An intro to Aronofskyisms, who in his exceptional debut feature pulls off the remarkable feat of making mathematics sort of interesting, theory relayed to us via the characters in their gripping exchanges; in these moments you end up taking notes for a Wikipedia binge.
The director draws so much from a conceptual premise through stylistic verve and repetition, and doesn’t run out of steam. There’s always something going on, the plot presenting successive obstacles for Max Cohen in his hopeless search for meaning where there frankly isn’t any to be found. The dirtiness of his domain (it’s like Abel Ferrara territory), the fact he’s living (barely) in squalor, the cocoon lifestyle, seems to further convince him that he’s deep in the shit and on the verge of an Earth-shattering discovery.
Elizabeth (1998), oh yes. I’d say masterpiece, a political thriller dressed up for marketing intentions as a costume drama, which it is.
This sequel? Oh, it was so BAD. It felt painful, my ears screeching and eyes gouged. This review cracked me up, though:
Michael Gove, MP and Minister/Secretary of Whatever: ‘It tells the story of England’s past in a way which someone who’s familiar with the Whig tradition of history would find, as I did, completely sympathetic. It’s amazing to see a film made now that is so patriotic … One of the striking things about this film is that it’s almost a historical anomaly. I can’t think of a historical period film in which England and the English have been depicted heroically for the last forty or fifty years. You almost have to go back to Laurence Olivier’s Shakespeare’s Henry V in which you actually have an English king and English armies portrayed heroically.’
That’s the worst review I’ve ever read. But the unintentional comedic elements of the writing trumps the movie.
It’s a horrible film. Writing this even depressed me.
Edward Norton was the last zeitgeist of the 20th century.
It sounds risible but it isn’t if you look at the body of work – he somehow captured everything, hit every nail. It was most likely by accident; that or he was incredibly good at choosing projects. He’s not really hit those heights since but the talent remains. He just needs a director to take a chance on him.
This is a sometimes horrifying movie and there are moments you almost have to skip. The film is biblical in its capturing of the transitory nature of happiness. These very real characters are stuck there with no escape. But they have a few wee happy moments. A few. It’s a long time since 1998 but not really, in the sense that someone said to me the Berlin Wall has been down longer than it had been up. You couldn’t make a movie these days with Ed Norton emerging from a cathartic shower with a Big Bertha-sized swastika on his chest. Today, this narrative would have the compulsory strong-willed female, a disabled character, obvious life lessons, and a happy ending. Cinema today is essentially and only social politics.
Derek Vinyard is the pre-eminent example of charismatic authority – everything he says at the dinner table is incorrect but he captivates through the intensity of the delivery. Bloody hell, who got Best Actor (when the Oscars were relevant) over this lad?! I think it was that exasperating Italian bloke who thankfully disappeared from cinema after his Academy Award.
And what the fuck was happening with the director calling himself ‘Humpty Dumpty’? My research is limited.
A thrilling series comes to its end. The Lethal Weapon movies were just so good at balancing the action and the comedy, and the four of them represent the peak of the buddy-cop movie. This is the most fitting finale that they could have come up with; it winds the series down perfectly.
These are actual characters you know and have grown up with. They are strikingly real and the last chapter especially doesn’t downplay their ageing and the toils of time.
And to the epic fight scenes. It’s an overused saying that (‘EPIC’) but these really are. That fight to the death with Jet Li is shit-your-pants time.
There is no point making a fifth one; it would just waste the legacy.
My 2020 massacre of Netflix took in the refreshingly old-fashioned Ronin (1998) the other day. When I say old-fashioned, I refer to the non-CGI (as far as I could deduce) action sequences and car chases, the absence of silly comedy lines or winks to the audience in the dialogue, and the general maturity of proceedings. This is an anti-postmodern movie.
It doesn’t surprise me that the helmsman is John Frankenheimer as it does hark back to his earlier work in the ’60s and ’70s, decidedly ‘masculine affairs’ but which still retained strong female characters (Angela Lansbury, anyone?). Natascha McElhone is the woman calling the shots here, definitely not the damsel in distress among the boys.
And it’s some assemble, particularly Sean Bean who totally convinces as a bullshitter way out of his depth, and Stellan Skarsgård as your buttoned-down ex-Stasi (one presumes) tech expert who just happens to be a complete psycho. De Niro is … De Niro, but De Niro before he became a pratfalling big baby in all those godawful ‘comedies’ from the noughties and beyond.
Rather than simply recommending Ronin for its throwback action and characters, though, there’s a bit more subtextual depth to it, a sense that this is the real world for a lot of folk, independent contractors segueing from job to job, making transient connections but nothing ever more than the odd fleeting bond. It’s a story of existential loneliness and a relatable one.
And regarding the MacGuffin, the perpetually elusive case which drives the narrative. Like Pulp Fiction (1994), we are never privy to the contents. It doesn’t matter.
Took this snap on a sweltering Friday afternoon in Edinburgh. For days I was trying to pinpoint why I was having … visions of a semi-obscure movie from the late ’90s. Then it finally came to me along with the following almost poetic narration:
‘9:13, Personal Note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood. The doctors didn’t know if my eyes would ever heal. I was terrified, alone in that darkness. Slowly daylight crept in through the bandages, and I could see, but something else had changed inside of me. That day I had my first headache.’
Darren Aronofsky’s π (1998), which is as stylish a movie one could ever make about mathematics. It’s quite something.
TheTruman Show (1998) didn’t capture the zeitgeist; it largely predicted it. Much like how Scarface (1983) birthed glorified Gangsta rap – present hip hop artists unaware that Montana was a satire laughing at the emergence of the culture – it was the Jim Carrey ‘serious role’ vehicle which presaged the Big-Brother-by-choice bantz we now have. The eponymous ‘reality’ TV show, a zillion other ‘hidden camera’ programmes populated by tarted-up bimbos (yes, including The Apprentice), the omniscience of social media, the shameless supervision from the NSA and GCHQ. It’s as if Truman is a summation of 20 years of snooping, willfully and not, but before it happened.
I can’t even count the number of times someone has said to me they feel like they’re living a real-life Truman Show, such has been the ridiculousness of their day. Well, if directed actors and MacGuffins aren’t out there to construct the drama, you can bet you’re being watched, often by choice – think of all the selfies at crime scenes, the Snapchatting of break-ins, check-ins at weddings/funerals.
The Truman Show nailed the lot – the shallowness, the vanity, the essential neediness of modern society to not only feign happiness in its absence but inject meaning everywhere, to create a drama when none is needed.
And that Philip Glass score lifted from Powaqqatsi (1998) is quite the cracker:
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 