{"id":5646,"date":"2010-08-08T20:24:25","date_gmt":"2010-08-09T00:24:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=5646"},"modified":"2011-06-18T02:23:31","modified_gmt":"2011-06-18T06:23:31","slug":"the-oxford-murders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=5646","title":{"rendered":"The Oxford Murders"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The money is no longer in America. It used to be that you weren\u2019t considered a success until you made it in the US, so athletes, actors, and musicians from foreign countries have been trying to make their talents more accessible (read: dumbing down) whether it be by simplifying what made them great in the first place or by conforming to a style that makes them uncomfortable and making the jump before they\u2019re ready. This almost never works, for every Ichiro Suzuki becoming a baseball superstar, there\u2019s ten Hideki Irabus, a bloated, overpaid flash in the pan. For every band like The Beatles practicing their wares in German clubs before emigrating, there are thirty groups like Pink Lady, which go from filling up stadiums of rabid fans to becoming short-lived variety show kitsch. For every Javier Bardem bringing his range and charm from Spanish films to his work with the Coen brothers and Woody Allen<\/span><\/a>, there\u2019s fifty Chow Yun-Fats, awkwardly trying to speak English, eliminating their substantial screen presence.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Bardem began his slow, carefully considered conversion to American star with \u00c1lex de la Iglesia\u2019s Perdita Durango<\/em>, a very violent, very 90s exploitation film shot in English. If it hadn\u2019t been based on the same novel that David Lynch\u2019s Wild At Heart<\/em><\/span><\/a> was, calling Perdita Durango<\/em> a Tarantino rip-off would seem to be a fair assessment, it\u2019s loaded with film references (especially in the much more coherent international version), over-the-top carnage, tough talking women with an attitude (Rosie Perez), unheralded-at-the-time character actors like James Gandolfini, and it\u2019s a road movie. Bardem smartly played it safe by still starring in mainstream Spanish films with directors like Pedro Almodovar (Live Flesh<\/em>) and eventually making a full break for America with his up-to-now, final Spanish language only film, Alejandro Amen\u00e1bar<\/span><\/a>\u2019s The Sea Inside<\/em>, working with a director who had already had a domestic English language hit with The Others<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>But since Perdito Durango <\/em>has only ever been available in a butchered cut in America (re-titled Dance With the Devil<\/em>) and didn\u2019t make a financial dent, de la Iglesia went back to Spain to re-invigorate his career. After the broad and sitcomy duo of Dying of Laughter <\/em>and La Communidad<\/em>, de la Iglesia made the maudlin and sentimental ode to faded Western stars 800 Bullets<\/em>*, before finding his form again with the very funny and colorful The Perfect Crime<\/em>. The Perfect Crime<\/em> was much closer to the slapstick comedy and absurd violence of his first film to make a splash, the Evil Dead<\/em>ish** apocalyptic The Day of the Beast<\/span><\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Perhaps as a way to find a middle ground for his second American entrance exam, de la Iglesia\u2019s Agatha Christie-like mystery The Oxford Murders<\/em>, which was completed in 2007 (according to the end credits) but was just given a miniscule and mostly video-on-demand release by Magnolia in the US, is neither a sun drenched comedy-thriller like Perdita Durango<\/em> nor an angry TV parody like Dying of Laughter<\/em>. If anything it\u2019s closer in tone to 800 Bullets<\/em>, which yearned for a long-gone way of thinking. As a result, The Oxford Murders<\/em>, with its cold blue color scheme and attempts at intellectualized dialogue heavy scenes is like nothing he\u2019s made before and plays to none of his strengths.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>With a screenplay not particularly well adapted from a Guillermo Martinez novel, The Oxford Murders<\/em> is the least cinematic movie de la Iglesia has made, apparently not realizing that there\u2019s not much excitement in watching people reading or how awkward and cramped a sport like squash looks on screen. This is probably de la Iglesia\u2019s way of \u201cgetting out of the way\u201d of the material, but we\u2019re left with actors like Elijah Wood and John Hurt standing around for four minutes at a time, simply giving exposition. There\u2019s no energy to any individual scene partially because de la Iglesia brought in a lot of Spanish actors and was forced to either dub them into English or have them speak the language phonetically and because the titular murders are of characters who barely qualify as extras.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The movie pretends to be about following the clues left by a serial killer trying to prove that arrogant and snooty Oxford professor John Hurt\u2019s theories about the lack of a plan in the world and that everything is random, is incorrect. But despite de la Iglesia\u2019s \u201clight touch,\u201d hence the plucky string score during the opening credits, and Hurt swimming in similar territory to one his best roles in Love and Death in Long Island <\/em>(where he played a stuffy and lonely writer), The Oxford Murders<\/em> is a confused mess. The fact that the confusion seems deliberate is an odd choice, keeping track of why Elijah Wood\u2019s ambitious dreamer grad student sleeps with a busty nurse or the miserable daughter of his innkeeper, isn\u2019t interesting, and as it turns out totally irrelevant. Wood, with his piercing Meg Foster eyes<\/span><\/a> that suited him so well in Sin City<\/em><\/span><\/a>, is let down by his lack of chemistry with the two women, there\u2019s no reason they\u2019d be interested in him, especially because he plays the role like a completely asexual slut.<\/p>\n

\"\"That contradiction is less embarrassing than the small and muddled role for Dominique Pinon (Delicatessen<\/em>, Diva, Amelie<\/em>) whose rubbery face is accidentally compared to children with down syndrome. And it\u2019s not the only part of The Oxford Murders<\/em> (which might be more accurately titled The Nerd Murders<\/em>) that would be unintentionally hilarious if it weren\u2019t so uncomfortably awkward. Burn Gorman\u2019s role as Yuri Podorov, Wood\u2019s jealous, drunk rival for John Hurt\u2019s attention might qualify for a flimsy Russian caricature, but he\u2019s further demeaned by de la Iglesia subjecting him to goofy slapstick (oh, the alcohol-drenched Russian lashes out before tripping and falling face first!) that\u2019s an amusing diversion, while being absolutely awful.<\/p>\n

At least the Scooby Doo ending, requiring nearly ten minutes of explanation and negating the need to follow the previous 90 minutes is preceded by one character stating, \u201cIn life, nobody bothers explaining anything.\u201d Well, except in this movie.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>* The same soft sentimentality that hurt the second half of his otherwise wild sci-fi parody Acci\u00f3n mutante. <\/em><\/p>\n

** As perhaps an appreciative nod, Evil Dead<\/em> director Sam Raimi made a reference to The Day of the Beast<\/span><\/a><\/em> in Drag Me to Hell<\/em><\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The money is no longer in America. It used to be that you weren\u2019t considered a success until you made it in the US, so athletes, actors, and musicians from foreign countries have been trying to make their talents more accessible (read: dumbing down) whether it be by simplifying what made them great in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[6843,6853,6858,5188,543,1915,1739,100,224,5256,40,6860,389,183,6854,1448,1337,6861,6862,6464,6847,2461,197,3004,435,6859,1550,6865,6849,6850,4445,789,1209,385,6846,6864,6844,3400,3412,2010,4600,4372,309,5599,99,6852,6822,87,310,5189,2238,6851,436,262,519,1316,5994,192,514,1865,6855,6857,510,6856,6845,6848,814,4666,6863,1167],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5646"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}