The Man in the Orange Jacket

London Film Festival 2014. BFI South Bank, 14/10/2014
Billed as the first ever Latvian horror film, Aik Karapetian's feature is like a rollercoaster in that it keeps the adrenaline flowing, but at the end of the ride we haven't really gone anywhere. The main protagonist spends several days living the good life in the house of a couple he has murdered. The house owner is a large employer of dock workers who has just retrenched hundreds of his employees, a detail which seems to be there to provide a justification for his murder. What follows reflects the confused state of mind of the murderer as another orange-jacketed killer seems to be after him. While we wait for a final showdown that doesn't seem to come (or does it?) he eats out at an expensive restaurant, goes shopping, imagines intruders, meets an associate of the house owner, and orders prostitutes to entertain him.

The large mansion in which the film is mostly set almost begs for the cold and detached Haneke-like cinematography that we get, but unlike Haneke, Karapetian doesn't resist shocking the audience by ratcheting up the tension and getting in closer when the violence finally occurs. The film crosses a line at a couple of points, with suggestions of necrophilia that are really superfluous to the story and seem to be there for shock value (and if so, why the repetition?). There is a vagueness at the heart of the film, beginning with an ambiguity about the identity of the main protagonist, and much of the action that subsequently turns out to be imagined. It is almost as if Karapetian isn't sure of which way to take the story and therefore filmed and included every option under the guise of dream sequences or the murderer's disturbed state of mind. In the end, as with the rollercoaster, much adrenaline is released but ultimately we are no further along - in our understanding of what we have just seen. This lack of conviction almost seems to make the point that all the awful things we see are a product of the imagination anyway, so none of it matters and we shouldn't get worked up about it, surely defeating the whole point of making this type of film.

There is plenty of style and no shortage of technical skill demonstrated in this film, but it may have worked better as an atmospheric short. Stretched out to a feature (albeit a short one), its shortcomings are all too apparent.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night + Director Q+A

London Film Festival 2014. Odeon West End, 13/10/2014
Based on a 2011 short of the same title, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a stylishly told vampire story, written and directed by the Iranian-American Ana Lily Amirpour. The unnamed girl of the title (Sheila Vand) is a vampire who walks the streets at night, and encounters a prostitute, a transvestite, a heroin addict, a drug dealer, a street urchin and a young man called Arash (Arash Marandi). Each character is featured in turn in the parallel tales of Arash and the sinister black-shrouded girl, whose very funny chance encounter one night sparks the romance at the centre of the story.

Although it is a fairly standard human-vampire romance, the different geographical and cultural setting adds interest, and I am curious about Amirpour's comic book series that is said to expand on the characters. The dim black and white cinematography captures the right mood, and industrial noise is used to create tension to great effect. There is a very clear stylistic debt to David Lynch, even down to the superb use of music, with slow rockabilly and 80s disco, as well as Iranian pop music (I hope the soundtrack gets a release). Like Lynch, there is a detached sense of time and a sense that the film takes place outside the real world - a sort of dreamy Iran/California desert hybrid.

This has to be one of the more interesting of the continuing flurry of vampire films, and it has made it onto the shortlist for best overall film at the festival. Judged by these high standards, I think it is too slight - the director admits that there is no political intent and there is little evidence of subtext - and borrows too heavily from Lynch to be a serious contender. As a standalone film however it works well as dark entertainment, the novel setting expanding the genre.

Viktoria + Director Q+A

London Film Festival 2014. BFI South Bank, 12/10/2014

Viktoria is an imaginative semi autobiographical tale of a girl growing up through the fall of communism and its continuing aftermath in Bulgaria. The eponymous heroine is born in 1979 without a bellybutton, and is immediately proclaimed as the Communist Party's child of the decade, in spite of her mother's ongoing desperation to escape the country. Her family is rewarded with a car and apartment, and the girl has a direct phone line to the party leader. The young Viktoria's every whim is indulged, her every action is applauded and she is treated as a princess who can do no wrong. As the iron curtain falls across Europe her privileges recede and the strains upon her family are laid bare.

This is a story about family and the alienation between generations that is exacerbated by external events. Boryana, Viktoria's mother (superbly played by Irmena Chichikova), has little to do with her own mother (she is more Party member than mother), even though Boryana and her husband share a tiny flat with her until Viktoria's arrival. Viktoria's own independence from her mother is materialised by Viktoria's unusual anatomy and Boryana's inability to express milk for her. Writer and director Maya Vitkova brings a lot of personal baggage to the screen, and manages to make it feel relevant and worthwhile telling next to the simultaneously unfolding geopolitical events. The cinematography is stylish and carefully composed, with clever use of colours to encode the different stages of Viktoria's life and the implied political and familial backdrop. The middle section that focuses on the 10 year old Viktoria's overindulged childhood is itself perhaps a little overindulged, and could have benefited from editing to maintain the pacing.

On the whole Viktoria deftly manages the tricky walk between entertaining and telling an interesting story while being informative about everyday life behind the disintegrating iron curtain.

Butter On The Latch + Q+A

London Film Festival 2014. ICA Cinema, 12/10/2014
Butter On The Latch is Josephine Decker's debut feature and one of two films she brings to this year's LFF, the other being Thou Wast Mild and Lovely. Completely different in style to TWMAL, Butter documents the ups and downs of the friendship between Sarah (Sarah Small) and Isolde (Isolde Chae-Lawrence) as they participate in a Balkan folk music festival in the Californian forest. Their dynamic is disrupted by the appearance of Steph (Charlie Hewson) and tensions with Isolde rise as Sarah and Steph become closer.

As in TWMAL we have often abstract cinematography, but in this case it is more abstract and less story driven, given the minimal plot and only three main speaking parts. The effect is suitably disorientating given the whirlwind of emotions between Sarah and Isolde. The improvised dialogue is believable, and the real life music festival backdrop punctuates the swirling torment with diverting musical and dance interludes. Like in TWMAL Decker leaves many gaps for the audience's imagination to fill.

It will be interesting to see whether the differences between Decker's two films here are an indication of her future direction. Personally I prefer the more narrative-driven style of TWMAL, which manages to entertain without losing the impressionistic edginess. Kudos to both director and Sarah Small for an informative and inspiring Q+A after the screening.

Free Fall (Szabadesés)

London Film Festival 2014. Hackney Picturehouse, 11/10/2014
A housebound geriatric and his wife. A hygiene obsessed couple who have sex wrapped in cling film. A man introduces his naked fiancée at a dinner party. A slapstick threesome, complete with laughter track. A gynecologist performs a reverse childbirth procedure, simply because it didn't work out for the parents. A child is inhibited by an enormous bull that only he can see, and is mistreated as a result. A meditation guru resents a student who transcends matter.
These seemingly unconnected vignettes make up Gyorgy Palfi's Free Fall. Although bizarre and often amusing, the stories are too slight and tangential to make for a completely satisfactory 80 minutes unless perhaps you look at them as a series of abstract shorts, which the director denies is his intention.
Up against Palfi's atmospheric and innovative Hukkle and the gorgeous and bizarre Taxidermia, this latest foray into his unique headspace is a bit of a let down, which is perhaps understandable given that Palfi was considering giving up the film business because of difficulties in getting funding. The soundtrack's use of Amon Tobin's music is a highlight.

Thou Wast Mild and Lovely + Director Q+A

London Film Festival 2014. ICA Cinema, 10/10/2014
Thou Wast Mild and Lovely is one of two films brought to the LFF by director Josephine Decker. It tells the story of Akin, who is hired for the summer to help Jeremiah and daughter Sarah at their farm. Though the married Akin is mocked mercilessly by her father for his perceived unmasculine ways, a bond develops between him and Sarah, which is consummated one day out in the fields. The trio's increasingly odd behaviour comes to a violent climax at a gathering in the third act.
The (Kentucky?) countryside is idealised, all primary colours and soft-edged - the human protagonists by contrast introduce coarse tools, violence, manipulation and animal lust, and commune ecstatically with the pure earth. The film is shot with a very narrow focal plane throughout, guiding the viewer's eye around each scene while emphasising the insular and oppressive feeling around the apparently isolated farm. We get fleeting glimpses of things that may or may not be central to the plot. Ambient sounds are amplified, at times drowning out the dialogue, so we often only hear fragments of dialogue. The cumulative effect is to engage the audience to seek their own truth about the background of the story, be it Jeremiah's true relationship to Sarah, what happened to previous workers at the farm, and the characters' motivations. For me the voiceover by Sarah which begins and ends the film doesn't really tally with the rest of the film which seems to follow Akin's perspective (with the exception of the hilarious bovine POV scene). 
Nevertheless, in only her second feature Decker dips her toes into the impressionist lexicon used by directors like Terence Malick and Shane Carruth and applies it in a more linear (some would say more coherent) fashion to very impressive genre bending effect with humour, drama and unflinching violence. I look forward to seeing where she goes next.

Hard to Be a God, Metamorphoses and Oxi: An Act of Resistance

Day 2 at LFF2014
Day 2 of the LFF provided plenty of food for thought, with common threads running through the three films I saw, even though they are not linked in the programme, and there was certainly no effort on my behalf to link them when planning the day's punishing cross-London film tour.


Hard To Be a God + intro by Svetlana Karmalita
London Film Festival 2014. BFI South Bank, 9/10/2014

The LFF audience take steps to ensure they stay to the final credits

Hard To Be a God is Russian filmmaker Alexei German's final work, the finishing touches of which (mostly sound edits) were completed by his screenwriter widow Svetlana Karmalita and son. In a lengthy introduction, Karmalita warned the audience that this was a film that polarised people. Moreover, she said that there was no plot at all in the first half of the three hour film, and that leaving at this point would be a rational and intelligent response and that she wouldn't blame anyone that did so. Having our expectations raised thus, we eagerly awaited the action.

The first half sets the scene in Arkanar, a planet that is 800 years or so behind earth in development, where there was no renaissance and all the intellectuals and skilled people have been hunted down and brutally slaughtered. Those that remain are a bunch of uncultured and very unhygienic barbarians. A party of scientists arrived from Earth some time ago and have settled to live on Arkanar. The outsiders' intellectual and physical advantages lead to their being referred to as Gods by the natives. The long introduction doesn't seem all that indulgent in the end, as the planet, it's society and customs are so bizarre. Everyone communicates through half grunted greetings, spitting, broken noses and rubbing snot on each others faces. This film is a hygiene freak's worst nightmare. The world German creates is remarkable in its coherence and detail, conveyed through meticulous tableaux captured through his wandering black and white camera.

The plot, such as it is, is minimal. Don Rumata, one of the visiting Earth scientists has resignedly assimilated and made his home on the brutal planet. His morning routine begins with a jazz sax solo, during which his slaves and minions stuff rags into their ears. His presence threatens the ruling Don Reba, who attempts to get rid of him. In the ensuing showdown Rumata singlehandedly massacres Reba's army. There are clear references to anti-intellectualism in totalitarian society, the responsibility of the powerful and the place of the intelligentsia in the cultural orthodoxy.

Hard To Be a God is without doubt a test of endurance, and one of tolerance for bodily emissions. German's wet and muddy Arkanar is almost Python-esque when revelling in its squalor - "It's squelchy", says one grotesque imbecile, "It's always been squelchy", replies another, (sniffs), "Smells like shit" - but is an amazing construction and utterly believable, all done on an enormous scale, and without cgi. It works well as an allegory, and though long in duration and thin on plot, it is a far more immersive, thoughtful and meaningful experience than something like the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit series of films, but is perhaps not what anyone would choose for a Sunday afternoon at the multiplex.



Metamorphoses
London Film Festival 2014. Lumière, 9/10/2014

In Metmorphoses, Christophe Honoré transposes Ovid's tales of gods and mortals from ancient Greece to modern day France. From my rusty memories of early secondary school adaptations it appears that Honoré has gone for relatively straight retellings of the fables, with a few external details like cars, police and women in hijab lending a modern day edge to the stories.

Europa, a high school student is led through a series of adventures by Jupiter, Bacchus and Orpheus. There is an erotic emphasis that I don't remember from the child-friendly versions (understandably I suppose), along with the violence and vindictive vengefulness of the seemingly emotionally immature deities.

Like Hard To Be a God, Metamorphoses addresses power and responsibility, but there is less of the easy moralising seen in the junior versions of these stories. Honoré's recontextualising goes some way towards making these stories relevant for a modern audience, but the theatrical deadpan acting style employed here proves unnecessarily distancing for this viewer.



Oxi: An Act of Resistance + Director Q+A
London Film Festival 2014. ICA Cinema, 9/10/2014

In Oxi, director Ken McMullen addresses the modern day Greek financial crisis by referring to ancient Greek texts on ethics and politics. The film is assembled from dramatic sections depicting a french detective and a mysterious sphinx, poems, Greek theatre and interviews with politicians and members of the public who have been affected by the crisis.

McMullen's passionate riposte to mainstream coverage of the crisis outside Greece points out that the Greek people are victims of a disconnect between democracy and power and the prioritisation of the markets above ethics and social justice. Debt has enslaved the Greeks, but McCullen makes the point that western civilisation owes a huge cultural debt to Greece for the very foundations of modern democracy.

The film makes its points, but for this viewer (a fairly intelligent and open minded non-classical scholar) this particular use of the classic texts is alienating, not in the sense that I am not open to the insights from these texts, but in that they add a needless layer of obfuscation where I think making more tangible connections between long established ethical principles and the current crisis could be more effective without sacrificing the film's intelligence or its wider resonances. I would not think that anyone who has benefited from a classical education and is thus familiar with the ancient texts needs to be told that the invisible hand of the so called free market and current economic system are morally indifferent and have consequences. I am not familiar with McMullen's other works, but considering this film in isolation I maintain that though accessibility isn't everything, I question its effectiveness towards the director's stated aim of taking on mainstream coverage in this seemingly obtuse way.

Shrew's Nest (Musarañas) + Directors Q+A

London Film Festival 2014. BFI South Bank, 8/10/2014
A stone's throw from festival-opening Imitation Game, the screening of this debut feature from Juanfer Andrès and Esteban Roel, two lecturers at a Madrid film school, is at the opposite end of the glamour and budget scale.

The film tells the story of Montse, who has been bringing up her teenage sister after their mother died in childbirth and whose father has been missing since shortly after the start of the Spanish Civil War. Things are complicated as Montse has severe agoraphobia and is unable to step outside their apartment, possibly as a result of her overbearing father who has a habit of manifesting himself and admonishing her when she is anxious. Montse's envious and abusive relationship with her sister morphs into full blown lunacy when their neighbour Carlos falls and injures himself outside the girls' door. Montse is instantly attracted to him and sees him as her salvation, while he becomes an increasingly unwilling house guest.

The film is masterfully paced and builds in intensity until the climactic scene where houseguest and sister attempt to escape Montse's clutches. Though pitched as a horror comedy, the plot is entirely believable due to the screenplay's gradual and deliberate development of Montse's state of mind. Themes of religious, sexual, and familial repression are explicitly but seamlessly incorporated. While the film draws influence from US and UK films like Misery, Shallow Grave and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, the directors also cite 60s and 70s Spanish horror, which I look forward to learning more about. There is a wonderful scene in which Montse grasps at a chance to regain normalcy and sanity but is prevented from going further down this path by a vision of her father. This scene lends the film a humanity and elevates it above the genre. Macarena Gomez is entirely believable in the role of Montse, and the makeup and special effects are very naturalistic, and document the derangement without getting schlocky. The cinematography makes the most of the indoor location and small cast without feeling limited.

An accomplished debut from Andrès and Roel, and I eagerly anticipate their next project. 4.5/5

Trailer link  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSCO95qb4Ss

Film shorts Feb/Mar

Scarlett lays eyes on planet Glasgow

A good batch this month, likely to be well represented in the year's end list.

Inside Llewyn Davis
Clever, sensitive, funny. The Coens doing what the Coens do best, very well.

The Grand Budapest Hotel
Film as meticulously crafted tapestry. Utterly charming rollercoaster of a shaggy dog story, snappily told. Up there with The Fantastic Mr Fox and Royal Tennenbaums among Wes Anderson's best.

20 Feet From Stardom
Entertaining doc about the unheralded backing singers who have been in the background of many classic records since the 60s. Inspiring and touching in parts but clunkily turns into an unsubtle promo for Judith Hill about 2/3 of the way through. An Oscar, really?

Under The Skin
Fantastic adaptation, very loosely based on the book. Scarlett perfect as an alien seconded to Glasgow. Much to say about modern society, human isolation and interaction, and the role of women. Visually compelling, innovative use of non-actors, outstanding soundtrack. Great.

American Hustle
Entertaining 70s romp, based on true events. Amy Adams outstanding, Jennifer Lawrence lives up to hype, but Bradley Cooper and Christian Bale chew up the scenery. Funny, exacting in period detail, cool music (hey it was the 70s). Like candyfloss - sweet, light and fluffy.

Film shorts Jan/Feb

Yeah, science!

The rest of the films seen at the cinema in the last month.

Lone survivor
Marine unit fails to elicit ounce of sympathy for self-inflicted injury in this cringeworthy propaganda piece. Laughable.

Sideways & Nebraska (double bill)
Alexander Payne's duo of languorous treks through rural U.S. make me feel like I need some fine wine, and people need to be nicer. Recommended.

Gravity
Trailer-raised fears of 90 minutes of Bullock gasping unrealised. Charming and visually superlative. If Kowalski had paid attention in physics class they'd both still be alive. Unmissable.

Film Review - Only Lovers Left Alive

Man, those sensous curves. That's a 1905 Gibson L1.

Curzon Soho, 14/2/2014
Once in a while a film comes along that ticks so many of the right boxes that one hesitates to go to see it for fear of disappointment. Only Lovers Left Alive was one such film for me. Directed by Jim Jarmusch, starring Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton, this comedy about a rock musician vampire with a fetish for vintage guitars and valve electronics, set in Detroit and Tangiers has plenty to live up to. And it does exactly that.

Hiddleston and Swinton play Adam and Eve, a pair of louche centuries-old vampires lovers, living in modern day Detroit and Tangiers respectively. Whether they are the Adam and Eve is left open to interpretation. They are mentored by John Hurt's elderly Marlowe, who kicks off a running gag by repeatedly suggesting that he is responsible for Shakespeare's oeuvre. Gothic and suicidally romantic rock star Adam, once friends with Byron, Shelley, Tesla and Einstein, wants to get his music heard but understandably, given that he is an ageless vampire, wishes to keep a low profile. There are hints that he was the brains behind Schubert and Paganini. There are diverting asides about how this motley crew cope with the realities of vampirism in an oblivious modern world full of 'zombies', their ironic term for the not-undead. The sensitive Adam despairs at how the zombies are living their lives and ruining the planet. Mia Wasikowska plays Ava, Eve's sister who comes to stay once the lovers are reunited. Detroit, with its abandoned districts and cavernous disused theatres provides a fittingly eerie backdrop for their story.

Eggboxes. Proper old school.

The plot, which hinges on the lovers reuniting and their search for untainted blood (that ol' blood as heroin trope is played to the full), is wafer thin. This film is all about the laughs and the details. Adam, whose look and even his house is clearly modeled on a mid 1970s Jimmy Page, is the main figure of fun. He has a penchant for vintage guitars made of 'mother of toilet seat', Rube Goldberg-like contraptions based on mid-20th century electronics, and is a bit emo, in the modern day parlance. Wasikowska is a brash presence for her few scenes, and even John Hurt has a little twinkle in his eye, but Hiddleston and Swinton play their parts in exquisitely, resolutely deadpan fashion. This low key mumblecore-influenced farce and love letter to art and beauty is what those of us who like films and have an interest in rock musicians, vampires, vintage guitars and gothic houses filled with valve electronics have been waiting all our lives for. There must be a few of us out there. 4.5/5

Film Review - 12 Years a Slave

Curzon Mayfair, 14/1/2014
Steve McQueen returns to the big screen with this charged affair based on the memoirs of Solomon Northup, a black man born free in the northern states, who is abducted to the south and illegally sold into slavery. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Northup, and the film follows him through the 12 years of his ordeal until he is released.

I am not going to make many friends by saying this, but though this is an important film due to its subject matter, I don't think it is remarkable as a film. Aside from the first ten minutes and the very last scene, which set the context for Northup's story, the rest of the film is a pretty generic depiction of slavery, tells us nothing new, and is largely irrelevant to the story. Northup's reluctance to reveal his legal status as a free man, for his own survival, and thus his true self, means that he has little genuine interaction with the other characters. The story is thus reduced to a series of episodes that do not develop either his character or the storyline, until the moment when the sympathetic Bass (Brad Pitt) comes along and agrees to help him. There is no sense at all of the twelve years passing, or of Northup developing any new insight or thoughts on his predicament or the wider question of slavery. If not for the clue in the title, this could have just as easily been six months a slave, for all that we see. The substance of the film is reduced to its depiction of the horrors and brutality of slavery, something I feel was portrayed at least as well in Django Unchained, to quote a recent if less serious example, and is just saying 'isn't it awful?'. In fairness, McQueen does innovate by acknowledging a degree of complexity in the culpability of some of those 'caught up' in slave ownership, such as Benedict Cumberbatch's sympathetic landowner Ford.

Ignoring the issue of substance, this is a beautifully shot film, as you would expect from McQueen. There is less use of the signature sense of detachment from use of medium range stationary camera angles than might be expected from previous films, with most of the action taking place outdoors. The south has rarely looked as sumptuous. The standout scene shows a prolonged near-hanging of Northup, as life goes on around him, and children playing nearby indifferent to his suffering. Ejiofor is outstanding, and indeed has to be to carry the film, as his aforementioned reticence about his situation limits his interactions and dialogue with the other characters. McQueen's long takes are very demanding of his ability to convey Northup's state of mind through subtle changes in his facial expression, and he rises to the occasion. Michael Fassbender as the sadistic Epps provides a counterexample at the brasher end of the scale, but is no less accomplished. Lupita Nyong'o also shines as Northup's fellow slave Patsie.

In the end this is an important work as one of few serious mainstream films that tackle slavery in America, and it will and should be widely seen. It is to its credit that it doesn't offer easy judgements. For instance Northup's outrage isn't obviously about the injustice of slavery, but about him being legally a free man who is abducted into slavery. The real Northup apparently went on to campaign for civil rights, but this is not covered in the film. Ultimately it is a nicely made depiction of episodes of barbaric cruelty and injustice bookended by 15 minutes of story, and says nothing on the subject that hasn't been said elsewhere. Not McQueen's best. 3.5/5

Top films of 2013

Beautiful things don't ask for attention (Sean O'Connell, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Still from The Great Beauty).

Here we are then, time to review the year in cinema. Somewhat embarrassingly, none of my top films have been reviewed in the blog. As a new reviewer with no background in the arts I find the better works much more difficult to review, and I find I am still reflecting on them when I would otherwise be writing. To rise above such challenges is a raison d'etre of this blog, and thus the blog's new year resolution is to do better and review more of what I see, especially the better films. These were my top films of 2013.


1. The Great Beauty. Sorrentino expresses a great love for present day Rome and la dolce vita (the lifestyle not the film, even though there are obvious parallels), while gleefully pointing out the emptiness and lack of purpose as Jep Gambardella searches for meaning towards the end of his writing career. From the opening party scene the audience is seduced into a life of parties and an appreciation of the finest and most beautiful that Rome has to offer. Gambardella's existential angst is conveyed in conversations with his pretentious circle, and his relationship with his neighbour, who overlooks his rooftop terrace next to the Colosseum. Every shot in this film is a beautifully composed piece of visual art in its own right, and Toni Servillo is pitch perfect as Gambardella. This is art cinema at its most flamboyant and seductive.

2. Blue is the Warmest Colour. By contrast Blue is the Warmest Colour is unflinchingly intimate, a close examination of a love affair between two young women. The much written about sex scenes are explicit and drawn out, but do function to immerse the audience in the intensity of the affair and pace of the film. Director Abdellatif Kechiche and the two leads Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos have created a remarkable piece that while it tips its hat to homophobia, class differences, and snobbery in the arts, is all about the passion of the love affair.

3. The Act of Killing. Joshua Oppenheimer's documentary focuses on the mass killings perpetrated against alleged communist sympathisers in Indonesia in the 1960s and 1970s. Oppenheimer follows Anwar Congo, a self-styled gangster and movie buff who led a gang of paramilitaries. These killers are at large and unrepentant, and are now represented by the Pancasila Youth organisation, which somehow still enjoys mainstream and government support, while its members extort with impunity. Congo and his associates as well as describing their actions, are invited to reconstruct some of the atrocities they carried out, sometimes with relatives of the actual victims. Some, like Congo, begin to realise what they have done, how it looks, and how it has affected people. Others seem to remain oblivious. Somehow Oppenheimer and his collaborators, many of whom remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, refrain from judging their subjects and allow them to come to their own realisations and condemn themselves by their own words and actions. The Act of Killing is a remarkable document of a brutal regime that is still influential, if not actually in power, contains many unforgettable scenes - some of the reconstructions are amazing, and a still charismatic lead subject in Anwar Congo.

4. Here Be Dragons. Mark Cousins' essay film was recorded in Albania in five days for a budget of £10,000 using a Panasonic HX-DC2. The trip was sponsored by the Albanian film institute in an effort to raise funds and awareness to preserve their decaying film archives. Cousins films as he travels through Albania, returning many times to a mysterious pyramid in Tirana. The narrative spins out from these starting points and considers questions of collective memory and identity, touching on landmarks in Albanian film history, but always coming back to the impact of the ostensibly communist former dictator Enver Hoxha in impoverishing the country. The centrepiece of the film is a letter addressed to Enver by Cousins that is accompanied by a long uninterrupted single take that addresses the impact of greed on Albania and on society in general. This is powerful and inspirational stuff, and shows that individuals can still make an impactful statement in these days of massive collaborative blockbusters.

5. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. A paean to imagination, a longing for the days of analogue, slow living and prioritising the quality of work above profit. What's not to like in this feelgood light comedy? Ben Stiller directs and stars as Walter, a daydreaming photo stockist at Life magazine who gets drawn into a global adventure in pursuit of the negative for the cover of the last ever issue of the magazine. Kirsten Wiig plays Cheryl, the romantic interest, and Sean Penn shines in the few minutes he has as the photographer Sean O'Connell. We switch frequently from reality to Walter's imagination in the first half of the film, and in some cases we are left guessing as to which it is we are watching. However, when Walter decides to track down O'Connell he has to make several decision (red car or blue car? a Matrix reference!) that lead to him having real adventures. The film is funny, uplifting and life-affirming and the cinematography, particularly the location shots in Iceland, is beautiful. It also has two of the most memorable scenes I can remember from this year, Cheryl and Walter's Space Oddity helicopter scene and the skateboarding scene.

Honorable mentions for this year go to Only God Forgives - stylish, comic book violence, Ryan Gosling and one of the great screen villains, Carancho - pitch black drama from Argentina, and Borgman - a surreal Danish-Dutch psychological thriller.

Happy 2014!

Film Review: The Counselor

"Drink up man, it's delicious. Surely you're not doubting my taste?"

Preview at Curzon Mayfair - 7/11/2013

Cormack McCarthy, Pulitzer Prize winning author, follows success with adaptations of his novels The Road and No Country For Old Men by scripting The Counselor. Ridley Scott directs a heavyweight cast of Hollywood's finest. Unfortunately The Counselor ends up as less than the sum of its parts.

The unnamed counselor[sic] (Michael Fassbender) is seduced by the promise of riches and a glamorous lifestyle into getting involved in a drug smuggling ring, together with his dealer buddy Reiner (Javier Bardem). The other parties in the deal are the largely unseen Mexican cartels and Westway (Brad Pitt). The details of the deal and the roles of these players are unimportant, to the extent of not being explained beyond the most indistinct sketch. Women loom large in the background, with Penelope Cruz as Laura, the Counselor's fiancée and Cameron Diaz as Malkina, Reiner's girlfriend. Needless to say, the drug deal goes wrong and as the result of a series of apparent coincidences the Counselor gets into trouble with those nasty Mexican gangs. 

Unfortunately the film feels indecisive and in not focusing on either the counselor's undoing or the criminal underworld it fails to illuminate either satisfactorily. A film like Carlito's Way, for instance, is more satisfying in may respects from a similar starting point. The counselor's partners repeatedly advise him to not get involved, and there is little evidence of why he would want to given his seemingly very comfortable position. Dialogue is often restricted to a series of near-monologues that are oblique to the story. Many scenes are superfluous, for instance the diamond dealer, the bizarre car humping scene and the phone call with the counselor's oddly verbose philosophical friend. One tokenistic surreal scene has the counselor wandering through a nocturnal demonstration by grieving families of drug cartel victims. Fassbender's performance is vague, though this could reflect his character being outside his comfort zone throughout the film. Bardem is amusing but stilted and Cruz is criminally underused, reduced to being a muse for the Counselor even though her ethical position seems entirely opposed to his activities. Diaz's woozy performance suits the role - Malkina's character is inscrutable though her intelligence is hinted at in Reiner's lines but never demonstrated in any way until the unconvincing non sequitir ending. Brad Pitt is a comedy cowboy in a bad suit and performs much like he did in Burn After Reading, good in a comedy but inappropriate here.

Every shot of the film is beautifully composed, and shows the cars, bikes, apartments, villas, furniture and actors at their best. The director's background in advertising shows and everything looks beautifully seductive. The desert landscapes are stunning, like a less saturated Breaking Bad - but clearly geographically distinct - and evoke some of the atmosphere of McCarthy's novels. However given the writer's very visual prose style, it is surprising that the drama hasn't transposed effectively to the big screen. In the end we have a film that although enjoyable, doesn't begin to do justice to the considerable talents involved. 2.5/5

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ML50I0mVHY

Film/Immersive Theatre Review - Strange Factories

Serving suggestion.

Cinema Museum, London - 5/11/2013
Strange Factories as staged at the Cinema Museum is a hybrid film/immersive theatre experience that addresses the nature of the creative process and how the artist's creation possesses an existence independently of the artist. The experience begins in the queue outside, where actors in masks instruct audience members to be silent during the performance, and inspect and tease them, priming them for what happens inside. The audience is then split into two groups which once inside are introduced to a number of characters in immersive theatre style, invited to consider their role in the performance, plied with (sham) drinks at a bar and participate in a seance-like ceremony. There was plenty of personal interaction in the viewing I attended, with an audience of nine, though I expect this will vary considerably with the size of the audience. Much of the action takes place in the dark, and the spooky atmosphere throughout is skilfully maintained.

The audience is then invited to sit down to watch the film. This to me is where the serious problems I had with the production begin. The film follows Victor Stronheim and a cast of largely forgettable and interchangeable characters around as he agonises over a play he has written. Boundaries between the worlds of Stronheim, his characters, the audience in the film and the actual audience are blurred, and Stronheim is forced to stage his play to get out of a predicament whose nature is obfuscated by the frankly tedious goings-on. In some scenes the film appears to taunt the audience with dialogue such as (I'm paraphrasing, from memory) 'How much longer can this possibly go on?' and 'The audience is desperate for this to end'. The film's final scene is played out simultaneously on screen and onstage with the same actors. This is followed by a dance and final theatrical scene, after which the audience is led out of the building.

I found the production as a whole unengaging, shallow and the film section overlong. My feeling is that Strange Factories could work as an immersive theatre piece, or as a ten minute art film playing in a gallery, but is too insubstantial for its near three hour running time. My immediate impression was of a company that has become insular and immersed itself too completely in a work. John Harrigan writes, directs and stars, and perhaps this singular vision needs some editorial oversight. An artist creates and has no obligation to cater for a particular, or indeed any audience. However, when the medium is film or theatre, the production is made to be witnessed. To be fair, Strange Factories doesn't appear to be widely publicised and I only heard about it as an existing fan of the Facebook page of Foolish people's previous production, the very enjoyable A Virulent Experience. Perhaps if the film had attempted to develop its characters or had adhered to a more conventional narrative style it might have engaged sufficiently for me to give a fair consideration of its themes. I am sure I was not alone in not getting it, as two other audience members walked out shortly into the film. The immersive theatre was somewhat enjoyable, but it is dragged down by the ponderous film and as a spectacle I give it 1/5.

Website (with trailer): http://www.strangefactories.com/

Film Review: How I Live Now

Cineworld Fulham Road (Preview) - 22/9/2013
Kevin Macdonald, who directed Last King of Scotland, directs this adaptation of the teenage novel by Meg Rosoff. Snappy American teen Daisy (Saoirse Ronan) arrives in the English countryside to spend the summer with her young cousins, who are left to a largely self-sufficient existence by their busy peace activist mum. Teen love blossoms and the kids have a fine time together, but all is interrupted as war breaks out and Britain is invaded while Mum is away. The children are taken away and separated, and Daisy is left to make good on her promise to reunite the family in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
The first act sets up the cousins' carefree bohemian home life like a cross between Joanna Hogg's Archipelago and the Weasley family in the Harry Potter films, and there are plenty of lighthearted scenes as Daisy adjusts to the laid back rural lifestyle. War begins suddenly, and is depicted without pulling any punches. There are plenty of harrowing and violent scenes, but the war is very much a plot device and little attempt is made to fill in details about the identity of the invaders and the nature of the disagreement. The bulk of the film is a road movie as Daisy attempts to reunite the cousins and see her lover again. Needless to say, it doesn't all go to plan.
How I Live Now is very grown up for a teenage film, with themes that are reflected in the 15 rating. It is pretty to look at, and comes across as a serious and mature version of a Famous Five adventure. All the children give good performances, and Saorsie Ronan really stands out. Given the storyline, it is difficult to avoid comparisons with last year's Lore, in which a teenage girl escorts her sister through Germany at the end of WWII. Lore is undoubtedly more substantial, helped by the filled-out background due to its factual premise, but HILN still packs a great deal of emotional impact. While Daisy's motivation doesn't entirely convince to begin with, it is to the film's credit that by the end the teenage romanticism and sentimentality for the family bond endure and satisfy teen and adult viewer alike. 3.5/5.

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSaxm68PPT4

Film Review - Solaris (1972)

Kelvin stops to smell the roses

Renoir - 13/6/2013. Introduced by Will Self

This was a special 35 mm screening of Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris, with an amusing and very personal introduction by Will Self, organised by A Nos Amours, a cinema enthusiast collective fronted by Joanna Hogg and Adam Roberts.
The film is an adaptation of the Stanislav Lem's 1961 SF novel of the same name. Set in the near future, it opens with a shot of reeds under water, a motif familiar from Tarkovsky's Stalker, and the first act is played out in a dacha in the countryside where the psychologist Kelvin is visited at his father's house by the cosmonaut Burton, who has returned from the planet Solaris. They discuss what Burton saw on Solaris and the future of the exploration programme. Kelvin himself is shortly to be on his way to Solaris. There is a strange but potent long scene where Burton and his son travel back from the dacha through heavy traffic - no attempt is made to conceal what is quite clearly a Japanese city. Though this film is supposed to be largely apolitical, I wonder if this scene is a vision of a future wider USSR empire?
Kelvin arrives at the station on Solaris to find one of the three occupants dead by his own hand, and the other two oddly evasive. It doesn't take long for Kelvin to discover why. Solaris, or something on it is alive and as the humans are probing it for information, the alien intelligence probes them by materialising as characters from the astronauts' memories or psyche. Kelvin's dead wife Hari appears to him, but only to the extent that he remembers her. Thus she cannot remember what she looks like, or any of her own past, except Kevin is directly involved. Initially resistant to this alien psychic neutrino being, Kelvin is haunted by his role in the original Hari's suicide and grows to love the proxy. What follows is a very Russian meditation on love, loss and the nature of reality and illusion. The cosmonauts however, though they are absorbed by their relationships with these manifestations, realise that having them around isn't healthy, and hatch a plan to bombard the surface of the planet with an x-ray transmission of Kelvin's brainwaves, which will provide the alien with the information it wants and make it leave them alone. The film ends with a chilling scene with Kelvin back at the dacha with his father.
The set design is basic, almost theatrical, but this isn't a pristine minimalist intergalactic vessel like those on Star Trek or 2001, it has a messier, almost steampunk or Jules Verne feel. The acting performances are quite remarkable, especially given the many long takes and the fact that many scenes were reportedly single takes due to the shortage of film. The film stock changes throughout, with different colour grading and abrupt shifts to black and white, probably by necessity unless there is some artistic intent I am missing completely. There is much to explore in this film - the imagery, literary (Tolstoy and Cervantes are quoted), philosophy of love and the human condition - and the slow pace encourages the viewer to slow down and take a look around. I am sure I will be watching it many times over on DVD. 5/5

Film Review - Beware of Mr Baker

High times for Mr Baker

Riverside Studios - 11/6/2013
Ginger Baker is best known for being the drummer and driving force behind the 1960s English rock power trio Cream, in which Eric Clapton did his best work, supported by Bassist Jack Bruce. Clapton and Bruce feature prominently in this biopic, which is compiled from stock footage of Baker and his various bands through the years, interviews with Baker and others, and animated sequences.
Though Baker comes across as a cantankerous, unconventional and irresponsible old man, the film is sympathetic enough to try to develop an understanding for his seemingly constant need to up sticks and start again from scratch, whether it be with his bands, marriages, or various countries around the world. This is a man who has three passions in life: music, his polo horses, and drugs. Everything else is by-the-by.
We see his life from his childhood, the early jazz drumming days, rock superstardom with Cream and Blind Faith, jazz fusion in the early 70s, living in Nigeria, Hollywood, Colorado, Italy, and finally back to South Africa.
The snappy editing and music clips, underpinned by Bakers rollicking drumming keep things moving along at a brisk pace, and given the subject, there is no way this could turn into a turgid hagiography, as music docs sometimes do. Remarkably, given the diverse nature of the source material, there is a strong visual style running through the film, helped by the editing and subtle manipulation of the older material. Baker is strident, forceful, selfish, and not always a cooperative subject, but all this is handled with understanding and humour, and I for one came out with renewed respect for the old man, despite what I have read about his behaviour elsewhere.
I saw this as the second part of a double bill with Not Dead Yet, the Jason Becker biopic, and it made for a nice companion piece, given the contrasting familial themes, and the more upbeat mood of the Baker film. Sitting directly behind me in the cinema was none other than Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, who laughed hard and often throughout the film, except when Ginger and Eric compared Ginger's drumming to John Bonham's. Now there's an exclusive you won't find in any other review. 5/5


Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5seWMYG9kk

Film Review - Not Dead Yet

Jason Becker speaks through eye movements

Riverside Studios, 11/6/2013 (+ Q&A with director Jessie Vile)

Avid readers of 1980s guitar magazines will be aware of Jason Becker, the electric guitar prodigy from Mike Varney's seemingly endless stable of shredders, which included Yngwie Malmsteen, Vinnie Moore, Greg Howe, Shawn Lane, Marty Friedman, and Paul Gibert. Nostalgia aside, I have to admit not being a fan of Becker at the time, as (perhaps unfairly) I had him down at the Friedman/Yngwie end of the spectrum, whereas I was more of a Howe/Vai fanboy. Imagine a wasp humming Bach at 240 bpm, or Paganini, you get the picture. Becker had just got the gig as David Lee Roth's guitar player and was recording the A Little Ain't Enough album for Roth when he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease), a debilitating neurodegenerative condition. Not Dead Yet documents Becker's life and his continuing career as a composer.
Given that Becker was on the point of going stratospheric when the diagnosis and rapid deterioration came, most of the first two acts are pieced together from amateur footage, whether 8 mm film shot by his uncle, or VHS video from various sources. Aside from this we have interviews with various figures who knew him at the time, and many musicians who were aware of his work. He appears to led a charmed life until the diagnosis, and his personality and humour come across very clearly. Oddly, there are only two pictures in existence of Becker with David Lee Roth, who refused to appear in the film.
ALS hits Becker hard and he is given three years to live. He deteriorates very quickly, culminating in an strange moment in the film where we are seemingly led to believe he has died. The director even goes as far as to imply that his childhood friend thought he was dead and was shocked to receive a message from him. This seems to be an unnecessary cheap trick that the film doesn't need.
Following this mysterious near death experience, although almost completely paralyzed and able to communicate only through eye movements, Becker regains his spirit and humour and continues to compose music through some ingenious devices and with the help of his father and various musical folk.
Ultimately the film is about one man, his fierce spirit and will to live, and his family without whose incredible love and support he would be nowhere. Jason Becker would almost certainly have faded away and died had he not been the willful character that he is with the humour and personality that he has. Despite the absence of a narrator, the film maintains its momentum, and everything comes across through the clever editing of the mostly found footage, reinforced through interviews and snippets of Becker's own memoirs, read by his father. Apart from the cheap shot death scene, this film is a moving and inspiring testament to the human spirit, and you don't even have to like the music to enjoy it. 4/5

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGFDWTC8B8g

Film Review - Thérèse Desqueyroux

Thérèse: I wish I was in The Place Beyond The Pines

Curzon Richmond 8/6/2013

Thérèse Desqueyroux is the last film from Claude Miller who died last year at the age of 70. It’s based on a novel by François Mauriac set in the 1920s about a bright young woman (Thérèse, played by Audrey Tatou) who marries her slightly dull neighbour Bernard, played by Gilles Lelouche so that their estates can be united and they will have thousands of acres of pines.

It is established early on that though Thérèse is intelligent, she ‘thinks too much’ and ‘has too many ideas’, she has a dissonant desire to unite the families – ‘I'll marry you for your pines’, she says to her fiancée, straight-faced. Her childhood friend Anne (Anaïs Demoustier) becomes her sister in law, and though Thérèse, frustratedly, finds her ‘simple’, for a while she is a proxy through which Thérèse discovers the possibilities of a life lived with passion through Anne’s dalliance with another neighbour. Thérèse’s loyalties to the family are tested when she is assigned the task of speaking to the Jewish neighbour to put him off. Boorish Bernard and the marriage are insufferable and stifling and something has to give way. The stress of dealing with forest fires on the estate one summer is the trigger for Thérèse to hit out, and the illusive equilibrium is blown apart.

In a way it is a strange performance from Tatou. Gone is the cutesy doe-eyed gamine from Amelie and even the straight-laced Sophie from the execrable Da Vinci Code. She plays Thérèse with a determinedly sullen, blank expression throughout and an uninflected voice through which she aims her pointed asides at the dullards around her, which suits the role but makes it hard to empathise with her. Gilles Lelouche for once does not play himself and does a pretty solid job playing the macho, yet weak husband. I’m not convinced the director does a great job of convincing the viewer of Thérèse’s sharp mind (she is shown reading books and writing letters), but on the other hand I think that not spelling out her competing motivations really makes the film. These things are never simple and if Thérèse isn’t fully aware of the reasons behind her actions, why should we be?

The film also steers clear of making easy judgements – though Thérèse is trapped in this unsatisfactory situation, it is almost entirely of her own doing, and her actions as she hits out against the suffocating regime show she is unbalanced, we are led to sympathise more with Thérèse than Bernard. The cinematography does full justice to the beautiful châteaux and country estates, whose bright pastel tones contrast with the oppressive interiors and Thérèse’s sombre appearance. Aside from the jarring change when the adult Thérèse suddenly looks 15 years older than her still adolescent childhood friend, there is plenty to like about this film, and plenty of food for thought and scope for interpretation, but ultimately I’m not sure it hangs together as well as it could have. 3.5/5

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En2OZWquQzY