The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

The Man Who Knew Too Much is the only film Hitchcock ever remade.  I wonder if that was a positive or negative thing.  Did he like the premise so much he wanted to update it, twenty years later?  Or was he dissatisfied with the original?

I saw the remake some years ago and wasn't terribly impressed by it.  The dilemma at the core of the film - a husband and wife learn that details of a political assassination that is going to take place and the plotters try to force them to remain silent about it by kidnapping their child - seemed rather contrived to me, for one thing.  Particularly since the villains allow the parents to get away with all manner of other efforts to thwart their scheme, because apparently that's okay, it's just talking to the authorities that is out.

The original suffers from the same problem, but it avoids some of the other missteps made by the remake: it doesn't overstay its welcome (it's 75 minutes instead of the later version's 120), it doesn't cast Doris Day as a dramatic lead (she was a capable comic actress, but she wasn't terribly good the remake of this), and it casts a very young Peter Lorre as the main villain.  It's easier to overlook an unlikely plot in those circumstances.

This version also has the charm of being exceedingly British.  At one point the husband is being held at gunpoint by the villains and yet everyone remembers all their pleases and thank yous and other social niceties.  It's the most polite band of antagonists you'll ever see.

The other thing I liked was that the wife character gets a more active role in this than the remake.  She's still definitely secondary to the husband, but less so.  Interesting that things went backward on that front twenty years later.

This is worth checking out as an early example of Hitchcock's work, and it's in the public domain so it is pretty easy to find very cheaply.  Or you can just watch it on youtube.

Wild Things: Diamonds in the Rough (2005)

Like the second film, this third Wild Things more or less repeats the opening of the first.  I guess I'll give them credit for committing to their little motif.  The callbacks aren't quite as comprehensive this time, but the movie does at least introduce its best feature right out the outset: Dina Meyer, once more single-handedly attempting to turn trash into something watchable.

I'm not saying Meyer succeeds, mind you.  But she does try.

The other thing this film shares in common with the second (other than the by now predictable girl-girl-boy sex scene) is that it collapses under the weight of its own plot twists.  The scheme here is utterly, utterly nonsensical.  It's not only massively more complicated than it needs to be, but it relies on a degree of coincidence and contrivance that dwarfs the first film's machinations by a factor of about 15 times.

As usual, we have two young women with an apparently hostile relationship, but who are 'secretly' lovers.  I put secretly in quotes because there are at least two scenes where they make out in the high school showers: not exactly a recipe for keeping your relationship under the radar.

At stake this time is the rather paltry sum - by Wild Things standards - of $4 million.  That's half the prize in the first film, people!  Show some ambition!  Said money is locked up in a pair of diamonds that were left to one of the young women by her deceased mother, but which she cannot access because her stepfather is contesting the will.

Together with her partners in crime - which include a juvenile offender whose parole officer is played by Meyer - the heiress sets out to frame her step father for rape.  The plan is to convince him that he can buy off his accuser ... which as he lacks funds of his own, he can only do by signing away his rights to the diamonds and letting the heiress sell them.

Or at least, that's what the plan initially appears to be.  It's going to get much, much sillier before things are through.

Dina Meyer's presence raises this a notch above the second film, but can't disguise the fact that this is still nonsensical trash.

Wild Things 2 (2004)

This film begins with a sequence of events that clearly and studiously echo the original film's opening.  We are presumably supposed to find this clever, but I am not convinced.

In any case, the film introduces us to Brittany, the step-daughter of a wealthy businessman.  She's queen of the school, wealthy and beautiful and the star of the beach volleyball team.

Is Brittany's athletic career important to the plot, or just an excuse to show lots of fit young women jumping around in bikini tops?  These are the kind of questions Wild Things 2 poses.  In other words, questions with very obvious answers.

All is not well in Brittany's world, however, as her mother is dead: either a drunken suicide or a drunken accident after ploughing her car into a swamp.  The exact details aren't really known, since no body was ever recovered.  Alligators in those swamps, after all.

Rather less popular at school is Maya, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks (as Brittany herself was before her mother married her step-father).  Maya seems determined to tear Brittany down, presumably because she resents the fact that Brittany has a nice car and a beautiful home, while she still lives in a trailer.

When a plane crash takes out Brittany's father, Maya seemingly has her opportunity to get revenge.  Brittany is shut out of the will in favour of a blood heir, and Maya claims to be to be step-daddy's illegitimate child.  The two young women engage in hurling insults at each other in court, but a DNA test bears out Maya's claim.

But of course this is a Wild Things movie, so it should come as no surprise that Maya and Brittany are secretly a lot more friendly than they pretend, and there's a whole lot more going on than meets the eye.  There'll be plot twists a-plenty in the second half of the film.

Of course, there's a big risk in putting lots of plot twists into your film, and that's losing track of whether the actual events, when finally revealed, make sense.  The original Wild Things was hugely contrived and quite far-fetched, but the basic plan didn't defy logic.  The same is not true of this film.  The last ten minutes make absolute nonsense of everything that has gone before, though Isaiah Washington's performance in his segment of them is almost enough to distract you from that.

Almost.

This is a pale imitation of the original.  Even the "sexy" scenes feel like a wishy-washy, unfocused retread of the first.  You can safely skip it.

Wild Things (1998)

I saw Wild Things at the cinema for the very scientific reason that it was on.  I had a card at the time that let me go to the movie theatre for $5 a time, so I was going every Wednesday night.  This particular week, I'd either seen everything else or knew I wasn't interested, whereas all I knew about this film was that Neve Campbell from Scream was in it.

In any case, even if I'd known more about the film, I probably would have still have been surprised by two factors.  First, that it's a pretty good little noir film.  Because make no mistake: despite the sun-drenched Florida setting and the absence of city alley ways, this is absolutely a noir film, with all the twists and turns and the moral corruption that term implies.

The second factor, and the one for which the film is much more notorious, is the sexual content, which was quite a bit more intense than was common for mainstream film releases of the time; especially ones featuring the usually clean cut Matt Dillon.

It's perhaps a shame that Wild Things does contain that sexual contact, as I think people have tended to overlook the decent little noir thriller that's the setting for the naughty bits.  Certainly, I expect the sequels will not measure up in terms of narrative, though they will doubtless deliver more nudity and sexual shenanigans.  On the other hand, the original noir films often rode the edge of what was acceptable content for their time, so maybe the sex scenes in this were a way of updating the genre to the times.

... nah, I don't really buy that either.

Anyway, if you're in the mood for a thriller, and don't mind lashings of nudity and bad language, and a cast of characters where the ambulance chasing attorney is one of the more likeable people you'll meet, then this is a pretty good bet.  I doubt it's going to be celebrated seventy years later, in the way a classic noir film like The Big Sleep is, but very few movies are The Big Sleep.

All up, this is a pretty good film with which to spend a couple of hours.

High Plains Drifter (1973)

A town of repugnant human beings hire a reprehensible human being to protect them from a trio of repulsive human beings.  A cartload of people die in the process, and not a one of them doesn't leave the world a better place by no longer being in it.

The central thesis of this film appears to be that pretty much everyone in the world is a worthless piece of scum and that the only thing that elevates any of us is that we might be a bit more selective - or effective - in our brutality than the others around us.

In other words, this is 100 minutes of jerks being jerks to each other, often with fatal consequences.  I found it a thoroughly unpleasant experience.  Which may in fact have been the point, but I have real life history for that sort of thing.  I don't need it in my fiction as well.

Technically, the film is well-shot and well-acted.  But I didn't care a whit about any of the characters on the screen and would quite happily have seen an atomic bomb fall on them halfway through the movie. Not only would they have deserved it, but it would have saved me 45 minutes that I could have spent doing something more pleasant, such as repeatedly punching myself in the testicles.

The Incredibles (2003)

We live in a great time for superhero movies.  Marvel Studios are yet to put a foot wrong with their adaptations, and signs are good for the next couple of releases as well.  Sony's Spider-Man films have had their ups and downs, as have Fox's X-Men titles, but on the whole: spandex rules the big screen.

So it says something about how good The Incredibles is that this decade-old animated feature remains one of the three best superhero films to be made (the first Iron Man and Avengers films are also on the list).

So honestly, you can stop reading the review right now: unless you're so prejudiced against animated films that you refuse to see it purely because it's a cartoon (which is frankly your own loss), you should grab this and watch it at your first opportunity.

In case you need some additional information, though, I'll give you a quick rundown: the film's premise is that after a promising start, superheroes were sued into oblivion by persons injured in their activities.  The government gave them new identities, and they settled into normal, ordinary lives.

Two such heroes are Mr Incredible and Elastigirl, who married and had kids together.  Mr Incredible is struggling to adjust to the life of being an ordinary person, though.  His need to use his abilities to help others is just too strong for him to overcome.  So when a secret government organisation contacts him to help them with a little matter, he leaps at the chance to get his hero groove back on.

But of course, the so-called government organisation might not be what it purports to be, and soon Mr Incredible, Elastigirl, and their kids will be in a fight for their lives.

This is a fun, action-packed film with great characters, expertly judged humour (both in the dialogue and the visuals) and a nice sprinkling of touching moments without ever being schmalzy.  It's a great script, really fine work.

See it.

Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

I like several of Danny Elfman's movie soundtracks, and I quite enjoyed what little I've heard of "Oingo Boingo", the band he headed in the 80s and 90s.  Which is why it comes as a surprise to me that the songs in this are the weakest part of the film.  They're bland, often very similar in their sound, and just all round underwhelming.

And bad songs are a significant problem when 50% of your movie is the characters singing.

Perhaps if the script was stronger the lack of interesting songs wouldn't stand out so much, but it's nothing to shout about, especially the pacing: the film takes a bit too long to get to its conflict, and the resolution then comes with unseemly haste.

This is a shame, because the basic premise isn't bad.  Jack Skellington, king of Halloween Town, is feeling some ennui about the same-ness of every year's holiday celebration.  But then, while on a walk, he stumbles into Christmas Town by accident. He sees this new and exciting place (and its holiday) as his opportunity to do something different, and resolves to take over Christmas.  He enlists the help of his creepy, kooky subjects, but of course neither he nor they really understand what the holiday is about, so things go more than a little awry.  Especially when wicked bogeyman Oogie Boogie gets involved.  (Oogie, by the by, gets the only song I thought had any real verve to it)

That outline sounds like a movie that should be fun.  More fun than it actually is, certainly.  But as noted above, the pacing isn't good, and that really hurts it.

So does the movie have any bright spots?  Sure.  It looks fantastic, with detailed stop motion animation being used to great effect, and lots of cool character and set design to be seen.  Visually, it's quite a treat.  It's a shame the aural and narrative elements of the film don't measure up.

Worth checking out if you're an animation buff, or a mad fan of the Halloween holiday, but otherwise, it's skippable.