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jim_ramsden
Reviews
Epidemic (1987)
Let's not get over-sensitive, eh?
Look, I know a substantial proportion of the American population get a little hot under the collar when funny-talking foreigners start criticising the American government and way of life, but hey - when you're the only country in the world inclined to and capable of dictation of world policy, you gotta take it on the chin. While Von Trier even makes me wince sometimes (the end credits to Dogville for instance), it's his point of view and is worthy of thought. He isn't here to lick your derrière clean for you - if you can't take a little criticism of the homeland, I'd steer clear of any imported movies for a while. Anyhoo, when truly disrespectful films like Titanic break records and reap awards with nary a raised eyebrow, it's double standards to expect non-US films to walk the line you'd like. Von Trier is a genius film-maker... you may not agree with his politics, but you cannot doubt his talent.
Naked Lunch (1991)
How can you have spoilers for this film?
It simply doesn't matter if I tell you anything about the 'plot', you still have to see it to know anything about it.
Naked lunch is the moment of realization of what's on the end of your fork that you're about to put in your mouth. Or what you're about to inject into your veins. Same thing. It's about the wall of familiarity falling down to reveal the truth. After years of doing junk, you stop thinking about the significance of the act of doing it. One day you have a moment of clarity: The Naked Lunch! Works the same with eating meat, hence the name.
Just thought I'd throw that it cos someone said it means something else, and someone else said it meant nothing.
We already know that this film attempts to get the feel of the book, rather than a literal translation of it. This was a great approach to take, and Cronenberg succeeds admirably.
There are flaws, and these actually occur when Cronenberg tries to make the film like the book by inserting straight lifts from it, mainly monologues told by Weller to his companions. They're great in themselves, but feel shoved in, false. They take you out of the film for a while too. Other inserts are similarly unsuccessful. The almost-bookending of Weller and Davis 'doing their William Tell routine' suffers from the same problem of obvious insertion, as does the homosexual images of the mugwumps (what a great image though, pity it screams of gratuity).
Focusing on the flaws for a moment, Weller's underplaying is initially successful and impressive, but as the film goes on it is difficult to know who to blame for the total lack of variation in face and voice: Weller or Cronenberg (or both).
But it really doesn't matter. This isn't the greatest film ever made, and yet is one of the medium's greatest accomplishments. Bringing the novel to film so successfully earns Cronenberg the highest kudos affordable to a film-maker. And while the afore-mentioned inserts ring false, so many ring true. Having the character of Lee writing what he thinks are reports to some unnamed intelligence agency but turn out to be the novel The Naked Lunch is astounding, and brings Burroughs into the film more than Burroughs did himself. There are many such moments of genius from Cronenberg, but perhaps the greatest is the entire shift of what the film is about, signified in one single shot.
I saw the film a long time ago, when I was old enough to enjoy it but too young to understand it. I later saw eXistenZ and enjoyed this too. I have since read the Burroughs novel and rewatched the film. Whereas Burroughs made up the fictional Black Meat but in the world he creates it is real, Cronenberg actually includes a glimpsing shot of what Lee has written on his typewriter: "I am addicted to a drug that doesn't exist. Now I'm going through withdrawal and I am afraid of what the symptoms might be." This twisted genius concept alone gives the translation from book to film what it needs: a subtle but significant back-bone.
Other than that, so much of what Burroughs made us feel in his novel is present and correct, including the superbly handled homosexual self-loathing. It would have benefited from more of Dr Benton, a wonderful, memorable and much more significant character in the novel, but who's complaining? Around the time I read the book and rewatched the film, I also read and rewatched Fear and Loathing. The fact there's a difference is obvious, but the source seems to be that Thompson experienced much of his life on drugs, whereas Burroughs simply experienced drugs. They make unlikely but telling companions for each other.
As a coda, upon rewatching Naked Lunch, I saw how similar eXistenZ was to it. In fact, replace Interzone with eXistenZ, drug-addiction with video-game addiction and add Jude Law and you get eXistenZ. Even two members of the cast of Naked Lunch I have seen in no other Cronenberg film turn up there. Naked Lunch really does show up how flimsy that film is. I guess Cronenberg must've had left-over ideas floating around his head in between.
My Life Without Me (2003)
I couldn't wait for it to be over - what a dire script
Beautiful? Tear-jerking? Moving? HOW?!?!?
In a film where the star placidly accepts her fate, where her unknowing husband is and remains an uninteresting goody-goody and where a man is seduced by a woman who knows she's only got two months to live and is going to break his heart to fulfil her need to get in bed with someone other than her husband... where is the emotion other than disgust? Polley is fine, but her character just doesn't develop... in fact, with the exception of Ruffalo's and some REALLY ANNOYING shy doctor, none of them do. In the end Ruffalo smiles nostalgically as he listens to a tape of his dead lover talking... so it's all okay. He doesn't mind being tricked into being someone's experiment before they die.
Sure.
3/10 for Polley and especially Ruffalo and the way Ann Mk II is introduced to the family (quite clever).
Mr. Arkadin (1955)
How is this anything like Citizen Kane?!?
The endless comparisons between this film and Kane made in these reviews goes to show how little people see beyond the obvious "power corrupts" theme that runs through pretty much ALL Welles' films (even Magnificent Ambersons portends the changes the automobile will have on the world). Besides this theme, Kane was a drama about a man robbed of his mother and his childhood who spends his life trying to recapture both, by playing at newspaper tycoon and building his own pleasure palace and by trying to fill the void where motherly affection should have been with the affection of everyone in the world.
Mr Arkadin is a thriller about a man so afraid of losing his daughter's love and esteem he is willing to kill to maintain it. The story is pure genius: after an opening shot showing an empty aeroplane in mid-air, we flash back to a man found stabbed in the back. Hence Welles sets up two mysteries at once for us to think about. When the knifed man tells Arden's girlfriend two names that are worth a fortune, Van Stratten thinks to blackmail Mr Arkadin with this scant information. Arkadin calls his bluff, and instead confides in Van Stratten that back in 1927 he found himself in Prague wearing a suit with a lot of money in his pocket and no recollection of who he was or how he got there - total amnesia. He hires Van Stratten to find out who Mr Arkadin really is, and thus Van Stratten embarks on a voyage around Europe, trying to trace Arkadin's life back from 1927.
At each destination in Europe, Van Stratten finds Arkadin there too, so we learn that Arkadin has more on the mind than tracing his origins. And when the people Van Stratten interviews start dying, the suspense is shifted up another gear.
Were it not for the lame performance by Arden and the odd moment of awful dubbing, this flawed masterpiece may well have been held in as high esteem as Kane, Ambersons, Touch Of Evil and The Lady From Shanghai, rather than being relegated to Macbeth's 'interesting failure' status. Storytelling wise, this is Welles' at his best, and it's surreal, disturbing plot is more a meeting of The Lady From Shaghai and The Trial than Citizen Kane. Personally, I think this is a greater picture than Touch Of Evil's plain power-corrupts line and The Lady From Shaghai which depends on one high-concept set-piece after another.
Love Actually (2003)
9 stories, 2 worth telling
***NOT-MUCH-TO-SPOILERS*** Okay, one story at a time in order of ascending badness. The story of an american woman (the wonderful Laura Linney) living in London whose love for a collegue is thwarted by her being constantly on-call for her mentally handicapped brother is by far the most successful thing about this film. Linney is superb, and the scenes in the mental institution are pitch perfect. This story neither tries to depress or elevate, just show. 8/10.
The story of a man (Liam Neeson) whose wife has recently died and whose son is in love with an american girl at school is very cheesy, not helped by the fact that the kid is scripted with adult dialogue, but is almost saved by the sheer joy of watching Neeson float through it. This would have been a good story for the kids, but unfortunately the rest of the film is filled with gratuitous swearing and nudity, so who this film is aimed at is lost on me. 5/10.
Juliet has married Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor) whose best friend Mark (Andrew Lincoln) doesn't seem to like her. At first it seems he is in love with Peter, but it transpires his unrequited love with Juliet is the cause of his aloofness. This whole story seems to be building up to one scene where he does something romantic and she kisses him. Great scene, but there's nothing else going for it. 5/10.
Jamie (Colin Firth) is a cuckolded writer who moves to the French countryside to work on a new book. He falls in love with his Portugese (not Russian as someone from Holland says above) cleaner (this sounds like the Hugh Grant story) despite them not speaking the same language. Good idea, great comic potential, but Curtis makes nothing of it other than a tedius love story and ENDLESS, ENDLESS non-gags where one of them says something then the other 'accidentally' says something in reply. This was due a lot of jokes and has been let down. Highlights: Firth's usual charisma and a scene where his cleaner's whole village follow him through the streets on his way to propose. 4/10.
John (Martin Freeman) and Judy (Joanna Page) are body doubles who spend their days simulating sex scenes with each other, but when it comes to dealing with their mutual attraction they're too shy, except they do get together in the end. Good idea for a comedy? I thought so. Not a single joke in the whole story. As with the Firth story above, this is another example of 'comedy genius' Curtis failing to develop a promising idea into a funny story. 3/10.
Karen (Emma Thompson) discovers her husband (Alan Rickman) is on the verge of commencing an affair with an employee. And that's it. What should have been the dark side of this film has nothing in it that isn't in the premise of a hundred other films. The whole story just seemed to get dropped. Where was this idea going? And why didn't it get there? 3/10.
Hugh Grant as prime minister. Nuff said. Why did Thornton do this? It doesn't accuse the american government; it just insults them. And who thought Martine McCutcheon could act? This is just dire! The highlight is Grant and some bloke singing a christmas carol! And that's in the trailer!!! 2/10.
Billy Mack (Bill Nighy) is an aged heroin-addicted rock star trying to make a comeback with a soppy Xmas rendition of Love Is All Around (geddit?). The funny thing is, he's really honest about what he thinks of it and this drives his manager (Gregor Fisher) mad. But they love each other really. The even funnier thing is that this isn't funny, or even competently written or acted. It's just a waste of time. The only decent line is the Britney Spears one - and again that's in the trailer. 1/10.
Annoying lad (Kris Marshall) can't pull. Convinced that his Englishness will do well for him in the US, he goes there to pull. He pulls. Four women. At once. That's it. No, it's not funny. Yes, it is retarded. 0/10.
Which gives this film an average of 3.4, rounded down to 3 and minus 1 for these stories not being hung together properly (some of them seem to end around the middle of the film's running time). Total: 2!
Nine stories, none of which are funny, and only four of which are in any way romantic. A waste of time and talent. Linney should get her kit off for projects far worthier than this in future.