NIGHTMARE ON ELM ST 2: FREDDY'S REVENGE @ 40

Jesse Walsh wakes from a nightmare that features the blade-gloved Freddy Kruger. His family has moved into the ol' Thompson house on Elm St and the bad one has been dropping into his dreams on the regular. When his little sister at breakfast hears his blood curdling screams from his room she asks her mother why he can't wake up like everyone else. It won't be the last joke in this film but it's the best. That's not to say that the Elm St's first sequel is poorly made, it's just that the nature of the gag is at odds with the rest of this film which, itself, is at odds with its own franchise. Elm St 2 is like Halloween 3.

Elm St movies generally go like this: a group of teens gets together and vanquishes Freddy Kruger. This one the victim and perpetrator are the same as Freddy possesses Jesse, forcing him to repeatedly commit murder: the protagonist is the slasher. It's significant that such an isolating approach should be applied to a character who, though new to his school, pretty much fits right in with the types who would mark him for bullying. They try but he pushes back and fits among them without a real struggle. He and the king of the jocks unite in adversity against their PE teacher which binds them.

That's the other thing about this film that needs a note. It's been outed for so long that it doesn't count as an elephant in the room. Nightmare on Elm St is a gay. From the dacked wrestling to the leather bar to Freddy's facial caress to his failed makeout with Lisa ending with his refuge with Grady to a near numberless other instances, the theme leaves subtext and becomes text progressively. If Tom Cruise a few years earlier thrilled audiences by dancing in his parent-free house to a rock classic, Jesse unpacks his things in his room to perky electro disco, bumping and grinding with an array of increasingly flamboyant specs.

These aren't the controversial aspects; those have to do with casting, writing and production. I won't cover the whole story here (it's not my community and I can't speak for them) but it's worth pursuit with some wrong-headed sleaze by writers and producers and a history of self-contradicting statements. If you've heard that this is the gay '80s horror you should know that wasn't conceived in inclusive spirit but more exploitatively. That it has become a cult hit with the community is, however, inclusive which serves as an example of cultural redemption that the horror genre seldom knows.

The story itself moves at a clip as Jesse makes his way through high school and Freddy makes his way through him, leaving a trail of corpses and a subplot of queasy manipulation. The fantasy sequences are darker in lighting and mood than in the first and Freddy's seduction of Jesse has the uncomfortable feel of predation. The mid-'80s forced pastel pallet of waking life is a strange relief after that. The finale is strong and, given the progress of the story preceding, has a persistent sexuality to it that leads to a coda of ambiguous experience (who is doing the dreaming?).

That this outlier in its franchise has been adopted by the culture it was once intended to exploit is a kind of happy ending. As an Elm St movie it is overshadowed heavily by the original and the third installment which is often pegged as the best in the best of the bunch. Later entries suffered the same dilution, boiling it down to a series of scenes and locations in a decreasingly purposeful loop. Freddy becomes a wiseacre and loses a lot of his power and the movies often muddle between quick-buck horror and teen comedy, finding an easy home in movie nights on VHS and TV movie marathons. The first three parts, however, stand as strong as a continuous unit as the first four Friday the 13th titles, each bringing something of themselves to the table other than regurgitation. If you've never bothered with it, hearing that one and three are the ones to see, press play on it and find riches.

Viewing notes: I watched my copy from the very well presented Elm St box set on DVD. While the original benefits massively from a 4K upgrade (bought separately) these discs are at the top of the game as far as the earlier tech goes and are often very pleasantly discounted by retail outlets. Otherwise, it's a cheap rent from one of the online sources.

Review: FLOW

A black cat ambles through a forest, avoiding a pack of dogs, and notices a rumbling coming from the earth. Animals speed through the scene, escaping what the cat sees is a huge, violent tide. Soon, the entire land is underwater and the cat is perched increasingly on the ear of a massive cat sculpture as a sailboat drifts its way. Scrambling aboard, it finds a capybara already there. The cat goes aft to the shelter to sleep after its exhausting progress. Eventually, they are joined by a ring tailed lemur and a stork, all of whom go through distrust and conflict until it really looks like it's them and the endless ocean. This is a story of survival.

The unavoidable eco theme of the climate disaster is clearly linked to the complete absence of the creatures that caused it, the humans. Their cities and monuments have become dry spaces for the animals. As we follow the crew of the sailboat we notice that they pick up skills along the way like the tiller of the boat, gathering treasures, the cat overcoming its antipathy to water and fishing for the rest of them. These are portrayed as being developmental but always within the limitations of physiology. Analogies to culture and politics are also clear, testifying to the adoption of a kind of compassion. That said, there is an incident in the stork flock that puts the exclusion and aggression to the fore.

But the animals don't just turn into cute human substitutes. The cat moves like a cat, coughs up hairballs and cleans itself like a real one. There is no spoken dialogue but the meaning of vocalisations (taken from real life animal sounds) is always clear. The animation style might take some folk a spell to adjust to. The backgrounds and settings lean toward photorealism but the animals are more blocky, like children's book illustrations. I think this was to allow more agility to the action of the characters in preference for a more dodgy ultra real style. Once you accept the animals, you will be lost in the story and will stop wondering about the method and start worrying if the cat is going to survive this time overboard.

And that's the thing. Flow does the lot, humour, drama, suspense and a stinging sadness when it needs to. If you leave this film not on the point of tears (or past it) you should worry. If it doesn't give you pause to consider the fragility of the state of the Earth then you might want to start considering. This is a short review because I know that, if I let myself, I might never stop writing about it. There were an expected high number of kids in the audience and I was almost looking forward to the sounds of their engagement. Then the film really kicked in, the powerful score and sound design lifting the already muscular visual feast, and the silence was the sound of awe. This will be one of the best films I will see this year.

Review: MICKEY 17

Mickey falls into a crevasse while on a mission for his colony and can't believe he's still alive after the fall. It's the future and he volunteered to become an Expendable in the interstellar expedition led by a populist politician. What that means is that he gets to be tested for anything injurious or lethal like exposure to space or newly discovered viruses. If he dies he gets reprinted with all his memories. The one we meet is the seventeenth iteration, Mickey 17. When he survives the situation, enough time has passed to assume his death and a new Mickey has been printed. Unlike his nerdy awkward self, this one is aggressive and forthright, claiming 17's life and girlfriend. But Mickey 17 is haunted by how he survived and what the strange local creatures are that almost consumed him.

Bong Joon Ho's epic length sci-fi satire dives deep and long but, as usual, brings everything home and then some. There is a lot of plot to deal with and the political examination of the microcosm on the ship gives opportunity for some banging jibes at demagogues and the lower depths of human curiosity. Also characteristic is the immersive world building on screen. That said, it could lose almost an hour of runtime before anyone would notice.

Because the third act and coda are so engaging, it's easy to let slip the disproportionately massive beginning and middle which runs so much repetition that it can feel like a loop. Scenes that should whiz by feel agonisingly elongated. This is an enemy to the comedic side of things and a lot of the setups feel exhausted by the punchline. With all that you wouldn't expect so very much expository narration but you do get a lot of it. There are passages of this film where you just wish you could hit fast forward. Bong does like to loosen his belt when making his features but something like Parasite plugs so much in without it ever feeling laboured or slow. He just let this one go on.

This is a pity because this superb cast which includes Robert Pattinson in dual roles, Mark Ruffalo in high bombast, Toni Collette in bizarre one-percenter sleaze mode, Naomi Ackie enjoying an action role, and Steven Yuen being everyone's slippery ne'er do well, is a corker of an ensemble. But you could also make a cast of the themes from colonisation, economic oppression, political populism, science minus ethics, fragile tenets regarding civilisation, unethical cuisine, and the overall oafish devastation that humans are so given to. The stretched canvas can at times allow breathing room for all of these but it's when the stakes clarify the conflict  in the finale that we really feel as though we find the depth.

Bong is a contemporary master of cinema and has given his audiences many hours of thought-provoking enjoyment. While this must rank among his best, I can't help feeling for the tightness of Host, the heartrending intrigue of Mother, the thrill of Snowpiercer and so on. I just wish that, along with Luca Guadagnino and Coralie Fargeat, someone would in kindly fashion shake him out of these interminable screen times. If this had been a lean ninety minutes it would be a pop out instant classic instead of the new film from the old master. That said, you really could do a lot worse than this at the moment.

Review: A COMPLETE UNKNOWN

1961 and a young Bob Dylan hits New York, guitar and handwritten songbook in hand. He visits the ailing legend Woody Guthrie in hospital where he also meets another living legend, Pete Seeger. Bob asks to play Woody a song written for him. It impresses both of them. He's on his way. Back in New York he meets a student who takes an equal shine to him and they shack up long enough for Bob's eyes to wander over to the rising Joan Baez who also thaws before him. A break here and a push there, and he's playing the Newport Folk Festival to an adoring crowd. There's just one problem. He's young and heavily creative and needs to keep moving forward. It's just before rock music spread out into its own traditionalism and the folk scene that Bob was ruling was feeling tight around his neck.

If you've seen any fictionalised movies about The Beatles you'll know how much of a risk this one was. If the guy playing him doesn't look exactly like him, he'd better play him to perfection. Any straying from the minutely rendered timeline of facts is up for the punishment of the greater world. Dylan is still alive and so is even the oldest of his fanbase. The recent biopic of Brian Epstein Midas Man had the Beatles community raging, not because of the muddled execution of Epstein but that the actor playing John Lennon was too short!

This Dylan is clearly intended for the Millennials and Gen Alpha rather than anyone who went to Newport. It's a linear take on fame, progress within a popular culture determined to keep it in stasis, and the value of contrarianism in the face of that. As such, it works a treat. I've never been able to get into Dylan to any real depth, despite the encouragement of friends and siblings who anything but Dylan bores. They tried and I honour the effort. It's just not for me. What is for me is the spectre of an artist who goes where he will, logs his bad decisions in an ever expanding repertoire of expression.

Timothee Chalamet doesn't quite resemble Dylan but he gets busy with studiously observed physicality, solid blue-eye acting and the commitment to do his own playing and singing. What he conveys might look a little too like the result of a lot of '60s interviews but Chalamet does appear to be crafting character for the purposes of cinema rather than the approval of the experts. As such, he comes across as a person before he's a famous person. Add to this the general persona he has already cultivated publicly with turns in Dune or Call Me By Your Name. He has a career duty to appear also as himself. If this seems a cheat consider that he is playing the kind of figure who needed to blend persona with self skilfully as a matter of occupational mental health. Chalamet works.

Apart from knowing already that the infamous "Judas" heckle happened on a U.K. tour and not at Newport, I couldn't easily tell you how much is got wrong here. I determined to relax what little I do know to see if it works as a film. All biopics, particularly of music stars, commit the great moments sin whereby a portent of greatness to come is heralded as part of normal life. People who might have good parts to play as characters are named in full the way they never would be in reality. There are a lot of these (as there were in the same director's Walk the Line) and they do annoy me as a concentration on such moments as genuinely quotidian would be more impressive. But it's not a big flaw, being so ubiquitous and when the cast that includes Ed Norton, Elle Fanning and a terrific turn as Joan Baez by Monica Barbaro is so consistently engaging. Is the electrified gig at Newport overplayed? Not as much as every concert scene in The Doors and the most sensational myth (Seeger axing the electricty) is curtailed. I liked it .It made me want to listen to Dylan and Baez and Pete Seeger. It did that job, if nothing else.

ROLLERBALL @ 50

A darkened velodrome slowly wakes as staff prepare it for use. The heavy grind of Bach's Toccata and Fugue blares. Teams assemble in uniforms that borrow from gridiron and hockey except that the players are wearing rollerskates while others are on motorcycles. The audience is restless behind Perspex barriers and a group of the suited privileged make themselves comfortable at an elevated viewing room. A hush descends for the announced corporate anthem. As it plays, the captain of the Houston team Jonathon E.  impatiently thumps a metal ball against his leg. The siren sounds and the ball is fired from a cannon. There are goals and rules but fatality is penalised only by time out. This is the future where there are no wars but there is Rollerball.

Norman Jewison's realisation of William Harrison's source novel and then screenplay ticks all the boxes of '70s dystopian sci-fi: a global government, a cultural distraction for a docile public, a take on computers of the future, and a strident anti-individualistic oppression. Details like the corporate anthem and the slick brutality of the game of the title wrench us out of the present day by depicting such as normality. So, why, out of a field that includes Logan's Run and ZPG, would I put this among the peaks of the sub-genre? Because it commits to all of those tropes and pushes character further forward than any of them.

Jonathon E. is a superstar. Between games and the adulation of crowds, his teammates and the corporate overlords, he relaxes at his ranch with his latest assigned spouse. What could go wrong? He could. He's aging and has been at the top of the game's culture for too long in the minds of the bosses. He has become greater than the game. The game's purpose is not the promotion of human endeavour, it's bread and circuses and is the only thing standing between the status quo and a repeat of the fabled corporate wars. Heroes are fine for the continuation but they, like all the products made by the corporations, have shelf life. Jonathon resists, knowing he has many years left in him on the rink. The corporation knows that he can be squeezed out and begin to loosen the rules until there is only the mechanism and the players and a game played to the death.

But the thing about this story is the result of the inevitable showdown between the people as represented by Jonathon and the company as represented by Mr Bartholomew: what will it mean if an act of defiance against the corporate order is successful, the breaking of the order, mass rebellion, more oppression? Jonathon himself doesn't know and Bartholomew is confident that the point is moot as he's on the real power team. Jonathon's development has to do with his initial discomfort at the squeeze to a position of awareness. Friends and trusted colleagues are of little help and then even the mighty electronic brain he visits in Geneva breaks down at his query. He's in this alone and has no way to predict his future if he doesn't conform and retire. As concrete as the conclusion is, we are left with a quiet dread.

James Caan as Jonathon starts as someone who barely questions his lot, being so privileged. His resistance begins with the assignment of wives; he misses one more than any and the suggestion that she was stolen by a suit has a sour resonance. But then, as he watches the game get harder as the constraints are progressively removed, he understands that he won't be allowed to continue. This is a clever twist on the usual dystopian scenarios by applying the costs of a command society to one at the top rather than a Winston Smith foraging around the lower depths. That the rule of the capitalists has become an invisible tyranny is also a switch from the more typical military totalitarianism or hard collectivism: there is a constant illusion of personal liberty for the consumer who is entirely bound by the goods and services from above. Caan's macho strong silence is progressively rendered vulnerable with  increased awareness, even to the point of being aware of the trap he has entered.

At the other end of the table John Houseman, everyone's go-to posh intimidator, slimes everyone around him with his unctuous powersleaze. When it is time to render this dark and even sadistic, Houseman brings it and embodies every vocable of his threat. This had already served him in memorable turns like his admiral in Seven Days in May and would again in the film and TV series The Paper Chase. There could have been no better casting.

And Jewison for his part also brings it. He ensured that there would be no glossing over depictions of the game which are white knuckle, constantly engaging and set within a spectacle of brightly uniformed colour, bloodthirsty crowds and a thunderous cacophony of constant threat of injury and death. These scenes thrill today. Back in the designer homes of the players and the boardrooms it's all '70s futurism with trapezoidal screens embedded in walls, primary colours and burnt tones for the suggestion of classiness that the status hungry always chase. 

The massive allnighter parties that end in the fiery destruction of trees for the hell of it show the waste and nervous-system-numbing hedonism the new one percent get to live by. These scenes are like old Playboy ads for whiskey or cigarettes come to life and only need slight pushing to work as visions of the world to come. It's where Jonathon attempts to find guidance and sense in the libraries and computer monoliths that the corporate style simplifies into mammoth clean-lined weirdness of design. Many remarkable public buildings from the time were used for this and the suggestion is that we are looking at the near future, not some fancied one far beyond our mortal grasp. Add some rich classical source music for the scoring and you've got what often feels like a cheekily produced bubblegum Kubrick. The fashioner of the busy anachronistic clashing of Jesus Christ Superstar would have been flattered by the recognition.

At school we all had to find a way to get to see this boy's movie to be in the gang. It was an M but one that cinemas were tight about. You could go with parents but the way to do it was as normal paying customers of the claim thereof. No one felt tipped a moustache or strode in with platform heels but if you went offpeak, in the afternoons when they were most in need of bums on seats, you'd get past, especially if you threw them a couple of bucks for softdrink and popcorn. I went to the drive in with my sister and her friend Penny and no one batted an eyelid. By that time, all the kids were talked out about it but I went on about bread and circuses as I'd been through an ancient Rome phase. That stirred a few chats. 

You were supposed to go on about the percussive violence, and I did, too, but the figure of the hero struck me more. Always having to dodge around what most of the kids liked and how little I cared for it, I treasured the hero as outsider and, while it wasn't a central text for me, it pushed me rightly away from mass muck. The spectres of things like Star Wars and Grease were to come and I did see and at least partially enjoy some of that, I was able to drop it without any pangs. The one commercial channel in Townsville was showing things like Zabriskie Point and Husbands as midweek movies; cute space and cuter '50s were not going to cut it.

I still like Rollerball. It's not timeless so much as still relevant. It's not just about sport (that would never endear it to me) but it makes a story with sport at its centre rivetting. Had a lot of career ahead of him and all of it is worth your time but for me the trio of Fiddler on the Roof, Jesus Christ Superstar and this form his strongest output, ending with the tale of frightening familiar gone rogue, the billionaire who acts like a king, and more, and worse.

Viewing notes: I watched my Scream Factory 4K with a faultless vibrant transfer not shy with the grain structure. Not locally available anymore but rentable through the usual online outlets.

CITY OF LOST CHILDREN @ 30

Krank, a craggy grotesque, taps the dreams of captive children because he can't dream himself. In an abandoned oil rig fitted out like a steampunk lair, his efforts, through a machine made to purpose, keep failing. The inventor of the device has long absconded in disgust, leaving half a dozen clones of himself. Krank elicits the aid of a cult of machine men to abduct children from the harbour town on shore. One night they take little Grub, brother of the massive One, circus strongman. Now ... um ... and a gang of children thieves is run by a pair of conjoined twins who are building up to steal a big payday safe and ... 

The problem with this film is that describing the plot will only make it seem pretentious or fatally cutesy. It does get cute quite frequently but never without something grim injected for balance. It is never pretentious; it delivers on all its promises of dark fairytale worlds, grounded unreality and spectacle. City belongs to a loosely aligned series of whimsical cinema stretching from the early '80s to the '00s (say, from Diva to Amelie) by the likes of Besson, Beineix and the team that brought you this one, Jeunet and Caro. These films, whether they were set in elaborate waking nightmares or pushed versions of the more familiar worlds of criminal life, were known for flamboyant design, cranked music scores, and a kind of bruised whimsy that reminded its audiences of the pain at the receiving end of a slap in the face.

City of Lost Children is the peak of these. The commitment to world building, from the brass and glass machinery to the soot encrusted brick walls of the city to the stunning interiors, is total. The careful use of CGI is made with futureproofing subtlety. While much of the casting emphasises the peculiar physical features to distortion, every face and body seems to be a part of this solidly imagined place and time. Add to all of that the fact that it works, for all its convolutions of plot, as an achingly beautiful tale of  redemption.

Ron Perlman, initially cast for height and bestial visage, has shown, role after role, that he's a strong performer, here again demonstrates his magnetism, tending toward his physical skills but convincing in the truncated dialogue he is given, a professional muscle learning speech. Judith Vittet as young Miette presents as tough as an eleven year old can. That this is done without older-than-her-years cuteness is a boon; her life so far has led to it and she has earned it. French cinema's goofy faced stalwart Dominique Pinon gets to play seven roles as the clones and their progenitor, each distinguishable from the others. Daniel Emilfork as Krank pushes his battleaxe face into his every scene but takes opportunity to show vulnerability along with threat without seam.

Music is by David Lynch regular Angelo Badalamenti and it's one of his most appealing. Ranging from organ grinder gothic to lush orchestral blooming, the music shoulders the extraordinary visuals, adding its own grandeur here and grit there. It sounds like he was enjoying his vacation from Lynchville.

I said that I thought this was a peak among the French whimsy but maybe I should have clarified that to mean it is the most timelessly presented one. When you are in front of this, you are not thinking of the underworld or dystopian futures or even political points about the fate of Earth's environment; this story exists within the imagination of its writers and creators, it transcends the few indicators of twentieth century technology and history to show a world both repurposed and dark. To its credit, while it can be grim it is never without heart and humour. If you seek it out, don't be put off by some of the abstruse plot complications, let the arc take you from peril and chaos to redemption and freedom. Above all, this is a fable of freedom and it feels like it even more than it did.

Viewing notes: I watched this from my 4K disc on a friend's new, enormous tv in Dolby Vision and 5.1. The transfer looks like film with no noticeable noise reduction but plenty of olde worlde grain. Splendid! The 4K is a local release at medium pricing. It's also rentable through Prime for cheap.

I NEVER SANG FOR MY FATHER @ 55

Gene, a teacher, meets his aging parents at the airport and drives them back home. It's not a long car ride but by the time they're in the driveway we've got a bumpy prologue that lets us know that this film is going to be an examination of a continued control by the father over everyone else. Scenes are like testimonies to this manipulation and there's almost no letup. Old Tom is at the wheel and there's only one way he'll let go. It's a quietly searing experience.

Gilbert Cates autopsy of family life makes it hard for its audience by keeping things middle class. The stereotyping does suggest that the alternative is a physically violent working class tribe but the vintage of this exercise place it more in the realm of Edward Albee, as the notion of Tom effectively freezing his son in place as Gene intends to embark on a second marriage at a long distance. 

The dialogue is taken almost unchanged from its theatrical source and it shows with long speeches and lengthy single set scenes. Rather than feeling stagey, though, Cates's approach is to let the text speak for itself through some robust performances. The cinema comes from a near television style motion. Again, this has more to do with pushing the ideas in the interactions forward rather than a lack of creativity. Cates made a career out of this arms length domestic drama and felt that a flurry of cinematic interventions would be distracting.

This has the effect on the viewer o' today of having to adjust to what can feel staid and staged. The adjustment is swift, though when the cast is this good. Melvyn Douglas still had a decade left on screen and judges his irascible old man front perfectly, allowing for the deflated humanity visible beneath, asleep in front of the TV or almost physically  struggling to remember the name of the person he's addressing. Against this power, Gene Hackman's struggle is to prevent his own fury from manifesting in an act of patricide. Hackman proved a talent for great intensity (starting  from his next film The French Connection) but here he centres the stress around his mouth, as his eyes sharpen to razors. Dorothy Stickney in her last role makes what she can of the saintly mother. Estelle Parsons gets out of her goofy TV comedy personae as the ostracised daughter to provide an intense punch of her own.

When I heard the news of Gene Hackman's recent death and then the details of what was the supposed sequence of the events, I wanted to avoid the usual suspect titles like French Connection or The Conversation. This painful and poignant piece suited the memory better for me. The scenes where Gene is inspecting old folks' homes as a possible solution to his situation are discomforting. You can read the details for yourself but the end of life resonance this has with the younger Hackman playing witness to his father's dementia is heartrending. Life and art imitate each other.

Viewing notes: I watched this a hire through Prime (also available through a few online shops) as an HD remaster. I don't know of its availability on physical media.