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Reviews
The Guest (2014)
Checks Out Too Soon
The Guest (2014)
A family whose son died in combat are visited by one of his former comrades.
The Guest is a ludicrous and funny thriller, with stand-out performances from Dan Stevens, Maika Monroe and Leland Orcer, who almost steals the show as the affable, alcoholic father. It has a dreamy synth-heavy soundtrack, reminiscent of both the 80's thrillers the film takes it's cues from and also Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive (2011).
Adam Wingard paces the whole film tightly as possible, and even as the film goes into truly bonkers territory in it's third act, it never loses sharpness.
My problem with The Guest is it sticks too rigorously to pastiche, when there's the makings of a film that could merely begin that way and transcend formula. The cast all are all perfectly in tune with the joke, the action sequences are exciting and brutal, the script has some hilariously dark and twisted turns, and yet it fails to subvert several genre tropes; the bullied kid at school, the stoners and a fair amount of dialogue all seem lifted from the films it sends up instead of parodied. The first half of The Guest promises a film that will surprise you, the second half slips back into a deadpan reheat. It's a shame, because everyone involved would be more than capable of pulling off something much more adventurous.
***
A creepy treat which falls just short of delivering something more than a send-up.
Munich (2005)
An Eye for an Eye Leaves the Whole Film Bland
Munich (2005)
In the wake of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, a team of Mossad agents are tasked with hunting down those responsible.
After a gripping re-enactment of the Black September Palestinians storming the Olympic village, intercut seamlessly with archive footage, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen) puts together a team to seek revenge. A potential maelstrom of dodgy accents (Australians Eric Bana and Geoffrey Rush playing Israelis, English Daniel Craig playing a South African) is mercifully avoided and the team start working down their list of eleven Palestinians who are in hiding throughout Europe.
Here are the stronger moments of Munich; the early assassinations are tightly paced set-pieces where Avner's (Eric Bana) hesitance to murder people is apparent. Eric Bana is excellent as the tortured Avner, and makes the most of an out of step script by Tony Kushner and Eric Roth, struggling to maintain the constant globe-trotting and hazy time scale, with a quiet, affecting central performance. What Bana can't pull off is the sense of a close knit team that several of the film's key dramatic moments depend on. At almost three hours long, the team's dynamic still feels underdeveloped and two members, Hans (Hanns Zischler) and Robert (Mathieu Kassovitz) are reduced to heist movie archetypes; the numbers and explosives guy.
Then there's the weird stuff: a mysterious French intelligence group led by Bond villain father and son Michael Lonsdale and Mathieu Amalric. Forgetting that the group was never supposed to exist, so sits strangely in a film that takes authenticity seriously, you get the sense the film could have benefited from losing this plot strand altogether, in favour of developing the team. There's also the team's reactionary murder of a female assassin, who is shot naked on her houseboat. It's played to portray Hans perverse titillation as he re-opens her robe on her bloody body, but feels jarring and false, as we haven't seen enough of Hans to believe he's become that damaged. The inexplicable use of high contrast in many shots, works against the excellent set design and costuming by making the '70s agents look like they're recording a grunge music video. It also sometimes bleaches out the sky giving scenes shot on location a fuzzy, green screened look.
Spielberg's message appears to be 'an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind', which is a noble, if light thematic fare for a film of it's length. In it's final moments, Anver predicts that the violence will only get worse and points out that everyone they have killed has been replaced by someone worse. Spielberg pans back to a lingering shot of the distant World Trade Center; a forced gut-punch in the wake of a story which fails to engage an audience with it's human drama.
**
A well intended misfire that could have done with a shorter run time and by focussing as tightly on it's main characters as it does on it's set-pieces.
Duel (1971)
Objects in Mirror Are Madder Than They Appear
Duel (1971)
A traveling salesman is hounded by a mysterious maniac driving a truck.
Duel opens with a series of bumper level driving shots, accompanied by the tidal ebb and roar of the road. With no human diversion other than the radio, this is an eerie mix, transforming the banality of traffic on the highway into an intimidating, almost alien domain. "Talk about pollution" says our hero, David Mann (Dennis Weaver) when he first encounters the monstrous truck; gushing out smoke, strung with multiple license plates which, according to Spielberg, are trophies looted from previous victims. The driver of the truck is never fully seen (he was 'played' by legendary stunt car driver Carey Loftin), so the on-screen menace is left to the vehicle itself. And it looks mean as hell; more rust than metal, like a junkyard escapee or a steampunk Goliath. It makes a strong case for the scariest villains being the faceless, the unknown, those who won't respond to reason. In a later moment, as the truck curves round a country road, it's grey bulk seems to have all the mercilessness of a closing shark.
"I gave you the road, why don't you take it?" asks Mann, before being driven into a fence by the truck. Weaver does a great job conveying Mann's initial incredulity turning to panic and subsequently his decisions to overtake or double back largely without the use of speech. These are the strongest moments of the film; where decisions on Mann's part (just like his adversary) are not prompted by speech or narration, which softens the isolation of Mann's situation. The other thing the film could have benefited from is the development of an early scene with Mann phoning his wife. His wife complains that he didn't intervene the previous night when someone was 'practically trying to rape' her. Although this scene was filmed as an extension of the original TV cut, it still would have been interesting to explore the of lack of communication with his wife, against his inability to communicate with the truck.
But motive and back story are things Duel avoids in favour of tightness. Spielberg mostly sticks to the road, raising paranoia by frequently keeping Mann's mirrors in shot to have a frame within a frame effect, ensuring the audience always keeps one eye out for the return of the truck.
The truck is a villain that psychologically goads it's victim with sheer size. In one sequence (also filmed after the original cut) Mann tries to help a broken down school bus. He fails, and spots the truck reappearing. But instead of running him down the truck driver helps the school bus on its way, in order to continue it's tormenting of it's victim. It's a superb sequence which frighteningly portrays the level of power the truck has over Mann.
****
A terrific ninety minute car chase that benefits from never changing gears.
Firelight (1964)
Lost Encounter with the Third Kind
Firelight (1964)
Firelight is seventeen year old Steven Spielberg's first feature feature film, the bulk of which is now lost.
Nevertheless, what images survive might seem very familiar. Whilst it's impossible to follow a plot, it's clear that a small town's residents are being terrorised by lights in the sky. Unlike the commanding and beautiful light show of Close Encounters, these early Spielberg visitors look more like bokeh Chinese lanterns. What stands out with even more recognition than glowing flying saucers is the Spielberg brand of horror which occurs throughout many of his major films; horror infused with entertainment and wonder. We feel frightened for Brody and Hooper, for Alan Grant and Ian Malcolm, but we still want to see more of those velociraptors and great white sharks. The scared looks of a young couple driving toward a luminescent UFO are a prototype for this hallmark balance of fear and fun.
Spielberg gave two reels of Firelight to an LA production company, which soon after went bust, and the reels disappeared. In all likelihood, we will never see whether Spielberg succeeded or not in sustaining a first feature length film. Perhaps it's just as well. What we are left with are enigmatic visual cues, fragments of dialogue, and the beginnings of a style that would entertain cinema-goers for decades.
***
Well worth watching for Spielberg completists or budding film historians but can only be judged as the corner piece of a lost ark.