Blow Out

Year of Release:  1981
Director:  Brian De Palma
Screenplay:  Brian De Palma
Starring:  John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow, Dennis Franz
Running Time:  108 minutes
Genre:  Thriller

Philadelphia sound technician Jack Terry (Travolta) is hard at work on the post production of a low-budget slasher film.  Visiting a park late at night to record sound effects, Jack witnesses, and records, a car crashing off the road and into a creek.  While he is able to save the passenger, Sally (Allen), the male driver is killed.  It turns out that the driver was a hugely popular presidential candidate.  As he analyses his recording, Jack becomes convinced that it was no accident, but murder.  When Jack tries to convince the authorities of his suspicions, he soon realises that he and Sally are now targets of a very dangerous conspiracy.

This film reunites director Brian De Palma with John Travolta and Nancy Allen who all previously worked together on Carrie (1976).  It's certainly fair to say that, along with Carrie, this is one of De Palma's finest films.  As a director Brian De Palma has a very good eye, but tends to let style get in the way of substance.  He reaches into his bag of tricks here with split-screen, long elaborate tracking shots and slow motion. The story is interesting and involving, with a strain of dark humour, and a startlingly downbeat conclusion.  It features several of De Palma's recurring themes, notably guilt, voyeurism, sexually motivated violence and film references.  However, this has a political dimension that was timely in the early 1980s and is still pertinent today.  The action scenes are skillfully choreographed and the whole thing is genuinely exciting.  John Travolta has seldom been better here, and Nancy Allen, while underused, is affecting.  John Lithgow and Dennis Franz make the most of supporting roles as sleazy creeps, with Lithgow being particularly effective and chilling.
   

John Travolta in Blow Out

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women

Year of Release:  2017
Director:  Angela Robinson
Screenplay:  Angela Robinson
Starring:  Luke Evans, Rebecca Hall, Bella Heathcote, JJ Feild, Oliver Platt, Connie Britton
Running Time:  108 mintes
Genre:  Biography, drama

The film tells the story of Professor William Moulton Marston (Evans), an American psychologist, inventor and writer, who is best known for inventing an early version of the lie detector and creating the comic book character Wonder Woman.
The story begins in 1928 where Martson and his wife, Elizabeth (Hall), teach and research together at Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges.  The two fall in love with their teaching assistant, Olive Byrne (Heathcote), one of William Marston's students.  Olive reciprocates their feelings, and the three enter into a polyamorous relationship.  Their unconventional relationship leads to severe problems for their personal and professional lives.  Meanwhile William Marston continues his work on his DISC (Dominance, Inducement, Submission, Compliance) theory of human interaction and becomes increasingly interested in  fetish art and bondage, which he channels, along with his belief in the inherent superiority of women over men, into the comic book Wonder Woman.

This is a biographical drama, it's not really a film about Wonder Woman.  The main story of the film is told in flashbacks as Marston gives evidence in 1945 to a committee who are seeking to ban Wonder Woman over it's sexual, sadomasochistic and queer imagery and subtext.  It's very well made, beautifully filmed, very well cast, with an intelligent, witty script that shines a light on a fairly obscure but fascinating piece of pop-culture history.  Personally I would have liked to have seen more about the comic book industry of the time, but that is not the story that they are telling.  In fact, Wonder Woman itself is more of a subtext in the film, the framing device notwithstanding, it's not until pretty late in the film that comics come into it in a big way.  The focus is mostly on the relationship between the central trio:  Luke Evans certainly looks the part of the 1920s academic, and plays Marston as an earnest idealist; Bella Heathcote is radiant as Olive Byrne who captivates both Marstons, and she is very good, particularly in the early part of the film where she has the greatest emotional heft playing a naive young woman whose entire world is capsized as she explores her new feelings, although she has less to do later in the film, but Rebecca Hall takes the acting honours as the fierce, funny and caustic Elizabeth, the realist of the three.  She is brilliant.
It may not have enough about Wonder Woman to appeal to some of the fans, and the comic book element may put off some viewers, but it is definitely worth giving it a go.

Rebecca Hall, Luke Evans and Bella Heathcote in Professor Marston and the Wonder Women



     

Clerks

Year of Release:  1994
Director:  Kevin Smith
Screenplay:  Kevin Smith
Starring:  Brian O'Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Marilyn Ghigliotti, Lisa Spooner, Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith, Scott Mosier
Running Time:  92 minutes
Genre:  Comedy, slice-of-life

The film follows a day in the life Dante Hicks (O'Halloran), a 22 year old employee of the Quick Stop convenience store in Leonardo, New Jersey, who is forced to go into work on what is supposed to be his day off.  He finds himself having to deal with his girlfriend Veronica's (Ghigliotti) sexual confessions, the fact that the love of his life is getting married, a hockey game, a funeral and an endless stream of weird, stupid and abusive customers.  Also stuck in Dante's purgatory are his best friend (and possibly worst enemy) Randall Graves (Anderson) and drug dealers Jay (Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith).

This super low-budget film marks the debut of writer/director/actor Kevin Smith and is the first of his connected series of "View Askewniverse" films (named after Smith's View Askew production company), which are linked by recurring characters and story elements, most notably the characters of Jay and Silent Bob who would go on to appear in many other films.
The film was shot in grainy black and white in the convenience store where Smith was working at the times, at night and on the weekends.  At the beginning of the film, Dante discovers that the metal shutters of the store are gummed shut, this was partly to hide the fact that although the film is set during the day, it was mostly shot at night.  With it's, at the time, completely unknown cast, grainy look and low-budget feel it has an element of authenticity and does at times resemble a documentary, filmed on a store security camera.  Crucially, it's also very funny.  Smith's sharp, vulgar and endlessly quotable dialogue is perceptive and hilarious, although definitely not for the easily offended.  With the directionless characters, fascinated by pop-culture, working crappy jobs, dreaming of something better but unsure of how to get it, this is one of the great films about young adulthood.

Dante (Brian O'Halloran) and Randal (Jeff Anderson) in Clerks       

"Patient X" by David Peace

Year of Publication:  2018
Length:  311 pages
Genre:  Historical fiction

Ryunosuke Akutagawa was a highly acclaimed Japanese writer, known as "the Father of the Japanese short story".  He lived in the turbulent Taisho period and survived the devastating 1923 Tokyo earthquake, before taking his own life in 1927 at the age of 35. 

Patient X documents the strange, short life of Akutagawa in a kind of fictionalised biography.  David Peace is an English novelist who now lives in Tokyo.  He first came to prominence with the "Red Riding Quartet" a series of crime novels set against the backdrop of the Yorkshire Ripper case, and then GB84, a fictional account of the 1984 Miner's Strike in England, two sports novels: The Damned Utd and Red or Dead, and the "Tokyo Trilogy": Tokyo Year Zero (2007), Occupied City (2009) with the third volume set to be published in 2020.  Peace's style is to take real people and incidents and embroider a fictional narrative.  In his prose he mixes narrative voices, repeated phrases and different styles to create a surreal, hallucinatory style. 
Patient X consists of connected short stories from the life of Akutagawa adapted from Akutagawa's own essays, letters and fiction.  Ryunosuke Akutagawa is probably best known for the short stories "Rashomon" and "In the Grove", which were adapted by Akira Kurosawa for the 1950 film Rashomon.  In fact, Kurosawa himself is briefly referenced in the book.  It's not necessary to iknow about Akutagawa to appreciate the book, although it helps.  The narrative takes us inside Akutagawa's troubled mind creating a strange, nightmarish world, where the real world exists, cheek by jowl, with ghosts, monsters, angels and demons.
It's often disturbing, sometimes beautiful and often just plain weird.  The book is also a book about writing, and the healing power of art and creativity in dark times. 

The Duellists

Year of Release:  1977
Director:  Ridley Scott
Screenplay:  Gerald Vaughan-Hughes, based on the short story "The Duel" by Joseph Conrad
Starring:  Keith Carradine, Harvey Keitel, Albert Finney, Edward Fox, Cristina Rains, Tom Conti
Running Time:  100 minutes
Genre:  Historical drama

Strasbourg, 1800:  French soldiers Lieutenant Gabriel Feraud (Keitel) and Lieutenant Armand d'Hubert (Carradine) become embroiled in a quarrel, when Feraud feels insulted after d'Hubert interrupts his visit to a prominent local woman (Jenny Runacre) with an unpleasant message from their superiors.  A keen duellist, Feraud challenges d'Hubert to a duel, which leads to a succession of conflicts fought over years.

This was the feature debut from director Ridley Scott, who would go on to become one of the world's foremost filmmakers.  This is a visually striking film, full of breathtaking images, with characters often posed in stately tableaux which make it look like a nineteenth century painting come to life.  It takes place over  a period of fifteen years in a number of different countries and is set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic wars.  The focus is always on the drama between these two men:  d'Hubert is a charming, gallant hero who just wants to settle the thing and stop Feraud haunting him all the time.  Feraud, on the other hand, is presented as a boorish, obsessive, violent pig who wants to kill d'Hubert really over nothing.  With it's elegantly composed images, the film does at times feel too stately.  The biggest problem in the movie, however, are Keith Carradine, and particularly Harvey Keitel, who just do not convince as nineteenth century French soldiers.  Carradine looks the part, but every time he and, especially, Keitel open their mouths, the carefully constructed illusion of the 1800s is shattered.  That being said, this is a good film.  The story is interesting, if never particularly affecting, it's stunning to look at and it does have a real epic sweep to it.

Harvey Keitel and Keith Carradine are The Duellists

The Fury

Year of Release:  1978
Director:  Brian De Palma
Screenplay:  John Farris, based on the novel The Fury by John Farris
Starring: Kirk Douglas, John Cassavetes, Carrie Snodgrass, Charles Durning, Amy Irving, Andrew Stevens, Fiona Lewis
Running Time:  118 minutes
Genre:  Thriller, science-fiction, horror

In Israel, an assassination attempt against ex-US Government agent Peter Sandza (Douglas) fails, but his son Robin (Stevens) is taken.  Eleven months later, Peter resurfaces in Chicago searching for his son, who he knows has been targeted by an international conspiracy due to his powerful psychic abilities.  Meanwhile, teenager Gillian (Irving) who is struggling to come to terms with her own devastating powers, is the latest target for the conspiracy, and is also being hunted by Peter who recognizes her as his best chance for finding his son.

This mixes conspiracy action thriller with science-fiction and horror elements.  It's always enjoyable, with some very well-staged and exciting action scenes, and plenty of humour, but it changes tone in the second half, when the horror elements become more pronounced.  Brian De Palma is a brilliant stylist and this does fall victim to De Palma's habit of over indulging in tricks and style.  Kirk Douglas is charismatic and gives some vulnerability to his role, which makes up for some hammy moments.  John Cassavetes is suitably creepy as a hissable villain.  Amy Irving is affecting as the teenager trying to come to terms with her new reality.   This is not a great film, but it is enjoyable and never gets boring.

Amy Irving in The Fury