Movie Review: Domino

Domino ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Brian De Palma.

Written by: Petter Skavlan.

Starring: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Christian), Carice van Houten (Alex), Guy Pearce (Joe Martin), Søren Malling (Lars Hansen), Eriq Ebouaney (Ezra Tarzi), Paprika Steen (Hanne Toft), Thomas W. Gabrielsson (Wold), Ardalan Esmaili (Omar), Younes Bachir (Miguel), Helena Kaittani (Stine), Sachli Gholamalizad (Fatima), Hamid Krim (Mustafa), Mohammed Azaay (Salah Al Din), Ilias Addab (Yusuf Hares).

 

Brian De Palma is nearly 80 years old, and nothing would make me happier to see him do what Paul Schrader did last year with First Reformed – and make a late masterpiece, especially since it’s been seven years since his last film, Passion, and over 15 since his last masterwork – Femme Fatale. Unfortunately, Domino is not that film. There are a few brilliant set pieces in the film, and it certainly fits in with De Palma’s obsessions with how we all are watching each other all the time. But its wrapped inside a story that isn’t very interesting, with characters who are paper thin. The film had a troubled production, and was essentially taken away from De Palma and edited without him. There is enough De Palma here to know who made this film, and enough here to make you think that even had he edited it himself, that the end result wouldn’t be a whole lot better.

 

The film takes place mostly in Denmark, and stars Game of Thrones’ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Copenhagen police detective Christian. While responding to a routine domestic disturbance in an apartment building with his partner, and best friend, Lars (Søren Malling), they run into a man on the elevator, whose shoes are covered in blood. They are able to stop him – and get the cuffs on him – but then Christian goes to the apartment to see what happened. Coming across a corpse of a man who has clearly been tortured – he realizes this isn’t such a routine call after all – and races back to tell Lars – but too late to stop the suspect, Ezra Tarzi (Eriq Ebouaney) from slashes Lars’ throat – and escaping running across the roof of the apartment building.

 

What follows is the best set piece in the film – a race across the roofs, that is clearly designed to bring Vertigo to mind, even directing referencing (or stealing, if you prefer) some of the master’s famous shots from the opening sequence in that film, but with a distinctive De Palma flair. It is such a great sequence, that you start to wonder if the dull opening scenes may not be what the rest of the film will be like.

 

Unfortunately, though, they are. What follows is a thriller that sees Christian team up with Alex (Carice van Hoiten) – another cop to try and track down Tarzi. They don’t know though that Tarzi has already been captured – by the CIA (led by Guy Pearce), who want to use him to track down an ISIS leader, who Tarzi is after for personal reasons anyway. To say that the films view of both the CIA and ISIS is over simplistic would be an understatement. They are both basically portrayed as evil – Pearce’s Joe Martin is an unfeeling monster, really, who doesn’t care about anything other than getting ISIS members, not matter the cost. The ISIS leader – Salah Al Din (Mohammed Azaay) is a one dimensional monster, who brainwashes people to do their bidding. There is a side plot about a woman going to a film festival red carpet to both commit a mass shooting, and then a suicide bombing – which is filmed, to be posted to the internet. It’s almost as if the person we are led to believe in the opening scene is the bad guy – Tarzi – is a victim caught between the two greater, evil forces – even if for Christian and Alex, he’s the only thing they are focused on.

 

That could have led to some interesting points being made about the nature of terrorism, and counter-terrorism efforts, and how everyone is just a pawn to be used by either side. And yet as presented here, everything is just one note, and simplistic. They are all stereotypes – and not very interesting ones at that.

The film does end with another great set piece – one that may call to mind De Palma’s best film (Blow Out) – shot under blue lights, as Christian and Alex have to try and foil another suicide bombing. Again, the characters in that sequence are paper thin – but the actual staging by De Palma is stunning, and the type of thing only De Palma could do.

 

So, in short, Domino is not a late career masterpiece from De Palma. Ever since Femme Fatale, I’ve gone into each De Palma film hoping to find another great film. Other than Redacted (2007) – his Iraq war film, which for my money is the worst film De Palma has ever made. Like both The Black Dahlia and Passion, there is brilliant moments in Domino – moments that no one else could do. But they are at the service of a plot and narrative and characters not worthy of it. Domino is worse than normal – but the pattern still holds. Yet, even though he’s nearly 80, he still has multiple films in various stages of pre-production, so I can still hope for at least one more De Palma masterpiece.

Mission Impossible Series: Mission Impossible (1996)

Mission: Impossible (1996) 

Directed by: Brian De Palma.

Written by: David Koepp and Robert Towne and Steven Zallian based on the television series created by Bruce Geller.

Starring: Tom Cruise (Ethan Hunt), Jon Voight (Jim Phelps), Emmanuelle Béart (Claire), Henry Czerny (Kittridge), Jean Reno (Krieger), Ving Rhames (Luther), Kristin Scott Thomas (Sarah Davies), Vanessa Redgrave (Max), Ingeborga Dapkunaite (Hannah), Rolf Saxon (CIA Analyst William Donloe), Karel Dobrý (Matthias), Emilio Estevez (Jack Harmon), Marcel Iures (Alexander Golitsyn).

 

It was fairly early in my re-watch of Brian De Palma’s Mission Impossible that a realization struck me as to how different blockbuster filmmaking has become in the 22 years since the film was made. This had nothing to do with the so called dated aspects of the film – but they are certainly noticeable when they break out what is considered top of the line technology that looks positively antiquated now, or the way they use this thing called “the internet”. It has more to do with the style of the film altogether. No studio today would hire a director as idiosyncratic in terms of style as Brian De Palma to make a film this today. While my memory of the film is that it was an impersonal film for De Palma – a paycheque film if you will – the reality is there are quite a few stylistic hallmarks of De Palma on display in the film. I’m not going to argue that the film is as personal to him as some of his others – it isn’t – but it’s still a Brian De Palma film, just one that also meets the demands of the summer blockbuster.

 

This is noticeable fairly early in the film. After the first mission at a big party goes horribly wrong – and Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) watches as his entire team is killed, there is a meeting between him and Kittridge (Henry Czerny), in which De Palma employs some bizarre angles to goose up their conversation. They are disorienting and strange, adding visual interest to a scene that is just the two of them talking, even as we know Hunt is planning something, and Czerny doesn’t (those angles allow us to see exactly what he is doing under the table, without the boring insert shot that would normally be required.

 

There are two, even better, sequences where this is even clearer. The first is the most famous scene of the film – Hunt breaking into a secure room at CIA headquarters in Langley to steal the NOC list from a computer. This isn’t really an action sequence per se – it’s much more of a heist sequence like the infamous one from Riffifi – which outdoes even this most quiet sequence in that it has no dialogue for a full half hour. This is why you hire De Palma for a movie like this – as it is a visually complex scene, with many movie parts and logistical challenges that have to pulled off effortlessly, and you have to build the tension purely through those visuals – and CGI isn’t an option. It’s one of the more complicated set pieces of De Palma’s career – and he pulls it off effortlessly. Even better, although simpler, is a scene late in the film in which a character (I won’t spoil) tells Hunt his version of events – but as we listen to what is being said, we see what Hunt is thinking – as he puts together the reality of what happened, and exposes the lies he is currently being told. It’s a perverse reveal that Hitchcock would envy.

 

Those scenes, in a way, stand out in the film because for the most part, no matter how expertly executed the film is, it does meet your expectations for action filmmaking from the 1990s. The action climax – involving a train, a helicopter and a tunnel, has justly become famous (even if, watching in 2018, you can more readily see the seams in the visual effects that you probably would have in 1996). Cruise is in full movie star mode here – and he does it quite well. Hunt is missing a little bit of the cynical edge he would gradually get – but that’s understandable, because here he’s an idealist who has yet to become disillusioned – it will happen by the end though. It’s a little disappointing how the rest of the cast is used though – as none really stand out. The most egregious example is poor Emmanuelle Béart, who is supposed to be the wife of Hunt’s mentor (played by Jon Voight) – although the 25 year age difference between the two is apparent, and even if it was done to also make her a believable love interest for Hunt, it’s still distracting (also distracting in 2018? The way Beart superficially resembles Voight’s daughter, Angelina Jolie). In many ways, so much of the story hinges on her character, and yet the movie gives her nothing to work with. Henry Czerny’s Kittridge, who the movie expends so much energy convincing you is the bad guy you know he cannot possibly be the bad guy, is also too one note. Jon Voight himself fairs better – although I do think his big speech is way too obvious.

 

Still though, I was surprised by how good I thought the majority of Mission Impossible was. I had it in my mind that it was minor De Palma – a brainless action film, but it’s a stylish, muscular entertainment that has more patience than any film of its size today would even dream of having. It makes me a little sad that De Palma almost immediately squandered whatever cache the film gave him with Snake Eyes (which brilliant opening shot aside isn’t very good) and Mission to Mars (which would be the worse film of De Palma’s resume if Redacted didn’t exist). I sometimes think we can be too hard on modern blockbusters – thinking that the die had been cast decades ago, and it’s just following on its path. Seeing this film though, you realize just how far most of them have fallen – how visually uninteresting they are - how they mistake rapid fire editing, shaky cameras and CGI for style. De Palma knew better in 1996 – and I wish more blockbusters would follow his example.

Classic Movie Review: Raising Cain (1992)

Raising Cain (1992)

Directed by: Brian De Palma.

Written by: Brian De Palma.

Starring: John Lithgow (Carter / Cain / Dr. Nix / Josh / Margo), Lolita Davidovich (Jenny), Steven Bauer (Jack), Frances Sternhagen (Dr. Waldheim), Gregg Henry (Lt. Terri), Tom Bower (Sgt. Cally), Mel Harris (Sarah), Teri Austin (Karen), Gabrielle Carteris (Nan), Barton Heyman (Mack), Amanda Pombo (Amy), Kathleen Callan (Emma).

 

I am glad that I saw the documentary De Palma before ever seeing his 1992 film Raising Cain – one of the few films in the director’s filmography I had not seen before. I’m glad because without it, I may well have thought that De Palma had no idea what the hell he was doing in terms of story structure, because even by De Palma standards – where story is secondary, and often ridiculous, the story of Raising Cain is completely ridiculous, and doesn’t seem to even be thought out. In the film De Palma, the director admits as such – saying that everything with John Lithgow’s Carter and his multiple personalities was supposed to come much later in the film, which was to open with Lolita Davidovich, as Carter’s wife Jenny, and her story. The problem is that once De Palma got into the editing room, none of that was working, so he had to find a way to make it work on the fly with what he already had. This doesn’t really make the very obvious problems with Raising Cain go away – but at least it makes them understandable.

 

In the film, Lithgow stars as Carter, who is seemingly a perfect husband and father. He, like his father before him, is a child psychologist, and has taken time away from his practice to raise the daughter he and Jenny – an oncologist – have together. But Jenny thinks he may be a little too interested in their daughter’s development – and maybe she would actually do something about it, except for the fact that a former lover, Jack (Steven Bauer), has just re-entered her life, and she thinks that she may still be in love with him. In the audience, we already know something is wrong with Carter – as in the first scene, he excepts for him and his daughter, from another mother at the park – who has her own kid in tow – a ride that will end in murder and kidnapping, and the appearance of Cain, also played by Lithgow, a chain smoking, leather jacket wearing psychopath. This is a pattern that will repeat itself throughout the movie – with Carter/Cain kidnapping children to continue the work of their child psychologist father (also Lithgow) – who has had his own run-ins with the law.

 

If I’m being honest about Raising Cain, not a whole lot of what’s onscreen really works. You have to give full marks to Lithgow, who goes for broke in every moment of the film – but that really just results in him overacting in every scene. This isn’t the type of role(s) where you want subtly to be sure, but a little bit less theatricality could have helped. Lolita Davidovich doesn’t fare much better – and that’s because she really isn’t give very much to do. Her Jenny remains a blank throughout the film, supposedly torn between two men, but not seemingly to like either of them very much – or even her own daughter. Steven Bauer – who has done good work for De Palma before in Scarface (1983) is an emotionless void in Raising Cain.

 

If the acting and story of Raising Cain leaves plenty to be desired however, you do have to admire De Palma’s style – which as always, is go for broke, and show-offy, but not in a way that distracts like Lithgow’s performance sometimes does. The climax of the film – during a thunder storm, at a motel, with many different characters converging, done in almost entirely slow motion, is masterful for instance. It is classic De Palma – a sequence worthy of the thrillers he had stopped making for a number of years before Raising Cain (really, 1984’s Body Double was the last in this vein – and there wouldn’t be another until Femme Fatale in 2002).

 

Raising Cain is certainly an auteur film – in both good and bad ways. I liked the film more than I probably otherwise would have, if it were not directed by Brian De Palma. Having seen over 20 films my him now, it’s easy to pick out his stylistic hallmarks, his way with actors, his pet themes, etc. – all of which can help deepen the experience of even an admittedly silly film like Raising Cain. Where it goes a little too far, is when some try to justify Raising Cain as some sort of misunderstood masterwork – of the culmination of De Palma’s style (seriously, I have seen this film rank ridiculously high on some list of De Palma’s work). I appreciate the parts of Raising Cain that work – as few and far between as they are – and it is definitely a De Palma film. It’s just not a particularly good one.

Classic Movie Review: Body Double

Body Double (1984)

Directed by: Brian De Palma.

Written by: Robert J. Avrech and Brian De Palma.

Starring: Craig Wasson (Jake Scully), Melanie Griffith (Holly Body), Gregg Henry (Sam Bouchard), Deborah Shelton (Gloria Revelle), Guy Boyd (Det. Jim McLean), Dennis Franz (Rubin the Director), David Haskell (Will the Drama Teacher), Rebecca Stanley (Kimberly Hess), Al Israel (Corso the Director).

 

Brian De Palma’s Body Double is one of the director’s best films – an Hitchcock-ian thriller that takes parts of Vertigo and Rear Window, but mixes them in with De Palma’s own sensibility to create a movie that is seemingly all surface style, although it runs deeper than that if you’re paying attention. The film was greeted with a lot of critical disdain back in 1984 – and some still think it’s awful – but it’s been one of my favorite De Palma films since the first time I saw it – and each subsequent viewing only confirms that.

 

The story is both relatively simple and needlessly complex, as well as completely ridiculous – all by design, I’m sure. The film stars Craig Wasson as Jake Scully, a struggling L.A. actor, who gets fired from the only job he can get – in a low budget film that kind of looks like a soft core porn with vampires – because of his claustrophobia. De Palma steals the opening from Blow Out here – placing in the audience inside the movie within the movie and then revealing that it isn’t real – in Blow Out, the sorority massacre is the kind of misogynistic slasher film many accused De Palma of making, and in Body Double, it seems like the director had Dennis Franz virtually play De Palma as the director of this one. Anyway, Jake’s day gets even worse when he returns home and finds his girlfriend cheating on him – in bed with another man - I absolutely love the reveal of this affair, as Jake tiptoes through the house so quietly looking for his girlfriend, who we can quite clearly hear having sex, although he has no idea what’s going on until he actually sees her (thus establishing a very important thing about our hero – he’s not very bright). Down on his luck, and falling off the wagon, he meets Sam Bouchard (Gregg Henry), another struggling actor, and mentions he’s looking for a sublet. Wouldn’t you know, Sam has the perfect place – somewhere he’s himself is subletting – but he’s scored a month long job up Seattle, and needs someone to care for the place. This apartment is the most unlikely on in cinema history – it looks like a miniature version of the space needle, complete with revolving bed, and lots of plants – not to mention a telescope, and the view of a gorgeous woman in another building, who every day at the same time does a sexy striptease in front of a window, for reasons no one bothers to question. Jake gets obsessed with this woman – Gloria Revelle (Deborah Shelton) and eventually starts following her) – but realizes he’s not the only one. Without giving away too much more, let’s just mention that eventually, Jake goes from Peeping Tom to well-meaning stalker, and finally moves into the porn business – where he meets Holly Body (Melanie Griffith) – a porn star with a very specific set of dos and don’ts.

 

The plot of Body Double is, admittedly, rather silly – but it’s also hardly the point of the film. De Palma deliberately chooses different elements from Hitchcock classics as jumping off points – the voyeurism of Rear Window, where the hero may have committed a witnesses a murder while peeping, and Vertigo, where the heroes weakness and phobia – prevents them from saving a life, which makes him feel guilty, propelling him on a journey with a woman who looks a lot like the murdered woman he couldn’t save. But Craig Wasson is no Jimmy Stewart – the hero of both of those Hitchcock classics, and one of the most likable actors in cinema history. As an audience member, you have no problem following Stewart down the rabbit hole, no matter how dark it becomes. Wasson is weaker from the outset – and he goes to sleazier places. You’re not sure you should like him. This is deliberate on De Palma’s part – the great every man in Jimmy Stewart has been replaced by this guy – who thinks that is precisely what he is, but he’s much more like the nerd her will eventually play in a porno music video (don’t ask – just go with it).

 

As with all De Palma films, there are several great visual set pieces throughout Body Double. There is, quite possibly, the longest “following” scene in movie history, as Jake follows Gloria Revelle on a full day of shopping and heading to the beach. The sequence goes on and on and on – with no dialogue, just the great score by Pino Donaggio, and the excellent steadicam work by cinematographer Stephen H. Burum. It is a hypnotizing sequence. The murder at the center of the plot is bloody and disturbing – and it’s that murder where most people make their complaints of misogyny against the film – as a female character is killed with a giant drill (to be fair, she is a more passive female character than I would prefer, and De Palma’s own explanation for the method of murder – that he needed a long drill so we could see it go through the floor, smacks of excuse making – even if it is true). The best character in the movie however is clearly Holly Body – played in her first great screen performance by Melanie Griffth (in fact, it would be the best work Griffth has ever done on screen, were it not for the film she made right after this – Something Wild directed by Jonathan Demme). De Palma had wanted to cast a real porn star in the role – but he was right to end up with Griffth. Her monologue about what she will and will not do is wonderful, because in just a few moments she hits many different things – it is funny and shocking and kind of sad. That describes her character as well – although unlike the other women in the film, Holly Body knows precisely who she is, and is in control at every instance.

 

Body Double is, in many ways, a quintessential 1980s film. You couldn’t make this film in any other decade than this. It is a film that embraces, on its surface level, all the flash and greed and shallowness of that decade, while underneath that, critiquing that shallowness. It’s a film that pulls the rug out of the audience more than once – but rather than feeling cheap, it simply deepens the film. The film is, on one level, trashy, sleazy fun – like any number of other thrillers from that era. But there’s more style here than in those films – and a little bit more going on beneath the surface. It really is one of De Palma’s very best films.

Classic Movie Review: Blow Out (1981)

Blow Out (1981)

Directed by: Brian De Palma.

Written by: Brian De Palma.

Starring: John Travolta (Jack Terry), Nancy Allen (Sally), John Lithgow (Burke), Dennis Franz (Manny Karp), Peter Boyden (Sam), Curt May (Donahue), John Aquino (Detective Mackey), John McMartin (Lawrence Henry).

 

Blow Out may or may not be Brian De Palma’s best film – it’s very close to it if it isn’t – but it is undoubtedly the film I would show a newcomer De Palma’s work if I want to encapsulate everything that makes De Palma such a great director when he’s working at his peak. It is one of his Hitchcock inspired thrillers, with mind boggling set pieces the master of suspense would happily have called his own, and yet it’s more than just an exercise in style, like some lesser De Palma are. The film will remind cinephiles of two other, probably more famous films – Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up (1966), where a photographer obsessively examines photos he took in a park, where he may – or may not have – captured a murder in the background, and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974), in which Gene Hackman obsessively listens, and re-listens to a conversation he has recorded for a client, trying to figure out if it contains evidence of a murder.

 

The “hero” of De Palma’s Blow Out is Jack Terry – played, in one of his very best performances by John Travolta, who works as a sound man for low rent slasher movies – the kind in which a lot of naked girls get stalked and killed, but only after having copious amounts of sex. He does all the sound effects for the films, and his director wants some new ones – including wind, and especially a new scream. Terry heads out one night into a park in Philadelphia, and as he’s recording new sounds, a car skids off the road, and crashes into a nearby creek. Terry jumps into action, dives in and rescues a girl – Sally (Nancy Allen) from the wreckage. He isn’t able to save the man who was driver – Governor McRyan, who was well on his way to becoming President. Terry is convinced that he heard – and recorded – a gunshot before the car tire blow out, and wants to prove that this wasn’t a tragic accident, but actually a murder. No one believes him – except for Sally, who he enlists to help him.

 

The opening shot of Blow Out is a virtuoso one in its own right – as a killer stalks a sorority house from the outside, before heading inside with his knife – and going full slasher attacking a woman in the shower. This sequence, which is done all in one take, from the killer’s POV, is the first of many times in the movie when De Palma will play with the audience – and introduce an element of black humor to the movie – as he reveals that what we are watching isn’t real, but is part of the movie that Terry will be working on. It’s almost as if De Palma is toying with the audience there – after some of the criticism he had received for prior films, being overly divertive or oversexed, he’s putting that out there front and center, and then pulling it away again (it also plays perfectly with the final scene of the movie – the two of them are perfect bookends to the movie).

 

This is hardly the last virtuoso piece of camerawork in the film. De Palma uses both new and old techniques throughout the movie, and what he and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond do with split screens, and steadicam (the first time De Palma used one – a year after Kubrick in The Shining) is remarkable. The finale setpiece – a chase through the streets of Philly, climaxing with a burst of fireworks and other Americana – including, of course, murder – is perhaps the best thing De Palma has ever filmed.

 

What makes Blow Out better than the other Hitchcock inspired films of De Palma though is not just the style – the style of Sisters, Obsession, Dressed to Kill, Body Double and Femme Fatale is nearly as good as it is in Blow Out – it’s in the way De Palma weaves the plot together, and because the characters in Blow Out feel real – which moves the movie beyond mere thriller into the realm of real tragedy in the end. Travolta’s Jack Terry is a man who becomes obsessed with finding the truth – and is determined that he is the only one who can actually do that. He trusts in his abilities to do that, and distrusts everyone else. Throughout the movie, as grows closer to Nancy Allen’s Sally – perhaps even grows to love her. But he also isn’t above using her for his own means – in a key sequence near the end of the movie, he sends her into a situation that could be dangerous, while he hangs back with his sound equipment from a safe distance – to “gather evidence”. For her part, Allen is just as good as Travolta, in a role that at first seems frivolous – as if perhaps she is nothing but a sex object (there are multiple characters in the movie that use her in just that way – although they are all clearly sleazy). She is a dreamer and an optimist – she loves the fact that Terry works “in the movies”, and won’t watch the news because it’s “too depressing”. All she wants is to be happy, but she allows herself to be dragged along – by one man after another, to do something she doesn’t really want to do. Even John Lithgow’s Burke – a violent man willing to do anything, including “pose” as a sexual serial killer to cover his tracks – is given slightly more, not depth really, but something more defined that most killers of this sort in movies. He is terrifying because we know he’s capable of anything. And, in a smaller role, Dennis Franz is very good as a slezeball P.I., with a camera, and his own version of the American Dream.

 

The film has one of the most cynical and nihilistic endings of any genre film that I can recall. It’s really only at the end of the film where everything snaps into focus – as to who our “hero” really is, which is tragically flawed. It’s an ending worthy of Hitchcock – who did this a few times (jn films like Vertigo or Notorious), but also completely De Palma. The finale shot of the movie is one the saddest shots in film history – a haunted man who has ensured he will remain haunted forever.

 

To say that De Palma has had a very tumultuous career would be an understatement – for every great films (like Carrie, Blow Out, Scarface, Body Double, Femme Fatale) there is a bad one (like Mission to Mars or Bonfire of the Vanities or Redacted) – and a whole hell of lot in between. But at his best, De Palma could be one of the very best filmmakers of his generation – someone who takes what came before him, and mixes the ingredients into something wholly his own. No wonder Quentin Tarantino loves him so much – he’s basically made a career out of doing the same thing.

Movie Review: De Palma

De Palma

Directed by: Noah Baumbach & Jake Paltrow.

Featuring: Brian De Palma.

 

There are a few ways in which documentaries centered on the work of one director can go – it can be the kind of fawning treatment, meant only foe diehards, that really should be nothing more than a DVD special feature (like Altman or Milius were a few years ago), or something like Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow’s De Palma – which, yes, is still for diehards, but it is a fascinating film in its own right, and contains a tremendous amount of insight into the films of Brian De Palma – from the man himself – as well as observations about Hollywood, from a man who has been there for more than 40 years. De Palma is mostly clear eyed about his own work – admitting when he made mistakes, or when something just didn’t work, but also being proud of his accomplishments – of which there have been many.

 

According to IMDB, Brian De Palma has 40 directing credits, and the film De Palma is basically the famed director talking about each and every one of them (they mostly skip the few shorts he made in school, but after that, the list is exhaustive). From his first Hitchcock homage, Murder a la Mod (1968), through subversive indie comedies like Greetings (1968) and its sequel, Hi, Mom! (1970) – which were early breaks for Robert DeNiro), through a disastrous first experience in the studio system – Get to Know Your Rabbit (1972), which De Palma says didn’t work, and when he told the studio how to make it work, they fired him, through the indie shockers Sisters, Phantom of the Paradise and Obsession, and then returning to the studio fold with Carrie (1976) – and then on and on, the film is full of observations, and De Palma pulls no punches. He’ll tell you how Cliff Robertson was an asshole on Obsession – how he realized Genevieve Bujold was stealing the movie from him, and did everything possible to undermine her. Or how he had to ban Oliver Stone from the set of Scarface, which Stone wrote, because Stone was trying to direct the actors. Or how David Mamet refused to work on The Untouchables after a certain point, so he had to do things himself. Or how Robert Towne wanting the climax of Mission Impossible to be a bunch of guys in a box car taking off their masks. De Palma admits that sometimes he has been hamstrung by the material – he doesn’t really like The Fury (1978), which made him do a car chase, which he hates doing, or how he had to completely restructure Raising Cain in the editing room, because it wasn’t working. He’ll admit his mistakes – he doesn’t dispute the fact that The Bonfire of the Vanities doesn’t work, but he does dispute the much made argument that he didn’t get it. He got it just fine, he just didn’t think that since he had Tom Hanks as the lead, that he could make a movie that cynical and depressing, or make Hanks that deplorable – so he lightened it, with horrible results. He knows Mission to Mars (2000) doesn’t really work – and it looks bad in parts, but that is, he argues, because they ran out of money. In regards to that film, he also argues why most CGI heavy blockbusters today look the same – it’s because the big effects sequence are pre-visualized, and not by the directors, but by effects houses, and they cost so much, that directors don’t really have the ability to go back and ask for something else. Ever wonder why every blockbuster seems to climax with a bunch of “stuff” crashing into other stuff, as building collapse, etc. That’s the reason.

 

One of the positives, and negatives of a movie like De Palma, which only questions the director on his own work, is that you end up with only one perspective. When I watched Hitchcock/Truffaut a few months ago, I wondered why there were no female directors questioned on Hitchcock’s work – which, many have argued, often bordered on, and occasionally crossed right on into, misogyny. The same can be said of De Palma’s work – but he mainly brushes off such criticisms. I would have liked to see dim delve more deeply into the sexual politics of Dressed to Kill (1980) for instance – a film, that is in many ways a stylistic masterpiece, but whose treatment of a trans character would make it impossible to make today. Or, delve a little deeper into the sexual politics of Body Double (1984) – one of my absolute favorites of his, but one that does feature a woman being killed by a giant drill (De Palma’s answer to that – that the drill had to be so big, so it could go through the floor where the main character would see it, is both an interesting practical note, but also a little bit of a copout) – but also, undeniably, has a great role for Melanie Griffith – her first great one, as a porn star, who completely owns and controls her sexuality. There is more to say about the sexual politics in his films, but De Palma doesn’t seem too interested in saying them.

 

Still, there are tons of great notes on the making of his masterpieces, like Carrie and Blow Out (my two favorites), his constant battle with the ratings board, or his regrets over something like Causalities of War (1989) basically being ignored at the time it came out (it’s one that I think still requires a critical re-evaluation). My one major regret is that it seems like once Baumbach and Paltrow get De Palma’s thoughts on CGI and Mission to Mars, they’re pretty much done with him, and the film. The Black Dahlia gets only a minute or two, Redacted even less, and I don’t think Passion is even mentioned by name. Worst of all, the film pretty much skims right by Femme Fatale (2002) – which would rank in my top five of all De Palma films, but which they don’t really discuss.

 

Still, De Palma is a fascinating document of De Palma’s career – a reminder of how great he can be given the right material (in the past two weeks, I’ve re-watched both Blow Out and Body Double – and loved both), and how to build a career in Hollywood. A career like De Palma’s could only happen at precisely the time it did – any earlier, and he’d be too shackled by the studio system, any later, and they wouldn’t give him the money needed to make such bold, provocative movies. He has had a wildly inconsistent career – but a great one.

Movie Review: Passion

Passion
Directed by: Brian De Palma.
Written by: Brian De Palma based on the screenplay by Natalie Carter and Alain Corneau.
Starring: Rachel McAdams (Christine), Noomi Rapace (Isabelle James), Paul Anderson (Derk), Karoline Herfurth (Dani), Rainer Bock (Inspector Bach).

Many of Brian De Palma’s thrillers – even his better ones – don’t make much logical sense. Go back and watch Sisters (1973) or Obsession (1976) or Dressed to Kill (1980) to see some examples of his finest work that gets by almost entirely on style and not on logic. If you think about the plots of these films, they pretty much fall apart. But because De Palma tells them with such style, and such passion, and because they twist and turn so unpredictably, you are caught up in the movie from moment to moment, and don’t really care if it all makes sense in the end. At least that’s true for me. I know a lot of people don’t really like De Palma – who, unlike me, think most of his films are crap, where I just happen to think that Femme Fatale (2002) aside, the last 20 years or so of his career has been disappointing, but the first 20 years were wonderful. His latest film is Passion, and judging by many the reviews coming out of Venice and TIFF (where I saw the film), most critics are writing this film off as yet another miss for De Palma. But while I will readily admit the film has flaws – and lots of them – I also have to admit I enjoyed the movie immensely. True, Passion functions mainly as a guilty pleasure – but considering how much I have disliked most of De Palma’s recent films, that is at the very least a step in the right direction.

The movie begins, a little shakily, as a workplace melodrama. Christine (Rachel McAdams) is an executive at an ad firm, looking to get a promotion to New York. One of her underlings, Isabelle (Noomi Rapace) comes up with a great idea for a new ad campaign – and when the upper brass likes it – Christine takes the credit. While this is certainly backstabbing, Christine puts on her phony smile, and explains that since she is the boss, if she wins, everyone wins. Besides, if she gets promoted to New York, Isabelle may get a promotion herself. Oh, and Isabelle cannot feel to self-righteous about herself – after all, on the trip to London where she pitched the idea to the client in the first place, she slept with Christine’s boyfriend (Paul Anderson) – and has been carrying on an affair ever since they have returned.

Where the movie goes from here, I’ll leave you to discover, since watching this plot take one unexpected twist after another, as it moves from a melodrama into a violent thriller and murder mystery is one of the chief pleasures of the movie. It is one of those movies where you’re never sure who is the good guy and who is the bad guy – because whenever you’re convinced you’ve figured it out, something comes along to pull the rug out from under you. Even the seemingly innocent people – like Christine’s put upon boyfriend and Isabelle’s sweet looking assistant (Karoline Herfurth) aren’t quite what they seem.

There are certainly problems with Passion. For one thing, the movie gets off to a rocky start. The workplace backstabbing doesn’t feel genuine – really it feels like actors going through the motions. It doesn’t help that De Palma miscast the two lead roles. In the original French film (unseen by me), by Alain Corneau, Christine was played by Kristen Scott Thomas, and Isabelle by Ludivinne Sagnier. For whatever reason, De Palma decided to forego this generation gap, and instead cast two actresses around the same age. This could have worked, by McAdams feels like she’s trying too hard to be the boss from hell – like she’s watched The Devil Wears Prada one too many times. And for her part, Rapace doesn’t seem like the innocent victim she should appear to be in the opening scenes – she’s more than capable of fending for herself against McAdams. Yes, it is a kinky thrill to see these two beautiful women involved in a game of cat and mouse, with sexual overtones, but there is something missing there. Surprisingly it is Karoline Herfurth who gives the movie’s best performance – and it is precisely because she seemingly comes from nowhere that her performance is so damn good.

And yet the miscasting of the movie certainly didn’t kill my enjoyment of it. De Palma and his style is almost always the star of his films anyway, and especially in this film’s later half – when he pulls out all the stops – he is in top form here. De Palma has always been an unabashed borrower from other directors – especially, but not limited to, Hitchcock – and he does so here as well (especially in the weird score that sounds like Bernard Herrman on crack). But the director De Palma most borrows from here is himself. He repeats many of the stylistic tricks he has used before, but somehow it doesn’t quite seem like a boring rehash, but a knowing nod and wink to his fans in the audience.

Passion is certainly not a great film. I wouldn’t really argue with anyone who hates the film, because I know where they are coming from. And yet, for me, this film functioned perfectly as a guilty pleasure. It doesn’t really add anything new to De Palma’s filmography, and it may not be an “objectively good” film (whatever the hell that means), but damn if I did not have a blast watching it.

The Top 10 Films of Brian De Palma

Brian De Palma is an extremely gifted filmmaker, and has been since his emergence in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with his strange dark comedies, and Hitchcock inspired thrillers. He is a student of cinema past, and takes those films and filters them through his own mind, and comes up with something between homage and original. Unfortunately it seems like De Palma has lost some of his magic in the past two decades or so. Really, since 1990, he has only made two really good films (both of them are on this list), but too much of his work since that time has been visually interesting, but dramatically hollow or even silly (Snake Eyes has one of the best opening shots in cinema history – a shot worthy of Scorsese, Hitchcock, Ophuks or Welles, but then devolves into a truly awful movie, The Black Dahlia has a perfect film noir look, but is undone by horrible miscasting). Nevertheless, I will be seeing his most recent film, Passion, at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, so I thought I’d look back at his 10 best films, if for no other reason than to remind myself how good he can be.

10. Dressed to Kill (1980)

I easily could have placed Sisters (1973) or Obsession (1976) in this spot, as both of those films, along with Dressed to Kill, are among De Palma’s most obvious Hitchcock homages – and all three of them have plots that would not work if you thought about them for five minutes, but you do not really care because the style of the movie is so mesmerizing, you simply sit back and enjoy the ride. This film, a clear Psycho homage, stars Angie Dickinson as a bored housewife who is one brilliant sequence (the sequence that I finally decided merited putting this film on the list) meets a stranger in a museum, and the two play a wordless game of sexual cat and mouse, with first one character stalking the other, and then vice versa, before they finally consummate their relationship. From there, the movie takes on twist and turn after another, many of which don’t hold up to scrutiny, but then again, we don’t really care, as absorbed as we are by the style, and the performances by Dickinson, Nancy Allen, as a street wise prostitute, and Michael Caine, as a psychiatrist. I know there are lots of plot holes, but I also know I don’t care.

9. Casualties of War (1989)

Casualties of War is not a great film – but had it been shortened, it well could have been. The film is based on the shocking true story of an American unit of five men in Vietnam who are sent out on patrol. Their Commanding Officer, played by a brilliant Sean Penn, is enraged that the MPs won’t let him go into town and get a prostitute, so instead he decides that, along with his four underlings, that they will go into a nearby village and kidnap a girl to fill their sexual needs on patrol. Hearing this, a Private (Michael J. Fox) does not believe him – but it becomes all too real when they actually do kidnap a girl, and force her to march alongside them on patrol. The other four men will eventually rape and kill the girl – and Fox will try to get the military to press charges against them. The bookending scenes at the beginning and the end don’t really work too well – they are too contrived. And yet the scenes in the jungle, where a decent man tries in vain to stop a violent one, who bullies everyone to go along with, are brilliant. There is a greater, shorter film in Casualties of War.

8. Carlito’s Way (1993)

In Carlito’s Way, Al Pacino stars as a Puerto Rican gangster in New York City, who has been released from prison on a technicality, and says he wants to go straight. All he needs to do is make a little money so he can invest alongside his friend in a car rental business in the Bahamas. And yet, Carlito knows nothing about going straight – his only friends are criminals, or his attorney (Sean Penn, who is easily the best thing in the movie), who is basically a criminal as well, and so, as the movie goes along, it becomes clear that Carlito will not get his happy ending – but then again, he doesn’t really deserve one - he should have died in prison. Al Pacino has a gift for playing these larger than life characters – and Carlito bears a resemblance to another gangster he played for De Palma, except a little older and wiser, and he carries the movie, and allows the colorful supporting cast to be truly bizarre at times. The film also has a number of great action set pieces – De Palma’s specialty. Carlito’s Way is a wonderful gangster movie.

7. The Untouchables (1987)

The Untouchables may not be among De Palma’s most daring works, but it certainly ranks as one of his most entertaining and satisfying. From Kevin Costner’s square jawed Elliot Ness, to Sean Connery, obviously having a blast in his Oscar winning performance as his mentor to Robert DeNiro, chewing the scenery brilliantly as a larger than life Al Capone, the cast is uniformly excellent. The movie also has several great action set pieces – the now infamous one in the train station playing homage to Battleship Potemkin, being the best, although there are some other great ones as well. True, The Untouchables is a movie built on clichés – there is hardly an original moment in its running time, but as straight ahead, Hollywood entertainment, The Untouchables is great fun.

6. Hi, Mom! (1970)

De Palma’s early, demented black comedy Hi, Mom! sees the director at his most experimental and ambitious – in fact, perhaps a touch too ambitious, as this is a very strange, unwieldy film, but also a great one. It stars a young Robert DeNiro, reprising his role from De Palma’s Greetings, as a Vietnam vet home from the war, who moves starts the movie wanting to making pornography – but a realistic pornography, than combines elements of cinema verite, moving on to becoming an actor for an strange, underground theater troupe (which includes the infamous Be Black, Baby! sequence), and finally becoming a domestic terrorist. If this all sounds very strange, that is because it is, but it is also among the most complex of De Palma’s films, one that very early on addresses his fascination with voyeurism, and the link between sex and violence. I cannot say that Hi, Mom is a completely successful film – it throws everything at the wall to see what will stick – but it certainly in an interesting one.

5. Body Double (1984)

In many ways, Body Double resembles De Palma’s other blatant Hitchcock homages – Sisters, Obsession and Dressed to Kill – except this one actually has a much better, much less flawed plot, and characters who are easier to believe. This one stars Craig Wasson as an unemployed actor whose friend lets him stay at his house for a few days when he’s out of town. It’s one of those strange houses on stilts around L.A., and his friends shows him the sights – especially the sexy neighbor who does a striptease in front of a window every night. Wasson cannot help himself, and watches her through a telescope, but starts to believe that she is in danger (Rear Window anyone?). From there, I won’t spoil the rest of the plot, except to say that the movie takes a strange but completely logical turn into the world of pornography – and contains one of the best performances of Melanie Griffith’s career as a porn star Wasson enlists to help him. The movie is sexy, violent and over the top – but also masterfully directed by De Palma, who here, finally directed a film that was not mere Hitchcock homage – but worthy of the master himself.

4. Scarface (1983)

Scarface is probably De Palma’s most famous film these days, which is odd when you consider who reviled by many critics when it was released back in 1983. But for whatever reasons, the world of rap has embraced the film, and Tony Montana, as a model for their life of excess – which is pretty sad when you think about the film itself. But De Palma’s violent gangster saga is not to blame for its followers – because on its own terms it a brilliant, violent, epic gangster film, with a brilliantly over the top Al Pacino, as a Cuban refugee who comes to Miami to make money – because along with money comes power, and with power comes respect. Montana rises up in the criminal underworld because he lets nothing stand in his way – he will do anything, as those around him will eventually find out. The screenplay by Oliver Stone is one that mixes the over the top violence with a political statement about America, and Cuba for that matter, but is above all a character study of a man who starts out as ambitious, and achieves everything he wants, but ends up drowning in his own excess. Scarface is a great movie because Stone, Pacino and De Palma all know it has be larger than life for it to work at all – and none of them were afraid to go there.

3. Femme Fatale (2002)

Femme Fatale is an exercise in pure cinema style. It opens with a jewel heist and a brazen one at that, as a team of seemingly highly trained thieves send the beautiful Laure Ashe (Rebecca Romijn) to a premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, where she ends up seducing a model in a bathroom wearing millions in jewels – and then ends up getting away with it – and screwing over her partners. Seven years later, a woman who looks a lot like Laure Ashe is back in Paris, and is photographed by a paparazzi photographer (Antonio Banderas), and is determined to get those photos back – no matter what she has to do to get them. This is a sexy film where Romijn proved that while she may not be a great actress, she at least had to good sense to know that this was the role she was born to play – Hitchcock would have loved her, and De Palma certainly does. The movie twists and turns, and keeps you guessing right to very end. It is a sexy thriller in the very best sense of the word. Now, is it really THAT much better than the similar films De Palma made in the 1970s and 1980s, or does it just seem so because it is the type of film that no one but De Palma would even think to make anymore? I honestly have no idea. But I love it just the same.

2. Blow Out (1981)

Blow Out is the best of De Palma’s Hitchcockian thrillers because, to me anyway, it is the one that most clearly moves beyond just mere homage, and gets to something deeper, darker and more original than those other films. In this one, John Travolta plays a B-movie soundman, out on a bridge late one night recording background noise, when he witnesses a car accident, as a car plunges off the bridge into the water below. He dives in, and saves the girl (Nancy Allen), but not the man who dies. What he discovers is that the man was a possible Presidential candidate, and when he goes back and listens to his tapes, he thinks he hears not just the blow out of the tire – but also a gunshot. Was this not an accident at all, but rather a murder? Travolta becomes obsessed trying to piece this altogether, and his investigation leads to a rogues gallery of people – Nancy Allen, not just an innocent victim, Dennis Franz as a slimy P.I., but not quite THAT slimy, and John Lithgow as a ruthless political fixer - and a possible, massive political conspiracy. Unlike many thrillers, these people do not behave as they do merely to serve the plot, but respond like real people would. The movie ends on a bleak, but fitting note. Yes, you can point out the influences in Blow Out – Hitchcock in the chase scene through the crowded streets of Philadelphia during an anniversary celebration of the Liberty Bell, Antonioni in the concept of a man driven to extremes thinking he has captured a murder that no one will believe – but De Palma moves beyond his influences here, and crafted his most complete thriller – one that it definitely his.

1. Carrie (1976)

Carrie is one of the best horror movies ever made, because it is one of those horror films that feels the most real. No, I do not believe in telekinesis, but the horror that grows in Carrie is a horror that comes out of the story and its characters – and not just a bit of tacked on bloodletting for commercial reasons. Sissy Spacek delivers a terrifyingly realistic performance as the pretty, painfully shy Carrie, who is tormented at school by the popular kids (the scenes involving the tampon are truly horrifying, but not in a horror movie way) but it pales in comparison to what she goes through at home, at the hands of her religiously fanatical mother, who is so scared of sexuality, that she will never let Carrie develop to be a normal girl. De Palma has often, rightfully, been accused of caring more about style than substance – but here, he lets the movie develop naturally, and takes his time setting up the characters, so that the horror when it comes, actually does come from a real place – which makes it all the more terrifying. Spacek and Laurie are brilliant in this movie to be sure, and while De Palma may be more restrained at times in Carrie than normal, it works – and he does let his stylistics out to play at points, most memorably as Carrie dances with her prom date, which first seems romantic, and then spins wildly out of control as De Palma’s camera moves faster and faster around them. Carrie may not be De Palma’s most “Brian De Palma” film (if that makes sense, and it does to me), but it is the best film he has ever made.