Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Bugs: three and a half out of five
IF movies are indeed magic, it's invariably the audience who are the magician's willing accomplice.
If it's an illusion in the first place that a two-dimensional image on a screen is reality, only a willing audience sees it for what it isn't. We suspend belief to accept all the filmmaker's crafts. We are the ones required, in good faith, to uncritically see the trick through.
Language is the biggest barrier to the enjoyment of movie magic, but the easiest to overcome.
The magic tricks of the movie dialogue trade fall into several basic categories when it comes to movies set in foreign climes and other times:
1: Talk American all the way through and use modern English as the written word as well. This is the most common and most satisfactory technique, given the immense limitation of most actors. (We think here of Kevin Costner in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves)
2. Talk American all the way through but use the relevant foreign language for the written word. This is the next most common and most satisfactory technique, given the immense limitation of most actors. (we think here of Madonna in Evita, speaking and singing in fluent American all the way through even though the placards in the big street march scenes are in Spanish. (The magic, when you think about it, is that we don't laugh out loud.)
3. Talk American but in a strong "ve haf vas to make you talk" style suited to the relevant foreign language and then use the foreign language for the written word. This is the next most common and most satisfactory technique, given the immense limitation of most actors. (we think here of Gary Oldman in Air Force One)
4. Talk American most of the way through – but speak in the foreign language for the first few seconds of important scenes with sub-titles just in case the audience has lost the magic and has forgotten the actor is supposed to be foreign. (This is a far less common and most unsatisfactory technique, given the immense limitation of most actors. Given an airing by Sean Bean in Anna Karenina, it's an insulting technique because we, the audience, had already accepted for the purposes of that particulr film's next 108 incredibly boring minutes, that Sean Penn was the Russian aristocrat, Count Vronsky in yet another boring depiction of a Tolstoy novel and there was no need to rub it in!)
5. Talk the foreign language all the way through, use scratchy sub-titles, show it at the Dendy and then on SBS.
And so it is that that little blond cutie Brad Pitt maintains the proud tradition of Category 3, in his new flick, Seven Years in Tibet, albeit with a slight difference.
Pitt plays Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer, hellbent on conquering the Himalyan peak, Nanga Parbat (local dialect for Everest's Little Sister). Pitt speaks in exceptionally strong American/Austrian at the start of Seven Years, then lapses into almost fluent American/Pittian for the remainder of the film.
We, the audience, magically go along with this technique because it's clear that since Pitt is talking in American/Austrian in the early frames, he must be playing an Austrian. Once that's been resolved, both the audience and Pitt can relax. Only a very hurtful cynic would suggest that Pitt is forced to lose the Austrian accent because his acting abilities preclude talking American/Austrian, showing emotion and making a few limited body movements all at the same time. On the plus side, however, Pitt never fails to smile in fluent Austrian whenever the storyline requires just that.
Helping Pitt flesh out this story of a selfish, material man who finds the true meaning of life in the holy Tibetan city of Lhasa, where he befriends the Dalai Lama, is Pom David Thewlis, who plays Harrer's countryman, Peter Aufschnaiter. Thewlis is a very talented actor who probably could have handed a category 3 American/Austrian accent job with ease, and all the way through no less, but opts here for the safer ground of American for the most part.
As do the entire Tibetan clergy when they meet before the Dalai Lama to discuss the pending invasion by neighbouring Chinese. Movie magic. Just like the English language paper in the street markets that gets our heroes all excited about D Day. What would a D Day headline mean to them? Magic.
It seems the Chinese have decided to invade Tibet, not because there's anything there really worth having (the last blade of grass left in the 1880s), but because they despise all religion and especially one that believes a humble earthworm out in the garden could very well be someone's dear departed mother.
I'm with the Chinese on this one. I thought the Buddhist philosophy was that you entered a higher lifeplane each time round (hence the exalted status of the Dalai Lama). On this basis, the aforementioned earthworm must be an ex-solicitor, surely.
That quibble aside, Seven Years is a slow-paced but worthwhile journey of discovery. It starts brilliantly enough with Jean-Jacques Annaud cleverly intercutting the richly coloured world of the mystical with the black and white horror of the physical word as the Austrians attempt their conquest of Nanga Parbat. People who climb mountains must have rocks in their heads and Annuad and director of photography Robert Fraisse keep the audience gasping for oxygen in the rarified atmosphere of the mountainface.
What follows is a widescreened travelogue across the top of the world that would be a geologist's wetdream, and a slow but thoughtful analysis of the spiritual world that guides many of us through troubled times. Amen.
Review: Don Gordon-Brown
I Know What You Did Last Summer (M)
Director: Jim Gillespie
Bugs: 3 out of five
Hang on a minute, I thought, nearly spilling my coke and popcorn. This surely can't be the sequel to Scream?
I'd heard Wes Craven had been lured out of horror film retirement to direct the sequel and if he's put it in the can faster than expected, who's complaining. Scream, after all, was a good slasher film, and, indeed, one of the better movies of 1996.
It must be the sequel because it's got the same writing team that created Scream. Funny name, though. I Know What You Did Last Summer. Then halfway through the movie, a peculiar and creepy feeling of deja vu crept over me – this isn't a sequel to anything. I've definitely seen this before. Somewhere.
All right, so it wasn’t quite that bad. But the plot to I Know What You Did Last Summer, directed by Jim Gillespie, is hardly strikingly original stuff. Its structure could, in fact, be recognised in a number of slasher films residing on videoshop shelves.
But beyond, and despite its unoriginality, lies a good film. And I Know What You Did Last Summer is as good as Scream, maybe even better. It has the three of four essential elements of contemporary horror films – the young and attractive leads, the idyllic setting, the gory way of meeting your maker (in this instance, the killer’s weapon of choice is a fishhook) and, most importantly, the gore.
Last Summer centres around four friends, Julie (Party of Five’s Jennifer Love Hewitt). Helen (Sarah Michelle Gellar), Barry (Ryan Phillipe) and Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr).
They're out on a drunken night, celebrating the end of high school. After much partying and ghost-story telling, the four make their way home, driving along the notorious (and aptly named) Reaper’s Curve.
Suddenly, they hit something, the car grinds to a halt and liquor spills all over the vehicle. Assuming the something to be an animal, they search for the carcass but instead find a man. After the appropriate girlish squeals, and the car that drives by, stops, but continues on, Ray summons up the gall to feel for the man’s pulse. Nothing.
Now the foursome are faced with a dilemma. They have just finished high school, and dreams of law-school and college football lie on the horizon. If they tell the police about the accident, the liquor soaked vehicle and their own soaring blood alcohol readings equate to one word - manslaughter, which means no law-school or football.
After much moral and ethical deliberating, they decide to dump the body
in the ocean, and swear to take the secret to their graves.
The story then cuts to a year later, and none of their lives have turned
out as they once hoped. Julie returns home from a failed first year at college,
to find a letter waiting for her. Inside lies a note bearing a single, ominous
sentence, I Know What You Did Last Summer. Someone knows, and someone, wielding
a fishhook, is out to get them.
I Know What You Did Last Summer is an enjoyable romp, filled with
death and gore and suspense.
And, yes, it does have a plot familiar to other horror movies, but it is
its own film, taking a used structure and placing a unique spin on it.
Review: Michael Gordon-Brown
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Bugs: 3 out of five
Boy, it's amazing what some Presidents of the United States will do to get re-elected for another four year term.
While most are more than content just to break as many promises as possible, screw the working class, raise taxes and appease the silent majority, not so our Mister Goody Two Shoes President James Marshall. He's got to go out singlehandedly and save the entire free world from the Communist menace. For it seems the most evil part of the splintered old Russian empire is still pretty evil.
And he takes almost unbelievable risks when Air Force One is hijacked by clench-jawed psychopath Gary Oldman, on this occasion playing Ivan the Terrible Korshunov. Holed up in the Boeing 747's fuselage, President Marshall - okay, it's actually Harrison Ford looking as goofy as ever but let's not spoil the story right now - USES A MOBILE PHONE TO CALL THE WHITE HOUSE FOR SUPPORT!
Now if anyone would have enough frequent flier points up to know that it's terribly dangerous to use a mobile phone at any time during a flight, it should be an American president. But NOT our President Marshall. He's so intent on getting brownie points to get re-elected, he uses the phone anyway, knowing full well that mobile phones can interfere with aircraft systems.
Then again, maybe nothing interferes with Air Force One's systems. It certainly doesn't miss a beat or dip a wing as Horshunov and his cronies takeover Air Force One with the aim of forcing the West and the Kremlin to release the terrorists' military and political leader General Alexander Radek. Radek? Mmmmm.
Tough plane this, considering it hosts a firefight where high-powered rounds roughly equal to the number discharged in the entire Cheychnean conflict are let off and comes through with, ahem, flying colours.
Will Marshall outwit the villains? Will he save his cute wife and cuter child? Will those in the White House, such as the VP Glenn Close, be amazed at his bravery? Will US fighter pilots get to salute across to the president and say things like: There are people here who'd like to shake your hand, sir? Will the computerised special effects be superb, except for the final sea crash which is really bad? Will Gary Oldman get any better at being very good at being bad? Will Harrison Ford get any worse had beening very bad at being good? Will director Wolfgang Petersen get the credit he deserves for putting together a better action flick, with far more suspense, than John Woo's Face-Off.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. No. Pity that.
Review: Don Gordon-Brown
