Movie Madness with Richard Doyle

Richard Doyle's
MOVIE MADNESS

The Kingdom (Lars von Trier and Morten Arnfred, 1994).

The result of this intriguing blend of medical drama, dark comedy, and supernatural horror film, produced as a mini-series for Danish television, is something like ER if it were written by David Lynch and directed by David Cronenberg. The setting is Denmark's largest hospital, where a self-righteous visiting Swedish doctor (Ernst-Hugo Järegård) abuses patients and co-workers, a pathologist is driven to bizarre extremes in order to obtain the cancerous liver of a dying patient, a Masonic cultist teaches surgery in the hospital basement, interns play practical jokes with severed body parts, and ghosts from the hospital's dark past haunt the hallways. It all ends with a deliriously bloody cliff-hanger. The picture was shot entirely with hand-held digital video, and features a soundtrack of amplified hospital sounds and electronic effects, adding to the already eerie atmosphere.

Tokyo Fist (Shinya Tsukamoto, 1995).

Tsukamoto forgoes the kinetic fusing of flesh and metal of his Tetsuo films, in this explosive story of flesh, muscle and self-mutilation. Insurance salesman Tsuda (played by the director) lives a deadening life with his fiancée Hizuru (Kahori Fujii), until an old classmate turned pro-boxer, Kojima (Kôji Tsukamoto), enters his life. Kojima puts the moves on Hizuru, so Tsuda takes up boxing to prepare for a final battle with Kojima. Faces are pummelled to a bloody pulp, boxers are broken in the ring, and human bodies are ritually pierced and tattooed, but the story doesn't generate much interest. Stripped of the driving kinetic energy of Tetsuo, Tokyo Fist painfully reveals Tsukamoto's weaknesses as a story teller. The boxing sequences are some of the most brutal I've ever seen.

The Krays (Peter Medak, 1990).

Pop stars Gary and Martin Kemp (Spandau Ballet) acquit themselves admirably as the British gangsters Ronald and Reggie Kray, who were media darlings in the 60s before a pair of very public murders sent them to jail. The Kemps are believably cold, ruthless and violent, bringing to life characters that are, at once, fascinating and repellent. Billie Whitelaw is also fine as the boys' mother, who raised them during World War II, and later created a cozy, yet subtly smothering, domestic environment for them to carry out their criminal exploits. As portrayed in the film, the bond between the three is so tight that no outsider can really share in the love, and this contributes to the brothers' attitude that whatever they want should be theirs. Kate Hardie appears as Ronnie's wife, who cannot survive his dominating attempt at love.

Hard Times (Walter Hill, 1975).

Charles Bronson plays Chaney, a Depression-era tough guy who rides a boxcar into the deep South intending to make some money as a bare-knuckles boxer. He meets Speed (James Coburn), a gambler and fight promoter in need of a new fighter, and the two travel to New Orleans. There they hook up with a drug-addict and medical school dropout (Strother Martin) who acts as Chaney's second, and together they try to make the big money by taking on the city's top street boxer. Hill's directorial debut is the first of his cult fables centering upon existential heroes with no disclosed past, living by unspoken personal codes in urban subcultures. The movie depicts a private world (similar in feeling to Robert Rossen's The Hustler) where hard men engage in contests, and character is as important as skill. And it features Bronson's best work on film.

Violent Cop (Takeshi Kitano, 1989).

A film in the "rogue cop" genre, full of Kitano's idiosyncratic touches. He plays Azuma, a cop who batters suspects and plants evidence. Unlike the characters in many of the American examples of this genre, Azuma does not seem particularly angered by criminals. He's just tired of his job, and cuts corners to get it over with. When a routine drug case results in the death of a colleague, Azuma comes back to life and cuts a swath through corrupt elements in his own department. As is usual with Kitano's work, the film is very slow and static, until it erupts suddenly into graphic violence. His passive, almost bemused expression never cracks, even in the film's bloodiest moments, which furthers the film's dark vision of a world dangerously out of control.

Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965).

In my view, this is Godard's masterpiece. It's a perfect example of his willingness to defy expectations, combine B-genres with intellectual techniques, and comment on the history of film while defiantly staking out his own vision of what films should be like. A deft blend of sci-fi, hard-boiled detective film-noir, and art film, the picture features Eddie Constantine as Lemmy Caution (a character he played in numerous 1950s French B-movies) as a secret agent sent to find a professor who masterminded the creation of a futuristic city called Alphaville, which is run by a domineering master computer (voiced by Godard in a guttural whisper). Godard uses no special effects -simply employing the most modernistic features of Paris he could find to evoke his dytsopian future. The film attacks the modern propensity to accept dehumanization through technology, the suppression of personality in favour of a group mind, and the saturation of society by commercial products, while never abandoning its cunning sense of humour or allegiance to B-film aesthetics. The result is one of the most brilliant and unsettling achievements in cinema.

The Bride with White Hair (Ronny Yu, 1993).

An impressive adaptation of an ancient Chinese legend. Zhou Yi-Hang (Leslie Cheung) is the unwilling successor to the leadership of the Wu-Tang clan and an unconfident leader of its armies against an evil cult, lead by brother and sister Siamese twins. He meets Lian (Brigitte Lin), a girl raised by wolves and adopted by the cult as their assassin, and they fall in love, planning to abandon the conflict and live together as recluses. Conflicting loyalties and mistrust lead to trouble. Operatic in scale, featuring garish colours and fantastic action sequences, the film is a minor adventure classic.