Random Thoughts on the ‘James Bond Ultimate Edition’ DVDs

So I’ve caved in and bought the first two volumes of the Ultimate Edition DVDs of the 007 films. Each volume contains a scattershot assortment of five films, seemingly chosen by some marketing exec firing rubber darts from a toy Walther PPK at a board with the Bond film titles hanging on it. None of the titles are available separately, so if you want a favourite film or two then you likely have to put up with plunking down sheckels for the odd film that is, well, kinda crap.

So, volume 1 has some favourites (Goldfinger, The Living Daylights, The World is Not Enough), and two middling to bottom-drawer efforts (Diamonds are Forever, The Man with the Golden Gun). The scorecard for volume 2 is two favourites (Thunderball, Licence to Kill), two middling (The Spy Who Loved Me, Die Another Day), and one dreckfest (A View to a Kill -- tell me the use of the Beach Boys in the pre-credit sequence is not a travesty). So far, I’ve only seen three of the volume 1 films in their entirety and have sampled some of the rest.

For 007 fans, the sole compelling reason to pick up these sets is the complete digital restoration done on the films by Lowry Digital, who also handled the revamps of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films. After buying Volume 1, I decided to test drive the picture restoration through a viewing of one of the older films, Goldfinger. And, man oh man, a beautiful sight it is too. The picture quality is far beyond anything I’ve seen on home video before; it is a gorgeous transfer to disc, excelling even the laserdisc incarnation that was previously the gold standard for this film. The film almost looks like it was shot yesterday. Stellar work.

Beyond the sterling picture quality, Goldfinger is an interesting viewing experience. Frequently cited as THE best in the series (which for my money is From Russia With Love), it is indeed a slick, fast, highly-engaging piece of entertainment, and the film that cemented James Bond’s position in pop culture. Sean Connery easily commands the film with smooth assurance, and the film contains many moments that have since become classic cinema. Who can forget the laser beam sequence and Goldfinger’s line “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!” Plus there’s Q’s (Desmond Lewelyn) witty retort to Bond’s “Ejector seat, you’re joking!”: “I never joke about my work 007.” But what’s interesting is how the seeds of the jokiness that were to drag the series into the doldrums are planted here.

Bond wearing a wetsuit with a duck attached to the head is a funny gag but, come on, why the hell would a soggy fake duck on a wetsuit cap be even deemed to be necessary as a stealth device? The cartoon mobsters make their first appearance in a Bond film, jokey hoods that bear all the realism of Halloween costumes (the phoney baloney gangsters reappear, sadly, in Diamonds Are Forever). And it is only the most strong-willed amongst us that can successfully suppress giggles at the hundreds of soldiers dropping on cue to the ground as Pussy Galore’s flying circus belch out stun gas over Fort Knox. There are other moments that foreshadow the James Bond Comedies of the ’70s.

The person most to blame for this is director Guy Hamilton. Look at the interviews with Hamilton on the second disc. He clearly has no interest in making any of the film remotely plausible. Thankfully the comedic zing is reined in somewhat by a good screenplay that bears at least a passing resemblance to the Ian Fleming novel. When Hamilton didn’t have some Fleming in the mix to leaven the silly humour we got: Diamonds Are Forever, Live and Let Die, and The Man With the Golden Gun. Disco Bond.

Which takes me to Connery’s last appearance in the official Bond series, Diamonds Are Forever. In spite of being overweight and sporting a bad toupee and, in one of the most genuinely scary moments in the entire 007 film series, a hideous pink tie, Connery still delivers as Bond. But the tone of the film is way off, veering into silly comedy too often, and continuing the grand You Only Live Twice tradition of jettisoning the entire novel. Though the novel is one of the weaker books, the opening credit “…in Ian Fleming’s Diamonds Are Forever” is a bald-faced lie. This is screenwriter Tom Manciewicz and director Guy Hamilton’s Diamonds Are Forever, and it is a fluffy comedy-thriller. Using this film as evidence, Roger Moore takes too much heat for turning the series to light comedy. Here’s where it really started in earnest.

(Spoilers in this paragraph.) Though it does contain some effective moments, including a grand close-quarters fight in an elevator, Diamonds Are Forever commits the cardinal sin of squandering one of the great dramatic events in the 007 series, the tragic death of Bond’s wife Tracey from the previous On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. It’s barely even acknowledged in the campy pre-credits sequence and is quickly dropped from the rest of the film. Unforgivable.

For a dramatic breath of fresh air, here comes Timothy Dalton in The Living Daylights. Though the film shows evidence of having been written for Roger Moore, with only scattered moments drafted specifically for Dalton, The Living Daylights steers back towards genuine danger and excitement in a much-needed course correction after the dire comedy-Bond of A View to a Kill. Dalton’s Bond was someone living on the edge, one step away from the psychiatrist’s couch or the morgue perhaps, and more of a flesh-and-blood character rather than a cardstock one. The plot refreshingly uses some Fleming in the opening moments, from the short story of the same name, before heading off into new material about a phony Soviet defector involved in a massive arms deal. The villains are weak and the plot a bit stale, but Dalton’s commanding, textured performance makes The Living Daylights one of the better films in the series. The picture quality on the Ultimate Edition disc is once again outstanding and the burned-in subtitles are restored, after being MIA for the previous Special Edition disc.

More random Ultimate Edition thoughts later.

The Fountain

Death. The desire for immortality, to conquer death. Death is a disease, and I will find the cure. The Tree of Life, the key to immortality?

Izzi is dying. Cancer. Her book, The Fountain, lies unfinished, a twelfth chapter unwritten. It is time for Tommy, her husband, to read it. In the story, Queen Isabel of Spain sends conquistador Tomas to find the tree that is said to grant eternal life.

The twelfth chapter will be written among the stars, in the heart of the Xibalba Nebula, itself the name of the Mayan underworld, the Place of Phantoms ruled by the gods of death.

“Goodbye, Izzi.”

Rebirth. The explosion of the human into the infinite, the joining of the mortal soul with the cosmos, the infinite cycle of death and renewal.

Love is in the infinite.

“Death is the road to awe.”


The Fountain

Directed by Darren Aronofsky
Written by Darren Aronofsky, based on a story by Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel

Starring:
Hugh Jackman....Tomas/Tommy/Tom Creo
Rachel Weisz....Isabel/Izzi Creo
Ellen Burstyn....Dr. Lillian Guzetti
Mark Margolis....Father Avila
Stephen McHattie....Grand Inquisitor Silecio
Fernando Hernandez....Lord of Xibalba

Hammer's Cornish Horrors

The winter months seem to lend themselves to classic horror films, to me at least, and I recently pulled out two gems from an unpacked box of videotapes. Produced in 1966 by England’s legendary Hammer Films, The Plague of the Zombies and The Reptile are period horrors set in Cornwall, a particularly beautiful part of southwest England, though both films were actually shot at Bray Studios near Windsor.

Shot back-to-back by director John Gilling using the same sets, the films were originally intended for release as a double feature but were never shown that way, as the similarity in the settings was too obvious. The Plague of the Zombies ended up on a double feature with Dracula, Prince of Darkness, while The Reptile played with Rasputin, the Mad Monk (both ‘A’ pictures starred Christopher Lee and also used similar sets). In those days, they knew how to market films. Both double bills lured audiences in with free gifts – ‘zombie eyes’ or a fake Rasputin beard – in addition to offering two films for one price.

The Plague of the Zombies was the last major zombie film before George A. Romero turned the genre on its head in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead, a film that forever associated zombies with cannibalism and led to extremely gory Italian schlock-horror. A classicly-structured mystery story, Plague tells of medical doctor Sir James Forbes (André Morell), accompanied by his daughter Sylvia (Diane Clare), investigating a series of mysterious deaths in a small Cornish village at the request of former student Dr. Peter Tompson (Brook Williams). The trail involves death, voodoo, and the living dead, and leads to callous aristocrat Squire Hamilton (played with delicious menace by John Carson).

Plague is a nifty, atmospheric little chiller with an interesting subtext of class division. The Squire and his men are portrayed as rich, arrogant upper-class thugs with little concern for the lower classes and no use for them except as mindless fodder for labour. The story unfolds as a classical, almost Holmesian mystery, punctuated by several notable horrific sequences. One involves Dr. Tompson’s wife, elegantly played by Jacqueline Pearce, rising from the dead in the village’s spooky graveyard. Another, more celebrated sequence is a green-tinted dream where the earthed denizens of the entire graveyard push their way up through the mouldering ground and lumber towards their victim. The image of a reanimated corpse pushing its way up through the soil is one that has been subsequently pinched by many horror flicks, including the atrociously gory Italian Romero rip-off, Zombie.

With atmospheric camera work and settings, nicely-textured performances, and imaginative makeup, The Plague of the Zombies is one of the most enduring creations from the Studio that Dripped Blood.

A 19th-century mystery story atmosphere also pervades The Reptile, which is narratively similar to Bram Stoker’s The Lair of the White Worm. Harry Spalding (Ray Barrett) and his wife Valerie (Jennifer Daniel) move to the cottage they inherited from Harry’s brother, who died mysteriously in an eerie scene at the beginning of the film, skin blackened and mouth frothing from some lethal venom delivered by a bite from a man-sized something. The solution to the mystery lies buried within the local mansion, home of Dr. Franklyn (Noel Willman) and his beautiful daughter Anna (Jacqueline Pearce, once again), both of whom have run afoul of a strange occult sect from the orient.

Roy Ashton’s elegant makeup on the title creature borders on iconic horror cinema, and is sympathetically portrayed like all great movie monsters. Well-shot by John Gilling and professionally acted, The Reptile is a great little horror yarn, assuming one can forget the trappings of 21st century digital cinema and enjoy inventive low-budget filmmaking.


Both films are available on DVD and VHS.

Bond Double Header

To celebrate the release of Casino Royale, one of the best 007 films in ages, here are my initial thoughts on the last two James Bond films, both starring Pierce Brosnan as the picaresque secret agent.

Die Another Day (2002)

After a string of imitators, wanna-bes, and silly spoofs, it’s like a refreshing shot of vodka-martini to finally see the real deal on the big screen again. Secret agent 007 returns to Die Another Day, certainly the most bipolar Bond movie to date. There’s half of a great Bond film here, and half over inflated action fantasy.

The producers and the director are obviously aware that over the past few years the stakes in the action genre have been raised to the stratosphere, mainly on the backs of those little ones and zeros that make up the digital effects that are so common in modern big-budget films. On the other hand, this film is a significant milestone in Bond movie history: it’s the 20th film, and it’s been 40 years since Sean Connery first played the definitive big screen 007 in Dr. No. (Trivia note: the very first actor to play James Bond was American actor Barry Nelson in a television version of Casino Royale.) So the filmmakers probably felt obliged to pay respect to the tradition of the series. As a result, we have one half classic Bond, and one half crowd-pleasing special effects fest. And you can almost identify the exact moment when Die Another Day shifts from one to the other.

The film begins with a wonderfully exciting pre-credits sequence. Bond, superbly played by Pierce Brosnan, poses as an arms dealer in North Korea. Soon, the gig is up, and we’re treated to a traditionally Bondian action sequence featuring hovercraft racing over a minefield. To up the stakes, the mines leap three feet in the air before they explode, and the villains have high-tech guns with exploding bullets and flame throwers. Great stuff, enough to make fans of this kind of thing giddy. Then comes an interesting twist.

For the first time in the films Bond, after being captured, undergoes serious torture. In the Ian Fleming books, Bond was sadistically tortured, but the movies have rarely depicted this. The torture scene is included as a plot element during the title sequence, an inspired idea that, combined with the stunning visuals, makes this perhaps the most memorable titles of any Bond film. After that, the remaining first half of the film was excellent, and classic Bond.

Stripped of his license to kill (something that also happened in the excellent and underrated License to Kill with a similarly underrated Timothy Dalton), 007 hunts down the person who betrayed him in North Korea. Working outside of the British Secret Service, Bond follows the trail to Cuba, looking for Zao (Rick Yune), and crossing paths with NSA agent Jinx, a memorably sexy Halle Berry. The rest of this ‘classic Bond’ first half is a throwback to the Connery era, where Bond had few gadgets, and survived on his wits, intelligence, and deadly skills. There are several nods to From Russia With Love, the second and arguably the best 007 film, including a meeting with a ‘mole’ in Cuba that had echoes of Bond meeting Kerim Bay in that film. (Side note: pay attention when Bond picks up a bird book while in the mole’s office. The author of that book was “James Bond”, and it's where 007 author Ian Fleming got the name of his main character from.) Later, back in London, there is a superbly-choreographed swordfight between sneering villain Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens) and Bond, which positively oozes Fleming nastiness. However, the excellent first half of Die Another Day comes to a crashing halt the moment after Bond gets his gadgets (in an admittedly funny scene with Q, now played by John Cleese), and heads over to Iceland, and Graves’ ice palace.

For the second half of the movie, think Moonraker popping CGI steroids. For those not in the know, Moonraker featured a smirking Roger Moore in the most cartoony, silly Bond film of all. Thankfully, Die Another Day never quite sinks to those depths, though a cheesy effects sequence in the Icelandic sea comes close. Brosnan struggles admirably to keep the focus on the character of Bond, but he’s defeated in the end by trendy MTV-style editing and camera work, an overuse of CGI effects, sound that is cranked up way too loud, and just one damn action scene after another.

It is a paradox of action cinema that too much wall-to-wall action actually ends up being boring. You almost slip into sensory overload, and become disengaged with the onscreen action. The best action filmmakers, like James Cameron, understand this and give their films peaks and valleys that allow the audience time to breathe. The final act of Die Another Day piles on so much overcranked action that the climactic undoing of the villain’s plans has little dramatic effect. After the superb first half, the film ends with a whimper.

So, what are we left with? After the near-perfect mix of character, plot, and action in The World is Not Enough, this one seriously overbalances into over-the-top action fantasy. In spite of it all, however, Pierce Brosnan pulls off an excellent performance, hinting at a depth of character even in the most outlandish sections. Serious Bond fans will love the first half and shake their heads at the second. Casual fans, and fans of action cinema in general, may enjoy the whole thing.

My advice to the producers for the next one: ditch the cartoony CGI, keep the balance of plot, character and action, and don’t be afraid to be classically Bondian. These films are too precious to turn into just another video game actioner.

(Note: Glad to see they took my advice for Casino Royale!)

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The World is Not Enough (1999)

Finally! A Bond film driven by plot and character, yet still delivering the action goods. For diehard Bond fans, this movie is a long time coming. Fans of wall-to-wall action and those with short attention spans may be checking their watches, but those who prefer a little meat with their thrillers will rejoice in the latest installment in the longest-running film series of all time.

This time around, 007 (Pierce Brosnan) is assigned to protect Elektra King (Sophie Marceau), daughter of an assassinated oil baron, and unravel a complex scheme hatched by terrorist Renard (Robert Carlyle), involving the sabotage of a vast oil pipeline. I won’t say much more about the plot, because one of the joys of this film is figuring out who is doing what, and why.

It’s been a while since I was intrigued by a Bond film plot, but The World is Not Enough did just that. The screenwriters have done a fine job of developing an intricate storyline, with interesting characters, and some compelling drama. The motives of several characters are shaded, delivering just the right level of intrigue, without bogging the film down. The story does unfortunately slow down as the movie approaches its climax, just when it should be revving into high gear, but the ending is still satisfying. I’m willing to forgive a few slow spots when the overall film is so effective.

In his third appearance as James Bond, Pierce Brosnan hits exactly the right note. His Bond is stylish and witty, but coloured with darker shadings that hint at the assassin beneath. In Brosnan’s capable hands, Bond has—surprise!—depth and emotion. He plays the dramatic scenes extremely well, and is adept in the many action scenes. In my book, he has now surpassed Timothy Dalton in the role, who I consider second only to Sean Connery. Will he ever surpass Connery? Of course not, because Connery’s the man, but with this performance, he comes a close second.

The other performances in The World is Not Enough are also top-notch. Sophie Marceau is a memorable leading lady, who has some secrets of her own. Robert Carlyle offers something very different as a Bond villain—humanity, and even sympathy. Renard is no over-the-top megalomaniac, but a ruthless terrorist who is counting down to his own death. Lodged in his brain is a bullet, put there by another double-o agent, that is working its way through his head, destroying the pain centres of the brain. The result is that he can “…push himself harder, faster than any normal man.” But there is an element of tragedy in Renard, a man who is rapidly dying, and knows it. The character of Renard is unfortunately not developed to its full potential in the screenplay, but Carlyle still makes the role memorable. Denise Richards is fine as Christmas Jones, nuclear weapons expert and eye-candy extraordinaire. The part doesn’t give her much to work with, but she performs well alongside Brosnan, and manages some heroics of her own.

Desmond Llewelyn makes what appears to be his last appearance as Q, gadget-master. If so, this is the passing of an era, and Q’s final exit scene is unfortunately unmemorable. Llewelyn, who has been in almost all of the Bond films, deserved more. On the plus side, Q’s replacement, played by John Cleese, looks to be a worthy successor. This is good, as Cleese has signed to do three more Bond films.

Two other supporting performances stand out—Robbie Coltrane and Judi Dench. Robbie Coltrane plays Valentin Zukovsky, who you may remember from Goldeneye, Brosnan’s Bond debut. Coltrane brings tremendous zest and humour to his scenes, as a reluctant ally to Bond. Judi Dench, an excellent actress, returns as M, head of MI6. I always thought there was great potential for her character, and its relationship with Bond. Here, that potential is thankfully realized, after only a marginal role in the last Bond film, Tomorrow Never Dies. In The World is Not Enough, M is given a far greater part in the proceedings, and is even in the thick of the danger at the film’s climax. I hope that the filmmakers continue to give M more to do in the next movie, because Judi Dench is terrific in the role.

Director Michael Apted here helms his first Bond movie, and does a great job. Both Brosnan and the producers hired Apted to emphasize the characters, and he does just that. He handles the dramatic aspects with skill and flair, while still retaining an essential “Bond style.” I have my fingers crossed that the producers will bring Apted back for the next installment. If so, he just may turn out to be the best director that the Bond series has seen, barring possibly Terence Young, who directed three of the best Connery films and set the style of the 007 movies.

Apted and stunt coordinator Vic Armstrong directed the action scenes, and they are as impressive as anything in the Bond films. The traditional “pre-credits” scene features two impressive stunt sequences, the second involving a spectacular boat chase along the Thames. This chase is tremendously exciting, pumped up by David Arnold’s adrenalin-inducing music score. Other action set pieces involve Bond and Elektra being pursued by snowmobiles gliding on parasails, and a deadly buzzsaw contraption suspended from a helicopter, plus the usual assortment of punch-ups, gunfights, and last minute escapes.

But in the final analysis, it’s the plot and characters that elevate this film to the upper echelon of the Bond series. Sure, it follows the Bond Formula (though admittedly adding a few twists), but while some past Bonds have emphasized gadgetry and silliness over plot, this movie redresses the balance. The World is Not Enough is top-notch Bond, showing the 007 formula humming along at its best.

My First Meme

I've been tagged by Kathy Kerli for a meme. The deal is that I tell you five things about me that you don't already know. Not knowing the audience, this is kinda hard, but I'll assume this is being read mostly by strangers--

1. The first movie I have a clear memory of seeing in a movie theatre is The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974).

2. I was born on Guy Fawkes Day in a hospital in Caerleon, Wales, that was later converted to a hotel as part of the Celtic Manor resort, and I had a second wedding reception there.

3. During my first ever open-water scuba dive off Vancouver Island, a 7ft six-gill shark swam underneath me, close enough that I could have touched it.

4. I once spent a week on an archaeological dig in the river valley of Edmonton, Alberta.

5. I played drums and contributed vocals (I won't call it 'sang') in a garage band called Dead City Radio, also in Edmonton. The name of the band was based on an album by William S. Burroughs that I had borrowed from the library.

CASINO ROYALE

Casino Royale is the first Bond film since the end of Connery’s original run that feels like the stylistic heir to that era. And it captures more of the tone of Ian Fleming’s novels that any 007 movie since 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. It is frankly startling that EON Productions, the makers of the 007 series, had the guts to reinvent the cinema Bond this drastically, but in taking this roll of the dice they have jolted the series to renewed creative life and have produced a film of surprising emotional depth, maturity, and genuine excitement. Casino Royale fits easily into the upper echelons of the 007 film series and, more than that, is one of the best films of 2006, no matter the genre.

Daniel Craig debuts as James Bond in a mesmerizing performance. Radiating charisma, grace, authority, and a killer instinct, Craig commands the screen. But there are added layers to his characterization, a vulnerability, a sense that Bond loses a piece of himself with each act of violence, a danger that he may bury his own soul. Bond is not invulnerable and unscarred; events effect him and leave their mark physically and psychologically. We see the first hints of Ian Fleming’s idea that James Bond enjoys liquor, the finer things in life, and women to sedate the damage inflicted by the constant danger his job involves. 007 really goes through the ringer in this film, bruised and bloodied and tortured, and Daniel Craig is utterly believable while still radiating the Bond style and essence. Those who criticized his casting can now hang their heads in shame.

The supporting cast are uniformly strong. Eva Green plays Treasury agent Vesper Lynd with sharp intelligence, cool sexiness, and a hint of buried sadness. As main villain Le Chiffre, Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen contributes a quality never before seen in a Bond baddie – sympathy. Not to give too much away, but Le Chiffre has more to lose in the plot than Bond, and in one scene we almost feel sorry for him. As a result, Le Chiffre has more depth than any previous Bond villain, and it makes the character more believable and ramps up the danger when he has the drop on Bond in a sequence that will make all males in the audience wince. Judi Dench truly shines as M, embodying a tough, no-nonsense intelligence chief who can almost make Bond cower. The Bond and M scenes are some of the best written in the film and it will be interesting to see how their relationship develops in subsequent films. Actors Jeffrey Wright (as Felix Leiter) and Giancarlo Giannini (as Mathis) are memorable supporting players, playing Bond’s allies, though Wright has too little screen time. Overall, the cast has an international flavour missing from recent Bond outings.

Who would have thought that Martin Campbell, director of GoldenEye, could give a Bond film this much of a stylistic kick? Two sequences, one in stark black and white and one in jumpy, hallucinogenic colour, are unlike anything seen in a 007 film before. The overall look of the film is crisp and exotic, and the camera work frequently outstanding, especially in the claustrophobic tight shooting of a fight sequence in a stairwell that recalls the train fight in From Russia With Love, the best of the Bond films. Though the 007 series has never truly been director-driven, Casino Royale bears the stamp of a dexterous filmmaker.

An excellent script helps. Sticking reasonably close to an Ian Fleming novel for the first time since 1969, screenwriters Neal Purvis, Robert Wade (scribes for the last two Brosnan Bonds) and Oscar-winner Paul Haggis have crafted a literate script that is well-paced and peppered with memorable dialogue. Like the Fleming novel, the story has a unique structure for a thriller, with the main story arc ending two-thirds of the way through and an emotional coda (albeit with a set piece added that is not in the book). The final act could have killed the momentum, but it remains interesting because of the attention to character and does eventually add to the main storyline. I won’t give anything away, but the very last scene of the film almost had me applauding. I can only hope the same attention to quality is paid to the script of the next Bond film.

With a John Barry-esque sweep, David Arnold's music contributes immensely to the success of Casino Royale. Deliberately avoiding the James Bond signature music until a key moment, the music weaves in a gorgeous orchestral version of the title song (which is an energetic punch of a rock song sung by Chris Cornell), dropping tantalizing hints of the 007 theme. It synergizes perfectly with the action on screen, adding vivacity and texture to key sequences.

There have been several honourable attempts to move 007 films back to their literary roots,¹ but none have succeeded better than Casino Royale. For the first time in many years, “James Bond will Return” reads like a promise of great things to come.


¹ Since the Connery James Bond films, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), For Your Eyes Only (1981), The Living Daylights (1987), Licence to Kill (1989) and, to a lesser extent, The World is Not Enough (1999) have attempted to return to Fleming minimalism.

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Directed by Martin Campbell

Written by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade and Paul Haggis, based on the novel by Ian Fleming

Starring:
Daniel Craig....James Bond
Eva Green....Vesper Lynd
Mads Mikkelsen....Le Chiffre
Judi Dench....M
Jeffrey Wright....Felix Leiter
Giancarlo Giannini....Mathis
Caterina Murino....Solange

Dark Water

The supernatural drama Dark Water is, from one angle, a refreshing return to a ghost story with a human story at the centre, reminiscent of classics like Robert Wise’s The Haunting and Jack Clayton’s The Innocents. However, the supernatural elements don’t entirely gel, surprise, or scare as they should, and so Dark Water stays frustratingly out of reach of excellence.

Built on credible performances and characters, the film is really about a single woman struggling to survive, hang on to her child, and love her daughter in a way that she herself was never loved. Recent divorcee Dahlia (Jennifer Connelly) finds an apartment for herself and daughter Cecilia (Ariel Gade) in an old, foreboding building complex on Roosevelt Island in NYC. Desperate to prove her worth as a mother and provider so she can maintain custody of Cecilia, she takes a job that is beneath her talents as a copyeditor and quickly signs the papers for the dingy but affordably-priced apartment. In Polanski-esqe fashion, the building boasts a cast of vaguely threatening characters: specious building manager Mr. Murray (John C. Reilly); monosyllabic, icy caretaker Veeck (Pete Postlethwaite); and two sexually-menacing youths. Joining these troubling forces circling Dahlia is her ex-husband Kyle (Dougray Scott), who threatens to tear Cecilia away from her, and her persistent memories of abandonment and callousness by her mother.

In true haunted-house genre fashion, odd events begin to happen. There are sounds of a small child running around in the empty apartment above. The elevator has a mind of its own and seemingly wants to take Dahlia to the tenth floor, where the abandoned apartment resides. Water begins leaking through the ceiling of the apartment, and the apartment above begins to flood with dark water. And Cecilia acquires an imaginary friend, one that doesn’t like being ignored.

A subtle underlying tension results from this set-up. Dahlia, financially struggling, emotionally damaged and in the midst of a custody battle, must appear entirely capable of raising her daughter. Kyle and his lawyer would seize on any hint of instability or hysteria, and so when the unexplained events begin to affect Dahlia, the stakes for her are raised considerably and the underlying suspense of the story ratchets up. Further beneath this in the narrative are the parallel threads of two individuals lacking and yearning for a motherly bond – one from beyond the grave.

The emotional depth of Dark Water raise it far above conventional horror films, but unfortunately the ghost story within the piece doesn’t ultimately deliver. The solution to the mystery at the heart of the haunting is far too obvious and is delivered too quickly towards the end of the film. This is one film that deserves to be expanded with more ghostly build up, though the coda to the story is both creepy and moving. Director Walter Salles invests the drama with conviction, and the film is beautifully photographed, but he mishandles the supernatural aspects. In the end, Dark Water just isn’t scary enough and is too thinly plotted, which is unfortunate because, given the obvious intelligence of the film, some genuine chills and a meatier plot would have pushed it into classic territory.

As it is, Dark Water is worth watching for its characters and performances, and is a rare example of an intelligent film of the supernatural.

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Directed by Walter Salles

Written by Rafael Yglesias, based on the novel by Kôji Suzuki and the screenplay by Hideo Nakata and Takashige Ichise

Starring:
Jennifer Connelly....Dahlia
John C. Reilly....Mr. Murray
Tim Roth....Jeff Platzer
Dougray Scott....Kyle
Pete Postlethwaite....Veeck
Camryn Manheim....Teacher
Ariel Gade....Cecilia

The Prestige

The co-writer/director and two of the cast members of Batman Begins reunite for The Prestige, filling the gap before production begins on The Dark Knight with a darkly lyrical tale of an obsessive psychological clash between two rival magicians in 19th century London.

Rupert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) begin the story as assistants to a run-of-the-mill magician. They come under the tutelage of a designer of magic tricks, Cutter (wonderfully played by Michael Caine). Cutter is like a 19th century Q, designing the complex mechanistic gadgets that produce the illusion of magic. The working-class Borden and the classy Angier fall out over a stage accident, and begin the rivalry that will dominate their lives. The story unfolds in an almost epistolary fashion, through two layers of flashback from the journals of the two magicians. Two quests dominate their obsession: the search for revenge, and the pursuit of the perfect magic trick.

Director Christopher Nolan has once again assembled a top-notch cast. Jackman applies his considerable charisma, yet shades it with some ambiguity, while Bale takes his psychological intensity and humanizes it. The result is that there is no clear-cut white hat/black hat split between protagonist and antagonist; each have admirable and deplorable qualities and both allow themselves to be drawn into a wasteful battle of wills. Michael Caine completes the main trifecta of characters with another turn as an older, wiser tutor and plays it so well that the repetition is forgiven. A rich roster of supporting performances, including a hard-to-recognize David Bowie, lend interest and dramatic weight, with Andy Serkis for once not acting in a motion-capture suit.

Between this film and Batman Begins, Nolan obviously has a fondness for a sepia-brown colour palette and uses it to great visual effect in the London scenes. Most scenes are darkly lit, reflecting a time when the night was only partially penetrated by gaslight, while several sequences set in a snowy town in America have an almost ethereal beauty. Cinematographer Wally Pfister has worked with Christopher Nolan on all of his films since Memento, and the result is a unique visual signature that rivals the look of Ridley Scott’s films, with whom Nolan shares the ability to create a believable, memorable cinematic world.

A marvel of production design, the sets of The Prestige are immensely textured and detailed. Look closely in the frame of any shot, and there’s some small detail to absorb, whether it’s a piece of magical machinery in a magician’s workshop or a pillar in a grimy street covered top to bottom with period handbills. The various magical gadgets of wood and steel and spring, whether strapped to the magician’s back or concealed as part of the stage, lend baroque but convincing detail. They almost look like some genuine relic you would see presented in a glass case at a museum. Some of the fantastical machines, especially those constructed by Nikola Tesla (David Bowie), are reminiscent of the spark-plasma lab equipment featured in the old Universal Frankenstein movies, a comparison that is cemented with the final shot of the film, which also recalls the Hammer Films’ Frankenstein movies, in particular a striking visual parallel to Terence Fisher’s The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958).

The meticulous design conjures a tangible sense of place and time that few period dramas achieve and mixes it up with an old-school mad scientist vibe that embodies the film’s distinction between a magician (illusionist) and a wizard (capable of genuine magic). In this vein, The Prestige also juxtaposes magic produced by apparent supernatural means and that resulting from science, and posits a world poised on the brink of rapid and staggering technological change that still has a thirst for magic.

Like the great magic tricks that are the subject matter of its plot, The Prestige is gloriously entertaining while the mechanics of a dexterous cinematic machine tick quietly away beneath the surface to produce some surprising narrative sleight of hand. The film ends in a plot reveal that turns out to have been carefully laid down, by dropping hints and clues along the way, with no cheating. So if a viewer figures it all out they have had to pay attention and use their minds to do so, and if not, they do not feel cheated. The Prestige may lack true substance, but it is a skillfully crafted and undeniably entertaining construction.

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Directed by Christopher Nolan
Written by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan, from the novel by Christopher Priest

Starring:
Hugh Jackman....Rupert Angier
Christian Bale....Alfred Borden
Michael Caine....Cutter
Piper Perabo....Julia McCullough
Rebecca Hall....Sarah
Scarlett Johansson....Olivia Wenscombe
Samantha Mahurin....Jess
David Bowie....Nikola Tesla
Andy Serkis....Alley

THE DEPARTED

Martin Scorsese, arguably the greatest living American film director, returns to the crime drama genre with The Departed, a compelling, funny, and suspenseful thriller that is easily one of the best films of 2006.

Adapted from the Hong Kong crime thriller Infernal Affairs, the film explores fractured psyches and divided loyalties through two protagonists: Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), a cop deep undercover in the crew of sadistic crime lord Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), and Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), Costello’s protégé and his mole in the Boston PD. Both gradually become aware of each other’s presence, and the film kicks into high tension-winding mode as they both try to track down and expose the other, leading to an ending of Shakespearean proportions.

A superb cast delivers several career-high performances. DiCaprio gives his best performance since The Basketball Diaries, projecting the desperation and existential loneliness of someone left without an identity. Damon manages to make his character sympathetic, no mean feat given that he’s aiding and abetting a psychopath. Jack Nicholson, said psychopath, pulls off a gestaltic piece of acting, building a smart, capricious, dexterous, and downright dangerous character out of many small moments that in other hands would shape a cliché. However, it is an almost iconic performance, and should net Nicholson another Oscar.

Scorsese has lost none of his ability as a filmmaker, brilliantly placing and moving the camera to capture and reflect interior and exterior action. There are no overly bombastic camera tricks here, though. In fact, one of the most effective scenes involves complete silence and two characters listening to each other on a cell phone connection. This moment is instructive of the power of great cinema – no digital effects, no fast and fancy editing, just a camera perfectly placed to capture two actors in a simple but intense moment that the writing has earned through smart, deliberate build-up. Another, briefer, moment that stayed with me was a shot of DiCaprio's face reflected in an ornament constructed of several hanging mirror shards, in a pellucid visual representation of a splintered psyche.

As with all of Scorsese’s films in this genre, there are several moments of explicit violence that are not discretely hidden off-screen. The Departed shows the dank, cagey backstreets of Boston in all their sick, jagged fury. Always a master of music choice, Scorsese chooses several classic songs and an effective score by Howard Shore to complement the cinematic action. One key song, the Stones’ Gimme Shelter, is repeated during the film, and is a cue that The Departed may at its heart be about fragmented individuals without a home in their inside and outside worlds.

William Monahan’s screenplay twists and turns, racking up the tension, and pausing here and there to spout some dialogue both quote-worthy (“I don't wanna be a product of my environment, I want my environment to be a product of me.”) and laugh-out-loud (politeness dictates that I don’t quote the funny but very profane moments).

The writing and direction build up the film to an almost operatic, epic drama. The Departed is sheer bloody poetry.

---
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Written by William Monahan, based on the screenplay Infernal Affairs by Siu Fai Mak and Felix Chong

Original Music by Howard Shore
Cinematography by Michael Ballhaus
Film Editing by Thelma Schoonmaker

Starring
Leonardo DiCaprio....Billy Costigan
Matt Damon....Colin Sullivan
Jack Nicholson....Frank Costello
Mark Wahlberg....Dignam
Martin Sheen....Oliver Queenan
Ray Winstone....Mr. French
Vera Farmiga....Madolyn
Anthony Anderson....Brown
Alec Baldwin....Ellerby

In a Nutshell: Elektra (2005)

I'm trying to find the right phrase, but why bother. To put it bluntly, Elektra (2005) is utter crap. Jennifer Garner stars as our martial-arts trained superheroine who kicks butt in hot outfits while an offscreen fan blows her hair seductively, as if Jenn was doing a commercial for Elektra Shampoo and Conditioner. Elektra, you may recall, was featured in Daredevil, and this film sets about the job of lowering the bar further than its predecessor with admirable dedication.

With the standard set very high for comic book adaptations by the superb Batman Begins, the simple-minded, nonsensical cotton candy of Elektra falls completely flat. When you roll your eyes at the very first line of the film--narrator Terrence Stamp somberly intones "There is an eternal battle between good and evil..."--you know you're in trouble.

An anti-teleological curry of recycled leftovers, this mediocre lump isn't even good for laughs. The plot makes little sense, and if you started to pick holes in the film, you'd be left with a few scraps of Swiss cheese. Here’s a few things I learned from Elektra:

1) A supernaturally-invulnerable muscle man can be killed by a falling tree.

2) Flying daggers can plow through hedges with no discernable loss of vector or momentum.

3) Assassins from the ‘Order of the Hand’ are in fact replicants that contain yellow powder. Or they are demons made from yellow smoke. Or something.

4) Being forced to tread water without using your hands as a child turns you into a hired killer with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

5) Yes, it is possible to make a comic-book film that makes X-Men: The Last Stand look like quality cinema.

To paraphrase Monty Python, this isn't a film for enjoying; it's a film for lying down and avoiding.

BURIED BUT UNDEAD

Ten Great Horror Films You May Not Have Heard Of

Every Halloween, the newspapers, magazines, and websites trot out the same old list of the ‘best’ horror films to rent during the scary season. All the lists are haunted by the same films: The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, Scream, Psycho, Night of the Living Dead, the Lugosi Dracula or Boris Karloff Frankenstein, and The Blair Witch Project.

Not that there’s anything wrong with those films. In fact, many are among my favourites of the genre. But wouldn’t it be nice to unearth a list of fright flicks that are not as well known as these top-tier terror films? Movies that may take a bit of shoveling to unbury at your local video store or online retailer?

Here, then, are ten of my favourite lesser-known horror flicks. They will be familiar to hard-core devotees of the genre, but will likely be unknown by the more casual viewer. If you are in the mood for some off-the-beaten-path creepiness, it’s well worth tracking these films down.

1. BLACK SUNDAY
1960; Directed by Mario Bava; Written by Ennio De Concini, Mario Serandrei, and Mario Bava; Starring Barbara Steele.

Italian director Mario Bava showed himself to be a master of camera movement, lighting, photography, and mood in this horror classic. The sheer beauty of the camerawork is obvious from the moment the picture starts, with a prologue that shows the execution of two witches, the female witch Katia played by ‘scream queen’ Barbara Steele. Filmed on a soundstage in gorgeous black-and-white, the prologue has a slightly unreal, oddly beautiful look that inhabits the entire film. This prologue also features Black Sunday’s most grisly and memorable image: a spiked mask, called the Mask of Satan (the film’s original title), being gruesomely hammered onto Katia’s face while she is tied to a stake. Years later, Katia is accidentally resurrected and plots to possess the body of her look-alike descendent.

The screenplay of Black Sunday seems confused as to whether Katia is a resurrected witch or a vampire, but as with all Bava’s films the plot matters only as a means to show startling images and develop a tangible haunted atmosphere. Shot after beautifully composed shot lingers in the memory, and the sight of the undead witch Katia with black pits in her face from the spiked mask is one of the iconic images of horror cinema. With a face that skirts the edge of beauty but seems not quite right, Barbara Steele delivers a wonderful central performance, and went on to become one of the great actresses of European horror films. Soaked with an atmosphere reminiscent of the old Universal Studios horror films from the ’30s and ’40s, Black Sunday is one of the most beautifully shot movies in the entire horror genre.

Black Sunday is currently available in a wonderful DVD edition that brings the film to life with stunning clarity.

Also Recommended: Bava’s films are so uneven, that it’s hard to wholeheartedly recommend another of his movies. The anthology horror film Black Sabbath is reportedly very good, though unseen by me. Planet of the Vampires, a cheap science-fiction horror flick, is mostly silly but has a few stylishly memorable sequences, and amazingly appears to be one inspiration behind Ridley Scott’s Alien. Both these films are available on DVD.

2. THE BROOD
1979; Written and Directed by David Cronenberg; Starring Art Hindle, Oliver Reed, and Samantha Eggar.

The horror films of Canadian writer/director David Cronenberg often seem to revolve around the human body mutating and turning against us in some way. The Brood, his third horror film and the first excellent movie in his resume, is no exception. The story involves Frank Carveth (Art Hindle), whose wife (Samantha Eggar) is undergoing an innovative psychotherapy called ‘psychoplasmics’ through the clinic of Dr. Hal Raglan (Oliver Reed). In psychoplasmics, the patient is encouraged to manifest rage physically, through their bodies. Frank is skeptical about his wife’s therapy, a skepticism that turns to horror when mysterious dwarf-like figures begin gorily murdering people close to him. It’s up to Frank to find out if psychoplasmics and the murders are related, and protect his young daughter.

What makes The Brood so interesting is that it works on two levels. First, it is a dynamite horror flick, complete with suspense, shocks, and dabs of gore. But secondly, it is an intriguing psychological meditation on the horror of bodily mutation and the forces that threaten one’s family. Cronenberg is one of the most intelligent filmmakers that has ever worked in the horror genre, and The Brood has an underlying depth that rewards multiple viewings. Be warned, though, that there is some repellent imagery in this film, with the final sequence especially unsettling for queasy viewers. A consistently challenging director, David Cronenberg certainly knows how to stimulate your mind and get under your skin at the same time.

The Brood is available on DVD in a bare-bones edition that features a crisp widescreen transfer.

Also Recommended: Of Cronenberg’s other films in the genre, the best are his romantic-tragic remake of The Fly, the surreally bizarre science-fiction horror Videodrome, and his compelling adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dead Zone, which features a great central performance by Christopher Walken. All these films are available on DVD.


3. CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN / HORROR OF DRACULA
1957; Directed by Terence Fisher; Written by Jimmy Sangster; Starring Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee.

I’ve cheated a bit with this selection, by picking a double bill. However, these two films are so essential to the history of the horror genre, and work so well together as a Halloween double feature, that I couldn’t resist. Produced by England’s Hammer Films, Curse of Frankenstein and Horror of Dracula have been rightly described as epoch-making films that completely revitalized the horror genre when it was in a postwar decline, and influenced several subsequent generations of films and filmmakers. The shockwaves that these movies caused upon initial release are still being felt in horror cinema today.

Curse is a reinterpretation of the Frankenstein story that discards almost all elements of the Universal Frankenstein movies, which up until this point were the definitive versions of this gothic horror tale. The emphasis of the film is squarely on Baron Frankenstein, played to classical perfection by genre great Peter Cushing. In this version, the Baron is not merely a misguided scientist. He is a brilliant, intense intellectual whose pursuit of knowledge is so single-minded that he is not above murder to achieve his aims. Christopher Lee, with whom Peter Cushing would co-star in many enjoyable horror movies, stars as the Creature, stitched together out of body parts stolen from cadavers and less-than-willing donors. The Creature features grotesque make-up by Hammer’s regular makeup artist Phil Leakey, who was forbidden by copyright to create anything resembling the Frankenstein Monster from the Universal films. The scene where the Creature awakes and removes the bandages from its face, revealing its distorted features for the first time still packs a punch today. And Lee manages to infuse the Creature with a sad, pathetic quality that arouses audience sympathies.

Though tame by today’s standards, Curse of Frankenstein was greeted with cries of revulsion from the critical establishment when it was initially released in the late 50s. It was one of the first films to show its horrors instead of discreetly suggesting them, with Frankenstein coolly examining severed body parts, and a bloody sequence involving the Creature being blasted in the head with a shotgun. Audiences, however, lined up around the block, and the legendary gothic horror movies of Hammer Films were launched, changing the genre forever.

The success of this film led to Hammer remaking another iconic horror film. Using the same creative team of director Terence Fisher and writer Jimmy Sangster, and reteaming stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, Hammer Films produced Horror of Dracula, a very loose adaptation of Bram Stoker’s famous novel. Christopher Lee, with his mix of regal charm and snarling animalism, provides arguably the best interpretation of the vampire count, in spite of very little dialogue. However, performance-wise the film belongs to Peter Cushing who brings charm, steely nerves, quick wit, compassion, and swashbuckling energy to the role of vampire hunter Van Helsing. Like Curse, Horror of Dracula is beautifully shot in vivid, blood-red Technicolour.

Again, many respectable film critics were horrified, especially at the film’s explicit connection between sexuality and vampirism. And once more, the film was a huge international hit, spurring Hammer Films to remake more classic horrors, beginning with The Mummy. Today, these two films have long since lost their power to shock, but they remain highly entertaining, their professional polish, intelligent scripts, wonderful gothic atmosphere, and sharp wit overcoming their low budget origins. Curse of Frankenstein and Horror of Dracula make a marvelous, fun Halloween double feature, and allow you to revisit a lost era of studio filmmaking and a time when the flagging horror genre lurched once again to renewed life.

Both of these Hammer horror films are available in gorgeous widescreen versions on DVD that are the best these films have ever looked on home video.

Also Recommended: Other worthwhile Hammer gothic horrors are numerous, including the direct sequels to the first Dracula and Frankenstein flicks, Dracula, Prince of Darkness and Revenge of Frankenstein. The Dracula series deteriorated in quality, though Scars of Dracula is worthwhile. In contrast, the Frankenstein series offered several intriguing films, the best of which are Frankenstein Created Woman and Frankenstein Must be Destroyed. Other notable Hammer horror flicks are Brides of Dracula, The Reptile, Plague of the Zombies, Kiss of the Vampire, Hands of the Ripper, The Curse of the Werewolf, The Mummy, The Devil Rides Out and Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter. All of these films are available on DVD or video, except for (sadly), Hands of the Ripper, which is out of print though sometimes available on EBay. Also of interest is a good documentary on Hammer Studios, called Flesh and Blood, which is on video and DVD. Warner Home Video also has The Hammer Horror Series a 2-disc DVD set that contains eight Hammer horror and thriller flicks; it is a must-have for all Hammer fans.


4. NIGHT OF THE DEMON
1957; Directed by Jacques Tourneur; Written by Charles Bennett and Hal E. Chester, based on the story "Casting the Runes" by M.R. James; Starring Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins, and Niall MacGinnis.

The legacy of producer Val Lewton (see Isle of the Dead, below) was not only a collection of superb psychological horror films, but also a stable of filmmakers who perfected their craft on his films. French director Jacques Tourneur was one of them. Having directed the classics Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, The Curse of the Cat People, and The Leopard Man for Lewton, Tourneur carried on the tradition of subtle psychological horror with the wonderful Night of the Demon.

Based on the short story Casting the Runes by the great ghost story writer M.R. James, Night of the Demon involves a debunker of the supernatural, psychologist Dr. Holden (Dana Andrews), investigating the death of a researcher in England who was working on an expose of occultist Karswell (Niall MacGinnis). Holden’s skepticism is put to the test as Karswell passes him a scrap of parchment with runic symbols that marks the holder with death at the hands of a demon, and his investigation slowly convinces him that perhaps Karswell can indeed wield dark forces.

The film plays on the Lewtonian question of is the supernatural involved or is it all in the mind? The balance is tipped somewhat in the favour of the supernatural explanation with the inclusion of a demonic monster in the opening sequence, but the creature is creepy and memorable, and its presence hangs over the rest of the film like a shroud. Tourneur expertly builds tension and fear throughout the film, with a wonderful use of darkness and shadows. A sequence set in a darkened wood with Holden pursued by a ball of supernatural light after smoking footprints appear in the earth is particularly spooky and memorable. The climax of the film, though marred by some cheap effects, still brings the story to a satisfyingly chilling conclusion. With a terrific performance by Niall MacGinnis that manages to be sinister, humourous, and humanistic, Night of the Demon is one of the all-time great movies of the supernatural.

A DVD edition of this film features the original British cut, Night of the Demon, together with Curse of the Demon, which is the truncated American version. Needless to say, Night is the preferable version. The clarity of this black-and-white film on this DVD is very impressive.


5. THE FOG
1980; Directed by John Carpenter; Written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill; Starring Tom Atkins, Adrienne Barbeau, and Jamie Lee Curtis.

The Fog, John Carpenter’s follow-up to his wildly successful Halloween, has never garnered the popularity of his first horror film. Which is a shame, because The Fog is a well-made, eerie mood piece punctuated with several memorable shocks. Adrienne Barbeau, Halloween alumnus Jamie Lee Curtis, and Tom Atkins star as residents of small seaside town Antonio Bay, which is preparing to celebrate its 100th birthday. Little do they know that the founding of the town rests on a dark secret, one that will rise up from the coastal waters and return to take revenge, enshrouded in — the fog.

Essentially a classic ghost story with added violence and shocks, The Fog is reminiscent of a spooky story told around a campfire. In fact, the film opens with a prologue in which Mr. Machen (John Houseman; the character named after the great writer of supernatural fiction Arthur Machen) tells a ghost story to a troop of boy scouts huddled around a campfire on a darkened beach.

Carpenter tells the story well, building suspense and fear. As with all of his films, he uses the widescreen movie frame to maximum effect, often placing key information at opposite sides of the screen. This is one reason why viewing a widescreen version of The Fog is essential; the pan-and-scan version removes so much information as to be a complete waste of time. Carpenter also provides the film’s wonderful electronic music score, which serves to heighten the suspense and sense of dread anticipation. A gem of a horror movie, The Fog is one of the best ghost stories ever filmed.

Luckily for current and future fans of the film, The Fog is available in a terrific special edition DVD. A dire remake of this film was released in 2005, and should be avoided like the plague.

Also Recommended: John Carpenter has directed two other horror films that are essential viewing--the classic and influential Halloween and the groundbreaking science-fiction horror of The Thing. His other genre films are a bit of a mixed bag, though both Prince of Darkness and In the Mouth of Madness have several imaginative touches.


6. ISLE OF THE DEAD
1942; Directed by Mark Robson; Written by Josef Mischel and Ardel Wray; Produced by Val Lewton; Starring Boris Karloff.

A Russian immigrant, film producer Val Lewton was given carte blanche by RKO Studios to assemble his own creative team and make a series of horror movies with little interference. The only catch was that he had to use the studio’s market-tested titles. The result was some of the most intelligent psychological horror movies ever made hiding under lurid titles like I Walked with a Zombie and Cat People.

Isle of the Dead is typical of the style of the Lewton films, and features one scene that remains frightening to this day. Boris Karloff plays a Greek army officer who is trapped in a house on a small island while the plague ravages the country. The officer, marooned in the house with a motley crew of people, is haunted by peasant superstitions regarding a vampire-like creature. Is a supernatural creature stalking the island? Like most of the Lewton films, this question is never satisfactorily closed.

Though very little happens in most of the film, an atmosphere of fear and dread pervades the movie. A scene in a crypt, simply but effectively shot with a brilliant use of sound, has the power to send serious chills down the spine. Aside from the intelligence of the stories, this is the great achievement of the Lewton films: though made in the 1940s, they have the power to chill today. Isle of the Dead is a dark and creepy little film that lingers in the half-light of memory.

Also Recommended: If you like Isle of the Dead, then the other Lewton-produced horror films are a must--Cat People (avoid the 1982 remake with Nastassia Kinski), The Seventh Victim, The Leopard Man, I Walked with a Zombie, The Curse of the Cat People, and The Body Snatcher (which reteamed horror icons Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi). All the Lewton horror series is available on DVD, some separately as double-feature discs, and together in a DVD box set. No horror fan’s film collection should be without this set.


7. SESSION 9
2001; Directed by Brad Anderson; Written by Brad Anderson and Stephen Gevedon; Starring David Caruso and Peter Mullen.

You know what they say: location, location, location. Session 9 has one of the truly great locations of any horror film: the abandoned Danvers Mental Hospital outside Boston, a sprawling, decaying, manor house dating from around 1880 that operated as an asylum until about the mid-1980s. The location is real, though the story of Session 9 is not. It concerns a hazardous materials removal crew headed by Gordon Fleming (Peter Mullan) hired to remove the asbestos from the Danvers Hospital. Wearing protective gear, the crew goes into the bowels of the deserted, crumbling, and foreboding hospital to do their job.

After several creepy scenes of the workers wandering in the building’s grim labyrinth, Mike (Stephen Gevedon) finds a set of audiotapes containing sessions in which a therapist is treating a patient with multiple personalities using ‘recovered memory’ therapy. To add to the creepiness, these tapes are based on actual case files and tapes that the filmmakers found at the location. As Mike becomes obsessed with these tapes, the other workers start to slowly become influenced by the oppressive building, and one of them apparently descends into madness. But which one, and why?

Aside from the fantastic location, the strength of Session 9 is its oppressive, disturbing atmosphere, and the parallel stories of the workers and the audiotapes that may or may not connect (I refuse to give away any of the film’s secrets, but suffice it to say that the ending leaves much food for thought and bad dreams). Filmed using a digital camera that adds effectively to the film’s verisimilitude, Session 9 is one of the few modern horror films that manages to be genuinely scary. And it accomplishes this with an almost complete lack of special effects and explicit violence. Unfortunately ignored during its limited initial release, the creepy and chilling Session 9 is ripe for rediscovery.

Also Recommended: Other films featuring great horror houses include The Haunting (the 1960s original, not the recent CGI fiasco); The Legend of Hell House, a good, though far from great, adaptation of a very scary Richard Matheson novel; and The Uninvited with Ray Milland, a classic ghost story. Director Brad Anderson’s grim psychological drama The Machinist, while not really a horror film, is also of interest. It features a Twilight Zone-ish wierd story that is well-told, and an amazing central performance by Christian Bale.


8. THE STEPFATHER
1987; Directed by Joseph Ruben; Written by Donald Westlake; Starring Terry O•Quinn, Jill Schoelen, and Shelley Hack.

It’s arguably one of the greatest performances in any psychological horror film. In The Stepfather, Terry O’Quinn (known these days for the hit TV show Lost) stars as Jerry Blake, a seemingly normal, staid, down-to-earth guy who is dating Susan (Shelley Hack) and trying to be a good stepfather to her daughter Stephanie (Jill Schoelen). Jerry, however, is not all he seems, as his nice façade hides a psychotic personality that obsessively searches for the perfect all-American family, and when that family doesn’t meet his Ward Cleaver standards...

O’Quinn is simply wonderful in the lead role, believably creating Jerry’s too-shiny surface and the darkness lurking beneath. But Jill Schoelen is also superb as a realistically portrayed teenage girl who, with probing intelligence and spunk, digs for the truth behind her ‘perfect’ stepfather. The scene where she, unknown by Jerry, observes him talking to himself in the basement of their house is brilliant and scary. Well-written by mystery writer Donald Westlake, the film builds effectively, slowly drawing the suspense tighter, until it reaches an unbearable level and explodes in a predictable but still scary climax. The Stepfather is a nifty little psycho-horror film, and well worth searching out. Unfortunately, as of writing, the film is unavailable on DVD, though some video stores may carry a VHS copy.


9. SUSPIRIA
1977; Directed by Dario Argento; Written by Dario Argento and Daria Nicolodi; Starring Jessica Harper.

A bizarre dark fairy story, Suspiria’s story doesn’t unfold so much as crawl around in your subconscious for a little while. What little plot there is concerns American Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) arriving in Europe to begin studying at a school of ballet. Taking a taxi to the school through a black and rainy night that seems to resonate with weirdness, Suzy witnesses a girl fleeing the rather ominous school building. Later, this girl is gorily murdered by a disembodied arm (we never see the rest of the body of the assailant). This is only the beginning of a series of strange events, including maggots raining from the ceiling and more bizarre murders, that lead to a supernatural revelation about the school and those who run it.

Suspiria doesn’t make a lot of logical sense, it has to be said. But stylish Italian director Argento never intended it to make any sense, except on the level of a bad dream. The film is brilliantly designed and shot to resemble a very (very) grim fairy tale, with the main characters akin to children in a story from the Brothers Grimm. This point is reinforced when you notice that all the door handles are made to be higher than normal, so the characters have to reach up for them to open doors, just like children.

This film is very gory, so be warned, but it is also very beautiful. Shot using an old three-strip Technicolour process, the colours of Suspiria are absolutely gorgeous. Apparently, this was the last time that the three-strip camera was used; it was scrapped after filming wrapped up.

Dario Argento has been called the ‘Italian Hitchcock’ for his stylish murder-mystery-thrillers like The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Deep Red, and Cat O’ Nine Tails. But even those films really have more in common with the horror genre than with mysteries due to their sudden shocks and explicit violence. Suspiria was his first film to completely abandon the mystery genre and rely solely on the supernatural.

Argento has a knack for some stunning camerawork, but often his films leave a lot to be desired plotwise. Suspiria is probably his masterpiece as the story and screenplay mesh perfectly with the direction to achieve the illogic and scariness of a particularly nasty and strange nightmare.

Suspiria is available in a terrific special edition DVD that showcases the stunning colour of the film and preserves the carefully composed shots in the original widescreen.

Also Recommended: Argento’s other supernatural-themed films are Phenomena and Inferno, but both are relatively inaccessible to casual viewers. If his style intrigues you, check out Deep Red, probably the most stylish of his mystery thrillers, and the one most closely tied to the horror genre.


10. THE WICKER MAN
1973; Directed by Robin Hardy; Written by Anthony Schaeffer; Starring Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee.

Many of its fans argue about its categorization as a horror film, but The Wicker Man has enough horrific and psychological suspense elements to merit the label. The film tells the unsettling story of prudish police sergeant Neil Howie (Edward Woodward), whose beat is northern Scotland and the offshore islands, investigating the disappearance of a young girl on the remote island of Summerisle. Finding little complicity with his investigation, he observes primitive religious and sexual rites, and realizes that the island is a community of pagans, with the enigmatic Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee) at its head. He finds evidence that the island people are preparing an elaborate pagan rite, involving the wicker man of the title, to bring fertility to the land again, a rite that may involve human sacrifice...

Wonderfully written, filmed, and acted, The Wicker Man has been described as the “Citizen Kane of horror films,” and as a genre piece that also offers a memorable story with intelligent social commentary it towers above most other horror movies. Though it contains few explicit shocks, the film effectively builds a sense of mounting unease, leading to a shattering climax. And as a statement about the role of religion in society, it leaves much to ponder after the final credits roll.

The Wicker Man is available on DVD as a single-disc edition and in a box set that contains a longer uncut version. A remake of the film, directed by Neil Labute and starring Nicolas Cage, was released in 2006. While not the disaster many have claimed it to be, it is far inferior to the classic original. Accept no substitutes.

The Black Dahlia

The Black Dahlia is a muted, subdued film noir, surprising given the pyrotechnics and excess that mark the best work of director Brian DePalma and source novelist James Ellroy. Some of this might be heady stuff for a mainstream thriller these days, especially for those who can’t handle lesbianism, but that says more about the times than the film. An often flat thriller, The Black Dahlia is a vaguely disappointing stab at twisted noir that buries within itself some isolated moments that crackle.

In a surprisingly textured performance, Josh Hartnett plays “Bucky” Bleichert, an LAPD officer who Sgt. Lee Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart, unsurprisingly excellent) persuades to join the task force dedicated to tracking the psychopath behind the “Black Dahlia” murder of aspiring actress Elizabeth Short. This notorious 1950s murder was never solved, and writer Josh Friedman, working from the source novel by cult neo-noir writer James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential, The Big Nowhere), weaves a tangled fictional tapestry around this real event, featuring obsessed cops, mentally imbalanced construction barons, police administrators jockeying for power, the lesbian underworld of L.A., and abused, lost starlets.

The story is difficult to follow at times but, I assure you, is a model of clarity compared with the Gordian knot of the book. What the screenplay lacks is the jazzed-up kick of Ellroy’s dialogue, something that Curtis Hanson and Brian Helgeland captured well in their film of L.A. Confidential. It is also missing the novel’s dark, twisted revelations, and the oppressive corruption that is seemingly the glue that holds the city together. Disappointingly, the final act falls back on the hoary old chestnut of the murderer blabbing at great length about what they did and why they did it, and tips dangerously close to unintentional comedy with an almost hysterical performance by a cast member who will remain unnamed for obvious reasons.

The principal cast members are all good to excellent, but the most indelible performance comes from Mia Kirshner, who appears as the murdered Elizabeth Short in black and white film clips of the character’s auditions for a futile and ultimately doomed shot at Hollywood fame. In those brief appearances, she projects the melancholy of a heart burdened with sadness and abuse and laden with the belief that her life will never get any better. Kirshner single-handedly makes Bleichert and Blanchard’s obsession with capturing Short’s murderer believable.

Beautifully shot by Vilmos Zsigmond, The Black Dahlia is photographed in a soft brown colour palette that captures the sepia-tinged look of a bygone era of urban crime and punishment. Director Brian DePalma is capable of some astonishing set-pieces--the train station sequences from The Untouchables and Carlito’s Way are obvious examples--but here his direction almost completely lacks the visual panache he is famous for. A stairway confrontation and murder has nail-biting potential but lacks suspense, though the violent payoff is classic DePalma. Overall, it seems as though DePalma is holding back when he should be making us beg for it then giving it to us. This is muted DePalma and muffled Ellroy. What the film really needs is both of these guys, full strength.

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Directed by Brian De Palma
Written by Josh Friedman, based on the novel by James Ellroy

Starring:
Josh Hartnett....Ofcr. Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert
Scarlett Johansson....Kay Lake
Aaron Eckhart....Sgt. Leland "Lee" Blanchard
Hilary Swank....Madeleine Linscott
Mia Kirshner....Elizabeth Short
Mike Starr....Russ Millard
Fiona Shaw....Ramona Linscott

Daniel Craig is Bond

The Internet does inspire some nuttiness, one of the silliest examples in the movie realm being the pseudo-007 fans and their campaign against Daniel Craig as James Bond. He's too blond, too ugly, not suave enough, et. al. Nonsense, of course. The hair colour isn't an issue, and Craig has a classical, rough-around-the-edges handsomeness to him. He's not a pretty boy, but I'm assured by polls of female magazine readers and my own admittedly limited research that women do find him attractive.

The more pertinent question is, can he play the part on screen? Judging by the new trailer, Craig will play 007 very well indeed, as the cool, ruthless, irresistable, and deadly secret agent that Ian Fleming wrote of in his James Bond novels, of which Casino Royale is the first.

The Bond film series has always survived by virtue of its adaptability. Those unfamiliar with the series claim 'they're all the same', but there are subtle and major changes in tone across the various films. No one would mistake the cartoony 007-lite of Octopussy for the deadly rogue agent of Licence to Kill, for example. Casino Royale looks to be more in the tradition of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, George Lazenby's sole turn as Bond, which stuck closely to the source novel and showed a human, vulnerable side of the secret agent. And Craig looks like he has the acting chops to pull it off.

The nonsense spread about Craig is truly pathetic. Contrary to the tabloids, Craig can drive a manual, did not get his teeth knocked out, and did not suffer sunburn while on location. And don't even get me started on the vacuous complaining of the 'craignotbond' web site. Sheesh.

Daniel Craig IS James Bond in Casino Royale. It looks like a treat for all true 007 fans, especially those who realize that the series desperately needs a shakeup.

MIAMI VICE

Michael Mann’s vivid and chromatic crime drama Miami Vice is the groundbreaking tv cop show processed through a post-9/11 digital zeitgeist to capture the capricious, dangerous, and bloody world of undercover police operations. Lose all thoughts of a slice of ’80s cheese served up for mindless thrills and laughs. This film crackles with edgy, haunting power, and offers no ‘idiot’s guide to police procedurals’ to nurture the audience. There are no main titles or narrative devices to orient ourselves; we are just dropped, pink and squalling, into the world of a team of undercover Miami police officers led by Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Rico Tubbs (Jamie Foxx, in his second film for Mann after the superb Collateral) and left to figure it all out from the inside, encouraged to become amateur anthropologists in a study of the language and ritual of a different, hazardous, and unpredictable world.

Crockett and Tubbs are drawn into an operation to get inside a drug ring operated by Arcángel de Jesús Montoya (Luis Tosar) and in the process plug a leak that has gotten two FBI agents killed. Going deep undercover as transportation specialists, the trail leads the cops to Montoya’s aide José Yero (John Ortiz) and his business manager Isabella (Gong Li), with whom Crockett begins an affair that blurs the boundaries between his real and imagined identities.

Vivacious and pumping with life, Miami Vice is the work of a master visual stylist. Mann shoots the film in a dazzling digital neo-noir style, alternating shadows and grain with cool, vivid colours, and injecting fast bursts of unexpected, brutal violence. No over the top heroics here; the cops move with an economy of action that is convincing, the result apparently of the actors going through actual training scenarios with undercover police officers. The film is shot with digital cameras, which affords occasional grain, especially in the night time shots, and lends a subtle verisimilitude. An order of magnitude more violent than the source material, the violence is not lingered upon, but fires out in staccato bursts that knock the viewer off balance. Dialogue is crisp, fast, and cool-noir; characterizations are shallow but brisk and efficient; and the film worms its way to a surprising emotional core.

Though not at the level of Mann’s masterwork Heat, Miami Vice is an absorbing shot of adult-themed crime thriller. And, like most of Mann’s movies, it has an absolutely killer soundtrack.

Cool quote:
"What will happen is I will put a round at twenty-seven hundred feet per second into the medulla at the base of your brain. And you will be dead from the neck down before your body knows it. Your finger won't even twitch."

I may use that one on the next troublemaker at a meeting.

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Written and Directed by Michael Mann

Starring:

Colin Farrell....Det. James 'Sonny' Crockett
Jamie Foxx....Det. Ricardo 'Rico' Tubbs
Li Gong....Isabella (as Gong Li)
Naomie Harris....Det. Trudy Joplin
Ciarán Hinds....FBI Agent Fujima
Justin Theroux....Det. Larry Zito
Luis Tosar....Arcángel de Jesús Montoya
Barry Shabaka Henley....Lt. Martin Castillo
John Ortiz....José Yero
Elizabeth Rodriguez....Det. Gina Calabrese

The Descent

Though it has been compared with Ridley Scott’s Alien, the true touchstone for The Descent is Apocalypse Now, with the common thread of a journey downwards or backwards in time into primeval savagery. Writer/director Neil Marshall, here making his second feature after the cult horror/action film Dog Soldiers, takes the camera up above the trees at the beginning of the protagonists’ journey, bringing it down to ground level, and then following the group beneath the earth into dank, primordial caverns and crawlspaces lit only by flares, flashlights, glowsticks and, in a deft touch, the infrared LCD screen of a digital video camera.

Recovering trauma victim Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) reluctantly agrees to accompany five female friends on a spelunking expedition led by adrenaline junkie Juno (Natalie Mendoza). Unknown by the rest of the party, Juno leads them to a previously unmapped cave system that harbours some particularly nasty surprises courtesy of the makeup effects and prosthetics department.

One of the few recent horror films that evokes some genuine fear, The Descent follows the women’s plunge into the darkest, most savage parts of the human soul, and confronts them with monsters both external and internal. The lighting, sound, and production design convincingly elicit the claustrophobic look and feel of a lost cave system. The lighting scheme allows the mind to imagine terror lurking just beyond the reach of luminosity and is used expertly to conceal and, at the appropriate time, suddenly reveal. The visual subtext of the film is of descent, terror, and rebirth, with a main character shown bursting through blood and slime into a frightening new version of the world. The convincing creature design and jolting editing add to the film’s gut-level impact.

If anything mars the film, it is the consistent visual references to other horror films, from Jaws and Carrie to Dario Argento’s Phenomena and Inferno, and the over-reliance on cheap shock cuts (though admittedly the riff on Martin Sheen from the climax of Apocalypse Now is arguably appropriate given the thematic similarity).

The Descent is plenty creepy and scary on its own, and when it stands alone without genre reference, it is an excellent horror thriller and, if nothing else, pegs Marshall as a filmmaker to watch.

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Written and Directed by Neil Marshall

Starring:
Shauna Macdonald....Sarah
Natalie Mendoza....Juno
Alex Reid....Beth
Saskia Mulder....Rebecca
MyAnna Buring....Sam
Nora-Jane Noone....Holly

A Trifecta of Fantastic Films and Cameron’s Return

One of the best films of 2006 so far,V for Vendetta, had a fantastic setting--a future Britain ruled by an imaginary government of theocratic fascists--and the cinematic year looks to be seen out by three more film fantasies that also promise to be among the cream of 2006.

Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain tells the story of the search for eternal life across three segments of time--the 18th century, the present day, and the far future. Hugh Jackman and Rachael Weisz star in this reportedly visually and intellectually dazzling film that was shot on a comparatively small budget, around $35 million. This will likely be a plus as large budgets for fantastic films often give birth to over-inflated movie grab bags stuffed to bursting with little regard for narrative clarity, invention, or subtlety (example: the moderately entertaining but hollow and overdone Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest). The trailer is visually arresting and promises a serious dramatic film, hardly in line with Hollywood’s unspoken rule that all science fiction and fantasy movies must be action films.

The Prestige reunites the director and main stars of the stylish and engrossing Batman Begins. Filmmaker Christopher Nolan directs Christian Bale and Michael Caine, along with Hugh Jackman (obviously choosing projects wisely these days) and Scarlett Johansen in a tale about a rivalry between two magicians in 19th century England. With Memento and Insomnia also under his belt, Nolan is a smart director with the visual flair of a David Lean, albeit seen through a darker lens. The Prestige promises to be a brooding, memorable story with excellent lead performances.

And lastly, there is Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, a dark fantasy of a little girl’s imaginary world of strange creatures and places that begins to intrude upon the real world, a highly-anticipated film about which I have written before. Del Toro continues to grow as a craftsman and an artist who operates almost entirely within the horror/fantasy genre and, if there’s any sense of cosmic justice, he will make his long-gestating adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s enduring short novel of frozen, otherworldly terror, At the Mountains of Madness.

All three films are guided by directors who have shown themselves to be visionaries with a masterful grasp of visual cinema and, equally as important, an understanding of story, character, and subtext. Aronofsky, Nolan, and Del Toro are exactly the guiding lights that sf/fantasy cinema needs. They are capable of style and narrative and depth; their films are about something.

After years of largely hollow flash and spectacle, it is about time that sf/fantasy cinema received a boost or even a revolution that moves the genre beyond mega-budgeted popcorn fodder back into the realm of ideas that illuminate the human condition and stories that truly engage.

Perhaps this triple-blast of smart, imaginative fantasy will do the trick, especially if one of the films can accomplish the near-impossible and overcome the Academy Awards’ traditional snub of genre cinema.

And let’s not forget that, after a multi-year absence from narrative film, one of the great sf filmmakers is returning. James Cameron has announced that he is back in the game with two typically insanely ambitious sf film trilogies in various stages of planning: Avatar and Battle Angel. For all their flaws, Cameron’s films show an innate sense of efficient characterization, narrative pacing, and thematic subtext. The writing, direction, and editing of Terminator 2: Judgement Day are models for how to do an action film right, with a sense of story pacing, using peaks and valleys to give the audience time to breath, rather than a wearying all out assault on the senses.

Cameron really understands how to direct and edit action sequences. Unlike a Michael Bay film (I hate to always pick in him, but it’s so much fun, and he’s one of the worst offenders of the Moulinex Processor school of cutting), the editing is fast but not hyperactive, providing a rhythm and a sense of spatial geography so we know who is doing what to whom and the consequences of each move within a scene. He also knows when to use long shots to provide clarity, and does not chop up action into dozens of close-ups that flash by at seizure-inducing speeds. And in his chase sequences, the camera is in constant motion and not nailed to the floor as vehicles speed by, a pet peeve of mine.

Though Cameron is far from an artsy, philosophical director (he deals in spectacle and broad-brush themes), his films do have subtext. T2 and The Abyss both dealt with the innate human tendency to destroy and the potential dangers of unfettered technology. Titanic, Cameron’s biggest hit, warned about the hubris of thinking our solipsistic technological superiority imbrues us with the ability to conquer all the forces the world can throw at us. It also, of course, worked at a personal level, regarding breaking through social prisons of convention to pursue what and who we truly love. These are big, somewhat simplistic themes, but their mere presence in huge action spectaculars are enough to make Cameron’s films more interesting than the lion’s share of this type of movie.

Cameron also pushes the envelope in terms of movie technology. The water tentacle in The Abyss and the T-1000 from T2 were pioneering uses of computer graphics imagery, or CGI, now so prevalent (some may argue overused) in the film industry. It remains to be seen how he will apply new technology in his upcoming films, but the prospects of new cinematic tools in the hands of a filmmaker that respects narrative is enticing.

Let us hope that the somewhat stagnant state of sf/fantasy filmmaking receives a shot in the arm from the likes of Aronofsky, Nolan, Del Toro, and Cameron. I think the genre is in desperate need of a revolution.