Category / Cinema

by hutchwp

The Book Thief (Brian Percival, 2014)

I’m a massive fan of foreign films. If a small film from an unknown director or studio outside of the US or UK has reached cinemas in the UK then it’s a pretty good indicator that it’s a film has something special about it. I managed to get hold of some preview tickets for this film and felt pretty excited at the start when the subtitles started and I thought “Thankfully, they’ve got it right”.

Then Emily Watson and Geoffrey Rush started talking and that’s where it all fell apart.

Why oh why would you pull in two hugely successful English actors and have them put on hammy German accents whilst speaking English, when Germany is full of excellent actors who would surely have been desperate for a big role in such a widely released film. I’m sure Christopher Waltz, Diane Kruger and Daniel Bruhl aren’t the only ones available. I have never ever understood why studios refrain from subtitles in this situation. Most people watching aren’t so stupid they can’t follow it. Heck, we English-speakers might even learn a language or two in the process. Please please please stop ruining films with this approach. If you want to see how to get it right then just watch the first ten minutes of Inglourious Basterds.

That said, the story is told well and there’s a fantastic performance from both the leads: 13-year-old Sophie Nelisse starring as book-obsessed Liesel, and her friend Rudy played by Nico Liersch (hurray a German!). I enjoyed it once I got past the annoying language distraction. It’s visually pretty if a little dull and soft. The John Williams score is beautifully emotive (as you’d expect from one of the greatest film composers of all time).

I’m sad that it didn’t quite hit the mark for me and I wonder whether I would have enjoyed it more if they had gone with a more realistic approach to the dialogue.

The Book Thief is released in UK cinemas on 26th February 2014.

by hutchwp

Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 2014)

Before I start I must confess I’m a huge Coen brothers fan. So much so that I recently went on a day-long course at Broadway Cinema (which was excellent by the way). I look forward to every Coen brothers release and when it’s coupled with a Palme d’Or win then you know you’re in for an entertaining two hours.

The looping storyline concerns the struggling titular character, a performing artist in New York’s Greenwich village, as he tries to make ends meet and regain the popularity he once had with his former singing partner Mike Timlin (who has since committed suicide). It is packed full of astonishing musical performances, not least from Oscar Isaac (previously famed for the King to Russell Crowe’s Robin Hood, though set to become quite well known when he stars in the upcoming Star Wars Episode VII). Joining him are Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan as the main stars of the film, though they are definitely in supporting roles. There are also cameos from heaps of great actors, my favourite being the highly comical contribution from John Goodman.

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The soundtrack is clearly the driving force behind the storyline. One of the greatest achievements the Coens manage is to allow our attention to be fully dedicated to the music. It’s never a case of starting a song and cutting away to a montage or separate conversation whilst the song goes through the motions of a second verse or middle 8. It is clear they are truly passionate about the music that drives the story and in almost every case the song is uninterrupted from start to finish. It could well be the greatest Coen Brothers soundtrack yet, and if you’ve heard the O Brother Where Art Thou? OST then you know what a compliment that is.

If you’re looking for something to lift your mood, steer clear. Indeed, if you are a struggling artist yourself, you might also want to give it a wide berth unless you are just interested solely in excellent musicianship. With someone this talented struggling to make ends meet and not showing any sign of getting anywhere with his music, you might leave convinced to never pick the guitar up again. If you can put all that aside and simply appreciate the (perhaps surprisingly) excellent musicianship captured so perfectly here then you’re bound to be a happy viewer.

This film is not going to go down as one of the great Coen Brothers films. It just doesn’t have the indescribable magic of, say, The Big Lebowski or Fargo. It is by no means a terrible film, but I just don’t think it has the widespread appeal of some of their other releases. It’s well worth checking out, though I recommend you give it your full attention.

Inside Llewyn Davis is out now in UK cinemas.

by hutchwp

12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2014)

12 Years A Slave is a unique film in many ways. Most of the cast are complete unknowns. The budget was very low ($20m USD). There isn’t a massive push to advertise it anywhere, with very few trailers being seen at the cinema and on TV (I do the former quite regularly and I think I’ve seen one). Despite this, it has seemingly grown popular through word of mouth. This is something that’s very difficult to achieve when most of its momentum has come before the release date.

The pattern is similar to that of Shawshank Redemption, though at the time that film really didn’t start well at the box office. It became a sleeper hit and enjoyed success many months after the initial release, thanks to continued praise from critics and several awards nominations and wins.

Indeed, Shawshank’s Dufresne isn’t wholly unlike Northup, the main character in 12 Years. Both are imprisoned against their will for entirely the wrong reasons and are determined to see that justice is realised somehow. It is the kind of story that keeps you captivated and as time goes on you become more and more engrossed in the fact that these people should get the happy ending they deserve.

Steve McQueen is a very clever director. With his background in the visual arts (he won the Turner Prize in 1999), he adds an artistic flair to every shot he takes. Much like his debut Hunger, almost every shot could be framed and put on the wall to enjoy in its own right. The cinematography is just that good. Equally, he doesn’t shy away from allowing the camera to linger on our characters as they encounter struggles. One shot in particular sticks in your mind, when Soloman is partially hung in his first plantation and having to stand on the tips of his toes to draw the smallest of breaths. A less confident director would have cut away several times to show other subplots developing, sporadically cutting back to show he is still in pain. McQueen’s choice to stay with him is an example of how bold he is prepared to be and it is one of the most striking parts of the film.

I got confused by some of the sound editing. Several times there was an active choice to allow clashes between the score and the natural sounds of the scene, and most of the time it didn’t really work. The choice was obviously made to let the clash signify discomfort, and was occasionally exacerbated by bleeding audio into the following shots or scene, and in one particular scene, where Eliza was uncontrollably crying, it was overly confusing and distracted me from what I was supposed to be watching.

That aside, it is rightly being considered to sweep the board at this year’s Oscars. I don’t think it will, because there are too many very strong contenders with no outright frontrunner. If it gets none, there will of course be uproar. However, the same could also be said of Gravity, Dallas Buyers’ Club, Captain Phillips, American Hustle, The Wolf of Wallstreet. The list goes on. It is a tough year to pick a winner in each and every category. The deliberation forced on the Academy panel is a sign of what a fantastic year it has been to be a fan of cinema.

12 Years a Slave in out in UK cinemas now.

by hutchwp

Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch, 2014)

Once in a while a film comes along and disappoints you so much you forget what ever made it appeal to you in the first place. The last time this happened to me was when I saw INLAND EMPIRE back in 2006. I was desperate to see it and couldn’t find anyone to go with me so walked on my own for over an hour to the nearest cinema showing it and watched the whole three hour spectacle unravel on my own. Actually was it six hours? It felt like it. And so it was with the latest Jarmusch film. I’m just sorry I forced the experience on my equally underwhelmed fiancé.

The film sets its pace deliberately slowly. Opening with a spiralling bird’s eye camera shot of our two main characters – played by Tom Hiddlestone (Thor, War Horse) and Tilda Swinton (The Beach, We Need To Talk About Kevin) – it matches the evocation of the interspersed antique record player. It’s intelligent camera work. We’re definitely spinning at the lower end of the 33 rpm spectrum, but it sets the scene pretty well with the slow and dirty rock music that accompanies it.

The story goes something like this. Our central characters (named Adam and Eve) are both vampires, they need blood to stay alive and source it from a sort of underground illegal blood trading market. Oh and Adam is also a reclusive rock star. And Eve has the power to touch things and say how old they are (I think this was sourced from the Superuseless Superpower blog, but I can’t be sure).

John Hurt (The Elephant Man, Alien) plays a very old vampire who it turns out is actually most of the greatest writers in the history of humanity. Chekov from Star Trek is Adam’s roady. Felix from Casino Royale makes an appearance. Later in the film, Eve’s younger sister arrives on the scene but it’s ambiguous as to exactly how old she is. I mean, there were long periods of the film where there was no dialogue and as I was drifting in and out of consciousness, and I got to wondering how old she really was. If Adam and Eve are about 600 years old and look like they’re about 40, she looks like she’s about 20 so must be about 300, but yet she acts like she’s about 14. So, do vampires mature at an extremely slow rate too? I don’t get it.

Anyway it rambles along for about two hours before getting to the point where something happens and they go abroad and have to look for new sources of blood. As my fiancé pointed out, it’s the sort of thing that would usually take about 20 minutes to develop in most films. It’s deliberately paced excruciatingly slowly and sometimes it works, but mainly it falls short.

It’s admirable that Jarmusch is bold enough to stick to his guns and allow conversation to take centre stage as he did so well with Coffee and Cigarettes, but this isn’t a film about having a conversation whilst smoking and drinking coffee. It’s a story about a rock star vampire, his wife who has a super power, a man who is secretly almost every important writer ever, Chekov from Star Trek and a seedy underground market for blood. Isn’t this a recipe for a really quite exciting film?

No. Apparently it isn’t.

Only Lovers Left Alive is out in UK cinemas on 21st February 2014.

by hutchwp

Casse-tête Chinois [Chinese Puzzle] (Cedric Klapisch, 2014)

I have to confess that I saw Casse-tête Chinois (Chinese Puzzle) at the 2013 London Film Festival and knew nothing about it. It was picked on a whim when I had a gap to fill in my schedule and I wasn’t able to put any research into it beforehand. During the post-film Q&A with director Klapisch, I learned that it is in fact the third installment of what is known as the Spanish Apartment trilogy, following L’Auberge Espagnole (2002) and Les Poupées russes (2005).

It stars Romain Duris as Xavier, a novelist whose ex-wife and children have moved to New York. The story concentrates on the complicated web of relationships that surround him as he tries to find an apartment, a job and some kind of life. Included in this web are his ex-wife Wendy (Kelly Reilly, now with her new husband), his ex-girlfriend Martine (Audrey Tautou) and her children, his best friend Isabelle (Cecile de France) and her partner Ju (Sandrine Holt) who are trying to have children of their own (with Xavier’s help), and many more bit players, all full of character. It’s a great ensemble cast and it’s clear they had a fantastic time filming together.

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The film is a joy to watch, with laugh-out-loud moments littered throughout. It’s unusual and quirky. It did not matter one bit that I didn’t know any of the background; the characters are well defined and it works very well as a standalone film. The hilarious business meeting where Martine has to speak Chinese, the sham marriage Spanish Xavier goes through with a Chinese girl to become American, and the crescendo where they all come together in one edge-of-the-seat hilarious finale – the balance is spot on. There are some more serious moments too, not least Isabelle’s affair with her au pair, but these tend to (eventually) be dealt with in a light-hearted manner.

It’s probably not going to make massive waves outside France, which is a shame because there are some lovely romantic comedies being made in that country at the moment and they deserve a little more attention. It may well also be the last installment in the series, with the director alluding to the fact it was difficult to convince some of them – especially Tautou – to come back for the third chapter.

I’d recommend it if you fancy a humorous and whimsical journey through someone else’s very complicated problems and need an emotional lift. It certainly won’t disappoint you.

Casse-tête chinois is released later in 2014 in the UK.

Watch the trailer here.

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by hutchwp

Starred Up (David Mackenzie, 2014)

Screened in competition for Best British Film at the BFI London Film Festival 2013, Starred Up was a film I knew very little about but had high expectations for, and it didn’t disappoint.

We are introduced to the lead character Eric Love, portrayed by Jack O’Connell (Skins, This is England), who has been “starred up” from a young offenders’ institution to a jail for adults for excessive violence. As the story develops, we go on a personal journey with him as he struggles to deal with the fact he is no longer the king pin in his new home.

Helping him on his journey is prison therapist Oliver, played brilliantly by Rupert Friend (Homeland). He builds up a close relationship with both him and several fellow inmates also going through the therapy sessions. It is in these sessions that we begin to learn a different side to our protagonist, one that he hides from everyone else he comes into contact with in the prison.

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The twist in the tale lies in the fact Eric’s father is also incarcerated in the same jail, and this is where his struggle lies. He is finally able to spend time with his father, but cannot cope with the fact that in spite of all the larger inmates and all the guards, the one person who has control over him is the one that he blames for being in prison in the first place. It is this dynamic that really allows O’Connell to flex his acting muscles, and show he can play much more than the jack-the-lad tough guy. As an actor, he has a serious amount of talent on offer and at such a young age must feel like the world is his to take on.

Much of the praise for the successes the film enjoys must go to screenwriter Jonathan Asser. Asser won the LFF Best British Newcomer award for this film, and it’s easy to understand why. It’s an authentic and intelligent script that draws on his own personal experiences and it ensures that what could have been a run-of-the-mill prison drama becomes much more than that – a study of an individual’s struggle against authority and personal responsibility.

Starred Up is released in UK cinemas on 21st March 2014.

See a clip of the film here or the trailer here.<br />
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by hutchwp

Mandella: Long Walk To Freedom (Justin Chadwick, 2013)

Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom is a biopic of the life of Nelson Mandella, a rich and vibrant story that has been crying out for a big screen adaptation for years. It’s pulled off in great style by director Chadwick. The story becomes even more poignant with the recent news of his passing, but makes the timing of the release of the film perfect.

The first thing you’ll notice when the film starts is that Idris Elba, famous for his roles in Luther, Prometheus and more recently Pacific Rim, looks absolutely nothing like Nelson Mandella. Many people assumed there would only ever be one man for the job: Morgan Freeman. Yet, the ambitions of this film were to cover Mandella’s whole life, and the meat of the story required a younger man to take the role. That Elba doesn’t look like him doesn’t really matter; his mannerisms and ability to convey the emotion of this rich story are of far greater importance.

The story moves at a terrific pace – it has to so it can cover everything. At times I wondered whether they could have spent longer on certain sections, and maybe a two part film would have been more suitable (this worked to great effect in Steven Soderbergh’s Ché). It didn’t detract from my enjoyment too much, but I feel like there’s more to tell – especially on his time as the president, which is a massive part of his life that was barely touched on.

Some of the prosthetics used to make Elba age were also a bit lacklustre. The first scene we see him as an old man is seriously undermined by the fact it looks a bit cheap. I wonder whether they thought they could get away with Elba’s appearance as a younger Mandela because we were less familiar with him, but panicked with his latter years under the knowledge that Madella’s face and appearance are so familiar.

Overall, this is a film that deserves to be seen and the box office will no doubt swell because of the timing of the release. It’s also a film heaped with responsibility that treats his legacy with due respect. Some reviewers have said that, because of this, it plays it safe. I disagree whole-heartedly. How else could this story have been told? It’s a fantastic work of art that is certainly worth seeing.

Mandella: The Long Road To Freedom is released at cinemas in the UK on 6th January 2014.

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by hutchwp

Frozen 3D (Chris Buck, 2013)

Walt Disney Studios. Hans Christian Anderson. Chris Buck. Idina Menzel, Kristen Bell and a voice cast full of talent and experience. It’s almost a kids’ Christmas blockbuster by numbers. Yet something isn’t quite right.

The character design for the two lead females – Anna (Bell) and her older ice-cursed sister Elsa (Menzel) – is superb. They’re fantastically realised and will be great additions to the Disney princess catalogue I’m sure. Outside of these though, the men are beyond generic. Indeed, Kristoff – the man of the mountain who helps Anna in her quest to find Elsa – could just be an extension of Flint from Tangled, complete with wisecracking animal sidekick Sven. The award for worst design goes to Olaf the snowman. This is a shame because he is responsible for some of the film’s biggest laughs, the best of which is the song “In Summer” – a song about how much he longs to experience the joys of the hot season. It’s undermined because he looks like a cheaply produced character from the early days of digital 3D animation.

The music is also, largely, a let down; bland and forgettable. I remember liking the opening song and the Olaf song (as mentioned earlier), but it’s a far cry from when I first watched Aladdin or The Lion King and was singing the songs for days. Only one song has a chance of going down as a classic and that’s “Let It Go”, sung by Menzel. It was the only serious song of any quality, but whether that’s enough to stand the test of time remains to be seen.

Despite this, one thing that distracted me was Menzel’s voice. She is in possession of one of the best singing voices to grace musical theatre in the last twenty years but the character she is playing, by my best guess, is about 21 years of age. Menzel is 42 and it must be said that when she is belting out the songs, she sounds like she’s 42. Not that any of the kids in the theatre would have noticed. I must reiterate that her voice is outstanding and she nails the songs, but there are plenty of great young female singers out there that could have done a tremendous job. It baffles me why they made this choice.

If there’s one thing the film should be applauded for, it’s pulling off the difficult task of finding space to develop not one but two extremely strong female lead characters. It would have been very easy to let one of them fall into the background but they do get the balance right. This is important move for the Disney merchandising departments, with a predominantly boy-centric year coming up in 2014 (Both Big Hero 6 and Star Wars VII will dominate the big screens next year).

Overall, the film ticks all the boxes and the younger generation will be thoroughly entertained throughout. In comparison to the non-Disney animated features that have been released in 2013 it wipes the floor, but this isn’t any old studio. It’s Disney, and we’ve come to expect much much more.

If you want to find some real Disney magic, then you’ll get that before the main feature itself. Get A Horse! Is a fantastic short film, featuring Mickey, Minnie and Peg Leg Pete. It’s a mixture of black and white and colour, 2D and 3D, and it mixes them to good effect. It’s seriously entertaining, fast-paced stuff and only served to underline so much that was missing from Frozen.

Frozen is released in cinemas in the UK on 6th December 2013.

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by hutchwp

Susuz Yaz [Dry Summer] (Metin Erksan, 1964)

Susuz Yaz is the first film to be released in the UK as part of the World Cinema Project, as founded and chaired by Martin Scorsese. Released in 1964 and directed by Metin Erksan, the film was immediately banned by Turkish authorities and was thus not enjoyed by the wider audience it deserved, despite winning the Golden Bear at the 14th Berlin Film Festival and the Biennale Award at the 29th Venice Film Festival. It has been a long time coming, but it is finally seeing a high definition official home video release.

The film charts the story of two brothers – Osman and Hasan Kocabas – who own a tobacco farm on which a water spring that serves a community is sourced. It is a drought summer, so Osman decides to dam the supply and keep the water for himself. Hasan opposes the idea, seeing the potential for arguments, starvation and unhappiness in the community. It’s the classic tale of conflict from within family, the choice of doing what’s right by the community or what’s right by your family.

There’s only one catch. Osman is a complete asshole.

Osman is a guy that is screwing over his neighbours solely for his own benefit. A guy that peeks through a crack in the wall to see his brother having sex with his wife. A guy that kills a man that tries to dismantle a dam that shouldn’t have been there in the first place, then forces his brother to take the blame. There are so many despicable acts as the story progresses and I don’t want to ruin them for you if you’re looking at watching this film. Just trust me that the character is up there with Nurse Ratched the great assholes of cinema list.

He’s part of a triangle of lead characters that drive the film forwards at a fantastic pace. The beautiful Hülya Koçyiğit is great as the oppressed housewife Bahar, whilst Erol Taş gives a great turn as the brother determined to do right by the community. Yet it is Ulvi Dogan as Osman that keeps us enthralled and captivated right to the end. He’s truly disgusting and pulls out every stop to make your skin crawl. At no point does Erksan attempt to court sympathy for him, which is refreshing to see nowadays.

The film comes in a box-set of three forgotten works of art along with an extensive booklet with short essays on the respective films. It’s a fantastic package that is similar in design to the recent Late Mizoguchi boxset, also from Masters of Cinema. The three films (this one plus Ahmed El Maanouni’s Trances and Ermek Shinarbaev’s Revenge) all have introductions from Martin Scorsese himself. Having not got to the other two discs yet, I can only comment on the Dry Summer disc. The five-minute introduction doesn’t really critically analyse the film and also offers no insight into it, though it is nice to see Mr Scorsese chat about something he’s clearly passionate about. Perhaps I’m just information hungry these days but I was certainly underwhelmed by the lack of bonus features. I guess the sheer fact that we get to see the film in any form is bonus enough and I can’t complain too much!

Delving into the Phil Coldiron essay into the booklet, we find out a small amount of info about the film and the context in which it is set, and it offers a perspective on why the film was so risque at the time that is found itself being banned. Certainly by today’s standards, the things I suspect it was banned for – the point of view upskirt shots of the desperately unhappy Bahar, the passionate sex scenes, etc – all seem very tame indeed. The more horrific scenes come in the form of animal cruelty and, later on, the fight scene between the brothers that is so convincingly acted out that it leaves the viewer feeling almost sympathetically exhausted for them.

All in all, if you have even a passing interest in the history of world cinema and want to support the great cause of film restoration then you should consider buying this release. I was nervous that it might stray from the high standards that have been set by the Masters of Cinema series but that just isn’t the case. It’s not a film I’ll be rushing back to watch again (I have two more from the same box first!), but I won’t be forgetting the great asshole Osman any time soon.

Martin Scorsese Presents World Cinema Project Volume One is released on Blu-ray and DVD dual format on 25th November 2013.

Susuz Yaz film poster from the 14th Berlin Film Festival

Susuz Yaz film poster from the 14th Berlin Film Festival

by hutchwp

Saving Mr Banks (John Lee Hancock, 2013)

I was inevitably sceptical about watching this. It’s a film that was created, in part, by Walt Disney Studios and stars family-favourite actor Tom Hanks as family-favourite animator, voice-actor and business magnate Walt Disney. If there’s ever any story that’s going to sugar-coat the facts, it is this.

Fortunately for Saving Mr Banks, Walt Disney is not the main character. That honour goes to Emma Thompson’s portrayal of Mary Poppins author P. L. Travers. Even more fortunately, her portrayal is up there with the finest of her career.

The story centres around Disney’s ongoing pursuit of producing a film adaptation of Poppins, something that Travers had resisted for years due to her apparent hatred of everything the company has ever been associated with.

In particular, we pick up the main thread story as she embarks on a short two-week trip to the studio headquarters to meet with a small creative team consisting of music legends the Sherman brothers (brilliantly portrayed by Jason Schwarzman and B. J. Novak) and Don DaGradi (Bradley Whitford). Her main intent is seemingly to sabotage every ounce of creativity in the hopes that the film is never made, lest the essence of her perfectly sculpted tale be destroyed.

This is intertwined with flashbacks to her time growing up in 1907 Queensland. These are the real standout portions of the film, and they shy away from the watered-down story we are unravelling in 1961 Los Angeles. Colin Farrell‘s turn as Traver’s alcoholic father is exceptional and this story is key to understanding how she acts in later life. I wished we had been treated to longer in Australia, but this tale was never going to be a three hour epic.

Back in LA, the story moves along at a reasonable pace, adding enough humour to the mix to ensure we don’t forget how magical the film making process is when Walt is driving it. This often works, but I shook my head in disbelief at the scene in which Travers finally changes her mind and starts to support the film. I won’t spoil it, but I’d love to know whether or not this really happened. I suspect not. It is somewhat ironic that a story centring on someone’s dislike of the Disney filmmaking process should be treated in exactly that manner.

Hanks didn’t have a lot to work with and that’s to be understood. That said, he still gives a stellar performance and he can’t be faulted. He will be considered for the awards season regardless, but not for this film – Captain Phillips is a much meatier role for him to be proud of, and one that will doubtless be featured heavily when the awards nominees are announced in January.

The praise in this film, rather, should be heaped upon Thompson for successfully portraying what must have been an immensely difficult character to master. That she makes us warm so much to a person that was evidently so emotionally cold is something worth admiring, even if everything around her is so sugar-coated.

Saving Mr Banks is released in cinemas in the UK on 29th November 2013.

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