Les Poupées Russes - 24th May 2006

I was really looking forward to this film. It is the sequel to L'auberge espagnole, a film which chronicles the experiences of French student Xavier during a year spent studying abroad (with the Erasmus programme). I first saw this film in Berlin, on my Erasmus year and the parallels between Xavier's experiences and my own were plentiful (apart from the affair with that married woman.) So I was curious to see how this film would show Xavier's post-Erasmus life.

On the whole it was rather depressing. Where l'auberge espagnole was a celebration of youth, les poupées russes was a mourning of middle-age. In this film we see Xavier and the rest of the Erasmus gang dealing with middle-aged problems: shitty jobs, shitty relationships and the gradual realisation that whatever happens, nothing can live up to the expectations of one's youth. L'auberge showed young people having fun whereas the main emotions from this film seemed to be despair and resignation.

Even the fabulous European nature of the film (Xavier flits between Paris, London and St. Petersburg) shows how Europe has grown closer over the past few years but just highlights how much the original Erasmus group has been fractured and is spread all over the continent. Where once they were all concentrated in Barcelona it seems now that the whole of Europe is the post-Erasmites' playground.

The film had rather a unique style: stories within stories within stories (as the Russian Dolls of the title) and would switch between them smoothly, all the while narrated by Xavier. There were some very clever touches and some genuinely funny moments.

Judged on its own merits this film was still very good; it had several different stories, and was consistently entertaining. However, compared to the first film it couldn't help but be inferior and make me a bit anxious about what a post-Erasmus future holds for me.... 7.25

Brick - 16th May 2006

Brick was an attempt to relocate a film noir story to an American high school and, in my opinion, I'm afraid it failed quite miserably. In trying to mesh together two very different genres it fell between two stools, it was neither one thing nor the other and it just seemed wrong.

One of the main problems was the main protagonist Brendan, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He was not empathetic enough to be a hero, nor did he have sufficient charisma to be an anti-hero as found in most film noir movies. All he seemed to do was regard everyone with a blank face and mumble things in a monotone. We did not see enough of the character to understand his motivations, and as a result I couldn't really care if he managed to solve this mystery or not.

Perhaps partly because of the above I was not engaged at all with the plotline. There was never enough suspense and ultimately I didn't really care that much as to how it all turned out.

A minor thing was the setting and the colour of the film. I kind of assumed that film noir should be, well, noir. I don't think the dusty, sun-bleached desert and concrete that provided a constant back-drop to the film could ever compete with the shadowy city streets of a traditional film noir flick.

The costumes were quite well done though. All the male characters wore an outfit which signified their place in the scheme of things (the football player, the Pin in his suit) and kept this costume throughout the whole film. The female characters wore brilliant clothes; the scene towards the end when Brendan confronts the actress girl in full hair and make-up was fantastic. And the other girl (Laura?) took her status as resident femme fatale very seriously and played it quite well. It was a bit annoying that Brendan wore the same baggy jeans and scruffy jacket all the way through though, he could have bothered to get changed sometime.

The film wasn't terrible but it just seemed a little disappointing because it could have been done so much better. Overall it gets: 5

The Magician - 10th May 2006

I didn't really know what to expect from this. Although the mock-documentary is nothing new (see Spinal Tap), I thought this was an original and inventive film. It definitely felt like a (rather badly edited) documentary; the way it managed to mix the minutiae of everyday life with more serious themes. Juxtaposing life and death with the mundane (hostage Tony placing a complicated fast-food order) and the inane (Ray and Max’s conversation about eating shit just before Ray shoots his friend Benny in the back of the head.)

And of course, although it feels as though it could be a real documentary, the film works because it’s not. Some of the genuinely very funny moments rely on the audience’s understanding that these are just people play-acting and the characters are not real; for example Ray taking a basball bat to Max’s junkie flatmate after promising him to use ‘the least violence necessary’ and even stopping the car for Tony, taken hostage in the boot, to settle an argument.

However, beneath its jocular tone the film asks some serious questions about screen violence. As Ray mentions in his final address to the camera - Max, who has been filming all his illegal actions, is an accessory to murder and therefore, by extension, so are all the viewers of this film. Max’s declaration of love (ish) to this ‘good-looking and charming’ hitman echoes the public’s obsession with real and fictitious gansgsters, murders and criminals.

I found this to be really very funny and always intriguing, even (or maybe especially) when nothing was going on. It was an exemplary mock-documentary, however this genre can perhaps be a little constraining and so I would never class it an amazing film. Also: the best mock-documentary ever (despite the fact it’s tragically very real indeed) is the portrait of drag queen Tyranna Sore-Arse Rex Live at Razor Stiletto - to be found at http://www.babydeltic.com/video, if you‘re interested.

Anyway, The Magician gets: 7

C.R.A.Z.Y. - 4th May 2006

I thought this film was fantastic. Not least due to principal actor Marc-André Grondin, who was so incredibly good-looking I could easily have watched him reciting the Shipping Forecast over and over for seven hours straight. Although he did have a tendency to keep turning into Our Craig off of Corrie in my head, which was slightly off-putting.

Anyway, C.R.A.Z.Y. was so called because they were the initials of the five sons of the Beaulieu family, seemingly named after their father's favourite Patsy Cline record. (This struck me as a rather stupid idea; what if they had another son? What if the father was a fan of the song Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious from Mary Poppins? What then?)

This all tied in with the idea of family; we follow the chief protagonist Zac, the fourth son, as he searches for his place within the family, through which he is able to find his place in the world. I thought the Beaulieux were a lovely depiction of a typical French family. (I know they were Canadian but to me they seemed typically French). The father was a sterotypical patriarch, Zac's brothers conformed perfectly to their own sterotypes and the mother was charged with keeping the whole family together using a combination of gentle persuasion and ironed toast. It was through Zac's relationships with his family members that we saw him grow up.

As a coming-out story, however, it never really got going. Apart from a few implied incidents there was nothing to suggest that Zac was ever exploring his homosexuality; indeed, much more time was spent concentrating on his fantasies about his (female) cousin and his eventual girlfriend. By the same token, we never see Zac 'coming to terms' with his homosexuality himself. Even after his argument with his father at the wedding, during his time travelling, we see him struggling with the whole homo thing and this is never actually resolved (apart from a tacked-on happy-ever-after ending.)

One of the most striking things was the fantastic use of music and especially fashion to evoke the era. You could almost pinpoint the exact date just from the clothes Zac was wearing - from Ziggy Stardust to Sid and Nancy, it helped to place Zac's story very firmly within a specific timeline.

Unfortunately, it went on a little bit too long. Zac's trip to Jerusalem and wanderings in the desert were never really explained and just felt a little pointless. Sometimes the arty editing and effects jarred a little, a lot of the time they weren't at all necessary. The fantasy sequences were sometimes a little annoying but managed to be more Amelie than Ally McBeal.

I also have to mention the language: Canadian French is weird. How they managed to pronounce the word fête to rhyme with 'eight' was just strange. I sometimes had no idea what the actual French was, even when I was reading the subtitles.

Anyway, despite the slightly incomprehensible bits it was a lovely film that really rather touched me. 7.75

Junebug - 19th April 2006

This film completely failed to make an impression on me. I was so underwhelmed I couldn't even be bothered to be annoyed or to search for what it was trying to say. Was it a film extolling the virtues of family? I hope not, if so it failed completely. I guess the point was to show what successful career woman (can't remember her name - she was very thin though) was missing from her life: Family.

All this was so much bollocks - Art Dealer Woman obviously had a brilliant life; she'd actually been to school, had a great job and was having sex all the time. The best part was that she was miles away from the bunch of retards that were her in-laws. The only thing she could take away from this whole sorry experience was the fact her husband was actually a complete tosser.

It was so long and boring and quiet and there were so many pointless shots of nothing. Completely underwhelmed: 2

Inside Man - 12th April 2006

Well, I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. It wasn't half as brainless as I expected. However it did annoy me a bit.

I think once I'd read Spike Lee's name on the opening credits I expected everything to be in-your-face preaching about "issues". And so I spent the whole rest of the film deeply analysing everything to find this in-your-face preaching. Which was a bit stupid. That said, there was a lot of stuff about prejudice and multi-cultural integration in New York City. Which, to be honest, I couldn't give a toss about - I found it all too New York to be really relevant.

I couldn't fail to notice, however, an underlying misogyny to the whole film. The only female figures were presented as sex objects (Denzel's wife; the female hostages) or as evil incarnate (Jodie Foster, who is actually evil incarnate, but that's no reason to make her character so.) One of the most telling scenes was in a court house (I think. Something to do with law.) Where Jodie and Denzel were presented as diametric opposites: the black man is good, the white woman is evil. Basically. Also: Denzel calls Jodie a 'cunt' (in a 15 cert film no less), an insult which isn't particularly beloved by feminists. This whole aspect was ever so slightly dodgy.

That said, it was fairly good as a bank heist movie. It was engaging but all rather predictable, which I found quite reassuring. There were some plot details that were a bit weird (the Nazi stuff mainly, what was the point of all that?) but I thought it was cleverly executed and in some places quite funny. It was enjoyable enough but some of the ideology didn't sit well with me: 6.

Los 3 Enterrios de Melquiades Estrada - 5th April 2006

I hate not being able to speak a language and it really annoys me that I found the title of this film unpronouncable, also that I think I've spelt it incorrectly above... This was a curious film; around half-way through it changed completely and went from being confusing and a bit irritating to engaging and rather moving.

The first half was indeed confused. For some reason Tommy Lee Jones decided to play around with the narrative: firstly we see the discovering of the body of Melquiades Estrada, then we flash forward and backward in time to see the events leading up to his death and several events completely unrelated to it. These little episodes were all a bit pointless, without meaning and definitely without the charm of Tarantino when he decides to do a similar thing. The only thing to recommend the first half was the sense of small-town despair
which infused practically every scene: from the empty desert to the chain-smoking regulars in the diner.

From shunning any kind of narrative in the first half, Tommy Lee Jones decides on a classic Quest motif for the second. He makes good on his promise to take the body of his friend back to his home town of Jimenez, dragging along his assassin with the intention of making him apologise to the family of the murdered Mexican.

As is usual in the good old Quest they meet lots of different people who help them out in different ways and both the travellers learn a little bit about themselves. Maybe I'm a bit old-fashioned but I found this reassuring.

One thing I did like that was a bit different was the fact that Tommy Lee Jones's character was slightly nuts, he only had a one-handed grasp on the reins of reality. The way he treated Melquiades's dead body, trying to do a make-shift embalming and setting it on fire was a prime example. Not quite Weekend at Bernie's but still fairly black humour.

I thought the ending was lovely. After finding out Melquiades's tales of his home town and family were contradictory to the truth, Tommy Lee Jones succeeded in deluding himself they had found Jiminez and he and his hostage both set about making Melquiades a suitable final resting place. Then it ended - there were no questions about what they would do being hunted by the border patrol and the police, it all ended with Melquiades's third and final burial.

It started slowly and strangely but almost made up for it with a moving ending: 6.

Transamerica - 29th March 2006

I really enjoyed this. I simply cannot believe that Felicity Huffman did not receive an Oscar for her performance since it was pretty much perfect. It was so, so much better than Reese Witherspoon's in Walk the Line anyway.

I think it was a brave decision to cast a woman as a male to female transsexual. It is a tribute to Huffman's skills that after the first few moments we cease to think of the character as a woman playing a man who is becoming a woman and instead see her as a woman who used to be a man. I think it re-iterates the fluidity of the concept of gender, that these things are not just black and white.

From reading Cosmo Landesman's review of this film in the Sunday Times it seemed he had an issue with a transsexual being depicted as 'normal' and that the villain of the piece was not Bree but instead her conservative mother. I can't help but disagree with this; it is a most important part of the film that the viewer is able to emphasise fully with Bree, that we see her life from her perspective.

It managed to be illuminating, very funny and genuinely moving. Often all at the same time. It was hard not to feel for Bree as she navigated hostile reactions from everyone, especially her own family while trying to keep the secret from her son.

The ending was well-judged. Hardly 'happy-ever-after' but still upbeat and positive. There was also a healthy amount of gratuitous nudity, which is always a bonus. 8.

Sterne - 23rd March 2006

The Cornerhouse was showing this as part of a series of Konrad Wolf films. I don't know much about his films, or indeed the films of the GDR (East Germany) so I thought I'd go along. It was introduced by someone from the Goethe Institute and was extremely interesting.

This film was made in 1959, a co-production between the GDR and Bulgaria, and it was interesting to see the attitude towards the Holocaust from an East German perspective. It dealt with a Nazi officer in Bulgaria in charge of a detention centre for Jews before being sent to Auschwitz. He falls in love with a Jewish woman and tries to save her from being sent away.

Of course there are better films about the Holocaust; what was special about this film was its portrayal of two different German officers. Note the contrast between the main character Walter, who was presented as extremely compassionate and disapproving of the inhuman treatment of the Jews, and his fellow officer, who was more concerned with drink, women and material posessions than humanity. This can be read as metaphor for the two different Germanies and if so, it seems that Wolf was absolving the East Germans from any responsibility for the Endloesung. Maybe I am over-simplifying things, but that was something I thought while watching it. Walter even co-operates to provide the communist resistance movement with weapons.

It was mentioned that some of the effects used by Wolf in this film, although seeming old-hat to a modern audience, were quite original and inventive in their day. Some of the editing and other effects were something different from other films of that period and it was indeed a well-made film. It's difficult to rate this in comparison with modern films, so I won't. I did enjoy it, as a film as well as because of its significance from an historical perspective.

Syriana - 22nd March 2006

Remember a few weeks ago I was talking about films which weren't about much in particular; they had disparate storylines, characters that had no relevance to one another and they just didn't seem to come together in the end? Well this was one of those films.

I think in trying to deal with too much it ended up saying nothing. With little background knowledge about Oil, (which I guessed was kind of the main theme? Was it? If so, Dallas did it so much better), and the political ramifications thereof, I couldn't really keep up with the convoluted plot. Either that, or there wasn't one.

It was just a bit boring and went on for too long (have films started getting longer or has my attention span just got a lot shorter?) The best thing about it was that it featured Dr. Bashir (of DS9 fame). And that was about it. 4.5.

Calvaire - 21st March 2006

I wanted to go and see this because I was curious as to what a 'Belgian comedy' - how the film was advertised - would be like. I had a lovely Belgian evening: ate chips with mayonnaise and took a real Belgian waffle to eat in the cinema. I would hesitate to call this a comedy however.

It started off regularly enough. A Belgian cabaret singer, touring round old peoples' homes gets lost and breaks down in some godawful village in the middle of nowhere. In Belgium. The owner of the local inn, which has been all but abandoned, gives him somewhere to stay and for a start it's all rather farcical and a bit Diner de Cons: the innkeeper is a bumbling country bumpkin who doesn't really want Marc the cabaret singer to leave.

The first sign that something is a bit strange is when Marc goes for a walk and stumbles upon the rest of the villagers fucking a pig. At this point I wondered why he just didn't run as far away as possible...

Anyway, he wakes up one morning to find the innkeeper, Bartel, setting fire to his van. When Marc goes outside to stop him the innkeeper knocks him out; when he wakes up he discovers Bartel has tied him up, cut off his hair and dressed him in a dress which used to belong to his wife, who had left him several years ago. Bartel is happy, thinking that his wife Gloria has finally returned and Marc spends the rest of the film covered in dried blood, sobbing.

From then on things get a bit surreal. We see the rest of the villagers in the pub who begin some weird dancing and while Bartel is walking through the forest a group of red anorak'd children appears a la Don't Look Now. In the middle of a freaky Christmas dinner the villagers appear and attack Bartel's house. We assume it is to rescue Marc but they are really intent on capturing 'Gloria', who was apparently carrying on with all of them as well.

Marc manages to escape and thus begins the final scene of him being chased through the snowy forest which is really rather beautiful. At the very end, the last of the villagers chasing Marc almost catches up before he gets caught in a bog. Sinking, he implores 'Gloria' to tell him that she loved him. "Je t'aimais" whispers Marc, as he watches him slowly disappear....

Although it sounds weird (and it was), it was also very enjoyable. It was the surreal touches which made the film, they gave it a nightmarish quality and so it avoided being anything approaching a horror flick. Despite being a complete nutter Bartel was a rather pathetic character at times, which was what made the lurch from farce into nightmare all the more terrifying.

The scary thing is I deal with Belgians every day at work. I haven't been able to think of them in the same way since. 7.

Capote - 8th March 2006

I did enjoy this film, although I am not entirely sure why. Once again it was a film in which nothing much really happened. The plot development was slow and there were whole swathes of nothing going on.

I think what made the film was Philip Seymour Hoffman. Whatever was happening, his portrayal of the deeply contradictory character of Capote was completely captivating. For once I approve of this Oscar winner, I definitely think he deserved it.

The scene towards the end, when Perry Smith is to be hanged, is actually quite chilling. As indeed is Capote's nonchalance towards him and the ease with which he lies to everyone.

This was a so-so film that really hung on Hoffman's portrayal of this deeply flawed man: 6.

Good Night and Good Luck - 22nd February 2006

Unfortunately I fell asleep for a good while during this film. It wasn't a comment on the film itself; I was very, very tired and it was difficult to stay awake with the soundtrack of easy listening jazz and a man with a very soothing voice saying "good night and sweet dreams" (or something like that) every 15 minutes.

However, it wasn't particularly thrilling. The plot, as far as I could make it out, seemed to be rather slow. Since I didn't really have much of a background knowledge of the whole McCarthy witch hunt era I perhaps wasn't aware of the significance of some of the developments. I could see the film was making a few important points but they kind of got lost for me amidst everything.

The black and white was a nice touch to give it a real feel of that era, as did the constant smoking. It did amaze me how everyone used to smoke incessantly on TV. It was nice enough, but I left the cinema distinctly underwhelmed and a little bit worried I'd been snoring throughout. 4.5

Walk the Line - 15th February 2006

Ho hum. I have not much to say about this film. I found it pretty boring from beginning to end. It was the classic biopic of someone making it big from their smalltown roots, messing it all up with addiction and then finally finding saviour in the love of a good woman.

It probably wasn't best that I didn't really care about Johnny Cash and have never been the biggest fan of his music. I wasn't that impressed by Joaquin Phoenix's impersonation and I think it is an absolute travesty that Reese Witherspoon won the Oscar for this when there were much, much stronger performances nominated; by this I mean Felicity Huffman (see Transamerica review, coming soon.)

I was not in the least impressed. And it went on for too long. 3.5

Munich - 8th February 2006

To be honest, I was expecting something a lot more one-dimensional; a lot more 'Hollywood', from Monsieur Spielberg. Maybe I was doing him a discredit, as the film managed to be extremely engaging, mostly since it let the viewer make up his or her own mind.

Now I didn't really know much about this specific incident. Of course that wasn't really necessary, it wasn't a film about one incident and its aftermath but the enormous grey area that exists within the realms of nationalism, religion and revenge. And naturally, although the film was set in the 1970s, the above themes are oh so relevant in today's world.

It was a rather brave choice to portray a terrorist as the main character, and such a sympathetic one as well. Eric Bana was almost an Everyman (note the wife and kid, to remind us he was just a normal bloke) and never seemed particularly fervent in his belief or his mission; he was always able to coolly and calmly rationalise his actions. This goes against the tendancy of some to characterise terrorists as half-crazed fundamentalists.

I particularly liked the way with which the actual Munich incident was dealt. It was neutral, we had no character as a point of reference. We learnt what was happening mostly through actual TV footage, which made it all the more chilling and could be seen as an acute commentary on the sensational reporting of war. Quite amusing when one of the terrorists, after seeing himself on TV, exclaimed 'Hey, we're movie stars', or something similar.

Despite all the deep stuff, Munich could equally be enjoyed as a traditional action movie. It moved along quickly, each separate bombing was carefully planned and executed and it was all pretty exciting stuff. As the film went on, however, and our main character got more and more disillusioned with his mission, the narrative jumped around a bit more. Great swathes of time passed without any comment. People died and were replaced, the never-ending vicious circle of revenge was being brought into question...

However, it went on about half an hour too long. They should have ended the film with our man being debriefed, emotionless, in that blinding white light. Instead he went to New York, had some dinner, went for a walk and arsed around for what seemed no point whatsoever.

I also enjoyed the fact it had Manni in it off of Lola Rennt.

It gets points for exceeding my expectations and actually being quite intelligent without being sanctimonious. However it loses some for going on too long and dragging a lot towards the end. So: 7.