Arrebato (Rapture) (1980) review ...

Ivan Zulueta


Synopsis
Madrid,1980. Jose Sirgado, a labouring bohemian b-movie filmmaker finishes editing the sequel to a previous film. Visibly displeased he journeys home to his girlfriend strung out on heroin. After attempting to tidy his home and taking some heroin himself he opens a mail package from an old acquaintance Pedro P. containing a reel of super-8 film, a cassette tape and a key to his apartment. Watching the film and listening to the accompanying tape on which Pedro talks through the pair’s first meeting, their ensuing friendship and how he developed an addiction to filmmaking, notably recording himself in bed as he reached a state of rapture induced by the camera manifested in a series of flashbacks. As Pedro’s gravelly voice over wears on it becomes clear that his camera has taken on a vampiric life of its own absorbing its subjects and ultimately erasing them from the real world. Pedro’s final recording informs Jose of his suspected fate and informs him to visit his apartment where he too is absorbed by the camera.


Review
In a surprising attempt to blend horror, filmmaking and addiction Ivan Zulueta succeeds in producing a cataclysmic cocktail of peverse characters, characteristics and scenarios. From the introduction there is the anticipation of a meditation on filmmaking as beleaguered director Jose puts the finishing touches on his latest picture – a sequel that appears to be an Ed Woodesque attempt at a vampire flick – visibly dissatisfied he retreats to his bohemian apartment swathed in multi-coloured streams light from studio lights in the corners of the room covered in boldly tinted pieces of silk. Revealed in the opening moments we are witnessing intensely self-reflexive characters and a film produced by a director of the same persuasion. Only once drifting into a dreaded area of kitsch and camp the film manages to steer away from an unwatchable horror film about a vampire camera to being a serious meditation on the addictive powers of cinema, its relation to reality and a study of obsession.

The single most interesting character of the piece is eccentric avant-garde filmmaker Pedro P. named purposefully after JM Barrie’s forever-young adventurer. Noticing and embracing the full power of film and cinema his life is usurped by the quest for finding solace in its presence and his own adventure takes him between the frames as a pained author may try to get between the lines ultimately driving him too far and away from any vision of beauty and creativity. Recording everything he experiences, encompassing the mundane to the dull, we witness his descent as he hopes to ascribe purpose to what he puts on the screen, himself questioning the meaning and existence of something if it is not recorded. All very deep and ponderous, and while Zulueta perhaps achieves his probable aim with the film, it seems watching the editing of P’s film and Arrebato itself as though the 1960s psychedelic eras in Britain and America as quick to arrive as they were to leave never landed on the shores of Spain. Pedro’s home movies bear a startling resemblance to those of John and Yoko’s Tittenhurst experiments in celluloid even including the slowly erecting penis akin to the opening of a flower.

It is within the visual and technical aspects of the film that suspends it in cultural cultish limbo for the ages and in so reveals the main factor that can be attributed to its final outcome. Francisco Franco, conspicuous in his absence, overarches all the themes of the picture, from the freshly imbued freedom of the Spanish arts set, the loose expose of Madrid underground drug culture and embrace of experimental cinema to be embodied in the following decade by the La Movida Madrileña and exported internationally by its champion Pedro Almodóvar – interestingly enough it is he who provides the appalling element of camp and kitsch with some voice over work that midway through almost brings the film the film down to its knees. Occupying an awkward space in Spanish and international film history whilst some years later than the free jazz influenced cinema of Cassavetes, Godard and Schlesinger into doubt anticipates Danny Boyle’s introduction of heroin chic to the street of Edinburgh and London and Aronofsky adopting similar methods of depicting addiction essentially fifteen to twenty years later Arrebato explores of previously uncharted liberated territory and the release of a repressive older regime.

Im Schatten (In the Shadows) (2010) review ...

Thomas Arslan

Synopsis
Berlin, the present. Recently out of prison Trojan is a professional criminal looking for his next big job. Meeting up with old contacts he soon hears of a job requiring three men, but upon learning that his colleagues are to be an alcoholic and a junkie he instantly jettisons it. Despite his careful actions and attempts to cover all his tracks rival crooks and a corrupt police detective are now separately tailing him. Meeting up with a female lawyer friend Trojan learns of a job stealing over a million Euros from a security van, the presumed ease of which has been revealed by one of the drivers who is willing to be “in” on the job. Requiring an extra man for the job he contacts a former associate, an older man, who consents to being involved. The policeman and rival gangsters observe the actions of those planning the heist. The job is carried out successfully with precision; Trojan and his older accomplice divide the bounty equally into four. Trojan delivers half to the lawyer who passes on the driver’s share. The policeman kills the driver taking his share after tailing him to his flat and the rival crooks kill the older man. The policeman follows Trojan to a hotel room; Trojan then kills him, before disposing of his body with the lawyer. Trojan retreating to his cabin hideout is then found by the rival crooks that he proceeds to kill. Returning from disposing of the bodies he sees policemen searching his cabin and runs away through the woods. Stealing a car from a garage he drives away presuming himself a fugitive.

Review
The life and times of a criminal foot soldier is well-trodden film territory, yet stripped of it’s anti-hero themes, operatic tendencies and gratuitous violence Thomas Arslan offers something far more intriguing. A truly accomplished film for a relatively young director of four previous feature films, none of which receiving distribution in the UK. In the Shadows is set against a backdrop of post-industrial Berlin and explores the criminal underbelly of modern Germany, the nature of business and the dangers of working as a free-lance professional. In search of new leads on possible jobs with low risks and high reward upon his release from incarceration, Trojan, the classically pseudonymed crook, turns to former contacts and associates - as may any enthusiastic European job seeker in any line of work today - in the hope that something will present itself. The film, therefore, chimes as a parable of the post-industrial age where work is scarce and the markets are cutthroat. Sitting, as it does, within the bounds of an easily digestible genre and clearly honed realist stylistic constraints the film is wholly palatable and always believable.

Employing over 80 years worth of conventions generic to the gangster film Arslan takes a released convict, composites his outlook on life and professionalism towards his job, adds a delectable set of goons, and executes a well-polished heist. No time for cumbersome character development is afforded in the cold and corrupt mechanical business of this world. Nothing is revealed of the central protagonist, the leading lady or the shady police officer, yet their laconic, emotionless and inspired performances anchor the film in a strangely abstract realism. In the Shadows expands on the notion of moving the crime thriller away from romanticised image of the gangster. Never tempted into lazy flashbacks or montage it is within the palette of colours that this finely crafted film moves along. Highlighting the darkness of day and night, the inner city and the countryside; light fluorescent reds and yellows give way to cold claustrophobic greys and blues whilst sharply contrasting greens burst vividly onto the screen later in the film. It is often, however, the dark, deep, and, at times, black scenes that are most illuminating and effectively placed within the narrative; presumably a choice that dictated the title, or one that was dictated by the title.

Early in the film a central theme of paranoia is propagated through the inner city greys and blues, thus setting up the dynamic of the harsh realities of business and corruption and raising the element of trust in the settings of hotel rooms and BMWs to run down garages and lunch time coffee outlets. The freedom of a getaway cabin hideout is surrounded by blessed green foliage before gradually switching to a wet grey long shot in a climactic moment of pathetic fallacy. This transition sequence is particularly emblematic of the film’s style and flow.

A propulsive soundtrack lurks beneath the action. Gracefully sprinkled sparingly throughout at moments of heightened tension, yet we are never fully submerged in the throbbing percussive bass or dissonant chords as may have been tempting and as would be expected with any of its Hollywood counterparts. Instead subtlety and craftsmanship are the factors that provide the intrigue. All too often the implication of craftsmanship suggests something ‘soulless’ within criticism, however, what is presented here is a well-cultivated exposé on the current business climate, equating crime to any other modern industry, in a film that is precisely crafted, excellently paced and competent in its execution.

Review by Matt Henshaw

The Hurt Locker (2008)

The Hurt Locker, yet another movie depicting the horrors and tribulations which American soldiers face in the Iraq war; or so it seems on the surface. Surely the cliché, prosaic and now rather tedious nature of such movies would not even be considered a nominee for the Best Film Oscar. Why then did The Hurt Locker walk away from the Oscars with this award and five more? The only way to figure this out is to watch it and after years of wondering, that's exactly what I did.

Kathryn Bigelow's movie follows a team of elite soldiers as they patrol the streets of Bagdad prepared to disarm any IED (aka roadside bomb) they encounter. The elite team consists of the rule abiding Sergeant JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), the highly insecure and rather troubled Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), and their adrenaline junkie leader, Sergeant William “wild man” James (Jeremy Renner).

As the story of the team’s endeavours progresses it becomes clear that James is much more interested in the thrill of danger than ensuring the safety of both his comrades’ and the many innocent Iraqi civilians at risk from the bombs he must disarm. He jumps at every opportunity to don his safety armour and enter the ‘kill zone’, risking his life and others (much to his team’s dismay). We also see his collection of pieces of explosive devices which he collects as keepsakes of bombs he has disarmed; and it becomes clear to the viewer that the movie’s most infamous quote highlighted in the opening credits, “war is a drug” is exemplified most potently within Renner’s character. It is Renner’s character alone therefore, which ensures that this is movie is not ‘locked’ in the cliché of politically driven war movies.

The story itself is not politically driven; Bigelow’s film is merely a vector for presenting the typical everyday activities carried out by soldiers in Iraq and most significantly the feelings and emotions they experience while performing their mandatory daily duties. This focus in and of itself , despite the lack of a politically driven plot, results in perhaps the most forceful anti war message of any politically driven film about the war in Iraq. There is nothing more compelling than witnessing and experiencing the emotions these soldiers endure everyday, and whether this was Bigelow’s intention or not, the viewer, let’s face it, is not going to be pleased with the suffering they witness; the suffering soldiers live though everyday in reality.

This placing the audience into the action of the film and allowing them to live through the soldier’s toil alongside Bigelow’s characters is achieved using various effective devices. Most notably the deafening silence present throughout the movie and the lack of a lavish, theatrical score creates an intense atmosphere, drawing the audience into the action and surrounding them in the setting. This, teamed with the regularly shifting POV and shaky camera shots successfully places the viewer on the barren, dilapidated streets of Bagdad, where they watch alongside the Iraqi civilians as Sergeant James and his team attempt to disarm the ever present deadly IED’s. The audience experience the activities of war as the characters do and this allows for an intense emotive response; so intense in fact that this movie was deemed the Best Film 2009.

And I have to agree. Ignoring the cunning political stand point Bigelow illustrates, this film was well deserving of its title and well deserving of overthrowing Avatar. Although Avatar offers the viewer the same experience of being placed into the action of the movie, Bigelow’s film does this unaided by 3D Imax technology; it is simply a brilliantly constructed film in which one is injected into the ‘Hurt Locker’ of war and comes out the other side having undergone an enlightening experience. The experience of a drug. The experience of war.

We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) review

We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)
Lynne Ramsay

Synopsis (in chronological order, not as shown in the film)
Opening at Tomatina, a large tomato fight in Valencia successful travel writer Eva is enjoying the prime of her youth and success. Returning home to an American city she falls in love with a wealthier man quickly falling pregnant and is persuaded to take a break from her career to raise their newborn son, Kevin. Initially the child will not stop crying when in the presence and care of its mother whilst remains quiet when father returns home. As a toddler the boy becomes mute in the care of his mother and responds little to her attempts to nurture him resisting the lessons of potty training and good behaviour before Eva resorts to a solitary moment of violent frustration. Their relationship is fractured throughout his young life only taking an interest in his mother reading him The Tales of Robin Hood that fires an enthusiasm for archery spurred on by his doting father. When a younger sister arrives accidentally Kevin resents the girl killing her pet guinea pig and blinding her in one eye. The two parents file for divorce before Kevin kills his father and sister and carries out a massacre at his school approaching his 16th birthday. Eva moves into a smaller house in the area that is pelted with paint along with her car, she gets an entry level job at a travel agents and attempts to avoid the parents of her son’s victims drinking and medicating herself to sleep every night.

Review
From a wide-ranging selection of independent cinema’s most prized ingredients you would expect a dish far more sophisticated than the one ham-fistly presented here. I can only apologise for the food based analogy but for the first half an hour of the film I couldn’t help feeling how over cooked it all seemed to be. The heavy-handed approach to We Need to Talk About Kevin must surely lie at the feet of director Lynne Ramsay, also credited for co-writing the clunky screenplay. The story is a potent tale of an American boy as he grows from maligned infant to sociopathic teenager in episodic flashbacks from his mother’s point of view. Most harrowing aside from his actions is that the usual suspects of blame come into play whilst the writing never allows the complex psychological persuasion of the central character to be explored as uncomfortable moments invite us to find humour in desperately humourless situations.

The film shows snippets of sugar sweet cereal, snatches of the star spangled banner and sketches of schizophrenia, the causes of which are lazily misattributed. It seems as though the script was written scribbling down and sticking with the first visual ideas that popped into the screenwriters heads, substituting the dramatic exploration into an American problem child’s psyche from the novel on which the film is based for obvious and arbitrary judgmental visual statements. It’s as if it was made as a knee-jerk reaction to the Columbine massacre had it happened in the 1980s. “Die! Die! Die!” Kevin sporadically shouts at the screen as he plays on a video game with his loving father. Are we being lectured on the violent nature of video games? “I don’t want to leave the city” insists successful travel writer mother Eva to financially stable father Franklin, sufficiently adequate performances from Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly respectively, before they whisk their new addition to the family off to the suburbs and a house that strikingly resembles that of Tony Soprano’s - minus one point in the parenting handbook for careerism and the chase of the almighty American dollar. Surprisingly Medieval folklore is even represented in the form of Robin Hood and his exploits in Sherwood Forest with a bow and arrow inspiring Kevin’s preferred means of execution, as though surely we must be wary of the things you feed into our child’s minds.

The only regular stalwarts of bad parenting and characters of subversion that aren’t referenced are music and the movies, and if they are it is with a subtlety that perhaps I missed amongst the onslaught of obvious gestures. The recurring costume choice of a Led Zeppelin t-shirt worn by both mother and father at significant points in their lives was maybe a decision made to somehow link Jimmy Page’s interest in Alistair Crowley and the Occult to the actions of their offspring, however, I would wish to balk at the backwardness of this idea if I thought it was a conscious effort. Never though, as may be expected part way through, do we have Kevin attend a Marilyn Manson concert. Movies on the other hand are only glossed over as mother and daughter, sister of the rampaging Kevin, cosily watch what sounds like a code-era soft gangster flick.

Finally, attention should be drawn to the sound of the film, as it craves attention for the majority of the picture as if for the most part something more interesting is happening out of the frame, usually signified by Tilda Swinton’s forced reactions. When done expertly and this can be a highly effective technique as David Fincher exhibits time and time again. But the volume at which some of the sounds are escalated to in the sound mix is excruciating for all the wrong reasons, when Kevin bites and picks his finger nails or gobbles a lychee that represents the eyeball of his blinded sister – possibly a reference to Un Chien Andalou, if again somewhat awkwardly done – the sound is amplified beyond any kind of proportion. A seemingly schizophrenic soundtrack ties the series of flashbacks together and may have made for interesting listening had it not been so self-consciously attempting to replicate the quirky nature of other 21st century independent films. Perhaps the reason rock bands never come under scrutiny in the films bad parenting blame game the film is scored by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood but never reaches the heights scaled by Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood caught as it is between so many different genre signifiers. Thus emblematic of a film where maybe too many cooks have spoiled the broth, or an ambitious yet inept head chef has let her specials menu go awry on a big night in the kitchen.

Review by Matt Henshaw

The Tree of Life (2011) Review

Preface

Firstly, I'd like to point out that I feel 100% inadequate in reviewing this film.  It's tough, to watch, to write about, to think about, to enjoy, but that doesn't stop me from believing it to be one of the best films of the year, probably the decade and it will no doubt be the bane, or pleasure, of any film student for years to come ... I hope you can make sense of my review ...

Synopsis

We are introduced to the O’Brien family, man, wife and three young sons in 1950s Texas.  Skip forward to the parents receiving communication one of their teenage son’s death before a funeral takes place.  A further skip forward to another of the sons in modern America surrounded skyscrapers reflecting on his life past and present and his place in the universe.  Visiting his thoughts we see impressionistic visions of the birth of the universe, the evolution of life and his own fragmented memories childhood.  The boys learn two ways through life from their parents suggested by voice-overs pondering the meaning of life.  The mother silently and endlessly nurtures them and the father adversely teaches them harsh life lessons and attempts to toughen them up through pugilism, punishment and discipline.  He is a failed pianist working at an oil company chasing patents for his ideas; this takes him around the world.  In his absence the boys embrace a sense of freedom and eldest son develops an instantly regretful underlying wayward streak engaging in vandalism, theft and bullying of his younger brother in envious light of his artistic talents.  The father returns and upon finding out his plant is to be closed the family must move from their home.  In the present day who we now know to be the eldest son walks through a door frame in the desert and appears to be in a kind of dream like place where all the characters from his past are preserved at a younger age.

Review

The breadth and scope of Terrence Malick’s latest epic tone poem is grandiose and ostentatious yet at times subtle and almost subliminal in its more quiet and sombre moments.  The film is a majestic and rapturous paen to the indecipherable wonders of the cosmos and an ode to memories of 1950s Americana; memories you would presume to those of the director, anyone alive before swathes of American youth disappeared for the mass armageddon in south east Asia and the faux nostalgia so finely mass marketed in the age of post millennia consumerism.  Pierced from start to finish by startlingly non-CGI images of the formation of the universe and the beauty of life on Earth as we know it The Tree of Life is a sparse tale of the small town Texan O’Brien brothers torn between following the life paths of an overbearing austere father - a beyond competent portrayal from Brad Pitt that warrants every portion of hyperbole bestowed upon it - and their graceful mother - an interchangeably elegant then elegiac performance from Jessica Chastain.

Book-ended by snatches of a restrained presentation in body language by Sean Penn in an attempt to bond the bulk of the action to the modern age of urban metropolises and tightly packed skyscrapers.  Opening with an on screen quote from the Book of Job and settling at its close in the kingdom of heaven through the doors of perception the film is heavy on the Old Testament and at times laboured with its biblical proportions, however, it is the camera’s paganistic worship of the sun that is most striking.  Shot as it is throughout the film through the trees, the wings of a butterfly and the spray of a hose Emmanuel Lubezki captures that that is all life giving and is in reverie of its truly altruistic nature.  The narrative unfolds as traces of memories in eldest brother Jack O’Brien’s head as he comes to terms with his place in the universe, the complex love of his individual parents and the death of his younger brother as a teenager twenty to thirty years on.  Therefore we see the sun through the eyes of a young prepubescent boy, as the Egyptians, Babylonians and the ancient pious would have seen the sun, as the central cast pose breathy questions in the voice over as if it were the Sun of God/the Light of God. 

In the voice over Chastain’s mother character sets up the duality that belies the film, the choice between the way of love through strong Christian notions of evangelism (the mother) and the way nature through harsh realities and punishment (the father).  Perhaps though the realisation of the forty something Jack is that in the face of the grandeur of the planets and the vastness of space, morality and the choice between love and fear, as Bill Hicks would describe is some what irrelevant and places Jean Paul Satre’s existentialist ponderings in the 1950s before science would start taking leaping strides from the 1960s through to the 21st century; a time when the skies truly were the final frontier ie. “the place where God lives” and the USA was building the new Holy Roman Empire.

Almost impeccably edited the film is completed by a score from Alexandre Desplat who takes in 500 years of western classical music and bridges four eras with a dense collection of composers.  The best parts bear more than similarity to Kubrick’s 2001 yet, possibly to avoid parody the soundtrack employs pieces less likely to induce cliché than that of 2001 or Disney’s classically laden Fantasia.  The father plays the baroque organ pieces of JS Bach from a time when music and art was only commissioned at the behest of the church tying him to the idea of expression through wages and the admiration of art living within your means rather than the graceful romanticism that resonates with the mothers elegance and spirituality, or the ever revived Agnus Dei movement of the Requiem Mass for the Dead.  That said you would be forgiven in wanting to watch the the inner planetary sequences with the voice-overs muted whilst listening to Gustav Holst’s Planets Suite or watch the nature and evolution set pieces expecting to hear David Attenborough summarise its visual splendour in a few crisp monologues.  With Hector Berlioz playing out over the evolution of the universe and Johannes Brahms and Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky in the family home the film and its accompanying soundtrack are anything but modest in their ambition, but perhaps knowingly so of its place in time and space.

Addendum

Just go and watch it.

Review by Matt Henshaw
Thanks for Reading !

Scarface (1983) Special Edition DVD – Universal Studios Home Entertainment (2004) under review ...

Scarface (1983) Special Edition DVD – Universal Studios Home Entertainment (2004)

Special Features

• ·         The Rebirth Of Scarface development featurette
• ·         Acting Scarface featurette
• ·         Creating Scarface 'making of' documentary
• ·         Scarface: The TV Version comparison featurette
• ·         Deleted scenes (22 mins)
• ·         Origins Of A Hip-Hop Classic documentary
• ·         Theatrical and teaser trailers

If ever there was a film that had the kind of cult following that consisted of ever youthful admirers who always wanted to know more about its inception and legacy, and its cast and its creators then Scarface surely is that film.  Brian De Palma’s classic film, a successfully remake of an old-time gangster classic, splurges a big fat ink stain in all the suitable boxes and portrays the scurrilous pursuit of the American dream with such a gritty bludgeon like no other film ever has, before or since.  Cart-wheeling through hoop after hoop to impress the male psyche we are treated to a melange of guns, breasts and violence, drugs, chainsaws and tigers.

Tony Montana arrives in Miami, Florida, USA from Cuba pronouncing himself as “a political refugee”.  He climbs through the cocaine fuelled gangster underworld claiming he wants everything that he’s got coming to him; “the world chico, and everything in it”.  It’s a masterfully theatrical performance from Al Pacino who asserts his credence and trustworthiness succinctly, becoming the envy of alpha male and living out a few man’s dreams when he says “I’ve only got two things in this world: my word and my balls, and I don’t break ‘em for nobody” in the face of a South American drug baron.  It’s definitely Oliver Stone’s script and Pacino’s portrayal of Montana, both with deftly touched with a subtle hint of humour that endears us to the lead character and the expected demise of Montana leads us to the unexpected sombre ending of his bloodied carcass lying face down in his overblown entrance hall fountain.  Were we expected to be sad at the death of our new favourite caricature?

The sets are lavish and the colours are unflinchingly coarse (I’m sure this movie has inspired more than a few ghastly makeovers in those with the taste and mindsets of Delboy Trotter).  Producer Martin Bregman had clearly spent greatly to realise the dreams of the Cuban gangster as he reaches the top of the cocaine pyramid; that is symbolised quite literally by a mound of cocaine in one of the closing scenes looks like a snow capped mountain top before Montana throws his face into it.

The soundtrack is a mix of electro 80s chart fodder and Giorgio Moroder’s synth noodlings that run the risk of being overbearing at certain intervals.  This can be enjoyed; or not, in Dolby 5.1 surround on the Special Edition DVD.  Which brings us nicely the double disc sets special features.

An excellent extra is a short piece on how Universal managed to edit the original film to be suitable for network TV in America.  Just how they managed to cope with all the nudity and violence is one thing, but the 160 f-words and the other language is another.  There’s also a short from pioneering black record label Def Jam Recordings chronicling the link to rap/hip-hop culture and the 80s movie.  There’s the revelation that P Diddy has seen the film 63 times, and it’s probably more since the recording of the interview.  We receive a real insight into the funding, production of the film and the method acting style of Al Pacino.

Plus, there’s the usual DVD fodder such as trailers and deleted scenes (that you can’t help but always think “they must have been deleted for a reason, so why show them now?”).  But, what is a real treat is the set of shorts that document the making of the film – The Rebirth of Scarface, Acting Scarface and Creating Scrface.

But what this film is really crying out for is a commentary from one or more, or all of the main players.  They’re all here on the DVD; sit them in a room together for a few hours and maybe even record their conversation as the film plays.  I don’t know?!  Even if it takes a few bags of white powder I think it should be done and I’m sure it’s what every die-hard fan would love to hear accompanying their favourite film.  No doubt the imminent release of the Blu-Ray edition of the film will be gobbled up with the usual whether this is featured or not.  Whatever the case may be, this is a highly entertaining film, and the DVD set includes some highly entertaining extra material.

Following review

Synopsis

(In chronological order, the film is shown as a fragmented narrative out of sequence)

Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.

London, 1998.  An unemployed would-be writer Bill begins following random people.  A suave character named Cobb confronts him in a cafe.  Cobb has noticed that Bill has been following him.  Cobb tells Bill that he is a burglar.  He convinces Bill to follow him some more so as to demonstrate his methods of breaking and entering.  Cobb tells Bill that he does it for the adrenalin rush and finding people’s secrets.

After breaking into the house of a blonde woman with Cobb, Bill smartens up and begins following her.  Later, after chatting her up in a bar, a relationship ensues.  She convinces Bill to steal some photographs from the office of her ex-boyfriend claiming he has been using them to blackmail her.  Upon doing this Bill uses a hammer to injure a heavy that catches him in the act.

Returning to the blonde with the innocuous photographs and a large amount of money she reveals that she and Cobb had been framing him all along for a murder that Cobb was suspected of committing.  Bill reports everything to the police. However, in the meantime Cobb has murdered the blonde with Bill’s hammer, framing Bill and stopping the blonde from going to the police herself to inform them of a murder committed by her ex-boyfriend, who is revealed to be Cobb’s boss.  The police have no knowledge of the previous murder case or a suspect named Cobb.  Cobb vanishes into the crowded streets.

Review

With Christopher Nolan’s latest “smart”, “quirky” and “edgy” thriller Inception scorching an impenetratable blaze of a trail on 3D screens worldwide, and the third part of his impressively crescendoing Batman trilogy perched on the horizon, taking a look back at his first feature length directorial debut you may notice that he might have lost a smidgen of his original charm along the way.  Following opened in late ‘98 to less than a whimper in the UK, but elsewhere received the kind of plaudits and accolades that were enough to lure Nolan - one of Britain's brightest young talents in years - away from our shores to Hollywood.  This film sadly remains the only one from this British director to be set in a British location.

What did the British film industry and critics miss?  All the clues to Nolan’s future style are there in a purer form.  The fragmented narrative gives the director chance to flex his admirable storytelling pecks seen later time and time again.  Obviously a studious filmmaker harking back to likes of Bogdanovich, Scorsese and the directors of the ‘70’s “New Hollywood” film school generation Nolan excels in presenting the conventions of a classic film noir using only found lighting to illuminating effect, even without any formal education.  The subtle changes in light and dark from scene to scene convey all the atmosphere necessary to accommodate the, at times, lacklustre acting.  The levels of acting (and overacting) have varied through the director’s films thus far:  from this collection of rookies putting together scenes just slightly above that of an amateur dramatic theatre group to a supreme show in scenery chewing from Al Pacino, or from master classes of playing yourself from Michael Caine to the deadpan Guy Pearce, well suited to Memento.

It is also a deadpan naturalistic style that is present here, and with Memento, it matters little, as the characters seem to be so well-developed, and ready for the audience to invest themselves into their story.  Like Cobb, the viewer gains such a sense of Bill from a simple look at his flat that they are ready to follow him and those he follows in turn.  Intertextuality abounds, from Jack Nicholson and Marilyn Monroe postcards stuck on the wall to the stolen Trainspotting soundtrack CD and the Batman sign on his door, a coincidental sign of things to come.  With the first of his Batman films, this ideal of character development is still just about there, but, by the time we reach his second instalment all subtlety of this kind is dropped for explosions, the changing of actresses to comply with studio schedules and incongruent change in the timbre of the protagonist’s voice.  And with Inception various plot devices and character’s arcs are thrown at us with the subtlety of a sledgehammer amongst more explosions and mind (and screen) bending imagery, but surely Nolan couldn’t have forgotten the depth he invested in his earlier characters as he gives Leonardo Di Caprio’s character the name Cobb, the very same name as the suave villain of his debut picture.

Probably the clearest example of Nolan’s switch from bright young thing to the producer of Hollywood blockbusters is the fight scene in the centre of Following.  It is a truly British affair.  The Hugh Grant-style flailing nature of it is that which many English people are ashamed to admit is true to form.  It blends into the London skyline very well, even having a choreographer, it is a far cry from the supremely co-ordinated floating Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Inception.  Yet, what this film sacrifices in polish and continuity it gains in charm, originality and, for the time, a fresh look at a genre that Hollywood was content in churning out glossy pastiches like L.A. Confidential (featuring a deadpan Guy Pearce no less).  Themes present in Following were also becoming common in other US films of the late nineties, like Sam Mendes in American Beauty questioning life and material values and David Fincher, who - like Nolan - toys with existential ideas along the way in Fight Club.  It’s no surprise then that Hollywood snapped up the young writer/director, shame then that Nolan was in England long enough to give us this picture alone.  “You take it away, and you show them what they had.”

Following Review by Matt Henshaw

Touch of Evil review

Synopsis

Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.

The US/Mexico border, a bomb is planted in a car as Miguel Vargas and his new wife Susie are crossing over into America.  Vargas, a Mexican official, realizes the negative diplomatic implications of a Mexican bomb exploding on American soil and begins to investigate. Police Captain Hank Quinlan and his partner Pete Menzies, arrive on the scene of the explosion.  When it becomes clear that Quinlan has planted evidence to frame a young Mexican named Sanchez, Vargas begins to gather evidence of his own in an attempt to expose the captain.

While Vargas is investigating Quinlan's corruption, Susie is cooped up in a remote motel that gets taken over by gang members of the Grandi family, who Vargas is fighting as a law enforcement official, and who is secretly also a criminal associate of Quinlan. Susie is kidnapped by the gang, injected with drugs, and taken to Grandi’s hotel in town. There, Quinlan seizes an opportunity, strangles Grandi and frames Susie Vargas for the murder in order to ruin her husband.  Meanwhile, Vargas confronts Menzies claiming that the evidence in all the cases they ever solved was fabricated.  Eventually Vargas persuades Menzies to record a conversation with Quinlan.  After the police captain admits to planting evidence, he realises Menzies is wearing a wire and shoots him only to be shot in return, leaving Vargas able to exonerate his wife.

Review

“Don’t you see you don’t help yourself by treating this as a joke?” exclaims Charlton Heston as Miguel Vargas, and it would have probably been a complaint oft-repeated at Orson Welles throughout his career in the movie business.  For it is at Welles’ character - the villainous, obese and sinister police Captain Quinlan - that this line of dialogue is directed. And with his usual acting aplomb, Welles dismisses the comment with “Are you finished? Anything more you wanna say, Vargas?” almost definitely the way Welles would have repeatedly reacted in the face of many of his real life detractors.  For there is an air of greatness surrounding this film and, indeed, it smacks of brilliance but ultimately flounders in it.  It has all the hallmarks of Orson Welles’ cinematography, style and wit in the direction, yet, aside from two major scenes, there is a distinct lack of the all encompassing innovative quality that thrusts Citizen Kane into the debates about greatest films of all-time.

It is in the undercurrent of humour, whether intentional or not, juxtaposed against the gravely dark thriller elements ofTouch of Evil that it is perhaps where the film falls down.  The black comedy is prevalent throughout the film, although thankfully not in any of the key scenes.  It could have worked well, as Hitchcock proved with his mastery of the darkly humorous thrillers of the same period.  In every scene, apart from the his brutal final shot the Mexican mob boss, Grandi, played by Akim Tarimoff, is comically overacted, more attuned to a bit-part in the mafia spoofing Analyze This and Analyze That films. Similarly, the mentally handicapped night manager at the motel seems to have jumped straight from a Mel Brooks film.

Mentioning Alfred Hitchcock and motels it would be rude not to reference Psycho made just two years later, and with the same leading lady.  Janet Leigh’s visit to the Bates’ Motel in 1960 delivers some of the most incredibly eerie scenes and one of the most memorable murders in cinema history, and the film manages to carry a perverse sense of humour continuously without it undermining any of its integrity.  The scene in which Leigh’s character Susie Vargas is drugged and potentially raped is sinister enough, yet its tension could have been heightened by not having the cutaways to the unnecessarily stupefied night manager in the motel reception, and the crass rock ’n’ roll music that plays out diagetically through the speaker in the room.  The rock ‘n’ roll music and boogie-woogie piano is a recurring theme through the film, detracting somewhat from the orchestral stabbings at moments of heightened anxiety, it also induces some of the strangest dancing/gyrating from one of the gangster extras that it instantly kills off any apprehension or fear.  Among the black comedy there is also a half-hearted attempt to add a sort of sexual tension, but the scene of Leigh in her négligé on the phone to her new husband seems awkwardly tacked in; again, the effect is achieved more successfully two years later with the peep-hole scene in Psycho.

Where the film does work is in its two most memorable set-pieces.  The three minute twenty tracking shot opening the film is unflinchingly ambitious in its scale and scope and sets up what should be a sensational movie experience.  And the murder scene is so fabulously presented that any audience would produce audible gasps -Welles’ acting is so convincing that we genuinely fear the corrupt law enforcer in his remaining scenes.  Although it is perhaps a great shame that if Welles didn’t treat his career in the Hollywood film studios with such contempt, and as such “a joke”, it could have been as successfully remembered in the same breath as his own Citizen Kane and Hitchcock’s Psycho.

Review by Matt Henshaw

Scarface (1983) Review

Almost thirty years after its original theatrical release, the brash eighties remake of Howard Hawks’ pioneering 1932 gangster movie Scarface has become a part of film, youth and criminal culture to such a degree that it almost seems redundant to question those who revel in reverence of it. But why is this film held in such high esteem? I’ll tell you why; because it is a film that pulls together a plethora of unassuming components to create an era defining spectacle that sits pretty (or ugly) in the middle of the eighties; between Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull – a glorious adios to the brooding dramatic cinema of the seventies in 1980 – and 1990’s Goodfellas, which welcomed the quicker paced editing-driven movies of the nineties.

So, what of the parts? Screenwriter Oliver Stone delivers an overwritten hodgepodge of ideas and unsubtle one-liners as a script. It has an over-long running time of almost three hours. The direction from Brian De Palma is clunky and cliché ridden. The soundtrack’s grotesque, grandiose electro-pop marathon gives any discerning listener a headache; and Giorgio Moroder’s synth bursts have dated the movie so badly that – lacking the operatic finesse of a film ten years older – it seems more aged than its gangster-canon predecessor The Godfather. The acting is over-the-top and most of this precipitates from Al Pacino as the malevolent lead character Tony Montana.

Perversely, it’s the combination of these negative elements that cause it to be a classic: The script delivers some of the most memorable and oft-quoted lines in cinema history (“Say ‘hello’ to my little friend!”) and is often cited as one of Stone’s great early achievements. The film never feels long in play and always seems like a good way to while away any afternoon or evening. The music – such as Paul Engemann’s ‘Push It to the Limit’ about chasing the American dollar featuring lo-tech drum machines – characterises the era of the movie so adeptly that it would be impossible to imagine it with any other tuneful splurges. Lead actresses Michelle Pfeiffer and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio give performances that would elevate them both to the status of leading ladies in future films. And Al Pacino’s tragicomic anti-hero Tony Montana has, for better or worse, had movie-goers obsessed with the character since his inception almost thirty years ago.

The continued success of this movie could almost stand as an argument for the idea that a collection of wrongs just might make a right. *****

Review by Matt Henshaw