11-14-2020, 01:20 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-14-2020, 01:21 PM by TM2YC. Edited 1 time in total.)
Killer's Kiss (1955)
'Killer's Kiss' was Stanley Kubrick's first studio film (for United Artists), after his self-financed and disowned 1953 debut. He still acted as director, co-producer, co-writer, editor and cinematographer. It's clearly done on a modest budget, runs to only 67-minutes, includes no stars (that I recognised), has some occasionally rough post-synced sound and one or two rough edits. However, Kubrick is already using his trademark symmetrical compositions, long tracking shots and his Noir lighting is stunning in every shot, so it doesn't look like a B-movie. The simple story is about two sad-eyed big city losers who make a connection, a defeated Boxer and a beautiful girl working in a seedy dancehall, after he intervenes between her and her violent boss. There are some distinct touches like Kubrick shooting through a broken picture on the wall, or doing a dream sequence in negative (which has echoes of his later "stargate" scene), or the fight in a mannequin factory, or having the heroine narrate the story of her sister's suicide, accompanied only with footage of the sister ballet dancing on a spotlit stage. Gerald Fried's Jazz score adds to a feeling of melancholy and shattered dreams. Apparently the studio insisted on a more upbeat ending but it felt just right to me and earned by the characters, so perhaps they were right? I think this film might be more celebrated if it wasn't a mere footnote in the career of a director who went on to bigger and better things.
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Noah (2014)
As the original story of 'Noah' is essentially "1. Build Ark, 2. Profit", writer/director Darren Aronofsky fills his film with as much incident, false jeopardy and half-baked inter-personal conflict as he can. All the problems he puts in the way of the characters, play out for as long as they are needed to fill a gap in screen time, then he solves them with magic. He doesn't stick to his own established internal logic, he's quite a poor director of action, the dialogue is leaden and cliched and the characters are one note. The leaf-based pregnancy test is unintentionally hilarious. It's mostly done in the style of the 'Lord of the Rings' films, which was a bad choice in my opinion. Aronofsky's talents would've better suited a more poetic, phantasmagorical approach, it probably could've been done without dialogue. The "let there be light" animated evolution sequence is so stunningly beautiful and creative that I'd recommend sitting through the rest just to see it. When he lets his imagination lose it works best, the physically tortured fallen angel/rock creatures looked great and it could've done with more dog/lizard hybrids.
'Killer's Kiss' was Stanley Kubrick's first studio film (for United Artists), after his self-financed and disowned 1953 debut. He still acted as director, co-producer, co-writer, editor and cinematographer. It's clearly done on a modest budget, runs to only 67-minutes, includes no stars (that I recognised), has some occasionally rough post-synced sound and one or two rough edits. However, Kubrick is already using his trademark symmetrical compositions, long tracking shots and his Noir lighting is stunning in every shot, so it doesn't look like a B-movie. The simple story is about two sad-eyed big city losers who make a connection, a defeated Boxer and a beautiful girl working in a seedy dancehall, after he intervenes between her and her violent boss. There are some distinct touches like Kubrick shooting through a broken picture on the wall, or doing a dream sequence in negative (which has echoes of his later "stargate" scene), or the fight in a mannequin factory, or having the heroine narrate the story of her sister's suicide, accompanied only with footage of the sister ballet dancing on a spotlit stage. Gerald Fried's Jazz score adds to a feeling of melancholy and shattered dreams. Apparently the studio insisted on a more upbeat ending but it felt just right to me and earned by the characters, so perhaps they were right? I think this film might be more celebrated if it wasn't a mere footnote in the career of a director who went on to bigger and better things.
<hr style="border: 1px solid white;" />
Noah (2014)
As the original story of 'Noah' is essentially "1. Build Ark, 2. Profit", writer/director Darren Aronofsky fills his film with as much incident, false jeopardy and half-baked inter-personal conflict as he can. All the problems he puts in the way of the characters, play out for as long as they are needed to fill a gap in screen time, then he solves them with magic. He doesn't stick to his own established internal logic, he's quite a poor director of action, the dialogue is leaden and cliched and the characters are one note. The leaf-based pregnancy test is unintentionally hilarious. It's mostly done in the style of the 'Lord of the Rings' films, which was a bad choice in my opinion. Aronofsky's talents would've better suited a more poetic, phantasmagorical approach, it probably could've been done without dialogue. The "let there be light" animated evolution sequence is so stunningly beautiful and creative that I'd recommend sitting through the rest just to see it. When he lets his imagination lose it works best, the physically tortured fallen angel/rock creatures looked great and it could've done with more dog/lizard hybrids.
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