Though I’ve really loved a few of Neil Jordan’s movies – The End of the Affair in particular, Interview with the Vampire of course … looking at his filmography now I realise I’ve actually missed quite a few, lol – I really came to this expecting nothing more than the latest perfect Jodie Foster performance. This used to be an event, of course, in the decade leading up to Panic Room a Jodie movie was really a Jodie Movie. Now, she almost religiously gets Oscar buzz on a yearly basis (no luck yet), and like Dakota Fanning, Johnny Depp – I’m sure there are others – more often than not, the greatness of the performance is almost “boringly” so.

But this performance honestly surprised me. Foster is known for playing strong women, of course, and her roles have almost without exception always had something powerful to say about women, about the treatment, the history, the everything of women. It’s almost bizarre to find her in this movie once you find out what kind of movie it is. I read recently about how upset she’d been by Sin City and I totally got where she was coming from, but there are many ways in which The Brave One is not so different from that comic book burst of ultraviolence. What makes Foster’s performance so surprising is the weakness she manages to show us at times. It’s a revenge movie, so of course there’s still a lot of strength. It’s called The Brave One, d’uh. But it’s the other, quieter stuff – the way she approaches the police desk after first getting the courage to leave her apartment at the start, for instance – that really made an impression on me.

There are moments here where I had to actually double check that it wasn’t based on a graphic novel or comic, in fact – the moment, for instance, where her “voiceover” first creeps in as she leaves the subway, “Why aren’t my hands shaking? Why does nobody stop me?” It practically reminded me of an old Incredible Hulk cartoon I used to watch on a loop, “Dizzy, shaky. Unable … to … stand …” It’s almost like she’s literally transforming superhero style into this other person she is in the end (“Superc*nt” – no don’t close the window, that’s the movie’s word, not mine – would almost be the perfect title, in fact). But though I’d struggle to say the movie is necessarily dark – on the contrary, it revels in its near-schlockiness just about wherever it possibly can – it’s certainly more interested in showing how affected – and, ultimately, irredeemably destroyed – Foster’s character is by every act of violence. And that’s the giant hairline than separates it from the far less reverent Sin City.

Anyway, like I said, I was amazed to find it really wasn’t just the Jodie that thrilled me in this movie. It’s every bit as absorbingly intense emotionally as I found The End of the Affair. It’s one of those movies that just fired its harpoon of interest directly into the center of my forehead and never let me go. At almost 2 hours in length, that’s really no mean feat. There’s just so much here that can only improve on subsequent viewings. There are so many things that really shouldn’t work, so many conveniences and contrivances – quite literally, the shooting in the convenience store, then the trust Foster shows following a stranger into a back alley to get a gun – but they’re all smoothed over effortlessly by what I can only assume is a Disbelief Suspension Device that Jodie Foster has concealed somewhere on her person at all times on set.

My mum said afterwards how Foster looks much as she did in The Accused. I said, yeh, and I’m sure that’s how a lot of people, possibly even Jodie, hoped that movie would end. It’s basically that movie meets Taxi Driver, Iris all grown up and doing the Travis Bickle thing – with the prostitute in the taxi, it’s almost a direct lift. It honestly amazes me that I haven’t heard more people going crazy about how basically dangerous this movie is etc, like Daily Mail types who said David Cronenberg’s Crash was gonna bring down society etc. This in itself probably says more than the movie itself does about how much morals have crumbled in just a decade. Even I found myself during this movie, even as I was quietly cheering Jodie on, thinking, “but … dude!” But what finally made me love this movie the most is how it genuinely takes no prisoners. It goes all the way, right or wrong. It delivers, which is more than can be said of at least 80% of the movies I’ve seen this year.

“This is something that happens.”

I really didn’t think I’d get so absorbed by this this time around and there are so many things to write about it I almost opted to wait until the next time since I don’t know if I really have it in me right now. There’s no review here yet, though, which is basically absurd … so what I write now will have to do if only as a placeholder.

I guess I’ve been having one of those late-twenties “mini crises” this week, and I’ve been kind of longing to have an hour or so that just felt like home. Hence Reality Bites earlier in the week, which unfortunately proved to have turned on me in my old age; the OBC of “The Pirate Queen” almost worked last night, the ever-reliable Boublil and Schönberg not trying to innovate a tried-and-true mould like so many others; but it was these three hours that finally brought me down from my grey cloud.

It’s the rain of frogs. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen this movie, but that moment, I swear, every time, it’s like an out-of-body experience. It’s Paul Thomas Anderson, director as God, looking down on all those characters – and you, me, all of us too focussed on the stupidest things … Donnie and his braces, Claudia and her self-esteem, Jim and his gun, “and so on and so on” ... you, and your whatever – and saying, in the voice of Aimee Mann, “It’s not going to stop ‘till you wise up.” If only it were so easy.

“Strange things happen all the time,” the narrator says – and there are so many shots in this movie of people just looking at each other in sheer abandonment, not knowing. “I don’t know,” says Jimmy Gator, “I don’t know what I did,” to which his wife’s double-edged answer comes, “You should know better!” It levels the whole human race, this movie – united in the simple fact that none of us has a freakin’ clue why we’re here, why we’re still here in spite of ourselves, and why we have the drives we have. All these characters wear their hearts on their faces, it’s like opera, like soap opera condensed, and it’s beautiful.

I love the “almost-POV” shots – over the shoulder, by the hip, behind the butt, just about all variations you can muster – that give you this weird sense of being more in the scene than is comfortable. Of course, the Aimee Mann songs – this movie basically introduced me, and I believe quite a few others, to her, and you couldn’t ask for a better introduction.

One line haunts me – from the barfly Thurston Howell – “It’s dangerous to confuse children with angels,” to which quiz kid Donnie’s response is, “No, it is not.” It’s as cryptic a line to me as that moment in Palindromes when Jennifer Jason Leigh says, “Pedophiles love children …” I really don’t know what exactly the filmmakers meant for this line to mean? But I love the ambiguity and sheer brassiness of it … it practically puts a gun to your head and says, “Talk about this.”

Magnolia shares a theme with Boogie Nights concerning child abuse and I always figured it was Paul Thomas Anderson quite ham-fistedly putting a little of Fiona Apple’s story into his movies, but I have to say, that line seems so at odds with his approach in Nights ... I really disliked the ending of the Colonel’s story there, mostly because it was very unclear exactly what he had done but also because it was just too much more misery on top of an already miserable enough third act. But I really love (if that’s the right word) how they deal with Jimmy Gator here. Again, the facts of the “crime” are ambiguous. But even if we’re to assume the worst that Jimmy raped his daughter, I just love the fact of that frog that falls from the sky, again like the voice of God saying, “uh-uh … you’re not gonna leave this hell so easy …” – and I don’t know if those sparks from the plug indicated the start of a fire … but the point is, either Jimmy’s gonna burn or he’s gonna have to face whatever he has or hasn’t done like the rest of us.

To end on a slightly higher note, I’ll just mention that last smile at the camera by Melora Walters. Most personal, beautiful, ending ever. Just thinking about it makes me consider placing the movie above the ethereal Almost Famous in my favourites list. Hmmmmmmm …. nah, not quite, but it’s heart-wrenchingly close.

Hey, how ‘bout that? I didn’t do so bad for “not being in the mood” lol It seems fitting to have such a naked stream-of-consciousness style review of this movie, actually.

Not a lot to add to my old review except to say, of course, I still love it. I get all the flaws people point out about this movie – most of all, having watched this time with two non-readers, how badly it caters to even those who have kept up on the movie side … I mean some stuff won’t make sense to you if you haven’t at least skim-read the novel – but you know what, I’m kind of blind to them. There’s an atmosphere and pace here that just takes my breath away. I was actually willing to believe on the first viewing that I’d just been blindsided by the wondrousness of Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood but it’s actually incredible how little screentime she has so it’s not just her. There’s the If… like departure of the Weasleys, surely the most gloriously anti-establishment moment seen in movies in years; the gloriously creepy performance of Imelda Staunton, the “I must not tell lies” scene I swear, up there and comparable to the appearance of Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs; and the one criticism of others that I have to disagree with … the death of S****s … couldn’t have been done more clearly or perfectly in my opinion.

The DVD extras are disappointing – a 45 minute doc of people asking “what does it all meeeeeeannnnn,” a patronising guide to editing and a sort of awkward “sorry we cut your part so much” thing by Nat Tena (really fun in itself, but worth a whole second disc?) – but the movie is more than worth the buy. It’s easily one of the best of the year, though I’m sure I’ll be juggling it, Azkaban, and/or movies 6 and 7 as “best in series” for as long as I live.

13th July, 2007:

Whoosh. Where to begin. As usual this is going to come out in a gush because I want what I write to be as fresh as possible and I don’t want to miss a single thing that’s buzzing around in my head. The biggest book squished into the shortest movie … and quelle movie. I have to begin by grudgingly, nay, beamingly exclaiming, this isn’t just the best in the series so far, not just as good or better than Azkaban, but I actually think maybe a freakin’ masterpiece. It hit the “as good as Azkaban, definitely, but it’ll take a second viewing to be really sure if it’s more,” point by around 30 minutes … and soon after I was simply riveted.

Again, as always, I had intended to and probably should have read the book again beforehand; I found myself realising only a few minutes in how little detail I remembered from the mammoth novel. The Sirius thing and Umbridge, of course, were cemented. But even outside of those, and boy are those lovingly (if that’s the right word for Umbridge) recreated, I felt this managed to bridge the gap insanely well between the loyalty of the Columbus movies to the novels and the joyous cinematicness of Cuaron’s marvel.

But it’s not the adaptation and general technical perfection of this one that finds me comparing it to the Cuaron movie the most … the thing that really makes this one stomp the rest of the series into the ground is the fact that the kids finally match up to the giants of the British acting world they share a screen with. Even in Azkaban I found the performances of Radcliffe and co. a little niggling. Here, even the kid playing Neville Longbottom has clearly been honing his thesp skills. Heck, even the random eyes moving around in the background of the Dumbledore’s Army scenes demand a second viewing to peruse. And the casting of Luna Lovegood? I’m sure it won’t surprise some who know me if I say, I think I have a new movie crush, lol. Evanna Lynch is absolutely wonderful, and I don’t recall that character ever really grabbing me in the books.

Add the mindblowing visual effects, the usual perfect editing and production design (the wallpaper in Sirius’ house deserves an Oscar on its lonesome), the most original score in the series since John Williams penned the till-now slightly-overly-repeated themes, a wonderful new, entirely Potterish way of doing that old cinematic cliché of the spinning news headlines, and, I don’t know … generally wonderful Potter-ness? And I’m not joking, I feel this is the series’ masterpiece. But at the same time I feel like rather than Cuaron’s outsider-ish way of stumbling upon genius in Azkaban, I feel this one is more the result of a process and this is now a perfect system that can only make the remaining two installments as good, if not better. The only thing I’d change is I’d make Tonks’ hair a little pinker, lol. Oh, and though I initially wanted Helena Bonham-Carter to play Tonks here, her performance as Bellatrix LeStrange has certainly put to bed my worries about her as Mrs Lovett later this year in Sweeney Todd.

Addendum On a sidenote … as there has been since the second movie, there will come with this movie so many reviews wasting more than a few words on how “dark” the series is getting and how it’s not for little kids anymore etc. I just wanna say, get it into your heads, people, it’s Harry Potter. It’s dark. This is a series that in the books and their adaptations has grown with its audience. If you think the fifth installment where they’re well blossomed and having first kisses and all is a great movie to take your six-year-old to and you come home incensed by what they’ve been “exposed” to … you simply don’t deserve to have that six-year-old, you idiot. It’s a PG-13 in the US, a 12A in the UK. Read the effin’ guidelines, and critics, stop making these people think they need to be told by you of all people how “dark” a movie is when it’s practically written on the frickin’ tin. It’s dark. But there’s as much love and magic in each frame of this movie (gosh, just beginning with the way the distance between Harry and everyone else is portrayed, I well up just thinking about it) as there was in part one, if not more … if you’re ready.

Kind of like Meet the Robinsons, there was actually a long stretch here that I look back on now bewildered, where I was just absolutely gobsmacked about how stupid a turn the movie had taken. If you’ve seen the movie you’ll know where – if you haven’t, you’ll know when you see it … I’m not gonna spoil it. Just to say, you’ll either go with it or not. I’m glad to say I went.

Like last year’s The Prestige and moreso The Fountain this just sits leagues above anything else I’ve seen this year so far, and I won’t be able to explain exactly why until I’ve seen it at least a few more times – though, maybe that’s why … because it’s not a movie whose beauty can be put into words (... that’s why it’s a movie …) I said reviewing Millions how Danny Boyle is about the most consistently brilliant director working today, and the guy doesn’t make it easy on himself changing genre with every production. I think what I said there is still an understatement. People have compared this movie (favourably and otherwise) to Kubrick’s 2001. Kubrick also changed genre with every movie. Honestly – if anyone out there is wondering who’s filling Stanley’s boots these days … allow me to nominate this guy.

Damn, lost a bunch of stuff written about a second viewing of this. To my surprise, I found it even better a second time around – I really thought it might lose a lot when knowing what to expect from it. I’d almost forgotten about the cheeky voiceover in the time since last watching. I’m sure some might say that voiceover is “too” quirky and even that it betrays the literary roots of the movie, but I find that combined with the way the camera so often simply “boxes” the action, in a manner reminiscent of American Beauty (not the only similarity this has with that movie), it basically makes the movie exactly what is referred to early on as Kate Winslet’s character observes the other mothers in the playground – it’s an anthropological study of humans. The title, “Little Children,” to me is like a question – who are the children here? And there’s a marvelous moment towards the end where the positions of parent-child, comforter-comforted, the roles of responsibility, swap within minutes between Winslet, her daughter, and Jackie Earl Haley’s sex offender, ending with Winslet having a minor breakdown and her daughter having to assume practically the mother role, telling her it’s all okay … it contains the movie’s two most beautiful shots, that of Winslet approaching Haley from the swingset, arm outstretched, and that of her daughter alone in the street gazing at moths around a streetlight … I mean, just for those 5-10 minutes alone, this movie is a priceless wonder.

December 7th, 2006:

I don’t know what to write here for two reasons – one, that my advice to anyone planning to see this movie (and if you’re not, then start making plans) is to read as little about it as possible beforehand … so just stop right now; and two, that I really don’t know where to begin at this stage. I don’t have the words, but I’ll try.

It’s mesmerisingly beautiful, whether it’s being funny, sad, even when it’s sometimes grotesque, disturbing, almost plain wrong (and yes, it’s all those things in its never dull 2 hours plus duration), it’s completely arresting. I want and need to see this one so many times. It’s in an entirely different league from the other 46 movies I’ve seen this year. I didn’t want it to end, not least because I really feared that any ending would surely miss something out and let the rest of the movie down … boy was I wrong. It rips your heart out and shows it to you and it’s disgusting and human, beautiful and ugly, despairing and hoping.

Just watch it. Just … wow.

Another that really might, perhaps even should, become an annual tradition. I knew that this movie would be vastly improved on a second viewing and I wasn’t wrong. In fact, if anything, I understated it. This shoots up my list of faves on this viewing, it’s either amazing or downright frightening how the movie has “aged” in only 2 years, aged well I have to say, but the relevance is just shockingly tangible, and I think it will only become moreso in years to come (for better or worse).

I’m surprised by how much I wrote on the first viewing, because what I failed to mention then – what I thought I had said – was that I was honestly, bizarrely now I think back, underwhelmed by it the first time. What I also forgot to say there was, in short, it’s mindblowing … frightening, uplifting, hopeful, quirky, sexy, sleek, and at all times astonishingly consistent for all the turns and tones it takes.

Incidentally, I couldn’t help incorporating and egg-bread based snack into this viewing too, lol. Not quite eggy-in-a-basket – didn’t have the patience – but I think along with a November 5th viewing slot, this also should be incorporated into the ritual lol.

There’s tons more to say about it – luckily, there’ll be tons more opportunities to do so.

October 12th, 2006:

They’re comparisons I really didn’t want to make, but they’re kinda hard not to, so I’ll just get them out of the way – this is very much “1984” meets “Phantom of the Opera”. I kinda stole the Phantom reference from Roger Ebert’s review which I read while watching, but I think I would’ve come to the same conclusion myself by the end of the movie. Personally, I found V resembled less the Phantom and more Tim Burton’s Batman (certainly in the first 10-20 minutes, at least till he starts on the alliteration) or, even more than anything, Vincent Price’s Dr. Phibes (I think it was the jukebox in his lair that clinched it, I don’t know why) ... but I definitely see the similarity. The “1984” comparison is particularly hard to avoid when you have John Hurt frequently appearing with in an almost emotionless face on a giant telescreen

But for all its familiarity, this movie is still quite a marvel, peaking with a twist part way that truly blew my mind for a moment, and finally delivering the Natalie Portman performance that I’ve been waiting for ever since 1996’s Beautiful Girls (Closer was close but, on reflection, no cigar). And any movie that has you running out of the room halfway to make some eggy in a basket has got to be worth recommending. I think this is one that will improve exponentially on repeat viewings.

ps. Oh yes, and mustn’t fail to mention the wonderful little girl who says, “Bollocks!” to the BS news towards the beginning of the movie, lol. Such things no movie should be without.

“We must pretend we didn’t hear it, then we won’t imagine things.”
“Well … sometimes one can’t help … imagining things …”

This one gets more and more glorious each time I watch it. Children and horror are about the greatest cinematic combination there is, and these kids are truly among the creepiest. It’s probably the most beautifully shot film of all time, Freddie Francis’ high contrast black and white cinemascope suiting the story perfectly, astonishingly not nominated for any awards according to the IMDb, let alone the Academy Award.

Whenever the movie begins I always find myself trying to remember what’s so scary about it, but I soon find out every time. It’s simple atmospheric unsettlement. Wide open spaces with only 4 (real, at least) people to occupy them, 2 of whom are children; children who we’re warned have the knack for wrapping adults around their little finger; adults, one of whom is clearly very highly strung. The seeming mental collapse of Miss Giddens (if that’s what it is) is seriously disturbing because it feels like it could happen to any of us in a bad week. And that kiss! Or, those kisses, rather – I’ve really been loving Kate Bush’s song “The Infant Kiss” recently, which was inspired by this movie, it was interesting to see it again with that song in mind. Like the movie as a whole, I still don’t know quite what to make of the kisses myself – I just know they send shivers down my spine, and that final moment of Giddens and Miles parting, leaving the screen dark, really leaves me shaken.

I think I must’ve missed the news of Deborah Kerr’s death 2 weeks ago Which made this kind of an unintended tribute. I haven’t really seen many of her movies – would love to see her in the original End of the Affair – but if her work here is anything to go by, then she was a true great, and beautiful to boot. She’s not the only shining member of the cast here though – in addition to the children, creepy Martin Stephens and adorably creepy Pamela Franklin, Megs Jenkins is a great presence as housekeeper Mrs. Grose. One of the all time great horror movies, for certain – and I guess Carrie isn’t so lonely afterall as a horror movie that also happens to be damn beautiful (incidentally, of course, Eyes Without A Face struck me immediately following that review as also falling into this wonderful category).

The most tragically beautiful horror movie ever made? I think so. That said, I find the more I watch it, the less it even feels like a horror movie and more like the saddest, most painful high school movie that just happens to be punctuated by blood and the supernatural. The only part that always really chills me is Piper Laurie’s eerily joyous performance, and the piano theme that plays at the White house (currently on the playlist on my front page radio thing), most particularly when Carrie falls down the stairs. That music cue just feels completely like death – or rather, the draining of life.

Piper Laurie and Sissy Spacek were deservedly (if bizarrely – would it happen today, one wonders?) nominated for Oscars for their roles. I’m always just as taken by other performances, though: Amy Irving and Betty Buckley are particularly noteworthy. I love the way Buckley imbues Miss Collins with this real bug up her ass – I forget if her backstory is detailed in the novel, and I know she tells the story toward the end about taking the leader of the basketball team to her prom but I’m always torn between whether she was the Sue Snell of her time – a reluctant “popular girl” who sympathised with the Carrie Whites – or even worse the Carrie White of her time. There’s a real sense of triumph as she watches Carrie crowned as prom queen; of hope when she talks to Carrie about Tommy’s invitation; an instant confrontational attitude when she talks to the “popular” girls; instant doubt when asking Tommy and Sue about the illfated invitation. Intended or not, she does the all-grown-up bullied girl very well.

Then there’s the music. Pino Donaggio’s themes (far-too-obvious Psycho references notwithstanding, lol) – in addition to the two beautiful songs at the prom (“I Never Dreamed Someone Like You Could Love Someone Like Me” probably the best love song ever) are almost if not more than half the movie for me here. They carry you with Carrie to the depths with her mother at home and the horror of school to the tentative acceptance of the dream of having that final prom dance – and then the nightmare aftermath of even that seemingly impervious dream being shattered like all the rest.

BTW, the DVD of this is much better than I originally thought whenever it first came out. There are no commentaries or anything and the features list reads like just a bunch of promotional featurettes – but the “Acting Carrie” thing combined with “Visualising Carrie: From Words to Images” is really more like a decent behind-the-scenes documentary. Unfortunately it doesn’t actually contain the screentests they talk about … but it’s still really good hearing from most of the cast members years later.