Reviews
Psycho (1998)
More than meets the eye.
I don't want to scare anybody and I certainly don't want to offend anybody, but I have come to realize that Gus Van Sant's exploration of Hitchcock's 'psycho' is quite simply one of the most baffling masterpieces of the last decade.
My ideas aren't entirely concrete and I know millions will think I'm crazy or stupid. However, here are a few of the things I'm thinking about:
- The original 'psycho' is arguably the key to all cinema. The definitive film about the nature of film. Hitchcock meanwhile stands monolithically above all other film makers and particularly in a derived psychoanalytic context is essential to the understanding of film as a cultural phenomenon. - The reworking of his greatest film immediately implies 'homage' - particularly in its shot for shot detail.
- The historical space between the two films is approximately thirty years - think about all the things that have happened in terms of western civilization.
- In the new film we know for sure that Bates is masturbating - in the original it is only implied. Also, there is more blood involved and a little more nudity.
- Hitchcock's 'Vertigo' involved the making over of a woman to look like another. To recreate what has been lost due to some internal, repressed desire. It has been suggested that this idea comes straight from the id of Hitchcock himself. Is the reworking of 'psycho' therefore a recreation of 'Hitchcock' and all the horror of his imagination.
- As people die in Van Sant's film, images flash by, supposedly images possessed by the victim, but they are images of disconcerting arbitrariness. Is Hitchcock's film falling apart at the seams, torn from its auteur by some third party, disseminated throughout film history, disrupted by the imperfection of its multifarious successors?
- Fundamentally, and here is the true horror of our experience as film spectators, it is as though history is repeating itself thirty years on, but this time the blood is harder to wash away.
Al di là delle nuvole (1995)
Beyond the clouds is exactly where this took me.
I would have to disagree with the comments that have been added to this page so far. I see Beyond the Clouds as a brilliantly understated, beautifully photographed and profoundly innovative culmination of a great career. I may sound a little hysterical, but rarely have I been so emotionally affected by such ostensible intellectualisation. Malkovich takes on the role of Antonioni perfectly (I think he has the best voice-over voice in the world), showing at once his (the director's) desire to emotionally involve himself with his fiction and to distance himself from it in order to retain the sort of analytical objectivity which sustains the lucidity of the argument (the 'story'). I think much of the beauty lies paradoxically in the implausibility, the director's relationship with the gorgeous Marceau, the ridiculous expectations the characters place on one another. I think the point is the harder we try, the more likely we are to fail. Wordsworth's 'emotion recollected in tranquility' idea is important; self control, self belief, self understanding. I think that's when we can take that step, the attainment of reality, the understanding of the 'image'. I found the scene on the windswept beach with the postcard absolutely devastating, the false world in which the director has trapped himself, the real beauty being the chaos, the unpredictability of the real world. And what an amazing soundtrack too, I can't seem to find it anywhere.
Rounders (1998)
Like a merry-go-round...
Rounders appears to have stolen its thematic structure from 'The Music Of Chance' - a feeling of inescapable, perpetual ups and downs, wins and losses. Indeed at the end, Mike (Damon) reminds us that with 30 big ones in his pocket, he's back where he started. Look out for dwelling circular imagery - the table, the chips, the cookies etc. Dahl paints the New York Rounders scene with a type of warmth that almost declares it to be an acceptable lifestyle choice for the nineties - could his elderly judge friend (Landau) have been more helpful? The problem I had with the film (the only one, and a relatively minor one at that) was that Matt Damon was unsuited to the role. No manner of make-up, dirty clothes and facial hair could disguise his babyface, boy next door, untouched reputation and appearance. Credit to Dahl though after the mess that was 'Unforgettable'.
Lung hing foo dai (1986)
I don't think it's an ice cream van
This is one of the coolest films EVER (honest). Once you have seen it you will be trying to bounce polo mints off every piece of furniture in your house, and there's nothing better than seeing a pre-Hollywood Chan beating the hell out of several hundred monks with a bench, some plates, an apple or two, and other assorted implements.
Lancelot du Lac (1974)
Questions on style.
1. Does anyone have any ideas as to the significance of the colourful tights which stand out more than any motif in the film. I thought of the chink in the armour thing, the achilles heel which we all have, but perhaps this is a little weak. 2. Don't you think Bresson's minimalist approach works better in black and white (A man escaped, Mouchette) than colour, as desaturated as the colour may be? Please help if you can.
Sam's Song (1969)
Oh no, please Bob, no.
This is perhaps the most ridiculously bad film EVER MADE. It is one hell of a tragedy that this is the way Bobby De Niro tried to get his career kick started. Any hilarity which results from its awfulness dies after the first scene in which Bobby is knocked off. The fact that the video sleeve for the copy I purchased (under new title 'Line of Fire') seems to describe a completely different film tells the story pretty well.
Henry Fool (1997)
Hartley brings warmth to his icy world
Is this the first time Hartley has understood character? It's an issue he's skated around before, but at last we can accept what would have simply been his talking puppets in Simple Men and Unbelievable Truth as real, breathing beings. The obsession with grotesque bodily functions can now be read as human, not alien. Thank God.
The Truman Show (1998)
The fear of Solitude
The consciousness of the individualist is only able to imagine the individual consciousness. Somewhere between the illusion of power and the realization of no power exists the existential nightmare which we observe in Truman. He is indeed 'true-man' and can be identified with perhaps more than any hero in the history of the screen simply because he IS the screen and we are given awareness of the fact. Truman will be destroyed by the outside world - maybe a bit pessimistic - because he will become the greatest celebrity in the history of the role. Whereas, to him, our Earth is his Heaven, our heaven is his unimaginable and the frightening realities (violence, pollution) are his Hell. So where is Truman Burbank really going when he passes that irradiated threshold?