My reign at Blockbuster...

is nearly over...

they're fairly cheap, but I'm fast running out of quality titles to rent. Topped off the last batch and went and got seven more titles (when will this addiction end?). No true classics in this list, some I just wanted to get out of the way, but the first one comes close to being a favorite. So without much further ado about nothing:

Phantom Of The Paradise

Ok, so now another title to tick off the Brian DePalma To Watch List. All that remains are his sixties comedies with DeNiro, Wise Guys (which coincidentally is out on DVD in a couple of weeks) and the slightly hard to find Home Movies. I have fair memories of watching the start of this flick when I was a teenager late one night on the ABC (and what a great opening song it is) but I either fell asleep or gave up on it (I was very limited in my tastes as a teenager). I look on myself with shame, as this is really top-drawer stuff. DePalma fuses the comedy of his sixties films with the horror of Sisters and comes up with something a bit more operatic and melodramatic but not too far removed from The Rocky Horror Picture Show (which interestingly debuted a year later, 1975, in London). Framed at 1.85, DePalma splashes the screen with his now-standard single takes and split-screens and somehow makes them work in a musical. The Paul Williams numbers are toe-tappers (my favorite number, however, is ruined by overlapping dialogue) and the cast understands the level of hysterical melodramatic comedy they're playing at. Highly recommended.


Irreversible

Late last year a friend recommended and lent this French title to me. Intrigued, I popped it in, unprepared for the true horrors that would lay ahead. The forthrightness of the gay club gave way to pure terror as a man is beaten to death with a fire extinguisher. Dazed by the opening scene, my eyes stumbled across the next few scenes, as the film progresses in reverse order with our heroes (?) attempting to track down the man they supposedly kill at the start. The incident that prompted this murder was a rape in a red underground subway tunnel all done in a single take (I would not realise until later that each scene unfolded in single takes). Only just taking in this scene, I switched it off in disgust at how graphic it was.
Cut to nearly six months later, curiousity got the better of me and I rented it to watch the rest. Maybe it was fate that I would watch it this way as I skipped straight to where I left off and the film proceeded to take a truly tragic turn which I won't reveal here. Needless to say my opinion of the film rose dramatically as I realised the intent of the filmmaker in the way he shot and cut the movie. People tended to hate this film, and I wonder if I had watched it straight through whether I'd have the same experience? Maybe not.
The extras are fairly minor (overseas versions have a commentary etc.) but the sfx featurette was interesting in the amount of invisible computer graphics they did. Impressive stuff.


Leaving Las Vegas
Another film that's taken me a long time to catch up with. I was overall impressed by it, particularly Elisabeth Shue's fine performance, Mike Figgis subtle direction and wonderful jazz score. What left me puzzled by, and slightly disapppointed with, was Nic Cage. I think he's overrated as an actor. Sure he's done some wild performances, like Vampire's Kiss or Wild At Heart, and has been able to modulate himself into some fine performances, like Adaptation. But an Oscar? For this? He very rarely moves out of caricature. Overrated.

The Tenant

I didn't really know what to make of this. I just want to see some of Polanski's back catalog. I didn't realise he was the lead actor in this, and he doesn't give himself an opening credit either. Very strange film, and plays a little like a companion piece to Repulsion with a little Rear Window thrown in. Polanski is surprisingly good and I was surprised that Hollywood was bankrolling such strange little mood pieces in the seventies. Wouldn't happen now. Isabelle Adjani is always good, and seems to be one of those actors who must have an aging portait of herself.


The Weight Of Water
I was really tired when I watched this and didn't give it much of a chance. Seemed quite bad. The whole Sean Penn/Liz Hurley section seemed stupid and pointless. The 19th century sequences were better, but considering how visual a filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow is, I was surprised how dull the whole thing was. Sarah Polley, is as always, wonderful, though.

Fantastic Four

Not as bad as everyone made it out to be, but nothing more than your standard entertaining Hollywood movie. Michael Chiklis (The Thing) and Chris Evans (Human Torch) make this film better than it had any right to be. I'm sorry, but when you have a big-budget comic book of a movie who do you get to direct it? James Cameron? No. Steven Spielberg? No. Tim Story! Yes! No. I mean, what the? Who's Tim Story? That's unfair actually, as that was my same respond with Mark Stephen Johnson and Daredevil, and he turned out an infinetly better comic book movie than this. I admit, it must have been hard nailing five major characters, plus an origin story, plus action sequences. They... just... don't... quite... get... there. Mark Frost, who I admit is a God, loses points for hackneyed dialogue and I'm sorry, but is there a story in there? Some of the effects are seamless, some are mindboggling, some are just plain bad. The Thing's makeup, which I initially hated on the web, looks solid (ha ha!). This was a missed opportunity and is the worst of the recent crop of Marvel titles (heck, even Hulk is better than this). The extras are ok for a single disc edition, the funniest bits are when the cast travel to Australia for the press junket, and we get a shot of Flinders St (yay!) and the cast meeting Kochie on Sunrise!


The Machinist

Again, a title that I'd heard a lot of good things about, but came up short for me. It's good, and Christian Bale as always, is terrific as Trevor, but I thought at the end, what if it wasn't Bale, what if they'd cast someone without the commitment of Bale in the role? They'd have a film one tenth of what it is. It's truly scary how emancipated Bale looks. No major studio would have let him do that to himself. The story is ok, but they stupidly promote the film as "Fight Club Meets Memento", yeah, beacause Fight Club had a similar color scheme and Memento was fractured as well. Might as well of called it "The Matrix Meets Irreversible" (hey, that's a cool mix genre idea!). Bland, but Bale makes it worthwhile. Oh, and I think Jennifer Jason Leigh is another of those actresses with the Dorian Gray fixation. She looks as good as she did in Fast Times At Ridgemont High over twenty years ago!

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