The Constant Gardener
You know the sort of film this is; the sort where you go in and everyone in the audience laughs at the Orange adverts that you've seen 100 times before; the sort of film where you know the doctor you catch a fleeting glimpse of is going to be important because he's played by Pete Postelthwaite, the kind of film where everyone gets up at the end feeling satisfied that they don't have to go to the cinema for another year, because this is a film for people who don't like film.
I'd heard a lot about how this had been directed by Fernando Meirelles, the bloke who made City of God. And I hoped this meant that it wouldn't result in a boring film. But it turned out that hiring him was a mistake, and he only got the job because the geezer who made Four Weddings and a Funeral was off filming Harry Potter. That gives you an idea of the level of this picture.
There isn't anything to dislike about this film, apart from that it's extremely obvious. You find out pretty soon that Rachel Weisz has written a report about some drug company, and they don't like it, and they have her killed. And Ralph Fiennes spends the whole of the rest of the film working that out. Duh. You can imagine them in the script meetings - you know, Gerald, the
twist is that there is no twist. Oh, apart from how obtuse Ralph Fiennes is. Just as I feared, this film is just as
shit as the Tailor of Panama, just with better production values.
Bad Taste
One day a couple of weeks ago I was hungover from a
good party, so I decided to go and watch Peter Jackson's first feature, Bad Taste, at the NFT. When you're feeling all moody and over-sensitive, there's nothing better than watching some fruity love-story; so as a corollary, if you were in a state of considerable refreshment the night before, the only thing that's going to be on your wavelength is a queasy zombie flick.
Peter Jackson made Bad Taste as a labour of love over the weekends of four years; it's very much the Plan 9 from Outer Space of zombie movies. The aliens have got bendy heads, for instance, because Peter Jackson had to bake the latex masks in his mum's oven, and without the bend they wouldn't have fitted in. Well, apparently some ignorant wankers think stuff like this makes a movie
shit. Such people are entitled to their opinion, of course, and are probably extremely happy in their loft apartments in Clerkenwell with only 3 cushions in the entire place, listening to Phillip Glass piano music on their biscuit-sized MP3 players, and only occasionally worrying about the cold empty feeling they get when they have to walk past the kebab shop of a night and look at the people in there who have been
enjoying themselves.
No. Bad Taste is the work of someone who really really really extremely badly loves film, in the same way a 14-year-old loves tits, and has no budget, but wants special effects, gun-battles, and
crane shots, for God's sake. When I was watching this film, I was reminded of how
shit The Producers was, and how by comparison it came across as an robotic money-making machine that no-one gave a piss-bung about.
The other good thing about Bad Taste is that it lives up to the title. It's absolutely fascinated by gak, and there are many bits in it that make you genuinely feel like chundering. Well done Peter Jackson, this film may have cost the same as a packet of garibaldi biscuits, but it's still
good.
Life is Beautiful
I avoided this when it first came out, because I couldn't imagine how it could possibly be good: a comedy about concentration camps that is feted at the Oscars; what will they fall for next, I wondered, maybe
a film about how Werner Von Braun is a cracking bloke and helps small children win science fairs? Well, it turns out that I was wrong, Life is Beautful is fantastic.
It's the sort of film that Charlie Chaplin might have made, because it's full of clowning and joy. It's both funny and sad, but not in the unfortunate way where the funny bits make you sad, and the sad bits make you laugh. At the end there's a scene where they really try hard to make you cry, and it almost managed it - I only avoided blubbing by dessicating my eyeballs with dust from pool chalk.
Some people have said that this film is offensive, but they are clearly miserable arseholes. The funny bits do make you laugh, but they're sad as hell too, because you know what's going to happen. I thought this was a really orginal and great film, but unfortunately in this instance
good is the best rating that this website allows me to purvey.
Barton Fink
I just watched Barton Fink today. I remember watching this when it came out, in 1991, at the old Lumiere Cinema on St Martin's Lane. My dad took me and my sister to see it; as we came out I recall the sticky feeling of reluctance to talk about it, because we all thought it was
shit.
Well, I can't speak for my dad or my sister, but I was obviously a callow fool, because this is extremely
good. Thank god they hadn't invented gobby websites back then. With his haircut borrowed from Don King, John Turturro is exceptional as the shy yet megalomanic Barton Fink; John Goodman plays Walter out of The Big Lebowski, and Steve Buscemi is ever-so-slightly weird. It's beautifully judged, and you can tell that the Coen brothers derived amusement from merely typing Barton Fink's name in the script.
Maybe I will have to go and rent Highlander II: The Quickening to see if there's any other films I erroneously judged to be
shit, back then?
Napoleon Dynamite again
The other day I went to the Rousseau exhibition at the Tate Modern, which was very
good, if a little steep at a tenner. One of the things I liked about it was the fact that despite having produced four or five indisputably great paintings, most of them involving foliage, many of the rest of the paintings, the ones of people and things like that were awful, you could see him losing it and not getting it back at all. Some of the paintings were so bad, in fact, that they looked like the drawings that he does in Napoleon Dynamite.
So I had to go and get hold of a copy of it on DVD, and watch it again. I'd forgotten what an excellent film this is. I just wonder where you can get hold of T-shirts like that. GOSH!
Murderball
Murderball is a documentary about disabled men who play wheelchair rugby. These blokes are insane. I liked it that just because they were in wheelchairs didn't stop them being ultra-competitive
arseholes and rugby psychos. The film talks about how you have to learn to do everything fresh after you become a quadraplegic, so playing a combat sport is ridiculous and great. You get the sense that their carers really don't like it.
I saw this as part of the Disabled Film Festival at the NFT. I'm not sure what to make of that, because this is simply a
good and interesting film.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
I was ready to dislike this movie quite intensely. I thought it sounded like The Player, written and directed by the bloke who scripted the Lethal Weapons. Hold on a moment, scratch the word 'quite' from the first sentence, please?
Surprisingly enough, it's actually very
good. OK, it doesn't mean anything, and it will probably look insanely dated in five years time, but it makes you laugh in the funny places, and surprises you in the surprisy places. It's quite pleased with itself, and dare I say it, it deserves to be.
Robert Downey Jnr does well, and Val Kilmer is good as the Lethal Weapon black man character, who in this instance is a gay private eye. This made me feel a bit odd, because I normally find films with Val Kilmer in them physically disgusting, so well done him.
Just because this film's got about as much depth as a jacuzzi doesn't mean to say it's not
good.
The Producers
Please note that this film hasn't actually come out yet, making this is a genuine One Word Movie
shit-plex exclusive!
This was quite an interesting wee psychology experiment. I mean, I hate musicals, and I think they are all
shit. But, I have to confess, #1) I went to the stage version of The Producers, #2) I genuinely enjoyed myself, and #3) I read a copy of Hustler all the way back on the tube. I don't know what to be most ashamed of.
So, by going to see this film, I'd be able to watch a genuine wrestling match between the angels of good and shittiness in my brain. Who was going to triumph, I wondered to myself, would my dislike of musicals be exposed as the posturing of a pretend intellectual? Would it hell.
This has got to be a strong contender for the worst film of the year. The acting is mediocre, although Uma Thurman does lend an inappropriately sexual edge to the production. The story wants you to think it's in comedy bad-taste, although really it's just boring, riding a relentless wave of poofter jokes and obvious moron-humour. And it's been directed by someone (Susan Stroman)who has never directed a film before in her life. She's put on plays and ballets and stuff like that before, but the idea of presenting a scene using a camera, let alone moving the fucking camera, like, at the same time the action is going on, has clearly never taken up too much of her time before. I thought I was watching soviet-era TV, but then I remembered the commies had Eisenstein, and he invented the dolly-shot, so that's obviously too accomplished. This really is
shit. And the lighting is waaaaaay patronising.
Is there something wrong with people who like musicals? Why not buy a ticket to The Producers and find out for yourself.
Factotum
The novels of Charles Bukowksi contain juicy dialogue, sordid characters, and a punchline every three pages. It's odd then, that none of the Bukowski films to date have been classics, and Factotum doesn't break that tradition. I mean, Barfly was OK to watch when you're drunk, but strictly when you're drunk.
The problem with Barfly is that Mickey Rourke does a very good Bukowski impersonation, and Matt Dillon doesn't measure up at all. He's too handsome and nice-looking and therefore fake. Bukowski isn't supposed to be a fucking affordable lifestyle. When he shacks up with Marissa Tomei you could be excused for thinking you'd walked into the middle of Franky and Johnny, the pathetically fake movie where Alfredo Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer play a pair of unattractive loners.
Also, I got the feeling that the movie didn't capture the narrative drive of Bukowski's writing. The 10-page sections that Bukowski's works are composed of are always heading towards a pay-off, and there's nothing of that in this film. There are four or five moments where you crack a smile, but that's because they managed not to fuck the script up.
I did think this was a
shit movie. And it did occur to me that this and Manderley were both films made by Scandinavians about America, and had they ever been there?
Manderley
This is the sequel to Dogville, just with different actors and a different story. They kept the font though, that's nice.
There's some kind of Dogme weirdness going on, where there aren't any proper sets, there's just writing on the floor saying what's supposed to be there. I thought this was a bit like a teenager scrawling Dwayne's Love Palace above his bed. But I found this was just a distraction, because it didn't mean anything. Because this film is mostly about is winding up liberals. That is a fun occupation, and like Hazlitt says, this film"spares no occasion of bating the rabble".
But it's quite obvious, and ultimately there isn't any message, because all the characters are full of crap. For instance, soon everyone begins to vote on everything, and from this we're presumably supposed to derive the idea that democracy is rubbish for making decisions. Well, he-llo, just turn on the news, anyone can see that's true. Democracy's good for getting rid of shit governments without violence, not for voting on the best shape for cucumbers.
This is a
shit film, not torrentially so, and not without interest. But over-satisfied with itself, and a tiny bit obvious.
