| Roundup : 'Inside Man' [6/10]; 'When A Stranger Calls' [6/10]; 'Silent Hill' [5/10]; 'Brick' [5+/10] |
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    ZEIT-HEIST : Spike Lee's 'Inside Man' [6/10] Snazzy, Manhattan-set bank-robbery thriller, made with at least one eye to seventies precursors like Dog Day Afternoon (namechecked) and The Taking of Pelham 123 (as in the latter, the [fictional] Mayor of NYC occasionally pops up). Though seemingly not especially interested in the material (beyond the nuts-and-bolts of hostage-situation police-procedural) Lee assembles a persuasively glossy package: most obviously noteworthy element is the cinematography from Matthew Libatique (at times recalling his hyped-up work on Requiem for a Dream) which presents a rather excessively starry cast in the best possible light(s). Perhaps aptly, Inside Man (pretentious, definite-article-dispensing title alert!) never looks anything less than a million bucks. Russell Gewirtz's script doesn't exactly stretch these stellar performers, but they're sufficiently charismatic and classy to keep things consistently watchable for most (if perhaps not all) of the 2hr+ running-time: Clive Owen (with slightly wobbly American accent) as the calm chief robber; Denzel Washington (seemingly having a ball in an array of natty threads) as the cop with whom he negotiates; Chiwetel Ejiofor (more comfortable than Owen with those Yankee tones) as Washington's No2; Christopher Plummer as the bank's patrician boss, closet bulging with skeletons; Jodie Foster (looking ever-so-slightly bemused beneath her glacially immaculate demeanour) in a deliberately nebulous (superfluous?) role as a glamorous but morally-bankrupt intermediary; Willem Dafoe (a conspicuously busy actor at the moment) rather wasted as a SWAT Captain. The elaborate robbery turns out to be rather more and less than it initially appears - as a 'hostage situation' develops Washington correctly deduces that many of Owen's ploys (one of which, in a pleasingly leftfield non-sequitur touch, revolves around a speech from Albania's former dictator Enver Hoxha) are stalling tactics to deflect the authorities from the gang's real activities. The picture, likewise, diverts the audience with all manner of flim-flam and persiflage - there are numerous, somewhat unhelpful flash-forwards to the hostages being interrogated by Washington and Ejiofor after the situation has been 'resolved'. This in addition to some less-than-subtle attempts to give a post-9/11 flavour to proceedings (one of the minor characters is a nephew of Osama Bin Laden; a throwaway shot of a desk calendar indicates the heist is taking place on 8/12), including an enjoyable scene-stealing turn from Waris Ahluwahlia as a harrassed Sikh ("Give me back my fucking turban!" he repeatedly yelps after getting roughed up by the jittery coppers.) Said 'stalling' and flim-flam would be OK if it were all the prelude for some kind of earth-shattering final-reel revelation - which it isn't, the climax being very much the weakest section of the picture. Overall feeling is of strong elements being rather lazily deployed: typical of this is Lee's use of music - picture opens and ends with an insanely rousing, catchy crossover track by Bollywood maestro A R Rahman (accompanies nifty 'picture-credits' identifying most of the cast by name and face, always a nice touch). But main bulk of action is scored in oppressively bombastic, incessant and portentous style by Terence Blanchard - which occasionally makes Gewirtz's ever-so-snappy, post-modern dialogue near-inaudible. DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL : Simon West's 'When A Stranger Calls' [6/10] One approaches When A Stranger Calls with the deep trepidation experienced by its central character when her telephone rings. It's yet another seventies-horror remake, this time of a rather dimly-remembered original (1979, dir. Fred Walton, expanded from a 20-minute short in the wake of Halloween's success; stars Carol Kane, Charles Durning, Brit actor Tony Beckley as the taunting psychopath). This time: no-name cast (including Brit actor Tommy Flanagan as the taunting psychopath), Simon West directing - his last theatrical feature to obtain a release being 2001's utterly dire Laura Croft : Tomb Raider. Low expectations, however, often yield pleasing results. Though no great shakes, this Stranger Calls proves much more suited to West's somewhat limited directorial skills - at least once the jaggedly edited opening title sequence is out of the way. He seems to have found his level - and, given the surprise success of the picture at the US box office (opened at #1) West may well be checking out Walton's pricelessly-titled TV-movie followup When A Stranger Calls Back (1993). After that offputtingly frenetic opening, West's WASC settles down into a pleasingly no-nonsense, non-spoofy remorselessly efficient (if somewhat repetitive) little chiller, very much in the style of 60s/70s British psychological woman-in-peril shockers. Set-up is hyper-familiar (was famously parodied via Drew Barrymore in the opening sequence of Scream almost a decade ago): on a dark and stormy night, teenage babysitter is plagued by menacing calls; turns out (da-da-daaaaa!) that the caller is in the (isolated, rural) house with her: "Did you check the children?!" being the 'money line' in both the '79 version and this update (which comes up with a rather nifty way of preventing our heroine from using her mobile.) All very Cat and the Canary, and shamelessly so: picture even features a cat and many canaries, with said feline munching on one yellow-feathered critter as the final reel looms (not an especially convincing effect, but bird-lovers will be reassured by the American Humane Association's typically-exhaustive report which notes that "Chester's sinful snack was a prop bird smeared with baby food." Pic itself is (rather like West's chef-d'oeuvre, Con Air) something of a 'sinful snack' all told - hardly nourishing, and by no means a new flavour, but a reasonably well-crafted diversion for a brisk hour and a half (thus especially suitable as date-movie fare). But several classy touches elevate WASC above the general multiplex ruck, including a suitably game central performance from Camilla Belle (Rose in the rather more high-falutin' Ballad of Jack and Rose) as 'Jill Johnson' (same name as in the original, just possibly a nod to the prominent 70s feminist Jill Johnston whose rambling poem was one of the highlights of Town Bloody Hall.) Safe bet to say Belle seems set for bigger and better things: talent and striking looks, combining Sharleen Spiteri, Juliette Lewis and (disconcertingly) a young Tom Cruise (she's only 20, so could plausibly be cast as Mapother IV's offspring in some future project). Pic is pretty much a one-woman show for most part, but the eagle-eared viewer will identify the caller's sinister tones as those of Lance Henriksen (the imposing, relatively youthful Flanagan takes on the physical aspects of the role, allowing veteran Henriksen to quite literally "phone in" his performance and thus devote more time to his beloved ceramics). Real star of the show, however, is locations scout Kyle Alexander: there's a remarkable old-school gym early on (allowing the athletic Belle to show off her moves around a kind of elevated running-track circuit), while the house in which the babysitting takes place is a modernist, lakeside masterpiece of glass and dark wood, full of intriguing dark corners and so tastefully opulent it makes Harrison Ford's similar gaff in Firewall look like a dilapidated, pokey bedsit. WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT : Christophe Gans' 'Silent Hill' [5/10] Monsters and demons from the unconscious of Francis Bacon! A plot ripped from H P Lovecraft by way of In the Mouth of Madness and Event Horizon! A maverick French director hot off the delirious, inspired Brotherhood of the Wolf! A supporting cast featuring the one and only Alice Krige - here looking like a cross between Tilda Swinton and Mercedes McCambridge!! Given all these elements, how on earth could Silent Hill fail? The jury is still out, and it could well be that those nefarious "studio bosses" are to blame: picture certainly feels like it's had slabs of exposition and explanation shoehorned in to what would otherwise be an intriguingly senseless miasma of nastiness and chills. But there's also a temptation to level the finger of blame (or should that be fingers..... "witch!!!") at scriptwriter Roger Avary, taking a detour into the horror genre and clearly ill-at-ease with the terrain: he and Gans seem determined to make The Ultimate Horror Film, the epic running time of 120-odd minutes providing evidence of their swaggering ambition (120-odd minutes for a horror is roughly equivalent to three hours plus for a 'conventional' drama). Though they do occasionally craft scenes of wild, near-genius delirium, they end up coming a cropper, foiled in their attempt to transfer material that has been wildly successful in one medium (Konami's video game) into another. Results here are really not much more successful than the rather more low-brow Doom or Resident Evil: Apocalypse, and can it really be a coincidence that the most satisfying 'video game movies' - namely Avalon and eXistenZ - were both based on games which (at least at the time of production) didn't actually exist? Story strongly recalls recent horror clunker The Dark: Sean Bean plays the bewildered dad in both pictures. Emphasis is very much on female characters, however: Rose (Radha Mitchell) is determined to sort out the escalating nightmares suffered by her young (adopted) daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland). Mother and daughter travel to the ghost town of Silent Hill, West Virginia, which seems to hold the key to the child's disturbance (though we sense that it's Rose who's the main threat to the child's well-being: shades of 'Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy', perhaps?). Fleeing a motorcycle cop (Laurie Holden, in a game, attitude-heavy performance), Sharon and Rose are involved in a road accident on the outskirts of the town. Sharon is knocked unconscious - and when she wakes, there's no sign of Sharon. She scours Silent Hill, which was abandoned following an enormous (still-burning) underground fire of mysterious origin. White ash floats through the air. And at periodic intervals, a siren sounds, total darkness falls - and hideous demonic forms materialise out of the air... These no-holds-barred, CGI-heavy interludes are by far and away the best thing about Silent Hill: especially the all-too-brief appearances of the chief monster, known to the gamers as 'Pyramid Head' but here (inexplicably) billed as 'Red Pyramid': an outsize blacksmith/slaughterhouse-worker type with huge metal pyramid obscuring his face, wielding a six-foot long (!) machete. But just as Pyramid Head and company are getting into his stride, the darkness lifts and Silent Hill returns to 'normal'. Result is frustrating alternation between sequences of enjoyably horrific (and gratuitously nasty) intensity and drab 'down time' in which Rose pieces together what happened to the town - and to the errant Sharon. Picture really goes off the rails, however, when Rose finally stumbles across the Big Secret underpinning the events: confronts a mysterious sect (led by the haughty Krige) in their church, where they are able to find refuge from the demonic forces. Picture bogs down into talky, clunky exposition - undoing pretty much all the good work that's gone before, with even a spectacular use of barbed wire unable to prevent proceedings fizzling out with a very predictable final 'twist'. Game over, indeed. TOO COOL FOR SCHOOL : Rian Johnson's 'Brick' [5+/10] response to an email asking how I enjoyed Brick: To be honest, I found Brick something of an ordeal. Bugsy Malone + Mulholland Dr + Elephant + The Long Goodbye. Arrived just before the adverts. Unexpectedly busy and my "usual" seats at the front were all taken so I sat at the back (which I quite like, actually, sometimes). Bad move. Bloke to my left across the aisle had some kind of cold and a nervous tic involving a kind of glottal nose-blow which irked me mildly. Over to the right was seemingly normal bloke, until half hour before end of film started stratching his arm noisily and for such a protracted amount of time that this was also clearly some kind of nervous tic. Sitting at the back was a fatal error not because of these annoying blokes, but because it rendered the sound of the film that little bit harder to hear (and the Tyneside's sound system has never been any great shakes) And the actors mumble a lot, and the dialogue is all this supposedly "hard-boiled" patter (more like "half-baked" if you ask me...), supposedly amusingly incongruous given the setting (a modern-day high-school in San Clemente, California). Arch kind of cool that I might have lapped up at 18-23 but now have little patience for. Very nicely shot, edited and directed, and director knows how to use music. But cumulative result was somewhat nightmarish/claustrophobic and I left the cinema in a mild stew of discontent (not helped by the incessant heavy rain outside!). Only 5+, because if I saw it with subtitles (or with better sound) it might all have clicked into place... Neil Young (age 35) 15th May, 2006 INSIDE MAN : [6/10] : USA 2006 : Spike LEE : 129 mins (BBFC timing) seen at Empire cinema [formerly Odeon], Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK), 7th May 2006 - public show WHEN A STRANGER CALLS : [6/10] : USA 2006 : Simon WEST : 83 mins (BBFC timing) seen at Cineworld cinema, Sunderland, (UK), 8th May 2006 - press show SILENT HILL : [5/10] : Canada (Can/Fr) 2006 : Christophe GANS : 126 mins (BBFC timing) seen at Odeon cinema, Warrington, (UK), 9th May 2006 - public show BRICK : [5+/10] : USA 2006 : Rian JOHNSON : 110 mins (BBFC timing) seen at The Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK), 14th May 2006 - public show* *A reader writes: "Are you going to do a 'proper' review of Brick? cos if i were a regular jigsawlounger I might want more than 35-year-old Neil Young Gets Cross One Rainy Night in Tic-Plagued Newcastle Cinema!" |
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