Die Hard

Die Hard is the greatest action film of all time. The end. No debate.

It works wonderfully, through great acting, fantastic set pieces, great cinematography, pre-CGI special effects that look utterly realistic and a barnstorming script.

In every area, the film excels itself, and provides a benchmark for all other action films. One area crucial to the genre is pacing. Films, like Speed, try and keep tension at a high pitch throughout, but often end up burning themselves out three-quarters of the way in. Die Hard takes a couple of breathers, when John McClane has doubts, but the tension remains, largely because of the vulnerability of our hero - he is half dressed and without shoes, never mind being outnumbered and outgunned.

When it first arrived in 1988 (or arrived on VHS in 1989 for me!) it was light-years ahead of the competition. The Hollywood action film of the 1980s seemed to largely comprise of an invincible over-muscled lunk (usually in a jungle) stood on the spot with an enormous machine gun mowing down armies of bad guys running towards him. Not only did Die Hard have a guy with a (fairly) regular physique, it pared down the number of bad guys that enabled you to count them off as the film progressed, it also turned the action into a game of cat and mouse, with Bruce Willis very much the mouse: always on the run from one hiding place to the next. John McClane was no emotionless man-mountain, but a regular guy who realised the odds were strongly against him, cried when in pain, voiced his doubts when in trouble.

Emphasising this “regular guy” approach to the movie, every layer of seniority or management in the film is shown as being wrong, lazy and stupid. Whether it’s the media, SWAT teams, the FBI or Dwane T. Robinson: if you’re earning more than average wage, you’re a jerk. And who doesn’t love to see jerks getting their dues?

On the flip side of the hero, is the bad guys. And Alan Rickman presented no ordinary moustache-twirling villain: Hans Gruber was smart, classy and funny. In fact, if he wasn’t so keen on killing innocent members of the public and police forces, he’d be good enough to be a hero. The henchmen are all equally as good, and even in their brief on screen time, they each manage to create a unique character. This is where Die Hard plays it’s best kept secret. It’s not just an action film. It is also a heist film. And we want to see the bad guy’s do their “one last job”. Part of us wants them to succeed - when they get into the vault, and the music breaks into Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, we pump a fist into the air with them.

And, as a finale, we get a great big tall building blowing up. And a man jumping off it. Being shot at from a helicopter. Which also blows up. What more could you want?

Carry On Up The Khyber

Those expecting Casablanca or Citizen Kane will be depressed by my choice for C, but I feel it is worthy of greater recognition. Of all the Carry On films, this is the only one that actually works on more than the basest of levels. Admittedly, it has all the double entendres, sexism and mugging to camera that you expect for a film series that had become utterly complacent with itself, and in 1968 was about to become utterly outdated by the arrival of Monty Python.

But Khyber works. The cast are all accustomed actors comfortable working with each other, but here they are given roles which push them a little bit further than many of the other entries in the series. The jokes are (largely) funny, and the dining room scene is a comedy classic. Of the cast, everyone is excellent, and Peter Butterworth deserves special mention, but Joan Sims is the standout, as the frustrated and dotty Lady Rough-Diamond.

There is some mild racism in it’s treatment of the Indian and Pakistani peoples, bit I think it acquits itself by applying exactly the same attitudes, and taking them further, to the British. Yes, in spite of all the crudities on display, Carry On Up The Khyber actually gives quite an in depth, self deprecating insight of British-ness, particularly in dealing with the then still fairly new concept of Britain as a small, cold and damp country in northern Europe, and no longer the centre of a world-spanning empire. Obviously, it’s not a lecture from an Oxford don, but a film with a story based around knobs, but nevertheless, it’s that extra dimension that raises it above the other Carry On films.

Bubba Ho-Tep

If there was ever a film that screamed “for the horror fanboys” in capital letters on a thousand and one internet forums, this is that film. Directed by Don Coscarelli (from the Phantasm films) and starring Bruce Campbell (from the Evil Dead films) with a pitch of Elvis vs. The Mummy, this promised to be a fun but inconsequential horror romp, with a fairly small but rabid target audience. That it managed to transcend these expectations and actually be a heart-warming and challenging piece about ageing and death was astounding.

Bruce Campbell plays a man who may (or may not) be Elvis, stuck in a flyblown nursing home with a cancerous penis. His two companions are the sympathetic-but-taking-no-shit nurse played by Ella Joyce, and civil rights activist Ossie Davis playing a man who may (or may not) be JFK. The jokes and monsters are all in place, and satisfyingly funny, but the film challenges it’s audience. How can we be content to abandon our parents and the elder generation in squalid, depressing homes such as these: yesterday’s heroes gave us civil rights, moon landings, rock and roll. And what do you do when you are staring death in the face? Is it possible to die with pride and honour intact?

Bruce Campbell is admittedly no Robert de Niro, but as Elvis he gives a tender performance of an old man who ran away from his heyday, and desperately wants it back. Ossie Davis and Ella Joyce are equally excellent in their supporting roles.

This film also changed my life, as I met the woman who would become my wife at the UK Premiere of this film. And if you’ve got to marry anybody, marry a lass who goes to Elvis vs. The Mummy films!

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

Baron Munchausen has baggage. It has a reputation as Gilliam’s Folly, a stinker that at the time it was the world’s biggest turkey. And it has to be said, it is an inconsistent, sketchy film with an ending that makes no sense. But Munchausen has a warmth and charm rarely seen in modern cinema, and even one of Gilliam’s failures is far more interesting than the majority of Hollywood cinema.

Munchausen picks up where Brazil left off – it is a story where the enemy is not the enemy at the gates, in the siege of a Mediterranean city, but the enemy is plodding, unimaginative by-the-book bureaucracy. Ironically enough, this has a modern resonance in our post 9/11 society: who is more destructive and dangerous - the mysterious foreign hordes, or our own fear-mongering government?

But the film is a creative, imaginative delight, with spectacular design, set pieces which you expect from a Gilliam film. What you don’t normally expect from Gilliam is the sheer quality of the acting – everyone is superb, with the exception of Robin Williams playing Robin Williams. John Neville is wonderful as the lead – despite being in his 60s when filming, his transformation in age depending entirely on his mood is entirely convincing, and Sarah Polley’s Sally is a child lead who is utterly delightful – only if half of her skill here had been split between the three leads of the Harry Potter films! The show is almost stolen by an unrecognisable Oliver Reed playing Mars, the God of War as a rough, blustery Yorkshireman doting on his trophy wife, Uma Thurman.

To finish it’s interesting to note that a shot Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is lifted directly from Munchausen. As Saruman addresses his Uruk-hai hordes from Isengard, the camera pulls back from his face, and keeps pulling back through the massed army till we realise the scale of it. Jackson accomplishes his shot with green screen and CGI. With Gilliam, it’s all real. And that’s what makes the difference.

2001: A Space Odyssey

2001: A Space Odyssey is either, depending on how you view it, a cinematic masterpiece or pretentious twaddle. Most people these days go for masterpiece, but on it’s initial release the poorer opinion prevailed – indeed the film was only rescued on initial release by exploitative marketing it to hippies as “the ultimate trip” (for the psychedelic Star Gate sequence).

But this film is indeed a masterpiece, arguably the closest mainstream cinema has ever come to being a piece of classical art. It’s leisurely pace disguises provocative themes and raises questions about our existence on this planet, the dehumanising effect of technology and the nature of evolution. For those on the “creationist” side of the evolution debate, it should be noted that this film does in no way exclude the concept of God (if you can accept God to be a black monolith).

The film itself is a staggering achievement, both technically and emotionally – the detail in the special effects as astounding now as they were 40 years ago, the rotating living quarters of the Discovery. The ballet of space-ships to Strauss is powerful, joyful, exuberant cinema.

The film exudes eeriness from ever pore, a key Kubrick trait – the humans are dehumanised by all their technology: birthday greetings and video telephone calls are imbued with a sense of melancholy and despair and the most emotional scene in the film is a man unplugging a computer.

2001: A Space Odyssey is a masterpiece - a film of immense scale and perception perfectly realised.

A Film Alphabet

In this blog, I'll be publishing a Film Alphabet - a guide to films, one beginning with each letter of the alphabet. Confusingly, I'll begin with numbers, but hey, you can't have everything.

This list is not meant to be the 27 Best Films ever made, it just happens to be ones I like. I'll probably get stuck around the Xs and Qs of the alphabet, but we'll see how it goes.

Once I've finished all that, I may start with various albums, books and other bits of culture wot I devours.

I hope you enjoy the read!