My Movie Year 2014

For me, 2014 has been all about the eyes. Brendan Gleeson's sad, soulful eyes in Calvary. The horrors reflected in Chiwetel Ejiofor’s haunting and haunted eyes in 12 Years A Slave. The flat blank eyes of Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin. My abiding memories of this year’s screen-gazing are going to be the gazes looking back out at me...

And it’s not just the eyes looking out. How about the eyes looking in, carting along baggage, preconceptions and a lifetime’s experience with them? You take from a movie what you bring to it. Case in point: The excessive deluge of think pieces screaming about the perceived agenda of David Fincher’s Gone Girl. From one corner: “It’s misogynist!”. From the other: “It’s feminist!”. And I sat in the middle thinking “No...it’s pulp. Really well-tooled pulp, and Fincher is smart enough to want to provoke his audience and raise such questions. But...it’s still just pulp.”

Gone Girl was monumentally stupid, hugely entertaining, far too long, never a dull moment. All at the same time. It’s a potboiler. Lurid. Over-egged. Melodramatic. Compulsive. It's riddled with holes that only gape wider when you prod at them a little bit. It may well be the ne plus ultra of potboilers, but it's a potboiler all the same.

Brilliant balderdash, but it really doesn't have anything remotely profound or meaningful to say about marriage or the media. Let's not credit Gone Girl with such unwarranted gravitas, when it's little more than a very good time at the movies.

And yet while everyone was picking apart Gone Girl fruitlessly hunting for an agenda where there was none, there was a more insidious, cavalier sexism at play in another huge release that didn't garner anywhere near as much attention - Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla. Let me show you how with a little game called Reverse The Following Roles: Bryan Cranston and Juliette Binoche. Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins. Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olson. I can't think of a single reason why at least one of those character reversals couldn't have been made without adversely affecting the narrative in any significant way. Ken Watanabe would still have had the opportunity to say “Gojira!” with the requisite amount of crowd-pleasing portent and gravitas.

(And, while I’m railing against inconsistent ways of looking at things, chew on this one: Stealing and sharing stolen naked selfies online is rightly perceived as Very Bad and Wrong. And yet stealing and sharing private company data and Sony email correspondence is Perfectly Fine and Fair Game. How’s that for a double-standard, motherfuckers? Sharing your body and sharing your opinions are personal and intimate acts and, most importantly, choices. Choices that have been removed from those affected. And with each licked lip over every salacious reveal, everyone makes their future argument weaker the next time someone comes to violate your rights and privacy….OK, back to crapping on about movies…)

Elsewhere, Christopher Nolan continued to make films that I admire rather than like. Interstellar was no better or worse than his erstwhile collaborator Wally Pfister’s Transcendence, and yet the latter was the one that got the critical kicking. In both cases, it's just not enough to have the ambition to interrogate questions of love, devotion, grief and our relationship with technology if you can't actually come up with anything remotely profound or illuminating to say about any of it.

Lucy, on the other hand, was Transcendence with a sense of humour. Where Pfister's film trades in po-faced faux-profundity, Luc Besson has a twinkle in his eye as he gleefully bullshits us for the sheer fun of it.

2014 was also the year that The Great John Carpenter Homage became a fully-fledged sub-genre. The Guest was essentially John Carpenter's Uncle Buck. It Follows was Halloween in Detroit (which is unfairly reductive, sure, but if you want a more detailed assessment, you’re going to have to click through to my recap of this year’s London Film Festival.) And in The Purge: Anarchy... It's Punishin' Time! If John Carpenter directed Frank Grillo as Frank Castle for Marvel, you’d get this double-barreled blast of pulp nirvana.

On the subject of Marvel, James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy disproved the burbling misguided wisdom of the internet masses who liked to claim that Big Bad Corporate Marvel were far too conservative to unleash Edgar Wright on Ant-Man. Gunn vaporised that argument with the endearing friendship between a gun-toting raccoon and a monosyllabic dancing tree. I also now have an excuse to once again share this beautiful logo designed by my inestimable friend Emma Price based on a dumb gag I hurled on to Twitter.

The Raid 2 sadly hewed to the maxim that more is less. The first film was all tight, stripped-down bonecracking beauty. This, however, was somewhat baggy and occasionally tipped over into queasy, disposable sadism. It lagged and suffered whenever Iko Uwais was off-screen (you could jettison an hour of subplots easy), but when he's there...wow. He's the Fred Astaire of face-kicking.

And so ends just a few of my ruminations on my Year In Dimly-Lit Auditoria. For one of those list things that everyone seems to be so fond of, you’ll have to wait just a little bit longer...

Writer's Bloch

I just found these and needed somewhere safe to keep them, so...

Robert Bloch wrote Psycho, so we should love him unreservedly for that alone. But he also came up with these wonderful bons mots:

“Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.” 

"Friendship is like peeing on yourself: everyone can see it, but only you get the warm feeling that it brings.”

“So I had this problem -- work or starve. So I thought I'd combine the two and decided to become a writer.”

Obsessive Compulsions: John Shaft

"Hey, man," Shaft said with weariness and exasperation. "What is this bullshit?"

The glint of metal became a blossom of flame, a bouquet of orange and vermilion thunder flowers. But only for the shortest moment known to man, that moment before dying.

Those are the final lines of Ernest Tidyman’s The Last Shaft, published in 1975. The end of the line for the cat that won’t cop out when there’s danger all about. But you can’t keep a good cat down…

[Cover art by Denys Cowan and Bill Sienkiewicz]

I've written about my lifelong obsession with Shaft many, many times before, so I’ll try not to cover the same ground here. But that doesn't preclude me from expressing my delirious excitement that Shaft is BACK! Not only are Dynamite Entertainment bringing all seven of Ernest Tidyman’s novels back into print (They Are Great! Buy Them All!), but a whole new cycle of John Shaft stories are about to begin in a series written by David F. Walker and illustrated by artist Bilquis Evely. As someone with a complete run of the original Shaft novels and an almost complete print run of Walker’s BadAzz MoFo magazine, I have no doubt that he is absolutely the right man for the job and I can’t wait to get my hands on some brand new Shaft. The man entrusted with continuing the legacy of Ernest Tidyman’s creation talks a little bit about what he has planned in an interview at Comic Book Resources here.

I’m positive I’m not the only one happy about the rebirth of an icon. I recently discovered that writer Steve Aldous has been working on a book provisionally called The Complete Guide to Shaft. He talks about the book and his research in fascinating detail at The Rap Sheet here.

But there’s more! Kimberly Lindbergs wrote about photographer and filmmaker Gordon Parks for the Movie Morlocks recently here, discussing not only Shaft, but also Parks’ achievements as a photographer, accompanied by a selection of some of Parks’ greatest photographs. And there’s also a selection of pieces about both Gordon Parks Senior and Junior that tied into a recent season on TCM in the US. Start here with the one on Shaft by Richard Harland Smith and click through to the rest of them from there.

This is the dawn of a new golden age for this inveterate Shaft fan. Right on...

My Take on the 58th London Film Festival

It’s been a long time since the London Film Festival was my beat and I was a card-carrying member of the press corps. Back in those days, in the fortnight leading up to the LFF’s Opening Night, I’d gorge on three screenings a day, topped up with a stack of screeners for home consumption - and that was before the whole thing started and then there’d be even more daily showings to squeeze in. Movies all day. Booze well into the wee small hours. Cadging stray minutes throughout the day and night to actually write the whole thing up. It was a blast.

The highlight of that time was finding the things that you didn't know existed. Sitting and watching Mulholland Dr. or Punch-Drunk Love or Ichi the Killer for the first time.

Now, I cherry-pick from the programme, picking out the “I Hope That’s Great”s whilst navigating my own schedule and availability and finances to ensure that I have a Good Film Festival.

This year certainly qualified as a Very Good Film Festival. Here we go:

Pasolini
It took me a little while to warm to Abel Ferrara’s impressionistic portrait of the last day of Pier Paolo Pasolini, but I can remember the exact moment when I was completely sold. The Staple Singers’ "I’ll Take You There" swells on the soundtrack as the frame is filled with a close-up of Willem Dafoe’s troubled, bespectacled visage - the finest use of the Staple Singers since The Last Waltz. Maybe even since Let's Do It Again. Soon after, there’s a snippet of the Swamp Fox Tony Joe White’s “Polk Salad Annie” and a great segue from Dafoe announcing to the proprietor of a trattoria "I'm waiting for Ninetto" into a story-within-the-story featuring the real Ninetto Davoli himself, replete with a shock of thick white hair. He's aged very well. We also get glimpses of what would most likely have been Pasolini’s next feature project which, from the fragments we see, looked like it was intended to be somewhat in the spirit of Uccellacci e uccellini, as Pasolini’s last night moves inexorably towards its tragic end. The dialogue throughout flips between English and Italian in a way that, surprisingly, isn't jarring and Willem Dafoe’s subtle, thoughtful, mournful characterisation is superb. He really knows how to rock a pair of bell bottoms, too.

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night
Ana Lily Amirpour’s skateboarding Iranian vampire Western (shot with the stark, striking crisp photography reminiscent of Robby Müller's work with Jim Jarmusch) does not wear its love of Lynch lightly. It is, after all, both wild at heart and weird on top. But I also thought it hit a vein of Michael Almereyda's Nadja too. Excellent sound design (particularly the sequence where a piece of music becomes suddenly overlaid with the gentle bumps of a heartbeat), and Sheila Vand is the spit of a slightly younger Asia Argento. Lots of fun.

It Follows
Shot in Detroit, Michigan (although I couldn't help thinking of it as Haddonfield, Illinois), It Follows is heavy on the Halloween, but is also an effective, genuinely disquieting chiller in its own right. Here, John Carpenter’s stolid, impassive Shape has transmuted into David Robert Mitchell's protean, relentless shapeshifter. It was almost enough to put me off sex for life. Almost…

Halloween’s subtext becomes It Follows’ supertext, in an environment where abstinence and celibacy can save your life and sex kills. Or, if you know how to play the game right, sex might just be the path to salvation. Along with the heavy notes of the Horror Master, there’s also a bouquet of John Landis (in particular the gimmick of having old public domain B-movies crackling away in the background, with their soundtracks doubling up to underscore this film’s action) and more than a little bit of Scooby-Doo. But I thought the biggest resonance here, intentional or otherwise, is Spielberg, echoing his early predilection for populating his worlds with absent or faceless parents. And I loved the Disasterpeace soundtrack. Whilst the central conceit is rich for mining in the future, I fervently hope this remains a one-off that doesn't succumb to sequelitis.

A Girl At My Door (Dohee-ya)
July Jung’s South Korean drama starts with the familiar set-up of stranger-in-a-strange-land, fish-out-of-water à la Hot Fuzz and Copland, but as it progresses it starts to go to some very dark and unexpected places. To say much more than that would spoil the skillfully calibrated run of reveals. I can say this much: Doona Bae (terrific in her brooding, understated central role) is a disgraced cop transferred to a small fishing village, where the old adage “no good deed goes unpunished” comes to pass as she comes to realise that her lack of understanding about local customs, culture and community results in a succession of unintended consequences, soaked in alcohol and steeped in violence.

No Man’s Land (Wu ren qu)
Bad people do bad things to bad people in a nasty, stylish and very, very funny Golden Harvest Spaghetti Western. (A Noodle Western?) Luxuriating in the Leone playbook, all the exterior scenes are hyper-stylised in a heavy orange wash. (So orange, you almost expect the Road Runner to go meep-meeping past with a smoldering coyote hurling Acme products in his direction). A scumbag lawyer finds that he has to Break Bad as he navigates a desolate Looney Tunes landscape populated with twisted oddballs redolent of Oliver Stone’s U-Turn. The lone bum note here is a final scene that somewhat undermines everything that came before it. Lop off the last five minutes and this is a scuzzy delight.

When Animals Dream (Når dyrene drømmer)
Like a Danish Ginger Snaps shot through with the staid, sterile provincial ambiance and tempo of Les Revenants. Confidently paced for most of its running time, its easy to forgive a final act that accelerates into bloody, full-throated genre conventions. It’s also worth singling out Lars Mikkelsen as the star player here, shouldering the weighty responsibility of devotion, sacrifice and dark secrets with quiet stoicism. A smart and genuinely quite moving take on love and lycanthropy.

Cub (Welp)
There's something in the woods! A grisly, inventive Flemish slasher that validates my lifelong antipathy to camping. Jonas Govaerts cites John Carpenter’s influence on the film’s visual grammar and narrative propulsion, and he also copped to the fact that he kind of wanted to answer the question Who Can Kill A Child? Lean, efficient and the exposition is sliced right down to the bone, Welp is a splattery joy.

Anamnesis

I frequently trawl through Google Image Search and save pictures for No Purpose Whatsoever. And then I end up with a folder full of pictures loitering on my hard drive just waiting to be consigned to the Recycle Bin awaiting permanent deresolution.

Not today! Today, I'm going to sling them all up here. No explanation, no context, nothing. And then I'm going to send them to the Recycle Bin. But for one, brief shining moment, they will have their moment on the screen.

Initiating image dump now.

Deuces

Here are a couple of quotes that have have been rattling around in my head recently. I'm sticking them here for safe-keeping. Keep an eye on them for me, will you? Thanks.

“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” - E.L. Doctorow, Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews

“One day, someone showed me a glass of water that was half full. And he said, "Is it half full or half empty?" So I drank the water. No more problem.” - Alejandro Jodorowsky

True Detective

Still mourning...

"This is Jim Rockford. At the tone, leave your name and message. I'll get back to you." *beep*

"$200 a day, plus expenses..."

And this is how I fly a flag at half-mast...

Farewell, Jim Rockford. Rest in Peace, James Garner.

It Came From The Archives! - Seijun Suzuki’s Branded To Kill

One of my favourite films Of All Time arrives as an Arrow Films Dual Format Blu-ray and DVD from Monday 28th July.

Excited? You should be. Once upon a long ago, I wrote 4,000 words on Seijun Suzuki's Branded to Kill for the Wallflower Press book 24 Frames - The Cinema of Japan and Korea. Would you like to read it? I've got you covered. Steam up some rice, find a comfy chair and get reading.

If this embedding business works like I hope it will, you will be able to find that essay below (along with many others worthy of your time) courtesy of Google Books webmagic. (Click and scroll to Chapter 9).



Want some more? You may have noticed that the other chapter I contributed to that volume on Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale is not available via Google Books. But you can find that right here.

Obsessive Compulsions: Who's on First?

Bud Abbott and Lou Costello are responsible for at least three "Firsts" in my life that I can recall. They were the first comedians that I can remember laughing at as a child, and they were the stars of the first horror movie I ever saw - Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.

My first memorable laughs and my first memorable scares. That ain't bad.

I loved Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein. Still do. And I was thrilled when I discovered that Abbott and Costello had their own show and I could watch repeats of it Every Single Day. Which is where I discovered my third "First".

"Who's on First?"

It's a great bit. I'm still in awe of it. I almost forget that these were two seasoned pros that had honed and polished the skit for years on the vaudeville and burlesque circuit before it got anywhere near me.

Here it is in all it's punning glory.

It's such a strong bit that it's been borrowed and tinkered with, ripped apart and put back together again differently so many times over the years. And even when I hear a lesser riff, I still laugh.

Here's Morris Day and Jerome Benton in Purple Rain. Say the password, onionhead!

EDIT 22/07/14: And that clip from Purple Rain has already been removed from YouTube. So here is the scene in question from an undated draft of the script by Albert Magnoli and William Blinn. (Sadly, it lacks the glorious usage of the insult "onionhead" and instead has something quite...different.)

Morris: ...we ought to have like, a signal.

Jerome: A password.

Morris: Okay. What's the password?

Jerome: You got it.

Morris: Got what?

Jerome: The password.

Morris: The password is what?

Jerome: Exactly.

Morris: The password is exactly?

Jerome: No, it's--

Morris: -- Hold it now.  Slow down. The babe walks in and you see her.

Jerome: I see her.

Morris: You come get me.

Jerome: I come get you.

Morris: And I'll probably have a couple little sexies on the stand-by, and we don't want to upset them, do we? So you just glide by me and say...what?

Jerome: Okay.

Morris: The password is okay?

Jerome: Far as I'm concerned.

Morris: Dammit!  Say the password.

Jerome: What.

Morris: Say the password, sperm breath!

Jerome: The password is what.

Morris: (frustrated) That's what I'm asking you!

Jerome: (more frustrated) It's the password!

Morris: The password is it?

Jerome: (exasperated) Ahhhhh! The password is what!

Morris: It!  You just said so!

Jerome: The password isn't it!  The password is--

Morris: -- What?

Jerome: Got it!

Morris: I got it?

Jerome: Right.

Morris: It or right?

               

Jerome: (perplexed) What??

And here's Chris Tucker having a crack at it in Rush Hour 3:

Chewing Gum For The Ears

This is my goddamn jam.

Mike Paradinas of Planet Mu mixes up over a hundred theme tunes and sound bites from the vast wasteland of 70s and 80s British television. There's more about it here. So Damn Good.