Tag / Film Review

by hutchwp

Film review – 20th Century Women (Mike Mills, 2017)

To mark 2017’s International Women’s Day, I dropped into the cinema to catch 20th Century Women, a film with three powerful and independent women at the heart of its plot. A triple Bechdel Test passer, the film indeed avoids the usual cinematic tropes and instead explores how men are often defined by the women around them.

In 1979 in Santa Barbara, California, Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumman) is a 15-year-old boy who is lacking a father figure in his life. His mother Dorothea (Annette Bening) has been long-single, but lives in a luxuriously huge house that she has converted into a sort of commune, in which lives a young female photographer Abbie (Greta Gerwig) and an emotionally-detached carpenter and handyman William (Billy Crudup) who is renovating the house for her. Julie (Elle Fanning) is a girl with whom Jamie is unrequitedly besotted; she wishes for him to remain as a friend only whilst she has a series of never-seen male sexual partners.

Mike Mills has cultivated an intelligent film from his own original script, describing it as a love letter to the women who raised him.

It’s the sort of quirky and intimate story that can only be crafted from ones own experiences, with two fingers up to the notion that boys need fathers and girls need mothers in order to be raised properly. Interestingly, whilst there are innumberable films that explore fathers being thrust into the role of both mother and father figures to both boys and girls, the concept of a group of women creating a support network for growth of a teenage boy feels wholly fresh and quite important.

The standout performance in a solid cast comes from Greta Gerwig, who I have seen in several films previously and never been excessively impressed with. This time, she is absolutely mesmerising as a young woman who is recovering from cervical cancer. We learn that the cancer was probably linked to her mother’s Diethylstilbestrol (DES) drug treatment during her pregnancy. She has been effectively disowned by her guilt-stricken mother, unable to cope with the fact she feels responsible for causing her daughter’s cancer. As a role, this is no light task, and Gerwig is at times totally breathtaking in her performance.

It is strange that the boy whose life the story revolves around eventually turns out to be a supporting character to the three leads. It is a lovingly-created film that is as relatable to mothers as it is to sisters of brothers and as it is to sons. With characters this believable and brilliant performances across the board, this is a film well worth seeing.

by hutchwp

Film review – Saludos Amigos (Norman Ferguson, Wilfred Jackson, Jack Kinney, Hamilton Luske, Bill Roberts, 1942)

Saludos Amigos is a comporomise film. It’s a feature-length film, but only just; a mere 42 minutes and you’ll be done on this one. It’s a film that also only exists as a product of a good-will tour of Latin America, with Walt Disney acting as an ambassador for the USA to counter-act the popularity of the Nazi Party in certain countries when it was produced in the middle of World War Two. 

The film consists of four segments, all of which are a mixture between documentary films and short animated sequences. The animators, technicians and filmmakers were sent to countries such as Peru, Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil and observe what they saw, making sketches and jotting down any ideas they had. It is therefore a wonderful work that captures the beauty of the landscapes and cultures of 1940s Latin America, whilst also serving as a brilliant piece of political evidence when viewed some 75 years later.


Of the four segments, the standout is Aqualero  do Brasil, which introduces José Carioca – a well-dressed Brazilian green parrot who speaks fast and smokes a cigar. He befriends Donald Duck and shows him some cultural highlights of Rio de Janeiro, with a great sequence involving the samba.

José may have been a bit of a flash in the pan outside of Brazil but in his homeland he’s still as loved today as he ever has been, happily sitting alongside Donald and Mickey as the face of Disney.
It’s nothing that will wow modern audiences. It’s simply not as entertaining as the five animated features that proceeded it. It is, put simply, a quirk.

by hutchwp

Film review – Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade, 2017)

If you’ve seen Toni Erdmann, you may be forgiven for leaving the cinema mightily confused. Not because the film was overly complicated, but perhaps because you’d watched a film drastically wide of what you’d been expecting. Marketed primarily as a German-Austrian slapstick comedy (schpalschtick? I’m coining it now), what audience have instead been challenged to watch is an affecting tragic drama that deals with a man’s disjointed relationship with his career-focussed daughter and tries to cultivate some kind of relationship amidst the complicated web of activity she has built around herself.

Toni Erdmann is the alter ego name of Winfried Conradi (played by Peter Simonischek), the father of Ines Conradi (Sandra Hüller). She is working as a business consultant in Bucharest, but returns to her hometown following the death of the family dog. When Winfried realises she is unduly stressed and taking a fake phone call in the back garden, he decides to follow her back to Bucharest and spy on her to find out more about her life.

 

One of the main polarising aspects of the film is the relationship between the father and daughter. Depending on how you interpret it, you might see him as a terrible father who is undermining his daughter’s progress in her career. She is trying her hardest to be taken seriously in her role in the midst of some terrible sexism in her workplace, but he is treating her whole life as a joke and she is right to distance herself due to the feeling of resentment over his actions. One cringe-worthy encounter involves an important business meeting with an important contact Henneberg (Michael Wittenborn) at an evening drinks social, whereby she makes a serious suggestion on a business level, but instead is asked by the man to take his wife shopping, whilst Ines’s father – as the ridiculous titular Toni – is invited for more drinks. A frustrating scene that portrays the subtleties of sexism at their absolute worst.

However, if you side with the father and assume that he is a totally devoted father – or at least one regretting not being devoted in the past – then you can read it that he has seen his daughter struggling, depressed and stressed, and wants to help her realise that there is more to life than being stressed at work. When he sees his daughter being pushed around by her workmates and not being treated equally, then he realises he needs to step in and show her what she can’t see – that she’s wasting her time.

 

After contemplating the film for over a week, I’m still not entirely sure where I sit on this, though I’m leaning towards the latter.

There are moments of real comedy in the film, but they are often laced with tragedy serving to undercut any notion that this is a comedy. There is a memorable scene when she organises a birthday brunch, which is only organised because it offers an opportunity for work colleagues to socialise. However, when she gets stuck in her dress whilst getting ready, she decides to simply take the dress off and answer the door with no clothes on. Initially humorous, the ripples of laughter disintegrated as the audience in my screening realised that we were witnessing a woman having a breakdown.

It’s a truly intelligent film that refuses to provide any definitive interpretations on the situation, instead allowing the viewers to make up their own mind. Thought-provoking and well-executed – exactly what a film should be.

by hutchwp

Der Letzte Mann / The Last Laugh (F. W. Murnau, 1924)

Alfred Hitchcock once described Murnau’s The Last Laugh as an “almost perfect film”. Watching it now it’s hard to disagree with him.

The film stars Emil Jannings as a nameless aging doorman at a well-respected hotel in Germany. The manager of the hotel notices him and decides he is too old to perform his job properly and is reflecting poorly on the hotel. He decides to demote him to the position of attendant in the washroom. Feeling demeaned and now without his uniform, the man slips into depression. 

It’s an astonishing and gripping performance from Jannings, and one that is rightly celebrated even ninety years on. The ability to fully engross the audience is formidable, with many long periods of the film simply focused on his facial expressions. It’s a one-man-show, and a film played out with just one intertitle. The basics of the plot can be explained briefly (see the second paragraph), but the meat of the story that makes it so special is acted out entirely facially through his animated grief.

Fortunately, the Masters of Cinema release includes the original 1924 Giuseppe Becce score, orchestrated and performed by Detlev Glanert. This single option takes out the uncertainty that often surrounds these classic films rereleased and the score is a perfect match for the visuals.

The epilogue following the only intertitle seems a little fanciful and at odds with the rest of the film. The intertitle even offers a disclaimer for it, almost apologising for not following through on the overly-realistic story it had played out in the previous sixty minutes. It provides a happy ending to the audience but feels a little like a studio executive has forced the ending on Murnau.

At the heart of it, it is a film that challenges the viewer to think about how we allow people to lose their confidence and treat older people with less respect than they deserve. It was, at the time, an unusual film with an extraordinary plot. Its success gave confidence to other directors to believe that a film could be whatever they wanted it to be. In that sense, it is one of the most important films of the silent era and one you should seek out as soon as you can.

[1] Bade, James, N. Murnau’s ‘The Last Laugh’ and Hitchcocks subjective camera. Quarterly Review of Film and Video. Volume 23 (2006).

by hutchwp

Film review – The Founder (John Lee Hancock, 2017)

John Lee Hancock is busily carving out a name for himself as the creator of sanitised versions of the most successful business men in the history of humanity, treading perhaps where no director would dare through a labyrinth of red tape.

In 2013 it was Saving Mr Banks, Hancock’s portrayal of an important segment of Walt Disney’s life as he helped convince P.L. Travers to release the rights to Mary Poppins and shaped the now-classic motion picture. This time around he’s tackling the origins of one of the biggest global brands of the modern world: McDonald’s.

McDonald’s hasn’t had a successful time thus far being portrayed on screen. Outside the overbearing product placement that everybody hates (even though they often pay for significant portions of films), if you ask anyone whether or not they’ve seen a film about McDonald’s, they will more than likely start talking about one of two films: McLibel or Super Size Me. Both are excellent as films and even better in showing the company in an extremely negative light.

Or you may remember this film…

 

The Founder isn’t quite as negative towards the iconic brand as the recent memorable efforts, going a long way to provide a balanced view of the origins of the story. It may be sanitised but it is at least reasonably based on facts (to our best knowledge).

Michael Keaton plays Ray Croc, a driven but unsuccessful salesman who happens upon the first McDonald’s restaurant whilst trying to sell milkshake making machines. This restaurant is owned by Richard and Maurice McDonald (Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch) and they soon go into partnership to franchise the company and start growing it across the rest of USA.

The biopic serves two purposes for the company. Firstly, it portrays the McDonald brothers’ story as being as wholesome and family-friendly as any of the McDonald’s adverts that are create today. This was a family company that didn’t want to be taken over by the global powers, resisting all the way and almost unbelievably against making any profit. Looking at it cynically, it serves as an advert that champions the company’s family values.

Secondly, it portrays the man who turned it into a global power as self-driven, full of business acumen but at his most basic a self-centred, cold and heartless money grabber. We aren’t supposed to like him, though I can’t help but think that the characterisation will be a template for those wishing to succeed in business. I hope not – it would be a poorly-chosen idol.

The overall result is that we don’t feel encouraged to like our central character and it feels like the side of a story that aligns with the global branding message rather than one we can truly enjoy. 

The problem is that Keaton is far too charismatic to not be liked and the Lynch/Offerman duo are sabotaging the success of the company at every turn. This makes the emotional journey slightly skewed as we try to take sides and don’t really know where to land.

Some will champion its subtlety but I don’t see it like that. I see it as a great actor shining through an advertising campaign disguised as a film.

Given the state of the political landscape right now, I don’t think it’s the film the world needs.

by hutchwp

Film review – Wake of Death (Phillipe Martinez, 2005)

I was recently enjoying a holiday in a Spanish beach resort. It was a great week, with brilliant weather and loads to do. One quirk of such holidays is the small selection of English-language television channels available. They’re always different and always extremely limited. This holiday was no different: BBC1, BBC2, BBC4 and ITV. And then there was movies4men.

Movies4men is a channel I steer clear of. Why? Because frankly it sounds like a pornography channel. It’s actually a terrible name for a fairly reasonable channel, with war and western genre films throughout the day and some action films in the evening. The name is, at best, a little sexist. But it sort of makes sense once you get used to it.

Anyway, if you turn it on at around 11pm on any night there is a fantastic chance you’re going to be stuck watching a poorly-executed Jean Claude Van Dämme film. And that’s where I was every night at 11pm. And that is how I came to watch Wake of Death.

It’s okay darling. It will be over soon.


“After his wife is brutally murdered, an ex-cop wages war against the Chinese triads,” reads the brief plot on IMDB. It tells you pretty much everything you need to know. It may well be one of the worst films I’ve ever watched.

The acting does nothing for a script written by a group of screenwriters – there were four – that probably knew that the script wasn’t particularly important for this film. Why? Because there would be no sequels. Because it had JCVD on the poster and the people who watch it will tend to only care about the action, fighting, martial arts, car chases and explosions. Because it’s hard to screenwrite “JCVD does typical JCVD stuff” without sounding nonchalant about the whole affair.

No matter what the result of the filmmaking process was, the audience would come. They would have been satisfied, albeit devoid of any kind of betterment.

They will have also been treated to a surprising number of JCVD sex scenes, which would probably have been more than they bargained for.

Van Damme has never been a great actor. Heck, he even used it as a defence in a lawsuit back in the 1996. Coincidentally, he has acted in 39 films since that comment from his lawyer was made. None of them appear to have really challenged the notion. 

The only time he tries to really act in ‘Wake of Death’ is a scene where he has to cry as he drunkenly remembers his dead wife. It’s as poorly-executed as that scene in one of the Taken films where Liam Neeson jumps over a fence, with about 10 different camera cuts along the traumatic rollercoaster ride. Someone is kind enough to throw water on Jean-Claude’s face between shots, but that’s still not enough to stop the director giving up and breaking the tension with a random Chinese triad bursting through the window and having a quick fight before running away.

If Van Damme has done some great cinema this millennium I am yet to see it. But his fans will seldom have been disappointed. 

by hutchwp

Film review – Revolt at Fort Laramie (Lesley Selander, 1957)

12 Angry Men, 3:10 to Yuma and The Bridge on the River Kwai may be more fondly American films from 1957, but Lesley Selander’s Civil War drama isn’t without its merits, even if the production values and a slightly generic premise make it just short of enjoyable.

The story is set in 1861 at the titular Fort Laramie in Wyoming, an outpost at which a cavalry of northern and southern USA soldiers await a trade with Native Americans of gold as part of a peace deal. However, just before the deal is completed, the American Civil War breaks out. At this point, the inner rivalries within the outpost threaten to bubble over and cause a mini civil war to rival that breaking out throughout the country.

There is a decent cast assembled to play out the film. John Dehner portrays Maj. Seth Bradner, a southerner in charge of the outpost, whilst the two factions are led by Confederate Sgt. Darrach (Robert Keys) and Federal Sgt. Serrell (Bill Phillips). Northern Captain Jamie Tenslip (Gregg Palmer) is in love with the major’s daughter Melissa (Frances Helm). There’s enough complexity to make for an engrossing storyline that should bring with it excitement.

Where it falls down is that the cast seem like they’re going through the motions. They’re delivering their lines, but for some reason the performances are devoid of any emotion. The film should really be much longer to flesh out the various storylines to bring them to life, but I’m not convinced the actors had it in them. The result is that even at 70 minutes the film feels like it’s dragging.

Harry Dean Stanton makes an early appearance in the film as a character called Rinty. The only thing less convincing than his acting is his fake harmonica playing. 

However, the worst performance in the film is from Don Gordon as a Sioux scout. I spent ten minutes wondering why there was a Mexican mixed up in a civil war issue. Fortunately, a Native American accent wasn’t required when he delivered brilliant performances in the likes of The Towering Inferno, Bullitt and Papillon.

It’s not a brilliant film, it’s not the best film about the subject matter and it’s not top of many of the actor’s greatest performances. It’s fine. Just an average western film from a time when the cinema market was flooded with them.

Revolt at Fort Lamarie can be bought on DVD now. Or you can simply watch the entire film online using the link above.

by hutchwp

Film review – Ghosts of Mars (John Carpenter, 2001)

John Carpenter’s history as a filmmaker may have many blemishes on it. For every Assault on Precinct 13, there was a Village of the Damned. For every time Kurt Russell escaped from New York, he also escaped from L.A. Yet few of his films have stunk as badly as Ghosts of Mars, which, unlike most of his other films, hasn’t got better with time.

Set on a remote Martian mining town, the plot concerns police woman Melanie Ballard (Natasha Henstridge) transporting dangerous criminal “Desolation” Williams (Ice Cube). However, upon arrival she realises that the planet has become infected, essentially, by zombies. She has to team together with a group of survivors including Jason Statham, Pam Grier and Clea DuVall.


The film was a box office bomb, making back just $14m of its $28m budget (global sales, according to Box Office Mojo). It’s hard to see why. Why it cost so much, that is. Conceptually, the mining town should look gritty, desolate and run down. It actually ends up looking more like a half-baked Crystal Maze set that was abandoned half-way through.
The plot isn’t terrible, and good movies have been carved out of much worse starting points. The soundtrack, provided by John Carpenter, is brilliantly varied.

What lets it down is dated visuals – they’re very 2001 – and an unreliable script. The actors do their best with it, but it simply doesn’t hit the marks.

It must be tough to turn down an offer to work with someone as great as John Carpenter. One can only assume that those involved looked at the script and were reminded of his best work. 

[Note] I hated all the official posters for this film, but unearthed the brilliant poster by Ralf Krause on the website AlternativeMoviePosters.com. Check out the website for more great alternative movie posters and order some to decorate your wall with something wonderful!

by hutchwp

Film review – Varieté (Ewald André Dupont, 1925)

Recently remastered and re-released by Eureka on their Masters of Cinema label, Ewald André Dupont’s Varieté is a wonderful film that’s well-deserving of a bit more attention, even 90 years after its original release.

It follows Boss Huller (Emil Jannings), the owner of a touring circus and former trapeze artist. Now retired with his wife (Maly Delschaft) and trapeze partner, their relationship is functional but stagnant. However, when  a mysterious woman called Berta-Marie (Lya De Putti) appears and joins his entourage, he becomes besotted with her and this marks the end of his marriage. Shortly after this a celebrated younger male trapeze artist named Artinelli (Warwick Ward) joins to turn their duo into a trio. Frictions rise between the two men as they begin to vie for the interest of Berta whilst remaining professional on stage.

Brit Ward and love rival German Jannings

Modern cinema fans may know lead actor Jannings, though they may not realise it. He was portrayed in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2007) by Hilmer Eichhorn in the tensely played-out film premier scene. During the Second World War, Liebich was an outspoken supporter of the Nazi party and was taking lead roles in many of the biggest Weimar-era films. By the end of the war, with the Nazi party defeated, he was left unable to work in the restructured Germany keen to forget the pervious decade, eventually retiring to a farm in Austria before dying at the start of the 1950s.

Before this, however, he was a much-celebrated film star, both in Germany and America. He was the first actor to receive the Oscar for Best Actor (for roles in two films: The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh), which happens to also be the first ever Oscar statue given out at the first ceremony, putting Jannings in a unique part of film history. Perhaps his greatest performance came in Die Letzte Mann, released a year before Varieté. He would surely have won more Best Actor Oscars if only the Academy Awards had started ten years previously.

The way the film plays out may leave viewers feeling somewhat bemused about how we are supposed to feel for the lead actor. Firstly, he leaves his wife at the drop of a hat for a woman he knows almost nothing about other than that she has arrived on a seemingly cursed ship. Then, when his new lover essentially does the same back to him, he plots a jealousy-fuelled revenge, murdering both her and her lover. It seems too that the judge in charge of hearing his plight forgives him and allows him to leave prison. It doesn’t leave much room for any kind of compassion for the character. Indeed, when it was released in America the entire introduction was cut from the release, leaving a much more moral character for the viewers [1].

You may also need to suspend your belief that Jannings could possibly pull off the stunts involved. Whilst they are beautifully and innovatively shot, I couldn’t help but feel like Jannings – 40 at the time of the shoot – was a tad too portly to follow the trajectories required of a trapeze artist. Inevitably an unconvincing stunt double was used, but it’s only a minor blemish on a series of quite fascinating scenes.

Whilst the restoration is absolutely perfect, a note should be made about the variety of soundtrack options available. The unusual default option is supplied by The Tiger Lillies. I attempted to watch this version but changed it after about ten minutes. It didn’t seem to fit very well at all – much more modern than it should have been and not really matching the tone of what was happening on the screen. Much better is the Johannes Contag version, listed as third on the main menu. There’s also the aforementioned complete American version, though I didn’t venture this far.

This is well worth investing in for fans of German silent cinema, and it’s great to see it being given so much attention so long after its initial release. 

[1] http://www.silentsaregolden.com/debartoloreviews/rdbvariete.html

by hutchwp

Film review – T2: Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 2017)

Trainspotting was one of the quintessential moments of British film in the 1990s, helping to define a generation and giving them a voice on the silver screen. It catapulted director Danny Boyle and his cast to international fame, with lead Ewan McGregor reaping the lion’s share of the benefits as it launched his path to stardom.

I was probably just slightly too young to enjoy the original on its initial release, catching it on VHS in around 1999 at the age of 15. But the effects were still strong amongst people my age – the music soundtracked our lives as much as the likes of Morning Glory and Parklife did. The imagery in the advertising campaign was arresting and inescapable. Finally watching the film I was blown away that something so popular was set in a Britain far more familiar than every other British film that seemed readily available at the time, all of which seemed to star Hugh Grant. 

The boys are back in town

When the sequel was announced, there was a certain amount of trepidation from fans of the original. It seemed unlikely that the success of the original could ever be matched. It wouldn’t have the same effect on society. The soundtrack surely wouldn’t be as good. Plus there’s the twenty years of nostalgia to contend with. So how does it stand up?The answer is, thankfully, very well indeed.

The plot centres around Renton (McGregor) returning to Edinburgh for the first time in twenty years, catching up with his old friends Spud (Ewen Bremner), Rent Boy (Johnny Lee Miller) and Begbie (Robert Carlysle). Time has passed and this has inevitably changed the four men, but it has also drastically changed the world around them too. It also hasn’t been long enough for two of the group to forgive Renton for what happened at the end of the first film.

Reimagining their friendship so far down the line when there hasn’t really been a particular push recently for a sequel to be made proves that this film has been made for all the right reasons. Danny Boyle and his team knew there was a story to be told here and it is told brilliantly.

As in the original, music plays a crucial role. There are reimaginings of three of the biggest hits associated with the original: Lust for Life, Born Slippy and Perfect Day. Elsewhere, more modern artists offer more up-to-date contributions from the likes of Young Fathers and Wolf Alice.

It won’t have the same cultural impact as the original, and few films have. It is, however, extremely relevant for those who lived through the first instalment, having an uncanny ability to reflect what has happened to almost everyone in society in the past two decades.

It is undoubtedly one of the best cinematic sequels we’ll see this decade.