Weird how I hadn’t seen this one yet. I thought (particularly after the super-obscure Cathy’s Curse) I pretty much knew where all the devil children were I have to admit I was a little disappointed first when I realised Brooke Shields wasn’t the Alice of the title and then when I saw her vanish entirely from the cast within about 15 minutes of the runtime, lol; but it didn’t deter me too much from sticking with it. Shields’ performance has nothing on, say, her work in Pretty Baby a couple of years later, but really none of the performances here are particularly noteworthy – though there’s something particularly haunting about the face of the girl who does play Alice, I’m sure Brooke would’ve done just as serviceable a job.

It’s kind of like Don’t Look Now meets Mystic River at the start, with a tone similar to Mommie Dearest (but maybe that’s just the deceptively innocent sounding title working its incidious charm, hehe). In the end it’s one of those 70s horror movies that “just works” despite its flaws, and I could’ve pretty confidently told you as much before even putting it on. I know that I say that often, but somehow I can’t help it. It’ll be interesting in 20 or 30 years to see if people 20 or 30 years younger than me start saying the same of the crappy teen “horrors” of this decade, that’ll be a real noodlebaker, but for now, I can just repeat what I’ve said before, that though the technical stuff was often sprayed on the wall like so many guts in these productions, they really knew how to up the freakout factor and haunt you, be it with music, images, blood, or sound.

As I said the performances are lacking – it’d be easy to call the whole production frankly shocking, in fact. But such is the story that I’d prefer to call it abysmally stylised. Like Happy Birthday to Me, Bloody Birthday, the Slumber Party and Sleepover Camp movies, I’m even willing to give Black Christmas another shot … it was more worth my time than a lot of things lately.

“He’s right. As a species we’re fundamentally insane.”

I want to get to my Mamma Mia! review so this might end up a bit short and sparse lol. I didn’t know a lot about this movie, had never read the Stephen King novella, and I guess the best way to begin here is to say: if the critics of The Happening were so negative because they were coming straight off the back of seeing this, then, I guess I can understand where they were coming from. If it’s fear, nightmare, social commentary and sheer hopelessness you were looking for, then The Mist is absolutely the movie to plump for.

Like The Happening, this is clearly not without its influences – in fact, if anything they’re only more obvious. The Fog is clearly there; that the movie restrains itself to the confines of a mall only a few minutes in immediately recalls Dawn of the Dead. But from there onward – I really can’t detail it because of the joy I got from not knowing what was coming – it’s really quite on its own.

Anyway, I’ve been a little lax in my movie watching of late due to the overwhelming distraction of TV and Second Life – I haven’t even felt comfortable in watching movies in “background mode” ‘cos my attention’s so much in the virtual world, lol. So I guess it’s high praise for me to say that I couldn’t take my eyes and ears off this one. The business of the opening scenes is superbly handled by Darabont introducing us to all the different characters we’ll be stuck with for the next two hours. When the weird happenings start happening, I was far more unsettled than I was by The Happening. And when the, uh, “other stuff” started happening later on … I really didn’t know whether to laugh or hide, and I did plenty of both.

A lot of people have talked about the ending and how down and unpredictable it is. I have to say, I didn’t find it so much surprising as it was inevitable. You kinda know what’s gonna emerge from the mist when that time comes following the incident everyone’s so shocked by. But that second vehicle that passes … that’s the one that really killed me. It’s still a cornier ending than I expected, rather like that “alternate ending” of the man with the X-Ray eyes when he plucks his eyes out and yells, “OH MY GOD, I can still SEE!” lol … but it’s still handled superbly by Darabont. It’s definitely Halloween viewing, that’s for sure.

“I’ve got something to tell you -”
“Don’t get sentimental now, dad -”
“The floor’s on fire. And the chair!”

The opening of this one is a clunky, cheesy, bitter disappointment after Temple and even after that it takes a while to get going, but I think once I got a severe case of the giggles over the old man/rubber stamp scene I found myself back in the mood that these movies require (it was definitely a good idea to re-acquaint myself with them before seeing the fourth tonight: I’m sure it’ll be awesome but you certainly need to be in the right frame of mind to get the most out of this franchise). Once Sean Connery shows up, of course, the movie enters a league all its own.

It’s a little clinical and clunky in production quality for me in the end, with as many duff notes as there are sweet ones. It feels a lot more like an Indy movie once they get inside the Holy Grail place at the end, and that “Let it go,” line from Connery really caught me offguard, I hope there’s something “deep” like that in the new movie (as well as the insanity of the end of Raiders and the whole of Temple). I’d really take the more iconic original or the joyous second over this any day, but in the end it’s still all good.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull seems, oddly, to look like the best film I’ll have seen so far this year come later on this evening – okay, I haven’t seen much, but there hasn’t been much to see … and it’s Spielberg, I’ve got faith. Though I was never a massive fan of this series, except in that horrid way that young boys are compelled to be rabid about such things, I’m pretty excited about it, so I’m watching the originals in preparation, I’m sure I’m not alone

The thing that I noticed more than ever before watching this installment was just how episodic the script is. I know this was like the whole point, etc, to recreate the old 30s and 40s serials and what-not – but it never before struck me as so crazily disjointed, each segment is its own separate short movie almost.

In so many ways, it’s an un-reviewable film: personally because I seem without ever really trying to have committed the whole darn thing to memory; because the Macfarlane/Groening/etc parodies in the intervening years make it impossible not to smirk in inappropriate places; and generally, because you can’t deny how perfectly iconic it is and how huge an impact it made on movies. John Williams’ score is one of the greatest, Karen Allen is gorgeous (_very_ excited about her being in the new one) and the finale is awesome, even more of a WTF moment, again than I ever recall it being – I mean, the movie’s just so nice and gentle up to that point, lol!

The May Day staple Actually, I’m not sure if I’ve ever actually remembered to watch it on May 1st so this may actually be a first though it’s long been the plan. On this occasion I decided to watch the 15-minute-longer “director’s cut” – it took some deciding but in the end I remembered it’s really just the theatrical cut with deleted scenes spliced in so in a way you wind up watching both at the same time if you’re already familiar with the theatrical version.

I don’t think the extra scenes make a huge amount of difference – though it heightens our understanding of Howie to see him on the mainland at the start, the quality of the scenes (I’m not talking about the grainy nature of the print they had to use, I mean the general acting and production quality which dips below perfect more than a few times during the rest of the film) is the film at its most flawed and hokey. The sooner you get Edward Woodward in the same room as Britt Ekland or Christopher Lee here, the better, ‘cos that’s when all its failings go out of the window as it begins to soar into the ether.

It’s one of those films that can be taken many different ways depending on your outlook on all the fronts it addresses. Whether you’re religious or not, what religion that may be, what your moral views and more happen to be (and if you’re anything like me, all these things will tend to shift wildly over time), the movie will affect you differently, but every different interpretation will be just as extraordinary as the next.

Usually when I watch this movie, while I’m not exactly on the side of the Summerisle residents, I find myself just as against Howie as I am them: because of his stubbornness, it’s almost fun to watch him being made (literally, in the end) a fool of, that is, of course, until it all goes too far at the end. This time, I was struck at the end how everybody actually wins and I found his ending almost a triumph for his faith, a sacrifice as powerful as that of Karras at the end of The Exorcist, even though all control is out of Howie’s hands, he makes his own death into something grander … through his singing, his praying, his resoluteness to the end.

The way we see Howie almost wallowing in his religion throughout the movie, most particularly the struggle we see in him as Willow tempts him through the thin walls of the inn, his end here is almost inevitable and almost the only way he can resolve his devotion to that quite miserable form of religion. He wins because until the very end he insists on his own beliefs, he never gives into temptation; by the rules of his religion, not to mention the law, he’s done right.

Contrast that with, by law, the “murderers” of Summerisle, that horrifying image of Lee and others swinging from side to side joyously singing “Summertime is coming in,”: their end is happier, but it’s really no different from Howie’s. They’re just as trapped by the rules of their religion, and they win too.

It’s a stunningly simple set-up, and for me it works everytime, if sometimes a little differently than expected. As I said, it’s flawed, but there’s so much (I haven’t even mentioned the beautiful songs by Paul Giovanni, it’s one soundtrack I’ll never grow tired of) to make up for the dips in quality.

Wow, there are some pretty awful things said out there about this lol. It seemed like a perfect partner for the Streisand Star is Born and I wasn’t far wrong. I certainly wouldn’t go as far in damning this as some have – even in the area of Neil Diamond’s “performance” I found nothing to really despair over. People have called it bad acting. I’d say, thank god he didn’t act, because, it’s true, he clearly can’t. What he gives in front of the camera is importantly not acting, and I think compared to a lot of so-called “acting” over the years – even, dare I say, some of Streisand’s stuff in the aforementioned Star is Born, deserves the bad-mouthing more – I honestly have to say, he’s not that bad at all. This is one case where the Kermode “I’d rather an actor who can sort of sing than a singer who can sort of act” rule is well-broken in my eyes, maybe because I’d always rather the writer of the songs sang his own songs rather than anybody else … that this in itself is a whole part of the story here makes Diamond the only honest choice for the part.

The only real problem with this movie is, like A Star is Born, the way it feels so by the numbers over the story. The conflict is shattered the moment Diamond’s father gives him his blessing way too early in the game (I haven’t seen the original of this – yes, spank me – but I thought this familial conflict was like the whole point of the story? lol, here it’s like, “no, no, no … oh, okay …”) ... and as such, the great songs notwithstanding, I have to say I was probably moved more by the Krusty the Clown version on The Simpsons lol …

But the songs are great, and it’s great to see Diamond singing them. It deserves to be repeated how great a double bill this and A Star is Born are too. Despite how disappointed I was with both of them, there’s something about the very idea of their existence that makes me know I’ll still do it again one day, probably more than once. They certainly feel like great movies because of the giants behind them, and there are definitely glimmers of their genius that break through the iffy surface.

Nice long first review below so I don’t feel compelled to say too much here this time but to mention how surprised I was that it worked so well a second time. The ending here is probably seen as particularly corny to some, and when I first saw it though it really overwhelmed me I wasn’t sure if it’d just caught me at the right time. I think the reason it looks like it’s actually going to work for me any number of times I see it now comes down to two things: the line that precedes it from the boy, “But this is my story, and this is where I want it to end …”, and all that water. The movie comes down to a child’s hope and water: how beautifully simple can you get? I should also repeat the fact that I should really watch this movie before and after anything featuring James Nesbitt – I’ve really grown to dislike him recently, mostly over the casting of him in the BBC’s “Passion” as Pontius Pilate … but he really is quite amazing here.

September 6th, 2007:

Absolute genius. A quintessential children’s movie (okay, it’s a 12A in the UK, I don’t agree; it gets a little scary towards the end but this so fits the bill alongside old children’s classics that I think it should almost be a U) and a quintessential British movie – addressing poverty, class, religion, the ethnic minorities, all those lovely things – in one. Not to mention the fact it remains at all turns, absolutely, a Danny Boyle film. I’ve yet to see Sunshine, but on the evidence up to now, I’ve got to say, surely Boyle is one of the most consistently brilliant directors not only in the UK but in the whole field.

The basic story is that a few weeks before the UK switches from Pound Sterling to Euros, a young boy discovers a bag stuffed with hundreds of thousands (not millions, but hey, what’s the difference to a child?) and must therefore decide what to do with it before it becomes worthless. If movies like Brewster’s Millions and Blank Cheque come to mind with that set-up, you couldn’t be further off. While all around him seem obsessed to the point of stereotype with football, the kid in question here has this obsession with Catholic Saints reminiscent of Winona Ryder’s character in Mermaids ... he even thinks he can see and talk to them at times (leading to hilarious moments when one of said Saints drops into his cardboard house by the railway for a sneaky joint, lol; or the Geordie Saint Peter telling him, “For Christ’s sake don’t tick them little boxes,” as the kid attempts to send the money to various charities). Against all odds, this kid wants to do good with this money, and is amazed at how hard that is.

I was hooked on this from the moment the Danny Elfman-esque opening music (incidentally, wonderful score all the way through by John Murphy) – coupled with some CGI of a new housing estate being constructed, a bit reminiscent of a Barratt commercial actually, but bizarrely beautiful – struck up, and it only got better from there. It never took the directions I thought it would. At times it’s similar to child fantasy movies like Lawn Dogs or Paperhouse; at times, the influence of much older, earthier things like Whistle Down the Wind is more evident (I have in mind in particular the scenes where the kid and his brother are introducing their school peers to the money; and the long line of homeless people following them to Pizza Hut).

It’s a mesmerising, beautiful movie with much to say about childhood and the state of the world, perhaps best captured best in the abandoned way the hero says to his dad at the end, “Everyone gets robbed at Christmas, dad.” Incidentally, major kudos has to be given to James Nesbitt here. Though I think he’s really talented, he normally manages to do something to annoy me; here, he not only didn’t do that, but he manages to cover up his seemingly uncoverable accent; Daisy Donovan is a delight, too, I had no idea she could act. The kids, it has to be said, aren’t fantastic; but it’s clear that Boyle has almost used their weaknesses to his advantage; again, it’s almost like watching a much older production. This is really a gem, and possible Boyle’s best movie to date.

I don’t think I’ll have seen this since I was about 16 so maybe it makes sense just how much of it felt new to me this time around, not to mention how I couldn’t have hoped to understand it that first time watching. All I really recalled, and even that only partially, was the last 20 minutes or so, the “last temptation” itself – when the movie really deviates and, I guess, causes offense to some. But while this movie even opens with a scroll disclaiming any direct association with the Gospels (and, you’ve gotta give it kudos, warning that it will be more a discussion than a storytelling session), it’s pretty amazing how faithful it is to the big story, right down to details like the guard’s ear in Gethsemene, stuff that’s cut out of other retellings so often that I’d forgotten it entirely since whatever Sunday school type affair taught it to me lol Take that last temptation as a dream sequence, which is I think a perfectly valid interpretation of it, and I really don’t see the offense at all.

For a late Eighties production, it’s gotta be said up front, the production values are beyond astounding. One of the things that struck me most about it this time around is how for some unknown reason it never once feels like by rights it should – that is, not to sound condescending or anything, but, like a bunch of Americans doing the Crucifixion story, lol. It almost wouldn’t have felt out of place if Robert De Niro had shown up in a key role here. There’s just something about the way Scorsese pulls it all together, Peter Gabriel’s score over the top, I don’t know. I don’t know if the fact that even David Bowie makes a better Pontius Pilate here than James Nesbitt in the recent BBC production is indicative of just how awful that Beeb casting was (like we need more proof – I was thinking just this afternoon how the only way they could possibly have made their production original would be to finally have a black Jesus …) or again of how surprisingly well this production falls together considering the elements.

At the center of that “bunch of Americans” is Willem Dafoe, and I think in him I may have found my personal favourite movie Jesus. I believe him, to a frightening extent. I’ve always said that I’m more a fan of the musical versions of this story, but this version quite literally overwhelmed me at times. It’s the way in which it brings logic to the table with almost insane calculation – he was a carpenter, we’ve heard, but this suggests he may have built the very crosses he and his fellow Jews were crucified on; when he preaches to a crowd, this version gives him dissenters, not unanimous adulation; when he carries the cross, it’s only part of the cross, when he’s crucified, he’s bone naked; even when it comes to those last ethereal 20 minutes or so, the logic applied takes my breath away … that God would kill Mary, that Saul/Paul would invent the Jesus we know of even if he had fallen to that last temptation. This production has the kind of issues behind it that all religious movies should have – it’s the questioning we all have for it all. It shows what, perhaps, Jesus really sacrificed up there on the cross.

I know that last sentence makes me sound way too much like the kind of religious nut I can’t stand; the weird thing of all this is that I don’t consider myself religious in the slightest – like Jesus says here, “God is not an Israelite!” and too many people claim him for themselves, and that’s my problem so I just say there’s a Higher Power and that’s that, you don’t need to run around doing anything for it, just know that it’s there and try to work in its favour etc. That said, and I think I’ve said it before and will say it again, when the Jesus stories are done well, I can really get involved with it all. When he speaks of love here, for instance, I get it. When the people run from him to kill the people he has said are wrong and he yells after them, “Not death! I said love!” I get it. It really makes me wonder if we’re reaching a similar point now when so few people are willing to love in lieu of cynicism and suspicion. Is anyone gonna stand up at the 11th hour and risk making an ass of themselves to save us? It’s a movie I know that now it’s really in me – I almost don’t even count that first viewing as a teenager as really seeing it – is going to haunt me as long as my brain’s ticking.