Blood Simple review

 Number 586 on the top 1000 films of all time is the neo-noir 'Blood Simple.'

Barman Ray (John Getz) is having an affair with his boss Marty's (Dan Hedaya) wife Abby (Frances Mcdormand.) Upon discovering this, Marty arranges sleazy PI Loren Visser (M. Emmet Walsh) to kill them both.

Blood Simple was the directorial debut of the Coen Brothers. They also wrote and produced the film. And they certainly laid the groundwork for their future careers. This was long before they were winning Academy Awards or creating the most surreal of cinema, but they set the stage for things to come.

Often I find Coen Brothers' films too zany and weird, but Blood Simple was relatively straightforward. Or as straightforward as any noir film can be. As one can expect, Blood Simple has many twists and turns although it all makes sense in the end. I think...kinda...

Speaking of debuts, this was also the screen debut of the always terrific Frances Mcdormand. Just like the Coen Brothers, she was laying the groundwork for her future career. What an illustrious career it has been. She remains one of only three actors to win three Best Acting Oscars - sharing the honour with Katherine Hepburn and Daniel Day-Lewis. Standing on shoulders of giants to say the least... 

Along with Katy Hepburn, Frances Mcdormand has really improved representation of women characters on-screen. Long gone are the days of women either being dumb blondes, sex objects or scream queens. The likes of Mcdormand and Hepburn proved that women are capable of playing just as interesting, tough and fully-formed characters as men do. 

Abby is no exception. She's more than capable of protecting herself from all the sleazy men in her life - you only need to look at how she deals with the sleazy PI Visser. He is just one of the many sleazy men in Abby's life - all played by relatively unknown actors who haven't gone onto have the same careers as Frances Mcdormand.

It's a credit to the Coen Brothers that they were able to write, produce and direct, such a thrilling and inventive neo-noir film with such an unknown cast.

Shortcuts review

Number 563 on the top 1000 films of all time is Robert Altman’s comedy drama: Short Cuts. 

Short Cuts tells a slice of life story of a group of strangers in LA whose lives occasionally intersect. There is the Finnegan family consisting of TV personality Howard (Bruce Davison,) his wife Anne (Andie Mcdowell) and their son Casey. There is also the Wymans: Ralph (Matthew Modine) and Marian (Julianne Moore,) and not forgetting Marian’s sister, Sherri (Madeline Stowe) whose husband, cop Gene (Tim Robbins) is cheating on her. Chris Penn, Robert Downey Junior, Frances Mcdormand, Tom Waits and a whole host of others all co-star.

Shortcuts reminded me of other slice-of-life films like Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia or the repulsive Happiness – insert links. Just like Short Cuts which clocked in at a monstrous 188 minutes, Magnolia and Happiness are similarly epic in length. This is also matched by their huge ensemble casts including the likes of Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman and others I need to check. Through the very nature of slice-of-life films, you need interesting characters. They are absolutely essential for the plot to succeed. In this regard, Short Cuts wasn’t comparable to Magnolia at all, but at least it wasn’t disgusting like Happiness.

Unfortunately, Short Cuts did just lack the same interesting and memorable characters that films like Magnolia had. Tom Cruise was rightly nominated for an Oscar for his work in Magnolia. He was terrific, but I can’t really think of any equivalent performances in Short Cuts. Robert Altman landed a Best Director nod, but that was it for the Oscars. Although evidently the critics don’t agree with me as Short Cuts won Best Ensemble at the Golden Globes, Julianne Moore and Andi McDowell were nominated and Madeline Stowe received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar from the National Society of Film Critics.

That’s their prerogative. I still can’t think back to a certain character and definitively say this film was all the better with them in it.  Many of the characters blended into one with few exceptions. I don’t think Tim Robbins was particularly convincing as the alcoholic, antagonistic, adultering cop Gene…but maybe it’s because he was so damn good in films like the Shawshank Redemption or Mystic River where he played tragic heroes.

Alas I think Short Cuts was a film undone by its very premise. If you have a slice-of-life drama where the audience has no interest in the lives being portrayed, then you won’t have a very interesting film. That was the case here.

Mississippi Burning review

 Number 470 on the top 1000 films of all time is the 1988 crime-thriller 'Mississippi Burning.'

Mississippi Burning is based on the true story of three civil rights activists going missing in a small Mississippi town. When FBI agents Rupert Anderson (Gene Hackman) and Alan Ward (Wilhelm Dafoe) start investigating, they are met with hostility from the town's racist locals. Soon they suspect the three activists were killed by the KKK. Frances Mcdormand, Brad Dourif, Michael Rooker, R. Lee Erney and Stephen Tobolowsky co-star.

I recently wrote a listicle about films too traumatic to watch again. If I were to write another list, surely Mississippi Burning would be at the top of the list. This is a film that does not shy away from the United States' racist past. Rather, it tackles it head-on. And there's no other way you can depict such horrible subject matter.

Mississippi Burning is a harrowing and brutal portrayal of the ugly discrimination that the black community was forced to endure. Yes, it does show it through the perspective of white men, and it would be have been more interesting if the black men were put more front-and-centre, but it was still a powerful watch all the same.

The relationship between Anderson and Ward underpinned the film. Anderson, the older and more maverick of the two, has to follow the orders of the younger, but more senior in rank, Ward, who is a stickler for the rules. Despite their differences, they learn to work together.  Dafoe and Hackman had great chemistry, which shone through.

As Dafoe is a character actor, he usually plays larger-than-life oddballs, usually leading, to over-the-top, exaggerated performances *cough cough* the the Boondock Saints, but he was incredibly measured and controlled in this.

Hackman was also great. Anderson has a romantic subplot with the wife of one of the Mississippi police officers played by Frances Mcdormand. she showed why she is one of the few actors to have won three Best Acting Oscars. Their relationship was wonderfully understated. Originally, the pair were supposed to have a sex-scene, but this was dropped in favour of the two characters standing in the shadows. And that's all we needed to see. Props to the lighting department.

And all the supporting cast were good too: Brad Dourif, Michael Rooker, and, especially, Stephen Tobolowsky were chilling ass the abhorrent KKK members.

Sure there might be some who criticise Mississippi Burning for distorting history, but the key message is clear enough: the black community was subject to terrible, racist abuse. And that's a true we should never forget.

Fargo film Review

 Number 175 on the top 1000 films of all time is the Coen brothers' 1996 black comedy crime film Fargo.

Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) hires two hitmen Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) and Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife to extort a ransom from her wealthy father. When the kidnapping goes awry and three innocents end up dead, police woman Marge Gunderson (Frances Mcdormand) investigates.

This is the second Coen Brothers' film I've seen after The Big Lebowski, and I've also watched Noah Hawley's TV series, Fargo, which was inspired by this very film. Out of the three, I definitely found the movie Fargo, the easiest to follow. It was the simplest with no enigmatic cowboys or UFO encounters.

But then again, it really was nothing special either. And that's down to how unmemorable the characters are. Upon writing this review for the first time, I couldn't remember any of the character's names apart from Marge Gunderson. When it came to the supposed protagonist, Jerry Lundegaard, (I'll come to this later,) his journey was murky.

I can't remember it being explained why he exactly wanted his wife kidnapped and ransomed apart from some vague explanation about how he desperately needed the cash. This kept his motivations opaque and I thought it was strange that we were focussing so much on a character who wasn't even the protagonist. Apparently, the real star was Marge Gunderson who doesn't appear until 33 minutes into the film.

Frances Mcdormand won her first acting Oscar for this film, but I'm not sure why. I haven't seen enough of Mcdormand's work to rate her acting ability, but Fargo didn't do her any favours. She doesn't appear until a third into the film, and when she does, she drinks coffee, eats breakfast and says "yeah," in her "Minnesota Nice." She only stumbles upon Showalter and Grimsrud's cabin by sheer dumb luck. Also I'm no gun expert, but I am sceptical that Gunderson's little Smith & Wesson would have the range to take out the fleeing Grimsrud. But I do think that Mcdormand was short-changed. She wasn't given enough to do to make her performance Oscar-worthy.

I'm not ragging on the film completely. I think Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare were great. Their scenes together provided a lot of the film's humour. Despite having only twenty lines of dialogue, Stormare had a brilliant presence, being a true menace in every scene. And Steve Buscemi is great in every film he's in.

All in all, Fargo was an entertaining crime thriller, but nothing special. Certainly not Oscar-material. And I know the "Minnesota Nice" accents were exaggerated, but it remains one of the weirdest accents in the US.