Some Must-Sees – movies boys will like, and girls ought to

Some excellent choices for a Saturday Night In

Heat – absolutely Top 10.  De Niro and Pacino play cat and mouse/cop and robber, with a brilliant supporting cast including Val Kilmer (the only thing I’ve ever liked him in), Tom Sizemore, Diane Venora, Natalie Portman et al. It’s simply exhilarating – Michael Mann brings us the greatest bank robbery scene since Dog Day Afternoon, but not until he’s laid out a story so engaging and characters so multi-dimensional that I never wanted the film to end. So he made it 3 hours long! I’ve never been so ecstatic in all my movie-going life.

Goodfellas – one of Scorsese’s best. A gangster flick with the perfect voiceover; star turns from Ray Liotta, Robert De  Niro and a frightening Joe Pesci; the wonderful Lorraine Bracco (later playing the ultimate in-joke as Dr Melfi in The Sopranos) and cameos from Scorsese’s own mamma and papa. Also one of the longest and most accomplished tracking shots in film history. Right from the opening scene, it has you by the throat and you don’t even want it to let you go.

Children of Men – from a filmmaker’s point of view, this is just incredible. The photography is notable for its ability to drag you into the action and carry you along, and to elicit a “how the heck did they do that??” response on several occasions. Clive Owen carries the story of a dystopian future where no children have been born for several years, and the planet is clearly in a crisis of gradual extinction. Amazing, exciting, wonderful stuff.

The Insider – more Michael Mann. This time it’s Russell Crowe who stacks on the weight and goes grey to deliver a superlative performance as a tobacco scientist who turns whistleblower.  Al Pacino spars with him as the journalist who takes up his story.  It’s beautifully shot, scripted, acted and completely gripping to the end.

Casino – another Scorsese masterpiece, more De Niro and Pesci. But this time they share the screen with a luminous Sharon Stone, giving the performance of her career as the manipulative, drug-addled wife of a casino boss (De Niro) who’s trying to go straight, but can’t leave the gangster life behind. Another amazing soundtrack, too.

Carlito’s Way – Brian De Palma follows up Scarface with Pacino playing a different character with similar leanings. Sean Penn and Penelope Ann Miller provide excellent support to Pacino’s Carlito Brigante, an ex-con trying to go good, who gets entangled in the dubious business of his lawyer, friend and ex-colleagues. It’s violent and exciting, and romantic too.

Infernal Affairs – the original Hong Kong police thriller that Scorsese made into the Oscar-winning The Departed.  The original is better though – and stars the stunning Andy Lau and Tony Leung Chiu Wai as a cop undercover in a criminal gang, and a gangster who has infiltrated the police. Let the games begin.

(Needless to say this list could go on and on, but this will do for now.)

Reality really can bite

Closer

(Yes, spoilers of course – but as the whole film spoils one’s concept of love, who cares??)

I re-watched this piece of urban, middle class, romantic dystopia last night, for the first time since it was in the cinema back in – (quick check on IMDb) – 2004.  And no, I haven’t seen the play.  Though I think one hardly needs to, since Patrick Marber wrote both that and this screenplay, and several moments in the film are decidedly stagey (which is not intended as a criticism of the acting, but the script makes it hard for it not to appear quite theatrical at times).

I remember feeling utterly bummed out when I first saw it, so cruel and superficial were the characters, so selfish their actions, such a pessimistic view of men and women and their attitude to sex, love and fidelity.  So I watched through metaphorical fingers this second time, being recently single myself and decidedly heart-broken, and not really wanting to believe that all men are such bastards.  (As a woman who is not quite as fickle, though nor sadly as beautiful, as Julia Roberts’ Anna, I can reassure myself that the film doesn’t, at least, speak for all women.) 

Somehow, this time round I liked it more.  The characters are still largely loathsome – you start quite liking Clive Owen (if only because he’s not cheating on anybody when he hooks up with Roberts – though the trigger for their encounter doesn’t exactly present him as a paragon of gentlemanly intention), then the rug is pulled with the revelation of his own indiscretion with the “whore” in New York, and his subsequently misogynist and vile interaction with Alice (a superb Natalie Portman) in the strip club.  Similarly, Anna wins us in the beginning as she rebuffs Jude Law’s adulterous advances – but then ricochets back and forth between the two men in a completely unsympathetic and unflatteringly cold portrayal of a woman who doesn’t really know what she wants.  Jude Law’s Dan is a bit of a weak-chinned weasel throughout the film, and yet ends up rejected and alone.  Still, did I think of him kindly as I switched off the telly and went to bed?  No.  He had it coming!

But that’s the story.  And putting the plot aside, as a film I thought this was terrific.  The acting is consistently excellent, and the characters’ delivery of their lines (even those that suggested they were suddenly transported to a West End stage, rather than on a set in Clerkenwell) was punchy, realistic and totally riveting.  All four actors portrayed the darker side of their characters with neither sympathy nor judgement, which is no mean feat when playing people as odious as this.  In managing to keep it real, the audience is swept along with their romantic travails, and still cares about what happens (even if one doesn’t care about the individual him or herself). 

If it doesn’t enhance my view of modern love, and only increases my fear that humans are, at heart, potentially weak-willed and unfaithful, at least it restores my faith in the power of good writing and the well-told story of human frailty.