- Total Recall
This week’s biggest release is José Padilha’s remake of Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop, a SF classic that’s one of the crown jewels of 80s Hollywood. It’s the second of Verhoeven’s major films to be remade in recent years, following Len Wiseman’s tepid take on Total Recall. I get why major movie studios are keen to remake Verhoeven’s work. They are, after all, consummate Hollywood films, though not for the reasons most people think. Verhoeven’s a known satirist, but his particular brand of satire is one of ultraclassification. In his American work particularly, it’s difficult (and often impossible) to discern where the satire begins and ends, which is why his most trenchant works often resemble deficiency. The point isn’t necessarily to parody Hollywood but to out-Hollywood Hollywood, to push its various tropes beyond the point of ridicule into a sort of hallowed albeit hypercritical space.
- Black Book (2006) I finally caught up with this one in the last year or so, and it instantly became one of my favorites, easily the most classical of the Verhoeven films I’ve seen. It’s the sort of “prestige picture” that actually earns the honor. Made in his native country, it’s less capricious than some of his works, a melodrama that artfully exposes complicated, deep-seated character traits and neuroses.
