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Say Anything
A high school comedy-drama that starts at graduation. A John Cusack headliner where the ‘Sack gets almost no cool lines, and plays an awkward kid with his heart on his sleeve. A Hollywood sex scene which actually represents what your first time was probably really like. A romcom where the couple get together in the first twenty minutes, where the girl’s not overly keen on the boy until part way through act two, and where the tear-jerking conflict comes from a b-plot about the girl’s father. A relationship-based movie with no resolution.
Say Anything is that rare thing, a mainstream movie that consistently defies all convention. It’s heartwarming, sweetly funny, and, like most Cameron Crowe movies, moving where it should be cheesy (yes, I’m talking about that stereo-over-the-head scene*). Cusack, considered too old too play the part in 1989, adds enough of himself (kickboxing, the Clash) to fully flesh out what in other hands would be a thankless task, portraying a gawky, tongue-tied fool for love constantly punching above his weight and carrying the movie when necessary (Ione Skye, playing the brain-box princess, doesn’t quite have the chops to rise to his level). And the awesome John Mahoney probably delivers his best performance as the father driven to see that his daughter gets every opportunity, even at the cost of his integrity. It’s a slowburning, rewarding relationship drama buoyed by an intelligent, compassionate script, and with enough real laughs to keep it frothy where it needs to be. Ranks up there with Almost Famous as Crowe’s best movie, and I’m really looking forward to Elizabethtown, the lightweight Orlando Bloom not withstanding.
* Think about it - he may be serenading her with Peter Gabriel's 'In Your Eyes', but it's the song that was playing on the radio just after Lloyd and Diane's first time, and one of her favourites - crucially, not one of his, Lloyd being a Clash and New Wave fan. The only resonance it has for him is the context of where he heard it first. And the gesture doesn't work - in any other movie this would be the Big Finish, in which they reunite just before the credits. Not here...
Bowfinger
A blip in the steadily downward cinematic career curve both Eddie Murphy and Steve Martin have been enjoying in the last ten or fifteen years (in all fairness, both of Martin’s last two books have been fantastic, with the first, Shopgirl, set to be another blip – or a new leaf? – in the next few weeks.
Basically an adaptation of the Ed Wood story with the names changed, the script sees Martin’s titular wannabe director attempting to get Murphy’s A-list action icon Kit Ramsey to star in his bleeding awful B-movie, Chubby Rain. After the inevitable rejection, he decides to simply stalk him and film his scenes without Ramsey realising he’s being filmed, with the aid of a geek lookalike (also Murphy) for the close-ups. Unfortunately Ramsey is a paranoid alien-obsessed nervous wreck (under the thumb of Terence Stamp’s sinister guru, a beautiful low blow against Scientologist movie stars), and with a penchant for flashing cheerleaders, just one bad day away from cracking up completely… It’s funny, bizarre, and, like Burton’s Ed Wood biopic, oddly moving in Bowfinger and crew’s conviction that they were born to make movies, and that this is the movie to do it.
Manhunter
Forget Hopkins’ tubby vaudevillian. The only Hannibal Lec(k)tor I really believe is the awe-inspiring Brian Cox from this first cinematic foray into Thomas Harris’ serial-killer books. Muted where Silence Of The Lambs is lush, gripping where Hannibal is flaccid, this is probably Michael Mann’s best film. Cox features in only a couple of scenes, but is hypnotisingly good as a casually terrifying Dr. Hannibal Lecktor (“Operator, I don’t have the use of my arms…”), while Tom Noonan as the story’s actual antagonist, killer Francis Dollarhyde, shows a stunning, eerie versatility (despite the excision of his back story, he manages to make the Tooth Fairy oddly sympathetic and monstrous at one and the same time, unlike in Brett Ratner’s horrendous Red Dragon, where a slavering Ralph Fiennes couldn’t make any headway even with the back story).
But this is William Petersen’s movie. Probably the blueprint for every profiler-able-to-get-into-the-mind-of-the-killer since, Will Graham is able to think like a serial killer because he’s one slip away from being one himself - shattered after taking Lecktor down, he’s brought back for ‘one last job’. Petersen is electrifying, there’s no other word for it. Every moment he’s on screen you can barely drag your eyes from him. Manhunter elevates the mediocre source material (Harris is a workshy hack with an undeserved rep) to the level of a European art movie, as Taxi Driver and The Exorcist did for exploitation movies back in the seventies. And ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’ has never rocked so hard.
Intolerable Cruelty
Regularly cited by critics as a low point in the Coen brothers oeuvre only surpassed by their unnecessary remake of The Ladykillers, this would have romantic b-movie written all over it, were it not for two things : Joel and Ethan’s trademark off-kilter dialogue, with their usual killer lines, running gags running wild throughout ; and an astonishing comedic performance from George Clooney, seemingly channelling both Cary Grant and Jerry Lewis at the same time, often in the same scene. With CJZ playing her predatory vamp to the hilt, determined to bring down the shark-like divorce attorney who fell for her while fleecing her, and a backing cast who seem to be having more fun than they know how to handle, this is a romantic comedy for cynical misanthropes with a screw loose. A low point? It’s just as good as The Big Lebowski, and that’s saying something.
Glengarry Glen Ross
Seconded (thirded?). Only LaBute’s In The Company Of Men can beat this as a study of neurotic masculinity. True, David Mamet seems incapable of writing for women, but frankly he’s never seemed bothered about trying. However, Glengarry… makes it a moot point – there are no female characters to provide a comparison. Instead, what we have is probably the finest ensemble of character actors since The Big Chill relentlessly jockeying for status in one cutthroat real estate salesmen’s office. Ed Harris, Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey, Alec Baldwin, Alan Arkin – macho players, defensive workaholics, sad sack has-beens, bulls and bears just looking ahead to the next sale, living by the ABCs – Always Be Closing.
It’s insanely gripping – foul-mouthed, emotionally brutal, one kick in the head delivered over one hundred minutes. Everyone excels in this (except possibly Pacino, who one could argue is coasting a little), but Jack Lemmon is extraordinary as Shelley ‘The Machine’ Levine, top salesman desperately trying to come through a slump and pay his daughter’s hospital bills. The standout scene at the end with Lemmon and Spacey, alone and at loggerheads, is a textbook example of how to play a dramatic change in status, and it’s horrible to watch, capped off by Spacey’s sadistic response to Lemmon’s plea – “because I don’t like you.”
High Plains Drifter
Essentially a revenge Western writ large, this is the precursor for The Crow (hella fun, of course), The Wraith (has it come to this, that John Cassavetes kid is reduced to playing a diet version of the fucking Toecutter in a shitty TV movie?) and Nick Cage’s upcoming CGI-fest, Ghost Rider, amongst many others. It’s dirty, bloody, shot in muted desert tones, browns and reds. Eastwood isn’t stretched as an actor, obviously – he’s just playing another version of the Stranger from his Leone movies, much as he does in Pale Rider. As director, however, he proves again that, as with all the best Westerns, the setting is the star. Starkly, brutally beautiful to look at, and with echoes of the story of Kitty Genovese in the plot – everyone in town is complicit, not just the killer antagonists – this is the neo-realist Western as impressionist Euro-flick, and shows for the first time the kind of potential that would finalise realise itself in The Outlaw Josey Wales and, later, Unforgiven.
Death To Smoochy
Tim Burton is an overrated hack, style over substance in a fright wig. Danny De Vito, however, is the real deal, and if anyone should have directed a new version of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, it should have been him. Death To Smoochy starts like a cannonball and never slows down for one moment, a black as pitch, frenetic comedy/morality play. Robin Williams continues the shedding of the man-boy persona that had almost erased the edgy, manic performer he used to be – One Hour Photo and Insomnia were released the same year as …Smoochy, proof positive of a deliberate change of track. He’s a foul-mouthed, sleazy fallen children’s entertainer, obsessed with trying to bring down/kill his replacement, the saintly Sheldon “Smoochy The Rhino” Mopes (Ed Norton) and so resuscitate his career.
…Smoochy crams more hilariously bitter, vindictive nastiness into just shy of two hours than I ever thought was possible - there’s three movies worth of plot here, and any semblance of an act structure be damned. One of my favourite movies of all time. |
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