The finest of three screen versions of PC Wren’s rumour of heroism in the French Inappropriate Legion (the others were made in 1926 and 1966, the latter a travesty). Pictorially ravishing, it features a celebrated break with a fort garrisoned by corpses, and the high deed tone carries on from there. Cooper is suitably distinct in his usual mum and gentle way as ‘Beau’, eldest of the three brothers who join the Legion to cover the covert ‘theft’ of a valuable boon, but it is really Donlevy who leaves the most everlasting impression as the cruel Legion sergeant. Boys’ Own overindulge, dialect mayhap, but good fun all the same.
Archive for Eylül, 2009
Beau Geste (1939)
Salı, Eylül 29th, 2009King Arthur (2004)
Çarşamba, Eylül 16th, 2009The film was written by David Franzoni, who wrote “Gladiator,” a film
that showed it’s possible to invest a History Channel-type topic with dramatic
urgency, without compromising its historical interest or integrity. But in
“King Arthur,” everything goes wrong. The film combines the plodding sincerity
of a Ph.D. dissertation with the brains of a high-concept Jerry Bruckheimer-
produced blockbuster (which it is), and no one benefits. Jarring notes of
comic relief and ridiculous faux feminism are thrown into a fifth century soup
pot to make thick, stinking gruel. It’s not an appetizing picture.
The true story of Britain’s King Arthur, if there ever really was such a
fellow, has been a subject for historical speculation for centuries. “King
Arthur” advances one theory. Here Arthur is Lucius Artorius Castus (Clive
Owen), an Eastern European man impressed into Roman service as a boy and sent
to police the British Isles as a Roman knight. With a group of other knights -
- including Lancelot (Ioan Gruffudd), Gawain (Joel Edgerton), Galahad (Hugh
Dancy) and Bors (Ray Winstone) — he fights off local freedom fighters, such
as the Celts, a semi-savage warrior tribe led by Merlin (Stephen Dillane).
“King Arthur” picks up the story in the year 452. Arthur and his men are
at the end of their 15-year tour of duty and are looking forward to a peaceful
retirement in Rome. They are weary and jaded — and that’s how they start
the movie. Wait until they find out they have to complete one last mission in
Britain, to rescue some Romans who are about to be wiped out by Saxon hordes.
There are few things more enervating than watching weary, jaded people get
more weary and jaded over two hours of screen time, but this is the dilemma
Franzoni and director Antoine Fuqua (”Training Day”) faced when they took on
this subject. The knights have nothing to believe in. They don’t believe in
the cause they’re fighting for, and they don’t believe in the Roman Empire,
which is decadent and doomed. I suppose the filmmakers were hoping the
audience would believe in Arthur and his men, but — aside from Bors, who
has a certain macho Curly Howard quality — they’re a band of
interchangeable mopes with a bad history, steeped in gore up to their elbows.
And that goes for Arthur, too. Understandably, then, an effort was put into
making Guinevere into a live wire, but too much effort. The daughter of Merlin,
Guinevere is a warrior princess, a feral little pagan mama who starts giving
Arthur come-hither looks within minutes of being rescued from a Roman dungeon.
She may be covered in her own filth, but she’s a confident modern young woman.
Keira Knightley attacks the role of Guinevere with all the energy and
enthusiasm of an actress convinced she’s making an important feminist
statement, but if this is what feminism has become in the popular imagination,
it’s as depressing as this movie’s gray and white color palette. By turns
insolent, lustful or homicidal, driven only by anger, aggression or blood lust,
Guinevere is a woman with no inner life. If she were a man, anyone in the
audience easily would identify her as a sociopath.
At least the action scenes might have been something, but they’re routine
– except for one interesting battle over a not-so frozen lake. Even then,
Fuqua blows it by reverting to the usual shaky-camera-and-quick-cuts style of
action filming, which mistakes creating confusion for creating excitement. The
one bright spot is Stellan Skarsgard as the hairy, helmeted Saxon leader, a
mumbling barbarian who rarely speaks above a whisper and never says anything
nice. Even in this misfired drama, when he murmurs, “Burn every village, kill
everybody,” it’s scary.
– Advisory: Dark Ages violence with swords, spears, arrows.
E-mail Mick LaSalle at mlasalle@sfchronicle.com.
Ken Park review
Pazartesi, Eylül 14th, 2009The depiction begins with the entitlement integrity blowing his brains out identical sunny day at a park. Then there’s a teenage small fry graphically servicing his girlfriend’s mom; the “good girl” daughter of a Bible-quoting dad who’s really a bondage-loving nympho; the autoerotic asphyxiation fanatic who masturbates in loving close-up in advance stabbing his grandparents to death in their bed; and the drunken macho father who sexually assaults his sleeping son. Exploitative, deliberately angering pornography? Courageous revelation of the cryptographic life of teens? Calculated sensationalism? Telling it like it is? These are the arguments that will inevitably cause fur to let someone have it anywhere in the vicinity of “Ken Greens,” a sexually frank slab of teenage ennui from that self-proclaimed experienced on the skateboard company, Larry Clark, working this time in tandem with ace cinematographer Ed Lachman. Beautifully crafted but emotionally dispiriting and alienating in its insistence on spotlighting only the negative aspects of life, this Euro-financed contribution to contempo Americana resembles certain recent French films in its unblinking depiction of raw sex. With attention-grabbing squabble and a measure of key praise in store, international sales will be strong to territories without censorship restraints, and an enterprising U.S. distrib could generate decent mileage with the veil as an unrated specialized crowd-pleaser.
More explicit but less “shocking” than Clark’s 1995 debut feature “Kids,” “Ken Park” was also written by Harmony Korine and was originally intended as Clark’s first picture until “Kids” financing came along. Films are similar in their matter-of-fact look at teens doing things that older folk prefer not to think about them doing, and in their aesthetic attractiveness. “Kids” had the advantage, however, of a genuinely unnerving narrative hook, while “Ken Park,” for all its vaunted sympathy for the kids it portrays, increasingly feels like a bunch of scenes included for the primary reason that their like hasn’t been seen before.
Focus this time is on adolescents whose domestic lives are beyond screwed up. Set in the central California town of Visalia, action moves from the startling violence of the opening to narrator Shawn (James Bullard) performing extensive oral favors on pretty blond housewife Rhonda (Maeve Quinlan), while her youngest daughter is plunked in front of the TV watching thonged models. Claude (Stephen Jasso) lives in miserable terror of his hulking alcoholic, unemployed dad (Wade Andrew Williams), who thinks nothing of stomping on his beloved skateboard and threatening him physically.
Rounding out the collection of male misfits is Tate (James Ransome), a tall, skinny boy whose grandparents are doing their mild-mannered best to raise him, even though that’s not nearly good enough. It’s Ransome who gets to perform a solo rendition of “In the Realm of the Senses” before doing what it took two Menendez brothers to do.
Most prominent girl is Peaches (Tiffany Limos), a superficially sweet and demure creature who looks just like her late mother and is therefore rather too tenderly adored by her religious fanatic father (Julio Oscar Mechoso). As soon as Dad leaves the house, however, she’s tying up her b.f. (Mike Apaletegui) and riding him as if the Kentucky Derby were at stake.
There’s little skill in Korine’s morosely lifelike dialogue, while character motivation is keyed to overplaying primal urges in response to living conditions that, but for one, are more pathetic than palpably unbearable. Exception involves Claude, whose pregnant mother (Amanda Plummer) is indifferent and whose father is an over-the-top caricature of an abusive parent who takes out his own frustrations on a defenseless kid.
The father’s desperate cry upon reaching rock bottom — “Nobody loves me!” — sums up the essential dilemma faced by all the characters to varying degrees, and viewers who can wade through all the foreground sordidness and connect to the characters’ humanity based on their need will no doubt find the film a sincere and powerful account of damaged lives.
The true nature of the film, however, is summed up by the scene in which the father stumbles into Claude’s bedroom to utter his lament. At first it looks as though he’s just going to fall asleep next to his son, and this would have been enough to convey the desired message of intimacy desired but thwarted. But, no, the filmmakers, in their relentless urge to always go all the way and point up how beastly people can be, insist upon having the father attempt to force himself sexually on Claude, who wakes up and reacts violently before matters go too far.
Although pic is loaded with fully exposed sexual encounters and convincing simulations, it appears to stop short of actual penetration. Visually, the film is quite lovely. These days, one expects such a gritty tale to be predictably shot handheld and digitally, but Lachman, credited as sharing both directorial and lensing duties with Clark, keeps the camera steady and the events bathed in the light of heightened naturalism that he states was influenced by ’60s Eastern European cinema.
Thesping is nothing if not game across the board.
