films – Podcasting Them Softly

Robert Stevenson’s In Search Of The Castaways

December 16, 2021 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I love old live action flicks from the Disney vault, I grew up with stuff like their Escape To Witch Mountain and Swiss Family Robinson as some of the most formative cinematic experiences of my childhood, so the swash, buckle, whimsy and warm-heartedness of these entries have always spoken to me. Robert Stevenson’s In Search Of The Castaways, based on a book by Jules Verne, is a rollicking, frequently invigorating, occasionally silly and quite enjoyable globetrotting adventure starring Hayley Mills, who I had only seen in Pollyanna and the original Parent Trap prior to this but damn is she ever an engaging, winning star presence onscreen. She plays a young girl who is searching for her missing sea captain father along with her brother (Keith Hamshere) and a consistently eccentric French Renaissance man played by Maurice Chevalier, who I’ve never seen in anything before but is the textbook definition of scene stealer here. They embark on a hectic voyage to Australian oceans bankrolled by a Lord (Wilfred Hyde-White) complete with wild jaguars, natives both helpful and threatening and not shortage of derring-do. Now, it is a musical but it almost feels like it wasn’t really intended to be and they just sort of hastily wrote a few quick ditties in post production to throw up onscreen, numbers that are pretty schmaltzy and aren’t handled with any real sense of vocal authentic aside from Mills herself, who is wonderful whether singing, talking or debating the Lord’s pampered kid (Michael Anderson Jr) on his stuffy ideas about a woman’s place on a navy vessel. It’s a fun time for the most part, the highlight being this brazenly bizarre, hilarious sequence where they all ride a giant shard of busted rock down a series of alps like a big boulder sled, it’s a wonderfully implausible bit of effects laden pandemonium as they careen down icy crags, through gorgeous subterranean snow tunnels and although it doesn’t feel believable for three seconds (their hair blows as if by one modest ceiling fan, never-mind the furious blizzard wind of a mountain range), is nothing short of a show stopping set piece on sheer Indiana Jones audacity alone. It’s good times, and fits the 60’s lovingly retro live action Disney niche quite nicely.

-Nate Hill

James Ashcroft’s Coming Home In The Dark

December 12, 2021 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I’ve never seen New Zealand cast in a dark or menacing cinematic light, having been used to stuff like the fantastical dazzle of Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth and the quaint, quirky whimsy of Taika Waititi’s fare. Not being that well versed in films coming from the country, I was fairly blown away and left in a kiln-fired state of deep shock by James Ashcroft’s Coming Home In The Dark, a vicious, unrelenting captivity thriller that wields a smouldering philosophical ember beneath a slick smokescreen of unbearable suspense, soul shaking acts of violence and stark, jagged cinematography that has as little visual mercy for the viewer as the two main antagonists do for their prey, a suburban family on a road trip through rural NZ who are stalked, terrorized and psychologically tortured endlessly. The villains, if you can called them that, are an interesting pair of spooky sociopathic drifters, led by the verbose, mercurial and terrifyingly dangerous Mandrake (Daniel Gillies) and his mostly silent, hauntingly observant sidekick Tubs (Matthias Luafutu). They seem to materialize out of the windswept ether just beyond a patch of swaying long grass where this family is peacefully picnicking. Toting a rifle, an impossibly misanthropic attitude and the volatile outbursts to back it up, Mandrake makes it his personal mission to hurt, toy with and mentally break down these people, particularly the dad (Erik Thomsen). But why? Are these two just wayward sick souls that target anyone out there, or is there some hidden, decades old resentment towards this middle aged family man, some personal grudge that lodges itself into Mandrake’s very essence and keeps him on this bloody, seemingly personal crusade of violence and ill-will? That’s the film’s central secret and one that blasts open the narrative from simplistic “family held captive by psychos” motif into something far deeper, darker and more ponderous. Gillies is an actor I never much paid attention to in Hollywood, he always got lobbed the forgettable pretty boy stuff and to be honest I didn’t even clock him as a Kiwi back then. Here he’s a little more aged, time-worn and haggard, and he gives what must be the performance of a lifetime, certainly one of the most effective and chilling villains I’ve ever seen, something like John Ryder from The Hitcher meets Dick Hickock from In Cold Blood. He’s like an elemental force of unflinching, ruthless resolve, made so by a horrific past that still glimmers on a low burn just behind his tangled bramble beard in deep set, searching eyes that harbour a potent malice shielding the last gasp of a broken child beneath. This is not a film for anyone who is even remotely squeamish; it doesn’t play by the usual rules of taboo and what you aren’t supposed to show in North American stuff and as such, it’s a fucking exhausting experience. But it’s also utterly captivating in every area from score to atmosphere to performances and, best of all, it has the kind of rich, sinewy, impossibly challenging thematic material that will have you thinking, processing, digesting for a long while after as this wicked story leaves a brand upon the soul. Excellent film.

-Nate Hill

THE ROBERT ALTMAN FILES: READY TO WEAR <PRÊT-Á-PORTER> (1994)

December 1, 2021December 1, 2021 by Patrick Crain, posted in Film Review

Opening on an image that links fashion with death (“Poison”) and the purchase of two gaudy Christian Dior ties, an acerbic tone is immediately set for Robert Altman’s Ready to Wear (initially titled Prêt-á-Porter, which it retains in its opening credits). After all, a film that promises to take a gander at the world of the vacuous fashion industry through the eyes of Altman, one of filmmaking’s keenest observers of human nature no matter how ridiculous, comes front-loaded with delicious possibilities. Unfortunately, everyone (Altman included) looks like they’re having too much fun and in too good of spirit for any of it to land with much weight. Ultimately, this is a movie where looking good is primary. The inability to match any piece of clothing with the stupid tie at the beginning of the movie is the catalyst of the perpetual conflict in the film which is also its greatest flaw. Nothing matches and nothing fits. In the end, clothes become meaningless. Yeah, the world of fashion is all stupid and gouache but, honestly, who gives a fuck when time is short and life is so much fun? Fair enough. But if everything is such a trifle, why should I care about any of Ready to Wear and devote 132 minutes to it if it doesn’t say anything beyond the obvious?

Ready to Wear, like many other Altman films, is an ensemble, wide-canvassed affair in which a multitude of characters mill around a central location and we traverse the course of their lives over a fixed amount of time. In this instance, we find ourselves in France during Paris Fashion Week where armies of journalists, designers, models, photographers, and schmoozers will crawl all over each other and a bunch of dog shit to get the front row seat for a glimpse at the germination of what will be the style for next season. If the financially hectic and cacophonous world of commodity futures seems baffling but fascinating, the world of fashion seems eerily similar, just pitched on the other side of the spectrum. Instead of utilizing information and guesswork to set monetary benchmarks for certain products, what we wear today was based off of something high-end yesterday which got its idea from something ultimately unwearable and ridiculous that was salivated over and ambulated across a catwalk during Paris Fashion Week.

Like Nashville (1975) and HealtH (1980), Ready to Wear builds towards a Big Event conclusion. Unlike those two films, the road to that conclusion is fun but entirely inessential. Beginning with the choking death of the tremendously disliked fashion mogul, Olivier de la Fontaine (Jean-Pierre Cassel), and ending with the unveiling of Simone Lowenthal’s (Anouk Aimée) newest clothing line, the creme filling of Ready to Wear is sometimes rich and sometimes delicious but also messy beyond the point of charming and, curiously, not very filling. For Ready to Wear is a tapestry of various vacuums lacking a feeling of true integration for all of its parts. As bickering newspaper reporters full of as much piss and vinegar as they are devoid of professional or personal integrity, the two (Julia Roberts from the Houston Chronicle and Tim Robbins from the Washington Post) end up falling into a French mini-comedy that sticks them in the same hotel room they cannot seem to ever leave as drinking and fucking become the primary activities that rule supreme in their orbit. As cute as this bit is, it feels completely disconnected from the rest of the film.

And this is double ditto for the thread involving Teri Garr and Danny Aielllo which is only worthwhile for the appearance of both actors appearing in the same frame. In this thread, Garr is set up as a secret paramour to Aiello but the punchline that eventually arrives lands like a big “so what?” while trying to get more mileage out of a (better) visual gag from 1974 with Bert Remsen in California Split. In the instances of these two character couples, I can’t help but feel like both stories are loose strands that would have been better off cut from the whole picture which may have also tightened up the narrative, created more focus, and put this in the company of Altman’s sharp and unjustly maligned, aforementioned HealtH. As they stand, both give the game away and tip Ready to Wear more in the direction of a grand party on the edge of the end of the century and less a wickedly biting satire on the fashion industry. And, consequentiallly, their pieces bloat the project and dilute it of its venom.

I can also say the above applies to Kim Basinger’s arch performance as hick reporter Kitty Wells. Forever out of her depth and highlighting the world of high fashion as steeped in all kinds of invented eruditeness, her “cultured” subjects always juxtapose with her ridiculous, bumpkin patois (both syllables of Dior are blasted out of her mouth like a shotgun and given equal weight). Cute, but she’s just Opal from the BBC in a hillbilly skin and adds nothing to the project other than giving the then-in-demand Basinger a chance to work with Altman again.

While excess is the name of the game in Ready to Wear, Altman seems downright undisciplined in parts. The MacGuffin of hunting for the “murderer” of Cassell’s character feels lazy and, like the threads mentioned above, it would be relatively easy to excise. After all, we still have quite a bit of structure left regarding some palace intrigue surrounding Simone’s business due to the machinations of her ambitious son (Rupert Everett) and a comedy of errors regarding three fashion editors (Sally Kellerman, Linda Hunt, and Tracey Ullman) trying to court a pretentious and self-satisfied photographer (Stephen Rea). In both cases, these two pieces of Ready to Wear are the ones that bring out some of the film’s richest and funniest characters, both primary and secondary. Of course, it’s entirely possible that there is more footage that exists that would go a long way better integrating some of these elements (Kellerman said as much in the press at the time of the film’s release). Given that this is a Miramax film of a certain vintage, it would shock me none to find out that Altman learned the lesson that most all learned when passing through the now-disgraced House of Weinstein and that creative control was all illusory. In the end, this was the only time he worked with the company, taking his action to other, smaller indies for the remainder of his career.

The 90’s were more or less as if the hedonistic 70’s had returned from a vacation in the money hungry 80’s and Ready to Wear ultimately finds Robert Altman caught up in the giant spectacle of colorful and loud vapidity that colored the decade. In fact, this movie is probably the closest in spirit to a celebration of the 90’s that there ever was. In highlighting the outlandish and garish nature of the world of fashion, Altman unveils a shallow culture that doesn’t give a shit about politics, gender, sex, or anything else. Everything is a hustle in the pursuit of a good time which, obviously, runs on money. This is a film that says those things with some elements of criticism but this is also a film that was also a multi-media product generator as it was released alongside its mass market screenplay book from Hyperion Press (almost a staple with any Miramax film released in the 90’s) and its uncommonly hip (for an Altman joint) soundtrack, the latter a crass idea satirized by Altman in the opening credits of Nashville all those years ago.

Not without its own certain charm, Ready to Wear is by no means a bad movie. It’s just a phenomenally inconsequential one. For all of its light callbacks to previous Altman films, its charming moments (mostly all belonging to Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroiannni), and is heavy emphasis on 90’s excess, the film feels like a soft confection wrapped up in opulent packaging. The end is explicitly articulated as the closing of a circle and Altman is a little ahead of the curve, but Ready to Wear’s denouement is a little more satisfyingly nihilistic than it is laugh-out-loud funny. If the idea of a clothing line that features no clothes seems like an unthinkable thing not worth considering, let me tell you about the vulgar game show host from Queens, New York who one day became the President of the United States.

Christian Neuman’s Skin Walker

November 22, 2021 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I’m not sure how to quite adequately describe Christian Neuman’s Skin Walker as I’m still not completely sure what I saw, even over a week after watching it. Some horror films not only have all their gore, atmosphere and acting bases covered to draw you in but go so far over the wall of coherency and conventional storytelling they sort of, burn a brand into your perception, never to be lost in the mental catalogue. This film tells the story of Regine (Amber Anderson), a disturbed young girl girl living a grungy nocturnal life in Luxembourg who is called home to her childhood house in the country when her grandmother passes away. She journeys back to the small rural town and massive, creaky manor she grew up in to find her cold, distant grandfather (Udo Kier) inhabiting an empty house full of sour, nasty memories. Her grandmother was a highly unpleasant person, as we see in unflinching flashbacks, but she also has hazy memories of her mother giving birth to a hideously deformed baby brother who may or may not still be wandering the forests on the edge of the property and seems to show up in her dreams and waking perception with unnerving regularity. I loved this film for a great number of reasons, beginning with the score, ambience and ethereal casting choices. Amber Anderson has these angular, dark elf features that are transfixing and somehow vulnerable yet vaguely eerie. Kier, well, Kier is king of the weird but strangely enough he plays a very human character here, where he often is just a spectral or allegorical presence. He’s got a ton of screen time and imbues his bitter old patriarch with a mental decay and resentment that hangs entrenched in the foggy air. The score is creepy, billowing and emotional especially in an early scene where Regine arrives back at her family estate and pours over it with worried doe eyes from a darkened car window as the vehicle ominously winds up the entrance road. The production design is lush, full of deep meditate browns, pale milky skin, cloudy skies, slick crimson blood and late autumn auburn detritus, a visual palette of stunning folk horror sensibility and startling eye candy that’s both gorgeous and gruesome to look at, like an orgy featuring Tim Burton, Guillermo Del Toro and Lars Von Trier (I’m terribly sorry for that mental image but I promise this film has more shocking ones). The issue with this film is that at a certain point it goes off the map of a logical, linear story and becomes a flailing arthouse caterwaul, a trippy psychological bedlam of noise, twisted memories, unreliable perceptions, so many subplot revelations and horrific, shuddering reveals that it becomes tough to view it as anything other than a story whose meaning and outcome was meant to be decided by the viewer themselves, and not spelled out for by the filmmakers. Now this isn’t an issue for me at all, I love stories like this, but the approach doesn’t always go over well with audiences, hence the mostly confounded and puzzled reviews for this that border on abject hostility. It’s fucking weirder than your most troubling nightmares, I won’t gloss over that, and if the narrative begins with a host of unanswered questions it ends with even more. But if you like bizarre stuff that doesn’t play by any sort of rules but it’s own, are into deep, dark folk horror with psychological overtones and appreciate a visual feast of colour, grotesquerie and unconventional beauty, you’ll love it. It’s a new hidden gem favourite for me.

-Nate Hill

Edgar Wright’s Last Night In Soho

November 20, 2021 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Edgar Wright’s Last Night In Soho has been a surprisingly divisive film so far this year, and while I wouldn’t call it any sort of spectacular milestone or anything, it’s a beautifully atmospheric, lavishly detailed, very well acted mystery thriller that led me right into its world and entertained me thusly. Rising star Thomasin Mackenzie plays Eloise, a shy, reserved girl from a small village in the country who is excepted at London’s college of fashion design. She arrives with stars in her eyes only to be disappointed by less than accommodating classmates and a stern, odd landlady (the great Diana Rigg in her final film role). As if homesickness, displacement anxiety and loneliness aren’t enough, she finds herself whisked away back in time to a dazzling London of the 60’s every night when she goes to sleep, where she becomes the mirrored dream avatar of aspiring singer Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy) whose life takes a dark, tragic trajectory in a series of events that Eloise has an unfortunately intimate, visceral backstage pass to observe. Who is Sandie, and why does she draw Eloise into her hazy nightmare that’s now decades gone by? Who is the dapper yet nasty lounge lizard Jack (Matt King) who encircles her life like a satin suited vulture? And who is the Silver Haired Gentleman played with devilish malevolence by the legendary Terence Stamp who appears to Eloise in the present like some kind of spectral Greek chorus? These are questions best left answered by the film’s twisty, macabre narrative that unfurls like a snake ready to strike. Mackenzie has an impossibly bright future and anchors the film in human vulnerability, while Joy’s gorgeous yet ever so slightly sinister features make a nice ghostly aura hovering over the story. London itself is lovingly and meticulously obsessed over by Wright and his creative team, and beautifully resurrected for the time travel to the 60’s, complete with lush smoke rooms, dank heroin soaked brothels and star spattered retro marquees. The story isn’t just an empty shock horror romp either that exists for cheap thrills or just to lead the audience on a blood soaked breadcrumb trail, there is actual emotional resonance and sorrowful tragedy here, especially in Sandie’s unfortunate, horrifying story arc. So I’m not really sure where the unimpressed reactions have come from, I mean it’s not a groundbreaking game changer for horror but it’s definitely a stunning gothic mystery full of chilly autumn atmosphere, detailed production design, a jaw dropping soundtrack and performances that are wall to wall scene stealers. A lot of spooky fun.

-Nate Hill

John Erick Dowdle’s As Above So Below

November 20, 2021 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I don’t know if there really are a bunch of creepy catacombs beneath Paris that you could get lost in, but if there are I definitely would not check them out, even if the fabled philosopher’s stone itself was buried somewhere down there as it is in John Patrick Dowdle’s As Above So Below, and extremely effective and sometimes downright terrifying horror film. It’s a found footage, which I’m usually not a fan of, but here the technique is employed in a less shaky, obnoxious and obtrusive way that it often is, and feels more fluid. The story tells of ambitious historian Scarlett (Perdita Weeks) who has figured out that far below Paris’s streets in an ancient cave system lies the grave of Nicholas Flamel, the infamous alchemist of old who also shows up in Harry Potter. She assembles a team of fellow scholars and guides and they all descend into these tunnels, where it soon becomes clear that Flamel’s grave isn’t the only place they lead to. The title is key, as they discover a strange metaphysical duality down there where no matter how deep they’ve gone, whenever they try to go back up, it only keeps getting deeper. Then they start seeing hellish visions, nightmarish ghosts and spirits of long dead demonic cult weirdos, and start dying one by one. This can of course be compared to Neil Marshall’s The Descent and it is similar in some scenes of claustrophobia and disorientation, but it’s a less vicious and hectic affair. There’s another film called Moscow Zero (that I’m pretty sure only I saw) with Val Kilmer which is pretty much the same idea but in Moscow instead of Paris and it feels a bit more akin to that in its esoteric nature and thick atmosphere. The visions they see and the resulting gory attacks are quite threatening, but for me the scariest scene comes early on when they first enter the catacombs, and are still quite near the surface. They hear spine chilling singing coming from one chamber, and as they look in and see impossibly eerie women standing still in unison choir dressed very strangely, their guide informs them nonchalantly “always weird people down here.” There’s a casual absurdity to that scenario that chilled me deeply and is a terrifically creepy aperitif to the more in depth horrors waiting for them farther below the earth. Aside from an ending that feels a bit too neat, this is an impressively doom and dread laced story that makes you feel genuinely lost and hopeless alongside its characters way down there, and tangibly threatened when they are hunted and preyed upon. Very effective stuff.

-Nate Hill

Jason Momoa’s Road To Paloma

November 19, 2021 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I was always kind of aware of Road To Paloma as ‘that biker flick passion project that Jason Momoa directed and stared in but didn’t really make a big splash’ so I never really got around to it until now. Well I think that there’s a reason it didn’t make a big splash, as it’s far more of a meditative, almost spiritual picture than any sort of action thriller type thing, an esoteric, atmospheric portrait of one Native American man meandering the southwest on the run from both the law and his past. But it’s a fantastic film, one that shows Momoa as a true visual poet in command of every frame, giving his story a loose, elegiac aura that’s not always so easy to capture authentically. He plays Robert Wolf, an indigenous wanderer who has a nasty, predatory federal agent (Timothy V. Murphy) on his tail at the behest of a gruff FBI section chief (the briefest of cameos from Lance Henriksen), guided by a conflicted sheriff (Chris Browning). That sounds like the setup for something fast paced and thrilling, but such is thankfully not really the case. There are some scenes of action and pursuit but most of the film is Wolf and his rambunctious buddy Cash (Robert Homer Mollohan) rambling from place to place on their bikes and carving out a path through the gorgeous, rugged Sierra Nevada Mountains and desolate plains below. They visit Robert’s friends and family, participate in a junkyard fight club for cash, hang out, drink, ponder existence and the unjust system that led to their predicament and really just… live. Many people have said this film is ‘dull’ and ‘nothing happens’ but I guess those people need constant gun battles and car chases pumped into them from an IV. If they slowed down to think a bit they’d see this film is anything but dull or nothing, it’s a heartbreaking, honest look at one man running from injustice after avenging the death of a loved one, and naturally being part of an indigenous tribe, he and his family experience the full weight of the racism, hate and evil that has bred in the area since time immemorial. Wolf feels less like martyr here and more like myth, a totem of the swiftly shrinking freedom human beings have in any given era or area, and a deliberate force of nature who lives moment to moment in utter clarity, possessive of an elemental restlessness that sees him never tarry in one space for long. He meets others including his tribal police chief father (the great Wes Studi), his sister (Sarah Shani) who has married an old friend of his (Michael Raymond-James), briefly entering and re-entering their lives before hitting the road again. He also meets a mysterious stranded girl called Magdalena, played by his real life wife Lisa Bonet. The two have a brief romantic encounter here that’s sweet, haunting, supported by their genuine love and chemistry and adds a heartfelt dynamic to Wolf’s story, even just for a few quick scenes. The story may be lilting and free form, simply a brief, tragic and melancholy glimpse into the life of a man who has spent most of it on the road, and is now nearing the end of it. But in that lyrical, shifting-sand narrative there’s a profundity and aching soul, a need to tell the story of great injustice and corruption, however far you need to read, and feel, between the lines. Great film.

-Nate Hill

Cary Joji Fukunaga’s No Time To Die

November 16, 2021 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Every character’s story must have an end, even a seemingly immortal, totemic hero like James Bond who is, after, still just a human being. In a way Daniel Craig has found the most humanity in the character of any actor so far, and Cary Joji Fukunanga’s No Time To Die is a spectacular sendoff for both his 007 and this spellbinding, pentamerous group of entries in the legacy. The film opens as Bond and the enigmatic Madeline Swann (Léa Seydoux) are hiding out somewhere in Italy, where he broods over the grave of his fallen love, Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), and ponders an uncertain future. That future is made frighteningly immediate for him when he’s attacked, Madeline proves to be just south of trustworthy and he’s propelled into another clandestine netherworld of globetrotting espionage, betrayal and warfare as a new threat looms over MI6 and the entire world. What didn’t work for me in Spectre was how Christoph Waltz’s hammy Blofeld (seen only very briefly here) was sort of the puppeteering ringmaster of every villain that came before him in the previous films, which to me felt cheap, cartoonish, way too neat and self contained to be believable. This film sort of rectifies that by having a new rogue element in the form of Rami Malek’s whispery, vaguely deformed bio-terrorist Safin, who although is admittedly not a very strong or memorable villain when you compare him to the likes of Mads Mikkelsen and Javier Bardem’s characters, is still appreciated as his own independent force outside of the whole silly spectre organization gimmick. This film soars from set piece to action to incident to spectacle with the same fluid, immersive momentum that SkyFall did, the lengthy runtime feels like a breeze because the film is so dynamic and engaging. A romp in Cuba sees Bond make a split second alliance with Ana De Armas as a ruthless agency contact, the two have a balletic, symmetrical action scene together that positively sings. The film’s opening is one of immense power as we see a young version of Madeline (Coline Defaud) have a horrifying encounter with Safin when she’s only a child, setting her dark and turbulent life arc into motion. Ralph Fiennes’s M, Ben Withshaw’s Q and Naomie Harris’s always lovely Moneypenny hum along in the background doing their thing, solid as ever while the usually subdued David Dencik (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) has a scene stealing supporting turn providing wicked comic relief as a hapless Russian doctor essential to Safin’s diabolical plans. The film’s strength, soul and effectiveness lies in its third act, which is not only a visually gorgeous example of inspired production design and choreography but truly a courageous, controversial choice that no other Bond film has had the stones to try and pull off. What sets the Craig films apart from the rest and what has made me a huge fan is the heart, the vulnerability and humanity put into this character, who is usually the paradigm of cavalier, womanizing, cliched suaveness and one dimensional grit in other areas of the Bond-verse, most in fact. Craig’s 007 is flesh, blood and fallible human soul, which makes his five-film arc stand out in realistic splendour. The ending they chose is one of power, and not what you may expect, but it hit home hard for me, and is the perfect final note to an epic chapter in this iconic story. Oh, and the theme song by Billie Eilish is a stunner too, up there with Adele’s efforts as my two favourite songs.

-Nate Hill

Cary Joji Fukunaga’s No Time To Die

November 16, 2021 by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

-Nate Hill

THE ROBERT ALTMAN FILES: THE PLAYER (1992)

November 16, 2021November 16, 2021 by Patrick Crain, posted in Film Review

It’s remarkable to consider the elements that went into the production of Robert Altman’s The Player, the 1992 adaptation of Michael Tolkin’s incendiary novel from 1988 about the bitter grist mill that is Hollywood. Here was a hot screenplay, written by Tolkin himself, that quite literally took the fiercest of aims at itself with a toughness not seen since Alexander Mackendrick’s The Sweet Smell of Success in 1957. That Hollywood would want to get fifteen feet of it was surprising. That the project would fall into Altman’s lap as he was hazily stumbling out of a decade-long exile in the show business wilderness on the shoulders of his triumphant Vincent & Theo, a miniseries made for British television in 1990 that was then edited and released to stateside theatrical audiences to some of Altman’s best notices in years, was unthinkable. That Altman would use the project with maximum glee to give both fingers to Hollywood with the loudest “fuck you” that he could muster was glorious. That Hollywood participated in and loved him for it, showering him with the kind of accolades and support not felt since about 1975 was as heartwarming as it was puzzling. After all, Altman used the film to charge them with being shallow, amoral phonies and they responded with “we know; welcome to director’s heaven.” For after The Player, Altman was never starved of a juicy theatrical project with A-listers champing at the bit to work with him. As Harvey Keitel’s character said in Altman’s Buffalo Bill and the Indians “Boy, I tell you there is no business like the show business.”

One of Altman’s greatest films, The Player is, on the surface, a neo-noir involving studio executive, Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins), who, after receiving a litany of anonymous, threatening postcards from a writer he once brushed off, accidentally kills an idealistic screenwriter (Vincent D’Onofrio) who Mill believes to be the originator of the postcards. Mill then does his damndest to avoid suspicion and arrest by members of the Pasadena police department (Whoopi Goldberg and Lyle Lovett) while reckoning with the fact that his his position at the studio is in continuous jeopardy due to internal politics.

I say The Player is a neo-noir because the film is awash in both references to shadowy crime films of the past (posters of Laura, The Big House, and Niagara decorate the offices of the unnamed studio in which Griffin toils) and in the attitudes of its characters, most especially studio security chief, Walter Stuckel (Fred Ward), who doesn’t seem to care that movies were made after 1958. Mill himself is not a man who’s been wrongly accused but more like a Colombo antagonist, dipping and ducking the cops while drawing the worst kind of attention to himself by brazenly dating the dead man’s girlfriend (a fantastic Greta Scacchi).

This is a strong film made stronger by the details. Not only is the main story of the beleaguered executive utterly compelling, the studio politics swirling about are fascinating, revealing an industry not to terribly different from any other despite its high-powered glitz. Gina Gershon’s ambitious assistant is an easy character to miss on a first watch but a real joy to observe on repeat viewings as she slyly moves with the winds of corporate change. Like the best of Altman’s work, this film has a life beyond its central story. The movie’s color palate, captured brilliantly by cinematographer Jean Lepine, gets darker and darker as the film goes on and as the characters become more and more corrupted. When Robbins and Scacchi beat retreat to a desert hot springs, they wander about as if they are in a Stygian hell, both of them sweating profusely during a sexual encounter and then, in the bright daylight and finding themselves both morally compromised, they relax in a vat of mud. Even therapeutic measures taken by the characters look dirty and unclean.

And if one thinks the film is just aimed at the upper crust of Hollywood, it should be mentioned that The Player spares absolutely nobody. Even writers are portrayed as pretentious, failed artists who cannot reconcile the fact that Hollywood is a machine that produces content that might accidentally stumble into being art; folks perpetually screaming into a void about quality, grit, and realism in a sausage factory.

Ten years after the alumnus of the New Hollywood movement had mostly become for-hire workhorses in an industry overtaken by corporations and accountants, the Hollywood in The Player is bursting at the seams with buzzy soothsayers who spend their days reducing movies down to one sentence and twisting them in the lights of various movie stars to see just how much money could be made with the right alignment. They’re able to pinpoint what makes money and what doesn’t by dispassionately rattling off a litany of attributes necessary for a film to be successful as if it were second nature.

Due to its extensive roster of incredible cameos, The Player also now functions as a Hollywood graveyard in perpetual motion, both literally and figuratively. On one hand, each year seems to bring the end of one of the many faces seen on the margins or in the cast of The Player and, as of this writing, the light of the seemingly indestructible star that was Dean Stockwell is the most recent to go dark. Julia Roberts, a fresh-faced talent when cameras rolled on this film is now a long-time vet, replaced many times over by Americans Sweetheart. Bruce Willis, such an A-list action star that his name and appearance is a running gag in the film, is now relegated to tongue-in-cheek action films for the AARP set. The specific brand of Hollywood that was in flux in 1992 is, in the waning days of 2021, a thing of the past.

And, of course, no conversation about The Player can occur without the mention of its breathtaking, staggeringly choreographed, eight and a half minute opening shot. To give some kind of measure to the difficulty in getting the shot from its opening image to ending on a cryptic postcard message that is read by the audience between two slats in a set of Venetian blinds, pulling it off in one take is like diving off the edge of the Grand Canyon in the hopes that you’ll stick the landing in an area with the circumference of a shot glass. And the self reflexive nature of the shot is stunning. Buck Henry shows up in the shot to pitch The Graduate Part II just as a conversation about Julian Temple’s long take in Absolute Beginners is referenced; Henry himself having participated in Temple’s “one-take” piece in Aria, an omnibus film from 1987 to which Altman also contributed. This is a movie about movies and, moreover, Altman always wants you to be aware of that. Before the action even begins and the first onscreen credit is witnessed, Altman allows his voice and the slate marker to be heard and witnessed, all in front of a tapestry of a filmmaker in action. We’re always looking through the looking glass that’s three panes deep.

And what we see is Hollywood as a poisonous food chain perpetually getting fatter, more desensitized, sleazier, and more desperate as the times change. “Movies… now more than ever” is the motto of Griffin’s studio that’s on the hamster wheel that will inevitably break down and will likely someday be swallowed by a giant whale. What more imagination can be expected from a place where decisions are made by a guy who, when told of a movie idea about a planet with two suns, automatically wants to know who plays the sons?