The Edge of Love (John Maybury, 2008)
I must be clear here and state that 5/10 for The Edge of Love means something entirely different to 5/10 for The Thin Red Line. This is an Ebertism: as the 'most powerful pundit in America' says:
When you ask a friend if Hellboy is any good, you're not asking if it's any good compared to Mystic River, you're asking if it's any good compared to The Punisher. And my answer would be, on a scale of one to four, if Superman is four, then Hellboy is three and The Punisher is two. In the same way, if American Beauty gets four stars, then (The United States of) Leland clocks in at about two.
A good system, I'm sure you'll agree. So, to put it in ever-so-slightly different terms, where Malick's film has many of the accoutrements of excellence, which it proceeded to waste, Maybury's slice of WWII lit-rom promised to be an exercise in Grade A uselessness. Before going to see it, I thought that there was absolutely no way that it could bear up to the expectations of someone writing a PhD thesis on its subject matter, namely the literature of the Blitz, let alone someone whose take on contemporary interpretations of that period is that they are generally opportunistic at best. Well, I was almost wrong. Matthew Rhys is more than acceptable as Dylan Thomas, and the frequently derided Sienna Miller was hugely convincing as Thomas's impulsive wife Caitlin. Even Keira Knightley, possible playing herself, survived the ordeal intact (as did the generally reliable Cillian Murphy). Maybury did well to limit his scope to the internecine relationships between the four main characters, thus limiting the likelihood of any serious historical vandalism, and most importantly resists the easy option of pulling punches when it becomes necessary to depict non-domestic events. Indeed, on three occasions - Thomas being beaten senseless by a soldier in the blackout, a direct hit on a busy nightclub (based on the Cafe de Paris incident in 1941), and Murphy's commando leader performing an emergency amputation on a Greek partisan - the film achieved a viscerality that poked through the sheen of its nostlagic stylisation. There's the correct level of 'unreality' here, as well: it seems that Henry Green and Elizabeth Bowen were more valuable reference points that Sarah Waters and Goodnight Sweetheart. Not bad, then, but there's still something a little cloying about it all, and the literary angle could have been played in a slightly less clichéd way: there was perhaps room for a further exploration of the contrast between Thomas the self-professed poète maudit and Thomas the BBC employee. This is touched on, but eventually seems to become little more than a partial character assassination.
Showing posts with label 2008 film reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2008 film reviews. Show all posts
Friday, 30 January 2009
Wednesday, 28 January 2009
2008 Film Reviews #5: The Thin Red Line
The Thin Red Line (Terence Malick, 1998)
I'd been meaning to watch this for years, and finally purchased the DVD so I could have the privilege of doing so. War film; ensemble cast; highly-respected auteur at the helm. What could possibly go wrong? Well, I'll tell you what could. Having three principle characters bearing fairly significant resemblances to one another could be deemed a mistake. Getting Sean Penn to phone in his performance wasn't a great move. Implying that you're going to attempt an extensive study of the ethics of conflict - the kind of study that informs the film's source text - and then devoting around three quarters of an hour to the tactical mechanics of overwhelming a machine gun emplacement is a little contradictory.
All the discrete elements of The Thin Red Line - war movies, big themes, Penn, George Clooney, Arvo Part on the soundtrack - end up coagulating here. I'm sure that something about this must elevate it above the morass of blood-and-thunder war films, but perhaps that's only a (false) implication that Malick manages to sustain by his repeated use of Part's Annum per Annum and Hans Zimmer's portentous refrain: so many signifiers of meaningfulness are present, minus the content.
I'd been meaning to watch this for years, and finally purchased the DVD so I could have the privilege of doing so. War film; ensemble cast; highly-respected auteur at the helm. What could possibly go wrong? Well, I'll tell you what could. Having three principle characters bearing fairly significant resemblances to one another could be deemed a mistake. Getting Sean Penn to phone in his performance wasn't a great move. Implying that you're going to attempt an extensive study of the ethics of conflict - the kind of study that informs the film's source text - and then devoting around three quarters of an hour to the tactical mechanics of overwhelming a machine gun emplacement is a little contradictory.
All the discrete elements of The Thin Red Line - war movies, big themes, Penn, George Clooney, Arvo Part on the soundtrack - end up coagulating here. I'm sure that something about this must elevate it above the morass of blood-and-thunder war films, but perhaps that's only a (false) implication that Malick manages to sustain by his repeated use of Part's Annum per Annum and Hans Zimmer's portentous refrain: so many signifiers of meaningfulness are present, minus the content.
Tuesday, 27 January 2009
2008 Film Reviews # 4: Quantum of Solace
Quantum of Solace (Marc Forster, 2008)
The title itself solicits derogatory substitutions of the abstract noun 'solace', the best-scanning of which (Quantum of Rubbish, IMO) is, sadly, semantically useless for describing the ineptitude and insensitivity that courses through Daniel Craig's second turn as James Bond. Okay: this is my gripe. There has been a tendency amongst certain film and TV critics over the last few years to automatically celebrate any piece of work which exacts a switch towards a supposed gravity. In some cases (Christopher Nolan's Batman films) this praise is justified, whilst in others (namely QoS and Casino Royale) it isn't. Reboots are invariably risky affairs, but New Bond preserves little to no awareness of the historical and sociological contexts that resulted in the relative light heartedness of all the pre-Craig films, even the pleasingly edgy Timothy Dalton outings Licence to Kill and The Living Daylights. While the old format looked tired while Piers Brosnan was scrapping with the ridiculous Colonel Moon in Die Another Day, the fact remains that Bond was, by that point, painted into a corner that the imitiation of fresher approaches (specifically the Bourne films) would only render more inescapable.
There is now no defining trait or content that can be said to belong wholly to the franchise, with the important exception of QoS's unabashed openness to product placement. As one might expect, this sits awkwardly with the allegedly uncompromising new direction. As Bond drinks himself silly on an overnight transatlantic flight, attempting to purge the guilt that has been brought about by the death of Vesper Lynd, no opportunity is spared to inform the audience that he's on a Virgin plane, or that he's drinking Gordons gin. As in the preceding films, particularly the latter two Brosnan efforts, the placements are given an ironic slant, but - in this context - the attempt at self-reflexive humour shatters the dramatic unity of what is supposed to be a pivotal and poignant scene. Similarly, the death of Gemma Arterton's sprightly foreign office agent, framed as if to add an extra layer of uncompromising brittleness to Old Bond's unwritten rule that the butter-wouldn't-melt Moneypenny types always get out okay, fails to rectify the tacky sexual politics by which virago figures like Grace Jones and Sophie Marceau are dispensed with in earlier films at the same time as leaving a straightforwardly bad taste in the mouth of the viewer. This is New Bond falling victim to a narcissism generated by all those fawning reviews: the characters are not expressive of, but simply expedient to the maintenance of, a narrative hard-mindedness. It doesn't work.
All this, and we still haven't got to the villain. Mathieu Amalric did the rounds in the press before QoS's release, puffing Dominic Greene as a Bond villain for the twenty-first century, a political chameleon whose talent for spin obviates any need to rely on muscle. (Greene, by the way, is an enviro-criminal, planning to hold South American water supplies to ransom. The worthiness of Bond's operations against him is negated somewhat by the extratextual fact that QoS was filmed in six different countries, which suggests to me a carbon footprint well in excess of anything that could be managed by, for example, hollowing out the innards of a Japanese mountain to build a glitzy, Ken Adam-styled rocket launchpad.) Anyway, the promo-pack image of Greene as a Blairite (or Sarkozyist) villain lasts roughly as long as the amount of time it has taken me to type this sentence. Amalric's character makes Robert Carlyle's putatively psychopathic Renard in The World is Not Enough seem like a Sunday school teacher. Goldfinger, Scaramanga, and Max Zorin would all have baulked at this chap's willingness to dispose with henchmen, and all would have been wary of challenging him to a square-go. On top of this incongruity between press self-image and filmic reality, there's the irritating importing of CR's world domination narrative into QoS. Greene is supposed to be patched, at a fairly high level, into the conspiracy by which Bond was foxed in Venice in the preceding film, but I have to confess I had more than a little trouble discerning how this might be the case, other than in the fact of Amalric bearing a passing facial similarity to preceding chief baddie Mads Mikkelsen.
In summary, the 'darkening' of the Bond franchise, allegedly a much-needed injection of political and psychological realism for the post-9/11 consciousness, seems to me much more a marketing reboot based on demographic analysis than a genuine attempt to add diplomatic and emotional thickness to the series. The worst thing is that Craig, by far the most thespy actor to inhabit the role, seems to genuinely believe in the stated motive of the whole enterprise. Hopefully, the third film of the reboot sequence will see the critics take this ersatz worthiness to pieces.
The title itself solicits derogatory substitutions of the abstract noun 'solace', the best-scanning of which (Quantum of Rubbish, IMO) is, sadly, semantically useless for describing the ineptitude and insensitivity that courses through Daniel Craig's second turn as James Bond. Okay: this is my gripe. There has been a tendency amongst certain film and TV critics over the last few years to automatically celebrate any piece of work which exacts a switch towards a supposed gravity. In some cases (Christopher Nolan's Batman films) this praise is justified, whilst in others (namely QoS and Casino Royale) it isn't. Reboots are invariably risky affairs, but New Bond preserves little to no awareness of the historical and sociological contexts that resulted in the relative light heartedness of all the pre-Craig films, even the pleasingly edgy Timothy Dalton outings Licence to Kill and The Living Daylights. While the old format looked tired while Piers Brosnan was scrapping with the ridiculous Colonel Moon in Die Another Day, the fact remains that Bond was, by that point, painted into a corner that the imitiation of fresher approaches (specifically the Bourne films) would only render more inescapable.
There is now no defining trait or content that can be said to belong wholly to the franchise, with the important exception of QoS's unabashed openness to product placement. As one might expect, this sits awkwardly with the allegedly uncompromising new direction. As Bond drinks himself silly on an overnight transatlantic flight, attempting to purge the guilt that has been brought about by the death of Vesper Lynd, no opportunity is spared to inform the audience that he's on a Virgin plane, or that he's drinking Gordons gin. As in the preceding films, particularly the latter two Brosnan efforts, the placements are given an ironic slant, but - in this context - the attempt at self-reflexive humour shatters the dramatic unity of what is supposed to be a pivotal and poignant scene. Similarly, the death of Gemma Arterton's sprightly foreign office agent, framed as if to add an extra layer of uncompromising brittleness to Old Bond's unwritten rule that the butter-wouldn't-melt Moneypenny types always get out okay, fails to rectify the tacky sexual politics by which virago figures like Grace Jones and Sophie Marceau are dispensed with in earlier films at the same time as leaving a straightforwardly bad taste in the mouth of the viewer. This is New Bond falling victim to a narcissism generated by all those fawning reviews: the characters are not expressive of, but simply expedient to the maintenance of, a narrative hard-mindedness. It doesn't work.
All this, and we still haven't got to the villain. Mathieu Amalric did the rounds in the press before QoS's release, puffing Dominic Greene as a Bond villain for the twenty-first century, a political chameleon whose talent for spin obviates any need to rely on muscle. (Greene, by the way, is an enviro-criminal, planning to hold South American water supplies to ransom. The worthiness of Bond's operations against him is negated somewhat by the extratextual fact that QoS was filmed in six different countries, which suggests to me a carbon footprint well in excess of anything that could be managed by, for example, hollowing out the innards of a Japanese mountain to build a glitzy, Ken Adam-styled rocket launchpad.) Anyway, the promo-pack image of Greene as a Blairite (or Sarkozyist) villain lasts roughly as long as the amount of time it has taken me to type this sentence. Amalric's character makes Robert Carlyle's putatively psychopathic Renard in The World is Not Enough seem like a Sunday school teacher. Goldfinger, Scaramanga, and Max Zorin would all have baulked at this chap's willingness to dispose with henchmen, and all would have been wary of challenging him to a square-go. On top of this incongruity between press self-image and filmic reality, there's the irritating importing of CR's world domination narrative into QoS. Greene is supposed to be patched, at a fairly high level, into the conspiracy by which Bond was foxed in Venice in the preceding film, but I have to confess I had more than a little trouble discerning how this might be the case, other than in the fact of Amalric bearing a passing facial similarity to preceding chief baddie Mads Mikkelsen.
In summary, the 'darkening' of the Bond franchise, allegedly a much-needed injection of political and psychological realism for the post-9/11 consciousness, seems to me much more a marketing reboot based on demographic analysis than a genuine attempt to add diplomatic and emotional thickness to the series. The worst thing is that Craig, by far the most thespy actor to inhabit the role, seems to genuinely believe in the stated motive of the whole enterprise. Hopefully, the third film of the reboot sequence will see the critics take this ersatz worthiness to pieces.
2008 Film Reviews # 3: High Anxiety
High Anxiety (Mel Brooks, 1977)
I appreciate that this film is, objectively, worth more than a four. What's difficult to express is just how much I was looking forward to seeing this: it was billed to me as a parody of Hitchcock and Freud, which sounded like a shoo-in as one of the greatest comic ideas of the twentieth century. Why it doesn't work (for me) I can't quite put my finger on, except by stating that Brooks's pandemonium-filled approach seems gauche compared to Hitchcock's subtle teasing out of the humour that inheres (especially according to Freud) in the impasses of human sexuality described by psychoanalysis. This psychodramatic comedy is already in North by Northwest, The Man who Knew too Much, and even Psycho, each of which incorporates a greater degree of comic content than Brooks seems willing to acknowledge. If a parody of Hitchcock doesn't account for the extent to which all Hitchcock films defend themselves in advance with huge measures of self- referentiality and parody, then it is more or less doomed from the off. Four out of ten.
I appreciate that this film is, objectively, worth more than a four. What's difficult to express is just how much I was looking forward to seeing this: it was billed to me as a parody of Hitchcock and Freud, which sounded like a shoo-in as one of the greatest comic ideas of the twentieth century. Why it doesn't work (for me) I can't quite put my finger on, except by stating that Brooks's pandemonium-filled approach seems gauche compared to Hitchcock's subtle teasing out of the humour that inheres (especially according to Freud) in the impasses of human sexuality described by psychoanalysis. This psychodramatic comedy is already in North by Northwest, The Man who Knew too Much, and even Psycho, each of which incorporates a greater degree of comic content than Brooks seems willing to acknowledge. If a parody of Hitchcock doesn't account for the extent to which all Hitchcock films defend themselves in advance with huge measures of self- referentiality and parody, then it is more or less doomed from the off. Four out of ten.
2008 Film Reviews #2: X-Files - I Want to Believe
X-Files - I Want to Believe (Chris Carter, 2008)
Apparently the team behind this film have argued that its lack of critical success was down to people finding it too 'dark'. I'd contend that it was probably more to do with the fact that it was complete bollocks; a messy, unsculpted, tensionless romp through the tropological entrails of the TV series (read: photogenic snowscapes, backwoods laboratories, David Duchovny's once-fresh gallows humour). This is all elevated to a new plateau of unintentional hilariousness by Billy Connolly's camp turn as a soothsaying pederast. I Want to Believe's denouement was the recuperation of Mitch Pileggi's Assistant Director Walter Skinner, a moderately interesting character at some point in the mid-to-late 1990s, from his descent into an extremely vague region of bad guy-dom that took place around the turn of the Millenium. As if this wasn't 'made for TV' enough already, there's an annoying subplot about Scully, who reminds me of one of E.T.A. Hoffmann's Enlightenment wenches, going through the theological wrangle. As I say, nice photography, but the Canadian landscape lends itself to that kind of thing anyway. Two out of ten.
Apparently the team behind this film have argued that its lack of critical success was down to people finding it too 'dark'. I'd contend that it was probably more to do with the fact that it was complete bollocks; a messy, unsculpted, tensionless romp through the tropological entrails of the TV series (read: photogenic snowscapes, backwoods laboratories, David Duchovny's once-fresh gallows humour). This is all elevated to a new plateau of unintentional hilariousness by Billy Connolly's camp turn as a soothsaying pederast. I Want to Believe's denouement was the recuperation of Mitch Pileggi's Assistant Director Walter Skinner, a moderately interesting character at some point in the mid-to-late 1990s, from his descent into an extremely vague region of bad guy-dom that took place around the turn of the Millenium. As if this wasn't 'made for TV' enough already, there's an annoying subplot about Scully, who reminds me of one of E.T.A. Hoffmann's Enlightenment wenches, going through the theological wrangle. As I say, nice photography, but the Canadian landscape lends itself to that kind of thing anyway. Two out of ten.
2008 Film Reviews # 1: Shoot 'Em Up
Okay, this is an irregular feature - I started writing these before Christmas, but I've picked them up again now because I needed to get some stuff off my chest about the movies I saw last year. The list goes worst-to-best in order, so you'll get all the grim stuff first. Note that this is about films I saw for the first time last year, which doesn't necessarily mean that they're 2008 releases.
Shoot 'Em Up (Michael Davis, 2007)
A film that came out late one film night when we too befuddled to decide what to watch. A film in which the allegedly 'comic' premise begins with a young woman being shot dead in cold blood immediately after giving birth. A film that stakes rather too much on the willingness of people to find Clive Owen munching carrots hilarious. A film that not so much exhausts all of Paul Giamatti's post-Sideways goodwill as makes him more or less unemployable. Seriously horrible. One out of ten.
Shoot 'Em Up (Michael Davis, 2007)
A film that came out late one film night when we too befuddled to decide what to watch. A film in which the allegedly 'comic' premise begins with a young woman being shot dead in cold blood immediately after giving birth. A film that stakes rather too much on the willingness of people to find Clive Owen munching carrots hilarious. A film that not so much exhausts all of Paul Giamatti's post-Sideways goodwill as makes him more or less unemployable. Seriously horrible. One out of ten.
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