Metalhead (2013) - Ragnar Bragason

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 Rebel Without A Cause, through to John Bender sticking it to the man (well Mr. Vernon) in The Breakfast Club all the way up to Lukas Moodysson’s seminal Fucking Åmal. Being a teen isn’t easy. Even in Iceland it would seem. That’s what Metalhead is about, along with a few other things.

Metalhead 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 Metalhead 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Squeeze (1977) - Michael Apted

The Squeeze 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.

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 Up series. So The Squeeze 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 The Squeeze is British, not just British but post Sweeney 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 The Squeeze 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.

Just as good are the supporting cast, Carol White who had shone as the lead in two key Ken Loach films (Cathy Come Home & Poor Cow) 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 - Movements. It's up there with the best of Roy Budd's scores. That good.

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 Get Carter, both of the Sweeney movies, Villain, The Long Good Friday, Robbery 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.

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.

The Purge (2013) - James DeMonaco

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 The Purge. 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.

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.

It’s not really anything you haven’t seen before, especially if you grew up with John Carpenter films such as Assault on Precinct 13, the remake of which had a screenplay by none other than (drum role) James DeMonaco. The Purge 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.

Around the half way point The Purge 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 Ils, but something more along the lines of Cherry Tree Lane. 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?

Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) - John Schlesinger

At it’s heart Sunday Bloody Sunday 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, Sunday Bloody Sunday 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.

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.

All three leads are irreplaceable once witnessed in their roles, Peter Finch in particular is just astounding. Watch his on fire role in Network 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.

By this point in his career Schlesinger was at the height of his game, Darling and Far from the Madding Crowd had both been hugely successful and he’d skipped across the pond to make Midnight Cowboy, which was not only a success but also defined a moment in time for a whole generation as much as Easy Rider or Woodstock 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 Sunday Bloody Sunday 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.

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 Billy Liar are his masterpieces, and this is from a director that made Marathon Man, Darling, Midnight Cowboy and A Kind of Loving. 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.

The Satan Bug (1965) - John Sturges

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 The Satan Bug would be right up my street. It is after all the film John Sturges decided to make straight after The Great Escape, 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?

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.

The plot is quite simple, a deadly man made virus (The Satan Bug) 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?

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.

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 Planet of the Apes score but with added synth blasts. It’s almost watching the film for this alone. Almost.

Small Time (1996) - Shane Meadows

From little acorns…

After years of knocking together short films, Shane Meadows secured enough funding to make the huge leap into feature film territory with Small Time. 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.

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 Reservoir Dogs, a film that seems to have had a hold on Meadow's around this time - his short Where's The Money, Ronnie? 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.

Small Time’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 A Room for Romeo Brass, which successfully managed to shift from comedy to domestic horror without any warning to great effect.

The core idea running through Small Time 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 A Room for Romeo Brass, Dead Man’s Shoes and more recently This is England. 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?

L' armée des ombres (1969) - Jean-Pierre Melville

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 L' armée des ombres 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.

L' armée des ombres 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.

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 L' armée des ombres 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.

Visually there is no mistaking that L' armée des ombres 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.

One of the glories of L' armée des ombres 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.

L' armée des ombres falls right slap bang in the middle of Melville’s greatest run of films, which started with Le deuxième souffle (1966), continued with Le samouraï (1967) and concluded with Le cercle rouge (1970). For various reasons L' armée des ombres 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.

Magic Mike (2012) - Steven Soderbergh

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 Magic Mike. If it wasn’t for a few key things then I’d probably be writing that I loved Magic Mike, but we can get to that in a minute.

Magic Mike 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.

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 Step Up 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.

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 Killer Joe, 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 Magnolia? 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 Dazed and Confused.

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.

The biggest problem with Magic Mike for me though was that the whole story had been done far better in Boogie Nights. 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 Boogie Nights did before and better. If Boogie Nights didn’t exist then Magic Mike would feel far more original, but it does exist and it’s a far better film. So where does that leave Magic Mike 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 The Full Monty or Boogie Nights, although neither of them feature assless chaps to quite the degree that Magic Mike does.

Ministry of Fear (1944) - Fritz Lang

   Right from the ominous opening music and image of a pendulum slowly swinging back and forth you know that Ministry of Fear 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 Ministry of Fear 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.

   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 Ministry of Fear 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.

   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 Ministry of Fear’s 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.

   All of the above happens within the first thirty minutes of Ministry of Fear. 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.

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. Manhunt 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.

   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.

   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 Ministry of Fear 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 Dr. Strangelove. Which of course was a full twenty years away from being filmed.

   It’s impossible to write about Ministry of Fear 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.

   Talking of villains the two things the audience have to work out during the course of Ministry of Fear 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.

   Ministry of Fear 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.

I, Anna (2012) - Barnaby Southcombe

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.

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.

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, Anna 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.

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.

Gray’s Anatomy (1996) - Steven Soderbergh

This is the last of the four monologues Spalding Gray filmed for the big screen, before his suspected suicide almost ten years ago. Gray’s Anatomy 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.

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.

Both Jonathan Demme and Nick Broomfield have had a crack at filming a Spalding monologue before, with Swimming to Cambodia (1987) and Monster in a Box (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.

Gray’s Anatomy 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.

If you don’t know Spalding Gray then either this or the equally aces Swimming to Cambodia 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?

Brazil (1985) - Terry Gilliam

Brazil had a huge impact on the teenage me, from the very first time I saw it I instantly got it. Whatever it was. The fact that my dad (who'd introduced me to Monty Python and subsequently by default - Gilliam) hated Brazil only made it even better. Here was something that only I understood, a film I'd found all on my own, a film that required a degree of decoding and more than a little effort to watch. But more than that it arrived in my life at just the right time, a time when I was starting to question everything around me, a time when I was supposed to be preparing for the rest of my life by knuckling down and doing well at school. Instead I was becoming obsessed with surrealism and the Dada movement, Chuck D, Roger Waters and The Edge were my musical idols, I'd just read 1984, The Catcher in the Rye and Naked Lunch for the first time and my head was abuzz with the ideas that would grow and inform who I eventually became. And right at the center of all of that was Terry Gilliam's masterpiece - Brazil.

I first stumbled upon Brazil on BBC2 back in the late eighties. The thing that drew me to it was the little blurb in the TV listing that stated it was by the person who'd made Time Bandits. That hooked me straight away, I'd loved Time Bandits as a kid and used to rent it on a monthly basis, this being in those dark days before ordinary people could actually own films. Brazil was the film that introduced me to the idea of auteur theory too, since after falling in love with it I started to link films together via directors rather than actors, which is what I had done before my epiphany.

So what is Brazil? Well it's a lot of things, almost all of them contradictory. For starters it's a very British film that just so happens to be directed by an American for a major Hollywood studio. It's also set in a dystopian future that has been set dressed with things from the past. But I'm getting ahead of myself here, so let's backtrack for a second and I'll try my best to write a brief synopsis.

Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) is a lowly bureaucrat in a world tied up in red tape. He has no ambitions, but he does have dreams, quite literally - he dreams of an ethereal girl whom he continually rescues by casting himself as a armored winged hero. A departmental error forces him out of the comfortable environment of his office and into the real world, where he bumps into the girl from his dreams - Jill Layton (Kim Greist). From there things spiral beyond Sam's control, he becomes mixed up with a subversive repairman (Robert De Niro) and his fantasy world and real world begin to overlap.

Brazil is an intricate film to say the least, and to really get the most out of it you need to have a basic grasp on what Britain was like during the mid eighties. Back then Britain wasn't so much swinging as sinking. The optimism of the sixties high had long since faded leaving behind a sense of defeat and mild betrayal. The country Napoleon once described as a nation of shopkeepers was now on the dole. Those that weren't unemployed were most likely on strike, teachers, nurses, firemen, coal miners, ship builders and factory workers had all downed tools at various times. The Conservative Government even tried (and failed) to send the army in against the striking miners in order to break their lengthy dispute. Add to that the fact that British industry was on it's knees, the shipyards were steadily closing and our car industry had folded, and you can tell things weren't rosy. To top it off the Government had decided to privatise key public assets starting with British Telecom. Public became private. If the key word of the sixties was LOVE, then for the eighties it almost certainly had to be GREED.

Also the IRA had stepped up it's bombing campaign, detonating a series of bombs around London. Anyone who lived through those times will remember the bombs in both Regents and Hyde Park as well as the bombing of Harrods during the Christmas season. Most famously though the IRA managed to bomb the the Grand Hotel in Brighton where the Conservative Party were staying during their annual get together. Fun times it wasn't.

It's all of the above more than anything else that runs through Brazil like letters through a stick of cheap seaside rock. Gilliam and his co-writers (Tom Stoppard & Charles McKeown) real masterstroke was to be able to get all of the above (and a whole lot more) up on screen, almost without people noticing. How? By placing it all within the framework of a Science Fiction/Fantasy flick. Even the greatest most political British directors of the time - Ken Loach, Mike Leigh and Alan Clarke - couldn't shoehorn all that into one film.

Phew! Right so history lesson over, let's get onto the film itself. Brazil is surprisingly enough set at Christmas. Sam spends most of the film receiving the same gift (an executive toy that makes decisions for you) from the people around him. Mrs Buttle (or is that Tuttle?) is reading Dickens' A Christmas Carol (the second greatest of all Christmas stories) to her children just before her husband is taken away for interrogation. In fact just before the police swoop in through the windows and down the hole drilled in the ceiling, one of her children asks how Santa will be able to deliver presents if they don't have a chimney? Even towards the end when Mr. Helpmann (the ever wonderful Peter Vaughan) visits Sam in his holding cell, he's dressed as Santa and has just stopped in on his way to entertain the orphans.

One of the great things about Brazil is the fact that it's hero - Sam - is actually quite detestable in his early scenes, he's so passive, ignoring the viciousness of the real world, in favour of his fantasy one. For instance when he has dinner with his mother and the restaurant is bombed, he's not alarmed and does nothing more than finish his meal - 'It's my lunch hour. Besides, it's not my department.' he explains to his fellow diners. He's only awakened to what is going on or able to feel any empathy once he comes into contact with people outside of his sphere. In fact it's two female characters (Jill Layton and Veronica Buttle) that force him to rethink the world he's living in. Sam only gets anywhere in his professional life thanks to his mother pulling strings for him, and only discovers Jill's name thanks to a little girl telling him it right after the gang of urchins set his Messerschmitt alight. Making Brazil one of those rare films where the women are more potent than the men. Which isn't such a strange concept when you consider who the British Prime Minister was at the time. There's a great visual gag when Sam's traveling home on the train and Gilliam pans the camera around the carriage of seated men to reveal a lone woman standing. Which in itself is quite unchivalrous, but just to add insult to injury the camera ends up at her feet to reveal that she only has one leg. It's these little moments that keep Brazil fresh even for the most ardent fan.

Being a film by Terry Gilliam you know it's going to have a wonderful look to it. Gilliam is very much an old school director, favoring image over words every time. Which isn't all that surprising when you consider his background in animation. His sets are stuffed to the gills with eye candy, most of which is only revealed upon repeated viewings. The numerous 'Loose Lips Sink Ships' style posters that are scattered throughout the film for instance. His use of locations is a delight too, Gilliam works best when on a limited budget, give him a stack of dollars and he'll build a set, hold back on the cash however and he'll find a set. So thanks to budget constraints we go from a working Oil Refinery through to strange modernist French housing estates and of course most famously the inside of a cooling tower. Creative solutions to problems rather than the usual money hose that Hollywood favours. His sets look lived in too, with a patina on the surface of everything.

Brazil isn't set in the future so much as an alternative now. If Blade Runner was Future Noir, then Brazil is Future Retro. The fashions for a start hark back to the fifties and that whole post WWII feeling - rationing coming to an end, clothes having more material, wider lapels and dresses that flowed, hats for everyone that kind of thing. The haircuts also date from that era as do the furnishings. The technology on show is a hodgepodge of bits and pieces from the past, all cobbled together typewriters and old valves, ducts everywhere. Of course none of it actually works, lifts, computers, toasters you name it, it's all on the fritz.

It's also a film chock full of film references too, from Casablanca ('Here's looking at you kid'), Battleship Potemkin (the fight on the steps towards the end of the film) and even The Empire Strikes Back (when Sam removes the Samurai's mask to reveal his own face). It's the shadow of Metropolis that looms largest over the whole film though.

Of course the thing that Brazil is most famous for now is the battle that Gilliam had with Universal head honcho Sid Sheinberg, who didn't care for Brazil at all and loathed it's downbeat ending. I've only ever watched the 'Love Conquers All' version once. It's interesting for anyone who adores the film enough to see just how it might have ended up. Thankfully for us Gilliam stuck to his guns and saw it through to the end, eventually winning his fight and having his cut become the default version. Speaking of endings Brazil has the best ending for a film that I can think of. It's up there with the greats - Citizen Kane, Dr. Strangelove and Some Like It Hot. It's a total shock to the system the first time you see it, and it's one of those that you'll never forget.

Jonathan Pryce will always be Sam Lowry for me in much the same way as Richard E. Grant will always be Withnail. Pryce really gives it everything and gets to show a lot of range from slapstick through to action hero. I couldn't ever imagine anyone else as Sam Lowry. Apparently Gilliam wasn't all that happy with Kim Greist's performance and cut down her role accordingly in the edit suite. You'd never know from watching the film though, she's feisty and hard to read all the way through. The rest of the cast is really a who's who of British acting from that period, Bob Hoskins, Ian Richardson and Jim Broadbent all get extended cameos yet manage to really stamp themselves onto the celluloid. Gilliam regulars Michael Palin, Ian Holm and Katherine Helmond get a bigger piece of the pie. All three are first-class, Palin is deliciously weaselly as Sam's best friend - Jack Lint, Helmond plays Sam's manipulative plastic surgery obsessed mother, a fantastic role that she doesn't waste. Best of all though is Holm who almost manages to steal the show as Sam's boss the sad and rather pathetic Mr. Kurtzmann.

Behind the camera Roger Pratt returned as cinematographer after having already worked on Gilliam's segment in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, as did editor Julian Doyle. I can't write about Brazil without a nod to Michael Kamen's sublimely odd score, which bounces between full on heroic strings to a bizarre symphony for typewriters, as well as several versions of Ary Barroso's Aquarela do Brasil. Weird but perfect.

Brazil is without a doubt for me Terry Gilliam's masterpiece. His follow up The Adventures of Baron Munchausen tried to do everything that it's predecessor had done, but ultimately failed. Tales of overspending, of sets being destroyed and of general on set chaos only fueled the legend that Gilliam was a difficult director, a perfectionist that would do almost anything to achieve the vision in his head. Gilliam managed to pick himself up after the debacle of Munchausen (which I like a lot by the way), and even managed to make successful films (12 Monkeys, The Fisher King) without ever losing sight of his distinctive vision. Since 12 Monkeys however he has struggled to get projects off the ground, and seems to have lost the momentum that was so essential in making Brazil.

Ultimately Brazil can be read a number of ways, at it's core it's a love story, but it's also about the bureaucracy of modern life, the suppression of the masses by the few and the technological revolution and how it's failed us. In hindsight though maybe more than any of that it's about a director standing up to a giant studio system and saying 'No'.

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.

Good Morning (1959) - Yasujiro Ozu

There’s always been an itch that certain directors get once they’re established that can only be scratched by revisiting one of their earlier films. Hitchcock famously remade The Man Who Knew Too Much as did DeMille with The Ten Commandments. It’s not something that happens so much nowadays, most directors are happy enough to recut their films instead. Sometimes it works, Blade Runner only really started earning any real kudos after Ridley Scott went back in with his scissors and chopped out the naff narration and altered that ending for instance. Then of course there are the times it doesn’t work quite so well and only ends up annoying the people who adored the original film. Cough cough, George Lucas and his little sticky CGI hands.

Yasujiro Ozu felt the urge to remake not one, not two but three of his own films during his career. All three arrived one after the other at the end of his career. Good Morning is a retelling of his silent great I Was Born But…, and was the first time he attempted a direct remake. Of course it could be argued that after a certain point in his career Ozu actually made the same film over and over, since most of his films feature the same plot of a middle class family trying to marry off one of their daughters.

As is usual with Ozu films the story itself is very simple, two boys Minoru and his incredibly sweet younger brother Isamu become obsessed with television after their beatnik neighbours buy a goggle box. They first beg, then scream and eventually go on a silent strike when their parents refuse to buy a TV set. Onto this Ozu hangs his observations of Japanese life in a Tokyo suburb. He sets the scene by opening the film with a misunderstanding about some unpaid money. Through this we get to visit each of the three main households in the film and meet the main players within the first ten minutes. It’s an excellent way of introducing the characters and giving a feel of how everything fits together spatially.

Good Morning seems destined never to make it onto any list of Ozu’s greatest works, but I think it’s one of his finest films. It’s quite different for him it’s funnier than most for a start, there’s even a running gag throughout the whole film about farting. The main difference between Good Morning and Ozu’s more famous films though is that this time the film isn’t shot from the parents perspective but from the children’s. Yes it’s still centered around a middle class Japanese family, and yes there is a hint of romance between their daughter and the kids English teacher. But getting her hitched to him isn’t the central theme this time ‘round. It’s still instantly recognizable as being an Ozu film though, the obligatory static low angle camera set up, scenes taking place at a train station and Chishu Ryu are all present and correct. As are the boiling kettles, clocks with pendulums and kids with baseball caps.

Good Morning is far lighter than most of the Ozu’s other work and at just a tad over ninety minutes flies by and is over before you know it. His use of colour after so many black & white films is a revelation. All reds and greens with almost every shot having one bright red object somewhere in the frame. By using the children rather than the parents as a voice, Ozu gets to wag his finger at certain things such as the mindless chit chat of everyday life, and of course the idea that television is only good for one thing - ‘producing 100 million idiots.’ Obviously he was worried about the negative effect television was having on cinema attendance.

This is a perfect film for anyone unfamiliar with the films of Yasujiro Ozu, and essential viewing for those who’ve already seen his ‘classics’. I’m not really sure what the conclusion of the film means though or even if Good Morning has an overall message beyond the obvious ‘the future is coming deal with it’. But that's neither here nor there since for the short time it's on screen you'll find yourself living in Ozu's world. Which is a great place to be.

Compliance (2012) - Craig Zobel

For the past ten years or so phones and films have not been happy bedfellows. I’m not talking about the whole cinema experience being ruined by people not being able to stay off the fucking things during films. Cinema patrons constant need to check what’s happening on Facebook or Twitter seems to have become more important now than sinking into the film they’ve just paid money to see. No that’s not what I’m talking about here (lucky you). It's more that since mobile phones have become so commonplace film scripts have had to deal with them and the problems they can cause a script. In the pre mobiles world tension could be ramped up by something as easy as someone being stuck in a room at work after everyone else had gone home. Nowadays tech savvy audiences won't stand for any nonsense. Phones are the ultimate get out of jail free card for most of the uncomfortable situations that a film character might find themselves in. So sometimes now the tension can come from something as mundane as trying to get a working signal or the old forgot to charge the phone chestnut. It’s a brave new world for certain, but it can be a bugger if you’re trying to write a thriller.

Sometimes a film comes along though that incorporates our friend the phone as a major plot point. Buried or the original Scream flick for example, both of these films used phones to build the unease the audience were (hopefully) feeling. Compliance is one such film. Set in a fast food place on a typically busy day, short of staff and thanks to a recent balls up with a fridge causing certain items to not be on the menu, it’s going to be a tougher than usual day at work. But for Becky (Dreama Walker) it’s going to be particularly tough, since half way through the shift her boss Sandra (Ann Dowd) receives a phone call from Officer Daniels (Pat Healy) informing her that Becky has stolen some money from a customer. He tells Sandra to hold Becky in a secure room until he can get there. And that’s your lot plot wise, since any more would spoil what is a cracking film.

Writer-director Craig Zobel does a stellar job at creating a convincing environment in which this nasty little film plays out. Although not strictly a Horror film (despite being pretty grim), it does that great thing that Horror flicks do - putting the audience in the characters shoes. All the way though the ninety minute running time you’ll question exactly what you would do in either Becky or Sandra’s situation.

It’s a faultless film, it’s not flashy (but still looks good), the acting is naturalistic in a way that American films rarely are. The cast are impeccable, and this really is one of those films where the words spoken are far more important than the visuals. Most of the action takes place in one room with the majority of the dialogue being between people that aren’t even sharing the same screen space.

I wish I could say more, but I can’t. Just see it. One thing I can promise is you’ll be straight onto Google afterwards since it’s a true story.

French Cancan (1954) - Jean Renoir

I love Jean Renoir. He was without a doubt one of the greatest French directors ever, always pushing the possibilities of what can be achieved with a camera and a reel of film to it's limits. He was also one of the great humanitarian film makers, concocting stories that were not only entertaining but also moving, and in hindsight incredibly poignant about their particular moment in history. During his thirties heyday he belted out classic after classic (Boudu sauvé des eaux, Toni, La chienne, La bête humaine, La grande illusion), culminating with his masterpiece La règle du jeu in 1939. He continued to make great films after this, but they were a little more patchy, and almost never managed to reach the stature of that earlier body of work.

In 1951 he made his first colour film - Le fleuve, which was shot on location in India and could easily lay claim to being his great lost masterpiece. So that little around the houses introduction brings us up to French Cancan, which is about the birth of the Moulin Rouge. French screen legend Jean Gabin plays Henri Danglard the theater owner who puts everything he's got into getting his dream venue off of the ground. Françoise Arnoul is Nini a laundry worker who Danglard discovers can dance, and decides to revive the titular dance using her as his principle dancer. Weaved amongst that are loads of thinly sketched out characters - a duo of pickpockets, an ex dancer now down on her luck, a prince about to become a king, basically the rich and the poor all mixing it up in Montmartre.

When I was a kid (bear with me this is going somewhere), my nan used to buy these little sponge cup cakes that were covered in brightly colored icing. They looked gorgeous but tasted of nothing special. That's what French Cancan reminded me of more than anything else. It's a good looking film, full of colour (Technicolor at that), but ultimately quite empty. The characters are all surface, and there seems to be very little depth to any of them. Nini gets some stuff to do and is probably the best overall role in the film. Gabin is severely underused for an actor of his talents, with only one scene at the end of the film where he really comes to life. Which only compounds the films problem, since the speech he gives just reminds one of what is lacking from French Cancan.

 On the plus side we do get a couple of numbers sung by Edith Piaf, and the film itself is likable enough in a Sunday afternoon sort of way. If it had been made by some lesser talent then I probably would have enjoyed it more, which is terrible to say, but is the truth. This is Renoir after all. The sets are great, but look like sets and are ultimately too brightly lit. I suspect this has a lot to do with the fact that it was filmed in Technicolor, although I have nothing to back that up with. Surely the Moulin Rouge should be darker? In Renoir's film it looks like a giant well lit soundstage. But hey maybe that was his intention so I'm not going to knock him for it. As I said though it's a hollow experience, Danglard beds anything that moves, there are lots of scenes of people drinking and shouting, plus love triangles galore - none of which hold the attention in the way these plot devices should. Still at ninety minutes it flits past easily enough, but is that what you want from a Renoir film? I think not.

Senna (2010) - Asif Kapadia

First things first, don't panic if you don't like or know anything about Formula 1. Like that other great 'sports' documentary - Hoop Dreams, Senna is, as the title suggests first and foremost about Ayrton Senna. I came to this with a fair bit of knowledge about F1, having followed it from 1984 up until about 2000. So I remember the years when Senna reigned as king of the circuit. I watched this with my wife last night (my second time, her first), and she loved it despite not knowing anything about the subject. So as I say don't be put off, this is a genius documentary that will suck you in within the first fifteen minutes.

So what's it about? Well on the surface it's about Ayrton Senna and his rise through the ranks of Formula 1 racing, becoming a triple world champion and taking his place amongst the greatest F1 drivers ever. During his meteoric assent a rivalry started between him and then world champion Alain Prost. What started out as good natured turned bitter within the space of a few years. Prost was at the top of his game and was about to be overshadowed by Senna. Once both drivers ended up in the same team (McLaren) the sparks really started to fly. It's the sort of drama that if it was in a fictional sports film you would hate it for being too far fetched. The fact that it's totally real and played out before the worlds media makes it all the more engrossing. There is also a lot of the silly politics of F1 woven into Senna's story too. Prost was French, Senna was Brazilian, the head of the governing body of Formula 1 (Jean-Marie Balestre) was also French, so see if you can guess whose side he came down on in any conflicts between Prost and Senna?

It's about so much more than that though. Thanks to home footage shot by the Senna family we get to view Ayrton relaxing away from the 200 MPH life of motor racing. We get a glimpse behind the curtain and see the human being. Which is a rare thing isn't it? Asif Kapadia has woven together footage from all over the place including behind the scenes moments that I've never seen, such as drivers meetings and mixed them with film from the races themselves, and the aforementioned home video footage. The involvement of the Senna family does tend to make this a little one sided, but that's a minor quibble and a small price to pay for such essential background material. The decision to have Senna narrate the documentary and intercut interviews with key players such as Ron Dennis and Prost himself is a masterstroke. Kapadia never shows any contemporary footage of anyone, keeping everything very much rooted in the past. There is so much more to say about this film, but I really can't go there without spoiling things. Just see it.

The Four Feathers (1939) - Zoltan Korda

This fourth film adaptation of A.E.W. Mason's boys own style adventure novel is widely regarded as the best of the seven out there. Who am I to argue? I've never read the book, or for that matter seen any of the other versions, including yet another by Zoltan Korda (who directed this). From what I understand this version is one of the least faithful to the source material. Still I've said it before and it bears repeating, books and films operate in very different ways. A film with a book style narrative needn't work very well and vice versa.

Set back in the Victorian age when Johnny Foreigner was nothing more than someone to be killed while we picked his pocket, this is very much a tale of stiff upper lips and doing the right thing. Harry Faversham (John Clements) comes from a long line of military men, despite not having any desire to enlist, he buckles under the weight of his ancestry and his overpowering father and joins the army. On the eve of being shipped overseas to fight Fight FIGHT, and with his father now firmly six feet underground, he decides to resign from the army and start to live his own life. Three of his best friends (also military officers) send him a feather with their names attached to it (the fourth comes from his fiance). Apparently this is what was done if you felt someone was a coward back then, it's a notch up from flapping your arms about and making bad chicken noises I guess.

Anyway Harry decides that he needs to redeem himself and prove that he's a brave little soldier after all, so that he can win the dame and the film can end on a high note. So off he sets under his own steam to do just that.

At just five minutes under two hours this chugs along at a fair old pace, the screenplay is by none other than R.C. Sherriff and it's faultless. In fact the whole shebang has so much talent both behind and in front of the camera that it would be more surprising if this was trash rather than the classic that it so clearly is. As well as Zoltan, you have both his brothers;- Alexander (no mean director himself) and Vincent working as producer and designer respectively. Then there's the great Georges Périnal as the Director of Photography, and even both Jack Cardiff and Geoffrey Unsworth as uncredited camera operators.

In front of the huge Technicolor camera are such old favourites as John Laurie, C. Aubrey Smith and best of all Ralph Richardson. Richardson really steals the film especially after he goes blind half way through. He plays the whole thing with just the right shade of hopeless bravery, and will have you digging out The Fallen Idol for certain once the film has ended.

This version of The Four Feathers looks absolutely gorgeous too. Now I'm not the worlds biggest Technicolor film fan but sometimes when used on the right subject matter I think it works a treat. This is one of those occasions. The location footage is great, be it the greenery of England or the huge dry expanses of Egypt, it looks lush. It's hard to imagine just how this must have looked to those people living in black and white, when they saw this at the time down the local Roxy. It wouldn't shock me to read that David Lean had had a peek at this before setting off to film Lawrence of Arabia for instance.

In fact it's Lawrence that springs most readily to mind when watching this. After all both are well scripted epic productions that rattle by and look as good as any film could look, add to that the desert setting, camels galore and that aforementioned stiff upper lip mentality and it's not all that surprising to find out that Alexander Korda had been trying to get Lawrence of Arabia made since the mid 30's.

So all in all a great British film, but not only that but a great epic film too, one of those cast of thousands type affairs that feel as old fashioned as a VCR player does nowadays. Pretty much since Gladiator we've been duped into thinking that CGI crowds are something to look at with open mouthed joy, when in fact films like this put them to shame and show them up for what they are. I like it when you can see what a struggle it must have been to get a crane shot, some slight camera wobble or some such, whereas I hate the obligatory zooming and floating all over the shop modern style. Since the camera is in the computer so we can put it anywhere we want, right? Well would it be so bad to at least try and make it look like it was being held by a person?

Alright rant over, seriously this is a cracking film and well worthy of all the praise heaped upon it. Does make me wonder just why Zoltan Korda would reshoot it using the same script 16 years later though. Strange bloke.