Spring Breakers

(Harmony Korine/2012/USA)

You know those young, gaudy, reckless American hedonist students that spend their Easter holidays in an alcohol and drug binged haze of moronic hollering and casual sex? Harmony Korine made a film about those idiots but couldn’t sustain the narrative long enough before having to weld it to some bullshit about white gangster rappers. The whole film is an exercise in glitzy surface cool in an effort to make some sub textual comment on American youth culture but it gets tired and tiring very, very quickly. Outside of Kids, which he wrote and is brilliant, I haven’t seen any other Harmony Korine films but am aware he’s lauded in various circles. If this is what he’s amounted to in the near 20 years since writing Kids I won’t be rushing to fill in the gaps.

(0/5)  

Harry Brown

(Daniel Barber/2009/UK)

Michael Caine goes all Chuck Bronson in this London vigilante tale but he has quite a few years on his Death Wish predecessor so it’s more bus pass and pension than Smith and Wesson, not unlike Eastwood in the previous year’s Gran Torino really. At its heart Harry Brown is a revenge story as Caine takes on a local gang of hoodied youths in a sequence of events that become ever more bloody and tense. It’s all a bit over the top and the bleakness of the lives and surroundings on display coupled with full on torture and violence diminish any chance of spinning it for a laugh. The narrative is too restrictive to pass as decent social comment so you’re left with a slightly absurd set up that plays out in an overly dramatic way. Michael Caine is absolutely brilliant as the aggrieved old codger though and his performance is worth the admission price alone.

(2/5)

Marshland

(Alberto Rodriguez/2014/Spain)

Marshland is a gripping crime mystery with a socio-political subtext that lifts it above normal, run of the mill cop drama fare. The methodical unravelling of the story behind the murder of two teenage girls in the swampland of the Guadalquivir River leads to a radical change in awareness and conscience of one the investigating officers. And so his relationship with his partner is altered forever. Made in the same year as the first season of True Detective you’d be forgiven for thinking the Spanish writers of Marshland were in some kind of mental synchronicity with those of the renowned TV series in the U.S. There are so many overlaps in style, setting and storyline I won’t begin to list them but the similarity of the area south west of Seville to the deep south of America is uncanny.

The shadow of Franco hangs over the lives of everyone in the film and the direct references to the past in many of the scenes build to a subtle but overriding implication. For a country or in this case a village, to transition from a traumatic phase of history then accountability and justice are integral parts of the healing of that trauma. The bigger question leading from this, on a human level, is if a person can exonerate themselves of previous bad deeds by being a better person and doing good to balance the karmic books. Can real forgiveness take place in the absence of justice for past sins?

A nice trick by Rodriguez is to use overhead shots at distance to visually notch the narrative every time something of significance occurs or is said. It’s quite a layered film with plenty going on underneath the story being presented onscreen to keep you musing long after the credits.

(3.5/5)

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)

False Trail

(Kjell Sundvall/2011/Sweden) 

A fairly by the numbers murder mystery flick that really didn’t rise above made for TV production levels for me. It’s obvious from a long way off what’s going on which makes the cat and mouse investigation that develops by turns predictable and a bit frustrating. A couple of good performances in the leads but unless you’re a Nordic crime genre fan this is an inessential affair.

(2/5)

Ill Manors

(Ben Drew/2012/UK)

A vehicle for rapper Plan B to showcase 8 songs revolving around the 8 characters whose lives are the focus of the film Ill Manors works in places and not in others. Essentially it captures the sense of frustration and hopelessness in growing up in a particular part of London as well as the community dynamics in those estates and streets too. But it also over eggs the story or stories to the point of soap opera level drama. Far too much happens in a week to stay completely engaged with it as issue after issue is highlighted. It’s a pity because if it had scaled back the script to focus more on 3 or 4 of the main characters it might have resulted in a tighter and more forceful film. The performances can’t be faulted and the setting and characterisations are on point so it really is a case of an overstuffed narrative.

(2.5/5)

The Raid 2

(Gareth Evans/2014/Indonesia)

It’s hard to imagine Gareth Evans coming close to the action and excitement of his first Raid movie but he does it and even goes beyond it. Picking up right where the The Raid finished we see Rama getting recruited as an undercover agent to infiltrate the Bangun crime gang. There’s a lot more story here and events tip along nicely with building tension and bursts of violence. Unlike the first movie which had a single goal driving the plot this sequel has to open out several different strands and weave them together whilst replicating the momentum and dynamic of the fighting. It does it really well, the story holds together and the fight scenes are a step above the earlier episode using a lot more visual gags and various settings and stunt set ups to elaborate on. If you enjoyed the first Raid you should have no complaint with this one either.

(3.5/5)

The Connection

(Cédric Jimenez/2014/France & Belgium)

The connection in the title being French as in the 1971 William Friedkin film about drugs smuggling through Marseilles to New York based on real events. The Connection looks at the story from the French side and details the story of Judge Pierre Michel and criminal Tany Zampa who were more or less arch rivals on the side of law and disorder respectively in 1970’s Marseilles. The film is an excellent character study of both the protagonists and has plenty of action and style but it is at the end of the day a gangster film and doesn’t push against or beyond that genre in any way. It’s a good film and a compelling story but there’s nothing spectacular about it in and of itself.

(2.5/5)

Heli

(Amat Escalante/2013/Mexico) 

This is one heavy going movie, starting with an elongated scene of a man held captive in the back of a truck, bleak is too easy a word to apply and maybe inaccurate too. Escalante presents events as inescapable and inevitable, a fact of life in today’s Mexico but as despairing as things get throughout the film it ends on a note of hope and positivity albeit a slight one. Heli lives in a small adobe with his dad, younger sister and his wife and infant daughter. He works in the local car factory. Things are ok, the family works hard and there are moments of joy amidst the routine of their days. However his younger sister is involved with a much older police cadet with dreams of escaping the hum drum by selling some cocaine siphoned off from a drug bust which he stashes at the adobe. Heli discovers both the affair and the drugs and takes actions which lead to a sequence of reactions that change their lives forever. The story shows the corruption in the police, the control of the criminal gangs and the indifference of the two to ordinary, lawful people but not in a deep examining way, more in a matter of fact, this is how it is way. It’s emotionally pummelling but an enthralling and worthy watch. The cinematography and depiction of the Mexican environs are beautiful and counterpoint the ugliness of goings on within them.

(4/5)

Carlos (Parts 1-3)

(Olivier Assayas/2010/France & Germany) 

This series of made for TV films recount the career in terrorism of Carlos the Jackal, or Ilich Ramirez Sanchez to give him his full and proper name, starting in Paris in 1973 when the young Venezuelan proposes himself as a replacement for the recently assassinated Mohamed Boudia in the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine). It paints the man as a committed revolutionary with the theoretical and political invective to motivate and justify his actions, often killing innocent civilians. It shows how he was a catalyst for several different revolutionary groups across Europe to work together during a period of great unrest and violence. Played by Edgar Ramirez, the charm and wilfulness of Carlos in his younger days is captured really well and as the trilogy moves through his life we see this charm subside into ego along with a progressive loosening of ideals. By the end he is seen to be nothing more than a mercenary sidling up to anyone who will fund his revolution, and lifestyle, with the crimes committed conveniently suiting both sides involved. 

It’s a great set of films but not without flaws. There's an excessive interest in his love affairs with no other reason than to make the films “sexy”. Also the soundtrack uses a bizarre amount of indie tunes for sequences which would ordinarily be orchestrated. The result is the impression that the protagonists onscreen are really cool, with reoccurring themes of jangly upbeat indie music. You’d almost think Olivier Assayas was trying to make Carlos into a sort of anti-hero with a noble cause no matter how horrific. Aside from these quibbles though, they are an engaging and revealing sequence of films.

(3/5)

Yakuza Apocalypse

(Takashi Miike/2015/Japan)

You don’t press play on a Takashi Miike film and expect a run of the mill cinematic experience. The man is known for his derangement of genres and narrative and in Yakuza Apocalypse he seems to pack almost every style and conceit he’s ever previously employed into the one sitting. Without trying to elaborate on every twist and turn, because we’d be here all day, the basic premise is this: Kageyama works for local gangster Kamiura, who happens to be a vampire. A rival cartel, consisting of a coffin carrying witchfinder general, an geeky assassin and a kappa water demon, rolls into town challenging Kamiura’s reign. They kick his ass but before he dies he bites Kageyama, turning him into a vampire, who then vows to destroy the cartel with the remnants of the yakuza gang. The cartel summon "the modern monster" who is a man in an oversized mouldy frog suit, he needs help up and down stairs but has unbelievable martial arts skills. The rest of the movie is taken up with the battle between Kageyama’s crew and the cartel and the frog. Have you processed all that? Because that is the bare bones of what goes on. At the start of the movie Kageyama says “My life was like tepid water. Then I met the boss.” Well Takashi Miike boils the bejaysus out of that water over the course of two hours and there is absolutely no point in trying to make sense of it. Strap yourself in and enjoy the ride because it is at times frustrating, at times hilarious and all the time fun. It ends in mid skirmish, suggesting there could be a sequel but for me the scenes towards the end take on the feel of a video game. The monster levels up and the final cut is as if someone pressed pause to make a cup of tea during an epic battle on a games console. This is a marmite flick, even Miike fans will rankle at it I suspect but if you can let the attention deficit style wash over you there’s lots to enjoy.

(3.5/5)

Animal Kingdom

(David Michôd/2010/Australia)

After his mum overdoses and dies Jay finds refuge with his grandmother and extended family who happen to be one of Melbourne’s most notorious crime gangs. His passive engagement with the daily running’s of this new family sees him find a sense of place and acceptance and also exposes him to exploitation in particular by his uncle - the older, just out of jail and slightly psychotic brother “Pope”. Based around real events Animal Kingdom matter-of-factly portrays these folk as they casually and pointedly operate and live outside of the law. Jay slips further and further into the mire as pressure from cops to go states witness builds and Pope slowly loses his grip and slips further and further into paranoid aggression. Ben Mendelsohn is intense and scary as Pope and James Frecheville plays the confused, perennially unsure but cool Jay to a tee. Animal Kingdom is quietly gripping to the very last second.

(3.5/5)