Soldier Blue

Soldier Blue was released in 1970, at a time when the Vietnam War was raging and US soldiers were being court martialled for the horrifying atrocities committed at My Lai. Its antiwar stance, its revisionism and its graphic depictions of violence and rape attracted much controversy, yet, despite its faults, the film does still carry some power and poignancy; its condemnation of war as valid today as it was then.

In November 1864, a regiment of US soldiers attacked an Indian village at Sand Creek, Colorado, massacring around 400 men, women and children. The backdrop to this horrific violence was one of dishonesty, greed and subterfuge. The US and the Cheyenne, Arapaho and other Indian tribes had signed a treaty which officially permitted Americans to create roads and military posts throughout the Colorado Territory without impinging on the Indians’ rights to the land. It wasn’t long, however, until the peaceful relationship the treaty intended to foster gradually deteriorated, as thousands of American prospectors came forth to mine the gold in the Rocky Mountains. White man’s villages sprang up and grew, settlers staked claims to Indian territory, politicians manoeuvred for the tribes to surrender more of their land. Despite all this, the Indians maintained peace.
A second treaty was put forward which proposed containing the Indians in one area bordering Sand Creek and the Arkansas River. The Indians would retain their rights to move freely throughout the land to hunt and trade, but would cede most of their territory to the US. Only six out of 44 Indian chiefs signed the treaty, supposedly without the approval of the others, yet the document was ratified.
When the American Civil War began in 1861, the Colorado Territory began to see much activity in the form of military mobilisation, and conflicts arose frequently between US soldiers and the Indian tribes. One regiment in particular, the First Regiment of Colorado Volunteers, under the direction of Colonel John Chivington, a man who saw it at his God-given duty to kill Indians, would come to play a terrible part in the violation and bloodshed at Sand Creek, an event that plays out the final act of Ralph Nelson’s provocative film.

The ‘Soldier Blue’ of the title, Honus Gant, is serving with that regiment (or the fictionalised version of it, the 11th Colorado). The film begins with the soldiers escorting a coach to Fort Reunion, the regiment’s base; the coach carrying not only a strongbox full of gold but a female passenger, Cresta Marybelle Lee (Candice Bergen), a beautiful white girl who has escaped after spending two years living captive with the Cheyenne. The travelling party is ambushed by Indians and only Cresta and Honus (Peter Strauss) survive the bloody battle, fleeing into the mountains. The film is centred around the relationship between these two diametrically opposed characters, as they set off through the wilderness in search of help.
Along the way, the pair are stopped by a small band of Indians out hunting. Cresta, the more world-wise and experienced of the two, knows they will rape her if Honus refuses to take part in a life-or-death knife fight with the head Indian. Against the odds, Honus emerges the winner and they continue on, later stumbling upon the camp of Isaac Q. Cumber (Donald Pleasence), a snaggle-toothed sneak of a man who makes his living selling guns to the Cheyenne.
It is here that the conflict between Honus and Cresta reaches its peak, and it leads the two of them to re-evaluate their viewpoints on life. Honus, the soldier, knows there are guns hidden in Cumber’s coach – guns that will be used to kill fellow American soldiers -- and is determined to destroy them. Cresta, however, sides with the Cheyenne, who she sees as kin, arguing that the Indians are forced to defend themselves against the white man, who is stealing their land and destroying their way of life. Honus discovers the guns but is apprehended by Cumber, and he and Cresta are taken prisoner. They eventually manage to escape, but Honus is shot and wounded and the pair are forced to hide out in a cave. The next morning, Cresta sets out alone across the plains, where she is found and taken to the camp of the 11th Colorado. Here, she is reunited with her fiancé, a Lt. McNair, and asks him to help bring back the seriously wounded Honus. Her pleas fall on deaf ears, as she finds that the commanding officer, Colonel Iverson (based on John Chivington), is planning a retaliatory strike on the Cheyenne for the killings we saw at the beginning of the film. Horrified, Cresta rides back to the Cheyenne village where she lived for two years, and warns them of the forthcoming attack. Although the Indians are able to prepare themselves for war, they cannot hold back Iverson’s regiment of pumped-up, barbaric and bloodthirsty savages; women and children are brutally murdered, Cresta is attacked and raped, and Honus looks on, helpless and impotent.

Soldier Blue seems to serve as both historical document and Vietnam War allegory, and some critics have argued that these intentions for the film fail to work in tandem. It’s a fair point, as Nelson’s desire to capture some of the liberal attitudes of the early ‘70s results in the film coming off, at times, as a bit too ‘peace and love’, when a low-key, balanced exploration of both sides’ perspectives -- the US and the Indians -- would have worked better. This straddling of ideas certainly hinders the characters, though that may also be down to Nelson’s choice of actors. Although their performances are by no means terrible – a lot of the interplay between Honus and Cresta is funny and engaging, and both are likeable ‘protagonists’ – Strauss and Bergen lack the depth and range to make the characters truly memorable and believable. (Bergen, in particular, has a little too much of that ‘hippie’ vibe; it’d be no surprise to discover that she walked out of Woodstock and straight onto the set of this movie.) Indeed, it isn’t until Donald Pleasence turns up as Cumber – arguably one of his most underrated and least-known performances – that you get a sense of a really great actor at work.

Despite being panned and reviled upon its release, and subsequently hacked into incomprehensibility by the censors, Soldier Blue, in its full form, is still worthy of a place in the canon of American westerns from the 1970s. It isn’t The Searchers, or indeed Little Big Man, but its examination of the conflict between whites and Indians is mostly well executed, arresting and poignant, if not for the faint of heart.

The Boat That Rocked

These are films for people that start yearning for Christmas when the bonfire is still warm. Maybe earlier. These are films for people that don’t want to accept the fact that they are not the centre of the huggy universe. These are films for people to cosy up to, round the fire, as fluffy snow flakes caress the window, and Cliff Richard plays as heads nod in an ironic but happy way: they know it’s uncool but to them, uncool is cool, right?

All Richard Curtis films are thus: things may go wrong, but let’s not get too distracted by that. Let’s count our blessings and high-five our cares away. So, Keira Knightley is charmed by an idiot with cue-cards on her doorstep professing futile love. Hugh Grant is acceptable as Prime Minister, quashing the dastardly yanks with a stammer and a raised eyebrow. Martine McCutcheon is a delightful chav made good. Rhys Ifans is still getting sizeable roles in major releases. Baubles gleam and bad stuff is just a temporary inconvenience. No-one really means it, they’re just human. Everything turns out okay in the end. Switch the news off, it may disturb. Airbrush the discontent, it may corrode the saccharine. We are strapped in for Richard Curtis – let the Andrex puppies endearingly tumble into view, let the world disappear, it’s time to ease yourself into a parallel world.

You can see the allure. The world is shit. It’s escapism, a balm, 90 minutes of succour for the harassed. And it’s vaguely enjoyable, in the same way that listening to a cute 19-year old Jehovah’s Witness talk nonsense is cute. There’s no harm done, and we’ve all had a laugh. Philip Seymour Hoffman takes a well-earned holiday and reads his lines out, he looks like he’s having a ball and you can hardly deny him that. This must be a delightful little side-project for him, knocking about with a few Brits for a bit, japing about between takes. Every scene reeks of fun, out-takes, barely concealed mirth, endless bonhomie. Kenneth Branagh, eesavinfun. Stereotypical killjoy figure, old-fashioned curmudgeon. Think 70’s TV authority figures: Blakey etc. Stick up his arse, board-rigid, no pulse. Straight from the archives, dusted off and reanimated 30 years too late. Oh, where’s your sense of humour reviewer man? Well, the last time I checked, it was alive and well in the year 2009. Which shows re-runs of classic comedy from time-to-time. And what I do is, I laugh along if it’s funny, and if it hasn’t aged well I just think, ‘That was obviously something that worked for my parents/grandparents/easy-to-please dullards whenever it came out, maybe still does. But it’s now obsolete. Unless you’re undiscerning or desperately undernourished in the old laff department.’

The story? Forget it. Radio Caroline meets Benny Hill and Morecambe and Wise via On The Buses. But with that incomparably twee Curtis feel about it all, and not nearly as funny. Yes there's plenty of easy charm and you're not in a bad place. Father Christmas has got his arm round you and he wants you to get involved and stop being such a cynic. So what? It’s not cinema.

King Of Comedy

In the post-reality-TV age (the welcome demise of Big Brother surely heralding a shift away from drably manipulative shows that line up idiots-with-issues for puerile pot-shots) it’s always good to re-acquaint yourself with a film that, well over a quarter of a century ago, had a wry, hilarious, disturbing look at a floundering, intensely and talentlessly warped wannabe.

De Niro’s Rupert Pupkin ‘Often mis-spelt and mispronounced!’ is a besuited delusional that spends his time either daydreaming about airbrushing his disastrously limp existence (memorably getting a fantasy apology from his ex-headmaster on live television: ‘We thought you’d never amount to a hill of beans. Well, you were right, Rupert. And we were wrong.’), talking to cardboard versions of Liza Minelli or Jerry Lewis or over-zealously pursuing the latter for a spot on his show and a leg-up as a stand-up. He helps Lewis, hassled amidst the throng outside the studio exit, get into his waiting limo and temporarily rids him of the rabid attentions of Sandra Bernhard’s unhinged stalker.

We then squirm as Pupkin haltingly attempts a kind of ingratiate/persuade number on Lewis’s Jerry Langford in order to catch an unlikely break. Langford fobs Pupkin off (eventually) with a breezily dismissive invitation to call his office, which is totally misconstrued and leads to increasingly ridiculous invasions into Langford’s life, including painfully obstinate loiterings in Langford's office foyer as various minions humour and ultimately tire off his relentless avidity, and a somehow charming, idiotic wooing of local cheerleader turned bartender. His mounting desperation culminates in the doofus kidnapping (initially laughed-off as a hoax) of Langford and those 10 minutes of fame that lead to worldwide fame and money-toting clamour for ‘the new king of comedy’...

As a commentary on self-obsessed, vapid no-marks hellbent on fame, it’s non-pareil. There’s no judgemental guff or carefully laid out descent into any kind of morality lesson – we leave Pupkin on (imaginary?) stage, lapping up applause, milking adulation, in his element. He’s talentless, but he’s where he needs to be: in peoples’ faces. For everyone out there that’s looked into the dead, lovestarved doll eyes of whoever is currently out front in the reality-goon jostle, here is recognition. The lights are on, but the only people home are cardboard cut-outs and imaginary acolytes.

DeNiro is as good as it gets, and exhibits more range than most actors could ever dream of. He is by turns hilarious, empty, terrifying, gauche, bumbling, parasitical, endearing. He is absolutely magnificent. Lewis is brilliant and perfectly judged as a seen-it-all all-rounder in the twilight of his career, and Bernhard is plain scary. And the whole thing expertly occupies the scant netherworld between hilarious and nightmarish. As the man says, it’s better to be king for a day than schmuck for a lifetime. A line that must be imbued with a certain poignancy for the once-great testosterone-tornado star of this career highlight.

Moon

There a few ways you might look at Moon. One might be to get sniffy about the Solaris parallels; another might be to question the disingenuity of having a Hal-lite up front in proceedings. Many a critic has been easy with the faint praise, and one reviewer described the film as 'possibly the most boring film ever made.'

I think we need to get these matters out of the way early on: if anyone finds this film boring, it means that they are either a) a replicant programmed to hate films that don't involve Brad Pitt mugging away in a desperate attempt to save the latest travesty that he's involved in or b) idiots. That simple. Moon is about 384,403 km far from boring. For those that watched it that 'didn't get it', it might as well be a matter of quarks and dark matter - but when will critics watch films and admit as much?

Sam Rockwell is an astronaut contracted to keep things ticking along on his lunar base. We see him doing everyday things, as we must: this is not really a film about space, or isolation, as it initially seems, just as Solaris or 2001 weren't. But we are led along that path for a while, and things take a turn for the worse as he crashes on a scouting mission. He ends up in computer-overseen rehab (Kevin Spacey as a stoned, benevolent version of Hal - a wimp of an onboard computer. Really, we expect far more underhand bedevilment from our electronic counterparts) and soon becomes aware of a 'clone' inhabiting the same ship. Whereby it gets genuinely intriguing.

In terms of capturing its environment, it's spot-on, and it evokes a wondrous sense of subtle awe with its meagre budget. The time-honoured bolt-ons are perfect. Interiors are effulgent, pristine cosiness, and the canopy of stars and dustbowl exteriors lend themselves beautifully to the intimacy and unencapsulable nature of space. Indeed, the only bugbear you might have is the fact that it's all too welcoming - there's nothing to be intimidated by, and you're more than happy luxuriating in it all.

Rockwell, with nothing to bounce off other than an unseen replica, is miraculous, lending a deep humanity to our multiple protagonists that the film lives and thrives upon. He is exceptional: a dual counterweight amidst the questions being put forward. Can we change and leave our old selves behind? What does 'we' mean? Do beards make us look more astronauty?

The film doesn't pose too many of the 'big' questions that cinema has grappled with to different levels of success over the years. There are no monoliths, no meetings with nefarious aliens, no real oddities as such. But the film has an underlying human quality, a generous, sympathetic strain of understanding of 'our' plight, whatever that might be. It revels in our quirks and behavioural tics through the guise of Rockwell, and it puts its arm around us and punches us on the shoulder. We're just here, the film says, and we're not all that bad. The finale, which has Rockwell (or a version of him, or a projected death-throes daydream - you decide) blasted back into Earth's orbit in an orgasmic hurtle of homeward-bound elation, throws in a kind of cross-sectional news transmission beamed from the big blue homeland, and it's perfect. Someone is overheard whining about something or other, but Rockwell is too chuffed to be on the way back to be getting down about workaday chatter and babble and in any case has been rebooted; his exile has squeegeed his malaise, and it evoked memories of a recent documentary about the Apollo astronauts, In The Shadow Of The Moon. In it, Alan Bean, as avuncular an astronaut you've never seen, says 'I never complain about the weather now. I'm just happy we have weather!'. And you're left with, perish the thought, a new-found sense of appreciation that should last until you're out of the cinema car-park at least.

The film is a great, understated success that no-one will go and watch. That doesn't give you an excuse to sit at home while a genuinely brilliant piece of filmmaking flits through your multiplex unawares. If you watch this in several years on ITV at 4am whilst semi-pissed, you're a lightweight. You're a lightweight. Take a few small steps for mankind, hand your money over, and help cinema evolve a little by encouraging small, thoughtful movies such as this. It was worth a try...

The Worst Films I've Ever Seen #1

The Number 23

Jim Carrey can act. The Truman Show and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind prove that. But his 5-second motionless cameo as a corpse in Clint Eastwood’s ‘The Dead Pool’ had more zing about it than this paycheck performance. Here, he can’t be bothered to strive for involved angst or tortured immersion or any of that. Here, he’s pantomime-poor. What’s behind you? The best part of your career, Jim. The film itself is a travesty even on Joel Schumacher’s bottom-heavy shitometer, and silently screams at you to switch off every few seconds. Yet more guff about the WEIRD manifestation of numbers as prescient and relevant and signifying something catrastrophic and fateful about our protagonist. It seems you can waft a few pages of premonitory dribble in front of a studio exec nowadays and get any old tat greenlit.

Martha Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence

Insipid, glib, pointless ménage a quatre, featuring three punchable male leads tiresomely orbiting a drably pretty and unconvincingly magnetic Monica Potter. Something about an art gallery, crossed-wires, near-misses (is this even what it's about? Does the writer or director even know?) and yet more scandalously inept money-frittering from a sporadically none-more-awful British film industry. The kind of cheesy, pseudo-sophisticated rubbish you’d expect last-minute from a swindled creative writing student.

Human Traffic

Feels like being locked in a terrible nightclub, surrounded by the endlessly dumb chatter parping out of the gaping mouths of pampered, listless, dull southern arseholes. Mistakes energy and enthusiasm for vitality and relevance. The front cover says it all: John Simm looks both hammered (on cider) and exceedingly irritating and delighted with himself for being so hammered. The film seems to be very chuffed with itself for, like, hitting the nail on the head about how the olds just don’t geddit and how hedonism is preferable to becoming your mum and dad and other really sharp insights that no-one has ever made before. Certainly never as tediously. And as you can see, it's got arch bellend Danny Geezer in it, so it's even more of an absolute doozy.

Face

Like a series of cockney drama workshop sessions strung haphazardly together, during the enactment of which the performers were asked to improvise gangster film clichés, lazy appropriations of seething menace (limp gurning) and edgy poise (hungover cantankerousness), only to come across as bored, lethargic versions of themselves whilst doing it. So spectacularly bad as to be mesmerising. Damon Albarn can’t even stand still convincingly; as for the involvement of the likes of Robert Carlyle and Ray Winstone, it’s strangely comforting to know that even top-performers like these are capable of being this atrocious.

Sliding Doors

This took years for ex-Bread knob Peter Hewitt to come-up with, and you can see why: it takes time and diligent care to plumb such labyrinthine turgidity and manage to make Gwyneth Paltrow seem completely unappealing and difficult to remotely endure. Ah, the dilemmas that affluent 30-something women have to wrestle with – ditch knobhead boyfriend and end up with a really dull, paper-thin guy with a nice line in unconvincing seduction patter? Double-realities unfold and serious questions are posed, such as: who put up the money for yet another irredeemable affront as this swanky, empty disaster?

AI

Haley Joel Osment (who hasn’t aged well – Google him!) is a small boy, but he’s not happy. He’s not really a proper boy, he’s a little artificial child that feels human. He finds out as much and ends up lobbing himself into the murky depths, only to be cut out of the frozen waters millions of years into the future by aliens observing a desolate Earth, who create a mother figure for him in order to make him feel whole again. What would surely have been ace under the aegis of Stanley Kubrick is a tosswad of mawkishness and ham. It’s the Chlamydia cum-stain on Spielberg’s pristine cinematic Y-Fronts (though there is a coffee-coloured starburst near the arse-crack that spells ‘Amistad’). Jude Law also skitters about as a kind of Fred Astaire gigolo figure. An expensive, airless, mard extravaganza of wrong.

Good Burger

TV spin-off travesty that will puncture your soul and make it feel like runny, salmonella blighted yolk. Kenan and Kel of strangely amusing kids knockabout show take the money and somehow trot out their lines like shameless goons. The most memorable scene involves Kel (or is it Kenan?) being told to 'Watch yo ass!', followed by Kel/Kenan spinning on the spot whilst 'watching' his 'ass'. Ingenious, but never hits such heights often.

Death Proof

Tarantino was once good, though you can hardly believe it watching this contemptuous rubbish. A load of nonsense about (a wastedly ace) Kurt Russell being a psychotic stuntman with yet another foot fetish. Featuring the most godawfully inept dialogue of ANY of the films on this list of turds. And this from the guy still on a crusade to convince us that he's 'beyond Godard' etc. He described this as his 'Eugene O'Neill movie'. Hoho. M Night Shyamalan, anyone?

The Day After Tomorrow

Hideous CGI spunkfest of submerged skyscrapers and laughably trite family values waffle, thrown at you loud enough and disagreeably enough that you'd hopefully not notice how crap it is and just go with the (not bad) effects. The world goes to shit and we're too annoyed by the feeble nature of what's served up to care.

United 93

I've got to be careful here, haven't I? We're on hallowed ground. You can't really have a go at such an enterprise as this: the reconstruction of a still-raw moment of hellish contemporary history in choreographed, verbatim detail. Here's my problem: there was no need. Not for reasons of sensitivity, but for reasons of superficial ambulance-chasing pointlessness. Here we have an incident already thoroughly mapped, recounted, and filed away for regretful, thoughtful reconsideration. Greengrass would say (and has) that it was a 'valuable' endeavour, bringing such a dire disaster into forensic focus for those who might not understand what happened. This is what I think: that it's tawdry, airbrushed opportunism masquerading as political art, and that the people that couldn't be bothered to wrestle with the permutations of such seismic worldwide horror in print such not be hand-held through a rousing celluloid version. Bankrupt, misguided tosh.

Knowing

Nicolas Cage, eh? Sometimes truly perfect (Wild At Heart, Raising Arizona, Leaving Las Vegas) and yet synonymous with airhead, samey bollocks of a number too hefty to waste time counting. And you watch Knowing unfold as pretty much more of the same and think, 'Cage, you're decent. Get a new agent. You don't need the cash.' And so on. And Knowing dribbles away in the last 20 minutes to such cloying, deus ex machina effect as to give you plenty of time to muse such matters.

It all moves along in a far more accomplished fashion than you have any right to expect for a good 70 minutes. It's reasonably gripping; Cage's son ends up with a scroll of numbers from an excavated time-capsule during a bicentennial celebration laid on by his school. Cage places glassful of whiskey on said screed and 'circles' a group of digits he notices are factually relevant, and this 'reveal' gathers apace as voices question the veracity of such random gusto - he's 'stressed' due to the death of his wife, says one. But Cage is Cage and will not be deterred, and we know those numbers are going to nudge Cage towards imminent devastation...and it quickly starts to get a bit baggy.

A shame as the two major set-pieces are pretty good for CGI, realistic and authentically orchestrated, and actually quite ingenious for those used to the same old wooly-looking explosions and collapsing buildings that feel like computer game add-ons. These ones are good, and as such are wasted.

Rose Byrne turns up as the daughter of the woman responsible for penning the numbers, creepy looking automaton-types follow them around and it all gets a bit sinister before the most odiously tacked-on culmination to a film I can remember. The hack director, Alex Proyas, seems to think it's okay to build something passably tense for 70 minutes only to veer away from all coherence and respect for the audience with a howling Spielberg rip-off finale that has to be seen to be disbelieved. It involves pebbles, fluffy white bunny rabbits, aliens and an unlimited amount of shameless chutzpah that makes it okay for you to demand your money back from Proyas, should you ever run into the charlatan. If you thought Southland Tales had a majestically bonkers coda, forget it. This has cojones the size of space-hoppers. It's so crackers it'll make you chuckle, until Cage delivers the least convincing rendition of a devastated man you've ever seen and your ironic mirth is ruthlessly shattered by reverse Schadenfreude.

Proyas is also obsessed with over-gloomy lighting that make a lot of the scenes feel like theatre pieces. Badly lit ones. You can barely see expressions register on faces - not that there are any. Just pained approximations of drab TV-movie-standard mugging.

Nicolas Cage throws up a non-performance of epic disinterest, frowning his way to his paycheck. He's barely there, and I can only assume he knew what a bag of toss he'd got involved with and that any kind of performance would be totally wasted. He owes himself, and us, a lot better, if only because we know how good he can be and this just won't do.