Brazil (1985)

Maybe it’s just indicative of my ‘ornry’ personality but the most interesting, engaging thing about Terry Gilliam’s Brazil is the ‘custody battle’ that surrounded its American release.
Now none of even it’s most ardent supporters/fans would suggest that this film was a commercial motherlode and even in pre-production it would have been clearly far-out and an ‘acquired taste’; I use that term specifically- I don’t think there’s anything about the film that’s beyond the average person’s conception or imagination BUT it’s very arch, exceedingly bleak in places, phantasmagorical and emotional yet illogical. But then, that goes for most Terry Gilliam films.
The obvious point being that this was not something a studio like Universal should have touched with barge-pole. Studio head- Sid Sheinberg, to many the literal godfather of the ‘blockbuster‘ and Steven Spielberg (metaphorically), saw what Universal probably chipped in half the budget for (5-7mill), and saw something they would struggle to sell. (So would I… There’s a completely tenuous reason for the film to be called Brazil for starters. Don’t ask me what I’d call it… ‘The Steampunk Bureaucracy’…’‘1985’?!).
Something pertinent (I feel) that gets left out of the discussion of that mild skirmish is that in 1985, there was no studio-‘art-house’ labels like Focus Pictures or Fox Searchlight, that would underwrite this sort of kooky, medium-scale film for your overseas markets and Western pseudo-intellectuals like me.
If you can’t already tell, I’m not the greatest fan of Terry Gilliam movies; I always feel like I should like them more then I do. I think he’s a great visionary stylist and he made a significant contribution to comedy with Python, which gave birth to more DIY dark animated comedy, and he’s a massively charismatic public figure but I have trouble dialling into his movies and Brazil is no different.
But I have to give the man credit for landing this purposely convoluted with a lot of different messages like homeland security and surveillance, bureaucratic superstructures and the day-job and as well as this, the film is set in this world of 30’s/40’s style with 80’s technology. It’s not for me but he created a British fantasy epic.
The delicious irony in the American battle for control of Brazil, that this film about getting lost on the industrial ladder and fighting against it, managed to break free from its creatively corrupt overseers and blossom due to grass roots support for it…

I watched Brazil (1985) on BBC2.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Touching The Void (2003)...

Stone (2010)

Is Milla Jojovich a good actress? This might inspire more internal debate within yourself then you might expect. Sure the case for the opposition is strong - she's been involved in so many blotted on the cultural landscape- it betters belief if she can read English, the amount of times when says yes to a shitty script and some might say that she was previously at her best when she was playing on her naivety like her character in The Fifth Element.  But in Stone, she has to go toe-toe in the acting stakes with De Niro and Edward Norton, two of the... well they've been better in previous years and still capable of returning to previous glories- Jojovich has never been that good. But I'm here to tell you that maybe we shouldn't have wrote her off since-and i never thought I'd be writing these words- she acts Norton and De Niro into a corner.
The story of Stone is that De Niro plays a prison parole officer and Norton is one of his last cases before he retires. Jojovich plays Norton's wife and takes it upon herself to offer herself to De De Niro so he might look on her husband's case favorably. The strange part is she doesn't seem to mind and well- the term nymphomanic is thrown around and misused a lot but she'd probably knob a door off its hinges.
Maybe Jojovich does so well were Norton and De Niro don't is that in a highly sexual (not gratuitously sexualised though) film, a lilith thing like her can play that more credibly. No one wants to see Bobby D humping away. It makes you wonder if St. John's Ambulance were waiting on the side.. just in case.  Norton looks equally embarrassed with the 'sex stuff' that permiates through his character.
But Stone is an interesting watch because you struggle to fully understand the 3leads motives- De Niro has an extremely dysfunctional abusive relationship with his wife and it's made her an alcoholic wreck but it's not clear why he's like that. Norton seems to taking a vested interest in reforming his character but how sincere is he. Jojovich seems to be fully invested in getting her husband free but she's not that interested in being the least monogamous. These questions are as frustrating as they appear and maintain your interest. Especially Jojovich's character and congrats on your performance here. I hope it's not a fluke. 'Psycho hose beast' fits her like a... glove?  Now if we can suggest to her how to kill her husband Paul W. S. Anderson we'll really be cooking with gas...

I watched Stone (2010) on Blu-ray via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Belle De Jour (1969)...

Limitless (2011)

Limitless had the head start that every film wants- it has a great high-concept and a well edited trailer that perfectly explains it. Which is not to say these elements are rare but few films follow up on their potential, but i'm happy to say Limitless does.
I guess we've all heard of this thing about humans only using between 10% and 20% of our brainpower and as you know, this film posits what would happen if you were using a 100% (?). Actually that's only part of what it's about-it does get far more concerned with the wunderdrug that provides this power and the supply and demand of that. Now I realise this the necessary cause/reason for the tension in the film and it does interest me but I was just interested in the idea of what you would do if you could multiply your potential. But those are niggles... Limitless has bigger issues but I'll come back to them.  Bradley Cooper is really great in this- he's showing he can carry a weighty role and Bobby Dee doesn't really turn up for very long but he does some scenery chewing and that's fine but I don't know if i buy the idea of Abbie Cornish's character, the love interest but that's just based on a weird supposition that if you were concerned with using all your potential and you had to micro-managed your time so you weren't wasting any... would you waste it on monogamy? I don't know where that thought comes from. In reality, monogamy would save a lot of time probably. The thing about films like this, like Inception and The Matrix (pardon a very broad comparison), 'techno-thrillers' as i saw it described today is you, the audience are so curious about the concept and the rules of the macguffin, that you want to forget about the story and concentrate on the exposition, in a way. Like the main character has a finite amount of the one-pill-a-day drug and I was far more concerned then he was about using his brain resources to learn pharmaceutical chemistry and produce more but that's me being silly; that's like worrying about James Bond being killed. But like I say, I was thinking he should be sorting that out instead of investigating the withdrawals of the drug and the film should have been focusing on the creative by-product of doing the drug than the drug its self.
But director Neil Burger and writer Leslie Riding know that they have this bountiful IP to play with and Limitless makes it patently obvious they want to pack as much as they can in; at times, it could induce travel-sickness and it's unpredictable to say the least. Obviously there are things I'd change focus on but it's so imaginative and interesting that's it's difficult to be mad at.  I guess that's the point- the film is moving so fast even if you're not sure where you're going, you're giddy and excited from the speed...


I watched Limitless (2011), at the cinema.
My 2011 in Movies will return with You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger (2010)...