Raging Bull

A sporting biopic unlike any other, Martin Scorsese’s astonishing masterpiece Raging Bull (1980) is surely one of the greatest cinematic achievements of all time. Although many rightly claim it to be the greatest sports movie of all time, Raging Bull’s praise should not merely be confined to one genre, as it is unquestionably one of the finest pieces ever committed to film.

Charting the incredible rise and fall of middleweight boxer Jake La Motta Raging Bull remains absolutely unflinching in its depiction of this complex, brutal and ultimately unique individual. From his early years as a young boxer of enormous potential, through his destructive and erratic relationships with his wife and brother/manager, and eventually his latter years as a seedy club owner and stand up comedian, Scorsese provides a painfully honest, yet remarkably beautiful depiction of each and every aspect of La Motta’s professional and personal life.

While it may seem as though heaping superlatives upon a film already assured of such magnitude and critical acclaim as Raging Bull is hardly an original approach to its scrutiny, I find it virtually impossible to find even a single fault in this most perfect of films. Rarely does one encounter a movie in which each of its components are so expertly woven together to create such a perfectly cohesive whole.

Arguably the most obvious of these components is Robert De Niro’s performance of La Motta, as he takes his famous methodical approach to unrivalled extremes. Aside from the well documented commitment De Niro provided with regards to the film’s fight scenes - sparring and training with La so extensively as to supposedly render him good enough to turn pro – the level of intensity brought to the character must rank alongside, in my view, his all time greatest performance as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976). His portrayal of La Motta’s decline and psychological disintegration can often be painful to watch; the scene in which we see him in a jail cell weeping whilst punching and slamming his head into a brick wall being one of the film’s most violently powerful moments. 

However, it is not just De Niro that is on fine form; similarly brilliant in his performances is Joe Pesci as Joey, La Motta’s brother and manager. The loving, yet intensely strained relationship between the two is genuinely moving.  For an example of just how good these two are on screen together, one need look no further than the famous confrontation scene in which Jake accuses Joey of having an affair with his wife. With each and every second that passes, the tension becomes more and more unbearable; rivalling the more physically intense fight scenes in terms of sheer emotional conflict. 

Equal to the supreme performances on offer is Scorsese’s breathtaking direction. From the opening slow-mo sequence of La Motta pacing and bouncing around a smoke filled boxing ring, the sense of impending danger is raised immediately to dizzying heights. Scorsese runs with this tone and then amplifies it with each of the film’s explosive fight scenes. The heightened sense of savage realism in these moments make for a viewing experience unrivalled by any other boxing movie; placing the camera and the audience inside the ring rather than outside, creating a tone of claustrophobia and offering no escape from the action taking place.

As proven with their subsequent works together - Goodfellas (1990) and Casino (1995) - when the formidable talents of Scorsese, De Niro and Pesci combine, the results are never short of impeccable. Yet, for me, Raging Bull’s ground-breaking and distinctive approach to an often formulaic genre results in this trio’s greatest success. A genuine work of genius.

Brighton Rock

The British gangster genre is one of which I have never afforded much time. A genre, which, for the most part, has developed an unforgivably lazy attitude towards each and every aspect of filmmaking. Whilst America has generally led the way in regards to gangster movies with obvious classics such as The Godfather trilogy, Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990) and Casino (Martin Scorsese, 1995) the UK has conjured up Guy Ritchie; a director of such dire ineptitude as to have single-handedly destroyed the genre by steeping his films in a world of pantomime villains and wholly insufferable cockney geezers. Sadly, due to the inexplicable box office success to have met some of these abominations, films of this ilk appear to have set the template for the genre as a whole, leaving masterpieces such as Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast (2000)much maligned and unjustly forgotten. 

On watching John Boulton’s original Brighton Rock (1947) the level of the genre’s decline was made even more apparent. The film follows Pinkie Brown (Richard Attenborough), a 

young gangster running a protection racket at a race course in Brighton. After he and his gang have a rival mobster murdered in a way that looks like suicide, a local woman named Ida (Hermione Baddeley)becomes suspicious and sets out to discover the truth behind the mans death. On meeting a young waitress called Rose (Carol Marsh), Ida realises that the girl may be able to reveal the truth as to what really happened. The ensuing events force Pinkie into an increasingly desperate situation, as he tries to maintain his status and keep the truth from being revealed.

Aside from the thoroughly gripping storyline Brighton Rock displays an exceptional film noir aesthetic and exposition. Far from the present day cartoonish tone of films like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (Guy Ritchie, 1998) in which the characters are presented in a misguided fashion of larger than life comedy, Brighton Rock holds its veneer of brooding menace and underlying tension throughout.

This brilliant construction of dark intensity and imminent threat is embodied to perfection by the performance of Richard Attenborough, whose portrayal of Pinkie holds the film together spectacularly. His stern and, occasionally manic demeanour is not only hugely iconic, but also highly intimidating, often staring into space whilst fiercely and randomly wrapping a piece of string around his hands as if he is preparing to strangle someone with it.

The performance of Carol Marsh as Rose is also extremely impressive, providing just the right level of innocence and naivety to the character to keep the audience on her side, even as she continues to protect Pinkie in spite of his terrible crimes.

However, in spite of Brighton Rock’s numerous outstanding attributes, it is still a far from perfect piece. One particular thing which I found frustrating was the occasional moment of erratic nastiness from Pinkie. For instance, when recording a gramophone message as a present to Rose, he inexplicably rants about how he hates her and is only marrying her to secure her silence. Not only is this action extremely stupid and uncharacteristic due to the fact that he is trying so hard to keep his secret under wraps, it is also a completely pointless device to remind the audience that he’s the baddie; a fact that should be pretty obvious to anyone from the moment Attenborough first appears on screen.

Although Brighton Rock may not be quite the masterpiece I had heard and read so much about, it is still immeasurably superior to the vast majority of films belonging to the genre to have been produced in recent years. One can only hope that in the renewed interest generated by Rowan Joffe’s 2011 remake, future directors might just look back to this as their template for the next stage in the development of the British gangster flick.

Despicable Me

In an attempt to establish themselves as genuine rivals to the sublime Pixar Studios, Universal Pictures offers up its debut 3D animation in the form ofDespicable Me, directed by Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud (2010). With an output of unprecedented consistency and visual resplendence over recent years, it may seem an almost impossible task to take on the work of Pixar without conceding to the inevitable conclusion that no other studio are quite ready to compete at the present time. Just take Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich, 2010), Up (Pete Docter and Bob Peterson, 2009) and Wall-E (Andrew Stanton, 2008) as such glowing examples of what Universal are up against. With this in mind, I believe that to make such comparisons with the above-mentioned contemporary classics would be both too easy and unfair on the film in question.

Despicable Me follows the evil Gru, voiced brilliantly by Steve Carell, and his constant and usually failed attempts to become the world’s greatest criminal mastermind. Whilst trying to thwart his arch nemesis, Vector (Jason Segel), Gru adopts three innocent, young orphaned girls, in the hope that they will be able to assist him in his plan to steal a magical shrink-ray gun; therefore allowing him to shrink and steal the moon. What follows is an inevitable, yet thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining journey for Gru, as his love for his newly adopted girls begins to outweigh his desire for criminal notoriety.

One of Despicable Me’s strongest assets are the voice acting on offer. Carell, a name to usually steer me a country mile clear of anything with which he is associated, is absolutely perfect as Gru. His comically evil Russian accent is a superb accompaniment to the lead character’s appearance. Equally outstanding is the vocal acting of Russell Brand as Gru’s long-suffering inventor, Dr Nefario, providing some of the film’s funniest moments merely through the sound of his voice, without falling into the trap of overstating the performance.

The film’s visuals are also beautifully executed, with the darkness of Gru’s mansion being expertly offset to the bold, bright colours of the outside world. The appearance of Gru’s tiny workers, small yellow creatures in dungarees, is also one of Despicable Me’s major visual strengths, adding to the movie’s vibrant aesthetic.

Whilst the storyline is incredibly predictable from start to finish, and many of its comic set pieces highly derivative from a whole host of children’s movies throughout the years, Despicable Me is still a perfectly adequate and thoroughly entertaining family film. Although it may not be quite in the same league as many of Pixar’s latest productions, it is certainly capable of holding its own against most of the other animated family films currently being churned out by the Hollywood CGI production line. 

The Portuguese Nun

As a film that has been met with almost unanimous critical praise, I am still wondering whether it was in fact Eugene Green’s 'A Portuguese Nun'. (2009) that I painfully and, eventually, begrudgingly endured. For this is without question one of the most tedious, long-winded and utterly pretentious films I have put myself through in a very long time.
It focuses on Julie (Leonor Baldaque) a French actress who goes to Portugal to act in a film, in which she will play a nun. Throughout her stay she meets an array of different characters, yet as these encounters come and go, she remains fascinated by a nun whom she regularly sees praying. After eventually meeting the nun she is finally filled with a sense of purpose and meaning in her life.

What, in essence, could make for an interesting piece of character exploration, somehow fails to connect or engage with the viewer in any way whatsoever, descending into a well of unexpurgated monotony. This is mostly due to Green’s agonisingly slow and drawn-out approach to the film. In each and every aspect it is sluggish and lacking in spark or momentum.

Take, for instance, Green’s camera work. Moving at a snail’s pace, the camera tends to dwell for protracted periods of time on the various landscapes in which Julie inhabits. This persistent technique, whilst intended to represent the protagonist’s state of mind and draw the audience further into her world, ultimately produces an effect of slow motion; as though one is being dragged through both the scenery and proceedings.

This technique continues with the scenes of conversation between Julie and the various characters she comes into contact with during her stay. Almost every conversation or moment of interaction is conducted via a series of cuts between still shots of each characters face, very often lingering on Julie’s for so long that every time the camera focuses on her an even further sense of impending boredom is induced.

Camera work aside, it is the air of crass pretention that equally bothered me while watching 'A Portuguese Nun'. The sense of smugness that emanates through the screen is almost palpable. At times I felt as though my patience was being deliberately tested, and that the desire to simply stop watching was a result of my inability to stay engaged with Green’s minimalism rather than at his ineptitude at effective storytelling.

On reflection, I wonder if it is this fear of being regarded as stupid or incapable to engage with such faux art-house nonsense that has led to 'A Portuguese Nun' being so highly regarded by so many critics. I have tried and failed to find any genuine positives or redeeming features and my endeavours have bee completely without success. The only recommendation I can possibly offer anyone still interested in seeing A Portuguese Nun is to steer well clear!

Black Dynamite

Ever since Scary Movie (Keenan Ivory Wayans) was released back in 2000 the art of spoof has taken a brutal and savage mauling. Having set in motion a chain of unspeakably bad, not to mention painfully unfunny follow ups to the original, Wayans also paved the way for the likes of Epic Movie (Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, 2007), Meet the Spartans (Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, 2007) and Dance Flick (Damien Dante Wayans, 2009)to name but a hideous few. For this reason, I approached Scott Sanders’s Black Dynamite (2009) with more than just a hint of trepidation.    

Thankfully, to my pleasant surprise, Black Dynamite manages to buck this recent trend by showing just how good spoof comedies can still be. Set in the 1970s and taking its influence from films of the same era such as Shaft (Gordon Parks, 1971) and Black Belt Jones (Robert Clouse, 1974) the story follows Black Dynamite (Michael Jai White), a hilariously tough-talking ladies man, as he sets out to avenge the death of his brother. Armed with both a 44-Magnum and a set of nunchucks, he fights, intimidates and charms his way around town in order to find his brother’s killer. The resulting chain of events makes for one of the most brilliantly silly and sublimely funny spoofs of the decade.

Possessing a tone not too dissimilar from the classic TV show Police Squad, Black Dynamite throws any sense of subtlety aside, favouring a far more direct and farcical approach to its humour. The Kung Fu scenes in particular display the kind of deliberately awful sound dubbing and camera work that one might find in the kind of low-budget ‘blaxploitation’ films of the time, as well as the kind often found in similarly low-budget Kung Fu movies, such as Ninja Terminator (Godfrey Ho,  1985).

Michael Jai White also provides a great deal of the film’s funniest moments, playing the part of Black Dynamite with just the right amount of self-aware absurdity, whilst ensuring that the performance never becomes too broad or brings about any sense of self-parody.  

In fact, this element of perfectly poised expositon in not only the performances, but the movie as a whole, is central to its overall success. Shot in Super 16 Film and backed by a soulful, 70s soundtrack, Black Dynamite both looks and sounds thoroughly authentic, going someway to enhance the ludicrous nature of the comedy.

The script on offer is equally preposterous, providing moments of laugh out loud hilarity; the scene in which Black Dynamite and his gang attempt to decipher ‘code Kansas’, results in one of the film’s funniest routines and comedic payoffs.

In many ways, the key to Black Dynamite’s success is its deference to the spoof techniques employed by many of its unbearably poor and lazily put together contemporaries, as well as Sanders’s decision to carry the piece in a more traditional spoof direction. Through combining such a perfect aesthetic with a plot and screenplay of ridiculously over-the top humour, hopefully, Sanders may just have helped put the spoof genre back on track.

Betrayal

Having just left the year 2010, a year, in which, I believe few would argue had been a particularly impressive year for the world of cinema, it is with a hint of disappointment that I must bring to your attention a DVD release of such crashing and unbridled dross so early on in 2011. The film in question is Haakon Gundersen’s Betrayal (2009), starring none other than Lene Nystrom of 90s pop group ‘Aqua’ fame. 

Set in Nazi occupied Oslo, Betrayal tells the story of a group of Wehrmacht officers and a local club owner, Tor Lindblom (Fridtjov Saheim), as he illegally supplies them with a wide range of industrial and recreational amenities. Unfortunately for Tor, he falls in love with nightclub singer Eva Karlsen (Nystrom), whom, as luck would have it, just so happens to be a British secret agent. When an outside party decides to send in an officer to check these transactions are legal, things take an inevitable turn for the worse. 

For a film of such drivelsome melodrama and desperation in its attempt to be taken seriously, it is a truly remarkable piece of catastrophic casting to place the lead singer of ’Aqua’ as its female lead. Not that her performance is particularly bad, it is just somewhat difficult to get behind the hero of a film swamped in Nazi corruption, who also happens to be ‘Barbie’. However, this is certainly not the primary cause of Betrayal’s vast and numerous shortcomings.

One of the most obvious and notable drawbacks of Betrayal is the absolutely abysmal score; persistently using short, sharp bursts of strings in a fashion, which is not only ineffectual, but massively overstated to the point of tackiness, ultimately ruining any potential for tension or suspense. This is also true of the film’s script, as it slowly and clumsily meanders through scene after scene of clunky, wooden and unconvincing dialogue.  

Similarly, the performances are far too melodramatic; diminishing any traces of realism and making any form of engagement with both characters and plot, virtually impossible. Admittedly, the poor quality of the screenplay doesn’t help matters, yet many of the cast do little to raise the bar.  Take for example Gotz Otto’s performance as SS Major Kruger, the officer with whom Tor conducts most of his dealings. A character of such vile corruption and immorality would surely have benefited from a performance of measured understatement in order to convey the necessary demeanour of menace and danger to the role. Instead, Otto’s portrayal bears more similarities to that of a pantomime baddie than a genuinely loathsome villain.

It is essentially this preposterously unbalanced tone in each and every aspect of the piece that lies at the heart of Betrayal’s failure to capture both the mood of the era, as well as the imagination of the audience. Whilst trying to juggle heavyweight political and ethical issues with ‘Barbie Girl’ and a ‘bad guy’ more akin to Captain Hook than a high ranking Nazi officer, Betrayal manages to stumble and fall over each and every hurdle in its path. With its bizarre combination of elements, the resulting effect is one of a film that hasn’t quite figured out what it wants to be. On the one hand, there is the half-hearted attempt at providing an informative commentary on complex wartime issues; on the other is Gundersen’s stab at creating an espionage/crime thriller. Sadly he doesn’t even come close to achieving either. 

Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment

As a film that deals with themes of insanity, jealousy, romance and class division, whilst simultaneously skipping between madcap comedy and tragic love story, it is little wonder that Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (Karel Reisz, 1966) achieves rather mixed results. It details the descent into madness of the already psychologically unstable Morgan (David Warner), as he is forced to deal with the break-up of his marriage to Leonie (Vanessa Redgrave) and her plans to marry her lover Charles Napier (Robert Stephens).   His inability to deal with the reality of his situation forces him into a world of fantasy, whereupon he sees things and people as wild animals in the jungle, viewing himself always as a gorilla. This particular obsession with gorillas increase along with his plight, with the lines of reality and fantasy becoming blurred as he inexplicably mimics the creatures in public to the bemusement of those around him, culminating in an extraordinary finale, which we will come to shortly.

The key issue I had when watching Morgan was its difficulty in creating a definitive identity for itself. With nowhere near enough funny moments to call itself a comedy, nor enough weight behind the spiralling mental condition of its protagonist to be considered a ‘serious’ film, Morgan falls short of reaching either with any real conviction. However, this is not to say that the film fails entirely. There are certainly enough positives on offer to remain pleasantly entertaining throughout, yet it never quite fulfils its potential to be something special.

Morgan’s most obvious asset is that of David Warner and his performance of Morgan. His on-screen charm combined with the understated menace of his portrayal of the young, unhinged artist is genuinely brilliant, providing the vast majority of the film’s comic moments. The delivery of such fantastic lines as: “You know, I believe my mental condition is extremely illegal.” are perfectly pitched between off-the-wall humour and a sense of growing madness. 

Director Karel Reisz’s visual sensibilities also lend themselves well to the piece, creating, at times, an aesthetic of superb originality. The use of cutting-in images of animals in the wild as a means to illustrate Morgan’s ever-increasing detachment from reality, works beautifully. This technique is largely what makes the film’s remarkable climax quite so unique, as we see clips of the original King Kong (Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933), in particular the scene in which King Kong saves Ann and fights the dinosaur, interspersed with Morgan watching the wedding reception of Leonie and his love rival Charles, as he imagines himself rescuing her from the monster. The resulting tone is one of wonderfully inventive comedy; a tone which one is left wishing had been more present throughout.

Overall, Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment is a perfectly adequate and mildly entertaining piece of British, 1960s filmmaking. While its cult status is assured due to its lack of concern with commercial viability, it is the absence of a suitably disciplined narrative and direction that are ultimately at the heart of the films exclusion from the canon of great British movies from the same era.