Movie Review - Waldo the Dog (2010)

Waldo the Dog, 2010.

Directed by Kris Canonizado.
Starring Rook Kelly and Jaquelyn Xavier.


SYNOPSIS:

A shame-ridden and mentally unstable young man wears a dog mask in order to cope with life.


Ah, lovely. Judging by the title, this sounds like something whimsical and nice. About 17 seconds into the film, when 'Waldo' – a guy in a really quite creepy grey dog mask, knocks on a door and shoots the man who answers in the face, I knew I was horribly wrong. Another short sequence later and he has chased down someone else and shot them multiple times. A bit of pausing in the flash cutting of Waldo crossing names off a list and you see that these people are criminals. Not just your average burglars or anything petty like that, but rapists, child molesters and so forth.

After a flashback to three years earlier, we read reports that a young woman has filed against Waldo himself for stalking her. Following a coldly brutal scene where Waldo finds his victim and rapes her, we see the young man rocking back and forth in his apartment and head butting a mirror until he falls unconscious. Awaking, the film then cuts to Waldo (now masked) running through the night, howling at the moon and stripping away his clothes. It is obvious, as the police reports seen earlier state, that thing young man is clearly mentally very unwell. The affectation of the mask and the tearing away of his clothes are a way of stripping away and disregarding his true identity, and everything therein that he despises about himself.

By becoming a masked vigilante, Waldo can (either consciously or unconsciously) attempt to atone for his own crimes, perhaps believing that by punishing others he can 'cancel' out his own crimes and wipe away his own defects. Another 'benefit' of the mask is that it is, obviously, unchanging. It doesn't betray any emotion and can function as a barrier between Waldo and the rest of the world. But amongst all this is the innards-of-a-black hole dark comedy. Seeing a man in a dog mask trying to eat a burrito and jigging with joy, pumping his fists at the excitement of some nice food, is funny to see. Even his crying after his continual failure to gain respect and advancement in his wrestling endeavours give rise to a guilty smile. Waldo's voice is also a great source of laughs sounding, as he does, like a eunuch combined with Mickey Mouse.

Two years later, we see Waldo repeatedly having the shit kicked out of him by various people / groups of people, presumably because he wanders the streets in a dog mask, seeking out trouble and confrontation when he is unequipped to handle himself physically. Whilst begging on the street, a mystery man gives Waldo a wad of cash, which Waldo uses to take up wrestling training. The wrestling takes the form of Waldo receiving repeated beatings and verbal abuse, which is sort of like the training of Kung Fu movies of old, where a young warrior must punish his body to make it strong and impervious to pain.

As he continues with his lessons, he gets better but regularly has to run away after being too robust with his opponents, pretty much the way a naughty dog does when it knows that it's gone too far. There are also scenes of Waldo playing in a children's playground where he gamely uses the swings and slide. These sorts of juxtapositions do a good job of portraying the swinging mental state of someone mentally off balance; someone who wants to be manly and strong, yet who also wants the comfort of childhood. Waldo also takes a lot of shit from people in the street. People who take umbrage with his very existence, the kind of people who set upon a homeless person for the twisted, visceral thrill of attacking someone with no recourse of action. Scenes like this make clear that at least Waldo has the shame to hide his face, whilst the random dicks on the street let their nasty, animalistic sides out in full view.

His first shot at redemption comes when he hears a woman's scream. Running to her aid, Waldo beats down the two masked men who are accosting her, and takes the woman home. He rests his head in his hands, which could be either because of his despair at the world at large or, indeed, because of the thoughts running through his own mind. He returns to the scene and savagely beats the two men, leaving their unconscious bodies in a dumpster. When the young woman – Jaquelyn (Jaquelyn Xavier) sees him again, the two strike up a friendship. The interplay between the two in Waldo's shack is sweet and the pair are almost adolescent in their interaction as they joke around and bond. The blossoming of their relationship is played really well as Jaquelyn's carefree character imbues the world with a glimpse of happiness. As the two traverse the promenade at a beach, Jaquelyn sells kisses for a dollar to help Waldo out with money, all filmed in the golden light of dusk.

As the two become closer and closer, the relationship gently glides from friendship to mutual attraction. Waldo's reticence when Jaquelyn tells him she wants to make love is explained upon the removal of his mask. Seeing his face, Jaquelyn immediately realises that Waldo is the man who raped her two years earlier. As he desperately tries to explain, she calls the police and he flees. This reveal is shocking because, as a viewer, you become so wrapped up in Waldo's period of hope that you forget that he is a rapist on the run and the film reminds you of this in the most brutal way possible. It also raises questions about the nature of Waldo's relationship with Jaquelyn; was the relationship his way of atonement or just another extension of his obsession? Or it could easily be both, the implications of his previous crime and his warped 'love' for Jaquelyn coalescing into an indecipherable mess in his brain.

After taking out his anger on the wrestlers of his gym and winning the fights on the street that he used to lose, Waldo hears a familiar scream. Running to the scene, he finds one of the masked men from before over the limp body of Jaquelyn. He beats the masked man to death and sits over Jaquelyn’s dead body. As to what she was doing there, Waldo will never know. The idea that she may have been there to give her forgiveness seems outlandish at best, and would be a major mis-step in the treatment of this kind of subject. It could also be slightly troubling that this one woman should be subject to so many random acts of sexual violence but in the world of Waldo it is this constant reminder of his crimes and the ultimate bleakness of his situation that keeps it from having any kind of misogynistic undertone.

Overall, Waldo the Dog is a brilliant piece of low-budget filmmaking. The idea itself could have burned out after a short while but director and co-writer Kris Canonizado keeps the film moving with a flow that compliments the nature of Waldo well. Sometimes the camera is allowed to rest on long scenes of innocuous dialogue, following the chatter with a hazy, laid back style. When violence rears its head, the camera work and editing is suitably sharp and brutal. Rook Kelly, as Waldo, also does an impressive job of imbuing a character who has virtually no lines with an aching sadness and desolation. Jaquelyn Xavier is also due praise for her ebullient portrayal of her namesake character. She does well to counter-point Waldo as a being of depression and her work in the reveal scene is realistically angry and scared.

For a budget of $200,000, Waldo the Dog is an outstanding achievement. The sheer force that is projected onto the screen by the film is something special and the handling of issues such as redemption and the repercussions of one’s actions are handled deftly. I would be majorly surprised if Waldo The Dog didn't generate a cult following over the years, and I'd be equally shocked if we didn't see any of the major players involved turning out another dark gem like this.

Alex Williams

Thoughts on... The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996)

The Island of Dr. Moreau, 1996.

Directed by John Frankenheimer.
Starring David Thwelis, Fairuza Balk, Ron Perlman, Marlon Brando, Val Kilmer, Temuera Morrison and William Hootkins.


SYNOPSIS:

On a remote island a visionary doctor combines animal DNA with that of humans, upsetting the balance of nature.


Dante described nine circles of hell. Various Chinese beliefs speak of anywhere from four to eighteen levels of fiery torment. However, whilst you are still alive, the closest thing that could probably approximate to the feeling of never-ending torment and woe of being cast down into some unintelligible, indescribable horror is The Island of Dr. Moreau.

This is not to say that there isn't some kind of perverse pleasure to be had from the film, it's just more akin to being a sado-masochist in hell than any kind of healthy, expected experience. Part of the horror is seeing so many fine actors wading their way through the crappy script, the shitty effects and their own blatant discomfort. Marlon Brando, Val Kilmer, David Thewlis, Fairuza Balk, Ron Perlman. All are present (Well, physically at least) and all are sucked into Dr. Moreau's black hole of despair (gross).

Marlon Brando, at this point so committed to the craft that he wore an earpiece so he could be fed his lines via radio, is the gene splicing, pontificating, sun lotion covered Doctor with Kilmer's Montgomery his adjutant. Kilmer was having a very bad time of it during the shoot as he was in the middle of a divorce. Accordingly angry at the world, Kilmer made it his personal mission to be as pissy and troublesome as possible. After getting to the set two days late and after demanding his role be reduced, he proceeded to have a spectacular falling out with director Richard Stanley, with Stanley eventually being booted of the picture after four days and replaced by John Frankenheimer. Frankenheimer stated that the only reason he wanted to do the movie was so he could work with his idol Brando, the same reason cited by Ron Perlman. I'd wager that after wrapping, both men wished they'd just kept those warm memories of On the Waterfront and Streetcar.

As it is, the film kicks off with Thewlis' Edward Douglas adrift at sea after a plane accident and eventually picked up by Kilmer's boat, which is on its way back from some trip to the mainland. After some TLC, Douglas is forced to disembark on Moreau's island after he is warned that the ship's captain has a bit of an eye for some Thewlis. Taken back to the compound, Douglas soon runs into Aissa (Fairuza Balk) who is Moreau's 'Daughter'. She runs away as Kilmer approaches and after Douglas remarks that she's beautiful, Val remarks 'Yeah, she's a pussycat.' (Har Har Har, it's a joke and foreshadowing all rolled into one! GET IT?!)

Anyway, after some snooping Douglas witnesses one of the good Doctor's creatures giving birth in a laboratory and, as clumsy people trying to be quiet in films are, he is soon heard and chased by more beasties. Eventually taken to the 'Sayer of the Law' (Ron Perlman), Douglas listens to the Sayer's sermon which basically lays out the humanity in the hybrids as their godliness and the animalistic as their debased, sinful side. Ron Perlman, playing a character without the use of his sight, wore contacts that rendered him blind, so as to really get into the character of what appears to a half-man, half-lion (those wise old lions). As a bonus, it'd also spare him having to witness a lot of the 'acting' that was going on as well.

So far, so bad. But ho hum, Brando's about to appear so it might be alright. Yep. Marlon Brando makes his BIG entrance and he looks like... Well, I can't really say. I have never seen anything like it before or since. He's just Marlon Brando. But nuts. Brando's Moreau has a sort of soft, lilting English accent which only really adds to his oddness. He also seems to be wearing dentures and this kind of detracts from any wisdom or insight that he might have and just makes him seem like even more of a fruity weirdo, if that's at all possible.

Then, back in Moreau's study/lounge, the doctor and Douglas discuss just what the hell is going on in this topsy turvy place. He presents his 'children' to Douglas and he also has a mini-me, who clearly freaks the ever-loving shit out of Douglas and probably would any other sane person. One thing that the film is good for is brilliant unintentional comedy moments. Upon seeing this little fellow (and in light of the fact that Douglas says he is a UN negotiator) he shouts and points: “Look at these people! Look at Him!” You can only imagine his skill when he gets the Israeli's and the Palestinian's around a table. When the little pink man tries to shake his hand, Douglas responds thusly:

Pretty much my facial expression throughout this whole film.

After Douglas displays all the tact and nuanced questioning tactics of a seasoned negotiator - “Did it ever occur to you that you might have totally lost your mind?” / “This is positively Satanic” etc. - everyone breaks for a while before dinner at eight. Dinner is preceded by Moreau and the little pink man playing a duet on the piano, which is made even more bizarre by Moreau and his companion both sporting long, white du-rags. After which they break out a couple of 40's and get silly. After that part that didn't really happen, they all sit down to dinner and one of Moreau's boys reads a poem by Yeats called 'The Second Coming', which discusses feelings of desolation with the world in it's current state and feelings of apprehension at what the future will hold. This could be either an allegory for the Doctor's withdrawal from the world and his god complex or as more foreshadowing of when the island will descend into bloody chaos. Moments of highfalutin' discourse like this are peppered through the film and make it even more obvious that the script was pulled in various directions by its many writers, with Brando even re-writing some of the script himself and Thewlis admitting he re-wrote his own lines. Mostly though, the film is wrenched more in the direction of action-chase sequences and oddly numbing, beastly violence. Rather than any kind of meditation on ethics or the thoughts Wells had of the ultimately animalistic nature of man and the implications of rapid scientific advancement, we get Val Kilmer trying to do an impression of Marlon Brando but sounding like he's got a severe sinus infection. It doesn't help the scene that Thewlis is making no attempt to stifle his laughter. Presumably the laughter of a man driven mad by the combined psycho powers of Val Kilmer and Marlon Brando.

Following an inevitable uprising, Moreau is torn limb from limb and everything truly goes to shit. The tenuous hold the doctor had on his creations gone and without their inhibiting serum, the beasts soon start to revert to their animal instincts. Things aren't helped by a scene that heightens the creepy o-meter from 'mild' to 'I want to go home and cry in the shower.' Now in a mental realm somewhere beyond our nearest star, Kilmer's Montgomery holds a sort of sweaty orgy rave for the rapidly regressing beasts and plies them all with mind bending drugs. What could go wrong?! Well, after five what I imagine were very uncomfortable and confusing minutes for the extras dressed as manimals, Montgomery is killed by Moreau’s evil son. Thewlis and Balk come steaming in and after a lot of comedy hissing and miaowing from Balk, both are subdued, with Balk's Aissa summarily hung for being her Father's favourite.

The creatures, now in control, soon turn on one another as one Hyenaman deems himself a god and is convinced by Thewlis that there must be a 'Number One God'. Slaying all his heavies, Hyenaman is also shot and after a beating from those still loyal to their dead master, walks into Moreau's burning house, shouting “Father... WHHHYY?” just like a really shoved-in-your-face religious parable.

Douglas leaves the island behind, safe in the knowledge that the benevolent Sayer of The Law will guide the remaining creatures to some kind of peaceable existence. Over a montage of people brawling in the streets, war, murder and so on, Thewlis narrates a monologue about how he sees the beast in all men and goes onwards, homewards in fear blahblahblehbleh. You know, just to really nail the message home.

After completion, David Thewlis declined to attend the premiere and says he has never seen the film as it was such a bad, painful experience. A decision which neatly mirrors the mindset the character his is based on in HG Wells' book - Edward Prendick, who fakes having no memory of his year on the island because it was so horrifying. Interviewed at Cannes in 1997, Thewlis had this to say about it: “Well, The Island of Dr Moreau wasn't very good, was it? I remember the day Brando turned round to me and said this was the craziest thing he'd ever been involved in and I thought, if this is the craziest thing Brando has been involved in, then fuck me...”

Alex Williams

Movie Review Archive

DVD Review - Assault on the Pacific: Kamikaze (2007)

Assault on the Pacific: Kamikaze a.k.a. For Those We Love, 2007.

Directed by Taku Shinjo.
Starring Keiko Kishi, Satoshi Tokushige, Yosuke Kubozuka and Michitaka Tsutsui.


SYNOPSIS:

A World War II epic about a squadron of Japanese Kamikaze pilots and their journey through training and first missions toward the terrifying destiny of their battle with the US Navy over the Pacific Ocean.


In films, the kamikaze have generally been shown as menacing, faceless danger, first appearing as an ominous dot on the horizon and then as a source of death and destruction. Assault on the Pacific: Kamikaze takes a different route, focusing instead on the young men in those planes. Touching on their personalities, fears, desires and relationships. The men, most of them barely out of their teens, are not rabid zealots or men devoid of emotion. Many of the young pilots have flashes of doubt, one flight leader even going to his Colonel to raise his concerns that his pilots have nowhere near the skill to hit a battleship and their lives are being thrown away needlessly. He is censured by his commander, are all who try to question the validity of the kamikaze missions, even though many show flickers of doubt.

This attitude, the suppression of reason and emotion in the face of duty and “glory” that many characters show is sown at the start of the film, when we are shown the upper echelons committing to the plan after the head of the air force states that defeat is inevitable but talks about 'The Spirit of the Nation' and Japan's identity through defeat and emerging on the other side. These generals espouse the Japanese military code of death before defeat or capture. With this attitude historically woven into their offices and ranks, the top brass seemingly only think in grand, nationalistic terms, not without an awareness of the loss of good young men, but more with an obstinate doctrine that it must be so, for Japan to state its intent and retain its honour.

Assault on the Pacific mostly takes place in a small town where the suicide squads, as they call themselves, are stationed. Young girls from the local school are drafted in to care for the men in their last few days of life. In the town, a lady affectionately known as 'Auntie' to the young men, runs a restaurant where the men come to relax and eat. For Auntie, this ushers in a time of continual tragedy and loss, as the young men she remembers as cadets who trained nearby come back one after another to tell her that they will soon be dead. The one young man who she sees the most is Kanayama, who had trained there as a cadet and whom Auntie had taken under her wing as if her own son. As the film goes on, and each character becomes more known and liked, a palpable sense of tragedy builds. Casual, everyday actions are tinged with a dark finality. When Auntie's eldest daughter – Reiko, is lent a book by Kanayama, she tells him that she'll return it in a few days. A silence follows as they both realise the importance of the statement and he tells her that she can keep it. Auntie constantly struggles with the dichotomy between her own, paternalistic feelings for the men (and Kanayama in particular) and trying to be an impartial comfort to them.

The continuous strain of seeing these happy, healthy young men before her and having prior knowledge of their deaths is an odd, emotionally strange situation for a person to be in and Auntie seems more drawn and weighed down as the film progresses. The film doesn't attempt to provide any clear-cut resolution to these feelings, as it would be impossible to crystallise one over-arching, all important message to be gleamed from what happened at this time, in this place. It instead shows a more realistic portrayal of war, from multiple viewpoints. The decisions and motivations of the men at the top of the ladder will and will not be in line with those of the men giving up their own lives. The young men, between themselves, display wildly differing attitudes to their mission. Some are volunteers, others are not. Kanayama, the night before his flight, breaks down to Auntie and her daughters. He comes to the conclusion that he doesn't know who or what he is dying for, just that he knows he will. There is a crushing inevitability in his words, the ultimate realisation that even his life is not his own.

The film again injects more ambiguity about half way through, when a pilot who has been noted to have doubts about giving up his life is beaten and berated and sent out again the very next day. After taking off, the pilot pulls his plane upwards so it will stall and allows it to crash to the earth in a ball of flames. Other pilots and mechanics rush to the scene whilst his commanding officer watches on, aware that the man has taken his own life on his own terms. The film again throwing open the concept of 'honour' to interpretation.

After this, an officer talks with another pilot and the justifications for their mission. Told that he and others are going to bomb a relatively unimportant target, the pilot asks why their lives would be given up for such an innocuous reason. The officer tells him that it is because if they bomb things like the jetty they have been ordered to, the Americans will believe that there are thousands of kamikaze, ready to attack anywhere, at any moment. The pilot grasps that all that is important is their death: that a show of fanatical (manufactured or not) intent would make the invasion of Japan itself a terrifying prospect. The officer states that 'There is right way and a wrong way to lose a war.' and that the kamikaze will help Japan strive for a better peace settlement. This, obviously, was not the case. The film time and again highlights the disconnect between this knowledge of the officers and upper command and the respective information available to those actually dying.

When time comes for the young pilots to actually go and undertake their mission, their fate is mostly to end up blown out of the sky or exploding into the sea. The battle scenes are well handled, with no sense of misplaced victory or defeat in the men's actions – just the sense of futility at their deaths. When one pilot does hit a ship, the repercussions are shown, with American crewmen trying to help their wounded, who are just young men themselves.

Ultimately, Assault on the Pacific aims to present a character study rather than anything over-the-top or distastefully action-laden. It shows the kamikaze pilots as young men at the heart of a conflict that their country was losing. They are not shown as bloodthirsty or hateful, just as normal men. The film does an exemplary job of avoiding portraying its characters as the familiar war film tropes and generates a genuine sadness for the fate of characters you come to know well. There are some moments that tip over into melodrama but these can be forgiven as the film, overall, is an effective parable about the real people behind actions that can sometimes seem incomprehensible.

Alex Williams

Movie Review Archive

DVD Review - Edge of the Empire (2010)

Edge of the Empire, 2010.

Written and Directed by Nirattisai Kaljareuk.
Starring Arnut Rapanit, Lalisa Sontirod and Than Thanakorn.


SYNOPSIS:

In 757, the Qin dynasty unleashes its army to impose the emperor's will upon the free tribes in the Cheung Dao Valley, China, forcing the six Tai tribes (the legendary ancestors of the Thai people) - the Ler, Chiangsair, Khanu, Yuro, Dtai and Thanai, into a futile war. After their defeat, the living remnants of the tribes are scattered across the land and reside in cities under the stewardship of Han overlords.


Based on the novel that won the 1973 John F. Kennedy award for literature, Edge of the Empire sports eye-popping visuals and top draw production values, courtesy of the film's three years in production. Following completion of principal photography, Edge of the Empire was tweaked and preened to fully embody the sumptuous experience the filmmakers hope to put on screen. And, overall, the film is beautiful, in both gentle and brutal ways.

Many scenes are awash with thousands of digitally rendered butterflies, first seen when we are taken to Ler City twenty years after the opening scenes of enslavement of the six tribes. Ler City serves as a hub for the tribes, but one which is all the time under the watchful eye of the Han governor – Tiewlang. The butterflies in the film are offered up as the nascent hope of the Tai tribes that they will one day be allowed to exist once again as free and autonomous people. And, indeed, the Thai name for the butterfly – Phi Suea, translates as 'Clothed Spirit.' It is here that we are first introduced to Lampoon (Than Thanakorn) as he leaps onto a raised platform and duels with numerous opponents wielding wooden practice weapons, soundly besting them all.

This initial fight scene sets the tone for the handling of the action. The fight sequences are tight and punchy, with the action edited and filmed so as to accentuate the up-close violence, with the camera pulling out when a character makes the ubiquitous superhuman glide fifteen feet through the air. As the Qin appointed governor watches on, we are treated to a Mortal Kombat-style scenario, where all the best warriors of the six tribes gather to showcase and hone their skills. Asked by the new military envoy to the area – Libong, if it is wise to allow the tribes people to practice their battle skills, Governor Tiewlang responds that it is better to allow them to do it in the open and fight each other than to force them to practice secretly, away from official eyes.

Military man Libong embodies the cold, imperialist spirit of some of the ruling Qin by denigrating the gathered tribes people as 'peasants' whilst Tiewlang strives to handle his charges with a more benevolent approach, the two men mirroring the oscillating attitudes of the ruling class. Tiewlang is soon replaced by a new governor, Litongjia (Praptpadol Suwanbang), who leans very much more towards the oppressive mode of governance, setting the people of Ler City against him and stoking their passions even more against their Qin overlords.

Litongjia is played as an oversexed zealot. He removes anything that could be considered a weapon from the villagers and imposes a harsh new regime on the people. Litongjia is one of the more enjoyable characters because he isn't saddled with any baggage as his character is designed as a larger than life villain, whose only motivations seem to be his penchant for cruelty and desire to fornicate with pretty much any woman he comes across.

Some of the acting on display, whilst serviceable, doesn't match up to the grand vision of the film. It is also quite hard to keep up with who is who and their motivations as the cast is quite sprawling and the plot moves at a very fast pace, apart from when some of the characters are killed off. Then we are treated to overwrought funeral scenes that find it hard to pin down any real emotion due to the sheer number of characters in play. It's understandable that in a film that wants to take on the epic sweep of a story of this magnitude, the writer and filmmakers would want to bolster that feeling with a large cast but the here it just ends up feeling bloated and largely irrelevant.

Whilst the acting may sag in some places, the direction, courtesy of Thai TV veteran Nirattisai “Ta” Kaljareuk, is accomplished and full of flair. Ta easily segues between brutal, close quarters combat, epic battle scenes and artful meditative shots of the rural settings. He is ably assisted by British cinematographer Paul Spurrier, who imbues the film with a flowing beauty, alternated with a sure, hard edge when violence erupts.

Overall, Edge of the Empire is a great visual experience and another exemplary example of Thai filmmaking (which was made for just 3.5 million dollars). The film is worth seeing for its visual impact and deft handling of action but as an historical epic it falls flat because of the sometimes sub-par acting and relatively weak script.

Alex Williams

Movie Review Archive

Movie Review - Sucker Punch (2011)

Sucker Punch, 2011.



Directed by Zack Snyder.

Starring Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung, Oscar Isaac, Carla Gugino, Jon Hamm and Scott Glenn.





SYNOPSIS:



Locked away against her will, a young girl's vivid imagination provides a thrilling escape from her dark reality.





With Sucker Punch, Zack Snyder is for the first time directing a film that isn't based on a pre-existing property. Dawn of the Dead, 300, Watchmen, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole (tee hee) all take their cue from other sources. Re-making Romero, adapting Frank Miller and trying to bring Alan Moore's opus (good luck pleasing him) all gave the director someone else's ideas to riff and build on.



Sucker Punch marks the first feature film Snyder has conceived and written from the ground up. Initially starting out as a short story of Snyder's, Sucker Punch grew into an elaborate, $150 million dollar fantasy epic and, as such, the burden rests entirely on him. Co-scripting the film with Steve Shibuya, Snyder has turned out a film high in fantastical, over the top action but lacking when it comes to the justification of the carnage on screen.



After finding herself imprisoned in 'Lennox Home for the Mentally Insane' (can someone be 'Physically Insane'?) via the machinations of her evil, abusive step-father, Babydoll (Emily Browning) conjures up a plan to escape with her fellow inmates Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), Rocket (Jenna Malone), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens) and Amber (Jamie Chung), striving to find the five items they need to escape – a key, a knife, fire, a map and a mystery object that will only be revealed to Babydoll at the end of her quest.



Finding herself staring down the barrel of a forced lobotomy, Babydoll and her cohorts soon get to work attaining the necessary items. It's at this point that the story switches to a 30s style burlesque setting with Blue (Oscar Isaac), the corrupt, deviant orderly taking on the role of pimp and overlord who controls his stable of dancing girls with violence and intimidation. The Polish head psychiatrist Doctor Gorski (Carla Gugino) becomes Madame Gorski and is tasked with whipping Babydoll into shape so she can perform for the various greasy perverts that frequent Blue's imaginary club. From this point, Babydoll uses her dancing to enter a kind of trance, projecting herself into the various fantastical fantasies where she and the other girls take on, amongst others, dragons, cyborgs, medieval knights, steam punk World War I German soldiers and various other outlandish ghouls in order to find their needed items. Whilst the burlesque club setting is vividly rendered and special kudos must be paid to Isaac for his performance, whirling from charming and charismatic to wholly unpredictable and sadistic, this intermediate buffer between the reality of the asylum and the fantasy segments does kind of kill off the dark power of the asylum, rendering it as a briefly mentioned, background concern as you become embroiled in the club and fantasy settings.



This leads to one of the major downfalls of the film, in that Snyder is obviously a talented director when it comes to rendering the action, anarchically imbuing the action with every fantasy, video game and anime element any 14-25 year old male (who is actually interested in those things) will find irresistible and joyous. And, indeed, these portions of the film do swirl and rush with a great momentum, sweeping the viewer up with their enthusiasm and verve. These sections can only sustain the film so far though, and well rendered action doesn't make a complete film.



This where the film falls down; the prologue of Babydoll's defiant stand against her step-father and subsequent mentions of abuse (both sexual and physical) feel slightly tacked on to the film, as though Snyder felt a need to ground the film with something adult, so as to point out that all the fantasy and outlandish goings on are wholly justified as the desperate escapism of a young girl. What it is in fact hard to pin down is whether the subtext of abuse is, as mentioned, a way to make the film feel more 'adult' or whether it is because Snyder lacks the maturity as a filmmaker to convey the issues of sexual and physical abuse in a way that is mature, understanding and well-defined. To take on such a thorny and difficult issue would test any director or writer, let alone Snyder who seems far more interested in the action elements of the film than coherently addressing the most major issue raised in the film.



Beyond the stilted handling on the abuse Babydoll is subject to in real life, Emily Browning fits well in the role of Babydoll and it is immense fun to see her and her co-stars pirouetting madly through insane action scenarios and the female cast acquit themselves admirably as fearsome warriors. It's just a shame that their dramatic chops are tested all to briefly, with scenes of real emotional depth few and far between. But when they are called on to inject some heartfelt feeling, they all put in solid work with Abbie Cornish pulling off a difficult role as the naysayer of the group, eventually transforming herself through some emotional turmoil into a resilient survivor.



Overall, the film works well on the level of ridiculous over the top action but cannot sustain itself as a parable of female heroism in the face of male-led oppression. Snyder once again proves his worth as a director of balletic violence (even if he does fall back on musical cues too often to try and inject a scene with emotional worth) but does not convincingly craft Sucker Punch into a film that packs any kind of real emotional weight.

Sucker Punch is released in UK cinemas this Friday.



Alex Williams



Movie Review Archive

DVD Review - The Unforgiving (2010)

The Unforgiving, 2010.

Written and Directed by Alastair Orr.
Starring Ryan Macquet, Craig Hawks, Claire Opperman and Michael Thompson.


SYNOPSIS:

Two survivors are the only link to a spate of killings that has plagued a desolate highway on the outskirts of Johannesburg.


Taking its cue from various torture porn fare like Saw and Hostel, The Unforgiving is a topsy turvy, chronologically disordered tale of three people stranded on the South African R106 freeway, prisoners of a gas mask wearing serial killer. Beginning with Rex Dobson (Ryan Macquet) awaking and finding himself tethered by a chain to big rock, the film gradually introduces via flashbacks (and flash-forward cuts), Alice (Claire Oppeman) and Vincent (Craig Hawks) who are also being held in the remote shell of a house.

As the film progresses it becomes clear that one (or more) of the prisoners are not what they seem and the editing has fun playing around with the viewer's suspicions as it cuts back and forth between the interviews the survivors give to Detective Hirsch (Michael Thompson). The story is one of the film's stronger points, while the dialogue does not fully do justice to the characters as they sometimes resort to traditional horror dialogue that goes against the grain of the decent concept. The script does, however, throw up a curse word that will become a firm favourite in my vocabulary as one character curses another as a 'Fuck-Knuckle'.

The Unforgiving has a good time skewing the moral compass of it's characters and doesn't offer up an easy resolution that clearly lays out who is good and who is evil, it just imbues the characters with the motivations and histories to show that most people could resort to violent acts given a nudge by events beyond their control, be they long in the past or relatively recent.

Director/ writer Alastair Orr makes the most of what must have been a low budget and his direction, whilst sometimes falling back on too many hand held, shaky close ups, is relatively assured and shows promise. With the budget low, the film is shot on digital and has the requisite harsh, bleached out look that its setting would demand. Considering that this is Orr's first feature, it has to be said that he handles his duties well but could sometimes remove the camera from the immediate vicinity of the violence and allow the audience to watch from a more removed point of view, as the camera sometimes is so close to the action and seemingly caught up in the frenzy of violence that it can be hard to tell clearly what is happening. That being said, the film is not overpowered by senseless gore and, in fact, the characters are given more space to develop than many other ultra-low budget horrors.

The acting, whilst sometimes marred by the aforementioned dialogue lapses into cliché, is steady, with the actors giving their all and manifesting the skewed and unpredictable nature their characters well. Michael Thompson does well as Detective Hirsch, giving a good performance as an assured law man with something vaguely dangerous lurking beneath the surface. It is Ryan Macquet who is probably the stand out though as he twists and turns through despair, fear and horror, eventually morphing into something quite different from what you would initially expect of the character as the film reaches it's climax.

All together, despite its short running time (clocking in at 1hr 13 minutes), The Unforgiving offers up a decent tale of subverted morality and unpredictable characters that transcends its low budget and sometimes clichéd dialogue. Despite its flaws, it would be interesting to see what would become of the director were he given a bigger budget and took a step back from the horror to let it play itself out, rather than getting too up close and personal.

Alex Williams

Movie Review Archive

Red Dawn remake revises its villains

The remake of 1984's classic 'kidz against the world' tale Red Dawn has hit a snag due to the ethnicity of its villains and, fearing low box-office returns in China, MGM has insisted that the filmmakers digitally remove all traces of Chinese military and cultural symbols from the film.

The new invading force will be those pesky North Koreans because they are still evil in the eyes of the world (and they don't contribute a massive amount to world box-office receipts). It will be interesting to see how different audiences react to the film when the studio and producers have essentially said, 'Yeah, change them to North Koreans; they all look the same anyway'.

Overcoming the logic leap of North Korea being capable of invading the North American continent, the producers of the film stated that all the digital tweaking would make it clear that North Korea has a larger role than you might expect in invading the USA, but are still in league with a (presumably unnamed) Chinese Red Army.

There isn't a set release date yet for Red Dawn but it should be out by the end of the year. The film marks the directorial debut of stunt coordinator Dan Bradley (who has previously handled second unit duties on the likes of Superman Returns, Spider-Man 2 and 3, Quantum of Solace and the upcoming Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol) and stars Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Josh Peck (Mean Creek), Adrianne Palicki (Friday Night Lights), Josh Hutcherson (The Kids Are All Right), Isabel Lucas (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen), Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Watchmen) and Ken Choi (Captain America: The First Avenger).

Megan Fox to star in Judd Apatow's Knocked Up spin-off?

Megan Fox is reportedly in line to take a role in Judd Apatow's follow-up to Knocked Up. The as-yet untitled spin-off to the 2007 comedy hit will see Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann return as the slightly crazed pairing of Pete and Debbie. Meanwhile Deadline are also reporting that Albert Brooks is set to join the cast and will take on the part of Rudd's father.

No role has been outlined for Fox as of yet but Apatow should have the nous to pull the best from her and play to her strengths. The actress will perhaps be looking for a quality role after the muddled and rubbish Jonah Hex, the epic and bloated crap-athon that was Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and the underwhelming reception for Jennifer's Body and Passion Play.

So far details are sparse about the project apart from the fact that Universal Pictures will be handling distribution and Apatow will be occupying the director's chair for the first time since 2009's Funny People.

British film studio 'Valleywood' facing an uncertain future

Valleywood, the informal shorthand for the Richard Attenborough-chaired Dragon International Film Studios, is facing financial uncertainty in light of debts to creditors and a lack of productions coming to the Welsh movie studio. The £330 million complex boasts 4 silent stages, an office building and a replica of a Norman Castle.

The castle was recently put to good use in the filming of the James Purefoy and Paul Giamatti starrer Ironclad (released today) which, so far, is the only feature film to make use of the studio. Future plans for the site include a grand total of 14 sound stages and a housing development of 2,000 homes.

It had originally been hoped that the lower costs associated with filming in Wales would tempt filmmakers from London, but this has not yet proved to be the case. This could be partly to do with the fact that administrators Price Waterhouse Coopers have been in fiscal control of the studio since 2008, with the studio owing £15 million to creditors right on the upsurge of the economic crisis. The adminstrators admit that this has held the studio complex back from being able to expand and entice film projects and could see the complex sold off for re-development.

Quentin Tarantino Western to finally get rolling?

Talk was rife last week after Quentin Tarantino once again expressed his desire to explore the Spaghetti Western and juxtapose the traditional Western elements to a slavery-era American South.

Tarantino has been kicking the idea around for a few years and once again he was spilling the beans after the Oscars. He has stated that the project may no longer include the slavery element but instead be a more traditional Spaghetti Western (well, as traditional as it could get with QT).

Speaking at the Los Angeles Italia film festival, Italian actor Franco Nero (Django) stated that talent was already being considered for the project. Alongside himself, Franco says that Treat Williams (Once Upon a Time in America), Keith Carradine (Southern Comfort) and Christoph Waltz (the deliciously diabolical Colonel Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds) are being sized up for roles.

Tarantino has yet to officially confirm that the film will be going ahead but with a script completed and Spain and Italy being mentioned as filming locations, it would be wise to watch this space for further announcements and updates in the near future.

DVD Review - Terror Trap (2010)

Terror Trap, 2010.

Directed by Dan Garcia.
Starring David James Elliot, Heather Marie Marsden, Jeff Fahey, Michael Madsen and Andrew Sensenig.


SYNOPSIS:

Don (David James Elliot) and Nancy (Heather Marie Marsden), a couple with an unhappy relationship, are run off the road on a rural back road. The surly Sheriff Cleveland (Jeff Fahey) drives the couple to a motel where crime/motel overlord Carter (Michael Madsen) will subject them to a deadly game of cat and mouse for the pleasure of a paying audience.


[Warning - here be spoilers]

Terror Trap begins with a biblical quotation:

'For just a man falleth seven times, and riseth up again: But the wicked shall fall into mischief.' - Proverbs 24:16

Whether this is to imbue the film with a sense of weightiness or to give the viewer somewhere to turn after witnessing Terror Trap is up for debate.

Terror Trap begins as a paradigm of horror movies with an attractive young woman speeding along a rural highway, talking on her phone and taking swigs from a liquor bottle with an almost suicidal disregard for the law. Set up as the perfect “deserving victim”, cue Sheriff Cleveland (Jeff Fahey) pulling her over and going from genial old boy to shouty psycho in a matter of seconds. Cleveland intimidates the young woman into letting him take her to the motel of doom. This young woman does reappear a few times through the film and her funeral is used to bookmark the beginning and the end of the film but any significance she might have is lost in the severely muddled plot.

Next up on the roster of victims are Don (David James Elliot) and Nancy (Heather Marie Marsden), who bicker and fight. Well, Don doesn't really do much fighting, he just kind of sits there and takes the abuse most of the time. The couple seem on the verge of divorce as she screams 'Fuck You!' at him five times in a row and then hits him whilst he is driving. Surely only an event of life-changing magnitude could ever bring these two alienated lovers back together.

After Don and Nancy are run off the road by one of Carter's lackey's, the two are whisked away by Fahey's Sheriff to the motel and must deal with the inevitable weirdo hotel clerk in order to get their shitty room that has blood smeared on the walls. At this point, many people might reach the decision to leave immediately and maybe tough the night out in a ditch before dusting themselves off and finding help elsewhere. But no, Don explains away the blood by joking 'Wow, these truckers must like it rough!'. Indeed.

Oh, and Nancy randomly reminds Don that he was a Marine. Y'know, Just sayin'.

Meanwhile, texts are sent out by Carter to various scumballs who gather at the motel in a dark room to watch the carnage on offer via video feeds planted all around the hotel. The scenes with the watchers are ridiculously over-egged, with the voyeurs shown as sweaty, twitchy caricature sleazebags. These scenes are more humorous than disturbing as the watchers goggle wild eyed at the screen as Don and Nancy fanny around doing nothing much at all.

As the film progresses, this audience of degenerates are seen watching not only the trials of Don and Nancy but also the torture and murder of some Ukrainian prostitutes that Madsen's Carter has purchased. The director seems to try and want to create a gritty, washed out aesthetic á la Hostel and films scenes of the Ukrainian prostitutes as a writing mass of flesh, and has them twice sprayed with arterial blood after a couple of throat slashings, seemingly thinking that this is disturbing and visceral but instead it's just kind of shallow and pointless.

There also doesn't seem to be any underlying moral tone or message regarding the actions of the watchers or those committing the crimes. There is no guiding reason behind the violence and blood other than to attempt to appear 'edgy' and modern by embellishing the weak story with voyeuristic elements.

Whilst the Hostel part of the film is unfolding, Don and Nancy are embroiled in their own The Devil's Rejects / Vacancy plot and run from place to place being pursued by assailants wearing overalls and what appear to be Venetian carnival masks. The masks lead to the murderers looking like a much tamer version of Slipknot and remove any sense of threat that they might pose to the main protagonists. It is around this point that Don seems to remember that he was a Marine for eight years and goes full-scale Rambo on everyone, perhaps revelling in the fact that he can finally express his rage at his crappy marriage and hideous wife.

The film ends with Don, having killed mostly everyone in the motel and leaving Cleveland beaten and broken on the floor, gently guiding Nancy away from the hotel as they start to walk the road to freedom and, perhaps, a brighter future. After the dust has settled, Carter walks to Cleveland and talks with him for a minute before shooting him twice, seemingly just because he can. Carter then walks off into the darkness, free to re-start his unique business somewhere else.

After this ending, there are about four more endings/epilogues that only served to further muddy the waters of the already broken plot and I couldn't really understand what the hell was going on anymore.

Alex Williams

Movie Review Archive

The film industry gets a kick up the bum in Australia

The Australian federal court has today turned down an appeal from AFACT (Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft) that sought to overturn an earlier judgement in favour of Australia's second largest ISP, iiNet.

AFACT, which was representing numerous Hollywood studios (including Universal, Warner Bros., Twentieth Century Fox and Sony Pictures) had alleged that iiNet had not done enough to prevent its users from downloading films and TV shows and thus was guilty of copyright infringement.

After a fractious and hard fought legal battle, iiNet won the trial last year and AFACT has been hard at work in the courts with its appeal, claiming that the original judgement had been wrong in regards to iiNet's capacity and responsibility to prevent online piracy and that the original judgement was “a serious threat to Australia's digital economy.” Some might argue that corporate entities using legal machinations, threats and mouthpiece organisations to impose their will on the internet is something far more dangerous, but whatever.

The Federal court upheld the original judgement, rejecting AFACT's arguments with
Judge Nicholas James commenting; "It cannot be inferred that a person authorises copyright infringement merely because he or she provides another person with communication facilities used by the other person to infringe copyright."

AFACT have the recourse of a further appeal.

Alex Williams' Desert Island Collection

Alex Williams presents his Desert Island Collection...


MOVIES

1. The Thing – The best sci-fi/horror film ever made.
2. Big Trouble in Little China – Jack Burton. Lo Pan. Endlessly quotable and infinitely enjoyable.
3. The Breakfast Club – The perfect John Hughes film.
4. The Man With Two Brains – Carl Reiner and Steve Martin's brains together for one of the best comedies ever made.
5. Die Hard – A christmas film and the best action film all rolled into one!
6. Paprika – Mind blowing and beautiful exploration of dreams and the nature of reality from Satoshi Kon.
7. Back to the Future Trilogy – This one's a bit of a cheat but you can't have the first without the second and the third is in because I like cowboys.
8. Spirited Away – Luscious and endlessly imaginative.
9. Dazed and Confused – My favourite Richard Linklater movie.
10. Akira – 'Nuff said.

TELEVISION

1. Twin Peaks – Dreamlike, beautiful and terrifying in equal measures. It tore up the TV rulebook and has never been matched since.
2. The Simpsons – Seasons 2 – 9 – Some of the best comedy made anywhere, ever.
3. Arrested Development – Intelligent, hilarious and crammed full of unforgettable characters, a show gone far too soon.
4. Seinfeld – A show about nothing that still reigns as the pre-eminent sitcom of all time.
5. Ren and Stimpy – A show so scatological, insane and downright bizarre that it's impossible not be drawn in.
6. Baccano! - Brilliant multi-character anime series that turns from gangster epic to supernatural infused madness at the drop of a hat.
7. The Sopranos – The best TV show about gangsterism ever.
8. Oz – Brutal, uncompromising drama that made you love and hate its characters at the same time.
9. Deadwood – A true sawdust and blood odyssey.
10. Beavis and Butthead – It takes a lot of talent and intelligence to make something this intentionally juvenile and crude AND make you like the eponymous title characters.

Click here for more of our contributor's Desert Island Collections, and please feel free to leave your thoughts (or indeed, your own choices) below...

Alex Williams

Matthew Vaughn interested in bringing Jonathan Ross' The Golden Age to the screen

Jonathan Ross' comic book The Golden Age could soon be coming to the big screen courtesy of Matthew Vaughn, director of Kick-Ass, Layer Cake, Stardust and the upcoming X-Men: First Class.

Vaughn has said that a major Hollywood studio is ready to back the picture and he has mentioned Ross' wife Jane Goldman (screenwriter for Kick-Ass, Stardust and First Class, amongst others) in connection with scripting duties, but Goldman may miss out due to scheduling conflicts. As of yet, details are up in the air and Vaughn has also said that he may produce instead of direct.

With The Golden Age centering on octogenarian superheroes being brought out of retirement, Vaughn has stated that he sees the project as perfect for some older stars to immerse themselves in, with Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty mentioned by the writer/director/producer.

Ross is an avid comic book fan and already has one title under his belt as a writer, with the four issue miniseries Turf – a tale of vampires and gangsters set in prohibition-era New York, which was released last year.

Upcoming Spider-Man reboot is officially 'The Amazing Spider-Man'

Next year's reboot of Spider-Man has now been officially named - Andrew Garfield will star as the epoynymous webslinger in The Amazing Spider-Man. The title is interesting because it harks back to the comic-book source of Spidey and will further stoke expectations about the new series.

Spidey's latest outing has been lamented in some quarters as following too soon after Sam Raimi's sometimes great, sometimes awful Spider-Man trilogy, which came to a close in 2007.

A new image has also been released by Sony, giving another view of Spider-Man's newest costume:

The darker colouring is immediately apparent, and it is interesting to note the mechanical web-shooters, opposed to the fan-grating choice of biological goo shooters of Raimi's films.

With the title now locked in and the new image's seeming closer adherence to Spider-Man comic book lore, The Amazing Spider-Man looks to be evoking an intriguing, somewhat faithful reading of everybody's favourite neighbourhood webslinger.

Starring in the reboot alongside Garfield's Peter Parker/Spider-Man is Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy, with Martin Sheen (Uncle Ben), Sally Field (Aunt May), C. Thomas Howell (Ray Cooper), Denis Leary (George Stacy), Irrfan Khan (Nels Van Adder / Proto-Goblin) and Rhys Ifans (Dr. Curt Conners / The Lizard), while Philip Seymour-Hoffman is rumoured as Venom (!?).

DVD Review - Black (2009)

Black, 2009.

Directed by Pierre Laffargue.
Starring MC Jean Gab'1, Carole Karemera, Francois Levantal and Anton Yakovlev.


SYNOPSIS:

Black (MC Jean Gab'1), licks his wounds and considers his future after a bank robbery gone wrong, in which nearly his entire crew is wiped out. He soon receives information from his cousin about a large cache of diamonds currently residing in a bank in Dakar, Senegal. Quickly assembling a new gang, Black sets out for Africa and what he believes will be the score to end all scores. However, his gang are not the only people interested in the diamonds and Black is propelled into a world of corrupt Russian army gunmen, voodoo and spiritual awakening.


From the outset, Black sets out its stall as something different from a straight up heist movie. On his way to hijacking a bank money transport, Black (MC Jean Gab'1) narrowly avoids hitting an old man in tribal priest's robes who reveals to Black a prophecy, telling him; 'You are the lion. The one who will defeat the evil snake.' Black takes the old man's words in his stride and continues on to the robbery which turns into a disaster. The holy man's prophecy will, of course, prove eerily accurate and adds an extra dimension to the film. Black is not just drawn to Africa by the thought of riches but is also seemingly pulled there by forces beyond his control. These elements of the supernatural / magical could jar when coupled with the heist objective but the film is structured as such that the more fantastical elements of the story emerge towards the end of the second act and work well as a more spiritual juxtaposition with the gun play of the previous action.

Debut director Pierre Laffargue does a good job of adapting his craft to suit the stylistic back and forth needed for a genre-masher like Black. He allows the cameras to get in close when gun fights erupt and has a good eye for a raw, gritty aesthetic. Laffargue is equally adept at staging and capturing glamorous, slow-motion sequences and flowing, one take shots. It is the director's fluency and adroit hand that allow the film to cross over into various filmic realms without it feeling disjointed or fractious. Laffargue is ably assisted by his leading man, with Gab'1 handling his duties well, able to bring out a boyish charm and capable, muscular presence in equal measures.

In combining elements of blaxploitation and spiritual/fantastical themes with the modern heist movie, Black is able to tread and, quite often, cross the boundaries of believability to no ill effect and mesh the various elements therein to keep the film running. The film does sag slightly, however, in the second act. Taken up chiefly with the meeting of and burgeoning relationship between Black and Pamela (Carole Karemera), for a while the film is subject to some aimless meandering. This is remedied by the pair's journey into the Senegalese plains and their time with a native tribe. Seen as fulfilling an ancient prophecy, Black and Pamela undergo the rituals of the tribe and soon embody the spirits of their 'totems' – Lion and Panther respectively. After their awakening, the pair journey to the lair of ubiquitous white panama suit wearing villain Degrande (Francois Levanthal), who has metamorphosed into a snake-man creature thanks to his voodoo priestess wife (Mata Gabin). Phew.

The final showdown is shot in an ethereal, blue hue and gives the whole climax a woozy, animalistic feel. The film ends with Black back in the Parisian suburbs, subject to the excited talk of young men about his legendary exploits in Africa. He sits in silence, listening and drinking a beer. Making his way to the street to be rejoined with Pamels, Gab'1 radiates calmness in his final scenes and displays outwardly the mystifying experiences of his character's time in Africa, which has now taken him far beyond the base nature of money and diamonds.

Alex Williams

Movie Review Archive

Essential Actor / Director Partnerships: Molly Ringwald and John Hughes

In a special feature running all this week, Alex Williams counts down his Essential Actor / Director Partnerships...

Molly Ringwald and John Hughes

Sixteen Candles (1984)
The Breakfast Club (1985)
Pretty in Pink (1986)

In the mid 80's, there was no one in movies who could make a better teen film than John Hughes. In his three films with Molly Ringwald (Hughes didn't direct Pretty in Pink – Howard Deutsch did - but Hughes wrote it and had a large degree of input into the film), Hughes explored in honest and realistic terms what it meant to be a teenager and, in Molly Ringwald, he found a versatile actress perfect for the centrepiece female roles of his mid 80's films.

Sixteen Candles found Ringwald as Samantha Baker, a girl low on the social ladder at school and distressed at the small amount of attention being paid to her sixteenth birthday. Due her to sister's wedding the next day, Samantha struggles through a day of mishaps, embarrassment and eventual happiness at the film's finale, sharing a kiss with her crush Jake (Michael Schoeffling).

Acting as the central cog in the film, Ringwald imbued Samantha with a believable, engaging persona which saw the film receive high praise from most quarters and was enshrined as an essential teen / coming of age film. Throughout the film, Hughes knows exactly when to ramp up the adolescent feverishness of young romance, when to hold back in a character's time of crisis and when to let the camera share in moments of intimacy. His directing is not at all tentative and he knows how to frame scenes of conflict with a hard, unfurnished style that can act as the flipside to Ringwald's sometimes fragile air.

For Pretty in Pink, Ringwald played the opposite of her role in The Breakfast Club as poor, wrong side of the tracks girl Andie Walsh, who exists on the fringes of high school society with her best friend Duckie (Jon Cryer).


Ringwald wasn't first choice for the role and it had passed through the hands of Jodie Foster and Justine Bateman before she was cast. It is fortuitous then, that she landed the role in Pretty In Pink, as it provided the perfect end point for a trilogy of Ringwald-starring, Hughes-created teen movies that would forever establish John Hughes as one of the pre-eminent chroniclers of American youth.

Whilst Andie attempts to juggle her interest in Andrew McCarthy's Blane McDonough and deal with her crumbling father – the always brilliant Harry Dean Stanton, she also has to try and protect the feelings of her best friend and would-be boyfriend Duckie. Alongside this, she has her boss Iona (Annie Potts), who attempts to guide Andie as best she can.

Ringwald portrays Andie as a girl who is trying to process her world being thrown off it's axis. With the rush of romance and the adult decisions that come with it, she must also deal with the petty politics of the factions in her school. As Blane belongs to the rich kid set, Andie has no social right to be interested in him and vice versa, and James Spader's character Steff puts it in cold, elitist terms: “It's not worth it, man. I told you it wasn't gonna work. The girl was, is and will always be nada.”

Nothing - that is the brutal, cold estimation of Andie in the eyes of Blane's friends. In this high school, as with many others (Including the Shermer High School of The Breakfast Club), the perceived but actually meaningless terms and labels used only serve to create unnecessary and cruel divisions. Andie is seen as nothing because she is working class, Blane is seen as an arrogant rich boy because of his background, designating their true personalities as secondary and insignificant.

Hughes attempts to reconcile the need for Andie to accept the harsh realities of encroaching adulthood and her desire to retain her individuality by having her combine a dress given to her by Iona with a second-hand dress her father bought for her. By stitching together the two into a new dress, Andie makes a statement about how two halves of different origin can co-exist and create a better whole.

1985 saw the release of The Breakfast Club, with Hughes directing and Ringwald as Claire Standish, a rich girl with serious disdain for her fellow detainees. Following the course of a day, where five disparate students find themselves in Saturday detention, the film functions as an ensemble with the characters slowly revealing their true selves as the day wears on and emotions run high. Ringwald's most entertaining and intense scenes came opposite Judd Nelson's John Bender, a playful, mischievous drop out with a heart of gold.

Again, Hughes uses the juxtaposition of rich and poor, refined and rough hewn, to highlight the common and unmistakable commonalities between his characters. Emilio Estevez's Andy and Ringwald's Claire seem to be the most socially popular of the group and sit next to each other. But as the film wears on, they lose their facades of seeming perfection and crumple, admitting the same inhuman pressures experienced by 'nerd' Brian (Anthony Michael Hall) and Ally Sheedy's 'freak' Allison. John Bender is the most brutally frank about his home life, which revolves around physical abuse and neglect. Bender, once the layers of aggressiveness and self-protecting wisecracks have been peeled back, reveals a scared young man.

As with many of Hughes' earlier films, adults primarily play the role of oppressor and are largely responsible for their children's despair. Even Principal 'Dick' Vernon (Paul Gleason) cannot resist bullying and threatening Bender, mocking him for his lack of toughness in the face of real aggression in a scene, which by looking at John Bender's face, has been played out all too often already in the young man's life.

As with Pretty in Pink, the downtrodden kids provide their own solutions and make peace with one another, and finally draft a letter to their principal, letting him know that his definitions of them are reductive, misinformed and cruel, mirroring the David Bowie lyrics from Changes that open the film:

“And these children that you spit on As they try to change their worlds Are immune to your consultations They're quite aware of what they're going through”

Related:

Essential Actor / Director Partnerships: Klaus Kinski and Werner Herzog
Essential Actor / Director Partnerships: Kurt Russell and John Carpenter
Essential Actor / Director Partnerships: Owen Wilson and Wes Anderson
Essential Actor / Director Partnerships: Steve Martin and Carl Reiner

Alex Williams

Essentials Archive

Essential Actor / Director Partnerships: Steve Martin and Carl Reiner

In a special feature running all this week, Alex Williams counts down his Essential Actor / Director Partnerships...

Steve Martin and Carl Reiner

The Jerk (1979)
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982)
The Man with Two Brains (1983)
All of Me (1984)

As comedy partnerships go, they don't come much better than this. In their work together, Reiner and Martin co-wrote and made some of the best comedy of all time. At the time of The Jerk, Martin was the most popular comedian in America. He was regularly selling out stadiums with his stand up shows, had won the Grammy for best comedy album in '77 and '78 and had sold over a million copies of his single King Tut. Meanwhile Reiner had established himself in the early sixties by creating and writing for The Dick Van Dyke Show, a sitcom set in the world of television, and it was here that he first began to direct.

With 1979's The Jerk, Reiner directed Martin in the role of Navin R. Johnson, a wide-eyed goofball who leaves his adoptive African-American family (Navin being blithely unaware that he is adopted) to seek his riches in the wider world. What follows is the rise and fall of Navin through a series of increasingly bizarre and sometimes deadly situations that test his happy-go-lucky resolve to the limit. Widely regarded as one of the best comedies of all time, Reiner accentuates the madness at times to leave the viewer as dizzy as Navin but also knows instinctively when to just let the camera rest on Martin and let him dazzle.

Martin and Reiner followed up The Jerk with their co-written playful homage to the film noir genre Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, with Martin in the lead role as rough and tumble, bumbling private eye Rigby Reardon. The film ingeniously spliced together clips from nineteen classic film noirs from the 1940s and 50s with new footage that was shot meticulously to match. This allowed Martin to have 'scenes' with Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Bette Davis and many, many more.

Reardon and his would-be dame Juliet (Rachel Ward) are propelled through a plot that quickly reaches a ridiculous level of complexity and ends with Reardon taking on the ubiquitous Nazis in a tropical island lair. Martin pitches Reardon as oscillating between the playfulness of Navin R. Johnson and the hardboiled private dick that is expected. Martin did not watch any film noirs in preparation for the role and that helps him to break through in the film. He brought his trademark elements of intelligent, skilled buffoonery but combined it with the personality of a knowing, slightly overwrought man of the times. The combination of the two allows Reardon to exist in the world of Veronica Lake and Ava Gardner and, at the same time, a Carl Reiner / Steve Martin film.

It was only a year later that the two returned with The Man with Two Brains. Martin starred as the world-renowned brain surgeon and bizarrely named Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr. Kathleen Turner gave a sultry, psychotic turn as his new wife Dolores. Centring on a plot of Hfuhruhurr's burgeoning psychic relationship with a brain in a jar by the equally spell-check un-friendly Anne Uumellmahaye (an uncredited Sissy Spacek), The Man with Two Brains mines a vein of absurdist, anarchic comedy. Martin's manic doctor alternates between genius, maniac, frustrated husband and madcap would-be murderer at the flick of a switch and is ably complemented by Reiner's frenetic direction.


Martin and Reiner's work together came to an end with All of Me in 1984. Though neither party had a hand in the script, the film was well received and praise mounted for the chemistry of Martin and co-star Lily Tomlin. Tomlin's role is that dying millionairess Edwina Cutwater, who attempts to have her soul transferred to her willing assistant's body. Martin is her lawyer Roger Cobb and inevitably her soul ends up in Cobb's body, with him controlling the left side of his body and Edwina the right.

Martin was lauded for his physical depiction of the unusual predicament, with the scenes between him and Tomlin singled out for their humorous and touching nature. The film eventually climaxes with Edwina's soul once again exorcised and finally sent to her scheming assistant's body.

Martin points to this film as the beginning of his 'mature’ period, where he was able to play more normal characters without the eccentricities of his earlier work with Reiner. All of Me represents a perfect stopping point for a joint body of work that plots a perfect arc from the explosive, audacious fun of their first feature, through to a more muted and traditional end that nonetheless proved maturity does not have to come at the expense of laughs.

Related...

Essential Actor / Director Partnerships: Klaus Kinski and Werner Herzog
Essential Actor / Director Partnerships: Kurt Russell and John Carpenter
Essential Actor / Director Partnerships: Owen Wilson and Wes Anderson
Essential Actor / Director Partnerships: Molly Ringwald and John Hughes

Alex Williams

Essentials Archive

Essential Actor / Director Partnerships: Owen Wilson and Wes Anderson

In a special feature running all this week, Alex Williams counts down his Essential Actor / Director Partnerships...

Owen Wilson and Wes Anderson

Bottle Rocket (1996)
Rushmore (1998) [co-wrote but not featured]
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
The Darjeeling Limited (2007)

As well as working for a director on screen, some actors contribute in other ways. Owen Wilson first met Wes Anderson when they were both studying at the University of Texas. They quickly began working together and the result was 1996's Bottle Rocket, which was an expansion on a short film they had made a couple of years earlier.

Revolving around a cast of misfits, Dignan (Owen Wilson), Anthony (Luke Wilson) and Bob (Bob Musgrave) plan the robbery of a cold storage building's safe. With Dignan plotting their robbery as a glorious, overblown heist of the century, the film builds towards its inevitable outcome with a soft affection for its bewildered protagonists. Dignan is the infectiously enthusiastic wannabe and, with Wilson, director Anderson found an actor capable of transmitting foolhardy bravado with a touching insecurity in equal measures. This was transmitted perfectly in the penultimate scene to their first feature. Facing almost certain capture by the police, Dignan responds;

“They'll never catch me, man... Because I'm fuckin' innocent.”

Wilson went on to co-write Rushmore with Anderson, again to much critical acclaim. During this time, Wilson was being cast in mainstream fare of questionable quality such as Anaconda and The Haunting.

With 2001's The Royal Tenenbaums, actor and director again collaborated on the screenplay. Wilson took the role of Eli Cash – a drug addicted writer and family friend of the Tenebaums with a raging, yet easily bruised, ego. Framed by the voice of Alec Baldwin as the narrator, The Royal Tenenbaums featured Owen Wilson alongside his brother Luke and a stellar cast including Gene Hackman, Bill Murray, Angelica Huston, Danny Glover and Gwyneth Paltrow.

In the film, Wilson's Cash functions as the flipside to his brother Luke's character, Richie. The two men are in the midst of life crises. Eli expresses his fears by taking drugs, behaving recklessly and emotionally manipulating people. Richie exists in a vacuum of limited expression, hiding behind his sunglasses and long hair. Of the two, Eli seems the more likely to end up hurt or worse, but it is Richie who attempts to take his own life.


With Eli, Owen Wilson captures a person who, whilst being a drug addict and depressive, still values life. His odd behaviours and outlandish persona all form part of an insanely insecure individual. Anderson treats Eli with shots that make him seem isolated and lonely, often filmed in wide shots, it only adds to the character's seeming loneliness.

Riffing on the idiosyncrasies of its oddball characters, the film managed to maintain a melancholy air of loss and regret whilst providing laughs and creating an eccentric, endearing world with Anderson and Wilson nominated for the 2002 best screenplay Oscar which eventually went to Julian Fellowes for Gosford Park.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou was released in 2004 with Bill Murray as the eponymous deep sea adventurer of the title. Wilson featured as Ned, Zissou's would-be son and pilot, with Angelica Huston, Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe and Jeff Goldblum also featuring. Wilson played Ned as a softer, more likeable character than Eli Cash with an earnestness that was a perfect foil to Murray's brasher father figure.

2007 saw the release of The Darjeeling Limited, which followed brothers Francis (Wilson), Peter (Adrien Brody) and Jack (Jason Schwartzman) as they traverse India on the titular train to see their mother, played by Angelica Huston, who lives in an abbey. Wilson, as Francis, had the role of the overbearing older brother, much to his brother's chagrin.

Related...

Essential Actor / Director Partnerships: Klaus Kinski and Werner Herzog
Essential Actor / Director Partnerships: Kurt Russell and John Carpenter
Essential Actor / Director Partnerships: Steve Martin and Carl Reiner
Essential Actor / Director Partnerships: Molly Ringwald and John Hughes

Alex Williams

Essentials Archive