Naked Lunch (1991)

 "It's a Kafka high. You feel like a bug."

When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I got into the habit of reading novels that were seen as a bit counter-culture, a bit alternative, a bit offbeat. Hunter S. Thompson, Jack Kerouac, that sort of thing. And, for some reason, I ended up reading a lot of William S. Burroughs including, yes, Naked Lunch. And that isn't exactly an experience I can recommend. Let's just say it's a novel you can only read when you're young...!

This film, though? Oh, the novel and David Cronenberg were made for each other. So much body horror, and not just the (deliciously realised) Mugwumps. No, we have sentient, spymaster typewriters which are highly sexed, which ejaculate and which, er, stand to attention when excited. Because of course we do. This is the perfect canvas for Cronenberg to do his thing.

The film is visually exquisite, as one might expect. Yet the highlight may be Peter Weller's monologue recounting that surreal anal-related sequence from the novel. He truly carries the film in a suitably deadpan performance, believable as Burroughs himself, the still point beside whom all the gloriously surreal stuff makes a weird kind of sense.

No, this isn't a straight adaptation of a novel that is, straightforwardly, unfilmable, with its complex, bonkers plot and even more complex, bonkers subtext... and written by an author who was a heavy user of certain substances. Yet, albeit with the addition of certain elements from Burroughs' life (the notorious "William Tell" act especially), it comes surprisingly close.

Absolutely peak Cronenberg. A film that achieves the impossible, and does so with aplomb.

Brazil (1985)

"I won't look at your willy."

This film is, of course, a work of genius from the unique mind of Terry Gilliam- Kafkaesque, nightmarish, surreal, perhaps similar in visual style to his recently directed Crimson Assurance bit of Monty Python’s Meaning of Life, but announcing Gilliam as a true auteur. It’s also a true cinematic classic, managing to present a fundamentally bleak view of civilisation with the darkly humorous approach that is of course the only sane one.

Gilliam may be a native of Minnesota, but this film is full of the influences of his twenty years in Britain. It is, obviously, full of that Orwellian fear of tyranny, and the petty details of that tyranny, that is constantly found in British science fiction. It is set in a deliberately timeless and anachronistic time and place, but there are plenty of visual nods to the Nazi’s, and in particular to the phenomenon, in the words of Hannah Arendt, of the banality of evil.

It’s very Pythonesque, of course, but should certainly not be reduced to that. The casting of Michael Palin against type is a masterstroke, as is the starring role for the excellent Jonathan Pryce. A parade of British character actors play a parade of entertainingly disturbing grotesques, as does Robert De Niro, whose insane casting somehow works.

It is, of course, obstructive to see a film about the reality of, well, fascism, in 2020. The Kafkaesque evils inherent in computers are shown here, as well as the effectiveness of information control by those in power. Where the only news is Fox News, truth no longer exists. And, while the UK is not yet at risk of fascism or anything close, the blatant cronyism and disrespect for constitution norms we see here are particularly chilling.

A superb film from a director who, with this film, has well and truly outgrown Monty Python.

A Midsummer Night's Dream (1968)

"Lord, what fools these mortals be..."

I never knew before tonight's random looking through Amazon Prime that this odd little Peter Hall film existed- associated with the RSC although unconnected with the many screen Shakespeare plays made a decade later.

As a production it's... odd. There is much use of location and visuals, yet this is very much in the style (and with the necessary attitude to realism) of a stag play- I suspect the budget would not allow otherwise. The make-up for the fairies, in particular, I can imagine working well on stage, but their look falls very flat here.

The fun of this production, though, is not in the visuals; it's in seeing this splendid cast of unfeasible young actors (Helen Mirren is in her early twenties here, and none of the leads are over thirty- five) perform one of Shakespeare's plays with which I'm most familiar. And Ians Holm and Richardson, in particular, are truly sublime as Puck and Oberon respectively. Most striking though is a young, sensual Judi Dench as she frolics erotically with Paul Rogers' Bottom... and yes, I know: that's quite a sentence.

Even a flawed production of Shakespeare such as this can showcase some individual performances worth seeing, and this is the case here. And I must admit that this particular version of Pyramus and Thisbe is the funniest I've seen. On the whole, then, a mixed bag- but it was always going to be a joy to see this play with this cast.

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.

Henry V (1989)

"I'm afeared there are few die well that die in battle, for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument?"

This is the second screen adaptation of this play that I've seen and blogged after The Hollow Crown, albeit one made twenty-three years earlier, and the differences are stark from the opening scene, where Derek Jacobi's chorus awakens us by lighting a match. This introduces two themes: this production's constant okay with light and it's claustrophobic feeling, indoors and on small sets as much as possible and with the location scenes shot so as not to look expansive. Hal finds the crown as uneasy as did his father is the clear message, and his guilt over being an usurper's son, paralleled by his anxiety over the war being just (because sending people to their deaths and their bereaved dependants into penury because of who should be King is totally just, right?) is reflected in the visuals.

Kenneth Branagh is a suitably angsty Henry. Yes, the speeches are present and correct, but this is not a jingoistic Henry V but an anxious one.

The rest of the cast excellent too, including a surprisingly unshouty Brian Blessed, whose message to Charles VI reeks of a menace he hasn't exuded since he was Augustus in I, Clavdivs. And, on top of those mentioned in the tags, we didn't have room for Derek Jacobi, Robbie Coltrane as a splendid Falstaff in scenes nicked from the Henry IV's, Robert Stephens, Paul Scofield, Harold Innocent and a very young Christian Bale. I particularly enjoyed Ian Holm's Fluellen, discoursing on Pompey the Great- for Shakespeare, all Welshmen are in some way his old classics teacher!

This is a superbly visual production, superlatively acted and directed. The emphasis on sparse lighting, points of light in the darkness and claustrophobia gives us an individual version of the play from Kenneth Branagh that is highly effective. A fine film.

Time Bandits (1981)

"Four foot one! That is a long time, isn't it?"

This isn't really all that brilliant a film, in spite of some splendid individual bits of comedy, but it's a fascinating record of Terry Gilliam at this point in his career, with stylistic signs of his later directorial career yet with one foot very much still in Python- the film just feels very Monty Python, not surprisingly as Gilliam co-wrote it with Michael Palin, and both Palin and John Cleese get some splendid cameos: I love Cleese's version of Robin Hood as Prince Charles. And, as with the Python films, the owner of Handmade Films, one George Harrison, is involved, in this case providing a rather good song.

Also brilliant are Ian Holm's height- obsessed Napoleon and Sean Connery's noble and charismatic Agamemnon, complete with the Caledonian tones which were, I'm sure, de rigeur in ancient Mycenae. David Warner is, as ever, a magnificent baddie and the great Ralph Richardson is, literally, God, although he phoned in his performance somewhat.

The whole concept of a portal in young Kevin's bedroom, a portal into other realities that does not abide by the laws of science, is so very reminiscent of British children's fiction, from Alice to Narnia. The dwarves, put in charge of shrubbery by the Supreme Being, remind me a bit of Slartibartfast from the then-recent Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, while also providing a good employment agency for dwarf actors.

It's not as good as I remembered; individual scenes are good but as a whole it drags a bit. Still, it's a fascinating film to look back on.

Oh! What a Lovely War (1969)

"The lights are going out all over Europe..."

The cast for this film is ridiculous. Aside from the people I've tagged at the bottom we have the Master himself, Anthony Ainley, as a British staff officer. We also have Thorley Walters, Nanette Newman, Gerald Sim, Edward Fox, Angus Lennie, Dirk Bogarde, Derek Newark, Ralph Richardson, Maggie Smith, Susannah York, John Mills and (uncredited) Jane Seymour and John Woodnutt. All in the same film. It's absurd.

This is Dickie Attenborough's epic film version of the famously improvised musical by Joan Littlewood and her Theatre Workshop. It's a thing of magnificence but it does, of course, present a very Marxist view of the First World War. You certainly don't have to be a Marxist to subscribe to the view that this was not a "just" war but just a silly dynastic struggle between old empires, the War of the Spanish Succession with trench warfare and mustard gas; I'm not, and I do. But it certainly helps. However, this film is a strong proponent of the old "lions led by donkeys" view, an unpopular view in many quarters these days. From the arrogant xenophobia of the British officers towards their French allies to a doddering and uncomprehending Franz Ferdinand declaring war on Serbia this is not a flattering portrait of those in power.

Thing is, though, it's magnificent. As a musical (all the songs are versions from the trenches) it revels in the freedom from realism while maintaining a clever structure through the use of one family's ground level point of view and of the sinister photographer figure.

There are so many fantastic set pieces, from the British recruitment propaganda to the moving Christmas fraternisation between the British and Germans in 1914 (the top brass cancel their leave!) .But the structure, message and intricacy of the whole thing is quite something to behold. A thing of magnificence.

The Madness of King George (1994)

"We consider ourselves blessed in our constitution. We tell ourselves our Parliament is the envy of the world. But we live in the health and well-being of the sovereign as much as any vizier does the Sultan."

This is scripted by the great Alan Bennett and stars the great Nigel Hawthorne (who, sadly, only graduated from the excellent Yes, Minister to a glorious film career at the end of his life), so obviously it's superb. It's as historically accurate as it's sensible for a play-cum-film to be (Alan Bennett did this period when he read History at Oxford, you know), full of heart, and funny. Cyril Shaps' poo-obsessed doctor is a particular delight.

We begin with a few scenes establishing where we are. Greville, the King's new equerry, is our POV as an audience, and we establish what the King is like as a person- pretty damn eccentric, what what? This is essential: before he goes mad, we need to see what he's like when he's sane. We also see his loving (but probably sexless) relationship with the Queen, his traditional Hanoverian hostility to the profligate and indolent Prince of Wales, and the political context of all this. Cold fish and budding alcoholic Pitt the Younger relies on the King's survival and sanity for his career and that of his faction of Whigs. If the King is replaced by Prince George as Prince Regent, then Charles James Fox is waiting in the wings with a somewhat more radical bunch of Whigs, which could mean a load of extremist nonsense like the abolition of slavery. Heavens above.

(The Tories are, incidentally, in no position to form a government: it was they who lost America and they will be out of contention for a generation.)

It is, of course, as popular culture always shows us, extremely dull at the court of George III. Versailles this is not. Nor, thank heavens, is it the awful Brighton Pavilion. But things soon become interesting as the King's behaviour takes a turn for the bizarre.

The film concerns the progress of his madness- mercifully brief, this being his first lapse in 1788: he would not recover, alas, from another attack in 1810, long after the film ends. The film seems to adopt the prevailing theory that the King's malady was, in fact, porphyria. A caption at the end reminds us that this is hereditary. Ha!

The meat of the film consists of the battle of wills between the King and Dr Willis, a man who is now able to exercise his authority over no less than a King ("No, Sir! You are the patient!"), if only for a little while. The Prince Regent will not have his way. Yet.

These scenes are fantastic, but the whole film is so damn watchable. It's brilliant. I mean, it's Alan Bennett. Just go and watch it now.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)

"You gave me life, and then you left me to die."

This is a very different cinematic version of Frankenstein. The point is not that it follows the broad outline of Mary Shelley's novel- which, not splitting hairs, it more or less does, including the Arctic bits- but that it is quite self-consciously made as part of a different genre. This doesn't have the trappings of a horror film and, unlike every other version I've seen, isn't a melodrama. Instead, this is presented simply as an adaptation of s classic novel, owing more to Merchant Ivory than to James Whale or Terence Fisher. The very presence of Helena Bonham Carter would signify that, we're it not for the fact that she would go on to meet Tim Burton.

Obviously, this means a focus on scientific ethics. But Kenneth Branagh's take on the themes of the novel seems to emphasise the Gothic, and not just in terms of mood; he includes the prominent lecture room scene in which Frankenstein stands up for an older, "philosophical" approach to science, and the controversial Professor Waldman (played by John Cleese in an entirely serious role) stands for an older, more alchemical tradition. This makes the monster, in a sense, a creation of the knowledge of a dark past- true Gothic.

It's also worth pondering Branagh's take on the links to Romanticism too, what with the original author being married to a certain writer of Ozymandias (and the thematically relevant Prometheus  Unbound) but not really in tune with the movement. Frankenstein here seems to be no fan of rationalism, yet he is hardly a sympathetic figure.

The film works well enough; Bonham Carter is excellent in the film's (and novel's) only significant female role from the pen of a daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft. Branagh is competent although, outside classical parts, he is not the most charismatic of actors; next to Colin Clive and Peter Cushing his take on the character is not overly memorable. Robert De Niro is superb as always. But there's a reason why film versions of Frankenstein lend themselves towards melodrama. This is a good film but not a great one, simply because the source material doesn't really lend itself to a straight adaptation.

Alien (1979)

“You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you?”

I should have reviewed this film ages ago. It’s certainly influenced so many other things that I’ve reviewed, not least Doctor Who during the 1980s. But at last I now have all four films, thanks to my friend Nick. That’ll be the next few films for the blog sorted, then!

I watched the director’s cut, which I originally saw at the cinema back in 1983. There’s a very stark contrast between the aesthetic of the Nostromo- functional, lived-in, run-down, unglamorous- and the gorgeous direction. The pace is extraordinarily slow. This is often, of course, because this is a tense thriller, but in the early scenes it simply seems to be for the sake of beauty. And beautiful it is, oddly enough. The ship may be a dull corporate blob, designed for function alone, but there is beauty. Also, there’s blueness. Lots of blueness. This is probably one of the bluest films I’ve ever seen.

Like Ridley Scott’s later Blade Runner, this is an interestingly contemporary take on the future. Again, everyone smokes. But this is a corporate ship, with lots of mentions of “The Company” but no mention of any governmental authority. How very 1979 and New Right. Also, everyone (even the cat!) is known by their surname alone, which gives a sense of coldness and alienation. It’s interesting that, while the characters are all distinct and well-drawn, none of them are particularly likeable. We identify with them because we identify with their circumstances as corporate wage-slaves in recognisable situations with sci-fi trappings and added peril, not because they’re people we’d particularly like to know.

This is an almost contemporary version of space travel, with a lot of screen time being given to the putting on of spacesuits and the opening and closing of airlocks. Space flight is not shown as safe or easy. Being a pioneer means danger and discomfort as it always has and always will.

Oh, and the computer interface has dated awfully, hasn’t it? And “Mother” seems awfully primitive in 2012. But still… this is superb. Hardly anything happens, but the tension is extraordinary. The scene with the cat in the locker, and the long, drawn-out scenes of Brett looking for the cat before he’s killed, and Dallas’ attempts to escape as Lambert panics, are justly legendary.

But what’s truly extraordinary about this film, and elevates it above the status of a superior thriller, is the gender and sexual subtext. I’m hardly the first to point out that it’s a man, Kane, who is brutally, orally raped and murdered, even giving birth to the creature. Interestingly, the white men all die first. And the final survivor (and probably the character who deserves to live the most) is Ripley. It’s an interesting subversion of the gender roles, and perhaps to an extent the racial roles, that we would expect.

Simple though the plot is, there are a couple of very nice twists. I’d forgotten that Ash was a robot; this is a superb performance from Ian Holm, who produces a character that makes sense whether or not you know he’s a robot or just a cold fish. And the alien being aboard Ripley’s escape pod is a huge shock. It’s a joy to see this film again, and I’m looking forward to the next three…