REVIEW: TRON: Legacy (dir. Joseph Kosinski)

Cast: Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde, Bruce Boxleitner

Joseph Kosinski’s renewed and reinvigorated TRON is certainly one of the most eagerly anticipated films since Avatar, and that anticipation is largely due to the avowed cult status of Steven Lisberger’s 1982 original. That film – with its mixture of archaic CGI, live action, and crude hand drawn animation – is arguably the most important and innovative special effects film ever made; but its simple plot and memorable performances also rendered it an unforgettable film in the hearts of film fans who worried about the sickly smooth aesthetics of Star Wars and the Rocky films.

To impress any of the legions of eager viewers awaiting his first feature, Kosinski had to do two things: create stunning visual effects that rivalled, and hopefully surpassed, those of Avatar; and create a memorable, quirky, and enjoyable story to hold it all together. He has succeeded wonderfully in the former, and perhaps predictably failed dismally in the latter.

The effects are truly ravishing. The 3D doesn’t kick in until Sam (Hedlund), the son of disappeared computer genius Kevin Flynn (Bridges), is transported into The Grid – a cyber-world created by Flynn, in which he has been trapped for the past 20 years. Over the space of those 20 years, the rudimentary, almost analogue, neon minimalism of the original film’s alternate reality has evolved over countless ‘cycles’ to produce a world so rich in glassy texture and sleek graphic cities that it more closely resembles a futuristic vision of earth than a more abstract idea of a ‘cyber world’ based on 0s and 1s. Kosinski’s background in architecture is clear – The Grid is a stunning futuristic vision, a cross between Philip K Dick and the Bauhaus. Kosinski was determined to honour the original film by avoiding complete reliance on CGI, so many of the sets are tangible, created out of concrete and glass, and you can feel their weight on the screen.

But is this an entirely positive point? This is supposed to be a vision of a ‘cyber world’ created entirely out of digital programmes. It necessarily needs to be anthropomorphised in order to be understood as a ‘mythic’ story, but is the chic interior design and the hog roast dinner entirely necessary? When Sam arrives on The Grid he is disrobed and prepared by four android-like ‘sirens’, and he later bumps into one of them as she is finishing her shift and leaving “the office” with an umbrella! What exactly is she protecting herself from in this instance? Cyber rain? There is something disappointingly easy about this interpretation of The Grid, which in the original film was a much more abstract space simply due to the limitations of technology. The wonders of the modern world have allowed Kosinski to render a truly outstanding vision on screen, but whether it is the right vision or the honest vision for TRON is debatable.

Two unquestionable triumphs should be mentioned though: the first is Daft Punk’s glitchy, techno score. Their infectious, cosmic dance pop is a perfect fusion of the organic and the ‘technologic’. It is at once cold and monotonous yet energised and vibrant. The second is the most important element of the TRON idyll… the disk battles and light cycles of legend are absolutely stunning; taking place in gigantic stadia before enormous crowds of baying ‘programmes’. The glistening quicksilver appearance of the bikes’ trails is breathtaking in 3D, and the battles themselves are easily as thrilling as anything James Cameron has created. They commend the film on their own, regardless of the success, or lack thereof, of the overall narrative.

The story, alas, falls between the cracks of the wonderful aesthetic choices. The evolution of The Grid has been plagued by the controlling, cancerous influence of Clu – a ‘programme’ built by Flynn in his own image to create a ‘perfect world’ on The Grid (while Flynn was busy battling the Encom corporation in the real world). Clu’s pursuit of a non-existent ideal has led to a dangerous and dark world of dogma, destruction, and genocide. Sam’s unlikely arrival provides a brief opportunity for Flynn to defeat Clu and escape The Grid… and so the fight is on. This could have been a halfway interesting story, but it really is not. Essentially, the story involves father and son, and Flynn’s adopted cyber-daughter Quorra, travelling across a barren landscape and getting into a few fracas before, well, winning. Somehow this random trip provides Sam with the cathartic, epiphanic inspiration he needed to “find himself” and turn his life around on returning to the real world. This is like a ‘Sci-fi action epic’ jus – a boiling pot of Gladiator, Star Wars, and The Matrix left on a high heat until all that is left is a sickly syrup of clichés and half-baked ideas.

The acting unfortunately, fails to save the piece. Jeff Bridges does nothing wrong as Flynn or, thanks to some wonderful visual effects, in his younger incarnation as Clu. But there has never been any doubt that Bridges’ talent lies in subtle and sincere character studies, rather than sci-fi epics. Garrett Hedlund is inoffensive as Sam, but he is either too young to too incapable of finding a way to save his vacuous character’s journey by adding some intangible dimension of emotional honesty.

In the end, this is a travesty of a story and a failure of a sequel, but an absolute triumph for CGI… it is to the original TRON what Avatar is to Ferngully.

REVIEW: Catfish (dir. Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman)

Nev is a 24-yr-old photographer from New York, his brother Ariel and their best friend Henry are filmmakers. When Nev strikes up an online friendship with Abby, an 8-yr-old girl who wants to paint his photographs, Ariel and Henry decide to document this bizarre online relationship. As the paintings start to arrive, Nev strikes up a more romantic relationship with Abby’s older sister Megan. Over the ensuing months Nev and Megan’s relationship becomes more passionate, and his feelings for Abby’s family become increasingly powerful… and then the cracks start to appear. When Megan sends Nev a song dedication, it only takes a few minutes of searching on YouTube to discover that she has stolen the recording and claimed it as her own. Soon after, when Abby’s mother claims that Abby has a gallery exhibition, an equally simple search on Google Earth proves that the gallery doesn’t even exist. Their suspicions aroused, Nev, Ariel, and Henry head off on a road trip to uncover the deepening mystery. What they discover when they arrive on Abby’s rural farm… is quite disturbing.

Critics are split on the issue of whether this film is really genuine, but this critic is willing to take the leap of faith. The warmth and spontaneity of Joost and Schulman’s filmmaking is too sincere to be a hoax. The story has obviously been edited to create a more traditional flow of revelations and moments where the tension is amped up, but messing around with the flow of time doesn’t mean that the events themselves are not real. Nev is an intriguing and roguish young man who knows how to work an audience, and his familiarity with the guys behind the camera make for an intimate and engaging film. The real draw of the film is obviously based around the revelations at Abby’s farm; but I don’t want to spoil the surprise, so I will leave it there for now… just go and watch this film!

REVIEW: The Tourist (dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)

Cast: Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Paul Bethany, Timothy Dalton, Steven Berkoff, Rufus Sewell

Let’s not mince words here… The Tourist is one of the most outstandingly atrocious films of the year. It is so unbelievably bad that we must surely assume von Donnersmark and co-writer McQuarrie (who brought us The Lives of Others and The Usual Suspects respectively) have done this purposefully and in a knowing fashion. The plotlines, performances, camerawork, and shoddy effects are terrible; and yet there is some strange enjoyment to be had out of all this pomp and cheese... and it doesn’t feel like an accident.

From the moment Elise (Jolie) appears on screen – in a cream gown and fur lifted from ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ – we are transported to a shimmering realm of 1950’s glare and colour where subtlety and originality have been obliterated. This is what an espionage thriller would look like if Jerry Bruckheimer were staring at The 39 Steps through Gene Kelly’s View-Master. Elise is racing through Gare du Lyon to catch the 8:22 train; and we know this because we hear her voice-over explaining that she needs to catch the 8:22 train… and then we see a close-up of the departure board advertising the 8:22 train… and then we see Paul Bethany – a bitter and overworked British agent – using some of Bruckheimer’s patented ‘neon-blue-computer-stuff’ technology to piece together a ripped-up note revealing that his target is getting the 8:22 train. Alexander MacKendrick would be proud, but anybody born after 1953 will be yawning and/or laughing.

When a modern Pendolino train shows up at the platform it feels as though an alien spaceship has crashed into post-war Lyon; but Elise doesn’t waste any time in her mission to find a man that has the same height and build as her mystery accomplice (we know this is what she is trying to do because her voice-over tells us so) and dragging him to the suitably art deco dining car for the duration of the journey. The hapless chap whose life is about to be torn apart simply because he has the same height and build as a criminal is Frank (Depp) – a maths teacher from Wisconsin who smokes an electric cigarette and reads spy novels.

When they arrive in Venice (where else could this film be set?) Frank finds himself escaping from Interpol and Russian gangsters who all believe him to be Alexander Pearce; and when Elise rescues him from the jaws of death she finally admits that she has been using him as a foil to protect her lover, who has stolen billions from the gangster and is wanted by MI5. She tries to send Frank home, but the forlorn traveller with his sad-puppy eyes and glass jaw refuses to flee from the woman he loves (he has fallen in love by the way). Queue an epic climax where all the various parties descend on a sparkling Venetian ball and fight it out. Oh! and there’s a gigantic and jaw-dropping twist too… you’ll never see it coming!

Some early reviews have called this a ‘turkey’, but those reviewers can’t possibly have appreciated the Ealing-throwback chivalry of the whole enterprise. This isn’t quite a comedy (it isn’t Carry On…) but it goes beyond Hollywood ‘tongue-in-cheek’ trashiness to provide a sleek and thoughtful rubbish film that earns its laughs.

REVIEW: Somewhere (dir. Sofia Coppola)

Cast: Stephen Dorff, Michelle Monaghan, Elle Fanning, Chris Pontius

‘Somewhere’ opens with a fixed shot of our protagonist – fatigued film star Johnny Marco (Dorff) – driving his sports car round and round in circles in the middle of the dusty Californian desert, alone. The film goes on to show Johnny dealing with the trials and tribulations of being a world-famous single father living in a hotel with legions of ‘hangers-on’ and nowhere to go. But that simple opening shot haunts the entire film with its stripped-down purity… what is anybody doing in Los Angeles if not driving round and round in circles in the middle of the dusty California desert, alone?

The Chateau Marmont on Sunset Blvd. is the crumbling, nicotine-stained crypt of a bygone age… the perfect home for our hopeless hero. Johnny lives in room 59, a room with an unused kitchen and plenty of space in the bedroom for strippers to erect their mobile poles. His “best friend” Sammy (Pontius) organises exclusive get-togethers almost every evening; and to the vacuous socialites and desperate actors that gain entry, this lonely man’s hotel room is the coolest place in town.

The only person to whom our pampered film star has any responsibility is his 11-year-old daughter Chloe (Fanning). So when his ex-wife (Monaghan) takes off and leaves him to look after the girl, the scene is set for a classic tale where the “sassy-kid-teaches-her-useless-dad-a-thing-or-two-about-adulthood.’ But Coppola never even entertains this clichéd idea. Chloe is a nervous pre-teen who adores her father; he doesn’t have the sense to hide his drinking and womanising habits from her, and she doesn’t have the guts to call him up on it.

This is not so much a dramatic narrative as a portrait of an artist as a young(ish) man. It is a story reminding us that stories don’t really exist, and not even movie stars in Hollywood are living the fairytale lives we see on screen. “Nothing ever really happens to anyone, and nobody ever really changes.” This isn’t a hopeful or nuanced point – and it certainly lacks the poetry of ‘Lost In Translation’, where another hopeless actor found some form of spiritual enlightenment through his relationship with a younger female – but it is a point well made by Coppola.

There aren’t many filmmakers who can embrace silence and inactivity and somehow imbue it with a mischievous sense of ‘saying something’. Michael Haneke is the indisputable master of leaving a camera staring at nothing and yet never allowing our senses to calm down. When our senses are starved of the barrage of information they come to expect while sitting in a darkened room with popcorn, they suddenly become alive to the possibilities of silence, the exciting ambiguity and anticipation of ‘nothingness’. Coppola is comfortable doing the same thing; the opening shot is a clear statement of intent, but another excellent example is a painfully slow zoom-in on Johnny as he sits in a make-up chair waiting for the mould that covers his entire head to dry. Encased in a waxy mausoleum, entombed with his own thoughts, the viewer eventually happens upon a terrifying possibility… what if Johnny isn’t thinking anything at all? What if too many years of stardom have switched his brain to standby mode?

A poem for Godspeed You! Black Emperor

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - ATP2010, Butlins Minehead

The throbbing drone of a 'nowhere to go' poem.

Cymbals shimmering…

 a growing expectancy of abandon.

Disgruntled distortion; flashing, ephemeral, menacing madness; the elegiac strength of poetry's newfound power.

The luscious, disintegrating grain of film flickers hesitantly across their gloomy parchment faces.

The soothing banshee wail of violins whistles amongst the crumpled analogue voices of men who will not be heard again. Jersey men. Important men.

Surrendering, waiting for the chasm between soul and sound to be bridged, by music that is like food too hot to have taste.

No layer unfulfilled, no synapse untantalised. An assault on every piece of the humdrum soul that was mine moments ago. Two thousand heads bobbing, faces downturned, staring vacantly at the space where they used to be. The growling howls of these vagabonds still screaming at us,

"Don't give up, there's LIFE to fight for yet!"

A tremor rips through the aether!

The air is kindling!

And now it burns and shines!

The silence blows the hearth to stillness…

The energy retreats, but leaves a stinging heat.

I can feel it against my skin,

as our sulking masses leave,

and our lives begin again. 

REVIEW: Of Gods and Men (dir. Xavier Beauvois)

Cast: Lambert Wilson, Michael Lonsdale, Olivier Rabourdin

Xavier Beauvois’ film spent four weeks at the top of the French box office after its September release, such was the national esteem held for the director and his chosen subject – the beheading of a group of French monks in North Africa in the mid-‘90s. The film is beautifully shot and masterfully sparing in what it is willing to show to its audience. Visitors arrive at the monastery with stories of road blocks, burnt out buses, and rioting gangs, but we never really leave the convent. In this way the film feels more like a stage play – there is a unity of time and space that makes the drama even more visceral and intimate.

The central performances are superb, especially those of the ageing, cuddly Michael Lonsdale and the frighteningly reasonable and saintly calm Lambert Wilson (who plays Christian, the head of the monastery). There is a synergy between the quiet and gripping performances and the spare cinematography that culminates with a spectacular scene during dinner, when the camera patiently lingers on each wrinkled, resolute, monastic face as the moving score reaches its crescendo… it is quiet, patient, unnoticed, but thoroughly engrossing.

If there is a criticism that can be levelled against this film it is that Beauvois seems to confident of what he is trying to say, and there is little room for the sort of mystifying ambiguity that cuts through most great European films. He knows exactly what his message is and exactly how he will express himself through the characters. In such a long and pensive film, it would have been more interesting if there were a sense of tearing at the heart of the premise… a dialectic played out by the characters. Unfortunately this is never the case, and Beauvois’ control over his thoughts is as thorough and totalitarian as the control Christian has over his subordinate monks.

REVIEW: The American (dir. Anton Corbijn)

Cast: George Clooney, Violante Placido, Paolo Bonacelli, Johan Leysen, Thekla Reuten,

Describing a film as “directed by Anton Corbijn” gives a very different impression to describing it as “starring George Clooney”. While both phrases could technically be directed at ‘The American’, the former is much more accurate and the latter is slightly misleading. An Anton Corbijn film is stark, brutal, and pensive; a George Clooney film is energetic, entertaining (although not necessarily light), and the central character possesses an otherworldly charm that never fails to disarm even the most cynical of critics. ‘The American’ is certainly brutal and pensive, but it is very rarely energetic, and the central character is not charming or absorbing in the way we expect of a Clooney protagonist.

Jack (Clooney) is an archetypal ‘lonely assassin’, hiding out in the Swedish wilderness with his unassuming girlfriend. He is soon discovered, and the cold and ruthless way he deals with these intruders, and his innocent girlfriend, tells us everything we need to know about this twisted husk of a man. Escaping to Rome, his minder Pavel (Leysen) sends him to hideout in a remote Italian village and prepare for another high-end job. He befriends a wily old priest (Bonacelli) and slowly falls in love with a disarmingly innocent prostitute (Placido), and his enforced seclusion sows the seeds of hope in Jack that he might be able to find a life outside of ‘the game’. But he is still being chased by the Swedes, and the high-end job that at first seemed so simple (manufacturing a bespoke weapon for a German client) is becoming much more complex and dangerous.

There is undoubtedly an enormous amount to commend this film. Anton Corbijn is a masterful film director; he has a precise and well-honed sense of visual style and tone, and he is able to translate this into his films with a deftness of touch that is increasingly rare in American-produced films. Reteaming with cinematographer Martin Ruhe (who also shot ‘Control’) ensures that this film eloquently conveys the atmosphere of the story while remaining beautiful to watch throughout. The story obviously involves long periods of waiting with staccato moments of high energy, and Corbijn does an excellent job of managing this dichotomy – imbuing the slower sections with a languid and melodic rhythm that is punctuated by the tingling, paranoid energy of the few chase scenes and dangerous moments that permeate the film.

George Clooney is, well, George Clooney. He is one of the most undeniably watchable actors on the planet, with a strong range of emotions and a passion for filmmaking that somehow translates into his every movement. The problem here is that there simply isn’t enough for him to do. The ‘lonely assassin who falls in love’ is too familiar a concept to be interesting in its own right, and somewhere along the line Corbijn, Clooney, and writer Rowan Joffe forgot to imbue Jack with enough of intensity and conflict to keep the story flowing.

REVIEW: Adrift (dir. Heitor Dhalia)

Cast: Vincent Cassel, Laura Neiva, Débora Bloch Camilla Belle

Mathias (Cassel) is a charming, stubborn womaniser, and a thoroughly successful writer. Wherever he goes, people hang off his every word and cling tightly to his roguish smile and powerful character. His three children adore him, especially his beautiful, awkward fourteen-year-old daughter Filipa. There is only one person that has learnt to despise him, and over whom he has no control… his wife, Clarice. The family have moved to a beachside community for an extended holiday so that Mathias and Clarice can give their marriage one last chance. But Mathias is already sleeping with a beautiful young American woman, and Clarice is drinking too much and spending more and more time away from the house. The story of this crumbling relationship is not told from the perspective of either party, but is seen through the eyes of the adolescent Filipa, who learns a great deal about herself while watching her beloved parents tear each other apart.

Filipa is at that awkward age between childhood and young adulthood; she is vulnerable and just wants to be loved and teased by her father, but she is also dealing with the beginnings of sexuality, and the realisation that she harnesses great power over the rougher sex. When she discovers that Mathias is a philanderer, and loses faith in her spiteful and uncontrollable mother, Filipa suddenly discovers the most important lesson a child can learn on their way to adulthood… she is alone. But by the end of the story, when Mathias has been humbled by Clarice’s decision to leave him for a younger man, Filipa has matured into a young woman and is ready to find a way to love her father anew.

Heitor Dhalia’s film paints a vivid and powerful picture of a hopelessly flawed family. The entire film is imbued with a subtle romance, with soft focus shots of characters riding around on motorbikes with the wind in their hair, and relaxing half-naked on golden beaches by glimmering diamond seas. The only things that disturb this image are the characters themselves, with their broken souls and confused and selfish actions. It is easy to fall in love with any of these characters – the charming rogue, the coquettish girl, or the tearful, beautiful mother – but they will all disappoint you in the end, as they fail to keep check of their emotions and fall helplessly into the traps of their own making. This is a mature and thoughtful drama that absorbs the viewer into the world of the family, and leaves him or her as emotionally bruised and drained as the characters themselves.

REVIEW: Everything Must Go (dir. Dan Rush)

Cast: Will Ferrell, Rebecca Hall, Laura Dern, Christopher Jordan Wallace,

When a young female employee accuses Nick of improper behaviour during a work trip, his history of drinking problems and failure to attend rehab conspire against him and he finds himself sitting in the staff parking lot, drinking cans of lager, and stabbing his personalised ‘severance’ pocket knife into the tyres of his boss’s muscle car. When he gets home, he discovers that his wife has dumped all of his worldly possessions on the front lawn, changed the locks, frozen their bank accounts (most of it his money), and left town for a few days to give him a chance to clear out. His fall from grace is completed when a company ‘heavy’ reclaims his car, and his cell phone is barred. Left with no options, Nick decides to drink the rest of his beers sitting in his favourite chair on the front lawn, and he doesn’t move for a long, long time.

Nick’s AA ‘mentor’, Frank, also happens to be a police detective and old friend who helped Nick’s wife kick the habit years earlier and is saddened not to have been able to help Nick in the same way. Frank buys Nick a few days grace by telling the local cops that Nick is having a yard sale, but Nick still needs to get his act together fast. He is helped in the reconstruction of his shattered life by Kenny, a sullen and inquisitive young boy, and Samantha, a beautiful and lonely pregnant woman who has moved in across the road in advance of her salesman husband (who sounds dangerously like a young Nick).

Based on the Raymond Carver short story, ‘Why Don’t You Dance?” this is a shamelessly quirky, heart-warming and sometimes surreal ‘indie’ movie. It combines Todd Phillips’ knack for fleet-footed, economic storytelling, with a more patient tenacity that allows the sombre subject matter to really breathe. The efficiency prevents the film from becoming a pretentious ‘indie’ flick about the suburbs; the patience stops it feeling like Old School: The Later Years.

Will Ferrell’s performance has received some completely undeserved criticism. Stranger Than Fiction proved to the world that while he might never be in the same league as Jim Carey, he is capable of starring in a drama without ruining it. His second ‘serious’ film is further proof that Ferrell has the dexterity and maturity to subtly tweak his characteristic brand of pompous but loveable humour into a more pathos-ridden dramatic style.

This is not a film that takes itself too seriously, but it is also not a ‘comedy’ in the strictest sense. The central performance had to be pitch perfect to accommodate these often conflicting atmospheres, and Ferrell does so perfectly. Apart from Carey or Zach Galifianakis, I can’t think of another actor around who could provide such a disciplined yet light-hearted performance

REVIEW: Blue Valentine (dir. Derek Cianfrance)

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams, Faith Wladyka, John Doman

Every filmmaker, regardless of their level of success, has a script buried in a bottom drawer somewhere that they have been working on since their teens, but have never quite found the time to make. When these films do get made, they usually fall disastrously short of expectations (Aronofsky… ‘The Fountain’, Scorcese… ‘Gangs of New York’, etc). Derek Cianfrance has honed a successful career as a documentary filmmaker while harbouring this brutal domestic drama; and after a twelve-year struggle to bring it to the screen, it must be a huge relief to have made one of the most captivating and extraordinary films of recent years.

Dean and Cindy’s marriage is collapsing. It is an unfortunate and unavoidable fact for which there is no simple reason and no evident solution. Dean is a creative and keen-minded man who has – in the eyes of ‘society’ – allowed his potential to rot, in favour of dedicating himself to parenthood and being a loving husband. Cindy is a nurse who escapes from her sadness by pretending to care about her job. She resents Dean for finding it so easy to enjoy their basic and melancholy life, and for being the apple of their adorable daughter’s eye. Dean decides that what they really need is a night in the city, away from their stale environment, so they leave Frankie with Cindy’s father and head for New York. In a hideous, sordid neon motel room, the couple drink vodka and stare hopelessly at one another. The silence is penetrated with drunken bouts of laughter and violent sex; but when they awaken they do so separately, both painfully aware that they may never be intertwined again.

This devastating study of a crumbling marriage is intercut with the story of how Dean and Cindy met. Dean is a sulking, hopelessly romantic removal man who meets the quiet and distant Cindy while helping an old man move into the nursing home where her grandmother lives. A second chance encounter on a bus seals their fate, and they wander the streets of Brooklyn while Dean woos Cindy with his ukulele and Cindy impresses him with her tap dancing skills. There are hurdles to overcome – such as Cindy’s overbearing parents and meathead ex-boyfriend – but the raw power of naïve love seems capable of overcoming anything.

Cianfrance has intentionally made a film of dualities – old vs. new, video vs. film, rich vs. poor, youth vs. young adulthood – but the most important of these is the most intangible: love vs. apathy. The terrifying thing about the furious arguments that erupt between Dean and Cindy is the futile apathy at their centre. There is no love here, and no hate, just a glut of emotion, a vacuum that will soon engulf them.

Comparisons to John Cassavetes come at a price – it is almost impossible to fulfil them – but Cianfrance comes as close as any filmmaker this reviewer has come across. Jean Renoir wrote, "The saving grace of the cinema is that with patience, and a little love, we may arrive at that wonderfully complex creature which is called man." Nobody came closer than Cassavetes. His films were not so much well-plotted narratives as experiments in capturing human feelings on celluloid. His characters were broken, desperate, confused, and beautiful. But Cassavetes would have been nothing without the extraordinary actors that populated his films – including his wife Gena Rowlands and best friend Ben Gazzara – who poured their souls into his characters.

Cianfrance has allowed his characters to dictate everything about this film, gradually stripping away any layers of pretence and cliché during the immense twelve-year development process. It takes an incredibly mature and non-possessive form of ‘authorship’ to provide such freedom for another creative entity while maintaining control over the vision of the film. The film is undeniably Cianfrance’s, and yet it is so powerfully enriched by the output of his extraordinary stars. And in Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling he has found his Rowlands and Gazzara, and has trusted them to take the characters and make them their own. There is even something of Gena Rowlands in Williams’ scowling, sullen, achingly beautiful face. The Cassavetes comparison is also earned due to the bewitching, chaotic aesthetic choices. Sometimes the film is slow, faded and burnt-out; sometimes frenetic, vibrant, and full of colour; and sometimes menacing and silhouetted.

REVIEW: Let Me In (dir. Matt Reeves)

Cast: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Chloe Moretz, Richard Jenkins

Fans of Swedish horror hit ‘Let The Right One In’ were understandably anxious to see what Hollywood would do with the nuanced and genre-bending original. And their anxiety probably wasn’t eased by the news that ‘Cloverfield’ helmer Matt Reeves was taking charge. But his remake is respectful of the original while also amping up the horror and the budget for a US audience.

Owen is a quiet, defenceless adolescent who lives in a broken home with his unfocused mother. He spends his evenings staring through his neighbours’ windows or humming advertising jingles on a lonely climbing frame. He gains no respite at school, where he is mercilessly bullied by a trio of tormentors. In a country torn apart by high school fatalities over the past few decades, Owen seems like an accident waiting to happen as he practices stabbing trees with a newly acquired hunting knife. But then Abby arrives, barefoot, in the middle of the night, and everything changes.

Abby is a centuries-old vampire who has never grown beyond the age of twelve. She lives with a man who could be her grandfather, but is in fact a lover who has subserviently followed her all his life, murdering innocent people and draining their blood to keep her alive. Owen strikes up a friendship with Abby, who seems reluctant, but cant help enjoying the attention of someone her own age. They fall into a comfortable rhythm of looking forward to one another’s company (something that most adults call ‘love’, which is much quicker to say) and both are brought out of their damaged and lonely shells by one another’s hapless attempts at courting. But Owen’s tormenters are becoming increasingly violent; and when her old lover gets caught during an attempted murder, the authorities begin closing in on Abby.

Reeves claims to have been attempting a meaningful remake that stood apart from the original and made important comments on Reagan’s America. Well in this regard he has failed spectacularly. But in his heart Reeves knows that this remake has only been financed because American and English people refuse to read subtitles. And in his attempts to hold onto the spirit of the original while filming a ‘Hollywood’ version with recognisable actors and a higher budget, he has succeeded admirably. This is not a ‘shot-for-shot’ remake as many have claimed. Reeves has removed extraneous storylines and stuck to a more manicured style of horror filmmaking that will appeal to a wider audience. He has maintained much of the barren, melancholy aesthetic of the original, but in the moments where brutal, CGI-laden attacks are warranted, he pulls no punches and allows the blood to spritz and the gore to spread.

Chloe Moretz and Kodi Smit-McPhee are superb as the central couple. The greatest triumph of the original film was its ability to tell an adult love story through the eyes of 12-year-old children, and ‘Let Me In’ achieves the same success. Smit-McPhee was a fragile lamb in ‘The Road’, but he has harnessed that porcelain innocence and complimented it with a steely insolence that is quite captivating on screen.

Moretz brings an uncomfortable level of humanity to the character of Abby. She seems vulnerable, and tired of this haunted life. The point of the original film was that the vampire brought happiness to a bullied little boy, but in ‘Let Me In’ it is equally the case that the boy brings light into the world of a fragile and scared little vampire girl.

REVIEW: Another Year (dir. Mike Leigh)

Cast: Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen, Lesley Manville, Oliver Maltman

What I am about to say probably wont be news to most readers: Mike Leigh makes film by taking a group of trusted actors and creating characters and stories with them during an intense period of workshops. I always feel the need to explain this when referencing a Mike Leigh film, because it really is a unique and mesmerising way of making films, and it is part of the reason that so many of Leigh’s peers have been left bobbing in the wake of his awesome creative power over the years. His films are imbued with a level of detail (both visually and in terms of characterisation) that makes them as gripping as a murder mystery and as melodic and emotional as the most manicured Hans Zimmer score.

‘Another Year’ stars two of Leigh’s most trusted and accomplished muses – Jim Broadbent and Lesley Manville – and will surely be counted amongst his greatest triumphs when he eventually stops making films and allows the world’s critics and academics to look upon his oeuvre from a distance. Tom (Broadbent) and Gerri (Sheen) are a settled, late middle-aged couple who seem to have been together in their North London home forever. Possessions, as a rule, get more comfortable with age, as they get worn in and submit to our shape and movements. So it is with blankets, mattresses, couches, clothes, spouses, and most of the other items that clutter our homes. That is the first thing that springs to mind when you see Tom and Gerri (don’t worry… a character makes the obvious joke early on so you don’t have to) in their well lived in home. There is a level of comfort and solitude in this unassuming suburban house that cannot be bought; every doorknob, cushion and ladle has been loved and used over many years, and the house is now a cluttered and peaceful monument to a happy family life.

Tom is a geographer and Gerri a counsellor, and when they are not working or tending their well-kept allotment, they are usually providing refuge for a stream of less fortunate friends. Chief amongst this roster of broken souls is Mary (Manville) a nervous, squeaking alcoholic who smokes too much and decided to stop acting her age in her mid-twenties (a period of her life that ended many years ago). All of the characters in this film are wonderfully complex and realistic, but they all lend themselves so easily to anthropomorphic comparisons. Mary is a fragile but fiery vole, darting around in the reeds of a pond. Ken (an old friend of Tom’s with a penchant for saturated fats and canned lager) is a weighty beaver, tumbling over anything in his path in a giddy but ill-conceived attempt to impress Mary’s coquettish vole. And Tom and Gerri are the swan and signet – bound eternally with a calm but unswerving loyalty to one another, but possessing a certain aloofness towards the less fortunate creatures in their pond.

We follow these well-rounded and thoroughly entertaining characters through each of the four seasons, beginning in spring and ending in winter. This might seem like an awkward framing device for such a free-flowing style of storytelling, but it really works perfectly here, as we see how hopeless the characters are to stem the flow of time. Mary is eager to quit smoking, fix her car, and find a man; but as spring slips into summer and then into autumn, she reappears at Tom and Gerri’s home just as reckless and miserable as the last time we saw her. And these shifts in time also remind us how timeless Tom and Gerri’s life together is. If it weren’t for the changes in produce that they bring in from their allotment – and the fact that rose and barbeques make way for earthy reds and cups of tea in the living room – it would be difficult to notice that time had ever moved on in their sanctuary of a home.

It is only right that Broadbent should play the ‘father’ in this story, as there is something about the playfulness of the film that harks back to ‘Life is Sweet’. Many of Leigh’s recent films have had a darker, more sombre tone; but ‘Another Year’ is filled with hilarious quirks and moments that punctuate the melancholy of Mary and Ken’s loneliness and promise that, no matter how sad life may sometimes seem, there is always someone to turn to and some reason to smile.

PRESS CONFERENCE: Black Swan (dir. Darren Aronofsky)

‘Black Swan’ is the story of a prim Prima Ballerina (Natalie Portman) who is forced to expose her dark side in order to maintain her position as the face of the New York City Ballet. The film marks another development in Darren Aronofsky’s startling career: combining a unique take on the thriller genre with captivating, choreographic camerawork and excellent performances, this film is sure to cause a few ripples come award season. The following press conference was attended by Aronofsky, two of the film’s stars – Mila Kunis and Vincent Cassel – and producer Scott Franklin, and was chaired by Screen International’s Mike Goodridge.

INTERVIEW: Derek Cianfrance on Blue Valentine

One of the standout hits of Cannes and Sundance, ‘Blue Valentine’ is a gritty and infectious portrayal of a failed marriage. Director Derek Cianfrance has spent the past twelve years perfecting the film, stripping away the layers of sentiment to reveal a truly raw and original domestic drama. FAN THE FIRE met up with the director at the London Film Festival…

INTERVIEW: Matt Reeves and Kodi Smit-McPhee on Let Me In

When news that a US remake of Swedish horror hit ‘Let The Right One In’ was going ahead, many were anxious to see what Hollywood would do with the nuanced and genre-bending original. Most probably weren’t expecting ‘Cloverfield’ helmer Matt Reeves to take on the challenge, but his remake is respectful of the original while also ploughing new turf, and amping up the horror for a US audience. FAN THE FIRE met with the film’s director Matt Reeves and young star Kodi Smit-McPhee in advance of the film’s release…

REVIEW: It's Kind of a Funny Story (dir. Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck)

Cast: Zac Galafianakis, Keir Gilchrist, Emma Roberts

Ryan Fleck has one request of his audience before the first showing of ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’ – “Anyone that has seen ‘Half Nelson’ or ‘Sugar’, just wipe them out of your mind, because this is a totally different kind of film.” Those first two films from directing duo Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden were nuanced and infectious explorations of various elements of American society (drugs, class, education, and sport). Their latest film explores the world of pharmacology, psychology and mental hospitals, but this is no searing or nuanced drama… it is a teen comedy.

Craig is 16-yrs-old, and as such he is convinced that he is the least intelligent, least capable, and least attractive student at his uber-elite New York private school. He decides that the only way to deal with this problem is to throw himself off the Brooklyn Bridge; but when this plan fails to materialise, he settles for a visit to the psychiatric ward of a city hospital. Unfortunately the teen ward is closed for renovation, so Craig is entered into the adult ward for a minimum stay of five days. Craig’s initial panic is calmed by the presence of the cuddly, calming influence of ward veteran Bobby, and the bewitching beauty of Noelle, another troubled teen on the adult ward.

Queue a touching, whimsical coming-of-age tale that would have had John Hughes flicking through his notebooks to check no ideas had been stolen. The cast of larger-than-life extroverts help Craig to rebuild his self-confidence, and learn an enormous amount about what is really important in life, leading to the obligatory ‘getting the girl’ moment at the end. It is his friendship with Bobby – a chronic visitor to the ward who is in danger of losing visitation rights with his beloved daughter – that really helps Craig to come to terms with his childish problems.

The film is beautifully shot. There seems to be a conscious decision to shoot the ward scenes in a shallow depth of field so that every pore and crease of the characters faces are perfectly realised, while the backgrounds blur into a drained, messy palette of institutional beiges. It is as if the filmmakers are saying “forget the background and the ‘world’ of the film, just study the characters and fall in love with them”. This purposeful and affecting aesthetic is punctuated by wonderful animated sequences that seem to gel perfectly with the dazzling and eclectic score created bespoke by Broken Social Scene.

The costumes have been provided by Kurt&Bart, and it is when you start adding up all these friendly relationships and ‘fun’ elements to the making of this film that you realise a disappointing truth… Fleck and Boden have perhaps had a bit too much fun making this film, and have fallen short of their artistic responsibility to the filmmaking process. The film is attractive and entertaining and there are some touching moments, but it pales in comparison to their earlier films.

Part of the problem is the central character, and the fact that we are following the wrong guy around this hospital. Keir Gilchrist is faultless as the young lead, but the character just isn’t interesting enough to carry a feature film. Bobby is a kind, hopeless man who wants desperately to find a normal life with his beloved daughter; he is the true emotional heart of this story, but we are so busy following an angst-ridden teenager through the hallways that we only ever see snippets of this fascinating, troubled, and achingly pathetic man. This is even more of a waste because Galafianakis is extraordinary in the role. His comedic capabilities are beyond doubt, but his quiet power as an actor comes across in this film, and you just want to reach through the screen and hug him.

In the end, the title of the film contains an irony that may be lost on the filmmakers: this is kind of a funny story… no more, no less.

REVIEW: For 80 Days (dir. Jon Garaño & José Mari Goenaga)

Cast: Itziar Aizpuru, Mariasun Pagoaga, José Ramón Argoitia

One might easily assume that a film about septuagenarian lesbian adulteresses is trying a bit too hard to shock; but Garano and Goenaga have in fact created a moving and subtle exploration into the timelessness of passion. Axun is a sullen and trampled wife who lives with her growling, childless patriarch Juan Mari. When her estranged daughter’s bastard ex-husband, Mikel, winds up in a coma after a car accident, Axun uses this barely feasible excuse to escape her cold, agrarian farm house. Axun finds little respite in the hospital, however, as she is immediately confronted by Maite – a ballsy lesbian who is throwing a birthday party for her comatose brother who shares a room with Mikel. After a few frosty encounters, Axun and Maite realise that they were best friends (and almost slightly more) as children. Maite has moved on, travelling the world, composing music, and liberating herself from her rural shackles; but it may be too late for Axun to do the same.

This beautiful and nuanced film is a stunning example of the criminally under-exposed world of Basque cinema. The film studies its subjects with patience and respect, but there is a ferocity and anger simmering beneath the surface. The film is kind and measured, but somehow always seems on the verge of erupting into madness and rage. The central performances, as a pairing, are equalled at this festival only by Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams in ‘Blue Valentine’. Itziar Aizpuru and Mariasun Pagoaga bring a charming vivacity and innocence to the potentially bizarre subject matter.

REVIEW: Poetry (dir. Lee Changdong)

Cast: Yun Junghee, David Lee, Kim Hira, An Haesong, Kim Yongbaek

Mija is a quiet and thoughtful old woman who seems out of place in Seoul’s ferocious urban modernity. She has been forgotten about by her family, her community, and her country; and seems resigned to living out her days caring for her sulking and selfish grandson. That is until she decides to take up an evening class in poetry, and thus slowly begins to view the world around her with new eyes, and to see the beauty and pain that abounds in the city and the natural world. When her grandson and his friends are accused of raping a girl, who subsequently committed suicide, Mija is forced to join the other boys’ fathers in an attempt to cover up the crime before word spreads.

Yun Junghee’s performance is unmissable. She is confused and vacant, but there is a quiet power and resolution to her actions. She is forgetful and often hopeless; but some of her poetic insights are disarmingly thoughtful, and when she is backed into a corner by the manipulative gang of fathers, she is not scared to fight back.

‘Poetry’ is a slow-building and patient film, and its exploration of Mija as a character is fascinating. The hazy palette of colours is strangely alluring and, well, poetic, and it ensnares the viewer in a mystified dream world. However, there can be no possible justification for the filmmaker’s appalling and irresponsible approach to the difficult subject matter. On a literal level, this is a story about the cover up of a horrific crime; reading between the lines, this is a story about Korea’s emerging middle classes abusing their power and influence to stifle the injustice suffered by the rural working classes. And yet Changdong refuses to say anything about it at all; whether this is incompetence of malaise is beyond my comprehension, but it is an issue that prevents this film being truly worthy of commendation.

REVIEW: Home For Christmas (dir. Bent Hamer)

Cast: Trond Fausa Aurvåg, Fridtjof Såheim, Nina Andresen Borud, Reidar Sørensen, Ingunn Beate Øyen

A desperate, cuckolded man dresses up as Santa Claus, beats his wife’s lover over the head with a shovel, and sneaks into his family home to give his children presents and spend time with his wife. A Serbian man holds up a doctor with a blade – it seems he is looking for drugs, but really he is desperate to find someone to deliver his wife’s baby. A homeless man attempts to break into a woman’s car, only to discover that she was his first childhood sweetheart. She allows him to shower and shave, before feeding him and sending him home to his family with a Christmas tree.

These are just a few of the surreal and touching vignettes that weave their way through this bewitching, snowy tapestry. A magical time that has been lost to advertising jingles and last minute shopping sprees in most of the Western world, is here treated with a uniquely Skandinavian frosty admiration. Christmas, in this film, is a time of haunting beauty; where desperation and hope meet in equal measure.

The film is based on a series of short stories by Levi Henriksen, and this has allowed Hamer a great deal of freedom to experiment with different tones and styles of filmmaking without worrying too much about consistency or unity. In this barren and timeless landscape, the various stories could be happening hundreds of miles apart or right next door to each other, it doesn’t really matter. The tone shifts constantly from melodrama to thriller to fairytale to romance; and the film benefits from the energy and freedom resulting from this lack of collusion.

That is not to suggest that Hamer has been given an easy ride. The film is only 85 minutes long, and his ability to fill those minutes with so many individual storylines that never become muddled or clichéd is nothing short of masterful. By the end of the film every strand has reached a fulfilling conclusion; and they all work to create a simple, glowing synergy as the Serbian couple, holding their newborn baby stare up at the Aurora Borealis playing out above them.

While the entire world of the film is nestled deep in snow, there are no flurries during the film. This is a world of stillness and calm, where the only warmth and movement comes from the people that live there. Whether the vignette concerns a bitter spinster, a depressed cuckold, or a lovelorn teen; the whole film is imbued with a tender-hearted hopefulness that makes this a must see film, especially during the festive season!

REVIEW: Cold Weather (dir. Aaron Katz)

Cast: Cris Lankenau, Trieste Kelly Dunn, Raúl Castillo, Robyn Rikoon,

Aaron Katz’ latest lo-fi slacker movie proves that using inexpensive equipment and cheap locations doesn’t mean you have to make a mumblecore film about angst-ridden teens. Admittedly, the hero (Doug) is a college dropout, intentionally falling short of his potential, who has moved in with his sister back in his hometown of Portland, Oregon. He seems content to spend his days drinking beer and reading Arthur Conan Doyle stories; but his patient sister Gail persuades him to take a night-shift job at an Ice Factory. He meets a suitably ‘real’ friend in Raul, a fellow employee at the factory who seems content with this life of DJing in local bars and earning money shifting ice. When Doug’s ex-girlfriend, Rachel, arrives in town, the scene seems set for a traditional slacker movie about ‘growing up’. But when Rachel disappears from her motel room, Doug, Gail and Raul find themselves embroiled in a sinister mystery that even Sherlock Holmes would have struggled to uncover.

The ‘slack’-er film of the first half hour becomes a taut and suspenseful crime thriller – complete with briefcases full of money, seedy underworlds, dingy motels and screeching SUVs with blacked-out windows. The film perfectly blends film noir conventions (‘femmes fatale’, shadowy figures, etc) with some hysterical insights into the life of a bored ‘twenty-something’ living with his sister in Oregon. I am not usually one for film comparisons, but think ‘Garden State’ meets ‘The Big Sleep’.

The four actors are perfect in their roles. None of them are stand out, award-worthy performances, but they perfectly capture the tight-lipped fun at the heart of the story. In one scene, Doug and Raul try to book a room at Rachel’s motel in order to do some more snooping around – they seem completely unaware of the social taboos surrounding two young men taking a motel room for a few hours, and the scene is all the more hysterical for it. The production design leaves something to be desired, but where the film ditches expensive lighting set-ups, it pastes over the shortfall with charm and wit by the barrel load.

REVIEW: The Parking Lot Movie (dir. Meghan Eckman)

Some documentaries are valuable as essays on important social, political, and historical events and figures; the value of others lies in their ability to uncover charming glitches in our depressingly predictable modern society. The Parking Lot Movie examines some of the most important thinkers and strategists based on the battlefields of the Corner Parking Lot in Charlottesville, Virginia, during the war of attrition against the drunken frat boys and spoilt little rich girls that try to escape without paying in their gas-guzzling SUVs. This might not seem like a universally important war, but to the criminally over-educated and idealistic parking lot attendants, it is of terrifying existential importance.

The hairy, charming men that run the lot are all anthropology, sociology, or philosophy students (or in some cases ex-professors!) from the University of Virginia. One of them even makes the point that such intelligent and thoughtful people should not be allowed to do such a monotonous and thoughtless job… it leads to dangerous levels of existential angst. They fill their time writing poetry on the walls of the cabin, and editing newspaper cartoons to provide whimsical anecdotes on the world of a parking lot attendant (for example, “imagine if Rosa Parks had owned a car!”). When they move on, they become academics or successful musicians, and leave some other hopeful and naïve American vagabond to take over their hours.

They all have one thing in common… an abject hatred for the rich kids, yummie mummies, and aloof republican patriarchs that argue over cents and dimes while taking up two spaces with their over-priced mastodons-on-wheels. When one quiet and unassuming philosophy major comes up against a ditzy-blonde who recognises him from high school, she sniggers and says “I hope you’re happy with your life.” He replies, “Yes, I am happy. I love my life. You are driving your daddy’s car and arguing over a 40c charge, so who has come further?” These are the real people living on the periphery of Generation X, and I am happy to say they are even more robust, considerate, and fulfilled than Douglas Copeland could have imagined.

REVIEW: Carancho (dir. Pablo Trapero)

Cast: Ricardo Darín, Martina Gusman, Carlos Weber

Luján is an overworked, dope-addict emergency medic who seems to spend her every waking hour chasing down traffic accidents in Buenos Aires. Such accidents in the Argentinean capital occur with horrific regularity; and while this tragic failure of the system tears families apart, it is also good news for the ‘vulture’ lawyers who take the insurance companies to the cleaners and hide the profits from the victims’ families. Luján meets just such a lawyer at the scene of a crash that he just happens to have witnessed. Sosa has created a name for himself at his fleapit law company for literally chasing ambulances around the city, and occasionally even paying homeless people to jump in front of vehicles; but as soon as he sets eyes on Luján he seems eager to bury this embarrassing lifestyle and prove himself to this enchanting melancholy beauty.

Unfortunately – as ‘Carlito’s Way’ taught us – escaping from a criminal underworld is no easy task. The acting head of the law firm, realising he has been double-crossed, attacks Luján at work; and in return, Sosa slowly and methodically beats him to death. There is no turning back for Sosa and Luján, who are forced to take unspeakable measures to escape from this sordid world.

Pablo Trapero’s stunning and violent film possesses that uniquely South American ability to combine searing social commentary with energetic and powerful filmmaking. As with so many great crime stories, this is a story that takes place at night, when the middle-classes are asleep and the criminals and emergency medics emerge to do battle once more. Buenos Aires appears as some crumbling, nightmare world, where flashes and eruptions punctuate the brooding darkness. Through this nightmare world, our heroes fight, back to back, with only their passion for one another helping them through. It is a romantic and visceral noir story that is unparalleled at the festival.

REVIEW: Howl (dir. Robert Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman)

Cast: James Franco, Jon Hamm, Jeff Daniels, Mary-Louise Parker

It is hard to work out what demographic ‘Howl’ has been made for. Fans of Alan Ginsberg will gawp at the obvious treatment of the court case that surrounded the publication of ‘Howl’ in 1957; they will react with lukewarm shrugs of indifference to the ‘far-too-literal’ translation of the poem into a tawdry animated sequences, and they will wonder why the hell the actor from Spiderman has been paid to mimic Ginsberg in a series of faux-interviews. People who aren’t fans of Alan Ginsberg… wont go and see the film.

Epstein and Friedman’s film seems eager to break the boundaries of the ‘biopic’ genre by splicing together the aforementioned elements to create a portrait of Ginsberg and his most famous work; but the devil is in the detail, and the unnecessary use of black-and-white film and the constant shots of tape-recorders during interviews suggest that the filmmakers have not stemmed the flow of clichés as successfully as they might have hoped.

Franco is perfectly capable of mimicking Ginsberg, but this is not acting. Philip Seymour Hoffman was acting when he portrayed Truman Capote, DeNiro was acting when he portrayed LaMotta, because in these instances the actors had to take the essence of a person (everything from facial tics to childhood fears) and absorb them in order to portray that person in a dramatic situation. In ‘Howl’, Franco just has to sit on a sofa and mimic Ginsberg’s hand movements and elongated syllables.

The courtroom sequences serve the dual purpose of showcasing ‘the hot guy from Mad Men’ (which might bring the producers a few dollars closer to breaking even) and providing a pretentious and didactic platform for the filmmakers to broadcast their views on censorship… these weighty monologues on a culture of fear and censorship remind us of a shocking fact that I’m sure we would all have forgotten were it not for this film… our governments might be trying to control what we know!!! Shock horror.

REVIEW: Leap Year (dir. Michael Rowe)

Cast: Monica Del Carmen, Gustavo Sanchez Parra, Marco Zapata

These days, when a film is set in one room, this becomes the central focus for any critical discussion – Saw, Reservoir Dogs, Fermat’s Room, etc. But Michael Rowe’s stunning ‘Leap Year’ occupies its humble space so naturally that you almost never notice you haven’t left Laura’s stifling Mexico City apartment. We meet Laura on the first day of a leap year February, and our attention is naturally drawn to the 29th day. Rowe is in no rush to get there, however, and the film depicts Laura’s painful, monotonous life of canned food, vacant stares, and sordid, violent sex with virtual strangers.

When she meets Arturo, a man with a dark appetite for sado-masochistic roleplay, she seems to have found the perfect partner in crime. In one of the most disturbing pieces of filmmaking I have ever scene, Laura masturbates Arturo while explaining how she wants him to cut her open and strangle her and come inside her while the last breath rattles out of her body. Arturo, scared by his attraction to the idea, reluctantly agrees to return the following day (the 29th February) and live out the scenario. But will he materialise?

The premise of the film could have attracted an Eli Roth or some other exploitative non-entity; but in Michael Rowe’s hands it is a haunting and believable tale of desperation and lost hope. It is a film where almost nothing happens, but every moment is imbued with an agonising yet cathartic hopelessness. Del Carmen and Sanchez Parra are perfectly suited to the material – understated throughout, but capable of gutteral emotions that punch right out at the viewer’s solar plexus.

REVIEW: The First Grader (dir. Justin Chadwick)

Cast: Naomie Harris, Oliver Litondo

Arguably the most disappointing film of the festival, this cliché-ridden film offers absolutely nothing of merit, and can only have been included in the festival at the behest of the UK Film Council, who co-produced the film (which may explain its dismaying lack of quality). There is no criticising the source material – the true story of an 84-yr-old Kenyan, Maruge, who decided to take advantage of a government initiative to introduce free primary schooling to claim the education he always craved. Maruge is a member of the Mau-Mau tribe who fought the English occupation of their land. On receiving a letter from the liberated government thanking him for his loyalty to his country, Maruge decides he wants to be able to read it for himself. The beleaguered and uncaring school system, personified by the hotheaded Mr. Kibruto, makes things difficult for Maruge, but with the help of head teacher Jane, he manages to overcome discrimination and hostility and by the end of the film… he can read his letter.

The film does everything by the book – from the ‘beautiful’ sweeping desert landscapes and ‘luscious’ hues to the ‘powerful’ score and the ‘weeping’ performances – but it is all so predictable it makes Clint Eastwood look like Salvador Dali. The story is incredibly thin, and rather than working hard to find an interesting depth to the subject matter, the filmmakers opt for the cheap and easy alternative of bolting on a ‘political thriller’ element which sees gangs of marauding parents attacking the school while Jane receives threatening anonymous phone calls.

A ‘true story’ feature film has more in common with a painting of its subject than a photograph… such a film is necessarily defined by the temperament and artistic vision of its creators. Perhaps a few parents actually threw stones at the school building, perhaps Jane received a phone call; but that doesn’t represent the emotional heart of Maruge’s journey and the filmmakers’ decision to force this story through the ‘thriller’ mould is disappointing to say the least.

REVIEW: Infiltration (dir. Dover Kosashvili)

Cast: Guy Adler, Oz Zehavi, Michael Aloni

On the back of ‘Waltz with Bashir’ and last year’s extraordinary ‘Lebanon’, it is unusual to find an Israeli film documenting the country’s military character with an Altman-esque sense of playfulness. This is M*A*S*H for Israelis, the main difference being that while Altman’s band of brothers were delinquents and rebels, Kosashvili’s characters are just plain incompetent.

The film follows a rag-tag bunch of ill-fitting military conscripts at a military boot camp. The enlisted men are Ashkenazi Jews, new immigrants from North Africa and Europe, Holocaust survivors, as well as both secular and religious individuals. Set over a decade from the late ‘50s to the outbreak of the 1967 war, the film depicts a series of vignettes that represent the various disparate cultural attitudes that were piled together in the creation of the Israeli state.

There is plenty to commend this original and energetic insight into the Israeli military machine. The light-hearted approach is refreshing, and many of the anecdotes and characters are moving and amusing in equal measure. But Kosashvili lacks Altman’s mastery of tone, and when the film deals with the darker side of its subject matter, there is a sense that the director is punching above his weight.

REVIEW: Tabloid (dir. Errol Morris)

The legendary Errol Morris arrives at the London Film Festival with the wonderfully fun and trashy ‘Tabloid’. In 1977 Joyce McKinney, a former Miss Wyoming, was arrested in Devon for the kidnapping, rape, and false imprisonment of a slovenly, overweight Mormon missionary, Kirk Anderson. To this day, McKinney claims that they were lovers, and that she had flown to England to help her beau escape from the powerful grasp of the Church of the Latter Day Saints. The ensuing court case was something of a farce, as the stunning and voluptuous McKinney received thousands of fan letters from men begging her to kidnap and rape them. McKinney eventually escaped back to the USA, where she lived in obscurity for many years… until she became the first woman to have her pet dog cloned by a Korean doctor! McKinney found herself pasted across the front page of the world’s tabloids once again, as baffled editors joined the dots and realised that their favourite pin-up girl had once again handed them a gift of a story.

This is not so much a documentary about tabloids as a tabloid documentary. Headlines stamp themselves across the screen to highlight painfully obvious ‘hit’ words such as SCANDAL, LOVE, SEX, etc. At one point this has humorous consequences when our loopy heroine struggles to describe the wooden cabinet in her hotel room with a lock on it… MINIBAR appears silently on the screen, stamping out her tiny human voice with its typographic rigour. In an age where celebrity has become a bloated and meaningless concept, McKinney is a hysterical breath of fresh air – she might be completely insane, but no one can doubt that her motives were sincere, and that she committed these acts out of passion rather than a calculated attempt to reach the front page of the Daily Mirror.

The tabloid investigators and journalists are not vilified for their part in the story. They conducted themselves with all the greedy, immoral, selfishness we have come to associate with this valueless industry; yet somehow we forgive them because they seem as bewildered as everyone else. They are caught up in the whirlwind of McKinney’s story, and it is difficult to blame them without secretly feeling like a hypocritic.

This is not a moralistic film in any sense – Morris is far too intelligent a filmmaker to bother ascribing blame or innocence in this debauched scenario. Joy is not portrayed as a mad woman or a martyr, but she is clearly a bit of both. And as our image of her skips between innocent martyr, malicious spinster, passionate romantic, meek victim, etc. we come to recognise the essential shortcoming of ‘tabloid’ reporting… there are no simple answers in real life, and things only appear black and white when they appear below a red banner.

REVIEW: Archipelago (dir. Joanna Hogg)

Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Kate Fahy, Lydia Leonard, Amy Lloyd, Christopher Baker

Following on from her critically acclaimed debut, ‘Unrelated’, Joanna Hogg’s second feature has all the latent, simmering power and bland, maritime settings of a John Cheever short story. Simpering matriarch Patricia (a prim and traditional woman who has been sculpted around her own name) has dragged her twenty-something son (the directionless Edward) and daughter (the sly and cutting Cynthia) to their lonely, abandoned family retreat in the Isles of Scilly. The father is noticeably absent from the trip, and so the odd family is completed by a meek cook, Rose, and Patricia’s painting teacher.

As the uncomfortable family go through the motions of a happy holiday – picnics on the cliffs, visits to old restaurants, etc – they slowly unfurl the lingering resentment and personal disappointment they all feel towards one another. Edward has decided to validate his existence by saving Africa, one helpless orphan at a time; Cynthia directs her scathing and surgical wit against her frater and mater in the hope that it will prevent her from turning it against herself, and really accepting how sad and empty she is; and Patricia is so desperate to play happy families that she seems constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

The film revolves around the extraordinary improvisations and spontaneity of the actors, all rehearsed and coerced wonderfully by the unquestionable talent of Joanna Hogg. The performances are natural and quiet, refreshing and understated. The finest example of this comes when the family head for an empty restaurant. Cynthia tries to keep everybody happy by enthusiastically suggesting which table they should take and what order they should sit in. Patricia’s muttering silence causes the group to move numerous times before finally settling down. When the food arrives Cynthia’s bird is apparently undercooked and she demands that her meal be returned, but she is humiliated by her mother’s decision to keep the same dish – “Mum and Ed are allergic to complaining”. All this tension is sliced open by a moment of comedic genius when, after a few minutes of awkward silence, Patricia remarks, “It’s actually quite good.”

There are other examples of Hogg’s confidence as a filmmaker, and willingness to juggle humour and tension until the two bleed into one another, and the viewer doesn’t know whether to worry for these poor souls or laugh at them. At one point, after a heated argument between the nuclear family, we cut to Rose cleaning an array of menacing blades in the kitchen. If there was any chance of the visual metaphor being overlooked, Rose suddenly emerges with an even bigger knife. We are in the palm of Hogg’s hand, and she is tickling us.

The cinematography is often flat and unattractive, but the filmmakers do well with the use of available light and evidently inexpensive production design to evoke the tonal qualities of the story. Sometimes the interior of the cottage feels warm and lively, at other times cold and vacuous; and the bland uninviting weather and harshness of the terrain are often beautifully rendered.

Joanna Hogg has saved the British Film Industry from another embarrassing LFF, and shamed the UKFC who have once again failed to notice and support a sparkling homegrown talent.

REVIEW: The Arbor (dir. Clio Barnard)

Cast: Manjinder Virk, Neil Dudgeon, Monica Dolan

Undoubtedly the most over-hyped and over-celebrated films of the festival; one can only assume that it was our desperation to laud a British filmmaker that allowed this hollow, meandering husk of a film to garner such critical praise. The admittedly pioneering approach to documentary filmmaking takes as its subject the equally over-hyped alcoholic playwright and ‘Paul Abbot-precursor’ Andrea Dunbar. The film takes real interview recordings with Dunbar’s children and brings them to life using lip-synching technology and a number of specially trained actors. The film also cuts in scenes from Dunbar’s first play (from which the film takes its name) that are filmed on the street where Dunbar lived as a child.

This could have been a superb one-hour TV documentary – and would have been deserving of praise in that form – but the pointless attempt to string it out into a cinematic feature have forced the filmmakers to search for subject matter that just isn’t there. All the expensive equipment and talented cameramen in the world cannot mask the fact that Andrew Dunbar is not interesting enough to be the subject of a feature film; and eventually the filmmakers reluctantly bow to this inevitability and turn to her troubled daughter, Lorraine, instead. Unfortunately, Lorraine is just a self-obsessed crackhead who hates her mum and accidentally killed her own child. They are a dime-a-dozen in the Western world, and the decision to take advantage of her predicament is cheap and constitutes exploitative and insincere filmmaking of the highest order.

The only possible justification for this segway is the idea that the film constitutes the play Dunbar would have written if she were still alive today. In Robin Soans’ play ‘A State Affair’ (2000) – in which he revisits Dunbar’s life and surroundings – there is a monologue of Lorraine explaining that if ‘Rita, Sue, and Bob Too’ (Dunbar’s most famous play) had been written in 2000, it would have been about smackheads instead of drunks. Perhaps Barnard is suggesting that, with the continuing collapse of our nation, in 2010 Dunbar would have written about women who are addicted to crack cocaine and get imprisoned by abusive partners and accidentally kill their own infant children with methadone overdoses.

REVIEW: The Taqwacores (dir. Eyad Zahra)

Cast: Bobby Naderi, Noureen Dewulf, Dominic Rains, Nav Mann, Ian Tran

The Taqwacores is an adaptation of the scene-defining Muslim punk novel by American Muslim author Michael Muhammad Knight. The story follows Yusef, a bookish engineering student who arrives in Buffalo, New York eager to study, but finds himself living in a squat house filled with bizarre, transgressive rebels and wasters with one thing in common… they are all Muslim. The group hold Friday prayer and take their religion seriously, but by night their crumbling abode is transformed into a makeshift hangout for the town’s punk scene. As Yusef comes to terms with this dichotomy, he learns an enormous amount about himself, his history, and most importantly his future.

This is an interesting insight into a generation of Western Muslims who have truly fallen through the cracks. They are outcast by the American Dream and vilified by their own religious communities who consider them to be broken and poisonous sinners; but, which is worse, they are also shunned by the supposed antithesis of the American Dream – the great subculture of punks and transgressives that the enfranchised middle classes are powerless to eradicate – for being dark-skinned terrorists. Without any subculture to fall back on, they are forced to make things up as they go along, borrowing from punks, hippies, rock n’ roll, Muslim thinkers, etc. There is only one rule for the group: all are welcome. The only way they can prevent their group becoming a sect is to remain open to all. The rule is there is no rule. But when the gang decide to put on a concert and invite all the Muslim punk bands from across the country, their determination to welcome groups with conflicting interests leads to a tragic and destructive end.

The book has been referred to as a Muslim ‘The Catcher in the Rye’, but any similarity here can only refer to the novels’ social importance. In terms of narrative, this is more like a Mulsim ‘The Great Gatsby’, as Yusef is a quiet and empty vessel through whose eyes we witness the captivating mystery of Jehangir, the amazing Ayyub, Dee Dee Ali, and many more.

A pertinent film reference would be ‘My Private Idaho’, a film who’s faded colours and barren locales play host to a rambunctious and fascinating crowd of hopeful misfits. Some of the acting is questionable, and some of the ideas handled in a fairly brusque manner, but surely that is the whole point of ‘punk’? This film is not trying to be poetic or moving, it is a testament to the ruthless energy of the punk aesthetic and the cinema of transgression. Nick Zedd would be proud.

REVIEW: Amigo (dir. John Sayles)

Cast: Garret Dillahunt, Joel Torres, Yul Vasquez, Chris Cooper

John Sayles is not the most interesting or controversial of filmmakers, but he is surely one of the most consistent and unfussy. It is easy to find a common thread running through his career, from his debut ‘The Return of the Secaucus Seven’ (1976) through to this latest film: well-conceived characters dealing with tangible problems in normal, human ways. In the face of this beguiling simplicity, there is little room for stylised lighting, complicated camerawork, award-stealing performances, or CGI.

This time, Sayles has chosen the American-Philippines war, at the turn of the last century, as his area of study. When a band of US troops arrive in a small farming village to set up a garrison, the head of the village is stuck between obeying his new masters, appeasing his countryfolk, and dealing with the menacing presence of the guerrilla warriors (led by his brother) who lurk in the surrounding jungle.

The cast is largely unfamiliar, and the production design is straight out of a TV period drama; but the quality of the performances makes for an engaging film. The sturdiness of the storytelling and the strength of the characters are reminiscent of great studio films of the 1950s, such as Red River or even The Bridge over the River Kwai. The story builds to its climactic crescendo with patience rather than gusto – with understated undulations of laughter and sighs, rather than fireworks and wailing.

This is by no means a Sayles masterpiece, however, and after a while the film begins to feel stretched. This is just a symptom of Sayles capacity as a filmmaker – he cares too deeply about his stories to curtail them, but he loves the art of narrative filmmaking too much to leave the film open ended. The result is a curt and unfulfilling ending that does no justice to the story that precedes it.

REVIEW: Gainsbourg (dir. Joann Sfar)

Cast: Eric Elmosnino, Lucy Gordon, Laetitia Casta,

The name Serge Gainsbourg brings to mind that peculiarly French brand of charming and sexually liberated arrogance. His music was playful and rude, his showmanship delightfully droll. Cigarette in hand, with croaking wisps of biting sarcasm, he encapsulated perfectly the laconic but immense passion of the French spirit. But behind this illuminated public persona lay an introverted and stubborn individual. Gainbourg’s stooping physique may have seemed, to his fans, like the sulking, lackadaisical haunch of a genius; but in fact it was the gait of a stubborn man ploughing forward through his life without a thought for the friends, relatives, and lovers he was leaving in his wake.

Gainsbourg was born to Russian-Jewish parents in Paris in 1928. His father was a bar pianist and his mother a soprano, but Gainsbourg was determined to become a painter and, after being expelled from school, he enrolled at the Ecole de Beaux Arts. He played piano in the bars and clubs of Paris to pay for his life as a struggling artist; and in 1958, after meeting the novelist and satirical songwriter Boris Vian, finally realised he was much more talented as a songwriter than a painter.

He gained notoriety writing the song Sucettes à l’anis for teen idol France Gall, which included the lyrics “Annie likes lollipops/ Aniseed lollipops/ The aniseed taste flows down Annie’s throat/ She is in paradise.” He began a passionate and famous affair with Bridget Bardot before falling desperately in love with British actress Jane Birkin on the set of Slogan in 1968. Their relationship was immortalised by the song Je t’aime… moi non plus, which topped global charts despite being banned on radio and being singled out by the Vatican for its explicit lyrics and use of ‘orgasmic’ sound effects.

The brightness of this glamorous and blessed life was dimmed by Gainsbourg’s excessive lifestyle. After suffering a heart attack in 1973, he announced he would fix the problem by “upping his alcohol and tobacco consumption.” He was untouchable as an artist, but unreachable as a human being. He blamed his fits of rage and waywardness on his alter-ego “Gainsbarre”; and as Gainsbarre began to take over, Gainsbourg’s life began to fall apart. Birkin left him in 1980, stating that she “loved Gainsbourg, but was scared of Gainsbarre”. He died, a recluse, in 1991, and the public outpouring of grief affirmed his status as a French cultural icon.

Joann Sfar's lugubrious and ethereal film is a delightful, thrilling tour through Gainsbourg’s life. Sfar takes every facet of Gainsbourg's life - from his rebellious but starry-eyed youth to his stubborn and lonely autumn years - and mingles them with a touch of Russian fairytale to create an evocative and pleasantly sporadic homage. Given the period of Gainsbourg’s fame, it would have been easy to turn this film into a New Wave homage with grainy jump-cuts and lots of bed-haired couples arguing in kitchens while smoking filter-less cigarettes. But while Sfar has paid tribute to this evocative period in French culture, he has also piqued out less obvious elements of the Gainsbourg legend (namely his Russian ancestry and love of folk stories) to create a magical and floating story with giant puppets and surreal Parisian rooftop settings.

He has also taken an unusual route with the soundtrack, choosing to rerecord all of Gainsbourg’s songs using contemporary bands and members of the cast. Sfar has not attempted to entirely understand Gainsbourg or have the final say on his image; he has simply provided a fascinating and refreshing perspective on this overlooked and enigmatic icon.