Hugo Sylvain (InfamousHugo)

BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS (2009)
dir. Werner Herzog
cast. Nicolas Cage, Eva Mandes, Val Kilmer

Here's what Werner Herzog has to say about directing a remake of Abel Ferrara's "cult" flick Bad Lieutenant: I've never even seen the original film, so we know now the films have nothing to do with each other. (It was the film's producers who insisted on the title) It was a speculation to start a franchise. And from day one, I said this is a mistake, it will backfire, it is wrong. Got it. Its not a remake.

Nicolas Cage is a terrific actor. He is fearless. Unfortunately, he never seems to know how to dose it in whatever roles he picks. Or actually, his performances are barely ever suitable to the characters he plays, making him look bad, uselessly quirky and annoying. With Bad Lieutenant he finds the shoe that fits. His paring with the German director is a match made in heaven. They both understand the material, which would have been bad in lesser hands.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is like an over-the-top parody, and I can already hear some people asking what it is that critics like about this film. The tone is subtle, and it can easily be mistaken as a badly written screenplay, when in fact, it is a terrific film.

Cage is the painkiller-addicted Lieutenant who has to solve a murder, while dealing with mobsters, drug dealers, his prostitute girlfriend, some gambling problem, etc ... There is a lot going on. At one point I was afraid it would all fall apart, but instead, every subplot is imbricated and nothing is left unresolved in the end. But Bad Lieutenant isnt really about the plots - or the subplots - but rather about the madness, almost surrealistic, but its not even close to be a character study.

Werner Herzog said of his film its the most hilarious one of his resume. I agree, but not hilarious in a laugh-out-loud way. Herzog doesnt take the script seriously and lets the story tell itself. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans has nothing to do with the Harvey Keitel flick of 1992. A lot of people will be turned off by its crudeness, or they simply wont get its tone. Its not for everyone, but its a terrific film, and it features Nicolas Cage's best performance in years.

THE UNTOUCHABLES (1987)
dir. Brian DePalma
cast. Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Andy Garcia

This is the fictionalized true story of how Elliot Ness went after Al Capone and brought him down. The Untouchables is most likely one of the best adaptation of a TV series along with The Fugitive. Brian DePalma goes all out here, doing great references to such great filmmakers as Seirgei Eisenstein without ever making it feel like a copy, like in previous films - DePalma's usual biggest problem - Dressed to Kill comes to mind. As usual, he uses complex camera movements and great long take making this film technically impressive sometimes. The train station scene is a classic.

The score by Ennio Morricone helps the intensity of the film and a few scenes are simply great because of his music. He also absorbs you right into the movie with the opening credits. Definitely a memorable score.

Kevin Costner had his big break in 1987, in part thank to this film, he gives a fair performance but Sean Connery steals the show as the old agent Malone while Robert DeNiro is almost overacting or parodying himself.

David Mamet's screenplay is clever, we get real characters with some development and some real struggle when they deal with killing people, even if they are bad guys. One of DePalma's best.

JAWS (1975) directed by Steven Spielberg starring Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw

The shark looked fake, but pure cinematic timing - meaning the right shot combined with fine acting and a killer soundtrack - made it scarier than your bedroom in the dark passed midnight at age 6.

«That's some bad hat, Harry.»

Its very hard to categorize Jaws, its part horror, part drama and part action picture. It was the first film to be released on hundreds of screens simultaneously making it, the first blockbuster in history of cinema. It obviously created a precedent, and for that reason it is easy to hate Spielberg or the film itself. But in the end, if Jaws had never been made, blockbusters would still have been created. In the 70's, cinema expanded into more than just the seventh art, it became a popular entertainment. Steven Spielberg is only one of the few young talented filmmakers who emerged from that era, some of the greatest movie directors began back then. Martin Scorsese, Francis Coppola, Brian De Palma, George Lucas are only few of the names that made what cinema has become, for better or for worse.

Based on a novel by Peter Benchley, Jaws tells the story of a small community where tourists spend a lot of time in the summer because of their nice beaches. A girl goes missing and is soon found, decapitated on the beach. Most likely a shark did that and Police Chief Martin Brody takes the right action when he wants to close the beaches. Amity Island needs the summer money to survive and the mayor wont let Brody go on with his plans. It doesnt take long for another victim to come up. The mother of the kid who was killed by the giant fish offers a reward for whoever catches the shark. Thats when Matt Hooper arrives, a shark specialist, but he aint there to kill the monster. A shark is captured and people go back to the beaches for the Fourth of July. Brody knows the shark that was caught wasnt the one and he stays aware of everything going on but that doesnt keep the shark from killing again.

«You're gonna need a bigger boat.»

That when the films becomes a character study. Brody and Hooper embarks on a ship with Quint, an experienced shark killer, they go for a hunt. There are tensions between them three, caused by their differences. Spielberg takes time to set the mood and let the characters develop. There is a terrific scene, after an exhausting day of trying to catch the great white shark, they are in the cabin, done eating, drinking and finally bounding. Thats when Quint tells a terrific monologue about the USS Indianapolis.

«Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, Chief. We was comin' back from the island of Tinian to Leyte... just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that when you're in the water, Chief? You tell by looking from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know, was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. (...) »

Several writers worked on that speech but Robert Shaw, who played Quint, is the one who came up with the final version, the one in the film, and personally, thats one of the most uplifting moments I have ever scene in a movie. Shaw is terrific in the film, never trying to be likeable but delivering his lines with the right amount of tension and mannerism. Roy Scheider gives a fine performance as Brody. A man who left the big city to settle on a small island. Events that happened when he was younger created a fear of boat and water inside of him but because he feels the people of his community are in danger, he faces that fear and goes on the boat to fight the shark. The ultimate «face-off» is actually quite something. Richard Dreyfuss completes the trio as Hooper, acting with all his skills and charisma.

A review of Jaws could never be complete if John Williams' music wasnt mentionned. The simplicity of his score made the film even scarier. He is responsible for at least half the success of the film. Combined with Verna Fields' clever editing and Steven Spielberg's fierce hunger to make a film, it created some of the most effective scenes in modern cinema. Add humor and fine acting to the mix and you get a fun piece of cinema. Spielberg managed to work around a fake shark that barely ever worked, a schedule that was ultimately tripled, actors arguing all the time, pressure from the studios and the producers. He was only a young man and made a name for himself showing experience and talent. In the end it proves its not how good the effect is, ut how well you use it and how well it serves the story and not the opposite. Spielberg has been using effects only in the need to tell a good story, an he proved with Jaws, to excel at that, from the very beginning of his career.

I think its obvious by now that Im a huge Steven Spielberg fan and Im aware many people hate him maybe because of an apparent lack of interegrity, but the man has never lied about his intentions with each of his films. He is willing to say if a film was made to please himself or the audience or simply to carry a message. Jaws doesnt have a message thats for sure but its pure entertainment with some type of depth and character development. I admire Spielberg for the film he created and I wont despise him for what his film created and what followed. Maybe without him there would be no Michael Bay or Rob Cohen, and I know that would be an amazing world to live in, but it wouldnt as amazing as living in a world with this film. If I had to watch only one movie for the rest of my life, it would be Jaws. Classic.

«Smile you son of a bitch.»