THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN

 

My official UK DVD of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (© Stephen Norrington/Angry Films/International Production Company/JD Productions/20^th Century Fox – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

My movie watch on 11 April 2023 was yet another of those long-promised but never-till-now-fulfilled film viewings – this time it was the early 2000s big-budget fantasy movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (plus one lady, as it turns out).

Directed by Stephen Norrington, and released in 2003 by 20^th Century Fox, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is set in 1899, but within an alternate, steampunk-themed Victorian universe, and the League's membership is as eclectic as it is exclusive (played, moreover, by a glittering host of acting stars).

Namely: legendary explorer Allan Quatermain (played by top-billed Sean Connery in his last on-screen film appearance), the picture-phobic Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend), Dr Jekyll (Jason Flemyng) (and Mr Hyde, natch!), Captain Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah) aboard his Nautilus, an invisible Cockney pickpocket/thief named Rodney Skinner (Tony Curran), and very seductive Dracula-acquainted vampire Mina Harker (Peta Wilson), plus American Secret Service Agent Tom Sawyer (Shane West). In short, the League is a kind of Victorian precursor to today's super-hero clans.

They have been assembled by the British government's representative, M, to save the world from an impending World War – the grandiose, insane plan of a cryptic super-villain known only as The Fantom (Richard Roxburgh), but with innumerable high-tech war machinery at his disposal, having captured a team of top scientists to do his bidding (otherwise their kidnapped, imprisoned families will all be killed). But this is just the beginning...

The movie is a masterpiece of subtle misdirection and sleight of hand, with the League discovering almost too late that it has a traitor in its midst, a double agent working for the Fantom – but  who is that masked Fantom?

If not Michael Crawford, might it be none other than the Napoleon of Crime himself, the nemesis of master sleuth Sherlock Holmes, and who happens to share his surname with one of my FB friends? Now that would be telling, but do keep a sharp lookout for a slew of subtle identity-revealing inferences along the way!

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is loosely based upon Volume 1 of the eponymous graphic novel/comic-book series by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill (I use the word 'loosely' because it diverges extensively from the characterisations and plots in this series, which in turn antagonised some comic-book purists). And as revealed above, it incorporates many famous literary characters and works from a number of eminent Victorian writers.

These include the likes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, H. Rider Haggard, Gaston Leroux, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, Mark Twain, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Oscar Wilde. In addition, Sax Rohmer's fiendish Fu Manchu was originally intended to appear, but was subsequently dropped, and at the studio's own request the Twain character of Tom Sawyer was added in order to attract American audiences, bearing in mind that most of the other lead characters were derived from British or French literary works. I've also been informed that Dorian Gray was not in the original source material, but as I haven't read any of that yet, I can't confirm this myself – does anyone know for sure? If so, please post details below this review – thanks!

As you'd expect from such a no-expenses-spared blockbuster as this one, the special effects on display in one form or another throughout The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (including a CGI-enhanced Mr Hyde) are mind-blowing (not to mention Venice-obliterating!) – this ain't no Asylum or SyFy Channel offering, that's for sure! Also well worthy of praise is its spectacular steampunk-influenced design and set decoration (most notably that of Nemo's incredible Nautilus ship), with painstaking attention to even the most minute details.

Needless to say, therefore, the film critics hated it on principle, but it did big business at the box office and especially via subsequent rentals and DVD sales.

So if you're happy to suspend disbelief from the word go, and just run with the pyrotechnics rather than the plot, you'll have a great time in the company of this league of truly extraordinary gentlemen (plus lady). I know I did!

If you'd like pay a brief visit to the League yourself and experience a tumultuous taster of the veritable rollercoaster ride awaiting you in the full movie, be sure to click here and here to watch a couple of official trailers for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen on YouTube. But after the wholesale destruction wrought in it by the battle between good and evil, I certainly don’t envy whoever is tasked with reassembling Dorian Gray's library – just sayin'…

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN

 

The official UK DVD of The City of Lost Children (© Marc Caro & Jean-Pieere Jeunet/Canal+/Centre National de la Cinématographie/Eurimages/France 3 Cinéma/Televisión Española/Union Générale Cinématographique/Concorde-Castle Rock-Turner/StudioCanal – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 22 December 2020, I watched the English-dubbed version of a quite extraordinary French fantasy movie, La Cité des Enfants Perdus, known in English as The City of Lost Children and released in 1995.

Directed by Marc Caro and Jean-Pieere Jeunet, and starring Ron Perlman as a carnival strongman named One, it features a surreal steampunk-styled dockside city with Bladerunner overtones in which children are being abducted by a crazed malign scientist aptly named Krank (played by Daniel Emilfork), who wishes to steal their dreams using a bizarre machine created by him, because he himself is unable to dream when asleep.

Krank is aided and abetted by six simple-minded male human clones (all played by Dominique Pinon), a female midget named Martha (Mireille Mossé), and a large disembodied brain named Uncle Irwin (voiced by Jean-Louis Trintignant) floating inside a fluid-filled tank, plus a gang of cyborgs named the Cyclops, who trade Krank stolen children for mechanical eyes and ears. In addition, there is a pair of adult female Siamese twins yet who, inexplicably, are not identical (played by Geneviève Brunet and Odile Mallet), known collectively as the Octopus, who are also utilising children, all of whom are orphans, but in this case as juvenile pickpockets to sustain the twins' Faginesque lust for money and expensive baubles.

When a young child named Denree (Joseph Lucien) looked upon by strongman One as his little brother is abducted by the Cyclops for Krank, One swiftly swings into action, letting nothing get in his way in his attempts to rescue Denree. During One's perilous quest, he is secretly assisted by one of the Octopus's orphan pickpockets, a young girl named Miette (Judith Vittet), as well as by a mysterious amnesiac diver, who just so happens to bear a remarkable facial resemblance to Krank's six clone helpers (and is once again played by Dominique Pinon).

The City of Lost Children is a very complex movie that was co-written by one of its directors, Jeunet, together with Gilles Adrien, but it is also extremely intriguing, and full of weird symbolism that has been fancifully linked in the opinion of some writers to Freemasonry and even the Illuminati. Strange indeed, but it is fascinating to watch – and also to listen to, as it boasts a beautifully melancholic, haunting score composed by eminent American composer Angelo Badalamenti, whose other big (and small) screen successes include the scores for Blue Velvet, Mullholland Drive, and the Twin Peaks TV series.

In addition, his wistful, plaintive song 'Who Will Take My Dreams From Me?, sung evocatively by Marianne Faithfull, plays softly over this movie's end credits – click here to listen to it, and watch the accompanying clips from the film (albeit screened here seemingly through a colour-draining filter for atmospheric effect).

As if all of this were not enough, the extraordinary costumes that elevate this mesmerising movie to an even greater level of idiosyncratic strangeness were designed by none other than avant-garde fashion flourisher Jean-Paul Gaultier. And I haven't even mentioned the troupe of trained fleas that inject a violently-potent aggression-inducing compound into the bloodstream of anyone bitten by them in response to the commands of their owner Marcello (Jean-Claude Dreyfus). Ah, too late, looks like I already have done!

The City of Lost Children is unquestionably one of the most unusual yet memorable movies that I have watched for a long time, its distinctive imagery staying in my mind long after the film had ended. Giving an all-too-brief idea of what to expect if you should decide to watch it yourself, and I heartily recommend that you do, here is an official trailer for this phantasmagorical fantasy experience.

And to view a complete listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE!