Annihilation

Let's try this again. Blog reborn complete with cheesy sequel name and tacky template.

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

(Image from IMP Awards)


Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Woah! This is the first Tarantino film that I've actually been blown away by, and is easily my favourite of his films (knocking Jackie Brown off the top spot). The film is, without giving anything away, a new take on World War II; and by that I mean an alternate history, one that is outrageously funny and enthralling from start to finish, with quite a few shocks thrown in for good measure.

Taking place 'once upon a time in Nazi occupied France', the film is divided into 5 'chapters' that follow several different interweaving story threads and characters. The titular 'Basterds' are a team of Jewish American soldiers led by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) who drop in to France to dish out bloody vengeance upon the Nazis, taking no prisoners and causing Hitler a major headache. Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) is a rather clever Nazi put in charge of hunting down the remaining Jews in France, a task he is exceptionally proficient at. Mélanie Laurent plays a Jewish woman, Shosanna, who survives the massacre of her family and hides in plain sight in Paris as the owner of a cinema, one that through fortuitous circumstances draws the Basterds, the Nazi top brass, and Col. Landa together.

One thing 'Inglourious Basterds' is not - despite outward appearances - is an action film. Sure, it's got some action in it and it is a violent revenge story, but for the most part it is a very dialogue heavy film that is made up of protracted conversations. That shouldn't be a put off because it's a Tarantino film, and the way these chapters and scenes are written as almost stand alone self contained mini stories that still gel together as part of a cohesive broader narrative, together with the snappy dialogue, is simply brilliant. It's sometimes tense, sometimes funny, and always engaging, with every character being layered and distinctive, even the very minor ones who pop into the film for a scene or two. And some of these scenes are nerve wracking, ratcheting up the tension minute by minute and keeping you on the edge of your seat. While the plot seems there to serve the characters, it's still excellent, albeit one that clearly takes place in an alternate, slightly surreal reality.

Of course, a great script doesn't equate to a great film without performances to go with it, and in this case the ensemble cast is uniformly excellent, with the standout being Waltz's ruthlessly brilliant and oddly amusing (and occasionally laugh out loud hilarious) and foppish Col. Landa. Sure, he gets the best lines in the film, but the delivery is simply fantastic. The rest of the cast is also in tune with the writing, playing it straight or slightly OTT as appropriate. Brad Pitt is great as Raine, a character that is unabashedly comical in nature, while at the other end of the spectrum Laurent's Jewish survivor is a much more serious and tragic character. There are also terrific minor standouts littered throughout the film, too many to really list out. The only weak link is a jarring appearance by Mike Myers, but I suppose it's only a problem if you're familiar with Mike Myers.

Everything about this film is praiseworthy, from the stylish visuals and editing to the music. One could argue that it runs a bit long, and in truth many of the scenes could easily be trimmed without detracting from the overall story, but part of the joy of watching this film is to witness these characters interacting and engaging in verbal combat, so in my mind the length is more a strength than a weakness! Inglourious Basterds is irreverent, occasionally extremely violent, and overall flat out brilliant and almost certainly unlike anything else you've seen before! Like I said, it's my favourite Tarantino film and among the most enjoyable cinematic experiences of the year for me. It makes me want to go back and re-watch all of his films again, just to reassess them!


[I'm not sure if I've come out of retirement here or not - this might be a one-off. Man, I'm rusty!]

Hands On (Part 4) - Blood, Guts, and Wool

Continued from here, here, and here.

"Ammi, I have something to tell you. You're not going to like this." he almost whispered.

He nodded at the sheep with an air of familiarity and, after taking a deep breath, stated loudly and with affected confidence, "That sheep is staring at me because...  we have a history."

Taken aback, she too stared at him; his eyes were now transfixed by the pure white and woolly mammal before them. She glanced furtively at the sheep, which seemed equally transfixed by him. She looked from sheep to man and from man to sheep, and from sheep to man again, but already it was impossible to say which was which, so similar were their expressions and demeanour. A wave of nausea passed through her. "What do you mean [you fucking worthless cocksucker]?" she asked tentatively, half afraid of the horrors the answer would surely hold.

She noticed him cringe slightly and realized she'd had another uncontrolled outburst. "Please, please, please try to reign yourself in, just this once. This is really hard for me to say," he said huskily, his voice now bereft of false bravado. She nodded slowly, but both of them knew she couldn't control the outbursts any more than she could control the beating of her icy heart.

Not the real outbursts, at any rate.

What her son didn't know was that she milked her condition for all it was worth, dropping f-bombs with reckless abandon, safe in the knowledge that everyone would attribute it to Tourette's. She could sense, however, that this was a profound moment, and that her son was about to bare his soul. While swearing like a sailor had a soothing effect on her, she resolved to withhold any controllable expletives for the time being. Being somewhat responsible for his tormented childhood, she owed him that much, even if he was a fucking worthless cocksucker. "I'll try listening for once", she thought.

"You see, it's all clear to me now. Every second of my existence, every choice I have made, every seemingly random occurrence that has driven me down this one path instead of a myriad others, has led me to this moment." He paused, and then, maniacally, barked "This... is... DESTINY!" as his right leg kicked forward uncontrollably. He then paused once more, took another deep breath, and started recounting his sorry tale.

"I first met Fluffy eight years ago when she was just a lamb. This was when I spent the summer with pervy old Uncle Trendy in England", he began. Her mind reeled - FLUFFY? The word - nay, the NAME - reverberated in her mind, dulling her senses and drowning out the now nostalgia tinged drone of her son's voice. Fluffy. Fluffy. Fluffy. She could no longer look at his face. Nausea took hold again.

Her eyes flitted down and locked on to his hands, which were now firmly attached to the steering wheel by his vise-like grip. Oh, those hands, those tender hands. She despised almost everything about her son, but those hands - surely their perfection was proof of God's existence? She felt herself drifting away into what she called her 'serene space', an imaginary alternate reality where her son was a guitarist rock God who could make sweet sweet love to his guitar with those tender hands, a reality in which he had won the heart of a horny groupie.

Her serene space was unashamedly romantic and perfect, cheesy even, but so what? Reality was full of the mundane, like pullovers, and sheep, and pullovers with sheep on them. The serene space was bliss, its single disturbing aspect the fact that she invariably placed herself in the role of the horny groupie. While this disturbed her, it did so only slightly, and certainly not as much as she felt it ought to. Not enough for her to keep it a secret, at any rate.

Her son droned on, but now there was also a paradoxically palpable excitement to the drone that drew her out of her serene space and back to reality.

"By this point, my heart was beating fast with the fear and excitement coursing through me! I saw Fluffy then for the very first time, and in that moment, in that perfect moment... I no longer needed proof of God's existence!"

Dizzy, she tuned out for a moment, and when she tuned back in - "... need you to understand that my love for sheep isn't the issue here. The thing is, the military were experimenting on them, changing them, and the things Fluffy could do, they transcended my wildest dreams! It's wrong, but it felt so right!"

"I can't listen to this anymore [you sick wanker]!", she screamed. Her hollering was so loud that it almost drowned out the explosion. Almost. Fluffy had ceased to be fluffy or anything else for that matter, having been unceremoniously turned into a shower of blood, guts, and wool. The atmosphere was saturated with blood, leaving the world shrouded in a hellish red mist. Paralyzed by the sight, neither of them could so much as breathe. It was in that eerie moment they saw a figure walking towards them, Reservoir Dogs style, through the bloody haze.

The figure soon became recognizable. "In-[fucking]-conceivable!", she muttered. It was....

Over to N now.

Sabbatical

This will be my last post for the year, as the capricious complexities of the real world demand my immediate attention now and for the immediate future. I write this post to preempt any feelings of guilt my 'blog neglect' may have otherwise engendered. I hope to be back in January.

A quick digression to prevent this post from being more than a mere note. Having recently watched 'Eight Below', a film about a bunch of dogs in peril, I was struck by how much more empathetic I was towards dogs in such situations on screen than I typically am towards humans in similar situations (on screen). Maybe it's just me, or maybe it's this particular film - which is very good by the way - but I found myself genuinely concerned for the well being of these canine protagonists.

I'm going to put it down to the film being an excellent piece of storytelling, but I wonder...

Black Book (2006)

(Image from IMP Awards)


Black Book (2006)

The gorgeous Carice van Houten is easily one of the main draws of 'Black Book', and not just because of her looks but because her stellar performance is the highlight of an otherwise unexceptional film. Van Houten plays Rachel Stein, a Jewish woman in the Netherlands during World War II who, after the brutal murder of her family, joins the Dutch resistance and infiltrates the Gestapo headquarters in The Hague. There she seduces the officer in charge, Ludwig Müntze (Sebastian Koch), but starts to fall for him when she realizes that he's actually a decent sort who likes to collect stamps instead of kill people. When the resistance uses her to try and help some captured prisoners while also trying to figure out who has been selling out Jews - like Rachel's parents - to the Nazis, she finds herself in an increasingly dangerous position.

Paul Verhoeven is the master of gratuitous violence, nudiy, and sex, and he doesn't dissapoint with this film, and neither does van Houten. Puerile elements aside, the journey Rachel goes through is harrowing and van Houten completely sells the character and her predicament, being sympathetic and convincing as a resourceful woman forced to go to extremes for the cause. She is by far and away the best thing about the film. The rest of it is pretty good as well but doesn't really fire on all cylinders; the film shifts somewhat uncomfortably between historical drama and cheesy action thriller, with the plotting and characterization often being more like a Hollywood summer blockbuster than a sober European war film. Some of the action scenes seem strangely surreal and at odds with the generally realistic tone the film usually maintains.

Having got those negatives out of the way, I can say that 'Black Book' is well acted and visually quite appealing, and while the writing may raise a few chuckles it is still strong enough to make for a gripping experience. As director, Verhoeven manages to conjure some tense scenes and more than a few horrific moments, as he often does, but there's very little in the way of overt humour in the film. Which is a shame, since black comedy is something the man does well, and it wouldn't have been especially jarring since the tone of the film is already fairly erratic.

Overall, a good film that comes across as more superficial and less weighty than most serious WWII movies; still, it's a fine piece of entertainment that features an excellent central performance to hold it together.

No End in Sight (2007)

(Image from IMP Awards)


No End in Sight (2007)

'No End in Sight' is a devastating indictment of the misguided Iraq war, a documentary that presents, soberly, the facts and testimony from people intimately involved with the war and subsequent occupation. Much of the content shouldn't be a major revelation for anyone who has been paying attention over the last few years, but there is an undeniable power in this recap of the sequence of idiotic and callous decisions that were made; the end result is two hours of film that leaves one's mind reeling with incredulity and anger. It's a reminder that not only was the war unjustified from the outset, but that it was mismanaged from the outset as well. Things never had to get as bad as they have done, and the people to blame are still sitting smug and secure in the knowledge that they'll never be called to answer for what they did to Iraq (among the many other dubious things that they did, but that's outside the scope of this film).

Alright, so far this isn't much of a review. I'm not really sure what more to say about a film that is essentially archive footage and interviews. It's expertly edited and structured, and looks about as slick and professional as a documentary can get. Written and directed by Charles Ferguson, it seems to cover every relevant detail with an intellectual detachment and presents a lucid analysis of how events played out. Even the narration is low key - Michael Moore this ain't - but while it doesn't attempt to be overly dramatic, much of what is presented will still get your blood boiling, while the remainder will have you laughing at the tragi-comic nature of it all. Perhaps the only frustrating thing about the film is that it never answers the question 'why?', but seeing as that's open to so much debate and speculation, I can understand why it never goes there.

Overall, a terrific documentary and a must see, even for those who are familiar with the subject matter.

Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002)

(Image from IMP Awards)


Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002)

A true story about three mixed race Aboriginal girls who were taken from their homes and who subsequently escaped their settlement and headed home - a 1500 mile journey along one of Australia's so called 'rabbit proof' fences. The film is credited with igniting debate on the issue of the 'stolen generations', mixed race children who were forcibly 'resettled' away from their families for various misguided reasons. The narrative is about as straightforward as it gets - the three girls are grabbed from their home in one of the film's early and most powerful scenes, and are transported to a settlement for mixed race children; they promptly escape and head for home, and are pursued first by a skilled Aboriginal tracker, and later by the police. Their story becomes something of a sensation throughout Australia, and as a result the girls are given aid by helpful strangers along the way.

It's a simple but emotionally evocative tale - I can't think of a basic narrative that is more immediately engaging than the quest for freedom against improbable odds and the struggle for survival such a quest entails. The cast is full of unknowns - apart from the jarring appearance of Kenneth Branagh - and all of the actors do terrific work, particularly the three girls the story revolves around. The writing hits all the right emotional beats; the characters might be a bit sketchy, but are sufficiently fleshed out for the story they are in. I have one major complaint about the film - the storytelling feels somewhat ordinary, with scenes rarely creating a sense of fear or hopelessness or of awe at how remarkable the girls' journey is. This is probably due more to the somewhat ordinary directing rather than the writing. There are some stunning visuals in there, however, particularly of the desolate and oppressive Australian outback (much like 'The Proposition'!)

'Rabbit Proof Fence' is a well made, inspirational film that falls short of being something truly special, but still packs quite a punch. The fact that it's based on true events does, as is often the case, give it some added gravitas, especially in the epilogue which features some of the real individuals portrayed in the film.

Death Proof (2007)

(Image from IMP Awards)


Death Proof (2007)

'Death Proof' is Quentin Tarantino's half of the 'Grindhouse' double bill, with the other half being Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror. Tonally it comes across as more 'serious' than 'Planet Terror', and features a lot of the witty, verbose dialogue and character exchanges that Tarantino is famous for. The story is about a stunt man, Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russel), a serial killer who uses his specially rigged 'death proof' stunt car to kill women. Significant portions of the film are devoted to introducing Stuntman Mike's victims - in fact I'd say the majority of the film focuses on the women - who are played by a selection of luscious ladies including Rosario Dawson, Rose McGowan, Sydney Poitier, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and stuntwoman Zoe Bell as herself. Quentin Tarantino also has a bit part as a bartender.

The character exchanges are fun but seem to go on for a bit (this is the standalone international version, which is about 25 minutes longer than the original 'double bill' cut). I didn't much care for the semi serious tone of what is essentially meant to be a B-movie - the quality of the film is just too high for it to be a real grindhouse flick, and most of the actors are, ironically, too good in their roles. Kurt Russell is the exception, it must be said, because he seems to relish going over the top as the sadistic stuntman. Zoe Bell is also a laugh and terrific in the action scenes where she is obviously doing her own (dangerous) stunts.

Overall, it's not as fun as Planet Terror but still quite different and worth a watch, especially for fans of Tarantino's work. I'm not that big a fan of the guy to be honest, and this isn't one of his best efforts, but it's still fairly enjoyable stuff.

The Proposition (2005)

(Image from IMP Awards)


The Proposition (2005)

Apart from the fact that it was a western set in Australia, I knew very little about this film, and was thus pleasantly surprised by it - it's not often I go into a film cold these days. The story, set in late 18th century Australia, starts off with criminal Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce) and brother Mike (Richard Wilson) being captured by Captain Stanley (Ray Winston). Stanley offers Charlie a proposition - find and kill the leader of the 'Burns gang', eldest brother Arthur (Danny Huston), or youngster Mike dies within 9 days. The Burns gang has committed heinous crimes and are despised by the townspeople, and Arthur is now a recluse who hides away in the mountains. Charlie sets off to find Arthur, and Captain Stanley takes Mike back into town as a prisoner but faces hostility from the townsfolk, who are impatient and want swift retribution. Stanley's wife Martha (Emily Watson) - who like her husband is from England and foreign to the harsh outback - begins to get involved in proceedings despite his attempts to keep her sheltered and safe because her friend was murdered by the Burns gang.

The opening scene lulls you into thinking that the film might be predictable, but the story veers into unexpected territory early on. Expectations are subverted, and I'd go so far as to say that Ray Winston's Stanley is the real star of the film, and not Pierce. The story becomes more about his efforts to protect his wife from the ugliness of his job while dealing with the hostility of his own men and the town, who become restless with the waiting and angered by rumours that Stanley has cut a deal and intends to let the prisoner go. Meanwhile, in the secondary narrative thread Charlie heads off into the mountains in search of his brother, ostensibly to kill him, but there is some ambiguity about his intentions, possibly even ambivalence. Characters in this film aren't straightforward and predictable, with most being multi faceted and interesting, and in the case of Arthur, downright frightening.

There are aspects relating to racial tensions between the whites and aboriginals in the story, but this is secondary to the primary themes of family, loyalty, and (sometimes perverse) justice. The film is stark and uncompromising in its depiction of cruelty and brutality, as bleak as the harsh outback where much of the action takes place. Pearce is fine in his role, but it's Ray Winstone who shines as a character whose depiction transitions from loathsome to dignified and decent; Emily Watson is also excellent as the out of place wife becoming acclimatized to the harsh new world she finds herself in. There are plenty of other very good performances in the mix, including John Hurt as a bounty hunter, and Danny Huston's portrayal of Arthur. There's not much action in the film, but there is some cringe inducing violence that might put off the squeamish.

'The Proposition' is an excellent film, one that, despite having a lot going on, develops its storylines to culminate in a fitting, if slightly predictable, climax. It's a fine blend of character drama and tension, a film that creates an oppressively atmospheric setting. Director John Hillcoat's next film is an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road', which I hear is also very bleak and stark; based on this evidence, he seems the right man for the job (though, to be fair early word on that film has been mixed).

Veronica Mars - Season 3 (2006-2007)

(Image from Wikipedia)


Veronica Mars - Season 3 (2006-2007)

I've given a fair account of the first and second seasons of this detective drama series, and since much of what was said in those reviews still applies, this review is going to be quick.

Time moves on, and Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell) and her pals are all out of school and (a tad conveniently) still together in Neptune, attending the nearby Hearst College. This season sees a departure from the earlier structure of having one ongoing mystery throughout and instead features mini mysteries that each last about a quarter of the season. I found this to be an improvement over the sometimes contrived season long mystery that often felt artificially dragged out and often lost focus. The heart of the show remains the relationship between Veronica and her father Keith (Enrico Colantoni), and the scenes between them are as terrific as ever. Her on again off again relationship with bad boy Logan (Jason Dohring) is interesting at times but becomes repetitive and forgettable after a while.

The mysteries themselves are fairly well done, but it's the characters and dialogue that make this show, and this season sees a slight dip in form. The acerbic banter isn't as prevalent, and while our heroes go through tough times the show feels a bit more light hearted. Some of the cynicism and edginess is missing. The supporting cast is also expanded and as a result characters wind up a little thin, and keep dipping in and out of the show sporadically.

Still, these aren't drastic changes, and overall the final season of 'Vernoica Mars' is still very good. Stylish, well acted, and well written... it's a shame it got cancelled, but on the plus side I suppose it didn't end up growing long in the tooth either - though, in this show's case it could have grown with the character, as a brief concept clip for future seasons showing Veronica as a rookie at the FBI demonstrated (sadly the clip doesn't seem to have the charm of the show). Who knows, perhaps someday 'Vernoica Mars' can return, reborn as a drama set in the adult world?