I'LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (2006, Sylvain White)

 

* 

Someone learns about something bad that a different someone did 12 months prior.  

Starring  Brooke Nevin, David Paetkau, Torrey DeVitto, Ben Easter, Don Shanks

Written by  Michael D Weiss

Produced by  Neal H Moritz, Erik Feig, Nancy Kirhoffer, Amanda Lewis

Duration  92 minutes   

 

Years ago, I worked with someone who confessed to always reading the last page of a book first.

"Why?" I asked her, incredulous. 

"Because I can't stand the suspense, I have to know how it ends," came the reply.

This struck me as plainly ridiculous. Not that there would have been any point me arguing with her – in the words of Bobby Brown, that was her prerogative. But certainly it's not something I would ever do myself.

(Although I did once watch a fan edit of PULP FICTION where the scenes had been reordered chronologically. It wasn't as good.)

Here's the thing. One of the least-heralded but most-important aspects of writing is structure. I'm not necessarily talking about nonlinear narratives, or MEMENTO-style trickery. More like, in what order does the audience learn things? Are certain events shown or not shown? How long do we linger over particular incidents? Stuff like that.

The writer (or, since this is now film we're talking about, writers plural) must make these decisions. They make them to serve the story and what they want the impact on the viewer to be. They've chosen to arranged things this way, out of the millions of other possible alternatives; that's their prerogative, their right as an artist.

So, messing around with the structure is kind of disrespectful, in my opinion. I wonder if my ex-colleague also used to skip her DVDs ahead to the final chapter? Shudder.

When it comes to a series of films, that's a structure too. You're supposed to go original first, then any sequels. Sure, some people have come up with other orders to watch things, like with prequels/sequels rosta of the STAR WARS universe, but that's mostly kept to the realms of hardcore geekdom.

I have done it, but not usually by choice. ALIENS and TERMINATOR 2 were both considered to be less intense than their predecessors, so as a youngster I was allowed to watch them years before the originals. And the first HALLOWEEN I saw, round a friend's house, was the controversially Michael Myers-free third one, SEASON OF THE WITCH. And I didn't even realise at the time that it wasn't the first film, so for years I was one of the rare people who didn't associate the franchise with its famous bogeyman.

So, on viewing I'LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, I tried to imagine I'd watched this film first. If so, would I have gone back and sought out the earlier ones? And to what extent does this reference those films? The answers are 'no' and 'slavishly', respectively. Or, as you'll see if you read on, I should probably say disrespectfully.

We begin in a carnival, like the start of another slasher threequal, FINAL DESTINATION 3, following the predicable gaggle of teenagers. Soon it's all:

"Have you guys heard of the Fisherman? Every fourth of July he gets out his hat and slicker, he sharpens up his hook and runs wild. But only on teenagers, ones with dirty little secrets."

"So he's like Santa in reverse? He goes after the naughty kids?"

In the slasher tradition of THE BURNING, PROM NIGHT, THE HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW, et al, it's a prank gone wrong that prompts the later killings. Our bland teens want to exploit the Fisherman legend by faking one of their friends receiving death by hook. But it goes wrong and he dies for real, and they make a pact to keep it to themselves.

We jump to next summer and our thinly sketched youths are feeling guilty about their dead buddy, especially lead/final girl Amber. Then everyone starts getting those ominous 'I know' messages, and before you can say 'mind your own business, mate' we get: a succession of kills and near-kills; Fisherman sightings and non-sightings; guilt and defiance. Rinse, repeat.

The cast is populated with unknowns, kids who were at the same auditions as those who made it onto shows like One Tree Hill and The OC, but who had to then watch on jealously as their peers achieved stardom while they instead popped up in things like I'LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER.

Clearly, the third entry in this almost-franchise isn't a direct follow up. Parts one and two had the connecting tissue of Jennifer Love Hewitt and were released fewer than 12 months apart. No JLC here, and nearly a decade has passed this time.

But I also can't help wondering: when is a sequel really a remake? Because when you get something like this, where it seems like they just dug out the original script and gave it a rewrite, how can you say it is actually a continuation? Yes, the characters are different and so is the location and some details. But that often happens in remakes, too.  They did add a supernatural element this time – but so what? The fact is, we still have the same basic structure and plot beats.

It's like they took a house, stripped off all the wallpaper and threw out the furniture and then redecorated. Except, they used lazy college kids to do the work and went to the local skip for supplies. And in terms of films that blur the line between sequel and remake, this does the opposite of going from EL MARIACHI to DESPERADO or when they redid THE EVIL DEAD as EVIL DEAD II: lower budget, fewer stars, less imagination and flair and filmmaking confidence.

There is a lot of what used to be called MTV-editing, now sometimes labelled 'Avid farts', an expression credited to online critic Outlaw Vern, Avid being the industry-standard editing software. It's not just cutting often to leave micro-short shot lengths, it's also adding white flashes and 'woosh' sounds to manufacture some excitement. Usually without success.

OK, to be fair, there was one sequence in I'LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER that impressed me. Not really the execution, but the concept. One of our teens, the blond not-Ryan Philippe one, is swimming alone at night. The Fisherman turns up, as is standard, and immediately hooks our boy’s ankle while he's trying to splash away. So, it’s like the Fisherman is actually going fishing!

I'd also like to think that the character name 'Amber Williams' is a tribute to the EVIL DEAD series’ Ash Williams, played by Bruce Campbell.

The only thing I can genuinely recommend I'LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER for is a drinking game. Do a shot any time someone denies the existence of the killer or you hear the words 'I know'; whenever the edit lets out an Avid fart, down your drink. After about 10 minutes, you won't know who knows what about anything anymore.

One star out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  God, please, please.

What would a movie called I'LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID FIRST SUMMER be about?  I’m sorry, I can’t. I just … I just can’t get my head around it. Sorry.

 

Previously:  THE LAST MOVIE

Next time:  LAST THREE DAYS

 

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND (2006, Kevin Macdonald)

 

* * * * 

When a restless young Scottish doctor takes a job in Uganda, he finds himself embroiled in the reign of dictator Idi Amin.

Starring  Forest Whitaker, James McAvoy, Kerry Washington, Simon McBurney, Gillian Anderson  

Written by  Peter Morgan, Jeremy Brock

Produced by  Charles Steel, Lisa Bryer, Andrea Calderwood   

Duration  123 minutes   

 

William Friedkin (THE EXORCIST, THE FRENCH CONNECTION) and Paul Greengrass (THE BOURNE SUPREMACY, CAPTAIN PHILIPS) started out directing documentaries, before pivoting to features. Martin Scorsese and Werner Herzog are thought of as narrative guys first and foremost, but still make docus as well.

Some directors, meanwhile, like to blend documentary and fiction at the same time, overlaying a story onto the real lives of non-actors. Steven Soderbergh tried this with BUBBLE; other filmmakers make it their modus operandi, like Harmony Korine (GUMMO, BABY INVASION), Chloe Zhao (THE RIDER, NOMADLAND) and many of recent ANORA Oscar-winner Sean Baker's movies: famously THE FLORIDA PROJECT and RED ROCKET, but also his early efforts like TAKE OUT and PRINCE OF BROOKLYN.

Todd Haynes is an interesting one. He made I’M NOT THERE, ostensibly a biopic of Bob Dylan, but one that cast six multi-gendered actors to portray the musician. Before that, Haynes had made VELVET GOLDMINE, set in glam rock's heyday but following fictional rockers, rather than the Velvet Underground themselves. And then, 20 years later, he went and made a straight-up documentary named THE VELVET UNDERGROUND, which was explicitly about the band!

Then you have those filmmakers who are making pure fiction, but want it to be as realistic as possible. Like the abovementioned Greengrass or Michael Mann (in particular with THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS.)

All of this is to say that the lines between fiction and real life, between depiction and dramatization, and between biopic and inspiration, can be pretty vague.

THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND's Kevin Macdonald is one of those director who started out in non-fiction and then pivoted to feature narratives (although, like Scorsese and Herzog, he does dip his toe back into the documentary waters from time to time). When he moved into narrative feature-making, it was with TOUCHING THE VOID, a docudrama about the near-fatal exploits of two mountain climbers. Now, let’s look a little closer at that genre classification, 'docudrama'. It’s a documentary, and it’s also a drama. It’s a reconstruction, but is it also a dramatization? Inevitably to a degree, but presumably drama-ed up as little as possible.

Interestingly, TOUCHING THE VOID has no screenplay credit. It mentions Joe Simpson, the climber who wrote the book that inspired the film, but not with an adaptation credit, just a mention of him being the book's author. Suggesting that there was no screenplay! But surely Macdonald didn’t drag hundreds of cast and crew up a mountain with a copy of the paperback and then flick through the pages telling them to act bits out on the spot?

What's irrefutable is that the goal with VOID was authenticity – to put us alongside the climbers as if we were there during their ordeal. However, when it came to Macdonald’s next film, THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND, things got a little more complicated.

Here, we have another true story. At least, kind of. The central figure is real-life Ugandan army commander Idi Amin, who did indeed overthrow the president in a 1971 coup d’etat. Amin was the subject of a 1998 novel of the same name by journalist Giles Foden, who was not in Uganda at the time. The novel was then adapted by acclaimed screenwriters Peter Morgan and Jeremy Brock, both of whom have CVs littered with fictionalized accounts of real-life people: THE QUEEN, FROST/NIXON and THE DAMNED UNITED, and MRS BROWN, I AM A SLAVE and DIANA AND I, respectively. To further complicate matters, their screenplay is described as 'considerably different' to its literary source.

THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND isn’t a biopic of Amin; he’s not even the main character. An early caption tells us "This film is inspired by real people and events", and then we open with our actual protagonist: James McAvoy as newly qualified doctor Nicholas. It's 1970 and his dad wants him to practice at home in boring old Scotland, but instead eager-for-adventure Nicholas spins his bedside globe and pokes his finger on Uganda.

He jumps on a plane to East Africa to join up with another white doctor and his wife, played by Gillian Anderson – trying out her Mrs Thatcher English accent years before The Crown. Before long, Nicholas is doling out injections to the villagers, playing street football in the dust, that sort of thing.  "You've certainly come at an interesting time," Anderson remarks: Amin's coup has literally just taken place. And soon the new prez is visiting their village, proving to be a charming and popular figure, orating a lot of propaganda about what he's going to do for Uganda. Anderson is sceptical, since the deposed president said the same things  – and turned out to be totally corrupt. Ominous.

Nicholas soon gets a chance to find out first-hand the truth behind the rhetoric. During a chance encounter on the road, Amin is impressed both by the medical assistance he receives from Nicholas and by how the young man grabs his handgun and pumps two .45 calibre rounds into a dying cow. Plus he has a thing for Scots, for some reason. And so the usurping general invites Nicholas be his personal physician.

This is a 'seduced by charismatic evil' movie. Nicholas is taken under Amin's wing, and is at first happy about his swanky apartment, vintage company car and elevated status. He defends Amin against people who doubt his benevolence, such as Simon McBurney's English Foreign Office correspondent. But Nicholas soon realises that his new boss is, in fact, a paranoid, philandering despot, with a hair-trigger temper from which even those closest to him aren't safe. Nicholas's life in Uganda spirals out of control, to the point that it comes down to kill or be killed. So, worse even than the streets of 1970s Glasgow.

Forest Whitaker famously won a Best Actor Oscar for playing Amid, in a rare case of award recognition for an established character actor. It was well-deserved, and Whitaker's ably matched by McAvoy, who puts in a star-making turn as the idealist hardened and changed by harsh reality.

However close THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND may be to what really happened in Uganda 50 years ago, it tells a story that's well worth your two hours. And that's the only kind of truth necessary, as far as I'm concerned.

Four stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  The actual last monarch of Scotland, as opposed to Great Britain as a whole, was Queen Anne (1702 to 1707).

What would a movie called THE FIRST KING OF SCOTLAND be about?  BRAVEHEART? I reckon?

 

Previously:  THE LAST ANGRY MAN

Next time:  INSIDIOUS: THE LAST KEY

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

THE LAST CASTLE (2001, Rod Lurie)

 

* * * 

In a tough military prison, one inmate leads a rebellion against the corrupt warden. 

Starring  Robert Redford, James Gandolfini, Mark Ruffalo, Clifton Collins Jr, Delroy Lindo 

Written by  David Scarpa, Graham Yost 

Produced by  Robert Lawrence 

Duration  132 minutes

Separating art from the artist. Some people really struggle with it. Since I think that a rational, intelligent person, one who can tell fantasy from reality, should have no problem, I try my best. 

I'll still watch a Woody Allen movie (well, I haven't bothered with most of the newer ones; I'm talking about his mid-70s to mid-90s peak). As an example from a different medium, I remember how when I was at school, many people said they hated Oasis because they couldn’t stand the Gallagher brothers; personally, I wasn't dwelling on their personalities when I was belting along to 'Live Forever' or 'Supersonic'.

But I do struggle sometimes. Specifically, with two actors. One is Kevin Spacey; that's a strange one for me, though. Rather than boycotting the movies he's in, I actually find that his reputation now enhances his performances, since most of his characters are unsavoury and/or predatory types anyway (heartfelt attempts like PLAY IT FORWARD were never going to work, let's face it.)

The other actor is Robert Redford. I was always a little suspicious of his golden boy looks and megawatt smile, exacerbated with INDECENT PROPOSAL, where he plays an all-time sleazeball with a billionaire's arrogant lack of accountability.

But it was reading Peter Biskind's Down and Dirty Pictures that left me never being able to look at Redford the same way again. 

The book is pretty much the '90s version of Biskind's more famous Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, which was about the '70s movie brats (Scorsese, Friedkin, De Palma, Spielberg, etc). Pictures covers the independent movie scene of the late 20th Century. Included are Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, Steven Soderbergh, Paul Thomas Anderson, David O Russell ... and, rather regrettably, Miramax, AKA the Weinstein brothers. 

And it has many chapters on the Sundance Film Festival, founded by one Charles Robert Redford Jr. Biskind portrays Redford as unreliable and full of himself; woefully under-committed to his own institution, forever breaking promises and failing to turn up. Now, the author does admit to having a vendetta against Redford, for reasons that remain vague, and the actor/director doesn't seem to have this reputation anywhere else. Yet the description stuck with me, and I haven't been able to view Butch Cassidy's pal in the same light since.

Redford is a charisma actor: more charm than talent. And that can work; hell, it usually does, that's kind of the point. But not all viewers can be won over. I have a friend, for instance, who doesn't like George Clooney, finding him smarmy and smug. And while I can see his point, my own heart melted 30 years ago watching salt and pepper-haired Dr Doug Ross every Thursday night on ER, and he's had a hold on me ever since.

Redford's THE LAST CASTLE co-star James Gandolfini was another charisma actor, albeit also a supremely talented performer overall. Here, however, he plays your archetypal sadistic warden. (More on Gandolfini in a minute.)

Yes, this is a prison movie – a military prison movie, but I don't think that makes much of a difference. As such, the first thing the modern viewer does is compare the film to modern titan of the genre THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION. And it starts similarly, with new prisoners arriving and the current inmates (including a young Mark Ruffalo) placing bets on who won't last the first night. But it soon takes its own path.

Redford's character, one of those newbies, is spoken about in revered, awed tones before he even appears onscreen. He's a highly decorated general, who turns up to this prison (nicknamed 'the castle') in full uniform and medals, although he's down to his vest after checking into his cell – still looking good at 65, Bob!

Adapting to life inside, General Redford mostly keeps himself to himself. He just wants to quietly do his time while absorbing people telling him things like "you are a great man, you've done so much for your country!" and "my father said you kept him alive in Hanoi!" Sometimes, he breaks things up by delivering inspirational speeches, most notably to a stammering Clifton Collins Jr. 

(If it's ever revealed what this saint among men did to end up behind bars, I missed it. Something about disobeying a direct order, I think. Was probably one of those morally murky ones.)

Warden Gandolfini, meanwhile, keeps himself amused with stunts like confiscating the inmates' basketballs and gleefully watching the resultant brawl from a window in his ivory tower. He lets the fighting go on until he gets bored, and then tells the guards to shoot some prisoners at random.

And Redford's soon running afoul of the warden's tyranny, when the prison boss decides to knock Mr War Hero down a peg or two. He's punished for standing up for the other prisoners and forced to arbitrarily carry heavy rocks from one side of the yard to the other. For this, we upgrade from vest to a shirtless Redford, curly ginger chest hair and all. 

Next, he starts persuading these thieves and murderers and whatever else to rebuild a broken wall, as a symbolic act of loyalty and companionship. And from there, it's a battle of wits to the end, with Redford deciding that it's going to be him who runs this penal establishment, not the onetime Tony Soprano. By the end, the former is leading a full-on prison escape/battle which, as per the whole 'castle' motif, resembles the final stretch of ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES, with Gandolfini even eyeing up a ceremonial sword he has displayed in his office as an option to charge into battle with.

I also wanted to mention Delroy Lindo, who turns up as Redford's ex-colleague and advocate. Only because a) Lindo was such a beloved staple of '90s cinema (THE HARD WAY, CONGO, GET SHORTY [also with Gandolfini], BROKEN ARROW, RANSOM, A LIFE LESS ORDINARY, etc); and b) while ostensibly from the USA, he actually spent his early childhood in the London borough of Lewisham. Respect due.

As for THE LAST CASTLE itself ... it's fine. Redford won't annoy most people and, to be fair, he's likable enough here. Biskind was probably wrong ... probably. It's not among the greatest prison movies (SHAWSHANK, ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ, that part in FACE/OFF) and is a little too rah-rah flag-waving for this non-American. I mean, the Goddamn climax is a bullet-ridden Redford hoisting up the stars and stripes, with the flag then filling the screen as the movie fades to black over triumphant music.

But if you like stories about men behind bars overcoming adversity, then it'll do fine. Plus at one point Ruffalo pilots a helicopter and destroys a guard tower with its tail rotor. That's something Morgan Freeman's crusty lifer Red never got to do, at least.

Three stars out of five.

Additional: Another point in Redford's favour is his 1980 directorial debut, ORDINARY PEOPLE, which I happened to watch recently. What a great movie! It definitely takes the title of most forgotten '80s Best Picture winner away from THE LAST EMPEROR. Only, you know, undeservedly forgotten in this case.

Valid use of the word ‘last’? I guess it’s supposed to be some kind of metaphor for changing times, or maybe the overcoming the ‘last castle’ in all of us? 

What would a movie called THE FIRST CASTLE be about?  An hilarious and charming coming of age story about two young brothers who both enter a sandcastle building competition. 

Previously:  THE LAST FACE

Next time:  THE LAST JOURNEY

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

AND WHEN DID YOU LAST SEE YOUR FATHER? (2007, Anand Tucker)

 * * * 

A writer reflects on growing up with his domineering, now-dying father.

Starring  Jim Broadbent, Colin Firth, Juliet Stevenson

Written by  David Nicholls

Produced by  Elizabeth Karlsen, Stephen Woolley

Duration  92 minutes

From the dawn of artistic expression, stories have dealt with Daddy Issues. Ancient Greek tragedian Sophocles threw patricide into Oedipus Rex; Hamlet’s dad came back from the grave to kick off the whole revenge plot; Henrik Ibsen explored 'the sins of the fathers' in his play Ghosts.

And movies dealing with angst toward a male parent or authority figure are too numerous to count. Just off the top of my head: TOP GUN, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, ON THE ROCKS, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, BEGINNERS, THE SAVAGES, THE FATHER, BLAME IT ON RIO, THIS BOY’S LIFE, THE SHINING, AD ASTRA, INTERSTELLAR, SOMEWHERE, ABOUT A BOY, BEAUTIFUL BOY, KRAMER VS KRAMER, NEBRASKA, THERE WILL BE BLOOD… (OK, some of those weren’t off the top of my head; Google was invented for a reason, people.)

Most of the above focus on the child coming to terms with living up to the expectations/reputation of the pater familias. But here are some rarely (if ever) explored twists on the topic that I for one would like to see:

– The father struggles to emulate the child, whose success has overtaken his own.

– The child is more interested in emulating their mother, much to their father's chagrin.

– The child suffers an existential crisis when they realise that they actually have no desire to emulate their father at all.

– The child finds out that their famous father is in fact a fake, but ironically the intricacy of the deception makes the child start respecting him for the first time.

– Excessively focusing on their intergenerational strife distracts the parent and child so much that neither achieves anything in life and they both die miserable.

AND WHEN DID YOU LAST SEE YOUR FATHER?, meanwhile, goes for the old 'we've always had a complicated relationship, Dad, but because you're nearing death now we’re finally incentivised to reconcile' angle.

As the father of the title, Jim Broadbent is established in Firth's sepia-tinted childhood flashbacks as a blagger, grifting his way into a horse track's members' enclosure on a family outing. He's a self-important, pompous blowhard – not a typical role for the usually cuddly Broadbent, more reminiscent of his earlier work as cocky bent copper Roy Slater in the sitcom Only Fools and Horses. Despite the man's flaws, the juvenile Firth idolises his dad, opining in voiceover "My father was a hero... I thought he'd live forever."

Back in the present ('London, 1989'), adult Firth is a writer, accepting a literary prize at a lavish ceremony. "Two words are all I'd like: 'well' and 'done'," he laments to his wife, while holding the award flimsily and looking forlornly across at his old man, who is going around the posh do quaffing free booze and drawing attention away from his son.

Then: the bad news that we all knew was coming. The doctor who delivers it has a bedside manner that's ham-fisted to the point of being humorous, like the scene is a relic from an earlier script draft when this was a comedy. "Your father's going to die," he blurts out. "Of course, we all die sooner or later - but in his case, it's going to be sooner rather than later." It's not even as if he's a bumbling intern or anything.

From frame one, WHEN DID YOU LAST feels like it must have been based on a book... which it was, but it's a little more complicated than that. When I saw David Nicholls’ name among the writers' credits on IMDb, I assumed that this was adapted from one of his weepy novels (like One Day or Us) – but actually he was the one doing the adapting. Turns out Firth is playing real-life poet Blake Morrison, and Nicholls fashioned a screenplay out of Morrison's memoirs. 

I'd never heard of Blake Morrison, since my knowledge of his chosen medium pretty much begins and ends with doing Carol Ann Duffy poems at school. I also remember the odd random line from other people's work, like "pick a corner in that charnel house" (turns out that was 'Vultures' by Chinua Achebe) and a dying mouse that "curls in agony big as itself" (Gillian Clarke – 'The Field Mouse'). Anyway, while I respect poetry, I've come to accept that it's one of those things I just don't get on with – like rugby, or watermelon... or musicals.

Anyway, following Dad's diagnosis, the film's structure settles into switching back and forth between more soft-focus flashbacks to an idyllic childhood (possibly apocryphal?), then back to Firth in the present trying to have serious chats with the ailing Broadbent, who was always a reluctant communicator at the best of times. The past bits get more interesting when they move on to Morrison as a teenager, circa 1962 – as signified by the Cuban Missile Crisis being all over the radio. His memories of those times alone with his father include rain-sodden camping trips, driving lessons in a vintage Alvis convertible on a deserted beach, and Dad regularly calling him 'fat-head'. Oh, and he remembers suspecting the notorious lothario of having an affair, or affairs plural, possibly even siring some bastard offspring.

AND WHEN DID YOU LAST SEE YOUR FATHER? is professionally done and classily played - maybe a bit too classy, to be honest. The whole thing is all rather nice, in a Sunday-afternoon tea-time kind of way, albeit with a little bit of sex and the odd F-word thrown in.

Nonetheless, when the inevitable tear-jerking ending arrives and Morrison completes his journey to accepting his dad as a flawed but ultimately caring man, it does feel earned. I've only ever cried twice at movies (the blindly crawling around fruitlessly ending of THE KILLER [1989] and Sarah Conner finally telling John that she loves him in TERMINATOR 2), but this came close to being number three. Good show.

Three stars out of five.



Valid use of the word ‘last’? Yes, this last time is pretty definitive. 

What would a movie called AND WHEN DID YOU FIRST SEE YOUR FATHER? be about?  These days, usually he comes into view immediately after the doctor. In times gone by, though, he would have been nowhere near the maternity ward, instead probably camped down the pub anxiously awaiting a phone call from the hospital.

 

Previously:  THE TOXIC AVENGER PART III: THE LAST TEMPTATION OF TOXIE

Next time:  LAST CHRISTMAS

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

LAST RIDE (2009, Glendyn Ivin)

 

* * *

A young boy accompanies his fugitive father across Australia.

Starring  Hugo Weaving, Tom Russell

Written by  Mac Gudgeon

Produced by  Antonia Barnard, Nicholas Cole, Anthony Maras   

Duration  101 minutes   

Sometimes a film comes along that you don’t like overall, and yet it possesses one element that really leaves an impression.

It could be memorable dialogue, that you find yourself repeating from time to time or which contains sage advice. There may be one classic scene, or breathtaking cinematography. Or it could be more to do with the story, that it poses some kind of poignant dilemma. It may be the score, a theme that you find yourself regularly humming, to the point that you simply have to buy the soundtrack – despite not actually owning the film itself.

Another of these standout elements may be the performances, or one performance in particular. This happened to me once regarding Hugo Weaving, star of LAST RIDE.

The film in question is THE MATRIX.

I used to consider THE MATRIX one of the most overrated movies of the ’90s. As the years have gone by, my opinion has changed. I've now come to think of it as one of the most overrated movies ever.

I don't think I've ever been so disappointed or so confused by the hype as I was when I left the Odeon cinema Bromley aged 16 in June 1999. I tried watching this supposed masterpiece again, first on VHS, then on TV, then on DVD. And each time my opinion of the movie only went further south.

The most frustrating thing about THE MATRIX is that not only is it one if those films that has infected popular culture to the degree that any criticism of it is considered blasphemy, but it has subsequently had sequels that it is OK to slag off. This has insulated the first film from criticism – despite the fact that all of the things people didn’t like in the follow-ups were already there from the very start.

So, whenever you suggest that maybe THE MATRIX is tediously self-serious and full of not very clever or original philosophising, that it's way overlong in the middle with too much time spent with annoying secondary characters, and that its action sequences contain all the thrills and peril of PlayStation 1 cut-scenes, the recipient of your views never engages with you.

Instead, they just automatically trot out a boilerplate reply: "Oh yeah, the sequels were bad. But the first one, that's a classic!" This answer is always the same, no matter who you ask, as if the person is actually an AI, programmed to only ever give that response. (Gasp – maybe we are living in the Matrix! Wouldn't that be ironic! Gosh, now I have something really deep and challenging to go away and think about.)

The original MATRIX is not only mediocre, it also had a negative effect on future films. Its success is directly responsible for all the tension-free, superhero or superhero-inspired, young-skewing garbage that passes for action movies these days. In some ways I actually prefer THE MATRIX RELOADED, which teased some interesting directions; but they definitely then went and lost all their good will with number three. And that recent legacy sequel – despite a strong start – brings new meaning to the word ‘smug’.

But there was one diamond in THE MATRIX: Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith. His mannered, memorable, stern to the point of near-camp performance was a joy. Some of his monologing will stay with me forever, like when he explains how humans rejected the first iteration of the Matrix for being implausibly perfect, or his delivery of the line "You're going to tell me, or you're going to die."

(It would be remiss of me to not add that Joe Pantoliano is equally great in THE MATRIX, but he always is. And also, I must state that I am a big fan of the Wachowski siblings’ debut, 1996's BOUND.)

Weaving hasn’t quite had the Hollywood career of his Aussie contemporaries, Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce – I wonder if he was the only one to turn down LA CONFIDENTIAL? I guess he was in LORD OF THE RINGS in some capacity, but that didn’t exactly see him ‘do a Viggo’ and get catapulted to leading man.

His movies tend to fly under the radar, apart from things like V FOR VENDETTA (where he’s hidden behind a mask) and villain duties in one of those Marvel movies, but it doesn’t mean he hasn't been doing good work. And that includes LAST RIDE, produced back on his native turf (Weaving was born outside of Australia but spent most of his childhood and early career there).

LAST RIDE sees our Hugo as a rougish ex-con, taking a no-budget, sleep in the car or outside in ‘the bush’ road trip with his pre-teen son, Chook (slang for chicken, as far as I remember from soap opera Neighbours). It's a journey that will have significant consequences for both of them. And let's just say that the trip is less about where they're going to and more what Dad is running away from.

The movie is slight: not bad, not amazing, watchable enough. I was irritated by the intrusion of the non-skippable ads on the ITVX ‘free’ streaming service, but not enough to turn off, so it passed that particular test. (My time is not free, and they’re wasting it with commercials.)

And ‘slight’ is still more than slightly better than THE bloody MATRIX. Then again, so would be sitting through a back-to-back stream of ITVX’s adverts, punctuated by clips from the film that only feature Weaving's Agent Smith.

Three stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  Spoiler alert: for the father, yep.

What would a movie called FIRST RIDE be about?  For me, our first family car was a Saab 9000, if I remember correctly.

Previously:  THE LAST PHOTOGRAPH

Next time:  THE LAST EXORCISM

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

THE LAST HORROR MOVIE (2003, Julian Richards)

 

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A wedding videographer who has a sideline in brutal killings starts filming his murderous exploits as a documentary.

Starring  Kevin Howarth, Mark Stevenson, Antonia Beamish, Christabel Muir  

Written by  James Handel, Julian Richards

Produced by  Zorana Piggott, Julian Richards   

Duration  79 minutes 

   

Found footage. The V/H/S franchise is keeping the fire of this sub-genre burning, to mostly successful effect, but by and large it feels like a style of filmmaking whose time has passed.

THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT popularised found footage in the modern era, of course, back in 1999, but few were able to recapture that magic. PARANORMAL ACTIVITY and CLOVERFIELD did well in 2007 and 2008, but while the former birthed a franchise, the peak was brief and (with some exceptions) the decline swift.

Found footage actually draws its origins back to the epistolary novel: your Draculas (good) and your Frankensteins (didn’t like it) that were structured around characters' correspondence or diary entries, or from newspaper clippings. The desired effect is to make everything seem ‘real’ and thus more involving. 

But there is a danger that the reverse will happen. Any time we enter the world of a movie, we know we are being asked to suspend our disbelief – to enter a dream-like state where we take things as they come. In removing the sense of artifice, the found footage approach can in fact create more artifice; be a distancing effect rather than an engrossing one.

Because without any of the traditional manipulative cinematic techniques (precise use of editing, lighting, staging, scripting, etc.), there's the risk that we never reach that suggestable state. And so, what looks like an amateur pointing his camera at random things happening in front of him may only ever end up feeling like an amateur pointing his camera at random things happening in front of him, an experience as incapable of engrossing us as a relative's boring video of their two weeks in Camber Sands.

Although not in the found footage style, for me the same principle applies to those one-take gimmick movies. They take me out of the story, forcing me to step back and admire the filmmaking rather than the film. The odd sequence can work out OK, but I was left deeply unimpressed with the feature-length ‘oners’ BIRDMAN (2014) and 1917 (2019) – both of which actually had several disguised cuts. The latter was especially misguided – rather than an immersive experience of the horrors of war, it turned the protagonists’ odyssey into a tedious trek, without the breaks and rhythms that good editing and pacing provide. Hitchcock’s ROPE is an example of the gimmick that actually does work – and the big man had fewer ways to cheat back in 1948.

(I’m similarly unimpressed with all the lauded one-take action scenes which litter the genre nowadays, such as in the overrated JOHN WICK films. All I see is how well Keanu has rehearsed for something the ends up looking like a video game cutscene, with none of the grace, tension or beauty of an expertly edited Peckinpah, Cameron or Woo.)

But back to found footage. Some of those films are actually very good. BLAIR WITCH didn’t do much for me, but I’ve been meaning to revisit it. The aforementioned CLOVERFIELD does a great job of combining high-quality SFX within a lo-fi aesthetic, and CHRONICLE works, if you’re into that sort of thing. And I can’t neglect to mention CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1980), one of the best ever horror films, period. REC (2007) and TROLLHUNTER (2010) also deserve your attention.

And, I’d say, so does THE LAST HORROR MOVIE – just about.

At first, the viewer is made to feel that they’re watching the wrong movie. An opening sequence takes place in a distinctly American diner, with a stereotypical slasher setup: a waitress closing up on her own is stalked and attacked by a maniac. It’s clearly not found footage, as was advertised.

Then we cut via a fuzzy screen to a British man addressing the camera from his grubby West London flat, admitting to taping over the diner slasher – which was the ‘real’ movie that we the viewer rented. He goes on to promise that what he’s about to show us will be much more horrific.

This is Max Parry, a serial killer, and he’s going to tell us about his exploits – he estimates he ‘does’ eight to ten people per year, between stints as a wedding videographer. More than that, he’s going to show us.

So, it’s basically as if after Henry and Otis from HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (1986) filmed their home invasion they decided to carry on bringing the camera along and started to enjoy the documenting as much as the killing. It’s also like the Belgian MAN BITES DOG (1992), but without the accompanying film crew (Max just has a protégé ‘assistant’ to film him).

THE LAST HORROR MOVIE isn't as good as those two, lacking their power and insight. Max is far too smug and cocky and doesn’t really convince as a homicidal maniac – the idea persists that he’s doing his whole video project as one big prank. The film tries for some thematic depth by calling out the viewer for their bloodlust and complicity, but is not nearly as incisive or witty as Austrian director Michael Haneke was with the same message in his FUNNY GAMES in 1997.

Nevertheless, it does have its moments.

There’s a queasily suspenseful sequence where we're led to believe that Max is luring a young boy away to be his latest victim, but it turns out the lad is his nephew and he’s only bringing him home to his mum/Max’s sister. A montage of bludgeoning kills cuts comically to Max tenderising some steaks with a mallet. Max runs up to a woman while she’s doing the laundry and stabs her repeatedly, and then while she sits there bleeding out he passionately explains to her, "We're trying to make an intelligent movie about murdering while doing the murders... we’re trying to do something interesting!"

That last example is more thematically rich than chastising the viewer with "so why are you still watching all this unpleasantness, eh?", presenting as it does an artist whose frustration to create something meaningful has driven him to murder – similar territory to Abel Ferrara’s DRILLER KILLER (1979).

If THE LAST HORROR MOVIE had had more of that kind of thing, and less oily smugness delivered straight to camera in extreme close-up, then Max's exploits might have been compelling and disturbing enough to put him up there with HENRY’s Henry and DOG's Ben in the pantheon of narcissistic killers with a camera. Pity.

Three stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  Max actually explains this towards the end, in a nice meta twist that I won't spoil here, all the while pondering whether his over-analysis makes him "sound like a wanker". Cough-cough.

What would a movie called THE FIRST HORROR MOVIE be about?  Universally, that would be THE CABINET OF DR CALIGARI (1920). For me personally, it was probably ALIENS – not strictly horror, I know, but pretty scary when you're eight years old.

Previously:  THE LAST THING HE WANTED

Next time:  I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

LAST HOLIDAY (2006, Wayne Wang)

 

* * 

A department store assistant is diagnosed with a rare brain condition and only has weeks to live, so she takes off on a luxury holiday to Europe.

Starring  Queen Latifah, LL Cool J, Timothy Hutton, Gérard Depardieu, Alicia Witt, Giancarlo Esposito 

Written by  Jeffrey Price, Peter S Seaman   

Produced by  Laurence Mark, Jack Rapke   

Duration  112 minutes   

   

Dear Mom,

Greetings from sunny Hollywood! Yes, I made it here in one piece! Sorry for not writing sooner, but I wanted to be able to put a return address – the Studio City YMCA just wasn’t gonna cut it!

But now I’m sitting here writing to you on my own desk (second hand) in my own room, in my own apartment! Well, I got the living room anyway, the sofa bed. It’s a one-bedroom, see, and I’m rooming with this British guy I met in the Y, who also wants to be a screenwriter. He’s got the bedroom, I got the living room, but don’t worry ma, he pays more of the rent.

And you’ll be pleased to hear that this letter isn’t the only thing I’m writing. Yes, I’ve started working on my first screenplay!

Okay, so here it goes. It’s about this woman, like an everywoman – like ‘everyman’, but a lady! She’s kind of like… not a loser, exactly, but definitely not happy. She buys her food with a big pile of coupons, her only social activity is singing in the church choir, she lives in a rundown neighbourhood near a bridge (alone, of course), with a shitty car that barely runs.

And, you know, she works in a department store in a real crappy job and her boss is a total jerk – like, his cell phone rings and he actually answers it in front of her, and all he cares about is money, whereas she wants to make the customers happy, that kind of thing. So yeah, like, overall, she’s real good natured and everybody loves her and all of that.

And those food coupons, they’re not just some random detail, Mom! You see, what she really wants to be is a chef. When she gets home every day, she watches TV cooking shows, and prepares all the food along with the TV chef. And she takes photos of the dishes she cooks and puts them in a scrapbook. It’s like a dream book for her, her aspiration book or something. Maybe that’s what I’ll call it in the screenplay!

But for sure she definitely also has this other book called ‘Possibilities’, where she’s cut and pasted the head of a guy she’s in love with onto photos next to herself. He’s her dream man, and he’s also her colleague! No, Mom, I know what you’re thinking. It’s not going to be creepy. It’s going to be real sweet and charming! 

Anyways, so here’s where it gets real interesting. This is the best part. Now, I gotta admit up front, I didn’t exactly come up with this idea totally from my own little mind. My roomie, he was reading this book named Last Holiday, by this old English writer who goes by JB Priestley. And Mom, I didn’t actually read the book or anything (you know me!), but I did read the back of it. And I don’t know anything about getting rights or permission or whatever, but I’ll worry about that later – this is the kind of idea that is too good to ignore.

You see, I was looking for a way to set the woman in my movie free, but how? What would make it so she can burst out of her funk and finally make the most of her life?

Well, this is it, here goes: she finds out she only has three weeks to live!

Isn’t that genius? Isn’t that original?

So she marches into her boss’s office and not only does she quit, she grabs his cell phone and smashes it on the floor! Wham! ‘That was a $200 phone!” he yells. I might even put the dialogue in capital letters!

So what next? She decides she’s gonna live her dream of being a chef in, now get this Mom, tell me this is not totally awesome: Europe! Can you believe that?

Now, when I told this to my British roomie, he said something really weird. He said that Europe is not, like, just this one place that’s kinda all of the same. He claims it’s actually a continent full of many different countries, all with unique cultures and that we Americans should stop lumping an entire continent together like we do. He said that was totally ignorant! 

Well, boo to him. This is gonna be an American movie for Americans. And in this American movie, my American leading lady goes to Europe and does European things with all those quirky, cute little European people. And snooty, right? Those Europeans are kinda snooty, everyone knows that. Of course, we'll make her spend most of the movie with other Americans who have also gone abroad, because we can't have too many Europeans around, that would be crazy.

I guess she can fly to France? In first class, of course. France is in Europe, right? That’s the one with Paris, I think. I think I heard once that they have, like, a lot of food in France. So that could be where she goes to learn how to cook. I'm not sure yet. Hey, remember that movie GREEN CARD, where they had that guy who was French (or was he English?) who had to pretend to be married to Andie MacDowell to stay in the US of A? Imagine if they ended up casting him as a celebrity chef who trains her! That would be super sweet.

Heck, maybe I just won’t even say which one of those cute little European countries she’s gone to, what difference does it make? That way, we can have all kinds of accents and languages and whatever all together, to be extra quirky and hilarious.

So anyways, you know, she goes to this European spa hotel place, and flies a helicopter, and goes skiing, and base-jumping, and has a PRETTY WOMAN-style shopping montage in a fancy department store, and does a load of other kinds of awesome things (all in a super cute and quirky European style).

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Three weeks to live? Major downer! But no, Mom, and this is where you’re really gonna see how all the money to send me to UCLA was totally worth it. Because, okay, get this: it turns out she actually isn’t about to die! Maybe the brain scanning machine or whatever was actually broken! Or maybe the doctor made a mistake, like he looked at her chart upside down or something! I’d probably have to make him European, too, or at least some kind of foreigner, if he's gonna be one of these real quirky, campy, useless doctors.

So that’s gonna mean I can write an awesome happy ending, where she’s had the time of her life, and realised that life is all worth living after all, and got her man, and opened her own restaurant, all of that. The audience is gonna walk out of theatres with a smile as wide as the Hollywood sign!

Right, gotta go. Just thinking about this awesome screenplay makes me wanna get back to it! Love to Dad and little Billy-Joe and Susie-Anne.

Love to Dad,

Your son

Two stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  Since she is not, in fact, about to die, it would be extremely unlikely for her to never go on another holiday.

What would a movie called FIRST HOLIDAY be about?  Personally, I spent a lot of my youth in the Yorkshire coastal towns of Scarborough and Bridlington (both in Europe, for the record).

Previously:  X-MEN: THE LAST STAND

Next time:  THE LAST SEVEN

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

X-MEN: THE LAST STAND (2006, Brett Ratner)

 

* * 

Three groups squabble over a cure for mutation: the X-Men; other mutants who are bad and so not part of the X-Men; and some nefarious non-mutants (AKA humans).

Starring  Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Anna Paquin, Kelsey Grammar

Written by  Simon Kinberg, Zak Penn

Produced by  Lauren Shuler Donner, Ralph Winter, Avi Arad

Duration  104 minutes

Quiz time! What do these films all have in common?

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN, ANT-MAN AND THE WASP, STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN, ALI G INDAHOUSE, TOY STORY 2, TOY STORY 3 and X-MEN: THE LAST STAND. 

Answer: they all start with a ‘fake-action prologue’, where we’re supposed to believe that our characters are in peril, but it turns out they were safe all along. This is not to be confused with beginning the movie in medias res, like all the other Bonds and the Indiana Jones series, where our hero is in the middle of an adventure that is not part of this film’s story, but is nevertheless a real incident with actual stakes.

Usually these fake-outs are a dream or a flashback or some kind of simulation/training. It’s the third example that (eventually) accounts for the opening of X-MEN: THE LAST STAND, and while up until now I’ve only ever found this trope to be mildly irritating, something about how director Brett Ratner starts THE LAST STAND (not to be confused with THE LAST STAND) really got on my nerves.

I think it’s because the man can’t decide on an opening so instead gives us three in a row, kind of like the opposite of the protracted endings in that final LORD OF THE RINGS film.

First, we have some kind of Jean Grey origin story flashback ("20 years earlier"), featuring Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen with creepy mid-noughties uncanny valley GCI de-aging, where Ratner at least gets the tedious contractually-obliged Stan Lee cameo out the way early doors.

Then, there's another flashback ("10 years earlier") to a father walking in on his son cutting off his nascent wings in the bathroom, a boy who will grow up to become Ben Foster’s mutant Angel.

Then, following the credits, we have the actual opening ("In the not-too-distant future"), where Wolverine, Storm, Rogue et al are fighting some giant robot thing in a post-apocalyptic wasteland/studio backlot, which – yes – turns out to be a Star Trek holodeck-style setup. Wolverine defeats the enemy all by himself, going against Storm’s insistence that "we work as a team". Then as they walk out, Halle Berry delivers more lines like "You can't just change the rules when you feel like it!" and "This isn't a game!", all the time wondering if she has to start wearing her fucking Oscar on a chain around her neck to get sent any decent scripts.

And the rest of the film?

Well, Bill Duke turns up in a DR STRANGELOVE-style war room among other important-looking bureaucrats. Kelsey Grammer makes sure he hits all his cues so he has to spend as little time in the blue make-up chair as possible. Ratner gives Anthony Heald a cameo as ‘FBI Mystique Interrogator’ in a nod to his own RED DRAGON (bad idea) or possibly THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (bad idea – but for the opposite reason).

Vinnie Jones reminds us that he was once a thing; Elliot Page is still Ellen Page; Famke Janssen is angrier and more sexed-up than usual; James Marsden is barely in it; R Lee Ermey does his drill sergeant thing but sadly only off screen; Harper’s boss from TV's Industry is one of the bad mutants and also apparently a hedgehog; and all in all the whole mess puts the viewer in the unusual position of pining for Bryan Singer.

Two stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  No, they went on to make loads more X-MEN movies, with no doubt many more to come long into the future until we’re all old and dead and mouldy in the ground.

What would a movie called X-MEN: THE FIRST STAND be about?  I’d have to look into the history of the source comic books, which is never going to happen.

Previously:  THE LAST SAMURAI 

Next time:  LAST HOLIDAY

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com