2023 - September
Carrie (1976) 4/4
Elle (2016) 3.5/4
Love Crime (2010) 3.5/4
The Fourth Man (1983) 3.5/4
Snake Eyes (1998) 3.5/4
Talk to Me (2022) 3.5/4
Sisters (1972) 3/4
Blow Out (1981) 3/4
Raising Cain (1992) 3/4
A Haunting in Venice (2023) 3/4
Dressed to Kill (1980) 2.5/4
Basic Instinct (1992) 2.5/4
The Fury (1978) 2/4
Obsession (1976) 2/4
Diagnosis: Murder (1974) 1.5/4
Jade (1995) 1/4
Passion (2012) 1/4
Elle (2016) 3.5/4
Love Crime (2010) 3.5/4
The Fourth Man (1983) 3.5/4
Snake Eyes (1998) 3.5/4
Talk to Me (2022) 3.5/4
Sisters (1972) 3/4
Blow Out (1981) 3/4
Raising Cain (1992) 3/4
A Haunting in Venice (2023) 3/4
Dressed to Kill (1980) 2.5/4
Basic Instinct (1992) 2.5/4
The Fury (1978) 2/4
Obsession (1976) 2/4
Diagnosis: Murder (1974) 1.5/4
Jade (1995) 1/4
Passion (2012) 1/4
List activity
40 views
• 0 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
23 titles
- DirectorPaul VerhoevenStarsJeroen KrabbéRenée SoutendijkThom HoffmanA man who has been having visions of an impending danger begins an affair with a woman who may lead him to his doom.02-09-2023
Paul Verhoeven is not known for his subtlety but even for his standards, "The Fourth Man" is a bit blunt. Consider, for instance, how clearly he telegraphs that, yes, the beautiful Christine (Renee Soutendijk) is indeed a dangerous femme fatale. The opening credits roll over footage of a black widow spider eating its mate, her house quite literally has a giant flashing sign which reads "The Spider" (the name of her hair-dressing salon), and when she first appears on screen she does so decked out in a dashing red suit, her blonde hair making her look like a faint memory of Kim Novak in "Vertigo".
And yet, strangely, ambiguity is a major trademark of Verhoeven's films. As unsubtle and explicit as he gets not only in terms of symbolism but also sexuality, he always aims for suggestion. After so thoroughly painting Christine as a femme fatale weaving her lethal web around our protagonist, he then goes on to completely obfuscate the matter. When the closing credits roll over a more traditional black screen, we wonder if she truly is the villainous man-eater we thought she was or just a lonely woman seeking love which keeps evading her in the most brutal of ways.
For that reason, almost nothing in "The Fourth Man" can be discussed in cut-and-dry terms. We watch the plot from the point-of-view of a clearly disturbed man, the anxiety-ridden, sex-obsessed, sleazeball writer Gerard Reve (Jeroen Krabbe) who is introduced in the film naked from the waist down, uncontrollably shaking, and fantasizing about murdering his male lover. We see him walk into his living room and strangle the man. Then there's a cut and we see him walk into the room again where the man is alive and well.
From that point on we realize we can't believe anything we see. Like the hero of "The Third Man", Gerard Reve agrees to give a lecture in a small town where his trouble begins. There he meets the beautiful Christine who invites him into her parlour where they have sex. Renee Soutendijk is the ideal femme fatale - seductive, mysterious, and icy. She gives Sharon Stone the run for her money.
Gerard intends to leave the next day but a photograph convinces him to stay on a bit longer. The photograph is of Christine's other lover, a hunky plumber named Herman whom Gerard immediately falls in love with. He fawns over the photograph, kissing it and rubbing it across his face repeating that he'll have him even if it kills him.
But what if it does kill him? Gerard is plagued by nightmares straight out of "Vertigo" which he chooses to interpret as warnings of impending danger. The entire film then becomes a story about Gerard's overactive imagination interpreting his nightmares and increasingly more bizarre events he encounters while staying with Christine as clues to a murder mystery that might not even exist.
In true Verhoeven style, we never really learn what happened. Are Gerard's interpretations of events the truth or just the ravings of a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown? In that sense, this film is not only a spiritual predecessor of "Basic Instinct" (as is often claimed by Verhoeven himself) but also of "Total Recall".
"The Fourth Man" proves utterly elusive and difficult to categorize. The plot Gerard imagines is pure erotic thriller, a mixture between "Double Indemnity" and Hanns Heinz Ewers's "The Spider", but Verhoeven never fully leans into the genre. After all, we don't know if that is what is truly happening. The result is closer to a psychedelic Giallo than noir as Gerard sinks deeper and deeper into insanity caused by his increased drinking and graphic nightmares.
The film is effectively confusing and artfully bizarre. At times it does indeed feel like an exercise or a dress rehearsal for greater things to come, but Verhoeven's eye-catching visuals, confident grasp of tone, and dark humour make "The Fourth Man" one of his more thoroughly enjoyable movies.
3.5/4 - DirectorPaul VerhoevenStarsMichael DouglasSharon StoneGeorge DzundzaA violent police detective investigates a brutal murder that might involve a manipulative and seductive novelist.02-09-2023
It's interesting to me that "Basic Instinct" is so often referred to as the defining erotic thriller when in fact its 1992 release signified the beginning of the genre's ignoble demise. It came on the heels of films like "Body Heat", "Dressed to Kill", "Fatal Attraction", and most notably "Jagged Edge", but was only followed by utter dross. Not three years later, "Color of Night" would hit the final nail in the coffin of erotic thrillers.
And yet, "Basic Instinct" has in many ways surpassed all of its predecessors in the public consciousness. It made a movie star out of Sharon Stone, it led to a deluge of straight-to-video/Skinemax imitators, and its famous leg-crossing scene has been parodied by everything from "Hot Shots" to WWE. I suppose that Paul Verhoeven's melodramatic direction and the film's lurid, overwrought tone made it, in modern speak, memeable.
Erotic thriller was a strange subgenre, one which was on its last legs since the 1980s and only periodically revived by movies that managed to stir enough controversy to become causes celebres de jour. The sad truth of the matter, however, is that unless directed by Brian de Palma or Alfred Hitchcock, most erotic thrillers were just not very good. If you look back on its catalogue you'll notice that it contains very few quality films like "Body Heat" and a whole lot of movies like "Color of Night".
"Basic Instinct", despite its undying popularity, is more the former. Oh, alright, it's nowhere near as bad as "Color of Night" but it's one of the ultimate style-over-substance movies. An erotic thriller that plays out like every erotic thriller trope and cliche condensed into a single film. It looks gorgeous and it nails the smouldering, noirish atmosphere but once you've had your fill of the eye candy, there's nothing left to titillate the pallet.
The story of a cop who falls in love with the main suspect in a series of brutal ice-pick murders is disappointingly straightforward. Sharon Stone famously plays the suspect, the icy, brilliant Catherine Tramell, who is so obviously guilty and conniving that she makes Det. Nick Curran, played by Michael Douglas, look like the biggest fool in the world. It doesn't help that he's not a very likeable guy to begin with. He's a short-tempered alcoholic whose sexual desire seems to be so overwhelming that I wouldn't be surprised to see him humping a hole in the wall.
I get that it's all part and parcel of the genre but Joe Eszterhas' screenplay is as uninspired as it is completely illogical. "Basic Instinct" seems to take place in a world in which forensic science has never happened so police investigations resemble parlour guessing games. The film builds up Catherine Tramell as a Machiavellian mastermind but she would need to be a time-travelling psychic to pull off all the gambits she does. Most novelists don't have a clear idea of their plot even after finishing the first draft. Catherine, however, seems to have had it all worked out decades ago.
The biggest problem with "Basic Instinct" is that there is no mystery in it at all. Catherine is so clearly the murderer that any clues pointing otherwise are obvious red herrings. The few twists that the film has in store are also easily predictable due to the fact they've all appeared in previous, better erotic thrillers. Hell, the entire plot of the film is lifted wholesale from Joe Eszterhas' own "Jagged Edge". All he's done is switch the genders of the leads and strip away all the mystery.
The film would undoubtedly play a lot better had Catherine Tramell been a more ambiguous character but I think it also could have worked had Nick Curran been a more relatable one. I had the same problem with "Fatal Attraction" in that the decisions the male character makes are so stupid and so morally repugnant that I simply cannot in any way feel bad for what ends up happening to him.
So what remains of a thriller with such a shallow, silly script? Surprisingly, a lot more than you'd expect. "Basic Instinct" is a watchable, enjoyable film but, for me, it falls more under the purview of guilty pleasures than genuinly good cinema. It has the goofy, lurid cheapness of the straight-to-video rip-offs it inspired but with higher production values and some excellent behind-the-camera work.
Jan de Bont's photography, for example, is exceptional. The film has an instantly recognisably icy blue look to it which doesn't only evoke a noirish atmosphere but also cleverly mimics Catherine's nature and her weapon of choice. Also superb is one of Jerry Goldsmith's career-best scores which, to me, is sultrier and sexier than the film's much-touted sex scenes.
"Basic Instinct" is, funnily enough, the most mainstream and least subversive film of director Paul Verhoeven's career. It has none of his trademark satire or genre-bending humour. It does, however, have his characteristically over-the-top style which occasionally makes it look more like a rock video or a perfume commercial than a movie.
There's no getting around the fact that "Basic Instinct" is an iconic film. One of the few movies that have truly penetrated the public consciousness and taken on a life of its own as a shared reference in the collective unconscious. Everyone knows the leg-crossing scene. It's also a fun, goofy romp if you take it for what it is and simply sit back and enjoy the ride. But it's also not a very good movie because of Joe Eszterhas' paper-thin script which has as little class as it does logic or mystery.
2.5/4 - DirectorPaul VerhoevenStarsIsabelle HuppertLaurent LafitteAnne ConsignyA successful businesswoman gets caught up in a game of cat and mouse as she tracks down the unknown man who raped her.03-09-2023
Paul Verhoeven unnerves us right from the very first shot of "Elle" and then proceeds to keep us off-balance for the next 130 minutes. Every time we think we know what this film is, what it's about, and where it's going, he wrongfoots us again.
It begins with a curiously dispassionate, voyeuristic shot of a brutal rape in progress. A woman is sprawled across some broken glass as a balaclava-wearing man ruthlessly pumps away on top of her. The act is being observed by a bored-looking cat and Verhoeven's distressingly objective, distant camera.
After the rape is finished, the man ups and leaves and the woman begins cleaning up the mess. She does so precisely, carefully, and unhurriedly. She throws her torn dress away, takes a bath, and then orders takeaway. "What is a holiday roll," are some of the first words we hear her say. It's not that she's unaffected by what happened it's just that she's practical to a fatal fault. Life must go on.
Her name is Michele and she is the kind of character Isabelle Huppert excels at playing - tightly wound, closely guarded, and doesn't give a rat's arse what anyone else thinks. It would be silly to try and typecast Isabelle Huppert, quite possibly the finest actress working today, but if there's such a thing as a role perfect for her - this is it. It's no surprise then that it is also one of the very, very best performances of her career.
The film seems to be proceeding according to the formula of a rape-revenge thriller. She goes out and buys a gun. She tries to find out who her mystery assailant is. She begins receiving threatening, gauding messages from him. Verhoeven's reputation as a craftsman of erotic thrillers precedes him and I have little doubt that he enjoyed playing up to audience expectations here.
However, despite its rape-revenge framework, most of the film ends up being a gripping character exploration of the unflappable Michele and the complicated, bizarre relationships with the men in her life. There's her academic ex-husband Richard (Charles Berling) who now has a new girlfriend - a beautiful young yoga teacher (Vimala Pons) which both frightens Michele and hurts her ego. "Bimbos with big tits never worried me, but the girl who's read "The Second Sex" will eat you alive." There's her son Vincent (Jonas Bloquet) who is so determined to prove himself an independent adult that he keeps looking like a petulant child in desperate need of his mommy. There's Michele's best friend's husband Robert (Christian Berkel) who meets Michele for random sexual romps, and her strangely mysterious neighbour Patrick (Laurent Lafitte) who, we suspect, may have ulterior motives.
Michele also has a tense relationship with her pampered mother Josie (Alice Isaaz) who has had so many plastic surgeries that her face is now a mask. We suspect that Michele's greatest fear is becoming her mother - old, vain, and in desperate need of a younger man. There's also the murderous family past which haunts both women and which unfolds slowly in the background of many scenes.
Even more bizarrely, most of "Elle" plays out like a deeply uncomfortable episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" such as the scene in which Michele announces that she was raped during a friendly dinner date with her ex-husband and her best friend right after ordering the wine and before the entree.
Despite his highly successful, cult career in Hollywood, Paul Verhoeven's best work has always been in Europe where he was allowed to make elusive, often oblique films such as "Elle" which avoids any kind of categorization. Like Verhoeven's fascinating "The Fourth Man", there are very few definites in "Elle". Even the rape which opens the film becomes a point of debate once the truth behind it is revealed.
But at the heart of it all is Isabelle Huppert whose compelling, often mysterious, always minutely precise performance is the lynchpin on which "Elle" hangs. She is present in every single scene of the film and I suspect that no other actress could have played Michele as well or as intriguingly. It's a performance of a lifetime and Huppert has given at least a dozen others like it. That's what makes her great and what makes this intentionally disjointed and slippery movie so beguiling.
3.5/4 - DirectorSidney HayersStarsJon FinchJudy GeesonChristopher LeeAnonymous notes accuse a psychiatrist of having murdered his wife. A bedraggled policeman attempts to uncover the truth behind her disappearance.13-09-2023
"Dr Hayward (Christopher Lee) is a murderer. seek and you will find.". That's just one in a series of anonymous notes sent to the police in the wake of Mrs Hayward's (Dilys Hamlett) mysterious disappearance. Now, Dr Hayward is no angel, for sure. He is a sinister, magisterial type, brazenly carrying on an affair with his secretary, the gorgeous Helen (Judy Geeson), right under the noses of the policemen who suspect him of murder - but did he really do it?
Enter Inspector Lomax (Jon Finch), an undistinguished but determined policeman who latches himself onto Hayward like a tick. When Hayward goes boating, Lomax comes along. When Hayward refuses to hand over the list of his patients, Lomax shows up with a search warrant. He even has one of his men follow him to work and back home every day.
If this is starting to sound familiar, it's because "Diagnosis: Murder" plays out like a bad episode of "Columbo". At its finest, that iconic 70s detective show was a battle of wits between two well-profiled, intelligent, and three-dimensional characters - the mysterious, likeable policeman and the complex, arrogant murderer whose motive is carefully constructed and whose plan is seemingly impeccable.
As written by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, based on a story by Philip Levene, "Diagnosis: Murder" has none of those attributes. For one, its characters are uninteresting and one-dimensional, rarely rising above their stereotypical functions in the machinations of the predictable plot. Jon Finch's Lomax is your run-of-the-mill TV cop - rough around the edges but determined and quite clever when the plot requires him to be. Christopher Lee turns in one of his stock performances as an arrogant, sadistic sod skulking around his mansion like a tweed jacket-wearing Count Dracula. He could do this part in his sleep.
The plot itself is only interesting because the writers dole it out in small increments - revealing new information every 20 minutes or so. Once it's all revealed at the end, however, it really doesn't amount to much at all. There's very little mystery or originality on display here.
Apparently, "Diagnosis: Murder" was originally made for television and it was a bad idea to release it theatrically. It bears all the hallmarks of a cheap TV pilot - the flat, uninteresting cinematography; the rushed, uninspired direction; the plodding pace at which the story unfolds... Also evident is a whole lot of padding. Besides an utterly irrelevant subplot about Lomax's affair with a married woman (Jane Merrows), there is a whole lot of shots in which people park their car, get out of their car, walk up to the front door, ring the doorbell, wait etc. etc. In truth, there's barely enough story here to fill out a 50-minute episode of an ITV detective show let alone a 90-minute movie.
Had "Diagnosis: Murder" aired on TV as originally intended, I'm sure it would have been forgotten by now as a dullish, failed pilot for a Jon Finch-led series. Viewing it as a theatrical movie, however, makes it an even more awkward, disappointing affair as its limited scope and emotional impact make it seem even cheaper and trashier than it really is. In truth, there's very little of interest in this leaden thriller which recycles plots from 30-year old pulp novels which were considered outdated even at the time.
1.5/4 - DirectorDanny PhilippouMichael PhilippouStarsAri McCarthyHamish PhillipsKit Erhart-BruceWhen a group of friends discover how to conjure spirits using an embalmed hand, they become hooked on the new thrill, until one of them goes too far and unleashes terrifying supernatural forces.13-09-2023
The A24 horror division continues to go strong with "Talk to Me", the best horror film I've seen since Ari Aster's "Hereditary" also made by the film company whose name now stands for quality and originality. Directed by Danny and Michael Pilippou, a pair of YouTuber brothers making an astoundingly assured and impressive film debut, "Talk to Me" is stronger on the former than the latter but still manages to wring out a fair few surprises and clever twists out of a familiar formula.
The story revolves around a severed hand which supposedly belonged to a medium and which has been embalmed and passed around from one doomed owner to the next. Whoever takes the severed hand and says the magic words becomes possessed by a spirit and goes through an experience similar to an LSD trip. The catch is - you can only be possessed for 90 seconds. "What happens after 90 seconds," asks one of the characters. "They'll want to stay", responds another ominiously.
I remember Roger Ebert reviewing an overly sincere movie called "Powder" about a young albino boy with superpowers who is being bullied at school by his peers. He made an excellent point saying that the kids wouldn't bully a kid with superpowers, they'd find him cool and unusual and would invite him to their parties. I've always wondered the same thing about demon possessions and mediums. If these things were real and as explosive and exciting as the horror movies make them out to be - they wouldn't be performed in secret and in basements of abandoned houses. The best part of "Talk to Me" is that it realizes this and being made by YouTubers, the film has a real grasp on modern social media culture.
After the severed hand is acquired by a pair of teenagers, their seances become a viral trend. They record themselves and post their experiences on TikTok. They create parties around the seances inviting their friends to try out the hand. A superb montage shows them having a whale of a time being possessed by the spirits of the dead - speaking in tongues, hysterically crying, thrashing around the floor... Imagine "The Exorcist" if Regan was a viral YouTuber! Man, she'd rake in the views.
Of course, eventually one of the teenagers stays possessed for longer than 90 seconds and, of course, it doesn't end well. Soon, the ghosts are out to hunt down the most vulnerable one of them all - the troubled Mia (Sophie Wilde) who is still getting over her mother's suicide and her trust issues with her father.
These plot elements are quite conventional and many of the beats in "Talk to Me" are immediately recognisable to anyone who's ever seen a Blumhouse movie. The Philippou Brothers, however, smartly go for creeps rather than jump scares - they are making a movie that's quietly disturbing rather than grotesque.
The screenplay by Danny Phillippou and Bill Hinzman is uncommonly smart for this kind of horror film. It crafts believable, relatively smart teenagers who are affected by these supernatural experiences in interesting, original ways. The excellent cast helps as well and there are some wonderfully touching and likeable turns from actors like Sophie Wilde, Joe Bird, and Alexander Jensen. I also really liked the dynamic, funny performances from Chris Alosio and Zoe Terakes as the pair who own the hand and who create a proper party culture around the supernatural.
The Phillippous also smartly temper their ambitions. Unlike other horror debuts like the recent "The Empty Man" which tried to tie together at least three different movies into one, "Talk to Me" is admirably self-contained focusing as it does on a small group of characters and their experiences without going too deep into mythology of the ghosts or the lore behind the hand.
Focusing on their points of view helps the film by giving it an atmosphere of mystery and the unknown. Even though many of the twists are familiar, the film still manages to feel surprising and slippery never quite allowing you to get too far ahead of it. It has a wonderfully tense, uncomfortable atmosphere helped by the fact that you never know if the next blow-up will come from the ghosts or the characters themselves all of whom seem to be walking the tightrope between sanity and a nervous breakdown.
Note also some very good sound work which focuses on small, uncomfortable noises such as the scraping of one nail against the other or the screeching a bus makes when it turns.
"Talk to Me" is an impressive debut not because it treads uncharted waters nor because it is so ambitious and original but because it wrings out so much out of such a familiar premise. It is also unusually creepy and unsettling for a modern horror movie eschewing political messaging and cheap metaphors for good, old-fashioned atmospherics and scares. Rounded out by a talented, game cast, "Talk to Me" is definitely the horror movie of the year.
3.5/4 - DirectorKenneth BranaghStarsKenneth BranaghMichelle YeohJamie DornanIn post-World War II Venice, Poirot, now retired and living in his own exile, reluctantly attends a seance. But when one of the guests is murdered, it is up to the former detective to once again uncover the killer.14-09-2023
When a third installment in Kenneth Branagh's series of Poirot adaptations was announced I had only one wish: that they adapt a novel which hasn't already been turned into a major motion picture. I felt that his takes on "Murder on the Orient Express" and "Death on the Nile" were both weighted down by comparisons to their pre-existing beloved and truthfully much better film adaptations from the 1970s.
My wish was granted and the third Poirot film is based on the relatively little-known "Hallowe'en Party" with which I have but a passing acquaintance. I read it many, many years ago but have since forgotten almost all the details of its plot. I also vaguely remember seeing its David Suchet TV adaptation but likewise, a precious few details have remained in my memory.
Never mind. Branagh plays fast and loose with the novel's plot anyway relocating it to Venice and rejigging many of its key components in his bombastically retitled horror/mystery "A Haunting in Venice" which begins, as quite a few Poirot adaptations have, with the legendary detective (Kenneth Branagh) in retirement and unwilling to investigate any more murders. His slumber is broken by the arrival of famous mystery novelist Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), his old friend, who drags him along to a spooky seance being conducted in a decrepit old palazzo somewhere in Italy's ancient sinking city.
Branagh the director has fun with Venetian cliches in the opening sequence full of gondolas and masks but then, for some reason, condemns the rest of the film to the interiors of the palazzo. There is a disappointingly small amount of Venice in this film most of which consists of skulking around the palazzo's peeling hallways and an array of interrogation scenes which take place exclusively in rooms ill-suited for purpose including a kitchen, a boat shed, and an overgrown garden during a rainstorm.
But before that, there is a genuinely spooky seance scene in which a theatrical medium brilliantly played by Michelle Yeoh spins around in a levitating chair speaking in the voice of a murdered child. "You murdered me," she shrieks! I had genuine chills.
Soon enough, the medium turns up dead and the game's afoot. But something unusual is going on. Poirot is seeing ghosts. Trapped by a storm in the palazzo with the killer, he is haunted by the little girl trying to point him in the right direction.
Now, dear reader, I must confess that a strange thing happened on the way out of the cinema. I didn't enjoy "A Haunting in Venice" nearly as much as I thought I would. Once again, as in the previous two Branagh Poirots, I had a lot of problems with Michael Green's convoluted, talky screenplay which consists entirely of characters explaining things to other characters and portentous dialogue which sounds ominous and meaningful until you realize, as Ariadne Oliver herself points out, that none of it makes sense in any language.
It also doesn't help matters that Green's reimagining of "Hallowee'en Party's" plot is both preposterous and wildly predictable. Featuring cliches which even John Dickson Carr would consider old-fashioned, it poses no conundrum for an experienced Agatha Christie fan like myself. Don't get me wrong, I have no issue with liberal adaptations of Christie's plot, just the fact that I figured out the killer and their motivation before the murder even took place.
But, dear reader, I am not a man to take disappointment lightly. As a lifelong fan of Agatha Christie and a mild but eager Kenneth Branagh enthusiast, I ventured into the cinema for a second time to do something I very rarely do - watch a film I didn't like for a second time. And do you know what? I actually found that "A Haunting in Venice" worked a whole lot better on second viewing.
Why? Well, for one, I could disregard the story and the clunky writing and focus on what actually works - the atmosphere. "A Haunting in Venice" is one fantastically moody picture - creepy and hauntingly sad - thanks to some good production design courtesy of John Paul Kelly and Haris Zambarloukos' painterly photography. The palazzo in which the film takes place is a masterfully designed set within whose confines Kenneth Branagh stage-manages a really engrossing shadow play. Of his three Poirot films, this is easily the best-directed one because Branagh, uncharacteristically, takes a more subdued yet no less stylish approach to this material. There are very few ambitious oners or crazily imaginative shots here and yet Branagh manages to convey more with a single frame than Greene can with pages of his stiff nattering. Consider a beautiful and genuinely sad shot which takes place after the second murder (because there always has to be a second murder) after which the character's loved one is left alone. Branagh shows them very briefly, climbing the stairs of the decaying mansion, in a static shot and yet the off-centre framing, the vast headroom, and the muted colour palette make us clearly understand the suffering in their soul.
Seeing the film for the second time also allowed me to appreciate even more some of the superb work done by the film's talented cast. I liked Tina Fey as the twinkly American writer whose slightly sinister air is gradually revealed as the story unfolds, Camille Cottin as the fire-and-brimstone matron, and Ali Khan and Emma Laird as a pair of Hungarian war orphans trying their best to survive in the nightmarish world of post-WWII Europe.
The best performance, however, comes from Michelle Yeoh who is simply astonishing as the mysterious medium outclassing the rest of the excellent cast with only a few minutes of screentime. Her character is either a melodramatic shyster or a haunted psychic doomed to hear the cries of the dead and Yeoh somehow manages to be utterly convincing as either. Matching her beat for beat is the impressive Jude Hill who must be one of the finest child actors to ever grace the silver screen.
I was less enamoured with Jamie Dornan's twitchy portrayal of PTSD and Kelly Reilly whose performance is unfortunately so forgettable that she might as well be a part of the furniture. She plays a former opera star but instead of playing it grand and... well, operatic the way Diana Rigg did in "Evil Under the Sun", she underplays it to the point where I'd often forget she was even in the picture. What a waste!
Branagh himself gives a much more restrained performance as Poirot than he did in the previous two films but he lends the Belgian detective a credible air of authority and a palpable heaviness in his heart. He is playing a broken Poirot here and the lack of the showmanship and glee he had in the previous two films is understandable if a little disappointing.
"A Haunting in Venice" is a beautiful film, an engrossingly atmospheric exercise in style and mood buoyed by strong performances but thrown off-balance by a thin, predictable screenplay. Michael Green has always been the weak link in Branagh's Poirot films and here he continues to disappoint but the film stands strong despite him especially on a second viewing when you can tune out the stupid plot and clunky dialogue and just let the photography and Hildur Guðnadóttir's hauntingly sad score wash over you.
If Branagh ever makes a fourth Poirot film I have but two wishes. The first is that he sets it in an ordinary English village where most of Christie's novels take place anyway and the second is that he gets a good writer so that I don't have to spend most of my review apologising for the script's many flaws.
3/4 - DirectorDerwin AbrahamsStarsRoland WintersVirginia DaleMantan MorelandAfter the partners in the LaFontaine Chemical Co. sign a legal agreement leaving their share to the surviving partner(s), two of them are murdered.15-09-2023
ALL CHARLIE CHAN REVIEWS HERE:
https://www.imdb.com/list/ls539978222/ - DirectorWilliam BeaudineStarsRoland WintersMantan MorelandTim RyanCharlie attempts to solve a triple murder in which a dead man's finger prints show up at all three murder sites.15-09-2023
ALL CHARLIE CHAN REVIEWS HERE:
https://www.imdb.com/list/ls539978222/ - DirectorWilliam BeaudineStarsRoland WintersWanda McKayMantan MorelandChan discovers a conspiracy when a low paying gold mine seemingly starts to become profitable, and attempts are made on the owner's life.16-09-2023
ALL CHARLIE CHAN REVIEWS HERE:
https://www.imdb.com/list/ls539978222/ - DirectorWilliam BeaudineStarsRoland WintersKeye LukeMantan MorelandCharlie Chan and his two eldest sons, investigate a murderous gang who is forcing an archaeologist to search for a treasure in Mexico.16-09-2023
ALL CHARLIE CHAN REVIEWS HERE:
https://www.imdb.com/list/ls539978222/ - DirectorLesley SelanderStarsRoland WintersKeye LukeMantan MorelandOn a plane trip, Charlie Chan and the passengers are drugged, and when they wake up a quarter million dollars is missing.16-09-2023
ALL CHARLIE CHAN REVIEWS HERE:
https://www.imdb.com/list/ls539978222/ - DirectorClive DonnerStarsPeter UstinovLee GrantAngie DickinsonDetective Charlie Chan helps SFPD solve the many bizarre murders. His clumsy grandson Lee, who's getting married, "helps" him. Is the Dragon Queen behind this?19-09-2023
ALL CHARLIE CHAN REVIEWS HERE:
https://www.imdb.com/list/ls539978222/ - DirectorWilliam FriedkinStarsDavid CarusoLinda FiorentinoChazz PalminteriA bright assistant D.A. investigates a gruesome hatchet murder and hides a clue he found at the crime scene. Under professional threats and an attempt on his life, he goes on heartbroken because evidence point to the woman he still loves.20-09-2023
Joe Eszterhas, at the time Hollywood's highest-paid screenwriter, managed to sell the same film script at least six times. The premise of this script, borrowed and reshaped from "Vertigo", follows a protagonist investigating a series of murders who then falls in love with a suspect who may or may not be the killer. Eszerhas keeps the audience in suspense through multiple red herrings, murders, and subplots until he finally reveals whether the suspect did it or not in a single climactic shot. Richard Marquand did this premise classily in "Jagged Edge" and Paul Verhoeven did it trashily in "Basic Instinct". In Costa-Gavras' "Betrayed" the serial killer was replaced by the KKK but the premise remained unchanged. Philip Noyce's "Sliver" was supposedly based on an Ira Levin novel but somehow Eszterhas still managed to turn it into the same story he's been recycling for decades. The sole major departure from the formula was "Music Box" in which the investigator doesn't fall in love with the suspect but only because the suspect is her father.
The last time Eszerthas successfully sold the same script was to William Friedkin who went on to turn it into the unspeakably boring erotic thriller "Jade", one of the last nails in the genre's coffin released the same year as "Color of Night". Eszsterhas was reportedly displeased with this film saying Friedkin had changed his screenplay to the point where he wanted to take his name off the movie but, I swear to god, I see no major changes to the same basic formula of the other five films which Eszterhas didn't want to take his name off of.
The investigator this time around is Assistant District Attorney David Corelli (David Caruso) and the femme fatale suspect is Katrina Gavin (Linda Fiorentino) who may or may not be Jade, an expensive prostitute who finishes off her clients with an axe to the head. Further complicating matters is the fact that Katrina is the wife of powerhouse lawyer Matt Gavin (Chazz Palminteri) who also happens to be David's best friend.
So much - so sleazy, but "Jade" is such a lethargic, slow, leaden film that it spends half of its 95-minute runtime setting up the premise. Whereas "Basic Instinct" concluded its exposition within the first 25 minutes with that unforgettable and much-rewinded leg-crossing scene, the cops in "Jade" take a good 45 minutes before they even suspect Katrina. Meanwhile, the film bores us with a number of pointless scenes (such as Matt's meeting with a client who is never heard from again), overcomplicated subplots (incriminating photographs of the Governer are found at the house of one of the victims), and general ennui. This is that rare beast - a William Friedkin film with no energy, no propulsion, and no tension. For most of its runtime, "Jade" is cold and dead like a corpse on a pathologist's slab.
For those hoping for at least some hot sex let me inform you that the first sex scene in "Jade" takes place 47 minutes into the film and it's so profoundly unsexy and chaste that it wouldn't even make a nun blush. In fact, this erotic thriller is as short on eroticism as it is on thrills. Sure, there is some nudity but none of it is in the least bit titillating.
After the film finally gets all of its exposition out it goes totally bonkers. There are inexplicable car chases, someone cuts David's breaks, there's a ludicrous political conspiracy going on which Freidkin forgets about for long stretches of time, all while there are more and more murders of characters you can't even remember were in the movie.
Meanwhile, the plot is completely unengaging. For one, far too much of it is completely external. The film is too concentrated on procedural aspects such as forensics, files, fingerprints, and background checks while it completely neglects to explore or develop its characters, their feelings, and their relationships. Maybe the film would be more erotic if Friedkin ever once stopped to tell us what David actually feels towards Katrina and vice versa. Instead, he's made this clinical, plodding police procedural with only two suspects! It would be more fun to flip a coin and go home than sit through this unfocused mess.
In good old-fashioned Friedkin style, there are two different cuts of "Jade". The 95-minute theatrical cut and the 107-minute director's cut. While the director's cut does make more sense, ultimately a bad movie is a bad movie and the additional 12 minutes of footage don't improve "Jade's" many problems.
Maybe I would have been more charitable towards "Jade" were it actually any fun to watch but this erotic thriller is a real slog. A boring plod through familiar cliches and predictable twists utterly lacking energy and heat. Of the aforementioned six identical scripts, "Jade" is certainly not the stupidest but it is easily the most boring one and, honestly, that's much worse.
1/4 - DirectorBrian De PalmaStarsNicolas CageGary SiniseJohn HeardA corrupt detective and a Navy Commander investigate an assassination and the disappearance of a beautiful stranger.20-09-2023
Detective Rick Santoro (Nicolas Cage) is having a whale of a time. Despite being a lowly Atlantic City cop, he has a beautiful house, an apartment in the city, a wife he loves, a mistress he LOVES, a son who loves him, and front-row seats to the boxing match of the year. "Does being a cop pay six figures now," someone asks him but the truth is - Rick's one of those guys willing to look the other way... for a reasonable price.
As played by Nicolas Cage at his most unhinged, energetic, and theatrical, there's something inherently seedy about Rick Santoro. We see it in the way he dresses (those loud shirts speak volumes), the way he ditches his wife on the phone and rolls his eyes when she asks him to tell their son good night, and the way he hits on a ring girl while walking down the aisle to his seat without even stopping to look at her. Not even his bookie trusts him - he asks for the bet up front, in cash. No problem, says Rick, as he goes off to beat up a guy who owes him some money.
We see all of this in what appears to be a truly spectacular unbroken 20-minute Steadicam shot as we follow Rick through The Powell Millennium Casino into the arena where the boxing match is taking place. Like Henry Hill in "Goodfellas", he has a hand in every pocket which we see as he bribes, cajoles, and intimidates his way to the front row. Director Brian De Palma beautifully orchestrates the chaos around Rick which reaches fever pitch just at the moment when a gunshot rings through the arena and there is the first visible cut of the movie to an overhead shot showing that the Secretary of Defense who was seated just behind Rick has been assassinated.
The rest of "Snake Eyes" plays out in more or less real time as Rick and his old buddy Navy Commander Kevin Dunne (Gary Sinise) hunt down the men responsible for the hit through a crowded Atlantic City casino.
But that beautifully choreographed and impressive opening shot is not just a gimmick. It's a mission statement! Indeed, "Snake Eyes" plays out less like a coherent movie and more like a director's showreel. This is a Brian De Palma wet dream, an opportunity for the great showman to grab his bag of tricks and pull out all the stops. Prepare to feast your eyes on some of De Palma's most audacious visuals. Almost every shot is some kind of an eye-catching, imaginative novelty. Even at its most low-key moments, "Snake Eyes" is filled with zooms, split diopter shots, split screens, and some of the most balletic Steadicam work you've ever seen.
At its most flamboyant, however, the film is absolutely breathtaking to look at. There is a shot in the middle of "Snake Eyes" which is as brilliant as anything I've ever seen De Palma do. It begins with a shot of Dunne in a hotel corridor looking for a mysterious woman who was seen with the Secretary of Defense just before he was shot (Carla Gugino). He walks up to a hotel room door and listens. The camera then slowly cranes up over his head and then crosses the wall to show us what's in the room. But De Palma doesn't stop there. He continues to crane through another and another, and yet another room until he finally finds the mysterious girl in one of them and cranes down to a close-up of her.
I cannot express in words my joy at seeing that shot. It's an experience which can only crudely be described as a cinematic orgasm. These are the audacious, inventive moves which made Brian De Palma legendary and "Snake Eyes" is one of his boldest, most dazzling achievements. I would say that every frame of this film is a painting except that De Palma doesn't do paintings. He expresses himself through movement. The movement of the camera, the movement of the characters through unique spaces, and the relentless movement of the story towards crazier and crazier plot twists. He makes motion pictures in the most literal sense of the phrase.
The weak spot of "Snake Eyes" is David Koepp's script which is threadbare, predictable, and not particularly engaging. But I can't really blame Koepp. The script seems to have been written exclusively to indulge De Palma's directorial excesses. Look, for instance, how often we flashback to the assassination. Each time seeing it from a different POV. Quite literally too, because every time a new character recounts their part of the story, De Palma shows it to us through their eyes. There is no particular need for Keopp to show us each of these POVs but he does because De Palma wants to shoot each flashback as a short film all of its own, with its own unique style befitting the character telling the tale.
The plot, thus, is just a shell meant to connect all the beautiful, brilliant visuals into something approaching a coherent but unambitious story. Anyone coming into "Snake Eyes" wanting more than that will no doubt be disappointed. I think the best and only way to watch this film is to disregard the story altogether. Just sit back and let De Palma wow you.
That is not to say that there are no good things about the film besides the visuals. Quite on the contrary. I love, for instance, the supporting characters. There are some terrific vignettes here. I laughed a lot at the journalist (Tamara Tunie) who is salty because she has to report from outside the arena in the rain. Note also an absolutely brilliant turn from Stan Shaw as a beat-down old boxer willing to give up his title to clear his casino tab. It's such a heartrending masterclass of a performance that I think it's a crime it's so vastly underappreciated. If Stan Shaw had given it in a more "respectable" film, there's no doubt in my mind he would have won an Oscar for his troubles.
What I love most of all, however, is that after all the chasing, the shooting, and the intrigue, the film's big climax hangs entirely on whether Rick really is the sleazy, dishonest guy he appears to be or whether once in his life he will decide to not look the other way. It's rare to see an action thriller which resolves its conflict not with a fight scene but with a beautifully written and played character beat.
The story definitely runs out of steam at that point and the 20 minutes that follow are something of a letdown. The film truly ends once Rick makes his decision. But nothing can take away from the fact that "Snake Eyes" is just such an exciting piece of filmmaking. De Palma achieves a level of intensity here which will not be matched until "Uncut Gems". The film also boasts one of Nicolas Cage's best performances, an uncommonly beautiful, striking score by Ryuichi Sakamoto, and a wicked sense of humour all of which is to say that "Snake Eyes" is a film which deserves a much better reputation than it has.
And someone please give Stan Shaw the Oscar he deserves. Thank you!
3.5/4 - DirectorBrian De PalmaStarsMichael CaineAngie DickinsonNancy AllenA mysterious blonde woman kills one of a psychiatrist's patients, and then goes after the high-class call girl who witnessed the murder.21-09-2023
"Dressed to Kill" is Brian De Palma at his most Hitchcockian. Interestingly enough, by borrowing the plot twists (and the psychiatrist exposition dump) from "Psycho", the dreamlike atmosphere of "Vertigo", and the sadistic sensibilities of "Frenzy", De Palma also ended up coming the closest he ever has to directing a full blown Giallo. In other words, "Dressed to Kill" blends stylistic excess with some threadbare plotting to create a somewhat janky but undeniably entertaining and impressive suspense thriller.
I (and pretty much everyone else in the world) particularly like the first third of the film which is, for my money, the best work De Palma has ever done. The audacious, plotless extended prologue of "Dressed to Kill" is a real masterpiece of sustained tension in which De Palma mined the everpresent anxiety over casual sex and venereal disease which would come to define the 1980s to create his own slasher variant of "Looking for Mr Goodbar".
Running for a precisely choreographed and beautifully shot 36 minutes, the prologue follows bored housewife Kate Miller's (Angie Dickinson) attempts to get a one night stand. After some disappointing sex with her distant husband and a row with her nerdy son, she finally scores in the most unlikeliest of places - a museum!
The stunning, wordless 9 minute museum sequence in which Kate engages an unknown man (Ken Baker) in a dance of seduction, not-so-subtly drawing his attention and then abruptly changing her mind thus drawing him and us into a bizarre kind of sexual hide-and-seek is rightfully considered a work of art all on its own. Masterfully scored by Pino Donaggio who manages to narrate the scene and follow the vacillations of Kate's mind with his lush, orchestral music and carefully, precisely shot by De Palma and his director of photography Ralf D. Bode it is a masterful display of suspense and erotica.
It is, however, the brutal scene in which Kate, returning home after her one-night stand, is slashed to death with a razor in the elevator which I was most impressed with. Not only is it shockingly graphic and staged with the kind of lurid glee De Palma is famous for, but it is also a masterclass in editing. Look at the clarity with which De Palma and his editor Jerry Greenberg juggle all the moving pieces involved with the sequence. Without ever slowing down the pace or missing any of the gory details, they successfully juxtapose Kate's tragic demise and the introduction of Liz (Nancy Allen) who will be our protagonist for the rest of the movie. Not only that, but they manage to do it with such panache and style that you can't help but marvel at the beauty of such a violent, nasty scene.
The remaining hour of "Dressed to Kill" unfortunately takes a dive and never manages to reach the levels of excitement and stylishness that the opening 36 minutes had. The real trick Hitchcock pulled in "Psycho" is drawing the audience back in after that explosive and climactic shower scene. De Palma doesn't quite pull off the same trick. Just like the shower scene, the elevator scene in "Dressed to Kill" has an air of finality to it. It's not just the end of the first act, it's the end of Kate's story and the resolution to the incredible tension De Palma's built up over the past 36 minutes. After that, he has to start the film all over again and hook us with new characters and situations.
The problem is that the characters and the situations which dominate the last hour of the film are nowhere near as interesting as the ones in the first 36 minutes. I like Nancy Allen very much, she's a sharp, likeable actress and her performance in this film has been greatly and unfairly maligned. But she just cannot compare to Angie Dickinson's superb and tragic role as Kate Miller.
It is here that "Dressed to Kill" takes a turn into "Rear Window" territory as Liz, a witness to Kate's murder, is unwillingly drawn into the plot when Kate's son Peter (Keith Gordon) asks her to help him catch his mother's killer. Peter is a tech wizard and he begins spying the offices of his mother's psychiatrist Dr Elliott (Michael Caine) because he believes the killer is one of Elliott's patients.
Quite aside from the fact that he never seems to grieve over his mother's death, Peter is not the most interesting of characters. Keith Gordon gives an adequate performance but I never found myself really caring about his character or liking him very much.
De Palma frames the last two-thirds of "Dressed to Kill" as a whodunnit but the answer is so blatantly obvious that I spent almost all of it waiting for the film to catch up with what I already knew would happen. It is another one of those mysteries with such a limited pool of suspects that it's impossible to miss the killer.
Nevertheless, the film spends far too much time building up the mystery of the killer's identity so much so that I found myself a bit bored. Sure, De Palma tries to rouse the film from its slumber with a half-hearted chase through a subway train but without an intriguing plot or engaging characters, the film simply falls flat.
"Dressed to Kill" picks up some steam again in its third act with a characteristically well-shot climax but it never reaches the levels of tension or intensity its first third had. Perhaps those opening 36 minutes are so brilliant that nothing could have followed them. They remain De Palma's best work. The rest of the film, however, is handsome but dull and disappointing, sort of like Kate's husband.
2.5/4 - DirectorBrian De PalmaStarsCliff RobertsonGeneviève BujoldJohn LithgowA wealthy New Orleans businessman becomes obsessed with a young woman who resembles his wife.21-09-2023
1956, New Orleans. Michael (Cliff Robertson) and Elizabeth Courtland (Genevieve Bujold) are a blissfully married couple. He's a rich developer, she's his blushing bride. Their idyll is shattered, however, one night when Elizabeth and their daughter disappear and Michael is left an anonymous note saying that he is to pay 500,000 USD if he wants to see either of them again. Acting under the instructions of the jovial Inspector Brie (Stanley J. Reyes), Michael instead hands the kidnappers a briefcase full of paper and a tracker which leads the police right to them. Unfortunately, the arrest goes sour and Michael's wife and daughter die a fiery death.
1975, Florence. An older but still regretful Michael and his business partner Robert (John Lithgow) are in Italy closing a deal. They decide to visit the church where Michael and Elizabeth first met. They walk down the aisle, look up at a fresco, and there, standing beside the holy icon, is Elizabeth, looking the same as she did the day she died! The strange woman's name, however, is Sandra. She's an Italian art restorer and has no connection with New Orleans at all. What is going on? Is she a mirage or a gift from god? Or is she a punishment sent from Hell to torment Michael for abandoning his wife and child? Either way, he becomes obsessed with this charming, mysterious young woman to the point where he brings her back to New Orleans. But before he knows it, he'll be given a second chance to redeem himself for the crimes of the past.
Despite significant echoes of "Vertigo", "Obsession" plays out more like a Sidney Sheldon novel. It's closer in tone and style to Hitchcock's early gothic melodramas shot as it is by Vilmos Zsigmond with muted colours and deep, dark shadows. The screenplay by Paul Schrader has some thriller trappings but most of it is intimately focused on Michael, his guilt, his love for Elizabeth, and his obsession with Sandra.
You'd think that a Brian De Palma film actually shot in Italy would be a sight to behold but "Obsession" is actually one of his most restrained efforts. A tad too restrained for my taste, in fact. This material is torrid, overwrought, and melodramatic. It is a story of heightened emotions, grand gestures, and preposterous twists. And yet De Palma's direction is very precise, very elegant, very self-contained.
A story like this requires more directorial excess and a whole load more kitsch. It came out a year before "The Other Side of Midnight" which I think has the better balance between goofiness and drama. De Palma almost seems to take this story more seriously than it is meant to be taken. His portentous direction seems to be implying there's more to find in these characters than there really is. But this isn't a weighty film. It doesn't have the wit or the insight or the hallucinatory quality of "Vertigo". It's much closer to a soap opera and had it been shot that way it would have been a whole lot more fun.
The film is at its weakest when it goes into thriller mode. I would be surprised if any viewer of "Obsession" didn't figure out the big twist long before it is revealed. Not only is it painfully obvious, but it's also the only possible answer to the mysteries raised.
The melodrama, meanwhile, is fine if a little sluggish and languorous. I blame this on the casting of Cliff Robertson which even De Palma agrees didn't work. Robertson is just all wrong for this part. He has an imperious quality, an arrogance like a "Columbo" villain. He's not a sympathetic character at all. His performance is also not quite on the level which the film requires. The entire emotional weight of the plot resides squarely on his shoulders and his ability to convince us of his character's guilt and obsessive love for his lost Lenore but Robertson just never pulls it off. He's no Jimmy Stewart.
Genevieve Bujold, on the other hand, is terrific as she always is but there's little to no chemistry between her and Robertson. "Obsession" is also a film full of strange accents. Bujold plays the Italian Sandra with her native French accent. John Lithgow puts on a comically bad Southern drawl while Cliff Robertson wisely doesn't even try.
The only element of "Obsession" which works flawlessly is the score by the maestro himself - Bernard Herrmann. In his final film score, he manages to evoke Michael's titular obsession and his growing frenzy far more successfully than the film itself. It is a beautiful score, unabashedly romantic and one of the very best in his distinguished career. He also does a brilliant job of suggesting an otherworldly element to the plot by adding a spooky, haunting choir to certain scenes. A master touch.
I'm sad to say that "Obsession" just didn't work for me which is surprising since it has so many elements I usually love and was made by so many people whose work I love. Ultimately, the predictable plot, the miscasting of the crucial part of Michael, and a far classier production than the material needed turned it into a film that bored rather than excited me.
2/4 - DirectorBrian De PalmaStarsMargot KidderJennifer SaltCharles DurningA small-time reporter tries to convince the police she saw a murder in the apartment across from hers.21-09-2023
"There were these twins, you see, and one was good and the other one was evil." It's a premise as old as fiction. It was fun when Bette Davis did it in 1964's "Dead Ringer", it was fun when Martin Landau did it in an episode of "Columbo", and, boy was it fun when Brian De Palma did it in "Sisters", his first full-fledged thriller. After years of making avant-garde comedies, it's an extraordinarily self-assured and stylish genre debut which both pays a conscious homage to Hitchcock and establishes De Palma as a filmmaker with his own unique take on the old tropes and cliches. And while it certainly doesn't rise to the levels of experimentation and expertise on show in De Palma's finest work, "Sisters" is a marvellous slice of grand guignol fun, irresistibly witty, clever, and atmospheric.
In proper De Palma fashion, the best part of the movie is the first half, a wonderfully tension-filled extended prologue in which Phillip (Lisle Wilson) and Danielle (Margot Kidder) meet as contestants on a dating show and go on one hell of a date. Danielle is a sweet girl, charming and quirky with the cutest French accent you've ever heard. But, as Philip is about to find out, her sister Dominique is a nasty piece of work. In one of the grisliest and most shocking scenes in De Palma's career full of grisly and shocking scenes, Dominique viciously slices Philip up with a kitchen knife. It's a superb scene - a volcanic explosion of tension which De Palma meticulously built up over the preceding 25 minutes hinting at the danger Philip is in with some cleverly placed clues and a general atmosphere of unease infused by a sinister Bernard Herrmann score. The scene wouldn't work so well, by the way, if Lisle Wilson didn't do such a marvellous job of playing the most likeable victim in any of De Palma's films. The guy is so sweet that you really want "Sisters" to turn out to be a romantic comedy instead of a thriller.
After the murder is done, a superb sequence follows in which De Palma masterfully juxtaposes Dominique hiding Philip's body with the POV of a woman who just happened to witness the murder "Rear Window" style. De Palma does this with an extended and rather audacious use of split-screen showing us the clean-up of the crime scene in real-time, side-by-side with the arrival of the police.
The police, of course, find nothing and it's now up to the witness to investigate the murder herself. Thankfully, the witness is Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt) an intrepid reporter with more pluck than street smarts who lunges head-first into the investigation with the eagerness of a new member of the Scooby Gang.
Like most of De Palma's films, "Sisters" is encumbered with a wildly predictable plot which means that the second half is devoid of any real surprises. This is a problem for a film which follows an investigation of a crime. However, in the case of "Sisters", the investigation is so much fun and it's such a blast spending time with the characters De Palma has created that I didn't mind that I knew every twist the story would take and every turn they would discover.
It's a blessing that "Sisters" is a far more comedic film than other De Palma thrillers featuring a whole host of goofy characters and comedic vignettes.
Besides the overeager Miss Collier, also in the film are such brilliantly over-the-top creations as William Finley's grotesque Emil Breton, Dominique's mysterious helper. Then there's Grace's overbearing mother wonderfully played by Mary Davenport who chastises her daughter for being an unmarried journalist and then smiles proudly whenever someone says they read her column. There's also a wonderfully kooky appearance from Olympia Dukakis as a cake-shop worker.
My favourite character, however, is Joe Larch, the tenacious, streetwise private eye whom Grace hires after much convincing from her editor/boyfriend. He is played by the always brilliant Charles Durning in a truly hilarious performance which sees him trailing a sofa from New York City to a one-cow-town in Canada.
Of course, the big dramatic role belongs to Margot Kidder whose emotional, torrid performance as the tortured Danielle is rivalled only by her truly scary turn as the psychotic, menacing Dominique. It just might be the best performance of her career.
Of all the De Palma thrillers, "Sisters" is the grungiest, funniest, and probably the most entertaining of all. It's certainly rough around the edges and very much in the B-movie category but it's a really fun romp from beginning to end. With a whole host of memorable, hallucinatory scenes, a terrific performance from Margot Kidder, and a creepy, haunting score by Bernard Herrmann, it is an astonishingly strong thriller debut from a director who would soon redefine the genre for the decades to come.
3/4 - DirectorBrian De PalmaStarsSissy SpacekPiper LaurieAmy IrvingCarrie White, a shy, friendless teenage girl who is sheltered by her domineering, religious mother, unleashes her telekinetic powers after being humiliated by her classmates at her senior prom.22-09-2023
Lots and lots has been written about the opening shower scene of Brian De Palma's "Carrie", the iconic cinematic adaptation of Stephen King's parable about puberty, sexual repression, and the high school experience. I mean when you open your film with scores of fully naked girls, you invite attention and criticism don't you? I especially love the story shared by the film's editor Paul Hirsch who claims that his friends would approach him after the movie to ask why he wasn't credited. It was only after that he realized that his credit appeared over a particularly explicit shot of Nancy Allen and that given the choice between Hirsch's credit or Allen's private parts, the text wasn't gonna win.
But like pretty much everything in "Carrie", that opening scene is a stroke of genius. De Palma brilliantly contrasts the womanly, developed naked bodies of these high school seniors confidently strutting about the locker room with the childlike body of Carrie White (Sissy Spacek), shyly cowering in one of the shower stalls in the back. Considering that the brilliance of Sissy Spacek's much-lauded Oscar-nominated performance is in her retiring, hunched-over physicality that opening sequence truly is the best possible introduction for the character.
My favourite scene, however, and probably the greatest single scene De Palma has ever shot is the climactic rage scene at the prom in the high school gym suddenly bathed in blood-red light. The masterful shot that proceeds it doesn't get nearly attention for its technical mastery. As the camera slowly cranes up a rope held by Nancy Allen's leering bully Chris all the way up to the bucket of blood perched precariously on a beam right over Carrie's head, we understand the full horror of what is about to transpire. As a final confirmation of Chris' wicked intentions, a ribbon caught on the bucket dislodges and slowly flitters through the air right onto Carrie's head like a laser on a sniper as Pino Donaggio's menacing cue "Bucket of Blood" plays.
The ensuing chaos shot in the trademark De Palma style is equally as masterful. Here we have his best use of split screens as the blood-covered Carrie, humiliated and angered, darts her eyes from one laughing face in the crowd to the next dooming them to death with her telekinetic powers. Irwin Allen wishes he had shot disaster scenes this visceral.
But "Carrie" is not just a technical achievement. The great reason why the film works so well is because it's such a gentle, heartfelt story and not just another freakshow. It weeps for Carrie and makes us care deeply about this troubled, repressed girl condemned to her fate by her austere, Bible-thumping mother Margaret (Piper Laurie). Margaret is one of the most hateful and evil characters in all of cinema but Piper Laurie plays her in such a way that you can't help but have fun watching her wicked tirades. She also smartly exposes the deeper reaches of Margaret's own trauma in the terrific final confrontation with her daughter.
"Carrie" also benefits from De Palma's experience in making avant-garde, sophomoric comedies in the 60s. It's a very funny movie which nails that high-schooler juvenile brand of humour. There are scenes in "Carrie" which would go on to inspire all the high-school comedies that came after it such as the wonderfully witty scene in which the gym teacher Miss Collins (Betty Buckley) punishes Carrie's bullies by making them do exercises or the unexpectedly hilarious scene showing a group of boys getting ready for prom. As they struggle to choose their outfits, De Palma cranks the speed up on the film until they begin sounding like Chipmunks arguing.
Pino Donaggio's score brilliantly synthesizes all of the film's disparate tones and elements. His soundtrack includes outright horror cues such as the famous "Bucket of Blood" but also pop music of the age, funky cues which sound like they're right out of a "Porky's" sequel, and sinister religious music which sets the austere Margaret apart from the rest of the vibrant characters. Along with "Don't Look Now", this is Donaggio's finest work.
"Carrie" also manages to be tender and even beautiful at times such as in the scene of Carrie's prom dance with the nice Tommy Ross (William Katt). De Palma shoots this scene in a single take his camera swirling around them as the cardboard stars which are a part of the prom decor mimic a starlit sky behind them.
It is a miracle then that De Palma pulls all of these tones and styles together into a coherent picture but he does because he places the character of Carrie and her emotions in the centre of the story rather than the horror and the bloodshed which surround her. This, along with De Palma's technical mastery of the art of cinema, is what makes "Carrie" a true masterpiece and without a doubt its director's best work.
4/4 - DirectorBrian De PalmaStarsKirk DouglasJohn CassavetesCarrie SnodgressA former CIA agent uses the talents of a young psychic to help retrieve his telekinetic son from a shadowy secret government agency.22-09-2023
Brian De Palma followed up "Carrie", a film about a girl with telekinetic powers who lashes out against the authority figures who failed her and the peers who mocked her with "The Fury", a film about a girl with telekinetic powers who lashes out against the authority figures who failed her and the peers who mocked her. Alright, these are certainly two very different movies but one almost gets the idea that De Palma was carving out a niche for himself which turned out to be very different than the one he would eventually go down.
Whereas "Carrie" was a gentle, heartfelt, intimate picture, "The Fury" is indeed all sound and fury. Based on a novel by John Farris, it's a trashy action-adventure movie full of conspiracies, sinister spies, gruesome exploding heads, shootouts, and spectacular set-pieces. In other words, it's exactly the kind of freakshow that "Carrie" was wise to avoid becoming. Now, I'm not saying that such material cannot be entertaining, just that throughout "The Fury", I felt at an arm's length from the characters and their stories. I never got emotionally or intellectually involved in the complicated goings-on in this picture because there really isn't much substance beneath the flashy exterior.
The two-pronged storyline follows two protagonists who don't meet until well into the film's second act. One is Peter (Kirk Douglas), a former member of a government agency dealing with PSI phenomena whose son Robin (Andrew Stevens) happens to be one of the most powerful telepaths in the world. After Robin is kidnapped by Peter's sinister former friend Childress (John Cassavetes), Peter begins a year-long odyssey to try and get his son back.
The second protagonist is Gillian (Amy Irving), the only other telepath in the world whose powers approach those of Robin. Like Carrie, however, she is only just learning the extent of her powers and becomes involved in the work of a mysterious institute led by Dr McKeever (Charles Durning).
Now, as you may have gathered, these two plotlines don't really come together until very late in the picture giving "The Fury" a distinctly disjointed structure. De Palma keeps cutting between the two storylines but they're so tonally different and so differently paced that he never achieves a good balance. The Kirk Douglas storyline is action-packed, witty, and full of flashy action scenes and suspenseful near-misses. The Amy Irving storyline, meanwhile, is slow to the point of lethargy as it focuses far too much of its runtime on her investigating a mystery to which we already know the answer.
With such a disjointed and threadbare plot bearing few surprises and almost no significant twists, "The Fury" really becomes the kind of thriller where you sit around waiting for the explosive set-pieces. Now, this is a Brian De Palma picture and the set-pieces are indeed tremendous. The film begins with a nail-biting shootout in Israel, there's a very funny car chase, some visually inventive scenes showing Gillian's visions, and one hell of a memorable epilogue.
But the scenes connecting the set pieces are a real slog. This two-hour movie is at least half an hour too long as characters endlessly describe the plot to one another in inane, garrulous dialogue scenes. Even De Palma seems to get bored with the dialogue scenes which he shoots in long, unbroken takes, his camera wandering aimlessly from one talker to the other.
There are altogether too many characters at play here as well. The institute Gillian attends is led by two doctors and a nurse of whom only the nurse has some minor characterization. Then there's another pair of doctors working for Childress who are introduced very late in the picture and who are so forgettable I can't even remember their names. Then there are Gillian's school friends who are introduced and then completely dropped from the film just like her family.
Kirk Douglas gives a decent performance but is at least 15 years too old for this role. By 1978, he was a 62-year-old man and his age shows especially in the first act which sees him fighting off much younger men while shirtless in two separate scenes. John Cassavetes, on the other hand, is a piece of pitch-perfect casting. The man projects such an air of imperious menace that he makes his severely underwritten character utterly believable in a way that Douglas just cannot. Caught between such acting powerhouses, Amy Irving gives an adequate but wholly forgettable performance.
But then again this is less of a movie and more of a pyrotechnics show which is why I'm so confused by the amount of exposition and dull plotting. For god's sake just do what the Italians do - cut to the explosions and forget the story.
The set pieces in "The Fury" are very good and when the film gets explosive it is a whole lot of fun but this is only about 30 minutes of its bloated runtime. The remaining 90 minutes are a real slog as we plod our way through an uninspired and unengaging plot which ends with one of the dumbest climaxes I've ever seen in which a character we just saw levitate falls off a roof!
2/4 - DirectorBrian De PalmaStarsJohn LithgowLolita DavidovichSteven BauerThe oncologist wife of a prominent child psychologist suspects her husband has an unhealthy scientific obsession with their child, unaware of what - or who - is really going on inside his head.22-09-2023
In 2012, Dutch filmmaker Peet Gelderblom completed a dream project - his own fan edit of Brian De Palma's underappreciated and often overlooked "Raising Cain" which has been baffling and infuriating audiences since its 1992 release. In an unheard-of series of events, De Palma himself came across Gelderblom's recut, watched it, and loved it so much he declared it his preferred director's cut. "It's what we didn't accomplish on the initial release of the film," he said, "it's what I originally wanted the movie to be".
Gelderblom's cut eventually wound up on the film's official BluRay release and it begins by following Jenny Nix (Lolita Davidovich), wife of child psychologist Carter Nix (John Lithgow) as she contemplates reigniting an affair with her ex-beau Jack (Steven Bauer). Jenny, however, is not merely turned on by her hunky former lover. Instead, she is gravitating towards the stable, predictable Jack because of her growing unease around her husband whom everyone around her perceives as perfect. Yes, he is a doting stay-at-home dad. Yes, he does appear to be a sweet, even-tempered fellow. But there's something that's a little too obsessive, too controlling about his relationship with their daughter and something he is hiding beneath that giant grin of his.
The theatrical cut, instead, began with a sequence in which we see the friendly Carter brutally murder an acquaintance assisted by his twin brother Cain. We soon learn, however, that Cain is actually one of the multiple personalities Carter has.
Besides Gelderblom, the film already has three credited editors which is a sure sign of a troubled post-production. Indeed, "Raising Cain" never quite manages to find a sure footing darting from plotline to plotline, from POV to POV, and from tone to tone. It has no conventional structure, no coherent plot progression, and whichever version you choose to watch you'll have to contend with a number of flashbacks, dream sequences, and awkward voiceovers which stumble over each other in order to explain the barest essentials of the film's plot.
There are tantalizing tales of deleted scenes and while watching "Raising Cain" I could definitely see holes popping up in the narrative. I conjured up in my mind imaginings of wonderful deleted footage which would make sense of the messy plot, further develop the characters, and create a more conventional storyline so that the film could actually work as a suspenseful thriller.
The thing is, none of this footage has ever seen the light of day and at its heart "Raising Cain" is not a conventional thriller. In fact, I think it has more in common with De Palma's weird, off-beat, avant-garde comedies from the 1960s than any of his lauded Hitchcockian films.
It definitely has a wicked sense of humour, self-effacing and almost fourth-wall-breaking. The disjointed narrative makes every sequence feel like a short movie in and of itself which creates its own expectations and then subverts them in the wildest possible fashion. Each time, De Palma sets up a conventional thriller situation. There are murders, cover-ups, cops arguing in a musty office, a wise old psychologist showing up to crack the case... And each time, De Palma completely turns the situation around on its head. The murder is negated when the victim springs up unharmed only a few scenes later, the cover-up almost goes wrong when the murderer inexplicably gets horny, the cops mock and dismiss the theories of the only one of their colleagues who has figured out the case, and the psychologist can't even find her way out of the building.
In that sense, "Raising Cain" is a film which deconstructs itself. It keeps making you think it is setting up some kind of a coherent plot or a suspenseful scene and then it proceeds to completely break the rules of the genre. In modern speak, it's a movie which deliberately trolls its audience. I mean, just look at that hilariously overwrought climax with the falling baby or the hilarious Argento spoof epilogue.
While I'm not convinced that De Palma ever meant any of "Raising Cain" to be taken seriously, there is some outstanding work on display in this movie. John Lithgow in particular does a brilliant job of portraying his character's split psyche. Playing a character with multiple personalities must be an actor's dream and Lithgow grasps the opportunity with both hands. He is outstanding as the frightened, conflicted Carter, goofily menacing as the tough guy Cain, fragile and heartrending as the abused child Josh, and controlled and sinister as the mysterious Dr Nix.
De Palma is certainly having a blast shooting the film in a manner which seems to be a parody of his own style. I especially love the bizarre flashback to Jenny and Jack's first meeting in the hospital room where Jack's wife is dying of cancer. As Jenny and Jack embrace and begin making out, the dying wife looks on in horror as De Palma creepily zooms in on her ashen face.
For technical achievement alone I must also single out the epic four-minute oner which follows a trio of characters delivering exposition down two flights of stairs and into an elevator before finally settling on a close-up of a corpse. Vintage De Palma!
"Raising Cain" is a bizarre movie and anyone looking for a coherent, tightly-wound thriller is bound to not only be disappointed but utterly infuriated. Instead, this is a borderline experimental film with a wickedly dark sense of humour which I absolutely love. Sure, its many disparate elements never come close to coming together but the film is such a brazen hoot that I can't help but admire it.
3/4 - DirectorAlain CorneauStarsLudivine SagnierKristin Scott ThomasPatrick MilleRuthless executive Christine brings on young Isabelle as her assistant taking delight in toying with her innocence. But when Christine starts passing on her protege's ideas as her own, things take a dark turn.23-09-2023
Isabelle (Ludivine Sagnier) runs at the gym on a treadmill. She says she does so to forget herself. Why does she need to forget herself?
She works at a large American multinational company under the sainted Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas), a business guru, Gordon Gekko for the 21st century. I love how everyone speaks her name with a kind of whispered reverence. You almost expect them to make a sign of the cross after uttering it.
Christine is everything the ugly duckling Isabelle isn't. She's confident, charismatic, and brazen. She is also a compulsive manipulator who finds great pleasure in using people and then discarding them in ways that hurt them the most. Take, for example, her lover Philippe (Patrick Mille) whom she uses as a human sex toy and then threatens to expose for embezzlement.
She does the same to Isabelle who is the actual brains behind Christine's brilliant business moves. Christine strings her along by giving her expensive gifts, telling her secrets and childhood stories, touching her tenderly and putting her face so close to hers that they almost kiss. Shen then turns around and steals Isabelle's ideas.
But Isabelle is not the willing patsy Christine thinks she is. What she is is observant, intelligent, and a good student and once she realizes that Christine is only using her the time comes for the student to better the teacher. Isabelle runs to forget herself but she'll make sure Christine never does.
The plot of "Love Crime" is nothing particularly original or Earth-shattering but the French know how to craft a deliciously engaging thriller. Director/writer Alain Corneau populates "Love Crimes" with such compelling and fleshed-out characters that we can't help but get involved in their lives.
The first half of the film is especially good. It's a sinister, almost sadomasochistic game of cat and mouse played by two superb actresses. Kristin Scott Thomas is wonderfully sadistic as Christine, commanding the screen with seemingly effortless elegance. However, it is Ludivine Sagnier, a dreadfully underrated actress, who truly impresses as the tidy, obsessive, repressed Isabelle. It's a performance so layered, thoughtfully varied, and precisely executed that it reminded me of the work of Isabelle Huppert, maybe the greatest actress I know of.
The second half isn't as sharp but the film remains addictively entertaining. Here it begins resembling a mid-tier "Columbo" episode as the plot begins twisting and turning in predictable but amusing ways. Sure, a lot of it depends on some questionable police work and almost supernaturally accurate memories of witnesses but Corneau and his co-writer Natalie Carter don't seem to be aiming for realism. Instead, "Love Crime" is at its heart the kind of old-school thriller that Corneau is best known for.
What did surprise me is that the 67-year-old Corneau has made a thoroughly modern movie, updating the old formulas and cliches to fit the 21st century. He immerses his crafty little plot into the world of business, competitive capitalism, and modern greed. Isabelle and Christine and Philippe and all the rest feel like characters of today. They are pushed to the extremes not because they want excess but because they need to survive in a dog-eat-dog world. It's a place where love has no place and "Love Crime" asks the question of what happens when emotions and desires get mixed up with the cold, hard world of business.
Corneau even manages to make the harsh digital photography work for him. It gives the film a voyeuristic, stark quality painting a vivid picture of the clean-cut, impersonal world these characters live in which makes Isabelle's emotional response to Christine's power plays all the more pronounced.
"Love Crime" works best, however, when it focuses not on the plot but on the two women at its centre. With such powerhouse performances from Sagnier and Thomas, "Love Crime" is a wicked good time and a sharp, effective portrayal of what happens to those who actually feel something in this capitalist world of ours where you're supposed to be a worker bee and aren't supposed to be yourself. Isabelle runs to forget herself - here's what happens when she can't.
3.5/4 - DirectorBrian De PalmaStarsRachel McAdamsNoomi RapaceKaroline HerfurthThe rivalry between the manipulative boss of an advertising agency and her talented protégée escalates from stealing credit to public humiliation to murder.23-09-2023
Alain Corneau's 2010 French thriller "Love Crime" was a deliciously witty satire on the emotionless, cutthroat world of competitive capitalism in which the worst crime you could commit was to show any emotion at all. You would think that an American remake would be even tougher since the USA is patient zero of the capitalist virus but, unfortunately, it was not to be. In the hands of Brian De Palma, the remake was reframed as a contrived, needlessly convoluted psycho-thriller which has more in common with hysterical domestic thrillers of the 90s like "Single White Female" than it does with Corneau's subtle original.
In reshaping the story to fit a more simplistic agenda, Brian De Palma has removed any and all traces of satire or political commentary from the film which now limps along down a series of increasingly preposterous twists and turns towards a climax so insane, overwrought, and poorly put together that I'm not sure I even fully understand what happened. I am, however, certain that I don't care since in true De Palma fashion, the story and the characters come second to visual trickery and subverting the audience's expectations. Like Hitchcock, De Palma likes to play the audience like a piano but "Passion" is more like a petulant child banging his hands on the keys.
"Love Crime" spent more than half of its runtime carefully fleshing out its characters. De Palma doesn't even bother reducing his two leads to puppets dangling limply on his strings. It doesn't help that both of the leads are badly miscast. Noomi Rapace is too powerful a screen presence to be convincing as the mousy Isabelle and Rachel McAdams is far too young and sweet to play her boss Christine. The dynamics of the story require that Isabelle look up to Christine but Rapace absolutely dominates the screen, towering over McAdams whose attempts to appear manipulative and debauched make her look all the more like a child playing dress-up.
Christine is the boss of a large marketing company in Berlin and Isabelle is the employee she seduces and then brutally discards publically humiliating her in the process. Isabelle then decides to take her revenge by committing the perfect murder.
De Palma, uncharacteristically, completely botches the murder sequence making the plot appear far more complicated and incomprehensible than it really is. He seems to decide halfway through that "Passion" really should be a whodunnit even though at that point we already know that Isabelle is the killer. He then introduces a series of unnecessary complications further muddling the story until he eventually gives up on the idea altogether.
"Passion's" worst crime is that it's mind-numbingly boring. McAdams and Rapace have little chemistry on screen, the plot is a mess, the twists are increasingly illogical, and the ending is as anti-climactic as it is confusing. De Palma tries to jazz up the proceedings by utilizing all of his well-known tricks - dramatic zooms, split screens, Dutch angles, and dream sequence fake-outs - but to little effect.
Other than Pino Donaggio's characteristically good score, there is nothing enjoyable about "Passion", a toothless, sluggish remake of an excellent French thriller which makes a mess of the original's careful plotting and bores us along the way.
1/4 - DirectorBrian De PalmaStarsJohn TravoltaNancy AllenJohn LithgowA movie sound recordist accidentally records the evidence that proves that a car accident was actually murder and consequently finds himself in danger.23-09-2023
Brian De Palma's "Blow Out" borrows the premise and title of Michelangelo Antonioni's seminal "Blow Up" but I think it owes much more to its contemporary, Francis Ford Coppola's "The Conversation". Both films took the paranoid anxiousness of the post-Watergate 1970s and turned it into taut, nervy techno-thrillers about sinister conspiracies and omnipresent surveillance.
In "Blow Out", John Travolta plays Jack, a sound man working on a cheap slasher flick who finds himself in a park in the middle of the night recording the sounds of the wind, the trees, and the frogs. This brilliant sequence, meticulously crafted by editor Paul Hirsch and sound editor Michael Moyse, is interrupted by a loud bang and a car hurdling into the lake. Jack jumps into the freezing water and saves the passenger, the beautiful Sally (Nancy Allen), but the driver, who turns out to have been a presidential candidate, dies.
The cops claim his death was a simple accident. His car had a blowout and swerved into the lake. But Jack is not convinced. He thinks he heard a shot just before the crash. Setting out to prove his beliefs, just like Gene Hackman in "The Conversation" he begins obsessively listening to the tape he made that night. Rewinding it, replaying it, tuning it just right so that the shot can be heard.
Unlike "The Conversation" or "Blow Up", however, "Blow Out" is a much more straightforward thriller and for that reason, it fits very snuggly with other more conventional paranoia thrillers of the time like "The Parallax View" or "Three Days of the Condor".
Herein lies my first problem with this movie. There's no real mystery in it. Not only do we immediately know that Jack is right and the candidate was assassinated, but we soon get to meet the killer and learn the whole plot. De Palma doesn't seem to place much stock in mystery anyway with most of his films either blowing the mystery angle as soon as possible (just like "Blow Out" does) or having a mystery so predictable and thinly plotted that it might as well have none (like "Dressed to Kill", for example).
The result is a movie which plays out more like a series of events and set pieces instead of like a carefully constructed narrative progression. Other paranoia thrillers of the age quite effectively placed much stock on the idea that you can trust no one. Anyone could be involved in the conspiracy and you never know how far it all goes. "Blow Out" doesn't even try to go down that angle. Before the first third is out, we learn that the killer is acting alone.
My second problem with "Blow Out" is its protagonists. I find neither of them particularly likeable or well fleshed out. John Travolta is rather bland as Jack, having neither the manic intensity of David Hemmings in "Blow Up" nor the psychological complexity of Gene Hackman in "The Conversation". Truth be told, Travolta is an actor whose performances are rather hit or miss with me. In the right parts his cheesy blandness can work well (think "Pulp Fiction" or "Grease") but most of the time he looks more like he's posing for the camera rather than acting.
Conversely, I do like Nancy Allen in most of the films I've seen her in including her previous films with De Palma but here I find her grating. The character of Sally, the blonde bimbo with a heart of gold, is a crude stereotype made all the worse by the screeching voice and one-note performance employed by Allen. Her Sally seems to oscillate only on a single frequency - high.
Thankfully, the bland leads are balanced out by some tremendous supporting performance. John Lithgow is mesmerisingly menacing as the killer, giving his most psychotic and terrifying performance. Also wonderful is Peter Boyden as a sleazy film producer who just cannot find an actress for his latest slasher flick who can scream right! However, it is the performance of Dennis Franz which is my favourite and which rings the most true. He is wonderfully slimy as a private eye who employs Sally to cuddle up to married men so he can then photograph their coupling and blackmail them. He's no Jake Gittes!
De Palma has always been a poor writer but at the time of "Blow Out" he was a sensational director. Here we have some of his finest shots such as the dizzyingly frantic moment in which Jack finds all of his tapes wiped or the flashback sequence showing how an undercover sting can go terribly wrong. The best sequence of the film, however, is its controversial ending which I found rousing, wildly exciting, and delightfully witty in a cynical, dark way. It is such a horrifying anticlimax that it put me in mind of some of Roman Polanski's finest endings.
With De Palma at the top of his game, some great supporting performances, and one of my favourite and funkiest Pino Donaggio's scores, I can certainly understand why so many cinephiles hold "Blow Out" in high regard. For me, personally, however, the thin screenplay, lack of a mystery, and the unlikeable protagonists kill some of the fun. I certainly find "Blow Out" impressive and occasionally highly effective but I also find it very unengaging because I already know what's happening and I don't care whether the leads live or die.
3/4