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/