Mama

(Andy Muschietti/2013/Spain & USA)

A modern ghost story with tit bits from a host of horror flicks that have gone before but is an impressively atmospheric tale of its own. The main influence is the Ringu movies but it is fun trying to spot all the others, if you can draw breathe between the rollercoaster ride of old school scares in Mama that is. Once the story is set and things get going it doesn’t let up and for all its effects and spookiness it is just an old fashioned jump cut BOO! movie. Besides being derivative another major flaw for me was the ending which ditches a traditional resolution of the ghost coming to peace for a bizarre trade off in character’s, sacrificing one over another.

(2.5/5)

Wake in Fright

(Ted Kotcheff/1971/Australia & USA)

©Vranckx

John Grant, an Australian school teacher in an outback town, packs up for the Christmas holidays to head back to Sydney and his waiting girlfriend. However his journey goes awry as he awaits a flight in the sweltering heat of “The Yabba” and he begins a series of encounters that take him on a hellish journey to the lower echelons of humanity. Wake in Fright is like an Australian Aguirre crossed with Deliverance. It touches on some menacing, repressed aspect of Australian psyche but projects it out, expands it to a universal theme of underlying animal instinct. The oppressive, heavy atmosphere of heat and testosterone hums off the screen as Grant relentlessly wades into ever more brutal scenes. The kangaroo hunt in particular is still controversial; it certainly wouldn’t get made today or passed by the censors. But Kotcheff is an avowed vegetarian and fully stands by the scenes.

It’s an essential, early example of Australian New Wave and the genesis point for a long line of films that use the extremes of the Australian landscape and culture to examine extremities of human behaviour in a variety of cinematic genres; films such as The Cars That Ate Paris, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Mad Max, Razorback and Red Hill amongst others. Wake in Fright is visceral and shocking but in a more considered way than a lot of modern Australian films that attempt to shock and overindulge in gore without necessarily provoking thought.

(3.5/5)

Homecoming

(Sinéad O’Loughlin/2016/Ireland) 

A concise and accomplished ten minutes of film that make a comment on modern rural Ireland in so many ways. Mick has come back from Australia and is working his father’s farm when he encounters Aoife, an old friend, moving belongings from the family home before it’s sold. They share reminisces from their youth, glances, looks, small gestures and a mountain of things not being said between the things being said which make Homecoming a really forceful piece. Superbly acted by David Greene and Johanna O’Brien, they both emit the tensions and emotions of the script in condensed, palpable performances. The surrounding landscape of Wicklow with mist sodden fields, luminous grey skies and verdant green hedges as Mick goes about feeding sheep are like something out of an Austin Clarke poem. But the scenes of Mick farming also set the pace of the film and allow a natural, unhurried telling of the story by O’Loughlin. It’s great to see talent like this coming through in film in Ireland.

(3/5)

Early Man

(Nick Park/2018/UK)

A slightly disappointing outing from Nick Park who’s usually a reliable curator of comedy stop motion flicks. Its flaws are a confusion of message and unfortunately jokes that fall quite a bit short of laugh out loud funny. It’s not that it’s really bad but just not as good as previous work from Aardman Animations. Admittedly I had seen no promo material before watching it so the crime of a confused message may be harsh. I just expected from the title a more homogenous story about prehistoric man rather than a satirical football parody. If you’re not a football fan a lot of the humour is going to be lost on you I think which narrows its audience and maybe explains Early Man’s lack of box office returns. But my son and daughter enjoyed it a lot more, probably because they are free of expectation and prejudice and just want to see funny stuff happen on screen regardless of context or genre and also they aren’t overly serious, grumpy old film lovers like their dad.

(2.5/5)

The Wedding Video

(Nigel Cole/2012/UK)

Raif wants to make a video for his brother Tim and his fiancé, Saskia, for their wedding including the preparations and excitement in the week or two beforehand. This found footage style comedy slowly reveals stories behind the three characters that show everything not to be as it seems and with unexpected results on the big day. It’s all a bit silly and thinks it’s more hilarious than it is but for a risible, half giggled 90 minutes it’s grand.

(2/5)

Battle: Los Angeles

(Jonathon Liebesman/2011/USA)

An initially decent premise devolves into run of the mill war movie stuff with a gang of soldiers in skirmish after skirmish without any real development of plot. It tries to be a visceral war experience in the context of an alien invasion which is fine but without any knowledge of why the invasion is happening and the only motivation being to stay alive the only story is people running around trying to do just that, stay alive. This works in a film like Independence Day because the time is taken to develop both characters and the tension of unexpected, unexplained alien presence before the attack. The tub thumping, glorious American soldiers saving the day hokum just adds to the annoyance of a vacuous script. It’s got lots of explosions and action with not much else going on.

(1/5)

The Pool

(Chris Smith/2007/USA)

Two friends, 18 year old Venkatesh and 11 year old Jhangir, make their living working in a hotel and a restaurant in Panjim in Goa. They earn money on the side selling plastic bags to passersby in their free time. Although they live in poverty they enjoy simple things like homemade chutney, street food treats bought with their extra earnings, sharing stories and just spending time together. The dynamic of their friendship changes when Vekatesh becomes focused on a swimming pool he sees from a mango tree one day. He begins to spy on the occupants of the household and eventually becomes involved with them; initially as a helper to the owner, Nana, in his garden but then as a friend to the daughter Ayesha. The relationships that develop bridge the obvious societal divide and expose a simple humanity in each. The Pool is shot in an unfussy, straight forward way which heightens its realism. The film unfolds at a languid, deliberate pace which reflects the heat and swelter of the streets on display. It is a beautifully crafted piece, absorbing and invested with a humanism that will stay with you long after watching it. The couple of plot twists, one with the swimming pool itself and another with Venkatesh in the final scene are lovely little spikes in pace and emotion.

(3.5/5)

The Incredibles

(Brad Bird/2004/USA)

I saw this in the cinema when it was first released and remember not being overly taken with it. As a result I’ve never re-watched it until this week when my kids asked to see it having caught a snippet somewhere on TV. 14 years later I understand the fuss about it. It’s a great take on superheroes and identity but more so there’s a lesson about personal strengths (super powers) and the importance of family. Working as a team, the family becomes a stronger unit capable of taking on any situation. Maybe it took my situation changing to having a family of my own to get it!

(3.5/5)

Victoria and Abdul

(Stephen Frears/2017/UK)

Having come to light after over a hundred years the remarkable story of the relationship between Queen Victoria and an Indian servant, Abdul Karim, whom she elevated to her inner circle, was crying out to be adapted to film. Frears makes a good fist of it with his ability to present and observe without any explicit directorial comment but the film suffers from an imbalance in the characterisations. Essentially we knows loads about Queen Victoria so Judy Dench can knock it out of the park but Abdul is a rather two dimensional foil. This is nothing to do with Ali Fazal’s capabilities as an actor but I suspect more to do with a selective use of material belying who the man was. Frears recreates events and situations which we know happened but as to the character and motivations of the man himself the Abdul onscreen lacks a little depth. Particularly problematic is his contextualisation as a happy servant of the empire which approaches a revisionism I’d not expect from a director like Frears. The man was more complex and made up, like us all, of emotional and mental strata that shape a more rounded character. There is evidence that Abdul displayed some arrogance, possibly a defensive stance towards the negative attitude of the royal staff towards him, and he certainly garnered favours for both his father and an old employer back in India which suggest a degree of manipulation of his privileged position but this doesn’t fit the vibe here.

The film is very much a light-hearted portrayal of the Queen in her twilight years with the affection and warmth of her friendship with Abdul the focus, as is the vitriol and bigotry of the royal staff towards him. Again this approaches revisionism unworthy of Frears because it places Victoria in a position of moral defender, fighting for his equal rights. As accurate as this may be inside the privacy of her own court outside in the real world she had presided over the imperial oppression of India. This isn’t Frears’ best work but it is a funny and engaging story however skewed or not fully reflecting actual events. Judy Dench is great as ever and steals the show.

(2.5/5)

Ran

(Akira Kurosawa/1985/Japan)

Ran is a Japanese Sengoku period epic set in the 16^th Century showing the results of a decision by a powerful warlord to effectively retire and split his lands and wealth between his three sons. It is a lavish film, full of colour and pomp and cut through with one of the most theatrical of performances in any of Kurosawa’s films in the form of Tatsuya Nakadai as the warlord Hidetora. His facial expressions and make up become increasingly pronounced as the story unfolds to carve out a visage of weariness and tragedy marked by shadowy bags under eyes, gaunt cheeks and rattling eye sockets. He is mesmerising at points and invariably accompanied by his fool, Kyoami, who offers a jumping, giggling counterpoint to his slow descent into madness.

The film closely parallels Shakespeare’s Lear in both themes and story. It opens with a shot of clouds and blue sky which presage the decision to abdicate and the upset that ensues. The clouds appear repeatedly before something terrible happens throughout the rest of the film. Nature or more accurately natural law, justice and power are underlying concerns of the story. One change Kurosawa makes is from Lear’s daughters to Hidetora’s sons but he retains strong female characters in the wives of the warlord’s sons. They are crucial to the plot and the theme around power. Ran is a sprawling family drama of sorts that examines the failings and struggles of being human. It is a sumptuous and at times violent film and is certainly one of Kurosawa’s best easily standing next to, if not surpassing, his earlier Samurai films of the 50’s and 60’s.

(4/5)

Remembrance

(Colin Gregg/1982/UK)

Notable for early appearances of John Altman, Timothy Spall and the film debut of Gary Oldman Remembrance follows a group of naval cadets impacted by a tragic event before they ship out for a six month NATO training exercise. Based in Plymouth and opening with some seriously dodgy drunken acting the story evolves at a measured pace, layering the narrative of each cadet over the other and building to a quite impressive emotional resonance in the closing scenes. It fits snugly into a lineage of British working class drama, looking into a singular facet of the population and bringing us closer through universal concerns and situations. Each story finds a cadet striving for identity, running from the past or struggling with their present situation and whilst there is no direct reference to it the shadow of the Falklands War hangs over things. The search for the identity of Oldman’s character and its link to Remembrance Day ceremonies honouring the dead of past wars is the overriding context. The Navy itself is presented as a mirror of the class based society in Britain with upper class naval officers being interviewed on the TV as the working class cadets watch in their quarters.

Gregg would go on to make the even more affecting Lamb but you can see him already wielding his craft with confidence here. There is an exquisite cut away of the Luis Brunel Royal Albert railway bridge which then pans to the modern day Tamar Bridge filled with traffic which for me encapsulates the move from public to private and an increasingly market driven society. It is the subtlest of hints at Thatcher’s Britain which is reflected again in the party scene where a teacher reveals her bias towards one of the young sailors, Steve, who responds in angry pride, evoking the image of the navy defending the nation whilst its people go about their lives. Another shot of Vincent strolling down a laneway looking at the dawn over Plymouth port with the sun glinting off the docked warships implies the adventure of the upcoming exercise and the opportunity the Navy presents to these young men who might otherwise be overwhelmed or alienated by their various situations.

In some ways the film is an attempt at explaining why young men sign up for a military life at sea given the disaster of the Falklands War the year before. But it is a barbed comment on conflicts driven by those with power and fuelled by young and sometimes idealistic men with little or no opportunity otherwise. Remembrance has been underappreciated since its original release but a reappraisal seems to have occurred with Film 4 screenings in lieu of Oldman’s Oscar win for Darkest Hour and rumours of a digital reprint.

(3/5)

This is a Television Receiver

(David Hall/1976/UK)

This is an avant-garde video piece in which newscaster Richard Baker, in close up, describes the functions of a television and the metaphysical paradoxes of the images and sounds onscreen. The section repeats but is now removed digitally as if the camera is recording a recording. This first iteration introduces a slight degradation of image and sound. There are two more iterations of the original each removed further than the last and producing increasingly degraded results. The second has Baker looking like a Sontaran from Dr. Who but his speech and image are still just about recognisable. The final iteration is a surreal, unintelligible warping of vision and sound. The degraded audio creates what sounds like a haunting wind, sound tracking the now alien dialogue of Baker who is no more than a visual stain of pixels across the screen. This is an excellent piece which queries the nature of representation and the manipulation of that representation to create new meaning.

This is a Television Receiver on Ubu

(5/5)

Easy Money

(Daniel Espinosa/2010/Sweden)

A crime thriller that winds three stories around each other quite successfully to keep the story engaging and moving til the end. There’s a low level drug dealer involved with an Albanian crime gang, a hitman for a rival Serbian gang and a young Swedish man living a double life posing as a wealthy playboy by day and moonlighting as a taxi driver whilst studying to try and fund his fake lifestyle. Their three lives become inextricably linked and dependant on each other. The level of character development and realness of their situations goes a long way to raising the story above the usual crime thriller plot but where it goes slightly awry is ending as a kind of morality tale. Doing bad things is bad mmkay. But this aside it’s a decent watch and surprisingly pacy for a Swedish crime drama.

(2.5/5)

I Hired a Contract Killer

(Aki Kaurismaki/1990/Finland, France, Germany Sweden & UK)

The Great Finn’s first foray into English speaking film deals with a man who wants to do away with himself but doesn’t have the courage to so he hires a hit man to take him out. Romantic rumblings change his mind but plans are in action and the killer is adamant on carrying out the job. Perversely black humour as ever from Kaurismaki, revelling in the absurdity of it all but I just couldn’t help feeling things were a little wooden. Some of the deliveries of lines and blocking of scenes seemed deliberately stuttered and to what end I couldn’t discern. The overall effect is a somewhat stilted affair or maybe I’m only noticing a Kaurismaki cinematic tic now due to not having to read subtitles? It’s an enjoyable film but certainly not the best outing from this incorrigibly, darkly funny director.

(2.5/5)