Author: BRWC

Stanley Kubrick has dismissed Fear And Desire, his 1953 feature debut, as  a “lousy picture, roughly and poorly and ineffectively made”. Its hard to argue with the late great auteurs’ own assessment, at times the film feels amateurish in its execution particularly in the technical aspects of filmmaking, poorly dubbed dialogue and rough sound editing often detract from the narrative. However there are moments within the film which stand out as pure Kubrick both in their execution and the way they deal with certain themes that the director would later explore in his later, more well known, work.

Fear And Desire is an existential war story which, as a narrator informs us at the outset is ‘outside history, only the unchanging shapes of fear and doubt and death are from our world’. As such there is no clear setting or cultural context for the film to operate in, leaving us with only the characters to navigate some unknown world. The narrative follows four soldiers trapped behind enemy lines as they struggle to survive. The characters themselves are archetypes, the standard soldiers we have seen in countless war films since — the by the book leader, the gruff second in command, the nervous young recruit. The fact that these men can often seem robotic or inhuman could be considered a major flaw in the film, not allowing the audience to connect to the protagonists. Alternatively this could be the exact point that Kubrick and his screenwriter Howard Sackler are trying to make. The dehumanising effect of war would later go on to become a key theme in Kubrick’s seminal Full Metal Jacket (1987) and it’s not hard to see the themes, and techniques the director uses to convey them, begin to take shape here. In a standout sequence the soldiers brutally slaughter a group of enemy combatants and proceed to calmly finish their dinner, the scene is expertly cut with extreme close ups of faces and hands, more than a little reminiscent of the shower scene of Hitchcock’s Psycho.

Parallels can also be drawn between the characters of Pvt. Sidney (Paul Mazursky) and Pvt. ‘Pyle’ (Vincent D’Onofrio) in Full Metal Jacket, as the two men similarly descend into madness. However it is the former that remains the more chilling and effective as a combination of over acting from Mazursky and a somewhat rushed transition from innocence to outright lunacy takes place within the Fear And Desire‘s admittedly short running time (at just over an hour, it barely qualifies as a ‘feature’)

Unfortunately the filmmaking of Kubrick’s debut struggles to effectively put across a clear message. Whether this is due to Sackler’s at times overly simple, at times overly philosophical, script or the wooden performances is hard to tell but as Kubrick himself suggested “the ideas which we wanted to put across were good. But we didn’t have the experience to embody them dramatically”.

For die hard Kubrick fans and cinephiles, Fear And Desire will no doubt provide new material to study and analyse, for general audiences however it is a perplexing and often sterile exercise, a rough sketch from a director who would go on to become one of cinema’s greatest artists.

Fear and Desire is out on Blu Ray and DVD on 28th January

Once upon a time there was a girl. She had made it through 22 years and thought she had things pretty sorted: a job, friends, the ability to play Wonderwall on guitar. She’d travelled a little, seen the sun rise over foreign beaches and set over misty mountains. She’d loved, lost, and eventually found something that felt like inner peace.

But, without even realising it, there was a void. No matter how full her life had seemed, it wasn’t – it couldn’t be – complete. Because until today, that girl had never seen Liam Neeson duct tape broken bottles to his fist as he prepared to beat the shit out of a wolf.

Oh man. First off, I admit that this film is not perfect. The wolves are clunky and unrealistic, verging into pantomime territory; the laws of physics are almost certainly broken; it does skim the edges of ridiculousness. Despite all that, The Grey still manages to be thoughtful, sombre and oh so badass.

The melancholy tone begins with the opening scene, in which John Ottway (Liam Neeson) narrates his suicide letter to his wife: “You left me, and I can’t get you back… I move like I imagine the damned do, cursed.” Patrolling the edges of an Alaskan oil well, Ottway stalks through the snow, a lone wolf tasked with hunting down the actual wolves which prowl the freezing tundra. That is, until his plane back to Anchorage crashes in a blizzard, leaving Ottway as de facto leader of a group of survivors. Battling to stay alive in the sub-zero conditions, the group of oil workers soon realise that they are being tracked by a real life wolf pack. The film traces their progress through the harsh Alaskan wilderness, as one by one they fall victim to that very worst predator: death, in all his guises.

There are rumours that this film is not just about Liam Neeson facing down wolves. Some people claim that it is all an existentialist metaphor about the brutality of life, our desire to cling to it and eventually the acceptance of inevitable death. Or something. Personally, I think that’s fairly irrelevant to your enjoyment of this film; more relevant is how much you enjoy Liam Neeson films in general and whether you know any facts about the behaviour of wolves (if so, you might start throwing things at the screen in disgust).

There is more to this film than just Neeson’s grizzled good looks, rough Irish accent, and a bunch of wolves though (yes, he’s older than my dad. Still would). I appreciated the relationship between the bleak yet somehow triumphant mood of the film and the beautifully muted colour palette and Alaskan scenery. It was also refreshing to see an American-made film that refused to abide by Hollywood tropes. One of my favourite scenes involves Ottway, in pure desperation and despair, screaming at the grey, unforgiving sky, asking god to finally show himself. My fingers were crossed hoping that writer and director Joe Carnahan wouldn’t give in to the desire for a happy ending and pull an unexpected helicopter out of the clouds. Thankfully, no deus ex machina was forthcoming; instead Ottway pauses for breath before grunting “fuck it, I’ll do it myself.”

The Grey is silly, although I have a feeling it was trying very hard to be serious. However, in no way does this detract from the pleasure of watching it; if anything, I enjoyed the ridiculousness, in the same way I enjoyed Neeson punching a man in the  throat in Taken. I didn’t believe it would ever really happen, but it was still awesome to watch.

Like every clear-thinking, warm-blooded creature on the planet, I’m a fan of Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. They both succeed in being consistently beautiful, charming, smart and sassy, inciting a tumultuous mix of envy, desire and wanting them to be your BFF.

With this in mind, I was very excited last November, when I saw the trailer for Gangster Squad. “Ooh!” I said, turning to my friend, “that looks awesome!” Ryan and Emma playing sexy 1940’s film noir characters? A battle for the soul of Los Angeles? Sean Penn as a mob boss? Yes please.

Skip forward three months, and it’s been a struggle to write this review. I saw Gangster Squad last Wednesday, but I’ve only just got around to pulling out my laptop and putting fingers to keyboard. It’s not that I don’t have an opinion about the film; it’s that my opinion ranges between “meh” and “well… that was a bit disappointing.”

Admittedly, it looks great: a 21^st Century take on the gritty yet slick, high contrast film noir style. Gosling and Stone look stunning, whilst Josh Brolin (as “good cop in a bad world” Sgt. O’Mara) appears like an old school superhero, his rugged features smoothed over into a shiny comic book cover. The shoot-outs are equally pretty, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen many times before, with a final slow-mo firefight in a lobby heavily reminiscent of the Matrix.

The problem with this film isn’t that it’s badly made, it’s that it’s dull. The plot is gangster-movie-by-numbers: pulling together a group of vaguely maverick cops to try to take out an evil mob boss, who meet with some success and some failure and in the end everyone goes home with a slice of cake. The characters are straightforward and simplistic, with the actors never being forced to move out of first gear. Considering director Ruben Fleischer was behind 2009’s Zombieland, which took a tried and tested film formula and put a cheeky, self-aware twist on it, it’s a shame he didn’t pull a similar trick with Gangster Squad. Instead we have something which is all style, minimal substance; watchable but not exciting.

A middle-aged man injecting himself with deadly snake venom for the quest of immortality may sound like something out of a cheap sci-fi movie, but in fact this absurdity is the focus for Vice’s most recent documentary, Venom Superman.

The story follows 46-year-old Steve Ludwin, a self-confessed venom consumer who claims his reptilian habits give him preserving powers and an extended youth. Although this takes the backbench as one of Vice’s less paramount and politically intent films, it does make for an interesting watch whilst also highlighting some remarkable specifics about the effects of his risky fixation.

Initial impressions of Ludwin are somewhat shocking and it can be hard to believe that he is anything short of a lunatic, with footage alternating between his crude, congealed blood spelling of ‘red rum’ and an overplay of Ludwin stating, “I don’t have a medical background, I have no fucking idea what it’s doing to my body.” Not the most convincing of openings. However, as the narrative unfolded, surveying his youthful aura and learning of his impeccable immune system, I was left wondering if this disarming man is not as psychotic as originally thought.

Like other Vice films such as Swansea Love Story and Interview with a Cannibal, the reporter remains anonymous and silent throughout, casino allowing the viewer to be immersed in Ludwin’s story and it’s a perplexing one at that. As we follow the typical routine, it’s difficult not to feel a little admiration towards the boldness of Ludwin’s meticulous and varied injection technique as he prepares numerous diluted and clinically life-threatening forms of venom. Due to his charismatic nature and cheery energy it’s sometimes easy to forget the stupidity proved in many of his actions, even his two brushes with death.

However, while the viewer continues to follow Ludwin’s weekly routine, the word placebo comes to mind as scenes cut to him claiming his vigorous energy and serpent-like skateboarding latter to taking the “drug.” It almost seems like something out of Spiderman, as the camera shows him weaving in and out of traffic on his skateboard, stating, “when I’m skating I’ve actually learned how to start moving like a snake.” But while some of his stories depict those of a man too far into a loose and threatening obsession, what begins to disclose are some interesting and valid scientific details, especially the layer behind Ludwin’s motivation, Bill Haast. We discover the director of the Miami Serpentarium Laboratories, living to over 100 years old and never being sick in his life, claimed all his attributes in debt to the consumption of snake venom. Ludwin ends his account with knowledge of recent test results showing copperhead venom to inhibit the growth of cancerous cells, a miraculous and rather significant finding.

Taken out of context, I would not give any other consideration aside from Ludwin being a man indulging in a misogynistic, god-like fantasy that will result in his demise. However, Vice’s intelligently backed-up narrative and affectingly intriguing subject matter have pulled me in; after watching and being presented with an almost made-up drug that could theoretically become a defining cure for cancer, I was left wondering whether perhaps Ludwin and Haast alike are not completely out of touch after all. While you might not find me smuggling “pet” snakes across the Chinese boarder, with some extended research I would not be so adverse to the concept of consumable youth. Ssssssssign me up, Ludwin.