Fargo (1996)
Cert: 18 / 93 mins / Dir. Joel Coen & Ethan Coen / Trailer
The Coen Brothers' frostbitten 1996 classic is another movie I'd tried previously, but given up on in short-order when I wasn't feeling its groove. In fact, it was an aborted combination of this and Lebowski which put me off the Coens until Llewyn Davis gave me a better insight into how their minds work (although I'm still not fully fluent in their cinematic language, admittedly). Now, I enjoyed Fargo, but I can't say I absolutely loved it, and I think I liked its eccentricities more than the film itself. That's not an unusual state of affairs in itself, but it's not the fire in which all-time favourites are forged.
What's odd about the film is that it's full of really strong character-performances, but none of them feel like leads, exactly. Frances McDormand and William H Macy fill their roles, as the thorough but happy-go-lucky cop Marge Gunderson and world-weary car salesman Jerry Lundegaard respectively, with the ticks, nuances and foibles that would usually be reserved for secondary characters to steal scenes they're in. But the film's primary cast seem oddly understated considering the story revolves around them. Coming close behind is the ever-magnificent Steve Buscemi as small-town crook Carl Showalter, in a performance which you'd swear blind was a sort of continuity-prequel of his role as Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs*1.
Then as it turns out, the film's narrative is in a similar mire; Fargo is a ransom-movie where the kidnap-plot almost seems to take a back seat, and where characters are killed off flippantly, yet the causal gunshots are robbed of any real impact in the sound-mix. Gunderson's ongoing investigation into the spiralling murder-spree is so linear that you're thinking "…is there going to be some massive, clever twist here?". But no, Fargo is a film about script and characterisation, and in that regard, it is utterly fantastic. I just have this nagging feeling that with a more dynamic story I wouldn't have been able to ignore the movie for as long as I did…
Nope.
Yep.
Yes, for a Sunday afternoon on the sofa.
There ain't.
Fargo stars Steve Buscemi, who also appeared in 2005's The Island along with Ewan 'Kenobi' McGregor..
*1 Obviously it's not an actual prequel as Showalter ends up in pretty much the same place (if more pieces) as Mr. Pink, but if it weren't for that detail then it might have been a nice link to have suggested. That's kind of a spoiler, isn't it? Fuck it, this film's from 1996, you've had your chance to watch it before now. Especially if you were then going to read a review of it after all these years. No, you shut up.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Well, when you're in the capital anyway, and it turns out that your new favourite cinema is showing one of the greatest films ever made, why wouldn't you?
And so, a glorious Saturday evening in June was dedicated to the dark, the dirt and the relentless rainfall of Blade Runner: The Final Cut. Sure, it's a little grainy in some shots, and it's a little framey in some of its slo-mo, but the film still looks utterly gorgeous 33 years from its incep-date. Whether the Final Cut is the definitive edition of the movie is still up for debate, of course, but since the core of the story holds in all seven versions, I'd happily watch any of them on a massive screen with thundering sound. The only real problem I had was removing myself from the familiarity of the film and trying to watch it afresh to maximise its cinematic impact (I've never seen Blade Runner at the cinema before, film fans, only at home).
It occurred to me that November 2019 looks to be a largely horrendous time to be alive, and I'm quite miffed that we'll all have gone back to using 10" CRT monitors by then. Although on the plus side, any voice-operation glitches have been ironed out and booze seems easy to come by at any hour of the day or night, so I'm sure I'll manage.
Watching Blade Runner has renewed my worries about the sequel, not least because Ridley Scott now has a track-record of derailing continuity he didn't bloody well write in the first place. It's one thing to complain about George Lucas' revisionism, but at least he doesn't go changing Steven Spielberg's stories. None of this can spoil what the original Blade Runner (in its many variations) means to so many, of course, but I know plenty of folks who can't watch Raiders Of The Lost Ark without re-tasting Kingdom of The Crystal Skull. I'm not one of them, by the way. I'm one of the twelve people in the world who enjoyed KotCS, but I'm sure you get my drift.
Anyway, yes of course he's a replicant...
If you can, do.
Well, you should own it already, so…
In Ford's case, that title would belong to Doctor Jones.
It does.
I will.
I'm fairly certain I can hear the front-end of one, but the internet doesn't seem to corroborate this, so I'll side with no.
What, apart from starring everyone's favourite Corellian smuggler, you mean? Honestly…
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Now this is what Summer cinema is all about; spending Saturday afternoon watching a black-and-white, subtitled Iranian film about a skateboarding girl vampire who listens to Lionel Richie! Fuck, yeah! I know that sounds flippant and/or sarcastic, but it's actually not.
A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night is fantastic.
Self-billed as "the first Iranian vampire Western", the inhabitants of a borderline ghost-town, Bad City, are being stalked by a bloodsucker with a taste for wrongdoers, and there are plenty of options on her menu. AGWHAaN*1 is absolutely mesmerising. The film may be subtitled, but it would work equally as a silent-movie with its impeccable visual storytelling. It's loaded with metaphor (visual and narrative), and cinematographer Lyle Vincent's use of mirrors is intriguing; you never see the camera in them*2, but you do see the vampire. If I was an arty-farty film student, I'd say the suggestion is that it's the viewer who is the real parasite, voyeuristically leeching on the close-range troubles of the town's melancholic population. But I'm not an arty-farty film student, so I'll probably keep that chin-stroking thought to myself. Oh.
Crucially, although this is about a vampire, it's predominantly an arthouse flick, yet you can rest assured that the feeding-aspect of the vampire mythos remains traditional, and the ferocity is there when it's required (there's also a delightful nod to Stephen Rea's 'buffoon' sequence in Interview With The Vampire). Whereas the modus operandi for tension-building in most modern horror films seems to be the 'quiet…quiet…LOUDCLOSEUP' approach, AGWHAaN rises above such parlour tricks by having an unblinking camera coupled with a star, Sheila Vand, who can be so inherently unnerving that even her more innocuous scenes feel like playing Buckaroo! when you've got the mule loaded with syringes…
I'd already watched one Western on this day, as well as a film about psychotic, predatory females. A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night towers above both. It's an outstanding film.
You possibly won't enjoy it, but it's outstanding.
If you think it's for you, then yes.
If it is for you then it'll be a buy-er.
I can't really say (for fairly obvious reasons), but it's certainly amazing work from everyone involved.
You thought the chain to the GFFA was going to be far longer for this movie, didn't you?
Yeah, I did as well.
*1 That's what all the cool kids are calling it. They told me.
*2 You're not meant to see the camera's reflection in any film of course, but this has straight-on shots of mirrors as well as the more commonplace angled ones.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
I know I was pre-warned by the film's title itself, but Slow West is almost stationary. That trailer makes things seem quite dynamic, but rest assured, that's pretty much all of the film's action, right there.
If you love the full range of wild landscapes New Zealand has to offer, this is the film for you, and you'll have plenty of time to appreciate it as the narrative progresses at literal walking pace. Imagine Lord Of The Rings, if everyone was a cowboy and no-one seemed in any particular hurry to drop off The Ring. The (necessarily) linear nature of the plot sees McPhee and Fassbender plodding through a series of vignettes, punctuated by a series of McPhee's continuing flashbacks, and the episodic nature of his prevents any kind of real flow (other than 'Oh, I see they've lost their trousers again', and even that isn't as interesting as it sounds).
Although at least by heading consistently West, the characters are moving in one set direction, unlike Fassbender and McPhee's accents, which wander about so much that their passports are already fully stamped by the third act. Luckily, when the Irishman playing an American and the Australian playing a Scotsman run vocally aground, the film drafts in another Australian in the form of Ben Mendelsohn, to show them how it's done. I can't imagine the lesson will stay learned.
Cinematographer Robbie Ryan uses a beautifully quiet lens, but it's perhaps too quiet for a film where little else is happening other than the scenery. Even the burst of character-arc-closing violence in World Of Sheds at the end of the film is no real consolation, as I'd been hoping for at least one of them to get shot for the previous hour anyway. The film exudes atmosphere, certainly, but it's the atmosphere of the kind of Western I don't particularly care for. The fault here lies entirely with the viewer, I know.
Slow West is a beautifully filmed journey in need of some serious direction.
I imagine you'll enjoy it; I'm usually wrong about this sort of thing
Oh, I have no idea.
Rent it first; best be safe, eh?.
*looks over spectacles*.
Again, I have no idea.
Not really, but I will question you at length about your thoughts on it.
Nope.
Slow West stars Ben Mendelsohn who is [currently] heavily rumoured to be appearing in Star Wars: RogueOne.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
You've got to hand it to Curtis Hanson, L.A. Confidential is a film which knows exactly what it wants to be, and wastes no time slipping on the plaid sports jacket of 1950s sleaze and intrigue. A pantomime of a crime-romp, it never quite descends into camp territory thanks to the poker-faces of the cast, with the leading trio of Kevin Spacey, Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe playing their roles completely straight despite clearly having an absolute hoot as the three-degrees of police corruption.
They're supported ably by a raft of both character and leading actors, most notably Danny DeVito and Kim Basinger, each commanding the screen entirely in parts which are almost understated, narratively. (As an aside, am I the only one who things the young Russell Crowe here is like a young Ewan McGregor in his look and mannerisms? There's a vulnerability in his performance which I haven't seen before or since*1, and this might be the most likeable performance I've ever seen him give. What happened, Russell?)
The only eyebrow-raising aspect of the film is the absurd amount of ADR going on, whereby the slightest and most indistinct of mouth-movements appears to result in some of the clearest dialogue you've ever heard. I'm not complaining about that as I can't stand mumbling in films, but the effect is quite jarring at times, especially if you're watching in hi-def.
L.A. Confidential is a quite remarkable and wholly uncynical homage to the gangbuster movie of Hollywood's golden age, the likes of which wouldn't get made in 2015.
In fact, I'm amazed it was even made in 1997…
One didn't watch Kim Basinger thrillers in the 90s. It wasn't the done thing.
I am.
I would, in a sort of Sunday-afternoon-movie kind of a way.
Not that I heard.
Kevin Spacey starred in 2009's The Men Who Stare At Goats, as did Ewan 'Kenobi' McGregor.
*1 Although to be fair, I find Crowe non-specifically unlikeable to the point where he's not 'a draw' for me when it comes to choosing movies to watch, so he could be putting out the most touching films that humanity's ever seen and I wouldn't know about it. But I doubt that, somehow. I doubt that a lot.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
