Essays - Top Ten - In Depth - R & R - Links - RAQ - Feedback
Dr Strangelove played straight and adjusted for a teenage audience (who won't be as likely to remember Strangelove). In the process of making it seem more serious the story is actually made more absurd: this time the alert for the third world war is triggered by a teenager (Matthew Broderick) who is trying to break into a games company's computer. Instead he cracks the defence system and asks to play "Global Thermonuclear War" ("Wouldn't you prefer a good game of chess?" the computer asks him). He plays the Russians, and as he fires his missiles they start appearing as inbounds on the War Room's defence screens. This film has credibility gaps that sit like giant black holes sucking the threatening tone out of the film, but its enjoyable enough, and shows itself willing to see the funny side of its silly plot. The best bits are those at the start, where Broderick fools around with the school computer (which, security wise, is roughly equal to the defence department's) to impress a girl (Alley Sheedy) or visits a bunch of computer freak friends (Pauline Kael showed amazing foresight when she wrote that one was "possibly the first example on the screen of a new species - computer nerd"). So these are the people who made Tron.
An added level of enjoyment is to marvel at the dodgy 1980s computer hardware on show.
Ok horror story with nothing particularly to recommend it for. Richard E Grant and Lori Singer are the good guys, and Julian Sands is the bad guy, in a story very similar to James Cameron's The Terminator (its quite similar in tone, too), only this time the visitors come from the past. But why doesn't Kassandra put the book in the sea? Holds your attention, but their are much better films along these lines that you could see. Might have made more sense to locate it in England, too. Effective Jerry Goldsmith score.
Wayne's World (Penelope Spheeris), 1992
Great Bill-and-Ted type film whose characters apparently predate that classic partnership. The humor here derives less from sending up teen speech and thought patterns (which is an easy target, however well done you think Bill and Ted were) and more from sending up old movie conventions - The two biggest laughs come from a joke based on film subtitles and a cross reference to Terminator 2 (alas, these are also pretty easy targets).
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Robert Zemeckis), 1988
Big budget film aims to be a tribute to the manic Avery-Clampett style of cartoons from the late forties, but ironically the viewers who had most reservations about the film were cartoon fans. They felt, with some justification, that the salute was being made by people who lacked full appreciation of those cartoons (ie Disney animators who avoided this kind of humour for years). If they'd been saluting the Chuck Jones style Disney could have had a hope, but Avery and Clampett are not only the two whose style was hardest to duplicate, they are also the two classic cartoonists furthest removed from the Disney ethos. Its like asking Spielberg to direct a Quentin Tarantino script.
Still, a lot of it works: the opening cartoon is a beauty, for a start - and you'll feel a joyful thrill at its conclusion when the camera pulls back and the characters walk of the set. Many of the cartoon characters of old make cameos (in their 1947 personalities, an admittedly brave choice by the makers). Disney and Warner Brothers reached a truce allowing Warners stars to appear, but someone demanded equal time for the major stars: an unwise choice for Disney because it means Bugs Bunny appears with Mickey Mouse, thus showing the latter as the loser he is. The moment cartoon fans will treasure forever, though, is the wonderful scene with Daffy and Donald Duck - a match made in heaven. The two belt out a frenzied piano duet (The Hungarian Rhapsody, of course) while trading blows and insults ("This is the last time I work with someone with a thpeech impediment!" gripes Daffy). It's a shame they're from different studios- these two would obviously have made a great team. A great scene to treasure forever.
The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah), 1969
Excellent late western covers the adventures of a bunch of old-style outlaws in the dying days of the west. Led by William Holden, they venture south of the border for that one last job, with former ally Robert Ryan in pursuit. The western, by this period, was in its self-reflexive twilight days, battling TV westerns and the newly emerging Italian take on the form (Leone's "Dollars" trilogy was released in the US in 1967-68). This is a bravura finale before the genre went into virtual hibernation through the seventies and eighties.
Probably the film's most famous legacy is its portrayal of violence: Peckinpah's opening and closing battles remain harrowing and have inspired countless (mostly lesser) imitations. But it's not ultimately a sensationalist or superficial film: it attempts a more intelligent take on some of the western's key themes. One is the coming of civilisation, though I share the view of those who argue this theme has been overplayed in discussion of the film. More significant is the portrayal of group loyalty and particularly male solidarity. True, the expression of this solidarity through the Bunch's slaughter at the end hardly counts as in depth analysis, but Peckinpah brings this about plausibly and it remains a classic sequence. Direction and editing is top notch here.
Seldom bettered.
As a thriller, it's very scenic. Weir seems to be trying for the first American arthouse action film.
Harrison Ford (at his most relaxed and therefore his most likable) plays a cop who finds that some of his fellow cops are responsible for a murder witnessed by a young Amish boy. Apparently on the theory that because his boss was crooked, all other cops are crooked (he never goes to the FBI or internal investigation) he hides out in the Amish farm community with Kelly McGillis (the boy's conveniently widowed mother). While the film is pleasant enough, and always good to look at, with strong chemistry between the two leads, action fans will balk at the unimaginative, largely unexciting finale (in which Amish run across the fields like the cavalry - or the Ewoks arriving in Return of the Jedi). Weir's usual arthouse crowd will similarly be dispirited by the films obvious hypocrisy in presenting the pacifist Amish, who believe killing is never justified and only used by people who can't find other options, and then having Ford indulge in gun battles with them.
Weir would have been better off to stick with one style or the other: by trying to redeem his material with arthouse flourishes he demeans himself and a terrific genre.
The World is Not Enough (Michael Apted), 1999
The latest Bond adventure is hardly the greatest. Directed by Michael Apted, best known for his 7-Up series, it's competently done, but totally uninspiring. The plot holds together marginally better than the lame-brained GoldenEye and the nearly plotless Tomorrow Never Dies, but the scriptwriters are woefully short of ideas, and the action setpieces (a boat chase, a ski chase, and Bond being pursued by helicopters) are flatly done. The advance trailer for John Woo's Mission Impossible 2 that preceded the film had me far more excited.
The supporting cast includes Dame Judi Dench (given a bit more to do as M, although it's hard to imagine she really wants to devote much time to the role), Sophie Marceau, and Denise Richards. Marceau does what is required for her part, but Richards seems way out of her depth as a nuclear physicist. John Cleese has a small part as Q's assistant, with Q himself (Desmond Llewellyn) getting a nice farewell from the series. He'll be missed.
Maybe Apted should have stuck to what he knows best and visited Bond every seven years to see how he was going. 007-Up, anybody?
1962: Dr No - Lean, mean Bond is played by Connery and about as cool as you can get.
1969: On Her Majesty's Secret Service - Bond is now George Lazenby, looking ill at ease, but showing a newfound maturity in one of his best films.
1977: The Spy Who Loved Me - Bond, sadly, has become Roger Moore and is fighting one of the more ridiculous villains he will face.
1985: A View to a Kill - Mmmm... elderly Bond and Duran Duran theme song. Can it get worse?
1992: Bond is missing, presumed dead, after years of neglect.
1999: The World is Not Enough - BrosnoBond is alive and well, but producers must try harder.
Working Girl (Mike Nicholls), 1988
Rarely do films become dated as quickly as yuppie business comedies from the eighties have (Secret of My Success, anyone?). This one tells the story of a secretary (Melanie Griffith) who surreptitiously takes over the job of her boss (a well cast Sigourney Weaver) for a week and tries to prove herself fit for a position higher in the company. Made now, the film would probably feature Griffith realising (quite unreasonably of course) that money isn't everything and giving up on her high pressure low satisfaction new job. But, man, this was the eighties- a decade I'll be proud to tell my children I grew up in.
Griffith can't really carry her role- even after she's adjusted her voice to more business like tones it's too squeaky to come across as convincing (the scenes where she switches back from one accent too another are jarringly overplayed). I kept having hallucinations of Meg Ryan in the role- partly because of her physical similarity to Griffith but also partly because I think she'd play better off Harrison Ford, playing Weaver's on-again-off-again boyfriend. Ford is a likable enough rogue, though his role is a little underwritten. Indeed, the entire supporting cast is good- Griffith and Joan Cusack play quite well off each other.
What this film is trying to do, however, ultimately remains a mystery. It's an unfortunate example of that new American genre, the not-comedy. Somewhere the Americans let the fuzzy plots they propped their comedies up with take over. There are, quite simply, no jokes in this film. A comedy, in America now, is simply light drama. It passes the time nicely enough (and I stress- there is nothing outright bad about this film) but it's a vacuum- you might as well have been asleep.
When things are getting that vapid the last thing you need to do is start making mistakes, but that's what Nichols does as the film moves towards its closing moments. Griffith and Weaver have finally had their big confrontation- and Weaver has won, taking over the reins of the deal Griffith was engineering. So what happens- we cut to a scene at a wedding between Griffith and her no-good boyfriend (Alec Baldwin). We've never been particularly interested in this guy, and less so now that the story is moving to a conclusion, even if it does have vague thematic relevance (it confirms Griffith can't return to her old life). Worse though, the whole scene (and the one that follows) seems to hint that a few weeks have passed. When it turns out that the deal is still in progress and Griffith gets a second chance at a standoff with Weaver we have to backpedal. Then Nichols repeats the trick he pioneered in The Graduate, once again using the final moments to sneakily undermine the (apparent) intentions of the script.
Excellent theme song by Carly Simon won that most rare of accolades - a well deserved Oscar.
Comments? Click here
© 2003 by Stephen Rowley