Bande à part
As I found out when I tried to watch L'appartment, nothing dates faster than sophistication. By contrast, Bande à part, a new wave classic from 1964, still feels modern. Some of the sequences are pure cinema, but there are stretches where you wonder what in the name of hell is going on. A character is shown crossing a river using a tethered rowing-boat, and then later in the film you get exactly the same thing. There are endless shots of the two men doughnutting their car, and a bit where a tiger makes an inexplicable appearance. Sometimes when I was watching this I was rapt, and then at other times I was looking at my watch.
Similarly, it was hard to say whether this should get a
good or
shit rating. It's a complex and engaging in the same way as a novel, and it's much harder to have knee-jerk reactions about those unless they have too many adjectives or an insufficent semi-colon density.
Anyway, I saw it a couple of days ago and I've been thinking about it quite a lot since, so it definitely falls into the
good category. Unlike Deja Vu, for instance, which evaporated like a fart in a high breeze.
Déjà Vu
You know the bit in the shampoo advert when Jennifer Aniston comes on and talks about how all the Pro-V complex molecules re-align themselves in a new polarity for added body and shine? The science in this film is similarly entertaining, and it is sad to reflect that whilst they can send The Denz 4 days back in time, they can't make him (or fatty Kilmer) buff anymore.
The Denz plays Doug Carlin, an ATF agent who is quite possibly the nicest man in America. When I was sitting in the cinema, I found myself thinking that he does have a lovely smile, which he uses to defend New Orleans against nasty yet beautifully shot acts of terrorism. And to do this he also makes use of a government-built time machine to go back 96 hours so that the other version of Denz (the one that hasn't travelled through time) can get his end away. It is hinted that by doing this, the entire universe could be destroyed, but you never actually get to find that out, one way or the other.
Primer it ain't.
I know it's wrong to enjoy these jelly-brained
shit films so much but I do like them.
Van Wilder: Party Liaison
If you like internet tests, why not have a go at this one? Simply read the following paragraph and make a quick note of how it makes you feel.
fat man big bum bum clam chowder guff wipe mega colon spunk cake barry white bum bum bum bum schlooong poo poo barf arse grape discharge wank wanking to wank bum he wanks
bum bum bum bumIf you smiled more than about once when you read that, you will probably enjoy Van Wilder. It is quite funny, there is a disgusting joke every six seconds and you don't have to use your brain very much. There is also a memorable scene involving eclairs that is almost as disgusting as the naked wrestling in Borat.
Unfortunately this does not qualify the film as
good, because it is flawed in its underlying premise. The Van Wilder character is made out to be quite cool. But really he is an attention-craving overfunded moral void who goes out with a vile girl who looks mostly like a withered twig. I bet if you knew him in real life and read a story saying that Bateman murdered him you would think it was a) just waiting to happen and b) funny. Because the sad fact is that Van Wilder bears a spooky resemblance to George W Bush during his "party" years. Look at the picture if you doubt me. It is not amusing, it is a bit frightening. Next they will be doing a film about Harold Shipman with arse gags in it and
people will laugh.
Code Unknown
Code
shit more like.
Horrible Adverts
I have had it with these adverts. You know the ones. You pay your nine pounds, and you sit down to enjoy the flashy cinema adverts. Only - here is one warning you not to ride your motorcycle to work or you'll smash into a lamppost and never walk again. Or one saying that if you get in an unlicensed mini-cab you're going to get raped while the camera leers at your tear-streaked face and it was practically your fault anyway. Or if you're in Leeds, there's one saying that you shouldn't get drunk, because if you do you'll climb scaffolding seeking to impress girls but instead you'll plummet to either piss-stained quadraplegia or death, and girls don't find either of these things particularly attractive. By the way, hope you like the film.
If they must have these adverts, I feel they should compensate by showing short films about nice things as well. Stroke a cat, you will feel better. Drink a pint of beer and eat some chips with your fella or bird. And don't eat your lunch at your desk in winter, enjoy the sunshine, humans were built for the savannah. That will put one in a much better mood for enjoying House of 1,000 Corpses.
Pan's Labyrinth
Proper fairy tales are good because they tend to be full of horrible things - people are cut into a thousand pieces, devoured by wild animals, sent into a coma by nasty bastard thorns, boiled alive, preyed on by child molesters, imprisoned for a laugh, and generally shat on for no good reason. Unfortunately some people don't like that sort of thing and they tend to concentrate on the nice things in fairy tales - talking animals, candied fruits, and fauns. And that fucks it up, because fauns are the biggest wankers going. When a faun appears in Pan's Labyrinth I was ready to leave the cinema and treat my brain to a couple of nice pints of strong continental lager.
That would have been a mistake, because this film is really
good. It is definitely nasty enough, because it is about civil war, fascism, and features an excellent wicked step-father as well as a faun, but the faun is OK because you are wondering if he's going to turn into a nasty paedo bastard. There were enough scenes to make Janine shield her eyes until they had finished cutting the man's leg off, too. The fantasy bits are not at all twee, because the set-up is right out of a spam-in-a-cabin flick - and most importantly, it obeys the first rule of spam in a cabin pictures, namely that anyone can die at any time.
It's a superior reworking of Del Toro's earlier The Devil's Backbone, which had a better ghost in it, but otherwise comes up a bit short. In summary, after the disappointment of L'appartement, Spain is the new France, although I am worried that Switzerland could be the new Germany.
L'appartement
It is certainly true that the French have style, but the problem is that there is good style, and then there is bad style. The look of this film owes most to perfume adverts, and it has all the intellectual intensity of a Duran Duran video. Furthermore, it was made in 1996, so it's
curdled bad style. It was literally true that I couldn't force myself to watch this
shit - sleeping won after only about 20 minutes.
As I found out when I tried to watch L'appartment, nothing dates faster than sophistication. By contrast, Bande à part, a new wave classic from 1964, still feels modern. Some of the sequences are pure cinema, but there are stretches where you wonder what in the name of hell is going on. A character is shown crossing a river using a tethered rowing-boat, and then later in the film you get exactly the same thing. There are endless shots of the two men doughnutting their car, and a bit where a tiger makes an inexplicable appearance. Sometimes when I was watching this I was rapt, and then at other times I was looking at my watch.
