Film Review: A Perfect Getaway (2009)

Milla Jovovich as honeymooner Cydney in "A Perfect Getaway"

A couple on their honeymoon in Honolulu have been murdered. Enter Cliff (Steve Zahn) and Cydney (Milla Jovovich), a couple on their honeymoon in Honolulu. See where this is going? Although the news of the murders originally panics them, they decide, quite daftly, to continue with arranged plans and hit the foothills for a backpacking expedition to remember. But things get spooky when they encounter another couple who leave them cold. Soon, they’ve teamed with thrill seeking duo Nick (Timothy Olyphant) and Gina (Kiele Sanchez) in an attempt to keep potential killers at bay.

Once in a while a film will come along that leaves you with nothing. That film is A Perfect Getaway, a thriller built around a single concept that keeps you guessing for an hour before anything actually happens. It’s not that I couldn’t handle the tension – Deliverance, a somewhat similar movie, took just about an hour to establish the central problem and was brilliant in its build-up. You felt unnerved, and the atmosphere was something horrible, looming and uneasy. Here, it doesn’t go down as well. But I doubt I will ever be satisfied with a movie that bases itself entirely around a lone revelation. The characters are dull and cardboard, the story treats you like an idiot, and the whole thing is goofy and terribly unspectacular.

A lot of critics seemed relatively warm to this one. I can’t agree. On rare occasion will I leave a movie feeling exactly as I did going in. A Perfect Getaway left me blank. It didn’t spur a single emotion. The only redeeming factor? That Hawaii looked beautiful. I wish I’d spent 97 minutes there instead of with this. (**)

Retro Review: Rashomon (1950)

A battle takes place in one account of the same story in Akira Kurosawa's "Rashomon"

It is Rashomon, a film that opens so beautifully and remains that way for its entire running time, which reminds us of how affecting simplicity in the movies can be. It is a film by Akira Kurosawa, of course, and the one that brought attention to the Japanese director in the West when it came to the surface in 1951. He would go on to become one of Japan’s most respected filmmakers. If this is where the rest of world got their first glimpse of Kurosawa, it rings true that this is still a good place to start.

Rain pours in torrents in the opening moments of Rashomon, and the instant appeal comes from the way the whole thing looks. It is magnificently shot, in black and white, each frame as fine-looking as the best photographs. The camera has been placed with such care that it is noticeable from the off. Kurosawa understands the importance of how we see something – it is, in fact, the theme of the film.

We are introduced to three characters, a woodsman, a priest and a drifter. The woodsman and the priest are amidst a personal crisis – a woman has been raped, and her husband murdered. The woodsman found the body. The drifter wants to know why the pair are so miserable. It turns out that they don’t understand the circumstances of the incident – “I just don’t understand,” is the first line of the film – and are trying to put the pieces together. And so a mystery begins, and we are invited to listen to various accounts of the tale from the perspectives of those involved. But who, we ask, is telling the truth?

That we might never know is actually the point. As simple stories are recounted (in this case, to an off-camera court), Kurosawa cleverly reveals everything but really says nothing. We hear from the raped woman, a bandit, and even the ghost of the dead husband who speaks to the court through a medium, but all the time we are never really sure of the true events that took place. The genius lies within the fact that the camera is stripped of its usual role - playing the neutral eye. Instead, it becomes subject to lies and perspective, and shows us only what the characters want us to see.

Rashomon influenced many modern contemporaries, the most famous of which is Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects. It was also remade as western The Outrage, which starred Paul Newman. But where most imitators rely on complex details and unforeseen twists, it is here that a now tired formula thrives. The story here is deeply poignant, tactically simple, and manages to be both riveting and distressing. It is also a masterpiece of mood, to be remembered not only for its story but for its use of cinematography. There is something deep and unexplainable about its power, and its willingness to explore multiple angles in such a direct way. To call it Kurosawa’s masterwork may not be far off. What can be said for sure? That Rashomon might be the most important film about perspective ever made. (*****)

Retro Review: Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991)

Francis Ford Coppola on the set of "Apocalypse Now"

The documentary opens with a famous director addressing an audience. Without a hint of exaggeration, he says, “We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little… we went insane.” The lines are blurred: is he talking about the Vietnam War or the momentous film he made about it in 1979? The truth is, it doesn’t really matter. The fact is that they are a part of each other, and the beauty of the entire affair is that they are now wholly indistinguishable. “My film is Vietnam,” the director says, and he's right.

Francis Ford Coppola set out to create a film based on Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, a terrifying journey into the dark side of the human condition. The result was the masterpiece Apocalypse Now. But the reason the final product was so extraordinary was because, quite literally, Coppola lived the themes of the source novel during the time spent making his movie. The experience of making Apocalypse Now was what Apocalypse Now ended up as. It was as if it was all meant to be. Hearts of Darkness documents the making of the gargantuan project. It leaves nothing out.

Moments into the documentary, I was struck by a feeling of sickness. I had just heard Coppola confessing his feelings on the production to his wife, Eleanor. It is her footage and recordings that make up the bulk of the documentary. He mentions to her that he wants to shoot himself. That is how tired and incomprehensible the project had become. Then we see the sheer size of the sets and the extras, the constant building work, the unfinished script, and the unreliable military who Coppola cooperated with when making the movie. The feeling of sickness came from my imagining. Imagining the Hell that making this movie really was. Coppola would have been crazy not to have gone to such a dark place in his own head. That’s a human reaction, after all.

We’ve heard of the nightmare shoots concerning Spielberg and Jaws and Ridley Scott and Blade Runner, but neither of these come close to the chaos that Coppola encounters here. You’ll see it all. Marlon Brando turning up overweight, unfamiliar with the source material, threatening to leave the production with a $1 million advance. Martin Sheen replaces Harvey Keitel weeks into shooting. Later he suffers from a massive heart attack. Coppola argues with Dennis Hopper over the purpose of his character. The script is never really finished, leaving the director to force improvisation upon his actors. It’s a mess.

But Hearts of Darkness is a riveting piece of filmmaking in the sense that it is as engrossing and affecting as the very film it documents. We share interviews with the principal cast, writers, production assistants, and anybody and everybody that had a hand in the making. Some interviews are new, some from the set, but all are revealing and truthful. That is what separates it from almost every other making of documentary – it’s brutally honest. Most importantly, it’s essential, because understanding Hearts of Darkness is to understand Apocalypse Now itself. (*****)