The Machinist

Some movies are more well-known than they are seen.  For years, whenever any article was published that spoke about how Christian Bale won the lead role in Christopher Nolan's Batman series, The Machinist was pointed to as an indication of just how far Bale would go for a role he cared about.  Thanks to an extremely limited theatrical release, though, few people actually watched the movie.  So, how does it stand up?

Trevor Reznik (Christian Bale) hasn't slept in a year.  He still works every day, working heavy machinery, but his insomnia has obviously taken a toll.  Aside from an emaciated appearance, Trevor seems to have memory lapses; his apartment is covered in Post-It notes to help him remember.  He doesn't seem to have any real friends, except for a hooker, Stevie (Jennifer Jason Leigh) that worries about his weight, and Maria (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon), the waitress at the all-night airport cafe that he visits daily.  One day, this abrasive new guy, Ivan (John Sharian), switches shifts and ends up working the same shift as Trevor at work.  While helping a co-worker (Michael Ironside) with a machine, Trevor gets distracted by Ivan gesturing on the other side of the room --- I would be distracted by Ivan, too, since he has a big toe where his thumb should be.  Gross.  Anyway, Trevor's carelessness causes an accident that ends up costing his co-worker an arm.  Trevor tries to place a little blame on Ivan, but nobody's ever heard of him; there is no Ivan at his workplace.  Huh.  That's weird.  It's not all bad for Trevor, though; he starts to see Maria outside of work, even taking her and her son to the carnival.  He and Stevie even talk about making a commitment and getting her a legitimate job.  Every time something seems to be going right for Trevor, though, Ivan pops up.  Stevie has a picture of him in her apartment, showing Ivan and one of Trevor's co-workers out fishing.  What is going on here?  Is this a big conspiracy to mess with Trevor's sleep-deprived mind?  And what is with the game of Hangman on Trevor's fridge that only seems to progress when he's not paying attention?

As I mentioned earlier, the one thing that everyone comments on when discussing The Machinist is Christian Bale's weight loss.  And with good reason.

Bale dropped about 60 pounds to reach a weight of 120, and his appearance is downright disturbing.  He looks gaunt with his clothes on, but the scenes where he is shirtless are just very uncomfortable to watch.  At one point in the film, you get to see a photo of a full-bodied Bale, and the difference between what he was then and is now astonishes.  Bale's performance is more than just a physical transformation, though.  He did a great job portraying the confused and exhausted Reznik.  What impressed me most, though, were the moments when he let his character's temper snap.  I found his anger here more alarming than anything I saw from him in American Psycho.  The rest of the cast is not nearly as good, though.  Jennifer Jason Leigh was okay, as was Michael Ironside.  The bit actors were mostly fine, too, including Anna Massey and Larry Gilliard, Jr.  I was left particularly unimpressed by John Sherian's performance as Ivan.  I understand that his character is not supposed to be likable, but whenever he was on screen, I could feel my distaste for this movie grow.  It's not entirely his fault, since not every actor can pull off a character that is smug, vulgar, and intentionally repulsive, but he didn't do a good job. 

By the way, what was with his toe-thumb?  Yes, I get that the character lost a thumb in a machine accident and had his toe transplanted onto his hand.  I'm asking what the point of that was.  The only purpose I can see in that is that it gives the screenwriter an opportunity to make a few discomforting comments about sexual foreplay.  Frankly, that is not nearly enough of a reason to satisfy me.

The Machinist has one powerful performance, several serviceable ones, and one supporting role that irritated me.  What does that say about director Brad Anderson?  Not as much as you might think, actually.  I generally liked his direction, but it wasn't flawless.  I think he handled Trevor's increasing paranoia well.  The story has a mystery at its core, and you can solve it if you pay attention to some details in the film (or, if you're movie smart, like me), but the clues are subtle and decently clever.  Obviously, Anderson and Bale worked well together, but no other character felt like it had much depth aside from Trevor.  Again, I'm going to point to John Sherian's performance as an indicator that Anderson didn't direct his actors all that well.  Nevertheless, he captured dread and paranoia quite well, and I was pleased with how he set up the film's mystery, so it is a job well done, overall.

I do have one major concern with this movie.  It's the game of Hangman.  The word in Trevor's game has six letters, and at one point, we see that he has "blank-I-L-blank-E-R."  Trevor guesses "Miller," meaning Michael Ironside's character; that doesn't work because there are two L's in "Miller," and it would have come up when the other L did.  Everybody knows how Hangman works, if only because it follows some of the same rules that Wheel of Fortune does.  The fact that Trevor is unaware of this is more than a little odd.  It gets worse near the end of the film.  SPOILER ALERT: When Trevor realizes that his Hangman word is "Killer," everything falls into place in the film, like little puzzle pieces.  And yet, that also ignores the fact that "Killer" also has two L's and, by the rules of Hangman, is clearly not the right word.  Unless, of course, Trevor is playing the game wrong, which is equally dumb.  Man, that pissed me off.

The Machinist is definitely worth a viewing for Bale's performance and his appearance.  The direction is pretty good and this is a nice little movie about paranoia.  It's not great, though.  The lack of a strong supporting cast and memorable dialogue seriously limit the power of this film, and that Hangman problem shows lazy screenwriting.  More than anything, this is a movie that is all about Christian Bale.  If that sounds up your alley, you should give it a chance.

The Oxford Murders

Have you ever seen a movie that was clearly ripping off a more successful film?  I'm not talking about pornographic adaptations, like Flesh Gordon, Pulp Friction, or San Fernando Jones and the Temple of Poon.  No, I'm talking about movies that have tag lines like "If you liked Snakes on a Plane, you'll love Snakes on a Train!"  Well, The Oxford Murders isn't quite that bad, but it is clearly emulating a formula most Americans would recognize.

Martin (Elijah Wood) is an aspiring American mathematician that has just arrived at Oxford to work on his thesis.  He wants, more than anything, to have his idol, Arthur Seldom (John Hurt), as his thesis advisor; these days, though, Seldom is heard an encouraging word toward students.  Martin attends one of Seldom's lectures, where he hears Seldom declare that you cannot prove the truth of anything, outside the laws of mathematics, which means that philosophy (the search for truth) is dead, and life has no meaning.  Not surprisingly, there aren't usually questions for Seldom after he is done speaking, since he basically mocks their quest for knowledge in his lecture.  Martin, though, is brave enough to stick up for mathematics as a form of absolute truth, which gets him absolutely eviscerated by Seldom in the lecture hall.  Figuratively, of course.  It does get his attention, though.  Later, the two meet up again by chance, only to discover a murder.  The victim, Martin's landlady (Anna Massey) and an old friend of Seldom's, had been on the brink of death for years.  If it were not for a small bloody nose, there would have been no signs of foul play; well, except for the note that Seldom was handed while signing books after his lecture.  The note read "First of the series" and had a hand-drawn circle beneath.  Out of context, that note meant nothing, but the note and that bloody nose indicate that someone is committing a series of murders.  Worse, Seldom realizes that the murderer wants to impress him.  Can Martin and Seldom work together to figure out the killer's pattern, or will they forever be one step behind?

I mentioned a formula earlier, but I didn't point it out in the plot.  That's because it's more of a plot device than an actual plot development.  So, here's how the formula goes.  Seldom casually mentions an advanced mathematical concept, like Godel's incompleteness theorems, in front of Martin and a normal (non-mathematician) person.  The normal person asks what that is, and Martin explains it, with Seldom agreeing.  In his explanation, Martin might throw out another concept that the normal person has to ask about, like the vesica piscis, and Seldom jumps in to explain.  Basically, the normal person is the point of view character for the audience in these scenes, and one expert throws out technical concepts with sometimes questionable conclusions, but those conclusions are never questioned because the other expert backs the first one up.  Does that sound familiar?  It should.  Yes, this movie is based on a novel.  No, the novel is not by Dan Brown.  Man, I hate the two experts vs. the uneducated formula!  Unfortunately, The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons have made the formula so successful that imitations are inevitable.  And, as much as I detest The DaVinci Code (book and movie), this movie is nowhere near as good.

The problem is not the acting.  John Hurt playing a clever and educated British man is not a stretch.  Elijah Wood, aside from his naturally peculiar speech cadence, was also fine.  He plays intelligent characters far better than dimwits, but I think he's been plateauing for a while with his emoting.  Leonor Watling plays a love interest for both men and she does a pretty good job.  It's not a major part, but she definitely made the most of it.  I'm not certain why a murder mystery would require her to get naked, but I think complaining would seem rude.  I was less impressed with the rest of the cast.  Jim Carter is adequate as the policeman investigating the murders.  Anna Massey and Julie Cox play an antagonistic mother-daughter pair, but their scenes are awkward and unnatural; I blame Cox more than Massey, because the awkwardness continues after Massey's character dies.  Dominique Pinon's character was pretty unbelievable, so his performance can be excused somewhat, I suppose.  Burn Gorman, though, plays a frustrated mathematician like his character was the Hunchback of Notre Dame.  His character is also unbelievable, but Gorman overacted well beyond the point of so-bad-it's-good.  There was something weird with his upper lip, too --- it didn't move much, which gave the impression (that I have been unable to prove) that his lines were dubbed over.  Whatever the reason, he was awful.  And, for some reason, Alex Cox (director of Repo Man and Sid and Nancy) has a bit part as a one-limbed insane mathematician.  I hope he doesn't get typecast.

I may not have been a huge fan of the acting and I may hate the two experts formula, but the deciding factor here is the story itself.  The first story problem can be seen with the basic structure.  Martin is the main character, right?  Something should, theoretically, be at stake for either him or his loved ones, which would indicate his love interest.  While it is mentioned that both are suspects in the murders (or at least some of them), there is never any sign that the police are especially interested in them.  So, there isn't a huge sense of urgency.  With Martin as the main character, though, the main character knows more about this film's concepts than the average person; Seldom is the expert, though.  That means that the main character is neither the expert nor the point of view character.  Making Martin the lead character distances the audience from the immediacy of the issue as well as the expert knowledge needed to solve the problem.

Oh, and the rest of the film is dumb, too.  That's a tough problem to overcome.  Why is there a romantic interest in this film at all?  Practically no time is given for it to develop; all it does is provide Martin with a reason to give up his academic aspirations and give bored viewers a pretty Spanish woman to ogle.  About those aspirations...Martin claims that he wants to quit academia forever, once the murder case is closed, and move somewhere with his ladyfriend.  There is no way in hell a budding mathematician that has been working hand in hand with his math idol is going to give that up; that would be like Tim "Ripper" Owens meeting Judas Priest, practicing with them, and then turning them down for a permanent gig.  Not going to happen, folks.  What makes this even worse is that, at the end of the movie, Martin is left seemingly without either love or academics.  Awesome.  The manner in which the plot is resolved also leaves something to be desired.  I don't want to spoil the "twist" that you will never see coming, or maybe never care about, but I will let you know that a busload of mentally handicapped children die to help reach the film's conclusion.  Not just any film can boast that claim, it takes a "special" one, like The Oxford Murders.

It's a shame, really, that this movie isn't very good.  Director Alex de la Iglesia did a pretty good job telling the story, and clues to the ending are shown, even if you're meant to overlook them.  It just happens that this movie has a stupid story that is made worse by its pretentiousness.  The best acting in the world can, at best, make a terrible movie worth watching once.  Unfortunately, the acting and directing in this is only good, which means you shouldn't waste your time with this movie.

Peeping Tom

Peeping Tom first caught my attention when I saw it referred to as "the British Psycho."  Silly me, I was under the misconception that Alfred Hitchcock was British.  Still, despite being a stupid little sound byte, the idea intrigued me.  Later on, I read an interview with Martin Scorsese where he said that everything you ever wanted to know about filmmaking and the people who make films can be learned from Fellini's 8 1/2 and Powell's Peeping Tom.  A movie that is disturbing enough to be compared favorably to Psycho and artsy enough to be mentioned with 8 1/2?  Okay, if I wasn't interested before, I am now.

Peeping Tom sets the tone from the very beginning.  The camera's point of view is a little obscured, looking up at people in the streets; the point of view appears to be coming from a camera, hidden in someone's jacket.  The unseen cameraman solicits a prostitute and she takes him to a room.  He approaches her slowly, pauses, and a light shines upon her face; we do not see what happens next, but it is clear that the hooker is dead and that she died absolutely terrified.  The next scene shows Mark Lewis (Karlheinz Böhm, credited as Carl Boehm here) snapping pictures for a naughty photo shoot.  Mark is socially awkward and is clearly attracted to female beauty, but not in the traditional sense; he is overwhelmed with the usual male lust for tops and bottoms, but he is also fascinated with capturing scars and glimpses of suffering on film.  There's never any question that Mark is the killer; he's far too creepy and his awkwardness makes it seem that connecting with a woman is taboo for him.  As the film progresses, we see Mark observing (not interacting with) everything around him, with his hand-held camera constantly by his side (he is a cinematographer, as well as a photographer).  When he sees something interesting, he films it; it could be police at work, a couple kissing, a girl looking sad, or whatever.  When he gives in to his urge to kill, the camera maintains Mark's camera's POV; it is not until the end where we realize exactly what he is doing.  There are hints along the way, though, when he asks one of his victims, "Do you know what the most frightening thing in the world is?  Fright."  That makes up the core idea behind this film, and it's an interesting one.

Peeping Tom is an ambitious movie.  It makes use of some pretty interesting psychology to make Mark a sympathetic character, despite his horrible actions.  The obvious intent of this movie is to examine voyeurism.  Mark is a voyeur in his own life, and even in his murders.  Heck, if you want to get all fancy and analyze this film (and director Michael Powell obviously wants you to), you can argue that the audience (AKA your face!  Oooh, sick burn!) is participating in these murders as passive observers.  From there, you can ramble on about the role of the audience in modern filmmaking, but even typing that made me yawn, so someone else will have to tackle that subject.  It shouldn't come as a surprise that a film about a cinematographer has great cinematography; for such an introspective movie, the colors are surprisingly vivid and the camera work is fantastic.  The shots are full of symbolism and meaning, but paying attention to those things just gives depth to the film --- if you don't know or care about such things, you can still follow and enjoy the film.  That's the way artsy movies should be.

The acting in the film is a little underwhelming.  The focus of the story is definitely on the idea of voyeurism, not the characters, so many of the actors have little to do.  Karlheinz Böhm certainly plays his part well, with an awkwardness that looks nearly impossible to be an act (but it is...acting!).  When I watched the film, Böhm kept reminding me of Peter Lorre, because his eyes were half-closed through most of the film.  But when I did a Google image search for him, Böhm looked pretty normal.  So, kudos to him for adding physicality to his role!  Anna Massey was pretty good as the optimistic love interest for Mark, but boy, is she ugly.  I'm not saying that Böhm is a top shelf prize, but I imagine that Massey played the "best friend" role more often than the leading lady.  My favorite performance came from Maxine Audley, who played Massey's blind and hard-drinking mother.  Dry wit, clever lines, and great delivery, this should have been a role that won awards, but Peeping Tom was an absolute bomb in the British box office, so no contemporary recognition was given to the film, director, actors, or cinematographers.

As technically and intellectually impressive as this film is, it has some flaws, although the most serious is not its fault.  The script plays with science for dramatic purposes on occasion.  The most glaring of these moments is when Mark gets spotted staring into somebody's window at night by the people in that room; they would have seen their own reflections, not Mark.  The intellectual bent of this movie also works against it, on occasion.  Since this is more of a disturbing movie than a frightening one, the immediacy of the story is sometimes lacking.  And then there are the obvious similarities to Psycho.  A mild-mannered man with deep-seated Freudian issues with his parent is going around, killing people?  Well, if you're going to copy, you might as well copy the masters, but...oh, wait...Peeping Tom was filmed at the same time Hitchcock was filming, and this actually beat Psycho to theaters by a few months!  That's just a tough break, especially since Psycho was so well received and this well-deserving film had to settle for a delayed cult success.

What is perhaps the most interesting thing about this film is how disturbing it is.  On the face of things, this is just a slasher movie with some fancy camerawork.  However, you tend to root for the killer in most horror movies (I know I do).  Watching them dispatch their victims is half the fun, but the idiotic decisions they make and their bad acting is often just as fun; you laugh at their misfortune just as often as you are scared by it.  Peeping Tom is not like that at all.  I didn't crack a smile while watching this (quite a feat), partially because the POV camera shots from the killer's perspective made it more difficult to disassociate from the murderer, and partly because it is disturbing but also disturbingly plausible.  It's a little too art house-style for my tastes, but it's still a film worth seeing and then watching again to catch anything you missed the first time around.