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Set in the sun-parched, hardly night-friendly dust bowl of Oklahoma, Near Dark is the story of farm boy Caleb Colton (Adrian Pasdar, best known as Heroes' Nathan Petrelli) who meets a girl, Mae (Jenny Wright) who happens to be a Vampire. After turning him, Mae takes responsibility for Caleb amongst her Vampire friends. Mae and her 'clan' (including the ever-present Bill Paxton as the menacing Severen) wander the highways like a gang of bored, nihilistic youths - much like a post-punk Mad Max. When Caleb finds himself among them, distrusted by all but Mae, he makes a desperate attempt to stay alive and become part of the clan.
Filling every frame with grimey mise en scene, Bigelow has opted for a claustrophobic feel despite the vast expanse of the Mid-West setting. The closed in shots give the viewer the sense of how trapped Caleb feels, which couples nicely with his reluctance to feed. In opposition to Caleb's reluctance, the clan are not the civilised Vampires to which cinema is recently accustomed, looking only to feed, they revel in their bloodlust - in particular during a scene in a bar they call 'shit-kicker heaven'.
While the dialogue, costume, neon and a lot of the synthesiser-based music is so thick with the 1980s as to date the film terribly, Near Dark is a refreshing kind of Vampire film. Besides having no mention of Vampires throughout, there is barely even the sight of fangs. These are violent, bored and anarchic immortals who've grown weary and distant from any sense of their long lost humanity. This culminates in their refusal to show any special consideration for Caleb's innocent family.
Mixing and matching classic genre elements from Westerns, Road Movies, Supernatural Thriller and even a little Noir (with all the neon harkening a little to the Cohen brothers' desert thriller Blood Simple), Bigelow has made an interesting Vampire film that is quite apart from most others. More well known and released the same year, teen favourite The Lost Boys has none of Near Dark's gritty ambience or rough and tumble adrenalin. This is a film soiled with diesel and dust and blood-stained, sweaty, unclean machismo - no room for sparkles at all.
Perhaps in acknowledgment of how romanticised and callow Vampires have become, the film is being remade and scheduled for release in 2012.
Labels: Kathryn Bigelow, Near Dark, Review, Vampires
The 2010 Best Picture winner is the study of a bomb disposal unit in the always potentially booby-trapped wastelands of Iraq; and of what happens when one of them is replaced with a reckless adrenalin junky on an apparent death wish.
SSG William James (Jeremy Renner) brings an unnecessary extra dose of danger to every insane situation in which the crew find themselves. He is quick to tackle the deadliest jobs and walk right into the 'hurt locker' - a term that means the place of ultimate pain. Along the way he befriends a young Iraqi boy (Christopher Sayegh) who plays soccer, calls himself Beckham and sells pirated DVDs.
Essentially a series of set pieces in the sands of Iraq, Bigelow's film lays bare the always terrifying days of the units tour of duty and the different personalities of its men. The film was also acknowledged for Best Film Editing and its conservative cut count helps add to the realism - it doesn't jump from frame to frame like a Jerry Bruckheimer movie.
Renner and fellow actors Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty handle their roles as members of the war weary unit well; even when the scene turns decidedly homerotic during a drunken, semi-clothed wrestle in the barracks.
For all the realism that glares from its sandblasted frames,(THL was shot on location in Kuwait and Jordan) The Hurt Locker has been savaged by many who know best for its unrealistic depiction of the conflict in Iraq. Taking the most criticism from returned soldiers seems to be the fact that a unit of just 3 men are patrolling deadly side streets looking for insurgents.
But perhaps what is most unrealistic about The Hurt Locker is the lack of any depth or even basic humanity given to the people on the other side of the US - Iraq equation. Even the one character towards whom SSG James shows real affection, Beckham, is undermined by the appearance of another child kicking a soccer ball and selling DVDs - as if he was merely a 'strategy' used by insurgents to infiltrate US troops.
There are critics and viewers alike who have referred to the film as apolitical, but it appears at the very least to be nihilistic in its intention - as if nobody can be trusted, least of all anyone from Iraq. If The Hurt Locker has a message of any kind beyond 'Never trust an arab', its that the war mentality is just that, a mentality, and its self-replicating and feeds on the madness of itself.
Despite its moral ineptitude, The Hurt Locker (purely as cinematic effort) is an intense and impressive film. While perhaps not a worthy Best Picture recipient given the brilliant Inglourious Basterds and A Serious Man were also in competition, it is the best Iraq War film since 2007s criminally underrated Redacted.
With the recent release of Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese once again brings a tale to the screen. There was a time in the maverick director's career that he didn't use Leonardo DiCaprio - The King of Comedy is one such time.
A naive loser Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro), who happens to be a hopeful comedian, manages to catch the ear of his comedic idol Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis as a rather candid and short-tempered version of himself) and invite himself for an audition. When Langford's office is dismissive of Pupkin, he grows increasingly disturbed until, goaded on by fellow Langford fan, Masha (Sandra Bernhard), he crashes his hero's home and takes him hostage.
Scorsese takes a film about comedians, co-starring a comedy legend in Lewis and works it into a menacing heist film not any less tense than his earlier work Taxi Driver (1976). Seemingly never far from lashing out violently during the hostage situation, De Niro's Pupkin has gone from a pathetic and celebrity obsessed loner who lives and has a fake TV studio in his Mother's basement to Travis Bickle without the mohawk. It is the slow burning tension that leads the viewer towards what seems like inevitable violence.
Jerry Lewis' BAFTA nominated performance as Langford underpins Scorsese's comment on celebrity and our dangerous obsession with it. The obvious differences in Langford's professional and private personas show that Pupkin and Masha are not even stalking the real deal.
Made in 1983 but feeling like a late 70s feature thanks to the drab colours and Pupkin's ridiculously dated dress sense, The King of Comedy is among Scorsese's best work and probably his strongest at that point until Goodfellas (1990).
Labels: Cinema, Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, The King of Comedy