Eyes Wide Shut

Completed mere days before his death in 1999, Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut is an erotically charged thriller starring the then married Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Based on the 1926 novella Dream Story by Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler the plot revolves around a rich New York City doctor Dr. William ‘Bill’ Harford (Cruise) and his wife Alice (Kidman) during a tumultuous few days in their marriage. The sexually charged Bill is accused of flirting and wanting to make love to women at a party and to his patients by his jealous and paranoid wife who then gets upset when her husband tells her that he isn’t the jealous type and trusts her implicitly. She drops a bombshell on Bill who then receives a call to attend to a patient. During the night Bill ventures into the city on a journey of sexual discovery and mystery which leaves him worried for his safety.

Eyes Wide Shut is split into two distinct halves, the first of which is an often explicit tale of sex, debauchery and passion. The second half mostly drops the erotic nature of the story in favour of all out thriller. Both halves were massively tense but equally enjoyable. I thought the film was fantastic and although it could be argued that in the hands of a lesser director and without the A List cast this would end up as a straight to video release, in the capable hands of Kubrick it is a taut and creeping film which I couldn’t take my eyes off.

Angels with Dirty Faces

Angels with Dirty Faces is a Hays Code era gangster film which stars James Cagney as Rocky Sullivan, a notorious gangster with a good side. Rocky grew up what appears to be the Lower East Side with his friend Jerry (Pat O’Brien) getting up to all sorts of misdemeanours and petty crime. One day the boys are being chased through a train yard when Jerry slips and falls in front of a moving train. Rocky saves his friend but as the boys make their escape Rocky is caught and sent to reform school which leads to a life of crime. Years later Jerry is a Priest and having been released from a stint in jail Rocky returns to the old neighbourhood to claim his share of loot from his crooked lawyer Frazier (Humphrey Bogart) but Frazier ain’t taking too kindly to Rocky walking back up in here, you get me, you mutz.

The film features a great central performance from Cagney as well as some brilliant set design and cracking dialogue. It feels a little diluted when compared to earlier pre-Code films but you get the picture of the world in which the characters are living. What is obvious although sometimes too obvious is the message. Sometimes it’s not who you are but where you are that makes you and the film’s black and white telling of this idea is laid out very clearly.

The Wizard of Oz

Now. I’m not going to sit here and say that The Wizard of Oz isn’t a good film because it is. It was ahead of it’s time technically and the Technicolor still looks magnificent after seventy years but The Wizard of Oz isn’t a great film. The story is so weak it is almost homeopathic and it also ranks as amongst the most annoying films I’ve ever seen. I seem to have a habit of slating films which other people love (see The Lion King, North by Northwest, BladeRunner) but I’m not doing it to be contentious. I personally think The Wizard of Oz is overrated and when you really watch it rather than just look at it, you start to notice all sorts of problems and plot holes.

Everyone knows the story. It is ingrained in our psyches and phrases such as “We’re not in Kansas anymore”, “Ding dong, the witch is dead” and “Fly my pretties” are sentences which are quoted in every day language. Similarly the characters are so well known that even if I described them as the green one, the hay bail, the robot or the furry thirties gangster, you’d know instantly who I was talking about. The Wizard of Oz is just something that we know inside out whether we’ve never seen it or have seen it a hundred times. But just because something is well known, it doesn’t mean it is good. After all, we all know who Hitler was and he wasn’t very nice at all.

2013 Oscar Nomination Predictions

I'd been planning a short post in January about my Oscar predictions but Film Actually is running a nominations contest which I thought I'd join. What will become immediately obvious to UK readers is that I'm writing this on January 6th, four days before the nominations are announced but up to a month before front runners such as Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, Les Miserables and Django Unchained are released in the UK. Therefore a lot of my predictions will be based around guess work or what I'm hearing about those films from the States. I may do another predictions post once the nominations are announced. Until then, here are my 2013 Oscar Nomination Predictions for future generations to laugh at. Click on the titles to read my review.

Most predicted nominations Lincoln (11), Life of Pi (9), Zero Dark Thirty (8), Django Unchained (7), Skyfall and Les Miserables (6), Argo (5), Amour (4).

Additional 12/01/13. Once the nominations were announced I worked out that I predicted 74% of the nominations correctly. 

BEST PICTURE
Argo
Lincoln
Zero Dark Thirty
Life of Pi
Les Miserables
Django Unchained

BEST DIRECTOR
Steven Spielberg - Lincoln
Kathryn Bigelow - Zero Dark Thirty
Ang Lee - Life of Pi
Ben Affleck - Argo
Michael Haneke - Amour

Berberian Sound Studio

An homage to Italian giallo horror films and the mechanics of cinema itself, Berberian Sound Studio stars Toby Jones as Gilderoy, a shy Englishman who gets a job as a Foley artist on the 1970s Italian film The Equestrian Vortex, an giallo horror with typical themes of Satanism and extreme violence. Gilderoy, man more at home capturing the sounds of the English countryside, is like a fish out of water and struggles to get to grips with the Italian way of film making as well as the horrific violence on screen. Set inside a claustrophobic sound studio, the film follows Gilderoy as he slowly becomes more and more dishevelled while trying his best to create the sound to accompany the terrifying visuals, none of which are ever seen on screen.

The film reaches a critical point around seventy minutes in from where everything goes a little strange. It can be described as being without plot and its ending is confusing to say the least. The preceding hour though is amongst the best I’ve seen from a 2012 film and up until the final third it was well inside my top 10 of the year. What is good is that prior knowledge of giallo isn’t necessary in order to enjoy it. I’ve only seen one giallo film in the last year, Dario Argento’s Tenebrae, and know very little about the genre but still really liked the film.

Blade Runner

Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner has appeared on All Time lists in Empire, Total Film, Sight and Sound, Time Magazine and countless others, both professional and amateur. It is generally regarded as one of the greatest Science Fiction movies of all time but here’s where I’m going to start making people angry. I don’t think it is. I’ve seen the film twice now and on my first viewing thought it not only wasn’t the greatest Sci-Fi ever but was just average. Yesterday on my second viewing I enjoyed it more than my first but I’m yet to join the millions who rank it as one of the best films ever. For me it is too slow and not very interesting. There’s obviously a lot to like but best ever? Nope.

It’s Los Angeles 2019 and humanoid replicants have been outlawed on Earth. The machines were designed as slave labour to perform menial tasks on the off world colonies but following an uprising, Blade Runners were hired to track down and ‘retire’ (kill) all Earth dwelling replicants. Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a former Blade Runner who is convinced to return to the job to track down several Nexus 6 replicants who have returned to Earth illegally, intent on extending their built in four year lifespan.

Safety Not Guaranteed

The latest film from the Duplass brothers is Safety Not Guaranteed, a film about a sad young magazine intern (Aubrey Plaza) who joins her boss (Jake Johnson) and fellow intern (Karen Soni) in tracking down a man who has left an advert in a local newspaper. The ad reads: “Wanted: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. P.O. Box 91 Ocean View, WA 99393. You'll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before.” Intrigued and hoping to discover a crazy man worth writing a story about, the three of them set off from Seattle to Ocean View to track the man down. They find Kenneth (Mark Duplass), a paranoid man who believes the Government are following him. Slowly Kenneth begins to accept Darius (Plaza) into his plans but is he crazy or is he on to something?

I was recommended this film by Malone on Movies and had heard very little about it beforehand. Just this morning I saw it was on The Vern's worst of 2012 list which made me worried. What also worried me was my total lack of interest in Jeff Who Lives at Home, a film I really disliked. I have really enjoyed the Duplass’ work in the past though and to be fair this film was written by newcomer Derek Connolly and directed by Colin Trevorrow but retains a lot of the quirky plotting, expert dialogue and unusual situations which has made some of the Duplass’ work great.

The Idle Class

Arriving on the back of his first great film The Kid, Charlie Chaplin’s The Idle Class feels weak and thin in comparison. The writer in Chaplin was struggling for ideas before he got the spark for The Kid and it almost feels as though he is back to square one while writing the two reel The Idle Class. A Tramp (Chaplin) gets off a train, and not how you’d expect him to, before heading for a day at the golf course. Meanwhile a wealthy wife (Edna Purviance) also disembarks expecting her well to do husband (also Chaplin) to meet her at the station but he is drunk at home. Following some hi jinks at the golf course there is a case of mistaken identity at a ball at which Edna takes the Tramp for her husband.

For me The Idle Class lacks the depth which made The Kid great and also lacks the direction and laughs that are found in the likes of A Dog's Life or Shoulder Arms. It occasionally takes a more dramatic route but this often fails to match even Sunnyside for dramatic narrative. The film is saved by a middle act on the golf course which is brilliantly inventive and funny but is unfortunately bookended by a beginning and end which did little for me.  

The Impossible

Man, I wish I was a heart string salesman. Sales will be going through the roof after the two hours of tugging and eventual breaking of heart strings due to the release of The Impossible. A Spanish production and based on a real life Spanish family’s experiences, The Impossible stars Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor as the husband and wife of a family caught up in the Boxing Day Tsunami that struck South East Asia in 2004. While on holiday the Tsunami hits the Thai beach resort that the family are staying at, separating Wife Maria (Watts) and eldest son Lucas (Tom Holland) from Husband Henry (McGregor) and youngest sons Thomas and Simon (Samuel Joslin and Oaklee Pendergast). With Maria seriously injured and little help at hand, the family struggle to survive in the most unimaginable conditions.

I have mixed feelings about The Impossible. On the one hand it is an expertly made film which brings a terrible tragedy to the big screen but on the other hand that tragedy is still fresh in the memory and the lengths to which the movie tugs at the audience’s emotions feel cheap and unnecessary. Although I’m sure it will be well received by critics, I have my reservations and my girlfriend downright disliked it.

The Girl

The Girl is a TV movie about the three year working relationship between Alfred Hitchcock (Toby Jones) and his two time leading lady Tippi Hedren (Sienna Miller) star of TheBirds and Marnie. The plot, which has been widely criticised by people who knew the great Director, focuses on his attraction towards his starlet and her rebuff of his advances. Much like a great Hitchcock thriller the film takes a dark turn as Hitch forces Hedren to go through arduous scenes over and over again and puts her in compromising positions sexually.

I’m a fairly new convert to Hitchcock having seen seven of his films in the last year, all for the first time. The Birds is one of the few Hitchcock movies I had seen before I began blogging but not for a long time. It’s been on my list to watch for a few months but I hadn’t got around to it yet and this put me in a quandary; what to watch first? I decided to watch The Girl before re-watching The Birds but now I’m slightly fearful that its portrayal of the Director may put me off the film and perhaps Hitchcock in general.