Top 10 Films of 2009

1) The White Ribbon
In a world of droll melodrama and spectacular CGI, Michael Haneke avoids all short cuts while creating this engaging, beautiful film. Shot in monochrome, and set in a remote, feudal German village in 1914; the story follows a quiet teacher as he investigates a series of mysterious, brutal acts perpetrated upon the townspeople. The winner of this year’s Palme D’Or, The White Ribbon will surely go down as one of the most important films of the decade.

2) A Single Man
Colin Firth is extraordinary as George, a University professor whose gay lover has been killed in a car crash. Prevented from attending the funeral, George decides to take his own life; but a series of interactions with students, strangers, and best friends makes him think twice. Tom Ford’s debut feature is a melancholy but undeniably stunning and lavish affair.

3) Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Werner Herzog – the man who dragged a ship over a mountain – has transformed Abel Ferrera’s schlock classic into a characteristically odd, but utterly wonderful, masterpiece. Nicholas Cage is back on form as the ‘bad cop’ who is too busy running from gangsters, hiding his drug addiction and protecting his prostitute girlfriend to deal with the mounting homicides in his city.

4) A Serious Man
After an epic cinematic masterpiece (No Country For Old Men) and a frenetic screwball comedy (Burn After Reading) everybody was assuming the Coen’s third film in as many years would be a lifeless and tired affair… but it might be the best of the three! Exploring the tribulations of a quiet, middle American Jewish man, this is certainly their most personal film in recent years; but the maturity of the characterisation and comic timing make this one of the finest films in their entire catalogue.

5) Frozen River
Courtney Hunt’s debut is a raw and thrilling film that fell victim to Slumdog Millionaire’s inexplicable whitewash at this year’s Oscars. When her husband runs away with all the family money, Ray Eddy realises that she can no longer afford the new trailer home that her two boys have been dreaming about. Her primal desperation drives Ray to extreme criminal measures in order to care for her children. The appearance, pace, and tone of this film make it one of the finest debut features of recent years.

6) Where The Wild Things Are
Five years in the making, Spike Jonze’s take on Maurice Sendak’s famous children’s story has finally been released. The film is intimate, sumptuous, and laugh-out-loud funny. James Gandolfini and Lauren Ambrose shine as two sulking Wild Things with childish relationship issues; and newcomer Max Records is fantastic in the central role. The film is slim on plot, but the ‘look’ of the film and the depth of the characterisation are utterly engaging.

7) Let The Right One In
With two Twilight films released in the space of one year and a flashy HBO series, True Blood, invading our homes, it was a relief to find that some people still care about the importance of the vampire myth and are unwilling to exploit it’s latent sexuality. This chilling Swedish film follows the dull and unromantic tribulations of a vampire, the hauntingly attractive Eli, who struggles to find enough blood to stay alive. Centring on Eli’s friendship with the young boy in her apartment block, Tomas Alfredson’s film avoids all the Vampire clichés, and in so doing gets much closer to the important themes of the myth than any of these vacuous pretenders.

8) Up In The Air
While Thank You for Smoking was largely ignored by critics, and Juno was attributed to screenwriter Diablo Cody; Up In The Air is Jason Reitman’s chance to establish himself as an important American filmmaker. The story follows Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) as he deals with the prospect of settling down in his dull American town after years of living in the skies as a travelling businessman. The film is hysterically funny and yet languid and thoughtful; and it is undoubtedly one of the best Studio films of the year.

9) In The City of Sylvia
Jose Luis Guerin is renowned for his quiet and patient ability to watch reality wander past his camera (rather than following the action around and cutting out all the slow bits like most filmmakers). Ironically, this film is all about following… as a young man follows a beautiful girl, his fantasy ‘Sylvia’, around the sun-soaked, clattering city of Cherbourg for one afternoon. Shot in real-time, the film uses this simple device to explore the spontaneity and romance that hide around every corner… if only we would take the time to search for them.

10) Sugar
Half Nelson is surely one of the finest American indie films of the decade, so it is fair to say that Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s second feature was a highly anticipated film. Miguel ‘Sugar’ Santos is a young Cuban baseball player invited to play in the NBL. His journey takes him from a conservative farming family in Alabama to the bright lights of New York City, and from the hopeful optimism of a young sportsman to the embittered solemnity of an immigrant who has given up on the American dream. The story is masterfully told, and proves that this exciting filmmaking duo is no one-hit-wonder!

REVIEW: Nowhere Boy (dir. Sam Taylor-Wood)

Cast: Aaron Johnson, Kristen Scott Thomas, Anne Marie Duff, David Morrisey, David Threlfall, Thomas Brodie Sangster

It must be said that British cinema did not promote itself especially well at this year’s London Film Festival. ‘Don’t Worry About Me’ and ‘Kicks’ failed to make any positive mark on the critics and audiences that turned out to see them; and while ’44 Inch Chest’ and ‘The Disappearance of Alice Creed’ boasted fantastic casts and gritty aesthetics, they were poorly written and suffered a similar fate.

Fortunately, festival organiser Sandra Hebron had one more card up her sleeve for the closing gala… ‘Nowhere Boy’. The film explores the teen years of one of the nation’s most beloved yet mysterious musical figures… John Lennon. The project has been developed by Ecosse (perhaps the most British production company around after a host of period dramas and adaptations of English romantic novels) and written by Matt Greenhalgh, an experienced television writer who recently wrote the critically acclaimed ‘Control’ (about another one of the nation’s most beloved musical figures, Ian Curtis). Finally, the film is directed by Sam Taylor Wood, a member of the Young British Artists, who was inspired to take the position by her late friend (and perhaps the most universally beloved British filmmaker of the modern era) Anthony Minghella. The result is an unusually British film that proves our national cinema can still match any bastion of filmmaking (from Hollywood to Paris) for quality, integrity, and passion.

‘Nowhere Boy’ deals with Lennon’s childhood, from the reunion with his prodigal mother to the advent of The Beatles. Lennon (Johnson) was constantly in trouble at school for bullying, playing truant, and reading ‘illicit’ magazines. He subsequently had a very strained relationship with his strict, positively Victorian Aunt and legal guardian, Mimi (Scott Thomas). His only friend through these years was his loving and free-spirited Uncle George (Threlfall); so when George dies of a heart attack, John decides it is time to seek out his mother.

Julia (Marie Duff) turns out to be a wild, fun-loving young woman, so when John gets suspended from school he hides the fact from Mimi and spends his days listening to ‘rock and roll’ and learning the guitar with his mother. Julia’s husband, Bobby, and Mimi eventually stamp out this brief glimpse of hope and happiness; and what follows is a destructive and passionate story of confused love, and the difficulties of forgiving people for things you have already forgotten.

John blames Julia for leaving him again, and escapes into the exciting new world of ‘rock and roll’ by founding The Quarrymen with his school friends. He meets Paul McCartney, who joins the band, and they begin to find success. But John’s heart is poisoned by the unanswered questions about why his own mother couldn’t raise him, and it is clear he cannot be happy until he understands his past.

After a cathartic and explosive argument, Mimi, Julia, and John seem ready to repair their broken family. But then a tragic accident wipes out yet another chance for John to find respite from his emotional torment. This is not dealt with in a morbid light, however, as John’s reaction to the situation proves how much he has grown as a man over the course of this short but important episode of his life. He doesn’t hide away or become needlessly destructive; he is mature and hopeful, and he directs his anguish into his songs. By the end of the film, John has moved out of Mimi’s home and is leaving for Hamburg with his “new band”. He promises to call Mimi when he arrives there, which he does… and he calls her every week for the rest of his extraordinary life.

The performances are predictably excellent. Anne Marie Duff was spectacular in Shameless, and she brings the same rough, dazzling beauty to Julia. David Threlfall is one of the most wonderful acting talents in Britain, and it is just a shame that his character has so little screen time. The finest performance by some margin, however, is that of Kristin Scott Thomas. She is powerful and alluring and yet delicate and easily hurt; it is a really extraordinary performance. Aaron Johnson also holds his own amongst some of the finest actors in Britain. At first he struggles to find Lennon’s unique accent, but eventually he picks it up. However talented an actor he is, however, there is no getting away from the fact that Johnson’s physiology is far too boisterous to capture the character of one of music’s most geeky-looking icons. There is no doubt that John Lennon could be a tremendous bully and a self-centred, stubborn man (this was evident throughout his life), and he was, of course, ruthlessly anti-establishment; but he did this in a quiet, clever, and subversive way, and it is difficult to align this with the brash, Brando-esque strut that Johnson brings to the character.

Perhaps the most surprising thing is how traditional the structure and aesthetic of the film are. When Steve McQueen made ‘Hunger’, it was obvious we were dealing with a piece of art, or political portraiture, rendered through the medium of commercial cinema. Taylor Wood could have brought a similar branding to this project, but ‘Nowhere Boy’ is a traditional film that just happens to be made by a first-time director who makes video-installation art in her day job. There are flashbacks to early-childhood which employ some interesting editing devices and unusual lighting, reminiscent of the legendary dream sequence in Bunuel’s ‘Los Olvidados’, but aside from that the film looks more like ‘Diner’ than ‘Performance’.

The script is beautifully written. The relationships between Mimi, Julia, and John are so beautifully crafted and natural. Aside from one sudden jump (when Mimi and Julia suddenly become friends so that the domestic situation can be resolved and Julia’s death feels even more tragic) the script is unwaveringly realistic and perfectly paced. There is really no need to have any strong feelings for John Lennon or The Beatles whatsoever to enjoy this film. Indeed, you are never especially conscious of the fact that this is supposed to be John Lennon. It is only when we meet Paul and George that we are reminded, and even then it is short-lived. This is not a biopic in the mould of ‘Walk The Line’ or ‘Ray’; it is the story of a troubled childhood and a determined and strong-minded young man who uses his love of music to overcome a bitter and uncomfortable domestic past.

REVIEW: Where The Wild Things Are (dir. Spike Jonze)

Cast: Max Records, Catherine Keener, James Gandolfini, Lauren Ambrose, Chris Cooper, Paul Dano, Forest Whitaker

Maurice Sendak’s 1965 children’s classic ‘Where The Wild Things Are’ is one of those primal, infallible texts that hints, harmlessly, at the Dionysian chaos and fury that lurk beneath the surface of our manicured lives. And who better to bring this warped and wonderful story to the big screen than the ‘realiseur’ of Charlie Kaufman’s rambling scripts, the possessor of a juvenile, ‘Jackass’ sense of fun, and the inventor of a raw and powerful aesthetic that defined a generation of skateboarding, Sonic Youth fans… Spike Jonze.

Jonze draws us into Max’s childish world with an incredibly intimate and volatile opening section, before Max escapes to his fantasy realm, which is all natural light and awkward camera framing. Max Records – a changeable, quiet, but passionate boy – is nothing like the two-dimensional rascal of Sendak’s book. He possesses a boundless love for his mother and sister, but if they fail to pay him enough attention he exhibits ferocious jealousy. Jonze explores these childhood quirks in a simple, affectionate, and ruthlessly honest way.

Once we enter the fantasy world, Jonze substitutes the dark, menacing visual imagery of Sendak’s book for more vibrant palettes and dusky settings. Allowing nature to take its course during filming, Jonze spared little thought for temporal consistency, choosing instead to just shoot whenever he felt like it. The result is a story world that seems to exist in some endless sunset, where the wild things sleep in daylight and stay up all night by the fire.

The forest locations were chosen specifically because they were burnt out and presented the art department with a clean slate. But for all the bewitching beauty of the colourful flowers and misplaced snow, there is still a barrenness to the settings that mimics the emptiness at the heart of the Wild Things. All they want is for Max to keep the sadness away.

The Wild Things of the book – all spiny fur, sharp teeth, and primordial ‘group think’ – are now cuddly, soft-furred creatures from the Jim Henson workshop. They are wonderfully well-rounded individuals with pride and fear and dependency issues. While CGI has been used on their faces, Jonze was adamant that the creatures should be real puppets because he wanted to see the sand trapped in their soft fur, and sense their ‘weight’.

James Gandolfini and Lauren Ambrose are the star attractions in this band of creatures. Gandolfini’s animalistic pride made Tony Soprano one of the best-loved characters in television history. He was a cuddly killer – a cheerful, doting, cold-blooded gangster – and Carol isn’t so very different. He is the wild thing that welcomes Max into the group, but his pride makes him a sensitive, volatile, and dangerous creature. Lauren Ambrose’s sulking, passionate teenager was an achingly engaging and beautiful character in Six Feet Under; and she brings the same bittersweet melancholy to KW.

Their relationship is the most wonderful thing about this film. Unable to comprehend the more ‘adult’ factors that complicate relationships, Max creates petty arguments between them… such as “you trod on the ‘head’ part of my head” and “this is why I don’t like playing with you any more”. However seemingly complicated adult relationships become, they rarely involve anything more complex than these childish impulses towards guilt and jealousy. Carol and KW are two adults engaged in a relationship that exposes how childish they really are, and that is something I am sure most adults could relate to.

Dazzling or Dizzying? A Christmas Carol 3D Premiere

Last night saw the breaking of a few festive world records in a decidedly Dickensian Leicester Square. Firstly, opera singer Andrea Bocelli lead the largest Christmas Carol ‘sing-along’ from the Square, as revellers across London joined in after the official ‘turning on’ of the Christmas lights. Then Disney, in collaboration with Sky Movies HD, hosted the largest ever ‘3D premiere’ for their new film ‘A Christmas Carol’.

Anyone who worries that Christmas has sold its soul should have headed to central London last night: Disney have bought the entire centre’s Christmas lights, so Jim Carey’s performance-captured face will be staring down at us from all over the shopping district until the dawn of 2010. But in Disney’s defence – and not wanting to cry ‘humbug’ too loud on this joyous occasion – the premiere was a success and certainly helped to kick off 2009’s Christmas season. Sky presenters Alex Zane and ???? Huk buzzed around the red carpet spreading Christmas joy as showers of fake snow wafted across the Square, and gaggles of rosy-faced carol singers cheered the waiting crowds. Even Jim Carey did his festive best, breaking the world record for the bushiest, most friendly-looking beard ever sported by a Hollywood A-lister at a European Premiere.

As well as being the biggest 3D premiere to date, ‘A Christmas Carol’ is an especially important 3D film because it is the first of its kind to also adopt Robert Zemeckis’ beloved ‘performance-capture’ technology (as seen in Polar Express, Beowolf, etc).

From the opening shots of the film it is clear that Zemeckis is going to take every opportunity to show off his new toy, ‘3D performance-capture’. After a stuttering start – where we are supposed to be dumbfounded by the sheer height of a candle stick and the awesome length of Scrooge’s fingers – the camera rises up over Dickensian London and swoops across the city in a brilliant and truly exhilarating roller-coaster ride. Disney 3D has now truly arrived.

It is also clear from the opening moments, as Scrooge (Carey) steals the pennies from the eyes of his dead business partner Jacob Marley, that this film is not heading down the Jim Henson route. As Scrooge traipses back to his lonely townhouse on Christmas eve, he is confronted by Marley’ ghost, who warns him that he is destined to an eternity of torment if he doesn’t change his ways while he is still alive. Performance-capture was invented for moments like this. Marley is brutally realistic and yet still fantastic and cartoon-like enough to prevent children and those of a timid disposition from screaming down the aisles away from the screen. It is genuinely unsettling, and I am sure a few parents will have a bone to pick with the censors, but Zemeckis, Carey, and Oldman can always be trusted to add just enough crazed humour, funny facial expressions, and comic timing to stop the tone sliding too far towards horror.

The performance-capture also enables the creation of some interesting ‘ghosts’. The ghost of Christmas past and present are very different creatures (the former being a breathy, timid torch, the latter being a robust Bacchus in flowing robes) but they both bear an unsettling resemblance to Scrooge (and Carey voiced all the ghosts). Zemeckis therefore gets closer to Dickens novel than most previous adaptations by hinting at the subconscious nature of the visions: after each escapade Scrooge finds himself falling out of bed, and it is more transparent than ever before that the old man is actually just suffering from guilty hallucinations.

Unfortunately, the 3D does not work as fluidly as the performance-capture; and apart from that opening section it just feels cumbersome and unnecessary. Occasionally the filmmakers feel the need to force the extra dimension upon us by sticking a pointless inanimate object (a door knob or somebody’s ear) in the immediate foreground so that the main action seems further away. This is jarring, annoying, and will draw any film fan out of the story because it is so unnatural and completely against the basic rules of filmic language.

This annoying ‘look at our 3D technology’ element reaches it’s zenith in a completely inexcusable, ten minute chase through the streets of London during which Scrooge is miniaturised and forced to escape from equine demons. For periods of this chase I was sure Zemeckis had literally been lifted footage out of Ice Age and coloured it in differently. It is insincere and childish, and after all the hard work Pixar have done creating meaningful films that can be universally enjoyed, ‘A Christmas Carol’ is only a ‘film for all ages’ because it has some things adults might like (that children most likely wont) and vice versa.

Jim Carey’s performance is perfectly reasonable, but it is only his good judgement and taste in projects that is stopping him falling down the Mike Myers wormhole. In projects like this he just does what he does, and while we cannot fault him for creating yet another entertaining, absorbing, and energetic creation, there is nothing fresh or unique to really commend it either.

Bob Hoskins… isn’t in the film; and any critic who claims his role added “nostalgia, warmth, and spirit” to the project is lying because they like Bob Hoskins too much. The only other actor who registers in this film (but has been cut out of the publicity, presumably because he isn’t as cheerful looking as Hoskins and Firth) is Gary Oldman. In his role of Bob Cratchit, Scrooges humble clerk, he helps to give the film a sense of honesty and calm; and in his haunting role as Jacob Marley he provides the most viscerally and realistically terrifying moments of the film.

In the spirit of corporate Christmas, I couldn’t possibly end this review without a word from my sponsors, Sky Movies HD, whose involvement in last night’s event was pivotal. Christmas is the only time of year when a middle-aged accountant from Luton will turn to his family and say, “lets watch ‘Mary Poppins’… as a family!” So what better time of year to signup to Sky and enjoy some Christmas classics in the company of your loved ones.

REVIEW: The Girlfriend Experience (dir. Stephen Soderbergh)

Cast: Sasha Grey, Chris Santos, Mark Jacobson, Glenn Kenny

Chelsea (Grey) is a ‘smoky-eyed’, high-class escort in New York City. She charges rich businessmen thousands of dollars, by the hour, for her company; but it isn’t the sex that they are paying for – they could go to any old hooker for that – it is ‘the girlfriend experience’. Chelsea lives in a sumptuous, open-plan apartment with her real boyfriend Chris (Santos), a personal trainer who is supportive of her career choice. Chelsea seems fairly content, but the life she has chosen is a transitory and hollow one, and she is clearly incapable of finding any real peace or solidity.

And that, in a nutshell, is the premise of ‘The Girlfriend Experience’: it is an opportunity to observe the emotional vicissitudes of one of life’s most mysterious creatures, that elusive succubus, the ‘woman of the night’. It is certainly an interesting project; and there is a lot to commend it in the pace and tone of the film, the performances of the leading players (both of whom are novices) and the way these performances are expertly captured by Soderbergh and DoP Peter Andrews. But unfortunately the film doesn’t seem to add up to the sum of its parts. The world of escorting might seem to be both glamorous and romantic and yet sordid and guttural; but Soderbergh is determined to avoid these polarities, and he concentrates on the mundane empty, loneliness of this world. Unfortunately, in so doing, he creates a cold and detached film that fails to really grip the viewer or persuade us that this is a story we should care about.

In between clients, Chelsea meets with friends, fellow escorts, and business advisors (many of whom are actually clients) in a bid to develop her business and become more successful. She gives a sleazy but influential sex-critic a ‘free sample’ in return for favourable reviews and business opportunities; but his review turns out to be nasty, and she also notices some of her clients cavorting with fresh-faced escorts. Chris is also trying to become more financially independent by taking on a management position at a gym, but the economic downturn makes this extremely difficult. These stressful tribulations are clearly having an effect on their relationship, as Chris seems to be the only person who cant get a ‘girlfriend experience’ out of Chelsea. When Chelsea meets a mysterious and charming new client, a screenwriter from LA, she decides to go away with him for the weekend despite Chris’s protestations. With their relationship in tatters, Chris goes of for a ‘boys trip’ to Vegas with a rich client, and Chelsea is stood up by the client, who returns to his family in California.

The lead performance is certainly worthy of merit. Sasha Grey is a fascinating young woman: a veritable legend of the porn industry with a passion for the French New Wave, Oscar Wilde, and transgressive art. She has been featured in radical fashion shoots, including artwork for a Smashing Pumpkins album, and was listed in Rolling Stone Magazine’s Hot List 2009. It is fair to say, then, that Grey is not your average porn star; she is a ballsy, passionate, and irresistible creature, and you cant help but be drawn into her quiet, mysterious, transgressive charm. This is her feature film debut – and it should be noted that she is a porn star playing an escort, so she probably didn’t have to dig too deep into her Stanislavski handbook – but she manages to come across as completely controlled and yet natural to a fault; and on the few occasions that high emotion are required, she is quite breathtaking.

The look of the film is effortlessly effective, but surely nobody doubts Soderbergh’s intimate understanding of the language of film. The whole film carries a sort of documentary aesthetic (unsteady camera movements, uncomfortable close-ups, inconsistent sound, etc) but it remains subtle and unobtrusive throughout. Soderbergh knows exactly how long to allow the actors to improvise, and exactly how long to leave the camera rolling. Awkward silences never grow too awkward, and shot lengths/ composition choices are juggled and varied often enough so that the film, despite its dreary subject matter, never looks dull or uncinematic.

The film is told through a fractured narrative, although this is never really forced upon us either. This fracturing works because it forces us to accept the circularity and repetitiveness of Chelsea’s world. Chelsea thinks she is on a linear path, and she is heading for some magnificent future where everything will be ok; but she is a tragic figure, incapable of recognizing her own flaws, and she is destined to stumble through the same mistakes and uncertainties throughout her troubled life. The way this hopelessness is weaved into the narrative should probably feel like a triumph for the film; but unfortunately it is not a ‘hopelessness’ filled with pathos or tragedy, it is a cold and empty hopelessness that doesn’t arouse any emotions in the audience.

Another upsetting thing about this film is the purposeful timing, and the effect it has on the character development. The story occurs in the lead up to the 2008 Presidential Election, and also in the midst of the economic downturn, and Chelsea and Chris are both in the business of listening to rich executives talk for one hour at a time. Soderbergh mistakenly saw this as a clever and interesting way to ram some fairly obvious and painfully obsolete economic and political drivel down our throats. While films about Obama and the economic crash will someday be essential, there had not been enough time to consider them as historic events when Soderbergh was making this film, and so his dealing with them feels crass and topical. Furthermore, the decision to spend so long listening to coke-sniffing, whore-loving executives talk about the abomination of higher taxes for the rich removes any hope of Soderbergh getting to know his characters, let alone taking the time to introduce them to us!

REVIEW: Everybody's Fine (dir. Kirk Jones)

Cast: Robert De Niro, Drew Barrymore, Sam Rockwell, Kate Beckinsale

Frank Goode has spent his entire life making rubber coating for the telephone wires that run along America’s railways. As a result, he has developed an illness from decades of breathing noxious fumes. But more importantly, he has never taken the time to appreciate his own four middle-aged children. When his wife dies, Frank realises that she was the only point of contact between himself and his children. Her death strips him of his comfort, and grants him a rare and precious opportunity to peer inside his own past and find out where he lost his way.

As his four children make their excuses to avoid visiting him for a reunion dinner, Frank decides to head out on an ill-advised (in fact downright forbidden as far as his doctor is concerned) road trip to surprise his unwitting cubs in their natural surroundings. In Frank’s eyes this can have nothing but cheerful and fulfilling consequences; his successful, grounded, and thoroughly happy children couldn’t possibly have anything to hide from their loving, if slightly distant, pater right? Wrong.

As Frank travels the length and breadth of Whitman’s beloved country, he watches the great American Dream crashing before him and hurling the wreckage at his feet. He discovers that his wife had lied to him about his children’s successes, and neglected to tell him about their multitude of frailties and failures. His artist son, David, is nowhere to be found in New York; and his only truly successful child (Amy, an advertising executive) is too busy juggling a failed marriage and trying to find out what the hell has happened to David (he was last heard from in a Mexican jail) to pay her long lost father any attention. Robert, supposedly a renowned conductor, actually plays a timpani drum at the back of the orchestra; and Rosie, a “famous dancer”, is a single mother tending a bar in Las Vegas.

The most painful thing about this slow crumbling illusion is the pitiful desperation with which each child tries to conceal their failure. Frank is heart-broken by the realisation that his children would rather lie than be honest with him; and he comes to realise that this is essentially his fault. But through determination and a new found humility, he is able to bond the family together again, and as he stands before his wife’s grave delivering an update on how the kids are doing, he is able to honestly reflect that… everybody’s fine.

Whatever Kirk Jones set out to do, he has created a truly sparing and beautiful film. There is plenty of humour and melodrama to keep commercial audiences happy, but beneath that there really is a depth of emotion that is quite devastatingly affecting. Frank’s realisation that he is the main source of antagonism in the lives of the four children that he has spent his whole life supporting is brutal, but the fact that there is no real opportunity for resolution is even more heartbreaking. It is too late to help his children improve their lives, and it is too late to witness them becoming the individuals they are now. All that is left for Frank to do is let the past slip away and try to enjoy an uncertain but comfortable future now that the illusions have been obliterated.

There is also a deep emotional resonance in the stories of the four children. For most of the year, we are confident in the conviction that the endless struggles and compromises that fill our daily lives are actually part of the fabric of modern life; but then we all have those awkward meals and visits when our parents ask us why we aren’t happier or more successful, and it is at these crushing moments that we suddenly feel like we have failed in some way. It is a painful but inspiring reminder that ‘Life’ is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted; and this universal truth is etched on the faces of Frank’s desperately fragile children, especially Sam Rockwell, who is superb as the childish but shy musician.

But more than anything else, this really is a powerful, elegiac ode to America: The Place Where Nobody Feels At Home. Some of the greatest films about nations are made by outsiders – Alan Parker, a born and bred Londoner, created two of the greatest films about 20th century America with Mississippi Burning and The Life of David Gale – and Kirk Jones achieves a similar result with Everybody’s Fine. Frank is a blue-collar man who has spent his life working in a factory while his wife and country lie to him about successes at home and abroad. He has buried himself in his work and allowed the American Dream to whisk him away from the gritty reality of life. When he finally wakes up and takes a look outside his cave – and takes off on the railways and highways that he, in a sense, helped to build – he realises that he lives in a nation of alienated and scared souls travelling from place to place. This is the tangible sense of loneliness at the heart of the film. Frank’s speciality was telephones, but everything about the American Dream is innately ‘tele’ – spread over great distances with no real connection or community to link it’s disparate elements.

Finally, and so inherent to the success of the film, is the performance of Robert DeNiro. He has been an absorbing, brooding New Yorker for four decades, but his attempts at expressing a more sympathetic side to the human condition have often fallen short. Perhaps largely as a result of his age, rather than a conscious change in his style, his performance in this film is wonderful. The powerful and stubborn DeNiro of Raging Bull is still hiding in the ridges and wrinkles of his aged face; but he is stooped in a softening pathos for the entirety of the film, and we cannot help but fall deeply under the spell of his quivering frowns and tear-filled eyes. If DeNiro was the John Wayne of New Hollywood, then this is his The Quiet Man.

REVIEW: Glorious 39 (dir. Stephen Poliakoff)

Cast: Romola Garai, Bill Nighy, Eddie Redmayne, Julie Christie

Anne is the adopted daughter of an aristocratic family in 1940s Britain. The head of the family (a conservative MP) and his son, who works at the foreign office, are both opposed the approaching war with Germany and determined to maintain their way of life. When Anne stumbles across some recordings of secret government meetings at their family home, she believes there is a conspiracy to prevent the war. This gripping psychological thriller follows Anne as she becomes entangled in a web of dark and menacing secrets. She is betrayed by all around her, finally realising that an adopted daughter isn’t necessarily a member of the family, and many of those she holds dear are killed. Stephen Poliakoff is famed for his television period pieces, but this is a magnificent return to the big screen. The eeriness of the film, and the sudden sense of loneliness that we share with Anne as we realise the depth of the betrayal that she has suffered, bare comparison with ‘The Wicker Man’. And the directorial vision of the film is sumptuous and epic and yet claustrophobic and dark.

REVIEW: A Serious Man (dir. Joel & Ethan Coen)

Cast: Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Simon Helberg, Adam Arkin

Larry Gopnik (another inspired character name from the men that brought you Dude Lebowski and Barton Fink) might be the least fortunate man ever to walk God’s earth. He is a quiet professor at an unassuming Midwestern university, and he lives an uneventful and abstinent life with his seemingly happy family. Things begin to unravel after a misunderstanding with a curt and menacing Korean exchange student leads to Larry accidentally accepting a bribe. Shortly after, Larry’s rotund and explosive wife reveals that she is leave him, although she can’t explain why. The quietly spoken Larry is easily muscled out of his own home by her over-bearing and infuriatingly calm new lover; and he is forced to move into a crumbling motel with his parasitic brother.

His children seem completely apathetic to his removal from the family home, and to make matters worse, somebody is sending anonymous letters to the university accusing Larry of moral turpitude. Larry faces all of these catastrophic events with an appalled expression and a stuttering whine. He is a wonderfully pathetic character, and watching him desperately cling on to the fragments of his life is like watching Woody Allen trying to hold on to Annie Hall. He reluctantly agrees to visit a series of Rabbis, all of whom are completely incapable of helping Larry with these bizarre 21st century problems.

After an astounding, critically acclaimed literary adaptation, and a raucous screwball comedy, the Coen brother’s have returned to a more familiar location (middle America) and a more personal protagonist (a brow-beaten middle-aged man with terrible luck). But this is by no means a regression on their part; it is simply a more personal and easy-going film than their previous few outings. The Coens have a knack for creating faultlessly manicured structures; even in a film as seemingly lackadaisical and character driven as this, there is still a series of set-ups and pay-offs that harks back the Lebowksi years. Their sense of timing, and their self-deprecating humour, also comes to the fore in this film.

Michael Stuhlbarg is superb as Larry. While the Coen brothers can always be relied upon to create great characters and stories, it is still down to the individual actor to deliver these slightly manic and confused creations into the real world; and Stuhlbarg is faultless in this regard. Larry is just as rounded a character as Jerome Lundegaard Jeffrey Lebowski; he is a simple man, and a serious one, who can’t laugh at himself or view his life from a different perspective. He is trapped in his tiny world, where everything has been decimated, and even when he is forced out of his home, he only manages to go down the road to a local motel. He is bumbling fool, and he speaks to the bumbling fool in all of us.

REVIEW: The Informant! (dir. Stephen Soderbergh)

Cast: Matt Damon, Scott Bakula, Joel McHale, Melanie Lynskey

‘The Informant!’ is the true(ish) story of Mark Whitacre, the highest ranking whistleblower in corporate history. Mark (Damon) is a biochemist who has been promoted to the heady heights of agricultural giant ADM’s corporate infrastructure. But when his division loses money for a record year, he pretends that a Japanese competitor has infected ADM’s corn stock, and before he knows it the FBI is involved. Mark is clearly not a man who thinks his decisions through very carefully – he is one of those polite and hopelessly naïve Americans that we don’t see enough of outside the US – and so he decides to tell Agent Shepherd (Bakula) about ADM’s involvement in one of the largest global price-fixing scandals in corporate history.

What follows is basically what ‘The Insider’ would have looked like if Mel Brooks owned the rights. Mark agrees to wear a wire in order to incriminate the top executives at ADM, but he is so childishly excited about his foray into espionage that he never stops to think about what he is getting himself into. But the tables turn swiftly when ADM’s lawyers discover Mark has been skimming money from the company profits, and the FBI decides to sideline the ADM case and go after Mark instead!

This film easily fulfils, but never really exceeds, expectations. It is certainly not a genre-defying, complex, caustic comedy about the global agri-industry; but it is another fairly successful outing for Stephen Soderbergh and his pals George Clooney (who executive produced the picture) and Matt Damon. It shares with the ‘Oceans’ films an effortlessly well-paced and uplifting tone that only comes about through a sort of synergy when an experienced, confident, and supremely talented filmmaker like Soderbergh decides to let his hair down with a few trusted friends and remind himself how much fun filmmaking can be. The fact that the ‘friends’ who decided to join in are two of the most globally renowned actors in history certainly can’t have hurt either.

Matt Damon may have achieved international fame in the Bourne films, and critical acclaim working with directors like Gus Van Sant and Martin Scorsese, but rare appearances on ‘Saturday Night Live’ and ‘Entourage’ (not to mention his friendship with South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone) prove that he is also an incredibly astute and underrated comic actor who knows how to make fun out of himself. This film will hopefully broadcast this hidden talent to a global audience. His performance is slick and understated; he is never brash or knowingly ‘comic’ (a refreshing quality after so many years of Ferrell, Stiller, Rogen, et al) and he maintains that slightly dim, Middle American charm that effortlessly radiates from his calm, ‘farm boy’ physique. I am always amazed by how easy it is to overlook the fact that Damon is actually an Oscar-winning screenwriter from Boston; his demeanour and physiology are so fresh and agrarian that one almost wishes he was more like Private Ryan.

This may not be the most tightly honed comedy script in recent years, and I must admit that it is one of those films where the trailer is funnier than the actual film. When the court case gets under way the story becomes a bit heavy handed and loses some of the snappy pace and fleet-footed dialogue that defines the rest of the script. But if this was the sort of film where every last moment was painstakingly thought out to avoid stagnancy, then it wouldn’t be the sort of film that allowed Soderbergh and Damon to enjoy themselves and create such a thoroughly entertaining and raucous insight into their famous friendship; and I for one am willing to overlook the hiccups and slow-points in this generally well paced and thoroughly enjoyable film.

If anybody was looking forward to Steven Soderbergh’s cutting, fictional attack on the corn industry (similar to Linklater’s fantastic rebuke to cattle rearing in ‘Fast Food Nation’) then they will be disappointed. This film only touches very lightly on the ‘corn’ issue in America (in case you didn’t know, every American is eating far more corn than they should be because the US government has been over-subsidising corn production at an unsustainable level since World War 2). Similarly, if anybody was looking for a deep, three-dimensional character study of a torn soul stuck in the heart of a giant US corporation (à la ‘The Insider’) then they will leave unfulfilled. The script prioritises laughs ahead of depth of emotion in almost every instance; and while there is pathos by the bucket load, we can’t ever really say we care about Whitacre. If, on the other hand, you arrive at the cinema looking forward to a frivolous, expertly produced, and very funny movie with a few cracking performances, then I think you might just be in luck.

REVIEW: The White Ribbon (dir. Michael Haneke)

Cast: Christian Friedel, Ulrich Tukur, Rainer Bock, Burghart Klaussner

Since his shocking 1989 debut ‘The Seventh Continent’, Michael Haneke’s style of distanced, uncomfortable, but undeniably beautiful filmmaking has developed and expanded throughout his fascinating career. After a decade working in his native German tongue, Haneke made the move into French filmmaking at the turn of the millennium, with a sparse but emotionally rich ensemble film, ‘Code Unknown’. His subsequent work with actresses Isabelle Huppert and Juliette Binoche has resulted in some remarkable performances and breathtaking films. In 2001, ‘The Piano Teacher’ won the Grand Prix at Cannes (it also won Huppert the Best Actress award), and catapulted Haneke into the highest order of filmmakers.

Haneke’s career took another turn in 2007 when he decided to remake his sadistic and brutal 1997 film, ‘Funny Games’, in the US with an all-star cast. The film, which concerns two sadistic teenagers who trap a middle-class family in their lakeside home and torture them with ‘funny games’ before killing them, was just as horrifying and unrelenting as it’s German original, and once again conjured up some fantastic performances, this time from Tim Roth, Naomi Watts, and Michael Pitt.

‘The White Ribbon’, which earned Haneke the prestigious Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, marks yet another positive step in his faultless career. And yet the film also seems to be a conscious step back for this progressive and dynamic filmmaker. After two decades of testing new boundaries both artistically and personally (directing a film in a language you do not speak fluently is a terrifying prospect, but one that Haneke relished), Haneke has returned to his mother tongue, and seems to have taken solace and respite in the historical heartland of the Germanic culture… the countryside. It is not that simple, of course; Haneke has used this humble setting to dissect the themes and messages underlying his previous films, and so ‘The White Ribbon’ really is another magnificent, emotionally resonant, and aesthetically stunning tour de force.

The film follows the lives of a few families in a remote, feudal village in northern Germany on the eve of World War One. When the village doctor is tripped by a maliciously placed piece of wire while riding his horse, the village is alive with whispers and theories about who could have committed the crime. But when a barn is set on fire, and two children are abducted and tortured, the repressed sentiments of the village begin to boil over. The schoolteacher (Friedel) who investigates the crimes also narrates the tale as an old man, and we are not expected to treat his narration as omniscient. The families we follow are those of the Baron (Tukur), the doctor (Bock), and the pastor (Klaussner); and by witnessing their various reactions to events in the town, we are given a fascinating insight into the repression, fear, and violence that exists below the surface of this small society.

Haneke chose the spatial and temporal settings of the film very specifically: he wanted this small feudal town, on the cusp of the modern world, because it worked so wonderfully as a microcosm of society, and also because your view of the children is coloured by a subconscious understanding that they will grow up to be Nazis. But this is not a film about German fascism specifically; it is a film about the dangers of repression and indoctrination, and the failures of previous generations to properly prepare the young for the world in front of them.

Many of Haneke’s films are about people who reach a point in their lives where they realise they are completely unprepared for the road ahead. From the suicidal couple at the heart of ‘The Seventh Continent’ to Huppert’s piano teacher and the scared husband in ‘Hidden’, these are characters who have lost all faith in themselves and their pasts and find themselves stranded in a terrifying present with no understanding of the world around them. ‘The White Ribbon’ is an attempt by Haneke to look back into the pasts of all his characters and work out what it is in our collective childhoods that leaves us stranded later in life; and of course the temporal setting of this film means we must also look at this on a social level: if a society is unprepared for the future, they are liable to grasp at straws and accept the first man who comes along with promises of safety and prosperity.

This film is certainly more tangibly philosophical and academic than many of Haneke’s previous films, and this may be partially due to the exhaustive research undertaken by him. In a recent interview he explained that he wanted the viewer to feel more detached from this film; hence his decision to employ the schoolteacher’s narration. The schoolteacher is a Dostoevskian character: a humble and impartial outsider who views the events around him with a simple intelligence. Viewing the film from (or at least informed by) his perspective prevents us from becoming attached to any of the characters, and so we float around the village, surveying and analysing and questioning everything we see.

This need for detachment also explains the ‘look’ of the film. Shot in black and white, the film looks so much like a Bunuel film from the ‘Viridiana’ era. Bunuel never wanted to coax the viewer into his films with unnecessarily well-composed shots, he believed that the image should serve the story and the tone and not simply be beautiful for it’s own sake. Haneke has followed a similar path here, and while the film is unmistakably well composed and strangely beautiful, it is also stark and brutal and real.

This is another truly remarkable film from one of the finest living filmmakers. It is not easy to watch, and it is not as openly shocking as many of his previous films; but it is intelligent and mature and there is not a single moment in the entire 145-minute running time that you doubt you are in the hands of an absolute master of the cinema.

REVIEW: Paper Heart (dir. Charlyne Yi & Nick Jasenovec)

Cast: Charlyne Yi, Michael Cera, Jake Johnson

People are calling ‘Paper Heart’ a mockumentary; but that word doesn’t seem to do the film justice because it bears no resemblance or heritage whatsoever to Spinal Tap. ‘Paper Heart’ is really an honest study on the nature of ‘love’; it is a quirky docu-drama that blends narrative sequences with documentary footage, and weaves the two together so that they inform and affect each other. And if that doesn’t grab you, there are also some fantastic Gondry-esque animated sequences and original music from the poster boy of geek-chic, Michael Cera.

Charlyne Yi, a comedienne from California, has always wanted to make a documentary about real love (as opposed to the “Julia Roberts/ English Patient/ sobbing-in-the-rain stuff”); but it was not until she approached friend and director Nick Jasenovec that ‘Paper Heart’ began to form as an idea. Jasenovec forced Yi to accept that the film would be better if she placed herself, and her staunchly anti-love mindset, in front of the camera. When she confessed to being nervous, Jasenovec suggested they incorporate a scripted narrative into the documentary so that she could feel like she was ‘acting’. And so this fascinating new medium of docu-drama was born.

Yi and Jasenovec have gone to great lengths to ensure that the whole film feels real. The documentary footage and the scripted scenes are shot in exactly the same style, so that we never feel a jarring effect when we cross from one to the other; and they decided to cast an actor to play Nick, as Jake Johnson is more realistic as Nick than Nick would have been!

The result is a mish-mash of genres that really draws the viewer into the heart and message of the story. This is a buddy/ road trip movie about two friends travelling across America trying to find the meaning of love. But it is also a heart-warming romance story looking at the courting process in all its awkward splendour. As Charlyne “falls in love” with Cera, her real-life character begins to change as her questions to complete strangers become more hopeful and romantic.

There are so many things about the film that could have been annoying: it is a “film-about-a-film” (often pretentious), it is created by quirky, American Apparel youngsters from East LA (often pretentious), and it has episodes of animation to help describe the interviews (which can often be… well you get the picture.) But the story is so refreshing and honest that it would be almost impossible to find anything annoying here.

In the end, Nick becomes hell-bent on finishing the film, and his intrusive camera nearly ruins Charlyne and Michael’s relationship. But whether or not their romance survives is irrelevant (it doesn’t even exist!), the important thing is that Charlyne has learned to accept the possibility of love, and the lack of control we have over it.

REVIEW: Jennifer's Body (dir. Karen Kusama)

Cast: Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Adam Brody

If anyone in the film industry claims that they aren’t at least a bit intrigued by the idea of a Diablo Cody horror film, then they are probably lying. Her sassy, infectious, and hugely popular debut, ‘Juno’, was the toast of the Oscars two years ago; and ‘Jennifer’s Body’ is her eagerly awaited follow-up.

The story concerns Jennifer (Megan Fox), the “hot girl” at Devil’s Kettle High School, who is sacrificed by the lead singer of a rock band (Adam Brody) looking to enlist Satan’s help in achieving fame. The sacrifice goes wrong because Jennifer is not a virgin; and she returns to life as a teenage-boy-eating demon. The only person who suspects Jennifer of the killings is her nerdy best friend, Needy (Amanda Seyfried).

While ‘Juno’ had pretentions of indie chic, ‘Jennifer’s Body’ is a comedy-horror that shamelessly targets the teenage market. The decision to cast Megan Fox (Transformers) and Adam Brody (The O.C.), while assembling a soundtrack stuffed with Emo-pop poster boys like Panic! At The Disco, is suggestive of the overall tone of the film. It is littered with teen references and gags and the hyper-real ‘teen speak’ that characterized ‘Juno’; phrases like “freak-tarded” and “cheese and fries” (as opposed to ‘Jesus Christ’) abound.

Lurking behind this teeny horror, however, are a few elements that deserve genuine praise. To begin with, some of the performances are excellent. Megan Fox is… Megan Fox. But Amanda Seyfried is an excellent young actress who brings a wild-eyed, eerie innocence to the part of Needy; and Adam Brody brings his characteristic charm and zany likeability to the role of Emo frontman Nikolei.

Secondly, the set design and general look of the film are commendable. It is a rich visual tapestry that fuses the mundane, small-town aesthetic of many legendary horror films (Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, etc) with the clean, sharp, colourful look of more modern teen-centred films.

Finally, there is Cody’s script itself. The task of dealing with an unfamiliar genre has forced Cody to stray away from her beloved quirky dialogue at certain points, and this is a positive because it forces some of her excellent observational humour to the fore. Nikolei’s defence of the sacrifice (it is impossible to make it as an indie rock band unless you have been on Letterman or made a song for a film soundtrack) is wonderfully tongue-in-cheek, and there are plenty of moments like this.

There is also the small matter of the ‘horror’ element of the film. There is nothing especially original about the horror here, but there is nothing excessively cheap or crass about it either. There are some genuinely scary sequences, and Karen Kusama has done an excellent job of teasing this uncomfortable element of the script out into the finished film. The result is a shamelessly quirky teen film that is actually quite funny, scary, and entertaining to watch.

REVIEW: Un Prophete (dir. Jacques Audiard)

Cast: Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup, Adel Bencherif

Jacques Audiard is perhaps the only filmmaker working today whose cannon of films can be uttered in the same breath as those of Melville and Chabrol. Like those giants of the Nouvelle Vague, Audiard is a master of the thriller/ crime genre and has spent the best part of his career unpicking its tightly knit conventions and tropes to create some of the most affecting and unforgettable films of the past few decades.

‘A Prophet’ tells the story of Malik (Rahim), a French Arab of North African descent embarking on a six-year sentence in a French jail. The prison is ruled by Cesar Luciani (Arestrup) and his Corsican gang; so when they approach Malik with an offer to accept him into the gang if he murders an unruly Arab inmate, it is clear that this is not an offer he can refuse. Malik is made a lieutenant in the gang after committing the gruesome act – and we are not spared a single detail, from Malik’s agonising attempts to conceal a bare razor blade in his mouth to the pathetic gurgling screams of the unfortunate Reyeb.

Things do not improve for this unfortunate outsider, however, as he is slanted by the Corsicans (who call him ‘Arab’ and suggest he is only fit for belly-dancing and house-work), berated by the Arabic community in the prison for siding with the enemy, and haunted by Reyeb’s ghost as he lies alone in his murky cell. Malik teaches himself to read and, by carefully studying Cesar and the gang, learns to speak Corsican and slowly picks up the ins-and-outs of the gang’s operations. He also makes an ally in Ryad, a softly spoken man with the cold, dark eyes of a killer.

Malik works his way up the chain of command to become Cesar’s right-hand man and most trusted ally in the prison; and when Cesar organises for him to be released for one day (to check on Cesar’s interests on the outside) he uses the opportunity to start up a side-business moving vast packages of hasish with Ryad (who has since been released) between France and Spain. As Cesar becomes a more desperate and alienated figure in his cell, and powerful adversaries work up the courage to confront him, Malik benefits from all the new connections he is making.

One of the founding tenets of the Nouvelle Vague was an admiration for American film noir, and a mystical ability to inject that rigid genre with a flowing, intuitive, philosophical dimension. Melville, Chabrol, Godard, et al were open about their worship of Humphrey Bogart, John Huston, and the other legends of Hollywood noir; but they were all cineastes and academics who knew that the ‘camera-stylo’ could be used for so much more than Dashiell Hammett adaptations.

In ‘A Prophet’, Audiard has created an accessible and stomach-churning prison drama that the most cautious American viewer could enjoy. All the genre tropes are there – gang initiation, deceit, loyalty, criminal codes, corrupt authorities, car chases, gun battles – but these comforting and visceral moments only exist as sharp jabs to the stomach in what is actually a flowing, complex study of loneliness and masculinity. There is no attempt to validate Malik as a hero, he, along with every other character in the film, is a victim of the brutality they were born into. There is no hope, just a daily fight to survive and make tomorrow’s fight a bit easier. When Ryad develops a terminal disease, there is no despair or sadness shared between these two close friends, just an understanding that Ryad will be released from his bondage slightly sooner than Malik.

Having worked with some of the biggest stars in French cinema (namely Jean-Louis Trintignant, Mathieu Kassovitz, and Vincent Cassel) Audiard has chosen a relative unknown to lead this brutal character study. Tahar Rahim’s performance is without a doubt one of the most infecting and memorable performances of the year. He creates a perfectly conflicted and tragic figure in Malik: he is cold and toughened by a lifetime in the penal system, but he has a child-like vulnerability and a need for human connection. His friendship with Ryad is perfectly portrayed… a deep affection that can never be admitted by either party.

This is undoubtedly one of the finest films of the year. It is an inspiring proof that the genre conventions of American story-telling can be fused with the mystifying explorations of the human condition more present in European independent cinema, to create films that perhaps rise above both camps purely because they are capable of fulfilling the highest aims of culture and communication… to inform, educate, and entertain.

REVIEW: Fantastic Mr. Fox (dir. Wes Anderson)

Cast: George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Willem Defoe, Michael Gambon

Adapting a Roald Dahl story is not an easy task. Born in a rural Welsh village to Norwegian parents in 1916, Dahl struggled through the strict British boarding school system during the inter-war years before joining the RAF for World War 2. It was only after this action-packed and dynamic life, when he had settled in a rural village in Buckinghamshire, that he began to write his children’s books; and every story he has written is infected with his confusing and multi-faceted character.

His Scandinavian heritage was the source of a zany passion for storytelling and the epic myths of Germanic folklore; but he was also a product of the British public school system, and his views on the world were precise and often caustic. He never lost his childlike love of sweets and creatures and discovering new words for the first time; and yet he lived through many tragic incidents that tempered his frivolous passion for life.

All of these things are cloaked behind Twits and Snozzcumbers in his books, but any artist wishing to adapt his work into a new medium must be willing to deal with the intricacy of his vision, or they will find themselves floundering under the criticism of the legions of Dahl lovers across the world. Quentin Blake had a unique understanding of his cherished friend’s work, and his illustrations are now as much a part of Dahl’s stories as the words are.

But when Wes Anderson first called Dahl’s wife to ask for permission to adapt Fantastic Mr. Fox into a film, it was the first time an artist with such a famous and recognisable visual style and auteur sensibility had tried to take on a Dahl story. Now, a decade after that first phone call, Anderson’s film is ready to burst out into the wider world.

This is Anderson’s first foray into animated filmmaking (aside from a few snippets in ‘The Life Aquatic’); and may also be his biggest budget too date, which means he had to answer to more powerful and involved studio executives. It has also come at a time when Anderson’s status as an infallible filmmaker is being questioned. After early works like Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, Anderson was the darling and the lynchpin of US indie cinema. But in recent years, after The Life Aquatic and Darjeeling Ltd., many critics have voiced their concern over his ability to maintain, never mind build upon, his early promise and vision.

An animated adaptation of an adored children’s story is certainly one way to silence those critics, but the potential for disaster is also frightening. There were negative reports leaking from Three Mills Studios in Hackney, where much of the film was created, that suggested Anderson was not cut out for animation. He was often unavailable through the gruelling months of stop-frame filming, choosing instead to direct the film via email from Paris and LA. And so there were many people who worried that the film would lack Anderson’s unique, complex and detailed style.

Well, as an adoring Anderson fan who owes his passion for cinema partly to those early films, it gives me great pleasure to report that Anderson has pulled it off with his usual understated panache and sly, hidden confidence.

For anyone who worried that the animation would cloak or unravel Anderson’s famous visual style, you needn’t worry at all. This is a Wes Anderson film right down to the carefully composed, symmetrical framing, the almost theatrical depth of field, and the colourful, choreographed movements. If anything, the stop-frame animation has allowed Anderson to rediscover his early inspiration for this unique style, and it feels as fresh as it did in Rushmore and Bottle Rocket all those years ago.

The animation is far from perfect, and takes a while to get used to., but it is fun and playful and I picture Quentin Blake (the eyes through which we all read Dahl’s stories) thoroughly enjoying it. Dahl and Blake never aspired to technical perfection, so why should this film?

For anyone who worried that directing a children’s film for a studio would cloak or unravel Anderson’s famous authorial themes and expressions, you needn’t have worried either. This is a Wes Anderson film right down to the deft comedic touch, the witty and caustic dialogue, and the obsession with domestic crises and troubled parental figures.

Anderson seeps through into the story, dialogue, and quirkiness of the project; and his unofficial troupe of actors (Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman specifically) ensure that his bitter but somehow earnest and hopeful comedic touch is stamped on every moment of the film. Without giving too much away, Mrs. Fox is now a dedicated landscape painter who can’t help painting the destructive forces of nature (lightning, tornadoes, etc) into her pieces. This is classic Wes Anderson: creating a dark and unusual character foible and then leaving it to fester in the subtext of the story world, without ever forcing its way into the narrative.

The real success, though, is that while the film is undeniably ‘Wes Anderson’ throughout, he has also stayed true to the real message and tone of Dahl’s vision. This is not so surprising because Anderson is an avowed Dahl fan and I imagine the two would have got along famously had they ever met; but it is nevertheless impressive. Anderson may have dispensed with the verse and rhyme of the original story, but a film adaptation should never simply be a carbon copy.

The world of the film is certainly less quaint and English; Mr Fox now has a sulking teenage son, Ash (Schwartzman), who attends high school and is green with envy at his more athletic cousin. Mr Fox is now a ‘newspaper man’ (a la Cary Grant) after packing in his spiv lifestyle, and the animal community has a much more clearly defined, twentieth century feel to it (estate agents, lawyers, sports coaches, etc.) But there is still that playful edge that was ever present in Dahl’s writing; that sense that he was enjoying a joke that he never quite revealed to his readers. That is something that Anderson excels at, and it works perfectly here.

I suppose it would be unseemly to ignore the leading man, and one of the most recognisable names on the planet, George Clooney. I went in to the film wishing that Anderson had used an established ‘Anderson troupe’ member (one of the Wilson brothers perhaps, or Adrian Brody) who could have brought an extra level of quirky pathos to the project. But I realise now that Clooney was the only man for this role. This is his first animated feature, and while it hardly an earth-shattering performance, he is technically faultless, and he constitutes a solid anchor around which the rest of the cast can deviate. While Brody or the Wilsons would have created a brooding and pathetic Mr. Fox, Clooney is the very embodiment of Cary Grant (Anderson’s inspiration for the role): quickwitted, confident to the point of being brash, but utterly charming and roguish.

This film may not silence Anderson’s critics; it is not perfect and there are plenty of weaknesses to tear away at. But nobody can deny that this was a Herculean task, and Anderson has succeeded where so many filmmakers would have failed. He has not sold out to those who wanted a children’s film, he has not retreated into the depths of art cinema, he has not sullied the great name of Roald Dahl, and he has not lost his authorial touch. For all of these things, I applaud the irreplaceable Wes Anderson.

REVIEW: The Men Who Stare At Goats (dir. Grant Heslov)

Cast: George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges

After yesterday’s spectacular opening gala film, Wes Anderson’s ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’, the London Film Festival came crashing back down to earth today with a screening of the distinctly average ‘The Men Who Stare at Goats’. There is nothing really wrong with the film (Ewan McGregor’s unfailingly awful American accent aside), but it lacks depth, beauty, or any of the artistic flourishes that would justify its position as a gala film.

This year’s festival plays host to Werner Herzog, Wes Anderson, the Coen brothers, and extraordinary debut features from artist Sam Taylor-Wood and designer Tom Ford; so the BFI have really let themselves down by embracing this vacuous studio tripe while under publicising some of the wonderful auteurs and home-grown talent on offer.

The film follows Bob Wilton (McGregor) a cuckolded small-town American reporter, as he travels to the Middle East to prove himself as a journalist and a man. While there he runs into Lyn Cassady (Clooney) a former member of the New Earth Army - a covert faction of the US Army founded by Bill Django (Bridges), a sort of Timothy Leary for the military, who researched mysticism, parapsychology, and narcotics in the 70s in an attempt to build an army that diffused conflict rather than creating it. Lyn, it transpires, was the poster-boy for this operation, with uncanny psychic and paranormal abilities.

We learn this history of the New Earth Army in flashbacks while Bob and Lyn are travelling into Iraq. After crashing the car, the pair are kidnapped by terrorists, and this sets into motion a chain of hapless and almost screwball events that sees the unlikely duo escaping from terrorists and imbecilic US security forces before eventually ending up at a secret military base run by Lyn’s arch-nemesis, Larry Hooper (Spacey).

Hooper, who was always more interested in the dark potential of the New Earth Army, is now a private contractor to the US military. Bill works for Hooper at the base, but he is a shadow of his former self having lost his passion and found the booze. Lyn cannot stand to see his idol falling so far from grace, and he gives up all hope of succeeding in his mission and helping Bill. It therefore falls to the previously sceptical Bob to spur Bill into action and prove to Lyn that the Jedi spirit lives on. They lace the powdered eggs at the base with LSD, set free all the goats and Iraqi prisoners, and escape in a helicopter, leaving Bob to tell their story to the world.

Evidently, then, the story is not terrible, and there is plenty of room for raucous comedy and entertaining performances. The characters are funny, and the unquestionable talent of the American actors ensures that there are some unforgettable moments and well-delivered lines. It is certainly a fast and entertaining action comedy with almost faultless pace and a well-polished structure. But ‘polished’ is not a word that necessarily fits within the remit of a festival gala film. ‘Revolutionary’, ‘memorable’, ‘divisive’, ‘completely unwatchable’; these are all words that should be applicable to a festival headliner. ‘Polished’ just means it is an easy Hollywood money-spinner that stays well clear of any boundaries; and Hollywood does not need any help from the BFI in marketing their films.

There are other qualities of the film that make it unsuitable for a festival gala. McGregor is characteristically wet, dull and useless; and I was left once again wondering how he has managed to spin out one decent performance as a heroin addict into one of the most startlingly undeserved careers in Hollywood.

Perhaps the most indefensible element of the film is the credit sequence, which shows images of the US invasion of Iraq with cheesy, upbeat American pop music playing over it. These are still some of the most unsettling news images in existence, and those events constitute one of the most heinous and indefensible atrocities and acts of terror ever perpetrated by a nation state. At a time when more and more Americans are coming to terms with the paralysing guilt they feel over these atrocities, I would love to know why Grant Heslov feels he is in a position to poke fun at the whole affair. Nobody should be allowed to create such a thoughtless and idiotic comment on the Iraq conflict, least of all a two-bit actor from Pennsylvania.

David O. Russell proved in Three Kings that you can make a funny film about the Middle East that is still socially responsible, aesthetically original, and gives plenty of space for an ensemble cast (including George Clooney) to show off their considerable talents. Rookie director Heslov has not reached this level of filmmaking, not even close, and it is a great shame that the second gala screening of the festival was wasted on this irresponsible, predictable, multiplex movie.

‘The Men Who Stare at Goats’ is released nationwide on 22 January 2010

REVIEW: Kicks (dir. Lindy Heymann)

Cast: Kerrie Hayes, Nichola Burley, Jamie Doyle

‘Kicks’ centres around Nicole (Hayes), a lonely girl who has been forced to grow up very quickly in financial and emotional poverty. Her only passion is for Lee Cassidy (Doyle), Liverpool’s star midfielder, who also happens to be single. While waiting outside the gates of Anfield to catch a glimpse of her lothario, Nicole meets Jasmine (Burley), a WAG-in-training from a considerably more wealthy part of the city. Despite their cultural and class-based differences, the two hit it off immediately due to their shared passion for Cassidy.

As the girls try, in vain, to access nightclubs, VIP areas, and apartment blocks to feel closer to their obsession, so their friendship and trust for each other tightens. It is an uplifting story of how the seemingly unconstructive and much maligned institutions of premiership football and the cult of celebrity can actually bring two separate souls together despite their troubled backgrounds, loveless parents, etc .

The characters are entirely believable and their actions sincere to a fault. Anyone with a daughter or younger sister will know what it is to see a teenage girl zip through this fleeting and defining period of their lives with the same wild swings of emotion and unexpected surges of kindness that these well-drawn characters embody. Nicole’s emotionally barren and impoverished background, with a criminal brother and invisible parents, is teased out subtly in Hayes quiet but powerful performance. And similarly, Burley’s upper-middle class, ‘nouveau riche’ princess, Jasmine, is brash and shallow (for her, Lee is more a flavour of the month than a reason for living), but she is still a caring and thoughtful individual who sees past Nicole’s lack of glamour.

Heymann’s direction, for the most part, has a great feel for the pace and tone of the story it is telling, and also manages to relay this in its visual tone. But sadly, and not for the first time in this festival, the story is inherently flawed and undeserving of cinematic exhibition. The fatal bow occurs about an hour into the film, when the girls decide to kidnap Cassidy and force him at gunpoint to stay at Liverpool after reports he is leaving for Madrid.

This is an absolutely absurd, insincere turn of events, and it destroys the emotional gravity and the genuinely uplifting tone underlying the idea of the film. There is a desperate attempt to find a natural situation in which this turn of events could occur; they meet Cassidy drunk outside a hotel after an argument with a team mate, and his decision to go with them is admittedly quite believable. But this is all rendered useless by the simple fact that these girls would never act in this way, and they certainly wouldn’t be so casual about it.

This honest exploration of the unlikely friendship between to lost youngsters is lost forever in the quagmire that ensues: a static and meandering half hour during which they almost have sex with him, almost kill him, almost ruin his career, and almost destroy themselves. In the end, though, none of these things happen, and the only truly tragic thing about the ending is how detached and callous it feels when compared to the fantastic story that preceded it.

REVIEW: She, A Chinese (dir. Xiaolu Guo)

Cast: Lu Huang, Wei Yibo, Geoffrey Hutchings

“She is Mei, an enigmatic young Chinese woman raised in a backwater but longing for a different life.” This is the basis for Xiaolu Guo’s fairly well anticipated feature film, ‘She, A Chinese’. The story follows Mei from her rural Chinese village to a larger city, and then on to London. Unfortunately, this physical journey is not accompanied by any emotional or thematic growth within the film.

From the moment we meet Mei, scowling outside her shack watching youngsters play pool, she is already a bitter and uninspiring character. She starts dating a flashy, motorbike-owning young man from Shenzhen who introduces her to a life of karaoke bars and neon lights; but when she refuses to sleep with him, he dumps her and returns to Shenzhen. This is evidently the catalyst for her decision to leave her village in search of a larger world, but you would never guess it from her response. She remains cold and detached from her surroundings, and we are no closer to empathising with her as a character.

Mei starts spending more time with a burly truck driver, who eventually rapes her. It is at this point that Mei decides to run away to the city. She is fired from her job at a shirt manufacturing factory (although she doesn’t seem to care) and starts working at a hair salon/ brothel. There she falls in love with a gangster, but when he is murdered she uses his secret stash of money to escape to London. Once again, Mei seems almost completely unaffected by these events. I won’t bore you with the rest of the synopsis, but suffice to say she marries an aging Englishman, gets bored of him, moves in with an Indian man who gets her pregnant, runs away again, and ends up on a beach somewhere outside London.

The unavoidable and damning fault in this film is the fact that it is filled with potentially dramatic events and situations that are rendered mundane and nebulous due to the filmmaker and lead actress’s inability to delve into the conflict at the heart of these events. Mei is raped, abused as a worker, marries an old Englishman just so she can stay in Britain, becomes pregnant by a man who runs away, etc. But at no point do these events seem to affect Mei on an emotional level. She remains aloof and detached, and so there is no drama or conflict or emotional growth. The viewer is expected to simply sit and stare at an episodic and meaningless series of events, and this is not a sound or responsible basis for a feature film.

The only interesting thing about this film is it’s partial location in a world that is foreign to most westerners. But no film deserves to be praised purely on the basis of its “exotic” location, as any location would seem interesting to someone who hasn’t been there. Rural China has been represented in a much more interesting way recently in films like ??????, and many of these films also manage to weave a fascinating human story into their representation of specific locales.

There are, perhaps, moments of emotional purity that help to redeem the film. At one point, when her Muslim Indian boyfriend explains that he can’t eat pork because Allah said it was dirty, Mei explains that she washed it in the sink. There are moments like this dotted throughout the film that help us to empathise with Mei slightly, and they fortunately work within the limited emotional range of the fairly stilted and one-dimensional lead actress.

In conclusion, this was a promising film with an intriguing premise. The idea of following a young woman on her journey from a rural Chinese village all the way to London is certainly an interesting idea, and probably accounts for the film’s presence at this festival. But the ways the idea is dealt with – in the creation of the script, the direction of the film, and the performance of the lead actress – fail to create any interesting emotional or thematic premises, and so it remains a dull and uninspiring film throughout.

REVIEW: Wah Do Dem (dir. Sam Fleischner & Ben Chase)

Cast: Shaun Bones, Carl Bradshaw, Kevin Bewersdorf, Norah Jones

‘Wah Do Dem’ tells the tale of Max (Shaun Bones), a Brooklyn kid with messy hair, an American Apparel hoodie, and a pair of lime green Ray Bans permanently attached to his face. Max is looking forward to taking his girlfriend, Willow (a cameo by Norah Jones), on a Caribbean cruise that he won in a competition. But within the first minute of the film (the award for fastest inciting incident goes to…) Willow dumps him and Max is forced to go on the cruise alone. From the moment he embarks, he is forced into an exhaustive series of odd encounters with people he would probably never have met in any other situation… and this makes for an exciting and funny film.

To begin with, Max is the only person on the romantic cruise who is there alone, and he is also the only person under the age of 65! He sulks around the ship, dejected and lonely, until he eventually befriends a few members of the crew. This section of the film does admittedly begin to lull. There are only so many comic situations you can come up with on a cruise ship full of old people, and most of the time Max is just staring at a TV screen or throwing up in his shower. It is when he arrives in Jamaica that the real fun begins…

Max immediately escapes from the tourists on his boat and befriends Bruno, a Rasta with an almost unintelligible Caribbean accent. They head to a ‘local’ beach, and Max finally seems to be having some fun with his new friends: he learns a few Jamaican phrases, smokes some weed, and goes for a solitary swim. When he returns, his bag has been stolen (along with his wallet and passport) and Bruno claims ignorance and runs away. Max eventually gets back to the ship that evening, just in time to see it pulling away from the harbour. Max is thus forces to embark on a long and fraught journey to the US Embassy in Kingston; a journey that takes his through dangerous townships, football obsessed gangs of teenagers, an evening spent celebrating Obama’s election victory in a shack bar, and a terrifying ordeal with a knife-wielding youth.

It is impossible to imagine this film working without the performance of leading man, Shaun Bones; he even gets an “in collaboration with” credit after the names of the director/ writer team. His performance is a perfect balance of self-pity and self-realisation, resilience and defeatism. The brief programme synopsis says, “Bones’ enigmatic performance [makes] it difficult to know whether to laugh or despair”, and this is perfectly true. When the tension and drama are high, Bones performance rises to the task, but when the situation calls for a relaxed and naturalistic style of acting, he is right on point as well. The performance is filled with pathos and comic timing, but is also completely believable.

Bones’ performance mirrors the general feel of the film perfectly. At many points it is impossible to work out whether this is guerrilla-style documentary footage with non-actors, or a more designed and purposeful style of filmmaking. When Max plays football with a group of teenagers, and ends up spending the night with them celebrating the Obama campaign, it is so naturalistic that one can only assume Bones’ and one of the directors literally just spent the night at this bar on the night of Obama’s victory and filmed their exploits. But then at other points a more clear cut narrative

REVIEW: We Live In Public (dir. Ondi Timoner)

There are three things that may never cease to fascinate me: the early 90s (because it was so recent, and is considered by the generation who shape our conscious to be irrelevant in comparison to their “special” generation of the 60s, and yet it was so vibrant and culturally rich); the internet (because nobody is capable of predicting where it will go… it is like a wild frontier, but every time someone thinks they have discovered California a whole new plain appears before them); and finally men (and I use that word to denote a member of my species, not necessarily my gender) who seem to have it all, but then manage to throw it all away.

If you feel like you are interested in any or all of the above, then you really need to see Ondi Timoner’s ‘We Live In Public’. The film charts the rise and fall of one of the most iconic ‘dot com kids’ of the early 90s. Josh Harris discovered the Internet while Tim Berners-Lee was still perfecting HTML at MIT (I cant be bothered to explain any of that last sentence; just open another tab in Wikipedia and come back when you’re ready) He knew there was money to be made, and he had the seemingly uninspiring idea of creating a research company that prospective internet start-up companies could pay for data. It really was a genius idea: nobody had a clue how to quantify the internet, so Harris paid a rag-tag bunch of mathematicians and statisticians to come up with some positive projections for potential revenue on the internet. Harris was an overnight success, and used his newfound wealth to start up the first ever Internet television station, Pseudo.com.

The Pseudo.com studio in Manhattan came to resemble Andy Warhol’s Factory, and it wasn’t long before comparisons were being made. Pseudo was a hit, and Harris became a very young, very wayward, multi-millionaire. He began hosting huge parties with supermodels, bands, films, and limitless amounts of drugs and alcohol. This was a computer analyst geek-turned-millionaire who created the coolest scene in downtown New York since the punk scene of the late 70s. He used the parties as a way of finding new creative talent for the wacky shows that aired on Pseudo, and the station went from strength to strength.

This is where things get really interesting. Harris had had a difficult childhood; somewhere between his estranged father and alcoholic mother, Harris was left to bring himself up using the television as a surrogate parent. He grew up to be a detached and troubled young man. Having reached the pinnacle of success – by the mid-nineties Harris was worth $80 million – his mental state began to unravel, and he spent more and more time hiding behind his ‘clown’ alter ego, Luvvy. The investors of Pseudo.com began to distance themselves from Harris, and eventually he left the station, claiming that it had only ever been an “art experiment” and he wanted to move onto something new.

That “something new” turned out to be perhaps the coolest, most unbelievable social experiment in history, ‘Quiet’. Harris sank millions of dollars into the creation of an underground community in a basement in New York. He invited famous artists to build an odd, futuristic church, a firing range with a breath-taking arsenal of weapons, a huge dining room, a bar, a performance space, a transparent tent for showering, and a ‘pod hotel’ of individual pods for the inhabitants of the community to live in. Oh, one more thing… he also set up hundreds of live-feed cameras to record every movement in the building, and hooked them all up to a 75-channel private TV controller so that everybody in the community could watch everybody else on their personal computer screens in their pods! So you could be sitting in your pod and decide to sit up and watch the guy four pods down sleeping, or watch a couple having sex in the shower, or a guy taking a shit in the open-plan toilets.

The experiment opened in late 1999, and was an instant success. The Dandy Warhols came down to check it out, the creative director of MoMA had to beg for a pod, and an entire community of the quirkiest, most hedonistic New York artists moved in for the month-long experiment. The footage of ‘Quiet’ is enough to recommend this documentary on it’s own… it really does have to be seen to be believed. It is like a cross between ‘Das Experiment’ and ‘Fear and loathing in Las Vegas’. There is sex, drugs and rock and roll in unprecedented measures, not to mention drunken naked women firing automatic weapons! There is a compulsory interrogation room, and Harris reserved the right to create any rules he saw fit to make: he could tell people what pod to sleep in, when they could eat, etc.

In the end, in the early hours of the morning of January 1st 2000, the NYPD were alerted that a millennium cult had gathered in an underground basement for a mass suicide. Imagine being the first officer to arrive down in that basement: hundreds of artists, either naked or dressed in matching grey and red ‘Quiet’ uniforms, drinking, shooting up heroin, watching each other on banks of monitors, sitting in a futuristic church listening to their ‘leader’ (Harris) delivering a millennium mass, and running around with loaded automatic weapons!

And all this was organized by one of the richest men on Wall Street at the time!

I will resist the temptation to transcribe the whole film for you; but suffice to say this is a man you really need to get to know, and the only way you can do that is by watching this film.

The filmmaker, Ondi Timoner, was an inhabitant of ‘Quiet’ and became a lifelong friend of Harris’ (if Harris is capable of keeping a friend for life). The film was ten years in the making and charts his rise to success, through the ‘Quiet’ years and goes on to explore his disastrous attempts to stream his life, 24-hours a day, on a website… an experiment that only served to further dilapidate his frail mental state.

Timoner is the perfect person to explore Harris. She clearly cares about him – she respects everything he has done and sympathises with his difficult past – but she is not blind to his mistakes and is willing to admit that he is a flawed and difficult human being. Timoner also seems to have inherited Harris’ philosophical and artistic approach to the Internet, and the way it will affect human society. She is therefore able to explain just how ahead- of-his-time Harris really was. ‘Quiet’ is, in itself, a perfect representation of the Facebook/ smart phone generation: we all sit around in our defined spaces (our ‘walls’ or ‘pods’ depending on your choice of nomenclature) staring at each other but never really connecting.

In the end, you probably wont understand Harris any better at the end of this film; but at least the filmmaker hasn’t tried to force some balanced, insincere closed ending onto it. This is a fairly simple exploration of a fascinating and complicated man. Timoner may not have unravelled the mysteries, but she has certainly captured the fascination and awe that so many people felt for Josh Harris… “the greatest Internet pioneer you’ve never heard of.”