KURSK: THE LAST MISSION aka THE COMMAND

In the wake of watching and obsessing over HBO's superb CHERNOBYL I thought I'd check out thew new film by Thomas Vinterberg - KURSK: THE LAST MISSION aka THE COMMAND.  As with Chernobyl, it's a tale of tragic loss of life in a Soviet/post Soviet system that is riddled with poor quality equipment, poor maintenance, bad decision making, cover ups, and honest working class men betrayed by their superiors.  In this case, the men are submariners running a test exercise in the Barents Sea. This may be 2000, over a decade after Chernobyl, but it's a similar story - an initial accident confounded by an unwillingness to do the right thing immediately. The Russians don't have rescue vessels of their own, having sold them for hard cash (they were taking rich tourists down to see the wreck of the Titanic.)  And when the British and the Norwegians offer help, the Russians refused at first - an unforgivable delay.

Vinterberg's film is a straightforward and earnest affair.  He does well at capturing the claustrophobia and camaraderie of the submarine and Matthias Schoenaerts (Vinterberg's FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD) is really superb as the charismatic protagonist. The film feels less authentic and more broad-stroke heroes and villains when it gets out of the submarine.  Max von Sydow is straightforwardly the bad guy as the Russian admiral who refuses help.  Colin Firth is straightforwardly decent and square-jawed as the British naval officer trying to help. It's a shame that the script doesn't quite allow for any convincing character building.

KURSK: THE LAST MISSION is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 117 minutes. It played Toronto 2018 and was released in the USA last month and in the UK this week.

EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE

EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE is an offensive film based on a faithful adaptation of an offensive novel. To that end, the blame for this exploitative, incredible (literally) movie lies with Jonathan Safran Foer - the novelist who exploited 9-11 to further his narcissistic fictional stylings.  It's hard to see how screenwriter Eric Roth could've adapted the film while minimises the absurd central conceit that powers the film.  And as for Stephen Daldry - once again, is it his poor judgement or his inability to disentangle himself from the mawkishness and self-indulgence that pollutes the novel?

The Big Idea is that a kid called Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn), borderline autistic, is so traumatised by his father's death in 9-11 that he obsesses over the idea that his father might have left him one last puzzle - a key with the name "black".  So he roams Manhattan interviewing every black, looking for the lock that his key will fit - some of the time, accompanied by a mute old man call The Renter (Max von Sydow) who turns out to be his grandfather (no real spoiler there).  Eventually, he finds the lock, and we discover why his mother is being so apparently irresponsible, but none of it really feels credible.  And, as with all high concept films, the incredible nature of the premise truly undermines our empathy with the characters. That said, even without the ludicrous concept, EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE would stretch any viewers patience.  The characters either fall between the downright irritating (Oskar Schell and his mother) or the unbelievably good-hearted (Oskar's father - surely the most attentive screen dad in history).  One can only assume that it's the presence of Hanks and Bullocks - Oscar sweethearts - that got this film nominated.  Max von Sydow is sympathetic - sure - but his nomination looks like an end-of-career pat-on-the-back rather than a specific acclamation.   

All I can say is that this is hands down the most irritating, exploitative film I have seen in quite some time. I discard it.

EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE is already on release in the USA and Canada. It will play Berlin 2012. It opens on February 16th in Germany, Portugal, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, the UK and Japan. It opens on February 24th in Argentina, Australia, Chile and Finland. It opens on February 29th in Belgium, France, Singapore and Brazil. It opens on March 8th in the Czech Republic and the Netherlands; on March 16th in Italy, Spain and Turkey; and on March 22nd in Slovenia.  EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE has been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar and Max von Sydow has been nominated for Best Supporting Actor. 

SHUTTER ISLAND - the auteur's B-movie

SHUTTER ISLAND is a psychological horror film directed by Martin Scorsese and based on the popular 2003 novel by Denis Lehane. This faithful adaptation is a self-consciously old-fashioned sort of an enterprise, set in a maximum security prison for the criminally insane, in 1950s America. It deals very deeply in notions of personal and national guilt – denial and repression. The protagonist is a veteran soldier turned Federal Marshall called Teddy Daniels (Leonardo di Caprio). He has been three two traumas – being present at the liberation of Dachau, and having his wife die in an arson attack on their apartment. Nominally, he has come to Shutter Island to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a female patient/prisoner called Rachel Salondo. His real agenda is to investigate the whereabouts of the man who killed his wife though - he protests – not to take revenge – and to investigate what really happens in Ward C. The central puzzle of the film is what is the agenda of the employees of Shutter Island, not least the lead psychologists (the superbly sinister Sir Ben Kingsley and Max von Sydow.)

SHUTTER ISLAND is a profoundly odd film. Just as with THE SHINING it sees an A-list auteur apply his talent to a B-movie genre – the brooding psychological thriller. All the way through the movie, I found myself being brought out of the film by the sheer quality of Martin Scorsese’s framing or Thelma Schoonmaker’s editing. I was also deeply impressed by the sophistication of the intellectual material – the conflation of personal and political guilt. But somehow, the sheer quality of the thematic material and its production mitigated against the hyper-real construction of a sinister atmosphere, through Robbie Robertson’s careful use of Mahler and the fictively sombre grey clouds hanging over the eponymous prison island with its gothic central house and proto-fascist civil war prison fort. It also mitigated against my emotional involvement with the film. Thus scenes that should be downright petrifying or deeply emotionally moving were neutered by their subvention to the tricky plot.

The movie is thus, at times, deliberately bad – especially in its opening sequences – with its self-consciously over-the-top weather effects and ludicrously over-bearing score. It is also at times extremely good – so good that it breaks the B-movie veneer. In particular, I would cite the flashback scenes to Dachau, especially the mass execution, which plays like a sort of demented ballet. At other times, Scorsese seems to be reaching for something darker and more twisted than I have seen him wrestle with before, but basically fail in that task. The way in which he treats the hallucinations and warped memories of his protagonist is beautiful and bizarre. But it brings to mind comparison with BUG and David Lynch’s recent work – not least MULHOLLAND DRIVE. I couldn’t help but wonder what a less faithful and more free-wheeling treatment of the material might have looked like in the hands of someone like Lynch.

And this brings me to my final thought on SHUTTER ISLAND: it is, after all, a beautifully made but rather conventional treatment of the subject matter. Scorsese’s art is well-honed but he is somehow a prisoner of it. He hasn’t allowed himself to truly break free and show us something so unhinged as to utterly disturb us. Neither has he subverted the B-movie horror film in the way that a Quentin Tarantino did with World War Two films in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (a film which, by the way, looks better with each passing day).

SHUTTER ISLAND premiered at Berlin 2010. It was released last weekend in the US, Argentina, Argentina, Denmark, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Russia, Bulgaria, Canada, Finland, Lithuania, Norway, Spain and Sweden. It is released this weekend in Belgium, France, the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Israel, New Zealand, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Austria, Estonia, Iceland, Taiwan and Venezuela. It opens on March 5th in Switzerland, Hungary, Brazil and Italy. It opens on March 12th in the UK, Egypt, Mexico and Turkey. It opens on March 18th in South Korea and on March 26th in Poland. It opens in April 9th in Japan and on April 15th in Singapore.

SOLOMON KANE - a near perfect piece of pulp entertainment

I love the CONAN films, and pretty much all Arnold Schwarzenegger flicks from the eighties in general. But CONAN is special. There's something deliciously disturbing about a woman like me (quasi-feminist, post-modern, intellectual snob) liking something so, well, unreconstructed in its full-on appreciation for strong men swinging swords in a battle for cosmic stakes painted in simplistic terms. Good and evil are tangible in the world of Robert E. Howard. So while I didn't know much about SOLOMON KANE going into the film, I knew enough: for this is another character created by Robert E. Howard, and in true pulp stylee, the resulting film is just astoundingly, unashamedly pure in its intentions. We are going to get a straightforward battle between good and evil fought for the ultimate stakes, and it will be waged by a fit guy with a multitude of weapons.

Solomon Kane is a sixteenth century aristocrat turned rebel warrior. Like St Augustine he has lived a life of pillage and murder upon the high seas, resulting in the Devil laying claim to his soul. Kane being no hippie vegetarian, he escapes the Devil and retreats to a monastery whereupon he repents and disavows violence. With steady purpose he sets off back to the West Country to his ancestral home, but finds that it has become over-run by sorcery and evil with a capital E (good piece of paedophobia involved). His dilemma is whether to forfeit his redeemed soul and take up the sword in order to vanquish evil.

The first thing to say is that this movie looks fantastic. It's all gothic horror - misty moors, muddy fields, craggy castles on clifftops. The cast look like Puritans have turned up in the middle of Mordor, with Solomon Kane looking distinctly like Aragorn and the evil thugs rather orkish. Mackenzie Crook of THE OFFICE looks particularly superb in a frightwig as a mad old priest and James Purefoy (Mark Anthony in HBO's ROME) looks every inch the convincing warrior with a crisis of conscience. They've even wheeled out Max von Sydow as Kane's father and Jason Flemying as the sorcerer Malachai with some very fruity face-grafitti.

The second thing to say is that despite the complete insanity of the plot - witches, sorcerers, pacts with the devil etc - everyone plays it straight. There's never a whiff of pastiche and somehow, the fact the actors all invest into it, means that we do too. I mean, the stakes are absurdly high here, but I never for a minute thought "Hold up! This is RIDONKULOUS!" Rather, I was genuinely fascinated to see how it would all play out, and felt genuinely sorry for this poor bastard who renounces violence and lives in genuine fear for his immortal soul but is caught in the worst of all Catch-22s.

Basically, SOLOMON KANE is just about as perfect as you can get for sword-swinging fantasy epic entertainment. I dock it half a mark for breaking the carefully constructed veil of plausibility by inserting a truly ludicrous CGI monster into the final act. It's even more annoying that writer-director Michael J Bassett did this, because when you look at the narrative, and the choice that has to be made to drive the denouement, you don't actually need the monster at all. The key point is that Kane has to make a choice, and a sacrifice. The struggle is internal, and the struggle against external ravenous beasties is secondary. Still, despite that minor hiccup, SOLOMON KANE remains an impressive and entertaining flick. I could happily watch it again, and I'm really hoping it makes enough phat cash that they greenlight the rest of the planned trilogy.

SOLOMON KANE played Toronto 209 and opened in France, Kazakhstan and Russia last Christmas. It opened earlier this year in Spain and the Philippines and is currently on release in the UK. It opens in the Netherlands on March 18th and in South Korea on March 25th. No US release date yet.

RUSH HOUR 3 - 100% pop-tastic

Brett Ratner is a vulgarian hack director and should be kept in a one-mile exclusion zone from all movie projects that require intelligence and subtlety. But give the man his due: he can direct a stupid, superficial action movie like no other. RUSH HOUR 3 is no exception. Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan reprise their roles as two cops in a culture clash, united in their hatred of triads and their love of....well...each other. You know the score: Tucker is going to dance like Michael Jackson and lech after hot chicks; Jackie Chan is going to do cool martial arts stunts; and we're all gonna go home happy. In this installment we have the added bonus of some rather perceptive gags about the US-Old World culture clash and a funny montage spoofing the buddy cop genre.

Of course, if you want to be all picky, you can find stuff to hate on. Jackie Chan's martial arts stunts may be a bit less extreme in his frail dotage. The whole "Jackie has an evil brother" story is under-written. And what the fuck is Roman Polanski doing in this sub Steve Martin role? But this is all to miss the point. RUSH HOUR 3 does one thing very well. It makes us laugh. And that helps us forget that global debt markets are going down the toilet. So two enthusiastic thumbs-up from me!

RUSH HOUR 3 is on release in Israel, Singapore, Iceland, Sweden, the UK and US. It opens in Egypt, Germany, Hong Kong, Norway, Indonesia, Argentina, South Korea and Japan later in August. It opens in Greece, Brazil, Lithuania, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Slovakia, Estonia, Australia, Russia and Spain in September and in the Netherlands, Venezuela, France and Belgium in October 2007.

Pantheon movie of the month - THE SEVENTH SEAL/DET SJUNDE INSEGLET

THE SEVENTH SEAL is a cinematic master-piece that brings with it a heavy reputation and iconic imagery. Ingmar Bergman's conceit is to have Antonius Block - a Swedish crusader returning home to a plague-torn country - play a game of chess against Death. If Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) can beat Death (Bengt Ekerod) at chess, he will be given another chance at life. However, Block does not want life for it's own sake. Rather, he just needs more time to discover whether God exists. After fighting a bloody religious crusade has has lost his faith. But he does not want to regain his faith: this time, faith will not be enough; he wants absolute knowledge.

Some may find the subject matter and the film's very reputation off-putting. But let me reassure you that THE SEVENTH SEAL is not a dry philosophical discourse. In fact, it has incredibly funny passages. Antonius Block may be travelling through a plague-torn land, but it is also a land of jesters, madrigals, ribald songs, drunken fights and cuckolds. Rude songs raise a laugh, but they lift the mood on a more profound level too. It is a relief after the self-flagellating Block to see the loving happy couple, Jof and Mia (Nils Poppe and Bibi Andersson) and their baby son.

My interpretation of the film is, therefore, a fundamentally optimistic one. Maybe you can never get an answer about whether God exists. Maybe barbaric acts happen in this world. (Certainly the scene of the witch being tortured and Jof being bullied in the tavern are excruciating to watch.) But life goes on, happy and full, for some. And we can all snatch and treasure moments of happiness.

Even Antonius Block must admit: "I shall remember this moment: the silence, the twilight, the bowl of strawberries, the bowl of milk. Your faces in the evening light. Mikael asleep, Jof with his lyre. I shall try to remember our talk. I shall carry this memory carefully in my hands as if it were a bowl brimful of fresh milk. It will be a sign to me, and a great sufficiency."

THE SEVENTH SEAL was originally released in 1957 and won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes. It is currently on re-release in the UK and is available on DVD.