Retro Trio: Sorcerer (1977); The World's End (2013); Ghost World (2001)

Sorcerer (1977)

Director: William Friedkin

An adequate but ultimately inferior and arguably unnecessary remake of a classic 1950s film.

Sorcerer is a spiritually faithful remake of the 1953 movie The Wages of Fear by Henri-Georges Clouzet. Though each film takes place roughly in the time that it was released, the 23-year difference between them matters little. The basic story follows a handful of shady drifters from different countries, all stuck in a small town in South America. All of them have long since run from something else, but all are desperate to finally return to their respective home countries. So desperate, in fact, that they agree to take an extremely high-risk, high-reward job in order to get the funds needed to leave. The job requires them to drive two trucks filled with highly volatile nitroglycerin across 200 miles of pock-marked dirt roads, so that the explosives can be used to collapse a runaway oil burn. These basics, along with the element of suspense which they set up, are the same in both movies.

Where Sorcerer differs from the original film is mostly in the time it spends on back story. Clouzet's film begins in the small village and spends the first 30-odd minutes there. Friedkin, however, opted to show how the four primary drivers ended up in their predicament. Perhaps unsurprisingly for the director of The Exorcist and The French Connection, the men's tales paint a grim picture. All four are varying degrees of despicable, with serious blood on their hands and misery in their wakes. While this does add a grimness to the movie that Clouzet's lacked, I actually found it a very effective device, as there is a fascination born of seeing if a quartet of vicious, haunted men can actually work together towards a common goal under deadly circumstances.

In nearly all other respects, though, I have to say that Clouzet's original is superior to Friedkin's. It's been about ten years since the one and only time that I saw The Wages of Fear, but I loved it and it always stuck with me.While it doesn't depict the drivers' nefarious backstories, it does strongly imply that these are desperate and somewhat unsavory men. Once they start to make the treacherous journey in their trucks, the movie is far better than Sorcerer. The tension and suspense is more consistently engaging. Whereas Sorcerer has several overly long scenes relying more on set pieces and drawn-out, repetitive action, The Wages of Fear sparks your engagement with one quietly deadly situation after another. Friedkin's movie does have some really good moments of suspense, but they don't stack up to the source material in either quantity or quality.

Sorcerer is a decent enough movie that suffers most from being a remake of an earlier masterpiece. Friedkin, as great a director as he was, probably should have left this one alone.

The World's End (2013)

Director: Edgar Wright

The second time I watched this one from start to finish, and it's even better than I had remembered. And what I remembered was a great movie.

Director Edgar Wright and writer/actor Simon Pegg wrote The World's End as the third and final installment of their "Cornetto Trilogy", a series of films connected mostly by their hilarious appropriation of well-known popular movie genres. This last film drew much of its inspiration from the science-fiction realm, most notably the classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Wright and Pegg had done this before, using George Romero's zombie flicks to inspire Shawn of the Dead and any number of Hollywood action cop movies to create Hot Fuzz. As great as those first two film are, The World's End outdoes them and showcases its writers' brilliance for creating entertaining, clever, and even thoughtful movies.

For the entire first act of the movie, a first-time viewer might wonder just where the science fiction is. The set up centers on Gary King (Simon Pegg), an alcoholic who peaked during his senior year of high school and, as he nears forty, decides to round up his old pals for a reunion pub crawl in their hometown. Once Gary convinces his reluctant former comrades to join (and enable) him and go back home, they soon find that their old pubs have all been homogenized by franchizing. This is the first glimpse of the sci-fi iceberg looming beneath the movie's first 30 minutes. As the fellows progress in their crawl, they discover that most of the town's denizens have been replaced by some sort of automated replicants, complete with their actual memories.

In the spirit of the classic movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The World's End uses its fantastic fictional elements to comment upon the homogenization of society. Whereas that earlier film was a thinly-veiled response to the utopian promises of communism, Wright and Pegg's film is a response to corporate sterilization of culture. There are several engaging exchanges that tap into deeper questions about individuality and youth-worship, among other rich topics. Carrying much of the load is a brilliant performance by Simon Pegg, who shows his surprising and impressive acting range in this movie. His Gary King character evokes several different emotions, and his arc is a surprisingly fascinating one.

I've become a real fan of Edgar Wright, and this movie is the one that solidified it for me.

Ghost World (2001)

Director: Terry Zwigoff

I hadn't seen this one since shortly after it was released 15 years ago. It still holds up very well as a funny, thoughtful drama about people who dwell outside of the mainstream. With hindsight, it is also clear that Ghost World was a rather early version of a style more widely popularized later in movies like Garden State and Juno. When compared to those more recent movies, I actually enjoy Ghost World a bit more.

Based on the graphic novel of the same name, the film focuses mostly on Enid (Thora Birch), a rather snarky, hip, 18-year old misfit who looks for inventive ways to stave off boredome during the summer following their senior year in high school. She and her equally-disaffected best friend Rebecca (Scarlett Johannson) tease and torment their friend Josh and hang around their more mainstream classmates just enough to mock and scoff at them. If this sounds a little jerky, it's because it is. Enid and Rebecca do make fun of some things which are worthy of mockery, but they're not exactly noble souls themselves.

Things are taken a little too far when, on a lark, Enid responds to a personal add and pretends to be a woman called for in the add. Enid and Rebecca stake out and watch as the man who placed the add (Steve Buscemi) arrives at the designated area to be unwittingly stood up. After watching the man wait hopefully and then leave dejected, Enid and Rebecca follow him to a garage sale. Enid buys an old record from the man, whose name is Seymour, and she makes a connection with him. Much of the rest of the story involves Enid trying to find a romantic interest for the introverted Seymour, deal with her changing relationship with the Rebecca, and pass a summer art class which she needs to officially receive her high school diploma. On the surface, it could be the plot to many coming-of-age films.

And yet, the novelty lies in the details. Typical of a Terry Zwigoff film, there is plenty of quirky and unexpected humor and drama. The characters are quite different from those in more popular teen movies. Enid, even more than Rebecca, typifies the condition that some young people experience when they have a far clearer idea of what they don't want than what they do. While this is familiar, neither Enid nor Rebecca are portrayed as loveable darlings whom the audience is clearly meant to support. They do selfish and even mean things, even if they aren't essentially mean people. This lends some drama to moments such as when Enid befriends Seymour, or when she breaks down as her friendship with Rebecca deteriorates. Thanks to the steady development of dimensions beyond our initial impressions of the characters, these moments have some heft.

Not every little joke hits, and not every action in the story feels totally organic. But there are enough laughs and enough authenticity to make for a good movie. I may not need to watch it again soon, if ever, but it's nice to see that a noted "cult" movie still holds up.

Retro Trio: The Great Beauty (2013); Hara-Kiri: The Death of a Samurai (2011); Bad Santa (2003)

This is Gep, in one of the countless amazing shots presented
in this outstanding movie.

The Great Beauty (2013)

Original Italian Title: La Grande Bellezza

Director: Paulo Sorrentino

An outstanding film, with an embarrassment of film technique riches.

For the first ten minutes or so of The Great Beauty, one might think they've been lured into an endless patchwork of visual imagery, with no clear or personal narrative. The film opens with several sequences of tourists marveling at and photographing some of the well-worn paths and sights of Rome, to a background of choir song. We then shift to a raucous nighttime party, which includes revelers of various ages and states of drunkenness and euphoria. Just when you think that film is simply going to be a visual panorama of the ancient city and its denizens, though, the film slows and focuses on a dapper gentleman in his sixties, who begins to narrate his perspective. This is Gep Gambardella - the heart and soul of The Great Beauty.

Gep is a writer who has produced nothing for over three decades. In his youth, though, he wrote a modern Italian masterpiece. Rather than build on this success by continuing his craft, though, he changed his goal to becoming the grandmaster of the Roman socialite scene. And he succeeded. For years and years, he was the epicenter of the social and artistic party world in the city.

Now, however, Gep is growing weary of the endless dance. Following Gep around the city, as he searches for more meaningful personal connections and even contemplates taking up his pen again, is a fantastic trip. He is affable, incredibly insightful and imaginative, and humorous, despite occasionally wearing his condescension on his sleeve. Watching Gep slowly disconnect from the shallower, more carnal, material realm that has been his comfort zone for so long, while he tries to reconnect with his own artistic nature, is captivating. And with his writer's eye, he is always aware of his own actions, in multiple contexts, and his commentary is priceless.

This vibrant sequence, in addition to being a visually dazzling,
has a depth, complexity, and tragedy to it that can only be
experienced by viewing the film. It's one of many of its kind in
the movie.

If Gep provides the emotional and intellectual substance of the film, cinematographer Luca Bigazzi provides the visual substance. Like an amazing number of Italian films, nearly every shot and sequence is perfectly framed and executed. You could pause the film at nearly any moment and be looking at something that could be hanging in an art gallery. Both the expansive exterior landscape shots and the interiors of the classical buildings are presented in all their glory, much to any film viewer's delight.

Gep's is a very personal story, but the context in which is occurs is just as important a theme. The writer's perspective has shifted to one of disgust for the hedonism that has consumed much of his city, including himself. It is a harsh criticism, and one that predictably resulted in confusion and outright anger from Italian intellectuals and artists who saw the film. Whether this was because they thought it was a gross, self-hating misrepresentation or whether they were uncomfortable seeing their own reflections a little too clearly, I can only guess.

The Great Beauty is too rich a film to adequately encapsulate in a post like this one. It should be clear, though, that I greatly enjoyed the film and will enjoy another viewing of it. Highly recommended.

Hara-Kiri: The Death of a Samurai (2011)

Director: Miike, Takashi

I was excited about this movie, having thoroughly enjoyed Miike's 13 Assassins. This other samurai period drama is equally as good, though in mostly different ways.

Hara-Kiri opens somewhat slowly, but very hypnotically. We watch as a local leader of a powerful clan of samurai grants an audience to a ragged-looking man who claims to be a ronin - a masterless samurai - who has lost his feudal lord, and who seeks to commit ritual suicide on their grounds, in an effort to reclaim his honor. The leader is quietly informed that this is likely a scam, with the ronin hoping that he will be given a modest amount of money and be sent on his way. This suspicion is confirmed when the samurai on the grounds find that the ronin's "sword" is a wooden fake. Instead of merely chiding and banishing him, they sadistically force him to go through with the suicide, with the wooden sword.

This scene is brutal to watch, as it is meant to be. What follows is a slow and painful revelation of exactly who the ronin was, and how he found himself in such dire straits. We watch a sad tale of love, poverty, and hope repeatedly dashed, forcing a young man into taking a gamble that ends horrifically.

This may all sound like a painful viewing experience, and it certainly is at several points in the film. There is much of the stuff of high melodrama, complete with tears of anguish and string music. However, there is far more to the tale to recommend it to those of us who have less interest in simply being depressed. Highly involved in the story is the young man's father-in-law, Kageyu, a former samurai of an clan who had been wiped out. When Kageyu becomes involved in his son's death, the movie becomes a study of the ostensible and often hypocritical notion of "honor" in medieval samurai culture. This analysis is what vaults this movie beyond most of its ilk.

Kageyu takes theh pose of ritual suicide, a posture that is
the touchstone for the entire picture. 

And in case you were wondering if there are any decent sword fights, the answer is a hearty "yes." Though they are few and far between for the first 90 minutes of the film or so, the movie ends with a wild one-man-versus-dozens whirlwind of sharp steel and righteous indignation. On its surface, it might seem like sensational, gratuitous action. But when you realize just what is driving that single warrior to fight so hard, the grander statement sinks in deeper and deeper. The final effect is powerful, to say the least.

Hara-Kiri: The Death of a Samurai is a great modern entry into an already-rich canon of samurai films. Highly recommended for anyone who doesn't mind a more brooding, challenging look at one of the most romanticized figures in the history of warfare.

Bad Santa (2003)

Director: Terry Zwigoff

Bad Santa is filthy, raw, and unrelenting. And it's hilarious.

The mission of this movie is clear, right from the jump: take the most cherished, purportedly selfless holiday in the land and tell a borderline-X-rated story centered on it. Mission riotously accomplished. Billy Bob Thornton plays Willie - a completely degenerate, alcoholic safe-cracker who, with his partner Marcus, poses as a mall Santa Claus in order to case the joint and rob the place blind on Christamas Eve.

You can probably guess where the humor derives from: the gloriously foul-mouthed, slovenly Willie interacting with hopeful kids is one area, but his generally fatalistic, hedonistic attitude towards the universe is the grander source of comedy. In a move that is initially self-serving, Willie invites himself into the home of Thurman - a socially awkward young boy who believes he is the real Santa Claus, and whose father is in prison for embezzlement. Willie takes every possible advantage of the naive Thurman, spewing language fit for a bar filled with drunken soldiers. Some of the funniest bits are Willie's puzzlement over Thurman's relentless attempts to gain his friendship, which Thornton converys through countless great facial expressions and deliveries of dialogue.

There's not a lot more to say about Bad Santa. If you haven't seen it, there is this clear positive: you will be able to tell whether you'll enjoy it by watching no more than the first 3 minutes. That's as long as it takes to get a sense of the film's humor, the protagonist's depravity, and the oncoming onslaught of linguistic filth. If you watch those initial moments and find yourself chuckling, then you'll certainly enjoy this extremely off-beat Christmas flick.