Under the Skin

The film may have come and gone from your friendly neighbourhood kinemaplex by now, but since starting this blog I've felt compelled to commit at least some pen to paper - or finger to keyboard - on the hypnotic and unsettling third feature from Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast, Birth). Almost an exercise in join-the-dot cinema, the basic premise is relatively simple yet it begs you to ask "right, just what the f*ck is going on" at every turn. I guess it's less a film, more of an experience... and yes I said the same clichéd line about Gravity, to which this film bears no relation whatsoever. But do bear with me.

Scarlett Johansson is in fine form (and accent) as an otherworldly being who's landed on earth, picking off strangers seemingly at random in deepest, darkest Glasgow. Tempting them back to abandoned buildings to then enter an unexplained black box netherworld, complete with liquid floor and no chance of sex, we're never quite sure why she's luring men back to her lair. Nor why there's another alien who's taken to the streets on a motorcycle - is he monitoring her? What's his motivation? What's hers? You may find yourself demanding answers from minute one, but I fear this isn't what Glazer wants you to do. He could very well be recommending the book the film is based on for all we know, from which answers may come gushing forth. But in terms of the feature he's constructed it's very much a case of sit tight, don't ask questions, and see where your head is at when the lights come up.

Quite where your head will be at is another thing, but it's fair to say Under the Skin doesn't once leave you bored. From the inky cinematography by Daniel Landin (Director of Photography on Radiohead's claustrophobic No Surprises) to the seductively detached central performance from Johansson; from a horrifying beach scene at the film's midway point, through to its harrowing conclusion. It's a bleak and unhurried ride often recalling the work of Andrea Arnold (Red Road).

Indeed in keeping with Arnold-esque realism, many of the cast were non-actors filmed with hidden cameras in Johansson's transit van which she uses to prowl the streets, searching for her next conquest. It all adds to build an atmosphere that's so palpable and thick with tension you'd struggle to cut it with a machete. But where Arnold's work is firmly rooted in a stark reality, it's the underlying knowledge that Under the Skin is, at heart, a sci-fi film - complete with a 150,000 gallon on-set water tank and a flaming alien - that help to lend proceedings a sense of genuine foreboding, a throbbing energy that's hard to describe until you've surrendered to its tightening grip.

I'd love to reveal more about the film, but it'd be a shame to pull any rugs from under you if you're tempted to give it a go. And why not. Immerse yourself in Under the Skin, and let it get under yours.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

(Includes minor spoilers)

The now-booming business of IMAX is starting to have a lot to answer for. I'm all for big blockbusters; despite my past review quota, a large swathe of what I actually pay to see at the cinema is big, loud, and often daft Hollywood popcorn fodder of the highest order. And I've no shame in that. But now that screens have gotten bigger, sound systems have gotten louder, and anything a filmmaker dreams up can be thrown at the screen (providing the studio has the money, that is), well... you end up with things like the Transformers trilogy.

Or indeed, The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

It's not for a lack of trying to be great fun that this sequel fails - it's precisely because of it. Films that try to be all things to all people often fall far short of the mark they're aiming for. In looking to build on his solid first effort, director Marc Webb has seemingly aimed for a kiddie's market and made a mega-budget episode of The Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, whilst also throwing in some pretty bleak adult drama for good measure. And a side order of physical slapstick. And Jamie Foxx disappearing into a plug socket. Yes, I said plug socket.

To skim over the story, Spider-Man is now part of the fabric of New York, Peter Parker (the ever-charming Andrew Garfield) having grown comfortable with his alter-ego, despite being haunted by visions of his girlfriend's father, deceased Police Captain George Stacy (Denis Leary, who's over-serious grizzled visage fading into life made me laugh each time I saw it). Whilst juggling his college graduation with saving New Yorkers from dreadful third-rate villians such as Paul Giamatti's Rhino (one of the most appalling wastes of talent and screentime I've seen in a long while), he has to contend with Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) feeling left hung out to dry (as if we didn't have enough of Kirsten Dunst's pissing and moaning in the first trilogy) and his supposed 'best friend' Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) returning from, well, somewhere after years of obviously not giving two hoots about Parker. At least in the first trilogy there was a slow build to James Franco (the original and best Harry) becoming the Green Goblin - or Green Goblin II, as the fans might have it. In this film, he wanders onto set and starts playing a slimey moneyed villain from the get-go. And this is supposed to be Spidey's best friend?! Give me a f*cking break.

But none of these folks feature on any of the major posters, oh no. Forget Rhino, Gwen Stacy OR the token appearance of Green Goblin - there's a new kid in town, or rather a new loser, replete with bad haircut, bad teeth and a bad line in origin stories. Max Dillon (the aforementioned Jamie Foxx) is a forgotten employee at Oscorp, who bears a striking resemblance to Jim Carrey's Riddler in more ways than one. The intelligent geek with delusions of grandeur, the crummy apartment complete with a shrine to Spider-Man on his wall (he saved his life a few minutes ago, in case you'd got caught up with one of the other dozen storylines this film wrestles with). After falling into a tank of genetically modified electric eels (naturally) he becomes Electro, his teeth magically fixed, and is clearly very upset with the entire world for not paying attention to him. Cue expected chaos, and Electro turning himself and his snazzy rubber suit into electricity and disappearing into a plug socket (yes, once again, I said plug socket). Oh, and a climactic scene in a power station where the musical refrains of Itsy Bitsy Spider are played out as he throws Spider-Man around the transmission towers. This is the sound of electricity making the music, by the way - just in case you needed that clarifying.

I wouldn't normally expand on the plot of any film to such a large degree, but The Amazing Spider-Man 2 appears to have not learned anything from the mistakes made by Raimi (or indeed Sony, depending on who you want to believe) on Spider-Man 3. Daft villians with ropey origins, friends becoming foes, girlfriends growing tired of their man's heroics - a familiar case of too many cooks spoiling what could have been a pretty tasty broth. I've no idea how much control Webb had over the production, but it definitely feels like a producer or two has wanted to see their favourite villain in there, and Webb hasn't had the clout to keep things simple and on track. If Raimi couldn't do it, Webb stood no chance. But hey, who knows - no-one sets out to make a bad film. But it feels like the opportunity to go wild on a huge canvas - and the thought of what you can do with 3D spidey-swinging on an IMAX screen, a million speakers firing out a mind-melting soundtrack (it's a dubstep nightmare in places) - well it would seem to have gotten the best of Webb.

In some ways you can see why this film is what it is - a very different beast to, say, Nolan's The Dark Knight, which took a darker origin film and expanded it into a serious, adult crime drama on an epic scale. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 plays like a kid's film turned up to eleven with a sprinkling of drama for the parents, and with that in mind it could be the case that as an adult, this film just isn't aimed at me. But as I said at the beginning, I usually love big, loud, and often daft Hollywood popcorn fodder... maybe I'm just growing old.

A Brief Intro...

For anyone who's stumbled across this blog, you may notice that my previous 22 updates have been archive reviews from the last three years. Anything from here on in will be current, you'll be pleased to know - but any kind words (or violent criticism) for my previous output will be warmly received.

Whenever I catch something at the cinema or at home and I feel inclined to bash out a review, it'll be up here. Swing by if you're bored or need a recommendation... providing I've seen it that is. I'll be more than happy to assist.

Also, feel free to add me on Twitter @exprojectionist if that's more your sort of thing. Cheers for reading!

Dave x

The Double

I was marginally miffed a few minutes into The Double, the sophomore feature from newly-minted Brit film royalty, Richard Ayoade. Miffed because I haven’t seen Terry Gilliam’s latest effort, The Zero Theorem – another film that deals with alternate futures, skewed visions of retro-tech and ethereal womenfolk who never quite seem real. I’m sure there’s a review waiting to happen that can compare the two in stark contrast, but alas, this review isn’t it. Maybe come back in a couple of months for an update, if you feel so inclined.

In the meantime, let’s deal with what The Double is – or rather, isn’t. It’s not Submarine v.2.0, though it does deal with central characters who are suitably quirky loners. It’s not a comedy, but it does have moments that make you smile (albeit in a rather odd, off-kilter manner – Bridesmaids this most certainly ain’t). It’s hard to say if it’s even sci-fi, though I guess that’s the closest genre it cleaves to. It’s as if Ayoade has taken a swathe of influences and banged them all in a giant pot, and The Double is the result. Half a pound of Gilliam, a dollop of Lynch, a slice of 1984, a pinch of Dr. Caligari… though to be fair you could add a myriad ingredients to what’s already a bubbling concoction (enough with the recipe metaphors).

The tale is a simple one, based on the Dostoyevsky novella of the same name. Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg) is a lowly cleric at a data analysis company, who is from the outset falling for the willowy charms of co-worker Hannah (Mia Wasikowska). Shy, awkward, and pretty much unable to articulate his feelings to anyone, his life is clearly headed nowhere until one evening, a neighbour jumps to his death in the apartment across from his. We are never given reason as to the suicide, but soon enough – after several incidents at work that lead to Simon (sort of) losing his job, he spots a doppelgänger of himself (going by the name James Simon – see what they did there?!) now residing in the apartment where the suicide took place.

After the initial shock they become friends, but their differences in character are none more evident. Much like Tyler Durden to Ed Norton’s nameless narrator in Fight Club, James is the confident, devil-may-care opposite to Simon’s lithe “non-person”, as Noah Taylor’s co-worker eloquently describes him. With the affections of Hannah bowing squarely in James’s direction rivalry ensues, as does the very real prospect that Simon may in fact be going completely insane. So far, so quirky – but it’s the central relationship and beautifully subtle twin-Eisenberg visual effects that form the core of this highly flawed but quietly ambitious film.

If there’s one thing that derails the self-contained, Wes Anderson-esque un-reality of The Double, it’s the endless cameos. I was discussing the film with esteemed Cornerhouse usher and gallery host Joel Nicholson, who quite rightly felt that you ended up laughing at actors’ appearances simply because you knew they’d been funny in something else, rather than being funny (or indeed necessary) in the context of the film. This might seem picky, but once you’ve ran the gamut of Tim Key, Chris Morris, Chris O’Dowd, Rade Serbedzija (who doesn’t even have a line), Paddy Considine, Craig Roberts, even (as again Joel pointed out) J. Mascis from Dinosaur Jr., it becomes exhausting and distracting to a fault. What should have been a dark and intense sci-fi with a darkly comic thread running through it becomes a get-together for friends and acquaintances, for no reason at all. With Wes Anderson, his ever-expanding cast of characters feel like a collective, a theatre troupe – not so here, sadly.

It could also be argued that the ending doesn’t live up to the one the original short story offered up – though I won’t spoil things for those not in the know (that applies to me too – a bit of Wikipedia was all I needed). Suffice to say The Double goes out with what feels like a whimper more than a bang, a slightly confused wrap-up that feels like it’s trying to make a neat conclusion to something that should be far darker. Though all things considered, you can’t knock Ayoade for having the courage of his conviction to create a film that feels deliberately contrived, a style-and-some-substance mash-up that spirals out of control in places, is indulgent with its casting, but has a hell of a lot to enjoy about it too. It’s the antithesis to what David Cameron might feel best represents the British film industry (I’m looking at you, The King’s Speech), and for that alone, it’s worth its weight in gold.

Gravity

When I were a wee lad, I wanted to be a fighter pilot – not because I had a yearning to join the Royal Air Force, but because Top Gun was my favourite film EVER. Taping it off ITV every time it was on, buying the Widescreen VHS release (the only kid in my school to understand why widescreen was better), even visiting the RAF offices in Manchester to ask how to I might go about becoming a fighter pilot (it was for a school project – I wasn’t THAT nerdy, I swear). Despite its status these days as a prime example of camp 80s homoerotic bravado, it did what the US Navy wanted it to do: get kids signing up. Gravity on the other hand will probably kill off sign-ups for NASA for years to come – a meticulously crafted grown-up blockbuster that shows when things go wrong in space, your options are well and truly limited (unless you’ve got George Clooney on your team).

Plot-wise, things are kept simple: Clooney is Matt Kowalski, a seasoned pro on his last space mission who’s been teamed up with Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock), a novice on her first. While installing new tech on the Hubble telescope almost 400 miles above the earth, a Russian missile strike on a defunct satellite starts a chain reaction, destroying multiple satellites to form a cloud of orbiting debris, which is naturally headed their way at super high speed. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that things go badly wrong from here on in, with Stone separated from her tether spinning off into deep space, with no way of stopping her momentum. If this alone is giving you sweaty palms, hold tight: there’s 75 more minutes to go. The term ‘rollercoaster ride’ truly was invented for films like this.

Alfonso Cuarón has been on the ascendance for a number of years now, and Gravity represents not just his full-blown transition into Hollywood filmmaking (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, Hollywood needs more filmmakers of Cuarón’s calibre), but his ability to push the technical limits of what can be achieved on screen – and in 3D, no less. The film opens with a 13-minute take, tracking around the cast as they orbit the earth, going in for close-ups, mid-shots and wide, satellite-swinging chaos. He even finds time to travel inside Bullock’s helmet, a technique he uses on multiple occasions, ramping up the claustrophobic tension to insane levels: it may be a cliché to say it, but Hitchcock would have been proud to know his penchant for a long take and tension-ratcheting set pieces has been inherited by the likes of Cuarón and his long-term cinematographer Emanuelle Lubezki, who helped to pioneer several long-take technologies on Cuarón’s previous film, Children of Men.

While I could nitpick about certain aspects of the film, I feel they’re more personal preferences on my part – Steven Price’s score is big, sweeping, intense; but this compensates for the fact that in space, you wouldn’t hear an explosion, so the music performs the job of foley in many key sequences. There’s also some opening exposition that really isn’t needed, along with a couple of moments of respite that, while needed, do tend to err on the side of cheesy. But this doesn’t prevent the film being a five-star experience. Just make sure you watch it in 3D, preferably in IMAX if you've got one near you - you're sure to be blown away.

Mosquitoes & Doritos: The Making of Rough Cut

I found out in mid-June of this year that my legs don’t fare well with midge bites (see pic). I was the aptly-named ‘fly on the wall’ cameraman during the week-long shoot for Hiker Meat, the 70s horror film-within-a-film that forms the central core of Jamie Shovlin’s debut feature Rough Cut and his exhibition Hiker Meat. And for two days of that film shoot, I was more or less eaten alive by what can only be described as plagues of midges on a biblical scale. When people are laughingly assuming you’ve covered your legs in horror make-up, you know you’re not in a good way. But more on my lower appendages later.

The title of this blog was something Jamie came up with on one of our many location-bound coach rides, gently bending the facts to make a rhyme out of our predicament (mosquitoes being quite a different beast to the friendly neighbourhood midge). The very fact it’s a half-truth makes for a good analogy of the film itself. A documentary on the collaborative nature of art? A deconstruction of the horror genre? A making-of featurette, expanded to dizzying proportions? Rough Cut is all these things, and more.

Admittedly having worked on the project, it’s hard to distance myself from what was a tough, arduous shoot that saw a rag-tag assembly of cast and crew find themselves lost (sometimes, quite literally) in the Lake District. Glamping in yurts might seem like a glorious weekend retreat for some, but when you venture deep into Ulverston forests and find yourself filming a crew trying to co-ordinate cameras, lights, actors, food, drink, fog, pyrotechnics, a home-made camera dolly, industrial lube AND the unpredictability of the Great British eco system, it soon becomes clear why Hollywood films cost so much. Oh to have had a Winnebago on set!

To describe what the film is though, that’s a little tougher. Shovlin, Mike Harte (script) and Euan Rodger (soundtrack) have worked on the Hiker Meat project for almost ten years: the film was dreamed up from generic horror/exploitation conventions, a full script completed, props made, posters and lobby cards printed up, and the resulting tangible paraphernalia would form the basis of increasingly elaborate gallery exhibitions for a film that never existed. However the temptation to actually create the film was evidently too much for its creators to resist, and so segments from the film were meticulously crafted from thousands of clips culled from horror films of the 70s and 80s. These segments (the opening scene, closing scene and a trailer) were what the Rough Cut crew were tasked with recreating, the rolling hills of Cumbria standing in for Jamestown, MA.

Filmmaking is far from new, and Rough Cut invariably shows the rookie mistakes and happy accidents that occur when attempting to put a film together on a shoestring. For me, following the cast and crew for five days and nights with nothing more than a Canon XA10 strapped to my hand allowed me to capture a panoramic snapshot of life on a film shoot, midges and all. For the feature itself, this footage is combined with archival content and standalone interviews, split-screens and layered audio, often giving the effect of a scrapbook committed to film – showing how an art project can flourish and become something bigger than the sum of its parts.

What you might get from the film largely depends what you bring to it – whether you’re a fan of extensive making-of’s, collaborative art projects, the horror genre or simply interested in what makes Jamie Shovlin tick, you’re bound to find something in Rough Cut worth your while. But don’t expect to see my legs – they were simply too shocking to make the final cut.

Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa

I’ll be honest; I was a tad scared going in to see Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa after having watched the trailer the night before. You know when you’re watching something with someone else, expecting to see something that’ll make you both laugh out loud in unison? Well it didn’t happen watching the trailer. Not once. And it put the fear of God into me that it would be the second Brit flick in as many months to raise little more than a mild chuckle (I won’t go into detail on The World’s End to which I’m referring, a film that makes me more upset the more I think about it). Thankfully, Alpha Papa is everything you could ever want from an Alan Partridge film, and more. That may sound over-zealous, but the minute you see him finger-tapping and head-bobbing to Roachford’s Cuddly Toy, expertly miming all the words as the opening credits roll, you know you’re in safe hands. Safe hands wearing beige leather driving gloves. Jurassic Park indeed.

While the plot could seem overblown on the surface, it’s the quaint British take on standard Hollywood action film clichés that serve to give Alpha Papa its charm. After elbowing out fellow DJ Pat Farrell (Colm Meaney) from his beloved North Norfolk Digital (in the process of being rebranded ‘Shape’ due to a conglomerate takeover), Farrell returns during a rebranding party with shotgun in hand, holding the station to ransom until he gets reinstated. Unaware it was Partridge who helped decide his fate during a management meeting, he requests Partridge be his right-hand man to help get him back on the air, with the police hoping he’ll diffuse the situation, get the hostages to safety and all will be well. Of course things don’t go to plan, with Partridge slowly realising the whole event could be a career-defining moment as his ego gets the better of him (as if you expected anything less), but never once does the film tumble over into total farce. It walks a fine line for sure, but when you think the film could easily have been Partridge in America (even In The Loop was essentially ‘The Thick of It goes to Washington’), you remain glad that Partridge – a singularly British creation – never feels like he’s trying to be anything other than Partridge, albeit on a slightly bigger screen.

The film is a difficult one to view objectively, largely due to the fact that Partridge is such a ubiquitous creation that it’s hard to imagine anyone watching the film knowing nothing about the character. It makes no concessions for those who don’t know who he is (no grand introduction, no back story), but in a way you don’t really have to know too much about Partridge to ‘get’ Partridge. As Coogan said himself in recent promotional interview, he’s the middle-Englander who’s all in favour of the free market, but at the same time would be trying to save his local Post Office from closing down. He’s at once utterly simple, yet layered and complex – and thankfully he’s moved with the times. You won’t see him sporting chevron action flash knitwear here, but what you WILL see him wearing is a rather natty Sennheiser talkback headset, perfect for hostage negotiations at any local radio station.

It’s also great to see a film based on a British sitcom that isn’t trying to use broad strokes to widen its appeal. Nor is it a film (and I hate this phrase) “for the fans”. Okay, it IS for the fans, but not in the way that Spielberg said that Indy 4 was “for the fans”, as if it’s some kind of self-indulgent exercise for a niche audience of millions. God knows how Alpha Papa will play in other territories – you can maybe make comparisons with the likes of Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm, Partridge’s studio dialogue often a joy to behold (“Never criticise Muslims. Only Christians, and Jews a little bit.”), but still, Norfolk is a hell of a long way from Los Angeles. But enough of the pontificating. When it boils down to it, Alpha Papa ticks every box you could ask it to – I’m desperate to see it again, and I don’t think you can ask for much more of a recommendation than that.

Django Unchained

Quentin Tarantino has, arguably, never been a ‘mature’ filmmaker. I mean this as a compliment – his films are wide-eyed rides into the mind of a former video store clerk, a man so obsessed by cinema that every frame he commits to his beloved celluloid is often deliberately referencing some film or another (and not always for good – Kill Bill might as well have been a home-made compilation tape of his favourite kung fu scenes). But Since he got Death Proof out of his system, he’s given us Inglourious Basterds – a film that killed Hitler and had more fun with World War II than anyone with a modicum of taste and decency thought possible. Sure it cribbed from other films and was never shy about it, but it made a statement – that Tarantino had found his mojo again. No longer was he floundering with dialogue that seemed like mere parody of his previous output. He was back on track, and only went and got Christoph Waltz his first Oscar nomination and Oscar win in the process.

Well it looks like Waltz knew he was onto a good thing, as he’s now been upgraded from supporting actor to lead role, moseying alongside Jamie Foxx in Django Unchained. Dizzying and often ridiculous, it marries Peckinpah violence and Mel Brooks’ knockabout comedy with almost flagrant disregard (the Blazing Saddles influences won’t go unnoticed). But throughout its lengthy running time, not once do we get the time-consuming, pop culture-laiden dialogue scenes that we’ve gotten used to from Tarantino’s screenplays. Sure there’s plenty of character interplay, but this is a lean, mean beast that doesn’t fuss about trying to make anyone look or sound cool – Foxx and Waltz have enough cool dripping from their holsters without even having to try.

Foxx plays the titular Django, a slave being moved across Texas who’s owners are rudely interrupted by Dr. King Schultz (Waltz), a dentist-cum-bounty hunter, who takes Django for his own (with a little bloodshed, naturally). His motives for this are clear enough – he needs his help in tracking down a group of brothers who Django once knew, so the bounty on their heads can be collected. So far so-so, but when Schultz realises Django is a natural marksman, they pair up to rescue Django’s beloved Broomhilda, a slave working on a cotton plantation owned by the dubiously-monikered Calvin Candie (a brown-toothed Leonardo DiCaprio, soaking up the role with zealous intensity). With a combination of stylised lighting (woodland shootouts by moonlight never looked so beautiful), an unfussy script (that’s also incredibly funny), a superb contemporary soundtrack (a nice departure for Quents, who’s usually got his head buried squarely in the 70s) and casting that’s right on the money, not to mention one of the sexiest and bloodiest gunfights to grace the screen in a long time, the film is a daring and outrageous monster that doesn’t tow the party line – it’s like Tarantino is no longer precious about how his work might be perceived (nor his acting skills, that make for a ‘so bad its good’ extended cameo), that he’s simply having fun making a crazed, mad-eyed Western that shoots off at tangents you don’t see coming (Don Johnson in a white suit and Stetson is a sight to behold).

If you’re looking for deep, cinematic nourishment, you might not find Django quite to your taste – I had a brief chat with a friend after the film who found it too long and somewhat boring, and he couldn’t quite grasp what Tarantino was trying to say. But as far as this reviewer goes, I don’t think Tarantino needs to be saying anything – though of course that’s not to say it’s devoid of meaning. The film plays out against the backdrop of slavery, and Samuel L. Jackson’s ageing, loyal head slave Stephen illustrates a bizarre dichotomy that may well have played out during that time period – a slave more willing to die for his master than help a fellow brother in need. But in a sense, dissecting these aspects of the script undermines just how hell-bent on entertaining the audience Django Unchained is – it’s a freewheeling rollercoaster of a movie, Tarantino at his most mature but also at his most carefree. And that’s not a bad combo by any stretch.

Sightseers

Ben Wheatley, back with his third film Sightseers, is managing to carve a relatively new niche genre in cinema – the social realist horror. Admittedly that might sound potentially god-awful to some, and it’s not as if it’s entirely his own construct – the MiniDV grit of 28 Days Later and the brit-horror stylings of Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers, The Descent) are no doubt influences. But if any directors are to be earmarked as Wheatley’s reference points, I’d hazard a guess at Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, Tony Richardson. But with far more blood, spit and bile thrown at the screen than all three of them could ever muster.

If you’ve seen Kill List, Wheatley’s 2010 sophomore effort, you’ll feel in familiar territory from the off – a dark, tangible sense of dread seems to seep from the screen with almost effortless ease (bear in mind this is a comedy produced by Edgar Wright, no less). Chris (Steve Oram) and Tina (Alice Lowe) are a somewhat naïve couple in the early stages of their blossoming relationship, escaping from Tina’s domineering mother for a caravan tour of Britain. Taking in what some might consider true gems of our tourist industry (Keswick’s Pencil Museum and Crich Tramway Village – who HASN’T been?!), it doesn’t take long before the cracks start to appear in Chris’s psyche, visibly and vocally disgusted by a fellow tourist dropping litter on a heritage tram. What would be an incident of minor consequence to most is of serious concern to Chris, and events take a decidedly dark turn for the worst – events that Tina, surprisingly, isn’t entirely unhappy with.

It’s a stunningly beautiful film in places, with some epic wide shots and hilltop sunsets showing the best of Britain, even in the rain and hail. But the best of Britain is far from what Sightseers is about, and as a blacker-than-black comedy it scores high marks across the board. Both the leads are superb, their actions for the most part beyond reprehensible, yet you never fail to care about their fate. Chris in particular is a genuinely terrifying creation, and if Steve’s still got his angry ginger beard when he and Wheatley are here for a Q&A on Wed 31 Oct, I’m going to be first out the door. That said, both he and Tina are roundly upstaged by Banjo the dog (or is it Poppy?), and it’s no surprise he won the Palm Dog when the film premiered as part of the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes this year to rave reviews.

If you’re expecting Kill List II, you may feel somewhat short-changed. But comparing like for like is surely not what Wheatley is after, Sightseers proving that while he’s a director carving out his own style he’s not afraid to test new waters. That said, it’s still a brutal, chilling film, but coated in such a flawless black comedy veneer that you can easily forget just how shocking it is.

Now, has anyone seen Banjo…?

A Clockwork Orange

As with many people of my age (31 and counting), the first time I witnessed Kubrick’s crazed concoction of rape, ultra-violence and Beethoven was on a dodgy VHS, procured by a work colleague of my dad who pulled in hundreds of foreign satellite channels from a gigantic dish in his back yard. I say ‘dodgy’, but the quality was actually great – RTL, no less. And having left for school that morning with my dad 20 minutes into it, me peering over his shoulder asking “is that what I think it is?”, I couldn’t wait to get back home and viddy it well. (I must stress, when I say school it wasn’t first year infants – I was 15).

Of course I had no clue about nadsat back then, the futuristic youth-speak used by Alex Delarge (an ego explosion of a surname if there ever was one) and his three droogs – one of the many facets of A Clockwork Orange that both dates it horribly and makes it effortlessly timeless in one fail swoop: the garish future-70s set design; the brutalist architecture; the electronic Beethoven-infused soundtrack that is as unique as it is ridiculous. It walks a thin line between controversy and comedy, and while considered immensely influential (aren’t all Kubrick’s films?), I’m struggling to think of a single film that looks, feels and operates like A Clockwork Orange does.

With Alex’s penchant for gang violence something that the state deems ‘curable’ in a hideously-skewed medical sense, A Clockwork Orange holds up a mirror to the August riots of last year, arguably showing that since the film was produced, so-called ‘youth’ (in its broadest sense) can never be cured of its violent, animalistic tendencies, and that in many cases it may live with that rage and bile well into adulthood. It was this argument that Kubrick seemed to side with, in stark opposition to Anthony Burgess, the author of the original novel, who in its closing chapter – never adapted for the film – preferred to think that we simply ‘outgrow’ our youthful impulses to become respectable, decent citizens. While this may be a cosy, rose-tinted view, it certainly wasn’t what Kubrick was thinking at the time, undoubtedly giving the film an indelible lasting relevance.

If you’ve never seen A Clockwork Orange, I urge you to do so – with Kubrick’s self-imposed UK ban of the film after an alleged spate of copycat gang attacks upon release, only lifted after his death in 1999, it’s easy to misconstrue the film as a so-called video nasty, something gruesome and horrific only to be spoken about in hushed tones. This is far from the truth – it’s not many video nasties that get nominated for Best Picture, Director, Editing and Screenplay Oscars, not to mention seven BAFTAs. As with all Kubrick’s output it’s beautifully shot and as noted, largely plays as a black comedy – the ultra-violence is limited to the opening twenty minutes, the rest of the film a veritable opera for the modern age, filled with ludicrous Government caricatures from all departments that give credence to why Alex is the way he is. The world Alex lives in is, sadly, far more deranged than he ever could be – hey, some things never change.

The Shining

It’s such a dreadful cliché, but there really is little else to say about The Shining that hasn’t already been said. That’s a hell of a way to shoot one’s self in the foot at the start of a film recommendation, but it’s true – every one of Kubrick’s thirteen feature films has had scores of scholars poring over every minute fibre of detail, and The Shining is no exception to the rule.

Much like The Thing, it’s a film I first caught when I was a young teenager – oblivious to many of Kubrick’s other works, no doubt watching it late night on Channel 4 with too many ad breaks, afraid to go to the toilet lest a pustule-covered old lady rise from the bath. The Torrance family (headed up by Jack Nicholson in a grandstanding performance) are charged with the responsibility of looking after the Overlook Hotel during the winter months, an imposing mountaintop building that practically serves as the film’s central character, its endless corridors, gigantic halls and garish green and orange décor threatening to overwhelm both the family and the viewer (the carpeting alone would be enough to send anyone doolally). And overwhelm it does, in the most spectacular fashion, with certain scenes as surreal as they are scary, as baffling as they are horrifying.

In fact, the film practically invites you to pore over it, to ruminate and to dissect – the last shot alone (no spoiler) almost encourages you to re-watch the film immediately, to see if there’s something obvious you missed first time round. But an academic exercise it isn’t. Much as I love Citizen Kane, it often feels like a text to be read, rather than a movie to be enjoyed – the same cannot be said for The Shining, a film that gleams with meticulous planning and drum-tight execution in the same way Kane does, but you don’t have to take a notepad into the cinema to ponder the mise-en-scene or the deep focus. It’s a film that’s there to shock you, to scare you, to make you feel uncomfortable without often even knowing why.

Stephen King never liked the film, quoted as saying it was the only adaptation of his novels that he could “remember hating”. Then again, Anthony Burgess had notable issues with Kubrick’s take on A Clockwork Orange – both films now noted classics in their respective genres. It’s an elegant, poetic, sometimes funny, often disturbing take on the horror genre, a world away from the ‘obvious’ scare tactics of lesser films, sitting perfectly alongside the likes of Rosemary’s Baby and Let The Right One In. Why not book a reservation at The Overlook today – you’ll never leave…

Antichrist

Von Trier is a difficult fellow to get to grips with. With one hand he can be deconstructing American racial politics with a side order of black comedy in Manderlay; with the other he’s putting Bjork through her paces in Dancer in the Dark, serving up a truly unique take on the modern day musical. That climaxes in a hanging. To say he’s predictable would be lazy, at best.

But that’s exactly what some of his detractors have criticised him of being with his latest venture, Antichrist. Part melodrama, part horror, part rumination on the nature of religion, it’s not an easy film to digest and in many ways defies description. In fact a so-called review of the film is hardly doing it justice – clichéd as it may be, it really is an ‘experience’. Many of you may have noticed it has split the critical community right down the middle, with one-star and five-star reviews appearing all over the place – a middling three-star review looks to be something Antichrist may never get to wear on its blood-stained sleeve.

Without giving away too much, Antichrist is, on one level, an all-encompassing subversion of Western religion: instead of life, we have death; where Eve spoke to the snake in the Garden of Eden, this time it’s Adam… who gets to chat with a mutilated fox, naturally. However this is simplifying things, Von Trier’s big box of ideas attempting to reach far beyond a mere mickey-take of all things God-like. Swirling around the central performances of Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as an unnamed couple coming to terms with a tragic accident are a whole range of signs, signifiers, images and outright allegories – some of which will trigger an instant post-film debate, others provoking galling, sideshow-style amusement. But this all depends on your point of view. Clearly Von Trier wants to provoke, to intimidate, to elicit a reaction so primal and visceral from his audience that they either sit tight and applaud his brilliance or walk out after the opening act.

No matter which viewpoint you end up subscribing to, you cannot ignore Antichrist – in the director’s body of work so far, although it alludes to images he has toyed with before (the weight that becomes attached to Dafoe’s leg recalls Nicole Kidman’s Grace in Dogville, pitifully chained to an iron wheel), it almost stands alone – the films it brings to mind are ones you wouldn’t ordinarily associate with the Danish auteur, such as Neil Jordan’s The Company Of Wolves and Christophe Gans’ Silent Hill. Uncomfortable? Yes. Divisive? Most definitely. Predictable? Hardly. Forgettable? Not a chance.

The Thing

My first lurid introduction to the world of John Carpenter was issue #8 of 80s fanzine The John Carpenter File. I remember the cover being a green and day-glo pink, with badly-placed images of Halloween 4, They Live, and The Thing. Though it wasn’t the ghoulish image on the cover that stuck with me – it was the one inside, of a disfigured face, stretched diagonally as if mid-transformation, one of the many iconic works of art created for the film by Rob Bottin’s visual effects department, charged with the daunting responsibility of bringing a completely new and unique alien lifeform to cinema screens. It wouldn’t be long before I saw The Thing, and from this little teaser, I knew it wouldn’t disappoint.

As a pre-teen ripe for being scared and thrilled by the cinematic luminaries of the time (not that I knew their names, but I certainly knew their films), it was the likes of Cronenberg’s The Fly, Scott’s Alien and Carpenter’s Halloween that satisfied that adolescent urge to watch films you weren’t supposed to, the Simon Bates BBFC warning at the start of these 15 and 18-rated films creating as much palpable tension for those not-quite-yet-of-age as the films themselves. Admittedly, when I first watched Halloween, I couldn’t have been a day over 10 or 11, and I had to have the landing light on every time I went upstairs for a good couple of months, lest Michael Myers was hiding behind a bedroom door. The Thing may not have frightened me quite so much – it’s a film brimming with tension and alpha-male frustration, fear of the unknown in a pressure-cooker environment, rather than an outright horror played for (what would become) clichéd scares – but it had a lasting impact on me that has made repeat viewings a joy. Halloween can’t hold a candle to this bad boy.

Kurt Russell headlines a twelve-strong cast that in any other horror film would be metaphorical cannon fodder who the viewer simply doesn’t need to know much about. The myriad genre films of late that knock off secondary characters without so much as a second thought make you think that, well, maybe the filmmaker simply doesn’t have time to let you get to know them – but Carpenter does. In two panic-fuelled hours, you invest as much in Russell’s MacReady as you do in the entire cast, in particular Wilford Brimley’s Blair, who ends up comically locked in a shack for his own protection – and for everyone else’s, not that they quite realise that when they close the door on him. The blood sample testing scene, carried out by a strung-out MacReady with what remains of the ice station crew tied up to chairs and sofas, is a masterclass in how to ratchet up cinematic tension, ending in geysers of blood being sprayed through walls of fire and giving the audience one of the best lines of the film (I certainly won’t spoil it for those of you that haven’t seen it).

High praise indeed for a film that is itself a remake, praise that one finds hard to give to the constant slate of horror ‘reimaginings’ that seem to litter multiplex screens these days. Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes label has a lot to answer for, teens and pre-teens reared on what amounts to MTV celebrity wannabes getting CGI’d to death, leaving them with no idea of the long string of filmmaking talent that flourished in the horror genre in the 70s and 80s, showcasing moments of brilliance and flashes of genius to a cinema audience who simply had never seen anything like it before. The Thing takes you to the far reaches of the Antarctic and makes you pray for a happy ending, long before the credits have rolled… whether you’ll get one though, well, that’s another thing entirely.

The Artist

It’s rather hard to review a film with a sense of objectivism when already it’s tipped for Oscar glory (a Best Picture nomination at the very least seems a shoo-in). No matter what I say, people seem to have already made up their minds that The Artist is a minor masterpiece, a breath of fresh air in a cinematic era that has become clogged with unnecessary superheroes, pointless pirates and transforming robots. And it gives me great pleasure to say that I agree with them; The Artist really is what it’s being touted as – a crowd-pleasing, unabashed barrel of fun coated in a silver glitter sheen that should bring a tear to the eye of even the hardiest cinemagoer.

At the heart of this black and white, silent love story lies Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo) and George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), two actors in the ascendance and descent respectively. As Peppy – with a little beauty treatment from George – makes her acting presence felt in the new wave of ‘talking pictures’, George finds himself stubbornly refusing to play ball with the studio execs, ending up down on his luck and struggling to wave the flag solo for silent cinema. But with Uggie, his loyal Jack Russell, on standby to pull him out of the doldrums, all is not lost… or is it? This is a film that toys with the emotions to such an extent that you’re genuinely never sure where things could end up, no matter how many narrative conventions you feel the film will surely stick to.

Both the leads are routinely superb, as are the supporting cast – John Goodman and James Cromwell are note-perfect throughout as the studio boss and Valentin’s chauffeur. Also, it has to be said that the film must have been somewhat of a challenge for all involved, when you consider how rigidly it sticks to its silent conventions. With intertitles and a full orchestral score, it’s a film that could have so easily descended into a technical exercise, losing most of its charm in the process. But director Michel Hazanavicius manages to keep things on track right to the very end, never losing sight of what’s important – strong leads you genuinely care about, and a dog that should be up for Best Supporting Actor if there’s any justice in the world.

If ever there was a film of 2012 that deserves to be seen at the cinema – nay, in a theatre – it’s The Artist. And yes I get my nerd hat out, one where it can be shown properly masked to its true aspect ratio of 1.38:1; our Cinema 1 should do the trick.

The Iron Lady

My gran, bless her, always used to blindly gauge films on who the star was. Tom Hanks: “Oh I don’t like him.” (she loved Castaway.) Jack Nicholson: “Oh no, I don’t like his face. He’s bloody ugly.” (she loved Chinatown.) Meryl Streep: “Who? Oh her, oh no, I’m not keen.” But I can bet a part of her would’ve loved The Iron Lady, despite her staunch Labour leanings. This is a film that boldly caters to everyone, and whilst that statement alone might be enough to put people off, it really is a testament to Phyllida Lloyd’s direction and Streep’s embodiment of Thatcher that together, they’ve managed to pull off such a coup: making such a universally hated woman (at least in these parts) likeable.

Now this isn’t to say The Iron Lady is without fault. With such a cleverly-contrived jumping-off point for the story to revolve around – an elderly Thatcher reliving her life through a series of flashbacks, with a bumbling Denis (Jim Broadbent) as her ethereal guide – it allows the narrative to be rose-tinted simply because we’re watching events unfold from Thatcher’s own recollections. What politician wouldn’t want to see themselves in a good light, regardless of the supposed atrocities they are meant to have committed? (the Falklands conflict is dipped in and out of with particular cinematic gusto.) But this is the film’s strength, allowing both the left and right wing (and us bleeding heart liberals) their chance to jeer, heckle and, would you believe, enjoy proceedings as they unfold, such is the conviction of Streep’s portrayal.

It’s been said in the press that she throws everything but the kitchen sink at her embodiment of The Milk Snatcher, and they’re not far wrong. But it never descends into outright caricature (despite what the poster may suggest), Streep clearly having a ball with the character but showing subtle restraint where necessary. If the film wasn’t built to be such a one-woman show this restraint might have shone through more, giving room for the supporting characters to breathe (Richard E. Grant’s Heseltine barely gets five minutes to play with), but it’s fitting that such a whirlwind performance sits at the heart of this populist, drum-beating, lightning-paced trip down a rather harrowing memory lane. Take a seat on the front row, and bring along some Butterkist to throw at the screen (other popcorn brands are available) – you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be thoroughly infuriated. But you can’t deny you’ll be entertained in the process.

Tyrannosaur

Sentimentality in films is often a difficult thing to get right. Go too far and you’re accused of over-egging the pudding, laying it on thick, tugging at the heartstrings that are easiest to grab hold of. Hold it back, and you lose the human touch. It’s a tightrope walk that Tyrannosaur deftly treads, and with such a huge weight of emotional baggage tied around its growling midriff, it’s an amazing, almost jaw-dropping achievement that its step never falters.

The directorial debut of Paddy Considine (Dead Man’s Shoes), Tyrannosaur spares no time in getting its hands dirty – the bile and vitriol spewing from Joseph (Peter Mullan) is laid bare on screen within the first few frames, his violent exit from a betting shop one of the darkest opening scenes in recent memory. Shane Meadows-lite this is not. Joseph is an alcoholic lost soul, a man so bitterly withdrawn from society that you wonder how the film can possibly progress from the rage and fury of its first few minutes (for those of you who’ve seen Considine’s BAFTA-winning short Dog Altogether, it’s worth pointing out that it’s loosely remade here as Tyrannosaur’s jumping off point). But when Joseph enters into the life of Christian charity shop worker Hannah (Olivia Colman), things take a different turn – and not entirely for the better. Hannah’s own world is already frayed at the edges with a failing marriage to James (a frightening Eddie Marsan), and it’s not before long that events threaten to spiral out of control for all involved.

Considine himself said at the recent Cornerhouse and BAFTA Q&A that he didn’t want to make another “little British film to apologise to the rest of the world with”, that he wanted to make cinema. And much as Tyrannosaur treads arguably familiar ground, it feels fresh and new (and indeed cinematic) in a way that its contemporaries don’t. Compare it to, say, Harry Brown, and the differences become clear – this isn’t a film attempting to ape Hollywood; it’s carving its own identity, not once spilling over into cliché-ridden territory which it so very easily could have done. Unpalatable moments are often overlaid with the sweetest of soundtracks – it should be incongruous, but somehow it fits. Vengeful acts of unspeakable cruelty that would seem unjustifiable in lesser films seem somehow ‘right’ or ‘okay’, such is the clarity and focus of the screenplay.

Many directors can make debut films that drip with style, their craft often honed in advertising or pop promos, but few achieve the sheer emotional wallop that Tyrannosaur packs – and with plenty of style to boot. The three leads put in incredible performances, but Colman in particular is revelatory – a far cry from her character Sophie in Channel 4′s Peep Show. And far from being a 100% leaden weight of grim northern melancholia, the film tempers proceedings with moments of tenderness and warmth that arrive in the most unexpected of ways – a brief kiss and hug shared between two of the leads overflows with emotion and subtext, a wake in Joseph’s local offering the viewer glimmers of hope amidst the despair. But this is by no means a film that attempts to offer up any happy endings, nor does it wallow in a self-pitying mire.

It’s simple but complex, a film full of contradictions that leaves you worn out yet exhilarated. No matter what your preconceptions, I urge you to see it.

Drive

I’ll get this out of the way – I’m a font geek. It’s a potentially shameful admission, but I know I’m far from alone on this. It’s such a pleasing thing to see when a good font is used well, and even more so when a bad one is used to the same effect. Which is why it came as a welcome shock when the opening titles of Drive came glaring out of the screen in neon pink Mistral – not exactly a favourite of mine, it has to be said. But for a film that has its feet firmly rooted in the 80s, both in terms of style and content, it’s a fitting choice that in a way typifies the film itself – straight out of left-field, but irrevocably drenched in familiar retro charm and violent, B-movie swagger.

Nicolas Winding Refn isn’t exactly a director known for his restraint (Bronson, Valhalla Rising), and Drive is no exception. Ryan Gosling plays the film’s nameless protagonist, a stunt driver who has a sideline in getaway driving for small-time heists, who’s world begins to unravel when his neighbour (Carey Mulligan) takes a certain shine to him – though with the imminent arrival of her husband, back home from a stretch in prison, it’s not long before things take a turn for the worst for all involved.

There’s a certain aesthetic to Drive that you will either love or hate – it’s all long, protracted pauses in conversations, glances across a room that seem to last forever, all the while Newton Thomas Sigel’s 80s-influenced synth score providing a not-so-subtle audio backdrop to proceedings. It’s like a straight-to-video crime thriller with arthouse leanings, dialogue stripped back to the bare minimum, caricature characters propelling the story to a succession of inevitably bloody conclusions. If you’re not a fan of unflinchingly graphic knife attacks and close-range shotgun blasts to the head, it could well be said this film isn’t for you. But that said, Drive is a film as simple as it is complex – it’s ambitious high art wrapped in a low art shell, shot through with a haunting, Lynchian dreamlike quality, though peppered with clichéd exchanges that at times border on the laughable. But in the same breath it lingers with you, a film that’s hard to shake even several days after you’ve left the dark of the theatre.

At times I was hoping the film would take a different turn, that it might take me in a direction I wasn’t expecting, but Winding Refn is, for all his stylistic pretensions, a director who sticks to his guns and is clearly making the films he wants to make – there’s very little evidence of studio interference in any of his films, and Drive could be his most commercially successful so far. Forget the likes of Death Proof – a film paying little more than lip service to a genre with another silk-jacketed stunt driver at its heart – Drive is the real deal, and whether you like it or not, it’s a hard film to forget.

Troll Hunter

It’s nice, every once in a while, to have a poster hanging in a cinema foyer that captures people’s attention almost without fail. When you see a dark, snow-bound road, a bedraggled land rover, a huge pair of hirsute legs straddling it and the title Troll Hunter screaming at you in a battle-scarred vomit yellow font, it tends to stand out from what one might consider our more ‘regular’ fare. In fact on first impressions, it has the very real capacity to put an audience off, despite their curiosity. But this is no B-movie exploitation horror, no highfalutin video nasty-cum-arthouse hybrid. This is fun, clever, adrenaline-rush filmmaking that, while admittedly spawned from a host of influences, is steadfastly a beast all of its own.

It’s the kind of film you don’t want to say too much about for fear of ruining the fun for everyone else. Wrapping proceedings up in a mockumentary style (already well-trodden territory with the likes of [REC], Cloverfield and The Blair Witch Project), we follow a group of three college students hoping to gain some kind of exclusive with lone hunter Hans (played with expert deadpan delivery by comedian Otto Jespersen), who’s methods and motives for an apparent spate of bear killings are shrouded in mystery. His land rover is covered with deep gouges and claw marks, a tungsten light array toted with him at all times, his caravan draped in herbs with a suspiciously vile smell emanating from within. And, as the team slowly gain his trust and follow him into the fjords and remote woodlands of Norway, their ever-present camera reveals him to be hunting anything but bears.

The trolls themselves are tragically beautiful, as ridiculous as they are frightening, immaculately conceived and quite unlike anything you may have seen before on the big screen (the monsters of Where The Wild Things Are pale in comparison to the size of some of these fellas). The location photography too verges on the awe-inspiring, considering half the time it’s throwaway shots from the inside of a car. But it’s the tone of the film that sets this apart from its contemporaries. It delves into comedy without being too silly; it has moments of tension without becoming a full-blown horror, never over-stepping the mark or breaking any internal logic it sets up. And as with all ‘found footage’ films, it relies almost entirely on the believability of its protagonists – safe to say, Troll Hunter’s main players and supporting cast are pitch-perfect, Jespersen in particular a revelation, a man who’s the only one of his kind, weathered and brow-beaten, finally finding a way he might escape his “dirty work” once and for all.

For those of you who feel the mockumentary has been done to death, I urge you to give Troll Hunter a go – the obligatory American remake is already in the works, and it’d be a crying shame for the original to go under the radar when there’s so much fun to be had in its 103 minutes. You’ll never look at pylons in the same way again.

The Tree of Life

I have struggled to begin film reviews in the past. It’s not always the easiest thing to commence what should amount to a concise assessment, a standalone piece of text that allows the reader to get a feel for what they may be about to see (or have just seen) and hopefully allow room for reflection – the last thing you want to do is sledgehammer a point home only to alienate the reader, one way or the other. The same thing could be said of filmmaking. Every director has their unique traits, but they’re all arguably trying to follow a similar path, in some way, no matter how they succeed, to entertain their audience. And I mean that in the broadest sense. Not every filmmaker sets out to make populist, blockbusting ‘movies’, because not everyone wants to be ‘entertained’ in that manner. But then entertainment is entirely subjective, which to a certain degree puts a spanner in the works as far as the rest of this review is concerned. Because in my view (and I do stress my view) there comes a point where what could very well be considered art becomes an exercise in towering pretension that borders on the obtuse – that point has been crossed with Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life.

There has been much hoo-hah in the press already regarding this absurdist, cod-philosophical, rambling patchwork of cinematic nonsense and thus far I feel I’m in a critical minority sitting firmly in the ‘against’ camp. The film won the Palm d’Or at Cannes this year after having endured both cheers and boos from the audience at its festival screenings. In my eight years at Cornerhouse I don’t think I’ve ever watched a film that may be as polarizing as this one – even Von Trier’s Antichrist, the last film in recent memory that seemed to want to ‘provoke’, is tame in comparison to the laughable faux-existentialism that Malick foists upon his audience for 138 minutes.

It’s as if Malick is the only one who has a handle on what he is trying to achieve, which makes viewing the film such a tiring ordeal. I once wrote a rather poor stage play at University around the second coming of Christ – by my own admission it was pretty dire because in trying to be clever, I’d incorporated a ton of obscure biblical characters and references in the hope that the audience would ‘get’ them. Suffice to say, they didn’t – I was the only one who knew what was happening. Similarly, when Sean Penn is ambling around an idyllic beach, looking for all the world like he’s being filmed for an aftershave commercial, his weathered visage and sunken eyes screaming SERIOUS ACTOR AT WORK, it’s clearly supposed to mean something. When we witness what has been labelled the ‘creation of the universe’ segment, yes, it is dazzling, but it’s so devoid of context that we sit dead-eyed, not in awe, but in amazement that a filmmaker of Malick’s stature can seriously be getting away with this. Voices whisper, dinosaurs tussle, characters gaze into the middle-distance – but it amounts to one big pile of nothing.

There have been several films that have tried to encompass life, the universe and everything – some more successfully than others. It’s a grand palette to paint on, and you’d have hoped that Malick would have had the foresight to offer up something new. But what The Tree of Life ultimately feels like is a hotchpotch of half-baked ideas from other films, strung together in a way that amounts to far less than the sum of their parts. 2001: A Space Odyssey has already been cited as a comparable piece of work, but you can throw Magnolia, Baraka, Gummo, Short Cuts and The Fountain in there for good measure as films that have dealt with these grand themes in ways that The Tree of Life could only dream of. The Fountain is bonkers, but even if you hate it, I’d hope that it could be argued there’s a semblance of an engaging story there. The same goes for the rest of the films I’ve mentioned, which is more than can be said for Brad Pitt’s trivial family strife in 50s Texas, taking up a good two-thirds of The Tree of Life whilst going nowhere in particular. But then entertainment is subjective, and I actively encourage people to disagree with me wholesale on this one.
  The Tree of Life looks beautiful… but that really is the best I can muster in its defence. I’m all for a good rumination on our place in the universe, but when it’s pulled off with such an impossibly aloof sensibility, it’s a complete non-starter to engage with anything the director has to say – if in fact he is saying anything. I realise I haven’t covered much in terms of plot, but with its non-linear narrative and almost collage-like approach to editing, such trivialities as the plot fall far by the wayside. But whatever I say certainly won’t stop anyone from seeing it, and I wouldn’t have it any other way – there’s nothing like a good post-film debate, and The Tree of Life will undoubtedly set tongues a-wagging.

Senna

Back in the 90s I was a huge fan of Formula One. It’s reasonable to assume that most teenage boys still are, too – between that and football, there’s a visceral, masculine appeal to both sports that one can’t help but find alluring. The huge success of Top Gear in recent years is testament to the draw of a fast car, with added chauvinism to boot. The fact it’s taken so long for a film to get made about the sport (if you discount John Frankenheimer’s stylish but bloated 1966 effort Grand Prix) is a surprise in itself, though it was worth the wait. Senna, Asif Kapadia’s 104 minute paean to arguably the greatest Formula 1 driver of all time, spends little time getting down to business – in fact, one is barely given pause for breath right from the opening credits.

What takes you by surprise though is how sparsely the film is peppered with back story – no studio-filmed interviews, only audio snippets from interviews both new and old, the entire film is a construct created from what must have amounted to thousands of hours of footage (the F1 races themselves aren’t limited to just the British broadcasts – we take in Italian, Brazilian and Japanese footage along the way).

But oddly enough this stylistic decision works in its favour, stripping the film of many of the usual clichés associated with the documentary genre, playing out almost like a fictional account of a driver’s career told through documentary footage cleverly strung together to form a piece full of heroes, villains, action and romance: the requisite ingredients for any self-respecting drama. It’s this almost blinkered focus on Senna’s driving career that propels the film at a lightning pace, with highlights along the way being Senna’s intense and often dangerous rivalry with fellow driver and one-time teammate Alain Prost; behind-the-scenes footage of pre-race driver meetings (Senna defiantly storming out of one in a standout scene); and of course Senna’s legendarily reckless style of racing. Seeing some of the in-car camera footage on the big screen alone is worth the price of admission.

What Senna is exactly is up for debate. Despite plenty of home movie footage it’s hardly a warts-and-all account as the film skips over some of the more salacious aspects of Senna’s private life. But in lieu of recent incidents of sportsmen in the media (specifically the lives of footballers off the pitch rather than on it) Senna’s life was the race track and the film signifies the importance of its protagonists’ role within his chosen field and not the tabloid fodder that may have surrounded it. With a career choice so well-suited to cinema, you can see why the decision has been made to focus on the racing – it really would take a hardy soul not to be thrilled by the footage Kapadia has compiled. It’s hard for me to not be biased, however with its golden period seemingly over I’ve not followed Formula 1 since my teens and I wasn’t entirely looking forward to a film full of talking heads telling me what a great man Senna was. In this film, the driving does the talking. This isn’t a dry expression of sporting artistry in the way that Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait was; this is a tense, moving, and ultimately thrilling rollercoaster of a film, what one might term an unashamed crowd-pleaser – not unlike the driver himself.

Julia's Eyes

Before you ask (and I’m sure you have done, what with the film’s poster hardly trying to avoid the comparison), Julia’s Eyes is not The Orphanage II. Whereas the credits remain the same (Guillermo del Toro ‘presents’ the film and Belén Rueda takes the lead role), this is not the supernatural ghost story that del Toro’s previous film was – this is a bang-for-your-buck Friday night thriller, and not a bad one at that.

Rueda’s Julia – here playing dual roles as twin sisters – suffers from a degenerative eye condition, her sight deteriorating in the same way her sister Sarah’s did. With Sarah committing suicide within the opening five minutes (it’s no spoiler!), and with no warning that she was suicidal, it falls on Julia and her husband to solve the mystery of why she felt the need to take her own life. With the suspicion of someone else being involved in the suicide, an elderly neighbour with further details of Sarah’s private life to thicken the plot, and a too-good-to-be-true care worker who ends up looking after Julia once her eyesight is lost, there almost seems too many loose ends to tie up at around the halfway mark; you’re left wondering how the film might find the room to join the dots and pull it all together. But it does – just – and it’s the film’s relentless pace that keeps the rug firmly pulled from under you at all times.

Julia’s Eyes owes a great debt to a vast number of thrillers and whodunits, with a myriad influences and references firmly worn on its sleeve. Though the one that sprung to mind for me was Mute Witness, Anthony Waller’s 1994 horror-thriller about a mute special effects make-up artist bearing witness to a supposed murder on the film set she’s working on. Admittedly the comparisons are often only cosmetic, but when one protagonist can’t speak and the other can’t see, it’s not hard to draw parallels between the two. The American remake of Mute Witness is also just around the corner, something no doubt destined for Julia’s Eyes in the not too distant future.

The film looks great, Rueda is great, and as far as a good night out at the flicks goes, it does exactly what it says on the tin. The only real criticism I can level at it (and this goes for Mute Witness too) is that one has to suspend one’s disbelief a little too often; convenient meet-cutes (with a horror twist) and slightly dubious character connections start to stretch the realms of plausibility as the climax looms. That said, the fact that the film relies a little too heavily on the umpteen twists and turns of its plot is arguably part of its charm, and may well leave you hungry for a second viewing.

13 Assassins

Takashi Miike has never been one to shy away from controversy – two of his more well-known offerings, Ichi The Killer and Audition, can very easily attest to that. But his latest, 13 Assassins, takes rather a different path – in fact if it wasn’t for one scene alone (I won’t spoil it for anyone, but safe to say it’s pretty grim indeed) you’d be hard-pushed to tell it was Miike at all. For this very reason 13 Assassins could be a bit of a crowd-divider depending on expectations, but in proving Miike isn’t just a one-trick pony, it quite valiantly succeeds.

In many ways, it is a film of two halves. Much as Kubrick split Full Metal Jacket right down the centre between the boot camp and ‘Nam, Miike takes the best part of the first half to set up the band of samurai who will come to be his thirteen assassins, set on a mission in late Feudal Japan to execute the younger brother of the ruling Shogun, the deplorable Lord Naritsugu. Immune to the law and inclined to take full advantage of his fortuitous power, he’s a character that Miike would ordinarily have immense fun with, due to the sheer force of his inhumanity (rape, child murder, limb-hacking and tongue removal, just some of his crimes).

But Naritsugu is to a certain extent, somewhat restrained in favour of the narrative – his actions quite often happen off-screen. Whether this could or should have been the case is up for debate – quite often the dialogue and exposition can come off as incredibly clumsy, with dozens of names bandied about at rapid pace and connections to be made between a myriad characters, when at the film’s heart it’s simply one man (or two, at a push) against thirteen. I found myself wondering if Miike should have really been let off the hook to bend convention (this is a 'jidaigeki' period film, after all) in the way that Tarantino did with Inglourious Basterds – there are clear parallels between both directors, and restraint isn’t often something found in their cinematic language. But once the main event has been set up for the second half (a clash between the thirteen samurai and Naritsugu and his own warriors) the action is virtually non-stop until the credits roll.

In no way a wire-fu film (Zhang Yimou’s Hero springs to mind as a comparative touchstone of that genre, with very similar costumes and sets), 13 Assassins grounds itself in reality and, in the rather bloodier second half, pulls no punches in its frenetic depiction of samurai battle – CGI flaming oxen and all. But Miike never oversteps the mark in terms of what’s needed for the film, putting characters first and foremost in what is essentially an action costume drama. Get through the cluttered exposition of the first half, and you’re in for a whole lot of fun.

Upside Down: The Creation Records Story

NOTE: I actually did a counter-review for this that I sadly can't find - part of me loved this film and part of me hated it with a passion. What follows is the 'good' review, as this was the only one Cornerhouse wished to put on their website, for obvious reasons. Enjoy...!

Whist a good deal of the music featured in Upside Down: The Creation Records Story never factored in my musical upbringing (I was born in 1980, the label being founded only three years later), I can attest to the fact that their most successful act, Oasis, did. It was (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? that first dragged my attention away from the likes of 2 Unlimited (I own their first album on vinyl – I say it’s a misunderstood classic), changing my musical worldview forever and leading me on a journey that took in the strains of Nu-Metal (Deftones), Post-Hardcore (Glassjaw) and Math Rock (Battles). A far cry from the radio-friendly jangle of She’s Electric, by anyone’s standards. If it wasn’t for Creation I may never have broadened my audial horizons to such an extent, which is one of the reasons why this documentary, for me, proves consistently fascinating.

It’s fair to say that drug-taking featured heavily in both the inception and business execution of the label. In the documentary, Alan McGee (the label’s co-founder) finds a way to pull back the velvet curtain on pretty much every significant event in its history to reveal that drugs were the driving force behind it (using money that was otherwise being spent on drugs and booze to set up the label itself; taking ecstasy for the first time whilst listening to acid house, only to have an epiphany and suggest to Primal Scream, who he signed early on in their career, that they incorporate it into their next album, Screamadelica). It’s these pivotal moments that prove how ramshackle the inner workings of Creation were: a proverbial house of cards waiting to fall at any given moment, though not before achieving success beyond anyone’s expectations with the discovery and subsequent world domination of Oasis, whose Knebworth gig would prove to be the start of the label’s undoing (“the fireworks and the VIP tents within VIP tents just weren’t Creation”, according to McGee).

It’s easy to almost ignore the label’s early years when focusing on this massive moment in musical history, which the documentary reflects upon with archive news footage of the Blur vs. Oasis chart battle, something not seen since The Rolling Stones fought a chart war with The Beatles thirty years previous. But McGee’s eye for talent oversaw the signing of – amongst others – My Bloody Valentine, The Jesus And Mary Chain, Swervedriver (who became firm touring partners with Nirvana), The Boo Radleys, Saint Etienne, Teenage Fanclub and Super Furry Animals. No mean feat for any label, least of all one who’s stubborn refusal to take the major label dollar almost bankrupted them (before Sony stepped in to take over whilst keeping the Creation imprint, just prior to McGee signing Oasis – a fortuitous move on their part). It’s a ride that leaves you shaking your head at the sheer audacity of it all, and how the whole endeavour didn’t simply implode in a drug-induced stupor. The only time the film’s talking heads take pause for reflection is when McGee, after six years of solid partying, was taken off a plane and hospitalised – for this to only happen twelve years after the label was started seems like a minor miracle.

Upside Down: The Creation Records Story is a film which doesn’t break any conventions, it doesn’t rewrite the rules of documentary making – but it essays smartly and succinctly the story of a label that DID, in their own way, rewrite the rules. Creation was a label which was unfettered by conventions of how things should be done, and despite the drugs, really was ‘all about the music’.