*batteries not included

Dir: Matthew Robbins

1987

*****

I’m not sure how *batteries not included is regarded now by the youth of today but for me it will always be a childhood favorite. It’s the ultimate kids 80s movie, featuring cute aliens, spaceships and a stand against capitalism (sort of). It was intended as an episode of Steven Spielberg’s popular series Amazing Stories but the bearded one liked it so much he decided to adapt it into a feature. He acted as executive producer and asked his friend Matthew Robbins to direct whom he had worked with on The Sugarland Express, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Jaws. Robbins had reasonable success directing Dragonslayer and The Legend of Billie Jean but it was the second episode of Amazing Stories that made Spielberg think of him. That particular episode was also written by animator Brad Bird who had only worked on The Fox and the Hound, The Black Cauldron and a couple of Disney shorts at that time. I wonder whether the film would have been more highly regarded had Spielberg directed the picture himself, such was his reputation at the time. ‘Produced by’ wasn’t quite seen as the same, even though the film couldn’t feel any less Spielberg-like. The film centres around a group of people living in a New York apartment building in the East Village. The whole area is being redeveloped to make way for skyscrapers and office buildings but the residence of the building are refusing to sell. The street level of the building houses a Café run by husband and wife Frank and Faye Riley who have run the café for over forty years. They manage the building, renting out to the few tenants they have left: heavily pregnant single mother Marisa Esteval (Elizabeth Peña), painter Mason Baylor (Dennis Boutsikaris), silent ex-boxing champion Harry Noble (Frank McRae) and elderly couple Muriel and Sid Hogensin. So far they are the only property owners in the area who have refused to sell and the property developers begin to get impatient. Lacey, a slimy 80s yuppy type and development manager of the firm, sends a hoodlum named Carlos (Michael Carmine) and his gang of thugs to bribe the couple and their tenants to move out. When the tenants resist, Carlos and his thugs punch through Mason's door, intimidate Marisa and break Harry's jar of mosaic tiles that he was using to fix up the buildings main entrance. After Frank Riley refuses to move, Carlos vandalizes the café. This assault convinces three of the tenants to move out. Mason's girlfriend, Pamela is tired of living in an old, depressing building with a guy whose art career is going nowhere. She dumps Mason, packs up and before leaving, advises Mason to quit being an artist and get a steady job. The Rileys' friends, Muriel and Sid Hogensin take Lacey's bribe and decide to move to a retirement home in New Jersey. Frank feels a little betrayed by the Hogensins for taking Lacey's money but they explain that the building doesn't feel like home anymore. They advise Frank that maybe he and Faye should come live with them at the retirement home. With the assault and Faye's dementia growing, Frank contemplates giving in. Things look bleak until that night when a pair of tiny space ships descend into the Rileys' apartment. At first it is only Faye who notices them and discovers that the little UFOs are actually living creatures. The little saucers seem to enjoy repairing items that were broken and they get to work, repairing the vandalized café and putting Frank and Faye back in. The two aliens take up residence in the shed at the top of the apartment building, and are dubbed "The Fix-Its" by the residents. Carlos comes back to threaten the tenants once again, but the Fix-Its lure him to the top of the building and into the shed where they scare him away. Faye and Marisa learn that the "female" Fix-It is pregnant. After consuming plenty of metal and electrical objects, it gives birth to three baby Fix-Its, although one of them is stillborn. Faye buries the stillborn in a flowerpot the next day, but then Harry digs it up, takes it back to his apartment, and succeeds in reviving it by taking apart his precious television set. Frank and Faye see a boost of business in the café from the demolition crew, while the Fix-Its help in the kitchen. Mason and Marisa grow closer. Marisa likes Mason's paintings and convinces him to persevere. Marisa's boyfriend, Hector, who is a musician and the father of her baby, visits Marisa while taking a short break from touring. Mason feels a little heartbroken until Marisa explains that Hector and his band have found a steady gig in Chicago with good pay and that she told Hector to go without her because their relationship just wasn't working out. She confesses that she has developed feelings for Mason and Mason confesses he has developed feelings for her as well. With Carlos unable to prove the existence of the Fix-Its that had been foiling their plans, Lacey is furious with the delays in evicting the tenants and moves to replace him. Desperate to see the job done and growing more unstable, Carlos breaks into the building's basement to sabotage the building's pipework and electricity, and badly damages the "father" machine in the process. After Harry throws him out, the tenants discover the Fix-It children are missing and go searching for them in the city while Faye stays behind with the "mother" machine as it fixes the "father". When the "father" machine is repaired, the now-wary Fix-It parents leave to seek out their offspring. After finding them with Harry, the machine family departs from the planet. Tired of the delays, Lacey's subordinate Kovacs, who is also an arsonist, attempts to burn down the building in a staged "accidental fire". Carlos discovers the plan and in a rage sabotages the arson to make the entire building explode, only to then discover that Faye is still in the building. While Kovacs flees, Carlos unsuccessfully attempts to pose as her late son Bobby to get her to leave, but succeeds in rescuing her as the fire spreads. The tenants then return to find the blazing apartment block collapsing, and Faye being loaded into an ambulance. I remember trying not to be seen crying by my sister or parents as we see by the next morning, the apartment block has been reduced to a smoldering wreck. To Kovacs' fury the construction crew, out of respect for Harry, refuse to continue as he is sitting dejected on the steps. However, this is a magical feel-good 80s family film, so the mechanical family come back later that night, and they have recruited countless other Fix-Its to help them. By the next morning, the entire building has been seamlessly restored to brand new condition, with the café looking as it did when it first opened in the 1950s, forever ending Lacey's demolition plans and resulting in his termination of Kovacs. Mason and Marisa settle into a relationship, while Carlos tries to start a friendship with the Rileys, with Faye finally having come to accept her real son's passing. Some years later, the developments have been built, but this time flanking either side of the tiny apartment building, with Frank's café now doing a roaring trade as a result of the new employment brought into the area. I’m not sure why you’d want you home to be completely surrounded by a huge skyscraper but it still feels like a happy ending. It’s a wonderful story but it is brought to life by the fantastic special effects and creature design of the little Fix-Its. The performances are also wonderful, with the truly adorable performances by Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy as Frank and Faye Riley. The pair were of course married in real life and audiences still remembered them fondly following Cocoon that had come out not long before. Frank McRae, Dennis Boutsikaris and Elizabeth Peña seemed to be in all of my favorite 80s films, each one is perfect in their role. It still makes me sad that Michael Carmine died just a few years after the film, his scenes with Jessica Tandy where her character thinks he is her dead son are so sweet and emotional, and I can’t help but think he had an exciting and colourful future ahead of him. For me it is the perfect 80s film, sure there are many but I often think *batteries not included is overlooked, when in fact pretty much every element of it is perfect.

¡Three Amigos!

Dir: John Landis

1986

*****

Three Amigos has got to be in my top 10 favorite comedies of all time. It’s an 80s classic. Released in 1986 it had the three biggest and funniest comedy actors who were at their height of popularity; the great Steve Martin, Martin Short and Chevy Chase. Set in 1916, the three men play stars of the silver screen – silent actors best known for playing ‘The Three Amigos’, heroes of Mexico, dressed head to foot in sequenced black suits and huge sombreros, ready to help the townsfolk of any Mexican village in trouble. Think Douglas Fairbanks x3. However, after the little village of Santo Poco is set upon by the infamous bandit El Guapo, the village send a telegram to the actors, asking them to come to them. Not realising that they’re actors – and not having a great deal of money for the telegram – the villagers send a somewhat cryptic message to the actors, giving them an impression that they’re being asked to put on a show for money. A timely offer after Hollywood studio boss Harry Flugleman had recently sacked them for daring to ask for a larger salary. Out of work and evicted from their studio-owned housing, Lucky Day, Dusty Bottoms, and Ned Nederlander head for boarder and onward to Mexico. The trio arrive in a cantina near Santo Poco and wait for their escorts. While there they are mistaken for a fast-shooting German pilot who is in town looking for El Guapo. The three are nearly set upon until they start singing ‘My Little Buttercup’ to the bemusement of the locals. They leave just before the feared German shows up, thinking the danger is gone they make fun of them and are all promptly shot. The performance of ‘My Little Buttercup’ is probably my favorite musical scene in the history of cinema. The Amigos arrive at the village and still don’t get that they are there for real and not just as an act. This leads to much hilarity when El Guapo does finally show up. The film is a spoof of silent films and of the western genre. It’s often surreal and the physical comedy is near perfect in my opinion. Steve Martin’s Lucky Day is the perhaps most in-tune of the amigos, the leader and the most show-biz. Chevy Chase’s Dusty Bottoms is the lady’s man, utterly clueless but full of charm, and Martin Short’s Ned Nederlander is the younger of the three, a former child actor with distinct naivety. The film directly parodies The Seven Samurai but the humor is straight out of Saturday Night Live and W.C. Fields. The story was written by Steve Martin, Lorne Michaels and songwriter Randy Newman. Newman wrote three songs for the film: "The Ballad of the Three Amigos", "My Little Buttercup", and "Blue Shadows" while Elmer Bernstein composed the epic score. John Landis directed when Steven Spielberg became unavailable. The film had been written a good six years before it was made, with the three main characters written for Steve Martin, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi. However, when Spielberg came on-board he asked for Martin, Bill Murray, and Robin Williams to portray Lucky, Dusty, and Ned respectively. However, when Landis took over Martin Short and Chevy Chase took the roles with Rick Moranis as stand in if Short had been unavailable. As much as I love all of those actors, I can’t see anyone but Martin, Chase and Short playing the main players. Alfonso Arau was also perfect as the outlaw El Guapo, playing it straight and funny at the same time, while Tony Plana was brilliant as Jefe, his second in command. Plana actually turned down working with Oliver Stone again on Platoon to work on Amigos. He knew that Platoon would no doubt be more prestigious but it was the five star hotel and easy work that made him choose the comedy. Stone didn’t speak to him for years later. The film also features Joe Mantegna, Phil Hartman and Jon Lovitz in three of the funniest cameos of the 1980s. Much of the film was cut by the studio while John Landis stood trial over the deaths that had taken place on Twilight Zone: The Movie. He had little control over the finished piece. Quite a few scenes were also lost in transit from location to studio. It was seen as a flop at the time with Chase being openly disappointed by it but it has developed something of a cult following since – generally by people my age who loved it as children. I think the lack of success – and the fact that Steve Martin developed tinnitus after filming a pistol-shooting scene for the film – meant that no one really spoke fondly of it for many years. It’s still not regarded as anything special, which I find puzzling, as the lines, action, timing and skits are all brilliantly performed. It’s one of the most quotable films of all time too, with greats such as: ‘Goodnight Ned’, ‘Are Amigos falling from the sky?’, ‘I’m going to fill you up with so much lea, you’ll be using your dick as a pencil’ and ‘You can tell it’s a mail plane because of its two little balls’. I adore it and won’t have anything bad said against it.

Hud

Dir: Martin Ritt

1962

*****

Hud is revolutionary addition in the history of the western. I’ve always seen Bad Day At Black Rock as being the first significant neo-western but Hud was the first revisionist Western, a twist in the genre that many other westerns took a while to catch up with. The antihero wasn’t a new concept within the western genre but there hadn’t quite been a character like Hud before, at least none as complex or contemporary. Based on Larry McMurtry's 1961 novel, Horseman, Pass By, the film's title character, Hud Bannon, was a minor character in the original screenplay that was reworked as the lead role by scriptwriters by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr. Director Martin Ritt and Paul Newman co-founded Salem Productions and the company made a three-film deal with Paramount Studios and for its first film Salem hired husband-and-wife scriptwriters Ravetch and Frank, Jr., who worked with Ritt and Newman on The Long, Hot Summer. Ravetch found McMurtry's novel in an airport shop during a Dallas stopover and presented the project to Ritt and Newman after reading a description of Hud Bannon. Hud (played by Paul Newman in one of the greatest performances of his career) is ambitious and self-centered, the opposite of his deeply principled rancher father Homer (played by the wonderful Melvyn Douglas). Also living on the Bannon ranch is Hud's teenage nephew, Lonnie (child star Brandon deWilde in his second classic western following Shane), who looks up to both men but is most impressed by Hud. Lonnie and Hud are attracted to the Bannons' housekeeper, Alma (Oscar-winning Patricia Neal). Although she is attracted to Hud, Alma keeps her distance because she has been mistreated in the past by men like him. Hud was a smaller character in the novel and was Homer’s step-son, while Alma was a black housekeeper to Homer’s wife. The removal of Homer’s wife took away influence from Lonnie so he could just be concerned with the two older male figures and the writers thought 1963 was still too early for an interracial sex scene, even though it was actually sexual assault. I don’t quite agree with this but Patricia Neal was phenomenal in her performance. The film has all the right ingredients of a classic. The performances are second to none, all the right elements from the novel had been tweaked for the visual adaptation and James Wong Howe’s cinematography is second to none. Howe's use of contrast to create space and his selection of black-and-white has long been favoured by critics and fans and it won him the Academy Award for Best Black and White Cinematography that year. Paul Newman went full method, Patricia Neal, who at the time had a stormy marriage to children’s author Roald Dahl and had just suffered the recent loss of her seven-year-old daughter to measles encephalitis, opened up to the actor during a rare break that allowed the cast to hang out by their hotel’s poolside. Neal found herself opening up emotionally about her daughter Olivia, who had died suddenly just months before filming. After her long outpouring, Newman stared at her for a long moment, then simply uttered "tough" and walked away. She was taken aback by his reaction. It was early in production, and they had not yet done a major scene together, so she hadn't really gotten to know him well or to understand his methods. Later on in the shoot, however, she realized he was already very much in character as Hud. Ritt, Newman and Douglas were staunch liberals, so the film didn’t go down too well with many. It was described by a few as an ‘anti-Western’, fundamentally ‘anti-American’, and so astutely made that it was redeemed by its fundamental dishonesty. Utter nonsense. The character of Hud is many things and represented an aspect of modern society for sure, he is mean, unscrupulous and never has even a momentary twinge of conscience or change of heart but, as Paul Newman put it, "We thought the last thing people would do was accept Hud as a heroic character ... His amorality just went over the audience's head; all they saw was this western, heroic individual". Martin Ritt later attributed audience interpretation of the character to the counterculture of the 1960s which "changed the values" of the young audiences who saw Hud as a hero. In retrospect there was no other film like it, maybe he was seen as a contrived character but the truth was that he was quite the opposite, I think this is why the film still resonates with audiences and it is still the alternative western of choice for most fans of the genre.

Red Rock West
Dir: John Dahl
1993
****
Red Rock West is one of the greatest independent films of the 1990s. I remember it was one of those films that would linger in the bargain bin of the video shop for ages, so eventually I had to buy it and I’m so glad I did. I still don’t understand why it isn’t ever discussed, as Nicolas Cage is brilliant in it as are the late J. T. Walsh and Dennis Hopper. A retrospective of either Walsh or Hopper – or Cage for that matter – should always include a mention of Red Rock West. The early 90s was a strange time for cinema and many a dud film was regarded as a hit and many a classic got overlooked and forgotten. Written by John Dahl and his brother Rick, Red Rock West was a film that not even its producers liked (none of them turned up for the film’s premier) but once people discovered it, it became a cult underground classic, albeit too late for the Dahl brothers to make any money. Strange really, as it was said to have been well received at the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival in 1993. Its worth watching just to see Cage doing one-armed push-ups in the middle of a desert road to be honest. The story is about Michael Williams (Nicolas Cage), a drifter living out of his car after being discharged from the Marine Corps. A job on an oilfield falls through due to his unwillingness to conceal a war injury on his job application, so he wanders into rural Red Rock, Wyoming, looking for other work. A local bar owner named Wayne (J. T. Walsh) mistakes him for a hit man, "Lyle from Dallas", whom Wayne has hired to kill his wife. Wayne offers him a stack of cash - "half now, half later" - and Michael plays along by taking the money. Michael visits Wayne's wife, Suzanne (Lara Flynn Boyle) and attempts to warn her that her life is in danger instead of killing her. She offers him more money to kill Wayne. Michael tries to leave town but a car accident leads him to encounter the local sheriff, who turns out to be Wayne also. Michael manages to escape from Wayne but runs into the real Lyle from Dallas (Dennis Hopper). Lyle and Wayne quickly figure out what has transpired, while Michael desperately tries to warn Suzanne before Lyle finds her. The next morning, when Lyle comes to get money from Wayne, he kidnaps both Suzanne and Michael, who are trying to retrieve hidden cash from Wayne's office. Wayne and Suzanne are revealed to be wanted for embezzlement and Wayne is arrested by his own deputies. Lyle returns with Michael and Suzanne hostage and gets Wayne out of jail to retrieve their stash of money. At a remote graveyard, Wayne pulls a gun from the case of money and holds Lyle at gunpoint before Lyle throws a knife into Wayne's neck. Michael and Lyle fight, with Lyle ending up being impaled on a grave marker. When Lyle rises to attack Michael, Suzanne shoots him dead. Michael and Suzanne escape onto a nearby train, but when Suzanne tries to betray Michael, he throws the money out of the speeding train and then throws Suzanne off to be arrested by the police accompanied by a wounded Wayne. Michael's train continues its journey into a new town. The big problem the film had was that the studio didn’t have faith in the neo-noir western. They thought that only art films could go down that road, not realising that Red Rock West was made up of the same stuff as some of the most highly regarded classics. It was also something new, something that any studio worth their salt would have got behind and promoted. I look at it now and wonder how the hell it didn’t become a classic. It should be seen as an iconic piece of cinema, with bootleg t-shirts and posters being produced, like they are with Pulp Fiction. The soundtrack is also outstanding, featuring great Country & Western artists such as Johnny Cash, Shania Twain, Toby Keith, The Kentucky Headhunters and Sammy Kershaw. Dwight Yoakam’s end credits song even got to number 10 in the charts and still people didn’t know it was from the film. Dennis Hopper was originally considered for the role of the Sheriff, which eventually went to J.T. Walsh. However, Hopper fought John Dahl hard for the meatier role of hit man-with-low-self-esteem Lyle, which the director initially refused because of the similarities of Dennis Hopper's character to Frank Booth in Blue Velvet. After much pleading, Hopper won the role and it was a huge success and one of the actor’s most underrated performances in his career. When the kids today tell me how uncool the 1990s were I tell them to go watch Red Rock West. It doesn’t work but maybe you only get it if you watched it at the time, but I thought it was cool then and I think it is cool now.

Ran

Dir: Akira Kurosawa

1985

*****

In the mid 1960's, acclaimed British actor Peter O'Toole tried to persuade Akira Kurosawa to film King Lear after watching the directors 1957 epic Throne of Blood – based on the bard’s famous play Macbeth. It does seem strange to have Shakespeare’s plays transported and adapted into feudal Japanese tales but it actually works quite well. Kurosawa thought about O'Toole’s suggestion but he had many projects in mind and set about them – most of which are now considered classics. Kurosawa conceived of the idea that became Ran in the mid-1970s, when he read a parable about the Sengoku-period warlord Mōri Motonari. Motonari was famous for having three sons, all incredibly loyal and talented. Kurosawa began imagining what would have happened had they been bad. Although the film eventually became heavily inspired by Shakespeare's play King Lear, Kurosawa became aware of the details of the play only after he had started pre-planning. According to him, the stories of Mōri Motonari and Lear merged in a way he was never fully able to explain, he finally realised what Peter O'Toole had been trying to tell him. He wrote the script shortly after filming Dersu Uzala in 1975, and then "let it sleep" for seven years. During this time, he painted storyboards of every shot in the and then continued searching for funding. Following his success with 1980's Kagemusha, which he sometimes called a "dress rehearsal" for Ran, Kurosawa was finally able to secure backing from French producer Serge Silberman. Ran (translated as ‘Chaos’ or ‘Turmoil’) has often been cited as among his finest achievements, and with a budget of $11 million, it was the most expensive Japanese film produced up to that time. The film begins during a hunting trip in the mountains where Lord Hidetora Ichimonji is entertaining two old friends with his three sons. Tired and old, Lord Hidetora Ichimonji falls asleep but awakes, telling his sons that he has had a vision that has led him to an important decision. As powerful as the now elderly warlord is, he has decided it is time to divide his kingdom among his three sons: Taro, Jiro, and Saburo. Taro, the eldest, will receive the prestigious First Castle and become leader of the Ichimonji clan, while Jiro and Saburo will be given the Second and Third Castles. Hidetora is to retain the title of Great Lord and Jiro and Saburo are to support Taro. Hidetora lectures his sons about the importance of unity using three arrows (one arrow is easy to snap in half but three arrows bundled together are much more durable). Saburo, however, breaks all three arrows with his knee and calls the lecture foolish. He points out that Hidetora is foolish if he expects his sons to be loyal to him, reminding him that even Hidetora had previously used the most ruthless methods to attain power. Hidetora infers the comments to be subversive, and when his servant Tango comes to Saburo's defense, he exiles both men. Fujimaki, a visiting warlord and Hidetora’s old friend who had witnessed these events agrees with Saburo's frankness, and invites him to take his daughter's hand in marriage. Following the division of Hidetora's lands between his remaining two sons, Taro's wife Lady Kaede begins to urge her husband to usurp control of the entire Ichimonji clan. She is still bitter about the loss of her family; Hidetora's forces killed her family after a land dispute and took over the family's land as his own. When Taro demands Hidetora renounce his title of Great Lord, Hidetora then storms out of the castle and travels to Jiro's castle, only to discover that Jiro is only interested in using Hidetora as a titular pawn. Hidetora and his retinue then leave Jiro's castle as well without any clear destination. Eventually Tango appears with provisions but to no avail. Tango then tells Hidetora of Taro's new decree: death to whoever aids his father. At last Hidetora takes refuge in the Third Castle, abandoned after Saburo's forces followed their lord into exile. Tango does not follow him. Kyoami then jokes about Hidetora's predicament, only to be thrown out of the Third Castle. Shortly thereafter, Hidetora and his samurai retinue are besieged militarily by Taro and Jiro's combined forces. In a short but violent siege, virtually all defenders are slaughtered as the Third Castle is set alight. Solitarily, Hidetora succumbs to madness and wanders away from the burning castle. As Taro and Jiro's forces storm the castle, Taro is killed by a bullet fired by Jiro's general, Kurogane. Hidetora is discovered wandering in the wilderness by his jester Kyoami, and Tango, who is still loyal to him and who stays to assist Hidetora. In his madness, Hidetora is haunted by horrific visions of the people he destroyed in his quest for power. They take refuge in a peasant's home only to discover that the occupant is Tsurumaru, the brother of Lady Sué, Jiro's wife. Tsurumaru had been blinded and left impoverished after Hidetora took over his land and killed his father, a rival lord. With Taro dead, Jiro becomes the Great Lord of the Ichimonji clan, enabling him to move into the First Castle. Upon Jiro's return from battle, Lady Kaede, seemingly unfazed by Taro's death, blackmails Jiro into having an affair with her, and she becomes the power behind his throne. Kaede demands that Jiro kill Lady Sué and marry her instead. Jiro orders Kurogane to do the deed, but he refuses, warning Jiro that Kaede means to ruin the entire Ichimonji clan. Kurogane then warns Sué and Tsurumaru to flee. Tango, still watching over Hidetora with Kyoami, encounters two ronin who had once served as spies for Jiro. Before he kills them both, one of the ronin tells him that Jiro is considering sending assassins after Hidetora. Alarmed, Tango rides off to alert Saburo. Hidetora becomes even more insane and runs off into a volcanic plain with a frantic Kyoami in pursuit. Saburo's army crosses back into Jiro's territory to find him. News also reaches Jiro that two rival lords allied to Saburo (Ayabe and Fujimaki) have also entered the territory, forcing Jiro to hastily mobilize his army. At the field of battle, the two brothers accept a truce, but Saburo becomes alarmed when Kyoami arrives to tell of his father's descent into insanity. Saburo goes with Kyoami to rescue his father and takes 10 warriors with him; Jiro sends several gunners to follow Saburo and ambush them both. Jiro then further orders an attack on Saburo's much smaller force. Saburo's army retreats into the woods for cover and fires on Jiro's forces, frustrating the attack. In the middle of the battle a messenger arrives with news that a rival warlord, Ayabe, is marching on the First Castle, forcing Jiro's army to hastily retreat. Saburo finds Hidetora in the volcanic plain; Hidetora partially recovers his sanity, and begins repairing his relationship with Saburo. However, one of the snipers Jiro had sent after Saburo's small group shoots and kills Saburo. Overcome with grief, Hidetora dies. Fujimaki and his army arrive from their victory only to witness Tango and Kyoami lamenting the death of father and son. Meanwhile, Tsurumaru and Sué arrive at the ruins of a destroyed castle but inadvertently leave behind the flute that Sué previously gave Tsurumaru when he was banished. She gives a picture of Amida Buddha to him for company while she attempts to retrieve the missing flute. It is when she returns to Tsurumaru's hovel to retrieve it that she is ambushed and killed by Jiro's assassin. At the same time, Ayabe's army pursues Jiro's army to the First Castle and commences a siege. When Kurogane hears that Lady Sué has been murdered by one of Jiro's men, Kurogane confronts Kaede. She admits her perfidy and to her plotting to exact revenge against Hidetora and the Ichimonji clan for having destroyed her family years before. Enraged, Kurogane kills Kaede. Jiro, Kurogane, and all Jiro's men subsequently die in the battle with Ayabe's army that follows. A solemn funeral procession is held for Saburo and Hidetora. Meanwhile, left alone in the castle ruins, Tsurumaru accidentally drops, and loses, the Amida Buddha image Sué had given to him. The film ends with a distance shot of Tsurumaru, blind and alone, silhouetted, atop the ruins. The development and conception of the filming of the war scenes in the film were influenced by Kurasawa's opinions on nuclear warfare. According to Michael Wilmington, Kurosawa told him that much of the film was a metaphor for nuclear warfare and the anxiety of the post-Hiroshima age. He believed that, despite all of the technological progress of the 20th century, all people had learned was how to kill each other more efficiently. The director also once said "Hidetora is me", and there is evidence in the film that Hidetora serves as a stand-in for Kurosawa. Ran was the final film of Kurosawa's "third period" (1965–1985), a time where he had difficulty securing support for his pictures, and was frequently forced to seek foreign financial backing. While he had directed over twenty films in the first two decades of his career, he directed just four in these two decades. After directing Red Beard (1965), Kurosawa discovered that he was considered old-fashioned and did not work again for almost five years. He also found himself competing against television, which had reduced Japanese film audiences from a high of 1.1 billion in 1958 to under 200 million by 1975. In 1968 he was fired from the 20th Century Fox epic Tora! Tora! Tora! over what he described as creative differences, but others said was a perfectionism that bordered on insanity. Kurosawa tried to start an independent production group with three other directors, but his 1970 film Dodes'ka-den was a box-office flop and bankrupted the company. Many of his younger rivals boasted that he was finished. A year later, unable to secure any domestic funding and plagued by ill-health, Kurosawa attempted suicide by slashing his wrists. He of course survived but every film he made after that had to be right and one had personal attachment. Kurosawa’s wife died during filming but the director one haulted the shoot for just one day, grieving for just a short time before filming again. Tatsuya Nakadai’s performance as Ichimonji Hidetora is now iconing in the world of cinema, he and especially Mieko Harada as Lady Kaede, relish their characters and bring them to life perfectly. While most of the characters in Ran are portrayed by conventional acting techniques, these two performances are reminiscent of Japanese Noh theater. Noh is a specialized form of Japanese traditional theater requiring highly trained actors and musicians where emotions are primarily conveyed by stylized conventional gestures. The heavy, ghost-like makeup worn by Tatsuya Nakadai's character Hidetora, resembles the emotive masks worn by traditional Noh performers. The body language exhibited by the same character is also typical of Noh theater: long periods of static motion and silence, followed by an abrupt, sometimes violent, change in stance. The character of Lady Kaede is also Noh-influenced. The Noh treatment emphasizes the ruthless, passionate, and single-minded natures of these two characters. It also explores religion, with Buddha mentioned and seen in several scenes. It was an epic tale born of obsession and the last great work of a legendary director. So much work went into it, it’s still hard to imagine that it only cost $11 million, even in 1985. I don’t think Kurosawa made a film that wasn’t a masterpiece, but Ran, while not my favorite of his, is special because it showed the world that the great director still had it in him and his dream was, at last, fulfilled.

The Machinist
Dir: Brad Anderson
2004
*****

I’ve been a fan of director Brad Anderson since his brilliant and criminally underrated 2001 horror Session 9. His career has had a few ups and downs but his 2004 follow up – The Machinist is a modern masterpiece and one of the best thrillers of the millennium thus far – again, criminally underrated. I’ve heard more about Christian Bale’s weight loss than I have ever heard about the actual film though which is quite frustrating, as the film is a brilliantly dark mind-bender that is so much more than its lead actor’s dedication. I’m in no way knocking Bale though, his sacrifice to the film is astonishing. The story follows Trevor Reznik (named after Trent Reznor, whom co-writer Scott Kosar wanted to score the film), a machinist whose insomnia has led to his becoming completely emaciated. His appearance and behavior keep his coworkers away, and they eventually turn against him when he is involved in an accident which causes his coworker, Miller, to lose his left arm (Michael Ironside – once again on limb-losing duty). Trevor (Bale), who was distracted by an unfamiliar co-worker named Ivan (John Sharian), is blamed for the accident. No one at the factory knows of Ivan and there are no records of him. Trevor seems to find peace only with Stevie (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a prostitute with genuine affection for him, and with Maria (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón), a waitress at an airport diner he frequents. He is haunted by brief flashes of recurring imagery, and objects (such as his car cigarette lighter) take on a menacing air. A mysterious series of post-it notes appear on his refrigerator, depicting a game of hangman. These vague incidents send him further into paranoia, but he nonetheless attempts to establish a relationship with Maria. Meeting her at an amusement park, Trevor goes with her son Nicholas on a fun house ride called "Route 666," whose flashing lights cause Nicholas to suffer an epileptic seizure. No longer able to think clearly, Trevor suspects that the bizarre events are a concerted effort to drive him insane. These ideas are fed to him in small random clues. One of them is a picture of Ivan fishing with Trevor's coworker Reynolds, which he discovers in Ivan's wallet when Ivan leaves it unattended in a pub. Another near-accident at work causes Trevor to lash out in rage at his co-workers; as a result, he is immediately fired. Increasingly distracted and alienated, Trevor forgets to pay his utility bills and his electricity is disconnected. A dark, viscous liquid begins trickling out of the freezer, coating the fridge door with streaks of what appears to be blood. After several attempts to confront Ivan, Trevor tries to trace his license plate. He follows Ivan's car to read its license plate, but runs out of gas during the pursuit. When a DMV clerk insists that personal information cannot be released unless a crime has been committed, Trevor throws himself in front of a car in order to accuse Ivan of committing a hit and run. He files a police report with Ivan's plate number on it, only to be baffled when he is told that the car in question is his own; he had reported the vehicle totaled one year ago. He flees from the suspicious policemen and goes to Stevie, who clothes and washes him, but he finds the photo of Ivan and Reynolds framed in her home and accuses her of conspiring against him. Confused, Stevie says the picture is of Reynolds and Trevor, but he refuses to look at it and is thrown out after a verbal conflict. He goes to the airport diner, but is told by an unfamiliar waitress they've never had an employee named Maria. The waitress at the counter tells Trevor she has served him every day for a year,and in all that time,saying speaking so little, she began to think he was a mute. In the film's climax, Trevor sees Ivan take Nicholas into Trevor's apartment and, fearing the worst, sneaks inside. Nicholas is nowhere to be seen and doesn't respond to Trevor's calls. He confronts Ivan in the bathroom and kills him after a struggle. He pulls back the shower curtain, only to find the bathtub empty. He goes to the refrigerator and opens it to find rotting fish and other spoiled food tumble out. His mind then flashes back to the fishing photo, which actually shows a healthy Trevor with Reynolds, just as Stevie claimed. Ivan being in the photo was part of Trevor's hallucination. The scene returns to one that occurred during the opening credits, in which he tries to dispose of someone's corpse - presumably Ivan's - by rolling it in a rug and casting it into the ocean. When the rug unravels, there is nothing inside. Ivan, alive as ever, appears holding a flashlight and laughs. The scene then cuts to Trevor staring into a mirror at home, repeating the words "I know who you are." It is revealed that one year ago, Trevor ran over and killed a boy identical to Nicholas after taking his eyes off the road to use the car's cigarette lighter, which was witnessed by the boy's mother, identical to Maria. He decided to drive away, and the resulting guilt became the deep-seated cause of his insomnia, emaciation and repressed memory. Ivan was a figment of Trevor's imagination and a manifestation of himself before the accident. He fills the missing letters of the hangman note to spell "killer." He briefly considers going to the airport and escaping, but instead drives to police headquarters, signifying his "road to salvation," a recurring theme in the film. He is accompanied by a silent but encouraging Ivan, who bids him an approving farewell outside the station. At the police station's front desk, he confesses to the hit and run. Two police officers escort Trevor to a cell, where he states his intention to sleep and does so for the first time in a year. It’s a clever winding road of symbolism and mystery but in all honesty, you could throw all kinds of slick direction at the script but without a seriously dedicated performance it would have been for nothing. The film, as amazing as the script is, belongs to Bale. Jennifer Jason Leigh and Aitana Sánchez-Gijón are both brilliant too, but Bale’s performance is something special. It’s easy to dismiss his acting and say that he relies solely on his new stature but it isn’t the case. Bale goes full method and, for once, it is totally worth it. His daily diet in preparation consisted of just water, an apple and one cup of coffee per day, with the occasional whiskey. He also took up smoking to help calm his appetite. He lost 62 pounds (28 kg), reducing his body mass to 120 pounds (54 kg). Bale wanted to go down to 99 pounds (45 kg), but the filmmakers would not let him due to health concerns. Anderson hadn’t actually asked Bale to lose such a vast amount of weight and was genuinely shocked when he saw his appearance on the first day of shooting. He later confessed to being thrilled by the actor's dedication. It annoyed me somewhat that the film was compared to Fight Club so much when it was released. While there is an obvious theme in common, the film is clearly influenced by Dostoyevsky and it references the Russian novelist several times, first when Reznik is shown reading The Idiot, one of the faux marquees reads Crime and Punishment when Reznik is riding the "Route 666" attraction and in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, the character who is visited by a devil is named Ivan. It’s a worthy film and it is a fitting tribute to Dostoyevsky’s work. I’m never much of a fan of cold grey and blue cinematography but Xavi Gimenez and Charlie Jiminez’s work here is sensational and fits the story and mood perfectly. Screen writer Scott Kroopf once referred to it as "the last movie that Alfred Hitchcock would have ever made". I totally disagree, The Machinist is not Hitchcockian, it is Bergman-esque but either way, it’s a modern masterpiece that deserves far more recognition than it has thus far received.

Gringo

Dir: Nash Edgerton

2018

***

I saw loads of trailers for Gringo before it was released but I couldn’t find any cinema near me that would show it. It seems the film had been deemed a flop before it even had a chance to prove itself. After finally seeing it I can understand why some views were disappointed but I think there is still plenty to like about it. It doesn’t quite get the mad-cap crime comedy thing right but most of the key characters more than make up for it. In the Chicago offices of Promethium Pharmaceuticals, co-presidents Richard Rusk (Joel Edgerton) and Elaine Markinson (Charlize Theron) receive a call from a company employee, Harold Soyinka (David Oyelowo), who claims he has been kidnapped in Mexico and that his abductors are demanding a ransom of five million US dollars. One day earlier, Harold, Richard, and Elaine arrive in Mexico where they meet with Sanchez, head of the plant where Promethium products are manufactured. Unbeknownst to Harold, it is revealed that Sanchez has been selling Promethium’s latest product, medical marijuana in the shape of a pill, to a Mexican cartel, and now Promethium has decided to cut them off to avoid harming their upcoming merger. Later that evening, as Richard, Elaine and Harold have dinner, Harold secretly records what Richard and Elaine say about him when he walks away. He learns from the recording the merger plans, which would result in Harold losing his job. That night, he also learns that his wife (Thandie Newton) is having an affair and wants a divorce. Sanchez informs cartel leader Villegas about them getting cut off by Promethium; Villegas is lead to believe that Harold is the boss and orders his men to capture him. Richard and Elaine leave Mexico the next morning without Harold when the latter seemingly disappears. Harold convinces brothers Ronaldo and Ernesto, who run the hotel he is staying in, to pose as his kidnappers in an extortion plan in which he calls Richard pretending to be kidnapped in exchange for a hefty ransom. Richard calls his ex-mercenary brother Mitch (Sharlto Copley) to rescue Harold. Harold spends the evening at a bar, believing his scheme to have failed. The bartender alerts the cartel when he recognizes Harold. Two men arrive and kidnap Harold, but, during the drive to Villegas, Harold overpowers his captors and crashes the car. In the morning, Harold is rescued by tourists Sunny (Amanda Seyfried) and Miles (Harry Treadaway), the latter of whom is in Mexico to serve as a drug mule. The couple take Harold back to a motel where all three happened to have been staying. Soon, Ronaldo and Ernesto, who have been bribed by the cartel into helping them find Harold, attempt to kidnap Harold. However, Mitch shows up and knocks the brothers unconscious and takes Harold with him. Mitch takes Harold to the airport to return him to Promethium, but he runs away. Mitch manages to subdue Harold and inject him with a tracker to know where he is at all times. Mitch makes a deal with Harold to attempt to extort Richard for a larger sum of money for Harold's return. When Mitch calls Richard to make that deal, Richard tells him that the company is planning to collect a life insurance claim on Harold if he were to end up dead, a sum of which Mitch would receive. Mitch reluctantly agrees to take him up on that offer. Harold and Mitch are spotted by Ronaldo and Ernesto as they walk the streets of Mexico. Mitch attempts to kill Harold but cannot bring himself to do it as he has grown fond of him. He is then struck by a car driven by the brothers, who take Harold with them to Villegas. Villegas tells Harold that he wants Harold to access a secure vault at the Promethium plant in order to steal the marijuana pill formula. A shootout occurs when the police arrive. Harold escapes with help from Angel, his Mexican colleague, who reveals himself to be an undercover DEA agent that infiltrated Villegas' gang. They are chased by members of the cartel, who run them off the road. Harold saves Angel from being killed by a cartel member; as Harold is about to be executed by another cartel member, Mitch arrives and saves Harold's life only to be killed himself. Harold asks Angel for help, believing that he has nothing to return to in Chicago. Angel agrees to falsely declare Harold dead and Harold gives him company files incriminating Richard. Villegas and his men are arrested by Mexican federal police. Richard is arrested by the DEA and sentenced to 15 years in prison, and Elaine, who testified against Richard, takes over Promethium. Harold stays in Mexico and opens a beach-side bar called “Harry’s Bar”. The story is convoluted and somewhat messy. Firstly, the sub-plot involving Sunny (Amanda Seyfried) and Miles (Harry Treadaway) is completely pointless. It adds nothing to the overall story and nothing of significance happens when their and Harold’s story meet. The plot involving Harold’s wife (played by Thandie Newton) sleeping with Rusk (Joel Edgerton) is also fairly empty. The role is way beyond Thandie Newton’s abilities and in all honesty it was a waste of her time. Both Seyfried and Newton are wronged in this film, so I hope they both got paid well. Sharlto Copley is also criminally underused but he makes up for a lack of screen time with about as much charisma as an actor can have, although this only makes his lack of screen time all the more frustrating. Edgerton and Theron play the villains rather well but watching Theron trying to seduce Alan Ruck is gringeworthy to the point of deeply unpleasant. Villegas (played by Carlos Corona) is an interesting Cartel character but his obsession with The Beatles isn’t quite as clever as the scriptwriter thinks it is. By far the best thing about Gringo is David Oyelowo as it turns out he is quite capable at subtle and physical comedy. Nash Edgerton (Joel’s brother) directs the action well and clearly has a great eye but his story is just a little overcooked with a couple of ingredients too many. I’m amazed it has taken him this long to film another feature film since his 2008 debut The Square (that followed the brilliant short film Spider). It is a mess for sure but it is fun and I was happily on the ride from start to finish and I think it deserves a little more love than it has so far received.

Penelope

Dir: Arthur Hiller

1966

**

I adore Natalie Wood – always have – and even her not so great films have a special place in my heart…but Penelope’s charm is very limited. Directed by the great Arthur Hiller, 1966’s Penelope also features some others of my all time favorites including Peter Falk, Jonathan Winters, and Dick Shawn (I’m a huge It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World fan). It’s a tricky film to track down these days as it’s release on DVD and VHS was very limited and I confess it is a film that I’ve not long been aware of. When I learned that there was a comedy featuring Wood, Winters, Falk and Shawn that I was unaware of I nearly exploded with excitement. Arthur Hiller was an added bonus and the synopsis was irresistible. Natalie Wood plays Penelope Elcott, the wife of wealthy banker James Elcott (Ian Bannen). We first encounter Penelope dressed as an old woman as she is robbing her husbands bank at gunpoint – on the first day of its opening. While the police, including Lieutenant Horatio Bixbee (Peter Falk), rush to get to the bank, Penelope escapes in a red wig and yellow suit. She donates some of the stolen money to a Salvation Army worker and donates the suit to a second-hand thrift shop. Con artists Sabada (Lila Kedrova) and Ducky (Lou Jacobi) immediately recognize the suit as an original designer outfit from Paris, and purchase it for a mere $7. Penelope then visits her psychiatrist, Gregory (Dick Shawn), and tells him all about her criminal activities. Together they explore Penelope’s Kleptomania through a series of flashbacks – most of which also include how she met her husband. She says it began in college, when a professor (Jonathan Winters) lured her into his laboratory where he began his attempt to rape her, but she escaped, leaving her dress ripped off in the process. During the chase, she stole a diamond set watch of the Professor's. She next stole on her wedding day. When she caught her maid of honor Mildred Halliday (Norma Crane) kissing James, she swiped Mildred's earrings and necklace. Gregory suggests she is stealing to attract attention from her distant husband. When a young woman, Honeysuckle Rose, is accused of being the thief, Penelope knows she must come clean so that the innocent women isn’t sentenced. Gregory wants her to return the stolen money to the bank, and also helps her return it via an incident whereby Penelope nearly steals a Rembrandt from the local art gallery. Penelope confesses and tries to clear the innocent Honeysuckle, but Horatio the cop and husband James do not believe her. Ducky and Sabada pay a visit, trying to blackmail her, but Penelope foils their blackmail attempt. Penelope then decides to host a dinner party, having stolen from all the invited guests. She tries to return the stolen items, but all claim that they have never seen them before. Penelope, confused and frightened, runs away. She again robs James' bank, but unlike the previous time, she is crying. James begs Horatio to find her. Penelope herself goes to Horatio with the stolen money, but the cop knows James would not press charges against his own wife. Gregory explains the dinner guests denied recognizing the stolen items because they would lose the fraudulently inflated insurance claims they collected. Gregory breaks down and begs Penelope to run away with him. She refuses, telling him she is cured. James realizes that he has neglected Penelope and starts seeing her face everywhere he turns. He goes to the psychiatrist's office, where James and Penelope happily reunite. Everyone involved is talented but the script and delivery is weak. It isn’t quite fair to say the film is dated, as the film was rejected upon its initial release, many agreeing that it missed the mark in pretty much everything it tried to achieve. After the film was released, Natalie Wood bought herself out of her Warner Bros. contract for $175,000, and fired her staff of agents, managers and lawyers. She didn't make another film for another three years. I do love older films of this nature and I forgive their ridiculousness because they are generally fun, innocent, good natured and the best kinds of silly but Penelope is so mis-judged that it made me incredibly sad. The early scene of Jonathan Winters stripping Natalie Wood to her underwear and then trying to rape her in a ‘comedy’ fashion is awful now and it was awful then. The comedy is cartoonish and falls flat with every joke. The best thing about the film is Natalie Wood, but then watching her wonderful performance – knowing it was wasted energy – has a tragic element to it that makes it hard to fully enjoy. Dick Shawn doesn’t seem allowed to really make the most of his character either, but Ian Bannen is good and Peter Falk is great. The best thing to come out of the film is that Peter Falk’s performance here was clearly the inspiration for Columbo, as the characters are pretty much exactly the same. I have no idea why it didn’t quite work but these are actors who I would happily watch again and again, even if it means watching them in a disappointing film such as this.

Choke

Dir: Clark Gregg

2008

****

I’m still amazed to this day that, not only did someone manage to adapt Fight Club into a film, they did it brilliantly. If you’re brave enough to adapt a Chuck Palahniuk novel into a film, you have to do it right, if you cant, you need to walk away. As much as I’d love to see the novels Invisible Monsters and Survivor made into films I honestly don’t think its possible to do so authentically. I love the novel Snuff but I don’t think anyone would really want to see that made into a film, the very thought of it makes me feel a little queasy, as much as I enjoyed it. Choke is probably one of the more obvious choices for an adaptation but I’m not sure those involved pulled it off as successfully as they could have. They certainly got the casting right with Sam Rockwell utterly convincing as main character Victor Mancini and Anjelica Huston, who certainly wouldn’t have been my first choice, as Ida, Victor’s mother. The story is about Victor Mancini, a reformed sex addict who works as a re-enactor of life in Colonial America – a colonial theme park in New Jersey. He works and shares an apartment with his best friend, Denny (played by Brad William Henke), who is also a reformed sex addict. To pay for his mother’s Alzheimer's disease hospital bills, Victor cons diners by intentionally choking at restaurants to get money from his rescuers, by keeping a detailed list of everyone who saves him and sending them frequent letters about fictional bills he is unable to pay. The people feel so sorry for him that they send him cards and letters asking him about how he is doing, and continue to send him money to help him with the bills. When he visits his mother one day, he meets Dr Paige Marshall (played by Kelly Macdonald), who takes care of her. She tells Victor that his mother's condition is worsening and that they could try an experimental stem cell technique that would require harvesting cells from the umbilical cord of a newborn baby with Victor's genes. She convinces Victor to have sex with her so she can have his child and save his mother. Victor never knew his father and is anxious to obtain the information from his mother, but she never recognizes him when he visits. He asks Denny to pose as him and ask her questions. Denny agrees and reveals that Victor's mother kept a diary. Victor finds it, but it is in Italian. Paige tells Victor she can read Italian and agrees to translate the diary. Victor and Paige try several times to have sex, but Victor cannot maintain an erection. After discussing it with Denny, he realizes he loves Paige. She then reveals to him that his mother may have fled Italy because she stole Jesus' foreskin, and used its cells to conceive Victor, making him the Second Coming. He is reluctant to believe but, in the end, accepts Paige's assertion. However, his mother finally recognizes him and tells him that she stole him as a baby and she has no idea who his birth parents are. As she tells him this, he feeds her chocolate pudding and accidentally chokes her to death. While Paige tries to resuscitate Victor's mother, a hidden band around her wrist falls into Victor's view, revealing that she is a patient in the hospital and not a doctor after all. Paige then reveals that she was admitted to the hospital years ago, in a catatonic state, and fell in love with Victor through the stories his mother told her about him. As she was a former medical student, the nurses allowed her to wear a white coat, as it calmed her down. Paige, a voluntary patient, checks herself out without saying goodbye to Victor. After his mother's funeral, Victor boards a plane. He goes to the bathroom and the door opens to reveal Paige joining him. Only half of what we see in the film actually happens in the book. Chuck Palahniuk sold the rights to Choke following the success of Fight Club and Clark Gregg (now famous for his role as Phil Coulson, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D) fought for the opportunity to direct it based on a writing assignment he had written on it years before. Gregg worked for five years on a script, trying to adapt it faithfully. In the end he decided to write his personal version of the story, believing that it would be one that Chuck Palahniuk would oppose. However, much to Gregg's surprise, the author liked and supported the departures made in his updated version and the film was a go, with Palahniuk even making a cameo appearance. It’s a nice film, I enjoyed it very much, but it isn’t a true Palahniuk story and I think that’s the problem I have with it. It’s a little to lite and comical in places where it really should have been dark and about the twisted relationship between a boy and his mother. Gregg later stated that he wanted to shift the tone of the story to be somewhere between Hal Ashby’s Being There and Harold and Maude, and more recent films like Secretary and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I really didn’t feel that to be the case at all, it’s not badly directed but its nothing special. For me it was all about the lead performances, which are more than enough to make it an enjoyable dark comedy.