Taxi Driver - Movie Review - Classic Film of the Week

A compelling and unsettling film exploring many of the fears, aches, and dislocations of contemporary urban life.

Travis Bickle (Robert de Niro) is a lonely, frustrated, and disoriented young Vietnam veteran from the Midwest who is working as a night cabbie in Manhattan. He despises "Sin City" with all its pimps and prostitutes, pushers and perverts. As a taxi driver, he stays somewhat sealed off from this ugly external world. He exists in the private space of his room and his cab — two isolated realms serving as a womb. Travis is the anonymous man. The other people to whom he should normally relate in his development as a person have become constant irritants and challenges to his self-will. By the middle of the film, his womb has been transformed into a fantasy chamber giving him the only opportunity he has to assert himself as the center of the universe.

Director Martin Scorsese who did such a masterful job using New York City as a backdrop for Mean Streets again succeeds in capturing the frantic and frightening side of the metropolis. Whether the scene is set in the slummy East Village, as the Bellmore Cafeteria (a hangout for hack drivers) or at Columbus Circle, the picture is a continuing presentation of an oppressive urban soulscape — the ever unfriendly environment.

Travis prowls the city in his cab. The wretched tenements, the glare of traffic lights at night, the eerie vapors emanating from the streets — all combine to create a feeling for Manhattan as an evil octopus. We begin to feel claustrophobic — closed in and pressed upon. The atmosphere of the film is feverish with constant intimations of impending violence.

Travis is hungry for love and recognition. He aggressively inserts himself into the life of Susan (Cybill Shepherd), an attractive, bright, and socially conscious woman who is working at the campaign headquarters of Presidential candidate Charles Palatine (Leonard Harris). Their encounters at her office, over coffee in a restaurant, and on one date are both bizarre and extremely revealing. The relationship is doomed from the start. Seeing her as "an angel in this filthy mess," Travis puts Susan on a pedestal. When he discovers that she is something less than an angel, his despair deepens.

If he can no longer be an adoring prince, Travis wants to be a savior. He showers his affections upon Iris (Jodie Foster), a twelve-year-old hooker who is the property of Sport (Harvey Keitel), a self-obsessed pimp. The taxi driver offers Iris some money in hopes that she will leave the city and the degradation of her life as a prostitute. She laughingly tells him: "I don't know who's weirder — you or me." But we know.

One of the movie's more poignant scenes takes place one night at the Bellmore Cafeteria. Travis tries to convey to Wizard (Peter Boyle), a veteran cabbie, what he feels about the meaninglessness of his life. He struggles to into words his depression, anger, and bewilderment. Although Wizard is somewhat tuned into that same feeling, he can offer nothing except the suggestion of cheap thrills. This vignette works on a gut level; it puts before us in a very realistic way the many situations in our lives when we have played either the role of victim or adviser. And when the scene is over, we feel the sense of loss in both the failure to communicate and the botched opportunity to help a despondent friend.

Robert De Niro's performance as the nervous and psychopathic Travis is a tightrope act of sustained intensity. It is to the actor's credit that he can involve us so deeply with this person's disequilibrium and rage. De Niro doesn't allow us to distance or disassociate ourselves from this character. He places us in the cab and by the sheer insistence of his performance takes us along for the whole ride This is acting worthy of an Academy Award.

Although Taxi Driver contains an assassination attempt on a Presidential candidate, the movie is not about that subject. By taking us inside a killer's mind, it reveals a very important truth: most murders are little murders. What shocks is the ease with which basic human aches can add up to murder — the working out of private grudges thought political symbols (Travis tries to get back at Susan through Palatine) and the sudden anger which finds release against whoever is at hand (the stomach-turning carnage of the film's finale). Taxi Driver is not for those who are unable to handle cinematic violence.

10 Cloverfield Lane - Movie Review

It might have the C-word in the title, J.J. Abrams producing and a monster in its midst, but this is not Cloverfield 2. Anyone expecting/desiring a sequel to Matt Reeves' 2008 monster mash will feel disappointed at best, cheated at worse, so let's make that thunderously clear from the off. Rather, 10 Cloverfield Lane is, as Abrams puts it, a "spiritual successor" or "blood relative" set in the (shudder) "Cloververse” – a hint of overlap here, a pinch of DNA there.

In fact, so faint are the echoes, not everyone will be convinced that debut director Dan Trachtenberg's suspense-thriller is anything more than a standalone effort. Originally entitled Valencia, it doesn’t take a cynic to point out that slipping 'Cloverfield' into the title of this Bad Robot production can only boost box-office prospects.

What's not to be doubted is the effectiveness of this tense, claustrophobic three-hander. Gone is the setting of a New York teeming with an astonishingly designed kaiju, scuttling alien-arachnids and unpardonably attractive twenty somethings. Instead we have a remote farmhouse – the address of the title – located 40 miles from Lake Charles in Louisiana, though the action is primarily confined to an underground bunker.

Our way in is, who we meet as she packs her stuff to flee a relationship. So forceful is the car crash that she’s subsequently involved in that we, like her, are stunned when she awakens to find herself hooked to a drip in a bare, windowless room with breeze block walls. She’s also chained.

Michelle’s captor is Howard (John Goodman), slovenly clothed, salt ‘n’ pepper beard, routinely flexing his hands as anger and paranoia surge through his tremendous frame. “There’s been an attack, a big one… I’m not sure yet if it’s chemical or nuclear,” he informs Michelle, warning of a fallout that requires they stay underground for “one year, maybe two”. Is he speaking the truth?

The third player in this psychodrama, mellow, eager-to-please Emmet (The Newsroom’s John Gallagher Jr.), certainly thinks so. He supports Howard’s theory that the Southern Seaboard has been attacked, and offers testimony of an appalling flash, “like something you read in the Bible.”

If Cloverfield assaulted our eyes with seesawing, visceral, found-footage thrills, and our ears with the deafening roar of streaking jets and collapsing skyscrapers, 10 Cloverfield Lane is all about pregnant stillness and screaming silence. Trachtenberg is far more traditional in his filmmaking and suspense techniques, right down to the stabbing strings of Bear McCreary’s Bernard Herrmann-esque score, and here delivers a chilling chamber piece in which a bellowed word or a fist thumped down on a table can impact like the Statue Of Liberty’s head bouncing down a Manhattan street

The presence of Whiplash’s Damien Chazelle among the screenwriting credits speaks volumes: Goodman’s Howard is as terrifying as J.K. Simmons’ Fletcher. He might not stop at verbal and psychological abuse, either – 10 Cloverfield Lane burrows deep into horror territory, threatening, at times, to become Martyrs for the masses.

The atmosphere is one of ambiguity and distrust. At the top of the steps to a triple-locked door gleams a small window to the outside world, and through it can be spied two dead pigs, Frank and Mildred, their blood-blistered flesh seemingly lending credence to Howard’s ranting about Russia, North Korea, al-Qaeda, and extraterrestrials. But then how do you explain the Doomsday books on his shelves, or the very existence of this bunker, with its air-filtration unit and tidy living space kitted out with TV, DVDs, jukebox, fish tanks, plants, electrical stove and refrigerator? He is, as Emmet puts it, “a black belt in conspiracy theory”.

All three characters are strongly played by a cast that was allowed to act out the drama chronologically courtesy of the single setting, and each has a backstory that further ratchets the tension – Howard’s mentions of someone called Megan build into a particularly heart-stopping subplot.

But there is humour, too, with the trapped trio continuing to obey table manners in this most extraordinary of settings, and adapting their rhythms until they co-inhabit with something like harmony – movies viewed include Pretty In Pink and Cannibal Airlines. (The latter is a made-up title but Frank Marshall’s 1993 drama Alive is a close fit.)

Does the action ever unpick its padlocks and move above ground? And, if so, is there anything out there that more firmly locates Trachtenberg’s movie in the “Cloververse”? To answer that would be to do the script, with its incrementally-tightening chokehold, a terrible disservice. Although it’s fair to say that the suspicious, strong-minded and thoroughly resourceful Michelle has one eye forever on that outer door, the other on the keys swinging from Howard’s hip. It’s also fair to say that Winstead’s unflashy, deep-dive performance elicits more emotional investment than any of Cloverfield’s comely cut-outs.

It’ll be too slow-burn for some and others are sure to say it’s a Twilight Zone episode stretched over 104 minutes (to which we say: “And?”), but 10 Cloverfield Lane has enough suspense, shocks and scares to be a monster hit. Let’s hope so – someone needs to give Trachtenberg a wad of cash to go shoot Cannibal Airlines.

Triple 9 - Movie Review

John Hillcoat’s Triple 9 sees Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave) playing a bad-ass alongside a team of thieves and corrupt cops who find themselves in the deep end of organized crime.

‘999’ is led by a notable cast, which include Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad), Norman Reedus (The Walking Dead), Clifton Collins Junior (Star Trek), and Anthony Mackie (Captain America). After the enraging death of one of the crew, Chiwetel’s character is forced to take on a near impossible task of stealing some files for the Russian mob, headed by Kate Winslet, whose self-consciously languid cigarette-smoking bring a slight element humor to the otherwise gritty two-hour thriller.

Daryl and Jesse as brothers?! If you’re a fan of Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead you’ll know what we mean. It makes for an interesting watch when two iconic TV characters come together to pull off mission impossible, but we’ll leave our fantasy of a Breaking Bad and TWD crossover at the door. Yet to transcend typecasting, Aaron Paul’s character felt a little like Jesse’s long-lost twin, only he’s not driving around the desert making meth in an RV; though refreshing seeing Norman Reedus looking well-scrubbed for once.

In order to successfully pull off the heist, the authorities must be distracted elsewhere. Their solution is to pull a “triple 9” AKA as an “officer down” call. Casey Affleck plays partner to one of our corrupt cops. Targeted as the “mark”, uncertainty, betrayal and fear embroil the team after he survives the attack. Like dominoes, bodies fall one after the other. Filled with enough nudity even HBO might re-evaluate it’s airing, Triple 9 will hold your attention, unapologetically throwing you shocker after shocker.

With enough blood, guns, boobs, and over-saturation to keep you desensitized for a while, could you survive with not seeing this film? Probably, as it rarely strays into a field of originality. We’ve seen the decaying results of inner-city demographics before. Triple 9 serves no further purpose, other than to further perpetuate negative stereotypes. Even Woody Harrelson plays a familiar role, that of a corrupt southern cop with very few ethical boundaries.

With its testosterone-fueled shoot-outs and not-so-subtle decapitations, Triple 9 might be a film you’d stay in and watch on a Friday night, but, despite its top-notch cast, there’s little here to lure you to your nearest multiplex. With its electric score and rough aesthetic, Triple 9 is definitely for fans of the no-nonsense, straight-to-point action thrillers – think Oceans 11, Inside Man, and The Equalizer all wrapped into one – but this would seem to be a case of identity theft.

Review of Bone Tomahawk

A modern twist on the Western Genre by up and coming director S. Craig Zahler could play a vital role in reviving the seemingly dead genre.

Westerns that were popular in the 60s such as Sergio Leone's famous dollars trilogy have seen their time as western movies popularity slowed down in the 70s and 80s, the genre lay in dormant for many years. Could Bone Tomahawk be the movie to bring the genre back to it's former glory?
S. Craig Zahler's creation is very far from the traditional western, featuring an incredible cast such as Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox and an outstanding performance from Richard Jenkins, I was specifically impressed with Richard Jenkins' performance as his character Chicory because prior to Bone Tomahawk I had only seen Richard performing in Step Brothers, and seeing him take on a very serious role in this movie blew me away. Possibly the most impressive of the casting in the movie was in the form of the 80s and 90s legend Kurt Russell, seeing him come to the western genre was outstanding to see and his role as Sheriff Franklin Hunt is honestly the best of all the Kurt Russell performances that I have seen, since his roles in the 80s in iconic movies such as Big Trouble in Little China, The Thing and Escape from New York, I'm happy to see that he has developed into one of the best actors in Hollywood and his performance in Bone Tomahawk is probably the actors best and will probably be a key turning point in the roles he will play in the future as we've now seen a new side to him.
For all you fans of guts and gore Bone Tomahawk is the one for you, with some of the most cringe-worthy scenes of violence I have ever seen and it really does give the western genre a postmodern twist.
Overall I think that S. Craig Zahler is one of the up and coming directors of Hollywood that everyone needs to keep their eyes on and I look forward to seeing what he has in store for us in years to come. Overall I would rate this film 8.5/10 and would definitely recommend it to anyone.