A History of Violence (2005)

“In this family we do not solve our problems by hitting people.

David Cronenberg is known for a certain type of film. This is very different from that type. Yet it's a very different type of film- an action film that's based around nuanced character and acting, and rather intelligent and thoughtful among all the violence, anyone?

It's hard, indeed impossible to discuss this film without spoilers. But it's about more than the twist; it's about how we can all construct our identities, about interiority, about the hope of redemption, about the violence that lurks within us, about what may lie beneath respectable and upstanding lives, about the alien nature of other people and the impossibility of truly knowing them, even if you're married to them, in love and still have good (and fetishistic) sex. But then, of course, in a very deep sense Edie does know who Tom is now. The past is a foreign country.

There's enough graphic violence here to qualify this as an action film, yet it's clever enough to simultaneously appeal to the arty film crowd. Viggo Mortensen gives a towering and dualistic performance that is truly extraordinary, although credit is also very much due to Maria Bello and to William Hurt, who shows his extraordinary versatility in a part very different from usual.

This is an extraordinary film, and one of the finest I've seen for a good many months.

Creepshow (1982)

“Where’s my Father’s Day cake...?”

EC horror comics, although I’m sad to say I’ve never read any, are best known, unfortunately, for being the unlucky victim of that stupid quack, Fredric Wertham, whose genuine achievements in his earlier career were overshadowed by his ridiculous witch hunt against comic books. They are also known, of course, for two British portmanteau horror films by Amicus, one of which I’ve blogged. But this, more than anything else, makes me want to look at the source material. I love the linking comic book stuff by Bernie Wrightson.

He’s not the only “name” though; the legendary George A. Romero directs and Stephen King, no less, has here not only his screenwriting debut but a deliciously scenery-chewing acting role in one of the segments. Other interesting little points are an unusually menacing role from Leslie Nielsen and Adrienne Barbeau as the most annoying woman in the world. The whole thing is splendidly grand duignol and enormous fun, bookended by scenes of a tyrannical father stealing his son’s comic book and getting his comeuppance, setting both the tone and the style.

As ever with a portmanteau film some segments are better than others, although the tide one was a real highlight, but what works well here is the tone and sense of cheerfully grisly fun that pervades thecwjolw thing. This may not be the greatest horror film ever made but it’s thiroughly enjoyable to watch all the way through, and that’s a superb achievement . The spirit of EC lives on.

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.