Film Notes

The Disappearance of Alice Creed 5/5 marvellous demonstration of what can be achieved on a small budget, very clever
Cop Out – 3/5 Bruce Willis was miscast
The Blind Side – 5/5 very good
The Other Guys – 3/5 meh
Easy A – 5/5 very well written, and as I’m a massive John Hughes fan, I loved the references…
Four Lions – 4/5 agreed with what + Alan said (and I keep thinking I’ve reviewed some of these already)
Daybreakers 4/5 above average
Planet 51 – 3/5 OK
Date Night – 4/5 funny
Stranger than Fiction – 5/5 had me thinking for ages about the character of God
All the boys love Mandy Lane – 3/5 meh
The Expendables – 4/5 looking forward to the sequel
How to train your dragon – 4/5 good fun
Nine Songs – 4/5 a worthy attempt
You only live twice – 4/5 I’m going through the old Bonds in order with my boys, oh what joy 🙂

Inception, and other film notes

Watched Inception again last night, and enjoyed it, but… here are some good articles about it:
17 criticisms of Inception
A Q&A with Nolan
A comparison with Tarkovsky’s Solaris

This month I’ve also watched:
Batman Begins and The Dark Knight back to back – just because I could 🙂
Alpha Dog – a banal film about the banality of evil, 3/5
The Illusionist – well put together 3/5
Laurel Canyon – a little bit of ‘so what?’ 3/5
The Way of the Dragon – more Bruce Lee nostalgia 3/5
Hot-tub Time Machine – funny 4/5
Primer – too intellectual for my tastes 3/5
Dog Soldiers – Brilliant! 5/5
The Killer Inside Me – misogynistic twaddle 3/5
True Grit (original) – John Wayne nostalgia! 4/5
From Paris with Love – excellent chemistry between two leads; plot was meretricious twaddle 3/5
Jonah Hex – garbage 2.5/5
The Switch – amusing, twee, could have been a much more adventurous and spiky film 3/5
No Impact Man – see this which prompted me to watch it 3/5 (as a film)
The Ghost – very good, although, having read the book, I knew what was coming 4/5

Black Swan, and other film notes

Black Swan 5/5 Superb – and there’s enough being said about it already, so I won’t add much. It was very much my sort of film.
Please Give 4.5/5 Oestrogen-heavy, absorbing, perceptive, humane.
Jennifer’s Body 4/5 Brilliant script
The A Team 5/5 if only all action comedies were this delightful – ‘they’re flying the tank!’
Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief 3/5 (barely) some good moments but a travesty of the book
Napoleon Dynamite 2/5 The PS3 has this excellent ‘watch at 1.5 speed’ button, keeping the sound, which I made extensive use of. The dance sequence was a good moment, but I found it too misanthropic on the whole.
Point Break (rewatch) 3.5/5 Bodhi!
The Joneses 4/5 witty critique of materialism
Painted Veil 4.9/5 a really wonderful film, beautifully shot and well acted, that falls short of 5/5 because I would quibble with the ending. Highly recommended though.

Film notes

Megamind 3/5 Quite fun
Clash of the Titans (remake) 3/5 OK
The Red Riding Trilogy 5/5 Stunning. Re-read ‘From Hell’ at the same time as watching through these – my head has been in a very dark place!
Gone Baby Gone 5/5 One of the best crime dramas I have ever seen, principally because of the exploration of moral character. Well done Ben Affleck.
Ghostbusters 3/5 – mainly watched again to entertain the kids (successfully)
Inkheart – 3/5 hmmmm
Collapse – 4/5 much better than expected, especially as a film

Five Favourite Bond Films

I love Bond films. I have the complete remastered DVD collection. Doubtless in ten years time I’ll splash out on the blu-ray version (or whatever has replaced them by then). My earliest memory of a Bond film is watching Goldfinger when I was about six or seven, and arguing with my parents about the correct way to pronounce ‘Sean’. Strangely, though I think Connery is pretty much the best Bond, none of his films are in my top five….

5. Licence to Kill – an underrated gem, with Dalton being believably vicious. It seems like every new Bond promises to ‘go back to basics’ and bring some needed edge to the role, in other words, they show how far Roger Moore completely dominated perceptions.

4. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – clearest memory of this is watching it on a very small black and white TV when on holiday in Dittisham – and for a long time I thought the film had been shot in black and white! Good for all sorts of reasons.

3. Goldeneye – Bond had been missed, and he definitely came back with a bang. The tank chase is one of the best chases in all the films, a great opening sequence, Sean Bean as a rogue OO, and Famke Janssen…

2. The Spy Who Loved Me – first Bond that I saw at the cinema; Jaws; the Lotus; the tanker that swallowed up submarines – established a template for me in that the Bonds before this are, for me, ‘old’ ones; after this I kept up to date. Which brings me to

1. Casino Royale – Daniel Craig, utterly fantastic and plausible; tremendous action sequences, a humanised Bond shown changing into “Bond”. A simply cracking film.

Let the arguments begin!!

Five Favourite Horror Films

5. Saw

In my teens – when I tended to read horror novels rather than watch horror films – I was very struck by a Stephen King short story (might have been a Richard Bachmann one) about a man left on a desert island who literally started to eat himself in order to survive. The question of how far a person is prepared to go in order to survive is one that I find very interesting (have to discuss that with my therapist!) and this film is the definitive exploration of the theme. The sequels are dreck, the ‘influenced’ films – like Hostel – are even worse.

4. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

One of the earliest horror films I saw, at a very impressionable age (I’d guess 15 or so). The central conceit is excellent – Don’t fall asleep! – and there are plenty of genuinely scary moments, but the reason why it abides in my mind is the ending, when Nancy turns her back on Freddie, thereby denuding him of power. Profoundly true…

3. An American Werewolf in London

This was the first horror film I can recall watching – at about age 12 (yes, much too young) – and it gave me all sorts of nightmares for ages. Yet, as with that scab that you can’t help picking at, I have returned to this film periodically over time in order to slowly overcome that dread. It contains one of the scariest sequences I’ve ever seen (the repeated dream) and it’s also very funny.

2. Land of the Dead

This was the first Romero I ever watched, and sparked an interest in the zombie genre which is ongoing (I loved The Walking Dead – I’ll have to read the comic). Again, it is the conceptual weight which makes the movie – the vision of rich people in a gated community, holding back the eager hordes whilst they seek to preserve an illusory existence. Prophetic stuff.

1. The Exorcist

Well what else would it be? Despite some of the OTT schlock, a profoundly orthodox work which treats the material seriously. What the devil seeks is for us to see people as ugly, and that is the direction to which all his temptations tend. The faith wins a victory when it sees as Christ sees – and that is what despatches the devil to his den.

Of course, these are subject to change over time, and an old one – like The Shining – might squeeze in. Let the Right One in will probably get in there before long (haven’t rewatched it yet).

Fifteen films meme

This is an interesting one (from Khanya). “The rules: Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen films you’ve seen that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen films you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes.”

Not in order of preference.
1. American Beauty (as I’ve just reposted a ‘review’ of it!)
2. Blade Runner
3. Magnolia
4. Fight Club
5. First Blood
6. Life of Brian
7. An American Werewolf in London
8. Un Couer en Hiver
9. Star Wars
10. Vanilla Sky
11. The Matrix
12. The Truman Show
13. Lawrence of Arabia
14. The Passion of the Christ
15. Good Will Hunting

If you read this, consider yourself tagged.

Why I like ‘American Beauty’

A talk given to a church film group, Feast of the Epiphany 2001 (first blogged 17th July 2005)

Today is the feast of the Epiphany, when the three Kings came to worship the infant Jesus and give him presents. At least, that is how we celebrate it in the Western church. What Epiphany is really about is the manifestation of God in human form, the word made flesh, the incarnation. In other words, it continues and completes the theme of Christmas as a whole. So what does this have to do with a film about someone who, in his daughter’s words, is a ‘lame-o’, ‘some horny geek-boy who’s gonna spray his shorts whenever [she] brings a girlfriend home from school’?

That’s what I want to say a few things about today. But a general point to begin with: I really enjoy watching films, primarily for their narrative content, but also – under Rolanda’s influence – for more filmic qualities as well. Narrative is for me the clearest vehicle for teaching anything about theology: if nothing else, theology is about human meaning, and the only way we can really absorb it is if we see it lived out through a story. So, if this works out OK and is of interest, there may well be further ‘showings’ when I indulge my own interests, and teach theology through film.

So, back to the horny geek-boy. American Beauty is about a man who saves his soul – it is a story of redemption. Lester is a man who has ‘lost something’ – he feels sedated, as if he has been in a coma for twenty years. He is estranged from his wife and daughter, but, just as important, he is completely estranged from himself, from his own passions. His wife and daughter think that he is a loser – and he doesn’t fight that assessment. He has given up. At the end of the film, this has all changed. In his own words, he’s ‘great’. So, how did this change come about?

The moment when the ice cracked was when he saw this sixteen year old nymphet dancing as a cheerleader. As is shown quite clearly in the film, this is a revelation to Lester, a true Epiphany. He sees something glorious and it sparks his passions into life, he starts to desire something again. Now, put to one side for the moment the questionable nature of this attraction, we can come back to that in our discussion afterwards. What I want to emphasise is that his desires are reawakened; in other words, his instinctual, bodily, carnal appetites.

Now, there is quite a good tradition in Christian thinking, which tends to get systematically overlooked in Western culture, about desire as the means to approach God. And desire is rooted in sexual attraction. This doesn’t mean that all our aesthetics, our understanding of beauty, can be reduced in Freudian fashion to misplaced sexual urges; it is to say that our sexuality is a gift, and a foundation for what can come later. In other words, what I am saying is the precise opposite of what Western Christian teaching has often held to be the case: that our sexuality is a dangerous inheritance from the fall, which must be repudiated or at the very least disciplined into submission. On the contrary, our desire is often a path to God, if we can but be honest about our true desires. Think of Augustine’s famous saying, Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God.

“…There may be higher states of vision. It may be possible ultimately to love God free from all form. But it is certainly better for man to love God in a form to which he can respond, and which has meaning for him, than it is to imagine he is loving a formless God when really he is simply committed to a spiritual vacuum. For in this way – in this loving of the divine in the creature – he is at least in touch with the Divinity. It is not for nothing that the great Andalusian spiritual master, Ibn Arabi, can say that the sages who enjoy the most perfect vision of God are those who can contemplate him in a woman.”
(Philip Sherrard, Christianity and Eros)

The whole point of the incarnation is that God can be found in the things of this world, if only we see them the right way.

So, back to Lester. Lester is having a mid-life crisis, and realising that all the things which he has been working for these past twenty years are actually worthless. This comes out most in the conversation he has with his wife, the opportunity for a reconciliation lost because of the importance of keeping a couch pristine. Although his wife’s character, like almost all in the film, is somewhat stereotypical they are fleshed out enough to be believable. And in this film the wife stands for a certain materialistic, career oriented ambition: her desires are focused on the world, her child raising is geared around success – ‘you didn’t screw up once’ – and material wealth ‘when I was your age…’ and even her adultery is lensed through her career goals. This is what Lester is walking away from. I think it appropriately symbolic that the first time we see him he is masturbating in the shower, the high point of his day. He is completely enclosed within himself.

Now the tagline of the film was ‘look closer’, and this is brought out most clearly with the video of the bag blowing in the wind. Ricky, remember, is the one who teaches Lester to let go, to the extent of seeking a job with the minimum amount of responsibility. He has what for me is the most important line in the film. When he is talking to Jane about why he films the things that he does, he says ‘When you see something like that, it’s like God is looking right at you, just for a second. And if you’re careful, you can look right back’. Jane asks what he sees, and the answer is simple: ‘beauty’. Ricky has what can be quite strictly characterised as a mystical outlook on life. All things hang together, they are meaningful and they are beautiful. In the course of the film, Lester absorbs this perspective, so much that by the end of the film, after he has been murdered, he is able to give thanks for ‘every single moment of my stupid little life’.

Some people commented to me that they were upset that Lester is killed at the end. To my mind that is a sign that the point has been missed. Our culture is terrified of death – it is the great taboo, and the dark side of the emphasis upon youth and sexuality – a diseased emphasis, to be sure. For me, American Beauty is a profoundly orthodox film – it is informed by a true perspective on the world, which doesn’t accept the values that the world provides, but transcends them. There are of course, other Christian motifs running through the film, but I don’t want to spell everything out. I’d like to finish with another extract from Sherrard:

“…the truth is that our heritage – and in it Christian (or what is called Christian) morality, according to which sexual love is at its best a frailty, at its worst damnation, has played its not insignificant part – has directed us into a way of life, or death, in which this energy is degraded and prostituted on every side. It has directed us into a way of life, or death, in which a person may be born into any one of our proliferating megalopolitan monstrosities and may go through the whole number of his years upon earth without ever once becoming conscious of the beauty of such a simple thing as a tree on the pavement catching the lamplight or as the rain falling.”

Or the beauty of a bag blowing in the wind.

Film notes

Cemetery Junction 3/5 Sweet
Where the Truth Lies 4/5 Oddly fascinating (not as good as Sweet Hereafter)
Enter the Dragon 3/5 reliving my adolescent Bruce Lee fandom
Fantastic Mr Fox 4/5 cleverly done
Diary of the Dead 5/5 owned this for about 18 months but put off watching it as I had very low expectations after the reviews, but thought it was great – can now see where Walking Dead got some of their ideas from (unless both were from the original graphic novel). Romero on form – but, obviously, for fans only.
Nine 2.5/5 Turned this off after half an hour. All the tinsel and none of the tree.
A Perfect Getaway 3.5/5 Surprisingly watchable. Also surprised to see some genuine acting skill from Milla Jovovich – I’m used to her Resident Evil persona, so nice to see her being human.

Shutter Island

I would count myself as a Scorcese admirer rather than fan – I greatly enjoy his films, but I haven’t seen all of them (eg The Aviator). This, however, seems to me to be his best yet, principally because I found it so orthodox – thanks to the last line of dialogue, which raises it from 4/5 to 5/5. Grim, but wonderful, and with some profound lessons for our culture. Highly recommended.