Author Archives: Dennis

Revolver

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Revolver [2005]

Director: Guy Ritchie
Actor: Jason Statham, Ray Liotta, Vincent Pastore, André Benjamin
Writer: Guy Ritchie

I couldn’t bring myself to write a review, so I’m giving you one from iMDB that I completely agreed with:

Quote:
Okay. Who was it? Who gave Revolver 10 out of 10? Are you tripping of your head on Ecstasy pipes? There were so many of you. Did you do it for a dare? Is this some kind of cult? Or did Guy Richie himself sign up 788 times under different names?

Before I say anything else, I’ll say this. Just because you don’t understand a film doesn’t mean that it’s not great. Maybe you’ve had a bad day at work, or you sat down to watch a film after you had a row with your wife and then weren’t in the mood. Maybe there’s a more fundamental stumbling block- like you just don’t have the mental capacity or a highly enough developed philosophical sense to engage with it. BUT. And this is a very, very big but. The XXL elephant-sized mega-but to end all buts.

PLEASE don’t confuse incoherence for complexity, and please don’t confuse this two hour non-squirter for an interesting film. Really. You may think you are pretty smart. You may even think of yourself as somewhat of a romantic figure: an independent thinker championing a masterpiece against a chorus of sheep-like naysayers. Please don’t. You’re embarrassing yourself.

Revolver’s a waste of everyone’s time. If you thought about if for a few minutes, you’d recognise it too. It was a waste of the cast, a waste of the crew, a waste of the caterers, and definitely a waste of the precious minutes (you can’t get them back you know) of anyone unlucky enough to sit through this unutterable, wretched mess.

“No – wait,” comes a voice in the darkness. “You just don’t understand. Its NON-LINEAR. That means the story doesn’t go in a STRAIGHT LINE. This is actually the COMPLEX and SUBTLE work of an AUTEUR. It addresses difficult EXISTENTIAL questions. And anyway – they slated FIGHT CLUB when it first came out – didn’t you hear? -Because they couldn’t deal with the COMPLEXITY. They’re eating humble pie now. Bet you hate Lynch films too, doncha?”

Hate to disappoint you, but I am quite a big Lynch fan. I rather like Memento, so a narrative told in an unconventional fashion doesn’t necessarily fill me with fear. And although I’ve only studied it briefly a few years ago, philosophy interests me greatly. I don’t dislike Revolver for these reasons. I dislike it because it purports to be about weighty, big-brained topics but deals with them in such an insultingly superficial way as to be laughable. I’m not much of a chess player, but Richie’s idea of how chess works seems to be that of a precocious four year old. I dislike it because the characters, without exception, totally alienated me. “Aha!” cries the Richie apologist. “Guy is cleverly tipping his hat to Brecht!” Just maybe you’re right. I think its more likely that he just can’t write a decent script for toffee.

Comparing Revolver with Fight Club is actually really instructive. Fight Club has acid-tongued, nihilistic dialogue that makes you laugh. Revolver has stale fortune cookie reject one-liners that make your ears bleed. Fight Club has a great twist that makes you reassess everything that has happened. Revolver has, as far as I can tell, several incomprehensible twists that offer no satisfaction because… well, they don’t make sense. If you keep pulling the rug out from under people, they eventually kick you out of their house. And then they lock all the doors and windows. And they never let you back in. Ever.

Guy Richie seems to assume that being philosophical entails repeating a mantra of little buzz-phrases. Mostly they are spoken, but often they flash up on the screen with attributions. It’s almost pathological.

But what makes this film particularly notable is the way in which something so incomprehensible can be married so neatly with all tired gangster clichés in the world. Ultimately its so inconsequential. You don’t care about anything. You don’t understand anything. You go home.

Actually, there was a bit I really liked: the uptight assassin who has a crisis of confidence. He’s great. But I can’t recommend you see the film just to see him. He’s only in it for a few minutes.

Please believe me. It’s horrible.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

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Kiss Kiss Bang Bang [2005]

Director: Shane Black
Actor: Robert Downey Jr., Val Kilmer, Michelle Monaghan

This was a really, really funny movie. It’s a cross between L.A. Confidential and Get Shorty. It’s awesome.

Harry Lockhart (Downey) is a crook who, while running from the cops, lands in an audition for a film-part, he’s so emotional because of his crook-partner got shot, that he aced the audition and is immediately flown to Hollywood in order to start preparing for a role. His tutor is celebrity PI Perry “Gay Perry” Van Shrike, who is an technical advisor on many movie sets. Together with Gay Perry and his highschool sweetheart Harmony Faith Lane (Monaghan) (a porn name if ever I heard one), Harry gets involved in a big kidnap/murder plot that seems straight out of a trash detective novel!

Great film. Very funny. I laughed. Loudly.

Shaun of the Dead

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Shaun of the Dead [2004]

Director: Edgar Wright
Actor: Simon Pegg

Around the time of 28 Days Later, and Dawn of the Dead, there was a lot of attention for zombie-flicks, and many people parodied the easily-parodied sub-genre of zombie-flicks. Not everyone did it right, but at least someone did; Shaun of the Dead.

It’s a film about Shaun, who wakes up one day, walks to the grocers to get a can of coke, like he always does, and completely fails to notice all the zombies in the street. He comes home and goes to play PlayStation with his best friend until, by accident, they find a girl in their backyard. At first they think she’s drunk, but as soon as she tries to, well, you know, eat him, they finally have the sense to turn on the tellie, only to find that the whole city is overrun with zombies. The two of them quickly decide upon a plan to rescue Shaun’s mom, and his (ex-)girlfriend.

Insert hilarity and a fair bit of acting from time to time. The John Woo-esque scene in that movie is billiant. Watch for it, you’ll notice it when people are pointing broken bottles at one another.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose

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The Exorcism of Emily Rose [2005]

Director: Scott Derrickson
Actor: Laura Linney, Jennifer Carpenter, Tom Wilkinson

Before I say anything about this film, it’s important that everyone understands that The Exorcism of Emily Rose is based on the story of Annalise Michel, a German girl who died after an excorcism was performed on her, back in the 70s. You can say what you will, you can be as skeptical as you want to be, but that kind of makes the movie a bit more creepy, regardless of the truth behind the story. :)

Emily Rose is a girl that comes from a very small town, somewhere in the mid-west or perhaps New England, who is accepted to a college in “the city” (which city that is, is unclear) on a full scholarship. There she finds herself assaulted by an invisible force one night at 3 am. It’s the start of a string of attacks on her. These are attacks are physical, mental as well as spiritual, and while doctors tell her that she might be epileptic, she comes to the conclusion that this is a spiritual matter, rather than a medical one, and she decides to move back home. There the attacks turn into an actual invasion of her body by a malevolent spirit, and the family’s priest is asked to help. The priest ends up doing an exorcism, which fails, and Emily dies.

That’s where the movie starts, with the incarceration of the priest. The next hour and a half is basically a courtroom drama, which tells of the trial of Father Moore, the priest in question, as he tries to defend himself against the charge of criminal negligence resulting in Emily’s death. They tell the tale of Emily’s posession, which is a creepy one, while trying to refute the public defender’s claim that there was nothing spiritually wrong with Emily, but that this was simply a case of epilepsy, which could have been treated with the right medication.

The story and visuals really appealed to me, because I think Catholicism has a great mythological background, which makes for great tales of Good pitched against Evil. Like The Exorcist, this film is sober and bleak, not relying on visual effects to deliver the punch. The juxtaposition of the court room drama, and the drama unfolding in the flashbacks of Emily’s last few days are very, very gripping, and with an excellent cast of relatively unknown people, you are not tempted to deform the actor’s part to what you have come to expect of the actor. The casting was spot on, right down to the super-religious, slightly bumpkin family of Emily. Great film.

A History of Violence

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A History of Violence [2005]

Director: David Cronenberg
Actor: Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ed Harris, William Hurt

Tom Stall (Mortensen) is a humble and loving family man living in a small town in Indiana, happily married and running a small diner in the centre of town. He is a well respected and popular member of the small, close-knit community, and with two healthy kids and a beautiful wife seems to be living out the American Dream.

When one day two notorious murderers come knocking at the diner at closing time, dead set on robbing the place and leaving some cold bodies on the checkered floor, Tom is forced to take action. In a heroic display of violence he guns down the killers while himself sustaining only minor injuries. He is heralded as a hero, and seen as the man who decidedly and single-handedly stopped the robbery, saved the threatened people that were still in the diner, and rid the streets of two wanted killers.

Much to his irritation, his face is plastered all over the news, which attracts some unwanted attention. A mobster from the eastcoast by the name of Fogarty (Harris) comes calling with two goons, claiming Tom is someone else, someone they’ve been trying to track down for a long time. They insist and start harrassing him and his family.

What happens next is appaling and appealing at the same time, in that Cronenberg sort of way. I enjoyed this movie a lot, for it’s acting, directing and its gratuitous but purposeful violence.