from Eagle Vs. Shark - a man who has never really grown up and isn't anywhere as cool as he seems to think he is. Boy may think he needs to learn how to be a man from his father, but it's actually Alamein who needs to learn responsibility from his son. It makes for an interesting dynamic that drives the entire film, and makes for equal parts humour and drama. Witness the scene where Boy tries to impress a prospective girlfriend named Chardonnay - he does this by pretending to drive his dad's car, cooking some potatoes in a microwave, and playing fetch with an unresponsive goat, all before unceremoniously asking her to 'do it' with him. It's such a charming combination of boyish naivete and bad advice from a bad father that it's hard not to laugh.
Boy is a wonderful and brilliant movie that needs to be seen to be truly appreciated. You can't properly capture it's infectious sense of humour in words, just go see it and be elated. You'll probably hear a lot of hyperbolic praise in connection to this film, but this is only because those who see it know that there are a lot of people out there who'll get immense enjoyment from it.
HIGHLIGHTS: I liked these two bits of dialogue...
(on playing poker machines) "It's better to risk everything and be real poor rather than sit around being a bit poor"
and
Boy's Friend: We're self-employed now.
Boy: What's your job?
Boy's Friend: Chucking mud at those cows.
Also, the recreations of iconic Michael Jackson filmclips like Billie Jean, Beat It and Thriller were especially entertaining.
DIRECTOR: Taika Waititi
WRITER/SOURCE: Taika Waititi
KEY ACTORS: Taika Waititi, James Rolleston, Te Aho Aho Eketone-Whitu, Craig Hall
RELATED TEXTS:
- Eagle Vs. Shark shares a similar setting, a similar character, the same creative team, and some of the same actors. Taika Waititi originally intended to make Boy first but decided to do Eagle Vs. Shark while he continued developing the script.
- 50 Ways of Saying Fabulous is another quirky film about coming-of-age in rural New Zealand. It isn't anywhere near as good, but it's worth a look.
- The Australian film The Oyster Farmer features a similar plotline regarding an immature man forced to stay in an isolated community whilst he searches for stolen loot.
- Whale Rider and Once Were Warriors offer some less humourous and more stereotypical depictions of growing up Maori.
AWARDS:
Nominated for a World Cinema award by the Sundance Film Festival. Also won a Best Film award at a German film festival.
Looking a bit like a cross between a loyal bulldog and Danny DeVito, Bob Hoskins has always been a somewhat unlikely star. He isn't particularly funny, nor is he known for an exceptional range as an actor... I guess if you had to categorise him on the grand scale of acting you'd put him somewhere between Michael Caine and Joe Pesci. Prior to Mona Lisa, Hoskins had played a variety of character and bit-parts in British film and television throughout the 1970s and 80s. He got his first big break with the memorably ruthless lead role in the unvarnished British gangster classic The Long Good Friday, but it wasn't until his work in Mona Lisa that he made his real mark on international audiences. Mona Lisa is also important for it's impact on the career of Irish director Neil Jordan, who would go on to explore similar themes in The Crying Game and become one of the UK's most underrated auteurs.
Hoskins plays George, a likely lad who gets out of prison after seven years to find that his world has moved on without him. He has a daughter who doesn't really know him, and a wife who doesn't want to know him. He shacks up with his good friend Thomas (Robbie Coltrane) and falls into work as a driver for a high class prostitute named Simone (Cathy Tyson). He also tries to chase up his former employer, Mortwell (Michael Caine), in the hope of getting some kind of compensation for the time he just did in gaol. As he gets to know Simone better he finds himself drawn into a world of sordid exploitation that he would rather not be a part of, though he is also unable to leave due to the feelings he develops for her.
At first Mona Lisa feels like a romance story re-imagined for the seedy London underworld of dodgy deals, peepshows, pimps and streetwalkers. George and Simone initiually have a bristly relationship due to their apparent class differences. George is a bit rough around the edges, he's cheap, and he knows it, but he's also a good man underneath. He's disgusted by underage prostitutes, he reads books and drinks cups of tea with a religious-like relish, and is unexpectedly naive due to his time away from the London underworld. Simone on the other hand is dignified and mysterious, George even says, "You aint no night nurse, let's say you're... a lady", as her occupation seems to encourage higher airs. Together they're an awkward match, but it doesn't take long for Simone to recognise the goodness in George, nor for George to "like her... like in the songs". But then the film becomes something else entirely - a story of lost girls exploited by greedy men and a journey into a whole other level of prostitution involving some pretty dark practices. Mona Lisa is a lot more than just a romance or a gangster film, it bends and combines genres to take the audience into unknown territory.
The title of the film refers to the character of Simone and what she comes to represent for George... she's like the painting's enigmatic smile, and with this the film comes to be an unconventional modern film noir of sorts. Neil Jordan disguises the tropes of the genre with the depressing grey reality of 1980s London, and also subverts the genre by breaking a few boundaries as far as heroes and their love interests go. It also helps that all the principle cast members put in some really alive performances. Caine is memorable in a relatively small role as the dodgy kingpin Mortwell - he's slippery, self-assured, immoral, ambitious and thoroughly charmless. Tyson is also excellent as Simone, bringing a convincing and sympathetic mix of strength and vulnerability to her role without shortchanging the script's intentions. I don't know what became of her after this role or why she isn't more well-known, a quick look at imdb.com reveals a fairly unimpressive list of British television credits, which is a shame. The real star of the movie is undoubtedly Hoskins, he puts a realistic and flawed hero on the screen and doesn't pull any punches for the sake of his ego as an actor. George is a fascinating supporting character put into the spotlight and made three-dimensional, and it's easy to see why Hoskins got a Best Actor Oscar nomination for this film. You really come to cheer for him despite the baser aspects of his character.
DIRECTOR: Neil Jordan
WRITER/SOURCE: Neil Jordan and David Leland
KEY ACTORS: Bob Hoskins, Cathy Tyson, Robbie Coltrane, Michael Caine, Clarke Peters, Kate Hardie
RELATED TEXTS:
- Neil Jordan would continue and expand on similar themes whilst exploring the film noir genre in The Crying Game, made eight years later.
- The Long Good Friday features Bob Hoskins in a similar London landscape, albeit less sympathetically.
- George's journey into the unsavoury underbelly of London to find the underage prostitute Cathy echoes the relationship between Travis and Iris in Taxi Driver.
- Also worth checking out is the taboo-breaking modern film noir Angel Heart, directed by British filmmaker Alan Parker (whose style and filmography bares some similarity to Neil Jordan's).
AWARDS:
Bob Hoskins was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar.
Mona Lisa was nominated for six BAFTAs... Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Actress (Cathy Tyson) and Best Actor (Hoskins). Only Hoskins won.
Hoskins was also nominated for a range of awards at other film festivals, a few of which he won (the most notable being the Cannes Film Festival).
There's something audacious about making a film about Facebook... if it had been done by a relatively unknown director (EG. Not David Fincher) then it would have a decidedly uphill battle to wage in order to get people onside. However, with Fincher's overrated track record, it's somewhat expected that this underachieving film would enjoy the popularity it's currently enjoying (ahem, ranked 122nd best film of all time on imdb.com?!) It probably also helps that Facebook.com is currently one of the biggest new aspects of modern society... and I don't say that lightly. Whatever the future may bring (and I don't neccessarily believe that Facebook is here to stay), the fact remains that it is a huge deal at the moment. I mean, even your parents probably know about it.
Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg, giving a good performance remniscent of his breakthrough work in The Squid and the Whale) is an ambitious but unpopular programming undergrad at Harvard. After his girlfriend breaks up with him due to his jerkish tendencies he exacts an alcohol-fuelled revenge via a series of spiteful blogs and a short-lived security-comprimising website known as 'Facemash'. This attracts the attention of the Harvard elite, who try to enlist his help for a social networking site. Zuckerberg is inspired by this germ of an idea, and teams up with Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) to create Facebook - a revolutionary attempt to replicate the social experience on the internet via the use of web 2.0 technologies. This groundbreaking idea attracts the attention of Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), the disgraced and broke founder of notorious filesharing site Napster, and before you know it these guys are all sitting on something big and at a loss as to how best to capitalise on it.
There are some things I really liked about The Social Network, such as the fact that it's breaking new ground in biopics by treating programmers like the rockstars of a new cutting-edge medium (and, to be fair, there's no reason why I.T. superstars shouldn't start getting films along these lines when every second musician has been getting them for quite some time now). I also liked Aaron Sorkin's script and the way it touches on Zuckerberg's flaws and what would drive someone like him to create something like Facebook. Zuckerberg comes across as an arrogant wunderkind, but these flaws are depicted as the Aspergers-styled side-effects of genius. The film largely paints him as an underdog... he has this unbelievable talent but isn't liked by others, and he finds it hard to break into the Harvard elite. He's also shown to be the only person capable of making something like Facebook work, so even though there are these other people in the film claiming intellectual ownership over the ideas behind Facebook we still feel like he's the victim when they come calling for a slice of the pie. The Social Network doesn't twist the truth so far as to make the film into the traditionally-formulaic biopic, by the film's end my sympathies lay mostly with Saverin - the cooler and less nerdy co-founder of Facebook. But there's something about the way the film avoids addressing Zuckerberg's strange behaviour that feels a little too convenient.
I also think that Fincher missed a huge opportunity... if he's going to tackle a relatively untouched subject matter like the internet then he should invest some more creative energy into making a film that's more original in terms of structure and dynamics. Most of the praise this film is getting is mostly due to what it is, not how it is. If you took the exact same cast and crew and turned it into a film about a non-internet related business venture then I suspect that no one would really care about it. You'd probably also have to take Fincher's name off it too, as he seems to have a unjustifiably healthy contingent of fanboys who have refused to go away since Fight Club. It's an interesting story but at the end of the day it's just a lot of people talking without much else happening. For a film about impossibly young superprogrammers trailblazing their way into new territory and taking over the world it's all a bit too pedestrian. The Social Network shows these guys making enemies because they've created something new and highly bankable... not only that, they're finding new ways for humans to live their lives. Surely something as big as this deserves a film treatment that's a bit more cutting-edge in construction and execution?
Fincher touches on some interesting things like Facebook's origin as a tool for Harvard elitists, and the fact that Zuckerberg literally trades his one true friend for all the hangers-on attracted by his success and money (and it's worth mentioning that Timberlake is actually quite good as the parasitic Sean Parker). Beyond that there isn't much else happening below the surface, for all the film's promise (exemplified by it's consciously literal name, The Social Network) there isn't a lot that seperates it from any other biopic about a business hotshot (The Informant!), sporting talent (Without Limits) or famed musician (The Runaways). It's a good film, but it's also definitely overrated.
TRIVIA: Armie Hammer plays the Winklevoss twins. This was achieved by having Josh Pence (who had a similar body type) play the second twin and then electronically mapping Hammer's face onto him so that they would look identical.
DIRECTOR: David Fincher
WRITER/SOURCE: Aaron Sorkin, based on the book Accidental Millionaires by Ben Mezrick (which is based on the true story behind the foundation of Facebook)
KEY ACTORS: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Rashida Jones, Rooney Mara, Armie Hammer.
RELATED TEXTS:
- Facebook.com. You might have heard of it.
- Accidental Millionaires is a biography by Ben Mezrich that covers the real events behind the creation of the site.
- Ben Mezrich also wrote Bringing Down the House, another true story about hotshot university students using their talents for glory and financial gain. This was adapted into the film 21.
- Mezrich has also written Rigged, Ugly Americans and Busting Vegas, all non-fiction works that deal with similar themes.
(Here be spoilers if you are yet to see the James Bond movies...)
The Mission
Debonair British spy James Bond (Sean Connery) is sent to Jamaica to investigate the source of radio interference with U.S. missile launches. On arrival he finds himself met with resistance by a network of dangerous agents in the employ of Dr No (Joseph Wiseman), a Chinese scientist operating from the nearby private island of Crab Key.
Jimmy Bond yo!
Sean Connery's first outing as James Bond is extremely likeable. He's smooth, charming, self-assured and always armed with a smirk, but it never comes off as smug. He's also a very 60s creation - thoroughly without angst and always ready with a quip. Connery manages to pull off such a feat without Bond ever really feeling the pressure to any large degree, and it's easy to see why this film and it's sequels made him such a star, as his performance is effortlessly appealing.
Villainy
Dr No is first introduced to us a neutral disembodied voice and then doesn't show up again until the last half hour of the film. His lair - a large wooden fortress and an ornate underwater hideaway - is pretty cool, though the end sequence in the massive lab area feels rather dated and cliched in light of the way things like The Simpsons and Austin Powers have parodied it since. Dr No's backstory (he's a half-chinese Tong crimelord turned atomic-scientist and he also has robot hands and some ties with a mysterious organisation of oppurtinistic terrorists known as SPECTRE) is fairly interesting if a little outlandish, but it's a shame that the film doesn't go into it more. It's also a shame that Dr No features so little in the film overall, especially as it's called Dr. No... he's in it for all of about 15 minutes. Joseph Wiseman gives a fairly restrained and dignified performance (probably all too aware of how ridiculous his asian make-up and metal hands were), and he's backed up by a host of faceless Jamaican mercerneries. He also has a cool flame-throwing tank that looks like a dragon.
Buddies and Babes
M (Bernard Lee) is introduced here as a pipe-smoking old boy of the establishment before routinely despatching Bond to the Caribbean. Once there, Bond teams up with a fairly nondescript CIA agent (Jack Lord) and a local Jamaican fisherman named Quarrel (John Kitzmiller). Quarrel comes off as fairly tough and awesome at first, but the characters devolves into a superstitious and mildly racist stereotype by the film's end.
The main 'Bond-Girl' here is Ursula Andress as Honey Rider, who doesn't show up until the last third of the film. Normally I would single something like this out as a structural weakpoint but Andress is such a terrible actress that it's probably for the best that she has the minimum amount of screentime. I suppose she looks good in a white bikini but she's very unconvincing as a marine biologist.
Locations
A little bit of the film is set in London at the beginning, and the rest of it was filmed in a wide variety of locations across Jamaica.
Gadgets and Tricks of the Trade
The only 'gadget' that Bond is given is a top-of-the-line handgun. He does however demonstrate his espionage expertise throughout the film with a number of tricks that have now become cliches... he breathes underwater thanks to a hollow reed and puts a strand of hair on his hotel-room doorframe as a way to detect any interference with his room (though he doesn't seem to care much when he inspects it and finds that it's gone). He also sets up a decoy-dummy in his bed, disguises himself in a radiation suit whilst in the villain's hideout, and is smart enough to wait for a deadly spider to crawl off him before making any rash moves.
Licence to Kill
Bond's first direct kill in the James Bond franchise is... a spider. He defeats a No henchman earlier in the film but the poor guys kills himself before Bond can make him talk. Bond also manages to shake off a car that's chasing him, which ends badly for the chap(s) in the car. He also kills a geology professor in the employ of Dr. No, a mercenary in the lagoon (he strangles/drowns him), chokes a scientist in Dr. No's lair, and fights off Dr. No before letting him drown.
Shag-Rate
I thought that Bond's reputation with the ladies might be something that builds up over the course of the series but I was wrong - he's really quite the player right from the start of this first film. He shags Sylvia Trench (a random woman he meets at a casino) at least twice before he starts his mission, beds Miss Taro (an asian agent of Dr No) maybe twice, and 'bonds' with Honey Rider in a small boat at the film's end. Nice going!
Quotes
CONSTRUCTION WORKER (after witnessing a car crash): How did it happen?
BOND: I think they were on their way to a funeral.
BOND (on seeing Dr. No's fish magnified by a convex window): Minnows pretending they're whales - just like you on this island, Dr. No.
DR. NO (to Bond): Unfortunately I misjudged you, you're just a stupid policeman.
How Does it Rate?
More Tintin than James Bond as we know it. Dr. No stretches credibility in the name of entertainment, and probably got away with it at the time as it would've been a breath of fresh air in comparison to previous films about spies (which tended to be quite dark and on the noirish side). The music is very swinging 60s, and the jazzy opening credits with silhouettes of women dancing in a frantic fashion also feels very much like a product of its time. It bugged and confused me that the production team would hire a white actor and put him in yellowface to play Dr. No for just a few minutes, yet they were happy to use real black actors for the Jamaican characters. I also could've done without the overuse of CSO/bluescreen and would've liked for some more time to be spent on the villain, but overall it's a fun and mostly inoffensive spy adventure.
Visit my James Bond page.
I'm a big fan of places like the Hutt River Province and Sealand... self-proclaimed countries who thumb their noses at the authorities, dodge taxes and generally lark about being eccentric and amusingly pompous. I had absorbed as much info as I thought it was possible to absorb via the internet, and I've even sent letters off to the Hutt River Province, as well as various other places on their behalf in an effort to help get them some of the recognition they're so widely denied. Then along came this book, the Lonely Planet Guide to Micronations. A whole book on self-made countries! A whole book! I was in heaven.
Whilst this book is firmly tongue-in-cheek, in accordance with the cheeky manner and ridiculous claims of some of these places, it's all 100% true (as stated on the cover). The book is divided up into three easily identifiable sections... the serious Micronations (home-made nations who have taken their claims the furthest... the ones who also get away with the most), backyard Micronations (exactly as it sounds, people who have declared their own houses to be authorities only unto themselves) and 'Grand Dreams' (micronations that sound way too crazy to ever be successful).
A $2 banknote from the Hutt River Province in Western Australia, featuring Prince Leonard.
Lonely Planet have to be commended on their research here... each micronation is represented by their flag, vital statistics and colour photographics. In many cases interviews and visits to these places have been utilised (where possible - some of these would-be countries are literally impossible to visit), and each one is presented with an easy-to-understand and sometimes highly amusing history.
Many of the self-made leaders of these countries refer to themselves as President, King, Prince or Emperor (and in one case, Lord Dumpling), and there are plenty of little stories to cover even the smallest and most obscure of micronational claims. I smirked the whole way through this book, it makes me want to go and make my own country in the outback somewhere. Occasionally I was amazed at what these countries try to get away with too... one micronation in the U.S. was so affronted that the U.S. Army was going to be training on it's land that they informed the U.S. Government that they intended to repel the 'assault'. A list of demands were sent to the Army... well, one demand, that the Army ask permission before crossing the 'border'. The Army humoured the micronation and did as they asked.
Anyway, this is a great book about lunatics. Read it and be inspired!
George Raft heads up a colourful cast of up-and-coming talent in this rough-and-tumble film noir about brothers trying to make a name for themselves in the hard graft life of honest, independent truckers. Humprey Bogart co-stars as Raft's family-man brother, together they're always on the road, always working, always trying to make a hard dollar so they can pay off their truck and start their own freight business. Unfortunately, with sleep and penny-pinching employers amongst their enemies, it doesn't look like the path to success is going to be easy.
Trucking films are few an dfar between, but that doesn't stop They Drive By Night from adhering to the tried-and-true formulas of the era. Whilst the audience doesn't know exactly what to expect from a trucking movie in terms of plotting, the structure is built in three distinct acts with occasional obvious contrivances. The first half hour is spent establishing the profession and showing the Fabrini brothers getting up on their feet. The second act introduces a devastating complication and the way their lives change as a result. The third act then, somewhat belatedly, edges into film noir territory (albeit without the mystery element) with Ida Lupino as the femme fatale.
They Drive By Night came out at a point when Bogart was close to breaking out as a leading man. Here he diligently plays support to the less-appealing George Raft - who just doesn't have the depth to carry a lead role in a memorable fashion. Bogart is particularly good in his post-accident scenes, bringing some realistic frailty and bitterness to his performance. Ann Sheridan co-stars as Raft's love interest - a weary, sharpwitted truckstop waitress. She makes a good impression in her first scenes, but the script fails to build or even maintain this characterisation for the rest of her screentime. Ida Lupino rounds out the cast in her attention-getting role as Lana, the wife of a trucking magnate who lusts after Raft. Her actions in the last act range from those of a scorned villainess to the outright ridiculous (her attempt to frame Joe Fabrini asks the viewer to really ramp up their suspension of disbelief). Lupino is okay in the role, it's really only her final scenes that make a real mark 0 her hysterically unravelling brought about by automatic doors is a little remniscent of The Telltale Heart.
They Drive By Night is a bit of a potboiler. I found the tone a little uneven, the ocassional hokeyness (such as the ending, or the 'innovative' splitscreen phone conversation scene) makes the film feel a little slapped together and unfocused at times. But as far as trucking films go, it's fairly decent and quite entertaining, and if you're a fan of golden era action-thrillers or film noir then you'll probably enjoy it.
LOWPOINT: The worst contrivance of the film is the introduction of the trucking character Harry. As soon as he's introduced we just know he's about to become a casualty of the profession. 1) He's yawning and mentions how tired he is, 2) He talks about how long it's been since he saw his wife and kis, 3) He's finally just paid off his truck, and 4) The goodbyes between him and the brothers seem a bit too heartfelt for a casual meeting.
For all my dislike of Roland Emmerich's 2012, I actually quite enjoyed his previous film, 10 000 BC. You can't take it seriously of course, it's a pretty disposable piece of fluff, but I thought it was passable piece of mindless fun and it didn't really have any aspirations to be anything other than a low brow big budget fantasy-adventure.
D'Leh (Steven Strait) is a young buck of a European caveman who follows a band of horseriding warriors halfway across the globe to rescue the love of his loins, Evolet (Camilla Bell). He gets in adventures with mammoths, giant flightless birds, sabretooth tigers, rival tribes and a Egyptian-like civilisation built on slavery.
It's an incredibly stupid film, anyone with even a passing knowledge of history will probably find it infuriating - the film depicts a group of Alps-dwelling cavemen who seem to travel on foot all the way to what appears to be Africa. They then encounter a proto-Egyptian civilisation, with the film falgrantly and proudly disregarding any semblance of established history or accuracy. My advice to anyone attempting to watch this film is to simply leave your brain at the door.
Just watch it for the cool prehistoric animals such as Wooly Mammoth and rampaging Elephant Birds. It actually probably would've been a superior film if Emmerich hadn't bothered with dialogye. Imagine that! A serious full-blown CGI epic with cavemen fighting prehistoric monsters, but with no speaking. It would've been awesome. Instead it's just a bit of big dumb fun.
DIRECTOR: Roland Emmerich
WRITER/SOURCE: Roland Emmerich, Harold Kloser
KEY ACTORS: Steven Strait, Camilla Bell, Cliff Curtis, Joel Virgil, Marco Kham, Omar Shariff
RELATED TEXTS:
- The civilisation-built-on-slavery theme was explored somewhat more realistically (and gorily) in the recent film Apocalypto.
- The most famous cavemen films are arguably One Million B.C. (1940) and it's British remake, One Million B.C. (1966), both of which feature prehistoric humans co-existing with dinosaurs - a very historically inaccurate gaff.
- The Clan of the Cave Bear, the first of six linked-novels by Jean Auel, is probably the most famous text that deals with prehistoric human life. It was also made into a film in the mid-80s.
- Year One is a biblical-caveman comedy starring Jack Black and Michael Cera that was made the year after 10, 000 BC.
In The Line of Fire is a popular and critically-acclaimed action film starring Clint Eastwood, Rene Russo and John Malkovich. Directed by Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot, Neverending Story, Troy), this 1994 film is (so far) the last film to star Clint Eastwood that Eastwood didn't also direct. The film earned more than twice it's budget at the box office, and introduced character actor John Malkovich to mainstream audiences. It also earned Malkovich his second Oscar nomination.
Clint Eastwood plays Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan, an ageing smartarse and borderline drunk haunted by his inability to save JFK from assassination back in 1963. When a talkative and mysterious nutcase (John Malkovich) decidees to target the current president, Frank asks to be made a presidential bodyguard again in the hope that he might redeem himself. What follows is a tense cat-and-mouse game between the would-be assassin and the old secret service agent who has become the laughing stock of his peers, and when the nature of the nutcase comes to light things start to look very serious indeed.
I really enjoyed this movie. Usually with action films I can take it or leave it - but when you have characterisations as engaging as these and such an intelligent and intense plot you can't help but get swept away in the excitement. Eastwood is great, getting to show his cheeky side in scenes with Russo, and he's at the top of his game throughout. Malkovich is also great as the soft-spoken master-of-disguise, and makes for a memorable villain.
In The Line of Fire makes me wonder how director Wolfgang Petersen went so wrong with Poseidon and Troy. I mean, why did he decide to go all overblown and epic when he was capable of great, entertaining films like this? The dialogue in In The Line of Fire is worth noting too... how can you say no to a film that has Eastwood delivering lines like "You have a rendezvous with my ass, motherfucker" and "I'll be thinkng about that when I'm pissing on your grave".
Good stuff.
Underground is a novel by Andrew McGahan, the critically-acclaimed and award-winning author of Last Drinks, Praise and White Earth, the latter of these being the 2005 winner of the Miles Franklin Award. Underground represents a change of pace for McGahan, a novel with a wider political scope that calls to mind science-fiction flavoured literary classics such as 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale. It is also a book that is completely and wholly Australian, dealing with pertinent Australian issues and the sort of things we could be facing in the near future if we aren't careful.
It is the near future in Australia. Leo James is a burnt out entrepeneur and the disowned twin brother of Prime Minister Bernard James, the figurehead of a new right wing Australia. Things have gotten worse and worse for Leo in the new political climate of Australia... ever since Canberra was nuked by terrorists no one has wanted to come to the country for a holiday, which makes it hard for Leo's recently financed Queensland resort. Leo is at the end of his tether, all boozed up and railing insanely at a cyclone, when he is kidnapped by a covert Australian terrorist group known as Great Southern Jihad. But this is only the beginning, he is rescued from the terrorists by the government's troops... and he is then rescued from them by another group, the Australian Underground. The Australian Underground is a nation-wide organisation made up of people from all walks of life who have one thing in common... they miss the old freedom of Australia and want it back.
McGahan's dystopian vision of the land down under is set only four years into the future, but it is very much a changed nation. The nuclear destruction of Canberra has made it possible for the government to waive all sorts of basic human rights... a permenant state of emergency has been declared, all muslims have been rounded up and put into ghettos, almost every major road is blocked off by a security checkpoint, and huge unofficial American military bases dot the landscape. It's an Orwellian nightmare of machiavellian proportions... a bland Prime Minister much like John Howard amasses unheard of amounts of power thanks to the pumped up threat of terrorism, and layers of deception and hypocrisy feed this new order in an all-too-familiar fashion. It's a horrible and realistic vision of a worst case scenario made possible - and the most terrifying aspect of it all is that it's so undeniably and recognisably Australian.
McGahan wisely fills his depressing dystopia with action and wry humour. It's probably an insult to both writers to compare McGahan to Ben Elton but Underground reads like a souped up version of one of Ben Elton's early eco-thrillers, albeit with more balls. It's basically a heartfelt attack on all that's wrong with our country's current political climate... indeed, McGahan writes on his website for the book - "I knew that I couldn’t just write ‘I hate John Howard’ fifty thousand times over, as cathartic as that might have been". This is an entertaining and informative read, educational in the way that all the great dystopian classics are (and incredibly relevant in this neo-conservative, post-9/11 world too). It resonated deeply with me.
It's 1953 and the Korean War has just ended. You're American and you're wondering if the casualties endured in such a far away country were worth it, so Hollywood makes a film like The Bridges at Toko-Ri to justify the losses. The result is a downbeat piece of war propaganda that acknowledges how things really are whilst celebrating America's triumph over communism and the need to continue the Cold War.
William Holden plays Brubaker, a lawyer and WWII veteran who is bitter at being drafted back into the naval forces for the Korean War. He's a good bomber pilot but he also misses his wife (Grace Kelly) and two daughters. When the Admiral (Fredric March) lets him know about an incredibly dangerous mission on the cards involving the bridges at Toko-Ri, Brubakers begins to get cold feet about flying.
The Bridges at Toko-Ri takes a little bit to get going due to the first half of the film being devoted to some shore leave in Japan. Shore leave sequences were always a way for golden-era war films to get some females into their pictures. In this case it gives plenty of screentime to the radiant Grace Kelly, who plays the world's most understanding wife. It actually stretches belief how supportive Nancy Brubaker is - she learns how dangerous her husband's mission is, even understands that he might die, and still lets him go quite happily. If that aint war propaganda for the wives on the home front then I don't know what is... I know the film is clearly showing the realities of being a navy wife but it also sticks in the throat a bit that it would dare suggest these women need to pretend they're okay with their husbands dying in order to support their country's war effort. Beyond this the shore leave sequence also serves a purpose in showing what Brubaker's family means to him and highlighting how much he has at stake and what he could lose.
The propaganda angle is played more strongly through the character of the Admiral. He boldly states that the Russians will take all of Asia if the Koreans aren't stopped in Korea, then going on further to say "All through history men have fought the wrong wars at the wrong time" - as if this is some kind of excuse for America fighting wars wherever they like against whoever they like. More than once the Koreans are referred to simply as 'communist' troops, driving home the Cold War subtext completely.
William Holden gives a fairly straightlaced performance as Brubaker, he tends to let the other characters do all the film's moralising. Holden instead focuses on giving a realistic depiction of how a hotshot bomber pilot with a loving family might feel when faced with the prospect of death in the line of duty. He's given competent support by Mickey Rooney as the smartmouthed Irish comic relief (complete with bright green top hat and scarf), though I have to question whether someone of Rooney's stature would meet minimum height requirements for the Navy.
Whilst The Bridges at Toko-Ri might very much be a product of it's time, it still manages to be a cracking good war film. It's biggest selling point is the aerial bombing sequence at the film's end, it still looks incredibly realistic even today and I struggle to think how it was achieved. War buffs will enjoy it.
HIGHLIGHTS: Robert Strauss brings his distinctive voice and frame to the small but memorable part of Beer-Barrel, a Navy signalman who uses golf bags to smuggle beer bottles onto the ship.
DIRECTOR: Mark Robson
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Valentine Davies, based on the book by James Michener.
KEY ACTORS: William Holden, Grace Kelly, Fredric March, Mickey Rooney, Robert Strauss, Earl Holliman
RELATED TEXTS:
- The Bridges at Toko-Ri was published as a novella by James Michener the year before the film came out, and was based on real missions flown in the Korean War.
- Director Mark Robson had previously adapted another James Michener book for the screen, Return to Paradise, starring Gary Cooper.
- The aerial sequences in The Bridges at Toko-Ri influenced the design of the Deathstar-bombing sequences for the first Star Wars film.
- Don Draper's Korean War flashbacks bare some stylistic resemblances to the Korean War ground sequences at the end of The Bridges at Toko-Ri.
AWARDS
Won the Oscar for Best Special Effects. Was also nominated for Best Editing.
Mark Robson was also nominated for a directing award by the Directors Guild of America.
There's always a danger in adapting a quirky, cultish work along the lines of Scott Pilgrim. Making a great, faithful adaptation doesn't neccessarily mean it will be a big blockbuster... and this film seems to prove the case. Whilst it's a highly enjoyable and impossibly hip film that just oozes coolness out of every colourful frame, it's still yet to even make back the money it cost to make (let alone make any kind of profit). Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there who make assumptions about films before they even see them... Michael Cera can be an acquired taste (I personally think he's fantastic - certainly no less appealing or variable than a young Michael J. Fox), and the film's adherence to video game logic or sequences completely divorced from reality can come across as needlessly silly if you've only seen the trailer. Kick-Ass had similar issues - some people saw the name and the way the film was marketed and assumed it was some kind of spoof-comedy. These people missed out. If you write off Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World for similar reasons you're also missing out.
Scott Pilgrim (Cera) is bassplayer for the Canadian band Sex Bob-omb. To the shock of his bandmates he has started dating a 17 year old asian schoolgirl named Knives Chau (Ellen Wong). Scott can be quite self-absorbed, and falls head over heels in love with a mysterious young woman named Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), whom he starts dating. He neglects to break things off with Knives, but this is about to become a very small problem in comparison with Ramona's baggage of seven evil-exes. In order to successfully date Ramona, Scott must defeat the League of Evil Exes. Just imagine the indie rock dating scene re-envisioned as an arcade-styled fighting video game.
First of all, a lot of this film (and the graphic novels it's based on) riffs on video gaming culture - from the midi version of the Universal theme before the film starts right through to battles where dispatched enemies turn into coins. It can be quite jarring if you're not expecting it, the film starts out like a typical slacker comedy before dropping in a few left-field developments that take (no one except) the viewer by surprise. The first of these is Ramona's casual use of extra-dimensional 'subspace highways' to travel from location to location, and then it's onto Bollywood-inspired fight scenes involving super-powers and flying vampire goth girls. If you can accept this alternative reality then you will have a hell of a good time with this movie. If you can't accept this then you're probably better off watching documentaries on the History channel.
Director Edgar Wright is a little bit conscious of how subcultural the gaming stuff might come across to uneducated viewers but he's also aware that there's no point in making this film if you're going to neuter any of the reasons that make it so fun and unique. It's surprising how amazingly faithful the end result is, he captures the comics in all their ironic and post-modern glory without falling into the trap of post-90s pop culture cynicism. He also makes the gaming and indie-rock aspects obvious from the start by adding some early scenes set in a record store and a video game arcade, helping to better establish the film's ties to these subcultures. It's little unacknowledged amendments like this that make Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World such a successful translation. And by successful I mean entertaining and true to the original text, not a financial hit. As I mentioned at the start of this review, it's more than a little sad that there weren't enough people out there willing to take a chance on a film like this.
The film isn't all surface stuff either, beyond the hip references to 90s video games and hilarious visual motifs is a story about the baggage we bring to relationships and how couples can work together to deal with it. In a lot of respects Scott is quite an unsympathetic character (a lot of the film's jokes come at the expense of his short attention span or how self-absorbed he is), but the film doesn't ring hollow because it does eventually deal with this in a manner that doesn't cheat the comedy or fantasy elements. The whole thing is this metatextual metaphor for relationships that sidesteps any accusations of pretentiousness by making it's theme obvious, in your face, and a lot of fun.
Michael Cera is well-cast as Scott Pilgrim, his lanky awkwardness makes him surprisingly well suited to play an indie hipster - it's probably a character that more closely resembles his real self than the usual nerds and geeks he gets cast as. He also captures Scott's self-asborbed bastard qualities whilst still remaining endearing enough to carry the film. It's a more proactive character than we're used to seeing him play, and it's good to see him testing his range by adapting to a different genre. The rest of the cast is equally perfect... Brandon Routh and Chris Evans are hilarious as two of Ramona's exes, Kieren Culkin is an inspired piece of casting as Scott's sophisticated gay roommate Wallace Wells, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead is adorably aloof as the girl of Scott's dreams.
So why should you see this movie? Well, it's chock full of awesomeness. You'll have a great time. It could've been repetitive with all the fight scenes but Wright's directon is inspired, spot on, and full of hilarious visual and editing-based trickery. This film is a true rollercoaster of comedy and action.
HIGHLIGHTS: I laughed at all the hipster vegan jokes (especially the vegan police played by underrated actors Thomas Jane and Clifton Collins Jr.) I also laughed at Gideon's digitised 8-bit pixel sword, the way the ending was structured like a video game, and Scott's self-consciousness about his hair.
DIRECTOR: Edgar Wright
WRITER/SOURCE: Written by Edgar Wright and Michael Bacall, based on the comics by Bryan Lee O'Malley.
KEY ACTORS: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ellen Wong, Kieren Culkin, Anna Kendrick, Brandon Routh, Jason Schwartzman, Chris Evans, Alison Pill, Mae Whitman, Mark Webber, Johnny Simmons.
RELATED TEXTS:
- There are currently six graphic novels in the Scott Pilgrim series, these are: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Sadness, Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The Universe and Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour.
- There are a few similarities between this film and Michael's earlier film Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist - both feature Cera as a bassplayer in an indie band, gay best friends, a love interest with baggage and an evil ex-boyfriend who wants the girl back).
