The Fly (1986)

The Fly is a 1986 horror film directed by David Cronenberg starring Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis.

Fans of the horror genre will know that remakes rarely outdo originals. I’ll save multiple examples for another time, but one I’ll mention is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The 2003 remake of the Tobe Hooper original turned a terrifying, claustrophobic nightmare ‘what if’ scenario into a run of the mill, forgettable teen slasher flick.

In the capable hands of the bizarre genius who is David Cronenberg, 1986’s The Fly does no such thing. It’s a tight, lean horror film that does exactly what it sets out to do, namely, scare the shit of you and make you want to chuck. Cronenberg, you magnificent bastard.

The film stars Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis, and both leads are great, though Davis isn’t asked to do much besides look horrified and cry a lot. She’s very good, but Goldblum gives one of his best performances. And hey, I have to respect an actor who can keep a straight face doing a scene where he screams angrily while wearing a pair of tighty-whities.

The original wasn’t a terrible film, but it was straightforward fifties scifi monster fare. Cronenberg’s version is far darker and more disturbing. The premise is the same: a scientist working on teleportation technology ends up accidentally splicing his DNA with that of a fly.

It’s there the similarities end. Cronenberg has a thing for deformity and sexuality, and both are on fine display here. Where the original made use of creature effects by having the protagonist literally spliced with a fly (he ends up with a fly’s head and front leg in place of his own), Cronenberg treats this incarnation more like a disease – Goldblum’s been spliced with a fly at a genetic level, and his body slowly begins to mutate into something that is neither human nor insect. His body doesn’t know what to do, so it begins to sort of break down on a molecular level.

And the sexuality is pure Cronenberg weirdness. A side effect of the gene splicing is that Goldblum has gained superhuman strength and endurance, so can suddenly fuck for days on end. When Geena Davis can’t keep up, he abandons her in pursuit of someone who can, leaving her with a bizarre rant about how the teleportation (he hasn’t realised, at this point, that he is half-insect) has somehow ‘cleansed’ his DNA, making him a perfect human being. He’s full of hyperactive energy and can’t see that he’s behaving abnormally. Goldblum plays the scene perfectly; he’s like a rabid junkie who hasn’t yet realised that taking massive amounts of methamphetamine has a downside.

What makes The Fly work so well is that in addition to being a great horror film and nicely done gorefest, it is at its core a tragic love story. Davis sells this aspect of the film really well – even as she sees Goldblum deteriorate before her eyes, she still cares for him, and he for her – I love the moment when he tells her to leave and never come back, because he’ll hurt her if she stays. He knows his mind is devolving into insect as much as his body and he can’t predict what he’ll eventually become. But he never becomes a straight out monster. He retains his humanity right to the end. Even when he kills someone toward the end, he does it not out of malice but because the guy gets in the way of his last-ditch, desperate attempt to splice himself back to humanity (he’s realised that his teleporter pods are capable of gene splicing, so in desperation thinks that if he splices himself with enough human DNA he can somehow make himself normal again).

Cronenberg amusingly refers to The Fly as his take on a romantic comedy. Whether you see it as a straight horror or a deeper tale, the film works because it puts a fully developed story and great characters first and the splatter second. It’s a great example of how to do a remake well.

The Nice Guys (2016)

The Nice Guys is a 2016 action comedy directed by Shane Black and starring Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling.

No one does action comedy like Shane Black. There’s a bit in The Nice Guys where one half of the ‘buddy cop’ duo, Holland March (Ryan Gosling) dreams that his partner Jack Healy (Russell Crowe) wears an ankle holster. Later, when confronted at gunpoint by one of the film’s villains, he frantically collapses at Crowe’s feet and begins pawing at his ankle looking for it. It’s a hilarious moment in a hilariously off-beat film and a typical example of the brilliance of writer/director Shane Black’s work – he’s fantastic at follow-through.

Another equally great example is a supposedly heart-wrenching moment where Crowe confides in Gosling about an incident that occurred in his past, but Gosling (a rabid drunk) falls asleep before Crowe can finish the story. Later when Crowe brings it up, expecting some understanding, he’s met with a blank-faced stare from Gosling who has no idea what he’s talking about. It’s a beautiful moment from both actors.

There are so many great moments throughout the film, but some of my favourites are where Shane Black, who has been in the action movie business for so long (he wrote Lethal Weapon and The Last Boy Scout and wrote and directed Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) mercilessly pokes fun at the tropes of the genre. Like when head villain Kim Basinger shows up out of the blue and announces very seriously that she’s ‘head of the Justice Department’, Gosling just shrugs and says ‘well that explains basically nothing’. The film doesn’t take itself seriously for a second.

Crowe plays a tough guy who beats people up for money, and Gosling an alcoholic private detective. Their paths cross when Gosling is hired to find a missing girl and Crowe is hired by the missing girl to stop Gosling looking for her.

Gosling’s wife died leaving him with a daughter, Holly (Angourie Rice). March is hired to find an adult film star we see in the film's opening scene as a kid steals a porn mag from under his Dad’s bed and gazes lovingly at the centerfold, Misty Mountains. Just then, a car crashes through his house and the kid stumbles out to find Misty herself in the same pose she was in the centerfold, but she’s dead. I love that the kid takes his shirt off and covers her up. Black establishes early on that ‘nice guys’ do the best they can in a shitty world. It’s typical of Black’s wonderfully dark sense of humour that the kid covers the body he was leering at in a magazine minutes earlier.

Anyway, when Crowe and Gosling realise the plot is thicker than they originally thought and that something very strange is going on with the dead porn star and all the people involved with the production of her latest film, March and Healy team up ala Riggs and Murtaugh and the film jumps from one oddball situation to another, made all the workable by the great chemistry between the two leads and Black’s directorial competence. Having grown up watching earlier examples of his work, I found myself nodding in appreciation at his restraint here. There’s no flashy camera work, no over-the-top special effects. The action is coherent and easy to follow, which puts him a cut above most other directors working in the genre today. He's over the top where it works, and underplays it where it matters.

The Nice Guys takes place post-Kennedy - poverty and corruption are rampant, the Hollywood sign is decaying and LA is kept afloat by two things - porn and the auto industry. I love the parallels Black draws between the two. There are two party sequences bookending the main storyline – one set at a porno producer’s mansion and the other at an auto show. They are both virtually identical.

I also love some of the commentary on adults looking down on the ‘kids of today’. Set in 1977, there’s a sequence at the start where Crowe laments that things have gotten so bad that a 13 year-old girl would shack up with a sleazy guy because he provides her with pot. Huh, give it a few years buddy. There’s another hilarious example of this sentiment later when Gosling encounters a kid who can’t stop talking about porn and how he tried to get into a film because he’s got a big dick. I love the follow-through here as well – Gosling hilariously obsesses over the kid’s vulgarity because he thinks that’s the type of guy his daughter has to ‘look forward to’.

The humour in the film is spot-on, and the smaller stuff is just as well-executed as the bigger jokes. Early in the film Crowe breaks Gosling’s arm when he’s threatening him to stop looking for the girl. I love that throughout the film we see Gosling in several different outfits, and rather than change his wardrobe he just cuts the arms of his expensive suits to allow for his cast. It’s great physical comedy and another insight into the character – he’s rented a house right across the street from his one that burned down – this is a guy desperately clinging to the life he wants rather than living the life he has.

Lethal Weapon kicked off the sub-genre of the ‘buddy cop’ film: fast-paced movies that effortlessly combine action, slapstick humour and (often very dark) comedy.  From the fantastically choreographed final set piece to a character forgetting his brass knuckles the same way someone might forget their car keys, Shane Black was doing this stuff long before the phrase ‘Tarantino-esque’ made an appearance, and in my humble opinion, no one has ever done it better.

Misery (1990)

Misery is a 1990 thriller directed by Rob Reiner and starring James Caan and Kathy Bates.

My favourite moment in Misery is a very small one, and a great illustration of why I love this film so much – the performances, in particular, James Caan as famous hack writer Paul Sheldon. It’s the part where crazy Annie Wilkes’ pet pig comes barrelling into the room and sticks its snout into his face. He’s incapacitated and helpless while an animal snorts obnoxiously into his face.

I love the look he gives the pig – it is pure hatred and disgust. To make matters worse, and the scene all the more uncomfortably hilarious, is that she has named it after the lead character in his series of pulp romance novels.  In a single look and with absolutely no dialogue, Caan conveys everything you need to know about his entire predicament in the film. He’s a famous writer, rescued from a car wreck by a batshit crazy fan who then imprisons him in her house while she slowly descends into complete and utter madness. Stephen King’s imagination for creating utter horror in simple situations is unmatched by any thriller writer, and screenwriter William Goldman did a fantastic job of taking a great novel and turning it into an equally great horror film (an unfortunately rare thing when it comes to film adaptations of King’s work).

The performances of the two leads are what set Misery apart from other thrillers. Kathy Bates is truly frightening as the demented psychopath Annie Wilkes. She could have played it as an over-the-top villain, but she goes for something far more effective. The veneer is the caring, motherly type, a lonely woman who finds solace in romance novels, but as it begins to crack about half an hour into the film you start to see glimpses of what lurks beneath.

Bates, and director Rob Reiner, do a fantastic job of dishing out the crazy in small chunks, rather than all at once, and the film is immeasurably better for it. Everyone remembers the ‘hobbling’ scene, and while that is a great scene, I prefer the first hint at Annie’s true nature. It’s where she’s feeding him tomato soup, and telling him what she thinks of his new novel (he’s got a first draft of his first non-romance novel in a long time, his effort to become a ‘serious novelist’). Predictably, she hates it because it’s not what she wanted – it’s not her beloved Misery Chastain. As she’s giving him her thoughts on it and he begins to defend it, she loses it, and begins ranting at him angrily, spilling soup all over him. What I love about the scene is how effortlessly Kathy Bates switches Annie from a violent psycho back to her façade. She suddenly becomes apologetic and then ends the conversation with her eyes kind of glazing over as she says ‘I love you, Paul’. She is so fantastically insane. And again, I love James Caan at the end of the scene, after she’s left the room. Again, he does it with a simple look – he’s realised he’s in deep shit. You can see the clock begin to tick in his head.

I love the way Reiner draws out the tension in other ways too. Like with the Sheriff traipsing through the snow and coming within inches of finding Caan’s car buried under a drift. As we see the Sheriff, Buster, walking back to his car, the camera pulls back slightly and we see one wheel protruding from the snow. It’s these simple shots that Reiner does so well. It has you cursing the screen and snapping your fingers and saying ‘damn it, so close’. 

There’s also the tension as Paul Sheldon waits for the inevitable – Annie Wilkes has just purchased his latest Misery novel. He knows (as we do) that Annie’s beloved Misery Chastain dies at the end. Again, Reiner dishes out the tension beautifully. We have several scenes of Annie bouncing into the room, excitedly telling Paul where she’s up to, and that she's loving every minute of the book, not wanting it to end. Then we see the anxiety in Paul as he waits for her to finish and wonders what the hell he’s in for when she does.

And there’s another great moment after she’s finished and found out about Misery's death. First she tells him he needs to burn his ‘serious’ manuscript. Obviously he objects, and tries to talk his way out of it. So she walks around the bed absently squirting lighter fluid on him. Again, it’s the look on Caan’s face. He's both heartbroken and consumed with a helpless kind of rage.

And as great as the ‘hobbling’ scene is, I also prefer another smaller moment that is, for me, far more horrific. It’s where Annie is in a severely depressed state. She’s absently looking out the window into a downpour, and telling him how the rain makes her depressed and how scared she is of ‘losing him’. But then she pulls a gun from the pocket of her cardigan and as the fear flashes in Caan’s eyes yet again she almost casually remarks that she ‘might put bullets’ in it. I love that it’s not an overt act of violence, it’s the implied threat is so goddamn terrifying. And the fact she makes the threat after saying she doesn’t want to lose him again shows how fast and loose Annie is playing with her grip on reality. Her downward slide into murderous insanity is nearly at an end.

I also love the deeper stuff in Misery too. I’ve heard that the book is actually used in some Psychology courses; Annie Wilkes is such a great example of a delusional personality. It’s better illustrated in the book, but there’s a scene in the film where, after Annie has forced Paul to bring Misery back to life by writing a new book Misery’s Return, where he starts to explain to her the type of writing paper he likes, saying (in an effort to placate her madness) that he just wants her to be a part of the writing process. I love it that she dismisses this entirely. She doesn’t give a shit about the process, because to her, Misery Chastain is a real person. She doesn’t want to know about how the writer created the character or brought her to life, because that would ruin the delusional fantasy she’s created in her head.

As great as everything about this film is, it’s the two main actors that make it truly shine, and hold up so well after all these years. Bates and Caan give truly memorable performances, and I love the cathartic moment when Paul finally gets his revenge. It’s a brutal bit of violence, but I can’t help but laugh at it – under any normal circumstances the mere thought of smashing a lead doorstop over a woman’s head and then shoving the charred remains of Misery's Return down her throat would never even cross Paul Sheldon’s mind. But given what she’s put him through, it’s absolutely understandable.

Misery is a fantastic film and one I revisit whenever I’m writing, if only just to remind myself that there are worse things than a case of writer’s block.

The Red Baron (2008)

The Red Baron is a 2008 war film directed by Nikolai Müllerschoen and starring Matthias Schweighöfer, Lena Headey and Joseph Fiennes.

I bought The Red Baron years ago but only got around to watching it recently because the cheap packaging made it look fairly ordinary. I should have known better than to let packaging deceive me. It’s a fantastic film. I’d put it right up there with War Horse as one of the better films depicting World War One. 

It’s rare to see an English-language film depicting things from the German side, and it’s here that The Red Baron really shines. The Nazi party was still more than a decade away – these fighter pilots are indeed fanatics, but they are fanatic about flying. The combat (at least at first) is completely secondary and they see it more as ‘sport’ than warfare. When Manfred von Richtofen first takes command of a fighter wing he emphasises to his men that they are to shoot down airplanes, not men. There’s a strange sort of chivalry between the British and German fighter pilots (something that was mostly lacking in the trenches they fought above) evident when the Red Baron and his loyal wingmen fly over a British flyer’s funeral at the beginning of the film to drop a wreath. They considered the British their opponents, not their enemies. 

This is also illustrated when Richtofen rescues a British pilot he’s shot down (Joseph Fiennes) and pulls him from the plane, handing him over to a nurse (Lena Headey). It’s enough to down the plane, he has no interest in killing the man flying it. He sees himself more as a duelling knight than a soldier, even remarking that dogfighting is like jousting, like ‘a tournament’.

Richtofen is a wonderfully drawn out character. We are first introduced to him as a young boy, and this is one of my favourite scenes. He’s hunting with his younger brother and he has a deer in his sights, but then gets distracted as a plane flies overhead. I like the way he abandons his rifle without shooting the deer – it’s not subtle but it works marvellously: he enjoys the hunt, not the kill.

Schweighöfer plays Richtofen with a mixture of boyish enthusiasm and war-weariness. His best scene by far is when he’s talking to Lena Headey about why he refuses to accept an officer’s commission (which would see him grounded, giving orders instead of flying, and thus safe as more and more German pilots are blown out of the sky by the advancing allies). He says he refuses to order his men into battle, he will only lead them. 

This scene comes after a mercifully non-sentimental love story between the Baron and the nurse after she treats him for a head wound. He playfully says he’s glad he got shot down because it gave him a chance to see her, so she decides to take the wind out of his sails by showing him the other side of the conflict, the one he has remained immune to while flying above it. 

At the same time, as the war ramps up and the allies advance, more and more of his wingmen begin to die rather than simply get shot down, and the varnish starts to come off. The scenes where his friends die are played brilliantly – there’s nothing heroic about it, they are just mangled bodies in the flaming remains of their aircraft. His bright red plane starts to become more of a burden on his soul than the symbol of German victory the military leadership are using it as. I like the scene where he visits the front lines at the Western Front and sees German soldiers being mown down by British machine guns. There’s nothing chivalrous about it, it’s just ugly. It’s around this time that he stops believing his own legend and starts to come to terms with the fact that, in the air or on the ground, it’s not a sporting match, it’s just war. 

I don’t know a great deal about the real Richtofen, but the film seems to stick pretty well to historical accuracy. For instance he got his famous nickname because he painted one of his early bi-planes red long before the famous red tri-plane showed up (he only flies it in the climactic battle of the film, the rest is in bi-planes). And there’s a solemnity to the final battle as he gives his wingmen a short pep talk before take-off. It’s clear they all know the war is lost and the battle is futile. This last aerial battle is filmed superbly – it’s far more brutal than the earlier jousting matches. Planes don’t gently coast to earth; they plunge from the sky engulfed in flame or simply break apart like wooden toys.

And the final piece of historical accuracy is one I really liked – we don’t see the Red Baron’s death (in reality it was never confirmed who actually shot him down), the film ends with Lena Headey visiting his grave and seeing that the British laid a wreath on it. Nice closure to a really nicely-done film. Two hours well spent.

Intersection (1993)

Intersection is a 1993 film starring Richard Gere, Sharon Stone, Lolita Davidovich and the ghost from Stir of Echoes and directed by Mark Rydell.

The biggest problem I have with Intersection is that Richard Gere's character is immensely unlikeable. It's impossible to sympathise with the plight of a protagonist who is such a colossal douchebag. Every problem he faces in the entire film (including the car accident) is entirely the result of his own selfishness. The whole film is built around the crucible of a car wreck that apparently claims his life, shown at the beginning, hence the title. But even this elicits no sympathy - he crashes into a stalled van because he is speeding like a loon on wet country roads with blind bends.

Anyway, Vincent (Gere) is a famous architect who was stuck in a loveless marriage with Sharon Stone (there's a problem for starters - I find it impossible to believe a woman as sexy as Stone is could be anything but ferociously enthusiastic in bed) until he met some ditzy redhead, Olivia (Lolita Davidovich) at an auction and suddenly discovered himself . . . or whatever. Because of their daughter (the chick from House and the ghost in Stir of Echoes when she was like, 12) and their architecture firm Gere and Stone are forced to still spend time together, and of course this causes issues with Gere and the ditzy redhead yadda yadda.

The scene towards the end outside the diner where Gere cries as he writes a letter ending his relationship with Olivia (a "find someone who doesn't have complications", type-thing) as rain beats down on his car is supposed to show how heartbreaking it all is for him, but for me it's just hilarious. Firstly because Gere is not a very solid actor, his tears seem horribly rehearsed, but more so because Vincent, the poor baby, is basically deciding which of the two women in his love triangle will have the privilege of his company. His wishy-washy excuses of wanting Olivia to find someone better are facetious at best - her needs are completely irrelevant. It's all about him.

And he's not half irritating. Throughout the film, Gere babbles these almost incomprehensible monologues that are supposed to show what a deep guy he is and how passionate he is about the women he loves, but he just comes off as an obnoxious nitwit.

The character we're supposed to root for, Olivia, is unfortunately not much better. She's one of those annoyingly eccentric characters, and her vibrant personality is supposed to be a counterpoint to Stone's cold detachment as the wife. Unfortunately she's just irritating. She bounces around like a squirrel on meth and her behaviour throughout the film is obnoxious - she shows up drunk to an event so she can create some drama because she knows Vincent's wife will be there, she gets horribly insecure about her relationship with him because he seems reluctant to build her a house so they can play happy couples, and she tries mercilessly and shamelessly to ingratiate herself to his daughter. She's a bundle of insecurity wrapped in a pretty package and has a fuse as short as a lima bean. She's the sort of chick you learn to avoid after she throws your possessions from a second-storey window and tries to brain you with a marble ashtray. But Gere hops after her like a lovestruck puppy.

The character I felt the most sympathy towards was actually Sharon Stone's. As I mentioned she is supposed to be the cold, detached wife that drove Vincent into the arms of another woman, but she is basically a decent person. Her only flaw seems to be that she married a dipshit. There's a ridiculous flashback scene in their bathroom where Vincent is coming onto her and she takes a phone call from a colleague. Gere slinks away pouting while she's on the phone and we're supposed to feel bad for him - oh, look, she denied him sex, what a twat! No wonder he hates her!

The film ends with Gere apparently breaking up with Olivia by writing her the letter, but then he has a sudden change of heart (he sees a little girl with red hair and gets all weepy) so he leaves a voicemail for Olivia (another babbled monologue) but then gets wiped out by a semi-trailer on his way to see her. Sharon Stone gets to the hospital first and finds the letter but decides not to give it to Olivia, thus both women leave thinking he had chosen her. The narcissism of this is absurd. Once again, it's not about Stone or Olivia. Their happiness is completely irrelevant - it's all about who was 'chosen' by Vincent.

And to make matters worse, we get some overwrought dream sequence as Vincent is dying where he sees his daughter and Olivia at a dreamy wedding banquet as some sort of symbol of the happiness he might have been headed towards. The startling thing about it, for me, is that Sharon Stone is not in it at all. A woman he supposedly loved, the mother of his daughter, and as he's dying he doesn't give her a single thought? She was probably better off without him.

The Counselor (2013)

I’ve said elsewhere on this blog that Ridley Scott is my favourite director. I didn’t think anything could make me doubt that opinion. And then I watched The Counselor.

The Counselor is a 2013 thriller directed by Ridley Scott and starring Michael Fassbender, Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem and Cameron Diaz.

I went in to The Counselor wanting to like it. Sure, along the way, Ridley Scott has made some clunkers. Remember GI Jane? Hannibal? Thelma and Louise? Yikes, yikes, and yikes.

But sadly, The Counselor trumps them all for complete and utter shit. I didn’t like a single thing about it. The acting is atrocious, the dialogue is pretentious, the plot is needlessly convoluted and the film looks terrible. It actually reminded me of a Tony Scott film from the 80’s rather than a Ridley Scott movie. The film even opens with some curtains wafting in a breeze overlooking a Mexican vista. Fuck me, this film sucked in so many ways I’m having trouble even beginning to describe it.

Ridley Scott seems to desperately be trying to make a slick crime epic. Instead the whole thing resembles a fucking Lexus commercial. The first steaming pile it lays is a scene where Javier Bardem and Cameron Diaz are watching her pet cheetahs hunt prey in the Mexican desert. They’re both wearing designer safari suits, and they sit there sipping cocktails while she pretentiously waffles on about a sunset. The entire scene is beyond ridiculous. These two nitwits are supposed to be some kind of uber-cool, pseudo-celebrity crime boss hipsters. Instead, they come across as two complete fuckwits.

It’s hard to take anything about the film seriously. One such aspect is the fact that Javier Bardem’s character looks like The World’s Biggest Douchebag. His shirts alone make you expect him to crack out some castanets and start dancing the fucking Macarena. You’re supposed to feel bad for him when the cartel guys catch up with him and blow his brains out. Instead, I was laughing my ass off.

But getting back to the worst part about Cameron Diaz’s character - her look. She has a cheetah tattoo on her back, and fingernails that look like claws. Wow. Subtle.

Of course she is supposed to be some kind of evil genius. She attempts to steal some drugs from a Mexican drug cartel but fucks it up along the way. However, this doesn’t stop her from stealing the money she wants in some of the most ridiculously complicated ways and doing away with anyone and everyone that can connect her to the crime. In the final scene she says hunters have grace, beauty and purity of heart. The film then ends with her saying that she’s famished. Oh right, in case I missed it with the film relentlessly slamming me over the head with it, she’s the hunter. Oh right! *smacks self in forehead* Jesus wept, I basically just wasted two hours of my life so Cameron Diaz could fuck herself with a Ferrari (don’t ask).

But enough about that. Onto the film. The film is one of those idiotic cinematic forays that pretends to contain a lot of substance, but is really just a slathering of style ladled on like brick cement. That’s fine I guess if all you demand of your films is slick nonsense that falls from memory like a discarded popcorn container as you walk out the door, but from a film maker like Ridley Scott, and actors like Michael Fassbender and Brad Pitt, I’m sorry, I ask for a little more.

One example of the idiocy I’m referring to, is where Diaz hires a couple of thugs to steal from the Mexican drug cartel. In order to get the drug cartel’s vehicle to work, she has to obtain a special wire gizmo from a guy who for reasons that only serve the plot, likes to ride his motorcycle really fast along deserted roads at night. And again, for reasons that only serve the ensuing plot, he keeps this gizmo…in his helmet. So how do these numbskulls seek to obtain this gizmo? They drive miles ahead of him and spend ages setting up a wire that will decapitate him as he rides past. We even get a stupid scene where the lead thug goes to a car dealership to measure the exact model of motorbike to make sure he gets the height of the wire correct. Fucking fuck me with a barge pole, why not just ambush the guy, shoot him dead, and take the freakin wire thingy? But no, that would make way too much sense so instead the guy spends ages measuring up this Wile. E Coyote roadside contraption while the audience is simply asked to ignore the fact that what, are these guys fucking psychic? How did they know this guy would ride down this particular road at this particular time? No one in his film ever does anything logically. It gets annoying really fast.

A scene that takes this stupidity to brutal extremes is where the 'Counselor’ (Michael Fassbender) is trying to get his bride-to-be (Penelope Cruz) out of harm’s way after his silly drug deal has gone pear-shaped and people are starting to die left right and centre. What does he let her do? She Googles a fucking hotel to hide out in. Fassbender is repeatedly warned earlier in the film about how ruthless and smart and conniving the cartel guys can be. So Jesus Christ Almighty, he didn’t think the cartel guys might be able to trace a goddamn Google search?

Anyway…another ridiculous death scene masquerading as something slick and clever and cool is how Diaz does away with Brad Pitt’s character. It’s set up early in the film where Javier Bardem inexplicably (most of his dialogue is inexplicably out of place or just simply clumsy exposition) tells Michael Fassbender about a cartel killing device that slowly garotes you. A wire is looped around your head and then a motor slowly tightens the wire.

So because this piece of dialogue is inserted so ham fistedly into an early conversation you immediately know that this little device is going to turn up later in the film. Brad Pitt is hiding out in London and Cameron Diaz gets a randomly hired thug to jog past and slip the device over his neck. Sure enough it tightens around his neck and he dies in front of some shocked onlookers. The death scene itself is not bad, it’s just (like everything else in the film) needlessly complicated. Again, just ambush the guy and blow his fucking brains out.

The story is complete nonsense, the dialogue is fucking drivel and Michael Fassbender is wasted. He’s basically an idiot who gets what’s coming to him. It’s hard to feel any sympathy for him whatsoever. He was already a well off lawyer, so what does he do? He has the bright idea to suddenly get into the drug business. But does he organise some domestic club deal no harm no foul? No, that’s not this guy’s style. Instead, he jumps into bed with a Mexican drug cartel. Gee whiz, Counselor, that sounds like a great idea. What could possibly go wrong?

Fuck me, this is a terrible film. But what’s more amazing to me than the fact it was directed by Ridley Scott, is that it was written by Cormac McCarthy. How not one, but two, incredibly talented people could fuck something up so tremendously is beyond me. Alas, here it is and its name is The Counselor.

Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993)

I’ve watched this film twice now and my chess game still sucks. Maybe I’m bringing my queen out too early...

Searching for Bobby Fischer is a 1993 drama film directed by Steven Zaillian and starring Max Pomeranc, Joe Mantegna, Ben Kingsley and Laurence Fishburne.

The most interesting scene in Searching for Bobby Fischer for me is where 7 year old chess prodigy Josh’s (Max Pomeranc) chess teacher (Ben Kingsley) lines up a pawn, rook, knight, bishop and king in front of him and asks him to choose which piece he is. Josh replies that he is none of them, that they are just pieces.

It illustrates that Josh, more than any of the adults in the film, realises that chess is just a game. It’s a point the film makes several times, and unlike most of the emotional elements of the film which are bordering on maudlin, it’s nicely subtle. Ben Kingsley’s character pretentiously waffles on about chess being ‘art’, Josh’s father treats it like a sport and becomes obsessed with his son winning trophies, and Josh’s friend Vinnie (an underused Laurence Fishburne) uses it as a hustle in blitz games in New York’s Washington Square Park. The adults don’t get that Josh doesn’t really care about winning or losing, or art, or how he is perceived by, or perceives, his opponents. He just likes to play chess.

I like the relationship between Josh and his father (Joe Mantegna). After Josh starts seriously winning tournaments, his dad forbids him to play speed chess in the park with Vinnie because his teacher insists it’s instilling bad habits in his play style and will ruin his tournament success.

The best scene by far is where his dad also realises it’s just a game and takes Josh back to the park to play a game with Vinnie. Vinnie baulks at Josh’s first moves (he opens with a predictable tournament strategy) and tells him “play from your gut, like you used to”, so Josh does, and quickly checkmates him.

The scenes in the park are great. Young Josh discovers chess by watching Vinnie and his mates play speed chess for money and drugs. I particularly liked that when they first head over to watch the games and you see it from his mother’s perspective, the camera focuses on the money changing hands. Then we cut to Josh’s point of view, and he only sees the chess boards. The money and the hustling are irrelevant to him; he’s just fascinated by the game. It’s a great use of perspective.

I wish the film had included more of the speed chess in the park scenes (it’s obvious a lot were cut for pacing) because they are not only the best part of the film, it would have helped to explain why people keep telling Josh’s parents to not let him play in the park. There are actually very few scenes of him actually doing that.

I also like how strong little Josh is throughout the film. I usually find kids in movies annoying, but Max Pomeranc plays real—life chess whiz Josh Waitzkin with a dignity far beyond his years. I like that when his teacher tells him that in order to be the best player he must learn to hate his opponents. Josh just shrugs and says “but I don’t.” His teacher then insists that his idol, Bobby Fischer, hated his opponents. Josh tells him “well I’m not him.”

Unfortunately the film jettisons the subtlety a few times. Probably the worst instance is where Josh’s dad moves the chess trophies from the mantelpiece into Josh’s bedroom (the film makes a point earlier of showing his father gloating over the trophies with Josh nowhere in sight). This scene would have worked far better without any dialogue. But no, because we audiences are morons we get a tearful line from Joe Mantegna, “these are yours now, son.”

We also get a ridiculous scene where father and son stand in the rain having an emotional conversation after Josh deliberately loses a game because he’s terrified that if he becomes a chess champion everyone will hate him. The impact of the scene is diminished somewhat because they stand under a torrential downpour when, moments earlier, they were safely inside a building. It’s sledgehammer subtlety that just doesn’t work.

The film is at its best when it’s not dishing up the emotional manipulation with a soup ladle, and thankfully the underlying theme that young Josh is more emotionally mature than most of the adults pushing and pulling him in various directions is done with some subtext, and so becomes the film’s strongest point.

The best moment in this regard is during the final game where Josh faces off against his nemesis – another chess-whizz kid – in a tournament grand final. Josh, seeing 12 moves ahead and knowing he’s won, offers his opponent a hand shake (signalling a draw) and his eager father and teacher watching on through a video monitor both reel at first asking “what the hell is he doing?” Josh knows he has won the game, so he doesn’t feel the need to ‘hate’ his opponent by humiliating him.

It could have been a little less ‘coming to terms with things’, but all in all Searching for Bobby Fischer is a strong film with some decent performances. Two hours well spent.