Posts Tagged ‘Adrien Brody’
High School
High School is too good to pass over, to consign as a mere stoner movie. It should be discussed in the same breath as the work of Hughes and Linklater, not merely in the same paragraph. A significant part of what makes High School so entertaining is the extent to which the audience feels part of the fun. Truly likeable characters and the excellent cast who bring them to life are critical to this. A sharp, original script with its fast and hard humour keep us on side, perpetuating the snowballing feel-good effect.
The two leads, Henry Burke (Matt Bush) and Travis Breaux (Sean Marquette) particularly impress. The former played our hero’s puerile nemesis in Adventureland, but is here cast against type as the straight-laced leading man, and pulls it off with aplomb. Meanwhile, the latter gets a little limelight after years as a teen actor on television, and convinces as the stoner with a heart of gold.
Subverting the typical anti-drug narrative exploited by reactionary campaigners and educational bodies in the US, Burke is a straight-A student destined for MIT. But in an impulsive moment of bonding and rediscovered childhood kinship, he takes a puff of “the sticky green…the cannabis sativa” from former pal Breaux (aptly named, indeed). This unfortunately coincides with their principal (by God, the most remarkable transformation of Michael Chiklis), whose shoulder carries a chip the size of Michigan, instigating a war on drugs, beginning with comprehensive drug screening.
Giallo *
There seems to be an opening for a horror fan amongst the programmers at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. They just can’t seem to programme interesting horror. Over the last few years, their selections have been high-profile trash: from Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist, through Land of the Dead and H6: Diary of a Serial Killer, to Giallo.
Taking its name from a long-established genre moniker, Giallo should be a smart incision in the skin of this typically Italian thriller/slasher bastard (or at least, a witty send-up). Unless I’m missing something… (this is quite possible, given my ignorance of the rich film history it clearly references; the detective could symbolise contemporary American horror; the eponymous killer might even stand for the genre itself!) …this is a bizarrely stupid film: internally inconsistent, stylistically incongruous, skin deep, paying barely cursory lip-service to substantiality. However reminiscent of Dario Argento’s classic works, it abandons everything which made them so well respected. We follow a stewardess, Linda (Emmanuelle Seigner, gamely putting on one of the least credible American accents in film), whose sister has been abducted by a cab-driving Turinese serial killer (Byron Deidra). Legendary local detective and former New Yorker Enzo Avolfi (a petrified Adrien Brody) hunts the murderer with a barely tangible fervor. That’s basically it, aside from some plot points haphazardly lifted from the genre and slapped together with lazy bemusement.
Even if it’s meant to be a joke, it’s an intolerably bad one – unlike the infinitely superior Antichrist. Admittedly, it is at the expense of film past, not audience present – but as a cinematic fart it out-stinks Antichrist by far. The script seems to have been strangled by its umbilical cord. It is beyond expositional, more than prosaic: repetitive, ridiculous. Character relationships are introduced by naming (c.f. “Hey, what’s my little sister up to?”). Plot is so riddled with holes that it is incredible, a fatal flaw which prevents the audience from entertaining the film’s propositions. Inevitably, once a critical mass of viewers have been worn down, the well-meaning crowd can’t help but ridicule the film, bursting into laughter at each further P we are supposed to make believe. The impatient critical audience will boo, if they are still awake. Does Argento want us to be so self-aware, so disconnected from the plasticine world he’s created?
