Panic (1970)

30 Thursday Apr 2015

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Affair, Aldo Monti, Alma Delia Fuentes, Ana Martín, Anaesthetic, Anthology, Drama, Horror, Joaquín Cordero, José Gálvez, Julián Soler, Mexico, Review, Yellow fever

Original title: Pánico

D: Julián Soler / 85m

Cast: Ana Martín, Ofelia Guilmáin, Joaquín Cordero, José Gálvez, Susana Salvat, Alma Delia Fuentes, Aldo Monti, Carlos Ancira, Pilar Sen

In Panic, a young woman (Martín) flees from another woman (Guilmáin) who is dressed in pink and carrying a knife. At first, the young woman manages to avoid her by escaping into the woods, but the woman in pink pursues her. At one point the young woman thinks she’s evaded her but the woman in pink reappears. In between periods of running through the woods, the young woman has flashbacks to an earlier time when she was brutally attacked by five men. With three men trying to block her escape, the young woman is eventually caught up with by the woman in pink, and a struggle to the death ensues.

In Soledad, two men, Carlos (Cordero) and Abel (Gálvez) are in a village that has fallen victim to an outbreak of yellow fever. Having buried the last victim – who proves to be Abel’s wife (Salvat) – they get in their boat and head down river and away from the plague zone. When their boat capsizes and they find themselves stranded in the swamp, Carlos is unable to deal with the idea that they’ll most likely perish there. He begins to go mad, and in the process, reveals that he was having an affair with Abel’s wife. Distraught at what he’s done, and for betraying his friend’s trust, Carlos implores Abel to kill him. They fight, but in the struggle, Carlos stabs Abel, killing him instantly. Carlos buries his friend in a shallow grave, and as the loneliness and despair take over, he discovers that Abel isn’t as dead and buried as he should be… and that he wants revenge.

In Anguish, scientist and inventor Tiberius Hansen (Monti) has perfected a narcotic that can double as a powerful anaesthetic. Just a few drops will render a patient motionless and unable to feel pain for five hours, but they will be aware of everything that’s happening to them during that time. When an accident leads to his drinking some of his new discovery, Tiberius collapses. His wife, Melody (Fuentes) discovers him apparently dead in his laboratory; the doctor (Ancira) she calls examines Tiberius, and not finding a heartbeat or any other signs of life, pronounces him dead. With Tiberius having made it clear he didn’t want a wake, Melody and the doctor press ahead with the funeral, aiming to have Tiberius buried as soon as possible…

The availability of Mexican horror anthologies is notoriously bad, with many gems of the genre proving as rare as the proverbial hen’s teeth, but Panic – available on DVD and via YouTube – has managed to buck the trend, and is well worth watching. Like many of its European counterparts, it’s a a mix of the weird, the unexpectedly poetic, and the bizarre.

This applies in the main to the first segment where the young woman is seen to have problems distinguishing fantasy from reality, both before and after she’s chased through the woods by the woman in pink and her murderous intentions. The young woman (who’s name we never learn) is seen cradling a doll before the woman in pink arrives on the scene, and the maternal way in which she’s so carefully holding the doll hints at the young woman’s “problems”. Several chase sequences later, the two women fight it out, and even though one emerges the winner, there’s a twist in the tale that is both unanticipated and satisfying. There’s a lot of cutting away to shots of the trees, a pool of brackish water that acts as a birthing metaphor, and a heavy reliance on Martín’s ability to look panicked like an animal caught in a car’s headlights. It’s a very straightforward segment, but powerfully shot, with no dialogue until the very end, and then in a scene reminiscent of the ending of Psycho (1960).

The longest of the three tales, and also the one most requiring its audience’s patience, Soledad is an entry that wouldn’t have gone amiss in a Tales from the Crypt-style portmanteau. With its two men trapped by circumstance, Abel’s frequent returns from the dead are handled superbly, but it’s the long, very slow build-up as they travel along the river that’s likely to sap the viewer’s will and have them reaching for the fast forward button. The tradition of very tight close ups is in operation here, with both men’s eyes so near to the camera you can almost count their eyelashes. These shots herald flashbacks to the two men kissing Abel’s wife, albeit with vastly differing results. Once they’re stranded, Cordero’s descent into madness is handled with the era’s usual dismissal of restraint, while Gálvez’ determined looks are put to good use – better use, perhaps – when he rises from the grave. Both men keep matters credible and there’s a fight (again in a pool of dirty water) that is a testament to Cordero’s commitment to the role as he’s dunked time and again. Here, Soler loses his grip on the pace from time to time, and Cordero’s performance borders on the annoying, but ultimately it’s worth it for Gálvez’ effortless turn as a man betrayed by his best friend.

In the last segment, Anguish, the protagonist’s desire to do good backfires on him with potentially life-threatening consequences as his family and his doctor do their best to speed up his funeral. This is the segment that finally introduces some consistent dark humour into proceedings, with its flashes of occasional wit and honesty. Hansen is a hoot as the man doomed to be buried alive unless either his wife can respond to his telepathic instructions, or the anaesthetic will wear off in time. Monti, reduced to providing a voice over for the most part, plays it straight, even when he’s railing against the unfairness of his situation. Fuentes matches him for sincerity, her pale features adequately representing the features of a woman who’s lost the love of her life (whatever the doctor intends). Mostly setbound, this segment is the most fully realised of the three, and remains the most entertaining, rounding off the movie in no small style, and with one last joke to tell.

Overall, Soler directs with a view to making the horror more subtle than usual, although the first tale is infused with weird imagery and close ups of a screaming Guilmáin. It’s a proto-slasher tale, and its rural, woodland setting is well shot and lit by DoP Gabriel Torres. The same can be said for the second tale, with its outdoor locations hinting at various menaces at every turn, and some impressive nightmare imagery. The last tale proceeds as expected, and Soler makes the most of scripter Ramón Obón’s layering of the humour, making Tiberius’s dilemma more amusing than horrific – not necessarily a good thing in a horror anthology – but the acting and the pace suit the story and that last joke should definitely raise a laugh.

Rating: 7/10 – with its over-extended middle segment, and low budget origins proving a handicap in certain scenes, Panic is still an enjoyable horror compilation; with a good sense of its limitations and strengths, the movie evokes ideas of loneliness, despair and resignation, adding some unexpected depth to each tale, and making them slightly above par for this sort of thing.

NOTE: There isn’t a trailer available for Panic.

The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros (2005)

29 Wednesday Apr 2015

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Auraeus Solito, Crime, Drama, Homosexuality, J.R. Valentin, Manila, Murder, Nathan Lopez, Neil Ryan Sese, Philippines, Ping Medina, Police officer, Review, Soliman Cruz

Original title: Ang pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros

D: Auraeus Solito / 100m

Cast: Nathan Lopez, Soliman Cruz, J.R. Valentin, Neil Ryan Sese, Ping Medina, Bodjie Pascua, Elmo Redrico

Twelve-year-old Maximo Oliveros (Lopez) lives with his father Paco (Cruz), and his two older brothers, Boy (Sese) and Bogs (Medina). In the absence of his mother who has passed away, Maximo cooks and cleans and generally takes care of everyone. But where his brothers and father are all tough, macho men, Maximo is the opposite: he’s effeminate, sashays when he walks, and he likes dressing up in women’s clothes and wearing make up. He has a few friends who have similar interests, and most of the time they watch romantic movies in a local DVD shop.

The arrival of a new police officer in the district, Victor Perez (Valentin), has Maximo wondering if what he’s seen in the movies could happen in real life. Despite the difference in their ages, Maximo develops a crush on Victor and determines to get to know him better. His attraction deepens when Victor interrupts two youths who assault Maximo and remove his clothes. Victor takes Maximo home, but earns Paco’s suspicion when he refuses to accept money as thanks. Later, the two youths are found naked and unconscious on a rubbish heap; one of them subsequently dies. At the same time, Maximo finds Boy cleaning blood from a T-shirt that belongs to Bogs.

With Victor proving to be a cop who doesn’t take bribes, Paco, who steals cell phones and sells them on, begins to become concerned over Maximo’s liking for him. Maximo cooks for him and begins to neglect his family. When Victor quizzes him over the murder of the youth, it leads to Paco, Boy and Bogs ambushing him one night and giving him a severe beating. Maximo finds him and taking him to Victor’s home, nurses him until he falls asleep. The next morning, Victor is hesitant towards Maximo, despite what he’s done, but they do share a wistful moment together that gives Maximo renewed hope that they will remain friends at least.

The arrival of a new police chief, Dominguez (Pascua), however, means promotion for Victor and a crackdown on local criminal activity. Maximo’s home is raided but the police don’t find anything. With Maximo still hoping that his relationship with Victor can be saved, Paco has other ideas: he decides he’s going to kill Victor, but when he confronts him, Paco comes face-to-face with an enemy from the past, an enemy as willing to step outside the law as Paco.

A movie that begins brightly, almost in a carefree manner before slowly darkening until tragedy is the order of the day, The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros is a heartfelt, uplifting movie when it comes to Maximo’s lifestyle and subsequent infatuation with Victor, but plays it safe with its more dramatic, criminal elements.

When we first meet Maximo he’s on his way home and swinging his hips as if he’s parading along a catwalk rather than the grimy backstreets of Manila. He’s unashamed, confident, and more importantly, he’s not harassed in any way. In his local community, Maximo is well-known and much liked. His family treat him no differently than they would anyone else, and are openly affectionate toward him. In short, his obviously gay mannerisms and outlook aren’t a problem – until he meets Victor. The difference in age, the social divide created by Victor’s job and Paco’s “business”, the moral and spiritual implications (Victor is a practising Catholic), all conspire to keep Maximo and Victor apart, but it’s Maximo’s naïve yearning that gives him hope.

It’s Maximo’s continued hope in spite of everything that the script by Michiko Yamamoto plays with most effectively. It’s a delicate balancing act, but Yamamoto, aided by intuitive direction from Solito and razor-sharp performances from Lopez and Valentin, succeeds in adequately capturing the heady infatuation of first love alongside that love’s inevitable disintegration. It’s handled with a great deal of charm and discretion and scenes that might have bordered on being uncomfortable aren’t allowed to become so thanks to the script’s awareness of where the boundaries are. Even when Maximo gives Victor a peck on the cheek it’s done with an emphasis on the sweetness of the gesture rather than anything more sexual.

With the Maximo’s one-sided “romance” so confidently dealt with, it’s a pleasure to see the Oliveros’ family dynamic treated with equal confidence, their close-knit inter-dependence one of the movie’s many plusses. The tenderness shown toward Maximo by his father and brothers is heartwarming and sincere, and even though their criminal activities threaten all their futures, including Maximo’s, the movie’s message is clear: this family will do whatever it can to stay together. Played with artless integrity by Cruz, Sese and Medina, this is a nuclear family (sans the mother) that has learned the hard way that family matters above all else. So when Maximo begins to place Victor ahead of his family, the threat to that solidarity is all the more disconcerting for them; it’s no wonder Paco makes the choice he does.

But while the rest of the cast play their roles with a strong sense of authenticity and purpose – with the exception of Valentin who retains a hulking presence but little else – the movie remains a showcase for the remarkable talent shown by Lopez. Making his feature debut, Lopez inhabits the role of Maximo with so much assurance and poise that it doesn’t seem as if he’s acting at all. From his first appearance making that catwalk strut to the scene where Victor tests his loyalty to his brothers, to the final scene where he employs an altogether different walk from that first one, Lopez’s performance is never less than authoritative and genuine. He’s not fazed by the emotional requirements of the script and handles each development in the story with an ease you can imagine some other actors would kill for.

But while the movie has several strong components going for it, one of them isn’t the descent into turgid melodrama it takes in the final half hour, as notions of honour and revenge take a back seat to the carefully constructed storyline that’s gone before. With no other possible ending for Maximo and Victor’s relationship than the one that occurs, the movie was always likely to end quietly, but Yamamoto’s script turns its focus away from its main protagonist and leaves him on the sidelines while his future is decided on without him. Somehow, given Maximo’s intelligence and acceptance of the world he lives in, it seems a shame to marginalise him in this way. And a quick mention for the music, mostly guitar-based, but which is, at times, incredibly intrusive.

Rating: 8/10 – a compelling drama about the consequences of one young boy’s first love, The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros makes no judgment about his love, but does tread a very fine line in displaying it; with a mesmerising performance from Lopez it’s genuinely affecting and rewarding.

A Song of Lisbon (1933)

28 Tuesday Apr 2015

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Beatriz Costa, Comedy, Fado, José Cottinelli Telmo, Lisbon, Manoel de Oliveira, Medical student, Miss Seamstress, Musical, Portugal, Review, Romance, Vasco Santana

Original title: A Canção de Lisboa

D: José Cottinelli Telmo / 91m

Cast: Vasco Santana, Beatriz Costa, António Silva, Teresa Gomes, Sofía Santos, Alfredo Silva, Ana María, Manoel de Oliveira, Eduardo Fernandes

Vasco Leitão (Santana) is a medical student with two adoring aunts (Gomes, Santos) who have funded his studies, but who are unaware that their nephew has squandered their money on wine, women and song. To make matters worse, he’s told them he’s passed his exams, has an impressive office, and is doing really well. So when they write to him and tell him they plan to visit him, and see how successful he’s become, Vasco doesn’t know what to do.

He confides in his girlfriend, Alice (Costa), with whom he has a relationship fraught with animosity (she can’t stand his flirting with other women, he can’t stand her jealousy). When he tells her of the generous inheritance he stands to gain from his aunts, she in turn tells her father, Caetano (Silva) as a means to persuading him to accept Vasco as a future son-in-law. Caetano sees the light and welcomes Vasco into his home, but Vasco’s landlord (Alfredo Silva) muscles in on Caetano’s plans to appropriate the aunts’ money.

This leads to Vasco being made homeless on the same day as his aunts’ arrival. With the aid of his friends from medical school he manages to distract them both, while Caetano promises to impress them with tales of how Vasco has saved his life. In the process he and Alice have a falling out that ends their relationship. Inevitably his aunts discover the truth and disinherit him (even as they become enamoured of Caetano and Vasco’s now ex-landlord). With no money, no home, no job and no girlfriend, Vasco is at a loss as to what to do next.

A chance encounter with his friend Carlos (de Oliveira) leads to Vasco being asked to sing Fado at a restaurant with a stage area. Unfortunately, by the time he takes to the stage he’s had a little too much to drink and his “performance” sees the audience throw food at him and call for him to leave the stage. Chased off, Vasco ponders on the way in which things have turned out, and as a result he begins to turn his life around, beginning with singing Fado more professionally.

Of interest for being the first Portuguese sound movie to have been produced entirely in Portugal, A Song for Lisbon is also only the second sound movie made in the Portuguese language, after A Severa (1931). Made during a period now regarded by many as Portugal’s Golden Era, the movie is a gleeful mix of comedy, romance and music, a sparkling piece of cinematic confectionery that plays to its strengths: a cast at the top of their game, a storyline that keeps it simple and straightforward, and direction that combines the two effortlessly.

The main draw here, of course, is Santana, already an accomplished stage performer and reminiscent of Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle in his prime. This was his first starring role in a full-length movie, and there’s not a trace of nerves or hesitancy in his performance whatsoever. With his cheerful grin and impish sense of humour, allied to various bits of stage work that he manages to include in amongst the comedic goings-on, Santana is never less than fun to watch. His drunken Fado audition is a great example, as he uses a guitar like a tennis racket to fend off the fruit that’s hurtling in his direction – it’s a vaudeville moment, pure and simple, and all the more effective for being so. He’s a star turn, so confident that you wouldn’t be surprised if he turned and winked at the camera every now and then.

Under Telmo’s assured direction, Santana and the rest of the cast revel in the carefree mise-en-scene, with Costa’s angry yet besotted girlfriend proving a great foil for Santana’s mischievousness (their food fight is a highlight). As the devious Caetano, Silva manages to avoid twirling his moustache in the manner of a silent movie villain, but otherwise it’s a similar performance, perfectly executed and with just the right amount of self-awareness amidst all the pomposity. The sequence where he oversees the crowning of Miss Seamstress (unsurprisingly it’s Alice), is a masterclass in suppressed humility and blatant favouritism. Further down the list of course is de Oliveira, making his first credited appearance as an actor (he wouldn’t do so again until 1963). He doesn’t have a big part, nor does he stand out particularly, but in some strange way it’s fun to see him in the prime of life, and not as the centenarian director he became famous for.

The movie also works in various Lisbon locations, but its opening credits sequence aside, manages to avoid becoming a kind of travelogue for the city, and instead uses it as a beautiful backdrop, and thereby enhancing the story. The musical numbers include a melancholy song of love sung by Costa that is as touching now as it was then, and a sweetly ridiculous number called The Thimble and the Needle (also sung by Costa). It all adds up to a glorious piece of entertainment that gallops along while barely pausing for breath, and which sets out to entertain its audience thoroughly, and thoroughly succeeds.

Rating: 9/10 – a perfect example of how to transfer an energetic, entertaining script to the screen and make it sing, A Song of Lisbon is both delightful and delicious; a triumph for all concerned and in comparison with some of the musicals being produced by Hollywood at the time, absolutely streets ahead.

NOTE: There’s no trailer available for A Song of Lisbon, but the following clip gives a good example of the humour involved:

A Small September Affair (2014)

27 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Amnesia, Bozcaada, Car crash, Ceren Moray, Drama, Engin Akyürek, Farah Zeynep Abdullah, Kerem Deren, Love affair, Review, Romance, Turkey

Original title: Bi Küçük Eylül Meselesi

D: Kerem Deren / 102m

Cast: Farah Zeynep Abdullah, Engin Akyürek, Ceren Moray, Onur Tuna, Serra Keskin

TV production associate Eylül (Abdullah) has a dream career, a handsome actor boyfriend, Atil (Tuna), and is living life to the full. But when a car crash causes her to lose her memory of the month immediately before the accident, it also causes her to wonder just why she can’t remember that time, and why she is getting sudden flashes of being on an island. Pressuring her best friend Berrak (Moray) into telling her where she was, Eylül learns that she and Berrak and Atil took a break to the island of Bozcaada a month before the accident.

Eylül insists on returning there, and reluctantly, Berrak goes with her. With her friend clearly hiding something, Eylül separates from her and encounters a young man, Tekin (Akyürek), who recognises her. But she doesn’t recognise him, however, he manages to persuade her to meet him at a nearby restaurant. There, he begins to tell her of the way in which they met, and their first “date”. But when Berrak calls her and warns her to get away, Eylül becomes frightened and runs away. Tekin follows her; when he catches up to her he shares another memory of their time together. When Berrak finds her, Eylül is even more confused by what her emerging memories are telling her, and Berrak’s insistence that they should leave and that everything is all right.

She continues to see Tekin, and he tells her how she decided to stay on the island instead of returning home with Berrak and Atil. He tells her how they visited various places on the island, and how she taught him to swim. Coming to understand that she and Tekin were falling in love, Eylül is still confused as to why Berrak is so worried by her being on the island, even after Tekin tells her about her visit to his home and she came to learn that he is the man she’s always sworn she’ll marry, an artist who provides caricatures for the newspapers. But Eylül remembers more: she remembers the morning after she and Tekin had first made love, and seeing herself in the mirror and not being able to recognise herself from the ambitious, fun-filled young woman she’d always aspired to be.

Atil arrives on the island and he and Berrak make her confront this memory, and the consequence of it, a consequence which she remembers, and which she discovers, brings her back full circle to the car crash and her loss of memory.

The first feature from the co-writer of the highly regarded Turkish TV drama Ezel (2009-2011), A Small September Affair is a small-scale winner that creates enough mystery out of Eylül’s missing month to keep the viewer intrigued and second guessing things throughout. It plays with notions of memory and imagination and longing with a lightness of touch that is both engaging and confident, and it deliberately avoids straying too far into more dramatic territory, despite an undercurrent that threatens to pull it that way on occasion.

The tone of the movie is all-important, as Deren constantly strives to undermine the audience’s expectations of what will happen next. By making Eylül’s memories potentially unreliable (each time she remembers something, Berrak comes along to question it), the movie makes each new revelation about her relationship with Tekin that much more important to her. This allows Eylül’s journey to balance precariously on the knife edge of fantasy, as each new “truth” shows her behaving in ways that don’t match up with someone who views themselves as “too joyful to fall in love”. As a result, the final revelation carries an emotional weight that acts like a hammer blow, and turns the whole need for Eylül to travel to Bozcaada completely on its head (as well as explaining Berrak’s behaviour).

The central romance between Eylül and Tekin is handled with a great deal of whimsy but it’s also well sustained by Deren and his two leads. Abdullah, with her blonde hair and depthless eyes, shines, both as the fun-seeking Eylül and her disconcerted, amnesiac future self. She’s an attractive screen presence, sprightly and high-spirited, allowing the audience to empathise with Eylül’s predicament and urge her onwards in her search for the “truth”. As her paramour Tekin, Akyürek employs a winning, puppy dog look that screams younger Ashton Kutcher lookalike, but it proves a strangely apt fit for a character who admits to being scared of everything, and who is joyful in ways that Eylül can only dream of. Together they play out a romantic game of charades that allows both actors to give completely endearing performances.

As might be expected, though, there are a couple of flaws in Deren’s script. Berrak’s behaviour, while explained at the end, is still too aggressive to be entirely acceptable in someone who is supposed to be Eylül’s best friend; and it’s hard to work out why Eylül herself is so suddenly convinced of her need to leave Tekin and Bozcaada behind, given that she’s acclimated to the island lifestyle so quickly and with such fervour (it’s that predictable moment in a romantic drama where an obstacle to everlasting love rears its ugly head and spoils things).

The movie benefits tremendously from its sun-drenched Bozcaada locations, lovingly lensed by DoP Gökhan Tiryaki, and makes a virtue of the relaxed, easy-going lifestyle its inhabitants enjoy. There’s also a fitting score by Toygar Isikli that matches the casual rhythms of island life and the touching romance between Eylül and Tekin, as well as the apt inclusion of Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Want to Have Fun in a party scene.

Rating: 8/10 – an emotionally sincere romantic drama that has its own fair share of deft, comedic moments, A Small September Affair lifts the spirits with efficiency and ease; with its central mystery adding depth to an otherwise standard love affair, the movie works on more than one level – and successfully throughout.

NOTE: The following trailer doesn’t have any English subtitles, but it’s still worth a look.

Trailer – The Film Critic (2013)

27 Monday Apr 2015

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Argentina, Hernán Guerschuny, Preview, Romantic comedy, Trailer

Just now getting a wider release – though in the USA only – after being shown at various festivals and on release in its native Argentina and Brazil, Hernán Guerschuny’s The Film Critic looks like a cineaste’s dream… or a gooey treat for lovers of romantic comedies. Either way, the trailer’s deconstruction of the classic romantic comedy set up is hilarious by itself, and bodes well for the movie as a whole. Let’s hope it lives up to its promise and gains a wider, international release before long.

Hamilton: In the Interest of the Nation (2012)

26 Sunday Apr 2015

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Action, Arms, Assassination, Drama, Guided missiles, Horn of Africa, Jan Guillou, Jason Flemyng, Kathrine Windfeld, Literary adaptation, Mikael Persbrandt, Pernilla August, Review, Saba Mubarak, Sectragon, Sweden, Thriller

Original title: Hamilton: I nationens intresse

D: Kathrine Windfeld / 109m

Cast: Mikael Persbrandt, Saba Mubarak, Pernilla August, Jason Flemyng, Lennart Hjulström, Aleksandr Nosik, Ray Fearon, Peter Andersson, Gustaf Hammarsten, Dan Ekborg, David Dencik, Leo Gregory, Fanny Risberg, Liv Mjönes, Kevin McNally

Posing as a member of a Russian mafia gang, Swedish intelligence officer Carl Hamilton (Persbrandt) is present at an arms deal between the Russian gang and a group of terrorists; the arms in question are Swedish guided missiles. Before the deal can be completed, both sides are ambushed by another group, who make off with the missiles. Making it to safety, Hamilton returns to Stockholm. There he resumes his relationship with a doctor, Maria (Risberg). He wants to settle down with her but an accident happens which prevents them from doing so.

In the meantime, in Ethiopia, a contractor, Martin Lagerbäck (Hammarsten) working for the Swedish company North Fors is kidnapped by fellow employee Benjamin Lee (Fearon). Lee’s reason for doing so is because Lagerbäck is the key to a conspiracy involving North Fors, their security company Sectragon, and the planned assassination of several African politicians using the guided missiles. When the Swedish government learns of Lagerbäck’s abduction, the Prime Minister (August) tasks Sectragon with his and Lee’s retrieval, and elects Hamilton to go along as an observer.

Though both men are rescued, Hamilton becomes suspicious of the intentions of Sectragon’s security chief, Hart (Flemyng). He decides to hijack an incoming helicopter and takes both men with him. Returning to Sweden via Amman in Jordan, and with the help of local PLO operative, Mouna (Mubarak), Hamilton thwarts Hart’s plans to recapture Lee and Lagerbäck. Back in Sweden it soon transpires that North Fors has a mole inside the government and that they are planning to assassinate a visiting Ethiopian politician, along with the Prime Minister. Lee is abducted by Hart, giving Hamilton very little time in which to track them both down and stop North Fors from carrying out their plan to foment war in the Horn of Africa.

Not particularly well known for producing spy thrillers, Sweden is nevertheless very good at producing flawed heroes who are weighed down by angst and debilitating introspection. The same is true here of Carl Hamilton, the creation of author Jan Guillou and the subject of eleven novels so far (this is adapted from the third in the series). With his melancholy features and acerbic outlook, Hamilton is as far removed from James Bond – an obvious comparison to make – as Bond is from, say, Derek Flint. Persbrandt is a good choice, his imposing physique and steely gaze making him ideal for the role, and he’s as adept at the close quarter fighting as he is when either romancing Risberg or being quietly compassionate with Mubarak.

With the character arriving fully formed from the outset – a refreshing change from the usual approach taken at the beginning of a potential franchise (an oddly titled sequel, Agent Hamilton: But Not If It Concerns Your Daughter was also released in 2012) – the movie throws the viewer into the thick of things and only occasionally pauses to give them time to work out what’s going on. Alas, when the viewer is granted pause for reflection, they may well wonder what is going on a little too often for comfort. There are several moments when belief isn’t so much suspended as overlooked. Lee’s abduction of Lagerbäck refuses to make sense however you look at it, and why Hamilton has to keep making trips to the Middle East is never explained either. It’s either a case of lazy plotting, or perhaps worse, a script that’s been bowdlerised during production. Either way, this is a movie where a lot happens… because.

That’s not to say that it isn’t entertaining, because for the most part, it is. The globe-trotting aspects keep the movie looking fresh, and the location work, particularly in Jordan, is often spectacular. Orchestrating it all, Windfeld (who sadly passed away in February of this year) injects an energy into the action scenes that gives the movie a boost whenever they happen, and she shows a confidence that helps paper over the cracks created by the script. She’s good too with her cast, eliciting strong performances from Mubarak and August (you can believe in her world-weary prime minister implicitly), and even reining in most of Flemyng’s idiosyncrasies as an actor. The mix of English and Swedish actors proves fruitful, though McNally’s scenes as the head of Sectragon look to have been filmed in a day, and not by Windfeld; they stand out like a sore thumb: poorly shot and with McNally doing a tired impression of a corporate sleaze bag.

There’s little subtlety involved in the political machinations as well, with Dencik’s slimy government mole proving not too dissimilar to his role in Serena (2014). The subplot involving Hamilton’s girlfriend Maria is played out in the background, and proves more interesting in the end than the main plot itself, as a journalist (Mjönes) gets involved and Hamilton’s career is put in greater jeopardy than it is from Hart. The resolution to this subplot, however, is given short shrift in terms of dramatics, and its effect on Hamilton goes largely by the by, aside from a predictably angst-ridden conversation between Hamilton and his boss, DG (Hjulström). It’s another reminder that Hamilton, while very good at his job, just wants to get out and lead a “normal” life with Maria. But as with all spies who are too good at their job, it’s never going to happen, and Hamilton soon heads back to cracking skulls and saving the world.

Rating: 7/10 – doing just enough to win over its audience, and providing a pleasant enough diversion, Hamilton: In the Interest of the Nation is an often over-cautious attempt at making a spy thriller; with a good central performance from Persbrandt and decisive direction from Windfeld, though, it’s an interesting take on a genre that’s been reinventing itself in recent years, and well worth a look.

Izulu lamí (2008)

25 Saturday Apr 2015

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Chili-Bite, Drama, Durban, Khwezi, Madoda Ncayiyana, Mat, Priest, Review, Sibonelo Malinga, Sobahle Mhkabase, South Africa, Street kids, Thembi, Tshepang Mohlomi

aka My Secret Sky

D: Madoda Ncayiyana / 96m

Cast: Sobahle Mhkabase, Sibonelo Malinga, Tshepang Mohlomi, Sanele Ndawo, Sizwe Xaba, Slindile Nodangala, Michael Gritten, Peter Gardner

When their mother dies, Thembi (Mhkabase) and Khwezi (Malinga) are at first looked after by their aunt Juba (Nodangala). But when it transpires that she’s only there to take what she can from their mother’s belongings, and a particular mat that their mother made is missing, their aunt soon leaves. With no money or food to get by with, and with no other family to turn to, Thembi – who has kept her mother’s mat hidden – and Khwezi decide to travel from their village to the city to sell the mat to the priest who bought others in the past.

Despite not knowing where he lives, or where his church is located, the siblings set out on foot, eventually hitching a ride on a train that takes them into the city. After wandering around for a while, they meet a young boy called Chili-Bite (Mohlomi) who is part of a gang of children living on the streets. He takes them under his wing and gives them a place of stay. Thembi tells him about the priest, and Chili-Bite assures her that he’ll help find him. When they see him talking to a white man, Tony (Gritten), Chili-Bite tells Thembi and Khwezi that this man knows the priest and will take them to him the next day.

When the time comes, the man takes Thembi and Khwezi to the home of a black man who is looking for a child bride. When he tries to confirm her virginity, she fights him off with Khwezi’s help and they manage to escape. Realising that Chili-Bite knew what was meant to happen, she confronts him before leaving. But she doesn’t go far and the next day Chili-Bite reveals he can take her and Khwezi to the priest – but when he tries he can’t find the church. Thembi challenges him but he walks off. When she then tells Khwezi they need to return to their village, he refuses to go with her and blames their mother’s mat for all the trouble they’ve been through.

Khwezi follows Chili-Bite while Thembi assumes he’s behind her. When she realises he isn’t she stops in the street until two nuns pass by. She follows them to a church and there finds the priest. He remembers her mother and is keen to see the mat. But when she returns to Chili-Bite’s hideout she finds that Khwezi has done something that will test their relationship – and both their futures.

A movie that has the feel of a modern-day Dickens novel, Izulu lamí is a charming look at the perils of big city life as seen through the eyes of two innocents abroad. With its trio of first-time performances – and in Mhkabase and Malinga’s case their only performances – Ncayiyana’s ode to childhood hope and perseverance is an uneven yet enjoyable movie that occasionally tries to punch above its weight, but is all the more admirable for trying.

Though juxtaposing the quieter, simpler village life Thembi and Khwezi are used to, with the noise and bustle of the city of Durban, Ncayiyana maintains a measured approach to his and co-producer Julie Frederikse’s script that, ultimately, drains the movie of any tension or drama. Even when Khwezi’s actions threaten his relationship with Thembi, it’s portrayed with such objectivity that he could have done something far less terrible, and her reaction would have been the same – and so would have the framing, camerawork and direction. It’s indicative of the movie’s main problem throughout: the less than involved presence of its director.

From this, the casual viewer may well be put off from seeing the movie through to the end, believing that they’ve seen all they need to by the halfway mark (or possibly sooner, once they arrive in Durban in fact). For the early scenes before Thembi and Khwezi get on the train are more interesting than what follows. The brief scenes of mock parental persecution by Aunt Juba, though expected, are well played by Nodangala and the two children, and have that grim inevitably that is familiar in these situations. But while the movie looks as if it’s going to be a battle of wills between the aunt and her niece and nephew, the script has them heading off to find their future in the big city instead, and while this is handled with a fair degree of persuasiveness, it’s the nature of what happens to them that brings things to a dramatic standstill on too many occasions.

While it’s clear that Chili-Bite is “interested” in Thembi, his decision to put her in harm’s way via Tony is at odds with the character’s innate humanity (yes, he’s a street urchin, and yes he’s out to get whatever he can, but the script makes Chili-Bite too likeable for him to be a bad guy; plus he has too much of the Artful Dodger about him). And the tone, quite light-hearted and occasionally whimsical for the most part, is shredded by the attack on Thembi by the man Tony takes her to. It’s a dark, moderately uncomfortable sequence that doesn’t fit with the rest of the script, and seems included because otherwise there would be very little dramatic incident in the movie at all. And the ending, though expectedly upbeat, leaves the trio of Thembi, Khwezi, and Chili-Bite exactly as they were when they met. For a movie that shows two young children on a (not quite so) dangerous journey, there’s no arc for them to follow as individuals.

Thankfully, Mhkabase and Malinga prove enchanting to watch, even if they do stumble over the occasional line of dialogue, and their fresh, natural performances give the movie a much needed boost to offset the paucity of ideas that permeates throughout the rest of the movie. Mhkabase is so assured it’s a shame she hasn’t made any more movies, while Malinga has the best pout of any child actor in recent memory. They’re also credible as brother and sister, their arguments with each other brought to life effortlessly and with conviction. When they share a scene together it’s often hard to decide which one to watch more closely. As the conniving Chili-Bite, Mohlomi is the more relaxed and he gives an appropriately brash performance, and just this side of broad caricature (watch him as he walks along with his gang). Together, all three evince a mutual respect and reliance for each other that is both touching and heartfelt.

Rating: 5/10 – overall a disappointing viewing experience, and with too many coincidences driving the narrative forward, Izulu lamí lacks a strong enough storyline to be entirely effective; with good performances allied to some poetic imagery and a degree of spirituality attached to the children’s quest, there’s still enough to warrant a more than cursory look.

Nh10 (2015)

24 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Anushka Sharma, Caste system, Drama, Honour killing, India, Navdeep Singh, Neil Bhoopalam, Review, Thriller

aka NH10

D: Navdeep Singh / 106m

Cast: Anushka Sharma, Neil Bhoopalam, Darshan Kumaar, Jaswant Singh, Yogendra Singh, Ravi Jhankal, Ravi Beniwal, Deepti Naval, Tanya Purohit, Kanchan Sharma, Tushar Grover

Meera (Sharma) and her husband Arjun (Bhoopalam) are attending a party that Meera doesn’t really want to go to. When she gets an emergency call from her work, she leaves by herself. While driving she is almost forced off the road by thugs attempting to rob her. She escapes but is left so traumatised by the experience that, when an otherwise unhelpful police officer suggests she buy a gun, that’s exactly what she does. To make amends for not being with her, Arjun suggests they get away for Meera’s upcoming birthday. He books a private villa and they set off on the long journey along National Highway 10.

But along the way, Arjun decides to take a short cut, a bypass road that will shorten their journey considerably. They stop at a roadside Dhaba for something to eat, only to witness the abduction of a young couple by a group of men. Arjun attempts to intervene but the leader of the men, Satbir (Kumaar) strikes him; they then head off. Meera and Arjun continue on their journey but Arjun spies the men’s vehicle on a spur road and angry at the way he was treated, decides to follow them. The couple find the men’s vehicle and Arjun goes after them – with Meera’s gun. He finds them but is horrified to see them beating and kicking both the woman, Pinky (K. Sharma) and her partner, Mukesh (Grover). It becomes clear that Satbir and his comrades are about to commit an honour killing: Pinky is Satbir’s sister and she has married outside her caste.

Back in their car, Meera encounters Chhote (Beniwal), a simpleton who is with the group of men. She goes in search of Arjun who has witnessed Satbir pouring poison into Pinky’s mouth. But they are both captured, and are forced to watch as Pinky is killed by Satbir using Meera’ gun; Mukesh is then bludgeoned to death. During this, Chhote picks up the gun and Meera and Arjun manage to get it from him, but in doing so, the gun goes off and Chhote is killed. They run away but are pursued by Satbir and his friends, one of whom, Omi (Singh), is Chhote’s older brother. One of the gang catches up with them, but before Meera can intervene with the gun, Arjun is badly injured. Leaving him in a railway underpass, Meera goes in search of help. But when she finds the nearest police station, she also finds that things are about to get a whole lot worse.

With its standard plot of urban couple versus rural gang, Nh10 contains – and relies on – several key elements from earlier movies such as Straw Dogs (1971) and Eden Lake (2008) (to name but two), but its unfamiliar setting and unwavering performance from Anushka Sharma stops it from becoming too derivative or banal.

It begins promisingly too, with the dynamics of Meera and Arjun’s marriage quickly and concisely outlined. Meera is the more successful of the two, and Arjun finds it hard to put aside, or hide, his dissatisfaction. When the police question his allowing Meera to travel by herself at night when she was attacked, his already wounded pride leads to the acquisition of the gun, but it’s as much to show that he can protect her as for her own peace of mind. And when he pursues the gang, against Meera’s increasingly anxious wishes, his later assertion that he was trying to do the right thing seems horribly disingenuous. By making Arjun the weaker, less confident half of the relationship, the script by Sudip Sharma sets up the movie’s second half and Meera’s resourcefulness with a confidence and an ease that belies the waywardness that is to come.

For once Meera makes the decision to leave Arjun and go for help, the tone of the movie – and its dramatic potential – becomes locked in service to the revenge motif that Chhote’s death has set in motion. As Meera encounters further danger at every turn, and finds herself trapped in a nightmare world where Indian law ends at the site of the last mall in the town where she and Arjun came from, the movie ratchets up the tension, but does so by piling coincidence on top of contrivance, and at the expense of its own credibility. In doing so, and despite Singh’s expertise in directing, there’s an inevitability about things that lets the movie down badly, and the movie struggles to maintain any sense of danger as Meera escapes the gang time after time.

As the movie drains of tension and excitement on its way to what feels like it should be a hard-hitting nihilistic conclusion, Nh10 provides enough revenge to satisfy the average viewer, and is defiantly graphic about it. These scenes benefit from – as mentioned above – an uncompromising performance by Sharma that at least adds some depth to events as they unfold, and which counteracts the descent into conformity that ensues. Sharma’s cold, dead-eyed stare in the movie’s final ten minutes is completely unnerving to watch and shows exactly how far Meera has come in such a short space of time.

The villains prove all too disposable by the time Meera makes her stand, and the introduction of a chief villain towards the end – who conveniently provides Meera with an excuse for what she feels compelled to do – lacks the kind of impact the script is aiming for. Singh makes the final showdown as exciting and horrifying as he can but with Meera’s invincibility already pre-determined, the outcome isn’t as rewarding as expected.

Rating: 6/10 – a good first half is squandered by the requirements of the second, leaving Nh10 feeling like it’s left itself high and dry; with a commanding performance by Sharma that compensates for most of the movie’s shortcomings, the movie ultimately lacks true audacity and cohesion.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)

23 Thursday Apr 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Ana Lily Amirpour, Arash Marandi, Bad City, Drama, Drug addict, Drug dealer, Father/son relationship, Horror, Iran, Marshall Manesh, Review, Romance, Sheila Vand, Vampire

D: Ana Lily Amirpour / 101m

Cast: Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi, Marshall Manesh, Mozhan Marnò, Dominic Rains, Rome Shadanloo, Milad Eghbali

In the fictional Iranian town of Bad City, Arash (Marandi) lives with his cat and junkie father Hossein (Manesh). His most treasured possession is his car, but when his father’s dealer, Saeed (Rains) claims payment for some of the money owed him, Arash is forced to hand over the keys to his car. Saeed shows off the car to a local prostitute, Atti (Marnò), but is spooked by a cloaked figure he sees in the rear view mirror. Later that evening he meets a girl (Vand) on the street and takes her back to his apartment. When he makes his move, what happens next comes as quite a shock: she sprouts fangs and attacks him, biting him in the neck and killing him.

Outside, Arash has come to get his car back. The girl passes him as she leaves, and for a moment, there’s a connection. Arash goes up to Saeed’s apartment and finds his body. He takes Saeed’s stash of drugs and his money, and leaves. The next night, the girl menaces Hossein and a small boy (Eghbali) on the street but spares them both. Later that same night, Arash dresses up as Dracula to attend a party. There he runs into Shaydah, a young woman whose family he works for as a gardener. Wanting to make an impression he lets her have some drugs for free; in return she persuades to take a pill himself.

When it comes to making it back home, Arash finds it more difficult than he expected. While standing staring at a lamp-post, he’s spotted by the girl. They begin a conversation. When Arash takes her hand and realises how cold it is, he gives her a hug in a clumsy attempt at warming her up. Surprised by this unexpected show of kindness and sympathy, the girl takes Arash back to her apartment. They discover a shared love of music, and bond further. When Hossein questions Arash about his being out all night, he’s less than impressed when Arash can’t even tell his father the girl’s name.

The girl spends some time with Atti, then at Arash’s request, meets him at the nearby power plant. She tries to warn him off, telling him she’s done some very bad things, but Arash is dismissive of her claims. She walks off, leaving Arash confused and frustrated. When Hossein’s withdrawal symptoms cause an argument the next day, Arash snaps and throws him – and the cat – out and gives him some of Saeed’s drugs and money to get by with. Hossein visits Atti and makes her take heroin. The girl arrives and in a fit of rage, attacks Hossein, the consequences of which will lead Arash to make the toughest decision of his life.

Shot in glorious black and white by Lyle Vincent, and with the town of Taft, California standing in (very effectively) for Iran, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a small, almost perfectly formed horror movie that avoids genre clichés and provides its story with a rich visual backdrop. In making what could be described as the first Iranian vampire western (with Mexicali tinges), writer/director Amirpour has come up with a spellbinding tale of reluctant desire that resonates far strongly than it perhaps has a right to.

Bad City is the archetypal place where bad things happen to good people, but even worse things happen to bad people. The worst thing in Bad City is the girl, a pale music-loving, wide-eyed monster who preys on the people of Bad City with seeming impunity – with all the bodies that have been dumped in a ravine on the outskirts of town it seems she’s been pretty busy, and for a long while. Used to being alone, and reliant on music for access to long-buried emotions and feelings, the girl feeds when necessary, but has no compunction about doing it. When Arash’s attentions take her by surprise, the girl regains something she hasn’t had for such a long time: hope. Distrusting it at first she tries to sabotage her relationship with Arash before it’s properly begun. But his persistence renews and encourages that hope, and before long she too has to make a decision that will be the toughest she’s ever had to make.

Vand – despite having precious little dialogue to work with – gives a tremendous performance, her sallow features and piercing stare perfectly expressing her curiosity about, and yearning for, a normal life. She makes the girl’s need for Arash so completely understandable – even if there are some obvious obstacles that will prove difficult, if not impossible, to overcome. But while the girl’s wistful longing is touching to witness, Amirpour and Vand ensure that the character’s darker habits aren’t glossed over: the scene where she threatens the little boy with taking his eyes out of his skull is chilling for its raw viciousness.

Marandi plays Arash as a brooding though needy soul, his good looks and cool car no solution for the emptiness he feels eating away inside him. With his good looks and easy-going charm, Arash should have no problem dating women, but there’s something off about him, and they realise this. Marandi expresses Arash’s confusion and inner turmoil over this with quiet persuasion, and makes Arash as desperate for some form of human connection as the girl is. The scene they share at the power plant is one of the most affecting, most awkwardly romantic scenes of recent memory.

Amirpour – making her feature debut – lifts motifs and inspiration from a variety of disparate sources but melds them into one confidently assembled whole. The tone of the movie stumbles on occasion – a scene that sees Atti dancing with a balloon feels like it belongs in another movie entirely – but for each misstep, Amirpour redeems herself with a moment of striking imagery, such as the sight of the girl, her chador billowing out behind her like bat wings, riding a skateboard toward the camera. She also shows a confident use of form and content, framing her characters against often overwhelming and impersonal backgrounds, emphasising their emotional discomfort and the difficulty of breaking free of the chains that bind them. With an equally adept use of light against shadow, and a creative sense of when to glamourise the black and white images, Amirpour displays a skill that easily bodes well for any future endeavours.

Rating: 8/10 – with lush visuals and one of the best scores and soundtrack of recent years, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a refreshingly original take on the vampire story; with a captivating performance from Vand and self-assured direction from Amirpour, it’s a movie that lingers in the memory long after its final image has faded from the screen.

Rebels of the Neon God (1992)

22 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Arcades, Chen Chao-jung, Drama, Lee Kang-sheng, Relationships, Review, Taipei, Taiwan, Tsai Ming-liang, Wang Yu-Wen

Original title: Qing shao nian nuo zha

D: Tsai Ming-liang / 106m

Cast: Chen Chao-jung, Lee Kang-sheng, Wang Yu-Wen, Lu Yi-Ching, Tien Miao, Jen Chang-bin

Ah-tse (Chen) lives in a flat where the drain in the kitchen has backed up and water covers the floor. He’s not too concerned about it; instead he’s more interested in stealing money from telephone booths with his friend Ah-ping (Jen). He has a relationship with Ah-kuei (Wang) that he’s not fully committed to, and no sense of purpose. Elsewhere, student Hsiao-kang (Lee) is bored with his studies and with his life in general. His relationship with his mother (Lu) and father (Tien) is strained and he spends most of his time in his room.

Hsiao-kang’s father is a taxi driver. When he sees his son out of school one morning he elects to take him there. At a junction, his father is held up by Ah-tse, who is on his motor bike (with Ah-kuei on the back). Ah-tse’s anger at being scolded by a taxi driver prompts him to smash the taxi’s side mirror. Later that night, Ah-tse and Ah-ping meet up with Ah-kuei and they go out. Ah-kuei gets drunk and the two friends take her to a hotel where they leave her to sleep it off. The next day, Hsiao-kang drops out of the tutorial school he’s attending and collects the refund that’s due. He buys a cap gun and heads to a nearby arcade, which is where he sees Ah-tse and Ah-kuei. Recognising them, he decides to watch them. They meet up with Ah-ping at a restaurant then they head back to the arcade; at closing time they hide in the toilets until it’s locked up. Hsiao-kang hides too and sees them pry open several of the arcade machines and remove the motherboards.

The next day, Hsiao-kang’s father discovers he’s no longer enrolled at the tutorial school. Meanwhile, Hsiao-kang has found out that Ah-kuei works at a skating rink. When she meets Ah-tse after her shift is over, they end up at a hotel where they spend the night. While they’re there, Hsiao-kang takes the opportunity to vandalise Ah-tse’s motorbike, rendering it unrideable. He goes home but is refused entry by his father. The next morning, when Ah-tse finds his motor bike, the cost of its repair is more than he can afford, unless he sells the motherboards. But when he and Ah-ping take them to the owner of another arcade, his hopes for a quick sale don’t go as planned…

There’s a moment towards the end of Rebels of the Neon God when Ah-kuei suggests that she and Ah-tse “leave this place”. Ah-tse responds by asking where she wants to go, but Ah-kuei is unable to answer him. It’s a moment that perfectly encapsulates the message behind writer/director Tsai’s foray into the lives of Taiwanese youth: that disaffection and ennui are powerful motivators toward isolation. None of the three main characters has a place in the world that gives them purpose. Ah-tse appears to be the more focused of the three, his petty larcenies and casual insolence informing his personality and making him seem as if he knows what he’s doing. Ah-kuei has little identity beyond that given to her by being with Ah-tse and Ah-ping; otherwise she’s alone and struggling to connect with others. Hsiao-kang is the most alienated, his intolerance and disdain for others a reaction to his parents’ expectations of him.

As the lives of all three intersect and criss-cross, Tsai focuses on the ways in which they fail to connect emotionally with themselves, each other, and the world around them. Ah-tse uses the people around him, Ah-ping as his willing accomplice in crime, and Ah-kuei as an accessory he’s barely concerned about. When the three of them are together he acts as an unelected leader, deciding what they’ll do and where they’ll go. He looks for power in whichever way he can find it, all to make him feel superior. But it’s a hollow superiority, as shown when his plan to sell the motherboards backfires, and his sense of place in the world is rudely undermined. With his bravado severely compromised and his self-belief in tatters, Ah-kuei’s increasing need to understand the parameters of their relationship forces him to consider someone else for the first time. It’s a transitive moment and allows their relationship a moment of hope.

Hsiao-kang though is completely lost, unable to connect to anyone except in the most basic way and even when it would be of benefit to him; at one point he visits a phone dating service but can’t pick up the phone when someone is calling. His feelings are compromised so badly he can’t even react when he’s thrown out of his own home. His attack on Ah-tse’s motor bike is less of a chance at payback for his father and more of an expression of self-loathing.

Tsai positions his characters against a neon-lit, brightly dramatic background, as Taipei’s nightlife throbs and pivots and vibrates around them. It helps highlight the level of dissociation the characters exhibit, and serves as a dispassionate character all its own. It’s an added layer in a movie that examines the connections and disparities our emotions can lead us into, and which leaves it all open-ended as to where its characters will end up and how withdrawn they’ll continue to be. The cast handle their roles well, though Wang’s character is given little development beyond her need for physical approbation. Lee is moody and recalcitrant as Hsiao-kang, capturing the character’s deep-rooted antagonism with quiet skill. And Chen displays the cocksure bluster that Ah-tse uses to make himself feel important.

With it’s attempts at lyricism amidst the garish neon wasteland of Taipei’s arcade district, offset with the colder austerity of its daytime appearance, and the poorly maintained rooms that Ah-tse uses, the movie paints a vivid portrait of a society and a generation unable to come to terms with its lack of direction.

Rating: 8/10 – with a poster of James Dean from Rebel Without a Cause (1955) as its guide, Rebels of the Neon God is an effective, thought-provoking look at teenage alienation; with a script that provides no easy solutions for its characters, it’s a sombre piece and with an unexpectedly emotional core.

Araya (1959)

21 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Cannes Film Festival, Documentary, El Rincón, Fishermen, Fishing, Manicuare, Margot Benacerraf, Ortiz family, Pereda family, Review, Salazar family, Salineros, Salt marshes, Salt mining, Tone poem, Venezuela

D: Margot Benacerraf / 82m

Narrator: José Ignacio Cabrujas

In northeastern Venezuela there is a barren, largely inhospitable peninsula called Araya. Home to a vast salt deposit, the area is harsh and uninviting, but it’s also home to various families that work the salt flats or fish the nearby sea. From the villages of Manicuare and El Rincón, they make a life for themselves that revolves around the collection of salt and fish each and every day, the two items that provide the basis for their community and their reason for being there. It’s hard, labour intensive work that offers little in the way of reward, but has become a generational necessity: for these Venezuelans there’s simply nowhere else to go.

Araya follows three families through the course of an average day. The Salazar family are salineros – salt marsh workers. Their day begins at six in the morning as they take the salt that has been selected overnight and pile it up into huge pyramid-like piles. It’s punishing work that has to be done so early in the day because of how high the temperature rises later. Even so, it’s hot work and the salt crystals can be damaging to the workers’ skin, causing ulcers and open sores. By late morning their work is done and the Salazar family can return home, making the six mile journey to Manicuare on foot beneath the blazing sun. Once there they can tend to work needed to be done at home before going to sleep.

Further along the coastline, the Ortiz family come down to the shoreline to cast their nets out into the sea. Even their youngest, Carmen, has work to do: she collects coral and shells. Once the nets have been retrieved, the fish that has been caught is divided up and some of it is taken to El Rincón and Manicuare for sale to the villagers. The fish is the main ingredient in everyone’s diet, and is rarely passed up.

At night the men of the Pereda family toil in the salt marshes, selecting and cutting blocks of salt for the Salazars and the other salineros to process the next day. Again, it’s hard work as they push their boats through the shallow waters and haul the blocks of salt onto them. And each family repeats the same actions the next day, and the day after that… until industrialisation reaches them, and their skills – handed down from generation to generation – become superseded by machines.

Although it has the look and feel of a documentary, Araya is intended to be viewed as a tone poem, Cabrujas’ narration deliberately written to evince a feeling not often associated with this type of “exposé” – an appreciation of the lyrical beauty that underpins the lives of the people who live in such a barren corner of the world. As such, and with the benefit of seeing the movie over sixty-five years since it was made, it’s fair to say that Araya works as both a tone poem and a documentary, and is successful whichever way it’s approached.

Part of the movie’s appeal, and one of its main strengths, is that while it celebrates the hard life these families lead, it also presents their lives in such a matter-of-fact way that there’s no room for pity or sentimentality; these people lead their lives in the way that’s portrayed, and they don’t complain about it. Benacerraf is also wise enough to avoid interviewing anyone, and by doing so, she gains more “mileage” out of being an observer than perhaps she would have done by asking a lot of pointed questions. The viewer can see all he or she needs to know about the inhabitants of Araya, as well as the obvious pride they take in the work that they do. As the movie shows more and more of the structured, unchanging lifestyle they lead, it shows how simple and uncomplicated that lifestyle is, and how suited they are to it.

Benacerraf – an acclaimed feminist filmmaker and founder of Venezuela’s Cineteca Nacional, and Fundavisual Latina – also delves into the history of the area, revealing the existence of a 17th century fortress that overlooks the area (but which is now a ruin), and which was built to provide security for the various traders whose cargoes of salt were prey to pirates. It’s difficult to see now just how busy the peninsula must have been despite its unforgiving nature, especially when the viewer sees the nearby wood, where the trees are so denuded that their branches look like withered bones. It’s images such as these, beautifully filmed by Giuseppe Nisoli beneath the blazing, cloud-free canopy of the sky, that highlights the stark, natural beauty of the peninsula.

Whether the camera is following a salinero carrying a basket full of salt on his head, or a member of the Ortiz family sorting through the hundreds of fish that have been caught, or the arrival in El Rincón of the water truck – 1,850 gallons to be shared amongst sixty houses – or the member of the Salazar family, Luisa, who makes clay pots without the benefit of a wheel, Araya is a visual feast, fascinating and poignant and continually astonishing in the way in which the peninsula’s inhabitants have carved out a rewarding way of life for themselves.

When the movie was first shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 1959, it shared the Cannes International Critics Prize with Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima, mon amour. And yet it was never picked up for widespread or international distribution, an outcome that seems ludicrous now that Araya has been restored and can be seen for the breathtaking experience it actually is. That it took fifty years for the movie to be recognised for its tremendous accomplishments just goes to show how wrong the movie business can be sometimes. Thank the deity of your choice then that it’s been rescued from obscurity, and can take us back to a time and a place where life – hard, exacting, rewarding life – was lived each day by a group of Venezuelans who were probably unknown to the rest of their country.

Rating: 9/10 – hypnotic, engaging, rich in detail, affecting, beautifully shot, powerful in its simplicity – Araya is all these things and much more beside; with its poetic leanings enhancing the visuals, the movie works on several levels and succeeds on all of them.

The Place Promised in Our Early Days (2004)

20 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Airplane, Animation, Anime, Drama, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Japan, Makoto Shinkai, Masato Hagiwara, Parallel worlds, Review, Sci-fi, The Tower, The Union, Thriller, War, Yuka Nanri

Original title: Kumo no mukô, yakusoku no basho

D: Makoto Shinkai / 90m

Cast: Hidetaka Yoshioka, Masato Hagiwara, Yuka Nanri, Unshô Ishizuka, Kazuhiko Inoue, Risa Mizuno

In an alternate reality, Japan is a divided nation. The northern half, Hokkaido, is ruled by the Union, while Honshu and everything else to the south is overseen by the US. At some point after the division, a tower that stretches up and beyond the clouds was built on Hokkaido, but the reason for its having been built is unknown.

One summer, two young friends, Hiroki (Yoshioka) and Takuya (Hagiwara), decide to build a plane that will enable them to fly to the top of the Tower (and maybe find out what it does). They spend all their spare time finding parts for the plane and assembling it, and are aided by their employer during school breaks, Mr Okabe (Ishizuka). One day, Takuya finds himself talking to a girl both friends know called Sayuri (Nanri). He tells her about the plane and she tags along when he next goes to the abandoned train station where they’re building it. Despite, Hiromi’s doubts about her being included in their plans, her enthusiasm for the project wins him over.

As they grow older, and the plane nears completion, Sayuri begins to have strange dreams that are connected to the Tower. One such dream sees the Tower exploding and causing tremendous destruction. Shortly after, Sayuri falls ill and is taken to Tokyo for treatment. Three years pass, during which Hiroki and Takuya stop work on the plane and go their separate ways. The political situation worsens between the Union and the US, and war is imminent. Sayuri has been asleep for the last three years, but she has been studied during this time, as her dream activity is reflected in the activity of the Tower. When Sayuri dreams, the Tower produces sufficient energy to overlay a separate reality on the area immediately around it. The scientists studying the Tower and Sayuri believe that if she were to wake up, the Tower would replace the existing reality with another, completely different one.

With Takuya being a part of the research team investigating the Tower, he learns of the connection to Sayuri and determines to free her from the hospital where she’s being kept. He enlists Hiroki’s aid in completing the plane and together they aim to fly it, with Sayuri aboard, close enough to wake her, and then to destroy the Tower with a missile. But they choose to do this just as the war breaks out, and the likelihood of their being successful is drastically reduced.

If your experience of Japanese anime has been restricted to the movies produced by Studio Ghibli, you could be forgiven for thinking that movies such as Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) and Arrietty (2010) are the pinnacle of that particular genre. But there are so many other fine examples out there that it’s sometimes worth the reminder that Studio Ghibli isn’t the only purveyor of tremendous Japanese anime.

Because such is the case with The Place Promised in Our Early Days. Starting out as a coming of age tale that is both affecting, and quietly and unobtrusively observed, the movie introduces its three main characters with a winning amiability. Hiroki and Takuya’s friendship is warm, committed and unselfish; they’re a good match too in terms of their intelligence and skills. And Sayuri is the girl who binds their relationship even tighter, making it stronger and more deep-rooted. The script, by director Shinkai from his own story, resists the temptation to introduce a love triangle, and the movie benefits immeasurably from this, the viewer unencumbered with having to worry as to which one of Hiroki and Takuya will be chosen over the other. Instead, two close friends become three, and each share in each other’s ambitions and concerns.

When the story changes focus in the second half and becomes more of a thriller, Shinkai retains the trio’s connections and shows how time and distance has failed to erode their bond. This allows for an emotional follow-through that adds to the increased pace and race-against-time urgency of the last twenty minutes. Takuya’s determination is easily understood, as is Hiroki’s initial reluctance to become involved in the plane and their original plan. And through it all there’s Saruyi’s consciousness, putting together the clues from her childhood, and from her time with her two friends, in order to work out the mystery of the Tower. Shinkai juggles the expanding storylines of the movie’s second half with ease, while darkening the tone and still managing to retain some of the lyricism of the first half.

The plot and storylines are served greatly by some stunning animation, with the rural location where Hiroki and Takuya build their plane offering vistas of dazzling beauty. Shinkai – again – leads the movie’s animators in creating a world that is similar and different to ours at the same time, and includes all manner of small touches that illustrate the differences (check out the advertisement for “Popsi”). The blue skies and green fields, even the greys of the town, are all shot – again by Shinkai – with a view to making it all look richly alluring, a feast for the eyes that provides ravishing image after ravishing image. Even when the tone darkens, the movie is still striking to watch and rewards the eye continuously.

On the minus side, Saruyi’s eyes have that enlarged look favoured by animators the world over, the urgency in rescuing her from the hospital is forced on the plot without any build-up, and some of the political manoeuvring of the second half is glossed over or given just a passing nod – everyone talks about the war being inevitable and no one tries to stop it. And the finale strays too close to being confusing to provide the emotional dividends that the viewer has every right to expect.

Rating: 8/10 – breathtaking and beautiful to watch for most of its running time, The Place Promised in Our Early Days is a minor masterpiece from Makoto Shinkai and shows that Japanese anime has more to offer than talking animals and creatures from Japanese folklore; a more emotional tale than usual but this is easily the movie’s strength, and it’s backed up (not overwhelmed) by some superb animation.

Riders of Pylos (2011)

19 Sunday Apr 2015

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Actor, Comedy, Democracy, Drama, Greece, Horse sanctuary, Ioulia Kalogridi, Messinia, Nikos Kalogeropoulos, Polypylon, Review, Romance, Telemachus

D: Nikos Kalogeropoulos / 92m

Cast: Nikos Kalogeropoulos, Ioulia Kalogridi, Ilias Logothetis, Giorgos Kimoulis, Antonis Kafetzopoulos, Antonis Theodorakopoulos, Takis Spiridakis, Vanna Barba, Dimitris Kaberidis, Vasilis Tsimbidis, Maria Kalagbor

Aging and once distinguished actor Telemachus (Kalogeropoulos) owes so much money to his creditors that he has to flee the theatre he’s playing at early one morning, taking as many of his props and costumes as he can in the back of a truck. He’s also had a recent health scare, brought on by too much smoking and drinking. He arrives in historic Messinia and the rundown castle of Polypylon, site of a horse sanctuary, where he’s greeted by Euhemerus (Kaberidis) and his brother Myron (Logothetis).

Telemachus spends an uneasy first night at the castle, and the next morning is reacquainted with an old actor friend, Voikalis (Kimoulis). But Voikalis is suffering from Alzheimer’s and doesn’t recognise him; he’s there to perform for the two horses he has at the sanctuary. Telemachus later decides to go for a ride in the surrounding countryside. He meets a woman named Haido (Barba) who invites him to have lunch with her, but he carries on with his journey, telling her he’ll come back later. He also meets an old man (also Kalogeropoulos) carrying a large wooden cross and pretending to be Jesus. They talk for a while before the old man moves on. Later, Telemachus’ horse runs away from him, leaving him stranded. He goes in search of it, but while the horse finds its way to Ephemeris’ estranged daughter, Democracy (Kalogridi), Telemachus finds himself getting even more lost than he was to begin with.

Haido waits for him to return but Telemachus eventually finds his way to where Democracy and his horse are waiting with a team of ecologists called the Riders of Pylos. Riding the horse again, he returns to Haido where she provides food and wine for him, and eventually, despite his attempts to resist her, they have sex. The next morning he returns to Polypylon, where he gives Myron and Euhemerus invitations to a celebration being organised by the Riders of Pylos, and where Telemachus and Democracy meet again and discover a mutual attraction.

A light and frothy concoction by the multi-talented Kalogeropolous, Riders of Pylos is sufficiently entertaining to avoid any notions of whimsicality or waspishness, and comes with such a sense of freedom that it makes the viewer wish for the kind of (seemingly) rootless existence that Telemachus experiences once he’s fled from his creditors. His is a blundering presence, presumptuous at times, dramatic at others, but always with a flair that, financial pressures aside, never seems to desert him. He’s like a mini-cyclone, unaware of the damage or chaos he’s creating, a force of nature surrounded by a greater force of nature that he seems oblivious to.

That he beguiles and bewitches two of the women he encounters could be said to be very fortunate indeed, but Telemachus is, despite his odd features and wrinkled appearance, an attractive, sensitive man, a man who views romance as an essential part of living. His brief connection with Haido shows his sense of pride slowly being eroded by her determination to bed him, until he reaches a point where, for him, it all becomes irrelevant and he might as well go through with it. He’s a man after all, with a man’s sense of personal, unavoidable destiny, and Haido is left overwhelmed by the experience; once committed, Telemachus is unable to give a terrible “performance”.

As the wandering actor, Kalogeropoulos is a delight to watch, his clumsy physicality and brash demeanour in the role developed over the course of the movie with an almost effortless disregard for the character’s pretensions and woes. It’s a performance where the actor goes out of his way to make his character a little too self-absorbed and out of his depth to be anything other than entirely sympathetic. Telemachus is a terrific creation, and Kalogeropoulos broadens his portrayal with occasional moments where Telemachus has moments of self-reflection that prove liberating for him. With his distinguished career on hold for the foreseeable future, Telemachus’ growing enthusiasm for this “new world” around him is delightful and charming.

It’s a good thing too, as the storyline is overall, a slight one, and with very little depth to it other than what’s created through the use of philosophical and historical quotes, some of which are daubed onto the walls of Polypylon itself. These are enough to make the characters seem more learned and intelligent than they actually are, but they lack the cleverness needed to elevate the characters’ posturing. Also, there are too many scenes, particularly involving Myron, that fail to advance what little story there is, and hold the movie back from fulfilling its potential. Telemachus’ journey of self-discovery is the main focus but getting lost and being forcefully cajoled into having sex aren’t exactly life changing experiences, and Kalogeropoulos’ script never quite knows what to do next with the character.

What the movie does know what to do with is its location at Polypylon, a wonderfully rundown castle in the hills that is a character all by itself, and which provides a splendid backdrop for several scenes in the movie. Either shown at a distance to show its full size, or lit up at night, Polypylon is a fantastic setting for Kalogeropoulos’s tale, a theatrical “venue” used to good effect throughout, and brimming with colour. So too is the surrounding countryside with its hills and waterfalls and boulders and pools, shot with precision and fidelity by DoP Yannis Drakoularakos. There are moments of breathtaking beauty to be had in Riders of Pylos, and each one is to be savoured.

Writer/director/star/composer Kalogeropoulos has fashioned an appealing, seductive tale that should bewitch audiences everywhere. Earthy, occasionally profane, and entrancing, the movie is a testament to its creator’s abilities and his knowledge of Greek values through the ages. A small, but hugely enjoyable blend of rural drama and contemporary romantic mores, this is well worth seeking out and capable of delivering the kind of warm feeling few movies even aspire to. Rating: 8/10 – refreshing for being entirely carefree with its portrayal of romantic ideals, Riders of Pylos is light and jovial, and all the better for it; with a sterling central performance, it’s a movie that wants its audience to have as good a time as possible, and on that level, it succeeds admirably.

NOTE: The following trailer doesn’t have any English subtitles but is still worth a look:

Borgman (2013)

18 Saturday Apr 2015

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Alex van Warmerdam, Angels, Civil rights, Demons, Drama, Hadewych Minis, Holland, Incubus, Jan Bijvoet, Jeroen Perceval, Murder, Psychological thriller, Review, Thriller

D: Alex van Warmerdam / 108m

Cast: Jan Bijvoet, Hadewych Minis, Jeroen Perceval, Sara Hjort Ditlevsen, Tom Dewispelaere, Alex van Warmerdam, Eva van de Wijdeven, Annet Malherbe, Elve Lijbaart, Dirkje van der Pijl, Pieter-Bas de Waard, Mike Weerts

In a forest, three men (including a priest) hunt for a man (Bijvoet) who lives in an underground hideout. The man escapes and alerts two others, Pascal (Dewispalaere), and Ludwig (van Warmerdam), to the presence of the three men. The man heads into a nearby town where he tries to find somewhere to have a bath and clean up. At the home of the van Schendel’s he’s rebuffed by the husband, Richard (Perceval), until he says that he knows his wife, Marina (Minis). Although she denies this, Richard becomes angry and attacks the man, knocking him to the ground. Later, after Richard has gone to work, Marina finds the man, who is called Camiel Borgman, hiding in their summer house. She lets him have a bath and some food and he persuades her to let him stay in the summer house for a few days, though Marina makes it clear he has to avoid being seen.

However, Borgman is soon finding reasons to be in the house, and is seen by her three children and their nanny, Stine (Ditlevsen). As problems in their marriage become apparent, Marina begins to lean towards Borgman for support and he stays for longer than planned. Borgman asks if their gardener is a friend or someone they’re close to; Marina says no. The next day, the gardener is shot with a poisoned dart by Borgman who takes him to his home and where he arranges for two of his associates, Olinka (van de Wijdeven) and Brenda (Malherbe) to meet him. The three of them kill the gardener and his wife and later dispose of the bodies.

Marina and Richard’s relationship continues to deteriorate, and when Borgman applies for the job of replacement gardener, Richard doesn’t recognise him, and he’s hired straight away. His friends Pascal and Ludwig arrive to help with the work needed to be done. Suffering from nightmares in which Richard is violent towards her, Marina grows ever more distant toward him and closer – at least on her part – to Borgman. With the children and Stine beginning to act strangely, and Marina becoming more and more desperate to be with Borgman, she asks him if there is something he can do about Richard. He can, and events converge on the night of a dinner party that includes Marina’s family, Borgman and his two friends, and Stine and her boyfriend, Arthur (Weerts).

The first Dutch movie in thirty-eight years to be selected for the Cannes Film Festival, Borgman is a dark, psychological thriller that comes replete with supernatural overtones. It’s a strange movie, uneven in places, disconcerting in others, and too much of its narrative feels arbitrary, or is left unexplained, for it to work fully. The mystery of Camiel Borgman and his associates is never completely revealed (though there are clues sprinkled throughout the movie), and the relationship between Marina and Richard lacks sufficient exploration to be completely convincing. And yet the movie is deceptively fascinating despite all this, taking hold from the start and keeping the viewer’s attention until the very (disappointing) end.

What stops the movie from being as rewarding or effective as it could be is the curious motivations behind Borgman’s activities and those of his associates. With writer/director van Warmerdam appearing unsure of which side of the coin he wants to come down on – are they angels or demons? – the resulting uncertainty is reflected in the tone and the imagery of the movie. There’s a repeated visual reference to Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare, where an incubus sits atop a sleeping woman (several times Borgman is seen astride Marina while she sleeps), but there’s also a scar on Borgman’s back that may represent the absence of wings. This causes a fair degree of confusion about the character’s motives and his reasons for choosing the van Schenkels as his targets (at first it seems as if they’ve been chosen at random but as the movie continues it seems more appropriate to think of them as having been picked out deliberately). It also leads to an unsatisfactory conclusion that is as puzzling as it is abrupt.

With the movie proving inconsistent – even though it’s absorbing at the same time – it’s left to the cast to help maintain any semblance of continuity. Bijvoet is mesmerising as the title character, his remote gaze and dispassionate regard for the people around him so exactingly portrayed it makes his performance completely unnerving; you just never know what he’s thinking. There’s a degree of urbanity about him that’s contrasted by his manipulative behaviour, but Bijvoet handles the various differences in the character of Borgman with ease. As the troubled, frustrated Marina, Minis is equally as good, and equally as mesmerising as Bijvoet, and she helps ground the more elaborate, metaphysical aspects of the script. Alas, Perceval isn’t given enough leeway to make Richard anything more than a bully and a probable victim of Borgman’s scheme to see the pair fall into his trap. With the remaining characters used to widen the narrative, but often to very little effect, the movie remains essentially a two-hander.

But again, Borgman is consistently absorbing and intriguing, and van Warmerdam works hard to stop the movie from becoming too abstruse, creating a tone that combines mystery, very dark humour, and psychological suspense to impressive effect. He’s aided by Tom Erisman’s clinical photography and Job ter Burg’s ascetic editing style, each adding to the somewhat distant effect used by van Warmerdam to highlight the dysfunction of the characters and their actions. There’s also some clever lighting effects used when necessary, and the score by Vincent van Warmerdam is cleverly suited and adapted to the material’s even pace and disturbing moments.

Rating: 6/10 – with the resolution of its central mystery proving so unsatisfying, Borgman wastes a lot of time setting things up only to forget to follow through; Bijvoet and Minis make for superb protagonists but can’t prop up van Warmerdam’s unwieldy script enough to save it completely.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 (2015)

17 Friday Apr 2015

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Action, Andy Fickman, Comedy, Convention, Father/daughter relationship, Kevin James, Las Vegas, Neal McDonough, Raini Rodriguez, Review, Robbery, Sequel

D: Andy Fickman / 94m

Cast: Kevin James, Raini Rodriguez, Neal McDonough, Eduardo Verástegui, Daniella Alonso, David Henrie, D.B. Woodside, Nicholas Turturro, Gary Valentine, Ana Gasteyer, Loni Love, Shelley Desai, Shirley Knight

INTERIOR. DAY. THE OFFICE OF MICHAEL LYNTON, CHAIRMAN & CEO OF SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT. THE OFFICE DOOR OPENS. HIS SECRETARY COMES IN.

LYNTON: Yes?

SECRETARY: You’ve just had a call from Kevin James.

LYNTON: Okay. What was it about?

SECRETARY: He said he had a great idea for Paul Blart: Mall Cop 3.

LYNTON: Have you seen Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2?

SECRETARY: No, I haven’t.

LYNTON: Well, pray you never have to. And after we pass on number three, pray no other studio picks it up instead.

SECRETARY: Is 2 that bad?

LYNTON: Bad? It makes Zookeeper look like it should have won Best Film at the Oscars.

SECRETARY: Okay, that is bad. What shall I say if he calls back?

LYNTON: (thinks for a moment) Tell him I’ve died – No, that won’t stop him. No, tell him we’re only making horror movies from now on. And pray he doesn’t come up with an idea for one of those instead.

SECRETARY: Got it. Will do.

LYNTON: Hell, I wish he would.

THE SECRETARY LEAVES. LYNTON GETS UP FROM HIS DESK AND WALKS TO THE WINDOW. HE LOOKS OUT AND SHAKES HIS HEAD REPEATEDLY IN A WEARY, RESIGNED MANNER.

FADE OUT.

Rating: 3/10 – so bad you wish you could forget it the moment you see it, Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 is an appalling, unfunny mess that mistakes pratfalls for the height of humour, and makes continually desperate attempts to inject real mirth into proceedings; an early front runner for Worst Sequel of 2015.

Unit 7 (2012)

17 Friday Apr 2015

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1992 World Expo, Alberto Rodríguez, Antonio de la Torre, Corruption, Crime, Drama, Drugs, Joaquín Núñez, José Manuel Poga, Mario Casas, Police, Review, Seville, Spain, Thriller, Violence

Original title: Grupo 7

D: Alberto Rodríguez / 95m

Cast: Antonio de la Torre, Mario Casas, Joaquín Núñez, José Manuel Poga, Inma Cuesta, Lucía Guerrero, Estefanía de los Santos, Alfonso Sánchez, Julián Villagrán, Carlos Olalla

Seville, 1987. With five years to go before the city plays host to the 1992 World Expo, the authorities are determined to root out any and all crime in the city, and particularly the drugs trade. Spearheading this attempt is Unit 7, made up of four officers: tough, uncompromising Rafael (de la Torre), young, ambitious Ángel (Casas), jovial, emotional Mateo (Núñez), and vain, homophobic Miguel (Poga). Using informants such as Joaquín (Villagrán) the team begins dismantling the various dealers and suppliers that threaten the Expo’s success. But their initial busts don’t amount to very much. It’s only when they find a substantial amount of heroin at the apartment of a prostitute known as Mahogany (de los Santos), Ángel takes some of it, and the team agrees to use it to create more informants, and thereby catch more dealers and suppliers.

Over the next four years their plan comes to fruition, and to such an extent that the team are responsible for fifty per cent of all arrests made by the Seville police. But tensions arise within the group as Rafael, nominally the group’s leader, is challenged more and more by an increasingly erratic and unpredictable Ángel. Ángel becomes more and more intolerant of the drug dealers and the junkies, and often violently assaults them in the way that Rafael used to. But where Ángel becomes more inured to the violence, and emotionally closed off – and which affects his marriage to Elena (Cuesta) – Rafael becomes more relaxed and indifferent, due to his relationship with a young junkie, Lucía (Guerrero).

The team’s high arrest rate also begins to attract the attention of Internal Affairs, and the team find themselves being followed. With an increasing media spotlight on them as well, a misguided raid on a home in the suburbs causes them to lose some of their credibility (and sense of invincibility). And when Ángel becomes the target of someone who knows why the team are so successful, and is prepared to use terror tactics to undermine them, their efficiency continues to falter. When they’re ambushed and humiliated in a similar fashion that they used to intimidate some junkies once before, and the identity of their tormentor is revealed, it leads to Ángel and Rafael going back to deal with their tormentor once and for all.

Incorporating contemporary footage of the World Expo site being developed and built over the years between 1987 and 1992, Unit 7 provides a social, political and historical perspective to its story that adds some degree of depth to the material, and while this is to be applauded, the episodic nature of the story ultimately works against it, leaving the viewer wanting to know more about the characters and their motivations, and with the feeling that there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes than we ever get to see or know about.

The trickiest (and not entirely convincing) aspect of all is the character of Ángel, set up as the rookie of the group and suitably naïve when the movie begins. An unfortunate encounter with a drug dealer leaves his lack of experience exposed, and his attempts to gain promotion are hampered by his diabetes – a plot device which is used in such a haphazard manner it might as well not be mentioned. But from the moment he picks up the pack of heroin and hides it he becomes a different man: arrogant for the most part and acting more like a vigilante than a cop. It’s a swift, unexpected change in direction, and while it helps set up the rest of the movie, appears too much out of the blue for comfort.

In contrast, Rafael’s turn to the “softer” side is given more room to develop, and while his relationship with Lucía provides more of an emotional component for the movie than it has anywhere else, the whole thing ultimately doesn’t go anywhere and leaves Rafael just as embittered and alone as he was at the beginning. With Mateo equalling comedy relief and Miguel placed firmly in the background, screenwriter Rafael Cobos’ more random approach to characterisation has the effect of distancing the viewer from the team, even though strong efforts are made to show their camaraderie and their combined sense of purpose. Certainly the cast, all well chosen for their roles, put in strong, confident portrayals – with de la Torre and de los Santos proving especially convincing – and make more of their roles than the script allows for.

Thankfully, Cobos’ script does work extremely well in its attempts to portray the effort made to break up various drugs rings and the kind of intimidation and violence that goes with it. The team regularly use excessive force, and while it’s probably not a misrepresentation of the times or the police attitude towards criminals, the savagery of their actions is remarkably one-sided – even when their tormentor reveals himself he doesn’t treat them as harshly as he was by them. This difference again has the effect of distancing the viewer from the group, and their subsequent actions, plus their ultimate fate come 1992, lacks the resonance it should have had.

That said, the action scenes are well-mounted, and Rodríguez shows a flair for unusual camera angles that makes – in particular – the opening rooftop chase such a visceral and propulsive experience to watch. With so many movies like this being made across the world (and too many in the US), Rodríguez’ visual acuity helps lift the movie above many of its competitors, and while this is his first attempt at making a película policial, bodes well enough if he should decide to make another. Aided by regular collaborators DoP Alex Catalán and composer Julio de la Rosa, Rodríguez has fashioned a hard-hitting, if emotionally distant crime drama that, fortunately, scores more often than it misses.

Rating: 7/10 – though struggling to offer a connection for the viewer on an emotional level, Unit 7 does provide a solid, impactful ride for most of its running time; with a firm sense of place and time, and an often impressive look and feel to it, this movie is still worth tracking down.

Mini-Review: Get Hard (2015)

15 Wednesday Apr 2015

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Alison Brie, Comedy, Craig T. Nelson, Embezzlement, Etan Cohen, Fraud, Kevin Hart, Mayo, Prison, Review, Will Ferrell

D: Etan Cohen / 100m

Cast: Will Ferrell, Kevin Hart, Craig T. Nelson, Alison Brie, T.I. “Tip” Harris, Edwina Findlay, Ariana Neal, Paul Ben-Victor, John Mayer, Greg Germann, Ron Funchkes

Hedge fund manager James King (Ferrell) has it all: a beautiful home, a beautiful fiancee (Brie), a recent promotion to partner in his future father-in-law Martin’s firm, and all the money he needs for a dream lifestyle. But it all comes crashing down when he’s arrested for embezzlement. In court, the judge sentences him to ten years in San Quentin, but allows him thirty days to get his affairs in order. In the wake of this, Alissa dumps him, Martin vows to find the person really responsible for the embezzlement, and James faces the prospect of prison by trying to run away to Mexico. But when he bumps into Darnell Lewis, who runs the car wash business at his place of work, he makes the assumption that Darnell has been in prison because he’s black. Asking for Darnell’s help in surviving on the inside, Darnell agrees to help him for $30,000.

Darnell does his best to toughen up James and prepare him for prison life, but James proves a less than able pupil. In the end Darnell decides James needs to be protected on the inside and hooks him up with his cousin, Russell (Harris), who has his own gang, the Crenshaw Kings. James makes a good impression on Russell but Russell decides he needs protection from a white gang instead and sends him to see the Allegiance of Whites gang, but the meeting ends in disaster, and both he and Darnell barely escape with their lives. At this point, Darnell realises that James really is innocent, and together they look for the real crook. But finding and keeping the evidence to convict that person proves to be another matter entirely.

Whatever your feeling about mismatched buddy comedies, or indeed any movie starring Will Ferrell or Kevin Hart, chances are that this will appeal to a broad audience base, and entertain accordingly. If the movie lapses too often into the kind of farcical schtick that seems to underpin this particular comedy sub-genre, then it shouldn’t be a surprise that it lacks even the requisite number of belly laughs. This isn’t to say that Get Hard isn’t funny – it definitely has its moments – but what holds it back is that it doesn’t try hard enough to make its intended audience really laugh out loud (though a couple of one-liners come close). What it does is present situation after situation that allows Ferrell to trot out his idiot man-child persona one more time, and with little or no variation from any other comedy he’s made in the last ten years. James is a role tailor-made for him, but the problem is that it doesn’t stretch Ferrell as an actor, and for large stretches he coasts along in the role, hitting his mark but without any appreciable effort.

It’s the same for Hart, giving us the same manic portrayal he’s given us in Ride Along (2014), The Wedding Ringer (2015) and others. With nothing to shake up the performance, it looks tired already. Add to that an increasingly bizarre series of situations where James has to “man up” – including giving a blow job to a stranger, easily the movie’s most uncomfortably plotted moment – and a criminal plot that has all the originality of of a photocopy, Get Hard is lazy, opportunistic and, at times, unbelievably crass.

Rating: 4/10 – not the absolute worst way to spend ninety-four minutes of your time, but certainly not the best either, Get Hard wastes the talents of its two stars, and plays it all by numbers; save your money and wait for it to become available for free in whichever way you can access it.

The Human Resources Manager (2010)

14 Tuesday Apr 2015

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A Woman in Jerusalem, Burial, Drama, Eran Riklis, Guri Alfi, Immigrant, Industrial bakery, Israel, Literary adaptation, Mark Ivanir, Noah Silver, Review, Romania, The Weasel, Yulia Petracke

D: Eran Riklis / 99m

Cast: Mark Ivanir, Guri Alfi, Noah Silver, Rosina Kambus, Julian Negulesco, Bogdan E. Stanoevitch, Irina Petrescu, Gila Almagor, Reymonde Amsallem, Roni Karen, Papil Panduru

When an employee at a prestigious bakery in Jerusalem is killed, and her body goes unclaimed for some weeks, it leads to a public relations crisis for the company. With a newspaper article being prepared that will criticise the bakery, its owner, known as the Widow (Almagor), gives the job of defusing the matter to the human resources manager (Ivanir). He discovers that the employee was a Romanian immigrant called Yulia who had been living in Jerusalem for some time, but whose family is back in her home country. He also learns that she had been let go a month before by her supervisor, and believes that this absolves the bakery of any blame for her body going unclaimed.

However, the journalist writing the article, known as the Weasel (Alfi), publishes the article anyway. And instead of fighting any claim of negligence, the Widow decides to admit blame and pay compensation to the family; she also gives the job of escorting the body back to Romania and representing the company at the funeral to the HR manager. With his home life proving difficult to negotiate – he’s divorced and has a young daughter (Karen) he doesn’t spend enough time with – the prospect of being away for a few days isn’t ideal, but he doesn’t have a choice.

At the Widow’s request, the Weasel goes with him, which adds to his problems. And once he gets to Romania, the HR manager finds that bureaucracy and local customs place further obstacles in the way of arranging the funeral. First, Yulia’s ex-husband (Stanoevitch) can’t sign the burial form because he’s no longer family. A search for their son (Silver) reveals a wild child at odds with everyone, but who is too young to sign the form either. This leaves his grandmother (Petrescu), but she lives in a remote village that is a couple of days’ journey away. Borrowing the van used by the Israeli consul (Kambus), the HR Manager, accompanied by the Weasel, the Vice Consul (Negulesco), the son, and a driver (Panduru), make their way to the grandmother’s village. But the onset of a storm forces them to take shelter in a military barracks, where both the van breaks down, and the HR manager becomes ill…

A downbeat, yet curiously, almost accidentally uplifting adaptation of A.B. Yehoshua’s novel A Woman in Jerusalem, The Human Resources Manager is a strange beast, part black comedy, part tortuous road trip, and part voyage of discovery. These elements, fused together as they are here, work in ways that often come as a surprise, and it makes for rewarding viewing, as the HR manager finds a new lease of life from taking care of the dead.

As the HR manager learns to loosen up and out his own troubles behind him – a previous posting that went horribly wrong, his divorce, the Widow’s lack of confidence in him – he also learns how to deal with the problems of others, particularly the son, whom he eventually bonds with. It’s all done gradually and with a great deal of sympathy and warmth toward the character of the HR manager, and avoids any grand emotional gestures, preferring to keep things on an even level and without a great deal of show. This approach doesn’t undermine the characters’ experiences on their travels, but serves to keep matters realistic, and is remarkably naturalistic as well.

The movie has its quirks. No one is called by name, only by description: the son, the Vice Consul, the grandmother etc., and it makes for an everyman feel. The only person who has a name is the dead woman, Yulia. And while this may point to some notion of the movie playing with stereotypes, such is not the case. Yes, it makes for a kind of shorthand when characters are introduced, but the absence of names never becomes an issue. The same is true of Romania, obviously the country the HR manager travels to, but never named in the movie. It adds to the idea that this is a story that could happen to anyone, anywhere.

In the title role, Ivanir is a great choice, his stoic features and resigned looks fitting the character perfectly. His early frustration at being given such a job is played with just the right degree of self-absorption and rancour. As the movie develops and the HR manager becomes more involved with Yulia’s family, Ivanir portrays his new-found determination and purpose with credibility and a refreshing lack of artifice. By letting go of his life back in Israel, or at least the things he believes are important to him, and by learning that he tries to exercise too much control, he frees himself from the yoke he’s placed around his own neck. It’s an impressive, consistent performance that anchors the movie and gives the viewer someone to connect with (and root for).

The supporting characters are all fleshed out to good effect, with Silver as the angry, petulant, aggressive son, and Kambus as the waspish Consul standing out from the crowd. There’s often stunning location photography courtesy of DoP Rainer Klausmann, and the movie is edited with precision by Tova Asher. In the director’s chair, Riklis organises and orchestrates the script by Noah Stollman in such a way that each scene adds something more to the story, and enriches it as a whole. He’s also good at bringing out the less obvious emotions in a scene and rendering them accordingly, letting the story unfold in a way that keeps the viewer guessing what’s going to happen next. It all adds up to a movie that is as poignant as it is efficiently dramatic.

Rating: 8/10 – with a terrific central performance by Ivanir, The Human Resources Manager takes its time and tells its story with honesty and subdued passion; not as morbid as it may seem, this carries a warmth and a heart that makes it a lot more enjoyable than you’d imagine.

Virginity (1937)

13 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Buffet, Composer, Czechoslovakia, Dowry, Drama, Illness, Ladislav Bohác, Lída Baarová, Literary adaptation, Marie Majerová, Otakar Vávra, Review, Romance, The Counsel, Zdenek Stepánek

Original title: Panenství

D: Otakar Vávra / 82m

Cast: Lída Baarová, Ladislav Bohác, Zdenek Stepánek, Jaroslav Prucha, Adina Mandlová, Bozena Sustrová, Bedřich Veverka, Jaroslava Skorkovská, Frantisek Kreuzmann

Hana (Baarová) lives with her parents (Skorkovská, Kreuzmann) and helps out in their grocery store. Her mother is hard-working while her father is a drunkard. One day, he tries to kiss Hana; her mother walks in on them and sees what’s happening, but instead of berating her husband, she tells Hana to get out. Luckily, Hana finds work at a café run by Josef Nevostrý (Stepánek). He’s attracted to her and finds ways to promote her; this causes some animosity amongst the other female staff but otherwise she gets on well with everybody. One day she meets a regular customer called Paul (Bohác), a composer; there’s an instant attraction between the two of them.

Soon, Hana comes to the attention of another regular customer, the Counsel (Prucha). An old man, he entices her with gifts, first a ring, which Hana accepts, and then a bracelet. But her relationship with Paul has grown stronger, and Hana refuses the Counsel’s offer of the bracelet. Undeterred, he tells Hana she can collect it from his apartment at any time. Meanwhile, Paul, who is sick, is determined to finish his latest classical work, but the effort takes too much of a toll. He becomes too ill, and is advised that he should spend time recuperating in the mountains. However, the cost of such a trip is expensive, and not even his doctor (Veverka) can afford to lend him the money to go.

Fearing that Paul will get worse, or even die, Hana goes to the Counsel’s apartment, but she can’t go through with her plan to allow the old man to seduce her and then get the money she needs for Paul. There is a scuffle and the old man suffers a stroke. Hana flees the building. Later, Paul comes to the café and tells Hana that his doctor has lent him the money to go to the mountains. Knowing this to be untrue, Hana makes a fateful decision: to marry Nevostrý and use the dowry to pay for Paul’s trip…

Adapted from the novel by Czech writer Marie Majerová (and with a screenplay co-written by her, Frantisek Cáp, A.J. Urban and the director), Virginity is a sombre yet engrossing tale of one woman’s refusal to be used, or taken advantage of, by the predatory men that surround her. Thanks to a great performance by Baarová, and sympathetic direction by Vávra, the movie avoids any sense that it’s an early soap opera by making each of the characters more fully rounded than usual, and by doing its best not to appear predictable – which it is for the most part (though not when it matters).

By making Hana a young woman whose awareness of the world, and what goes on in it, makes her less naïve than usual also makes for an interesting central character who seems to side-step problems with ease, but who doesn’t quite have the complete confidence that should come with that ability. Some things, like her successive promotions at the café, orchestrated by her quietly lovesick boss, she takes quick and decisive advantage of while remaining oblivious to his attentions. Even though her female colleagues are less than enamoured of her rise through the ranks, Hana’s mix of sincerity and good intentions stops her from being disliked, and there’s a strong sense of the female solidarity that keeps all the women from being exploited, either at work or in their love lives. With the female characters refusing to be objectified, or to let the men around them feel they can be bought with trinkets, the movie has a proto-feminist feel that few movies of the Thirties – wherever they were made – can boast.

Issues of feminism aside, it’s the seedy backdrop that draws the attention. The Counsel is an old-style lecher, leering and manipulative, his intentions as clear as if he’d written them on the café window. Prucha plays him as a sly old fox, certain of his “charm” and even more certain that his gifts will bring him what he wants. Despite his soft-spoken manner and patrician bearing, he’s the worst type of predator: the one who knows his ploy will work… in time. In contrast, Nevostrý is motivated by passion and love, but his own attentions toward Hana are equally as disturbing as the Counsel’s. His approach is to reward her and make her grateful to him, to make her feel obliged when he finally reveals his feelings for her (though his scheme is undermined by Hana’s need for the dowry). It’s a clever conceit, that the man who professes love for Hana is the most conniving in pursuing her.

As her true love, however, Bohác’s agonised composer is a less than desirable mate, his wild stares and manic grinning proving too distracting from the moment he appears. (In truth his portrayal is reminiscent of any Twenties performance by Conrad Veldt, and distractingly so.) It’s to Baarovás credit that she makes Hana’s love for Paul so convincing, her early infatuation played with such sweet earnestness that the viewer is swept along by the budding romance in the same way the character is. As Paul’s condition worsens, Baarová shows Hana’s fear and apprehension with such a degree of sympathy that when she makes the journey to the Counsel’s apartment and begins to have second thoughts as she climbs the stairs, it’s the most dramatic moment in the movie. And when she is preparing to be married to Nevostrý, with her workmates fussing around her, the look on her face tells you all you need to know about how Hana is feeling at that moment. It’s an impressive performance, and all the more so for the risqué – for 1937 – scene where Hana expresses her frustration at being parted from Paul: she stands in front of a mirror in her room and runs her hands down over her breasts, her arousal so plainly written in her features that it’s almost embarrassing to watch. (Interesting Historical Footnote: when she made this movie Baarová was living in Berlin, and was the mistress of Josef Goebbels. Yes, that Josef Goebbels.)

Director Vávra does a fine job of keeping things from becoming too sensational, or mawkish, and handles the social and sexual politics of the time and the story with understated finesse. He draws out fine performances from his cast – Bohác aside – and gets to the heart of a scene with a minimum of fuss or any attempt to draw attention to himself as the director. As a result, the movie has a fresh, unhurried feel to it that makes it entirely believable from start to finish.

Rating: 8/10 – a minor classic from Czechoslovakia that boasts a handful of terrific performances and clever direction, Virginity never lets it characters – or the audience – down; Baarová is a pleasure to watch, so good in the role of Hana that this is one of those occasions where it’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role.

NOTE: No trailer available.

Odd Couple (1979)

12 Sunday Apr 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Chia Yung Liu, Comedy, Drama, Hong Kong, Ka-Yan Leung, King of Sabres, King of Spears, Laughing Bandit, Martial arts, Master Rocking, Review, Sammo Hung

Original title: Bo ming chan dao duo ming qiang

aka Eternal Conflict

D: Chia Lung Yiu / 91m

Cast: Sammo Hung, Ka-Yan Leung, Chia Yung Liu, Dean Shek, Hoi Sang Lee, Huang Ha, Peter Chan, Karl Maka, Lam Ching-Ying, Mars, San Tai

The King of Sabres (Hung) and the King of Spears (Liu) are fierce rivals whose fighting skills are tested in each year in a duel. But the contests are always a draw, and after fifteen years they hit upon the idea of each training an apprentice who will represent them in another duel and hopefully, decide the issue. With the idea agreed, the King of Sabres discovers his apprentice at a local market, where the young man, Stubborn Wing (Liu) is defending himself against a gangster (Lee) and two of his henchmen. With the King of Sabres’ aid, the trio are defeated, but Stubborn Wing resists the King of Sabres’ entreaties to become his apprentice. It’s only when his home is burned down and the King of Sabres offers to train Stubborn Wing with a view to letting him try to kill him when he’s ready, that the young man agrees to go with him.

In turn, the King of Spears finds his apprentice in the form of a boatman called Ah Yo (Hung). In contrast to Stubborn Wing, Ah Yo is more than eager to join the King of Spears, and joins him willingly. Over time they both learn from their respective masters, until the day comes for them to travel to the Wulin Sacred Place, where their respective masters have their duels. On the way, Ah Yo encounters a lord called Master Rocking (Shek) and his retinue at an inn. A fight ensues and Master Rocking and his men are defeated by Ah So; but when Stubborn Wing arrives at the same inn, Master Rocking returns with two mercenaries to challenge Ah Yo. Instead, the two apprentices take them on individually, beating them and teaching Master Rocking one final lesson.

At Wulin Sacred Place the pair begin their duel but are interrupted by the arrival of Laughing Bandit (Leung). Laughing Bandit, who bears a scar on his face and the back of one hand from duels he fought with both Kings years before, captures Stubborn Wing and Ah Yo. Knowing that their masters will try to rescue them, Laughing Bandit waits for them to arrive at his hideout, and to take revenge for the loss of face they’ve both caused him.

With dozens upon dozens upon dozens more martial arts movies made in Hong Kong during the Seventies, sorting the wheat from the chaff could be seen as either nigh on impossible, or the kind of project you’d need years to devote to. But what can be said about Odd Couple, is that it’s one of the best, a mix of silly comedy, stunning martial arts choreography, and a story that makes a virtue of its own simplicity.

It’s a movie that is almost incredibly silly at times, and yet it works, from the ridiculous mannerisms of Shek as Master Rocking, to the knowing facial expressions of its two Kings, to the scared remarks of two challengers to the King of Sabres’ title – “I’ll go and get my brother.” “I’ll go and tell my granny.” This is a movie that is easy to laugh along with and doesn’t descend fully into the kind of inexplicable playground humour that a lot of Hong Kong movies include (it may be funny to the people of Hong Kong but sometimes local humour doesn’t travel that well). There’s humour too in the relationships, where grudging respect is hidden beneath a barrage of insults and putdowns. There’s even a joke at the villain’s expense: when he and the two Kings come face to face it’s revealed that he used to be called Old Yellow Dog.

The story, despite some problems with its own timeline, keeps things moving from one glorious set-piece to another, and even lets some of the supporting characters share in the spotlight. A highlight is Mars’ performance as Potato, the King of Spears’ assistant. With a queue that features several short tufts of hair dotted above the forehead, and the kind of protruding upper middle teeth that Bugs Bunny would be proud of, Potato is a walking, talking “joke” all on his own. But it’s Hung and Liu who dominate, playing dual roles and yet creating four distinct and believable characters (and it’s a pleasant surprise that the movie doesn’t attempt to place them all in the same frame – or that it matters). Hung looks so youthful in this movie it serves as a reminder that he’s been making movies for such a long time (and to such a high standard). He has such a screen presence that he commands the screen in either role, and brings his usual high spirits to the material. But Liu matches him, playing his two roles with a more serious flair and frowning a lot, but clearly enjoying himself, both as an actor and as the director.

In the end, though, it’s action directors Yuen Biao, Lam Ching-Ying and Billy Chan who make the movie as entertaining and as breathtaking as it is. The martial arts choreography in Odd Couple is nothing short of astounding, with all concerned raising the bar with each action sequence. It’s incredible to see Hung and Liu – and Leung as well at the end – move with such speed and agility (though there is a moment where the action is speeded up deliberately, a nod perhaps to the sheer brio employed), and all without apparent benefit of wires or too much trickery in the editing suite. Every clash of sabre and spear or body blow is captured with loud, ringing clarity by the sound effects department, adding to the overall effect and making the action even more thrilling in its execution. Ming Ho’s cinematography supports it all with tremendous élan, perfectly framing each scene and showing a judicious use of close ups when required.

Rating: 8/10 – there’s a franchise that includes the words “fast” and “furious” in its title, but Odd Couple really is both those things, and very funny as well; with all the talent involved, it’s a movie that had every right to turn out as well as it did, and the overwhelming proof is there on the screen.

Wild Tales (2014)

12 Sunday Apr 2015

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Action, Airplane, Argentina, Érica Rivas, Comedy, Corruption, Damián Szifrón, Demolition, Diner, Drama, Hit and run, Julieta Zylberberg, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Marriage, Murder, Oscar Martínez, Parking fines, Portmanteau, Rat poison, Revenge, Review, Ricardo Darín, Rita Cortese, Road rage, Wedding reception

Original title: Relatos salvajes

D: Damián Szifrón / 122m

Cast: Darío Grandinetti, María Marull, Rita Cortese, Julieta Zylberberg, César Bordón, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Walter Donado, Ricardo Darín, Nancy Dupláa, Oscar Martínez, Osmar Núñez, Germán de Silva, Érica Rivas, Diego Gentile

On a plane, catwalk model Isabel (Marull) meets classical music critic Salgado (Grandinetti). They discover they both know Gabriel Pasternak, Isabel’s ex-boyfriend. Soon, it becomes apparent that everyone on the flight knows Gabriel, and they’ve all held him back or made him angry in some way. But now Gabriel is flying the plane…

At a diner late one night, a man (Bordón) comes in and is rude to the waitress (Cortese). She recognises him as the man who caused her father’s death and made advances to her mother two weeks after her father’s funeral. The cook (Zylberberg), upon hearing this, suggests they put rat poison in his food. The waitress is horrified by the idea, but when the food goes out and she discovers the cook has added the poison, she makes little effort to stop the man from eating it. It’s only when the man’s son arrives and begins eating the food as well that she tries to take the food away, with terrible consequences…

Driving through the countryside, Diego (Sbaraglia) is deliberately held up by another driver, Mario (Donado). Diego finally overtakes him and yells abuse at him as he goes by. Several miles later, he gets a flat tyre just as he reaches a bridge. Just as he’s finishing putting a new wheel on, Mario arrives and pulls up directly in front of Diego’s car. Diego hides inside his car, while Mario takes the opportunity to vandalise it. When he’s finished, Mario gets back in his truck but before he can move off, an incensed Diego pushes Mario’s vehicle down the incline at the side of the bridge where it topples over into the river. Mario survives and clambers back up to the road, threatening to find Diego and kill him as Diego drives off. But Diego finds he can’t leave things as they are, and turns back…

Respected demolitions expert Simón (Darín) stops off on his way home to pick up a birthday cake for his daughter. While he does, his car is towed away for being in a No Parking zone. He goes to the towing depot and despite explaining that he couldn’t have known he was parked illegally, still has to pay to get his car released. He also finds that he has to pay the parking fine as well, but before he does he loses his temper and takes a fire extinguisher to the teller’s window. His subsequent arrest leads to his losing his job, which leads to his wife wanting a divorce, which – in a twist of fate – leads to his car being towed again. But this time, he makes the necessary payments, before embarking on a plan of revenge…

Well-off businessman Mauricio (Martínez) wakes one morning to learn that his teenage son has knocked down and killed a pregnant woman. He calls his lawyer (Núñez), who comes over straight away. They hit on a plan to persuade Mauricio’s groundskeeper Jose (de Silva) to take the blame for the hit-and-run in return for $500,000. When the fiscal prosecutor arrives he realises Jose isn’t the culprit, but proves willing to go along with Mauricio’s plan if he can be paid as well. When the cost of keeping things quiet begins to spiral out of control, Mauricio realises there’s only one thing he can do…

On the day of their wedding, Romina (Rivas) and Ariel (Gentile) are as happy as any newly-wed couple can be. Until Romina spies Ariel with a woman that he works with, and being more friendly than is comfortable. She confronts him and eventually he concedes that he’s slept with the other woman. Romina, angry and upset, runs off to the roof where she encounters one of the kitchen staff. He consoles her, which leads to Romina deciding to go back down and make this one wedding reception to remember…

With each of its six stories painting a picture of emphatic revenge, Wild Tales is a treasure trove of violence, pent-up emotion, unbridled anger, personal despair, and cathartic expression. It’s an often no-holds-barred experience where average people find themselves willing and able to do things they wouldn’t normally consider. As such it works on a visceral level that will have some viewers cheering in parts and laughing heartily in others; it’s that kind of feelgood movie.

The stories themselves vary in intensity, with several proving satisfactory on a wish fulfilment level, while a couple lack the bite of the rest. The opener has the initial feel of a Twilight Zone episode, but soon morphs into the ultimate revenge tale as one man decides to kill everyone who’s ever crossed him. It’s funny and horrifying at the same time and packs a punch with its final shot that isn’t forgotten very easily. The second tale has a classic structure, and is where revenge is complicated by the arrival of an innocent into the proceedings. It’s stylishly done, with a noir feel to it that complements and enhances the storyline, and Zylberberg’s fierce portrayal of the cook is an unexpected bonus.

The pick of the bunch is definitely the third tale, with its two protagonists descending rapidly from macho posturing to murderous determination with no attempt made to work things out. It’s brutal, uncompromising, and shocking in the way that these two men resort to such extreme measures – and with so little compunction. And then there’s the ironic postscript, where two investigators sum up their opinion of what happened, a perfect coda that subverts the savagery that’s gone before. By contrast, the fourth tale is a more considered tale of revenge, the kind that’s taken after one too many setbacks, reversals of fortune, or bad breaks. The issue of being towed away will be familiar to many people in many countries, and it’s this familiarity that gives the story it’s resonance. As Simón fights against an uncaring bureaucracy, you know it’s just a matter of time before he puts his “special set of skills” to good, vengeful use. And when he does, you can’t help but cheer, even though you know the system won’t let him get away with it.

The fifth tale is perhaps the weakest of the six, where the concept of revenge is used in its loosest form, with Mauricio taking a firm stand against the people who, seeing an opportunity, are looking to benefit from the awful situation his son has put him in. There’s a humorous side to the tale that manifests itself through the spiralling costs of people’s willingness to “help”, and finally by Mauricio’s assertion that enough is enough and all deals are off. But corruption has a way of winning out, and the outcome – while never in doubt – provides a sad, sour note that doesn’t feature elsewhere in the movie. The sixth tale is a riot, one of those stories that we’d like to think happens more often than it actually does, where fidelity is exposed and leads to the kind of publicly humiliating, extreme, morally indignant behaviour where verbal cruelty is the order of the day. It’s similar to the first tale in that it’s funny and horrifying at the same time, but on reflection, viewers may well find that it doesn’t go far enough, and that Romina’s actions aren’t quite as vindictive as they could have been. Still, it’s an entertaining tale, and in contrast to all the carnage and terrible behaviour seen in the previous stories, has a final scene that ends the movie on a positive note.

On the whole, Wild Tales is a darkly comic look at the various ways in which revenge can colour and alter our lives and lead us down some very dark paths indeed. As assembled by writer/director Szifrón, the movie is absorbing and compelling and bitingly satirical in its reflection of how quickly we dispense with so-called decent behaviour when we feel the need to. It’s difficult to detect any moral judgment in the stories, with Szifrón apparently content to let his audience make their own minds up as to how guilty or innocent each character is, but some will definitely have their supporters.

Each segment starts off slow then picks up speed, which does lead to the feeling that the movie is a bit of a stop-start experience, but the characters are concisely and effectively drawn, and Szifrón makes sure each tale is told in a lean, measured way that augments the material and ensures there’s nothing extraneous to deal with. The cast are uniformly excellent, with special mention going to Darín and Rivas. And each tale benefits from Javier Julia’s often invigorating and beautifully lit photography.

Rating: 8/10 – as portmanteau movies go, Wild Tales has such a high success rate it could be almost embarrassing; with its theme of revenge expressed in such an impressive fashion, the movie has so much to offer, and rewards on so many levels, that it can be returned to time and time again and still maintain its effectiveness.

Xala (1975)

10 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Chamber of Commerce, Comedy, Corruption, Drama, Impotence, Literary adaptation, Marabout, Ousmane Sembene, Politics, Review, Senegal, Seune Samb, Thierno Leye, Third marriage, Younouss Seye

aka The Curse

D: Ousmane Sembene / 123m

Cast: Thierno Leye, Seune Samb, Younouss Seye, Myriam Niang, Fatim Diagne, Mustapha Ture, Iliamane Sagna, Dieynaba Niang

With independence from France finally achieved, the white administrators of the Senegalese Chamber of Commerce are ousted from their offices by a group of local businessmen (who promptly accept hefty bribes from the French so that true power resides with them, “behind-the-scenes”). One businessman, El Hadji Abou Kader Beye (Leye) is preparing to marry for a third time. His first wife, Adja (Samb), and his second, Oumi (Seye) are both unhappy with his decision, as his new bride is much younger than them. But on the night of the wedding, El Hadji finds he cannot get an erection and the marriage remains unconsummated.

The beleaguered businessman confides in the President of the Chamber of Commerce who recommends he visit a marabout (a local witchdoctor). But despite the marabout’s advice, El Hadji remains impotent. Oumi visits him and invites him to her home that evening with the promise of sex; during her visit El Hadji starts to wonder if his impotency is a curse – a xala – placed on him by his second wife. Leaving his office his driver (Sagna) advises El Hadji to visit his marabout. A cure is effected but El Hadji finds his new wife has her period; he visits Oumi as arranged and he has sex with her instead. Meanwhile, El Hadji’s colleagues begin to discover that he’s running up debts he’s unable to repay, and that he’s been selling rice on the black market to maintain his social and economic standing.

His store comes under scrutiny from one of his buyers. With no stock in it, El Hadji has to reassure and cajole the man into accepting that all will be well and soon. A summons from the President of the Chamber of Commerce interrupts them. At the meeting, El Hadji is advised to go and visit his bank director. When he does so, he’s told that any further advances he needs will be dependent on his clearing his existing debts. But it’s at a further Chamber of Commerce meeting that El Hadji finds his future as both a member and a businessman in jeopardy, and he still has no idea who placed the xala on him to begin with, or why.

There’s a French proverb that goes, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. It means, the more things change, the more they stay the same. This is the theme at the heart of Sembene’s scathing look at contemporary politics in Senegal during the Seventies (and as adapted from his own novel of the same name). Xala is unapologetic in its attempts to expose the continuing corruption that plagues the country, whoever is in power, and it paints a powerful portrait of the ways in which that corruption affects the poor and the disadvantaged. Viewed now after forty years, and with much more known about the ways in which Colonial Africa overthrew its European masters, only to prove even more ruinous in its inability to govern itself, the movie is a candid snapshot of the times.

Sembene tells the audience everything they need to know about the political backdrop to the movie in the opening scenes where the local businessmen take over the Chamber of Commerce with all the pomp and circumstance of men acting with a moral certainty. The white administrators are rudely dispensed with, but are soon back, with briefcases full of money, one for each of the men who are supposed to be “better” than they are. With the bribes accepted eagerly, one of them hangs around as the President’s “advisor”, hovering in the background like a political fixer of old. The old corrupt system is dead, long live the new corrupt system. And once Sembene has established that indeed, things will remain the same, he focuses on El Hadji as an example of the greed and selfishness that were – and are – endemic in African politics.

The businessman’s lifestyle, or at least the lifestyles of his two wives, along with the cost of marrying a third, soon proves to be his undoing. Such is El Hadji’s need to be seen to be ascending the social and political ladder, it results in his risking everything to arrive and stay there. Like so many African leaders in the post-Colonial era, the temptation to appropriate resources for himself – and at the expense of the people – is shown as an extension of his usual business practice, a refinement if you will of sharp practice. The only difference between Xala and real life is that Sembene doesn’t let El Hadji off the hook, and his comeuppance is both well-deserved and horrible at the same time.

Although there is a great deal of drama to be had from El Hadji’s shady wheeling and dealing, it doesn’t come along until well after the halfway mark. Until then, the movie follows a recognisably European comic scenario, with the new groom afflicted by a bout of impotence that sees him berated by his new mother-in-law, and encouraged to approach his new wife on all fours with a fetish in his mouth that makes him look like some kind of dentally challenged vampire (it’s all part of a “cure”). There’s good fun to be had from the way in which this serious businessman, now in a position of power, will yield to the most bizarre of behaviours in order to regain his potency, and how he’ll let his first two wives dominate him. Sembene also pokes fun at El Hadji’s increasing “Europeanisation” through his wearing of Western clothing beneath more traditional robes, and his pretentious assertion that he only drinks bottled water (and which is used to fill his car’s radiator at one point).

Sembene also casts a judicious eye on El Hadji’s surroundings, spending time with those less fortunate than his main character, and speaking up for the rights of the disenfranchised and the disabled. As this storyline becomes more and more important to the narrative, Sembene more closely examines the ways in which this abandoned section of Senegalese society should have more of a voice than it does. Their ultimate effect on the fate of El Hadji is introduced with great skill by Sembene and leads to one of the most terrible of movie endings, but one that retains a redemptive feel, both for them and for El Hadji.

The movie has a washed-out colour scheme that may well be due to the film stock available for Sembene to use, but even so it makes for an effective reflection on the murky practices of El Hadji and the Chamber of Commerce (and their puppet masters). The soundtrack is filtered through the bustle of street life, and the occasional bursts of music enliven what is a mostly sombre tale. Sembene shows a complete confidence in the material throughout, and if he slips up occasionally in his attempts to make El Hadji as emotionally impotent as he is physically, then he can be forgiven for trying to add another layer to the character’s problems.

Rating: 8/10 – forthright and critical in its depiction of post-Colonial political corruption, and with a compelling comic sensibility, Xala tells it’s story simply and with a sense of righteous indignity; there are times when it seems as if we’re watching a documentary, but Sembene directs with compassion and no small amount of skill.

Ossos (1997)

09 Thursday Apr 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Cleaner, Drama, Estrela d'Africa, Isobel Ruth, Lisbon, Mariya Lipkina, Newborn baby, Nuno Vaz, Pedro Costa, Portugal, Review, Vanda Duarte

aka Bones

D: Pedro Costa / 94m

Cast: Vanda Duarte, Nuno Vaz, Mariya Lipkina, Isobel Ruth, Inês de Medeiros, Miguel Sermão

Clotilde (Duarte) lives in one of the poorest districts in Lisbon, the infamous Estrela d’Africa. She works as a cleaner in more affluent properties, and has a husband (Sermão) who treats her badly and a daughter. When her friend, Tina (Lipkina) comes home after giving birth to an unwanted baby, she tries her best to support her. But Tina isn’t bonding with her baby, and her partner (Vaz) doesn’t want very much to do with the child either. But when he suspects that Tina is trying to kill herself and the baby, he takes it away and tries to sell it on the street. He’s unsuccessful, however, but the baby falls ill and he takes it to a hospital. There he and the baby attract the attention of a nurse (Ruth) who takes an interest in their plight.

She takes the father back to her home and tries to learn more about his predicament, but he’s rude to her and leaves abruptly. The baby is allowed to go home the next day, and its father takes her back to the nurse’s home. He tries to leave it there but the nurse is unable (and unwilling) to take on the responsibility. Clotilde, meanwhile, begins taking Tina with her on her cleaning jobs. But away from these jobs, Tina remains listless and uninterested in the idea of being a mother. When Clotilde is unwell, Tina takes on one of her cleaning jobs, but when the client (who proves to be the nurse) comes home she finds Tina slumped on the kitchen floor with the gas on; she rescues her just in time. The father tries again to divest himself of the baby, and is successful in giving it to a prostitute (de Medeiros).

The nurse visits Tina to ensure she’s okay, while Clotilde returns to work. Matters begin to settle down, but there’s a sense that the father should be made to pay for his actions regarding the baby.

Actually filmed in Lisbon’s notoriously poverty-stricken “Estrela d’Africa” Fontainhas district, Ossos is an unremittingly bleak look at the lives of a handful of its inhabitants. It’s a dark, depressing drama, reflecting the milieu of the district and giving the viewer a glimpse at the impoverished area that its characters do their best to survive in. There’s a telling moment early on when the father is seen striding along a street with the baby in tow, and the reality of the area’s physical decay is evident in the various dilapidated buildings and overall sense of a blighted community. By focusing on this terrible state of affairs, writer/director Costa paints a convincing portrait of blasted lives and the continual struggle to maintain some semblance of “normality”.

Tina’s estrangement from her child is told with a dispassionate faux-documentary feel – indeed the whole movie has that approach – and as a result the movie keeps its distance from its characters, observing them more than engaging with them. The movie contains a mix of static close ups (often held for some time) and medium shots that emphasise the sense of separation that Costa wants the viewer to experience. By keeping his characters at a remove, Ossos becomes more of a social study, and proves gloomily effective as a result.

Making the most of its dismal mise-en-scene, the movie highlights the ways in which even the most disadvantaged try and make the most of what they have (even if it seems painfully little). Clotilde has a job that constantly reminds her of her place in society, her clients’ homes so much cleaner (thanks to her), warmer and welcoming. And yet she perseveres, doing her best to overcome the shortcomings of her own life, and doing her best to help Tina when she most needs it. She’s a good woman who doesn’t know any other way of dealing with the life she lives. In contrast, her husband has given up trying to make any difference in his own life, and is recalcitrant and dismissive of others who continue trying; or worse, who achieve any significant changes.

It’s not entirely doom-and-gloom, but does seem like it. However, Costa finds unexpected humour in the way his female characters interact with each other, their caring attitude and natural affinity reminding the viewer – and themselves – that there’s always hope, even in the worst of situations. It’s a positive message, and one that holds its own amongst the grime and sombre depredations of daily life in Fontainhas. This makes some scenes more rewarding than others, and the movie constantly surprising, despite its uncompromising tone. It’s a testament to Costa’s confidence in his material that these aspects make as much impression as they do.

He elicits quietly understated performances from his cast, with Duarte’s androgynous-looking Clotilde the movie’s early focus. Vaz is appropriately arrogant and childlike, his dogged determination to rid himself of his child the actions of a spoilt teenager unprepared for so much responsibility. Lipkina has the least to do, her fixed gaze cleverly indicating the worlds within worlds that make up her vacant stare. And Roth adds humanity to the piece with her kind-hearted nurse acting as the way in for any viewers having trouble connecting with the other characters.

With the narrative petering out by the movie’s end, Ossos isn’t entirely successful in what it does, but as a penetrating look at the lives of Lisbon’s disenfranchised, it packs a significant punch. The story and plot may be slight but it retains enough of a hook to make it an emotional, and rewarding, viewing experience.

Rating: 8/10 – a minor classic from Portugal, and evidence that slum life can be as positive as any other, Ossos is never far from astonishing thanks to Costa’s considered, measured approach; thought-provoking and resonant on many levels, it’s a movie that honours the residents of Fontainhas, and does so without being in any way pretentious.

Planeta bur (1962)

08 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Drama, Georgi Zhzhyonov, John, Literary adaptation, Pavel Klushantsev, Review, Robot, Sci-fi, Sirius, Soviet Union, Spaceships, Vega, Venus, Vladimir Yemelyanov

aka Planeta Burg; Planet of Storms; Planet of Tempests; Storm Planet

D: Pavel Klushantsev / 78m

Cast: Vladimir Yevelyanov, Georgi Zhzhyonov, Gennadi Vernov, Yuriy Sarantsev, Georgiy Teykh, Kyunna Ignatova

Three spaceships from the Soviet Union – Vega, Sirius and Capella – are approaching Venus when one of them, Capella, is struck by a meteorite and destroyed. The mission requires two of the ships to land on Venus while the remaining ship stays in orbit. But Capella’s replacement, Arcturus, will take four months to reach Venus, a situation the cosmonauts on board Sirius – Ilya (Yemelyanov), Aleksey (Zhzhyonov) and Roman (Vernov) – find unacceptable. They hatch a plan to land on Venus using a glider and one of the ships, but it means someone having to stay in orbit and monitor their progress on the planet. This falls to Masha (Ignatova), a Vega crew member. In the end, it’s her fellow crew members, Scherba (Sarantsev) and Dr Kern (Teykh), along with Kern’s robot John, who make the trip in the glider. However, when they land, all communication with them is lost.

The Sirius crew land in their ship to look for them. They encounter a strange, rocky environment that is perpetually shrouded in mist. They identify their colleagues’ location and set out in a hover car to find them, but not before Aleksey is almost killed by a carnivorous plant-like creature. Realising that Venus holds more dangers than they’d expected, they proceed with caution. Meanwhile, Scherba and Kern have encountered another danger, lizard-like creatures that walk upright. Fighting them off they soon find another problem: with their spacesuits torn in places, they’ve become susceptible to the air on Venus and are getting sick. They hole up in a cave and wait for their colleagues to find them.

Locking onto their position, Ilya, Aleksey and Roman find themselves under attack, this time from a creature resembling a pterodactyl (they’ve already encountered what appears to be a brontosaurus). Their hover car is damaged and ends up at the bottom of a lake. With communication lost with everyone on the surface, Masha has to decide whether or not she should mount her own rescue mission or wait for Arcturus to arrive. With time running out, the hover car is rescued from the lake and Ilya and his two colleagues get closer to finding their comrades. But not before Scherba, Kern and John have to deal with the lava flow from a nearby volcano. And all the while an ethereal female voice can be heard both in the distance and incredibly close by…

Viewed now, over fifty years on, Planeta bur is less of a curio than you might expect. While it’s not very prescient in terms of future science, and retains a quaint approach to some of its technology – Masha records her thoughts about making her rescue mission on a reel-to-reel tape recorder – there’s more than enough going on to keep the viewer interested, even if there are some unfortunately comic moments.

The trick is to put aside what we know now about Venus, and just go with the flow. After a stodgy opening period where the characters are introduced and the dilemma of landing on Venus is discussed and then decided on, the meat of the movie is introduced and we get to see the rugged, inhospitable landscape that represents the planet’s surface, as well as some very unpleasant inhabitants. It’s like a science fiction movie crossed with a disaster epic, as the cosmonauts encounter danger after danger, from man-eating plants to mini-Godzilla-like creatures to sudden volcanic eruptions. And though the pace is unhurried, there’s still enough tension built up between the various scenes of peril to keep the viewer interested and engaged.

In between these scenes there’s also time for the characters to wax philosophical about the origins of life on Venus and Earth – maybe we’re all descended from Martians – and the importance of the mission to the people back home in the Soviet Union (there’s even a short sequence where Masha envisions a parade with appropriately cheering masses in attendance). These interludes add a layer of intellectual gravitas to what is essentially an adventure, and is matched by the serious, intense nature of the cast and their performances. Yemelyanov looks like he’s lost the ability to smile, while Zhzhyonov’s eagerness to land on Venus makes him appear reckless. As the sole female on the mission, Ignatova looks concerned, worried and fearful throughout, and Teykh goes the opposite way ands affects a disinterested, unemotional stance that befits his reserved character.

The special effects employed range from the casually simple, such as the space suits, to the impressively clever, such as the hover car (which really looks like it’s floating a good foot off the ground). The locations, though feeling restricted, are used to very good effect, and there’s an otherworldly feel to them that adds a level of eeriness to proceedings. Klushantsev orchestrates the various alien encounters without overdoing it in terms of increasing the pace or making it look as if the cosmonauts are in any real danger, but their encounters are effective enough and shot with a good deal of style (if a little restrained at the same time). While some of the creatures remind the viewer of the budgetary constraints, again there’s a quaintness to it all that makes up for any shortcomings.

Concluding with a couple of revolutionary sounding songs extolling the virtues of both Earth and Venus, the movie has a satisfactory ending that hints at a possible sequel (but which sadly never happened). What did sadly happen is that American International Pictures got hold of the movie and re-edited it twice to make two vastly inferior “new” versions: Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965), with Basil Rathbone added to the mix, and Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968), directed by Peter Bogdanovich and with Mamie Van Doren added instead. Neither movie has much to recommend it, and should be avoided at all costs.

Rating: 7/10 – a little clunky in places, but thankfully free of too much ideology or Soviet propaganda, Planeta bur is a serious sci-fi movie that has much to say about the idea of space exploration; entertaining throughout, and as an entry movie into the career of the under-appreciated Klushantsev, definitely a good place to start.

Trailer: Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a trailer for Planeta bur available.

Insurgent (2015)

08 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Abnegation, Action, Amity, Ansel Elgort, Candor, Dauntless, Drama, Erudite, Kate Winslet, Literary adaptation, Naomi Watts, Review, Robert Schwentke, Sci-fi, Sequel, Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Thriller, Veronica Roth

D: Robert Schwentke / 119m

Cast: Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Kate Winslet, Ansel Elgort, Miles Teller, Naomi Watts, Octavia Spencer, Jai Courtney, Mekhi Phifer, Zoë Kravitz, Maggie Q, Daniel Dae Kim, Jonny Weston, Ashley Judd, Ray Stevenson, Tony Goldwyn, Janet McTeer

In the aftermath of the attack on Abnegation, a search reveals a box that contains all the faction symbols. It’s taken to Erudite where Jeanine (Winslet) reveals it holds a message from the city’s elders, but only a Divergent can open it; this leads Jeanine to order that all Divergents are rounded up. Meanwhile, Tris (Woodley), Four (James), Caleb (Elgort) and Peter (Teller) are hiding out in Amity, under the protection of their leader Johanna (Spencer). Tris is all for returning to Erudite and killing Jeanine but Four warns against acting so hastily: they need to be a stronger force before they can attack the ruling faction.

Matters are brought to a head when Dauntless leader Max (Phifer) arrives to look for any Divergents. Peter reveals their presence but Tris, Four and Caleb manage to escape on a train that takes them into Factionless territory. There they meet Evelyn (Watts), the Factionless leader who, it turns out, is Four’s mother. She advocates a coalition between Factionless and the remainder of Dauntless. The next day, Tris, Four and Caleb leave to visit Candor, where the remainder of Dauntless have taken refuge. On the way, Caleb tells Tris he can’t go with them and they part. In Candor, their leader, Jack (Dae Kim) arranges a trial to determine the truth of Four’s insistence that Jeanine is lying to the other factions. A raid by Max and Eric (Courtney) leads to Tris being tested and found to be 100% Divergent. The raid is unsuccessful though and Tris is rescued by Four and Candor. At Erudite, Peter tells Jeanine the best way in which she can trap Tris. With the lives of all in Candor at risk because of Tris’s presence there, she determines to turn herself in.

At Erudite, Tris is apprehended and taken in front of Jeanine. She explains about the box and has Tris hooked up to it. In order to open it, Tris has to pass each Faction test, something none of the other Divergents abducted by Jeanine has managed. With Caleb having rejoined Erudite, and Peter also on their side, Tris can only hope that whatever message the box holds, that she will survive the ordeal long enough to learn what it is, and what it means for the city.

After the prolonged set up and introduction of each Faction and the world they support that made up most of Divergent (2014), you’d think Insurgent would be less reliant on large chunks of awkward exposition. But it’s not the case, as this instalment introduces new characters and broadens the original’s scope. This leads to more explanations for everyone’s behaviour and more occasions where the not-exactly-complicated story has to be explained every step of the way (as if the audience wouldn’t be able to keep up). Which is a shame, as this time around, Tris’s newfound place in her world is much more interesting and exciting to be a part of.

Weighed down by the expectations that come with cinema’s version of “middle child syndrome” (and even though Allegiant will be released in two parts – damn you Harry Potter!), Insurgent gets a lot right. It ups the action content, makes the heroes more heroic, the villains more villainous, and ends with the news that we’ve all been waiting to hear: next time we go outside the wall. The movie couldn’t be more designed to please its audience, both existing and new. And that’s another factor that makes the movie work: you don’t have to have seen Divergent to work out what’s going on. Such is the care that’s been taken with the adaptation of the book, that even though there are huge chunks that are missing (including whole storylines), it’s a tribute to screenwriters Brian Duffield, Akiva Goldsman and Mark Bomback that this is a well constructed, and surprisingly streamlined version that holds its own and isn’t reliant on the first movie.

It also moves the characters forward in unexpected ways. Tris is hell-bent on killing Jeanine which isn’t the usual approach in a YA movie (you’d never expect to hear Katniss Everdeen sound so vehement about President Snow as Tris is about Jeanine). It’s refreshing to see someone be that blunt and not harbour any deep-seated guilt or reservations about the rights or wrongs of such a thing; Tris is resigned and more importantly, she can’t wait to do it. As for her love interest, the taciturn Four, we get to see him deal with a greater authority than Eric or Max, or even his dad: his mother, presumed dead all these years and as determined to get Jeanine almost as much as Tris. While he wrestles with his emotional scars, Tris gets down to the task of taking out Jeanine; it’s like he’s not even supporting her anymore.

Of course, true love overcomes any dispute or disagreement and Tris and Four leave their differences behind when it comes to overthrowing Erudite, and although the message in the box is one that only readers of the novel will have seen coming, it’s still a treat to see it revealed in such a dramatic, world-upsetting way. It’s yet another way in which new director Schwentke keeps things interesting and the viewer on their toes. He makes judicious use of the new cast members, with even Watts (who has Big Villain written all over her) required to keep it simple and not detract from the main storyline, that of Tris learning to forgive herself for the deaths of her parents and the turncoat Will. Woodley, still the best thing in both movies, shades her emotions with ease and presents a version of Tris that is still learning but who’s also streets ahead of her rebellious companions (but then she is Divergent).

The rest of the cast offer and provide excellent support, with special mention going to Courtney, Spencer, Watts and Teller, though Elgort is still stuck with possibly the blandest character in the whole series, and suffers as a result; he just can’t make him interesting. Winslet is icy and controlling and strangely attractive because of all that, and steals each scene she’s in. The final scene robs us of a major character and is a great way to end this movie and set up some of the dramatics of the next, but it also feels like a bit of a cheap shot at the audience’s expense. What, do we ask, does that mean for Tris and Four and all the rest? Well, to find out, tune in next year!

Rating: 7/10 – better than Divergent, and better assembled, Insurgent shows the franchise gaining in confidence and moving ahead in the right direction; not without its flaws – Peter is still an annoyingly underwritten character – the movie packs a lot in and, on the whole, makes it all work with a great deal of panache.

Charlotte for Ever (1986)

07 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Benjamin Constant, Bereavement, Car accident, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Drama, Father/daughter relationship, France, Lolita, Review, Script, Serge Gainsbourg, Vladimir Nabokov

D: Serge Gainsbourg / 90m

Cast: Serge Gainsbourg, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Roland Bertin, Roland Dubillard, Anne Zamberlan, Anne Le Guernec, Sabeline Campo

Stanley (Serge Gainsbourg) is a movie maker who is down on his luck. His wife has recently died in a car accident and he has no money; all he has left is his daughter, Charlotte (Gainsbourg). He tries to get an advance for a new script from his friend, Herman (Dubillard), but it comes with a condition: he must come up with the script in a week’s time.

Charlotte blames him for the death of her mother. The car she was in, and which Stanley was driving, crashed into a petrol tanker. The subsequent explosion killed Stanley’s wife, and left him with a burned hand. He displays regret and sadness at her death but refuses to be made to feel guilty about what happened. Charlotte battles against him, being obstinate and aggressive and continually challenging his assertions about the accident and his lack of culpability. She also takes issue with his liaisons with young women who appear at their home on a regular basis.

Stanley receives a visit from his doctor, Leon (Bertin) who is gay and has recently split up from his boyfriend. Leon is depressed and unhappy, but Stanley is unsupportive toward him; only Charlotte shows him any sympathy. His visit encourages Stanley to think more on the script he needs to write. But instead of coming up with something original he decides to plagiarise the work of Benjamin Constant. When the script is finished, Stanley gives it to Herman who thinks it’s terrific. Leon is present when he reads through it, though, and he tells Herman what Stanley has done. Herman is furious, but Stanley is oblivious and hits on him again for money.

Charlotte encounters Adelaide (Le Guernec), one of her father’s conquests, and angry at her (and him), she attacks her. Stanley discovers them and makes Adelaide leave before he attempts to placate Charlotte. She shows some remorse for her actions, and later, tells her father that she never really blamed him for her mother’s death.

With a screenplay filled to the brim with literary and sexual references galore, as well as a few literally sexual references, Charlotte for Ever, the brainchild of multi-talented Serge Gainsbourg, is a movie that any viewer will hope is just that: a movie. Because if it isn’t, and it only semi-accurately describes the relationship between real-life father and daughter Serge and Charlotte, then this psycho-sexual drama is likely to leave a sour taste in the mouth.

From the opening scene where Stanley tells Herman how his attention has been transferred from his wife to Charlotte, and his speech becomes more and more erotically charged (with more than one reference to Nabokov’s Lolita to reinforce the issue), the movie becomes an uncomfortable experience to watch as he manipulates his conversations with his daughter, and the viewer is left wondering if Gainsbourg the writer/director/father isn’t averse to sharing his real feelings for Gainsbourg the actress/daughter. Charlotte Gainsbourg was fifteen when the movie was made, and there are scenes where she appears topless, including one that involves her being manhandled by her father. It may be that Charlotte was a willing, and completely aware, participant in the movie, but the fact that Gainsbourg chose his daughter for the role, and not another actress, doesn’t make it any easier to appreciate.

Added to this is Gainsbourg’s continual use of sexual rhetoric and innuendo, best displayed (if “best” is the right word) in a scene where Charlotte is doing her homework. It consists of a series of questions that she asks for his help with. One question is: “What quality do you most admire in a woman?” Stanley’s response is: “Her wetness.” There are other examples where Stanley’s blunt, unapologetic use of single entendres is used and most of them are wince-inducing. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Gainsbourg is playing with the audience, but the fact that he’s using his daughter as part of the game makes it all the more unconscionable. It’s also like seeing a naughty schoolboy trying to shock his teachers: the schoolboy knows what he’s doing will cause a stir, but he doesn’t have the context that would make it more palatable – or forgivable.

With the supporting characters in place for Stanley (and Gainsbourg) to feel superior to, the movie ends up looking and sounding more like a vanity piece than a fully realised drama. Everyone talks in an arch, mannered way of speaking that features literary quotes, apothegms, precepts and quasi-philosophical assertions that are only superficially astute. It’s the type of cod-intellectual rambling that is meant to make its author sound erudite and cultivated, but which in reality makes them sound asinine instead. Gainsbourg gives himself a lot of these meandering speeches – and not one sounds convincing.

The performances suffer as a result, with Gainsbourg appearing disinterested in his own movie and prowling around in scenes as if he can’t quite decide which mark he should be hitting. He continually grabs and paws at his daughter, and wears a black glove on his right hand to denote his injury from the car crash. Alas, this gloved hand is used more as an affectation as Gainsbourg waves it around to indicate all sorts of feelings that he can’t clarify through speech or expression. In the end, it’s a lazy, semi-committed performance that soon becomes boring to watch. As for Charlotte, she provides emotional responses to Stanley’s behaviour that match the affected way in which he behaves, but which prove too wayward and inconsistent for comfort. There are glimpses of the slightly removed acting style that has stood her in good stead in the years since, but here she’s pretty much a puppet being moved around at will by her father.

Curious viewers, or fans of Gainsbourg pére et fille, will find no one to sympathise with (or recognise), and even less to engage with beyond a handful of gratuitous scenes of female nudity. The ending is abrupt and unrewarding given all that’s gone before, but at least it brings to a close a tale that manages, with considerable ease, to be both tawdry and pretentious.

Rating: 2/10 – sometimes a movie is just a dud and that’s all there is to it, and Charlotte for Ever is the movie that proves the rule; with only Gainsbourg’s disco-themed score to recommend it, this sad, alienating movie shows him not at the peak of his powers (which were considerable) but declining badly – and seemingly unconcerned.

NOTE: The “trailer” is more of a promo video for the song that plays over the opening credits (and at various times during the movie).

The Keeper of Lost Causes (2013)

06 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Assad, Carl Mørck, Cold cases, Crime, Denmark, Department Q, Drama, Fares Fares, Jussi Adler-Olsen, Literary adaptation, Mikkel Nørgaard, Nicolaj Lie Kaas, Police, Review, Sonja Richter, Thriller

Original title: Kvinden i buret

aka The Woman in the Cage

D: Mikkel Nørgaard / 97m

Cast: Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Fares Fares, Sonja Richter, Peter Plaugborg, Søren Pilmark, Mikkel Boe Følsgaard, Troels Lyby

Following a police raid that leaves his partner, Hardy (Lyby) paralysed and another officer dead, detective Carl Mørck (Kaas) is transferred out of homicide and into Department Q, which deals exclusively with cold cases. His brief, along with his assistant, Assad (Fares), is to review the cases, submit a brief report and then close them. The first case he looks at concerns the apparent suicide of politician Merete Lynggaard (Richter) five years ago. Something about the case doesn’t make sense to Mørck and he reopens the investigation. He looks through the witness statements and finds that one statement wasn’t included in the final report: that Merete’s brother, Uffe (Følsgaard), who was with her on the ferry she is supposed to have jumped overboard from, was seen with a man in a raincoat.

Since Merete’s suicide, Uffe has resided in a home. Mørck and Assad visit him but his condition – brain damage from a car accident when he and Merete were children – prevents him from being of any help. A conversation with one of Merete’s colleagues reveals her liaison with a man at a conference shortly before she killed herself. Mørck gets hold of the list of attendees and photos that were taken at the conference. Suspecting that Uffe might recognise one of the men at the conference, they show him the various photos that show Merete and one of the male delegates. Uffe does recognise one of them, a man named Daniel Hale. With a solid lead to work with, Mørck’s investigation is brought up short by his boss, Marcus (Pilmark) following a complaint by the manager of the home and the original investigating officer. Unable to let things go, Mørck continues his investigation and travels to Sweden to speak to Hale.

When he and Assad get there, they discover that Hale died a few months after Merete’s suicide. They also discover that the man who attended the conference and was recognised by Uffe isn’t Daniel Hale. Learning that the man is likely to be a friend of Hale’s known as Lasse, the pair return to Denmark only to be suspended from duty. But again, Mørck can’t let things drop, and their investigation leads to an isolated farmhouse and a revelation involving the car accident that left Uffe in his current condition.

The first of four movies adapted from Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Department Q novels – The Absent One (2014), A Conspiracy of Faith (2015), and The Purity of Vengeance (TBC) complete the quartet – The Keeper of Lost Causes is an efficient, gripping thriller that introduces possibly one of the dourest police detectives in recent cinema history. At one point, Assad remarks that he’s never seen Mørck smile. Mørck’s response? “My wife left me. My colleague’s dead, and my best friend’s a cripple … I don’t have a lot to smile about.” It’s a pithy, succinct summation of Mørck’s character, and while it seems in keeping with the recent trend in Scandinavian crime fiction and movies, the combination of Mørck’s gloomy outlook on life and Kaas’s glum demeanour raise this particular movie into the above average category.

With the central character so firmly established in the opening fifteen minutes, the movie is then free to concentrate on the mystery surrounding Merete’s apparent suicide. But as Mørck begins to piece together the clues that point to something more sinister, the script by Nikolaj Arcel takes a parallel line and shows the viewer what happened that day on the ferry. It’s a bold move, as the mystery elements inherent in the story are jettisoned in favour of a more cross-linear approach where the events of five years before run concurrently with the progress of Mørck’s investigation. This leaves the viewer with an entirely different type of crime drama than seems in play from the beginning, and while the villain of the piece enters the story quite late in the day, their appearance and the reason for their behaviour is cleverly revealed (even if what they actually do isn’t properly explained or feels credible).

The plot and various storylines play out with a surprising attention to detail, and Arcel’s adaptation does a good job of downplaying any implausibilities such as Mørck’s boss Marcus ignoring the progress he’s made in disputing the suicide theory. This aside, the movie is a solid, methodically paced crime drama that works best by keeping it simple, and Nørgaard’s unfussy, yet expressive direction is best exemplified by two moments of unexpected lyricism relating to Merete’s childhood. He’s good with the cast as well, eliciting strong, confident performances from all concerned. Kaas’s downbeat yet focused portrayal of Mørck is one of the things that makes the movie work so well; he’s completely credible as the impatient, disrespectful and arrogant ex-homicide detective who finds a new home in Department Q. And he’s matched for dedication and immersion in the role by Fares as Assad. Fares, who is Lebanese, spent two months learning Danish for the movie, but you wouldn’t know it. Assad is the sidekick role, but Fares brings a determination and an intelligence to the role that a lot of seasoned actors would have skirted past on their way to a more stereotypical portrayal.

Shot by DoP Eric Kress with an emphasis on dark, shadowy interiors and overcast, cloudy exteriors, the movie is recognisably part of the recent Nordic Noir genre that has spawned a myriad of similar tales both on the big screen and television. But thanks to a clever script, a director on top of his game, and a cast that brings credibility to (almost) every scene, The Keeper of Lost Causes is a terrific first movie in the series. If this outing is anything to go by, then the remaining three movies will definitely be ones to watch.

Rating: 8/10 – a well-paced, intelligent, and above all, absorbing crime thriller, The Keeper of Lost Causes is a testament to good story telling; quietly ambitious, the movie is a terrific example of how to maintain suspense without undermining either the plot or the characters.

29 February (2006)

05 Sunday Apr 2015

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Blood, Ghost, Horror, Ji-yeon, Jung Jong-hoon, K-Horror, Leap Year, Lim Ho, Murder, Park Eun-hye, Review, Ticket, Tollgate

Original title: 2 wol 29 il

aka The Curse of February 29th; February 29

D: Jung Jong-hoon / 90m

Cast: Park Eun-hye, Lim Ho, Lee Myung-jin, Lim Hyun-kyung, Kim Jae-man, Son Jung-bum

Ji-yeon (Park) works the late shift at a tollgate. It’s dull, unexciting work until the evening of February 27th. Just before her shift ends, the tollgate suffers an unexpected blackout. While Ji-yeon wonders what’s happening, a car comes up to her booth. She takes the ticket given to her by the driver, who quickly speeds off. Only then does Ji-yeon realise the ticket is covered in blood. The power comes back on and she goes home after being relieved by her friend Jong-sook (Lim Hyun-kyung). The next day Ji-yeon learns there was a murder at a nearby tollgate. Her friend jokes that it’s the curse of the tollgate, and tells her about an accident involving a prison bus that exploded and the female murderer who was supposed to have died in the fire. The story goes that her body was never found, and now every leap year, she comes back to claim more victims.

Ji-yeon is affected by the story, and has a nightmare in which she sees the woman’s burned face. She’s visited by the police officers (Lim Ho, Lee) who are looking into the murder, but she’s not able to tell them much. That night the tollgate suffers another blackout and the same car returns, again with a bloodstained ticket. The police, now dealing with two murders, become more involved, especially when they learn that the blood isn’t from the victims. Ji-yeon tells them the story of the female murderer, and though they’re not entirely convinced, they still look into it. When they show Ji-yeon a photo of the woman, she identifies her straight away as the woman she’s seen.

Having originally taken the night of the 29th off to celebrate Jong-sook’s birthday, Ji-yeon is horrified to learn that her friend has agreed to cover someone else’s shift that night. Ji-yeon rushes to the tollgate but is too late to stop Jong-sook from being murdered. With visions of the woman becoming more prevalent, and finding it difficult to sleep, Ji-yeon goes back to work accompanied by the police, who lie in wait for the car and its murderous occupant to return to the tollgate.

Part of a series of four horror movies made and released in 2006 – the others being Hidden Floor, Dark Forest, and Roommates – this is a somewhat slight tale that might have played better as a short, and which never completely capitalises on its basic premise. Opening with a journalist’s visit to a mental hospital – where we first meet Ji-yeon as a patient – her story is told in flashback as we witness the events that have driven her to fear for her life. What unfolds is a familiar tale of haunting and murder that has much in common with other K-Horror (and even J-Horror) movies, but which doesn’t offer – at least at first – any reason for the ghostly murderer to be targeting Ji-yeon in the first place.

With the movie holding out for a more rational explanation of events nearer the end, the viewer is left with the feeling that the script, co-written by director Jung and Yoo Il-han, has been cobbled together with the idea of including as many unlikely scares and supernatural confrontations as it can manage without appearing too silly. That it manages to avoid this – though only just – is due to the relatively matter-of-fact approach Jung takes to the material, and the otherwise mundane way in which the plot unfolds. Ji-yeon becomes increasingly disturbed, the police remain baffled and confused, and the ghostly murderer pops up in all manner of places (see picture above) just to keep things from getting too staid. It’s not exactly a tired movie, just one that doesn’t try very hard.

Of course, horror movies by and large don’t have to make perfect sense, but it does help, especially when strange events are given what appears to be a rational explanation. And with the journalist’s interview with Ji-yeon having ended, the movie comes up with what it wants the audience to believe is the definitive spin on events. However, while it makes superficial sense, it’s so full of holes that even a viewer who’s only been paying partial attention will realise how daft it is. And then the movie trumps it’s own conclusions by adding on a twist that both supports and undermines both premises altogether (which is quite clever when you think about it).

The cast are proficient enough with Park keeping what could have been a more hysterical performance in check, and making Ji-yeon a more sympathetic character in the process (though when she’s required to look exhausted, instead she looks like she’s on drugs). Lim Ho as the senior Inspector who suffers an (initially) unexplained arm injury adds a layer of world-weariness to matters, while Lee plays the junior officer with a brash good nature that shows there is some comedy to be squeezed from the script. The rest of the cast don’t really make of a connection, with Kim’s journalist proving too vapid and Son’s hospital orderly too smug.

Jung, whose only feature to date this is, handles the supernatural elements well enough but the jump scares lack the visceral intensity to make them work as effectively as they should. And more could have been made of the tollgate location, but alas the camerawork is sluggish and there are too many occasions where it fails to take advantage of its surprisingly creepy vibe. With so little tension being created, Jung ploughs forward in the hope of the movie having an accumulative effect, but by the time it reaches its final confrontation, the movie doesn’t have enough left to get excited about.

Rating: 5/10 – serviceable, but too bland to be anywhere near terrifying, 29 February coasts along for much of its running time hoping to make an impression; that it doesn’t is due to a pallid script and an approach we’ve seen too many times before, making it one for K-Horror completists only.

TRAILER: There is a trailer for 29 February but it doesn’t have English subtitles. If anyone still wants to see it, it can be found here.

90 Minutes (2012)

04 Saturday Apr 2015

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Abuse, Aksel Hennie, Bjørn Floberg, Drama, Eva Sørhaug, Mads Ousdal, Marital problems, Norway, Pia Tjelta, Relationships, Review

Original title: 90 minutter

D: Eva Sørhaug / 89m

Cast: Bjørn Floberg, Mads Ousdal, Pia Tjelta, Aksel Hennie, Annmari Kastrup, Kaia Varjord

Johan (Floberg) has reached a point in his life where he’s made a profound decision as to his immediate future. He’s determined to put several aspects of his life behind him, such as the room he rents and a subscription he’s taken out. As he makes these changes, he’s goes about them with a sense of finality and sadness. Fred (Ousdal) is a cop who’s marriage to Elin (Tjelta) has ended in divorce. They have two young children, both girls, and Fred’s presence in their home while Elin plans a party is being tolerated by his ex-wife. When she takes a call from someone who is coming to the party and is currently playing golf, Fred assumes the man is the new love in her life, something that he isn’t happy about. Trond (Hennie) is a young man who appears to be living alone in a sparsely furnished apartment. He listens to the radio and tapes up his right hand but otherwise seems unmotivated. He goes into his bedroom, where he strips and has sex with a woman (Varjord) who is gagged and tied to the bed. Also in the room is a baby, which starts crying.

Johan arrives back home from a trip out. His wife, Hanna (Kastrup), is there. He begins to prepare dinner for them while Hanna has a shower. He is methodical and precise and makes sure that everything is just so. Fred begins to antagonise Elin by refusing to leave when she asks him to, and by complaining that she never seemed interested in golf before. He also finds excuses to remain there that involve either their children, or a neighbour. Elin loses her patience and insists that he leave. He eventually does so, and drives off angrily. Trond releases the woman tied to his bed to see to the baby. She is his partner, Karianne, and the baby is theirs. With the baby seen to, she begins to cook for them both, but when she looks out of the window, Trond becomes angry and attacks her. He drags her back into the bedroom and reties her to the bed. He snorts some cocaine, then arranges to meet a friend in order to get some more.

During their dinner, Johan prepares some gravy that he lets his wife try first. She becomes woozy and soon passes out. Fred drives around until he ends up back at his old home. He gets out of his car and goes inside to confront his family. Trond is visited by his friend and another man, who assault him and take his TV as repayment for his drug debts. Angry at being humiliated he decides to take it out on Karianne. He forces her to have sex and in the process nearly suffocates her, but stops just short of doing so. All three men find themselves on the verge of having their lives changed forever.

Only the second feature by talented director Sørhaug after Cold Lunch (2008), 90 Minutes is a bleak, uncompromising slice of Norwegian angst that gives the barest amount of detail for each man’s behaviour, and is coldly judgmental when it comes to the outcomes of each story. We meet each man at a stage where their individual journeys have reached a point of no return (though Trond’s is a little less cut and dried).

Johan’s actions are calculated and, in their own way, heartless and cruel. There may be an element of love involved in his actions toward Hanna, but the absence of any concrete reason for his actions doesn’t allow for any sympathy from the viewer. It’s clear he does have a reason for doing what he’s doing but Sørhaug is clever enough to make that reason irrelevant; his sadness tells us enough, and as we watch Johan carry out his plan, the sense of foreboding that builds is carefully orchestrated to the point where inevitability and hope collide, leaving a melancholy chill over the storyline that is quietly and unquestionably effective. Floberg is subdued, almost absent throughout, his careworn face providing all the information we need as to what he’s feeling. Of the three men he’s the most restrained and the most agonised, and Floberg gives perhaps the best performance as a result.

Fred is a man with unresolved marital issues and a simmering layer of anger lurking beneath an outwardly pleasant façade. Of the three men he’s the most recognisable and understandable, his jealous possessiveness a staple of marital dramas the world over. Sadly, this very familiarity stops Sørhaug from making his and Elin’s storyline from being anything more than entirely predictable, and his return to their home has all the surprise of presents at Xmas, especially after we learn he’s “taking a break” from active duty as a cop and is behind a desk. Nevertheless, Ousdal steers clear of making Fred too obvious, and makes his face almost mask-like when around other people. It’s only when he’s in his car that we see the full range of the emotions he’s feeling and realise just where those emotions will take him. As a transformation it’s unnerving and unexpectedly affecting.

As for Trond, he’s perhaps the most tormented of the three, his drug dependency exacerbating his paranoia and abusive behaviour towards Karianne. He’s an ogre, pitiless and self-absorbed, a rapist whose abusive nature has robbed him of every last ounce of decency. His actions are abominable, and it’s a measure of Sørhaug’s script, and Hennie’s abilities as an actor, that Trond isn’t allowed even the faintest hint of understanding or redemption; he’s unlikeable all the way through. Of the three storylines, Trond’s is the most difficult to watch, with its moments of domestic violence and sexual assault, and Sørhaug (again) is clever enough to thwart the audience’s expectations. The ultimate fate of Trond and Karianne and the baby is one that allows the movie to end on a note of cautious hope, but a note that nevertheless comes without any guarantees.

90 Minutes is a hard movie to like as such, its unremittingly grim mise en scene and examination of extreme misogynistic behaviour making it tough to engage with. But Fred’s story aside, Sørhaug’s script is still intrepid enough to make the other two storylines surprisingly engrossing. She also makes the camera more of an observer than a participant, allowing a more dispassionate approach to the material that offsets the horrors being witnessed. Henrik Skram’s icy score adds another dimension to the austere proceedings, and there’s sterling camera work from Harald Gunnar Paalgard, particularly in Trond’s apartment.

Rating: 7/10 – by making Johan, Fred and Trond so unsympathetic, writer/director Sørhaug runs the risk of making 90 Minutes too unpalatable for the average viewer, but there’s enough to admire in the stringent, uncompromising set ups to make up for any distaste at the characters’ actions; one that will linger in the memory and with a cathartic moment that remains appropriately unsatisfying.

Wadjda (2012)

03 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Ahd, Competition, Drama, Green bike, Haifaa Al Mansour, Qu'ran, Reem Abdullah, Review, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Waad Mohammed

D: Haifaa Al-Mansour / 97m

Cast: Reem Abdullah, Waad Mohammed, Abdullrahman Al Gohani, Ahd, Sultan Al Assaf, Alanoud Sajini, Rafa Al Sanea, Dana Abdullilah, Rehab Ahmed, Nouf Saad, Ibrahim Almozael, Mohammed Zahir, Sara Aljaber

Wadjda (Mohammed) is an eleven year old girl living with her mother (Abdullah) in Riyadh. She regularly undermines the rules and restrictions of the school she attends, and remains unconvinced that the demands of the Qu’ran are at all necessary. She is friends with a boy, Abdullah (Al Gohani), who lives opposite her, but they have a bit of a combative friendship. When he mischievously steals her headscarf while riding his bike, Wadjda chases after him. This leads to her challenging him to a race when she has her own bike. However, the idea of girls riding bikes is frowned upon and Wadjda’s mother refuses to buy her one. But when Wadjda sees a green bike, she determines to buy it herself.

When her entrepreneurial activities at the school are curtailed by the headmistress, Ms Hussa (Ahd), Wadjda is unsure how she will raise the 800 riyals she needs to purchase the bike. Meanwhile, her mother is struggling to retain the attention of her husband and Wadjda’s father (Al Assaf); he is planning to marry a second time but Wadjda’s mother is convinced he won’t go through with it. Back at the school, Ms Hussa announces there’s to be a Qu’ran recital competition, one that carries a first prize of 1,000 riyals. Although she has little interest or knowledge in the Qu’ran, Wadjda joins the Religious Club and begins to learn sections of the Qu’ran by heart as well as the meaning of certain words and phrases. She gains the respect of Ms Hussa, and helps Abdullah when he asks to string some lights from his house to hers in aid of his uncle’s political election campaign (even though her mother is against it). While Abdullah works on the lights, Wadjda learns to ride on his bike.

The day of the recital arrives and Wadjda puts in an impressive performance. When she arrives home she finds her father there, but not her mother. She falls asleep, waking later that evening, and finds her mother up on the roof, listening to the sounds of a party nearby. It’s then that Wadjda learns both good and bad news, and receives reassurances as to her future.

The first feature movie ever to be made fully in Saudi Arabia, and the first to be made by a female director, Wadjda is a delightful, life-affirming confection that is alternately funny, thought-provoking and heartfelt. It mixes gentle yet pointed observations about the role of women in Saudi society, and the pressures placed upon them by the male-dominated hierarchy, and finds subtle ways in which to subvert those pressures (Wadjda, for example, regularly goes about without her face covered, despite being of marital age; she also spends time with Abdullah unchaperoned, another no-no).

With nods to the neorealism of Italian cinema, this could be looked on as a variation of De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1953), but while the two movies share some vital DNA, Al-Mansour’s ode to childhood determinism works on a whole different set of levels, with social constraints and religious approbation strongly to the fore, and providing a rigid backdrop against which Wadjda’s efforts to secure her bike take place. It’s a clever piece of propaganda, though, showing how little real regard Wadjda’s fellow schoolchildren have for the rules that govern their lives. One girl meets her boyfriend in secret, while two others bend the rules by using make up when they shouldn’t; Wadjda herself sells hand-braided bracelets to the other pupils. It’s fun to see these girls behaving like the children they are, but Al-Mansour is canny enough to show through the actions and behaviour of the adults around them that it won’t last forever.

This celebration of childhood goes a long way to providing the heart of the movie, allowing the viewer several insights into Saudi life through young eyes. First-timer Mohammed is superb as Wadjda, funny and endlessly expressive, a mesmerising screen presence able to raise a smile or prompt a tear with seemingly little effort. In her scenes with Abdullah there’s a genuine bond between the characters that makes their interaction entirely credible and sincere. (Al-Mansour needed plenty of rehearsal time due to the constraints imposed on her by the filming process, which meant she couldn’t mix with the male crew members; some things, it seems, have a way of working out). Abdullah is equally as good, juggling the emotional demands of losing a husband with those attendant on being – effectively – a single working mother. The scene in which she tries on a red dress – meant to remind her husband of what he’s giving up – sees Abdullah provide a powerful yet understated comment on both her character’s pride and her desperation.

There’s formidable support too from Ahd as the frosty headmistress, and Al Assaf gives an astute turn as Wadjda’s largely absent, though loving father. Al-Mansour, working from her own script, avoids filling the minor characters with stereotypes and uses her own experiences growing up to good effect, telling her story with a refreshing lack of sentimentality and using the camera like a casual observer. She shows a confident appreciation for space and depth, often sprinkling wide shots and long shots into the mix with surprising accomplishment for a first-time director. Filmed entirely in Riyadh, the city backdrop adds that extra level of authenticity without which parts of the movie wouldn’t work, such as when Wadjda and Abdullah go to confront her mother’s driver (Zahir) over his decision to quit arbitrarily. The whole thing is expertly assembled and edited by Andreas Wodraschke, and features a subtly evocative score by Max Richter that supports and enhances the action.

Rating: 9/10 – a formidable first feature from Al-Mansour that rewards the viewer throughout, Wadjda is a cinematic marvel; coming from a part of the world where there are no cinemas (except for one IMAX screen in Khobar) and no movie industry as such, this is nothing short of a major triumph and should be on everyone’s list of must-see movies.

Wetlands (2013)

02 Thursday Apr 2015

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Anal fissure, Carla Juri, Charlotte Roche, Christoph Letkowski, Comedy, David Wnendt, Drama, Haemorrhoids, Literary adaptation, Marien Kruse, Meret Becker, Mother/daughter relationship, Personal hygiene, Review

Original title: Feuchtgebiete

D: David Wnendt / 109m

Cast: Carla Juri, Christoph Letkowski, Marien Kruse, Meret Becker, Axel Milberg, Peri Baumeister, Edgar Selge, Clara Wunsch, Ludger Bökelmann, Bernardo Arias Porras

Helen (Juri) is a rebellious teenager whose mother (Becker) and father (Milberg) are divorced; she wants nothing more than for them to get back together. Thanks to her controlling mother’s obsession with cleanliness when Helen was growing up, Helen has developed an opposite fascination with hygiene. This has led to her suffering from haemorrhoids and having an obsessive interest in her own bodily fluids, in particular those generated by and from her vagina. She gravitates to unclean toilets and wears her underwear for days at a time. She doesn’t have a boyfriend, and uses vegetables to masturbate with. She constantly challenges those around her, and affects a disinterested, yet provocative demeanour.

She does have a friend, Corinna (Kruse), but otherwise Helen doesn’t gravitate to any of her peers (though she does have a variety of sexual encounters). She reflects on her childhood and her mother’s abusive behaviour, but most of all she muses on her personal hygiene. However, when a burst of shaving results in her sustaining a cut to her anus, it creates an anal fissure that leads to her ending up in hospital and having an operation to remove part of her anus. Recovering in her hospital room, and attended by male nurse Robin (Letkowski), Helen is told she cannot leave until she has a bowel movement. Finding herself attracted to Robin, and using the situation to try and reunite her parents, Helen delays her release, but her childhood memories keep intruding, and it leads her to a clearer understanding of the trauma that she has been suppressing, and which has propelled her into being the person she is.

Robin becomes her confidante, and though he’s in an off-again-still-off-again relationship with teaching student Valery (Baumeister), he’s still hopeful that they’ll get back together. Valery does her best to speed up Helen’s recovery, but lacks the deviousness that Helen brings to the situation. And as the time for her leaving does approach, the likelihood of Helen’s parents being reunited seems remote.

Those viewers whose gag reflex isn’t particularly good would do well to steer clear of Wetlands, as it’s a movie unafraid to go where practically every other movie fears to tread. In terms of body horror, this is a movie that even David Cronenberg might pass on, but David Wnendt’s adaptation – co-written with Claus Falkenburg – of Charlotte Roche’s novel is by turns comic, darkly dramatic, surreal, choc-full of squeamish moments, and occasionally bizarre. It’s a smorgasbord of cruelty, nudity, self-abuse, dysfunction, psychotropic nightmares, and casual sex, but it’s also possessed of a warm-hearted centre and is boosted by a raw, fearless performance by Juri that pushes more than a few boundaries to one side – and then comes back and tramples on them.

Vigorous and unnerving, Wetlands is a visceral trawl through the mind and life of a young woman for whom “normal” means rubbing her haemorrhoids on dirty toilet seats and making her own tampons (which she swaps with Corrina). Helen’s sense of propriety is so far out of whack that it’s amazing she has anyone close to her: she has no fear and no appreciation for the feelings of others, and alienates almost everyone in her path. That she remains likeable at all given all this is a testament to the script and Juri’s performance, which is often breathtaking. Juri inhabits the character of Helen with such gusto and disabling charm that the viewer can’t help but be drawn into her world – no matter how luridly disgusting it may be from time to time – and with her cheeky grin and unruly curls, she keeps Helen sympathetic throughout, even during the scene where she coldly berates Corinna for being pregnant. There’s a wealth of unexpected pathos beneath Helen’s ebullient, manipulative, mocking persona, and Juri keeps it all there, just close to the surface, threatening to succumb to it on several occasions but reining it in at the last second.

Helen’s combative relationship with her mother is agonisingly rendered by Juri and Becker, while the sad dependency she feels toward her father is reflected in the quiet, unforced performance of Milberg. Less fulfilling or convincing however is Helen’s relationship with Robin, which seems included as a way of giving Helen a chance at a quieter, more “normal” life. He also seems too much of a nice guy to fall for Helen’s ruinous antics, and Letkowski’s ingenuous portrayal never strays far from being bland and a trifle tame, leaving the viewer wondering what Helen sees in him. Also less convincing is Helen’s consultant, the patronising and insensitive Dr Notz (Selge); he’s the nearest the movie comes to having an authority figure to challenge but the character is too much of a cartoon to be effective as anything else.

With its clutch of spirited performances, Wetlands fares well when it focuses on the dysfunctions and disappointments of family life, and the ways in which people see the nuances of their life as defining them – there’s a great fantasy scene where Helen’s mother is dying and her last thought is about whether or not she’s wearing clean underwear, and which leads to a priceless moment straight out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). It’s also a highly stylised, visually inventive movie that offers a dizzying variety of close ups, point of view shots, flashbacks, and tightly edited scenes and sequences (thanks to Andreas Wodraschke). There’s even an animated sequence near the beginning that sets the tone of much of the fantasy/nightmare elements. All are well-staged and coordinated by Wdendt who shows a keen feel for the material and a determination not to pull any punches when it comes to Helen’s physical and sexual bravado.

By making Helen such an uncompromising character, it’s down to the viewer to decide just how far they want to go with her on her journey, but aside from all the notions of mental illness, sexual ethics and social acceptance, the movie is a surprisingly warm and nurturing experience, its gross-out moments (including the surprise ingredient in a pizza that should have take away sales plummeting) not as randomly added to the storyline as it appears.

Rating: 7/10 – not as morbid or deliberately confrontational as it may seem, Wetlands is all about love and acceptance, and the trials one young woman goes through to attain those; not without its flaws, the movie is still a mesmerising, emotional roller coaster ride, and not for the faint-hearted.

When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism (2013)

01 Wednesday Apr 2015

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Actress, Affair, Bogdan Dumitrache, Bucharest, Corneliu Porumboiu, Diana Avramut, Director, Drama, Movie, Rehearsal, Relationships, Review, Romania, World Cinema Month

Original title: Când se lasă seara peste Bucureşti sau Metabolism

D: Corneliu Porumboiu / 85m

Cast: Diana Avramut, Bogdan Dumitrache, Mihaela Sirbu, Alexandru Papadopol

Paul (Dumitrache) is a writer/director making his latest movie. He hasn’t worked with his lead actress, Alina (Avramut) before, but he likes to challenge her over her interpretation and understanding of the script as well as her personal opinions on topics such as shooting on film as opposed to digitally. One day during the movie’s production, Paul fakes a stomach problem and lets his producer, Magda (Sirbu) know that he can’t work; instead he meets up with Alina. They rehearse a scene where Alina’s character gets out of the shower, and as she gets dressed, overhears a conversation involving the male lead character. She and Paul discuss the various reasons for her behaviour during the scene, and try and pin down the various actions that will be involved. Afterwards they have sex.

As the day progresses they have lunch at a Chinese restaurant, and much later, they run into Magda at a hotel where some of the cast are staying. Magda isn’t happy with the male lead’s behaviour from the night before, and she’s also unhappy with Paul because she doesn’t believe his assertion that he’s seen a doctor and had an endoscopy carried out. Afterwards, Paul and Alina continue to block out the shower/dressing scene, going over it time and again in their efforts to fine tune the motivation of Alina’s character. Later, they eat out at another restaurant, where they are joined briefly by Laurentiu (Papadopol), one of Paul’s fellow movie makers. He mentions that Alina has the look of Monica Vitti about her, but Alina doesn’t know who that is. Paul is surprised, and when they leave they talk about the differences between theatre – which is Alina’s professional background – and cinema.

The next morning they meet up before heading for the day’s shooting location. There, Paul gives Magda a copy of the endoscopy exam to watch with a doctor called to the set. Despite some irregularities, the doctor is satisfied, though Magda remains convinced Paul has falsified the recording, though she can’t figure out why. And in a conversation with a makeup lady, Alina reveals its her last day on the production.

The so-called Romanian New Wave has been responsible for a number of stark, minimalist movies in the last ten years, most of them poignant, subtle explorations of the effects of Communist rule on the lives of everyday people. Some movies, such as The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu (2005) and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007), have found an international audience and been critically applauded. And Porumboiu himself has been feted for his previous movies, including Police, Adjective (2009). Here, he adopts a rigid, formal approach to what is essentially a diffused romantic two-hander, as Paul attempts to both impress and manipulate Alina into giving the performance he’s looking for, and in the process, foster a relationship that, deep down, he knows will only be temporary.

Beneath his rigorous, intellectual demeanour however, Paul is a fraud: pompous, insecure, and insincere. He wants Alina to appear naked in his movie and uses the notion that she’ll be thankful fifty years on that she’ll have a permanent reminder of her youth and beauty. Alina turns the tables on him, though, and shoots down his argument by asking the simple question, what makes him think people will be watching his movies in fifty years’ time? It’s a lovely moment, Paul’s presumptuous ideas punctured without a trace of animosity, and showing just who has the upper hand in their relationship. As the movie progresses, and Paul’s continued attempts to gain some measure of control become less and less effective, Alina reveals more and more of the determination and poise that have been there all along, but which Paul has been too blinkered to notice. The moment when Alina reveals she’s never heard of Antonioni (let alone Monica Vitti) is a wonderful indication of how unconcerned she is by Paul’s cinematic posturing.

Both Avramut and Dumitrache excel in providing well-considered, measured performances, making even the blandest of Paul and Alina’s interactions more intriguing and suggestive than they appear on the surface. Avramut keeps Alina’s face in repose for most of the movie, deflecting Paul’s advances with cool detachment and engaging with him on her own terms. Dumitrache evinces disappointment and dismay, giving Paul the air of a man for whom this isn’t his first experience of being out-manoeuvred by his leading lady. Their relationship is one full of delicate cuts and thrusts, and Porumboiu directs their subtle feints and ripostes with a careful eye for the casual gains and losses inherent in such an unsatisfactory affair.

Unexpectedly absorbing as it is though, the movie does a visual aesthetic that could be off-putting to certain viewers. Porumboiu’s adoption of rigid camerawork and single shot set ups, while keeping things at a distance, actually works to force the audience to pay attention to what’s being said, and the way in which Paul and Alina move around each other, as if in a dance, reaps its own dividends. Particularly effective are the neutral backgrounds Porumboiu places his characters in front of, their non-committal colours and broad expanses reflecting the disinterest Alina and Paul really have in each other. It’s only when Paul and Magda run into each other in the hotel lobby that the environment changes, becoming more decorous and richly detailed. It’s a refreshing change for the viewer, but as Alina leaves them to it and Magda displays her anger, it becomes an indication that Paul’s personality needs an impersonal surrounding in order for him to feel comfortable, and to have a degree of control that reassures him (under Magda’s withering gaze Paul reacts like a chided schoolboy).

Rating: 8/10 – surprisingly emotional beneath its stringent visuals, Where the Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism is deceptively simple and subtly rewarding; less a meditation on the nature of movie making (though with nods in that direction), and more an examination of two people using each other out of convenience, Porumboiu’s movie is an unexpected pleasure.

thedullwoodexperiment

~ Viewing movies in a different light

Monthly Archives: April 2015

Panic (1970)

The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros (2005)

A Song of Lisbon (1933)

A Small September Affair (2014)

Trailer – The Film Critic (2013)

Hamilton: In the Interest of the Nation (2012)

Izulu lamí (2008)

Nh10 (2015)

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)

Rebels of the Neon God (1992)

Araya (1959)

The Place Promised in Our Early Days (2004)

Riders of Pylos (2011)

Borgman (2013)

Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 (2015)

Unit 7 (2012)

Mini-Review: Get Hard (2015)

The Human Resources Manager (2010)

Virginity (1937)

Odd Couple (1979)

Wild Tales (2014)

Xala (1975)

Ossos (1997)

Planeta bur (1962)

Insurgent (2015)

Charlotte for Ever (1986)

The Keeper of Lost Causes (2013)

29 February (2006)

90 Minutes (2012)

Wadjda (2012)

Wetlands (2013)

When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism (2013)

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