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The Letter L is for Love

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The Last Samurai
[Edward Zwick, 154', 15, 2003], 16Jan04

Warning, this film contains many, many scenes with Tom Cruise (you may remember him as Maverick in Top Gun) and one particularly harrowing sequence in which the miniscule master, and our very own Billy Connely and Timothy Spall are in shot all at the same time.

Drunkard American Civil War Captain Nathan Algren is not a happy man. Party to an Indian Wars My Lai, he's been hitting the bottle to forget. But Billy C comes along and embroils our 'war hero' (for Tom is indeed a man amongst men) in a nice little earner. Newly modernising Japan needs an army to go with the railroads, so our hero packs off to Nippon to teach the heathen a thing or two, earn five hundred bucks a month and all the sake he can swallow. And Tom can swallow. It seems the tradition of the samurai (apparently it means to serve and not to decapitate as you might presumefrom recent cinemaitc outings) is at odds with the rapacious morality of those serving the way of the capitalist. The development of an army is neatly tied to the exploitation of the resources of the emerging Japanese state. Inexplicably the heart of ancient Nippon, the samurai, is unhappy watching the family silver being sent to Thatcher and Co for cleaning.

More plot blah: Tom teaches the peasent recruits, they do battle and all die at the hands of the samurai except Tom who is a warrior of a different caste but one to be studied by Ken Watanabe's inscrutable daimio. . . Tom is captured and held for a winter. Tom learns The Way. Usual rites of passage stuff, Tom emerges a brief six months later a true Jedi Knight at one with The Force. "Only six months?". We're talking Tom here remember. During this brief winter Tom has learnt to honour the ways of his capturers and they in turn to respect his occidental mores.

Bit of back story fluff with some near romantic entanglement with the wife of the man Tom killed. . . you can imagine! Anyway, pressing on, there's 154' to cover.

Come spring some toing and froing to the Emprorer to whom the samurai are honour bound. But those nasty modernisers have got the young god under their thumb and the scene is set. The Samural take on moderne in an elaborately staged pitched battle, lots of piercing arrows rain from sky, swords glinting in the sun, bandit warrior shogun scythe type thing and evantually the ancient warriors all die at the hands of the Gatling Gun. Except Tom. The metaphor is pretty blunt but well delivered: the price of modernity is the loss of an older, more spiritual life. For all your TV dinners, fin sharked automobiles and I Love Lucy what does it profiteth you America?! Well thats what I thought anyway.

Despite the moviemaking by numbers clunkiness of this two and a half hour film I was genuinely moved. Huge chunks of the picture are precisely if unimaginatively lowered into place, each respective bit cut out and sadly retained from the Hollywood actioneer template. Cruise, bless him, does an excellent job of being a star. Tom's

My years of in-theater training allow me to side step the

 

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Perhaps the biggest impediment to enjoying a new film is having to wait on the appearance of a movie subjected to blanket publicity. This falls two ways. Number One, it's a huge budget monster with the production costs spent all over on PR that tell us what a gem of beauty and delight some piece of Hollywood shite a movie is! Obvious, and we kinda' expect and accept. The film doesn't really get any worse, in fact the snowstorm of mediated cant signifies how truly formulaic the movie is. The Number Two type movie however is different: this is usually a small to middlin' budget feature that is genuinely worthy. Every single piece of media you consume for six weeks before the pic appears is laudin' the forthcoming masterpiece reveling in the joy of telling its readers that it has its finger well and truly on the pulse. . .

Since long before Xmas the terror of festid media have been lauding LIT as the first great film of 2004. Tiresome. Tiresome that Xmas journalism is written sometime in November, long before the annual bacchanal of seasonal sluicing gets underway. I have a fond vision of monkeys in charge, the early lit lights of the town beckoning the solstice illuminating not the frantic beavering of office workers across the land but rather the dim and ill-conceived ministrations of specially imported rock apes keeping the sluggish machine churning whilst the office workers are away getting pissed. And beavering. For the bulk of December Britain is a land on remote control, output is poor to say the least. So slackness embodies the output of the season.

Actually cut all that, the impediment is having to sit in a freezing wind tunnel whilst the audience around you is tittering away and all you can think, all I can think, is, ‘what’s so bleedin’ funny?". This is the fate that befell me when I went to see LIT earlier this week. A half full house (cheap night, first week) combined with serious heater failure issues had my back well and truly up! I sat and thought for a while, contemplating the draught crossing my legs, becoming increasingly perverse as the film begrudgingly unwound. . .

Well where’s all this leading? Towards my general disquiet when any film is lauded. I approach it with caution, with my appreciation turned down, a kind of minus 3 for my appraisal. So you can imagine, sat there amongst a gallery of braying fools, cold and decidedly under-whelmed as a reaction to a media who hear a Jesus and Mary Chain tune on the soundtrack and immediately think: profound act of genius. I don’t think so! I walked out.

But this is a Bill Murray film. I wasn’t about to give up. Bill Murray for gawd’s sake. Ghostbusters (Murray womanising for all he’s worth to woo Sigourney Weaver), Groundhog Day (that huge psychotherapy metaphor stamped all over it, just keep doing the same old shit till you work it out), Kingpin (Woody Harelson’s comb-over. . . and when will the moo-lay wearing cognoscenti come to realise that the comb-over is the only true gesture haircut). That sardonic edge that accompanies his every utterance. No, I walked out, but I went back. So. . .

Lost in Translation
[Sofia Coppola, 105', 15, 2003], 12Jan04+16Jan04

Bill Murray plays Bob Harris, somewhat spent Hollywood star taking the $2m for that Japanese whisky ad moment. Marooned in a five star Tokyo hotel Bob is washed out on jetlag, cultural incomprehension and mid-life ennui as his marriage takes a holding pattern somewhere over the Pacific. Scarlett Johanssen is in town to get her lips implants sorted for her part in The Girl with the Labial Lips with that lovely Mr Darcey bloke. She's got a snapper hubby in tow, but he's too busy doing glitterati with the could-be-Britney in the foyer to be bothered with her and her dreadful, early twenties crises. But never fear for the sardonic figure of barfly Bob, resolving his crises with lady liquor attracts her and an innocent affair commences.

Like a couple of shipwrecked souls Bob and Johanssen's Charlotte cling to one another. Trapped within the pinball machine of nocturnal Tokyo, they negotiate the neon and glare with one eyebrow raised, knowingly they bear the pain of it all, whilst seeking connection to keep their irony laden life on the ground. Projection aside, this is a charming if odd film. Much as it works, the cinematography coats a delightful and garish night against which our protagonists are deployed, I can't help feeling something is amiss.

Turning upon the performances of Murray and Johanssen, this is a cake walk for the man who has made a career out of acerbic one-liners. Murray's interaction with the film crew and the staff of the hotel, for some critics bordering on the racist, is a sad comment on Bob's lack, and alludes to an emptiness that belittles its locutionary. One feels for Bob, but not enough. Maybe this is a testament to Coppola's direction, her two sleepwalkers nervous of what will be there if they dare to wake. Maybe. Or maybe this is a film predicated upon Coppola's youthful experience of life in the jet stream, a paean to the vacuousness of glamour that is just a tad adrift because such a story has no story. Chance encounters in hotels can bring life and joy in the most unlikely circumstances but rarely do they deliver closure. Life moves on, our problems mitigated but unresolved.

So is LIT much cop? I'm not sure, the truth is I brought so much luggage to my viewing of it that I can't decide whether it's great, simply good or an emperor divested of clothing. There is a magnificent shot of Bob driving a golf ball down the green against the backdrop of Mt Fuji, a perfectly packaged moment that the travel brochures would sell us. For Bob it does little to allay his emptiness. Perhaps that shot personifies the film, it looks great, but something is missing. A good film definitely, but not a great film. Take that salt cellar with you and enjoy this quiet and poignant movie.

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One of my few early childhood 'happy memories' is of my mum's friend reading parts of the first book of Tolkien's saga to me. I tasted madeline aged nine when I rediscovered Tolkien's The Hobbit, and had waded through LOTR, two chapters a night for a month, before I was twelve. The majesty and mythos, the morality and sense of right action were in me before I had got to be a teenager. Boy you'd imagine I spent my adolescnce playing Dungeons and Dragons: tick that box! So when LOTR the One showed up a couple of years ago I was amazed how much of me was stuck inside that huge book. Amazed and bedazzled and generally gobsmacked. I soared on cinematic wings my heart filled with the triumph of movie-making, the silver screen the place upon which my ego was cosseted. I adored LOTR the One. It had some rubbish bits and was certainly vulnerable to deep nerd penetration (now theres a porn movie I'd hate to see) but it did what cinema should do: it made the world magical! LOTR 2: The Twin Towers wasn't as good, but hey, I didn't care. I just sat back and revelled in it. And was awed by a screenful of silent Lambeth teenagers. I wouldn't wish these movies on anybody but if you grew up with Tolkien, they're a must. But now LOTR 3: The Merchandising Continues.

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Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, The
[Peter Jackson, 201', 12A, 2003], 18Dec03

First up, if you do go make sure you go for a good long piss before the movie begins, LOTR 3: The Return of the Bladder Infection is very, very, oh so very, long. Still, let's face it, by now you're either going or you ain't, whatever I or anyone else has to say isn't really going to sway you.

You will need to know something about the story otherwise you're going to be pretty confused (whispering friend will not suffice), but to destroy any anxiety: the ring ends up in a volcano with that funny Gollum chap, good wins over evil, the elves and the wiz and a couple of the hobbits pass beyond the land of men and kinda die; but only in that death is another room sort of way. Aragon changes his name again and ends up as the Big Cheese. Orlando Bloom's Legolas becomes a lovely role model of emasculated manliness, a 'non-threatening boy' for pubescent girls everywhere - the big ciss! The FX are INCREDIBLE. The Seige of Minas Tirith is stupendous and the cavalry charge against the orcs is awesome. But I was ranting after Matrix 3 and look how shite that was! What you have to ask yourself is, "Am I going to be feelin' it?" well yes, and no!

LOTR 3 does a very good job at encapsulating the third volume of Tolkien's magnum opus. The Return of the King is where JRRT really kicked that Oxford learning into gear. It becomes a near biblical deluge of B I G characters on the Middle Earth stage, all doing important things and speaking in Old Testament terms about Thingy This and Thingy That. Volume 3 can be a mite confusing! Jackson has neatly winnowed out the chaff and concentrated on telling the story. I can't fault him. Some plot is forgotton and a couple of characters are shuffled up or down the pecking order for reason of audience demographic but all in all Mr Jackson has done an incredible job and I look forward to his reported filming of The Hobbit.

However there is something amiss about Film The Third. I suspect its the source material. You know what's going to happen, and having to witness 210' of its happening seems a little overblown. Characterisation remains thin and Jackson's strategy of placing the humanity in the lap of the hobbit's backfires. They're bloody tweedley-dee tiresome in their cod celt ways (Merry and Pippin) or constantly emoting on about the burden (the ring that is, not the running time) like a couple of characters placed upfront for pre-teens to project onto (Frodo and Sam). The hobbits seem like clever 'in's for kids rather than the core of Tolkien's universe in which the innocent can have such a huge impact on the course of history. The Actions of Men etc are overblown, the baddies ugly and pointy. It falls to the computer generated Gollum to bring any kind of respite from the weight of seriousness, his divided personality squabbling with itself over the Precious (merchandising rights). Still I'm being churlish, forget the detail, go and get bombasticated by Jackson's uber-fest of Wagnerian proportions, it is truly awesome and one day, mark my words, one day someone will take all this techno know-how and make a truly beautiful and meanigful movie. Not this time though!

Just in case it's not clear, I loved LOTR 3, but think its time to put away childish things. Now examined its time to move on to an altogether harder world. The predominantly Manichean milieu of good and evil is a lovely fantasy but I see no clear evil, only shades of uncertainty and confusion. Tolkien is rooted in some other place, a cultural artefact that has a degree of comfort in all its certainty. There's something a little disturbing about all those grown-ups revelling in Harry Potter and voting Tolkien the best read or whatever fukk-wittedness the Beeb recently came up with. I suppose I hope for more!

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01Jan04

An ill advised second viewing today, the familair and tedious NYD hang-over driving me to the sanctuary of the cinema. All surprise now gone LOTR was dull, the acting leaden, especially every screen second of the insufferable Hobbits, and the 'epic' bombast of the film simply tiresome; it ain't Kubrick that's for sure. The effects and design remain superlative but I didn't feel any belonging to the story, only a slight ennui as the trilogy ground to its inevitable little fellow in the lava (with ring) conclusion. Oddly enough Gollum's computer animated character remained compelling and I could watch Peter McKellen read the phone book but the film just ain't all that. An unsurprising disappointment!

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I paid my money and I knew I'd hate it. I sat on the back row and I hated it. It was and is shit. Never see this film. Gnaw your arm off, suffocate your first born, resist, never.

Love Actually
[Richard Curtis, eterntiy', 2003], 21Nov03

n. port-man-teau. The wearing of a woman's gown or other flamboyant attire to facillatate the enjoyment of an otherwise pointless experience; whilst blind drunk on port.

I cannot disguise my utter loathing for this project. A more detestible and ugly film I have not seen this year. That maybe this tells you more about me than the film remians to be seen but let me adumbrate its failings. They begin with the cast: a roll call of smug luvvies and TV once seen's as I grope at the remote control. I counted Egg from This Life who I like and the bloke who looks like him in that Teachers show (or is it the same actor, how can you tell?), I spotted Alan Rickman once so full of promise (hamming it in Die Hard) and now what? Emma Thompson, ugh! Billy Bob Thornton: why? Hugh fukkng Grant: the nail in the coffin. I loathe everything he signifies! The reviewers have not been unkind enough. The hearty soundtrack of Albert Square adding some lovely lumpen glotteral stops in the shape of Martine Mcthing (and I do feel for her 'cause she's the subject of a whole bunch of fatty remarks). The cast are lame ducks upon the village pond of Curtis's script and direction.

The film comprises, was it eight? nine? small tales that almost manage to wind into each other as the film splutters to what Curtis must presume is heart-warming closure. Unmentionable in despatches is Grant's PM besotted with the gor blimey tea lady McCutcheon, extremely embarrasing! I'm sorry I can't take myself over these soggy plot fragments so limpid and unimaginative is each in its plaigarising and unthought progression

And such a pitiful use of London locations, the same spot on the Thames and a day out on one of those roofless tourist buses one day last Xmas to snatch some festid footage. If your going to exploit the scent of London then at least do it properly. London is an incredible place and awaits its own Manhatten and of course Curtis wasn't going to deliver but pleaseee. . . at least try! This pitiful detail summarises every other thing that is wrong about this movie. Curtis, you weren't even trying.

Where is this warped laudanum London that Curtis inhabits. It is a thorough insult to us all this fantasy town of snow, jolly Xmas encroachment and twee middle class couples. Okay Curtis has discovered that black people do indeed live in London, just not in Notting Hill. But he still seems only able to conjure up unbelievable jolly chums who swear in an unfamilair argot. Arrrghhh. . . I fukking hate this film too much!

And that ¢? Rowan Atkinson for his two minutes. Thank you Rowan!

DESPICABLE! - ¢

 

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