12 Years A Slave (2014)

12 Years A Slave is a remarkably emotive epic/biopic (bi-epic) about Solomon Northupp, highly tipped for Academy Awards in March and, less frivolously, an important testament to a period of recent history that is rarely the subject of cinema. Solomon – a real person who wrote about this series of unfortunate events in a book, and here played by Englishman Chiwetel Ejiofor – is a free black man in a world of 19^th century American slavery. Whilst temporarily away from his New York family Solomon gets captured and winds up being sold – falsely – as a slave by Paul Giamatti to, first, Benedict Cumberbatch and then Michael Fassbender.

Director Steve McQueen is one of the most talented filmmaking men around (his two previous pictures were Shame and Hunger) whose artistic preferences bring various subjects to vitality, conjuring art from the artifices of others. Alongside his regular cinematographer partner Sean Bobbitt they usually make highly visual films that are Impressionistically brushed. McQueen and Bobbitt tone down the photographic flair for 12 Years and paint a more pragmatic rendering, an uptight more realistic dalliance with conventionality though this remains an art film of high integrity and dignity.

Crossing the hapless extent of humid Southern, slavery characters we – the audience – retch at the sweaty perversion of Edwin Epps (Fassbender), the meek collusion of William Ford (Cumberbatch), and the pipsqueaky Tibeats (convincingly enunciated by Paul Dano), until we are absolved by the long-coiffured Canadian saviour Brad Pitt. McQueen’s eclectic assortment of characters lyrically cover any and every angle of personality that survived in the early 19^th century American slavery culture. And we are subjected utterly to the story of Solomon; we are entirely invested in his redemption, and then saturated emotionally when he is rescued from the plough fields of despair. Yet there is a lingering gnat of doubt that we are self-conscious of: Solomon was only one among millions saved; imagine the plight of those other poor souls inexplicably left to rot in those barbaric trades. McQueen leaves this despairing seed intentionally.

It’s an A-star cast list mixed with newer and very talented blood, like Lupita Nyong’o. And they all bring a heft to their respective roles, all ensuring their parts are sufficiently embedded within the tapestry McQueen constructs. There are no scene-stealing characters because the very concept of such a character is an individualised, decadent affectation that can subvert the movie. All are subject to the higher cinematic context, which is the plight of Solomon.

Of the slaves themselves we perceive the difference between those who are free and have received an education – like Solomon – and the slavish companions Solomon’s presence is graced with; those born and raised in the psychologically hindering confines of institutional enslavement. Unlike his closed companions Solomon has knowledge of the outside liberated world, but this is no comfort to his psyche; it intensifies his misfortune and heightens the appalling extent of his fall. His fellow slaves live their simple, cowed existence in the profound shadow of inherent inferiority. We are reminded of Frantz Fanon’s writing and of the Sartre play ‘The Respectful Prostitute’, in which the accused ‘nigger’ refuses to shoot his white accusers on the basis that “they’re white folks” and cannot even comprehend to subvert or destroy the superiority that was so feverishly instilled in his race. White men are the undisputed masters of this America. But McQueen doesn’t make these literary allusions explicit: he has no intention of placing 12 Years within an intellectual discourse that might isolate his audience from the central idea. His raw, challenging work is intended to be approached by all, because the past suffering of man ought to be universally applicable to all and understood by all.

If 12 Years is a piece that kind of transcends the frivolous binary of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ (no film should be judged like that really – there are good and bad things in every film, etc… yes even The Room) it should still be the subject of film criticism but there’s nothing I can really think of to say, critically. McQueen’s rambunctious spirit is pervasive, as will be flippantly attestable come the Baftas and Oscars.

Top Eight Movies of 2013

So here we are (admittedly a bit later than other end of year lists) with the top eight films of 2013. 

At number eight is Blue Jasmine. More than once have critics gleefully announced the demise of Woody Allen, the man Roger Ebert once labelled ‘the treasure of cinema’. Sure Allen’s filmmaking method of make-as-many-films-as-possible-and-hope-something-sticks has given us some wayward products but they have always been more than counter-balanced by the greats like Annie Hall or Husbands And Wives. Blue Jasmine is a terrifically written story – which Allen pens himself of course – that manages to adroitly capture a very challenging paradox: of combining a deft humour with the frighteningly serious mental disintegration of a woman in her forties. It’s sublimely poised on a delicate equilibrium for the entire 98 minute running time. Not only does he negotiate that confluence of tone but Allen also juxtaposes the travails of Jasmine (Cate Blanchett), her flashbacks with crooked husband Hal (Alec Baldwin) and the love-life of step sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins). He manages to incorporate all these disparate tendrils of story into one captivating, coherent plotline. Blue Jasmine is a lesson in how to write a near perfect screenplay.

Next: Frances Ha, Noah Baumbach’s monochrome film. Frances from Frances Ha is full of joire-de-vivre, definably Iggy’s lust for life. Greta Gerwig is jubilantly hilarious as Frances. She radiates the requisite optimism for 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. But Baumbach and his cinematographer Sam Levy certainly encapsulate the bohemian cool of New York City. There’s a hint of fond satire for that hipster kind of culture, something so intrinsically linked to New York. Frances Ha is a charming watch, a bit twee but not in the emotionally shallow way – twee in the coy sexy way.

Django Unchained proves that if he so desires, Quentin Tarantino could make a fantastic suspense thriller. And for two hours that is what we have here – a superbly scripted, masterfully poised edge, then Tarantino’s self-control relents, the craziness kicks in and Django becomes the mish-mash of earnest drama and B-movie gore that its director loves. Jamie Foxx is the eponymous Django, a freed slave out to wreak his revenge over the world of white men, delicately seeking to liberate his wife from the lawful clutches of Leonardo Di Caprio’s plantation owner. Foxx is accompanied by Christoph Waltz and submits another beguiling performance as a Tarantino German. But perhaps the greatest legacy that Django bequeaths to the world is proving the acceptance, nay the necessity, of the production of films that centre on American slavery… even if the last fifteen minutes was just gratuitously mental.

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. Whilst it may be a little long for those with shorter attention spans Pines is a visually appealing movie with a veracity and vigour to follow through on the style.

Only God Forgives is a neon bleached blitz set in Bangkok, sometimes highly stylised sometimes gritty and difficult – but always with that Nico Winding Refn aesthetic in mind. Lieutenant Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm) is the curious figure who acts as a self-appointed moral executor in a city bereft of law or justice, Refn’s anarchic angel with a sword. It features another reticent Ryan Gosling performance, akin to his appearance in the popular Drive. Photographically this really isn’t that different from Drive: both take place in dark urban environments, lit only by the vice and torment of its inhabitants; but this is far grislier fare with obscurer motives yet it remains wholly compelling and utterly arresting.

3. A Field in England harnessed plenty of the right kind of social media attention with its unorthodox release: the movie came out simultaneously in the cinema, VOD (video on demand – iTunes etc), DVD and on television via the English film channel Film4 (who also funded the production). And yet a strategy such as this needs a memorable film to follow through on those concepts; Ben Wheatley delivers on that count: A Field in England is a richly disturbing exercise in cinematic psychedelia, darkly surreal and incisively acted. It manages to strike at the contemporary yet remunerate the English Civil War mental-ness it recreates. Shot in black and white with a penchant for the bizarre, A Field is a difficult watch. Particularly the 10 minute psych-out bit towards the end. It’s a kaleidoscopic montage of mirrored camera effects and slow motion, soundtracked by jarringly atonal noise. The impact is withering and fascinating, and remarkably efficient in conveying the bewilderment that it does. But this picture is all the more interesting for these affectations.

2. From the opening ten minute opening salvo, almost entirely one beautiful swirling shot, every filmmaking aspect of Gravity 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. Cuaron’s work is confounding and brilliant and will be remembered for a long time.

And number one. Number one is the Italian... thing… Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grande Bellezza. It’s the most beautiful film I have ever seen. Cinematography, music, the concept – Toni Servillo reflecting on his bohemian life in the beautiful Roma – everything is a bit stunning and kind of unexplainable.

That’s it. Another good year for the art of filmmaking.

Ensemble of Reviews 2

 Captain Phillips (2013)

Tom Hanks is brilliant as the titular character of a Maersk container ship that gets attacked by Somali pirates around the Horn of Africa, but Paul Greengrass’ latest thriller lacks the raw political punch that it could and perhaps should have had. Captain Phillips makes vague attempts to contextualise the plight of Muse (Barkhad Ali) early on, and they do occupy a kind of villainous ambiguity, but the reasoning behind the Somali piracy is never forcefully alluded to or revealed. Perhaps this was deliberately side-stepped by the producers or the money men – after all, it is the financial greed and corporational trading gluttony that facilitated the production of this film.

Thriller movies set on boats and ships have a rich cinematic heritage – Speed 2, Under Siege, The Poseidon Adventure – although this is considerably more serious and considerably less trashy. In truth Captain Phillips loses its lustre as soon as Hanks leaves his ship and gets smuggled away in a lifeboat and taken prisoner by his Somali friends, but then regains it when he has to simulate the visual effects of shock, which Hanks does in absolutely captivating fashioning. Greengrass’ picture is entertaining in its own morosely disaster film-y way, but lacks the ju-ju to really leave an indelible impression on the gods of cinema history (id est me).

Blue Is The Warmest Colour (2013)

There were serious, debilitating criticisms about the male fantasy lesbian sex scenes featured in Blue is the Warmest Colour last summer when Abdellatif Kechiche’s film clinched the Palme d’Or at Cannes. And they are kind of unnecessary. I’m not being nanny state – these are ten minute scenes, stretched out and exposed to the extent that they lose all cinematic potency, or even interest. Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux had to bare all for their roles and they weren’t particularly pleased about it, calling the shooting experience ‘horrible’ and Kechiche’s directorial style overly demanding, even exploitative. Furthermore the author of the original graphic novel, Julie Maroh, labelled the three hour epic as simply ‘porn’. Nonetheless it cannot be denied that these stories furnished the film with a whole extra layer of PR though.

The film itself seems less a study of homosexuality in modern France – the reactions of Adèle’s friends are only briefly shown – and more a love story about Adèle and Emma, and their evolving and dissolving relationship. In that sense Kechiche’s vision is a pure presentation of love, that love is universal and present regardless of sexual orientation; he looks to liberate his audience’s preconceptions from titillating prejudice. Narrative arcs that unfurl over a number of years – like Blue is the Warmest Colour – often find it difficult to maintain relevance and, in truth, the third act does meander as we leave teenage self-discovery and enter the adult dialectic. Regardless, the quality of acting is superb, and brings the house down in some of the central scenes that drip with emotion and altruistic longing.

Dallas Buyers Club (2013)

Matthew McConaughey’s Golden Globe winning performance makes this Jean-Marc Vallée film about the spread of HIV in the late 1980s. Loosely based on true events (isn’t every film nowadays) McConaughey plays the Texan hick Ron Woodroof who puts aside his antiquated homophobic opinions to sell beneficial drugs that the FDA (the US Food and Drug Association) deemed illegal in the States to aid fellow sufferers of the AIDs virus. Jared Leto is his effeminate accomplice and Jennifer Garner – who is, like McConaughey, in the process of reinvigorating a critically flagging acting career – the sympathetic local doctor. Their enemies are the FDA and anonymous pharmaceutical companies who harvest people’s lives to make as much money as possible. It’s the emotional journey of Woodroof who deservedly steals the limelight: he goes from electrician/cad/bull rider to a morally fibrous clandestine businessman who travels to Mexico, Japan, Israel and other places to secure the drugs his clients need. And McConaughey is that man who takes on the gruff nature of Woodroof’s character, even replicating the latter’s frail physiognomy with a severe weight loss program. Dallas Buyers Club is a heart-warming biopic of strength against adversity – over both the FDA and the fatal disease which eventually claims his life – and thoroughly rewarding watch.

Drinking Buddies (2013)

Drinking Buddies is Joe Swanberg’s new dramatic comedy, starring Olivia Wilde and Jake Johnson as two colleagues who work at a brewery and events company, and their sturdily platonic friendship and how its dynamic works amidst Kate’s (Wilde) break-up with her boyfriend. It’s a film that tries to be warm and natural in its quick-fire conversational dialogue – a refining of Swanberg’s history in the inane mumblecore sub-genre – yet the characters are perversely unengaging, leaving us (yes, the royal we) cold and isolated from their respective issues. There are moments that intrigue but the heart-felt bits sag with emotive strain; Drinking Buddies is at its best when focussing on the awkward looks and body language hints that Wilde and Johnson are careful to convey. This should be a light-hearted flick and nothing more.

An Ensemble of Reviews 1

How I Live Now (2013)

Protagonist Daisy (Saoirse Ronan) is a strong-willed American with a cryptic family background and grumpy anti-authoritarian ways, who swiftly entertains a strong attraction to her floppy-haired cousin in the latter’s English countryside home. This is Kevin MacDonald’s (Last King of Scotland, State of Play) post-apocalyptic microhistory film adaptation of Meg Rosoff’s novel of the same name. London is destroyed by an off camera nuclear bomb (the aftereffects of which are viscerally interpreted by MacDonald) and the little family – two brothers, their sister, and cousin Daisy – are left alone to fend for themselves in a homage to pastoral living, a throwback to the bountiful and unequivocal innocence and beauty of children playing, minus the weighty presence of adults and their political terrorism. But the children are indicted and fragmented into the mass evacuation of south England by the military scourge. The adults tear apart the fantasy lifestyle. We follow Daisy and the little girl Piper up to a dullard family home, then their runaway journey back down to the south in a desperate bid to reunite with the lost boys. Infused throughout is the palpable idyll of the verdant country, the English forests, landscapes and streams; these images are prioritised over the grey lethargy of urban locations.

The source of danger is ever-present yet acutely abstract – the complete removal of an identifiable ‘enemy’ hinders this picture. This would be fine if MacDonald hadn’t deemed to show a scene in which the completely anonymous, seemingly apolitical ‘enemy’ can be seen shooting at children. Who are they? What are their political motivations? By introducing an alien aspect that needn’t otherwise have been there, credibility is stretched and undermined. Beyond that there is a faint absurdity surrounding the determination of Daisy, whose whirlwind romance of a few days with Eddie is enough to propel her halfway down England and treat Piper uncompassionately. It is faintly ridiculous. How I Live Now isn’t unnecessarily a bad film it just shoves pastoralism straight down your throat, like a less subtle Keats.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

Aah The Hobbit 2, another sequel with an unhealthily bombastic budget and a colon in the title. P. Diddy Jackson slaps down another grandiloquent slice of Middle Earth apple pie, flatulently imbuing his cinema with saccharine set pieces and 48 frames a second, three dimensional animated VFX. Yet there is a method to the action-packed madness, a recognition and deference to the story that ultimately, and perhaps more than anything else, contributes to the fun. For a three hour film The Desolation of Smaug is considerably more faceted than the first hobbit film, with a variety of sets and challenges that the protagonists collectively encounter, with personal quests that enhance the narrative rather than distract from. Even the bits that writers Jackson, Philippa Boyens, Fran Walsh and Guillermo del Toro wrote independent of Tolkien’s books – like the presence of Legolas (Orlando Bloom, obviously), his back story and his elven friend Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) – add to the cinematic experience rather detract, resulting in a movie that is broadly representative of a pre-Sauron Middle Earth. Martin Freeman reunites with Sherlock Holmes as Smaug, part of a laudable cast that incorporates the revolting Macchiavellianism of Stephen Fry’s Master of Dale and the stubborn poise of Lee Pace as Thranduil, among the regular crew. Fantasy respect can be re-appropriated to the New Zealander filmmakers; the decision to turn The Hobbit book into a three way film trilogy doesn't seem quite so nonsensical.

American Hustle (2013)

This represents perhaps the pinnacle of David O. Russell’s career rejuvenation after The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook, sweeping the infamous actor bust-ups of years past into the ‘forgotten’ category. And this is very brilliant in its own peculiar way. American Hustle relies entirely on its idiosyncratic characters which have been constructed by writers Russell and Eric Warren Singer from the perms, flares and facial hair of the 1970s; Christian Bale is the conman Irving who has been, with partner and lover Sydney (Amy Adams), coerced into exposing and entrapping corrupt politicians by FBI ladder-climber Richie DiMaso, whose slimy predilections and desperation are expertly portrayed by vogue actor Bradley Cooper; all the while Irving’s erratic housewife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) is inadvertently sabotaging her husband’s carefully laid plans. The plot is secondary to those characters, something about taking down naïve mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner), as they all dally round, contriving events and deceiving each other with humorous asides and period costumes. Hustle is so Seventies and American it’s affected and unspontaneous, something that grates a little towards the end, particularly when Lawrence does the housework whilst singing to Elton John’s ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’. Perhaps that’s just me – because I fucking hate 1970s fashion and pop music, a debacle in the long decades and centuries of human civilisation, up there with the post-Roman Dark Ages and Forties Germany. This is eminently enjoyable, though too self-congratulatory by half.

The Selfish Giant (2013)

A depressing drama film about poverty in a Yorkshire town; written and directed by the multi-talented Clio Barnard. Two friends - one Arbor a shrimp-like street urchin with a serious attention deficiency and the other Swifty, a gentle giant from a large family with an equine spirit - get thrown out of school and try to make their own money seeking independence, to succeed in the areas which their parents and older brothers had failed. By dint of their perseverance they salvage and steal scrap metal for Kitten, the local scrapyard dealer. Swifty ingratiates himself with the latter by revealing an expertise with the horse-chariot racing that Kitten regularly gambles on; but Arbor is left behind, jealous and inadvertently pissing off almost everyone he ever meets with his blunt demeanour and naive authority. Arbor's vain attempts grow increasingly desperate putting more strain on his friendship with Swifty, until the starkly tragic ending which leaves a striking shadow. This is a grey, tawdry film brilliantly acted by the young protagonists and exquisitely directed by one who possesses the filmmaking nous, knowing when to stultify and when to penetrate, and how to sequence scenes - regularly juxtaposing between sensitive and harsh. It's one of the films of 2013, and yet remains so humble and small in its miniature intentions - to portray one tiny corner of the world, and of two boys lost in the bureaucratic cracks of modern society.

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.