Mulholland Drive (2001)

 "You will see me one more time, if you do good. You will see me two more times if you do bad..."

This is, of course, an interesting film to watch while I'm one season in to Twin Peaks. The directorial style, obviously, is very much going for the same thing, and I don't just mean that it's directed by David Lynch; the colurs, the lighting, it's all going for a riff on small town homeliness, but with something not quite right. This is very much a film about Los Angeles, of course, but this is perhaps appropriate as for much of the film we see the city through the wondering eyes of Betty from small town Ontario, who initially can't stop smiling.

The film constantly exists on the edge of realism. For most of its length there's a mystery plot that makes sense if you squint a bit, only for realism to break down at the end of the film as paradoxes abound. Artistically, it's quite wonderful, perhaps about what Hollywood ultimately does to people's dreams. They arrive hoping to make it... but the city is chaos, and nothing makes sense. The film looks like a dream, but perhaps the prospect of making it in Hollywood is no less so.

People don't quite behave realistically. It's 2001, but mobile phones don't exist; the film is and isn't quite set in the present. There are dreams, states of waking... it's very Lynch.

Regardless of meaning, though, the film is a joy to watch, with fascinatingly weird set pieces and visuals which, again, skirt the edges of realism. Is it my favourite David Lynch film that I've seen? Hard to say. But it's certainly an extraordinary piece of art.

Visitor Q (2001)

 "What do you think of such wonderful bullying?"

Oh my. I knew this film would be weird, and I knew it would be disturbing. But I didn't expect... this. So many things I can't even directly allude to. Let's just say there's incest, violence, drug abuse, rape, murder, and milk. Lots of milk. In quantities requiring an umbrella...

The film is very interestingly shot, with a hand-held camera, deliberately given a grainy, low budget look. It's a very deadpan dark comedy, amusing us at times while making us uncomfortable about our amusement. It belongs, I suppose, to a genre where a dysfunctional family is visited by a stranger who patiently "fixes" their problems sothat, as the film ends, the family are happy and united in their extremely twisted way.

The father, mother, son and daughter all do morally repugnant things, but it is the neglect of the salaryman father that is clearly the root cause, filming life instead of living it and accepting his responsibilities. His sexual problems are a metaphor for this. He ignores his son's abuse of his wife, and passively films his own son's bullying. Only a renewed bonding with his wife, in the most twisted circumstances possible, leads to the moment of catharsis as the couple briefly pause their dismemberment of a woman's body to chop the bullies to pieces. Ah,it warms your heart, doesn't it?

There's clearly a subtext here, and a view is being expressed about the percieved woes of Japan. Perhaps one theme is about what it means to be a man- to have integrity, to be a decent husband and father. Twisted though the film is, it makes one think. A worthwhile film, then... but watch it at your peril.

Jason X (2001)

 "Be glad you weren't alive during the Microsoft conflict..."

It's the tail end of a tired slasher franchise, known for its very straightforward take on the genre. The last instalment was eight long years ago. Things have fizzled out. So what to do? Put Jason Voorhees.... in space. yes, it's utterly bonkers. But it really works. However mad an idea mayu be, if the execution is good, the end result is good. And this film, laregely devoid of big names (despite a rare acting cameo from David Cronenberg, no less) is one of the finest instalments in the Friday the 13th series, rivalled only by the sixth film.

I have, perhaps, been overly kind to this franchise in the past. A slasher film lives and dies by its characters more than any other genre of horror. We need to get to know them for the deaths to have meaning. And too many of the earlier instalments failed in this regard. I gave them too much credot for the fact they are from a pre-Scream era when the slasher genre was less associated with the fourth wall.

This film, of course, has a good few metatextual moments (love the reference to weed, alcohol and pre-marital sex), but these are not the real focus. What really impresses is the lived-in, well-designed future world with robots, nanotech medicine, interstellar travel and a new Earth to replace the environmentally devastated old one. There are nice little ironic comments on what we expect from the future- the mention of "beaming up" gets a puzzled look.

Yet people in 2455 are the same as ever. There is greed. There is denial. There is fear. There is cowardice. These feel like real people. Human nature doesn't change. Yet there is also courage, integrity, nobility. Regardless of the future, space setting, the core of this film is its characters. That gives meaning to the threat Jason poses.And it's why this film is such an unexpected gem.

Duck Children (2001)

 This is an eight minute short film, sperficially giving the message (Amewricans, this isaimed at you) that civilians owning firearms is, obviously, not coinsistent with not being a ***ing barbaric ****. Just saying, you know.

Anyway, this is film as theatre in thatr a camera is pointed at some young children being charmingly made to perform on stage as deucks. Lovely. Then some redneck ****, with a firearm, typica;;y owned by men woith very small penises, proceeds to murder them all, proving that all gun ownersa- minus farmers worried aboiut foxes, sporting types keeping their guns locked in clubs etc- are not human. Seriously. If you own a military type of gun, like a machine gun or some **** like that, stay away from me and my child, and think about your evil lifestyle.

Anyway, I adore the deliberately theatrical bent of this piece of very short cinema. School shootings are evil. Americans: if you believe gun ownership is more important than the lives of children... just die. Children's lives are precious, as though that needs saying.

Your neighbour owns a gun, and is not a farmer? Call the police. This person is a criminal.

From Hell (2001)

“You’re not going to see the twentieth century...”

I first saw this at the pictures when I was at uni back in 2001, long before I first read Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s magnificent graphic novel. I quite enjoyed it at the time, I remember. This time, not so much. Is it because a whodunit which only hints at the depths of the graphic novel seems much shallower in comparison, in effect meaning that the film is unfairly disadvantaged in my estimation because I happen to have read the source material? Or is it that watching graphic entertainment based on the murder and misogynistic disembowelling of women is perhaps a more unsettling viewing in 2019 than it was in 2001?

Perhaps a bit of both. Certainly the film works well as a whodunit, although it skates close in the early scenes a couple of tones to giving away Jack the Ripper’s identity. But the real meat of the graphic novel, the long monologues by Gull and especially the stuff about Freemasons and “Juwes”  (how true is what Moore claims?) is dealt with only superficially. But perhaps there are only so many depths you can reach in a two hour film.

Beyond the simple script the film is well shot, well made and well cast with a pre-Jack Sparrow Johnny Depp convincing as a cockney copper, bizarre though the decision to have Abberline chase the dragon may be; the original version of the character is very different. Heather Graham impressed as Mary, Ian Holm is superb as Gull, Robbie Coltrane is the perfect sidekick and the late Ian Tichardson is a good laugh as Abbeline’s stupid Freemason boss. It’s a perfectly decent film in many ways, although inevitably it dwells on the horrible murders of women. But I think inevitably it looks shallow, perhaps unfairly given what can fit into two hours, than the source material.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

"Nobody tosses a dwarf!"

This is only my second viewing of this or, indeed, any of this magnificent trilogy. And, yes, with an appropriate nod to YouTube's How It should Have Ended (watch it for LOTR), it's magnificent. The three sodding hours actually passed very pleasantly.

The Lord of the Rings is an odd book, or trilogy, however you’re counting. I’m glad I read it at twelve, appendixes and all; I enjoyed it very much, but I fear the charms of its 1,200 plus pages would have likely eluded me if I’d been any older. Written by an Old English academic- I once cited an academic work of his while writing an essay on Beowulf- and intended to create the Germanic and Finnish myths he so loves, it isn’t a style of writing we’re used to in modern times. These days we have a literary genre called “fantasy”; that wasn’t so clearly the case at the time, and indeed The Hobbit was written for children. One odd thing about Lord of the Rings is the huge change from children’s pride in the shire to epic narrative for the rest of the novel but it is, of course, a work of genius.

So how does Peter Jackson film such a book? Well, brilliantly. His native New Zealand is a magnificent setting, and his cast is superb- Ian McKellen May stand out, but Christopher Lee is utter perfection as Saruman. Yet just as important is the magnificent direction and the scene that, for me, stands out is Christopher Lee’s performance in the scene where we discover that Saruman has betrayed Gandalf- the scene is a perfect synthesis of actor and camera as the extraordinary subtleties of Lee’s performance are echoes perfectly by the movements of the camera.

Wisely, Jackson does a faithful adaptation without cutting corners and, indeed, takes things from the appendixes to flesh out the narrative- particularly in an expanded role for Saruman which helps with the plot at this early stage but also, with Sauron himself being just an eye, giving a face to what the Fellowship is fighting. Seeing the Shire on screen makes is stand out from the high fantasy surrounding it: it’s odd to see a British work of high fantasy that features American crops such as tobacco and potatoes- or perhaps the “weed” is something else? It would make a lot of sense.

There’s one thing I don’t get, though. What’s so special about Sean Bean’s “One does not just walk into Mordor?” It’s a fairly nondescript line so why all them memes?

A Beautiful Mind (2001)

"What truly is logic? Who decides reason? My quest has taken me to the physical, the metaphysical, the delusional, and back."

A superb film, this, with a surprisingly subtle starring role from Russell Crowe as schizophrenic genius mathematician John Nash, whom we see from his brilliant if asocial youth, through the barbaric horrors of asylums and insulin shock therapy, to respected old age where, through sheer force of reason, Nash is able to accept that the delusions he still sees are false, and ignore them.

It's a deeply affecting film, although Nash's mental instability is rather cleverly demonstrated through some clever twists that I shall not spoil. Some are obvious from Ron Howard's obvious "dream sequence" directing; one in particular I didn't see coming. But this is a deeply affecting portrait of an incredible man, supported through everything by his loving wife Alicia right through to recognition by the Swedish Academy and his status, until recently, as the world's most famous living mathematician.

Sadly, John and Alicia Nash both died last year in a car crash, both in their eighties, but it seems their lives were well lived. 

Monsters Inc (2001)

"Kids these days... They just don't get scared like they used to!"

I'm somewhat winging it with this one; I wasn't going to blog this film and so I didn't make any notes. But here I am, a week later, deciding to blog it after all. I haven't done that since Drop Dead Fred. So here's hoping for some semblance of structure.

This film is, let us lay it out at the start, amazing. The animation, the voice acting and the witty script raise this up to something special, but best of all is the concept; a city of great looking monsters who get all their powers from the screams of frightened children. Sully is the most celebrated of the scarers, who enter inter dimensional doors (a fantastic image) to scare kids. But all this comes crashing down once a little baby girl and a dastardly plot enter proceedings.

One has to raise an eyebrow, I suppose, at a fairly contemporary looking society with an energy crisis which is able to use doors as interdimensional portals, but the whole concept is so cool that I simply don't care. The dynamic between Sully and Mike is fantastic, as it has to be for the film to work, and Boo is so very, very cute.

There's not much more to say; I'm not going to dig too deep for subtext although there are probably things that could be said about corporate greed. Just go and watchful. It's great.

Prozac Nation (2001)

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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.

Donnie Darko (2001)

"Every living creature on Planet Earth dies  alone."

This is the greatest film of the twenty-first century so far. I thought so the first time round, when I saw this film back when it first came out in my uni days, and I think so now. It's beautifully and meaningfully shot, it has definite yet undefined themes, and it oozes a profundity that can't be nailed down to anything so banal as a specific meaning. And in retrospect it comes from a turn-of-the-millennium golden age of films like this. It's only been thirteen years, but I couldn't imagine Donnie Darko being made now.

From the start we establish that it's going rive beautifully shot. We establish that the soundtrack is going to be awesome, too; it doesn't get much better than Echo and the Bunnymen's "Killing Moon". From the beginning there's a visual emphasis on the contrast between the banal suburban existence from 1988 (fittingly, the year of Morrisey's "Everyday Is Like Sunday") and the slow motion acid trip of the camerawork, establishing a stranger and more beautiful world than dinner tables, 1980s interior decor and put downs of Michael Dukakis.

The debate over politics (and it's sobering, from a modern perspective, that a relative centrist like Bush the Elder could never run for the presidency over politics today) establishes the family dynamic; Elizabeth, the eldest, is the political rebel, Donnie is a very strange boy, and the family is a pretty normal kind of dysfunctional.

Donnie Darko is a fairly standard Holden Caulfield type- adolescent, rebellious, bookish- but things get a little stranger once he's woken up by a giant talking a rabbit- introduced, naturally, by an eerie soundscape. He's not at all displeased, being an angst-ridden teen, that the world will end in "28 days, six hours, 42 minutes, 12 seconds". 

Our slow introduction to the school environment  is helped along by a slow montage and a splendid "alternative 80s" soundtrack. It's weird to me, as a Brit, to see the superb and sexy Drew Barrymore, teaching Graham Greene, saying "barrow boy" in an American accent(!), but she's a parallel to Donnie; older, more mature yet also alienated. Also alienated is Cherita, with Donnie, who is certainly alienated, the only one who is nice to her.

Not at all alienated, on the surface at least, is the slimy, authoritarian snake oil salesman Cunningham, alongside his stupid teacher accomplice. But Gretchen Ross is pleasingly alienated, which is why  we want her and Donnie to get together. Donnie doesn't get in trouble for flooding the school but he gets in trouble for challenging Cunningham's vacuous bullshit, which is a very valid commentary on the prevalence of such bullshit and, worse, that it is so widely believed. 

Donnie doesn't want to die alone, but he can't bring himself to believe in a God, much like myself. I don't understand the significance of the wormholes or the time travel stuff, but perhaps the point is partly that, on four dimensional space-time, death is not the end but just a point in our four-dimensional lives. It's the nearest we atheists can get to eternal life.

It's narratively satisfying to see Cunningham revealed as a paedophile, and appropriate that it should be Donnie burning his house down that reveals this. But the world is ending. So we must have a party, a type of party where people dance to Joy Division the mystery of who Frank is gets revealed, but the ending, while deeply satisfying, is mysterious; time reverses so that Donnie dies in the plane crash; he sacrifices all this extra time he had so that the world will not end for others. His life therefore has meaning. Death is absurd but, for this existentialist film, God is dead so it is our choices that matter.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001)

"You're a wizard, Harry!"

I am thirty-six years old. It's time to admit, after years of aspiring to do so, that I will never read the Harry Potter novels. I always have a pile of books to read at any given moment, and there will always be a bunch of books I  want to read more than I want to read something I'm probably too old to appreciate properly. One day, perhaps, I will read them to my children. Until then, well, I'm no hardcore Harry Potter fan, but I enjoy fantasy and traditional British horror stories, so I go into the films with high hopes.

First impressions are of how gratuitously star-studded the cast is. It's utterly ridiculous to fin so many acting knights and dames in one place. Nevertheless, we begin in suburbia, in Surrey, no less, a county which is far too expensive for us mere mortals to live in, and a grotesquely horrid family portrayed superbly by Fiona Shaw and the late Richard Griffiths. They're a family right out of a Roald Dahl novel, so naturally their stepson, Harry, is special. Our point of view, though, is that of Professor McGonagall (Dame Maggie Smith, playing a character named after a famously bad poet), and Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane in an unusual role for him), definitely not that of the "Muggles". We are made to see things from the point of view of those who use magic, which makes us feel as though we're part of said privileged group too.

After a few child-friendly scenes of child abuse, again Roald Dahl-style, Harry gets to go to Hogwarts which is, it seems, a public school, although the presence of regional accents among the staff and pupils speaks of a desire to play down the connotations of social class and treat boarding school simply as a trope of British children's literature, which is fair enough.

Harry gets to shop for magical stuff, not least a wand, in a magical, wondrous space in the middle of London that mortals cannot see; this also belongs to a long tradition in children's literature. The railway platform, the train, and even the location of Hogwarts itself are magical spaces where the mundane and everyday have no place.

We get an inkling of the fact that Harry is destined for greatness by dint of the fact that his wand seems to think so (in a ridiculously minor role for no less an actor than John Hurt), and Hagrid fills him in, like Obi Wan to Luke, on how the evil Voldemort turned to the dark side and killed his parents, but in the meantime he's a mere first year, meeting his future friends Hermione and Ron for the first time and also an enemy, the suitably named Draco Malfoy.

Harry doesn't get picked by the talking hat (what else?) for the sinister-sounding Slytherin house, but instead gets put in the rather chivalrous sounding Gryffindor. . Sadly, as with all schools, he has to do sports (boo!), and it actually quite good at this scary-looking Quidditch thing.

Months pass. Christmas happens. We, and Harry, have been introduced to Hogwarts, so it's time for a plot to happen, based on the eponymous MacGuffin. So there's a showdown, and it's cool; chess, with people as the pieces, where you die if you get taken. Wow. We end with house point being awarded to Harry's house for his heroism and that. And then the school year ends, and he has to go home to his Roald Dahl family...

I enjoyed that. A fantastic kids' film chock full of inspired ideas. Here's hoping the sequels are as good.