I think I caught a cold killing the banker.

Holy Motors

(2012)

(SPOILERS) Holy Motors was a fixture of 2012’s Top 10 lists; a critics’ darling. As a consequence, anyone who doesn’t fall for its charms runs the risk of being labelled a philistine (or “une philistine”, perhaps). I could claim relief that I did like it, although I’ve never had much compunction about dismissing arty pretentiousness as arty pretentiousness when I see it. A significant portion of Holy Motors is arty pretentiousness, but a fair amount of it is also genuinely quite clever, interesting, entertaining and amusing (all of this with the caveat of “probably”; it might all be a crock). I didn’t fall for it hook, line and sinker and I wasn’t enraptured (there’s a point where willfully obtuse works all begin to look the same) but I was diverted.

To indicate my lack of devotion to the difficult career of cineaste Leos Carax, the only previous of his pictures I recall seeing is Les amants du Pont-Neuf. Which was unfortunate enough to arrive at a time when the presence of Juliette Binoche in any non-English language film seemed obligatory. It was a difficult, expensive, picture to make, and one that hastened Carax’s disappearance from cinemas only to return with a widely derided film (Pola X). This is his first full-length feature since, although it is comprised of a collection of linked vignettes. They are united by the limo journey of actor Oscar (Denis Lavant) from appointment to appointment. At each stop Oscar adopts a different guise and a different form of expression (of genre?) This is one of those films that invites wildly divergent interpretations, in part because the filmmaker himself may not be quite sure what he is saying.

The Guardian celebrated it as “a scattershot thesis on the nature of performance”. As Holy Motors’ apparent dissection of the apparatus of filmmaking (coming from a director who started out writing for Cahiers du Cinema), this seems like a rather too literal, superficial, interpretation. If that is all it is about, then maybe its pretensions are just that. The paraphernalia of movie making is a constant presence, the director himself appearing in the first scene, and the picture takes in everything from the nuts and bolts of performance-capture to gangster films, deathbed tragedy, and musicals. But that surely isn’t what the picture is really about. Lead actor Lavant referred to it as “a poetic declaration of love for mankind today” but Carax was dismissive of such a take.

The director reluctantly claims Holy Motors as “a parable of human relationships in the internet age” (that would be the heavy-handed gravestones with website addresses on them, then; a profound visual metaphor there, Leos), and “the fatigue of being oneself… The answer is to reinvent oneself”. Which makes him sound like a right old misery guts. But there’s a sense in this picture that the director is at play; while his Oscar (winner?) enters each scene whole-heartedly, there is little sense of the truly threatening in even the most disturbed scenario. Moments recall David Lynch (the bedroom wall the director walks through, or the confrontation with his doppelganger) or Cronenberg (the womb-like limo from which the protagonist emerges periodically can’t help but seem similar to another 2012 picture, Cosmopolis) but Carax doesn’t get under your skin the way those to two do. Maybe it’s because this meditation is so obtuse, or maybe it’s because the form itself is distancing; our involvement in the onscreen happenings is ephemeral, and without ultimate consequence (so cinema as a metaphor for cinema, then?)

Oscar is driven around by his chauffeur Celine (Edith Scob). At each stop, Oscar disembarks, assuming a new guise. He is an old woman begging. Then an actor in a performance-capture suit on a sound stage, entering an erotic entanglement of PVC and lights with a statuesque “co-star” as their actions are reinterpreted in Gigeresque CGI form. Most distractingly, he becomes a feral ginger fiend in emerald suit with a voracious appetite for any substance in proximity to his mouth; he consumes wreaths, money, hair and fingers. And then reveals his stiffy (much less coyly than Pacino’s in Stand Up Guys). He also wipes blood on Eva Mendes’ armpit.

As a father, Oscar remonstrates his daughter for not having a good time at party or flinging herself at boys (it’s a cute inversion, see?) before embarking on a rousing accordion interlude through a cathedral. Then there’s that Lynchian murder in a warehouse, where he and his quarry are one and the same. A man appears in his limo to whom Oscar opines “some don’t believe in what they’re watching any more”. Off again, he murders a banker (the same banker Oscar “plays” at the start of the film, when he is first picked up). There follows a deathbed tragedy, where both parties must cut short their doomy foreplay to leave for appointments. Following this, Oscar’s limo is involved in an unscheduled altercation with another limo carrying Kylie Minogue. Who breaks into song about how “we once had a child”. She is there to meet a lover (leadfing to not-a-little strawberry jam). Oscar’s final appointment takes him “home” to a family of apes, while Celine returns the limo to the Holy Motors depot. After she leaves, masked, the assembled cars begin talking to each other.

What to make of it all? Perhaps Holy Motors is all in the eye of the beholder. This doesn’t strike me as a picture demanding onion-like layers of unpeeled readings, but you know that it will receive them anyway. There is a hypnotic abandon in viewing the antic appointments unfold.

Right from the first scene, the director is there, apparently confused by the sight of an undiscerning theatre audience with their eyes shut. They aren’t even paying attention. Why are they sleeping through the art over which he sweats blood (does Carax demand readings of his resistant movies, to satisfy his intellectual reflexes)? Those undiscerning fools! There is even a sense that this level of arthouse impenetrability, where even the director isn’t sure what it’s all about, is willing the viewer to dismiss it. Then the auteur can return to the seclusion of his ivory tower safe in the knowledge that no one understands. If so, Carax failed this time.

The critics took the bait, never keen to be labelled dumb. Which isn’t to say this is some kind of emperor’s new clothes, but I’d be lying if I professed to understand it’s very essence. This is the kind of picture Monty Python would have done a sterling job sending up if they were still together (perhaps Fellini fan Gilliam can do a special bit for their stage show) and, if Holy Motors didn’t possess a vibrant sense of humour (albeit a very dark one), all might be lost in a wasteland of obscure surrealism and fractured social commentary. One wonders if it really wants to be analysed. The film may be more content to be just “weird and interesting” than to be examined thoroughly for untold depths and found to come up short.

So this is what occurred to me. Each day, a guardian angel ushers a human out on his life’s (lives) journey(s) (a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage). This human is filled with increasing weariness and distance from why he is actually doing any of this at all; life has become only about meeting prescribed appointments and its greater purpose is lost. Every night the limo returns to the heavenly vault (Holy Motors Inc.) and every day the process starts anew. It might be a metaphor for reincarnation. Perhaps the final appointment is a suggestion that we have devolved, no longer able to distinguish our automatic responses from the instinctive behaviour of the apes from which we are descended? A kind of reverse-Kubrick.

Maybe. Probably not. Had this picture come out 40 years ago, most likely no one would have blinked an eye. But Carax’s cogitations feel like a rarity now. Perhaps that is partly the point. His film is a chin-stroker’s delight, of which there are fewer extreme cases today. I am less than convinced it is hugely profound, yet it is striking, and slightly crazed, and appealingly demented. And Denis Lavant is an amazing actor, even if his director doesn’t think all that much of his film analysis skills.

****

I’m smarter than a beaver.

Prey (2022) (SPOILERS) If nothing else, I have to respect Dan Trachtenberg’s cynical pragmatism. How do I not only get a project off the ground, but fast-tracked as well? I know, a woke Predator movie! Woke Disney won’t be able to resist! And so, it comes to pass. Luckily for Prey , it gets to bypass cinemas and so the same sorry fate of Lightyear . Less fortunately, it’s a patience-testing snook cocking at historicity (or at least, assumed historicity), in which a young, pint-sized Comanche girl who wishes to hunt and fish – and doubtless shoot to boot – with the big boys gets to take on a Predator and make mincemeat of him. Well, of course , she does. She’s a girl, innit?

Just because you are a character doesn't mean that you have character.

Pulp Fiction (1994) (SPOILERS) From a UK perspective, Pulp Fiction ’s success seemed like a fait accompli; Reservoir Dogs had gone beyond the mere cult item it was Stateside and impacted mainstream culture itself (hard to believe now that it was once banned on home video); it was a case of Tarantino filling a gap in the market no one knew was there until he drew attention to it (and which quickly became over-saturated with pale imitators subsequently). Where his debut was a grower, Pulp Fiction hit the ground running, an instant critical and commercial success (it won the Palme d’Or four months before its release), only made cooler by being robbed of the Best Picture Oscar by Forrest Gump . And unlike some famously-cited should-have-beens, Tarantino’s masterpiece really did deserve it.

I’m the famous comedian, Arnold Braunschweiger.

Last Action Hero (1993) (SPOILERS) Make no mistake, Last Action Hero is a mess. But even as a mess, it might be more interesting than any other movie Arnie made during that decade, perhaps even in his entire career. Hellzapoppin’ (after the 1941 picture, itself based on a Broadway revue) has virtually become an adjective to describe films that comment upon their own artifice, break the fourth wall, and generally disrespect the convention of suspending disbelief in the fictions we see parading across the screen. It was fairly audacious, some would say foolish, of Arnie to attempt something of that nature at this point in his career, which was at its peak, rather than playing it safe. That he stumbled profoundly, emphatically so since he went up against the behemoth that is Jurassic Park (slotted in after the fact to open first), should not blind one to the considerable merits of his ultimate, and final, really, attempt to experiment with the limits of his screen persona.

Death to Bill and Ted!

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991) (SPOILERS) The game of how few sequels are actually better than the original is so well worn, it was old when Scream 2 made a major meta thing out of it (and it wasn’t). Bill & Ted Go to Hell , as Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey was originally called, is one such, not that Excellent Adventure is anything to be sneezed at, but this one’s more confident, even more playful, more assured and more smartly stupid. And in Peter Hewitt it has a director with a much more overt and fittingly cartoonish style than the amiably pedestrian Stephen Herrick. Evil Bill : First, we totally kill Bill and Ted. Evil Ted : Then we take over their lives. My recollection of the picture’s general consensus was that it surpassed the sleeper hit original, but Rotten Tomatoes’ review aggregator suggests a less universal response. And, while it didn’t rock any oceans at the box office, Bogus Journey and Point Break did quite nicely for Keanu Reev

Everyone creates the thing they dread.

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) (SPOILERS) Avengers: Age of Ultron ’s problem isn’t one of lack. It benefits from a solid central plot. It features a host of standout scenes and set pieces. It hands (most of) its characters strong defining moments. It doesn’t even suffer now the “wow” factor of seeing the team together for the first time has subsided. Its problem is that it’s too encumbered. Maybe its asking to much of a director to effectively martial the many different elements required by an ensemble superhero movie such as this, yet Joss Whedon’s predecessor feels positively lean in comparison. Part of this is simply down to the demands of the vaster Marvel franchise machine. Seeds are laid for Captain America: Civil War , Infinity Wars I & II , Black Panther and Thor: Ragnarok . It feels like several spinning plates too many. Such activity occasionally became over-intrusive on previous occasions ( Iron Man II ), but there are points in Age of Ultron whe

Poetry in translation is like taking a shower with a raincoat on.

Paterson (2016) (SPOILERS) Spoiling a movie where nothing much happens is difficult, but I tend to put the tag on in a cautionary sense much of the time. Paterson is Jim Jarmusch at his most inert and ambient but also his most rewardingly meditative. Paterson (Adam Driver), a bus driver and modest poet living in Paterson, New Jersey, is a stoic in a fundamental sense, and if he has a character arc of any description, which he doesn’t really, it’s the realisation that is what he is. Jarmusch’s picture is absent major conflict or drama; the most significant episodes feature Paterson’s bus breaking down, the English bull terrier Marvin – whom Paterson doesn’t care for but girlfriend Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) dotes on – destroying his book of poetry, and an altercation at the local bar involving a gun that turns out to be a water pistol. And Paterson takes it all in his stride, genial to the last, even the ruination of his most earnest, devoted work (the only disappoint

If you ride like lightning, you're going to crash like thunder.

The Place Beyond the Pines (2012) (SPOILERS) There’s something daringly perverse about the attempt to weave a serious-minded, generation-spanning saga from the hare-brained premise of The Place Beyond the Pines . When he learns he is a daddy, a fairground stunt biker turns bank robber in order to provide for his family. It’s the kind of “only-in-Hollywood” fantasy premise you might expect from a system that unleashed Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man and Point Break on the world. But this is an indie-minded movie from the director of the acclaimed Blue Valentine ; it demands respect and earnest appraisal. Unfortunately it never recovers from the abject silliness of the set-up. The picture is littered with piecemeal characters and scenarios. There’s a hope that maybe the big themes will even out the rocky terrain but in the end it’s because of this overreaching ambition that the film ends up so undernourished. The inspiration for the movie

This entire edifice you see around you, built on jute.

Jeeves and Wooster 3.3: Cyril and the Broadway Musical (aka Introduction on Broadway) Well, that’s a relief. After a couple of middling episodes, the third season bounces right back, and that's despite Bertie continuing his transatlantic trip. Clive Exton once again plunders Carry On, Jeeves but this time blends it with a tale from The Inimitable Jeeves for the brightest spots, as Cyril Basington-Basington (a sublimely drippy Nicholas Hewetson) pursues his stage career against Aunt Agatha's wishes.

I think it’s pretty clear whose side the Lord’s on, Barrington.

Monte Carlo or Bust aka Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies (1969) (SPOILERS) Ken Annakin’s semi-sequel to Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines tends to be rather maligned, usually compared negatively to its more famous predecessor. Which makes me rather wonder if those expressing said opinion have ever taken the time to scrutinise them side by side. Or watch them back to back (which would be more sensible). Because Monte Carlo or Bust is by far the superior movie. Indeed, for all its imperfections and foibles (not least a performance from Tony Curtis requiring a taste for comic ham), I adore it. It’s probably the best wacky race movie there is, simply because each set of competitors, shamelessly exemplifying a different national stereotype (albeit there are two pairs of Brits, and a damsel in distress), are vibrant and cartoonish in the best sense. Albeit, it has to be admitted that, as far as said stereotypes go, Annakin’s home side win

Your Mickey Mouse is one big stupid dope!

Enemy Mine (1985) (SPOILERS) The essential dynamic of Enemy Mine – sworn enemies overcome their differences to become firm friends – was a well-ploughed one when it was made, such that it led to TV Tropes assuming, since edited, that it took its title from an existing phrase (Barry Longyear, author of the 1979 novella, made it up, inspired by the 1961 David Niven film The Best of Enemies ). The Film Yearbook Volume 5 opined that that Wolfgang Petersen’s picture “ lacks the gritty sauciness of Hell in the Pacific”; John Boorman’s WWII film stranded Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune on a desert island and had them first duking it out before becoming reluctant bedfellows. Perhaps germanely, both movies were box office flops.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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