Monsters

2010 | USA | Directed by Gareth Edwards

Logline: After a returning space probe has inadvertently deposited alien organisms on Earth, a journalist reluctantly agrees to escort a tourist through the infected zone to safety.

A truly remarkable endeavour; An ex-pat Englishman shooting an American feature movie with almost no script, only two actors (the rest of the cast are real people being used as featured extras), no storyboard, a skeleton crew, shot entirely on location in a non-English speaking country. The result is a modern classic; ordinary boy meets ordinary girl amidst extraordinary times in unfamiliar landscape, laced with intrigue and danger, melancholy and ultimately a profound sense of tragedy, despite the thread of connection and possibility of love.

Scoot McNairy plays Andrew Kaulder, a twenty-something American photojournalist in Mexico, hoping for the scoop of his career thus far (capturing one of the monstrous alien creatures within the infected zone, or victims - especially dead children). He’s instructed to locate his boss’s daughter, Samantha (Whitney Able), who’s roughly the same age and on a vacation of sorts, and bring her safely back home across the US border. Kaulder isn’t too happy to be pulled from his potentially lucrative opportunity into a rescue mission. He finds Sam with an injured wrist in a local hospital, and they embark on the journey north.

What begins as a road movie transforms into an elusive science fiction thriller, and ends abruptly as a romantic drama. But there is a deep sadness that permeates the narrative. This is instigated in a prologue sequence depicting the US military on a search and rescue mission, which culminates in an airstrike on one of the massive alien “octopus-spider” creatures, which involves Kaulder and Samantha as casualties. This isn’t immediately apparent, but can be confirmed upon repeat viewing.

Apart from the superb performances from McNairy and Able (and the great work elicited from the non-professionals), what makes Monsters such a powerful and intelligent movie is Gareth Edwards’ approach to tone and atmosphere. The narrative isn’t so interested in the bigger picture, although that is addressed, albeit ironically, even cryptically, by the movie’s title, but by the little moments within scenes, the nuances of the characters' expressions, through body language and reflection of thought. This is one of the most moving and unassuming love stories I’ve ever seen, exquisitely heightened by Jon Hopkins beautifully atmospheric, hugely emotive, ambient electronic score.

The vivid cinematography is often raw and urgent, and in places beautiful, even mesmerizing. Gareth Edwards not only camera-operated (on a consumer-level digital camera) and edited, but also designed all the CGI effects, including the amazing creature design, and the clever adjusting of existing signage, plus adding military vehicles, ruined buildings, etc. The dreamy mood and languid pace of the movie (although it's not a long film) may be uninteresting to viewers expecting a horror-action picture, but it is precisely this unusual hybrid of elements (especially for a Hollywood-looking movie, and I mean that in the best possible way) that makes Monsters such an affecting experience, both emotionally and psychologically. Not only my favourite movie of 2010, but it has secured a place as one of my very favourite movies of all-time.

Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno

L’enfer d’Henri-Georges Clouzot | France | 2009 | Directed by Serge Bromberg & Ruxandra Medrea

Logline: A documentary about the making of an ill-fated feature by a legendary French director and starring a legendary Austrian actress.

French director Henri-Georges Clouzot had an illustrious career, with two brilliant movies in particular; The Wages of Fear and Diabolique. In 1964 he began work on what promised to be his most adventurous and profound piece, Inferno, a study of jealousy and madness. It was a big budget affair and was to utilize a plethora of wildly inventive camera and photographic techniques in order to capture the internal machinations of the lead male character; his psychological breakdown and descent into paranoid, irrational behaviour as he becomes convinced his gorgeous young wife is cheating on him.

Serge Reggiani was cast as suspicious Marcel the husband and Romy Schneider was cast as his carefree wife Odette. Jean-Claude Bercq was cast as Martineau, the handsome temptation, while Dany Carrel was cast as the sly fox flaunting herself in between. After weeks of test-shoots and experimentation with lens and gels and projections and all manner of cinema tricks principal photography got under way on location at a stunning hotel riverside resort with nearby aqueduct and railway line.

Clouzot, being the meticulous perfectionist that he was, had painstakingly storyboarded the entire movie, not an entirely unusual process in the mid-60s, but Clouzot made sure his camera compositions matched the storyboards precisely. He employed three different camera crews, but was reluctant to leave one set-up to go to another in case the one he left wasn’t perfectly realised. Quickly the production got behind schedule. Reggiani began to have clashes with the director, Clouzot would shout back. One simple shot would take a whole day to shoot. Clouzot would then insist on re-shooting.

185 cans of film later and Reggiani walked off the production claiming illness, but in reality it was despair and frustration, and Clouzot had replaced him with Jean-Louis Tritignant (although he didn’t even screen test). Shortly later Clouzot suffered a heart attack. That was the end of Inferno. Clouzot only made one other feature before dying in 1977. His wife held the archived rolls of film captive finally disclosing them to the public in 2005.

This superb and fascinating documentary-cum-reconstruction features several key players from the original production talking candidly about the experience of working on the movie. Also two contemporary actors, Berenice Bejo and Jacques Gamblin read from the original script, to extrapolate from the existing original scenes which were shot, but without sound. It’s a crying shame Romy Schneider wasn’t able to offer her own thoughts (she died tragically in 1982 aged 44), as the documentary uses her seemingly co-operative presence (despite her reputation as a prima donna) from the movie as a focus point. Such a radiant, exquisite beauty she was, in a way this doco is a beautiful tribute - a paean - to her.

Who knows how well Inferno would have turned out, but certainly the extravagant, expressionistic, prismatic use of cinema techniques including the juxtaposition of black and white for the main story and colour reversal for the sequences depicting Marcel’s hallucinatory madness would have ensured the movie a firm place in cult classic history. The colour footage, in particular shots of Romy bathing, the turquoise water against her flawless tan skin just looked sublime. That fact that the movie was never finished makes it all the more tantalizing.

Clouzot’s widow sold the rights to Inferno to another famous French director, Claude Chabrol in 1992 and two years later he made his own version of the movie starring Emmanuel Beart and Francois Cluzet. I must check it out as I admire Beart’s work, and I’m curious as to how provocative Chabrol’s version is considering how provocative Clouzot’s was going to be, in terms of raw sensuality and uncompromising narrative structure.

Incendies

Canada/France | 2010 | Directed by Denis Villeneuve

Logline: The perplexing request of a mother’s will sends her adult son and daughter into the dark heart of the Middle East to discover their tangled roots amidst hatred and love.

The French word “incendies” translates roughly as “destruction by fire” or “scorched”. And indeed, this is a searing, slow-burn drama that quietly crackles like a murder mystery, blisters like a thriller, and scars like the best tragedies of love and despair. Yet it also offers a unusual sense of reward, a kind of baptism by the flames of inhumanity that results in a movie that has you emotionally battered and bruised, but complete.

Incendies tells two journeys and runs their narrative concurrently, jumping back and forth between two timelines. There is the path of discovery a brother and sister are forced to take after they are read their mother’s last wishes. Two envelopes reveal a father they thought was dead, and a brother they didn’t know existed. Jeanne (Melissa Desormeaux Poulin) and Simon (Maxim Gaudette) will only be granted their mother’s burial rights by her notary (Remy Girard) once they’ve solved this enigmatic “inheritance”.

The second narrative arc is that of their mother Nawal (Lubna Azabal), her story from the hardships of her young adult life to her posthumous mind games. She is revealed as an exceptional woman who endured the most heart-wrenching twists of fate, right up to her final days. Jeanne and Simon must travel into a harsh and unforgiving landscape, an unnamed Middle Eastern country (Beirut?) where their mother struggled to survive.

Incendies is a study of violence and resilience. Denis Villeneuve elicits stunning performances from his three leads, especially Luban Azabal, a tour-de-force from her. There is a stark and desolate beauty to the mise-en-scene, cinematography and score. Each scene builds on the last taking the audience deeper into this intriguing, but ominous family mystery. There is a brooding sense of menace that lingers through much of the second half of the movie.

Based on a play by Wajdi Mouawad, Denis Villeneuve has fashioned a superbly cinematic adaptation with striking imagery and a powerfully affecting mood. Politics riddles the movie, but never does it feel like propaganda or a socio-political lecture. There is complexity, nothing is black and white, and there is a beautiful narrative core that transcends any language limitations. Incendies delivers its dual stories with minimal dialogue.

Incendies is harrowing, but ultimately a movie of rare fractured beauty. Denis Villeneuve made one of my favourite French-Canadian movies of the past twenty years with Maelstrom (2000), with Incendies he tackles a similar sense of loneliness and quest for knowledge, but bravely ventures outside of his comfort zone; in geography, origin, and language.

Withnail and I

UK | 1986 | Directed by Bruce Robinson

Logline: It’s 1969 and two disheveled, unemployed London actors decide to spend a rejuvenating weekend in the country only to have their escapade turn into a series of embarrassing incidents and disasters.

"We want the finest wines available to humanity. And we want them here, and we want them now!"

Quite frankly I think Bruce Robinson’s semi-autobiographical yarn is one of a rare handful of perfect screenplays. It’s also one of the most moving and affecting films about friendship. And it also happens to be exquisitely funny. I’ve watched this movie more times than any other, except maybe Blade Runner, Apocalypse Now, and Alien.

Story goes that Robinson has circulating a manuscript for a novel he’d written, based on his experiences with a fellow thespian and raving alcoholic named Vivian (whom the character of Withnail is based on). The script ended up in the hands of George Harrison who decided it was suitable for his Handmade Films production company. Robinson was then offered the director’s role. He’d never directed anything before.

During principal photography producers who were viewing some of the rushes complained that there weren’t any gags, and that the movie wasn’t going to be funny enough. They wanted Robinson off the picture. Bruce became enraged, insisting that the comedic effect was cumulative, and based on character, not one-liners (although the movie is endlessly quotable). He was kept on, only after demanding that the producers were not allowed on set under pain of death.

The casting is sensational. Paul McGann is terrific as Marwood (never actually named in the movie and credited only as “… and I”), the more earnest  and prospective of the pair, whilst Richard E. Grant’s portrayal of Withnail is a calibrated stroke of genius. As crazy as it seems Grant was a teetotaler, yet delivers arguably the finest depiction of a desperate drunk ever put to celluloid. Then there’s Michael Elphick’s wily poacher Jake (“I’ve been watching you, prancing like a tit, you need working on lad!”), Ralph Brown’s irrepressible drug fiend Danny (“If I spike you, you’ll know you’ve been spoken to!”), and last, but not least, Richard Griffith’s blisteringly camp Uncle Monty (“There is, you’ll agree, a certain je ne sais quoi oh, so very special about a firm, young carrot!”).

Apparently Daniel Day-Lewis was offered the role of Withnail, but declined (he’s great, but no). Kenneth Branagh was tested (eeek!), as was a young Bill Nighy (interesting). In the end, there’s no one else who could’ve pulled off what Grant did with the role. And McGann was the perfect foil.

I could describe the elements in Withnail and I like a beautiful marriage. Every scene compliments the last, every line of dialogue is pitch-perfect, every nuance of character shimmers, and every moment is to be savoured like a 1953 Margeaux or thrown back like a pair of quadruple whiskies and a pair of pints. The original score by David Dundas and Rick Wentworth is magical, and there’s the now infamously inspired use of two Jimi Hendrix tracks; All Along the Watchtower and Voodoo Chile (Slight Return), which prompted the Hendrix family estate to change their licensing policy because they were dismayed over the continued association with drug culture.

Superbly filmed (the location shooting in the Lakeside District is highly memorable, especially in the scene where Marwood in his magnificent leather trench coat steps out of Crow Cragg cottage into the frosty early morning air and has a look around), and deeply poignant, Withnail and I lingers like vintage wine and fond memories. Poor Bruce Robinson has never made any money from the movie, and to rub salt in his wounds, it has one of the strongest cult followings of any English comedy, challenging even Monty Python.

I could write a bloody thesis on this movie – maybe one day I will – but for the meantime I’ll simply bookend my review with another reference to the movie’s key themes of fraternity and loneliness, streaked with irony, where Withnail turns to a few bedraggled, disinterested zoo wolves and recites Act II from Hamlet; “I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth …”

NB: Feel free to try the associated drinking game. You drink whatever and whenever they do.

Dead Man's Shoes

UK | 2004 | Directed by Shane Meadows

Logline: A soldier returns to a small country town to seek revenge on the local wastrels who amused themselves years earlier by teasing, humiliating, and terrorising his younger mentally handicapped brother.

A deeply sombre and disturbing tale, more resonant than a dozen hack horror movies, yet inhabits its own nightmare realm; a dramatic thriller of controlled rage which inexorably reaches critical mass and finally explodes with a precision that fractures into the abstract.

Shane Meadows is a unique talent, having proved himself with several gritty and powerfully emotive dramas each laced with a unique streak of coal black humour. Dead Man’s Shoes is his darkest film in tone and execution, yet there is humour to be found lurking uncomfortably just below the movie’s surface. Like the best practitioners of cinema comedy, Meadows understands that the most intelligent and resonant comedic edge comes from vividly-etched characterisation and irony, rather than forced gags or throwaway lines of pithy dialogue.

Paddy Considine, who co-wrote the screenplay with Meadows, is revelatory as Richard the returned paratrooper - simultaneously protagonist and antagonist - with one hell of a bone to pick. His brother Anthony (Toby Kebbell) floats around anxious to see what Richard’s true agenda is as he loiters around the township's watering holes observing the wideboy shenanigans; the men who appear absurd, yet dangerous and unstable. But their disparate energy is nothing against the velocity of a troubled, trained assassin, a man on a rogue mission.

On what appears to be a very modest budget, Dead Man’s Shoes is both artful and economical in its narrative with its striking, yet fluid, unassuming camerawork. A superb cast support Considine’s knockout central performance, but of particular note are Kebbell and Gary Stretch as the charismatic gang leader Sonny. The soundtrack of mostly modern folk and western songs is another standout, with the addition of some broody electronic stuff from Aphex Twin and Laurent Garnier during a pivotal scene of drug-induced mental disintegration.

All these elements, handled with consummate skill, push the movie into strangely mythical territory etching a concise parable about the violence of the mind, body and soul. Revenge is a savage, unruly beast capable of sudden and extreme violence, leaving emotionally discordant repercussions lingering.

Like a deconstructed merging of slasher and vigilante flick Dean Man's Shoes takes all the familiar elements and turns them on their heads. Then severs the head, and kicks the body in the gutter. This is the kind of terrifying darkness that post traumatic stress disorder threatens to unleash, and in this case, explodes into a Jacobean-style tragedy, as a deeply-scarred soul furiously wipes the blood of rage and redemption from his disturbed eyes.

Bound

US | 1996 | Directed by The Wachowski Brothers

Logline: An ex-con and her new lover concoct a scheme to steal a large stash of cash from the lover's gangster boyfriend.

Bound is a neo-noir, a modern gangster tale, told in tight economical form with lashings of style and wit, and liberal splashings of ultra-violence. There’s also some hot and heavy petting between the moll and the femme fatale, which gives Bound a chic lipstick lesbian meets butch dyke edge. A bold move, but the brothers, in their feature debut, pull it off.

Corky (Gina Gershon) is an ex-con hired to work in an apartment as a plumber. She meets Violet (Jennifer Tilly) who lives in a swish pad next door with her mobster boyfriend Caesar (Joe Pantoliano), who launders money for the Mafia. The two women begin a clandestine affair and Violet convinces Corky to help her steal $2,000,000 that Caesar has in custody before he gives it back to Mafia boss Gino Marzone (Richard C. Sarafian). As the money is already stolen loot, it can only go pear-shaped from there. The long arm of Murphy's Law reaches in to the crime scene and grabs the misfits by the short and curlies, and proceedings begin to go seriously awry.

Bound is a superbly constructed screenplay that slowly tightens the knot and screw in classic Hitchockian fashion, except this is more lurid and nastier than what Hitchcock would’ve been able to get away with, although it owes much to the master of suspense in its visual stylistics and plot devices. Even the uber-stylish opening title credit sequence would have made Hitchcock titles regular Saul Bass nod with warm approval.

The movie boasts sensational work from the cast, especially the three leads; Gershon, Tilly and Pantaliano. Gershon delivers one of her finest performances (along with her other leather turn in Prey for Rock & Roll). Tilly - whom normally annoys the pants off of me with her whispery high-pitch - is perfect as the mischievous seductress. Other top notch support comes from Christopher Meloni (TV’s Law & Order: SVU) as obnoxious, hotheaded Jonnie and John Ryan as the unctuous hitman Mickey.

The movie takes place almost entirely within the two apartments (Violet’s pad and Corky’s flat). There is an early scene establishing Corky’s nonchalant swagger in a dyke bar where she tries to pick up an older, more butch woman, but has a “cop” intervene. Curiously, the older butch woman is played by literary luminary Susie Bright, who also served as “technical consultant” (read: lesbian supervisor). At scene's end Corky delivers one of the movie’s many memorable lines: “When you get tired of Cagney & Lacey, find me.”

The camerawork and production design in Bound is marvelous. From the disorientating opening set-up tracking down through a wardrobe full of plush coats and jackets to the pulling out of a snub-nosed .38 Special in extreme close-up, with a tumbler of whiskey beside it, to the very conscious decision of using mostly black and white art direction makes Bound a most artful noir construction. The image of deep red blood splashing over thick white paint is as visceral and perverse as it is darkly sensual.

Bound is a movie that has aged well, like a smoky whiskey, and, like any great cult projection, rewards from repeat viewings. Grab a squeeze, and a malty slug, ease back into the Chesterfield, and wrap yourself up in the silky forbidden.

Breaking The Waves

Denmark/Sweden/France/Netherlands/Norway/Iceland/Spain | 1996 | Directed by Lars Von Trier

Logline: A naive young newlywed is forced to adjust to adult life within the confines of a strict religious community.

I first saw this movie by myself at the Wellington Film Festival in New Zealand after it was first released. It was the final film of the festival with a festival party scheduled directly after the screening. It was a full house in the Embassy cinema (around 800 people), and during the last fifteen or so minutes I was sobbing. So were the people to left and right of me. In fact I believe most of the audience was in tears. 

Straight after the screening I staggered out into the foyer and ordered a straight whiskey from the bar, then wondered around in a daze. Someone asked if I was alright and I replied that I had just seen Breaking The Waves and was an emotional wreck. From memory I didn’t last long at the after party I was too fragile. 

I finally watched the movie for a second time a few years ago and it still packs a huge emotional wallop, perhaps not quite the sledgehammer I was anticipating, but then I knew what to expect. Part of the movie’s incredible strength and potency lies in not knowing what happens and with this in mind I am very reluctant to provide any kind of detailed synopsis. Still, half an hour in I turned to my fiancé and said somberly, “This is going to ruin me again.”

It is the mid-70s and Bess McNeil (Emily Watson) is a naïve young woman living in a very strict Calvinist community in northern Scotland. She has met a Danish man, Jan (Stellan Skarsgård), who works on an oil rig, and the two of them are married at the beginning of the movie. 

Bess’s older sister-in-law Dodo (Katrin Cartlidge) looks out for Bess (Dodo has been hardened by the death of her own husband, Bess’s brother), as she knows Bess to be a very impressionable and emotionally vulnerable woman. Some would say Bess is stupid, but her psyche is more complex than that. Bess’s parents are deeply religious and are concerned about her union with an outsider. 

Lars Von Trier, who wrote the screenplay, is a true maverick, notable for his experimental Dogma manifesto, he started pushing the boundaries of mainstream filmmaking with this movie. There are many elements in Breaking The Waves which he would use when formulating the Dogma rules; the use of entirely handheld camera (apart from the chapter cards), the extensive use of improvised acting, using only available light, and the reliance on a raw, uncompromising presentation of the narrative. 

Von Trier applies a Brechtian approach with the character of Bess frequently breaking the fourth wall (the camera) by gazing into the lens at various moments during the course of the movie. This can be interpreted as Bess’s contact with God, along with her almost “saintly” aura reflecting an inner voice which guides and cajoles her. 

Playwright Bertolt Brecht also used tableaux in his plays and Von Trier employs a similar convention with the chapter cards which punctuate the movie. There are eight of these over the course of the two-and-a-half hour film, each one a stunning landscape composition which looks like a painting, until you notice the subtle movements of water, cloud and light. These chapter stops are accompanied by an excerpt of music from the period, each one loaded with passion and melancholy for maximum emotional impact (I remember tears rolling down my cheeks whilst Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and David Bowie’s Life On Mars were used).

Breaking The Waves is a film of devastating power. The themes of love, grief and hope are treated in a most unique and extraordinary way; one long beautiful tragic poem, but presented like a cinematic novel. The performance of Emily Watson is astounding. Quite possibly one of the most brilliantly sustained performances of the past twenty years or more (interesting to note that Helena Bonham Carter was first cast as Bess, but as great an actor as Carter is I doubt she would’ve been able to capture the unbridled innocence that Watson does). Stellan Skarsgård (who would go on to a very successful international career) and the late Katrin Cartlidge are excellent, as is Adrian Rawlins as Dr. Richardson. 

Apart from Emily Watson, the other star of the movie is, probably, my favourite director of photography, Robby Muller. His work on this movie is outstanding. This was one of the early features to be shot entirely on video. During the final post-production stages the video edit was recorded back onto 35mm film, giving the movie its striking grainy look, with the exception of the chapter cards which were obviously treated in a more ethereal, painterly fashion. 

If you’ve never seen Breaking The Waves prepare yourself for an intense emotional journey. Resist learning too much of what happens before you watch it. It is a film that demands an open mind, an empathic heart, a curious soul. And a box of tissues. In one light a revisionist melodrama, but more emphatically I’d champion Breaking The Waves as a true masterpiece of modern cinema. 

Frank

Ireland | 2014 | Directed by Lenny Abrahamson

Logline: A wannabe songwriter inadvertently joins an eccentric band and attempts to lead them to fame.

Loosely based on the character known as Frank Sidebottom by late British comedian Chris Sievy, but probably also inspired by Sievy’s band that was on the fringes of the late-70s Manchester music scene, Frank tells the tale of young Jon (Domhnall Gleeson), an aspiring keyboardist songwriter, stuck in a rut, until he happens to be in the right place at the right time (or maybe the wrong place at the wrong time) and finds himself hired by Don (Scoot McNairy), the band manager of Soronprfbs (yes, intentionally unpronounceable) after witnessing the band’s keyboardist attempting to commit suicide.

Enter: Frank (Michael Fassbender), the band’s enigmatic frontman, with a large papier-mâché fake head. Frank is a genius, it seems. But initially not perhaps so tortured as Don, or Frank’s possessive sidekick Carla (Maggie Gyllenhaal), and synth/Theremin player. Two other band members, drummer (Nana (Carla Azar) and bassist Baraque (Francois Civil), sift in the background, but say very little. This is Frank’s band, and despite Jon’s best intentions, the left-field musical musings are very much from Frank’s twisted mind.

This is a drama with a strong sense of black humour, but there is an element of mystery that permeates much of the movie, simply because Frank never removes his fake head. Just who is this person really? Is he as crazy as he seems, or is he saner than everyone else? Certainly Don, who was institutionalised for fucking mannequins, and Clara, whose abject disliking of Jon leads them into hot water, seem the more unhinged. Jon abandons his ordinary life to spend months on end #livingthedream with the band in a remote cabin whilst they attempt to record an album.

As Jon grows a beard and continues to blog, tweet, and youtube his experiences he seeks further exposure for the band. The social media tagging pays off and the band find themselves heading to the famous SXSW festival in New Mexico to perform. But just like that lonely tuft of armchair fabric, things will become frayed. There will be tears before bedtime.

Abrahamson has made a delightful movie; part off-beat character study, part zany comedy, but most intriguingly, a drama that deals with mental illness, loneliness, and that dangling carrot called #elusivefame without ever once feeling earnest, ponderous, arrogant, or patronising. The screenplay is Jon Ronson and Peter Straughan. Ronson was one of the members in Frank Sidebottom’s original band; so much of what unfolds on screen must surely have been inspired from his own first-hand experiences. It’s a great script with cracking dialogue.

Hats off to the cast for all-round great performances, especially Domhnall Gleeson and Maggie Gyllenhaal, but a special nod to Michael Fassbender who animates the fake head to perfection through his subtle body language. The few original band songs, penned by Stephen Rennicks, especially the haunting I Love You All, are superb. All of them were performed live by the actors. Frank rocks.

Frank screens as part of the 61st Sydney Film Festival, Tuesday 10th June, 7pm, Event Cinema 4.

Jodorowsky's Dune

USA/France | 2013 | Directed by Frank Pavich

Logline: The story of cult film director Alejandro Jodorowsky's ambitious but ultimately doomed film adaptation of the seminal science fiction novel.

I’ve been waiting for this documentary for many, many moons. I didn’t know if it would be made. But it has. Thank you Frank Pavich. Thank you for delivering one of the most fascinating and inspiring documentaries in a long time. The story of Mexican director Jodorowsky’s attempt to make the ultimate science fiction movie from what is often regarded as the ultimate science fiction novel (arguable, yes, but undeniably one of the most acclaimed, respected, influential, and certainly the biggest-selling sf novel).

Frank Herbert’s Dune was published in 1965. Less than ten years later Jodorowsky  was looking for his next project with French producer Michel Seydoux who had been very impressed with the directors previous works, El Topo and The Holy Mountain. Alejandro decided it was Dune he wished to make into a movie, even though he hadn’t read the epic 400-page novel (did he ever read it??) Hollywood sold the filmmakers the rights for very little (probably because they suspected they would never be able to pull it off), and so Jodorowsky, determined to make the a mind-expanding piece of cinema unlike anything ever made before, set off on his quest to find his band of spiritual warriors.

Jodorowsky’s version of Dune would be like an LSD trip, but without actually dropping the lysergic acid. His vision would be an extraordinary psychotropic experience that would hypnotise, mesmerise, and transform its audience’s consciousness. First crew secured was Jean “Moebius” Giraud, the brilliant comic book artist, famous for his Heavy Metal strips and numerous graphic novels. Not only did Moebius design much of the costume design and look of the characters, but also he storyboarded the entire 300-page script to Jodorowsky’s exact descriptions.

Next on board was Dan O’Bannon, who moved to Paris to begin work on pre-visualising the movie’s special effects. Then Swiss surrealist H. R. Giger was employed to create the look of House Harkonnen and its people. British sf illustrator Chris Foss joined the team to design spacecraft and further architecture, as did Pink Floyd to score some of the movie’s music. The cast included Salvador Dali (to be paid $100,000 for each minute of screen time), Mick Jagger, Udo Kier, Amanda Leer, and Jodorowsky’s 12-year-old son Brontis, whom he (cruelly) forced to train in various combat skills for numerous hours every day for two years!

Fifteen million dollars was what the movie’s budget demanded. Jodorowsky and Seydoux had their complete storyboard and all the design sketches and paintings bound into an awesome book, which was then photocopied, and the two men did the rounds of the major Hollywood studies pitching their project. The studies were impressed with everything, except the director whom they deemed too crazy to risk all those millions on a three-hour art film.

Cult directors Richard Stanley and Nicolas Winding Refn are included in those who offer their thoughts on the plight of Jodorowsky’s Dune, but it is the 84-year-old man himself who provides the documentary’s cosmic aura of fascination. His English may be broken, but his communication has its own articulate clarity. One can’t help but feel utterly inspired about the creative process, despite how utterly disappointing it is that his extraordinary vision never came to cinematic fruition. The movie’s tagline may be “The story of the greatest science fiction movie never made,” but after you’ve watched his doco you’ll agree this is simply the tale of the greatest MOVIE never made.”

Big props to Kurt Stenzel’s awesome score, and it must be also noted, just as various interviewees mention, that much of Jodorowsky’s vision for Dune has fragmented and been absorbed into numerous other science fiction movies of the past forty years. The influence this shelved project has had is as epic as the source material. Jodorowsky’s Dune is the mélange you need to fuel your creative machine.

Jodorowsky’s Dune screens as part of the 61st Sydney Film Festival, Saturday 14th June, 2:15pm, State Theatre

Unlawful Killing

UK | 2011 | Directed by Keith Allen

Logline: A documentary about the allegedly conspiratorial killing of Diana, Princess of Wales, and her lover Dodi Fayed.

Actor-cum-director Keith Allen, who also happens to be the father of pop star Lily Allen, took a gamble, a big gamble. After making an hour long television doco on business magnate Mohammad Al-Fayed, father of Dodi Fayed, Allen returned to the subject matter of Al-Fayed’s dead son; more precisely the conspiracy surrounding the death of Diana, the Princess of Wales, on 31 August August 1997 and the subsequent Royal Inquest.

In Britain an unlawful killing is the verdict that is delivered by an inquest into the death of a person by one or several unknown persons, specifically that the killing was done without lawful excuse, is in breach of criminal law, and, most importantly, that the inquest does not name any person(s) as responsible. Most cases occur within a military context.

Whether you believe the conspiracy theories or not, Unlawful Killing paints a pretty damning portrait of the Royal family, especially Prince Philip whose adolescence is revealed as a Nazi sympathizer, or at the very least guilty-by-guardianship-association, his, it appears, is quite the sociopathic, racist personality, or worse. I’ve never paid much attention to the Royal family, but after watching this documentary I felt very saddened at how Diana Spencer became caught like a butterfly in an enormous web of deceit, betrayal, ridicule, cruelty, and finally, murder.

I use the term “allegedly” loosely, only because no one was ever brought to justice. The French paparazzi were heavily criticized for aggressively pursuing Diana and Dodi on the night they died. Many wanted them used as scapegoats. The truth will probably never surface, just like the deaths of Marilyn Monroe and the assassination of President Kennedy remain as cloudy as ever.

Lawyers insisted on 87 changes to the finished documentary before Allen would be “safe” to release it. He refused, and the film was not released in the UK. Allen hoped the American market would be more interested, given their perverse fascination with conspiracy theories, but alas, the doco failed to pick up any distribution for fear of possible litigation.

Instead, Unlawful Killing floats in the purgatory waters of raw truths and dangerous deception, the perfect limbo for the Sydney Underground Film Festival, which is where the documentary screened in 2013, with the festival directors muffling quiet anxiety that dark forces might descend on the festival cinema and seize the film on the grounds of subversive intent.

And it is a powerful and compelling documentary put together with intelligence and wit, punctuated with candid interviews from those involved in and around the official inquest, which, absurdly, took place nearly ten years after the event. It’s the inquest of the inquest, if you will. And while one can argue the documentary, funded by Mohammad Al-Fayed, is a vehicle driven from the backseat by the grieving father to push his overwhelming belief about a terrible cover-up, one cannot deny that there is something very dark and insidious behind the glittering veneer of the Royal family.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

USA | 1974 | Directed by Tobe Hooper

Logline: Whilst on a visit to a relative's old house several friends become victim to a strange, murderous family from a nearby property.

“The film which you are about to see is an account of the tragedy which befell a group of five youths, in particular Sally Hardesty and her invalid brother, Franklin. It is all the more tragic in that they were young. But, had they lived very, very long lives, they could not have expected nor would they have wished to see as much of the mad and macabre as they were to see that day. For them an idyllic summer afternoon drive became a nightmare. The events of that day were to lead to the discovery of one of the most bizarre crimes in the annals of American history, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.”

One of the most influential modern horror movies ever made, Tobe Hooper’s seminal nightmare continues to shock and amaze audiences with its raw and oppressive atmosphere, its grotesque imagery, and its emotionally visceral tone. Made on the smell of a blood-soaked rag and delivered like a baptism of fire, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre celebrates its 40th anniversary with a 4k digital restoration and inclusion in the 61st Sydney Film Festival (including a special late night Friday Drive-In presentation in Sydney’s western suburbs).

The movie demands a big screen viewing, even though it was only shot on 16mm. It is a cinema master class in narrative efficiency, editing, sound, score, and most importantly, nightmare mood and tone. Hooper had made the firm decision for his second feature to make the subject matter the star, and so, with his screenplay collaborator Kim Henkel, they devised a scenario inspired by the true crimes of the notorious Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein, a necrophile and cannibal.

None of what happens on screen is true, except some of the art direction of the Sawyer family’s home that includes armchairs made of human bones (Ed Gein had a penchant for that kind of interior decoration), but the movie’s presentation exudes an authenticity that makes one’s skin crawl. The low-budget ingenuity, combined with the unctuous shroud of sweat and grime, adds spitting fuel to the nightmare fire.

Originally called Leatherface, then Head Cheese, finally the simple, yet staggeringly effective title The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Yet, only one person is killed with a chain saw; the others are either bludgeoned by sledgehammer or hung on a meat hook. Curiously, Hooper was intended on getting a PG rating (?!), but no amount of cutting back on the on-screen moderate violence could get the MPAA to approve a general exhibition. What was Hooper thinking?! The movie was simply too intense for anything but an R.

Indeed, one of the movie’s extraordinary features is just how little graphic violence is actually depicted for a movie of its intent. Only John Carpenter’s Halloween comes to mind, bearing a similar intensity through minimalism, and another landmark modern horror. Hooper's "violence" is in the cinematic sub-text; the camera angles, the use of sound, the suggestion.

Plucky Marilyn Burns plays Sally, one of the all-time great scream queen final girls, her ordeal reaching a fever pitch during the protracted and incredibly macabre scene in the Sawyer family’s dining room. It is this interior sequence – along with the first reveal of the Sawyer family’s ivy-covered homestead – that lingers long and hard in the mind. The extreme close-ups of Sally’s petrified green eyes should’ve been used in the movie’s poster campaign.

From the disturbing opening montage, flash-photographing the crime scene of the grave-robbing, to the final images of a blood-streaked, hysterical Sally huddled in the back of an escaping ute, whilst an enraged, mentally-retarded freak swings a roaring chain saw around and around in the burning haze of a Texas sunset, Tobe Hooper’s lean, mean killing machine will remain deeply etched in the annals of modern horror history.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre screens as part of the 17th Revelation - Perth International Film Festival, Saturday 12th July, 11:15pm, Luna Cinema.

Boyhood

USA | 2014 | Dircted by Richard Linklater

Logline: The life and times of an American boy aged from 5 until he’s 18-years-old. 

It was inevitable that someone would attempt such an ambitious project and pull it off. I’m glad it was Richard Linklater, as he has such an innate ability to create something out of nothing. Not always, as Before Midnight didn’t impress me, but I love Before Sunrise, and I remember the wonderful fractured resonance his first movie, Slacker, had on my fellow X-Gens and I (I even wore the t-shirt for many years). So now Linklater applies all the dramatic nuances he’s learned over the past twenty years and creates a superlative coming-of-age story of one boy, and the relationships with his immediate family, and a clutch of friends and acquaintances.

This two-and-three-quarter-hour movie long will become the benchmark for coming-of-age flicks, even though there are conventional elements that aren’t dealt with in detail (the losing of his virginity isn’t a narrative priority), and the narrative meanders and weaves. But it is this Linklater cinematic signature that gives Boyhood its magic. Life is just that; a weave along life’s curious and unpredictable path. Sometimes you get what you want, sometimes you don’t, some people are kind, some are assholes, some mountains turn out to be hills, and some puddles turn out to be ditches.

Linklater began filming his "Untitled 12 Year Project" in 2002. His lead actor Ella Coltrane was just seven-years-young. Over the next eleven or so years Linklater got together annually to shoot more footage of his fictional family and friends (although I’d put money on the screenplay being more than a little autobiographical) until eventually his boy, Mason, had become a young man. Childhood and adolescence were complete, Linklater now had the task of editing together a fluid narrative, and he did so brilliantly.

Linklater’s cast his own daughter, Lorelei, as Mason’s older sister Samantha. As one would expect, she lost interest in the project a few years in, and requested her father kill her character off, but Linklater refused. Eventually she regained enthusiasm. The movie’s authenticity would’ve been ruined if any of the characters had actors replaced during filming, and thankfully everyone remained on board for the duration.

The entire unknown support cast delivers bang on performances, whilst Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke, as Mason’s folks, deliver the most endearing performances of their long careers. They don’t change much, but of course Mason and Sam change dramatically. It is their haircuts that punctuate the years gone by. Wisely, Linklater doesn’t add “One Year Later” cards; instead giving subtle clues in his use of source music, and televised news items playing in the background, letting the audience determine the passing of time.

Boyhood’s most profound concept comes right at movie’s end when Mason’s new acquaintance, Nicole (Jessi Mechler) poses the idea that one doesn’t seize the moment, but the moments seize us, and this is precisely what life – the passing of time – is about. Over the past three hours, paced wonderfully, we’ve just watched an impressionable young boy grow into an intelligent young man. It’s a beautiful thing.

Boyhood screens as part of the 61st Sydney Film Festival, Saturday 7 June 11:30am, State Theatre

Taxidermia

Hungary | 2006 | Directed by György Pálfi

Logline: Three generations of dysfunctional men; a lusty, flame-sucking soldier, an obese, champion extreme eater, and a ratty embalmer on an artful perversion.

The themes of copulation, consumption and preservation are studied in perverse, visceral and controversial detail in one of the most outlandish and exceptional tales of a family’s history ever to grace the screen. This is no Fanny and Alexander, although, magic realism does intervene from time to time, Taxidermia is a much darker and more desperate, yet is infused with an elusive lightness of being, an otherworldly zest for life, even at its grimmest.

György Pálfi was interested in taking the shock tactics of porn and horror, and incorporating them into a dramatic, blackly comic narrative so they become less about the self-serving machinations audiences are used to perceiving them as, and become integral parts of a real world, albeit one that still appears surreal and fantastical to a cinema audience. Taxidermia is hard to categorise, which makes it all the more intriguing; it’s essentially a tenebrous comedy, black as midnight on a moonless might.

The narrative triptych begins during WWII with Vendel (Csaba Czene), a hare-lipped soldier stationed at a muddy farmhouse with his lieutenant who treats him poorly. He oogles the farmer’s voluptuous daughters, masturbates and, after falling foul (porcine, to be precise) of the farmer’s wife his superior takes exception and executes extreme prejudice.

 Vendel’s offspring, Kálmán (Gergely Trócsányi) is born with a wee piggy’s tail, which is severed in a circumcision of sorts, and grows to be one of the greatest competition eaters of Eastern Europe and even finds time to romance an equally large, obsessive woman Gizi (Adél Stanczel).

Their son, Lajoska (Marc Bischoff), a rail-thin rodent-like young man, has become an obsessive taxidermist (with a poster of Michael Jackson – Bad on his wall to illustrate celebrity perversion of appearance) who is forced to look after and pander to his gross father’s every need. His father has become a massive blob of flesh who consumes chocolate bars by the thousands, silver wrapper and all. Lajos has to feed his father’s huge competition cats and still manages to find time to service the weird requests of his clientele, like fetuses incased in Lucite.

The movie’s final sequence features Lajos in a final act of self-preservation that would make David Cronenberg wince and smile; body horror taken to a most bizarre and outrageous extreme that makes perfect, hideous sense. Both shocking and hilarious, Pálfi has pushed the boundaries of the parable, the fable, the fairy tale and the art film and melded his own unique sculpture of vulgar sexual/mortal catharsis. Familial soapy warmth gives way grotesque ordered chaos which in turn surrenders to nightmarish domesticity and finally the fragility of existence vs. the longevity of art.

Taxidermia sports fantastic production design, costume, and special effects, the performances are brave and compelling, and the camera work and mise-en-scene is frequently brilliant; Taxidermia has to be seen to be believed. Think Hans Christian Anderson, Gael Garcia Marquez, David Lynch, Dusan Makavejev, Jan Svankmajer and David Cronenberg all in the same dark room listening to each other’s strange and sordid secrets and finding ways to make each other chuckle and gross each other out.

Taxidermia is, without a doubt, one of the most original movies of the past twenty years. But be warned, it is certainly not for the squeamish, or those easily offended. This is transgressive cinema; dark sunshine that burns as it tans. Once seen, never forgotten, and for the more indulgent, it rewards with repeat viewings because of its symbolic, sociological, and satirical layers. Penetrate the orifice of the modern art film and prepare to have your sensibilities regurgitated.

Blade Runner

USA | 1982 | Directed by Ridley Scott

Logline: In Los Angeles, 2019, a cynical and weary detective is coerced into tracking down several dangerous rogue androids, but finds himself confused and dehumanised in the process.

REPLICANT\rep’-li-cant\n. See also ROBOT (antique): ANDROID (obsolete): NEXUS (generic): Synthetic human, with paraphysical capabilities, having skin/flesh culture. Also: Rep, skin job (slang): Off-world use: Combat, high risk industrial deepspace probe. On-world use prohibited. Specifications and quantities ― information classified.

- New American Dictionary © 2016

It’s the flaws in a polished movie that elevate it to the level of rough diamond. Blade Runner is a cosmic gem ground at street level in a wet and filthy social apocalypse of technological ingenuity amidst a wild moral wilderness. Based on Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novella Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, it is widely regarded as one of the most influential sf movies ever made. It also happens to be my very favourite film (although Fellini’s 8½ occasionally comes a-knocking).

Ridley Scott had already made a brilliant and seminal sf movie, Alien, but he jumped back on board the future-noir wagon and delivered another grim and visceral piece of pure and astounding cinema. Keeping the weathered look of Alien, but expanding on his “retro-fitting” concept, Scott had the production design and art department go to town on an existing Hollywood set of downtown New York (originally the movie was to take place in a future Manhattan). The result of Scott’s deft melding of sound and image, combined with Jordan Cronenweth’s stunning cinematography, Douglas Trumbull’s masterful visual effects, and of course, that score by Vangelis, makes Blade Runner so richly atmospheric, so dreamlike and mesmerizing.

There is a melancholy that exudes, most of it through the timeless, exotic electronic score, but much of it comes from actor Rutger Hauer’s career-defining performance as Roy Batty, the self-styled leader of the Nexus-6 Off-world slaves (including 21-year-old Darryl Hannah in her screen debut); advanced flesh and blood robots known as Replicants. Batty has brought his friends back to Earth (under penalty of death, or as the cops call it “retirement”) to join him in his mission to find his maker: their genius geneticist creator, Dr. Eldon Tyrell (Joe Turkell). And when Batty finds him he demands, “I want more life, Father!” Curiously, in the original theatrical version the line was “I want more life, fucker!”, which held an equal resonance.

Harrison Ford has always complained that his character, Deckard, never did any real detective work (he also rates his experience working on the movie as one of his least favourite), yet the investigating was never meant to be that important. Blade Runner is less about the machinations of the law and more about the philosophy of what it is to be human. The beautiful irony that author Dick was interested in, and which Scott hones in the movie, is how Deckard becomes less and less a human as he tries to eliminate the robots that are “more human than human”.

The infamous concept which was strongly hinted at in the original version and the later Director’s Cut and Final Cut, but toned down in the 1982 theatrical version with the tagged-on happy ending, is that Deckard is very likely a prototype Replicant himself, the same kind as his Replicant lover Rachael (Sean Young), both of whom have implanted memories and aren’t aware they’re artificial humans. Philip K. Dick never suggested this intriguing aspect, but Ridley Scott was always adamant. Curiously Harrison Ford thinks otherwise, perhaps just to spite Scott.

Blade Runner works on so many levels, most effectively on a purely visual level, but significantly on an emotional level, which is surprising as it has heavily criticised over the years for being too cold and detached. No doubt the beautiful Vangelis music has a lot to do with the mood and tone, but there is much to be said for the overwhelming sensory experience the movie upholds; Scott’s attention to detail is more evident in Blade Runner than probably any of his other movies, with the exception of his sf-horror masterpiece Alien.

NB: For the record, I'd love to see a re-edit of the Final Cut that inserts all the film’s many deleted scenes and includes footage from the “Work Print”.

State Of Grace

USA | 1990 | directed by Phil Joanou

Logline: An undercover cop returns to his NYC stomping ground in order to bring an Irish-blooded criminal family and associates to justice, but finds the danger too close for comfort.

One of the best gangster flicks set in New York City, Phil Joanou’s blistering tale of corruption, deception and betrayal amidst the noise, squalor and filthy beauty of Hell’s Kitchen, the Irish core of the Big (rotten) Apple, brims with violence and seethes with conviction. It also has a brilliant cast giving superlative performances, many of them at the peak of their game.

Sean Penn, who had come to attention in Taps and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, then stolen the limelight in The Falcon and the Snowman and At Close Range, proved his mettle further in Colors and Casualties of War, but came out with both guns blazing as Terry Noonan, the cop caught in a tortured struggle between doing his job and trying to save his dearest friend, Jackie (Gary Oldman). In the process he re-ignites a love with Jackie’s sister Kathleen (Robin Wright), and becomes the subject of suspicion from Jackie and Kathleen’s older brother, Frankie Flannery (Ed Harris), the Irish mob boss and a cold and ruthless killer.

State of Grace is made with the same attention to detail, attitude and atmosphere as Coppola’s Italian masterwork The Godfather, but it also brings to mind the streetwise, visceral virtuosity of another master of modern cinema, Martin Scorsese (while in the final explosive set-piece the director channels Sam Peckinpah). Joanou had come from a background directing video clips for U2 and Tom Petty. While still at high school he worked on Star Trek: The Motion Picture under John Dykstra and received a Special Visual Consultant credit. After making U2’s concert movie Rattle and Hum the big boys came knocking and Joanou was given the chance to make the movie he wanted.

48-year-old screenwriter Dennis McIntyre wrote just one screenplay before succumbing to stomach cancer during the production of his work. You can feel a sense of personal experience permeating the words of his characters. McIntyre grew up in Hell’s Kitchen, and would’ve seen first hand the loyalty and camaraderie, the brutality and savagery of the lives of Irish and Italian gangsters. Director Joanou does a fantastic job of capturing the bristling energy, the paranoid urgency of Terry, Jackie, Kathleen and Frankie’s relationships.

Of note are some of the superb support actors that surround those key players; John C. Reilly, John Turturro, R.D. Call, Joe Viterelli, and in a tiny, but pivotal scene Burgess Meredith. It’s a dream cast featuring several future legends, many of whom look so damn young when watching the movie now. Gary Oldman threatens to scorch the screen with his incendiary performance as the volatile alcoholic Jackie. He nails the vulnerable intensity of his character with a sledgehammer. Penn and Wright began their tumultuous real-life relationship on the set of this movie. Their chemistry on-screen reflects this.

State of Grace sweats like a motherfucker, yes, it’s full of foul-mouthed diatribes about trying to do what’s right, in the boiling brew of everything that’s wrong; a family torn apart by their own code of crooked ethics. While it might not be of quite the same calibre as Scorsese’s masterpiece Goodfellas (released the same year), the shadow of which it immediately fell under, it is another dynamic and totally assured study of ethnic-American crime and punishment, and is hugely under-rated.

Vampire's Kiss

USA | 1989 | Directed by Robert Bierman

Logline: A Manhattanite publishing executive is visited and bitten by an apparent vampire, a woman he previously slept with, and he starts to exhibit erratic and obnoxious behavior.

One typical night while Peter Loew (Nicolas Cage) is having drinks with colleagues he meets sexy Rachel (Jennifer Beals). He invites her back to his place (bad idea, but he’s none the wiser) and they neck furiously. To be precise, it’s Rachel who necks Peter. The next morning Peter brings her coffee, but Rachel isn’t there. Has Peter imagined her?

Vampire’s Kiss is a weird little movie and brilliant. The screenplay is by Joseph Minion, who also penned another blackly comic, sly tale of urban paranoia: Martin Scorsese’s After Hours. Any comedy that deals with schizophrenia, sexual assault, and murder, is most definitely of a darker hue, and right up my twisted little alley! It also features one of the most mannered performances in Nicolas Cage’s career (the fake pretentious accent alone is eccentric comedy gold!), and yes, that's saying a lot.

Bierman caresses the Big Apple affectionately, even obsessively; the opening establishing montage slyly focuses on the city’s spired skyscrapers; the Empire, the Chrysler, and other inverted architectural “fangs”. There is a sub-text at play about the stresses of modern city life, which the vampire’s curse uses this to great metaphorical effect. Rachel’s vamp is very much the classic femme fatale, and New York City is renowned for encouraging any kind of outlandish public behaviour, or at the very least it is ignored by the locals; so Lowe’s slide into madness is water off his therapist, Dr. Glazer (Elizabeth Ashley)'s back.

It is Loew’s targeting of work colleague Alva (Maria Conchita Alonzo) – “Am I getting tha-roo to you Alva!” – that laces the tale with genuine discomfort, and Loew’s fantasy world colliding with reality that provides the movie with much of its inspired satire. Along with the corporate realm, the classic vampirism elements are mercilessly teased and manipulated; the bat in Loew’s apartment, the sun hurting his eyes, his ruthless arrogance at work, and his desire to act subversively at night whilst dressed in a suit and tie (his undead strut through a packed nightclub dancefloor is yet another example of the movie's marvelous off-kilter humour).

The copper-tinged sensibilities of this corrupt bloodsucker are an acquired taste, but like most movies that feature on this page, it gets better with each viewing. There is much to relish, especially some of the eccentric asides; the mime artists outside Loew’s brownstone, the elderly woman cussing in the office bathrooms, Loew using his upturned sofa as a “coffin”, Loew pulling faces as he runs amok with plastic fangs, and of course, Cage’s haircut and his method acting (infamously he plucks and actually chows down on a real cockroach!)

Not only is Vampire’s Kiss one of my favourite vampire movies, but I firmly stake that it is also one of Cage's finest performances, and the most bitingly-funny comedies of the 80s, up there with the very best of those that have a cumulative effect.

Surviving Desire

USA | 1991 | Directed by Hal Hartley

Logline: A college professor falls for one of his students but becomes a confused emotional wreck when she decides to end the short term relationship not long after they’ve become lovers.

I was a fan of indie darling Hal Hartley’s early movies, and still am, especially his first feature The Unbelievable Truth. But it is this featurette - only 60 minutes in length - that is my favourite. It also happens to be one of my favourite comedies and favourite love stories, albeit a comic-tragedy wallowing in literary mire (I’m loathe to call it a rom-com).

Martin Donovan is brilliant as Jude, the uninspired English professor who is spouting Russian literature at film’s opening; “I believe that you are sincere and good at heart. If you do not attain happiness, always remember that you are on the right road, and try not to leave it. Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself.” Mary Ward is excellent in the role of Sophie the object of Jude’s lust. Flirtation turns to infatuation, and inevitably he must come crashing down from the lofty heights of such a heady elusive romance. There is a divide of years between them, but they’re brought together over their love of words and ideas, and the sexual chemistry is fueled by their respective adulation of each other.

Of course Sophie is swept away by Jude’s command of language, and she allows herself to be wooed, as she quietly seduces. Jude is entranced by her pixie good looks, sly knowing glances and arts smarts. Their charisma and coyness become entwined, divine, divine, but there will be tears before bed time. She is so young, full of curiosity and contradiction, he is blind to the heartache on the horizon.

It’s a poignant movie and the edge of seriousness is given a dynamic and refreshing twist with Hartley’s delightfully wry observations on the fragility of charm and the pulse of passionate abandon. The movie was produced for American Playhouse, a cable television show, which is why it’s shot in 1.33:1 ratio. Hartley also made two short movies at the same time of similarly playful philosophical ilk: Ambition and Theory of Achievement (and are included on the DVD).

There is a beautifully understated quality to Surviving Desire. It looks and feels self-conscious, yet it floats with such delicacy, the nuances of Donovan’s and Ward’s performances are deliberate and theatrical, but still command a cinematic je ne sais quoi. The dialogue crackles and caresses with stunning insight and droll humour. These are the little ironies of love’s cruel game. There is no such thing as romance and adventure, only trouble and desire. Jude rises with hubris, but falls with humility.

The movie’s highlight comes in the form of a dance routine, which expertly parodies movies like Singin’ in the Rain, but skillfully indulges them. Jude is drunk in love with Sophie and as the guitar chords echo away Jude’s desire manifests itself as a dance without accompanying music. It finishes with Jude’s arms outstretched like those of the Saviour. It’s a golden moment, and I remember first watching the movie at a film festival and the audience cheered this scene.

The support cast is all wonderful, but especially notable is Matt Malloy as Jude’s theologian friend Henry and Rebecca Nelson as Katie the lost soul street monger whom Henry becomes involved with. They share a hilarious rapport. The rock-folk music credited to The Great Outdoors and Ned Rifle (Hartley under a pseudonym) fits the movie like hand in glove; loose, and jangly, lilting, but uplifting, it’s the perfect foil for the beautiful battlefield that is surviving desire. “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may …”

Johnny Suede

USA | 1991 | Directed by Tom DiCillo

Logline: A naïve and immature young man with aspirations of being a country-rock star receives a few lessons in life and love while strutting around in his newly acquired blue suede shoes.

“John had just about everything: the look, the hair, the clothes … everything, except one thing … shoes. And this made him feel incomplete. As if he lacked one final crucial thing. Like a car without wheels, like a rocket without fuel … Like a man without shoes. Everyone else seemed to have it, everyone else seemed complete, everyone except him. So he kept looking for this one thing, night after night, wandering, searching … This is the story of what happened when he found it.”

“You Freak Storm, huh?”

“That’s right. I’ve seen you before. What’s your name?”

“Johnny. Johnny Suede …”

“Nice shoes you have there, Johnny.”

“Thanks. I like your boots. Where did you get them?”

“I found them when I was living in Wyoming.”

“What were you doing in Wyoming?”

“I’ve been all over, man.”

“Me too.”

“Yeah? I was born in a goddamned motel room.”

“Really? Your dad was a traveling salesman?”

“Daddy? I don’t know too much about my daddy, man, except he was shot minutes after I was born.”

“Wow, you’re kiddin?”

“No, I am not fucking kidding. Even tried to write a song about it, once, but I just didn’t finish it. It goes like this … I was born in a motel room/When my daddy lost his job/Just after one/He pulled a gun/And blew his brains out/They call me mamma/They call me mamma/The call me mamma’s boy, but I don’t care/I’ll be a mamma, I’ll be a mamma’s boy/Since daddy got the electric chair!”

Such is the style of sardonic sense of humour found in this unique and memorable exercise in drifting oneiric style. Tom DiCillo had previously been a cinematographer on Jim Jarmusch’s first two features (Permanent Vacation and Stranger than Paradise) before adopting Jim’s sense of deadpan visual comedy and applying his own narrative sensibilities. With Johnny Suede there’s more than just a nod toward another great American stylist of sardonic humour floating in a dream nightmare; Mr. David Lynch.

Brad Pitt is Johnny Suede and the movie was released the same year as Thelma and Louise which made Pitt a household name. Curiously the two characters are of a similar ilk; they’re not the sharpest blades in the drawer, a coupla southerners lookin’ for a break. As the eponymous guitar-crooner with his immense pompadour and retro threads Pitt is curiously endearing. Apparently DiCillo’s producer wanted Timothy Hutton, but DiCillo insisted on Pitt, but later regretted Pitt’s interpretation, so much so that in his brilliant satire Living in Oblivion DiCillo based the arrogant, cocksure actor (played by James Le Gros) on Pitt himself.

The movie as a whole is more than the sum of its parts. It’s a mood piece with great cinematic textures and a delicately delirious atmosphere. The music – especially the main theme – composed by Jim Farmer is deeply evocative and resonates long after the final image of Johnny Suede’s shoe perched on the roof of the car, as it drives off down the street into the sunrise. But it’s not just the music and Brad Pitt and Tom DiCillo’s colourful palette and deliberately staged location shooting, it’s the key support cast that shines just as bright; Catherine Keener as Yvonne is darn wonderful, Alison Moir as oddball Darlette, a sandwich or two short of a picnic, is a rare gem, and Nick Cave is hilarious as Freak Storm, the cowboy in white … is he a genuine angel or a demon in disguise? And just what is it with that weirdo in the tux (Richard Boes) who keeps turning up with Darlette?

Yes, Johnny Seude is very much like a strange dream. Some of it works a treat, other bits leave you somewhat baffled, but like all good strange dreams, there’s just enough of the sexycrazycool stuff to make you wanna have that dream again. And again.

Under The Skin

UK | 2013 | Directed by Jonathan Grazer

Logline: An alien on earth in human form seduces various men before she becomes curious about the human condition and all its foibles.

It’s taken Jonathan Glazer, who made the excellent Sexy Beast (2000), ten years to make an adaptation from Dutch novelist Michel Faber. The screenplay, co-written with Walter Campbell, is loosely inspired by elements of Faber’s story; an extraterrestrial siren (Scarlett Johansson) has visited earth and taken human form and spends her time going from one sexual encounter to the next, whilst another of her kind runs around after her cleaning up. The alien is frequently distracted by the contrasting beauty and desolation of the landscape and its inhabitants. It begins to overwhelm her.

Infused with the kind of ponderous melancholy, the spare, cold imagery, and the existential wilderness of Andrei Tarvosky, Stanley Kubrick, and Nicolas Roeg combined, Glazer’s deliberately artful take on fractured desire, entrenched loneliness, and gradual empathy is the year’s most affecting movie. There is a cumulative emotional effect happening that reaches a startling and strangely satisfying denouement.

Under the Skin is precisely that. It’s a play on words; the obvious reason being the alien in disguise, but the deeper meaning is what follows a crucial, and for parents rather harrowing, scene set on a rugged beach. Later the alien protagonist (none of the movie’s characters are given names) finds herself waiting in traffic, a baby’s cry reverberating in her mind, and subsequently she abandons her vehicle, immerses herself in a tranquil white mist, and becomes lost, a quiet drifting desperation gnawing away inside her, as she grapples with the human impulse.

Glazer peppers his languid, meandering narrative with some stunning imagery (his background has been directing music clips and commercials), the most extraordinary being a sequence depicting one of the alien’s conquests nightmarish experience deep within a carnal void. Another burnt onto my retina is the POV of a motorcyclist hurtling along a narrow country road at night. Under the Skin is as much a study of the Scotland highland landscape as it is of Scarlett Johansson’s visage, and body, and it fixes itself firmly into the best of her career.

There are many questions raised and never explained, but as David Lynch once inferred, we don’t understand everything we see in life, so why should we understand everything we see in cinema? It’s apparent David Lynch is another tone, mood, and visual influence on Under the Skin. There is frustration, especially during the movie’s first half, as slow-burn repetition threatens to tear the movie’s conceptual fabric, but as I suspected, this is a movie that lingers significantly, long after the snow has fallen.

Very much an acquired taste, just like much of the perplexing and provocative science-fiction cinema of the 70s ............ There is nihilistic darkness at the edge of the lush dream that hovers, entrances, and threatens to engulf.

Under the Skin screens as part of 17th Revelation - Perth International Film Festival, Opening Night, Thur 3rd July, 7pm, Luna Cinema, Sun 6th, 6:15pm, SX Cinema, and Wed 9th, 6:30pm, Paradiso Cinema

Repo Man

USA | 1984 | Directed by Alex Cox

Logline: An indignant teenage punk-rocker is recruited by a car repossession agent and becomes embroiled in the chaotic pursuit for a car containing deadly cosmic material.

Made on the smell of an oily rag and sporting some of the cheesiest special effects this side of Edge City Repo Man still manages to rise above its limitations and resonates like the growling weather-beaten Chevy Malibu that is the key non-speaking character of the movie. Of course, the movie actually belongs to the lost streets of Los Angeles, but is snatched in the last moments by something from beyond terra firma.

Emilio Estevez plays new wave punker Otto with a careless charisma, almost indifferent to the events that surround him and steer him toward his lofty destiny alongside mechanic Miller (Tracey Walter), who knows oh so much more than his nut-and-bolt-short-of-a-full-engine looks suggest. Harry Dean Stanton is perfect as the cigarette-chewing, speed-snorting repo man whom takes young turk Otto under his reeky wing.

Repo Man enjoyed the drive-in midnight circuit in America, but become the revolutionary anti-hero after years of being manhandled in VCR machines. There’s something about it that lingers, like the stain of grease. It’s overtly stylised and there’s plenty of dodgy acting from the supporting players, some of which works in a wacky kind of way; like Olivia Borash as ingénue Leila. In fact, so stylised is the movie that the characters eat and drink from cans labeled simply “Food” and “Beer”.

This City of Angels is bordering on post-apocalyptic, and is awash with apathy and contempt; one minute Otto is lying with his girlfriend Debbi (Jennifer Balgobin) on a bed, the next minute he returns with a beer and she’s making out with opportunist punk Duke (Dick Rude). In a more explicit deleted alternate take Otto returns and punk Archie (Miguel Sandoval) has his head between her thighs. Later sexy Debbi shaves her head into a Mohawk (channeling Annabella Lwin via Grace Jones) to join Duke and Archie in an armed robbery spree.

Alex Cox is making sly, subversive statements about consumerism and cosmic consciousness, but really the movie is a more a satirical slap in the face for complacent idealists. If you smoke too much pot you’ll end up glued to the idiot box gathering cobwebs, if you don’t seize the moment you’re liable to end up seized by conspiracy. Watch out for secret agent shenanigans! Watch out for Dioretix - they’ll change your life! Methinks Cox supped quite a bit of Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid back in the day.

The soundtrack is littered with legendary American punk rock bands whose noisy discords fill the movie’s atmosphere, including The Plugz (who provide all the incidental music as well), The Circle Jerks, Black Flag, Fear, Suicidal Tendencies, and, most notably, Burning Sensations’ cover of Pablo Picasso - “… was never called an asshole!” - whilst proto punk rocker Iggy Pop provides the movie’s theme song.

Cox wrote a sequel, Waldo’s Hawaiian Holiday, in the early 90s, but it was never made, eventually he couldn’t help himself and delivered Repo Chick (2009), shot entirely on a green-screen stage, and apparently pretty damn awful. So grab yourself a “Beer”, a slice of “Pizza”, hell blaze a “Reefer” - just so you can really feel the danger - and indulge in some of the more zany moments of 80s indie cinema.