GASLIGHT — CLASSIC FILM PICK

Welcome!

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

 

George Cukor's masterful adaptation of Patrick Hamilton's 1938 stage play is a cinematic feast of noir suspense. Gleefully dark, seamlessly directed, and packed with surprising plot twists, "Gaslight" is truly a masterpiece of Cinema.

Glory!

Ingrid Bergman won a much deserved Best Actress Oscar in 1944 for her nuanced portrayal of famed opera singer Paula Alquist.

Stunning!

Retired Paula returns to London (circa 1880) to live with her new husband Gregory Anton (Charles Boyer) in the house where her late aunt lived before she was murdered ten years earlier. 

Gregory is a skilled technician in the practice of gaslighting. Convincing Paula that she is losing control of her mental faculties is just a smokescreen to cover up Gregory's criminal activities. 

Joseph Cotton's Scotland Yard detective Brian Cameron becomes suspicious of Gregory, whose refusal to let his wife go out in public raises a red flag.

Ingrid Bergman's flawless performance is endlessly watchable.

The late, great Angela Lansbury steals every scene she's in as Nancy, the flirtatious maid that Gregory hires to keep an eye on Paula while he's busy with his skullduggery.

This is much more than a solid period drama from one of Hollywood's most revered directors.

If you haven't yet seen "Gaslight," you are in for a rare treat. You'll certainly be keenly aware of other's attempts at leading you down a path of self-doubt after watching this amazing film.

Repeated viewings are in order.

If you discover that someone is attempting to gaslight you, you'll know what to do; exit the relationship on the spot.

"Gaslight" remains remarkably topical for its relevance in the modern world. This Cinema classic is essential viewing if only for its clear definition of the now-popular term.

Not Rated. 114 mins.

ROBOCOP (REMAKE)

Welcome!

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel. Punk heart still beating.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

 

For the long-forgotten historical record, there have already been three Robocop movies — all co-written by Edward Neumeier, who is also a contributor to the latest reboot of the machine-man franchise.

The first film was an earth-shattering revelation, the others not so much. What earned the first film box office success and critical acclaim, and doomed the others as failures, was Paul Verhoeven’s energetic participation. The Dutch master director's darkly comic and scathing commentary on America’s unwitting surrender toward the fascist ideologies that have consumed the country since the 1980s are as abrupt as they are poetic.

Verhoeven’s visionary 1987 film was so ahead of its time that, despite its dazzling brilliance, he wasn’t brought back to direct any of its sequels. That was an injustice and a grave error.

The current version, of a near future when mechanized law enforcers plague Americans, is already dated. Red-light cameras trigger automatically generated tickets; missile-equipped drones threaten to annihilate house pets and civilians without regard to criminal behavior for citizenship status.

You can’t blame director José Padilha (known for his phenomenal documentary “Bus 174” and the gritty crime drama “Elite Squad”) for trying to break into Hollywood via a “genre” movie. It’s too bad for Padilha (and us) that he chose the insurmountable challenge of equaling Verhoeven's achievement for his attempted vertical career move. Padilha’s “Robocop” exhibits competent direction and little else.

No matter how hard the screenwriters and director strive to bridge the themes of humanity with corporate greed and scientific proof, “Robocop” is a disjointed movie that falls apart at every turn.

The film’s opening act attempts to replicate the inciting incident of Verhoeven’s original, but fails at the crucial moment when our good-cop loses connection with his mortal existence. In the original movie, Peter Weller’s police officer Alex Murphy suffered "Last Temptation of Christ"-like torture at the heavily armed hands of ruthless Detroit gangsters before losing his life in a shocking scene of despicable violence. The audience felt as though it had lost a friend. In the new version, Padilha’s camera comes nowhere near the face of the man who will be turned into a militarized killing machine. As such, the chance for an essential human connection is lost. Paul Verhoeven would never have made such a mistake.

By the time Alex (played marginally by newcomer Joel Kinnaman) is injured in such a way that he can only be reformed as part machine, too much time has passed for the audience to be engaged in the drama.

Satirical subplots, including Samuel L. Jackson as a right-wing FoxNews-styled television host, fall flat — just too blunt. There’s no nuance. Everything is too much on the nose.

As the story unfolds, its formulaic pattern overshadows the best efforts of its actors. Gary Oldman gives his ever-reliable all as the scientist responsible for transforming Alex’s head and torso into the ultimate crime-fighter. Abbie Cornish is fantastic as Alex’s caring wife Clara, and Jackie Earle Haley turns on the juice as a military software engineer responsible for the program that controls Alex’s fast-twitch abilities in the field. Alas, their best efforts are in vain.

This adaptation of the Robocop franchise had the potential to really say something about where America's corrupt militarized-global-corporate-political machine is headed. It didn’t do that. Instead, it squandered the opportunity to pussy out as just another generic Hollywood “entertainment” picture. We don’t have time for that. There’s too much at stake.

Rated PG-13. 108 mins.

OLDBOY — REMAKE

Welcome!

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel. Punk heart still beating.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

 

A Losing Proposition
Spike Lee and Korea Don’t Mix

Korean director/co-screenwriter Chan-wook Park’s haunting 2003 revenge drama “Oldboy” is one of the most unbearably intense films ever made. Based loosely on a Japanese graphic novel, the movie is the second installment in Park’s “Vengeance Trilogy” — see “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” (2002) and “Lady Vengeance” (2005).

However, there are elements that make “Oldboy” a much rougher ride for the audience than Park’s other two violence-fuelled crime thrillers in the trio. “Oldboy” is a more disturbing and rewarding experience due to the nature of the terrible reversals suffered by its forever-tormented protagonist of the film’s title. “Oldboy” refers to a fraternal term of endearment for the alum of a private high school.

The original film’s complex themes revolve around social commentary regarding Asian nationalism, politics, incest, private prisons, as well as taboo cultural mores and motivations. It is a richly multifaceted film that addresses a wide range of deeply personal and political issues in a simultaneously direct and metaphorical manner. Chan-wook Park’s “Oldboy” is an outrageously original cinematic vision that only a fool would attempt to revise without paying acute attention to elevating the source material — if not at least playing the song as written.

Why then would Hollywood choose to remake an extraordinary (and recent) film whose fingerprint is so specific? Stephen Spielberg takes the blame for stepping up to the plate to remake “Oldboy,” initially with plans to cast Will Smith in the leading role that Choi Min-sik made his own as Oh Dae-su in Park’s original. A screenplay adaptation by Mark Protosevich (“I Am Legend”) was passed around Los Angeles. Put Protosevich’s tone-deaf adaptation into the hands of Spike Lee, and what you come up with is a flavorless revenge movie robbed of every ounce of cultural identity, nuance, and emotional power of the original. Lee’s version of “Oldboy” isn’t so much transposed, as it is a gutting of all the best aspects of the original. I’m certain there are qualified screenwriters and directors that could have transposed Park’s film into a Western-culture harmonization and kept its narrative intact — especially the original film’s divine ending.

Chan-wook Park’s formidable protagonist eats a live octopus after escaping 15 years of kidnapped captivity inside a private incarceration facility. No such scene of primal expression exists in Lee’s version.

The octopus scene’s elimination is a representative example of the kind of heavy-handed editorial alterations the filmmakers repeatedly commit in reducing a great film to a mediocre one.

The original scene is more than a little upsetting; it cuts right through to the viewer’s heart and stomach in a way that Spike Lee’s version never approaches. The visceral connections are missing.

There is no redeeming value to Spike Lee’s remake of a Chan-wook Park’s instant classic “Oldboy” — a cinematic experience that is irrefutably unlike any other you have ever had.

The beginning, middle, and ending of Lee’s “Oldboy” are all different from Chan-wook Park’s film. To expose the differences between the two versions would only serve to dignify Spike Lee’s abomination, or give away any more jolts or surprises from the prototype version.

The only usefulness of Lee’s travesty is to alert would-be audiences that they should see, or revisit, Chan-wook Park’s incredible film. But by no means should anyone squander the time they would spend watching Chan-wook Park’s “Oldboy” on Spike Lee’s deflated rendering.

Rated R. 104 mins.