Groundhog Day (1993)

 "Well, what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't one today."

This film is probably the chief reason we Brits know what a groundhog is- it's the first time I've had cause to see one on screen that I've noticed. And, of course, it's probably the only reason most of ushave heard of the institution of Groundhog Day. Actually, I'm curious... do you chaps do St Swithin's Day, the summer equivalent...? 

This film, though, is surprisingly excellent and surprisingly deep. It's a comedy, I suppose, shot and co-written by the late Harold Ramis, and it certainly has a great many witty lines. And yet it's more than that, and only superficially reprresents that Hollywood comedy cliche that flawed comic protaginists need to redeem themselves in a heartwarming way. This film is far too good to be reduced to that tired old cliche.

So yes: Phil is a total git of a weatherman, arrogant entitled, snobbish, simultaneously thinking that country people are "hicks" and that education for culture's sake, such as the poetry of Baudelaire, is a"waste" compared to humdrum vocational dullness. And only reliving one day again and again, enough times to learn French, the piano, ice sculpting and the art of seducing one Rita- does he gradually go through phases of apathy, deep depression, and eventual catharsis, realising that a life well lived is one of altruism.

It sounds trite. But it isn't. The film wrestles with some deep philosophical questions- ethics, existentialism, all sorts- yet is not didactic, and insists on no one philosphical lens, which shows admirable restraint.

Fundamentally, though, this film has a brilliant script, the two stars are superb and it works both as comedy and as a concept. A true classic.

Hard Target (1993)

 "How does it feel to be hunted?"

Before I go anything further, something has to be said.

That mullet is not acceptable.

There.

Aside from that lamentable lapse, however, John Woo gives us a well shot and solidly scripted action film with excellent set pieces aplenty, the highlight probably being our protagonist literally standing on the saddle of a moving motorcycle as he sprays his limitless supply of bullets at various expendable baddies.

The concept is interesting- shadowy, cynical baddies recruit homeless military veterans for rich paying clients to hunt and kill, with Jean-Claude Van Damme's Chance getting mixed up in it all. The setting- New Orleans and the surrounding bayou- also adds a lot of flavour. And, while this is hardly a film oozing with subtext, there's a nice bit of commentary on how we ignore and dehumanise homeless people.

Van Damme, shall we say, is probably never going to win an Oscar, decent though he is, although he can certainly kick. But the film lives and breathes by its hugely charismatic baddie, with the superb Lance Henriksen chewing the scenery in the best possible way. His performance is a real highlight.

But, well, the whole thing is just so fun and entertaining, especially the last third of the film,in the bayou, as the final hunt plays out. Yes, Chance and his friends have absurd quantities of plot armour. Yes, Chance shoots a truly absurd quantity of anonymous henchmen with a single shot. But...isn't that part of the fun?

Go on. Switch your brain off and give it a go. You know you want to.

Cronos (1993)

 "You're going to Heaven covered in make-up. Your wife will think you've been with a whore."

'Tis the weekend before Halloween, so a horror film seems appropriate. And it's been a while since I've blogged a film by the great Guillermo del Toro, so here's an early film of his, indeed his first. And... yes, it's bloody good.

This is, at heart, a vampire movie. Yet it takes the simple idea, puts it among real people with real emotions and relationships in a very real Mexico City, and explores it from a new angle, as a type of immortality invented by a late Renaissance alchemist who fled to Mexico in 1536.

Unusually, the protahonist, Jesus Gill, is an elderly grandfather who sells antiques and dotes on his little grandaughter who, as the film progresses, becomes increasingly creepy through no fault of her own. His path to vampirism is both real and moving, because of both his love of family and his religiosity.

The baddies are believable too- a desperate old man seeking rejuvenation before his cancer kills him, and his put-upon thug of a nephew played superbly- if not really in Spanish- by Ron Perlman. Yet this is, at heart, despite the effective horror set pieces and ideas- I love the use of insects- this is a film with a lot of heart, above all about the bond between a grandad and his orphaned grandaughter.A unique, excellently shot and inspired debut from a director who will go on to do other great things.

Jurassic Park (1993)

 “An interactive CD-ROM!”

“An interactive C-D ROM!” 

I had a vague impression I’d seen this film 🎥 before. I hadn’t. It is, to avoid all beating around any bushes, brilliant. Oh, the cast is superb. Sam Neill and Laura Dern star with great brightness. Dickie Attenborough gives us a real career highlight. Jeff Goldblum gives us the prototype of the splendid maverick scientist role that he would come to own. Bob Peck, a find actor, finally makes it in Hollywood.

The CGI is dated. The science, perhaps, too: dinosaurs ARE birds. And, yes, Ian is highly charismatic. Yet his spiel against John’s sci-fi dinosaur DNS nonsense is subtly religious, objecting not only to John’s playing around with the ecosystem but to his perceived blasphemy- and “blasphemy” is a concept accepted only by tyrants who despise freedom and crave theocratic absolutism. Also, there’s an amusingly obvious subplot of getting the kid-hating Alan to begin to tolerate the little soda.

That aside, though, this is a solid blockbuster from the esteemed and too often snobbish my dismissed Mr Spielberg. Long may he direct.

Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday (1993)

 "Planning on smoking dope, having pre-marital sex and getting slaughtered?"

So it's the '90s, as the fashions and the cars clearly indicate. I turned sixteen in 1993, and can attest that this way of dressing was once considered normal. This feels odd, of course, because this is the decade's only Friday the 13th film. And the first one not to feel like a regular instalment- despite the sequel-stealing final scene, this film has a blatant self-consciousness that it may be the last one that no previous instalment has had.

It isn't, of course. Nor is it the promised exploration of Jason's backstory, which is superficial indeed. It's a B movie. Yet, in the context of this franchise which, in an inversion of the usual pattern, started as nothing special and took until the sixth instalment to get good, this is fairly decent in context. It has no stars, no actors I recognise whatsoever, nor does it have anthing other than B movie performances, yet it pretty much manages to be entertaining enough.

It makes token attempts to be self-referential, most notably the opening sequence with a trap for Jason, but ultimately relies on the conceit of Jason (only briefly a returning Jason Hodder) jumping from body to body. It also relies on both melodrama and the intriguing, behatted, moderately charismatic, if cliched, character of Creighton Duke, as much as it relies on the usual jump scares.

It works. It's not a bad film. But I wouldn't use higher praise than that.

The Eligible Bachelor (1993 TV Film)

 "Dull, dull, dull!

Well, at least this isn't as bad as The Last Vampyre. But it's pretty bad, nevertheless. I'm well and truly glad to have put these three long, pretentious specials behind me.

There are some redeeming features, I suppose. I'm not sure departures from Conan Doyle are quite the thing for a series originally predicated on doing no such thing, and the plot twsts don't exactly arrive through deduction, but the departures from Conan Doyle's The Noble Bachelor (with a pinch of The Veiled Lodger) are clever and well thought-out, Simon Williams is excellent as Lord St Simon and it works well to have the character ultimately revealed to be a bounder and a cad, who had his first (rich) wife killed and his second declared insane. It's a shocking revelation, and his confrontational scenes with Hetty cleverly reveal him as an abuser, charming but frighteningly good at gaslighting, asking "What have you made me do?" as he tries to throttle her.

Yet that isn't enough. This film is interminably long, with Lord St Simon not even engaging Holmes on the case until we're forty minutes in. And the direction, while arty and well done, is meaningless and pointless as the artistry isn't really saying anything. It's good to see Holmes in one of his depressive, drug-addled phases (bipolar?), but it's dwelt on far too long, with the trippiness just a retread of the far less pretentious The Devil's Foot and the nonsense about precognitive dreams being utterly unsuitable for both the character and the series.

I really hope the final six, proper length, episodes are better than this.

The Last Vampyre (1993 TV Film)

 "Are we to give serious attention to such things? It's pure lunacy."

This is the second of the three Granada TV films based on short stories before we return to six proper episodes for the final stretch. It was... challenging to watch.

I found The Master Blackmailer, while by no means great, not to be as bad as its reputation. I can make no such claim for this turgid nonsense.

It's instructive, however, to take a look at why. There is, indeed, a bit of allusion to the supernatural here but there's a more or less rational explanation for everything; this episode is essentially no more supernatural than The Hound of the Baskervilles. Also, while I would have preferred a shorter and more faithful adaptation of Conan Doyle's The Sussex Vampire, the changes work well enough on their own terms and could have worked. This isn't bad because it's overlong: it's just bad television.The introduction of the character of Stockton as a red herring and extra sub-plot could have worked, but fails to do so through sheer dullness, and the scenes in the ruined house are just silly..

Fundamentally this is style over substance, except the directorial fanciness isn't actually as good as it thinks it is. Also, despite the rather good location filming, the guest cast, Maurice Denham aside, is just rubbish and dull- Keith Barron, in particular, is terrible. And the script is just formulaic. Yes, it's good that we get the "Giant Rat of Sumatra" line from the original short story for Sherlockian fanboys, and even a reference to the Gloria Scott. But this is a sad and limp piece of television that is no better now than when I saw it aged fifteen on its original broadcast.

Demolition Man (1993)

"The exchange of bodily fluids? Do you know what that leads to?"

From unpromising beginnings- Sylvester Stallone's first line is a very crude bit of blatant exposition- a film I was expecting to be just a fun '90s action movie turns out, as well as being exactly that, a genuinely (and intentionally) funnt comedy at the same time as well as a timely warning against an over-sanitised society. No sex or alcohol? That's no utopia.

The cast is superb. Yes, this may no longer be the Stallone of First Blood who actually acts but more the Stallone of Judge Dredd whom you just point as a script and let you do his shouty stuff, but that's exactly what's needed for the part of John Spartan. Wesley Snipes gives a much more accomplished performance- yes, his role as Simon Phoenix calls for much scenery chewing, but this is considered, nuanced and multi-layered scenery chewing and the perfect performance. The lovely Sandra Bullock, meanwhile, gives a perfect comedic performance. She's a talented actress, although sadly one who (present film excepted) hasn't always chosen the best films in which to appear. And Nigel Hawthorne, although bizarrely miscast, is superb as always.

On the surface this is a film about a cop and a psycho from 1996 emerging into the distant future of 2032, where they continue their rialry amongst much skulduggery. Yes it is just as much a comedy of manners, finding copious humour in putting its macho hero in a saccharine future where police are unable to handle violence and swearing is prohibited. I'm certainly not a libertarian of the right-wing sort, you'll never catch me railing against that nebulous concept of "political correctness", but, in its attitude to civil liberties, sex, beer and ratburgers, this is perhaps a rebuke from the '90s towards our society of facial recognition and that silly, arbitrary fourteen units a week. It's also a bloody good and well-shot film, both as a comedy and as an action film.

RoboCop 3 (1993)

"We're dead, you stupid slag!"

This final film in the series is, I see, not much liked. And yes, diminishing returns are indeed a thing here with the weakest of the trilogy. But it’s not bad. Well, not that bad.

The general storyline is pretty damn good and deals with the right sort of themes- OCP is now fully under Japanese control, because it’s the early ‘90s and Japanese corporate domination of America in the near future is very much a thing. OCP are peddling some pie in the sky fantasy of a new 1950s utopian city to encourage people to leave their home while employing nasty mercenaries to evict while neighbourhoods just for profit, while there’s a big Japanese sort of ninja-sequel end of level boss lurking in the wings.

Robert John Burke is as good a replacement for Peter Walker as you’re likely to get, and Rip Torn is always good to see. It’s great to see a lot of the usual guest cast, with the Sarge particularly getting to shine. Also, I love the little girl reprogramming ED-209, John Castle as an evil villain straight out of Thatcher’s cabinet, and Nancy gets a meaningful death. This isn’t a bad film.

So why is it not as good as it could be? Well, the script is pretty good, and has the right kind of cynical political subtext, but the dark humour is gone. And the direction, while competent, is action film direction and lacks the visual wit we have come to expect. You have to say the film is well made, the script isn’t bad, but the end result is a little disappointing.

The Airzone Solution

“Have I been scintillating company?”

 Unexpectedly, Amazon Prime is now showing- complete with subtitles- this interesting little piece of wilderness years nostalgia for us Doctor Who fans. It isn't Doctor Who, of course- in 1993 that existed only in a rather good set of novels. But it's made by fans, and stars no fewer than four doctors plus Nicola Bryant- and a very young Alan Cumming in a henchman role. And, most importantly, it’s a bloody gripping environmental thriller to boot, belying it’s low budget.

It’s very 1993, of course. From the opening music to a couple of jarring instances of casual racism that wouldn’t happen nowadays (Ellie does an arse-clenching  Chinese accent after a takeaway, and there’s an equally arse-clenching exchange about “big chief”, “pow wow” and “heap”.), but most of all it’s fascinating  to see how the perceived problems of the environment have changed over the past 26 years- incredibly, global warming isn’t even mentioned; the threat is pollution and- nostalgia alert!- the ozone layer. Remember that?

Jon Pertwee, as he often did later in life, phones it in. But Peter Davison is superb as a crusading journalist, while Sylvester McCoy shines in a slightly under-prominent role as an environmental activist. But the indisputable star is the superb Colin Baker as weatherman Arnie, a nice guy forced against his nature to resist the nefarious Airzone Solution, a very ‘90s exemplar of private sector greed from an age when Thatcherism was still very much a thing. This is an obscure bit of fandom drama, but something obscure can nevertheless be bloody good.

Schindler's List (1993)

"The party's over, Oskar. They're shutting us down. Sending everything to Auschwitz."

This is, to put it mildly, not an enjoyable film. But it is a necessary one, and one of the greatest and most devastating films ever made.

It's fitting that a film about the Holocaust should not feature Hitler, that dull, bigoted, pathetic man whose place in popular culture as the embodiment of evil troubles me. Because unloading the unspeakable evils of the Nazis on to one lazy, useless, banal man is a cop out. The Holocaust is the worst thing the human race has ever done, and to emphasise the man in charge is to downplay the evil of the many soldiers, bureaucrats, functionaries and accountants who murdered six million Jewish people- individuals, with lives, hopes and fears- and so many others.

Worse, I can't blame it on anything intrinsically German (much as such racism would entirely miss the point) as I am an Englishman, with partly Anglo-Saxon and so ethnically German blood flowing through my veins. No; it is a profound human darkness that must never be repeated, and it is a profound worry that, as these events fade from living memory, the inoculation is fading. We already see the symptoms: people who use such stupid terms as "SJW" and "snowflake"... both my grandads used to shoot people like you, and I'm proud of them for that.

Schindler is no saint. He's a dodgy businessman, an adulterer, fond of the good life, not a good Catholic. But put him next to a psycho like Goeth, perhaps the most evil character in all of cinema. The contrasting scenes of both of them with Helen Hirsch show that. Liam Neeson is amazing, of course, and Ralph Fiennes is the most evil presence in all of cinema. But the real revelation is Steven Spielberg, whose usual didactic filmmaking gives way to a devastating, monochrome, handheld documentary style that clearly portrays the horrors of the Holocaust. Scenes are etched into your mind, which is a good thing: never forget.

A cathartic and profound work of art which dwarfs anything else that Spielberg has ever done, and a film which has made the world a better place by hopefully preserving the memory of the Holocaust for another generation.

The Nightmare before Christmas (1993)

“Attacked by Christmas toys? That's strange, that's the second toy complaint we've had.”

I watched this on Christmas Eve and it’s now 20^th January. Still, better late than never, eh? After all, it’s not as though people are sick and tired of all things Christmas at this time of year, right?

I now fully realise how culturally impoverished I was not to have seen this gothic, glorious little jewel of a stop motion animated musical before now. The first of the songs, I learn, eventually found its way into Marilyn Manson’s set list, while Henry Selick’s stop motion animation is the best since Ray Harryhausen. The art is not yet dead. And yes, I know, it’s yet another musical. I seem to be losing my credentials as someone who doesn’t like them.

This is a Henry Selick film; he directs and does the stop motion animation. Yes, Tim Burton supplied the storyline, but it’s not the storyline that makes this film so extraordinary. It isn’t a Tim Burton film, however close it may be to his sort of aesthetic.

The whole concept is completely mad, of course, and bizarrely abstract. Halloween and Christmas are both towns, naturally, with appropriately weird inhabitants, and Halloween decides that it’s going to do Christmas instead, with unfortunate results. That’s it. But around all this we get set pieces and visual treats galore, making this short film a piece of Christmas Eve perfection.

All the characters look great. There’s Jack, of course, but I particularly like Sally, created out of cadavers by the superbly named Dr Finkelstein. Best of all, though, is Oogie Woogie. He’s the coolest, the best singer, and made out of insects. What’s not to like?

So, yeah, good film. The next review might not be so gushing. It certainly won’t be so much of a wait…!