Floria Sigismondi directs Dakota Fanning, Kristen Stewart and Michael Shannon in this rise and fall biopic of 1970’s all girl rock sensations The Runaways.

OK… so as a narrative this isn’t going to blow anyone’s socks off. If I asked you what you would expect from such a film, and you scribbled your ten cliched expectations on the back of a fag packet and then we ticked each off as they came to pass…. Well… you’d struggle not to get 10 ticks. Let’s sidestep that, as you wouldn’t criticise The Magnificent Seven or say The Fugitive for doing exactly what they say on their tins. What Sigismondi brings to the endeavour is a constantly coulourful beat (the motions are at the very least gone through at an apt punkish pace) and an unjudgemental eye on the debauchery and rebellion – whether huffing glue, roadies or each other, it is all painted positively as kids having fun and exploring new experiences. The eventual fall of one character is down to the nature of the business rather than punishment for any “sin”, in fact it closes on a feeling quite close to the penultimate shot of Goodfellas or Mike Milligan’s cruelly mundane “reward” in the last episode of Season 2 of Fargo. What really punts this into a watchable experience though is a brilliant turn from Shannon (no surprises there). His punk impresario Kim Fowley is a fucking on uppers belter of a performance – villian, preacher, fairy godmother, coach of the underdogs, rooster in eyeliner, right in your face. Stewart does her usual winning vulnerable, shy, tough schtick in the mid-background too.

7

 

Brett Ratner, Jonathan Demme and Ridley Scott direct Anthony Hopkins, Edward Norton, Ralph Fiennes, Jodie Foster, Ted Levine, Frankie Faison, Julianne Moore, Gary Oldman and Ray Liotta in this trilogy about a captured high functioning psychopath who has affections for the FBI agents who ask politely for his help and for eating people. 

I’m going to be controversial here. Anthony Hopkins is a bit rubbish as Hannibal Lecter. He won an Oscar as him, starred in three films that collectively made over $800 million dollars at the box office (unheard of for a hard R rated series 15 years ago) and entered into the public consciousness as the character in a way that no movie icon has since… apart from maybe Austin Powers. So there’s your problem by sentence number 3 of this retrospective, I’m easily comparing Hannibal the Cannibal to Austin Powers. And the comparison fits. What was genuinely a seductive, chilling and full fat role when dished up through short, puzzling bursts in Silence of the Lambs got expanded by near continual parody in the intervening years. Lecter became a character that had been filtered and redefined by a decade of spoof by the time he returned. So when a cash-in sequel and prequel came along, they foolishly upped the Lecter content, stretching the good doctor thin thin thin so we are left with a wispy pantomime villian; a Xerox of an impersonation of a punchline to a great support character. The pair of subsequent movies piggybacking off Silence have way too much Lecter to bare scrutiny, and Lecter not as the coiled, enclosed god, waiting to bite off your jaw or tinker with your mind, but as the closing sting japester, in his wig and Panama hat, cheekily telling Clarice “I’m having an old friend for dinner.”

Hopkins’ caged genius predator was truly great when rationed out, but once the big paychecks to return rolled in and the narratives are being carried by his hands alone we get parody and repetition… why for example in Red Dragon does he start doing his Okie impression of not yet met Clarice, apart from misguided fan service? Okie Dokie!

And it doesn’t help that Brian Cox’s brief appearance in the same role in the earlier Manhunter is more blankly intriguing; that Mads Mikkelsen’s expanded, erotic and eminent central turn in the recent brilliant TV series is so winning. Hopkins unsuccessfully returning with his bucket to the Thomas Harris well twice pretty much ranks him down as the third best Hannibal Lecter. Only the German guy no one can remember who played diddy cannibal in that prequel no-one watched comes in behind the great actor in his most famous role. We start with the personification of unstoppable danger, we end with essentially a travelling Frasier Crane who is willing to gut a man.

Toughens the nipples, doesn’t it?

The last film to be made yet the first in the chronology, Red Dragon has to be the most redundant movie ever made (cash takings aside). Michael Mann’s 1986 adaptation Manhunter may have flopped on release but as a genre flick it is one of the finest ever made, joining Se7en, Zodiac, M and Silence itself in the rare club of 5 star serial killer thrillers. And Bryan Fuller’s TV series uses the well plundered source material again to close down all the story arcs with a run through of the same plot and characters that somehow still manages to feel experimental, vital and relevant third time around. Brett Ratner’s prequel on the other hand feels like a student thesis, a project to remake a classic film in the backyard for a weekend… only gallingly with a brilliant cast putting in minimum effort, only with a mega budget that adds a paint by numbers sheen to the whole forgery. Not unlike Gus Van Sant’s shot for shot Psycho, you spend the entire rehash looking for variations rather than getting caught up in the experience. And whenever bonus Hopkins can be crammed in, the cramming begins. The source story is an absolute cracker, no weak cover version can diminish that strength, and Fiennes clearly wants to bring something new to Francis Dolarhyde (though he lacks Tom Noonan’s otherworldly ownership of the part). It’s watchable but why look at a pavement chalk drawing of the Mona Lisa, when Michael Mann’s superior original is so accessible.

The Silence of the Lambs, is a masterpiece though, and still a masterpiece, despite its unruly spawn. An absolute corker of a ghost train ride with both villians hurtling along parallel tracks for maximum shock. Jonathan Demme (usually the maker of interesting rather than great cinema) deploys every trick in the book to keep you guessing, tense and unnerved. Then, in the final coup de grâce, when we accidentally find ourselves at Buffalo Bill’s house, invents a whole new piece of big screen conjuring. Yet he drips it all in a prestigious autumnal sheen so that the constant grindhouse nasty feels intelligently deployed, sensitively handled and the by-product of a tasteful, classy affair. C movie content, A movie craftsmanship. The actual intent is vice versa, but this worked on the Academy, they gave this grim freak show the 5 biggest awards. That puts Silence in the exclusive company of It Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Not bad for an airport novel shocker, and not in anyway undeserved either.

So many moments from the film have entered in the modern lexicon, become touchstones within western culture as a whole. Yet some of the most sinister gristle remains untalked about. “I can smell your cunt.” Clarice surrounded by ominous State Troopers (the uniform of her dead daddy) being dismissed and viewed sexually at the same time. When the lights go out in Bill’s basement. Hell, Bill himself. Ted Levine is sickening as the beast wanting transformation. From his skin suit to his swastika bedspread to his ratty little poodle he has the nomenclature of hell made flesh. When he orders his next kill to put the lotion in the basket it is inhuman, when his composure breaks and a slither of relatable anger and frustration bubbles though… just a pop, just a smidgen, mind… it is tragic. The one strength of the series entire is its main “antagonists”; The Tooth Fairy, Bill and Mason Verger are the complex stuff of nightmares and they fight hard to wrestle the spotlight from Hopkins increasingly hammy, top billed supporting turn. They all wrestle well, if they never pin him, they win on points. Mason Verger in particular I’ll talk about and praise more in a bit.

Which brings us to Clarice Starling. The tough, hardworking, determined and psychologically believable heroine. Decent, pure protagonists rarely have this much depth, are seen as being tangibly this human onscreen. Of course this is all down to Jodie Foster, she invests her key role with a charming straight arrow directness – Elliot Ness with as much heart as brains. No wonder Hannibal falls for her. No wonder the world did. Her short, slight stature, her unguarded reading of threats both in the line of fire and the work place make you worry for her. Yet she is consistently presented as tough as nails, a risk taker. She’ll sweatily kicks down doors in training or in the field, she returns to Lecter, she gets right up to the glass if it means a step closer to rescuing the victim. Striving and excelling in a dangerous man’s world on her own terms, all the while keeping her own female identity made Clarice Starling a rare feminist icon in cinema. Rare even today.

BBC Culture’s Nicholas Barber noted “Demme and his team may have hoped to usher in a new age of intelligent, independent, inspiring Hollywood heroines, but instead it was haughty homicidal maniacs who caught the public imagination.” And that would prove the series’ undoing. It got hooked on the monstrous male gazers and flirting ladykillers rather than the franchise’s one fully developed human. When they decided the inferior Julianne Moore was an interchangeable fit for a declining Foster they decided cannibals were more important than saviours. I would have mothballed the project the second Jodie said “No thanks.” And maybe Foster just sensibly realised what a shitstorm an adaptation of Thomas Harris’ Hannibal was bound to be.

I have given Hannibal the sequel two tries. Both times I was frustrated by how directionless and ambling it is. In no rush to get nowhere. Not-Clarice sits in a Justice Department basement for the entire second act, the most exciting sequences involve Lecter wandering around lesser landmarks while characters with no given names stalk him. At one point we cut to an Italian cop watching some Champion’s League on telly. I was jealous. It all seemed far more involving a watch. And I don’t even like football. Ridley Scott collects a paycheck. He frames the excessive Grand Guignol well enough but the beige blank wall space it hangs from is gargantuan and overwhelming. Clearly the work of someone happy to shrug his talented shoulders and just shoot a discordant script. And he shoots the violent, brain peeling jumble as prettily as the budget allowed and no doubt moved on to more engaging projects off the back of the inevitable positive till receipts. There is no clarity to the plotlines or unity to the ensemble that a great director who cared about the material might bring. I’m a fan of Ridders so it hurts typing that.

There are two seams of gold within the slate. Ray Liotta goes full pelt as Clarice’s sexist superior. And Gary Oldman as Mason Verger is just delicious. Verger has to be the most underrated movie monster in cinema history. Horrifyingly scared, wickedly self aware and unstoppably enthusiastic, his one wish is to see Lecter fed to the pigs. And in many ways Oldman imbues this disgusting nasty with such electrifying delivery he manages to elevate the drossy, rote film he finds himself in (uncredited pointedly… Hmmm?). He in many ways serves the same purpose as Hopkins did in Silence. He turns a support role into something more troubling, a side antagonist into the main event. And to prove just how undeserving Hannibal the movie is of such a millionaire pederast horrowshow, Hannibal the TV show embraced Mason Verger fully. Let him run wild. And it was glorious.

Such a shame that Lecter, Starling and Verger found their stories left dangling in such a mediocre, compromised final chapter. But given the palpable quality dip after Silence I’d much rather Mikklesen and Fuller got a chance to meet a fresh Clarice through any medium, TV or cinema, rather than see Hopkins use his one hand to write another new Starling another dirty love letter.

5/10/4

Bernard Rose directs Gary Oldman, Isabella Rossellini and Valeria Golino in this warts and all biopic of Beethoven. 

A mixed bag period drama. The Citizen Kane style framing device restricts and neuters Oldman’s performance – making him a barely glimpsed question mark, often silent  or in the sidelines rather than out in front waving his baton as you’d want him. The central mystery is also rather daftly resolved – all the anger, pain and unrequited love we bare to witness boils down to some ropey room service and icky stew (imagine Ludwig Van’s Tripadvisor review)! Despite these frustrations, Bernard Rose, the horror director no less, wrangles out some marvellous sequences of revolts, frilly sexiness and the pièce de résistance is the Ode to Joy flashback of inspiration. That montage of magical realism is in particular brilliant cinema. These struts of quality cannot support the entire rickety narrative but they make it worth enjoying at least once.

5

Sydney Pollack directs Dustin Hoffman, Dustin Hoffman and Jessica Lange in this comedy about an unemployable method actor who poses as a middle aged woman to secure a part on a soap.

Tootsie is one of those “classics” that I always meant to get around to watching, it is embarrassing I hadn’t til now being quite such a big Hoffman and Bill Murray fan. It didn’t quite meet my high expectations for it. As a comedy or a drama it isn’t quite feast or famine. The humour from the set up is amusing at best, with only an uncredited Bill finding laugh out lines. Drama wise the developments are too broad – points are made about sexism and questioning identity but in a foamy sitcommy way, it is a little too as expected, a little too soft play safe. Tootsie stands out on strong performances and charm, good New York location work and an insider’s relish of the acting world. It is a very, very likeable film giving Hoffman plenty of room to excel in dual roles… he creates and maintains Dorothy as her own person admirably. And Jessica Lange makes the most of what could have been a throwaway part – instilling her romantic interest with depth, seductiveness and vulnerability.

7

Jean Luc-Godard directs Anna Karina, Sady Rebbot and André S. Labarthe in this drama following a young free spirit’s descent into prostitution.

A bit of class this. So beautiful, so stylish and evocative of its era. Yet also deliberately cold and calculated. Distancing techniques abound like chapter intertitles, abrupt cuts, unflinching cameras, long shots of the back of people’s heads, bleak clinical narration from government surveys about prostitution. Yet all of it cannot suppress a glowing star turn from Anna Karina – as the gorgeous fool who would rather oblivion than her normal constraining life, she is captivating. You feel for her ennui and failed attempt to break out, savour her guilt and acceptance of her lot. Yes – it is a tragedy but there are some quirky moments embracing pop culture scattered to entertain us (a trip to the movies / a jukebox is played), that poke holes of light into the darkness. Great!

8

 

Stanley Kramer directs Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and Anthony Perkins in this staid apocalyptic romance about the citizens of Melbourne waiting for the deadly radiation from a nuclear war that has wiped out the rest of the planet to reach them. 

I’m getting old. Some kid at work has nicknamed me “Grandpa” and another asked me what the biggest change I have seen in my lifetime was. And the answer I gave was I grew up thinking at any moment nuclear war would begin and that would be that. I grew up on Mad Max, The Terminator, Threads and When the Wind Blows. And then after the Berlin Wall fell… that mindset… that the only possible future would be dictated by the thermonuclear loaded gun our governments had created… seemingly disappeared. The weapons haven’t gone anywhere, just the appetite, I guess? We’d much rather the slow gnaw of environmental breakdown than the spectacular immediate burnout of a man made extinction level event. This film rather calmly explores the fallout of this. But rather than hordes of marauding mutants racing the wasteland for another arseholes to fuck and then eat, we follow a group of sailors and civil servants going about their romances and admin in the face of timetabled approaching doom. It is a well made but bleak film, troubling yet quaint. If it wasn’t for the annoying repetition of Waltzing Matilda, I would probably reward its classy stoic pessimism with a higher mark. As a collection of haunting dramatic ironies it has weathered the storm well enough.

6

 

Barry Jenkins directs Trevante Rhodes, Naomie Harris and Mahershala Ali in this triptych following the coming of age of a gay black youth in a crack addled area of Miami.

I feel a little sorry for Moonlight. A small scale, well crafted, bravely experimental and sensitive (if not all that emotionally sophisticated) character study, that now has the weight of expectation that a Best Picture Oscar brings crushing down hard on its shoulders. It is too slight, too personal a film to bear that populist weight, that sneering scrutiny and I feel over time it will suffer an equally unbalanced backlash as one of those notoriously undeserved Academy Awards fuck ups. Not cloying like Crash or A Beautiful Mind (genuine Oscar fails), it still is not quite as moving, intelligent or eye opening a look into the young black experience as say Boyz N the Hood, Fresh or series 4 of The Wire… nor as brilliant a cinematic exploration of a man outside the stereotypical “gay norm” accepting his sexuality as seen in Brokeback Mountain or Beginners. It is, however, a perfectly fine one watch movie, with strong support turns from Harris and Ali, and striking neon infused visuals. I kept seeing echoes of Terrence Malick in the directorial choices and this worked well. One true frustration? I would often praise a movie for not holding the audiences’ hand every step of the way but Moonlight’s aggressively oblique structure often skips what feels like key moments of drama. That’s a stylistic choice but it is one that deprives of us of seeing plot points that would grip, while suggesting only young Chiron’s experience is of value while other characters triumphs and tragedies are at best distracting background noise. The focus is selfishly narrow.

6

 

Jordan Vogt-Roberts directs Samuel L Jackson, Brie Larson and John C Reilly in this glossy romp that mixes King Kong with Apocalypse Now with… I don’t know… something comic book, and colourful, and arch… like Con Air.  

After the sophisticated Godzilla from Legendary we now get their far more goofy Kong. Tonally different, with a lot more monster mashing (like tons and tons) and non-stop gags to match, this hits a sugar rush level of mega budget satisfaction you wouldn’t expect to find outside of a June/July release. The bright palette of rich yellows, dirty golds, toxic blues and innards pink and the jaunty pace hark back to heyday of Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich but this feels a more wholesome, a less cynically calculated movie. It feels and plays out like a lot of kids  in a toy shop fun. Pop mayhem. The opening burst of action and assembling of the team mimics the clean, fresh energy of Raiders or Ghostbusters. If you are aspiring to match those in terms of flavour you cannot be doing too much wrong. The cast helps, there are brilliant bits of work from the older hands (John C Reilly’s stranded WWII pilot is starring in his own separate five star movie), though Tom Hiddleston’s ostensible lead gets lost in the mix. Maybe there are way too many characters vying for attention but to criticise such a breezy and pleasurable movie for aping the secret strength of say high watermarks like Die Hard or Aliens seems hypocritical. Maybe in a decade all these smaller stand-outs will be considered the Hudson, Hicks and Vasquez of a generation.  But headline act is Kong. He gets to be moody, a little romantic (but he has too busy a shift to spend too much of his time wooing the ladies this chapter) and break baddie behemoth balls. As daft as it all is among the humans, the movie leaps up a quality notch whenever he is onscreen. And when Kong is onscreen he dominates. More please.

7

Fritz Lang directs Gustav Fröhlich, Brigitte Helm and Alfred Abel in the dystopian epic about a mad scientist who replaces the underclasses prophet with a revolt inspiring robot. 

The complete Metropolis is lost in the mists of time so I prefer this assembly put together by disco producer Giorgio Moroder. Sure it adds a dated but appropriate synth pop soundtrack but it also keeps the plot, pace, form and indelible images pretty much intact. It is the most Saturday night blockbuster-style way of enjoying this abused classic, which after it flopped got cut to shreds by international distributors in the 1920s. As for the film itself it is still an awe inspiring achievement and quite the wild ride; taking in industrial disasters, violent rebellions, rooftop chases, mechanised Satanic rituals and raves spilling out from sex parlours. In this form, Metropolis is a living, breathing and kicking out on uppers experience rather than some dull museum piece dustily presenting its still inspirational visual design. As a throw every against the wall and see what sticks futurist adventure, Fritz Lang’s epic still dazzles.

8

Kenneth Lonergan directs Anna Paquin, J. Smith-Cameron and Jean Reno in this drama about New York girl dealing and not dealing with her involvement in a fatal accident. 

An involving and satisfyingly expansive drama is undone slightly by its miniseries length. Paquin is excellent as the troubled kid entering the world of adulthood through a baptism of compromise and surface level morality, and the ensemble around her is a truly impressive roster of talent. Too tighten up the focus or cutaway at the subplots would lose a lot of what makes Margaret distinctive, yet Lonergan’s far more efficient follow up (Manchester By the Sea) explores the sames themes of fate, responsibility and maturity with more certainty and more entertainingly.

6