Weekly Recap 27 | Audition, A Bittersweet Life, Perfect Blue, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Doctor Who Series 10 & more

I have a lot of recognisable movies in this episode – Shyamalan’s latest flop, Satoshi Kon’s best film, some Paul Thomas Anderson, some Terrence Malick, some Charlie Kaufman, some Alfred Hitchcock, and many more that I simply can’t fit into my title – all capped off with a bittersweet farewell to Doctor Who. So sit back and enjoy this nice and long episode.

Let us begin with Shyamalan’s latest disaster. In Old, a family on a tropical holiday discovers that the secluded beach where they are staying is somehow causing them to age rapidly, reducing their entire lives into a single day. I would never have guessed that Shyamalan has been making films for over 20 years, because Old very much feels like it’s his first film. The filmmaking on display is quite simply abysmal, with some of the worst framing I’ve seen in any film. Almost every shot is zoomed in far too much, cutting off the actors’ faces and failing to capture the action entirely as it was often off screen or inexplicably out of focus. There is the occasional nice shot – especially some involving the sea at night – but it just makes it all the more annoying just how incompetent the directing in this mostly is. It’s infuriating just how poorly shot Old is, but the screenplay is somehow even worse. Ridiculously stupid characters that say the most ludicrous of things, all delivered with fascinatingly terrible acting (except for Rufus Sewell, who was fantastic as ever). When they’re not just unconvincingly freaking out over the dumb stuff that occurs in this sorry excuse of a film, the garbage screenplay is mostly taken up with them talking about their personal problems that I have absolutely no reason to care about, while they drop like flies through stupidly contrived means. At least the deaths themselves are funny, specifically the vain woman that dies from her bones breaking then immediately healing in the wrong angle, so that they would keep breaking more and more until she was a contorted, mangled mess (that was genuinely a great scene that had the whole cinema gasping, murmuring and chuckling in unison).

This concept actually reminds me of an episode of Doctor Who – The Girl Who Waited from Series 6 – as it grapples with the same idea of living an entire life in a single day, questioning whether putting someone through that is morally right if others benefit from it. But that was a phenomenal piece of television that utilised the premise in a setting free from cliché sinister intentions. Old, on the other hand, has the twist where this was all part of a drug trial that allows them to test the long term effects of their medicines in a rapidly accelerated format. I mean, it’s certainly a great concept, but Shyamalan inexplicably decided to make them an evil corporation acting out of secrecy. It simply makes no sense that they aren’t open about the reality of the beach, because loads of people would volunteer for the program (Park Chan-wook’s Thirst comes to mind). Honestly, I would probably like this film far more if it was a purely existentialist drama – preferably written by Charlie Kaufman – that grappled with the ideas that Old tried so pathetically to explore, only free of the dumb horror that made the actual film feel so vacuous.

Let me just say that I fully admit to being a Shyamalan apologist, since I’ve always found value in even his most slandered of films. And I truly thought he was regaining his reputation after Split and Glass, which I hold as being fantastic movies in their own right. But I just can’t support him anymore since it’s almost like he’s purposefully trying to go back to being the laughing stock that he was after making The Happening. I do believe Old is Shyamalan’s worst film.

Next is the 3 hour long epic Magnolia, which is an epic mosaic of many interrelated characters in search of happiness, forgiveness, and meaning in the San Fernando Valley. This is a film I’d known of for a while, but found its 3 hour runtime too daunting to even consider beginning. I’ve also only seen one Paul Thomas Anderson film prior to this one (There Will Be Blood), which didn’t exactly impress me as much as I felt it should, so enthusiasm isn’t a word I would use to describe my desire to finally watch this. But from memory, I’ve loved all films that have tried to interlace the lives of a myriad of unrelated characters to elevate the themes through subtle editing techniques or fascinating narrative structure (Smoke, Cloud Atlas, Amores Perros, Pulp Fiction); I’ve also really enjoyed films that have attempted to set themselves purely in real time (Rope, Victoria, 12 Angry Men), as the strict time format can lead to many moments of heightened drama due to the immediacy of the peril maximizing the tension. So considering Magnolia does both of these things in tandem, this surely should have enchanted me like it did for everyone else.

And yet what an insufferable, bombastic mess this was. Every actor just seems to be competing with each other to give the loudest, most hysterical performance, almost as if they know they can barely be heard over the overbearing music drowning everything out – which isn’t even diegetic to at least ground it in the scene – never ending for a single second to give respite from all the ridiculous shrieking and nonsensical jumping between unrelated plotlines. John C Reilley was the only likeable performance, plus Philip Seymour Hoffman could never annoy me – in spite of being rather boring here. But Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore, and the rest of the over-bloated cast really needed to just tone it right down, though I doubt that would still be enough to make the self-indulgent, narratively unfocused, profanity-laden writing passable. It’s even shot boringly: solidly, but without any interesting visual flair; just dreary cinematography to match the dreary narrative (well, except for the frog scene of course). And while some figments of engaging storytelling do crop up in the final hour or so, having to sit through 3 hours of this non-stop blaring of annoying noise just didn’t make it worth the time. So I really don’t understand how this film could be so adored, as while it certainly gives off the air of being masterfully crafted and possesses the elements that I normally adore in these kinds of films, it has to be among the most torturous wastes of time I’ve ever experienced.

I actually watched two 3 hour long movies this week, which in hindsight probably wasn’t a good idea. Continuing my discovery of Terrence Malick, The Thin Red Line tells the story of an Army Rifle company, who change, suffer, and ultimately make essential discoveries about themselves during the fierce World War II battle of Guadalcanal. It takes something truly special for me to enjoy a war movie, and The Thin Red Line just wasn’t it. The writing in this is both too dense with its rambling monologues and pretentious voice-overs, while also too shallow in its ineptitude at properly characterising these soldiers with memorable personalities (well, except for Nick Nolte’s character, but then his acting was the most atrocious anyway). While said faceless soldiers are certainly convincing at portraying pain and fear – and the large cast boasts many great actors – their delivery of the verbose dialogue leaves much to be desired.

With that said, this is quite possibly the best looking war film I’ve ever seen; the only contender for that spot would have to be Apocalypse Now. This is probably a silly thing to say, but my favourite piece of cinematography in this film was the way the camera managed to capture the pristine grass amidst the explosive battles, weaving through the long blades as though it were the wind. I learnt from The Tree of Life that Malick has the most precious eye for seeing the beauty within nature and the way man leaves his irrevocable mark on it, using such imagery to explore lofty ideas and craft sequences of immense profundity. So while he failed to achieve the latter for me with Thin Red Line, the former continues to be gorgeously done.

Right, that’s enough for American cinema; moving back to Asia, I’ve decided to watch Takashi Miike’s two most popular feature films. First up is Ichi The Killer. As sadomasochistic yakuza enforcer Kakihara searches for his missing boss he comes across Ichi, a repressed and psychotic killer who may be able to inflict levels of pain that Kakihara has only dreamed of. What a boring waste of time this was, made all the worse by some rather pretentious imagery. I went in expecting lavish amounts of blood and gore – which was beautifully gratuitous in its brief spurts – but came away repulsed by the sheer nothingness that it ultimately was, as twisted as some of that nothingness is. I found the plot so unengaging in fact, that I had to derive all of my enjoyment from trying to figure out how they managed the practical effects: which were admittedly fascinating, though the CGI was God awful. But random, gross things are chucked in here with no rhyme or reason as a futile attempt to spice up this overwhelmingly dreary experience.

The second Miike film I watched is Audition. Seven years after the death of his wife, company executive Aoyama is invited to sit in on auditions for an actress; leafing through the resumés in advance, his eye is caught by Yamazaki Asami, a striking young woman with ballet training. I haven’t been left with a favourable opinion of Takashi Miike so far, and I truly thought Audition would turn me around. After all, from the opening scene I was shocked with how much more emotionally mature this was to Ichi The Killer, which was far too cartoonishly edgy for its own good. Audition is more conventionally made, and while that causes it to be a slow burn, the first half shines because of that. Unfortunately, while it’s transition into surreal horror – and then torture horror – is really well done and probably what most believe to make it a masterpiece, it did leave a sour taste in my mouth that rather tarnished my positive feelings towards a film that had been going for a lighter narrative. It’s not like I wasn’t expecting the way it would progress – as for once I read ahead – but the way it completely changes its tone just didn’t sit right with me. I should reiterate that this is undoubtedly a great film – hell, I’d even say I think it’s Takashi’s best, made all the stronger by the incredible ending – and maybe if my mood was more perfectly aligned with this type of film today, I would have loved it like everyone else. But I just did not enjoy it in the slightest for the vast majority of its runtime, which is frustrating when its objective quality is recognisable to me clear as day.

This entry is a Korean movie that I’ve been meaning to watch for a long time. In A Bittersweet Life, Kim Sun-woo is an enforcer and manager for a crime boss, who assigns Sun-Woo to a simple errand while he is away on a business trip: to shadow his young mistress, Heesoo, for fear that she may be cheating on him with a younger man with the mandate that he must kill them both if he discovers their affair. I normally adore these stylish Neo-noir thrillers that Korea tends to do so well, but this is definitely not the best example of the genre. Of course, the fact that I don’t like Kim Jee-woon’s highly praised I Saw The Devil either is probably indicative that I simply just don’t like his directing style, which I can’t help but feel is trying too hard to mimic a multitude of other, far superior directors: namely Park Chan-wook and Sergio Leone (plus many more I’m sure).

With that said, I honestly don’t think this film does anything wrong – it just doesn’t manage to excite me on any of its filmmaking elements. Lee Byung-hun is kind of one note but still gripping to watch as he suffers through trials and tribulations; the narrative isn’t adventurous enough to be properly memorable, but still with enough twists and thrills to make it worth watching; the dialogue ranges from overly simplistic to laden in exposition, but it gets the job done in delivering the necessary character and plot information so that some thematic layers can naturally arise; the pacing is pretty slow for the most part with scenes that take too long to make their point, but the cool action and funny deaths keep the film at a steady rhythm; and the cinematography is a lot drier than the Letterboxd backdrop led me to believe, but still with enough interesting camera techniques to at least keep me watching for the occasional nicely constructed shot. I realise now just how much Night in Paradise borrows from this film – Park Hoon-jung did work with Lee on I Saw The Devil after all – though for some reason I feel that was actually superbly made where as this felt largely mediocre (as usual, however, my opinion seems to be the reverse of everybody else’s). I can certainly recognise the potential that this film exhibits; I just don’t think it properly achieves all it sets out to do. A Bittersweet Life ultimately feels kind of messy in its presentation, but still a solid watch overall.

This next film should give this episode a more positive vibe after my criticism and dissapointments. After all, Perfect Blue is considered a masterpiece of anime. In Perfect Blue, a pop singer decides to shift her career towards acting, but here sense of reality is shaken when she is stalked by an obsessed fan and the ghost of her past. So happy that I liked this more than Paprika. I love it when I can’t make heads or tails of whether what’s happening is real or not, and Satoshi Kon explores that psychological creepiness with impressive finesse. The animation is obviously superb, but what I think makes it all the more striking is just how real it’s presented, directed almost as though it were live action – though still with many frames that bend reality or capture a certain emotion that only animation can truly craft. I feel Paprika went too much into the nonsense of dreams, whereas Perfect Blue leans much more into nightmarish realism, making for a more fascinating narrative. And while I did guess the twist quite early on, that didn’t detract at all from my engagement at trying to seperate the worlds of Mima’s broken dreams, of her mundane reality, and of the sickening film she’s in, that merge together to create many masterfully crafted sequences. Plus the main theme song is simply to die for!

Let us now move on to some Hitchcock with Marnie. This lesser known Hitchcock drama follows Marnie, a compulsive thief who gets blackmailed by Rutland (her boss) into marrying him. Obviously, she doesn’t reciprocate his love, but his selfish desire to have her leaves him to solve the mystery of her past in an attempt to cure her. I find it amusing how Tippi Hedren’s performance is pretty awful – plus a fair bit of the directing leaves much to be desired – but I was fully gripped by this most unusual plot and the way the characters develop. Sean Connery, on the other hand, was fantastic, and his character is fascinating in just how morally confused he is, which managed to make the physical and mental contortions of the two leads in their clashing and harmonious flaws – mirrored by Herrmann’s most divinely nightmarish score – immensely intense. 

There are a fair amount of flaws in this, however. Most glaring – aside from Hedren’s acting – would have to be the shoddy projection work that occurs in more than just the driving scenes: the shots on horseback are hilariously bad, which is a shame because I was generally impressed by the overall aesthetic and cinematography. Certain plot threads I feel could have been fleshed out more – such as the sister who sort of just gets sidelined – and the climactic flashback scene that explains everything to do with Marnie is also very underwhelming, which sadly meant the film ended on a downward note. Even so, these flaws aren’t anywhere near big enough to make me forget just how gripped I was by the narrative as a whole: Hitchcock is, after all, a master of suspense and a genius at hooking the audience to every twist in the plot. In many ways, this feels like a combination of the set-up for Psycho – the main character runs away with money – and the corrupted romance of Vertigo – with its exploration of desire and the need to control leading to despair. Marnie adds its own twist to those two better films by having it lead to a happy ending for the two leads, which probably makes it weaker and not as memorable, but still leaves me with a rewarding experience. 

Hitchcock is a director who excels at exploring the taboo, projecting his own insecurities and shortcomings into dramatic – sometimes overly so – settings, examining humans in all their beauty and ugliness that are all too often indistinguishable from one another. This inherently results in his films possessing certain inherent flaws that are impossible to scrub off and can even be indicting of Hitchcock’s moral character, but are nevertheless masterful in the exploration of said flaws and the way it makes us think about our own moral values, told through the most thrilling of plots and enchanting of characters. Marnie is by no means the best case of this, but I certainly think it’s a worthy attempt.

Another Hitchcock classic with the one Hitchcock himself considered to be his best: Shadow of a Doubt. Charlie Newton is frustrated because nothing seems to be happening in her life, until she receives wonderful news that her uncle Charlie is arriving for a visit – but Uncle Charlie may not be the man he seems to be. Damn, I didn’t realise until now just how much Park Chan-wook’s Stoker is influenced by this film – both of the psycho-killers being called Uncle Charlie is, after all, a dead giveaway. I already knew Park was like the Korean Hitchcock, but the directing is definitely much more consistently strong with this old master filmmaker, as I really felt Park fumbled the ball when trying to add his own spin to a story Hitchcock had already done so well. 

Shadow of a Doubt is among Hitchcock’s pre golden age works, so his style hasn’t yet reached the heights he’s so famous for nor does the writing craft the thematically rich narratives that makes him so enticing to analyse. And yet this is practically a faultless film, with great dialogue teeming in subtle subtext, captivating performances to show off the nuanced characterisation, minimal yet purposeful camera technique to accentuate the most important moments, and brisk pacing to elevate the enticing plot with a never ending sense of thrill. There’s many moments in here that might seem too inconspicuous or even unnecessary – which for me would normally serve as a point of critique – but it all adds up to bring the family to life, thus giving the fact that they’re innocently hiding a murderer in their house greater suspense. I particularly loved the way the father and his friend would often ponder about how they’d kill each other (something I can relate with) as that made for a hilarious running gag to serve as a nice bit of dramatic irony in the way it obliviously mirrors the actual murderer. So while the plot might not dare to endeavour into any territory that could be considered as particularly thought provoking – nor is there any real visual flair to make the picture an enchanting spectacle – the film itself is genuinely as perfectly crafted as it can get.

My final film is another Kaufman movie to add to my favourites. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind sees Joel Barish heartbroken that his girlfriend underwent a procedure to erase him from her memory, and so he decides to do the same. However, as he watches his memories of her fade away, he realises that he still loves her, and so tries to correct his mistake. You can never go wrong with Charlie Kaufman, because I honestly think he’s my favourite contemporary writer. Such beautiful, slick, charming, hilarious, poignant writing that never falters, exploring the peaks and troughs of human relationships through his ever-present and endearing existentialist lens. Kaufman excels at dissecting life’s most depressing moments amidst the most bizarre of situations, and here he’s done it again with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I don’t think it’s his absolute best screenplay – that title still goes to Synecdoche New York – but there really isn’t any point in trying to distinguish the differences in quality between what he’s written when everything he writes is a masterpiece.

The thing is though, it’s easy to take for granted the way Kaufman so gorgeously explores a man’s regret at losing his memories and his bittersweet embracing of his final cherished moments, but such a thing could just as easily fall apart without proper visual depiction of his subjective experience. Thankfully, Michel Gondry brings Kaufman’s perfect writing to life with a superbly wild style. At first I was hesitant, since the prologue felt rather cheaply shot, but once it gets to the long nightmare sequence that forms the main bulk of this film, Gondry turns the insanity up to eleven with surreal transformations and transitions between settings that can’t make up their mind about whether they want to be mundane or nonsense – mirroring Kate Winslet’s eccentric and impulsive character with exquisite irony. The gradual deterioration of Joel’s mind – the tragedy itself being incredibly delivered by Jim Carrey in a rare subdued performance – is funny in the bluntness of the special effects, fascinating in its persistence through otherwise normally directed scenes, and melancholic as it merges so eloquently with the tear-jerking writing. If I had to be nitpicky, I could say that the real life scenes happening in parallel to the mind wipe aren’t as gripping, plus it kind of doesn’t make sense that Joel knows everything that’s going on outside his mind when he’s supposed to be in deep slumber. But any minor flaws really don’t matter because at its heart this is such a gorgeous gem, made all the more precious by how the prologue – which I originally thought was weakly directed – comes back around in a most satisfying and wholesome twist.

And with that, we have now arrived at the section of my Weekly Recap where I talk about the series I watched this week. Obviously, I’ve just finished the 10th and final season of Doctor Who. I’m very sad it’s over, because I’ve enjoyed rewatching Capaldi’s run so much. But while it’s a shame the show got cancelled after Series 10, at the very least it ended on an amazingly high note. 

Series 10 is a weird season of Doctor Who because it feels so isolated from the rest. All the others felt like logical progressions from one to the next, but Series 10 feels like it’s decided to start with a clean slate of sorts. It does still continue certain character and theme threads that were set up with Series 8 and 9 – as I’ll elaborate on shortly – but as a whole Series 10 very much acts as a stand alone piece of television and honestly is a great place to jump on because of that (ironic, of course, considering this is the final season). The Doctor is now a professor in a university, and the lectures we see him give in some episodes are simply incredible. Capaldi is captivating every second he’s on screen, so when he monologues his screen presence is simply astronomical, no doubt helped himself by Moffat’s brilliant writing. It’s here that he finds his new companion, Bill. She’s probably the most mundane companion we’ve had so far, and she can get annoying when she won’t stop reminding everybody about her single character trait, but she still works brilliantly with Capaldi to craft a humourous and endearing professor-student dynamic, which turns into some rather poignant scenes as the ending takes a turn for the tragic. Though to counterbalance Bill’s normality is Nardole, played by the comedian Matt Lucas. I’ll be honest, I despised him so much the first time I watched Series 10, but I’ve actually grown rather fund of him over the years. Nardole does bring a great deal of comic relief to every scene he’s in, which makes each episode that much enjoyable. These three together form a TARDIS team that hasn’t been seen before, making for a refreshing change of pace to the standard set up of just a single human girl, which has admittedly gotten tiring.

By no means are Bill and Nardole my favourite companions though, which is where the genius of the individual episodes comes in. They start off feeling pretty fillery, but The Pilot, Smile, Thin Ice and Knock Knock are still solid adventures. Series 10 gets properly good with Oxygen however, which is simply a fantastically constructed episode that leaves the Doctor with his first permanent injury: blindness. It’s a disability that he has to grapple with for quite sometime, which is something the show has never been brave enough to do, thus adding so much weight to this revelation. It does get resolved by the end of the next story, the epic Monk three-parter, but what has to happen for the Doctor to be cured allows the villains to actually win for once. The Monk arc doesn’t stick the landing with Lie of the Land unfortunately, but it’s still a showcase of the fantastic writing Moffat is capable of – especially with Extremis – which is only topped by the actual finale to Series 10: World Enough And Time and The Doctor Falls. These episode are simply magnificent, but what makes them work so well is the incredible character arc Missy has undergone. This is the thematic thread I mentioned that has weaved its way through the entirety of Capaldi’s run, which is to say Missy’s growth and attempt to become good. Well, not good per se, but she certainly wants to regain the Doctor’s friendship, and the only way she can is by learning to stop being evil. Bill and Nardole are just distractions, because the real heart of Series 10 is precisely The Master’s relationship with The Doctor, with Michelle Gomez and Peter Capaldi cranking out some outstanding performances.

Series 10 is a relaxing season, free of the self-indulgent arcs and universe-shattering stories, instead focusing much more on the characters in a way that Series 9 didn’t quite manage. Nearly every episode is brilliantly written and beautifully directed, leading to a climax that is so wonderful and bittersweet that I couldn’t possibly ask for a better ending to the show.