Archive for July, 2001
81 – Snatch.
Guy Ritchie, the Man Who’s Married To Madonna, directed this movie about missing jewels in London’s boxing underground. Played out in the Goodfellas vein, there are characters with colorful personalities to match their colorful names, including Franky Four Fingers, Bullet Tooth Tony, One Punch Mickey O’Neil, Boris the Blade, Turkish, and Brick Top. Stylish and violent – but not in an off-putting way, if you’re a fan of the genre, Snatch is all about ice, doublecrossings, fights, guns, blood, guts, ah, the fun never ends.
Brad Pitt plays a pugilistic gypsy (he’s “One Punch”) who delivers a wonderful engaging performance, speaking his lines in an almost unintelligible dialect. You see, everyone in the film (except for Dennis Farina, who plays Cousin Avi from the U.S.) is British. If you’ve never heard any Briton speak other than the high-class West End junk that the Queen uses, you’ll be in for quite of a shock here. But once your ear gets tuned in to the accents, you’ll be fine. (Of course, Pitt’s Mickey was given that garbled tongue as kind of a way for the writer to poke fun at Britain’s own dialects, which are understandably tough for non-Britons to decipher.)
There are fixed fights, botched robberies, a dog who may have eaten a diamond, carniverous pigs, and a getaway driver who has trouble getting away. You remember when Quentin Tarantino reintroduced the caper-gone-bad genre with movies like Pulp Fiction and reservoir Dogs? This one carries the torch a little bit further, and it’s carried by a solid ensemble cast that includes Academy Award winner Benicio Del Toro (Frankie Four Fingers), Farina, and Pitt. The rest of the gang you might not recognize, but they’re also not characters that simply dissolve into a scene, either. You know the kind – in a subpar gangster movie, all of the hitmen look alike. Not here. This is a cool, fun action film with panache and a touch of humor in the right places (sick humor, though).
Snatch: 7
80 – Shadow of the Vampire
Posted by frothy in Shadow of the Vampire on July 16, 2001
Back in 1924, the silent movie Nosferatu was released. At the time (as now) it was the definitive expression of the timeless story of Count Dracula. There have been, of course, endless renditions of the 1896 Bram Stoker tale; however, Nosferatu was unique in that the medium of cinema was extremely new in 1924, and the maker had to deal with prejudices against this newfangled form of entertainment, which had to compete with the written word. Now, of course, a new Dracula film need not compete with the original story; it only needs to compete with earlier versions on film.
This movie explains the story of how Nosferatu was produced. The director, F. W. Murnau (John Malkovich), is filming his masterpiece in Germany (the widow of the story’s author refused to sign the rights to the story, so they couldn’t film in Transylvania or use any of the names in the book). His choice to play the part of the vampire Nosferatu is Max Schreck (Willem Dafoe), a beastly, hideous man who will appear to the cast and crew only in character (an early example of Method acting, to be sure). Shreck will not travel or bunk with the company; he will live only in the cave dwelling that the film’s protagonist, Count Orlac, calls his home.
With a leading man that eccentric, it’s no wonder trouble appears on the set. People get sick, others appear listless and not quite into their work. Still, the tenacious Murnau pushes on. He must get his shot! His film must be completed! And as it progresses, he slips a little further into his own world, and Shreck – who, it has been said, played perhaps the ugliest vampire in film history – assumes more and more control over the direction of the movie (although not literally).
Dafoe is unrecognizable in makeup, but the sinister creepiness he brings to most of his roles is evident here. It’s an accomplished actor who can play a part in full makeup and still make the role distinguishable from… well, from some chump in a lot of makeup. Dafoe’s excellent here, and his interplay with Malkovich is galvanizing. Their scenes together are like an actor’s class on How To Emote and Project. There are times when each actor appears to ham it up slightly (or, in the case of Malkovich, more than slightly), but the two of them together constitute a casting coup.
This is a wonderful little film, yet another that didn’t quite get the acclaim it deserved. The atmosphere is both rich and compelling, both essential qualities for a film that’s all about vampires from long ago. This is not a movie that’s high on special effects, either; don’t expect to see a lot of flash and fancy. It’s also a homage to silent movies and to old-time horror films in general. It’s a minimalist film in terms of set itself, but much is done with so little.
Shadow of the Vampire: 7
79 – Monkeybone
Posted by frothy in Monkeybone on July 16, 2001
An endearing young nebbish named Stu (Brendan Fraser) is a cartoonist whose main creation is the personification (or, if you will, the simianization) of his libido. The ornery Monkeybone represents all of Stu’s repressed feelings, you see. This is not uncommon among cartoonists or comic-book artists (or, for that matter, any artist); the product on the page is often the result of the demons within the artist’s tortured soul.
Anyway, Stu has a lovely girlfriend named Julie (Bridget Fonda), who just happens to be a doctor. Monkeybone’s about to hit big, and Stu’s friend/agent (David Foley) is trying his damnedest to merchandise the hell out of the uncontrollable penis with legs. (There’s a not-so-subtle symbolism at work here, of course; Stu represses his emotions, including all sexual feelings, and releases them only in the form of Monkeybone on the page.)
The day that deals for the commercialization of Monkeybone (reluctantly by Stu, of course) are made, tragedy strikes. A freak car accident leaves Stu in a coma, although somehow his girlfriend escapes unharmed. So there he is, lying in a hospital bed. Trust me, folks, there’s comedy afoot here. We’re only now getting to it.
While clinically dead, Stu finds himself in Hell. Everyone down there knows him, because he’s suffered through nightmares for many, many years (and they’ve served to inspire him in his artistry, too). In 1991, there was a movie called Cool World that covered some of the same ground. In that film, cartoonist Gabriel Byrne ran into all of his old creations – in this one, Stu finds that the denizens down there have been audience to his nightmares since they began, and they’ve been counting on him to churn out more. Keeps ‘em alive, apparently. Oh, but just to complicate things, Julie the doc has found out what causes nightmares. Actually, I guess that actually makes things nice and simple, not more complex. What’s worse, down in Hell (actually, an offshoot of Hell called “Downtown”), Monkeybone is quite the center of attention, and even has a standup act that humiliates the reserved and introverted Stu.
The movie really consists of two main parts: Stu down in Hell (although not quite dead yet in real life), trying to find a way back up; and Stu back on terra firma, trying to Save The Day. What connects the two parts is that the nefarious Monkeybone, who’s ostensibly been helping Stu to get an “exit pass” has actually schemed to return to the land of the living himself – in Stu’s body. So that’s where the hijinks really begin; at least, that was the plan. Once Monkeybone gets back up there, things seem to fall into a familiar plotline, which is a shame. There are many scenes down in the underworld that are positively funny, including Whoopi Goldberg as the Lord of the Dead. Oh, and some good bits with Grim Reaper recruits. And the sets! VERY good, fascinating stuff. If you’re a fan of scenes, how things look – set design, set decoration, the whole bit – then this movie has oodles of eye candy. It’s very well designed.
And here’s a bit of praise for someone I thought I’d never give it to: Chris Kattan. See, after Monkeybone returns to Earth in Stu’s body, Stu has to find a way back up there himself. He’s sent back in the body of a gymnast who was just killed in a car wreck (broken neck). The scenes of Stu waking up on the dissection table then being pursued by a mob of angry pathology doctors anxious to get his organs (which, of course, were supposed to be donated) are priceless, as is the bit of how Stu quickly copes with his broken-neck problem.
There’s a lot to look at here, and although the characters themselves are rather cardboard (and Fraser himself, while amiable, might be a little miscast), I think this was an overlooked movie. It has everything Cool World had back in 1991, except it also has (pardon the pun) a soul. This one made you like Stu and root for him, which is (of course) essential to any silly comedy. This one’s just a silly comedy with some bite to it.
Monkeybone: 6.5
78 – Thirteen Days
Posted by frothy in Thirteen Days on July 12, 2001
Back during the Cold War, life was a little different. Once the USSR became a major world power, there was an intense battle of wills on the parts of both the US and Russia not to get into another war. While previous wars had been fought using conventional warfare, it was common knowledge that the next one would involve nuclear weapons, and would probably be the last war anyone would see.
In October of 1962, the Soviets planted missles on the Communist island of Cuba, a mere 90 miles away from Florida’s coast. Those of you who were sentient beings in 1962 must have been apoplectic when you heard that news. Imagine! The Red Menace, which had up till then been as distant as Mars, was now parked in your front yard, tooting the horn. It was probably enough to make you quake in your boots. Americans aren’t accustomed to reacting in such a manner, of course; we’re the big, bad tough guys of the world. And while up till then a full-blown nuclear attack might have seemed as unthinkable as the Cubs winning the World Series, all of a sudden it was very possible. And people were terrified.
But by the time the public found out about the missles, the White House had been working on the problem for a little while. This film captures the inner-circle machinations that President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy orchestrated to avert thermonuclear war. Was Krushchev seriously trying to initiate a war? Was he trying to scare the US? Was he basically saying, “We can park these missles right here and there’s nothing you can do about it,” basically making the US look bad to the rest of the world?
It was among the most gripping time period’s in the brief, eventful history of the United States. The future of not only the country but of the entire world was teetering, and one false move on the part of the level-headed thinkers in America would plunge it into the abyss. To complicate matters, there were two letters purporting to be from the Soviet leader: Were they both fakes? Was the first real, and the second a fraud? Should the US denounce both? And of course, there were certain military leaders in the US who wanted nothing more than to blow the Reds off the planet.
The movie is filled with a virtual no-name cast. Bruce Greenwood plays the president, and he was convincing and powerful in his performance. Steven Culp plays Bobby Kennedy, volatile but shrewd, the ultimate diplomat. The only real “name” in the cast belongs to Kevin Costner, who plays political advisor Kenny O’Donnell. He has the same good-old-boy accent he sported in JFK, but he was a little more emotional than in most of his films. A good move on his part, I’d say.
The madness of near-war is an infection to which these prime players seemed immune. It’s movies like this that remind one that politics and war planning are not simple textbook exercises; they need to be cultivated from the heart and leashed by the brain.
Thirteen Days: 8.5
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