Retro Trio: High Heels (1991); Starred Up (2013); The Painted Veil (2006)

High Heels (1991)

Original Spanish Title: Tacones Lejanos

Director: Pedro Almodovar

This was the latest in my little trip through the films of renowned Spanish director Pedro Almodovar. I found High Heels yet another early example of his unique voice and masterful skill as a film-maker.

The story focuses on Rebeca Giner (Victoria Abril), a young Spanish TV news anchor with some very complex, and occasionally lethal, ideas and relationships with men in her life. As a very young girl, Rebeca knowingly drugged her boorish step-father so that he would fall asleep at the wheel and die in an accident. Rather than being out of some mere urge to kill, her purpose was to free up her mother, Becky (Marisa Paredes), to take an acting job which her husband was preventing her from accepting. Oblivious to her daughter's hand in the death, Becky leaves her daughter behind and goes to Argentina to begin the acting career which is her dream.

A strange but amusing dance number thrown into the
proceedings ensures that we never take things too seriously,
even when things take a few rather dark turns.

Flash forward twenty years. Rebeca is a TV news anchor, and her mother has long since become a world-famous actress. Rebeca's mother returns to Madrid upon hearing that her daughter has married a former lover of hers, another rather loutish older man not unlike the father-in-law whom Rebeca drugged two decades earlier. When he is found dead several weeks after Becky's return, the mother and daughter become the prime suspects in an investigation headed by bloodhound judge Juez Dominguez (Miguel Bose). The associates of the two women include a colorful bunch, including several transvestites.

While the murder-mystery elements may, on the surface, make this seem like a fairly typical whodunit, this is an Almodovar movie. And being one of his earlier films, there is a range of humor, from virtual slapstick right through to the most pitch black, running through the proceedings. As with the other four films that I've seen of his, this one deals heavily with themes of personal identity and the feeling of loss and absence. Much of the movie can be very amusing, as there are more than a few absurd situations and interactions. But at the heart of it are universal emotions revolving around relationships between parents and children, spouses, and lovers. The movie bears many of the familiar hallmarks of the other Almodovar films I've seen, but once again is completely its own story.

Now having seen five of his movies, it seems to go without saying that the movie looks incredible. I've already described my impressions of the visuals in Almodovar's movies, so suffice it to write that High Heels is no different. This, in conjunction with all of the other merits of the film, simply solidify my admiration for the man as a film-maker. It's truly amazing stuff.

Starred Up (2013)

Director: David Mackenzie

I am now officially a fan of David Mackenzie. I watched Starred Up after seeing and loving Mackenzie's neo-Western film Hell or High Water. Based on that movie and this 2013 offering, I am willing to go see whatever his next few projects are, out of hand.

Starred Up is a prison drama focused on Eric Love, an extremely violent 19-year old convict who has aged out of the juvenile system and has been moved into an adult maximum security penitentiary. It also happens to be the very same prison which houses his convict father, Neville, who has been serving a life sentence since Eric was a small child. In less than a few hours after processing, Eric gets into a brutal fight with another inmate and in placed in solitary. Soon after release, he has another serious scrap with the guards. Just as the guards are ready to pummel him, though, a prison counselor sees all that is going on and taps Eric to take part in a discussion/therapy group which he runs. The guards reluctantly agree, and Eric is all but forced to attend the group.

The movie is an astounding, if highly disturbing, look at violence, masculinity, and how a young man grapples with trying to harness them to not just survive but also grow as a human. There are many extremely intense scenes, of both a physical and psychological nature. The young and hyper-pugnacious Eric is our fractured looking glass into the strict hierarchy of the lethally stratified federal prison system (the movie takes place in England, but it is easy to apply the environment to nearly any maximum security prison in the world). Watching Eric rein in his fury at his father and nearly everyone else around him in order to first survive and then to find some modicum of growth is as fascinating as it is disturbing. The setting and themes are not for the faint of heart, grim as they are, but there is real humanity sitting just beneath the surface of the entire movie.

The group therapy sessions are arguably the best scenes in
this great movie. You can almost see the waves of violent
aggression emanating from these guys, as well as their
immense struggle to deal with it all.

The acting is outstanding. The only actor whom I recognized was the incredible Sam Mendelson, who does a brilliant job as Eric's hard-as-nails father, Neville. All of the others, although not familiar to me, were amazing. Jack O'Connell is ferocious as Eric, and Rupert Friend is equally brilliant as the counselor Oliver Baumer. Not to be outdone are all of the men who are part of the therapy group. It is during these group meetings that we get some of the most powerful scenes. Some of these do not even involve words, but rather a palpable tension arising from extremely violent men wrestling with themselves and each other on a level that goes far beyond physical struggles.

Being a movie that was clearly going for an authenticity which few prison movies approach, Starred Up does not offer a rosy conclusion. It does, however, offer the satisfaction of having seen something that reveals some profound aspects of human nature, and it offers us all a hard look at what incarceration means. It is the type of movie that, even if I don't feel the need to see it again, I would recommend nearly everyone watch at least once.

The Painted Veil (2006)

Director: John Curran

The wife and I decided to go "full nerd" recently and read the same classic English novel before watching the film adaptation of it. The novel was The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham, an author whose other novels I've loved. My wife had seen the movie already, but I was coming at it from the novel first.

The movie stays true to most of the spirit of the novel, set in the 1920s, in which Kitty (Naomi Watts), a young socialite Englishwoman, marries Walter Fane (Ed Norton). Walter is a rather dry but civil bacteriologist who takes her to Hong Kong where he does research. Soon after their arrival, Kitty grows bored with her new husband and begins an affair with an attractive up-and-comer in the British colonial government. Walter discovers the affair just as he accepts an assignment to go to a cholera-ravaged area deeper into the Chinese countryside. Under threat of a messy and public divorce, Walter forces Kitty to accompany him. While terrified that her husband wishes her death from the cholera epidemic, Kitty sees no other option but to accept and go with him. Amid the cholera-infected area, Walter and Kitty find themselves among great suffering of the native population, and they meet several other Westerners who are there for their own reasons.

Kitty and Walter - two people who probably weren't right for
each other from the start, but whose shared struggles among
the cholera epidemic lead them to grow themselves and their
respect for each other.

This film adaptation hits nearly all of the strongest, most poignant notes of Maugham's brilliant novel. The relationship between Walter and Kitty grows increasingly deeper and more complex once they are among the cholera epidemic. And while lesser writers would have milked this situation for no end of sentimentality and trite reconciliations, Maugham was far too experienced and skilled an author to travel such beaten paths. When reading the novel, I was constantly surprised at how the story unfolded and how the characters developed. And the unexpected turns are not merely inserted for the sake of surprise. They feel quite organic, and they touch upon the messy nature of human desires and our ability to alter and expand our perspectives. The movie retains many of the novel's subtler turns of character, which only increases its value. To be sure, a few things are simplified and given slightly tidier resolutions, but this is to be expected from most commercially-minded films. In the case of this movie, they don't greatly diminish the overall tale.

Beyond the clear strengths of story and character, the movie is visually stunning. The cinematography captures the beauty of the Chinese countryside, as well as the exquisite beauty of the period's buildings and clothing. Cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh has plenty of dazzling movies and TV shows to his credit, and this one may be his crown jewel. An added technical merit is, unsurprisingly, that the acting is excellent. Naomi Watts and Ed Norton are typically great, as are all of the supporting cast.

I'd recommend this movie to nearly anyone, just as I'd recommend that anyone read the novel first. While readers who deeply love the novel may be a bit disappointed in what the film changes or omits, I don't feel that there are any crippling alterations or omissions. Both are first-rate pieces of art, and they make for great comparisons to each other. 

Retro Trio: Bridget Jones's Diary (2001); Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011); First Blood (1982)

Bridget Jones's Diary (2001)

Director: Sharon MaGuire

One of the stronger, more accessible rom coms that I've seen, if not exactly a movie that I'll put on my all-time favorites list.

The title character (Renee Zellweger) is a hard-drinking, chain-smoking, unlucky-in-love, 30-something bachelorette who works at a publishing company. She makes a resolution to cut down on her vices and make every effort to find a decent man. Unfortunately, she soon falls for Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), a handsome, funny, womanizing rogue who is a manager at her company. Bridget engages in a fun, sexually satisfying affair with Cleaver, though she does remain curious about another man on the periphery of her life, Marc Darcy (Colin Firth). Darcy is a much dryer, serious lawyer whom Bridget knows through family friends. Bridget's feelings become even more confused when more details emerge about Cleaver's past friendship with Darcy, and the former's unwillingness to fully commit to Bridget.

This is a more singular rom com, as its protagonist is unusually degenerative. Jones's loneliness is fairly standard fare for the rom com genre, but her humorously chronic attempts to drown her sadness with booze and cigarettes make her much more accessible than similar, more poised and innocent protagonists. She is a nervous type who has "diarrhea of the mouth," which results in her embarrassing herself more than any other person possibly could. It all makes for solid comedy.

The two most appealing aspects of the movie are the acting and the adult nature of it. I can appreciate the foul-mouthed exchanges, mostly between Bridget and Cleaver, which make the characters more enjoyably earthy. The actors are all perfect in their roles, with Hugh Grant especially standing out as the attractively hedonistic and sleazy Cleaver. Colin Firth plays the stuffy Darcy masterfully, and these two polar opposites offer plenty of opportunity for Renee Zellweger to show off her comedy acting chops.

My viewing partner for this one was my wife, who has seen the movie more times that she can count. It was nice to be informed that the movie, just as the source novel, drew from Jane Austen's classic Pride and Prejudice (I suppose Colin Firth playing a character named Darcy should have given it away). I can appreciate such updates, and it gives the tale some welcome intelligence and literary heft.

While the Bridget Jones character may come off as an incompetant clown a little more than her creator, author Helen Fielding, might have liked (my wife assures me that this is the case), it hardly spoils anything in a light-hearted film like this one. This is never going to be a movie that I'll go out of my way to watch, but I'll be happy to put it into the holiday rotation to see every year or two.

Don't lie - you know you enjoy the cuteness.

Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011)

Director: Jennifer Yuh

A fun enough sequel, though not as enjoyable as the original (which I reviewed here).

The tale picks up some time after the first movie. Po (voiced by Jack Black) is now a legitimate kung-fu master, working with the Furious Five, defending locals from evil-doers. Not far away, the exiled son of a powerful family - Shen (Gary Oldman) - plots to return and overthrow the country. Shen also has an obsession with avoiding a prophecy which states that a black and white warrior will utterly defeat him. This is about all there is to the main story, which is far less interesting than the story of Tai Lien in the first movie.

The other story elements include learning much more about Po's past, and it also follows Po's quest to further master kung fu by "embracing inner peace," as his master Shifu puts it. These parts to the story are fine, but the tale isn't quite as engaging as the previous movie. This is the general theme of every aspect of this sequel: decent enough, but a weaker version of the original.

From the dialogue to the visual action, all aspect of this movie are slightly less clever or entertaining versions of the themes and gags set up in the first movie. Plenty of the lines are funny, but not quite as funny. Some of the action is a visual treat, but not as much of a treat as the original, as this movie relies more on overly long fighting sequences. You get the picture.

Unlike the first movie, which was a complete story in and of itself, this second movie clearly had an eye on an assumed third film. Panda 2 plants seeds the for a plot which will obviously bear fruit in the next film (released earlier this year, in fact). This is fine, but it leaves more dangling plot threads by its end, which can make for a slightly less satisfying narrative.

This is still a good series, and I'll check out the third film. I do hope, though, that it can be a little more like the original.

First Blood (1982)

Director: Ted Kotcheff

Somehow, some way, I had never watched First Blood at any point in my meat-eating, suburban-living, red-blooded, all-American Gen-X'er male life. I finally decided to fill in this glaring blank on my dance card of '80s tough guy movies, and it was well worth it.

Based on a short novel of the same name, First Blood follows several brutal days in the post-war life of Vietnam veteran John Rambo. Rambo is a drifter of sorts, and he wanders into a small town in Michigan after finding out that one of his platoon buddies had died from complications of exposure to Agent Orange. In the town, the local police officers try to bully the somewhat ragged-looking Rambo out of town. The quiet veteran, however, civilly refuses. He is then promptly put in jail.

In the jail, while being physically abused, Rambo suffers a severe PTSD flashback and lashes out, badly beating several police officers and escaping into the nearby woods. Over the next few days, the police refuse to back down, hounding Rambo to the point that he accidentally kills one of them in self-defense. The situation escalates to the point that more troops arrive, along with Rambo's former commanding officer, Colonel Troutman. It becomes clear that Rambo was not only a war hero but also one of the fiercest and most capable soldiers he had ever trained. What unfolds is a showdown between an ignorant local law enforcement team and a man who has been trained into a lethal killer but who also suffers from untreated psychological trauma.

It's easy to see why this movie obtained such respected status. Yes, it is a survival story and a case of one-versus-many, which both have a certain macho appeal. On these fronts, the movie still hits its marks. Beyond this, though, the movie taps into some very dark psychological territory that standard action movies were rarely exploring in the early 1980s. Rambo is presented as a tragic figure, rather than simply as the "wrong man to mess with" which so many imitation characters tried to emulate.

Some of of the scenes and sequences are a bit overlong, and a few points are belabored a bit much. Still, this was a really good movie that I wish I had seen long ago. It does further beg the question, too, of what if Sylvester Stallone had managed to keep his narcissism and ego in better check? The guy was in some outstanding movies early in his career, with First Blood being of particular note. If he had aspired a little more towards artistic integrity over fame and cash, he probably could have many, many more excellent movies on his resume, and far fewer movies like Rambo III, Cobra, and Rocky 5.

A Field in England (2013)

Director: Ben Wheatley

Spoiler-Free Summary

In the middle of a Civil War skirmish in a 17th century English countryside, a trio of deserters inadvertently band together as they flee the nearby carnage. One of the men is an apprentice for a missing alchemist, and he convinces the other two soldiers to search for his predecessor, who had gone missing in that same field some time in the past.

After ingesting some mushrooms with hallucinogenic properties, the two soldiers begin to confuse fantasy with reality, as they are led to find the former apprentice and search for a hidden cache of gold somewhere in the field. Various forms of madness and paranoia occur as the group interacts with each other and other characters, who may or may not be illusory.

Still Spoiler-Free Opinion

Did I Like It?

There are some films that leave you wondering whether you actually enjoyed them or not. A Field in England is one of those for me, even though it's now been about two weeks since I watched it.

There's no doubt that it does leave you guessing throughout, trying to piece together the varied, suspicious, and tantalizingly vague stories that the alchemist's apprentice is foisting on the soldiers. And there is the McGuffin of the buried treasure, which will leave any viewer wondering just what it is that the men are searching for.

The tale grows more twisted and confounding as
the various characters lead, follow, and manipulate
each other for reasons that are oddly frightening
for their lack of clarity.

The telling of the tale, though, can be dizzying, to say the least. Presumably by design, there is a fair amount of incoherence in the story once the mushrooms are taken. There are many jump cuts, disorienting camera angles, and general confusion about who is who and what, exactly, they are looking for and why. Every so often, the film sobers up for a moment and you feel some sense of clarity, but these moments become more fleeting as the tale progresses. Despite all of my questions, though, I mostly felt that there was something I, as a viewer, was missing, rather than something that the director had overlooked. Things are presented with a confidence and control that give the impression of internal logic, even if I couldn't completely wrap my head around all of it. This is to say nothing of the very heavy British accents and colloquial idioms, which can sometimes be a challenge to fully comprehend, even for one who rarely has trouble comprehending thick accents.

This likely sounds like a very masochistic viewing experience, but I assure you that it wasn't. The performances are outstanding, and there is actually some solid humor sprinkled into the dialogue. The levity is welcome, as most of my energy was spent on puzzling things out.

If nothing else, A Field in England leaves an impression. It's unlike any film I've ever seen, and offers hints at many darker, much more mysterious things lurking beneath its ever-shifting surface. It's these unknown components that offer me the intrigue that I enjoy in many tales, even if my curiosity is not completely satisfied by story's end. But this is exactly what is special about this movie - it leaves itself open to multiple interpretations. If you're willing to put in the mental energy these require and don't mind the ambiguity.