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dombrewer

Much of the criticism I've read of Derek Cianfrance's follow-up to the exceptional "Blue Valentine" concentrates on the sprawling nature of the plot and the sense that there is too much for one film to hold. I think that is a slightly narrow minded perspective - it's true that the defined three act structure is a surprise and is unexpected given that the trailer smartly only concentrated on the opening third, but that's not to say the whole doesn't tie together brilliantly in retrospect. My concerns about where the film was headed while watching it were dampened down when considering how the bigger picture would present itself afterwards, and an impressive picture it is.

There's no doubt the strongest part of the film is the first third, thanks to Ryan Gosling's effortlessly charismatic, unpredictable turn as "Handsome" Luke, a stunt bike rider who belatedly discovers he is a father and in the process of trying to provide for his baby son falls into a life of crime. Through the influence of mechanic Robin (Ben Mendelsohn in yet another pitch perfect, twitchy, greasy turn that he has recently cornered the market in) he ends up using his bike to rob banks. The robberies are absolutely thrilling - unexpectedly so coming from Cianfrance who had previously shown no hint of high octane sequences like the ones we see here. In many ways Gosling's performance and Cianfrance's direction out-do Nicholas Winding Refn's "Drive", with which it shares some marked similarities, only here Luke is a multi-dimensional character and one who has a good reason to behave the way he does rather than just look moody and detached.
The second section concentrating on Bradley Cooper's cop Avery is probably the weakest part concentrating on the aftermath of Luke's final robbery and the police corruption that is uncovered because of it - Cooper is very good as the guilt ridden "hero" turned whistleblower, but the shift from Gosling's magnetic performance is a hard one to follow and he is missed. Eva Mendes is strong through all three sections, and is at her best here, while Ray Liotta provides reptilian menace to his small role as a particularly unsavoury fellow officer. The final part concentrates on the two men's sons - Jason and A.J. now both grown up and struggling to either discover their parent or rebel against their influence. It's clear that inherited traits will come to the surface and things won't end well. Emory Cohen gives the weakest performance in the cast as the wayward son of Avery's cop turned politician, which unfortunately veers firmly into the irritating, but Dane DeHann (similarly tortured in the excellent "Chronicle") really motors the film toward its conclusion as his Jason gradually pieces together the events of the past.

This wildly ambitious, multi-stranded character study is ultimately most concerned with fathers and sons, actions and their repercussions - what may appear unwieldy on a first view does pay off patience and attention as details repeat and themes resolve. It's brave film-making and well worth seeing from a director forging an exceptional career.
10 years 11 months ago
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dombrewer

As a slightly more in depth retort to mathiasa's insightful review below - "The Gatekeepers" is a brilliant and damning documentary revealing decades of Israeli secret service activity from the mouths of six men who ran the Shin Bet organisation from the Six Day War to the present day, all being interviewed and speaking about their roles in the major events that took place over those years for the first time.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is highly contentious one, but I have no problem saying my sympathies for as long as I've understood and had an interest in the politics of the region have sided firmly with the Palestinians. I fully expected not to feel particular attachment or sympathy for these men who were responsible for targeting and killing Palestinian "terrorists", and true to form found myself gritting my teeth in the opening sections of the film, but what is quite extraordinary and unexpected - you find that all of the men interviewed have great sympathy for the Palestinian cause as well, actively sought a two-state solution and still believe the only way to bring peace to the country is through continued dialogue. Their criticisms of the Israeli government are harsh, going as far as to say that apart from the tragically assassinated Yitzak Rabin the previous and successive prime ministers had no interest in the fate of the Palestinian people at all. But blame for the continuing failure of reconciliation is also levelled at the fundamentalists of both sides - the hardliners of Hamas as well as the Jewish underground, fired up by extremist rabbis. I had never heard of the near-catastrophic plot to blow up the Dome of the Rock before, and was fascinated to learn of the Israeli secret service investigating their own as much as the Islamists.

Like any great documentary this film illuminates and fascinates; the six are variously bullish, aloof, militaristic, or dislikable for their actions but as they eloquently explain their predicament and the choices they had to make for better or worse, invariably without strong leadership or defined strategy, the black and white of dissolves into many, many shades of grey. It would be hard not to understand or even be convinced by their arguments. Although it has been variously denounced as strongly pro as well as strongly anti-Israeli, the truth is it's a remarkably well balanced, insightful and compelling account. The final message is a pessimistic one, but perhaps the very act of opening up and really explaining what has been going on behind closed doors in Israel could make a difference to the next generation, one that is more determined for peace on both sides than ever before. I hope so.

Interestingly this film was an Oscar nominee alongside he astonishing Palestinian/Israeli co-production "5 Broken Cameras" - watching both films together would be a sobering experience indeed, both are highly recommended.
10 years 11 months ago
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dombrewer

It's fair to say "Compliance" haunted me more than any film I've seen this past year - it stuck in my mind like a rusty nail, and that's quite a feat. I was still thinking about it 24 hours later and cogitating my response - in fact it's been nearly a month since I saw it in the cinema and now felt like putting my thoughts down in a review. It's a contentious film, and one that has polarised opinion. What I saw was an an expertly made, brilliantly acted "real life" drama for grown-ups that asked serious questions about our willingness to capitulate to authority, no matter what the moral implications are, prompted by the famous Stanley Milgram experiments. There are elements of the story that seem too outlandish to believe, but basic research into the actual events reveal how accurately, almost to the smallest detail, writer/director Craig Zobel approached the story. The age old "what would you do" question circles uncomfortably as you watch with no small amount of horror as a prank call police interrogation to a busy, understaffed fast food restaurant goes too far; the terrible consequence of the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time. Who's to say what can happen if circumstances and events align so inauspiciously?

Ann Dowd has rightly won plaudits for her performance as the middle aged restaurant manager Sandra, stressed out, easily manipulated and out of her depth. spoiler

I have a suspicion that a good deal of the negativity surrounding the film from the general public, currently pushing the IMDB rating down to 6.4, is based more on the unpleasantness of the sensations the film generates rather than a criticism of the quality of the film. We are entirely complicit watching the film unfold as Zobel shoots the film as if we were present - spoiler.
10 years 11 months ago
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dombrewer

I was lucky enough to see both parts of this brilliant, bloody, sprawling Indian crime drama shown at my local arthouse cinema in one afternoon - there's no doubt it's a major entry in the history of Hindi cinema (not just because of the combined near five and a half hour running time) and may prove to be turning point in the perceptions of Bollywood cinema in the West. It's a little confusing that IMDB lists both films as one entity when they were clearly presented as two films with two separate title cards, and a notable increase in certification from 15 to 18. I'm reviewing both films in this one review and then adding it to both listings here on icheckmovies.

The film follows three generations of the Khan family over 60 years, from the 1940s to the present day, and is based on the true story of a real life crime dynasty. The whole sequence starts with a flash-forward of a raid on the house of Faizal Khan (reprised part way through the second film). Director Anurag Kashyap sets his stall very firmly in the opening minutes - we see a family gathering to watch the opening credits of a Hindi television sitcom when the television promptly explodes in a shower of machine gun bullets. There are similar moments throughout - in a key speech late in the film from Ramadhir Singh, the constant antagonist to the several generations of the Khan family, he explains why he has survived when all his contemporaries and rivals have died violent deaths - he blames the unreality of Bollywood cinema for convincing all these petty criminals that they are heroes of their own stories, all-powerful, irresistible and invincible. The reality, as Kaskyap is all too eager to show us, it harsh, bloody, cruel and unforeseeable and this proves to be a scathing personal criticism about the cultural, and artistic, impact of popular Hindi cinema.

The first part concentrates on the lives of Shahid Khan and his son Sardar - the former a petty train robber turned coal mine enforcer, murdered by his boss Singh for privately boasting to take over the business. His son, driven by revenge swears never to grow his hair until Singh is dead. Manoj Bajpai performance as the grown up, shaven headed and bigamous Sardar is a highlight of the whole - it's a terrific, charismatic performance, and the interplay between his two wives and two families motors a good deal of the story, as well as providing some welcome humour. The various sons of Sardar - Faizal, Danish, Definite and Perpendicular - their rivalries and alliances, quest for power and individual acts of betrayal and revenge make up the majority of the second part of the film. There is a complexity to the plot, straddling such a long time line with so many central characters but at no point do you lose track of who is who, or what is at stake - short sequences impact on later events, acts of revenge fulfilled from hours before still manage to resonate. Vitally, it's incredibly entertaining, sometimes shocking and boldly modern film-making.

Just as the music and style of cinematography subtly changes to reflect the passing decades so does the level of violence (hence the shift from a 15 to an 18 certificate) - spoiler. Although we are immersed in a world of extreme violence, criminality and immorality none of our protagonists entirely lose our sympathy - violence begets violence, and the dominos continue to fall right until the final moments, when we finally see the opportunity for the cycle of revenge and lives devoted to crime to finally break. There is a problem in the use of CGI blood in the latter parts of the film,spoiler- it's disappointingly unrealistic when so much up to that point has convinced, but it's really a minor quibble.

For anyone interested in modern Indian cinema and those who have no aversion to screen violence this is probably one of the best filmed gangster epics to date, in any language. Highly recommended, all profane, giddy and breathless five and half hours of it.
10 years 11 months ago
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dombrewer

I was lucky enough to see both parts of this brilliant, bloody, sprawling Indian crime drama shown at my local arthouse cinema in one afternoon - there's no doubt it's a major entry in the history of Hindi cinema (not just because of the combined near five and a half hour running time) and may prove to be turning point in the perceptions of Bollywood cinema in the West. It's a little confusing that IMDB lists both films as one entity when they were clearly presented as two films with two separate title cards, and a notable increase in certification from 15 to 18. I'm reviewing both films in this one review and then adding it to both listings here on icheckmovies.

The film follows three generations of the Khan family over 60 years, from the 1940s to the present day, and is based on the true story of a real life crime dynasty. The whole sequence starts with a flash-forward of a raid on the house of Faizal Khan (reprised part way through the second film). Director Anurag Kashyap sets his stall very firmly in the opening minutes - we see a family gathering to watch the opening credits of a Hindi television sitcom when the television promptly explodes in a shower of machine gun bullets. There are similar moments throughout - in a key speech late in the film from Ramadhir Singh, the constant antagonist to the several generations of the Khan family, he explains why he has survived when all his contemporaries and rivals have died violent deaths - he blames the unreality of Bollywood cinema for convincing all these petty criminals that they are heroes of their own stories, all-powerful, irresistible and invincible. The reality, as Kaskyap is all too eager to show us, it harsh, bloody, cruel and unforeseeable and this proves to be a scathing personal criticism about the cultural, and artistic, impact of popular Hindi cinema.

The first part concentrates on the lives of Shahid Khan and his son Sardar - the former a petty train robber turned coal mine enforcer, murdered by his boss Singh for privately boasting to take over the business. His son, driven by revenge swears never to grow his hair until Singh is dead. Manoj Bajpai performance as the grown up, shaven headed and bigamous Sardar is a highlight of the whole - it's a terrific, charismatic performance, and the interplay between his two wives and two families motors a good deal of the story, as well as providing some welcome humour. The various sons of Sardar - Faizal, Danish, Definite and Perpendicular - their rivalries and alliances, quest for power and individual acts of betrayal and revenge make up the majority of the second part of the film. There is a complexity to the plot, straddling such a long time line with so many central characters but at no point do you lose track of who is who, or what is at stake - short sequences impact on later events, acts of revenge fulfilled from hours before still manage to resonate. Vitally, it's incredibly entertaining, sometimes shocking and boldly modern film-making.

Just as the music and style of cinematography subtly changes to reflect the passing decades so does the level of violence (hence the shift from a 15 to an 18 certificate) - spoiler. Although we are immersed in a world of extreme violence, criminality and immorality none of our protagonists entirely lose our sympathy - violence begets violence, and the dominos continue to fall right until the final moments, when we finally see the opportunity for the cycle of revenge and lives devoted to crime to finally break. There is a problem in the use of CGI blood in the latter parts of the film,spoiler- it's disappointingly unrealistic when so much up to that point has convinced, but it's really a minor quibble.

For anyone interested in modern Indian cinema and those who have no aversion to screen violence this is probably one of the best filmed gangster epics to date, in any language. Highly recommended, all profane, giddy and breathless five and half hours of it.
10 years 11 months ago
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dombrewer

I've been wanting to see this Stuart Gordon/Jeffrey Combs/H.P. Lovecraft horror for many years, as an admirer of their "Re-animator" from the year before, but struggled to find the film anywhere - it's never on television and wasn't released on DVD in the UK until very recently. I finally managed to watch the unrated director's cut online. In a way it's a shame because I have a feeling if I'd seen it as a kid in the 80s on grainy VHS it would have properly blown my mind as intended. Today it seems gloriously OTT, unexpectedly kinky, disjointed, bizarre, gaudy and resolutely and proudly B-grade in every way.
Combs plays Crawford Tillinghast, an altogether more sympathetic sort of insane scientist and different kind of monster to Herbert West, and one you continue to side with even when a blood soaked pineal gland is snaking out of his forehead and he's sucking the brains of a nurse out of her eye socket (a seriously disgusting and magnificently audacious moment). Barbara Crampton has more to do in this one than in "Re-animator", and good job too - she's a feisty leading lady, playing some extremely off-the-wall scenes truthfully while looking ridiculously hot in S&M gear. It really *is* a shame I missed this one as a kid.
The star of the show are the special effects though - the creature designs and makeup are superb, easily standing alongside the great work of that greatest of practical effect eras - the scene where the villainous and increasingly mutating Dr. Pretorious returns from the other dimension and tears his own head in two revealing violently writhing tentacles and a fountain of slime owes a strong debt to John Carpenter's "The Thing" but is just as effectively done. Crawford's comment immediately following: "that... will be quite enough of that" is a classic, and in the similar vein to Palmer's all time great understatement in Carpenter's film.
As great as the effects are, and outrageous as the telling of the story is, the plot is admittedly weak and as a result the film never really reaches the levels of a bona fide horror classic, but it's a mad ride and definitely deserves a place in 80s SFX history. I'm looking forward to completing the Gordon/Lovecraft set with "Castle Freak" and "Dagon".
10 years 11 months ago
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dombrewer

Essentially a rip off of "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" told through the prism of the extremely tired "found footage" genre. The gimmick in this instance is that the overtly theatrical and self-important preacher conducting the exorcisms openly admits to fraudery on his part, even a complete loss of faith, and is seeking to demonstrate (care of the film crew that follow him on this, his supposed last exorcism of the title) how all the possessions he encounters are products of obsessive religion, skewed psychology and mental disorders. By using bed shaking, demon howling, crucifix smoking trickery he gives the families of the "victim" exactly what they want to see and hear to clear the way to uncover the real root of the problem. The actual morality of that process is quite messed up in itself - in reality it would be feeding a potentially dangerous mindset with more dangerous material, but reality takes a significant backseat as the film progresses. Although the majority of the film is interesting in its attempts to debunk the notion of possession and exorcism the performances never feel true enough, or the script real enough, to effectively sell the notion of the documentary style - as much as the film tries to seem real it always ends up feeling scripted, and is frequently more silly than scary.

Logic flies out of the window in the final part of the film - spoiler

One final thought - if this film really was meant to be "found footage" who edited the material into the final film? And why on earth would they add "creepy" horror music to the soundtrack? This is basically horror film-making by committee without an original premise or the sense to follow an idea through, and because it was cheap to make and went down well with the late night popcorn crowd it even spawned a sequel. I won't bother with that, and I wouldn't recommend you bother with this.
10 years 11 months ago
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dombrewer

This curious and rather beautiful film from Portuguese director Miguel Gomes riffs on Murnau's silent classic "Tabu: A Story of the South Seas" - and comprises a short prologue followed by a narrative split into two; the first half set in modern day Lisbon, the second in colonial Africa fifty years before. The link between the two timelines is the character of Aurora (first seen in an increasingly senile and volatile state, imagining plots formed against her by her absent daughter and long suffering maid) and her former lover Ventura who is summoned to Aurora's deathbed by her sympathetic neighbour Pilar. It is the elderly Ventura who narrates the events of the second half of the film, describing the passionate and failed love affair he embarked upon with the newly married woman. What is established as a rather odd, fairly uninteresting domestic drama of old age and loss blossoms unexpectedly into a dream-like, exotic and tragic romance.
What is unusual, and wonderful, is how the events of Africa are presented as a sort of silent movie - all the dialogue is absent although all the sound effects are present, which to me said something about the way we remember the distant past - voices and dialogue are lost to us while images stay strongly logged in our memory. The performances are all very good - Ana Moreira's melancholy beauty and Carloto Cotta's matinee idol looks are perfect as the younger, silent versions of the lovers.
Shot entirely in black and white, and in different film stocks to cleverly evoke the silent era in the second half, what starts out in relative mundanity does have something fascinating and moving to offer by contrast. Well worth investigating.
10 years 11 months ago
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dombrewer

Firstly, a relevant admission: I don't like Danny Boyle's work. He would sit high on my imaginary list of highly regarded, extremely successful mainstream directors who I've consistently disliked for the majority of their career. In fact since "Shallow Grave", which I saw twice in the cinema nearly 20 years ago, he's failed to make a film I'd rate higher than average, even in light of multi award winning glory (the deeply patronising "feel good" smash "Slumdog Millionaire"; poverty porn for the middle classes with added fake-Bollywood panache), theatrical accolades (the terrible National Theatre production of "Frankenstein") and British sainthood for surely the first ever Olympics ceremony conceived on class A drugs.

Given the chance to see a free preview I went to see "Trance" with low expectations and they were squarely met. Danny is still trying to make the same show-offy films he made in the 90s with heavy doses of style over substance; an abundance of deeply irritating camera trickery - meaningless lens flares, dutch angles and rapid fire music video editing to essentially cover up the flaws in the screenplay, which are legion. Like "Slumdog", "Sunshine" et al this is another schizophrenic, tonally inconsistent production which wants to be too many things at the same time. Here we have a psychological / romantic / thriller / hypnosis / heist movie, with some fairly juvenile doses of sex and gore. Boyle regular John Hodge (he of "A Life Less Ordinary", "The Beach", "Seeker: The Dark is Rising" and, oh yes, "The Sweeney") is back on screen writing duties, so you might say it's a bit of a Hodge-podge... yes... sorry.

Cast wise it's basically a three hander: McAvoy still fails to convince as a leading man, although he looks more and more like Boyle's old mate Ewan McGregor every day. Vincent Cassell takes on the bad guy role, or rather the 'bad guy who isn't really a bad guy after all' role, and Rosario Dawson has probably the most to do as the psychiatrist hired by the bad guys to hypnotise McAvoy into remembering where he hid a £20 million stolen Rembrandt, until all the very predictable twists start coming in... spoiler

The enduring images you will take away after watching this film will more than likely be:

1. A man getting shot in the penis
2. A girl's rotting half-eaten maggoty face in the boot of car
3. Rosario Dawson's full frontal nudity, with freshly shaved vagina.

Or "Dawson's Crack". I thought of that on the way home, you can have that for free. That aside, for a film so concerned with memory this is eminently forgettable. The great British public will probably love it.
11 years ago
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dombrewer

I've been an admirer of Lars Von Trier since he tore up the rule book and thumbed his nose at mainstream sensibilities in the late 1990s to mid 2000s with brave, infuriating and brilliantly unique films like "Breaking the Waves", "The Idiots", "Dancer in the Dark" and "Dogville", not to mention his extraordinary, surreal horror mini-series "The Kingdom" for Danish TV. His third feature film is the last part of the thematically linked "Europe" trilogy, and was the last Von Trier feature I had yet to see; it is without doubt his first masterpiece and belongs in the top ranks of his output.

It follows Leonard a young American pacifist drawn to Germany in the immediate aftermath of WWII hoping to do some good in the newly US-controlled country. He joins his uncle working as a sleeping car conductor on the railway line of the Zentropa Rail Network and falls in love with the daughter of his new employer, but her intentions are not at all clear as Leonard is drawn into conspiracy by hidden remnants of the Nazi regime, as they attempt to undermine the new government through acts of sabotage, murder and terrorism.

Technically this film is a wonder, combining the familiar monochrome and smoky imagery of 1940s film noir with beautiful, often experimental, camera-work evoking a dark dream world where time shifts and truth and reality are unstable concepts. There are occasional shots of colour mixed in with the B&W cinematography, and there is frequent use of back projection which the actors interact with. Like the previous two parts of the trilogy this is a film that revels in its own awareness, but also works as a homage and an updating of the romantic wartime spy thriller. The performances are also strong: Jean Marc-Barr is a convincing, sympathetic lead, open hearted but out of his depth; Barbara Sukowa perfectly cast as the beautiful and dangerous femme fatale, and there's a typically unsettling cameo from ever-reliable Von Trier alumnus Udo Kier. Special mention too to Max Von Sydow who sets up the world of the film beautifully with a measured, omniscient narration literally hypnotising the audience - "On the count of ten, you will be in Europa. I say: Ten." This opening monologue of falling deeper and floating takes on a sinister cast in light of what happens at the end of the film as, like Leonard, we are unable to wake and escape the world of the film. Altogether a work of genius.
11 years ago
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dombrewer

"River of Grass" is essentially an update of the couple on the run story familiar from "Badlands" and "Bonnie and Clyde", except in this instance the mismatched pair, Cozy and Lee, aren't connected romantically, have committed no crime worth running for (after swimming at night in a neighbour's pool they accidentally shoot at, but miss, the owner) and if they are trying to escape anything it is only the monotony of their suburban Florida lives.

Lisa Bowman's performance as Cozy is the focus, she also provides the spare narration, and it's hard not to feel for her as she tries to fulfil her dreams of something better when she can't even get past the toll booth on the motorway.

Kelly Reichardt's debut feature is hampered by the tiny budget and limitations of her cast, but there is enough quality in the storytelling and effective recreation of location and atmosphere to see the promise that would be realised through her increasingly confident and impressive films - "Old Joy", "Wendy and Lucy" and "Meek's Cutoff".
11 years ago
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dombrewer

Just seven minutes long this early, experimental short from Wallace McCutcheon and Edwin S. Porter of "The Great Train Robbery" fame is based on a comic strip character (the first ever comic adaptation?) and shows the bizarre nightmare that that drunken character faces after stuffing himself all night with melted cheese and too much booze. We've all been there.

It's great fun, and the opportunity for the directors to try out some cutting edge special effects including some very effective stop motion and multiple exposures - little demons prod the head of our gluttonous protagonist and his bed bursts into life like a bucking horse and propels them both out of his bedroom window and into the night sky. Simple, funny and a nice little piece of cinema history.
11 years ago
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dombrewer

Aleksandr Petrov's animated adaptation of Hemingway's Pulitzer Prize winning novella is the third attempt to bring the story to the screen following the live action films starring Spencer Tracy and Anthony Quinn - this version is a brisk 20 minutes and won Petrov the Academy Award for Best Animated Short, but personally it left me unmoved.

The medium is, unusually, oil painting on glass which must have been extraordinarily time consuming to shoot. It adds a suitably liquid, vibrant look to the film, but unfortunately the composition and flights of imagination you might expect for an animated reading are sorely lacking. This is a very faithful adaptation and a rather safe one too, lavishly recreating the struggle between man and marlin, but never truly engaging or evoking a sense of wonder; a perilous sea voyage and battle of wills has never felt quite so pedestrian.

Very nice to look at, but much less deep than the sea it animates.
11 years ago
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dombrewer

You'd be hard pressed to find a modern British film trying so very hard, valiantly even, to be an American one. There's a nagging sense in mainstream British cinema that everything boils back down to mockney, chavs and fish 'n' chips, there's no room for serious a glossy action movie because we don't take ourselves seriously enough. As soon as you hear British accents on screen (those villainous RPs aside) it's all vaguely parochial and made-for-TV. Credit then to director Eran Creevy that "Welcome to the Punch" really looks like the real deal - everything about the visuals and the editing style reminds you of Michael Mann's love letters to night-time LA or the convoluted political wranglings of The Wire. Even the character names sound distinctly American - our protagonist and his nemesis are Max Lewinsky and Jacob Sternwood. They're practically names from a western.
It's a shame then that the majority of the dialogue is second rate and the story never as exciting as the way it is presented. McAvoy is a watchable presence on screen (oddly affecting a London accent when his native Scottish would have done just as well) but doesn't have the charisma or subtlety of Mark Strong who gives a focussed anti-heroic performance. Andrea Riseborough (so, so good in "Shadow Dancer") is good if underused as Lewinsky's partner Sarah. Peter Mullan gives another reliably strong performance as part of Sternwood's old team of robbers, Johnny Harris a twitchy, creepy turn as a ex-military man turned gun runner. spoiler but that's a minor issue when the plot is secondary to the style and the interplay between the leads.
It's a slick, noisy affair that's entertaining enough, but ultimately let down by a forgettable, well trodden premise and a morally dim conclusion. One scene raises the bar in terms of originality, and that's a genuinely funny stand-off (or rather sit-down) over a nice cup of tea. Not quite the saviour of the British action movie, but it has a damn good try.
11 years ago
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dombrewer

It appears there has been no more divisive film of the last year than the Wachowski Siblings and Tom Tykwer's adaptation of David Mitchell's "unfilmable" multi-timeline novel; professional reviews have crossed the whole gamut - five stars to one star - Ebert called it one of the best of the year, Time magazine the worst. So, is it a "masterpiece" or a "disaster"?

I've yet to read the novel which Natalie Portman apparently handed Lana Wachowski during the filming of "V For Vendetta" inspiring this adaptation. I gather the central idea of the book is slightly different from this film version, but the concept of six nested timelines all closely interlinked and influencing each other is intact. In essence the film aims to show the progression of a soul through time, evolving or devolving according to the actions of the respective character, and positively influencing the actions of the main character in the next timeline (these characters are marked by a comet shaped birthmark, more than likely representing the person pushing things forward, making a difference, "blazing a trail" so to speak). And those six timelines are exquisitely created; a 19th Century ocean voyage, 1930s Cambridge/Edinburgh, 1970s San Francisco, modern day London, 22nd Century "Neo-Seoul", and post-apocalyptic Earth - 100 years after "The Fall". The visuals of "Neo-Seoul" are the stand-out, it's a sumptuously created work of imaginative sci-fi; equal parts Huxley, Bradbury, Philip K Dick with Blade Runner and TRON inspired visuals.

Cast wise it's a truly eccentric line up; you'd probably never expect to see this cast working in the same film as an ensemble but the surprising strangeness actually works well. Many of the performances are brilliant, and everyone gets a chance to shine at some point in the film playing up to six characters apiece, usually under a ton of make up. Some of those make up jobs are exceptional, some much less successful, but part of the fun is spotting who is playing what and working out who someone is. In a couple of instances you'd never know until the closing credits. For a technically sophisticated, expensive film it's a pleasingly old fashioned concept, depending on the versatility of the cast, evoking the multi-rolling of Alec Guinness in "Kind Hearts and Coronets" or Peter Sellers in "Dr Strangelove". Of the many characters we see Tom Hanks' future valley man Zachry, Halle Berry's journalist Luisa, Ben Whishaw's composer Frobisher, James D'Arcy's scientist Sixsmith (young and old), Doona Bae's genetic clone Sonmi-451, Jim Sturgess' lawyer Ewing and Hugo Weaving's embodiment of evil Old Georgie are all terrific, many are the central character of their respective times. What is fascinating is the way each actor's string of characters progresses or recedes - Hanks' characters take the longest journey from murderers and thieves to a scientist who tries to do the right thing to a superstitious tribesman who finds the courage to become a protector and saviour, finally he is our storyteller. Hugh Grant's unscrupulous businessmen and lecherous consumers eventually become a literal consumer of men, a mute cannibal. Hugo Weaving's string of bad guys ends up with him simply dwindling into a ghost of evil in a society's mythology.

Another exciting aspect is the fascinating, multi-layered connections between the timelines and the way they impact upon each other, to pick them all up would take multiple viewings. Names and numbers repeat themselves - the "fabricant" Sonmi-451 shares the numbers of her name with Luisa's apartment number (both a clear reference to seminal work of science fiction, independent thinking and revolt "Fahrenheit 451"), the number six appears again and again - there are six timelines, six main characters, Frobisher is writing the Cloud Atlas Sextet for six soloists, his lover is Sixsmith... What could be confusing and off-putting is mostly dazzling as long as you are prepared to engage in the film and pay attention; this is truly intelligent cinema, which has something thrilling to say about the impact of all our actions upon the world, echoes that we are unaware of, along with the permanence and importance of artistic expression in all of its forms. I was thinking during the film how the great visuals and the clever make up and crossing ideas were happening at the expense of actual heart, but then the emotional pay-offs happily come in the respective conclusions.

For me three hours in the cinema flew by, testament to how well paced and involving each of the stories are, each adding an element of historical romance, sci-fi action, broad comedy or political thrills as necessary and never outstaying their welcome. If I had to offer some criticisms I'd say the Riddley Walker-esque new language spoken by the post-apocalyptic tribe is impenetrable at times; some of the make-up is extremely distracting, there's a line of unnecessary prosthetic noses and bad contact lenses, and the attempts to alter Berry and Bae's features to Caucasian doesn't convince; Jim Broadbent is fine leading in his own timeline which is intentionally comic ("I know! I know!") but he borders on pantomimic elsewhere. This are minor issues in the face of the whole. I think it's a great shame that the mainstream awards snubbed this film so roundly and many have been put off by the mixed reviews from seeing this film on the big screen; I believe it will find its audience and eventually be recognised for the brave, sprawling, fascinating, flawed but exciting work that it is. I can't wait to watch it again.
11 years ago
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dombrewer

This exceptional, disturbing film details the appalling crimes of the seemingly mild mannered and softly spoken John Christie, an infamous British serial killer from the 1940s and '50s who preyed upon vulnerable women, including prostitutes and those seeking illegal abortions, by raping and strangling them and then concealing their bodies in his ground floor flat and communal garden; spoiler

It would be hard to overstate how well director Richard Fleischer and screenwriter Clive Exton (after Ludovic Kennedy's book) bring this story to the screen. The events are grotesque and upsetting but at no point does the film stray into melodrama or sensationalism - in fact the calmness and mundanity of the telling reflect the personality of their protagonist perfectly. This is in no small part thanks to the work of Richard Attenborough, surely giving his best screen performance - he barely raises his voice for the duration and maintains a chillingly plausible calm and terrible intelligence, the mask only slipping when committing his violent crimes. He is supported by another typically magnificent performance by John Hurt as Evans - a boastful but simple minded and illiterate Welshman, spoiler The film is rounded out by strong, naturalistic performances by Judy Geeson and Pat Heywood as Beryl Evans and Ethel Christie, as well as Robert Hardy and Geoffrey Chater as the defence and prosecution lawyers in Evans' trial.

The art direction and cinematography are also brilliant: the grainy 70s film stock perfectly fits the mood, with accurate attention to period detail (the film was partially shot in the real Rillington Place before it was demolished), the dirty greys, browns and greens of the squalid flat adding considerably to the sense of unease that pervades the whole film. Most impressively we don't see very much of the murders taking place, usually just the moments leading up to and after with a casual, dispassionate eye and the film is all the more horrifying because of it. spoiler

Powerful, subtle and genuinely chilling - one of the great, under-rated British films and easily one of the best films I've seen this year. Highly recommended for anyone interested in true crime and the subtler, grubby corners of thriller and horror cinema.
11 years ago
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dombrewer

Even though this was Dario Argento's debut feature it is remarkably well made; extremely confident, bursting with cinematic flair and bags of atmosphere in what was to become his trademark style, for good and for bad. Like the later "Deep Red" and "Suspiria" he is scores highly on the visuals and atmosphere - several scenes are beautifully shot and cleverly conceived - for example the opening attack inside a white art gallery, the protagonist trapped between two huge glass walls able to watch but unable to help or hear the screams of the injured woman - but low on basic plot logic, a competent script and character motivation, and it is full of the violent misogyny rife in the Giallo genre Argento exemplified. He is more interested in the way a razor would realistically cut the skin of a woman being murdered than what any sane person or basically functioning police department would do if investigating a serial killer. To criticise Argento for realism or logic is a little silly for exactly that reason, as a master of style it really doesn't matter why the police allow and encourage a civilian to pursue an independent investigation when he is directly involved, or why he repeatedly puts his and his girlfriend's lives at risk when directly threatened.
The final twist is nothing extraordinary by today's standards, even predictable, where a thriller needing a twist has now become the norm it's not hard to find one. It also falls apart under too much scrutiny, but again, Argento probably wasn't too bothered about that - as an exercise in style and pure cinema Argento was undoubtedly firing on all cylinders right from the start.
11 years ago
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dombrewer

A partially successful attempt by "War and Peace" director Sergey Bondarchuk to accurately recreate the famous defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte by the British at Waterloo. The scale of the undertaking is astonishing with enormous panoramic vistas of ranked soldiers and most memorably an almost impossible to conceive scene of battle shot from high above as floods of French cavalrymen swarm around formations of British infantry. Those images aren't quite strong enough to forget the clumsy and often confused storytelling that lead up to them however - the script fails to sparkle, weighed down by some muddy and drawn out historical accuracy, as well as some terrible dubbing, a consistent problem in a multi-language cast and crew.

Performance wise Rod Steiger is always a powerful presence on screen and does well as Bonaparte, he is never less than watchable, although his mad leaps from bellowing rage to whispered fervour are overly familiar and get repetitive after a while. Christopher Plummer is excellent as the supercilious snob Wellington, dropping sarcastic quips and barely contained contempt for the men he has to lead and is a perfect intellectual foil for the passionate Steiger. Elsewhere Orson Welles phones in a cameo as the briefly reinstated King Louis XVIII, while Dan O'Herlihy, Jack Hawkins, Virginia McKenna and Terence Alexander from TV's Bergerac fill up the supporting cast.

As a spectacle and physical act of film-making it is now unlikely to be surpassed in this age of realistically computer generated crowds but problems elsewhere stop this from being the true classic it should have been.
11 years ago
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I've yet to see a film by Spanish director Luis Buñuel I've not enjoyed - this sexual melodrama from his Mexican period of the 1950s is simultaneously simple and subtly subversive, and is something of a guilty pleasure.
Typically the black and white cinematography is wonderful with great use of deep shadows to produce a sultry atmosphere, and the performances are also strong. Rosita Quintana is perfect as the devilish, sexy Susana: the recently escaped and possibly dangerously mad girl who tricks her way into the household of a respectable landowner and family man (Fernando Soler) and promptly begins to seduce him and every man in the vicinity for her own amusement and exhibition of power. She's marvellously manipulative, pulling down her blouse to reveal her shapely shoulders whenever she interacts with the men of the house, affecting innocence and compliance around the women.
It's a film with a high sexual charge, we are manipulated as much as the characters are by the way Buñuel films Quintana. A great scene uses different camera angles to show the three men of the household, unaware of each other's mutual obsession, all watching Susana silhouetted (no doubt knowingly) behind her window at night, and of course we are equally complicit in this voyeurism.
The master stroke is how Buñuel subverts the genre, he skilfully tells the story - perfecting the popular style of Mexican melodrama while mocking it at the same time - most notably in the final scene spoiler.
11 years ago
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dombrewer

Based on the real life story of Sardinian writer, poet and professor of linguistics Gavino Ledda, who was deprived a basic education by his domineering father at an early age and forced into becoming a shepherd to support his family, enduring terrible loneliness and hardship while single handedly protecting the livestock as well as the cruel punishments of his father. In essence it's the story of the father and son's troubled, often violent, relationship and Gavino's ultimately successful attempts to escape the shackles of his poverty and the influence of his father/master.

Made by the Taviani Brothers in the 70s for Italian television the story is a simplistic one, but compelling and often troubling. However the strength of the story is let down because of some clumsy and now dated film-making. The Sardinian landscape is muddily shot, the dubbing and sound quality is poor and several scenes stretch credulity or taste. It is true that the shepherd boys, starved of contact with the opposite sex, practised bestiality but the comical, flippant way it is presented will more than likely trouble or repulse many viewers. Similarly Gavino experienced violent beatings at the hands of his father including whippings with branches that permanently scarred the boy - here we can see Omero Antonutti (excellent and convincing throughout as Father) barely connecting with soft branches that would do no harm whatsoever - it's a scene more likely to evoke laughter than horror as father and son run in circles around their shepherd's hut. There are obvious ways to shoot scenes like this to make them more powerful or believable but the decision of the directors to show these elements realistically inevitably diminish the film.
Elsewhere there are some interesting ideas, well executed; the real Gavino Ledda introduces and concludes the story, giving the actor playing his father the stick he carried the day he was taken out of school, blurring the line between the semi-documentary style and the fictional act of recreating the event. A battle of wills between boy and goat is wittily told in voice over. And the most famous scene of the 20 year old Gavino, having physically defeated his father and asserted his superiority, attempts to retrieve his suitcase from under his father's bed to leave for good: their final interaction is powerful, surprising and skilfully handled. That other elements of the film are less successful is a shame, but Ledda's story is worth discovering regardless of that criticism.
11 years ago
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dombrewer

Svankmajer's most recent feature length film is also his most ingeniously animated and by some way his funniest and most satirical.
It opens with a short introduction from the director, animated in the style of the film and clumsily dubbed over in English, where he apologises for the fact that his "psychoanalytical comedy" is a cheap animation rather than a live action film as he'd intended and probably isn't funny at all, and that the animation is just of photographs as the actors were too expensive to hire, even that the introduction was necessary at all to boost the running time. It's an audacious opening and one that brings to mind some of the criticism Svankmajer must face as an animator - where to some audiences his work may not taken as seriously as a live action film, somehow easier to make or cheaper, when of course the exact opposite is the case.
The story involves the waking and sleeping life of Eugene (Václav Helsus), a happily married, middle aged business man who meets and grows obsessed with a beautiful young woman in his dreams. Attempting to see her more often he goes to great lengths to ensure he can dream undisturbed, and makes frequent visits to a psychoanalyst in an attempt to understand what the dreams mean. The wonder of the film is that practically the whole running time is made up of superbly surreal animated photography, not like the work of Terry Gilliam in the Monty Python series and films, regularly intercut with live action moments, so that the real and the surreal are permanently blurred. Neatly manicured ladies hands protrude from windows to politely applaud when Eugene and his dream woman embrace; a watermelon is blown up like a balloon and explodes into reality as it hits the pavement; Eugene's boss has a dog with the body of a suited business man on all fours; enormous snakes slither out of doorways to consume men who can only run on the spot; characters' heads are sucked into their bodies and replaced with those of chickens and crocodiles; the portraits of Jung and Freud on the therapist's wall observe the sessions and approve of her theories (depending on who's theory she is expounding) and break out of their frames to scrap with each other. It's all dazzlingly executed and brilliantly captures the disconnected, otherworldly logic of our dreams.
The story takes a fascinating turn as Eugene's tragic family history is slowly unfolded, and his dreams begin to reveal a darker story, while the screenplay roundly mocks the cult of dream reading and psychoanalytical therapy.
Possibly Svankmajer's best work and that's not too bad for a man who is still pushing boundaries in his mid-seventies.
11 years ago
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Legendary Czech animator Jan Svankmajer has only made six feature length films to date and all are worth watching, but this must rate as one of his best, mixing together stories by Edgar Allan Poe and the Marquis de Sade and adding his own idiosyncratic style; it produces a unique, hallucinogenic and deeply unsettling horror film.
We follow Jean, a young man in the present day who has been struggling with violent dreams of lunacy and incarceration his since the death of his mother, who comes under the influence of a man calling himself, and living like, the Marquis de Sade (Jan Triska, in a gleefully over-the-top performance), which leads Jean to the asylum of Dr. Murlloppe, who runs the building with strange, unconventional methods. We discover through the unreliable source of Charlotte, supposedly the good doctor's daughter and one of the nurses that Jean falls in love with and hopes to rescue, that the real doctors are locked in the cellar, tarred and feathered, and the madmen have taken over the asylum. Jean's attempts to restore order end up taking a darker turn and the "13 Treatments" seen on playing cards during the opening credits are brought into play.
Like any film dealing with madness this one truly teeters on the brink itself, and builds to its inevitable conclusion with all the surrealism and menace of a bad dream. Unlike Svankmajer's other films the animated sections are somewhat less prominent, only appearing as short interludes between scenes, often introducing a new location, where lumps of meat, tongues, eyeballs and skeletal remains frolic to the accompaniment of repetitive jaunty piano music.
Anyone interested in the darker side of animation, looking for an alternative to the Hollywood concept of horror cinema, or aficionados of Poe or de Sade need look no further. A meaty treat.
11 years ago
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dombrewer

Svankmajer's second feature after his excellent re-imagining of "Alice in Wonderland" takes on the altogether darker subject matter of "Doctor Faustus" as told by playwrights and novelists Marlowe, Goethe and Christian Grabbe - the alchemist who sells his soul to the devil for knowledge and power and unable to repent is finally damned.
In Svankmajer's world we are introduced to a ordinary Czech man (Petr Cepek) who on a whim follows an unmarked map through the streets of Prague to a run down theatre, where in a strange twist on audience participation unwittingly becomes the lead actor in a puppet retelling of the classic story.
Given the freedom and scope a part-animated version of this story affords it is disappointing how few imaginative leaps there are - the majority of the animation is of the relatively unexciting traditional wooden puppets, creepy in their way, but simplistic - the birth of a homunculus baby early on is one exception; its face morphing into that of the protagonist, and finally a skeleton. This echoes the most successful animated aspect of this retelling, using Cepek's own face, cold eyed and immobile, as Mephistopheles, although it takes an hour, two thirds of the running time, to get to the crucial point of Faustus signing the deed which then leaves most of the incident of the story out aside from a quick trip to the King of Portugal and a visit from Helen of Troy. The antics of the Marlovian sub-plot, that of the jester stealing his master's powerful books for his own buffoonery, is as tiresome here as in that play. The final twist out of the world of the puppet theatre and back into reality is an effective one where loose threads come together in a violent conclusion, but some notable images aside this ultimately feels like a missed opportunity for Svankmajer to really let fly with some great source material.
11 years ago
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I had low expectations for this latest film from British horror director Christopher Smith (his first film "Creep" was utter twaddle) with Sean Bean strapping on his muddy Lord of the Rings/Game of Thrones beard, broadsword and armour once more, but this turned out to be more interesting than my expectations allowed.
Bean plays the Knight Ulric sent, with a reliable band of dirtied British character actors, to investigate a village where the titular plague has mysteriously bypassed, perhaps due to the sorcery of a fabled necromancer. They are joined by Osmund (Eddie Redmayne), a young monk leading them through the marshland, but secretly planning to desert his order to join his girlfriend. There are strong performances from John Lynch, Tim McInnerny and Carice Van Houten, barely recognisable from her most famous role in Verhoeven's "Black Book", and some nice atmospheric cinematography, although typically most of it is handheld and undermines much of the acting and art direction with its tiresome wobbling. Someone buy the man a tripod.
The dialogue is frequently uninspired, but the premise is a strong one pitting Christians against Pagans in a full-blooded morality tale. Unsurprisingly no one comes away from that head to head looking terribly good, either morally or physically intact.
I probably will go back now and see the rest of Smith's filmography that I've missed. Well, maybe not the one starring Danny Dyer, that really is too grim a prospect.
11 years ago
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This Belgian drama has had a long delay reaching British cinemas - perhaps the success of Audiard's "Rust and Bone" which also starred Matthias Schoenaerts finally prompted a wider release - either way it was a treat to finally see this acclaimed film on the big screen.
Schoenaerts plays Jacky Vanmarsenille a Flemish cattle farmer caught up in an illegal hormonal steroid scam and the murder of an investigating policeman, the events of which bring to the surface some very dark events of his past. His performance is exceptional, bristling with barely contained pain and confusion; Jacky's hulking frame, frequently visually compared to the bulls his rears and sells, covering up the scars of a very lost, very lonely man.
The film is expertly shot with terrific atmosphere and menace, variously in the bleak Belgian fields and farmlands, as well a particularly good scene in a neon lit nightclub. Once the tangles of the plot begin to unravel and parts of the back story begin to fall into place it's hard not to be totally gripped by this very unusual, unsettling tale. Where it slightly falls down is partly in the unrelenting gloom of the story, which gets quite hard to take at times, partly in that some of the supporting performances fall short and that some of aspects of the plot seem overblown for the sake of the character study.
It's really a film to watch to admire Schoenaerts career-making performance, which will stay firmly lodged in your mind, but probably not one for an enjoyable, or even a repeat, viewing.
11 years ago

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