150) No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men (2007)

Directors: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

Starring: Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones, Kelly Macdonald, Woody Harrelson

I was at a trivia night a few months ago where they asked the question what was the last film to win the Best Picture Oscar which started and finished with the same letter. They gave the answer as The English Patient. Seems they hadn't updated their questions to take into account No Country for Old Men winning the award in 2008. I don't know why I have chosen to start by sharing that, but it is a little piece of trivia which, at least at the time of writing this, is still correct (though it might not be for much longer if True Grit can pull a swift one on The King's Speech and The Social Network next year).

Out hunting in rural Texas, Llewelyn Moss (Brolin) comes across the scene of what is obviously a drug deal gone violently wrong, with dead bodies strewn everywhere. Not far from the scene Moss finds another body, this one with a briefcase containing $2 million. Rather than report the incident Moss opts to take the money for himself and try and skip town with his wife. Unfortunately this decision puts a psychopathic killer, Anton Chigurh (Bardem), on his trail. Chigurh is a man who has no issue with killing anyone and everyone who stands in between him and that money. Looking for both of them is the local Sheriff Ed Tom Ball (Jones).

Javier Bardem's performance as Anton Chigurh stands alongside Heath Ledger's Joker as the greatest villainous performances of the last decade. Chigurh is simply terrifying. The calm, measured way in which he speaks and his cold, emotionally detached approach to his killing is very chilling. What makes the character interesting is the fact that we aren't presented with any real motivation. Presenting a realistic motivation for villains is a key aspect of their characterisation. It is what makes us believe they are real rather than two dimensional, pantomime villains who only do what they do because they are evil. Whether that motivation is greed, passion, revenge, bigotry, we need something in order to understand why they are doing what they are doing. In No Country for Old Men, Chigurh's motivation is not so obviously apparent. We know he has been hired to track down the money, but that explains only why he is in this particular situation, rather than how he became this cold-blooded, seemingly soul-less individual. The fact that Bardem takes this seemingly unstoppable force that is Chigurh and makes him so terrifyingly believable is a credit to him as an actor.

All of the buzz concerning No Country for Old Men when it came out was to do with Bardem, and rightly so. He was great and a worthy Oscar winner. But on a second viewing the performance which caught my attention was that of Tommy Lee Jones. Jones has this amazing face. It is beautifully weathered and says so much. He looks tired and worn down by the world (appropriate given that he is the old man for whom this is no country). He delivers his dialogue, which is very well written, perfectly. Being a sheriff he keeps his emotions in check, but as he is nearing retirement the wight of all the evil he has seen over the years and it has taken its toll on him and he is just done in. A fantastically subtle performance.

Spoiler alert time, if you haven't seen the film and you don't want it ruined, skip this paragraph. The death of Llewelyn Moss amazed me. People were shocked in Hitchcock's Psycho when the film's main character dies only a third of the way into the picture, but at least she got to die on screen. Moss dies between scenes, with Bell showing up to the hotel to find he has been killed. I don't think I've ever seen a main character killed off with so little fanfare before. I don't know why you wouldn't have that death take place on screen, it seems a strange decision, but then maybe that is the point. It catches us off guard the way that it caught him off guard.

My one bone to pick with this film, which I had on my first viewing and I maintain on my second, is that I find the ending a bit unsatisfying. By the ending I mean the last 30mins. The intensity of the film builds to fever pitch and then the event discussed in the previous paragraph occurs and that intensity dies straight off and the film just seems to trail off with a few slow scenes to finish the film. Obviously, this is not meant to be a blockbuster film. It is based on a Cormack McCarthy novel and as such is meant to be more brooding and contemplative, which is definitely what the last part of the film is, but it does feel like a big drop off.

No Country for Old Men is a fantastic film. It looks stunning, contains some of the best written dialogue in recent years and some great performances. It is also the fullest realisation of the Coen brothers' talent to date.

149) True Grit

True Grit (1969)

Director: Henry Hathaway

Starring: John Wayne, Kim Darby, Glen Campbell, Robert Duvall, Jeff Corey, Dennis Hopper

Even before I heard about the Coen brothers remake of True Grit (which I'm really annoyed isn't getting a Boxing Day release in Australia so I won't be able to see it before the year and thus this blog ends) I had been keen to see this Western classic. I've got a bit of a soft spot for Westerns and despite not having seen a lot of John Wayne's work, I was interested to see the film which at last won him an Oscar.

When teenager Mattie Ross's (Darby) father is gunned down by Tom Chaney (Corey), she sets off on a personal mission to get vengeance. She enlists the help of a drunken old Marshall, Rooster Cogburn (Wayne) a violent man with a reputation for having "true grit". As they prepare to go after Chaney, they cross paths with Texas Ranger La Boeuf (Campbell) who is also after Chaney because of a murder he committed in Texas. The three reluctantly join forces to pursue Chaney and the gang he is hiding out with.

John Wayne is very good as Rooster Cogburn. His presence really carries the film. Without him in that role I don't think this particular film would have been anything special. That being said I did have very high expectations which weren't quite met. I was expecting a great performance, but it was just very good. I knew it was supposed to be different to his other roles, but it wasn't that different. It isn't the best performance of his career, even of the small sample I've seen. It doesn't come close to his performance as Ethan Edwards in The Searchers. Not knowing a lot about who else was in the field that year, I kind of feel like his Oscar win was one of those Oscars which was given because he deserved to have one after the career he'd had rather than because this specific performance was his greatest ever. Although in a way it is appropriate that he should have received a pseudo-lifetime achievement Oscar for his performance in True Grit because his performance as Rooster Cogburn is very much informed his careers work, and what John Wayne had come to represent. As the fat, drunken, aging Marshall Wayne played off the persona that John Wayne had developed over 40 years of filmmaking. Audiences had developed certain expectations of the John Wayne character and as Rooster Cogburn he plays against them but there are still moments when classic John Wayne shines through. Part of the reason which this performance lacks the punch now that it had on the films initial release is that modern audiences don't have the same investment in the John Wayne character as they did then.

Glen Campbell is a bit of a dud in this one. The guy wrote and sang some good songs, but his acting isn't much to write home about. He wasn't helped by the fact that this film was all about John Wayne and Cogburn's relationship with Miss Mattie Ross which made La Boeuf feel like a third wheel in every scene he was in. He is massively outshone by Wayne, and even by young Darby who puts in a fantastic performance (it's hard to think of a better character for an early teen girl to play). From his very first scene he is belittled, first by Ross and then by Cogburn and it is clear that no one wants him there. You get the impression that we weren't supposed to like him, so at least Campbell's wooden performance didn't ruin a good character.

This film contains a line of dialogue which I love. When Rooster suggests the uptight Mattie Ross might benefit from having a shot of whisky she snaps back, "I would not put a thief in my mouth to steal my brains." I don't know why, but it made me laugh and has stuck with me. It's one of those lines that you store away in your head in the hope that one day you will have the opportunity to use it.

True Grit didn't blow me away, but that is more of a reflection of the expectations I carried into the film than the quality of it. It isn't John Wayne's best performance or his best film, but it is a really good, fun story with some great character interaction. A story which I am now even more excited to see the Coen brothers' take on.

148) Where the Wild Things Are

Where the Wild Things Are (2009)

Director: Spike Jonze

Starring: Max Records, Catherine Keener, James Gandolfini, Paul Dano, Catherine O'Hara, Forest Whitaker, Michael Berry Jr., Chris Cooper, Lauren Ambrose

The final Reel Dialogue for the year was held at Turramurra Uniting Church tonight with the film being Spike Jonze's adaptation of the beloved children's book Where the Wild Things Are. I saw this film at the cinemas late last year and was really surprised by it, not meaning that it was better or worse than I expected but just that it was different, and think that the ideas it explores and the way it chooses to explore them make it really well suited to an exercise like Reel Dialogue.

After throwing a tantrum because his mother (Keener) is paying more attention to her new boyfriend than to him, Max (Records) runs away from home to the land where the Wild Things roam. There he finds a childlike group of rough and tumble monsters led by the short tempered Carol (Gandolfini). Max convinces them to make him their king when he promises that he can keep all the sadness away.

I think like a lot of people, when I first heard they were making a film out of Maurice Sendak's children's book I wondered how they were going to do it. The book conjures up great images, and is in that way ideal for a film adaptation, but given it only contained nine sentences, it is very thin on narrative and character. Thus for a long time Where the Wild Things Are was among the many beloved stories which was placed in the 'too hard' pile, wearing the tag "unfilmable". If a filmmaker tried to flesh it out they'd be accused of not being true to the book and alienate it's millions of fans, but there simply weren't enough words in the book to make a direct adaptation. As a result Jonze was forced to take a few liberties with the storyline in the film to make it work as a feature length film, and also to add a bit of depth to the tale, but he has done so with great delicacy.

Jonze adds a prologue which informs everything that happens in the world of the Wild Things, giving it an extra layer of significance. Max is a boy from a broken home. His parents are divorced and his mother has a new boyfriend. Max also stands on the verge of adolescence. Thus everything which happens within the world of the Wild Things, a world within Max's imagination, helps Max explore these two issues; the nature of a family and what it means to grow up. The world of the Wild Things is an allegorical one, with each of the Wild Things representing a part of Max's personality, with the exception of KW, who obviously represents his mother.

What this leaves us with is a mood piece. While he has taken some license with his adaptation, Jonze hasn't done a great deal of fleshing out of the narrative. He hasn't given the film a driving storyline with important plot points placed throughout. In fact not a great deal happens in the film. There are different scenes and events, but to deliver it as a plot synopsis would make the film sound very dry. Where the Wild Things Are is all about the mood. It has a bittersweet mood, as you would expect from a story about the passing of childhood.

While Sendak's book is a children's favourite, Jonze's film is not really for kids. Rather than targeting the same demographic as the book, Where the Wild Things Are is more likely targeted at the generation of people who read the book when they were little. The lack of a clear plot will make be too boring for children, plus some of the thematic exploration is a bit too intense.

So much of the success of the book was its ability to conjure up images. Thankfully, the film is visually marvelous. The world of the Wild Things was shot primarily on location in Australia and diverse settings (one minute they're in bushland, then the desert, then the beach) really give the film that dreamlike quality. The Wild Things themselves, performed by actors in suits with CGI faces added, look great. They look exactly like you expect they should, slightly more 'realistic' than the cartoonish illustrations in the book, but maintaining the original look. The CGI faces are amongst the most subtle CGI work I've seen and using actors in suits meant that the Things could interact with Max and the landscape in a tangible and believable way, whereas using fully CGI characters always feels not quite right.

This is not one for the kids or those with a short attention span. Where the Wild Things Are won't have you on the edge of your seat. It will have you sitting back deep in thought. Jonze has produced a beautiful, thoughtful and touching film which while I'm sure devoted fans could still find something to complain about, for the rest of us appears to be valiant effort at a difficult adaptation.

147) The Lives of Others

Das Leben der Anderen (2006)

Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Starring: Ulrich Mühe, Sebastian Kock, Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Tukur

For the final week of the semester in Screens, Images, Ideas we watched the film that I had been most looking forward to seeing, von Donnersmarck's Oscar winning The Lives of Others.

In the East Berlin in 1984 (an appropriate year given the film's themes), Stassi Captain Gerd Wiesler (Mühe) begins a surveillance operation on playwright Georg Dreyman (Kock). Dreyman is the only playwright in East Germany who is read in the West who remains loyal to the GDR, but his artistic, intellectual lifestyle and choice of company arouse suspicion. Wiesler's surveillance finds nothing suspicious, but he grows more and more intrigued by Dreyman. When Wiesler discovers that the reason the Minister for Culture is so keen on finding something to pin on Dreyman is that he is secretly having an affair with Dreyman's partner, for the first time in his long and decorated career as a Stassi officer he becomes conflicted.

The Lives of Others is not an anti-communist film. A less restrained film, and ultimately less interesting film, would have had our heroes being noble East Germans fighting against the oppressiveness of socialism with victory coming through the falling of the Berlin Wall. However in von Donnersmarck's film the two characters who we empathise with the most, the Stasi officer Wiesler and the playwright Dreyman, are in fact the two most devoted socialists in the film, and remain that way to the end. Their character evolution does not see them changing their perspective on socialism. In both cases their dissatisfaction is with the way that socialism has been executed in the GDR and it is this devotion to socialism which inspires both of them to rebel against the state in their different ways.

The restraint of this film can also be seen in the fact that the Berlin Wall barely features. This is a film about the GDR. It is not a film about the Berlin Wall and thus we never see footage of the wall, with the exception of some footage of it falling which is largely to establish where we now find ourselves in the chronology of the story, and there is only one short scene in which a mock plot to cross the wall is discussed. The film is about life in East Germany, largely dealing with characters who feel they belong there. So it is not about life in East Germany in relation to life in West Germany. It is not life in East Germany longingly looking to the West, dreaming of a better life, so the Berlin Wall as a barrier, both physical and symbolic, need not feature with any prominence.

What really makes the film is the recreation of the GDR. Through their cinematography, use of location and set design, von Donnersmarck and his team do an amazing job of establishing the sense of stifling oppression in the country. Von Donnersmarck and his design team looked at hours of footage and photographs of the old GDR. Through this they came up with a colour palate for the film. They identified that in this material the colour green appeared more than the colour blue, and orange appeared more than red. So von Donnersmarck and his set designer Silke Buhr chose to completely remove reds and blues from their set design. What resulted was a hyper-reality, a look which was realer than real. When we remember things, the prominent details become more prominent and those details which were insignificant disappear completely. Thus this hyper-real colour design created a GDR which really clicked with a lot of people's memory of that era.

Ulrich Mühe, who sadly died only a year after the film came out, puts in a great performance as Wiesler. He truly believes in his calling as a Stassi officer to be "the sword and shield" of the GDR. There are a great deal of similarities between him and another famous cinematic surveillance expert, Gene Hackman's Harry Caul in The Conversation. Not only do they look amazingly similar, the lack of visible emotion and the overwhelming lack of trust in those around them is also similar.

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, who has to have the longest name I've ever come across for a director, has just released his second feature film and has gone in a rather different direction. He has backed up his Oscar winning debut (it won Best Foreign Film) by directing The Tourist with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. It's the one which looks like roughly the same premise as Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz's Knight and Day but a bit less corny and a bit classier. Like I said, a slightly different direction, but when someone has only made two films you can't really say that something is in or out of character. He could just be a diverse guy.

The Lives of Others is a fascinating and brilliantly executed film about an amazing period of history, a period that is all the more amazing considering how recent it was. It is a bit slow at times, but never enough for you to lose interest, and has a very touching and satisfying conclusion.

146) Rain Man

Rain Man (1988)

Director: Barry Levinson

Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise, Valeria Golino

There was recently a stage production of Rain Man at Glen St Theatre in Belrose which my dad and brother went to see. I wouldn't have minded going myself but had a prior engagement on the night that they were going, but it did put the film in my mind and made me want to watch it again.

When selfish yuppie Charlie Babbitt (Cruise) finds out that his wealthy father, to whom he has not spoken for a number of years, has died. Glad that he will finally get his hands on his father's $3 million fortune, Charlie is floored when he finds that all he has been left in the will are his father's prized 1948 Buick convertible and his rose bushes. The remainder of the estate is to into a trust. When he goes to collect his car he discovers that trust is for a brother that he never knew he had, Raymond (Hoffman). Raymond is an autistic savant who lives at the Walbrook Institute. Charlie kidnaps Raymond, intending to use him to get what he sees as his rightful share of the estate. As the two travel across the country together Charlie's anger that his father should leave all his wealth to a man who has no need for money is replaced with anger that his father had kept his brother secret from him, as he struggles to establish a connection with his new found brother.

So much of this film's success is down to Dustin Hoffman, but it is not just because of his performance. Hoffman is very much responsible for the shaping of the final film. Initially Rain Man looked very different. It was to be a Martin Brest picture starring Hoffman as Charlie Babbitt and Bill Murray as his lovable retarded brother Raymond (kind of halfway between Forrest Gump and Sam from I Am Sam). Murray would pull out of the project when he discovered that Hoffman was more interested in playing the Raymond character, and Hoffman's determination that Raymond should be autistic rather than retarded, which transformed him from an overly affectionate man to an emotional blank canvas, led to the resignation of Brest. The film bounced around between a couple of directors including Steven Spielberg and Sydney Pollack, finally landing with Barry Levinson. The changes obviously worked as the film ended up winning four Oscars, including gongs for Hoffman and Levinson and Best Picture.

Hoffman's performance is amazing. He is a famously dedicated method actor and spent a year observing a number of autistic men to see how they interacted with people and to pick up mannerisms and quirks. I actually have two autistic cousins and while autism is a condition which differs from case to case, depending on its severity, I definitely recognised different aspects of his behaviour. The real challenge with this character is that usually films are all about change. Characters have a character arc, a journey they undertake which changes them in some way. Raymond is incapable of that change, and remains exactly the same man at the end as he was at the beginning. Despite that, Hoffman makes Raymond compelling to watch. He doesn't try and play him as cute or pathetic or lovable, he just delivers a very true and honest portrayal.

Obviously most of the credit goes to Hoffman for his amazing performance, but the achievement of Tom Cruise should not be ignored. With Raymond being such an emotion free character, the entire weight of the audiences engagement falls on Charlie, who is in pretty much every scene in the film. It is his frustration we feel as Raymond is incapable of interacting and engaging, as we are unable to get into his head. Hollywood conventions have us believing that if this odd-couple go on the road together, over time they will connect, but Raymond's condition doesn't allow for that to happen. Levinson doesn't bow to sentimentality. It was also a very bold move for Cruise to take the part on a couple of fronts. Firstly, Charlie is quite an unlikeable character, particularly early on in the film, which was a change for Cruise who usually plays romantic heroes. Secondly, with the film being dominated by just the two characters it required Cruise to back himself not to get blown off the screen by Hoffman. This was really Cruise's first big step from being a movie star to being an actor.

Rain Man also marked the Hollywood debut for then unknown composer Hans Zimmer. Zimmer has gone on to become one of the big guns in the film score business, and having listened to his score for Rain Man I can just say I'm glad he left his synthesizer in the 1980s.

It was with an ironic smile that I watched the famous scene at the airport in which Raymond refuses to board a plane out of fear that they would crash, citing the fact that Qantas is the only airline to have not had a crash. That may still be the case but in the few weeks leading up to watching it Qantas have had their fair share of time in the news with various mid-air mishaps. That scene is a great scene of product endorsement for Qantas which they will be hoping to keep relevant.

Rain Man is a beautiful film. For a film which is set on the road and is constantly moving it is very theatrical (you can see how it would easily make the transition to the stage), centred almost entirely around these two characters. It is a thoughtful film which is at times uplifting, heart-breaking and funny. It's a real classic, and Hoffman's is one of the great screen performances.

145) Animal Kingdom

Animal Kingdom (2010)

Director: David Michôd

Starring: James Frecheville, Ben Mendelsohn, Jacki Weaver, Joel Edgerton, Guy Pearce, Sullivan Stapleton, Luke Ford, Laura Wheelwright

As an Australian who watches a lot of movies I am well aware that I probably don't do enough to support my local industry. Australian films make up a small percentage of my overall viewing. What is sadder is the fact that having already seen three Australian films this year (Bran Nue Dae, Wake in Fright and Mary & Max) probably puts me well and truly above average. When Animal Kingdom hit the cinemas it was getting big reviews. The critics were raving about it, and not just in Australia. I had the best of intentions to see it at the cinemas, but despite the fact that didn't end up happening I was still determined to see what all the fuss was about.

When Joshua 'J' Cody's (Frecheville) mother dies of a drug overdose, he is forced to get in contact with his grandmother Janine 'Smurf' Cody (Weaver) for a place to live. When he moves in with the matriarch he is introduced to a part of the family that his mother had worked very hard to keep him separate from. J's uncles; 'Pope' (Mendelsohn), Craig (Stapleton) and Darren (Ford) along with their friend Barry Brown (Edgerton) are involved in various criminal activities, primarily armed robbery. The Melbourne Armed Robbery Squad is after Pope, who is in hiding. The standoff between the Armed Robbery Squad and the Cody family escalates, with casualties on both sides, and J stuck in the middle.

Animal Kingdom looks and sounds like an Australian film. You have a respectable cast of talented Aussie actors headlined by Mendelsohn, Weaver, Edgerton and Pearce, in that grungy suburban setting which has replaced the outback as Australian cinemas location of choice over the last decade or so. Everyone speaks with Australian accents and you even have Australian TV shows on in the background. The film even starts with a heroine overdose death (to all those whose response is "Oh great, another morbid, drug-centred Australian film", you just have to persevere through the first 5 minutes). Animal Kingdom looks and sounds like an Australian film, but it is also absolutely brilliant. This film demonstrates that the name of the game is not necessarily to make Australian films that look as Hollywood as possible so audiences don't realise they're watching an Australian film. Animal Kingdom shows through the way that it has been turning heads all over the world that in the international film landscape there is a place for a well made, recognisably Australian film.

It is a really intense film. Early in the movie one of the Cody boys (I won't say which one) is gunned down by police in a scene which really takes you by surprise, partly because you figured that character was going to play a bigger part in the unfolding story and partly because there was just no warning that it was coming. That moment kicks off a sense of unease and unsettlement which continues through the rest of the film. The characters are unpredictable and unreadable which means you rarely have the comfort of being able to predict what comes next.

In looking like an Australian film, Animal Kingdom lacks the slickness and visual stylisation that you expect from more typically Hollywood ventures into the crime and punishment genre. Visually, Animal Kingdom looks like an everyday, suburban drama. This nail-biting tension that runs through the film is created by an excellent screenplay full of rich characters who are brought to life by a quality cast. I usually hate Ben Mendelsohn. There is something about him which has always given me the irrits. He looks smug and arrogant. But even I am willing to concede he is very good in this film, a real menacing, intimidating presence. Joel Edgerton is strong as Barry Brown. He is our initial way in to the Cody family. He is the relatable character, the one we identify with as we are finding our feet. Newcomer James Frecheville does well in his first film not to get overshadowed by his co-stars, at least not more so than the part calls for, but the real buzz is around Jackie Weaver's performance.

I'll admit, I don't actually know a lot about Jackie Weaver. She's one of those actresses who I know is quite well respected, but I don't really know on what basis. She's won AFI awards for her roles in Caddie and Stork and was in Picnic at Hanging Rock, Alvin Purple and Cosi. She has only made 13 films in an almost 40 year career, with most of her work being television based, but boy does her performance pack a punch in this one. She is present for the majority of the film, spending most of the time in the background, appearing to be simply a sweet and supportive mother to her boys, with her affection for them seeming to verge on incestuous. It is only towards the film's climax that she asserts herself as the matriarch of this crime family and we realise what a controlling and chilling character she is. It's a great performance. She has won the AFI award for Best Actress and the USA National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress, as well as getting nominations from the IF awards, the Satellite Awards (in Los Angeles) and the Washington DC Film Critics Association Awards. She is seen as an outside chance of scoring an Oscar nomination, which would make her the first Australian actor since Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge! to earn an Oscar nomination for a performance in an Australian film (although I'd be tempted to look further back to Geoffrey Rush in Shine as Moulin Rouge! had a fair bit of Hollywood weight behind it).

2010 has actually been a pretty good year for Australian film. We've had a legitimate box office success, by Australian standards that is, in Tomorrow When the War Began which took $13.5 million, supported by films from a variety of genres which have performed more modestly but have still had a recognisable presence at th box office in Bran Nue Dae, Daybreakers, Red Hill, I Love You Too, Beneath Hill 60 and The Wog Boy 2: Kings of Mykanos. In 2008 no Australian film took more than $3 million at the box office but in 2010 more than five films crossed that mark. Things are looking up. Even a film like The Loved Ones which tanked horribly still looked quite interesting, so the tanking was an unfortunate surprise rather than an assumed outcome. But no doubt Animal Kingdom was the jewel in the Australian cinema's crown in 2010. It got brilliant reviews across the board, and is building award momentum having won the a swag of AFI awards as well as the Grand Jury Prize for a world cinema drama at the Sundance Film Festival.

Animal Kingdom is the best film to come out of Australia for years. In fact it probably already warrants a mention in conversations about the best Australian film ever. It is that good. It has a sense of polish that you just don't usually see in Australian films. Usually they may have isolated elements which are really impressive and garner attention, but are let down in other places. Animal Kingdom sets and maintains a high standard from start to finish. It is an absolute cracker and puts a mountain of pressure on its debut director David Michôd to prove that it wasn't a fluke.

144) Blues Brothers 2000

Blues Brothers 2000 (1998)

Director: John Landis

Starring: Dan Aykroyd, John Goodman, J. Evan Bonifant, Joe Mortin, Kathleen Freeman and a who's who of rhythm and blues music

Kate and I went on a 20km bush walk with a group of her friends this morning. We got home after lunch with only a couple of hours before we had to leave for an afternoon tea we had to go to, and needed to recover. I flicked on the TV and Blues Brothers 2000 had just started. I'd seen it before so I knew what I was in for, but I was tired, needed not to think and fancied hearing some good music, so I persevered.

Elwood Blues (Aykroyd) is finally released from prison. After the passing of his brother Jake he is now the sole Blues Brother. He returns to the orphanage where he grew up and is enlisted by Mother Mary Stigmata (Freeman) in her mission to raise funds for the children's hospital. She also asks him to mentor a troubled young orphan, Buster (Bonifant). Elwood and Buster set about getting the band back together, with the aim of collecting the big cash prize at the battle of the bands. While gathering old faces Elwood enlists the services of Mighty Mac McTeer (Goodman), a bartender at a strip club run by Blues Brothers drummer Willie Hall (as himself), as their new vocalist. But of course, they can't help but get themselves in trouble along the way and before you know it they have the state police, the Russian mafia and a right-wing militia group on their tails.

One word review of Blues Brothers 2000: Dreadful. Now for some clarification.

The first question which has to be asked is 'why'? Yes, since it's release in 1980 The Blues Brothers has become somewhat of a cult favourite (I know I love it), but that doesn't change the facts that it was a critical and box office failure and John Belushi, a big part of its charm, is dead. Who thought it was a good idea to get the band back together again? I'll tell you who, the same idiot who thought it was a good idea to put a kid in the film as a main character. How many sequels have been ruined over the years by the addition of a child. Apparently John Landis originally envisioned the role to be for Macaulay Culkin, but he outgrew it before the film got made. Surely that's reason enough to scrap the part.

The film seems determined to tell the same story. In the original the film begins with Jake being released from prison, being picked up by Elwood and taken to the convent school where they decide to get the band back together to raise the money required to keep the orphanage they grew up in open. Blues Brothers 2000 begins with Elwood being released from prison, heading to the convent where the same nun enlists his help to raise funds for a children's hospital. His solution: get the band back together. The neo-Nazis from the first film are replaced by the Russian mafia, the visit to a negro church is replaced with a stop off at a revival meeting out of town, the classic roadhouse performance from the first film is replaced with a performance at a redneck monster truck rally where they are once again mistaken for being a bluegrass band and have to improvise (this time with 'Ghost Riders in the Sky' rather than 'Rawhide'), and the car chase with a massive pile up is replaced by another car chase with a massive pile up. This film seems to have tried so hard to recreate the tone of the first that it has failed miserably.

You see that a fair bit in sequels, and it is part of the reason that sequels are rarely as good as the original. In the case of the original there is a unique set of circumstances which create a certain tone and feel in a film. Come time for the sequel, the effort of the filmmakers goes into recreating that tone and feel. It becomes a much more self conscious act of imitation that leaves you with a film which lacks the life of the original, feeling not so much like a continuation as an effort to do it again. You definitely see this in something like The Pirates of the Caribbean (after the whole Jack Sparrow thing took them by surprise the sequels became all about featuring that zany character and as a result it felt less natural and more forced) and you see it in Blues Brothers 2000. The Blues Brothers was always a bit silly, a bit tongue in cheek, a bit unbelievable, but it had a sense of fun which redeemed it. Blues Brothers 2000 is missing that fun.

There are two good things about this movie: the music and John Goodman.

Of course, The Blues Brothers was all about the music. Another feature which carried across from the original is the supporting cast of cameo appearances from an absolute who's who of the rhythm and blues world. Try some of these names on for size: Aretha Franklin, James Brown, B.B. King, Wilson Pickett, Eric Clapton, Sam Moore, Isaac Hayes, Lou Rawls, Bo Diddley, Dr. John, Grover Washington Jr., Steve Winwood and KoKo Taylor. Plus of course you have the hard-working, all-star show band The Blues Brothers featuring some very talented musicians in their own right. The music in Blues Brothers 2000 is brilliant and almost makes the film watchable. Almost.

The other redeeming feature of the film is John Goodman. Mighty Mac is effectively Jake's replacement as Elwood's singing partner. John Goodman can sing. He performed at the Oscars a couple of years ago when Randy Newman's song 'If I Didn't Have You' from Monsters Inc was nominated for an award. He is the one good addition to the sequel. He has a couple of great numbers and reinforces what a talented guy he is. John Goodman is an actor I have a lot of time for and I feel has never quite got his dues. Maybe it's a case of his size restricting the sort of parts he can land, maybe he stayed a bit too loyal to Roseanne for nine seasons.

If you loved The Blues Brothers you will find Blues Brothers 2000 a dreadful disappointment. If you hated The Blues Brothers then you would have no reason to see Blues Brothers 2000, but if you did you'd probably think it was one of the worst films you'd ever seen. As a film Blues Brothers 2000 is woeful. However as a soundtrack it is excellent. If they re-cut it as a concert movie, it'd be a classic. But they haven't.

Oh, one last comment. The film is called Blues Brothers 2000 but it was released in 1998. Why?

143) The Social Network

The Social Network (2010)

Director: David Fincher

Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Rooney Mara, Armie Hammer, Rashida Jones


For the first time in a while there are actually a few movies out at the cinema which I'm quite keen to see. I doubt I'll get to all of them so I have to prioritise, with The Social Network just pipping Ben Affleck's new one, The Town. The critical response to The Social Network has been quite conflicted. Prior to its release it was being talked up as a shoe in for the Best Picture Oscar, then it came out and got good, but not great, reviews.

Mark Zuckerberg (Eisenberg), the founder of Facebook and the world's youngest ever billionaire, is facing two concurrent legal depositions. The first is from fellow Harvard students Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss who claim that Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from them when they employed him to design their website idea, 'The Harvard Connection'. The second is from one time best friend and original CFO of Facebook Eduardo Sevarin, who claims that Zuckerberg squeezed him out of the company, robbing him of his share of the billions of dollars the company is worth. Through these two depositions The Social Network explores the controversial and conflicted individual that is Mark Zuckerberg and the development of one of the most influential websites of all time.

This film made a bit of a splash when it was released because it painted Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in a rather unflattering light. The film doesn't really take sides in the depositions that are portrayed, we are not encouraged to think one way or the other, to see him as guilty or innocent, but rather to simply acknowledge that he does have a case to answer. No doubt Zuckerberg is presented as a massive jerk, but what is interesting is the type of jerk he is presented as. When you go to see a movie about the world's youngest ever billionaire being sued for millions of dollars by people who claim he has cheated them, we expect this man to be a ruthlessly greedy individual, but that is not at all the light Zuckerberg is presented in. Money is not nearly the priority to him that it is to the Winklevoss's who are suing him. Zuckerberg is rather presented as an arrogant and ambitious genius. What he wants is to do something which will make the world acknowledge his brilliance and he did that with Facebook. The fact that it made him billions of dollars was irrelevant.

There were two performances in this film which really struck me. The first, obviously, was Jesse Eisenberg's performance as Mark Zuckerberg. Earlier in the year in my blog on Adventureland I joked that Eisenberg and Michael Cera were seemingly interchangeable. In the few things I'd seen him in he had always played that insecure, jittery nerd, which is why it was so refreshing to see him doing something completely different in The Social Network. As Zuckerberg he spoke with such a directness and assuredness, stemming from that arrogance. It was not something I was used to from him. A really great performance which will see him get his first Oscar nomination.

Here's a statement I never thought I'd say: The casting of Justin Timberlake was a masterstroke. His was the second performance which really struck me. To Zuckerberg and his computer programming friends, Sean Parker was a superstar. He was the rock star of their industry, which made Timberlake such a good fit. He manages to be convincing as an intellectual equal for Zuckerberg and at the same time ooze a charisma which sucks him in.

The writing of this film is something to behold, though. In a time where dialogue in films is dumbing down, Aaron Sorkin's screenplay has an incredible pace and energy. It is real rat-tat-tat, machine gun dialogue. You don't even get to warm into it. The very first scene is Zuckerberg talking at a million miles an hour to his then girlfriend, though for not much longer, Erica (Mara). Of course, this shouldn't come as a surprise if you are familiar with Sorkin's work. He wrote the screenplay for A Few Good Men, as well as creating the TV series The West Wing.

In some ways this film as a whole mirrors Mark Zuckerberg, or at least Mark Zuckerberg as he is portrayed in the film (an important distinction to make as The Social Network is definitely not a documentary). The film seems to be as amazingly intelligent as Zuckerberg, but equally cold and unfeeling. When the main character is such an emotionally incapable individual, and so many of the other characters being consumed by greed and ambition, it is difficult to find a character within the film with whom we can engage and relate. The only two who spring to mind are Eduardo and Marylin (Jones), the legal assistant who is sitting in on the depositions.

David Fincher is a fantastic director who has made a number of very different films. The Social Network, again, is something very different to anything we've seen from him before but it instantly takes its place in the upper echelon of Fincher's films alongside Fight Club and Se7en, and may well earn him his first Oscar.

The Social Network is, at this stage, one of the Oscar front runners for next year. It is expected that upcoming films Black Swan by Darren Aronofsky and The King's Speech by Tom Hooper will also challenge for the big prize, but you can expect Fincher, Sorkin and Eisenberg to be among the legitimate contenders in their categories. It is a really well made film, and very intelligent, if not as emotionally engaging as others.

The Social Network is intended to be a portrait of our times. There are over 500 million people registered on Facebook, over 50% of which log in on any given day. Online social networking has become a key characteristic of 21st century life. This is a film for right now and will serve as a document for 2010 the way Wall Street serves as a document for 1987 or Easy Rider for 1969.

142) The American Friend

Der amerikanische Freund (1977)

Director: Wim Wenders

Starring: Dennis Hopper, Bruno Ganz, Lisa Kreuzer

So I said in yesterday's blog that this week in Screens, Images, Ideas we were looking at Wim Wenders. The actual film we were looking at was The American Friend, an interesting choice given that it is neither one of his most famous films nor his most celebrated films. It wouldn't get put in the same bracket as Wings of Desire, Paris, Texas or those films in his road movie trilogy.

Jonathan Zimmerman (Ganz) is a picture framer from Hamburg who has recently been diagnosed with leukemia. At an art auction he crosses paths with an American art dealer named Tom Ripley (Hopper). Ripley has a scam going where he sells expertly painted forgeries. While others don't know this, Jonathan has his suspicions and therefore takes a disliking to him. What he doesn't know is that Ripley is involved in far shadier things than just dealing forged artworks. Hearing about Jonathan's medical condition, Ripley comes to him with a unique proposal, offering him a large sum of money to assassinate an underworld figure. Knowing that he doesn't have long to live, the prospect of ensuring his family's financial security leads Jonathan to take up the job and starts a decent into a dark side of the world he had never seen before.

The American Friend is an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel Ripley's Game. Wenders has said that he likes Highsmith's work and had long wanted to make an adaptation of one of her books because he likes the way that the narrative grows out of the characters, rather than the characters appearing to serve the narrative. Wenders is very much of the opinion that narrative need not be king all the time, as it tends to be in Hollywood cinema. He is very much in favour of using narratives that grow out of characters or locations (Wenders' films have an incredible sense of place) rather than just coming up with a story and then working out where to put it and who to put in it.

In 2002 a more Hollywood adaptation of the novel was made, released under the original title Ripley's Game, to cash in on the success of 1999's The Talented Mr. Ripley starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Cate Blanchett and Philip Seymour Hoffman. In the 2002 version of the film the role of Tom Ripley is played by John Malkovich. Needless to say Malkovich plays the part in a very different way to Dennis Hopper. Malkovich's Ripley has a softly-spoken intensity. He has very level emotions and feels very sinister. Hopper plays Ripley exactly the way that you would expect Dennis Hopper to. He is slightly more twitchy and skittish, not as eerily calm as Malkovich's portrayal and lacks that sinister quality (which if you've seen Blue Velvet you'd know Hopper is more than capable of achieving). But for mine, the big difference between the two is that in the 2002 version there is no doubt that Ripley is the main character. Wenders' film is organised in such a way that Ganz's Jonathan is much more central. There is even a point in which Hopper disappears from the film for about half an hour only to show up in a very short scene before another extended absence. Wenders' film is not about Ripley the way it would have been if it were being made by in Hollywood.

This film poses some really interesting questions about morality and what our morality is based upon. In the film Jonathan is confronted by a question, does the fact that he is not far from death alter his moral compass? It is something he wrestles with. He is not a violent man, and the notion of serving as a hit man would ordinarily have been abhorrent to him, but the fact that he is going to die causes him to think about things in a different way, to reset some priorities. It is an interesting moral conundrum that Wenders explores.

Wenders was a part of the New German Cinema, one of the many New Waves which have swept through the European cinema in that back half of the last century. Behind the French New Wave, the New German Cinema, which flourished from the late 1960s through to the early 1980s, was probably the most influential. It brought attention to some great filmmakers like Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Wenders. Of all the New German directors, Wenders is probably the most commercially accessible and, he would admit, the most American. Wenders had always been very influenced by American popular culture and while we are quite used to hearing about Hollywood filmmakers who have a European sensibility, in Wenders we find a European who seems to have an American sensibility. His interest in the American cinema can be seen in The American Friend in the fact that as well as giving the title role to Dennis Hopper, he gives smaller cameo roles to American film legends Sam Fuller and Nicholas Ray. It was working with Wenders on The American Friend which led Hopper to tell Francis Coppola that he felt Wenders was the best equipped of all the exciting young filmmakers working in Germany to make the transition to Hollywood. Coppola, through his Zoetrope Studios, would thus give Wenders his first American directorial job, Hammett (which ended up being a massive cock up, but that is another story).

The American Friend is a strange film. It feels like a thriller, Wenders does a good job of creating that atmosphere of tension, and the general plot dealing with the planning of murders and shady dealings tells us that it's a thriller, but at the same time there just seems to be elements missing from the narrative which undermine its thriller status. In a good thriller, while certain pieces of information will always be intentionally withheld from you as part of the mystery, generally it is important that the viewer knows what is happening and to a certain extent why it is happening. To immerse yourself in a thriller you need to have a rough idea of how the different events you are watching relate to each other, so as to build that tension. This is what Wenders doesn't give you in The American Friend. You can follow what's going on, but you do feel like you are missing something. It is a thriller more in terms of its atmosphere than its narrative.

141) Paris, Texas

Paris, Texas (1984)

Director: Wim Wenders

Starring: Harry Dean Stanton, Natassja Kinski, Dean Stockwell, Hunter Carson, Aurore Clement


This week is the second last of the semester for Screens, Images, Ideas and we're looking at German director Wim Wenders (remember, he's German so the Ws sound like Vs). He seems to be a bit of a favourite of Dr. Noel's as he always seems to make room for a Wenders film in his courses. I haven't seen a heap of his films so I went in to uni the day before classes to watch what is probably his most highly regarded film, Paris, Texas.

Seven years after walking out on his wife and child, Travis (Stanton) is found mute and amnesiac, wandering aimlessly around the Texan desert. His brother Walt (Stockwell) comes over from Los Angeles to pick him up and take him home. On the trip back Travis slowly regains his ability to talk and his memory. At Los Angeles Travis is re-introduced to Walt's wife Anne (Clement) and Hunter (Carson), Travis's young son who has been living with them for a number of years. As Travis observes the family he decides that Hunter needs to be reunited with his mother, Jane (Kinski). Travis locates her in Houston, Texas, so takes Hunter on the road to find her.

Paris, Texas is a problematic film when you think about it in terms of national cinemas. It is a French and German co-production filmed in the USA. It has a German director, working in a genre, the road movie, which is typically American. It is a real blend of European and American film sensibilities. While the road movie genre is commonly associated with American cinema, given its strong connection to the Western, Wenders actually has quite a strong connection to the genre. In Germany, Wenders made a celebrated trilogy of road movies; Alice in the Cities (Alice in den Stadten), The Wrong Move (Falsche Bewegung) and Kings of the Road (Im Lauf der Zeit), in each case adapting this American genre in order to discuss German themes and ideas. Paris, Texas, though, was Wenders first American road movie, and after it won the Palme D'or at the Cannes Film Festival it prompted some film critics to suggest that the best American road movie of the decade had in fact been made by a German.

Stanton gives a great performance as Travis. Particularly in that first half an hour or so when he is mute, his face was so expressive you always felt as though he was just about to talk, but then opts not too. From that we straight away realise that it is not so much a case that he can't talk as that he won't. For so much of the film Travis remains a mystery to us. We don't know why he left his wife and child. All these questions are answered in an amazing monologue scene. Travis finds Jane working in a sex club kind of place, where men sit in dark booths behind two way mirrors and have conversations with girls in different fantasy settings. In a scene which goes for almost 15mins, Travis and Jane sit on opposite sides of the mirror. First Travis tells his story and then Jane tells hers, with only one person being able to see the other at any time. It is a really powerful and emotional scene as we hear the story which unlocks so much of what we have witnessed, made all the more powerful by the understated way in which Stanton and Kinski deliver their lines. Monologues tend to be a feature of the stage more than the screen, but this is one of the best film monologues you'll see.

You can add Paris, Texas to the long list of films which appear indebted to John Ford's The Searchers. A lot of reviews of Wenders' film make reference to Ford's film and another which has been similarly inspired by it, Scorsese's Taxi Driver. All three centre around a man who is trying to rescue a young woman/girl from sexual bondage. In all three cases the male figure is somewhat misguided in their quest. In Paris, Texas we are not convinced that Travis's decision to take Hunter away from Walt and Anne is the best one for him. Given that Jane chose to leave Hunter with them, and has made no effort to get him back, we question whether she will be a suitable parent. The allusion to The Searchers is completed at the film final scene, in which Travis's actions mirror Ethan's in Ford's film.

Paris, Texas is a slow and contemplative film which on a narrative level explores themes of loss and sacrifice. However beyond the narrative it makes some really interesting comments about America. Seeing America from the viewpoint of a visitor, Wenders gives the film's American exploration a unique outsiders perspective.

140) The Hangover

The Hangover (2009)

Director: Todd Phillips

Starring: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bartha, Heather Graham, Jeffrey Tambor, Ken Jeong, Rachel Harris


Another double up for the year. I was inspired to watch The Hangover again by a friend of mine who went to a Halloween party dressed as Alan (Galifianakis's character) in what was one of the best costumes I've seen in a long time.

Again, I don't want to spend a lot of time repeating myself, you can read my thoughts in my previous blog on the film, but I did want to talk sequels. After The Hangover killed it at the box office there was never any doubt that there would be a sequel. Hollywood studios just don't turn down money making opportunities like that. So The Hangover II is shooting at the moment and I don't have high hopes for it. The plot of the sequel seems to revolve around Stu's bucks party this time with the setting being Bangkok rather than Vegas. It sounds very much like the same story, different jokes. While I'm sure it will have a lot of real laughs I'm not sure it will be as clever and obviously as original, as the first one. Doing the same thing again, I'm concerned that it will just feel like watching deleted scenes from the first film.

The big controversy around the sequel has been the fact that Mel Gibson was going to have a cameo appearance in the film until certain cast members, Galifianakis believed to be one of them, said they objected to working with the fallen star, leading to his being replaced with Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper's mate from The A-Team. Now I know this is not a popular stance at the moment, but I actually quite like Mel Gibson. Obviously he's clearly a nut bag, but since when has that been a disqualifying characteristic in Hollywood. He's got a definite screen presence and is quite comically gifted, and I think would have really worked in the role as a Bangkok tattoo artist. What has a number of people questioning this decision though is the seeming double standard of refusing to work with Gibson, despite having used convicted rapist Mike Tyson in a cameo role in the original.

There are also reports that former US President Bill Clinton has filmed a cameo in the picture. The White House to Hollywood, he's the anti-Reagan.

Status Update

October

Films Watched: 15 (139 in total)

Pick of the Bunch:

I've watched some really good films this month, but you just can't go past The Godfather. Unlike Citizen Kane, The Godfather is a canonised film which isn't just for film types. When it came out it was a genuine blockbuster. The film has some of the cinema's all time iconic moments, lines and characters. It's just the best.

Also Up There: The Barbarian Invasions, Jaws, Jesus of Montreal

Don't Waste Your Time: London Orbital. Hands down the most boring film I've watched this year.