Film 2013

[Meade's Ball]

Day 2 at the festival and a trio of films viewed. I'll be brief. Or try to be.
Child's Pose: a Romanian film that has a satiristic take on the upper middle classes there. A spoilt son that looks in his early 30s commits a crime he ought to be jailed for against the ordinary, but his fur-coated mother continues to carry out her own investigation, slow using the money-desperate corruption that streams through most authority figures to buy his innocence. It had some good scenes certainly and some amusing parts in amongst the rather horrible tale of guilt being wiped clean, but i wasn't wholly gripped or thrilled by it. It was good at times though.

Borgman: er, what? A dutch film about this troop of strange travellers led by Camiel, a chap who has eerily persuasive powers and routines and surgical procedures, slowly taking control of the house of a generally well-to-do family. It's meant to be blackly comic, and it's odd beside that, or wants to be, but the metaphor being told wasn't too clear and the comedy died out quite early on to make it more dreary and flatly absurd as it went. Meh.

Gravity 3D: now that is a visual spectacle. Wowzer! A technical wondershow. Sandra Bullock as a green science-expert astronaut up there fixing some bugs on a satellite with the the delightfully charming and cheeky space-veteran George Clooney. There's no background story. Just them floating in space with the earth spectacular beneath them, when a machinegun shower of debris strikes and separates Bullock, her spinning into the pit of endless darkness that surrounds her. The first mission is to save her and then various catastrophes follow, but you accept them thanks to the constant glory of all seen. Such an amazing show for graphics and movement of camera and that awful feeling of being trapped and breathless, but in a spacescape so heavenly that you think it wouldn't be so bad a place to drift off and die. The action is constant and the suspense without end. The music at the close got on my wick a little, but overall a memorable spectacular far and away best for the big screen.

 

[vegster]

I caught Blue Jasmine at the DoY's last night, a bit of a contractual obligation for me after having dragged Mrs V to the last two films of my choice. I, like Acker, am not a big fan of Woody Allen, after Sleepers, Bananas and War And Death he drifted in to angst,knucklebiting argumentative comedy which does nothing for me. The two girls to the left of the cinema thought it was a hoot and laughed uproariously throughout, whereas I found little to amuse and nothing to laugh at.

In one scene a bespectacled, weedy dentist makes a fumbling play for Blanchette at his surgery. It was done in such pure Allen style that it could have been lifted from any number of his previous films and it could have been Allen himself in that cameo but for the fact he is 30 years too old.

In fact as certain scenes played out I was more distracted by what happened in the background while the arguments soared and escalated. Blanchett plays the part well but earns little sympathy from me as she ended up in a situation she deserved. So, this is my first whole Woody Allen film for about 15 years and it really seems that time has stood still for him, he has been unable to push on from the same tired format. It was a bit like Status Quo, you know what you are going to get and they have a few good songs but you would not want to see a live gig every year.

" The more things change, the more they stay the same "

6.5

 

[Meade's Ball]

My history of extremely long Filipino films before today was zero long. Now, it's got one on the list. Norte, the End of History. 4.5 hours long. No intermission. Crumbs i needed a wee by the end of it. And a bit of a nap. It was nothing like Gravity with constant action and tension. This was a film that took its time and a lot of it. There'd be scenes of a minute or two staring at sunlit-surfaced river without a flicker of activity on it until very slowly a dot approaches that becomes one of our leads on a boat being paddled along, not a word said. Seven minutes have been spent in total and nothing has happened. Ok lots has happened before here and there that have him on that rivertop, but you sometimes want the fast forward buttons to get to the blinking point.
It's the long and stuttering tale of two men both in need of the use of a fat female loanshark who is rather obviously uncharitable in her profession. One of the men, Fabian, has pulled out of his law degree and seems to have a newfound hate of society. The other is a regular guy, Joaquin, with a nagging injury that gets in the way of employment. The loansharkette gets brutally stabbed to death, about an hour or so in, and Joaquin gets imprisoned for it, a crime he didn't commit. We then see our two male leads have individual segments of their dealing with their situations, one handling the obscene guilt of their wrongdoing and querying how he became that beast, whilst Joaquin has his time on the inside, missing his wife and children enormously and unjustly, and having to cope with Wikwak, the prison bully.

In the end, i liked it. I was struggling for the first 90 minutes or so with the languid pace of it all, but once matters began to happen around and about the place, i became more gripped, to the point where the final 2 hours were tense and fittingly dramatic in spite of the slowness. I shan't be repeating the feat of such a titanic viewing, but i am tiredly glad i did and enjoyed a vast final chunk of it. Norte will not get a release, i don't think.

 

[Beach Hut]

Le Week-End

In parts funny in other parts not and a bit dis-jointed.

Think we were the youngest people in the cinema which says something

 

[Meade's Ball]

My first today was The Congress. It's under the hands of Ari Folman, who made the startling Waltz with Bashir a few years back, but this time the first half of it is live-action. Unfortunately, it concerned Hollywood itself, so it was all self-referential, to the point where it stars Robin Wright all the way through as herself. It's about her selling her image to the studio that made her, unhilariously called Miramount, and giving up acting for life as computers can use her scanned self. Her agent is played by Harvey Keitel and he makes various jibing japes about her having lost him so much money by always choosing the wrong films, and by buggery that was the correct accusation over this nonsensical tripe. Halfway through, 20 years into the future, Wright takes a potion that allows her to go into animated land. Which makes no sense. None at all. And her capers there take us in no direction at all, or too many. The artwork is sometimes reasonable, but has no place for being there. It was agonisingly bad and i felt for the actors, for a moment perhaps, until i felt for myself again as i still had more to sit through. Shite.

Thankfully, the evening had me taken to Nebraska, Alexander Payne's latest. I like Payne, although his last few have been a tad flat. This was also not carrying the amusement and might of Sideways, but i liked it. It took a while to become something, but while the effect isn't lasting, it moved and tickled in places. I liked it in black and white also. I was at a showing earlier in the year when Ben Wheatley spoke of using black and white when you don't wish for the distractions in the backgrounds of shots that colour brings, and the lines written all over the faces of the characters speak endlessly. In this this was largely true as it's a tale of Bruce Dern, and his family, looking to be taken to Nebraska to collect the million dollars he thinks he won thanks to receiving the sort of postal spam that's dead in the water now with constant similar makebelieves sent out by email and ignored. Dern wants his money nonetheless and one of his sons finally gives in to drive him there from Montana instead of allowing him to walkdown the motorway. They travel via Dern's brother's home in a town full of meatheads and buffoons, many of them closer to the grave than birth, and this journey and the little clashes Dern quietly has with people whose memories must be blurred at best are a sometime little joy. The Meade liked it enough, but some of that pleasure may have been relief after the god-awful first flick of the day. Dern's wife is amusingly foul and lively for an old dame.

 

[shirley]

Film 2013:

-The Wolf of Wall Street
-Walking with Dinosaurs
-The Monkey's Paw
-Justin Bieber: Believe.

 

[Meade's Ball]

I'll try to be concise. 6 films in the last couple of days and the festival has truly come alive for me.

Ilo Ilo - nice debut feature from Singapore about a maid hired from Indonesia and the mild relationship that develops between her and the son of the family who is undoubtedly neglected. Warm and naturalistically moving, the story, and cheekily funny, but the setting is the late 90s and the economic struggle in Singapore steps in and deepens the surroundings. Twas the UK premier thanks to the original premier a couple of days before having technical difficulties that destroyed the showing. The director was a good and amusing guy.

Omar - a Palestinian thriller that i really enjoyed. The look of it is crisp and it's largely musicless, the environment an almost audible whisper of tension in itself. Omar is part of a little revolutionary gang who plan action. When a cop is shot dead, the authorities come down on them hard, with some good roof-climbing chase scenes. What comes out afterwards is that no one is to be trusted and might have their own agenda, including Omar himself. But the place is awash with possible betrayal, so the rest of the film turns you hither and thither and feeds a couple of killer moves. Softly political and making it more action and thrills than an exposé on life behind enemy lines, but the setting itself feeds on the unknown and a stressful wish for escape and change. Good stuff.

Touch of Sin - this won awards, this Chinese 4-parter, but it left me a little unfeeling. Each saga is a statement about China's confusion over what it now is, reflecting the reports on suicides within business and revenge against corporations struck with gunfire. It looked good and some of the imagery was fine, but it didn't stick together for me. Maybe in a different mood i would have preferred it. Good, certainly, but a bit untied together, so i didn't feel its intended scratch of my insides.

Under the Skin - Scarlett Johansson in the nude. Surely a lure for a number out there. She's an alien, who seemingly has come to Glasgow to learn about the human race, and in doing so attracts men into her van and to her homes that will follow her across the slick veneer floor, sinking into the black lava. It's a film told from her perspective, so it's noises and snippets of humans stared at in a glance and recorded and some situations she's unsure of how to handle. It was described as an experimental film, and it certainly does not follow the formulaic structure, but it was a very good show with some impressive imagery and the screeching sounds mixed in with the wall of music really tearing at you as you watch. Some funny parts too. I thought it suitably ironic for an alien to be looking to understand human life being played by an American trying to work out what the hell a Glaswegian might be saying. Apparently, a lot of the first half with Scarlett driving around was with newly-designed hidden cameras, so the conversations she's having, inquisitive ones to learn secrets of people, were authentic, and the flirtation she uses easily wins over the passers by that climbed on board. I wanted to ask at the end whether these local chaps were also the ones that erectly follow Scarlett to their doom, but of course didn't pluck up the courage. Good film though.

Like Father Like Son - out this weekend so not seen much in advance, but oh my god i loved it. There's something about Hirokazu Koreeda's work that is slyly and quietly sublime. This is about a well-to-do and business-minded father who finds out, with his wife and 2 other families, that there was a mix-up between the newborns in the hospital and their now-6-year-old son Keita is perhaps not biologically theirs. What follows then is the meeting with their actual son who is happy and bouyant in a family of greater happiness and how everyone deals with exchanging their raised children for the one's that bloodly theirs. Japan in this is a country of constant politeness, and in being that there is no shouting or accusations or curses laid out, and an outward kindly matter-of-factness to proceedings when we know full well that so much goes on and is felt beneath the surface. It was gentle and striking in one and i was almost for the first time brought to tears in it with one moment. An amazing film. It'll be tough to beat it for my festival fave.

The Double - Richard Ayoade's comedic and disturbing take on Dostoyevsky's tale. Jesse Eisenberg is his usual stammering and nervous self in a dystopian office of lifelong pros unappreciated for their work, staring out unspokenly at the girl of his dreams who works in the photocopying department. His doppelganger appears, a super-confident version of himself, and life changes for better and worse. It was good. The rooms are darkly painted in this loveless and asocial environment and the hopelessness rings true, but the tone is darkly comic and surreally amusing more and more in the midst of the part-clash of identicals. Some good cameos and some good direction. Definitely worth a look when it comes out. Had some good The Apartment references in the romance and office power battle, and that's a great film to pay respect to in something Brasil-esque.

 

[Meade's Ball]

Fans of my mindless cinematic babbling will be pleased my day off the festival is over and back i went for a doublebill this arvo. I started off with a Brazilian film called They'll Come Back. When i read the description briefly a while back it mentioned a metaphorical road movie theme to it, so i bit. It was in one of the small screens, and i felt i should venture for the more miniscule and less talked of to get the fuller flavour of the festival again. Sadly, this was really quite boring. A brother and sister in their early teens are booted out of their parents' car and left by the roadside for squabbling and to teach them a lesson. The parents don't seem to come back though. The brother goes off to a gas station and tells his sister to stay where she is. She does. For a day. By a motorway. No one comes back for her. So off she strolls. I'd like to say she has an adventure or two and learns about herself but that doesn't seem to the be the case in a rather wordless and expressionless little journey. The end has some parts to it, but i wasn't too bothered when we got there, and off i fled when the director appeared for a Q&A. A bit vacuous and without the style necessary to cover it.

Things brightened a bit with number 2: We Are The Best. It's 1982 in Stockholm and a couple of 12 year old girls give themselves punky haircuts and pledge to make a band, in spite of no musical training being anywhere near either of them. A coming of age comedy drama follows. It's directed by Lukas Moodysson who had his success with the comical 70s hippy commune piece Together, and the feel of this is fairly similar with its combination of the graphicness of its subject and sometime cruel honesty of life's misfits in its humour. It was good overall, in spite of the sometimes annoying manner of the set of girls' lead singer. When she began to grate then a decent laugh or two were had, so it won me over enough to approve more than not. It looked like 1982 as well, which is a funny time in retrospect in terms of the general looks of the people of that era.

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

I want to give a heads up to the best film of the year so far by some margin and the greatest acting performance of the year by a considerable margin from what I have seen. Captain Phillips. The film is quite superb from start to finish and Hanks gives his best performance since Saving Private Ryan, 1998. His acting in this is quite remarkable especially the last 10 minues when under post traumatic stress in the medical, I am finding it hard to remember such a tour de force scene of acting ability than this for years. Greengrass delivers a taught, tense and brilliant film with the actors playing the Somalian pirates all being wonderful with no previous film experience between them. Hanks is a shue in for a best actor Oscar nomination. 8.7

 

[Acker79]

The Fifth Estate
Through all the trailers I had thought Benedict Cumberbatch was doing south african accent. I didn't really know much about Julian Assange, so didn't realise it was Australian.

It seemed to want to debate the pros and cons of completely free access to information, without really having a serious debate about it, more just allusions to a debate, simplistic arguments that hint at something more in depth but never commits.

There was an addendum just before the credits which has a to camera scene with benedict basically saying similar to what was in the open letter from Assange that has been floated in the press recently, with comments about the film being based on the two worst books etc, as if the point all along was that we should, as individuals, seek out truths we seek but it seemed more of an appeasement than a sign of the films original intent.


Prisoners
It is long. It's over 2.5 hours before the end credits

It's a little hard to really discuss without spoiling. There are parts where it seems like they want to analyse the idea of 'how far will you go' and 'does torture work?' but it seems to conflict with the rest of the story they want to tell, and as it enters the final third it starts to lose its way as it goes from a somewhat interesting tale that keeps you guessing, feelings helpless as the parents, then in the final third segues into a simple run-of-the-mill crime thriller.

Jake Gyllenhaal seemed a little miscast. He's introduced as a police investigator who has solved every case, but you look at him and think he's only been on the job 5 minutes, but he seems to walk around without any sense that he answer to senior authority, a lone investigator who has no issue going into buildings without letting anyone know or radioing for back up etc. (he also does something in one of his interviews that has what should be dire consequences, but nothing appears to come of it). He also looks like he's trying to play out of shape, old, jaded cop but he's too young and fit to pull it off convincingly.

 

[Meade's Ball]

I want to give a heads up to the best film of the year so far by some margin and the greatest acting performance of the year by a considerable margin from what I have seen. Captain Phillips. The film is quite superb from start to finish and Hanks gives his best performance since Saving Private Ryan, 1998. His acting in this is quite remarkable especially the last 10 minues when under post traumatic stress in the medical, I am finding it hard to remember such a tour de force scene of acting ability than this for years. Greengrass delivers a taught, tense and brilliant film with the actors playing the Somalian pirates all being wonderful with no previous film experience between them. Hanks is a shue in for a best actor Oscar nomination. 8.7

Can i recommend A Hijacking, a Danish film about a cargo ship being hijacked by Somalian pirates out earlier this year? I doubt Philips was any kind of remake as A Hijacking is not an action-filled adventure, but maybe after a week or two away from Hanks one it wouldn't be bad to check out the one i mention. I really liked it.
I might see Philips on Monday.

 

[Acker79]

Mark Kermode suggested a double bill of A Hijacking and Captain Phillips on a recent video blog.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/markkermode/posts/Hijacking-Stories

 

[Meade's Ball]

Ok, another 5 films.

Milius - a documentary about John Milius, the director of some of the early 80s terrible films such as Conan and Red Dawn, but also the writer for some great scenes in movies to remember, such as Apocalypse Now and Jaws, where as the good friend and part-classmate of the likes of George Lucas and Spielberg and Coppola he was called in to make things great. Twas a homage to him really and could have been shown on tv without any enormous interest, all thanks to Milius having had a stroke a few years ago and this being made to recognise his place in the history of film.

Night Moves - after seeing two Jesse Eisenbergs in The Double, i got another one in this environmentalist terrorist drama directed by Kelly Reichardt, who only does Oregon, basically In this is Eisenberg and Dakota Fanning and Peter Saarsgard looking to blow up a dam to make a statement. We see the planning and the build up to it all with no back story to the characters, as if we just happen to have stumbled into that segment of time when this is happening. No music, no shrieking drama, just expression and actions and dialogue. It was rather good. A neat and slow piece about the dark underbelly of any movement you wish to look into the heart of. Not many laughs to be had, but the seriousness was gripping.

Hide Your Smiling Faces - a film about two brothers, one 16 and the other 11, confronted by mortality as a body of the friend of the younger is found on the riverside. They're in the middle of a forest and nature has a hold of them, whilst little else does, and these 2 lads in their schoolfree summer merely cavort and play in ruins and steaming lilypad-covered lakes and with the skin of once-living insects in their hands. There's boredom, and a little experimentation and just filling time, whilst the memory of death permeates through their lives. It was ok. The dialogue goes off a bit obviously in stages, but sometimes it's clear that it's just footage of young people playing games in the places they are. The greenery was beautiful and oddly crushing, but the film doesn't click entirely. A good enough debut though.

The Past - i had thrills inside when the A Separation director was having his new film showing at the festival, so tickets were bought and stored safely. A very tough act to follow, and this doesn't live up to those standards, but still a very very good show. Paris and a husband returns there to divorce his wife at her request, the secret of their split unexplained. She asks him to talk to their child, 15 years or so old, and the seeds of possibility are planted as to something not quite right. The film then unravels mild twists and secrets as it goes, us wondering who might to be blame for an incident and who exactly loves who. It was smart and engrossing. Stars Berenice Bejo from The Artist and Tahir Rahim from A Prophet, who was there to introduce it and stuck around to talk about its making after. I'll see it again when it comes out. Not as good as Like Father Like Son or Gravity, but still in my top 3 of the festival thus far.

And finally, Salvo - a Sicilian film about the mafia that opens with the usual gunfight and cars with shot-through windows and a chase with guns to hand that can go with such a film. But then it turns sharply into something a bit different as blood ends being spilled and the psychological repercussions of what's going on take over. Words were few and far between but the tension remains rife in our hitman's abduction of his enemy's blind sister and their possibly growing relationship, each of them finding light in different ways. It was good. I'd like to see it again when my brain's not quite so tired. The look of it was fine. The Q&A afterwards with the directors was fascinating as they spoke of the many years it took to make and where they'd have to go to raise funding for such an outing which could only afford one or two takes. Admirable effort that had me thinking a bit of Lee Marvin in Point Blank.

 

[Meade's Ball]

The festival and i have now separated, but we did it in style. Or they did. I was me.

12 Years a Slave - i had high hopes for this, in spite of the subject matter of abduction and slavery in the 19th century being undoubtedly foul and horrendous, and that mistake was partly mine. A good film, yes, but it felt so different to director Steve McQueen's other 2 features and i wondered why. It felt a studio piece. Maybe McQueen wanted this tale go to as wide an audience as possible and went for the formulaic. Or maybe it was having the likes of having Brad Pitt as producer, and therefore as "actor" for the very worst part of the film. Overall, though, a slight disappointment. Purely for having a bit of a Spielberg touch to it by throwing in Hans Zimmer music from the start, telling us cheaply how to feel, when really, i didn't need to be told to feel sad over the situation of a man having life removed from him for a long period.
Anyway, Chiwetel Ejiofor plays the celebrated violinist in New York who is stolen from his free life and traded for slavery down south, beaten externally and internally, for as long as his many years lasted. He gives an expert performance as a man of intellect having to hide it for continued fear of the lashings for daring to impersonate a human, in the eyes of the unstoppably sickening whites who think of ownership of animal flesh rather than assessments of human character. Some scenes are difficult to stomach and brilliantly put together, particularly one in which his attempted hanging has him stand on tiptoe in the mud to just about stay alive, as life goes on around him with children playing and other slaves going about their business, all because a human taking his last breaths by noose was such a common sight. Michael Fassbender gives a general masterclass in acting, highlighted all the way by his brief scene with Brad Pitt. An oscar-winning film, and i don't say that as an entire compliment. I hope McQueen goes back to being chillingly shocking in a more artistic way next.

New World - the brochure sad "a combination of Infernal Affairs and The Godfather", and that was incredibly accurate as it looked to directly copy both. Korean cop and gangster thriller a little unmemorable, and nonsensical, but alright to fill a couple of hours out of the rain for.

Heli - now this one was good. A Mexican family go about their daily lives unflambouyantly and with light humour, until they are tossed into the world of the drugs traffickers whose war with the authorities seem to quietly dominate general life. The effects are crushing and violent and transform Heli, the only survivor from a raid and abduction of the family. Some excellent and shocking sort of thrilling naturalism to it, in a world of windless stillness to it and the most beautiful and filling skies. I do recommend seeing this when it comes out. An oh my god someone has set fire to a penis as a torture method scene still stays with me. A good film that one.

I did love this festival truly. Now, onto the BFI's gothic season with some horror classics and an evening in conversation with George Romero.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Saw the Metallica 3D concert thriller movie thing on Friday. Highly amusing, over the top and fun with some seriously good concert footage.

 

[Acker79]

Captain Phillips
I really liked this. I didn't really know much about the true events it is based on, which probably heled, but it was also just generally very good. The tension was great, even just the boat pulling away from harbour at the beginning was intense and foreboding.

There were some flaws, such as the sense of drama that the navy captain who initially took control of rescue/negotiation attempts that was too much for a character we didn't know well enough, and a few moments where you wonder about the logic behind certain tactical decisions. But that really is just nitpicking. It was very good.

I also really liked something about the end but don't want to spoil it

 

[Meade's Ball]

I went to see Enough Said the other night. I am not sure whether i'm a Gandolfini fan per se, but news this was his last work held the meagrest of interest. It was an unspectacular affair in terms of the Gandolf, him having not the greatest chance to shine, but his tenderness rang at least partially through. This was a film for the facially stressed and strained Julia Louis Dreyfus to be the centre of attention, as the middle aged woman with a daughter on the verge of college and facing a life on her own. But she meets an unlikely possible partner in Gandolfini. Both characters are generally light and their difficult in getting together is a tad silly, but it was ok. Not as funny as it might have been, but Dreyfus was decent and likeable in spite of her partial wrongness. Light and humorous in places.

 

[Lord Bamber]

Parkland

Very enjoyable and easy to watch film, based on the book 'Four Days in November". What makes Parkland different from other Kennedy based films is it successfully weaves together the assassination and subsequent chain of events through the eyes of some of the key witnesses immediately after the shooting and concentrates on some of those who, over the years have received less focus. The film does not aim to be controversial on an event which after all has become, one of histories greatest conspiracies, purely portraying the facts, bringing to life the extraordinary and chaotic scenes of the aftermath, which it achieves.

 

[piersa]

I don't contribute to this thread a great deal but love it. Best thread on NSC.

 

[piersa]

I saw THE WAY WAY BACK the other day. I enjoyed it. Had a feeling of reality about it. 7/10
Also saw THE INTOUCHABLES. This is a very engaging film. 8/10.