Author Archives: Dennis

Ladder 49 [2004]

Director: Jay Russell
Actor: Joaquin Phoenix, Jacinda Barrett, John Travolta, Robert Patrick

Whenever I find myself at home alone, having shamelessly downloaded a film, watching it on the sneak, hoping the RIAA (or whatever the cinema-equivalent is) doesn’t come busting down my door, I always get what I have over the years called the coach-class effect. Whenever I fly, you see, and I’m watching a film on the little screen mounted in the seat in front of me, that’s all I focus on. It’s all I hear, it’s all I see. I find I can concentrate quite well when I’m in an aeroplane. The same goes for when I’m at home watching something on my computer screen. I sit so close that I get completely immersed in whatever I’m watching, be it a television show, feature film, documentary or a music video.

And it usually leaves me incredibly emotional, and this time was no exception.

I’ve heard this film described by some of my friends who’ve seen it in the cinema, as a festering piece of escrement. Perhaps it was the coach-effect, but I have to disagree. While it certainly wasn’t a milestone in cinematic history, nor was depth or realism very pervasive elements in Jay Russell’s rather rookie attempt at cinematics, but the film left me with something else; an monumental feeling of worthlessness.

You see, I’ve helped my fair share of people with advice, services, favours, money, or whatever else I was able to afford them, but I’ve never really done anything selfless, courageous and brave. And it seems that this little superhero-wannabe ( read: me ) is convinced that all of that is what it takes to become a truly good human being.

Coffee and Cigarettes [2003]

Director: Jim Jarmusch

What. A. Waste. Of. Time

Der Untergang [2004]

Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel
Actor: Bruno Ganz

Der Untergang, or “The Downfall,” tells the story of the last days of Adolf Hitler as he slowly slips further down into his insanity, plagued by defeat, betrayal as well as the almost undying loyalty of most of his people. Everything weighed down heavily on Adolf Hitler the last few days in the bunker underneath Berlin.

The movie, heavily critised for showing Hitler’s humanity, shows a side of the war that very few people have ever seen, mostly because of lack of interest. When thinking of the second world war, people don’t want to think of the Germans as people, but rather as the enemy. People don’t want to think of Hitler the man, but rather as Hitler the monster.

After the war Germany slowly came to grips with the scope of the war, the attrocities and the wide spread genocide. Many simply couldn’t believe it, and so the Germans started the first of four phases of WWII education. The first phase was to educate the people about the war. The second phase to educate about the events behind the war that few had any knowledge of. (Read: the attrocities.) These two phases were hardly emotional and information was delivered with a certain amount of dispassionatism, in order for the Germans to get used to certain concepts without immediately feeling guilty and defensive.

This film is from the fourth and final phase; with all the emotional content necessary for the full weight of the war to come crashing down on a well-prepared nation of Germans.

The film starts with a small audio-clip from an interview with Traudl, Hitler’s personal secretary during the war and main character from the film, from 2002, the year she passed away. The film also ends with a small part of the interview, video this time, in which she realises that while she didn’t know about the genocide, she could’ve known, had she wanted to, and the guilt she felt for being so naive.

In between, the film is a tale of the almost surreal moments in Berlin, right before the Russians marched in and cleaned house. Hitler, surrounded by his generals and Feldmarschalls, convinced that the fall of Berlin is not a given, while most of his generals have accepted what he has not; that the war is over and that capitulation is the only option for the German people’s survival. Hitler, wracked by feelings of betrayal at such heresy, refuses to believe it. What struck me was how many of the generals said; “We capitulated in 1918. We will never do that again,” indicating clearly how the Treaty of Versailles – known among many Germans as the Versailles Diktat, which shows just how they experienced it – was considered a humiliation of the highest order.

From the Hitler Jugend getting rewarded the Iron Cross for successfully operating the anti-tank cannons, to the drunken debauchery of the mid-level officers who had already given up on the war, to the massive loyalty to an insane leader, to the scene in which everyone seems to be discussing the best ways to commit suicide, this film is full of surreal moments, in which you can’t quite believe, though fully realise, that this is the way it must’ve been near the end of the war.

The film ends, as I said, with a small clip from the interview with Traudl, followed up with a summary of what happened with most of the men and women in the film after the capitulation. What struck me, most of all, and which made me incredibly emotional, was that the SS officer who went into Hitler’s room, to confirm that he and Eva Braun had commited suicide is still alive today, living in Hamburg. It’s the thought that in another few years the generation that had first hand accounts of a war that was so detrimental to the formation of our society today will no longer be there to tell us about it.

History gets written by the victor, or so the saying goes. But I think that in recent years, unless a people have been wiped out or surpressed in the aftermath of a war, they have had a chance to tell their tale. To make sure that historical accounts didn’t get muddled up. The German survivors of the second world war are probably one of the first generations of war-survivors to be able to do that, and it took them nearly 60 years to do it.

Pauly Shore Is Dead [2003]

Director: Pauly Shore
Actor: Pauly Shore

This film stars Pauly Shore, Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Sean Penn, Fred Durst, Chris Rock, Whoopi Goldberg, Tom Sizemore, Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg, Johnny Sanchez, and the list goes on and on and on…

This film was a hilarious, self-deprecating film, made by Pauly Shore. I used to love Pauly Shore, and I almost forgot about him until I ran across this film in which he kills himself in order to revive his career. He’s got a lot of celebraties to talk smack about him. Really forgotten motherfuckers, too…like Rico Suave! I laughed my ass off, but I think that might have been the mood I was in.

The Manchurian Candidate (2004) [2004]

Director: Jonathan Demme
Actor: Denzel Washington, Liev Schreiber, Meryl Streep, Jeffrey Wright, Jon Voight

First off, I’d like to tell you the story of the original Manchurian Candidate from 1962, starring Frank Sinatra, directed by John Frankenheimer; The film, because of it’s rather sensitive subject matter was not going to be produced because the president of United Artists, Arthur Krim, was also Finance Chairman of the Democratic party and very politically inclined. As a personal favour to his friend Sinatra, President Kennedy convinced Krim that it was alright to make the film. The film was supposed to be a satire, but got a grim overtone when after the release of the film Kennedy was shot dead by Lee Harvey Oswald, whom many conspiracy theorist claim was a Manchurian Candidate. The film stayed in circulation until the late seventies, when the rights to the film reverted to Sinatra, who halted distribution, giving rise to all kinds of speculation. After his death, the rights fell into the hands of Tina Sinatra, Frank’s daughter, who was one of the producers of the 2004 remake.

The film is about Major Ben Marco [Denzel Washington], who, together with his squadron, was ambushed in Kuwait in 1991 while on a reconnaisance mission. He was knocked unconscious and only through the brave efforts of Sgt. Shaw [Liev Schreiber] – a son of a US senator who, in a fit of rebellion against his dominant mother ran away from home and enlisted in the army, refusing an officer’s position – did the squadron survive with only two casualties and made it through the desert on a three day trek to safety. He was awarded the Medal of Honor, the highest award a soldier can hope to achieve.

When Ben is confronted, years later, by one of the soldiers from his squadron, the confused Pvt. Al Melvin, who seems confused, paranoid and claims to have lucid dreams of brainwashing, he, too, starts to have dreams that seem more real than the events surrounding the ambush he remembers experiencing.

Meanwhile Sgt. Shaw is now Congressman Shaw, having been shoehorned into politics by his influential mother Senator Pretiss Shaw [Sterile Creep] and will be on the presidential election ticket as running mate.

Unable to get back in contact with Pvt. Melvin, Ben tries to get in contact with Shaw, since it seems he is the only other surviving member of the squadron besides Melvin and himself. At first Shaw gives him the cold shoulder, but later, out of respect for his former commanding officer, decides to talk about the dreams Ben’s having over take-away food. Having found an implanted chip in his shoulder earlier that day, Ben comes across as paranoid and confused, and while Shaw is campaigning he can’t have any distractions, nor can he afford to induldge in Ben’s delusions. Ben claims Shaw, too, has an implant in his shoulder and when Shaw refuses to let Ben check, he attacks him.

Slowly Ben is losing his mind, and he’s trying to part fact from fiction as his drive for the truth becomes more and more obsessed. Slowly he starts finding out the truth about the ambush in the Kuwaiti desert, and he tries with all his might to convince people that his discoveries could prove to be a danger to the sovereignty of the country.

Training Day, John Q, Man on Fire, Manchurian Candidate. Denzel Washington is proving by and large that he is a fine actor, and I have no doubt that, if he keeps this up, in the years ahead he’ll earn many more oscars that he can put with the two he already has.

Liev Schreiber, whom I had only before seen in the Scream series, proves to be a hell of a good actor, and Sterile Creep isn’t as jarring as she normally is in films, and actually preformed really well.