Evangelism
Review Of 2012: The Half Dozen Special – 12 Best Trailers Of 2012
2012 is nearly over, and so is the second full year on the blog. I generally think it’s been a pretty good year for film, but actually not a great year for trailers. It’s also not been a great year for predictions; in the corresponding post last year I correctly predicted that the Mayans had incorrectly predicted the end of the world, but then incorrectly predicted myself that we would get half of the Hobbit film this year. (If only.)
So looking back over the year, there’s not been massive amounts of originality when it comes to hacking two minutes and thirty seconds (give or take) out of your film and splicing them together, but there’s still been a decent enough batch to put together a list of my favourites. I’ve not seen all of the films, and they’re not all trailers of great movies, but that’s not the point, it’s all about what’s contained within these 150 or so seconds. These are the dozen promos that most floated my boat in 2012.
Best Trailer For A Clearly Awful Movie – Elephant White
Yes, this is the best bad trailer that we have of 2012, to paraphrase Argo. Clearly no sane person’s ever going to watch the film, unless it’s on a Friday night on DVD with a liver-threatening amount of cheap lager, but if you can’t enjoy Djimon Hounsou, big guns, Kevin Bacon with one of the most ludicrous accents in the history of anything ever, more big guns and a caption indicating that the director also made something quite well regarded (yes, really), and this is about my biggest guilty pleasure of the year. (That, and knowing how to spell Djimon Hounsou without looking it up.)
Best Trailer For A Not Clearly Awful Movie* – Seven Psychopaths
* But it is an awful movie. Even talking too much about it now will just serve to make me angry again, not least because I actively recommended this film to friends on the basis of the trailer. The total arrogance and intelligence-insulting smugness are thankfully missing from the trailer, but be warned: the experience of watching the trailer is nothing like that of the film, and where Sam Rockwell’s last line might raise a smile here, by the time I saw it in the film I wanted to run up to the screen and punch him in the face.
Best Two Minute Version Of The Whole Movie – Moonrise Kingdom
It’s basically many of the best bits of the entire film, including much of the music and a lot of the jokes; if you want to save yourself the time of watching the whole film, then you deserve a good talking to, as it’s properly brilliant, but if you want to give someone who’s not seen it an idea of what they’re in for, then go right ahead.
Best Black And White Trailer – The Turin Horse
Also best trailer for film I haven’t seen yet. (Yes, even better than Elephant White.)
Best Trailer That Sets Up The Wrong Expectation Of The Film – Killer Joe
Don’t get me wrong, any trailer that hooks in an audience and then serves up something they’ll enjoy is absolutely fine in my book, but the snappy editing and up-tempo music in this trailer suggest something of a fast paced thriller, rather than the deliberately paced chiller you’ll actually get. But no harm, no foul as far as I’m concerned.
Best Flavour Of The Movie Trailer – Berberian Sound Studio
This deconstructed horror, proving as effective at throwing up creepy atmosphere and screwed-up characters as any standard horror despite being seen through the eyes of the foley artist and the sound editor, might be a hard sell, but this brief snatch of the film absolutely nails what you’ll get from the film itself. I’d be prepared to stake a Curly Wurly on no-one loving this trailer and hating the film, or indeed the converse. (Disclaimer: 1,000 word review required to claim Curly Wurly. Allow 28 days for postage.)
Best Explanation Of High Concept Trailer – Looper
So there’s this time travel thing, right, and it’s set in the future, but actually two bits of the future, and China’s more of a world power, and we have time travel but only criminals use it, and so they have to find ways of protecting their interests, and… what do you mean, I’ve had two and a half minutes already? This Looper trailer does a cracking job of setting up the initial conceit, giving a flavour of what’s to come but not spoiling the twists and turns to come later in the film.
Best Short Form Trailer – The Master
The trailers of the Coen Brothers’ last couple of films (A Serious Man and True Grit) have been fine examples of an underlying, almost hypnotic, rhythm used to create mood and effect, and this short initial trailer for The Master uses the same bag of tricks to generate a mindworm that will burrow its way into your brain in just over 60 seconds.
Best Editing Trailer – Sightseers
How much of your film is it possible to cram into a standard length trailer? Thanks to whoever edited this Sightseers trailer, we have at least some sort of answer. I would love to know if the six people that walked out of the screening I was at saw this trailer beforehand, and if somehow their expectations of the film were wrongly set. I would also like to award this best trailer soundtrack of the year; I’d like to, but I’m torn between this and Moonrise Kingdom. Hashtag indecisive.
Best Trailer For Setting Unattainably High Expectations Of The Film – Skyfall
It was unsurprising that my most anticipated film of the year, given my participation in BlogalongaBond (for which I wrote enough words to fill a university thesis on Bond and his ongoing impact) that this trailer, emphasising the wall to wall quality that ran through everything from the acting to the cinematography and the production values, set my expectations sky high. (Ahem.) Ultimately Bond was great, but could never live up to the expectations that this trailer set. Still, it’s the biggest film of all time in the UK and the biggest Bond film of all time worldwide, even adjusting for inflation, so it seems to have kept you lot happy.
Best Trailer For A Film Not Out Until Next Year – Django Unchained
I first saw a Quentin Tarantino film at my university’s film club, Resevoir Dogs being shown on a big screen in a lecture theatre where I normally learned about linear algebra and complex analysis. Somewhere in there, a better writer than me could find a link between pure maths and the pure pleasures of a Tarantino hit, but hey, I’m a mathematician; I got a degree without writing a single essay. It’s a miracle you’re still reading this, frankly. Anyway, look over here! Tarantino!
Best Trailer Of 2012 – The Imposter
This one has it all: sharply edited, fantastic use of intertitles with quotes on praising the film (the five star reviews coming in a start at a time are a particular highlight), it makes great use of the music, it gets the obligatory “From the Academy Award person thingy of…” quote in and it also doesn’t give away too much about the film’s structure or big twists, despite having practically the last shot of the film contained within. For these and many other reasons, this UK trailer for Bart Layton’s The Imposter is my top trailer of 2012.
Previous years:
Review of 2011: The (Half) Dozen Best Trailers of 2011
Review Of The Year 2010: The Half Dozen Best Trailers of 2010
The Half Dozen: 6 Most Interesting Looking Trailers For December 2012
Gather round, one and all. The spirit of the season is upon us, and cinemas will be filled with festive treats and reissues of The Muppet Christmas Carol, It’s A Wonderful Life and, if you’ve been really good this year, Die Hard. But as well as that, there’s a host of fresh Christmas goodies, all wrapped and waiting, plus at least one other seasonal treat getting a fresh airing.
So here for your seasonal entertainment are my selection of trailers for this month, each one accompanied by a Christmas ditty or piece of prose of some sort which I’ve shamefully ripped off reworded slightly in honour of the film in question. A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone.
Gremlins
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse This close to midnight, the Mogwai was waking But no food for him, no chance Bill be taking When down in the lounge there arose such a clatter He sprang from his bed to see what was the matter Away to the kitchen he flew like a flash To grab him a knife, some Gremlins to slashThe Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
O little town of Hobbiton How still we see thee lie Above thy deep and pipe-fuelled sleep A fire-breath’d dragon files Yet in the dark caves shineth The elven “sword” called Sting The hopes and fears of Gandalf’s peers Rest not yet on a ringChasing Ice
Oh, the weather outside is frightful But the photo’s so delightful And since we’ve no place to go Let it snow, it must snow, oh please snow! It’s showing large signs of thawing And the world is still ignoring Al Gore would have liked this show Let it snow, it must snow, oh please snow!Life Of Pi
On the twelfth day of Christmas, all known Gods gave to me Twelve zoo crates moving Eleven Coldplay pop tunes Ten whales a leaping Nine ladies dancing Eight fish a catching Seven hours of swimming Six meercats playing Five shots of bling Four attempts at filming Three dimensions Two blokes just chatting And a tiger who wants me for teaPitch Perfect
Christmas time, mistletoe and wine Children singing truly phat rhymes With logs on the fire, Anna K in the nip This gaggle of girls will try hard to be hipJack Reacher
At Christmas time, there’s no need to be afraid At Christmas time, we banish light and we let in shade And in the world of bad guys, Werner Herzog’s just a joy Can Jack Reacher save the world, at Christmas time? But say a prayer, pray for the other ones At Christmas time, they’ve no chance when Tom’s having fun There’s a world outside your window And it’s a world of dreaded fear Well tonight thank God it’s them, instead of youThe Half Dozen: 6(ish) Most Interesting Looking Trailers For November 2012
While Five Star the group might be consigned largely to history, I can’t help thinking of them every time a discussion of five stars comes up in the context of film, because I have that idiotic kind of brain. With the two largest circulation film magazines in this country both working on a one to five star scale (and at least one other working on “out of five” principles), the five star sliding scale has become something of an industry standard, as posters look to be able to crowd their commendations with reviews from members of the press with as many stars as possible.
I, somewhat more in line with online ratings schemes such as IMDb, rate my scores out of 10. In terms of alignment, I consider only 10/10 films to be worthy of the five star gold standard, and since I began keeping records in 2008, these have been the films to get the ultimate Evangelist recommendation:
2008: Waltz With Bashir, The Dark Knight, No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Wall•E and Hunger
2009: (500) Days Of Summer, Let The Right One In, Up, District 9, The White Ribbon and Synecdoche, New York
2010: Of Gods And Men, Inception, The Social Network, Kick-Ass, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Toy Story 3, Winter’s Bone and Mary And Max
2011: Confessions, Drive, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, True Grit, Take Shelter and The Guard
2012: Looper, Moonrise Kingdom, The Cabin In The Woods, Shame, The Artist, Robot & Frank and The Imposter
Given that I average over 100 films a year, you can see it’s a relatively small proportion that are getting that elusive ★★★★★ rating from me. This year especially, where the main box office tentpoles such as The Avengers¹, The Dark Knight Rises and Skyfall have gotten so many five star plaudits elsewhere and only four from me, it feels an odd list that I’ve ended up with. There’s also some slight shame in saying that Shame is still my film of the year, for while I still believe it’s a story utterly of our times married to Steve McQueen’s exemplary film making, it’s not exactly the kind of movie I want to discuss with my mother when I call her on a Sunday afternoon.
What November has promised is the possibility of contenders to both the five star crown, and possibly even films which could nab that illustrious title of “Favourite Film Of The Year”, taken by No Country For Old Men, Up, Scott Pilgrim and Confessions over the last four years. Empire Magazine reviewed 32 films this month, and gave 21 of them four stars or more. I’ve picked out six that might just be able to take that fifth star.
The Master
I still take no pleasure in reminding people that There Will Be Blood still holds the record for the number of audience walk-outs of any film I’ve ever seen (23). There’s been much discussion on Twitter this week about reviewers giving it various ratings, where even the mainstream press have been divided from ★★★★★ all the way down to ★. I’ve been a fan of PTA ever since Boogie Nights – although telling my mother to watch Magnolia was, in hindsight – a mistake, but this one could definitely go either way.
Excision
Empire magazine have awarded this five stars, and say what you like about Kim Newman, he knows his horror. I’m seeing this as part of a Fright Fest all-nighter later today; earlier this year I saw six films in a full day session at their weekend event in London, the best of which was the again uncomfortably misogynistic Maniac with Elijah Wood. But there’s no reason why a horror movie shouldn’t be able to get on that list.
Amour
Speaking of lists, Total Film published a recent list featuring the 50 Best Movies Of Their Lifetime in their most recent issue. It’s a very populist list, but at the same time Michael Haneke has two entries in the top 20 (Hidden and The White Ribbon). I’ve developed a deep admiration for Haneke’s films and so consequently this is probably the most anticipated film of the month for me, even if I am expecting it to be absolutely devastating.
Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet
I saw so many films at the Cambridge Film Festival this year that I’m still writing them all up. (Days 9 – 11 coming next week. Hopefully.) However, I still missed a couple of films I was really looking forward to, including Ugandan-set documentary Call Me Kuchu and this story of a man following his passion when his body lets him down. I also love that this trailer doesn’t feel constrained to the normal two minute and thirty second rule that seems to define most full length trailers these days.
Silver Linings Playbook
I heard about Oscar buzz for this one just before I saw the trailer, and having seen it my first thought was “Really?” However, it does carry the caption near the end confirming that Dave Karger from Entertainment Weekly thinks it’s the best film he’s seen this year. Now, there might be someone out there that thinks Keith Lemon: The Movie is their ultimate highlight, but we’re all different and Playbook would certainly be an easier sell to my mother. In terms of mainstream entertainment this month, it looks like this and Argo have the best shot of achieving greatness. (Also, given that we have a three hour Romanian film called Aurora on the way, a great month for films beginning with A.)
Nativity 2: Danger In The Manger
Had you going.
Sightseers
I bought Kill List on Blu-ray last Christmas, with the intention of watching it to see if it made my top 40 of the year. It’s still in the cellophane. I probably need to stay in more. This year’s list of films I ought to watch on DVD but probably won’t have time include Monsieur Lahzar and The Turin Horse.
¹ A reminder that we don’t call it Avengers Assemble round here. I can tell the difference between Uma Thurman and Scarlett Johansson, thank you very much.
Cambridge Film Festival Diary: Days 7 and 8
Note to readers: although the festival finished a month ago, I am determined to get to the end of my write-up, so do bear with me. Many of the films on here haven’t yet seen a wide release, and I’ll be sure to point out the great and good here when – and if – they get a wider circulation.
When I was younger, I had a real love of many different things, but most of those were driven out of my one true love: numbers. Apparently I used to sleep around two hours a night and then sit up for the rest of it doing sums and driving my poor mother slowly crazy. (This was not helped when my sister came along two years later and slept for sixteen hours a night, regularly causing my mother to think she was dead. Who’d be a parent? But I digress.) As an example, I always loved cricket, but that love initally grew out of the wealth of statistics and record-keeping that surround the sport, and I would never be seen at my local county ground without a copy of Wisden or another almanac to refer to. Then as I grew older, my appreciation of the game, of reverse swing, googlies and a stout forward defensive took hold, and now I love cricket for the game itself, rather than for the numbers that go with it.
With film, it’s been almost the reverse process. Over the last twenty years I have slowly but surely developed an increasing love of the form, which started to peak in 2008 when I made my first trip to the Arts Picturehouse in Cambridge, now practically my second home. However, I also discovered at this time the ability of websites to catalogue and record what I’d seen, and then to be able to use spreadsheets to analyse my own viewing patterns. Film itself is still the main love, but again the statistics have become a nice personal sideline.
For anyone following my Twitter feed, they’re hopefully used to this by now, or would have unfollowed long since. But it was during this period that I hit a number of personal milestones, including the most cinema films I’d ever seen in a calendar month (I ultimately achieved 50 in September), the second most I’d seen in a calendar year (127 in 2010; my record of 164 last year is now just six films away at time of writing) and the most films I’d seen at the festival (beating the 19 of 2010 and the 27 of last year).
But the one thing I’ve always tried to do is to maintain the quality level; there’s no point in setting out to see a certain number of films if you’re not going to get something from them. I went into days seven and eight with high hopes, and there were a couple of real gems, but again it proved to be something of a mixed bag.
Here, then, is my write up for Wednesday 19th September.
Bestiaire If you’re a fan of animal documentaries, then Bestiaire may appeal to you, but what documentarian Denis Côté has produced is less a David Attenborough-style insight into the inner workings and social developments of the animal kingdom, and something more akin to the world’s most expensive live action animal screensaver. Côté mixes footage of the zoo animals with that of their human handlers, and there are occasional profound or witty observations that arise naturally out of the footage captured, but the simple footage, lacking narrative, voiceover or any other directive techniques, leave Bestiaire sorely lacking in real insight. The Score: 5/10
Reported Missing (Die Vermissten) Jan Speckenbach brought his modern morality tale to the festival’s contemporary German stream (although regrettably, the need for food prevented me for staying for his Q & A). When a 16 year old girl goes missing, her estranged father is called in to help find her, but the more he investigates, the more he discovered disturbing patterns of behaviour among more and more children of her age. Speckenbach both writes and directs, and weaves a modern take on a familiar fable which becomes more interesting the more it reveals itself. The first act is somewhat glacial and unfocused, but slowly the treads are drawn taut and there’s a moderately chilling comment on the position of youth in society and our responses to them within it all. The Score: 6/10
Frank The Microcinema strand saw the debut feature from music video director Richard Heslop, starring Darren Beaumont as Frank, a troubled loner who struggles with the reality of life around him, but finds friendship only in a young girl that lives next door with her collection of snails. When he finds Fidel on a beach, he takes him home and attempts to form another relationship, but Fidel proves unusual company and soon Frank finds himself more tormented than ever. It’s an assured debut from Heslop, with an unusual mixture of black comedy, deep feeling and stunning imagery, capturing the bleakness and the beauty of the surroundings perfectly. It’s difficult at the best of times to capture mental illness successfully on screen, but Frank looks at a number of aspects of the psyche and manages in them to find some surprising shades of both light and dark. Darren Beaumont is excellent as Frank, and is well supported both Con O’Neill as the brusque house guest Fidel, but it’s Heslop who’s the real star, and hopefully his first feature will be just the start of a longer career in full length features.
Following the film there was another Q & A, which included writer / director Heslop and star Beaumont, the first revelation for me was that I’d been sat two seats away from Beaumont for the duration of the entire film and actually spoken to him before the film started. Getting over that shock, it was fascinating but also somewhat frustrating to hear the struggles that Heslop even had to get the film in front of the cameras, and the struggle to get it to a wider audience. Here’s hoping Frank finds one, even though it might be an acquired taste for some. The Score: 9/10
Sleep Tight My fourth Late Night Fright of the festival was the new thriller from Jaume Balagueró, director of the first two [Rec] films and starring Luis Tosar as the janitor at an apartment block who isn’t quite the dutiful custodian that he first appears. Taking advantage of his position, he’s a silent participant in the night time life of resident Clara, but his motives are more clouded than first appears. However, he’s attracted a certain amount of attention – including another nosy girl in the block – and it could be only a matter of time before his night time visits are discovered. Balagueró works the tension of the situation masterfully, Alberto Marini’s script manages to throw up a few surprises and Tosar succeeds in switching from genial to creepy at the drop of a hat. Sleep Tight may well have you checking the wardrobe and under the bed before you put the lights out. The Score: 8/10
That was Wednesday. I always try to work in some form of rest day at some point in the festival, so most of Thursday consisted mainly of sleeping as I tried to deal with the effects of doing little but eating, travelling and watching films. However, refreshed and revitalised, I headed back for a further round of films in the evening. These were my selections for Thursday 20th September.
Yossi From Before Sunset to Clerks II, there’s been a small trend in recent years to visit characters in dramas after a long break. It would seem that our perpetual diet of sequel and follow-ups has given us a taste for living longer lives with characters from even the smallest dramas. Following this trend, Eytan Fox has decided to revisit the character of Yossi from his 2002 film Yossi & Jagger, a tale of two gay men in the Israeli military. Although the fact that there’s no Jagger in the title might be considered a spoiler for the original, Yossi covers enough ground of its own for those who haven’t seen the original. The older, more mature but now deeply repressed and frustrated Yossi we find in 2012 is struggling to find happiness, but discovers both the possibility for closure through a chance encounter at the hospital where he now works. Yossi works on two levels, further exploring the social stigma still associated with homosexuality and the effect on family relationships, but also working in the style of last year’s Weekend as a frank, honest and affectionate modern relationship movie that just happens to star two men. The sight of Yossi and his new suitor Tom walking and talking together while Tom sits on a ride-along toy giraffe was, for me, one of the highlights of the festival. The Score: 8/10
All Divided Selves The line between art and film is a tricky one to judge. Luke Fowler has made a number of works looking at the life and career of Scottish psychiatrist RD Laing over the past few years and this latest work has gained a higher profile by virtue of its nomination for this year’s Turner Prize. Fowler has assembled a mixture of newly shot footage, mainly used to construct the mood and to suggest further themes from Laing’s ideals, into a collage of comprehensive archive footage which takes a no-holds barred look at Laing, his public perception and tries to understand to some extent whether his ideas remain relevant. Psychiatry seems to be a very opinionated science, grounded much more in theory than hard fact and Fowler plays with that idea, never allowing the film to settle on a definitive view of Laing, but as a consequence it’s hard to escape the feeling that this works better where it’s showing as an art installation than it does as a feature film; on the big screen, it’s the more direct archive footage, especially a bitter confrontation with Irish talk show host Gay Byrne, that proves most compelling.
Life then had a decent stab at imitating art in the Q & A afterwards, when in one uncomfortable moment a writer for the Festival’s in house publication asked, among other things, why Fowler had refused them an interview, to which Fowler again refused to respond. While I’m not sure that question would have ever been answered in that context, one can only hope that Mr Fowler is able to give slightly more graceful declines to questioning than the one he gave that evening.
The Hidden Face (La cara oculta) Spanish horror has seen a resurgence in the last few years, and this creepy thriller was the last of my Late Night Fright of the festival. Somehow I could have seen this being an episode of the old Seventies series Tales Of The Unexpected, with the creepy atmosphere slowly ramped up, but the South American country setting feeling oddly remote and almost otherworldly. Quim Gutierrez plays a conductor whose girlfriend has left him, but when he quickly takes up with a new woman he finds himself quickly a suspect in the disappearance of his former lover. While director Andrés Baiz manages to stir up a reasonable atmosphere through subtle scares in the first half of the film, there are two main problems: the central conceit not only requires a certain lack of awareness of their surroundings, but also that you swallow it without question. More than that, the major reveal, which in a better film would come nearer the end and allow you to join the dots yourself, here comes too soon and replays too many events; second time around, the film gradually deflates and sucks energy out of what could have been a powerful ending. The Score: 6/10
Next time: I reach the final weekend of the festival, with icebergs, cross-dressing and Zac Efron in a hat.
Cambridge Film Festival Diary: Day 6
Day 6, the halfway point in the festival, and also the halfway point in my viewing plans for the festival. Seeing so many films now starts to take on something of the feeling of being halfway down a long, dark tunnel; my skin is starting to suffer slightly from the lack of sunlight – some moisturiser soon sorts that out, at least on a temporary basis – but more than that, the effects of sitting down in the same position for six to ten hours a day are starting to affect both my body and my mind.
The solution to that problem is a little more obvious – stop spending six to ten hours a day in the cinema – but it’s a solution I won’t have the luxury of for nearly another week. So by this point I started to dispense with the normal facing forward sitting position, adopting an increasing number of variations, including a sort of side-saddle and a splayed crucifix where only a small amount of me was in contact with the seat. I had to try to keep the variations down as the week went on, lest people think me a horrendous fidget, but it did just about save me from pins and needles, or worse, as the week wore on.
This, however, was what was on screen in front of my fidgeting on Tuesday 18th September.
Jiro Dreams Of Sushi For the second time in two years, I saw a documentary about a three star Michelin restaurant at the film festival. Jiro was a noticeable improvement over last year’s El Bulli, not least because it spends as much time understanding the proprietor as it does the restaurant. Sushi looks deceptively simple, just some rice, some raw fish, a little wasabi and some seasoning, but David Gelb’s documentary successfully illuminates quite why chefs need to spend up to ten years learning some of the more refined techniques before they can truly call themselves proficient, and why a man of eighty-five is still working day in, day out to create some of the finest cuisine in the world. It also takes a look at what the future might hold for both this restaurant, and a second run by one of Jiro’s sons (not the only one to enter the family business), given the longevity and dedication of their respective head chefs. I had sushi for lunch straight after the film, but I know it wasn’t a patch on Jiro’s. The Score: 8/10
Notorious The second of my Hitchcock films of the week, and while still in black and white, this now benefits from the addition of sound. It also benefits from the addition of some of the finest stars to ever grace the silver screen, including Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains. It has a fairly tortuous MacGuffin, but Notorious just goes to show why the details of those were never important, when the central love triangle is so strong. One of Hitchcock’s most successfully romantic films, it’s also a stunning example of just how good a director he was, getting supreme performances from his actors but also working his camera incredibly well, and the whole party sequence is an absolute joy and a thrill from start to finish. Grant and Bergman make a satisfying screen couple (due in no small part to Grant’s off screen coaching, apparently) and seeing it on the big screen confirmed its place in my top 5 Hitchcocks. The Score: 10/10
The Idiot Another carry-over theme from Monday, this time the Estonian cinema thread, but unlike the previous day’s Temptation Of St. Tony I found The Idiot a somewhat frustrating experience. Based on the Dostoevsky novel of the same name, The Idiot is the story of a Russian prince who returns to his homeland after years away in an asylum in Switzerland. Once back, he manages to fall for not one but two women, and slowly but surely his innocence in such matters and the personalities of the two women start to make all of their lives unravel. The first act is strong, not only setting out the narrative clearly but with excellent staging and some nice touches, including a contemporary twang to the soundtrack. Sadly, as the film progresses the staginess takes over, the invention becomes more and more absent and the whole production becomes dry and airless.
By the last act, the courage of any convictions has been lost and certain scenes – for example, when one character sends another a hedgehog as a metaphor for their relationship – lack any sort of sense that they belong in the same film. (It would be worth mentioning that it was at this point I became slightly hysterical, which may be the reaction every time I see a hedgehog from now on.) If only the mood and inventiveness of the first third could have been maintained, The Idiot would have been excellent, but sadly it goes down as at best a brave attempt. The Score: 4/10
Anda Union All of the other films in the festival I saw were showing at the spiritual home of the festival, the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse, but I had determined I would make one trip out to one of the other venues to take in a film. That turned out to be the last in a series of films showing at the Cambridge Buddhist Centre, in this case a documentary about Mongolian music group Anda Union. I wasn’t 100% convinced about the venue; while the projection and sound that had been set up were excellent, my first attempt at a seat (in what could be best described as the stalls, in what was originally a Victorian theatre) left me craning my neck too much to see the screen, my second seat was behind a curtain with no view of the screen at all and my third had a flip chart board blocking half the screen. Thankfully the screening was only sparsely populated, otherwise I may have been struggling for a decent seat.
In terms of the film itself, the documentary tracks the group on a 10,000 kilometre journey across the steppes and plains as they meet with family and friends and take their music wherever they go. Showing everything from the production of their instruments through to concert footage, it’s a fascinating insight into a life in another world, and while there are no earth-shattering revelations from the footage following them travelling, the music itself is thrilling. It’s a mixture of string instruments and percussion, coupled with both throat singing and more conventional singing, and with track names like Ten Thousand Galloping Horses, the passion for their people and their culture shines through. The Score: 7/10
Sinister Last up was my third visit to the Late Night Frights thread, for a haunted house chiller starring Ethan Hawke. The premise is stripped back to the bare bones, and all the more effective for it; Hawke plays a novelist who’s based his career on true crime investigation, but his last hit is disappearing into the distance at an ever increasing rate, and he’s going to increasing lengths to get a few more minutes of fame to add to the fifteen he’s already had. Alienating the police before he’s barely set foot in the town, he finds a box of Super 8 footage and a camera in the otherwise empty loft space, which hold the key to the horrors of more than he realises.
Sinister absolutely nails the atmosphere, and has the feel of a high end, high quality Stephen King adaptation about it. The last time I jumped out of my seat in the cinema was during Neil Marshall’s The Descent, so credit to Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill for causing my seat and I to part company. The one real flaw is with Hawke’s character, who has two unfortunate afflictions required to maintain the tension; he repeatedly makes poor decisions in terms of his own and his family’s safety, happy to hide behind an unspoken truth not being a lie, but that’s compounded by the fact that every single person in the audience will have put all the pieces together before his character does. If you can forgive these flaws, then Sinister is surprisingly creepy and well worth a late night visit. The Score: 7/10
Next time: with the home stretch in site, I’ll be covering days seven and eight, with more scares, more giraffes and some micro-budget cinema.
Cambridge Film Festival Diary: Day 5
Day 5 of the festival, and this was the peak I was working to. Like a gym exercise bike attempting to mimic riding up and down a mountain, I’d started slow with days of three or four films, but the Monday of the festival was always destined to be the big day. If you’re at the festival morning, noon and night then each screen gets through typically six screenings or programmes in a day, so with some careful planning and no care for your own personal sanity, it is possible to squeeze in six films. That, on Monday, is precisely what I did.
I’ve blogged before on the challenges of seeing seven films in a day, and the care that needs to be taken. Seeing six at a festival is a slightly different challenge, as choice is reduced and the planning made somewhat easier, but the logistics of taking in food – not to mention avoiding a DVT – still make it a challenge not to be entered into lightly. The real key is ensuring variety, and the selections I’d made, from Estonia to London (in two eras) via Germany and France, helped to prepare me for the day ahead.
These were the films I saw on Monday 17th September.
The Temptation Of St. Tony (Püha Tõnu kiusamine) Long time readers will know I’m not a fan of awards, as they get more right than they do wrong. Despite quite liking the Danish film In A Better World which won the Best Actor, there was already a long list from that year’s official submissions I liked more (Incendies, Of Gods And Men, Dogtooth, Confessions, Biutiful and Tirza, in case you were wondering), and that list has now gotten one longer. It’s also testament to the benefit of occasions such as the film festival, as this was showing in a short Estonian season, and as far as I can tell has never had a theatrical release in this country before.
Given how few of the list of 66 submissions from that year have surfaced in this country, that can only be regarded as a crying shame, especially if Temptation is anything to go by. Divided into half a dozen separate chapters, but with overlapping narratives and characters, each explores facets of mortality as Tony reflects on life and existence. It starts as a black comedy and isn’t afraid to explore some darkly dramatic places as well, with some stunning and occasionally surreal images; the humour and the unique images will hook you in before director Veiko Õunpuu takes things up a notch, going to some deep, dark places on Tony’s journey of self-discovery. Taavi Eelmaa’s poised and often expressionless face marks his initially passive journey through events around him, becoming crucially more involved as he attempts to break away from and subvert his safe, domestic middle-aged existence. Look out also for an appearance from Denis Lavant, who stars in Holy Motors and which could also be a companion piece to this film. (Spoiler for day 11: I preferred this. I think. More on that later.) The Score: 9/10
Untouchable (Intouchables) It’s a French film, it’s already been a massive hit across the continent and it’s been picked up by the Weinsteins, and it currently sits at position number 73 on the Internet Movie Database’s list of the top 250 films of all time, as voted for by users. So what’s not to love? The story of a grumpy, frustrated quadriplegic who decides to shake up his life a little by hiring a Senegalese man just looking to meet the minimum requirements for his benefit claim, it’s a feel good film of epic proportions that isn’t afraid to have a laugh along with the characters at either their backgrounds or their afflictions, and there’s a huge amount of chemistry in the relationship between disabled but wealthy Phillippe (François Cluzet) and troubled but charismatic carer Driss (Omar Sy). Indeed, what’s not to love?
Quite a lot, actually. If you approach the film with blinkers on, just looking at the relationship in isolation, it’s easy to see the charm and entertainment of the lead pairing, but as you cast your gaze wider the stereotypes and clichés stack up with an alarming frequency. Black man likes Seventies disco music but upper class white man is into classical music? Fair enough. Black man has a view that modern art is just squiggles on a paper and anyone can do it? Erm… White rich man has disaffected, troubled daughter (with boyfriend in tow), carer comes from a troubled background with disappointed mother and even more troubled siblings? White rich man also has a PA who’s the only one immune to the charms of his black carer, but she turns out to be a… I’ll let you guess; if you can’t, this may be the film for you, but it certainly wasn’t for me, the engineered storytelling (based on a true story, but with so many details put through the poor storytelling mangle that it always feels fake) and the inability to give any of the subplots the time they need simply because so many have been stacked up makes Untouchable start to feel top heavy and ultimately a rather cynical attempt to play on your emotions and engage your sympathies, almost an entertainment-seeking monster than an actual film. The Score: 5/10
The Big Eden It seems every country has one; a good time entrepreneur with a seedy image but charisma to burn and an almost inexplicable ability to charm the ladies. America have their Hugh Hefner, Britain their Peter Stringfellow and Germany their Rolf Eden. Eden came to notoriety through a set of Berlin nightclubs that he set up (and which all failed dramatically once he’d sold them off), and The Big Eden presents Rolf’s life story, interspersed with interviews from both his contemporaries and the many women he’s been with over the years. A number of those women have also produced children, and their stories help to add a contemporary perspective to a story that is, by nature, slightly rooted in the past. Other than the significant age range of the children he’s sired, The Big Eden is a little unremarkable, but it does succeed to an extent in getting underneath what’s made such a success of the man, and how he’s become so appealing to the ladies. The Score: 7/10
The Lodger: A Story Of The London Fog Thanks to the BFI and their restoration efforts, a number of Alfred Hitchcock films have now been returned to cinemas looking better than ever, and the Cambridge Film Festival had a season of a dozen of the master’s top works, both from his rich Hollywood period and from his silent British days. The Lodger is one of those earlier films, but bears all of the hallmarks of his later work, not least in his willingness to corrupt the image of a screen idol of the time, in this case Ivor Novello as the shady traveller who takes room and lodgings at the same time that a serial killer named The Avenger is terrorising London every Tuesday. The methodical nature, the plot twists and the direct camera work are all present and correct and it clearly demonstrates that it wasn’t just in Hollywood and in colour that Hitch was able to work his magic.
The only slight downside about this particular print was the score by Nitin Sawhney, which while evocative of both mood and period for the most part, used a couple of more contemporary sounding songs which jarred slightly, but since they were out of the director’s control I’m willing to let him off this time. The Score: 8/10
Now Is Good The second film I’ve seen at the festival, after Come As You Are, to ostensibly feature a character or characters searching for sex as part of a wider purpose, Now Is Good isn’t really about that at all. Sex is just one of many narrative diversions that this story, based on Jenny Downham’s fiction novel “Before I Die”, takes along the road of trying to understand what life must be like for a teenager dying of leukaemia and whether or not she can encapsulate a lifetime of experiences into a few short months. Dakota Fanning plays the stricken teen Tessa, perfecting a cut-glass English accent (which does occasionally feel at odds with the very contemporary Brighton setting), and Jeremy “War Horse” Irvine is saddled with the unfortunate job of being the eventual object of her affections, which mainly consists of standing in the background of scenes, alternating between looking shocked, repulsed and a bit gorgeous.
Where Now Is Good really resonates is with the characters and performances of Tessa’s parents, played by Paddy Considine and Olivia Williams. Considine is the overly controlling father who is struggling to come to terms with the fact he’ll outlive his daughter, and Williams the estranged mother who’s doing her best to take apathy and incompetence to new levels. Without their performances, Now Is Good would be just another teen drama, and possibly a slightly exploitative one; with them it becomes a rounded drama, which will engage the emotions of anyone with half a heart. If you can put aside a poorly handled sub-plot involving Tessa’s best friend (a cheery Kaya Scodelario) then Now Is Good succeeds on its own terms, and any of a sensitive disposition should make sure they pack a couple of hankies for the last act. The Score: 7/10
The film was followed by a generally cheery and pleasant Q & A with star Jeremy Irvine and producer Peter Czernin. Ranging from insights into what it was like to act opposite Considine (apparently him waving a butter knife around at the breakfast table during a scene came across as particularly menacing) to the experience of a girl with leukaemia actually coming to set, which was apparently surprisingly life-affirming. It’s only a slight shame that more of Irvine’s genuine charm that came across in the flesh wasn’t captured in the film.
Tower Block A very British take on the high rise drama, it’s a simple set-up that tries its hardest to wring tension out of a set of generally unsympathetic and unlikeable characters. A murder takes place on the top floor of a tower block, but the residents are either too scared or too partisan to get involved with finding the culprit. The block is being evacuated by developers, and eventually those top floor residents are (conveniently) the last residents left in the building, all the easier to be picked off by a mystery sniper. The quality of the actors is good, with new British talent such as Sheridan Smith and Russell Tovey mixing with the likes of more established names of the likes of Ralph Brown and Julie Graham, but the only real standout in a coterie of people you wouldn’t want to live next to is Jack O’Connell as the protection money collector Kurtis, who makes unpleasantness an art form and is all the more watchable for it.
Directors James Nunn and Ronnie Thompson do what they can to wring tension from the situation and there’s some moody scenes, but genuine tension proves harder to come by. It’s not all their fault; while James Moran’s script does deal out a few good lines to O’Connell, Smith and Tovey, it’s a little pedestrian and often predictable, and doesn’t match up either to his work on the likes of Doctor Who and Torchwood, or indeed to his Danny Dyer-featuring horror Severance from 2005. This is one middling Brit thriller it’ll be hard to get stuck into. The Score: 6/10
Next time: sushi, suspicion, Sinister and some amazing Mongolian music in my not quite alliterative day 6.
Cambridge Film Festival Diary: Day 4
Sunday is supposedly a day of rest, but it’s also an ideal day for the cinema. Taking on something like the film festival requires a certain level of pacing if you’re going to see as much as I’ve planned to, so after two very full days on days 2 and 3 day 4 was the chance just to keep my hand in, before the big push over the next few days. Sunday morning’s normal routine was followed by Sunday lunch with Mrs Evangelist, eaten on our laps while attempting to keep up with Celebrity Masterchef. (Never let it be said I don’t know how to show a lady a good time.) Mrs E, as I refer to her on Twitter, is a more average film fan and is also a shift worker thanks to people rather inconsiderately being ill outside of office hours, so the festival is my chance to head off on my own and explore some of the more esoteric delights that cinema has to offer.
Sunday’s particular delights, then, were for fans of Jack Kerouac, Icelandic music and animals, but all in very specific ways.
On The Road This adaptation of the famous Kerouac novel has taken a ridiculous amount of time to come to screen, and in the process has been throug a number of different hands; it’s a shame to say that it doesn’t entirely appear to be worth all that effort. The director who finally brings this to the screen is Walter Salles, and he’s retained his gift for spectacular scenery and mind-searing visuals; what unfortunately is lacking, in both his direction and Jose Rivera’s screenplay, is the lyrical rhythm that has made On The Road so enduring as a work of fiction, and resorting to simply reading sequences of prose out at various points simply shows the gap in interest level between book and screen, the film version never quite managing to come truly alive.
Of the main cast members, the only one that stands out is Garrett Hedlund as the mischievous Moriarty; Sam Riley is a good actor in search of the right role, being as fundamentally miscast here as he was in last year’s Brighton Rock. It’s the supporting turns from the likes of Viggo Mortensen that will live longest in the memory, and while Kristen Stewart has a certain amount of fizz, she gets very little to do. On The Road very much conforms to the stereotype of Stewart’s contemporaries, great to look at but with little of substance on the inside. The Score: 6/10
Grandma Lo-Fi (Amma Lo-Fi) The story of an Icelandic woman in her Seventies who turned her hand to making music with a small keyboard and a variety of household sounds, Grandma Lo-Fi is small but almost perfectly formed, capturing completely the charm and eccentricity of Sigridur Nielsdottir, but also what has made her music so appealing to many. Detailing her background and her approach to her music, right through to the delightful cover art she produces for the CDs she has pressed herself, it’s an inspiration as to what can be achieved through the simple process of application. Despite the short running time, there are a few odd kinks in the tail, but if you’re looking for a documentary to give you a warm glow, Grandma Lo-Fi should suffice, another entry into what is currently proving a stand-out year for music documentaries. The Score: 8/10
Postcards From The Zoo (Kebun binatang) Finally for day 4, a fairy tale of sorts, set in and around Jakarta Zoo in the Indonesian capital. It’s the story of a young girl, Lana, who grows up in the zoo and dreams of being able to touch the belly of the giraffe, frustratingly out of reach for many reasons. The story draws parallels with the conservation of wildlife and the issues facing endangered species in Lana’s journey through the zoo and into the city beyond in the company of a magical cowboy. However, what may sound on the page as a story book piece comes across on the screen as flat and uninspired, none of the various story elements really gelling and the characters just not working. It’s a brave attempt and is willing to explore plenty of facets of life in the Indonesian big city; it’s just a shame that it couldn’t find any to truly engage with. The Score: 5/10
Quote of the day: “Marylou, spread your knees and let’s smoke some weed!” – Dean Moriarty, On The Road
Health update: More walking, mainly to work off the pizza and, ahem, chocolate cake I had for dinner. Just starting to get slightly sore knees. Being tall is not all it’s cracked up to be when it comes to small cinema seats. Only another week to go.
Next time: Day 5, thanks to the unstinting passage of time, and my busiest day of the festival, from Estonian mortality drama to British horror with just about everything in between.
Cambridge Film Festival Diary: Day 3
The first Saturday of the festival, and one where I normally don’t get to see much as I have another tradition I’ve followed since moving to the area. I do sometimes worry that people misunderstand the “Evangelist” in the name of the blog, as the only religion here is films, and no gods to speak of (but a bit of Christopher Nolan worshipping occasionally). Outside the blog, as long time readers will probably remember, I do a lot of other things, including being choir master of my village church; this gives me the opportunity each September to join a service where choirs from all over Cambridge meet to sing in King’s College chapel. As strong as my love of film is, chances like this don’t come along every day (about once a year, in fact), so the first Saturday is traditionally a thin day for me in terms of films.
Having studied the diary very carefully this year I’d determined I could manage to squeeze in three films, one before the afternoon rehearsal and two after the wrap up at King’s. But because I obviously wasn’t busy enough, when Toby Miller from Cambridge 105’s film review show Bums On Seats had seen on Twitter that I’d seen Come As You Are, I took up the offer to join the show to share my 2p worth. There was also a discussion on Hope Springs, which I’d seen (and seemingly enjoyed slightly more than my fellow reviews, although not much). All seemed simple enough and ideally set to fit into my schedul; at the studio for 10:30, bit of prep and discussion and then on air from 11:00 to 12:00.
I knew roughly where the studio was, but thankfully I’d got two separate sat navs just in case. They both lie. Actually, that’s a little unfair to them; they’re old and unsophisticated, so unlike many modern sat navs they don’t tell you what extra time you’ll need to get through traffic, and Saturday morning traffic in Cambridge, which they both sent me straight into the middle of, seemed particularly testing. Having been four minutes away for about half an hour, I finally arrived at the studio at around 10:50 in a mild state of panic. Thankfully I was in time for the show, but what I’d been denied was the opportunity to see what was coming.
This is my excuse, anyway, for the ramblings which I’ve just listened back to on the podcast; suddenly having to have articulate thoughts and express them coherently, rather than the opportunity to edit and re-edit what I’ve written until I don’t sound like a raving madman. Having re-read the first paragraphs of this, I’ve realised that no amount of time will stop me sounding like a madman, so if the opportunity arises again I will try to be a little less self-conscious. Anyway, don’t take my word for it, here’s the chance to hear what I had to say (if you’re quick), and to sigh, tut and to disagre with it strongly. Thanks again to Toby for the opportunity, and to my fellow reviewers for allowing me to help them sound good.
After all that, I still got those three films in, and here’s what I saw on Saturday 15th September.
Hemel Hemel translates as “heaven”, which might seem an odd name for a daughter, especially one who’s grown up as cantankerous and rebellious as Heaven has. She has a close relationship with her father, and Hemel explores that relationship as well as their respective attempts to find love. What Hemel actually finds more of is sex; the film is a series of vignettes focusing on either a new man in Heaven’s life or a new woman in her father’s. The copious nudity and frank, sometimes brutal, reality of the feelings expressed by the Hemel family might be offputting to some but Hemel is very good at getting underneath the nature of relationships and succeeds in maing the characters sympathetic rather than alientating, while still allowing father and daughter to get off a succesion of stinging barbs at each other. It does find real emotion, especially in Hannah Hoekstra’s central performance, and while there’s nothing hugely earth-shattering or revelatory Hemel does satisfy on its own brief terms. The Score: 7/10
V.O.S. (Original Subtitled Version) Described by those people who like to use other similar things to describe things as Charlie Kaufman-esque, V.O.S. played in the Calatan cinema stream at the festival, and Cesc Gay’s film takes the relationships of two couples and places them within a film-within-a-film setting. We’re never quite sure if we’re watching them making the film or them actually being the characters, with one of them writing a script which details the lives of the characters, and so on, and so forth. While there’s some clever touches and the conceit is maintained throughout, it doesn’t quite have the clarity of purpose of Kaufman’s better work and is also fairly bog-standard in terms of the relationships on display, lacking credibility at a couple of key junctures. But maybe we should blame that on the writer? Or maybe on the character of the writer? The Score: 6/10
Dead Before Dawn 3D Writer Tim Doiron and director April Mullen are on the verge of becoming Canadian institutions at the Cambridge Film Festival. Having been in 2009 with Rock, Paper, Scissors: The Way Of The Tosser and a year later with Gravytrain, they were back (sadly not this time in person) with their third film, and where Gravytrain had been a spoof of hard-boiled crime fiction, this time the target was zombie and horror flicks. A group of dysfunctional college students manage to afflict themself with a rather unfortunate (and also rather unfortunately specific) curse which will become permanent upon sunrise. DBD3D succeeds rather more than Gravytrain did, not least for the fact that more of the scattergun humour actually works and there’s enough genre staples, as well as the odd piece of genre skewering, to help the film get by on its own good will and energy. Employing an impressive number of family members to give the movie a look bigger than its budget, there’s also a trump card in the form of a typically energtic performance from Christopher Lloyd. It’s not going to give the best examples of the genre any trouble, but you could do much worse for a few laughs on a Saturday night. The Score: 6/10
Mullen and Doiron weren’t able to be in the room, but they did dial in via Skype for a Q & A, with the audience (or what was left of it, as we were already well past midnight at this point) staying to ask affectionate questions. In particular, Mullen’s enthusiastic response to my question about a particular Christopher Lloyd moment – you’ll absolutely know the one when you see it – means I may now have just a tiny crush on the Canadian director. (And that was even before she promised to turn up in person in a cheerleader outfit at a future screening. Yikes.)
Quote of the day: “The beees! Aaargh! It’s always the bees!” – Dead Before Dawn 3D
Health update: A reasonably healthy lunch was offset by a slightly less reasonably healthy burger and chips in the Picturehouse bar. Plenty of walking to and from just about everywhere, and I might just about have gotten away with it.
Next time: Day 4, and it’s Kristen Stewart, an Icelandic musical granny and a girl with a disturbing giraffe fixation.
Cambridge Film Festival Diary: Day 2
Day two, the first full day of the festival. By now you’d expect me to be organised, but the sheer volume of my bookings was already working against me. As with the previous two years, I’d arrived for the first film and then all of my tickets had printed out, a long stream like some form of Wall Street ticker tape warning of impending crisis. My crisis came from the fact that, as always, the tickets don’t seem to print off in any particular order; so on day one I had a long stream of 36 tickets from the main booking, and by day two that was four still fairly long streams where I’d taken the previous days’ tickets out of the middle. The sight of me performing what must have looked like the world’s least interesting magic trick I hope at least kept the staff of the Picturehouse entertained.
Anyway, onto the day itself: this was Friday 14th September 2012.
Hope Springs
The day started with a repeat screening of one of the previous night’s opening films. Hope Springs is the tale of a couple in their 31st year of marriage, where Tommy Lee Jones is content to follow the same predictable, pedestrian routine but Meryl Streep yearns to put some spark back into their marriage. A good proportion of the film is either a two-hander with Jones and Streep formulating their issues, or a three-way with Steve Carell (less exciting than it sounds, I can assure you) as the therapist looking to work through their issues for them.
I certainly wouldn’t devalue the idea of couples therapy as such, but the film never convinces in terms of the therapy itself, feeling far too superficial to really get at the deep roots of the couple’s problems. In terms of entertainment value it’s a moderate success; Streep can normally be relied upon to be a class act, but she comes across as slightly mannered here, and Carell is required to simply turn up and be as calm as possible while keeping a straight face while saying words like “masturbate” or “penis”. Most of the joy comes from watching Tommy Lee Jones be a spectacular grump for as long as possible, which also makes his character slightly unsympathetic. Recommended if you’ve been married a while and can’t afford $4,000 dollars for counselling, although I would suggest avoiding a repeat of what Streep and Jones get up to in their movie theatre visit. The Score: 6/10
Avalon
Scandinavian art cinema takes a step backwards in the form of this mercifully short study of the trials and tribulations of nightclub promoter Janne (Johannes Brost). Enjoying life without complete regard for others, an unfortunate accident leaves him with a number of problems on his hands, but neither he nor the film are interested in getting anywhere near solving those problems. A dark film offering little hope for any of its characters, lifelessly shot it’s only the weathered performance of Brost that’s likely to keep you invested. Don’t expect to see a huge return on that investment. The Score: 4/10
Camp 14: Total Control Zone
I was going to start this paragraph with “harrowing”, but I’m not sure that any words come close to capturing the dehumanising brutality that Shin Dong-Hyuk had to endure growing up in a North Korean labour camp. While there’s a small element of talking heads from other participants who’ve also escaped the North’s regime, the majority of the film is based around Shin’s reflections on his experiences and his attempts to cope with life in a more civilised world. His memories of the camp are captured in some part in animation, with a Schindler’s List colour palette giving way to an understated animation style that worked so well for Waltz With Bashir a couple of years ago, but the most powerful sequences are actually set in Shin’s flat, his silences and difficulties in recalling his experience making the viewer uncomfortably complicit in asking him to review this. A heartbreaking sense of a life almost irredeemably lost isn’t totally well served by the structure, and a better edit could take this up by a point or even two, but it’s still a deeply affecting portrayal of the human spirit and its attempts to overcome adversity. The Score: 8/10
Barbara
Germany’s entry for the 2012 Academy Awards Best Foreign Language Film is another tale exploring life in the divided Germany of post war years, in this case a tale of two doctors in a small country hospital in East Germany. Barbara (Nina Hoss) is under close scrutiny in her relocation, and for good reason given that she has a number of secrets she’s trying to hide; André (Ronald Zehrfeld) has different reasons for being there, but both are working through their own lives while trying to do their best for the succession of young patients coming through their doors. Zehrfeld has charisma to burn and nicely offsets Hoss’s colder, but still sympathetic, performance. Director Christian Petzold tells his tale in a measured fashion, but doesn’t quite succeed in generating tension where all of the possibilities present themselves; it’s still a well fashioned story, kept alive by the performances of its two leads. The Score: 7/10
Tridentfest 2012
And so to Tridentfest, the collection of short films and music videos that has claimed the first Friday night of the festival for the past few years. If you’ve never been, then it’s a collection of very local film makers (often filming in their own houses or the Picturehouse bar) exploring different facets of film making, sometimes thoughtful, occasionally gory, but almost always very funny.
This year there was nothing to match last year’s The Purple Fiend for length (the longest film clocking in at barely 10 minutes), but variety is the spice of life and we certainly got that again this year. Highlights for me were some of the music videos, especially one to a song from British Public (I think) which seemed to have a chorus consisting of chanting “bears” over and over again – which, unsurprisingly, stuck in my head for days – and Chess Man, a real life insight into a man who plays lots of chess and makes the occasional piece of artwork, much of it shot on VHS-C tapes acquired off the internet.
But it’s the eccentricity, the laughs and the just plain down right oddness that make Tridentfest so memorable; from Teaching Simon To Skate, mixing a sense of British sporting endeavour into some Jackass-like skateboarding pain, to Andy Needs His Milk, an utterly disturbing but memorable tale of a disembodied but demanding head. The evening was rounded off with one of the many shorts from The Fantastic Poo Brothers, called Powers; it might be one of the most pointlessly stupid things I’ve ever seen, but four days later I’m still smiling when I think about it. That is the quite literal joy of Tridentfest, and hopefully a second screening later in the week will give you chance to see what you may have missed.
The evening was rounded off with a chat with a couple of the members of the Project Trident team, which brought to light the fact that the poster in the foyer for Tridentfest bears a poster quote from my review of The Purple Fiend last year, as indeed does the DVD case, which they were kind enough to give me a copy of. Possibly my greatest achievement as a blogger to date. Possibly as a human being. (Sorry, I don’t get out much.)
Next time: Day 3, featuring Hemel, V.O.S., Dead Before Dawn 3D and how traffic nearly killed the radio star before he even got started.
Cambridge Film Festival Diary: Day 1
One of the highlights of my year for the past two years since I started this blog, the Cambridge Film Festival kicked off again this week. For my third year at the festival, thought I’d try something a little different, given that the rate at which I manage to review films makes me the Geoffrey Boycott of blogging. (I promise not to state that my grandmother could have directed that better or that even a stick of rhubarb could have out-acted Kristen Stewart, as Mr Boycott invariably would.) So this year, I’ll be picking up more of a diary feel, which means I can at least give an opinion on everything, not just the feature films, and also share my experiences of the festival when I’m not sat in front of a cinema screen. (I would expect me to be sat mainly in the bar, although there’s already been a few other highlights.)
So here’s my rundown of day 1, Thursday 13th September 2012.
About Elly The first film I’ve seen at the festival in the past two years was a 10/10 both times, and ended up in my top 10 of the year (Winter’s Bone and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy respectively, thank you for asking). While gratifying to see an outstanding film first up, it then leaves the problem that everything coming after it proves to be anticlimactic. About Elly neatly sidestepped that problem for me by just being great.
Actually the film before A Separation, Asghar Farhadi has now two definite pieces of work to show his ability to blend compelling narratives with suspense, to shade his characters rather than casting them as completely black or white and to be able to comfortably mix Iranian social issues with a more general backdrop. For the first half, About Elly could be set on a beach just about anywhere but events unfold in such a way that social pressures and gender issues help to shape the drama but to keep it accessible.
The story of a beach trip with turns to near tragedy and then an unfolding mystery, Farhadi keeps his characters grounded and believable and it’s to the credit of all involved that I genuinely couldn’t predict the outcome. Without being outlandish, there’s enough subtle twists and revelations of motives to keep you hooked throughout. Following in the footsteps of the likes of Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panadi, Farhadi is part of a strong generation of Iranian film makers, and About Elly and A Separation put Farhadi at the forefront of that group. The Score: 8/10
Come As You Are (Hasta La Vista) Thanks to the Paralympics this summer, issues of disability and equal rights have been at the forefront of the minds of the nation, so this Flemish import may be arriving at just the right time. Loosely inspired by the experiences of Asta Philpot, three Flemish youths of varying degrees of disability have decided that they can no longer face the prospect of a lifetime of struggling to lose their virginity, and on hearing of a brothel in Spain that caters for those with similar conditions they determine to set off on a road trip, which goes about as well as road trips in comedies generally do, except with more jokes about disabilities.
During the Paralympics, certain tweeting comedians caused a furore by some of their humour, drawing a clear line where jokes should be fearful of crossing. Hasta La Vista understands this line well and always invites you to laugh with, never at, its participants when it comes to their disabilities, but to laugh at them for the same human fallibilities shared by everyone, whether disabled or not. The idea of heading to a brothel certainly won’t generate sympathy with everyone, but the plight and frustrations of these three lovable losers will keep you consistently entertained. A fantasy sequence near the end, intended to illustrate the liberation of the characters as they near the fulfilment of their quest, may actually cause you to question the reality of what you’ve watched and the ending feels a little pat while also leaving threads unresolved, but Hasta La Vista is still a journey well worth taking. The Score: 7/10
The Snows Of Kilimanjaro (Les Neiges Du Kilimandjaro)Robert Guédiguian has been to the Cambridge Film Festival before, and this time returns with a film inspired by a Victor Hugo poem, La Légende des siècles (The Legend of the Centuries). Set in and around a French shipyard town, Jean-Pierre Darroussin plays Michel, a French trade union representative whose show of solidarity in entering his name into a redundancy lottery at the shipyard sees him made redundant along with nineteen others. The film explores the ramifications on both Michel and his family and friends, but also on another of the nineteen, Christophe (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet), who is attempting to raise his two younger brothers in the absence of their work-away mother.
Guédiguian is keep to explore the social ramifications of the decision, reflecting the current economic climate more sharply than even when the film was first shown at Cannes last year, but this makes for a slightly uneasy marriage of political discourse and family drama. Views of the characters are kept broad, but somehow the film never quite gets truly to the root of some of their motivations, and the eventual resolution to the plot strains credibility somewhat. Still, the performances of the whole cast are generally strong and evoke a suitable amount of empathy, but Snows may not last in the memory for as long as the recession might. The Score: 6/10
The film was followed by a Q & A session with Guédiguian, who spoke through the use of an interpreter, feeling that he could more correctly convey his answers in French than in English. I studied French for five years at school and a further year at uni, and can often follow decent chunks of French films without reading all of the subtitles, but confronted with an actual fluent French speaker discussing the finer elements of his film left me feeling the need to scurry back to my worn copy of Tricolore from school and do some urgent revision. Guédiguian was a delight, though, charming and erudite and fielding a long procession of questions in both French and English.
In summary:
Film of the day: About Elly
Quote of the day: “F*** Ryanair!” – various characters, Come As You Are
Festival stamina: I should explain; I’m trying to lose three stone at present, put on by poor eating due to a busy work life, and am trying to maintain that over the course of the festival, in addition to regular exercise. Hopefully this diary will help me to keep track of how that’s going. Day 1 was a firecracker chicken at the nearby Wagamama, and was suitably filling and low calorie. I also got around forty minutes’ walking in two and from my car, so energy levels remain high one day in.
Coming on day 2: Hope Springs, Avalon, Camp 14: Total Control Zone, Barbara and Tridentfest 2012.
The Movie Evangelist 