Films

Upstream Color

Submitted by Sewer Robot on 14 May 2013 - 6:48pm
Year: 
2013
Director: 
Shane Carruth
Review: 
The most common reaction to Shane Carruth's first film Primer was a need (and a wish) to watch it again. Understandable perhaps, as Primer had a convoluted time travel plot. His second film is mostly a study of a difficult relationship where one of the partners is badly damaged (the first third, which - almost wordlessly - depicts the experience which traumatised her is a staggering piece of film-making). The most common reaction to this film will be a need (and a wish) to watch it again. Maybe it's the mind-altering maggots (yep - it's a bit sci fi again), or the mysterious pig farmer with the digital sampler. More likely it's Carruth's technique of expressing his characters' dislocation through oddly juxtaposed (often beautiful) images, timeslip audio tracks and disorientating locations. This director does not assemble a story like a parent cutting a child's food into bite sized pieces. He intends its meaning to be open. Accept this and bask in its strange sumptuousness.
Might appeal to people who enjoyed: 
There was a lot of love expressed here recently for Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. This film owes a lot to that masterpiece (tip: they would make a great double bill). Both explore the implications for our identity if our mind could be infiltrated and our memories taken from us. A lot of the imagery is similar, although ESOTSM uses striking visuals to describe a coherent emotional landscape while UC's layering of pictures and ideas is impressionistic, more reminiscent of Terrence Malick.
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Star Trek - Into Darkness

Submitted by dogfacedboy on 11 May 2013 - 6:54pm
Year: 
2013
Director: 
JJ Abrams
Review: 
Its hard to review this film without spoiling major plot details so I'll try not to. The rebooted Star Trek operates in a different universe that the original series\films. This annoyed the Trekkers no end so if that includes you, then I'd avoid this as it further messes with the past. However JJ Abrams isn't concerned with making a film for a minority but an enjoyable whizzy action film with little nods and gags to please the casual fan. Pine, Quinto, Pegg and Cumberbatch (Kirk, Spock, Scotty and The Baddie) are on top form with Benedict like an evil Sherlock - smart, cold, calculating with a brooding intensity. The Kirk n Spock bromance is further developed and the film touches on serious subjects whilst entertaining the heck out of the audience. It's not perfect and it could be argued if you are going to completely reinvent the 'canon' then why rely on familiar storylines and scenes but its a rip snortingly good fun ride.
Might appeal to people who enjoyed: 
The first Star Trek reboot and likes a bit of intelligence in their popcorn blockbusters. Despite a long running time it never lost pace and started to drag. Perhaps this was to cover up some plot-holes (and a returning character from the first film is totally pointlessly used to do just that) but frankly, this is such fun it doesn't matter.
mojoworking's picture

Frank Zappa - From Straight To Bizarre

Submitted by mojoworking on 29 April 2013 - 1:18am
Year: 
2011
Director: 
-
Review: 
For an artist who operated way out on the fringes of commercial and critical success for most of his career, there are now an inordinate amount of Frank Zappa DVDs on the market – at least ten, by my reckoning. Although conforming to the talking heads format we’ve become familiar with, 'From Straight To Bizarre’ is one of the best of the FZ documentaries available. Not only does it contain rare vintage footage of the Mothers, Beefheart, The GTOs, Wild Man Fischer and other weird and wonderful artists signed to Frank’s labels, but there are also many recent interviews with the surviving musicians. Zappa ran Straight and Bizarre as a kind of freaks' refuge/social experiment and while most of the signings are now just footnotes in rock history, Alice Cooper and Beefheart went on to much bigger things. The GTOs and Jeff Simmons chapters alone make this 161 minute documentary an essential purchase for Zappa fans, but historians will also enjoy the Lord Buckley and Lenny Bruce footage.
Might appeal to people who enjoyed: 
'Baby Snakes', 'The Torture Never Stops' and all the other Zappa DVDs now on sale in your local record store.
dogfacedboy's picture

Snodgrass (Sky Arts Playhouse Presents)

Submitted by dogfacedboy on 27 April 2013 - 5:07pm
Year: 
2013
Director: 
David Blair
Review: 
Ian Hart returns for a third crack at playing John Lennon - this time in a 30 minute short film by David Quantick based on a story by Ian R MacLeod in which John left the Beatles in 1962 and is a workshy 50 year old in Manchester in 1991. The Beatles are still knocking around the clubs. All Lear-like quips and sardonic one liners, Lennon drifts through the world sneering at the ordinaries or 'Snodgrass'. Haunted by his past at his new workplace, feeling above everyone else, born for greater things, Hart manages to carve out a real person despite the lyric quoting dialogue in the script. Its a slight thing but quality nonetheless. The only big mis-step is right at the start with a radio playing news and song clips to remind people of 1991. Yet I would contend that music - which includes Nirvana - would not exist without the Lennon Beatles and their wordwide influence of popular culture. Aside from that it was nice little alternate reality with Hart perfect again as Lennon.
Might appeal to people who enjoyed: 
the songs of those popular moptops from that there Liverpool with their shaggy heads and foot tapping wit.
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The Secret In Their Eyes

Submitted by drakeygirl on 1 April 2013 - 1:08pm
Year: 
2009
Director: 
Juan José Campanella
Review: 
This Argentinian film, winner of the Best Foreign Film Oscar in 2010, is a dark, violent, elegiac, tangled tale of love and loss - and it's engrossing and affecting. The story concerns Benjamín Espósito, a retired federal agent obessessed by the rape and murder of a young woman 25 years earlier. He is writing a novel about the case, and meets up with his former boss Irene Menéndez-Hastings (now a judge), stirring up emotions boxed away by time. A breathtakingly-brilliant chase scene set in a football stadium enthrals, but the quiet, silent glances and 'secrets' in people's eyes referred to in the title are just as powerful. Just as an aside, it also has some flashes of humour. Seemingly unimportant incidental scenes and odd moments of dry humour speak volumes about the relationships between the characters and provide the human connection that elevates this from clever crime thriller to a moving piece of cinema. The film is currently available online via BBC iPlayer.
Might appeal to people who enjoyed: 
The Killing, The Lives Of Others

Looper

Submitted by Ahh_Bisto on 1 February 2013 - 5:08pm
Year: 
2012
Director: 
Rian Johnson
Review: 
Good science fiction designs an alternate world that retains a familiarity with our own and creates characters who are believable even if the setting is fantastical or, as those constipated by logic gleefully extol, simply not scientifically possible. OK, unwillingness to suspend belief duly noted. Looper only works if you accept that we can travel through time and that the physical and temporal anomalies that such travel creates are less important to a story's blossoming than the character choices and plot machinations it ferments and catalyses. Looper succeeds because it creates characters we can believe in and predicaments for them that are contextually credible. Willis is the A-lister but its Gordon-Levitt's eerie approximation of a young Willis as a young gun for hire who impresses, providing the film's central time-piece around which the hands of the story move. Pierce Gagnon as the precocious but troubled little boy ensures the kinetic action has an emotional pay-off.
Might appeal to people who enjoyed: 
Intelligent eye-candy or a Hollywood mainstream film that is accessible but intelligent through the promotion of the simple maxim of giving preference to story and character over special effects and a "will this do, thanks for the big budget" arrogant oafishness.

The House I Live In

Submitted by fazackerly on 25 January 2013 - 11:30am
Year: 
2012
Director: 
Eugene Jarecki
Review: 
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Festival in 2012, from the man behind "Why We Fight". This may be the most powerful and thought-provoking documentary I have seen. If you haven’t seen it yet, I would very strongly urge you to do it. I caught it on BBC iPlayer and I believe it is still available there for a while. It’s a documentary about the “War on Drugs”. It deals with how and why this “war” started and how it is affecting people in the USA. I won’t explain them here, because I think you should watch the film yourself, but the conclusions reached in the film are unexpected and profound. The film had the effect of making me examine my assumptions and prejudices about the subject, and it did it in a way that was completely absorbing. It's been the best thing I have seen so far this year.
Might appeal to people who enjoyed: 
Fans of the Wire. Someone somewhere described this film as the non-fiction companion to The Wire. That’s spot on. And there are frequent contributions from David Simon, who created The Wire.
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John Dies At The End

Submitted by Burt Kocain on 3 January 2013 - 10:45am
Year: 
2012
Director: 
Flakey Boy Genius Don "Bubba Ho-Tep" Coscarelli
Review: 
Some movies, it only takes seconds for me to know I'm in. This is one of them. Drug-addled in-joke nonsense cult brilliance. With added gore and squirming insect terror. This movie may make no sense the first time around. Or the twenty-third. That doesn't matter right now, because you have take a call on a bratwurst. Quote: "When you're listening to a song on the radio, where is the song?" From IMBD: "It's a drug that promises an out-of-body experience with each hit. On the street they call it Soy Sauce, and users drift across time and dimensions. But some who come back are no longer human. Suddenly a silent otherworldly invasion is underway, and mankind needs a hero. What it gets instead is John and David, a pair of college dropouts who can barely hold down jobs. Can these two stop the oncoming horror in time to save humanity? No. No, they can't." Everything you know is wrong! ( ... and any movie that quotes the Firesign Theatre knows where my clitoris is)
Might appeal to people who enjoyed: 
Donnie Darko. Rubber. Bill And Ted. Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The Sound Of Music. Fuck knows, frankly. But they know who they are.
mikethep's picture

Paul Kelly: Stories of Me

Submitted by mikethep on 14 December 2012 - 12:38pm
Year: 
2012
Director: 
Ian Darling
Review: 
Just back from watching this at the outstandingly uncomfortable University of Queensland film theatre, with 3 other people. Which is a pity, because this is an excellent documentary about the career of the great Australian singer-songwriter who, I have to confess, I have mostly ignored previously. Ah yes, Australian singer-songwriter, bit of Dylan, bit of Springsteen, quite good, would be roughly how I would have categorised him. But there's much more to him than that; he's a real rocker who spent his formative years rattling round the pubs and clubs of Melbourne and Sydney with a variety of bands, yet is capable of songs of great beauty and subtlety, and a great storyteller too. And a complex character - ask the ex-wives. But to see the audience adoration in the live clips in the documentary (not to mention the word-perfect singing along) is to realise that he inhabits the psyche of just about every Australian under the age of 60. Mea culpa: I'm off to do some serious reassessment.
Might appeal to people who enjoyed: 
It's a dead cert for BBC4 - maybe it's already been on and I missed it, who knows? Anyway, none more Afterword in my opinion.

End Of Watch

Submitted by Sewer Robot on 20 November 2012 - 7:23pm
Year: 
2012
Director: 
David Ayer
Review: 
Ayer has been documenting the complexities of policing LA for many years (most successfully in his screenplay for Training Day). This time we are right down at ground level accompanying two patrol officers on duty. The often gimmicky point-of-view camera is used extensively, but with a purpose - so we enter potentially explosive danger zones with no more perspective than the cops, allowing us to appreciate their just-doin'-my-job courage while sharing their lack of awareness when this might cross the line into foolhardiness. What sounds like a dramatisation of an episode of COPS is elevated by excellent performances by the two leads; the film's best scenes are where they riff off one another in their patrol car. So well are these characters fleshed out that in a 100 minute film the other characters are no more than sketches. Although lacking the dramatic structure of his previous scripts and having little new to say, EOW puts us in the car with two of cinema's most believable cops.
Might appeal to people who enjoyed: 
The best of Ayer's previous scripts (Training Day and also Dark Blue, his adaptation of a James Ellroy story). Although it does mark a move away from more classically structured morality plays where a good man is tested by being placed in a situation requiring heroic courage; here, South Central L.A. is a snake pit where danger can erupt anywhere at any time. The moves of the larger pieces might hold greater fascination, but it is the pawns on the frontline who play for the highest stakes.

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