Reviews

Something borough me back time and again to Chinatown...I didn't know what it was, for a start I couldn't understand the plot, and the beige was almost sickening...but I couldn't resist. Maybe I just wanted to decipher it, maybe it was Gittes' smart mouth, maybe it was that massive bandage keeping his nose together. After about 20, god knows, how many watches I finally got it...this is possibly the best pastiche ever made!

But wait! before you kill me for calling this a simple pastiche, hear me out, because this isn't just a simple pastiche. Whilst much of the new American film makers at the time were making excitingly different, youthful films (for a laugh lets say 'two-lane black top') Chinatown seems to be a look back at the times of old film making - the P.I., Howard Hawks, Bogy and so forth. But this, as much as any film made in this brilliant period, breaks with the old.

Its entire structure, its whole fabric is laced with a kind of uncanny wrongness. Its construction is built to fall apart, to tear and reveal that beige colour, that badly timed joke, that plot which unravels before our's and our 'heros' eyes. Chinatown is beautiful because, well, it isn't. Its charming yet devastating, funny yet worrying. There is something just not quite right about this film's homage...

And so to conclude with some kind of coherence: Chinatown is a film I had to work at (and perhaps this is why i like it so much). The plot is labyrinthine, its characters are often generic, and Gittes is a far from a admirable - even likable - hero, but these are what makes this film. Listing its flaws is tantamount to listing its qualities. And this is a quality film in many ways. The plot subtle and enjoyable (if you cant work it out - see, 'The Big Sleep'), the performances are very good, the script is quick and witty (in many ways).

So not a simple pastiche. This is a very clever and (dare i say) profound homage to the detective film. Very strongly recommended to anyone interested in American cinema and to everyone else too.

Strange Days is a very interesting and enjoyable cyber-punk-esque, end-of-the-millennium detective film.

Set about four years after it was released (1995, i believe) its world is a close future in which Los Angeles is being torn apart by race riots and police brutality - all washed down with a hedonistic population clamouring for new sensations.

Here we find the science-ficiton device. The "SQUID" prosthesis which allows peoples experiences to be recorded, reproduced and sold on the black market for people to experience for themselves. The story follows Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes) into an intriguing and disturbing detective story centring on a murder recorded by one of these devices. Not only does the film flesh itself out with violence, car chases, and a pretty massive party but, through its use of the SQUID device, it allows for a good detective story to ask interesting questions about bodily experience - and the nature of that when it becomes recordable (turned into information) and sellable - when it becomes currency.

So where is there fault with this film? (7*?) Well there isn't much really. At times the film's 'bad guy' seems to become that 90s villain we've seen so many times. And I think the plot-twist and the ending were both rather forced(but this is pretty big-budget stuff, so...). I could go on and list things which I think could have been better about the film but that would be not only useless but arrogant.

This is a great film which, despite falling into a few of the usual traps, deals with some interesting themes and is very enjoyable to watch (and has some alright music in it too) - This is a film of its time which is defiantly worth watching.

'Knowing', as a tense action film works to some extent. The scenes of destruction are the most impressive iv seen, yet there is something rather perverse and pointless about the whole thing. The development of the mystery that fuels 'Knowing's' narrative is pleasingly ridiculous at the best of times, but as usual with a lot of recent American action films, the plot takes itself far too seriously, becoming at times unbearably tense, whilst at the same time (paradoxically) rather uninteresting.

The more problematic, or in fact worrying, element of this film seems to be its most outstanding contribution. The action scenes - the scenes of disaster - are incredibly real and intense. (Me and a friend watched this, and despite our cynicism we were both undeniably affected to a great extent by these scenes - for an American i imagine the imagery is far more affecting.) The problem with these scenes is that as a whole they seem to mean nothing - they lead our protagonist simply through an orgy of destruction that - in opposition to the action genre's tendency to depict such destruction - is neither enjoyable nor cathartic.

This film, despite creating some brutally real scenes (which is undeniably quite an achievement), seems to have no purpose. The carnage that ensues can, at best, be seen as CGI at its most powerful; however it often seems as if there is a kind of perverse enjoyment/paranoia in watching many people die in very real yet spectacular ways that this film apparently panders to. Along with this the tense mystery that keeps the plot going slowly comes apart and by the end of the film, the plot's conclusion, despite its grandeur, is rather unrewarding. Ultimately this film - along with much of the apocalyptic genre that is slowly emerging from the American disaster and science fiction genres - is unrewarding and at times slightly worrying.