Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

"I'm asking for safe passage through the Anus..."

Time for another Marvel film, methinks. I'm determined to get through them all.

This is an MCU film, so you won’t be surprised to read that I enjoyed it hugely. It’s not the very best effort from the increasingly indomitable fiefdom of Kevin Fiege, but it may well be the most fun. The whole thing is pitched as a comedy, and good comedy at that. It’s a departure for Thor, yes, but it works. And there’s something about Thor and his world that lends itself to this sort of thing. I hope Taika Waititi does more.

It’s good to see the post-Avengers Hulk too, with another excellent performance from Mark Ruffalo. The Hulk, rightly in my opinion, hasn’t been considered sufficiently popular as to warrant his own film since 2008, but remains a strong supporting character. It’s good as well as inevitable to see Loki, too, although the relationship between the brothers is so predictable by now that fourth wall-breaking humour is the only possible approach.

It’s brave, but absolutely right, to not only do Ragnarok and do it properly (while evacuating the population), to do it with humour rather than be bleakly depressing, and to mix it up with post-Guardians of the Galaxy cosmic hi-jinks. And Marvel, for once, give us a first class baddie with Cate Blanchett’s Hela, appearing just after Odin dies and revealing that his and Asgard's past has all been a lie; Odin was not always a wise and benevolent ruler. A less serious but highly entertaining baddie, though, is Jeff Goldblum playing superbly against his maverick scientist typecasting as Grandmaster. We even get an Doctor Strange cameo.

I realise not all Marvel films can be like this. But... can we have some more please?

Thor: The Dark World (2013)

"I'd rather been a good man than a great king."

I've pretty much decided that I need to get a move on with watching all Marvel films, especially MCU ones, and probably DC ones too. Without being anal about it I'm going to try and make half of the films I watch Marvel or Disgruntled Competition ones until I'm caught up. After all, I've certainly already blogged a fair proportion of them.

Anyway, let's talk about Thor: The Dark World. I liked it. A lot. It's not one of the most talked-about Marvel films over the five years since its release, but the MCU films never step below a certain level of quality. This being the second film, we already know both all the Asgardians and the whole gang of Jane, Eric and the wonderful Darcy, whom we fall in love with all over again. It's great to enjoy characters we already know rather than having them introduced to us. Highlights are the perfect reunion between Thor and Jane and the scene with Eric in the mental home, complete with Stan cameo. The film has wit, heart and excitement, and lots of each. You can tell it's Marvel. It also has, unexpectedly, Chris O'Dowd of all people in a moderately large part.

The baddie is Malekith, back from  the Walt Simonson days, played by Christopher Eccleston who, despite the unpleasantly snooty things he's since said about the part, does a perfectly good job. We also get Kurse, although with a very different, Beyonder-free backstory. And CGI trolls. Lots of them. Tom Hiddleston playing Loki with an extraordinary range of emotion, Frigga dying, a touching father/son scene in which Thor refuses the throne from Odin on the grounds that the decisions of kingship would mean he can no longer be a good man. It's fun to see London, too, and amusing that the convergence of the Nine Worlds should happen at, of all places, Greenwich. And, as ever, the MCU version of Asgard is great; powerful alien beings with 5,000 year lifespans whose advanced tech is always described in gracefully magical language, the perfect expression of Arthur C. Clarke's adage about sufficiently advanced tech being indistinguishable from magic.

If that wasn't good enough, we get Thor coming back to Jane at the end, and an intriguing post-credits scene involving the Collector and more plot-heavy talk about Infinity Stones. A brilliant film, the perfect blockbuster- well, it's MCU.

The Elephant Man (1980)

"I’ve tried so hard to be good...”

This is a film that does something amazing: it’s unabashedly sentimental and gets away with it. This is entirely down to David Lynch, whose interesting local style allows him to be sentimental without over-sugaring the palate in ways that a less, well, weird director could not.

The performances, of course, are superlative, as the cast list pretty much guarantees they would be. John Hurt is superb and justly acclaimed as Merrick himself, although a Leicester native would realistically have been a lot more ay up me duck than this performance. The character is quite superficial, I suppose- his only character trait is “virtuous”, although there’s ambiguity about his death at the end by lying down to sleep instead of sitting and crushing his neck; is it suicide? There’s no denying, though, that Hurt portrays the pathos of the character superbly. A young Anthony Hopkins too, as a Frederick Treves wondering if in the end he is any less of an exploiter than the loathsome Bytes. The monochrome cinematography and occasional piece of weird direction just about stop all this from being too saccharine. And, of course, the presence of John Gielgud is always a dignified of intended seriousness.

It’s an odd success in that it’s not very David Lynch at all in many ways, and there is no real message behind the pathos, but nevertheless the way Lynch creates said pathos is true artistry. This film feels the same kind of sentimental that Steven Spielberg films often are but, of course, David Lynch does it better.

Thor (2011)

"We don't have horses. Just dogs, cats, birds."

"Then give me one of those large enough to ride!"

So far I haven't seen a bad Marvel Cinematic Universe film and this, while not one of the very best, is no exception. It may be an odd film for Kenneth Branagh to direct but he does a fantastic job, giving us Asgard in all it's spectacular glory exactly as we dreamed of. Chris Hemsworth is a splendid Thor, Anthony Hopkins a brilliant Odin, and Idris Elba an implacably magnificent Heimdall. All this and we get Sif and the Warriors Three. Most of all, we get the extraordinary Tom Hiddleston as the villainous Loki. Natalie Portman also impresses as poor Jane Foster, with her doomed love for a god.

The film strikes exactly the right balance between the fantastical and the ordinary, giving us plenty of spectacle but grounding it in just enough reality to avoid alienation. It also subtly continues the ongoing plot thread with Clark Gregg's Phil Coulson and a post-credits sequence setting up what is to come. There's an obvious basic plot, yes, as the arrogant god learns humility and becomes better, but this is a hugely entertaining couple of hours. But then, Marvel films always are.

Only one thing, though... why didn't they incorporate the theme tune for the 1966 cartoon with the closing titles?

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

"See the amazing cinematograph- the wonder of modern civilisation."

Francis Ford Coppola gives us a lush, gorgeous Dracula. While the film doesn't entirely work- it's bloated and over-detailed- I'd actually blame the source material rather than this excellently made film which, in spite of what is often said and in spite of some obvious and welcome homages to James Whale's 1931 film, is if anything a little too faithful to the novel.

The casting is full of big names, although an oddity is that very few of the big names are using their own native accents in one way or another. Gary Oldman is a splendid Dracula, while Winona Ryder- who, it being the early '90s, had to appear in this film- is well cast as the sexually repressed and innocent Mina, whose repressed desires are soon teased out. Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker is, as ever, Ted, while Anthony Hopkins is a convincing and amusing Van Helsing.

The film makes explicit what is implicit in the novel: it's all a metaphor for sex and sexuality, as numerous scenes make clear with vampirism always portrayed in an obviously sexualised manner. Another nice touch is that all narration us epistolary in nature, paralleling the firm and structure of Stoker's novel. But Coppola also adds a prologue in which Vlad the Impaler turns against God and (in a process not entirely clear) towards vampirism after the Juliet-like suicide of his wife, who thought him dead. In lesser hands this would have been corny and embarrassing, but Coppola makes it work.

The direction is beautiful: I love the change in texture and camerawork during the cinematograph scenes. The only real criticism I can find is Richard E. grant phoning in his performance; the film is beautifully made and bloated only because Coppola is clearly such a huge Dracula fanboy, something I'm well prepared to indulge.

Red Dragon (2002)

"Any rational society would either kill me or put me to some use."

I ought to confess, before anything else, that I haven't seen Manhunter. But this is a different adaptation of the novel, not a remake, so it doesn't break my "no remakes before I've done the original" rule. Besides, the film is deeply entwined with the two predecessors to which it is a sequel, dovetailing very nicely into The Silence of the Lambs.

It's also bloody good, and even manages to pull of the trick of Anthony Hopkins, eleven years older than we first saw him, playing the intellectual, civilised Hannibal Lecter of 1980. Well, aside from the small point that he's feeding his guests human flesh, but it's fascinating to watch a Lecter whose proclivities are as yet unknown. Even more interestingly he's a psychiatric expert in psychopathic killers, and regularly consulted by FBI agent Will Graham, but we quickly move, over the opening titles, to Graham catching him, his trial, and his nine consecutive life sentences, followed by Graham's retirement, although we just know that the cliche of his coming out of retirement is upcoming. 

Interestingly, Lecter is again not the main villain here. The Buffalo Bill this time, the Tooth Fairy, is left mysterious for a bit, and eventually Graham is forced to consult the esteemed Mr Lecter, the approach to the cell echoing The Silence of the Lambs. The twist is, rather nicely, that the Tooth Fairy is a big fan of Hannibal's. The plot is, perhaps, predictable, but it is sufficiently well-realised and well-acted to get away with it. 

The killer's final tragic end eventually comes after a few twists and turns, revelations of a life of abuse and a twist in which we find that he is not, as we had thought, dead. There are lots of jolts and moments of excitement amongst the violence and yet the film still seems to maintain a certain sense of quality, of being more than just a violent thriller. This is yet another sequel which is in fact more than decent.

Hannibal (2001)

"You can look at my face, but you shied when I said the name of God."

It's an interesting prospect; get Ridley Scott to direct the sequel to The Silence of the Lambs. The result is a very different style of film (co-scripted by David Mamet, no less) which, while not equalling it's predecessor, is nevertheless an excellent film. The same health warning applies here as applied before, however; I haven't read the original Thomas Harris novel.

This sequel further develops the ghoulishly fascinating relationship between Hannibal Lecter and a recast Clarice Starling, portrayed by Julianne Moore as a much tougher and less nuanced figure. She is again alone in a man's world which belittles her on grounds of both class and gender, put on to the Lecter case by an all-male disciplinary committee. 

The third lead character here is the wealthy, disfigured and thoroughly disturbed Mason Verger, whose face was peeled off and fed to dogs by the delightful Mr Lecter. It's immediately obvious that he wants revenge but Lecter is safe, for the moment, posing as an academic in Italy whom is not, for the moment, suspected of anything by his police inspector friend. This soon changes, however, and the inspector's growing suspicions are an early source of tension in a section of the film that, while entertaining, takes up a surprisingly high percentage of the film. It's structurally odd, but somehow it works.

Eventually we get to an equally gripping game of cat and mouse between Clarice and Lecter, in an inevitable prelude to their showdown with Verger. It is interesting that this third act, like The Silence of the Lambs, does not feature Lecter as the main antagonist; this is not the most interesting use for the character. Clarice, as usual, must battle against both male authority and male violence with her only supporter a violent, canniballistic psychopath. Creepily, he's only nice to her because she's polite and her distress excites him.

It's a slow-paced film that goes quickly and ends suddenly when it seems there's much more to come, and there's a particularly gruesome brain-eating scene towards the end. This film is very oddly structured but is also that rate phenomenon of a worthy sequel.

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

"Quid pro quo. Yes or no?"

This is another film from the shocking list of films-you-must-see-before-you-die that I hadn't fully seen before watching it for this blog. I hang my head in shame. And it's an excellent thriller. Perhaps I was expecting something artier, given all the Oscar nominations, but Anthony Hopkins' performance is certainly a work of art. And I'm glad this film was made in 1991, and not now: these days it would be in danger of falling into the niche of "torture porn". Well, "torture porn lite". Instead, plenty of mainstream filmgoers got to see Hopkins be magnificent.

Of course, we don't see him for a while, and his first appearance is a big event which is built up. Instead we follow Clarice, the film's actual protagonist, who suffers both class prejudice and acute gender prejudice in the very masculine world of the FBI. That Crawford is a right bastard.

Buffalo Bill, the actual villain, is a bit of a cartoon figure in contrast to the far more nuanced and interesting Hannibal Lecter, and hardly a positive Hollywood representation of a transsexual, but he serves perfectly well in driving the plot and the element of mystery in a plot sense. Meanwhile we, assuming Clarice's point of view, get to explore the psyche of Lecter, a mystery in a much more character-based sense, as she tries to get him to cooperate. 

Certainly, the relationship between them is fascinating. Clarice is used to being belittled on grounds of gender, but the wedge Lecter uses to keep her in her place is class, for he is a posh and cultured chap who quotes Marcus Aurelius and she is the daughter of a West Virginia coal miner. She is supposed to be the psychologist, but it is he who gets inside her psyche; indeed, the title of the film refers to her childhood trauma.

Hannibal is the only ultimate winner here, of course, gaining his freedom at the end, but he always appears to be the one in control on all the various mind games here: with Clarice, with the prison director, with the senator whose daughter is in the hands of Buffalo Bill, and indeed with Bill himself.

His escape is exhilarating to watch, being both fiendishly clever and bloody exciting viewing. Interestingly, his escape attempt doesn't come until after he's got Clarice to open up, which makes him seem even more in control.

It's surprising, though, how Lecter then vanishes from the film until the epilogue; contrary to popular belief he is not the protagonist in a film which is chiefly about Clarice's pursuit of Buffalo Bill and the gender issues of a film which concerns make violence to women, workplace misogyny and transsexualism. Great though Hopkins is, I was disappointed, perhaps unfairly due to the popular perception of the film, by his lack of screen time in this excellent thriller,

This is, of course, based the middle novel of a trilogy, and there is both a sequel and a prequel starring Hopkins to blog. -

And then there's a certain Brian Cox, who featured so prominently in yesterday's blog post...

The Rite (2011)

“What did you expect? Spinning heads? Pea soup?”

And so my journey into the unfamiliar territory of more modern horror continues with this acting tour de force from Anthony Hopkins. A confession, though: I’ve never even seen The Exorcist, let alone blogged it, so I won’t be making any comparisons. Sorry.

I suppose films about demonic possession would be scarier for those who believe in all that stuff; I don’t. Nevertheless, this film is effectively creepy, although it’s first and foremost a character drama and a chance for Hopkins to show us his considerable talents.

This is a very pro-Catholic film: the first thing we see is a quote from Pope John Paul II and the vibe seems to be that such things actually happen. Nonetheless, it’s a solid film, pleasingly structured with a strong cast, including Toby Jones trying out his American accent.

The audience identification character, Michael Kovac, has exactly the sort of theological doubts as to make him ideal for his role in the narrative; we see Hopkins’ Father Lucan almost entirely through his eyes. Lucan himself is full of precisely the sorts of eccentricities that we would expect from such a character. It’s highly convenient, of course, that Lucan would be Welsh, therefore absolving Hopkins from having to put on an accent.

We begin by following Michael through the seminary as he enters the strange, celibate world of the priesthood, but soon the scene switches to the far more gorgeous and cinematic setting of the Vatican, with all the obligatory shots where the camera lingers on the famous tourist sights.

The exorcisms are dramatic, and it’s clever that the supernatural elements are limited to a phantom horse and some creepy, devilish creepy crawlies. The creepiest moments, of course, utilise the psychological side of the supernatural: the most memorable moment in the film is where Michael speaks by phone to his dying father who says that “They’re hurting me”, and is then told that his father died hours earlier.

The climax of the film, where Lucas is himself possessed, conveniently gives Hopkins yet another chance to dazzle us with his acting skills. The conclusion is satisfying, although the fact that it revolves around Michael finding his faith again shows us what the film is trying to say.

This is a rather small scale little film, and essentially a vehicle for Hopkins to do a bit of a turn, but it’s well worth a watch.