tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8317899424816872422024-03-06T02:34:06.453+01:00My Life At The MoviesLawrencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08968026418965458002noreply@blogger.comBlogger160125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-831789942481687242.post-19831823744766724332014-04-18T02:12:00.002+02:002014-04-18T08:40:41.011+02:00Lawrence of Belgravia (2011) - Paul Kelly<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Okay so the briefest of history lessons first. Despite what you might have read, heard or remembered the eighties was actually a phenomenal period for music. Back then Lawrence had a band called Felt. They were influential, heavenly, and easily one of the best bands of that era. Lawrence’s plan was to release ten albums and ten singles during the eighties and then split the band. Which is basically what happened. Lawrence desperately wanted to be a star, play Top of the Pops, sell a ton of records and live the whirlwind life of the fabulous. His records sounded like nothing else around at the time, the guitar heroics of Television fed through The Velvets swagger and topped off with a healthy dose existential poetry. Lawrence was ready for stardom, he sang about it, craved it, demanded it, but it never came. Felt were, and I suppose still are a cult band.<br />
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Paul Kelly’s remarkable documentary, <i>Lawrence of Belgravia</i>, picks up Lawrence’s story twenty years after Felt’s demise. Things aren’t too good for Lawrence when we catch up with him, he’s facing eviction and is suffering from mental health issues. That said he’s still recording and releasing music as Go-Kart Mozart, and dressing like a thrift store Brian Jones at his most dandyish. Still living the dream, still clinging to the vague hope that at any moment his boat will come in. Through a series of interviews with various interviewers, we get to meet Lawrence the person as opposed to Lawrence the failed pop star. All sorts of topics are covered from the formation of Felt right through to Lawrence’s opinions on the internet. Lawrence is an entertaining interviewee, coming across as someone who could wax lyrical and say something pithy about almost any subject dropped in front of him. One of the things that impressed me most about this documentary was that at no time is Lawrence ever made a figure of fun, you never get the feeling that anyone involved in the film is laughing at him in any way. It is funny, in places hilariously so, but the amusement always comes from Lawrence himself. One scene in particular of him trying to paint a door is painfully comical.<br />
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I’ve been trying to see this documentary for years, and have only just managed to do so. Being a huge Felt (and Lawrence) fan, I was worried that I’d built up what could have been unattainable expectations. Yet <i>Lawrence of Belgravia</i> didn’t disappoint. The whole documentary looks gorgeous, and is largely comprised of static shots, allowing the action to unfold within the frame. Which works well and allows Kelly’s great eye for composition to really come to the fore. Kelly’s background in photography is something that really shines through in his films. He's also aces at super-fast montage sequences, one of which manages to compress the whole history of Felt into a few seconds of screen time. Very nice.<br />
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The great thing is that you don’t have to be a fan of Felt, or even music to enjoy this, since it’s a portrait of a rather eccentric individual, who when given a platform tends to make amusing comments about everything. Please, someone just give him a TV show. <br />
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<i>Lawrence of Belgravia</i> is thoroughly watchable and for a Felt fan like myself an utter joy. For the eagle-eyed, there are some sublime cameos (my personal favourite being Pete Wiggs popping up for a second behind a door), Pete Astor, Martin Duffy and even legendary producer John A. Rivers turn up at various points. If you get the chance to catch a screening of this, then you’d be a fool to miss it. Hunt it down, you won’t regret it.Lawrencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08968026418965458002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-831789942481687242.post-62420773053429242252014-03-01T00:17:00.000+01:002014-03-01T09:44:57.298+01:00Metalhead (2013) - Ragnar Bragason<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Adolescence isn’t easy. We’ve all seen plenty of films that tell us that, from James Dean fighting against whatever was in front of him in <i>Rebel Without A Cause</i>, through to John Bender sticking it to the man (well Mr. Vernon) in <i>The Breakfast Club</i> all the way up to Lukas Moodysson’s seminal <i>Fucking Åmal</i>. Being a teen isn’t easy. Even in Iceland it would seem. That’s what <i>Metalhead</i> is about, along with a few other things. <br />
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<i>Metalhead</i> kicks off back in the early ‘80s, on a dairy farm in rural Iceland (for rural read rocks everywhere). It’s the bleakest landscape imaginable that could still be described as beautiful. Very fitting for a film dealing with alienation. Iceland looks like the moon fell into the sea. Hera’s (Þorbjörg Helga Dyrfjörð) older brother manages to run himself over with a tractor after she distracts him and dies soon after. The film is about how she and her parents come to terms with their loss. Which sounds like the sort of thing that could so easily be trite and send most people reaching for the off button, but hold up because if <i>Metalhead</i> does one thing well, it’s confounding expectations. On the day of her brother’s funeral Hera storms out of the church marches home burns her clothes and kits herself out in her dead brother’s wardrobe. She blames herself for his death and takes on his persona, falling headfirst into the middle finger to everyone world of Heavy Metal. <br />
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Cut to ten years later and not much has changed. Rather than heading into Reykjavík and finding a life, she punishes herself (and her parents) by staying in the tiny community she’s lived in all her life. A community by the way where she is the token weirdo, and she does her absolute best to live up to that title. All of this is played out to a soundtrack of metal tracks that I have to admit was sort of lost on me, but still sounded pretty good. There’s plenty of name dropping, Dio, Maiden, Judas Priest etcetera and there are enough metal band t-shirts to keep the most ardent metalhead trainspotter happy. There are various sub-plots too, that push the story onwards, a new priest arrives in town (I know, but it turns out better than it sounds), her parents gradually dissolving marriage and her childhood friend obviously having the hots for her. There’s also a musical thread about Hera writing and recording her own music. She plays a pretty mean Flying V guitar don't you know. <br />
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Anyone who’s ever found themselves at the edge of society will recognize themselves in the character of Hera. One of the things I really liked about this film was the fact that it’s central character is an atypical female, not the usual thing you find in films where women are only there as a prop for the male characters. Hera does things that are questionable but never clichéd. Þorbjörg Helga Dyrfjörð is superb, and really throws herself into the role. It’s hard to say much more about the film without spoiling things. It’s a drama that finds time for humour, there are moments in the film that a different director would have milked for as many tears as possible, but writer/director Ragnar Bragason doesn’t seem in the slightest bit interested in any of that. Which is a relief.<br />
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In short I have to say I really enjoyed this. It’s a strange little film and maybe that’s why I liked it so. How many other films can you think of that deal with adolescence by having the main character make herself up in Black Metal warpaint? See, for that alone this deserves a pat on the back, and it doesn’t take a great leap of the imagination to see how this could at heart, be inspired by the recent financial woes that Iceland has endured. Oh and it’s also got the most beautiful church in it that you’ll see at the cinema this year.Lawrencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08968026418965458002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-831789942481687242.post-91755005310070156492014-01-06T22:39:00.000+01:002014-01-07T06:39:07.381+01:00Blackfish (2013) - Gabriela Cowperthwaite<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Okay so first up I should say that I’m a vegetarian and have been since about the age of sixteen. So that’s about twenty five years now. Also I don’t like zoos or the idea of wild animals being held in captivity for any reason other than their own safety. One last thing, I abhor the idea of animals being used for entertainment or to make money. Okay so with all that out in the open I think it’s fair to say that I brought a healthy amount of baggage with me when I watched this documentary. Probably enough to ensure that I’d have to pay a surcharge to get it all on the plane.<br>
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So what’s <i>Blackfish</i> all about? Well the long and short of it is this. Tilikum is a killer whale who ‘works’ at SeaWorld in Florida. You know what SeaWorld is, it’s one of those places where hordes of people pay money to see dolphins and other marine life jumping out of the water and performing tricks for them. After which you can head off to the restaurant to spend some money, before buying some cuddly toys on your way out. Problem is Tilikum has been killing his trainers and has so far notched up three kills. SeaWorld just like any good capitalist, fudges the evidence and manages to convince the outside world that it’s not Tilikum but the trainers that were at fault. After all you gotta keep those people flowing through the gates, and those dollars in the till haven’t you? And that’s mighty hard to do if your public think that the star attraction is a serial killer.<br>
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So anyway that’s the skinny. The documentary itself is very one sided purely because SeaWorld refused to be interviewed or give any kind of statement about what has happened. So instead it focuses on asking why is it that killer whales in captivity have a staggeringly huge record of injuring and in some cases killing humans, when in the wild that sort of thing never happens? Unlike a lot of documentaries <i>Blackfish</i> actually manages to get to the bottom of this mystery with surprising ease. In fact to be honest, I kind of knew the answer going in myself. It’s the exact same reason why Roy Horn (of Siegfried & Roy fame) was attacked by one of his tigers, and the same reason why Timothy Treadwell was ripped apart by the bears that he loved so much. These are wild animals, and as such are unpredictable, once you forget that and start treating them as your pets then all is lost. It’s just a question of time before they snap and decide that they’ve had enough of having some leather-skinned chappie sticking his head into their mouth, or having someone on their back as they swim around a tiny pool. And who can blame them?<br>
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Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite has fashioned a superb documentary out of some great talking heads footage (ex SeaWorld employees and killer whale experts), and some utterly gruesome home video footage of the whales flipping out. You’ll have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by it. I think most people will watch it through a permeant stream of tears. The film it shares a lot of themes with is <i>12 Years A Slave</i>, mothers being forcefully separated from their children the idea of a living being being little more than property etcetera. As I said there will be tears. I’ve always hoped that in a few generations time they’ll look back at our era and think, “Really they kept animals in cages, what were they thinking?” Hopefully this documentary will make a few more people think about what to do on their family day out, and head for the beach, or the woods, or the fun fair or whatever, just as long as it’s not to a zoo or marine park. Well worth seeing. Lawrencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08968026418965458002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-831789942481687242.post-8025074770471220492013-10-07T22:05:00.001+02:002013-10-19T16:18:49.114+02:00Rush (2013) - Ron Howard<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Motorsport and Hollywood have never been the best of friends. Over the years there have been numerous attempts to get them together, but every single film has failed to capture the excitement that any racing fan will tell you lies at the heart of the sport. The big problem is that Hollywood seems to feel that the idea of some bloke hurtling around a race track in a flimsy car loaded with highly flammable fuel isn’t quite interesting enough. So usually a love story or some other old cliché that worked in other films is bolted on, while all the things that make motor racing so watchable in the first place - team politics, strategies, the various personalities of the drivers are quietly let go. <br />
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The best (and I use that word in the widest most general sense) racing film ever made is John Frankenheimer’s <i>Grand Prix</i> (1966). It’s a real stinker of a film, staring a pudgy James Garner as an American Formula One driver making a comeback. Awful film, utter rubbish with two huge exceptions. The racing footage is superb, and there’s a raft of cameos by most of the world’s greatest drivers including Jack Brabham, Jimmy Clark, Juan Manuel Fangio and for me the best of the bunch, the none more English Graham Hill. If that’s the best then just image what the others are like.<br />
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So with that in mind my expectations for a Ron Howard film about the 1976 Formula 1 World Championship battle between Niki Lauda and James Hunt were low. Extremely low. But it’s an absolute triumph, not only a great film about motor racing, but also a superb drama about obsession and rivalry. Not just that though it also manages to ask why would anyone do anything as crazy and dangerous as motor racing, and provide resonable answers to boot. <br />
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I’m not going to go into what happens during the film, since if you don’t already know, you don't need me to spoil it for you. I’ll just say that you really don’t need to know or love Formula One to get the most out of this, in much the same way you don’t need to be into sharks or swimming to enjoy Jaws. However if you do know your Balestre's from your Ecclestone's then there's lots of goodies in here for you.<br />
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So why does this work where <i>Grand Prix</i>, <i>Le Mans</i>, <i>Days of Thunder</i> and <i>Driven</i> all failed so badly? Well for starters it’s scripted by Peter Morgan who of course wrote the aces screenplays for <i>The Queen</i> and <i>The Damned United</i> as well as <i>Frost/Nixon</i> for director Ron Howard. It’s a good tight script that sticks closely to the facts and events of that ’76 season. Next up are the two main actors who not only look the part but manage to act it too. Chris Hemsworth as the cocksure James Hunt and Daniel Brühl as the intense perfectionist Niki Lauda. Both are totally convincing, even if at times the brushstrokes on screen are a little broad, sometimes in order to cram as much into a reasonable running time you need to simplify things. The third reason for me loving this film so much has to go to Danny Boyle’s regular cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, who goes all out and gives the film a look somewhere between the frantic hyper editing and multiple camera set ups of a modern film, and a world seen through Timothy Leary’s 60s specs. So business as usual for ADM then. Visually it’s one of the most sumptuous films I’ve seen for a while, and yet despite using every modern trick in the book, it still manages to convince as a period piece. As such, <i>Rush</i> begs to be seen at the cinema, the sound alone is astounding with the cars screaming around the circuits to a suitably propulsive Hans Zimmer score.<br />
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I really can’t recommend this film enough, it does everything it promises and more. Who would have thought Ron Howard would have it in him? That he would have the savvy to not take the easy way out and pile on the melodrama, to have the faith to stick with the truth. The fact that he has made a film as good as this makes me feel that I’ve misjudged him badly in the past. Having said that though, there is nothing in his filmography that I would ever want to return to ever again. Except this, which I’m sure I will watch again and again and again.<br />
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<br />Lawrencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08968026418965458002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-831789942481687242.post-40683957053028128912013-09-15T19:51:00.004+02:002013-09-16T15:19:25.429+02:00Thursday's Children (1954) - Lindsay Anderson<br />
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Along with most Brits of a certain age I have a special place in my heart for Lindsay Anderson. Film critic, director, and most importantly of all the individual that gave British film a much needed kick up the arse back in the mid 50s as the founding father of the Free Cinema movement. He didn’t make all that many films, but when he did they were always, <i>always,</i> worth seeing. However, as much as I adore <i>If....</i>, <i>This Sporting Life</i> and <i>Britannia</i> <i>Hospital</i>, it’s his documentary shorts <i>O Dreamland</i> and <i>Thursday’s Children</i> that I return to time and time again. Both were shot in the British seaside town of Margate, and have a pull on me that I can’t really explain.<br />
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The better of the two is <i>Thursday’s Children</i>, which is about a school for deaf children. Every time I watch it (which is at least once a year), I cry. A lot. Narrated by Richard Burton using his best earthy brown vocals and lensed by the legendary Walter Lassally, it packs a lot into it’s brief 25 minute running time. We get to meet various children and two of their teachers. We see how they learn to form sounds and words, slowly. Very slowly.<br />
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It’s a painful watch, since as the documentary unfolds you can't help but wonder what is going to become of these poor kids? What does the future hold for them? Remember this is 1950s Britain, so any real sort of understanding of their disability from the general public is going to be a hard won battle. It’s heartbreaking to think about. The kids in the film are so happy and full of life, so much so that I can’t help thinking that once they leave school (where they live too), that their happiness will be quickly knocked out of them by the harshness of the outside world.<br />
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Back in the mid 80s, my junior school had a deaf unit. None of the children from that deaf unit were accepted by the other kids in the school, they were treated as outcasts and mainly used as a punchline for many cruel jokes. I got to know one of the kids, Robert. He was a sweet guy who lived down the road from my nan. Maybe it’s this memory that makes <i>Thursday’s Children</i> such an emotional watch for me? <br />
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<i>Thursday’s Children </i>picked up the Oscar for Best Documentary (Short Subject) at the 1954 Academy Awards. Which is neither here nor there really, but it does show that it had appeal outside of Great Britain, and probably allowed it to reach a far greater audience than a film like this should have any hope of finding. Whenever I watch it I can’t help but wonder what happened to all the kids? How did their lives turn out? How are Dennis, Linda or Katherine doing? I’ll never find out, I know that, but it never stops me from wondering. If you’ve never seen this, then you really should. It’s even on YouTube, so there’s no excuse. Just be ready to shed some tears.Lawrencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08968026418965458002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-831789942481687242.post-43150283019821556082013-08-30T13:04:00.002+02:002013-08-30T13:04:39.534+02:00Marley (2012) - Kevin Macdonald<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Kevin Macdonald knows a thing or two about how to put together a decent documentary. After all he’s the guy responsible for both <i>One Day in September</i> and <i>Touching the Void</i>, two of the best documentaries of recent times. So when it was announced that Macdonald was taking over production of the documentary about the life and times of Nesta Robert Marley from Martin Scorsese, (who like both Spielberg and Del Toro, always seems to be attached to more films than is humanly possible to make), I knew that sooner rather than later I’d end up owning it.<br />
<br />Now I love a good music doc as much as the next man, especially when I don’t really know all that much about the subject. Which is just what <i>Marley</i> is for me. What I knew about Bob Marley were just the basics that everyone knows, those fantastic early Ska 7”s, the early Lee Perry produced stuff (<i>Mr Brown</i> being one of my all time favourite songs) and that after he signed to Island his music became watered down, but crossed over and sold like the preverbal hot cakes to the white folks. Oh and he died because of some injury sustained whilst playing footie. Beyond that I didn’t have the foggiest. <br />
<br />Macdonald’s documentary really wins out by concentrating on Marley the person, rather than being a definitive trawl through which album came when and what single charted where. I’m sure there are numerous books out there that cover that sort of thing in OCD style detail. The Marley family seem to have given their blessing to the project since they are interviewed, and have obviously given up a stack of never before seen pics and home video footage. Now normally that sort of thing could be a death blow for this sort of film. Since the director is obligated to show the subject in a certain rose tinted light in exchange for access to such previously unseen goodies. However Macdonald manages to have both his cake and eat it. For every story of Bob Marley bringing people together there is another about him shagging his way around the globe, or being a shitty parent. Eleven kids by seven different women while all the while being married, that definitely paints a picture that most families wouldn’t want talked about too loudly. <br />
<br />On top of that the interviews that Macdonald secures with various players from the late 60s Jamaican reggae scene are all gold. Jimmy Cliff, Bunny Wailer, Chris Blackwell and Rita Marley are all very forthcoming. Lee Perry is thankfully not in crazy man mode and manages to give a small insight too. Although his contribution is so small I do suspect the rest of his interview was unusable. Fire, water, CDs hanging from bits of string on a stick, his standard routine. Yawn. Then there are various girlfriends, long lost family members and a whole host of characters from Marley’s past. Weaved into these interviews are some gorgeous aerial photography of Jamaica and archive footage galore. <br />
<br />In short this is one of those documentaries that if you have any sort of love of music you have to see. I went into it thinking Bob Marley was an alright if somewhat overrated bloke, that managed to bring reggae to the sort of people that would never normally listen to it. I came away not having changed my opinion all that much, but with a greater respect for the man. The final chapter of the film, dealing with Marley’s untimely death is heartbreaking, and really hammers home the idea that behind the persona Marley had built for himself throughout the 70s, was a very real person who was dying and desperately didn’t want to. See it with the bass cranked up to max, but do see it.<br />
<br />Lawrencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08968026418965458002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-831789942481687242.post-39629828047460705162013-08-15T14:26:00.000+02:002013-08-15T14:37:27.484+02:00The Squeeze (1977) - Michael Apted<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>The Squeeze</i> is one of those diamonds of 70s British cinema just begging to be unearthed and rediscovered. On paper the plot sounds like something you’ve seen a hundred times before, nothing special in fact. Nasty types kidnap a wife (Carol White) and daughter, but the husband (Edward Fox) decides rather than coughing up the ransom he’d rather team up with his wife’s previous husband (Stacey Keach) and try and sort it out that way. Problem is that despite being ex-police, Keach is an alky and really not up to the task of sorting anything out other than ordering a drop of Sherry to steady his nerves. <br />
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As I say on paper it’s nothing special, but director Michael Apted brings a hell of a lot to it. Apted was already an old hand at shooting from the hip having worked in TV for years, most famously on the <i>Up</i> series. So <i>The Squeeze</i> massively benefits from his style of shooting on location rather than being set bound, plus the cameras are mainly hand-held rather than dolly mounted, all of which injects a fair amount of energy into what ends up on the screen. Then there’s the fact that <i>The Squeeze</i> is British, not just British but post <i>Sweeney</i> British. It’s a sweaty nylon shirt stuck to the faux leather seat of a British Leyland car, bags of rubbish in the streets and boarded up houses type of film. More than that though <i>The Squeeze</i> is aces because of it’s cast. Keach is actually a real find, I’m not sure if he was overdubbed (it doesn’t look that way) or if he could actually manage a decent accent - either way he sounds genuine enough, and is convincing as a soak. So much so that you can almost smell his stale breath at points. Edward Fox is his usual fantastic self, looking at all times as if he’s trodden in dog shit, his face fixed in a perma-scowl. Both he and Keach’s introductions are superb, Fox bursts into Keach’s home demanding to see his wife and for once has a real air of menace about him. Whereas Keach is introduced stumbling along through a London Underground station and eventually takes a nasty tumble down an escalator.<br />
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Just as good are the supporting cast, Carol White who had shone as the lead in two key Ken Loach films (<i>Cathy Come Home</i> & <i>Poor Cow</i>) is so very, very good. It’s a tough role, involving plenty of crying and nudity but she does a bang up job. Then there’s David Hemmings playing totally against character as one of the main villains. What at first feels like a huge piece of miscasting quickly reveals itself to be a bit of a masterstroke. Same goes for Freddie Starr as Teddy, in his only attempt at serious acting he plays a light fingered Scouser who helps Keach out throughout the film. It shouldn’t work, but Starr is actually pretty good and manages to reign in any urge to do his usual shtick. Add to that Alan Ford in his first screen role and you're onto a winner. I should also give a quick shout out to the Johnny Harris score which is
a blinder, it's never been made available but two of the tracks appear on his genuis album - <i>Movements</i>. It's up there with the best of Roy Budd's scores. That good.<br />
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What little plot there is revolves around Keach and Fox squabbling, and Starr trying to keep Keach off the sauce long enough to rescue his ex. It’s grim, and not very action packed by todays standards but it is very dramatic and strangely earthy. Which is something that British crime films seem to lack nowadays, in the rush to look glossy and try and compete with the fluff that fills our multiplexes from across the pond we’ve forgotten about the things that made our crime films unique. It’s there in <i>Get Carter</i>, both of the <i>Sweeney</i> movies, <i>Villain</i>, <i>The Long Good Friday</i>, <i>Robbery</i> and a whole stack of other films. It’s that ordinariness mixed in with the criminal aspect, scenes used to take place inside a boozer rather than a club. Maybe I’m just being overly nostalgic for the past but it’s definitely something I miss in British crime films, which when done well can hold their own against anything Hollywoodland cares to throw at us.<br />
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This is a bit of a pain to get hold of, having not had a DVD release despite being owned by Warners. Hopefully someday this will be rectified, but until then just do what you have to do to see this. You won't regret it.<br />
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<br />Lawrencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08968026418965458002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-831789942481687242.post-27245588341292923572013-07-26T15:07:00.001+02:002013-07-26T15:07:41.609+02:00The Purge (2013) - James DeMonaco<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In the nearly future, America has managed to get its crime and unemployment down to a record low. How? By having a yearly purge whereby for one continual 12 hour period all crime is allowed. The emergency sevices get to stay home and put their feet up for the duration. There are certain rules worked into this notion, mainly so that no nutter can set off a nuclear device and claim it as part of the festivities. If you can buy into that idea then you might quite enjoy <i>The Purge</i>. Now as far as I can tell film wise this could have gone in two very different directions, depending very much on the budget. It could have been a Tom Cruise actioner with Tom battling his way across a ravaged cityscape in order to save his daughter who for some reason or other is outside when the purge begins. He’d be a cop who'd lost his wife to some street scum in an earlier purge, and had pledged her never to kill anyone during the blah blah blah. Which of course would be a bit yawnsome, and fairly pedestrian Hollywood fare. <br />
<br />Luckily we end up with the second option, smaller budget, less star power but a film that only has one writer credit, and in one of those moments that sets the heart racing, that writer is also the director. So far so good. James DeMonaco’s script centers around one family and one location. James Sandin (Ethan Hawke) is a top salesman for a home security firm, home security obviously being big business in a day and age when it’s possible that your neighbour can legally take your head off with a machete because your dog barks too loud. Now let’s just say James is doing aright, he can afford enough high tech stuff to make sure that his family - wife Mary (Lena Headey) and two kids Charlie (Max Burkholder) and Zoey (Adelaide Kane) - can ride out purge night without any trouble. Except that would make for a very boring film, so when a guy runs down their street screaming for help little Max decides to let him in. He’s not just an ordinary guy though, he’s black! A black man loose in white suburbia, you can see where it’s going already can’t you? The shit hits the fan when an angry mob turn up at the Sandin’s front door and demand the guy be sent out to them so they can kill him. It’s a moral quandary. The Sandin family are given two options, send him out and be spared, or hold onto him and the mob will break in and kill them all.<br />
<br />It’s not really anything you haven’t seen before, especially if you grew up with John Carpenter films such as <i>Assault on Precinct 13</i>, the remake of which had a screenplay by none other than (drum role) James DeMonaco. <i>The Purge</i> is set up more as a moral dilemma film than an all out action siege thing though, and for the first third works fairly well. DeMonaco is no great shakes as a director, he’s not awful but he’s not very interesting either. Luckily his two leads are top notch and felt believable as a couple. The kids are just generic American white teeth and good hair kids. In other words - boring. DeMonaco piles on things that you know are going to come into play during the last third of the film, the son has a medical condition, the neighbours are jealous etcetera. <br />
<br />Around the half way point <i>The Purge</i> turnes a corner and becomes quite ordinary, lots of shooting and all the typical tropes you’d expect from a bad home invasion film. The ethics of killing people is adressed throughout the film, but not in a very good way. Which is a shame since it could have been a taught little film, maybe not quite up to the standard of <i>Ils</i>, but something more along the lines of <i>Cherry Tree Lane</i>. In the end though, you won’t care what happens. Once the bullets start flying your brain will start to wander. Worth watching once, if you’re bored and have nothing better to watch. But how often does that happen? <br />
<br />Lawrencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08968026418965458002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-831789942481687242.post-39493404984789433392013-07-15T21:40:00.001+02:002013-08-05T07:43:21.291+02:00Trance (2013) - Danny Boyle<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Oh dear. I wanted to like <i>Trance</i>, I really did. And for the first ten minutes or so I did. The art heist that kicks the film off and sets the story in motion is a thrilling piece of cinema. Typical Danny Boyle, looks gorgeous, booming soundtrack and very very fast paced. But then for some reason the voice over narration disappears (always a bad sign), if you’re going to use something like that (voice over) then at least have the grace to have it throughout the film, otherwise it feels like what it is - tacked on to explain things to the audience, information that a director of Boyle’s stature should be able to convey via images. But the voice over being given the heave-ho is the least of <i>Trance’s</i> problems. Where to begin?<br />
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Well let’s start with that wonderful beginning. Danny Boyle films have always had a strong start, think about how <i>Trainspotting</i> and <i>Shallow Grave</i> sucked you into the film straight away. Then consider probably his most audacious opening, that of <i>28 Days Later</i>. Which is still just mouth open, jaw on the floor, how the fuck did they do that astounding. When it comes to endings Boyle isn’t quite so strong, he tends to slap a huge anthem on the soundtrack and over-egg everything a bit, not always but sometimes. <i>Sunshine</i> started well but around the halfway mark became something entirely different, same with <i>28 Days Later</i>. <i>Trance</i> suffers the same fate but almost from the start of the film. <br />
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Simon (James McAvoy) is an art auctioneer with a gambling problem, Franck (Vincent Cassel) is a heavy type who is going to steal a Goya painting from the auction house that Simon works at, with Simon’s help. So far, so ordinary. Except Simon manages to swipe the picture before giving it to Franck and thanks to a bump on the head, can’t remember what he’s done with said painting. Deep sigh, it get’s worse. Enter Elizabeth (Rosario Dawson) a hypnotherapist who is hired to find out just what the hell is going on by talking softly to Simon. Now apparently she can not only make him remember things, but also make him forget other things, oh and shuffle around his memories. Cough, cough. By this point you’re already being asked to suspend an awfully large amount of disbelief. This isn’t the <i>Inception</i> world of Science-Fiction, this is supposedly set in the here and now of London. Basically things get weirder, and initial opinions about characters change as the film progresses, as does the whole tone of the film. There are huge chunks of the running time where you will not have a clue what’s going on, is he hypnotized now, or is this actually happening sort of stuff. And that’s all well and good, but you need a damn good ending to explain away everything that’s happened. <i>Trance</i> doesn’t have that ending. Everything (well almost everything) is rattled off in a monologue towards the end of the film, and it doesn’t work. It’s too insane, too far out to make any sort of sense. And after all that Boyle has the nerve to try the <i>Inception</i> spinning top ending. Sorry Danny but you haven't earnt that mate.<br />
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<i>Trance</i> is a film that demands to be watched multiple times, so that when you know the story you’ll be able to sit back and nod as it all unfolds second or third time around. Unfortunately it’s simply not a good enough film to ever want to watch again. The three main leads are all perfectly fine, like all of Boyle’s films it’s well edited and looks impressive (Anthony Dod Mantle is still on DoP duties so no huge surprise there). It’s well directed too, there’s lots of glass and reflections underscoring the theme of duality, and it’s got a nice huge electronic score (by Underworld’s Rick Smith). But the story is just too silly, and by the time it’s over you’ll be thinking about how <i>Breaking Bad's</i> going to end or what to have for dinner, anything but the nonsense you've just finished watching. <br />
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At the end of the day I still love Danny Boyle, I love him for trying things, for never getting stuck in the rut of making the same film over and over, for not being scared of being British and embracing the American glossiness that most British directors do so badly. I love that his films are pure entertainment, for someone that claims Alan Clarke and Nic Roeg as two of his biggest influences he couldn’t make films any further away from their output if he tried. Boyle makes films to be watched on a Saturday night when your plans have fallen through, and you’d still rather be out. For all his faults, his films are watchable and fun and always interesting. There’s no deep message, like Tarantino it’s all surface, and there’s nowt wrong with that. It’s just that <i>Trance</i> is the worst film he has made in a long time. And I haven’t even mentioned Rosario Dawson’s totally out of place full frontal scene, and the way it’s explained away in such a pathetic way. Please don’t fuck up <i>Porno</i> Danny. Please.Lawrencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08968026418965458002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-831789942481687242.post-16210717076583290272013-07-03T21:26:00.000+02:002013-07-04T16:29:23.728+02:00Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) - John Schlesinger <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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At it’s heart <i>Sunday Bloody Sunday</i> is a simple enough film. Alex Greville (Glenda Jackson) is a divorcee who’s sleeping with young designer Bob Elkin (Murray Head). The thing is Bob is also having it away with Dr. Daniel Hirsh (Peter Finch), and that’s about the long and short of it. Being British and early 70s this could so easily have ended up being a seedy exploitation flick aimed solely at the dirty mac brigade, or maybe even a Robin Askwith wink to the camera trouser dropper. That it isn’t anything like those and actually one of the best dramas of the early 70s is why we are still watching and talking about it. Directed and conceived by John Schlesinger, arguably the greatest of the British New Wave directors, <i>Sunday Bloody Sunday</i> is a glimpse into a week or so of the lives of the above three characters. There’s no massive story arc, or bombshell ending (although the ending is one of the best you’ll ever see). Nothing too dramatic happens, Alex knows about Daniel and vice versa so there’s very little drama to be mined from the usual love triangle situation of secrets coming to the fore during the films running time. <br />
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So why is this such a great film then? Well for starters Schlesinger treats all his characters with dignity. Daniel Hirsh is a homosexual, that is simply accepted as fact and not dwelt on any more than the fact that he’s male or a doctor. There isn’t much nudity, Schlesinger returns again and again to the image of hands gripping the naked flesh of a back rather than showing any full on rumpy pumpy. The real triumph though is just how well written the core trio are. Based on a similar ménage à trois from his own life, Schlesinger was able to put a lot of himself into the film, since just like Daniel Hirsh he was a Jew and gay.<br />
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All three leads are irreplaceable once witnessed in their roles, Peter Finch in particular is just astounding. Watch his on fire role in <i>Network</i> to get an idea of the sort of range he has. Glenda Jackson wasn’t even the first choice for the role of Alex - Vanessa Redgrave turned down the part after reading the script that had been written with her in mind. As I say though it’s hard to imagine anyone else as Alex now. <br />
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By this point in his career Schlesinger was at the height of his game, <i>Darling</i> and <i>Far from the Madding Crowd</i> had both been hugely successful and he’d skipped across the pond to make <i>Midnight Cowboy</i>, which was not only a success but also defined a moment in time for a whole generation as much as <i>Easy Rider</i> or <a href="http://peoplearecrying.blogspot.se/2013/04/woodstock-1970-michael-wadleigh.html" target="_blank"><i>Woodstock</i></a> did. So it was a pleasant surprise not only for him to return home, but to also use his clout to get something as small and difficult to sell as <i>Sunday Bloody Sunday</i> off the ground. Schlesinger brings little touches that others probably wouldn’t, such as the daydreams that Alex slips in and out of during the course of the film, which is otherwise filmed quite naturalistically. <br />
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It’s very much a film of it’s time, some of Glenda Jackson’s sexiness might be lost on a todays audience due to her ghastly haircut for instance. But ultimately the theme that people fall for the wrong people and often fall for them quite heavily is something that will resonate with generation after generation. Schlesinger made films about people on the margins of society throughout his career, and this film is no exception. Without a doubt both this and <i>Billy Liar</i> are his masterpieces, and this is from a director that made <i>Marathon Man</i>, <i>Darling</i>, <i>Midnight Cowboy</i> and <i>A Kind of Loving</i>. It’s that good. Plus you'll get to see a young Daniel Day-Lewis in his first screen appearance scratching the side of a car with a broken bottle. You know what to do.Lawrencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08968026418965458002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-831789942481687242.post-419653137571632502013-06-23T21:55:00.000+02:002013-06-24T16:20:08.008+02:00The Satan Bug (1965) - John Sturges<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I love a good cold war conspiracy style thriller, especially when there’s a chance that whole populations could be wiped out due to some evil genius. The 60s was full of these sort of things particularly after the ’62 Cuba missile crisis and the rise of a certain Mr. Bond. So with all that in mind I thought <i>The Satan Bug</i> would be right up my street. It is after all the film John Sturges decided to make straight after <i>The Great Escape</i>, which is a film that I have watched at least once a year or so for as long as I can remember. So it couldn’t be bad could it?<br />
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Well surprisingly for a film that would describe itself as a thriller it lacks quite a bit in the thrills department. In fact I’d go one further and say it was actually dull. A bit on the boring side. It has it’s moments, but could have done with being trimmed a little to bring the running time down to a lean 90 minutes, rather than the flabby two hours it is now. The thing is there’s a good film in there but for some reason it just didn’t find its way onto the screen.<br />
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The plot is quite simple, a deadly man made virus (<i>The Satan Bug</i>) is stolen from a secret American military base and our hero Lee Barrett (George Maharis) has to figure out the who, the why and the how and get the germ weapon back before it is used to wipe out the entire planet! Will he manage it? Will he figure everything out? Of course he will since this is from the time before that golden Hollywood era of downbeat endings, Vietnam hadn’t really hit Americans as a huge catastrophe yet and Nixon was still a few years off of souring Americans on politics forever. So why doesn’t it work then?<br />
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Well for starters there is a really uncomfortable mix between really drab sets, all muted colours and no set dressing and the gorgeous location footage from the Californian deserts. Which clashes like an episode of Columbo and a John Ford western. The acting matches the sets, drab and by the numbers, the lines are spoken but they never convinced me they were being uttered by humans. Worse than that though is the total lack of any sort of tension. It’s explained to us just how deadly this virus is, but at no point does it ever feel like anything other than a clear liquid in a bottle. People bark orders to each other down phones, cars tail other cars, heads are scratched and questions answered but it all just feels so pedestrian. It’s also a fairly confusing plot, with characters previously thought dead turning out to be not quite ready to be buried, and then there’s a 'Clay Shaw is Clay Bertrand' bit of subterfuge that makes you feel like you might have to rewatch the film again from the start, just to see if you could spot what was coming. Except like I said earlier it’s far too dull for that.<br />
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Which is odd since Sturges is one of the great journeyman directors of this period, he made good solid E X C I T I N G films. It’s like his heart just wasn’t in this. Which is a shame. The Jerry Goldsmith score is a gem though, sounding like a precursor to his <i>Planet of the Apes</i> score but with added synth blasts. It’s almost watching the film for this alone. Almost.Lawrencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08968026418965458002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-831789942481687242.post-79409930557442977962013-05-28T20:52:00.000+02:002013-06-02T00:06:14.790+02:00Small Time (1996) - Shane Meadows<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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From little acorns…<br />
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After years of knocking together short films, Shane Meadows secured enough funding to make the huge leap into feature film territory with <i>Small Time</i>. As debuts go it’s not the strongest I’ve ever seen, but with hindsight it’s easy to pick out more than enough of Meadows’ tropes to make this well worth a look. What little story there is revolves around a group of ne'er-do-wells in a suburb of Nottingham, who basically steal, drink and smoke themselves through life. Meadows plays Jumbo, the gang’s leader and hard man. Once you get used to the comedy wig (which must have helped massively with continuity) you'll find that he’s not too bad as an actor. His next door neighbour and fellow gang member is Malc (Mat Hand), who’s under pressure from his girlfriend Kate (Dena Smiles) to ditch Jumbo and move on with his life.<br />
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For the most part it all works well, the acting is a bit all over the place at times but the dialogue has a crackle to it that makes up for any actorly shortcomings. With a budget of just £5,000, it’s not that surprising to find that it’s not the most beautiful film you’ll ever see either. However Meadows works at his best when on a tight budget, and manages to turn this to his advantage. It’s all location, no sets, and hand held rather than dolly shots, all of which inject some life into the film. Just look at the scene towards the end of two robbers running away from a botched heist. It's lifted wholesale from <i>Reservoir Dogs</i>, a film that seems to have had a hold on Meadow's around this time - his short <i>Where's The Money, Ronnie</i>? being hugely influenced by it too. It's the most exciting scene in the film and has a real kinetic energy to it. As does the hilarious car boot sale montage, where our heroes distract stall owners just long enough to swipe anything they can get their mitts on.<br />
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<i>Small Time</i>’s biggest flaw is the balance between it's comedy and violence. Jumbo knocks his girlfriend Ruby (Gena Kawecka) about, but this is never really addressed as much as just accepted. There’s a running gag about Ruby using a vibrator that falls a bit flat, but it’s after one of these scenes that Jumbo lays into her. Meadows doesn’t give the audience time to adjust to the sudden switch in tone, and it becomes a bit of a mess. Within three years though he would nail this particular idea with <i>A Room for Romeo Brass</i>, which successfully managed to shift from comedy to domestic horror without any warning to great effect.<br />
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The core idea running through <i>Small Time</i> is the influence that violent people can have over others. It’s a theme that runs through most of Shane Meadows’ filmography. It’s there in <i>A Room for Romeo Brass</i>, <i>Dead Man’s Shoes</i> and more recently <i>This is England</i>. Another constant in his work is Gavin Clarke’s music which is all present and correct here. Pretty much all of the above crop up again and again in Meadows’ work, the Nottingham setting, the working class characters, the music, the humour, the hand held camera work - it’s all there in abundance in every film he makes. Over the years he has refined all this and managed to make it his own thing. Almost twenty years later Shane Meadows has become the closest thing we have as a successor to Ken Loach, Mike Leigh and Alan Clarke. Now who would have thought that when watching this all those years ago?<br />
<br />Lawrencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08968026418965458002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-831789942481687242.post-8492336892632176772013-05-27T22:13:00.001+02:002013-05-27T23:24:00.937+02:00L' armée des ombres (1969) - Jean-Pierre Melville<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Right from the opening image of a troop of Nazis jackbooting their way down the Champs-Élysées, the impotent image of the Arc de Triomphe looming large behind them, it’s obvious that Jean-Pierre Melville’s salute to the French Resistance isn’t going to be shot through any sort of rose tinted lens. Just as it feels the Nazis are about to march off the screen and into the audience Melville freezes the frame and the film proper begins. Éric Demarsan’s slowly descending piano notes chime out over a rainswept murky country landscape. Cutting through the scenery is a prison van transporting Philippe Gerbier (Lino Ventura) to a prisoner of war camp. Gerbier is a leader of a small French Resistance cell operating out of Marseille. Melville kicks <i>L' armée des ombres</i> off as he means to go on, it’s all very gloomy minor key stuff. Ventura’s hangdog features hint at defeat whilst his eyes and mannerisms convey anything but.<br />
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<i>L' armée des ombres</i> was adapted from Joseph Kessel's book of the same name. Rather than going for a straight ahead narrative Melville instead opts for a series of vignettes. Which at first seem unrelated but later become more and more intricate. One of Melville’s genius touches is the way he introduces each new character through someone we have already met, so for instance after our introduction to Gerbier has played out, we cut to a new scene with a new character - Félix Lepercq (Paul Crauchet) sitting in a car with Gerbier, then through Félix we meet Jean-François Jardie (Jean-Pierre Cassel), who in turn introduces the audience to Mathilde (Simone Signoret) and so on. It works very much in the same way as the faction in the film does, very clever. Very Melville.<br />
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Jean-Pierre Melville only really made two types of films during his short career - gangster flicks and war films, or more accurately films set during the German occupation of France during WWII. Melville was an active member of the resistance during WWII, and this comes across in spades in <i>L' armée des ombres</i> with it’s myriad of interlocking stories and characters. There’s a huge attention to detail that runs throughout the film as well as Melville’s fixation with methodical storytelling. No Nouvelle Vague jump cuts for Melville, far better to almost have things play out in real time. This of course makes scenes seem more real, such as the execution of a resistance member who has betrayed the cause. When you know the camera isn't going to look away, it becomes just that little too real.<br />
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Visually there is no mistaking that <i>L' armée des ombres</i> is a film by Jean-Pierre Melville. The washed out green, grey and blue colour pallet, the distressed set design it all screams Melville. Likewise the stilted almost mannequin acting style so favoured by the great man is on display here too. Melville drags stunning performances out of his actors, Simone Signoret is wonderful in one of the few strong female roles in Melville’s filmography. Just check out the look on her face during her last moments on screen. The real star of the film though is Lino Ventura, who gives one of the most understated performances of his career despite the fact that his relationship with Melville had become so bad during the filming, that they had stopped talking directly to each other.<br />
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One of the glories of <i>L' armée des ombres</i> is despite the sombre almost melancholy air that hangs over it, it has the sort of set piece action scenes that would have singled Melville out as a future Bond director. There are numerous prison breaks, assassinations and the like. Yet just like his gangster films these scenes never unbalance the film. He builds tension to almost uncomfortable points at times, such as the attemt to rescue Félix from his cell. Good stuff.<br />
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<i>L' armée des ombres</i> falls right slap bang in the middle of Melville’s greatest run of films, which started with <i>Le deuxième souffle</i> (1966), continued with <a href="http://peoplearecrying.blogspot.se/2011/03/le-samourai-1967-jean-pierre-melville.html" target="_blank"><i>Le samouraï</i></a> (1967) and concluded with <i>Le cercle rouge</i> (1970). For various reasons <i>L' armée des ombres</i> failed to ignite the French box office, and was mauled by the critics for being out of touch with the cinema of the day. After all it arrived just a year after the ’68 student riots in Paris. Vietnam was on everybody’s mind and a film about events from a quarter of a century before must have just felt old hat. It never even received an American release until 2005, but is now seen as one of Melville’s masterpieces and probably his most personal film. Everybody owes it to themselves to see this.
Lawrencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08968026418965458002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-831789942481687242.post-923116393118972952013-05-16T23:42:00.000+02:002014-04-18T11:25:14.556+02:00What Have You Done Today Mervyn Day? (2005) - Paul Kelly<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Paul Kelly’s second foray into the world of film making is this wonderful short (45 minutes) film about the Lower Lea Valley in London’s East End. The announcement on 6th July 2005 that this long neglected area was soon to become the center of the worlds attention (due to it being transformed beyond all recognition into the Olympic Park for the 2012 London Olympics), was met with a smattering of applause and a healthy dose of scepticism from the local population. Luckily Paul Kelly was on hand along with long time friends and collaborators Saint Etienne to capture the area on film before it disappeared forever.<br />
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We follow a paperboy as he cycles through the various places that make up his route. It’s a simple narrative that allows Kelly to focus on a number of seemingly unconnected images and places that appear to have been forgotten by all but those that live there. Mervyn Day (the paperboy) meanders around the downtrodden area exploring derelict buildings, cricket grounds and canals. On top of this we get various audio bursts from the locals, waxing lyrical about everything from a crocodile that lives in the canal, Dick Turpin and a kidnapper on the loose. There's also wonderful gravelly narration from David Essex and Linda Robson as Mervyn's grandfather and mother respectively.<br />
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<i>What Have You Done Today Mervyn Day?</i> works in the same way as <i>The London Nobody Knows</i> or even <i>The Long Good Friday</i> in that it records a whole swathe of London that has now gone for good. A time capsule for a future generation if you will. There's references to The Smiths, <i>Eastenders</i> (signs for both The Dagmar and The Queen Victoria turn up), stories about great leaps in industry (plastic being invented here) and how nicking toy cars from the Matchbox factory wasn’t really thought of as stealing. More than anything there is a strong feeling of nostalgia running through the film. This comes across not only in the audio interviews, but also in Saint Etienne's score.<br />
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Peppered throughout <i>What Have You Done Today Mervyn Day? </i>are snippets of radio news about Britain winning the Olympic bid and of the bombings that knocked London for six the day after that announcement. Which cleverly manages to convey both the mixed feelings (excitement & gloom) that was in the air at the time. It also firmly anchors the film in a particular moment in time. It might not mean much now, but in 50 years…<br />
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Coming from a photography background Kelly has a keen eye for where to place his camera and manages to find beauty in things that most people would normally look away from. An old Coke can and half deflated football sitting atop a puddle of scum on a waterway, rows of long abandoned industrial premises, old street signs and heavily graffitied walls. All look interesting and invoke a nostalgia for ‘the old days’. I found a shot of an old bin with wooden slats particularly moving. Maybe you had to be there.<br />
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Just as with their previous collaberation with Paul Kelly, 2003's <i>Finisterre,</i> the Saint Etienne soundtrack works a treat. The music itself is almost an updated version of John Cameron’s aces score for <i>Kes</i>. Very pastural yet modern at the same time, very Saint Etienne in other words. It's all flutes and beats, the sound of the past and the present clashing with great success. They performed it live at the film's premiere at London’s Barbican Centre. <br />
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By the film's end our paperboy is down at the Thames staring across the water at that other huge London redevelopment project of the recent past - The Millennium Dome. It leaves the viewer questioning what will happen to the communities around the Lower Lea Valley in the aftermath of the Olympics? Will they be pushed further afield and not get to enjoy the rejuvenation of their own area? After all, that has been happening for donkey's years now with the gradual 'gentrification' of London. Time alone will tell. Once the lovely animated credits for <i>What Have You Done Today Mervyn Day?</i> start to role though you’ll find yourself wanting to go for a stroll along the waterways, or maybe pop into one of the local caffs for a mug of tea. It’s too late though since it’s all gone now. That’s why this film is so important. A total triumph.
Lawrencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08968026418965458002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-831789942481687242.post-52929974769026263672013-05-08T23:08:00.000+02:002013-05-09T08:06:53.624+02:00Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno (2009) - Serge Bromberg & Ruxandra Medrea<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Utterly absorbing documentary about genius French director Henri-Georges Clouzot's unfinished film - <i>Inferno</i>. Clouzot already had a few great films under his belt (<i>Les diaboliques</i>, <i>Le salaire de la peur</i> and <i>Le corbeau</i>) by the time he started work on <i>Inferno</i> in 1964. Marcel (Serge Reggiani) and Odette (Romy Schneider) are a couple who run a lakefront hotel in rural France. Marcel is insanely jealous of Odette and er, that’s about it since after three weeks of filming everything went pear shaped and ground to a halt.<br />
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What directors Serge Bromberg & Ruxandra Medrea have achieved with their documentary is nothing short of a miracle. First they managed to track down all the film that was shot for <i>Inferno</i>, including screen tests, camera tests and all that sort of thing. Next they convinced Clouzot’s widow to allow them to use that footage in their documentary. Their real ace in the hole though is showing whole chunks of the film cut together with sparse sound effects and actors reading the original dialogue, since the original footage didn’t contain a soundtrack. So rather than just talking about one of cinema’s great lost films with perhaps a few tantalizing stills, we actually get to see roughly what it is we lost out on.<br />
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<i>Inferno</i> looks nothing short of stunning, the bulk of it is black & white, but at key moments the footage shifts to really vivid colour. Plus from what's on show here <i>Inferno</i> would have ended up being as trippy as the Stargate sequence in <i>2001</i>. Lighting set ups that move in a circular motion around the face, lots of mirrors and strange filters. Faces being imposed over one another and at one point a wall of eyes. As I said trippy. <br />
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So what went wrong? Well first up Clouzot was a hard person to work for. He was famously cruel to his first wife (Véra) during the making of <i>The Wages of Fear</i> (which she starred in), and I’ve hardly ever heard anyone say he was a joy to work with. So there’s that. Serge Reggiani was a big star back then and walked off of the shoot after three weeks of being screamed at, and being forced to run after a camera car for days on end in the searing heat. So there’s that too. Then there’s the fact that Clouzot was a perfectionist, reshooting scenes that were already deemed perfect by everyone else. Despite the fact that the lake they were shooting around was scheduled to be drained within four weeks. So there was a time factor in there too. The final nail in the coffin came when Clouzot suffered a non fatal heart attack. Effectively calling a halt to the whole shebang.<br />
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The saddest thing about this documentary is that we will never get to see the finished film. Unlike other films that were butchered on release but have since been restored to the original glory (<i>The Wicker Man</i>, <a href="http://peoplearecrying.blogspot.se/2011/01/metropolis-1927-fritz-lang.html" target="_blank"><i>Metropolis</i></a> and <i>The Wild Bunch</i> for instance), this documentary is as good as it gets. Bromberg & Medrea score points for getting key people that worked on the film to tell their stories, including Costa-Gavras no less. Now if Peter Bogdanovich could just sort out a decent version of Orson Welles’ unfinished <i>The Other Side of the Wind</i> then everything really would be hunky dory.<br />
<br />Lawrencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08968026418965458002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-831789942481687242.post-57160421513130164752013-05-05T17:02:00.000+02:002013-05-05T22:54:44.018+02:00The Evil Dead (1981) - Sam Raimi<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Five ‘kids’ spend a weekend at some manky old cabin in the middle of nowhere. After finding a book bound in human flesh and listening to a tape recording of some old fossil going on about bygone civilizations, evil and chanting in some ancient made up language, everything goes tits up. The woods come alive and so does the film. From that point on we get a healthy dose of low budget gore, more rubber puppets than your average episode of <i>Spitting Image</i> and best of all Sam Raimi’s amazing eye for camera set ups.<br />
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I was around 14 years old the first time I ever watched <i>The Evil Dead</i>. It had long been deemed far too nasty for the great British public to watch. So like pretty much everyone else my age, my introduction came via a fairly decent VHS pirate copy. I remember being really excited to finally be getting to see one of the school playground’s most talked about films. Me and John Jackson (who had procured said VHS from God alone knows where), had bunked off school for the day and holed ourselves up in my front room. The curtains were pulled tight, not just keep he sun off of the TV screen, but also just in case a passing neighbour should happen to witness the naughtiness and buckets of gore that were about to explode off the screen.<br />
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Eighty minutes later and it was all over. It wasn’t quite as great as I’d hoped it would be. We made some toast and watched it again. It was alright, but not really all that scary. Not like <i>American Werewolf in London</i> or <i>The Texas Chainsaw Massacre</i>, both of which still made the dash from the light switch to my bed the most frightening five seconds of my day. We watched it a third time that day knowing that we might never get to see it again. We laughed quite a lot third time around, but there wasn’t really anything that made me want to check under my bed before turning in for the night.<br />
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Over twenty years later I can’t say how many times I’ve seen <i>The Evil Dead</i>. It’s been quite a few though. Yet I would never claim to be a huge fan of the film, maybe that’s because I have friends that have Book of the Dead tattoos and all that sort of thing. Still every few years it ends up being thrown into the DVD player. And every few years I end up feeling the same way I did all that time ago when I first watched it.<br />
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The big problems for me stem mainly from the fact that it doesn’t scare me at all. Not in the slightest. Then there’s the fact that it looks cheap, really cheap, which of course it was. Haircuts change, continuity doesn’t appear to exist and the acting is pretty ropey. There’s no real attempt at any character development or backstory either. It’s a simple set up, and you get what you get. Raimi never let the lack of budget get in the way of his vision though and I feel torn between applauding him for managing to do so much with so little, and also wishing that maybe he could have dialed it back a little. Maybe have creatures lurking in the shadows instead of totally visible all the time, since when you see a rubber head being bashed with an axe, it just looks like a rubber head being bashed with an axe. The claymation sequence at the end of the film is on the one hand Raimi pushing himself further than any first time director ever should. On the other hand though it looks woeful, goes on way too long and should probably not be in the film. Still it’s these sort of things that give the film it’s charm and have earned it a hugely loyal following.<br />
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Where the film works best is when the awful dialogue disappears and Ash (Bruce Campbell) takes center stage. Campbell has a screen presence that the rest of the cast lack. The scenes of him just reacting to what’s going on are fantastic, as are a number of the things Raimi does with his camera during these sequences. The last shot of the film for instance is one of those ‘once seen, never forgotten’ moments.<br />
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For me this is a film that’s easy to admire but difficult to love. Nowhere is that better shown than the infamous tree rape scene, which is technically well executed, but is quite grim to watch and feels out of place with the rest of the horror in the film. I prefer the <i>Evil Dead II</i> far more than <i>The Evil Dead</i>, which is probably sacrilegious to some, but what the heck it's the truth. It’s still not scary but it's at least looks like a professionally made film. It's funnier too.Lawrencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08968026418965458002noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-831789942481687242.post-88963737147738865392013-04-27T18:50:00.002+02:002013-04-27T18:58:35.445+02:00Indie Game: The Movie (2012) - Lisanne Pajot & James Swirsky<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Kickstarter funded documentary about the world of independent game developers. Right from the off I have to say that I thought this was an extremely absorbing watch, for a start I’m not a gamer, it’s not that I don’t enjoy playing them it’s just that I find they tend to suck the hours out of life like nothing else on earth. There’s heroin addiction and just a little lower down the ladder there’s game addiction. I just don’t need either in my life. That said I still found this documentary enthralling and informative, directors Pajot & Swirsky manage to walk a novice like me through the world of gaming without me ever feeling like I’m watching an episode of <i>Sesame Street</i>.<br />
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Pajot & Swirsky focus on two games, one near completion - <i>Super Meat Boy,</i> and one that has been in development for so long (<i>Fez</i>) that its creator (Phil Fish), seems to have lost sight of what he is doing. As well as these hopefuls we get input from the developer behind the über successful <i>Braid</i> (Jonathan Blow), on the highs and lows of actually getting a game out into the marketplace. As with <i>King of Kong</i> before it <i>Indie Game</i> is watchable even if you couldn’t pick out a Wii in a police line up. Like any good gaming documentary <i>Indie Game</i> focuses on the human drama rather than the pixels.<br />
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Right from the off I was hooked, I remember Francis Ford Coppola once
saying that the best way to start a documentary was to put your best
footage right up front, even before the title card and then build the
documentary up towards that point. That’s exactly what <i>Indie Game: The Movie</i>
does. So what on paper sounds like possibly the least exciting
documentary ever, actually turns out to have tension and drama aplenty.<br />
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Edmund McMillen (tats, weird facial hair and a natty line in Metal tees) and Tommy Refenes (worry, male pattern baldness and more worrying) are very easy to root for, they come across as a couple of regular types and you'll find yourself wanting them to be a huge success by the time their game is launched. Phil Fish (Wolverine hair and chops) is a little different though. I actually found myself hoping that someone would rescue the poor guy, who all the way through this seems to sink further and further under the pressure of living up to what his game promises to be.<br />
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The difference between indie and major in the gaming world seems to be one of artistic control over your product. Indie games are more quirky and warm, less inclined to want the whole world to hook up and play at the same time. That’s the plus side, the downside however is that usually a tiny group of people have to do what hundreds of programmers manage at the major studios, and on a miniscule budget to boot. This causes games to take years to arrive, and this can really take it’s toll on the poor sods that spend every waking hour working on them. So imagine then what it’s like if that game sinks without a trace, or even worse never even sees the light of day. These are the sort of things that <i>Indie Game</i> deals with.<br />
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I didn’t cry, I didn’t laugh and I didn’t want to play computer games after watching this either. But I did go straight on-line afterwards to see what had happened to the three main people in the documentary, and that’s good enough for me to think that this is well worth an hour and a half of your life be you a gamer or not.
Lawrencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08968026418965458002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-831789942481687242.post-59331792920654242102013-04-15T17:55:00.001+02:002013-04-16T23:07:20.696+02:00Woodstock (1970) - Michael Wadleigh<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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3 Days of Peace & Music ran the tagline on the poster for the ‘Woodstock Music & Art Fair’ which took place over four days in August 1969. If they’d just worked the words ‘mind altering drugs’ and ‘biblical weather’ into their slogan they wouldn’t have been too far from the truth. Of course <i>Woodstock</i> is now one of that eras most defining moments, at the time though it was just another festival. Today just hearing or reading the word <i>Woodstock</i> conjures up images of stoned greasy haired kids dancing about and sliding through mud, but back before the festival it was a country retreat for a small crowd of artistic types (most famously Bob Dylan) who wanted out of the city life. The fact that the Woodstock Festival didn’t actually take place at Woodstock, but actually some 45 miles down the road is just typical of the zonked out nature of this iconic gathering of tribes.<br />
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Thank heavens for Michael Wadleigh then and his idea to gather up a film crew and head out to document the event. He hit on the brainwave that the audience were just as interesting as the performers and shot hours of film of hippie kids rolling in mud, talking rubbish, sucking on tiny yellow spliffs, getting naked, waffling on at length about drugs, war and The Man and a whole host of other things. Wadleigh arrived early enough to be able to capture the transformation of Max Yasgur’s farm, filming the construction of the stage and capturing the locals bemusement (and later anger) about what was descending upon their little hamlet.<br />
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The footage itself is great, mainly handheld, it all feels very unrestricted and very free, totally sixties. Wadleigh’s team seemed to be in the right place at the right time. Which is quite a feat in itself. However the editing is where it all really comes together, we get lots of split screen and overlapping effects, which really do a lot to bring to life what could have otherwise been a static shot of someone singing a song. The fact that a young Martin Scorsese and his future editor - Thelma Schoonmaker were on the editing team probably didn’t hurt too much.<br />
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But of course the visuals are only half the story, music and sound obviously play a huge role too. For every great act in the film there’s another that played the event but didn’t make the final cut for whatever reason. Some omissions were rectified with the extra forty minutes bolted on for the Director’s Cut, hello Janis Joplin and Jefferson Airplane, but even now there’s still no Tim Hardin, The Band, Grateful Dead or Ravi Shankar. But what we do get is a good mixed bag of performances, Joe Cocker gurning like a born again 90s raver through <i>With A Little Help From My Friends</i>, likewise Santana and Ten Years After manage to show that with epic guitar solos comes epic face pulling. We get The Who at their live peak, but unfortunately so far no footage of Townsend booting Abbie Hoffman off stage has ever turned up. Other musical highlights include Sly Stone putting the rest of the line up to shame and showing that he was James Brown’s natural heir, Crosby, Stills & Nash doing their acoustic thing, the electric set that included Neil Young wasn’t filmed thanks to Young nixing the idea. Doh! Then off course there’s Richie Havens kicking the whole shebang off, decked out in a kaftan and dripping sweat all over the place. He’s amazing to watch and even better to listen to.<br />
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By the time Hendrix hit the stage a staggering four days after Havens the majority of the 500,000 that had trooped along had departed. Almost no one attending had brought any sort of provisions to survive their time at Woodstock, have a look next time you watch it and see how many tents you can spot. The real victory of Woodstock was the fact that it happened and it passed off relatively peacefully, it was organised by the people for the people too. Half a million American youths were able to sleep next to each other in some strange field in atrocious weather without any violence, that’s a wonderful thing. Especially when juxtaposed with the same amount of Americans 8,500 miles away in Vietnam doing the same thing to the same soundtrack but with very different results. <br />
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For me <i>Woodstock</i> is something that I watch every five years or so. It’s not my favourite music festival documentary, but it’s damn close. The previous year’s <i>Monterey Pop Festival</i> is far better music wise, but doesn’t spend much time with the audience. In fact with a few exceptions I really don’t enjoy the music in <i>Woodstock</i> as much as the stuff that happened while all that was going on. The thunderstorm, the stage announcements - <i>‘If you think really hard, maybe we can stop this rain’</i>, the warnings about the brown acid, the interview with the guy who uses a portaloo and describes it as <i>‘far out’</i>, the locals who rally round to provide food for the festival goers, the atrocious mess call trumpet player - the list is almost endless. It’s easily one of the high points of popular culture in the 60s. The good vibe of Woodstock didn’t last long though, just a few months after on December 6th The Rolling Stones staged their own mini festival in California at the Altamont Speedway and brought the 60s to a bloody violent close.Lawrencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08968026418965458002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-831789942481687242.post-15270977435761081522013-04-09T22:13:00.000+02:002013-04-12T07:21:34.677+02:00Magic Mike (2012) - Steven Soderbergh<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I like Steven Soderbergh. I like the way he’s able to flit between smaller indie flicks and big studio films. I like the way he jumps between genres with ease, normally subverting said genre by subtly twisting the audiences expectaitions and ending up somewhere slightly different to the film they thought they were going to watch. Most of all I like him for having a vision, a reason for doing what it is he’s doing. I really hope he finds the urge to make more films and doesn’t retire, but rather takes a sabbatical for a while. I haven’t loved or even seen every film he’s ever made (I've seen most though), but I really did enjoy <i>Magic Mike</i>. If it wasn’t for a few key things then I’d probably be writing that I loved <i>Magic Mike</i>, but we can get to that in a minute.<br />
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<i>Magic Mike</i> has the simplest of plots, one that you’ve seen time and time again. It’s the old young kid is taken on a journey through a strange new world by an older wiser man. Knowledge will be passed down and lessons will be learnt. You know the sort of thing. The young kid in this case is 20 something problem type - Adam (Alex Pettyfer), who is unable to hold down a job and lives with his sister - Brooke (Cody Horn). He’s befriended by Mike (Channing Tatum) who shows him the world behind the curtain of male stripping. <br />
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That’s the basics, but being a Soderbergh film it’s a little more than that. So you get a lot of stripping, there’s at least seven or so set pieces and they are superb and very creative. But there’s also a side story about Mike being an entrepreneur and trying to get his business dreams off the ground in a world where money isn’t being lent out so easily, along with Adam’s tale of flying the nest. Channing Tatum is a revelation as Mike, he can do all the physical gubbins that the role requires, the dancing and moving must be second nature to a guy whose C.V. includes not one but two <i>Step Up</i> films. The impressive thing is that he can act, taking Mike from a shallow all surface type to something a little more human by the time the film wraps up, without anything feeling false or forced. <br />
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Unfortunately the same can’t be said Cody Horn who seems to have one blank expression that she uses in every scene. She’s not in the film all that much, but when she is you’ll be reminded that you’re just watching a film. Alex Pettyfer is a little better, but I didn’t really buy the journey he went on, it felt like some scenes must have gotten lost along the way in the editing suite. At one point he’s turned into a drug hoover, which felt a little sudden. The only other actor to really give Tatum a run for his money is Matthew McConaughey. After his incredible turn in <i>Killer Joe</i>, McConaughey manages to impress yet again with very little screen time as Mike’s boss - Dallas. He’s a scream, and manages to pull a performance out of himself that I would never have thought possible. Do you remember Tom Cruise in <i>Magnolia</i>? Well it’s that sort of 180° style turn. I hope he can keep it up, he even reprises his ‘Alright, alright, alright’ drawl from <i>Dazed and Confused</i>. <br />
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It’s strange that the world of male stripping is so vastly different to that of it’s female counterpart. The biggest difference being the audience, at male strip clubs the onlookers are almost 100% female, all of whom seem to laugh and shriek their way through the show. Women seem to quite often turn up in groups and it's thought of as more of a night out, a bit of fun. Juxtapose that with the far sleazier crowd that watch women peeling of their undies and you’ll see what I mean. Very odd that they can be poles apart, but they are. At the end of the day it boils down to why people would choose to watch another person remove their clothes on a small stage. For women I think it's less sexual than it is for men. I don't have anything to back that up, it's just what I'm guessing. Although having never frequented either male or female strip clubs I'm probably not the person most qualified to make that judgement.<br />
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The biggest problem with <i>Magic Mike</i> for me though was that the whole story had been done far better in <i>Boogie Nights</i>. The rise and fall and slight rise again story, the substitute family (Mike as the father, Brooke as the mother), hell there’s even a scene where a character unsuccessfully and uncomfortably tries to raise a loan, not to mention the descent in drugs hell section. All of which <i>Boogie Nights</i> did before and better. If <i>Boogie Nights</i> didn’t exist then <i>Magic Mike</i> would feel far more original, but it does exist and it’s a far better film. So where does that leave <i>Magic Mike</i> then? Well it’s good solid entertainment, nothing more nothing less. Well worth seeing for Matthew McConaughey alone, but you get the bonus of a Channing Tatum acting like a potential Oscar nominee. Being a Steven Soderbergh film means that it’s well directed and edited (by Soderbergh himself), but it does feel that it was put together a little too quickly in places with a few scenes that feel a little flat and character motivations that you’ll have to fill in for yourself. The stripping scenes are great fun and Soderbergh doesn’t short change his audience when it comes to that stuff. Overall it’s well worth your time, but there’s far more depth to be found in either <i>The Full Monty</i> or <i>Boogie Nights</i>, although neither of them feature assless chaps to quite the degree that <i>Magic Mike</i> does.Lawrencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08968026418965458002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-831789942481687242.post-43537043543462351552013-03-29T16:20:00.000+01:002013-03-30T09:51:23.826+01:00Escape From L.A. (1996) - John Carpenter<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The eight year old me was obsessed with Han Solo, so much so that all I wanted to do when I grew up was hang with a Wookie and say cool things like 'boring conversation anyway' and 'droids don't pull people's arms out of their sockets when they lose.' Punk may well have changed the cultural landscape for the kids aged fourteen and over in '77, but for us pre-teens the watershed moment was catching George Lucas' third feature film<i></i> at the cinema. There’d be no more playing war in the school playground after that, for the next decade it was <i>Star Wars</i> and <i>Star Wars</i> only. There were always grumblings about who would play what character and so forth, but ultimately whoever I was supposed to be playing would immediately fade as soon as we started. I was Han Solo, as I suspect were loads of other kids that had been told to be a stormtrooper instead of the guy who’d made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.<br />
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That all changed one morning at Upminster train station back in the summer of ’81. As I ascended the stairs towards the exit I caught sight of a poster for <i>Escape From New York</i>. Kurt Russell’s head was floating above the New York skyline with helicopters flying all about it. It was at that exact moment that my loyalties towards Han fell away and my new obsession with the unknown fizzog in front of me began. Han may well have had a cape and thought Tauntaun’s smelt bad on the outside, but this new fella had an eyepatch and the best grimace on his face I’d ever seen. Plus he was called Snake Plissken. How fucking cool was that? Snake. Plissken.<br />
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I was way too young to actually go to the cinema and see <i>Escape From New York </i>though, and it would be years before I managed to rent a VHS copy of it. Despite the fact that over the years I'd built up massive expectations for it, it didn’t disappoint. From that opening synth line of the score all the way through to Snake’s kiss off at the end, for the teenage me it was total perfection. Writer/director John Carpenter was at the top of his game back then and his films with Kurt Russell were amongst the best things he ever did. The Russell & Carpenter partnership is up there for me with those great actor/director teams like Eastwood & Siegel or Mifune & Kurosawa. So with all that rambling prologue in mind you can imagine how excited I was when it turned out that Kurt and John were going to make another film together, and not just any film but a sequel to <i>Escape From New York</i>.<br />
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I saw <i>Escape From L.A.</i> on it’s opening week. I was disappointed. It was shit. I never watched it again… Until now. Me and a couple of John Carpenter fans were nattering away about some new pictures of John and Kurt posted on Facebook, and the conversation turned to <i>Escape From L.A.</i>, and for the first time since ’96 I had a huge hankering to watch it. It couldn’t be that bad, could it? Maybe I’d had such high expectations first time ‘round that I’d been too harsh on it? Possibly? Maybe?<br />
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Well as it turns out <i>Escape From L.A.</i> is still an absolutely abysmal film. Shockingly so at times. The bulk of the problem has to be laid at John Carpenter’s feet, since the biggest stumbling block with the film is that it all just feels so damn lazy. Just like all the worst sequels this basically rehashes the plot of the original. So we get the ticking time bomb plot device, Snake having to retrieve something from no mans land and all the rest of it. The thing is <i>Escape from L.A.</i> was made fifteen years after the original, and if you’re going to wait that long to follow up your film you’d better have a damn good reason for doing so in the first place. Don't make something that feels like a cheapo thrown together straight to DVD release. The effects in this film are probably the worst I’ve seen in a major studio film from this period, worse than original Playstation graphics with multiple shots that look unfinished and then some. Maybe the money ran out? It sure looks that way.<br />
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On the plus side Kurt Russell is on top form and does the business as Snake, it’s a character that he can easily breathe life into and his growly sub Harry Callahan delivery always works. The rest of the cast range from okay (Stacy Keach, Cliff Robertson) to miscast (Steve Buscemi) to downright shite. Yes Pam Grier and Peter Fonda I’m talking about you. Fonda in particular is wince inducingly awful, cranking up his old hippie dude persona to nauseating effect. Most of the major touchstones of the original are present but in a lesser form, for example the fight to the death arena scene now involves shooting hoops on a basketball court. I kid you not. That’s how bad this is. The only thing that redeems <i>Escape from L.A.</i> a little for me are its last ten minutes which are as good as the original film. <br />
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So as far as I’m concerned I’ll hopefully never have the urge to watch this again. It’s awful, and made even worse by the fact that John Carpenter has it in him to put things together on screen in a way that few others can manage. I still hold out some hope that someone will knock up a script that will bring Carpenter and Russell back together, Carpenter would make an ideal choice for a decent comic book adaptaion for instance and Kurt Russell can do no wrong (don't mention <i>Soldier</i> that wasn't his fault all right). Let’s face it, they could never make anything worse than <i>Escape From L.A.</i> Could they?Lawrencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08968026418965458002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-831789942481687242.post-11919237686561395982013-03-23T13:27:00.004+01:002013-03-23T13:29:52.299+01:00Ministry of Fear (1944) - Fritz Lang<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Right from the ominous opening music and image of a pendulum slowly swinging back and forth you know that <i>Ministry of Fear</i> isn’t going to be a comedy. Of course it isn’t, it’s a Fritz Lang adaptation of a novel by Graham Greene how could it be anything other than a nourish thriller? And yet despite those credentials <i>Ministry of Fear</i> does have a gloriously dark streak of humour running through it. In that way (and a few others) it’s the most Hitchcockian Fritz Lang film I’ve ever seen, an innocent man on the run, a league of evil wrong doers operating within plain sight of ordinary society, a blonde love interest and of course the all important McGuffin to propel the film ever forwards. It’s all so Hitchcock in fact that you almost keep an eye out for the great man’s cameo. Almost. But I’m getting ahead of myself a bit here, so let’s wind back to that opening pendulum and pick it up from there.<br />
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It turns out that said pendulum is attached to a wall mounted clock (Lang does love his clocks), which is being stared at intently by our films hero Stephen Neale (Ray Milland). As it strikes six o’clock someone enters the room and informs Neale that he is free to go, and offers up the advice that in future he should try and steer clear of the police. So far so mysterious. It turns out Neale is leaving an asylum, although why he was in there we don’t find out just yet. This opening scene of <i>Ministry of Fear</i> really sets the tone for the rest of the film with it's long dark shadows. Lang is always one step ahead of his audience, it’s a mystery which we are encouraged to try and solve as the film progresses and as such it works extremely well.<br />
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Anyway poor old Neale leaves the asylum determined to head for the bright lights of London. Before he even makes it to the train station though he spots a fete and the first of many suspension of disbelief moments begins. Maybe I should have mentioned that the film is set during WWII, since a fete at six in the evening seems a little unlikely. But as it turns out that’s the least of this films lapses in logic. So where was I? At the fete Neale ends up winning a cake (don’t ask), which becomes <i>Ministry of Fear’s</i> McGuffin. You see due to a mix up involving a palm reader (like I said, don’t ask), Neale has been given a cake that was meant to go to a Nazi spy. Oh yes it’s 1944 and the bad guys are all Nazis don’t you know. Anyway to cut a long story short Neal hops on a train to London, gets attacked by a blind man en route, who then nicks his cake and runs off across what looks like no mans land (but is in fact an obvious sound stage outdoor set) during an air raid, dodges bullets and bombs, gets accused of shooting someone at a seance and becomes that innocent man on the run that I mentioned earlier.<br />
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All of the above happens within the first thirty minutes of <i>Ministry of Fear</i>. So to say it’s fast moving would be doing it a disservice, it rattles along at a cracking speed and at a few minutes shy of an hour and a half is over before you know it. There’s no title card at the start of the film informing us when and where the action is taking place, instead we get constant references to life during wartime. The cake is praised as being made with real eggs, which would really be something during those heavily rationed times. Black drapes hang everywhere too and there is constant chatter about the blackouts that were a nightly occurrence during the Blitz. A whole section of the film even takes place in one of the London Underground stations which doubled up as air raid shelters back then. All of the above works supremely well and grounds the film in the period in which it is set. Of course London is never actually shown being bombed, that sort of thing just wouldn’t do. There was a war on after all.<br />
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As is well documented the villains of this film in real life had an affinity for Fritz Lang's films. So much so that according to Lang he was approached by Joseph Goebbels to become the head of UFA (Universum Film AG) which would have resulted in him being a huge part of the Nazi propaganda that was churned out during WWII. Lang baulked at the idea and fled that night to Paris, and then later to the safer shores of the U.S. I can’t say for sure but I’m guessing Goebbels wasn’t so keen on Lang’s American output, which during the early forties was chock-a-block with Allied propaganda. <i>Manhunt</i> for instance starts with an assassination attempt on the Führer. For Lang it must have been incredibly important to distance himself from the insanity that his countrymen were wreaking across the globe, especially since he had settled in the U.S.A. a country that despite being founded by European immigrants was well known for it’s intolerance of anything other then the American way of life.<br />
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Anyway back to the film, Ray Milland is pretty darn good as a the man on the lam, able to switch between wry one liners delivered with a raised eyebrow to running and jumping style action at the drop of a fedora. The sort of thing that Cary Grant always made look so easy. Of the rest of the cast Percy Waram as Inspector Prentice really stands out and makes a great foil for Neale during the last third of the film. Marjorie Reynolds is the love interest and doesn’t really get all that much to do sadly, she’s mainly there as a crutch for the men in the film. Far more interesting is Hillary Brooke who gets the full five star noir introduction walking out from darkened shadows into the light.<br />
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The most obvious thing this film has going for it and probably the reason you’re reading this now is of course Fritz Lang. By this time in his career he was already a master director with enough classics under his belt to ensure he’d always be remembered. His American films may not hold a candle to his earlier German output but they were always well directed. He was a real master with shadows and light, the final rooftop shoot out in <i>Ministry of Fear</i> for instance where a darkened stairwell is lit fleetingly by gun blasts is one of the best looking things you’ll see in a film from this period. The same can be said of the seance scene which takes place in a gigantic room with a circular table and chairs in its center. Once the lights drop Lang gives each of the people at the table a spotlight, visually it’s reminiscent of Ken Adam’s war room set for <i>Dr. Strangelove</i>. Which of course was a full twenty years away from being filmed.<br />
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It’s impossible to write about <i>Ministry of Fear</i> without mentioning Graham Greene and his famously sniffy attitude to Hollywood adaptations of his books. I can see why, since quite often they jettisoned back story and motivation for characters and delved straight into the story. I haven’t read the Greene novel this is based on so I can’t really comment on how it differs. What I can say though is that Greene’s prose doesn’t have any real zip to it. Whereas this film really is the cinematic equivalent of a page-turner, it’s episodic with Neale being thrown from one situation to another leaving the audience with almost no time to work out just who the villain is.<br />
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Talking of villains the two things the audience have to work out during the course of <i>Ministry of Fear</i> are the identity of the head of the Nazi ring and just what was in that 4lb 15oz cake? Anyone familiar with the language of cinema will be able to spot the chief Nazi straight away. How? Just by the way he/she holds a cigarette since all screen Nazis hold their cigarettes in a weird way. As for the cake, well it’s not so much what was in it that is the mystery as much as how did it not get blown to kingdom come when the police were finding bits of the guy holding it scattered all over the show? But as always with these films it’s not so much the destination as the journey.<br />
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<i>Ministry of Fear</i> falls into a strange place in Lang’s oeuvre, it’s not anywhere near his best work and yet it’s nowhere near bad enough to be dismissed or forgotten either. It falls somewhere in-between those two camps, and is best viewed as such. There’s little point in pouring over why characters do what they do, or even what happens to certain people once their value to the story has run dry since logic seems to take a back seat at times. It’s best to just go along with it all a-la Hitchcock and enjoy the ride. Lawrencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08968026418965458002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-831789942481687242.post-63564234639383531792013-03-07T23:25:00.001+01:002013-10-27T15:15:06.486+01:00Made in U.S.A (1966) - Jean-Luc Godard<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Of all the feted directors of yesteryear, it’s Jean-Luc Godard that I just don’t get. I quite like a few of his earlier efforts (<i>Bande à part</i> and <i>Le mépris</i>), but the majority of his mid to late sixties films just leave me cold, and <i>Made in U.S.A</i> (no full stop after the A for some reason, a deep political reason I’m sure) is one of those films. It’s not that it’s impenetrable, since I can deal with that. It’s more that there is nothing within the film for me to hold onto, so despite the short running time (85 minutes), I found myself checking to see how long was left of the film every fifteen minutes or so. Which can’t be good can it?<br />
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So plot wise we have Paula Nelson (Anna Karina) trying to find out how her boyfriend (?) died. Maybe. Or maybe not. She wanders from scene to scene spouting a kind of cut and paste dialogue, bits of a pulp novel here (the film is supposedly based very very loosely on Richard Stark’s novel <i>The Jugger</i>), some philosophy there. After a while I found my brain was just unwilling to try and process any of what was being said. To add insult to injury the audience is bombarded with the distorted voice of Godard ranting on about various Maoist theories via a reel to reel tape machine. Characters are named after political figures and film stars/directors. Can you hear that? That’s me clapping really slowly in an empty room. Just. For. J-L G.<br />
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Now whereas certain films by David Lynch or Luis Buñuel require a degree of decoding by the viewer, it feels worthwhile and at least the directors give their audience some sort of story to hang onto while they try and figure out just what's going on. Godard meanwhile is very heavy-handed with his messages, which are firmly rooted in the times and subsequently dated and of no consequence to anyone now. Vietnam, the state of sixties France blah blah blah, I couldn’t care less.<br />
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Still on the plus side we get Marianne Faithful singing an a cappella version of As Tears Go By, and the playfulness with the format that you associate with Godard is still present, he always manages to do things that are at the very least interesting, but it’s not enough. The real hero of the film for me is cinematographer Raoul Coutard who makes the whole shebang a sumptuous viewing experience. His colour palette is made up of vivid blues and reds against warm yellows and oranges. His camerawork is second to none and goes a long way to explaining why he was the most in demand cameraman of this period in France.<br />
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Maybe the thing I hated most though was the dedication at the start of the film to Nicolas Ray and Samuel Fuller. Godard looks up to these two legends as teachers, and yet by slapping that dedication at the start of this film shows that he hasn’t learnt a thing, since neither of them would ever make a film as arse numbingly dull or as self-absorbed as this piece of trash.Lawrencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08968026418965458002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-831789942481687242.post-86046394826879448612013-02-21T22:38:00.002+01:002013-02-23T08:54:43.439+01:00Who Can Kill a Child? (1976) - Narciso Ibáñez Serrador<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The big question I had when this film finished wasn’t so much <i>Who Can Kill a Child?</i>, but more why is it that I’d never seen or heard of this film before? I’ve been watching horror flicks all my life and I’d never even stumbled across this mid-seventies Spanish gem until now. English couple Tom (Lewis Fiander) and Evelyn (Prunella Ransome) are on holiday in Spain, leaving behind the tourist trap of the mainland they head off to a remote island that Tom once visited before they met. Upon arrival they quickly notice that there are no adults around, only children. Lots of children. To say more would only spoil things, but <i>Who Can Kill a Child?</i> is equal parts <i>Children of the Corn</i> (the story not the woeful film series) and <i>The Wicker Man</i>, sprinkled with elements of <i>The Birds</i>. That’s the sort of company it’s keeping. <br />
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Pedophobia has long been a staple of the horror genre, from early sixties classics such as <i>Village of the Damned</i> and <a href="http://peoplearecrying.blogspot.se/2010/11/innocents-1961-jack-clayton.html" target="_blank"><i>The Innocents</i></a> through to such modern nasties as <i>Ils</i> and <i>Eden Lake</i>. Kids are evil. We all know it, it’s just that most people don’t want to accept it. Anyone who remembers the horrific murder of two year old James Bulger by two ten year olds can attest to this I’m sure. It’s one of those things that everyone can associate with, either by having once been a child or the double whammy of also being a parent. If you really wanted to push the point home you might point out that the most evil people on the planet, Hitler, Stalin um Murdoch were all kids once. But I don’t need to write that, do I? It's always easier to scare people with what is all around them, rather than ghosts or the devil or any of that nonesense.<br />
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<i>Who Can Kill a Child?</i> starts off with a montage of true life images of atrocities from throughout the past century, bodies being dumped into mass graves in Nazi death camps, children with skin hanging from their limbs fleeing napalmed villages in Vietnam and starving skeletal children in war torn Africa. I’m sure Serrador would justify this by what follows in the film, but I thought it was a little much to be honest and could have done without it. That aside though I thought the film was almost like a missing link. The Spanish have had a bit of thing for nasty child horror lately, mainly thanks to Guillermo del Toro who seems to have children and horror at the heart of everything he directs or produces. Seeing this gives a little more insight into what came before del Toro.<br />
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The two leads are stalwarts of British TV and were absolutely convincing as a couple. They're reminiscent of Sutherland & Christie in <i>Don't Look Now</i>. Ransome is particularly good, going on much the same emotional journey as Mia Farrow did in <i>Rosemary’s Baby</i>. Hysterical women (or men for that matter) in films can be just the sort of thing to drag you out of a scene, yet she plays it just right. The real kudos though has to go to director Narciso Ibáñez Serrador who manages to keep the film moving forward despite the fact that at times not a lot appears to be happening. He does this by building and building tension to almost uncomfortable extremes at times. His set pieces are pitch perfect, the human piñata being a particular gruesome favourite. Serrador drenches the whole film in a sheen of sweat, it's an itchy nylon shirt stuck to your back, denim flares in the burning Spanish sun. The fact that so much of the action takes place in broad daylight as opposed to the usual trope of bad things only happening at night really helps sell the film as being real, which in turn makes it easier for the viewer to do what they should always do when watching a successful horror flick - ask themselves over and over what they would do in the situation. The deserted village calls to mind so many westerns, yet how many westerns ended with a stand off like the end of this film? <br />
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It’s impossible to watch this without thinking about the Spanish Civil War, and I think that is the none to subtle sub-text here. It’s not essential to understanding or following the film, but it elevates it a little higher than a mere schlocky Euro horror flick. Speaking of schlock this was remade last year as <i>Come Out and Play</i>. I haven’t seen it, so I won’t judge it until I do. The reviews weren’t kind though. Shame since I think a sensitive retelling of this story could be a huge hit. Then again Americans notoriously hate seeing children being killed in films. Sending them off to war or mowing them down in their schools is one thing, up on the silver screen is unacceptable though. Do hunt this down if you are a horror fan and haven't seen it. I promise you won't be disappointed.Lawrencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08968026418965458002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-831789942481687242.post-90421246004824552362013-02-17T14:28:00.001+01:002013-02-17T14:49:24.314+01:00I, Anna (2012) - Barnaby Southcombe<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Great slow burning London set crime drama that for once doesn’t involve gangs of hoodies talking in a language that no English speaking person over the age of thirty can understand, nor does it involve shooters, there’s no tart with a heart, no swearing, no Danny Dyer and no silly action scenes. Instead we get that old fashioned thing of actors, for want of a better word - acting. <br />
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Charlotte Rampling is middle aged lonely heart Anna Welles and Gabriel Byrne is D.C.I. Bernie Reid investigating the murder of George Stone (played by the always value for money Ralph Brown). Anna and George meet up at a singles night and by the next morning George is dead. Bernie clocks Anna and being recently separated himself decides to try his chances with her. Throw into the mix Hayley Atwell as Anna’s daughter and Eddie Marsan as one of the flatfoots working the murder with Bernie and you have a seriously decent cast.<br />
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Written and directed by Rampling’s son Barnaby Southcombe this is a slice of modern noir set in and around London’s Barbican. The acting is top notch, not at all showy, with Rampling in particular giving a note perfect performance. At it’s heart <i>I, Anna</i> is a murder mystery, but an old fashioned one without the yawnable multiple twists we’ve become so accustomed too. In fact the ending feels right on the money, well earned if you like. Southcombe directs the whole thing with a keen eye but never allows his camera to take center stage, everything is geared to serving his script and allowing the cast to do their stuff.<br />
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It’s always a treat to see actresses over a certain age up on the screen in an interesting role. It seems to be that in Hollywood once the wrinkles set in then for some reason there’s no work for actresses as a leading character. It’s all mad aunts and grandma’s, which is a pretty tragic state of affairs and one that probably goes quite a way to explaining just why so many of them feel the need to have the dreaded plastic surgery. Anyway I’m drifting a little here, so to get back to the film I’d say this is a must see. Unpredictable in a way so few films are nowadays, if that sounds like your cup of tea then I'd say it's well worth taking a punt if you get the chance to.<br />
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<br />Lawrencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08968026418965458002noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-831789942481687242.post-88970910592276623702013-02-02T10:20:00.002+01:002013-02-05T18:50:55.037+01:00Gray’s Anatomy (1996) - Steven Soderbergh<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is the last of the four monologues Spalding Gray filmed for the big screen, before his suspected suicide almost ten years ago. <i>Gray’s Anatomy</i> is basically about Spalding’s experience after he discovered that the vision in his left eye had become fuzzy. After visiting an eye surgeon and being told that an operation was inevitable, Spalding decided to try absolutely everything he could think of to fix his eyesight rather than going under the knife. And of course Spalding being Spalding he turned it into one of his best monologues.<br />
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For those unaware of who Spalding Gray is let me start by saying he’s a bit of an acquired taste. But once you fall for him you won’t be able to get enough. Primarily an actor, but finding writing more rewarding, he’s probably most famous for his one man shows. Sitting behind a desk with a notebook, microphone and a glass of water and would pour forth amusing, poignant and often tragic stories from his own life. Think a slightly more neurotic Woody Allen and you’re in the right ballpark.<br />
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Both Jonathan Demme and Nick Broomfield have had a crack at filming a Spalding monologue before, with <i>Swimming to Cambodia</i> (1987) and <i>Monster in a Box</i> (1991) respectively. Both opted for the straightforward approach of what you’d see at one of his shows, quite spartan. What Soderbergh does is throw all that out of the window and do what he often does in his films, which is to do things in a way they haven’t been done before. So straight away there’s no audience and everything is far more stylized. For the scene in the doctors waiting room Soderbergh shoots through a opaque glass door. Likewise for the trawl through various alternative medicines Soderbergh uses various film making techniques to highlight what Spalding is rabbiting on about. It works a treat, never detracting from Spalding, and actually makeing it more of a film than the previous two efforts.<br />
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<i>Gray’s Anatomy</i> doesn’t actually open with Spalding Gray at all, but rather a series of short interviews with people who have all suffered some form of eye injury. My favorite of these is the woman who put super glue in her eye thinking it was eye drops. These interviews are filmed in stark black and white and look gorgeous. At various points in the film these interviewees return and say what they think of the various weird alternatives that Spalding is trying. Making them basically a representation of the audience. It’s a good idea that works really well. <br />
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If you don’t know Spalding Gray then either this or the equally aces <i>Swimming to Cambodia</i> are perfect places to start. I think this might have the edge since it’s visually rich too, the blood red lighting and silhouettes used for his visit to a psychic doctor in the Philippines being a particular highlight. Oh and there’s a wonderful minimalistic score by Soderbergh favourite Cliff Martinez too. So come on what are you waiting for?Lawrencehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08968026418965458002noreply@blogger.com0