The Curate’s Crapburger

The Day After Tomorrow (Roland Emmerich, 2004)

One of the principles I try to hold to when reviewing films is to avoid simply savaging a film. The smugness of smart-arsed critics who can do nothing but pick apart a movie always irritates me. Which isn’t to say that bad movies shouldn’t be criticised. It’s just that the best reviews of bad films are those that also stop to note the good points amongst the bad. Likewise, most classic films have their share of flaws, and defining why these films succeed despite their problems is often difficult. Critics need to appreciate the elusiveness of the strange alchemy that makes a good film. As they say, nobody sets out to make a bad movie.

Nobody, that is, except Roland Emmerich.

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Bill Killed

Kill Bill: Volume II (Quentin Tarantino, 2004)

When I reviewed the first part of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, I concluded with a rhetorical question: would anyone have enjoyed just the first half of Once Upon a Time in the West? My point was that it was difficult to assess Volume 1 prior to the release of Volume 2, since it was bound to end up as an empty exercise in style if it could never reach any conclusion. Sergio Leone’s classic sprung to mind as an example of a perfectly rounded film by a master of film technique that wouldn’t amount to anything if you showed just part of it. Having seen Volume 2 of Kill Bill, however, I can see that the example was all wrong. Once Upon a Time in the West is a film with purity of purpose that stands as a supremely executed single entity. Kill Bill, by contrast, makes perfect sense as two movies. Not only is each volume an anthology, constructed out of a series of episodes that add up to a larger whole, but each volume is starkly different in overall purpose and tone. I’m now convinced Tarantino intended for the film to be split in half all along, and I’m not one of those who hankers for Tarantino’s promised single movie version (I can see it being schizophrenic and unsatisfying, like From Dusk Till Dawn).

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Mike Moore’s Palme D’Or and Quentin Tarantino’s Casino Royale

Mike Moore winning the Palme D’Or? It seems so bizarre that it is hardly surprising that in all the stories about Fahrenheit 9/11 preceding the festival, nobody had really suggested this as a possibility, despite the film being in competition. I can’t wait to see the film: I loved Bowling for Columbine, and am sympathetic to all but the most outrageous of Moore’s politics. Yet I also fear it may be terrible. Columbine I thought stood head and shoulders above Moore’s other work because he successfully reigned in many of his worst impulses. Moore has a weakness for hyperbole and half-truths that has brought down many of his other films and books, but despite the best attempts of the right to discredit Columbine, nobody really poked any serious holes in it. There is plenty of scope for a really devastating attack on George W. Bush without bending the truth, but I fear Moore’s anger and the praise heaped on him post-Columbine may have gone to his head. I can see Fahrenheit 9/11 descending into hysteria, conspiracy theories and factual error. Let’s hope I’m wrong: for all his faults, Moore popularises the left and has the kind of cross-cultural reach that usually only the right can achieve.

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Be My Friend, Godfather…

The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)

It’s ironic that Francis Ford Coppola made his name as arguably the leading director of the 1970s on the back of The Godfather. Just when Hollywood was embracing a new wave of film school educated directors, and financing lots of offbeat, low-budget “youth” pictures trying to recapture the success of Easy Rider, Coppola broke through with a very classical studio picture. It really is, as Leonard Maltin’s guide puts it, “the 1970’s answer to Gone with the Wind:” in other words, an epic but conventional adaptation of a lengthy source novel. Later, with Apocalypse Now, Coppola would try for a more highbrow art project that better justified his “auteur” status, but here – superficially at least – Coppola’s triumph is simply one of expert stewardship. The Godfather is, first and foremost, a perfectly wrought interpretation of Mario Puzo’s novel. People sometimes cite The Godfather as an example of a film masterpiece springing from a trashy book, but I think this is unfair to Puzo. The qualities that make the film great are mostly present in the novel: if we ascribe greater value to the film version, it’s because we are more willing to surrender to the experience of pulp fiction in the cinema than in print.

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Basking in the Sunshine

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)

There’s a sequence late in Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich where two characters chase each other through the subconscious of actor John Malkovich. The deepest recesses of memory – such as childhood and teenage humiliations – are literalised as little mini-dramas that the characters can barge into and interrupt. The sequence lasts only a couple of minutes, but it’s easy to see it as the genesis for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the latest film based upon a script by Malkovich screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. This time the mind we rummage through is that of Joel (Jim Carrey): a forlorn, withdrawn man whose relationship with the extroverted and impetuous Clementine (Kate Winslet) is in disarray. The central gimmick is that Joel and Clementine stumble across Lacuna, a company offering erasure of unwanted memories. Joel seizes on the chance to put the relationship literally out of mind, and the central portion of the film sees Joel wandering through his own mind and exploring his memories of the relationship even as they are extinguished one by one.

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Weir at Sea

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Peter Weir, 2003)

Plot wise, there is not a great deal to Peter Weir’s sailing picture Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World. During the Napoleonic Wars, the British vessel Surprise is alone at sea off the coast of South America with orders to intercept the French vessel Acheron. After an opening skirmish, Captain Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) plays a cat-and-mouse game with the French ship, which significantly outguns his own. Along the way he must deal with inexperienced officers, insubordinate and superstitious crewmembers, and particularly the doubts and war-weariness of the ships’ doctor Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany).

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Spelling A

Review – Spellbound (Jeffrey Blitz, 2003)

The Spellbound in question is not Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller, but rather the absolutely riveting, Oscar nominated documentary about spelling bees in the United States. As with so many of the best documentaries (including the one that beat it to the Oscar, Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine), it is at once hilarious and yet kind of disturbing. It follows eight children to the National Spelling Bee, with the first half of the film patiently establishing their personalities of the contestants, and the second half showing the relentless, pressure cooker finals that utilise a gratuitously unfair (but extremely exciting) sudden death format.

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The Departure of Disney

The news in the last couple of weeks that Roy E. Disney (and another board member, Stanley Gold) have resigned from the board of the Disney corporation after disputes with Michael Eisner draws attention to the depressing future that faces the studio. I have no inside knowledge of the studio, so have no idea how effective Roy E. was as a board member. But even if his role was purely ceremonial, the symbolism of what’s occurred is bad enough. Roy E. Disney is Walt Disney’s nephew, and the son of studio co-founder Roy Disney. Given the elder Roy’s much larger then generally understood role in the studio’s operation (he ran the business end until after Walt’s death, and the studio was initially the “Disney Brothers” studio), Roy E. represented a direct, tangible link to the heritage of the company, which has always been its greatest asset. It’s long been easy – and largely accurate – to disparage Disney as just another soulless media conglomerate, but Roy E. was still there as a human link to the glory days of the thirties when Walt blazed his trails. (Sure Roy E. was just a kid at the time, but we’re talking symbolism here).

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A Long Trek Down a Short Pier

Star Trek: Nemesis (Stuart Baird, 2002)

There has been a long-standing tradition that the even-numbered Trek films are good and the odd numbered ones mediocre or bad. Star Trek: Nemesis – the tenth Trek film, and almost certainly the last involving the full “Next Generation” crew – mixes enough good, bad and indifferent elements that it would have been held up as vindication of that theory whether it was been odd or even numbered. The villain of the piece is Shinzon, who has masterminded a political coup in the Romulan empire by the empire’s underclass, the Remans. Story logic would dictate that Shinzon would be Reman himself, but Nemesis is founded on twin contrivances: firstly, that Shinzon is a clone of the captain of the starship Enterprise, Jean-Luc Picard, and secondly, that Shinzon has somehow come into possession of a prototype for the android Data. These plot points are, on close examination, patently absurd, but they serve their purpose of providing a personal link between the villain and the hero of the piece.

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Star Wars on DVD and the Pink Panther Remake

The last week or so has seen the news splash around the internet that Star Wars will arrive on DVD in September 2004, without the real question being answered: which version? Despite the breathless headlines “Original Trilogy on DVD,” nobody knows if we will in fact get the original trilogy as released in 1977 to 1983 (although those willing to take a punt have tended to state that we will get the 1997 Special Editions instead).

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