Lawrence of Belgravia (2011) - Paul Kelly

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.

Paul Kelly’s remarkable documentary, Lawrence of Belgravia, 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.

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 Lawrence of Belgravia 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.

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.

Lawrence of Belgravia 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.

Rush (2013) - Ron Howard

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.

The best (and I use that word in the widest most general sense) racing film ever made is John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix (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.

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.

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.

So why does this work where Grand Prix, Le Mans, Days of Thunder and Driven all failed so badly? Well for starters it’s scripted by Peter Morgan who of course wrote the aces screenplays for The Queen and The Damned United as well as Frost/Nixon 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, Rush 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.

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.

Down By Law (1986) - Jim Jarmusch

I’m going through a bit of Tom Waits phase at the moment. Whenever that happens you can bet your bottom dollar that I’ll watch Short Cuts and Down By Law. Waits plays a version of himself in both films, but fuck if you’re going to put a Tom Waits like character into your film then you might as well cast the man himself. Right?

Jim Jarmusch first met Waits through John Lurie at a party thrown by Jean-Michel Basquiat. They hit it off immediately, recognizing kindred spirits in each other. Just as he had with Lurie, Jarmusch used Waits again in various other projects - he recorded the soundtrack for Night On Earth, was the voice of the DJ in Mystery Train and appeared in one of the better Coffee And Cigarettes shorts.

Down By Law has been a constant favourite of mine since I first saw it back in the early nineties. I’ve even managed to see it at the cinema - twice. See I told you I liked it didn’t I. It, along with the two films that Jarmusch made either side of it - Stranger Than Paradise (1984) and Mystery Train (1989) are (for me at any rate) his best films.

The story itself, like most of Jarmusch’s films is fairly straightforward, three people get thrown together in jail, learn to get along, escape and start their lives over. Separately. It's never really about the plot with a Jarmusch film, it's more to do with the situation and the dialogue. The little things are the scraps that stick in your memory. The film kicks off with some gorgeous pre-credits black & white tracking shots, setting the scene and tone before we’re thrown into the film proper. This was the first time Wim Wenders’ cinematographer Robby Müller had worked with Jarmusch. Something must have clicked since they’ve collaborated on five films and a handful of shorts since.

Set in a run down near mythical New Orleans, that’s seemingly populated only by prostitutes, their customers and various pimps and low-lifes, Down By Law doesn’t try to lay any claim to being an authentic slice of life drama. Instead it heads off on it’s own course, doing it’s own thing with scant regard for the rest of the world. It’s neatly divided up into three half an hour acts. In the first section we meet Zack (Tom Waits), a radio DJ with the handle Lee ‘Baby’ Sims. He’s all pork pie hats and pointy shoes, muttered wisdom and walking like he’s full of bad booze. When we first meet him he’s being dumped by his irate girlfriend (Ellen Barkin). This sends him off on a bender and leads to him being set up for a murder and winding up in jail. Next up we meet Jack (John Lurie) a pimp who takes some stick off a woman (Billie Neal) before being set up for a crime and being hauled off to jail. Sound familiar? The second section of the film finds Jack and Zack sharing a jail cell with Roberto (Roberto Benigni), who as it turns out is actually guilty of his crime. The final section sees our trio on the run from prison through the Louisiana swamplands.

The first thing that strikes you about Down By Law is how good it looks, and just how out of step it was with the other films coming out of America at that time. The acting style is loose but the script is tight. In fact Jarmusch wrote the script with his three leads in mind and it shows. The three characters contrast each another, Benigni is like a puppy full of boundless energy, Lurie is the polar opposite, cool and destracted while Waits is almost simian like, lots of hand acting and grunts. The dialogue is gloriously weird, Benigni in particular is almost Manuel like with his over the top non grasp of English. The scene where our trio sing ‘You scream, I scream, we all scream for ice cream’ for instance, is the sort of thing that most people would chop from a film, since it doesn’t move the plot forward at all. Yet in Jarmusch’s world it feels like one of the film’s pivotal moments, since it's a bonding moment for our three stooges. Plus in a nod to one of Jarmusch’s heroes (Yasujiro Ozu) the camera is static and set at a low angle.

My favorite portion of the film is the last act as they plunge through the Bayou. It reminds me of Letter Never Sent and Southern Comfort, in the way the natural world is both beautiful but dangerous and harsh. The stark black & white photography being so reminiscent of those Russian man against the elements films. Jarmusch doesn’t bother showing the jail break, and yet you never feel like you’re missing it. You hear the bloodhounds but never see them. Down By Law is low budget film making at it’s finest in that way.

Incidentally it turns out that there actually was a real Lee ‘Baby’ Sims, he was a DJ back in San Diego when Waits was a young ‘un. Funnily enough he wasn’t too happy about having his name pinched for such a scuzzy character. Can't imagine why. Anyway, even after seeing this film more times than I care to remember it still has a shine to it, still feels new every time I watch it. I don’t know why that is. But I’m glad it’s like that.

Skyfall (2012) - Sam Mendes

Bond is back. And about bloody time too. What with all the trouble with MGM (the co-owners of the Bond brand) almost going belly up, it felt at times that there was more chance of seeing Welles’ version of The Magnificent Ambersons than ever seeing Bond at the cinema again. Then there was the awful muddled Quantum of Solace which was still lingering in the memory reminding everyone just how bad Bond could be. Skyfall had a lot to live up to. It accomplishes just that though, and then some. Mendes has managed to reignite the Bond franchise and make it feel like something worth getting excited about again. Which is not bad when you consider the series is almost old enough to get a bus pass now.

So right from the off we get what is possibly the most exciting pre-credit sequence in a Bond film ever, a chase scene that propels along at a super rapid pace. From cars to motorbikes, to motorbikes on rooftops and finally to that old chestnut a fight on a moving train. With a digger and some VW Beetle's. Mendes lays waste to any fear that the director behind American Beauty might not have the chops for action within these first few minutes.

For the first time in 20 years we have a title song that sounds like it belongs over those gorgeous opening images too. While we're talking about Bond music, David Arnold’s attempts at bolting traditional orchestral flourish to synth modernism which worked about as well as it did for Marvin Hamlisch’s frankly laughable score for The Spy Who Loved Me, have been dropped along with Arnold, in favour of Mende’s composer of choice Thomas Newman. Like so much else in Skyfall it’s totally the correct decision.

There’s no need to go into the story here since it’s Bond. He’s still a British spy with a license to kill on the heels of a bad guy that will find that out by the end of the film. Some things have to stay the same don’t they? There is a plot point that is lifted straight from Marvel’s Avengers film, but I’m certain it must be pure coincidence. As in the previous Bond benchmark - Casino Royale (no not the original, silly) it’s far more personal this time round. World domination isn’t on the table, and there are no Ken Adam inspired villains liars either. Noughties Bond has to be different, there's no more jumping in the sack with anything with a pulse for example. The need to jet around the world isn’t so important now either since travel is cheaper than it was during the Connery/Moore days. So Turkey and Shanghai are the exotic locales for the first half of Skyfall, while London and the Scottish Highlands are used to perfection for the second.

Being the 50th anniversary film there are nods aplenty to the 22 films that preceded it. Not in Die Another Days awful hanging of old props around Q’s workplace, no it’s a little more subtle this time. There are all sorts of things for the viewer to spot, so I won’t spoil anything by listing them here. My favourites though were the Live and Let Die and On Her Majesty's Secret Service moments. Another thing I got a kick out of was when Bond is served his favorite drink, we see it being prepared but we don’t hear him say the immortal line. As I said it's all a bit subtle.

As was already known Daniel Craig is Bond perfection, but for this film he’s flanked by some of the best actors around. Dame Judi returns as M and gets more to do in this film than all her other Bond films put together. Then there’s Ralph Fiennes and Naomie Harris as MI6 types, both manage to play about with their stereotypes and have great (and this is a term I hate using, but I will anyway) character arcs. Albert Finney turns up towards the end of the film and gets the best line of all for his effort. Then there’s Javier Bardem as the naughty type who Bond is trying to defeat. Bond films are only ever as good as their villains, think back to Jonathan Pryce in Tomorrow Never Dies if you don’t believe me. The past has seen some real corkers - Charles Grey, Donald Pleasence and Telly Savalas being the three that immediately come to mind. Well Bardem is up there with them. He gives his character a depth and despite some proper looney moments manages to keep him on the right side of parody. His entrance is reminiscent of that great Omar Sharif intro in Lawrence of Arabia, and let's face it if you're going to borrow then you should always borrow from the best.

There are some problems with Skyfall, it’s a little overlong for instance and there are some typically Bond lapses of logic at times. But the overall film is so good that you can forgive it almost anything. Where does Bond go from here? Well seasoned Bond watchers will know that every time the series gets a re-boot the first film is always dark and gritty. After that the one liners creep in along with the silly gadgets. So in three films time we should have Daniel Craig swinging from a tree shouting like Tarzan. God help us.

Shut Up and Play the Hits (2012) - Will Lovelace & Dylan Southern

Aces documentary charting the day leading up to and coming down from LCD Soundsystem's farewell concert at New York's Madison Square Garden on April 2nd 2011. It's a show I'd love to have been at but for various reasons (most of them involving a complete lack of funds, and the rest having to do with living 4,000 miles from N.Y.), I wasn't able to attend. So this documentary has quite a bit to deliver for all those fans that are in the same boat as me. Thankfully it does and then some (the DVD having the whole concert spread across two discs as an 'extra'). I'd say right off the bat that you need to be a fan of LCD Soundsystem to get anything from this. This is a documentary in the very real sense of the word, documenting a moment in time. If you are already a fan then prepare yourself for a treat, not only do we get selected highlights from the 3 ½ hour show, but also receive a behind the scenes look at life in the center of the hurricane, all interspersed with an interview with LCD frontman James Murphy.

It works really well, and we gain a small but significant insight into why Murphy feels that putting LCD Soundsystem to sleep at the height of their fame is the right thing to do. Let's face it, in an age where bands are more and more reluctant to call it day, even when they are well past their prime, it is supremely refreshing to see someone do the right thing and draw the curtains before things become boring. Just imagine how cool New Order would be if they'd stopped after Technique, even The Clash try to airbrush out the embarrassment of their final Cut the Crap LP from history in order to look like they went out on a high, rather than the awkward whimper that they actually left the music world with. But anyway I'm getting sidetracked…

There are poignant moments such as Murphy talking about his heroes (Lou Reed and Bowie seem to be the two that crop up over and over), and how he perceived them as a teenager as being something untouchable, almost beyond human in the way that people tend to think of celebrities in general. What co-directors Lovelace and Southern manage so well is to show the mundanity of Murphy's life, how he just like normal folks, wakes up and checks his phone, drinks coffee, meets friends and walks his dog. It's this juxtaposition between the everyday and the jaw dropping hugeness of the gig that really does the trick for me.

Obviously the documentary this reminded me off most was The Band's swan song - The Last Waltz. Just like that farewell concert famous friends drop by to lend a hand, so we get Arcade Fire, Planningtorock, Reggie Watts as well as a band consisting of Gavin Russom (The Crystal Ark), Nancy Whang (The Juan MacLean) and Al Doyle (Hot Chip). Al Doyle is particularly watchable, leaping about and playing just about any instrument that is thrust in front of him, so as well as the usual guitar, bass and keyboards he also plays a stack of percussion and even at one point a trumpet. The band are in great form, and whip through some choice cuts - North American Scum, Dance Yrself Clean, Someone Great, Losing My Edge and the highlight for me - All My Friends. "To tell the truth, this could be the last time."

At no point does this ever feel like a funeral, there are tears, but they come mostly at the end and that's understandable since it is just that - THE END. It'll take years before people realise that what James Murphy did was not only brave but also essential. I'm convinced that LCD Soundsystem's stock will rise and rise with time. Something that might not have happened had their next album been a patchy effort, or a contract filling live album. Having said that though I'd love to have seen them live just one last time. Still I'll always have the records and now I have this film too. The king is dead, long live the king.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) - Sam Peckinpah

Pretty much the last of Peckinpah's essential films, this nearly western from '74 is famous for Peckinpah having final cut, making it one of the few films that was released the way the man intended. Just like Orson Welles before him, producers and studios loved to chop about Sam's films. Thankfully a fair few of his greatest flicks are now back to the way Sam entended them to be. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia has always been just the way Peckinpah envisioned it though.

In some Mexican backwater local gigolo Alfredo Garcia has managed to get the local mob boss's daughter up the spout. So being a typical mob boss he demands Garcia's head, with a huge cash sum for whomever manages the task. Peckinpah regular Warren Oates plays ivory tinkler Bennie, who thanks to his girlfriend having recently had a bit on the side with Alfredo happens to know what no one else does - that Garcia has just shuffled off this mortal coil. So off he sets, girlfriend in tow to decapitate the corpse and earn enough money to quit the rat race for good.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia scores instant points with me for being so unique, I can't think of another film that is like this. It's part road movie (but then again maybe not, since how many road movies end up where they began?), and part gutter romance. The whole story feels like it could have been ripped straight from the grooves of Dylan's '76 album - Desire. Everyone in the film looks like they could do with a hot bath and a bowl of soup. Oates' Bennie is a throwback to the sort of character Bogart would have inhabited back in the 40's, in fact the film has a distinct touch of the John Huston's about it. Oates makes Bennie totally believable despite the fact that he's on one of cinema's strangest journeys. He starts off being a loveable rogue type but ends about as far away from that as you can get, without it ever feeling forced. I guess it's that old adage about having a good script and good actors being half the battle. It would be hard to imagine Steve McQueen (another Peckinpah regular) as Bennie for instance. In fact I'm hard pressed to think of anyone other than Warren Oates in this role since he made it so much his own, in much the same way that Nicholson did with R.P. McMurphy. Peckinpah peppers the rest of the film with a cast of unknowns (to me anyway), Isela Vega as Bennie's woman Elita is the only person who comes close to the amount of screen time allowed Oates. It's very much him and Peckinpah that dominate the film. Plus we never even get to see the title character.

Every town looks really run down, but once we're out on the road we get to see the real beauty of Mexico, it looks totally lush. Normally road movies make quite a big deal out of their cars, think of Sailor's '66 Ford Thunderbird in Wild at Heart, or Bullitt's 1968 mustang fastback. Not here though, the cars in this film look shittier than any you have seen on screen before. Welcome to planet Peckinpah. Now if the perma-sweaty people or bloody action scenes aren't enough to let you know that you're watching a Peckinpah film, then the editing surely is. It's that great thing he does during action scenes, slowing the action down and filming it from multiple cameras so that you can see exactly what happens. Even his dodgier later films have these great moments.

That's not to say that this is only blood and gore slo-mo action, because the best moments in the film also happen to be the tenderest. My favourite is the five minutes we spend with Bennie and his gal making plans for the future under a tree in deepest Mexico, although the wonderful little scene in a shower comes a very close second. Of course being Peckinpah we get two girls having their clothes ripped off (one of them even gets a busted arm thrown in for free), and Kris Kristofferson attempting to rape Elita.

From the moment Bennie desecrates Garcia's grave things tumble downhill fast for him, and anyone with even just a basic knowledge of Peckinpah will know how the film has to end. It's structured in such a way that scenes mirror each other. Using the digging up of Alfredo Garcia's grave as the cutting off point. Once the grave has been opened the film essentially runs backwards, repeating each scene until it finishes right where it began. Things change so much for Bennie during his mission/journey (his whole life philosophy alters), which means the same set up takes on a different hue, such as that shower scene, or the meeting between the heavies and Bennie in their hotel room. It's a perfect structure in that way, something I'd first noticed in a Melville film.

I don't think 'bloody' Sam gets the props he deserves because of the controversy surrounding many of his films, coupled with the fact that he managed to overshadow them by being such a larger than life figure. If you love the man then you've seen this numerous times already and probably have drinking games to go with it. If you're not up to snuff with yr Peckinpah films however then this is as good a place as any to start. Be warned though, you'll want to see everything Peckinpah made after watching this. Yep even Convoy.

Le Samouraï (1967) - Jean-Pierre Melville

 Jef Costello (Alain Delon) is an assassin, the sort of guy you shouldn't really double cross. So when after a successful job Jef is pulled in for questioning by the law, his employers decided that he's a liability and decided to off him. They botch the job, and now Jef is out after blood. If you read that synopsis on the back of the DVD, would it make you watch this? I'd probably stick it back on the shelf thinking that I've seen that film a few hundred times before. Yet Melville, like all great directors is able to take a familiar yarn and turn it on it's head, creating something entirely original and recognisably his.

Le Samouraï is unmistakeably Melville, containing as it does several of the directors trademarks. For a start before anything happens we are presented with a hokey quote, supposedly from some ancient samurai text, but of course being straight from Melville's pen. Then there are the Melville staples - the doomed loner character (Jef), the huge American car (Valérie's), Jef's white gloves and long hard gaze into the mirror at the start of the film. All of these things appear again and again in JPM's films. Even the staircase in Jef's building turns up a number of times in his flicks.

By '67 Melville had well established his film language, all muted washed out colours (usually greys and pale blues) and sets that had a more than run down appearance. His characters always dress to the nines with police and gangsters adopting the same dress code, that of trench coats and trilby hats. Something that is touched upon in the scene where Delon is told to stand in a line up amongst other policemen, all of whom are told to put on their coats and hats, of course they all look like gangsters, or is that policemen? Then there's Melville's meticulous eye for detail and his relish at showing the audience the minutest details of the most mundane things. In Le Samouraï we are very carefully shown exactly how Jef sets up his alibi and walked through how the police plant a bug for example. Sometimes these scenes almost feel as if they are shot in real time, although of course they aren't. The weird thing is that despite this obsession with detail, his characters don't appear to breathe the same air as us. His world is a few steps removed from ours, for example when Jef (twice) steals a car he does so in broad daylight by simply walking up to it, opening the door (unlocked!!), then using the huge ring of keys that he carries around with him, he slowly and methodically works his way through key after key until finding the one that will start the car. Interestingly a similar scene is to be found when the police break into Jef's apartment using the same massive bunch of keys.

As I said Melville's world is like ours but slightly different. It's almost fantasy like, when Jef shoots his victims, both times you see Jef taking his white gloved hands out of his trench coat pockets, he isn't holding a gun, then we cut to the victim who has pulled a gun and quickly goes to pull the trigger, however quite unbelievably Jef manages to outdraw them. As I said it's Melville's world as much as when you watch Play Time it's Tati's.

Melville worked almost exclusively in two genres throughout his career, those being crime and resistance films. This isn't my favourite of his crime films (Le Cercle rouge just pips it, just), but it's still a masterpiece. There is just so much to enjoy about this film, such as the wonderfully cold performance from Delon. He's almost like a mannequin, he hardly talks during the film (in fact there is no dialogue at all for the first ten minutes), and when he does it's very spartan, with almost no emotion detectable. The room he lives in is a reflection of him, only the barest essentials are on display, water and cigarettes are stacked neatly on top of a wardrobe, a bed pushed against one wall the chest of drawers empty. The caged bird that Jef keeps is an obvious metaphor for Jef, who as far as we see has no companions, no love, nothing. Delon is often framed entirely alone, frozen out from the rest of the people that populate the film. There is more to say, but I just feel that I'm wittering on, I haven't mentioned the use of Kurosawa style wipes in the editing or even the great fetishistic way Jef is with his hat, let alone any sort of discussion about how perfect the end of the film is (hint think about the title). The thing is there has to be some stuff for you to discover for yourself, you don't want me telling you everything now do you?

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) - Edgar Wright

Wow, let me kick this off by saying that despite reservations that I wouldn't like this, I came away thinking it was pretty neat. I don't read comics or play computer games anymore, which is more down to the fact that I have other things to do, than thinking it's childish or anything like that. So I was thinking that this film wasn't aimed at me at all, since I hadn't even heard of Scott Pilgrim until it was announced as Edgar Wright's next film. Edgar Wright I have heard of, and despite the fact that I think he's a bit of a goon, and far too full of himself, he has done enough to make me at least interested in anything he decides to direct. Spaced was great and at the time felt like a much needed shot in the arm for British comedy. Not only was it funny but it looked so bloody sexy, next up was Shaun of the Dead, which gave Wright the chance to really go for it in terms of style and for the most part it worked. Hot Fuzz was such a bloated effort I'm amazed that any of the humour made it through, it was overlong, over complicated and had about four endings too many.

So with the above in mind you can imagine why I wasn't all that bothered about Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. I probably would never have bothered seeing it either had it not been for the fact that a few people (Daniel Bergman take a bow), who's taste in film I really trust told me that I would like it. So for those who are like me and have never been touched by the world of Scott Pilgrim fear not, for despite all the visual madness (oh and there is plenty of that, more of which later), the film is about the baggage people carry around with them from relationship to relationship. Something everyone who is old enough to see this can relate to.

Visually this is out there, but in a good way, it doesn't burn your eyes or leave you reaching for the painkillers. I don't think there has been a term coined for this style of film making yet. It's the equivalent to film what post rock is to music. Post Cinema just sounds well wrong, so hopefully someone bigger and brighter than me will name this genre at some point. But you know the sort of thing I'm talking about, Oliver Stone really went for it with Natural Born Killers and Fincher ran with it on Fight Club to a degree, but Wright really cranks it up a notch with Scott Pilgrim. It's very kinetic, perfect for a generation weaned on fast cut late eighties fluff, those who have the language of computer games firmly lodged in their underused brains. But the visuals are just the dressing, the actual theme running through the film is that of ex girlfriends/boyfriends and all that.

So the basic plot of the film is this, Scott Pilgrim regular geek, plays bass in a band with two other geeks, meets a girl (Ramona Flowers) falls for her, and as happens in these situations she has a past that our hero should be happy to not know about, but unfortunately (for him) he can't help but be curious about her exes. And so since this tale is not tied to the real world but rather that of the comic it's based on, Scott has to battle Ramona's seven exes. Now this is where I thought I would tire of the film, since the idea of having a least seven fight scenes to get through was not something that made me punch the air and cry 'HELL YEAH'. This is where Wright's real skill as a director comes into play though, since he was able to make each fight scene different from the previous one, and at the same time wring comedy from them and move the plot forwards. In this way I'd say his closest peer is Stephen Chow (the genius behind both Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle), in terms of both style and the way they both have no qualms about pushing things just that little too far. The best thing is the evenness of the film, most films like this tend to wilt a little around the hour mark, the humour dries up as the real drama of the film comes to the fore. Not here though, right the way up to the last frame I was laughing and just couldn't wait to watch this again. So this ends up as one of the best films of the year for me. Which is quite strange, but that's life innit?

Le Doulos (1962) - Jean-Pierre Melville

There were a couple of bits of graffiti that I'll never forget from back when I was a nipper. In fact so old were they that they were done with white paint and a paint brush. Not quite Banksy. The first was off of Southend high street and declared 'Neil Queen* is a supergrass', the second was in Wickford and said 'Watkins** is a coppers nark'. Now God alone knows why they have both stuck in my head, but they have. What's this got to do with Le Doulos? Well Doulos is French slang for a grass, maybe somewhere in Marseilles there is a guy in his late thirties writing about remembering Doulos being badly painted on a wall. Well perhaps not.

Anyway as you probably already know Jean-Pierre Melville only really made two kinds of films, WWII French resistance flicks and crime capers. This one falls neatly into the later category, what with it being about robberies and the naughty types that do that sort of thing. The big question that runs through the film is, who is the police informant? The set up is simple and the mid film reveal is a stroke of genius. It's one of those moments where you realise that the director has pulled the wool over your eyes. It'll have you wanting to rewatch it again ASAP, just so you can say to yourself that you saw it coming a mile off.

Jean-Paul Belmondo plays his usual brash, treat the girls like shit they love that sort of thing character, Serge Reggiani as always is far more understated, and for me at least is the real star of the film. He appears to not do much, but conveys far more emotion with just one glance than Belmondo manages with his mugging to the camera style of acting. As per usual in a Melville film the female characters (of which there are only three) are very two dimensional. They only exist as an extension of their male counterpoints. I don't think Melville is quite the misogynist that critics have labeled him, he just made films about relationships between men. Plain and simple. It's just that sometimes you have to put a dame in there too.

There are a few things to look out for in Melville's crime films, some obvious some less so. So let's start with the simple ones. Hats, if you're not wearing a hat, you're not in the film, same goes for trench coats. Then there are the huge American cars that all the bad boys drive, they look so out of place when they have to park up next to some little fart box Citroën. But then Melville's Paris is like something out of Sapphire & Steel, a kind of parallel Paris that is twinned with Chicago. Then come the smaller things, white gloves for instance, the top boy always has white gloves. The lead characters looking at their reflection in a mirror, is another. All of these things are in Le Doulos, if they weren't then you wouldn't be watching a Melville film.

Of course there is a lot more to Le Doulos than that, for starters there is a fantastically shocking scene between Belmondo and Monique Hennessy, and enough little twists to keep things moving along at a decent pace. Oh and a lovely long tracking sequence during the main titles. There is one other thing that always happens during Melville's police and thieves films, and that is how they end. Now I'm not going to give anything away here, but I'll just say they always have the same ending. If you haven't seen this, then you really should if you are a fan of this sort of thing. Things got a whole lot better for JPM after this, and his genius years were just around the corner. I've convinced myself whilst writing this that I really need to rewatch them all. Happy days.


*I can't remember the actual name and have substituted a friends name instead.
**Same story here as the one above. As far as I'm aware neither Haydn Watkins or Neil Queen have grassed anyone up, only time will tell though.

The Clash - Westway to the World (2000) - Don Letts

Bloody hell, no one told me about The Clash. It wasn't until I moved to Sweden before I realised just how great they were. I was well into my twenties by then, having been weaned on the lie that Punk had been a British invention, and that The Sex Pistols were the main thing to check out from year zero. Well that's what you get if you grow up believing what you read in the N.M.E. I guess. So it's my own fault.

Except as I said no one told me about The Clash. Of course I knew the odd song here and there, and they sounded pretty good, I can remember giving their first album a go just to see if they were for me, and thinking that it was pretty ordinary. Then I happened to be at a friends house drinking and talking, with Sandinista gurgling away in the background. Gradually I started to wonder just what the fuck were we listening to? I bought it the next day, and from then on made sure I told everyone about The Clash.

Westway to the World is essential viewing whether you have been told about the genius of The Clash or not. For the five year period between their eponymous debut and their last hurrah, The Clash developed at a phenomenal rate, taking in just about every kind of music there is. They covered reggae tracks, put out double and then triple albums and played Shea Stadium before imploding. All of which (and a whole lot more), is covered in fine style in this documentary. There's stories about being run out of Kingston, playing 17 (or was it 16) nights in a row in New York, squatting in London, signing to a major label (Punk died the day The Clash signed to CBS) and recording the first British Hip Hop single. All that and Mick Jones' awful hair.

Much like the equally essential The Filth and the Fury from the same year, the story is told by the band members themselves, mix into that stacks of rare footage and you can't go wrong. The Filth and the Fury is the slightly better documentary, but I'd say both should be not just seen but owned and watched at least once a year. Of course they don't go beyond Combat Rock, so Cut the Crap isn't mentioned. You'll find similar things happening in documentaries about The Doors and The Velvet Underground. But that's a small niggle, and to be honest for the sake of ending the documentary well it's probably the right thing to do.

The Clash really clicked when Topper Headon joined. It all started to fall apart when they booted him out for being a smack addict. If The Smiths had been able to have seen this doc when touring The Queen is Dead, then they might have survived a few more years. There's a moral in this film. When a band works, do not, no matter what, fuck about with that which makes it work. This is where a decent manager should earn their percentage. You can't go booting out someone who you think is 'just' the drummer or bass player, it might take a while but it's either the end, or at best things are going to change radically (and normally not in a good way). Anyway if you don't own anything by The Clash and with Christmas just around the corner, why not stick London Calling on that wants list? Or if you're feeling really brave, the unwieldy beast that is Sandinista. You won't regret it, I promise.

Point Blank (1967) - John Boorman

If Lee Marvin has ever made a bad film, then I haven't seen it, and yes I do rate Paint Your Wagon, so you can just nip that thought in the bud right now. There's something about Lee Marvin, even when he plays a 'good guy' he does so with an air of almost borderline menace. So many of todays actors think that to be a tough guy on screen you have to be at the gym eight days a week, or emote like crazy and maybe have a few Gary Oldman in Leon style facial ticks. However it's a hard thing to get right, Robert Carlyle managed it in Trainspotting, and he's just a wee fella, it's in the voice and the way you carry yourself. I think Marvin understood this, and carved a whole career out of playing essentially the same character over and over with slight tweaks here and there.

So you get the picture, I like Lee Marvin. More than that I like Lee Marvin when he is teamed up with a director that is able to bring to the table visually, what Marvin delivers acting wise. Boorman is just such a director. Fresh from making the Dave Clark 5 flop Catch Us If You Can, Point Blank was his chance to shine as a director. And shine he did, it's not overly flash but it does utilize many little tricks that make it so obviously directed by the new blood that was pouring into Hollywood at the time.

Anyway the story itself is a simple take on the revenge thriller, two mates pull a job, one shoots the other and makes off with all the loot and said friends wife, except he didn't kill his friend, and now his friend is a mite annoyed and wants his share of the lolly. Nothing too amazing there, but by casting Lee Marvin as Walker (no first name, that's how hard he is), the man who is out for revenge, Boorman had pretty much done 50% of his job. Marvin is like a runaway train, smashing through doors and tearing everything and everyone up in his path. Even though so many people meet their maker in this film, have a butchers at how many people Walker actually kills. You'll be surprised I think. Angie Dickinson is his piece of arm candy, and she is great in a very unsympathetic role.

The tagline on the poster ran - There are two kinds of people in his up-tight world: his victims and his women. And sometimes you can't tell them apart. But it might as well have said - Point Blank. Where men are M E N, and women go to bed with their make up on. Well, you know what I mean. It's a great late sixties film, think of Bullitt and you're on the right track. As I said earlier Boorman has a way with finding interesting set ups, one scene in particular has one of the best uses of sound in a film from this period full stop. I'll just say Lee Marvin's footsteps when he goes to visit his wife, if you've seen it you'll know what I mean, if you haven't, then why not?

Boorman would follow this film with Hell in the Pacific (again with Marvin) and then the even better Deliverance, before getting lost for a few years with such oddness as Zardoz and Exorcist II: The Heretic. Marvin would carry on chiseling out roles until in 1980 he made what I consider his greatest, The Sargent in The Big Red One. Which despite it's title isn't some soft porn flick, but actually one of the best (anti) war films ever made. Did I ever mention how much I love Lee Marvin?