A major point of reference for a lot of the reviews of this has been The Da Vinci Code so it’s a real wonder I even sat through it in the end, let alone that at best I found it far more enjoyable than the Dan Brown adaptation. It’s still a ridiculous pile of nonsense whose only real conclusion is “nobody knows anything” and which outstays its welcome long after you’ve said, “Yeh, I get it,” thirty times – but I was pretty hooked on the screen for at least two thirds of the duration. John Hurt is typically fantastic (the opening monologue is a true indication of how the rest of the movie will be and it’s down to him alone that I didn’t burst out laughing over it), Elijah Wood is okay outside of a few very weird accent and dialogue slips (he’s actually American in the movie, it should be easy enough, but it’s like the Oxford setting and co-stars are getting to him or something, and not in that believable way that his character has just been there awhile), and I quite liked the music. Nothing special but if you like the genre you’ll no doubt be happy enough.

“She was only the dead-leaf echo of the nymphet from long ago – but I loved her, this Lolita, pale and polluted and big with another man’s child. She could fade and wither – I didn’t care. I would still go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of her face.”

First thing that must be said here is how much funnier this is than I ever remember it. The two adaptations of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel are usually separated quite cleanly as “Kubrick funny and Lyne serious” but it’s really nowhere near as simple as that. There are tons of laughs in this version, particularly early on as the game begins in the Haze household. “Is she keeping you up?” Charlotte asks Hum after his and Lo’s first intimate moment, and later, “Just slap her hard if she interferes with your scholarly meditations.” This humour continues throughout the film, usually undercutting any potential discomfort caused by the underage sex etc. (the sleeptalking at the Enchanted Hunters, eg.). The movie kind of snaps in two at the moment when Humbert tells Lo about her mother and the first scene of her crying (some of the most gutwrenching crying ever put on film, I might add, I can hardly bear it no matter how many times I watch the movie) – but even after that the laughs are horrifyingly infectious – the riotous start to the “road trip” portion of the story, for instance, with Lo flinging hairgrips and such at Humbert from the back seat makes one entirely forget just exactly what is going on and indeed what just happened.

Ennio Morricone’s score (it’s the tragic atonal notes that kill me), Jon Hutman’s production design (and/or Chris Shriver’s art direction – I’ve never been able to differentiate between the two roles, lol), Howard Atherton’s cinematography, and Judianna Makovsky’s costume design all deserve individual mention – the production design in particular, though. It’s the motels that stand out of course (“Children under 14 free!”) but the details of the props, from whiskey glasses to the Magic Fingers to the whole damn interior of the car are amazing too, everything has a weighty, tangible believability to it. Lyne’s imagery is virtually flawless, it’s certainly a leap from his 80s thrillers anyway; the introduction to Lolita in the garden is just as arresting as that in the ‘62 movie, and that’s really no mean feat to accomplish. Such things as the grotesque shot of Quilty’s hand “fingering” the dog leash jar occasionally but it all contributes to the uneasy balance of light and dark. Looking at the nominations for the 1998 Oscars (or even ‘99, when the movie was nominated for some more minor accolades), it’s a genuine shame that this movie ultimately got such a messy release, because in the minor categories it could’ve had a serious shot (I’m always amused, however, when I’m reminded that Dominique Swain and Jeremy Irons were nominated for Best Kiss at the MTV Movie Awards :))

Unlike many (and I’ve said this many times before, hopefully I’m not boring anyone with repetition) I’ve a huge place in my heart for both Lolita adaptations. They’re just entirely different films as the novel is a different work too. I have no great desire as some do to see it done “correctly” or from Nabokov’s own screenplay (which I have but haven’t yet read) though of course I’d watch such a thing in a flash and probably build yet another cavern of love in my chest for that too.

I have to include just one more quote in this review, I could honestly fill a page with them though – it’s the one that ends the movie and what always brings me back to regarding it as every bit as good an adaptation as Kubrick’s no matter where it may stumble along the way:

“What I heard then was the melody of children at play. Nothing but that. And I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita’s absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that chorus.”

Both quotes are almost straight from the novel, albeit shortened; both are beautiful and really get to the heart of why Lolita is so much more than it’s often unfortunately mistaken for. It’s been too long since I actually read the novel, I read it almost every year for a while but I can’t seem to find the time to read these days. Watching this, however, not to mention searching an e-text for those particular lines and finding the glorious expanded versions of them, definitely made me want to find time. Anyone who hasn’t read it at least once should feel even more compelled.

Hmph. Figures. I thought this was gonna be the old Brian De Palma movie but it turns out to be a remake thereof that I’ve never heard of lol. I watched anyway since the cast list includes Chloe Sevigny and Stephen Rea, and to be honest there are a lot of moments here where I could easily have been convinced – especially considering his recent output prior to Redacted – that it was at the least a much older movie, and at best directed by De Palma himself. I haven’t seen the original so I don’t know if it’s one of his movies that displays the stylish Hitchcock homagery he shortly thereafter became known for, but that’s what I’m referring to here at least. This is all well and good, and makes for an interesting 90 minutes … but I’m just left wondering exactly what the point of it was.

In any case, it’s better than a piece of crap – any time I find myself gasping, “Oh my god” over the gore content of a scene is always a good thing. To be perfectly honest, the ending of this thing feels more like the good old Seventies than anything I’ve seen outside the decade itself, right down to the Rosemary’s Baby ish score. I’ll happily watch it again – though after I get around to seeing the original, I promise.

This movie is basically a giant nauseous leap into the cesspool that was the burgeoning media-driven culture of the Nineties that has by no means yet been flushed away. I watched the “Chaos Rising” mini-doc on the DVD for the umpteenth time after this viewing and in it Oliver Stone says how it’s the product of 2 years in which he was simply “disgusted” by what was happening in the world and really, that’s the best summation of the movie that you could ask for. It’s a movie that just boils with bile at a world that is, it’s so often hard to deny, going to hell. Even 14 years on it still feels perfectly relevant, not least because there are still hoards of people who think of it as just a piece of ultraviolent cinema.

The tone of that first “I Love Mallory” sitcom flashback still astonishes me – it feels so much like any sitcom, but the presence of Woody Harrelsson and Rodney Dangerfield, almost comedy icons in themselves, yet with those evil looks in their eyes, the words coming out of their mouths and the crucial intercutting with the “real” black and white stuff like Dangerfield fondling Juliette Lewis’ butt, it’s just simultaneously horrible yet fascinating to have the world laid bare in such a way.

It’s photographed by Robert Richardson. Whenever I see his name on a movie now it’s this movie that immediately springs to mind and the one I most associate with him – the horses, wolves, dust, clouds, and of course, the multiple film stocks … never used as a gimmick, always perfectly relevant to the scene in question.

On top of all this is Trent Reznor’s soundtrack. I still remember the day when my family were on the proper cliché family holiday in Orlando in 1997 and we went to the Florida Mall and my eyes were peeled specifically for this movie and The Exorcist on VHS (they still hadn’t been released here yet – I’m sure Clockwork Orange, Straw Dogs, Texas Chain Saw, Pretty Baby and even Kubrick’s Lolita were in the back of my mind too though), yet my heart first leapt on finding the mere soundtrack to the movie, and I’ll never forget the guy at the counter who sold it to me ‘cos it was like one of those first times a random adult (sue me, I personally feel blessed that I still felt like a kid at 17 lol) had spoken to me like I was just a regular person, and he said something along the lines of, “This CD rocks, I have it in my car all the time, it’s just like watching the movie,” which of course I didn’t know what he meant at the time because I hadn’t seen the movie yet, but it’s absolutely true, that soundtrack is one of the greatest of all time – both standalone and in the context of the movie, from the 50s “Back in Baby’s Arms” through Bob Dylan’s “You Belong to Me” right up to Reznor’s own “Burn” and “Something I Can Never Have”, the dialogue frequently cut into it almost rhythmically, my favourite of those moments being the Nixon, “As I leave,” during the Leonard Cohen “Waiting for a Miracle” opening (“There are lots of invitations …” “As I leave …”).

It’s just a brilliant, blistering assault that really defies any attempt to summarise as I’d like to do here. But I would just say, I should probably watch it more as the very world it portrays disgusts me more as time goes by. Those closing moments, the flicking between the channels, really caught me off guard this time around and they’re about the most crushing moments in a whole 2 hours of horrific acts. That this was so long before the rolling news that covered things like 9/11 (which Stone himself arguably overly sanitized in World Trade Center) is nothing short of a terrifying marvel.

Can’t help but mention Kermode yet again on this movie, but what can say, his review was probably his best since whenever it was he last spoke at length on The Exorcist, lol. Three times really is the charm on this movie, and I’m glad I didn’t feel compelled to try and write anything on the second viewing on Oscar day.

The second or third time is the time you’ll watch this movie and actually start to realise how packed with potential interpretations it is. There’s the look between Day-Lewis and his son after first encountering Paul Dano’s Eli. The first time I saw this look, I hadn’t really cottoned on to the fact that it was a separate character to Paul at the start (that realisation alone could save you a whole viewing, so pay attention). This time I saw it entirely from Day-Lewis’ side; in relation to his powerful stance on family matters; he simply realises how much Eli looks like his brother … something he’ll never see in his son, just as later when duped by an imposter, it’s the kind of thing that crushes the seemingly uncrushable Daniel Plainview. Well, that and religion. Who knows what I’ll see in that look the next time I see it.

There’s the sweeping shot of the barebones railroad town following the scene with Paul, that beautifully minimal Jonny Greenwood loop playing over as the camera pans from an empty railroad, past the empty platform, all the while following Plainview’s little motorcar that seemingly appears out of nowhere, completely selling us the space in which the rest of the movie will play out.

Someone criticised me in my review of Sunshine for calling Danny Boyle the new Kubrick. Though I still stand by that statement in terms of the quality of that movie, repeat viewing notwithstanding – and even though apparently the movie Paul Thomas Anderson watched most during the creation of this marvel was actually a John Huston movie, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre – I have to say, if it’d been shown to me at random without credits, I could have been fooled more easily into believing this was somehow Kubrick’s lost last masterpiece before believing it was made by the Paul Thomas Anderson that made Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Punch-Drunk Love. Just the 2001-like opening, that oil-slicked rod completely reminding me of the monolith with all the eerie primal meanderings that preceed it, and the symmetrical, theatrical finale in the bowling alley, nevermind what falls in between. It’s pure perfection. But watch it 3 times – the first time with as little interruption as humanly or even inhumanly possible.

Addendum: I almost forgot the one thing I really wanted to say in this review what with my mood of late. I noticed reading the old review how even I got fooled into following the herd and describing this as a very masculine movie below, for which I can only apologise. Do not assume that because it’s mainly populated by penis-bearers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that this means it’s necessarily a “man’s movie”. As far as I understood it this time around, I can’t imagine a more anti-male film. It’s all about the destructive nature of greed, self-righteousness, pride … that is, of being that horrendous stereotype associated with the Y chromosome. Even I won’t deny the unfortunate truth of gender stereotypes in history ... I only ask that people don’t let them influence their expectations of the future. I guess if you view everything in terms of sex and gender you won’t be able to help seeing it so; but you’d do a lot better to view it simply as cinema that’s true to its world. (Addendum addendum?: I hope she doesn’t mind me mentioning it if she reads this but I was really buoyed by my sister saying she never once considered the lack of female characters in the movie.)

February 19th 2008:

I was lucky enough to (through no effort on my part, honest, it just kinda happened; I’m not that much of a nut lol) pretty much follow Mark Kermode’s advice on how to watch this movie verbatim – that is, almost empty cinema (about 3 other people in there with me I think, lol), decent sized screen, central seat (five rows back – can’t believe I used to obsessively want to be as close to the screen as possible, it’s a wonder I didn’t break my neck) ... and believe me, I’m glad I saw it like this. It does demand, at the least, your full attention. Usually I’d shun such advice – I always say a great film will grab my attention despite the attention I give it, the screen size, etc – but for Paul Thomas Anderson following his last hat trick of masterpieces? I’ll pretty much do anything.

I’ve said a few times since the nominations that this would probably be the film I ended up rooting for at the Oscars. That this film makes No Country for Old Men look positively mainstream pretty much ends any real hope I had that it had a chance, lol – I’m actually inclined now to think it’ll be Juno or Clayton that takes the gold, so similar and difficult are this troublesome pair.

This film and No Country for Old Men (Assassination of Jesse James perhaps completing the threefer) are like a characteristically perverse inversion of the old “waiting for a bus” thing – you’re waiting around for hours and then three show up at once. I don’t think anyone was particularly “waiting around for” these movies last year – except in that vague, ongoing way we’re always wanting something to blow us away and change the way we look at film. Yet show up they did anyway, and demanded to be seen. I’d love to know if the film makers concerned were aware that what they were doing wasn’t so unique – the whole thing’s like a mini New Wave to me.

If you noticed I’m babbling, it’s ‘cos I know it will take another viewing for me to feel like I know what I’m talking about on this one – it was churning around in my mind and slotting itself together even as I was walking home, and I think there are still a few things I surely missed. What I can say is, from the moment Daniel Day Lewis’ pickaxe first thwacks into that rock, it’s like Paul Thomas Anderson was doing the same thing to my skull – it’s really a movie that gets inside your skin … in fact, more than that, in this case you almost get inside its skin. And I guess I do now understand why this movie has unfortunately been seemingly reduced to nothing but Day Lewis’ performance in critics’ and awards circles. You come away from the movie almost feeling like some of him has rubbed off on you in some strange cinematic transference. He’s almost the ultimate anti-hero: almost in that by the time the movie’s over, though you know exactly why he did the things he did, you’d really be forgiven for not having a shred of forgiveness for him.

But it’s not just Day Lewis’ movie. Paul Dano, Dillon Freasier and all the supporting cast are perfect; Jonny Greenwood’s score, like Nick Cave’s for Jesse James in fact, is no iPod material in its dissonance but perfect support for Anderson’s imagery (No Country of course had no music so there’s another thing that ties these films together), and the sound ... I thought No Country’s sound was good, but, again that pickaxe, just wow … if it wins any Oscar outside of Day Lewis, and I hope it does, then I hope at least it’s that one.

Like I said, it’s gonna take at least another viewing for me to truly put it all together – and I’ve never been more excited about seeing a film a second time in my life … could even be the first time I see a movie more than once on the big screen in a long time if my multiplex still has it next week. BTW I can also understand how some people will absolutely hate the movie – as a PTA fan even I felt twinges of disappoint over how it lacks the slickness particularly of Boogie Nights and Magnolia. Kermode compared it most to Punch-Drunk Love and I’d agree – the scene around the son’s accident, score and all, reminded me completely of that movie’s most chaotic moments, particularly in the music department. It’s still a very different Paul Thomas Anderson though – I’d almost not even know it was his movie if I weren’t told … a few themes carry through, but visually it’s much grittier. It’s incredibly, almost repulsively masculine, too – which, if you know me, make the fact that (I think – that 5th heart is still pending) I love it even more of a testament to how good this film is.

I had a feeling this would be better a second time, but I don’t know where to begin describing the sensation I felt walking home today. Sometimes, just sometimes, it’s really worth seeing a movie on the largest screen you can find. I’m sure that’s the opposite of what I’ve said elsewhere but hey, I’m saying it.

I had my eyes on Johnny Depp for pretty much the whole movie this time – projected larger than life his performance is even more outstanding than I’d first thought, and though I’d pretty much been swung over to the Daniel Day Lewis camp earlier today seeing some clips from There Will Be Blood, I couldn’t have swung back harder or faster. It’s not just the singing and the face and the accent; what captivated me more than anything here were the full-length shots of Johnny … the way he walks and carries himself, he’s like a silent movie star, it’s all Sweeney and though he’s on the screen almost constantly, I wanted even more of him just standing, brooding.

On occasion my gaze did shift, though, to the other actors; particularly Helena Bonham-Carter, who is also much better than I’d previously thought … watching her just through the “Not While I’m Around” scene, right up to her closing the door on Toby in the bakehouse, is just about as mesmerising and gutwrenching as watching Depp for the rest of the film’s duration.

It is slightly more violent than I’d perceived the first time around (though I’d still stand by what I said about the BBFC – and I was glad to hear Mark Kermode saying much the same a couple of weeks ago on Five Live), but as many have said already, it borders about as much on the ridiculously comic as it’s possible to do without veering completely into nonsense and making a mockery of the rest of the drama; the roll-on effect being that when those crucial deaths occur in the final act, your focus is entirely on the higher meaning of the deaths, and about as far removed from the shower of blood as I think has ever been seen in such a bloody movie.

I didn’t spot Anthony Head’s brief appearance the first time either – it’s truly blink and you’ll miss it, lol. I think he was originally to be one of those who sang “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd” – which I guess I also want to mention again. I’ve grown to love this exclusion – it’s beautiful as underscore and really, as I said in the earlier review, I missed “Kiss Me” much more than anything else. And even that exclusion is still a minor drawback, which along with the slightly hokey, “That’s all very well …” line following “Epiphany” (it’s in the trailer too), is far from enough to counter the fact that this movie is really, quite jawdroppingly, perfect.

7th January, 2008:

NB. I’ve decided to post this now, it’s been sort of hanging back till I see it “properly” ‘cos, as with Rent, my opinion after a first watch felt very muddled but having listened to the soundtrack again the other night, I remembered the one reason I think it really is as good as I wanted it to be and that’s that, basically, it reaches that same crushingly beautiful hollow in the end that I remember from the first time I saw the show / listened to the cast recordings / whatever. I can’t wait to see it again, definitely a birthday present to look forward to
———————-

I can’t begin this review without pointing out how ultimately I couldn’t help but approach it on a first viewing the same way I did the Rent movie. It felt almost like a chore, like, I almost just wanted to get the watching of it “out of the way” so I could watch it again if that makes any sense. I wanted to know what was missing, what was new, what was changed, etc, so I could amend my perspective or whatever to get the most out of it. Subsequent viewings of movies like this will always be more enjoyable than the first for me – I don’t like unpleasant surprises much Not that there are many here, I hasten to add (the clue is in the star rating if I start to sound like I was disappointed).

I guess I’m surprised now having seen it how universal the praise has been. It’s by no means as conventional an adaptation as they could’ve made it, and the cuts are just as unexpected (“Green Finch and Linnet Bird”, to my joy, remains; while “The Ballad” is used only for instrumental underscore). I love how young Toby is now and Ed Sanders, who plays him, is incredible in the part. And while I’m on the supporting cast I may as well mention Sacha Baron Cohen as Pirelli … even more perfect than I imagined he’d be.

Then there’s the gore. I’m baffled and a little annoyed by having just read that it has been rated ‘18’ here in the UK. To me it makes little sense – even if it’d actually been as violent as I’d been led to expect (which it isn’t) ... there is no sex (even the beggar woman’s bawdy taunts are gone – though they’re there on the soundtrack …), no bad language (*edit*: okay, the “s” word but that’s still PG material …), nothing but blood here for the BBFC to be offended by. And though the ‘18’ certificate isn’t quite the kiss of death the NC-17 rating is in the US, I still think that stopping under-18s from seeing a movie like this … I mean it’s Sondheim for heck’s sake … it sends out the wrong message entirely about what the BBFC’s purpose is. I hope a few councils think to overrule it and let a few school trips get in or something.

Of course, I can’t end this review without mentioning Johnny Depp I’d seen bits and pieces of the performance and couldn’t resist sneaking a few tracks of the soundtrack prior to watching the movie, and I knew that the gruff bellowing rage of George Hearn etc was pretty much gone, replaced with Depp’s beautiful but admittedly thin voice. In the context of the whole product, though, there’s far more surprises in his singing than I expected. He actually does come close to the roar of the stage Sweeneys in places, and when he holds the soaring, swooping higher notes, especially alongside Alan Rickman on “Pretty Women”, it’s absolute heaven. The harmonising on the part of the other actors is really impressive too.

See, kind of a flat review and I’m afraid I might sound like I was slightly bored by the movie. Like I said, it was the first look. My anticipation for this movie was massive, I pretty much knew how much I was going to love it. It’s been like a present sitting under the Christmas tree, like I know what it is, I really want it, and now I’ve opened it I’m just looking forward to playing with it again later. If that makes any sense, lol.

One thing I will say is that despite all the buzz etc, and I’ll be continuing my little corner of support for it, I’d be astonished if this was nominated for a lot of Oscars let alone winning any – I keep seeing other hopefuls and just about everytime I find another category I feel Sweeney will be shut out of … even Johnny in the end. It just really doesn’t strike me as that kind of movie, not from any angle I look at it, and there are so many other movies that, no matter what I think, are gonna get a hell of a lot more votes. Like I said – don’t get me wrong, I love it – I’m just kinda surprised that so many other people do too. It seems so grey and grim to me to be getting such love as it is. I feel like they could’ve used the crossover aspects better – the Sondheim fans, the Johnny fans, the gore hounds – they could’ve made it 2 and a half hours, they could’ve really used the Johnnyness, and despite what people are saying .. it could be gorier.

Yes – I’m giving it 5 stars, it’s at the top of my 2007 list, and I’m sitting here saying it could’ve been better, lol. But, like Rent was still “Rent”, y’know: it’s still “Sweeney Todd”. It might not be as definitive a version of the show as I’d hoped for – it feels a little too fast in places jumping from scene to scene (“Kiss Me” would’ve been a particularly helpful inclusion I think towards the end) but it still knocks the socks off anything else seen in the past year. All I can think could be the reason for its success is the thought of those who have never seen or heard of Sweeney Todd. When I think of those people, I almost literally turn green with envy. I guess going into this movie that way, as perhaps many have … that would be a pretty astonishing experience … which is exactly why I’ll be taking the family for my birthday “thing” in February

I’m not sure I got as much out of this as some, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t more gripped from start to finish than I was during pretty much any given movie of the past year (okay, maybe 30 Days just pips it). The chase here is extraordinarily visceral, delivering bucketloads of the kind of jumpy shock most movies can lay claim to just a handful of with just about every gunshot and jolt having an impact. I hope that if this movie does get the Oscar nominations everyone’s buzzing about, it’s included in the sound categories too.

I guess I’ve got to be honest and say if there’s a reason I’m left a little empty by the movie, it’s ‘cos it lacks two things which, it you look at my faves, are kind of important to me: heart and music. So it’s not the movie’s fault at all as these two absences are highly deliberate. But it’s very rare a movie without one or both those things can do a thing for me – whereas this one did plenty – so don’t be discouraged by my 4-star rating. Though this movie comes close to that box of movies last year that were technically perfect but delivered nothing “beyond” for me, it never quite gets in.

Javier Bardem is one of the creepiest killers ever to walk the screen and his modus operandi is truly the stuff of nightmares (it’s when you see him open doors with it that makes it even worse). There’s plenty here to bring me back for a second viewing, when I’m sure it might grow on me just as Fargo (which I didn’t get at all on the first view) did. Right now, I do think calling it the Coens’ “best ever!” is a bit of a stretch – I mean, come on, they had about a decade long string of instant modern classics up to Fargo – but it is eons above Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty.

Watched for Jodelle Ferland, of course; and I don’t think I’ve ever felt so like a sucker for watching a movie for such a reason, lol. Jodelle is in this I think frame for frame even less than she was in The Messengers. I guess at least she’s a girl in this one? (still playing the glad game from Pollyanna I guess LOL)

It’s just a really generic TV movie and not worth talking about much at all. It doesn’t even end well, it just kinda stops, lol. Not worth keeping or seeing again even for Jodelle.