by Oscar O’Sullivan

Before we get into the usual reviews, a little personal news – my masters documentary project My Shadow Calleth Me – The Making of Thus Spake Zarathustra will be playing on the big screen thanks to The People’s Picturehouse Cork, the monthly film showcase that highlights independent film and art from local creators. I’ve been a fan of the showcase for as long as it’s been running and am so thankful to them for this experience. To criticise is easy (and fun too), so it’s only fair that I should be forced to take feedback on a creation of my own. Mine is one of 11 films that’ll be showing at 7pm in The Pavilion bar, so get your tickets here if you’re in Cork and are up for an evening of unique entertainment, or if you’d like to lambast me in person for a review you disagree with.

Monday – From Russia With Love

The second 007 film takes the tone and structure that worked for the first and blows everything up to larger and more ambitious proportions – more locations, a more complex plot and a hell of a lot more bombastic, explosive action. Adapting the fifth Bond book is an interesting choice, as the political complexities and large cast of important characters is a far more daunting prospect than the relative simplicity of Dr. No and may not have come across on the screen. Thankfully the gamble paid off with a film that, while more uneven than it’s predecessor, is a near perfect espionage thriller when it wants to be. Just like in the original novel, we are introduced at length to the villains and the love interest before we meet Bond himself, giving the audience an insight into the mystery that Bond himself lacks. It’s a classic storytelling trope – see Alfred Hitchcock’s famous “tell the audience there is a bomb” monologue – and elevates two characters that could otherwise have been one-dimensional, Grant and Tatiana. Tatiana is leagues ahead of the previous Bond girl by virtue of simply having an impact on the plot. Her chemistry with Connery is so palpable that even we might be briefly fooled that her love is anything more than an act, though of course she can’t help but fall for him in spite of her mission. Looming villain Grant doesn’t speak until the final act but is a constant presence from the get-go. The very first scene before the titles roll has him ruthlessly dispatching a man in a latex Sean Connery mask as a training exercise. As Bond snoops around and gets into scrapes in Istanbul (or was it Constantinople?) Grant repeatedly crops up just out of his sight, intervening to make sure Bond gets his hands on the decoder machine so that he can swoop in and snatch it from him at the finish line. The final act treats us to a half-dozen action scenes piled up like an all-you-can-eat buffet – a train-compartment brawl, a stealth sequence to steal a getaway car, driving along only to be attacked by a helicopter chucking down grenades, leading Bond to disembark and bust out his trusty portable sniper rifle for a ground-to-air duel, escaping via speedboat and blowing up fuel tanks to fry pursuers and finally, when we think it’s all over, a final twist and a Mexican standoff for the fate of our heroes. It’s almost too much, but I’m not complaining. 9/10

Tuesday – The Elephant Man

Listening to ‘Blank Check with Griffin & David’ discuss this film after I watched it, guest Alex Ross Perry made a point that I really agree with. To paraphrase him, the film is so perfect that it becomes almost impossible to discuss – the brilliance is self-evident, so what can we say to explain it? A beautiful, sad and ultimately affirming experience. A story that anyone could have made well, but only David Lynch could have thought to make like this, a vision of Victorian England as a facade built on endlessly pounding machines, where vital moments of introspection and development are depicted in sequences of experimental montage. A story where, despite the pain and the cruelty of the world at large, kindness is a powerful enough force to put right any wrongs. It also avoids being sickeningly sweet, doling out its sentiment in measured and impactful doses, so that something as simple as the camera following behind Anthony Hopkins striding forward to embrace his friend becomes a moving summit of emotional expression. Unique even within Lynch’s own eclectic filmography, a must-see true-story masterpiece. 10/10.

Wednesday – Sing Sing

I’ve already written a review of Sing Sing but not for this page – it’ll be appearing somewhere else at some point in the next week. Watch this space.

Thursday – Blue Velvet

Back at it again with the David Lynch films, this time catching up on one I’ve seen already a couple of years ago. I didn’t know exactly what to make of it at the time so I was hoping the context of having seen more from him would put it all into focus, which it did, but not in the way I may have expected. It’s experimental in ways that don’t always work to the fullest, trying out a lot of ideas that Lynch would perfect a few years later in Twin Peaks. The best way I could describe the films is as a teen adventure movie about two young adults getting wrapped up in a small-town mystery, only to discover that the physical manifestation of evil is living next-door. Protagonist Jeffrey returns to his hometown from college, clearly believing himself to already be a man – confident, charming and unafraid of imagined danger. What becomes clear, as the mystery spirals out of control, is that he still has a lot of growing up to do. This loss of innocence is explored through his unwilling connection with Dorothy, a lounge singer in the midst of a suicidal breakdown after gang boss Frank Booth kidnaps her family to blackmail her into a sado-masochistic relationship. She in turn forces Jeffrey to engage in violent sexual fantasies, dragging him deeper into the ‘adult’ world than he had ever imagined and driving him into a state of despair. He’s kept grounded by his neighbour Sandy, the archetypical ‘good girl’ who is adventurous enough to go along with Jeffrey’s detective fantasies but pure enough to avoid being dragged down into the muck with him, ready and waiting to pull him back out to the bright, shiny suburbia they know so well. Her description of a dream she had is the emotional core of the film, delivered with wonderful feeling by Laura Dern, a promise that the ending won’t be all doom and gloom to keep your hopes up during the truly degrading content in the film’s middle. Speaking of the theme of ‘loss of innocence’, could it be a coincidence that the film’s depraved adult villain is played by a former teen star? While Dennis Hopper is certainly more famous for his later career, one can’t help but wonder if this was intentional or not, especially during a scene where he threatens Jeffrey with the idea that they’re the same person deep down. Hopper’s performance is insane, so insane that it’s full impact can only be felt the first time you watch it – each character quirk and line delivery is like a kick in the face, less likely to land when you know they’re coming. You may notice that I’ve written more about this film despite thinking it’s weaker than The Elephant Man – that’s because, while I may not entirely “get” this as an in-the-moment viewing experience, there’s so much to be mined from it thematically and emotionally after the fact. A film that grows and enriches itself in the memory, it’s almost a shame to have to actually watch it again, so maybe I’ll give the extended cut a try next time to see if that shakes anything loose. 8/10.

Friday – Beetlejuice

I should assume we all know what Imposter Syndrome is, considering how common it is for people to self-describe as suffering from it over trivial things. Nevertheless, I elaborate – think of it as the sinking feeling that you’re not actually as good or nice or talented as other people, or even you yourself, may think you are. A common sensation, perhaps even too common and vague to warrant an entire complex, but I digress – this is Oscar Talks Movies, Not Oscar Talks Theoretical Psychology. You’ll have to get a few pints in me for that. Why, before you ask, I am bringing this up is as a tortured set-up to review a great film I have little concrete to say about. I realised recently that, despite being a fan of Tim Burton since childhood, I had never seen even a single one of his actual classic films – I was, in short, a fake fan, an imposter. Burton was one of the first directors I was aware of as, well, a director – the idea that a person has made the entertainment that you love is something that eventually dawns on every child, and Burton is a common candidate for this. We all know that his star has dimmed in the last two decades, with many (myself included) writing him off or growing out of his oeuvre – I dipped out in 2016 when I half-witnessed Mrs Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children on the television. In the run-up to his supposed comeback with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice I was mortified to discover that I had only seen a selection of his worst, most commercial modern dreck. Would I have been so quick to write him off and cast him aside if I had grown up with Edward Scissorhands, Batman, Big Fish or any of the half-dozen classics I still haven’t caught up on? In typical therapeutic fashion, I blame my parents for this glaring oversight. So in the spirit (ha) of second chances, I’ve been intermittently making my way through his filmography to see what I’ve been missing out on. Beetlejuice was particularly revelatory from a visual standpoint – the eclectic inventiveness and signature world design that captured my imagination as a child, in a film that’s actually good. Groundbreaking! Packs an incredible amount of punch into 90 minutes, so well-rounded that Michael Keaton’s breakaway performance doesn’t upend the entire film with it’s loud and proud audacity, quietly heartwarming in the way even Burton’s lesser films manage to squeeze out. I’m glad I’ve circled back and given it a go – soon I’ll be able to hold my head up with pride when I proclaim “yeah Tim Burton’s pretty good. Did you hear that Israel has been putting bombs in consumer electronics by the way?” 8/10.

Sunday – The Substance

Truly insane that this is playing wide in cinemas – MUBI has been putting their money where their mouth is when it comes to theatrical distribution, so hopefully they stick to their guns instead of getting cold feet like all other streamers eventually do. The Substance is a glitzy, filthy, brazenly artificial piece of raunchy pop horror and I loved every second of it. So much of what happens on screen defies belief, explanation and good taste, revelling in it’s own monstrous insanity while produced with such flashy bubblegum colours that you’d imagine cutting into any object on screen would reveal that it’s all made of fondant and rainbow spongecake. This contrast of beauty and terror is what the film thrives on, sexualising women on screen to such ludicrous extremes that it can only invoke laughter while also using odd angles and lenses to distort the body in strange ways, extreme close-ups forcing you to confront every slight imperfection. The argument could be made that it defeats its own point about the commodification of women’s bodies by participating in that same sphere, but intent goes a long way. One must accept that the film is using these images to say something and of course it pays to remember that Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley both performed in the film of their own free will. Some have accused the film of misogyny, portraying Elisabeth/Sue as vain, stupid and deserving of every bad thing that happens. While the film certainly isn’t overtly sympathetic to her – it’s a black comedy first and foremost, so schmaltzy sentiment is off the table – I read it not as condemning her but condemning the system that has driven her to behave this way and enabled her to literally destroy herself in the pursuit of an idealised, unsustainable image. It’s an exaggeration of the reality of aging in Hollywood, Moore’s character abruptly tossed to the curb the day she turns 50 to be replaced with something as young and beautiful as she once was – literally, in this case. Meanwhile a man can be as unappealing, elderly and disgusting as he wants and still be the king of the world, as seen with the studio boss played by Dennis Quaid, a loud-mouthed sexist cavorting across the screen in metal heels ogling and oogling every woman in sight with all the unbridled glee of a little boy on Christmas morning. Perhaps I just have Lynch on the brain recently, but the film’s central premise also read to me as a sort of reverse Mulholland Drive – while that film sees a woman fall so enviously in love with another that she ultimately attempts to become one with her, The Substance has a woman hate herself so deeply that she splits into two beings but cannot escape from the fact that, whether young or old, she’s still the same person. The homage is surley intentional, as the ending is pure Lynch stylistically and there are plenty of more overt references to Kubrick, Cronenberg and more throughout, all part of the film’s ironic pop-art aesthetic – familiar images commodified and repackaged to distract from how truly awful the system that sells them is. Not really my place to tell anyone they’re wrong for hating this, all I can do is give my two cents and hope it finds it’s audience. 10/10.