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Reviews
Obsession (1976)
curious, compelling mystery drama with a surprising ending, masterfully set up
We all suffer from those deja vu moments in life when we feel we recognise a place we've never been before or a person we find has an uncanny resemblance to someone we once knew, a loved one, friend or relative. I know of only two film directors who have taken this phenomenon and weaved it into movies worthy of watching. The pioneer in this case is, Hitchcock, and the film ,Vertigo. But in Brian De Palma's(Fury, Carrie, The Untouchables etc) Obsession, we come up with a truly well crafted, flawless tribute to Hitchcock and Vertigo. I'd have to agree with another reviewer that this movie vastly surpasses Vertigo in many respects. I'm equally surprised that its not that well known or reviewed.
The film sets the scene in Louisana state where there is a 10th wedding anniversary going on for Michael and Elizabeth Courtland. Michael played by Cliff Robertson, is a real estate businessman in partner with John Lithgow as Lasalle. Genieve Bujold( Anne of a Thousand Days) plays Courtland's wife, Elizabeth. There is a kidnapping that night in which Courtland's wife and daughter are seized and a ransom demanded for their safe return. The intented rescue goes wrong and both victims are killed in a high speed chase when the car they're occupying collides with an oil tanker, however the bodies are not recovered. Sorry that's as far as I'll tell you about what happens next. Please see the movie, its pure brilliance and the unusual feature about this gem is its connections with Vertigo. For one thing we have the same musical scorer, Bernard Hermann, who gives an excellent off beat musical theme here. Elements common to both films include both Genieve Bujold and Kim Novak(Vertigo) studying a portrait hung on a wall, Bujold in Courtland's house, Novak in an art gallery. We have male pursuers of female interests. Jimmy Stewart observes Novak during her daily excursions around San Fransisco (Vertigo), Robertson follows a woman who resemblances his former wife, around Florence, Italy (Obsession). We have mysteries to be solved in each film. At one point in Obsession, Bujold composes a letter only to crumple it up as it inadequately expresses her feelings. Novak does the exact same thing in Vertigo. Watch the piece with a gold plated pair of scissors that glints at the camera (Obsession), this technique was used very effectively with a knife in De Palma's DRESSED TO KILL movie. And I ask, is that Tom Skerritt I see towards the end of the movie dressed as a security guard who approaches a TWA check-in clerk? It wouldn't surprise me if it was, why? Because as any film fan knows, Skerritt was the captain of the Nostromo in the Sci-fi horror film ALIEN. What's the connection you ask? Well interestingly, One of the other members of that ill fated space crew just happened to be Veronica Cartwright who, God bless her little lungs, lets out some of the best screams in Hitchcock's THE BIRDS!! Apart from these connections what impressed me most about OBSESSION was the story by Paul Schrader, the acting, especially Bujold, who exudes a captivating sensuality in the film and John Lithgow as the upbeat business partner to Robertson. Robertson's character was difficult to play as he was constantly in a state of what seemed like eternal remorse, difficult to portray that kind of a mood on celluloid. But the most impressive feature by far was the masterful film editing done by Paul Hirsch. With only 6 years experience under his belt he produced such simple and fluid dynamics that lended some memorable moments to this film. One such piece of magic is John Lithgow's face morphing into someone else's in an airport scene and then morphing back again to show the compression of memory and time. Another time compression feature is where Robertson stands on a memorial site to his departed wife and daughter. The camera gives us a slow 360 degree panorama and when we return to Robertson's face we have miraculously advanced 16 years into the future. This is pure artistic work and it reminds me of the 'hands covering the face' scene in Cinema Paradiso, magic. Did you know that when Courtland's wife and daughter are kidnapped , the year is 1959 one year after the release of Vertigo and that a reference to pyschiatrists links both movies. Well there I go again. Better yet rent it on video you will be doubly surprised, I give it a definite 10.
Arlington Road (1999)
stunning brilliant political crime/thriller that explores interesting questions about privacy,assumptions, truth and conspiracy theories
It appears that this film was aborted 3 times before it finally reached the celluloid screen possibly because of the volatile subject matter under consideration. Any veteran Hollywood director wouldn't touch this idea with a forty foot pole as it would be considered career suicide to do so. Fortunately,for us, Mark Pellington, a new director on the scene decided to buck all trends and gives us a 'no holds barred' exposition on militia.
We are introduced to two middle American suburban families that are brought into contact with each other through an accident to one of their children.Tim Robbins plays Oliver Lang, a structural engineer who builds extentions to shopping malls. Mrs. Lang is played by Joan Cusack, the doting housewife who dutifully takes care of her charges and supports her husband's profession. The Langs have 3 children, 2 girls and one boy. On the opposite side of the street, we have the Faradays, Jeff Bridges is cast as Michael Faraday, a history professor at Georgetown University who lost his former wife(FBI agent) to a botched FBI raid on a gun collector's compound and now is living with Hope Davis who plays Brooke, his current girlfriend and with Grant, their young son, from Faraday's 1st marriage rounding out the players. Typical families that you would bump into in any suburban setting quietly going about their lives. Director Mark Pellington then adds some interesting ingredients, like the fact that Faraday teaches a course on Domestic Terrorism at his university and is pals with an FBI agent called Carver played by Robert Gossett. Carver led the botched raid on the 'Copper Creek' gun compound in which Faraday's wife died, agent Carver being one of the few FBI survivors of the original team. A piece of misdirected post, meant for Lang, lands in Faraday's mailbox, Lang's reaction to the misdirected mail causes Faraday to start probing Lang's past. On the surface this is an adapt crime/political thriller, but once you dig, like Faraday, beneath the surface, it isn't long until you come up with curious subplots and interesting social commentary. Anybody in America today can easily get private ,confidential information on anybody else in the country. It has become a hot button issue with the general public. When Lang gets to know about Faraday's 'investigation' of his past, he is naturally upset and confronts Faraday in his garden, kicking over his table in disgust. Lang states 'Think you know more about me, than I know about myself?'. 'What gives YOU the right to delve into my private life?" This is the ultimate searing question that anybody who has ever suffered someone else probing their past, will ask. Lang explains his past coherently and convincingly and suddenly we're then questioning Faraday's motives that appear to be based on his inability to come to terms with his former wife's death. This is further emphasised when Brooke(Hope Davis) again confronts Michael's continuing obsession with Lang's past. "You've invaded his privacy", "How did you expect him to react?" "Are they teaching the Bill of Rights this semester,or did that not make the program?"They have an argument and she leaves in frustration. Faraday appears to be trying to right a 'wrong' with another 'wrong' and as we know 2 wrongs don't make a 'right'.To cement this relentless probe further we step into the next level that the film operates on. In fact if we examine the various levels they can come down to 1) a visceral/ psychological level ,which most people will readily relate to and that gives them a film which is dark, brooding and chilling especially at its conclusion. 2) a rational/logical level . Here is where we are interested in some things that don't quite fit, that are triggered by the movie's ending, so we 'investigate' the film with more viewings and maybe reach the conclusion that it's flawed because essentially the plot has 'impossibilities' built into it. And 3) a subliminal/ inference level is reached if we reject the plot 'impossibilities' as flaws and see those same flaws as part of a set up purposely orchestrated by Pellington, then we can focus on what the director is trying to convey. Suddenly characters become metaphors/similies, the film becomes symbolic as a paradoxical portal into a richer, wider arena on the nature of paranoia, conspiracy theories and why they have such a hold on society, about the nature of assumptions and truth. Most people will connect on the 1st level and 2nd levels. Some people will connect with all three levels as they view the movie multiple times etc. etc. The 3rd level (subliminal/inference) to me, is where people can get truly paranoid about the movie. Bridges ,as Faraday ,teaches the domestic terrorism class to his students. He shows them a terrorist incident committed in St louis by a lone individual called 'Scobee'. He shows them slides of the aftermath and as the movie audience can clearly see the building in question is the Alfred Murrah FBI center in Oklahoma City, the one that got bombed by McVeigh and Nicholls in, I think, 1996. The details are changed for the film but the slides are not shown as any CGI fictitious location. Faraday rejects the huge FBI probe which reached its conclusion that 'Scobee' was acting alone.Faraday gives his reasons for the 'impossibility' of the FBI's conclusion. Now is this how the authorities work or is this how the mind of a conspiratory theorist operates? Pellington, the director, wants us to believe that Bridges, as Faraday, feels the FBI makes mistakes, most obviously, because they wrongly made assumptions at the 'Copper Creek' raid that cost him his wife's life. However, Pellington also wants us to THINK like any conspiracy theorist would, to see the logical connections that they can make and try to understand their motives and at the same time contemplate, at the end of the movie, the sheer incongruity of it all. The whole 'Copper Creek' incident smacks of an uncanny resemblance to the 'Ruby Ridge' raid that preceeded the Oklahoma bombing. Now throw in the various stories that were printed in the press about a Middle Eastern man with a broken English accent driving around in a Yellow Ryder truck the day of the Oklahoma bombing, the same type of truck that was used at the Murrah building to blow it up. Add to that Pellington's insertion of the 'Liberty' van near the end of the movie and the connection is made, where? in the movie viewer's mind or in reality. Pellington pushes the boundaries of his audience here and I would think that the relatives of the Oklahoma bombing would have a very uncomfortable time watching this movie as it appears to be stacked in that direction, or is it only that way in some people's minds?The movie asks questions such as can the ACTIONS of a conspiracy theorist be detrimental to any official investigation.
The FBI are fatally misled by Faraday's unintentional final actions. It is not the Langs that we should be ONLY concerned about but the theory and ACTIONS that Faraday comes up with (think about it). Take another scene, Brooke seeing Lang in a parking garage. Firstly, she's already influenced by Faraday's assumptions about Lang, so she's suspicious and she ACTS on her suspicion, following Lang. Then she frantically leaves a message on Michael's answering machine, noting what she saw, long metal boxes. Immediately, the audience, being played along with the characters will conjur up all sorts of possibilities for what's inside those boxes, AK47's, rocket launchers perhaps, components of a bomb. But wait a minute, if Brooke hadn't have been influenced by Michael's growing paranoia, what would she have thought? That's Lang's behaviour was a little odd and she might have let it go at that and not acted on it? I could see this movie being vehemently argued about in film school, it has rich potential for various counterpoints. I love it when directors twist things around and get you to reappraise everything continiuously throughout a movie. Hitchcock did it all the time. Tim Robbins, as Lang gives a superlative performance, perfectly understating his role and being controlled, affable, even understanding of Faraday's weaknesses. It's only when Lang confronts Faraday in the back garden that we get a tiny hint of menace but it disappears quickly replaced by hurt and indignation. Joan Cusack as Mrs. Lang, oh my God, this woman is truly sinister, like a reject from an audition for the 'Stepford Wifes' she pops up now and again unexpectedly to frighten the living daylights out of us. Hope Davis has a great supporting role as the anguished girlfriend to Bridges, excellently played and a metaphor for ethical society's questioning of delving into someone else's private life to satisfy another's curiosity. Robert Gossett, as FBI agent Carver, is just right and at one point quizzes Bridges' If you have anything, you know , I need to know, you'd better tell me Michael, ....'cause I dont want another Copper Creek on my hands..and neither do you" ...."Micheal, give up that class,......it's getting inside your head.. ". As always Jeff Bridges picks up on unusual offbeat films and continues to display pain and anguish that only he can show like no other actor and by the end of the movie we are flabbergasted and shocked at the outcome. Pellington is definitely a dynamo director to watch out for, he can easily get inside your head and manipulate your thoughts. A number of directors come to mind, mostly notably, Hitchcock (Rear Window, Sabateur, Vertigo), Gilliam (12 Monkeys) and to a lesser extent, DePalma (Obsession, Dressed to Kill). It was the screenplay that I liked most of all, professionally written, thoroughly convincing, and look out for the key scene at the children's baseball cage. What's said there ,by whom, is so profoundly revealing, in hindsight, that you need to pay some attention to the dialogue, it's worth it. Considering there are only 6 main characters in the whole film, Pellington still manages to hold the audience's interest. I thought the whole idea might be boring at the start, but it measurably got better and better as Faraday's obsession took over. In large part this has to do with the character buildups, editing and exceptional camerawork, closeups, by Bukowski.The jittery camerawork, and intense facial closeups add to the creepy, uncomfortable feeling of this movie. If you have a good eye for faces then the film is even more spooky.There are no logical flaws in this film. It has been paintakingly set out in a particular way.This is truly a great classic movie in all respects. I do suspect that the subject matter is truly uncomfortable for most audiences to absorb and think about (hence the review backlash and nitpicking?). Pellington is audacious enough to try to get his audience thinking and contemplating about the elements in the movie and when you compare it to say Vertigo you have to remember that Hitchcock's film is definitely uncomfortable, creepy and generated strong criticism, in its day, for the ludicrious nature of its plot, but it became a cult classic just the same. A definite 10 out of 10 here. Get it, watch it, and be scared!!
Obsession (1976)
curious, compelling mystery drama with a surprising ending, masterfully set up
We all suffer from those deja vu moments in life when we feel we recognise a place we've never been before or a person we find has an uncanny resemblance to someone we once knew, a loved one, friend or relative. I know of only two film directors who have taken this phenomenon and weaved it into movies worthy of watching. The pioneer in this case is, Hitchcock, and the film ,Vertigo. But in Brian De Palma's(Fury, Carrie, The Untouchables etc) Obsession, we come up with a truly well crafted, flawless tribute to Hitchcock and Vertigo. I'd have to agree with another reviewer that this movie vastly surpasses Vertigo in many respects. I'm equally surprised that its not that well known or reviewed.
The film sets the scene in Louisana state where there is a 10th wedding anniversary going on for Michael and Elizabeth Courtland. Michael played by Cliff Robertson, is a real estate businessman in partner with John Lithgow as Lasalle. Genieve Bujold( Anne of a Thousand Days) plays Courtland's wife, Elizabeth. There is a kidnapping that night in which Courtland's wife and daughter are seized and a ransom demanded for their safe return. The intented rescue goes wrong and both victims are killed in a high speed chase when the car they're occupying collides with an oil tanker, however the bodies are not recovered. Sorry that's as far as I'll tell you about what happens next. Please see the movie, its pure brilliance and the unusual feature about this gem is its connections with Vertigo. For one thing we have the same musical scorer, Bernard Hermann, who gives an excellent off beat musical theme here. Elements common to both films include both Genieve Bujold and Kim Novak(Vertigo) studying a portrait hung on a wall, Bujold in Courtland's house, Novak in an art gallery. We have male pursuers of female interests. Jimmy Stewart observes Novak during her daily excursions around San Fransisco (Vertigo), Robertson follows a woman who resemblances his former wife, around Florence, Italy (Obsession). We have mysteries to be solved in each film. At one point in Obsession, Bujold composes a letter only to crumple it up as it inadequately expresses her feelings. Novak does the exact same thing in Vertigo. Watch the piece with a gold plated pair of scissors that glints at the camera (Obsession), this technique was used very effectively with a knife in De Palma's DRESSED TO KILL movie. And I ask, is that Tom Skerritt I see towards the end of the movie dressed as a security guard who approaches a TWA check-in clerk? It wouldn't surprise me if it was, why? Because as any film fan knows, Skerritt was the captain of the Nostromo in the Sci-fi horror film ALIEN. What's the connection you ask? Well interestingly, One of the other members of that ill fated space crew just happened to be Veronica Cartwright who, God bless her little lungs, lets out some of the best screams in Hitchcock's THE BIRDS!! Apart from these connections what impressed me most about OBSESSION was the story by Paul Schrader, the acting, especially Bujold, who exudes a captivating sensuality in the film and John Lithgow as the upbeat business partner to Robertson. Robertson's character was difficult to play as he was constantly in a state of what seemed like eternal remorse, difficult to portray that kind of a mood on celluloid. But the most impressive feature by far was the masterful film editing done by Paul Hirsch. With only 6 years experience under his belt he produced such simple and fluid dynamics that lended some memorable moments to this film. One such piece of magic is John Lithgow's face morphing into someone else's in an airport scene and then morphing back again to show the compression of memory and time. Another time compression feature is where Robertson stands on a memorial site to his departed wife and daughter. The camera gives us a slow 360 degree panorama and when we return to Robertson's face we have miraculously advanced 16 years into the future. This is pure artistic work and it reminds me of the 'hands covering the face' scene in Cinema Paradiso, magic. Did you know that when Courtland's wife and daughter are kidnapped , the year is 1959 one year after the release of Vertigo and that a reference to pyschiatrists links both movies. Well there I go again. Better yet rent it on video you will be doubly surprised, I give it a definite 10.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
visual condensation of humankind's evolution amid the stars
If you haven't seen this movie by now then you must be living on Mars. 33 years after its release 2001 can still generate controversy and comment. On this web site alone 300 + reveiwers have made some very enlightening remarks and insights into what is still regarded as one of the all time best movies around. Most of the comments have been in the positive sense with a few exceptions. When 2001 came out in Apr 1968 man had still not yet landed on the Moon. The film garnered equal praise and harsh criticism. Scientists loved the idea of 'Hal' the artificial intelligence computer, essentially the central character of the movie and Hal's amazing capabilities. But critics argued that the film was confusing and fragmented, lacked any coherent storyline. Sometimes you come across cinematic art that demands more than just a passive sitting back and sensually aborbing its content, 2001 is one of those movies that demands your attention and is best thought of in reflection and contemplation. It communicates by many different means, allegory, symbolism, motif.
One of the most interesting comments I ran across was the cryptic remark of a German reviewer who stated that" 2001 IS the monolith". What does this really mean? Rather than go through a brief explanation of the sequence of the film I suggest if you haven't seen it, rent it now and come back here for more interesting tidbits. Kubrick never fully explained his movie but always suggested that people 'experience' it rather than analyse its workings. Humans being what they are chose the latter probably unsatisfied with the simple 'experience' mode of viewing it. There are two scenes in the movie which are justaposed to each other and separated by 4 million years of time. The first scene involves a small family of Chimpanzees who are unceremoniously ousted from their waterhole by an overly aggressive band of renegade chimps. The ousted group would have died off without water until the mysterious presence of a monolith-like device appeared without warning in their midst. After its appearance one of the banished chimps 'discovered' that a femur bone could be used as both a weapon and an aid to survival. When the banished chimps come back to the heavily guarded water hole they are armed to the teeth to challenge back their only means of survival. By killing the renegade ringleader all the other aggressive chimps disappear unable to defend themselves from the new" bone weapons" used against them. 4 million years forward and we have a similiar fight for survival involving a computer intelligence and a human in space.
The computer has killed off all the astronaut's companions and has now shut out the lone survivor, Commander Dave Bowman, from the spaceship Discovery. In fact what the computer Hal has done is handed Bowman a death sentence. Bowman needs oxygen to survive and he has a limited supply on board his pod. Faced with a computer that will not obey his commands he winces for a few minutes and then miraculously comes up with a plan to get on board the Discovery. The computer reminds him that he has forgotten to don his helmet and going through the escape airlock would be rather difficult, if not impossible to accomplish. But Bowman does the impossible outwits the computer and regains control of the craft just like the ousted chimps regain control of the waterhole. In the second scene there is no monolith in sight to 'assist' Bowman. However comments in the past about 2001 recognise the monolith as representing God, and therefore God assists the chimps elevating them to the stature of humans through ' divine intervention' if you like. But notice two elements linking the scenes, water and oxygen. These are two of three essential elements for human survival, the third being, food. What better way to link all three elements than to have the characters in space constantly eating all sorts of edibles ("tastes like chicken, Yeah, they're getting better at it all the time"). From the spaceflight commanders to the space stewardesses,from the astronauts Poole and Bowman to Dr. Floyd forgetting about zero gravity and his food tray, food abounds everywhere in the middle segment of this movie. These are our basic needs for minimal survival, if we are deprived of any of these we will eventually die. If we look again at what leads up to the second titanic scene between man and computer we get another insight into something much more disturbing. Hal controls all aspects of the ship and engages readily with the crew answering any of their questions. Its simply my contention that Hal believing that it was a' conscious entity' makes an independent thought about its position in the mission to Jupiter. Hal decides that it is superior to any of the crew under its serviance and any humans past ,present or future. The reasoning Hal uses is pure logic to reach this conclusion. Hal somewhere in the middle of a yet again 'unstimulating' game of chess with one the astronauts, Poole (water again) decides to rid itself of all human cargo and proceed to complete the mission by contacting the monolith itself. Bowman and Poole do not know of the existance of the monolith but are on board to assist in the mission and help revive the 3 hibernated scientists on board. Hal not only knows about the monolith but somehow understands its importance and the importance of the mission to be completed. So the computer sets a trap for Bowman and Poole and makes the brilliant deduction that the astronauts will rationalise that Hal is in error at predicting a faulty AE35 high gain antenna device. What Hal is doing is playing 'chess' with the crew members lives. Its heady stakes in space. When mission control tells the astronauts that Hal is in error predicting the fault because a replica Hal 9000 unit on earth says the AE 35 unit is not faulty, Poole smirks , and asks Hal to account for the earth simulator's diagnosis. What Hal says next is so earth shattering that the entire movie pivots on the answer. "I attribute it to human error", Hal intones confidently, "Its always been human error, it always will be". The crew miss the cryptic message in the statement, ie. computers are perfect, humans will always be in error, so why should humans make the contact with the monolith, it should be the computer Hal, a superior conscious entity. The crew are baffled by the statement but sense something is wrong and decide to unplug Hal before its does something serious to the ship and themselves. Some scientists worry that the progression of computer technology is getting out of control, or more specifically out of human control. The speed of computation today now streaks ahead of human ability to digest and assimilate the raw data that these machines produce. Could there be a a point where we, as a species, lose all control to the computers and then become subservient to them. That day will come , maybe not in our lifetime, but it will come.
Hal knows what Bowman and Poole are up to and 'checkmates' them effortlessly adding to its confidence as a superior conscious entity. Hal knows about another superior conscious enity, the monolith. However Hal does not fathom the depth by which the need to survive is embedded in the human psyche. Bowman succeeds by using his training , resourcefulness, mobility and something much more important, both sides of his brain, the irrational with the rational. Bowman takes command of the ship and reestablishes human superiority over its own technology. In other words humans have reached a stage in evolution whereby they are primed and ready for the encounter with an alien intelligence. But remember I said that some audiences gave the monolith the symbolism of God. If you substitute Hal with God and the discovery ship with the earth and play the sequence again you get an astonishing piece of revelation. God stops humans from , what? becoming superhumans. This is the Nietsche principle that is order for man to become superman, God must die. In order for us to evolve we will probably have to jettison all religions to do so. That's a radical idea, it was in the German philospher's time, it is today. But an even more stunning revelation awaits us if we follow the pure logic of this. Man creates machines/computers. If Hal is substituted with God then ,by Aristotelian logic,man CREATED God. Therefore man will REVERT back to God in the future. Should lightning ever strike me down with this notion then I'll know I was wrong.
Kubrick was cryptic to say he hoped nobody would find any meaning in his film. I think this was also a clever experiment to see if the audience could come up with some personal meanings that would set a trigger going in everybody's mind. If we could recognise something in the movie that Kubrick was trying to convey by non- verbal means, something that was recognisable to us at sometime in our evolution. Well lets try this, the monolith again could be something else, something that most people readily can connect with.
If we substitute monolith with trilithion and then mention the word Stonehenge. If we mention IBM and computers and Stonehenge and the year 1964, some of us will get the connection. In 1964 a researcher using an IBM mainframe (IBM is one of the commerical logos used on the Hal machine in the movie) discovered alignments to various stars,Sun and Moon etc. The whole episode created incredible controversy at the time between scientists and this was a year or two prior to 2001 coming out. Computers and monoliths (3 in the movie, or the same one 3 times, trinity religious motif), computers and trilithions (3 stone uprights) . If you want to garner more fun with numbers why not zero in on the number of astronauts on board the discovery , five, 3 in hibernation and Bowman and Poole, 5 is the mumber of man. Seven tetrahedral shapes accompany Bowman to the Jupiterian surface, 7 is the mumber of perfection and a number associated with divinity/sacredness. We can also see that there are three separate alignments shown dealing with the monolith. In the Chimp sequence, when the monolith appears, the sun crests over its rim and behind that the New Moon is shown. In 2001 on the Moon itself, the monolith there exhibits the same alignment only this time the cresented light source has to be a 'New Earth' since this is viewed from the Moon's surface. When Bowman journeys to land on Jupiter we see the final alignment which consists of 6 spheriods including the surface of Jupiter. Then the monolith inserts itself into this alignment emphasising the number 7 again; perfection. As stated above by saying '2001 IS the monolith' means that forbidden (hidden) knowledge awaits us when we view the movie. Ask yourself this final question, why do we , as a species, have the URGE to explore?