Bond composer John Barry dies aged 77

One of the cinema's most unique and distinguished artists passed away from a heart attack in New York today. John Barry was born in Yorkshire in 1933 to a piano teacher mother and a father who ran a chain of theatres and cinemas. After serving in a military band during World War 2, Barry found success arranging the music for the first in Albert 'Cubby' Broccoli's 007 series, Dr. No.

Barry went on to create the theme tunes for 11 Bond films, including Gold Finger and You Only Live Twice. The Bond franchise is the most important and iconic collection of films ever created on this humble island; and for all the wonderfully camp credit sequences and droll film stars that have appeared before countless generations of film fans' eyes, it is Barry's theme music, thundering and floating past our ears, that holds the entire myth together.

Barry went on to create legendary, and often Oscar winning, scores for countless films, including Dances With Wolves, The Lion in Winter, Born Free, and Out of Africa. In 2001 he was awarded the prestigious BAFTA Fellowship for his outstanding contribution to the British film industry, and to the cinema in general. He will be remembered as a humble, unfussy, and playful man with a singular and spectacular musical vision.

REVIEW: The Fighter (dir. David O. Russell)

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Melissa Leo

‘Irish’ Mickey Ward (Wahlberg) was considered a thuggish brawler, and mocked as a ‘stepping stone’ fighter brought in to elevate the careers of his opponents. His older half-brother Dick Ecklund (Bale) glimpsed success when he “knocked down” Sugar Ray Leonard in 1978; but Leonard actually tripped, and still went on to win the fight by unanimous decision. Both brothers – and their mother/manager Alice (Leo) – have been choked by the pathos of that moment ever since. Dick’s career declined, and by the late 80s he was happily juggling a crack addiction with his duties as Mickey’s coach (while also harbouring loud desires for an imminent comeback). Alice was as buried in hopeless denial as her most beloved eldest son; and in the midst of all this destructive, insular melancholy, it is easy to see how Mickey’s career was circling the drain.

But then something changed… and by the time Ward finally retired in 2003 he had won a WBU welterweight title and had been awarded ‘Fight of the Year’ on three separate occasions by Ring magazine. This stunning turnaround – and the hurdles over which Ward had to jump to tackle his family and all the other social issues that had kept him in the gutter for so long – is the central focus of David O. Russell’s wonderfully entertaining film.

Russell is rarely mentioned in the same breath as the other American indie ‘auteurs’ of his loosely defined generation. But his breakthrough success – the bizarre and loveable ‘Spanking the Monkey’, which followed a teenage boy on the cusp of manhood dealing with his Oedipal mother – proved his ability to portray fragile and awkward familial relationships in a surreal and unique fashion on film. Having dealt with everything from the Gulf War to Sartre since, The Fighter provides an opportunity to return to the realm of the domestic, albeit on a much larger scale.

Much of this story may seem twee and self-aggrandising (the break-ups and make-ups, etc); but even if the story doesn’t quite stand up to factual interrogation, there is something soothing and enjoyable about hearing the story the way Dick and Mickey would tell it. The film is bookended by interviews with the brothers (the opening shows Bale and Wahlberg in character, the final credits show real footage of Dick and Mickey) and there is a sense that we are hearing the story from their slightly deluded but wonderfully colloquial and punchdrunk perspective.

It would be remiss of me to review a boxing movie without assessing the all important fight scenes. Russell opts for a hyper-realistic portrayal of the fights, with over-exposed, grainy TV footage and re-recordings of the actual commentary and graphics from the HBO footage of the fights. The close up blows, as is always the case in films, seem more explosive and intense than real boxing; but Ward’s famous fights really were as explosive as they look in the movies. At one point during the Shea Neary title fight, commentator Jim Lampley quipped, “this is like movie fighting” (although including that particular line in the film would have been one knowing, self-referential step too far, even for the director of I Heart Huckabees!)

Russell seems to stumble during the climactic Shea Neary fight, however; as his sharp vision falters, he slips every ‘boxing movie’ cliché into the fight. There are slow-motion swings, cut-aways to worried girlfriends, and even a hilarious ‘double duck’ as Ward dodges two punches in a style more akin to Adam West than a professional boxer. But that is all part of the charm of watching a story the way we would have heard it if we sat in a bar with Dick and Mickey. It is fantasised and giddy, but truthful in a way that even the most realistic of films often fail to achieve.

Melissa Leo is excellent as the hopeless and broken Alice. As the story develops we realise that she started out as a proud mother with unshakeable self-belief; but when life deals you a few too many harsh hands, self-belief quickly turns to deluded and defensive bitterness. In a place like Lowell, confronting failure can be a dangerous thing, and it is an almost existential necessity to block it out and ruthlessly protect the myth of your own making. Bale’s performance is so good it almost collapses into mimicry, but his twisted and terrifyingly accurate ability to portray the quirks and simmering undertones of difficult characters ensures that his performances always transcend such claims. He is one of the few actors working in Hollywood today that elevates acting into the realm of art. His performances are windows into the souls of men.

Jackson's Way: The Jacksathon

In the vast empty space that constitutes a human life, there is a tiny pinprick of purpose (or ‘pointfulness’) at the centre. Philosophers, religions, life coaches, and sociologists have dedicated entire lifetimes to uncovering exactly what this pinprick contains; but Chris John Jackson has an alternative approach – avoid the pinprick at all costs, and bathe in the eternal radiance of pointlessness.

Jackson first came up with his pioneering behavioural science while standing on the periphery of a business park in which he was supposed to be attending a meeting. He had an epiphany, and realised that attending was not his only option, just the only option with a point. Instead, Jackson decided to explore the vast primordial ocean of purposeless options that lay before him, and stood in the same spot for four days, scrutinising every window frame and landscape garden in the estate.

Several bestselling self-help books and numerous world tours later, Jackson is now one of the leading figures in the world of life coaching. Publications like ‘Jackson: Just a Man’ and ‘Maximum Jackson’ have propelled him into the limelight, and he has decided to undertake a grinding tour of England’s capital to encompass as many of his fans as possible.

The basis of Jackson’s Way (and his plan is, most definitely, a Way) is the execution of 'Jactions' which, when carried through to their illogical conclusion, produce a sense of very real nausea. The simplest Jaction, according to Jackson, is picking up a piece of litter from one part of a city, and depositing that piece of litter in a different part of the same city. This Jaction could be compounded by collecting a different piece of litter from the place where the first was dropped, and so on. But there are other simple Jactions that can be conducted in the safety of one’s living room, such as trying to put your hand in two places at the same time, or trying to make two words that don’t rhyme, rhyme. These activities are, necessarily, impossible, and therefore ‘pointless’; but their pointlessness does not negate their worth. In fact, in Jackson’s Way, it promotes their worth.

This tour only incorporates Level 1 lessons, but my class was treated to quite an exhilarating and complicated ‘compound Jaction’, orchestrated by Jackson himself, and I will endeavour to recreate it for you here. On stage, Jackson was preparing to pick up a bottle of water by conducting the exact action that one would usually conduct to pick up a bottle of water, except he was standing 20ft away from it. At the same time, Jackson threw a towel (his most famous teaching aid) into the air and the audience were tasked with screaming ‘Robert Passad’ (the name of an audience member at the end of row D) over and over again in an attempt to make the towel float. In the event of our succeeding, the Talkshopinar (Jackson has combined the very different environments of a talk, workshop, and seminar into one cohesive whole) would be adjourned and the entire audience would join Jackson for a drink at the bar. But the towel did not float, and so Jackson made a special noise – a sharp exhalation combined with an attempt at a whipping sound – and proceeded to engage a specific audience member, Alex, in a conversation about Poland until Alex felt nauseous. Once this had been achieved, Alex gave the universal signal to show that he had achieved the fulfilment of his Jaction (shouting the word “achieved!” while also punching a fist into the air). This triggered a sequence of four shouts of ‘Alex!’ from pre-assigned audience members. On the first ‘Alex!’ a separate audience member was picked to leave his seat and stand against the far wall of the auditorium, staring at it until he discovered an entire world there. On the second ‘Alex!’ another audience member raced across the stage and danced alone in the wings (stage-left) where nobody could see him. On the third ‘Alex!’ Jackson threw a copy of a Clive Cussler novel to the real Robert Passad, who was expected to read out loud while Jackson attempted to move Finchley northwards despite having no qualifications whatsoever to commend him for the task. And on the final ‘Alex!’ a fourth audience member charged out of the auditorium, through the bar area, out of the building, and waited outside until a word came into his head. By the time he returned with his word, the various audience members had almost all achieved nausea (except the indomitable Robert Passad, who continued reading for some four minutes before succumbing) and the room went silent as we waited to see if Jackson would correctly guess the word the fourth audience member had selected. On the count of three both men blurted forth – the audience member said ‘pointless’, Jackson said ‘daffodil’.

And so ended an overwhelming ‘compound Jaction’ that left the air alive with the possibilities of pointlessness. Even the most sceptical audience members began to mutter with a new enthusiasm and expectancy. “Maybe this crazed yank is on to something!” they thought.

Jackson’s Way doesn’t stop at actions though, and he went on to explain the importance of collecting things that usually seem invisible – either because they are beside something purposeful and visible, or because they distort something purposeful and visible, or because they are the very opposite of something that is purposeful and visible. Objects such as rags of carpet that, when bundled up in a certain way, loosely resemble an elephant; or a single walkie-talkie; or a hand-dryer that no longer serves a purpose other than being heavy to carry. And once you have mastered this concept with ‘things’, Jackson hinted at the potential to apply it to ‘thoughts’ as well; although the concept of thinking the opposite of what you are thinking was a step too far for a Level 1 class.

My Jaction for today, in case you hadn’t noticed, was to write out in as much monotonous detail as possible, what Jackson did during this evening’s talkshopinar at the artsdepot in North Finchley; knowing full well that nobody will ever read it. If you do come across it, and read the entire thing, then I would like to congratulate you on completing your first Jaction - the last few minutes of your life have been consumed by something remarkably, beautifully pure and pointless.

http://www.jacksons-way.com/

REVIEW: Barney's Version (dir. Richard J. Lewis)

Barney Panofsky (Giamatti) has a son that refuses to speak to him, a daughter that dutifully suffers his company, three ex-wives (one of whom he is still desperately and hopelessly in love with) who want him dead, a TV company that is going down the pan after decades of churning out utter tripe, and a drunken ex-cop who is still trying to pin a thirty year old murder on him… life is not great. But drowning under this cacophony of slurs and mistakes is a pained man who can’t quite pin down the actual, tangible points at which he went wrong. Well what we are about to hear… is Barney’s version.

Barney begins life – as far as this story is concerned – as the square, Jewish friend of a rag-tag band of American travellers screwing and doping their way around Italy in the 1960s. He marries a “conversation piece” hippy that he has seemingly knocked up, but when she miscarries a mixed race baby he refuses to speak to her, and finds her dead in her apartment a few days later. Barney escapes back to Canada to marry a “nice Jewish girl” (Driver) and work in the film business. But on his wedding night he falls heels-over-head in love with another woman – the woman he will lie beside for eternity – Miriam (Pike).

His marriage to the Jewish princess is a disaster from the off, and when he finally finds her humping his heroin-addict best friend Boogie (Speedman), he can barely contain his delight at his impending, financially risk-free, divorce. But he cannot forgive Boogie, and in a drunken fight he accidentally lets off a few rounds from his gun, and Boogie disappears into the lake behind their cottage, never to be seen again. With a hot-headed cop (Addy) on his tale, Barney heads straight to New York to woo Miriam, and finally seems to have found happiness… until he eventually manages to screw that up too.

This adaptation of Mordecai Richler’s 1997 novel flitters between bizarre tragic-comedy and straight drama. There are quirky layers to Richler’s writing – e.g. Barney’s company is called ‘Totally Unnecessary Productions’ – that bring the film into line with the likes of Sideways, American Splendor (no coincidence who starred in both those films) and Election. Most of the film thrives off this impossibly bizarre and satirical subject matter; there is a flippancy and incorrigibility to the style and pace of the storytelling that matches perfectly with our lovable, pig-headed hero.

But this film tries to be a bit more grown up than its ‘quirky indie’ brethren… and it doesn’t quite manage it. The vast timescale means that this film needs to be a bit more patient in its pacing, and unfortunately there are points at which the tragic-comic tone collapses into melodrama with a reliance on clichéd ‘standing in an autumnal graveyard while violins weep through the soundtrack’ moments that feel Totally Unnecessary.

Around award season, it is important to take note of a few other elements of a film that sometimes go unnoticed. The make-up is absolutely wonderful - understated and impeccable, and when Giamatti appears on screen at his actual age he somehow looks abnormally young because we have become so used to seeing him as a natural old man. The ‘performance by an English actress’ is also essential at this time of year, and Rosamund Pike has delivered a career best performance which may garner her some attention at the BAFTAs (although one doubts it will be enough to make Los Angeles sit up and take note).

83rd Oscars: Nominations Announced

The Golden Globes' older, more responsible sibling is preparing to rouse itself from another grumpy sleep. As expected, there are very few surprises (and that, ladies and gentleman, is called a 'paraprosdokian'). Ryan Gosling's ommission from the Best Actor category for his startling performance in Blue Valentine is enough to make my boycott the awards, but if any of you still care... here are the nominations:

Best Picture
127 Hours
Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The King’s Speech
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter’s Bone

Directing
Darren Aronofsky – Black Swan
Joel and Ethan Coen – True Grit
David Fincher – The Social Network
Tom Hooper – The King’s Speech
David O. Russell – The Fighter

Actor in a Leading Role
Javier Bardem – Biutiful
Jeff Bridges – True Grit
Jesse Eisenberg – The Social Network
Colin Firth – The King’s Speech
James Franco – 127 Hours

Actress in a Leading Role
Annette Benning – The Kids Are All Right
Nicole Kidman – Rabbit Hole
Michelle Lawrence – Winter’s Bone
Natalie Portman – Black Swan
Michelle Williams – Blue Valentine

Actor in a Supporting Role
Christian Bale – The Fighter
John Hawkes – Winter’s Bone
Jeremy Renner – The Town
Mark Ruffalo – The Kids Are All Right
Geoffrey Rush – The King’s Speech

Actress in a Supporting Role
Amy Adams – The Fighter
Helena Bonham Carter – The King’s Speech
Melissa Leo – The Fighter
Hailee Steinfeld – True Grit
Jacki Weaver – Animal Kingdom

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
127 Hours by Danny Boyle & Simon Beaufoy
The Social Network by Aaron Sorkin
Toy Story 3 by Michael Arndt; Story by John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich
True Grit by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
Winter’s Bone by Debra Granik & Anne Rosellini

Writing (Original Screenplay)
Another Year by Mike Leigh
The Fighter by Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson
Inception by Christopher Nolan
The Kids Are All Right by Lisa Cholodenko & Stuart Blumberg
The King’s Speech by David Seidler

Foreign Language Film
Biutiful – Mexico
Dogtooth – Greece
In a Better World – Denmark
Incendies – Canada
Outside the Law (Hors-la-loi) – Algeria

Animated Feature Film
How to Train Your Dragon
The Illusionist
Toy Story 3

REVIEW: Morning Glory (dir. Roger Michell)

Cast: Rachel McAdams, Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton, Jeff Goldblum, Patrick Wilson

Becky (McAdams) is a prissy, neurotic workaholic – a dream employee, but a nightmare date. As producer of a suburban morning news programme, and with the unusual hours that this entails, Becky lives in a lonely cycle of blackberry chimes, failed dates, and take-out food. It all seems worth it with her inevitable promotion on the horizon; but when the anticipated meeting with her boss results in her dismissal rather than promotion, Becky finds herself speechless, helpless, and jobless. After weeks of racing around Manhattan handing out resumes Becky finally lands a job as producer of Daybreak – a crumbling morning show at an underperforming station, assembled from a hopeless gaggle of misfits and crackpots, with an ageing, egotistical presenter, Colleen (Keaton).

Becky, determined to keep the job and improve the ratings, immediately fires Colleen’s sleazy co-anchor (a move that gains her a lot of popularity) and goes in search of a cheap replacement. Her best option seems to be a horse-faced weatherman from Florida, until she discovers that legendary news anchor Mike Pomeroy (Ford) has a year left on his contract with the station. Pomeroy is an aloof, growling alcoholic with an abject hatred of modernity and ‘sweetness’, and he refuses to entertain this insufferable little girl’s request. Faced with an ironclad contract, he is forced to join the tacky show, but as Becky is about to find out… you can only lead a horse to water.

Becky seems to be winning people over at the station, not least the station’s most eligible bachelor, Adam (Wilson); but Pomeroy refuses to do anything other than sulk on camera and deride the tetchy Colleen’s credentials, and news that the show will be cancelled if ratings don’t improve leaves Becky desperate for a solution. In a short space of time, Becky needs to make the show more entertaining (i.e. trashy) while also persuading the pretentious Pomeroy that the show has integrity, and spending more time thinking about her personal life with Adam. There is no way she can do all this on her own… so will Pomeroy come out of his cave and help the poor girl before it is too late?

Roger Michell’s film is a straightforward romantic comedy, refreshingly strong on the latter and sparing with the former. This might be Becky’s story, but her personally romance with Adam is sidelined in order to give Harrison Ford as much screen time as possible. Rachel McAdams is perfect in the leading role – she is a talented and confident actress with enough experience to know that this was always going to be Ford’s show. She is also, thankfully, wise enough to realise that trying to imbue Becky with attractive qualities like being demure, or mysterious, or latently sexual would never have worked. This girl is a sickly-sweet, anxious, twitching fawn who wears her heart on her sleeve; she is adorably pathetic, and McAdams pulls it off perfectly without trying to steal the show.

Ford is wonderful as the bitter, boozing hermit – he growls and moans, but there is always a playful glint in his eye and the faintest wrinkle of a smile radiating through his dimples. He has been playing ‘disinterested cool’ since we first met the captain of the Millennium Falcon thirty years ago; and he just gets cooler with age. The only thing more entertaining than his spats with the feisty young McAdams are the catfights he shares with the deliciously mean and simpering Diane Keaton. Michell has wisely avoided ‘Sex and The City’ romance or a commentary on the quality of network television in favour of a long series of anecdotes and quick-witted arguments. It is a well-structured, solid Hollywood ‘movie’ that will provide a bit of harmless entertainment… it is like a donut with plenty of sugar, but just enough bran to make it filling.

REVIEW: Neds (dir. Peter Mullan)

Cast: Conor McCarron, Joe Szula, Mhairi Anderson, Gary Milligan, John Joe Hay

John McGill is a diamond-in-the-rough, a studious youngster with academic potential buried deep in Glasgow’s wallowing and futile projects. The hope, of course, is that such a talented youngster could be plucked from obscurity – perhaps by some needy philanthropist or do-gooder civil servant. But this is Britain, and the child is left to tumble hopelessly into the depraved world of gangsters, scars and cheap liquor that has swallowed previous generations of Glaswegian delinquents. When a local gang discovers that John is the younger brother of an infamous local thug, they invite him to join their ranks. John slips easily into this new lifestyle of territorial knife fights and school absence. But can he scramble back towards the light before it is too late?

Peter Mullan is a superb Scottish actor, and fast becoming one of the country’s most accomplished filmmakers. This film’s tangible realism may not quite hold up to comparisons with Ken Loach, but there are certainly similarities to the punch-drunk world-weary anger of Alan Clarke; and the film is cut through with a troubling fantasy element that Lindsay Anderson would not have frowned at.

REVIEW: Black Swan (dir. Darren Aronofsky)

Cast: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Winona Ryder, Barbara Hershey

Darren Aronofsky has never been scared to push himself, and his audience, into new and uncomfortable territory. After the unequivocal success of his early films, he decided to throw himself into a highly stylised, epic CGI love story with ‘The Fountain’. He followed up with a stripped down, nuanced ‘cinema vérité’ exploration of a struggling wrestler. And now he has thrown the film community another curveball with ‘Black Swan’, a dark and stylised psychological thriller set in the isolated world of ballet.

Nina (Portman) is a prim and desperately enthusiastic ballerina with the New York City Ballet. She lives with her mother Erica (Hershey), a ballerina who “never quite made it”, but fortunately ended up with a child that she could blame for her failure. Erica is a mother so bristling with passive aggressive, maniacal tendencies that even Hitchcock would tense up in her presence. When Nina is elevated to the most prestigious role in the company, that of Prima Ballerina, by the sexual and totalitarian company boss Thomas (Cassel), Erica can only muster a wincing smile to cover the sting of jealousy. That is more than can be said for the rest of the company, however, as they whisper and shun their new queen like bickering school children.

To add to Nina’s woes, the previous Prima Ballerina, Beth (Ryder), has attempted suicide by jumping in front of a car; and a new ballerina, Lilly (Kunis), has arrived from San Francisco with a lawless, highly sexual dancing style that has Thomas panting like a dog. Nina isn’t given long to fret over these fraying threads on the seams of her dream, as Thomas is already digging away at her prim image, trying to penetrate her dull propriety and illicit some sexuality. Nina is playing the lead in ‘Swan Lake’, and while she was born to play the White swan, she is incapable of exhibiting the dark passion of the Black swan. As the pressure mounts up and Nina is expelled into a world outside her mother’s grasp – a world of loneliness and chaos and sexuality – Nina’s mental control melts away with horrifying and tragic consequences.

As might be expected when an ‘auteur’ makes a ‘genre’ film, there is an endless list of masterpieces that are called to mind while watching ‘Black Swan’. ‘The Red Shoes’ is an obvious example, although Aronofsky claims not to have seen it until late into development; ‘All About Eve’ is a painful depiction of a star’s jealous and unstable backstage breakdown; ‘Belle de Jour’ is a chilling journey through a woman’s discovery of her own dangerous sexuality; and almost everything Polanski ever made seems to have inspired the twitching tension and cataclysmic darkness that underpins this film.

But all this means that, at times, this film feels less like a ‘psychological thriller’ and more like a Media Studies exercise in ‘how to make a psychological thriller’. There are haunting reflections, hazy ‘doubles’, archaic mothers, creeping shadows, shifting timeframes; all the tropes of the genre are carefully checked off the list. Aronofsky gets an A*, but nobody likes a teacher’s pet.

Perhaps I am being too hard. The story holds up and remains cohesive and intriguing throughout (although there are moments when one thinks to oneself “why should I care about this prissy little dancer?”) and the technical accomplishments justify the film’s existence all on their own. Aronofsky has bravely chosen to stick with the unsteady, jolting ‘cinema vérité’ camerawork of ‘The Wrestler’, despite the general assumption that this style of camerawork is the antithesis of the ‘thriller’. This lends the film an unnerving realism, which is complimented by the use of 16mm film (Aronofsky is one of the few remaining stalwarts against the RED camera) and the oppressive, drained landscapes of New York City.

But it is when the dancing begins that Aronofsky really begins to enjoy himself. Aronofsky has collaborated with Benjamin Millepied, a highly respected ballet dancer and choreographer, to choreograph the film, and they have treated the camera as a cohesive member of the routines. The camera swoops and glides and pirouettes around the dancers, creating a kinetic synergy that is quite moving and beautiful. This may not be Aronofsky’s most accomplished or original film, but it is a visceral and visionary take on an exciting and under-explored genre.

REVIEW: Conviction (dir. Tony Goldwyn)

Cast: Hilary Swank, Sam Rockwell, Minnie Driver, Melissa Leo

Another heart-wrenching ‘true story’, ‘Conviction’ tells the story of Betty Anne Waters, a wife and mother from Massachusetts who dedicated her life to becoming a lawyer so she could defend her brother Kenny, who was given life without parole for first-degree murder in 1983. As with so many ‘true stories’ these days, the source material is compelling, and the resulting film crass and predictable. If there were a Dummies Guide to winning an Oscar, this film would make a great case study.

It is completely inconceivable that events really transpired in the manicured order they appear onscreen – with revelations and obstacles and highs and lows arriving at the exact moment we expect them. And what value (artistic or otherwise) is there in a film that butchers and edits the truth beyond all recognition, then slaps on a moving score and pays top dollar for a famous actress? Certainly not the sort of value that should be expected of a festival film.

However, given the staggering number of terrible films emerging in recent years, it is perhaps unfair to be so hard on a film that rejoices in the traditional models of Hollywood storytelling. This film effortlessly hits every note with the sort of precision that will have Clint Eastwood worrying; and it will certainly tug at the heartstrings of audiences around the world. But it just isn’t honest enough to be considered ‘great’, and it is hard to imagine anybody leaving the cinema determined to rally against the American justice system… they will be too busy crying and praising Hilary Swank’s moving performance.

Swank plays completely against type as a feisty and determined young woman who single-handedly overcomes all the obstacles in her path to win the boxing match… I mean fly across the Pacific… wait, which Hilary Swank film is this again? The only surprising thing about ‘Conviction’ is the revelation that Minnie Driver is still alive and, apparently, finding employment in Los Angeles. Hooray for her.

REVIEW: 127 Hours (dir. Danny Boyle)

Cast: James Franco, Kate Mara, Amber Tamblyn, Clémence Poésy

Fans of Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, and 28 Days Later will delight in Boyle’s return to something a bit more punchy and gruesome after the sickly-sweet Slumdog Millionaire. 127 Hours tells the true story of Aron Ralston, an American mountain climber who was forced to cut off his own arm with a blunt army knife after he became trapped in a canyon in Utah. Ralston (Franco) belongs in the canyons, so Boyle doesn’t waste much time introducing us to whatever dull, domesticated contrivance of a life he leads beyond their sandstone borders. Within minutes of the film’s opening we are already soaring over Utah’s epic fiery plateaus and swooping down into it’s cracked surfaces to find Ralston leaping across dunes on his mountain bike. It is clear that Ralston is not a man with a hobby; he is a man with an unshakeable passion for this heartland of the West.

Ralston is completely alone here, free to whoop and scream with excitement and race around half naked if he so wishes. Even when he chances upon a pair of beautiful and hopelessly lost walkers – Kristi and Megan – he treats them as though they were his guests and shows them around a few of his favourite haunts. After a few hours splashing around in a subterranean creek, Ralston leaves the girls and continues on his lonely journey to ‘anywhere but home’. But soon after leaving the girls, Ralston loses his footing on a loose boulder and finds himself trapped, in an upright position, his feet barely able to touch the ground, with his right arm pinned between the canyon wall and the offending boulder that has travelled down with him.

This is already universally known as “that film where the guy chops his arm off”, and this twisted dramatic irony is where the real horror of the story lies. The viewer knows, from the moment the boulder lands, that Ralston will have no choice but to hack off his arm; and there is a hint of voyeurism inherent to the idea of just sitting and watching him squirm for 127 hours before finally handing us his pound of flesh. Boyle is acutely aware of this element of the film, and makes good use of the fact that Ralston was an avid self-publicist with a passion for gadgets, who seemingly never went anywhere without his tiny video camera. From the moment Ralston realises he may never get out of the canyon alive, he records messages to his loved ones and documents his declining health. In one surreal sequence he narrates his story as if he were on a daytime TV show, accentuating the idea that we are – in some sense – taking pleasure in his pain.

James Franco is utterly engaging and strangely entertaining as the unfortunate adventurer. He is forced to hold the audience’s attention on his own for almost the entire duration of the film (even Tom Hanks had Wilson!) While this is obviously testament to the actor’s talent, there is no doubt that the reason this film works so well is because of Boyle’s characteristically racy and visceral style of filmmaking. Combining elements of a ‘music video’ aesthetic with subtle, intimate moments and epic John Ford vistas, Boyle
never gives the audience a moment to tire of the difficult subject matter. And I won’t even begin to describe the stomach churning power of the climactic scene where Ralston slowly hacks away at his arm… you have to see it to believe it.

Lyrics to a song inspired by the Coen brother's True Grit

You asked me what became of her

Well that I really couldn’t tell

I once drank in a bar alongside her father

And the man that killed him as well

She arrived in town, her clothes in tatters

Wanting to see that man in chains

Unblemished, tearless, but soul-shattered

He’d taken off across the range

No lawman ranger could have helped her

No man in town would stoop to care

But I was weary of that fickle ordered town

So for fifty silver coins I said, “I’ll hunt that Chaney down”.

We headed out across the river

To Chocktaw country with no trail

How can you say no to a daughter

A lost girl with a ranch saddle looking so frail

In drunken dreams I heard her screaming

Down by the shallow riverside

He stole upon her and she didn’t have the fight

And I didn’t have the sober legs, I didn’t have the sight

I hunted down that ruthless villain

Forsook my life to save her soul

I charged him down, though it was one man against four

Lost my horse and took a bullet too, but sent him through Heaven’s door

I didn’t hear much from her after

The West diminished in my palm

I joined Bill Hickock and we took off on the road

A monument to what we’d lost, a show too soon to close

The plains lay dormant for the winter

Of man’s expanding gridlock gloom

No mystery left, no gold or thunder

No hangings, sheriffs, shoot-outs at noon

She’ll have a man, a child to mother

A plot of land that’s not for sale

White picket fences used to cover

The fiery plains from which she hailed

The fiery plains from which she hailed