Be Kind Rewind (2008)

THE BIGGEST MOVIES OF ALL TIME JUST GOT A LITTLE MAKEOVER.

Despite the huge hiatus I took from this already enormous project, I think it should be pretty damn obvious at this point that movies mean a lot to me. If they didn’t, I don’t think I’d be even remotely close to the person I am today, let alone attempting to review every film I own one by one on the Internet. I love movies, and so I especially like it when a film comes out that so clearly comes from that same place in the filmmaker. Michel Gondry is one of those filmmakers that can do this. Idiosyncratic, quirky, absurd and possessed of a unique visual style, Gondry looked back to the films of the past to tell a story of what they mean to people and how they can bring them together through the acts of communal memory.

In Passaic, New Jersey, Elroy Fletcher (Danny Glover) runs a video rental store in a condemned building he claims was the birthplace of jazz legend Fats Waller. Facing foreclosure, Fletcher goes on a business venture, leaving his foster son Mike (Mos Def) in charge of the store. However, when Mike’s friend Jerry (Jack Black) tries to sabotage a nearby power station and becomes magnetised, he inadvertently erases every tape in the store. Mike and Jerry quickly hatch a plan to hide the disaster by making homemade versions of every title to rent and save the store. With help from the local community, their films develop a cult following.

When Gondry first talked to Jack Black about the project, specifically the premise of two friends who accidentally erase all the tapes in a video rental store and have to quickly make up new versions themselves, Black assumed that it was to be a period piece, set in the 70s or 80s. Gondry corrected him that it would be set today, that it would be a video rental store that, now in a world of DVD players and digital playback, was now finally on its way out. Right away, there is a rather wistful sadness to this idea. That this store, its name of Be Kind Rewind now being something that's redundant in this modern day, has held on for way longer than it really should have and is now on the verge of collapse. This point is actually quite literally made, since the entire building itself is due to be condemned, failing to meet some of the most basic requirements for safety and public use. Progress is coming, whether they want it or not.

The store’s owner, Mr. Fletcher, is clearly someone who could never really hack it in a fast-paced world. Early in the film, whilst having lunch with Mike and Jerry, they ask him why he was never married. He answers, “Well, the common story is, the girl that you was gonna ask, you waited too long to ask. She went on to marry somebody else and then you can’t find anybody to compare to her. So, what happens? You get old.” And old itself has a sort of double meaning here, too. Yes, Mr. Fletcher has indeed got old and is now too far gone to catch up, but the force of progress that threatens to oust him and end his business comes in the form of a neighbourhood gentrification project, which plans to clean up the rundown area and rename it Olde Passaic. Mr. Fletcher wants to keep his home and his business, but he needs time to do it.

His foster son Mike (I say foster son, though I’m not really entirely sure as to what the relationship actually is between the two, but it seems the most likely) also wants to hold on to the old neighbourhood, as opposed to the Olde neighbourhood, for a few reasons. Like Mr. Fletcher, he wants to keep things the way they are. He wants Mr. Fletcher to be happy. And he likes the neighbourhood, though when pressed he has kind of a tough time giving reasons as to why. When he and Jerry argue about it, both have their viewpoints on Passaic.

            Jerry: Mike, you have zero ambition.

            Mike: What?

Jerry: That’s your problem. You’re gonna be stuck in this dump

for the rest of your life. Good night.

            Mike: What? What? What’s a dump? What’s a dump? My shop

is a dump? You live in a junkyard.

Jerry: Not just the store… this whole city is a swamp.

            Mike: It’s a swamp now?

Jerry: Yeah, a dump swamp. When you get stuck here, you’re

stuck for life. Come on, Mike, what is so great about this town? Huh?

            Mike: … the people.

            Jerry: The people? You’re gonna make me cry. The people. The

only reason there’s anybody here is because they have nowhere to go.

Perhaps Jerry’s less positive outlook can be forgiven. At least Mike has reasons to hold some affection for his neighbourhood. He grew up here, has something of a life, albeit not a particularly good one if we’re honest. And he’s proud to have lived in the very building in which jazz great Fats Waller was born. It’s the story that Mr. Fletcher has told him since he was young, and is the story that we are told right at the start of the film, that Harlem wasn’t the capital of the jazz scene back in the day; Passaic was. How can you not want to hold on to such an important part of history when it’s so close to you? That’s why he tries to paint a mural of Fats beneath an overpass, to give the people of the neighbourhood something to look to and in which they can take some level of pride.

However, with Jerry, he has comparatively even less than Mike. Jerry does live in a junkyard, in a trailer, right next to a power station. Worse still, he believes that microwaves from the power station are causing his brains and the brains of everyone else to become affected, which is all part of a government conspiracy to alter behaviour. To buy things, to accept things… yeah, he’s a little strange. And people do dismiss him as the paranoid oddball for his strangeness. The local cops even make something of a joke of visiting his trailer in the night, taking turns knocking on his walls, claiming to be from the government, that the black helicopters are here and such… but Jerry has a plan: sabotage.

When Mr. Fletcher leaves town to go to a Fats Waller remembrance ceremony, leaving Mike in charge, Jerry enlists Mike in his plan to scale the fence of the power station and destroy it by swinging a grappling hook onto it and……. well, that’s actually it. Jerry thinks that should be enough to stop the microwaves from controlling everyone, somehow. Mike initially declines, but goes along anyway (it’s kind of plot hole, but not a particularly major one). However, halfway through the mission, Mike gets cold feet about the plan and abandons Jerry and takes off. Jerry stays to follow through, but in a moment that you’d think could only happen in films from the 80s, the power station fights back and sabotages Jerry.

The next morning, when Jerry visits the store to tell Mike about the previous night, Jerry gets in an argument with a customer when he keeps re-arranging all the tapes in the store. It’s not until a little later that we find out that this is the moment when Jerry, having been magnetised by the attempted sabotage, has inadvertently erased every single tape in the store. After an initial period of worry, and under the threat that Mr. Fletcher will be told how poorly Mike is coping, he has an idea. Grabbing a VHS camera and the blank tape of Ghostbusters, he announces to Jerry, “I’m Bill Murray, you’re everyone else.” They are going to personally remake every title in the store, using themselves as cast and crew, from memory, thus keeping the store in business.

Yes, the premise is bizarre as all hell, but don’t you just love that? For the potential downer that Be Kind Rewind could become (the end of VHS, for these people, for this neighbourhood), there is an absurd whimsy and warmth about the whole thing that is incredibly charming. Instead of succumbing to the inevitable, these two guys fight back, armed with a camera and some of the most ridiculous props and costumes available. And as they go, their notoriety escalates. They become so famous that people from all across the state come to see what they’ve made, like their 20-minute version of Ghostbusters featuring a ginger cat as Zuul and proton beams made of Christmas tinsel; their remake of Boyz n’ the Hood in which gunshots result in a literal pizza on the ground standing in for blood; or their take on RoboCop, where the titular character is made entirely of autoyard scrap.

Not only do Mike and Jerry become moderately famous in the city, but the community comes together to help them make more films, effectively becoming an enormous production crew and repertory company. Everyone bands together to make new versions of these films, but all in the uniquely zero-budget way they called “Sweded”.

It’s in this nature of Sweding that we see some of the great tricks of what is effectively guerrilla filmmaking, many of which Michel Gondry used himself growing up. They utilise depth of field and perspective tricks to create a sense of scale between a giant Jack Black-shaped King Kong and the screaming woman he snatches through a window; they flip the camera to negative in order to film night shots during the day; and they use cheap scale models for scenes like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man attacking New York. It’s such a wonderful combination of crass cheapness and incredibly imaginative technique. What’s even better are some of the titles they claim to have Sweded, either from what is seen on shelves or are mentioned during filming montages. Return of the King is one such title that would be absolutely hilarious to see as rendered by three people using a budget of about $20 and filmed in New Jersey. On the other end of the scale is mentioned a Sweded version of Harmony Korine’s Gummo, which, if you’re familiar with that film, proposes an idea of such absurdity since Gummo is as close to the real world equivalent of Sweding films as it’s possible to get. (Harmony Korine even outdid that in 2009 when he made Trash Humpers, a film made entirely on VHS and edited using two VCRs instead of actual editing equipment.) There is even a shot in Be Kind Rewind of genuinely impressive staging in which we are presented with a montage of the films being made, but it is actually one single, uninterrupted shot, with everyone moving from set-piece to set-piece, taking in films as diverse as King Kong, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Men in Black and Carrie. It’s a great shot.

Eventually, things do start to catch up with the Be Kind Rewind crew, with representatives of movie studios looking to enforce copyright law showing up to end their business. It’s here once again that the idea of progress, or at least a contrary sense of progress, seems to enter the film. Even though what they are doing is a violation of copyright law, the films that they make are helping them to progress and make some headway in saving their business, and also fostering a sense of community. Indeed, what they are doing can be found on the Internet and in most film schools, with students remaking scenes and sometimes whole movies in order to develop and progress their skills as filmmakers (I once happened upon a short piece of film on an edit suite in which some students were re-enacting a scene from Twilight… it was pretty funny). And this idea of creativity being derived, borrowed, flat-out stolen from what has gone before has been acknowledged by some great innovators in the world of art. Pablo Picasso famously said that, “good artists copy; great artists steal” and that, “every act of creation is an act of destruction”. Indeed, the history of creating new art or technology or science is a history of taking what has come before and reworking it into something else, something new. That the studios go after the Be Kind Rewind crew is as much an act of desperation that their product will be devalued as it is the defence of intellectual property. In a weird way, Gondry's film that revolves around the anachronism of VHS being overtaken by the new technology of DVD, and those that fight to save it, finds its parallel in the studio executives (like those who try to shut down this small movement) who find themselves on the line of being ousted by the surge of independent filmmakers who rise thanks to the new media opportunities of the Internet and digital distribution... hell of a thing, that.

This idea of taking from the past and turning it into what you want or need it to be is addressed directly in the film when, after the visit from the studio reps ends their Sweding run, the community band together for a last chance at saving the neighbourhood by making something new. It’s no longer about the community banding together over the shared love of other films. Now, it’s about keeping that community together by creating something that speaks for them all. As Jerry says, “We can make any movie we want… they can’t sue us if we’re making new ones.” And the story they choose is simple… a history of Fats Waller’s life as lived in Passaic. They want to tell the story of someone who Mr. Fletcher called “a happy man.”

Given that the film is as much as ode to community as it is to film, Michel Gondry embraced the real community of Passaic as much as he could. Some roles were given to real residents of the area. Pretty much every extra you see was local to the area they were shooting. And the final shot that assembles the community at large is a genuinely heart-warming sight. In making a film about a community coming together, Gondry really did bring a community together.

Be Kind Rewind may require you to screw on something of a whimsical head at certain moments (if you can take Jerry’s attempted sabotage of the power plant as the hilarious throwback that it is, you’ll be fine), but it is a truly warm and charming film, with a deep affection for film, for music, for people. Everyone is great, from Mos Def and Jack Black’s odd double act to the delightful Melonie Diaz to the slightly spaced out kookiness of Mia Farrow. In this film, Gondry has created something of sincerity and obvious love, and it is most certainly worth the watch.

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)

HE'S BACK, HE'S EVEN BIGGER AND HE'S UP FOR IT!

Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery was a pretty big deal. Although its theatrical take is generally regarded as modest (apparently making $68 million from a $16 million budget is modest), it found even greater success on the rental market, and its cultural impact was massive. For those of you who weren’t there for it, after the film came out you couldn’t turn a corner without someone firing off one of the dozens of catchphrases at you. It was huge. Given that this was the case, a sequel was guaranteed to arrive, giving the world another crack at the abundantly toothy spy. Two years after the first, that sequel arrived – Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.

Austin Powers (Mike Myers) returns to action after he discovers his wife Vanessa Kensington (Elizabeth Hurley) is a fem-bot, created by Dr. Evil (Mike Myers) to assassinate him. When Powers survives, Dr. Evil travels back in time to 1969 and he steals Austin’s Mojo. Travelling back to 1969, Austin teams up with CIA agent Felicity Shagwell (Heather Graham) to recover Austin’s mojo and stop Dr. Evil from wiping out Washington DC with a moon-based laser gun.

By now, we’re all aware of the rules regarding sequel escalation, where the follow-up to a successful film has to be bigger, give more, be more outrageous. Hell, just look at the tagline up there. That is most definitely the case with The Spy Who Shagged Me, in which even the title is allowed to be more risqué. The title itself caused something of a stir in the build up to the film’s release. Adverts and posters were somewhat censored, hoping to avoid offence at the carnal suggestion. It was also changed in various countries, some looking to downplay or alter the meaning (Finland’s version translated as The Spy Who Bumped Me), whilst some seemed to drop the pretence altogether (Norway’s version translated as The Spy Who Ejaculated on Me). Regardless, it’s a pretty obvious indication that the film was given a freer hand to try and recapture the old magic.

The inspiration for the film still comes from the various Bond movie's tropes and clichés, all geared towards making the film bigger and wackier. Dr. Evil now has a base inside a volcano, as well as a secret base on the Moon. He now also has a huge destructive laser cannon, with which he plans to hold the world to ransom once more. As with the first film, there are other sources for comedy here. For example, a highly suggestive game of chess parodies the one from the original 1968 film The Thomas Crown Affair. Also, a number of jokes refer directly to Star Wars (Death Star, Dr. Evil’s claim that he is Austin’s father, some design elements of the Moon base). All of these shows a distinct eye not just for the 60s era in which the film is predominantly set, but also for the year of the film’s release. The Thomas Crown Affair was remade and released in 1999, being released two months after The Spy Who Shagged Me. Also, the much-anticipated Star Wars prequel The Phantom Menace got its release in 1999, leading to many publicity jokes. One of the trailers announced, “If you only see one movie this summer, see Star Wars. But if you see two movies, see Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.” Myers clearly still shows some talent for parody.

The actual film itself does, if we’re honest, suffer a little bit from this newfound licence to be bigger. The introduction of time travel, which will allow Austin to travel back to the 60s, is always a thorny thing to introduce, simply because it can automatically destroy the logic of the film. Also, it can feel a bit cynical to use it at times (“What do we do to make this new film better?…… uh, time travel?...... Okay.”). Myers and co. are obviously aware of this, with Austin trying to follow the potential paradoxes offered before Basil Exposition tells him not to think about it, and then informs the audience to do the same. Yes, they know that pretty much none of what we’re about to see makes any sense, but they want you to just enjoy the ride. I’m often very wary of films that do this, but if it’s a fun ride, then I can get over it.

New things to come from this film are the introduction of three new characters. Taking the place of Miss Kensington as Austin’s partner is Felicity Shagwell, played by Heather Graham. Given the respect Austin developed for monogamy in the first film, as well as him being Mojo-jacked, it's a good reversal of relationship as Felicity is everything that Vanessa wasn’t. She’s as highly-sexed as Austin, and always ready for a proverbial tumble. In fact, she introduces herself as Felicity Shagwell, “Shagwell by name, shag very well by reputation.” Another new face is Dr. Evil’s clone, Mini Me, played by Verne Troyer. Mini Me is another fine comic creation from Myers, with the two playing of each other very well, and serves to appropriately further disrupt the relationship between Dr. Evil and his son Scott, which continues to be strained (a great scene at the beginning has both of them appear on an episode of Jerry Springer, which inevitably ends in a massive fight). The third is another character that Myers plays himself, the enormous and appropriately named Fat Bastard, a disgruntled Scots Guard who works for Dr. Evil. As much as Myers is an anglophile, he is also rather obsessed with Scotland. As such, Scottish characters have a way of surfacing fairly regularly in his work (So I Married an Ax Murder, Shreck). Fat Bastard is a grotesque individual, weighing a metric tonne and claims to eat babies, hence some carnivorous intentions towards Mini Me.

Everyone in the cast does well, with Myers giving just as much to his roles here as he did the first one. Heather Graham is a bit more convincing than Liz Hurley was in her role, but there are still moments that you see her drop character. There is a great turn from Rob Lowe, who returns here in a more substantial part, as Number Two circa 1969. Effectively playing a young Robert Wagner, he gets everything right, from the walk to the precise timbre of Wagner’s voice, though he still makes it his own.

The film itself is still a lot of fun, and the jokes still fly with a great regularity. The two sequences where people describe Dr. Evil’s rocket ship (“What is that? It looks just like an enormous... Wang! Pay attention.... Sorry, I was distracted by that giant flying... Willie!... Yeah?... What’s that?... Well, that looks like a huge... Johnson!... Yes, sir?”) is very funny, even though you feel like it shouldn’t. The moment with Dr. Evil losing control of his chair is great, as is his Mojo-fuelled seduction of Frau Farbissina.

However, there is a little less of the wit that shone through the original. There isn’t really anything like the scenes exploring the life of an evil henchman. Also, many of the jokes here are repeats of the originals, with just a slight tweak to make them work. It’s rather splitting hairs to come down against them, but it’s still indicative of a less intelligent take on the genre. Other jokes rely on more crude humour, such as the tent scene (although that’s still pretty funny.) or the whole character of Fat Bastard. The Spy Who Shagged Me seems to have lowered its standards a bit in order to capitalise on having a wider audience than the first film. As it is, it worked. This film made more money in the first weekend than its predecessor did in total, seeing it through to a final take that was over four times that of the last one. That’s some pretty good business.

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me is about as funny as the original, although it does lack much of the cleverness that showed up in the first film, and the story isn’t as tight as it should be (something most time travel films must deal with). Nevertheless, there is still a lot of fun to be had, with more parodic swings at the spy genre, new absurd comic creations and a freer sense of whimsy about it. I’d rather it held to the shrewdness of the first, but it’s still some fine entertainment.

Appaloosa (2008)

FEELINGS GET YOU KILLED

In the mid to late 2000s, there was something of a revival of western films, like Seraphim Falls, 3:10 to Yuma, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. It seemed like the classic American movie genre had returned for the beginning of the new Century. One of the quieter releases to gets its release around the time was the second directorial effort from actor Ed Harris, following his debut Pollock in 2000. Reuniting with his A History of Violence co-star, Viggo Mortensen, Harris co-wrote, directed and starred in an adaptation of Robert B. Parker’s novel Appaloosa.

Virgil Cole (Ed Harris) and Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen) make their living as sheriffs-for-hire, taking on another job in the town of Appaloosa, as marshal and deputy. Their job is to face down the gang of the powerful rancher Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons), who killed the last marshal and his two deputies. Their job is complicated slightly when Allison French (Renée Zellweger) arrives in town and starts on a quick romance with Virgil.

There are a few different types of plot available to the maker of westerns. Some films are about the struggle of settlers trying to push through the harsh landscape to find land of their own. Some films are stories vengeance, with one determined gunslinger heading out take their revenge on those that wronged them in some way. Appaloosa is an example of what is generally called the ‘Evil Rancher’ story. The town itself is in such a remote area that the only way it survives is through the business brought by the wealthy rancher, whose cattle trade becomes the primary lifeblood of the town’s economy. If not for them, the town would be abandoned and the residents would have to start again from scratch somewhere else. However, precisely because of this enviable position of power, the rancher figure believes that he owns the town and can do whatever he wants in it, a feeling that is shared by those who work for him. Before you know it, the town is plunged into a state of fear, with the ranch-hands getting drunk, assaulting people, shooting up the saloon and treating the town and its citizens like a plaything. Law ceases to exist, either because the rancher killed him or put him on payroll. Under such circumstances, the townspeople must look for outside help, bring in someone that can stand up to the rancher and clean up the town. This is precisely where Appaloosa begins, with Jeremy Irons acting as the Evil Rancher and Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen the men hired to restore order to the town. For the most part, it’s pretty standard stuff.

In such a case, when the familiarities with plot may become a burden, it’s down to the characters that populate the script that make all the difference… and Appaloosa has some fine characters going. Virgil Cole is the man hired as marshal, the primary force of law. Though he has a liking for things of a more refined nature, he’s not exactly a smart man, often trying to use fancy words, but stumbling on their pronunciation or meaning. Clearly, he has an appreciation for things of a more sophisticated measure, even tries to understand them, but knows that they will always be just beyond his reach. His strength lies in his ability to set aside any form of erudite pursuit in order to do the dirty work of killing people. Emotionality is not really something he’s good at. In fact, there’s evidence that he is rather poor at keeping them in check, such as his whirlwind romance with Allison, which borders on the adolescent, or when he beats down a drunk in the saloon for speaking in too vulgar a manner. Nevertheless, he believes in the law, which is why he’s so good at bringing it to the lawless.

Everett Hitch is Virgil’s long-time friend, and his partner in crime-stopping. Hitch is much smarter than Virgil, more in control of his emotions, and a better hand with a gun. It’s Hitch who helps Virgil with his poor vocabulary, and backs him up when trouble rides into town. What stops Hitch from being the frontman of this duo is that he is less resolute in his belief in law. He knows that not everything is black and white, that there are shades of grey in the mix, that the law is only a solid as the man that upholds it, and it’s all precisely because he’s much smarter than Virgil. This is why he needs Virgil to lead him, because, even though he has his morals, without that extra guiding hand, he’s no better than your average lawless gun-for-hire.

Randall Bragg is a nasty piece of work. He’s just as smart as Hitch, and just as ruthless as Virgil, and has friends in some incredibly high places. It’s these very qualities that have seen him become the successful rancher. With his financial hold on the town, and his influence his prominent circles, he knows he need exert only a little force to get what he wants. Allison French is perhaps the most interesting character, although to explain why would be to give away too much about her and the relationships of all those above. All I will say is this – she is a survivor.

The interaction between these characters, and others, is all a matter of delicate subtlety, and the actors all play it out with an understatement that matches the tone of the script. Harris and Mortensen particularly play well off each other, showing the kind of easy relationship that Virgil and Hitch would have spent years developing. Theirs is not a friendship built on long conversations about life, but of a simple, quiet understanding of each other’s habits and ways.

There is also an interesting consideration within the film as a political text. Within the western genre in general, there is often an association made between the law, and those represent it, and the United States as a country. This is, after all, the quintessential American genre, and such associations helped garner John Wayne the nickname of ‘The Ultimate American’. It’s a political version of the standard civilisation versus wilderness measure, civilisation being the law and, thus, America. Now, with such a notion in mind, look at the representation of law in this film. Virgil is not particularly smart and he’s hot-tempered, but he’s a decisive man of action and resolute moral standing, not to mention with a great faith in his partner. Hitch is equally trusting of his partner, but he’s also smarter than him and less likely to act in the best interests of the law with his influence. Can we not perhaps consider this some sort of meditation on the potentially partisan nature of the American government? With one as Republican, the other as Democrat? It would seem to be a rather hopeful vision of sorts, since the two can co-exist and act as a force for justice and good. If it’s intentional, it’s intriguing and wonderfully noted; if it’s accidental, it’s still interesting.

However, there is a problem within the film… I did not particularly care for Appaloosa, mainly because it’s kind of a waste. It’s got a great cast, and the characters are very interesting, but they are just not handled well by Harris the Director. There is a delicate subtlety in the writing that he is simply unable to convey on the screen, which makes it feel occasionally choppy or weak. In Harris’ vision, there are no subplots, only primary plots that greatly alter the way the film feels. It begins as two men bringing law to a lawless town, but then that just stops and becomes a romance between a man and woman, with the other guy looking on. Then that stops and the law bit comes back. The law bit plays out until it becomes a different story altogether in the wilderness… there is a distinct lack of subtlety in the direction. Harris is unable to effectively weave these stories together, so they crash into each other, passing the buck from one to the other with no grace or dexterity. Also, the point of narration occasionally shifts, which is kind of a rookie mistake. The whole film is being recounted by Hitch, as evidenced by the voice-over at the beginning and end. This works well at times, with the manner we discover the relationship between Virgil and Allison being done in a suitably low-key fashion. However, there are instances that we move away from him to Virgil. It’s not exactly the worst problem ever, but it certainly highlights the problems within the methods of storytelling being used.

Also, everything just feels so flat. There’s little sense of the atmosphere of the period setting or the surroundings. The town of Appaloosa is a small and sparse place, but it feels so hollow. It’s less a town, more of a purpose built set. And the camera always sits at such a distance from things. It could be that Harris wants to incorporate this sense of open space as a regular visual motif, or highlight the metaphorical distance between characters, but it just makes things feel too remote. Given the slightness of the work on show, in the acting and the script, we could have used a discrete closeness to the camerawork. And the editing is a might clumsy on occasion, such as when the film tries to convey the days and nights that Bragg sits in jail after he’s arrested. It’s all in the visuals, but it’s too blocky, with little care taken on transition or thought given to how one scene connects to the next.

In the end, Appaloosa could have been great, because it had so much going for it. The script was fine and subtle, the cast assembled was excellent, they all did great work, and there’s the potential for allegorical discourse within. However, the lacklustre effort from Harris behind the camera fails to evoke the proper sense of drama or tension, which makes becoming emotionally involved an effort placed entirely on the viewer. I certainly don’t mind doing my part, but you’ve got to meet me halfway.

American History X (1998)

VIOLENCE AS A WAY OF LIFE

Racism… feel the eerie chill that runs through the room when the subject is brought up. It’s an old issue, but still holds all of the power to antagonise and divide today. Some people believe it’s a simple issue of perception; others believe it to be one of, if not The most complex and thorny subject in society. It’s a heavy topic and, in the tradition of the artist’s need to explore the many problems of society, it has been the focus of so many works, from novels to films to music to painting to sculpture… like I say, it’s a big one. In 1998, another film was released to explore this subject: American History X.

A brutal skinhead named Derek Vinyard (Edward Norton) is tried and sent to prison for the murder of two black men who tried to steal his truck. When he gets paroled three years later, Derek emerges reformed, but finds that his younger brother Danny (Edward Furlong), who grew up idolising his brother, is following him down the same path. Derek resolves to save his brother from the same fate.

American History X had something of a tortured birth. It was the first script from writer David McKenna and the first film for director Tony Kaye. The story has a good central conceit and Kaye certainly seemed to have an idea of, at least, how he wanted to the film to look. The problem came much later on, during the editing process. Kaye, who was editing the film himself, was taking a while to finish. New Line Cinema, who were behind the film, didn’t like his version and made several suggestions as to what they wanted from the final cut. Kaye begrudgingly then came up with a second, much shorter version of the film. New Line apparently rejected it right away and took the task of editing away from Kaye, bringing in editors Jerry Greenberg and Alan Heim (who got final credit) and Edward Norton to come up with a new version for release. Angry at this decision, Tony Kaye disowned the film and tried to have his name taken off of the project. However, because he openly spoke about his reasons for doing so in Variety, he violated the rules of the Director’s Guild of America and was not allowed to remove his name. Kaye then sued both the DGA and New Line for violation of his right to free speech. Pretty messed up, isn’t it?

I suspect the reason that Kaye was taking so long to come up with his best edit of the film was because he saw a problem with it that he was trying his best to cover, which pretty much seems to exist at the scripting stage. In the chronology presented by the film, Derek starts off as a teenager in high school, intelligent but naïve. We see that the beginnings of his hatred, or at least mistrust, of people of other races rests with what his dad taught him at the dinner table. Derek’s father was clearly a big part of his life, as he alludes to how important he was to him. However, we really only have this one scene to show what the father is like and how that inevitably leads to Derek becoming the skinhead we meet at the film’s opening. It does make a kind of sense, but it still seems like quite a leap, especially since this is the only time we see the father. We already know that he was killed when he was shot trying to put out a fire in black neighbourhood, which Derek immediately takes as being clear evidence that black people have no respect for law, property or life. A couple more scenes would perhaps have helped sell this trajectory more, but as it is, it’s a lot to hang on a single scene.

Also, there is a constant shift in narrative perspective, though this is made easier to handle due to Kaye’s decision to film past events in black and white and present events in colour. Most of the film is told in flashback, narrated by Danny as he tries to write a paper on his brother. He recounts the big moments that he was present for in Derek’s growth into the skinhead leader, which serve for some powerful scenes. However, because all we can see of the past is what Danny saw, we don’t get answers for some questions that would have been very interesting. For example, how did Derek fall in with Cameron Alexander (Stacy Keach), the man who fed him the white supremacist stuff, to begin with? This is a hugely significant moment of Derek’s life and incredibly important to our understanding of his development, but since Danny was not privy to this, neither are we. It just happens. Even then, there are some slight holes in this point of narration, such as his mother talking to Murray outside their home. Then we have the moments of the present, which are free of narrative constriction, so we can go where we want, follow whomever we want. Under these conditions, we split our time mainly between Derek and Danny, with the occasional deviation into glimpses of other characters. Then there is a second, more extended flashback sequence from Derek, telling Danny about his time in prison. So, within the film, there are three shifts in perspective. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does leave the whole feeling a bit disjointed.

Ultimately, the problem with the script is that it tries to do too much. It wants to open a debate on racial politics, it wants to meditate on the nature of hatred, it wants to show the brutal actions and the more brutal consequences of these characters, it wants to scare, it wants to educate, it wants to offer a small glimmer of hope… the script simply can’t do all of these things in a concise and erudite manner. As I said, I think that’s what Tony Kaye was trying to compensate for in the editing suite. He saw that some scenes were not really carrying the full impact that they should have, and tried to work around it. Not that the edit we see is without problems. Often, characters are ignored when you really feel they would have had something to say. For example, there’s the scene where the Vinyard family are at the dinner table and Derek’s father is telling him not to swallow all of the “affirmative black-tion bullshit”. This scene seems to exist only for Derek and his father… but the rest of the family are present. Don’t they have any thoughts on this? We know Davina, Derek’s sister, would disagree, but she stays silent. There isn’t even a shot of her during all this. Why? Again, this seems like the kind of thing that results from a script that hasn’t been properly conceived and a direction that hasn’t been properly focused. Saying that, there is report that part of Norton’s input in the editing process was to give himself more screen time, which could also explain such a problem.

So, yes, I do think that there some problems with the film on a basic level of conception, but this is all stuff that speaks to, for lack of a better way of putting it, my filmic intellect. If I ignore the problems of narrative or plot, what does the film do on an emotional level? It’s a very emotive subject, so it would be foolish to ignore the impact that emotion has. I find the film very disquieting and unsettling, but I say that in a good way. The film may seem more like a string of scenes on some occasions, but these scenes do have power to them. This is pretty much thanks to some excellent performances onscreen. Edward Furlong often gets relegated to simply watching events happen, being that he is the conduit for the viewer, but he does carry himself well in the role. He shows that Danny isn’t really a believer in all of this neo-Nazi crap, but goes along with it because it gives him a sense of being and a social life, not to mention because it makes him feel closer to his brother, whom he clearly admires. Ethan Suplee’s Seth is a repulsive individual, offensive in almost every aspect, even to his own friends, who put up with him only because he’s so intimidating. Avery Brooks is a firm and dignified presence in the film as Sweeney, one of the few people willing to meet Derek and engage with his ideals. Guy Torry gets overlooked a lot, but his is a rather important role. His Lamont is Derek’s first real interaction with a black person as equals, which only happens because Lamont wins him over with humour. If he wasn’t convincing, there would be a real weak spot to Derek’s story. Beverly D’Angelo also gets a rather overlooked show in the film, but is rather touching as Derek’s much put-upon mother. However, this film belongs to Edward Norton. He’s a force in this film, both emotional and physical. He comfortably carries the early Derek’s slightly unsure teenage self; through to his rather scary incarnation as an instigator of hate (the look of pride on his face after he murders two people is very unsettling); and finally to his reformed and repentant self, trying to severe his connections to his past life for the good of his family.

American History X is a good, but flawed film, which holds some great performances, especially from Norton. However, there is something that stands in the way of it being the really great film that you know it wants to be. There are small technical issues with some of the camerawork, but the structure of the film remains the biggest the obstacle to overcome, which sees the final message maybe a little hard to nail down. Nevertheless, I do like the film. It’s provocative and deeply unsettling and doesn’t really offer a clean conclusion. I’m not sure it makes its point as powerfully as it wants to, but it does at least try.

Above the Rim (1994)

THE HARDEST PART OF WINNING IS CHOOSING SIDES
In the early part of the 90s, there was a run of inner-city dramas, thanks mainly to Spike Lee leading the way through the 80s. As such, there was now a market for films like Menace II Society, Boyz n the Hood, New Jack City, Sugar Hill, Friday and so on. There were some common tropes and themes in these movies, amongst the most common being basketball, crime and the desire to make it out of the hood. For Jeff Pollack’s 1994 debut as director and co-writer, he took on these elements and gave us Above the Rim.

Kyle (Duane Martin) is a promising young basketball star looking to use his talent to make to the big leagues, but his quick temper often gets in the way. Looking for a shortcut, he falls in with Birdie (Tupac Shakur), a local drug dealer who wants Kyle’s talent to win him money. Meanwhile, Birdie’s big brother Shep (Leon), a troubled former basketball star now employed as a security guard, tries to keep Kyle on the right track.

The strongest thing that this film has going for it is its cast. There isn’t really a poor player there, and collectively they raise the game of the whole movie. Duane Martin convinces as the brash and arrogant, but talented young Kyle; Leon’s onscreen presence raises what could have been a rather bland role to another level; and Tupac Shakur, who has proved his worth as an actor on more than one occasion, brings a needed edge to Birdie… even if it’s not exactly a stretch for him to play a criminal thug.

Decent work comes from the supporting cast, too. Marlon Wayans does funny and pitiful as only he can; Wood Harris’ Motaw is a suitably threatening figure as Birdie’s right hand man; Bernie Mac makes a decent impression, even if his character is really only there to be abused; and Tonya Pinkins is solid as Kyle’s mother.

Probably the strongest aspect to the film, though, is the soundtrack. It may put off some who don't care for rap or hip hop, but it's an incredibly strong collection of work and probably amongst the best soundtracks of the 90s. If you're old enough to remember when MTV actually played music, it's pretty much a guarantee you will have heard 'Regulate', the moody song of gangland life from Warren G and Nate Dog. The soundtrack is unquestionably better than the film it's attached to.

For the good points to be had in Above the Rim, there are also some pretty bad points. The script is rife with cliché, so you pretty much always know where each scene is going to go. As such, relationships are not subject to any great surprises either.

Also, there are some technical issues throughout, primarily with sound, so the dialogue in some scenes is difficult to hear, such as the opening sequence or anytime we’re in Birdie’s club. As it is though, these can be mostly chalked up to the relative inexperience of Pollack as a writer and director, the kind of thing that should get better over time.

Perhaps the biggest problem in the film is the manner in which everything gets tied up in the end. Kyle’s hot-headed ways seem to resolve themselves a little too quickly, as does Shep’s difficulty with his past, so it feels like the filmmakers had maybe become a little impatient to get things over with. Also, the use of violence as a way of resolving issues is a little unsettling, which again likely comes from the lack of a real ending. If there had just been an extra 15 or 20 minutes to allow things to play out in a more considered manner, it may have felt a bit more satisfying.

Above the Rim is a decent enough flick. The cast is strong, the energy’s pretty good and the basketball scenes are done well. It does have more than its fair share of clichés going, there’s the odd misstep on the technical side of things and it all feels a little rushed to end. However, it does manage to be a rather effective little basketball movie. It’s not for everyone, but if this is your kind of thing, check it out.