2001: Vanilla Sky

David Aames has it all: Good looks, great job, shitloads of money, and he gets to dump Cameron Diaz for Penelope Cruz. Naturally, fortune must soon deal him a bad hand, and deal him a bad hand it does. - Everybody seems to like the Spanish origninal (Abre los ojos) better. I haven't seen that one; at any rate, Vanilla Sky creates a cohesive aesthetic system which is pleasant in a Dido kind of way. Suits me fine. (7)

2009: Surrogates

The Bruce Willis flick about a future in which people mind-control human-looking robots that they send out into the streets so they (the humans) can safely stay at home is professionally done all around, but no Blade Runner (6.5).

2009: Män som hatar kvinnor (Men Who Hate Women or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)

Like the Stig Larsson runaway bestseller it is based on, the film takes its time, clocking in at about 150 minutes, though this is by no means to its detriment. Good work all around. (7)

2007: In the Valley of Elah

Despite asking us to sympathize with an ex-soldier who managed to raise his two sons into joining the army, the first three quarters of this film, about a father trying to find out who killed his son, work decently as a mystery, until the film starts to clumsily hurl its anti-war meassage at the audience. Possibly the most hideous last scene in movie history. (5)

1944: The Pearl of Death

Holmes (Rathbone) and Watson are looking for a precious pearl in this one. Other people want it too. There's a conflict for you! (6.5)

1944: The Scarlet Claw

Does the recent series of murders call for a supernatural explanation? The village's people say yes, Sherlock Holmes says no. Who will turn out to be right? (6.5)

1965: A Study in Terror

This account of Sherlock Holmes (John Neville) hunting Jack the Ripper (not invented by Doyle) either features a very strange approach to cinematography or the material has been subject to serious bleaching over the year. I got used to it after twenty minutes or so, however. Apart from that, a nice afternoon diversion. (6.5)

1997: Insomnia

A cop goes to northern Norway, where the sun never sets, to investigate the murder of a young woman. Not the most untroubled man to begin with, he can't sleep. Slow descent towards madness, morally questionable behaviour. Special mention for the camera work: To call the colouring pale would be an understatement; rather, there seems to be an abundance of light on the screen. Good, off-kilter neo-noir. Or blanche. Well, you get the idea. (7)

1960: L'avventura

When a party of youngish rich Italians goes on a boating trip, one of them disappears. But Antonioni's film is no run-of-the-mill mystery; rather, after the initial events (the most entertaining part of the movie in my view), it turns into Scenes from a Relationship. I feel wholly ambivalent about the film: Visually, it is stunning; as a narrative, the deliberately paced and loosely plotted L'avventura is much less successful. Overall, a weak recommend (6.5).

2010: Shutter Island

The first half or so of Scorsese's film about two agents investigating on a kind of Alcatraz for the criminally insane has an extremely well-crafted plot, but the ending is extremely poor - indeed, my enjoyment of the film was heightened because I discounted early hints about the ending thinking that they couldn't possibly go for something that lame. Also, Scorsese generally doesn't seem at the top of his game, the music's poor and the back projections' quality made me wonder whether they were intended as a deliberate hommage to Hitchcock. Having said all that, of course if Martin Scorsese directs a thriller based on a Dennis Lehane book it's going to be a good film. (7)

2005: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Best of the Noughties: Lists and Suggestions #10)

Call me daft, but maybe the plot of this crime comedy was a little too clever for me: I found it hard to follow. Never mind that, though, because with Robert Downey jr., fast-paced, witty dialogue and a corpse being peed on, it works well enough on a minute-by-minute basis, though it's not quite The Last Boy Scout. (7)

1985: Jagged Edge

Lame female midlife crisis/courtroom drama from the pen of Joe Eszterhas, who later gave us the not dissimilar Basic Instinct. Features good-looking horses and bad-looking haircuts. (5)

1984: Body Double

Brian de Palma's take on Rear Window has 1980s: Decade of Bad Taste written all over it and even features Frankie Goes To Hollywood performing "Relax". Interestingly, de Palma uses the kind of dramatic scene that most writers would have put at the end or maybe the beginning of a script as a turning point right in the middle; rather neat. Even so, not his strongest bit of work, especially in visual terms. (7)

1992: Bad Lieutenant

Building your film around a cop that does all kinds of drugs, cheats and is generally devoid of morals is a bit of a cheap idea, the kind of thing that appeals to sixteen-year-olds, and at times the film is way too slow. On the upside: A perfectly cast leading man and the whole thing filmed with just the right amount of nittygrittyness. Summary: Tries to be Taxi Driver, isn't. (6)

2009: Sherlock Holmes

The CGI/Action approach to Sherlock Holmes uses quite a few stock elements of this line of production and is conventional to the point of indulgence, but this it does really well; the comic partnership between Holmes and an invigorated and de-nerded Watson is a lot of fun with its sharp dialogue and after I'd seen the film I couldn't imagine anyone but the fabulous Robert Downey jr. in the role. Simple minds, simple pleasures, I guess. (7.5)

1953: Stage Fright

This Alfred Hitchcock film, featuring his usual tropes, benefits from a tightly-written script and uses Marlene Dietrich to full effect, but indeed suffers from the famous construction error later acknowledged by Hitchcock. (6.5)

1963: Shock Corridor

Anticipating David Rosenhan, a journalist, hungry for the Pulizer Prize, fakes insanity to be admitted to a mental hospital and find out who killed one of the patients in a case that remains unsolved by the police. A nice idea for a film, but it's given the trashy treatment here. Neat rain effect towards the end, though. (5.5)

1944: Laura

There's little to say about this conventional 1940's murder mystery, which is competently done but not very exciting. On the superficial front, Gene Tierney's hair is always impeccable and Dana Andrew's jackets are always too large. (6)

1945: And Then There Were None

Director René Clair decided to cut out any nonsense and instead concentrate on the story, which, if you have managed to forget all the details (as I had), is good enough to carry the movie. (7)

The Best Films of the 2000s, #8: The Pledge (2001)

Directed by Sean Penn; written by Jerzy Kromolowski, based on a book by Friedrich Dürrenmatt; cinematography by Chris Menges
124 mins.; 2.35:1; colour; language: English
At Wikipedia, IMDb (6.9), Metacritic (71)


Jerry Black, a homicide detective is about to retire as the mutilated body of a young girl is found. He is the one who tells the dead girls parents the bad news and her mother makes him swear to find the killer. Soon a suspect is arrested, a mentally retarded man who sort of admits to the murder before killing himself. Jerry doesn't believe the dead man was the killer, but is told in decreasingly uncertain terms that he is now retired and the case is closed. He (a) lets it go and spends the rest of his days gardening or (b) can't forget the pledge he made and tries to find the real killer? Come on, make a guess!

The film's plot has a somewhat winding history: The screenplay for the 1958 German mystery Es geschah am hellichten Tag (recommended!) was written by Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt. However, he thought that the story was too obedient to the conventions of the genre and reworked it into a novella with the telling title Das Versprechen: Requiem auf den Kriminalroman, adequately translated into English as The Pledge: Requiem for the Detective Novel. Which is the source for this film.

It's a bit hard to explain why this film is great. For one, it doesn't have any weaknesses one might point out, which you can't say about most films. It also has the finest Jack Nicholson performance I've ever seen, and I've seen quite a few. But maybe the key lies in the trailer?



Like no other trailer before it, the clip tries to make it look (and sound!) as though the film becomes all fast and shocking and dramatic towards the end. I think even if you haven't seen the film but look at the trailer really closely, you can see it's a pretty desperate effort: He's taking a gun! He's talking to someone! The truth is that the ending of the film isn't like that at all. Slowly and painfully it grinds to an end. In that it is violating the rules of its genre more clearly than Dürrenmatt's novella ever did.

That may still not make it sound like a great movie, but that's the best I can come up with. Alternatively, maybe all the people who thought it was so-so are right. But I doubt it.