The Road Review

I read the vast majority of The Road last summer whilst travelling the length of the 171 bus route from Catford to Holborn and back. It isn’t that I’m a particularly fast reader; it’s just that Cormac McCarthy’s sparse prose is nothing if not economic. The best thing about The Road as a novel is how much vivid detail McCarthy conjures with so few words. The grey, ruined America of the book is painted in your mind almost from nowhere. And one of the great things about John Hillcoat’s fine adaptation is how well this world is visualised on screen. One wouldn’t be surprised if the Australian director had actually scorched significant bits of countryside to recreate McCarthy’s unnamed disaster.

For the uninitiated, The Road concerns an anonymous Man and his Young Boy travelling south across a post-apocalyptic countryside in search of whatever they can find to keep them alive. A predictably intense Viggo Mortensen and equally impressive Kodi Smit-McPhee star as the two survivors. I was lucky enough to be invited to a screening hosted by the Barbican which was followed by a Q&A with Hillcoat. Hillcoat was clearly in awe of his source material but much to my delight was unafraid to take small liberties with the text, subtly chopping and changing it to suit its new medium. What he has made remains faithful to the novel but also stands on its own two feet as a separate and significant entity.

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’s minimalist score stirs and impresses; Javier Aguirresarobe’s cinematography is both daunting and beautiful despite the intentionally coarse and unpleasant looks of the production design; and Hillcoat masterfully paces the film in such a way that its 111 minute duration seems to fly by. Also commendable is the constant atmosphere of menace – at any moment you feel things could go terribly wrong for the duo.

Thankfully there are very few negative comments to be made about the film. The sparing use of a voiceover narration works, but only just and some may find the few flashback sequences in the film slightly clunky. Others still may find the film relentlessly morbid, though for my money, Hillcoat has captured the untainted love between man and his son that provides hope for them in a brutally hopeless world.

The much delayed release of The Road seems clearly engineered to provide it with a good run during the forthcoming awards season, its producers no doubt hoping to replicate the success of McCarthy’s previously adapted work, No Country for Old Men (Hillcoat claimed that he was satisfied with the film’s success already as it had impressed the esteemed author). The Road has also arrived in the middle of a spate of much sillier apocalypse movies – 2012, Carriers and the forthcoming Book of Eli and Legion (which features mankind’s destruction via the medium of heaven-sent machine gun wielding angels – seriously). Where one postulates The Road will stand out from these is in its reality-based, post-9/11 and post-Katrina influenced realism, which delivers a gut punch on a much more personal level.

Serious Men - An Interview with the Coen Brothers

Laconic. That’s probably the best way to describe Joel and Ethan Coen. Either that or jet-lagged. There’s probably other things the Coens would rather be doing than participate in a round table interview with a handful of eager student journalists, who don’t seem quite able to believe that they’ve actually been allowed to chat to these purveyors of cinematic cool, but to their credit, they give us our due and patiently answer our every question.

Joel is the older of the two and the more forthcoming, until Ethan comes out of his shell. Both are intelligent and clearly intimately involved with their works. Their latest, A Serious Man, is the subject of today’s interview...

Q: Given the setting and community in which the film is set, it seems this might be a slightly more personal, even autobiographical film?

J: Well it’s a little bit of both, it’s not really autobiographical because the story is made up, but it certainly is a movie that takes place in the community that we grew up in. There are a lot of similarities to our background there, we went to Hebrew school, we were bar mitzvah –ed, our father was an academic, he was a professor at a Midwestern university, we grew up in a house like that, in a neighbourhood like that, all those things I guess you could say in some sense are autobiographical but the story is all fiction.

Q: Does that mean you're very much like Aaorn?

J: No... The character that Michael Stuhlbarg plays in the movie isn’t anything like our father, couldn't be more different in many ways. The characters themselves aren’t meant to reflect real characters or members of our family or anything else like that. But the setting is very much...

E: But you know that's it... Aaron's character is probably a very typical kid of that environment and probably we were too. Not particularly like him but, you know, part of that time and place.

Q: Why is it Jewish boys smoke so much pot? [laughter]

J: We both smoked pot but we were both a little older when we did it, we weren't doing it at 13, but yeah, there was a lot of pot around. We were both a little older when we started smoking dope; neither of us were stoned at our bar mitzvahs, but yeah, there was a lot.

Q: Given the semi-autobiographical theme and the slightly more conventional dramatic style, would you say you're maturing as filmmakers, or do you see this as a continuation of your previous films, which were perhaps more genre pieces?

E: Aaaah I don’t know, we don’t actually compare movies one to the other or think about it much. Maturing? God, who knows? They’re all juvenile to me. Maybe not. I don’t know. Some of them are more genre pieces than others but this one isn’t the only one that’s not... it sits comfortably in a genre, but for us that’s a pretty unexamined question. We don’t actually think about where we're going or relate the movies one to the other and think about how they’re progressing or regressing

Q: How do you think your working relationship has evolved over the decades? Has there been a pinnacle do you think?

J: In our working relationship?

Q: Yeah, between the two of you

J: Honestly it doesn’t feel like it’s changed at all

Q: How has your work ethic changed? When you did Blood Simple were you locked away in a cupboard typing away? What’s your working day when you’re working on a script?

J: I think maybe in a certain respect it’s become a little more professional due to the pressures of y’know... when we were doing Blood Simple we were in our twenties, I remember sharing an apartment or living nearby and blah blah blah... now we’re old fogies, we’ve got kids we go home to at night, y’know we go into an office every day and write... is that what you mean?

Q: Well it’s the amount of writing you get done, you’ve had your short plays recently, are you literally writing every day? A good 2000, 3000 words?

J: Oh shit no.

E: No it does seem funny. Joel may disagree, but we’re fairly lazy, yet relative to other people we do seem to get a fair amount done, but that just seems to reflect poorly on other people as opposed to well on ourselves!... We get very little accomplished and yet we’re outpacing many of our peers. It seems odd to me. And when we were younger we did, as Joel’s suggesting, we did seem to spend more time doing it, actually in production even more than in writing longer days... six day weeks, we haven’t done six day weeks in ages in terms of shooting weeks.

J: We would work longer in the editing room, it’s, y’know, it just er... as you get older we like to go home and spend more time with our kids.

Q: There is a co-dependent sibling relationship between the father and his brother, is that something you enjoyed exploring in this film?

J: Yeah it was a fun part of the story, again it was not reflective of our experience growing up, we didn’t have an uncle that lived in the house. We actually knew someone who did and that kind of informed us. It was the germ of the idea I guess, and there was somebody else we knew, these characters all tend to be based on real people, they’re sort of hybrids of lots of different impressions you get from lots of different people. There was someone else that we knew about but never met that wrote that book that’s in the movie; it’s actually called the Mentaculus.

Q: Is there anything of your own relationship in the brothers in the movie?

J: Between Larry and Uncle Arthur? Jeez, I hope not!

Q: You said you were looking for an essentially unknown actor to play the lead role, why was that?

E: Well partly just ‘cause of how we wanted the movie to feel, kind of a slice of life from that time; we wanted to immerse the audience in that setting, it seems kind of exotic, even though its where we grew up, even with a lot of years of perspective it seems like an exotic place to us and we wanted the audience to feel that too. And putting a familiar movie star face in that setting would not help, it would diminish the whole feeling of ‘here we are in this everyday reality’, this suburban Jewish community in 1967; one doesn’t expect George Clooney to show up. Actually, maybe that would have worked!

Q: Looking back at years of growing up, does this film about a man going through a spectacular mid-life crisis come from you two at all?

E: Yeah... no, no, not in any specific way, but I don’t think either of us would have written this movie when we were thirty.

J: For all kinds of reasons.

E: In a way, yes, only a middle aged person would have written that, but neither of us have any of the specific problems this character has.

Q To what extent do films like A Serious Man and No Country for Old Men suggest searches for order are meaningless? Is the title A Serious Man disparaging in any sense?

J: It’s a little ambiguous even in our minds actually, as to who it’s supposed to be referring to. In our minds it’s both Sy Ableman who is called a serious man in the movie, and Larry who is the protagonist and at some point in the movie aspires to that and the stature it implies, but no its not meant to be... maybe there’s some irony in it, but it’s not meant to take the piss out of him really. And the search for order...?

Q Yeah, I guess in No Country for Old Men you’re left with the feeling that things are random.

J: Yeah it’s interesting, they’ve both kind of got that element in them and it’s interesting to us.

Q: Along those lines, why did you make Larry a physicist specifically?

J: Well that was um... First of all, making his world an academic one was something we wanted right off the bat because it was something to play with and we felt it would be something fun to create in. The physics thing tied into... we wanted to make him a scientist [and see] that way of looking at the world and that sort of rationality was up against, in the face of the things that are happening to him, especially in the face of the more... he’s to a certain extent looking to spiritual leaders for answers for the things he’s going through which was interesting to us and the last thing that was interesting to us was that both mathematicians and the more spiritual parts of the Judaic tradition, the more mystical parts of the Judaic tradition, try and make sense of the world through numbers. That was interesting to play with.

E: Yeah, the whole idea of the character starting off as thinking he has some grasp of how the world works and is a rationalist, that all seemed to conspire to make him a mathematician or a physicist. Yeah, someone who is immersed in numbers, that too tied in nicely with his scribbling on the blackboard [formulae in Larry’s physics lecture] and tied in nicely with the Mentaculus, a deranged version of the same thing.

Q: Given that this is about maths, and that sense of order is kind of displaced, do you think it’s unfair or do you agree that this film has been described as quite nihilistic or misanthropic at all?

E: I don’t know why you’d call it misanthropic, it’s about a character who’s looking for some kind of meaning and he’s getting repeatedly stymied in that quest. But that’s the story... I don’t know, the character doesn’t achieve any kind of clarity or get a grasp any kind of meaning that’s satisfying for him but I don’t know, that just seemed like the story we were telling rather than an expression of a larger point of view that we have ourselves.

Q: When you were saying about using science or Judaic religion or maths to look for meaning where maybe there isn’t any, is that kind of a hit back at film critics and analysts who maybe assign metaphors or meanings onto your narratives?

E: [pause] No [laughter]. No, really, I, no, I don’t think so, no. No way, no. Yeah.

Q: Would you be able to tell us anything about what your next project will be? Do you have anything in mind?

J: We’re doing a movie, it’s an adaptation of a novel called True Grit, it was made into a movie once before actually in the late sixties with John Wayne. It’s a Charles Portis novel, an American writer, it’s a western and it’s going to star Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and Josh Brolin and a fourteen year girl who we haven’t cast yet who’s sort of the main character in the movie.

Q: Have you always wanted to make a western?

J: Well, I don’t know that we’ve always wanted to make a western, it’s always been interesting and in the back of our minds and things, like maybe it’d be interesting to do. This was just a novel we both really liked and the opportunity was there to do it and so...

Q: Do you still think a western has relevance for an audience today?

J: Um...sure, yeah, why not? Yeah, absolutely. So do vampire movies, so do outer-space movies. I’m just not sure we could make an outer-space movie.

Q: Do you have any advice for budding filmmakers?

J: Just general advice for budding filmmakers? Wow, that’s hard. It’s been so long since we were budding. It’s hard to know whether any of experience is relevant to someone who’s just starting out now. I’m always really cautious about that ‘cause when we were starting it was such a different environment. Maybe things are generally... y’know, maybe there are some constants in it.

E: It might sound like a cop-out, but it’s so difficult to give a prescription, y’know, what are you gonna do? It’s just from firsthand experience, everybody I know in the movie business – which is most of the people I know! – got into it in different ways, they all kind of stumbled into it, many of them with ambitions to get into the movie business, but how you get started is so different in each case. It’s just so hard to give a prescription for it, you know, how to go about it successfully.

J: It’s certainly easier if you can somehow generate or manage to find your own material, as opposed to being reliant on other people for the actual material that you might make into a movie, ‘cause then you have an ownership of something, you can go out and try and do yourself as opposed to waiting for people to offer you the opportunity to make something. So as a general rule, it may still be true, I think it was true when we were starting out; it’s probably still true now.

Q: Do you consider yourselves artists?

J: We don’t really think about it. That’s the honest answer, we, y’know, we consider ourselves filmmakers, we make movies. I wouldn’t put artist down on my passport.

Q: I just thought when were discussing the cold rationality of people like the protagonist in A Serious Man, how would you view the world, as more random or has your academic background influenced you to view in a more rational way?

E: Well we don’t have any scientific expertise or sophistication, so god, maybe by default we’re artists, we can’t figure things out in any organised way, but y’know... yeah!

Q: I remembered reading one of you had a background in philosophy...?

E: [amid laughter] ah... no! Sorry!

And with that, a PA pops her head in the room and informs us are interview time is over. The Coens leave; we gather up our Dictaphones and make our way out of the building. The two guys who got shot down for asking the “is this a hit back at your critics?” and the “are westerns still relevant?” questions are still reeling, but everyone else seems to have had a great time. One guy produces his mobile. “Right,” he says. “Time to start bragging!”

A Serious Man Review

The first thing that strikes you about A Serious Man is a distinct lack of George Clooney. Or Steve Buscemi. Or Frances McDormand. The brothers Coen have eschewed their roster of regulars and cast an ensemble of relatively unknown thesps in A Serious Man, an awkward yet very likeable comedy drama.

The film begins with a brief prologue set several generations before the main plot in a snowy village where an unassuming chap may or may not have invited a demon into his house. The Coens have invented their own Jewish folk tale, filmed entirely in Yiddish that sets the tone of ambiguity and bafflement that will entail for the next 100 minutes.

We’re then transported to a Jewish community in the American Midwest, 1967 and the classroom of Danny Gopnik (Aaron Wolff), which we enter via Danny’s ear canal which the camera slowly pulls out of to the sound of Jefferson Airplane (whose music features heavily in the film). Danny’s problem is his struggle to pay back his dope-dealing classmate whilst learning the Torah for his upcoming bar mitzvah. His academic dad, Larry Gopnik (an excellent Michael Stuhlbarg) however, has much bigger problems which seem to multiply every minute. His wife Judith (Sari Lennick) announces she’s leaving him for local bigwig Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed), his odd brother Arthur is sleeping on his couch and a student is attempting to both bribe and blackmail him. Things escalate from there.

In an effort to combat his midlife crisis, Gopnik visits three rabbis in search of advice and generally finds none. Similarly, the film offers little in the way of answers or meaning as we are left to make our own sense of its narrative. If you like closure and conclusions, you may not enjoy A Serious Man (its ending in particular throws a rather unexpected curveball). This is a matter of personal taste however, and I rather enjoyed a break from being spoon-fed bite-sized simplistic fodder. I was reminded of Andy Kauffman’s ‘character’ in Adaptation, who is struggling to write a script about real people who go through life without easy conclusions: A Serious Man is such a script. The interaction between Larry and Arthur too, reminded me of the Kauffman twins’ two-sides-of-the-same-coin relationship.

The cast is uniformly excellent, with Fred Melamed’s Sy being a stand-out, though the Coens have given him a real gift of a character to work with. Sy is sleazy yet charismatic, all bear-hugs and bonhomie whilst openly having an affair. Aaron Wolff also charms while Michael Stuhlbarg holds the whole shebang together with an assured performance. The production design is also highly commendable, effortlessly transporting us to 60s Midwest America in every minute detail.

A Serious Man may not be the Coen brothers’ most accessible film (the press notes came with a Yiddish glossary), but beneath its composed exterior is a quagmire of existential crisis and near Shakespearean personal tragedy. There are also plenty laughs to be had too though, which leaves us with a satisfying banquet of a film with plenty to enjoy and plenty to chew over.

DLAFF preview

The cream of new Latin American cinema is coming to London from 26th November to 6th December in a cavalcade of galas, screenings, workshops and esteemed guests. Around forty feature films, many of which will be UK premieres, will be showing at venues across London as well as numerous shorts and cultural events.
The pick of the crop include the widely touted Blood and Rain which will be introduced by its wunderkind director, Jorge Navas. Blood and Rain is the story of two lost souls, Jorge and Angela, who meet on a rainy Colombian night who attempt to ease the other’s pain. The film is followed by an after-party as part of the festival’s opening night revelries on the 26th.
Also showing is Alex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer, a ‘cyber-punk, futuristic sci-fi’ dealing with ‘virtual immigration’, whereby people use hi-tec equipment to cross borders with their minds. High concept or what? The film looks at the stories of a soldier, a migrant and a writer and is part of the festival’s ‘immigration tales’ selection of films. The director provides a Q&A sesh on its opening on
December 3rd. Also in the ‘immigration tales’ selection is Simond Brand’s excellent drama, Paraiso Travel, which tells the incredibly moving tale of Marlon and Reina as they travel South America to cross the US border and make lives for themselves in New York (see review
opposite).
The other set of films grouped by theme is ‘Comedy in the Cinema of Latin America’ showcase, the highlight of which is Romance, produced by Brazilian superstar Paula Lavigne. This rom-com, about the struggling relationship between out of work actor Pedro and successful thesp Ana, is one to watch.
For many though, the best part of the festival will be the special event at the Tate Modern. Following a screening of Los Bastardos, its director will be taking part in a panel discussion with film critic James Woods and the world renowned Alfonso Cuaron, director of Children of Men, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and the contemporary Mexican classic, Y Tu Mama Tambien. The luminaries will be discussing the variety of Latin American cinema and the changing modes of production brought about by digital technology.
Admirably, profits from the eighth
annual DLAFF are this year being donated to Kiya Survivors, a charity who look after Peruvian children with special needs. The recently established Pasitos Centre in the remote village of Chinchero will be the main beneficiary, which offers basic education, support and care for many of the kids in the village.

Discovering Latin America Film Festival (DLAFF) runs from 26th November - 6th December
For more information and tickets for screenings and events, visit www.discoveringlatinamerica.com.

London Film Festival Preview

The London Film Festival kicks off on 14^th October, during which a multitude of brand new films will be showing at cinemas across the capital. I take a look at potential highlights...

An Education

Adapted from The Guardian journalist Lynn Barber’s memoir by Nick Hornby, this feature stars hotly-tipped newcomer Carey Mulligan as Jenny, a bright girl from a lower middle class family who is seduced by Peter Sarsgaard’s older man, David. Enticed by the fine things in life that David can provide for her, only school teachers (Emma Thompson and Olivia Williams) sense the danger Jenny may be entering.

The Road

Cormac McCarthy’s second scintillating novel to be made into a film, The Road stars Viggo Mortensen as a nameless survivor of a nameless apocalypse who is travelling across a scorched America with his young son. If director John Hillcoat has managed to convey even a fraction of the book’s grim vision, we could be on to a winner. Last showing is this afternoon though so hurry!

A Serious Man

The latest film from the Coen Brothers sees the nice and normal world of Larry Gopnik fall apart around him as he tries to maintain his virtuous existence. Some feel that Burn After Reading was a misfire after the much lauded No Country For Old Men; let’s hope A Serious Man can restore their faith in the ever surprising Coen’s catalogue.

Balibo

Balibo is based on the true story of five Australian journos who were killed whilst covering the 1975 genocide in East Timor (for more about that search YouTube for Noam Chomsky’s excellent documentary, Manufacturing Consent). The film has been described as tense, thrilling and affecting and should highlight a relatively little know 20^th century tragedy.

Bunny and the Bull

The producers of this have described it as ‘Withnail & I for the mentally ill’. It boasts Paul King, director of the Mighty Boosh at its helm as well as stars Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt. It will probably be rather funny then. It concerns the tale of two friends who’ve had a trip around Europe so tumultuous; it’s left one of them house-bound for two months. Fielding and Barratt play an ex-matador and a tramp that the couple encounter on their trip. Expect surrealism.

American: The Bill Hicks Story

An inventive documentary from two UK filmmakers, American: The Bill Hicks Story combines stand-up footage, testimonies from close family members and animation techniques to tell the tale of one of the greatest comedians ever to grace a stage. Hick’s performances were audacious displays of articulate rage, unrelenting compassion and machete-sharp wit. Hopefully, the film will capture some of this and serve as a fitting memorial to the sadly missed stand-up.

The Scouting Book for Boys

Thomas Turgoose, the breakout star of Shane Meadow’s tour de force, This Is England, takes the lead as David in this compelling drama about two childhood friends who are separated when one goes missing. Apparently mixing the anxieties of teen-hood with the idylls of childhood in the summertime, this could be the film that turns Turgoose into a household name.

Metropia

“Downbeat animated sci-fi noir” describes this Scandinavian curiosity. Roger lives in a dystopian vision of the future in which all of Europe is connected by subterranean transport links and constantly monitored by CCTV and big corporations. Also, he’s hearing voices in his head. Is someone trying to control him? Who? And why? Or is he just mental? Sounds intriguing!

Women Without Men

Iranian director/artist Shirin Neshat adapts Shahrunsh Parsipar’s banned (in Iran) novel, in which we follow the stories of four women during the time of the 1953 coup (backed by us western buggers) in which Iran’s democratically elected PM was deposed by the shah. A heady mix of political, social, sexual and religious issues are discussed in this beautifully shot film.

Also showing at the festival are showcases of several short films, grouped by theme. ‘The Gothic and The Grotesque’, for example collects numerous macabre and creepy shorts including Little Red Hoodie, an update of a familiar Grimm tale and Touch of Red, a depiction of Edgar Allen Poe as he writes The Fall of the House of Usher. The ‘Landscape as Character’ set also contains many potential gems, such as A Whore and a Chick which features a cycling chicken man and John Wayne Hated Horses, about a father and son’s views on machismo.

There’s also the secret screening, in which the audience doesn’t know what they’re going to watch until the lights go out. In the past, punters have been treated to No Country For Old Men and The Wrestler. My money’s on Terry Gilliam and the late Heath Ledger’s The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus.

For more information, screening times and locations and tickets, visit www.bfi.org.uk/lff.

Notes on the History of Black Cinema

The first all-black casted film, The Homesteader, was made by novelist Oscar Micheaux in 1919. It dealt with the race tensions and inequalities of the period, a theme that would continue to be pervasive in black cinema. Of the 500 or so ‘race movies’ – films made for black people by black people up until about 1950, only around 100 have survived, due in part to their existence outside the protection of Hollywood.

Perhaps the most notable black pioneer in cinema is Sidney Poitier. In 1963, Poitier became the first black actor to win an Academy Award for his part in Lilies of the Field (though James Baskett was awarded an honorary Oscar for his role in Song of the South and Hattie McDaniel won a Best Supporting Actress Award for Gone With the Wind). He was regarded as a critically and commercially successful actor, starring in films such as Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night and They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! Poitier was savvy enough to choose roles that not only paid off financially, but roles that also challenged black stereotypes of the time. He also had a successful career behind the camera with a clutch of directorial efforts. For his contribution to cinema, Poitier was awarded an Academy Honorary Award in 2001 and more recently received a Medal of Freedom from President Obama.

An important chapter of black cinema is the blaxploitation genre of the 1970s. Led by films such as the original Shaft and Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, the blaxploitation films usually starred black casts who, through brain and brawn, outwit The Man. Whilst some found the films empowering – Spike Lee said of Sweet Sweetback, “...[it] gave us all the answers we needed. This was an example of how to make a film, a real movie, distribute it yourself, and most important, get paid”- others, such as the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Urban League, criticised the genre’s crass stereotyping (such as pimps or drug-dealing characters) and the movement waned by the end of the decade.

The legacy of blaxploitation lives on, most notably in the work of Quentin Tarantino. Kill Bill, Death Proof and especially his masterpiece Jackie Brown (which starred stalwart of the original movement, Pam Grier); all owe a creative debt to the blaxploitation genre. Shaft was remade in 2000 and the movement influenced films as diverse as American Gangster to Austin Powers. For better or worse, blaxploitation also influenced the iconic style of the ‘gangster’ image adopted by artists such as Snoop Dogg, Ice T and 50 Cent.

Perhaps the most important black director of recent years is Spike Lee. A graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of Art, Lee has helmed almost fifty major films (as well as numerous advertisement campaigns, most famously for Nike). He has also directed videos for Prince and the late Michael Jackson. Lee’s signature film, Do the Right Thing, was nominated for two Academy Awards, though not Best Picture, to the chagrin of the director and many others. Deemed controversial upon it’s released in 1989, several jumpy white reviewers incorrectly predicted that black audiences would be incited to riot after seeing the film. Of course, no violence took place and the film has gone on to be rightly heralded as a modern classic.

Lee is nothing if not outspoken, both on-screen and off. While his films deal with issues of race, media and society, Lee himself has been a strident critic of the NRA and Charlton Heston, the actions of the US government post-Katrina and racist right-wingers. An avid sports fan, Lee is preparing a documentary on Michael Jordan as well as a sequel to his 2006 thriller, Inside Man.

I noted whilst researching this article that of the top twenty highest grossing film stars of recent years (in a survey published by Esquire magazine) only two were black – Will Smith and Eddie Murphy (furthermore, only five were female). No Academy Awards have been won by a person of African origin in the last two years. In spite of the boundaries broken by Micheaux, Poitier and Lee, Hollywood, at least, is far from an equal opportunities workplace. Thankfully, independent cinema showcases much more black talent, which is why events such as the Black Filmmaker’s International Film Festival are so important.

Moon Review

Moon - 97 minutes, directed by Duncan Jones and starring Sam Rockwell and Kevin Spacey.

Moon is a tightly scripted one man (more or less) drama that should entertain and enthral in equal measures. Sam Rockwell plays Sam, who works on a base on the moon mining helium 3. He is assisted by Gerty, a robot voiced by Kevin Spacey (obviously influenced by 2001’s sinister HAL). Towards the end of his three year contract, Sam suffers an accident whilst driving around on the moon’s surface. To his surprise and confusion he awakes in the base’s infirmary with no idea how he got there. To say much more would spoil some of the film’s surprises, of which there are several in store for the viewer.

Moon’s greatest strength is its surplus of ideas – questions of identity, sacrifice, environment and ethics are all addressed. A spot on performance from Rockwell also adds emotional heft to the human elements of the plot. Spacey gives a reliably unnerving vocal performance too. Jones’ direction is surprisingly adept for a debut feature and the production values are also surprisingly impressive for a (relatively) low budget picture.

To conclude, Moon is a satisfying and thought-provoking sci-fi in the classic sense of the genre – don’t expect any giant CGI robots punching each other in the face. The first twenty minutes or so are arguably a little slow, but by the atmospheric conclusion (aided by Clint Mansell’s eerie score) the tension will be by nigh on unbearable. Cracking stuff; we await Jones’ next project with much anticipation.

Funny People Review

Funny People – 146 minutes, directed by Judd Apatow and starring Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann and Eric Bana

The third directorial feature from comedy lynchpin Judd Apatow, Funny People is a comedy-drama concerning Adam Sandler’s George Simmons, a jaded millionaire comedian who learns he has leukaemia. He meets Ira Wright (Seth Rogen), a wannabe stand up, whom he employs to be his assistant, write jokes for him and talk him to sleep at nights. The film follows the varying successes of the comedians’ careers in the business. Ira’s roommate Mark (an excellent Jason Schwartzman), for example, has hit pay dirt in crap sitcom ‘Yo, Teach’, much to the derision/jealously of his friends. With comedians as central characters, there are predictably many funny exchanges and situations that arise in the film and most people should find several laugh out loud moments in the film.

Funny People is not without its flaws however. A comedian with a terminal disease makes for some erratic shifts in tone, veering from low-brow humour to near the knuckle tragedy, often within seconds or even simultaneously, which is not something Apatow always carries gracefully. The film is also indulgently long and could easily have lost a good forty five minutes without losing any plot or character development. The sexual politics are also pretty questionable at times as Apatow seems reluctant to truly commend or condemn any of his character’s actions.

However, despite its problematic faults, Funny People is still a compelling drama and very well acted by a faultless cast (Eric Bana is especially good). The overtly autobiographical elements (Leslie Mann is Apatow’s real life wife; his two young daughters have significant roles; footage of Apatow and Sandler’s college pranks are implemented) are a bold inclusion, that despite not always making for comfortable viewing, are one of the film’s more commendable features. Solid and very watchable.

My Week in Film #9

My good friend Karthik recommended that I watch Primer, which I did so a couple of weeks ago (the ‘My Week in Film’ banner seems to have been stretched to ‘My Month or so in Film’). I watched Primer with absolutely no foreknowledge whatsoever (other than assumptions based on Karthik’s tastes) which is a very rare privilege for me. Seriously, when was the last time any of you watched a film that you knew nothing more about than the title? It’s an experience I would advocate. In the spirit of this, I’m not going to explain anything more about it other than that it’s about a couple of scientist friends that make a discovery. It was made for $7000 by actor/director/writer/etc Shane Carruth in 2004. I found the film compelling, confusing and unnerving. It was shot using Super 16mm film stock, which gives the picture a gorgeously oversaturated, 70’s style look. Carruth’s script also embraces highly technical dialogue and refuses to ‘dumb down’ in any way, which adds to the film’s commendable realism. I cannot recommend it enough.

I also re-watched one of my all-time favourite films, Starship Troopers recently. For those who haven’t seen it, it’s a pitch black humoured satire on fascism in which the extreme right-wing forces of earth fight disgusting giant alien insects. Or to paraphrase one critic, ‘a sci-fi WWII from the Nazi’s point of view’. Partly shot in the style of a recruitment video/infomercial, Starship Troopers mixes tongue in cheek, gung-ho brutality with a dash of intellectualism that serves it very well indeed. The special effects look great ten years on and it’s got Neil Patrick Harris in it. What more could you want?

I also saw the second and third Terminator films recently. Rise of the Machines really isn’t as bad as everybody said it was (in fact, it’s the Terminator film I’ve seen the most). It’s properly funny, which I welcome, just as action-packed and plot driven as its predecessors (the latter prerequisite not being too hard to match) and has the best ending of all three. I’m still not convinced that I’m going to see Salvation yet though.

Finally, in a break from the sci-fi. I saw Happy Feet. Frankly, this is probably the weirdest film I have ever seen, and I am not knowingly exaggerating. It utilises a very twisted internal logic in which we have to believe that singing is a crucial part of penguin society. It doesn’t get any more logical from thereon in. It has a great voice cast, well choreographed action sequences and some impressive CG rendering. I’m not entirely certain kids will properly understand or like Happy Feet (I’m not even sure I did) but I cautiously recommend you watch it, if only as it is original if nothing else. I’d be interested to hear what you think of it.

My Week in Film Podcast #2

Hi

Welcome to the second podcast! This one goes out to Glen for his enthusiastic response to the last one.

Just right click here and “save link as”.

A couple of notes:

• I am aware how often I repeat some words and phrases


• I too notice how my accent changes slightly during the top ten

Ok. Enjoy!

Jack

My Week in Film Podcast #1

Hi! Welcome to my very first podcast! An exercise in self indulgence that allows you, the listener to enjoy my stilted and forced sounding 'radio voice' anywhere you like! Be it on the road, on the can or in the shower (please don't listen to your MP3 player in the shower). Just a few things I ought to mention, firstly, Ben has suggested you download the podcast if you can rather than listen to it on the site as this will cause bandwidth "issues" with the site, if not the internet and explode your computer. Into your face. So yeah. Watch it. Tom.

Simply right click here and "save link as".


Also, just a couple of things I forgot to mention:

• Yes, I am aware how many times I said Role Models was funny


• Professor X is played by Patrick Stewart


• The action sequences in X2 are quite rubbish


• Yes, I realise that X2 probably isn't supposed to be plausible


• And on Monday evening, I had to give in some DVDs to the library, but the staff had left, it being a bank holiday, so I had to leave the DVDs in the collection bin, meaning they would be signed in on Tuesday, meaning I would get fined, which is unfair.

Anyway, hope you enjoy the 'show'. Given how complicated it has been for me and Ben to bring this to you, its unlikely that this podcasting lark will happen very often, but let us know if you actually want more and if you do, we'll try and think of something if we can.

Love to your mothers,

Jack x

My Week in Film #8

The Motorcycle Diaries is my girlfriend Lauren’s favourite film, which she showed me last Saturday night. The film is the true story of two young doctors, Ernesto “Che” Guevara and companion Alberto Granado (played by Gael García Bernal and Rodrigo De la Serna respectively) and the journey they undertake through South America, en route to a leper colony. The Motorcycle Diaries is by turns breath-taking and humorous as the two protagonists beg, borrow and steal food, shelter and transportation as their dilapidated motorbike, inappropriately named The Mighty One, becomes steadily more ramshackle as they take in more and more of the gorgeously imposing countryside and its inhabitants.

The film’s greatest asset is its subtly employed social conscious. It serves as a kind of origin story for Ernesto and we see how the naive medical student would become the infamous revolutionary through his encounters with marginalised members of South American society. Crucially though, the film never approaches preachy-ness and social tragedy is more inferred than overstated. The film treats its audience as adults and is all the better for it.

Other notable aspects of the film are Gustavo Santaolalla’s soundtrack, which both stirs and excites, and decidedly old school photography, appropriate to the mid-twentieth century setting. Some may find The Motorcycle Diaries a little slow, compared to your average ADHD Hollywood action thriller, but the film is good, honest film-making, that should no doubt entertain, inform and possibly even inspire.

Tuesday 21^st of April was, unofficially, Iron Maiden Day. Across the globe, cinemas in hundreds of cities made one showing and one showing only of Iron Maiden: Flight 666, a documentary (or rockumentary, if you will – one very small cookie up for grabs) detailing the heavy metal band’s recent Somewhere Back in Time Tour, which, to repeat the oft quoted tagline in the film comprised of “23 sold out stadium and arena shows in 13 countries in just 45 days, travelling 70,000km and performing to almost half a million fans”. The film was directed by Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen, the duo behind the celebrated Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey documentary. The band travelled in the environmentally questionable fashion of flying their own jumbo jet, piloted by lead singer Bruce Dickinson. The footage of the band arriving at hotels, flying, golfing and meeting unnervingly rabid fans (the Chileans and the Costa Ricans being the most scarily obsessed) is interspersed with predictably top-notch live performances of classics from their mid-eighties heyday, the theme of the tour (unfortunately the Greenwhich Odeon had some really quite appalling technical difficulties with the surround sound which significantly neutered the live footage for our showing).

As a somewhat lapsed fan of the band, I was dubious to the appeal of the film. Unfortunately, my doubts were not entirely unfounded. As an owner of the rest of Iron Maiden’s filmic output, I didn’t find Flight 666 to be particularly insightful, certainly no more so than Rock in Rio (in particular its extra features) or the excellent History of Iron Maiden series and would have preferred a more significant amount of the run time devoted to concert footage (though for a documentary there was a pretty darn generous amount). The problem, for me at least, is that Flight 666 is neither a pure, in-depth documentary, nor a concert film; either of which would have been preferable to me. However, as Dickinson keenly points out, the Somewhere Back in Time tour was for the new fans (not a cash-in on their most popular period, apparently) and the same is probably true of the accompanying film. Don’t, however, watch this if you have no interest in Iron Maiden at all: I was graciously accompanied by a long-suffering Lauren, who was nearly bored to tears.

Finally, last night I saw the much-hyped Let the Right One In (Låt den Rätte Komma In in the original Swedish) at the Greenwhich Picturehouse. First a word about the cinema – it was probably the nicest one I’ve ever seen a film in (I did go to an even plusher one once, but didn’t actually see a film; I was part of a studio audience). Two words – reclining seats. For the benefit of regular readers, there is a Picturehouse in York, if it’s anything like the one in Greenwhich, I urge you to go.

Let the Right One In is the story of a bullied young boy, Oskar, who befriends what seems to be a twelve year old girl called Eli. Eli, however is a vampire and responsible for numerous violent deaths in the small town in which they live. Let the Right One In is striking in many ways. Firstly, it is beautifully shot: dark, cold and sparse and yet intimate and compelling. Scenery, whether natural or man-made, expansive or claustrophobic is brought wonderfully to screen, each shot composed with the precision of a fine artist. Secondly, the two young leads and their adult supporting cast are uniformly excellent.

Much has been made of the genre blending and bending in this film and rightly so. Elements of the horror and romantic traditions are skewed and hybridised to great effect, making the film stand out as a highly original piece of work. Finally, plaudits are in order to director Tomas Alfredson for the perfectly pitched tone, which is seriously creepy, distinctly eerie and terrifyingly tense whilst also being superlatively sweet and often heart-breaking, sometimes all at once.

My only criticism is that occasionally the hauntingly beautiful orchestral soundtrack comes across as being rather OTT, especially given the introspective and quiet nature of the film. Other than that, I would urge you to catch this film while you can, as I doubt it will be playing for very long. I would doubt that you will see a film anytime soon that, in spite of its brutal grimness, will uplift you in quite such a profound way. Also, watch out for Harvey Dent’s cameo!

My Week in Film #7

I watched two films this week, the first of which was Richard Curtis’ The Boat That Rocked, followed by Adam McKay’s Step Brothers. The cumbersomely titled The Boat That Rocked was showing in a very pleasant little cinema in Ambleside named Zeffirellis. Spread over two sites and showing a considerable amount of films over four screens, it was an endearing venue with an obviously dedicated local following. Key in its appeal was the showing of an amusing independent short prior to the main event, concerning a lonely young man on a train. Unfortunately, it has proven difficult to find the details of this film, though I have emailed the cinema in an effort to find them out. Stay tuned.

The Boat That Rocked is about an offshore pirate radio station, Radio Rock and the misadventures of its staff and crew and the government’s attempts to shut it down. Boasting an impressive cast, including Bill Nighy, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Nick Frost and Kenneth Brannagh (who stands out as the funniest thing in the film) among many others, the quality of the players is the film’s strongest asset. The film is solidly shot and the set and costume design is convincingly 1966. There also a couple of half decent set pieces, both comedic and dramatic, including a sequence towards the end involving a box of records (to say much more could be a bit spoilery). Unfortunately, this is about all the good there is to say about the film.

The Boat That Rocked is very flawed in more ways than one. Crucially though, its biggest sin is that for a so-called comedy, it really isn’t very funny. At all. The majority of the humour derives from cheap innuendo, pratfalls and daft insults disguised as ‘witty banter’, only the previously mentioned Brannagh proving anywhere near smirk-worthy. The script too, is problematic, feeling like a second draft rather than a finished article. Characters appear in and out of the narrative seemingly at random. Events are said to be occurring in the future only to happen in the next scene. Plot strands are picked up and dropped with reckless abandon. Annoyingly, the majority of characters are pretty likable but are let down by the cobbled together plot. Whilst this is postulation on my part, I believe that the biggest problem is Tom Sturridge’s lead character Carl. I got the feeling that he had been added to the film for the audience’s ‘benefit’, a point of normality for viewers to experience the array of wacky characters, something that really is not necessary. I’m guessing that before Carl’s inclusion, the film would have been a series of loosely linked, semi-amusing skits. Now, burdened with a lead character, the script obviously must adorn said lead with some sort of goal, you know, for narrative cohesion, such as finding his father, getting a girl, finding a place in the world or discovering the ‘meaning of rock’. Bizarrely, Curtis goes with not one but all of the above, resulting in a lot of crammed in story at the climax and about 452 endings. My point being that the film would have been more palatable without an attempt to create a traditional A to B storyline around it; as it is, attempts to straighten out the plot only confuse things further.

Ultimately though, perhaps this isn’t the kind of film that is designed for strict critical scrutiny (it certainly doesn’t stand up to it). Rather, this is a film for disengaging brain and feeling good, which is all very well, but I was expecting a bit more. It wasn’t for me.

Step Brothers, by comparison, is much funnier. Suffering less than expected for being a pretty formulaic Will Ferrell movie (the man practically a genre in himself), Step Brothers is about two middle aged men who still live with their parents. The parents get married and Ferrell and cohort John C Reilly find themselves as unwilling roommates. Perhaps the best aspect of the film is Ferrell and Reilly’s worryingly precise portrayal of pre-adolescent boys, their tantrums and one-up-man-ship antics hitting the nail rather pointedly on the head.

At times, the supporting cast threaten to out-shine our two leads; Adam Scott in particular, as Ferrell’s god-awful younger brother, gives unsettlingly good comedic performance. The film could perhaps be improved by some slightly more aggressive editing to reign in some of Ferrell and Reilly’s more indulgent improvisation, but, while it is not as outrageously hilarious as Anchorman, intriguing as Stranger Than Fiction or as undeniably charming as Elf, one thing you can say for Ferrell’s output, as exemplified by Step Brothers, is that it is nothing if not consistent, and consistently funny at that. An example that Richard Curtis would do well to learn from.

My Week in Film #6

On Monday night, I and a select group of friends went to the VUE at Clifton Moor to see Clint Eastwood’s new film, Gran Torino. A forty-five minute trip to see a film may seem excessive, but the cinemas in Scarborough are poor enough to justify the journey (especially when coupled with their lack of choice). The film in question, however, was anything but poor. Eastwood directs himself portraying Walt, a misanthropic, racist widower with a horrible family who assumes his life can’t get much worse until a group of Hmong people move into the house next door and bring trouble with them in the form of a gang perusing harassed youngster Thao.

The first thing to say is that for the first time in what seems like an age, going to the pictures didn’t involve super-heroes, monsters, corsets, sci-fi or fantasy. This film is no high-concept blockbuster, it is a contemporary drama and god did it feel good to see a film without even a hint of spandex.

Whilst the change in Walt’s opinions about non-whites is predictable, the engrossing storyline is slightly more off-kilter than I expected, with a surprise, though in retrospect, inevitable ending. The script is tight, the music understated (though I wasn’t sure how I felt about Eastwood’s raspy singing over the end credits; predominantly creeped out, I think) and the photography somewhere between perfunctory and elegant. The main draw here is obviously Eastwood’s superlative performance (touted as his last) which is by turns sympathetic, distasteful, comical and frightening.

The only criticisms I really have with the film are that several lines from the supporting characters sound forced and unnatural, which undermines the realism at points. Also, the words ‘Gran Torino’ sure are said a heck of a lot; I realise it’s the name of the film and everything, but would it never be shortened to ‘the Torino’ or just ‘the car’? Whilst a minor quibble, this too undermines the realism of film, which is disappointing, considering how important an air of reality is to the film’s moral standpoint. However, the film is excellent overall and is highly recommended.

I also watched A Cinderella Story this week, which is a modern retelling of Cinderella starring Hilary Duff. There isn’t really a lot of good to say about it. I’d be surprised if there is anyone in the demographic primarily portrayed (teens preparing to go to university) who would find this fun in a non ironic way. Pre-teen girls would probably love it but then they’d probably love it more if it featured their age group more prominently (as in the actually not bad prologue). Also annoying about the teens portrayed is that despite all being supposedly in the same academic year, the actors cast look to be variously aging from around fourteen to thirty.

Anyway, the dialogue is mostly poor or tedious. The two leads are either massively pretentious or the scriptwriter(s) simply don’t know how teenagers speak. Acting is functional. Expect no flair in cinematic technique. The plot drags on far too much in the final act. Half-arsed set-pieces and narrative devices are stuck in at various points, but at least, I suppose, some effort has been made to engage audience interest.

Good points? Well, the transposition of the classic fairy tale into its new twenty first century Californian setting is pretty seamless and Jennifer Coolidge’s performance as the step-mother raises a few smiles, but little else catches attention. It’s not that the film is overtly, offensively bad, just that there is very little good in it. Films like Enchanted, The Princess Bride and (though I hate it) Shrek have proven that contemporary fairy tales can both critically and commercially successful. A Cinderella Story is just evidence of a criminal lack of effort.

Finally, I watched Quantum of Solace for the first time last night. Following on directly from the satisfyingly decent Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace follows everyone’s favourite secret agent as he travels across the globe in an effort to uncover the mysterious organisation responsible for the death of his girlfriend Vesper in the previous film.

Unfortunately, the film does not maintain its predecessor’s high standards: rushed unfocussed and awkward, Quantum can’t seem to strike a balance between the drama and the action. Characters seem sketchy, motivations are not clear and some of the action sequences are simply ludicrous, especially frustrating given the Bond team’s dedication to something approaching realism in Casino Royale. It is perhaps unfair to keep comparing the film to its prequel, but when a franchise chooses for the first time to make a direct sequel I feel it is inevitable.

Quantum is not without its redeeming features. Daniel Craig is still appealing as Bond and Judie Dench’s scenes (of which she has significantly more than in previous outings) are consistently entertaining. And I seem to be the only person in the world who likes the theme song (to an extent). There is evidence, such as in the opera set piece, that the film could have been great, but on too many occasions the film misfires, the aforementioned scene being the best example. Also, the plot is pretty silly, but then this Bond (and even the last film had him defeating terrorists with… poker) and these kind of things can usually be looked over. Unfortunately, the film has too many other flaws to cover these up. Ultimately, who wants a Bond film in which M’s scenes are more interesting than Bond’s?

My Week in Film #5 Terry Gilliam Special

I didn’t watch any films this week, so as Mark has requested, I’m going to provide you the reader with a brief overview of the films of my favourite director, Terry Gilliam. Gilliam is known for his whimsical style and films that are both child-like and dark.

Gilliam’s first directorial credit of note is for Monty Python’s Holy Grail, which of course, is very funny. Similar in style and execution is Jabberwocky, another medieval-set series of sketches loosely strung together by a scant plot.

Time Bandits was one of Gilliam’s more commercially successful films and also one his most enjoyable. The plot concerns a group of dwarves who have stolen a map that shows the way through time and are using it to steal riches. The time travelling element once again gives Gilliam a device to scenes of historically based amusement. John Cleese’s Robin Hood stands out as being particularly funny. The film has a great ending and stick around for the credits, during which George Harrison’s magnificent song Dream Away plays.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is another series of funny scenes attached to a thin plot. The aged eponymous Baron is attempting to recruit his old companions to protect a besieged city. Overblown and over budget, Munchausen is a fun film with only one criticism, in that it is at times overly sentimental. It is also pretty indulgent, but personally, I like that.

Brazil is perhaps Gilliam’s best film though it is only my third favourite. Brazil is basically George Orwell’s 1984 fed through Gilliam’s fevered imagination and twisted into something weird and compelling. Dream sequences and reality contort with each other and the set and costume design is remarkable. An artistic and political triumph, its one man against the system theme mirrored in Gilliam’s fight to get the film released.

Twelve Monkeys is probably my favourite Gilliam film and film in general (I say probably, it fluctuates regularly with my next entry). Bruce Willis stars as a convict sent back in time to the 90s to try and gather information on a biological weapon that has wiped out much of the earth’s population. Institutionalised for his apocalyptic rambling, he meets an excellently unhinged Brad Pitt in a career best performance (yeah, why not?). The film is amusing, thought-provoking, dark and persuasive in all the right measures. I urge you to seek it out.

The other contender for my personal favourite film is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro star in Gilliam’s adaptation of the superlative Hunter S Thomson (my favourite author) novel of the same name. The narrative is drug fuelled quest in search of the American Dream. Psychedelic camera work, puppetry, post modern devices and remarkable prose combine to create what is frequently but accurately described as a trip of a movie. In an interview I was lucky enough to attend the filming of with Mark Kermode and Gilliam, the director explained how he took pains to make sure the horizon line never appeared horizontally. This attention to detail, combined with Depp’s accurate mirroring of Thomson provides us with an addled but amazing piece of cinema.

In terms of Gilliam’s films that I have actually seen (the two main films I haven’t are The Fisher King and Tideland), only The Brothers Grimm disappoints. In many ways, this represents the flaws of Gilliam’s style most prominently. It is incoherent and muddled, with only vague impressions of plot and character. The general idea is quite interesting – portraying The Brothers Grimm (played by Matt Damon and Heath Ledger) as conmen creating fairy stories for personal gain, but is executed poorly.

Gilliam’s next film will be The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus, starring the late Heath Ledger, as well as Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law in the titular role. If Gilliam’s canon to date is anything to go by, it should be well worth a look. Gilliam’s back catalogue is certainly worth a dabble – there should be something to interest everyone, from futuristic noir to medieval comedy via social satire. I would suggest you try any of the films mentioned above (except The Brothers Grimm), though as I have said, I would particularly recommend Brazil and Twelve Monkeys (maybe try the less accessible Fear and Loathing if you’re brave!).

My Week in Film #4

On Sunday night I had the pleasure of watching Martin Scorsese’s The Departed. The film is an American retelling of Infernal Affairs and tells the tale of a hood that has infiltrated the police and an undercover cop posing as a gang member, played by Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio respectively. Jack Nicholson plays the bodacious crime lord at the centre of the intrigue. Inevitably, the plot gets complicated as interests conflict and allegiances mutate. The film is stylish edited, adding to the snappy pace, much needed due to its excessive run time. Pleasingly, Scorsese is unafraid to show separate scenes running parallel to each other, again, adding to the pace of the narrative.

The film perhaps meanders too long into an extended epilogue which probably could have been more economically made (by that I mean doing more with less, rather than that they blew the budget on pyrotechnics or anything). Perhaps Scorsese would do well to give the gangster genre a rest now, though that said this is arguably his most engrossing take on the genre yet: the plot is excellent and much less predictable than you might expect – though having the two leads share a love interest seemed hugely artificial to my mind. The best thing about the film is the wonderful supporting cast, with standout performances from Mark Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin. A well deserved best picture Oscar then, even with the stiff competition it faced from Little Miss Sunshine and Babel, both brilliant films too.

Earth is a kind of ‘greatest hits’ to the BBC’s superlative documentary series, Planet Earth’s ‘complete discography’, if you will. Edited into a feature length film from many of the aforementioned series’ best bits, Earth shows us a year in the life of our planet and truly is awe-inspiring in every sense of the phrase. Make no mistake; if you see any film that I have mentioned in these blogs, make sure you see Earth: it has by far the greatest cast of characters, set design and photography of any I’ve mentioned.

I was only slightly disappointed in that there was precious little footage I had not already seen, but then, this isn’t the kind of stuff that gets old easily. Tracking shots over Angel Falls and bus-sized sharks leaping out of oceans may draw a tear to your eye. Different from the TV series is Patrick Stewart narrating in place of David Attenborough, though either’s dulcet tones are welcome in my book. Again, the most exciting thing about the film is, apart from the use of extreme slow motion and sped up camera work, there are no special effects whatsoever; everything you see happens somewhere on our still beautiful planet and if you do not find that a joy to behold, then I don’t want to know you.

My friend lent me Prachya Pinkaew’s kung fu film Chocolate, which I watched on Friday. This is the story of a mentally troubled girl whose mother has cancer. To pay for her mother’s medication, our heroine Zen sets out to collect the various debts people owe her mother. Unfortunately, due to her mother’s dodgy gangster past, these people are BAD MEN and are unwilling to pay up. Fortunately, Zen is a kick-ass martial artist. The inevitable result is lots and lots (and lots) of people getting kicked about the face by a thirteen year old girl in a varity of inventive ways.

The plot is only slightly thicker than the paper it is written on and characterisation is merely functional. However, the choreography of the fight scenes is predictably excellent and the film is shot stylishly and often artistically. The soundtrack too is rather decent. There are a couple of flaws in the plot, for example, would the average factory worker really take a meat cleaver to an adolescent girl at a moment’s notice? And would people really be so unwilling to pay up for cancer medication? Had it lasted any longer, it may have outstayed its welcome, as it stands though; it is a short and sweet, enjoyable beat ‘em up with unexpected and welcome pathos adding an interesting hook for the viewer. Zen’s gleeful shrieks and whoops as she takes on the workers of the ice factory are hugely endearing too.

Finally, I re-watched Edgar Wright’s modern classic and action movie pastiche, Hot Fuzz this very eve. Simon Pegg is a big cop in a little village and Nick Frost is his idiot partner. Laughs ensue, arse is kicked and everyone goes home with a smile on their face. Another great ensemble cast here, in particular, Timothy Dalton’s scene stealing Simon Skinner, played with villainous joy. The editing is fast and furious and the soundtrack here too is brilliant and demonstrates an often fascinating use of sound (really!).

The film is wonderfully dense in references both self-reflexive and parodic which warrants repeated viewings. The script is tight and there are some real belly laughs as well as impressive set pieces in the film. Only one or two lines fail to hit their target, but with this tiny exception, Hot Fuzz is one of the most consistently enjoyable films I can think of. I await Wright, Pegg and Frost’s next venture with barely contained anticipation!

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The Departed, Martin Scorsese, la Terre, Patrick Stewart, Chocolat, Prachya Pinkaew

My Week in Film #3

This week kicked off with Sam Raimi’s 1981 horror classic The Evil Dead, lauded as a milestone in the genre by its fans. You may remember in my first post I reviewed Bubba Ho-Tep and was mightily impressed. Compelled by the quality of this film, an exploratory mind, reckless spending habits and most importantly, a student discount card, I invested in a three disc DVD copy of My Name is Bruce, Bruce Campbell’s latest film, largely because Bubba Ho-Tep was included in the package. Having read a couple of (admittedly quite negative) reviews of My Name is Bruce, I became aware that much of the humour would be in the form of deictic references to Campbell’s previous body of work. To that end, then, I decided that I ought to familiarise myself with the Campbell canon, starting, obviously, with the Evil Dead trilogy (the two sequels to be reviewed in a future installment!).

The Evil Dead, then: even with no previous knowledge of the film, one could probably hazard a reasonably accurate synopsis of the plot. Five teens, including Campbell as our hero Ash (who, incidentally, spends most of the film struggling under a book shelf), travel to a dilapidated cabin in the woods for a holiday. Events conspire that lead to the awakening of ‘evil’ in the woods and soon our teen heroes are turning into zombies and killing each other with violent delight. Who will survive and what will be left of them (a biscuit for anyone who knows what I’m referencing)?

Despite its inevitable predictability, The Evil Dead stills entertains, due mostly to the canny flair of Raimi’s direction, the brutal shocks and none-more-black humour. It may sound clichéd, but The Evil Dead really is a crash-course in low budget film-making, making up in creativity what it lacks in capital. Raimi’s camera pokes and pries around locations and characters like an ADD voyeur, presenting us with increasingly interesting shots as the film progresses.

The gore and violence, of which the film boasts an infamous reputation, have a real wince-factor. The notorious ‘tree-rape’ scene is particularly nasty and acts as a sign of things to come and pretty much urinates all over the boundaries of good taste. The home-made effects are impressive in their repulsiveness.

Ultimately, whether or not you like The Evil Dead depends on your feelings towards the horror genre. Personally, I have little interest in it and have only indulged previously in horrors with that came with large dose of humour (Severance, Slither, Shaun of the Dead, et al) and The Evil Dead hasn’t managed to change my opinion in the least. The acting and dialogue are atrocious and the the violence is gratuitous (especially in the end sequence, talk about overkill) and I can’t help but feel a little subtlety would add to the creepiness. Still, I would be lying if said I wasn’t looking forward to the apparently superior Evil Dead 2.

This week’s Latin American film is La Vida es Silbar (Life is to Whistle or Life is Whistling) by the celebrated Cuban director Fernando Pérez. The plot concerns the problematic lives of three individuals, unknowingly watched and played by omniscient narrator Bebe, a teenage orphan girl played by the director’s daughter. Bebe uses her apparent influence over the individuals to change the course of their lives to make them happy. The three are Elpidito, a waster who craves his estranged mother’s love, Julia, an older woman with a guilty past and Mariana, a ballerina torn between a promise to god and her love for her leading man.

The film is an unorthodox curiosity and much more than its component parts. While the separate storylines are hugely melodramatic, there are moments of genuinely impressive cinema here too, notably the scene in which Julia’s doctor chases her through the streets of Havana (the doctor being just one of the excellent and idiosyncratic supporting cast). The ending is ambiguous, which may annoy, but the film is a delightful oddity and you may find yourself becoming very emotionally invested, should you decide to give it a chance.

Finally, I saw Watchmen last night. I went in quite dubious of whether or not I was going to enjoy the film, having heard mixed reviews and being all too aware of its indulgent running time of two hours and forty minutes (as some of you are aware, I feel that if a director cannot tell their narrative in less than two hours, they should go back to the drawing board or make a TV series). Above all, I was determined to judge the film on its own merits and disregard its comic origins. Whether or not this is the ideal way to view the film is another matter.

I’ll start off by saying Watchmen is a hell of a lot better than I thought it would be. I would even go to as far to admit that I really enjoyed it. The story is a kind of murder-mystery, cold war, conspiracy thriller with superheroes. And it really is quite good. The problem is, judged in comparison to the thrilling graphic novel, the film inevitably pales. But does it work by itself?

That’s a question that I can’t really answer, having read the book about eighteen months ago (it would be interesting to hear what someone who hasn’t read it thinks) and aware of its subtleties and depths left unexplored by its cinematic counterpart. In any case, the question may be moot. Zack Snyder has admirably not attempted to appeal to the uninitiated, a bold move, but apparently one that has paid off, given the film’s box office dominance last week (either the marketing department must be applauded or Watchmen has a much less niche appeal than I suspected).

The adaptation really is laudable, managing to create a coherent plot out of the sprawling morass of story in the source, and is probably the most impressive element of the film. The significantly altered ending, whilst less exciting than the original, is elegantly implemented and arguably makes more internal sense than Alan Moore’s. The cast are largely excellent, with the exception of Ozymandias, who due in part to his slightly altered role and an off target interpretation of the character (it seems unfair to pick on an individual in an ensemble performance; it’s not that Matthew Goode does much wrong, the rest of the cast just shine brighter).

Problems include the minor and the major. Small grumbles would be the slightly anachronistic casting and Nixon’s nose, whereas more concerning matters include the dreadful soundtrack, which jars and tracks often seem unsuited to the on-screen images (see the dreadful implementation of Hallelujah and 99 Red Balloons - just because a song is from the time period in question and is about the cold war does not immediately justify its inclusion Mr Snyder!). Also the aesthetic of the art direction seems incompatible with some of the narrative’s loftier political and philosophical themes. The film can’t quite decide if it’s a serious one or just a neon tribute to a serious comic. Questions of peace at what cost and vigilantism are undermined by gaudy visuals, blue penises and fake noses, often making the film rather snigger-worthy, perhaps highlighting the kind of things comics can get away with that films cannot.

In spite of all this, the film, to a seasoned Watchmen reader at least, is a highly enjoyable romp and, if nothing else in this time of economic crisis, provides great value for money. Whether non-readers will ‘get’ or enjoy it is another matter (do comment if this includes you, I’m very curious to hear what you think).

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The Evil Dead, Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell, La Vida es Silbar, La vie est Whistling, Fernando Perez

My Week in Film #2

There is a belief held by some critics that this year’s academy awards chose to adorn Sean Penn with the Oscar for best actor over the favourite (and deserving) Mickey Rourke to amend for their snubbing of Brokeback Mountain in 2006. Apparently the academy is now ready to embrace gay cinema. This is perhaps overly cynical but not beyond the realms of possibility. I have not yet seen Crash (to which Brokeback lost out to) but I would be most pleasantly surprised if it were indeed any better than Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, which is the first film I saw this week. In truth, I watched the beginning of Brokeback weeks ago, but have only finished it last Monday. As you are probably aware, the film portrays the secret relationship between two cowboys, beginning in 1963 and continuing for the next two decades. The film of course explores the unavoidable prejudices that the male couple are faced with but more importantly has plenty to say about the nature of love in general and the various conflicts and complications of a romantic and sexual relationship which are handled maturely and with the utmost respect to its subjects. The film is by turns joyful, wistful and heartbreaking to the extreme.

The film is particularly striking on two counts: firstly, in the two male leads superlative performances and secondly in Rodrigo Prieto’s stunning cinematography. If you thought Heath Ledger’s posthumous awards for his role in The Dark Knight were well deserved, then his portrayal of the stoic and tormented Ennis Del Mar will blow you away. While his version of the Joker was good though predictable (an opinion I hold that I am sure will be contested; his psychotic killer was pretty much how I expected the Joker to be in a ‘serious’ Batman film and I am certain most ‘serious’ actors would have done a similar portrayal; I also feel that the script, costume and make-up departments had as much to contribute to the character as Ledger, feel free to tell me how wrong I am) , Ledger’s Del Mar is a revelation, or rather, reveals very little and drip feeds the audience tantalising nuances of character and feeling throughout the film. While his Joker spouted amusingly deranged dialogue, here a simple look or movement of body states so much more. Admittedly, I had only seen Ledger in the flawed Brothers Grimm prior to The Dark Knight and thought the ‘loss of a major talent’ spiel that was flaunted about his death was a little over zealous. Now having seen Brokeback, I am truly saddened that we have but one opportunity to see if he equals or even betters his performance in Brokeback – roll on Dr Parnassus.

Honourable mentions should also go to the reliably solid Jake Gyllenhaal as Ennis’ lover, the less inhibited Jack Twist and Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway’s performances as the cowboy’s wives they are forced to take. Back to Prieto’s grand cinematography: though hard to go wrong with such breath-taking locales as the mountains of Wyoming, Prieto adds beautiful poetic tones to the landscapes, which are as stirring and moving as the plot. My only real criticism is that the pair’s initial passion seems to appear from nowhere, though this feels pretty much justified as the film continues.

Alfonso Cuarón’s 2001 hit, Y Tu Mamá También (And Your Mother Too) also explores sexual relationships in various contexts. This Mexican film introduces Tenoch and Julio, two seventeen year old best friends who occupy themselves chiefly with cheap drugs, parties and sex with their girlfriends. Tenoch is a rich son of a politician while Julio is poor and has been raised by his single mother. When their girlfriends leave for Italy in the summer, they quickly become bored. Whilst at a wedding reception, they flirt gracelessly with the beautiful twenty-eight year old Spanish wife of Tenoch’s cousin, Luisa and invite her on a road to trip to a secluded beach they invent. To their surprise, a couple of days later she accepts their invitation and the unlikely trio find themselves on the road. Predictably, Tenoch and Julio try their utmost to impress Luisa with varying results. There are as many twists, turns and breakdowns in the plot as the characters find on the road and while some work, others feel forced and unnatural. The sex (of which there is a considerable amount) is graphic but tasteful and implemented to the functions of the story. The humour is also agreeable and the chemistry between Tenoch and Julio is undeniable.

Had the film remained as a reasonably serious take on the teen sex comedy / road movie (think Road Trip with something to say and of infinitely superior quality), it would have been an enjoyable, better than average watch. However, Y Tu Mamá También's one major flaw that annoys in two ways: a largely redundant omniscient narrator. The lesser of the two annoyances is the narrator’s habit of filling in gaps in Tenoch, Julio and Luisa’s characters, which really could have been implemented in the actual plot. Secondly, is the film’s tacked-on political posturing. The narrator makes brief references to political events and figures that feel added in simply to raise the profile of the film, perhaps the no-holds-barred sex with some intellectual dignity. The result is wholly unconvincing. A little research also reveals that the characters are named for figures from Mexico’s history in another attempt to add to the political nature of the film. This cheapens rather than deepens the film (I’m keeping that one!). To return to the Road Trip comparison: if we renamed the characters in that film Columbus, Washington and Martin Luther King and had a narrator mention every time they drove through a place where a riot or assassination took place, would it be a political, intellectual film? No, it would be lame. Likewise, this self indulgence renders Y Tu Mamá También a good film, though far from a flawless one.

Last night we had a mini movie marathon, starting with The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, which stars Hugo Weaving, Terence Stamp and Guy Pearce as Australian drag queens from Sydney who are travelling through the outback en route to a residency at a venue many hundreds of miles away. Of course, there as many prejudices to be faced from small town yokels as there were in Brokeback Mountain and as many breakdowns as there were in Y Tu Mamá También, due to the unreliable nature of their bus, the eponymous Priscilla, but with a great deal more humour than either of them. As you might expect from a film starring three drag queens in the lead roles, the dialogue is charged with barbed wit and genuinely hilarious insults are thrown back and forth between the quarrelling performers. As with any road movie, there is the parallel journey of self discovery but to say much more would be to deny the film its quirk and surprise.

Hugo Weaving is another surprising performer this week, his portrayal of Tick/Mitzi providing the human performance I’ve seen of him (perhaps not surprising given his penchant for playing elves, computer programs and giant alien robots) and is a compelling anchor for the movie. The supporting cast are uniformly excellent, as well as that key supporting character, Australia itself which provides an imposing backdrop comparable to Brokeback Mountain, though much sparser (the characters provide more than enough colour though). The most admirable aspect of the film however, is director Stephan Elliot’s commendable decision to not to simply adhere to mere stereotyping of either the drag queens or, as you might not expect, of the backwater townsfolk. Uplifting stuff.

Lastly this week, I re-watched Christopher Nolan’s experimental and complex thriller Memento. Again, as you are probably aware, this film follows Guy Pearce’s Leonard Shelby in his quest to find the man who raped and killed his wife. Unfortunately, the incident left Shelby with brain damage and he no longer the ability to make new memories, meaning he forgets everything, people, places, events, minutes after they happen. To gather evidence, he uses his handy Polaroid camera and takes extensive notes in the form of sinister looking tattoos on his body. Like Shelby, you may come out of the film knowing less than you did going in, but you’re in for a great trip nonetheless.

Perhaps the most ‘Nolan-esque’ directorial trait that was absent from The Dark Knight is his warping of time-lines within a narrative (as seen in Batman Begins and The Prestige). Memento is told backwards. This is far from a gimmick, it is a narrative implemented to accurately to emerge the audience in Shelby’s condition. The result is a film that intrinsically involves the audience with the character and forces the viewer into an active role in the storytelling. It feels almost interactive and you would do well to take notes yourself during the film (don’t feel compelled to tattoo yourself though). Carrie-Ann Moss and Joe Pantoliano provide strong support in their portrayals of dubious characters. Unlike the other films I watched this week, Memento is claustrophobic and tight, adding to the creeping sensation of something unpleasant lurking around the corner. Personally, I think Nolan would do well to narrow his sights and retain his focus in his next directorial endeavour as Memento shows that the results could be fantastic.
Feel free to comment, question or recommend films for me to watch and write about.