Tag Archive: Christoph Waltz


SPECTRE LEAVES YOU SHAKEN BUT NOT STIRRED

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November 11, 2015

SPECTRE directed by Sam Mendes (UK, 2015)

This movie is two and a half hours of pure Bond bunkum which starts promisingly but, unlike the superior Skyfall, is content to fall back on style over substance.

Daniel Craig with steely blue eyes and tight muscular body makes a good 007 and is as indestructible and unflappable as ever.

Realism is not the keynote of course but you would expect him to accrue a few designer scars or at least to get a few stains or rips in his clothes.

As it is, you cut him and he does not bleed, beat him and he does not bruise and he always gets the girl. Another unfathomable trick he pulls off is to be able to find an immaculate range of suits or elegant casual wear despite never carrying more than hand luggage.

His maverick mission is to crack Spectre (note the English spelling), a criminal organization which has infiltrated the heart of the British establishment with a cunning plan of using global surveillance via the Internet and wiretapping – sound familiar? Continue reading →

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DJANGO’S UNCHAINED VIOLENCE

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February 18, 2013

DJANGO UNCHAINED directed by Quentin Tarantino (USA, 2012)

The men (and handful of women) who commit murder, behave savagely or revel in brutality have deep-rooted problems that are not triggered solely by exposure to the wrong kind of entertainment. This makes it all the more bizarre that the premiere of Django was delayed by the Weinstein Company in the wake of the school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut.

Both Tarantino and Samuel L.Jackson publically criticised this decision and the director was equally disdainful of Krishnan Guru-Murphy’s puritanical line of questioning in a recent Channel 4 interview.

Django Unchained is without doubt a violent movie but it is wildly misplaced to regard it as just a tasteless or gratuitous bloodfest. It borrows from exploitation-movies but it is far too intelligent and knowing to be treated as a common or garden splatter movie.

The scenes of cruelty and killings can even be justified in view of the subject matter and are surely mild compared with the actual treatment handed out to slaves in America.

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ROMAN CARNAGE

Filed under: Movies, Parenting — Leave a comment
November 8, 2011

Short but definitely not sweet,  Roman Polanski’s Carnage makes no attempt to hide the fact that it is a theatre piece (It is a screen adaptation of the  successful play “God of Carnage” by Yasmina Reza).

The only outdoor scenes are two brief opening and closing shots of children playing. In the first, one boy strikes another with a stick. In the second the pair seem to be the best of friends again.

In between the two sets of concerned parents meet to discuss the act of violence between their sons in a rational, adult manner.   The two couples, the Longstreets and the Cohens, are well off, well educated individuals who are superficially polite and accommodating but the more reasonable they try to be to each other the worse the dispute gets.

Polanski, having assembled a first rate cast, has to do little more than point the camera. Kate Winslet (Nancy), Christoph Waltz (Alan), Jodie Foster (Penelope), and John C. Reilly (Michael) are all excellent with Waltz, ironically coming across as the most honest because he never makes any pretence of being anything other than selfish and immoral.

To help get the mood of cloying claustrophobia, the movie was shot in real time with the actors under strict instructions to stay on set the whole time. The tension builds gradually until, by the end,  the gloves are well and truly off  as they tear into one another and reveal their true colours. The most memorable scene is when Nancy vomits spectacularly over Penelope’s precious art books.

Ostensibly it is a comedy of manners, but it also presents a sobering and downright pessimistic perspective on human nature and the limits of political correctness. I enjoyed it but it’s a movie that made me squirm rather than laugh.

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BILINGUAL BASTERDS

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February 5, 2010


One of the coolest things about Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds is the multi-lingual dialogue. The standard formula in mainstream movies is for characters to adopt some dodgy accent to tell audiences that they are speaking a foreign tongue (witness Daniel Day Lewis in ‘Nine’).

In this movie we hear English, French, German and Italian with SS Jew hunter Col. Hans Landa (played brilliantly by Christoph Waltz) being the most linguistically gifted. Tarantino takes huge liberties with historical accuracy but when it comes to language he is deadly accurate.

With this simple gesture he exposes the ridiculous notion that audiences will be put off by having to read subtitles.

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