This is a quiet, solemn little film about change, nostalgia and odyssey. Our focaliser is Kit (Henry Golding), a British-Vietnamese man who returns to his birth country some 30 years after fleeing it. He and his family escaped Saigon in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, settling for England because of his mother’s fondness for the Queen.
We know little of what happened since, only that his parents have passed. Their ashes accompany Kit as he touches down in Vietnam, where he hopes to find a place of meaning to scatter them.
The opening establishes Monsoon as a film of mood and ambience, framing Kit’s voyage with wide, static camerawork that captures the scale and exciting isolation of travel. ‘Exciting isolation’ may sound oxymoronic, but it describes the feeling of solitude a solo traveller can have when they’re immersed in an environment very different to their own, which is especially true of Southeast Asia’s buzzing, balmy cities. Moonsoon understands this, immersing you with beeping horns, rumbling engines and foreign voices as Kit navigates the streets and alleys of Saigon.
Kit cuts a rather aloof figure, coolly detached from the people and places around him. That is until he meets Lewis (Parker Sawyers), a thirty-something African American man living in Saigon as a fashion entrepreneur. A bigger personality, Lewis brings out a smile in Kit, revealing him to be insouciant rather than hostile. Their connection appears to be just a tryst, yet a chance second encounter becomes more meaningful as they share their respective connections to Vietnam.
Lewis is drawn to Saigon ostensibly because of the city’s growth and opportunity, but his relocation is spiritually underpinned by the country’s dark past. Lewis explains how his father served in the war, suffering scars both physical and psychological by the time he was discharged. Years later, he would commit suicide. Lewis’s presence in Vietnam, therefore, is an odyssey almost as personal as Kit’s.
This shared, quiet mourning is part of the young men’s understated chemistry, one that’s both physical and intimate, sometimes bittersweetly. They find some comfort in the city – Lewis feels accepted by the locals, Kit finds traces of his childhood – but their experiences are still wistful.
The memories of their relatives will stay in a troubled past, supplanted by the skyscrapers and free market optimism of modern Vietnam. Indeed, Lewis and Kit’s experiences can be seen as a microcosm of the Vietnam story, representing the past, present and future of that beautiful, exciting country.
Of the five incendiary years since Donald Trump announced his run for president, 2020 may well be the most bilious and divisive of them all. Indeed, it could be the nadir of 21st century American political discourse. Attempts to see the big picture, to understand the fractures among class, creed and race, will often drag one through what historian Niall Ferguson dubs the ‘political hate machine’, better known as social networks and the mainstream media.
Happily, Stars and Strife transcends the noise of your Twitter feed, examining America’s hate and division, what’s caused it and how the nation can move forward. Written and directed by economist David Smick, it is a film that favours even-handed optimism rather than cynical doomsaying; it manages to showcase America’s issues while suggesting that its best years might just be ahead of it.
The documentary opens with rapid-fire imagery and talking heads, including former secretary of state James Baker, businessman Ken Langone, economist Alice Rivkin, and former secretary of defence Leon Panetta, who observes a concerning shift in congress, “It has never been so divided. Everybody felt part of a process. That’s missing now. No one wants to go into no man’s land and get shot in the back.”
However, Smick notes how the creases of bipartisanship are ironed when congress works on bills that benefit large multinationals. This is symptomatic of corporate capitalism – or corporatism – which is briefly explained in an animation that compares how different ideologies – communism, socialism, fascism, corporatism and ‘main street capitalism’ – approach milking two cows. It’s layman stuff, no doubt, but the takeaway is that corporate capitalism is turgid with esoteric bureaucracy, or perhaps even ‘rigged’.
This contention, which has spurred populist movements such as Occupy Wall Street, segues into discussions of the media and communication, especially the algorithms of social media. On Twitter, for example, using emotive words – fight, destroy, attack, violence, murder – will increase the probability of it being retweeted by 20%, creating rabbit holes of knee-jerk hot takes. Media executive Shelby Coffey notes how, “The village crank can now connect with 30,000 around the country or around the world.”
This is division by design. There is no room for nuance, no room for the centre. And this is what Stars and Strife is about – the centre. It is a plea for compromise and collaboration, to find the common ground and effect change as opposed to a constant state of polarization. Few quotes articulate this ambition clearer than a speech from Senator John F. Kennedy in 1958, “Let us not seek the Republican answer, or the Democratic answer, but the right answer.”
Smick cites the First Step Act of 2018 as a rare example of congress finding that right answer, but his films has a mixed outlook on the future. Some echo Warren Buffet’s belief that America’s best days are ahead, while others note the old fallen empires as an ominous precedent. Either way, Stars and Strife is a compelling 97 minutes with a message that’s as cautionary as it is optimistic.
Twenty-nine years ago, in the fall of 1990, a film adaptation of American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis’s new novel, seemed unlikely. For this was a book deemed so violent, so pornographic, that Ellis received 13 death threats before it was even published. Indeed, the prospect of it being published at all was jeopardized when Simon and Schuster dropped it, citing ‘aesthetic differences’. Meanwhile, groups such as the National Organization of Women launched protests and called for boycotts, indulging that old fallacy of depiction equaling endorsement. Happily, amongst all the radioactivity, Vintage Books swooped in and bought the rights, publishing it as a trade paperback in March 1991.
But with more readers came even more vitriol, including some from my own father, who binned his copy in disgust after reading Bateman’s vicious mutilation of a tramp and his dog. I would personally tell Ellis this at a book signing years later, to which he said, with a slight wryness, “oh dear, oh goodness”.
Of course, today American Psycho is widely recognised as a modern classic, with Patrick Bateman an embodiment of capitalist greed. But the passage of time is not the only reason for this. Mary Harron’s 2000 adaptation of the novel, starring Christian Bale in what is still his best role, highlighted the great comedy and satirical absurdity of Ellis’s text, attracting legions of new readers and perspectives to his unfairly maligned novel. But this came at something of a cost, because while the film is unquestionably dark, it is an ameliorated vision that does not reach the depths of Bateman’s id quite like the novel.
How then would American Psycho have looked under another filmmaker’s direction? Well, Mary Harron’s leadership was never a sure thing. David Cronenberg was attached in the early-to-mid 90s, a filmmaker who had adapted an even more difficult book in The Naked Lunch. One would think that the master of body horror – who later turned his hand to visceral dramas like A History of Violence, Eastern Promises and Map to the Stars – would have had a haunting, possibly surrealist take on the novel.
Yet when Cronenberg recruited Ellis to write the script, he made clear that all restaurant and nightclub scenes were to be axed – because such locales are ‘static’ and ‘boring’ – and that he didn’t want to shoot any scenes of violence. Ellis, frustrated by the constraints and simply bored of the material, started to write all sorts of nonsense, including an outrageous musical denouement that saw Patrick Bateman atop the World Trade Centre to the sound of Barry Manilow’s ‘Daybreak’. Perhaps Ellis had been watching Serial Mom at the time? Fortunately, the collaboration was never realised, but this did not end the complexities of American Psycho’s pre-production. Soon after entered veteran filmmaker-cum-agitator Oliver Stone, who Harron described as, “probably the single worst person to do it… I like his stuff, but social satire is not his forte”.
It’s curious to read her say that, because American Psycho is a rather tidy mixture of Wall Street and Natural Born Killers. Indeed, Ellis visited the set of Wall Street in the spring of 1987, smoking cigarettes with Charlie Sheen between takes. He’d watch the final cut in December of that year, concluding that “the seduction of Sheen’s Bud Fox by Michael Douglas’s Gordon Gekko was the most powerful part of the movie.” “In some ways”, Ellis elaborated in his pseudo-memoir White, “I saw American Psycho as the logical outcome of where Bud Fox was heading in 1988 and 1989, even as I also realised that I was writing about a nightmare version of myself.”
Wall Street
Despite this human underpinning, Wall Street placed greater emphasis on the immoralities of high finance as opposed to American Psycho’s personal ridicule of its subjects. Yet, as Ellis observed, they still shared cultural themes. Gekko beguiles the sophomoric Fox into his world of surfaces and chauvinism, a world that Pat Bateman cherishes and hates in equal measure. And as Fox proves his worth and loyalty, Gekko rewards him with not only lucre and prestige, he even transfers Darien, his former lover. For she, like Bateman’s women, is just another commodity.
Yet for some, Stone’s social commentary may have been too earnest, even though it remained a clear indictment of everything Harron’s film would lampoon. However, his 1994 film Natural Born Killers, which follows star-crossed lovers Mickey and Mallory Knox as they shoot their way across the American West, adopted a very different tact, namely one of surrealist, sledgehammer satire.
This aesthetic, combined with his political flair and intention to focus on Bateman’s psychology, is what made Oliver Stone’s American Psycho so interesting. Because while Harron’s adaptation made full use of Ellis’s humour and dialogue – and was gifted with an iconic performance by Bale – it lacked what Harron herself described as the novel’s ‘avant-garde’.
After the burden of directing the weighty Heaven and Earth, Stone wanted to let off some steam with his next project. And let off some steam he did, because Natural Born Killers is a kaleidoscopic maelstrom of bloodshed and postmodern satire. Its aesthetic flitters from Super 8 and video to 35mm and animation, all of which is washed alternately in colour, black and white, and occasionally a green hue that represents the sickness of American culture. Then there’s the outrageous cutaway faux-TV shows: the rancid I Love Mallory sitcom that reveals her severely dysfunctional family to a vapid laugh track; and American Maniacs, an obscenely tabloid crime show presented by Australian slimeball Wayne Gale, who Robert Downey Jr. performs with an electric narcissism.
Natural Born Killers
Stone’s argument that Mickey and Mallory’s genuine love for each other serves as some kind of spiritual redemption is difficult to square with, but the delirium with which he and director of photography Robert Richardson hammer the film’s tagline – a bold new look at a country seduced by fame, obsessed by crime, and consumed by the media – has a visceral, abstract quality that’s missing from Harron’s otherwise solid adaptation.
After all, Patrick Bateman loses all touch with reality in Ellis’s novel. Everything Jean sees in Bateman’s notebook in the film’s closing moments we, the reader, have to endure in minute, first person detail. Bateman’s apartment becomes a veritable abattoir, spattered with the mutilated remains of his victims. You can almost smell the stench as he wanders this horrific tableau; it is a scene of abject debasement that’s not just disturbing but outright upsetting and miserable.
The film that’s closest to this bestial sexual violence is Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salo, and maybe the Italian maverick would have done a good job had he not been murdered in the winter of 1975. We may see more Patrick Bateman in the future, maybe another adaptation, maybe that TV show that never took off. But in the mean time we will have Ellis’s seminal book, Harron’s sardonic adaptation, and a list of filmmakers – Lynch, Ferrara, Stone, Fincher – whose interpretations we’d love to see.
In 1997, action thrillers such as Face/Off, Con Air and Air Force One commanded hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. The camerawork was slick and the spectacle was satisfyingly tangible. They had real stunts, real explosions and real car chases. Because of this, brawny action fare of the 80s and 90s occupy a special place in many nostalgic hearts, driving the popularity of contemporary franchises like John Wick and The Raid.
But not all action thrillers are remembered. Breakdown, released on 2 May 1997 and starring Kurt Russell, has been relegated to hidden-gem status. It doesn’t have the ballistic ballet of Face/Off or the pantomime villainy of Air Force One; rather, it mixes the frenzied energy of Duel with the real world, class-flavoured terror of Deliverance, resulting in a superlative piece of American thriller filmmaking.
The taut plotting wastes no time in establishing Jeff (Kurt Russell) and his wife Amy (Kathleen Quinlan), a professional couple driving from Massachusetts to their new home in San Diego. They reach the desolate stretches of the American Southwest when their new Jeep shudders to a halt, minutes after a volatile exchange with a belligerent hick at a petrol station. Happily, an amiable truck driver agrees to take Amy to a nearby diner while Jeff guards their vehicle, but a nightmare ensues when she vanishes without a trace. Breakdown’s tagline is ‘it could happen to you’, and it largely rings true here in what is a credible depiction of a freak, disorientating situation.
This credibility is achieved in large part by the script, which deftly considers how the characters and viewers will react to situation – the questions they’d ask, the actions they’d take. But props are also due to the believable everyman in Kurt Russell, who had played another besieged, bourgeois husband in 1992’s Unlawful Entry.
Russell had faced a maniacally jealous cop in that film, but the enemy in Breakdown is more sinister than that. The enemy is a cabal whose criminal tentacles seem to have infiltrated every part of the sparse local community, making our protagonist – and us – feel deeply vulnerable. Jeff has no superpowers to prise Amy out of this desperate predicament; if the conspiracy doesn’t kill him, the oppressive American desert will.
All of this sweat, blood and hardship give Breakdown a soul that is missing in the synthetic claptrap of our era. But that is not to say Breakdown is a realist picture; notions of conceivability evaporate as the plot crescendos to a bombastic climax, one that could only exist in a Hollywood movie. Yet that is exactly what this is – a punchy American thriller with good guys, bad guys and a relentless life and death struggle. Besides, everything that precedes the finale – the tension, the mystery, the reversals of fortune – make for such compulsive viewing that we forgive and even welcome the sledgehammer denouement. It is the proverbial white-knuckle ride.
Cineastes may bemoan the rise of streaming services for their evisceration of hard copy media, yet these platforms can breathe new life into forgotten gems. Breakdown, which is available now on Amazon Prime, is a stellar case in point.
With 2017 gone and 2018 in full swing, it is time to look back at some of the best films of the past year. 2017 was a year of huge diversity in terms of the genres of films, and it is not easy to pick the very best movies. After all, everyone has different tastes and preferences. We have still ventured to look back at some of the best films of last year, including one or two that may have gone under the radar and may not have gained the attention of the global population.
Lady Bird is not only one of the best films of 2017, but it is easily one of the best movies of the 21st century. Directed and written by Greta Gerwig, the movie stars Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf and Tracy Letts among others, and explores the developing story of a high-school senior and her turbulent relationship with her mother. A pretty low-budget movie – it cost just $10 million to make – it has gained critical acclaim as well as box office popularity, picking up over $35 million gross. The way Ronan and Metcalf play off each other and the dynamism between the two characters is mesmerising. There is little wonder that Lady Bird received a standing ovation at its international premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, with Ronan nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role and Metcalf for the Best Actress in a Supporting Role at the 71st British Academy Film Awards. This coming-of-age drama may not exactly be ‘consumer material’, but for those with an appreciation for true art, this movie ticks all the boxes.
The Shape of Water is another film released in 2017 which may not have been exactly a worldwide box office success like the Marvel comicbook movies have done for the past 10 or so years, but this rather oddly crafted flick has a variety of layers. Set in Baltimore in 1962, the story is based on a mute custodian at a high-security government laboratory befriending a captured amphibian. Directed by the legendary Guillermo del Toro and starring Sally Hawkins and Michael Shannon, The Shape of Water is focused on two lonely hearts meeting for lunch, listening to records and enjoying the simple beauty of life. This is a tale of romance, but it is also a thriller, with a story that develops with every scene and climaxing towards the end. Selected by the American Film Institute as one of the 10 films of the year 2017, The Shape of Water received no fewer than 12 nominations at the 71st British Academy Film Awards, including Best Film.
Another well-crafted and artsy movie – definitely one of the best of the last year – is The Big Sick. An American romantic-comedy directed by Michael Showalter, the film explores the lives of an interracial couple who have to deal with cultural differences after one of them falls ill. Although based on a common yet simple concept – it is about an interracial couple after all – the movie is profound in its portrayal of minute differences and the couple have to come to terms with it. Loosely based on the lives of the film’s writers Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani, the film has been received well by the critics and has been praised for the way it juggles with comedy and seriousness. The way The Big Sick handles very intricate issues of life is a marvel in itself. Made on a budget of just $5 million, the film has grossed over $50 million to date – an undoubted success at the box.
Marvel and DC have been doing big comic-book blockbusters for a while now, and in 2017 the two major studios arguably produced two of the best movies – Spider-Man: Homecoming and Wonder Woman – of the genre of all time. Instead of rebooting and retelling the old tale of how Peter Parker became Spider-Man, Marvel decided to move the story forward. The events of the film take place after Captain America: Civil War and see Peter Parker itching to get back into action. As usual with the character, Spider-Man makes a lot of jokes and the film is really fun to watch. There was an underlying sense of seriousness in the movie, but at the same time, Spider-Man Homecoming is light-hearted. What Marvel did was focus on the character rather than on his stunts. Wonder Woman is easily the best DC comic-book movie produced in the 21st century. One of the best origin movies of all time, the film looks at how Diana Prince has to come out of the shadows and fight with ‘men’. Gal Gadot gives a flawless performance as Wonder Woman, which is steeped in feminism and has a tinge of humour as well. Although the story is quite linear, it flows nicely and allows the character to grow and warm the audience’s heart.
While Spider-Man and Wonder Woman were massive box-office successes – they were among the top 10 grossing films in the world last year – Molly’s Game was not, but it should still be considered as one of the best in other ways. Directed by Aaron Sorkin and based on on the memoir Molly’s Game: From Hollywood’s Elite to Wall Street’s Billionaire Boys Club, My High-Stakes Adventure in the World of Underground Poker by Molly Bloom, the film is about a strong and independent businesswoman who holds high-stakes poker games and becomes the target of an FBI investigation. With Jessica Chastain playing the lead role and Idris Elba and Kevin Costner also playing important parts, the film is an exploration of the gambling world. One negative of Molly’s Game, though, is that it makes it seem as if gambling and going to casinos is for the rich and the wealthy. It is anything but in the modern world. All you need to place a few bets or have a roll of the dice is a mobile device and stable internet connection. With websites such as Oddcheckers listing online casinos that offer free bonuses, you do not even have to use your own money to have a go at a roulette machine, thanks to how competitive the niche is at present.
Get Out is another movie in 2017 which is highly recommended. Directed by Jordan Peele, it is classed as a horror, but the American film is much more than that. It is a telling story about racial issues in modern USA and has a touch of humour. Get Out stars Chris, an African-American man, going to visit the family of his white girlfriend where all the servants are black. It is a thriller that develops well and has several twists and turn. Get Out is a powerful film, arguably one for the ages. It explores age-old exploitation and treatment of African-Americans and gives a very modern outlook. What is very interesting about the film is that it is very intense and has the right balance between horror and underlying social commentary.
And last, but not the least, Logan. True, this is a superhero movie, but it is also one of the best films of any genre… ever. This is the last time that Hugh Jackman plays the part of Wolverine, a mutant who has been haunted by personal demons through his life. In Logan, Wolverine is tired and weary of the world and takes care of his mentor Professor X. He then learns of his daughter Laura, also a mutant like him, and has to prevent the villains from capturing her. Logan is a powerful movie that explores loss, death, age and family in the modern world. Hugh Jackman could not be any more perfect in his portrayal of Wolverine, but in Logan he simply outdid himself. One can see on his face and in his actions his torment, and the Australian actor’s performance in the film is simply Oscar-material.
