Alright, the second week of the movies, let's go
8. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985) - January 8th
This became my film of the day for a friend who had time for a movie, but not a long one, and wasn't particularly picky about what he saw. As far as Freddy movies go, it's a significant step down from the first, which remains in my top ten horrors of all time. That said, it's a mixed bag of awful and amazing, the kind of strange film that would ultimately receive a mediocre rating that doesn't reflect the spectrum of quality it spans. We have a terrific concept and great practical effects, as well as decent leading performances and that general camp theatricality, but we also have... everything else. The writing is paper thin and the acting of the side characters could not be more bizarrely forced, a significant number of scares don't land (and don't as often have the same flair from the first one that suggested the scares were just as readily used for comedy), and the whole thing ends up with very mixed execution. I can't say I'll quickly forget the transformation scene, which saw Freddy's hand spew forth from the main character's, before slicing him open to let Freddy out, with practical effects reminiscent of The Thing, but I also wish I could forget the delivery of specific lines.
On the point of subtext, I didn't know going in to the film that there was a lot of homosexual subtext attached to the film, but after reading about it, I can absolutely see it. You need look no further than the gym teacher, aggressively clad in leather at a bar, only to be later tied up and whipped with towels, to see how blatant the point felt getting across.
Anyway, now to give a rating to the film. Like I said, no one number could be truly reflective of a movie like this, but if have to put a number to it... - 5/10
9. District 13: Ultimatum (2009) - January 9th
A follow-up to the 2004 film District B13, this is a well-choreographed and relatively fast action movie with some good humour, some intrigue, and a considerable amount of cynicism by nature of its function. In order for the movie to exist as it does, the film has to and does recognise that the entire first film ultimately amounted to nothing. It's not a hard sell, politicians just re-neg on their promises from the end of the first film, and surprise surprise, we're still stuck in a dystopic concrete city that allows for maximum parkour. In this regard, the film is a success; the fighting and the parkour are both really well done, with a lot of light fun detail injected in to otherwise tense and pitched scenes, such as attempting to fight around a priceless Van Gogh, or tripping up chasing police officers with simple tricks with clothes lines and the like. The writing is less of a success: the structure is heavily front-loaded, getting out a lot of interesting but mostly superfluous information before it actually gets on with the plot, introducing our main characters from the first film in fun ways that don't actually further the plot or their characters, and would probably be fine if they weren't also drawn out. Damien's intro scene is funny and ends in a good fight scene, but it drags on for so much longer than it needs to between the intro and the fight. It shows Damien as competent, but we already knew that, so acceptance of light humour turns to boredom before actually getting in to the thick of action. This can be said for the actual set-up of the film's main conflict, which is also excessively long . This actually matters by the end of the film, so it's inclusion isn't unwarranted, just how much time spent on it is when it has nothing to do with the main characters. That's essentially the key issue I had with the film; between its fantastic action scenes, the film is trying to set up intrigue and political machinations, most of which feel removed from the characters themselves. It reminds me of The Raid 2, except in that movie the overarching conflict was much closer to the main characters, and was much easier to get invested in as a result. This feels far more nihilistic, especially with its ending, but also politically broader by way of its less personal touch. As a first reaction, I'm not sure what to make of the ending, but it's subversive, to say the least. - 6.5/10
10. Sense and Sensibility (1995) - January 10th
Ang Lee is one of my favourite directors, mainly for his peerless work with Life of Pi, but also because of the sheer variety in his work. He's always experimenting with new formats or structures, new ways of filming things or telling stories; Life of Pi had its own set of unique choices in deliberate format changes and the like, and most recently he did Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, which I still haven't seen, but primarily because it would be near-impossible to see in its intended format, which seems precisely the point of the film in the first place. But, I digress. Though I initially sat down to watch Sense and Sensibility as an example of Ang Lee's earlier work, it became quickly apparent that this was very much Emma Thompson's work as well. I haven't read the book for reference, so how much of this is direct adaptation or rough translation is lost on me, but regardless the writing is excellent here, fitting the characters at least as they are portrayed in this film. I honestly don't have a whole lot to say about the themes of this movie that I haven't already read about; class and gender and the complications therein are presented with great comedic and situational irony and made compelling by the actors' performances. The one thing I disagree on is the idea that the film frames Elinor as someone who must learn a lesson of passion as opposed to Marianne learning a lesson of propriety: one thing I really enjoy about the film is the way the two women cross their idealistic paths, with Elinor eventually seeing more than propriety to love and Marianne seeing more than passion. This is strengthened by Lee's restrained but detailed visual presentation of each character, with Marianne being shown with carefree visual shorthand and Elinor being shown with control, but both achieving a sort of soft amalgam by the end of the film, not abandoning their initial ideals but learning to add to them, with both of them learning through loss, both of status and of their loves. As an aside, I really loved Hugh Laurie as Mr. Palmer - I always love Hugh Laurie, but he was just such a sardonic delight for the brief moments he was on-screen that he left an impression enough that it required talking about. - 8/10
11. The Handmaiden (2016) - January 11th
I'm honestly not sure what to say about this one, though it's par for the course from the guy who brought us Oldboy. The film is bold, disgusting, graphic and yet meditative rather than exploitative. The film depicts deception and subjectivity in ways that completely threw me; I love that I both expected a turn by the nature of the director's reputation and was still blindsided again and again. The film lulls you and lies to you and cheats on you, and it's both infuriating and applaud-worthy. The editing is what struck me the most, however, upon considering it further: the moment that first truly wowed me in the film was that of supreme skill, communicating character and simultaneously planting the seeds of deceit about that character while another character is already lying. It's using one of the key advantages of the medium of film to some of greatest potential, and I love how well the film pulls it off. - 8.5/10
12. Them! (1954) - January 12th
Watching films like this is always a treat for me; it's both a film that should be respected as a hallmark of 50s sci-fi, the same as The Thing From Another World, and the sort of film I get a kick out of because I adore monster movies, especially those that draw from the same sort of origins as the likes of Godzilla. While Them! is obviously nowhere near as prolific as Godzilla, it draws from the same well of creativity; never content just to have monsters be monsters, movies like these serve as a stern warning against what caused the monsters, in this case atomic radiation. In the case of these two movies in particular, it's great to see key differences in the movies that contrast each nations' reaction to the effects of atomic warfare. Them! is a concerned potentiality, Godzilla a suffering reality: where one states "nobody can know what will happen next, this could be it", the other says "this is what happened." This extends to the way the movies are made as well. Them! is much more explicit in its references to atomic testing and the potential problems of it, formed by a nation learning how to deal with a new power; it even follows the same route as The Thing From Another World and has a pontificating moral at the end of the film to take away with you. Godzilla was formed by a nation not only dealing with the existence of the new power, but with its fallout, and a government that wanted to sweep everything to do with the war under the rug. Extreme censorship had only ended a couple years before, and even then there was pressure not to talk about it, so a lot of Godzilla, despite following a lot of the story beats common in these types of movies, it more restrained or maudlin with its approach; the fact that the movie ends with the movies' moral, its victory, being intentionally clouded by military propaganda for what we are told is the sake of the nation, is particularly telling. But I better stop here with the comparisons; I could turn anything in to a conversation about Godzilla and end up talking about him all day.
As for Them! itself, it's impossible not to appreciate the film as a piece of history and pop culture; it's campy and melodramatic, silly by today's standards, with effects that are a product of their time, but its story is tight, and structured the way these sorts of movies are, creating tension through the difference in audience understanding and character understanding. If you know the monsters that the characters will fight (which, at this point, you should), then there's enjoyment to be had in the little clues as the characters try to figure out something truly unbelievable. It's got the usual theme of military strength versus scientific understanding, with a mix of some scientists looking for options that are alternative to a show of force, and others looking for ways to apply that force most strategically. It's always cool to be reminded that this theme was with sci-fi monster movies since their inception. - 7.5/10
13. Call Me By Your Name (2017) - January 13th
I wrote a review for this one here. It was excellent, but also undoubtedly shadowed by some of the expectations set by the absolutely glowing reviews the film had. I'm curious as to whether I would have rated it higher or lower if I hadn't seen the reviews before I watched the film. I could see what it was going for, but it didn't work for me on the personal emotional level. That said, emotional resonance isn't everything I rate a movie on, it was still excellently performed and written, and the direction had a terrific eye for detail, the way the characters' and camera's movements interacted with one another was a particular bonus. - 8/10
14. The Shape of Water (2017) - January 14th
Well, I managed to get a second cinema viewing in by the end of the week. My review for this is here. It's one of the weirdest film's I've seen in quite some time, and I doubt the images of this one will leave my mind for some time either. - 8.5/10
Re-watches
5. Time Bandits (1981) - January 8th
This was one of my favourite films that I watched last year, and I got the chance to show it to a good friend. I absolutely adore this film, it's a pitched fever dream of high fantasy, capable of getting by just on the sheer insanity of its premise alone. Seriously, the film is about a history buff kid falling in with a group of time travelling little people who've stolen a map from God (well, we don't know him that well) and are seeking to become international criminals. That kind of premise is funny enough on its own, but the film is also hilarious, with Palin and Gilliam's writing creating a lot of comedic irony that's essentially Monty Python-but-kid-friendly, the sort of story with the sort of humour you'd expect from Pratchett (must be something to do with the name Terry). The characters are robbing Napoleon, then getting riches taken by Robin Hood, soon they're in Greece stealing from Agamemnon, then they meet an ogre with a bad back, whose boat gets unwittingly picked up by a giant, it's all just completely batty, and the film is ever so joyful because of it. It's also one of the few times where the denouement being a deus ex machina is actually great, since the movie had previously set up as God being a thing that exists in the movie. That's probably what I love most about the movie: the characterisation of God. The entire time He's this foreboding presence on the movie, the bandits are running from Him because they stole His map, and they're more scared of Him than they are of Evil. However, when it's time for Him to show up and save the day, literally because he feels like it's time for Him to show up and save the day, He's this all-powerful, slightly forgetful fellow. He pauses to think when trying to answer why there has to be such a thing as Evil, and His answer is hand-waved ("something about free will"), it's a funny way of thinking of God, whose concerned himself with the creation of everything but forgotten rather why He did so, it's just in the idea of us never really getting that answer because even God has forgotten. Other than that, I love the set-pieces of course, and the score, both reminding me heavily of the Python movies, but most importantly I love the childish whimsy of the whole affair. It's literally an escapist fantasy, running away from the day-to-day life of discussing which make of toaster is better to go on an adventure, but learning along the way basic tenets like "don't steal" and "rise to combat evil", as well as some slightly deeper ones like "believing in something hard enough doesn't make it true", not particularly earth-shattering revelations, but the sort of thing you'd hope a child would learn, all framed by the hilarity of the film's tone and script. - 8/10
6. Carol (2015) - January 10th
Somewhat fitting that I ended up re-watching this with a friend when my plans to see Call Me By Your Name were cancelled. This was just as fantastic the second time around, with powerful performances from both Mara and Blanchett, and excellent drama and tension set by morally grey actions informed by the context of the film. I appreciate the film's ability to have a clear indication of who to support in the film and yet understand the world it lives in: Therese and Carol are absolutely sympathetic, but characters like Harge are not cartoon villains. It allows the audience to be fully invested in the romantic aspect of the story, to be taken in by Carol as Therese is, and have it be contextualised in a way that doesn't seem particularly sordid, but by nature of their setting have it be so to just enough people in the story for it to be a problem. At the same time, Harge acts in the way that he does because he comes from a place that lacks understanding, as everyone does in this world, something that I thought was brilliantly highlighted by Therese's conversation about it with Richard. We see a world where this sort of thing is so strange, so 'other', and therefore scary, beset by a local morality that calls it so wrong that it's treated as a mental health issue, so the reactions of the people around Therese and Carol are understandable. Harge is still definitely a key antagonist in the story, but he acts as a product of the world around him, and as easy as it is to get mad at him, Chandler sells the complexity of the character with the fear in his eyes as his world collapses around him; it's not taking it from his perspective, but it's understanding that his perspective is not something to be merely dismissed, especially in the day and age in which the film is set. Of course, it should be obvious at this point that a film that puts this much care and thought in to its secondary characters that there's considerably more put in to its two main characters. It would be so easy to do this cheaply, to have the film's love affair be the only subject of the film, but Carol takes the harder route of applying so much to the character of its title. Carol is herself a wonderfully complex character, with an entire life leading up to the events of this movie, that affect her actions beyond who she is to Therese. The image of the perfect powerful woman who can melt you with a glance falls away as the realities of her life set in, but you love her as Therese does all the same as the movie reveals her as a more complete person than as a character. The details of her divorce are the best of this: the way she has to fight to maintain joint custody of her daughter, the struggles and lengths she has to go to just to show that she is a mother first and foremost. It's both a great way of reinforcing the context of the story and developing Carol in a much more universally sympathetic way. Blanchett's final soliloquy is a great climax to all this, essentially summarising the themes and conflicts of her character in a few meaningful sentences. Therese is a bit of an odd duck, at once an audience-insert for viewing Carol and at the same time carrying her own indecisiveness, insecurities, and development, she's more of a narrative tool than the other characters and doesn't carry quite as much humanity as the rest of them, but at the same time has more than most audience-insert characters and is carried by a sterling performance from Mara. She asks the questions the audience wants to know the answer to, and learns what the filmmakers want the audience to learn, but her individual attachment to Carol feels more meaningful than just something for the sake of the plot happening (again, most of this weight coming from the way its sold). In this regard, you could say Therese is far more human than most characters of her type, even though these types of characters can often feel less dynamic than those that they react according to. Overall, this film was a treat to re-watch: while I initially gave it an 8.5/10, I'm now tempted to bump it up to a 9/10. Definitely something I'll have to reconsider.
Published January 14th, 2018
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