-
Versus (2000, Kitamura Ryuhei)
So, watching Versus, I realized a few things. First, Kitamura is probably the best action director… ever. Second, he can’t write his way out of a hat. Third, he’s also a great director of actors. Versus, for the superior first forty minutes, has a lot of characters in frame, doing a lot of things, not just action, but also just exuding personality. Kitamura does a great job with it.
It’s not just his shot construction, of course. It’s the way he moves the camera. He only does it in the first forty, but it’s a fantastic system for informing the viewer of what’s going on–where people are standing, where they’re moving. There’s so much good in Versus, which is incredibly hard to believe considering it’s described as Evil Dead meets The Matrix. Unfortunately, like I said, all that goodness is technical (some of the performances are excellent, however).
The writing falls apart, but then it breaks down more and more. Whenever Kitamura feels the pace slowing, he introduces more characters. We start with eight, which quickly becomes six, then he introduces three more, then another, then another two. The last additions are these asshole cops who are supposed to be funny, and to some degree they are–and it’s really interesting that one makes the (intentionally) geographically incorrect remark that he grew up in Yellowstone National Park in Minnesota, but the American DVD company subtitled it to Canada. Not surprising, that Japanese people have a better awareness of U.S. geography than American DVD aficionados.
Kitamura, as a writer and somewhat as a director (he keeps twirling the lead’s leather trench coat), is seemingly obsessed with “cool.” Versus is a film dictated by “wouldn’t it be cool if…” which is no way to tell a good story, but there wasn’t one anywhere in Versus, thankfully. It just got worse than it needed to get.
Had I seen Versus before Azumi, I might have shut it off (though probably not, as the opening forty are incredibly well-directed), but I certainly would never have found Azumi. Azumi is a good movie.
All Kitamura needs is a good script–which means he shouldn’t touch it.
Posted on
Posted in
Tagged
-
Olga’s Chignon (2002, Jérôme Bonnell)
I think this film is the one of the best films Woody Allen never made.
I don’t talk about it much, or ever, since I watched all of Allen’s films long before The Stop Button, but there are some distinct Allen formats and he never seems to mix them. Olga’s Chignon mixes them a little–it’s never as depressing as Allen’s depressing films–and it’s never as playful as his most playful entries get.
Except for the end, which sort of stops, leaving a number of characters unresolved simply because the third act concentrated on two of the four main characters. The conclusion is well-handled enough, however, that I can forgive some of it. It’s just when you introduce your thesis at the last minute, it makes a lot of the previous story setting instead of important.
Bonnell’s young, twenty-eight, and Olga’s Chignon is an impressive debut for someone that age. As much as he concentrates on the writing, his directing is the most important part of the film. He holds scenes a few seconds longer than you except, giving the viewer time to reflect on what he or she has just seen. It’s a literary equivalent to ‘white space’ in short stories, expect ‘white space’ is sometimes used to display change in time, and fade outs are the traditional film device. Except fade outs don’t let you reflect. The only other film I can think of that does this is Horse Thief.
Olga’s Chignon is also my first French family drama and it’s set an incredible standard. Bonnell’s got a new film this year, but Olga never made it to the US (thankfully Nicheflix has it), so I’ll have to track that down somehow. Based on this film, of course, getting slaughtered with a UK exchange rate would likely be worth it.
Posted on
Posted in
Tagged
-
Safety Last! (1923, Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor)
Film used to be a visual medium. It’s an audio/visual now and getting more and more audio–Dolby Digital and DTS has convinced folks they need five speakers plus the discreet (while Woody Allen still shoots mono). Film has become stage-less theater (without the pretension of theater), but it wasn’t always that way….
I’ve never seen a Harold Lloyd film before and my silent comedies are limited mostly to Buster. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a silent Chaplin, just a couple talkies he didn’t talk in. Keaton cannot be surpassed in his quality or his influence, but Safety Last! is just a lot of fun. Silent films use different storytelling techniques than sound pictures do (regardless of the awkward-“intended to be silent” talkies of the late 1920s, the change was immediate–their awkwardness was something else entirely). Without telling the audience the character sold the phonograph, without intimating it with dialogue, the film is left to suggest to us that the phonograph has been sold. Sure, there’s the full explanation with a pawn stub, but that’s either for the stragglers or, more likely, to introduce the concept of money into the scene. Money’s one of those concepts that needs to be enumerated.
Silent comedy and silent drama are also completely different (silent comedy quickly establishes its characters while drama can just go on and on, making a comedy a safer bet for someone just seeing a silent film–not everything that survived is necessarily good). Safety Last! is able to introduce a major character in the last act. It’s just a drunk, but he’s in it the act more than the romantic interest. We rarely see that–I’ve got Sea of Love on the brain since I just rented it and really want to watch it and I remember reading Price’s screenplay collection and he said he wanted to introduce the murderer in the last act and the love interest in the middle of the film and the studio gave him a really funny look. But, even in comedies of the 1930s and 1940s, not even mentioning dramas, big characters did not appear in late in the film. Characters whose presence is felt throughout the film (ranging from The Senator Was Indiscreet to Seven) is a different situation, of course.
As for Lloyd, he’s impossible to dislike, a perfect Everyman. His physical comedy is not as athletic as Keaton’s, of course (is that possible?), but it’s superb. The film ends with his attempt to scale a 12-story building and it’s the first time I got worried about someone surviving since I saw Superman as a kid.
Lloyd is well-known to film buffs–customers at the video store I worked at, back when there were smart people seeing movies (the late 1990s), used to ask about his films. Someone had seen it on TV or something, when he or she was a kid, and now he or she has kids… Lloyd’s the most accessible silent comedian and it’s great that “someday soon” his films will be available on DVD. Until then, check your TCM listings, as they frequently have mini-Lloyd marathons.
….oh, that’s a little scary. Movielens had my star rating dead-on….
Posted on
Posted in
Tagged
-
The Three Musketeers (1993, Stephen Herek)
There’s a cruelty of home video. I can watch The Three Musketeers, which I liked as a fifteen year-old, and loathe myself for that previous affection.
What can I say about this film? A lot, actually. One, I had no idea Disney let so many people get killed quite so graphically. Two, Charlie Sheen is good. Who ever thought they’d type a sentence like that? Oliver Platt is appealing and Michael Wincott is a good villain.
The rest is crap. Terrible writing (by the half-wit who wrote Star Trek V) and direction, Kiefer Sutherland tries but at most times he’s trying to be Han Solo or something, Tim Curry is playing one hiss-able villain too many and Chris O’Donnell is a crime against art. Of course, O’Donnell is always a crime against art, so I was expecting that. But he’s bad in this one, even for him.
Since I watched Man in the Iron Mask yesterday, it’s impossible not to make a few comparisons. I’ll spare you those. But something occurred to me about heroism as portrayed in film. Why was it effective in Iron Mask but not in Three Musketeers? Because there’s a beauty to fatalistic heroism. Jumping around in a rip of Empire Strikes Back (though, in hindsight of the prequel trilogy, maybe Three Musketeers had a better conclusion to the son avenging his father scene) is not fatalistic heroism. These guys aren’t straining to do the impossible. This reasoning goes way, way back, to when I first (actually, the only time) saw Con Air and Nicolas Cage announces he’s going “to save the day.” Well, he could have done it the whole time, and the audience knew he could do it and succeed, so why give a shit? That’s what Three Musketeers is like….
Oh, and Rebecca De Mornay sucks too. A lot. But not as much as Chris O’Donnell.
Posted on
Posted in
1993, Action-Adventure, ⓏⒺⓇⓄ, Directed by Stephen Herek, Film, The Three Musketeers, Three Musketeers moviesTagged