Jordan Peele: a bigger conman than Saul Goodman?
It's Jordan Peele, therefore it must be funny, smart and of the moment. His latest 'Nope' is one for 'intellectuals' to sit around drinking coffee and discuss their elitist takes on the superiority of so called elevated horror. 'Oh this new wave of horror from the likes of Jordan Peele and Ari Aster rather distinguishes itself from that bonehead Eli Roth' says one of them and the other replies, 'I couldn't agree more. I must say i do love that A24 shirt you're wearing. Do you know where I could purchase one of those, squire?'
Is Jordan Peele the messiah he's made out to be in modern horror? Or is he just a man who can pull out a Chicago sun roof or squat cobbler when asked to like TVs finest criminal lawyer Saul Goodman? Up to now, I have very much enjoyed the work of Mr Peele. Unlike many others, I'm not convinced he's made a perfect masterpiece (sorry Get Out stans) but in spite of his shortcomings he has proven himself to be one of the most interesting minds working in horror today. All this even after only two features, which is undeniably impressive. This hasn't stopped some weirdos from calling him the best horror director of all time. Get a hold of yourselves! Full respect to Mr Peele for Correcting these people and rightfully declaring that John Carpenter is the king in this arena baby! So yes, impossible to deny this talented still fairly new director of his achievements thus far.
Even in Peele's most lauded first feature his problems began to emerge. His main problem? Third acts. In this case, he made this fantastic satire and made full use of his comedy background (Key and Peele til I die, you can't beat the Neesons sketch) to create some genuinely new ground for horror. Yes, that good that the critics had to dig up all the old classics like Ganja and Hess and all the big black horror titles they could name. I recommend the documentary Horror Noire: a black history of horror for those wanting to find more in this field. My personal favourite (since we're on it then) is Tales from the Hood and I do hope that one day Bones gets more love. Snoop Dogg and Pam Grier, what's not to love?
Anyway back to Get Out, a film which was so good, it did for blacks, what the Stepford Wives did for women. When we get towards the big plot reveal that's when things get a little shaky. Tonally it changes massively and comes an entirely different movie. Up to that point the directions really controlled and the cameras more of a detached observer with some of those party scenes. The screenplay and the actors doing the work while the camera is going for this distanced cinema verité approach.
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There's a clever voyeuristic effect in that you too are a guest at the party. Towards the end the style changes and it becomes a very trashy, chaotic and giddie movie. Luckily, both were very good at what they were doing and so they didn't cancel each other out as they should have. The switch was unusual but overall didn't completely destroy the movie. Do still have one issue, which is that he should have kept his original ending, which was a whole lot darker involving the police and the institutional racism side. There was a moment it seemed it was going that way. Very irritating as it would have been braver and more fitting to the original intentions of the movie.
As I said with Get Out, it wasn't such a problem at the time because of all the good it was doing for the rest of the movie. The fact it was pretty revolutionary cancelled out any little problems. It wasn't until Us came out that the Jordan Peele third act problem became so apparent and unavoidable. This time he comes up with another amazing idea about there being clones of ourselves living underground and being experimented on. Big up Michael Abels Tethered Mix of I Got 5 On It. The streets still remember. All the best stuff in this movie happens in act two when the counterpart creepy clones of the family appear at the gates ready to play. They all end up fighting each other and there's a wonderful use of NWA's 'Fuck the Police'. The ever hilarious Tim Heidecker even gets a cameo. Assume he's a friend on the comedy circuit.
During that second act we get the bulk of the brilliance of the movie. Fun trashy weirdness as well as our over reliance on technology and police being beamed back at us. That's where the ideas are at. For a brief moment they are neatly contained and then the third act arrives and dismantles everything. The film ends up with more ideas that it can contain and literally explodes. Peele's pursuit of an allegory becomes overwhelming and in trying to overexplain itself, collapses. The allegory is no longer neat, fun and manageable. Almost no allegory makes literal and perfect sense, the good ones are just about stripped down to the point where it can do enough to support the message. This chief bites off more than he can chew and forgets the important point that small can represent big. I maintain that he should have taken some notes from Alexandre Aja's The Hills Have Eyes remake. In that film, Mr Aja added in that the mutant family's defects were caused by government nuclear weapons testing at a particular site. Note that the allegory has been contained to one location. Consequently, it is believable and realistic. Had Peele done the same, his sophomore effort would have been excellent and closer to the quality of his debut. Instead, he came at it from the angle of 'I am Jordon Peele who just made an academy awards accepted horror movie and am the fucking man, get the fuck out of my way'. Let's just say I reckon it got to my man's head. He goes too big and tries to turn it into a national incident rather than local. Sometimes, i guess less is more. So keep your bloody dodgy government testing sample to a reasonable limit, ok?
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Following Us, I was willing to brush off its disappointing finale and accept Peele's two film catalogue as nothing short of ambitious. In a time when so many directors can't even perfect the simple 90 minute run of the mill economic horror for a Friday night viewing, here's one guy that actually does have things he wants to say on top of that. Us even demonstrated some smoother capabilities in the genre tonally. This one had more focus on the trashy fun rather the other style he was practising in the first half of Get Out. Definitely had a lot to like about it. Therefore, I was ready to embrace his latest film Nope.
If you watch extra closely with Nope you'll see Jordan Peele trying to make a movie out of the complete nonsense on display. He never quite commits to anything. It's his longest film to date and it really does suffer because of it. As I've said he is pretty much incapable of grounding ideas. Normally I can appreciate the huge amount of ideas the movies contain. Contain actually being the wrong choice of words because his movies don't actually contain ideas. They seep out the edge of the frames destroying the movies integrity. We're three films in and for the love of God, someone please teach this man the three act structure. He's too good to be ruined by something so simple. Nope didn't even have the foundations and without them it just becomes these ramblings and doodlings with no cohesive meaning. This one never makes it out the sketchbook.
My expectations for Nope were pretty clear. In my mind, I assumed it would be comparable to Shyamalan's Signs in both aesthetic and experience. That is to say Aliens on a ranch, decent suspense and then a final idea so bad it threatens to derail the entire picture. Remember the water in Signs? Pre-water stupidity, I'm still convinced it's a solid follow to The Sixth Sense. Then boom turns out the Aliens can't hack water. New skit afraid of water. Swing away baby, Swing away! How ill-prepared were these Martians that they decided to invade a planet dominated by water? Fucking morons them UFO manning pillocks. Makes almost zero sense and its most definitely what's known in this business as a Deus Ex Machina. Nope didn't even fare as well as Signs. It never even cements itself for a single act. I was never fully convinced by it.
If Baz Luhrmann's Elvis project from earlier this year, Elvis, is guilty of hopping from technical achievement to technical achievement at the expense of narrative, then Peele's Nope is guilty of idea hopping at expense of narrative. The pair of them need to take a good long look at themselves and re-examine their approach to narrative.
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What infuriated me most is that I was going in giving the big man Peele a handicap. I knew the third act would be poor so I was willing to let this man off for that part before I even went in to the cinema. However, it soon settled in that I wasn't even enjoying the first two acts. There was no way out for Peele. He'd fucked this one up well and truly.
Around the second act some interesting ideas do begin to emerge. An argument is put across that blacks have "had skin in the game" since day one of cinema. Therefore it's Peeles time to do his version of the western the way it was meant to be. So forget Muybridge or Ford because Peele's about to set things straight. I was all geared and ready to enjoy something like that. Too bad my man can't even make a good genre picture out of this. There were undoubtedly routes Peele could have taken here or at least tried to. We get these potentially interesting stabs at commentary on trained animals in Hollywood. Had it been more of this Once Upon a Time in Hollywood type movie but with trained animals and not stunt men I'd be calling it the movie of the year. Anything for more of Steve Yeun and his monkey. What even was the monkey really about? The nerds keep talking about how Kaluuya's characters profession as an animal trainer is what makes him geared to handle the aliens. I picked that up and I'm all for the writing and the visual elements substituting for in your face dialogue but is it interesting? Not exactly in the way Schrader's underrated The Card Counter comments on its central character. As limited as it is in Nope, fair play though for at least attempting to make the characters profession integral to the plot. Doesn't happen enough these days.
Still confused by the Tarantino style horse vignettes being used as the structure of the movie. What on earth was that about? Seemed like a cheap trick that never really paid off and was no better than the kind of rip off antics you'd see in Bullet Train. Peele keeps the music exciting though, he hasn't quite lost that part to his game. It's nothing as memorable as the way Us was commenting on the difficulties of parents trying to explain more adult things they enjoyed when they were younger to their children and it's not Redbone in Get Out. Regardless, there was something pretty cool about the music blasting out across the empty ranch and some of the wild band T shirts on display (big fan of the stoner metal band Earth getting some representation in cinema. That's what we come to see!)
When the third act comes in, it's somehow even worse than I envisioned. Instead of expanding on the ideas being set up sloppily in the second act it throws them out the window for the worst kind of disaster movie imaginable with abysmal set pieces. What is that scene geography? For such a professional with a budget like this it's embarrassing. They set it up reasonably nicely making full use of Peeles Deniro Daniel Kaluuya (still glad at what the director and his star have formed together over the last few years and am still looking forward to more collaborations). As he waits around for the shit to go down you almost feel they're on to something. They cut back and forth between them at their stations but once it kicks off you can't really tell who's where and what's going on.
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I could not fucking stand the design of the Alien. Once it began attacking I was like oh shit roll up the credits, you're done Mr Peele. Imagine independence Day without Emmerich's charming humour. Is this the best you can do? Why couldn't he have just stuck to his little western. Rather just watch the incredible 70s classic Boss N*gger again if I knew this man was going to bottle this so hard. Nope is not signs. This is The Happening. Its fucking Cowboys Vs Aliens 2. That's how bad Nope turns out.
Nopes had more than enough time to settle on me now, I've read nearly everything I could get my dirty little hands on about it and I still think it's absolute garbage. I remain baffled by its success and am very much open to hearing what people think about it. Almost everything I've encountered so far has just made me laugh. What a load of wham. Just wham. Keep reading about how it's this high concept critique of the "spectacle". Yet the film it says has almost nothing to say about that. In fact, the only way I can register this film as a genius take on our obsession with spectacle is by observing the way the film has been received. In that regard, it's an overwhelming success in the sense that Jordan Peele fails to land a single idea (yes not one) and yet people have eaten this shit up like it's the work of God. It's been sold on nothing other than name only. People have been totally consumed by nothing. Consequently, maybe it is accidentally the greatest film ever made about the "spectacle". He wanted to give us the spectacle and he sure as hell gave one for better or worse. A one trick pony with more ploys up his sleeve than the Albuquerque con man or a misfire from someone who will go down as one of the best? Jokes aside, he'll be back. He'll be back.
Bonus Points for:
-Having a homicidal maniac monkey
-Daniel Kaluuya being cool
-The Earth band t shirt
-Referencing Muybridge
-Saluting our great animal performers in cinema
Overall Score: 1.5/5 5
Got a call from Bonehead Bill asking if I wanted to see this week's monster movie Beast. He kept saying it's the one where Idris Elba punches a tiger! Kept repeating it over and over full of youthful joy like I couldn't understand what he was saying. Told him I'd seen the trailer and all. Sharlto Copley Where's he been all these years?
Bonehead Bill was excited to see this one as he's a real thrill seeker. He's not one for the intricacies of storytelling and character development. He would regularly say things like "there's whole lot of plot here getting in the way of the boobies". Bonehead Bill is the kind of man who wants the nudity and the violence. And he wants it now. Don't you even dare think about making a film longer than 90 minutes and not have S and M torture sequences every fifteen minutes on the dot because this man's normally on his 16th can and ready to pass out at the slightest hint of dialogue.
Had a quick look over the times over at the Light cinema. Informed my good friend Bonehead Bill that I was on the late shifts this week and wouldn't be able to make the only showing of the day at 8.10 PM. Instead of letting it go, Bonehead Bill invites himself round for a few drinks and a movie at my place. He says we'll pick one off the telly.
Not long after he's dropped on my sofa, Bonehead Bill asks, "Did you catch the names of those absolute jokers who wouldn't shut the fuck up about Jordan Peele's Nope on our way past the coffee shop the other day?". Responded with a quick shake of the head as I continued to browse through what was available on the streaming this week. Bonehead Bill proceeded to go on a rant about how if he saw those two eggheads out and about again he'd give them a good seeing to.
All I could reply with was "Ok" paying as little attention as possible hoping this would be the end of it. This didn't put him off and he continued by saying, "nerds like that shouldn't be able to walk the streets". "whys that then?" I asked and he goes, "ain't got time for 'em lad". Even though I half agreed with Bonehead Bill I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of engaging with him on this.
I'd already made my peace with the let down of "Nope" and it was time to move on to whatever cheap shit the services had to offer. No one had given me a straight answer on exactly why they had liked Nope or given me a suitable reason and so I'd just accepted I wasn't going to get one because it simply wasn't possible to give one. All it was is the kind of movie for people like the unnamed duo at the local independent coffee shop to blurt out "Peele's done it again. Another exhilarating work of genius from him" without ever specifying the "what" it was exactly that he had done this time.
What if this quick stop to throw up at the service station, after a heavy night of drinking could just be your last?
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The time for dwelling was over, it was time to play Russian Roulette with the infinite number of titles accessible at our finger tips. Our only hope was the movie would go well with a few beers. That's when it hit me, there was that new film on Shudder called Glorious, which was produced by horror legend Barbara Crampton.
Bonehead Bill took some convincing because the last movie we'd watched on Shudder was Revealer and the less said about that the better. Represented all the worst of modern horror with its overuse of neon lighting and lazy synthesisers. As well as the dialogue spelling out the directors political beliefs in a not too subtle way. Bonehead kept mentioning this as he moaned on about there not being enough time for nastiness in horror these days cause the filmmakers never leave you on the edge or even have time put you there because there's 3 pages of dialogue before there's the set piece you want. By the time they get there it's not even fun anymore cause the directors told you exactly how he feels about his material. It was hard to disagree. Eventually I got my boy to watch this flick with me by reminding him that he'd beat the bishop to the poster on his wall of Barbara Campton in her sexy gear in From Beyond probably more times than he could count. Therefore, he owed it to this lady to watch all films with her name on it. 'What's this film you want to watch about then?', he asks.
Glorious is this single location Saw meets Lovecraft cosmic horror type of movie that comes off as though written by Kevin Smith in the Tusk/Red State era under heavy narcotics, rediscovered the next day when sober, reread in absolute fear and disregarded for being too far even for his idea of a drug fuelled midnight movie. A post Whiplash-nightmare in which the fate of planet Earth is being fought in the worlds shittiest toilet. Get strapped in lads, this ones taking you to the heavies.
Whilst I spent the majority of this watching in a state of high anxiety as though reviewing unwanted past traumas, Bonehead Bill was loving this from the off. In the opening few scenes we have this dude who is drinking heavily and burning all his property laughing manically as he dances round and drinks whiskey from the bottle. You had to give it the dude, he seemed to be having the time of his life whilst his life was falling apart all around him. I think Bonehead found a kind of kinship with this man. This was the exact level he operated on too. So he cheered this dude on and joined him on the booze. Barely even 10 minutes in and Bonehead was clearly drunk. For fuck sake. It got to the point where, he could barely understand what was happening and would just keep saying, 'that man is going to fuck JK Simmons glory hole!'.
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It took me a good few hours after the thoroughly intoxicated Bonehead Bill's departure to really contemplate the horrors of what I saw in this movie and to even begin to process it. Anyway, I finally managed to get some thoughts together to describe the experience so here goes.
What we have here is the kind of movie that solely exists purely between those hours of craziness as you try to recover from a hangover or intense comedown. We're talking the few hours when you fall into insanity with your head under a tap and arms clutched round a sink. Suddenly you're neither here nor there. The world becomes out of balance. Each passing second thinking this it. You're done for. Fighting for your life, waiting for the shops to open to grab a Lucozade from the corner shop. Telling yourself you'll never touch the bevvy again, it's the last trip you take and making all kinds of false promises for a few extra hours of life. You try to solve the grand puzzle. Your mind breaks. It's just you and your demon who just happens to be JK Simmons. And that motherfucker wants your kidneys. You begin to crave your return to normality a stronger man. Is that all life is, a series of meetings in the bathroom praying for extra lives? This don't sit too well with me. I'm a Chubby Checker man, I want to be dancing the twist summer after summer. So don't go cutting me off just yet! But what if you don't deserve another shot? What if you literally can't fuck your way out of this one. What if this quick stop at the cheap service station to throw up after a heavy night of drinking could just be your last?
Bonus Points for:
-Combining John Kramer mayhem with HP Lovecraft
-Matching Tusk and Red State for clearly under the influence written midnight movie madness
-Having a few drones on the score rather than just synths
-Casting JK Simmons as a demon God who just sits on the shitter hiding from his father
-The main fella chinning whiskey and having a great time whilst his life falls apart
Overall Score: 4/5
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Rewatch of the week: Is it safe?
Welcome to chariots of fire on crack. For the first hour of this we get two running parallel stories. Both seem equally intense. In New York, Dustin Hoffman is obsessively running across Central Park, he's caught in a trance and continuously checking his watch as though competing with someone or trying to outrun something. At the same time, he's studying at University, a quiet student wrapped up in a dissertation to do with his father. It is heavily hinted his father killed himself with a bullet to the head and the scenes where they show it in flashbacks are so dreamy and surreal. Hoffman morbidly still keeps the gun in his draw as though waiting for some opportunity to use it and release this hidden side to him. There's something undeniably psychological driving him.
First of all that continuous watch checking. Always heavy when someone's up to that business. Need to give it a rest. At least here though it seems like it's building to something. There's a reason for its inclusion to the character. I still don't understand why Denzel Washington times everything he does in his Equaliser remakes. Gives me proper PTSD do clock watchers. If you're at work I get it, we all do it but on your own time? Put the damn watch away! Reminds me of my own father Big Phils relentless day planning and persistent ETAs. Haven't got time for ETAs me, I get there when I get there. If something wants to happen to me it'll happen. Honestly, an obsessive clock watcher can be worse than a hoverer on some occasions. Why can't these people embrace the randomness of life? They'll be planning their own fucking funeral if you let them.
Other thing that caught my attention was all the running through Central Park. Went there once and where ever you go you're mobbed by runners at nearly all times of the day. Only time I wasn't was when I went for a stroll at 4am cause of the jet lag. Went on a proper thrill seeking tangent and was hoping to see some Cruising/The Brave One type shit going on but can't say I witnessed any such after dark activities. At all times other than that though you have to be constantly on the look out for runners. They think it's their territory. Found them almost as irritating as cyclists in the UK who ride two a breast. Wanted to unload some kung fu on these fuckers. The weird thing is I don't think they've got anywhere else to go. It's such a strange culture. I didn't see them running anywhere else. Does no one do those sexy sprints across blocks like Michael Fassbender in Shame? Perhaps cause he's British he doesn't follow the customs. Either way I was not on this running vibe. Don't know what that's about. I was just trying to cover every inch of the place, taking strolls listening to Danny Brown. Living my best life, not running down the clock like these health freaks.
Over in France, Hoffmans characters brother played by Roy Scheider is on some spy shit. I would never allow a damn yank to be James Bond but Mr Scheider is so good that you could almost make a consideration to the rule. If you're a fan of Sorcerer, then you're going to love this movie, there's that same Neo noir vibe that kicks in from the outset. Movies of the 70s are coming more and more of a delicacy to me. They're a glimpse at future we never had. A future we could have had if we behaved a little better.
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In 1977, just one year after Marathon Man, a huge sci fi blockbuster arrived. Star Wars wasn't just some blockbuster that everyone piled up to see one year, it literally changed the culture of cinema forever. Its impact can't be denied, it literally reset the target age of audience films were marketed at.
Throughout the 60s cinema really cemented itself as an art form and continued to grow in the 70s showing its full capabilities. You went to the cinema that's what you expected to see. European arthouse was booming. You'd go the cinema and come out discussing the French new wave, a new Bergmann or Tarkovsky movie. These movements and directors dominated the scene in such a way the US began to fall behind and so the only way they could keep up and have something to be even remotely proud of was to change their entire strategy.
They came up with a model which seems insane today. Studios basically gave a lot of money to up and coming directors and said here make what you want.
Wallah, New Hollywood era begins. This saw the rise of Americas most talented directors such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford
Coppola, William Friedkin, Peter Bogdanovich, Arthur Penn, Dennis Hopper etc. It was a time that promoted auteurs and little studio involvement. Life was good.
All this came to a stand still when Star Wars came out. In 1975, Jaws had committed the great cinematic crime of beating the B's at their own game. Studios began to see the success of Roger Corman's flicks at the box office and decided to start creating their own brand of b movies with a bigger budget. Effectively almost killing off the competition and nearly putting a bunch of good dudes out of business.
The big studios wouldn't really take a swing at the pornos, which were equally raking in the big bucks as they were too scared to show some penetration. That's where pornographers such as Damiano, The Mitchell Brothers and Metzger found a gap in the market. Consequently, the likes of Marilyn Chambers, Linda Lovelace and John Holmes became big stars. Up the porno chic! Bring it back.
About the closest Hollywood got to making a sex film with big stars was watching Brando getting his arse a good seeing to in Last Tango in Paris, which remains perhaps the greatest sex film ever made despite being soft and not hardcore. I for one, would have loved to have seen Hollywood go hardcore and see what kind of wild movies they could come out with. I'm sure like Disney in the streaming era, certain "classics" would simply disappear or be subject to a few cuts here and there to hide the heavy past.
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Of course, it would be foolish to say that Jaws and Star Wars are bad movies. Completely the wrong move. They're absolute masterpieces and that's what makes their cinematic crimes of de-ageing the cinematic audience and killing off the independents so damn irritating. You couldn't hate them even if you tried. First it was Spielberg and then it was his bloody mate George Lucas that came in and fucked up everything for all the little guys and the auteur purists out there.
Wasn't til long after a lot of the New Hollywood directors films were hurt massively at the box office. Scorsese's New York New York flopped massively and then we get to Heaven's Gate. Heaven's Gate was seen as the end of New Hollywood. According to many critics of the time it was a complete failure and couldn't recuperate its large costs. Following that disaster, studios were too afraid to put money behind the youth again and so commenced the era of studio puppets. I'm unwilling to bring myself to even watch Heaven's Gate. I hear its actually quite a good movie and has been critically re-assessed. Just can't watch it and I'll forever undeservedly hate Michael Cimino for putting the final nail in the coffin.
You can see the effect it had on Roger Corman in his follow up to Death Race 2000 called Death Sport. This time David Carradine is donning a robe, light sabers and laser blasters whilst the originals satirical political commentary becomes almost entirely lost.
There's a strong argument to be made that it's cause of Lucas and Spielberg that we got the whole Marvelisation of cinema many years later and now we're trapped in an endless cycle of superhero movies that feels like it's gone on longer than the western and has been a lot less willing to evolve without an Italian take over.
Rant kind of over I think. What I was trying to say there was I like these 70s movies because they show what could have been. When you watch them they're way more adult oriented, socially critical, subversive and experimental than anything you're likely to see in cinema today.
Challenging cinema has been replaced by Conservative cinema. It's fucking boring. Marathon Man is actually directed by Jonathan Schlesinger. A filmmaker you may know from the movie Midnight Cowboy. Notoriously, the first and only X rated movie to win best picture. Midnight Cowboy isn't just a movie, it's an era. A cultural reference point. We're talking about the time of Travis Bickle and the story of 42nd Street. The Deuce as it was known back then before Guiliani ruined it like he ruins everything. A street filled with wall to wall grindhouses. Old cinemas left from the theatre days which would show kung fu movies, horror, artsy eurosleaze and even x rated films.
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These shocking movies actually kept the business going in the area. An extremely creative period that was in fact so creative it was under constant threat of destroying itself with the sexual activity and crack that fuelled it. It was dangerous cinema both on the screen and where it was viewed. You had to avoid the cum on seats, drug dealers, muggers and the horny gentlemen. Cinemagoers demanded the films show them the most disgusting and depraved shit imaginable or they'd start destroying the cinema. Every time you went the cinema you risked your life. Let's just say it wasn't the comfort of the multiplex or your own living room.
Marathon Man actually has a lot of the old grindhouse thrills in there. Early on Scheider when he's on his missions in France, he's violently ambushed in a hotel room. He's meant to be doing a deal with an ex Nazi called Szell but known as "the white angel" for his ideal striking blonde hair played by theatre nerd Laurence Olivier. The deal is Scheider gets Szell access to his diamonds from a locked safe (originally stolen from his Jew victims) in exchange for other Nazis whereabouts hiding across the globe in the 1970s.
Unfortunately for Szell this goes very wrong and the deal is off the cards when his brother is killed by an insane New Yorker. Absolutely love this by the way. The brother is killed off by an angry American with no connection to the spies whatsoever. He just turns up fuming and still hasn't forgiven the Germans, suspecting them all of being Nazis.
I fully rate it because we get a random wild car chase in the opening act that completely affects the plot when it should have nothing to do with it. Establishes this film as nuts and really gets the wheels in motion. It's like something out of a Coen Brothers movie where absurd random events just happen and any character can be killed off at any moment.
The killing of his brother clearly rattles Szell, who grows paranoid and wants to kill off everyone connected with the deal. Cue the hotel ambush on Roy Scheider, which is one of the most badass things I've ever seen in the history of cinema. He's on a Paris balcony just taking in the Eiffel tower and this fella comes at him from behind with a sharp wire round the throat. Big boy Roy quickly sticks out his hand to stop it closing round his throat, which results in a proper Friday the 13th part 3D like moment where blood spurts out his hand all over the place. A bit of blood from the hand is nothing for old Roy and he beats the living shit out of the Intruder. What a fucking scene.
After his near death encounter, Roy flees to New York to hide out and see his brother. Thus the everyday man is brought in to the action. I'm obsessed with that persona of Dustin Hoffmans in the 70s. He's no tough guy or hard man like his contemporaries were. He's no Bobby Deniro or Al Pacino. He's just a weak little 60s counter cultural hippie dude you know.
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What I respect is that he never tries to act tough or be something he's not but he doesn't shy away from typically violent and action heavy roles. He embraces his own patheticness and what's exciting in his movies is seeing him find his own inner violence as part of a cinematic journey. Straw Dogs being another fine example. No one understood violence like Sam Peckinpah and his story really brings out the truth in that we're all capable of it, no matter how we hide it and finds it within every day man Hoffman. This film does it in a similar way. You can always tell its brewing in Hoffman too with that gun in the draw business. He wants to let this side to him out. He wants to explode like Michael Douglas in Falling Down.
Marathon Man offers this incredible experience where one day you're a quiet student who keeps to himself and next minute you're on the maddest night of your life having your teeth drilled in to by ex-Nazi Laurence Olivier who keeps repeating at you "is it safe?". This is one of my favourite movie lines of all time next to Boogie Nights, "my fucking wife has an ass in her cock on the driveway. I'm sorry if my thoughts are not on the photography of the film we're shooting tomorrow". There's something about the is it safe line that's so damn memorable. Poor Hoffman just being like what the fuck is this guy talking about. Is what fucking safe. Still this ex Nazi keeps coming at him with the drill and asking is it safe?
This scene is way heavier than anything you saw in The Ipcress File. Whatever torture you've seen in a spy movie is nothing compared to this one. It's even heavier than Dicaprio getting his finger nails torn off in Body of Lies. You will never forget this scene and once it's over you won't stop repeating "is it safe?".
Without giving too much away when they drive poor Hoffman round the block and drop him back off gives my head such a whirl you know. Then you get to see him bailing round the streets of New York at like 4am in his pyjama bottoms being chased by thugs awakens such visceral and nightmarish fears in me. Not seen anything so giddie that got my heart racing since I first saw Arnie Schwarzenegger sprinting after Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese in The Terminator. Trust me, it'll get the blood pumping.
Marathon man's second half is going to put you so on the edge. It's pretty much an hour long chase sequence. So many horrible scenes in this movie are going to blow your head off. At the time it was criticised as being too violent but now if anything that's its greatest strength, keeps it from looking old because it still seems so frightening.
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This goes out to all you Safdie brother heads out there, you will love this movie. Not even just cause it belongs to the corner of pure anxiety inducing cinema but because it could fit in to the same world as Uncut Gems with all the Jews and high priced diamonds. There's one scene in this that freaks me out on a level I don't even understand and I'm not even Jewish. Nazi Szell makes a trip down to the diamond shops and quickly realises people still recognise him from the Holocaust. One survivor even follows him down the street trying to get someone to stop him screaming "stop that man" but no one will listen and thinks she's crazy. The setup of it is like some kind of night terror where you can't quite get your body to function properly and not a single person will help you. Definitely the kind of movie you'd love to hear more from Pauline Kael about. Believe she described the film as a "Jewish fantasy".
Laurence Olivier was so convincing and intimidating as this Nazi teeth driller that they gave him an academy award nomination for this little stunt. It's so unfitting to his reputation and what you normally expect to see him doing. Let that be a lesson to you theatre loving nerds who swerved off great careers to do some bloody Shakespeare nonsense like Ed Norton, we don't want to see you on stage reciting monologues written hundreds of years ago, we want to see you on the screen drilling holes in people's teeth. It's that simple. So stop hiding in your little fucking theatres getting wanked off by your inclusive little club, climb out your own arses and make something for the people. You may think you're doing something worthy and great but you're not. Drill teeth now.
Bonus Points for:
-Roy Scheider for taking a wire to the neck on a Parisian balcony
-Laurence Olivier's torture methods and teeth drilling
-Dustin Hoffman running at full sprint round New York at 5am to outrun some goons
-Laurence Olivier's sleeve blade
-Laurence Olivier being forced to swallow diamonds
Overall Score: 5/5
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I don't actually watch many shows, which I know is crazy in this day and age with all the prestige television out there. Consequently, this should prove to be an interesting section each time cause I only tend to watch really stupid forgotten about shit (probably for a reason) out of nothing but curiosity. So expect random junk that takes my fancy such as Planet of the Apes, Star Trek, Magnum PI, Kung Fu, Columbo, The Incredible Hulk and The Equaliser.
This week I got round to a Stephen King adapted miniseries called Bag of Bones. His 34th book. I never set out to watch it but I was completing Mick Garris's catalogue, which is essentially just Stephen King adaptations. Subpar ones at that. In doing all his films, I was really hoping to find a great one I could get behind. Turns out not to be the case. The Stand has this glorious opening to don't fear the reaper and a Joe Bob Briggs cameo but soon gives way to over sentimental corny malarkey and stops being the sprawling Post-apocalyptic western it started life as. I was convinced that one would have been Mick's masterpiece. He almost achieves something profound with its epic scope but gives up around the middle. Therefore, Sleepwalkers remains his best for me. Impossible to fuck up coke era King. A proper Freudian incestual monster jam that only cocaine could create. Is it good? Who knows. Is it entertaining? Wickedly!
First Time Watch of the Week: Joe Dante is for the children
We don't do enough for the kids man. I'm always thinking this. We could always do more. As the mighty Ol' Dirty Bastard said in 1998, when he crashed on to the stage at the Grammy Awards before Kanye West was doing it, "Wu Tang is for the Children". We could all learn from that. Get involved in your community. Help out the kids.
The Saturday Matinee has always been a great gift programmed to the children. Without a doubt something you can't let die. Not to be confused with that theatre malarkey. Similar concept but that's for nerds with free afternoons. Whereas, I'm talking about the kids. It's origins lie in the old 1930s/40s serials such as Flash Gordon and Buck Rodgers. They even did a lot of the Marvel and DC superheroes. Except back then they were camp, they had style and knew their audience.
Now, if you've ever seen one of these, you'll know the format is quite striking. Normally running times can be anywhere between 200 to 250 minutes. Except they weren't designed to be watched in one go. Each week you went down your local cinema and watched an episode which would run 15 to 30 minutes. About a reel of film or two at most. The set up was this: a narrator would catch you up to speed with the events of the previous week. Someone like Batman runs in to save the day and there's the most chaotic fight scene you've ever seen in your life. This was many years before David Leitch and Chad Stahelski of John Wick fame were running things.
Blocking hadn't really developed at all in those days. So there's no real choreography. Yet I always really enjoy these disorderly brawls. They have such a charm and genuinely look dangerous in their disorganisation, which is a lot more that can be said about some fight scenes in Hollywood today.
At the end of an episode, Robin being as useless as ever, would get captured by some goons and the narrator comes in with an urgent message you can't ignore like, "Will Batman save Robin? Or will he fall victim to Riddler's trap? Find out next week on Batman and Robin!". The narrator was always so convincing and made a pretty strong case. You were coming back the next week. You had to.
There's such a cheesy and campy element to it, that once you start watching them you wished there was still something like that available. Why didn't that grow? About the closest you'd get to it now is an animated superhero show (which are oddly about a million times better than anything you could possibly watch in the MCU). Usually when I've got my kid round he shows me his Spiderman shows and they're great. I recently found out that one of the best DJs of all time John Digweed (check out his Renaissance and Northern Exposure mixes for proof) used to do the score for the spiderman animated series of the 2000s. Couldn't find any of it on Spotify but there's like a 2 minute clip on YouTube. Assume it's a rights problem as to why more can't be uploaded. Imagine that though, the friendly neighbourhood spiderman slinging webs and beating up the bad guys to Trance bangers! What ever happened to DJs taking over Hollywood soundtracks? Give me back the days of people like Paul Oakenfold being in charge of the sound of Swordfish and Jason Bourne. Give DJs the keys to Hollywood again!
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Another show I can't stop watching at the moment is the Spiderman one from the 80s. Animated again. MF Doom fans will know every word of this one. That little bastard has made an entire career of sampling this one show. From the theme song to dialogue of Doctor Doom himself. RIP by the way. Greatest rapper to ever do it.
One project that came remarkably close to the tone of serials, even if not in form, in a live action sense was Schumacher's Batman films, which are brilliant by the way. Don't let anyone tell you they're not. They're masterpieces of camp. But oh no the fucking Tim Burton nerds had to come in and say in the words of the world's greatest songwriter, Leonard Cohen, "We Want it Darker". Go wank off to some German Expressionism Tim!
Still I can't help but think you know what would be cool? Batman done again as a live action serial. I'll let it off not being so light if someone other than Tim Burton directs. Maybe if they kept it to the same kind of style as Batman Beyond or one of those decent DCAU movies like Subzero or Mask of Phantom. Imagine it? Like 15 minutes or so of Batman interrogating Jokers thugs and looking for clues each week. I'm all in. Bring in the comics more too. Plenty of material there and with the time slot you could stick to the essentials rather than adding hilarious side stories to fill the feature length run time like with The Killing Joke when he starts banging Batgirl behind Jim Gordon's back for a solid 40 minutes or so.
Naughty Batman!
About the only thing that comes close to serialised storytelling today is the work of Olivier Assayas, who there is a strong argument to say is the greatest director of the last like 30 years or so. His films such as Carlos and The Wasp Factory have the free flowing nature of the old school serial. In these spies and terrorist bounce about to great music and engage in wild endeavours like they're James Bond in a kind of episodic fashion.
More recently he re-did his film from the 90s Irma Vep as a literal serial. A project inspired by Les Vampires from 1915, a more arty serial than the superhero stuff and more of an early crime epic. Its director Louis Feuillade is a master of the labyrinth storytelling. It could well be ancient but I really have never seen anything quite like it just because the format isn't so regularly adopted. Although more adult oriented, Assayas seems to be the only one still flying the flag but as I said at the start we need more for the kids!
Obviously the director of Matinee is a little too young to have been watching those original serials and so his is about a different period. His film is an ode to the matinees of his youth, which were the 50s creature feature. These trashy films became so popular amongst teenagers because they were growing up living in fear of the bomb. Nuclear threat was constant and the cold war was on the way.
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Paranoia spread and so these silly monster movies where spiders and even women could grow to 50 feet took on a whole new meaning. So these went from disregarded trash to potentially works of art. The key to them was a good subversive and sneaky writer who could create a solid b movie and hide in little messages about the times. Communists became giant bugs I shit you not. This is dudes down bad. I try to wrap my head round it. Like imagine being so down bad you start turning communists in to massive insects. Americans when they're at their most terrified make the most creative and brilliant cinema I swear. All the terror and panic starts slipping on to the screen.
Before watching Matinee, I'd suggest checking out a few films from the era itself. If I had to recommend the two most interesting it would be Them and The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Firstly, Them has the radiation and nuclear weapon fears on display and was one of the first to do it. As for the original The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, that's a perfect exploration of the Mccarthy witch hunts and red scares. After watching these two, you'll get the gist of what these movies are about. Themes wise they just start finding new ways to repeat themselves but I do love 'em! If you do happen to develop a "fix" or more appropriately a "bug" upon seeing those two classics I suggest moving on to anything directed by Jack Arnold. He'll scratch that one for you.
Adorably, Dante sets his film in October 1962 allowing it to be a nostalgia piece. You don't got to be a history buff to know what was going down that year with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Never fails to amuse me that one. Just like alright Russia, we'll park your missiles over here for you, right opposite our joint enemy. Set them down right over there. The yanks had previously pissed off the Cubans the year before with disgusting Bay of Pigs.
Kennedy is seen as one of most liked and beloved presidents and in the grand scheme of how shit they all are he probably was one of the better ones. Regardless, he's got a lot to answer for on the Bay of Pigs. There's a great defence of his case in saying he could do little to stop that and these people even bring in Vietnam in to this equation. The conspiracy theorist followers will even know of that one where Kennedy could have been assassinated due to his attempts to pull troops back from Vietnam. Guess they didn't like his exit strategy. Above all though, JFKs time in office will make you wonder, do presidents actually have any influence? I mean I haven't read nearly enough about that stuff but I get the impression he had some good intentions and couldn't fully carry them out. Either way, the Cubans did have a full on right to be more than a little pissed off with Bay of Pigs.
As a result the yanks were shitting themselves for a good couple of weeks with these nukes pointed directly at them. All of them were on edge just waiting to hear the emergency sirens and to get down on the floor with their head in hands like the public service videos were informing them. Bring in Lawrence Woolsey played by John Goodman. Into the film world that is of course. Woolsey is something of an exploitationer with a clear love of the old carny tactics. Probably the most similar person to him in real life would be William Castle. Fantastic director in the late 50s and early 60s who made The Tingler, House on Haunted Hill and StraitJacket.
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When other people are freaking out, Woolsey has this grand idea that it's time to get people in the cinema. If you look at the way people obsessed over the return of the cinema postcovid you'll realise things haven't changed at all. Personally, I think it's kind of wholesome. Woolsey is an absolute prophet who like myself agrees that cinema works best when the Yanks are petrified.
In all the madness of those few weeks, Woolsey decides it's the perfect time to get the kids in the cinema for some escapist entertainment with a little subtext. A way of dealing with all the chaos in a comedic and safe manner. Therefore, he's going to have a premiere of his latest film, Mant. A creature feature about a giant man turned spider that seems like a massive rip off of The Fly or The Wasp Woman.
As far as films set within a cinema this ranks with the best of them, i.e. Inglorious Basterds and Demons. What makes Woolseys matinee experience differ from others is that he has a few tricks up his sleeve. This is what makes him like William Castle. He spends a lot of the film setting up electrified seats to shock the kids, wall shaking and has even hired a guy to walk round in a costume scaring the kids. These are the same kind of tricks deployed by Castle and would later go on to inspire John Waters Odorama for Polyester (in which the audience were given a selection of smells they had to take in at certain points in the film, a bit like 4D except more disgusting).
Woolsey is just about the most friendly character I have ever seen in my whole life. He seems to take a lot of pleasure in his work for the children and even rescues a few in the final act. Goodmans perfect for this and he brings that warm persona he had from Monsters Inc playing Sully. There's something so homely about that voice of his. You never feel more safe hearing it.
Unfortunately, though I'm not fully sure there were many people that existed like this Woolsey character in the exploitation racket. I can't say for sure what Castle was like outside his amazing films. However, if you go off the most known exploitationers like Herschell Gordon Lewis, Doris Wishman and Russ Meyer I don't think they particular cared about the kids. Or even just in a horror sense, did someone like Val Lewton really care about the kids? I simply don't know but doubt it.
Probably the most fitting of this type would be to see John Goodman in Trumbo. In that he runs some b movie making independent studio and threatens someone with a baseball bat whilst producing some of the greatest lines in cinema. He goes on a rant saying, "I don't think me and you are going to be pals. Want to stop me hiring from the union? I'll go down and hire me a bunch of winos and Hookers. It doesn't matter. I make garbage. Want to call me a pinko for the papers? None of the people who go to my fucking movies can read! I'm in this for the money and the pussy. And they're both falling off the trees".
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Regardless, even if the depiction of a producer in Joe Dante's Matinee is false, you gotta love it just for being so damn wholesome. I want to believe there are people out there like Woolsey keeping the kids entertained on a Saturday morning.
Probably the best way to take this film is like one of Tim Burton's only decent movies, Ed Wood. He sort of dumbs down some of the darker elements of the story like Bela Lugosi's Heroin addiction and Woods wife beating but as a kind of fictional biopic playing with real life characters it's amazing. The fact it's done in the style of the people involved is way better than any bland by the numbers retelling.
Matinee is about taking multiple factors of the time and putting them together going off the legends rather than the truth itself. It never positions itself as serious and should be taken as loving fun or even homage.
I'm a huge fan of Joe Dante. He brings his love of the 30s and 50s monster movies every time. There's a humour in his work you just don't get any more. The other day I watched his film The Hole. It isn't particularly good but there's this bit where a toy clown starts attacking a kid and I couldn't help but think most directors wouldn't shoot it this way these days.
Everyone tries to make such ridiculous antics needlessly and routinely scary and it comes off pathetic. They would do well to learn from Mr Dante who brings in a sense of mischief. That's what makes his classics like Gremlins and Small Soldiers so good. In effect, they actually do come scarier because they work on pure manic energy.
He's a director who clearly loves what he does and they're my favourite types. Matinee is a film that loves cinema.
You can't help but feel that love too just watching it.
The passion is contagious. It'll take you back to your own childhood and that sort of magical creative intersection you could find so easily back then but along the line closed a window at some point in your life to get there.
Other than Ed Wood other films to compare this with would be the Coen Brothers Hail Caesar and Hairspray. Like the latter film, the soundtrack here is an absolute delight. Little Eva, The Platters and Skeeter Davis. All your 50s rock'n'roll and doo wop. My only complaint with this film is that the characters in the real world, other than Woolsey seem a little undeveloped. We get some stories in there like these kids going on their first kind of dates, which is nice.
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Still think they could have been explored more in a hangout way like Dazed and Confused or Mean Streets. Yeah Mean Streets maybe an odd comparison but this is definitely the kids version of it in a way. That films about a bunch of people trying to survive in the streets and ritualistically going the cinema (always tickles me that scene where they basically rob some teenagers and their first thought is let's go the cinema and spend the money as though it's some routine). I don't see that life as being too far from Matinee. These are kids scared of the bomb and finding escape in the cinema. When life gives you lemons, go the cinema. That's what it's all about. And think about the kids a little more you know.
Down at the cinema these days
I notice they do make some effort by having kids movies run longer and maintaing that Saturday morning slot. But I don't think that's enough. Back in the days of drive ins when they were first kicking off they'd have Disney specials to get them all down. We need more like that. Specially designed programmes and all that jazz. Because if there's one thing that still holds true, every kid deserves a good childhood. Cause it's all downhill from there.
Oh what a treat of a movie
Matinee is. Honestly, it's just a few undeveloped Characters, about three set pieces and a couple of Doo Wop songs away from being 5 stars and one of my absolute favourite movies.
Bonus Points for:
-John Goodman being wholesome
-The William Castle tricks
-The movie-in-the movie being a 50s style creature feature
-Incorporating the Cuban Missile Crisis
-The 50s Doo wop and Rock'n'roll soundtrack
-Joe Dante bringing back the Saturday matinee for the kids
Overall Score: 4.5/5 -
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