Category: Film

So you’re waiting for The Two Towers to open, and you’re looking for some action and spectacle. Potter and Bond have arrived in cinemas promising to deliver, but don’t be fooled – forget those franchised phoneys and stay at home with The Brotherhood of the Wolf.

The new blockbusters represent the triumph of craft over talent. The Chamber of Secrets and Die Another Day are reliably diverting and well put together. They do exactly what it says on the tin, reassuring the consumer that even though they’ve not seen this particular film, they already know what to expect.

Which is what makes The Brotherhood of the Wolf (just out on video and DVD after its sell-out run at the IFC earlier in the year) such a triumph – you’ve no idea what to expect from an 18th-century French kung-fu anti-Enlightenment conspiracy monster movie. Think Peter Greenaway meets John Woo and you’re not even close.

Brilliantly shot, it’s stylish and playful in equal measure, swaggering across the screen completely confident in its unique vision.

Based on the true story of an unidentified beast that terrorised a remote part of pre-Revolutionary France, it follows the attempt of explorer and naturalist Fronsac and his native American companion Mani to track down the creature.

The film gleefully rips up the genre rules, but amazingly it still ends up as a coherent whole, and a ripping yarn. Amid the beauty, violence and general insanity, there’s even time to raise questions of aristocratic dissipation, environmentalism and fascistic mechanisation.

Forget Harry and James, and choose the film that’s got the best of both of them – gadgets, fights, suave heroes, chases, intrigue, spies and monsters. And frock coats.

Tuesday, April 02, 2002

In our playground there were simple rules of engagement. Three boys would link arms and stride around the playground chanting ?Who wants a game of War??, or if we were feeling cheeky, ?Who wants a game of Kiss Chase??.

Soon others would join in, and then the teams would be divided along certain agreed lines. Most of the time, the captains would alternately choose one person, until the only one left would be the new kid with the patch over his NHS specs to correct his lazy eye.

But on occasion, we?d divide the teams up in a different way – for example, Mrs Bowring?s class stick the rest. While watching the dreary Oscars last week, it dawned on me that the ceremony would be much more exciting if it was a team event.

So Paul Newman and Kirk Douglas would loudly declaim, ?Who wants a game of War?? while strutting around the huge auditorium. Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Connolly would stop talking about whether Nicole Kidman fancied Robbie Williams, and slouch over to join in.

Soon they?d have to work out how to divide the teams.

?It should be everyone who?s got at least one Oscar against all the losers,? says Tom Hanks. ?Except you can have Julia Roberts because she runs like a girl.?

?I?m not going on your fucking team,? bellows Russell Crowe. ?You and your flag-waving Oscar-bait ?Run Forrest, run!? piece of shit. Where?s Denzel? No way is he getting the gong for Training Day. I am Russell Ira Crowe – Commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.?

?Didn?t I see you in Neighbours?? says Gwyneth Paltrow, playing with her hair and keeping her black eyes downcast in her new grunge head-girl look.

?You leave Neighbours out of this!? say Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Kylie Minogue and Natalie Imbruglia in unison.

?Children, children,? says Charlton Heston. ?We all know that Hollywood is the cradle of cinematic creativity, but lame-ass Europeans who don?t even allow their police to pack heat always argue that they do the good work. Let?s settle it once and for all – Americans over here, the rest of the World over there. If we win, you only get to compete for the best film in a foreign language category from now on. Mike Myers and Jim Carrey, where do you think you?re going? You?re on our side – we need your deadly comic timing.?

?No way, Moses,? says Myers. ?We?re Canadian, remember? And you don?t get Donald Sutherland, Dan Akroyd, William Shatner or Christopher Plummer either.?

?But isn?t Canadia part of the US?? asks Liv Tyler, in a very fetching way.

?Which side am I on?? pipes up Catherine Zeta-Jones. ?And how do we play? I never really did playground games when I was in primary school.  I was always rushing home to watch The Streets of San Francisco and Romancing the Stone.?

Soon the fighting begins. The Americans have the good looks and healthy diets that athletes need, and the crack Saving Private Ryan squad of Hanks, Matt Damon, Ed Burns and Tom Sizemore makes early headway against the Fops and Weaklings brigade of Hugh Grant, Rupert Everett and Ewan McGregor.

In the corner, the Baldwin family is getting their asses kicked by the Redgraves, but Billy Bob and Angelina are making mincemeat of Sam Mendes and Kate Winslet, until Billy Bob and Angelina forget about the fighting and start making gymnastic love and giving each other tattoos.

The Queen?s Own Royal Thespians are doing well for their age, with Sirs Ian McKellen, Derek Jacobi, Anthony Hopkins, and Ben Kingsley being ably assisted by Dames Maggie Smith and Judi Dench.

At one point Andie McDowell says, ?Is it raining? I hadn?t noticed,? and both sides pause to beat her like a red-haired stepchild.

The ANZAC regiment of Baz Lurhmann, Jane Campion, Nicole Kidman, Sam Neill, Peter Jackson, Russell Crowe, and Mel Gibson are sent into the heart of the mel?e without proper support by the spineless British directors Anthony Minghella and Guy Ritchie, who are safe behind lines.

Richard Harris and Peter O?Toole have adjourned to the bar, where Woody Harrelson?s rolling a big one. Winona Ryder?s slipped out the back with everyone?s coats.

In the music battle Paul McCartney, Sting and Enya are up against Randy Newman and John Goodman. Sting refuses to fight, as it?s against his Buddha nature, and Enya wails, ?I don?t perform live, I need hundreds of hours of studio time and overdubbing to make an impact.? Sir Paul miraculously withstands the heavyweight stylings of Newman and Goodman because he appears to be made of money.

Vinnie Jones strips off his tuxedo to reveal his Wimbledon FC shirt, and takes out Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard with a couple of fully committed tackles. ?I?ll give you feelgood entertainment,? he snorts.

Pacino and De Niro are both fighting dirty against the British Bad Guy division of Alan Rickman, Jeremy Irons and Robert Carlyle, who keep coming up with elaborate ways to kill the Americans only to let them go again.

Ridley Scott and his brother Tony are having their own fight. ?I make Bladerunner, Thelma and Louise, and Gladiator,? says Ridley. ?And you sully the family name with Top Gun and Days of Thunder. You know our Mam hates Tom Cruise.?

Suddenly the lights go out, the cameras and microphones stop working, and for a few moments there?s chaos. When the lights come back up, all the US forces are on their knees with their hands tied behind their backs with gaffa tape. An elite cadre of make-up artists is doing unspeakable things to the complexions of the stars.

Charlton Heston looks like a broken man. ?Against you tricksy character actors and Antipodeans we might have had a chance,? he says. ?But I forgot that all the technical people and make-up artists in Hollywood are British.

?But don?t worry, we?ll be back – we?re going to come and boss you in your own house next year at the BAFTA Smackdown.?

Wednesday, December 19, 2001

Most films invite you into a different world for a couple of hours, showing you people and places that you know little about. We expect this world to be convincing, and to have a depth that allows us to suspend our disbelief for a time.

But very few films – whether fantasies or not – have created as coherent and powerful a vision as that shown in The Lord of the Rings.

Unlike the well-made but shallow Harry Potter, this is myth for grown-ups, with a palpable sense of evil, and a sweep and scale that wins out over the problems of bringing such a dense book to the screen.

The opening of the film suggest the purview of the movie, with the first words being, ‘The world is changing,’ and it’s director Peter Jackson’s triumph that he gives a sense of the broad context for the actions of Frodo and the others, while also allowing them to live as individuals.

To create a convincing fantasy world that exists in the moment is challenging enough, but to give us history lessons at the same time as telling us a taut adventure story is a real triumph.

Throughout the three hours the pacing is excellent, and if some events are given little enough screen time (Cate Blanchett and Liv Tyler went a long way for not much work), the rhythm seldom sags.

If the world that Tolkien imagined is brought impressively to life, it can also be argued that the film also reflects Tolkien’s inability to draw complex characters. So elves are all ethereal and vaguely Arian, dwarves sturdy and quick-tempered (and Welsh), while the hobbits are good-natured and surprisingly resilient.

But Tolkien and the film are making epic, and the point is that the characters have a nobility and grandeur that has passed from the current world. Nor does this suggest that the good vs evil battle is clumsily drawn.

Saruman’s expediency as he engages in the Middle-Earth versions of genetic engineering and industrialization hints at the dangers of the modern age, while Boromir’s tragedy is that his sense of duty and honour to Gondor overcome his better judgement.

Aragorn’s burden as being a king without a kingdom, and heir to the hero and villain Isildur is particularly well-drawn.

At the council in Rivendell (symbolically during autumn – winter is coming, the elves are leaving, foolish humans are taking over) there’s a sense that the world is doomed, and this air of real menace permeates the film.

The performances also support this complexity of vision. Elijah Wood, with his translucent skin and childlike eyes, captures Frodo’s brave uncertainty, while Ian McKellen’s Gandalf is impressively stern and careworn, and Sean Bean nails Boromir’s Viking spirit.

And they all move in a world that is a joy to behold. If the ring is a supporting character in the drama (it certainly is more in control than the Fellowship), then so is the New Zealand landscape. It looks both very familiar and also slightly alien – the mountains and rivers heightened versions of what we’re used to in this small-scale continent.

There are problems, though. The fight scenes are brutal but chaotic, and it’s hard to work out exactly what’s happening. Viggo Mortensen’s English accent goes astray at times, and his weasel blankness is supposed to hint at Aragorn’s nobility, but sometimes he just looks blank.

But Jackson has created a dense, well-structured and rewarding version of the book, and I’m already looking forward to the next film, and thinking about how cool it would be to be like Legolas, firing two arrows at a time and walk across the top of snow without leaving footprints.

Monday, November 12, 2001

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ is that rarest of birds – a big-budget adaptation of a successful book that works. And it not only works, it also remains true to the plot, vision and values of the original.

Normally, ‘based on the novel by . . . ‘ means ‘well, it’s got the same title’, or at the very best ‘it was all going fine until we did the test screenings, and then we had to reshoot the ending’.

But here the film does exactly what it says on the tin. Aside from the most minor changes to the plot, we get the full story told in a faithful way, even down to the set design, where everything we’re told about Hogwarts is included (candles floating in the air over the dining hall tables, for example), and augmented by sympathetic details not in the book (like the medieval feel for the quidditch stadium).

And the casting is excellent: Richard Harris, John Hurt, Alan Rickman, Ian Hart (that’s John Lennon in ‘Backbeat’, not left back at Elland Road), Fiona Shaw, Maggie Smith, John Cleese, Julie Walters, Robbie Coltrane and Zoe Wannamaker. Some of them have no more than a handful of lines, but they add such heft to the film that you can forgive the three child stars when they falter a little.

If there’s heft from the cast, then there’s even more solidity from the story itself, an unlikely collision between a universal myth and an English boarding school jape. The narrative as Harry moves from neglected orphan to chosen one in a fight between good and evil is a classic mythic trope, and any similarities with ‘Star Wars’ are entirely deliberate, as they both draw on the same sources. Where George Lucas added space ships and blasters, Rowling adds dormitories and house points, but it’s a tribute to the film-makers that they left well alone. Voldemort is Darth Vader – the talented master of magic who went over to the Dark Side – but he’s also Lucifer, Sauron and any number of other examples of hubristic evil. And no prizes for seeing Harry as Luke Skywalker or Frodo Baggins.

My fear with the film version was that this sense of real badness would be toned down, but the movie is appropriately gruesome, and doesn’t pull any punches with some of the more graphic elements in the book. As one little girl remarked after the showing I saw, ‘it’s scary, disgusting but good’.

One result of this fidelity to the book is that the film runs for two and a half hours, but the thing is so carefully plotted and well-played that you scarecely feel the time drag. After the great immediacy of the quidditch match things get a little slow for a while, but in a cinema packed with kids, I didn’t see much restlessness at all.

So if you like the books, you won’t be disappointed in the film. If you’ve never read Harry Potter, the film gives you such a faithful version of the first book that you may as well just jump straight in with this. And don’t believe anyone who tells you that the book’s better, because what you’re seeing _is_ the book.

Friday, October 26, 2001

You walk out of the cinema and everything is changed. You entered the big boxy building in the light of an ordinary afternoon. But now it’s dark, and the city feels a little different. You wonder if what you’re seeing is actually there. Everything seems kind of real, but then you’ve just spent two hours believing what you saw, when you knew it wasn’t real.

You look harder, noticing things that you would have missed before in this stylized version of the familiar. The lights are brighter, the shadows more pronounced. You listen to the noise of the traffic, as it washes like waves on the walls of the buildings; you watch the forklifts loading bright boxes of veg as you walk past the wholesalers. Into a square and your eye pans across it, and then the focus pulls back to the office block at the far end. Now you cut to details of the halo round the top of a lampost, and you close in on the faces as people come out of the shining shop. 

You’re not just heading home, you’re walking down a street in a city on a specific evening, with the light just so, and particular cars driving past, individual noises reaching you, and so many different things all happening at once. You’re glad you went to the cinema on your own, because if you’d been talking about the film on the way home, or headed off for some drinks, your customary life would have intervened and you’d have missed all this wonder.

What’s the story? It’s like you’re in the movies. Or maybe the movies are in you.