2023 - August
Chinatown (1974) 4/4
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) 4/4
Charade (1963) 4/4
Dead Again (1991) 3/4
Time Lapse (2014) 3/4
Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe (1978) 3/4
Mirage (1965) 3/4
A Day (2017) 3/4
Last Embrace (1979) 2.5/4
Hollow Man (2000) 2.5/4
Deja Vu (2006) 2/4
The Two Jakes (1990) 2/4
Woman of Straw (1964) 2/4
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) 4/4
Charade (1963) 4/4
Dead Again (1991) 3/4
Time Lapse (2014) 3/4
Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe (1978) 3/4
Mirage (1965) 3/4
A Day (2017) 3/4
Last Embrace (1979) 2.5/4
Hollow Man (2000) 2.5/4
Deja Vu (2006) 2/4
The Two Jakes (1990) 2/4
Woman of Straw (1964) 2/4
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- DirectorBradley KingStarsDanielle PanabakerMatt O'LearyGeorge FinnThree friends discover a mysterious machine that takes pictures twenty-four hours into the future, and conspire to use it for personal gain, until disturbing and dangerous images begin to develop.06-08-2023
Three roommates stumble upon their late neighbour's magical camera which takes pictures of the future. Driven by greed and hubris, they try to exploit the device for their own benefit but learn the hard way that you shouldn't mess with time. If this sounds like a premise for a "Twilight Zone" episode, that's because it is. In 1960, Rod Serling wrote the episode "A Most Unusual Camera", and 54 years later, in 2014, director/writer Bradley King gave us "Time Lapse", a modern take on the same idea.
Like "Twilight Zone", "Time Lapse" is a twisty, fun, mind-bending cautionary tale which blends science fiction with some good old-fashioned morality. Unlike "Twilight Zone", however, it's not particularly thoughtful or all that deep in how it goes about it. Don't be fooled by "Time Lapse's" indie provenance, this is really just an overwrought potboiler which has neither the philosophical underpinning of "Primer" nor the psychological richness of "Coherence".
But an overwrought potboiler is not necessarily a bad thing and I must admit that I got quite engaged in "Time Lapse's" twisty plotting and the soap-operatic entanglements its leads find themselves in. Bradley King is smart enough not to get too caught up in the mechanics of its McGuffin. We get a few lines explaining that the late neighbour was some kind of a scientist and a few mathematical formulas on a chalkboard. Voila - you've got yourself a magic camera.
He also smartly relies more on plotting and the suspense of what each new photo will bring rather than the thin characters to further the film's narrative. It's pretty clever how the trio slowly become slaves to the machine - dutifully fulfilling all of its prophecies with almost religious zealotry. If a photo shows them dancing - they dance; if a photo shows them kissing - they kiss; if a photo shows a dead body - well... there-in lies the rub.
OK, maybe there's one or two too many characters who walk through the trio's front door brandishing guns for my taste. And maybe I would have preferred a subtler, smarter ending than the bloodbath we get. Of course, it's preferable for a film's tension to be built out of character interactions but I suspect these action-movie elements which feel at odds with the film's sci-fi premise were King's way of compensating for his script's lack of strong characterization.
The trio of leads are Jasper (George Finn) who begins the film as an intolerable jerk and remains much the same throughout; Callie (Danielle Panabaker) who seems, for almost the entire film, to be entirely blind to her roommate's growing insanity and obsession with the machine; and Finn (Matt O'Leary) who sleepwalks throughout the film lacking agency or drive. There are some twists to these characterizations but seeing how they arrive less than 10 minutes before the credits roll, they don't really change the fact that for the vast amount of the film its leads are unlikeable, dumb, and lacking in impetus.
But the premise is an intriguing one and Bradley King turns it into a goofy but entertaining yarn whose charms are similar to those of 1950s B-movies. He has an infectious flare for puzzle-box plotting and twists which change your entire perception of the film. He also has a game cast whose performances are uneven but clearly committed to the cause and delivered with the necessary po-faced intensity.
The result is a fun, trippy time at the movies which might just have come a tad before its time. I suspect that mere 3 or 4 years later, "Time Lapse" would have raked in millions for A24 or Blumhouse. Instead, it languishes in underserved obscurity.
3/4 - DirectorJo Sun-hoStarsKim Myung-minByun Yo-hanShin Hye-sunA mystery drama revolving around a father who commits an unethical act in an attempt to save his daughter's life. Three years later, his actions return to haunt him, trapping him in an endless time loop.06-08-2023
Dr Kim Joon-young (Kim Myung-min) is having a hell of a day. He's returning from an exhausting business trip, his daughter is mad at him for missing her birthday, and he has a gaggle of reporters waiting for him at the airport gate. As if that's not enough, he saves the life of a boy choking on a piece of candy at the airport and witnesses a fatal car crash which claims the lives of a taxi driver and his passenger. Just then, at the site of that very car crash, a bad day turns into the worst of his life when he realizes that there's a third victim - his beloved daughter Eun-jung (Jo Eun-hyung) who was hit by the out-of-control taxi while crossing the road. As Dr Kim Joon-young stands before his daughter's body his head begins to spin, the road beneath his feet gives way, and he faints only to wake up back on the plane an hour before.
I suppose in a way that time loop movies became old hat the very year they became famous. That's what happens when the film that popularizes a subgenre is also its definitive representative. That film is, of course, Harold Ramis' "Groundhog Day". But, as repetitive as they can become, I have to admit I have a fondness for time-loop thrillers. It's an intriguing and entertaining take on the old Hitchcockian "ordinary man in an extraordinary situation" type thriller and since 1993, I have enjoyed many similar films, especially Jack Sholder's underrated "12:01" and Duncan Jones' "Source Code".
At first, Sun-ho Cho's "A Day" is a very straightforward example of the subgenre. The hapless doctor is at first incredulous but he notices more and more signs that the day is indeed repeating: the boy always chokes on the candy, the toll booth attendant on the highway always drops his change, and the taxi always hits his daughter. So far, so typical.
Then, about 30 minutes in, "A Day" adds a few intriguing twists of its own. The first comes in the form of an ambulance driver Lee Min-chui (Yo-han Byun) who, as it turns out, is also reliving the same day over and over again. Why? The passenger in the crashed taxi is his wife. The two men decide to consolidate forces in order to save their loved ones.
The second twist comes a little later and I wouldn't dream of spoiling it because it came as such a pleasant and fascinating surprise. It positions the killer taxi as a kind of relentless manifestation of destiny adding further suspense to an already tense and exciting movie.
The first half of "A Day" is very good indeed. The time loop is very short (only about an hour) which gives the film a palpable urgency. This is not the kind of time-loop movie in which the protagonist can afford to stop and have some fun. The truly horrific results of the protagonists' repeated failures add further pressure. The car crash is portrayed unflinchingly by Sun-ho Cho who still manages to add a touch of John Woo-style visual poetry to the event. The result is a film which has a breathless energy and real narrative propulsion.
The second half, however, once all the twists have been revealed, descends into soppy melodrama. As our protagonists learn a series of life lessons, cry over their mistakes, and make hysterical amends for their sinful pasts I wanted the film to go back to being the tense, original, sharp thriller it started out as.
I suppose the problem with "A Day" is that it thinks it is weightier than it really is. Director/writer Sun-ho Cho tries very hard to add pathos and significance to his film in the second half when he really should have just embraced it as the paper-thin but compellingly entertaining potboiler that it is.
Still, I did enjoy this unusual and clever time-loop thriller mainly due to its relentless pacing and fine performances. Myung-Min Kim is especially good in the rather stereotypical role of a man trying to balance being a devoted father and an ambitious careerist. However, if Sun-ho Cho wanted his film to be more dramatic he should have taken more time to develop the characters and actually earn the melodrama he tries to impose on us in the weak third act.
3/4 - DirectorJonathan DemmeStarsRoy ScheiderJanet MargolinJohn GloverHarry breaks down and loses his job after his wife is assassinated - could it be his turn next ?15-08-2023
"Last Embrace" is often described as Hitchcockian which it certainly is. However, we shouldn't overlook the obvious influences of paranoia thrillers of the 60s and 70s on its atmosphere and visual style. This is one of those thrillers in which everyone is a suspect, the whole world might be corrupt, and no one is wrongfully accused - they're intentionally set up. Our lone hero is not just a victim of circumstance or even the one sane man in a crazy world. He's a morally ambiguous creature precariously perched between good and evil, constantly teetering on the edge of self-destruction, fighting for the last semblances of illusionary normalcy.
The plot is pure Hitchcock, however, playing out as a cross between "North by Northwest" and "Spellbound". Adapted from a novel by Murray Teigh Bloom, the film follows Harry Hannan (Roy Scheider), a CIA operative returning from a lengthy stint at a mental hospital following his wife's tragic death. On his way back to New York he almost has a fatal run-in with a train. Was he pushed or did he slip?
His superiors certainly don't believe he's fit to return to active duty so they suggest he take it easy for a while. However, his peace is disturbed by Ellie Fabian (Janet Margolin), an attractive young scholar who has moved into Harry's apartment while he was away.
A mysterious run-in with his late wife's brother, a cyanide pill in his medication, and a threatening note written in Ancient Aramaic make Harry believe someone is trying to kill him but can he trust his own perception? Disappointingly, after an intriguing first act, the film drops this ambiguity in favour of more straightforward thrills. As the action ramps up, it seems that the filmmakers forgot all about Harry's mental problems. Indeed, who has time to worry about their psyche when they're being pursued up a bell tower by a crazed gunman?
The style of the film, meanwhile, has more of a John Frankenheimer tinge. Take, for instance, the very belltower sequence which reads like it was lifted wholesale from "Vertigo". Director Jonathan Demme, however, shoots it very differently than Hitchcock would. He uses a lot of messy handheld shots, dutch angles, and unnerving instances of actors delivering their lines straight to camera. The result is a film which has a nervous, paranoid atmosphere rather than the graceful elegance Hitchcock preferred.
"Last Embrace", unfortunately, works a lot better as pastiche than as its own film. The suspense sequences are very good and the film has several memorable set-pieces strewn throughout its runtime including its dreamlike, slow-motion prologue, the superb bell tower chase, and a rousing climax on top of the Niagara Falls. Miklos Rozsa delivers a terrific Bernard Herrman impression and Tak Fujimoto's photography cleverly balances Demme's avant-garde visuals with more conventionally beautiful cinematography.
What doesn't work is David Shaber's screenplay which begins with tantalizing suggestions of ancient Jewish conspiracies and an unreliable protagonist only to slowly but surely disintegrate towards predictability. I figured out what was going on long before I wanted to. Great mystery films should feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. It should have a lot of convincing red herrings and left turns before revealing that the truth was in front of our eyes all along. Shaber's script, however, is far too economical. There is really only one character who could convincingly be the killer and only one motive which is revealed far too early.
Roy Scheider, meanwhile, is far too much of a stoney-faced strongman in this picture to be convincing as a man on the edge of a nervous breakdown. His performance is very physical for sure - there's a lot of shouting and sweating going on but no sense of anything really interesting below the surface. Who is Harry Hannan? Who knows? More devastatingly - who cares?
A far more interesting performance comes from Janet Margolin as Harry's unwanted roommate and sidekick. She brings a kind of vulnerability to the picture, a warmth and humanity which is otherwise in short supply here.
Watching "Last Embrace", I kept wishing it would break out of its self-imposed pastiche and become its own picture. I wish it had a more compelling, complex narrative and a stronger sense of authenticity. So much of the plot hinges on Jewish tradition and history but Demme gives them almost no presence in the movie. He makes New York feel positively WASP-ish. Even the brief scene in which Harry speaks to a Rabbi feels curiously lacking in Judaic authenticity. How do you make a film so steeped in Jewishness without even a twinge of klezmer on the soundtrack?
2.5/4 - DirectorTony ScottStarsDenzel WashingtonPaula PattonJim CaviezelAfter a ferry is bombed in New Orleans, an A.T.F. agent joins a unique investigation using experimental surveillance technology to find the bomber, but soon finds himself becoming obsessed with one of the victims.15-08-2023
A great paradox of science fiction is that the more you explain something the less convincing it becomes. Think, for instance, of the TARDIS, Doctor Who's mode of transport through time and space. Over the course of the show's 60-year history, not a single speech or even a throwaway line has been written to try and justify its existence and yet all "Doctor Who" fans accept it as a fact. Now look at Tony Scott's "Deja Vu" which at its centre has a "Minority Report"-style time machine which allows the FBI to look four days into the past. The film spends more than a third of its runtime trying to explain how it works and justify its existence but all the technobabble and pseudo-physics accomplish is make me stop listening. If the film had merely presented the machine as a fact and not bothered to explain how it came to be, I think it would have been easier for me to swallow the plot.
Speaking of which, the film follows ATF's maverick agent Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington) as he looks into the explosion of a New Orleans ferry. His attention is drawn to a corpse of a young, attractive woman found floating in the water one hour before the explosion. He deduces that she was somehow involved and reasons that if they solve her murder, they'll find the person responsible for blowing up the ferry.
Enter the FBI who in their possession have the aforementioned machine. For some reason, they let Doug in on the secret and together they set out to solve the young woman's death.
The machine allows them to look at the past but nothing else. They can't rewind it, fast-forward it, or interfere in any way. It's like a live feed showing what happened four days ago.
Doug and the team begin surveillance on the young woman whose name they find out is Claire Kuchever (Paula Patton). As they watch her daily routine, however, Doug becomes more and more obsessed with the idea of saving her. What if something could be sent back? A note maybe, warning her of what's to come.
The film is maddeningly inconsistent about Doug's feelings about Claire. Is he merely wrestling with his conscience or is he obsessed with this mirage of the past - the beautiful young woman he knows is about to die before his very eyes?
From the moment the machine is introduced, we know where the film is going. We know Doug will travel back in time to try and save Claire but it takes "Deja Vu" a whopping 90 minutes to get to that point.
I found the film's second act mind-numbingly dull. Instead of building on Doug's obsession with Claire and the moral issues of time-travel surveillance, the film wastes time on technobabble and a rather uninteresting chase scene in which Doug in the present has to follow a car in the past even though we clearly see that the FBI scientists can do that from the comfort of their control room chairs.
The film is full of such lapses in logic and ultimately makes very little sense. The trouble is that it is too long and soppy to be mindlessly entertaining and too dumb and boring to be as weighty and dramatic as it pretends to be.
Once Doug does actually go back in time, the film picks up in pace and the climax is appropriately explosive and entertaining. Still, the film falters when it comes to what is supposed to be its heart - the relationship between Doug and Claire. Instead of having Doug travel to the past much earlier in the picture, by the time he does so there's only about 30 minutes of the film left. Not nearly enough time to develop a believable relationship between these two people who've never even met before.
I am probably a bigger fan of Tony Scott than most people are. I just love his stylish, cool direction which (to quote "Family Guy") insists on itself. "Deja Vu", however, is not one of his best works. It lacks the high-octane energy that the rest of his films have. It's curiously limp and flat and too keen to be taken seriously. It also has a really ugly, murky cinematography by Paul Cameron which makes it look like the film print was dragged through mud before being scanned.
The best part of the film, of course, is Denzel Washington the casting of whom has been the saving grace of much worse films than "Deja Vu". His very presence lends the film more gravitas than it deserves and whenever the screenplay by Bill Marsillli and Terry Rossio easier up on the technobabble and focuses on Doug the film is instantly more interesting.
"Deja Vu" is too keen on being "Man on Fire" - serious, brooding, and noirish - when it should have been "Source Code" instead - fun, goofy, and unpretentious. It makes the mistake of relegating the fun part we're all waiting for to the third act and instead of filling up the second act with needless exposition. The film never made me care about Doug or Claire or its severely underwritten and bland villain. All I wanted to see was a time-travelling Denzel Washington, a treat it kept teasing me with until I was too bored to enjoy it.
2/4 - DirectorKenneth BranaghStarsKenneth BranaghEmma ThompsonAndy GarciaA woman who has lost her memory is taken in by a Los Angeles orphanage, and a private eye is enlisted to track down her identity, but he soon finds that he might have a past life connection to her that endangers their lives.16-08-2023
Kenneth Branagh's "Dead Again" begins like a Sidney Sheldon novel and continues in a similar, soap-operatic tone throughout its runtime. A beautiful amnesiac (Emma Thompson) has been found wandering around an orphanage. After being taken in by the nuns, they discover that the woman suffers from horrifying nightmares which cause her to scream bloody murder in the night which understandably upsets the children. They offload her onto Mike Church (Kenneth Branagh), once a resident of the orphanage now a sleazy private eye who specializes in finding missing persons. His solution for the amnesiac's problem - put an ad in the paper and let her stay over at his place until someone calls.
Shockingly, the plan works and in walks Franklyn Madson (Derek Jacobi), a smarmy antique dealer who moonlights as a hypnotist. "I see cases like this all the time," he reassures the sceptical Mike, "a person experiences something traumatic and they want to erase it from their minds. Trouble is they erase everything else along with it". He offers his services to help our gorgeous amnesiac, nicknamed Grace for a lack of a better name, remember her past trauma and, having no one else to turn to, she accepts.
In the first of the film's many twists, the trauma turns out to be a rather distant one. Madson helps Grace regress not to the recent past or her childhood but to her past life when she was Margaret Strauss (also played by Thompson), the wife of an Austrian composer Roman Strauss (played by Branagh). As it turns out, in 1948 Margaret was found murdered with a pair of scissors stuck in her chest and Roman was arrested and executed for the deed.
That is the premise of Scott Frank's screenplay which doesn't make one iota of sense. It is a bizarre, nonsensical yarn in which coincidence is substituted for logic and whose secrets only remain hidden because every single character acts like a complete moron.
Mike Church must be one of the worst private detectives in all of cinema. Not only does he never seem to cotton onto the fact that Roman Strauss looks exactly like him but he's also not in the least bit suspicious of a random hypnotist who wanders into his apartment uninvited in order to uncover his client's repressed memories. "Why, come on in, menacing stranger with a British accent! You must be a nice man!"
With all of its left-field twists, not much of real value happens in "Dead Again". Once the hypnosis sessions begin, most of the film cuts back and forth between the two timelines. In 1991, Mike and Grace begin falling for each other while in 1948, Roman and Margaret's marriage begins to crumble. The film hints a lot at some dark, brooding secrets and mysterious motives but once everything is revealed - it's all rather disappointingly mundane and anticlimactic.
And yet, as bafflingly stupid as "Dead Again" is, I found myself really, really enjoying it while it lasted. The film's saving grace is Kenneth Branagh's wildly overwrought direction which shoots for the moon and hits the stratosphere right from the film's explosive opening credits. In a Kenneth Branagh film, every night is dark and stormy, every camera movement is an ambitious 360-degree dolly, every close-up is extreme, and every line is delivered with the same intensity as if it's being shouted into the auditorium of London's National Theater.
Kenneth Branagh obviously had Hitchcockian ambitions for this film but the result is decidedly more Gialloesque. Like a Dario Argento film, "Dead Again" boasts an idiotic script, a nonsensical plot, and wildly overegged emotions but is saved by some eye-popping visuals and the director's gleeful willingness to go so wildly over-the-top that you cannot help but laugh along with him. This is a superb example of a style-over-substance thriller.
Conspiring with Branagh to create this atmospheric and melodramatic thriller is cinematographer Matthew F. Leonetti who does a fine job of evoking the feel of those 1940s gothic noirs and composer Patrick Doyle who delivers a characteristically brilliant score. Doyle was obviously tasked with impersonating Bernard Herrman but in many cues actually matches and maybe even outdoes the master's brilliance. His booming music is a massive reason why "Dead Again" is as much fun as it is.
The film is also lifted by a terrific supporting cast of goofy and bizarre characters. I've already mentioned Derek Jacobi's antique dealer who tracks down valuable objets d'art by hypnotizing its former owners. Also in the picture is a disgraced former psychiatrist turned supermarket worker (Robin Williams), a swinging 1940s journalist who meets a grizzly fate (Andy Garcia), and Mike's photographer friend who gleefully recounts the horrors of the crime scenes he's shot (Wayne Knight). Note also brief but memorable appearances by Miriam Margolyes as one of Madson's clients and Campbell Scott as a karate-fighting goon.
"Dead Again" is not a very good thriller. It boasts a terrible, over-convoluted, utterly insane screenplay. But it ends up being far more entertaining than it has any right to be due to Branagh's characteristically unhinged direction. His and Thompson's performances are also a reason to see this film as they share tremendous chemistry on screen. It is also undeniably entertaining to watch Branagh play Roman Strauss with much the same passionate fervour Laurence Olivier exhibited in "Rebecca".
3/4 - DirectorStanley DonenStarsCary GrantAudrey HepburnWalter MatthauRomance and suspense ensue in Paris as a woman is pursued by several men who want a fortune her murdered husband had stolen. Whom can she trust?17-08-2023
Right from Maurice Binder's iconic opening sequence depicting train wheels in motion swirling round and round like the labyrinthine plot of the film to follow, "Charade" is pure joy captured on 3000 meters of celluloid. I don't know about you but when I think of charm I think of Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn; when I think of twisty yet clever plotting I think of writer Peter Stone; and when I'm in the mood for a sizzling, dazzling, relentlessly entertaining romantic thriller, I think of "Charade".
It begins glumly with a corpse falling out of a moving train and then abruptly cuts to a romantic scene played out on the deck of a chalet in the picturesque, snowy Alps. It is the first meeting between Regina Lampert (Audrey Hepburn), a quick-witted, whip-smart translator with divorce on her mind, and Peter Joshua (Cary Grant), a slippery, stylish, mysterious American who'll keep popping up in her life until he is allowed to stay permanently.
We follow Regina back to her home in Paris where we learn that the dead man we saw in the opening was her husband Charles. An ambitious, preening policeman interrogates Regina in the hopes of learning more about him but is disappointed when it turns out that Regina has a taste for mystery. After he shows her Charles' many different passports in many different names she quips: "Until two days ago all I really knew about Charles was his name -- now it turns out I didn't even know that".
Regina and Peter meet up again in gay Paris now that she is a wealthy widow. She has the hots for him but he is playing it coy and hard to get. "You forget I'm a widow," she tells him. "So was Juliet, at fifteen," he replies. "I'm not fifteen," she says. But Peter is not that easy to catch out. He has a retort for every occasion and this time it's: "That's the trouble. You're too old for me."
Their romance is rudely interrupted by the arrival of a cartoonish trio of villains who pursue the wisecracking lovebirds around Paris. They include a Texas cowboy (James Coburn), a tank-like bruiser with a hook for a hand (George Kennedy), and a professorial type with a bad sneeze (Ned Glass). They're after a quarter of a million dollars Charles stole from them and which they believe Regina has. The trouble is: she doesn't know whether she has it or not!
Most movies would devolve from this point into a series of mindless chases and suspense scenes but not "Charade". There's very little action in this picture which instead relies on its characters' intelligence to further the twisty plot. As it turns out, Peter and Regina are a slippery pair and they engage in a clever mind game with the trio of thugs with the money as the prize.
Peter Stone has many, many, many surprises up his sleeve and to reveal a single one of them would be a crime. His script is a minor miracle because it is a rare thriller which manages to pull off a number of twists which entirely change your perception of the film without once straining your credulity. He plays the audience like a virtuoso always knowing which strings to pull to get the wanted reaction and always doing it with grace and skill.
Director Stanley Donen strikes a wonderfully stylish, charming tone for the film. "Charade" is often referred to as the best Hitchcock film Hitchcock never mind, but I struggle to see the connection. "Charade" doesn't have Hitchcock's edginess. This is a film without a sarcastic bone in its body. There's no irony here, no dark humour - it's pure unadulterated joy. The whole thing is a game played with glee by charismatic, loveable players. It is a film which aims only ever to put a smile on your face and, for two hours straight, it succeeds deftly.
There are so many things right with "Charade" it would be impossible to name them all. Henry Mancini's beautiful, melancholic yet exciting score would be one and Charles Lang's picturesque, colourful cinematography another. But the real pleasure is watching Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant, two of the most charming, loveable, charismatic, seductive stars the screen has ever seen play off of one another. Their on-screen chemistry is unparalleled. When they trade barbs the movie sizzles! When they hug warmth radiates from the screen! Notice also how rare it is to see a romantic comedy in which the woman relentlessly pursues a man. I've not seen many female characters with so much agency in a romantic relationship as Regina Lampert.
Watching "Charade" again today I wondered how it must have seemed in 1963. Perhaps it might have looked a little quaint, old-fashioned, and fantastical. But these are the movies that last. Fun, warm, sizzling entertainment that reminds me of Hitchcock's quote about how most movies are slices of life but his are slices of cake. So is "Charade", a film I'm always in the mood to watch.
4/4 - DirectorEdward DmytrykStarsGregory PeckDiane BakerWalter MatthauAn accountant suddenly suffers from amnesia. This appears related to the suicide of his boss. Now some violent thugs are out to get him. They work for a shadowy figure known simply as The Major.18-08-2023
There can be no doubt that Universal put together "Mirage" in order for it to ride the coattails of the unexpectedly successful "Charade", another twisty thriller written by Peter Stone. It even reunites two of the former film's cast members, Walter Matthau and George Kennedy, in similar roles but a few of the key players are missing including director Stanley Donen and "Charade's" charming, charismatic stars Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn whose witty interplay arguably made the film as loveable as it was.
It's the lack of Donen, however, which I think most accounts for the stark differences between the two films. He was replaced by Edward Dmytryk, another terrific director, whose approach to Stone's shifting sands-style thriller is far more serious and noirish. He doesn't have Donen's lightness of touch and as a result "Mirage" has a more serious, noirish tone which is made all the more evident by Joseph MacDonald's shadowy black-and-white photography.
The film begins with our protagonist, cost accountant David Stillwell (Gregory Peck), working late in his office on the 27th floor of a New York skyscraper when he is startled by a mysterious blackout. Unwilling to wait for the power to come back, he makes his way down the seemingly endless stairs where he runs into Sheila (Diane Baker), a woman who seems to know him even though he cannot remember her. When he tells her he's not the man she thinks he is, she runs off in a panic. He pursues her all the way down to the building's basement but loses her in the dark.
Strange occurrences continue to plague David Stillwell on his way home. The bartender at his regular bar remarks that he hasn't seen him for a while even though David swears he was there only yesterday. The same comment is made by the concierge at David's apartment and when David finally gets into his flat he finds a man with a gun waiting for him.
At this point, the film begins to feel like an episode of "The Twilight Zone" and you can almost hear Rod Serling telling you, in that deep, commanding voice of his, about how the blackout sent David Stillwell into a parallel dimension. But don't worry. "Mirage" is not that kind of a mystery and there is a worldly explanation for the bizarre events surrounding our hero.
The most fascinating question in "Mirage" is not so much what is happening to David Stillwell as who the hell is David Stillwell. There seem to be significant holes in his memory and armed men are more than willing to plug those holes with bullets. "Mirage" is at its best when we're not sure whether David is a good man caught up in a murder plot or the murder plot's very instigator. Like a prototype for "The Bourne Identity", the film builds up a terrific atmosphere of ambiguity surrounding the protagonist himself which adds to the bizarre mystery he finds himself in.
At a certain point, however, "Mirage" entangles itself far too much by trying to obfuscate the viewer. There is so much obscure dialogue revolving around a mysterious Major whom everyone is terrified of that my head began to spin and I began to wonder if I was watching a missing episode of Patrick McGoohan's "The Prisoner".
The initial set-up of this film is terrific and I was hooked until I realized the film was going nowhere. It was merely jerking me around from one mystery to the next. How can a building's entire floor disappear? How come a cost accountant knows nothing about accounting? How come David's building doesn't have a basement when we clearly saw him go down into the basement? etc. etc. etc.
Too many scenes in "Mirage" seem to be designed solely in order to confuse rather than to further a coherent plot. Indeed, once the plot is revealed, quite a lot of what happened makes no sense at all. Unlike "Charade" which had an airtight, clever, and intricate plot, "Mirage" has nothing but set-up. It piles on one bizarre puzzle after another which it cannot really satisfactorily resolve. It doesn't help, I suppose, that the climax of the film is so talky and leadenly paced that I found my attention slipping. Imagine if instead of that masterful chase through a theatre, "Charade" ended with Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, and the villain sitting down for a lunch meeting.
Still, "Mirage" is undeniably an atmospheric movie thanks to Dmytryk's engaging direction and MacDonald's beautiful photography. It also has a first-rate supporting cast including the always wonderful Walter Matthau who steals the film as a hapless private eye trying to help David Stillwell solve the film's many mysteries.
It is ultimately, however, Gregory Peck who carries the picture. Watching him in "Mirage" it is obvious why he was as big a movie star as he was. Not only does he have a real star presence on screen, but he is also able to hold your attention and evoke sympathy even when playing a character as ambiguous and mysterious as this. Until the very end of the film, we're not sure who David Stillwell is or if he's a murderer but our faith in Gregory Peck never wavers.
"Mirage" is nowhere near as good or as memorable as "Charade" lacking as it does its clever plotting and charm but it is a decent if ultimately underwhelming paranoia thriller bolstered by its terrific cast and atmosphere of unease. The first half which Edward Dmytryk imbues with a nightmarish, almost horror-like quality is especially good before the plotting falls apart.
3/4 - DirectorBasil DeardenStarsGina LollobrigidaSean ConneryRalph RichardsonTyrannical, but ailing, tycoon Charles Richmond becomes very fond of his attractive Italian nurse, Maria. The nurse, in turn, falls in love with Charles' ne'er-do-well nephew Anthony, who plots ways to gain control of his uncle's fortune.21-08-2023
I was surprised to see a contemporary review describe "Woman of Straw" as old-fashioned since it seems to me an exemplary product of its time. It is one of those post-Douglas Sirk glossy melodramas awkwardly mixing Harold Robbins-style skullduggery among the rich and famous with Alfred Hitchcock-style murder and mayhem to create the cinematic precursor to what would eventually become prime-time soap operas.
It has more than a little in common with Michael Gordon's awful "Portrait in Black" both revolving around the murder of a despicable rich old man at the hands of his much younger wife and her lover. "Woman of Straw" is thankfully a whole lot more watchable and dynamic if certainly not any more intelligent or believable. Still, "Portrait in Black" had the common sense to start with the love affair already in progress and the murder plot underway. "Woman of Straw" takes close to 70 minutes to get going which was ultimately too long to spend with its rather unlikeable trio of characters.
The evil old man here is Charles Richmond (Ralph Richardson), a caricature of a villain who throws around racial epithets and takes cruel pleasure in making his black manservants pretend to be dogs. Out of pure spight, Richmond has disinherited his playboy nephew Tony (Sean Connery) who comes up with a perfect way to murder his uncle and get his hands on his millions.
He convinces Charles' doting nurse Maria (Gina Lollobrigida) to seduce his ageing uncle so that he would leave his fortune to her. They will then murder the old blaggard themselves and share the money. What could possibly go wrong?
The first 70 minutes of "Woman of Straw" are absolutely leaden. Here is a thriller with no suspense, no mystery, and no memorable set pieces. I suppose what the film is trying to be is a kind of a Claude Chabrol-style character piece but our three leads are horribly underwritten and uninteresting. Charles is a caricature, Tony is a shallow bore, and Maria is a mindless puppet for the two of them to jerk around at their pleasure (the titular woman of straw, I suppose).
The performances do this film no favours either. Ralph Richardson gives an uncharacteristically one-note performance shouting all of his lines at the top of his voice and lacking any sense of glee or humour. Sean Connery, who would do such a great job of playing morally ambiguous characters later in his career, barely registers on screen as Tony the Cad. He also badly struggles with his accent which flips-flops between schoolboy RP and Connery's natural Scottish brogue sometimes within the same sentence. Gina Lollobrigida's characterization of Maria, meanwhile, is wildly inconsistent. I guess she was written to be an indecisive character but Lollobrigida's performance makes her seem psychotic. She changes her mind about the murder scheme from scene to scene sometime seeming to genuinely care about Charles only to hate him in the very next scene. She is also a very poor femme fatale. Not only does she lack any chemistry with Sean Connery but she is also never convincing as a seductress.
Basil Dearden's direction is elegantly workmanlike, but he fails to imbue the film with any energy or suspense. I wonder what Alfred Hitchcock would have done with this material. I know for sure that he would have made Charles a more interesting character. He would have made him gleefully evil, someone who revels in his cruelty. He would have also made Maria a more relatable character. Someone whose motives and allegiances were clearer. Most importantly, however, he would have given the proceedings a tighter pace and a dark sense of humour rather than the stoney-faced, regal pacing Dearden imposes.
The film does pick up some steam in its final 40 minutes when some thriller elements finally rear their heads. The appearance of a few reliable and familiar character actors such as Alexander Knox and Michael Goodliffe also helps. Unfortunately, it's too late to save "Woman of Straw", a rather listless and unengaging melodrama based on a novel by Catherine Arley.
2/4 - DirectorTed KotcheffStarsGeorge SegalJacqueline BissetRobert MorleyOne by one, the greatest Chefs in Europe are being killed. Each chef murdered in the same manner that their own special dish is prepared in. Food critics and the (many) self-proclaimed greatest Chefs in Europe demand the mystery be solved.22-08-2023
Don't you just love it when a film's title doubles as a plot summary? Four years after penning the similarly self-explanatory "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three", "Charade" scribe Peter Stone adapted "Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe" from a novel by Nan & Ivan Lyons. Unfortunately, the film's plot is not one of its most appetizing courses. Instead, I think "Travelogue with Jokes" would have been a more apt title.
A food-based film invites a critic to make a series of cooking puns. I will try to limit myself even though I cannot resist noticing that the film is a frothy mixture of farce, romance, and murder in the most exotic locations Europe can offer. While pleasing to the palate, "Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe" is not a truly filling meal.
Oh, the jokes are delightful especially when delivered by Robert Morley who is here at his grandiose best as the calamitously fat food snob Maximillian Vandeveer, editor and eater-in-chief of a Micheline-like magazine. Not that Max would ever associate himself with something as common as a car tyre!
Peter Stone is one of my favourite screenwriters partly because of his flare for writing great, snappy, witty dialogue. Indeed, the first 5 minutes of this film are a splendid showcase consisting of a long, deftly executed scene in which Morley marches through the offices of his magazine spouting pithy rebukes at his employees. When his doctor has the gall to suggest a diet, he explodes: "I am what I am precisely because I've eaten my way to the top! I'm a work of art, created by the finest chefs in the world. Every fold is a brush stroke! Every crease a sonnet! Every chin a concerto!"
The film proceeds in a similarly broad manner and a food fight breaks out within the next 10 minutes. "Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe" may be about the best European cooking but its taste in humour is positively proletarian. There are jokes-a-minute here about bottom-pinching Italians, snobbish Frenchmen, and stupid Americans. There's farce and slapstick, insults abound, and it's all terribly amusing! Especially when Robert Morley is on-screen.
The problem, however, is that Stone and director Ted Kotcheff never quite manage to satisfactorily wrap all the humour, the gags, and the wit into a coherent, well-structured, and evenly-paced movie. Trouble is two-fold, you see, beginning with the plot. The story revolves around a series of murders whose victims, you guessed it, are the best chefs in Europe as chosen by Max's magazine. They are being found murdered and turned into their signature dish. The trouble is that this mystery plot is awfully thin, painfully predictable, and quite uninteresting.
Similarly uninteresting are the film's protagonists, so much so that I have successfully avoided mentioning them so far. They are Robby Ross (George Segal), an uncultured American fast food chain owner, and his ex-wife Natasha (Jacqueline Bisset), Europe's premiere sweets-maker and a future victim of the killer.
It is hard not to compare this film negatively to Stone's masterpiece "Charade". That film had a great plot, deviously twisty and unpredictable. It also centred on a pair of likeable, witty, smart characters who share a sizzling chemistry. No such luck here! Segal and Bisset are fine actors but they're not Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. They lack the chemistry and the comic timing. Their characters are also not as well-rounded or loveable, especially Robby, the adulterous loudmouth who stalks Natasha across Europe like a clowning version of Ted Bundy.
Halfway through the picture, I asked myself why they were even necessary. The film would have been so much better had it focused on Max, a brilliant, hilarious comedic creation so brilliantly, energetically played by Robert Morley that he simply screams to be given a film all of his own. He should have been the gourmet detective, eating his way through Europe while hunting down the serial killer. Now there's a better movie!
But, don't get the wrong impression! "Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe" is not a bad movie. Merely one that frustratingly never reaches the heights of its potential. When it works, it is a tremendously funny and deliciously joyful romp through Europe's most picturesque locations wonderfully shot by John Alcott and set to Henry Mancini's characteristically sentimental yet bouncy music.
Along the way, we run into some of Europe's finest character actors including Jean-Pierre Cassel, Philippe Noiret, Jean Rochefort, Gigi Proletti, Stefano Satta Flores, Frank Windsor, Peter Sallis, John Le Mesurier, and Joss Ackland.
Finally, there are the great culinary concoctions which Ted Kotcheff shoots just as lovingly as he does the film's many exotic locals. The film's best scene is a gripping montage sequence of a chef meticulously preparing the most appetizing-looking cake I've ever seen. This is definitely a film that will make you hungry!
Finally, of course, there's Robert Morley who steals the show under the noses of Segal, Bisset, and the glorious food. This is a career-best performance for him and when he's allowed to rule the stage, he is simply a joy to watch. At times, he reminded me of Charles Laughton in "Witness for the Prosecution" in more ways than the obvious... but then, the explanation to that would be a spoiler!
3/4 - DirectorJoseph SargentStarsWalter MatthauRobert ShawMartin BalsamFour armed men hijack a New York City subway car and demand a ransom for the passengers. The city's police are faced with a conundrum: Even if it's paid, how could they get away?23-08-2023
A good and reasonable question is asked by various characters all throughout "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three": "Why would anybody hijack a goddamn subway train?" And yet four heavily armed men calling themselves Messrs Blue, Green, Grey, and Brown did. OK, hijacking the train is the easy part. How will they get out? Lt Garber of the Transit Police (Walter Matthau) has a suggestion - they'll make every man, woman, and child in New York City close their eyes and count to a hundred.
But before we get to that, the ransom must be paid. The hijackers stop the train in the middle of a tunnel, halfway between two stations, and demand one million dollars. Unless the money is delivered to them in sixty minutes, they'll start killing off the hostages one by one. A scramble of bureaucracy ensues - the mayor has to OK the operation, the local cops squabble with the transit cops over the jurisdiction, other subway trains have to be rerouted causing a major traffic jam... All the while, the eighteen hostages sit in the silence of a darkened train car while their lives hang by a thread.
"The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" was not the first hijack thriller ever made and it was certainly not the last but I can't think of a single example of the genre being done better. Never has the hopelessness, the tension, and the uncertainty of a hostage situation been better conveyed than here.
There is barely any action in this movie - only a few stray bullets, warning shots, and a few nervous scuffles and yet the movie sizzles with excitement. Everything about it feels so completely real that you can't help but get caught up in the situation. Every single character, every hostage, criminal, cop, politician, and subway worker is clearly profiled and recognisable. Their everyday lives get in the way of the situation. A key worker is not at his post when needed because he's looking for a plumber to retrieve a ring lost in the john. The mayor is sick with the flu and really, really, really doesn't want to deal with the situation. The deputy mayor is sick with the mayor avoiding responsibility and refuses to make any decisions without him.
No director of photography does gritty as well as Owen Roizman. You can almost smell the stuffy, stinky inside of the hijacked train. Look at the textures of filth and grime on its metal walls. The real-life locations are equally as unglamorous. The chaotic control room needs a new lick of paint, the office of the transport police is cramped and messy, the inside of the tunnel dark and forbidding.
But the thing that I absolutely love about "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" is just how funny it is. The film was adapted from John Godey's novel by Peter Stone, a writer whose mastery of language is only matched by his plotting wizardry. As I mentioned above, he clearly delineates every character, no matter how minor they are, and gives them a caustic, New Yorker sense of humour. One such minor character is the mayor's wife. As her husband neurotically bristles around the house unable to decide whether to pay the hijackers she tells him that a million dollars sounds like a lot of money but that he should think about what he'll get in return. "What," he asks. "Eighteen sure votes," she shrugs.
Meanwhile, the plot fits together like a brilliantly executed heist. Stone brilliantly injects something as clear-cut as a hostage thriller with real suspense and mystery. How will they get away from a subway train caught between two stations and surrounded by armed police? Even when we get the clever and original answer, Stone keeps piling on the mysteries.
Walter Matthau may be the biggest star in the picture but "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" is an ensemble piece if I've ever seen one. Robert Shaw is terrific as the cold, exacting leader of the hijackers as are Martin Balsam as the talkative, nervous train driver and Hector Elizondo as the loose cannon of the group. There's a brilliant, Oscar-worthy supporting turn from Tom Pedi as the memorably short-tempered subway supervisor who's had enough of these hijackers on his train. Some great turns also come from Jerry Stiller as another subway cop, Lee Wallace as the undecisive mayor, and Tony Roberts as his long-suffering deputy. Doris Roberts plays the mayor's wife who steals a long scene with a single line.
"The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" is a beautiful gem of a movie. It's 100 minutes of constant suspense and excitement loaded with humour and wrapped in an atmosphere of absolute realism. Joseph Sargent, a highly experienced TV director, keeps the proceedings moving at a tight, fast pace while David Shire's rhythmic, atonal score keeps the audience's blood rushing.
4/4 - DirectorRoman PolanskiStarsJack NicholsonFaye DunawayJohn HustonA private detective hired to expose an adulterer in 1930s Los Angeles finds himself caught up in a web of deceit, corruption, and murder.25-08-2023
For me, "Chinatown" is the quintessential Hollywood film. The kind that the studios made in the 70s, a little in the 90s, and that they should make today. It's a film with a grand reputation, often touted as one of the greatest movies of all time, certain to be found on the lists of the greatest thrillers ever, and yet it is a real "audience picture" as director Roman Polanski himself would put it. It's a taut, twisty, endlessly entertaining old-fashioned gumshoe yarn with a few subversions to the formula that make it unforgettable. It is a fun movie then, expensive and gorgeous to look at. The kind of movie that Hollywood has always been the best at making. But it is something more. As written by Robert Towne, "Chinatown" packs more of a punch than your standard hardboiled thriller. It draws you in with run-of-the-mill genre tropes - murders, land deals, and thugs with guns - but ultimately delivers a dark, thoughtful, curiously romantic story about a man clinging to the last vestiges of his optimism trying his best to correct the mistakes of the past and avoid the pitfalls of the future. No matter how many times I see "Chinatown", the ending always gets me. Even though I know what's coming (hell, everyone does) it always fills me with a kind of rightful rage, a frustration at the injustice of the world. In other words, it makes me feel exactly the way its hero does at that moment which is something only a truly great movie can accomplish with such seeming ease and unpretentiousness.
You see, "Chinatown" is a refreshingly low-key movie. One which doesn't insist upon itself. It never lets on that it's an important picture. It plays the genre straight and keeps its multi-layered narrative buried under a lot of gripping intrigue and a forceful narrative drive.
Robert Towne's screenplay begins in about as ordinary a fashion as a hardboiled story can - with a private eye getting an assignment from a client. And yet, Towne is already subverting genre expectations. J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is no Sam Spade. He's an upmarket private eye, engaged in "marital work", it's his "metier". He's not your typical slouched, poorly shaven slob wasting away hours in a rundown room you could barely call an office. No. Gittes is a natty dresser, comfortably ensconced in a fancy leather chair, surrounded by wood-panelled walls and waited on by a cute secretary.
He's also not a rough-around-the-edges Humphrey Bogart-type. Oh, sure, he's a wisecracker and a brawler when need be, but he's a surprisingly gentle guy for a movie such as this. Most of the time, he's soft-spoken, prefers restaurants over dive bars, and does everything he can to avoid a fight. It's telling that in the few times he cannot avoid it he usually ends up in bandages.
Instead of fights, Gittes seems to be more interested in finding publicity. I love the little moment in which, while trying to get his client out of the police station, he stops at the front door to make sure the journalists know how to spell his name.
Towne seems to be doing everything he can to create a character who really has no business getting involved in this story. Why should Gittes, a successful, busy private detective with no great love for violence become so obsessed with finding the killer of a man he barely knew? Why should he put his life on the line for some acres of land that don't belong to him anyway and another family's problems? That is the real driving mystery behind "Chinatown", one which is beautifully and succinctly answered by the film's iconic final line.
Unusually, the plot, complex and occasionally indecipherable as a hardboiled plot should be, is also a clever subversion by Towne. He anchors it by giving it a basis in history then centres it not on some quasi-magical McGuffin or a fanciful drug deal but a very real and plausible manipulation of the land market. A thumb through the history of the United States will probably reveal hundreds of such schemes.
The last brilliant subversion of the hardboiled formula is our femme fatale Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) but to get into that would mean going into spoilers. Suffice it to say that although Faye Dunaway has the icy blonde look and those startling eyes that can melt any man within a twenty-mile radius, Evelyn is a markedly different character than you expect her to be.
Director Roman Polanski cleverly follows the tone set by Towne's screenplay and establishes a realistic, down-to-earth tone very unusual for these kinds of movies. I love that he avoids making "Chinatown" an homage to film noirs of the 1940s. He doesn't imitate their shadowy, chiaroscuro look or their cynical, bleak and downtrodden atmosphere. He also smartly avoids nostalgia. "Chinatown" doesn't have that golden look that made "The Godfather" feel like a picture book. Polanski is a European director, after all, who, as a Jewish person, probably doesn't have much affection for this period in history.
No, the film as shot by John A. Alonzo is starkly naturalistic. Polanski and him also shoot a lot of it with handheld cameras giving it an immediacy and grittiness not usually associated with the neo-noir. Despite ostensibly being an evocation of the film noir genre, "Chinatown" is never stylized. The dialogue, the characters, and the look of the film are as real as possible and never tip over into pastiche. Even Gittes' jokes and one-liners feel like things a man on the street could possibly say. He's a witty guy, for sure, but his dialogue never feels like it was written by a comedian... or David Mamet.
Finally, the film is populated by a whole host of excellent, true-to-life supporting players none of whom is more memorable than John Huston, the father of the noir detective film himself. He is simply mesmerising as the courteous, sweet Noah Cross whose gentle, kind nature is more menacing to Gittes than the gun-wielding thugs who are after him.
"Chinatown" is spellbinding. It lures you in with its twisty detective plot. It keeps you guessing along the way. Then it hits you with one of the most emotionally draining and rousing finales ever committed to celluloid. As the closing credits roll, set to that gorgeous, sultry, romantic score by Jerry Goldsmith, you realize that you simply can never forget "Chinatown".
4/4 - DirectorJack NicholsonStarsJack NicholsonHarvey KeitelMeg TillyThe sequel to Chinatown (1974) finds J.J. "Jake" Gittes investigating adultery and murder, and the money that comes from oil.25-08-2023
It's an intrinsic problem of all sequels that they are immediately and often unfairly compared to their predecessors. I personally think that every review of a sequel should at least contain a cursory reflection on how it fits together with its progenitor but I also believe that every movie should also be examined and judged on its own merits.
With "The Two Jakes", Jack Nicholson's largely forgotten sequel to the iconic "Chinatown", this is almost an impossible mission. You see, it's a film which suffers from a fatal case of identity crisis. The screenplay by Robert Towne is so totally intertwined with "Chinatown" that it is doomed to forever sit in its shadow. Its plot examines the lasting impact of that film's devastating finale. Its cast is made up of a plethora of returning characters - some returning for a brief cameo and others playing a major part.
And yet, in directing "The Two Jakes", Jack Nicholson has crafted such a starkly different movie that it just doesn't seamlessly blend with Roman Polanski's defining neo-noir. Right from the opening, it feels, looks, and moves differently as if it stems from completely different DNA.
So, there is the problem with reviewing "The Two Jakes". It's too connected and too reliant on "Chinatown" for it to be considered its own movie but it's also too different and incompatible with "Chinatown" to be an effective sequel.
Where to begin then? Well, the film begins in 1948, eleven years after the events of "Chinatown" and it seems like J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) has moved on. He is still the same suave private eye, a little too honest and a little too gentle for his own profession. He's done some fighting in the war, he's a little more grizzled, and a little fatter but he's still the same old natty, wisecracking Jake.
We catch him as he's executing a sting operation. A jilted husband, also named Jake (Harvey Keitel), is supposed to catch his cheating wife Kitty (Meg Tilly) in a motel room with his business partner. In the next room, unbeknownst to the couple, Gittes and his partner are recording the whole scene to be played in court.
Unfortunately, the set-up goes wrong and Jake shoots his business partner. Now Gittes is in hot water. Did Jake shoot the man in a moment of passion or was the whole thing a premeditated murder which Gittes is now an accessory to? The only proof is the wire recording which soon becomes a hot item. But the whole case takes a different spin when Gittes listens to the recording and hears a familiar name mentioned by the dead man. The name of Katherine Mulwray.
These are the first 15 or so minutes of "The Two Jakes" and about as much sense as its possible to make of the film's plot. The credits claim the movie was edited by Anne Goursaud but it feels more like an early assembly than a final cut. It's an entirely shapeless ramble through a plot which I couldn't understand for one half of the time and didn't care to understand for the other half of the time.
In a stark contrast from the famously tightly constructed "Chinatown", scenes just sort of happen in "The Two Jakes" without much logic, without any narrative progression, and without any discernable sense of pacing. The rather run-of-the-mill stakeout scene is followed by a bizarre, David Lynchian moment in which a crate Gittes is sitting on explodes and launches him into a dream sequence. The always excellent Madeleine Stowe comes into the picture for a delightfully bizarre sex scene only to then completely vanish from the proceedings. Harvey Keitel is similarly elusive, coming in and out of the picture in a seemingly random way, every time emerging as a very different character.
The plot itself is similarly meandering and almost completely without interest. Everyone and their mother is after the wire recording which Gittes has hidden somewhere. Mobsters show up with hand grenades in his office, a lawyer calls him every hour on the hour to threaten him, and a series of beautiful women want to exchange their bodies for the recording. And yet, there's curiously absolutely no sense of urgency to the film. The mobsters seem perfectly fine to let Gittes wander around Los Angeles for as long as he wants. They'll wait! The lawyer is content to merely telephone and telephone even though Gittes never seems to return his call. Meanwhile, the women do have sex with Gittes but leave without taking the recording. I guess he's that good in bed that they just forget why they were there in the first place.
There's no real mystery to solve in "The Two Jakes". Towne tries to build up some intrigue over the whereabouts of Katherine Mulwray but if you can't guess where she is then this must be the first thriller you've ever seen.
And so the film stutters along without any pace or urgency moving from one pointless scene to another. Some of the scenes are admittedly quite good. Occasionally, Jack Nicholson shows a real flair for the bizarre and the visually enticing. Mostly though, they are terribly dull exposition scenes in which characters explain to each other things they and we already know.
It is said that the original "Chinatown" screenplay contained a narration which Roman Polanski cut. Polanski is a smart man. "The Two Jakes" retains the narration, performed in dull monotone by Jack Nicholson, which adds nothing to the film. It either reitarates things we've already seen or spouts portentous nonsense like "time changes things, like the fruit stand which changes into a filling station". Eventually, the narration is also forgotten like most of the plot points and characters and simply disappears from the picture. I didn't much miss it.
I guess that ultimately it doesn't matter whether I review "The Two Jakes" as a sequel or its own film. It doesn't work as either. It's bloated, meandering, slow as molasses, but most disasterously it's just plain boring. It never adds anything to "Chinatown" or the character of Jake Gittes because "Chinatown" never really needed a sequel. There's a reason why it's ending is so iconic. It's because it is absolutely perfect. It makes such a definite, irrevocable, memorable point that anything further is superfluous. And that's what "The Two Jakes" is. Superflous.
2/4 - DirectorPaul VerhoevenStarsKevin BaconElisabeth ShueJosh BrolinA brilliant scientist's discovery renders him invisible, but transforms him into an omnipotent, dangerous megalomaniac.30-08-2023
Invisibility is the coolest superpower or at least that's what I thought when I was a kid. It seemed to me that it was a green light to get away with absolutely anything. You could sneak into any movie you wanted, you could eat any candy you wanted, you could go anywhere you wanted and no one would know. Of course, as I grew older I could see that the one major limitation of invisibility is a person's own morality. You see, if you were invisible and needed cash, all you would have to do is walk into a bank and take it. Easy right? But you wouldn't do the same if you were visible and had a gun? That would be robbery? But is it robbery if no one sees you do it?
This idea was seized upon as far back as 1897 by H.G. Wells who in his "The Invisible Man" posited that an invisible person would simply go crazy with the power and freedom they possessed. Almost a hundred years later, Chevy Chase would go on to star in "Memoirs of an Invisible Man", a broad comedy which, according to screenwriter William Goldman, Chase desperately wanted to turn into a more serious rumination on the loneliness of invisibility. "Of course, I wanted to make a movie about the loneliness of invisibility," Goldman would go on to write, "just not with Chevy Chase".
"Hollow Man" follows a similar line of thinking even though neither H.G. Wells nor Chevy Chase are credited as writers. As directed by Paul Verhoeven, it begins intriguingly as a rather nasty satire of the gung-ho Silicon Valley can-do way of thinking. Dr Sebastian Caine (Kevin Bacon), a conceited genius scientist (because, really, is there any other kind?) has cracked the secret to invisibility. All he has to do is inject a blue liquid into an animal's vein and they poof out of sight. But, like any movie mad scientist, he is itching to try his formula on a human being.
He volunteers. What could possibly go wrong? He will inject himself with the blue liquid, go invisible, and then his team of boffins will be able to observe him for a few days at which point he will inject himself with a different liquid and become visible again.
Of course, it doesn't go as smoothly as all that. After a visually impressive scene in which Caine goes invisible in the goriest and most painful transformation since "An American Werewolf in London" and a few days of fun and games, his team realize that they cannot turn him visible again. The liquid goes into his vein but the transformation does not happen.
Up to this point, "Hollow Man" has a nice satirical edge to it. Kevin Bacon does a terrific job of playing Caine as a kind of toxic playboy oblivious to any kind of social norm and above the law. He flirts with his staff, stalks them around their high-tech lab while invisible, and scoffs at his superiors behind their back.
But the character of Caine turns out to be "Hollow Man's" biggest failing. He is such an odious, nasty, egotistical creep at the beginning of the film that there is no room for him to transform. The second act, thus, in which we're supposed to see him slowly go insane due to the power afforded him by his invisibility, falls utterly flat because... well, he's already insane.
There is a brutal rape scene around the midpoint of the film which is, I think, meant to be the big moment in which Caine becomes the villain of the piece. However, since the very first scene of the film sees him ogling the woman from his apartment window this doesn't really come as a major surprise. Not only is the scene utterly predictable but it's also not at all shocking since we know right from the off that Caine is capable of such an atrocity. Had he been more like William Hurt's character in "Altered States" or Jeff Goldblum's character in "The Fly", for instance, "Hollow Man" might have worked a bit better. There would have certainly been more suspense and human interest in the film's second act.
The third act, equally unsurprisingly, turns into a big, goofy slasher film in which the invisible Dr Caine picks his team off one by one in their high-tech lab. This part of the film is at least a fair bit of fun even though it is as dumb as a box of bricks. For instance, the film establishes that the team can see Caine if they wear infrared glasses and yet, for some reason, they go around the lab looking for him without wearing them. Wouldn't that be the first thing you reach for? Maybe also shut off the lights so that he can't see you!
Any lofty ideas about "Hollow Man" being a smart psychological thriller goes out of the window when Caine, like an invisible Michael Myers, keeps coming at our hapless heroes even after they beat him up, stab him, and even set him on fire. Some of this film is undoubtedly fun in a B-movie kind of way but, for the most part, it feels like a wasted opportunity.
It feels like that because the first act ramps up a lot of interest and excitement, the cast is genuinely good, there is a terrific late-career score by Jerry Goldsmith, and some inventive, gruesome visual effects which have (for the most part) stood the test of time. Unfortunately, all Paul Verhoeven made out of these terrific elements is a sporadically entertaining B slasher flick.
2.5/4