Chris At The Pictures

Adam Wingard, director of last year’s absolutely terrific slasher You’re Next, returns to the screen with The Guest. A family is grieving when mysterious David (Dan Stevens) appears on their doorstep claiming to be a friend of their son who died fighting in the Middle East. Sporting charisma, impeccable manners and an unquenchable desire to help the small family, David appears from the outset to be a miraculous Samaritan, but as questions about his past are raised, things begin to take a darker turn.

The key to enjoying The Guest – and indeed You’re Next – is understanding the dark and ridiculous sense of humour with which it handles itself, and boy does it return with a bite in the final act. The script is sharp and funny, and any film which can make an audience of horror-phobic students burst out laughing as someone is brutally murdered has to be doing something right. Deny it as they might, I’m willing to bet that 100% of the audience I saw the film with laughed like hyenas consistently throughout the bloodshed.

Dan Stevens is absolutely brilliant in the central role, and despite the charisma and the charm exhibited at first, you know from the start that something very wrong is going on beneath the surface and it’s the tension and excitement of waiting for things to go wrong that makes his performance so enjoyable. Leland Orser as the alcoholic father with the dead-end job is one of the funniest things in the film, Maika Monroe and Brendan Meyer as the brother and sister duo put in fine performances, and in fact the majority of the supporting cast bounce off Stevens incredibly well.

The movie is shot in a gorgeously stylish manner, the palette seeping with neon glows and pitch black shadows working in fantastic tandem. Visually, this prevents the film from looking too much like a thriller that takes itself too seriously, enhancing the comedic tone despite the suspenseful set-pieces that pop up every now and then. A massively enjoyable synth-heavy score does nothing to lessen the 1980’s B-movie sensibility but that is exactly what Wingard is aiming for, down to the font used for the opening titles which brings to mind titles like The Hitcher and The Evil Dead.

Though deliberately slow and some might argue self-indulgent towards the beginning, the story holds out on the twists and turns for the final twenty minutes, with an ending that works incredibly well: Wingard has the audience exactly where he wants them and knows exactly how to play them, the divided audience reaction of outraged ‘No way!’ on the one side and hysterical laughter on the other proving that to a tee. Upon leaving the screening, it was really refreshing to hear so much animated discussion, to see so many gobsmacked faces which made me feel completely justified in my enjoyment of the film.

The Guest is a shed-load of fun; a stripped-down, smart, punchy psychological thriller that wears it’s ridiculously stylish B-movie colours proudly. There’ll be a part of you that feels immensely guilty for laughing with it, but that’s why it works so well. I cannot remember emerging from the cinema with such a large yet slightly ashamed grin on my face for quite some time and unless something truly startling emerges between now and December, I’d feel quite comfortable calling it my film of the year.

5 stars

Released in 1974 but set 100 years previously, Mel Brooks Western-comedy Blazing Saddles holds many accolades, including three academy awards, a place on four of the AFI’s prestigious ‘Top 100’ lists, but most notably it was the first major studio picture to contain a fart joke (seriously, look it up). And if that isn’t enough to catch your attention, then there’s really no hope for you. So don your cowboy hats, load your six-shooters and whoopee cushions to revisit a comedy classic.

The film tells the story of Bart (Cleavon Little), a black railroad worker who is employed by Baron Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman) as the new sheriff of Rock Ridge in order to scare off the townsfolk so the Baron can purchase the land. However, upon arriving in the town, the sheriff quickly proves his value to the townspeople and they begin to rally behind him and his partner Jim (Gene Wilder).

Little is likeable and charming in his role, bouncing off Wilder well, just managing not to be overshadowed by him through a selection of key scenes, the majority of which I’d rather not give away if anyone reading has never seen it (shame on you), save for a moment in which he turns to a pair of Klu Klux Klan members and exclaims ‘Where the white women at?’. Harvey Korman as Lamarr steals the show whenever he’s on screen, alternating between tight-lipped sarcasm and pants-on-head insane whilst perfectly offset by Slim Pickens as Taggart, his slow-minded crony. Mel Brooks makes an appearance as Governor Lepetomane and is instantly hilarious. There is just something about that cross-eyed, cigar smoking face gawping towards the camera that will never be anything but funny.

Where the comedy is concerned, there are great swathes of gags in all varieties, from simple visual jokes (a hangman placing the noose around a horse and the man sat upon it), to surrealist comedy (a pair of World War 2-era German soldiers making friends with the outlaws), to downright toilet humour (the famous beans around the campfire scene). The jokes are plentiful pushing the boundaries of what was deemed ‘good taste’ back in the 70’s, but they don’t all rush over themselves in an attempt to get quick laughs like many comedies nowadays. By placing an in-joke here, a farting scene there, then going completely for broke in the finale, it is clearly written by people who understand that the essence of comedy is timing, and Blazing Saddles has that down to a tee. Even the social/racial satire (though not always particularly subtle) is well-done, and at its heart is the idea of securing equality in a mainstream movie as a positive force in the mind of American audiences who – merely ten years previous – would have balked at the idea of a black protagonist.

One of the more striking things one notices upon re-watching the film is that, despite its comedic nature, it is still made like a traditional Western. The cinematography echoes the camerawork of classic movies such as The Searchers and the musical score carries a strain of epic motifs as well as the more traditional harmonica pieces one would come to expect. It might be conformity to stereotype but it helps sell the setting of the movie and therefore serves only to increase the audience’s bewilderment when the more surreal elements come into play (and trust me, when it gets to that point you’ll wonder if you've accidentally taped another movie over the film).

With its mixture of bizarre anachronisms, racial satire and toilet humour all played with a – nearly – straight face, Blazing Saddles is a remarkable comedy that has stood the test of time, and whose DNA can be clearly seen in everything from the Monty Python movies to Family Guy (Seth MacFarlane appears to have built up most of his back catalogue simply by ‘referencing’ or downright ripping-off the comedies of the 70’s and 80’s). Everything that A Million Ways to Die in the West does spectacularly wrong, Blazing Saddles did (albeit haphazardly) side-splittingly better forty years before. 

Reviewing a film like this is always a difficult thing. Just how do you review such an enormous cultural phenomenon? It’s like asking a musician to review Beethoven’s 9^th or a video gamer to review System Shock 2. Something that big is incredibly difficult to critically analyse, especially when it has had such an impact on entertainment today, can only easily be critiqued in the simplest form: as a film, a piece of cinematic entertainment, making sure – despite a very large amount of personal investment in the film and its successors – to judge it by the same standards by which I would review any other release.

And taken on those standards, it stands up remarkably well, because in terms of sheer cinematic spectacle, it is near-perfect. Whatever people say (and have said very loudly) about writer-director George Lucas, one cannot deny that he is an incredible world builder, and his collaboration with concept artist Ralph McQuarrie results in a tangible, ‘used universe’ aesthetic that created a believable world, perfectly complimented by Gilbert Taylors simple, unobtrusively classical cinematography. The model space-ships created for the special effects sequences and the hugely detailed sets also carry a remarkable degree of realism, and even in the technology a clear distinction is drawn between the heroes and villains: contrast the cobbled together look of the Rebel Alliance tech and the cold, clean-cut industrial aesthetic of the Imperial warships.

Before one even delves into their performances, the line-up of characters is, by itself, one of the most unforgettable ensembles in film. Whether you like Mark Hamill as an actor (and many argue whether his performance is well-balanced or simply the baleful whine of ‘tortured youth’), his appearance as Luke Skywalker conforms to the archetype of the young hero so perfectly that his name is now synonymous with the great heroes of ancient Greek or Roman legend. We relate to him not because he is perfect, but because he (like many of us) strives for great things but is held back by family duties and the mundane tasks of everyday existence. 

The role of the hero’s companion is filled by Harrison Ford, who is gleefully smug and self-centred as the smuggler Han Solo, a character that – despite his best efforts to display the contrary – we all know is a hero at heart. His loud-mouthed reluctance to join the fight until a reward is mentioned probably taps deeper into some of our psyches than we’d like to admit. Offset by his gentle giant of a companion – the Wookiee Chewbacca – Han is thrown into something he didn’t ask for but is eventually won over by Luke like the rest of us. His final decision to throw in his lot with the Rebel Alliance during the pulse-pounding climax is a wonderful moment and a highlight of the film.

Carrie Fisher is also an absolute joy, proving that being a Princess need not be the damsel in distress, and after her initial rescue she takes the lead from the two men with an air of no-nonsense, quick-thinking resourcefulness still rarely displayed by female characters in mainstream movies. The chemistry between the three leads is wonderful to watch, each one of them using the other two to build their character, and all three complimented by a string of colourful side characters including but not limited to: Alec Guinness as the wise and venerable Ben Kenobi, who spends the film with a permanent twinkle in his eye and a temperate smile on his lips, the two droids R2-D2 and C-3PO whose bickering and undeniable affection for each other transcends their mere mechanical origins, and of course the evil Darth Vader, who – certainly in terms of appearance – almost overshadows all others, supplied with an imposing physicality by Dave Prowse and an incredibly imposing voice by James Earl Jones.

Even deprived of the imagery that cannot fail to become iconic, the film is a marvel: John Williams provides quite possibly the most famous musical score in cinematic history, a shamelessly brash and courageous symphony that – surrounded in the 70’s by harsh realism and today by never-ending electronic scores – soars through the stratosphere with an ensemble of memorable themes. To those who have a love for film music, even the motifs and segments that hold the score together are memorable in their own right. Ben Burtt – who now holds one of the highest positions in Hollywood post production – begins his journey into sound design with an array of incredible sound effects that have passed into epochal movie legend, and, perhaps most extraordinarily of all, were drawn from the most mundane or bizarre objects and creatures.

All these separate elements used alone would be remarkable, but combined they have created one of the most incredible cinematic experiences of all time. With a timeless story of a young hero setting out to prove himself – against the legacy of his father, the backdrop of a galaxy at war, and insurmountable odds – thrown into this eclectic mix of audio-visual mastery, a legend is born. Whilst some believe – myself included – that the sequel (The Empire Strikes Back) is a better movie, taken on its own merits, and held up against not only the films that surrounded it back in 1977 but also the contemporary Hollywood fare of today, it is simply extraordinary. A common phrase batted around today with regards to much mainstream action schlock is ‘turn off your brain and enjoy’. For Star Wars, my advice would be ‘fire up your heart and love’.