JODOROWSKY'S DUNE

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune would likely have been either been one of the greatest films in cinema history or one of its greatest follies. Likely it would have been both at once, so enormous and ambitious was the production, as chronicled in Frank Pavich’s enthralling documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, that it was likely destined to fail. It was simply too awesome to exist. 

By the mid 70’s Jodorowsky had already lead an impossibly eccentric life. He studied mime with Marcel Marceau, became a prominent theater director, his first film (made illegally) caused riots in Mexico, but his follow ups, El Topo and The Holy Mountain, turned avant-guard surrealism into box office gold despite occasionally stomach churning content. At this point he brashly decided to adapt Dune, a book he had not even read at the time.

It proved to be a good instinct. The psychedelic narrative of the book, centering around The Spice, a coveted drug used as spaceship fuel but is also a path to enlightenment, is a perfect match for Jodorowsky even as he stated throwing large parts of it out in favor of his own, deranged vision, which quickly swelled to 10 hours and featured galaxy spanning tracking shots, women being impregnated with drops of blood and other flights of fancy I'll leave the audience to discover.

To bring that vission to life he hired only artists whom he felt had the necessary passion. French comic artist Moebius doing storyboards and a great deal of the costumes, future Alien designer H.R. Gieger designing the villain’s homeworld, and British illustrator Criss Foss painting the most amazing looking space ships ever.

The documentary unfolds mostly in the increasingly old-fashion talking head format, which can be forgiven because the primary head belongs to Jodorowsky who is outrageously fascinating as he tells how he shamed Pink Floyd into doing the soundtrack, conned Orson Wells and Salvador Dalí to play key supporting parts or put his teenage son through rigorous combat training to play the lead. His passion and optimism for the project is hypnotic he comes off as history's most affable cult leader. His sales pitch to at least one collaborator consisted of: "Sell everything you own and move to Paris."

Other interviewees include Gieger, who's voice is nearly as terrifying as his art, a smattering of critics, producers, and, for some reason, Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn. The stories don't always seem completely reliable, but they've been given just the right embellishments by Jodorowsky which are indulged by Pavich because they make such a good yarn. The documentary's best moments might be when he chooses to animate key segments from the script, including the opening shot which is so amazing I had had to remind myself to breathe.

For a time it all seems achingly possible. But the film never got the green light needed to go into production. Even in the 70's, the peak of the ambitious New Hollywood movement, no studio wanted to pony up the proposed $15 million starting budget for the film with special effects that had never been tried, might last 10 hours and would probably be explicitly violent and sexual from a director with a well founded reputation for being nuts.

Jodorowsky remains understandably bitter, in a touching moment he tears up, takes the money out of his wallet and curses it, not just for Dune but for all the other projects he's been burned on. He would eventually move on to other films of varying quality, but has mostly left cinema behind for comics were he's respected and budgets aren't an issue. Lots of his ideas for Dune ended up in a series he co-authored with Moebius, The Incal. Dune eventually did reach the screen as a different debacle helmed by David Lynch and latter as a pretty decent mini-series by John Harrison. But both of those try and take the book head on, Jodorowsky wanted to change to world with his mega budget, spiritual blockbuster and was rebuffed like many filmmakers with larger than life ambition. It's sad that his Dune had to join the parathion of other great unmade films such as Kubrick's Napoleon or Del Toro's Mountains of Madness, but it's fortunate we have Pavich's spellbinding documentary to give us just a tiny peak into a film that might have changed the world.

Grade: A

ONLY GOD FORGIVES

Nicolas Winding Refn has made good films in the past. He made a great film with 2011's Drive, but it's no surprise that his new film Only God Forgives falters. Refn's style is so extreme and out there, that it was inevitable that he'd make at least one outrageous failure.

Ryan Gosling stars as Julian, a shy, reserved gangster who runs a Muay Thai kickboxing gym in Bangkok with his sadistic brother Billy (Tom Burke). One night Billy gets himself killed after raping a 16 year old prostitute. At this point Julian is obliged to go out and get revenge but can't quite work up any enthusiasm after hearing about his brother's crimes. This leads to the intervention of his mother (Kristian Scott Thomas), who we learn has a rather, um, Game of Thrones relationship with her sons. She comes in to hire a hit on Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm), the karaoke loving cop who ordered Billy's death and might be some sort of Daemon or something.

In interviews, Refn has talked up the film as a companion piece to Drive but the comparison is a poor one. Drive had a potent love story and thin characters rebelling against their own thinness in a very satisfying way, this film has nothing but its own style. Sure, Refn's depiction of Bangkok as a nightmarish, hallucinatory Hellscape is effective at times, but to what end? The film isn't really interested in anything other than wallowing in its own seediness and Kubrickian set pieces set to another one of Cliff Martinez's amazing synth scores. There's no meat here and it's very clear from the start that no matter how much it wants to do otherwise, Forgives isn't going to do anything but sit there. Even a climactic, and expertly constructed, fistfight fails to generate interest. The film is just too cold, too cromagnon in its approach. 

Even Gosling, America's foremost expert at saying nothing but communicating everything is a blank here. It's not his fault, as his character has no inner life and has nothing to do but sit on couches, flex his hands and occasionally terrify prostitutes. He doesn't play a character so much as he provides Refn with a life sized Ken doll to pose, same goes for all the other actors save Thomas whose self-consciously shrill, yet engaging performance is the best part of the film.

Strangely, the very same coldness that keeps the film from being good might also keep it off my worst of the year list. The film was booed at Cannes but I couldn’t muster up enough interest to hate the film that much. There are terrible, appalling elements here, the film isn't invested in them enough to appall me. The film is an utter failure, albeit one made by someone capable of doing so much better. The worst part of this film isn't its shallow use of weighty themes or the blank performances, it's watching talented people waste their talent.

Grade: D

DRIVE

He drives around at night a lot. He gets paid to do that, but you get the feeling that he'd do it anyway. He's a lonely man. So removed from humanity that he doesn't even get a name. The credits list him as Driver. Driver is played by Ryan Gosling (Crazy Stupid Love, The Notebook) who continues to remind us why he's one of the best actors working today. When we meet him, he's driving a getaway car. What follows is one of the most exciting car chases in recent memory. Unlike what we get in something like "Fast Five" it feels real. The movie seems to know how it feels to be pursued by the cops.

Driver is one of those 'By day, by night' types. By day he's a Hollywood stunt driver, rolling over cars and stuff. We know what he does at night. His handler for both jobs is a crusty, local mechanic named Shannon (Brian Cranston). Shannon is bit of a father figure to Driver, albeit an exploitative one, and sees a future for the kid as a stock car racer. Shannon gets a pair of his gangster pals to sponsor the car. The gangsters are played by Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman. They are an odd pairing, casting wise, but they work great together. Both are menacing but for different reasons.

Early in the film Driver befriends his neighbor Irine, played by Carry Mulligan. The romance that develops is not hot n' heavy. It's shy and tentative, almost chaste. But it's clear that she's bringing something out in him, something that's been hidden for perhaps his entire life. Unfortunately it gets put on hold when her baby-daddy, Standard (Oscar Isaac), is released from prison. In a lesser movie Standard would have been an abusive husband that Driver has to rescue her from. But thankfully, it's not a lesser movie. Standard and Driver become friends, in a way, and Driver offers to help him get out of his mob debt by helping out on a heist. The film heats up considerably from there.

This is a very stylish film. The car chases, while sparse, are utterly fantastic. The film looks great and director, Nicolas Winding Refn, is a master of visual storytelling. He wastes nothing. He doesn't load the film down with too much talking. Driver doesn't speak much, he just does things. As a presence, Gosling walks around like the reincarnation of James Dean or Alain Delon. He chews his toothpicks. He wears his white, scorpion jacket looking like a knight, or a superhero. Of course, he's not really a superhero, he's a man-child with anger issues. It is fitting then, that the jacket gets more and more bloodstained as the film goes on. We don't learn much about him. We don't know if he was born emotionally distant or if he was made that way by some past trauma. I vote for the past trauma. I think the key is a scene near the end where Driver goes to kill one of the main villains. Driver wears a latex-rubber mask he stole from his day job. It's such a dehumanizing mask that it doesn't feel like he's hiding his identity so much as he's building a wall between himself and the world.

I wrote in my review of Bronson that Nicolas Winding Refn would one day direct a great film. That day is here. The problem with Bronson was it's lack of thesis. This film has one in the form of a song, A Real Hero, which plays twice in the film. In Bronson, Refn kept his protagonist at arms length. Here, Driver is keeping the world at arms length, and like that song, he is left to wonder what it feels like to be "a real human being."

Grade: A+

BRONSON

Sometimes a movie depends so squarely on a lead performance that it's casting becomes the film. Nicolas Winding Refn's 2008 film Bronson is just such a case. Bronson tells the true tale of Englands most violent prisoner. Michael "Bronson" Peterson. Bronson is played by Tom Hardy (Warrior, Inception), and the film follows him throughout his hyper violent life.

Tom Hardy IS the film. Without Hardy as Bronson, there is no film. Period. And there in lies the problem. Hardy is fantastic and fearless in the role, but there isn't very much else going on here. The film is essentially 92 minutes of Bronson hitting things. There is some variety to be sure. Sometimes he's hitting things while in jail, sometimes in an insane asylum, sometimes in underground boxing matches. Near the end of the film he abandons the whole 'hitting' part and tries his hand at being an artist, but it doesn't feel right so he goes back to hitting things and the movie pretty much ends.

To be fair, you can't have the movie without the hitting. Bronson was and remains Englands most violent criminal. He is a difficult character. He's spent time in 120 prisons and logged over 30 years in solitary confinement. He takes joy in causing pain, loves being in prison, and nothing else. He's not quite human. But where as other directors, such as Scorsesse, might find some sort of thesis or point to Bronsons life, Refn just presents it. Perhaps he's saying that there is no point, that some people are just violent sociopaths and that's that. If that is his point, it is a depressing one. I honestly don't think the film is really trying to say anything. It's as if script-development stopped when the lead role was cast and that is simply not enough. If anyone can make any sense out of this film, this man, please post your ideas in the comment section.

The real story here is Tom Hardy as Bronson. He is a force of nature, and he is unlike anyone else working in the buisines. He's built like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he moves like Charlie Chaplin. The way he moves and uses posture is lightyears ahead of most other actors. Even his shoulder-blades give a great performance in this film.

Refn is a good director and this is a very stylish film. A dangerous drinking game can be made out of spotting Stanley Kubrick references. You get the feeling that Refn will one day make a great film, but this is not it.

Grade: C+

"Bronson" is currently streaming on Netflix Instant. Hardy is currently appearing in the MMA drama "Warrior," and will play the villain in The Dark Knight Rises. Refn seems poised to break into big time too with "Drive," which opens today.