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Films XCIII-C
Yes - we have a back log. But: a hundred up.
XCIII: Escape from the Planet of the Apes (Don Taylor, 1971)
This reverses the trajectory of the first two films and has three apes travel from their society to a fictionalised 1970s Earth. It's not quite clear how they found and repaired Taylor's ship, but perhaps it's a sign of superior ape science. The characters have escaped from the climax of the previous film. As in Beneath, the captain dies, leaving Zira (Kim Hunter) and Cornelius (Roddy McDowall) to negotiate our "present" day.
Initially they hide their power of speech, but Zira lets it slip in frustration, Whilst they are viewed as bizarre celebs at first, they are clearly perceived as a potential threat and have to fight for their survival. This is all the more vital when they discover Zira is pregnant.
Here it is the apes who experience racism, or at least the xenophobia of a species under threat. There is almost the sense of this becoming an escaped slave narrative. My sympathies, at least, lie with Zira and Cornelius.
A clever attempt to extend the franchise beyond the ending Heston wanted for it in Beneath.
XCIV: Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (J. Lee Thompson, 1972)
Here the events are set in the 1990s, after a virus has wiped out the cats and dogs. Apes have been kept as pets and trained as servants - and it is pretty obvious as slaves. Caesar the talking ape (Roddy McDowall) stays in hiding with a circus, at risk of execution if he is discovered. When Armadano (Ricardo Montalban) the circus ringmaster is arrested, Caesar has little choice but to become a slave. But soon he is fomenting rebellion.
In what is either a failure of nerve at the allegory, the one other decent human being MacDonald (Hari Rhodes) is black, and this fact is used repeated to point to the slavery/race metaphors. He rescues Caesar from being executed and acts as a moral compass. This is the most violent of the films so far.
XCV: The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008)
Note the lack of Batman from the title - whilst Miller had The Dark Knight Returns as being Batman, here it is one of the villains being referred to. The superhero movie, forever being revivified, seems set in stone - the first film gives the origin story and bolts a villain requiring vanquishing as a graduation ceremony, leaving an overlong film. The sequel requires stakes to be raised, and a new villain who has to be defeated before the second, true, villain is revealed. Baggy, baggy.
Inevitably this example of the baggy follow-up is haunted by the offscreen death of Heath Ledger - and he dominates the first two thirds of the film. (Certainly the trailer keeps the final third quiet - despite many trailers showing events from surprisingly far into films.) Ledger is extraordinary as the Joker - mimicking Vincent Price for accent - but an Oscar nods is overly sentimental.
Not since Michael Madsen in Reservoir Dogs has so much violence been suggested but not actually seen - whilst once the BBFC used to be overly tough on everyone but Spielberg, this does feel like a 15. With the exception, I think, of a blinding, the camera tends to cut away at the violence. If I recall correctly the 12 was originally introduced as a means of certifying Burton's Batman as 15 seemed a tad old and numerous early teens were likely to sneak in. The 12A, brought in for Spiderman, enables the under twelves to see it if accompanied by an adult who has the duty to check the advice. I had no pre-pubescent children to take to the cinema - so I don't have to decide - but it's interesting that no other artform has such a policing mechanism. (OK - DVDs etc mimic cinema; videogames as artform? Aspiring at times to film, of course. Age banding in books would be an equivalent.) I suspect that we are more squeamish than the kids.
As DA, Harvey Dent (indie dahlin Aaron Eckhart who does blockbusters as second banana) cracks down on the mafia, so the Joker is bringing his anarchy to town whilst stealing money. In these days of internet banking this seems a little quaint, but he doesn't really want the cash. The Joker sets up a series of moral dilemmas - the killing of criminals, making hostages look like kidnappers, setting up either/or choices of rescue. The good guys meanwhile mislead each other, carry double headed coins, invent unethical tools to aid their victory. Yeah, we get it - in a world where the white knight becomes the dark knight nothing is white and black. The Batman and the Joker need each other (see Killing Joke (1988) and unacknowledged source for the film - it's a good job Alan Moore has stopped caring about movie versions).
Meanwhile is it any wonder that both Wayne (Christian Bale - competant, but as much an absence as Keaton was in his day) and Harvey Dent are trying to date the same woman when there hardly seem to be any others in town? There are a couple of wives and a cop, and mothers as extras, but that's it. Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel Dawes has the very definition of a thankless role, mostly finding reasons not to commit to her beaux - one is already married to the day job, the other to the night one. It's a high risk occupation being a superhero's girlfriend - at best you just lie back and think of rescue, at worst there's no rescue and you end up as a plot device.
To be fair this is all very competent but - what's the line about Wagner, some great ten minutes but lousy half an hours? Baggy, baggy, baggy.
XCVI: Whisky (Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll, 2004)
Actually it should be called "Cheese" for the word said when having a photograph taken. Jacobo (Andres Pazos) has run the family hosiery buisness and looked after his dying mother for years whilst his brother Herman (Jorge Bolani) has built his own business in Brazil. As Herman is returning home to attend the erection of the headstone for their mother, Jacobo asks his shop floor manager Marta (Mirella Pascual) to pose as a wife to demonstrate his success. Fair enough, Marta says.
There's a fetishized repetition of events here - the opening of the factory, the buzz of the lights, the hum of the machines, the clicking of on switches. The lights flicker. The brothers give each other socks. And eventually I realised it's Mike Leigh - not necessarily in terms of production techniques, but in characters being trapped by the quotidian. I've no idea why this was showing in Durham - part of a cinema club - but worth seeking out.
XCVII: Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (Gurinder Chadha, 2008)
Let's face it, I'm not the target demographic, but it was this or The Dark Knight in Durham. Or go to the pub.
Should I be depressed that Alan Davies can now play sad old dad? I guess he's been old enough for a while, and Bill Bailey did it in Skins. One person I went to school with is a grandparent, and has been for years. Ouch.
Georgina (Georgia Groome) looks like she has a perfect life in Eastbourne - aside from being 14 and a girl - but needs a boy. When she and her best mate Jas (Eleanor Tomlinson), meet non-identical twins Robbie (Aaron Johnson) and Tom (Sean Bourke) (from London!!!) they decide to take them. Jas succeeds remarkably easily but Georgina has to resort to stretefies - which backfire on her. However this is fairy tale so everything sorts itself out and everyone is happy who deserves to be happy - and even some of those who don't. Undemanding.
XCVIII: Hot Fuzz (Edgar Wright, 2007)
Belated rewatch, on DVD, in which I recognise more of the actors. Fascinating to see it slip between 1970s genres (various shades of horror, including Hammer, and detectives/cop) and more contemporary (well, 1990s) buddy action movie. The climax is a little OTT but generically right.
The story of a high achieving cop (Simon Pegg) being transferred to a country town (Jim Broadbent in charge of Bill Bailey, Paddy Considine, Nick Frost, Raff Spall, Karl Johnsson and, er, Bill Bailey). Of course, before long, he uncovers crimes and conspiracy. Fun - but I wonder how many spot the Iain Banks joke?
Les Femmes de l'ombre (Female Agents, Jean-Paul Salomé)
A film starring five women and I'm not convinced it passes the Bechdel test.
In mid-1944 a group of French women in exile in Britain are selected by the SOE to rescue a British geologist from a hospital in occupied France before he is transferred to Berlin and likely executed. He has been digging around the Normandy beaches and may have information valid for D-Day. Four women and a man parachute into France, where a fifth woman is already infiltrating the hospital as a nurse.
Inspired by true events - I'm not sure how loosely - it's certainly refreshing to see a female Dirty Dozen, and it avoids any whiff of turning into Charlie's Angels at any point. It even has more of a sense of women killing as a job rather than because provoked than usually seen. But it is still the men who are the agents of the plot - who need rescuing, who mustn't crack under torture, who must be executed, who get to be brave. But an exciting thriller, nonetheless.
C: The Visitor (Thomas McCarthy, 2008)
A hundred up - and it's only afterwards I realise I'm not clear who the visitor is.
Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) is a widowed, tenured professor stuck in a rut, who is forced to go to a conference in New York to deliver a paper he co-wrote. Reaching his New York apartment, he finds two squatters: a Syrian, Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), and a Senegalese, Zainab (Danai Jekesai Gurira). Rather than kicking them out, he lets them stay and befriends Tarek, from whom he learns to play djembe drums. Then disaster strikes, and Tarek is arrested by the immigration service.
There's a danger in this sort of film of the Other being homogenised - although there is a neat joke in which someone talks about Cape Town having learnt that Zainab is Senegalese. But there's the lazy sense of the white culture being dry and dead - its acme being represented by wine, classical music and, er, The Phantom of the Opera - and African culture as lively and authentic. Vale has to show that white men can play the blues and get his mojo back. There's also danger in racially-tinged issues being sorted out by white patriarchs (see Strange Days, say, and Honeydripper), but fortunately the film undercuts that.
In a distinctly post-9/11 world the film is brave enough to make you care about a number of illegal immigrants in a country built on immigration, the arbitrariness of the system of deportation and how the system actually radicalises the oppressed. At the same time, Vale looks incredibly out of place - at his college, at the pub, in the detention center and even in his own apartment.
This is a very watchable film that's very much food for thought, and even the minor roles have a depth to them which The Dark Knight doesn't even begin to aspire to.
Totals: 100 (Cinema: 39; DVD: 56; TV: 5)
XCIII: Escape from the Planet of the Apes (Don Taylor, 1971)
This reverses the trajectory of the first two films and has three apes travel from their society to a fictionalised 1970s Earth. It's not quite clear how they found and repaired Taylor's ship, but perhaps it's a sign of superior ape science. The characters have escaped from the climax of the previous film. As in Beneath, the captain dies, leaving Zira (Kim Hunter) and Cornelius (Roddy McDowall) to negotiate our "present" day.
Initially they hide their power of speech, but Zira lets it slip in frustration, Whilst they are viewed as bizarre celebs at first, they are clearly perceived as a potential threat and have to fight for their survival. This is all the more vital when they discover Zira is pregnant.
Here it is the apes who experience racism, or at least the xenophobia of a species under threat. There is almost the sense of this becoming an escaped slave narrative. My sympathies, at least, lie with Zira and Cornelius.
A clever attempt to extend the franchise beyond the ending Heston wanted for it in Beneath.
XCIV: Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (J. Lee Thompson, 1972)
Here the events are set in the 1990s, after a virus has wiped out the cats and dogs. Apes have been kept as pets and trained as servants - and it is pretty obvious as slaves. Caesar the talking ape (Roddy McDowall) stays in hiding with a circus, at risk of execution if he is discovered. When Armadano (Ricardo Montalban) the circus ringmaster is arrested, Caesar has little choice but to become a slave. But soon he is fomenting rebellion.
In what is either a failure of nerve at the allegory, the one other decent human being MacDonald (Hari Rhodes) is black, and this fact is used repeated to point to the slavery/race metaphors. He rescues Caesar from being executed and acts as a moral compass. This is the most violent of the films so far.
XCV: The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008)
Note the lack of Batman from the title - whilst Miller had The Dark Knight Returns as being Batman, here it is one of the villains being referred to. The superhero movie, forever being revivified, seems set in stone - the first film gives the origin story and bolts a villain requiring vanquishing as a graduation ceremony, leaving an overlong film. The sequel requires stakes to be raised, and a new villain who has to be defeated before the second, true, villain is revealed. Baggy, baggy.
Inevitably this example of the baggy follow-up is haunted by the offscreen death of Heath Ledger - and he dominates the first two thirds of the film. (Certainly the trailer keeps the final third quiet - despite many trailers showing events from surprisingly far into films.) Ledger is extraordinary as the Joker - mimicking Vincent Price for accent - but an Oscar nods is overly sentimental.
Not since Michael Madsen in Reservoir Dogs has so much violence been suggested but not actually seen - whilst once the BBFC used to be overly tough on everyone but Spielberg, this does feel like a 15. With the exception, I think, of a blinding, the camera tends to cut away at the violence. If I recall correctly the 12 was originally introduced as a means of certifying Burton's Batman as 15 seemed a tad old and numerous early teens were likely to sneak in. The 12A, brought in for Spiderman, enables the under twelves to see it if accompanied by an adult who has the duty to check the advice. I had no pre-pubescent children to take to the cinema - so I don't have to decide - but it's interesting that no other artform has such a policing mechanism. (OK - DVDs etc mimic cinema; videogames as artform? Aspiring at times to film, of course. Age banding in books would be an equivalent.) I suspect that we are more squeamish than the kids.
As DA, Harvey Dent (indie dahlin Aaron Eckhart who does blockbusters as second banana) cracks down on the mafia, so the Joker is bringing his anarchy to town whilst stealing money. In these days of internet banking this seems a little quaint, but he doesn't really want the cash. The Joker sets up a series of moral dilemmas - the killing of criminals, making hostages look like kidnappers, setting up either/or choices of rescue. The good guys meanwhile mislead each other, carry double headed coins, invent unethical tools to aid their victory. Yeah, we get it - in a world where the white knight becomes the dark knight nothing is white and black. The Batman and the Joker need each other (see Killing Joke (1988) and unacknowledged source for the film - it's a good job Alan Moore has stopped caring about movie versions).
Meanwhile is it any wonder that both Wayne (Christian Bale - competant, but as much an absence as Keaton was in his day) and Harvey Dent are trying to date the same woman when there hardly seem to be any others in town? There are a couple of wives and a cop, and mothers as extras, but that's it. Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel Dawes has the very definition of a thankless role, mostly finding reasons not to commit to her beaux - one is already married to the day job, the other to the night one. It's a high risk occupation being a superhero's girlfriend - at best you just lie back and think of rescue, at worst there's no rescue and you end up as a plot device.
To be fair this is all very competent but - what's the line about Wagner, some great ten minutes but lousy half an hours? Baggy, baggy, baggy.
XCVI: Whisky (Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll, 2004)
Actually it should be called "Cheese" for the word said when having a photograph taken. Jacobo (Andres Pazos) has run the family hosiery buisness and looked after his dying mother for years whilst his brother Herman (Jorge Bolani) has built his own business in Brazil. As Herman is returning home to attend the erection of the headstone for their mother, Jacobo asks his shop floor manager Marta (Mirella Pascual) to pose as a wife to demonstrate his success. Fair enough, Marta says.
There's a fetishized repetition of events here - the opening of the factory, the buzz of the lights, the hum of the machines, the clicking of on switches. The lights flicker. The brothers give each other socks. And eventually I realised it's Mike Leigh - not necessarily in terms of production techniques, but in characters being trapped by the quotidian. I've no idea why this was showing in Durham - part of a cinema club - but worth seeking out.
XCVII: Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (Gurinder Chadha, 2008)
Let's face it, I'm not the target demographic, but it was this or The Dark Knight in Durham. Or go to the pub.
Should I be depressed that Alan Davies can now play sad old dad? I guess he's been old enough for a while, and Bill Bailey did it in Skins. One person I went to school with is a grandparent, and has been for years. Ouch.
Georgina (Georgia Groome) looks like she has a perfect life in Eastbourne - aside from being 14 and a girl - but needs a boy. When she and her best mate Jas (Eleanor Tomlinson), meet non-identical twins Robbie (Aaron Johnson) and Tom (Sean Bourke) (from London!!!) they decide to take them. Jas succeeds remarkably easily but Georgina has to resort to stretefies - which backfire on her. However this is fairy tale so everything sorts itself out and everyone is happy who deserves to be happy - and even some of those who don't. Undemanding.
XCVIII: Hot Fuzz (Edgar Wright, 2007)
Belated rewatch, on DVD, in which I recognise more of the actors. Fascinating to see it slip between 1970s genres (various shades of horror, including Hammer, and detectives/cop) and more contemporary (well, 1990s) buddy action movie. The climax is a little OTT but generically right.
The story of a high achieving cop (Simon Pegg) being transferred to a country town (Jim Broadbent in charge of Bill Bailey, Paddy Considine, Nick Frost, Raff Spall, Karl Johnsson and, er, Bill Bailey). Of course, before long, he uncovers crimes and conspiracy. Fun - but I wonder how many spot the Iain Banks joke?
Les Femmes de l'ombre (Female Agents, Jean-Paul Salomé)
A film starring five women and I'm not convinced it passes the Bechdel test.
In mid-1944 a group of French women in exile in Britain are selected by the SOE to rescue a British geologist from a hospital in occupied France before he is transferred to Berlin and likely executed. He has been digging around the Normandy beaches and may have information valid for D-Day. Four women and a man parachute into France, where a fifth woman is already infiltrating the hospital as a nurse.
Inspired by true events - I'm not sure how loosely - it's certainly refreshing to see a female Dirty Dozen, and it avoids any whiff of turning into Charlie's Angels at any point. It even has more of a sense of women killing as a job rather than because provoked than usually seen. But it is still the men who are the agents of the plot - who need rescuing, who mustn't crack under torture, who must be executed, who get to be brave. But an exciting thriller, nonetheless.
C: The Visitor (Thomas McCarthy, 2008)
A hundred up - and it's only afterwards I realise I'm not clear who the visitor is.
Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) is a widowed, tenured professor stuck in a rut, who is forced to go to a conference in New York to deliver a paper he co-wrote. Reaching his New York apartment, he finds two squatters: a Syrian, Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), and a Senegalese, Zainab (Danai Jekesai Gurira). Rather than kicking them out, he lets them stay and befriends Tarek, from whom he learns to play djembe drums. Then disaster strikes, and Tarek is arrested by the immigration service.
There's a danger in this sort of film of the Other being homogenised - although there is a neat joke in which someone talks about Cape Town having learnt that Zainab is Senegalese. But there's the lazy sense of the white culture being dry and dead - its acme being represented by wine, classical music and, er, The Phantom of the Opera - and African culture as lively and authentic. Vale has to show that white men can play the blues and get his mojo back. There's also danger in racially-tinged issues being sorted out by white patriarchs (see Strange Days, say, and Honeydripper), but fortunately the film undercuts that.
In a distinctly post-9/11 world the film is brave enough to make you care about a number of illegal immigrants in a country built on immigration, the arbitrariness of the system of deportation and how the system actually radicalises the oppressed. At the same time, Vale looks incredibly out of place - at his college, at the pub, in the detention center and even in his own apartment.
This is a very watchable film that's very much food for thought, and even the minor roles have a depth to them which The Dark Knight doesn't even begin to aspire to.
Totals: 100 (Cinema: 39; DVD: 56; TV: 5)