Super

US | 2010 | Directed by James Gunn

Logline: After his wife falls under the influence of a drug dealer an ordinary guy becomes a superhero, but is severely lacking in heroic skills. 

Dorky Frank (Rainn Wilson) loves beautiful Sarah (Liv Tyler) and they wed in a blissful bubble soon to be burst. Sarah likes the bong and it seems she likes more what “interesting” Frank can offer. 

WHAM! 

Jacques (Kevin Bacon) steals Sarah away, seducing her with harder drugs and longer nights. Frank falls into misery and despair and in desperation he turns to God to show him the light that will back his true love. God touches Frank and presents a vision of superness. 

BAM! 

Frank takes heed from The Holy Avenger (Nathan Fillion) and transforms into Crimson Bolt! Saying “Shut up, crime!” and armed with a trusty wrench, Crimson Bolt dishes out extreme prejudice – justice – to those evil crime doers: the drug dealers, the child molesters, those who profit off the misery of others, those that butt into queues! 

THANK YOU, MA’AM! 

Super is a fantastic slap in the face for comic book fans, freakazoids, and those who like their comedy laced with toxic darkness. Gunn takes the satire bull by the horns and bites the morality bullet, then spits it back out, and says “Fuck you!” … If you follow your heart, the surface shit melts away leaving the truth exposed like a bleeding organ. Take that organ and squeeze it ‘til it hurts. Life is full of emotional pain and bitter irony, a journey where Murphy’s Law can pound you into the ground. But the “super” inside you can prevail! 

Gunn worked for the Troma camp cutting his perversive, subversive teeth and getting his hands grimy and calloused on Tromeo and Juliet. He wrote the excellent screenplay to Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead (2004) re-boot, he wrote and directed the hilarious science-fiction-horror spoof Slither (2006), and most recently delivered, arguably, the most entertaining Marvel movie yet, Guardians of the Galaxy. 

The movie’s relatively low budget (considering the cast) doesn’t hinder the movie’s intent, as Gunn delivers cleverly and economically. He elicits sensational performances from his two leads, with Ellen Page causing unexpected ripples of cosplay lust through the audience when she dons that slinky eye-mask as Frank’s sidekick, Boltie! Gunn winks at his fans by casting Michael Rooker as one of Jacques’s thugs, as Rooker was the lead in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986), the movie that apparently had the biggest impact on Gunn’s in his formative years.

Putting it bluntly, but succinctly, Super kicks Kickass’s arse! The movie’s amorality, its sly, and oh so wicked sense of humour, the graphic ultra-violence that shocks as much as it triggers satisfaction; all of it is a superb manipulation of convention and expectation. Oh, and a bang-on soundtrack to boot! Pop some corn, rip the scabs off some tinnies, roll some blunts, whatever, just leave your sensibilities at the door and get in amongst it, this is an anarchic hoot of the highest order. 

Control

UK/USA/Australia/Japan | 2007 | Directed by Anton Corbijn

Logline: The story of Ian Curtis, the singer of seminal UK indie band Joy Division, whose personal and professional troubles lead to him committing suicide at age 23.

"When routine bites hard, and ambitions are low/And resentment rides high, but emotions won't grow/And we're changing our ways, taking different roads."

It was inevitable that a biopic would be made on the short life and even shorter career of one of the most important English bands to emerge from the debris of the punk era; Joy Division, a four-piece from Manchester with a perpetually sullen lead singer by the name of Ian Curtis who had an extraordinary and inexplicable stage presence, and who wrote some of the most profound lyrics in the history of pop music.

It was perfectly fitting that the person who would champion the story of Ian Curtis (newcomer Sam Riley) and Joy Division was the man who had photographed them from the start, who had captured their steely passion and poker-faced conviction in the raw visual poetry of monochrome; sweating, staring, drawn, and driven. Anton Corbijn was instrumental in creating their Factory Records image, and in tribute he helmed his first feature, this brilliant personal study called Control.

"Why is the bedroom so cold? Turned away on your side/Is my timing that flawed? Our respect run so dry/Yet there's still this appeal, that we've kept through our lives."

Based on the book Touching From a Distance written by Ian’s widow, Deborah Curtis, and superbly adapted for the screen by Matt Greenhalgh, Control balances delicately the fevered atmosphere of Joy Division’s meteoric rise with the trials and tribulations of Ian’s crumbling marriage to long-suffering Debbie (Samantha Morton in fine form) as he juggled his inner demons, an affair with a German music journalist Annik (Alexandra Maria Lara), and his professional commitments. As much as he wanted it all, it became all too much.

Sam Riley delivers arguable one of the greatest performances of a dead rock star ever committed to celluloid; he is Ian Curtis, not so in looks, although there’s definitely a strong resemblance, but in the body language, the physicality, the nuances. Understandable Riley won numerous awards, as did Corbijn for his stunning directorial control (excuse the pun), as well as Matt Ruhe’s luminous black and white cinematography (actually shot in colour and changed in post, but it still looks fantastic).

A big pat on the back must also go Toby Kebbell as the band’s manager, and to the rest of the band actors: James Anthony Pearson, who plays guitarist Bernard Sumner, Joe Anderson, who plays bassist Peter Hook, and Harry Treadaway, who plays drummer Stephen Morris. Corbijn initially planned to have the actors mime to playback recordings of Joy Division, but after a few rehearsals it was decided the actors were proficient enough to play the songs for real, which they do, sensationally.

"Do you cry out in your sleep? All my failings exposed/And there's a taste in my mouth, as desperation takes hold/Yet it's something so pure, just can't function no more."

Control is a beautiful tragedy. It’s a known fact that Joy Division came to a crashing end with Ian’s suicide by hanging in May of 1980, just days before the band were due to fly to America for their first ever tour. In April, and again in June, of that year the band released Love Will Tear Us Apart, one of the rawest, most heart-wrenching, yet finest modern love songs ever composed. Joy Division chose not to disband; instead they soldiered on, recruited Gillian as keyboardist, and transmogrified into New Order, a brilliant outfit in their own right … yet the legacy Ian Curtis and Joy Division left on the indie music scene will remain untouchable, bordering on mythical.

Down By Law

USA | 1986 | Directed by Jim Jarmusch

Logline: When three mischievous strangers find themselves sharing the same jail cell after each being set-up, framed or simply acting in self-defence, they escape into the wilderness of the Louisiana everglades.

Maverick indie auteur Jim Jarmusch hit the nail of bittersweet irony squarely and beautifully on the head with this black and white jazz riff on unlikely friendships forged in times of despair. It is arguably one of the most egocentric comedies of the 80s, and certainly one of Jarmusch’s crowning achievements, along with his monochromatic masterstroke Dead Man and the short Coffee and Cigarettes – Somewhere in California, all of them as elusively existential as they are ristretto black in humour.

Down by Law was Jarmusch’s third feature (and the only feature he’s made with American financing) and his first using Robby Müller behind the lens. Müller, a magician of monochrome, casts the film with superb tones and textures; the weathered homes along the streets of New Orleans, to the luminescent jungle of the everglades.  This is film noir transplanted from the city and off the beaten track. It’s a fairy tale love story, but you’d never see it coming. It’s the buddy flick transmogrified. It’s a jam session of mood swings.

Zack (Tom Waits, in brilliant form) is an out-of-work disc jockey. He’s been given the boot by an irate girlfriend (Ellen Barkin, hilarious opening scene), and drunkenly takes the offer of a hot drop-off. Jack (John Lurie) is a pimp who should know better, ‘cos the jailbait and a tip-off gets him in hot water with the long arm of the law. Roberto (Roberto Benigni) is an Italian tourist who finds himself in the deep end with some thugs and ends up killing a man with a billiard ball by accident; “Eees a sad and beautifohl world.”

The three of them find it difficult coping with the claustrophobia of the tiny jail cell they’ve been thrown in. Roberto tries to lighten the mood, but only aggravates the other two who don’t want a bar of each other. The numerous scenes behind bars are some of the movie’s funniest. Each character is a wonderful contrast against the other two; the laconic posing of Jack, the languid witticisms of Zack, and the manic observations and interjections of Roberto.

The soundtrack is fantastic; incidental music provided by John Lurie, and a selection of songs (taken from Rain Dogs album) performed by Tom Waits. It fits the mood of the movie hand in glove. As does the long takes, breezy editing, and rambling narrative. Like all of Jarmusch’s work, the emphasis is less on the narrative structure as a whole and more on the individual moments that glide together.

In the movie’s second half – after an hilarious night spent in a shack where Roberto quotes famous American poet Walt Whitman – our three intrepid fugitives arrive at a small cottage. Roberto is chosen to investigate. He doesn’t return, and later Jack and Zack hear him laughing with a woman. It is here we meet gorgeous Nicoletta (Nicoletta Braschi) and it is from her humble abode that the three men will part ways.

Down by Law left such an indelible impression on me when I first saw it at the Wellington Film Festival in '86; in terms of mood, atmosphere, the nuances of character and acting, the unassuming, yet utterly poetic direction, it immediately became a personal favourite and has remained in my inner sanctum of cinema for more than twenty years. Savour it like fine boutique bourbon.

The Invitation

US | 2015 | Directed by Karyn Kasuma

Logline: While attending a dinner party at his former home, a man begins to suspect that his ex-wife and her new husband have a sinister agenda that involves all the guests. 

Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and his partner Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi) are driving up into the Hollywood hills, on their way to a dinner party being held at Will’s former residence, which he once shared with Eden (Tammy Blanchard). Eden now lives there with her new husband David (Michiel Huisman), having returned from two years in the wilderness. Eden is keen to reconnect with some of her dearest friends, and David is more than willing to facilitate the reunion. But there will be tears before bedtime. And there will be blood. 

Will and Kira’s drive into the affluent suburb is given an ominous sign when they accidentally hit a coyote. Will is forced to end the badly injured creature’s life with a tire iron. Kira is mortified. They relate the incident to the other guests upon arrival, much to everyone’s horror. But these things happen, all creatures die at some point, and fate’s intervention can be most cruel. 

It isn’t long before Will’s wariness gets the better of him. Eden has changed, and Will suspects she hasn’t properly dealt with the tragedy of their life together, the death of their young son. New husband David is eager to show the guests a video of the encounter group they spent time with overseas, that helped Eden deal with her grief. Sadie (Lindsay Burdge) is Eden and David’s houseguest (lover), and she is champing at the bit for everyone’s undivided attention. 

Everyone is slightly rattled by the downbeat video, and endeavours to lighten the mood. Will feels the walls closing in. Paranoia and dread will be served upstairs on the mezzanine in an hour. 

The Invitation is a fabulous example of what can be done in Tinseltown outside of the iron grip of the studios. Financed completely independently, shot for around $US1m, with terrific direction from Kasuma (I’ll forgive her for Jennifer’s Body, that was mostly Diablo Cody’s fault), a top notch cast, and a rip-snorter of a screenplay by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi that slow-burns with serious heat, culminating in a perfect ending, that reminded me of the same kind of envelope-pushing denouement from the excellent UK horror The Children (would make for a great double-feature). 

Booby Shore’s lush, fluid cinematography, the palette all olive, burgundy, chocolate, and umber, and almost entirely set within the plush pad with a garden that gazes out over Laurel Canyon, The Invitation is a brilliantly orchestrated psychological thriller seared with the nightmare tones and execution of classic horror. It’s not over until the fat lady sings, but she may never leave the green room. 

One of the reasons The Invitation works so well is the perspective is held firmly in check from Will’s point of view. It is his curiosity, his anxiety, his confusion, his sense of alarm that the audience connects with in palpable degrees. Yet, with each little twist of the screenplay, and they are small, yet quietly devastating, the bigger picture blurs, then sharpens in focus. The odd moments Will witnesses; Sadie, nude from the waits down, eyeing him from the bedroom, happy, dreamy, content Eden putting a bottle of barbiturates in her drawer, the grief counsellor’s creepy message on David’s laptop, David lighting a red lamp hanging from a tree in the garden … All these seem to be part of a dark design that tightens the screw of Will’s concern. 

It’s time to raise your glass.

It’s hard to single out best performances, but Tom Hardy lookalike Marshall-Green definitely holds fort, with Tammy Blanchard’s emotionally unhinged presence providing a great juxtaposition, and Huisman’s laidback charm is the perfect dark nemesis to Will’s burgeoning intolerance. The Invitation is Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen for the end of days, a masterful study in deceit, and definitely one of my favourite movies of the year. 

The Invitation screens as part of Tasmania's Stranger With My Face International Film Festival, Friday, 15th April, 8pm. 

Cat People

US | 1942 | Directed by Jacques Tourneur

Logline: A man marries a foreign woman who fears the curse of her ancestors, that she will turn into a panther if she kisses her husband.

Producer Val Lewton made several low-budget “horrors” for studio RKO. With Cat People he employed French ex-pat Jacques Turner at the helm, who eschewed the usual horror trappings and went for a more atmospheric look and feel, and an ambiguous tone in dealing with the movie’s themes and plot devices. It makes for a sublimely affecting drama; a tragedy torn by the talons of horror. 

Oliver Reed (Kent Smith), a naval construction engineer, meets Eastern European fashion designer Irena Dubrovna (the perfectly cast Simone Simon) at the zoo, where she discards a strangely macabre sketch she has made of the black panther. Reed flirts with her and before you can say “Meeeeeow!” they’ve fallen in love and married each other. However, Irena is afraid of an ancient Serbian curse that spells that a woman can not be kissed by a man; otherwise she will transform into a panther and kill.

Due to Irena’s intense emotional anxiety the couple does not consummate their marriage. Reed instead becomes closer to his work colleague Alice Moore (Jane Randolph) whom admits to being in love with him. Reed arranges for Irena to be treated by his friend psychiatrist Dr. Louis Judd (Tom Conway), but it becomes apparent Dr. Judd has an unprofessional agenda. When Irena discovers she is losing Oliver to Alice she becomes jealous and hateful. She schemes and stalks, her stealth inexorably leading her into the lion’s den. 

Oliver Reed admits to Alice that he is strangely drawn to Irena, that he has to look at her when she’s in the room, has to touch her when she’s near, yet as soon as Alice admits to her desire to be in a relationship with Reed he makes the decision that he is no longer in love with Irena; the pressing desire for sexual companionship has quashed his patience. Then when Irena becomes fully aware of Alice’s intent on Reed she unleashes her dark inner beast. It is this carnal creature that she so desperately wants not to be her nemesis, so she can enjoy what any normal woman does. 

Dr. Judd, however, sees this repressed sexuality as an untapped elixir that needs to be released. “What should I tell my husband? Naturally he’s anxious to have some word,” Irena ask him after their session. “What does one tell one’s husband? One tells him nothing,” Dr. Judd replies with quiet authority. 

Cat People is a unique study of repressed sexual desire and deep-rooted emotional upheaval. It also deals with sly deception and moral corruption. The horror of the movie is not so much the actual killing, but the fear of being consumed by something that should be so pleasurable, yet is a plague upon the senses. 

Tourneur plays brilliantly with light and shadow, the sound and editing. There are several stand-out scenes, most notably when Alice is stalked by Irena along a road at night, with just the sound of their stilettos clacking on the pavement, then quiet, then the roar of a panther is drowned out by the loud swish of a bus pulling into shot beside Alice at the roadside. The wedding reception scene in a restaurant has a great moment when another striking Eastern European woman (credited as The Cat Woman) seems to recognise Irena and says to her “Mia sestra.” Irena looks frightened and quickly makes the sign of the cross.

My favourite scene, and one that has become a classic of suspense, has Alice being stalked again as she takes a swim in an indoor public baths. Irena as a silhouetted panther growls and circles the pool while the dappled light dances feverishly across the walls and ceiling. 

Tourneur went on to direct the haunting I Walked With a Zombie (1943) and my favourite classic film noir, Out of the Past (1947), but he nailed those elements first in Cat People. It’s a classic noir-esque horror-drama, and like Don Siegel’s classic of dread and paranoia Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), it belies its meek origins, transcends the genre, and resonates with the chilling sensuality of a strange and troubling dream. 

Come and See

Idi i Smotri | Russia | 1985 | Directed by Elem Klimov

Logline: In Nazi-occupied Russia a peasant boy joins a group of partisan soldiers as they travel across a war-ravaged countryside. 

“And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.” --- Chapter 6, The Book of Revelation (The Apocalypse of St John the Divine), The New Testament

Without a doubt the most devastating and profoundly anti-war movie ever made, Elem Klimov’s semi-autobiographical account of a teenage boy unwillingly thrust into the atrocities of war in WWII Byelorussia (Belarus), fighting for a hopelessly unequipped resistance movement against the ruthless Nazi fascist forces, witnessing scenes of abject horror, as he slowly loses his innocence, inexorably loses his mind, his face eventually resembling that of a frightened old man, his soul finally a ruined sentinel. Come and See is the unfettered poetry of hell on earth.

Come and See (the literal Russian translation is Go and Look) follows adolescent Florya (Aleksey Kravchenko), a Belarusian villager, on a dark odyssey set in 1943. In the movie’s prologue he is fooling around with a young boy on the sand dunes, both pretending to be vigilant soldiers fending off the evil Germans. Florya uncovers a rifle amongst the military debris, his inspiration to fulfil a staunch patriotic stance and join the Soviet resistance. Later at his house with mother and two kid sisters the partisans arrive to collect him, much to the dismay of his mother, who has already lost her husband. 

In a forest clearing Florya is integrated with the village comrades who have formed the small ragtag resistance, but his tattered boots result in him being left behind as a reserve. Disappointed Florya wanders off and meets Glasha (Olga Mironova), a pretty, slightly older girl, who appears touched, in love with a partisan commander. Florya and Glasha spend moments together, finding pockets of beauty and laughter amidst the trees and a light rain, but a sudden bombing destroys the brief tranquility, causing temporary deafness, and sends Florya and Glasha back to his family abode where true horror presents itself, and the two teenagers are forced to flee for their lives, through a hellish swamp, and into the midst of the terrorised survivors of the village. Florya’s interpersonal nightmare has only just begun… 

Klimov wrote the powerful story many years before it was made. Taking inspiration from a novel called Story of Khatyn by Ales Adamovich, combined with his own wartime experiences, witnessing the atrocities of the Nazis, Klimov and Adamovich penned a script titled Kill Hitler. They were forced by authorities to drop the Hitler reference, even though the intent of the title was suggesting that one should kill a Hitler – demon - within you to prevent the worst. Taking their new title directly from The New Testament’s Book of Revelation, they fashioned an episodic journey of discovery and resignation, atrocity and genocide, and the screenplay was filmed in chronological order. The central character of Florya, who is in almost every scene, becomes a metaphorical vessel, the innocence that is blackened and defiled, left looking like a battered old man by story’s end. His character represents his entire people. 

WARNING! FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH CONTAINS SPOILERS!

In a scene near movie’s end Florya is approached by a young woman in a daze whom he had left much earlier on with the other villagers (she looks so similar to Glasha that perhaps it is Florya's memory of her superimposed). The woman’s lips are torn, blood runs down her thighs. She had had managed to escape the burning barn with her baby only to be brutally gang raped and beaten terribly. To Florya (and to the audience) she represents the ruined beauty of love and life, as Glasha had told Florya of her desire to have children. The image is seared onto the retina, just as the final moments of the movie are forever imprinted in the mind’s eye. Seeing a framed photo of Hitler, cracked, lying in a muddy puddle, Florya takes his rifle and begins firing into the picture, and as he does so WWII archival footage and images burst across the screen, playing in reverse, regressing in time: corpses in the concentration camps, der Führer congratulating a German boy, 1930s Nazi party congresses, Hitler's combat service in WWI, Adolf as a schoolboy; and finally a portrait of the infant in his mother's lap … Florya stares hard into the innocent face of the baby, eyes glazing over, staring into the camera … Into the abyss.

Captured with astonishing realism (and shot in 1.33:1 ratio), yet infused with flashes of the surreal, director Klimov’s bold statement is without a doubt the most disturbing war movie ever made. It is also happens to be one of the most mesmerising, and how it balances this contrast of aesthetics - beauty and grotesquerie - is brilliant. There is a streak of absurdist humour and clever use of irony that winks slyly at the audience from time to time, with characters often talking directly to camera as they converse with each other. There is the moody, ambient synthesizer score, and hypnotic use of Steadicam (which much of the movie was filmed with), both of which add a curious, modern sensibility, but not incongruous. Come and See is state of the art filmmaking, yet unpretentious, never once feeling contrived, or bombastic. Many of the uniforms were original, and (much to the horror of Hollywood) real ammunition was used in some scenes!

Klimov doesn’t shy from the ghastliness of war; characters are blown to bloody bits, burnt beyond recognition, and in the movie’s most harrowing, and prolonged, sequence, an entire village is forced into a wooden barn and burned alive as the Nazi soldiers and officers gather around and admire their handiwork like its an exhibition for their amusement. Everything that happens on screen really occurred. Six-hundred-and-twenty-eight villages, with all their inhabitants, were burned to the ground. The wretched Holocaust tears at the very core of humanity. In an interview Klimov stated how the sense memory of that appalling horror carried through the generations of Belarusians, making it difficult for the actors having to recreate the war crimes that destroyed their people. 

The performance of young Aleksey Kraychencko is nothing short of miraculous - apparently his hair going grey during the shoot! But I tilt my cap to Olga Mironova, and to the rest of the support cast, all of them delivering exceptional performances. Oleg Yanchenko’s stunning original music is integral to the movie’s intense atmosphere, and a few sourced pieces are used to superb effect; Strauss’s The Blue Danube, Wagner’s Tannhåuser overture, and finally, hauntingly, the Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem. The entire movie can be seen and heard as a series of funereal movements dressed with suitably sombre and sobering images and sound.

Indeed, after viewing Come and See one is never the same. It is a tenebrous and monumental work, a deeply-etched, expressionist tour-de-force, a masterpiece of cinema.

Elem Klimov never directed again. His work was done. 

Apocalypse Now

US | 1979 | Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Logline: During the Vietnam War a US captain is forced into one final mission; to locate and terminate the command of a rogue and delusional US colonel. 

“I turned to the wilderness … And for a moment it seemed to me as if I was buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets. I felt an intolerable weight oppressing my breast, the smell of the damp earth, the unseen presence of victorious corruption, the darkness of an impenetrable night.”

There are very few nightmare movies as visually, viscerally and psychologically affecting, as profoundly immediate, despite their historical settings, as Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. There has been so much said and done, so much dirty, bloodied water under the war-torn bridge of this extraordinary production, that any humble review in the wake of its questionable destruction, its primal majesty, its philosophical musings is purely grist to the mill. But a few more words scattered to the critical winds won’t hurt. This is a movie that has remained in my heart of dark delights ever since I first saw it cropped on a dodgy rented VHS with its original end credits rolling over a montage of the Kurtz compound being destroyed by what appeared to be an air-strike. It is one of my three favourite movies of all time; it is a war movie to be experienced like a “bad” acid trip, infused with dangerous awe and nightmarish wonder. 

“Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service. It was a real choice mission, and when it was over, I never wanted another.”

It is 1969. Captain Willard (Martin Sheen in a career performance) is a Vietnam veteran on the edge, well-seasoned, overcooked, but craving, is plucked from his squalid hotel room in Saigon and given an important intelligence briefing by Colonels Corman (G.D. Spradlin) and Lucas (Harrison Ford): “To proceed up the Nung River in a Navy patrol boat. Pick up Colonel Kurtz's path at Nu Mung Ba, follow it and learn what you can along the way. When you find the Colonel, infiltrate his team by whatever means available and terminate the Colonel's command … Terminate with extreme prejudice.” 

On board the PBR (patrol boat, riverine) is his “streetgang”; Navy Chief Phillips (Albert Hall), Californian surfer Lance (Sam Bottoms), Bronx boy “Clean” (Laurence Fishburne, just 14 years old when filming started), and New Orleans machinist “Chef” (Frederic Forrest). Willard notes they’re “mostly kids; rock and rollers with one foot in their grave.” After a bizarre excursion accompanying Lt-Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall, terrifyingly impressive) and his air cavalry on a “Ride of the Valkyries” - “Someday this war's gonna end ...” – Willard and his crew begin in earnest their deadly mission up the Nung River into the heart of darkness … 

“I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream; that's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor ... and surviving.”

Apocalypse Now is less a conventional narrative arc, and more a series of incidents and set-pieces building toward a final metaphorical assassination. It is war as allegory, movie as experience, nightmare as expressionist deliverance. Wholly inspired by Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, a perilous journey into a quagmire of humanity, and based on an original screenplay by John Milius titled The Psychedelic Soldier, director Coppola pared everything back and then laid on the audio-visual schematics with a spade. Michael Herr was brought in to write Willard’s excellent narration. His intention was to create a spectacular adventure rich in theme and the philosophic inquiry into the mythology of war. The end result was a strange and demanding experience ahead of its time, yet distinctly of its time. 

Apocalypse Now was one of the last masterpieces of arguably the greatest decade in the history of film. Shooting began in 1976 and lasted sixteen months. Over 200 hours of film ended up in the can. The stories that floated around the production have become the stuff of legend, many of which are recounted in the brilliant companion-piece, Hearts of Darkness : A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1991), made by Coppola’s wife Eleanor, who courageously documented the entire production on a 16mm camera. 

Coppola had an incredible crew working for him, chiefly cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (probably the greatest DOP working at the time), production designer Dean Tavoularis, and editor Walter Murch, who also acted – very importantly - as sound designer. It was Murch who also supervised the exceptional “Redux” extended director’s cut which was released in 2001. The main additions of which are an extension of the Playboy bunnies performance sequence (and later their amorous encounters with Willard’s crew), a lengthy French plantation sequence where Willard and crew are wined and dined by a group of colonialists led by Hubert (Christian Marquand) who expound America’s military blunders and the history of Indochina over Bordeaux and opium, and Willard indulges in a little amorous interlude of his own with the lady of the estate, Roxanne (Aurore Clément).

Carmine Coppola’s amazing score (co-composed with Francis), which utililises the Moog synthesizer to stunning effect (duplicating helicopter blades, and creating a palpable sense of menace and exhilaration) is a key character of the movie, as is the use of The Doors’ The End during the ritualistic, and climatic, killing sequence at movie’s end. A real caribou was slaughtered (as part of native custom) and the effect is truly disturbing. 

“I tried to break the spell - the heavy, mute spell of the wilderness - that seemed to draw [Kurtz] to its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of gratified and monstrous passions. This alone, I was convinced, had driven him out to the edge of the forest, to the bush, towards the gleam of fires, the throb of drums, the drone of weird incantations; this alone had beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations.”

In a rare-as-hen’s-teeth workprint (which only exists in bootleg form, and clocks in at nearly five hours) there are several notable sequences that were never included in either the original version or the Redux version. The whole movie was set to songs by The Doors, and the entire length of The End is used over the movie’s stunning opening montage sequence which features a Vietnamese prostitute sharing Willard’s bed, then abandoning him to slide into a pitiful haze. Numerous other scenes are longer or have alternated takes, most importantly, the role of Colby (Scott Glenn), the soldier sent in before Willard, who has gone bamboo. He is instrumental in Willard completing his mission, yet inexplicably Coppola decided to leave out a pivotal scene where Colby shoots dead the photojournalist, is subsequently mortally stabbed by Willard, and then encourages Willard to kill Kurtz. 

The dawn strike on “Charlie” goes on for nearly half an hour and features a musically evocative “ballet” of the choppers as they fly toward their destination. Another earlier workprint scene has Willard, in his narrow “tiger cage” being carried down to an area in the compound where Kurtz’s native followers, including Colby and Lance (who has completely lost the plot), dance and taunt Willard, and sacrifice a squealing wild pig. The workprint’s assassination sequence – set to the entire length of The Doors’ When the Music is Over -  is a very expressionist take, with much ritualistic chanting and dancing that culminates with Willard plunging a spear through a guard and a baby whom the guard has held up in front of him as defence! Willard then enters Kurtz’s sleeping quarters to deliver the final machete blow. 

The five-hour workprint is an unbridled mural of sensuous insanity, in all its unwieldy structure, its indulgent, uneven rhythms, it’s bootleg low quality. I seriously question Coppola’s decision for Redux to re-insert the plantation sequence and further scenes involving the Playboy bunnies, and yet leave out the scenes involving Colby, the photojournalist, and Willard’s complete stalking of Kurtz.

“In a war there are many moments for compassion and tender action. There are many moments for ruthless action - what is often called ruthless - what may in many circumstances be only clarity, seeing clearly what there is to be done and doing it, directly, quickly, awake, looking at it.”

Props must go to Dennis Hopper, who plays the photojournalist - “The man is clear in his mind, but his soul is mad”- with deranged glee, and whom was struggling in his own dark wilderness, and deeply grateful to Coppola for offering him the work. Last, but not least, Marlon Brando, who plays Kurtz, and who turned up on set with the utmost arrogance, having not read the script, nor Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (which Coppola had instructed), 40kg overweight, and threatened to quit (and keep his $1m advance). However, his presence in the movie, although often in shadow, can not be undermined by his impudence. Brando provides Apocalypse Now with a true sense of bombastic megalomania. 

“The horror! The horror!”

In any form Apocalypse Now is a masterpiece of cinema, a portrait of war as the Devil’s work; a seductive nightmare. 

The Deer Hunter

US | 1978 | Directed by Michael Cimino

Logline: Follows a group of close friends’ celebration of a wedding, the damage of war, and finally, a desperate reunion.

This is the story of a group of friends, their happiness and sorrow, their camaraderie and competition, their bond and separation, from the grey steel and concrete protection of a small town to the humid, endless nightmare of the Vietnam War … and back again. 

This is the story of how love, hope, and human frailty, amidst the cruelty and violence of combat, irrevocably changed their lives. Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter is a harrowing masterpiece, yet an undeniably beautiful movie, and one of a handful of truly untouchable American movies from the last forty years. Breathtaking as it is heartbreaking. 

Michael (Robert De Niro), Steven (John Savage), Nick (Christopher Walken), Stanley (John Cazale), John (George Dzundza), and Axel (Chuck Aspegren) are steel workers and close friends of Russian heritage in the Pennsylvanian township of Clairton at the base of the Appalachian Mountains. It is late fall of 1967. Steven is about to get married to pregnant Angela (Rutanya Alda), and he, Michael and Nick are about to head off to the Vietnam War, so the wedding is both a ceremonial celebration and a farewell. 

The narrative is divided into three very distinct acts; the wedding, the war, and the aftermath. The movie begins at dawn with the steel workers finishing their shift and heading straight to Welsh’s Lounge, their friend John’s bar, for pre-wedding drinks. Then it’s time for formalities, a traditional Eastern European wedding, which sees the friends in a rambunctious mood. In the early morning light, still in tuxedos and brandishing beer cans, the five men (minus Steven who’s ensconced in his wedding nuptials) drive up into the mountain range for a deer hunt. Later with the large buck, which Michael has shot and roped to the front of the car, the men arrive back at the bar to enjoy a final carouse. 

The second act suddenly throws the audience into the midst of a jungle combat hell as Mike, Steve and Nicky try to survive the horror of the war. They are taken prisoner by the Vietcong, caged below a riverside hut along with other POWs, and forced, one by one, to play Russian Roulette for the perverse amusement of their captors. Steven’s fragile mental state is severely tested, as is Nicky’s endurance level. Michael is the pillar of strength. But the men are eventually separated. 

Back home Michael, now a decorated Airborne Ranger, struggles to cope with reintegration. Several years have passed. Steven has also been brought back, but is in hospital and self-imposed seclusion. Nick hasn’t returned from South-East Asia. Linda (Meryl Streep), Nick’s fiancée, seeks comfort with Michael, now that he is home safe (albeit damaged goods). Michael learns from Steven that Nicky is in Saigon, and he is determined to bring him home. 

The extraordinary screenplay (which feels like its been lifted from a novel) is from a story outline by Michael Cimino and Deric Washburn (Camino claims to have completely re-written Washburn’s delivered script), and was partly based on a 1975 script called The Man Who Came to Play by Louis Garfinkle and Quinn K. Redeker, about men who travel to Las Vegas to play Russian Roulette. An arbitration dispute prior to the movie’s release secured Garfinkle and Redeker a story credit on the film. With nine nominations, including Best Actor (De Niro), Best Actress (Streep), and Best Cinematography, the movie ultimately won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Supporting Actor (Walken), and Best Sound. 

The naturalistic performances are amazing (Walken, De Niro, and Streep – who improvised most of her lines - are revelatory, and it was John Cazale’s last movie as he was suffering from terminal cancer). The storytelling is superb, Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography is stunning, especially the scenes of Michael stalking the deer on the mountainside both before and after the war. But it is Cimino’s meticulous attention to production design (the entire movie was shot on location, no big sets were built) that lifts The Deer Hunter’s game considerably. Indeed, this is one of those rare examples of everything coming together magnificently. It is a disquieting tour-de-force, an emotional tour of duty. 

It’s a demanding movie, with the wedding and deer hunt taking up nearly an hour of screen time, yet the narrative and pacing flows effortlessly. I first saw the movie on VHS as an impressionable young teen and it left an indelible impact, in visual terms definitely (especially the disturbing Russian Roulette scenes), but more importantly as being one of my very first truly adult movies in terms of the way the narrative unfolded, its tone, the emotional weight. I saw it again a couple more times in the following decades, and then again in recent years (after a long hiatus), and felt the calibre of its storytelling and themes resonated more strongly, more significantly than ever before. 

I remember, aged ten, when The Deer Hunter was first released, and seeing the large poster pasted on a street wall, the image of Michael clutching his hunting rifle perched on a rock, the title appearing strangely benevolent, almost arcane, and the censor’s rating, R18, reminding me this was a movie I would not be seeing for quite some time, and wondering to myself, if it’s a war movie, why is it called The Deer Hunter? I guess I’ll understand when I’m grown up. Sure enough, the symbolic importance of Michael as a hunter, as a soldier, as a compassionate, flawed man, really only became clear to me once I had become an adult. 

As an adolescent I was impressed by the visceral intensity of the second act (the war), and the tragedy of the third act, but the ramifications of the men’s bond and as individuals, set up in the first act, weren’t as affecting. Seeing it recently again after many years was a profound experience. I’ve changed, the movie hasn’t. The theme song, Stanley Myers’ Cavatina (performed by guitarist John Williams), is still as pivotal and haunting. Some of the movie’s subtleties and nuances that I wasn’t aware of in those earlier viewings now appeared like treasures. The choices we make define who we are, even in the face of terrible odds. 

The Deer Hunter grabs you, shakes your hand, spits at you, slaps you hard in the face, embraces you, lets you cry on its shoulder, and finally whispers in your ear, something like … Life is frivolous, life is joyous, life is fragile, life can be bitter, and life can be cruel, but life is vibrant, and life is affirming, and life … life goes on. Even after the nightmare, the inescapable tragedy and loss of war. Life goes on.

The War Zone

UK/Italy | 1999 | Directed by Tim Roth

Logline: A teenage boy, frustrated with his family’s move away from the city, struggles with his relationship with his sister, and hers with their father. 

Tom (Freddie Cunliffe) is a sullen, acne-ravaged 15-year-old with his hormones simmering. His very pretty 18-year-old sister Jessie (Lara Belmont) whom he is close with is, plays aloof and secretive. Their mother (Tilda Swinton) is heavily pregnant and their father (Ray Winstone) is stern and preoccupied, seemingly with work. The family has moved from the bustle of London to the bleak coastline of Devon and into an old farmhouse. Tom feels alienated, having abandoned his friends, and now becoming uncomfortably aware of his sister’s sexuality. Further more he senses something is not quite right in the family dynamic. 

Actor Tim Roth gets behind the camera and directs Alexander Stuart’s adaptation of his own novel, The War Zone, into a searing, emotionally devastating juggernaut that obliterates the concept of the well-adjusted nuclear family. Although there are only three scenes of violence ( a car crash, a beating, and a stabbing), none of which are graphic, The War Zone is one of the most gut-wrenching and wounding dramas ever made, as it deals with the most intimate and taboo of relationships, its inevitable exposure, and its immediate and shocking aftermath. 

The battle lines are only never drawn in this combat zone, for there will never be victors, only victims, and collateral damage. Incest between father and daughter is one of the most powerful beasts of betrayal, and The War Zone exhibits this demon as a cold stark nightmare of moral confusion. As complicated as the situation is for Jessie and Tom, the reality is simple; their father has descended into hell and is taking the family with him. The old WWII bunker on the seaside cliff top is first a crime scene, throughout a metaphor, and finally a sanctuary. 

Operating almost like a play, Stuart’s screenplay has only a handful of settings; the rural family house, the local pub, the bunker, the desolate beach, the hospital, and a London housing estate flat. Most of the movie takes place in the house, and the only notable characters outside of the family are the small roles of Lucy (Kate Ashfield), a local family friend who recognises Tom’s sexual frustration, Nick (Colin Farrell, in one of his first features), another local who Jessie has a sexual escapade with much to Tom’s chagrin and further confusion, and Carol (Aisling O’Sullivan), Jessie’s older city friend who Jessie talks into seducing Tom for purely selfish reasons. 

The movie is beautifully shot by cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, capturing the landscape and natural light with all its darkened hues absorbing the psychological darkness of the terrible secret, the rugged terrain reflecting the inner domestic turmoil, the rain beating down like Nature’s disdain. Simon Boswell’s orchestral score juxtaposes the brooding nightmare with its lilting refrains; The War Zone is a ghastly poetry of sorts, capturing elements of natural beauty and smothering them with a jagged shroud of evil. 

One of the most provocative and disturbing elements of The War Zone - apart from the harrowing scenes of Tom spying on his father sodomising Jessie in the bunker, and in the hospital where the mother discovers her baby is bleeding and Tom warns her - is Jessie’s moral confusion and the bonding ambiguity that lingers between her and Tom. There is a grey subtext that suggests Tom might be sexually attracted to his sister, and this awkward attraction is something Jessie doesn’t repel. She allows Tom to see her fully nude, they wrestle and cuddle, Jessie slaps Tom in the face by bringing him down to the beach where she intends to have sex with Nick. Later Jessie brings Tom to her experienced friend Carol in order to get him laid, only to interrupt the pair almost out of jealousy.

WARNING! CONTAINS SPOILER!

In the final scene, after Tom has escaped to the bunker in a blinding moment of psychological masochism, Jessie arrives to console him. “What do we do now?” Tom asks, but Jessie doesn’t answer, so Tom closes the heavy iron bunker door, shutting the camera and audience out, a helicopter shot slowly rising away from the desolate landscape. 

The primary evil has been vanquished, but so much damage has already been done, it is apparent the ingrained trauma will probably never heal, and possibly a form of sustained dysfunction is firmly in place. The War Zone is a shattering drama, superbly directed and acted, especially brave young Lara Belmont in her debut. It won a slew of international awards. No doubt an exhausting experience for director Tim Roth, just as it probably was for Gary Oldman on Nil by Mouth, as neither actor has directed another feature since. Curiously, on the inside cover of my DVD edition are a series of behind the scenes photos showing Roth, Belmont and Cunliffe smiling and enjoying themselves at work as if to remind the viewer this was only a movie, but, just like Nil by Mouth, and aspects of Naked, it is a nightmare is all the more haunting because the horror it depicts is a very real and prevalent hell that happens all over the world, all the time, not just England.  

Nil By Mouth

UK/France | 1997 | Directed by Gary Oldman

Logline: A working class family, and their immediate friends, struggle to deal with alcoholism, drug addiction, and domestic violence.

“I remembered that day ... because I could've put that on his fucking tombstone, you know? Because I don't remember one kiss, you know, one cuddle. Nothing. I mean, plenty went down, not a lot come out. You know, nothing that was any fucking good ... He was fucking freezing cold. It frightened the life out of me. I was looking at him, you know? For the first time in my life, I talked to him. I said, ‘Why didn't you ever love me?’”

Based on his own experiences growing up Gary Oldman penned an utterly uncompromising, searing portrait of addiction and violence. With French director Luc Besson an unlikely co-producer it is the grim as nails life and times of South-East Londoner Raymond (Ray Winstone), his pregnant wife Val (Kathy Burke), her young brother Billy (Charlie Miles-Creed), and their immediate friends and family, a devastating, blistering nightmare of working class urban disease.

Billy is an adolescent, a junkie, and a thief. He does petty crime for Ray and his mate Mark (Jamie Foreman, son of the notorious Cockney gangster Freddie Foreman), and steals Ray’s stash. Ray is a violent, belligerent thug and an addict too, and doesn’t think twice in viciously assaulting Billy when he confronts him over the theft. They are a family trapped in a vicious circle of drug and alcohold abuse and domestic violence. But the worst is yet to be unleashed. 

Val and Billy’s mother Janet (Laila Morse, Oldman’s sister) spends much of her time socialising with them, and their grandmother Kath (Edna Doré) is often included in get-togethers, as is Michelle (Leah Fitzgerald), Ray and Val’s young daughter. Billy hangs out with his heavily tattooed mate Danny (Steve Sweeney). Val hangs out with her girlfriend Paula (Chrissie Cotteril) and her partner Angus (Jon Morrison). They all spend much of their time at the local pub or in front of the telly at home getting blitzed, but no one more so than Ray, while Billy’s smack habit is getting out of control. 

Shot with mostly handheld camera, using available light,  filling the background with non-professional actors and locals as extras, and employing the thick Cockney vernacular, Nil by Mouth has an authenticity and gritty realism like a fly-on-the-wall documentary. This is enhanced ten-fold by the extraordinarily convincing acting of the core cast, of which Ray Winstone’s central performance is monumental in its ferocity and conviction (his inebriated monologue to his own reflection is something to behold). How he could not have been nominated for an Academy Award is a travesty (just as David Thewlis’s snub was for Naked). Mind you Kathy Burke is particularly affecting (and upsetting as her character drinks and smokes whilst pregnant), and she won Best Actress at Cannes for her role as Valerie. 

I have never seen such a frightening drunkard on film as the Raymond of Nil by Mouth. The movie is dedicated to the memory of Oldman’s father, so is it safe to assume that Raymond is modeled on Gary’s own dad? If so, Nil by Mouth is a desperately sad obituary, depicting the harshest of truths that most violence is part of a cycle of poverty and bad parenting. It might sound like a terribly clichéd analogy, but love makes the world go round, without it the cogs seize, the giant machine crashes, and blood is spilled. 

What is most horrendous is not Billy’s junk habit, not any of the appalling verbal abuse hurled from the mouths of Billy to his mother, or from Ray to Billy or Val. There is a scene of physical violence when Ray assaults Val and beats the living daylights out of her borne of his own drunken jealousy and coke-addled paranoia. The beating is terrible to witness (although it’s actually delivered out of shot from the camera), but when we see the horrific nature of Val’s injuries and her denial to her mother that it was Ray who beat her, the effect is absolutely devastating. This is the kind of violence too close to home, the kind that riddles broken families, the kind that is so often never reported. 

Special note must go to the awesome special effects make-up applied to Kathy Burke (although how her wounds heal faster than the “love bite” on Billy’s nose is a small distraction), and to the use of music; Eric Clapton provides a surprisingly low-key score, while additional songs are used to punctuate scenes, including two evocative nu-soul tracks from singer Frances Ashman.

As repellent and harrowing as this domestic scenario and its surrounding seedy London working class is, Gary Oldman has made a darkly brilliant and dangerously compelling movie (his one and only as director). The last scene echoes on a disquieting note; the extended family gathered around discussing the plight of incarcerated young Billy who has narrowly escaped death. They joke about him being moved to the infirmary wing housing the freaks where he’ll probably get raped. The family is re-forming a dysfunctional bond, over the violent misfortune of one of their own. Very little has changed. This is no morality tale, yet Nil by Mouth paints a hellish picture that speaks a thousand hardened words. 

“When you go out, you go with your mates ... and when you are in, you're pissed asleep in front of the television. I'll turn the television off, go to bed ... you follow me at three in the morning stinking of booze. That's what I get. Either that or you're knocking me about. I'm 32 today, you know, and I feel so fucking old. You know, I'm so tired. I wanna be able to look back and say, "I had a bit of fun." Instead of saying, ‘Everyone fucking felt sorry for me.’  I mean, that's the life I've got. Do you hear what I'm saying? I just don't want it. I'll find somebody else. You know, someone who can love me. Someone kind.”

Naked

UK | 1993 | directed by Mike Leigh

Logline: A homeless man arrives in London where he bothers an old girlfriend, and wanders the streets ranting at strangers, whilst another equally embittered man harasses and abuses women.

 “You can't make an omelet without cracking a few eggs. And humanity is just a cracked egg. And the omelet stinks.” 

Mike Leigh’s greatest movie, Naked, is a tour-de-force of direction, acting, and writing; the screenplay of which was created mostly from improvisation during an eleven-week rehearsal period. Director Leigh’s original script was only twenty-five pages long and in utilising his renowned in-depth dramaturgy and workshop ethic, he carved a powerhouse narrative about the desolation of relationships and the despair of humanity. A cracked, fragile society desperate for love, starved of affection, weighed down by the burden of urban pressures, maimed by the cruelty set upon each other by each other. Naked is the human soul and its psyche laid bare and scratched raw until it bleeds.

Johnny (David Thewlis in the performance of his career) is on the run. He’s sexually assaulted a woman in a dark alleyway and she’s escaped, screaming bloody murder. He steals a car and high tails it out of Manchester, arriving in London where he makes his way to his ex-girlfriend Louise’s (Lesley Sharp) flat, then abandons the car and waits outside the front door. Louise’s flatmate Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge) arrives and lets him in for a cuppa. 

Johnny spouts blackly comic vitriol and pearls of darkened wisdom in equal measure. Sophie soaks it up as it washes over her. Before you can say “cheeky young monkay” Johnny and Sophie are having urgent sex. For Johnny it’s contemptuous release, for Sophie it’s any port in a storm, and she wants this particular wretched boat to stay moored. Louise arrives home from work and is surprised and disgusted with Johnny and her flatmate. Johnny lingers until Louise’s indifference and Sophie’s desperation starts to buckle his patience, and he flees the house. 

Johnny encounters various lost souls during the course of his nocturnal wandering and early morning crawl; an erratic young couple (Ewen Bremner and Susan Vidler), a lonely night watchman (Peter Wight), a booze-addled older woman (Deborah McLaren), a pretty wallflower waitress (Gina McKee), as well as an aggressive man postering walls, and an intolerant chauffeur. All of these people are in many ways not too dissimilar to Johnny; lonely, affected, embittered, struggling with their place in society. Johnny manages to charm his way into their lives, but finds himself banished or he becomes frustrated and leaves. 

Jeremy/Sebastian (Greg Cruttwall) is a wealthy playboy sociopath (borderline psychopath). While Johnny is weaving his way in and out of London’s back streets Jeremy is worming his way through his own series of dodgy escapades; first he propositions a masseuse, then following a dinner date he leaves with the waitress, and eventually winds up at the flat of Louise and Sophie. It turns out he not only knows Sandra (Claire Skinner), the lease-holder who’s return from holiday is imminent, but is apparently the landlord. He and Sophie have sex and he treats her with contempt and cruelty. Johnny arrives back at the flat having been beaten up by a roaming gang. Jeremy and Johnny share a strange moment of surprised recognition. 

There is an underlying sadness that permeates Naked like rising damp. But it’s not a tragedy, although its characters are all inherently tragic, pathetic and/or loathsome. Naked is the darkest of comedies, as pitch-black as smoldering English coal. Johnny is an extraordinary, misanthropic piece of work. It seems he wishes from deep within his bruised and aching heart that the world can be a better place, but his psyche and soul are so damaged he can only find disappointment and spill forth a perpetual cynicism; the centerpiece of his school of thought is his extended stay with Brian, the “insecurity” guard, whom Johnny shares a discourse on the apocalypse. 

One of the primary themes of Naked is the failure of human beings to connect, of a basic, almost primal, behaviour based on selfishness. All of the characters presented are locked in their realm of despair and loneliness. Naked portrays a truly lonely planet. Even Louise, the only person in the movie with the capacity for unconditional love is abandoned. Sandra is neurotic, Sophie is pathetic, and Jeremy is evil. Johnny is not quite the anti-hero, more the tortured protagonist, capable of abject antagonism, yet is oddly, grotesquely fascinating, as a result of his searing intelligence and acidic wit. 

Leigh’s cinematographer Dick Pope shoots the city in a cold, grim palette, and the characters are dressed in dark hues. A memorable image from the movie that sums up its dysfunctional themes and intent is that of Sophie in black bra and panties straddling Jeremy in black jockeys, hands behind his head, a smug expression on his face, she whipping her long dark hair against his body like a cat o’ nine tails, moaning in submission. It’s both funny and depressing at the same time. 

Naked takes no prisoners, makes no concessions, offers no explanations, leaves no excuses. It is a nightmare torn apart to expose the broken dreams of the emotionally fragile and frail. Johnny is an opportunist whose abhorrent behaviour is born from desperation, while Jeremy is a scheming manipulator whose aberrant actions are born from wickedness. I like to imagine a Biblical perspective to the narrative suggesting that Johnny and Jeremy have been kicked out of heaven, holding contempt for God and all of His creation, humankind, but especially women. Jeremy is a demon, Johnny is a fallen angel. Both are in purgatory.

Naked is not a movie specifically about misogynist men, but a movie about the capacity men have for self-destruction and cruelty, and the women who allow these contemptuous creatures to enter their lives. Naked is a movie where optimism has been crucified and human frailty is abused.

Endlessly quotable, blackly funny, harsh, corrosive and deeply resonant; a movie that ages with the tannin of a fortified wine, yet retains the taste of the most bitter pill. A portrait of despair, a study of misanthropy, a disquieting glimmer of humankind’s perseverance in the face of moral decay and low-esteem, Naked is cinema’s quintessential suicidal cry for help. “Don’t waste your life.”

"Resolve is never stronger than in the morning after the night it was never weaker."

Morvern Callar

UK/Canada | 2002 | Directed by Lynne Ramsay

Logline: Following her boyfriend’s suicide an impulsive young woman uses his money to go on holiday with her best friend and indulge in a hedonistic lifestyle. 

In a career performance Samantha Morton becomes the titular character from Alan Warner’s brilliant 1995 debut novel about a shellshocked and careless woman on a spiralling journey of self-discovery and self-abandonment. The novel is Scottish in origin, however while best friend Lanna (Kathleen McDermott) is full brogue Scots, Morton’s Callar is English. Not that it really matters, Much of the narrative takes place abroad in the tourist hotspots of coastal Spain (the island of Ibiza, mainly). 

Many of the novel’s peripheral characters are still floating in and around the narrative (Red Hanna, Cat in the Hat, Dazzer, Couris Jean, Sheila Tequila, Creeping Jesus, and Tom Boddington, the eager beaver literary agent who visits Morvern in Spain), but for almost the entire travelogue, emotionally, psychologically, and physically, the perspective is Callar’s. This is her journey, both inner and outer. But there isn’t an ending, well, not a conventional one, and the movie works all the better for it. 

Beautifully shot and edited by Alwin H. Küchler and Lucia Zucchetto, respectively, Morvern Callar has the unusual distinction of having the source material written by a man, but of a woman’s perspective (rare), and the movie adaptation co-penned (with Liana Dognini) and directed by a woman. It is director Ramsay’s female intuition that gives Morvern Callar and added depth of colour and tone. The narrative becomes Ramsay’s vision as viewed through Morvern’s eyes. 

There is a sublime, darkened poetry at work within Morvern Callar, watching this fearless, troubled young woman dive into the deep end and swim with the sharks, pretending they’re dolphins. This may very well be Morton’s vehicle, but it is Ramsay navigating and driving. Warner’s novel becomes a shell, but it’s a hard shell with strong, distinct markings. 

Ultimately Ramsay isn’t interested in capturing or portraying realism, but neither was Warner. This is a story of inner turmoil, executed through outer impulsions. It is xenophobia embraced, it is gregariousness thrown in a corner, the extroverted held captive. Where is love? It is lying in the warm surf. Where is lust? It’s sprawled on the dancefloor. Where is responsibility? It’s floating in the Champagne. Where is the future? It’s present in the past. 

Morvern Callar is an acquired taste, like a ocean delicacy; salty, slippery, viscous, invigorating, elusive, immersive. Samantha Morton and Lynne Ramsay become symbiotic, as they traverse the landscape of the feminine wastrel, the fox unaware of its slyness, the damaged, self-medicated soul who has stitched herself up. 

“Where are we going? asks Lanna , after Morvern has made a most ambitious decision involving her dead lover’s manuscript. He’s history, it’s time to find hers. “Somewhere beautiful,” Morvern replies with a grin. Leave your sensibilities behind, let yourself be entranced on this languid, wayward rave. 

It’s curious to note that Ramsay didn’t direct again for nearly a decade, finally following up Morvern Callar with the excellent, deeply disquieting We Need to Talk About Kevin. 

Badlands

US | 1973 | Directed Terrence Malick

Logline: In the late 50s an impressionable teenage girl is befriended by a reckless young man who leads her into an interstate murder spree. 

“Of course I had to keep all of this a secret from my Dad. He would had a fit because Kit was ten years older than me and came from the wrong side of the tracks so called.”

Holly (Sissy Spacek) is a fifteen-year-old girl with her head in the clouds. Her father (Warren Oates), a sign painter, has relocated them into Fort Dupree, South Dakota, and it is here where she meets the handsome, restless Kit (Martin Sheen), a greaser biding his time, toying with escaping the clutches of small town existence. He lures the pretty redhead away from her front yard and before you can say “Good golly, well I'll be damned!” they’ve fallen into a hapless, hopeless infatuation, much to the concern of her strict father.   

“Little did I realise that what began in the alleys and back ways of this quiet town would end in the Badlands of Montana.”

It is Holly’s voice-over narration that provides Badlands with its dreamy, juxtaposed morality. It’s as if Holly is watching herself drift along on a picturesque travelogue, unable to intervene, her life inexorably becoming a train wreck in beautiful slow motion. It is love’s sweet adventure that unfurls and traps her in its web and it is life’s bitter irony that leaves her amidst love’s ruin. 

Terrence Malick’s feature debut is, arguably, his most accomplished and resonant movie. Loosely based on the real-life killing spree of Charlie Starkweather and his girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate in 1958, although not credited or acknowledged at the time, here’s a conciseness that encapsulates the narrative, that keeps the edges from fraying, yet still manages to harness a poetic sense of the wilderness, of wandering. Malick has always managed to imbue his movies with a soft, dreamy mise-en-scene, even within the framework of a war movie (The Thin Red Line), but with Badlands the narrative and style are so perfectly entwined, it’s hard to imagine anyone else at the helm. 

Spacek and Sheen are terrific. Spacek, who was twenty-three at the time captures the wistfulness of a teenager with a delicate charisma and brooding intelligence. Sheen, all James Dean swagger and nonchalance, had already spent fifteen years doing television, with a couple of features under his belt. His performance is amongst the best of his career. 

“One day, while taking a look at some vistas in Dad's stereopticon, it hit me that I was just this little girl, born in Texas, whose father was a sign painter, who only had just so many years to live. It sent a chill down my spine and I thought where would I be this very moment, if Kit had never met me? Or killed anybody... For days afterwards I lived in dread. Sometimes I wished I could fall asleep and be taken off to some magical land, and this never happened.”

Three cinematographers worked on the movie, but kudos to Malick for reigning in the visual style with such fluidity, something he’s achieved and maintained on all his movies. It’s interesting to note that the production designer, Jack Fisk, would go on to marry Spacek and work on David Lynch’s Eraserhead, of which Spacek helped secure financing for. It was her experience on Badlands that made her appreciate the artistry of cinema, and aware that visionary filmmakers needed the support. Sheen still regards Malick’s screenplay for Badlands as the best he’s ever read. 

Badlands is melancholy and disquieting, undeniably American, brilliantly evocative, and one of my favourite movies of the 70s. 

10 Cloverfield Lane

US | 2016 | Directed by Dan Trachtenberg

Logline: Following a car accident a young woman is held captive in an underground shelter, sharing it with a two men, both of whom claim the outside has been affected by a catastrophic chemical attack.

Originating from a script titled The Cellar by Josh Campbell and Matthew Stuecken, and whipped into more interesting shape with the addition of Whiplash screenwriter Damien Chazelle, as a debut feature vehicle for director Trachtenberg 10 Cloverfield Lane is a much better movie than the producers probably thought they had on their hands when they decided to dress it up as a kind of “blood relative” sequel to the excellent found footage monster flick Cloverfield. 

It’s a shame that the Cloverfield tag has been attached, because it ultimately does the movie no real favours. Fans of the original Cloverfield expecting another hapless-pretty-young-folk-on-the-run-whilst-a-behemoth-beast-runs-amok will probably be disappointed. There are some surprises to be had, but the less you know of them, the better. Hopefully you can get to see the movie before the idiots spoil the fun. And there’s a lot of fun to be had with this movie. 

It’s an old-fashioned nail-biter, in the Hitchcockian/Spielbergian tradition. Essentially a three-hander, and claustrophobic to boot. Mary Elizabeth Winstead, delivering a truly superb performance, plays Michelle, a woman escaping her married woes. She is sideswiped on a dark country road, far from the city, but manages to survive a nasty crash. She regains consciousness inside a bunker. Soon enough she’s introduced to her captor, a hulking embittered man called Howard (John Goodman), and his “Igor”, Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.), a lost soul. Seems they’ll all be underground for quite some time, as Howard insists the world above ground has been polluted from some kind of invasion, and Emmett backs the story up. 

As Michelle attempts to find out the truth, the the screw of suspense tightens, and the tension rises. Emmett leans in closer to Michelle, as Howard squints from across the table, and strange sounds echo from Howard’s farmland above. Just what exactly has happened? And just what is Howard’s real agenda? 

The first two-thirds of the movie unfold with Michelle getting to grips with her captivity and trying to cope with the preposterous notion of a possibly scorched, contaminated earth that only one night ago was perfectly fine. But if Michelle had listened more closely to her car radio on the route out of the city in the movie’s first ten minutes she’d have heard that major blackouts were affecting parts of the country. Something not right was definitely afoot. 

The final third - the last quarter even - of the movie shifts dramatically into an extended and thoroughly unnerving action set-piece, with a frayed denouement that harks back to the grim and mysterious allure of classic late 60s and 70s thrillers. At first it feels as if we’ve been thrown headlong into an entirely different movie, but the overall tone, mood, atmosphere of the movie is consistent, and the refreshingly nihilistic psychology, with a hint of hope, provides the movie with serious genre weight, not forgetting terrific periodic injections of wry humour. 

Trachtenberg has crafted an excellent old-fashioned thriller. See it on the big screen, before the twists and surprises are spoiled. If that’s at all possible in this harsh and unforgiving social media-saturated climate. 

Deliverance

US | 1972 | Directed by John Boorman

 Logline: Four adult friends embark on a weekend canoe trip only to be terrorised by angered backcountry woodsmen. 

Based on the brilliant first novel from James Dickey, an acclaimed American poet and university lecturer, who also wrote the excellent screenplay, Deliverance is a deeply impressive, but harrowing portrayal of masculinity, and the ferocious nature of man, that has lost none of its visceral power since it was first unleashed back in 1972. It is a tale of shattered innocence and ruptured, primal machismo, with an undercurrent of social and eco commentary (awe and contempt) that is apparent only through the movie’s superb use of symbolism and metaphor. Freedom is sought with single-mindedness, but the darkness of the soul is eventually laid bare, only after the mind and body is subjected to humiliation and violation. 

Lewis (Burt Reynolds in a breakthrough career performance) is the macho leader, an imposing go-getter, who loves the great outdoors. Accompanying him are his buddy Ed (Jon Voight), a pipe-smokin’ family man who likes a tipple and a challenge, Drew (Ronny Cox), another family man, with strong morals and a dab hand on the guitar, and chubby Bobby (Ned Beatty), who likes to complain, but yearns to cut loose. These four friends drive up into the heavily-wooded Appalachian hills and negotiate for some local moonshiners to drive their two cars down the mountain road trail to the Aintry river-stop where they’ll rendezvous in their canoes a couple of days later. The greasy feral mountain men wonder what the hell they wanna tackle the river for. “Cos it’s there,” replies Lewis smugly.

Not a scene or shot is superfluous in Deliverance. I raise my hat to the consummate skill of Boorman and Dickey, who along with late, great cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond (one of my favourite DOPs), editor Tom Priestley, and special effects technician Marcel Vercoutere, fashioned a nightmare thriller as sharp and deadly as the powerful bow and arrow brandished by Lewis and Ed (which is almost a character in itself, the other “character” being the Chatooga River – renamed the Cahulawassee in the movie - which divides South Carolina and Georgia).

The performances from the four leads are terrific, especially Jon Voight. It was Ned Beatty’s first movie, but special mention must go to Bill McKinney as Don Job, who forces poor Bobby to squeal like a pig, a nasty piece of work he is, and with few lines to utter, Herbert ‘Cowboy’ Coward, as Job’s toothless grinnin’ bosom buddy. These two backwoods bandits are an understatedly fearsome pair (decades later McKinney named his own website squeallikeapig.com!)

It’s hard to believe but the Deliverance production was uninsured. The actors all performed their own stunts, the rapids tossing resulted in Burt Reynolds breaking his coccyx. Jon Voight actually scaled the sheer vertical cliff face. Ned Beatty was the only one who had any canoeing experience, the others learnt on location. To further minimise costs, locals were hired to play the resident hillbilly folk, with one elderly gentleman improvising a buck jig which was included in the movie.

Sam Peckinpah wanted to direct, and when Boorman was signed on Peckinpah went off to make Straw Dogs. Donald Sutherland turned down one of the roles because he objected to the violence (and later regretted his decision), yet ironically a year later he starred in Don’t Look Now (1973). Charlton Heston and Marlon Brando both declined the role of Lewis, as did Lee Marvin for the role of Ed, telling Boorman he thought he and Brando were too old for the parts. James Dickey appears in a small, but convincing, part as the Aintry Sheriff who suspects the men’s story might be a little taller than they’re admitting to.

There’s an apocalyptic atmosphere that permeates the narrative of Deliverance, the title of which is a clever play on being rescued or set free and a thought or judgment, often from an authoritative voice. In this case, the title suggests the pursuit of unbridled adventure amidst the wilderness that is being threatened by urban development (the damming of the river) and the plunder of human progress. Dickey was passionate about this socio-political stance and he designed his novel as a nightmare metaphor. Boorman had a kinship with Dickey and used his skill as a director to design a mise-en-scene, a vivid, succinct visual narrative that employed both symbolism (Ed’s faltering when he tries to kill a deer and the river reducing Lewis from He-man to whimpering invalid) to the analogy of the violence of man’s inhumanity to man vs. the violence of humankind’s geographical greed.

Whilst nowhere near as graphically violent as most of today’s R-rated horror movies, Deliverance still contains the power to shock and upset, especially in the infamous rape and murder sequence, and later when we witness Lewis’s horrendous leg injury (that’s one gruesome compound fracture!), Ed impaling himself on an arrow, and the discovery of Drew’s twisted corpse (Ronny Cox suggested taking advantage of having a double-jointed shoulder!). There is an implicit violence that courses through the entire movie, despite the natural beauty of the surroundings. The movie even ends in a dream-like paroxysm of guilt and fear … and finally stillness, but with anxiety floating just below the surface.

The only thing that dates Deliverance is the use of day-for-night shooting during Ed’s nocturnal scaling of the cliff. In 1972 anamorphic lenses and film stock were a lot slower and night scenes had to be under-exposed and given a blue tint during post-production. Little else apart from that gives Deliverance away from being nearly forty-five years old (it’s not like mobile phones would’ve helped the men’s predicament!) Even the famous “Duelling Banjos” scene somehow seems ageless.

In Germany the title was changed to (and translated as) In Dying, Everyone is First. 

The Hitcher

US | 1986 | Directed by Robert Harmon

Logline: A young man manages to escape the clutches of a psychopath, but finds himself being pursued relentlessly, and framed for several murders.

The Hitcher is a ferocious beast unto itself. It was Harmon’s feature debut, having worked as a still photographer on Fade to Black (1980) and Hell Night (1981), and it was also screenwriter Eric Red’s first feature (he’d write another top-notch screenplay, made the following year, Near Dark). Red claims inspiration for The Hitcher came from The Doors’ Riders on the Storm. 

Teenager Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell) is on a car relocation from Chicago to San Diego. He’s tired, it’s dark and raining heavily, yet silhouetted by the roadside is a hitchhiker. Halsey picks up the stranger, immediately announcing that his mother told him never to do this. The dangerous-looking character turns and smiles, “John … Ryder”.  

Ryder (Rutger Hauer) is soft-spoken, brooding, and guarded. His silence is calculated, and the cold, slippery night weighs heavily on Halsey. Soon enough Ryder presents his hand, and Halsey’s fear grips him like a vice. The stakes have been raised, and Halsey has swallowed the bait. This game (of cat and mouse) is on for young and old. 

For an American movie, The Hitcher is in an atmospheric league of its own. It exudes more of a European mood and sensibility; minimalist dialogue, a deadly, drifting menace that verges on the supernatural, an evocative and haunting score from Mark Isham, a central tour-de-force performance that still towers above most other on-screen psychopaths, and a mythological, surreal framework that encompasses the narrative. The Hitcher is like John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978); presenting the audience with a villain that defies logic and reason, has no background, essentially no real motive, and lives primarily to terrorise and murder all those around a central figure whom has provided the killer their obsession, their morbid infatuation.

One can argue there’s a homoerotic undercurrent in The Hitcher, that John Ryder is taunting Jim Halsey in an unconsciously sexual way. There’s the touching and the looks, the teasing and the play on male virility. But more interesting is the concept that maybe John Ryder doesn’t even exist, that he’s actually a split personality of Halsey’s, or, more tenuously, a figment of his twisted imagination, created to rationalise Halsey’s serial murder spree. Sure, the entire movie is far-fetched, but, like Halloween, you embrace this internal nightmare logic in order to allow the dream-fabric to breathe. 

Later, after Halsey is framed for several murders and Ryder is definitely guilty of one, and both he and Ryder have been arrested Ryder is then interrogated by State Troopers. They discover that he has no driver’s licence, no social security number, probably no birth certificate. It’s as if he never existed. So when they ask him where he’s from, Ryder smiles and says, “Disneyland.” This is one of the movie’s many moments of brilliance; the irony of the pure evil nestled within the sanctuary of manufactured entertainment. The law is confounded by Ryder, and decide the only thing to do is have the dangerous lunatic carted off to a holding cell at the local State prison. If only it were that simple. 

I’ve not seen anything else director Robert Harmon has made, but I feel safe in stating he started at the top; The Hitcher is a masterstroke of paranoia and dread, of tension and suspense, excellent action sequences and ultra-violence to boot. C. Thomas Howell is the one weak link, delivering a stilted, wooden performance, but Rutger Hauer (in his second career-defining piece of controlled wrath, after Blade Runner four years earlier), and in the only key support role, Jennifer Jason Leigh as Nash, the waitress whom Halsey befriends in desperation, provide enough high calibre. Also notable is Jeffrey DeMunn as Captain Estridge. 

The Hitcher is a lean, mean, killing machine, cut from the uncompromising cloth of cult material. There may be a moral denouement, but the journey has been decidedly amoral, transgressive even. Pay no heed to the straight-to-video 2003 sequel or 2007 remake, they’re not worth your time. Embrace the lunacy of the unique original, let the madness take hold, and do what your mother told you never to do: go for a ride with John Ryder. He’ll kick your ass into the middle of next week, and give you nightmares for a few more.

Angel Heart

US | 1987 | Directed by Alan Parker

Logline: A dishevelled private eye takes on a mysterious client and becomes caught up in a missing persons search that threatens his sanity and endangers his life. 

A supernatural thriller that looks and feels like a 50s noir, but is wrapped in the macabre, Southern fried funk of the occult. It’s New York City, 1955. Private Investigator Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) prefers to take the easy jobs, where his cream-coloured, crumpled linen suit won’t get torn. He gets hired for a what seems like a fairly straightforward seek-and-ye-shall-find job by a man who calls himself Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro): track down a popular young crooner called Johnny Favorite, who vanished around the time the boys came home from the war. 

Angel’s investigation takes an unexpected and sombre turn after he discovers the doctor who discharged Favorite from a hospital ended up with a bullet through the eye and his brains splattered over his morphine-stained pillow. Angel digs deeper, about six feet down, and finds himself becoming shrouded in the voodoo cloak of New Orleans, especially after he becomes entangled with the sultry, teenaged priestess Epiphany Proudfoot (Lisa Bonet), who just happens to be Favourite’s daughter.

Based on the novel Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg (who also penned the phantasmogorical fantasy Legend, filmed by Ridley Scott), Parker’s screenplay spins a dark whirlpool, with the narrative following Angel closely, so as to keep the audience at his level of bewilderment. I haven’t read the novel, but the movie makes for a powerful, seductive piece of nightmare cinema, as the diabolical revelations unfold, and the tendrils of temptation unfurl.

Parker has made numerous excellent movies. Like another talented Englishman, Michael Winterbottom, who approaches each movie with a different style and technique, and who moves effortlessly between genres. Angel Heart is among my favourite Parker movies, along with Midnight Express, Pink Floyd - The Wall, and Birdy. Mickey Rourke delivers a career performance, an actor at the top of his game, before the boxing robbed him of his looks, and his career fell on the ropes. 

Angel Heart has aged very well, considering it’s nearly thirty years old. The vintage-style cinematography by Parker’s long-serving cameraman Michael Serresin is superb; a colour palette that verges on monochrome, and combined with Parker’s brilliant compositions, the loaded imagery, the clever mise-en-scene, the movie is a darkly beautiful joy to behold. It helps when you’ve got a key cast as charismatic as Rourke and De Niro, and as sensual as Bonet and Charlotte Rampling, as tarot reader Margaret Krusemark.

With long hair, a full beard, and talons De Niro was apparently impersonating Martin Scorsese in his performance as “Lucifer”. He certainly commands every scene he is in, but Rourke matches him, beat for beat, and although Parker originally offered the role of Angel to Al Pacino, Jack Nicolson, and even De Niro, Rourke fits the character like a suede glove. It’s curious to note that Parker found De Niro so uncomfortably eerie in the role of Cyphre he allowed the actor to direct himself! 

Parker’s attention to detail (once described by a critic as an aesthetic fascist), especially with the rustic locations, art direction, use of music, and the editing, provides much authenticity within the scenes; the atmosphere is pervasive, especially in some of the movie’s more intense scenes, such as the provocative, now legendary “Soul on Fire” rain/sex/blood scene, the village voodoo ritual, the murder aftermaths, and the chase scenes (oh, to see the version before it was heavily trimmed for the MPAA). One of many images burned onto my retina is a frightened Harry Angel bolting out into a New Orleans’ street, into the torrential rain, his flailing trench coat making him seem like a ghostly apparition.

“I’m an athesist,” states Angel to Cyphre, while they sit together in a French Quarter church, the humidity thick, the tension palpable. “Are you?” Cyphre replies a little surprised. “Yes I am. I’m from Brooklyn,” Angel says emphatically. The humour drips like black molasses. Cyphre twirls his ebony cane, “The future isn’t always what is used to be Mr. Angel,” he muses, and soon Harry Angel will know the truth, and it will scare him to the very bottom of his very soul. When one dances with the devil in the pale moonlight, one doesn’t realise how terrible wisdom can be, when it brings no profit to the wise.

Taxi Driver

US | 1976 | directed by Martin Scorsese

Logline: A Vietnam vet, working as a cab driver in NYC, struggles to cope with his surrounds, and deal with his inner demons bearing down.

“The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.” --- Thomas Wolfe, “God’s Lonely Man”

Five features into his distinguished career, but only his third major release, director Martin Scorsese delivered Taxi Driver (1976), the first of three masterpieces; the other two being Raging Bull (1980) and Goodfellas (1990). At once a searing portrait of emotional alienation and psychological deterioration with a realm of urban decay, and also a blistering study of humankind’s innate loneliness and man’s propensity for extreme violence, Taxi Driver is still as powerful and dangerous now, as it was 40 years ago. 

Screenwriter (and filmmaker) Paul Schrader penned the potent tale of Travis Bickle’s pathological despair in five days following his own nervous breakdown, being rejected by his girlfriend and in the midst of a divorce. He didn’t talk to anyone for weeks, frequented porn cinemas, and an obsession with firearms meant he kept a loaded gun on his desk for inspiration and motivation. Brian De Palma was slated to direct, but was fired. With the gritty realism of Mean Streets (1973) and the emotional depth of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974) on his resume, Martin Scorsese entered the picture and brought with him Robert De Niro (who’d just won an Oscar for The Godfather Part II), and the rest is history.

Travis Bickle (De Niro) is a Vietnam veteran who takes a job as a cab driver in New York City, working long hours and driving to all the boroughs. His only acquaintances are a handful of other cabbies working for the same company. Bickle attempts a romance with uptown Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), who is working on the political campaign for Charles Palantine (Leonard Harris), a Presidential candidate, but he screws that up royally. Twelve-year-old streetwalker Iris (Jodie Foster) crosses his path on several occasions, and as the weight of the city’s filth bears down on him and his psyche begins to crack Bickle decides to save Iris and free her from the pimp shackles (Harvey Keitel as Sport) of her pathetic prostituted existence.

From the opening image of the subway steam filling the screen and Bernard Herrmann’s jazz-wounded score soaked in melancholy, the ominous strings scraping, the sad alto saxophone singing a song of desperation, a yellow checkered cab pushes through the white subterranean mist of the city and begins its long drawl in and out of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Harlem, and the Bronx, uptown, downtown, midtown and the lower East side. Taxi Driver is Scorsese’s dark ode to the city that never sleeps, capturing the quintessential grime and low-life glamour of 70s NYC that perpetually feeds its moral and physical corruption.

“Listen, you fuckers, you screwheads. Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is … a man who stood up.”

Building steadily towards its frightening, shattering denouement Taxi Driver is a tour-de-force of direction and performance. Robert De Niro is mesmerising in his method brilliance, Cybil Shephard exudes a wonderful coquettish charm, while a very young Jodie Foster exhibits amazing subtlety and vulnerability, and Harvey Keitel provides the perfect sleazy foil to De Niro’s deadly coiled spring. A nod also to Steven Prince, in just one scene, as Easy Andy, a cocky gun salesman with style and merchandise to burn (Scorsese would later make a short doco called American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince).

It’s curious to note the extraordinary who’s who of actors who were offered, auditioned for, and in some cases cast - but withdrew, in the role of Betsy; Farrah Fawcett, Jane Seymour, Glenn Close, Susan Sarandon, Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, Ornella Muti, Isabelle Adjani, Liza Minnelli, Barbara Hershey, and Sigourney Weaver, and in the role of Iris; Melanie Griffith, Ellen Barkin, Kim Basinger, Geena Davis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Brooke Shields, Dabra Winger, Carrie Fisher, Mariel Hemingway, Bo Derek, Kim Cattrall, Rosanna Arquette, Kristy McNichol, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Linda Blair. 

Martin Scorsese himself appears in two scenes; the first as a background extra (seated on a ledge outside Palantine’s campaign office), but the second is as one of Travis’s more unhinged fares, spouting a disturbing, misogynist monologue which undoubtedly contributes to Bickle’s already heavily affected and troubled persona. Scorsese stepped into the role after the intended actor sustained injuries prior to filming.

Whilst Bickle’s psychotic slow burn toward the inevitable brain-snap is the movie’s tightening screw, it is the ultra-violent bloodbath at movie’s end that provides Taxi Driver with its piece-de-résistance (although Robert De Niro’s improvised “You talkin’ to me?” scene commands its own cult adoration). Dick Smith, special effects make-up legend, was hired to provide shocking authenticity to the brothel carnage, but ironically Scorsese was forced to de-saturate the blood’s hue (making it look an odd pinky brown) in order to avoid an X-rating. It still packs a punch, especially the shocking .44 Magnum impact to the hand. Smith also made the famous Mohawk wig for De Niro (which I always thought was real!)

Taxi Driver continues to impress and fascinate; superficially as a date stamp of mid-70s New York City (Scorsese shot entirely on location), but more importantly Scorsese’s effortlessly fluid, but controlled and deliberate visual narrative that never once feels contrived, yet sustains the tension of a crouching tiger, a sleeping cobra, a lost soul at the end of his tether. Schrader’s story wraps up with a curious epilogue that has Iris’s father’s voice-over praise on Travis Bickle’s rescue efforts while the camera drifts over newspaper clippings describing the gun-battle with the gangsters and his subsequent pedestal as urban hero.

But has this twist of fate actually happened, or is it just a figment of Bickle’s distorted imagination, a wish-fulfillment fantasy he’s projecting in the moments before his death as he sits on the sofa mortally wounded …?

Scorsese adds a coda to suggest otherwise: Travis Bickle back behind the wheel of his safety net, his trusty checkered cab, on the dark crowded streets of the big rotten apple, and low and behold, into the back seat climbs Betsy. The vibe is awkward; she acts aloof, “Travis I’m … How much was it?” Travis replies, “So long”, as he clears the meter. She gets out, he drives off, but something catches his eye in the rear-view mirror and Travis does a double-take …

We’ll always wonder just what was it that caught the eye of God’s lonely man, but, perhaps it’s best we never found out. 

Bone Tomahawk

US | 2015 | Directed by S. Craig Zahler

Logline: In the Wild West four men set out to rescue a group that has been abducted by a tribe of primitive cave dwellers.

Novelist and aspiring screenwriter Zahler’s dream comes true, Hollywood comes a-knocking, with Kurt Russell attached. His dark Western journey into the heart of darkness is brought to life with bone-dry black comedy and gut-wrenching ultraviolence. Bone Tomahawk is one of the best revisionist Westerns of the past twenty years, and, along with Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, gives Russell the second best role – and performance - he’s had/given in years. 

Set in 1890s, at the tail end of the Wild West, in Southern California, the story opens with a prologue that depicts the plight of two drifting vultures, Buddy (Sid Haig) and Purvis (David Arquette) on the outskirts of the township Bright Hope. Eleven days later Purvis shows up at the local bar, somewhat worse for wear. Back-up deputy Chicory (Richard Jenkins) has observed suspicious behaviour, and he notifies the Sheriff Hunt (Kurt Russell).

The lovely Samantha Dwyer (Lili Simmons) is called away from attending to her husband Arthur’s (Patrick Wilson) injured leg, to extract a bullet from a culprit’s leg. Meanwhile, young Gizzard (Maestro Harrell) hears a strange call on the night breeze. He inspects the stables.

Subsequently an arduous journey is embarked upon by Hunt, Chicory, a loyal sharp-shooter known as Brooder (Matthew Fox), and Arthur, as they set off on a five day jaunt across the Mojave desert to find the Valley of the Starving Man, where a tribe of brutal, in-bred cannibals dwell. The four townsmen must execute a daring rescue. The odds are against them.

Clocking in at two hours-ten minutes, the bulk of the movie is the incidents at Bright Hope and the trek itself. In the movie’s third act horror rears its monstrous head and cuts a bloody path of destruction, a standout set-piece being a savage vivisection of a man. In fact there are numerous special effects makeup moments, I was surprised the artists involved weren’t given proper credit, instead just being mentioned amidst the usual crawl at film’s end.

All performances are top notch; Russell, of course, delivers a wonderfully measured, restrained presence, a noble lawman indeed. Wilson is always good, but special mention to Jenkins, in the role of the old timer, and Fox (almost unrecognisable) as the suave, well-heeled Injun killer.

The cannibals are, apparently, troglodytes. Lathered in white okra, adorned with tusks, and brandishing bone tomahawks, and bow and arrow. The also have human teeth embedded in their throats, enabling them to make a harrowing scream/call-to-arms. The women of their clan have been blinded and left as baby machines.

There is a brooding minimalism and historical authenticity that exudes from Bone Tomahawk’s sweaty skin; the mannerisms, the dialogue (which reminds one of Tarantino-esque exchanges, but not as self-conscious or as clashingly modern), and a shroud of nihilism that hangs over like a dark desert cloud.

I’ll be bold enough to say, this is the Western Tarantino would love to make, but would never pull off. So put your timepiece away, it’s time to ride, it’s time to kill, it’s time to bleed. 

Straw Dogs

US/UK | 1971 | Directed by Sam Peckinpah

Logline: An earnest American and his young English wife settle in rural England and face increasingly vicious local harrassment. 

At surface level a powerful study of violence both implicit and explicit, but under the skin, Straw Dogs is a complex and disturbing morality play that poses far more questions than answers. It provokes and outrages, yet by the end offers only slight reward, leaving a bitter taste of copper, and the acid after burn of contempt. After the assault on the senses that is the siege at Trencher’s farm, empathy is left in ruin, humanity torn a sunder. 

Two years prior Sam Peckinpah had delivered one of the great, uncompromising Westerns, The Wild Bunch (1969); a ruthless, indulgent portrait on male self-righteousness, bravado and violent machismo. It was a farrago of raw energy and moral corruption. Peckinpah then polarised audiences even further, pushing his dark fascination with the human spirit and society’s innate misanthropy to a deeper, more insular level. Straw Dogs would tear apart all notions of love and trust, of jealousy and desire, and of man’s acumen for violence.

Based on the novel The Siege of Trencher’s Farm by Gordon Williams and adapted for the screen by David Zulag Goodman and Peckinpah, Straw Dogs tells the story of meek and mild David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman), an American mathematician who, with his pretty young wife Amy (Susan George), has moved from the States back to Amy’s home of Wakely, a small village on the coast of England, where she grew up. They’ve bought an old farmhouse up on the hillside that needs repairing, so David has hired a few of the local handymen, so that he can concentrate on his treatise on celestial navigation (the “astro-mathematic structures of stellar interiors”).

One of the builders is Charlie (Del Henney); an ex-lover of Amy’s who makes it very obvious he still carries a torch for her. Amy is flattered by his attention, but won’t stand for his sleazy behaviour. Charlie and his cohorts, Norman (Ken Hutchison) and Chris (Jim Norton) despise David, and challenge him by inferring he’s a milquetoast for abandoning his country in time of need (the Vietnam war). There’s tension between David and Amy as well, since David is so wrapped up in his equations and seems only to patronise Amy, leaving little time for genuine loving. Amy is restless, David is preoccupied. Frustration and neglect will soon collide, and tragedy will ensue.

Straw Dogs is such a thematically rich and intelligent work, darkly provocative, nightmarish, subversive. The characters don’t fit any easy mold, all drifting within a morally grey area. Obviously there are some that can be easily pigeon-holed as villainous, but there are agendas exposed that suggest not all intentions were evil at heart. If only ...

The most controversial part of the movie is the rape scene (which got the movie into a lot of trouble when it was first released and in the years following), or more precisely Amy’s response to Charlie’s rough attempt at seduction. It is apparent Amy still harbours an attraction toward him, but he’s by no means the man who makes her laugh, as her husband does. Amy’s flaunting of her naked body, and not wearing a bra beneath her sweaters, has been driving Charlie wild with lust.

WARNING! CONTAINS SPOILERS!

After orchestrating a snipe hunt for David, where the men stick it to him in the bush, leaving him floundering on the hilltop waiting for pheasants and ducks to fly by, Charlie arrives back at the farmhouse and surprises Amy who invites him in for a drink. But it’s more than booze Charlie’s after. He forces himself on Amy, she slaps him, he pulls her by the hair over the sofa where he pins her down and tears her robe and panties off.

At this point the assault changes gear. It appears no longer to be rape, but consensual sex as they have intercourse and she caresses his face and they kiss. It began as forced entry, but has become something far more complex. The image of Charlie is intercut with David, both men making love to her. But is Charlie providing a more passionate experience for Amy? “Hold me,” Amy whispers. Suddenly Norman is there in the room also, brandishing a shotgun. Amy isn’t aware as she lies on her stomach, her eyes closed in a state of post-coital satiation. Whilst Charlie holds Amy down, Norman sheds his pants and sodomises her. Amy screams in shock and pain. The first intercourse had been questionable in its reception; the second is violation, impure and simple.

David never finds out about the rape, which makes his act of defiance in the last third of the movie a curious stand. One would expect the drama to come from David seeking revenge, but Straw Dogs confounds this by having David respond to something more prosaic: one man’s house is his castle and should be protected at all costs. It is here that David’s failings as a husband and his strengths as a coward in turnaround are made explicit. He was witness to Charlie’s blatant interest in his wife, and he was too cowardly to confront the men about the killing of Amy’s pet cat, yet when David has brought the local pederast, Henry Niles (David Warner, in an uncredited role), into his home after accidentally hitting him with his car and the village lynch mob have come to collect him because local girl Janice (Sally Thomsett) is missing, presumed dead at the hands of Niles, David refuses to give him over. It is here where the siege takes place, and where David turns the tables on his attackers.

Whilst Amy is hysterical, David is transforming, becoming less human, more animal; less logical, more instinctual. But the most telling and the most distressing point is not made until the very end. Having dispatched all of the assailants in numerous violent ways, David tells Amy to stay in the house while he drives Henry Niles down to the village, even though he can’t be sure all the attackers are dead. As they drive through the impenetrable darkness Niles says, “I don’t know my way home.” “That’s okay,” David replies with a strange smirk, “I don’t know either …”

Straw Dogs deals with game-playing and the strategy of battle as metaphors and symbolism. We see Amy playing chess in bed, David working on his elaborate mathematical equations on his huge chalkboard, David and Amy fool around as if on a perpetual one-on-one game of their own making, David taunting the cat by throwing fruit at it, there’s the snipe hunt David is coerced into going on, and of course, the final siege, which is a series of confrontations and dispatches. There’s also the strange voyeurism that involves Janice and her brother Bobby (Len Jones), spying on David and Amy. Janice has a crush on David, but she ends up manipulating Henry Niles, as if on some strange death wish.

There’s also a thematic element concerning immaturity and its potent fragility in relationship to experience and innocence. “You act like you’re 14,” teases David to Amy, “I am!” she replies with a cheeky laugh. Charlie, Norman and Chris all act like they’re adolescents, bragging and cajoling each other. Henry Niles is a man-child. And of course David and Amy are cocooned in a bubble of immaturity as well.

Peckinpah’s direction is superb, helped by atmospheric cinematography from British cameraman John Coquillon. The editing is brilliant, especially the inter-cutting during the church social gathering which highlights Amy’s paranoia and trauma, and also during the siege (three editors, plus an editorial consultant were employed on the movie). The score, mostly sombre brass and woodwind, captures a suitably terse mood.

The performances are all first rate. Hoffman is at the top of his game (and only a couple of features into his career) playing the emotionally retarded stranger in a strange land, while Susan George matches him with her delicate balance of vulnerability and assertiveness. The support cast can’t be singled out, they’re all great.

Straw Dogs is a difficult movie; but for all the best reasons. It presents the moral quagmire of human frailty, it slaps you in the face, slashes you, and leaves you scarred, with blood on your hands. 

“Heaven and earth are not humane, and regard the people as straw dogs.”