1990-1999

25.10.23 Strained love in a world of opulence. In The Age of Innocence, we see what a versatile filmmaker Martin Scorsese truly is. It’s hard to believe this is the same director behind gritty classics like Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, although here you can see a lighter, more subdued side in the likes of his recent films Silence and Killers of The Flower Moon. Scorsese subtly crafts a slow-burning period piece, allowing the social mores and unspoken rules of 1870s New York high society to simmer under the surface.  At the heart of it all is an excellent performance by Daniel Day-Lewis. In Newland Archer, we see a man torn in half between his safe, social responsibilities and the hedonist abandon of true love with a forbidden woman. A suave character matched up brilliantly with a classy performance, of a man who seemingly has everything, until he doesn’t. Winona Ryder also impresses as she grows into her role as Archer’s wife-to-be Mary Welland, with some powerful work in the latter half of the film involving intimate, showing scenes with DDL. I also really admired Joanne Woodward’s wistful, dreamlike narration which cements the film’s sense of time and place well. She perfectly captures the romantic but complex emotional tones of the narrative as she guides us through Archer’s inner thoughts and struggles. Coming back to The Age of Innocence in 2023 serves as a welcome tonic to some of Scorsese’s longer and more dense films of late. At a tight 2 hours, this one is lush, elegant, and poetic in a way that modern films rarely achieve.  Scorsese succeeded in creating an insular world that feels far removed from today. From the ornate costume design to the sparkling dinner parties, The Age of Innocence is a gorgeous film that holds up incredibly well 30 years later. It’s a transportive viewing experience, which politely requests its audience to slow down and appreciate the details.

2.2.24 How do you cinematically portray people making life-changing, world-affecting decisions? Superbly shot and boasting impeccable recreations of the only 60 Minutes broadcast I’ve ever watched, The Insider reveals a chilling reality: how hard it is to tell a simple truth when ‘Big Tobacco’ wants it silenced. Three big-screen heavyweights fully showcase their capabilities here. First, Al Pacino intensely simmers as TV producer Lowell Bergman; a muted performance by his standards, yet still decent. Second, a youthful Russell Crowe delivers a subversive, beta-role as whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand, characterising the intelligence and weight of a man some 20 years his senior. But third and most impressively, Christopher Plummer fully chews the scenery as 60 Minutes’ charismatic host Mike Wallace. His casual authority and bulldog-like vigour belie Plummer’s near-70 years. In minor criticism, I would have preferred more focus on Plummer, as he has far less screen time than Pacino and Crowe, which is understandable considering how high their stock was in the late nineties after Heat and LA Confidential respectively. However, compared to those films, there’s little action here, despite no shortage of tension either, especially in the methodical first hour. It’s Michael Mann’s least physically violent film but due to the serious wide-reaching subject matter, it feels no less impactful. The most riveting moments seem mundane, Crowe and Pacino sitting in a Japanese restaurant on the floor with the camera flipping between sides of the room as the conversation becomes slowly more intense, as does their professional relationship. Meticulously edited, The Insider contains no dud shots, badly lit frames or dodgy focuses; everything is as it needs to be to get its point across. Undoubtedly long, yet absent of anything superfluous. Even the lone villain Michael Gambon’s repeated appearances feel compulsory, re-stating the coldness of corporate corruption. A film which reminds us that in real life, the biggest fiends are not those with fangs or claws, but the ones with global influence and mile-high piles of money to protect their interests from scrutiny.

25.3.24 It’s hard for most people to say anything remotely interesting about one of the most important films of the 1990s, but I’ll try anyway with two key points. As stupid as it sounds, Fight Club honestly got me into reading books properly. After seeing it at 15 years old, I remember telling my older stepbrother how much I loved this film. It opened me up to other works by the writer Chuck Palahniuk, such as Lullaby, Choke, and Survivor. Some of these books he bought for me as gifts, alongside many Nine Inch Nails CDs and Spawn McFarlane action figures. From there, it introduced me to similar transgressive writers that I still love to read from time to time, like Bret Easton Ellis, Kurt Vonnegut, and Irvine Welsh. There’s no doubt Fight Club was the catalyst that ignited a respect for literature, which undoubtedly helped in my academic life. Fight Club transformed me from a casual moviegoer into a genuine film lover. When I was 16, my micro-analysis of the film’s themes, such as late modernism, consumerism, and neo-Marxism, led to my first proper piece of writing on film. This project was part of my AS Film Studies course, and it marked the beginning of my journey into a deeper appreciation and understanding of cinema. Fight Club challenged me to look beyond the obvious and explore the profound ideas and concepts that great films can convey. Ultimately, the film is a critique of capitalism, although the surface-level themes of masculine identity, fetishism, and violent protest somewhat obscure this. I could also say I wouldn’t have a career as a sociology teacher without this film, but that might be pushing it too far. Nonetheless, Fight Club’s impact on my personal and intellectual growth as a teenager cannot be overstated. It’s a film which encourages rule-breaking, at least in terms of breaking away from conventional, consensus thinking on a societal level. Because of that, I’m also happy to disregard the first rule of Fight Club.

29.01.23 The Player is a real enigma of a film. One on hand it’s incredibly cynical, but simultaneously, it’s positively joyous. It’s full of A-List actors, but is acutely ‘anti-Hollywood’. The motives of the film’s central characters are selfish and slimy, but the film is all surface smiles, shiny suits and vacations to Acapulco. I enjoyed it on the whole, despite it feeling like a ‘back-patting’ exercise of Altman trying to cram as much talent into the 2 hours as possible. Sometimes the cameos are as short as 10 seconds with no audible dialogue, which becomes rather annoying. I feel like a lazy way of making the audience interested in what’s on the screen. There is an overreliance on this device being used repeatedly (apparently there are 65 cameos!) at the expense of some of the more interesting characters in the film, such as Whoopi Goldberg as the detective, and Tim Robbins’ Icelandic love interest. I did feel that the ending lands well though and has a sweet irony, which ties it up nicely. Maybe some viewers will have fun pointing at the screen every time a famous face pops up, but I found that element slightly tiresome despite this being a really well-written and ‘of its time’ nineties satire.