30) The Darjeeling Limited

The Darjeeling Limited (2007)

Director: Wes Anderson

Starring: Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman, Anjelica Huston, Natalie Portman, Bill Murray

Kate had to head out early this morning. Saturday is supposed to be a sleep-in morning for me, but by 7:30am I found myself well and truly awake so decided I would use the hour and a half I had up my sleeve before Kate would be home to watch a film. I perused the shelf and found The Darjeeling Limited. A comedy (ish) and a touch under 90mins, it fit the bill.

Three brothers, Francis (Wilson), Peter (Brody) and Jack (Schwartzman), who have not spoken to each other in a year come together in India at the insistence of Francis to take a journey of spiritual enlightenment and to rediscover not only their brotherly relationships but themselves. As they travel across India on a train, the Darjeeling Limited, little do Peter and Jack know that Francis has planned for this trip to culminate with a reunion with their estranged mother (Huston), who they have not spoken to since she failed to turn up at their father's funeral.

Much like Tim Burton, Wes Anderson has his people, an ensemble of actors he likes to work with. Thus the cast of The Darjeeling Limited is mainly made up of people who have worked with Anderson before on one or more projects (Wilson, Schwartzman, Murray and Huston), with Adrien Brody being a bit of a guest star, but he looks as at home as everyone else in the cast.

Anderson has been able to develop a very distinct personal style and tone to his films. While his films are always classed as comedies, they usually explore melancholy themes of broken dreams and shattered lives. Part of the reason for this consistency in theme and tone is that he always involved in the writing of his material. He usually writes in collaboration with someone else. For his first three films (Bottle Rocket, Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums) that collaborator was Owen Wilson. For this film his writing partners were Jason Schwartzman, a long time Anderson favourite, and Roman Coppola, the son of Hollywood legend Francis Ford Coppola and brother of Sophia Coppola.

The Darjeeling Limited was intended as a a film with two parts. When it was originally shown at festivals the film opened with Part 1 is a short film, about 10mins long, called Hotel Chevalier, which acted as a prologue to Part 2 which was the main body of the story, the three brothers on their train journey through India. This film shows an incident, which will be referenced later in Part 2, when Jack's ex-girlfriend (Portman) comes to visit him at a hotel in Paris where he has run away to in order to get away from her after the breakdown of their relationship. This short film was removed for the wider theatrical release of the film, instead made available for free download from the iTunes Store as part of the film's publicity campaign. However it has been restored as a prologue for the DVD release of The Darjeeling Limited. As I said, the events of Hotel Chevalier are referenced later on in The Darjeeling Limited but in and of itself, the short film strikes me as a wee bit pretentious. Not a lot happens and it is not overly amusing or interesting. Rather it just establishes a mood, at least a mood relating to Jason Schwartzman's character, for the second part of the film.

The film was shot on location in India. Anderson and a small crew spent three months in India, shooting on a real train, running on live tracks with it's own engine. They gutted ten carriages to make the sets for the different locations on the train. Shooting on location really serves this film well, giving their journey a feeling of authenticity as well as providing some breathtaking scenery outside the windows as they chug along and for them to stop off and explore.

For those who have a real interest in Wes Anderson's films, this is one of his best. But that is only for those who are devotees of Wes's style. For the rest of us it is not quite as accessible as the more recent Fantastic Mr. Fox which has all the quirks and quips that Anderson films are known for, but is a bit more friendly for the visitor to Wes World.

29) Shutter Island

Shutter Island (2010)

Director: Martin Scorsese

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Max Von Sydow, Michelle Williams, Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson, Jackie Earl Haley, Ted Levine

I'm a massive Martin Scorsese fan (there you go, biases declared up front). I think he is without doubt the greatest filmmaker of his generation, and among the greatest filmmakers of all time. So, of course, I have been hanging out to for Shutter Island to come out for some time. I had a few spare hours after a meeting at Macquarie Uni before I was due at Turramurra so I thought I'd sneak in a screening.

In 1954, U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) and his partner Detective Chuck Aule (Ruffalo) are sent to Shutter Island, a remote island which houses an asylum for the criminally insane overseen by Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), to investigate the disappearance of one of the patients. However, Daniels has his own motives for being assigned to this case. He has heard disturbing rumours about the nature of the experiments being performed on the island and wants to find the evidence which will enable him to expose them. But when Aule suggests to him that maybe Dr. Cawley and his team are aware of his motives, and the whole investigation is a front to get him into their hands, the aim of the game becomes escape.

Shutter Island is the latest project in an increasingly fruitful collaboration between Scorsese and DiCaprio which has now garnered four films (they also worked together on Gangs of New York, The Aviator and The Departed). Scorsese has a history of choosing to work with the same leading man on a number of films. His most famous director/actor collaboration is, of course, with Robert De Niro, with whom he has made eight films (Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, New York New York, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, Cape Fear, Goodfellas and Casino) but earlier in his career he has also had a fruitful working relationship with Harvey Keitel with whom he made five films (Who's That Knocking at My Door?, Mean Streets, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Taxi Driver, The Last Temptation of Christ). DiCaprio, though, has definitely taken on the role of Scorsese's chosen leading man now, with Leo attached to play the lead in one of Scorsese's upcoming projects, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt.

DiCaprio is very good, really capturing the determination, anger and confusion of his character, and he is well supported by rest of the cast. Ben Kingsley, sorry, that should be Sir Ben Kingsley, is also very good, giving his best performance since Don Logan in Sexy Beast. That is not saying a lot though, as for a knighted actor he does an awful lot of rubbish (Exhibit A: BloodRayne, Exhibit B: The Love Guru).

Scorsese has obviously had fun making this film, getting to play with a number of genres which are not all that common in his oeuvre. The 1954 setting allows him to play with elements of film noir, with DiCaprio and Ruffalo both presented as hard-boiled type detectives in the Bogart mould. It is also his first venture into the horror/thriller genre since his remake of Cape Fear in the late 1980s. Scorsese uses the creepy, gothic asylum setting to great effect,with the film being littered with references and images from classic horror films (for example, the slow walk down the corridor of cages as arms reach out trying to grab the protagonist, a classic scene from Bedlam).

Shutter Island has a really great twist ending, up there with The Usual Suspects and The Sixth Sense in terms of unpredictability, but what makes the twist ending work is that it is only one of a number of twists that take place throughout the course of the film. The narrative turns in on itself on a number of occasions, leaving the viewer constantly uncertain about what is actually happening on this mysterious island, but nonetheless enthralled.

I get the feeling Event Cinemas don't quite know how Shutter Island is going to fare. On the one hand, they are giving it the best part of ten screenings a day, much like any major release, but on the other hand before the film started I had trailers for two foreign films, the latest film from Amelie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet called Micmacs and the Swedish film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It suggests that they think it isn't a typically mainstream audience who are watching Shutter Island. I can't remember the last time I saw a preview for a foreign film before a comic book movie or a Judd Apatow or Will Ferrell comedy. I just thought it was interesting.

I can only assume that it came out too late to be considered for this years award season, but in that case you can pencil it in as an early contender for the 2011 awards. A fantastic, enthralling thriller. A must see, as generally are most Scorsese films.

28) The Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker (2008)

Director: Kathryn Bigelow

Starring: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes, David Morse

The closer we get to the Oscars the more it looks like The Hurt Locker is the film to beat, so I wanted to make sure I got out to see it before the ceremony. I had put it off a bit because the more I heard people raving about the film the higher my expectations got and the more concerned I got that there was no way that the film could live up to those expectations. But I bit the bullet and saw it today and must say it didn't disappoint.

When SSG Matt Thompson (Pearce) is killed while trying to disarm an IED (improvised explosive device) SSG William James (Renner) is brought in to Bravo company for the last 40 days of their tour of duty. While James is very good at what he does, having successfully disarmed over 800 bombs, he is an adrenaline junky for whom the thrill of disarming a bomb is the ultimate high. His gung-ho attitude creates a tension between himself and his subordinates, Sgt. Sanborn (Mackie) and Spc. Eldridge (Geraghty), both of whom are just trying to keep themselves alive until they can go home.

The Iraq War is a different style of war to any that we have seen before (in one scene Spc. Eldridge quips, "Aren't you glad the Army has all these tanks parked here? Just in case the Russians come and we have to have a big tank battle?"), and the makers of this film are very aware of that. Because this was is different to any fought before, this war film is stylistically different to any before it. Unlike the frenetic pace and shaky camera of the Omaha Beach landing sequence at the beginning of Saving Private Ryan, in The Hurt Locker the intensity is derived from the stillness. The scenes with almost unbearable levels of tension, those concerning the disarming of bombs, involve one man working on the bomb with no one within 100 metres of him, civilians watching on with interest and soldiers watching the civilians with suspicion. Rather than chaotic battles with bullets whizzing everywhere and constant mortar explosions, this film has an eerie quietness to it.

You may know Jeremy Renner from his roles in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, 28 Weeks Later or The Lords of Dogtown, or like the rest of us you may have never heard of the guy before. However, he puts in a cracker of a performance as the adrenaline addict, SSG Will James. While there is a danger such a thrill seeking character could become two-dimensional, Renner manages to flesh him out and, particularly in the scenes in which he interacts with local child Beckham, gives an authentic humanity to his character. This is the kind of performance that makes a career. He is already locked in for lead roles in two films in pre-production, The Town with Ben Affleck and the fictional film about Edgar Allan Poe called The Raven with Ewan McGregor, and his name has been linked to two more including the comic book super movie The Avengers. If he could land the Oscar for The Hurt Locker who knows where his career could go. Odds are though that we will see a fair bit more of him.

Generally, it must be said that Bigelow has extracted brilliant performances out of a relatively anonymous cast. The three biggest 'name' actors in the film, Pearce, Fiennes and Morse, combine for a total of about ten minutes screen time. It is Renner, Mackie and Geraghty who shoulder the burden of carrying the film and they do an excellent job. Much like I said with A Serious Man, the anonymity of the actors in leading roles means there is no baggage that the viewer brings when watching the performance, so they can simply accept the character they see on screen.

I'm not going to ruin it for you if you haven't seen it, but I don't think I was completely satisfied with the way the film ended. I don't know that it was consistent with the tone of the rest of the film. That being said, it is not as though there was a more obvious way to finish the film that I can't see why they didn't go with.

The Hurt Locker will more than likely end up being the definitive Iraq War movie much in the way that Apocalypse Now is the definitive Vietnam War movie. It is quite simply a brilliant film and a deserving Best Picture front runner.

27) Gilda

Gilda (1946)

Director: Charles Vidor

Starring: Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, George Macready, Steven Geray

I'm tutoring at Macquarie University in a subject called 'Introduction to Cinema'. Today was the opening lecture for the semester, with our first topic being classical Hollywood cinema and the associated screening was Gilda.

Just after the end of the second world war, small-time hustler Johnny Farrell (Ford) moves to Argentine. He is rescued from a mugger one night by Ballin Mundson (Macready), who it turns out owns the local underground casino. Upon seeing Farrell's ability to win at cards, Mundson hires him to win for the casino. Mr. Mundson and Johnny form a strong bond and when Mr. Mundson goes overseas he leaves Johnny in charge of the casino. However, everything changes when Mundson returns with a new wife, the playful and desirable Gilda (Hayworth). Not only has he broken their number one rule, no women ("Women and gambling don't mix"), he is unaware that Johnny and Gilda's paths have crossed before. Thus Johnny's role changes, with more and more of his time being spent trying to hide Gilda's indiscretions from her husband. On top of this Johnny discovers that Mr. Mundson's illegal activities extend much further than simply running an underground casino.

Gilda was the defining role in Rita Hayworth's career, and the one which propelled her into the stratosphere as one of the biggest stars of the 1940s. This was the role that inspired her famous quote, "Every man I knew went to bed with Gilda and woke up with me." I hadn't really seen her in anything prior to this and must confess that after watching Gilda I wasn't exactly blown away. She's a stunning woman, you can't deny that, and it is true that she was more renowned as a sex symbol than for her skills as an actress, but I thought her performance lacked a bit of subtlety. That wasn't a problem when she was playing Gilda in her public persona where she is a very vibrant, playful, unsubtle character, and she can do the scenes of high emotion like arguments and breaking down in tears, but in her more private moments where she was supposed to be displaying more complex emotions like 'concerned' or 'doubtful', she was a bit jarring. But other than that, the role was perfectly suited for her, taking complete advantage of what she had to offer as a sex symbol with a background in dancing, as she got to play on that flirtatious image (you get the famous hair-toss moment you may be familiar with if you've seen The Shawshank Redemption) and even perform a couple of extended dance numbers towards the end of the film.

Gilda is not your typical femme fatale that you find in a film noir like this. Traditionally the femme fatale is a dangerous woman who manipulates the male protagonist to get what she wants (think Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep). Gilda, while displaying a similar level of sexual allure and influence on the men around her, is not that straight forward a character. Gilda doesn't actually know what she wants. She is simply rebellious not because she is trying to get anywhere, just because she doesn't know what to do. Gilda is not an evil character, she is a tragic character.

This is a film in which you can really see the influence of the old Production Code. The Production Code was the set of industry censorship guidelines which was in place in Hollywood up until 1968 when the introduction of what would become the ratings system (G, PG, R, etc) occurred. Unlike today, where different films can be restricted for different age groups, until 1968 all films had to be acceptable for someone of any age to view. The Production Code spelt out what was acceptable and unacceptable content for films produced for the American public. The first principle of the Production Code was that "No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin." Thus, marital infidelity was looked down upon, which is where Gilda becomes interesting. For the first half of the film Gilda is shown to be openly cavorting with other gentlemen while her husband is not looking, and going home with a number of them. To adhere to the Production Code, this type of infidelity could not be tolerated. It was not a problem if they wished to kill her off at the end of the movie but in order to get their happy ending, the filmmakers had to find a way to explain away all of the perceived infidelity early in the film, which ultimately did not bring anything to the narrative.

Gilda is pure classical Hollywood. With that sprinkling of film noir it is everything that is fantastic about the Hollywood of the 30s, 40s and 50s. However, as good as it is, it hasn't really made that transition into greatness that others like Casablanca have. If you like classical Hollywood movies, you'll love this one.

26) Raising Arizona

Raising Arizona (1987)

Director: Joel Coen

Starring: Nicholas Cage, Holly Hunter, John Goodman, Trey Wilson, William Forsythe, Frances McDormand, Sam McMurray, Randall 'Tex' Cobb

As part of my PhD thesis I will be looking at the work of the Coen brothers. Raising Arizona was one of the few Coen brothers films which I had not seen. I also haven't seen Intolerable Cruelty or their remake of The Ladykillers, both of which are regarded as somewhat disappointing. Raising Arizona, however, is considered a Coen brothers classic so I thought it was high time I gave it a look.

Recidivist H.I. 'Hi' McDunnough (Cage) falls in love with Ed (Hunter) the police officer who takes his mug shots each time he is arrested. They marry, but unfortunately are unable to have children (as Hi explains through the narration "Edwina's insides were a rocky place where my seed could find no purchase"). When the news reports that wealthy businessman Nathan Arizona (Wilson) and his wife have just given birth to quintuplets, Ed and Hi decide that five is more than any parent could handle so they will abduct one for themselves. However, when two of Hi's friends, Gale (Goodman) and Evelle (Forsythe), who have broken out of prison and are hiding out at Hi and Ed's home discover the identity of the baby they abduct him with the intention of claiming the ransom money, only to themselves form an attachment to the child.

Raising Arizona was the Coens' second film, after the Noir-ish thriller Blood Simple and introduced the world to their particular style of black comedy (the film is, after all, a comedy about child abduction which is not generally considered a humorous subject). The film has quite a strange pace. On the one hand it is quite fast paced, in particular the prologue in which Hi gives us the back story of his criminal past and his relationship with Ed really raced through, if very quick with a number of years of history condensed into a couple of minutes. In general a lot happens for a 90min film, but every now and then a scene will be stretched on for a bit long, for example the first kidnapping scene, which really stalls the pace of the film. Being that it was the Coen's first comic film it could simply be the case that they were still learning just how long you should milk a certain joke for.

Raising Arizona also introduced one of the staples of Coen brothers comedies, the dimwitted protagonist. Hi and Ed are lovable hicks, and the Coen's use their simple perspective of looking at the world as a key tool in not only creating the narrative, it takes a special kind of dimwit to think that just because someone has had five babies they wouldn't miss one if it was kidnapped, but also as a way of telling the story, in this case through the narration of Hi. The Coens would continue to use these dimwitted protagonists in their later comedies: Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins) in The Hudsucker Proxy, The Dude (Jeff Bridges) in The Big Lebowski, Pete (John Turturro) and Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson) in O Brother Where Art Thou? and Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt) and Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) in Burn After Reading.

The comedy in the film is not just from the dialogue. There is also a fair bit of visual humour (including a brilliant short scene where Gale and Evelle are tunneling out of jail with their breaking through the surface is presented in such a way that it looks like the earth is giving birth to them, continuing the baby theme). The film was shot by cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld who not only had a good working relationship with the Coens, collaborating with them on their first three films, but also has an obvious knack for comedy as he was also the cinematographer on Big and When Harry Met Sally before launching his own directorial career which would include titles like The Addams Family and Addams Family Values (a very underrated pair of comedies), Get Shorty and Men In Black and its sequel.

Raising Arizona is a very enjoyable film, quite funny and typically quirky, but for mine the Coen brothers have got a lot better at what they do since making this film in 1987 and it is probably not as good as some of their later comic efforts like The Big Lebowski and O Brother Where Art Thou?

25) Traffic

Traffic (2000)

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Starring: Michael Douglas, Benicio Del Toro, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Don Cheadle, Erika Christensen, Dennis Quaid, Topher Grace, Albert Finney

Traffic is another film which I needed to see in order to understand what my book was talking about. It is one that I'd been meaning to watch for some time, but generally I don't like drug based movies, they make me feel uncomfortable, so until now I had yet to feel inspired to grab it off the shelf.

In Tijuana, an honest state policeman, Javier Rodriguez (Del Toro) struggles to combat a drug industry which controls everything including the police. In Ohio, a conservative judge (Douglas), appointed by the President to head up the war on drugs investigates the scope of the problem while also dealing with the discovery that his daughter is an addict. In San Diego, after her millionaire husband is arrested for trafficking drugs, a society wife (Zeta-Jones) is forced to involve herself in the racket in order to pay off debtors, while a disgruntled detective (Cheadle), protecting a star witness for the case, is forced to consider whether his efforts have been in vein.

Traffic has multiple narrative threads running through it (a fad which really seemed to take off after the success of Pulp Fiction, being employed not just in dramas like Crash and Babel, but also in comedies like Love Actually). These narrative strands are connected in that they all deal with the drug trade at different points in process, but unlike in the case of those films mentioned above they remain reasonably seperate rather than intertwining at the climax of the film. In fact, with the exception of the two threads taking place in San Diego, the protagonists of each thread don't meet each other.

As a means of helping the viewer distinguish between the threads, Soderbergh 'colour codes' them, shooting each narrative thread in a slightly different style. The film opens in Mexico, commencing with the narrative of Del Toro's character. These scenes set in Mexico are presented in a distinctive grainy and degraded golden tone (achieved through a combination of devices including colour filters, digital desaturation of the image and Ektachrome film stock) which gives the scenes a very hot and dry feel. These scenes are contrasted with those set in Washington which, being shot on tungsten film which is usually reserved for night time shooting, have a marked blue tinting, which creates a very steely cold feel. The scenes set in San Diego are more conventional in appearance in terms of the colours, but even in those Soderbergh has used the risky technique of 'flashing' the negative (momentarily exposing it to white light after shooting) so as to create a desaturated effect, in some cases emphasising the brightness of the Californian sunlight. This switching back and forth between very distinct visual styles is not something you will see in more conventional Hollywood films but is used to great effect here. Interestingly this unconventional effect was used to make what was, at the time, an unconventional narrative style, more accessible to audiences (two wrongs making a right?).

Steven Soderbergh won the Best Director Oscar for this film but it did not win Best Picture, which went to Gladiator. 90% of the time Best Picture and Best Director go hand in hand so it's interesting to see the situations where it doesn't. I guess in this case the Academy determined that much of the success of Traffic was as a result of Soderbergh's work as a director, more so than in the case of Gladiator and Ridley Scott, where it was seen as the combination of visual effects, costumes, acting, music and direction which had made the film what it was.

This is a well directed and well acted film but ultimately, I think what makes Traffic effective is the fact that it is not afraid to say that it doesn't have the answer. Too often Hollywood films will offer simplistic approaches to complex issues. Traffic acknowledges that the drug trade is a big problem, and one which we do not yet know how to deal with.

24) The Last Detail

The Last Detail (1973)

Director: Hal Ashby

Starring: Jack Nicholson, Otis Young, Randy Quaid


In this month's Empire magazine there is a short interview with comedy writer/director/producer Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, The 40 Year Old Virgin). He was asked what his favourite film of all time was and his response was a toss up between Network (which is indeed an amazing film) and The Last Detail. This surprised me a bit as, despite being quite a critically acclaimed film, it tends to get left behind by some of the real classics that came out around the same Hollywood boom period of the early 1970s. Apatow's mention reminded me that I actually had a copy of the movie on my shelf which I'd picked up for five or six dollars sometime last year as Hal Ashby was one of the key figures in that Hollywood Renaissance whose work I had not seen any of. So I pulled it out and gave it a look.

Two navy lifers, Buddusky (Nicholson) and Mulhall (Young) are commissioned to escort a young seaman named Meadows (Quaid) across the country to a military prison in Boston, where he is to serve eight years behind bars, for the measly offence of attempting to steal $40 from a polio charity, which just happened to be the General's wife's pet project. While Buddusky and Mulhall initially view this assignment at a paid holiday (they are given five days to make the trip), upon seeing how young and timid Meadows is Buddusky's sense of outrage at the injustice of the sentence causes him to reassess the purpose of his mission. Rather than try and get Meadows to prison as soon as possible and take the few extra days for themselves, Buddusky decides that they should show him a good time before he gets locked up. However, as they show the young man all that the sixties has to offer, they start to think that maybe showing him everything that he will be missing out on might not be the act of kindness they intended it to be.

The Last Detail is a fine example of what was going on in Hollywood in the early seventies. Much like Easy Rider, The Last Detail is very anti-authoritarian in tone. Buddusky and Mulhall's frustration at the injustice facing Meadows, and more generally at the way in which those in power were abusing their authority, was intended to speak to the anti-authoritarian youth of the nation, disenfranchised with their government in the light of the Vietnam conflict and the Watergate scandal. The screenplay, by Robert Towne (Chinatown, Shampoo) is also brimming with profanity, taking advantage of the recent changes in censorship laws allowing for a more authentic style of dialogue. Stylistically the film is quite rough, in particular the audio quality is not great, and lacks the polish of classic Hollywood films and instead going for the realism favoured by the French New Wave directors.

When you talk about great directors from the seventies you invariably get names like Coppola, Scorsese, Spielberg, Altman, Lucas, De Palma. If you are with someone who knows their stuff they might also throw in a Mike Nichols or an Arthur Penn, but not often do people remember Hal Ashby. Initially he established himself in the industry as an editor, working on films including The Cincinnati Kid, The Thomas Crown Affair and In the Heat of the Night, for which he won an Oscar. He then made the transition into directing and earned a reputation for making small-scale, character driven dramas including Harold and Maude, Being There and Shampoo. He played a key role in transforming Hollywood in the late sixties and early seventies and was one of the prominent directors in Hollywood until the arrival of the 'Film School Generation' (Coppola, Scorsese, De Palma). Unfortunately he developed a crippling drug addiction which led to him being considered unemployable by the 1980s. When it finally looked like he was getting his life back on track he developed cancer which eventually killed him in 1988.

Nicholson's performance as Buddusky is considered to be one of the finest, if not one of the better known, in his career, which is a big call because careers don't come much finer than Nicholson's. He's been nominated for twelve acting Oscars, of which he has one three, both statistics being records for male actors. That being said his performance in this film does deservedly sit towards the top of the pile. Nicholson could hardly put a foot wrong in the early seventies and through his compatibility with subversive, anti-authoritarian characters he became the on-screen face of the Hollywood Renaissance. Much like I said with Brando in relation to On the Waterfront, if you only know Nicholson as an old, fat, kind of sleazy guy, do yourself a favour and check out some of his earlier stuff, starting with The Last Detail.

Like I said, there's a lot of swearing, so it's not one for those with sensitive ears. But if you can handle it, The Last Detail is a really compelling, character driven film which gives a great insight into where Hollywood was at in the early seventies.

23) The Road

The Road (2009)

Director: John Hillcoat

Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smitt-McPhee, Charlize Theron, Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce

Went to see The Road today with friend yesterday. I'd been quite keen to see it as it had got some big raps from a number of critics. But despite the fact that it was only released here at the end of January, it was very difficult to find anywhere that was showing it, or at least showing it more than once a day.

In a desolate, post-apocalyptic America that has all but run out of food, a nameless father (Mortensen) and son (Smitt-McPhee) journey south, towards the coast. In this hellish existence in which they are forced to scavenge for food and are constantly in hiding from gangs who have turned to cannibalism in order to survive, it is only the fathers love for his son and the need to protect him and teach him to protect himself which sustains him.

The Road was shot on a relatively small budget of US$20million which means that the filmmakers had to take a slightly different approach to presenting a post-apocalyptic world than other higher budget projects have chosen to in the past. Rather than looking at the big picture, the film operates on a much simpler, smaller scale. It is just about this father and son, and their direct experience as they walk the earth. Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smitt-McPhee do an incredible job of carrying this film. They are on screen for well over 90% of the film. In fact there is not a scene in the entire film in which one or both of them is not present. The other characters in the film only play minor roles either in flashbacks or in passing encounters.

Unlike movies like Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior which present the post-apocalyptic world as an action-packed place, The Road presents a much more bleak and dire depiction. The film takes place about a decade after the apocalypse has occurred and in that time humanity has been stretched to it's limits. Many, including the boys mother (Theron) have opted for suicide long ago. Those who remain do so by making survival their sole priority. Thus they scavenge and steal, and many have turned to cannibalism. Humanity's moral code has been abandoned and while the father is determined to imbue some sort or morality in his son, assuring him that they are "the good guys", in a number of situations we see just how much he has had to compromise his own values in order to survive. It is also a world presented without hope. Things are not going to get better. The father and son have left their home out of realisation that they couldn't survive another winter there and that it was only a matter of time before the cannibalistic groups found them. They decide to head south, towards the coast, but with no specific goal in mind. It is not a case of "If we can only make it to the coast everything will be alright." The father is only too aware that what they will find there is no different to what they have seen everywhere else. This seeming lack of hope makes for a very challenging experience for the viewer, as hope that everything will be alright in the end is usually one of the main desires one experiences in viewing a film.

Because this film is not trying to look at the big picture in it's depiction of this post-apocalyptic world, there are a lot of questions which go unanswered. Primarily is the question of the nature of the apocalypse that has occurred. The destruction of the earth is not shown on screen, all we see is a flashback scene in which the father is at home and notices a fiery orange glow and the sounds of people screaming coming from behind his drawn curtains. We are told that all plant life and pretty much all animal life has died, which makes one think that maybe it was a nuclear war, but the people we encounter during the film, despite being dirty and starving, have nothing wrong with them to suggest exposure to radiation. At the end of the day, that is not what the film is about. Hillcoat is not seeking to give the audience a warning about the dangers of nuclear war or global warming or anything. What happened to create this situation is irrelevant. The story is about the here and now for this father and son and how they deal with it. So as you watch the film it is important not to let yourself get bogged down in those sorts of 'why' questions.

I was quite surprised that this film was completely overlooked when the Oscar nominations came out. It has been getting consistently positive reviews, so is obviously a critical favourite, and being based on a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Cormac McCarthy, who also wrote No Country for Old Men, it had the respectable foundation to make people take notice. The two leads, Mortensen and the young Smitt-McPhee were very good and cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe had already received a nomination for best cinematography at the BAFTAs, and none of them would have been out of place if they had received a nomination from the Academy. I had originally thought that maybe the film didn't come out in time to make the cut for this years Oscars, but it turns out it received a limited release in the USA in November 09 which was well before a number of the films which are up for awards. I guess it just wasn't their year.

By all reports this film is not quite as full on as the novel on which it was based, but none the less it is still quite a heavy film. It is beautifully shot, in a tragic kind of way, and the performances are top notch, but this is definitely not a film for everyone.

22) Shakespeare in Love

Shakespeare in Love (1998)

Director: John Madden

Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph Fiennes, Geoffrey Rush, Tom Wilkinson, Colin Firth, Ben Affleck, Rupert Everett, Judi Dench

This is a film I had been meaning to review for a couple of years now. After Miramax put a lot of financial support behind a marketing push for the movie coming into the award season, Shakespeare in Love managed to win seven Oscars, including the Best Picture over the much more fancied Saving Private Ryan. In the years since, that decision come to be considered as one of the big Oscar 'mistakes'. I remember seeing it on video shortly after it had come out and thinking it was ridiculous that this won best picture over Saving Private Ryan (which, it should be noted, I hadn't seen but had heard was very good). Over the years though I have begun to that maybe as a 14 year old I didn't fully appreciate the intricacies of the screenplay and perhaps a lot of what made Shakespeare in Love a good film went straight over my head. So yesterday, when I was reading a bit about the history of Miramax in which Shakespeare in Love featured quite prominently, I decided to give it another shot.

Talented playwright William Shakespeare (Fiennes), living in the shadow of the more respected Christopher Marlowe (Everett), is struggling for inspiration in the writing of his next play, a comedy called 'Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter'. A lover of the theatre and in particular the plays of Shakespeare, the wealthy Viola De Lesseps (Paltrow), disguises herself as Thomas Kent and auditions for a part in his new play. Despite being betrothed to Lord Wessex (Firth) Viola starts a secret affair with William and as their romance blooms he finds the inspiration he needs write what will become arguably to world's greatest love story, Romeo and Juliet.

The screenplay, by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, for this film is very clever. Regardless of whether you think it deserved the Best Picture Oscar (or whether Judi Dench deserved the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for a role which consisted of only 8mins of screen time) you can't deny that it's Best Original Screenplay Oscar was well deserved. The screenplay has a number of levels to it, with little winks to those in the audience who are more familiar with Shakespeare and his works (I particularly liked the scene in which the uninspired Shakespeare sits at the bar in a tavern explaining to Marlowe that he has nothing for his play other than a title, at which point, off the top of his head, Marlowe rattles some off the key plot points to Romeo and Juliet just to get him started. This is obviously one for all those who think that a lot of Shakespeare's revered plays were actually written by Marlowe).

What I enjoyed though, was the way in which the writers sought to draw parallels between the theatre industry of the 1590s and the Hollywood of today. The writers have a thinly veiled dig at the Hollywood system in their presentation of the money men organising how they're going to put on the next Shakespeare play, offering the players a percentage of the profits as payment when they know perfectly well that there won't be any profits. There are also a couple of quite funny scenes where Shakespeare hires a boat to cross the river and has awkward encounters with the boat drivers (presented as the taxi driver of the time), one who recognises him having seen him in something but can't remember what, and one who has been working on a script of his own and would like him to read it. Much like the Heath Ledger film A Knight's Tale tried to present jousting knights as the rock stars of the day, Shakespeare in Love presents the theatre as the Hollywood of the day, but goes about it in a slightly more subtle way.

When Miramax bought the rights to make the film off Universal, part of the agreement was that Miramax could not use any A-list stars in the film (at the time Julia Roberts had been interested in the project) as Universal did not want the film to be competing with it's upcoming slate of releases. That being the case, Miramax did an amazing job in securing a quality cast, littered with familiar faces and a number of actors who would go on to become quite big names (this is the film that made Paltrow A-list, even if she has dropped off in recent years).

Whether it is a better film than Saving Private Ryan is still debatable, but Shakespeare in Love is a very clever, well written and well made film. If anything, the stigma of being considered an unworthy Best Picture winner has probably unfairly tarnished the legacy of this film.

21) Up in the Air

Up in the Air (2009)

Director: Jason Reitman

Starring: George Clooney, Vera Fermiga, Anna Kendrick, Jason Bateman


So, continuing my way through the Best Picture nominees I come to the film which was the early frontrunner for the big gong, Up in the Air.

Ryan Bingham (Clooney) is a corporate downsizer, or a career transition councilor, or a termination facilitator. He fires people for a living, going from company to company doing what the bosses don't have the guts to do. His job causes him to be on the road 322 days a year, a lifestyle that he cherishes. Home for him is planes and airports, hotels and hire cars. He dreams of being only the seventh man to reach ten million frequent flyer miles. However, his way of life is threatened when his company considers taking him off the road after the ambitious, young Nathalie Keener (Kendrick) introduces the possibility of doing their job over the internet rather than face to face. So Ryan has to take Keener on the road with him, in the hope of demonstrating that her new way of doing things is not feasible. Meanwhile, his no-strings-attached approach to life is also compromised as he becomes increasingly more involved with Alex Goran, a woman he meets in an airport lounge who shares a similar jet-setting lifestyle.

Jason Reitman, son of veteran comic director Ivan Reitman, has got himself a reasonable hot streak going to start what looks to be a promising directorial career. He's made three feature films; Thank You for Smoking, Juno and now Up in the Air (with the exception of Juno he also wrote their screenplays). Not too shabby a trio to start a career with. Up in the Air has earned him his second Best Director Oscar nomination (his first was for Juno), but as wonderful a job as he has done with this film it would appear unlikely he will get past Kathryn Bigelow or James Cameron to get the gong.

It is a credit to both Clooney and Reitman that Ryan Bingham is actually a likable character. The combination of being someone who fires people for a living and being someone with no desire for real human connection meant there was great potential for him to become a truly despicable character. Even when we see the scenes of Bingham doing his job, talking people around to seeing it as an opportunity rather than a set back, there is a dignity in the way he does it, his ruthless efficiency is matched by an authenticity in the way he deals with people in that very vulnerable situation. Clooney's performance is brilliant, perfectly protraying that charming and charismatic person who can be your friend without giving any real insight into who he is.

A number of critics have alluded to a Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn feel to this film I reckon that is fair enough. This movie does have a classic feel to it and Clooney and Fermiga, who puts in an equally brilliant performance as Alex, are perfect foils for each other. Alex urges Ryan to think of her as being him "with a vagina". In Alex, Ryan believes he has found someone who actually understands the way he chooses to live his life. Anna Kendrick is also great as the Nathalie Keener, trying so hard to put up the cool composed front of Bingham, but lacking the truly hard shell to keep her emotions under control (her sudden emotional breakdown in the airport is both hilarious and a bit heartbreaking). It is no surprise that the three leads in this film are all up for Oscars.

As the son of Ivan Reitman (director of Ghostbusters, Stripes, Meatballs, Kindergarten Cop, Twins), Jason obviously has some connections to the comedy world so it was interesting to see a number of more comic actors showing up in the supporting cast. Jason Bateman from Arrested Development plays Bingham's boss, Bingham's sister is played by Melanie Lynskey (Two and a Half Men), her fiancee is played by Danny McBride (Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder) and The Hangover's Zach Galifianakis appears as one of the people being fired.

This could end up being one of the defining movies of the last couple of years, particularly relating to the Global Financial Crisis. Funnily enough, this script about someone whose job it is to go around firing people had been kicking around for years and it was only once it got up and running that the GFC hit and it took on a greater relevance. Jason Reitman actually toured around American interviewing people who had recently lost their jobs. Some of the people he interviewed he actually cast in the film, asking them to improvise their responses as George Clooney fired them. Gives a bit more gravity to those scenes knowing that the people being fired are actually reliving real life experiences and sharing the real life emotions they went through.

This is a brilliant film which, despite it's topical but heavy subject matter, manages to maintain a light and breezy tone. It is nice to see a really great, Best Picture quality film, which doesn't feel the need to be heavy. Like I said above, it was the early frontrunner for the big gong, but seems to have lost a bit of momentum over the last couple of months in the wake of the record breaking run of Avatar and the surprise critical success of The Hurt Locker. Even if it doesn't get it though, still very much worth seeing though. A light, very likable and very relevant drama.

20) A Serious Man

A Serious Man (2009)

Directors: Ethan Coen & Joel Coen

Starring: Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Sari Lennick, Aaron Wolff, Jessica McManus


This was a two-birds-with-one-stone viewing today. The Coen brothers are two of the filmmakers I will be looking at in detail later in my thesis so I needed to see this, their latest film, however it is also one of the nominees for Best Picture at this years Academy Awards and as I had mentioned in my earlier Oscar related blog, I was keen to try and see as many of the nominated films as I could. So a doubly productive morning for me.

Larry Gopnik is an average Jewish guy leading an average suburban life. He has a wife and two kids, a job as a physics professor at the local university. However when his average life starts to unravel, Larry is left seeking answers. Is God punishing him? Is he a good man? A serious man (a "mensch" in Yiddish, someone of good purpose and character)? Is God even paying attention?
Over their career, the Coen brothers tend to operate in one of two modes; either quirky comedies (The Big Lebowski, Burn After Reading, O Brother Where Art Thou?) or dark, film-noirish thrillers (No Country for Old Men, The Man Who Wasn't There, Miller's Crossing, Blood Simple). A Serious Man tends to align more with the former, although it is not a perfect feel. The film is much more tragic in tone with the comedy tending to come from moments of absurdity in Larry's search for answers as to his run of bad luck.

You may not recognise any of the names listed as starring in this film. Truth is, most of them you'd be lucky to recognise their faces. In the past the Coen's have tended to enlist either A-list stars (George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Jeff Bridges) or top quality character actors (Frances McDormand, John Turturro, John Goodman) to bring their stories to life. For whatever reason (perhaps budgetary) in this film they have opted for no names. However this does not become a weakness, but rather a strength of the film. The anonymity of the actors helps the viewer to fully engage with the character. Michael Stuhlbarg in particular puts in a marvelous performance, opting to portray Larry as a hopeful man who is simply bemused by everything that is happening to him, rather than as a sad sack or a whinger. The supporting cast put in some really funny performances as the hopelessly pathetic support network that Larry turns to to help him through his questioning.

A Serious Man is quite an intellectually dense film. It explores big themes such faith, fate and reason. Larry is a physicist (ironically one who is an expert in the Uncertainty Principle) whose profession is based on reason and logic, however the Jewish community he is a part of renders his rationality irrelevant in favour of faith in his quest for understanding. The Coens are also not afraid to leave you with "Who knows?" instead of trying to present clear cut answers to these big questions. The film also raises questions about perspective. While Larry is convinced that his life is going down the drain, his brother Arthur still asks why God has chosen to bless Larry so abundantly while showing no favour to him, and in a rather comical scene the juniour Rabbi tries to show Larry that his sense that everything was crumbling was merely evidence of the fact that he had forgotten how to see the beauty in the world. The mere fact that the film is set in the late 1960s serves as a reminder that not too long ago things a lot worse for the Jewish people. Having read a few reviews it would appear that if you have some familiarity with Judaism or with quantum mechanics (particularly with the famous 'Schrodinger's Cat' thought experiment) you will find even more levels within the narrative, but despite having only a limited knowledge of Jewish traditions and practices and absolutely zero knowledge of quantum mechanics, I still found it to be a very stimulating and thought provoking film.

Todd McCarthy wrote of this film in Variety that, "This is the kind of film you get to make after you've won an Oscar." That's a pretty spot on call. A thematically dense film with a plot which doesn't provide a great deal of closure, brought to life by a cast of absolute no names, it can only have been the prestige associated with the Coen brothers which would have convinced a studio that this film was a worthwhile investment (albeit a relatively small one with a reported budget of only US$7 million). That being said, it is wonderful that the Coen brothers were able to get this film made because it is fantastic.

19) Being John Malkovich

Being John Malkovich (1999)

Director: Spike Jonze

Starring: John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, Orson Bean,
Charlie Sheen, John Malkovich


As I mentioned in my blog on Three Kings, I'm reading Geoff King's book Indiewood, USA. At the moment I'm in the middle of a chapter about screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. Having just trawled my way through a section on Adaptation (a film I am yet to see), I thought I'd make my life easier by sitting down to watch Being John Malkovich so I'll know what he's talking about when I tackle that section.

Unemployed puppeteer Craig (Cusack), begrudgingly takes a filing job in a strange, low ceilinged office on the 7 1/2th floor of a Manhattan office building. Despite being married, to Lotte (Diaz), Craig falls for a woman he meets at his new workplace, Maxine (Keener), though she shows no interest in him. One day Craig stumbles across a hidden portal which enables people to enter the mind of John Malkovich for 15mins. You see what he sees, hear what he hears, feel what he feels. He enters a partnership with Maxine to make money off it, selling it as an experience. When Maxine starts having an affair with Lotte, but only when she's inside Malkovich, Craig sees an opportunity to be with Maxine.

Charlie Kaufman is probably the most unique and interesting screenwriter working in the American cinema. As well as Being John Malkovich he is the mind behind other intriguing films like Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. His screenplays are usually quite unconventional, not necessarily adhering to mainstream narrative conventions, and often dealing with interesting, mind-bending scenarios. He works with similarly non-mainstream directors like Michel Gondry and, in this case, MTV prodigy Spike Jonze. This means he's not for everyone. Some people really love his stuff, some people just don't get it. Because he is unconventional he tends to work on the fringes of Hollywood, in that 'Indiewood' are of overlap between the independent sectors and the major studios. Studios aren't going to back him with big budget projects because his 'alternativeness' means his films are no sure thing to make that money back, but they are happy to support his projects providing the budgets are reasonable and he is still able to attract some big names to his films (Jim Carrey, Meryl Streep, Nicholas Cage, Kate Winslett, Cameron Diaz to name a few).

How Kaufman settled on Malkovich as the central figure I don't know. Apparently Malkovich was initially reluctant to star in the film but was worn down by Kaufman and Jonze over a couple of years. As much as I don't really like him (there's just always been something about him which has rubbed me the wrong way) he does a great job in what must have been a very challenging role. Can you imagine what it must be like not only having to act a character who in theory is supposed to be you, but is in fact written by someone else, but to have to act a character who is supposed to be you being controlled by other people?

People tend to credit the phenomenon of glamorous actresses uglifying in the name of art to Charlize Theron and her Oscar winning performance in Monster, however Cameron Diaz pipped her by four years with her performance as Lotte Schwartz. But what was so striking about her performance in this film was not just that she wasn't glammed up and sparkling, it was the way that Jonze chose to treat her. Despite being only the second character to appear in the film, there are no close ups on her face in the first 40mins at least of the film. She features quite prominently in the introductory stages of the film but is always shown either in the background of a shot of John Cusack's character, or in shadow, or not front on, or in long shots (likely to indicate how low a priority she is in Craig's life). In fact if you didn't already know that it was Cameron Diaz playing the part it would take you quite a while to work it out. The camera does not treat her as a star.

Just as an aside, I love when you look at movies from a few years ago that have tried to predict the future and you can see by just how far they missed. I know we're screwing up the environment but the odds of the world looking like Blade Runner by 2019 are lengthening by the day. Being John Malkovich doesn't make any grand sweeping claims but I did get a bit of a giggle out of the 'Seven Years Later' (which keep in mind would have been 2006) which featured Charlie Sheen playing himself as a bald man with one of the world's great comb-overs.

Being John Malkovich has a strange premise, but is not difficult to follow. It prompts some interesting questions and, in an awareness that it is doing so, acts some of them out (at one point John Malkovich goes through the portal into the mind of John Malkovich). It's a wonderfully surreal film, at times very funny, but with moments of sadness.

18) On the Waterfront

On the Waterfront (1954)

Director: Elia Kazan

Starring: Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Eva Marie Saint, Lee J. Cobb, Rob Steiger



The torrential rain outside meant that cricket was called and I had the afternoon at home. Kate felt like watching a movie and I'm always happy to, so we decided to watch On the Waterfront as she'd never seen it before, she was in the mood for something old and it wasn't too long (we had cleaning to do).

Terry Malloy (Brando), a one time prize fighter, works on as a longshoreman on the docks at Hoboken, New Jersey and runs errands for underworld figure and corrupt union boss Johnny Friendly (Cobb). Terry's brother Charlie (Steiger) is Friendly's right hand man. Friendly uses Terry to unknowingly set up the murder of a fellow longshoreman, Joey Doyle, who had threatened to go to the authorities about the corruption of the union bosses. When Terry meets Joey's sister Edie (Saint) he starts to feel the pangs of conscience. When he comes clean to her, Edie and Father Doyle (Malden) try to convince Terry to lead the way in testifying against Friendly and his gang at the Waterfront Crime Commission hearings.


On the Waterfront is an absolute classic. It won 8 Academy Awards including Best Picture and had a further 4 nominations. It has a screenplay which has been universally praised by critics as near perfect. It helped make Marlon Brando into a legend and it contains one of the most famous scenes in the history of American film (the famous "I coulda been a contender" scene between Terry and Charlie in the back of the car).


Marlon Brando is electrifying in this film, delivering what is probably the performance of his career. If you are only familiar with Brando as a fat, old man and you don't really know what all the fuss is about get your hands on a copy of this movie. This is Brando establishing his legendary status rather than just resting on it as he did later in his career (Superman: The Movie). This was the last of three collaborations between Brando and Elia Kazan, the director who gave Brando his big break in A Streetcar Named Desire and who seemed to be able to get the best out of him (Brando was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for every film he did with Kazan). His performance as Terry Malloy, a man tormented by his conscience and the frustrated by the knowledge that he was unable to be all that he could be because of his loyalty to his brother who never had the same devotion to him, is one of the most powerful in film history. On the Waterfront earned Brando his fourth Best Actor Oscar nomination (an amazing statistic given it was only his sixth film), won him his first Oscar and played a major role establishing him as the legendary figure that he now is.

Brando's performance is well supported though. Eva Marie Saint won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as Edie Doyle, sister to the murdered longshoreman Joey Doyle and love interest/conscience of Brando's Terry Malone. Karl Malden does a great job as the fiery Father Barry and along with Lee J. Cobb and Rob Steiger earned a nomination for Best Supporting Actor. But despite having three of the five nominees in that category On the Waterfront did not claim that Oscar.

Interestingly, this was a very personal film for director Elia Kazan. In 1952, shortly before the making of this film Kazan had agreed to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee in naming colleagues associated with the Communist Party. By doing so, he was given a free pass and able to continue his career unhindered. This gives extra resonance to the scenes in which Terry stands up in court to testify against those his friends, and the way in which he is outcast by even those he thought he was standing up for as a result of it. Through the portrayal of Terry's actions Kazan is insisting that it was a sense of conscience rather than self interest which motivated him to speak up.

Unless you are one of those people who flat out refuses to watch black and white films, in which case you need to wake up to yourself because you are missing out on some brilliant films (These people do exist. When I worked at a video store I had a customer ask if they could exchange a film because they didn't know it was going to be in black and white. Philistine!), you have to see this film. An essential part of any film education.

17) The Informant!

The Informant! (2009)

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Starring: Matt Damon, Scott Bakula, Joel McHale, Melanie Lynskey

The Informant! was a film I was really interested in when I first saw the trailers for it mid last year but it just came and went from cinemas here quite quickly and with very little fanfare. I guess it just shows that even with a star as bankable as Matt Damon you still need the big marketing dollars behind a film to get it onto people's radar.

Mark Whitacre is a vice president for lysine developing company ADM. He loves his job. But when he finds himself being forced to participate in illegal price fixing he takes this information to the FBI, who convince him to act as an informant. However, as the investigation continues, just how reliable a source Mark Whitacre can be considered starts to come into question.

This is a very clever and funny film and is really well written. Matt Damon has a really big load to carry in this film. Not only is he the sole big name in the cast, with the supporting cast being made up of faces better known from the small screen than the big one, his character is also the key to making this film work. If you can't buy his performance the film simply won't work. However he holds everything together with a really strong comic performance in a role which is very un-Matt Damon-like (he sheds his chiseled Jason Bourne figure to do the Russell Crowe for this one and piles on a few extra kgs).

The stand out feature of this film is the hilarious narration from Mark Whitacre. This narration is presented in the form of a stream-of-consciousness interior monologue. Different events or things he sees will trigger a thought, which we will often hear over the top of the on screen dialogue, beautifully demonstrating the way Mark's mind wanders in and out of focus. These monologues cover everything from sushi to polar bears, the texture of avocado to his pet topic, corn.

Marvin Hamlisch's score has rightfully seen him nominated for a number of best original score awards (Golden Globes, Broadcast Film Critics Association but unfortunately no Oscar nod). In a slightly more subtle way than the narration the score also takes the viewer into the mind of Mark Whitacre. It has a comical lightness to it (even using a kazoo at one point) which beautifully illustrates the innocent ignorance of Whitacre, but the score changes to a brassy James Bond-esque feel when he is performing his undercover duties as a spy (He calls himself 0014 because he's "twice as smart at 007").

This movie is simply brilliant for the first hour, it is funny, clever and very engaging. Unfortunately, though, it starts to drag a bit from there. In the second half the focus of the story changes somewhat (I won't explain quite how so as not to ruin the film) and as a result it starts to get a bit messy and loses some of it's charm.

16) Three Kings

Three Kings (1999)

Director: David O. Russell

Starring: George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube, Spike Jonze

I've just started reading Geoff King's Indiewood, USA which looks at that area of overlap between the Hollywood studios and the independent sector that emerged in the 1990s. One of the case studies in a later chapter is Three Kings. I'd never seen it before and figured I'd probably get more out of the book if I was familiar with the film he was analysing so when I saw it for sale for $9.95 I decided to pick it up.

Three Kings is set immediately following the signing of the peace treaty ending the Gulf War (the first one). The American soldiers are still in Kuwait, yet to be shipped home. When Sgt. Troy Barlow (Wahlberg) stumbles across a map which is believed to reveal the location of stockpiles of gold stolen from the Kuwaitis by Saddam, Maj. Archie Gates (Clooney) sees an opportunity for to get rich quick before heading home. However, venturing out in pursuit of the gold opens the four soldiers (that's right four, making the title Three Kings a touch confusing) are alerted to the absurdity of the situation in which the USA were leaving the Iraqi people. With a ceasefire having been called, and the Iraqi soldiers under strict orders not to engage with US troops, they had set their focus on taming the unhappy Iraqi locals ("Bush told the people to rise up against Saddam. They thought they'd have our support. They didn't. Now they're getting slaughtered"). The quick, cash-grab plan goes out the window when they break the ceasefire in order to rescue some civilians, and the new mission becomes getting these refugees across the border.

The film started with a slide warning that different visual effects, including distortions of colour, were used in the film to enhance emotional response. I assume that they must have had a spate of people in early screenings being ignorant and complaining that there was something wrong with the print. When I watched the film there were a couple of occasions where they would use some visual technique like a slow motion shot or a distortion of colour, but nothing so obscure that it could be mistaken as accidental.

David O. Russell gives a satiric depiction of war unlike any we've seen since Robert Altman's M*A*S*H. The film is punctuated with darkly comic moments and absurd situations. While the soldiers are searching for the gold they have to wade through the real loot of war; stockpiles of jeans, kitchen appliances, mobile phones and stereos. We have a gung-ho war correspondents standing calmly in the middle of gunfire doing take after take as she stuffs her lines, with the soldiers accepting of her presence and happy to fight around her. However, the film also has its fair share of confronting scenes of violence and torture, so the humour never undermines the horror that is war.

I read a review of this film by Roger Ebert in which he claimed that with Three Kings Russell had announced himself as a major player and compared the film to the best films of Scorsese, Stone, Altman and Tarantino. A bit over a decade later it turns out he may have got a bit ahead of himself. As impressive as Three Kings was, the most notabale thing Russell has done since is I Heart Huckabees which was only a moderate success. By all reports the guy is an A-grade douchebag, having had run ins with a number of actors (including on the set of Three Kings where he reportedly got in a fistfight with Clooney who objected to the way he treated some of the extras), which may go some way to explain him not being able to land any big projects. He's rumoured to be attached to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and according to IMDb in development he has a project listed as 'Untitled Baton Twirling Project' so we'll see what he makes of those.