Furious on Film 04.05.07: Issue 83
Posted by Arnold Furious on 04.05.2007
Things have taken a turn for the surreal.
Fuck the intro. You know what I'm about by now. Except I'm now using my teaser line to throw out a classic quote from a film of the past in an attempt to tie it into what I'm talking about in the column. Sort of. Last week was Don Cheadle in Bulworth making comparisons between the government intervening in the Middle East (like in headline movie Syriana) to the CIA getting involved in the hood. Nifty stuff.
Warning could well contain minor spoilers throughout. Films are rated on a ***** scale. This week we have
8 ½, Thank You For Smoking, Romance, Breakfast on Pluto
8 ½ (1963)
EXPECTATIONS The greatest director I've never seen any work from would be Federico Fellini. Mainly because Fellini is largely inaccessible to the general movie going public. His plots are generally abstract and bizarre. Almost impossible to follow unless you're really paying attention. 8 ½ comes after his biggest successes; Nights of Cabiria and La Dolce Vita. I've seen part of both but not the entire film thanks to scheduling conflicts with other things. 8 ½ won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1964 and also bagged costume design. Fellini himself was nominated 12 times but never won until his honorary Oscar in 1993 when he died. But then the Academy never has a great record with these things.
TRAILER Best offer from You Tube is this unusual trailer, which is dubbed 8 ½ Mile because it has Eminem rapping over the 8 ½ trailer. Interesting. Different.
On a related note this is the start of the film, which was copied by REM for the video of Everybody Hurts.
WHAT'S IN A NAME? 8 ½ refers to the number of films that Fellini had directed including this one. Those being six features (The White Sheik, the Young and the Passionate, The Road, The Swindle, Nights of Cabiria & La Dolce Vita), two shorts (Love in the City & Boccaccio 70) and sharing one film with another director (Luci del varieta). Plus this film.
PLOT Now you're asking. As I understand it Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) is a film director struggling with the concept behind his latest film. Although it has a massive prop (a spaceship) it seems to deal with issues from his life and past rather than sci-fi. The approach is vaguely semi-autobiographical as its Fellini who represented by Anselmi. His struggle to come up with a good idea for a film is largely what Fellini was going through after two big hits.
OPINION Trying to get your head around 8 ½ is a real struggle. Fellini deliberately makes the film intangible so it's hard to tell if you're watching the process of film making/casting or whether it's a fantasy or even worse when Anselmi starts having flashbacks and fantasies interwoven. You can't tell what's real and what's going on inside the head of the central character. It's actually pretty smart film making as Fellini is telling the audience that nothing is real and they're watching a movie. But I think it goes a little too far and becomes needlessly complicated. The prospect of an ending of any kind slowly slips away during the course of the film and its impossible to tell if the ending is a fantasy or not. There's no doubt that the majority, and I mean the vast majority, of you readers will hate 8 ½. It's so hard to keep track of. I hear that complaint quite frequently as regards far easier to understand films. Prior to attempting the 8 ½ experience I figured Lynch's Mulholland Drive was the hardest film out there to follow. But I've since realised I just missed a key moment during that film because I was taking a slash. Now I'm thinking 8 ½ needs more than one viewing to be truly understood. It's a very hard film to deal with. I included the short video of the start of 8 ½ so you can see the general problems in watching it. It starts in a dream sequence or a fantasy, if you'd rather, so right from the off you're dealing with reality issues (kind of like in Richard Linklater's Waking Life). And it doesn't become clear it's a dream sequence until Anselmi takes to flight to escape the traffic jam. I understand that Fellini wanted to encapsulate what its like to make a film and the emotions and feelings that a director goes through while attempting something very bold and complex but I'm left with a nagging feeling that 8 ½ isn't the masterpiece it claims to be. Visually it has a lot to offer but because it's all so surreal the level of thinking required is more to discover your level of interpretation rather than what Fellini wants to tell you. So you have to take Fellini's visions and translate them with your own experiences. I had a hard time with that although I've made several films myself. Nothing on the scale of a feature but short films. And hopefully they'll never see the light of day or there goes my reputation as a judge of quality. While I went through some trying times making films, like staying up all night with a team of four actors trying to get the lighting right, dealing with a shitty camera and trying to keep one of the actors off the marijuana only to end up with the entire crew/cast stoned and attempting to film a scene at 7am that took five hours to set up right, it never changed me as a person. Not like 8 ½ changed Fellini. Or his previous pictures. The biggest issue with 8 ½ is that as a film it's constantly telling us that it's doing nothing but day dreaming. For 140 minutes. But because it's announcing that it's hard to criticise 8 ½ for doing so. Ultimately 8 ½ is a surrealist film so you either like it or you don't depending on your personal choice in terms of genre. I personally like to have a plot attached to my films. Although, and this may seem strange, it's the kind of film I would love to make but I have no real interest in watching it. Perhaps that's just as bizarre as the concepts that Fellini presents.
BEST BIT The revolt in Anselmi's mental harem as he starts to lose control of fictional women. He breaks out a chair and whip Indiana Jones style to fend them off. I like that.
RATING Ok, this one is impossible. Totally impossible to throw out a snowflake rating. It's all about how you personally feel about a film but I'm not even sure 8 ½ is a film in the conventional sense of the word. It's more like a flow of consciousness or a visual presentation of an art gallery. The main thing is to remember that Fellini basically got this huge mental block and instead of scrabbling around trying to find inspiration for a film to follow up on La Dolce Vita he just made a film about his mental block. That takes some guts and balls and he has to be commended for even attempting this.
Top Ten Films By Decade
1990's
I had a real hard time with this one because I was 14 when the 90's began, which kind of shows I was at a very impressionable age. A lot of stuff you do in your late teens sticks with you for a long time. Certainly I've found I have a soft spot for any kind of music I was listening to back then. So I found this list really hard to condense to 10. My list of films was well beyond a straight up ten. So here are the ones that didn't quite make it Hunt for Red October, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, JFK, Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, Dazed and Confused, Forest Gump, Natural Born Killers, Clerks, Chungking Express, 12 Monkeys, Goldeneye, Before Sunrise, Swingers, Trainspotting, Slingblade, Usual Suspects, Good Will Hunting, Grosse Point Blank, Boogie Nights, Chasing Amy, Saving Private Ryan, Thin Red Line, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Festen, A Few Good Men, Central Station, Green Mile, Dead or Alive: Hanzaisha. At some point all of those films were in my top ten. The bottom half of the ten you see below alternated in and out of the count down repeatedly. Next week as we enter the 00's I'm taking it one year at a time. Mainly because I started reviewing films around 2000.
1. Goodfellas
2. Schindler's List
3. LA Confidential
4. Pulp Fiction
5. Shawshank Redemption
6. Life is Beautiful
7. Hard Boiled
8. Big Lebowski
9. Seven
10. Casino
Thank You For Smoking (2005)
EXPECTATIONS The director here is Jason Reitman. That name might not mean anything to you but I bet you've heard of his Dad, Ivan. After all he directed Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters II, Meatballs and Dave. He is a bit of a cult figure for fans of the 80's. While this is Jason's debut feature he's been making short films since the late 90's and has six in the can prior to Thank You For Smoking. His next movie Juno stars Jennifer Garner and should be suitably quirky and offbeat. The screenplay for Thank You For Smoking came from Christopher Buckley's book. He's a well known political satirist with a cutting wit and a suitable background. His uncle was a US senator while his father William F. Buckley was a political commentator. Christopher grew up in politics and that allows him a unique position to comment on it. Thank You For Smoking was written in 1994 and finally makes it to the screen after 11 years. Thanks to its success another novel, Little Green Men, is due for the film adaptation process shortly.
TRAILER
PLOT Big Tobacco lobbyist and spokesperson Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) isn't a popular man. Seen as a seller of death his only friends are those in similar professions; booze spokesperson Polly Bailey (Maria Bello) and firearms spokesperson Bobby Jay Bliss (David Koechner). Together they refer to themselves as the MOD; Merchants of Death. Nick comes up with a fine idea to make cigarettes popular again; put the sex back into smoking by having them featured heavily in a forthcoming sci-fi release. In order to make it happen he hooks up with Hollywood producer Jeff Megall (Rob Lowe). Out to stop the spread of evil is the one, two punch of Senator Ortolan K. Finistirre (William H. Macy) and sexy reporter Heather Holloway (Katie Holmes). Naylor isn't the top guy though as he reports to both his boss BR (JK Simmons) and the owner of Big Tobacco, the Captain (Robert Duvall).
OPINION Apologies for the long plot lay out but I felt I had to mention how great the cast was. Rob Lowe has a real big return to form in this flick playing the Zen influenced straight talking agent immersed in Hollywood and spin. He's squeaky clean because he never let's dirt get near him. Eckhart's Naylor is a trenchman though. Permanently facing off against some moral objective group or another and when he's not dealing with that he's trying to connect with his young son. During which he manages to teach the boy one of life's great lessons; if you argue correctly you never lose. Which he proceeds to do throughout the film taking down an assortment of goody two shoes with his razor sharp personality and shit eating grin. Eckhart is phenomenal in Thank You For Smoking. There are films that define people and this is Eckhart's moment where he goes from being "that guy from the Core" to Aaron Eckhart; movie star. The amazing thing is how he manages to do so when surrounded with the most intimidating cast I've seen assembled in some time. Everywhere there's star power. Even JK Simmons is a veteran of two Spiderman movies and Koechner has Anchorman under his belt. And most of the time Eckhart has to contend with either Rob Lowe on incredible form, Robert Duvall or William H. Macy. And he comes out looking incredible. But it really is one of those roles that's destined to make someone a star provided the director makes the right casting choice. And Reitman not only made one great casting choice, he made a series. Thank You For Smoking is one of the best ensemble casts of recent years, possibly only outshone by Martin Scorsese's incredible line up for the Departed. And Eckhart comes out smelling of roses. Hell, he's set to be Harvey Dent in the forthcoming "The Dark Knight". There's another performance that he could make his own. The absolute best thing about Thank You For Smoking is the script. I'd imagine a lot of it comes from Buckley but Reitman makes it flow and deserves a lot of credit. The only downside to it is that Thank You For Smoking has far more targets than the tobacco industry. In fact the amount of spin and politics involved in the story makes tobacco one of its lesser targets. The satirical assault is on such a wide, wide range of American ideals (tobacco, firearms, alcohol, politics, human rights groups, Hollywood, spin doctors, political correctness) that it can't really get stuck into any one of them with any real venom. Just as the script is starting to get stuck into one the scene changes as does the target and it comes off as unfocused. That said everything is really funny, it's just a pity they didn't take it to another level and really push. This could have been one of the most important films ever made. A genuine assault on American ideals and values that exposed all the negative things that satirists like to complain about on a regular basis. Hell, something Bill Hicks would have been proud of. Thank You For Smoking happily doesn't take sides and pokes fun at every angle in the debate over smoking and personal freedom. In the process it produces a series of great scenes with superb dialogue delivered brilliantly by Eckhart, Simmons, Koechner, Bello and Macy in particular. After my struggle with 8 ½ it was a really fun 92 minutes for me.
BEST BIT "People, what is going on out there? I look down this table; all I see are white flags. Our numbers are down all across the board. Teen smoking, our bread and butter, is falling like a shit from heaven! We don't sell Tic Tacs for Christ's sake. We sell cigarettes. And they're cool and available and *addictive*. The job is almost done for us!" BR gets a touch upset about a lack of sales.
RATING - ****1/4. An easy recommendation. Smart without being confusing, vicious without going over the top and funny throughout without resorting to cheap gags.
Romance (1999)
EXPECTATIONS I'd heard a lot about Catherine Breillat, the film's director. She's known for strong films about sexuality. She's been writing books on sex since she was 17 after appearing in Last Tango in Paris. Four years later she was making her first film about a 14 year old girl exploring sexuality for the first time. Her films have gotten gradually muckier as she's gotten older to the point where 1999's Romance was dubbed pornographic. Most of the controversy seemed to stem from the casting of Rocco Siffredi, a famous porn actor, in one of the main roles. Siffredi has himself appeared in over a thousand pornographic films and is now a producer in that oeuvre. It's only after renting and watching Romance that I realise it's one of Breillat's most poorly received films. I choose it because it was her most well known picture.
TRAILER You're probably best off without this as I doubt it'd be safe for work.
PLOT Marie (Caroline Ducey) lives with her boyfriend Paul (Sagamore Stévenin) but their sexual relationship has gone down the pan recently. Marie wants sex but Paul isn't interested. After three months of this Marie strays and starts having sex with neighbourhood lothario Paulo (Siffredi) and then experienced ladies man Robert (François Berléand). While she has sex elsewhere she's still in love with Paul.
OPINION It'd be fair to say I didn't get this. It's really a female perspective on love that's totally skewed in a direction nowhere near reality. Paul is painted by the director to be one of the biggest jerks on the planet. He routinely refuses to pay attention to his girlfriend saying she disgusts him and then ignoring her even more when they go out, spurning her attentions to dance with other women. And then having a go at her for looking (looking, not complaining) pissed off about it. Their sexual relationship involves him occasionally allowing her to suck on his penis, which is happily shown, before pointing out how much she disgusts him for wanting to do so. What the fuck is that shit? Then along comes Rocco and I just couldn't take him seriously. There's a reason why porn stars generally don't attempt crossovers into dramatic acting and this was fine example of why. His sample dialogue would be something along the lines of; "would you like it up the ass?" And even that comes off as rigid and stilted. It's around that point that Ducey's whinging central character really started to get on my nerves. This process had a long way to go because that wasn't even at the halfway point in the film. She had a bad habit of reeling off opinions about an assortment of sexual things. It sounded like some woman's diary just being read out loud. I've never had that much of an interest in the philosophy of love & sex. Especially not from the French perspective because their whole approach to that area is flat out weird. While I appreciate Breillat's attempt at putting something onto the screen that is to all intents and purposes totally unfilmable that's also the biggest problem I have with the film. Trying to put onto screen someone's emotions when essentially the character doesn't know what emotions she's going through is pretty much impossible. And the controversy that surrounded the film? Well, presented onscreen for some considerable time is Rocco Siffredi's erect penis, something the entire world has already seen. So what. The film was even banned in some countries because of its sexual content but the Brown Bunny, banned nowhere, is far more explicit. It irks me how often I keep coming back to that film but it really is a benchmark in several different film making concepts; fucking, boredom, recovery and Manos: The Hands of Fate tribute in terms of driving. Romance sets a few benchmarks of its own. It has the widest array of sex ever seen in a mainstream film. While penetration is never shown there's bondage, simulated rape and gynaecological examinations ahoy. Goddamnit, why do I keep picking these films that are hard to review in the conventional sense? That's two this week.
BEST BIT Mentally debating whether Rocco really was railing Caroline Ducey from behind during one scene. It sure looks like it.
RATING - **. It's different, I'll give it that much. It's also not as bad as the Brown Bunny because it's never that boring. It is horribly inconsistent though and worryingly amoral. The ending is terrible to boot. I'd not recommend this.
Breakfast on Pluto (2005)
EXPECTATIONS From Interview with the Vampire director Neil Jordan. He achieved a great deal more notoriety in the UK with films like Mona Lisa, the Crying Game, Michael Collins and Butcher Boy. Breakfast on Pluto sees him returning to his native Eire along with some other notable exports from that country. Red Eye and Batman Begins star Cillian Murphy, Liam Neeson and Braveheart/Troy/Gangs of New York's Brendan Gleeson. It's nice to see all four returning to the emerald isle.
TRAILER Complete with great music from Dusty Springfield (Windmills of your Mind a far superior version to Grady Tate's on the Thomas Crown Affair). The trailer actually made me want to see the film. I saw the trailer on two or three films and became desperate to see the film based on that.
WHATS IN A NAME? It's a line out of the film where a druid obsessed biker is talking about the wonders of the universe. I'm 90% sure he's quoting a lyric from a song but every internet lyric search engine has come up blank so I can't tell you what song. Oh, that's annoying.
PLOT Patrick Braden (Cillian Murphy) is left on a priest's doorstep as a child. When he grows up he exhibits some rather fruity behaviour for his home in County Cavan, Ireland and heads to London to find his mother who bears a striking resemblance to Mitzi Gaynor who once sang "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair".
OPINION From a land where terrorism meets cross dressing, birds get subtitles, Brian Ferry is a transvestite killer and Brendan Gleeson is a Womble comes Breakfast on Pluto. There's no doubt that Neil Jordan has created a very unique film in Breakfast on Pluto. The quirky little asides (like Bryan Ferry being a transvestite killer, Brendan Gleeson a Womble and the vicarage robin's getting their own subtitles) make Breakfast on Pluto an unusual viewing experience. You're never quite sure what will happen next. Given that the backdrop is a series of IRA attacks in Ireland and London next could be a very big explosion, a gangland execution or, because this is still a film of great weirdness, a Down Syndrome boy dressed as a Dalek. As I'm writing this it almost feels like I'm making stuff up but I'm really not. Much has been made of Breakfast on Pluto being part of a "gay" year of cinema because it happened to be released the same year as Rent and Brokeback Mountain. But these are all entirely different films and while Breakfast on Pluto has some pretty heavy homosexual leanings it's more about Patrick Braden inventing an escapist character called Kitten where he'd retreat to get away from his abandonment and his sense of lacking in his life thanks to his absent mother. Cillian Murphy does a great job of conveying all this without really talking about it. Kitten is more inclined to talk about what he wants to do with his life. The ongoing diaries of Patrick "Kitten" Braden would make for interesting reading. I think it bugged me slightly that Breakfast on Pluto doesn't really have an ending in the traditional sense but what it does have is a great journey. The cast is really strong with Liam Neeson providing the main support as Braden's adoptive father and local priest. While he's blatantly not giving the film his best performance he gives it legitimacy and gives Cillian Murphy's flashier character room to breathe. Stephen Rea, a regular for Neil Jordan, provides a turn as a magician who falls for Kitten in London. His character helps get Kitten back on track although aside from the montage of their brief performance act there isn't much in the way of story being told between them. It's clear there is some sort of chemistry but before that really has a chance to be explored Kitten has to move on. The third great cameo is Brendan Gleeson playing a short tempered Uncle Bulgaria impersonator who finds Kitten asleep on Wimbledon Common. His foul mouthed performance is a gem and a distraction for both the viewer and Kitten who briefly escapes his serious life to get drunk and pretend to be a Womble. It only lasts a day but it's nice that he got the chance to just drop out of character almost just for 24 hours. Murphy is great throughout and got rewarded with a Golden Globe nomination although the Academy was a little busy with Brokeback Mountain and Murphy lost out at the Globes to Joaquin Phoenix for Walk the Line. It's hard to distinguish for me between the two performances that were equally good. Murphy's is perhaps a little more in the realm of overacting but he is playing a very large character. Next week I'm tackling Capote so we'll see Philip Seymour Hoffman's actual Oscar winning turn.
BEST BIT I think the robin quoting Oscar Wilde. Suitably surreal.
RATING - ****. It's a little on the long side. As a result, at 135 minutes, it loses any tightness to the story. Chopping 20 minutes of subplots out would, however, almost certainly change the ending. But hey, I'd be in favour of that. Just don't chop out Brendan Gleeson's cameo. And I guess you can't lose Bryan Ferry's absolutely demented one either even though it adds very little to the plot. Normally I don't like the suggestion that a film should be trimmed somewhat as it just shows a lack of patience but I enjoyed Breakfast on Pluto, it just could have been that little bit better if they'd been able to get the flow from A to B a bit more fluid. Braden's search for his mother is too easily sidetracked.
ELSEWHERE
Movies Roundtable for April. I had time to do this for once. What's with that yellow thing representing me?
Leonard Hayhurst has Ask 411 Movies. That Vader video had me in bits. Especially when he tells Princess Leia to "git your black ass outta here". Genius.
Will Helm has Misunderstood Masterpieces. He also pens the Daily 411 over at the 411Mania myspace page. MySpace is still for gays. But the 411 myspace page is the least gay page on myspace.
George Sirois has Scene Anatomy 101 with Superman Returns. I've not seen it yet. Not really been in a rush to do so either. Although it is pretty high up on my Lovefilm rental list.
Please welcome Nick Wallander to 411. He debuted this week with "I'm Not Gonna Lie" a news based column where he sarcastically pokes fun at the week's newsworthy cinematic events.
While we're dealing with noob love here's Dave Tomlinson with a review of the Casino Royale DVD. I've not read it because I want to see the film first. But I'm sure it's fine. Also debuting this week was fellow Brit Owain J. Brimfield. He doesn't really care for Happy Feet. Good start. Also debuting yesterday was Jason Chamberlain with Casting Call.
But the best of the noobs thus far has to be Jeffrey Harris aka the Vile One. Before even debuting he managed to bag an interview with Hot Fuzz stars Simon Pegg & Nick Frost not to mention director Edgar Wright. SCORE! Not only that it's comes off like a chat between old drinking buddies with minimal sucking up. "Bono he can fuck off". Read it people!
NEXT It's a whole week of up to date stuff as Lovefilm.com actually sends me recent films. We have the Constant Gardener, World Trade Center, Capote and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. In seven days. Join me then.
