Kill Your Darlings (2013)

The American film industry is desperate desperate desperate to tap into the prevailing fondness that postmodern society harbours for the Beat Generation of the 40s, 50s, 60s - which also happened to be an unprecedented period of American glory, creativity and technological innovation when they were at the spearhead of the civilised world, sure of their white man ideals, vastly removed from the broken social ills of the modern States. The Beats were a landmark group of American men who subverted and inverted literary traditions to forge new ways of writing that was original and visceral and angsty. The principal three figures of said movement are here portrayed in this decent rendering of that period - for the uninitiated that's Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Bill Burroughs.

Previous attempts at capturing their spirit in visual cinematic form have been mixed: the Kristen Stewart On The Road immediately springs to mind, although the David Cronenberg rendition of Burroughs' 'novel' Naked Lunch was, to my mind, curious and surreal enough to be considered good (that was a semi-biographical biopic, though heavily based on some of the abstract scenes from the book). So debut director and screenplay writer John Krokidas had gumption to take on the Beat legend and wrestle it into a workable filmic framework. His portrayal had two main approaches: tackling the Beats when they were still at the University of Columbia as the New Vision, before their ideals were yet fully defined; and making Lucien Carr, an early figure in the Beat story, a central character specifically his murder of David Kammerer. These are intelligent approaches and, to a degree, work nicely.

Problems arise when the four characters - Ginsberg, Carr, Kerouac, Burroughs - are split, and Krokidas doesn't seem necessarily sure which of the men to focus on; there are montage scenes which try to centralise all. He's prevaricating to include all Beats in one singular orgy of celebration. As the end notes configure when they detail the successful lives that these men would go on to leave, apart from Carr.

Obviously the main attraction to this picture is Daniel Radcliffe playing Ginsberg. Some, like myself, have queried Harry Potter's acting ability in the past but in Kill Your Darlings Radcliffe is actually very good; he interprets early Ginsberg as a young writer with ambition though nerved out by the new philandering narcotic surroudings that Lucien Carr introduces him to. At this stage in his life Ginsberg is caught between his adult artistic lifestyle and the sheltered middle-class upbringing he's had under his poet father and mentally maladied mother. Dane DeHaan is the social renegade and homme fatale, a suave young man who whips naive fellows into the whirlwind of his life and spits them out with sexual rejection. He leans his life on figures captivated by his persona, like David Kammerer and briefly Ginsberg, and relies on the safety net they provide to live wantonly. DeHaan is good at portraying these hidden haunted characters; he's an actor set for the big lights: he did well in The Place Beyond the Pines earlier this year and stars in the new Spiderman, next.

Kill Your Darlings is a decent addition to the canon of biographical Beat movies though it never strays into the pasture of excellence, even when it uses TV On The Radio for a night-time escapade. Oh yeah there's a lot of homosexuality but it never feels strained or forced but a natural progression. Krokidas never approaches these themes awkwardly or inorganically and they are executed with delightful emotion and brio.

The Place Beyond the Pines (2013)

The Place Beyond the Pines was released into the world way back in spring of this year, a kind of dramatic epic that sprawls across its 140 minute runtime incorporating three distinct acts and time periods. The first sees Ryan Gosling in his usual reticent role choosing to look stay in Schenectady to watch over his son Jason, who lives with mother Eva Mendes. But he approaches the issue of financial support in a demonstrably non-lawful manner and is shot by the policeman Bradley Cooper, who is subsequently wracked with guilt. Cooper has a son called AJ, the same age as Jason. The third act concerns their volatile, dysfunctional friendship which is ignorant of the morbid connection between their respective father's.

Director Derek Cianfrance (who also co-wrote) has constructed a very tender story set in rural town America spanning nearly two decades, infusing the stories with effervescent cinematography (by Sean Bobbitt who I am a big fan of) that furnishes every image with a staccato pungency that bristles with colour, life, deliberation, spectacle and a soundtrack that, with the aid of Suicide and Bruce Springsteen and Salem, reaffirms that.

Gosling's Luke Glanton is a stuntman attached to an itinerant circus with a talent for motorcycles, though he's limited in other areas like subtlety and job prospects; the responsibility of a son is thrust upon him by Mendes, a local girl from Schenedactady (however the fuck you spell that). Lured by the quick fixes a bank robbery could supply him and his son, Luke with his friend Robin (Ben Mendelsohn) become successful at their heists. Luke goes one job too far. He is face to face with Cooper's Avery Cross and the story is transposed to him. Cianfrance's introduction of Cross is sneaky and well executed, shifting the focus between the two characters in a convincing manner.

Cross becomes a public hero after his exploits against Glanton though he faces moral dilemmascorruption from within his own police force

Those two stories though are, in fundamental terms, the prologues to their teenaged sons Jason and AJ, played by Dane DeHaan and Emory Cohen. They're both fucked up druggies with daddy issues and frequent the local police stations though Avery Cross, now an attorney or something, using his political influence to keep an eye on both of them. Self-discovery, good acting and debauched parties ensue and young Jason is left liberated yet stultified with the truth of his father - he disappears to find himself.

Whilst it may be a little length for those with shorter attention spans The Place Beyond the Pines is a very appealing movie, visually - and style is enough to keep me going for hours; in that sense I guess I'm pretty easy to please. But there is a veracity and vigour of content in here that puts a level above other style heavy pictures like Malick's To The Wonder or anything by Carlos Reygadas. I'm sorry for this review being not very good, but I'm just really tired right now. In a conventional sense it's not really finished, but I'm just going to call it postmodern (or metamodern) and publish it anyway. I ducked out a bit on the story because it's an arduous re-telling and spoiler aplenty; there's good stuff on the cinematography though... but then you don't have to like it

Permanent Vacation (1980)

Jim Jarmusch is one of those idiosyncratic filmmakers whom one only discusses in furtive whispers behind bookshelves of Proust, his curious filmography having spread almost by word of mouth. If the shock of platinum hair has always rendered him visually memorable his cinematic studies of curious unorthodox characters has become a filmic trope in American independent circles.

Permanent Vacation was his first full length feature - though even that clocks in at a comparatively lowly 75 minutes. We follow Morrissey-lookalike Ally Parker a daydreaming teenager with a furious wanderlust, both in temporal and spatial terms. Temporal because his music tastes and sartorial look is based on 50s rock'n'roll/teddy boy, slicked back hair; spatial in the sense that he is perennially walking around New York City, but with always with an eye on other places. He's searching for new experiences and locations but never with any intention of settling anywhere, a permanently fleeting spirit with nothing to tie him down. And it's something that he revels in, enjoying the disapproval others have for the manner in which he conducts his life.

Ally explores the broken urban backstreets of America encountering characters stricken by the ruthless pedagogical systems, living amongst the rubble of ruined buildings. But he decides to leave for Paris, though not before meeting an exact French replica of himself going in the other direction: both are enigmatic and laid-back, though seeking a kind of reassurance from the other that their respective cities are worthy of boots-on-the-ground exploration.

Travel, the wandering nature and resistance to a conventional life - jobs, families et cetera - are modes of living that have always appealed to me; thus I see in Permanent Vacation a beautiful idealism, a search for adventure and uncovering of the unknown that appeals to me personally. Constant itinerancy has a romance.

This debut is more a demonstration of Jarmusch's writing abilities - to capture unusual characters in episodic fashion relinquishing the restricting necessity of a plotline. It's a strange beginning to a career but wholesome and curiously optimistic.

Loves Of A Blonde (1965)

Another classic now, Milos Forman (who would later do One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest) and his Czechoslovakian Loves Of A Blonde. This is a succinct tale of naive youthful romance set in a bleak Communist background. 

A factory boss is concerned that his all female workforce will become 'lonely' and unproductive without the presence of a local military regiment, and so a small middle aged force of reservists are dispatched to take up residence nearby. Three of those men attempt to coax the rather gorgeous Andula (Hana Brejchova) and her two friends at an introductory dance, but trip over themselves in some hilarious ways. Andula however is dazzled by Mila a much younger piano player from Prague; she spends the night with him instead, then breaks up with her boyfriend and follows Mila to the big city uninvited and presents herself to his parents.

Mila's parents are the quintessential married couple, taking the time honoured roles and opinions usually shared out between the husband and the wife. He is unworried by Andula's sudden appearance and is acquiescent to allow her overnight refuge at their small apartment; the mother becomes anxious over the moral destitution of her son, and blames Andula for being mislead. Mila's philandering cad-ish ways are gradually revealed and Andula returns to her provincial workplace spurned and in diminished mood. 

Loves Of A Blonde is a laudably funny film, even 50 years later. It retains the humour because it features the same relationship problems and interchanges that are universal across the spectrum of modern time, poignantly exacerbated by Forman's long drawn out scenes, whose direction is tasteful throughout. It may be twee and cutesy but not in a depletive way, it's coy but prizes naivety as a positive characteristic of youth. Glorifies and romanticises youth yet satires, fondly, it's penchant for brash action.

There is undoubtedly a political statement, subtly enfolded. It has been suggested that Andula and her friends are emblematic of the political docility of a generation grown by a system of government that has no wish for its population to become educated or aware of the world's outside of the eastern European Soviet communist bloc they reside in. Instead of campaigning for democratic liberation they chase boys and love. Deconstructing this theory, one would have to say that the opinion has been forwarded in a world in which democracy has 'won' and communism has 'lost' with, retrospectively, a clear and obvious comparison of inferiority to the lives and pursuits of contemporaneously young people in the west - i.e. by 1965 capitalist juveniles weren't slaving away in factories, mostly, but revelling in High Beatlemania. Therefore retrospective opinion puts a tendentious or slightly misread interpretation on the message that Forman may have been trying to convey. (I could probably source some Forman interviews in which he might have explicitly stated what his political intentions were for this film but I can't be bothered, because I'm not getting paid for this stuff yet therefore I can safely and legitimately write anything I want without any form of factual grounding). There is one scene of particular interest when the girls of the dormitory unanimously VOTE for a new resolution on an agreement of morality. Is this the vanguard of the winds of change or a satire on the unanmity of governmental desire for the uniformity of its people, a reflection of the communist ballots of the time - in which everyone was unanimously in favour, officially, of Soviet coercion. Difficult.

Beyond the potential political implications, Loves Of A Blonde is a luscious film of cinematic daring and execution, purposefully and effectively comical.

Jules et Jim (1962)

A long time ago I reviewed Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless and decided that that should be the start of a La Nouvelle Vague series. Alas, due to many disparate and long-forgotten reasons I never followed up on that. BUT we're back with the next most famous picture that originated from that feted cinematic epoch, Francois Truffaut's Jules et Jim. 

A tale that made Jeanne Moreau a legendary name in the annals of film, a movie that immortalised the buddy film. Not a buddy film forged in the retrogressive but fondly remembered style of 80s American cops but in the romantic, emotionally sophisticated Paris and verdant German countryside. The titular German Jules (Oskar Werner) and native Frenchman Jim (Henri Serre) are the closest of friends, who share literature and women in pre-First World War Paris. But like many other men of that time they are thrown about by the war, drafted, segregated and alienated from one other by the enforced boundaries of politics and war. 

Mixed up in those broader social movements is Jules' marriage to the young femme fatale Catherine to whom Jim shares a furtive passion. She is impulsive yet delectable, enviably prone to switching her exalted attention between the two stricken men at a moment's notice; and they are caught on her life affirming hook, drawn - like all men would be - by her idiosyncracies and intentionally controversial iconoclasm. Moreau plays Catherine as a woman who subverts female and romantic paradigms, able to sustain loving relationships with any man she chooses. Of course she features in some of the most famous scenes, like the song 'Le Tourbillon' which she performs for her three lovers about half way though. It's an autobiographical number that reveals precisely how she wishes to be perceived by them: as an ephemeral spirit, purposefully naive, untameable and unknowable, able to bounce fancifully from one romantic or lively situation to the next without any strings attached.

Yet her immorality and unfaithfulness eat away at her insides and facilitate her destruction; indeed Truffaut is keen to stress to inevitable victory of morality, that Catherine can only stave off the moral consequences of her whimsical, selfish actions for so long. In that sense, unlike other French New Wave films, it is an exercise in thematic idealism. Moral idealism.

Yet the film is called Jules et Jim. This is as much about the friendship of those two men which quite beautifully transcends jealousy or covetousness. Despite sharing Catherine's affection they remain as brothers. This is in part due to the soft, lenient, forgiving, indulgent (perhaps even weak) nature of Jules whose gentle love for Catherine allows her free rein to do what she pleases with whom she pleases; meanwhile Jim appears apologetic about his ardour for Catherine, the wife of his bff.

Undoubtedly a gorgeous story exploring the delicacy of affection and the tedium of a quiet life. Not Truffaut's though - this picture is based on the novel by Henri-Pierre Roche, who had been until Truffaut's adaptation relatively unknown and even recommended Moreau for the central female role. Now he has been immortalised. The narration segments, axiomatic of La novelle vague, were lifted directly from the original manuscript.

Truffaut did not intend this to be a standalone straightforward romance however - the lives of the characters take place in a broader socio-political world which the filmmaker eludes to. The war is the most obvious, and crucial to the development of the characters. The things Jules and Jim experienced whilst serving their countries changed their outlooks, fundamentally altering the laid-back laissez-faire attitudes they used to exhibit in Paris together: they value stability and the sanctity of life above all other things, in recognition of their fortune at not being critically wounded. Of course that was something that Catherine did not go through, and she remains the intentionally naive philanderer she had been pre-1914. A famous scene is the race across the bridge with Catherine impetuously dressed in the guise of a working class man and fooling a stranger into asking her for a light. Thus Jules et Jim engages, in an offhand humorous manner, with discourses of gender and class, parodying the way in which people segregate one another. The fact that she wins their sprint race, an athletic male-dominated pursuit, confirms the irrelevancy of gender specific prejudices. And yet,simultaneously, there is a sense that Catherine and the others are naively mocking the conservative or backwards characteristics of a pre-war society that was alien to Truffaut (in terms of temporal time) and them, in terms of social class - them being part of the bourgeois elite, engrossed in bourgeois pursuits like literature and opera.

Jules et Jim was stylistically and in technical execution, a part of the French New Wave. It utilised some of the techniques that that clique vociferously advocated: narration, freeze-frames, incorporated newsreel, panning shots - yep all that boring shit that renders the resulting movie fluid, smooth and sophisticated. And of course the sexually evocative yet elusive and enigmatically aloof female protagonist, one who conforms to her own unique moral code perhaps but strong-willed, obstinate and unfathomable. Similar to Patricia in Breathless. But whereas Godard's tone is less sombre, rejecting the subjectivity of morality even implying its absurdity, Truffaut perceives morality to be a recurring feature of modernity, remaining a central tenet to civilised life. I have absolutely no wish to devolve to philosophy and discuss the emphasis the Enlightenment put on morality (as an objective force), something that was kind of banished and ridiculed in the postmodern world of the 1970s - although if I was going to explore that avenue Godard, in retrospect, was the greater social visionary. Yet this has no bearing at all on the enduring relevance and prestige and romance of Truffaut's Jules et Jim which remains undiminished in its legacy.

Frances Ha (2013)

Frances from Frances Ha is full of joire-de-vivre, definably Iggy’s lust for life. She is infectiously optimistic about her place in the big wide world of New York City, concerned about her future as a dancer without allowing it to become a overwhelming worry. Perhaps she’s more anxious about the rate at which her contemporary’s lives are evolving both in terms of career and relationship, the perennial markers of headway in a bourgeois society.

That contemporary comes, primarily, in the form of her best friend Sophie (Mickey Sumner, a daughter of Sting). They are closely bonded having met at college then moved into an apartment together. Essentially this picture is about how their friendship changes as each, with varying degrees of success, relinquishes their younger carefree selves and take on the adult stuffs of career and relationship.

Greta Gerwig is jubilantly hilarious as Frances. She radiates the requisite optimism for Noah Baumbach’s character and adeptly enacts the wince-inducing scrapes that Frances gets herself into. Gerwig – who also writes – is the lifeblood of Frances Ha.

This is all shot in monochrome. Perhaps to act as a generous counterpoint to the titular character’s vivacity or to capture the suavity of early Godard, I’m not entirely sure. But Baumbach and his cinematographer Sam Levy certainly encapsulate the bohemian cool of New York City. There might even be a hint of fond satire for that hipster kind of culture, something which is so intrinsically linked to New York. Either way black and white photography, as always, looks cool. As is the rest of Frances Ha: a charming watch and a bit twee but not in the emotionally shallow way – twee in the coy sexy way.

Gravity (2013)

My mate:

'Dude you gots to see Gravity in 3D maaan. Seeeeeriously, bruv. It's da ting. Even famed 3D sceptic Mark Kermode says it makes 3D SENSE.' 

I was all, yeh but its well more expensive nevertheless I did plan a splash; I had financial room for a treat. So there I was, paying for a pair of format-specific glasses, hopping up some stairs in a real cinema, walking down the aisles past some rudimentary Chinese people and a Spanish speaking posse babbling in the premium seats. I sat near the front (even though I wasn't supposed to) to ingest as much 3D as possible - because that's how it works I think - and hear as much bass as possible. 30 languishing minutes of migraine-inducing advertisements later and the trailer's began to roll and then we were in. 3D vision always takes five minutes of getting used to but Gravity, it can be unequivocally confirmed, is the real three-dee mother-shit.

Even from the opening ten minute opening salvo, almost entirely one beautiful swirling shot, every filmmaking aspect is strangely realist and genuine and fibrous yet blessed with the photographic cerebral grace that cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki somehow bestows upon Alfonso Cuaron's film. How the sets and photographic angles were constructed completely confounds my admittedly limited knowledge of CGI and camerawork, but I just can't imagine how they were conducted... just staggering. I'm loathe to say 'gamechanger' because that's a horrible portmanteau word and lacks all the relativistic technological contexts of each individual film, but there's no doubt that every astronaut film, past and future, will be compared negatively to this one - with the arguable exception of 2001: Space Odyssey.

The Cuaron-Lubezki dynamic has got to be the edgiest partnership in cinema right now, trumping even the Christopher Nolan-Wally Pfister and Steve McQueen-Sean Bobbitt director-cinematographer thing. Lubezki is axiomatic of photographic legerdemain, one who pushes technical boundaries to forge new visual majesties that none thought possible. Here they even improve on the long action-packed tracking shots of Cuaron-Lubezki's previous movie, 2006's Children Of Men. The swinging cameras are just so damn good, me mouth was agape for every successive shot.

Of course their genius lies not only in technical accomplishment but in the more nuanced sections, knowing when to zoom into Sandra Bullock's eye when to pull out when to turn around. Each move feels fastidiously manipulated and studied to yield as much dramatic and emotional gain as possible. Every picture is tastefully loaded with aeons of thematic or existential indicators, like the dulled and blurred renderings of the earth or of faces or chaos on the visor reflections.

But flairy photography alone does not a seminal film make. The sounds and music have to be as geared towards the end result as everything else. Steven Price (whose only other feature-length film composer credits are, strangely, The World's End and Attack The Block, though according to his imdb page he has always been a part of the music department for big scores like Howard Shore's Lord Of The Rings) has composed a soundtrack that discards conventional melody in favour of the suspense and melodrama that Gravity required. His work splices in and out, often unnoticed, melding with other sounds like breathing or the clanking of technology, intensifying apprehension or facilitating a lighter emotional rebate where needed. Yet the most potent sound that Cuaron and Price utilise is... nothing. The unknown, frightening depths of silence. It's a rare feature in a major Hollywood picture and conveys the profundity of nothingness that no could device could possibly manage - the likes of Roland Emmerich and Zack Snyder should take note.

The story too, penned by Cuaron and Cuaron junior, is no let-down. It's as unique and ethereal as one can imagine a disaster/survival film to be, nor is it weighed by tediously orthodox emotional tropes like the search for parents or of love - this is about the singular survival of a person, about the desperation to return home to earth. This is Sandra Bullock. Like many I have  generally found Bullock irritating, both in her slippery rom-coms and the non-rom-coms where she acts like a fish out of water. But her excellence here is proof that one fine script can alter the path of an entire career; that top level actors aren't just pretty faces, but present on merit. Her on-screen colleague George Clooney is just as charming and delicately egotistical as he always he is, and ideal for the role that was originally written for Robert Downey Jnr.

Only when all these filmmaking strands blend skilfullly together can a film truly be considered great; but this is something Alfonso Cuaron has achieved, his directorship mixing everything with adequate emphasis on each to create this awe-inspiring work. I guess I want it to receive awards so that its transcendent brilliance can be formally recorded in the annals of film history, but I don't think I care that much. it should be made mandatory viewing ........... fully realises and justifies 3D too, the way tiny shards of debris buzz everywhere, utterly mesmerising. Soon I'll run out of adjectives, haven't touched on the broader themes of human existence and identity in the face of space exploration, can't do anymore. Over analysis would perhaps undermine its effects, 'specially if you haven't seen it yet..............

La Planète Sauvage (1973)

Picture the 1973 Cannes Film Festival. Look there's Rene Laloux, director of the animated film La Planète Sauvage, amongst the likes of Ingrid Bergman, Paul Newman, Luigi Zampa and Francois Truffaut. Laloux is sitting next to his animator Roland Topor, with jazzman Alain Goraguer the other side. They're deep in conversation, discussing the award they've just been handed by Monsieur Bergman from the Cannes jury - the 'special jury prize'. Laloux aloofly tosses the trophy into the air and Topor draws this irrationality into a surrealist art form, infusing the image with humanist allegory; Goraguer pours into his prog-funk-psyche manual and composes a broody, jazzy mesh to mirror Topor's renderings. All devolve into dots and boxes and nonsensically designed animals.

That scene is almost entirely fictitious. But one can imagine Topor picturing the 'real' world along those lines. He and Laloux worked together on the story behind La Planète Sauvage which was based on the 1957 sci-fi novel of Stefan Wul. They conjure a rich and beautiful but dangerous world inhabited by intelligent blue beings called Traags who keep tiny humans, or 'Oms' (which sounds like a bastardisation of the French word for man - 'homme' - to me), as pets. The Traags are a vastly intelligent species who spend most of their time 'meditating', underestimating the little Oms who splinter off to form their own colonies in the wilds of rural areas. Led by Terr a former captive human who has a Traag education, these organised Oms mobilise themselves and become a threat to the Traags. Both species learn to live symbiotically thus avoiding war and mutual annihilation.

As I say it's a heavily allegorical picture with, I'm sure, political allusions and ontological theories of being referred to throughout - certainly the idea of two powers in opposition to each another seems like a pretty overt nod of the head to the Cold War, which was in full swing at time of making (or at least in a period of detente, what with the diplomatic thawing between Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev). There is an examination of how humanity deals with new and alien things: the reception Terr first receives by the when he joins the wild Oms tribe is decidedly suspicious because he has knowledge of the Traags' writing. One of the chiefs attempts to suppress, even assassinate, Terr in a desperate bid to retain leadership. It's a fascinating aside in the film; a caveat to the human psyche, selfish in-fighting and back-stabbing even in the face of a superior enemy.

But without being party to the ideologies of any of those involved, or indeed of being present at the time of conception or of release it would be foolish to speculate.

On a purely visual level the artist Topor's visions are truly remarkable; he was demonstrably in possession of a unique imagination capable, not only of creating unorthodox eco-systems, but of instilling in them the personified qualities of humour and anger and curiosity. Each frame is resplendent in his vast unquantifiable creativity. It is a inventive scale almost matched by the music of Alain Goraguer. According to wikipedia he came from a jazz pianist background, a pal to the luminary Serge Gainsbourg, but in La Planète Sauvage he had demonstrably been keeping up with the developments in prog rock and German krautrock because many of the arrangements bask in wah-wah guitar and grooved bass-lines, not to mention surreal stylistic progression in keeping with the weird images of Topor. These arrangements tend to be lighter than the central theme which is broodier, more serious. With speech often at a minimum the music had to be prominent and able to stand resolutely by its self, yet compliment the oscillating moods of the pictures. Goraguer proved himself equal to that challenge; indeed the soundtrack has enjoyed something of a minor renaissance in recent years, with a vinyl re-release (D.C. Recordings I think).

Fundamentally, the story behind La Planète Sauvage reads almost like a Hollywood survival thriller. Loosely: man escapes captivity, man meets like-minded fellows, man returns to take revenge on marauding captors, man ends happily with his woman. Nonetheless Laloux and Topor's execution was so wildly and brilliantly off-kilter it would probably put off most modern film-goers.

Riddick (2013)

Our friend Riddick is stuck on an arid, inhospitable planet again the silly fool. Stuck fending for his life against hostile wildlife and some rough mercenaries. Again. But Riddick, being the best and alien (a species called ‘Furyan’), haunts them and hunts them; but there is a far greater threat out there waiting for the darkness to fall. Yes the third Riddick film peddles almost exactly the same material as Pitch Black. Of course it’s David Twohy who writes and directs again although this time he and Vin Diesel are without the financial backing of Universal – they shelved the original plan for a Riddick trilogy after the tepid reviews for the second The Chronicles Of Riddick.

The first act of Riddick is narrated by the eponymous anti-hero in film noir stylee; he recounts his downfall as Lord Marshal (after Chronicles) and how he has come to be marooned with his terrible festering wounds. The second is concerned with the bounty hunters and their attempts at capturing Riddick. Truly the screenplay is awful, riddled with cringe inducing dialogue drivel – as scripts often are when trying to introduce some bad-guy familiar ‘banter’. The third act sees the incoming darkness and the monsters that follow – how they let a chained Riddick loose to help them.

So basically it is Pitch Black except not as good – the original had claustrophobia, an unknown threat and diverse characters. This has none of these qualities. The eyes are still menacingly cool though.

Byzantium (2013)

Byzantium marks another Neil Jordan foray into vampiricism after his Interview With  A Vampire of the mid 90s. As in the latter, Byzantium deals with the existential angst of immortality in a world bereft of meaningful relationships and isolation; also like Interview some of the story is told through flashbacks. But we don't see any fangs.

Clara (Gemma Arterton) and Eleanor Webb (Saoirse Ronan) have led nomadic lives for two centuries, on the run from the mysterious misogyny of 'The Brotherhood'. They struggle to get by and feed - the usual themes of social displacement, of forging a life in a strange modern world. They are remnants of history. Clara thrives in the extroversion of normal humans but Eleanor is more artistically delicate, preferring the numbing comfort of solitude. She writes beautifully. But, in a gloriously romantic twist, is obliged to throw all her pages away one by one to protect their identities - of course later on it's her writing that unravels the whole shabang and undermines their safety. Lacking any deeper goals than simply 'to survive' Eleanor seeks something else - the company of a leukaemia suffering bloke called Frank (Caleb Landry Jones) and his dashing long hair.

Things go wrong of course. The story, written by Moira Buffini (who also penned Tamara Drewe and Jane Eyre), isn't necessarily bad but there is some cerebral essence missing. Of course it's all well and good me, being the critic, writing that there's something missing; I've got to articulate what it is. And I'm not quite sure. Perhaps - he says in full stream of consciousness mode - problems surround the character of Clara. For a central player in the story she is surprisingly superficial - yes we know that she does everything for the safety of Eleanor, her daughter, but what's behind her relationships with the other characters? Who knows. She veers between the controlling maternal figure and the typical vampirical demon, with a lust for carnage and liberality. She's hyper-sexualised by Arterton, as one would expect and want, but not in a particularly compelling manner, and there's a vague notion about her fighting the sadistic bullies to protect the weak; she just never feels fully resolved.

Photography is pretty swish though, as you would expect from cinematographer Sean Bobbitt, the same guy who worked on those Steve McQueen films. The Clara scenes are markedly lurid and debauched and nocturnal; Eleanor is usually placed in beige and bleak surroundings (although that is the natural colour of English seaside towns), reflecting the watery blue-grey of her eyes. And the axiomatic red of the blood is luscious and dripping. Blood red is of course an essential component to vampire semiotics, and so it's often difficult to construct any visually original images with it. But Jordan, Buffini and Bobbitt succeed: Clara, upon her turn to the undead, immerses herself in the gushing, bloody cascades of a waterfall in celebration of her mortal release. It's resoundingly brash and instantly memorable.

Why is it called Byzantium? I'm not sure.The voluptuous nature of the word perhaps, evocative, exotic and foreign; an imperial culture alien to us, lost in the folds of history (in case you're not sure what I'm referring to here: the Greek Byzantine empire, based in its vibrant capital city Constantinople, stood for a thousand years, from the fall of the Roman empire to the Renaissance). It is also the name of the hotel that Clara and Eleanor find shelter in, a building that, under the aegis of Clara, becomes a high class brothel - again, notions of (sexual) exoticism and glamorous mystery are redolent. 

It's a worthy addition to the filmic canon of vampires - and god knows there have been terrible additions to that roster - and certainly a fine example of luxurious storytelling but not as satisfying as one would wish it to be.

We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011)

Tilda Swinton won awards for her tortured portrayal of the mother of titular Kevin. Psyched out and raving she is followed by the colour crimson everywhere like the spectre of her past haunted life; Eva (Swinton) lives her life in the shadow of some post-traumatic event that gradually unravels itself in the course of the narrative with a series of flashbacks. She lives in the same town, regularly discriminated by its others inhabitants. They douse her small house and Volvo in red paint; Eva spends the film scraping it off, as a visual act of catharsis. It's blood, it's grief, it's guilt; it's an inversion of the 'anger' that red usually denotes because she is not angry; it's a visual reminder of what terrible events marked Eva's life; and it's not subtle. There is crimson everywhere.

Kevin is involved. He is the ultimate problem child, inhibiting the relationship between mother and son with his facetious behaviour, deliberately and demonstrably altering his demeanour from his mother to his father (John C Reilly). We follow Kevin's development through Eva's flashbacks. The child actor (Jasper Newell) infuses his Kevin with the black beetle eyes of a menacing disposition but its the teenage Kevin, played by the brilliant Ezra Miller, who adds a disturbing charisma and darkly witty humour to the role. Of course the self-destructive origins of their relationship lie not only with Kevin but Eva herself; though she tried initially to forge the necessary connection they faltered repeatedly, because of his obstinacy and her inherent reluctance. Indeed Eva appears to have been reluctant about bearing him in the first place.


But its the recurrence of the crimson that runs right through We Need To Talk About Kevin. The colour flares up in tangible objects, dream sequences, metaphysical visions and within the flashbacks - it reminds her of that moment when she saw the outrageous crimes that Kevin gleefully carried out, and resonates down the two years that have since passed in her life, suffused with every bad experience she subsequently suffers. 

But, perversely, by representing the duality of guilt (for the way she raised Kevin) and memory, the crimson performs a kind of redemptive role, contrarily bringing Eva and Kevin closer together. At the end he is suddenly fearing the black abyss of his imprisoned future, she feeling responsible for the torturous violence of his wayward teenage behaviour, and so for the first time they embrace sincerely.

I haven't read the original novel by Lionel Shriver but I should think Scottish director Lynne Ramsay took the story in her own artistic direction - as filmic adaptations ought to. She unites (because she co-wrote the screenplay) the strands of flashback and the present with inventive cinematography, employing all manner of compelling photographic techniques. By doing so she infuses every scene with a nihilism, questioning the nature of being in the modern world and, possibly, even the unconditional joy ordinarily felt in the bearing and rearing of children. We Need To Talk About Kevin is a movie without humour - even black comedy is non-existent. It's a depressing watch but in an unorthodox manner, incisively conveying its intended tone of rampant pessimism.

Steve McQueen Part Two: Shame (2011)

One brief wiki research later and I discover McQueen comes from an artistic background. Well quelle fucking surprise as the Peep Show quote goes. Shame is another dose of visual majesty - again with the endearingly appellated Sean Bobbitt as cinematographer: they gorge themselves voraciously on artistic camera effects, lighting and costume to enact another wonderful tale of emotional heartbreak and substance.

We get more flair and more Fassbender, this time trying to hide his own sexual desperation, a man lost in the over-stimulus of New York City. His character, Brandon, is at once charming, charismatic and desperate, depraved. His outside social face is struggling to remain ahead of the filthy darkness that pervades his private life: his safe place, home, where he can indulge in the activities he knows would be considered perverted and unhealthy outside of his mind, is

invaded by his sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) who brings her own wealth of problems into his life, forcing onto him a responsibility that serves only to worsen their already dysfunctional relationship. Nearly every image is dipped in grey hues, like Brandon himself who regularly wears blandly coloured scarves and coats, as a way of demonstrating people's outward normality belying internal turmoil. His only hope is the brightly dressed woman on the subway, a metaphor of narrative perhaps but nonetheless poetic.

McQueen crafts another picture that is constructed by the metaphorical building blocks and clues he craftily scatters throughout every frame, yet these are organic constructions that don't require inordinate amounts of attention. They are obvious yet subtle enough for us, the audience, to understand the life and inner workings of Brandon without immediate distraction. It's scary because he just an ordinary thirty-something man. Worse even, he is successful and financially secure; it undermines the central component to our capitalist societies, that wealth equates to unconditional happiness.

I don't know how McQueen has acquired such a striking command so early in his filmmaking career, just two films in (Hunger too of course). There aren't many others with the immediate grasp of directorial techniques that he has. His next, 12 Years A Slave, and out soon, looks muy muy promising.

The Internship (2013)

Just a quick one. The Internship, or Wedding Crashers 2, is quite clearly a massive 90 minute advert for Google with the chirpy/pseudo-serious double-act of Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn as vaunted groupies.

And it is Wedding Crashers pretty much: precisely the same chemistry is transferred almost a decade later - including, of course, a Will Ferrell cameo. The chemistry is still kind of present in their underdog story, so in the most numbsculling, mindmelting way, this isn't actually a complete waste of time (also I've always had a soft spot for Wilson's charming Texan drawl) - you just have to watch something from McQueen or Von Trier or Haneke or someone else either side to redress the intellectual equilibrium.

It's not as if writers Vaughn and Shawn Levy haven't attempted to sneak to genuine social commentary in either. When Vaughn and Wilson are down in the dumps are being made redundant from their simple salesman jobs (sacked by John Goodman no less) they wistfully denounce the 'college dream' their generation had been sold by the governmental suits: get a degree and you WILL have a comfortable, monied life. I'm not from that generation but that idea seems like it probably rings true. Then a bit later on when they make friends with younger interns they find the 20 year old kids cynical and realistic: the college dream has burst, they aren't enough jobs, life is hard - this is something I can relate to. Those are prescient social observations in a society long ravaged by post-modern cynicism, resigned to the fact that their fates will be decided by outside factors. It's clumsily introduced but Vaughn and Levy TRIED.

For synopsis, see Wedding Crashers. And the antagonist is English of course. Talk about reversion to standard American heart-warming comedy characteristics. There are actually a couple of genuinely laughable scenes and the ending is so corny one can't help but smile languidly, relinquished from the cares of the world, minds thrust back into the cosy folds of high school/university nostalgia. Not quite The Internshit then.

Steve McQueen Part One: Hunger (2008)

Swing down around here for a Steve McQueen encounter, his first entry into the canon of cinematic history and it's a stormer. POWER. Power-FUL. It's so powerful and angsty and raw and photographically gripping. I could describe all the wizard techniques McQueen and his cinematographer Sean Bobbitt get up to, lay-out all their tricks and sneakiness on a plain (or some other flat surface) but that would gravely transcend and remove the essence of Hunger. How they do it is not necessary. All that is necessary is the power and the effect the image-viscerality has on me, or you. They zealously infect every frame with copious dollops of grey sadness. And this is McQueen's debut (for which he received some prize by the jury at Cannes).

McQueen, as writer (alongside Enda Walsh), introduces us to three primary characters whose respective lives revolve around a prison full of 'political terrorists' in Troubled Northern Ireland, 1981. First we meet the morose silence of prison guard Raymond (Stuart Graham). He lives daily under the clouded spectre of imminent death; he's a man coming to the end of his psychological tether, wracked by fear and guilt, unable to connect with his colleagues, torn asunder by the brittle realities that govern his meagre existence: his guilt-flecked knuckles, bloodied by the physical abuse he's obliged to dole out to inmates. In a twist of power structure irony though, the forlorn existentialism - borne out of crippling self-disgust - are not experiences shared by those battered inmates.

They are the metaphorically (and spiritually) liberated few; not economically coerced to perform unhumanly acts by authorities from above, but free and able to chase their own socio-political ideals; safe and sound in the warm bosom of faith, of sincerely believing in their rightness and knowing that in the end they will prevail. And so whilst inhabiting that mental haven, they recklessly abandon their physical bodies to all manner of unspeakable filth. All bodily sacrifices are made. The second character is a new inductee into the prison and another who engages in the deprecating non-prison uniform protest (the uniform being a visual submission to an authority they consider evil and alien). He (Brian Milligan) and his cell-mate (Liam McMahon) perform every protest imaginable.

Figs of humour do spring eternal though, however fleeting: during the family meet times there are subtle parlances aplenty, conducted all clandestine-like with trinkets and radios stuffed up vaginas, messages relayed via the warm garment folds of babies etc. Here in the background we are introduced to Michael Fassbender as Bobby Sands, the republican willing to travel any lengths to see the personal freedoms of his people realised. Despite the emasculation symbology infused with the cutting of his hair and a violently uncomfortable rectal inspection, he ploughs on his impossible furrow nonetheless. Disregarding all who attempt to sway him otherwise. Even his ally/friend Father Dominic (played by the ebullient Liam Cunningham, better known as Davos Seaworth) cannot deter or redirect his self-destructive energies away from a planned hunger strike. 

Their interview is the centrepiece to Hunger. It's 16 and a half minutes of solid, quick-fire, impassioned dialogue from one singular dispassionate Kubrickian angle, adjacent from Sands and the Father, placed equally between each. Tip the hat, bend the knee nothing but praise can be directed towards Fassbender and Cunningham for the multitudes of their talent: they managed to sustain the requisite level of intensity for a remarkably long period of pure acting time (not to mention being able to remember the lines and pauses [okay so I guess it could have been a bit improvised but if that was the case it makes it all the more impressive]). Hereon in we're left to feast on the sumptuous photographic delights of Sands' protracted hunger strike. And it's gruesome. Hideous closeups are alternated with woozy trauma-inducing camera work as he gradually loses his grip on contemporary time and space; his mind devolves back to a day that he perceived to be his golden period, an afternoon he once spent as a boy in rural Ireland running cross-countryside.

Hunger is so powerful, so formidable a viewing it's impossible for any viewer to remain aloof from any of the themes that run prevalent through its hour-and-a-half runtime - and I haven't even touched on the religious aspects (a pretty fundamental feature of The Troubles admittedly but not, I don't think, a central part of this film). McQueen pushed many intangible filmmaking boundaries here, breaking moulds and conventions then inventing new ones. He plays with traditional chronologies of plotlines and arbitrary factors that transcend cinema ('time') then dismisses them all in favour of something more elusive: visual style, with raw human substance.

Wounds Of Waziristan (2013)

This is a link to Madiha Tahir's latestdocumentary. It examines the fallout from the lengthy (and supposedly ending) drone strikes that Bush, Obama and the US have been carrying out over the Waziristan region of western Pakistan; makes for horrible viewing. Tahir brutally reveals the lies of those central administrations and their 'just' reasons for the murder of innocent civilians; not even that they die or that their family structures have been decimated by grief, but the psychological stresses that constant fear inevitably impresses on people. The US have exploited the fact that there are no official codes of law in that region, in much the way as the British did after the First World War.

The story is built on the harrowing interviews that Tahir conducts with the victims and journalists who have lived under the yoke of drone terror. And it is heartbreaking. Interspersed between these scenes are excerpts from a presidential address given by Obama. It's an evocative technique, designed to condemn the president and his policy even more; it’s one that is regularly applied in whistleblowing documentaries such as these as a way to show how flagrantly bullshit the official line is.

Of course Wounds Of Waziristan is only 25 minutes long: its potent and effective at such a short time, but nonetheless it's a shame that wasn't an hour or of feature length.

Blackfish (2013)

Must admit I started watching this thinking it would be one of those crap disaster-monster movies about a killer whale ravaging the inhabitants of some town off the east coast of America. I was wrong. What I saw instead was quite a one-sided though thoroughly absorbing 80 minute documentary about the horrors and moral pitfalls of the confinement of killer whales and the fatal results.

Orcinus Orca, to give killer whales their Latin moniker, are dangerous. Blackfish gives example after example of this. And yet they are not the targets of Gabriela Cowperthwaite's surprisingly fascinating documentary: it's the suits, specifically SeaWorld, with vested interests in the inhumane capture and psychologically debilitating captivity of a naturally wild mammalfish (not the technical term perhaps). All for lucrative financial gain of course.

SeaWorld, like all such companies, seem to be pretty disgusting and prone to misrepresenting inconvenient truths. There's no attempt to analyse the happenings from their point of view - and they refused to contribute any counter-argument to the picture, though they did offer a defensive statement retrospective of Blackfish's appearance at the Sundance festival earlier this year - but it remains difficult to sympathise with SeaWorld. They are in utter ambivalence to the mental health of the whales (there is a detailed segment featuring scientists and orca-experts explaining the significant emotional capabilities of the animals, rendering them intelligent enough to be psychologically damaged and altered by the torturous conditions they live in) or the trainers, who have largely been left in ignorance of the dangers they face when working with their charges. That the whale shows continue much as before - despite a court case - with only slight changes to trainer safety precautions is the most disturbing aspect of all; indeed, the infamous triple human-killer killer whale Tilikum is actually still giving performances, which is extraordinary.

Cowperthwaite interviews neglected employees as well as a remorseful old whale hunter, all of which are moving and emotional and tear inducing; she manipulates the audience in a superb way, encouraging even those who don't usually think much about abuses to animals (like me) to brandish an animal rights sign. It's a true documentary, expertly compiled and edited with music drenched in emotional significance to evoke in the audience the rage that clearly compelled Cowperthwaite to make Blackfish.

There's a quote towards the end: (paraphrasing) "in fifty years time we'll look back at these happenings and think them barbaric". There's a nice resonance in there that rings true somehow. One wonders how long this practice at SeaWorld will continue. With directors like Cowperthwaite shedding light on yet further examples of murky corporational workings, probably not very long - lobby and protest groups are massing and mobilising in opposition.

Adventures In The Sin Bin (2012)

Awful awful awful awful. Romantic high school comedy has long had its day and should die.

My Own Private Idaho (1991)

Gus Van Sant is one idiosyncratic gentleman. Overtly artistically and untediously belligerent, he sees and creates stories that juxtapose abrupt violence with oblique emotional warmth and sincere humour. Van Sant, who went to school with David Byrne, is a true renaissance man - he directs, writes, paints, plays music, photographs, winks, twerks and nods according to trusty old wikipedia. In that vein My Own Private Idaho, his third directorial accreditation, is a demonstration of his ability to juggle multiple strands and ideas yet still finish with a coherent final picture.

As an independent film My Own Private Idaho could be pretty free with its controversial content, able to say and paint the visual pictures that a mainstream studio film couldn't, yet it struggled to pick up funding for production. The controversy surrounds the rent boy homelessness of narcoleptic Mike (River Phoenix) and Scott (Keanu Reeves). Perhaps controversy arose because of the film's matter-of-fact treatment male prostitution: the reasons for their lowly predicament are not the subject of the film and are left unexamined because this isn't some social analysis of American society but a story about relationships and existentionalism. Their 'profession' is not a central plot feature, just a kind of mental starting point for the story to progress from. Though most sex scenes are implied there are two that appear out of necessity, and they ingeniously portrayed: instead of movement Van Sant appears to draw from his photographic background and puts his copulating characters in significantly sexual still life positions... sure I've seen it somewhere else, but can't remember where.

The writing is fragile and delicate and oscillates wildly between the two central characters; it can be separated into four distinctive acts. One, the lives of the boys specifically Mike and his stressful narcolepsy (often sleeping through difficult or socially awkward scenarios); two, with the arrival of Bob Pigeon (William Richert) as the Falstaff figure My Own Private Idaho transforms into a contemporary homage to Shakespeare's Henry IV: Part One, with Scott (who comes from a rich background) as Prince Hal, the character who indulges in moral depravity but whom plans a spectacular redemption to emphasis his dramatic transformation - it also re-enacts one of the more famous scenes from that play, the robbery - with Scott taking the central lead role; the third act features both Mike and Scott equally as the movie becomes a self-discovery travel drama, an attempt to find Mike's mother a trail that leads them to Italy and back (to Portland); finally, we see Scott's redemption and Mike's further descent into depression and psychosis.

That was a long and perhaps confusing sentence (147 words). Mike ends up in his place of existential wilderness (from which the movie opens up with as well) talking to himself; he has lived and is living a difficult under-privileged life full of knock-downs and bad luck. Upon falling into another narcoleptic stupor he is robbed of his belongings and shoes; but then a figure comes along and picks him up: is it another horny customer in search of purchased debauchery? Or is it Scott retrieving his best friend from the metaphorical ditch?

I - as are many others - am slightly in love with Phoenix. Like other figures who die before their time - Keats, Duncan Edwards - or at the peak of their powers - Cobain, Hendrix, Morrison - there's a romance about the premature death of great individuals. River Phoenix sits alongside those individuals because he was/is a great actor blessed with an extraordinarily nuanced talent - the campsite scene is a fine example of that. He had the delicacy and touch of a master. My Own Private Idaho is arguably his greatest film and so we, the retrospective audience who know how shortly his life would continue, have learnt to appreciate it even more.

My Own Private Idaho is aided by the presence of Phoenix who has left a ghostly cult-like impression on all of the films he worked on in his short-lived career. Nonetheless it remains a genius indie movie full of surreal metaphorical images and Udo Kier in his customary American role as 'strange European'.

The Pledge + Encounters At The End Of The World (2007)

Rather than sustain this blog ad hoc I've decided, abruptly and right this very minute, to make a pledge and write a film review every single day. This might probably a foolish promise to make busy because I'm pretty busy - studying and that - and failure is likely; nonetheless it's a good habit to get into if one wants to get into writing. Besides even if I fail there's no one really reading this blog anyway... so I'll only be a failure in mine own eyes. There won't be any particular chronology or reason for movie selections, they will be chosen arbitrarily. Also due to varying availability of time the length of reviews will no doubt probably fluctuate significantly.

With that in mind I shall begin with the Werner Herzog documentary Encounters At The End Of The World. Herzog is invited by the Council of Scientists (or something) to film the McMurdo American Research Facility Unit, how they live, how they entertain themselves in the tundra deserts of Antarctica. And it's beautiful, truly beautiful and moving on so many levels - zoologically, anthropologically, naturally, landscapes. It's an auteur work with Herzogian gravitas stamped throughout - perhaps more apparent than usual because, with his wizened German delivery, he narrates the whole way through.

He focusses on the people and their work, following them like a spectre ghosting in and out of their jovial, weather-beaten faces. This is a unique society, comprised of individuals who have built their lives on travel and scientific exploration; these are a people who have fascinating, sometimes frightening, stories to tell; a group whom fate has seen fit to throw together, to build an isolated culture of social expediency and relativist humour. But Herzog is careful not to depict McMurdo as a Utopia - as he says himself, this isn't a place where humans and 'the fluffy penguins live in perfect harmony'. Its an ugly almost industrial place of work in tough environmental surroundings. Indeed though McMurdo may be free of many of the aesthetic frivolities of their western homes - no such things as 'fashion', or meticulous self-grooming, cultural knowledge - it's still a slave to some of the stultifying bureaucracy of the mainlands, like health and safety.

Although Herzog switches between face to face interviews and that fly-on-the-wall documentarial style, there is a greater ontological message of what it means for humanity to inhabit the Earth. The message is that, ultimately, no matter what mankind can build with its technologies and clever thoughts they (we) will be defeated by the relentless cycle of mature and evolution: a crashed helicopter submerged in snow drifts is cited as the symbol of that futility. This underlying message is not as nihilistic as one might think though. It inspires us to acknowledge and recognise the flawless beauty of the world whilst we have the opportunity. This message is often couched in idiosyncratic metaphors but Herzog's implications are made clearer by his extended use of underwater film photography, showcasing the unorthodox yet exquisite bounties of nature: fish, crustaceans, penguins, seals, volcanoes, and of course people. The issue of climate change is the subtle everpresent, though it's rarely mentioned in overt terms. Encounters seems to act as a kind of lament that climate change has been pushed out of the intellectual court and into the stagnant arena of politics, where it stews and simmers in those endless bureaucracies. But this is no tree-hugging (whale-hugging) propaganda film - indeed at one point Herzog questions why so much cultural effort should be expended on the curation of animal life and almost none on the maintenance of dying human languages and customs.

Present throughout Encounters' is the glorious soundtrack. Particularly noticeable on the underwater sequences beneath the ceilings of ice, the music is a voluptuous juxtaposition of awe-infusing choral (that's 'choral' not 'coral', and no pun was intended) and the emotionally resonant atonal screechings of modernist composers. In truth the music renders those underwater scenes the most memorable sequences in the film, an opinion which should not (and does not) slight the anthropological conclusions that Herzog draws elsewhere.

The legend of Werner Herzog can turn his elder hand to any format of film and make it visually spectacular and morally intriguing.