mogwai-1 Reviews

Alice in Wonderland (1999 TV Movie)

What A Trip!

[10/10 · 9 April 2002]

Yeah, maybe it's got its faults (Looking Glass scenes added in inexplicably, whatever), but by God this is the trippiest film ever made! Hours and hours of madness! It's like you're in a dream that takes control of you. The grass and the trees are so green, the colours are so amazingly vivid, the camerawork is so - melty? - and everything just flows together in the weirdest, most unreal way. So enjoyable. Everything is happy and crazy, just like Lewis Carroll intended it to be. Live a little, just like Alice! Dive into it! I ended up imagining I was Alice and walking in and out of these magical places for hours. What a druggy film - the caterpillar, a thousand references, sentences mangled and regurgitated as inspired poetry, rainbow colours, hundreds of characters, the list goes on.

I love this film! Watch it! Lock yourself away with it!

Requiem for a Dream (2000)

10 out of 10. Unquestionably.

[10/10 · 21 February 2001]

This is, quite simply, the best film I have ever seen. Horrific, hypnotic, beautiful, disturbing, real and dreamlike. Darren Arnofsky has taken his filmmaking to another level here. The closest comparison, stylistically, is David Fincher's Fight Club (see the jail sequences in Requiem, the lightning-speed editing, steadicam, etc.). Thematically, well I suppose Last Exit To Brooklyn, obviously, and maybe Pleasantville, as in the becoming-one-with-your-television thing. Ellen Burstyn is, even by her own standards, incredible. Jennifer Connelly, it is almost impossible to believe after watching this film, was the girl in Labyrinth. These characters have no rock star friends or helpful entourage to bring them back from the edge; they are on their own, and it shows.

What an ending.

What a score (possibly the greatest theme ever written).

What direction.

What a film.

How do you top this one?

I think only Darren Arnofsky has the answer.

Bad Boy Bubby (1993)

Crazy, insane, black, funny, terrifying, weird, SUPERB.

[10/10 · 21 February 2001]

This film changed my life. No, really. It was a Friday night, and the parents were away. I was on my own in front of the television, and Channel 4 (UK + Irish viewers will know of it) was showing Bad Boy Bubby as part of some cult film season. Well, to cut a long story short, I was glued to the screen for the duration of the film (I drooled and stared at it during the commercial breaks) and when it was over, I realised that the dinner was entirely burnt. Not a particularly relevant story, you may think, but note that the television was IN THE KITCHEN, mere feet from the oven. That's how good this film is. It features possibly the greatest crazy monologue ever committed to celluloid (the pub/microphone scene), two of the most disturbing murders in any movie I've seen (and I've seen thousands), one of the most unsettling relationships I've seen, and an unbelievable central performance. This film is darker than dark, and stranger than Eraserhead. Just as Bubby is on his own throughout the film, so is the viewer. Alone, confused and disturbed beyond words.

And I've never thought of the Salvation Army in the same way since.

10/10

Taxi Driver (1976)

The best performance by an actor in any film ever.

[10/10 · 21 February 2001]

What can I say about Taxi Driver that hasn't already been said?

It's directed faultlessly, by possibly (probably) the greatest director in the history of cinema.

Robert de Niro? 11 out of 10.

Paul Schrader? Likewise.

Thelma Schoonmaker? Ditto.

Jodie Foster? Her best performance.

Cybill Shepherd? It could only go downhill from here.

Brilliantly scripted, brilliantly directed (see: the scene with Travis on the phone, when the camera pans down the hallway; the shooting scene; everything, actually), brilliantly acted. In a word : brilliant.