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Thursday, 26 September 2013

Europa Report



2013 seems to be awash with thought provoking science-fiction films. Not just sanitised superhero flicks but movies that contain sturdy, worthwhile themes. Europa Report can be counted as one of those. Directed by Ecuadorian Sebastian Cordero (Cronicas) this’n slipped under the net somewhat, unknown and unseen by almost every casual cineaste. It is easy to see why. Without a big name director or a star actor’s coattails (highest profile guy is Sharlto Copley of District 9 and Elysium fame) for the PR men to grab onto there seems to have been very little promotion for Europa Report (it relied mostly on viral and blogging publicity campaigns). It’s also very character-driven with no time wasted on superfluous action scenes – and without ‘action’, films rarely sell well.

Right, a synopsis: a crew made up of Americans, Europeans and Russians head to Europa (a moon of Jupiter) the one seemingly inhabitable body in our solar system. They are on a quest to discover whether there is any sentient life thriving in the vast frozen oceans there, but disaster strikes and Europa turns out to be a bit wilder than predicted. I say ‘wilder’ – it’s not like Avatar with rampaging predators – but instinctive life, creatively and interestingly presented by the filmmaker. Without any distracting monster VFX, suspense is sustained at a captivatingly high level right to the end – a feat based on the idea that fear of the nameless or unspecified is more mesmerising and enthralling than a visual threat. That age-old film-writing technique of keeping the unknown unknown is as powerful as it was in the 1940s when Jacques Tourneur made Cat People.

Cordero’s cinematographic approach to his space odyssey-ing sci-fi comes from an unusual angle. The unnerving concept behind found-footage is usually applied to low-budget horror (not that that technique is low budget anymore – just look at the Paranormal Activity franchise)  to instil an immediacy, and cleverly unhook the significance of the ending, i.e. the audience knows whether the characters survive or not because that’s the nature of anonymous ‘found-footage’. Interspersed with the private videos and footage are faux interviews with the ‘experts’ that worked on Mission Control and knew the astronauts who were lost on the exploration, taking on a documentarial role.


With a mixed chronology Europa Report can be considered a challenging watch, and it’s absolutely necessary to stick with the characters, and spend time mentally piecing together the events as they emerge. It sounds like a recipe for madness, for utter cinematic and narrative chaos but a focussed audience is rewarded with an extremely satisfying final third, in which everything unravels from a fragile bud into a sturdy, charismatic flower. Worth a go.

Saturday, 21 September 2013

New stuff coming, honest

I haven't posted a review on here for 11 days, for which I apologise - life stuff etc. I will add something new in the next 3 or 4 days. Probably a double sci-fi review of Elysium and Europa Reports.

Tuesday, 10 September 2013

The Bling Ring



Sofia Coppola is one cool cat. She’s attractive, sartorially elegant and best friends with Kim Gordon. Coppola has belied the cinematic royalty of her surname and forged an independent career built on her talent and auteur eye. She has become a director to be prized and respected, and I always look forward to her newest work. But The Bling Ring. Based on the gang of teenagers who were so bedazzled by their celebrity idols that they burgled their houses, Coppola prods a fictional magnifying glass into the lives of those juveniles. Young people in thrall to shallow public figures of the celebrity culture, is a timely subject to explore. Coppola’s keen eye for pertinent subject matter is to be commended but the execution, not so much. Her writing (as with all her films Coppola wrote and directed) is lacking a sentimental depth, an incisiveness that such a complex topic needs.

There’s no doubt that this is a rare misfire in an otherwise critically successful career. Naturally the focus is on the teenagers’ obsession with robbing the Hollywood homes of Paris Hilton, Miranda Kerr etc, but there are but there are so many thematic bases that Coppola touches on without ever really devoting sufficient time or space to fully develop. There is an unrequited romance at the centre of the group between Marc (Israel Broussard) and Rebecca (Katie Chang) that is never developed or resolved, merely hinted at; similarly the technology aspect of Facebook and the sharing culture of other social networking is fingered without ever really imparting much comment beyond acknowledging its presence in these people’s lives, though the significance of selfies is craftily accomplished and amusingly prominent.

The role Emma Watson plays is fascinating and problematic. There’s no doubt that she is the star of the cast, and likely to pull in a younger and more female audience for Coppola, yet plays neither of the two central roles. She is Nicki Moore a free floating rich girl who picks and chooses elements of bogus spirituality to counterbalance the voracity with which she engages in male flirtation. But there is too little background insight into her character for the amount of camera time she gets. To be blunt I suspect that the reason Moore is given as many lines as she has is because it is Emma Watson who is playing her. Simple as that.

Maybe those criticisms are a little harsh. There are a couple of dynamite shots: the bit in Megan Fox’s room where Sam (Taissa Farmiga) finds a gun and playfully points at an agitated Marc is brilliantly written, brilliantly acted and brilliantly directed. It’s an intense menacing piece of cinema that sits incongruous with the black humour everywhere else. And the music does, as ever on a Coppola movie, work excellently well. In the same way the My Bloody Valentine/Kevin Shields iridescence encapsulated the alien loneliness in Lost In Translation, so the reckless and feckless characters revel in the brash hip hop of M.I.A. and Azealia Banks, and Sleigh Bells’ raucous crunk.


The Bling Ring is not necessarily a bad film, it just doesn’t capture the ills of modern society as effectively as one feels Sofia Coppola could. Bones of contention arise out of frustration rather than scorn. There is a prevailing style and the celebrity guests appearances – Hilton, Kirsten Dunst, Audrina Patridge (must confess I had never heard of her before) – lend a veneer of authenticity. But the dialogue between the gang whilst in the process of the burglaries is so flighty and irritating, and the dangers of drugs and alcohol are so easily cast aside and meaningless. Yes I know that is the whole point of the movie, but it feels too contrived without the tenderness of narrative to delve beyond the aesthetic.

Saturday, 7 September 2013

World War Z


Go back six months and the omens for Marc Foster and Brad Pitt’s zombie project (he stars and co-produces) were pretty appalling: production and editing had been riddled with writing fallouts and cost issues (the budget ballooned to around $200m, though there were hyperbolic reports of the ridiculous sum of $400m) to the hilarity of all outside that poisonous bubble – Foster and Pitt reportedly didn’t speak to each other at its troubled end. Fast forward to its release and there were accusations from Israeli quarters that the movie had undertones of anti-Zionism. With all the problems that WWZ has been plagued by, the end result could have been a lot worse.

The first script was penned by J. Michael Straczynski (Changeling) before Matthew Michael Carnahan (The Kingdom) was parachuted in to compose a complete re-write. Then, after the shoot finally completed last year, Pitt and his team decided (with the help of Lost and Star Trek Into Darkness’s Damon Lindelof) that the entire forty minute third act would need to be reshot and replaced. There severe problems with logistics and an inexperienced production team… to be honest WWZ’s travails are best described in this article here. Everyone expected a flop of Titanic proportions. And then, on the first weekend, it took £77.3m ($118.8m) from the box office. It had more than recouped its outlay and there is even, absurdly, concrete talk of a sequel.
Pitt plays the former UN official Gerry who has retired in order to spend more time with his stereotypically idyllic family. But one day they, and all the inhabitants of a Philadelphia traffic jam, are accosted by a horde of hyper athletic zombies (that is, Danny Boyle zombies rather George Romero zombies. With the help of his friend at the UN (Fana Mokoena) Gerry and his fam just escape from Newark by helicopter and are taken to a Navy ship somewhere in the Atlantic off the Eastern seaboard. From there he is persuaded to help a young virologist discover the source of the zombie disease and find a cure. Gerry finds himself travelling to South Korea and Israel and Wales in that quest.
As one would expect the plot does lose itself and there are a series of false starts and pointless characters but nothing too laughable. The third act is tangibly different to the rest but it isn’t noticeably worse – in fact the discovery at the end is surprisingly adroit and an appearance by Peter Capaldi is always welcome. To be fair though, considering the writing issues, there must have been a late night where everyone just said ‘oh fuck it, that’ll do’. It is a bit funny how serious it takes itself though – ‘the fate of humanity is at stake!’ etc etc.
Older zombie movies were typically issued with savage contemporaneous social commentaries, trying to act as intellectual stimulus rather than the simple blood’n’gore fests that latter days renditions have become. The modern genre is rarely anything more than shallow grisly escapism; celebrating man’s ability to create vulgar fiction rather than forcing the audience to question the world. The concept of the zombie apocalypse is a utopian construct, fashioned by writers as a kind of reset button for society – to wilfully neglect or ignorantly overlook that makes a mockery of the whole thing. WWZ can be accused of that. It possesses nothing of the intricacies and complexities that the book possesses. Of course it would pertinent to point out that the original script (Straczynski) had serious geopolitical intentions but it was rejected, ostensibly for being too clever. Not unlike the rebuff of Soderbergh’s Behind The Candelabra the production companies again prove to be overly fearful of commissioning anything that doesn’t use a requisite amount of CGI. But, to be fair to them, they’re only following demand. And the current demand is for pot-bellied superhero with unquenchable appetites for computer effects.


Hollywood once again smothers any spark of intelligent thought with the pillow of ‘action-thriller’ and VFX. World War Z is a blueprint of how bountiful CGI and a first class A-lister like Pitt can draw hordes of convulsing people and make tons of money despite artistic deficiencies, and how it will be able to achieve that feat over and over. It’s mind-numbing entertainment but I guess its entertainment nonetheless. And we all have those late nights when all we want to do is watch something guileless and anaesthetising. This is it.

Wednesday, 4 September 2013

Venice Film Festival

Whilst the Venice Film Venice is going on, there are three pictures that have been attracting more attention than most. Jonathan Glazer's alien/vampire/ loneliness drama/horror Under The Skin has certainly been making waves - including a 5 star 'first look' review by Xan Brooks from the Guardian. Based on Michael Faber's novel of the same name, an alluring woman wanders the Highlands of northern Scotland for male victims. I haven't seen either of Glazer's previous feature length films Sexy Beast and Birth, but his music videos and commercials are quite brilliant. Ok so praise for the direction of a TV advert, one of the most irritating visual manifestations of capitalism, feels like a tarnishment but just watch this and this, and this too. Not to mention his award winning work in music videos: particularly the UNKLE feat. Thom Yorke one, which is utterly brutal and phenomenal. I will watch his features soon in preparation for Under The Skin. Bodes well.



The second is the Terry Gilliam surreal sci-fi The Zero Theorem, starring Christoph Waltz and David Thewlis among others. It touches on themes linked with the Age of Information and the loneliness computers pre-suppose (i.e. you don't need anyone else). It could be very good like Fear And Loathing and Brazil, or it could be consigned to the Gilliam 'cult' bin - I did not enjoy Baron Munchhausen at all. Anything with Gilliam is bound to be interesting, and anything with Waltz is bound to have a hint of charm so the fact that this project had been pushed back for years shouldn't make too much difference.


The movie I've been most looking forward to this year though is Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron and cinematographer Emmanuel Lebezki's latest Gravity. With George Clooney and Sandra Bullock (not my favourite actors admittedly) in the lead roles as lost space walkers this is the latest in a long line of 2013 science fiction movies, but will probably be the best. I'm such a huge fan of Children Of Men and the long extended tracking shots therein that I will pay the extortionate entry fees that cinemas in England charge to go see it. There have reportedly been problems with Gravity because it's release has been pushed back many times - it was originally set to show at Cannes in May - and, sure, the revolving door of A-list actresses (Angelina Jolie, Natalie Portman) that have been signed up to play the Bullock character has caused problems but in Cuaron I will always trust. Look forward to many long shots, plenty of spaceship destroying CGI (but used in a cool way. It does seem to be easy for big budget movies to splurge too much time on computer effects, to the point where the picture completely relies on them but, again, in Cuaron I trust.) and 'authentic' space walking choreography, or something.


Things to look forward to when they get general releases in the coming months.

Tuesday, 3 September 2013

Husbands and Wives/Girl with a Pearl Earring


Some notes on a couple of films I’ve seen in the last few days. First of all the drama Husbands and Wives that Woody Allen struck gold with in 1992, justifying his scattergun approach of make-as-many-films-as-possible-and-hope-some-of-them-are-good. It garnered two Oscar nominations – Best Original Screenplay (written by Allen of course) and Best Supporting Actress for Judy Davis. The superior quality of the cast is what pushes this good script into more stratospheric realms; each actor has fettled their respective character to finely convey all the criss-crossing network of motivations and angsts without a hint of forced emotion or strange inorganic decision-making.

Allen plays his stock character (Gabe) of New Yawker awkward passivity, this time in the guise of a drama-baiting writer permanently dissatisfied with a stable personal life. He is pleasantly married to Mia Farrow’s Judy, a subtly manipulative magazine editor who suffers from relationship paranoia. They’re best of friends with another couple, Jack (Sydney Pollack) and Sally (Davis), who unexpectedly decide to split amicably. Husbands and Wives follows the personal fallout of that psychological shift on all four central characters. The failure of a marriage Gabe and Judy thought very strong drives a wedge between them, yet brings their counterparts together despite dalliances with younger partners (including Liam Neeson and his handsome Oirish accent). Davis was quite understandably the subject of many nominations and awards: she not only gets Judy’s hysterical mental volatility but nails the artistic pretentions and general obnoxious arrogance that makes her character so irritatingly effective. A brief mention too for a very young Juliette Lewis playing Rain the talented student catching Gabe’s eye: the self-deprecating seduction of an older at its finest, she adds a youthful – though not naïve, Rain is surprisingly pragmatic – aspect to the focus on middle-aged love.

Allen’s screenplay is a masterwork in how to organise and balance a four central character ensemble without ignoring any individual. The script encounters the story from a retrospective approach. The main characters are interviewed in a kind of psychologist manner by a neutral unknown. That narrative technique manages to arrow in on their motivations and reasoning whilst the plot unfolds concurrently. It’s a very efficient form of paralleled self-analysis. For Allen it’s quite serious material, a step away from his usual comedic material. Yet there are a few laughs, usually based around absurd situations – Jack dealing with a tantrum of his foolish young fitness guru girlfriend Sam (Lysette Anthony). Finally some of Calro Di Palma’s (a relation to Brian?) cinematography includes smooth tracking shots, techniques one wouldn’t ordinarily find in a thoughtful drama such as this.

Husbands and Wives takes a skewed microscope to love after marriage, but Girl With APearl Earring (2003) looks at a young girl seeking love. Well, kind of. It’s a movie based on a book based on the painting by Johannes Vermeer, fictionalising a romance between Vermeer (Colin Firth) and the servant girl the painting is supposedly inspired by (Griet played by Scarlett Johansson). Or is there really a romance between the two? Their short-lived passion appears to be fleeting and one-sided and there is little to no physical interaction between the two – if there are allegorical scenes for sexual encounters then they are not explicit enough. Vermeer is entranced by Griet’s pure and innocent beauty yet his affection comes in the form of a paternal relationship, with him as protector and benefactor. She is fascinated by Vermeer, but less with him and more so with his exquisite painting – Griet seems to spend most of her screen time staring wistfully at his work. Her heart belongs to Cillian Murphy, a local butcher.

The platonic relationship the two central characters is refreshingly terse and unusual. A period drama such as this is usually produced and promoted on the promise that it would provide ‘passionate love affairs’ that ‘transcend class boundaries in a post-feudal Europe’ – it’s nice that the unimaginative has not been indulged here, with more nuanced types of love pushed to the fore instead. Vermeer’s wife Catharina is a hysterical, whingey woman fraught with jealousy and financial concerns, and played superbly by Essie Davis. She is far removed from her husbands’s artistic temperament yet he feels bound by some loveless obligation to her, partly perhaps because her mother (Judy Parfitt) is vital in securing paid commissions for him.


The art direction and photography of Eduardo Serra was nominated for an Academy Award. It is a bright picture with vivid hues replicating Vermeer’s own artistic interpretation of his world (or so Wikipedia informs me). There are some great shots, close-ups of Johansson’ eye etc. The score, composed by the venerated Frenchman Alexandre Desplat, is similarly adroit at furnishing a saturatingly dramatic and lonely façade to 17th century Holland.


Sunday, 1 September 2013

Lotus Eaters


Lotus Eaters is a critical ode to the youthful decadence of affluent London socialites, built on a rampaging surfeit of photographic swagger. And it's the visual affectation of this film that renders it so interesting: there's no doubt that director Alexandra McGuinness and her cinematographer Gareth Munden are heavily influenced by the paragons of cinema history. It uses Kubrick’s tracking shots, Godard’s cut-up editing and the shaky action camera work that Visconti and Cuaron, among many others, have displayed a flair for. And all those techniques shot in black and white. This film is pretentious, but is there anything wrong with that? There’s no doubt that monochrome photography does look cool.

However that focus on a polished aesthetic seems to have been at the expense of anything much tangible. McGuinness said in an interview that she wanted Lotus Eaters to be character-driven not plot-driven and that is a stylistic choice evident, painfully so at times. The story concerns itself with Alice (Antonia Campbell-Hughes) and the minor existential crisis she experiences within general life and her relationship status. She is a model but looking to enter the acting profession whilst trying to save her drug addled boyfriend Charlie (Johnny Flynn), but lost in the thoughtless decadence of her reckless friends. Nothing really happens – it’s just a succession of parties and social gatherings at which the characters are fleshed out. But like The Room there are some ‘indifferent’ acting performances and iffy writing: the manipulative she-devil Orna is a case in point. Orna is the Cruella de Vil figure – predatory, black and platinum hair, fashion background – who acts as a kind of guardian angel to Felix. Her scenes though err on the cringeworthy – largely because of jarring dialogue and the incongruous sex appeal she exudes in waves. The writing also fails to capture the lustre of some pretty robust themes – anorexia, drug abuse overdose, rape allegations of rape. They’re all mentioned briefly suggested but never dealt with: instead they simmer away ineffectively in the background. Alice is clearly suffering from anorexia but, beyond a couple of momentary allusions to it, it affects nothing.

This isn’t to say there aren’t good bits. McGuinness’ writing conforms quite explicitly at the end to Greek tragedy – it is juxtaposed with the high-brow symbolism of a dying horse, the meaning of which I am not privy to. There’s a great line about trying to conceive a child out of sheer boredom which comes right out of the Austen draw of affluent folly. Music also plays an important role in summoning up the atmosphere of trendy: scenes of tension are punctuated by montaged party scenes of hip music – the London goth/post-punk band O Children make a surprise appearance in the festival scenes. In fact it was the copyrights to the soundtrack that prevented Lotus Eaters’ release in American cinemas until this year despite its first showing a couple of years ago.

Undoubtedly Lotus Eaters is at its strongest when dealing with the opulence – the scene where the group fill a bath with vodka is particularly memorable. Bella (Gina Bramhill) perfectly encapsulates the pervading spirit of rampant excess and fleeting juvenility in a dramatic soliloquy near the end. She strips and enunciates to her whacked out friends the glories of these days they’re living through, wishing the night would last forever in that kind of 19th century Parisian ultra-idealistic way. Its observation is clear: in our retro-obsessed modern world the true belle époque is here and now. It’s a movie made from tumblr, like McGuinness stitched a load of black and white Instagram photographs together. A succession of beautiful people dealing with the pitfalls of the first world: drugs, relationships and fashion. Yes it’s a dreamlike vision, deliberately distorted to exaggerate a small cross-section of wealthy twenty-somethings, but nonetheless a curious watch. The essence of the movie is rooted in Greek literature. The title of course is named after the lotus eaters of Greek mythology who spent their decadent lives on an island of pleasure and paradise. This proves to be an apt title for McGuinness’ film.