EARLY REVIEW: I Spit On Your Grave [18]

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE opens on January 11th 2011. You can see the UK trailer HERE

DIR: Steven R. Monroe
CAST: Sarah Butler, Andrew Howard, Jeff Branson,
Daniel Franzese, Chad Lindberg, Rodney Eastman

It’s not the most censored, though 32 years later you still can’t see it uncut, but of all the video nasties the original I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, which was made for peanuts by Mier Zarchi, is perhaps the most infamous, and not only because of its spectacularly lurid title. It’s perhaps one of the most difficult and distressing films I’ve ever seen and, for all its many flaws, it gets under your skin to the point that after watching it you feel like you need a shower to get it off you. It is, then, an odd choice for a remake, because what more can you do, how much more extreme can you be?

Steven R. Monroe’s film is, in general shape, very faithful to Zarchi’s blueprint. Jennifer Hills (Butler) is still a young novelist who arrives at a remote cabin to work on her second book. After a few nights some local men come calling, they break into the cabin and ultimately rape and beat Jennifer almost to death. A few weeks later Jennifer, physically recovered, enacts a systematic and terrible revenge on the men who attacked her. It is, essentially, the same blueprint as every rape/revenge movie from THRILLER: A CRUEL PICTURE to THE BRAVE ONE. Where Monroe’s film differs from Zarchi’s is in the amount of detail it provides. Where Zarchi’s film seemed most interested in the horror of the acts it depicted, Monroe’s takes more time to build its characters (especially those of the group of men that attack Jennifer), with the characters of the rapists this is pretty effective; they are cartoons in the original, and if anything giving them more background serves to drop them from an even greater height.

In many ways this I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE is a better film than the original, and yet that’s also what sometimes undermines it. Though it was made for just $1.5 million, the 2010 film looks outstanding. The images are crisp and cinematic, and that’s exactly the problem. This sheen about the film (which continues with the casting, Butler in particular being rather too Hollywood pretty for her role) is a little distancing when compared to the down and dirty feel of Zarchi’s film which, whatever you feel about the morals of this choice, really did put you right in amongst what was happening, and created at times the deeply unnerving feel that what you were seeing just could be real. Put simply you watch this film, but you survive the 1978 version.

To give credit where it’s due, most of the performances here are considerably better than those of the 1978 version. Along with being given more character traits and being much more fully developed we now have some capable actors playing Jennifer’s attackers, with Andrew Howard turning an especially impressive performance as a sadistic sheriff who is also a family man (in the film’s most striking, and in some ways most horrific, scene he takes a phone call from his young daughter while the other men rape Jennifer just a few feet away) and Chad Lindberg much more convincing as a retarded adult than the original’s Matthew. On the whole the first half of the film, documenting Jennifer’s arrival at the cabin and the series of attacks and rapes she is subjected to, works very well. It may look prettier, but the events are still just as nasty, brutal and horrendous as they were in the original film. It’s when we reach the revenge section that I begin to have real problems with this I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE.

For me the original I Spit… is a film about the degradation of violence. Jennifer’s vengeance is short and brutal; an act of purging, driven, it seems, as much by a need for closure as for vengeance. It’s also surprisingly underplayed, with the gore much more implied than it is shown. This, however, is the age of SAW and thus here the vengeance is played up to a ludicrous degree. The problem is that I think we’re supposed to enjoy it, and that’s a real sticking point for me. There is an interesting question about the second half of this story, which the film never quite addresses, which is whether Jennifer actually lived through her ordeal. Butler’s performance is ambiguous, but there are definite hints here that Jennifer may be little more than a spirit of vengeance, and I think I prefer that idea to the perhaps more persuasive alternative, which has her dealing with her ordeal through complex tortures meted out to her attackers, each capped off by some meaningful detail or wisecrack to get us to embrace and applaud this extreme vigilantism. The violence here is much more explicit and dwelled on much longer than in the 1978 film, to such a degree of extremity that I began to question exactly how justified Jennifer’s actions were (especially in relation to the Sheriff). It’s unpleasant, sure, but feels more like a carrot for the audience than anything else.

This is a difficult film to review. From a technical standpoint, especially given the budget, it’s excellent and Monroe certainly shows that he knows how to discomfort an audience (a skill that will serve him well in this genre) but it’s so bound up with another film, and though the 1978 film is not, by most traditional measures (excepting Camille Keaton’s remarkable, haunted, performance, which Butler completely fails to match) as ‘good’ as this one it is for me undeniably the more effective film. I guess it comes down to what you want out of a movie. If you want the catharsis of cheering at Jennifer’s vengeance then this is the version for you, but if you really want the full impact of this story then stick with the 1978 version. Neither is an easy watch, but neither is uninteresting.

Mini Review: London Boulevard [18]

After seeing London Boulevard I sat down with Ray Winstone's character, Mr Gant, to discuss the film. This was our conversation. It was very, VERY sweary.

DIR: William Monahan

24FPS: Hi Mr Gant. Fancy a beer?

Gant: Yeah. So what did you make of the movie, you facking c**t?

24FPS: To be honest Mr Gant, I thought it was largely bollocks.

Gant: The dog's bollocks?

24FPS: Afraid not, just regular bog standard bollocks.

Gant: You think you can do better, c**t?

24FPS: That's really not the point, it's more that hundreds of directors before William Monahan have already done better, that this movie plays like the cutting room floor scrapings from every sub-average British gangster movie ever made.

Gant: Give me some facking specifics.

24FPS: Well, let's start with you, and with the actors playing your criminal gang.

Gant: You want to watch yerself sunshine.

24FPS: You're fictional Mr Gant, I'm really not scared of you. Anyway, you're all cartoons, spouting out the mouldiest of cliche gangester lines, all of them liberally festooned with obsceneities.

Gant: Like fack, and c**t?

24FPS: Like, as you - repeatedly - say, fack and c**t. Frankly it's a bit boring, and the fact that neither the plot nor the characters were keeping my interest meant that I ended up wondering what the exact ratio of swear words to other words was in the script. It's not as though THE DEPARTED, which William Monahan also wrote, was lacking in swearing, but the dialogue was intersting, so you didn't end up counting fucks, here it just sounds like Monahan, whenever he couldn't think of anything else for a character to say, just threw in a c**t.

Gant: Didn't you fink the plotting was clever, like how I made Colin Farrell my facking bitch?

24FPS: No. I've seen it all before, especially that car park scene where you try to induct him into your organisation, a scene which comes complete with dialogue so cliche I wonder if Monahan got it from an examplar passage in screenwriting for the near brain dead.

Gant: Alright you facking smart arse c**t, was there anything you did like?

24FPS: They're both underused, but the two lead actresses; Kiera Knightley (as a movie star who shuts herself away in her home to escape the papparazzi) and Anna Friel (as Farrell's alcoholic sister) are both good. They each feel like they're in a completely different movie to the impoverished man's GET CARTER that you and Mr Farrell (who is not bad here so much as he's just bland) are participating in, and while Friel's storyline is also familliar, Knightley's was actually the more furstrating, because I didn't feel like I'd seen that movie before, and yet it kept cutting back to you and Ben Chaplin doing your boring mockney villain thing.

Gant: Awright, what about the tech side, not going to tell me it looks shit too are ya? ARE YA?

24FPS: No, actually it's often gorgeous, and that's what happens when you hire Chris Menges to photograph your film, and cast such fabulously beautiful people as Farrell, Knightley and Friel.

Gant: And me.

24FPS: Well. Anyway, it's something, but it's not much compensation, because it doesn't stop the storytelling from being plodding and the plot being depressingly telegraphed (the 'surprise' ending is anything but). Nor does it keep the dialogue from clunking, especially Knightley's speech about the role of women in cinema, which couldn't have landed with a more resounding thud if it had been wearing concrete boots.

Gant: So you saying my facking movie's shit, ya c**t?

24FPS: Yes, bluntly. LONDON BOULEVARD is so predictable that if you've ever seen a British gangster film before you'll know exactly where it's headed right from the start. It's a shame, because there are some interesting ideas here (who, for example, is the photographer outside Knightley's flat who isn't among the press corp) but Monahan's flat refusal to explore these ideas, in favour of a story we've all seen, done better, fifty times already, is really irritating. Also, it's annoyingly sweary, I may have mentioned that.

Gant: Well if that's what you think; fack you.

24FPS: You too. Nice talking to you.

Superpodcast: Masters of the Universe commentary

So I'm back with Marcey and Bede, and fellow guests Nick Bosworth and Pat Torfe, on Superpodcast for a commentary which seems as though it's been months in the planning. The five of us sat down on Saturday to watch (and to mock the living shit out of) Masters of the Universe. You can listen to this track as a regular podcast, but you can also, if you've got a copy, sit down with you Masters DVD and sync us up with the picture (something which, admittedly, we had some amusing trouble with). It's chaotic track, but it was fun for us and I hope you'll enjoy it too.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest [15]

Reviews of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire can be found HERE and HERE

DIR: Daniel Alfredson
CAST: Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist, Annika Hallin,
Anders Ahlbom, Lena Endre, Micke Spreitz

And so the big movie event of the year (as Momentum and Yellow Bird have sold it) comes to a close, not with a bang but with a whimper, with a film so forgettable and inconsequential that it may as well be merely an expulsion of air. It’s a real shame, but I can’t say I didn’t see it coming. Stieg Larsson’s final (completed) Millennium novel is a doorstop; a huge beast of a book filled with a rambling, ranty, mass of detail and freely mixing a little fact with increasingly outlandish fiction. It’s also incredibly static. On the page that’s not entirely ineffective; Lisbeth Salander (played again by the extraordinary Noomi Rapace), confined to a hospital bed, unable to do much of anything in her own cause (which, this time out, involves a trial for attempted murder that could see her committed), is a somewhat effective counterpoint to the fierce, active, character of the first two books. Unfortunately, translated to the screen, it’s often – like much of the rest of the book - just dull.

For what seems like an eternity (the cut down cinema release is 147 minutes long) nothing happens. Endless screen time is filled with Mikael Blomkvist’s meetings at Millennium, with meetings at ‘The Section’ (a shadowy institution which has been conspiring against Salander), with Salander lying in bed and barely speaking, and, as ever in this series, with people typing. Because the book has had to be reduced so much the narrative here will be largely lost on those who haven’t done their homework, and for those that have the mass of connection and detail is reduced to a series of brief scenes of people we’ve never met before sitting in chairs and explaining the plot to one another. For much of the middle section of the film scene after scene after scene seems to reveal yet ANOTHER new character, who’ll pop up for a scene or two, explain something, and then never be seen again, but the problem is we already know what happened to Salander, it’s been obvious since THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE, so it feels like the movie is spending two hours putting together a 1000 piece jigsaw of a blank wall.

Even when we get to the set pieces (the attempt on Lisbeth’s life at the hospital, the attack at Erika Berger’s (Endre) home) director Daniel Alfredson fumbles the ball. The hospital sequence in particular lacks any suspense, and feels tossed off and perfunctory. The same is true of the courtroom set third act. This should be the great dramatic dénouement but, in spite of a fine performance from Annika Hallin as Lisbeth’s lawyer (also Blomkvist’s sister) and the customary excellence of Rapace’ quieter, but still forceful, turn it just doesn’t work. It’s all delivered so flatly, the other performances run towards the hammy (Anders Ahlbom as Dr. Teleborian is especially guilty here) and Alfredson’s matter of fact direction does nothing to energise the sequences. Where Neils Arden Oplev managed to truly adapt THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, make it a different but equally valid telling of Larsson’s story for cinema, Daniel Alfredson has only managed to put some bits of the books on screen. This is an inert film, were it not for Rapace and a handful of other performers (Nyqvist, Hallinn, Endre) it would be totally worthless.

All this said, it’s hard to lay all the blame at Alfredson and writer Ulf Ryberg’s door. THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST doesn’t work as cinema, and it was never going to. As a novel it is neither claustrophobic enough to work as that kind of thriller nor expansive and exciting enough to work as a more action driven film, and by sidelining its most interesting character the book shot itself and this adaptation in the foot from the start.

Mini Review: Alice in Wonderland [XXX]

ALICE IN WONDERLAND [XXX]
DIR: Bill Osco

The mid to late 1970's is generally seen as something of a golden age for porn, that time when even people making X Rated movies were at least attempting to make real films, even if they weren't especially artful. ALICE IN WONDERLAND has fascinated me since I first heard about it; a porno musical? How could that not be at least interesting? It's by no means a great film, but ALICE IN WONDERLAND certainly is interesting.

The thing that is perhaps most intriguing about the film is just how much of it doesn't revolve around sex. There is a long establishing sequence in which Alice (played by the sweetly pretty Kristine DeBell, who had several mainstream roles after this film) makes it clear to her boyfriend that she isn't ready to have sex with him (the film is careful to establish that, despite this stance, Alice is 18), then the White Rabbit shows up in the library where Alice works and leads her into Wonderland. Even in Wonderland, where events become more sexual with each passing scene, there is at least an attempt to tell a story, and to allow DeBell to act. Alice wants to grow up, but she's a little reluctant to join in the various sexual games in Wonderland, and to the filmmaker's and DeBell's credit, they do attempt to carry this through even in Alice's approach to the sex scenes.

The songs are pretty awful, and so is the bawdy comedy, but there is something about this movie. Even though, at the tea party, Alice doesn't so much have tea with the Mad Hatter as, well, blow him, there is a strange innocence about the whole thing. It has a playfulness that makes it, for all its rough edges, bad acting, silliness and shagging, feel like something that a group of friends - pardon the pun - tossed off for a bit of fun. I can't exactly recommend it, because it's not actually any good, but I certainly enjoyed watching it.

24FPS is two

Tomorrow 24FPS begins toddling forth into the future, as it reaches its second birthday. I feel a bit like a proud dad; it feels like I've been doing this forever, but also like it has gone by in a flash. Before I get a bit misty eyed and remeniscent, I wanted to say thanks to the people who really make this site work, which is you guys, yes you reading this now.

Thanks, really. When I started this I imagined I would just be one more blogger, essentially using his keyboard to shout at the internet (and perhaps three people, two of them related to him) about movies. But it's grown into a little more than that, okay I'm a small fry by web standards, but the fact that month after month more than 7000 unique visitors are choosing to come to 24FPS seems fucking unimaginably huge to me. You guys are from all over the world; The US, the UK, Australia, but also India, China, Korea, even Iraq has got in on the act. So, whoever and wherever you are; cheers, I'm really pleased that you take time out to read my ramblings.

The site really took off this year, as people began to notice it. In May I found myself browsing in HMV and seeing one of my own quotes staring out from the back of a DVD. That was odd. I've also embraced social media, and through that gained access to this year's London Film Festival (which is still paying dividends and ought to make 2011 very exciting round these parts).

To finish off I thought I'd pick a couple of highlights, the stuff I enjoyed most and am proudest of from the year.

POSITIVE REVIEWS: Le Refuge / Toy Story 3

NEGATIVE REVIEWS: The Twilight Saga: Eclipse / A Nightmare on Elm Street

And just before I go, largely so that this post doen't consist entirely of me blowing my own trumpet, here's something awesome. Enjoy.

An interview with Brian Welsh, director of In Our Name

I think I’ll always have a bit of a soft spot for IN OUR NAME, because it was through that film that I got my first real break as a critic, getting into this year’s London Film Festival, so it was a pleasure to speak with Brian Welsh about his provocative second feature. We spoke over the phone, me from my office and Brian from the bar of the Curzon Soho. There was some noise on the line, and from the bar, and that combined with Brian’s thick Glasgow accent has sometimes made this transcript a bit of a challenge. Still, it was a fun interview, and Brian was happy to engage with the various issues that his film throws up.


24FPS: Brian, I wanted to start off by asking you a bit about your background, and how you first became interested in becoming a film director.

Brian Welsh: Sure, my background is really in editing. I was working as a runner in a post-production suite up in Glasgow, and I was fortunate enough while I was there to get the opportunity to cut a pilot for a documentary, which fortunately got financed by the BBC. Then I continued to work as an editor, cutting films about social issues affecting Glasgow, cutting some films for the Scottish Socialist Party. I really wanted to get into drama, but realised it was hard to break in from Glasgow, so I came down to the National Film School. Using resources and people there, I decided to direct this script [I assume this is his first feature; Kin] and that no budget film got me the opportunity to get my foot in the door, and get the money to fund In Our Name.

24FPS: I noticed from your IMDB filmography, that you’ve done a lot of documentary and engaged with a lot of social issues in your films.

BW: Sure, yeah.

24FPS: And that’s something that In Our Name does as well, often quite angrily. So I wondered if there was a personal reason you wanted to engage with the ideas in In Our Name, and was it the issue or the story that you first came up with?

BW: It’s complicated, because I do tend to get my back up if there’s something I feel strongly that I want to talk about, but there are also a lot of personal things in it as well. I guess you’re asking did the story come first or did the issue come first. I was really drawn to write it because of the testimonials I’d been reading about soldiers, both in the states and over here, and their difficulties reintegrating back into society after being away, and this breaking of a kind of military covenant, the agreement between the armed forces and ourselves as a society. But as a story, I’m drawn to stories where something follows you and creates a stumbling block, and in this case guilt; guilt from the characters past creates problems for them in the present. So this idea of this soldier coming home harbouring these scars, this guilt, and it becoming a real stumbling block to them living the life they want to live, was something that drew me to it, as well as the issue.

24FPS: Obviously the big challenge of the film is finding the right actor to play Suzy. So can you tell us a little about how you cast Joanne Froggatt, and how you worked with her on that performance?

BW: Sure. I knew I wanted to see Joanne Froggatt very early on, and unfortunately we got a knockback to begin with, so I saw a wealth of actresses after getting that knockback from Joanne and I said to my producer in the middle of the auditions “look, I really, really want to see Joanne Froggatt, can we see if we can set up a meeting or something?” Coincidentally, she’d read the script by this point, it had been lying around in her agent’s office, and it was kind of a coming together. She said “Oh, I really buzz off the script”, and I asked if she’d come in and read for it. So she came and read for the part, and I was absolutely blown away by her first audition; visibly moved, and she really likes to work in the same way that I like to work. We were very much in tune with Mel Raido [who plays Suzy’s husband Mark] as well, who was fantastic from the first audition.

The process was… we spent a lot of time in rehearsal. We had a very intensive ten days, all living and existing as the characters, also with the kid, Chloe, who plays Suzy’s daughter. They spent ten days existing as a family, and improvising defining moments up to the moment that the story starts, so that when we got to the shoot there was a very three-dimensional, tangible relationship there.

24FPS: The other thing I want to ask about the preparation is; your two main actors are playing ex soldiers, so did you have them do any training for that?

BW: Yeah, I did. Mel’s an incredibly physically fit guy anyway, really fit, and coincidentally into boxing, which was in the script. But Joanne did some training in a programme called Brit Mil Fit where you can go to parks or sport centres around the country and ex soldiers train people in a military type scenario, and Joanne did that, and also I was keen that she bulked up a lot, because she’s very slight, so I had her pigging out on pizza and going to a lot of this training. We’re also very fortunate that Chloe, the little girl who plays the daughter, her Mother and Father coincidentally were both soldiers and actually met in the army, so they were a great resource for us to call on.

24FPS: I think when people see the film they’ll agree that one of the most striking scenes is when Suzy addresses her sister’s primary school class, and breaks down after telling them a war story. So I was wondering where that story came from, and the process of shooting that particular scene?

BW: Obviously the story is about something horrific that’s happened to a young Iraqi girl. Reading a lot of the stories, case studies and testimonies, children are very often a trigger and will stimulate memories and guilt, and the idea of children being victims of war, I felt that was something I wanted to include; her being a mother as well. So the idea of children and the effect that conflict has on children; that was kind of the reason for including that scene.

When we shot the scene, we shot it in a school up in Newcastle, and I was very keen that the kids knew nothing about what was happening, I knew from working with kids in the past that you’ll only get them to react to things in the moment once, twice if you’re lucky, or you’d have to rewrite the story every take to get that genuine reaction from them. So we shot the kids first, and they had no idea what the story was so that, and obviously Joanne’s performance, so that reaction you see from them is absolutely genuine. Every take we did after that they were completely desensitised, and by the end of three or four takes they were yawning.

But Joanne… one of the things that she really identified with in the script was that scene, and I was crying behind the monitor watching when she did her first take.

24FPS: A thing that really struck me visually about the film was your use of location, and how you use the derelict parts of Newcastle to echo Suzy’s experiences in Iraq and what she saw there.

BW: Yeah.

24FPS: and combining that with the use of sound to suggest her hallucinations. So could you tell us about designing those sequences; were they always designed that way, or did you initially want to go into the war itself?

BW: That’s a really good question, and something that not many people pick up on, but I felt that because it’s a psychological condition and most of the conflict in the film is inside her head we really have to see and feel things the way that she does. So there was a lot of sound written into the script, because that was a way that we could voyage into her head. It was quite difficult shooting a film like that; quite a naturalistic language but trying to show something that’s psychological. I fought a lot with whether to use flashbacks or not, but I came to the conclusion that we have to, we have to use flashbacks because we have to see what’s going on; just a glimpse of what’s inside her mind’s eye. I think that blending of languages gives it a uniqueness.

24FPS: You’ve partnered with a few veterans charities for the release of the film, and obviously you’re very passionate about the issues. Apart from the goal of finding an audience, is there a political goal for you with the film, and how might you define that if there is?

BW: Combat Stress were incredibly important to my research, they discussed with me the issues in the film, they allowed me to go up and spend some time at their centres and to meet real sufferers of PTSD, and that hammered home to us the importance of portraying the issue as honestly as we could. We hope that the film will help their cause and also perhaps reach out to people who need to seek help for a condition that obviously… obviously the army is a hyper masculine environment and talking about ones feelings isn’t always viewed as a strength. So it’s often bottled up and the average is 14 years for someone to seek help.

24FPS: I think it’s an admirable goal, and that’s also why when I saw that BBFC had given you an 18 I was a little disappointed, because there are kids who’ll be going into the army who aren’t yet 18, and I think it’s an interesting film for them to see before they do that.

BW: Yeah. The violence in the film is not explicit, the sex in the film, though one of the scenes is kind of harrowing, is not explicit. The reason it was given an 18 is that we used the word “cunt” five times. Apparently if we’d used it three times it would have been fine.

24FPS: [laughing] Still ridiculous aren’t they?

BW: But how many 16-18 year olds are going to watch it I don’t know. The film will be available on Curzon on Demand.

24FPS: Just a couple of quick questions before we wrap up. First of all I was wondering if you’ve got a next project yet and what you can tell us.

BW: I’ve been away, after the festival I went up to Scotland writing a new project. I’ve got pages and pages of stuff I need to read my way through, but I don’t want to say too much about it. It’s a film about looking for spirituality in all the wrong places.

24FPS: And just one final question; Aside from In Our Name, obviously, what’s the best film you’ve seen lately?

BW: Jesus, good question, what have I seen lately? I saw a wonderful film at the festival, it was a Vienamese film called Don’t Be Afraid, Bi.

24FPS: I wanted to see it, but I missed it.

BW: I thought it was a beautiful film. What else have I seen that I really enjoyed? I loved Of Gods and Men.

My thanks to Brian for taking the time to talk to me. His film opens on December 10th, it's playing at the Curzon Renoir in London, and should be coming to independent screens in the big cities. Check your local listings. You'll also be able to see the film through the Curzon On Demand service, which launches next year. You can read my review from the London Film Festival HERE.