Pumpkin State

Captain Correlli’s Mandolin

Well, it would seem that every single popular novel to be seen being read on the Tube three years ago have now all been turned into films. Unsurprising I suppose, the film industry loves to canibalize other media for its successes. And most of those films (High Fidelity, Bridget Jones’s Diary) have been pretty successful. And so to Captain Correlli’s Mandolin, a book which - at first sight - is much more cinematic than the other two more confessional blockbusters. Correlli, with its sweeping love story set during World War Two surely offers a film-maker both lush settings and exciting battlefield set pieces. Doddle right?
Unfortunately the other thing Captain Correlli’s Mandolin offer is a selection of wide ranging European accents. The multinational cast which the book can get away with nicely comes and bites the film on the nose rendering anything else it tries to do hopelessly silly. The fact that the film has decided to give all of its characters broad European accents renders it laughable, especially when some of those accents are not even very authentic. Nicholas Cage’s Correlli sounds much like the Italian captain in ‘Allo ‘Allo, and even his stupid accent lapses into American more often than not. “Bella Bambina” indeed. Worse is to come - Penelope Cruz is doing a Spanish accent, mainly because she is Spanish and does not speak English that well. Even Christian Bale camps it up mercilessly, also growing the least convincing beard in cinema for quite some time. Only John Hurt manages to get away with his accent in any form, and merely because he has the gravitas to make it look part of the character.
This would be a pity if the rest of the film worked, but unfortunately the problem with a wide ranging book like Captain Correlli’s Mandolin is there is too much plot to fit in. Therefore some of the important characters in the book are merely sketched, and then appear to act oddly out of character. Borrowing the books narrative pacing, but altering the effect also leaves the film feeling bitty, the earthquake near the end is shown to be dramatic - but actually has no effect on the characters. What is worse is that the film plumps to change the very ending, offering a quick fix happy ending which completely undermines the vague air of tragedy the film should rightly be offering.
Truth is there is just too much depth in a book like Captain Correlli’s Mandolin, and its character are too well drawn. Instead the Italian Army here are presented as Keystone Cop like in their incompetence, the German’s the usual ruthless bad guys. Cage seems to be playing Correlli as a Marx Brother, all ticks and getting drunk. It is difficult to see what Cruz’s Pelagia sees in him, it is equally difficult to understand her when she tries to articulate. Perhaps the most damning aspect which sums up the film is that the theme picked out by Correlli, the big love theme is a piece of Grade One plucking as basic as Three Blind Mice. The film has a similar degree of superficiality.
If you want to see a relatively undemanding love story the Captain Correlli’s Mandolin will probably suit your purposes. Especially if you like the requisite Mills And Boon background of a sunny Greek island. However if you were expecting any depth, or a faithful conversion of the book then this movie is not for you. It will probably sour the book for you, instead of this dapper charming Italian captain, you will forever see Nicholas Cage saluting with a flower and shouting “Bella Bambina”. And that not a memory anyone should have to stick to. (4)
IF THIS FILM WAS A CAR CRASH: Escape From Athena - dodgy WWII action movie - hitting Shirley Valentine - for the Greek Love aspect. Except with ‘Allo ‘Allo accents and a complete lack of any real emotion.

Cat People
And this is not a movie about Michelle Pfeiffer and Yusuf Islam's pop career. The is certainly no Cat Stevens, though there is - of sorts - a Catwoman. Cat People, this was the original 1942 version, is a seminal piece of psychological schlock horror. A B-movie made good, a film notorious for its psychosexual undertones unheard of in its day, and a film which spawned a remarkable sequel (and a lousy remake in the early eighties). Cat People is a very interesting film, though it obviously was not made with that in mind.
Cat People is a low budget B-picture, and its low budget is the secret of its success. Unable to go for big stars, unable to do really anything with special effects (not that in 1942 special effects were in any way special). Therefore it achieves its effect through a number of less special techniques, good writing, effect use of pacing from the director and clever underlying story. It mixes supernatural horror with the still relatively unknown field of psychology, and peppers it with a blend of foreign intrigue. Like a similarly paced film from sixty years later - The Sixth Sense - the very premise of the movie is unclear until the last third.
The plot is simplicity in itself. Simone Simon plays Irena Dubrovna, a Serbian immigrant meets and falls in love with Kent Smith's very wooden Oliver Reed. Simone is alluring in a odd way, she is by no means one of films great beauties but she has a certain European charm keyed in with a secretive mysterious nature which suits her perfectly for the secretive Irena. You see, Irena believes she is one of the Cat People, Serbians cursed from time immemorial. She believes that when she makes love to a man for the first time, she will turn into a feral, uncontrollable wildcat and kill him. Fearing such a change, she stays well away from the marital bed.
So far, so interesting, since her claim is very far fetched. She is obviously obsessed with this idea, and is often found by the big cat cages in the zoo (which is handy since they are the only cages in her local 24 hour zoo). She goes off to a psychiatrist, an arrogant fella who treats madness as if its just around the corner for the world and his wife. But he does not help her overcome her fears (which as it turns out is just as well for her husband) and soon hubby gets itchy feet. There is a very understanding chick at his work who declares her undying love and then we discover that Irena will also cat out if she gets jealous.
She gets jealous. Cue growling, and an inspired use of long shadows. This is very much in the film noir genre with respect to its lighting, and the greater the tension gets, the longer the shadows are. Irena slowly appears to lose her mind, and off screen big cat incidents increase. The clever aspect of the film is that this shift occurs as we gain sympathy with "the other woman" and Reed's perplexed yet wooden husband. The shadows get hideously long until we finally get the death the film has been foretelling - and the requisite tragic ending. Irena commits suicide by letting a jaguar out of the zoo. It gives the whole film a rounded symmetry which increases the classical feel of the film.
The fundamental secret of the film is its mixture of mythology. While the film invents its own mythology, its stories about the Serbian Cat People are completely original yet similar to werewolf myths. But the real beauty is tying it into sexuality. This is a forties film, with all the prudery of its day and sex is not even mentioned in the film. Yet it matches Irena's sexuality with danger, tying into a primal instinct of mankind.
Cat People stands up rather well today as a rather basic supernatural thriller. It is very simple, and is a very short film. Nevertheless it is played well, especially by the alluring Simone Simon, and the use of lighting makes it rather important in the development of film noir. Fundamentally though it is the originality of its themes, creating a consistent film mythology which it plays off of exceptionally well. Cat People offers plain, simple thrills - and spawned an even more interesting sequel - but even on its own it offers fantastic thrills. (8)
IF THIS FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: The Wolfman drives into The Blue Angel, but in a lot of ways this is a trend setting film, so does not really resemble a car crash at all.

Celebrity
Woody Allen films drift up to our shores so late, its barely worth reviewing them. Its as if someone heaved the reels in to an admittedly large bottle and tossed them in the ocean, hoping for a prevailing tide and a gee on by the trade winds. There are also other reasons why reviewing Woody's ouvre is pointless. Everyone already has an opinion of Woody Allen. You either love him or you loathe him. Often without seeing more than one of his films. I happen to love him. I think his canon of work will stand up with that of the greatest of film-makers and that the constant criticisms that we are only getting more of the same are both lazy and hideously inaccurate. We get a film a year from the Woodster, and none of the are redundant. Some are less good. Some are poorly cast (Mia Farrow was never as strong as her casting suggested), or only based on half hearted ideas (hello Alice), but surely this can be said about any other director. And to be fair, Celebrity stands accused of both of these problems. So its still a good movie, but its only an average Woody Allen.
The half baked idea here is the thesis put forward that modern life is obsessed with chasing fame. The holy grail of late 20th Century life is to touch, be involved with and the adoration of all things famous. An interesting thesis, and one which has a degree of plausibility. However the way Allen attempts to explore this is less convincing, showing Kenneth Brannagh interviewing, shagging and generally obsessing over a number of famous people. This is compared with his ex wife (played by the excellent Judy Davis) who accidentally falls into celebrity herself without chasing it. These two parallel lives are expertly played out, but somehow add up to less than a whole, with themes about guilt and happiness and even the ageing and writing processes all thrown in the mix. It delights when it unravels our protagonists lives, and annoys more when it tries to make its less than obvious point.
Woody decided to pass on acting in this one, which has also given us a mixed bag. Brannagh, who is an over-rated actor, actually pulls off one of the best roles of his career in the Allen role. Many people have been annoyed by what appears to be a ropey impression of Woody, while there is something more languid about Brannagh's style the neurotic tics which Woody displays are all in place.
Brannagh's travel writer (failed screen-writer and novelist) is monstrous, much like the titular character in Deconstructing Harry. However Harry was a success - here we have a failure all the more aware of his failings. That Branagh manages to make him vaguely sympathetic, despite the odds, is mainly due to the writing. Yet, for all that has been said about Branagh's impersonation, this is really Judy Davis's film. She plays the real neurotic here, the one with the guilt that things might actually be going okay. It is a less flashy role, but a harder one to convince in. While the Branagh plot gets all the decent cameo's, Davis has to convince on less (though she does get the best single gag - the banana blow job).
There is a lack of focus in Celebrity which is its real undoing. Firstly we have the parallel plotlines which we bounce between for no particular reason. There are life developments not explained (Branagh going out with Famke Janssen - who is such an underrated actress it is painful), sections which seem out of place and then intrusive flashbacks which go on too long. Allen has, of late, been accused of misogeny in his film and certainly the time he spends pouring over Charlize Theron and indeed Janssen is distracting. Indeed it becomes increasingly unsure whether Branagh is obsessed with Celebrity (as the thesis may be) or beauty - though if one wished to be unfair his eventual clinch with Winona Ryder is an exception to this. This is an interesting character trait, but unforgivable in a film which is using its main character to illuminate its theme. When the character waivers, so does the theme. After all of it, when we get the closing sequence where Davis and Branagh meet again and discuss their lives since parting, another theme is mooted. That love is merely a matter of luck. Perhaps this is ironic, Branagh had a great thing and threw it away, but its as good an explanation as any for Davis's romance.
This is a funny film. It is a good film. It may appear I've spent most of the above slagging it off, but that's mainly because I hold such high standards for a Woody Allen film. Celebrity is unfocussed, unsure of itself and while it is beautiful to look at we are not quite sure of why Woody chose to film it in such a way. Surely gaudy, disposable colour would fit better with the theme - the transitory nature of Celebrity. The bright world of the talk show. Even this is an error of large proportions, up there with the surprise recycling of some of his best material. Did Woody really think that so few people would have seen Annie Hall that he could get away with having another "polymorphously perverse" character, and surely he's got to run out of hookers to play with? That the one liners are still great is a boon, and that the story itself is rather compelling is a must. But in the end Celebrity has to be seen as a minor Woody Allen film and one which is, unusually for him, a lot less than the sum of its parts. (7)
IF THIS FILM WAS A CAR CRASH: Well, lets see, we've got Annie Hall driving through Manhattan really, Deconstructing Harry as she goes along which is either a Crime or a Misdemeanour.

The Cell
Crazy bunch - serial killers. Always skinning people, eating people and generally terrorising communities for no good reason than they had a vaguely sadistic parent and they want some kind of attention. Cinema loves its serial killers. Since Silence Of The Lambs, the charismatic serial killer has become the norm. But you have to ask yourself, what makes a serial killer tick. More importantly - what is going on inside a serial killers head. Well, The Cell attempts to answer this, and falls flat at the first hurdle. Y’see I know what’s going on inside a serial killers head and its not all this MTV visual shit that Tarseem throws at us. Nope, its just a lump of grey shit humping itself about. Problem solved.
The fundamental idea behind The Cell is a nice one. Jennifer Lopez plays a particularly empathic social worker who, by the aid of computerised jigerry pokery and a fetchingly tailored rubber suit, can literally get inside someone’s thoughts. Of course this is a technique fraught with potential disaster. Therefore the only person its been tried on is a catatonic young boy who has obviously seen Lawrence Of Arabia too many times. This gives us a visually arresting opening sequence - and if The Cell has anything going for it, there are some beautifully staged set pieces. Unfortunately though the coaxing of a young boy out of a catatonic state is not the stuff major blockbusters are made of. Therefore we need the serial killer detour.
Vincent D’Onofrio’s psycho is of a peculiarly Hollywood breed. Obviously a misfit and loner, he nevertheless has enough money to build and operate not only a time operated, slow form of water torture, but also a complicated rack so he can hang himself (via aid of many a piercing) over his victims bodies. This sequence is grisly, gratuitous and frankly gets in the way of the inevitable. We know that D’Onofrio will get caught, and we know via the machinations of a far too complicated plot that Lopez will have to go into his head to try and find his latest victim. Of course what she finds inside the killers head is disturbing stuff indeed.
Well no. Actually what she finds inside his head is an illustration of cod psychology. All funny dreamlike camera angles, second hand imagery from other horror movies (not necessarily a bad thing if the memory is supposed to assimilate its influences) and some really nice frocks. What follows is an increasingly silly race against time, a further mind trip featuring Vince Vaughn and some poorly sketched ideas about the self and the brain. It all looks great, and Vaughn at least hints at some sort of character depth - but boiled down to its serial killer roots the film is almost banal. The clue that Vaughn and Lopez find in D’Onfrio’s mind was a clue which already existed and had been overlooked in the police operations. The heart of The Cell, the mind travelling, is actually wholly pointless to the tacked on plot. How much can we therefore care about the resulting save of the final victim.
The Cell is a diverting movie, and at least in its dream sequences consistently inventive. It invites a minor degree of psychological discussion - in its ideas that even this guy can be saved (and religious imagery abounds - Lopez makes a fetching Virgin Mary in many scenes here). But the run of the mill serial killer plot lets the whole thing down. The initial story, the rescuing of the boy from his own personal demons, seemed a lot more promising. As a personal challenge for Lopez’s rather sappy character (with extremely sappy choices in lipstick colour) it could have provided a creepy Sixth Sense sort of storyline. Instead we only really spend a quarter of the film in “dreamland” and these are easily the best parts of the film. The serial killer plot is perfunctory, and the film delivers as if it is going through the motions, but only impresses when Tarseem gets out his digital paintbox.
I did not expect to like The Cell, so was surprised that I liked it as much as I did. It was very much in spite of the film itself. Characterisation is nearly absent, whilst the plot is so much cookie cutter serial killer. That said the visuals are impressive, and the score does its best to promote some tension. In the end though the film tricks you into think it has more than a bit of potential - potential it generally squanders. There were more than a few opportunities for genuinely creepy thrills near the end which are squandered. And there is an odd underlying pseudo religious feel to the films treatment of saving people. That said, its different - at least its the same old story wrapped in slightly more interesting clothes. A nicely tailored rubber body suit to be fair.(5)
IF THIS FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: Michael Mann’s Manhunter meets Altered States and mixes it up with The Lawnmower Man.

Charlie’s Angels
Fun. Hmm, there’s a word we don’t see in the cinema much these days. Along with phrases like less is more, a giggle and just plain silly. Actually the phrase just plain silly could describe the plot of at least fifty percent of the thrillers which have been released in the last two years. And its a phrase which happily describes Charlie’s Angels plot too. The difference here is that Charlies Angels is knowingly, joyously silly and revels in it.
It is a very, very difficult thing to do - produce a comic thriller. You would think it the easiest thing in the world the regular number of times Hollywood gives it a go. It is even harder to take a film based on a TV show and make it any good. Yet against all the odds Charlie’s Angels manages to do it by force of good nature, an understanding of its audience and an understanding of its milleu. Drew Barrymore - producer behind the project - is well aware that her target audience has probably never seen an episode of Charlies Angels on television. Therefore there is no need to stay loyal to the original except on the very basics. That there are three attractive agents all of whom work for Charlie. Not ex-policewomen these though. We are more in Mission: Impossible territory here.
There is a plot to Charlie’s Angels, though it is pretty perfunctory it suffices fine. It allows the girls plenty of costume changes, a fair few excellently (for Hollywood) choreographed fights and the requisite amount of gags. Casting of the main parts is nigh on perfect, Drew is the tough one, Lucy Liu is the dry one and Cameron Diaz cements her reputation as Hollywood’s number one comedienne reprising her naively oblivious turn from Something About Mary with some other fantastic moves. The writing in the film has taken the stereotype of each girl, and played with it - leaving us with the most amusing but frankly preposterous idea that Cameron Diaz cannot get a date. Played to the hilt - it is almost a pity that a standard hilarious turn by Bill Murray is hidden in all of this. But then that is the secret of any good movie - leave the audience wanting more. With the success of the movie they will almost definitely get it.
The direction is very MTV, very hip and very funky. Yet it also knows when to slow down, when not to play with the audience. Not very often though, instead it is as competent as its heroines at spinning, flicking and adding to the kinetic intensity of the fight scenes. Taking a leaf from, and out doing Bond movies with its set pieces it has also created a memorable bad guy in Crispin Glover, who doesn’t say a word. Frankly though this is a breathless colourful whirl full of solid gags, and even more solid thrills. The ending seems a touch rushed, but that is so much more preferable than the po-faced nonsense we got in last years other blockbusters - M:I2 again. Indeed there is a lot the Mission Impossible franchise could learn from Charlie’s Angels - most notably how to have fun.
Charlie’s Angles is one mad pop rush, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. You go in with no real expectations, and find that you are in a non-stop adrenaline rush. Loud pumping music, camera trickery and an fantastically entertaining cast. Apparently there was bad blood on set - well it for once does not come through in the film. For your popcorn money you will not have a better time in the cinema for a long time. And Cameron Diaz…..(8)
IF THIS FILM WAS A CAR CRASH: The quality jokes and gentle knowing humour of The Brady Bunch Movie crashing into the fight scenes of The Matrix and a really good James Bond film - thrills spills and all. Plus Raquel Welch in Fathom mixing it up. Really just all you could ask to entertain and amuse.

Chicken Run
I like chickens. They are very versatile. Tasty roasty, pan-fried and with an assortment of herbs and spices - all of which the meat takes on gamely (if you forgive the pun). I like chickens almost as much as I like pigs (bacon - got to win hands down), and if I can like a film about a pig (Babe) then damnit, I can like a film about chickens - right? Well obviously yes, though Chicken Run is a whole different kettle of fish to Babe. And I like fish a lot too.
Chicken Run is the first feature length animation from Aardman Animations, birthplace of Wallace and Grommit. Now the antics of the Northern fellow and his dog always left me relatively cold. I always found it a bit too mannered, often rather slow and the characters a little bit too simple to be endearing. I like my cartoons to be intelligent, or just a plain evocation of the limitless possibilities offered by animation. While the claymation process allowed all sorts of things to happen, it rarely did. In the search for internal consistency there turned out to be little that would not be possible using normal actors, or in the cas eof Babe a wee bit of computer trickery with animals. I suppose in the end though W&G were tarred by the brush of Last Of The Summer Wine, Peter Salis's voice reminding me of endless Sunday nights of old people going down hill in a bath-tub.
So I was glad that Chicken Run ditched Wallace & Grommit. It did not necessarily ditch the setting though, our chickens and the farm they are on are most certainly Northern. But instead they have plumped on what is essentially a prisoner of war escape movie, with chickens. This could either be inspired or lunacy. Much like the submarine movie, or Gladiators' sword and sandal epic there has not been a POW movie for about thirty years. And Chicken Run most definitely takes its cue from the Great Escape, leaving references that not just the kids will misunderstand, but even people in their early twenties will be confused by. Nevertheless, as is the best way with a film with references many other movies, those references are not essential to understanding the concepts. Unfortunately here the concepts are relatively simple - chicken, pie or escape.
Chicken Run is nice to look at, and the craftmanship involved does come through each scene. The only disappointment on this front therefore comes from the fact that the film remains so rooted. The world of the chickens is, by the films very plot, one of about three sets. And, no matter how hard the innovative character design works, they all look pretty much the same. It is therefore down to the voice acting to imbue these samey birds with character. Much of this is down perfectly, Miranda Richardson's evil farm wife is a tour de force of the kind of proper bad guy kids films should have, and Jane Horrocks does her Bubble voice to best comic effect. Mel Gibson's Rocky, whilst being a more distinguished puppet, also has a degree of the brashness required. Oddly the one slight let down is the lead. Julia Sawalha's Ginger is a touch too ordinary around these larger than life characters, and her voice is never powerful or northern enough to give it the kind of exasperated charm that she needs. This does pick up in the later scenes, but to start off with she is a bit of a let down.
In the end though the best question is does the whole package work. You would have to say, both on the evidence of me enjoying the film and on the evidence of the kids in the cinema with me, yes. The plot is very simple, and the chicken romance is almost laughable. The action scenes however soon pick up near the end, leaving you with a rather breathtaking climax, as good as any live action climax we will see this year. Park and Lord know how to time their animation to perfect, so that even if their plotting and characterisation is a bit flat, the excitement is still there. It is also interesting to note that from an action film perspective this is a very unusually film in that nearly all the protagonists are female. Ginger is the hero, and the villain is the farmer’s wife. Mel Gibson's rooster may come back to help save the day, but in the final scene is relegated to the usual female role - that of love interest.
Chicken Run is a fun piece of summer entertainment, and a good first film to come out of the Aardman stable. It will be the most successful British film of the year, and it is a very British film - which knows how to use its Britishness to mass appeal. Admittedly the story is a bit one note, as are many of the characters, and the only gags that are really funny require a knowledge of the subtext (though when they accuse Gibson's rooster of not even being American I had to smile). Possibly the best kids film of the summer, it languishes behind Toy Story 2 as the best animation of the year. Nevertheless with Aardman and Pixar doing such good work, suddenly Disney does not look so attractive. (7)
IF THIS FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: The Great Escape hits Star Trek hits Babe hits - oh what's that other film about chickens?

Citizen Kane
Yeah, I know its an old film. Yeah I know everything else I've reviewed is new. But my church is broad (and those enough of you unlucky enough to know me will also unkindly suggest this is mainly because I would not fit in a narrow church). Anyway, I know no-one much is reading out there - its only vanity which stops me putting one of those web counters on the site, because the reminder that only 0000004 people have visited this site may well crush what is left of my tattered ego. (Web counter added later to prove said point that no-one reads this shit).
It was a new print anyway. I mean, I know that doesn't make it a new film but, well, you know.
I love seeing old films at the cinema. I really love the way that after the ads and the trailers the screen contracts, rather than expands for our eighty mil spectacular. Once everyone has got widescreen televisions - say ten years time - will they pan and scan these oldies - or stretch them, because the ratio is much the same as a televisions? With grainy film stock and rough editing, it can make some of these flicks look not only dated, but from a different artform altogether. Which is where Citizen Kane comes in. Whilst it is by no means thoroughly modern in style, it certainly pre dates many innovations in film, not least in technique and storytelling.
Also, I have to hold my hand up here, I ain't never seen Citizen Kane before. Now I feel Iam pretty well versed in cinema history - for a layman you understand - but this is a blip which has often passed me by. It is rarely on television, never makes the Saturday Matinee slot and I suppose all the baggage that goes along with the film maybe put me off. That baggage being the assertion that this is the best film ever made. Now, whilst I'm a bloke and therefore anally make lists like this all the time, I do really think that such lists are both pointless and redundant (much like the word redundant there). If anyone else loves a movie, I am more prone to want to dislike it. Look at As Good As It Gets, the Oscar winner stinker of 1998. I hated it, everyone else loved it - though of course in this case I was right and it was certainly not due to petualance on my behalf. Finally, I've never really liked Orson Welles. The idea of this hugely overweight, beardedly ponderous thwarted genius has always bugged me, and most of the films I've seen him in he has not impressed. And that War Of The Worlds thing is just getting old.
Cut to the quick, Citizen Kane is really good. By turns clever, tricksy and annoying it sucks you in with its fantastic opening newsreel sequence and keeps you sucked in until - well the end. Knowing the narrative trick in the film may hinder your enjoyment - certainly I felt a touch cheated - so I won't reveal it here as someone once did to me. But this is a hugely impressive film in every way. The dramatic tension is kept high, yet it shouldn't be as we all know not only how Kane's life ends but ever aspect of his life is told to us in the newsreel section. To maintain dramatic tension whilst at the same time merely presenting public vs private view is very well done. Welles shows a great deftness of touch.
This is Welles film all the way through, but his acting really takes the cherry. That we never again see in cinema the bouncey ebullient Welles, as young Kane is a great pity because here is a case where infectious enthusiasm literally takes over the screen. To watch this dulled into the later, tired, eccentric Kane is the inherent tragedy within the film - to be constantly striving for something we either can't have or have lost. The Maguffin within the film could to some be seen as an annoyance, yet it is merely a framing device that out investigation is based on. Maybe this is Welles being overtly clever - but then this is a film full of new ideas and new faces. Most of the actors were unknown, the script original and many shooting and editing techniques pioneered. The ideas too within the film were radical for its age, the toying with socialism and the exposing of government corruption were certainly not standard Hollywood fare. Eventually Welles suffered for it, which is perhaps why his legend is so much greater. To make such a good film, at such an age was an achievement - but to later suffer for it caps off his legend.
Fact is, Citizen Kane is not the best movie ever made. Even though I really enjoyed it, it probably wouldn't even make my top ten. On the other hand, half of the films which make my all time top ten this year, won't make it next year. It is useless to catagorise films like this - can you really even compare Citizen Kane to the Matrix? Its like comparing Hockney to Picasso to Van Gogh to - whoever. Its old. Its different. Its black and white. And it does what it does very well. And in the end, that is all it takes to get a (9)
IF THIS FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: Not so much a car crash as a couple of people bumping into one another.

Claire Dolan
Claire Dolan is a high class prostitute. She has a very intimidatory pimp. She wants to stop being a prostitute, and have a child. She has met the perfect man to have this child with - but when she tries to run away her pimp tracks her down and gets her back on the high priced game. Will she escape this life, will her man stand by her? There, my friends, we have the beginning, middle and end of Claire Dolan. A small story, with only three acting roles of any note and where not an awful lot happens. So why is it one of the best films released this year?
Much of it is critical vanity. Very few people are going to get to see Claire Dolan. The ICA have it on for about three weeks and then it will pretty much evaporate into the arthouse vacuum from whence it came. No real stars in it (Colm Meaney from Star Trek, and sundry "Celtic" roles - Vincent D'Onfrio best known for his Tia Maria advert), and a plot as simple as it is depressing - this is not an easy fiolm to distribute. Of course they could try saying that it is very good, see if that packs the place out - but who ever had the courage of their convictions on that front.
The film is very stark and minimalist, taking place generally in a succession of hotel rooms. Claire gets through a number of her clients on screen in a thoroughly unsexy way. She is a professional, she knows how to give her best and still not be touched by it. The job does affect her though, we see her being secretive, we see her running away and we see her fear while she is in hiding. It is all "show not tell". Claire has no girlfriends that she can confide in, and tell that she really would not like to be on the game any more. She does not walk around with a sign saying hooker on her, and she does not look like a stereotypical prostitute (infact she looks an awful lot like my friend Gioia - which is a touch disturbing truth be told).
Claire Dolan is a film that treats its audience with a lot of respect, it does not explain it just shows us the scenario and lets us work it out. Just what is the relationship between Claire and her pimp. He is a family friend, he has known her since she was twelve and yet he is her pimp. Why does she have two sets of ID, as well as her Irish passport. And does she really get anything out of her relationship with Vincent D'Onfiro's cab driver except some ready and willing sperm. There are no answers to these questions, and yet its all there on screen for you to ponder.
Like Rosetta earlier this year, Claire Dolan is a pretty relentless and intimate picture of a woman in crisis. Whilst not quite as relentless as Rosetta (Claire is off screen occasionally) it follows a similar kind of intensity to allow us to try and get into the mind of this character who does not open up to anyone. As a cipher she is therefore fascinating and compelling to watch, which more than makes up for a lack of action in the film. It is mercifully short anyway, one and a half hours is enough time to spend in Ms Dolan's company - especially with the wonderful sting in the tail of the film. That said, Colm Meaney's pimp is an equally intriguing character - ruthless but with some obvious unknown connection to Claire. The only vaguely weak point in the film is the cab driver. This is not strictly Vincent D'Onfrio's fault, he is just simply not as interesting - though the scene in which he is mugged provides a welcome contrast to the coldly passive non-violence of the rest of the film.
Written and directed by Lodge Kerrigan - Claire Dolan is a wholly unsettling piece of melodrama. Shot in cold, grey tones - bleached of life we have a fine metaphor for Dolan's own unfeeling existence. Very little in the way of a soundtrack, just the odd non-chromatic scale to highlight the constant lack of comfort in the film. An opening sequence showing the geometry of skyscrapers, and the regular patterns in their windows is hinted at again and again in the film with hotel rooms. But centre to the entire movie is Claire herself - in a chilling performance by Katrin Cartlidge. She brings this sympathetic character to life in an unsympathetic way. We know she is in trouble, we watch her trying to get out - but we are never allowed in. We do not know where her debts come from, how much she owes her pimp and what exactly she is going to do next. And so we know not to trust the vaguely happy ending we think the film is offering us.
Claire Dolan is not a laugh a minute. It is compelling however; cold but with a central character who is so down-trodden that despite her beauty and undeniable work ethic you cannot help but observe aghast. Despite having such a slight storyline, the film leaves plenty of unanswered questions, and does not really offer anything in the way of hope. But as a character study it has not been touched this year, and as a film offering a truly intelligent look at a type of prostitution - and a type of prostitute it provokes plenty of though. It is also the perfect example of a film which is absolutely made by its final scene. If you can see it, go: not a very nice experience but one that will affect you nevertheless. (9)
IF THIS FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: You could call it Pretty Woman hit She's Having A Baby - but that would be more than simplistic and thoroughly on the wrong tack.

Clerks
Okay, another first. This is the first film I'm reviewing that I've already seen. I know, I'm making up the rules as I go along here, and if you want to bitch and moan you know who to call. Clerks is Kevin Smith's first film and I have always reckoned a pretty wonderful piece of work. It was made on about 20p, black and white with non-professional actors and is fantastically foul mouthed. I think I've seen it about four times on video, and laughed my arse off each time. So to see it on at the Prince Charles, well it was only going to cost me £2.50, right? And it would be interesting to see it in the cinema.
Well, its not exactly a cinematic masterpiece. Its grainy black and white and whilst most of the shots are competently set up, its a film about working in a convenience store. It was never going to need an art director. Maybe its because I know the film quite well, or maybe it was the fact that I saw it in the cinema, but a lot of its flaws were suddenly revealed to me. So lets tell me why I've always liked Clerks, before I slag it off.
Its the script, innit. Whatever this films flaws are (and I will be getting on to them, no worries) the script shines through. Its funny. When so few films are dialogue funny out there, its great to see one which knows a good gag when it sees it, and knows a lot of them. The interactions between Dante and his customers are great gags. Clerks is fundamentally a sketch show, but with the same characters. I challenge you to think of twenty really good gags which can take place in a convenience store. I can think of two - tops - yet Smith manages to weave his gags around a coherent and rather affecting little story. He also manages to weave some fantastic farce in there (very difficult to do and expertly paced). The beauty of all of this is that Smith is using a new language, that of the nineties generation and has a fantastic ear for it. To weave a good Gen X moral into the tale as well makes the whole film more than just a picture with lots of fellatio jokes in it. Clerks is all in the writing, and to be fair, its not in a lot else. Because now I'm going to discuss what is wrong with Clerks.
The actors are pretty poor. The low budget does not help them with this because an awful lot of the stuff is single camera work. With the amount of dialogue Smith gives them, this can create dialogue heavy takes of two, three minutes which with the possible time constraints could not be reshot. Its not bad, but some parts seem slapdash. Luckily what they lack in technical skill, they make up for in likability. Especially Dante and Randall who are loveable in a loser sort of way. Especially Randall, who is in all other senses a despicable character. That said, this type of character regularly pops up in Smith's films and is generally better plaid by Jason Lee.
Some of the gags don't work. They tend to be the ones with appalling sound effects attached. Smith does dialogue, he is rubbish at sight gags. And indeed, Clerks sight gags are terrible. This also ties in with the general look of the film. Smith's art direction may not need to be any good, and it isn't. There is a fight scene which is laughable, and the whip pan camera work in the driving scene is most uncomfortable to watch.
The soundtrack, well this is a bit of good and bad. In some areas it is used really well, in others the Sepultura light grunting is distracting from the dialogue (which - see above - is the reason to see the flick). Which leaves us to the final flaw in the movie - which is the ending. The story is fine. Dante - working though he should have the day off is bored out of his skull and odd things keep happening to him. Just when the eccentric antics of the customers are starting to flag, we get a plotline - regarding Dante's ex whom he still loves. She is getting married, and Dante is torn between her and his current girlfriend. This builds to a fantastic climax which I shall not spoil here. The aftermath of this is Dante realising that he is wasting his life, and he loves his current girlfriend - whilst Randall is dumping her for him. So we end with Dante unhappy, even though he has made the right decision. All we are left with - rather than a reflective yet happy ending - is a vague promise that Dante will try and sort something out. Its the first time I've noticed it, but it is very weak.
In a lot of ways, Clerks works better on video. As I said, its a lot like a sketch show, and therefore can easily be stopped and talked over. And the fact it is on a small screen does not hinder it. The only thing a cinema does give you is the communal laugh-in effect, which is not to be ignored. I like Clerks a lot. It will still be one of my favourite films of the nineties, despite all of its flaws. And I enjoyed seeing it again, so this is a whole hearted recommendation. And go see the rest of his stuff too. (Mallrats, Chasing Amy and coming soon, Dogma)(8)
IF THIS FILM WAS A CAR CRASH: Manhattan (hey - its a well written, black and white comedy) with Dumb and Dumber and Fritz The Cat.

Clockwatchers
You've got to be really, really careful when you are thinking of a title for your film. You can slave over every aspect, then you need to find a name that fits just right. Sometimes a character name will do the job - like in Angie or Jerry Maguire. A memorable line of dialogue - like The Silence Of The Lambs. Or a description of who your characters are - say Goodfellas, Clerks and in this case Clockwatchers. You must always look out however, that your title does not unwittingly become a tool in the hands of the eager film reviewer to provide and easy gag to damn your hard work.
Clockwatchers is lucky in the basic respect that most cinemas do not have clocks in them. Indeed it is often so dark that you would need a luminous watch to keep track of the interminable time it tacks for this boredom fest to go through the motions. Which is (as I usually say at this point) a great pity, because there are a couple of nice things in Clockwatchers. There's just an awful lot of tedium sprinkled liberally on top of it. The basic plot is simple. Four female temps, who work in the same office, bond. The something happens which slowly splits them up. Wrapped around this are examples of the tedium that such office jobs perpetuate, where you are literally sitting in a seat because the company would fall apart if you weren't there. They don't care that you are not doing anything, you just take up the space which gives them piece of mind. I've done jobs like this, I know what this is like. And in brief, flitting moments, Clockwatchers has some nice recognisable parodies of these moment. However, it does tend to rely on being dull within itself to push the feeling of office bound ennui.
The story itself is not interesting, is handled appalingly and its all far too slow. This is a great pity. First the film wastes some fantastic actresses. I've banged on about Parker Posey before in The Misadventures Of Margaret. Here she plays another Margaret, equally kooky, the mischievous imp in the otherwise staid atmosphere. Anything the film has going for it almost all comes out of Posey's character, who really is the only interesting character here. Lisa Kudrow is also a good actresses, wasted here playing a slightly conceited unsuccessful actress. The film is based around Toni Collette however, who really has very little to do and unfortunately doesn't do that all that well (we won't even talk about her Australian accent which is fine until you meet her all American father). More of an annoyance is that there is still a great unwritten office satire waiting out there. The petty jealousies, highlighted in this film, could be elevated into fantastic farce - not as a springboard for angst.
That Clockwatchers starts so well: long takes, clock ticking, vignettes of people being bored - should have exploded into anarchy later, not tedium. Ah well. This isn't even on general release, which surprised me before I saw the film. A comedy, with such good actresses with a premise I could identify with. Having seen it, (as part of the Prince Charles Cinema's American Independence weekend) I can see why this never quite made the cut. Its fine trying to illustrate tedium, tedium can be funny, but I draw a line at the film doing this by being boring itself. As I said before, I've done jobs like the ones in this film, and they were dull. I do not need to relive this through the film as well. (2)
IF THIS FILM WAS A CAR CRASH: Nine To Five meets some of the slower sequences in an Ingmar Bergman film, but without the gags.

A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange killed the Scala. Before I go through what is good, and bad about the posthumous re-release of Stanley Kubrick's controversial movie I want to tell you about the Scala. It used to be my favourite cinema in London. Resolutely occupying the low end of art-house, it perched above the Kings Cross Midland City-Line Station (now Thameslink) and rattled every time a train went under. A flea-pit of the finest order, it was a beer drinker and smokers friend. More importantly, it did all-nighters in the days before they went out of fashion. And all-nighters of Schwartzenegger movies and the like. I saw a James Cameron quad bill there in the summer of 1991 (Piranha, Terminator, Aliens & The Abyss) and in between dodging the burping tramps and the vaguely sticky seats had a whale of a time. Since I had missed my last train, the Scala offered me somewhere warm to bed down for the night whilst fitfully waking up to see Sigourney Weaver burning away more xenomorphs. And A Clockwork Orange killed it.
Oh, truth be told, it was on its last legs. The owners wanted more rent - and saw it as a prime site to exploit. But the Warner Bros court case, on behalf of Stanley Kubrick, which got slapped on after The Scala showed A Clockwork Orange really ripped the heart out of the cinema. (It has since re-opened as a very good club, with a relatively similar ethos - so there is a vaguely happy ending here.) No-one really got to the bottom of the reason why Kubrick withdrew A Clockwork Orange - in the one country where he was able to do so (he made it here so the copyright extend to him personally). Sure, there had been cases of copycat violence, and Kubrick was well known as a perfectionist but even so. To completely withdraw it has created an aura about the film, the sense of taboo. And here, a year after his death, we finally get to see it. How does it fit in to today's movie scene.
Well, it's a very odd picture. It was an odd picture back then, it remains so now. It lives very much in the milieu of the mid-seventies social science fiction movies (Soylent Green & The Andromeda Strain spring to mind), dystopian futures extrapolated from our present. And the story is very simple. We follow Alex (Malcolm McDowell) through a series of appalling crimes, until he gets caught. Then we follow his revolutionary treatment which turns him physically against violence, rape and by happenstance, Beethoven. And the conclusion. All set in a world made of pretty appalling production design values and tinny synthesised music. So is it still relevant today?
The plot is relevant, will always be relevant. Whilst it starts with a premise that Alex is just bad, it takes us on a discussion on what crime and punishment are all about. There are three reasons for prison: protecting society from the prisoner, punishment for the crime and rehabilitation for the prisoner. The thesis of a Clockwork Orange (or at least the government in their kipper ties) is that prison is an expensive way to do this, when you can condition a persons mind against violence you both protect society and rehabilitate. What the film tries to show is that this invasion of personal liberty is no rehabilitation. That said, it leaves a large number of disturbingly grey areas for people of various political bents to turn the ideas to their own. In that respect, Alex's journey is an unqualified success.
From a film point of view there is only one reason this film works at all. That is the tour de force performance from Malcolm McDowell. Cherub faced, ever perky, ever insolent - he is the perfect choice for Alex. He is the epitome of the loveable murderer I mention in the review of The Talented Mr Ripley. This makes him all the more psychopathic to the audience - but then we are here to watch not to sympathise. Which is why the clever switch into sympathy in the latter parts of the film are clever. You feel this may be something to do with the clever direction as well - but I am tempted to lay pretty much all of it on this one dash of casting genius. For in most other aspects a Clockwork Orange is found wanting.
The production design is pretty appalling, looked upon from this viewpoint 25 years on. Perhaps Kubrick wanted a mixture of the future and the present to give the film a certain resonance. Yet his future designs are merely extrapolations of seventies fads, and the constant appearance of transit vans and other early seventies staples actually dates the flick. The attempt at going futuristic for the youth culture smacks of someone with very little concept of how youth culture works which could well have been the case. Thamesmead as a place to film may have fitted the desolate, concrete wasteland that Kubrick was after - but it was never going to be the future in house design. This coupled with some remarkably over-the-top and cack handed performances in supporting roles leads the whole thing an air of farcical comedy at times. This undermines some of the more serious objectives - especially as it feels as if you are laughing at something rather than with it. And the less said about the stylophone Beethoven the better I think.
Kubrick was bold in his stab at making A Clockwork Orange, bold in his designs in places and in his attempt at taking on Burgess's language. There is a feeling of half-heartedness about the project, which could well be associated with the lack of budget for the film. This all said, the source material and theme of the movie are more than strong enough to paper over most of these cracks. You could not imagine this film without McDowell though, and he more than occupies the central role in this film - he is the film. So on the side of those buses - where it says Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, I tend to disagree. This is Malcolm McDowell's Clockwork Orange - and I would like to think that he would not have withdrawn it and killed the Scala in the process. (8)
IF THIS FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: Soylent Green & Crime and Punishment with probably a Beatles movie. A lot more films have been involved in crashes with ACO than vice-versa.

Confessions Of A Trick Baby
Not, as some places would have Freeway II: Confessions Of A Trick Baby. Whilst the film shares a director and a way with literal updating of fairy tales, Confessions Of A Trick Baby is no sequel to that previous entertaining take on Little Red Riding Hood. What it does have in common is a teenage female lead / co-producer. Which is more than significant when you look at the subject matter, what happens in the film and the general atmosphere. Confessions is an 18 - and it makes sure it fills all of its check boxes on that front, sexual swear words and all.
The Trick Baby in question is hardened seventeen year old one woman crime wave White Girl played by Natasha Lyonne. Now I like Natasha Lyonne, she was great as the narrator in Everybody Says I Love You, and managed to hold a film pretty damn well in Slums Of Beverly Hills. That said she is a teenage girl and has to do teenage girl type movies (she is woefully underused in American Pie). This is not that kind of film. This is much more fun and she relishes her star role of tart with minuscule heart. White Girl gets caught and sent to a medical prison where they can deal with her bullemia - used in the most tasteless ways imaginable. While there she hooks up with a much more psychotic mate - they escape and ostensiably head for Mexico, freedom and a nun played by Vincent Gallo.
Yes - its that kind of film.
Confessions Of A Trick Baby is in no way related to the Confessions films made in the seventies. I don’t think they ever did Confessions of a Soho Tom, but that would be as close as they would get. The only similarity would be in a budgetary sense - this is a cheap looking movie. Which adds to its overall B-Movie charm. After all we have scalpings, some very nasty vibrator antics and that’s way before we get anywhere near Mexico and Vincent Gallo’s Nun. (Yes - Nun.) And while there is little in the way of brain in this film, and morals really are left on the back burner, it is late night fun for very few of the family.
Freeway did Little Red Riding Hood. Confessions Of a Trick Baby does Hansel and Gretel. That is all you need to know, and even if you did not know by the time they start using rocks of crack to lay a path in the words (yes, that kind of film) you will have sussed it out. Therefore the final reel holds little surprises plotwise. If however you are the kind of person who finds senseless, badly done violence in any way amusing it holds more than enough compensation. It would be a bit churlish to moan at Vincent Gallo for hamming it up in a picture like this, and whilst his portrayal of a psychotic nun is not out of the top drawer its the best drag psychotic nun I have seen in ages (Eric Idle does not count as psychotic before you say anything).
Confessions Of A Trick Baby is a terrible movie. It is shot badly, the script and plot are laughable. But everyone taking part takes it deadly serious and Natasha Lyonne - as a teenager - is unlikely to be able to chew up the scenery a the teen equivalent to Clint Eastwood in a rush. Exploitative pap has a place in this world and you just don’t get an awful lot of it made these days. Do yourself a favour, put American Pie down and pick up Confessions Of A Trick Baby. You might just get a good laugh out of it….(5 in a sane world - 8 after the pubs shut)
IF THIS FILM WAS A CAR CRASH: Well the film it most resembles is oddly Freeway. But let’s go for Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill with a Mexican version of Hansel & Gretel.

Les Convoyeurs Attendent
(The Carriers Are Waiting)
As is the way with all of these things, I wait ten years from Man Bites Dog for another Belgian film to rock along - and no sooner than Rosetta smeared her grubby face all over the screen than this second Belgian oddity comes along. Les Convoyeurs Attendent (the title means "The Carriers Are Waiting" and refers to weather reports and carrier pigeons, which is pretty tangential to the plot) is a darkly comic family drama - or at least that is what it sets its stall up as. I am not convinced that it wholly succeeds in any of its aims.
The storyline loosely follows our nuclear family through six months of trials. The father, an ambulance-chasing photographer gets his son to train to beat the world door-opening record (41,000 in 24 hours) so the family can win a car. The son, a film buff, is not very keen on this unsurprisingly. He is too busy doing his guest show on local tinpot radio and courting an elder friend of his sister. Said sister is slowly obsessed about their neighbour and his pigeons. And so it goes via vaguely eccentric plot points and the classic kind of tragi-comic plot. Certainly the film is structured well, the characters are well drawn - but overall the film seems a bit small for the big screen.
The film is set up as a comedy, and does have a number of amusing moments. The whole plot regarding the door opening world record starts off very amusing, with the manic father desperately trying to find a record his family could break. This turns into uncomfortable anger though, anger which is too harsh for the gentle comedy that the film starts off at. When the film drifts into tragedy, you get the feeling that some kind of social realism is being aimed at here. Unfortunately the previously surreal episodes restrict this semblance of reality. The black and which cinematography is nicely done, illustrating shadow and light - but again adds to the films small feeling.
Les Convoyeurs Attendant is not a bad film, but it all seems a bit inconsequential. It reminded me very much of parochial British films, often Scottish where strange things happened to illustrate a universal theme. The theme here is that families survive only when they stick together - and the last five minutes really let the film down by being sickly sweet. In the end, whilst the kids are interesting, the father is drawn as too much of a grotesque - and the mother barely drawn at all, leaving the heart of the film sorely missing. Tying the whole ending into the 2000 celebrations as well add a tone of hope which is non-existent in the rest of the film - and also already dates it badly.
Perhaps Belgian films have a similar relationship to French cinema that Scottish films do to English. This is in no way flashy and has its aim set pretty low. It entertains, but is not perfect. Indeed there are four or five different endings which would have improved it. (The son's film show on the radio is all about continuity errors - yet there is a glaring continuity error in here which I thought was so obvious it would have to be involved in some sort of self-referential ending. No such luck.) In the end, The Carriers are waiting for something to happen, as we do here - the last ten minutes devolving into pure cliché. It really does not step up a level of amusement or engagement higher than the average episode of Ballykissangel - which cannot be all good. (6)
IF THIS FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: Local Hero sideswiped by Gregory's Girl - but in French of course. It was probably their yellow headlights that did it.

Cookie's Fortune
Saw this one with Lou, and we both had the same reaction. "My parents would have liked that". Now is that damning with faint praise or what? We don't share parents of course, so this is not skewed at any particular trait of our parentage, its just that Cookie's Fortune is a film with is just about clever, is certainly not flashy and is laid back - much like any generation looks at the parents above it. There is no bad language, very little violence and things tug along at a nice pace with the good guys winning and the bad girl getting her come-uppance. It just does not feel like 1999.
Cookie's Fortune has a nice, simple plot. Cookie an old Southern widow lives with Willis, her black housekeeper. One day, lonely for her dead husband she shoots herself. Enter Camille, her niece, a interfering, awfully proud woman who has no wish to be related to a suicide - so she makes it look like murder. Willis is then accused... Its a nice set-up, a nice story. Nothing bad really happens, even the suicide is done by a very old lady who has pretty much given up the will to live alone. The joy of Cookie's Fortune however is not in its plot. It is in its supporting cast, the twee, the eccentric and the slightly odd sides of small town life. The plot is hackneyed, obvious and just exists as a framework to hang the rest of this pleasantly engaging character study on.
Character studies are what Robert Altman does best. Look at Nashville, look at The Player, really really look at Short Cuts. He takes his time to draw out some full rounded characters by simple exploration of certain aspects. Here, it is Willis the housekeeper who gets the most attention and he is a lovely character. Nice, thinks of others - certainly a goody two-shoes in every respect. Yet he likes a drink, and loves his employer. Unfortunately Altman spends a little bit too much time on Willis, especially in the opening twenty minutes. This has one of the slowest openings I've ever seen in a film, especially when if you vaguely know the plot, you know what will happen. Once Cookie kills herself, things step up a gear and start getting a little bit more interesting. But you have to get that far.
The other problem with spending too much time with Willis, is the effect on the other main character of the film - Camille. Played by Glenn Close, it is quite obvious that Altman spent very little time in developing her. Certainly we see a lot of her character in her actions, she directs the towns play with an iron rod, rules her half-witted sisters life and is the first to act in any situation. While Glenn Close is a great actress, her she puts on a bit too much pantomime here - the level of her performance is so different to the others. While the others go for low key realism, nuances are everything. With Close, its all gawping, eyebrows and pouting. It makes you dislike the character, (which is fine, because you're supposed to) but to resent her spoiling the rest of the story. There is also a very strange scene near the end, which tonally throws the rest of the film out of whack - which one must assume is there because its the only time Close does anything resembling a difficult bit of acting.
This is all a pity because there are lots of lovely performances surrounding this monstrosity. As previously noted, Willis (played by Charles Dutton) is a beautifully created character. This contrasts nicely with Cookie's grand-niece Emma, played by Liv Tyler. Liv is very impressive here, yet again being energetic and driving much of the motion of the plot. Hers is an enigmatic character, there are aspects about her recent past we never understand. And yet she is well loved by much of the town, and in particular by the dim-witted Chris O'Donnell (who has little to do but does it very well). Ned Beatty also bumbles in as Willis's fishing partner who is aware of his innocence simply for that reason. Only Julianne Moore - as Camille's sister is disappointing.
Cookie's Fortune, as a low key character movie is pleasurable. No more, no less. It has no great points to make, but there are a few nice laughs and you do get involved in the end. If it was a directors first film, you would be pleased, looking forward to their next movie. But from a director as experienced as Robert Altman you would expect a wee bit more. The slow opening, the strange scene near the end, the uneveness of the performances - none of these things make sense. Still, you can take your parents: they'll like it. (6)
IF THIS FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: Maybe one story from Short Cuts with something like Fried Green Tomato's. Or - of course - a film or two made thirty years ago. And Glenn Close doing her finest Bette Davis.

The Corruptor
First up, this is a rubbish name for a film. It is straight out of the eighties, where Hollywood thought that my Dad would only ever get video's out of the shop if they were titled The <Insert word here>. So out of the shop came "The Eliminator", "The Terminator", "The Disintigrator" and of course "The Reactor". The only films I my Dad liked better were their sequels. Now don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with naming films like this except its no longer the eighties and my Mum gets most of the house video's out now for my Dad. The other down side is it gives away an awful lot of the plot.
The plot of The Corrupter is convoluted, twisty and on paper rather good. The problem is, we know from the get go that someone, somewhere is going to be corrupted. It kind of takes a bit of the sting out of it all. Like I said - in the planning stage they were on to a winner. We have the cool as fuck Chow Yun Fat as an unconventional (aren't they all) Dirty Harry style cop - trying to clean up Chinatown. Chow is beloved by anyone who likes Hong Kong action films, but here he speaks pretty convincing English. With his black leather coat, steely glare and two gun action he is the Clint Eastwood of the late nineties. Enter (Marky) Mark Wahlberg as a rookie sent to work with Chow. Cue a bit of wunza buddy action (ones Chinese, one ain't) - and add some gratitous nudity for the ladies, because they so love to see Mr Wahlbergs ass. Sprinkle on to this a gritty plot, a pretty damn good car chase and top it with sweeping themes about honour and justice and you've got a sure fire winner. Haven't you? Well, unfortunately not.
The Corruptor should be a good film. The acting is good, the story is good. Yet the whole film is unfocussed. Who are we supposed to care about. Is it (Marky) Mark, he's the rookie made good right? Wrong. We are interested, but I didn't really care. Is it Chow? Well, certainly I felt more for him, but then the film told me I wasn't supposed to. Then it changed its mind. This flip flopping of sympathies left me not really caring about anyone. It may make for interesting dranatic tension on the page, but on the screen it leaves you not cold.
The direction is equally loose. Its a good hour in before any semblance of a plot is put together and we find out the reason why we are even watching this story in the first place. When we find out, well its a nice story but it comes as an anti climax. This shows in loads of other ways. The soundtrack is all over the place, hardcore rap mixed with traditional Chinese. The visuals: we are offered jerky camera, steady cam, and the signature shots of a head down view of Chinatown. Its all well done, but its all pointless fluff. There is a story here, a well thought out one at that, which is lost in the mess of trying to do too much.
In the end, The Corruptor is a good film hiding inside a rubbish one. Unfortunately you get to go pay for the rubbish one. Like I said, its got a great story, so good that some execs nicked the main trappings for Lethal Weapon 4 last year (well, they needed a plot). Its just been made so badly, with no thought of how the whole thing hangs together. Worth seeing if you like Chow Yun Fat, or (Marky) Mark Wahlbergs arse, but not worth seeing for itself. Which is a pity because there's probably a good film at its heart - with a better name - which has unfortunately been corrupted. (5)
IF THIS FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: The French Connection vs Chinatown vs a few of those soft porn films for the ladies. But it is not even The Replacement Killers.

Coyote Ugly
There is an undeniable link between the cinema and corn. In physical terms - the odd reason why popcorn is seen as the ideal snack to eat when munching it sounds like hordes of worker ants descending upon the auditorium. Also as a description of a particular type of film. No other artform so readily clutches corniness to its bosom - with perhaps the exception of romantic novels. Nowhere else is the application of a formula both reviled and successful. We are at a stage where describing a film as corny is an insult. Well here I shall be doing the opposite.
Be well aware that there has not been a purer exponent of corn in about five years. Coyote Ugly is proper, non-GM, non-self aware 100% corn - much like Shredded Wheat. The story is straight out of a thirties musical, updated to a kind of pseudo year 2000. Coyote Ugly takes place in a parallel universe where a non-descript bar can be staffed by rude, obnoxious harridans who serve only shots and dance on the bar and this as seen as neither exploitive nor anything to be pissed off by. A world where singer-songwriter showcases come replete with full bands and lighting effects. And a world where John Goodman can beget a svelte toothy daughter who obviously has no genes in common with her corpulent father.
I lied when I said that nothing in this film was genetically modified. Piper Perabo - our erstwhile heroine - is quite obvious a mix’n’match clone of Julia Roberts mouth, all American blondeness and eyes which are almost as watery as Renee Zellwegers. The film stands or falls on her ability to emote, pretend to be singing and naïf charm. She plays the songwriter who moves to the big city (all 27 miles) to sell her songs. What follows is the usual rags to riches story, spiced up vaguely by the bar job that she does for a bit of money - after she is robbed in the big bad city of course. Coyote Ugly is the preposterous name for the bar described above - a place invented by the feverish imagination of Jerry Bruckheimer, much like the Flashdance was invented by him twenty years previous. The place is the dream bar of a guy like him - and the kind of place which financial and health and safety-wise would never be allowed to survive in the real world. But the films effervescent joy manages to both convince us that we want to go there, and that its all good, clean fun - despite being tantamount to pole dancing.
So have we got the plotline down pat. Perabo smiles. Perabo goes to the big city. Perabo cannot sell songs, and gets robbed. Perabo ends up working in sleazy bar. Perabo falls in love with damaged Australian. Things get to a low ebb. Then things end up happily. Le-ann Rimes rocks up - about as incongruous a star turn as you’ll ever see. Its a nuts and bolt plot freshened up by its relatively unknown cast who are all going for it knowing that this is their one shot at stardom. Buoyed up by a film stealing expanded cameo by John Goodman, and Maria Bello who seems to specialise in playing "older" attractive women - without actually being much older (see also Payback). Ever box is ticked, bar fights, tit shots and most amusing views of the creative process in action. It is pap, it is thoroughly disposable and possible even rather offensive (depends on your view on the empowering effect of shaking your cooties). That said though you know that when you go through the door - so you can’t really complain.
Coyote Ugly is a Jerry Bruckheimer production, and as such does exactly what it says on the tin. Cocktail with birds, Showgirls without the pretension of art or the excessive tit shots. What might be surprising for a Bruckheimer production is exactly how sweet it is. He is a master producer merely because he sees a niche and exploits it. We have not had corn done this well in years, and as a slightly more girl power version of Dirty Dancing it will probably have a rip-roaring life on video. Its no good - but its about as good as no good gets. (6)
IF THIS FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: Dirty Dancing hits Cocktail being watched enviously by Showgirls and a Judy Garland 1930’s filum.

The Criminal

Hitchcock has a lot to answer for. He is indirectly responsible for most of Brian De Palma’s career to start off with – when De Palma is not pastiching Kubrick. His main crime though is raising the bar so high in a certain type of thriller that it really is next to impossible to equal it. Take the small British pot-boiler The Criminal for instance. It wants to be a hard edge North By Northwest type paranoia thriller. It ends up collapsing under the weight of its own creaking plot. You cannot be all things to all me, and unfortunately the Criminal tries.
So what do we have in the mix. Stephen Mackintosh is our musician hero J, picking up a girl in a bar. After a long, and rather well done, seduction we cut to our two comic relief police officers (Bernard Hill and a fantastic Holly Aird) – sardonically harassing a drug dealer. Back to the flat where they are about to get it on, then our two groups of people meet. Using a poor stab at Soderbergh-esque playing with time the officers investigate the scene of the crime – Mackintosh’s flat. Through this needless, and uncomfortable device we find that there has been a murder and Mackintosh is the only suspect. What follows is a standard innocent man on the run routine, which goes through so many plot convulsions that it is practically epileptic. This leads us to a finale which is supposed to be clever, as the loose ends are tied up but by which point we have given up caring.
Why do we give up caring? Simple – the good characters, the interesting ones have been eliminated. Whilst the plot of the Criminal may be twisted, its genre is clear. Therefore the interesting touches of black humour, quirkiness and genuinely funny one-liners promise to elevate the film to a higher level. This is all dashed when the most sympathetic character in the film is unceremoniously bumped off for a pretty poor set piece. Its brave of a film to dispense of its popular characters, brave but stupid. It is equally brave to have Mackintosh play J in a less than attractive manner, and something that would have worked better if the character had more ambiguity. As it turns out the plot is so preposterous that he obviously has nothing to do with it, but his winging lets you hope he gets bumped off. Even the seemingly shoehorned in American light relief is more appealing than our lead – and what do you know the film dispenses of her too.
Technically The Criminal is rather well done. It is slightly overlong, but that is more a fault of its convoluted plot – which requires extensive exposition. There is also a nice eye for detail, especially in the characterisation. Holly Aird steals the show in the first half, and hopefully this will be enough for her to get a larger role elsewhere. Personally I found much of it disconcerting set-wise since much of it was filmed in Senate House in the University of London, twenty yards from where I am siting. It doubles as a police station here which appears a touch to opulent. And the film has a grungey presentation of London which is at least novel. In the end though it is all undermined by a conspiracy theory plot which could have been written by a fifteen year old – there are so many loose ends.
The Criminal is a bad film enlivened by good bits. The good bits are almost entirely comedic, though it is interesting to note that it is a singular black humour on display here. There is a good British cast, rounded off by Eddie Izzard, who get on with being just likeable enough whilst delivering some well crafted line. This is a script which – while stagey – is peppered with good lines, yet the shape of the thing is a mess. Is it a black comedy, thriller, action movie or romance. It is none of the above – and that is truly criminal. (4)
IF IT WAS A CAR CRASH: Arlington Road – and all of its flaws – hitting North By Northwest with some unambitious British nonsense getting caught in the crossfire.

Croupier
I know I should have seen Croupier a few years ago, when it first came out and hung sullenly around the NFT like a kid trying to scab fags in the bikesheds. It got so-so reviews and vanished as quickly as it came in. Then someone made a hoo-ha about it in the USA and the owners realised that actually they had a genuine hit on their hands. Cue its return to the British cinema – ostensibly the same film but now with nice US reviews blazened across its poster. They rather liked Clive Owen’s quiet fortitude, felt it was clever and we were all wrong over here.
Well were we wrong? Yes, the lukewarm reviews garnered here though may have had more to do with it being released a week after the cinematic re-release of Get Carter – Mike Hodges best known piece of work. And admittedly next to Get Carter, Croupier looks a lesser film. However it is a very different type of beast. Whilst Get Carter was a relentless piece of work about revenge, Croupier is that tricky beast – a film about writing, a film about creativity.
The film is structured solidly from the viewpoint of Owen’s Croupier. A man with a past and not much of a present. An unsuccessful author, not really in love with his girlfriend but with a vivid mental fantasy life. The key question of the film is how much are fictional characters autobiographical to their author? And if the author is distinct will he move towards his character the closer life imitates are. Owen’s very suave shiftiness allows us to watch this transformation as the plot inextricably traps him and leads him towards tragedy. The question is how much of this is a literary game, and how much is real – a difference blurred by Owen’s omnipresent narration.
So Croupier is a clever film, a sly thriller which makes up for the relative mundanity of its setting with the glitzy of its down at heel casino. It is also help immeasurably by its supporting characters – in particular Gina McKee as Owen’s equally no-hoper girlfriend and a spiky Kate Hardie as a hostess who has literally been dealt a very bad hand. Only Alex Kingston’s femme fatale jars, her character seems out of place in this world – possibly the idea – but she seems clunky. But the best work in the film is by Hodges himself, managing to tease us with a simple plot resolution which twists surprisingly near the end to present us with an unhappy happy ending.
Croupier is a film of ideas, a film of grit and a mature look at some of those who have fallen by the wayside. Owen commands attention in the lead role and it is impossible to think that he will not move on to larger roles after this. Certainly not a slam bang thriller this is intelligent cinema near its best, a little bit rough and ready but a solid watch. Perhaps its scale is a little bit too small, and perhaps its ending is too convoluted. But its good cinema, and a solid British hit. Watch and learn. (8)
IF THIS FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: Well its got all the good bits of Casino set in seedy London. So The Long Good Friday with something like Barton Fink.

Cruel Intentions
There's a rubbish name for a film, would you not say? Cruel Intentions? Its a bit wishy washy, it doesn't tell us anything about anything - except perhaps there might be a character or two who's intentions are maybe a wee bit underhand. Rather than go into a semantical discussion on the particular reasons why at this moment in time (listening to Liz Phair and too hot in general) the word "Cruel" seems ridiculous I'll get on to the film itself. Which is, as these things are in this day and age, a teen update of Les Liasons Dangeruse.
You what? A modern day teen version of the classic tale of aristocratic shenanigans, toying with the hearts and minds of each other in the coldest of possible ways. Well, yes - and the hook its all hung on is rather well done. We have Ryan Phillippe as Valmont, and Sarah Michelle Geller as Kathryn Merteuil (they didn't really bother updating the names all that much). Both students ina very posh boarding school, she is the winsome head girl, who is a bit of a coke addict and nympho on the quiet. Valmont is a shag magnet and is frankly getting a wee bit bored with being able to hide his salami in every available orifice at school. Enter the pure chaste virgin Reese Witherspoon as Annette - virgin not only by reputation but by New Woman manifesto. The rest is history, especially if you've read the book or seen either of the two films made of it in the last ten years (Valmont, the other version is oft looked over but in some ways better than Les Liasons Dangeruse).
So, does it work? Well, yes and no. The main problem is with the setting. I don't really mean that the updates setting makes any of this less likely. More that it shares most of its faults with the original. Both Cruel Intentions and Les Liasons Dangeruse are about the rich, who are by their very nature pretty much alien to us - the viewer. Whilst this cold hearted manipulation of people is interesting to watch, it is nothing more than a fancy dance into and out of bed and leaves us, in the end, uninvolved. The way both versions try to draw us in, is via our good girl, our pure chaste virgin. Here, as played by Reese Witherspoon, she is a very attractive character. Yet even the purity she initially embodies is unattainable for the viewer, and frankly her view is equally outdated. Therefore we are always looking in from the sidelines and it takes frankly a number of really cheap Hollywood tricks to even try and get us involved.
This is where the film is an awful lot better. It employs its soundtrack masterfully. It plays with the audience with a few in jokes (a biting Jennifer Love Hewitt gag early doors, for those of us who really had to sit through "I Know What You Did Last Summer"). Its equating of school, and teen politics with the aristocratic whirligig of pre revolution France is spot on, both sets share a coldly manipulative talent. And of course, everyone in this film is nice to look at. I got the double whammy of Geller and Witherspoon, whilst the ladies I was with were literally moist with the combination of Ryan Phillippe's lips and bare nekid ass (don't ask - I thought he looked like a ponce). Special notice must also be made of Cecille, played by Selma Blair who merely by existing has probably ended Liv Tyler's career (they look identical and one imagines the Blair being cheaper).
Cruel Intentions is relatively fun to watch. It is smart, and even when its not smart its nice to look at. But unlike the other updates of recent times (10 Things I Hate About You, She's All That and the knockdown dead king of the update Clueless) its source material causes its main problem. Les Liasons Dangeruse is not a comedy. Hence Cruel Intentions is not a comedy, therefore it misses out on all the smart gags an update brings. That said, it is played well, and pretty well written, though the courtship of Annette and Valmont is a tad too fast. That it falls back on Hollywood tricks for its ending is not a problem. It actually makes it more involving than the sterile world we had previously been dispassionately watching. In the end though, its a film about poor little rich kids, and I don't really care.
And if you really want to know, I just think there's something a bit weird about a word with a u and an e together like that. (7)
IF THIS FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: Les Liasons Dangeruse with Pretty In Pink. Though when Geller puts her pink number on, she is anything but pretty in it.

The Cup
Its an abiding memory, which goes back to the FA Cup Final of 1977-78 season. Arsenal vs Ipswich, a game of pretty stupendous dullness if I remember rightly. Arsenal played their usual blocking play, closing down the plucky East Anglians at every opportunity. The only highpoint was the goal, near the end of the second half, distinguished by the fact that the scorer was so gob-smacked that he passed out and had to be stretchered off. Nevertheless I remember, and this could be because it was said every year, Bryan Moore's dull-cit tones saying that I was joining a worldwide audience of over 1 Billion watching the game. Later I came to really appreciate how big a billion is (see, a Maths degree is good for owt) but it never stopped me wondering why. Why were there people in Patagonia, Mexico and even (though I find this unlikely) the USA watching a scrappy game between Arsenal and Ipswich Town? I used to just put it down to cultural imperialism and move on.
Now The World Cup's worldwide audience figures make a whole lot more sense. Its a world cup after all, so the whole world has, feasibly, a hand in its final game. And so to the film The Cup, which posits that there is also such a fervent viewership in - of all place - a Tibetan monastery in exile. The Cup is a simple story of how this obsession was borne out, and how the monks did indeed get to see the World Cup final (another rather anti-climatic game between France and a hideously out of form Brazil). There is not much more to The Cup than this story, it is presented as being based on a true story and there are touches of that in its very naturalistic, whilst inconsequential details. However I have heard in circles that The Cup is a masterpiece. It is not.
The Cup has all the sophistication and narrative density of a Children's Film Foundation movie from the mid-seventies. I am not sure if it has pretensions above what it is, a simple and interesting tale told adequately. The film splits nicely into two halves, which are both competently done but on the whole a wee bit dull. The first half of the film concerns the arrival at the monastery of two young Tibettan's, sent by their mother to be free in India. This half is very much scene setting: here is the monastery, here is how life works here, and here are our new recruits. This is a narrative trick as old as the hills, introduce some new characters who can find out about the place along with us. Problem is, part of the early tension is apparently (since it actually causes no suspense at all) based on the question if our new boys have been caught on the border. They haven't, they turn up and are truth be told rather dull.
Much more interesting are our two football loving Monks. Sneaking down to the Indian village to watch the World Cup semi-finals they come unstuck when they cause a passionate football based argument. This is much more like it, characters with a definite goal, that of seeing the final. Mischievous monks, at odds with the monastery, these two characters are easily the best reason to watch the film. The main plot unfolds nicely, they want to watch the final, but have been banned from the village. Cue some artful dodger-esque attempts to cobble up a television.
Except, no. Just when the film is out of its picturesque but dull phase, they ask the Lama if they can get a TV for the World Cup Final. Whilst there are a few nice culture clash jokes at this stage, any real conflict is scuppered by the fact he says yes. So they raise the money and get the TV. All that is left is the moral of the tale about wanting physical things too much - our football mad monk feels bad that he pawned someone elses watch, and hence cannot enjoy the match. This moral is tantamount to Orco rocking up at the end of an episode of He-Man it is laboured so much. Whilst the film is always on the interesting side of tedium, culture clashes are always nice to watch, in the end The Cup falls down by just not having a complex enough plot.
The Cup is apparently the first ever Tibetan film (though filmed and set out of necessity in India). It is therefore wholly competent as a first entry into a international medium. As a documentary of what it is to live in exile it is never less than interesting. However as a story it is too simplistic for an adult audience doing anything but patronise the sentiments held within. It is a good story, but its a good piece of reportage rather than a motion picture. There are hints of complexity held within the film, but untouched are the suggestions that many of these monks do not want to be in the monastery at all. The Cup looks nice, the time just about passes, but its not a masterpiece. (5)
IF THIS FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: Kundun (Martin Scorsce's really rather good Dalai Lama movie) slamming right into Escape To Victory (which is really rubbish - but beggars can't be choosers on the football movie front).

The Curse Of The Cat People
The film Cat People did not have a real curse about it, unlike the latter horror movie Poltergeist which almost definitely did (and I don't just mean its lousy sequels, but the weird things which happened ending in the tragic death of the child star). But then, the film The Curse Of The Cat People, has equally got nothing really to do with a Curse of any Cat People, certainly not the Cat Person from the first film Irene. Because while the film contains the same characters from the first movie, it is a very different beast. It would even be difficult to truly call it horror, while it has the trappings of a horror movie it is actually a movie which is fundamentally about child psychology. A subject of which there are few films about, yet here is an adult film, an adult genre film which has a child as its lead character.
The Curse Of The Cat People is set about six years after the original film, and the first thing we see is a young girl playing with her school mates. Or at least, not playing - as she is deemed strange and no-one wants to play with her. The initial intimation, when we see who her parents are, Ollie Reed and his girlfriend from the previous movie, is that this youngster is Irena's daughter. An whole new scenario presents itself, a new cat person going wild, as a child. Except, except we know Irene never had a child - it was pretty much implied by the first movie. So where are we going here, is there some kind of curse on this girl Amy?
Well, no. Indeed, while the film inhabits the same world as the previous noir, supernatural tale, there is not a hint of the supernatural here. Instead we have an isolated, imaginative child who for want of friends, creates an imaginary one. The imaginary one she creates happens to be Irena, from the original film, created from a photograph and a few off words. The dynamic therefore is between Any's fantasy life, and the real life her exasperated father wants her to lead. A classic battle of child psychology, when he punishes her for these beliefs she runs away. And then we get the frightening part of the film, merely frightening because we see it through Amy's young eyes - where a vivid imagination can scare you half to death.
This is contrasted with a relationship Amy strikes up with an old woman, who believes her own daughter is an impostor. This gives the film two outlets, firstly a creepy old lady and an old hauntedesque house. After all, this is supposed to be a horror film - even though it really isn't. But it also gives us a comparison, it gives us a daughter who grew up without love. This lack of sympathy makes us believe her daughter has turned bad, but is just building us up for the strong emotional climax. And a very good climax it is too, tying in the need for Amy to grow outside her fantasy life, and the need this woman had for love.
The film is fundamentally a view of the mindset of a lonely child. There are some very nice touches, especially early on where the fantasies her father has told her are being regurgitated to him. It is merely in the recasting of Simone Simon as Irena, that even makes this a "Cat People" movie, but this Irena is so sweet that it is almost creepy. The lack of threat is threatening in itself - which gives the film a psychological edge it would never have had without being a sequel. A lot of people may have been let down by the fact it does not regurgitate the original movie, but in the end get to see a much more interesting film.
The Curse Of The Cat People is a unique film, and a strangely beautiful one. Being about a small child imaginings, it still grounds itself very much in reality. Young Amy is a very serious girl, growing out of a stage we all go through. It is this recognition which makes it a compelling film, one which has snuck under our radar by virtue of being a horror sequel. Just for being this clever, and for being an oddly affecting one at that. A small beauty. (9)
IF THIS FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: Cat People - obviously - with maybe The Sixth Sense. Again though, a true original piece of work.

All articles copyright Peter C.Baran (or authors where stated).
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