Posts Tagged ‘terrorism’

Red State

Red State

Friday, September 2nd, 2011

“Simple just shit itself…”

If my reviews are ever helpful to anyone but myself, I can guarantee this won’t be one of them, as it’s one of the kind I pretty much already had written in my head the minute I heard about the film, and it’s only developed as the past year or so has gone onwards. From the spark of “Kevin Smith is gonna do a horror movie” to the whole rush of the SModcast network and his radio station – even a whole podcast series of Q&As about this very film – it’s sort of a miracle that I still came to this movie not really knowing exactly what to expect.

As high as my expectations were, they were matched a massive fear of disappointment, in which case I would have written much here about the fact that after listening to Smith, his family and friends for the last 6 months (I still haven’t missed a single episode of Per Diem or Get Jobs, and I listen to all but a couple of the podcasts as avidly), the movie feels something like a home movie, with Ralph Garman as a mute bad guy, Smith’s wife Jen in a small role, and the likes of Michael Parks, John Goodman, and Kevin Pollak, whose performances Smith has barely been able to contain himself over (they’re the reason behind the recent Academy qualifying theatrical run of the movie in LA).

So the main part of this review is this: I’m overjoyed to say that with my frankly unfair expectations for this project after Cop Out and Zack and Miri failed to turn me on (tho, again, having listened to Smith I understand the part those films played in his grand scheme), it didn’t disappoint me at all. This film isn’t just a gargantuan leap over Smith’s last two films, it’s a complete departure from anything he’s ever done.

I reserve one heart in my rating this first viewing because quite honestly, by the time the credits rolled, I still didn’t know what to think. I sat through the whole of this movie with my mouth slightly agape, simply a slave to the wonderful fact that despite having been exposed to so much talk about it over the past year, I had no f-ing clue where it was headed next. John Goodman and Michael Parks’ performances steal the show completely, it’d be a great film if was just theirs, but Smith handles his action sequences with a confidence I don’t think anybody would’ve seen previously in his abilities as a film maker. The gore is minimal but thrillingly inventive, with even the stuff you may see coming a mile away coming from just enough of another angle to tickle the senses. This is a movie I look forward to seeing again and again, and if Kevin Smith fulfils his promise that his final movie, the 2-part Hit Somebody, will be even better, than I’m honestly frightened about how much that one will blow me away. I’ll be honest, I don’t care how silly it sounds: I feel oddly proud of the dude about this one… he pulled off what he set out to do beyond anyone’s doubts or expectations… that’s literally all there is to say…

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Sabotage aka The Woman Alone

Sabotage aka The Woman Alone

Thursday, October 14th, 2010

As I said in my review of Secret Agent, I was almost ready to write a very similar review of this to the one I wrote for that. The story begins similarly broad and vague, the characters not refined or focused enough. But though it’s not as joyful as The 39 Steps (though there’s a few humorous touches, like the grumpy woman in the pet store) it makes up for that in being quite wonderfully heavy. I’d quite forgotten that Hitchcock ever was this heavy prior to The Wrong Man (NB. I wrote this before watching Lifeboat again – wow).

The story, simply put, is about terrorism in London and its effects on those who survive. Of course, there’s more to it than that, but I struggle to view this movie in anything but purely emotional terms. The film is most famous for its central scene where a young boy carries a bomb across London on a bus. Hitchcock famously spoke of this scene as being a failure for him, because he allowed the bomb to go off, betraying his usual rules of suspense and surprise. One really wonders what the point of the movie would have been had the bomb not gone off and taken the child with it. For around this central sequence is built a pure, exhausting tragedy the likes of which you simply don’t expect from cinema this early. For a 75 minute movie to have such emotional weight is nothing short of astonishing.

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Juno and the Paycock

Juno and the Paycock

Thursday, September 30th, 2010

This is another awkward title in watching one’s way through Hitchcock in that there are no real official releases of it so the available ones remain both hard to find in the first place and then hard to watch due to their quality. For those who might be interested, I found it worth the cost of this set for Juno… and the previously reviewed Easy Virtue, even despite having no need for the other 18 films in the set (the bonus trailers are nice too, and it doesn’t take up much shelf space).

While certainly not exactly “true” Hitchcock, I was pleased to find this more watchable than I’d been led to believe. The acting, by the same Irish Players company that originally did it as a play onstage, is the best in any of his work up to that point (an unfair observation, perhaps, as he had only done one other talkie). Some of the reviews that had made me apprehensive had taken issue with the Irish accents, and I’d taken that to mean that it was perhaps non-Irish actors putting on marginally offensive or just plain bad Irish brogues, but I guess these reviewers were simply from parts of the world that made the dialogue simply difficult for them to follow.

The story concerns a poor Irish family that come into an inheritance, spend it before it’s received, and then discover that they received false information and there is no inheritance. The whole thing ends in tragedy beyond any financial loss, however.

There’s but one moment that struck me as a “true Hitchcock” moment but I leave it till the end of this review as I can’t find other reference to it anywhere so can’t be sure of what I saw… please let me know in the comments if you saw it too. It’s very close to the start of the film, when shots are fired in a crowd. They disperse rapidly, and there’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cut to what I’m sure is literally a rat running up a drainpipe. It made me giggle, but not for long as, like I say, I can’t be sure that’s really what it was meant to be lol.

It’s relatively inessential, particularly in the grand scheme of its director’s filmography, but provided you can cope with the accents I find it a perfectly interesting look at Irish life. It could’ve been an hour longer and still have been pleasant background to my ears. That it ends with such force is a surprising, if draining, bonus.

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Four Lions

Four Lions

Wednesday, September 29th, 2010

“I swear… I may ask you to blow yerself up, but I’ll never ask you to piss in your own mouth.”
“No more widdle in me gob? Rubber dingy rapids?”
“Rubber dingy rapids, brother.”

I have to admit the first time I watched this I was left a little disappointed having expected not so much “more” as plain “different” from it. It’s a movie that may require some adapting to, and I must recommend you also watch it again if you “don’t get it” the first time (yes, I hate being told to do that too).

I’m one of those who felt that the Brass Eye “Paedogeddon” special was the culmination of everything Chris Morris had done to that point and I figured that after such a long break from anything like it, his feature film debut would somehow be even more abrasive and controversial. Despite “making light” about Muslim terrorist cells, even now having seen it a second time, I’m still not convinced it goes far enough.

The problem for me here is that while, yes, it’s very funny in places, the comedy in no way diffuses the fear that these people thrive on. If anything, the more hapless and disorganised these people become, the more frightening the threat is that they pose. It’s like watching a toddler pick up a loaded gun. Perhaps this was Morris’ intention, but it doesn’t make sense to me. Once they start playing with explosives – the exploding crow notwithstanding – maybe it’s just me, but the tension made it impossible to laugh anymore. If I was in the company of anyone who laughed at the later explosions in this movie, I’d frankly be very uncomfortable indeed, even if it was just nervous laughter.

This is where my review gets confused. Because up to this paragraph is really how I felt the first time I watched it. But there I was watching it the second time: and there I was, in spite of myself, laughing at what I’ll only refer to as the “Heimlich explosion” towards the end even while still feeling horrified by what I was seeing. There’s another side effect to this weird oscillation between near slapstick comedy and harsh reality, though, and that’s how sad the lost souls who find themselves pulled into this world while not even understanding what they’re doing or why they’re doing it become. When one of the gang looks at the police surrounding him at the end and quite honestly states, “I’m sorry lads – I don’t really know what I’m doin‘…” there’s a kind of tragic poignancy that takes a lot of building towards that Chris Morris handles as deftly as only he could.

I felt like the truly great Chris Morris stuff, however, didn’t show here until the end credits roll. It’s here, after all is said and done, with no possible way of wrapping up logically what he’s trying to say, that Morris offers up a series of bizarre clippings that simply nod to the madness of this situation we’re in. A terrorist leader is interviewed in a metal box, within a warehouse, in the middle of nowhere; the middle of nowhere is an RAF base, the warehouse is US territory, and the box is somehow Egypt; the interviewer holds up a Weetabix biscuit and tells the terrorist, “We know a lot more than you think we know.” A news reader reports on the closing incidents of the story, stating, “Police shot the right man, but the wrong man exploded.” It’s this absurdity that I love most from Morris and it’s great to see it at all here, albeit it only in the end credits.

This is a movie that makes it hard to know at times whether to laugh or cry, despite certainly having distinct parts that are definitely funny and parts that are definitely sad – it’s a movie that provokes discussion at the same time as being relatively simplistic at times, and that’s pretty hard to balance. In the grand scheme of Chris Morris’ career I’m not certain it comes close to even a few minutes of the Brass Eye special, but that’s as unfair as comparisons come. It’s certainly always good to know movies like this can be made, but I’m very unlikely to watch it again. All I can really say is, you’ll have to find out what you think for yourself.

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The Visitor

The Visitor

Monday, February 16th, 2009

Richard Jenkins is an actor who I’ve never seen turn in a bad performance, and I had him down a few years ago for an Oscar nomination in North Country so it was very good news to me indeed when I heard he got nominated for this, of which I’d heard very little. I managed to avoid any story or even production information right up until watching it now, aside from the name of the director, Thomas McCarthy, whose only other film to date The Station Agent I liked very much. So, I didn’t know exactly what I was coming to here, but I had a pretty good suspicion it would be good stuff.

What I got is an experience that seems to be getting more hauntingly sad the more I think about it. The story concerns illegal immigrants in New York but, as the Oscar nod might suggest, centers around the unlikely character Jenkins portrays. I love how his immediate behaviour – that is, allowing what amounts to an intruder to stay the night in his apartment, joining a line of more Eastern-looking drummers busking on the street, etc – from the outset here is never questioned although you always think such questioning might be around the corner from the looks he’s occasionally given. This is a picture of a perfectly functional multi-cultural society, but one that runs into a brick wall once the authorities step in; as they do, leading the film to a conclusion that will certainly spark discussion. I wanted so bad for this movie to have a happy turn at its close like the slightly similar (though more extreme) Dirty Pretty Things instead it slings you out with a grimace on your face much like Jenkins in his showstopping scene at the detention centre, feeling powerless at only knowing, “It’s Not Fair.” I don’t know if I got anything from the movie except this powerful feeling of injustice, but the film certainly doesn’t dally in delivering this simple message, and Jenkins more than deserves the nomination – I thought the score at times was pretty great two, mixing the piano of his deceased wife with the primal drums of his awakening to the fact that there’s more to life than pretending to be busy all the time.

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Zeitgeist / Zeitgeist Addendum

Zeitgeist / Zeitgeist Addendum

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti, just one of the many great quotes these two documentaries are packed with.

This might not be a favourable comparison to some but – trust me I mean it well, I think – these reminded me a lot of What the Bleep do We Know? and its sequel Down the Rabbit Hole. I don’t have a lot to say about either, so I’m combining them into the one review.

Don’t let the lack of wordage here make you think I thought as little of them – there’s information in these four hours that make them certainly worth watching at least once by every man, woman and child on the planet. Many, as I did, will find a lot information they already had from other sources – for me personally, I’m a total liberal anyway so I gobble up information like this, I watch Colbert, the Daily Show, South Park, I listen to This American Life and Radio Lab, so a lot of what’s said here has already been “revealed” to me either in pure fact as here or just as part of a joke.

What has to be said about these documentaries, as often happens with these kinds of things, kind of hangs around that very word “documentary”. Like the What the Bleep films, the whole thing is just so one-sided and utopian (ahem … “weapons of mass creation,” I mean, come on …) you’d be a fool not to take them with a very large and healthy scoop of salt and skepticism. When, as here, they use footage of and quotes from Carl Sagan, the requirement for a baloney detection kit should be even more of a no-brainer. For if you watch movies like this, that basically tell you exactly what you want to hear – that your life sucks merely because of the failings of others and an evil superpower – and lap it up without question, you’re kind of playing into the core problem they’re addressing. I say this because I’ve read a lot of reviews that took the one-sided argument exactly that way.

One thing I found wrong with the first movie, which is perfectly – even exhaustively – methodical in putting forth its 9/11 argument, is that it gave no real thoughts regarding what exactly we’re supposed to do with all this information. Luckily, this is fixed in the Addendum which closes with a shopping list of ideas, kinda like those at the end of “The 11th Hour” or “An Inconvenient Truth,” or ways in which we might fix this. Many have pointed out that none of these ideas have really been thought much beyond the idea(l) stage. The fact remains though that however one-sided or idealistic these docs may be, if you’re gonna be one-sided and idealistic, there are worse things to be one-sided and idealistic about than what these movies are suggesting. They do manage to convince you that it’s possible. They’re more visually interesting than the average documentary to boot – the second one vastly improving on the first. And anything that includes footage from Network and lines from Carl Sagan – even if, as was the case in Frost/Nixon you may as well just watch the interview, you may as well just watch Network and read Sagan, LOL – really, I just can’t argue with.

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The Dark Knight

The Dark Knight

Saturday, November 29th, 2008

So … I’m glad I held off on the reviewing this one. I knew deep down there was a reason I was waiting, and as the opportunity to view it a second time came closer, that reason became clearer. I initially felt plainly too bogged down by the mass acceptence of the thing; like Wall-E, that, “what else is there to say?” feeling that pretty much describes my year in movie watching lol. But it’s kind of more than that. I knew the movie was as perfect as everybody was saying the moment I saw it, and that’s important as to my own opinion on the thing; don’t get me wrong, I know where the good reviews are coming from. There’s very little to complain about.

BUT.

It doesn’t stand on its own.

Christian Bale’s voice is ridiculous.

… and great as Maggie Gyllenhaal may be, it’s still a cast change that I can do without and that in contrast to the otherwise flawless continuation of Batman Begins is just plain too distracting. I am not of the ilk that believe comic books are the revolutionary future of cinema; I find the concept ridiculous, it’s an entirely different artform I just really don’t think this movie will endure even a decade. That, and I really believe that people who think comic books are the revolutionary future of cinema should be taken out and BIFFed.

Umm .. that, and despite how I will probably still shed a tear if it happens: I really think that if Heath Ledger wins for this when he didn’t win for Brokeback would be kind of an insult – because though he’s great, it would never have been one of his best remembered performances were it not for what happened. It’s a practically perfect movie, don’t get me wrong … but there are just too many niggling drawbacks for me to go with the masses on this. Batman Begins is a much more complete and assured production, and I’m pretty sure I’d say the same of at least two of the 80s/90s movies on a repeat viewing too.

At the same time of all this, of course, it’s gotta be said as I value it in considering a movie’s quality: it gets people talking. One feels the need to argue exactly why you did or didn’t like it. And to me, that in itself makes a movie better than it otherwise might be.

In the disappointing collection of releases outside of the Oscar season this year, it’s no surprise that people latch onto “The Dark Knight” … I just can’t wait for whatever finally snaps them out of it (sigh – Watchmen, I imagine …)

The ending, on the other hand, is fantastic.

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A Mighty Heart

A Mighty Heart

Friday, December 21st, 2007

The poster of this says, “This is the story you haven’t heard.” Hmm. Yeh – unless of course you’ve read the book by Daniel Pearl’s wife that it’s based on, I guess. Even if you haven’t, I don’t think there’s a lot here that couldn’t be inferred by the basics of the story. Your husband goes missing in the most dangerous part of the world right now, how exactly are you gonna react?

I considered trying like so many have not to sound insensitive in this review, to glow enough about Angelina Jolie’s performance that I don’t have to worry about the lack of comment on the rest of the movie. I decided, hopefully those who know me already will know I’m sensitive about stuff like this, and hopefully those who don’t know me that care about whether a person is sensitive about such things will attempt to get to know me.

In short, it’s not that great a movie. I was swung as most everyone else by Jolie’s performance in the end – though I’m still a little skeptical that the nonetheless emotionally affecting “screaming in a room” scene is really worthy of an Oscar nod – but like the last Michael Winterbottom movie I saw before the only slightly better Cock and Bull Story, Code 46, this is ultimately so “authentically” procedural it’s painful (and not in a good way).

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