When I say this cat Rian Johnson is
probably the best director and auteur of his generation, y’all best listen up.
Not only are his screenplays taut, imaginative, colourful, and home to
marvellous characters, they are also the ballsiest in the business. Gumshoe
film-noir set in high school? No problem. Meta-con-men movie about con-men
movies? Check me out, haters. Rian Johnson has a Santa Claus-sized bag full of
fuck yous and Rian Johnson chucks them at the studios whenever Rian Johnson
feels like it.
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| Kinda looks like he does too, eh? |
As most geniuses, he will be forever
underfunded and his work unappreciated until late in or after his life. Unlike
the Michael Bays and Stephen Sommers’ of the film world, who seem to think that
if you put enough loud noises and fast-moving things in a movie the audience
will be transfixed and happy, Rian holds firm the idea that people are smart
and narrative complexity is not beyond the layman.
It took a while for that point to be
driven home. It was a few years after he started making his fantastic (but
highly unprofitable) films that a flick called Inception started opening doors. It’s a high-concept piece that is
as challenging as it is thrilling, not to mention it’s 150 minutes long,
doesn’t offer spoon-fed answers, and grossed $820 million dollars. It is a
landmark film and iron-clad proof that high-concept and high revenue are not
mutually exclusive. Because up until then, let’s face it, how many
high-grossing, non-franchise sci-fi films can you think of? I had to check
Wikipedia to see if 2001 turned a
profit at the box office (it did).
Probably in no small part thanks to Inception’s success, Endgame
Entertainment (backed by Sony) gave Rian $30 mil to do Looper, a picture that serves the dual purpose of:- Giving 60-year-old Bruce Willis all the reason he needs to own everything in the known universe; and
- Being the best sci-fi flick this side of the 21st century.
I haven’t even seen it, yet I’m
comfortable saying this based on early critiques and the fact that Rian
Johnson’s genius can only be measured on the same scale as things like the
cosmos and Liam Neeson’s cock.
In preparation for my Looper viewing this week, I am loading
up on Rian Johnson back-catalogue and key Bruce Willis pictures, since Bruce
Willis is a force of nature in his own right. I saw a JGL interview recently
where the young actor asks how many stars with Bruce’s action credentials have
also been in as many historically important and critically acclaimed films.
It’s an important point.
The first instalment in Bruce Willis’
time travel sci-fi canon. Civilisation has been forced underground by the
proliferation of a deadly virus that has also wiped out most of humanity. Bruce
Willis is sent back through time to investigate a late 20th century
terrorist organisation suspected to have been involved in its dispersal.
This is an important movie because it
solidified Brad Pitt and Bruce Willis as eminently competent actors to a mass
audience, it is Terry Gilliam’s most commercially successful picture, and it is
one of those rare films that can either be involving sci-fi divertissement or a
conceptually profound affair. The same person can watch this movie with their
brain switched on or off and enjoy it on completely separate, yet overlapping,
sets of merits. All in a day’s work…
Unbreakable
(dir.
M. Night Shyamalan, 2000)
Anyone who derides M. Night Shyamalan as
a filmmaker needs to watch Unbreakable and
go fuck themselves, in that order. As retarded as some of his films are, Unbreakable is unshakable testimony that
he absolutely knows what he’s doing as a writer/director. Whereas The Sixth Sense just sorta didn’t work
as horror or suspense, Unbreakable is
an intentional subversion of the superhero genre and, in this light, a modern
masterpiece.
Night’s direction is assured, his
narrative captivating, and Bruce Willis delivers a superb performance, not in
the Daniel Day Lewis hot-shit method kind of way but in that you struggle to
think of any actor (living or dead) who could have done that role better. Sammy
J shows up as the portentous comic book collector Elijah Prince, who strives to
convince a dubious Bruce that his superpowers are for real. Robin Wright Penn
gives yet another solid performance to which no one paid attention. And hey,
did anyone else notice that the moment she married Sean she stopped getting
good roles and immediately following their divorce she was in three of the most
critically acclaimed films of that year? Just sayin. Don’t let the man bring
you down, sister.
In a way, Night was a victim of his own
success. The Sixth Sense was too huge
a cultural phenomenon for anyone to take Unbreakable
at face value. It’s a true shame, since it is both Night’s best film (by FAR)
and probably the second best superhero movie ever made (after The Dark Knight).
Film-noir set in a small-town, Northern
California high school, this movie will just blow your mind. JGL plays a
would-be Sam Spade character investigating the disappearance of his troubled
ex-girlfriend Emily (played by the heavenly Emilie de Ravin). His ensuing
travails evoke the nastiness of navigating high school social strata, if all
your classmates were involved in drug dealing, intimidation, and murder.
Rian Johnson’s vision here is, in the
truest sense of the word, singular. A movie like this could not have been made
by anyone else, nor will it ever. You could make a sound argument for this
movie launching JGL’s career (as an adult) and it established Rian as the next
“holy shit, who is this guy?!” Its film-noir aesthetic is expertly delivered,
its characterisations vivid, the script gripping and above all just really damn
smart.
Brick is a
refreshing, energetic, bold piece of filmmaking, made even more impressive by
the fact that it was produced for under a half-million dollars. A tremendous
accomplishment on every level.
Luc Besson may have one of the oddest
careers of any filmmaker I can think of, and Fifth Element is probably one of the oddest films in it. This is
apocalyptic sci-fi turned up to 11 all the way through, featuring a
bleach-blonde Bruce Willis, a young, HOT Milla Jovovich, Gary Oldman chewing
scenery as only Gary Oldman can, the most impressive production design of
perhaps any movie since Ben-Hur, and
Chris Tucker committing 100% to the most ludicrous, batshit insane performance
in the history of film.
The plot is there is no plot. Bruce
Willis must save the Earth from destruction by huge ominous black planetoid orb
thingy. The whole thing is just a pretence for creating an overblown,
balls-to-the-walls, visually staggering sci-fi epic that also happens to be
truckloads of fun. Hating The Fifth
Element is tantamount to hating fun. This movie goes out of its way to
please everybody. Huge goofy bad guys that look like Yoda on steroids. Chris
Tucker’s absurd hairdos and outfits. Chris Tucker’s absurd everything. Plenty
of explosions. Gary Oldman’s character is called “Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg.”
Mathieu Kassovitz in a hysterical cameo. The President of the Universe being
played by Tiny Lister (because, honestly, who else could the President of the
Universe be?).
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| Except maybe this guy |
Fifth Element also contains
some of the greatest non-Die Hard
moments of Bruce Willis pwnage ever committed to film. He doesn’t even rack up
that high a body count, it’s mainly that he dispatches baddies with such delectable
nonchalance. Whereas John McClane was a hyper-competent cop who, albeit
reluctantly, made monumental efforts to save people while still cracking wise and being a general hardass,
Bruce portrays Corben Dallas as someone who could give less than two shits. His
delivery of every line is soaked in overtones of “I don’t want to be here.
Please stop talking to me. I just want to go home to my shitty apartment and
hang out with my retarded cat.” He is the antithesis of everyone else in this
film, who is so goddamn excited about everything, and, as such, fucking rules
house.
The Fifth Element is this gigantic, bombastic filmic entity that, miraculously for a film that clearly demanded a shit-ton of work and money, knows how not to take itself seriously at all. It is an ode to sci-fi fantasy, crafted by a geek who spent his childhood daydreaming for other geeks who spent their childhoods daydreaming. You just get swept up by it.
Step 1: Get drunk with 2-3 close
friends.
Step 2: Put the Planet Terror DVD in the DVD tray.
Step 3: Press the “Play” button.
Step 4: Magic.
Next
week: Looper
Looper is in theatres
now. Go see it like your friend Ben.
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