7/15/15 (Part Three): Lost Swans and Hot Lead

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'90s homage, action films, action-comedies, Adam Buxton, Bad Boys, Bill Bailey, Bill Nighy, Billie Whitelaw, Blazing Saddles, British comedies, British films, Cate Blanchett, cinema, co-writers, cops behaving badly, David Arnold, David Threlfall, Edgar Wright, Edward Woodward, ensemble cast, Eric Mason, fast-paced, film reviews, films, goofy films, Hot Fuzz, ineffectual cops, Jess Hall, Jim Broadbent, Joe Cornish, Julia Deakin, Kevin Eldon, Lucy Punch, Martin Freeman, Movies, Nick Frost, Olivia Colman, Paddy Considine, Paul Freeman, Peter Wight, Point Blank, public decency, Rafe Spall, Ron Cook, Rory McCann, Shaun of the Dead, SImon Pegg, small town life, small-town British life, Stephen Merchant, Steve Coogan, Stuart Wilson, the Cornetto trilogy, The World's End, Timothy Dalton, UK films, urban vs rural, violent films, wisecracking cops, writer-actor, writer-director, Young Frankenstein

There’s something a little off in the sleepy, picturesque hamlet of Sandford, UK and it’s up to gung-ho London super-cop, Nick Angel, to figure out what it is. Sure, the inhabitants of the tranquil little village may seem impossibly friendly, the kind of small-town folks who know everyone’s names and just how many sugar cubes they take in their tea, thank you very much. Sandford may seem impossibly clean, neat and crime-free (no one in town, for example, has even heard of the “M-word” (Murder, doncha know?), let alone done the dirty deed), a peek into a peaceful township where the biggest problems are the “living statue” street performer and a “hoodie epidemic” that vexes the preternaturally polite populace something fierce.

Ask any genre fan worth their salt, however, and they’ll probably all say the same thing: small, quiet little towns like Sandford may seem like oases from the rat-race of the world at large but, dig a little deeper, and they’ll always produce more than their fair share of skeletons in the various closets. Behind every kind, small-town smile lurks a bottomless capacity for evil and down every immaculately cobblestoned pathway? Why, the very heart of Hell, itself! After all…can you really trust someone who seems so…nice?

If you’re Edgar Wright and the rest of his merry band of hooligans, the answer is an absolutely resounding “Hell no!” and the result is the second film in writer-director Wright’s “Cornetto Trilogy,” Hot Fuzz (2007). While the first film in the series, the modern classic Shaun of the Dead (2004), tipped the musty, old zombie film ass-over-tea-kettle, Hot Fuzz seeks to do the same for action-packed ’90s cop films (the final point of the trilogy, The World’s End (2013), takes on alien invasion epics). By using most of the same terrific ensemble from Shaun of the Dead and that patented zany brand of deadpan humor, Wright capitalizes on everything that made his previous film so much fun, while throwing plenty of bones to anyone weaned on actioners like Point Break (1991) or Bad Boys (1995). While the film is always a little goofy, it’s also a smart film, full of blink-and-miss-em visual references, plenty of silly action, some surprisingly bracing violence and enough witty dialogue and outrageous scenarios to keep the punters in stitches. In other words: prime Wright, through and through.

After Nick Angel is promoted to Sergeant and sent to the sticks (his always-on antics are making not only his police peers but his big-city superiors look like ineffectual morons), it looks like his eternal crime-fighting pilot light will be snuffed, never to blaze again. After he ends up in the middle of a pair of suspicious deaths that are unceremoniously labeled an “accident” by the local police force, Angel decides to do his own investigation, with the dunderheaded assistance of one PC Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), the fairly useless son of Angel’s new superior, Inspector Frank Butterman (Jim Broadbent).

As more and more “accidents” keep popping up, however, Angel begins to suspect that the sleepy town might harbor more below the surface than just an unhealthy interest in winning “Village of the Year.” As Nick and Danny butt heads with the local chamber of commerce, headed by Tom Weaver (a completely unrecognizable Edward Woodward) and slimy grocery-store impresario Simon Skinner (former 007 Timothy Dalton), they begin to get wind of a conspiracy that might, potentially, involve every resident of the lovely little town. When it begins to seem as if the pair have gotten in over their heads, however, there’s only one sure-fire fix: binge-watch ’90s action flicks and then take the fight right to the streets.

Is there really something going on, however, or is poor Nick just going completely stir-crazy in the snoozy little community? As he gets closer and closer to the truth, Nick will learn that there’s only a few things he can put his faith in: his unwavering belief in the absolute power of good over evil, his steadfast determination to rid the streets of any and all crime (shoplifters, beware!) and the universal truth that absolutely anything will explode into a towering fireball once shot. Bad boys? You better believe it, buddy!

Reprising their winning chemistry from Shaun of the Dead, if not their actual characters, Pegg and Frost are exceptionally bright points of light in the altogether brilliant constellation that comprises Hot Fuzz’s ensemble. Martin Freeman, Bill Nighy and Steve Coogan pop up, briefly, as Nick’s self-serving London superiors…writer-directors Joe Cornish, Peter Jackson and Wright, himself, all have cameos…Cate Blanchett stops by for an unannounced turn as Nick’s unfaithful former girlfriend…Paddy Considine and Rafe Spall show up as a couple of idiotic cops nicknamed “the Andes” (since they’re both named Andy, dig?)…the always amazing Olivia Colman (Peep Show, as well as endless other British endeavors) has a blast as snarky PC Doris Thatcher…the aforementioned Dalton (one twirled mustache removed from silent-era villainy) and Woodward (best known on this side of the pond for his titular role as TV’s Equalizer, on the other side for his landmark performance in The Wicker Man (1973)) chew miles of scenery…writer-actor Stephen Merchant gets a great bit as Peter Ian Staker (or P.I. Staker, for the punny win)…virtually every second of screentime is occupied by a phenomenal actor given free rein to be patently awesome.

The result, of course, is an incredibly immersive experience, the equivalent of Mel Brooks’ ridiculously star-studded classics like Young Frankenstein (1974) or Blazing Saddles (1974). When combined with the picturesque locations, the over-the-top action sequences and the often absurd comedy, Hot Fuzz (like the other two films in the Cornetto Trilogy) is its own self-contained universe. It’s this quality that allows moments like Adam Buxton’s outrageously gory death (his head is reduced into a fine mist via the timely application of a fallen stone block) or the unrelentingly action-packed finale to sit comfortably beside more “high-brow” comedy fare like the scene where Angel engages in a crossword duel with a cagey old lady or the one where he rides through town to the tune of the Kinks’ “Village Green Preservation Society.”

There are great throwaway jokes about the amount of damage caused by “good guys” in action movies, the tendency of small-town busybodies to focus on pointless “outrages” like hoodie sweatshirts and street performers over more important issues like corruption and justice and how small town folks in films often slot effortlessly into the “sinister locals” category (one of the townsfolk was an extra in Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs (1971), we’re told on more than one occasion). There’s great comic material here both high and low, literally something for any fan of the funny stuff.

One of the smartest tricks Wright and company utilize is the restaging of famous action movie setpieces from the likes of pop-culture phenomena like Point Break and Bad Boys. While these scenes would function just fine in a vacuum, previous knowledge of Danny Butterman’s much-loved action films makes the experience that much richer: there may be no more sublime scene in the entire film than the one where Nick and Skinner battle it out over the ruins of a scale-model version of the town. As the two punch it out, like warring Gargantua or Godzilla with a particularly stiff upper-lip, a broken fire hydrant supplies a continuous shower of water over the two: in other words, Wright goes ahead and gives us one of those clichéd old bits where the hero and villain fight it out in the rain, pounding abuse on each other as the very skies join in. And it works gloriously: somewhere in “movie heaven,” Riggs and Murtagh are looking down, fondly, I’m willing to wager.

In feel (and tone), Hot Fuzz probably hews a little closer to its follow-up, The World’s End, than its predecessor, Shaun of the Dead. Hot Fuzz, however, like the films it references, is an altogether bigger, noisier and more boisterous affair than either of the other films: while Shaun of the Dead was full of great setpieces and The World’s End managed to take a leap into much “bigger” themes, the action beats of the middle film are their own little world. Hot Fuzz is a little “dumber” and “slighter” than the other two but that’s also to be expected: you don’t wade into the fray of silly, adrenalized action movies without getting a little of it on your shirtsleeves, after all.

Despite being less than enamored with Hot Fuzz upon its initial release, the film has grown on me, over the years, in a way that I’m not sure Shaun or World’s End has (although World’s End still has plenty of time to go): once I allowed myself to get swept away by the film’s loud, Technicolor action and ferocious sense of energy, however, it became easier to absorb the more subtle, truly ingenious elements to Wright’s style.

If you grew up on ’90s actioners, harbor suspicions against the status quo or fancy yourself a bit of a lone wolf, Wright and Pegg’s Hot Fuzz practically demands another viewing. Come for the gleeful chaos and copious explosions but stay for the kind of insightful, in-depth and subtle commentary that we’ve come to expect from one of genre cinema’s most unusual visionaries. As Michael might say: “Yarp.” Yarp, indeed.

6/6/14 (Part One): All the Little Devils are Proud of Hell

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1970's cinema, Al Thomas, alcohol abuse, animal cruelty, animal massacre, Australia, Australian films, auteur theory, based on a book, bonded teacher, Bundanyabba, Chips Rafferty, cinema, civilized vs savage, depression, desolation, Doc Tydon, Donald Pleasence, drama, Film auteurs, film review, films, First Blood, gambling, Gary Bond, homoerotic tension, hunting, isolation, Jack Thompson, John Grant, John Meillon, kangaroo hunt, Kenneth Cook, male friendships, mining town, Movies, North Dallas Forty, obnoxious friends, Peter Whittle, Purgatory, repressed sexuality, school teacher, stranded, Sylvia Kay, Ted Kotcheff, the Outback, the Yabba, Tiboonda, Tim Hynes, Uncommon Valor, urban vs rural, Wake in Fright, wasteland

Many times, we discuss vacations in terms of “getting away from it all.” The presumption, obviously, is that we’re getting away from all of the tedious, mundane and unpleasant aspects of our daily lives: all of the annoying things like 9-5 jobs, chores, responsibilities and anonymous authority figures. People will hike deep into the woods, sail away to the middle of the ocean and climb the tallest mountains possible, all in the pursuit of “getting away from it all” and finding some internal serenity. In a day and age where we all seem to be alarmingly “plugged in” almost 24 hours/day, there’s something not only attractive but downright necessary about dialing everything back to a more simple level: just “us” and nature, our phones on silent and our brains turned off. By “getting away from it all,” we’re actually hoping to get back to ourselves, that core version that exists below the commitments of civilized society.

But what if we went so far away from polite society that we ended up in an altogether darker place? What if our quest for internal peace and discovery of the self led us not to personal evolution but to devolution? Is it possible to embrace our primitive, savage ids so much that we become nothing but flesh-sacks for volcanic, primal emotions like lust, hate, fear and the need to inflict pain? Getting away from the everyday bullshit of polite society is a noble goal but it leads to a dangerously slippery slope: once we’ve begun to accept a more primal, savage lifestyle, we automatically become at odds with the rest of the “civilized” world. As Nietzsche so eloquently put it, “When you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.” In Ted Kotcheff’s disturbing Wake in Fright (1971), we get the distinctly perverse pleasure of witnessing someone not only stare into the abyss but get consumed and shat out the other end.

It’s Christmas vacation for bonded school teacher John Grant (Gary Bond) and he eagerly closes the doors on his one-room schoolhouse in the tiny Outback town of Tiboonda, looking forward to his next six weeks of leisure. He’s heading for the bright lights of Sidney but must take a train to the small mining town of Bundanyabba in order to catch his flight. Ostensibly only in town for the evening, John takes a rather dim view of the hard-drinking, overly “friendly” locals: their earthy behavior is at decided odds with his more “civilized” big-city upbringing. As a local tells him, however, the “Yabba” is actually the best place in Australia: no one cares where you are or where you come from, as long as you’re a “good bloke”. John meets one of these “good blokes” in the person of Jock Crawford (Chips Rafferty), a local state trooper who proceeds to buy him one beer after the other at a local pub. When John complains that he’s hungry and would rather eat than drink, Jock thinks for a moment and does the most sensible thing: he takes John to a different bar so that he can order a steak along with the booze. “Best dollar you’ll ever spend,” Jock reckons, as he leaves John in the less than capable hands of local sawbones Doc Tydon (Donald Pleaseance).

Tydon is an amazing character, a slovenly, feral, ridiculously self-assured train-wreck who deflates the previously positive affirmations of the Yabba with the ominous declaration that “all the little devils are proud of Hell.” It’s here that John also gets introduced to the backroom gambling game of two-up, which involves betting on the flipping of a pair of coins. In a classic example of the fatal flaw, John initially scoofs at the game, before becoming intrigued, betting and winning. Unable to leave well enough alone, John continues to bet (and win), all with the hope of earning the $1000 bond necessary to buy his way out of Tiboonda and end his perceived servitude. He displays an amazing streak of luck, all the way up to the point where he loses all of his money. And, just like that, John’s one-night stay in the Yabba is about to turn into a whole lot more.

Unable to pay for his flight, John watches helplessly the next morning as it flies away overhead. He visits the local labor exchange but it’s closed: the only place that actually seems open is the bar (of course) and John drags himself there to spend his final coins on some sweet, if temporary, escape. Once there, John meets Tim Hynes (Al Thomas), another “good bloke” who buys him multiple drinks (after shouting down John’s initial protests) and takes him home to drink some more (pretty much the official past-time of the Yabba). Once there, John meets Tim’s strange daughter, Janette (Sylvia Kay), who mopes around silently while John and Tim continue to drink until they pass out, at which point they’re roused by Tim’s obnoxious friends, Dick (Jack Thompson) and Joe (Peter Whittle) for more drunken debauchery. After Doc Tydon shows up, Janette sneaks the blotto John away for a little drunken making out session, although his contribution to things pretty much begins and ends with puking on her. When John passes out, he wakes up in the Doc’s absolutely filthy pigsty of a home, a place that looks just like the dreadful Turkish prison in Midnight Express (1978). This leads to more drinking, of course (as Tydon tells him, Yabba water is only for washing, not drinking), while leads to more debauchery which leads to an absolutely horrifying kangaroo hunt, drunken rampage and possible rape. As John gets further and further away from his former gentle “civilized” nature, he finds himself in a shadowy world where the only diversions from a brutally bleak life are drinking, fucking, killing, fighting and destroying. Will John be able to pull himself out before he’s lost forever? Or will he end up just another permanent resident of the Yabba? And, in the end, can anyone ever really leave the Yabba?

It’s quite possible for a film to be both utterly intriguing and fairly repellent and Wake in Fright is certainly both of those things. On a purely narrative level, the film makes imperfect sense, existing somewhere between a fever dream and the French New Wave. Thanks to the editing style, which helps to heighten the sense of disorientation, it’s often difficult to establish continuity or, in some cases, even establish quite what’s going on. More often than not, the film is aggressively unpleasant: ‘roo hunt notwithstanding (and we’ll address that shortly), there’s a groddy, dirty edge to everything that makes a heady stew when combined with the sense of vast, open isolation and personal fatalism. The Yabba definitely appears to be some sort of a stand-in for Purgatory (or perhaps Hell, depending on how you look at it) and any satisfaction wrung from watching poor John Grant descend into its depths is grim, indeed. It’s not so much that John is a really good guy: he seems like a perfectly average guy, which makes his destruction, somehow, more upsetting. We can cheer if a “bad guy” gets his come-uppance and smirk when an unnaturally pure “white knight” fails. When a “normal” person fails, however, especially if they fail thanks to essentially good reasons (John keeps betting because he wants to get out of Tiboonda so he can be reunited with his girlfriend in Sidney), it hits a bit closer to home. John could be any of us, under the right circumstances: his degradation and destruction could be ours.

Despite how unpleasant the film ends up being, it’s a consistently fascinating film, thanks in no small part to the exceptional cast and stellar filmmaking. Donald Pleaseance, in particular, is absolutely amazing: Doc Tydon is the id in flesh and Pleaseance doesn’t so much chew the scenery as immediately become the center of any scene he’s in. Whether standing on his head while drinking a beer, cutting the balls off a dead kangaroo, graphically describing his sex life with Janette or engaging in a little drunken, homoerotic semi-nude wrestling with John, Doc Tydon is a ferociously alive, unrepentant, hedonist. More animal than man, Tydon may actually be the Yabba, a living personification of this hard-scrabble area that grinds men into pulp in the mines and pours the remains straight into the bars. I could practically smell Tydon’s stench through the screen, thanks to Pleaseance’s firebrand performance, and that’s no small compliment.

Gary Bond is good as John Grant but there’s not a whole lot required of his character: he’s a strictly reactive force and spends more time wobbling about in a state of semi-coherence than actually developing in any given direction. While it’s easy to empathize with John, it’s difficult to truly like the guy: he’s given the opportunity to climb out of the hole on multiple occasions but always seems to choose the path of least resistance (which, of course, is usually the worst path). Unlike Tydon, John takes no pleasure in his debauchery: as such, he tends to vacillate between confusion and moral agony.

From a filmmaking standpoint, Wake in Fright is exquisitely crafted. The cinematography is absolutely gorgeous and shows off the vast, epic emptiness of the Outback to great effect. The opening shot, a slowly revolving wide-shot that shows us the entire, tiny emptiness of Tiboonda in one, smooth 360-degree motion, is an amazing mood setter. Equally impressive is the score, which manages to swing from lighter to oppressive on the drop of a hat: the weird, eerie “sci-fi” theramins that kick in after John loses all of his money and begins his descent are a really nice touch, as are the droning tones that inform the latter half of the score. The score is a perfect example of subtly building atmosphere and mood without resorting to overly obvious musical stingers.

Despite all of the things to recommend here, I must admit that I didn’t really care for Wake in Fright. The film left me cold, which isn’t necessarily a problem, but it also left me queasy on many occasions, which is a more significant issue. One of the main reasons for this, although certainly not the only reason, is the astoundingly awful scene where Tim, Joe, Dick and the Doc take John out kangaroo hunting. I’d heard rumors about this scene, which apparently features actual footage from a real kangaroo hunt, but nothing I imagined could have prepared me for the actual film. The closest thing I can compare the hunt to would be parts of Pier Pasolini’s Salo (1977) or the disgusting animal footage in Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust (1985). As with those films, I will freely admit to looking away from the screen at times: there’s simply no way that anyone who loves animals (and I’m pretty much a fanatic) could watch the wholesale kangaroo butchery without dying a little inside. This is compounded with a bit (I’m assuming staged but only because I would never want to entertain the alternative) where John Grant graphically stabs a wounded baby kangaroo to death, while the guys cheer him on, hooting and hollering. Wake in Fright is not, technically speaking, a horror film but the kangaroo hunt is easily the most horrific thing that I believe I’ve seen in some 30 years of movie watching…and that says a lot.

Ultimately, I’m not sure whether to recommend Wake in Fright or not. The film will certainly not be for everyone and I can see quite a few people turning it off midway through (for better or worse, the ‘roo hunt really does draw a line in the sand). There was also much about the film that still mystifies me, including the question of what, exactly, happened between John and the Doc. As an important piece of Australia’s New Wave, Wake in Fright certainly bears discussion with films like Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and The Last Wave (1977), although I’m less fond of it than either of those films. In certain ways, parts of Wake in Fright even prefigure modern-day Aussie exports like Wolf Creek 2 (2013), which features its own variation on the kangaroo slaughter. Australia has always had a vibrant and fascinating film industry and astute viewers could do worse than rummage through their 1970’s back catalog. That being said, Wake in Fright is pretty strong stuff and I can’t honestly see myself revisiting it anytime soon. The Yabba might be an interesting place to visit but I sure as hell don’t wanna live there.

4/21/14: Hit the Lights on Your Way Out

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astronomers, astrophilia, benefits of sleep, cinema, circadian rhythm, city living, darkness, documentaries, documentary, Errol Morris, film reviews, films, Ian Cheney, Jack Newton, light pollution, melatonin, Morgan Spurlock, Movies, observatories, Sky Village, social commentary, technology, The City Dark, the night sky, urban vs rural

This modern world of ours provides us with a lot of necessities, along with plenty of unnecessary (but still nice) stuff. Whereas concepts like “wi-fi,” “streaming video” and “mobile devices” are things that many of us take for granted, it wasn’t too long ago (relatively speaking) that these ideas would have been more synonymous with fanciful science fiction than with real-world applications.  For most, however, any notion of looking backwards, to a less technologically advanced time, is more pointless nostalgia than anything else. The thought process always seems to be that any price we pay to advance to the “next level” (whatever that may be) is worth it: whatever we lose on a personal scale will be more than made up by the fact that we can now watch reruns of Cheers, on our phone, while we wait for the bus. There are more arguments, pro and con, than can realistically ever be examined in a forum like this. There is one thing, however, that should be plainly clear to everyone, regardless of which side of the “technology divide” you happen to fall on: our hyper-modernized, super-aware, technologically advanced society has cost all of us some of our humanity. Whether you find this troublesome, however, is a whole other issue. Documentary filmmaker Ian Cheney does and his thought-provoking documentary about light pollution, The City Dark, should make everyone stop and think about the ultimate price that we all pay to light our way in a frighteningly vast universe.

The documentary begins by introducing us to narrator/creator Cheney, a recent transplant from rural Maine to the bright lights of New York City. While growing up in Maine, Cheney was fascinated with the stars and astronomy, even going so far as to build his own telescope. Upon moving to the big city, however, he realized that he could see far fewer stars and, in some cases, he couldn’t see any at all. What, if any, impact does “losing” the night sky have on humans, he wondered: was this a trade-off that we could happily live with or were we giving up a vital part of our humanity? The City Dark, then, is his attempt to answer this question, as well as figure out his own conflicted views on the subject of mankind vs natural order.

Structurally, the doc is broken up into six sections, each of which deals with a different issue/aspect of light pollution: defining and giving examples of light pollution; fleeing over-lit urban areas for darker rural areas; the effects of light pollution on animals/nature; the effects of light pollution on humans; the reasons why humans use light; and possible solutions to this issue. This structure is very clear and well-defined, making it easy to follow the flow of Cheney’s research. There’s also a decent amount of time spent with each issue, making the film feel well-balanced. If nothing else, Cheney is obviously a filmmaker who knows what he’s doing, which is always a good feeling for an audience member.

There’s a good balance between traditional “talking head” interviews with various astronomers and scientists and Cheney’s own commentary. Unlike other indie documentaries about niche subjects like this, The City Dark is the perfect synthesis of more traditional documentaries and more open-ended, philosophical ruminations. There’s enough expert, scientific information for the doc to feel authoritative, yet there’s enough of Cheney for the doc to feel personal. It helps that Cheney has a very easy-going, pleasant personality: he’s the perfect host for something that requires a little personal reflection along with the historical record. This also helps make the film feel even-handed: although we definitely get the idea that Cheney is anti-light pollution, he goes out of his way to explain the factors that brought our world to this point, which are just as natural as the impulses that will need to get us out of it. There are no easy answers but it helps when the host refuses to take a hectoring tone: more documentarians should take note of this.

As someone who’s always had a twin love of bright, neon lights and the dark, starlit night sky, I found The City Dark to be immensely thought-provoking. The film is filled with some absolutely stunning imagery, including some of the most beautiful, chill-inducing shots of the night sky that I’ve ever seen. Couple this with some equally eye-popping views of the various lightscapes that are evident across the entire globe and The City Dark is never anything less than gorgeous to look at. Cheney is a more than capable filmmaker and I can’t help but feel that he’s the next Errol Morris or, at the very least, a more laid-back version of Morgan Spurlock.

In many ways, The City Dark is all about the continual, endless struggle to be human. Small, fragile, adrift in a vast ocean of night, with only the meager candles that we craft to light our way, humanity peers ever outward. While we light the way to make ourselves feel safer, Cheney makes the valid point that we may just be isolating ourselves more, cutting ourselves off from the natural world around us and relegating ourselves to a beautiful prison made of steel, glass and an infinity of brilliant lights.