Sphinx

Tomb With A View

Sphinx
United Kingdom 1981
Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner
Orion/Kin Lorber
Blu Ray Region A

Sphinx was a bestselling novel, which I quite liked in my early teens, written by Robin Cook. Now, the book was originally published as Tombs (I am just finding out now) but, although it took me a few years to finally catch up to the movie version, the paperback I read in the early 1980s had a film tie-in cover and was definitely titled Sphinx... a title which has been kept through subsequent printings to this day, it would seem. Now I always liked Robin Cook and I think this was the third of his I read, after first buying a new copy of a later book, Brain, cheaply from a coastal town’s book spinner in the early 80s. I followed it up with second hand copies of Sphinx and then with what is still probably his most famous book, Coma (which was turned into a great film).

Now, I absolutely loved all the Robin Cook novels that I read but I remember being somewhat disappointed with this movie when I first saw it on TV in the mid to late 80s. It didn’t help that it was shown on ITV, mutilated by slight cuts and further destroyed by the insertion of commercial breaks... which, as any right minded individual would recognise, is one of the great blights and evils of modern day living. Don’t watch the ads folks... they’re bad for your health.

Anyway, over the years I’d put down my initial disappointment with the movie version as being due to just the ads and so on... so I was glad to discover a Kino Lorber Blu Ray of the movie at this year’s London Film And Comic Con. I was really looking forward to seeing the movie again and I looked forward to hearing composer Michael J Lewis’ score again in the context of the picture (more on that a little later).

Catching up to it again now I can tell you that, despite the book being absolutely brilliant, I was hugely disappointed with this. Considering both the source material and the fact that the director is none other than the legendary Franklin J. Schaffner, it’s a considerably dull film... although it still looks great. The cinematography on this, where Shaffner and a couple of DPs use mirrors and make use of divisions to give the actors interesting angles and divided screen space (such as square openings in a lattice like room divider in the lead actress’ hotel room) all contribute to a visually arresting film and, normally that would be enough for me. However, this element alone does not help to stop the tedium setting in fairly early on and then continuing for a gruelling two hour running time (give or take the odd minute).

Okay, there are some great actors and they all do a fine job... such as Lesley-Anne Down as main protagonist Erica (although, I’ll come to the tone of that performance in a minute, convincing as it is), Frank Langella as another main protagonist who might possibly be an antagonist (or is he?) and there are even four actors from Raiders Of The Lost Ark from the same year in common with this film. In the shape of the great but, severely underused here, John Rhys-Davies, the brilliant William Hootkins plus Vic Tablian and Tutte Lemkow. The slight Indiana Jones connection is further enhanced by a hotel bellboy played by Kevork Malikyan, who was of course the leader of the Brotherhood Of The Cruciform Sword in Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade (not to mention being a regular on ITV sitcom Mind Your Language). The film even has Sir John Gielgud in it although, his character really doesn’t last too long, it has to be said (not really a spoiler, you’ll see it coming from a mile off).

Okay... so the actors in and of themselves are not the problem... it’s more to do with the way the thing has been written, I think, other than anything else. The performers are totally credible but the characters they play aren’t. Not as the way they are written and, well, the easiest target here is Erica, played by the lovely Lesley-Anne Down. She’s supposed to be a professional Egyptologist, who gets embroiled in a plot to do with a missing statue, the black market trade and a lost tomb. Well, maybe I’m being a little naive here but, shouldn’t an Egyptologist be able to speak a little of the native language, rather than running about aimlessly trying to stumble onto someone who can speak English? And stumble about is right. Considering she’s the sole protagonist who is supposed to be effectively carrying the movie, she does not in the slightest play a strong woman. This lady falls over at the drop of a hat and screams her way through even the most simple of reveals. I mean, why is an Egyptologist screaming at the sight of skeleton? But then again, why is a grown lady screaming at the sight of a minor wound on someone’s face after they rip a plaster off? This has got to be the least interesting, damselly damsel in distress they’ve written to carry a movie for a long time. Trust me, if you were tasked to break into a lost tomb with an expert in the field, you would not want this Erica woman with you... you’d probably wind up dead fairly quickly, I reckon.

So yeah, it’s kind of an extended damp squib of a movie, truth be told and, although all the actors are trying their best, they lost out to their dialogue and directorial instructions big time when an audience is asked to view the final product. There is, however, one really good element to this movie which has sadly been overlooked, possibly because... I suspect, at least... this movie possibly didn’t make a large dent in the box office take when it was released.

That element is the wonderful American Egyptianese sounding score, richly orchestrated and coloured by one of my favourite musical instruments, the cimbalom. Michael J. Lewis’ astonishing score is absolutely brilliant and is great as a stand alone listen. I know that last fact because, although the score to this one has never been released commercially, the composer did press a promotional CD to tout his work to future clients and I was lucky enough to acquire one of these CDs at a soundtrack specialist shop in Rye on holiday a decade or two ago and, I have to tell you, it’s another crime against filmanity that this particular score has never had a proper commercial release because, yeah, it’s pretty amazing.

However, it has to be said that, as astonishing as Sphinx is both visually and by way of its score, these elements sadly fail to lift the movie over the various problems it manifests. It’s still a very dull watch and... well... at least I saw it again, I guess. So there’s at least that. Sphinx is little more than a curio these days and, my guess is this movie won’t be rediscovered and hailed as a classic by anyone, anytime soon and... that’s not an especially bad thing, I would say.

The Box

Button Dressed As Lamb

The Box
2009 USA 
Directed by Richard Kelly
Icon UK DVD Blu Ray B

Warning: Spoilers for the source novel and previous TV adaptation.

The Box is a movie that I meant to see at the cinema at the time of its release due to the intriguing premise presented in the trailer. Unfortunately, I don’t think it played around my local cinema long enough for me to be able to physically get there while it was on but a cheap, second hand Blu Ray made its way into my possession recently and so... here we are.

The premise, which had so intrigued from the trailer and which, I might add, doesn’t even begin to give you the true flavour of this movie, is very simple and it’s based on a short story called Button, Button. This was written by famous science fiction writer Richard Matheson (The Incredible Shrinking Man, I Am Legend) and it’s now been filmed twice, once here and once as one of the 1980s run of new Twilight Zone episodes. However, by all accounts, all three versions differ somewhat and so I feel it’s okay to give away the endings of those first two versions here in order to talk about the way this movie makes use of Matheson’s material and the way the director, very much an auteur after his breakthrough hit Donnie Darko, has chosen to extend the premise beyond Matheson’s original source.

The central hook of all three is a parcel which arrives one morning at the front door of a husband and wife. They open it to find a box with a button under a glass dome and a note that Mr. Steward will be coming to see them at 5pm. When Mr. Steward does arrive, he has with him an envelope which holds the key to release the dome with the button. He tells them that they have 24 hours to choose to use the key to open the glass dome and press the button. If they choose to press the button, two things will happen. Number one is that someone they don’t know will die. Number two is that, when Mr. Steward comes to retrieve and reset the box the next day, he will bring with him a million dollars in cash, tax free. So there’s your moral dilemma right there... do you ease the pain and struggle of your life with a big cash injection and not care that someone you don’t know will die for it?

Now, of course, this wouldn’t be a story unless somebody presses the button and the wife in each case does so. Now this is where the short story and the Twilight Zone episode apparently differ in their conclusion and, I have to admit, I kinda prefer the Twilight Zone ending myself, although Matheson himself apparently didn’t like it so much.

In the original story, the wife has pressed the button and her husband is found dead on train tracks. Mr. Steward’s words to the wife are something along the lines of... “Do you ever really know your husband?” In the Twilight Zone episode the husband is fine but, as Mr. Steward leaves the couple to reset the box and pass it on, he makes the point that he will, of course, be passing it on to someone who, he assures them... doesn’t know them.

Now for me the implied threat of that version is much stronger and, in fact, it’s the option that Richard Kelly goes for in this movie but, the thing is, we get to this point fairly quickly in the running time, it has to be said. Probably no later than half way through the film. What the director/writer then does is take the premise further and start exploring both the reasons why such an interesting proposition has taken place in the first place and also what the aftermath is for the various people who find themselves unwillingly participating in this deadly game.

Now, a strong opener like that was probably better off with no meaning behind it because, after the initial trauma of the idea, nothing you say is going to explain it adequately enough to match the simplicity of the initial proposition. I’m sure Richard Matheson understood this and I’m guessing so did Richard Kelly. However, it does give Kelly a chance to explore what could possibly happen next and, I really don’t want to give away too much here except to say...

The film does get a whole lot bleaker as the narrative continues on towards the ending. This is not a feel good film and the intensity and dark places that it goes to reminded me, at least in terms of atmosphere and the kind of way in which the nagging claustrophobia of the main protagonists’ daily milieu is presented on screen, of Alex Proyas’ Dark City. Fans of that movie wil probably like the trip that this director takes them on here.

Like I said, I don’t want to put any spoilers into play here but there is a certain significance in the fact that Cameron Diaz’ character Norma is married to James Marsden’s character Arthur, who is part of NASA and worked on a project involving a probe which was sent to Mars. They, like many families inadvertently taking part in this chain of events, have a young child. There is a lot of conspiracy happening in this movie and, like the old TV show The Invaders, there’s also a tell for the audience, and the central characters, as to whether or not someone in the movie is already taking part in this particular “programme”.

What I will say is that, if you’re expecting a movie which is a set up to a thriller with an upbeat sense of closure, then you’re in the wrong genre. It’s both more and, to some people, probably less. This is a science fiction film, it turns out, and it’s very much tapped in to the old school 1950s style sci-fi movies and this one comes across as almost a mish mash of The Day The Earth Stood Still and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, in some respects. It takes the initial concept and takes it into new areas and, near the end, to a new moral decision on the part of the one of the characters. A decision that we realise, at this point, has been asked of people a lot of times before the involvement of Norma and Arthur.

In some ways I can understand why The Box apparently bombed at the box office. I do think, however, that this movie has got a lot going for it and fans of science fiction will really enjoy it. There are a few nice genre nods, the perpetual sense of impending bleakness is coolly maintained throughout the running time and it really doesn’t cop out at the end. Certainly, a movie I think is worth a watch and something I feel should have had a lot more success at the time of its release... when it was sold as more of a thriller in the trailer, than as a science fiction/horror movie. Definitely one to watch out for if you’ve not come across it before.

Liam Nesia

Unknown 2011

UK/Germany/

France/Canada/

Japan/USA

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra

Now playing

at UK cinemas.

Warning! Spoilers? Oh yes, big ones. Not really spoilers as such if you’ve seen the trailer because... well, you’ll see. If you really want to know nothing more than you can already figure out from the trailer then stay away from reading any of this review.

Hmmm... I remember watching the trailer for this movie at the cinema and as the first thought popped into my head “Woah... they’ve done another Taken or, at the very least, a new Taken rip-off”... the rest of the trailer played out and that rather hopeful thought process had unfortunately changed to... “Blimey, that’s an old plot they’re digging up again. Have people really never seen this hook before?” Still, regardless of the old 1940s-nobody-remembers-who-I-am-not-even-my-wife plot line, it did still look like it was trying to mine the same vein of “thrillcium” that Taken had opened up and, since I’d really liked that movie... there was no way I was wanting to miss this movie at the cinema.

Besides, I’d already seen Rango earlier that day and was singularly unimpressed... so I figured a big, shouty-jumpy-punchy action movie with lots of pulse-pounding percussion effects could not even begin to disappoint me... how wrong I was.

Unknown, it turns out, is a classic case of a movie trailer giving you all the answers you need to work out, within the first few minutes of the film, that movie’s final solution. You know, from the trailer, that there’s a twist... the trailer shows you Liam Neeson having an accident, not remembering stuff and then, when he does remember who he is, his wife doesn’t recognise him and he has been replaced by another man. That much is simple and very much like those old black and white movies from the 40s that I used to watch as a growing lad.

They really shouldn’t have given this much away because, frankly, the movie already has a transparent plot leading to one inevitable conclusion, which I will reveal in just a minute (you have been warned). Letting you know all the set up in the trailer before it’s even played out in the movie quite easily leads you to deduce the correct conclusions just from the way the characters behave (more pertinently, what they don’t say to each other that a normal couple might) and the way their body language works... something I’m sure the actors were very careful about, trying to pull the wool over the audiences eyes while at the same time trying to stay true to their character’s backstory... something that can’t be that easy to do without actually lying to the audience (well at least they can’t be accused of that).

But because you “know the score” you really do know what’s going on before even the opening credits are finished and the accident which sets up the film has even taken place. Like M. Night Shyamalan’s films The Village and The Sixth Sense, this is a movie which really wears it’s ending on its sleeve.

Okay, here we go then. Car crash. Neesons mind wiped but then he remembers he’s Dr. Martin Harris who’s about to give an important lecture on... oh, I don’t remember, something scientific. But his wife doesn’t remember him and she’s already got another replacement Dr. Martin Harris with her to deliver the all important lecture... not to mention that Neeson’s website has photos of this other guy and there are, wait for it, family photos. Conspiracy signals right here, yeah? They even have family photos. And most of this is information you can get easily enough by just watching the trailer - marketing dilemma... unfortunately you can’t sell the hook because the hook doesn’t hold up under scrutiny for longer than 5 minutes without giving itself away... but without trailering your hook then you don’t have anything unique to say about your movie other than “Ooh. You all went to see Taken and The Bourne Identity. We’d like similar amounts of money chucked at us too please. Come see our wannabe!”... so unfortunately... you have to trailer your flimsy hook!

And to ram the obvious final solution down your throats just that little bit harder, the “flashbacks” are treated with some very dreamlike effects to them. Seriously, this goes beyond the normal semiotics of cinema with the treatment of the film stock in these sections. Now, okay, this could be a stylistic flourish of the director but, frankly, my suspicions have already been more than aroused by the trailer. And when I say my suspicions have been aroused I mean the trailer is dancing naked around me talking dirty and tickling me under the chin aroused. I know these aren’t normal flashbacks we’ve got here, they’re fake memories and, even in the unlikely instance that they had indeed been flashbacks... then why the heck is Mr. Liam-I’m-a-simple-married-doctor-giving-a-lecture-here-folks-Neeson so good at keeping the enemy at bay with his jumpy, shouty, fighty stuff and his stunty-drivey-crashy stuff? Give me a break.

Okay... so I hope by now anyone still reading this will have cracked the so-called spoiler for this movie but, just in case you havent, I’ll spell it out for you. Yes, Liam Neeson is a bad guy assassin on a mission with his “wife” under cover. Yes the accident has wiped his memory and he’s taken on the fake memories of his own cover story and yes, the film then takes a terrible turn for the worse because once Liam figures out who he is and why he’s there, he then tries to stop it taking place. What? Honestly, half an hour with Diane Kruger warding off danger (so good in Inglourious Basterds but, like Neeson, wasted here) and he’s ready to switch sides and do the right thing? Why? What epiphany happened here that the audience wasn’t privy too? Talk about writing yourself into a corner and then running through the wet paint quickly in the hopes that nobody will notice your clumsy, writerly footprints.

Ok... let’s try to focus on anything good here. Ok... Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger and Frank Langella are all stand out here, although Langella’s a little bit over the top, if truth be told. But the one who really comes out on top here is... Bruno Ganz! Yep, that’s right. You read correctly. They somehow managed to convince the great German actor Bruno Ganz to be in this poor-man’s Bourne rip-off. And, once I’d gotten over the shock of how old he’s looking now (was half expecting that angel from Wings of Desire and its sequel to fall to earth on screen again, clutching his suit of armour) I realised that he is the only character I can respect in this mess of a movie. A seriously well-written and intelligent, considered performance from Ganz here and almost (almost) worth the price of the ticket... if only he’d had more screen time.

And that’s about it, I think, for both the good stuff and the bad stuff when it comes to this particular movie. Unknown is an okayish, no brainer actioner which will probably leave you fairly unsatisfied because it’s so easy to figure out what’s going on so quickly in the movie. A third rate version of The Bourne Identity... which makes it a second rate Salt in my book! If you like seeing the slow transformation of solid actor Neeson into Mr. Mature Action Hero... then you’d be better off staying away from this one and waiting until they’ve got Taken 2 in the can. And, yes, that movie is already in pre-production and awaiting shooting. Lotsa shooting is my guess ;-)