Blackthorn (2011) – review

An indie film purporting to tell ‘Butch Cassidy the latter years’ is an odd concept, particularly when the character dies at the end of one of the most popular American films of the late ’60s.

But Blackthorn isn’t really about Butch Cassidy – the Butch Cassidy tag acts as both convenient marketing and as shorthand for anti-heroes of yore. Really the character here of James Blackthorn (formerly known as Butch) could have been any old West outlaw retired in Bolivia and wanting to make his way back home.

The western is a fantastic genre which allows for lots of expression within a range of well worn archetypes. And like countless others from Once Upon a Time in The West onwards, Blackthorn goes for the ‘passing of the old West’ theme. But it mixes the nostalgia with a celebration of individual spirit and an embrace of friendship.

Beautifully shot but clearly on a low budget, Blackthorn can be rough around the edges at times. But it’s also an undiscovered gem that seems to have passed critics by upon its UK release back in April.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) – review

Soft, warm and reassuring like a spongy pudding, the central messages of The Perks of Being a Wallflower are ‘it gets better’ and ‘aren’t friends great?’. But where it gets better from is a little more murky, with a central theme of sexual abuse never fully acknowledged only shockingly mentioned in passing. Indeed its dark centre is so effectively wrapped in cuddles that the film feels like a sustained nostalgic recollection of heartbreak as a positive experience.

Logan Lerman is the shy teen who befriends the louder Ezra Miller and Emma Watson, but each comes with their own issues and insecurities. Despite their problems everything in the film feels quite nice, with reassuring friendships forming a kind of self-help support group.

Perks is one of those retroactive teen films too, where the characters are smarter than their years, listen to cool music, and have the kind of meaningful conversations the source novel’s author (Stephen Chbosky, who also wrote and directed the adaptation) imagined or at least wished he had at 16. There’s no wit or sass here to water it down either, everything is done with absolute teenage sincerity.

Despite what sounds like some pretty big reservations on my part, I rather enjoyed Perks. I am aware that others may be irritated by it, but for me it fills the void in my heart that can only be warmed by introspective teen flicks.

Holy Motors (2012) – review

Lets start by saying Holy Motors is one of the best things I’ve seen this year, and a true testament to how art can exist in accessible cinema.

I didn’t know much about it going in, and that’s probably for the best, but just so this review makes sense, the central conceit is that Denis Lavant’s character is an actor but not in film or theatre – he dresses up and carries out weird acts across Paris on behalf of an ‘agency’.

Where I wrote about Looper before and bemoaned its inability to say anything, Holy Motors is a film full of ideas and points to make. It’s a film about cinema first of all which is confirmed by an opening shot of a cinema audience. But Holy Motors goes on to break down the rules of film. Certain things don’t make sense – that’s fine, they’re not supposed to, and absurd situations or incongruities are played for dark laughs. It’s a film massively full of ambition, and director Leos Carax has the confidence to pull it off.

Holy Motors’ deconstruction of cinema is used with purpose, commenting on the absurdities of existence, personal passions and desires, and suggests some quite sophisticated things about life as performance.

The cinematic touchstones I drew from it were Nick Roeg’s Performance, The Truman Show and Mullholland Drive – there is something really Lynchian about it. Parts of Holy Motors are insane, but they’re always with purpose and never over done.

Holy Motors is bold, exciting filmmaking and easily enters the top end of my films of the year.

Looper (2012) – review

I find it strange that Looper has been so widely well received, because I took a strong dislike to it.

For me, Looper was manipulatively plotted (so many coincidences), bit off more than it could chew with a telekinesis strand developed late in the game, was blandly directed, and overall pretty shallow.

But mostly, I found Looper cynical. The whole thing was made with a nudge and a wink, “look at how smart we are!”, when really it was a low brow genre exercise with plenty of plot holes and a central conceit I didn’t buy into.

Good sci fi should always have a parable or some relevant things to say, but on face value all Looper seemed to present was some sentimental thoughts about cycles of abuse, oddly presented in voice over at the end when there had been no use of voice over before. But deeper down there was a void too, with Joseph Gordon Levitt’s final act suggesting all the film had to offer was nihilism.

Looper will be a film which divides people regardless of how universally critics agree (93% on Rotten Tomatoes!). Out of the group I saw it with, two of us hated it, two of us loved it, and two were indifferent.

Now Is Good (2012)

Last night I braved an Orange Wednesday in Wood Green (which trust me, I deserve some kind of award for) to see Now Is Good.

The reason for taking on a hellish Wednesday was that Now Is Good’s disappearance from cinemas is sadly imminent after only a week on release, and I kinda wanted to see the film for two reasons, both of which make me sound like a pathetic teenage girl. Firstly, I find leading man Jeremy Irvine quite very attractive, and secondly I’ve developed an appetite for swooning romances after seeing Zac Efron in The Lucky One earlier in the summer.

The intention of Now Is Good is largely to imitate that Nick Sparks style but in a British setting, and Now Is Good does what it does well. Now I don’t have much of a barometer to go on as The Lucky One is my only Sparks experience, but Now Is Good (which is based on a British novel by Jenny Downham) definitely feels heavier than its American counterparts would dare to go. See the lead character in Now is Good is a teenage girl suffering with cancer… and it’s terminal. So, on the one hand it’s a melancholic film, delving into the fears and realities of death from both a teenagers and a parents’ point of view, and on the other hand there’s a blossoming teen romance under threat of being cut short.

It’s an odd mix, and probably sticking to the death theme so rigidly holds it back from being a romantic melodrama that could appeal to a broad audience. And obviously a broad audience was sought – there’s not much other explanation for casting Dakota Fanning in a British film, plus a more optimistic title was used in place of the novel’s one: Before I Die. But alas, Now Is Good failed to make the weekend box office top ten and is now fading from screens.

For me, the film started unconvincingly with some bad acting from minor characters and a terrible stab at a British accent from Fanning. To be honest it many ways carries on unconvincingly too – I’m sure people dying of cancer generally look worse, have less energy and are in constant pain. But emotional weight develops through the film, with Fanning giving a good performance despite the accent, and the ever reliable Paddy Constantine and Olivia Colman doing the whole parents under emotional trauma thing well. And Jeremy Irvine is as dreamy as I had hoped. He might not be the greatest actor around but he gets by well on charm, character and looks. As long as he can do an American accent, there’s definitely a room for him in future Nick Sparks adaptations.

Now Is Good is far from perfect, but I was carried along by it and was genuinely quite saddened by the end.

Standing up for liberal America: Paranorman (2012)

It’s not often I feel impelled to write about a film the minute after I see it, but Paranorman is a revelation.

From Laika animation, those people who brought us the wonderful Coraline, it’s a quite superb stop-motion animation, with beautifully crafted character and set models all contained within superbly framed shots that bring it to life. The music is ace too. Plot-wise it’s not as carefully constructed or surreal as Coraline, but instead is an affectionate homage to horror cinema’s tropes.

But what really caught me off guard and astonished me about Paranorman is how it managed to stuff an absolute load of socio-political commentary into what is essentially a kids animation. Furthermore, due to the escapist horror setting, dumb parents might not even notice the ‘liberal indoctrination’ as Fox News would probably put it if they caught on, but kids are going to be taught meaningful messages and skills.

Norman (the titular character, voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee) is different: he can see dead people. But out of blind hatred for people that don’t conform, his parents and schoolmates choose not to listen but to paint him as a freak, ostracising him… You can probably seen where I’m going with this.

The witch that haunts Norman’s sleepy New England town also had similar sensory abilities, and 300 years earlier was persecuted and hanged by reactionary peers. Back in the present day, a rising of the dead instigated by the witch’s spirit causes the town’s people to form an angry mob, attacking the zombies who actually don’t want to eat brains but only to rest in peace and threatening Norman and his friends for being zombie sympathisers.

Paranorman is a warning against the American right-wing and their mob mentality led by those that wish to destroy all that they don’t understand – whether gays, Muslims, liberals or schoolboys with a sixth sense. It’s a film where “It’s not my fault I that was born this way!” is uttered in earnest, and in a throwaway line the jock character outs himself as gay (in a kids film!). There’s a message of acceptance and tolerance for children to grab hold of and I really hope it sticks.

Himizu (2011)

Set against the backdrop of Japan’s massive March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Himizu is a bold film about a group of people in desperate situations.

But that doesn’t mean it’s slow downer of a film, Himizu is surprisingly assured, fast paced and with vibrant characters whilst remaining contemplative where necessary. The main character is 14 year Sumida old whose mother has left him and father is an alcoholic that periodically turns up to demand money and beat his son whom he wishes wasn’t born. A girl at school, Chazawa, takes an interest in Sumida and becomes his friend but she has her own parental issues, with a mother who hates her. Meanwhile a community of men (and one woman) displaced by the tsunami live in tents outside Sumida’s boat house and form a surrogate family of sorts.

The tsunami-torn setting really is inspired – apparently added to the script after the disaster struck it gives heartbreaking reality to proceedings. In addition to a ravaged Japan, the screenplay’s other content isn’t easy going either. Violence is constant and painfully rendered and parents want their children dead (literally preparing a noose in Chazawa’s case). The cycles-of-abuse theme is a bit heavy handed at times but at least it tries to make a point, and diversions into violence as a means of mentally escaping a dire situation are also pursued.

The message though is one of hope, with the oddball community banding together in the sort of way that I last saw in charming French comedy Le Havre. Parents may suck and casual murders might be on the loose (another side-step the film takes), but there are kind people out there too. Sumida and Chazawa’s teenage relationship is fraught, but at least they have each other. When the film ends on the devastated landscape that has permeated proceedings, Chazawa screams “Sumida! Don’t give up!”

 

My review would normally end there, but I must say as a little addendum, Himizu is beautifully shot and the blu ray transfer is one of the best I’ve ever seen, probably owing to how well the Red One Camera (which was used here) translates to the format.

Lawless (2012)

Sometimes a film can have all the right ingredients but not quite come together. Lawless is one of those.

I was looking forward to the second collaboration between John Hillcoat as director and Nick Cave as screenwriter after their Australian western The Proposition, and the cast of Lawless is really great too, with Gary Oldman, Tom Hardy and Jessica Chastain amongst others. However, Lawless suffers from being formulaic, and not doing anything to stand out from the formula.

Plot wise it’s a standard gangster/smuggling/crime film, borrowing bits of Goodfellas, The Godfather, Blow, Public Enemies and countless others. But those films have style, panache and character depth… whereas Lawless has Shia LaBeouf. LaBeouf here is set to his default mode of annoying, which is a shame as I hoped he could do more outside of the restrictive franchise movies he’s appeared in. Meanwhile Tom Hardy gives an unremarkable performance by his standards, grunting his way through the film in a moderately endearing but ultimately shallow way, Guy Pearce’s smarmy special agent grates, and Gary Oldman is wasted giving a good performance in a severely underused role. I did like Dane DeHaan though, last seen being excellent in Chronicle, and here giving a supporting character life and likeability.

Hillcoat, who made a big impression on me with The Proposition and The Road, struggles to find his own style here – direction is functional and by-the-numbers. At times Cave’s screenplay can be frustrating too – the bad guys have a habbit of turning up conveniently to force tension.

As is always the case though, whenever Nick Cave and Warren Ellis get to do a film score the results are quite beautiful. The style will be familiar to anyone knows the music from The Assassination of Jesse James, The Road, or The Proposition, and again it’s both delightful on the ears and well suited to the film. There’s an added hint of Firefly and Deadwood on a couple of the tracks too, which is always welcome in my book.

My advise with Lawless would be to skip the movie and buy the soundtrack.

Three Colours Blue (1993)

Whenever I tell myself I’m going to stop buying physical media, it’s inevitable that I stumble across something like the Three Colours Triology for just £3 on blu ray(!) in Fopp. That’s the kind of offer if can’t turn down.

Three Colours Blue is a quite superb film, with one of the best female lead performances I’ve seen. Juliette Binoche plays a woman who has lost her husband and young daughter in a car accident, which may sound depressing, and quite frankly it is. But depressing films are often the best films, the ones that affect me the most despite by initial reluctance to watch them.

The whole thing is a superb study in loss, melancholy and trying to move on. Sometimes it’s a bit heavy on blue scenery and props to signify ‘feeling blue’, but I guess that’s the point of the film. Eventually you just go with it. Add in some haunting music – the deceased husband was a famous composer – and the backdrop of France in transition due the rising European Union, and you’ve got yourself a film that is both artistically beautiful and full of depth.

And I cannot stress enough, Binoche is superb.

Tabu (2012)

It’s a rarity these days to find a new film screened in 35mm, and the ICA seemed to make a big deal of the fact they had the only English subtitled 35mm print in existence. For a film that was shot on both 35mm and 16mm, in Black & White Academy Ratio it was a special experience.

So anyway, Tabu is an arty Portugese film which has been causing a stir at various film festivals. After a brief prologue, it starts with a present day story about a Portuguese woman’s relationship with her elderly neighbour, before travelling back in time to see the neighbour’s adventures in Africa as a young woman.

First off, the present day story is exceptional. The acting is superb, the characters are people you want to know more about and director Miguel Gomes uses carefully framed photography to give the audience meaningful and absorbing access into their lives. This part of the film I absolutely adored, and would have happily watched a full two hours of lead character Pilar (Teresa Madruga).

But then we take a dive into the past, an exotic Africa of the 1960s. The whole section is presented in quite a clever way: filmed in 16mm with just voice-over and effects on the soundtrack – no dialogue is heard from the characters themselves. It’s supposed to suggest memory and nostalgia I think, and it is certainly a bold move. It did have the negative effect of distancing me from those characters I felt though, and I certainly found the first half more engaging.

But Tabu on the whole is a wonderfully creative and exciting piece of world cinema.