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Sunday 20 November 2016

Paul Thomas Anderson's "Inherent Vice" – One word is the last word



I don't using go for one-word reviews, but here goes...

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS

Loathsome.



Review continues below...

Inspire your baby with the Visual Baby series of picture ebooks.  Original patterns and art designed for young eyes. Try them today by clicking the covers below.


      

"It's the only thing that stops her crying" Katie Alison
"All three of my children love this book"  Janice Peterson
"Moons, trees, leaves... fabulous!" Linda Matson 

Maybe it would be better you were wasted but I doubt it.

Personal Score: 0/10

This is part of a series of film reviews where I give my comments on the BBC's Top 21st Century films as a writer. The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.

Saturday 12 November 2016

Tomas Alfredson's "Let The Right One In" – Little Miss Vampire



The glut of vampire movies in the past few years has passed me by.  As with actual vampires, I've heard they're out there but I've never felt the urge to seek them out.  But here comes one on the BBC’s 21st Century’s 100 Greatest Films list, so I sat down to watch it, driven to my television like a vampire to its bed at daybreak.

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS

One thing Tomas Aldredson's film, Let The Right One In, is not is scary.  There is none of the cushion hiding, stomach clenching terror of Hitchcock's Psycho, for example, despite a fair number of sudden vampire attacks.  And it doesn't have the full-blown sexual elements of many vampire films either.  There is a love story between the vampire, Eli (Lina Leandersson) and a twelve-year-old boy, Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) but they never get much sexier than 'going steady'.

Oskar is bulled at school by a classmate called Connie.  Connie has two henchmen who he seems to bully almost as much as Oskar, which is a nice little touch.  As a result of the bullying, Oskar stabs trees with a hunting knife in an impotent rage, and collects a psycho's scrapbook of newspaper clippings about murders, which soon start to include local murders when Little Miss Vampire moves next door with her middle-aged helper, Håkan (Per Ragnar).  Håkan turns out to be the world's most inept renfield, stringing up local victims with no care whatsoever for being discovered in the act of draining their blood.  Unsurprisingly, he is disturbed by passers-by every time and is soon bumped off.  Apparently, Håkan has a more developed role in the novel on which this film is based, but in the film he's a waste of space.

Review continues below...

Inspire your baby with the Visual Baby series of picture ebooks.  Original patterns and art designed for young eyes. Try them today by clicking the covers below.


      

"It's the only thing that stops her crying" Katie Alison
"All three of my children love this book"  Janice Peterson
"Moons, trees, leaves... fabulous!" Linda Matson 


Oskar's parents are separated and his father (as well as apparently most of the other local men) is an alcoholic.  It's a nice touch to show this most prosaic of human weaknesses as a direct analogy with the vampire's exotic lust for another liquid, blood.

Given it's not scary or sexy and given that most people agree vampires don't exist, you might be wondering what the heck is the point of this film.  In some respects it is a coming of age film, with Oskar going through puberty, doing weight lifting to build up his body and confronting his bullies.  In this way, Eli can be seen as a personification of Oskar's lust for blood in revenge for his bullying as well as for his nascent sexuality.  There is a moment when Eli sneaks a glimpse at Eli's crotch while she is undressing and we see a scar in place of genitalia of either sex.  Given that Oskar has never seen a naked girl, it would make sense that his imagination projects a big question mark there if we interpret Eli as a kind of phantom stand-in for his murderous rage.  Eli also has a habit of flitting across impossible gaps across buildings through high-up windows, and of appearing from nowhere (as at the swimming pool at the end), which also supports the idea that she's not really there.  Plodding old Håkan is the fly in this metaphorical ointment, of course.

It's worth watching for the claustrophobia of the community, the beautiful snow-bound photography and the sweet and dangerous relationship that develops between Eli and Oskar.

Just one thing though – will vampires *please* wipe their freaking mouths after a blood meal.  Gross.

Personal Score: 5/10

This is part of a series of film reviews where I give my comments on the BBC's Top 21st Century films as a writer. The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.

Thursday 10 November 2016

Jacques Audiard's "A Prophet" – Breakin' the law, breakin' the law



Here in the UK, most kids go to free state schools but there are also private schools with fees.  The fees are about 20,000 GBP a year, or 72 percent of the average UK salary of 27,600 GBP – so it's not for everyone.  Apart from keeping their young charges away from the riffraff, the private schools claim to help the pupils achieve their aspirations and realize their potential.  They hire inspirational teachers, or at least teachers who pretend to give a damn about the needs of the kids.  I mention this because in Jacques Audiard's film A Prophet, a similar development happens to the main character, Malik (Tahar Rahim), an Arab serving a six-year sentence in a tough French jail.

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS



Rather than an inspirational teacher, Malik is guided by the ghost of Ryad (Adel Bencherif), a prisoner who Malik is forced to kill early in the film by a Corsican gang boss, Cesar Luciani (Niels Arestrup).  Ryad has offered Malik drugs in exchange for sex.  When Malik goes to his cell, concealing a razorblade in his mouth, Ryad talks gently to Malik about books and learning to read in order to calm him down.  This is unendurable to the nervous Malik, who'd hoped to attack Ryan immediately, so the murder doesn't go as planned and ends up in a messy fight.

While it's conceivable that Ryad would talk kindly to Malik ahead of a cosy sexual encounter, it's harder to understand why his ghost continues in the same vein after Ryad has murdered him.  Nevertheless, that is what the ghost does.  What's more, the ghost is a kind of angel and Malik turns out to be a sort of prophet in the Muhammad mould.  You might also wonder why Muhammad and an angel would be mentoring and developing the aspirations of a drugs boss, which Malik gradually turns into over the course of the film, inevitably eclipsing the influence of Cesar along the way.  But hey, you've just got to roll with this stuff if you stick with the film.

Given that poor prisoners are unlikely to end up in privately education, the only chance for the realisation of their aspirations is likely to be the appearance of a guardian angel.  I suspect this is a rare event in real life, which doubtless explains the lamentable state of personal development among modern-day prisoners.  But shy, gauche Malik makes the most of his good luck and becomes a proper boss, playing the various criminal gangs against each other both inside and outside the jail.

Review continues below...

Inspire your baby with the Visual Baby series of picture ebooks.  Original patterns and art designed for young eyes. Try them today by clicking the covers below.


      

"It's the only thing that stops her crying" Katie Alison
"All three of my children love this book"  Janice Peterson
"Moons, trees, leaves... fabulous!" Linda Matson 


Tahar Rahim plays Malik beautifully.  When the other characters point out his limitations, he brushes them away with little shrugs and shakes of his head, as though he's already moved on to the next thing.  The prisoners are superbly cast and really look the part – I suspect many are not formal actors,  It's a long film but the quality keeps up throughout.  For example, about three-quarters through, when the script could have started to flag, suddenly there are two sweetheart touches from the scriptwriters.  First, Malik dresses in a suit and tie and his crim friend tells him he looks just like a lawyer – a lovely piece of dialogue since lawyers are probably the only people he's encountered who wear suits and ties.  Then shortly afterwards, Malik goes through airport security for the first time – he has never flown before.  A guard pats him down, and at the end Malik subserviently sticks out his tongue, just as he's used to doing during the searches when he comes in and out of prison.


Another thing that's done well is the standard thriller device of a murder plan that goes wrong.  There's the attack on Ryad at the beginning, and later Malik and his friend attack a rival gang boss in his armoured car.  But the car doesn't stop in the way it usually does and the pair have to think on their feet to get the job done.  In each case, seeing how Malik reacts to the stress of the unexpected events leads to a memorable scene that brings out his character and also develops the plot in a skilful way.

Personal Score: 8/10



This is part of a series of film reviews where I give my comments on the BBC's Top 21st Century films as a writer. The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.

Saturday 5 November 2016

Coen Brothers' "Hail, Caesar!" – Squint against the grandeur!




I recently finished watching the IMDB Top 250 list and for that exercise I watched every film, regardless of whether I expected to love or hate them.  I’m now working through the BBC’s 21st Century’s 100 Greatest Films list and, well, I’m being slightly less rigorous.  There are certain directors (Tarantino, Scorsese, Nolan and Jackson for example) that I’ve simply had a bellyful of on the Top 250 list.  To put it bluntly, I won’t be watching any more of their fucking films.  Steven Spielberg is a different case.  There are quite a few of his films on the 250 list.  Some of the earlier ones (Jaws, Jurassic Park) I enjoyed.  Others I really hated (Schindler's List).  Generally the sentimentality and artistic misjudgement of the later films outweigh the positive elements for me – there’s no denying Spielberg’s talent, but the rage these later films generate in me can’t be good for the heart, so I’ve decided to add Spielberg to the Cunt List along with Tarantino etc.  (Sorry I’ve got a bit sweary in this introduction, by the way.)


All of this is a longwinded way of saying that I haven’t watched the film at Number 83 on the BBC list, A.I. Artifical Intelligence, by Steven Spielberg, and I’ve replaced it with Hail, Caesar!, by the Coen Brothers.

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS


Hail, Caesar! isn’t a well-loved film among the Coen Brothers’ output.  People complain that it hasn’t got a plot, or they walked out of it, or fell asleep during it or whatever.  Personally, I loved it and chuckled my way through the whole thing.

The set pieces – George Clooney’s epic Roman scenes, Channing Tatum’s tap-dancing routine, Scarlett Johansson’s synchronized swimming extravaganza, Alden Ehrenreich’s adventures with his horse, Whitey – are all magnificent, and serve both as a homage to the entertainment value of 1950s Hollywood big-budget movies and a knowing nod to the artifice and non-reality of these glitzy entertainments.

Alden Ehrenreich’s cowboy character, Hobie Doyle, is pushed into a mannered drawing-room drama directed by a British director Laurence Laurentz, played by Ralph Fiennes.  Hobie is horribly miscast due to the unavailability of any other actor and doesn’t make a success of the role.  It’s a sign of the genius of this film, however, that the Coens don’t mock poor Hobie from one end of the film to the other.  On a date contrived for publicity purposes by the studio between Hobie and a young starlet, Hobie is allowed to be charming as he demonstrates his lassoing skills with spaghetti strands at the dinner table.  This is the kind of artistic judgement that comes with the long experience of the Coens.

Review continues below...

Inspire your baby with the Visual Baby series of picture ebooks.  Original patterns and art designed for young eyes. Try them today by clicking the covers below.


      

"It's the only thing that stops her crying" Katie Alison
"All three of my children love this book"  Janice Peterson
"Moons, trees, leaves... fabulous!" Linda Matson 



Of course, without the problems in production (Hobie’s miscasting, Scarlett’s character’s pregnancy, Clooney’s character’s kidnapping), there would be no need for Eddie Mannix (played by Josh Brolin) as the Hollywood fixer, who has to keep the expensive productions running smoothly.  Mannix is a Catholic and he is often tempted in the film – to lie, to smoke cigarettes after he’s told his wife he’s quit, and to change industries to a well-paid position being offered by the engineering firm Lockheed.  But while the crazy, frivolous world of Hollywood is held up against the sober, cushy world of Lockheed, Mannix is never in any doubt about where his heart lies.  When the Lockheed recruiter shows Mannix a photo of a hydrogen bomb detonation that his company has been involved with, the relative evils of the two industries are put into focus.

A nicely understated aspect of this film is that Mannix is such a brilliant manager.  He walks the line between satisfying political pressures and compromising quality.  He promises to follow up on the results of his decisions (such as watching the rushes) and always does what he says he’ll do.  He deals with the creatives in exactly the right way to keep them happy and to extract their best performances.  It’s not often that the mundane techniques of proper work are convincingly shown in art, but this is a great example.

George Clooney has worked with the Coen Brothers on a number of films now and I think he gives good value.  I liked him in another much hated Coen Brothers film, Intolerable Cruelty.  The DVD extras of that film showed him doing a dozen takes of spitting out a mouthful of tea in surprise, and I don’t doubt that his jowl-shaking response to being slapped by Mannix towards the end of this film took just as much effort to get perfect.  Clooney’s character is kidnapped by a group of Marxist writers, who are furious at being cut out of the profits of the films that rely on their scripts, and who get their revenge by slipping in sly Marxist references wherever they can to the studio’s film scripts.  There are some long scenes of Clooney with the Marxists and I suspect it is these that cause much of the negative reactions to Hail, Caesar!.  I loved them though – they are full of little gags, not least of which is the sight of these Marxists having their earnest discussions in a luxury ocean-side building, complete with servants, eating crustless cucumber sandwiches.

Personal Score: 9/10

This is part of a series of film reviews where I give my comments on the BBC's Top 21st Century films as a writer. The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.