Normal Service…
Posted by admin in Uncategorized on August 3rd, 2009
…about to be resumed. Sorry for the hiatus!
A Boy Called Dad
Posted by Annie in All reviews, Edinburgh Film Festival on July 4th, 2009
What does it mean to be a father, are we pre-destined to be what our parents were, do we get a second chance to change once we’ve fucked up? A Boy Called Dad asks some tough questions in a short film about a 14 year old boy who becomes a father whilst barely understanding what’s going on. Unfortunately, although the film is beautifully set up with newcomer Kyle Ward playing Robbie and the wondrous Ian Hart as his feckless father, A Boy Called Dad is too ambitious, and quickly descends into a frankly unbelievable storyline.
Given that I hated the second half, I’m just going to write about the fabulous first half. We are shown Robbie impregnating a girl in a bus shelter, not a girlfriend, not even someone he liked very much. The girl obviously has to grow up fast and become a mother, but fatherhood is a choice, and one which can be summarily rejected. In a fabulous scene where Robbie is running away from an angry ice cream cone, he literally runs into Ian Hart, and asks hesitantly “are you my dad?”
Ian Hart is incredibly good as Robbie’s father, who abandoned his mother years ago and is a stranger to his son. He isn’t evil, but lying comes to him as easily as breathing - he tells his son that he’s been living in Ireland since he left, but we later find out that he’s moved ten miles away to Liverpool. He and Robbie tentatively bond, but it’s a fragile relationship, underpinned by Hart’s inability to be a father, to put his son first. Robbie discovers for himself the responsibility and commitment that comes with fatherhood, at a devastating cost to all concerned.
Ward has to carry the second half of the film, and to be honest, it’s just not that good, and the early promise slips away. It’s ambitious, but becomes a road movie and lacks a sense of reality, although the sense of poignancy and yearning continues. I think this could have been an incredibly good film if it has retained its relatively narrow scope and focused on the relationship between Robbie and his father, Robbie and his son. The ending is a let down, although the cinematography is gorgeous.
Adam
Posted by Annie in All reviews, Edinburgh Film Festival on June 27th, 2009
Adam is the closing film of the EIFF, and very much like the opening film Away We Go, it’s an exercise in human interactions, slight, inoffensive, and deeply unmemorable. Adam is the eponymous protagonist played by sweetly beautiful Hugh Dancy, who to date has made a career largely in light romantic leads (Ella Enchanted, Confessions of a Shopaholic), and again plays a romantic lead albeit with a slight difference - Adam has Asperger’s syndrome, which is the key concept of the film, and his ensuing relationship with new neighbour Beth, played indifferently by Rose Byrne (I Capture the Castle, Sunshine).
Asperger’s syndrome is on the autism spectrum, but in Adam although this is the main theme, it is also shown as not a major hindrance to a romantic relationship. Adam is tender and sensitive, but child-like in his interactions. He is capable of embarking on a satisfying sexual and romantic relationship with Rose, and the huge eyes and quivering lips of Dancy don’t at any point suggest a lack of empathy; it was really frustrating to endow the hero with this condition, but then not have the courage to portray the difficulties of a relationship, apart from a slight awkwardness at parties and going on about space travel. When Jack Nicholson is an asshole in As Good As It Gets partly as a result of his OCD, it doesn’t pull punches about the impossibility of a relationship at some points. When Beth shouts at Adam for asking difficult questions (”Is your dad going to prison?”) she just comes across as a bit of a bitch.
I didn’t take this as a ‘fresh take on the romantic comedy’, but a pretty stale nibble. The film could have explored the fact that Beth has daddy issues, relying too heavily on the advice of miscreant dad Peter Gallagher (American Beauty, While You Were Sleeping), and looked at what Adam had to offer Beth - for instance, this is a man who physically incapable of lying to her, unlike her cheating ex. Instead, Beth demands what Adam has always been incapable of giving, to analyse and offer up his emotions on a plate. Adam is directed by newcomer Max Mayer, who directed the wedding episode in The West Wing - the guy obviously loved rom-coms, and this is not a terrible example of the genre, and he is trying to do something different, if not actually succeeding, so brownie points for the attempt.
This is a mediocre film in the end, although Amy Irving has a small and interesting role as Beth’s mother - again, tensions and cracks are not explored or developed, but just papered over in the interest of a neat ending. My chief beef with the movie, however, is that Adam is allowed to improve and develop, and this betrays the film’s very premise. It cheats the hero and it cheats the audience.
Fish Tank
Posted by Annie in All reviews, Edinburgh Film Festival on June 25th, 2009
Fish Tank has been much praised at the EIFF, and has picked up a lot of word-of-mouth recommendations. On a bright, sunny afternoon mid-week in Edinburgh, the performance of Fish Tank was sold out, with a large queue of people hoping for returns.
Fish Tank is the story of 15 year old Mia, brought up on a council estate with her younger sister by her feckless mother who sees Mia as competition rather than a beloved daughter to be nurtured. Katie Jarvis is blindingly good as Mia in her first screen performance, bringing furious youth and nervy vulnerability to the role. Mia is all unfocused fury, loving dancing in empty flats and drinking the stale afternoons away. Then her mother introduces new gorgeous boyfriend Conor into the mix, and things, as they say, begin to happen.
I am slightly confused about the blurb which seems to not be sure about what will happen when the good looking and caring Conor moves into the family dynamic, but as some apparently have a sweet innocence about them that we should preserve, I shall leave it a mystery about what on earth could happen in a family home between 15 year old daughter, 30 year old mother, and mysterious sexy Conor who vanishes to a different life on occasion. Hmmmm. I can’t think what could happen.
Fish Tank is a terrific movie, but I had the same anxiety watching it as I do when watching Ken Loach films, or The 400 Blows. Fucked-up adolescents always make me deeply uneasy in gritty urban dramas, as bad things are always going to happen to them. It’s not a genre for which I have any affection, because unless the film decides to lie, there usually is no way out for these characters. There can’t be. Mia captures a poignant sense of longing and yearning, a vivacity that has been almost yet not quite extinguished by the total lack of any care in her life. Her options aren’t just limited, they are non-existent, and Mia’s actions are potentially shocking and life-changing.
The three female leads are terrific, and there is a depressing trajectory from the youngest foul-mouthed but funny sister through Mia to her mother which clearly signals the only roles that are open to these women. Music and dancing is a profound, unspoken part of their life, and when Mia tries to translate that into something more concrete, the world is a harsh place. Fish Tank captures profoundly the sense that even Mia, violent and angry and unpredictable, is still a teenager in her naivety and innocence, believing that opportunities are genuine and people can be good.
This is not a feel-good movie. I don’t like this genre, it makes me uncomfortable and furious about how shitty life can be for teenagers like Mia. It is however bloody good, and a day later it’s still stuck in my thoughts, unlike the majority of films from the festival, to be honest.
Nakba
Posted by Annie in All reviews, Edinburgh Film Festival on June 25th, 2009
I’m not above admitting I can be wrong occasionally - I mean, I don’t like it, but I can be brave and admit that I might have been wrong through gritted teeth. I have to be straight and admit that I was wrong in my prediction that Nakba was going to be awesome. Very wrong. Well, hang on a second, that’s not entirely fair. It may have been tremendously uplifting and the film of the year in in the last 15 minutes, but it broke me in the first 25. I had to leave.
Nakba - meaning “day of catastrophe” - was billed as a powerful and visually stunning political documentary that unfolds entirely through image and music, telling the story of the Palestinian exodus and the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Okay, it was never going to be Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion, but as the camera panned in on random landscape, held it, rolled back out again, wandered around for a bit and then zoomed in on a hole, I had nothing to hold on to in narrative terms or even a sense of history. It’s my failing. I know this. The blurb does hint at this in the ominous phrasing “Max Francos’ accomplished film bypasses the traditional documentary form and constructs a historical narrative entirely without words”. I just needed some context other than deserted landscapes and decaying, abandoned buildings.
I feel bad writing this, and like I should give it another go. I blame the shorts that were on before the film started, to be honest. Five shorts, all about massacres, blood shed, human misery and shatteringly discordant. All the House (Haditha Massacre), in which a girl recounts her family’s slaughter intercut with scenes from Godfather III (I only got that from the blurb, I had no idea which film it was - I had my eyes closed against the strobe effect I think); Infamy, which was hand-painted film attempting to render intense visceral responses to the 9/11 attacks through abstract form; In Transit (children in Kabul play with the abandoned carcusses of warplanes - this one was not bad); Sunroof (Benazir Bhutto Assassination), collage of news reports interspersed with sections of Millers’ Crossing - again, couldn’t pick out the flashing film stills - I just wasn’t expecting the Coen brothers) and Vita, which was about German unification and political history. Three out of the five used the device of flashing, blurred images (or a scratched and bloodied film reel) overlaid with snatches of media reporting on the tragedy in question.
It was too much at 9 in the morning, I felt physically sick with the one about the Haditha Massacre which showed fast streaming technicolour pink jumping around and had screeching bagpipes in between the descriptions of evil done by American soldiers. I’m shallow, I could see what they were doing, but I felt sick at the sensory unpleasantness. The makers of these shorts should also consider that of the ten people that made it to the show, about half walked out.
On a kinder note, they were powerful in their own way, just awfully bloody same-y. Is there just the one school of harrowing shorts at the moment? Seriously, ditch the snatches of TV and radio and blurred images from gangster films whilst reporting atrocities and try something genuinely innovative.
Pontypool
Posted by Annie in All reviews, Edinburgh Film Festival on June 25th, 2009
Ah, what can I say? The sheer bliss of hearing the line “Pontypool is eating itself” - you have to have come from Pontypool in South Wales to really appreciate that line, but still. I had a moment.
Pontypool is a zombie flick with a twist set in a remote Ontarian town of the same name. It’s set almost entirely on a radio station, where cool cat DJ Grant Mazzy (great turn by Stephen McHattie) reports on a very strange turn of events on St Valentine’s Day morning. He handles the obituaries section very well, and I don’t think Terry Wogan could have stood the intense pressure myself.
A virus has broken out, and well, you should know the rest unless you live under a rock and you have set your face against zombies and their ilk. This is not an especially new concept, and in many ways it very sensibly sticks to the standard zombie tropes of a slow moving, slow witted, inexorable crowd of former friends and family who want to chow down on your throat and bones. It does have a nice concept about how the virus is spread which lends itself to a great second half and climax. My chief gripe about the festival has been that films don’t know how to do endings, but this is beautifully paced throughout.
There is little schlock horror in this, but Pontypool definitely capitalises on the sense of dread and claustrophobia reminiscent of the daddy of Zombie flicks, Night of the Living Dead. There’s a nice shout out to the desperate hands of the zombie hoards against frosted glass doors. Mazzy and his producer Sydney (Lisa Houle) and assistant Laurel (Georgina Reilly) are trapped together in the radio station trying to piece together the collapse of the world outside and still keep broadcasting. Based on the novel Pontypool Changes Everything by Tony Burgess, Pontypool isn’t a horror in the classic sense, but a thriller and character study. Put it like this, I get deeply upset in horror movies and generally have to sit with my fingers in my ears and cover my eyes until it’s all over, and I really didn’t with this, but I was creeped out and gripped throughout. It’s a bit like The Others in absolutely no way except that there was very little which was distressing to watch, but I couldn’t sleep last night. Maybe I should compare it to all other films which it in no way resembles except for the emotions that I feel? Hmmm. Probably won’t continue down this road.
The three leads are excellent, and I found it deeply refreshing that the main characters, Mazzy and Sydney are both middle-aged, intelligent, and not prone to hysterics. The film demanded articulate and charismatic leads in a film that is essentially about the power of language and what it means to be human, and both actors bring a humanity and humour to a film which shows the world as you know it collapsing outside. Director Bruce McDonald has hinted that this may the first in a trilogy, and both the quality of this film and the premise would certainly sustain another film - what happens next? Goddamit! I want to know.
So, this is a film that basically does what it says on the tin. And yet that’s pretty bloody rare if you ask me; a well made film that builds to a crescendo, cranking up the tension as it goes and giving us enough information to keep us invested without irritating deus ex machina explanations of what’s going on. And this is Pontypool, I mean come ON. I wish it had been set in my Pontypool. That would definitely have elevated it to fucking awesome status.
Romeo & Juliet vs the Living Dead
Posted by Toni in All reviews, Edinburgh Film Festival on June 25th, 2009
“Courage, gentle cousin, I have brought you BBQ.”
The Montagues and Capulets are once again facing their age old feud, but in this re-telling of the classic Shakespeare tragedy, there is one slight modification: zombies have come to fair Verona. Juliet (Hannah Kauffmann) is still well below the legal age (for anything, really) and her parents want to marry her off to the strapping jock, Paris (Ross Kelly). The precarious truce between these families is strained even more by Romeo (Jason Witter) and friends showing up for the Capulet Masquerade, when the invitation specifically said, ‘No Zombies or Catholics allowed.’ Flying in the face of this discrimination, the zombies shuffle forth, complete with party masks, and proceed to upset the guests. All except Juliet, who has eyes for no one but Romeo. Luckily, he doesn’t want to devour said eyes, but seems to still have a heart in his zombie body and falls instantly for Juliet.
You know the story well, but you have never seen an interpretation even close to this. And the pity for it, as this is the best version of Romeo and Juliet I’ve ever seen. This is the version you always wanted, but never knew you would get. It is a classically comic combination of a 1980’s setting, rhyming couplets, and zombies. Romeo & Juliet vs the Living Dead is Shakespeare, Shawn of the Dead and Say Anything shaken up in a snow globe and covered with zombie goo.
The world premiere of this film is Friday, 26 June at 11pm at the Filmhouse. For tickets go to www.edfilmfest.org.uk. Go! After that, you have to find this at your nearest cinema, get all your friends together, and go see this. If the cinema doesn’t have it, demand it. I was crying with laughter, that is no joke. I haven’t laughed that hard at a film in a long time. I was struck by the shear genius of combining the usually impenatrable language of Shakespeare with zombie culture. Romeo and Juliet just somehow makes more sense with zombies. It is brought to the masses in an all too familiar American 1980’s setting (for those of us of an age to remember that hideously clothed decade) with most of the budget likely spent on buckets of fake blood and body parts. But it isn’t your typical low-budget film. This is well written, and the acting is just exaggerated enough to enhance the comedy moments, rather than be funny because of too much amateur over-acting that you so often find yourself laughing at with low budget films.
The writers (Ryan Denmark & Jason Witter) also did a great job at making it a palatable 85 minutes long, which considering the source material, is refreshingly succinct. The film flags just a bit in the middle, but that isn’t the fault of the movie writers so much as the original story dragging on.
There are brilliant comedic moments in the film: a zombie (Lord Capulet) playing Moonlight Sonata on the piano, a zombie pulling reading glasses out of his pocket to read the party invitation, and a Juliet always in soft focus. If there are any teachers out there, this is just the film you have been looking for to accompany teaching Romeo and Juliet in the classroom.
I also applaud the writers for some excellent decisions in how to end the film. I won’t spoil it for you, but Shakespeare only wishes he came up with it. Combine all this with a cracking soundtrack, and this film will definitely be on my list of favourite films for the year. This is the first feature film for writer/director Ryan Denmark and I hope it gets the world wide attention that it deserves.
I leave you, dear reader, with this missive from Lord Capulet: “Let us leave Juliet to her showerhead.”
Stay tuned for an interview with the Director, Ryan Denmark, and leading man/zombie Jason Witter.
Toni’s Diary: 21 June
Posted by Toni in Edinburgh Film Festival, Uncategorized on June 25th, 2009
Happy summer solstice everyone! On the longest day of the year, I celebrated by sitting in the dark all day at the cinema. At least it was light when I went home…Having spent nearly a week cloistered in the cinema, I thought I would peak out into the real world, and say hello to you all.
Today I’m celebrating not the solstice, but a first for me. I walked out of a movie for the first time today. Yes, first time ever in my life. Not that there haven’t been dozens I wish I had, but today I finally came to my senses and did the right thing. I walked out.
I have to say that it was an exhilarating experience. I got a little nervous when I realised what I was going to do, especially has I hadn’t positioned myself very well for an inconspicuous getaway (right in the middle of a row, quite close to the front of the cinema). But there were only three people to my left to disturb, so a transition moment in the film, I did it.
I highly recommend doing this at least once in your movie-going experiences; it is very liberating. I walked out into the rare Scottish sunshine and felt good about myself and embraced my new mantra: life is too short to watch bad movies. This can also apply to bad books. Why stay or read ’til the end? Unless you are paid to watch a movie or read a book, there is no reason. But you have to trust your instincts and be able to let go. I will never know how Humpday ends, and I don’t care! I didn’t care about any of the characters, and I don’t care where they ended up. This was the first time, but now that I have my taste of freedom from bad films, and I’m sure it won’t be my last. I know this instance isn’t as brave as I didn’t pay to see the film, so it will be even more bold to do it in the future for a film that I pay to get into. But I have my new mantra! And life is worth more than the price of a ticket to a bad film.
Modern Love Is Automatic
Posted by Annie in All reviews, Edinburgh Film Festival on June 23rd, 2009
See, this sounded like it was going to be a genuinely interesting and possibly exhilerating film. I’m always easily influenced, but the premise in a nutshell is “Can a new life as a dominatrix cure one woman’s sense of alienation?”
And the answer in a nutshell is “no”.
Man this was a dull film. Melodie Sisk plays Lorraine, a statuesque silent figure who constantly is sucking on a straw of a can of Tab through the film, wearing an almost pornographic nurse’s outfit and is so very weary and alientated from everyone throughout. Through happening on a bondage mag, she decides to try out a sideline as a dominatrice, and brings the same sense of ennui to that as she does to everything else in her life.
Lorraine’s boyfriend cheats and leaves, possibly drawn to a woman who occasionally talks and puts down the fricking can of Tab. A new garrulous room mate moves in, and whilst we expect the chatty and terminally silly would-be model Adrian (Maggie Ross) to drive Lorraine insane with rage, instead she starts to feel a remote tenderness towards her. Ross actually steals the show from under Sisk’s statuesque nose, showcasing blind optimism and determination to make it as a model despite being tiny and plain.
The story goes along as you might predict: succession of scenes of Lorraine with clients, an obsessed boyfriend, and a sense that the world of fetishism might not be as vibrant and zany as it’s cracked up to be. Adrian also finds a weird form of selling herself, becoming a model in a low-budget mattress shop, where six Robert Palmer-esque models tempt a succession of pathetic men into buying mattresses in exchange for decorously feeling them up.
Both women enter a world of fetishistic sex where nakedness and penetration is not the end-point. Both women feel they are in charge of their own destiny, but it’s clear that they are both controlled by the precise desires of men. Although Lorraine spanks and changes diapers and dresses like a sadistic madam, her clients tell her in no uncertain terms exactly what they want her to do. One depressing exchange has her dressed up as an SS Guard abusing the client. At the end she remarks, “are you Jewish?” “No,” is the answer. “I am,” she comments. This scene underlined the fact that Lorraine is not in control, she is commodity.
Modern Love is Automatic is very mannered. The dialogue is stilted or non-existent, Lorraine’s gestures are artificial and precise, much like a man mimicking his concept of what it’s like to be a woman. The colours are strong pastels, and there is a strong look to Lorraine and the apartment. The jarring punk music and strobe lighting add to our sense of detachment from the characters, and I suppose they make the audience feel the same alienation as the lead actress.
I think this was meant to be an edgy, challenging film which was both risque and funny. It didn’t seem to have much to say, apart from share a sense of dreariness with the audience - I doubt that’s much of a result for director Zach Clark.
Moon
Posted by Annie in All reviews, Edinburgh Film Festival on June 18th, 2009
Some reviewers use stars as a way to rate films, others have little Oscars - I apparently only have the one way of measuring how much I like a film: “this is fucking awesome”. Well, this is the second time I’m going to use that ranking, at any rate. So, in a nutshell, Sam Rockwell (Sam Bell) is the sole human on the moon, which is a giant mining repository for Earth in the near future, he’s coming to the end of his three year stint and is getting ready to come home to his beloved wife and child. And then things start to get weird.
I can’t really say much more than that - I was utterly unspoilt before I went in to see this (about the plot; my own personality, not so much). Quite a lot of the time I was definitely in WTF mode, but this pulls of the kudos of being an intelligent sci-fi flick. I think it won’t work if you get a broad synopsis of what’s going on. In looks and some humour, Moon is not a million miles from the sitcom Red Dwarf - the future is grubby and a bit sad; Rockwell chugs down unidentifiable reconstituted food and watches Bewitched (”with Elizabeth Montgomery”). It also has elements of Solaris too, and Gerty the slightly sinister computer is most definitely a shout-0ut to HAL.
Sam Rockwell is great in the lead role, and I don’t think many people could have pulled off the acting range required. Rockwell does look astonishingly like Will from Will & Grace, which kind of made it all even odder; a Will in those little old lady lambskin slippers your gran wears. The director is Duncan Jones, who I just found out was formerly Zowie Bowie. I guess that is a hard name to pull off - “let’s just face facts and give us your entire term’s lunch money now, Zowie” - but why Duncan? Hmmm. Will have to ask that if he’s loitering around; alternatively I can ask if he ever thought of calling it “Space Oddity” instead, fnar fnar.
Seriously, see it and before you read too much about what’s going on in it. Like I said, fucking awesome….