I actually came to David Mamet’s House of Games a bit sideways. Nowadays, of course, it would catch my eye because of Mamet’s name and my love for his unique style of writing dialogue. However I actually saw House of Games long before I was aware if Mamet as a screenwriter and director. No, it was another name that first drew me to this movie. One of the actors.
Ricky Jay.
Now, I can already hear many of you out there saying “Ricky Who?”, and that’s completely understandable, because Ricky Jay is not exactly a name that, as they say, puts butts in seats – at least not for the majority of people. For people who enjoy illusionists and especially card manipulation, on the other hand, Ricky Jay’s name is one to – pardon the pun – conjure with.
Ricky Jay was born with magic in his blood, being the grandson of illusionist Max Katz, and made his first television performance at the age of four. In what had to be an absolutely intriguing evening, Ricky Jay once performed between rock queen Tina Turner and Timothy Leary who was there that night to lecture about LSD.
What makes Jay so intriguing, though, is not so much his skill at card manipulation, which is prodigious, but his interest in, and exploration of, the history of magic. He has written a number of books on the subject and also produced a number of specials featuring not only illusions that he created but also those of the masters of the past.
Anyway, it was the presence of Ricky Jay in the cast list that initially brought me to House of Games.
Then I discovered Mamet
Now don’t get me wrong I’m not one off those who think David Mamet can do no wrong (State and Main, I’m looking at you), but when he is on, Mamet has a control of dialogue that is rarely equaled.
It does, however, take someone who is in sync with Mamet’s style to deliver that dialogue properly. There is definitely a stiltedness to it that can be off-putting and can sound incredibly forced and fake without the proper attitude behind it.
Fortunately for House of Games, which is in many ways an updated version of The Sting, where no one can be trusted and nothing and no-one is ever quite what they seem, Mamet’s dialogue s a perfect fit, and in stars Lindsay Crouse an Joe Mantegna he has found the perfect actors to bring that dialogue to life.
There is a certain flatness, a remove to the delivery that can be a bit off-putting, but at the same times adds to the sense of distrust the pervades the movie and makes ever person, every action, and every statement seem suspect. Plus, the plot takes a number of twists that keeps the viewers on their toes and uncomfortable, which is just how the con artists that are at the center of the film want things.
Here’s your trailer:
Stark.
However, Godard’s innovative shooting style also extended to the editing room, where he decided to cut not only between scenes, but inside them, taking out anything he felt extraneous or boring. This led to what have been called “jump cuts”where the background may change dramatically while conversations may be taking place. These jump cuts also occur during action scenes, often with the camera only focusing on individual objects or quick actions, all of which serves to make the movie move much more quickly an adding an extra layer of intensity.
The film opens with a dedication to film noir house Monogram Pictures, an the reason for that seems to be two-fol. First, the movie is obviously Goard’s riff on the noir genre, including many direct references to classics of the style such as The Maltese Falcon, which is paraphrased in a statement by our protagonist Michel who states that he always falls in love with the wrong woman. For that matter Michel’s American girlfriend Patricia is, despite her outwardly light demeanor, an almost prototypical femme fatale, eventually holding all the cards and becoming the final arbiter of MIchel’s fate.
f the interesting announcements to come out of the meeting was of a new graphic novel which will be written by Gene Luen Yang, the author of American Born Chinese, which was the first graphic novel to be nominated for a National Book Award and the first to win the American Library Association’s Michael L. Printz award. The new graphic novel he is writing for C s to be entitled Superman Smashes the Klan.
As a “franchise” Cloverfield certainly has an odd history. The first movie, simply titled Cloverfield, was a found-footage take on the kaiju/giant monster/Godzilla genre. To be honest, although there have been found footage movies that I’ve enjoyed, I wasn’t a fan.
Then, in a surprise move, Netflix released a trailer for the movie during the Super Bowl and announced that the film would be available for streaming immediately after the game.
Now, this is a perfectly good and quite interesting setup for a science fiction film. Unfortunately, too little is done with the possibilities, and the film mostly devolves into a fairly standard survival movie set on the space station, Plus the movie veers way too far into the “fiction” end of science-fiction. Perhaps the rules of science and physics are different in the new universe also?
Oh, and as for its connection to the “Cloverfield Universe”? Yeah, that’s even more tenuous and literally last minute than that in 10 Cloverfield Lane, and if you’re looking for some background or insight into what is going on in the original then forget it.
“All’s good if it’s excessive.”
The problem comes with just what those whims are. The aristocrats are an extremely perverse lot – perhaps some of the worst villains ever put on film – and they indulge themselves in everything from physical torture, rape, sodomy, the eating of feces, golden showers, and yes, even murder. To make matters worse, they seem to experience a sexual pleasure from this perversity.
But there is something to the film which, despite its objectionable subject matter an its portrayal of abominations, raises it high above mere simplistic dismissal.
Pasolini’s camerawork s also obviously that of a master, as he chooses just the right way to frame every scene in order to intimidate the thinking viewer but also to provide a sense of distance which allows the viewer to be more of an observer as opposed to an actual participant in the horrendous goings-on.
Further, there are also the political and social commentaries that are being made in the film. I haven’t mentioned it yet, but the setting of the film is Italy’s Republic of Salo (thus the film’s title) during the last days of the regime of Benito Mussolini. The aristocrats fashion themselves as Anarchists, and the entire film is structured to represent the abyss dividing those with power from those without. The young adults who are the subjects of the men’s tortures are given little background and little personality and are basically treated as interchangeable commodities existing solely for the use of these men.
I seem to have been on a bit of a Kurt Russell kick lately. Just recently I wrote about 
Okay, since I’ve already mentioned Kurt Russell, let’s take a quick look at his character. Our first introduction to him is as a man who is despondent and nearly suicidal after his son has accidentally killed himself with a gun, Nonetheless, he is considered fit enough to lead a military team on an expedition into the unknown. Also, once he’s back on the job, the only real effect his depression seems to have on him is an aversion to letting the younger members of the tribe found on the alien planet handle his guns. Sure, I suppose you could chalk his willingness to stay behind on the planet and make sure that the stargate is destroyed as a symptom, but in the film he simply presents it as “doing his duty”, so no, I;m not willing to attribute it there.
Then, of course, there is James Spader’s Daniel, who often seems not just clueless but willingly obtuse to everything going on around him. Of course, this points out another of the film’s huge flaws: the fact that no one in the movie ever bothers to ask what could be considered the important questions until it is convenient to provide a plot twist.
The problem is that Davidson simply doesn’t work as the kind of intimidating presence that is needed to embody the conqueror of a people and the all-powerful Egyptian sun god. It was a daring casting choice, but in the end, as the film shows, without his otherworldly armor and space flyers and weapons, he really just has too much of a boyish look to pull off the role.
Also, it seems odd that even though the civilization on the other side of the gate is apparently thousands of centuries old (after all, they were supposedly the ancestors of Earth’s ancient Egyptians, and have been under the rule of Ra for all those years, they have also seemingly been asleep for all those years as they have made absolutely no technological advances of their own, nor has Ra used any of his own technology to advance the civilization, instead apparently simply – I don’t know – napping in his flying pyramid space ship?
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