Lifes a bitch…

Monday 5th October 2009

Fish Tank (2009)

So its been a year pretty much to the day since I started this ‘blog’ and perhaps more importantly over half a year since I last made an entry. Still seems fitting that the first film I’ve been really inspired to write reams and reams of scholistic drivel about falls on the anniversay of the gestation of this humble internet film log. I have in fact had remarkably good fortune with trips to the cinema of late, following from a calender year of mostly subpar nonsense. To be fair I’ve always liked this time of the year at the cinema, we’ve gotten over the glitz and glamour and common dissapointment of the summer blockbuster season, and we’ve got a short respite before the Christmas schmaltz and the onslaught of the Oscar hopes and instead we’re allowed a couple of months of understated, cool and off centre flicks that elsewhere in the year would get forgotten.

Anyway, my own good run at the flicks started with Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker (good but not quite ‘this generation’s Apocalypse Now‘ as many hoped for), followed by Adventureland a week later which had a certain undertstated brilliance to it and smacked of classic coming of age flicks of the ilk of The Last Picture Show, American Grafitti and Dazed And Confused. Then last week I watched Away We Go which was sweet and fluffy and made me smile from ear to ear.

Finally, we come to my reason for remembarking on this blog – my trip this evening to see Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank. Arnold’s previous effort Red Road was grim and bleak as hell but was also brilliantly made, and was quite thrankly one of the best British films in years. I knew fairly little about Fish Tank other than the fact that it was directed by Arnold, it was set in Essex (represent!) and some lore about the ’star’ Katie Jarvis getting discovered arguing with her boyfriend on a train platform.

Fish Tank had me hooked fairly from the get go with its veritee shooting style and its caustic but improvisional-esque (is that a word?) dialogue. Along with Shane Meadows, Andrea Arnold seems to be the only writer/director who can portray British coloquial dialogue without it coming off as contrived or put on in any way. The most wonderful thing about Fish Tank is of course Jarvis, who is note perfect as Mia, but it is Arnold’s direction of her character that really sets this film apart country miles about from its contemporaries. Fish Tank is wonderfulfully current and its depiction of the Essex milieu – caught between the urban jungle and and the suburbia now populated by the post-war diaspora from the East End – which I know so well from my youth, was spot on. (A further inter-urban divide is highlighted between Mia’s high rise estates and the modern Barrat style homes where she tracks Connor to.) Mia’s position within this environment, lost among the high rise estates that contain her, and at odds with almost everyone she comes in contact with, speaks of an alienation that is reminiscent of Antonioni’s best poetry on urban estrangement. And I mean that, I truely believe Fish Tank can sit side by side with the likes of L’eclisse and Red Desert in those stakes.

There is so much more to the film that I could prattle on about. The subplot involving the horse on the traveller’s compound added an analogous element to Mia’s tale (‘She’s 16 – she lived a long life’). And of course there was a recurring theme of Mia wanting to dance, and actually on one level you could totally look at Fish Tank as another ‘dance flick’ along the lines of Step Up, Save The Last Dance and erm B-Girl(!), albeit a cerebral arthouse dance flick that was staggeringly brilliant.

Film of the year.

Thom’s Oscar round up…

Wednesday 11th February 2009

Slumdog Millionaire (2008), The Reader (2008), Frost/Nixon (2008), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), Milk (2008).

So I’ve now managed to work my way through each of the nominees for this years best picture Academy Award, as well as a bunch of the ‘also rans’. I found myself unusually drawn into the whole Oscar spectacle this year, pretty much for the first time. Maybe because I’m more exposed to all the comings and goings due to my profession, but certainly in the past I’ve always looked down upon the whole affair with some derision. Anyway this year I’ve followed it from the start much int he same way that I really got drawn into the presidential race right from the get-go. Maybe I’m finally becoming a yankophile?

So to the pictures themselves. Slumdog Millionaire – which I wrote about previously on here – was the first one of the five I caught, before in fact the nominees were announced. I was particuarly gushing about it at the time about a month ago, and I stand by that. Its a well made, attractive film with an uplifting, yet grounded theme. Let down only perhaps by some of the acting. This stands a good chance nonetheless, if for no other reason than the feel-good factor pushing it through in these “dark and uncertain times.” It would be good to see a British film shot in India win at the Oscars, but I wonder whether Hollywood will just stick to its own?

Second came The Reader. This to me was an ok film but nothing more. There was nothing about it that blew me away. Whats more I didn’t really understand what the moral of the tale was. Ron Rosenbaum’s piece in Slate makes interesting reading (http://www.slate.com/id/2210804/). Mr Rosenbaum points to the New York Times’ lumping of the film in with tales of personal triumph. Indeed, why should we care that an extermination camp card has learnt to read whilst in prison? Theres more to it than that, I guess the suggestion is that Nazism was not a black and white issue. Arguably Mr Rosenbaum goes too far in his piece to suggest that this was in fact the case, I for one can certainly imagine grey areas, but the fact remains as far as this particular movie is concerned I was left feeling unsure eactly what I was supposed to take away from it. Well directed I suppose by Stephen Daldry but not well enough for me to get overly excited about his long awaited adaptation of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay.

So onwards to Frost/Nixon. This I found to be an interesting film but not much more. Frank Langella was brilliant as Nixon, and at times I really thought I was watching Tricky Dicky himself, but as for Michael Sheen I really just can’t get past Tony Blair. Its sad I know, but thats type casting for you. I actually saw this more as a comedy, but I’m unsure whether it was meant to be read that way. Whatever the case, it hasn’t really stuck in my mind, so in short – is Nixon the One? I doubt it.

I caught David Fincher’s Oscar effort The Curious Case of Benjamin Button last night. Clocking in close to three hours, oddly this seems to be the front runner for many. I for one don’t see what all the fuss is about. It seems like I’ve said this about all the films I’ve talked about here, but this was ok/average but nothing more. Really for me it was just a stylised version of Forest Gump. Sure, technically it may be breaking new ground and it had some nice shots, but much of the atmosphere and shooting style of the film seemed completely contrived. And for all the technical brilliance fo the film, there was not mcuh of a storyline to hook it upon. Which is sad when you consider that the source material comes from none other than the great F Scott Fiztzgerald. One of my favourite ever authors, and someone who has an untouchable talent of turning a tale, particularly in his short stories of which Benjamin Button was one. This was completely lost on this film which bares little in common with the short story bar its title. To be fair my ambivalence towards this film doesn’t surprise me. I’ve never gone nuts over Fincher’s previous work, and share the same ambivalence towards Seven,  Fight Club et al (shock horror!).

To complete my Oscar set, tonight I caught Gus Van Sant’s Milk. Like my attitude towards David Fincher, none of Gus Van Sant’s previous works have done much for me. I found that dreamy detcahment that he employs in Elephant and the like, to be quite cold and emotionless. Maybe thats the point, but I needed more than that. But shit, Milk actually delivers the goods. Its almost the polar opposite of Elephant, the camera gets right in there and it becomes an amazing character study bursting with emotion. Whats more in a year when everyone is going on about the all male cast (see  Valkyrie, Frost/Nixon, W) noone seems to have mentioned the amazing male cast in this film, but jesus it is special. Until now I’ve sworn blind that Mickey Rourke has to be the shoe in for best actor for his role in The Wrestler (a frankly seminal film which in my opinion totally should have been up for Best Picture, but hey), but after seeing Sean Penn as the epynonomous Harvey Milk I’m not so sure any more. Moreover, Penn is supported by unbelievable supporting performances particularly from Emile Hersch  but also of course James Franco (he’s come a long way from Daniel Desario!), Josh Brolin (he’s come a long way from Brand Walsh!) and  Joseph Cross. Just everything about this film seemed to work, it was just really well stiched together, I don’t know what else to say beyond that.

So to sum up, if I had the vote for the Academy Awards, firstly the nominees would include The Wrestler and  In Bruges and a whole host of other films that trumped those that did make the final cut. But stuck with those five, its Milk hands down for me. Followed by Slumdog Millionaire with the rest just falling by the wayside. In reality come February 22nd I can see the gong going to either Slumdog or Benjamin Button. Watch this space…

Leave it all behind

Wednesday 04th February 2009

All My Friends Are Leaving Brisbane (2007)

I went to see this Australian film at the Barbican, because I guess I associate the time I myself spent living and travelling in Australia almost a decade ago now, as a real time of transition and pleasant uncertainty in my life. I’d just left school, and didn’t really have much of a clue about anything. Not of course that I have much of a clue about anything here and now, and I guess my life hasn’t completely petered into predicatble stillwater, but I can’t deny that I occasionaly miss that transient mystery of not really knowing what each day, week or month might bring.

Unfortunately there was nothing mysterious or really particularly interesting about this film – a kind of poor man’s Reality Bites with Australian accents – but it did allow me the chance to cast my mind back and indulge in some carefree memories.
And needless to say it presented an infintely more positive outlook on life than my last cinema outing a couple of days ago to see Sam Mendes’ unrelentingly bleak Revolutionary Road. That offered a life of compromise, drudgery and long forgotten dreams. All My Friends Are Leaving Brisbane at least reminds us that we should go out and seek our excitement int he world wherever it may be.

Apparently Australians are silly enough to believe that that excitement lies here in London, or more specifically Earls Court. But at least they’re out there trying. Thats the main thing…

Purgatory’s kind of like the in-betweeny one. You weren’t really shit, but you weren’t all that great either. Like Tottenham.

Friday 30th January 2009
In Bruges (2008)

Commuting on the London Underground as I do, I often find myself picking up on particular things I notice, be they the same assortment of strangers that I always seem to share my route to work with or less inanimate objects like adverts and one sheets that catch my eye. Its normally some indefinable quality that draws me to these things, but whatever it is, there always seems to be something at any particular period. One of these was the one sheet for the film In Bruges. I always found my eye drawn to it, and I cant really explain why, but whatever it was it didn’t at all inspire me to want to go see the film. Maybe because it starred Colin Farrell, who to be fair I’m fairly ambivelent about, but wouldn’t drive me to see any film he stars in. Or maybe because the one sheet didn’t really say much at all. Whatever, I didn’t end up seeing it until this cold Friday evening cosied up on the couch on my own after a looooooong week.

To be honest, as you can probably tell by the rambling largely unintelligible tone of the previous paragraph, I’m not feeling particularly verbose this evening, and so I’d feel a mite guilty about writing now about this film. Guilty, because, well in short, its absolutely fucking brilliant. See told you I wasn’t feeling verbose.

Perfect script, brilliantly acted (especially by Colin Farrell…), blackly comic, just a wonderful wonderful film. And whats more its a first feature from director Martin McDonagh. There has always been something that held me back from really loving Quentin Tarantino’s films. In Bruges, I felt had a certain Tarantino-esque quality to it, but all the elements came together to draw me in and hold my awe and affection in a way that has always been lacking for me with Tarantino.

Anyway, I’ve now seen the majority of the films up for best picture at the 2009 Oscars and most of those that narrowly missed out, and for some reason In Bruges has never, as far as I’m aware, been mentioned as a possibility – even as an outsider.

For the life of me I don’t know why, because it is easily the best film of the last year.

New crowned hope

Tuesday 13th January 2009

Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

My evening started with the sight of a dead body getting wheeled away. This isn’t a clever Sartre-esque way of commencing a blog entry. This really did happen. I arrived back in the environs of my flat after work tonight to find the whole area cordened off by the police and the aforementioned body slowly getting carted off. I didn’t see the thing, thank christ. It was covered in a red blanket that looked really itchy. Not that the person under it probably cared. Sorry if that sounds insensitive, but those were my thoughts. I stood and watched for about twenty minutes unable to take my eyes away. Finally I dragged myself indoors and sat and listened to Pavement for some reason.

So to the film, the reason why I’m supposed to be writing this and you’re supposed to be reading this. If indeed you are reading this of course. You could be forgiven for not, considering this is my first entry, in a supposedly dayly blog, in about 2 and a hlaf months. Oops. Between my last entry Quantum of Solace and now, I’ve watched a tonne of films as is my want. Some good some bad, but in typical Thom style, once I got out of the rhythm of doing something I found it very hard to get back. But for some reason tonight, whilst cleaning my teeth having just got back from watching Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire at the Genesis, I suddenly felt inspired to WRITE.

Did I love the film that much?! Well actually I did really rather enjoy it. The film is currently being gushed over by anyone and everyone, and more often than not I steer well clear of such things, but I was intregued to see if it stood up to the praise. It was unadbashedly feel good, which some may label a cynical ploy to win the public’s heart, considering the shitty situation the world exists in at present, but why not?

In a way the film is just tugging at the same heartstrings and emotions that saw us all willing Renton to get away with shafting his friends from a pile of money, almost 15 years ago in Trainspotting – which incidentally is in my opinion the only other good film Danny Boyle has ever made. Slumdog is of course an infinately more mature effort. And what many critics have forgotten to mention is that it is brilliantly shot. Antony dod Mantel was the DOP, who I remembered as directing photography on a lot of the old Dogme 95 films. You couldn’t really get much further than Dogme95 than Slumdog Millionaire, but i digress.

Slumdog actually provides a similar emotional progression and payoff to Trainspotting, but whilst the latter film reeked of the cultural and economic values of want that we all held dear in the mid 1990s, Slumdog offers a far more suitable world view for today. I guess without wanting to sound gushing, that world view is one of hope, and in which sense reminded me of Linha de Passe which I wrote about in this blog several months back. I guess hope is important.

It’d be a pretty cold bastard who didn’t want revenge for the death of someone he loved.

Friday 31st October 2008

Quantum of Solace (2008)

Its weird to find an obvious link between A Bloody Aria and James Bond’s 22nd outing; one being a brutal Korean film that not many people will ever see, the other being a multi-million dollar big budget blockbuster that not many people won’t see. Yet find an obvious link I have – here are two films that are utterly consumed by the idea of revenge.

Its perhaps weirder still to find that I actually enjoy a big budget blockbuster, least of all a James Bond film, but fucking hell, this was brilliant.

I was worried at first by the pace of the film. As Daniel Craig effortlessly parkoured across the rooftops of Venice, much in the same vein of previous Bond outing Casino Royale, I was struck by just how un-Bond it all was. You could never imagine Connery or Moore taking things at such a breakneck pace, and the influence of messrs Bourne and Bauer is palpable here. But as the film progressed, and to be fair slowed down a bit, it found its feet and I was really pulled in to it. The fact that the film dealt with issues from the previous film giving it an actual arc for once, really allowed us to delve deeper into Bond’s character for once, which the stand alone plots of most of the previous films don’t really allow us.

Craig of course plays Bond as a much harsher and colder character, free from the shackles of the one liners and expected cliches, and is in fact much ‘cooler’ for it. This is exactly how Bond should be, and closer to how he appears in the original Flemming books. It was hinted it in Casino Royale but the laying to rest of Roger Moore’s playing it for laughs Bond is finally acheived here.  He’s so different he’s hardly recognisable. Its the little things that really hit it home. For instance could you ever imagine any of the previous Bonds having a beer at the bar? I doubt it.

But yet there was the odd bit of fan service and homage to keep traditionalists happy. But just slightly tweaked to ally it with the new Bond, such as Gemma Atterton’s rather cruel Goldfinger mimicking fate. Maybe it was just me but I also felt I saw homages to Don’t Look Now with the church scaffolding scene near the beginning and even the Western at the end with the desert railroad. Maybe it is just me, but the point is, the film has depth, that allows even a cynic like myself to appreciate a film that I was preparing myself to lambast.

The film also allowed for some rather astute political commentary. In one scene an English minister comments to M that ‘We can’t be expected to pursue foreign policy on the basis of hunches and innuendoes’.  A rather obvious comment on the Iraq war I felt. I also was surprised as to how clearly the American’s were painted out as so duplicitous and conniving. For a film, who’s key audience will be the USA to take this stance, I guess indicates how far America has dropped in its own esteem and that of the international community.

Anyway I’m drifting from the point here a little. Bottom line, this is Bond how it should be – a cold, ruthless killer consumed by revenge. It harks back to cruel nature of the oft-criticised George Lazenby one off classic Bond On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. I don’t think there has been a better Bond since then, until now maybe…?

Sometimes you have to lose yourself ‘fore you can find anything.

Thursday 30th October 2008

A Bloody Aria (2006)

The quote in the title of this post is from Deliverance rather than A Bloody Aria, A Korean film I caught at the ICA this week. The quote is included because A Bloody Aria takes on John Boorman’s city folk menaced by country hicks plotline, but conversely whilst all the characters seemingly lose themselves here, by the end of it noone has really found anything.

On a day trip through the countryside, aspiring opera singer In-jeong flees to the woods to escape the advances of her lecherous professor and mentor, Yeong-sun. When a seemingly harmless local man offers her a ride to the bus station, In-jeong thinks she’s found her way out – until he insists that they stop to meet his friends, a disturbed group of country-bred thugs. In-jeong finds herself reunited with Yeong-sun and it slowly becomes clear that the pair is being held captive to participate in the gang’s sadistic mind games.

The film was an odd affair, in that it creates a fascinating character study, but it does not follow the standard filmic characterisations. There are no stand out heroes, nor anti-heroes. Pretty much everyone in the film is out for themselves, and they are all painted out quite cruelly. Sure some of the characters are more vicious than others but by the end of it you aren’t really rooting for any of them , and you wouldn’t be particularly surprised or even displeased if they all massacred each other in a big blood bath. Thats not to say at all that this was a bad film, quite the contrary. Indeed it is this particular departure from filmic standardisation that makes it stick in my mind.

The film deals with the effects of bullying, from a school playground variety to institutional varieties such as the army or the police. Arguably each character is the the way they are due to some form of bullying and we are left wondering what kind of person they were at the outset. Were they pure and just blackened by their torment or was there something there already which was merely coaxed out by this terror? A Bloody Aria offers no simple answer to this question as the lines between good and evil are not so much blurred as completely ignored. This is illustrated perfectly in the film where In-jeong must place her fate either with a man who has tried his darnedest to rape her, or a group of murderous thugs. This is just one example of the film’s utterly nihilistic world view.

The other key theme of the film is the idea of revenge and retribution. This of course is closely allied to fellow Korean, Park Chan-Wook’s filmic expositions on revenge such as Old Boy and Lady Vengeance. This lead me to ponder just what it is about Korean culture and society that instills these themes?

In a nutshell this film is a moral tale with no morals.

Why don’t we just wait here for a little while… see what happens…

Wednesday 29th October 2008

The Thing (1982)

‘Lots of men, scared!’

This was the note I scribbled to myself in an attempt to gage my immediate reaction to the film. Sums the film up pretty well I feel.

I’m in the process of giving myself a John Carpenter education having recently acquired the new Optimum boxset. This was the first pick from that set, and despite what I said about cult/youth movies in my Near Dark post I actually found this pretty enjoyable, even close to 30 years out of its original context. It was hugely atmospheric based as it was in the frozen tundra Antartica, in a research station manned by a ragtag group of American men, who slowly turn on each other as they become invaded by a shape shifting alien force.

The film for me was a lesson in isolation and paranoia. Its possible I believe to view the film not just as an alien sci-fi tale, but a  warning of the perils of isolation. Everything that happens in the film could be hallucinations brought on by ‘cabin fever’ a la Jack Torrance in The Shining. In this instance though it takes on the form of a kind of mass hysteria in that theres a group of guys there.

Maybe all they needed was the calming influence of a woman…?

Listen to the night, it’s deafening.

Monday 27th October 2008

Near Dark (1987)

Now follows my attempt to get festive with the halloween spirit and watch some scarifying movies. I started out this week with Near Dark, Kathryn Bigelow’s vampiric road movie western romance. I’d missed this one growing up, and having been bemoaned by friends for having never seen it I decided to break this one out of the Box of Blood boxset. I unashamedly love Bigelow’s Point Break anyway so why not eh?

Visually, the film captures the crepuscular atmosphere suggested by the title perfectly, forever drifting liminally in the ‘twilight zone’. Whilst the characters amongst the vampire gang were all genuinely quite unnerving – particularly the ‘kid’ vampire Homer, and Bill Paxton’s character. But I felt more could have been made of these character studies rather than focussing on the love story between Caleb and Mae.

On the whole, while I appreciated Bigelow’s playing with genre conventions and mish mash of styles, this film actually didn’t do too much for me. I was disappointed by this fact and it lead me to question the whole ideal of ‘youth movies’. No matter how good they are, I feel they’re best experienced on the groundfloor – in the context and the zeitgeist of their original release period. The Goonies was my favourite film growing up and I still perennially revisit it from time to time. A friend had never actually seen this film. After pressganging him to watch it, I was shocked to find that he didn’t enjoy it. But I can understand that a little now, because unless you have that memetic association from your own juvenescence with any particular ‘youth movie’ you’ll likely be missing something.

Life’s like a ball game. You gotta take a swing at whatever comes along before you find it’s the ninth inning.

Monday 27th October 2008

Detour (1945)

I’m now getting in danger of doing what I do whenever I undertake writing a diary of some sort – I end up getting way behind and having a backlog of entries to catch up on. Well I watched Detour on Monday (its now Thursday) so its not entirely fresh in my mind. Really the whole point of this blog is to record my immediate thoughts rather than researched and measured ponderings. But I shall persevere nonetheless.

Detour as it happens is an absolute gem of a picture. Shot by Edgar G. Ulmer for one of the so-called ‘poverty row’ studios at the end of the War in 1945, its a film that grabs you from the start. Mostly because it follows the paint by numbers film noir formula, but hell it just works, so who’s complaining. Rogert Ebert sums it up best when he describes the film thus:

“This movie from Hollywood’s poverty row, shot in six days, filled with technical errors and ham-handed narrative, starring a man who can only pout and a woman who can only sneer, should have faded from sight soon after it was released in 1945. And yet it lives on, haunting and creepy, an embodiment of the guilty soul of film noir. No one who has seen it has easily forgotten it.”

Beyond the usual air of paranoia and degredation that inflicts most film noir, what really kept my attention with Detour and what kept me thinking long after the film had finished, was ideas of chance and fate. Tom Neal’s character Al Roberts is a hitchhiker and every trial and tribulation he meets is of course a direct result of which particular drivers he manages to hitch a lift from. What is the difference between chance and fate I wonder? Is it fate or chance that Roberts happens to be in Charles Haskell’s car when Haskell suddenly drops dead? Everything that happens in the film sits in this dichotomy. Its weird to imagine an alternate film where he gets picked up by a different car, gets the girl he wants and everything is peachy. Probably wouldn’t have been a very interesting film, but my point is completely different paths can emerge from the simplest of actions. I’m probably not making much sense. Serves me right for waiting so long to write about this film. Sorry, I suck as a blogger clearly.