Film Reviews
Clue: A SurpriseA Film Review by Ella Williams
I have always thought that using a board game as the premise for a movie is ridiculous. A recipe for a boring, trite, and ineptly handled couple of hours. Just try to get through the train wreck that is Battleship. Even worse (so I thought) would be an 1980’s movie based on the vaguely campy detective game; Clue. I thought, at best, it would be one of those ‘it's so bad that its good’ affairs, filled with over-acting, charmingly cheap sets, and clumsy writing. One sick day, a few weeks ago, after aimlessly scrolling through Netflix for longer than I could even remember, I stumbled upon Clue. It seemed perfect for my feverish and half-delusional state. I certainly would not have to pay much attention, seeing as the film would inevitably be ridiculous. At first, it seemed to live about up to my expectations. It started with cheesy music, a sinister thunderstorm, and over the top, caricature characters. But within the first twenty minutes, I started to watch closer. First of all, the cast is surprisingly adroit, with names like Tim Curry and Madeline Kahn. The acting, though exaggerated, is often hilarious and poignant. The writing is clever, and though the story is basically the traditional ‘who done it’ murder mystery in a Gothic mansion, it takes a glib look at life, politics, and American paranoia in the 1950s. My favorite part was purposefully frenetic, fast paced method of story telling that the film employs. It moves at break neck speed, and often events unfold back to front, with details added throughout. There are even three separate endings. These were originally aired at different theaters, as an homage to the board game’s choose your own ending format, but in the current version they are played back to front. It almost lends an alternate universes feel. This goofy, cult classic certainly deserves its following, and even though it has a touch of the ridiculousness I had anticipated, it makes for a singularly enjoyable watch. |
Midnight in Paris - A Love Letter to the 1920'sA Film Review by Ella Williams
In the aftermath of World War I, Europeans and Americans were left with a sense of confusion and of futility. Many had been raised with self-righteous and staunchly optimistic Victorian values, but their experiences of the war were at odds with this upbringing. The aim of the preeminent artists of the 1920s was to find new ways to convey this new reality. The famous ‘Lost Generation’ consisted of these artistic and alluring individuals. Some were American expatriates, others were European. The writing, art, music, photography and films created by this group tended to be self-interested and focused on what was then current, modern. Because of this, the ‘cannon’ of the time is incredibly rich and distinctive, and continues to be captivating. It depicts beauty and despair; a common confusion about life after the greatest war that history had seen. This group seems to have traipsed about Europe, living bohemian, and often tragic lives. They centered in their beloved Paris. The Woody Allen Film, Midnight In Paris, is about Gil Pender, a modern day Hollywood screenwriter obsessed with Paris during this era. He views his work as hackneyed, but he is idealistic in his hopes for writing a novel and becoming a full time author. He is vacationing in Paris with his self-centered fiancée, and relishing in his belief that Paris is the most beautiful and romantic city in the world. All he wants is to wander around the old streets, observing. One night he is able to escape his fiancé and her vapid friends. He gets drunk and meanders around Paris late into the night. Twelve o’clock finds him lost on some back street, perfectly happy. When the clocks strike midnight, a 1920s car drives up, and the lighthearted passengers, dressed in 1920s attire, invite him to join them. Somehow, this car transports him back to the 1920s Paris he so longs to know, and he meets all the artists that he admires. The movie is peppered with prolific members of the Lost Generation like Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Luis Buñuel, Man Ray, Gertrude Stein, Cole Porter, Ernest Hemingway, the Fitzgerald’s, and others. As the movie progresses he loses touch with his real life, and becomes more entwined his nighttime excursions to the past. He shows his manuscript to Gertrude Stein, befriends the people he used to idolize, and even ends up falling in love with Adriana, woman who was apparently both Hemingway and Picasso’s mistress. He realizes that he doesn’t even like his fiancée, and would rather be with her. When he tells her he loves her, a 1890s carriage pulls up, and the sumptuously dressed couple inside invite Adriana and Gil to join them. The carriage takes them further back in time, to the Paris of La Belle Époque and Gil discovers that Adriana feels much the same way about this time period as he had felt about the 20s. Ironically, he sees people reminiscing about The Renaissance. Gil has something of an epiphany, and decides that it is better to accept a flawed present then to construct a romanticized version of the past. He returns to the future, leaves his fiancée, and in the end strolls off into the Paris rain with a beautiful antiques dealer. Midnight in Paris is an especially tender and careful depiction of the 20s. It would have been easy to have gotten lost in the mystique of the time, and to let Gil stay. Or have to have forced him to return, and prevented him from returning, making it the biggest tragedy of his life. What is interesting about Midnight in Paris is that gets past that, and even though the majority of time is spent reveling in the past, the point of the film is to enjoy the present. |