Elizabeth (1998)

 "It is no easy thing to be loved by the Queen. It would corrupt the heart of any man".

Before I praise this wonderful film, I'll get a few criticisms out of the way. 

So... the opening text- in a terrible font, incidentally- misspells the word "fervent"and has "halfsister" with no hyphen. And the closing text has England as "the richest and most powerful country in Europe"... er, no. Pre-industrial England, indeed pre-agricultural revolution England, was a middling country whose population was never going to be as big as a France or a Spain- England, I suppose, was more of a Netherlands or a Portugal.

Also, a lot of history is telescoped into a short time and the chronology is inevitably off. William Cecil is shown asan old man in the 1550s and dismissed early in Elizabeth's reign. Francis Walsingham is spymaster and Machiavel from day one. And did the future King Henri III of France really wear dresses and have sex with his aunt, the Queen Regent of Scotland?

And yet, I think, we have to accept this as a creative necessity. History is not easily crammed into two hours of screen time without being adjusted to fit. And this film, text aside, is magnificent.

Too often, history in cinema is shot in a dull, staid, Merchant Ivory way. Not here. Shekhar Kapur uses light, colour, claustrophobia and perspective wonderfully. We open with a truly shocking scene of three martyrs being burned at the stake, the sheer horror of it all being emphasised. Mary's court is dark and without joy, Kathy Burke giving us a Mary who has always been the underdog, and even as queen is humiliated by her neglectful husband and the nature of the cancer that kills her. She is bitter, resentful... yet cannot sign her sister's death warrant.

Elizabeth's accession is symbolised by two flashes of white light. We see the aftermath of the bloody battle in Scotland via the camera panning across the River Tweed running with blood. The look of the film is exquisite. Yet so are the performances. Cate Blanchett is, of course, a revelation, but the performances of Joseph Fiennes, Christopher Eccleston and Geoffrey Rush are equally superb.

This film is a triumph. Just try and ignore the text.

Velvet Goldmine (1998)

 "I needn't mention how essential dreaming is to the character of the rock star."

It would be an exaggeration, perhaps, to say that rock 'n' roll is gay. The gayness of early '70s glam was not quite as prominent as portrayed here. Yet the LGBT+ness was present in real life as it was here- the New York Dolls; Bowie's (oops; Slade's) bisexuality; the whole damn aesthetic; Lou Reed having had that electric shock treatment to get rid of all traces of gayness, here attributed to Curt Wild, a character otherwise based blatantly on the rather less gay Iggy Pop.

It's a welcome perspective. And it's to be applauded that Todd Haynes, an American director, sees the importance of mudsic hall, as much as the blues, to British rock in general and Bowie in paticular. See also Ian Dury, Roxy Music (heard in this film) anfd the DNA of British punk and post-punk bands who may well know nothing of music hall. This is, I feel, an underexplored area. 

This is a glorious film, clever and directed with artistic confidence which nevertheless serves the narrative, however weird it may get. Obviously the narrative- a journalist researching how Bowie- oops, Slade- disappeared after faking his death, evokes Citizen Kane. That's no bad thing. The exploration of early '70s gay and general British culture are well done- a couple of old queens speak in subtitled palare. Vada that, me jolly old eek. Ooh, Mr Horne, etc. There are orgies. There's Angie Bowie- er, Mandy. 

Importantly, there are triumphant performances from jonathan Rhys Meyer and Ewan McGregor. Christan Bale, as ever, is a bit meh, but Eddie Izzard is superb as the quintessential rock manager.

And the whole thing is infused wth the spirit of Oscar Wilde, apparently a foundling deposited in 1854 by a flying saucer! His amulet of gayness is symbolic. Characters quote him at the drop of a hat. His aesthetic movement is echoed throughout,

This is a much, much more important and serious film than I'd expected to see. It's magnificent, an elowquent plea for the very important gay side of rock 'n' roll.

Ring (1998)

 Frolic in brine; goblins be thine."

This is a very late '90s film, full of truly great interior decor. It's also the greatest horror film ever made. The concept is genius: a videotape (this dates the film, in the best possible way) that kills you in seven days. Yet there's no gore, just exquisite suspense arising from truly superlative direction in the grammar of horror, a genre which relies on the directorial voice more than any other. Unlike any other genre, it hinges on the effectiveness of specific shots. This film achieves said effectiveness triumphantly.

It's a very human film, too. We follow one woman, a journalist, with her cute little son, as she investigates, and ends up seeing the video, enlisting her academic ex-boyfriend. The drama of each day passing towards death is enormously effective. The film rides the concept to the end: there isa nothing else, despite the hints at redindled romance. Although, er, he slaps her face in the well when things get hard. Well then.

But that moment (SPOILERS ABOUND!!!) when the seer's daughter comes out of the telly is incredible. I love the minimalism of the horror. We see only this shamblingly feminine figure, here hair covering her face, until we see... yeah, The make-up is minimal, and all the better for it. She is terrifying. She is iconic horror. She is nightmare fuel. Yet she is achieved without CGI, in a film without gore. That's real horror.

So is the conclusion.This is genius, extraordinary, and as of today the greatest horror film I have ever seen.

Blade (1998)

“You may wake up one day and find yourself extinct."

 It's strange to think that this is such an early Marvel film. In fact, prior to this the only feature films had been the bizarrely underrated Howard the Duck, The Punisher and the low budget, no star straight-to-video '90s films Captain America and Fantastic Four, both rather obscure. And that was it. Until Blade came along, failed to wow the critics but was a huge success. Not long after came X-Men and Marvel films were everywhere, many of them sadly at Fox.

So how does it stand up, twenty years on? Pretty well, actually. Yes, wooden Wesley Snipes is phoning it in with a character that could have offered a lot of potential to a good actor, and has no charisma. Yet the script- by no less than David S. Goyer- is superb, and the film looks great, even if the cinematography has inevitably dated; from the perspective of 2018 there's more than a little of the late '90s music video vibe. It looks great, though, with impressive CGI.

We begin with a great set piece at a vampire rave that dates the film enormously, yes, but also shows us what Blade can do and his mission in a visually exciting way. N'Bushe Wright convinces as the doctor who is unwittingly drawn into this vampire fighting world, and Kris Kristofferson is superb as the grizzly and gnarled mentor figure.

This is not like the comics; Blade has been made into a kind of half-vampire for some reason, and the vampire mythos here is not quite the same, but it's nice to see Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan being credited.It's an entertaining two hours, though, and perhaps the real start of our current Marvel cinematic age.

The Parent Trap (1998)

"I have class and you don't!"

This isn't exactly the greatest film ever made or anything. Nor is it a particular favourite, and to be honest it was Mrs Llamastrangler who instigated watching it. But I've already blogged the original and may as well blog this. After all, it's very much a rarity to get a sequel that's better than the original.

The main reason for this is the pacing; this film zips along and doesn't drag in places as does it's predecessor. Also, a very young Lindsay Lohan is rather good as the twins- here renamed Hallie and Annie- and, indeed, knocks Hayley Milks into a cocked hat. And that, I'm sure you agree, is an arresting image.

The main difference from the original is that one of the twins, Annie, is British, and from London rather than Boston. Not the actual London, though; this is very much the London of Hollywood, a tourist-friendly place where people cross the zebra crossing at Abbey Road and where the La's (from, er, Liverpool) provide the soundtrack.

Another plus point is the splendid comic acting of Natasha Richardson, and the rather sweet romance between Martin and Chessie. Also, this time around,there's modification of Mum (Elizabeth) having physically abused Dad (Nick) way back when, which is always a plus. Oh, and the pranks are much bigger and better.

This is the perfect remake, with little improvements everywhere. The sweetest thing of all is that Martin and Chessie get married at the end too. So, yes, not exactly the best film ever, but the rare distinction, at least, of one remake which isn't pointless.

Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (1998 TV Pilot)

"Guys like you tend to stick to the bowl no matter how many times you flush!"

I'm stuck at home with a sprained ankle and, alas, am reduced to watching this. Yes, this was indeed made as a TV pilot in 1998, probably the last of the, er, less than stellar Marvel films and TV pilots that were made before it all took off with Blade and X-Men. We shall never see it's like again. I think.

The casting of David Hasselhoff says it all; they're going for the same camp feel of the legendary 1960s Batman series but not pulling it off; instead we have a bog standard, cliche-ridden 90 minutes of action adventure. We have the hero being grudgingly coaxed out of retirement. We have a splendidly over-the -top baddie in Sandra Hess as Andrea Von Strucker, for some reason conflated with Viper, who appears to have an orgasm at one point while shooting a bloke dead. We have conflicts with pen-pushing superiors, we have James Bond gadgets, we have an android duplicate of Fury being used for the predictable plot function of making us think that Fury is dead. We have a poisoned hero going into action to save his life. And, yes, we have Andrea Von Strucker threatening to unleash a deadly virus over Manhattan in return for "one billion dollars". This in a pilot made after the release of Austin Powers.

Thing is, though, the script isn't actually that bad. With better actors and a bigger budget (the helicarrier, in particular, is rubbish, and the whole thing looks like an episode of Knight Rider), the same script could have sparkled. The self-consciously camp directorial style, especially, fails utterly to serve the script.

Hasselhoff himself is exactly as arse-clenchingly embarrassing as you might expect, but everything else sets a tone to patch. We have a character, Alexander Pierce, who seems to be modelled on Hugh Grant and looks utterly implausible as a SHIELD agent. And why, for crying out loud, does Andrea choose to kill Fury by kissing him with poisoned lipstick instead of, you know, shooting him?

This is, basically, rubbish, and should be watched for ironic purposes only. You have been warned...!

Bride of Chucky (1998)

“In fact, if this was a movie, it would take three or four sequels to do it justice.”

I fell in love with this movie at “Voodoo for Dummies”. That love was consummated with the quote I’ve just used. This film is hilarious. You know how much I love films that play around with metatextuality and this is the ultimate example of that. Plus, it co-stars Family Guy’s very own Jennifer Tilly. A minor gripe about the DVD, though: no bloody subtitles.

It feels, after only seven years, that we’ve entered a more modern and self-aware era than the preceding trilogy, and one which is a darn sight more fun. I mean, the opening titles unfold to Living Dead Girl by Rob Zombie. How cool is that?

The basic concept of the film is so blatantly taken from Bride ofFrankenstein that we get a little clip. This is one of many nice little gags referring to other films. I love Tiffany. She’s sassy, ditzy and delightfully kinky. I love the way that, just after that goth bloke refers to orgasm as “le petit mort”, she handcuffs him to a bed, dances sexually, and then watches as the recently revived Chucky administers a “Grand Mort”. As you do.

I also love our fugitive couple who seem to attract gloriously violent deaths wherever they go. The massacre in the honeymoon suite at Niagara Falls is the second best scene in the film. It goes without saying that the best scene is the puppet sex scene. I trust we all agree on that? And, incidentally, this seems a good a place as any to quote the line “plastic is no substitute for a nice hunk of wood”. I just had to crowbar that in.

The relationship between Tiffany and Chucky is hilarious to watch, if also a blatant sign of the change in tone from the previous films to fit in with a more post-modern age. The final scene, not to be spoilerific or anything, is the most perfect cliffhanger in the history of ever.

Pi (1998)

“As soon as you discard scientific rigour, you're no longer a mathematician; you're a numerologist.”

I’m still a bit dazed from the experience of this film. It is its own, claustrophobic little world, ant that owes as much to the look of the film as anything. The alienating texture of the monochrome footage and the never-ending stream of varying degrees of close-ups- I counted not one long shot in the film- offer us a dreamlike, claustrophobic reality reflecting that of our (possibly) unreliable narrator, Max Cohen.

Max is clearly a genius, highly qualified mathematician, but this has not brought him material wealth (he lives in a grotty little New York apartment building as does, depressingly, his similarly blessed mentor, Sol). He has obvious trouble connecting with people, even his gorgeous neighbour Devi, who is lovely and feeds him up with yummy samosas. Then again, there’s her name- is she supposed to represent material temptation- the devil? I hope not. I really rather fancy her.

I suppose the opening monologue about staring into the sun, evoking Icarus and returned to throughout the film, pretty much foreshadows the whole film. But this film is very poetic for something so centred on mathematical. I ought to mention, by the way, that my education has been all arts and humanities and that everything I know about maths I got from books on popular science. So I may have heard about the Golden Mean, Fibonacci numbers and stuff like that, but I don’t begin to understand the actual maths bit. Thought I’d best mention that. Just in case you started getting crazy ideas about me being vaguely qualified to review this movie or something…

Max’s obsession with mathematically cracking the chaos that is the stock market is much more successful than he realises, but has a much deeper significance which means that both Orthodox Jews and faceless corporate types will stop at very little to discover his secret… if, that is, we consider Max to be a reliable narrator. Darren Aronofsky (who is impressing me hugely as both writer and director) keeps this nicely ambiguous, making it clear that Max subsists on an entire chemists’ worth of pills, showing us weird dream sequences, and keeping the direction uncertain. Certainly, the fact that there are no comebacks for Max at the end seems to hint that it may all be in his head. What do I know, though; there’s so much symbolism that I don’t get. What’s the significance of the man with blood dripping from his hand? And the Coney Island sequence? Is the metal detectorist some kind of metaphor for materialism, or even capitalism? Don’t ask me!

Sol, I think, is supposed to be then voice of sanity and reason, so it’s both significant and worrying that he eventually dies of a stroke, paralleling Max.

I know very little about Kabbalah, except that it connects Alan Moore and Madonna, two very odd bedfellows. I am, of course, aware that numerology of all kinds is not only bollocks but Daily Mail- sanctioned bollocks, but this film pulls it off with so much style and verve, and pulls in so many genuine historical thinkers, that the whole thing works brilliantly. Likewise, I’ve no idea how Rabbi Cohen’s big revelation about the Cohenim and the name of God would be received by a religious Jew, but not being one I have no problem and simply find that it works beautifully as a dramatic plot revelation, and the unveiling of Max’s personal God complex is almost the climax of the film.

Returning to the lovely Devi, she appears to be Max’s only source of food, and is the only person we hear having sex this mean she represents animal urges as opposed to dry, abstract thought? Is there something Manichean going on here? It’s very hard, interpreting the symbols in this film, not to be simultaneously wrong and pretentious. We hear Devi copulating at the same time as we hear drilling, and we see Max having his breakdown. Does this point forward to the rather gruesome and physical climax of Max using a drill to lobotomise himself? Is this the victory of the animal over the cerebral? I’m buggered if I know but I had enormous fun watching the film.