Halloween

October 31st 1963, Haddonfield Illinois, we are shown a lone house through the eyes of an individual, this individual approaches and peeps in a downstairs window at a young couple making out on a sofa, as the young couple make their way upstairs the person watching them steps back and looks up at an upstairs window where a light is switched on. Suddenly the light goes out and the music kicks in shocking the viewer as the person watching makes their way round the back of the house, into the kitchen and grabbing a murder weapon. The boyfriend then makes a swift departure unknowingly leaving the young woman alone in the house with a killer. After stabbing her almost naked body to death, the killer makes their way out as a car approaches and a couple get out, “Michael” says the man as he removes the killers mask. It is here that the first edit appears as the killer turns out to be none other than the young woman’s 6 year old brother Michael Myers. It is at this point that the audience is petrified, the tone of the film is set and that the horror genre is changed forever.

Filmed on a very small budget and starring the then unknown Jamie Lee Curtis, John Carpenter’s film would not only prove to be the definitive film of his career but also invent the slasher genre (including the 100’s of poor knock offs and sequels). But what is it that separates this particular film from the rest? I guess it is down to the fact that it is ACTUALLY scary, it has the ability to leave you in suspense for prolonged periods, then relieve you as you feel that everything is safe then suddenly makes you jump and then relentlessly continues to hold you in suspense right up to the kill. Strangely enough however is that some of the films jumpiest moment come from sequences in which no one is ultimately murdered or attempted to be murdered. One such sequence involves the character of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) becoming paranoid as she believes she is being stalked by someone lurking behind a bush, who she is yet to realise is in fact renown murderer Michael Myers.

I also believe another reason why this works so well as a horror is the sense of reality behind it. After all its is set in everyday suburbia where the characters go about everyday activities. In fact the sight of an individual going about ordinary activities in their kitchen whilst Myers stares in through the window at night has such a real life sense that I can never look out my kitchen window at night without even thinking about Myers in the slightest.

Direction and cinematography also play a part in the eeriness of this film. Although shot in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles the streets depicted in the film have the look and feel of a spooky small town in middle America thanks to John Carpenter’s framing of these scenes. Also note worthy is how for the bulk of the night time scenes a lot of the widescreen shots have dark patches showing that the killer may well be hiding anywhere. Throughout we see black shadowy areas where we can notice the white mask of Myers looming in the background.

Of all the reasons that this film manages to scare where other horror films fail to is down to one specific reason; the music score. Not since Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho has a horror film been so enhanced musically. Carpenter uses a number of notable leitmotifs throughout the film to raise hairs on the audiences arms and push the fear factor as high as possible.

Casting in this film is also very strong. Jamie Lee Curtis plays the role of Laurie Strode with the perfect balance of curiosity and naivety making her character all the more believable. She also has an extraordinary ability to react to what is going on in the script at any given time whether it is maintain a sense of paranoia when something doesn’t seem right or screaming in reaction to the horror taking place before her eyes. Like Her mother Janet Leigh before her she has truly gone down as one of cinema’s finest scream queens. The casting of Donald Pleasence in this film also proved successful, after Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing turned the role down Pleasence went onto play the role of good guy Dr. Loomis giving the character an obsessive edge and whilst his character is not as evil as Myers he does leave you wondering that he may well be nearly as insane

The casting of Nick Castle as The Shape (Myers) also proved successful, although not an actor and despite having no lines, Castle dots ever I and crosses every T when it comes to portraying Myers’ body language and mannerisms on screen making him one of cinema’s most iconic villains. There are other reasons why Myers has become so iconic but I think the key reason came about by chance when the filmmakers decided to take an old William Shatner mask (a piece of merchandise from the classic Star Trek show), dye the hair, paint the face white and cut out larger eye holes. It proved hugely effective.

In the years to come Halloween would spawn endless amount of imitators, a whole load of inferior sequels and even a truly blasphemous Rob Zombie remake. Despite all these weaker follow ups the original Halloween shall forever be remembered as one of the most iconic horror films of all time and clear proof that sometimes a film can be genuinely scary.

5 STARS

Koyaanisqatsi

The next film I shall review is perhaps the most unique and unusual film I have ever seen. Introduced to it in my first year of university by a lecturer, it is a film that uses no dialogue and instead relies on a series of images coupled with music in order to tell a story. That film is Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi.

For a film with no dialogue one might argue that an hour and a half is too much of a chore to sit through. Although this may be true about the film’s rather misguided sequel Powaaqatsi it couldn’t be more wrong when concerning this film. Koyaanisqatsi is, in a word, exhilarating. From the long opening shots of the Grand Canyon of Utah, to the sand dunes of the Nevada desert, to the staggering sights of lakes and mountains, the open 20 minutes of the film draw us into understanding the natural beauty of the world in which we live and the vastness of the USA as a country. These images gain a great deal of power when accompanied by the music of Philip Glass.

After much natural beauty the film suddenly cut to a shot of a digger in which we get the first sense of what the message behind this film is; that nature is beautiful and that manmade revolution is defacing it. Throughout the film we see images of ran down building and public congestion. The film even culminates with a rocket taking off into space then blowing up and falling from grace as it reaches the upper atmosphere. Reggio’s ethos here is clearly that he believes in ‘evolution over revolution’, that man was made for this earth, to remain on this earth as it’s keepers, an earth that was once beautiful but has been destroyed by pollution and manmade monstrosities. It also appears evident that the rocket scene that culminates this film implies that mankind must not leave this world (to which I personally disagree, I support the space program), that mankind must remain here and maintain this world.

Perhaps the most genius thing about this film however is that it deliberately contradicts itself. As we the audience are shown sweeping images of Manhattan we can also truly understand that manmade things can be just as stunning as nature. This shows us that the manmade revolution can be just as wonderful as it is terrible and that there are two sides to every coin. Ironically I feel that the city based segments of this film are all the more impressive as we get to witness every minor aspects of city life within New York City, a place that I visited that will now stick with me for the rest of my life.

Reggio uses a number of impressive camera techniques, such as leaving the cameras running for hours whilst filming at about 1 shot per every other second making the lights on moving traffic wiz past one after another. This is also used for shots of clouds and the moon moving at a rapid rate as well as the masses of people that fill the city. I can only begin to imagine the amount of time and effort that went into filming and editing these sequences and finding the perfect married of image with Philip Glass’ music score, a music score that fills the most dynamic scenes of the film with ecstasy.

Now I’m not a music buff, I have good taste, I know a good song when I hear one and I know what makes a film score effective but if you ask me to put my musical theories into words I may struggle so I shall use just one word to describe Philip Glass’ score; relentless. It is a type of music that has gone onto inspire such modern indie bands as Muse and was also re-used effectively for the superhero film Watchmen. This goes to show that elements of this film have proven influential even if it isn’t a well know film.

I feel there is little left for me to say in perhaps the most technical sounding of all my reviews other than Koyaanisqatsi is mesmerising. It goes to show that not all avante garde cinemas is downright stupid (a la Andy Warhol) and can instead be impressive.

5 STARS

The Dark Knight

Since the days of Christopher Reeve there have been endless amounts of comic book to film adaptations, some good, some bad and some that have been downright terrible. Fortunately others have been pretty damn good, films such as Brian Singer’s X2 (2003) and Sam Raimi’s Spiderman 2 (2004). The only issue with these films however is that no matter how real the directors tried to make them they would always feel like comic book adaptations. This changed however in 2005 when the acclaimed director of Memento, Christopher Nolan revealed Batman Begins to an unsuspecting audience of comic book fan. Not only did it fix the damage done to the bat franchise since 1997’s Batman and Robin but it showed the a comic book adaptation could be portrayed in a realistic manner whilst also making a statement about the corruption within our very society. However this is not a review of Batman Begins but rather its uber-sequel The Dark Knight.

It would be hard for me to define The Dark Knight as a comic book film. It’s a comic adaptation for sure but as a film it is more in the vein of a sprawling, densely complex crime epic, a tale of inner corruption on a metropolitan scale. It is a film that owes more to such modern greats as The Departed and Heat, with elements of such modern noirs as Se7en and LA Confidential albeit one with a hero in a bat suit and a villain in a clown costume. Rest assured you’ll never find another comic book film so inherently realistic in terms of tone and content.

So what is it that makes this film work so well? Let me start with the performances and more specifically that of The Joker played by Heath Ledger a man who as you well know tragically lost his life 6 months before the film was released. Like many other viewers I can merely use superlative to describe his performance; immense, sensational, encapsulating. Ledger fully succeed in drawing the audience into the psyche of his character, especially when he is telling various anecdotes of how he got his scars (notice also how in the scene where he is up close to Maggie Gylenhall whilst welding a knife, the camera does a full 360 pan around so as to entrap the audience further in). Here is a man who in his final days manages the beat the great Jack Nicholson at his own game, portraying a Joker who is truly vile and sadistic with an effortless sense of malice. Naturally his performance got a lot of attention as a result of his premature death but the fact of the matter is that he truly was magnificent in this role dead or alive. It seems so easy to be cynical about the fact that his death made people praise his performance. HE WAS GENUINELY THAT GOOD and I believe that if he were still alive today he would be as big as say Johnny Depp for example. A tragic loss of a man who had just reached his prime. As I sat and watched this film for the first time I saw an actor who was truly cherishing the role he had been given, as co star Christian Bale described “I had never seen a man enjoy playing a part so much”, Bale was also quick to stand up against members of the media who felt that the role of The Joker ultimately drove Ledger over the edge.

This brings me to Christian Bale’s performance as Bruce Wayne/Batman. There are two main camps of people, both with views on Bale’s performance. One camp feels that he personifies the troubled, conflicted nature of the character perfectly and the other camp who felt that he was too dry an actor to successfully portray a lead hero (typical of the lead performer in many popular franchise films) and also felt his raspy bat voice was rather silly. I am part of the former camp. I felt that although Ledger was technically better, Bale still brought a great deal to this film, after all Bruce Wayne is a man utterly devoted to an ideal that he will stick to no matter what the circumstances, a man whos true identity is at risk a number of times throughout the film, a man who questions his role as a hero and whether he is “inspiring good or madness”. If the first film was about him gaining a purpose then this film is about him questioning that purpose. Although his bat voice was more pronounced this time round I didn’t really have any problems with it, I mean sure he does go a little overboard from time to time, specifically with his final confrontation with The Joker but then again doesn’t he need to disguise his voice so no one realises that he is in fact multibillionaire playboy Bruce Wayne. I mean come on its not THAT annoying.

Other performances in this film are also top notch. Arguably as great as Ledger’s is that of Harvey Dent played with amazing charisma by Aaron Eckhart. His portrayal as Dent is that of a man who at first appears that he can’t be trusted but as the film progresses we gradually learn what a heroic individual he is and that the only way to turn him evil is to bring a tragedy upon him. Gary Oldman returning as Jim Gordon once again (in typical Oldman style) immersing himself in the character he is playing this time portraying Gordon as a man with so much pressure resting on his shoulders. Maggie Gylenhall proves so much more effective than Katie Holmes in the previous film, Michael Caine returns as Alfred getting no less than a few great speeches and Morgan Freeman gets a slightly beefed up role than last time even getting the oppotunity to question Wayne's antics. The bit players prove effective as well giving us a wide plethora of cops and mobsters that make Gotham city seem like a more believable, fully functional city ergo making it feel like a character in its own right.

Ironic really that the real genius behind this film is not any of the actors but in fact its director, Christopher Nolan, the latest in a string of British directors to have conquered Hollywood. Through his gitty, realistic direction style he has crafted a gripping thriller that leaps far beyond its comic origins, pulling us forcible into the story and holding us at the edge of our seats through out. From the nerve shredding bank heist at the start were we are first introduced to The Joker right up to the gloriously bleak final confrontations with Harvey Two Face. It is through the sharp, suspenseful and impeccably written screenplay, which Nolan wrote with his brother Jonathan Nolan that we as an audience are drawn into the chaos that ensues throughout. Take note of the film’s sweeping cinematography and pulse pounding ambient music score. Rest assured this is a film that twists and turns and develops throughout building its way to the ferry set finale in which the lives of hundred are at stake merely through the push of the button. This climax like the rest of the events depicted throughout rests on a knifes edge. It is also clever because The Joker as well as many of his schemes remain ambiguous as how he pulled things off. Ambiguity is good people.

For me another impressive aspect was the way this film was edited. Accompanying Nolan's direction it has the ability to create a sense of danger, then intercut between various incidents all of which develop a sense of danger and build up until each individual sequence reaches a point in which all hell breaks loose. This is evident in a numbr of scenes (the build up to The Joker crashing the party, the mad rush to save Dent and Rachel, the citywide panic, the final showdown). The film also boasts various impressive action set pieces from beginning to end all of which contain a sense of spectacle that is far too absent in many modern CGI infested films today. Such sequences include Batman using a sky hook device to capture a villain in Hong Kong and an extensive chase through the streets of Gotham (Chicago) that culminates with a lorry flipping over.....forwards....for real. This is a strong example of how shooting action scenes for real can be vastly more impressive than filling the screen with soulless CGI. (Note: These set pieces are shot in IMAX as well as the establishing city shot, this is not present on the DVD copy, the only way to get the director's full vision is to view in Blu-ray).

There is a lot more to this film however than mere excitement and thrills. On repeat viewing the social, political subtext becomes clear revealing that there is a message in this film. The basic message here is to portray how the authorities are ultimately powerless to defend their public when faced with terrorism from a man who ultimately cannot be bargained with no matter what. A man who preys upon the corruption and paranoia of a post 9/11 society, a man who believes that people will turn against each other and succumb to madness when faced with sheer threat, as The Joker quotes “When the chips are down, these civilized people will eat each other”. I know for some people that sounds a bit deep for a mainstream film but it could not be any truer. Even the imagery reflects that of a post 9/11 society (the burning fire truck, the footage of the joker torturing a man on the news, the image of Batman’s silhouette as he looks solemnly down on the burning rubble where a loved one lost a life). The film even finds room to question the role of a mask hero in a modern society; Is his presence in Gotham helping to make it a greater place or is he merely a vigilante who’s actions are ultimately encouraging greater evil. Rest assured this film is a strong statement on the modern era, right up to the final minutes of the film which plays on the whole concept of creating a conspiracy in order to maintain order.

Overall The Dark Knight has managed to re-invent what a comic book movie can be capable of and shall remain one that shall be viewed in years to come. It is definitely up there as one of the all time greatest sequels along with The Empire Strikes Back and The Godfather Part II and definately one of my all time favourites. The question remains; do we need a third Nolan Batman film to make it a trilogy or should the story end with this film?

5 STARS