for this week’s Tribune : four reviews including ‘American Werewolf’, ‘Citizen Kane’ and ’9′

Published on: October 29th, 2009

An American Werewolf in London
   Director: John Landis
Citizen Kane
   Director: Orson Welles
9
   Director: Shane Acker
Tales from the Golden Age
   Directors: Cristian Mungiu, Ioana Uricaru, Hanno Höfer, Constantin Popescu

Not for the first time, the week's best "new" releases aren't remotely new: Citizen Kane and An American Werewolf in London are on re-issue, and while the former is seldom too far from our cinema screens, the latter, appearing in selected venues just in time for Halloween, is a significantly rarer beast.
   Indeed, those who haven't seen American Werewolf for years, or even decades, may approach it now with a certain degree of trepidation. Will the once-groundbreaking special effects now feel dated? And what of writer-director John Landis's trademark blending of horror and humour – always a tricky business, let alone after the passage of 350-odd full moons?
   Well, any such fears are quickly assuaged. This is a terrific example of Hollywood entertainment as five-star crowdpleaser and clever homage to a much-loved sub-genre: perhaps even a "lost classic" of 1980s American cinema. The horror/humour balancing-act is achieved with casual aplomb from the very first scenes, in which a pair of American backpackers fall foul of a lycanthrope on the "Yorkshire" moors (actually Wales). But that's not all: the film also delivers as an unlikely but persuasive romance, as the injured wolfman (David Naughton) falls in love with his nurse (a never-lovelier Jenny Agutter).
   While the old-school effects remain satisfying – even in today's era of wall-to-wall CGI -  it's the lighter aspects of the movie which feel particularly fresh. At heart, this is a wonderfully well-observed culture-clash comedy (Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court is unobtrusively namechecked)  about a wide-eyed American experiencing the delights and oddities of multi-cultural, class-blighted, pre-Falklands Blighty. Watch out for the breathlessly titillating (and brilliantly fabricated) TV-ad for the News of the World, hyping the upcoming confessions of "Naughty" Nina Carter : "Read about her nude pictures!… 'The only ones I regret – were among the first.'"
  
   From the very real News of the World to the decidedly fictional New York Inquirer – Citizen Kane being a spoof biopic of the latter's billionaire publisher/editor Charles Foster Kane (director/co-writer Orson Welles). We follow Kane from a poverty-stricken rural childhood through to lonely old age in a vast, opulent Florida castle as a reporter tracks down key figures in the tempestuous life of the fiercely ambitious but tragically flawed magnate.
   Ironic that the exalted reputation of Citizen Kane – a film which so relentlessly lays bare the bathetic reality behind its central figure's looming public image – should itself be based partly on misconceptions and shoddy reporting.
   Each decade Sight and Sound magazine polls leading film-critics for their all-time top ten movies – and from 1962 to 2002 Kane has been the most frequently named title. But in the 1992 poll, only 43 out of 132 critics included the film anywhere in their lists. Which means that over two-thirds of critics wouldn't even put it in their top ten.
   The Kane mystique  is itself a strong piece of evidence against the practice of compiling such  'best ever' lists. Because it's long been near-impossible to watch the film with anything approaching fresh eyes, so heavily does its oppressive reputation weigh on every frame. This is most unfortunate, because Kane – for all its solemn moments and grim undercurrents – is essentially a jaunty enterprise: very much a very young man's film, the result of a 25-year-old director being let loose on the film-making medium and, like Kane on his newspaper, gleefully trying everything he can think of – just to see what happens. Most of it (Welles' lead performance; Gregg Toland's innovative cinematography) works. Some of it doesn't.
   The screenplay, for example, is much more concerned with compiling witty lines than with probing serious issues – be they political or psychological. It's clever rather than intelligent, packed with cheap (if deserved) jibes at the expense of the  'real' Kane, William Randolph Hearst. It's hard to think of another film, for instance, in which the death of the protagonist's wife and only child is mentioned so briefly that many viewers may not pick up on it at all. Despite such (heretical) caveats, Citizen Kane is by any standards a very fine film, and anyone who hasn't seen it yet obviously should try to do so. But they should seek out An American Werewolf in London first.

And once such individuals have got both of the aforementioned classics ticked off, they should – if they haven't done so already – make sure to catch what is perhaps the best new film of 2009, Neill Blomkamp's ghetto-fabulous sci-fi epic-on-a-shoestring District 9, which is still showing on certain screens. Only then should their attention turn to the "proper" new releases – chief among them being Shane Acker's 9.
   The titles aren't the only element that links the two movies: both Blomkamp (who's South African) and Acker (American) are proteges of Peter Jackson, Acker having formerly been employed by the Wellington-based visual-effects firm Weta, which Jackson co-founded. Indeed, Acker's sole previous feature-film credit was as an animator on The Return of the King (2003) – and that picture's star Elijah Wood contributes the main vocal performance for 9, expanded from Acker's Oscar-nominated, 11-minute dialogue-free 2005 short of the same name.
   "9" here refers to the central character – a tiny humanoid made of what looks like sacking with the number 9 drawn on his back and WALL-E style mechanical eyes on his head. He wakes up in a disorienting, post-apocalyptic, post-mankind world, dominated by vast, vicious robots, in which a handful of entities similar to himself face near-constant mortal danger. If "9" and his pals are to survive these perils, they must discover why – and by whom – they were constructed, these questions sparking a spiritually-inflected quest-narrative that isn't without the occasional nod to Tolkien, among numerous other sci-fi and fantasy forerunners.
   But while 9 may not be the most original story you'll ever encounter, and is saddled with a cumbersomely conventional score (by Deborah Lurie), Acker does manage to endow proceedings with an atmosphere – now whimsically jaunty, now thrillingly tense – that's disarmingly distinctive. The result is a fast-moving, uncompromising affair that will surely be much too scary for many children – the BBFC, somewhat indulgently awarding a 12A certificate, reckons that it contains only "moderate sustained threat," a judgement that's hard to square with certain especially nightmarish sequences that would grace the oeuvre of co-producer Tim Burton.
  
   All of which excitement leaves us with only enough room for a few words on Romanian portmanteau film Tales from the Golden Age, comprising five episodes wryly dramatising certain "urban myths" that represent facets of the country's experiences under the despotic rule of Nicolae Ceausescu. Specifically, his last decade in power before his usurpation over the Christmas of 1989.
   It's a period already familiar to many viewers through writer-director Cristian Mungiu's Palme d'Or winning 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, though the tone here is more quirkily comical than grimly harrowing. Mungiu contributes two of the five episodes, and The Legend of the Air Sellers – the longest at 36 minutes – is also one of the best, a deft depiction of how capitalistic and entrepreneurial (criminal) impulses could quietly flourish even under a regime as repressive as Ceausescu's.
   Pick of the bunch, however, is Ioana Uricaru's curtain-raiser, The Legend of the Official Visit, a 19-minute satire on small-town pretensions that boasts the economy and nuance of the smartest short stories. The remaining three parts are solid enough, and the various segments combine into a pleasing whole – although not quite to the extent of justifying the 130-odd minute running-time.

Neil Young
20th October, 2009
written for the 28th October issue of Tribune magazine

AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON : [9/10] : US/UK 1981 : John LANDIS : 97m (BBFC) : seen 13th June 2008, National Media Museum, Bradford (Fantastic Films Weekend – complimentary ticket). Original review. [25/28]

CITIZEN KANE : [8/10] : US 1941 : Orson WELLES : 119m (BBFC) : seen 21st April 2002, Ritz Cinema, Thirsk (public show). Original review. [23/28]

9 : [7/10] : US 2009 : Shane ACKER : 79m (BBFC) : seen 1st October 2009, Empire cinema, Great Park, Birmingham (press show – 62nd CinemaDays event). [20/28]

TALES FROM THE GOLDEN AGE : [6/10] : Amintiri din epoca de aur : Romania 2009 : Cristian MUNGIU, Ioana URICARIU, Hanno HOEFER, Razvan MARCULESCU & Constantin POPESCU : 131m (BBFC) : 149-minute version seen as a "double bill" at Cinema Arta, Cluj, Romania, 5th June 2009 (Transilvania International Film Festival, Cluj-Napoca; public show; complimentary ticket). Original review. [17/28]