Howl did they manage to make it so boring?

For those of you hoping to see the daring, honest, brutal, sexy, filthy and scandalous on film, choose something else as you will certainly not find it in Howl, tonight, at the Curzon Soho.

Howl is rubbish. But let’s take a closer look. This film is made of scenes of Ginsberg reading Howl, scenes from the obscenity trial, an interview with Ginsberg, and HORRIBLE animation. Aside from the horrible animation, the ingredients for a decent film are there. But at a certain point film makers need to stop and think about how they're doing what they’re doing, who will end up watching it and whether it will work or not. Here it just looks like this wasn't done. Putting together all the ingredients is not enough, you must have some kind of vision, an instinct, something that will make it all gel together - and it should involve the ability to hire a better casting director.

Turning Howl, poem poet and crowd, into a film didn’t work - let's see why.

First of all, this is like being at school, the poem is paraphrased either visually, via horrid animation of people shooting up or mating (heterosexually), or through endless repetition, or – final straw really – through dialogues, literally explaining, in the trial scene, what the words might or might not mean. Surely to find out about Howl, one would have rather read the poem itself, or the relative wikipedia entry.

Second: there are times in which films set to tell stories we already know the end to, like the obscenity trial in this case, but these films generally manage to create some sort of tension, work their magic so even if we know the outcome, we might either put it out of our minds or wish to see how we got there anyway. Not here, this is not a film about the trial, nobody gives a crap about it. This is a film where the trial is thrown in for good measure, no tension is built around it and nothing justifies it even being there. Oh, and did we have to cast Don Draper as Don Draper? Doesn’t the fellow want to try something else for chrissake?

Third and final, third and main: excitement, or the total lack of. If you go and see Howl you are either a Don Draper/Franco fan, or know Howl. If the former, you are dismissed. If the latter, you are expecting at the very least cock and balls, insatiable ecstasy, or both. As on screen Franco fails (was he even trying) to look less like the badly cast unremarkable hotshot he is, and more like Ginsberg reading Howl to an enraptured, galvanised, and adoring crowd, people in the auditorium start to leave or fall asleep.

Snoring.

Really.

This might have been acceptable or even a source of pride for, say, Antonioni or Pasolini, Bergman or Haneke, at times, knowing that this or that film they made was not designed to be immediately accessible to all, but just to an élite; but here?? That such a blood pumping, all shaking, whirlwind of a poem (and of a poet) [and of an era] should be translated so tamely into film that people fell asleep is in itself a certain failure.

All this film needs now is a subtitle, a caption:

‘Howl, by Disney'

‘Howl, was it in fact censored? I can’t remember’.

‘Yawn..’ sorry I meant ‘Howl, soon on a plane near you - for those who fear flying and would rather be asleep’

--

Faye Fornasier

Never Let Me Go - Film Review

My friend Siobhan and I have started going to the cinema together, there seems to be one implicit condition though, we can only see unbearably depressing films. It's unbearable or nothing. Which is fine, I guess, since we both enjoy that kind of pain, and we seem to bear it all right. Recently she suggested Blue Valentine, then I suggested Never Let Me Go. You can see them both and let me know which one you found to be the most depressing.

First of all, let me admit that prior to watching them I had no idea what they were about. Of Never Let Me Go I knew the cast, and the only reason I suggested it is that I quite fancied seeing pan-faced Keira and pig-faced Carey in action together again. It might be a bad habit but in the past few years I have started deliberately avoiding reading plots and reviews of films I might want to see at the cinema. I am far too put off by genres, so not having a clue what it is that I am about to see makes it easier to actually go and be surprised - sometimes. This doesn’t, of course, explain why I knew nothing of NLMG, since it's based on a novel which I own but i haven't read yet. I won't apologise for that though, I am busy, get over it. It's on the pile of books to read, I keep adding to the pile and keep reading the last book added. I was going to read it at the right moment and the moment hadn't come yet, so, from the poster alone (I don't read back cover plot outlines either) I assumed I would be a coming of age smooch fest, a boarding school version of Pride and Prejudice, only modern and therefore – I hoped – more explicit.

Imagine my surprise seeing Keira play the part of the selfish bitch in what turned out to be a really disturbing story scripted to spin sci-fi on its head and free it from any sci-fi elements bar one, microchip bracelets, a cinematic addition apparently. As it was a Q&A, I had the chance to see that the book lovers had no objection to the filmic rendition, and Ishiguro himself – I hear – is fairly happy with it, as he was consulted every step of the way to make sure everything felt right and nobody got pissed off. The casting worked really well, the children, in particular, were well trained to mimic their adult correspondents; and the Japanese aesthetics were well respected. What annoyed me, I have to say, is the exasperated cinematic cliché of colour representation of emotions. Blue, gray, green and the combination of the three equal sadness and hopelessness. Great, let’s turn this film into the winter installment of a knitting catalogue. In fact, let’s also design our intertitles to match that and turn the film locations ans time placers into knitting chapter openers (Hailsham: child wear, The Cottages: farming housewives, Completion: er... shawls?)

Anyway, enough technicalities, what is the film about? Should you see it? You should read the book first - you should always read the book first unless we're talking of The Girl With the Pearl Earring - but if now is not the right time yet, I'll be happy to spoil it for you. NLMG is the story of three children who meet in a special boarding school for clones who are created and raised for the sole purpose of becoming organ donors in their 20s. As the three protagonists grow up friendship, love and resentment get tangled, until Completion time approaches (death, that is) and they have to let go. The sadness is constant and justified: just like normal humans the clones know their existence will come to an end and hope to postpone it, the difference is that unlike that of most humans, their life will terminate in their prime and they don't get a chance to forget about it. Their desperation is not the raw, uncontrollable one of the replicants in Blade Runner, which is probably why this film didn't do well in the US market. The fact that the characters don't run much, reveals Romaneck, has displeased some critics over there. There is only one run in the film and not much screaming and confrontation; this is down to Romaneck's desire to remain close to the Japanese concept of Yūgen, according to which emotions should be expressed subtly, elegantly, like a small ripple on the surface of a river troubled by very strong, deep undercurrents. Not in the screamy, snotty way we go about things.

Ignore the remark on the overindulgent photography, I recommend this film because it surprised me, and also because not watching films only because Keira Knightley is in them is no longer a good excuse.

Good for you, Keira.

-- Faye Fornasier

James Bower reviews The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans

Dir. Werner Herzog, USA, 2009, cert. 18, 122 mins

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer, Xzibit

Imagine Joaquin Phoenix’s confusion as, some years ago, Werner Herzog famously dragged him from the upturned wreck of his car. How must that feel?

Probably very similar to watching The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans. It’s dark and frightening. Everything's upside-down and back-to-front. But there’s a serendipitous German to help put things right.

Is this what it takes to coax a decent performance out of Nicholas Cage? There’s no wonder then, that we don’t see it more often. The Bad Lieutenant is arrestingly peculiar. Cage plays Terence McDonagh, a cop in post-Katrina New Orleans. A crazy cop. A junkie cop. A scathing critique of drug culture? More like Requiem for a dream starring Frank Spencer.

Oh yes. It’s a comedy. You’d be forgiven for expecting something different. The Bad Lieutenant is not an easy film to market. Because it’s crazy. Crazy like a fox!

A clown who’s swapped his custard pie and giant hanky for gun and a crack pipe, Terence is obscene and pitiful. He may once have been a good lieutenant, but his bad back has led to an addiction to painkillers. Then to other drugs. All of them. But despite his flaws, Terence is no chump. His state of mind seldom brushes the outer reaches of lucidity, but somehow

he’s playing the entire world for a fool. The flooded shell of his life is held together by a fragile and oddly beautiful network of lies. His captain (a hilariously naive spin on the Angry Black Sarge) thinks he’s the best cop on the force and he’s dating Frankie (Mendes), a beautiful drug-addled hooker. Tasked with solving a multiple homicide, Terence sets out to paint the town red and blue.

In the post-Katrina apocalypse, up is down, black is white and The Bad Lieutenant is a buddy cop movie; Terence’s ‘buddy’ is Big Fate (Xzibit), a local drug lord with whom he plans to build holiday homes. It’s also a family comedy. Terence finds himself on a road trip with a sulky teenager (somebody call Ice Cube!) and the dog from Marley and me. And it’s a nature documentary: a hallucination causes Terence to see invisible reptiles in the middle of a stakeout. As the wobbly camera gazes lovingly at a blinking iguana, the soundtrack croons ‘Please release me’ and a blurry Cage stands in the background, glancing towards the audience and smiling awkwardly. It was at this moment that I mentally cast him to star in a big-screen adaptation of Alan Partridge.

Cage is funny as hell. He delivers his second great performanc

e in a year, tapping a reservoir of talent I thought he’d crapped in long ago. Or maybe he’s simply flipped. I couldn’t tell. Wracked with back pain, Terence lurches around the topsy-turvy big easy like an angry scarecrow, scouring crime scenes for anything he can swallow, snort or smoke. His drug addiction may be competing with his gambling problem for control of his shattered body. But when he mumbles threats though his permanently clenched teeth, you damn well better take this joker seriously. Despite telecommuting from another galaxy, Terence still brings in more than his fair share of bad guys. Is he the world’s cleverest, most tenacious junkie? Or is he a genuine supercop with an unfortunate powder problem? It’s never totally clear, but Cage’s truly bizarre turn keeps you guessing right to the end. Which is one big, awesome twist.

The Bad Lieutenant has ‘cult classic’ written all over it, and will most likely do for Cage what Lebowski did for Bridges. Tempered with just enough sobriety to keep it from tumbling headlong into a smirking parody, it’s well-shot and the weirdest thing you’ll see for quite some time. Herzog turns a mundane tale of bent cops and co

ke into an almost British comedy of embarrassment. Terence is a hypnotic creation made up almost entirely of tics and quirks. Eyes rolling in his skull like a fruit machine, Cage is rivetingly unhinged, and seems to realise that in Herzog he has a director who will actively encourage his lunatic side.

Bad lieutenant. Good film. Excellent iguana.

4/5

-James

Film review: James Bower gives Alice a kicking - clearly Nutshell does Wonderland better than Burton...

Dir. Tim Burton, USA, 2010, cert PG, 108 mins

Cast:
Mia Wasikowska,
Johnny Depp,
Helena Bonham-Carter

Alice was surprised to discover that her rabbit-hole contained a magical world full of whimsy and nonsense. Tim Burton’s adaptation of this beloved classic opts for a grittier, more realistic depiction of a girl falling down a rabbit-hole.

It’s full of shit.

Welcome to Burton’s wonderland, a fantasy experience that is both meticulously branded and utterly disappointing. Sound familiar? It should. If movies were music, this would be Burton singing a karaoke version of his own greatest hits. Evidently it’s now more important to him to make a Tim Burton movie than to make a good movie. It’s painfully predictable. But if you’re a pea-brained teenage goth, you’ll love it.

Oh, and don’t let the title fool you. This is not Alice in Wonderland. It’s a tiresome yarn woven from the trailing threads of Lewis Carroll’s books. Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is now 19, and has forgotten her original adventures in wonderland entirely. A shame, since they were far more entertaining than this bloated dirge. Once again Alice chases a rabbit down a hole, and once again she finds herself in wonderland. Here’s where the film’s big problems start; abandoning the original story would be fine if the film had a good story of its own to tell. But it doesn’t.

Alice in Wonderland isn’t a huge story. It’s little, and it’s cute. It’s a travelogue in which Alice stumbles from one impossible situation to another with barely any narrative glue to hold them together. Burton’s Alice doesn’t get this, and is hell-bent on mushing these neat little plays, songs and riddles into drab blob of sub-LOTR epicness. The parlour-game cuteness of the books is thrown out in favour of sweeping shots of Alice riding across landscapes to thunderous music to thwart the ill-defined machinations of the Red Queen. It just doesn’t fit; for one thing, the denizens of wonderland aren’t especially versatile. They don’t work well when removed from their traditional roles and places. A prime example is Depp’s Mad Hatter. He’s an action hero. He’s a leading man. He has an origin story and multiple personality disorder. Which is a lot to ask of a guy who only ever existed to drink tea. Depp’s lazy performance does little to paint over the cracks; Tim has finally stretched his Johnny too thin.

It gets worse. Remember the exploding penguins from the climax of Batman Returns? Alice wraps up with something equally stupid; a big fight. It’s hard to imagine a cast of characters more ill-suited to a massive, LOTR style dust-up. I do not feel any richer from having seen Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum doing kung fu, nor from seeing Alice transformed into Joan of Arc.

Visually the whole thing is an ordeal. The film’s palette is the colour of chewed up M&Ms, with psychadelic colours dotted across a drab brown canvas. The cast is stellar, but the only one to claw his way out of out of the film’s CGI murk is Stephen Fry as a smoky, billowing cheshire cat. It’s a real pity to see Rickman and Glover submerged in such a turgid piece of filmmaking. And it would’ve been nice to give Christopher Lee more than 2 lines of dialogue.

Lee plays the Jabberwocky, realised in eyeball-rattling CGI. But this leathery monster is symptomatic of the film’s deep flaws. A computer generated lizard is no substitute for the beautiful wordplay of Carroll’s nonsense poem. A single stanza of the poem itself is recited by (who else?) Depp’s Mad Hatter. There’s no love of screwing around with language and no recognition at all of the poem’s awesomeness (which is considerable). I’d foolishly raised my hopes that Lee would recite the whole thing; instead the film misses a huge opportunity to do something really cool in favour of that lousy action finale. What’s a vorpal blade if it doesn’t even go snicker-snack?

2/5

-James

James Bower reviews UP for Nutshell

 
Review: Up
USA, 2009, Cert U Dir. Pete Docter, Bob Peterson
96 mins. Cast: Ed Asner, Jordan Nagai, Christopher Plummer
 
 
Up is a masterpiece.
 
Not only that, but Up succeeds against the odds. Conceptually it’s Pixar’s weakest offering yet: It’s not about monsters, or robots, or toys. It’s about Carl Fredericksen. Carl is 78 years old with a walking frame and a house full of faded memories, primarily of his beloved wife Ellie. Ellie just died, and her loss is something that you’ll feel for the duration of the film. This is thanks to one of the greatest opening montages I have ever seen, animated or otherwise. Critics have been swooning over this one for weeks, and it’s my turn to join them. It’s the condensed life story of Carl and Ellie, from their first meeting as kids drunk on tales of ‘adventure’ to a closing image of old Carl sitting alone by a table of condolence messages. It’s the most affecting 20 minutes I’ve seen this year.
 
If you’ve seen a poster for Up, you know the story. Using hundreds of coloured balloons, Carl floats away in his sad little house (hey, it’s better than the Shady Oaks retirement village). But Up is not about a floating house. It’s about Carl. Carl clings to his house like a drowning man to a rock. He needs his stuff, and he has a lot of it. Photographs, scrapbooks, ornaments, furniture - it’s a chintzy museum dedicated to a life that ended when Ellie died. And he’s terrified of letting go. When Carl realises that the two of them never achieved their shared dream of adventuring in South America (his life in montage is full of mundane joys, but none of them involve what he considers to be ‘adventure’), he finds a way to get there without leaving his fully-furnished mausoleum. Did I mention that Carl is a balloon salesman?
 
The storytelling in Up is nothing short of masterful. Carl is painted so lovingly and with such clarity that it’s impossible not to feel for the cranky old coot. Ed Asner’s voice work is just perfect, right down to the irritated little grunts that make up half of his vocabulary. Despite himself, Carl charms not only the audience but also Russell (Jordan Nagai), a wide-eyed, slow-witted boy scout who happens to be on Carl’s porch when the house lifts off. Russell is part of a small supporting cast that also boasts a talking dog and an LSD-flavoured flamingo straight out of a Tex Avery cartoon.
 
At once crushingly sad and outrageously funny, Up’s laughs range from classic slapstick to a sublime musical montage set to Bizet (the whole score is first rate). One thing Up lacks is ‘zingy’ dialogue. Thank Christ! Am I the only one who’s sick to death of smart-ass zebras and neurotic penguins? Up’s delicate, honest humour is part of its irresistible charm. Equally satisfying are the action sequences, perfectly paced and choreographed and a thousand times more gripping than the cgi brain damage of the summer’s top action flicks. A briefly-glimpsed thunderstorm into which Carl and Russell accidentally drift might even out-rumble the whirling ocean maelstrom of Miyazaki’s Ponyo.
 
Up is visual poetry. It speaks on many different levels woven into an outstandingly complete cinematic experience. Most of Carl’s life whizzes by us in a few minutes, but you can feel the passing years as though you’re there with him, and that’s what gives the rest of the movie such a wonderful weight and texture. Carl’s hermit crab-like dependency on his house is never telegraphed; it’s just there, plain as the big round nose on his face. Russell isn’t just bumbling comic relief; he’s a real kid, and he has a sad story of his own that he can barely articulate. But Up can.
 
See Up as soon as possible, as many times as you can. Whimsical but not saccharine, tight but not contrived, it’s smart, it’s funny and it’s beautiful. It’s also strikingly mature. This is a kids’ movie, but not one in which everyone’s dreams come true. It’s one founded in disappointment and regret, but which then lifts this sadness into a glorious statement about the malleability of dreams. There are new ones out there that Carl just didn’t know about yet. You can tell when a film has been made with love; Up is such a film.
 
10/10
 
- James Bower