Gattaca is set in a future in which genetic
engineering has become the norm: the perfect babies with their meticulously
selected characteristics are called Valids, those still conceived in the normal
way In-valids. The In-valids are of course considered second-class citizens:
what's supposed to be a Utopia, is in fact a Dystopia.
The film tells the story of an In-valid called
Vincent (Ethan Hawke) whose lifelong dream it is to make a space trip to Saturn, an enterprise not open to In-valids. With the help of a DNA broker, he gets
the chance to fulfill his dreams by adopting the identity ofa Valid called Jerome (Jude Law), a former swimming champion who was
paralyzed in a car accident. Jerome gives him samples of his blood and urine to pass the admission tests and Vincent has a leg operation to become four inches taller and look more like a former sports crack ...
Gattaca was
praised for its introspective nature: for once a SF movie did not rely on
special effects and odd techno-gadgets, but rather on the moral ambiguities of
genetic engineering and questions about identity in a world where
people have no control over their own lives unless they break the law. It was
called 'thought-provoking' and 'scientifically provocative' and it's often said
that the film vitalized the discussions on the controversial topic of genetic
engineering. Note however that most issues the script raises, are
only hinted at, and never really examined in detail. Instead the whole thing is
played out more or less like a paranoia thriller: Vincent/Jerome becomes the main suspect in a
murder case and we ask ourselves if the police - or the colleague he's flirting
with (Uma Thurman) - will find out who he is.
Often
mentioned as the first 'buddy-cop-action-comedy' (yes, that's quite a mouthful),
a sub genre very popular in the 80s and 90s. If it wasn't the first, it was the
most trendsetting, if only for casting Eddie Murphy (fresh from Saturday Night
Live) as the well-dressed, ultra cool inmate who is released for 48 hours to
help hard nosed, shabby cop Nick Nolte tracking down two cop killers and a missing sum of
money.
Mixing strong
violence with fairly lighthearted comedy, director Walter Hill introduced a brisk,
tongue-in-cheek style of film making that would dominate Hollywood action movies (not
only cop thrillers) for the next decade. He was asked by the producers to tone
down the violence, but the action scenes are still quite potent, notably an
early shootout in a hotel which sets the whole thing in motion.
The film works
thanks to the charisma of the two leads, but the rather flimsy script (see under miscellaneous) has not emerged
unscathed from the numerous rewritings it was submitted to. A more
intriguing idea about the criminals kidnapping the local governor's daughter and
threatening to kill her within 48 hours unless a large ransom money is paid,
was dropped in favour of more screen time for Murphy and his routines. The
scene with Murphy personating as a police offer and searching and snarling at a
redneck ("I'm you worst nightmare, a nigger with a badge!") is a
standout, other routines have become too familiar over the years.
48 Hrs. is
still quite enjoyable, but it suffers from this typical noisiness that marred
many movies from the Eighties, with the actors shouting at each other most of the
time (apparently that was supposed to be funny in those days) . The shouting wears you off after a while, but
luckily the film has a running-time of a mere 90 minutes.
Miscellaneous:
The film
apparently had a long and interesting genesis: the original idea of a cop
solving a kidnapping with the help of a released inmate (the former partner of
the kidnapper) dates from the early Seventies. According to Walter Hill, he was
asked in the late Seventies to rewrite the script as a vehicle for Clint
Eastwood and Richard Pryor, but the project was abandoned because Eastwood
wanted to play the criminal. The project then went from Columbia to Paramount
and was finally turned into a Murphy-Nolte vehicle, with Walter Hill co-scripting
and directing
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
(2017, Martin McDonagh)
The premise of
Three Billboards (etc.) is quite simple: months have passed since a young girl
was brutally raped and murdered in Ebbing, Missouri, and the local police force
seems to have given up the case. Her mother then hires three billboards outside
town to accuse the chief of police of negligence ... Problem is: this chief of
police is not an asshole, but a nice guy who did his best to solve the crime and he also happens to suffer from
terminal pancreas cancer. When Willoughby commits suicide because of his
illness and the unbearable pains he'll have to endure, the inhabitants think he
did it because of the three billboards outside town and blame Mildred ...
And all
hell breaks loose ...
What kind
of movie is this? A black comedy? Or is it a serious drama that is at the same
time funny? Whatever it is, it is well-made and tremendously well-acted. Both
Frances McDormand and Woody Harrelson are perfectly cast as the two main
opponents, the mother and the chief of police, and Sam Rockwell turns in a terrific
performance as the redneck sergeant who still lives with his mum. This is a better
movie than The Shape of Water, its major rival in the Oscar race for Best
Picture, but it's not flawless either.
Writer/director
McDonagh skillfully plays with people's expectations, revealing layer after
layer of both the movie's plot and characters. The story will most certainly keep
you hooked, but some of its contrivances seem a little absurd. Three Billboards
is about traumatic experiences people are unable to forget, but most characters
seem strangely unaffected by what's happening to them (or to others) in the
course of the movie. In Ebbing, Missouri you can burn down an entire police
station and even a person who nearly died in the fire won't bear a grudge
against you. And like one critic wrote: the conclusion seems to be that it's
okay to be a cunt, but not a dick (*1).
Controversy
Ironically
the film's script was criticized by some, not because of its improbabilities,
but because it seems to condone sergeant Dixon's redneck behavior. Through a
series of machinations the character is turned, in the final stages of the
movie, from a brute into a more amiable person. Obviously the intension of the film makers was
to illustrate his growth as a person, not to condone his racist ideas (he was
clearly presented as an immature person in the first three quarters of the
movie), but most of these machinations rely too much on coincidence or sound so
far-fetched that the whole idea of redemption and forgiveness is blurred.
That man is
Wyatt, knick-named Captain America because of the Stars & Stripes on his
helmet and chopper. He and his friend Billy want to join the Mardi Grass
festivities in New Orleans. En route they pick up a hitch-hiker, visit a hippie
community, are arrested when joining a parade without permit, meet an alcoholic
lawyer in jail, attract some undesired attention of locals and have a bad acid trip.
They eventually reach New Orleans, so Billy thinks they made it, but
Captain America, the more philosophical of the two, knows better: they blew it.
They have reached New Orleans, but haven't found America.
Fonda and
Hopper had both appeared in biker movies before (Fonda in The Wild Angels,
Hopper in The Glory Stompers) but Easy Rider is *not* just another movie about biker
gangs or outlaw bikers: Captain America and his friend are involved in drug
smuggling at the beginning of the movie, but they're no outlaws or Hell's
Angels and the movie refrains from the gratuitous violence of the previous
biker movies. Wyatt and Bill are freewheeling bikers: they're
anti-establishment but not anti-social. They envy a farmer who lives off the
land with his large family ("You can be proud of yourself"). At some
point, George Hanson, the alcohol lawyer (Jack Nicholson) says:
" You
know, this used to be a helluva good country. I can't understand what's gone
wrong with it."
Easy Rider is
a movie about a country in transition, about the collision of the Old and New,
of the City versus the Countryside, of what has vanished and what is
yet to come. Fonda had the idea to construct the movie as a new kind of
western: he had recently watched John Ford's The Searchers (1956) in which the
protagonists are looking for a girl who was abducted by the Indians; in Easy
Rider the two would instead be looking for America. Wyatt and Billy are named
after Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid and their journey to the East mirrors the trek
to the West of the original settlers: voyagers go looking for a better life and
discover that the paradise they were dreaming is not up there for the grabs.
From the
start, Easy Rider was a Fonda-Hopper project: Fonda would produce, Hopper
direct and both would work on the script. A rough cut had
a much longer running-time and an experimental structure, but in
post-production most story elements and experimental narrative effects (flash forwards, jump cuts, hand-held camera shots, etc.) were edited out. The finished movie
is a succession of vignettes, all with their own mood and structure, virtually without any overarching narrative. On the
surface, Easy Rider offers a typical, almost stereotyped image of the Sixties:drugs, hippies, free love; it also shares
some of its obsessions of the decade about the end of materialism and going back
to nature, but it's not naïve in its approach: it's a movie about the dreams
the young ones had, but also about their disillusions.
The movie is
immensely helped by László Kovács' magnificent cinematography of the landscape
and a now classic soundtrack. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were asked to
write an original score, but eventually it was decided to use existing tracks
by Steppenwolf, The Byrds, the Band, Jimi Hendrix and others.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Miscellaneous:
* The title
'Easy Rider' is a little erratic. Most people have interpreted as a reference
to bikers, but its original meaning was a horseman or a horse easy to ride. In the
Sixties it was used in relation to free love: men who lived with women who
practiced it, had a 'free ride'. Occasionally the term was also used for
someone who visited prostitutes (the boys in fact visit a whorehouse in New
Orleans)
* The
tracks used on the soundtrack were chosen by editor Donn Cambern; he used music
from his own record collection 'to get in the mood' during the editing process.
When confronted with some of the results, Fonda and Hopper decided to skip the
ideas for an original soundtrack by CSN&Y. In return Hopper grew a David Crosby moustache for the movie ...
_____________
1969 -
Directed by Dennis Hopper, produced by Peter Fonda, written by Peter Fonda,
Terry Southern and Dennis Hopper - Cast: Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack
Nicholson, Luke Askew, Karen Black, Michael Pataki, Toni Basil
I had not
planned to see it, at least not in theatres, but I was in the company of
somebody very dear to my heart who desperately wanted to see it before
it would get all those Oscars, so I decided to give it a try. What shall I say?
It was a bit better than I had expected, but like most of this director's work,
it didn't do much for me.
Most of you
will know that it tells a story about a forbidden love. Sally Hawkins is a mute
custodian at a secret government laboratory where an amphibious
creature, captured in the Andes, is studied by a team of scientists and put to
some grueling tests. While visiting him, the woman
and the creature start developing a strong bond. Eventually they will fall in
love. In most classic love stories of this type - Romeo & Juliet, Anna
Karenina, even Titanic - the barriers are social, and the lovers die in each
others' arms. In the case of Del Toro's movie the barriers are biological and -
this is probably the most original angle - the lovers manage to overcome the
ultimate barrier: Love literally overcomes Death, the lovers literally live
happily ever after.
That's all
okay, this is a fairy tale with horror influences (and some religious
overtones), The Beauty and the Beast with a sniff of the Frankenstein myth. The
story is set in 1962 Baltimore, during the days of the Cold War and both Super
Powers are interested in the creature; the espionage story adds some suspense
to the plot, but be forewarned: some of the scenes of violence and torture are
quite gruesome. The shape of Water is by no means a bad movie, it's a good one that will no doubt hold your attention, but the problem
- at least my problem - is that you sense that the movie is desperately trying
to *say* something, no doubt something of great importance. In interviews the
director himself mentioned the refugee crisis. In his words this was a
Hollywood movie made by an immigrant. True of course, but I don't care for
messages, at least not in movies. Messages belong in bottles, and if I need
one, I pick one up at the seashore.
If you'll
look past the gloss, you'll notice that The Shape of Water is a rather empty
audience pleaser that is not as original as it may seem. But it's wonderfully
acted and beautifully made. Sally Hawkins is sweet and winsome (you can't think
of anybody else in this role) and the creature looks alive, will never give you
the idea you're looking at the proverbial 'man in a suit'. And the sugary
message will no doubt please moviegoers and Academies. Four Oscars you say?
Thought so.
⭐⭐½
Dir: Guillermo del Toro - Cast: Sally Hawkins (Elisa), Michael Shannon (Strickland), Richard Jenkins (Giles), Octavia Spencer (Zelda), Michael Stuhlbarg (Dimitri Mosenkov/Dr. Robert Hoffstetler), Nigel Bennett (Mihalkov), Lauren Lee Smith (Elaine Strickland), John Kapelos (Mr. Arzoumanian), Martin Roach (Brewster)
The movie,
not the TV-show. It was a smash hit in theatres when I was a teenager and we
all went to see it, even when we didn't have the right age (it had an '18
rating'). Today, half a century later, it's still an entertaining movie, but
it's hard to understand why an entire generation went raving mad about it.
MASH is set
during the Korean war (1950-1953), but the subtext is the war in Vietnam. The raunchy
jokes, the haircuts and moustaches are all Sixties, not Fifties. Donald
Sutherland and Elliot Gould are Hawkeye and Trapper John, surgeons in a Mobile
Army Surgical Hospital (hence the title). They are not passionate about the war, but dedicated to
saving people's lives. They reject protocol and view those who respect it with
cold contempt. Sutherland and Gould look and behave like hippies and the growing
protests against the Vietnam War must have helped the movie a lot: it was
interpreted as a protest to America's military operations in the Far East. Mash
was anti-establishment, Mash was counterculture, Mash was ahead of its time. At least we thought it was all these things.
The movie is
a collection of vignettes, with hardly any coherent narrative. Director Robert
Altman realized his episodic
movie needed more structure and therefore added a series of speaker
announcements to connect the different episodes. Those announcements are
occasionally funny, but don't really solve the problem: the whole thing still
feels rather disjointed.
As said, Mash
is still enjoyable, the episodic action has a nice flow and the actors are very
good. Sutherland and Gould underplay their roles, which suits the material very
well, and Sally Kellerman is a delight as Major Margaret 'Hotlips' Houlihan, the
straitlaced, yet lascivious nurse who is the obvious target of many of the
boys' practical jokes. But there's this feeling that it belongs to another era. Above all, it's not as funny as it used to be. Mash was an
immensely popular movie and the raunchy jokes - like Hotlip's infamous shower
scene - seem to have influenced directors of sex comedies, a popular subgenres
from the first half of the Seventies. What used to be daring and outrageously funny
may now give you the idea that you're watching one the entries in the long
running Porky's series.
⭐⭐⭐½
1970 - Dir: Robert Altman - Cast: Donald Sutherland (Hawkeye), Elliot Gould (Trapper John), Sally Kellerman (Hotlips), Tom Skerritt (Duke), Robert Duvall (Major Burns), Roger Bowen (Lt.-Col. Blake), Jo Ann Pflug (Dish), Gary Burghoff (Radar)
One of
Belmondo's better movies from the Seventies.At first glance it looks like a sequel to L'Homme de Rio, the spoofy espionage
flick he had made a decade earlier (with the same director), but Le Magnifique
goes one step further: Belmondo not only plays the superspy, but also the
author who created him, turning the movie into a *spoof of a spoof*.
Belmondo is
François Merlin, a social pariah who has written 42 pulp novels about a super
hero called Bob St. Clair. François has modeled Bob after himself, but in his
fantasy world Bob is of course everything his creator is not: he's the epitome of courage and charm, an
infallible action hero and a lady killer. François can't pay his bills and
is madly in love with his neighbor, Christine, a sociology student (played by
Jacqueline Bisset!), who has no eyes for him. In the novels Christine has
become Tatiana, Bob's lover and side-kick ...
Veering
between François's fantasy world and his everyday life, the film not only parodies
the espionage genre à la James Bond, but also Belmondo's own screen persona. The
script is a bit of a mishmash, which is no wonder if you know its genesis: It was
co-written by director de Broca and Francis Veber (best known for comedies like La Chèvre and Les Compères, both starring Gérard Depardieu and Pierre Richard),
but the two couldn't agree on some aspects of the story (most of them related
to Jacqueline Bisset's character) and eventually a script doctor was hired to finish the job (*1). Some of the gory jokes may look
tasteless today, but they were meant to poke fun at the blood-spattered cinema
à la Peckinpah that was very popular in those days. Overall Le Magnifique is quite
funny, occasionally even touching. And Jolie Jacqueline is pure eye candy.
⭐⭐⭐
Note:
* (1)
According to some sources Italian actor Vittorio Caprioli also contributed to
the final script. To avoid any
possible legal action by one of the people concerned, nobody - not even De
Broca and Veber - was credited for his work.
1973 - Dir:
Philippe De Broca - Cast: Jean-Paul Belmondo (François/Bob St. Clair), Jacqueline Bisset (Christine/Tatiana), Vittorio
Caprioli (Charron/Karpof), Jean Lefèbvre, Hubert Deschamps, Hans Meyer - Music: Claude Bolling
