Phil on Film

Review - House of Tolerance (L'Apollonide: Souvenirs de la maison close)

2012-01-22T23:16:00.003Z

House of Tolerance has been released in some countries as House of Pleasures, but in its native France it goes by the title L'Apollonide. That is the name of the Parisian fin-de-siècle brothel that director Bertrand Bonello invites us to spend two hours inside, with all but two brief scenes taking place within the building's luxuriously decorated walls. By spending so much time in this one location the film induces a sense of claustrophobia, of being trapped, of time standing still, and in that way it allows us to share the feelings of the woman who earn a living there. They are all trapped inside L'Apollonide, paying off the debts that bound them to the brothel's owner (Noémie Lvovsky), while clinging on to the hope that one of their wealthy clients will eventually propose and spirit them away from this place to start a new life. For most of them, this dream is a futile one.

Life at L'Apollonide is a strange mixture of decadent fantasy and mundane reality, and Bonello enjoys exploring both aspects of his girls' day-to-day life with the same curious eye. By day, the girls sleep, wash, submit to uncomfortable STD examinations and long periods of boredom, all of which is depicted in a straightforward manner that has an air of well-researched realism about it. When a 16 year-old Pauline (Iliana Zabeth) joins the workforce, we are taken on a tour behind the scenes of the house, as she learns the correct method of preparation and presentation that each prostitute must master before facing their customers. Women hang around in the background of shots, nude or near-nude, and we soon become comfortable in this company, enjoying the sense of camaraderie that exists between them. The characterisations are thin, but a few individuals stand out: Céline Sallette as an ageing prostitute whose options are growing increasingly thin, Hafsia Herzi as an Algerian fetishised for her ethnicity, and Alice Barnole as a woman brutally attacked at the start of the film. Her mouth is slit in a manner that recalls Heath Ledger's Joker or the 1928 film The Man Who Laughs, but towards the end of the film even this disfigurement is a selling point, as men become intrigued by the girl hiding her mutilated features behind a mask.

Surprisingly for a film directed by Bertrand Bonello and set in a brothel, there is very little actual sex in House of Tolerance. The director is far more concerned with the business of sex and the games that people play than he is with the act itself. One client asks his chosen girl to perform for him as a life-size doll, another shares a gilded bath filled with 24 bottles of champagne, and one of the workers has to dress as a geisha and speak to her man in Japanese (gobbledegook she concocts on the spot). Bonello indulges these fantasy interludes, sometimes surveying the action in multiple rooms through a split-screen effect, but they are contrasted with the darker consequences of these women's chosen profession. We see a prostitute slip into opium addiction as she tries to escape her bleak future while another succumbs to syphilis, and of course there's the horrendous face-slashing that opens the film, even if Bonello dilutes the impact of this attack by returning to it repeatedly throughout the picture.

It's an intoxicating film – so much so that it's over before you begin to question what exactly Bonello is trying to say with it. As the boundaries between fantasy and reality shift in the film's climactic stages, House of Tolerance appears to be a lament for the passing of an era, with the brothel – crippled by debt – about to close its doors for the last time. Is Bonello painting a nostalgic, romantic portrait of what the sex industry used to be? That certainly appears to be the case with the epilogue, which suddenly and jarringly lands us in a contemporary milieu, a move that I think is a mistake on the filmmaker's part.

The only other scene that takes place outside the brothel's walls occurs when the girls are allowed to have a day off by their madam, to swim in the lake and enjoy the fresh summer air. It could be argued that this reprieve from the stifling atmosphere of L'Apollonide only makes their prison-like surroundings even more imposing when they return to work, but I felt that allowing us to see the world outside the brothel somehow broke the spell that Bonello had so skilfully cast in the opening hour. One character describes the odour of the brothel as "the smell of sperm and champagne," and Bonello's evocation of this atmosphere is so rich and vivid, we can almost smell it for ourselves. House of Tolerance is overlong and a little vague about its purpose, but it has a powerfully transfixing effect, and its finale leaves your head swirling with remarkable images: a slow dance to Nights in White Satin, a panther skulking around behind the furniture, a woman weeping in a way we've never seen before.

Review - Haywire

2012-01-19T01:27:00.004Z

If Steven Soderbergh follows through on his oft-repeated promise to retire from filmmaking in the next couple of years, we'll be losing one of the most prolific and inventive directors in American cinema, but on the evidence of his last two films, perhaps the guy needs a break. Haywire follows hot on the heels of last year's Contagion, and both pictures feel like the work of a man who is only as engaged with his subject as he needs to be. In both cases, it feels like Soderbergh is experimenting, setting himself little challenges to overcome, but while there may be a sense of satisfaction in this approach for him, the audience can often sense when a filmmaker's heart isn't really in it.

The frustrating thing about this is that Soderbergh is a director who really knows how to put a movie together. When he's firing on all cylinders, his films have a distinct energy and rhythm, but at other times his pictures can feel curiously cold and detached. The chief pleasure offered by Haywire is a chance to see this brilliant craftsman assembling action sequences, but that's really all his film does have to offer and I'm not sure if it's quite enough. Between these episodes, Haywire has a curious dead quality; it's almost as if the actors have stumbled onto the set, picked up the script and read their lines for the first time on camera. Haywire has a terrific cast, but none of them seem to be bringing everything they've got to the party.

In fact, a couple of the professionals are outclassed by the amateur in their midst. The central character in Haywire is Mallory Kane, an ultra-professional contract killer, and she's played by Gina Carano, better known as a mixed martial arts fighter rather than an actor. It's not the first time Soderbergh has thrown a non-actor into the mix, but at least he knows how to do it without leaving them out of their depth. His tactic here is similar to the one he took with Sasha Grey in The Girlfriend Experience – he picks someone with a natural presence and charisma, he gives them a role that doesn't rely on dialogue, and he plays to their strengths. Carano's strength, of course, is most evident when she lets her fists do the talking, and Haywire comes to life when Soderbergh allows her remarkable physicality take centre stage. As we might expect, the fight scenes are shot and edited with a slickness, clarity and lightness of touch that heightens our appreciation of the actors' efforts. When the fists start to fly, Soderbergh mutes the jazzy score that accompanies almost every other sequence in the picture so we can only hear the sound of impact, or the participants' laboured breathing. There's no sense of the characters holding back in these encounters – it really looks like it hurts when punches are thrown and bodies crash into furniture – and Carano fully convinces as a woman who can hold her own in a male world.

Plenty to admire, then, but what the film really lacks is any sense that it is ever likely to live up to its title – even at its most action-packed, there's a cool reserve about Soderbergh's direction that prevents Haywire from reaching fever pitch. The other thing that's noticeable by its absence here is a story. Lem Dobbs' screenplay is a fairly half-hearted rehash of The Limey's narrative – there's even a climactic ankle twist and confrontation on a beach – but without the time-shifts and memory games that Soderbergh utilised so vividly in that picture. The plot is explained iN a couple of scenes towards the end of the film, but by then it doesn't really seem to matter as the story is essentially a flimsy skeleton that exists so Soderbergh can hang a few cool scenes onto it.

The frustrating thing about this is that it wouldn't have taken all that much to turn Haywire into something more than that. A rewrite, some restructuring and a little more care taken with the performances might have given us a picture that has a sense of weight or purpose, but Soderbergh seems happy with what he has, and that's a little disappointing. Haywire is the kind of movie this director could make in his sleep – regrettably, as you watch it, you might suspect that he has.

Review - War Horse

2012-01-08T19:41:00.003Z

War Horse probably won't be for everyone and you can approximately gauge your reaction to the film as a whole by the way you feel about a scene that takes place early in the picture. Cornish teenager Albert Narracott (Jeremy Irvine) is attempting to plough the family's field with Joey, a horse patently unsuited to farming life that Albert's father (Peter Mullan) foolishly purchased at an auction. The Narracotts' future could depend on their ability to grow crops here and an expectant crowd – including their sneering landlord (David Thewlis) – has gathered to watch his futile efforts. Initially, the boy and horse get nowhere, despite their admirable grit and determination, but as the rain begins to fall and the ground softens, Albert gains a second wind. Suddenly, the indomitable pair are churning up the soil, and when a boulder blocks their path they simply drive on, with the plough cleaving the stone in two.

If you roll your eyes and scoff at the sight of horse beating rock, then War Horse is not the movie for you. Steven Spielberg's screen version of Michael Morpurgo's novel – and the hugely successful stage play it spawned – is an entirely earnest piece of work, and that in itself makes it something of an anomaly in today's cinematic landscape. The central character of the film is not a human capable of cynicism, but a horse and therefore a true innocent, so Spielberg has made a film reflecting that. We experience the First World War through Joey as he is first bought by Captain Jim Nichols (Tom Hiddleston – is any contemporary actor better suited to wartime roles?) and subsequently changes hands in war-torn France, experiencing both the kindness and cruelty that mankind is capable of. Joey becomes a metaphor for humanity in the same way that Bresson's donkey did in Au hasard Balthazar, reflecting the best and worst of us.

War Horse also represents the best and worst of Spielberg, but I think the director's virtues shine through with this material more than his flaws tend to hobble it. After making a number of acclaimed films and television series on the subject of World War II, this is Spielberg's first foray into the Great War of 1914-1918, a conflict still largely underrepresented on screen, but there's no place for the blood-spattered verisimilitude of Saving Private Ryan here. War Horse is a family drama that requires a more restrained approach, and Spielberg is at his very best when he strikes a delicate balance between showing us just enough violence – or simply showing us the threat of violence – and letting the audience imagine the rest for themselves. He stages a dazzling sequence in which the British cavalry – with Capt. Nichols atop Joey – charge a seemingly unarmed German battalion, before Spielberg's camera glides ahead to reveal the hidden danger they are riding into. Later, an execution is partially hidden by a rotating windmill, but is no less chilling for it, and a gas attack is portrayed in all its panic-inducing immediacy, while the vivid depiction of No Man's Land, with its damp, rat-infested trenches and bodies strewn across the black mud, leaves us in no doubt about the hellish conditions these soldiers fought under.

The problem with Spielberg – particularly latter-day Spielberg – is that he often doesn't know when to quit, and War Horse occasionally risks undermining its own emotional power by straining too hard for effect, with John Williams' ubiquitous but forgettable score being an overbearing presence. The other issue the film has is perhaps one it has inherited from the source material, with War Horse feeling episodic in its construction, as Joey moves from one encounter to the next in a series of chapters that occasionally feel disjointed as a whole. The best of these are wonderful, though, and they mark the few occasions that the human actors step out from Joey's shadow to make an impact on the picture. Niels Arestrup brings a gravitas to the film as a farmer whose granddaughter (excellent debutant Celine Buckens) forms a bond with Joey, and the talented British actor Toby Kebbell gets a welcome opportunity to shine on the big stage in my favourite scene in the film. He plays a soldier who finds the horse in No Man's Land, entangled in barbed wire, and with the help of a German soldier (Hinnerk Schönemann) he works to free the animal. In this witty, touching encounter, the two men briefly bond over the wounded animal, before they head back to their trenches and prepare to possibly kill each other the next day.

What War Horse reinforces above all else is that Steven Spielberg is a master at this kind of grand, sincere, old-fashioned filmmaking. I can't think of many directors who could be better suited to this story, and while some will resist the overt sentimentality on display in the film, many will surely be moved by the film's indefatigable optimism against the backdrop of such death and devastation, and the film may be a particular treat for children. When I watched War Horse the audience contained a large number of younger viewers who remained utterly rapt throughout, and it made me wonder how many filmmakers could make a 2½-hour film about the First World War that is capable of transfixing audiences of all ages in this way. Steven Spielberg has always possessed that invaluable ability to imbue his stories with emotions that have a universal resonance, and in years to come we may well look back on War Horse as yet another family classic from this great director.

Review - Shame

2012-01-05T00:19:00.005Z

Shame is a film with plenty of sex but not much eroticism. As we watch Brandon (Michael Fassbender) engage in a series of carnal encounters during the course of Steve McQueen's film we discern no sense of joy or satisfaction on his part; the desperate look on his face simply suggests an insatiable need that cannot be satiated. Brandon is a sex addict, and like all addicts his thoughts rarely stray from the source of his next fix. He downloads porn at work and sneaks off to the office toilets to masturbate. In the evenings he might pick up a one-night stand or hire a prostitute, or he might just stay at home with his laptop and the girls of the internet for company. He lives from orgasm to orgasm, but it's a lifestyle that precludes any kind of real emotional bond with another human being, a state that McQueen and co-screenwriter Abi Morgan set out to challenge.

There's a certain vagueness to McQueen and Morgan's vision of their protagonist that is perhaps (being generous) intended to set him up as a kind of everyman; a blank canvas for the audience to project their own desires and insecurities onto. We never learn what exactly Brandon does for a living, although he's evidently good at it and it makes him a lot of money; we don't know how long he has been dealing with this sexual compulsion, although VHS tapes can be glimpsed in his porn stash; and we don't know what kind of relationship he has with his sister, although the film drops enough hints for us to surmise that they're no ordinary siblings. The needy, unpredictable Sissy (Carey Mulligan) arrives unexpectedly to disrupt Brandon's isolated lifestyle, and the film suggests either a background of abuse ("We're not bad people, Brandon, we just come from a bad place.") or incest, through Sissy's habit of being so often naked or near-naked in front of her brother.

Suggestion is as far as the film wants to go, however, and whatever depth or impact Shame possesses tends to come from Fassbender's commanding performance. McQueen relies heavily on the lead actor who also excelled in his directorial debut Hunger, and Fassbender again gives a forceful but understated portrayal, allowing the camera to linger on his face and pick up on his smallest gestures. This is most evident in the excellent early scene of flirtation on a subway train, when Brandon catches the eye of a female passenger and their clandestine glances threaten to lead to more until she suddenly remembers the ring on her finger and hurriedly escapes into the night. Fassbender holds the picture steady with his magnetic stillness, and actors like Mulligan can't help coming off as rather shrill in comparison. In fact, I'd have appreciated more time with Nicole Beharie, as a character who Brandon decides to treat as a romantic partner rather than another conquest. The two actors complement each other beautifully on their date, which McQueen allows to play out in long takes, but the connection Brandon makes with Marianne has its downside – when he does take her to bed, he can't get it up.

Shame is an odd title for this movie because it doesn't seem to be primarily about Brandon's sense of self-disgust or remorse at all. Instead, it's a film about his inability to form a lasting connection with another person and his crippling reliance on the drug that – at least temporarily – fills the void in his life. Shame is good at capturing the repetitive and self-destructive nature of addiction, but films about addicts so often have to ensure their protagonists hit rock bottom, and this is where McQueen starts to lose his grip on his picture. Brandon's downward slide ends with a long dark night of the soul in which he fingers the wrong girl and then ends up in what appears to be the New York branch of Le Rectum, the gay club that first appeared in Gaspar Noé's Irreversible. This dark passage culminates with a lurch into tragedy that feels schematic, and the operatic tone of the whole third act doesn't carry the same power as the quieter moments of Shame, the ones that really get under your skin.

McQueen is a man in complete command of the visual aesthetic of his films and he serves up numerous striking images here. From the crumpled sheets that bear the evidence of Brandon's antics the night before, to the stunning tracking shot that follows his late-night run, or the climactic threesome, in which the bodies of the participants are so gorgeously shot and lit. Shame may be a slightly uneven film but is the work of a talented filmmaker who is developing a distinctive style and a reputation for tackling challenging material, and Fassbender is clearly an actor with whom he has found a natural synergy. I wish they hadn't resorted to a shot of Brandon weeping and falling to his knees in the rain – I think they're better than such clichés – but even if it missteps occasionally, Shame remains an engrossing, impressive film, and there is an undeniable thrill in seeing a rare high-profile picture that's willing to deal with sex in a frank and serious manner.

Review - Tuesday, After Christmas (Marti, dupa craciun)

2012-01-02T23:42:00.004Z

The recent renaissance in Romanian cinema has been built upon the ability to find extraordinary drama in the everyday lives of ordinary people, and Radu Muntean's Tuesday, After Christmas is yet another remarkable offering from this country's new wave. What makes this film one of the most notable achievements in recent Romanian cinema is that it is less preoccupied with the lingering effects of the Ceauşescu regime and instead more interested in telling a story about people who could live in any western country. The film opens with a shot of a naked couple in bed. Paul (Mimi Branescu) is a middle-aged, greying man; Raluca (Maria Popistasu) is blonde, pretty and quite a few years younger than her partner. As we watch them in their post-coital happiness, we are instantly struck by the easy, playful intimacy that exists in their relationship.

They are not a couple, however. Paul is in fact married to Adriana (Mirela Oprisor), with whom he has an eight year-old daughter, and as soon as we discover this fact we are simply waiting for Paul's infidelity to be revealed. That sense of anticipation is where the film's dramatic tension is drawn from, but the engrossing effect of Tuesday, After Christmas is unusual because very little happens in the film that could be described as typically dramatic. After that opening sequence, in which Paul and Raluca kiss, joke around and talk about their forthcoming plans, the next scene shows us Paul and his wife in the midst of Christmas shopping. They try to pick out a snowboard for their daughter (who is currently going through a "pink phase"), they try on boots and a jumper, and they generally act the way married couples do. The dialogue is naturalistic and revolves around mundane things, while the performers have the rare, precious ability to act as if nobody at all is watching.

This is the great strength of Tuesday, After Christmas. It creates a sense of life so commonplace and familiar we feel as if we have intruded into the world these characters inhabit. Muntean lets the film unfold in unhurried single takes, his camera maintaining a fixed distance and allowing the characters to wander around the frame, and through observing them in their day-to-day activities we come to know them as complex, real individuals. Muntean doesn't adopt a stance in his depiction of this love triangle, he doesn't paint Paul as a cad for his behaviour or Raluca as a homewrecker, they are simply people who have found themselves in a difficult, emotionally charged situation. There is still love between Paul and Adriana – we see it in the way he rubs her feet after a long day, or when she cuts his hair – but perhaps what he feels for Raluca is real love as well? Branescu is astonishing as a man trying to process these conflicting feelings and consumed by a deep sense of shame for the manner in which he has hoodwinked his wife for so many months.

Muntean takes his time to drop the revelatory dramatic bombs we expect, confident in the strength of his writing and the ability of his actors to hold our attention through seemingly inconsequential encounters. There is a simmering threat of an eruption in some scenes, particularly when Raluca and Adriana finally meet, with Adriana seeing this young woman as their daughter's dentist and nothing more while Paul awkwardly stands in the background, suppressing his gnawing guilt. That sense of guilt finally leads to him confessing to his wife, and the scene that follows – an unbroken take of more than ten minutes – is a masterclass in acting, with Oprisor providing a devastating portrayal of a woman watching her marriage of ten years crumble around her. She attacks Paul with a righteous fury and attempts to hold back her confused tears, but above all she feels let down by her man, and Opriso's delivery of the line "you are my biggest disappointment ever" is a killer blow.

Tuesday, After Christmas is a sad film but it's also an invigorating one, having been made with such intelligence and insight, and feeling so richly authentic. So many films dealing with the breakup of a marriage or the revelation of infidelity feel the need for hysteria and melodrama, but Tuesday, After Christmas just gives us a painful portrait of people dealing with real circumstances as best they can. We don't know what the future will hold for Paul and Raluca, for Adriana, and for their daughter Mara, but the strain shows as we leave them playing happy families for one last Christmas.

The Best and Worst of 2011

2011-12-31T11:46:00.021Z

Best Film

1 - The Tree of Life
It's the kind of film that gets inside your heart and mind and stays there, with its bottomless mysteries and ambiguities continually provoking further thought
2 - A Separation
It is so rare to see a film that treats its characters and its audience with as much respect as this one does
3 - Mysteries of Lisbon
To watch Ruiz unravel the interlocking stories within stories that this sumptuous film consists of is to watch a master filmmaker at work
4 - Margaret
A sprawling, unpredictable rollercoaster of anxiety, sadness and truth
5 - Meek's Cutoff
Long scenes consist of little more than these characters wandering across the square screen, the wheels of their wagons creaking incessantly, but it is utterly transfixing to watch
6 - True Grit
It possesses the kind of deceptive simplicity that only filmmakers at the very top of their game are blessed with
7 - Tomboy
Tomboy is a small film – running for little more than 80 minutes – but few pictures this year have felt more perfectly formed
8 - Senna
This is Asif Kapadia's first documentary feature, but it unfolds with the momentum of a great drama
9 - Weekend
How rare it is to see a contemporary cinematic romance that feels honest, intelligent and real
10 - Essential Killing
A film that lingers in the memory long after its incredible final shot has faded away

Honorable Mentions
The Artist
Blue Valentine
Hugo
Melancholia
Miss Bala
Poetry
Rabbit Hole
Take Shelter
Warrior
Win Win

Worst Film

1 - The Change-Up
The Change-Up exemplifies mainstream Hollywood at its worst, displaying a scant regard for quality or for the taste and standards of its audience
2 - 3D Sex & Zen: Extreme Ecstasy
I tolerated the first half and loathed the second
3 - Brighton Rock
Nothing coheres, and the film just plods forward with a complete lack of tension and menace
4 - Zookeeper
An unspeakably tedious farce
5 - Age of the Dragons
I am honestly bewildered by the idea that anyone considers it worthy of a cinematic release
6 - Tomorrow, When the War Began
More often than not, the film generates unintentional laughter
7 - Arthur
It was always inevitable that a film like Arthur would be written for Brand, and that it would ultimately expose his shortcomings
8 - Julia's Eyes
Totally bereft of imagination, emotion or genuine scares
9 - Anonymous
Nothing more than a bloated and silly period soap opera that's too trivial to have any merit
10 - The Inbetweeners Movie
I can't help wishing they'd stayed on the small screen, where they clearly belong

Dishonorable Mentions
The Beaver
Cars 2
Crazy, Stupid, Love
Film socialisme
The Green Hornet
Hanna
Hereafter
I Am Number 4
Jack Goes Boating
We Have a Pope

Best Director

1 - Terrence Malick - The Tree of Life
2 - Asghar Farhadi - A Separation
3 - Raúl Ruiz - Mysteries of Lisbon
4 - Kelly Reichardt - Meek's Cutoff
5 - Joel & Ethan Coen - True Grit

Best Actor

1 - Jean Dujardin - The Artist
2 - Peyman Moadi - A Separation
3 - Michael Shannon - Take Shelter
4 - Vincent Gallo - Essential Killing
5 - Brendan Gleeson - The Guard
6 - Tom Cullen & Chris New - Weekend
7 - Jeff Bridges - True Grit
8 - Jim Sturgess - One Day
9 - Peter Mullan - Tyrannosaur
10 - Joel Edgerton - Warrior

Best Actress

1 - Anna Paquin - Margaret
2 - Michelle Williams - Blue Valentine
3 - Zoé Héran - Tomboy
4 - Olivia Colman - Tyrannosaur
5 - Rachel Weisz - The Deep Blue Sea
6 - Nicole Kidman - Rabbit Hole
7 - Kristen Wiig - Bridesmaids
8 - Yun Jeong-hie - Poetry
9 - Hailee Steinfeld - True Grit
10 - Stephanie Sigman - Miss Bala

Best Supporting Actor

1 - Matt Damon - True Grit
2 - Bruce Greenwood - Meek's Cutoff
3 - Brad Pitt - The Tree of Life
4 - Ben Mendelsohn - Animal Kingdom
5 - Ryan Gosling - Crazy, Stupid, Love
6 - Tom Hiddleston - Thor
7 - Simon Russell Beale - The Deep Blue Sea
8 - Corey Stoll - Midnight in Paris
9 - Nick Nolte - Warrior
10 - Albert Brooks - Drive

Best Supporting Actress

1 - Sareh Bayat - A Separation
2 - Bérénice Bejo - The Artist
3 - J. Smith-Cameron - Margaret
4 - Rose Byrne - Bridesmaids
5 - Dianne Wiest - Rabbit Hole
6 - Charlotte Gainsbourg - Melancholia
7 - Jeannie Berlin - Margaret
8 - Jessica Chastain - Take Shelter
9 - Malonn Lévana - Tomboy
10 - Emma Stone - Crazy, Stupid, Love

Best Original Screenplay

1 - A Separation
2 - Margaret
3 - Win Win
4 - Weekend
5 - Poetry

Best Adapted Screenplay

1 - True Grit
2 - Mysteries of Lisbon
3 - Rabbit Hole
4 - The Deep Blue Sea
5 - Hugo

Best Cinematography

1 - The Tree of Life
2 - Hugo
3 - Wuthering Heights
4 - Mysteries of Lisbon
5 - Miss Bala

Best Editing

1 - Senna
2 - The Tree of Life
3 - A Separation
4 - True Grit
5 - Blue Valentine

Best Original Score

1 - Snowtown
2 - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
3 - The Artist
4 - The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
5 - Contagion

Best Costume Design

1 - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
2 - Mysteries of Lisbon
3 - Hugo
4 - True Grit
5 - Midnight in Paris

Best Production Design

1 - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
2 - Hugo
3 - The Tree of Life
4 - The Deep Blue Sea
5 - Thor

Film Experience of the Year

1 - Shoah at the Prince Charles Cinema
An unforgettable, exhausting, once in a lifetime experience. Claude Lanzmann's 9½-hour Holocaust documentary is one of the crowning achievements in cinema. A relentless torrent of words that conjures images to break the heart. A humbling, monumental film.

2 - The Passion of Joan of Arc at the Royal Festival Hall
Carl Theodor Dreyer's film remains one of the most moving cinematic experiences one can have, and at this Royal Festival Hall screening it received a new lease of life from Adrian Utley and Will Gregory's excellent new score.

3 - The Devils at the Barbican
In the months before Ken Russell passed away, British film fans had two opportunities to see his notorious The Devils uncut. It was revealed to be a true masterpiece from this maverick filmmaker.

4 - Beggars of Life at the National Film Theatre
A train-hopping silent classic starring Louise Brooks, Wallace Beery and Richard Arlen, which was enlivened by a tremendous new score from The Dodge Brothers.

5 - The Clock at the Purcell Room
Christian Marclay's film is a staggering achievement. Assembled with skill and wit, it's utterly engrossing and consistently surprising. Worth devoting a day of your life to.

2011 in Review

2011-12-31T00:48:00.012Z

My visits to the cinema in 2011 were dominated by questions of scale. This summer I sat down and watched the longest film I've ever seen in its entirety, Claude Lanzmann's overwhelming Holocaust documentary Shoah, an all-day experience that I will probably never repeat but one I'll similarly never forget. I also saw sizeable chunks of a 24 hour-long movie, as I managed to catch around 9 hours of The Clock over the course of two days (tip of the hat to Matthew Turner, who managed a whopping 13 hours in one sitting and archived his tweets from the evening here). Christian Marclay's astonishing feat of research and editing is a true marvel; a film that completely hypnotises the viewer and makes them forget about time slipping by even as they watch a film that constantly reminds them of it.

That's what the best movies can do. They make a viewer completely lose themselves in the picture, forgetting about all other distractions, and if a film can hold my attention for an unusually long period then that's all the better. This year I enjoyed Bernardo Bertolucci's raucous and surprisingly funny fascism epic Novecento for the first time, Michael Cimino's unfairly maligned western Heaven's Gate for the second time and – the only 2011 release that stepped up to the running time challenge – Raúl Ruiz's Mysteries of Lisbon. That late contender for my film of the year prize was a 4½-hour movie edited down from a 6-hour TV series, but I could have happily sat there and watched the longer cut, so entranced was I by the late director's command of his labyrinthine, witty, dreamlike story.

Some films are considered momentous through the subjects and themes they choose to explore rather than their length, however, and this year the end of the world was on the minds of numerous filmmakers (maybe they're taking seriously the notion that our time will be up in 2012?). Apocalyptic tales are normally the preserve of Roland Emmerich, but while he was busy with more high-minded fare (even if Anonymous did turn out to be dumbed-down Shakespeare), some of our finest filmmakers attempted to bring their familiar style to humanity's last days. Naturally, Lars von Trier wasn't in any mood to let us off the hook, destroying Earth in Melancholia's gorgeous opening ten minutes before taking us back to see how two sisters braced themselves for disaster. In truth, I prefer the visceral, unhinged force of von Trier's more uneven Antichrist (with which this would make a fine, if draining, double-bill) but Melancholia is one of his most fully realised and dramatically powerful films, and another triumph for this ever-surprising director. It was funny too (Udo Kier as a prissy wedding planner? "I vill not look at her. She has ruined my vedding."), which certainly gives it the edge over Contagion, Steven Soderbergh's realistic but ultimately uninvolving examination of what might happen if a deadly virus made its way from person to person across the globe. Few directors can put a complex film together with the skill and finesse of Soderbergh, but sometimes the finished product can come across as a mildly interesting directorial exercise rather than something he's fully invested in.

The other major film to tackle an impending apocalypse this year was Take Shelter, Jeff Nichols' hugely impressive second collaboration with Michael Shannon. This was a far more ambiguous take on the subject than Contagion or Melancholia – is working-class family man Curtis mentally unstable, or are his visions actually Nostradamus-like predictions of a storm to end all storms? Take Shelter is a confident, absorbing and challenging film that is built upon an astonishingly powerful performance from Shannon, a great actor finally getting the platform he deserves. It's always a joy to see actors you admire receiving widespread acclaim, and 2011 offered numerous similarly satisfying performances – Jean Dujardin in The Artist, Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids, Olivia Colman in Tyrannosaur and Anna Paquin in Margaret...even if Paquin had to wait 6 years for her recognition.

The strange case of Margaret was one of 2011's most memorable stories. After a torturous editing process, lawsuits, re-drawn contracts and the deaths of two producers, Kenneth Lonergan's second feature was dumped like a hot potato by a studio that – perhaps understandably – was heartily sick of the whole affair. Such a fate befalls many small movies, but what happened next was more surprising. People started to seek out Margaret, they loved it, and they began spreading the word that the film was far from the disaster its difficult production would suggest. In fact, it quickly became clear that Margaret might just be one of the year's best films and it was soon the movie on everyone's lips, with some critics (notably Jaime Christley, who started a petition) pressuring Fox Searchlight to give the film the release it deserved. The #TeamMargaret campaign seemed to pay off as the film expanded into new cities and extra screens, and there was something very satisfying about seeing passionate film fans driving a picture out of the ghetto and towards the mainstream. However, as Ashley Clark quite rightly pointed out on Twitter, it's worth asking why there was no #TeamBallast campaign when Lance Hammer's movie quietly flopped on these shores.

So many small films slip through the cracks these days and if we learn any lesson from the Margaret situation, it should be that vocal advocates in your corner can make a world of difference; and while I began this article talking about epic cinematic experiences, it's the smaller, more intimate films that burn just as vividly in my memory. Asghar Farhadi's masterful A Separation dropped us into the middle of a crumbling Iranian marriage and gripped us as it depicted the unforeseen consequences of the split, while Andrew Haigh's Weekend allowed us to spend a couple of days with two men and see a beautiful, moving romance bloom before our eyes. Essential Killing was perhaps the most minimalist film of all – consisting largely of Vincent Gallo running through various inhospitable landscapes – but it proved to be the year's most exciting thriller too, and possibly the finest use yet of the madness that lies inside Gallo.

But the film that dominated 2011 for me is a film that married the epic and the intimate like no other. After a typically long gestation period, Terrence Malick finally unveiled The Tree of Life, which proved to be both the most personal and most ambitious work of his extraordinary career. Malick's breathtakingly evocative portrait of a son torn between the virtues personified by his very different parents allowed the director to explore the birth of the universe itself and our relationship with God. For some viewers, The Tree of Life was a shatteringly moving experience that shifted our sense of what cinema could accomplish; for others it was a self-indulgence too far, only worthy of scorn and derision; a few baffled souls simultaneously took both views. However, The Tree of Life got people talking, sparking fascinating debates for and against Malick's magnum opus, and even those who criticised the film could only marvel at its visual and aural splendour, and the almost unprecedented breadth of its ambition. You couldn't walk out of this movie and say you hadn't felt something, that you hadn't been part of a singular experience, and no matter what size canvas you choose to paint on, that is surely the goal of a great work of art.

Review - The Artist

2011-12-30T01:05:00.003Z

The Artist opens with the premiere of a new film starring silent movie star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin). It's a thriller entitled A Russian Affair, in which Valentin plays the dashing, death-defying hero, and as the movie reaches its exciting climax, the cast and crew pace anxiously behind the scenes. Finally, the film ends and they await the expected explosion of applause, but for a moment there is only total silence, until we see the nervous filmmakers break out into broad smiles. The audience has in fact been clapping enthusiastically; we just couldn't hear it.

This is a silent movie about silent movies, and sly little tricks like the one described above are what director Michel Hazanavicius knows best. He has already proven himself a dab hand at pastiche in his endearingly naff OSS:117 films – which starred Dujardin as a suave but clueless spy – and few director-actor pairs are better suited to a silent homage than these two. The Artist, however, is a significant step up from the two OSS:117 pictures, which often felt like a rather ramshackle collection of hit-and-miss gags. Here, the structure is more solid, the gags are sharper and the whole production is a good deal more polished than the director's previous films. 1920's Hollywood is lovingly recreated through the impressive production design and crisp black-and-white cinematography, all of which is contained within a 4:3 frame and interrupted only by the intertitles required to share the characters' dialogue with us. Stylistically, at least, Hazanavicius gets everything just about right, and the effect is immediately entrancing.

The director doesn't dig into the silent era for his story, however, as films like Singin' in the Rain and A Star Is Born are the most obvious influences upon The Artist's narrative. George Valentin starts the film as top dog (with his faithful hound Uggy a close second),and such fame has inevitably resulted in a certain arrogance. One great early scene shows him, and Uggy, milking the crowd's adulation while his spotlight-starved wife and co-star (Penelope Ann Miller) fumes off stage. Few actors would be able to play such a scene of swaggering bravado while remaining so thoroughly likable, but that's the magic Dujardin brings to the role, his enormously expressive performance shining like a beacon at this movie's centre. The man radiates old-fashioned movie star charm from every pore and his Fairbanks-like performance here is a thing of beauty; light on his feet, displaying pin-sharp comic timing and able to completely shift the tone of a scene by simply raising an eyebrow. We instantly understand why Valentin was such an screen idol, and the man himself firmly believes he has nothing to fear from these newfangled talkies. "If that's your future, you can keep it!" he laughs after seeing test footage of a sound picture. We all know what happens next.

As one star falls another must rise, and the travails of George Valentin's fading screen career are set against the burgeoning stardom of irresistible ingénue Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo). George is responsible for her big break, and then he has to stand by and watch as her face adorns the billboards that once bore his image. Again, the star quality that makes Peppy America's new cinematic sweetheart is obvious; some actresses might have struggled to stand up to Dujardin's formidable turn, but Bejo's dazzling smile, wit and grace makes her a perfect partner for him. The scenes they share together in the movie's opening half – their meet-cute, their multiple-take dancing on set, the delightful scene with the jacket – simply leap off the screen. This is pure cinematic magic.

The question is whether Hazanavicius can keep up the pace, and sadly he can't. After a breathless and invigorating opening, the film stalls with George's overextended slide into obscurity, and this is where the The Artist's habit of constantly drawing attention to its own construction works against it. The Artist always makes us aware that we're watching a silent film; it plays games with sound effects and intertitles ("I won't talk!"/"Why won't you talk?" etc.) and makes frequent references to other movies, including ones that exist outside the era it's paying homage to. Hazanavicius gets away with the Citizen Kane-inspired breakfast table gag, largely because of Dujardin and Uggy (a canine performance for the ages, this), but when he marks Valentin's lowest ebb with a snatch of Bernard Herrmann's Vertigo score, the effect is needlessly distracting. The Artist spends a long time trying to make us care about its central character's decline and fall, but the film is too knowing about its own artifice, and it spends too much time winking at the audience to achieve the necessary sense of depth when required.

The people who made silent films in the early days of cinema didn't know they were making silent films, they were just making cinema. They were creating, they were experimenting, they were trying to master this new visual language, and that sense of sincerity is what The Artist ultimately lacks. It's a stupendously enjoyable film, there's no question about that, and it overcomes its sluggish midsection magnificently with a rousing finale, but it's hard to see it as more than an expertly executed stunt. Still, as crowdpleasers go, this is one of the more unusual and commendable Oscar contenders to emerge in recent years, and one wonders what effect it will have on viewers who have never seen a silent film before. Will The Artist act as the beguiling gateway drug to a world of silent cinema, causing neophytes to eventually discover the masterworks of Keaton, Chaplin, Murnau, von Sternberg and more? Then, and only then, will they discover what silent movies can truly be.

Review - The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

2011-12-27T19:24:00.003Z

A great director can sometimes turn trash into art, but David Fincher can only take The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo so far. We might be inclined to wonder what attracted this filmmaker to Stieg Larsson's novel, but Fincher has always displayed a taste for pulpy, thrill-based stories, so the darkness of this tale should in theory be a good fit for him. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo has already been filmed once, by Danish director Niels Arden Oplev, but his TV background was evident through his unspectacular handling of the picture, whereas the new version has at least been entrusted to a real filmmaker. Fincher attempts to stamp his own personality on the film immediately, with a rather dubious opening credits sequence involving bodies writhing in ink (or oil?) to the sound of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's version of Immigrant Song, a sequence that suggests a kinkier take on James Bond.

I guess it seems oddly appropriate, as the male lead is played by the current OO7. Daniel Craig is investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist, whose attempt to take down a corrupt businessman has landed him in court and financial trouble, with his reputation in pieces. Despite this, he is offered a new job when retired millionaire Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) invites him to his remote estate and asks him to solve the forty year-old mystery of his daughter's disappearance. As he gets down to business a parallel storyline plays out, introducing us to the real star of the movie, Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara). Whereas Daniel Craig strolls around being Daniel Craig and opting out of the Swedish accent every other actor adopts, Mara seems completely committed her character. Her waif-like frame makes Lisbeth a more vulnerable figure than Noomi Rapace's embodiment of the role (though she lacks Rapace's ferocity), and she bears the scars of a lifetime of abuse more readily, but she also brings a welcome sly wit to the role and an effective directness. I liked her delivery of the line, "Lie still. I’ve never done this before – and there will be blood," as she took a tattoo-based revenge on her rapist, as well as her condescending sneer and "please" when Mikael asked how she accessed his encrypted files.

Lisbeth is a stunningly proficient computer hacker, you see – but then, I presume you know that already, which is why I haven't gone into much detail over the plot here. If you haven't read the book or seen the movie then you're going to be a very small proportion of this film's potential audience, which gives Fincher some peculiar challenges top overcome. There is no tension here – we know the beats of the story very well and when the characters are in peril we know both that they will escape and even how they will escape. For much of the film the key differences between the 2009 film and this one are in style and mood. Fincher's film is as slickly watchable as we might expect – we've seen before how he can make computer hacking and the dogged pursuit of clues into mesmerising cinema – with Jeff Cronenweth's coldly atmospheric cinematography and the unsettling rhythms of Reznor and Ross's score ensuring this is a far more professional production than the original film. But The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo remains a sordid piece of work, no matter how gleaming the surface of Fincher's picture is, and it remains a pretty shoddy piece of storytelling too, something that is only thrown into sharp relief by the extra style this American version possesses.

The most successful film adaptations of novels often make significant changes to the structure of the narrative, and that's something The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was crying out for. Steven Zaillian's screenplay does make a few small changes to the plot – one alteration towards the end is a smart move – but the essential structure of Larsson's story remains in all its ungainliness. Significant issues remains: that Lisbeth and Mikael don't meet until over an hour of the film has elapsed; that so many revelations are congested into a few stodgy and unconvincing sequences; and that the film ends not with the uncovering of the murderer, but with a rather dull and inconsequential sequence in which Lisbeth plays dress-up and steals some money.

I wish Fincher and Zaillian had completely re-thought The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and dared to give us a fresh take on a story that has already been told through one book and movie. Instead we have that same old story, with all of its inherent problems, lifted mostly intact and given an expensive makeover. It's not really enough, and watching The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a strangely empty experience, as we watch in the knowledge that the film exists beneath the level of the talents that have been working on it. It's always a pleasure to see a filmmaker like David Fincher at work, but sometimes he's only as good as his material allows him to be.

Review - Mysteries of Lisbon (Mistérios de Lisboa)

2011-12-12T00:57:00.004Z

Everybody in Mysteries of Lisbon has a story to tell, and over the course of the film's 4½-hour running time, Raúl Ruiz is going to tell every single one of them. To watch Ruiz unravel the interlocking stories within stories that this sumptuous film consists of is to watch a master filmmaker at work, confidently unfurling his film at a pace that is guaranteed to transfix an attentive audience. The film begins simply enough, in a 19th century Portuguese college where a young orphan has been taken under the wing of a kindly priest, Adriano Luz's Father Dinis. The boy longs for his mother and, as he recuperates from a fever, Ângela (Maria João Bastos) suddenly appears at the side of his sickbed. She presents him with a toy theatre, a touch that reminded me of Ingmar Bergman's similarly expansive Fanny and Alexander.

Little cardboard characters appear on this stage occasionally, as more stories are recalled (and fresh mysteries created) by Father Dinis. He is the key figure in Mysteries of Lisbon; the cog around which the movie elaborately revolves. Father Dinis appears to know everybody's secrets and histories, even popping up in their stories in various guises and intervening to turn the tide of events. Keeping track of this character's switches of identity and functions within the plot(s) would be challenging enough, but in Mysteries of Lisbon there are so many revelations that completely upend our understanding of the characters involved in this drama and their relationships with one another. For much of the film, you simply have to follow the various narrative trajectories as best you can and trust that it will all add up to something in the end. What holds our attention throughout Mysteries of Lisbon, however, is less the stories being told than the manner in which Ruiz is telling them.

Mysteries of Lisbon is one of the most fluid and mesmerisingly beautiful films I have seen in a very long time. Every shot is ravishingly designed and the director gives us plenty of time to admire the scene he has set, as he allows the film to play out in long takes with very little cutting. Within those takes, André Szankowski's camera glides around the characters, circles them, rises above them or sneakily peeks at them from behind the furniture. When Ruiz observes two lovers the morning after their scandalous tryst, he does so between the crack in a door, or half obscured by curtains, as if we have crept into the room unbeknownst to the players in the scene. His camera continues to rove curiously along corridors as of seeking out further dramatic disclosures, and every such directorial flourish is carried off with a remarkable lightness of touch, the whole film being imbued with this sense of mischievous playfulness.

Ruiz certainly appears to be in his element here, and if Mysteries of Lisbon is about anything then it's surely about the sheer pleasure of storytelling. Characters often say things like "That's another story" or "I'll explain later" and every time the film takes us off on another tangent the whole picture feels revitalised, as a new set of characters add fresh layers of complexity and drama to the film. Somehow, it makes sense that the revenge-fuelled plotting of a French aristocrat in the film's most modern sequence is linked to a love triangle involving two Napoleonic soldiers decades earlier, or that the two crooks who almost killed the child that Ângela was carrying should later become such significant figures in young João's life. Ruiz withholds key information from us throughout, allowing us to get to know the characters from one perspective before he offers us another take on who they are.

When you make a film that runs for 4½ hours (Mysteries of Lisbon was edited down from a six-hour TV series), you'd better justify that running time, and Ruiz does so magnificently. This might be the swiftest and most consistently engaging 4½-hour film I've ever seen; Ruiz can't afford to let the pace flag with so much incident to cover and so many mysteries to solve. Raúl Ruiz died this year at the age of 70 and although he was already working on another film, Mysteries of Lisbon feels like a fitting swansong. It feels as if all of the storytelling techniques the director learned during his long and eclectic career have been utilised here; the film is a summation of everything that Raúl Ruiz loved about movies and moviemaking. It's one of those rare films that feels like an instant classic even as you are watching it, and although Ruiz's passing came too soon, his final film is a gift to us all.

Review - Margaret

2011-12-09T00:57:00.004Z

Pity poor Margaret. Kenneth Lonergan's second film has finally arrived in cinemas after six years of confrontations, reediting and legal wrangling, although the term "arrived" is perhaps a too polite one to describe the way Fox has dumped it so unceremoniously. To treat a film in such a manner – denying press screenings, offering no publicity and restricting it to a handful of cinemas (just one screen in London) – suggests the film is a disaster that will only bring embarrassment upon the studio, and it will better for everyone if they just quietly bury it. The curious thing about Margaret, however, is that the film isn't a disaster. In fact, Margaret is one of the most adventurous and impressive American films that you're likely to see this – that is, if you can see it.

It feels so odd to have to seek out a film like Margaret because if it had been released this time five years ago, with a supportive studio behind it, then might have been viewing it in the middle of its awards push, and remarking upon the leaps and bounds that Lonergan had made between his first two features. His 2001 debut You Can Count on Me was a low-key but perfectly formed independent film and we might have expected him to subsequently have the kind of career that someone like Tom McCarthy has carved out for himself. Instead, Lonergan has produced a work of startling ambition and lacerating emotional content that remains utterly fascinating even as it occasionally threatens to veer out of control or buckle under its thematic weight.

It also features one of the year's greatest acting performances in the lead role. Anna Paquin plays Lisa Cohen, an ordinary 17 year-old from New York City. When I say Lisa is an ordinary teen I mean just that – she's a smart girl who does stupid things; she presents herself as a more mature person than she is and then finds herself in difficult situations as a result. Many viewers will watch Lisa and describe her as a nightmarish central character, but Lonergan and Paquin deserve enormous credit for never pandering to audience expectations by attempting to make her sympathetic. They simply let her exists in all of her complicated, abrasive, turbulent glory, and Paquin's conviction in the central role is something quite wondrous to behold. Margaret is chiefly a film about the deep sense of guilt and shame that Lisa feels when she inadvertently causes a fatal bus accident, but it's about so much more than that. Perhaps too much.

As Lisa attempts to make amends for her actions we see how her behaviour affects everyone she comes into contact with. She makes life extremely difficult for her mother (J. Smith-Cameron, a wonderful sparring partner for Paquin), who already has enough on her plate with a new man in her life (an odd, droll cameo from Jean Reno) and a play approaching its premiere. She has a huge impact on the lives of the bus driver responsible for the accident (Mark Ruffalo) and the closest friend (Jeannie Berlin) of the woman who died in it, and she has intimate interludes with a slacker (Kieran Culkin), a besotted classmate (John Gallagher Jr.) and a teacher (a startlingly young-looking Matt Damon). You want even more than that? How about a few lengthy debates on American foreign policy in a post-9/11 world, which would have presumably felt more resonant and organic five years ago than they do now? Lonergan certainly fits a lot into his two and a half hours, and you can see why he spent so many years fighting for a longer cut.

With such a surfeit of plot and metaphorical allusions, Margaret inevitably feels a bit overstuffed and unbalanced at times, and some characters feel short-changed in this version (Damon's teacher in particular), but on a scene-by-scene basis Margaret feels thrillingly alive. The flat – occasionally downright ugly – shooting style adopted by Lonergan and DP Ryszard Lenczewski (who has done impressive work in the past) doesn't prevent us from becoming engrossed in the often explosive drama they capture. Almost every scene in Margaret hinges on a vivid sense of emotional honesty that Lonergan and his exceptional actors manage to access with unerring consistency, and the editing skilfully keeps us on our toes, frequently cutting away at what feels like a crucial juncture. The film is a sprawling, unpredictable rollercoaster of anxiety, sadness and truth, and it's a film blessed with an all-too-rare sense of vitality and intelligence.

In fact, Margaret is so good it's almost inconceivable that Fox have treated it so shabbily. They may well feel they have already lost enough money and pulled out enough hair over Lonergan's long-gestating passion project, but surely they can see that they have something of value on their hands here? The excellent performances, the sense of ambition and the undeniable emotional impact the film possesses mark it out as something special, and it's astonishing to consider that it almost never saw the light of day. Margaret is flawed but invigorating, and in an American cinematic landscape that so rarely offers surprising, challenging fare, its re-emergence from the ashes feels like something of a miracle.

Review - Hugo

2011-12-06T05:17:00.002Z

"Time has not been kind to old movies." This line could have been delivered by Martin Scorsese, as he continues his mission to rescue and restore lost classics from cinema's past, but instead it's delivered by a character in Hugo, the director's first film aimed at a family audience. On one level Hugo is the broadest, most commercial film that Scorsese has ever made, but on another level it is his most intensely personal, with this great director – who has spoken admiringly of filmmakers who "smuggled" their own ideas and themes into studio pictures – turning this Christmas-time blockbuster into a heartfelt paean to the magic of cinema. At one point the kids' adventure that provides the ostensible narrative backbone to the picture simply stops, and Hugo begins to deliver an illustrated lecture on the earliest days of filmmaking and the work of Georges Méliès in particular. This is America's greatest living director paying tribute to one of cinema's greatest visionaries, and as I watched these scenes I felt I'd died and gone to movie heaven.

Whether a lesson in the life and times of Georges Méliès is what children want from their cinematic entertainment is another question entirely. Hugo is – thankfully – a million miles away from dancing penguins or squealing chipmunks, but hopefully the story of resourceful young orphan Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) should contain enough adventure, comedy and emotion to hold their attention, even if the two distinct portions of Scorsese's film don't always mix elegantly. Hugo's problems tend to exist at a script level, and there's a certain awkwardness about the manner in which John Logan's adaptation of The Invention of Hugo Cabret handles exposition in the film's opening half. Scorsese's issue seems to be more a question of how to play it, and the film veers drunkenly between moments of quiet emotion – Butterfield and Ben Kingsley (as Méliès) give sensitive performances – and scenes of ostentatious clowning, which tend to centre on Sacha Baron Cohen's bungling Station Inspector.

The story revolves around Hugo's desire to find out what secret is hidden inside the automaton his late father left him with. This is the catalyst that leads him to Méliès – now running a failing toy shop, his artistic achievements forgotten – and to Isabelle (Chloë Moretz), who mysteriously wears a key around her neck that fits the automaton's lock. Scorsese brings a great sense of directorial verve to their clandestine quest, but he can't do much about the fact that the story is thin and repetitive, with too many scenes of Hugo running away from the Station Inspector and narrowly avoiding onrushing trains. It starts to feel like padding, as does the Amélie-like side story of romance blooming between Richard Griffiths and Frances de la Tour. It has been over 25 years since Scorsese made a film that ran less than two hours, and Hugo certainly feels like it could have used some disciplined tightening.

Because when Hugo is good it's an absolute wonder to behold, and it reaches its zenith during the sequences that take us behind-the-scenes on Méliès' sets, lovingly recreated by Dante Ferreti. Méliès leaps around the set in full costume (he acted in the films he directed), enthused by the possibilities of this amazing new medium. It seems almost fitting that Scorsese has adopted 3D for this particular picture – he recalls audiences flinching as they watched the Lumières' Train Arriving at the Station in 1896 – and he utilises it to create a wondrous sense of depth and space, inviting us into the impossibly beautiful world the film has created for us. There are gorgeous, magical sequences here, with Scorsese giving free rein to the fantastical in the same way that Méliès did over a century ago, and the sense of love and compassion that Scorsese brings to the silent film element of Hugo is so palpable it moved me to tears.

It's a shame, then, that the human element of the film failed to ring true in the same fashion. Moretz gives a stiff, unconvincing display and Baron Cohen's performance quickly grows tiresome, with his tentative courtship of Emily Mortimer's meek flower girl being another unnecessary addition. But Scorsese ensures Hugo is always dazzling to watch, and despite my misgivings about the manner in which it tells its story, it had a deeper emotional impact on me than any Scorsese film has in years. It's a beautiful, spectacular, ambitious picture about a man's love of making movies – whether that man is Méliès or Scorsese – and I hope it finds an audience among its intended demographic. When I looked around me halfway through the film, all of the children in my vicinity certainly seemed spellbound by it, quietly following the action with rapt attention, and at its best Hugo did make me feel like a kid again; gazing with awe at the big screen, and delighting in cinema's ability to let us see our dreams in the middle of the day.

Win L'amour fou on DVD

2011-11-30T02:43:00.005Z

The life and times of a style icon should really be explored in a stylish documentary, and that's the tribute Yves Saint Laurent receives in L'amour fou, Pierre Thoretton's slick and touching film. Focusing on the five-decade relationship between the designer and his great love Pierre Bergé, the film skilfully weaves together extensive testimony from Bergé, well-chosen archive footage and eye-opening shots of the extraordinary art collection they amassed as it is auctioned off for a fortune. Although his genius for innovation and design is obvious, the real Yves Saint Laurent remains something of an enigma throughout, with Bergé's observations only taking us so far beneath the surface of his character. Nevertheless, L'amour fou is an elegant film that provides viewers with an accessible and intriguing introduction to the man and his work.

L'amour fou is out on DVD now and Phil on Film has three copies to give away. To have a chance of winning, just send your full name and postal address to philipconcannon@gmail.com. This competition is open to readers from around the world (just make sure you can play region 2 DVDs) and winners will be notified on December 9th.

Good luck!

Interview - Terence Davies

2011-11-25T07:38:00.003Z

Terence Davies' The Deep Blue Sea is the director's first narrative feature since The House of Mirth over a decade ago, and it is a welcome reminder of the gifts that have made him one of this country's finest filmmakers. This story of a woman who abandons her marriage for a passionate but self-destructive affair is an adaptation of Terence Rattigan's play, and it proves to be a perfect fit for Davies, allowing him to once again travel back to the 1950's where he feels most at home. It's a beautiful, brilliantly performed film and I had the opportunity to talk to Terence Davies about it shortly before the film's UK premiere at the London Film Festival.

When we last spoke in 2008 you mentioned some projects you were working on but The Deep Blue Sea wasn't one of them. How did this come to be your next film after Of Time and the City?

Well, it came about by accident. Sean O'Connor, one of the co-producers, got in touch with me and asked if I would like to do a play of Rattigan's because his centenary was going to fall this year. I had never seen the plays staged, and the only ones I knew were the 1952 version of The Browning Version, which I love, and the late-1950's version of Separate Tables, which I also think is very good. I said I couldn't do them because I think those films are good and it would be very difficult to rethink a play. Anyway, I read the entire canon and I said I might be able to do something with The Deep Blue Sea. I had been taken to see it by my mother and all I could remember was one scene with Kenneth More coming down these stairs, so I didn't really know it, and I thought I could do something with that. So that's how it came about.

How did you go about adapting the play? You have adapted novels in the past, but was this a very different process?

At first I was a little worried because I had never done a play before. What I found from reading the entire canon is that Rattigan likes to put all of the exposition in the first act, and I don't particularly like that. It's telling me what went on before the curtain went up and it's not that interesting, I don't think. I felt that it had to be told from Hester's point of view, which means a lot of that exposition can go, simply because we can't know about it if she's not privy to it. That made it much easier, if I did it from her point of view, but of course it meant restructuring it, and I thought, "Where they're talking about the past, I want to see the past," so it was very much the subjective point of view of Hester's that then determined how it was written. The first draft was very, very tentative, because I was a bit worried and didn't think I could pull it off, but Alan Brodie of the Terence Rattigan Trust was absolutely wonderful and he just said, "Be radical with it," so I did. I always work in the same way – first draft, notes, second draft, notes, polish, and that's what we shoot – and that's what happened here. But I had to get the sub-textural meaning, not just what the story is, and in that tentative first draft I didn't really know what the subtext was. By stint of reading the play again and again and again, I realised what it was about. The subtext is about love, three forms of love, and a love that each person cannot get from the other, it cannot be reciprocated. Once I knew that, it made it relatively easy to adapt the rest of the play.

It's true what you say about the three forms of love at the heart of the film, because while the film is essentially Hester's story, all three characters find themselves placed in a difficult situation and dealing with emotions that they are ill-prepared for.

Yes, exactly. When Hester married William Colyer, she was probably like a lot of men and women who didn't know a lot about love and sex. He was obviously a very cultured man and they shared cultural things together. Perhaps he didn't have much of a libido, but that was part of the package and you didn't question it – well, certainly in the 50's you didn't, especially if you were a middle-class woman – but she discovers sex through this ex-flyer and that changes her completely. In a way she wants them both, she wants the culture that William brings and the eroticism Freddie brings, but he likes popular culture, he just doesn't respond to art or the highbrow, and while she gets that from William there's very little sex life there. They all want that different kind of love and they can't give it. William wants things back the way they were but she can't do it, even though she does love William in a way, she wants this intense physical relationship – all intense, all the time – but Freddie can't give her the cultural comfort she desires. Freddie, really, has been destroyed by war. When you're 18-20, as those fighter pilots were, you survive and you come back to a bankrupt, shoddy Britain, what do you do? Life seems to be crushingly dull. So it's about the nature of that ménage à trois, really.

You mentioned having to cut the exposition from Rattigan's play and one of the most striking aspects of your film is the way you open it, with an incredibly intense sequence scored to Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto. How did that come about?

It was always written like that because what I wanted to do, in mirroring the shot at the end that moves away from the house, is to say that in the whole of London you have this little house and this little tragedy. You have to introduce the people who are in the tragedy with succinctness so you know who they are. That's just a practical thing, but what I wanted to do with the Barber was to give that sense of, whenever you're going through whatever traumas you're going through, they're huge in your life. They might not be huge outside or to other people, but they're huge in your life. I wanted to make it succinct and say, this is a potent story about a woman who's driven to do this, and she's driven to it by love and erotic love. That concerto I've known for many years and I think it's one of the great concertos, the slow movement is so wonderful, and I just knew it was right. It wasn't originally written to accompany the first nine minutes, because that's how long the slow movement lasts, but I thought as we cut it that we could get rid of the voiceover – in fact we got rid of all of the voiceover, except over the credits, which really works – and just set the whole of that nine minutes to music. We show her trying to kill herself and we show her dilemma, why she's doing it. That evolved as we cut it.

In recreating 1950's Britain, how much of it was drawn from your own memories of that time?

The thing that is really important – and this is something that they often get wrong when they do the 50's in this country – is that while I know how it looked I also know how it felt, and that's a huge difference. I can remember everything being broken and shabby, because you couldn't buy on HP, that came later, so you had to make do with what you had. There was still rationing, for God's sake, and everything was down at heel, because the country was bankrupt. The cinematographer, the man who designed it for me and the woman who costumed it for me; the three of them talked about colour as a metaphor, and I've never heard anyone talk like that. That was thrilling because I thought, "I've got the right people, they know what they're doing." We had long discussions, I always do a lot of tests for the stock and the look of the film, and when you have three people talking about colour as a metaphor you know you're onto a good thing.

As well as evoking a period of British history, it feels like The Deep Blue Sea is also evoking a particular era of cinema. As I watched it I felt the influence of directors like Douglas Sirk, David Lean and Max Ophüls. Did you have any specific films or directors in mind as you shot it?

[Laughs] Well, that's very complimentary. They were sort of half there because you can't see Letter From an Unknown Woman and forget it, you can't see The Heiress and forget it, and of course you can't see Brief Encounter and forget it - you just can't. They were there subliminally. In fact, when she stops short of killing herself on the tube, that was a direct lift from The Passionate Friends, and when she's in the chair at the very beginning in front of the fire and she looks at her husband, I've stolen that from Brief Encounter. [Laughs] I suppose we don't say stolen, we say homage, don't we?

As long as you're stealing from the best you're doing OK.

Yes, it's not bad is it? [Laughs]

Another thing that reminded me of that bygone era of cinema is the supporting characters who pop up in the film from time to time. The no-nonsense landlady and the man who acts as doctor for Hester felt like they could have appeared in a David Lean or Michael Powell film.

Well, when Ann Mitchell came in to read for Mrs Elton it leapt off the page. I mean, she had known these women and had been brought up with these women, so she just inhabited this role. I had always wanted Karl Johnson to do Mr Miller and I said, "I don't want you to audition, I want you to do it. I don't know who to ask if you say no" and he said of course he'd do it. He's so wonderfully crunchy and irritable, he was just a joy, they both were. In fact they all were a joy, I had a wonderful cast. They don't do any "character acting," they just are. That's what I said to all of the cast, I said, "don't act it, feel it" because the camera captures truth but it also captures falsity. If it doesn't feel right, don't do it.

The other thing I liked about Mrs Elton is that you give us a glimpse into her home life with her ailing husband, and that goes back to what you said about everyone having their own tragedies behind closed doors.

What Ann loved about that particular scene was that we gave a working-class character the role of telling Hester about love. She tells her that love isn't all the rubbish that's spoken about it, love is about wiping someone's arse. That's what you do, you go on and you do it in a way that they can carry on and keep their dignity, that's what real love is. I think at the end, Hester does find true love, because without overtly saying it she can say, "If you're happier without me, you can go, Freddie." God knows, her future is bleak, she's not trained to do anything, but she has found a strength by letting him go. That's true love, I think.

Rachel Weisz is extraordinary in this film and while I have admired many of her performances in the past I think she's working at another level here. Was she always your Hester?

No, not at all. I saw her when I was watching television one night. I don't watch a lot of television but I switched it on and there was a film on, I think I had missed the first ten minutes, and then this fabulous girl came on. It was Beeban Kidron's Swept From the Sea and I waited for the end credits. Then I rang my manager and said, "Have you heard of someone called Rachel Weisz?" and he said, "Terence, you're the only person who hasn't" [Laughs] I just thought she would be wonderful as Hester. We sent her the script, she rang me, we talked and I said, "If you say no, I have no idea who I'll ask," and she said she'd do it. The same with Simon Russell Beale, they just said they'd do it.

And Simon Russell Beale is somebody who doesn't do a lot of cinema.

No, and he should! He's wonderful on camera and he gets the tempo very, very quickly. I've told him that he has to do more. It's just tragic that he's not doing film.

It has been over a decade since The House of Mirth so you must have experienced such a thrill being on set and working with actors again.

It always is a thrill. That's my raison d'être, it really is. I'm very proud of it because we only had a small budget of £2.5 million and we shot it in 25 days.

That's amazing, it looks great for such a small budget.

When you know what you want you can husband your resources, you really can, if you know the meaning of the scene and you know the number of shots that it needs. Very often on set you'll think, "Oh, that's a bit dull, I can improve that by doing it another way," and I'm pretty good at thinking on my feet. On two occasions the camera broke down and we lost half a day each time, but I wasn't worried because I knew what the shots were and I knew we'd get them, and we did. We did it because everybody pulled together and everybody, I mean literally everybody, was so committed to the film. It was the most wonderful display of commitment from everybody, from the people who financed it right down to the actors. It was quite marvellous.

All of your films have been set in the past. Can you imagine ever making a contemporary movie?

Well, I did write a contemporary comedy but I couldn't get the money for it. Whether it will ever happen or not I don't know, your guess is as good as mine. I would have liked to have done it because I thought it was a good and funny script. You never know. Maybe one day.

One of the projects you mentioned the last time we spoke was the novel Sunset Song. I've since read it and I think it's an extraordinary book that I'd love to see adapted for the screen. Is that likely to happen?

Oh, I really want to do it. I've actually got four projects. There's Sunset Song, which is written. I've just got to do a polish on a script about Emily Dickinson, because I love Emily Dickinson. There's an adaptation of an American novel by Richard McCann called Mother of Sorrows, and I've already finished an adaptation of an Ed McBain novel. So there are four, potentially.

That's great, so much to look forward to.

Well, I hope so. It's just as long as I get the production money. If not I suppose it's back to the old Labour Exchange. [Laughs]

Review - The Deep Blue Sea

2011-11-25T07:19:00.004Z

"Beware of passion, Hester. It always leads to something ugly." Those words of warning ultimately prove prophetic for Hester Collyer (Rachel Weisz) in The Deep Blue Sea, but Hester doesn't heed that advice. She is a woman consumed by a passion that has transformed her and has convinced her to disrupt the stable, comfortable life mapped out for her in order to taste something more exciting. Hester has walked away from her wealthy and respected husband (Simon Russell Beale) for a younger man, former RAF pilot Freddie (Tom Hiddleston), whose dashing, devil-may-care attitude has a rejuvenating effect on woman tired of spending quiet nights in front of the fire with a husband who loves her, but not in the way she needs to be loved. She has pursued her desire for physical, erotic satisfaction, but when we meet Hester at the start of the film, she is contemplating suicide in Freddie's small flat. Her mother-in-law's pointed words have come true, and her passion has led to something very ugly.

The Deep Blue Sea is an adaptation of the play by Terence Rattigan and the most notable aspect of its production is that it marks Terence Davies' return to narrative cinema more than a decade after his superb take on Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth. It's wonderful to have Davies back and within minutes of The Deep Blue Sea beginning we feel as if we are in safe hands with a man who is in his element in this milieu. The film takes place in the early 1950's, an era that Davies recreates in a detailed, richly atmospheric fashion. The film feels lived-in, with the drama largely taking place in a shabby bedsit or smoky London boozers, where everyone partakes in one of Davies' customary singalong scenes. As well as evoking a particular time and place, the film also gives Davies the opportunity to pay homage to the cinema of that bygone era, with the early films of David Lean, the beautiful style of Max Ophüls and the melodrama of Douglas Sirk all being notable influences on his approach here.

In fact, the opening of the film is pure melodrama, as Davies condenses the backstory and Hester's suicide attempt into an intense montage accompanied by Barber's Violin Concerto. It's a bold move that creates a heightened sense of emotion immediately, but after this prelude, the film settles into something rather more traditional and reserved. It's a resolutely old-fashioned film, and one that easily leaves itself open to accusations of being little more than a filmed stage play, but to do that is to ignore Davies' extraordinarily elegant and deliberate use of the camera. His direction creates a sense of intimacy with these characters and allows us to experience their emotional tumult first hand as they each deal with the thorny dilemmas Hester's infidelity has created for them. I was particularly moved by Simon Russell Beale's performance as Sir William Collyer, a man deeply in love with his wife and incapable of comprehending her course of action or doing anything to win her back.

The film is a real showcase for Weisz, however. As in The House of Mirth, Davies has drawn from an actress a subtle, complex, emotionally charged performance that instantly eclipses all of her previous work. Hester is an intelligent woman torn between her head – which tells her that a life with Sir William is the only sensible option – and her heart, and Weisz's portrayal of her inner conflict is incredibly astute. Davies shoots her like a 40's movie star and gives her the space she needs to bring Hester to vivid, multi-dimensional life, ensuring it's fascinating and affecting to watch as she falls apart under the duress of this self-destructive relationship. The Deep Blue Sea is a film about loving someone intensely and also realising when the time has come to let that person go, and in Davies' hands it handles these themes with honesty and perception.

What the film perhaps lacks is the powerful and cathartic emotional climax that audiences will crave, instead leaving us with a quiet sense of sadness and resolve that is embodied in Weisz's performance. That is a minor gripe, however, because The Deep Blue Sea is a gorgeously crafted film that is clearly the work of a great filmmaker in tune with the very essence of his material. Despite the success of Davies' documentary Of Time and the City, this feels like the director's real return to filmmaking, allowing him to once again display his uncanny visual sense, deep empathy with actors, piercing emotional insight and – above all – his deep and abiding love for cinema, which he brings to bear on every frame of this marvellous film.

Read my interview with Terence Davies here.

Blu-ray Review - Touch of Evil

2011-11-22T01:01:00.003Z

The Film

Orson Welles's career is a tale of genius, compromise and heartache. By the time he was hired to direct Touch of Evil in 1957, he was already regarded as something of a spent force, a man who peaked with his debut and had grown into a liability for studios. Touch of Evil was supposed to be his way back into the studio system. He delivered the final cut of the film on time and on budget and felt he had elevated the story into something special with his dynamic direction and close work with the actors. The next thing Welles knew, Touch of Evil had been reedited by Universal into something that he recognised only as a cheap, chopped-up version of the film he wanted it to be. It had lost almost twenty minutes and some of Welles's most daring stylistic choices had been discarded. Frustrated and angry, the director wrote a 58-page memo explaining what exactly he felt the film needed to be to achieve its maximum potential. His plea was ignored.

It is natural to take sides with the aggrieved artist in situations such as this, but looking back, perhaps it's not so hard to understand why Universal hesitated over releasing Touch of Evil as Welles presented it. They expected to sign off on a straightforward cop thriller with big stars that they could sell to a mass audience, and they were surely knocked off balance by the film they received. Touch of Evil is overblown, lurid and morally ambiguous; full of mannered performances and grotesque close-ups of sweaty, leering faces. For all these reasons we can understand why Universal hated it, but it's for all of these reasons that I love it.

Welles knew what he had with Touch of Evil. The story is a piece of trashy pulp noir, and he plays it to the hilt, developing a menacing, seedy atmosphere that permeates every corner of the cheap bars and motels that the film takes place in. It's the story of a police investigation into a car bombing, which is depicted at the start of the film in one of the most audacious tracking shots ever conceived and executed on film. Shorn now of the opening credits and Henry Mancini's score, the restored version of Touch of Evil allows us to appreciate even more the brilliance of this sequence, with the tension being developed through the deliberate camera movements and use of diegetic sounds. Welles also introduces two lead characters as the car, carrying its ticking cargo, drives past, with Mexican cop Vargas (Charlton Heston) and his new bride Susie (Janet Leigh), who are drawn into the plot when the car explodes just as they share a kiss.

Enter detective Hank Quinlan, a larger-than-life character unforgettably played by Welles, who looms into view hobbling on a cane and casting a narrow eye over the Mexican cop daring to enter his jurisdiction. Quinlan is one of the great screen antagonists; a casually racist detective who always gets results and is willing to play fast and loose with the facts and due process in order to obtain them. He has some marvellous scenes with Heston ("You bet your sweet life I won't" Quinlan retorts when Vargas insists that he won't have any trouble from him) but the scenes that really sting occur between Welles and Marlene Dietrich, making an indelible cameo as a fortune teller who once shared a relationship with Quinlan. A lifetime of regret lingers in their brief interactions. "You haven't got any," Dietrich tells Quinlan when he asks her to read his fortune, "Your future's all used up."

Touch of Evil is not the perfectly crafted masterwork that Citizen Kane is, but I'd argue that it's something even better. It's a huge, bombastic affair and the style of the thing overwhelms the stodgy story – but what style. The bravura opening sequence suggests right at the start that this is a director utilising his full box of tricks. Every time I watch Touch of Evil I'm staggered by his striking camera angles, thrilling long takes, superb use of light and shadows, and bold editing patterns. I love Touch of Evil because it gives us Welles at his most adventurous and daring, and because it represents the last flowering of his undeniable brilliance within the studio system. He was some kind of a man.

The Extras

There have been many different versions of Touch of Evil, and this new Masters of Cinema package brings the all the cuts and offers them in both the 1.85 and 1.37 aspect ratios. There are fantastically informative commentaries and documentaries, as well as the customarily fascinating Masters of Cinema booklet, all of which shed fresh light on the film and its troubled history. This really is the only Touch of Evil you'll ever need.

Touch of Evil is available on Blu-ray now.

Buy Touch of Evil here

Review - Snowtown

2011-11-21T00:35:00.002Z

To all outsiders, John Bunting (Daniel Henshall) appears to be a nice guy. An affable, easygoing character with a smile and a twinkle in his eye, John steps in to shore up a one-parent family that has recently been shattered by revelations of paedophilia. He encourages the boys abused by neighbour Jeffrey to write the word "FAG" on his windows and helps them splatter ground-up kangaroo remains over his porch, until this campaign of intimidation drives the man away. By this point, 16 year-old Jamie (Lucas Pittaway) and his younger brothers adore the new man in their mother's life, but John has not yet revealed the depths of cruelty and violence he is capable of.

Snowtown is the story of the most notorious serial killer in Australia's history. Between 1992 and 1999, Bunting was responsible for 11 murders, with the victims mostly being those on the margins of society. Justin Kurzel's film refuses to sensationalise the story, or even attempt to conform it to a familiar narrative, which makes Snowtown an extraordinarily tough film to watch; a detached, impressionistic portrait of horrific crimes that keeps the emphasis on absolute realism throughout. The film is shot in bleak hues by Adam Arkapaw (who also worked on Animal Kingdom, with which it shares some similarities), and the intense score provided by the director's brother Jed Kurzel plays a key role in the film's oppressive atmosphere. However, while you might suspect that Snowtown is a tough viewing experience because of the violence, that's not really the case. There's only one notable scene that shows a murder in all of its agonising, gory detail, and for the most part it's Kurzel's craft that gets to you, as well as his keen sense of what to show and what not to show.

What Snowtown does show so brilliantly is how a damaged, vulnerable young man like Jamie could easily fall under the spell of a man like John Bunting. He takes advantage of the destabilised Vlassakis family to give himself a platform in the town and then he manipulates the widespread hysteria over the paedophile menace to justify his own murderous desires, as he targets perceived gays and perverts who he feels won't be missed if they suddenly "disappear." He starts exerting his control over Jamie. We notice how he is always lurking in the background of shots in which Jamie is the focus, controlling the youngster's actions, and Henshall's stunning portrayal slips from avuncular chumminess into sadism and intimidation in the blink of an eye. Henshall is the only professional actor in Snowtown, the rest of the cast being drawn from the local area, but the naturalistic performances are convincing across the board.

But for all of its qualities, I'm having a very hard time recommending Snowtown. Ultimately, I left the screening wondering what I actually got from the film, beyond a general sense of emptiness and depression after witnessing such nihilistic cruelty. The final straw for many will be the already notorious "bathroom scene," which is crucial from a story point of view – cementing Jamie's complicity – but it's almost unwatchable as cinema. Snowtown is hugely admirable as filmmaking and I respect its completely uncompromising approach to telling this story, but the film seems inconclusive at its close, having failed to fashion a sense of purpose from these horrors. We despair at what we've witnessed and congratulate ourselves for having endured such a gruelling experience, but then we walk away from the picture knowing we never want to watch or think about it again.

Review - Wuthering Heights

2011-11-10T01:07:00.005Z

There have been many screen versions of Wuthering Heights but we haven't seen one quite like this. Andrea Arnold's take on Emily Brontë's novel is very much the work of the same young director who showed through her films Red Road and Fish Tank that she is a filmmaker with a distinctive, uncompromising voice. That voice may be just what a tale as familiar as Wuthering Heights required to make it feel fresh and new on screen, and for at least half of this extraordinary picture, Arnold appears to do just that. For many independent filmmakers, such a prestige project might be seen as a step towards mainstream respectability, or a bid for awards credibility, and there's something appealingly perverse about the fact that Arnold has in fact taken this opportunity to produce her most challenging work yet. However, while it's easy to applaud her refusal to adhere to the customary tropes of so many genteel literary adaptations, the unforgiving austerity of her approach does make this Wuthering Heights a tough film to love.

Arnold immediately immerses us in the harsh world of 19th century Yorkshire, with the moors being filmed in a richly atmospheric fashion by the director and her supremely talented cinematographer Robbie Ryan. Even if it fails in certain departments, Wuthering Heights is an undeniably impressive visual achievement; visceral, beautiful and replete with striking images. Arnold and Ryan often let those images take prominence over the dialogue, which is blunt and naturalistic (I'm not sure Brontë ever penned the words, "Fuck you all. Cunts."), and that's a smart decision. Shooting in 1.33 and utilising handheld, intimate camerawork, they find shots that speak volumes about the relationship that develops between orphan Heathcliff (played as a child by Solomon Glave) and the spirited Cathy (Shannon Beer): their clasped hands plunging into mud, the torrential rain hitting their upturned faces, furtive glances stolen through a crack in a door.

The two untested young actors who play the lead characters as youngsters repay Arnold's faith in them. Glave has an interesting sullen quality while Beer is a thoroughly engaging screen presence, who superbly portrays her character's growing curiosity about and interest in the dark-skinned addition to their family. Their performances are a little raw but their scenes together feel terrifically alive, aided by the director's frequent cutaways to shots of the natural world that surrounds them; images of death and bleakness acting as a counterpoint to their charged emotional connection.

Alas, that's only half the movie. When Wuthering Heights jumps forward a few years to find Cathy (Kaya Scodelario) now married and Heathcliff (James Howson) returning to Earnshaw farm after a long, unexplained absence, I immediately started to sense that something had gone awry. All the vitality and boldness of the first half had drained away, and the two adults who step into the roles of Cathy and Heathcliff struggle to invest their turns with the same natural depth of feeling that their young co-stars possessed. In particular, the casting of Howson proves almost disastrous for the film, with his flat, uncharismatic and shapeless performance creating a hole in the centre of the picture where a complex, fascinating protagonist should be.

But it's not just the actors who fail to build on the fine work done in the first half, as Arnold also seems to lose her grip on the material in its latter stages. The film grows repetitive, recycling shots and motifs from the first half but without any of the accompanying impact, and this film about obsessive love, violence and passion ends up feeling oddly detached and increasingly unsure of itself as it progresses. Wuthering Heights is an arresting attempt to capture the dark nature of Brontë's novel, but as brilliantly evocative as Arnold's rendering of the wild, windswept landscape is, it fails to capture the similarly turbulent emotions at the heart of the tale. On a number of occasions in the film's second half, Arnold has Howson headbutt a wall or a tree, presumably in an effort to show us how much the lovesick Heathcliff is suffering, but while it certainly looked very painful, I never felt a thing.

Review - Tabloid

2011-11-07T00:59:00.004Z

Errol Morris has described his new film Tabloid as a love story – his first since his feature debut Gates of Heaven – and I guess it is a love story, in a way, but one that's quite unlike any other. It's a film about the crazy extremes that people will go to for love, the dark roads it takes people down and the blinkered denial that accompanies someone utterly devoted to another. Morris' protagonist is Joyce McKinney, a dream subject for this filmmaker; he just sits her down in front of his camera and listens as she talks, talks, talks, peeling back layers on a story that gets madder by the minute. It's no accident that the film is called Tabloid; Morris shares a tabloid reporter's gift for sniffing out a good story and squeezing every drop of entertainment from it.

If you don't know who Joyce McKinney is or what incident earned her such notoriety, Morris' lively film wastes little time in getting us up to speed. McKinney was a one-time Miss Wyoming who fell in love in the late 70's with a Mormon missionary named Kirk Anderson. He fell just as hard for her, they began planning their life together and then – fearing the effect this sexy blonde was having on one of their flock – the Church suddenly spirited him away. At least, that's Joyce's version of events, but Tabloid is partly a film about the slippery nature of the truth and with nobody available to put across Kirk's side of the tale, Joyce's account is all we have to go on. Dismayed by the loss of her one true love, Joyce gathered together all of her money, a faithful collaborator (who was clearly besotted with her – another example of love making people do crazy things) and a pilot to follow Kirk to Devon, where he was now living. That's where the story started to get really interesting.

The tale of Joyce McKinney and Kirk Anderson later became known as "The Case of the Manacled Mormon." It had all the ingredients for a tabloid sensation – sex, crime, religion – and Morris gets plenty of mileage out of the salacious details and surprising twists the story consisted of. Joyce defiantly claims that she didn't kidnap Kirk at gunpoint, take him to a remote cottage and chain him to a bed before having sex against his will. "How can a woman rape a man?" a bemused Joyce asks, "That would be like pushing a marshmallow into a parking meter." Joyce is a fabulous, fascinating character; bubbly, verbose and completely unselfconscious. There is no equivocation in her rendition of her story – everything happened like this, and everyone else is a liar – and her apparent sincerity, or delusion, is oddly persuasive.

But the most telling line in Tabloid is spoken by Daily Express reporter Peter Tory, who says that McKinney has her side of the story and the tabloids have theirs and "somewhere in between lies the truth." Morris doesn't come down on either side of the argument; he allows each participant to share his or her own subjective reality and lets us decide who to believe. Tory (who is amusingly enamoured with the word "spread-eagled") and Mirror photographer Kent Gavin are great value as interviewees, recalling the lengths that the two warring papers went to as battle for control of the story escalated. Joyce's seedy past was exposed, with one paper depicting her as a wronged angel and the other as a whore, and both upped the ante until the story lost momentum and Joyce was, for a while, forgotten (the bizarre twist that later took her back into the public eye almost takes Tabloid into science-fiction territory).

The point isn't laboured by Morris, but it's impossible to watch Tabloid without wondering how the McKinney story would play today in a media-saturated society that is more obsessed with trashy tales than ever before. Tabloid has been described as Morris' lightest and most playful film for some time, but at its core – as with most of these titillating tales – there's an abiding sense of sadness, with portrait of a woman who misguidedly gave up everything for a futile love and was left alone long after the reporters and photographers moved on. The most vivid and haunting moments in Tabloid are found in the archive footage of a young, beautiful, hopeful Joyce reading extracts from her unfinished fairytale romance. And the title of this incomplete tome? A Very Special Love Story, naturally.

Review - Oslo, August 31st

2011-11-04T01:37:00.003Z

At the start of Joachim Trier's Oslo, August 31st, Anders (Anders Danielsen Lie) wants to die. He wakes up one morning, gets dressed, walks down to the river, fills his pockets with stones and then plunges in. Moments later Anders emerges, gasping for air, and dejectedly crawls his way out onto the riverbank. He walks back to the drug rehabilitation clinic where he has spent some time trying to get clean and straighten out his life, and he is handed an opportunity to finally take a step in the right direction. He has a job interview in Oslo, at a magazine where he will be able to put his skills as a writer to use, and we hope that Oslo, August 31st will present us with a man who, having failed to take his own life, will grasp at this fresh start with both hands. But Oslo, August 31st isn't that film. Life simply isn't that easy.

Anders' attempt to reconnect with society provides Oslo, August 31st with its narrative backbone and the protagonist's fragile grip on life gives it a gnawing sense of dramatic tension. Will Anders sink or swim, as he re-enters the world he last experienced as a hedonistic drug addict, spiralling towards self-destruction? His odyssey unfolds over the course of a single day, as he plans to make the most of his time in Oslo by meeting an old pal and his sister, and getting in touch with an ex-girlfriend who lives in New York, although the numerous unanswered messages he leaves for her suggests she isn't so keen on reconciliation. The experience is a disconcerting one for Anders, however, as he discovers that some old acquaintances have moved on with their lives while others still bear grudges for misdeeds that the old Anders committed. All of this is compounded by a sense of quiet shame that he exhibits, notably in the job interview when, having seemingly impressed the editor with his intelligence and insight, he suddenly clams up and bolts as his problematic history comes up.

All the while, we can sense something slipping inside Anders, with Lie – who also starred in Trier's impressive debut Reprise – giving a magnificent central performance that exposes so much anxiety and insecurity through his eyes and body language. He's a subtly expressive actor whose smallest gestures are telling, and he brings a remarkably vivid sense of emotional truthfulness to the heart of the picture. Trier and his excellent cameraman Jakob Ihre follow Anders at a close but respectful distance, the camera always finding the right spot to let us share in his turmoil without seeming to intrude upon it. Oslo, August 31st is a character study that finds warmth and coldness, humour and flickers of anger in its central figure, and Trier's skilfully constructed screenplay ("freely adapted," the credits tell us, from Pierre Drieu La Rochelle's Le Feu follet) sheds light on his life and situation through his natural, superbly played interactions with other characters.

The director does occasionally risk letting some of these encounters run on a little too long, and at a certain point in the second half, as Anders gradually slides back into his old bad habits, a grim inexorability takes hold of the movie. But there are so many moments here that dazzle – a late-night scooter ride through empty streets, an impromptu spot of swimming in the dawn light – and the way Trier uses editing and sound design to bring us into Anders' subjective point of view is exceptional. In particular, there's a sequence at the film's centre that stands alongside anything I've seen on screen this year, as Anders sits in a cafe and casually listens to the various conversations that take place at tables around him. For a couple of minutes we hear people discuss work matters and life matters, share some gossip and laugh at each other's jokes; and in the midst of all this chatter, all this life, we find Anders sitting quietly and alone, eavesdropping on a world that he doesn't feel he belongs to anymore.

Review - Weekend

2011-10-31T00:27:00.002Z

The structure of Weekend couldn't be more tried-and-tested. Two people meet, they make an instant connection, they begin to get to know each other but they only have a limited amount of time to spend in each other's company before one has to depart. If you're now thinking of Brief Encounter, or perhaps Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, then you've got a rough idea of Weekend's tone, but it's the nature of the content that sets it apart. Those aforementioned movies were all about heterosexual relationships whereas Weekend is about two men who meet in a bar, enjoy a one-night stand, and then quickly realise that their relationship has taken on a weight and dimension that neither of them anticipated.

It begins on an ordinary Friday night in Nottingham, as Russell (Tom Cullen), a softly spoken lifeguard, leaves a family party and heads for a gay nightclub. After a few drinks and some tentative flirting, he takes Glen (Chris New) back to his flat and we pick the story up the next morning, as a typical post-coital awkwardness hangs in the air. Glen pulls out a tape recorder and asks Russell to recount the events of the night before, something that he does after every sexual encounter for an art project he is working on, and this acts as an icebreaker while also reveal something of the two characters. Glen is sharp-witted, brash and open about his sexuality and Russell is a little more circumspect; he's out of the closet, but only to his closest friends, and he is wary of public displays of homosexual affection.

Watching how these two characters interact, becoming more open and intimate and sharing more of themselves with each other, is the joy of Weekend. Writer/director Andrew Haigh creates an atmosphere and builds a rhythm that allows the actors to relax completely into their roles, and it's the contrast between them that makes the relationship so intriguing. As Saturday morning progresses into Saturday afternoon and then Saturday night, the pair have sex again, but for the most part Weekend is a film built on conversation. Russell and Glen talk about themselves, about their lives, about their plans for the future and about the perception of gay culture in modern Britain. Even when these exchanges grow more politically charged, it never feels forced, as if Haigh is imposing an agenda on the film. The dialogue, fuelled by drink and some recreational drugs, maintains the natural flow of a couple who feel increasingly at ease in each other's company.

At one point in Weekend, Glen discusses his art project and says, "Gays will only come because they’re hoping to see some cock, and they’ll be disappointed. Straights won’t come because it’s about gay sex." As he watched this scene play out, I wonder if Haigh intended it as a commentary on the commercial prospects for his film? Weekend is gay film, very much concerned with the details of gay relationships and society, but it deserves to have an impact beyond that niche audience. It's a film that is so honest about relationships, about the ability of one person to communicate their true feelings to another, and about the importance of making the right decision at the right time, that surely viewers of any persuasion will recognise some truth in it. For many audiences, its chief pleasure will be a simple one – as we watch the film end on a perfect note, we are reminded how rare it is to see a contemporary cinematic romance that feels honest, intelligent and real.

Review - Machine Gun Preacher

2011-10-30T17:36:00.003Z

Have you ever watched a film based on a true story and felt that you'd prefer to be watching a documentary on the subject instead? I felt that way as the credits rolled on Machine Gun Preacher, during which we see footage and photographs of the film's inspiration, Sam Childers. A drug-using ex-con who rode with biker gangs in early 90's Pennsylvania, Childers later found God and dedicated his life to protecting children in war-torn Sudan and Uganda – amazing story, right? It's the kind of story that filmmakers dream of, offering a perfect arc of redemptive character development as well as numerous action scenes and plenty of abandoned orphans to tug at the heartstrings. The strange thing about Machine Gun Preacher is that while it appears to perfectly fit a familiar narrative structure, actually fitting the story to that structure does it no favours whatsoever.

We first meet Sam when he is released from jail, being met by his loyal wife Lynn (Michelle Monaghan) who has surprising news for him. She underwent a religious conversion while Sam was inside, but after angrily upbraiding her for quitting her steady job as a stripper, Sam goes straight back to his old ways, stealing and taking drugs with buddy Donnie (Michael Shannon, always watchable in a thankless role). Eventually, however, after hitting rock bottom, Sam does join his wife at a service where the Lord, moving in mysterious ways, opens his eyes to a new path. A preacher from Africa comes to town and delivers a sermon that inspires him to travel to Africa, build an orphanage and take up arms against the militia enslaving children across the country. These are all decisions that he takes very quickly.

That's the problem with Marc Forster's film. Sam's evolution from wild man to mercenary happens swiftly and without a real sense of friction, so the emotional catharsis we're expected to experience feels unearned. Forster and screenwriter Jason Keller are unwilling or unable to delve into the conflict at the heart of the title – a man of God who is also a man of violence – and so we have a film that seems to be two pictures awkwardly spliced together. Whenever Sam is plagued by self-doubts, starts alienating his family with his obsessive zeal or rages at the reluctance shown by his rich neighbours to put their hands in their pockets, the scenes feel trite and are played out in a perfunctory manner, and Forster generally seems much happier with the parts of the film that allow his hero to perform Rambo-like heroics. To be fair, that's also where Gerard Butler seems happiest, as we get the sense very early on that his emotional range is being stretched to breaking point by the demands of this character.

Machine Gun Preacher has moments that grip and moments that nearly move, but is that the skill of the filmmaking and acting producing such an effect, or is it simply the strength of the real life tale that the movie is telling? I'd suspect it's the latter, as the bungling approach by the filmmakers can be epitomised by one appalling misjudgement – when the traumatised little orphan who refuses to speak for the whole movie suddenly opens up to Sam at a crucial critical juncture. The exchange reeks of artifice; a scene intended to have the audience weeping but one that will surely have any right-thinking viewer raging at the open manipulation instead. Machine Gun Preacher is based on a remarkable true story; trust Hollywood to turn it into a risibly fake one.

Review - The Ides of March

2011-10-29T16:31:00.002Z

The presidential candidate George Clooney plays in The Ides of March seems too good to be true. Intelligent, handsome and charming, Governor Mike Morris also has all the right answers to questions posed in interviews and at debates. He makes his position clear on foreign policy, gun crime, the death penalty and abortion – in each case, offering thoughtful, compassionate arguments – and he refuses to let religion cloud the issue, telling the crowd at one debate that, "My religion is a piece of paper – the Constitution of the United States of America." Of course, if something seems too good to be true then it probably is, and the dramatic twist at the heart of The Ides of March concern Morris's unwise dalliance with a young intern (Evan Rachel Wood) and what damage it might do to the campaign. "You can lie, you can cheat, you can start a war, you can bankrupt the country," the governor's aide Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling) explains, "but you can't fuck the intern."

Meyers, rather than Morris, is the main protagonist in Clooney's film, an adaptation of Beau Willimon's stage play Farragut North. Meyers is an idealist whose passions are stirred by the bright future that Morris heralds, but as we all know, politics is a grubby business, and The Ides of March is about his youthful optimism and naïveté coming up against cynicism of political machinations. The older aide Meyers works alongside, Philip Seymour Hoffman's Paul Zara, knows how to play this game all too well, with he and his Republican counterpart Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti) personifying the bitter, jaded mood of men who have spent a lifetime fighting dirty. Early on in the film Hoffman and Giamatti share a great scene behind the stage at a televised debate, with the pair sniping at each other like the old pros they are, and I'd like to have seen more of that in the film. Instead, The Ides of March focuses on Meyers' growing disillusionment with and eventual manipulation of Morris, hence the film's rather obvious title.

The Ides of March works as a perfectly enjoyable political yarn but it exists totally on the surface. As in Drive, Gosling suggests a kind of blankness rather than the depth or conflict that his directors are clearly searching for in those lingering close-ups. His character arc is predictable but Clooney and co-writer Grant Heslov do throw in a couple of neat twists that liven the narrative up (even if they make Evan Rachel Wood little more than a sacrificial lamb, tossed aside in an offhand manner), and as a director he ensures the film is always slick, efficient and entertaining. What the film ultimately lacks is a genuine sense of cynicism or a darkness at its heart, or perhaps a real sense of consequence to the actions that the characters take. Clooney's attempt to expose the moral corruption at the centre of American politics feels a bit tentative, and it's why The Ides of March only plays as a diverting drama rather than a memorable one.

Review - Anonymous

2011-10-28T19:49:00.002Z

William Shakespeare and Roland Emmerich – it couldn't be a better combination, could it? The English wordsmith responsible for some of the greatest plays and most iconic characters of all time, and the German director for whom words and characters are of secondary importance to huge explosions. Emmerich has made a career from destroying major cities and iconic landmarks, but in his new film Anonymous he has turned his attention to the attacking reputation of a single man, as he explores the notion that Shakespeare didn't actually write the extraordinary body of work that is attributed to him. There have been many debates over the true authorship of Shakespeare's plays, but this theory, scripted by John Orloff, suggests that all of his writing actually emerged under the quill of Edward De Vere, the Earl of Oxford.

According to Anonymous, De Vere (played by Rhys Ifans) was the true literary genius; a man who (if one of the film's many flashbacks is to be believed) wrote and performed A Midsummer Night's Dream as a child and continued to write in secret for the rest of his days. Such lowly activity apparently brought shame upon his family ("You're...writing again!" his wife exclaims, in the tone of a woman discovering her husband's affair) in this puritanical age, and therefore De Vere needs somebody to claim credit for his works. He approaches playwright Ben Jonson (Sebastian Armesto) but this position is usurped by bawdy, drunken actor William Shakespeare (Rafe Spall), who immediately lets the widespread acclaim for "his" plays go to his head (even crowdsurfing at one point. Seriously).

Spall's characterisation of Shakespeare as a reckless, opportunistic loudmouth is cheap, but it's also the film's most entertaining element and it made me wish that Anonymous would unfold as a comedic Blackadder-style romp, but Emmerich mostly plays it with a straight bat. He concocts a complex web of intrigue to explain De Vere's motivations – suggesting that Polonius and Richard III were thinly veiled caricatures of his political rivals – but such densely plotted shenanigans are not this director's forte, and he quickly loses his grasp on the flashback-heavy structure. By the time Emmerich got around to portraying the Virgin Queen (played by both Joely Richardson and Vanessa Redgrave) as a harlot who had illegitimate children hidden all over London, I was both confused and bored. Anonymous would be most palatable as high camp, but while it does offer moments of unintentional hilarity, it's too long and too ponderous to entertain on that level.

As Anonymous arrives in cinemas some have wondered what the effect of the film will be on our perception of Shakespeare and – more importantly – on how younger generations will view him. They needn't worry, because this is nothing more than a bloated and silly period soap opera that's too trivial to have any merit, even if the presence of noted Shakespeare-sceptics Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance in the cast may seem to give it a veneer of credibility. Shakespeare's reputation has endured over two centuries of questioning by a variety of great writers and thinkers, so I'm confident it will survive an exposé from the man who made 10,000 BC without sustaining much lasting damage.

Interview - Gerardo Naranjo and Stephanie Sigman

2011-10-25T00:20:00.006Z

Gerardo Naranjo's thrilling new film Miss Bala drops its audience right into the heart of the Mexican drug wars alongside its terrified, bewildered protagonist – a young woman who just wanted to be a beauty queen. It's a sensational film that showcases both its director's visual and storytelling flair and a lead performance of raw emotion from an actress making her film debut, and it simultaneously succeeds as a gripping action movie and a look at the criminality and corruption that appears to be endemic in Mexican society. I met both Gerardo Naranjo and Stephanie Sigman last week when they were in town for the London Film Festival to talk about it.

Gerardo, you wrote your previous two films yourself but on this film you worked with a co-writer, Mauricio Katz. Why did you make that choice and how did you work together on the screenplay?

Gerardo Naranjo I don't really consider myself a writer. I write what I want to see but I invited my friend to help me be more clear about what I wanted to see. What happened with Drama/Mex and I'm Gonna Explode was that I made these movies that were eight hours long, you know, it was just based on improvisation and they had a playfulness. I think I was that kind of person back then, but it was very painful because everything was extended and I had to cut these eight-hour movies back to two. When I decided to make Miss Bala I said I was going to start making the film I wanted to make, so I had to discover what that precise film was and I think having a writer with me helped me discover that. He also helped me find the ways in which I was lying to myself. For example, I would say, "In this scene they kidnap her and take her to the headquarters, and I want to see that in real time." He would tell me that if I wanted the sequence in real time it would be five minutes on the screen, so I would decide that we need to see an ellipsis of that. I needed him for time administration.

Even though you decided against the five-minute shot you do have a number of very long and complicated takes in Miss Bala.

GN It was all about the internal time of the actions that Stephanie does. I explain to her in the best way I could that her actions were going to define the rhythms of the film. She had to know the rhythm by herself and once she knew it then that was going to be the rhythm of the film. She and the other actors brought the emotion by themselves. I didn't tell them what they were feeling in the scene, I just created a situation and they were reacting to it.

Stephanie, what was it like for you to be at the centre of scenes like the gunfight, when you're reacting to such chaos?

Stephanie Sigman Well, it really was chaos! [Laughs] Gerardo was talking about the rhythm and we did all the scenes of the movie on video first, to work out the choreography. We did it without the emotions or the guns, but it really helped me because I knew what every shot was going to be like, and then I knew it was going to be tough and emotionally and physically tiring. It was a dark process, being this character, but it was also about trusting the people you work with. I think Noe (Hernandez, who plays the leader of the cartel) is an amazing actor and he gave me everything to work with because he really scared me a lot. It wasn't easy and there were moments when I thought I wasn't going to finish it, but I carried on because I didn't feel alone in that process.

This is your first film role. I understand you've just done some TV shows in the past.

SS Yeah, but I haven't done that much.

GN When I cast her she hadn't done it, and then she signed up to do it and I was very angry.

SS He was very angry!

GN I wanted a virgin! [Laughs]

SS It's an incredibly intense role because Laura spends the whole film in a state of fear and anxiety. Was it tough for you to sustain such extreme emotions?

It can be easy to do something like that because it's not like you're constantly frustrated and you cannot explode. At the end of the filming I felt I was totally dry, I didn't know if I could even cry. It's part of doing something that's a challenge for everyone and you want to give all that you can give to the project. I don't know, I enjoyed it somehow, maybe I'm a masochist. [Laughs]

It's interesting to see the drug wars from the point of view of an innocent and an outsider rather than a cop, criminal or agent. Did you feel you had to take a fresh perspective on this subject?

GN There is a ton of material being done about crime in Mexico and most of it is completely surreal or ridiculous. There are movies that are very comedic or farcical in tone and they are doing very well. I was so surprised by this and I feel there is almost an agenda to show crime in a light, entertaining way. That was very strange to me because I had this perception that crime was something very different, and when we went on to research we found out that the crime world is very ignorant, pathetic and grey. We didn't find gold chains or girls all around, you know, we didn't find people having a great time. We found a lot of paranoia and people who were very mistrustful of the people around them. We felt it was a good opportunity to talk about that because nobody was saying that crime was an ugly world, everybody was fixated on this Scarface promotion, and I don't think crime in Mexico has that side. Even the biggest drug lords live a very pathetic life; they are not in a luxury castle but in these dark apartments hiding. It was very important for me to talk about that, to show how these criminals behave and how much they lack a sense of morality. It was kind of an anthropological statement.

How has the film been received in Mexico?

GN It has certainly been very controversial. I think there are many people who think that if we don't look at it and we evade the subject, then maybe it will disappear. We think we have to look at the phenomenon in the face, identify it, and only then can we start to solve it. Many people think we are talking badly about the country, we are not patriots, we are doing the country harm, but we don't think so. I think the first thing we knew would happen with this movie was the controversy but we wanted to people to discuss it and the box office is very good, so a lot of people are seeing it and either loving it or hating it.

SS It's 50/50 in Mexico. A lot of people hate the movie, and a lot of people hate my performance in the movie – "Call that acting? It's so easy!" – but I think it's perfect what is happening with the movie.

GN I think it reflects how polarised our society is. It's so weird to me when people talk about criminals as bad Mexicans and good Mexicans, but I want to ask what is the seed of a bad Mexican? I think it's a country that doesn't give the same opportunities to everybody, and a country that can have the richest person in the world and the poorest. The country gives so few opportunities to people that some kids decide to join this "suicide club," which is a life of crime. They know they will be killed, they know it will be a five-year action, which is the average action for a life of crime in Mexico, but they have no other future. I think we should talk about a country that has lost its sense of community. I don't think the movie attacks the criminals or the government, I think it attacks the community,

SS There are a lot of reasons why this is happening and it's so easy to blame the president or to blame the cartel, but I think this movie makes the story personal for people, to make them understand and...I'm sounding like a Miss. [Laughs]

You're such a method actor, you're still in character.

SS I want world peace! [Laughs]

What was it like shooting in the areas where this sort of crime happens regularly?

SS I was really focused on what I was doing, but I'm sure there was a lot they didn't tell me...

GN I think we were very tight as a group and very clear. The first thing was to protect the group and we said we were shooting a film called Madame Bonita, a title that inferred we were making a romantic comedy, something very lovable, and we never told people we were making a crime movie. Certainly, we felt the influence of these guys, but that's just common life, I mean, when you see the black truck with tinted windows you don't wonder about who these guys are. When I did research I met a lot of criminals, in jail or active, and their words were very practical: if you mess with them you get punished. We tried to be respectful and in the movie we made our own cartel, so we didn't make the movie about them, it's much more a movie about a feeling or something that is in the air.

There's a scene in the film when Laura goes to a policeman for help and in that single take we slowly realise that he is driving her back into danger. The scene suggests that corruption is everywhere, so how can the problems in Mexican society be rectified when that's the case?

GN I think this is the climax of something, a concept that you have to be quicker or more sassy than the other one so you can get ahead. We have focused so much on the greed and getting ahead of the rest that we have lost sight of the fact that there has to be rules, and there has to be a way of doing things. Everybody is having his own battle to survive and the rules or the law don't exist, so I feel that we need a spiritual revolution. If we feel like we need to take the rules into account and we start to consider ourselves as a group, then things will get easier for everybody, but I don't know when we'll see that.

Stephanie, now that your first film has been such a hit I assume you're getting a lot of offers. Do you know what you'll be doing next?

SS I'm working on a film in Mexico but it's totally different, it's about independence. It's about a national hero called Morelos, and it's a love story, a love triangle. After that, I don't know. I hope it's something interesting.

GN Will you consider "artistic nudes"?

SS No, only for money. [Laughs] Every actress in Mexico is asked, "would you consider a nude scene" and they always say, "only if it's artistic," but you have to think about the rent, you know?

Gerardo, how much money do you have?

[Checks pockets] I only have two pounds. [Laughs]

Review - This Is Not a Film (In film nist)

2011-10-23T00:48:00.005Z

"When hairdressers get bored they start cutting each other's hair," Mojtaba Mirtahmasb tells Jafar Panahi in This Is Not a Film. The two men are filmmakers so, with nothing else to do, they are filming each other as they have this conversation in Panahi's kitchen, with Mirtahmasb holding a professional camera while Panahi records on his iPhone. This is the only type of filming that Jafar Panahi can get away with. In 2010, Panahi was arrested by the Iranian government on vague charges and sentenced to six years in jail, along with a 20-year ban on making films, writing screenplays, giving any media interviews or leaving the country. As he awaits news on his appeal, Panahi is under house arrest, stuck in his apartment while his family are away visiting relatives and noisy New Year celebrations take place outside. He invites his friend, fellow director Mirtahmasb, to come round, and between them they begin to construct something, even if Panahi refuses to call it a film.

What emerges from This Is Not a Film is a fascinating portrait of a restless artistic spirit trying to find an outlet for his creativity. Mirtahmsasb likes the idea of making a documentary that goes “behind the scenes of Iranian filmmakers not making films,” but Panahi has more interesting ideas, and he begins reading from a screenplay he wrote and was in the process of casting before his arrest. The director marks out a rudimentary set on his floor with tape – almost like a mini-Dogville – and then he begins detailing the shots he had worked out, before reading and acting out the various parts. He quickly realises that this idea is pointless, however – "if we could tell a film then why bother making a film?" he asks – and to illustrate this point he plays a scene from Crimson Gold, in which an actor's unexpected action made the scene into something more than it was on the page.

This Is Not a Film eventually develops into something more than its setup seems to offer too, even if Panahi and Mirtahmsasb don't seem to have a clear idea of what they're filming or why. There's little shape to the film, with the pair frequently being distracted by interruptions – calls from Panahi's lawyer, the family's Iguana crawling across the director's shoulder, a neighbour attempting to leave her annoying dog with him while she goes out – but what comes through in these moments is Panahi's need to record all of this. In his films he always enjoyed working with non-actors, so just capturing real life through a lens is important for him.

What comes through more than anything in This Is Not a Film is the sense of humour, playfulness and curiosity that Panahi exhibits and the absence of anger, despite his oppression. This Is Not a Film is a very funny movie, never more so than when a young man turns up to collect Panahi's trash and finds himself becoming the unwitting star of the film, with the director following him on his rounds to the other floors. The man tells us about his work, studies and family, but we never find out his name; in fact, we don't discover the names of anyone involved in the film beyond those of Panahi and Mirtahmsasb (who has now also been arrested) as the closing credits are redacted in a grim reminder of the danger an endeavour like this brings. Panahi may insist that this is not a film, but it is a courageous, witty and vital act of defiance.

Review - Miss Bala

2011-10-20T02:20:00.005Z

Gerardo Naranjo called his last film I'm Gonna Explode, and with his latest picture he has. Miss Bala is an extraordinary display of directorial verve and dynamism, as Naranjo plunges us into the heart of the ongoing Mexican drug wars. However, the protagonist we follow is not a cop, a dealer or an agent – the central character in Miss Bala is a woman in her early 20's who only wants to compete in the Miss Baja beauty pageant. Laura Guerrero (Stephanie Sigman) is a modest, honest woman who lives at home with her father and younger brother. When her friend Suzu (Lakshmi Picazo) informs her of the contest, she defies her father's wishes to attend, and this is the decision that will drag her into a waking nightmare, one realised by Naranjo with a blistering intensity.

The first sign that things are going wrong for Laura occurs when she loses Suzu in a nightclub as a hit is carried out by a local cartel, and this is also the first sign of Naranjo flexing his directorial muscles, with the tense sequence being expertly staged. As Laura washes up in the bathroom, men with guns climb down through the window and burst into the club, taking out revellers in the dark. Terrified, Laura attempts to locate Suzu amid the mayhem without being caught in the crossfire, and Naranjo orchestrates this in a fluid, gripping long take that follows Laura amid the chaos.

Throughout Miss Bala, the director lets the action unfold in these extended, superbly coordinated sequences, maintaining a tight focus on the terrified young woman at the centre of his complex narrative. In one superb scene, Laura asks a friendly-looking policeman for help locating the missing Suzu, and he tells her to get in so he can drive her to the station. Naranjo holds the shot as they drive until we – and she – gradually realise that Laura is being driven further into danger by this corrupt cop. Every level of society is riddled with the corruption and criminality that Laura is exposed to, with even the Miss Baja contest being rigged by those with the power and influence to do so. As she walks out onto the stage, Laura should be feeling immense pride as she achieves her dream, but that dream has been tainted by the bloodshed she has witnessed and the behind-the-scenes machinations that have secured her prize.

As a protagonist, Laura is a strangely passive and reactive figure. Things happen to her, often beyond her understanding, and she tries to deal with it as best she can, with her instincts for self-preservation informing her decisions. Having such an acquiescent character as the focal point of the story may seem unwise, but Naranjo places us in close proximity to her and makes us share her experiences. We quickly empathise with Laura and come to care about her fate, and Stephanie Sigman brings such a sense of raw, real emotion to the role it becomes impossible to remain detached from her trauma. The danger that surrounds Laura feels so real and permanent; embodied by the brilliantly threatening and repellent Noe Hernandez as the gang leader who has Laura in his vice-like grip.

When Laura, disorientated and in shock, staggers out onto the stage and bursts into tears at climax of the Miss Baja contest, the host suggests she has been overcome by the emotion of the occasion and quickly ushers her of stage. But in Miss Bala, Naranjo is determined to peel back the surface of Mexican society to present it as the dark, violent and morally bankrupt world he sees it as. Miss Bala is a thriller – and an exhilarating one – but it is also a potent exposé of a broken, corrosive society that taints anyone who becomes trapped within it.

Review - The Kid With a Bike (Le gamin au vélo)

2011-10-18T01:54:00.005Z

The experience of watching a Dardenne brothers film is an experience that’s unlike any other. Towards the end of their new film The Kid With a Bike, I found myself holding my breath as 11 year-old tearaway Cyril (astonishing newcomer Thomas Doret) found himself in a series of perilous situations. By this point, I’ve seen enough of the Dardennes’ work to know that this is exactly what they do, and that their ability to spin nerve-grabbing drama out of seemingly humdrum situations is unparalleled in modern cinema. But the question of how exactly the Dardennes achieve this time and time again remains a mystery to me. They are capable of making us care - really care - about the fate of their characters in a manner that very few filmmakers can accomplish, and they do it without blatant appeals for audience empathy.

In fact, the sense of connection that we always feel with a Dardennes protagonist is even more surprising when you consider how often they are presented as troublesome, even unlikable characters. Think of Bruno, the irresponsible father from the Dardennes’ L’Enfant, or taciturn carpenter Olivier, from The Son, who becomes unsettlingly fixated on a young apprentice working for him. In The Kid With a Bike, the main character is a child abandoned by his father and staying in a care home, but this is not a cute little moppet capable of instantly disarming the audience.

Cyril is an intense, aggressive character who refuses to bow to authority figures and responds with punches and kicks to any who try to keep him under control. He is a ball of restless, exenergy who races from one location to another and hurtles through doorways, with his habit of being in a state of perpetual motion informing the pace and style of The Kid With a Bike, as the Dardennes' camera races to keep up with the young protagonist. Cyril seems utterly fearless, but there's something so vulnerable about him too, and an aching need for a father figure that he is all too aware of. Cyril refuses to believe that his father has abandoned him, despite all evidence to the contrary (he has changed his phone number and moved without leaving a forwarding address), with the child pleading, "He would have brought my bike," as he clutches onto his futile hope of a reconciliation.

Cyril's father is played by Dardennes regular Jérémie Renier (it's tempting to view The Kid With a Bike as a companion piece, if not a quasi-sequel, to L'Enfant). It is of course an awful thing for a man to reject his own child, but the Dardennes don't judge him, as they refuse to judge any characters in their films. Everyone who appears in a Dardenne brothers movie is a real person, with deep emotions and valid reasons for behaving the way they do. As Guy washes his hands of his parental responsibilities, another character steps into the breach, with Cécile De France's hairdresser Samantha taking an interest in Cyril after he literally crashes into her during one of his many flights from school. She offers to take care of him on weekends. A tenuous bond develops between them, initially prompted by Samantha's retrieval of Cyril's beloved bike.

The fragile and complex nature of human relationships is what the Dardennes capture better than anyone else. We never know for sure why exactly Samantha feels compelled to take on this damaged, unpredictable, sometimes near-feral boy, but we never doubt for a moment that the feelings she has for him are genuine. Likewise, we fully understand why Cyril becomes so attached to Wes (Egon Di Mateo), the local dealer who exerts a Fagin-like influence over local kids. Coming from the same background as the lonely youngster, Wes is a perfect substitute father figure for Cyril, even if we can smell trouble from the moment he appears on the scene.

I won't tell you exactly what sort of trouble Cyril gets himself into, except for the fact that it develops in a fashion that feels surprising and yet entirely natural. It's also absolutely riveting, with the climactic stretch of the film causing me to gasp and reducing me to tears on more than one occasion, and the Dardennes' ability to affect me so deeply without cheapening their film with a single ounce of sentimentality is testament to their brilliance. The Dardennes invest their films with such compassion, honesty and hopefulness that it becomes impossible to not care about the story being told. They are contemporary cinema's great humanist filmmakers, and as such, they remain in a league of their own.

Review - 360

2011-10-17T13:57:00.005Z

Fernando Meirelles' 360 is based on Arthur Schnitzler's play Reigen (better known as La Ronde) which was already filmed with consummate wit and elegance by Max Ophüls in 1950, but you probably wouldn't guess that from watching this bloated version. Instead of reminding us of La Ronde – in which a series of relationships drive the plot, eventually circling back to the couple that opened the film – 360 just recalls the other multi-character, multi-narrative films that have hit cinemas in recent years. If you have the chutzpah and intelligence of a PT Anderson or Robert Altman orchestrating a clutch of criss-crossing storylines, then you might end up with a Magnolia or Short Cuts, but the majority of these pictures end up like Babel or Crash – empty contrivance combined with self-importance. Guess where 360 lands on the spectrum.

Believe it or not, 360 is even worse than Crash, because while Crash tended to beat the audience over the head with its points about racism, at least it had points to make. I don't know what the various mundane situations screenwriter Peter Morgan has dreamed up for his equally mundane collection of characters is supposed to signify – love makes the world go round, I guess, or something equally trite.

Morgan (who appears utterly lost when daring to venture outside the safe boundaries of the biopic) begins his globetrotting tale in Vienna, where a businessman (Jude Law) has booked the services of a prostitute (Lucia Sipasova), while his wife (Rachel Weisz), back in London, is hooking up with a Brazilian photographer. When the photographer's girlfriend (Maria Flore) discovers his infidelity, she embarks on a journey back to Brazil, during which she continues to display excellent taste in men by becoming friends with recovering alcoholic Anthony Hopkins and paroled sex offender Ben Foster. Meanwhile, Parisian dentist Jamel Debbouze is harbouring a crush on his Russian assistant (Dinara Drukarova) whose husband – a gangster's driver and general dogsbody – is about to drive to Vienna where he will meet up with the sister of the prostitute who we began the story with.

It would take a screenwriter of rare skill to tie those narrative strands together without making the movie feel false and schematic, but Morgan flounders almost immediately. His storylines are reliant on his characters making various stupid decisions at key moments, like the fragrant Laura's utterly inexplicable desire to invite the sweaty, nervous and aggressive ex-con back to her hotel room, where she fails to get the sex offender into bed (yes, it plays as ridiculously as it sounds). Morgan's dialogue is truly pitiful, clumsily reaffirming the film's themes and structure at regular intervals – "A wise man once said; if there’s a fork in the road, take it" is one example, while another character actually says "we've come full circle" after driving around an Austrian ring road. Anthony Hopkins, who spends much of the film wandering around an airport looking confused, tries his best to sell the big AA meeting speech Morgan provides him with, but it just sounds like another clunky piece of screenwriting shoehorned into the picture.

The actors can't impress because they are lumbered playing characters whom Morgan and Meirelles clearly don't give a damn about. This is evident in the way story threads are carelessly discarded – Law and Weisz disappear from the film for ages before popping up for the insultingly glib ending; I have no idea what happened to that Brazilian guy – and how one-dimensional each characterisation is. Speaking of Brazilians Missing in Action; what happened to the filmmaker who directed City of God? With every film Meirelles makes, Kátia Lund's co-direction on that 2002 picture appears ever more vital. Here the director resorts to banal symbolism (shooting endlessly in mirrors) and his attempts to link scenes in creative ways misfire spectacularly – the little toy plane circling Jamel Debbouze's head being an unintentional comedic highlight. He seems to have as little idea as anyone about what exactly the point of this film is, and he ends up dragging us in circles, while we beg for a fork in the road so we can make our escape.

Review - Midnight in Paris

2011-10-11T23:50:00.003Z

Woody Allen fans are a nostalgic bunch, and can often be found looking back at the director's considerable body of work only to complain that his films ain't what they used to be. That sense of nostalgia is the central theme in Allen's latest film, and the result is the liveliest picture he has made for some time. Midnight in Paris is the story of an American in Paris, and true to Woody form, he's a neurotic Hollywood screenwriter who dreams of becoming a novelist instead. He's in France looking to be artistically inspired, but he's stuck with an uptight, demanding fiancée (Rachel McAdams), her Republican parents (Kurt Fuller and Mimi Kennedy) and her know-it-all ex (Michael Sheen). No wonder Gil (Owen Wilson) yearns for a different set of companions, and for the golden age of Paris life.

Standing idly on a corner one night, as he walks the city's empty streets, Gil gets picked up by an old-fashioned car and whisked back to the 1920's. He wanders into a bar in which Cole Porter is tinkling the ivories, Hemingway (a wonderful, movie-stealing Corey Stoll) is in conversation with Fitzgerald, and Dalí is sitting at a table with Buñuel. In fact, there are famous faces from that bygone age wherever Gil looks, and they immediately take him into their circle, offering words of wisdom as Gil shares his 21st century problems.

It's a delightful conceit, and one that has inspired Allen to make his lightest and most breezily enjoyable picture for many years. The name-dropping and the referential gags are prime Woody material, but they feel much fresher in Midnight in Paris than the Dostoevsky or Sophocles citations have done in his recent heavy-handed morality tales. The films from Allen's oeuvre that Midnight in Paris most recalls are two of my personal favourites – Sweet and Lowdown and The Purple Rose of Cairo – and I think there's something about a period setting that sharpens his focus and fires his creative juices. Visually, the film is his sharpest for a while – with co-directors Johanne Debas and Darius Khondji giving the film a lush sheen that embarrasses some of Woody's recent point-and-shoot efforts – and the director handles the transitions between periods with ease and wit. One of my favourite gags involves the fate of a private eye Gil's concerned parents-in-law employ, as Allen adds multiple levels to the film's time-shifts.

Those additional layers are added in part because Mario Cotillard's Adriana - the mistress of Picasso with whom Gil briefly becomes infatuated – yearns to escape the period that so dazzles Gil and escape into the Belle Époque era inhabited by Toulouse-Lautrec and Gaugain. Just as Woody Allen fans yearn for a return to the director's own belle époque, Adriana wants to enjoy a time that has long passed, but Midnight in Paris goes some way to satisfying all desires – by allowing Adriana to fulfil her dream, and by being a film that recaptures a little of the whimsical magic and humour that Allen is capable of at his best. Of course, the issues that have plagued much of Allen's work remain; some characters, notably the one poor Rachel McAdams is lumbered with, are paper-thin, and his writing is still often clumsily on-the-nose. But it's hard to resist the charms of Midnight in Paris, and hard to deny the pleasure of seeing Woody Allen regain just a little of the spring in his step that we all thought he'd lost.

The London Film Festival 2011 - The First Round-Up

2011-10-09T22:50:00.013Z

The 55th London Film Festival opens on Wednesday but I've already spent a week watching films from the programme. Some of these films are embargoed (Dreams of a Life, Hut in the Woods) and some will be reviewed in full closer to their screening dates (We Need to Talk About Kevin, Miss Bala, Wuthering Heights, The Deep Blue Sea), but for now, here's my short take on a few movies that will be showing in London over the coming weeks.

Americano

Mathieu Demy – the son of Agnès Varda and Jacques Demy – takes the lead role in Americano, his directorial debut. The film opens with Martin (Demy) receiving the news of his mother's death, prompting a journey from Paris to LA, where she stayed following her separation from Martin's father. He returns to the house he lived in as a child, sifting through her belongings and recalling old memories (signified through shots of Demy in Varda's Documenteur), and trying to connect with the mother he doesn't really know. This is obviously a very personal project for Demy but I found it very hard to connect with Americano. There's something off about the pacing and Demy's rather flat central performance fails to transmit a great deal of emotion. After a maudlin opening hour it comes as something of a relief when Martin discovers a letter suggesting his mother had a very close friendship with his childhood pal Lola and sets off to Tijuana to find her. The movie is enlivened by the Mexican atmosphere and by the arrival of Lola (Salma Hayek), a stripper who performs for Martin and will only talk for cash, but Demy still struggles to find any dramatic spark in this overlong story. For a film purportedly dealing with the messy emotional territory of family memories, the ending – when it finally comes – is too neat by half.

The Awakening

As happy as I am to see the talented Rebecca Hall in a leading role, I wish it was in a better picture, although I did have high hopes for The Awakening, which opens with a scene that's both creepy and clever. Hall plays Florence Cathcart, a writer in 1920's London with a firm belief in scientific logic whose books expose supernatural myths. She is contact by Robert Mallory (Dominic West), the head of a boarding school that has apparently been troubled by ghostly occurrences ever since a young boy died there, and Florence – suspecting that it is nothing more than a schoolboy prank – agrees to investigate. Nick Murphy's film embraces every ghost movie cliché it can think of, but the film is extremely well played by the leads (including Imelda Staunton as a school nurse in awe of Florence) and well paced for much of its first half at least. The problems arise as the movie wears on with Murphy relying on familiar and repetitive tricks to make us jump, and too much of The Awakening consists of Hall stalking about the school's barely-lit corridors as we wait for something to leap out of a dark corner. As the plot ties Florence's own past into events at the school, the overwhelming sense is one of silliness rather than fear, despite Hall's valiant attempts to bring a real sense of emotion and anxiety to her character. There are some neat touches (one particularly clever bit involves a doll's house) but the film too often reminds us of earlier better movies, including The Others, The Orphanage and – above all – The Innocents, against which it pales in comparison.

Corpo Celeste

Alice Rohrwacher's accomplished debut feature takes place in a small Italian town in which the local children are preparing for their Confirmation. One of these children is Marta (the outstanding Yle Vianello), a girl with a curious and rebellious streak, and as Marta undergoes this rite of passage, Corpo Celeste reveals itself to be a sly critique of religious hypocrisy, with priest Don Mario more concerned with the impression he'll make on the visiting bishop, and his potential transfer to a larger parish, than he is with the children's catechism. Until things become a little broader towards the end, Rohrwacher's directorial approach is subtle and natural, her handheld camera following Marta in a manner reminiscent of the Dardennes, and the film features some great location work, with Marta – coming from Switzerland and depicted as an outsider – often observing the distant action below from a windswept rooftop. The interactions between Marta's family, especially her loving, laid-back mother and bossy older sister, are skilfully developed, and the film strikes an impressive balance between its poignant and humorous moments. I was a little disappointed in the way Rohrwacher brought Corpo Celeste to a close, but that's a minor caveat against a film that possesses real heart and intelligence.

Darwin

On the road that leads to the tiny town of Darwin, a sign reads "No Services Ahead." It was placed there to discourage visitors, which suggests that Nick Brandestini might have received a frosty reception when he ventured out into Death Valley to film Darwin's 35 inhabitants. Instead, he finds a community that's free of prejudice and judgement, and full of people who judge you "not for who you were, or who you might become, but for who you are today." Darwin is a remarkable portrait of town that has become home for people who couldn't fit into mainstream society, or who have pasts that they would rather leave behind, and Brandestini's interviewees openly share their beliefs, their anecdotes and their often painful life stories. He is fortunate to have stumbled across some great characters: Monty, the one-man fire service who has cut his ties with his drug-using children; cantankerous postmistress Susan (who holds the only official job title in the town); and married couple Hank and Connie, who appreciate the fact that their transgendered son can live in peace here. The director shoots them with respect and empathy, allowing them all to have a voice, and he frames these interview segments with wider snapshots of the area; spectacular images of the barren landscape that surrounds them, or the government missile testing facility that sits in perilously close proximity. Darwin is both touching and amusing, but there's a sense of lingering sadness present in much of it too, as the town's youngest inhabitants leave to try and build a future elsewhere and we wonder what kind of future this tiny community has.

Headhunters (Hodejegerne)

Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie) is a short man. We know this because it's one of the first thing he tells us about himself, and his insecurity about his height – particularly when he stands next to statuesque girlfriend Diana (Synnøve Macody Lund) – is the catalyst for the crazy events that turn his life upside down. So fearful is Roger of losing Diana that he has resorted to meticulously planned art thefts, supplementing the income from his day job as a headhunter, but even that isn't enough to cover his expensive lifestyle. Fate brings him into contact with businessman Clas Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) who seems perfect for the position Roger is trying to fill and who just happens to have a priceless painting hanging in his apartment. It's around this point that all of Roger's best-laid plans collapse and his life begins falling apart, and Headhunters begins to show us that it's a lot smarter and wittier than it in initially appears to be. This film is an adaptation from the novel by Jo Nesbø, often hailed as the successor to the late Stieg Larsson, but Morten Tyldum's movie has more personality and more surprises than any of the recent screen versions of Larsson's Lisbeth Salander trilogy. The film hurtles along at a terrific pace, finding ever more excruciating tortures to put its protagonist through, and it has an appealing tongue-in-cheek tone that offsets some of its more implausible elements. Hennie is a tremendous lead, playing Brown as an arrogant bastard who deserves a nasty comeuppance, and then unexpectedly earning our sympathy as this increasingly beleaguered character loses everything – his car, his clothes, his friends, even his hair. Headhunters may be daft but it's a grand piece of entertainment.

Let the Bullets Fly (Rang zidan fei)

This interminable comedy adventure was an enormous box-office success in China but I can only assume that much of its wit, charm and sense has been lost in translation. The tone is set early on, with a train robbery that is played in a madcap register; all rapid editing, overblown action and even more overblown performances. Director Jiang Wen gives the most subdued turn in the film as bandit Pocky Zhang who disguises himself as the new mayor of Goose Town, which puts him in direct opposition with the town's current ruler Huang (Chow Yun Fat). The subsequent plot – such as it is – involves a great deal of double-crossing and identity-swapping as Pocky and Huang attempt to get the upper hand on each other, but I found it very difficult to muster enough enthusiasm to sustain my interest in the convoluted narrative. I found the Let the Bullets Fly tiresome from its opening moments and the self-consciously wacky tone didn't get any easier to endure as this overlong film trundled on. It's surprisingly light on action – frequently getting bogged down in repetitive conversation – and the comedic aspect of the film is a complete misfire; Jiang Wen seems to believe humour is measured by volume, so there's an awful lot of shouting, face-pulling and characters inexplicably bursting into maniacal laughter at regular intervals. Their high spirits were not mirrored by the audience.

Like Crazy

I get the sense that Like Crazy wants to be this year's Blue Valentine, but it's far too flimsy and underdeveloped for that. This transatlantic romance charts a couple of years in the life of young couple Anna (Felicity Jones) and Jacob (Anton Yelchin), who meet at college in LA. Theirs is a whirlwind romance, only halted by Anna's need to return to England for the summer, but when a foolish immigration hiccup delays her return, the pair have to make some tough decisions about their future; is their relationship based simply on youthful impetuousness, or is there something deeper to it? Cutting back and forth between the UK and the US, director Drake Doremus shoots his film with a great sense of intimacy and an eye for small but telling moments (credit to cinematographer John Guleserian, who finds some beautiful shots), but Like Crazy's style doesn't come packaged with a real sense of emotional weight. The characters are too thinly drawn and too much time is spent observing their relationship rather than being allowed to understand it. Doremus seems to take it as read that we'll believe in this relationship, and if we do then it's primarily down to the efforts of the two leads. Yelchin and Jones have a tangible chemistry and they expertly detail their characters' ups and downs, their moments of rapt infatuation and their guilt-tinged dalliances with other lovers, with Jones in a particular doing some subtle, affecting work. Like Crazy is ambitious effort but one that feels oddly fragile and it's unlikely to linger long in the memory, despite offering numerous moments of pleasure.

Natural Selection

If you've ever seen a quirky independent American road movie (and let's face it, who hasn't?) then Natural selection will hold few surprises. It adheres to a familiar template both in its narrative and its characterisation, but writer-director Robbie Pickering throws in a few twists and idiosyncratic touches that freshen up the formula. Rachael Harris gives a fantastic and hugely likable lead turn as Linda, a devoutly religious 40 year-old who is shocked to discover that her husband has been secretly donating to a sperm bank for over two decades ("I've only been working here since 1988," a nurse replies when Linda asks how often he has been attending the clinic). With Abe (John Diehl) now bedridden, Linda sets out to find the man that he has fathered but never met, which leads her to drug addict and criminal Raymond (Matt O'Leary). The odd-couple adventure that follows sees Linda and Raymond grow in predictable ways – she shakes off her wide-eyed naïveté, he becomes more mature and considerate – but their awkward interactions and the manner in which they deal with the obstacles thrown in their path are often very funny. Pickering's handling of the story is assured, blending moments of Coen-esque craziness with effective character-building interludes. Ultimately, the film doesn't really add up to very much, and too many of its plot developments are signposted in advance, but it is a very charming debut and the two central performances carry it a long way.

Review - Crazy, Stupid, Love

2011-10-04T00:07:00.003Z

There's a cracker of a plot twist in the second half of Crazy, Stupid, Love. I didn't see it coming and it is executed beautifully. Within minutes of that high point, however, the scene in question has degenerated into farce, with much grappling and shouting, and the cleverness of that particular narrative wrinkle has been foolishly tossed away. This sequence goes some way to summing up the problem with Crazy, Stupid, Love (beyond the horribly punctuated title, I mean). The film is an astonishingly inconsistent piece of work, with every turn of its overstuffed plot just as likely to yield moments of embarrassment as much as moments of truth and laughter. Generally, however, the sense is one of overwhelming contrivance, with the screenplay by Dan Fogelman putting plot before character and creating a series of encounters that occur as artificial narrative constructs rather than incidents developed in an organic fashion.

Crazy, Stupid, Love follows a group of interconnected characters whose romantic entanglements become very tangled indeed over the course of the film's two hours. Cal (Steve Carell) and Emily (Julianne Moore) are a couple growing apart after almost 25 years of marriage, with Emily abruptly announcing that she wants a divorce as they drive home from an unfulfilling meal. Cal reacts to this as any man would, by throwing himself out of the moving car, but when he has regained his senses and started to adjust to single life, he discovers that getting back into the dating game after such a long absence is not easy feat. This is where Jacob (Ryan Gosling) comes in. He spots Cal pathetically drowning his sorrows in a bar and – for some reason – decides to make the rejuvenation of Cal his new project.

You might suspect that this will form the central narrative to Crazy, Stupid, Love, but it's only part of the story. Elsewhere, ladies' man Jacob finds himself being unexpectedly knocked back as he pursues young lawyer Hannah (Emma Stone), Cal and Emily's son Robbie (Jonah Bobo) is infatuated with his teenage babysitter Jessica (Analeigh Tipton) while she harbours a crush on the now-single Cal, and Emily is seeing a work colleague (Kevin Bacon). Marisa Tomei also pops up as one of Cal's conquests, but the role she has been given is so excruciating to watch and so far beneath this talented actress that I can't bear to even think about it.

Fogelman is a big believer in comic set-pieces. Robbie makes an embarrassing and implausible declaration of love at school; Jessica takes risqué photos of herself for Cal that you know will end up in the wrong hands; the revelation of Tomei's true identity causes ructions between Cal and Emily; and the film climaxes with a series of sappy speeches at a school graduation. It feels like Fogelman has written his movie around these big moments but the connecting tissue between them is flimsy. The actors do their best with the material, but Carell is stretched in the lead role and the film could have jettisoned many of the scenes involving Robbie and Jessica without losing much of value from the picture. Co-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa's work on the picture is generally solid but mostly anonymous, which is disappointing after their ribald, daring and often brilliant I Love You Philip Morris.

Crazy, Stupid, Love is a misfire because it fails to make us believe in its characters or their turbulent emotional states, but there is one narrative strand that works like a charm. Whenever Crazy, Stupid, Love spends time with Ryan Gosling or Emma Stone, things seem to click into gear, and their scenes together are a pleasure to watch. Both actors are confident and talented enough to just play their scenes in a natural way, developing an effortless repartee and chemistry, and it's a particular joy to see Gosling on such relaxed and funny form. Everything seems to come so easily to Gosling and Stone; they're the only people involved in Crazy, Stupid, Love who don't have to force it.

Review - Drive

2011-10-03T00:19:00.006Z

In Drive Ryan Gosling plays a getaway driver who adheres to a strict set of rules. "If I drive for you, you give me a time and a place" he tells a potential employer over the phone, "I give you a five-minute window, anything happens in that five minutes and I'm yours no matter what," and we quickly see The Driver (for we never learn his name) putting his rules into practice. As the men who have hired him execute their heist, he places a wristwatch on the dashboard and we hear the tick-tick-tick of the seconds ebbing away. When the crooks finally jump back into the car carrying their loot, The Driver pulls away carefully, keeping his speed steady and avoiding any hasty moves that might draw attention to himself. Then he spots a police car.

This is a beautifully directed sequence and one that immediately hooks the viewer into Drive. Nicolas Winding Refn has a superb command of space and a sleek visual sense, and he ratchets up the tension with consummate skill. I could have easily watched a whole film consisting of this kind of cat-and-mouse action, but one of the surprising things about Drive – and there are plenty of surprises – is how little driving there actually is. Beyond that opening sequence, there's a terrific chase following a robbery gone wrong and a quiet romantic interlude in which The Driver takes his neighbour out for a spin, but much of the movie takes place outside cars, which is where some of the film's problems begin. Chief among Drive's issues is the central relationship that complicates The Driver's controlled, attachment-free life. It's meant to provide Refn's film with its emotional core, but I didn't buy it for a second.

It begins when The Driver meets and falls in love with his neighbour Irene (played by Carey Mulligan), who has a young son that she's currently raising alone as her husband Standard (Oscar Isaac) is in jail. When Standard is released and some thugs come after him for money, The Driver inexplicably agrees to assist him in a robbery to help pay off his debts. I say inexplicably because I never felt the kind of bond between Gosling and Mulligan that would encourage a man like The Driver to risk everything for this woman. Irene is a weak character and Mulligan is not the actress capable of imbuing her with the depth and spark required to make us believe in Gosling's sudden infatuation. Refn includes numerous shots of the pair gazing into each other's eyes in the hope that something will emerge from these silent encounters, but for me, the relationship between Irene and The Driver remained a hollow element at the film's centre.

In fact, Drive is much better when it focuses on the supporting players. As a crime boss, Albert Brooks is a menacing hoot and he shares a couple of hugely entertaining exchanges of dialogue with a scenery-chewing Ron Perlman. They're a pair of down and dirty crooks with little regard for loyalty and friendship when somebody becomes a problem. Bryan Cranston also excels as Shannon, the crippled mechanic who provides The Driver with his cars and his jobs; he's a loser with big dreams that you know he's never going to achieve. All of these characters are archetypes of the noir genre but Cranston, Brooks and Perlman invest them with an idiosyncratic personality and a real sense of life, something that I never felt Mulligan or Gosling managed to do (and poor Christina Hendricks barely gets a chance to do anything with her tiny role).

You have to wonder how interested Refn really is in the human element of Drive. He seems so much more at home with the retro, neon aesthetic and the sudden bursts of (frankly rather off-putting) ultra-violence. It's impossible to deny that Drive is gorgeously put together, and on a scene-by-scene basis it would be regarded as one of the films of the year, but while style can be its own reward, these stunning individual moments don't cohere into anything that satisfies overall and it's hard to define what the point of the film is, exactly. There are pleasures to be had here, but for long stretches of the movie I just wanted the moody protagonist to get into his car and drive.

Review - Warrior

2011-10-02T19:58:00.004Z

We know how Warrior is going to end almost as soon as the movie begins, but that sense of inevitability doesn't dilute the film's power. This is the story of two estranged brothers who both compete in an international mixed martial arts (or MMA) tournament and nobody will be surprised by the fact that they end up facing each other in the climactic duel. We know exactly where the film is going, but it's hard to gripe about its predictable nature when we're so emotionally involved in the onscreen drama. In fact, there's something comforting about clichés and familiar narrative trajectories when they are delivered with a genuine sense of skill and conviction, and Warrior is a textbook example of genre dynamics working for a picture rather than against it.

Like David O Russell's The Fighter, this film revolves around familial tensions. Tommy (Tom Hardy) is an ex-soldier who left his squadron in mysterious circumstances to return home to Pittsburgh. He find his father Paddy (Nick Nolte) a changed man; refusing his son's offer of a drink, Paddy announces that he has been sober three years, with the suggestion being that his boozing was a key element in the family's past heartbreak. Paddy has no contact at all with his other Brendan (Joel Edgerton), a teacher and family man, but all three men are drawn to the same tournament. Brendan, a former fighter, has already been earning some cash through illicit, late-night bouts, but he needs the prize money this competition offers to save his home from repossession. Tommy wants his father to coach him into shape, but it's hard to see why he needs such training – he walks straight into the gym and lays out their top competitor with one punch.

Tommy is a coiled spring of pure, animalistic aggression. He storms into the ring with none of the posing or backing music the other fighters employ, and after ferociously tearing into his opponent, he storms straight back out, not even hanging around to hear the referee call the result. Hardy is terrifyingly believable as the snarling Tommy but it's Edgerton who really impresses, with his more textured character allowing for a more nuanced and empathetic performance. He's the underdog who makes good in the grand Rocky tradition, and his scenes are lent more colour by the excellent portrayals of those around him – his wife (Jennifer Morrison), trainer (Frank Grillo), school principal (Kevin Dunn) and his excitable students.

The film has been co-written and directed by Gavin O'Connor, whose mediocre previous features didn't hint at the kind of control and storytelling sense that he displays here. He impressively utilises his locations – both the working-class Pittsburgh background his characters hail from and the Atlantic City backdrop to the main event – and he makes every scene count in some way. The film maintains a remarkable sense of narrative momentum, with the second half of the movie dividing time between emotional confrontations outside the ring and the vicious, thrillingly depicted fights inside it. Warrior runs to 139 minutes, which initially seems excessive, but it doesn't feel overlong when you genuinely care about the outcome of each bruising encounter.

We care because it feels like Warrior possesses a beating heart beneath all of that brawn, and that's exemplified by nobody more than Nick Nolte, as the patriarch desperate to make amends for his past mistakes. There's a devastating authenticity to Nolte's portrayal of Paddy, with so much pain and regret on show in his watery eyes and halting delivery. Combined with Edgerton, Hardy and the gripping, richly atmospheric fight sequences it creates an extraordinarily powerful brew. Conventional it may be, but Warrior is also irresistible.

Review - The Change-Up

2011-09-29T23:01:00.003Z

Sometimes a film just makes me despair. The Change-Up is the latest body-swap comedy to emerge from Hollywood, but few entries in this long-running genre have ever been more dispiriting or odious than this witless farce. The film fails on every conceivable level, but it's hard to avoid the notion that they have failed because they barely tried to make something worthwhile in the first place. There's nothing inherently wrong with making another body-swap movie – as recently as 2003 I thoroughly enjoyed Mark Waters' Freaky Friday – but to make a successful one you need just a little bit of wit and imagination, a clever central conceit, and characters whose predicament we can care about or at the very least be interested in. The Change-Up doesn't offer any of these qualities and the overwhelming sense one is left with as the credits roll is one having experienced a film that possesses an astonishing level of contempt for both its characters and its audience.

The Change-Up's premise is fundamentally broken by its choice of the two characters who undergo this switch of bodies. An old man swapping bodies with a teenager is interesting, a mother inhabiting the body of her daughter is interesting – one bland, middle-aged white guy trading places with another middle-aged white guy is not interesting. Jason Bateman is Dave, who we first meet when he goes to tend to his two screaming (and badly CGI-d) babies and takes a mouthful of projectile shit from one as he changes its nappy (weirdly, the camera focusing on the infant's dilating anus before the shit is unleashed). If there's one thing we learn from The Change-Up's depiction of Dave's life, it's that marriage is a miserable, stressful, sexless nightmare, so it's little wonder that he wishes he could live the life enjoyed by his buddy Mitch (Ryan Reynolds), a mostly unemployed actor whose chief pursuits are pot-smoking and promiscuous sex. What's less clear is why Mitch would want to trade places with Dave, but for the purposes of moving the story forward, he wishes just that and thus the pair switch bodies as they both piss into a magical fountain.

The 'comedy' that ensues is just stupefying in its crassness and its dullness. Mitch proves to be predictably incompetent as he is tasked with closing Dave's major business deal while Dave is completely out of his depth on the shoot of a porn movie and hapless when it comes to Mitch's many lovers. Part of the reason The Change-Up isn't funny is because Bateman and Reynolds' lack of distinctive mannerisms or a recognisable acting style means you constantly need to remind yourself who is playing who, but the main reason it isn't funny is because every single joke is cheap, ugly and juvenile. Aside from the film's inexplicable fecal-obsession (as well as the baby shit both Bateman and Leslie Mann are shown taking a dump, while Bateman also sticks his finger up a woman's arse), the gags rely on all characters behaving with implausible levels of stupidity. But for the most reprehensible aspect of the film, it's hard to see past the way The Change-Up treats its women. They are all strange, faintly disgusting creatures who have babies, get old and sometimes even goes to the toilet (pass the sick bag!), and they're held up for our mockery and revulsion unless they are willing to play the role of fun-loving sex object (a part Olivia Wilde dutifully fills).

Here's the thing about The Change-Up. It wants us to see it as a raunchy, taboo-breaking comedy, but at heart it is bound by the formulaic and deeply entrenched conservatism of Hollywood (when Dave has the opportunity to have sex with the woman he has lusted after for years, why does a sudden pang of conscience drive him back to his wife?). Nothing in the movie is real or honest. The characters don't convince (it's impossible to believe that these two guys would still be friends) the obstacles they face are hackneyed (Mitch has a rocky relationship with his dad – fucking daddy issues yet again. Get a grip, Hollywood!) and their eventual epiphanies feel totally artificial, emerging from the need to hastily wrap the script up and nothing more. The Change-Up exemplifies mainstream Hollywood at its worst, displaying a scant regard for quality or for the taste and standards of its audience. You may have noticed that at no point in this review have I mentioned the name of the director – sorry, I didn't catch the credit. Let's just look at The Change-Up as another forgettable piece of garbage, rolling off the production line of a filmmaking industry that hates you.

Review - Mademoiselle Chambon

2011-09-26T00:40:00.002Z

In other hands, Mademoiselle Chambon could have been a passionate, heady romance, but director Stéphane Brizé is not interested in playing it that way and the film is all the more effective as a result. The story brings together family man Jean (Vincent Lindon) and schoolteacher Véronique Chambon (Sandrine Kiberlain) through a stroke of ill-fortune – when Jean's wife is hurt at work and cannot pick up their son from school – but the relationship that develops between them is built in small steps. After their first encounter, Véronique invites Jean to come back and speak to the class about his career as a construction worker and then asks him to drop by her house to look at a damaged window. All the time, this pair are edging closer together, but they do so in such a tentative, hesitant fashion. There are raging passions here, but they just happen to exist below the surface.

One of the catalysts that sparks their romance is music. Jean discovers that Véronique plays the violin and he gets her to perform for him, which she does so with her back turned as she is too nervous to perform for an audience. Music helps to build a bridge between them, with Jean being moved by her skill and Véronique appearing to emerge out of her timid self when she plays for him. Brizé's last film to be released here was Not Here to be Loved, another sensitively played romance in which two people were drawn together by a shared passion (in that instance, it was dance) and once again the director shows a remarkable knack for allowing scenes to breathe and develop in a manner that feels entirely organic. That same generosity is extended to the actors, who excel in their subtly drawn roles. Lindon is hugely impressive as an ordinary working-class character experiencing feelings he never anticipated, while delicate beauty Kiberlain manages to bring emotional depth to her character while retaining an intriguing unknowable quality.

Brizé expertly sustains the sense of longing and the erotic tension that exists between Jean and Véronique as well as creating authentic relationships between Jean and his wife (Aure Atika) and elderly father (Jean-Marc Thibault), but what's most impressive about Mademoiselle Chambon is how he does so much while saying so little. Words are less important in this film than looks and gestures, and Antoine Héberlé's camera is alive to the meaning that exists in the most fleeting of glances. The most refreshing aspect of Mademoiselle Chambon is its willingness to leave so much unsaid, but that understated approach is precisely what allows it to cut deeper than most screen romances.

Blu-ray Review - Manhunter

2011-09-25T01:01:00.003Z

The Film

If you hear the name Hannibal Lecter, what do you see? Most people will instantly bring to mind Anthony Hopkins, who won an Oscar for his performance in The Silence of the Lambs and subsequently reprised the role in two further movies, but some will surely think of Brian Cox delivering lines with subdued menace as "Dr Hannibal Lecktor" in Manhunter. This was the first screen appearance of Thomas Harris' brilliant, sadistic villain, but he's very much on the periphery of this picture and had not yet morphed into the camp, spotlight-hogging character that Hopkins would eventually turn him into. When the novel Red Dragon was later adapted for a second time – by Brett Ratner – it seemed as if Hollywood was trying to wipe away the memory of this unusual 80's thriller, but Manhunter deserves a better fate than to be remembered as the "other" Hannibal Lecter movie.

The true villain of the piece in Manhunter is Francis Dollarhyde (Tom Noonan), but we don't meet him until almost an hour of the movie has elapsed. Instead, we see the aftermath of his crimes, as the killer known only as "The Tooth Fairy" slays families in their sleep. Will Graham (William Petersen) is the tormented FBI agent leading us through the crime scene. At the start of the movie Graham is retired, having suffered a breakdown after his confrontation with Lecktor, but he is coaxed back into action by the Tooth Fairy murders, as his unique perspective on the mind of a murderer makes him the only man capable of bringing him to justice. Graham walks in the footsteps of his prey and tries to enter into the murderer's thoughts. In a superb sequence, Graham reconstructs Dollarhyde's actions as he watches a video of his victims' home movies, gradually starting to see the world through the eyes of a killer.

Eyes and the act of seeing are key motifs in Manhunter – "Do you see?" Dollarhyde repeats as he presents images of William Blake's Red Dragon, which he dreams of becoming. After killing his victims, he replaces their eyes with shards of mirrors so he can see his image reflected in them, and the woman he is infatuated with (Joan Allen's Reba) is blind and therefore can't see the disfigurement that he is so conscious of. Noonan's performance as Dollarhyde is sensitive and devastating and his scenes with Allen are beautifully played, but it's Petersen's driven central performance that really impresses. All of the horrors Graham has subjected himself to in the line of duty are visible in his tired face and wary demeanour, and his turn matches beautifully with Cox in their key scene together. Cox plays Lecktor with a relaxed arrogance; we first see him slumped in his startlingly white cell, partially obscured by the door. He only has a small role in Manhunter but he nails it so effectively, capturing the insidious nature of Lecktor's dialogue: "Dream much, Will?"

Cox's style is very different to that later adopted by Hopkins and the overall aesthetic of Manhunter is distinct from the later entries in the series. If you need a lesson in how working with a creative, visionary director can affect a cinematographer's work, then compare Dante Spinotti's filming on Manhunter with the images he conjured in Ratner's drably uninspired Red Dragon. Manhunter looks sensational throughout with Mann's typically vivid hues creating a rich, unsettling atmosphere, and his use of a subjective camera makes us see what Dollarhyde and Graham see. The film builds to a remarkable climax set against In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida and when you look at the wide variety of virtues that Manhunter offers it's puzzling that it remains the film received such a lukewarm reception upon its release and that its cult status has taken so long to solidify. At the very least, the film deserves to be considered the equal of the much-lauded The Silence of the Lambs, and in many ways perhaps Mann's film is superior. This may not be the Hannibal Lector you know, but it's one you should know.

The Extras

Both the theatrical and director's cut are present here with the latter featuring a commentary by Michael Mann. He's a dry talker and sometimes states the obvious, but he also offers illuminating technical details and discusses the psychological layers behind his story. Mann is absent from the retrospective documentary but interviews with the major cast members compensate, and Dante Spinotti provides an interesting interview in which he explains how he and Mann created Manhunter's distinctive look.

Manhunter will be released on blu-ray on September 26th

Buy Manhunter here

Review - Page One: Inside The New York Times

2011-09-23T23:53:00.005Z

I knew I was going to enjoy Page One: Inside The New York Times as soon as it began. The opening credits run over images of the newspaper being prepared for its morning despatch – machines whirring as pages run through them, before being bundled and driven out in a fleet of vans. It is a familiar and heartening sight, but this is exactly what we are on the verge of losing, with print newspapers dying out in the digital age. Andrew Rossi's documentary couldn't have been filmed at a more turbulent time for America's "paper of record," having been shot while the Times saw sales drop, was forced to let long-serving staff members go, and faced difficult questions about its future as the entire media landscape shifted irrevocably.

Page One is a fly-on-the-wall film that takes us into the New York Times offices, observing both the everyday operations of the paper and examining the situation that it currently finds itself in. To do all of that in a shade over ninety minutes is a tall order and if I have a criticism of Page One, it's that Rossi tries to cover too much in a short period. Being allowed to watch as the paper gets put together is a fascinating and rare opportunity, but the filmmaker's attempt to blend that with the vast and complex subject of print media's uncertain future risks eating into the amount of time he can spend on those scenes, and vice versa. Both subjects are probably interesting enough to merit a feature in themselves.

Having said that, the feature we have is a solidly entertaining and thought-provoking one. The shift between the traditional values of the paper and the new world of technology is epitomised by young reporters such as Brian Stelter, who blogs and tweets and an extraordinary rate while filing his stories; but as adaptable fresh talent such as Stelter thrives, stalwarts from the paper's other departments – having given decades of service to the Times – receive news of their redundancies. The paper is rapidly reshaping itself for this new age and many of the contributors whom Rossi interviews have opinions on the its current position and future viability (some have already written an obituary for the Times), but as David Carr explains, even in the vast network of news sites and blogs that now inhabit the world wide web, the source for all stories is often the same – the New York Times.

Carr is a force of nature and he provides Page One with a fascinating, effortlessly charismatic central protagonist. A media columnist with the paper, Carr is a passionate advocate for everything the Times represents, even going off the record in an interview to angrily chastise his subject after an ill-advised remark against the paper. As he stalks around the NY Times office in his distinctive manner, grouchily espousing his own ideas on the changing face of journalism, Carr is at the centre of Page One's most memorable scenes. Towards the end of the film, Rossi follows Carr closely as he puts together a major story, ringing his contacts, checking his facts, piecing together the evidence he uncovers and gradually building the finished article through his painstaking work. It's truly compelling viewing and a vital reminder that no matter what media receive our news from, quality journalism such as this is at the bottom of it all. It is an invaluable commodity and one that must not be lost as the times rapidly change.

Review - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

2011-09-19T21:52:00.002Z

Thomas Alfredson's new film version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is about as good a two-hour movie as I can imagine being made from John le Carré's spy novel. In 1979, the BBC adapted the story into a seven-episode miniseries that has subsequently been hailed as a TV classic, so how can we expect a single movie to compress such a complex and slow-burning plot into a fraction of the time without losing some sense of complexity or depth? The good news is that the film stands up to the inevitable comparisons to both the source material and the television version and comes out of it looking pretty good. Sure, it may not be the definitive Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but the fidelity and integrity that screenwriters Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan have shown in adapting le Carré's story is admirable, and as a showcase for both a gifted young director and the cream of British acting talent, the film is hard to beat.

The first thing one notices about Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is how superbly Alfredson and his team have nailed the atmosphere of the world that the story takes place in. This is a tale of spies and double agents, but there is nothing overtly thrilling about the manner in which the film is presented. George Smiley (Gary Oldman) is a British Secret Service agent forced into retirement along with head of the agency Control (John Hurt) after a bungled mission in Budapest results in one of their men being ambushed. However, there is talk of a Soviet mole "right at the top of the Circus" and as a man who is now on the outside Smiley is the perfect candidate to find out who exactly the traitor is. As Smiley, Oldman gives the most reserved and minimalist possible, sinking into the role of a character who keeps his cards close to his chest at all times, a character who has taken the notion that "careless talk costs lives" to his heart so literally that he barely utters a word.

It's a central performance of remarkable restraint and subtlety, and it's also an entirely selfless piece of acting, providing the film with a calm anchor and allowing other actors to steal the limelight with their more animated turns. Of these, Tom Hardy (as the anxious agent Ricki Tarr), Benedict Cumberbatch (as the man Smiley enlists to help him find the truth) and Mark Strong (as a former agent trying to start his life anew). It seems harsh to pick out individual performances, though, because the whole ensemble excels, with some wonderful actors maximising their impact with just a few minutes of screen time (Simon McBurney and Kathy Burke particularly). It is an embarrassment of acting talent and their ability to instil their characters with immediate depth and texture is vital in a film that has little time for introductions.

Because there is an awful lot of plot to cram into Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. As written by le Carré, the story is paced in a measured fashion and steadfastly refuses to juice things up with action when a quiet conversation will suffice. By necessity, the film condenses this narrative but through some judicious editing and utilisation of flashbacks and expository scenes, it manages to keep the plot moving while maintaining the deliberate rhythms of le Carré's storytelling. Alfredson orchestrates so many scenes beautifully, from the fateful Budapest ambush outlined above, to Ricki's nervous adventure in Istanbul and a gripping attempt to steal valuable documents from deep within the bowels of the Circus. Every frame of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is crafted with love and attention to detail, which is why it pains me so much to say that there's something missing at the heart of it all.

Maybe it's just that – heart. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is an immaculate piece of work, with the rich but unfussy production design and artistically drab cinematography immersing us in the world of its characters, but while I found myself admiring every aspect of the film individually, I just couldn't love the whole. The film wants you to believe that there's a torrent of suppressed emotion hiding behind these closed-off façades, but I never felt it, and the manner in which the film kept me at arm's length throughout meant it ended up falling short of where each aspect of its production seems to place it. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is in many ways a film about love – the love of one's country, the love of a woman, the love of one's fellow man – and what it feels like when that love has been betrayed, but the characters and the filmmakers keep those feelings buried too deep to have any real and lasting impact.

Interview - Céline Sciamma

2011-09-15T23:35:00.005Z

Céline Sciamma received great acclaim for her debut film Water Lilies in 2007, a sharp and beautiful exploration of the relationship between two teenage girls in the world of synchronised swimming. Her second film Tomboy also concerns a young girl going through a difficult and confusing period in her life, and once again Sciamma has proven herself to be a sensitive and skilful filmmaker, capable of handling potentially troublesome scenes with remarkable grace. Warm, intelligent and moving, Tomboy is one of the best films of the year, and I met Céline Sciamma in London this week to talk about it.

The thing I loved most about Tomboy is how it accurately showed the way children behave when there are no adults present. What is your process for capturing such natural behaviour on film?

That's the whole challenge. It's about writing first and being accurate about character building and bringing back memories from childhood, but not having that nostalgic point-of-view of an adult and really being at the scale of children. I also had a kind of strategy where they always had to do stuff. The scary thing when you are working with children is that you have these little trained monkeys saying the line in a witty, funny way, and this is what you fear the most as an audience and as a director. So you make them do a puzzle, play with Play-Doh, play with water, and when you are on the set that brings them into the scene and makes them forget about the fact that they have to say the lines. That's the basic strategy. You have to find the balance between being accurate with them as with any actor – talking about the goals of the scene, the goals of the character – and making them forget about the fact that it's a job. That's why we were shooting very long takes, 10-12 minutes, and never cutting, because it's a like a fail when you cut for them, and I was always talking to them and playing with them a lot. When they danced I danced, when they sang I sang, when they bathed...well, I was not in the bath [laughs], but it was all about building this relationship where it's all a big game, even though for you it's a lot of anxiety.

I was particularly touched by the relationship between the sisters, which I think is one of the best depictions of a sibling relationship that I've seen for some time.

I'm glad you say that because it's the most intimate part of the movie for me. Sisterhood is really the thing I wanted to portray with a strong feeling and to show that complicity. And working with a six year-old, you know, it's really not the same thing as working with an 11 year-old. The 11 year-old can focus, she can forget about herself, but the six year-old is tired and then she's unstoppable, so you have to bring those two energies together. They were both only childs so they didn't know that relationship, which was a good thing because they learned together.

I understand you found Zoé Héran on your first day of casting, which was an incredible stroke of luck because if that performance isn't perfect then the film won't work.

Yes, and that was what made it such a great challenge. It is luck but it's also how you create your own luck because the movie was made really fast and I had three weeks to do the casting. That's why I didn't do what I expected to do, hunting the streets everywhere trying to find the perfect little girl, because we just didn't have the time, so I spread the word with casting agencies everywhere that I was looking for a little girl who could be mistaken for a boy. The word came back that Zoé was kind of boyish and was registered in an agency for several years but not really performing because she was too awkward for what you expect from a child on TV or cinema. That was why I said I wanted to see that girl first and she came in the first day.

You never explain the reasons behind Laure's deception. I wonder if Zoé had any questions or ideas about why her character was behaving in this way?

Actually it's easier to explain to a kid than an adult, and Zoé never asked why. Adults always ask why, but the movie never says why and it's more about the 'how.' Zoé understood that she's new here and nobody knows her, this other girl mistakes her for a boy and she's just going for it, simple as that. She really connected to that because I think those questions were too big for her. The plot works on such simple mechanics that she could always relate to the plot and it was a comfortable story for her, actually.

You see the film from the child's point-of-view and while adult viewers know her secret will be revealed when Laure goes to school at the end of the summer, Laure is not thinking that far ahead. It reminded me of being ten years old when you feel like summer is going to last forever.

Yes, you have a very small projection when you are a kid, it's all about the present. I always kept that in mind when I was writing. I remember thinking as a kid that things like, "I want that video game" or "in a week it will be blah-blah's birthday," or else you have very big ones like, "When I am old..." so yes, I think that was very important to stay true to the children's mind.

Why did you go with the English title of Tomboy? Is that a well-known term in France?

No, not at all, nobody knows what Tomboy means in France. In France to say tomboy you would say garçon manqué which means "failed boy," but that would be a terrible title! That's why I didn't want to use that expression. Tomboy is also more mysterious, so people would go into the film not knowing what it is about, although here and the US and everywhere you'll all expect what you're going to see.

When you made Water Lilies you had never directed even a short film before. What were the biggest lessons you learned from that film that helped you prepare for Tomboy?

[Pause] Mmm...that's a good one. [laughs] Well, first I learned that I loved it, which I didn't expect. Also, I really tried to make mixed emotions and I kind of failed. You know, I had fun sequences and I shot them, but I couldn't find the balance and that was something I really wanted to achieve with Tomboy, trying to get those contrasts. Sometimes you can laugh and you have this humorous little character of the sister, so that was my biggest lesson to think about the contrast, and I think this movie is more open and more generous.

Water Lilies was a big success, receiving a great critical reaction and nominations for the César Awards, but when most people make their second film they are expected to make something on a bigger scale. You've gone in the opposite direction with a smaller budget, young actors and a faster shooting schedule.

I wanted to avoid the pressure, I guess! [laughs] Yeah, it was a way to avoid the pressure and it was a political gesture, because people expect that of you and also you expect it of yourself. You have to get bigger but I was thinking that I wanted to be freer, because that's what the success of the first film should give me, more freedom. There are two legends about second films: they are bigger and less sincere, and often they are a failure. I decided to do just the opposite because I wanted it to be fun.

It's a strange paradox about filmmaking, the bigger a budget gets the less freedom a director has.

I think that's something you get to learn. I felt like I was a rookie but now I feel more confident that I could handle a bigger budget knowing how to do it, and I can grow bigger but not be a slave to money or famous actors. It's not that I resent that but I just think you have to find the right moment to do it for yourself.

I saw your short film Pauline that you made as part of a government anti-homophobia campaign and the strong theme that runs through both your features and the short is this idea of young women questioning their own identity.

It is an intimate question that I am not struggling with anymore, but it's part of my own journey, I guess. I am obsessed with it, I can't help it, but I feel lucky that I am obsessed with it because I feel there are great opportunities for fiction. You feel like you are writing a story that hasn't been told that many times; a girl pretending to be a little boy or putting Play-Doh in a swimsuit. It's so exciting and it really brings strong storytelling and strong characters, so that's why I like it. It's original and political and alive.

Obviously a film like Pauline can be used as a great educational tool, but Tomboy could be used in a similar fashion.

It's actually going to be the case because it has been elected as part of the school programme. It will be shown in primary schools and high schools and that's amazing. Pauline was made for this purpose, it was a script written by a teenager and it was political gesture, and Tomboy was not made for that purpose but I'm glad that it gets to reach the kids. That's really cool.

It took you four years to make your second feature. Will we have to wait as long for your third one? Do you already have the idea for your next film?

I don't have the idea yet, but this time I think I'm going to be faster. I want to write in a few months if the promotion gives me some time. I have been working as a screenwriter for other people and working in TV to learn my stuff, so now I hope it won't be so long before I get back to work.

Are you happy writing scripts for other filmmakers to direct?

Oh yeah, I still want to do that. You don't wake up every day with a story idea that you want to spend years with. You have to believe in it really strongly because it's hard making films, you know. I like working for other people. I like the fact that I can be a soldier for somebody else's battle.

Don't you look at their film and think, "I would have directed it this way" or "I'd have done that better"?

[laughs] I haven't been in that position yet. It's the French way to write it together with the director so if you pick him and trust him it's OK. It's his project, it's not like you're writing it and handing it to him, so it's less painful, I guess.

I know you've said a couple of times that you want to work in TV as well.

Yeah, because it's really flourishing in France and everybody wants to make it big on TV now. There's less of a frontier between cinema and TV, when ten years ago this wouldn't be happening.

So many big movie directors are moving into television now, like all of the filmmakers working on HBO series.

And you guys here too, the BBC. I think we should be more like the BBC than HBO, as we're European. I have been writing a TV series for Canal+ and I have learned a lot just being one of the writers, so now I'd like to write my own. I'm already in touch with the channels to talk about it.

Well, I hope we see that series over here.

I hope so too.

Review - Tomboy

2011-09-15T21:38:00.003Z

At first glance, there's nothing unusual about Michaël, the central character in Céline Sciamma's second feature. He wears the same baggy t-shirts and shorts that most ten year-old boys prefer, he wears his hair cropped short, he's protective of his younger sister and he loves playing football. Michaël is the new kid in town, with his family having moved into this small suburb during the summer, but he quickly becomes a popular figure among the local children, particularly his pretty neighbour Lisa (Jeanne Disson). There is something unusual about Michaël, however – his name isn't Michaël, and he's not even a boy. Laure (Zoé Héran) is actually a ten year-old girl whose naturally boyish demeanour hides any hint of femininity. Her deception is sparked by an innocent misunderstanding – when Lisa first introduces herself and understandably mistakes her new neighbour for a boy – but Laure takes this error and runs with it, and as summer progresses she seems to grow ever more comfortable in the character she has assumed.

We initially watch Tomboy from a position of curiosity, wondering how long Laure can maintain this extraordinary façade. We know that her secret will ultimately be revealed – after all, she will have to enrol in her new school at the end of the summer, where her true identity will be exposed – but Laure is too busy revelling in the joys of being a young boy among friends to worry about such consequences. Sciamma's first film Water Lilies was a hugely impressive debut, beautifully composed and tactful in its handling of sensitive topics, but Tomboy struck me as a much more acute and emotionally involving film. She directs with a remarkable delicacy of touch, allowing scenes of entirely natural behaviour to play out on screen and immersing us in Laure's two worlds – the family home, a warm and loving environment, and the woods where Michaël and his pals play. The director offers no explanation for Laure's behaviour; she is more interested in observing how this young girl adapts to new situations and how the group dynamics among her friends evolve around her.

So Sciamma is hugely fortunate to have discovered such eminently watchable young actress to carry her film. Zoé Héran is so utterly convincing in the challenging lead role that it's impossible to imagine any child being a better fit for the part. This is a performance of stunning subtlety and dexterity, and it's fascinating to watch Héran as she methodically negotiates the various tricky situations she finds herself in; examining her body to confirm that her undeveloped breasts won't give her away, or fashioning penis from modelling clay to ensure her trunks will be appropriately shaped when she goes swimming, trying to find a secluded spot among the trees to urinate while the other boys relieve themselves in the open. Sciamma obviously has a wonderful facility to draw entirely believable and spontaneous performance from children and the magic she works with Malonn Lévana, as Laure's 6 year-old sister Jeanne, is just as crucial to the film's success. The scenes between these two are an unalloyed joy, and one of the finest depictions of a sibling relationship that I've seen in years, with Jeanne being especially delightful to watch when she becomes a co-conspirator in Laure's lie and enjoys spending time both with her big sister and with new friend Michaël.

Tomboy is a small film – running for little more than 80 minutes – but few pictures this year have felt more perfectly formed. In terms of scale, the film couldn't be further removed from Terrence Malick's epic The Tree of Life, but what the two pictures share is an uncanny ability to view the world through the eyes of their young protagonists and to express both the bliss and pain that encapsulates childhood experience. Tomboy's approach is softer and quieter, however – it's a film that sneaks up on you, and you have no idea how deeply involved you are in the drama until you feel it. Sciamma and Héran make us care about the central character's happiness in a way that precious few films manage to do, and whether you call her Laure or call him Michaël, you'll be left in no doubt as the credits roll that you've spent time with a very special young person.

Read my interview with Céline Sciamma here

Review - 30 Minutes or Less

2011-09-15T07:36:00.004Z

Working with David Fincher on a film like The Social Network must be a tough act to follow, but Jesse Eisenberg probably thought he was on safe ground when he reunited with his Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer for 30 Minutes or Less. Unfortunately, he has only made the transition from a sharply written, multilayered and precision-directed film to a movie that has been thrown together in the most careless and haphazard fashion. Alongside Eisenberg, who plays pizza delivery guy Nick (the title is a reference to the money-back guarantee on offer if Nick doesn't deliver on time), the film has cast Aziz Ansari as his buddy Chet, and these two work tirelessly to keep the thing moving, but 30 Minutes or Less so often stalls.

The film opens with two distinct narrative strands that eventually crash noisily into one another. Nick and Chet spend their days hanging out and smoking pot until Chet finds out that Nick has been seeing his twin sister Kate (Dilshad Vadsaria), a revelation that sparks further recriminations and results in the two pals grappling messily on the floor. They go their separate ways, with bad blood between them, but they will soon be reunited when Nick finds himself in a fix. That fix is the brainchild of Dwayne (Danny McBride) and Travis (Nick Swardson), two idiots who have their eyes on the lottery fortune currently being enjoyed by Dwayne's father (Fred Ward). They decide to have the old man bumped off but in order to raise the $100,000 that a hitman charges these days, they'll have to rob a bank, which is where Nick comes in.

The idea of Nick wearing a bomb vest and having to rob a bank for these clowns has potential, but 30 Minutes or Less never seems entirely sure of what kind of movie it wants to be. There's a madcap, screwball energy to certain sequences but the film is too disjointed to work as a farce, and it frequently slows down for indulgent scenes in which Dwayne and Travis bicker tiresomely or discuss their plans for a tanning salon/brothel. McBride is at his most intolerable here as the stupid loudmouth arsehole who thinks he's the smartest guy in the room, and his belligerent delivery gets old very fast. Fleischer and his screenwriter Michael Diliberti struggle to work tasteless gags into the mix – a supermarket cashier suggests Nick and Chet are purchasing a "rape kit" when they buy toy guns and ski masks – in fact, the film's treatment of its female characters is pretty depressing throughout. The most notable woman on show is a stripper while Kate, whom Nick is supposed to be so enamoured with he'll risk taking a detour en route to the heist, is little more than window dressing.

There's one very funny scene in 30 Minutes or Less and it occurs when Nick and Chet finally make it into the bank and improvise their way through a robbery, but the film doesn't hit such heights again. 30 Minutes or Less is never quite sharp enough, never quite crazy enough and never quite funny enough, and it nosedives badly in its second half with scenes of violence that jar badly against the film's comic element. Are we meant to care about the film's various one-dimensional lowlife characters as they wind up shooting each other and setting themselves alight? The baffling resurrection of one apparently dead character for a post-credits gag suggests that none of it really matters anyway.

Interview - Melanie Lynskey

2011-09-13T01:01:00.003Z

Melanie Lynskey has become a regular fixture on both big and small screens in recent years with her appearances in Up in the Air, The Informant!, Away We Go and Win Win, and her role on TV's Two and Half Men, but when I spoke to the actress this week it was her very first performance I was interested in. Lynskey was just 16 years old and had no screen acting experience when she was cast alongside Kate Winslet in Peter Jackson's true-life tale of obsession and murder Heavenly Creatures. The film is finally released on blu-ray and DVD this week, and here's what Melanie Lynskey had to say about her debut role.

It's hard to believe that Heavenly Creatures is 17 years old now. I watched it again this week and it's still as strange, beautiful and disturbing as ever.

Yeah, I just saw it last night because they screened it at the New Beverly here and I hadn't seen it in ten years. It was so strange!

When you were cast as Pauline you had no acting experience. Did you have acting aspirations or did it completely come out of the blue?

I always wanted to be an actor, it was really my great dream in life. When I was 16 at high school and at the age when you have to decide what you want to do in life, I kept telling people I wanted to act and they would say, "What, are you crazy? That's not a career." I was thinking about what else I might be able to do when they came to my school and asked me to audition and I got the job. I was so lucky.

What was that audition process like? Did you meet right away with Peter Jackson?

It was his partner Fran Walsh who came around and they didn't have a script or anything. They just told us a little about what the character was like and they took two girls at a time and had them improvise with each other. At the time I was doing a lot of improv comedy and stuff like that, so I was used to improvising and it was just fun and easy. A couple of weeks later they took me down to Christchurch to meet Peter and have a long audition, a proper audition on film, and they also showed me Kate Winslet's audition tape. It was like, "This is the professional actress from England who has been working for six years and this is how good you have to be." [laughs]

But even though Kate Winslet had been acting for some years, this was her first feature film role, so I guess she was in the same boat in some ways.

It didn't feel like she was, at all. She was so confident and so sure of herself, she just seemed like an old pro.

How familiar were you with the real story before getting this role? Did you have to do a lot of research?

I was familiar with it because New Zealand is such a small place and there aren't that many murders so you really hear about all of them. [laughs] Peter and Fran had done a lot of research. They had talked to everybody they could and read all the diary entries and there was a huge folder they gave us. We also went around and talked to people, like girls who went to school with her, because we wanted to get all of the physical stuff right, the mannerisms.

It's a very dark and emotionally taxing role. As your first part, was that a daunting character to take on?

I felt nervous just because I was the only person who was a newcomer, and I felt that all of these people were so amazing and I wouldn't be able to fit in with them, but they all made me very comfortable. As for the acting side of it, I wanted to act so much and I was doing everything I could in my own town, like community theatre and so on, so I just felt like it was such an opportunity and it just felt exciting to me. I also felt I was in very safe hands with Peter and I knew he wasn't going to let me go crazy.

It was a real departure for Peter Jackson too because his movies up to that point had been trashy, outrageous B-movies and he hadn't suggested the kind of subtlety and ambiguity he showed here.

Definitely. I had seen Braindead so when they started to talk to me about what the movie was about I thought, "Oh my God, it's going to be awful." [laughs] But as soon as I read the script I saw the sensitivity and it was really a whole other thing.

What was it like to shoot those fantasy sequences?

It was funny. The girls themselves were imagining all of that and it felt like we were in the same sort of situation because we had to imagine all of that was around us, so Kate and I relied on each other's energy and we trusted that we were looking at the same things. It was a funny thing to play, and it was a lot of fun when we did the clay people scenes because they were real people so that was kind of a bizarre situation.

I read that you and Kate stayed in character between scenes. Is that true?

Kind of. I think she said something like that in an interview. I mean, we were definitely very teenager-y with each other and very animated, and we talked and talked and talked, but I don't know if I'd say we stayed in character. There was some times when we did stay in character because it would have been difficult otherwise, like the murder sequence, when we sort of lived for three days in this kind of crazy, oppressive state. It was so upsetting to get into the role and it was easier to just stay in it.

Was it easy to get out of that mindset afterwards?

It was difficult. I remember we had to shower right afterwards. I mean, immediately after the scene we had this little place to shower and it felt very symbolic to get rid of it all. We were at the place where it really happened and Sarah's [Peirse, who played Pauline's mother] performance in that scene was so shocking to me at the time and it was so upsetting. That was really tough.

Filming at the actual site where these events took place must have been very strange.

It was bizarre. Initially, Peter and Fran thought they would film it in the exact spot where it happened, but when they went there they felt too upset and freaked out by it, so they just recreated it in a spot that was very similar.

When you made the film, what were your thoughts on the kind of exposure it was going to get? Until Heavenly Creatures and Once Were Warriors came out at around the same time, New Zealand cinema didn't really have much international recognition.

Not really, I guess there was The Navigator. There were some films that would go to Cannes and I loved film so much that I had an awareness of that kind of thing. The film just felt so personal to me and I had never been part of something that people watched, so it hadn't really crossed my mind, and when people started talking about festivals and stuff like that I just thought, "What?" It was such a weird leap for me to make that people were actually going to see this thing that felt so private, but everybody else on set was so used to it. I remember Kate saying to me, "So what are you going to spend your money on?" and I thought, "What are you talking about? I'm never going to make money like this again in my life, I'm going to save it!" [laughs] She was already off auditioning for other things. When the film came out the way people responded was really amazing. I remember going to the Venice Film Festival and people were so intense about it. It was really crazy.

Did you get a lot of attention and more movie offers straight away? For your second film you worked with Peter Jackson again on The Frighteners.

I didn't get any offers, it was just silence. [laughs] I didn't expect it either. I went back to high school and felt like I had been so lucky to get this opportunity. Nothing else came up and I thought, "Well who do I think I am to believe I could make a career out of this?" and I had really accepted it for a little while. Then I got this agent in America who said I should go over and do some auditions, but I thought she was crazy. I don't know, I felt embarrassed and like I was being laughed out of there, because that role was so specific. Of course, all of these films were happening for Kate and I felt like, that's her thing and I don't have any business trying to do that. After a few years of university studying theatre, I felt that I had loved the experience so much and what if I could do it? I'd always regret it if I didn't try. So I came to LA and started to do some auditions, but it was when I was at university that I did that little thing in The Frighteners. Peter just asked if I wanted to come and do this movie and hang out.

Could you have predicted at the time that he'd be directing Lord of the Rings within five years?

Kind of. It wasn't a great surprise how it turned out for anybody. Some people just have this confidence about them and faith in themselves, and they make you feel that anything is possible. Peter definitely has that and it always seemed like he would do things on his own terms. He kept telling us about all of the movies he was being offered and they were all these really schlocky horror movies, but he stuck to his guns and said, "I want to do the projects that I want to do, and I want to stay in New Zealand." And he did.

You said that it took a few years for your career to take off but you've had an amazing run in recent years. You've been involved in a number of films I've loved, like The Informant! and Win Win.

I love The Informant! and I always love people who love The Informant! [laughs] It's a real 'love it or hate it' movie and I love it. It's my favourite thing I've ever done.

I just picked it up on blu-ray the other day and I love re-watching it. I'm always amazed by Matt Damon's performance.

He's so good in that movie! I mean, he was great in Invictus as well, but it's so weird that he didn't get nominated for that.

They always screw the comedy performances when it comes to awards.

They do, it's so funny. I don't know why they do that. But yeah, the last few years have been so great. I got this new agent because I wasn't really happy with how things were going and I needed to change it up a bit, and this agent I'm working with now is really good about me not working unless it's something that I believe in. It just feels like a different world and I'm so lucky.

What have you got lined up next?

I'm taking a little break because I haven't seen my husband all year so I'm just going to hang out with him for a while, but I'm excited about this movie that I've just finished. I was in Connecticut where I was shooting a movie that Todd Louiso is directing called Hello I Must Be Going. His wife wrote it and it's a great little script that came out of Sundance development, and I hope it comes out OK.

DVD Review - Heavenly Creatures

2011-09-11T23:48:00.003Z

The Film

Heavenly Creatures already seemed like something of an anomaly when it was released in 1994 and it seems even more incongruous when you consider where Peter Jackson's career has taken him since then. Jackson was known at that point for his proudly tasteless and outrageous comic horrors Braindead, Meet the Feebles and Bad Taste. For his fourth feature, Jackson and his partner Fran Walsh took on the notorious murder of Honora Rieper in 1954 by her daughter and her daughter's closest friend, and the constraints of real events forced him to curb his more outrageous impulses. There is a fantastical element to Heavenly Creatures, but unlike Jackson's later The Lovely Bones – in which the ill-judged afterlife sequences swamped the real life portion of his narrative – this aspect of the film feels organic and necessary, and a glimpse into the minds of two very unusual teenage girls.

Our first sight of them is startling. Pauline (Melanie Lynskey) and Juliet (Kate Winslet) run through the woods, screaming hysterically. They run towards the camera and we can see their faces and clothes are covered with blood; "It's mummy," Pauline cries, "she's terribly hurt!" From this opening, Jackson takes us back a year, to show us how these girls first met and began the intense friendship that would end in bloodshed. When we are introduced to her, Pauline is an introverted and unwelcoming presence, with her arms crossed and a permanent scowl on her face. If she does speak, she only mutters quietly before withdrawing to her own private thoughts.

Compare her demeanour with that of Juliet, an English girl who suddenly arrives in Christchurch and lights up Pauline's world. She walks into the classroom with a brash arrogance and superiority – head held high, chest out. The pair are thrust together in an art class, when Juliet's anti-authoritarian stance strikes a chord with Pauline, and from that point they are inseparable. They bond over their shared love for scars, Mario Lanza, clay figures and their shared distaste for Orson Welles ("The most hideous man alive") and Jackson draws us into this relationship, allowing us to share in the imagined world that they frequently escape into. The lively confidence of Winslet melds beautifully with Lynskey's dark conviction, and together they superbly express the overwhelming, intoxicating need that they have for each other. Lynskey's perfectly pitched reading of the real Pauline's diary entries and letters also acts as a valuable insight into her character's fractured and tumultuous emotional state.

There are elements of Jackson's schlocky past on display here. He uses weird angles and tight close-ups on authority figures – priests, nurses, teachers – as they loom over the girls, but the effect sits well with the central characters' skewed perspective on the world. His judgement of tone is impressive throughout, daringly mixing scenes of darkness and light, and finding imaginative ways to render potentially troublesome moments, such as Pauline's first sexual experience. The film feels vibrant and fresh in a way that few of Jackson's more heavy-handed pictures have since, with the images blooming into rich life during the fantasy sequences. Jackson can be guilty of letting some scenes run a little long, but the film is always fascinating to watch.

It's also deeply disturbing, and when I re-watched Heavenly Creatures recently I was struck by how horrible the murder of Pauline's mother is – not just the act itself, but the long build-up to it. Lynskey's delivery of the line, "treat yourself" is chilling, and the long walk that precedes the murder is an agonising one. We believe in what we are watching not only because it is so closely based on the real event, but because we have come to believe so completely in the twisted love that has driven these two girls to this point of no return. Heavenly Creatures remains a true one-off in Jackson's filmography; a film in which rich imagination and raw emotion combine to unforgettable effect. Will he ever reach these heights again? We can only hope, but the world of CGI appears to have swallowed this once iconoclastic filmmaker whole.

The Extras

No extras were provided on the disc for review. The final version will contain a retrospective documentary.

Heavenly Creatures will be released on DVD and Blu-ray by Peccadillo Pictures on September 12th.

Buy Heavenly Creatures here

Preview - The BFI London Film Festival 2011

2011-09-09T23:51:00.014Z

During the month of October I will be doing very little aside from watching films, talking about films, writing about films and – probably – dreaming about films. Yes, the London Film Festival is back, and after attending the press launch on Wednesday morning, I have spent the last couple of days working out exactly what I want to watch from this year's programme. The festival is divided into various strands, and I've picked out a few highlights to look out for from each one.

Galas and Special Screenings

This year's collection of gala films is generally a safe, predictable and disappointingly dull one (both Clooney films? Come on...), but there are a handful of potential gems here. I've already seen We Need to Talk About Kevin, a gripping and deeply unsettling adaptation (and, I think, improvement) of Lionel Shriver's novel. Tilda Swinton gives a stunning lead performance and Lynne Ramsey displays an unerring control of the material, producing a series of vivid images and utilising some expert sound design. Others I'm excited about include the closing night film The Deep Blue Sea, an adaptation of Terrence Rattigan's play which marks Terence Davies' first narrative feature in a decade and stars the reliably excellent Rachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston. The Dardenne brothers are also filmmakers you can rely on to produce something special, and they return with their new film The Kid With a Bike, while Steve McQueen and Michael Fassbender (who worked together on the outstanding Hunger) reunite for New York-based sex drama Shame. But the two galas I'm most excited about are silent features, made eighty years apart. Newly restored, Miles Mander's The First Born will be presented at the Queen Elizabeth Hall with a new score from Stephen Horne, while Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist is a new silent film that recreates the cinema of the 1920's. Having enjoyed Hazanavicius' OSS:117 collaborations with the brilliant Jean Dujardin, I can't think of a better pair to pay homage to that bygone era.

Film on the Square

New films from Giorgos Lanthimos, Werner Herzog and Hirokazu Kore-eda are on offer in this section of the programme. I've tried to avoid reading anything about Alps because I went into the stunning Dogtooth cold and want to experience this film in the same way. Herzog's Into the Abyss takes the inimitable director to an American prison to interview inmates on death row, while I Wish is a return to contemporary family drama from Kore-eda after the eccentric (and, for me, disappointing) Air Doll. The indefatigable Fred Wiseman's latest documentary goes behind the scenes at the Crazy Horse cabaret club in Paris, while Takashi Miike returns with Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai, which has a lot to live up to after 13 Assassins was one of the hits of LFF 2010. I'm intrigued by Andrea Arnold's adaptation of Wuthering Heights and by the fact that Sean Penn appears to be playing Dorian from Birds of a Feather in Paolo Sorrentino's This Must Be the Place, but perhaps the most enticing prospect here is Miss Bala, the new film from Gerardo Naranjo, which received some extraordinary reactions at Cannes. I've already seen one and a half of the films in this strand – Take Shelter is an absorbing, slow-burning drama that features an incredible performance from Michael Shannon, but I was rather relieved when my screening of Miranda July's The Future ended after an hour thanks to a power cut. I won't be going back to find out what happens to that damn cat.

New British Cinema

The films in this group are mostly unknown quantities, but that means there's hopefully a lot of potential for exciting surprises. I've certainly got my eye on Dreams of a Life, a documentary reconstruction of a desperately sad story, and Shock Head Soul uses similar techniques to tell the story of Daniel Paul Shreber. Junkhearts has a strong cast, including a welcome lead role for Eddie Marsan, while Richard Jobson's The Somnambulists sounds like a bold experiment and Andrew Haigh's gay romance Weekend is one I'll be keeping my eye out for. But really, everything in this section deserves some consideration.

French Revolutions

I always enjoy a good workplace movie and so my interest was piqued by the Jean-Pierre Darroussin-starring Early One Morning even before the programme compared it to the excellent Time Out. I also enjoy the physical comedy of filmmaking team Abel, Gordon and Remy that has been displayed in their films Iceberg and Rumba, so the presence of their new picture The Fairy in the lineup is cheering, while the endearingly weird Dominik Moll presents The Monk. Elsewhere in this section, I like the look of 17 Girls, Guilty and Nobody Else But You and I'm keen to see if Mathieu Amalric builds on the promise of his directorial debut On Tour with his new film The Screen Illusion.

Cinema Europa

I'm not sure if I'll get to enjoy what looks like one of the most daring projects in the festival, but I feel it deserves to be highlighted. Dreileben brings together three directors for a trio of loosely linked features, all of which are sparked by the same event. The festival is screening the three films together and separately, and I hope I can find time to catch them. Elsewhere, a couple of directors whose previous work has impressed me have new features in the festival. Andrei Zvyagintsev, who made a stunning debut with The Return, has now directed Elena, while Ruben Östlund, director of Involuntary, returns with Play. There's also the documentary Whore's Glory, the new film from Andreas Dresen Stopped on Track and the ambitious Russian dystopian epic Target to look out for.

World Cinema

This is perhaps the most eclectic collection of films in the festival, with features from familiar powerhouses of the international cinema scene and offerings from countries whose film culture is less widely recognised lining up alongside each other. From Japan, there's Mitsuko Delivers, a new film from the director of last year's charming Sawako Decides; from America there's two films from Joe Swanberg (Uncle Kent and Silver Bullets); from Iran there's persecuted director Jafar Panahi in This is Not a Film and the excellent actress Leyla Zareh in Goodbye; from China we have comedy-adventure blockbuster Let the Bullets Fly. I'm intrigued by the taboo-breaking Indian film Asshole, the South African film Beauty from director Oliver Hermanus (whose Shirley Adams I admired in 2009), Egyptian true-life tale Asmaa and Sri Lanka's Flying Fish. There's also a collection of films representing New African Cinema and a couple of Tibetan features: Old Dog and The Sun-Beaten Path. I can't wait to expand my cinematic horizons here.

Experimenta/Short Cuts & Animation

I'll be honest. Every year I promise myself that I'll seriously explore the experimenta and shorts strands but every year I fail to find sufficient time in my schedule. I'm approaching this year's festival with the same good intentions, as Twenty Cigarettes and The Pettifogger catching my eye among the experimental offerings, while a couple of the shorts collections – notably The Suburbs and Just Because You're Paranoid Doesn't Mean They're Not After You – show some promise. Will I actually see any of these films? Watch this space!

Treasures From the Archives

Every year when I first get my hands on the programme, this is the section I eagerly flick through to – and what riches I discovered this year! Pick of the bunch is undoubtedly Shin heike monogatari, a 1955 film from Kenji Mizoguchi (and one of his only two colour features) that receives a rare screening here. The other archive feature that stood out is The Machine That Kills Bad People, a very atypical Rossellini film about a man who discovers that his camera has the ability to take lives. The director himself described this foray into surreal humour as "an isolated experiment," and I'm not going to miss this chance to see it. There are a couple of great-looking silents as well; The Nail in the Boot + Shoes from Russia (with the BFI's Soviet cinema season having stoked my interest in the country's early filmmaking efforts this year) and an American feature called The Goose Woman, starring Louise Dresser. Finally, I really want to make time to see Barbara Loden's Wanda, Elia Kazan's America, America, the Turkish thriller Law of the Border and a new 4k restoration of Les enfants du paradis. I know everyone flocks to the LFF to see exciting new films, but please don't forget to check out this section of the programme. This is where the real treasure is buried.

The BFI London Film Festival runs from October 12th to 17th at venues around the capital, and I'll be providing extensive coverage here throughout the month.

Review - 3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy (3D rou pu tuan zhi ji le bao jian)

2011-09-03T23:33:00.002Z

3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy starts as one sort of film and ends up as something very different. I tolerated the first half and loathed the second. The film is the fourth instalment in a series of Chinese erotic comedies originally inspired by a 17th century novel, but this is the first one to bring the series into the third dimension, with the decision to embrace cutting-edge filmmaking techniques paying off at the box-office. In Hong Kong, the movie raced past the records set by Titanic and Avatar, with people even flocking to Hong Kong from China to enjoy a film banned in their own country. Sex sells, no matter where in the world you go, but that's truer than ever in this case, because there's little beyond the sex to get excited about in Christopher Sun's movie – there's no Zen as far as I could see, and precious little ecstasy.

The big story surrounding 3D Sex and Zen upon its release in this country has been the decision taken by the BBFC to demand a couple of minutes worth of cuts before the film received an 18 certificate. So it comes as something of a surprise when the film quickly reveals its rather tame approach to carnal matters. Most of the sexual encounters consist of some softcore writhing, thrusting and moaning, while the only penises shown in the film are a tiny one exposed for comedic value and – more alarmingly – a severed horse cock which is flung at the 3D glasses-wearing audience (The House of Flying Phallus?). At other times, huge erections are shown as silhouettes or under garments, but it wasn't for this reason that the BBFC demanded revisions.

We'll get back to that matter later on.First, let me expand on the dichotomy between the film's two halves. 3D Sex and Zen is the story of a young man named Wei Yangsheng (Hiro Hayama) who falls in love with the beautiful Tie Yuxiang (Leni Lan) at first sight, scuppering her planned marriage to his best friend. The pair make love incessantly in their first days of wedded bliss, but Yangsheng proves to be a disappointment in bed, climaxing almost immediately every time they have sex. For some reason (plot is not this movie's strongest suit), Yangsheng ends up at the Tower of Rarities, where he becomes intoxicated by the sexual delights going on inside and decides to stay, promising to serve the Prince of Ning for a decade. He encounters a "proportionally perfect" woman (Saori Hara), a beautiful hermaphrodite with a very deep voice and a talented penis (Vonnie Liu), and he decides to solve his own genital inadequacy by have a horse transplant. As you do.

All of this is played with plenty of gusto and broad strokes, and it's mildly enjoyable in its cheerfully amateurish fashion. The tone is giggly, prurient and farcical – like a slightly more explicit Chinese Carry On film – and the enthusiasm of those involves allows us to overlook the film's deficiencies at times. It really is a shoddy piece of work, though. The acting, as you may expect, is hopeless, and the film has been thrown together in such a haphazard manner I often had no idea what was going on. At one point we're asked to recall a scene that I don't think was even in the movie, and when two characters climbed up a mountain towards the end to (a) have sex with and (b) kill a monk, I hadn't the foggiest notion of who they were or what they were up to. OK, people aren't going to go and watch 3D Sex and Zen for its compelling narrative, but after the novelty of some boobs being jiggled at the camera in 3D has worn off, the picture becomes an awful drag. Then the tone suddenly shifts.

The BBFC in its modern incarnation is not in the habit of requesting cuts films without good reason, and the statement released over the 3D Sex and Zen decision states: "Compulsory cuts were required to two scenes of sexual and sexualised violence, which included elements with a tendency to eroticise and endorse sexual violence." Having seen what remains in the film, I'm not a bit surprised that they made that call. The second half of 3D Sex and Zen descends into ugliness, becoming focused on dismemberment and rape to a repulsive degree. At one point, a woman is forced to sit on a wooden horse that has a rotating spiked device embedded into its back, but as she suffers her moans and screams are barely distinguishable from the orgasmic noises made by her and other women when in the throes of passion earlier.

It's not just the misogynistic nature of this content that I found sickening; it's the comparison with how the film depicts these sights and those of the earlier lovemaking. Why is the depiction of sex soft-pedalled while violence is shown in all of its explicit, bloody unpleasantness? This is true not just of this movie but of contemporary film culture in general; films which take a frank approach to sex always seem to cause a stink while the sadistic Saw, Hostel or Final Destination films and their myriad imitators have become an accepted aspect of mainstream cinema. For a while I thought I might have some fun with 3D Sex and Zen, but on reflection, I doubt I'll see a more depressing and repulsive movie this year.

Review - The Inbetweeners Movie

2011-08-29T00:29:00.005Z

Not every film deserves to be seen in a cinema and movie versions of television shows rarely do enough to justify their place on the big screen. The history of British cinema is littered with dismal attempts to give much-loved sitcom characters a movie platform, and the latest programme to make this difficult transition is The Inbetweeners. It is the culmination of a meteoric rise for the show, which began life on E4 in 2008, and after two often hilarious series (followed by a much more strained and patchy third), it has been deemed worthy of a big screen send-off. Sadly, despite its title, The Inbetweeners Movie isn't really much of a movie.

The film has been directed by Ben Palmer, who was responsible for many episodes of the TV show, and he hasn't done much to adapt his style for this new medium. The most ambitious shot in the movie occurs right at the start, as the camera swoops across the show's suburban setting and glides in through an open window, settling on the now-familiar sight of Jay (James Buckley) having a wank (complete with glove, snorkel and fistfuls of ham). Some things never change, and many fans of the series will be cheered by the prospect of watching the characters they love doing the things they've laughed at so many times before. Simon (Joe Thomas) is still hopelessly besotted with his on-off girlfriend Carli, who dumps him in the movie's opening moments, while Neil (Blake Harrison) is as cheerfully oblivious as ever and the studious, sensible Will (Simon Bird) is looking forward to putting his school days behind him and moving on to university. This is the one major change in the boys' lives; the fact that their exams are now over and they're leaving the school environment that bound them together. To mark this end of an era, the four decide to take a holiday in Crete – making use of Jay's inheritance from his dead grandfather – a holiday they presume will be a sex-filled free-for-all, but one that we know will offer nothing but the series of excruciating humiliations we've come to know and love The Inbetweeners for.

The question is whether any of this is different enough from the TV show to justify the greater length and expanse of a cinema feature? "Sending everyone on holiday" has been the basis for TV-to-movie translations from Holiday On the Buses to Kevin and Perry Go Large, with the idea perhaps being that the extra exoticism of a foreign location suggests that the filmmakers are actually giving the core audience something different for their money, something that's worth a trip to the cinema for. The essential problem with so many of these films, however, is the fact that characters who can support a half-hour sitcom between them can rarely survive the demands of carrying a feature. The actors and the writers appear to have wilted under the pressure in this case, with gags and situations that might have passed muster on TV feeling so feeble on the larger canvas.

The actors do give it their best shot. Bird, Buckley, Harrison and Thomas remain a likeable quartet, sharing a natural chemistry and repartee, and our affection for their characters carries this movie an awfully long way. It's not really their fault that they have been lumbered with a script that repeats jokes from the series (Will complaining about a reserved seat and inadvertently insulting a disabled child) or handles some set-pieces in such a laborious fashion (the shit-on-nose comeuppance is a dismal misfire). The boys appear more naïve and downright stupid than ever, which might be an easier way to get laughs but it takes them one step further away from the core of truth that characterised the best episodes, and the female counterparts who have been created to give each inbetweener a love interest are just as poorly written. Sure, there are funny moments scattered throughout, but only enough to fill a single TV episode, and when that many gags are stretched over 100 minutes, it leaves a lot of long, dry patches.

Whether anyone actually cares about The Inbetweeners Movie's value as a film is another matter entirely. Within a week of its release, the picture has broken the record for a comedy at the UK box-office, which proves that familiarity really is the biggest draw for today's cinemagoers. Let people know that they'll get exactly what they expect – with no surprises, no ambition and no attempt to shake up the formula – and they'll turn up in their droves. Of course, it's hard to argue with the box-office returns for The Inbetweeners Movie, but it's disappointing to see them being rewarded so extravagantly for such a cheap, unimaginative and lazy endeavour, and I can't help wishing they'd stayed on the small screen, where they clearly belong.

Review - The Skin I Live In (La piel que habito)

2011-08-28T21:32:00.003Z

When talking about Pedro Almodóvar recently I referenced Volver as his last film. It was only afterwards that I realised that his 2009 feature Broken Embraces had completely evaporated from my memory, which perhaps suggests that the director was in dire need of a change of pace. Broken Embraces felt like little more than a recycling of themes, motifs and ideas from his earlier work; in short, it felt tired, which is why The Skin I Live In feels like such a bracing surprise. The director's latest film is a liberal adaptation of Thierry Jonquet's novel Tarantula, and after a couple of female-centred pictures from Almodóvar, this is a film very much concerned with the male gaze and one man's obsessive control over his female subject.

The film takes place in Toledo in 2012, where Antonio Banderas, reuniting with Almodóvar for the first time in twenty years, plays renowned plastic surgeon Robert Ledgard, whose experiments drive the film's plot. In his remote mansion he holds a young woman captive, using her as his guinea pig while he attempts to develop a new type of synthetic skin, resistant to pain, bites and burns. Her name is Vera (Elena Anaya), and we first see her contorted into a yoga position, clad in a figure-hugging body stocking, in the sparse room that doubles as her prison cell. Only one other person knows she is there, Ledgard's Mother Marilia (Marisa Paredes), the Igor to his Dr. Frankenstein, who keeps an eye on Vera throughout the day, communicating with her over an intercom and supplying food via a dumb waiter. Who is Vera? What is her relationship to Ledgard? And for how long has she been trapped like this? All will eventually be revealed.

But it won't be revealed here. Ignorance is bliss when it comes to a film like The Skin I Live In, so I'm going to tread carefully around the film's narrative. This is Almodóvar's darkest and most psychologically twisted film for some time and he piles on plot developments that drive his story into increasingly disturbing territory and simultaneously test the boundaries of his audience's credulity. He leaps back and forth in time (acknowledging the excessive nature of his time-shifts with an exasperated-sounding "back to the present" caption near the end) to reveal the family trauma that has prompted Ledgard to play God, and he introduces supporting characters who will fit into the drama in unusual ways. There's Vicente (Jan Cornet), a young man infatuated with his lesbian co-worker and then there's Zeca (Roberto Álamo), who appears dressed in a full tiger outfit, which might seem ridiculous were it to occur in any other film.

The brilliance of Almodóvar's filmmaking here lies in his ability to keep us riveted even as the story grows increasingly absurd. His direction is impeccable throughout. His meticulously controlled mise-en-scène, combined with José Luis Alcaine's gleaming cinematography and a surging, Hitchcockian score from Alberto Iglesias, creates an intoxicating effect. His work seems so much more invigorated here than it was in Broken Embraces, effortlessly transfixing the viewer as the narrative corkscrews towards its climax. The director also seems to have revitalised Banderas, who gives his best performance in years as the tortured, unhinged scientist. Both he and Anaya expertly portray characters who withhold much of their true nature from us for the majority of the film's running time.

Ultimately, what The Skin I Live in lacks is an emotional undercurrent to complement the film's gorgeous presentation. The film feels clinical and sometimes bloodless, and while the revelations Almodóvar has in store for us are shocking and gripping, they don't really possess a deeper impact. The beauty of The Skin I Live In is only skin deep, but how can I complain when it has offered me one of the most surprising, aesthetically stimulating and exhilarating experiences I've had at the movies all year? Almodóvar's latest film might exist only on the surface, but what a surface it is.

Review - One Day

2011-08-22T23:45:00.004Z

One Day takes place on St. Swithin's Day, July 15th, but this isn't one of those films that plays out over the course of 24 hours. In fact, the story One Day tells unfolds over something closer to 24 years, dropping into the lives of Emma (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter (Jim Sturgess) on the same date each year to see how their lives are progressing. Sometimes they're together, often they're apart, and as we watch them grow older, we – and they – wonder if these long-term friends are actually made for each other. It's a smart literary device and one that certainly worked for author David Nicholls, whose bestseller has become something of an instant classic, eliciting tears and superlatives from most readers.

The film adaptation might not reach audiences in quite the same way, but it does have plenty to commend it. Nicholls (who wrote the screenplay) has stayed true to the distinctive structure of his book, with the movie opening on July 15th 1988, as Emma and Dexter meet for the first time in the aftermath of celebrating their university graduation. They spend the night together, but in a platonic fashion, and that's the state they remain in for many years: just good friends. Emma, an aspiring writer, takes a dead-end job in a Mexican restaurant and begins a relationship with stand-up comedian Ian (Rafe Spall). Meanwhile, Dexter enjoys a more decadent and rootless existence, becoming a TV presenter on an outrageous late night show (obviously modelled on The Word and its ilk) and making a dubious name for himself as "the most annoying man on television." The pair appear to be drifting apart, but there's a deep connection there that ensures they keep returning to one another. She never seems happier than when she's with Dexter, while he finds a sense of stability and understanding with her that he can't find anywhere else.

Thus, the ingredients for a classic romantic tearjerker all appear to be in place, with the obstacles that lie between Emma and Dexter only piquing our anticipation of the moment when they will finally fall into each other's arms. One Day doesn't really hit those big emotional peaks that we might be expecting, though, and part of the problem lies in that narrative structure. The film moves fluidly enough between scenes, with each new sequence marking another annual leap, but this technique is sometimes disruptive to our engagement with the story, as we continually readjust with the characters each having suddenly moved on with their lives. The result is a rather uneven piece of storytelling that occasionally skips whole years in a flash (and even drops the odd period clanger, suggesting the premiere of Jurassic Park took place in 1994); but even if it never quite delivers the (heavily telegraphed) emotional sucker punch that it promises, One Day does manage to find moments of emotional resonance through a number of skilfully crafted individual scenes.

The film has been directed by Lone Sherfig, who does the same polished and subtle job with this material that she did with 2009's An Education. She can't do much with the conundrum of her central couple being kept apart for much of the film, but she is a fine judge of tone and she consistently hits the right note in their individual stories. I particularly liked Dexter's relationship with his parents (Ken Stott and an underutilised Patricia Clarkson), whose worries for their son as his drug-fuelled lifestyle goes off the rails is touchingly portrayed in a couple of short but impactful scenes. Likewise, I enjoyed Rafe Spall's performance as an unsuccessful comedian with whom Emma shares an unfulfilling period. Sherfig has always been an excellent director of actors and she draws sharp turns from the whole ensemble here.

Of course, the success or failure of the film depends largely on the strength of the two leads. Hathaway is unlikely casting as an awkward, frumpy, northern lass (unglamorous outfits and big glasses can't dim her radiant beauty), and her accent only occasionally reminds us of the city she's supposed to be from, but she gives a warm and intelligent performance nonetheless. However, it quickly becomes obvious that Emma is the less interesting of the film's central characters, with Dexter's two decades being markedly more turbulent and compelling. Dexter has to be alternately arrogant and charming, loving and selfish, and Sturgess handles the complexities of his character with real adroitness, making him feel more like a fully-fledged human being than Emma is allowed to become. It's his tale that ultimately feels like the true narrative thread of One Day, and while the film may not be the grand love story it has been presented as, it is a rather astute and thoughtful examination of the way life takes us down unexpected and often painful paths, leaving us wiser and more complete for the experience.

DVD Review - Our Day Will Come (Notre jour viendra)

2011-08-22T00:55:00.002Z

The Film

"We have no language, no army, no country!" Vincent Cassel shouts in Our Day Will Come. The oppressed minority group that he is issuing this rallying cry on behalf of is that of redheaded people, whom Romain Gavras identifies as an often humiliated and discriminated against group in his feature debut. Gavras has already built one piece of work around the idea of prejudice against redheads with his 2010 video for MIA's single Born Free sparking controversy over its scenes of ginger people being beaten, shot and blown up by the police. Our Day Will Come essentially expands upon and reinterprets that theme, but whereas the 8-minute video was rife with provocation, Gavras' ideas seem diluted when asked to support a feature running ten times that length.

What Our Day Will Come has in its favour is plenty of energy, and Gavras moves his story forward at a fair pace early on. His film is a road movie featuring two redheaded characters who decide to fight back against a world that is unfair and unkind to their people. Rémy (Olivier Barthelemy) is a young man who is the victim of bullying among his own teammates on the football team and demeaned by his mother and sister at home. Patrick (Cassel) is a disillusioned psychiatrist (he is shown early on being more interested in the crisps he's eating than the patient crying in front of him) called in to help Rémy after a violent outburst against his family but who instead joins him on his strange odyssey. The older man – Cassel is greying but with flashes of tell-tale red in his hair – teaches his young companion to stand up for himself, and he tries to help the sexually confused Rémy with women, and at some point the pair coalesce into a revolutionary team, leading the rebellion for gingers everywhere.

There are parallels to be drawn here with any society in which a minority has terrorised the majority (the slogan "our day will come" appears to have been lifted by Gavras from the IRA, and Ireland is seen throughout the film as a utopian safe haven for redheads), but the director's ideas don't appear fully formed, and neither do his characters. It's never clear what drives Rémy and Patrick beyond a vague sense of being wronged and ostracised by the world at large, and Barthelemy's performance doesn't bring much to the film. At least Cassel is on fine form, imbuing Patrick with an intensity that anchors the film at crucial points, with this excellent actor denoting changes in mood and intention with just his eyes, and the film as a whole should have taken its cue from him more often. Our Day Will Come needed to be darker and more daring to really make an impact on the audience; in short, it needed more of the focused maliciousness that characterised the MIA video. Instead, all we have is a series of overlong scenes in which Rémy and Patrick engage in various forms of antisocial behaviour before the film escalates into silliness in its final moments, with Gavras having given himself nowhere to go but over the top.

The Extras

The infamous video that inspired Our Day Will Come is viewable as a DVD extra, and there are two other Gavras-directed videos as well, for Justice's Stress and DJ Mehdi's Signatune. The 18-minute "making of" film goes behind the scenes on the shoot and talks to a few of the minor actors.

Our Day Will Come will be released on DVD and Blu-ray on August 22nd.

Buy Our Day Will Come here

Review - The Guard

2011-08-17T23:56:00.003Z

"I can't tell if you're really motherfucking dumb or really motherfucking smart." So says FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) as he ponders the Irish police sergeant he has been partnered with in The Guard. Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) responds to the American's statement with an enigmatic smile and reveals nothing, keeping the audience similarly in the dark regarding his true nature. Is Boyle good cop or bad cop? Is he slow on the uptake or simply playing it that way? Sergeant Boyle is not averse to pilfering drugs from a crime scene or doing shady deals, and he enjoys the company of prostitutes on his days off, but he might just be the only honest cop in the county. He is a mass of contradictions, and the perfectly cast Gleeson keeps his cards very close to his chest.

The question posed by Everett is easier to answer when considering the film itself, however. The Guard is very motherfucking smart, having been written and directed by John Michael McDonagh, whose brother Martin made In Bruges, which shares a similar tone and sense of humour. The film takes place in Galway and when we first meet Boyle, we quickly see him as a feckless and eccentric soul, who amuses himself in quiet moments by teasing eager new recruit Aiden (Rory Keenan) and his desire to do things by the book. Boyle's brash demeanour is certainly startling to Everett, who has arrived in Ireland following a lead on a major drugs shipment, and they get off on the wrong foot almost immediately. "I thought only black lads were drug dealers." Boyle suggests as he watches an FBI presentation of the three white suspects. "I'm Irish" he protests, apparently startled by the angry reaction his comment has provoked, "racism's part of our culture."

McDonagh has some fun setting a tale of drugs, murder and corruption against the incongruous rural backdrop. One scene finds Everett walking the country roads alone, with the locals eyeing this stranger suspiciously and refusing to cooperate with his enquiries ("There's a black man at the door!" a woman shouts in subtitled Gaelic when he knocks), which is the kind of sequence that's recognisable from so many fish-out-water comedies. McDonagh follows the familiar narrative template of the buddy cop movie too – a straight-up detective and his unconventional sidekick having a relationship that develops from mistrust and animosity to camaraderie – but he gets away with the unoriginal format thanks to some sharp writing. The Guard puts a sly spin on numerous scenes; after one tense confrontation with the chief villain of the piece (Liam Cunningham), Boyle ends up with his head in his hands – not through despair, but a headache induced by drinking his milkshake too fast. Amid the humour, McDonagh also crafts some fine dramatic scenes too, such as a couple of warm and witty exchanges between Boyle and his ailing mother (Fionnula Flanagan), or the compassion he shows to a young widow.

The director can be guilty of overwriting, however. The three drug dealers (Cunningham, Mark Strong and David Wilmot) are given dialogue that feels a little strained, with Cunningham discussing philosophy while Strong bemoans his dissatisfaction with the business he's in and Wilmot is stuck with the thinnest role as the most psychotic of the trio. Still, complaining about a film being a little overwritten seems churlish when it arrives in an era of comedy films that barely seem to be written at all.

And whatever the minor flaws in The Guard (McDonagh's direction can be a bit slack, failing to sustain a sense of momentum at crucial moments) it's worth seeing for one very big reason – Brendan Gleeson. In a performance that's rich in comic timing, subtlety and complexity, Gleeson provides us with a vivid and memorable characterisation – Ireland's own Bad Lieutenant – and he brilliantly shifts our perspective on Gerry Boyle, moving from feckless joker to heroic figure; an unlikely Gary Cooper standing for what he believes in and facing down the crooks. He does all of this while retaining that essential mystery at the centre of Gerry Boyle. Smart or dumb – who can say for sure? Either way, he's a fascinating and hugely endearing character to spend time with.

Blu-ray Review - Kind Hearts and Coronets

2011-08-17T00:10:00.003Z

The Film

Few comedies are blacker than Kind Hearts and Coronets, and few are better. This is a film about a serial killer coldly and calculatingly dispensing with various members of a single family, but it is carried off with such effortless grace it keeps us impossibly charmed and smiling throughout, even as we are witness to such dark acts being committed. One reason for the film's beguiling nature is the casting of Dennis Price in the role of serious social climber Louis Mazzini, who dreams of obtaining the dukedom that he feels is his birthright by getting rid of the eight D'Ascoynes who stand in his way. Price's boyish demeanour and reserved manner makes Mazzini a fascinating and oddly beguiling protagonist, and his coolly detached narration is perfectly pitched. "Sometimes the death column brought good news, sometimes the births column brought bad," Mazzini observes as he examines the family tree. "The advent of twin sons to the Duke was a terrible blow. Fortunately, an epidemic of diphtheria restored the status quo almost immediately, and even brought me a bonus in the shape of the Duchess."

Although Kind Hearts and Coronets is justly celebrated today as one of the finest achievements of Ealing Studios (and, by extension, British cinema), Price's performance is often undervalued. This is partly due to the subtlety and understatement he brings to the part – never drawing attention to himself – but it's chiefly because he is co-starring with one of the greatest actors in cinema on peak form. Alec Guinness plays all eight members of the D'Ascoyne clan in an astonishing feat of acting, but there is no showmanship on Guinness' part. Instead of turning his multi-part performance into an ostentatious display of mimicry and comic skill – as Peter Sellers and Eddie Murphy would later do – Guinness disappears into his characters. He was a young man then, but look at how convincing he is as both the sprightly photographer his own age and the doddery old vicar; as the blustering General and the arrogant young heir. For Guinness, it was never about showing off his talents, it was simply an opportunity to slip into eight different roles and convince us that they were each a unique and distinctive member of the same family.

So much of the work Guinness puts in is slight and fleeting – the way he adjusts his glasses, or carries his cane – and such deft touches only become apparent on repeated viewing, with Kind Hearts and Coronets being a film that yields fresh treasures every time I watch it. The film was directed by Robert Hamer, who tells the story with an elegance and bite that is appropriate for this most refined tale of murder. His shots are beautifully composed and Douglas Slocombe's cinematography is particularly well served by this new restoration, with his gorgeous use of shadows looking richer and more darker than ever. But it's the screenplay – by Hamer and John Dighton – that continues to sparkle brightest of all more than sixty years after it was first written. The film is full of cutting dialogue and sly observations, with beautifully turned phrases such as, "I shot an arrow in the air; she fell to earth in Berkeley Square," to describe an archery-related murder or the telling line, "It is so difficult to make a neat job of killing people with whom one is not on friendly terms."

That second line encapsulates the curious sense of a very English politeness and class-consciousness that distinguishes Kind Hearts and Coronets from any other study of a murderer. It is something of a miracle when a film attempts to blend comedy and tragedy in such a fashion and traverses that difficult territory without ever putting a foot wrong. Kind Hearts and Coronets is a flawlessly told joke that builds to a brilliant punchline – although that wasn't the case when the film was first released in America. Hard as it is to believe now, the panicky US censors modified the climax to make it neater and more easily moralistic, which hardly seems fitting on the end of this particular movie. This is a film that can't be sweetened or diluted, and the original ending remains perfect, leaving the conclusion hanging tantalisingly in the air and inviting us to speculate if the slippery Mazzini will find some way to wriggle free from yet another tight spot.

The Extras

John Landis offers a short introduction to one of his favourite films and there's a vintage, 25-minute Channel 4 documentary on Dennis Price that features some great clips from Price's career and tells a rather sad tale. The best extra on the disc is a commentary track featuring Alec Guinness' son Matthew, Peter Bradshaw and Terence Davies. Guinness offers some interesting stories from the set (including how close his father came to drowning during one scene) while Bradshaw and Davies highlight their favourite moments, although all three are sometimes guilty of going quiet when the temptation to simply watch this masterpiece becomes too strong. Davies seems to take particular delight in watching "the finest comedy film ever, ever, EVER!" and he has an amusing habit of squealing, "It's so delicious!" whenever some aspect of the film has tickled his fancy (which is a lot).

Kind Hearts and Coronets will be re-released in cinemas by Optimum Films on August 19th. It will subsequently be released on blu-ray and DVD on September 5th.

Buy Kind Hearts And Coronets here

Interview - Lucy Walker

2011-08-14T23:28:00.007Z

Lucy Walker has had quite a year. In February, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Waste Land and a few months later her latest documentary Countdown to Zero was released to widespread acclaim. This alarming and eye-opening film about the nuclear threat has had an impact beyond cinemas too, sparking a debate about the possibility of total nuclear disarmament. I spoke with Lucy Walker about her film recently ahead of its DVD release.

The topic of nuclear weapons is such a vast and complex one. How did you get to grips with the subject when you first embarked upon this project?

I had to try and figure out what were the most important things to include. I'm not an expert and I was left to my own devices to figure that out, but I'm pleased with the balance of the film and I believe it covers the most important aspects and issues. I learned a lot through my research, because I didn't really know much. I mean, I'm a regular concerned citizen, I read the newspaper and all that stuff, but I quickly realised that my A in physics A-level didn't mean anything and I had a lot of catching up to do. So I reached out into the various scientific, NGO and government communities and consulted all the experts I possibly could about what they thought was most important for people to understand. I encouraged them to educate me and point me towards other people who would be good interviews or other important stories. I spoke to something like 125 people off camera as well as all of the people you see on camera. I just phoned people up and asked for their help and they were all really generous in helping me figure out what to include.

The range of interviewees you have in the film is remarkable. Was it a challenge to get access to them and persuade them to speak on camera?

It was a real challenge across the board. For example, sometimes politicians are so used to delivering established lines, which is fine except it's not very interesting because you're just going to end up with something safe and boring, and that's not screen dynamite, so you had a problem there. On the other hand, I found the opposite problem with people who weren't media-savvy or were too alarmist, so there were a lot of different challenges in getting people to speak from the heart but to be accurate, informative and interesting. The goal was never to be alarmist and exaggerate the threat but to explain it as clearly and as humanly as possible.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film is how ignorant most people are of the nuclear threat and how apathetic a lot of them are too. I guess you had to make the film as accessible and easy to digest as possible so viewers with that lack of knowledge could be educated by it.

Yeah, I really did. I wanted to make a film that, if people watched it, they'd feel really empowered, like there would be nothing in the newspaper that they couldn't really grasp. Look at the Fukushima incident just now in Japan, hopefully that story demonstrates how important it is that people do understand the issues and what's at stake. The thing we have to understand about nuclear material is that when something goes wrong it can go way that's hard to control or predict. I was actually just filming in Fukushima in the wake of the tsunami and I also filmed in Hiroshima on the same trip, and I was very much reminded of what can happen with a nuclear explosion, when a whole town can be instantly destroyed. Nothing I saw in Japan made me thing that anything in the movie was wrong. If anything, unfortunately, it all felt very current with what I learned and put in the movie.

It's almost as if people saw the Berlin wall come down and that era of communism end and thought that was the end of the nuclear threat.

I think that's exactly it. I think we all thought that the Soviet Union went away, and with it all of the terror we had in the 80's, so surely the nukes must have gone or we would be doing something about it. I was a very enthusiastic and keen student at school, and I remember when I was very young my teacher showed me these articles about climate change, but I kept saying, "If there's a problem they'd be doing something about it," so I didn't believe her! Unfortunately, some problems are so complex you realise it's easier to deny that there's a problem, but I think the film demonstrates that we'll be in worse trouble if we do ignore it than if we try to deal with it now.

One of the major changes that has occurred since that era is the emergence of new countries that have nuclear capabilities outside of the traditional superpowers.

Think about Pakistan, for example. Pakistan is really interesting. We showed in the movie that it's the headquarters of Al-Qaeda, and I think we weren't wrong there, and think about how many nuclear weapons that country has and how unstable it is in many key ways. What could happen there if any number of different destabilising events might occur? There's so much tremendous anxiety in the world and so far we haven't been in a position where a country has fallen apart while being in possession of nuclear weapons, but there's really nothing to prevent that happening.

Particularly as you show in the film how easy it is to cause a catastrophe by accident.

That's right, it's important to understand that you don't even need someone to intentionally set one off and there have been far too many cases where they have almost gone off. By definition, most of the states that have nuclear weapons are sophisticated ones with the organisation and resources – North Korea would be the exception to that rule – but this idea of accidents not being preventable is very interesting. You just can't plan for every eventuality. The people of Fukushima didn't plan for the extremity of that event, but who does? As time goes on, these very unusual circumstances will always arise once in a while, and the consequences of these things are so off the charts it's important to anticipate that accidents are an inevitable part of these things.

What kind of reaction have you had from politicians?

We've had very encouraging words from Hillary Clinton who gave it two thumbs up, and I think it's considered to have made a big impact. I've never had it confirmed that President Obama has seen it but he has quoted from it at certain points, so I think it has been impactful. I don't know if they've changed the ending for the UK version but the ratification of the star treaty happened and that was terrific, because we emphasised that as the first real step.

Do you really think complete nuclear disarmament is feasible?

That's the big question. Hopefully the movie shows that the alternatives are worse, you know? People will tell you that having no nuclear weapons in the world is a naive position, but I think you have to turn it around and say that the idea of feeling safe with many more states active with nuclear weapons is way more naive. Whatever you once thought about whether nuclear armament or disarmament was a good or bad thing, we're now living in this changed world where there's no technological bar to entry with this stuff anymore. In the future it's going to be much quicker and easier, and as technology advances it proliferates. Look at Libya, for example. I was actually supposed to go and interview Gaddafi and also Sayeef Gaddafi, who was just killed, for the film, but they cancelled at the last minute. They had nuclear weapons, they had the whole kit, but then they voluntarily gave it all up in 2003. Now Imagine a situation where Libya in its current state had nuclear weapons; it wouldn't be pretty. In the future, we will be in a situation, inevitably, where countries will have nuclear weapons and grow unstable. I don't know about you, but I'd feel very unhappy about living in a big city in such a situation. If one nuclear weapon got into the hands of a terrorist organisation that had a beef with Britain, I'd feel very worried living in London.

You mentioned that you were shooting in Japan recently. Is that for a new project or is it related to this film?

Yeah, I'm filming a new documentary in Japan but I don't want to talk about it too much yet. This is quite hot off the press, because you're the first person that I've spoken to about the film in a while. I was just filming in Japan, in the area where the tsunami hit Fukushima, so it's a new project about those recent events.

I was commenting to somebody recently about how most of the best films I've seen this year have been documentaries. Do you feel it's an exciting time for documentary filmmaking?

Yeah, I really do. I feel like fiction filmmaking is in the doldrums right now, if you ask me, apart from a few very exciting filmmakers. There's a lot more dynamic work going on around documentaries, and there's a couple of reasons for that, which are quite easy to point to. One is the fact that camera and editing equipment is so accessible now. The cameras are so portable and affordable now you can shoot some high-quality stuff, and in documentaries it is so important that you can edit a lot of material and really build the story in the editing room. I also think that it's a really interesting time when we're trying to find out how the world works, and we have this opportunity to look directly at the world and understand really important, fundamental, exciting things that are going on in our world using state of the art film equipment. I just really exciting, so yes, I feel like documentary filmmaking is where it's at right now and that's why I enjoy it so much.

DVD Review - Countdown to Zero

2011-08-14T22:46:00.004Z

The Film

Countdown to Zero opens with members of the public from various countries being asked how worried they are about the threat of nuclear weapons. Most show little concern over the subject, with this probably being the first time that some of them have even given the matter any thought. Later, another group of people is asked how many nuclear weapons they think are in the world and which countries are currently in possession of them. Their answers are vague and varied, and complete stabs in the dark, with none of those asked in a position to make an informed guess. For these people – and, by extension, for a large proportion of the population – the nuclear threat is not a danger that is currently on their radar. With Countdown to Zero, Lucy Walker has identified that ignorance and apathy as a threat in itself, and her film is a passionate call for action against a catastrophe that may be closer than we think.

To help tell this story, Walker and producer Lawrence Bender (who has crusading documentary chops, having produced An Inconvenient Truth) have marshalled an extraordinary group of interviewees. Former heads of state, scientists and even criminals who have smuggled plutonium out of worryingly insecure facilities. Their testimonies are urgent but measured, laying out the facts of the matter in clear and accessible terms, and what's so terrifying about Countdown to Zero is how easy they make it all sound. As the world becomes increasingly destabilised and rogue states emerge, the risk of nuclear weapons falling into dangerous hands is greater than ever. Countdown to Zero depicts the possibility of nuclear disaster as a Sword of Damocles hanging over us all and, in its scariest segment, it suggests that the sword may be dropped by accident as easily as design. A series of anecdotes from the past few decades suggest just how close we've come to a nuclear attack through human error. In 1995, someone from the US military failed to inform Russia of a nuclear test they were conducting, and the film suggests that only the clear thinking of a thankfully sober Boris Yeltsin prevented them taking immediate retaliatory action.

Countdown to Zero is a departure for Walker, whose previous films have seen her follow a group of people and watch as a story emerges. This is a far more journalistic piece of filmmaking, compiling interviews, archive footage and montages into a coherent, persuasive whole. The film is slickly produced, with Walker making effective use of some troubling imagery (recent terrorist attacks in Madrid, London, Bali, New York) and computer graphics that show how easily nuclear weapons can be smuggled into the United States (one does fear that an aspiring terrorist could get some handy hints from this picture). Walker can be guilty of being a little too literal and alarmist in some of her directorial choices, but she generally does a fine job of ensuring the film flows smoothly even as we are being asked to digest a lot of information.

The title Countdown to Zero has a double meaning. Of course it refers to the idea of a bomb ticking down to disaster, but it also signifies the target for complete removal of the world's nuclear weapons. It might be a futile dream but Countdown to Zero makes an impassioned case for the urgency of striving for that goal.

The Extras

The main extra feature is a 50-minute panel discussion recorded after Countdown to Zero's UK premiere at BAFTA. Lawrence Bender, Bruce Blair, Valerie Plame Wilson, Margaret Beckett and Queen Noor take part in the conversation, which comprehensively covers whatever subjects the film itself might have overlooked. There are also trailers for a number of other Dogwoof releases.

Countdown to Zero is released on DVD on August 15th

Buy Countdown to Zero here

Review - A Separation (Jodaeiye Nader az Simin)

2011-08-07T23:19:00.006Z

The full title of title Asghar Farhadi's new film, Nader and Simin: A Separation, gives us the characters of and their current situation but it doesn't hint at the complexities and revelations that will be revealed over the course of the following two hours. Initially, the film seems content to focus on this central relationship which is on the brink of falling apart. Nader (Peyman Moaadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami) are first seen sitting next to each other and talking directly to the camera as they address the judge considering Simin's divorce appeal. She wants to leave Iran and take her daughter abroad but Nader refuses to relinquish custody of Termeh (Sarina Farhadi) and insists that he must stay with his father, who suffers from Alzheimer's and requires constant care. However, Farhadi's film quickly makes us aware that it is less interested in the rights and wrongs of this decision than it is in the unexpected fallout from it.

The separation of Nader and Simin introduces us to some new characters, who will eventually become embroiled in the complex drama the writer/director weaves. After Simin leaves to live with her parents, Nader hires the devoutly religious Razieh (Sareh Bayat) to take care of both the house and his father while he's at work, and she arrives with her young daughter in tow. Razieh needs this job for the money but must keep her new role under wraps from her unemployed husband Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini), knowing that he would fly into a rage at the thought of her working in a single man's home. Razieh constantly struggles with the conflict between her duties and the strictures of her faith; when the old man soils himself, she has to ring her imam to find out if it would be a sin to change and wash him.

The whole of A Separation is driven by conflicts, both large and small, and Farhadi makes it extremely difficult for us to know whose side to take. Our perception of what we see is constantly shifting as Farhadi withholds vital information from us before dropping it like a grenade into the centre of the drama, causing us to completely re-evaluate the characters and their behaviour. All of the figures involved in A Separation are real, complex, multi-dimensional characters, all of whom have their reasons for behaving the way they do and who are alternately in the right and the wrong. It is so rare to see a film that treats its characters and its audience with as much respect as this one does and a film that turns its viewers into active participants, as we piece together the opposing stories presented to us and search for the truth. Farhadi is a director in full command of his material, and this is a marked step up from his previous work.

I make that statement as someone who thought About Elly (which won Farhadi the Best Director prize at Berlin) was one of the best films of 2009. That picture was similarly built upon a web of deceit, as a series of lies gradually spun out of control, and through his brilliantly written screenplay Farhadi explored the tensions and complications of Iranian society. A Separation pulls the same trick, but in a richer and deeper fashion. The contrast here is between the old and new Iran, as the traditional, religious couple of Razieh and Hodjat clash with the more liberal and progressive middle-class pair of Nader and Simin. Theirs is a conflict of both faith and class, with the hotheaded Hodjat raging at his inability to speak as eloquently in front of the judge as the educated Nader. All of these factors come into play, but Farhadi's focus is always on the human drama, allowing his wider points on life in Iran to resonate in subtle ways.

Farhadi is a wonderful director of actors and there isn't a weak performance in A Separation. The Berlin jury awarded its Best Actor and Best Actress prizes to the entire ensemble, but there are a couple of standout performances that I really want to highlight. As Razieh, Sareh Bayat creates a heart-wrenching portrait of a woman desperately trying to compromise between doing what's right and doing the best thing for her and her husband; her emotional breakdown when faced with the dilemma of swearing a lie on the Qur'an is agonising to watch. Also worthy of praise is Sarina Farhadi, as Termeh, who finds herself being pulled between her parents and forced to make choices that compromise her own moral integrity. She's a quiet, watchful presence at the start of the film who becomes increasingly important as it progresses, finally being asked to make perhaps the most telling decision of all as Farhadi's devastating drama reaches its tantalising cliffhanger of a climax.

Review - The Referees (Les arbitres)

2011-08-05T23:43:00.003Z

When The Referees made its debut on the festival circuit in 2009 it appeared under the title Kill The Referee. While it's easy to understand why the filmmakers have subsequently opted for a less lurid title, the film's original name does emphasis the serious consequences that football referees' decisions can have. In the 2008 European Championships, the English referee Howard Webb gave a penalty against Poland in the last minute of their match with co-hosts Austria. Replays showed that the decision was justified, and many praised Webb for having the courage to penalise the kind of offence that often goes unpunished, but viewers in Poland were less impressed. Death threats immediately appeared on the internet in videos comparing Webb to Hitler, and even the country's Prime Minister said he felt like killing the referee.

All of which is an undeniably absurd reaction to the decision of one man in the midst of a sporting contest, but little about football these days is rational and referees have had to become accustomed to abusive tirades, as players, managers and supporters use them as a convenient scapegoat for failure. Theirs is a lonely, singular profession, and few can understand why they put themselves through such a thankless task, so a film like The Referees has plenty to interest football fans. This documentary by Belgian filmmaker Yves Hinant makes the most of an all-access pass behind the scenes of Euro 2008 to shows the tournament from the perspective of the men in the middle. We join the anxious referees and their assistants inside the dressing rooms as they prepare for the match, we eavesdrop on the running conversations they have during play, and we stay with them throughout the often painful and humiliating aftermath, as the split-second decisions they have to make in the heat of the moment are analysed from multiple angles.

The access to the microphones the referees wear is perhaps The Referees' most enlightening aspect. The officials are constantly double-checking their calls with each other and often appear wracked with self-doubt ("We are not Gods, we make mistakes," one tells a complaining player). When Webb's linesman Darren Cann fails to spot an offside in the build-up to a goal, he immediately begins to question the validity of his decision, but it's too late; the goal has been given and play has restarted. All Cann can do is try to see out the rest of the game without incident and wait for the inevitable inquest the following day, both from the media and from the refereeing panel that goes over the previous day's match with the individuals involved.

This is intriguing material for fans who have rarely been allowed such a detailed glimpse into the world of referees (though I remember with fondness an 80's experiment in which David Ellery wore a mic during an Arsenal match and had Tony Adams screaming abuse at him for 90 minutes). The film isn't all that revelatory, but it does provide small nuggets of insight. I was struck by the sense of competitiveness that exists alongside the referees' camaraderie, with all of them desperate to be awarded the final (one is extremely upset when his last chance passes him by), and the divided loyalties on display when their own nations are in action is also notable – defeat, of course, would increase their own odds of staying in the competition. If the film's aim is to put a human face on the match officials then it's a success. Seeing the pride they and their families take in a job well done and seeing how emotionally involved they can get with their role does provide us with a fresh context for men who are usually cast all too easily as the villains of the piece.

How interesting The Referees will be to non-football fans is open to debate, though. Hinant has cut his film down to its essence, excising any commentary or captions that might provide context and instead letting the footage he captures tell its own story. This means the film can feel formless and occasionally confusing (even for someone like me who watched almost all of the games at that tournament), but for the most part Hinant uses his 77 minutes well. Refereeing is a strange business, as emphasised by a quote towards the end of the film that states the officials did a good job because "nobody is talking about the referee." To err is human, but we often seem to forget that referees are only human, always noticing the mistakes they make and quickly forgetting whatever good work they have done during the 90 minutes. Bearing that in mind, it's hard to begrudge a film that attempts to show these much-maligned figures in a different light.

Review - Zookeeper

2011-08-01T00:02:00.002Z

The animals in Zookeeper have the ability to talk to humans. This is a skill they have secretly harboured for years because humans can't handle such a seismic revelation, but after daring to spark up a conversation with zookeeper Griffin Keyes (Kevin James) what do they do with their amazing gift for interspecies communication? They try to order pizza over the phone, they persuade Griffin to take them to dinner at a TGI Fridays restaurant, and above all, they focus their attentions on helping Griffin rekindle his relationship with materialistic bitch Stephanie (Leslie Bibb). Aren't there more pressing and interesting things the animals could be doing with their time? If there are, Zookeeper certainly isn't interested in them.

For Zookeeper is only interested in following the predictable template of the Kevin James vehicle. Yes, Mr James now appears to be a bona-fide movie star (although how and when this was allowed to happen, I'm not sure) and therefore we have to watch him carry a movie, which means we have to watch him fall over a lot. In Zookeeper, James gets hit by a tyre swing and falls over, he attempts some acrobatics at a wedding and falls over, he runs into a signpost and falls over. As an actor, James is a bland, unimaginative presence, who only appears animated during his many pratfalls. Despite his lack of any discernible personality and propensity for bungling, Griffin ends up having the pick of two women; the aforementioned Stephanie, who will only be with him if he gives up his career, and his co-worker Kate (Rosario Dawson), whom everyone knows he will ultimately end up with. Before Griffin settles on the right girl, however, we have to sit through an unspeakably tedious farce in which the animals give him various tips on how to secure a mate.

An idle thought crossed my mind as I watched Zookeeper – this is the second film I've watched in which Kevin James gets caught pissing outdoors by a group of women. Is this some weird fetish James has managed to smuggle into both his new film and Grown Ups? I'd like to think so, just because I was desperate for any hint of subversion in this dismally idiotic fare. All of the animals are voiced by celebrities, but to grating effect; Sylvester Stallone and Cher play a bickering lion couple, Adam Sandler is a monkey and Maya Rudolph is an extraordinarily annoying presence as a sassy giraffe. The star turn among the animal voices is Nick Nolte as a gruff, lonely gorilla who strikes up a friendship with Griffin. Imagining that Nick Nolte is really sweltering inside that cheap gorilla suit (and therefore doing something to earn his fee) rather than simply providing his voice is a thought that's a whole lot funnier than any of the 'comedy' Zookeeper serves up.

It's a bad sign when an audience is imagining things more entertaining than the film they're watching. Zookeeper has no wit, intelligence or invention, but perhaps the most dispiriting aspect of the whole picture is the presence of Rosario Dawson in this worthless endeavour. She plays a sweet, unassuming zookeeper who is offered a position at a sanctuary in Nairobi, which necessitates the predictable last-minute dash to the airport by Griffin, but aside from her general 'niceness' she has been given no personality traits whatsoever. Has the paucity of decent roles for women in Hollywood reached such endemic proportions that a genuinely talented, charismatic actress like Dawson is reduced to playing barely-there love interest to Kevin James? The imbalance between this romantic pair is so laughable that there can be no satisfaction seeing her end up with such a buffoonish jackass. "Why didn't she go to Nairobi?" a confused little girl sitting near me at the screening asked as the credits roll. There is no answer that makes sense.