9. Leon (1994)

(Number 56 on Empire’s list of the 301 Greatest Movies)

“Is life always this hard, or is it just when you’re a kid?” – Mathilda.

“Always like this.” – Leon.

When one is borrowing DVD’s from another, they are kind of forced into watching the films sooner, rather than later. This was the case with Leon, although I must admit I was fairly pleased with the choice I had made (out of the 5-ish DVD’s I’d borrowed). Jean Reno (Leon) and a young Natalie Portman (Mathilda) make for quite a “cleaning” duo… With Natalie Portman being unrecognizable to the eye (my eyes, anyway). Who doesn’t love a good assassination film though, right?

What do you always get in a film with a hit man? An overly hyperactive insane two-faced cop, with a passion for drugs and killing people who enjoy life. Gary Oldman does quite the acting job when it comes to Stansfield and his characteristics. One of the most memorable things about this character would have to be how his DEA agents are incredibly frightened by his actions, and simply do not follow him when he attacks the family.. Probably for the best, they’d most likely get killed too. You get to see them attempt to calm him later in the film.. Quite a team and a leader we have here, makes for some very amusing scenes.

 I’d have to say Leon makes for quite an entertaining film during the time in which you don’t have a laptop and you’re incredibly bored. It perks up your day, and makes it that little bit interesting. Let’s face it though, a crime drama thriller always does wonders to make your day interesting. it definitely did for me. A film about a hit man teaching a 12 year old how to “clean”, who wouldn’t love it?

Scene that comes to mind – Stansfield roaming around Mathilda’s flat killing her family, with his men staying close to the door due to being scared of him. Definitely amusing.

Favorite thing – Just the whole character of Stansfield. Who doesn’t love an insane two-faced cop with a love for classical music and popping pills when about to kill?

Least favorite thing – I really hoped for a simply father-daughter relationship between Leon and Mathilda, but the relationship that they do have adds to the essence of the film.

Rating – H – 65/100. K – 80/100.

IMDB Page

– H

8. Beetlejuice (1988)

Tim Burton gives us the ultimate in the comic-horror range of bio-exorcisms. It’s showtime.

 (Burton took one look at Michael Keaton and thought “Yep, that’s my Batman.”)

The Film…

So you’re dead, you can’t leave your home, the living want to claim it and ruin your remodelling and eventually they want to claim you, tricky one… what to do? Well there’s a word for people like you, say it three times and you’re in for something terrifying. Just the thing to get rid of those living scum right, a bio-exorcist. So Beetlejuice, Beetlegeuse, Betelguese!

Where to begin? I think I’ll start with the little exclamation of surprise I gave when the opening titles were rolling and I found out that this was indeed a Tim Burton film. I went, “Oh, Tim Burton.” and then “Oh, Danny Elfman.” as one of the world’s favourite film composer’s appeared too. But really who else would give you a film that began with an upliftingly creepy, tuneful lilt and gave its establishing sequence of landscape shots through a sequence of close ups of a scale model of a small town? Of course it was Burton and Elfman. One of the other names I thought I recognised was that of Michael McDowell (turns out I meant Graham, the Irish golfer), but, whom we discovered had written Beetlejuice (with edits by Larry Wilson and Warren Skaaren) and adapted Burton’s ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ for screen. We also soon realised that he was dead, which is a shame because it means he’ll never write anything again, not in this world at least.

In the film the recently married Maitland’s Adam and Barbara (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) vacation at home becomes their last ever vacation as they pass into the undead and conclude that nothing really matters now, aside from the manual they’ve been given on just how to be dead. Yet the Deetz, Delia (Catherine O’Hara), Charles (Jeffrey Jones) and the young Lydia (Winona Ryder) not to mention the fabulously arrogant Otho (Glenn Shadix), make sure that they realise how much things still matter to them. With their display of what a rich 80’s family and their ‘in the know’ interior designer can do to terrify the undead, (one of the things apparently is sculpture), the Maitland’s only chance perhaps is Lydia, who seems to be able to see what they’re going through. When wearing sheets, pulling their own heads off and making the Deetz’ dinner party into a Harry Belafonte themed dance sensation doesn’t work the Maitland ghosts seek help from the other side. This only leads to a waiting room full of the recently deceased and sassy case handler Juno (Sylvia Sidney), who is less than impressed with their progress, but warns them not to go near Betelgeuse. Yet when they can’t stand the art, interior design and being made a novelty of any longer then that’s when the fun begins.

The visual work on this film is as you would expect with a Tim Burton piece, gorgeous and entirely boggly eyed, multiboxed spooky. Beetlejuice is a sensation of a film for the set design, make-up and  animation alone, but also because Betlegeuse is such a sensationally disgusting character. Michael Keaton’s performance as the stripy suited, pale faced motormouth, fearmonger and creep is hilarious. Genuinely hilarious. Sustaining this level of other worldly sleazy madman charisma for each scene means that simple lines just shine, in ways they only do for instance with a character like (his complete opposite) Steve Carrel’s ‘Brick’ in Anchorman.  Everything about Betlegeuse is disgusting, and that’s the way it’s meant to be, it’s what makes him the perfect anti-villain, yes he’s prepared to help, but only if he can get his way, and his way is out.

Notable too are the touching moments of insight into the black clad Lydia Deetz’ young loneliness and how finding these ghosts is like finding a family that really cares about her. The film I’d praise in the same way I’d praise The Royal Tenenbaums and Richard Ayoade’s recent film ‘The Double’ for the way in which they treat suicide, films with a comedic lightness that touch on the subject very well by presenting it as a genuine prospect for real humans and don’t shy away from that. Here we have a lonely adolescent girl who is the most in touch with the world because she listens and looks and thus can see the Maitland’s, driven to wanting them there so she can be dead with them too, and on the other hand you have the fact that in this underworld “all of those who’ve committed suicide become civil servants”. It’s a balancing act of fiction that Lydia’s character arc really does well to hold, especially in the final scene. Other arcs of atmosphere in the film can lose themselves to a lack of interest depending on what state of attention you’re willing to pay, especially in the case of the real estate based moments, (which are thankfully saved by Otho many a time). I really do enjoy however the closeness that Tim Burton’s films have to childhood and adolescence, how the growing up part is confusing in a world where you’re not shielded from adult ideas. The adultness that she has is what keeps Lydia’s character so attractive to Betlegeuse, and the fact that he’s explicitly expressed that he’s there to take her away and wont be stopped is the crux of the creepiness when combined with Burton’s more horrific scenes; unless the Maitlands have something to do about it all. (Spoiler – which, of course, they do.)

Beetlejuice, to conclude – a whacky visual treat, a helluva of a story and a host of great performances. See Alec Baldwin be charming, young and stretch his face over itself, see Winona Ryder be melancholy and younger, see Glenn Shadix be obnoxious and flaunt it and see Michael Keaton be the best he’s ever been. Watch it, before it ends up growing eyes and watches you.

– K

Notes…

Number 278 on Empire’s list of The 301 Greatest Movies of All Time

5 Things You May Not Know About Beetlejuice

Early Draft of McDowell’s Beetlejuice Script

A scene that comes straight to mind…

One of the instances that the Maitlands step outside of the house and are propelled into a yellow sand dune world of the surreal and almost eaten by a sandworm, one of Burton’s wondrous, fanged head-within-a-head creations.

“Whoa, sandworms. Ya hate ’em right? I HATE ‘EM MYSELF!” – Betelguese, later, on the topic of sandworms.

Rating… K – 76/100. H – 80/100.

5. Battle Royale (2000)

Number 289 on Empire’s list of the 301 Greatest Films Of All Time

“So today’s lesson is, you kill each other off till there’s only one left. Nothing’s against the rules.” – Teacher Kitano.

What’s the best way to spend your 17th Birthday? Well, that’s obviously watching a gruesome thriller about Japanese kids in the 9th grade being forced to kill each other by their government. Beautiful, right? With the films tagline being “Could you kill your best friend?“, it becomes obvious this film is not going to be light-hearted, in any way.

Starting off with 42 students, the film keeps up with its status in the drama genre, with the constant killing you get to witness. In a way, the tagline itself describes the film perfectly, as the answer to this question decides whether you live or die. Only one person is allowed to survive, meaning if you don’t kill you will be killed, and if you do kill.. Well, you’re most likely going to die anyway. With the three day rule (If there isn’t only one person left after three days, then everyone dies) and the danger zones placed randomly on the island, it’s no doubt there would be a major amount of casualties shown. Quite a few of the deaths come of as seemingly disturbing.. Although, if you’ve watched quite a few horrors (like me), you might just find yourself thinking “What even is going on?”. It’s just one of those films, I guess.

The major thing to point out about BR is the similarities in the plot, when compared to The Hunger Games. (Book link).. With the obvious point being Battle Royale was released many years before HG’s book and film, both contain fairly similar plots, being.. Kids are forced by their government to kill each other, leaving only one successor. K pointed this out before we watched the film and, being a fab fan of HG, I didn’t want to admit that HG just might have taken a bit of their plot from BR, but it’s an inevitable fact and fairly obvious.. Once you’ve watched both (and possibly the books). Quite a shame, actually. Although, BR is definitely more gruesome.

Rating –

H – 68/100

K – 72/100

Scene that comes to mind – Five girls killing each other as they think one of them poisoned another. The girl who actually did the poisoning survived. Ahh.. Brilliant.

Favorite thing about the film – The plot is obviously brilliant.

Least favorite thing about the film – It was so brilliant HG basically ripped it off. Why must America always have remakes of Japanese films?

Fab Links – There’s an actual website? According to IMDB, anyway. In Japanese, though. Be sure to translate it..

IMDB Page – http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266308/?ref_=ttqt_qt_tt

– H

Introducing. I K and she H.

I K, and she H, watch films. She watches a lot more than I do in short spaces of time via the internet, while I end up watching a broad range of them down to my collecting DVDs. The cinema also happens, occasionally. Recently H and I realised, during our scrolling through lists of ‘top (insert apt number) films’, that we’ve both watched a lot less of the ‘top’ films than we made out that we have in conversation – individually, together and to each other. We are liars. We felt guilty. We looked at the fact that we’d not watched The Godfather Trilogy or Scarface with an abject feeling of pissed-off-edness and sat staring into the distance.

We needed to do something about that. So instead of pretending to have watched all of the films from (firstly) Empire magazine’s recent readership voted poll, ‘The 301 Greatest Movies Of All Time‘, we went through said list writing down films that we needed to watch. This took us about 40 minutes, an episode of The Crystal Maze fast dissolving by in the background. Both of us ended up with lists of over 170 films that we are determined to watch, while cutting out the rare few that have never interested us anyway in the slightest… Dirty Dancing, for instance, can come to me in its own time, I’m not specifically going to go to it.

170+ seems like an awfully big number but that’s only the start of it all. Seeing as there are polls out there from industry professionals and cult film societies alike this popular starting point seems pretty much the most convenient. As a starting point, by the way, it amounts to an estimated 10 whole days of films. Brilliant.

Our Evolution Into Filmwatchers (us far left)