Reviews

I'm troubled by The Ninth Configuration. William Peter Blatty is a believer. I am not.

Spoilers: what the film is about is a GI "Killer Kane" who suffers a schizophrenic break and takes on a new persona as a psychiatrist in a gothic castle for damaged military personnel. I understand the need for mental patients to "act out" in order to keep from dissolving and, in the twist it's revealed he was always under supervision of professionals, but I'm skeptical they would allow a homicidal schizophrenic treat patients.

But that's just plot holes; I'm more troubled by Blatty's assertions that in saving the astronaut from the gang (who didn't seem to have homicide on their mind, witness the presence in the bar of the redneck seen chained earlier in the movie) and allowing himself to kill them all and be killed in the process this is somehow evidence of God's existence.

The finale romanticises this with medallions and open spaces in the same way The Exorcist does, and in many ways this film in a remake of that one. (Kane ultimately awakens his dark side to save an innocent life and chooses self termination in much the same way Father Karris does) Of course the implication is no matter how many bad people (biker gangs, Vietnamese soldiers and other "enemies") Kane kills, as long as he rescues the one good man we can all sleep soundly knowing God is in control.

Now, much as like movie cats which are always evil and movie dogs are always good (with the exception of Cujo who was a good boy but got sick) these are tropes which are never repeated in reality; in reality cats never kill anyone and are exceptionally talented with rodent and insect infestations while dogs play, fetch and occasionally kill people.

Such is life not movies.

Biker gangs rarely if ever commit knife crimes and American foreign policy and the military industrial complex are very complicated issues, within which America always tends to look bad. Especially Vietnam. Happily in the movie Scott Wilson got over The Fear and went to the moon so fairy tales are real. Therefore: Leprechauns.

It reminds me of that question about how many lives you are prepared to sacrifice, or indeed people you would kill to save a baby. But not your own baby, someone else's.

In the movie you might get an emotional kick but it's not reality and despite its homely empathy it's portentous empty rhetoric about a cold blooded murderer dying with a clean conscience.

Depression is.

Poor Tina. Lurching from one abusing patriarch to another in the vain hope of feeling.

The filmmakers capture the absurdist view from inside a plainly horrifying marriage with its comforts and familiarities coupled with the bleak panorama of the sexed up unfaithful in all its voyeuristic banality.

Tina's inability to interact with the players beyond surface leads to inevitable communicative dead ends, always judging, preaching or simpering the ghastly characters of misanthropy make as much sense as the proverbial fish on a bicycle.

Perhaps Richard Benjamin's arrogant husband and father is too close to caricature to be realistic but Carrie Snogress keeps things grounded letting her anger and resentment out only in short bursts.

It's all a bit dull until the finale; revelations about her husband and lover and the apocalypse of therapy were spine chilling in all its dissociative glory.

Wonderfully entertaining cineliterate conversion of the zombie horror into metatextual infotainment.

By way of spoilers; the first 25 minutes, the film within the film is super gory hyper realised cliched nonsense but still more entertaining than anything with Milla Jovavich. Only once we rewind to the birth of the project do things make sense, but technical marvels like how they filmmakers stayed out of shot originally unless it was filmed in multiple takes but even then continuity would be challenged.

What remains is a remarkably entertaining and smart film about filmmakers getting their souls back.

Friedkin's 2.4 films from the 70s cemented his reputation as a talent; tangible drama, risk taking, determined and shocking.

To expect a film about that man to be as urgent or relevant is too much. Instead it's a 2 hour long infomercial about his best 2.4 films and Cruising. Talking heads gush about his talent and generosity while the man himself waffles endlessly about the state of cinema, Hitler being complicated, Jesus and the endless list of "greats" he name drops with nauseating regularity. Including convicted gangsters who "didn't do anything wrong".

Big name stars smile uncomfortably as they recall humourless anecdotes that fall flat as private jokes or sound like they're at job interviews.

An incoherent mess that serves as puff. It begins to resemble This Is Spinal Tap as he's hired to direct an opera offering insight such as "the composer is the most important thing even though they are dead."

Despite his faux modesty his reputation as a megalomaniac begins to show as he begins to resemble a man obsessed with posthumous recognition among the greats, which is fine so long as no one mentions The Guardian or Jade.

Unfortunately at no point do the filmmakers explore the politics or beliefs that permeate the man or his movies or ask any tough questions, like watching Grandad being interviewed by his grandchildren.

Where Friedkin himself interviewed Fritz Lang who had a story to tell, one which permeates his career, you get no such impression from Friedkin who's only insight into his work appears to be his observation that he makes things "real" and is unable to transcend reality the same way an Antonioni or Argento does, that being the only revelation in this examination of his work.

For most of the film we follow Kong on a LOTR quest down a tunnel to find "home" which, much like LOTR is filled with ancient ancestral Maguffins that beg the question how a giant ape society built high-tech-low-tech magical mystical glowing cave gadgets that open portals to Godzilla defeating artifacts; rather more impressive than opening the doors of my imagination into how such weirdness is possible. This is the one where Kong levels up with a magic sword.

The dialogue and characters are rubbish; it's a kids movie really so put a kid front and centre and revel in the simplicity and cheap significance of "home" and "family" while a significant amount of adults are killed off screen.

But this is not a movie I expect to learn anything about the human condition except in the broadest of strokes, unlike the first entry which seemed to put the humans at the centre of the drama and cast Godzilla as a cypher of a father's relationship with his son under threat. Here we have monsters beating each other senseless in acts of violent domination only matched by human ingenuity which threatens to trump them as the apex dominator.

No laughs or drama, it moves from one action set piece to the next as obviously as tick follows tock with only dewy eyed sentiment to hold it together.

Apart from one scene of genuine menace; mechaGodzilla slowly approaching in the background after going rogue, it's a movie devoid of tension and imagination, the director clearly knows how to make a special effects sequence look realistic but fails to invest it with surprise or inventiveness and left my senses as dulled by the repetitive violence and stilted emotion as Kong after getting knocked out cold.