There’s this line in The Departed (2006) uttered eloquently and menacingly by Jack Nicholson’s Frank Costello: “You learn a lot – watching things eat.”
I can’t help but think of it every time I venture into a supermarket (or pop on Facebook to have a butcher’s at human antics) in this nauseating Corona epoch we now reside in – folk hoarding bog roll and pasta, literally slathering and screeching about the venue, peasants resembling something rage-like out of 28 Days Later (2002).
This is one terrifically entertaining whodunnit with an unexpected political undercurrent that comes to the surface in the third act. The time flew by, mainly due to Daniel Craig’s outrageous PI southern shtick. His voice is so uncannily like that of House of Cards’ Frank Underwood, I closed my eyes and pictured Kevin Spacey and all the resultant grisly news following the accusations about the bloke. It didn’t ruin the movie, only giving it a creepier edge.
Most films of this ilk hark back to Agatha Christie and are mere pale imitations of those superior yarns; Knives Out (2019) is something more than that, with its contemporary setting and subtly subversive reworking of the genre. You also believe these characters.
August Diehl holds one of those physiognomies of the Klaus Kinski variety, instantly recognisable and very creepy, more suited to playing the villain or the unhinged than the innocent. Diehl almost stole Inglorious Basterds (2009) from Christoph Waltz with his tavern-set scariness (in full Hugo Boss clobber). Here he pulls off the Jesus role with aplomb, a performance very much devoid of … dare-I-say-it – pretension. The worst performances by actors are the posturing sort which embarrassingly scream for an Oscar; none of that bombast here. And to give the movie more of a deathly air, Michael Nyqvist and Bruno Ganz both star in their final roles.
22 years after the release of The Thin Red Line (1998), Malick casts his spiritual magic once again on WWII, this time not on the soldiers at Guadalcanal but the German home front. Malick ticks all the Malick boxes = sweeping cinematography, incessant voice over, melancholic score, metaphysical monologues, and lots of nature and all that. It is a long sesh but with reason, and in no way a ‘slog’. The story of Franz Jägerstätter is one worth telling.
The terrified audience bolted from the theatre, so the apocryphal story goes. Why anyone would flee from a black-and-white moving image with no sound didn’t appear to come into the mythmakers’ thinking.
YouTube user Denis Shiryaev has given the Lumières’ slice of early cinema a 2020 makeover (4K and 60 FPS) and it has the effect of amplifying the nostalgia factor and the strange serenity of the ‘narrative’. The frame’s occupants always looked too nonchalant to me, this a time when the presence of the camera was meant to turn folk into a frenzy. A mere few minutes of research reveals the extras in the shot were asked to ignore the filmmakers, the subjects ‘directed’ so to speak.
This is the upgrading of vintage visuals done right, none of this Ted Turned colorization pish.
Perhaps one day it will happen but I very much doubt it – a lauded director decides to use Gorgie Road as a seedy backdrop for a modern noir. I imagine a jaded Bogartesque PI stopping off at Aldi for a few cheap beers after a draining day spent with myriads of local scum.
In fact, I’m going to have to make this motion picture, the drama shot on a battered HTC, Gorgie City Farm the site of the climactic shootout.
Most films are rather terrible, either your average generic copycat picture (sequel, superhero, franchise) or a total disaster zone. A very small elite of films are incredible, and then we have a hefty batch of escapist fare which feature a sublime scene deserving to live within a better movie.
Blade (1998).
Operation Blade (Bass in the Place), a song so synonymous with late ’90s techno it defines it. And that is the essence of the scene. Ropey CGI, Wesley Snipes struggling to make the choreography work, but the 100% chav tune papers over it all. It is a ghastly movie and the sequels likewise. Incredible music, though.
Deep Blue Sea (1999).
This film was dire, but Samuel L. Jackson’s stirring speech interrupted by extreme-close up bite-action was something else, totally unexpected, utilising the Hitchcock technique to perfection. If it happened later on in the movie it would have been wiser, as after this scene of madness there is no point in watching the remainder of it.
The Matrix Reloaded (2003).
An unabashed muddle, a shambolic mess as coherent as The Architect’s monologue. The highway chase, though. That’s what a short movie should be. And that’s what sequels should have been – short snippets.
Hannibal (2001).
I think the first hour of Hannibal (2001) is a mightily classy affair. You’ve got Florence and vistas and art chat and Hannibal running the show. If they kept the movie there it could have approached masterwork status. But they didn’t and it descends into calamity as soon as Italy is discarded. Sad.
I know absolutely zilch about cars – I cannot drive one, have never possessed and never will have any interest in them, and cannot fathom sharing the same road with so many dafties. I see a lot of these ‘boy racers’ congregating in supermarket car parks, revving their engines and taking selfies. The mind boggles. It’s one of the many reasons why I scratch my head at these Fast & Furious films. Utter shite. I just don’t understand the appeal.
This movie transcended the ‘car fetish thing’, however. Mainly because the topic is merely a foundation for broader themes and character dynamics. Ferrari here are the urbane, suave totem of Italian sophistication; Ford, the bog-standard symbol of production line Americana. And in another example of what we now call ‘globalism’, the Yanks want a bit of the prestige and to shake off the crass tag.
Christian Bale’s Ken Miles is an affront to the company men presided over by Tracy Letts’ Henry Ford II, the monolithic Ford Motor Company no institution in which to showcase one’s maverick inclinations, yet Miles finds a way through pure undiluted talent. It’s another absurd yet captivating Bale performance, the highlight of a movie in which nothing annoyed me even though it’s ostensibly about cars.
This was gripping, an Adam Sandler movie that isn’t nails-down-a-blackboard godawful. He has been in some of the most appalling films, yet also the intermittent cracker – Punch Drunk Love(2002), for example. Here he is unrecognisable from his usual goofball act, literally sweating his pores through the travails of a gambling junkie juggling debt, addiction, and avoiding some rather dodgy small-time hoodlums/loan sharks. It’s an accurate portrait of the lives many folk live and quite the captivating one.
I never found The Shining (1980) scary on any level. Instead, it remains after about 20 viewings an endless fascination. It’s the meticulousness of it, the banality, the … pointlessness of the whole affair. It isn’t about anything except pure aesthetics, a director exerting his OCD over every painterly composition. There isn’t even a single character in it and perhaps that’s the point.
Doctor Sleep (2019) does things the right way: it barely has anything to do with Kubrick’s number yet makes subtle allusions to the picture, knowing the audience will understand the references. It also has three-dimensional characters, which I never expected to ever find associated with the Overlook Hotel. A decent movie with nothing specifically annoying going on is a rarity these days. Well done.
A thoroughly miserable mise-en-scène in Gorgie yesterday, though I don’t mind the deluge as the chavs stay indoors (mostly). Armed with a stolen umbrella, I for a very brief epoch possessed Blade Runner (1982) visions – Vangelis, Film Noir, a charismatic Dutch antagonist, 2019 premonitions vs. present day shenanigans.
Then I arrived at my conclusion: 2019 didn’t witness flying cars and robots you can have ‘life moments’ with; it was some berserk ginger midget in a 1997 Kappa tracksuit bolting up Gorgie Road with a stolen toaster, three tubby cops in tow.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 