The Correct Opinion

Gangs of New York

A set in search of a story.

18 Again

18 Again is the finest offering from the 1980s cycle of bodyswap comedies. Forget Mickey Rourke, our greatest loss from that generation of actors is Charlie Schlatter (currently appearing in Diagnosis Murder).

The Cable Guy

The Cable Guy is a flawed masterpiece. If it were in French and starred no one you'd ever heard of, but was otherwise *exactly* the same (in fact, if it still had Jim Carrey in, but you'd never seen him in anything else), it would be a cult classic. Boring people at parties would try and chat you up by saying how great it is, "it's really funny, but also dark... the stalker is *really* creepy, but hilarious too. Have you heard of Jim Carrey? No? He's a genius, an incredible physical comedian with an air of real menace. Yeah, I have it on video. I could lend it to you... or you could come round and see it. Looks like you're empty there, can I get you another drink?"

"I'd like to see Ben Affleck do *that*!" or You make me feel like dancing.

Singin’ in the Rain is not as good as some people would have you believe. The final third drags, the ballet bit is tedious and the Broadway Melody sequence is too long and nowhere near as good as it thinks it is. There are marvellous parts to it though - “Fit as a Fiddle” makes us smile with wonder, “Good Morning” is great fun, the “Moses Supposes” routine is fantastic and “Make ‘em Laugh” is a brilliant piece of sustained clowning. The virtuosity and application behind these is astounding, but they are as nothing compared to The Greatest Moment In The History Of Cinema, the most famous bit, the bit where Gene Kelly does, indeed, sing in the rain.

For those not familiar with the film, Gene has met this chick, he digs her, he’s a bit cocky, she’s a bit stand-offish, he discovers some humility, she admits that she digs him, they kiss. That about brings us up to speed. From the effortless bound onto the lamppost to the giving away of his umbrella, what happens next is astounding. It is not so much his dancer’s tricks which are important here, he pulls more difficult moves elsewhere, but the way in which his euphoria is perfectly expressed. He abandons the reserve we all carry and acts utterly without self-consciousness, so happy is he with his new love. We would all like to do this sometimes but we cannot. However, now we don’t need to – he has danced for all of us. (If I actually did come across someone singing in the rain I would be liable to punch them in their try-hard face.) People bursting into song in films is usually corny, but here it is completely appropriate. The pat phrases with which love is usually expressed are bypassed in favour of a pure representation of his feelings through melody and movement - words are too jagged, too digital, too small to express the amorphous glory of this rapture. (Unfortunately, what little eloquence I have is limited to writing, otherwise this post would be a video clip of me dancing.)

It is uniquely cinematic too. The marriage of dance (and what dancing… elegant and graceful yet completely masculine) and melody along with the direction produce an experience which cannot be replicated in other media. It is somehow utterly artificial yet completely convincing. You can keep your “Rosebud...”, your “I am Spartacus”, your Keyser Soze relvelations. I would swap them all for the two seconds when the camera pulls away as Gene Kelly twirls down the street. It goes past the intellect and connects directly with our emotions, sending our spirits soaring. It is the greatest five minutes in celluloid history, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is that.

Why the second best bit in film history occurs in Psycho. And it's not the shower scene.

Psycho contains several iconic and remarkable moments, but with all the (justified) attention the shower scene gets, it is too easy to overlook them. The second greatest moment in cinema occurs when we are still in shock after the first murder. Norman Bates has entered the cabin, and witnessing the bloody corpse begins to clear up the mess. Erasing all signs that there was ever anyone in the room, he wraps Marion Crane's body in the shower curtain, puts her in the boot of the car and takes it to the swamp. He pushes the car into the water and it begins to sink. And then it stops. There! There is the second greatest bit in film history! We start in our seats and hold our breath... After an eternity the car again starts to be pulled down into the mud and we can exhale. Incredible. We have been played like so many cheap violins. After following and identifying with Marion Crane, sympathazing with her flight with the stolen money and being stunned by her brutal demise, our sympathies have somehow been transferred to a man who, at the very least, is trying to erase any traces of her which could lead to justice being served. Why are we relieved that the body is being hidden? Surely we should be shouting at the screen, "No! No car, stay! Where is this marsh anyway? Police! Police!" But we don't. We have been made complicit in this ghastly crime. Bravo, Hitch. Quite remarkable. You devious, lecherous old bastard... you got us.

Stanley Kubrick - Advertisement Director without Portfolio

Not having seen 2001 or A Clockwork Orange, I am eminently unqualified to spout forth this opinion. However, that’s never stopped me before, so I’ll crack on. Kubrick makes imperfect and frustrating films. He is a director of moments - of apes throwing bones into the air, of Steadicam shots of a child riding a tricycle, of sergeant majors dressing down new recruits. But he can’t put a film together. His work is generally cold and distant, with an obsessive attention to mis en scene and technical matters, but an indifference to character and story. Spartacus is good, but he cannot take full credit, having to suffer the indignities of cooperation. Doctor Strangelove is a brilliant film, precisely because it is so unlike everything else he did. There is a sense of spontaneity, of life, in it which brings to mind Hawks, but is entirely absent from the rest of his work. I hear good things about The Killing and Paths of Glory, so perhaps he did have something once, but by the mid-sixties his success seems to have brought him too much control. (See also: George Lucas) Of course, his legend was fed by his famous reclusiveness, yet another instance of a man playing the mad genius and so being accepted as such.

Al Pacino

The part of Michael Corleone in the Godfather films is *the* male role of American cinema. Impossible now to imagine anyone else doing it, Pacino faced incredible resistance from the Studio heads as Coppola's first choice. The story of the troubled coming together of this overblown masterpiece has been told a thousand times, and so I won't go over it again here. Brando, of course, won an Academy Award for his terrible, hammy Vito Corleone, and DeNiro managed the same for his impersonation in Part II. Throughout though, it is Pacino that holds our attention. We are shocked when his youthful beauty is spoiled by the violence of a corrupt policeman, the marks on his face still there when he is in Sicily, much later on. It is too difficult to describe his performance in Part II without referring to his "dead eyed menace", so I won't even try. However, the flashback at the end, from this icy, alone but all powerful figure to the youthful innocent just returned from joining the marines makes our jaws drop as we recognise how much he has changed. When you realise that these two scenes must have been filmed within a few weeks of each other, our astonishment is even greater. The films are far from perfect, of which more later, but they contain at least one truly remarkable performance.