Film Discoveries of 2016

Only Angels Have Wings

Over the last two years, I have been maintaining a movie journal as a way of keeping track of the best new and old films I watch in a given month. This is partly an administrative task - it's a lot easier to make end of year lists if you already have a bunch of lists to work from - but it's also part of an ongoing desire to watch more, and more varied, films. If I get to the end of a given month and I see that I've watched a lot of French or Japanese films (or not enough French and Japanese films, for that matter), or if I've watched a lot of films noir at the expense of everything else, that gives me an impetus to seek out films from other eras, countries or genres in the immediate future. It's an awkward self-correcting system, but it more or less keeps things balanced.

To put a cap on a year in which I watched around 250 older movies (i.e. ones released before 2016), I looked back and picked out the ones that have stuck with me the most over the last twelve months. Since it's hard to rank them all against each other, I have ordered them chronologically by release date (though I will call out the very best older film I watched because it also happened to be the very best thing I watched all year) to give a sense of what my film watching year looked like away from the 2016 treadmill.

In some cases these films lingered because they led me to discover others films from a specific filmmaker or movement that I hadn't considered before, in others it was because they were just great. In several cases, it was because they were among the stranger films I've ever seen, and featured images that I won't forget any time soon. For whatever reason, these are the twenty older movies that had the biggest impact on me in 2016.

Movie Journal: October

Queen of Katwe

It's the most wonderful time of the year...

No, not because Christmas is just around the corner (though that is a plus) but because it's awards season! Good films are finally coming out again! After what has been one of the more dispiriting summers in recent memory, the next couple of months look phenomenal and the slow drip of interesting, challenging movies started in October, as reflected by this month's list, which is less reliant on non-2016 films than usual.

In total, I watched 22 films this month, 21 of which were first time viewings. The lone rewatch was of James Whale's Frankenstein, which I hadn't seen in about a decade, and was even more haunting and gorgeous than I remembered. Karloff's performance as The Monster is one for the ages, not merely because he's convincing as a hulking mass of murderous potential, but because he also makes The Monster's fear as he's trapped in a burning building feel palpably real.

The worst film I watched was Finian's Rainbow, Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of the 1947 musical about an Irish couple (Fred Astaire and Petula Clark) coming to America, pursued by a Leprechaun (Tommy Steele, in what may be the most grating performance ever committed to celluloid) and interrupting the lives of a small town while singing terrible, forgettable songs. Also, there's blackface for some reason. A thoroughly dispiriting watch, though it's weirdly inspirational; Coppola was only four years away from making The Godfather, after all, so anything is possible.

Without any further ado, let's talk about the best films I watched in October, 2016.

Halftime Top 10

O.J.: Made in America

Even though January of 2016 now seems like it happened 15 years ago, we are somehow only halfway through this fucking year, which means that it's a good time to look back over the last six months and consider how the year is shaping up, film-wise.

The answer is "not great", as evidenced by the fact that my number one film is arguably not actually a film, and the slate of mainstream fare has been pretty woeful with a few bright sparks dotted around the place. Still, there's plenty of promising stuff on the horizon - Manchester by the Sea! Rogue One! Kubo and the Two Strings! Moana! La La Land! - and I still have to catch up on a bunch of films that I haven't had a chance to see/haven't played anywhere near me (my anticipation for Green Room remains sky high), so there's still plenty of time for 2016 to sort itself out. 

Right, let's get to the top ten.

Movie Journal: August

Mostly due to work commitments, this was a fairly quiet month for me in which I watched a mere 20 films, though at least they were all first time viewings. The only real thread in my viewing came towards the end of the month when, after recording a load of their films from TCM, I watched a string of Marx Brothers movies in a row. Through that, I have come up with a grand unifying theory regarding how to judge the quality of a Marx Brothers movie:

• If it has Zeppo (very much the Xander Harris of the group) in it, it's probably going to be a good one.
• The quality of a Marx Brothers film correlates precisely to how quickly Groucho shows up. If he isn't introduced in the first couple of scenes, then you're off to a bad start.

I didn't watch any legitimately bad films, but the least interesting was The Past is a Grotesque Animal, a documentary about Kevin Barnes and Of Montreal. It's a perfectly fine documentary and a good primer for the band, but it's a great example of a documentary which does little more than tell the story of an artist without offering any insight into why they are all that special. There's no sense that the film is offering more information than Kevin Barnes' Wikipedia page would.

It actually makes for a good contrast to the best film I watched this month...

Half-Time Top Ten

Blue Ruin

Now that we're halfway through the year, it seems like the perfect time to look back and take stock of how the year in film has unfolded thus far. It's been a surprisingly strong start, with a nice mix of smart blockbusters and entertaining indies, and while I've got high hopes for the rest of the year - Inherent Vice can't get here soon enough! - I wouldn't be heartbroken if this ended up being my Top 10 for the entire year. As far as an assessment of the year, this would be a "keep up the good work" for 2014.

Doc/Fest 2013 Coverage: Day One

Welcome to A Mighty Fine Blog's coverage of this year's Doc/Fest, coming to you live from in and around and up and down Sheffield's fabled streets and hills. I'll be updating the blog constantly over the next few days with brief capsule reviews of everything I see, assorted musings on the festival itself, and, depending on how sleep-deprived I become as the week goes on, surrealistic vignettes about pasties. I'll also probably do a final post on Monday with my final thoughts on the highs, the lows and the rich, creamy middles.

The Martini Shot: Debuts

Over the last couple of months, Adam Batty (of Hope Lies), Joe Gastineau (of The Wooden Kimono and No Ripcord) and myself (of this parish) have been talking about starting one of those podmacular casts that we heard so many people talk about whilst sipping mint juleps at our club, in which we would discuss pressing matters of the day in a most erudite and cromulent manner. After many weeks of false starts, dead-ends and daring escapes, we finally sat down in a room together and recorded something about films in a slightly mumbly and sweary manner.

That's a roundabout way of saying that the first episode of our new podcast, tentatively* called The Martini Shot, can now be listened to on, or downloaded from Podbean here. The premise, vague as it is, is that every week we will come up with a theme which we will then discuss with reference to films relating to that topic. Since this is the first episode and our minds work in super obvious ways, we settled on "Debuts", which worked out pretty well, I think. Apart from Adam's endorsement of The Adventures of Pluto Nash, which I cannot in good conscience support.

We're hoping to get it on iTunes in the next day or so, at which point I'll update this post with the relevant information.

We're still finding our way with this and, although we were all pretty happy with Debuts as a first try, we're determined to improve it and make it the best podcast that we can, so any and all feedback is appreciated and welcome.

*Tentative because there is already another podcast with that title so we may be forced to change ours. Now, we could blame Joe for this because it was his idea and he didn't do a cursory Google search, so we will. It's your fault, Joe!

Things I Learned From Movie X: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

First off, sorry for all those colons in the title. Only proctologists should see so many colons in such quick succession, and even though they are something of a necessity, they are a bit of an eyesore.

Now, in thise edition of Things I Learned From Movie X, I try to mine some precious knowledge from Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, in which renowned Middle Eastern actor Jake Gyllenhaal plays the role of a filthy urchin who grows up to be a violent murderer, but who is also a prince so it's all gravy.

The best of these columns, in general, tend to come from films that are overblown, stupid yet kind of boring. Prince of Persia fulfills all three criteria, and is one of those glorious examples of people throwing a ton of money at the screen to scant reward, either artistically or commercially.

Paranormal Activity

Night #1 - 24 October 2009


A bit of background for anyone unfamiliar with the story of Paranormal Activity and who, unlike me, doesn't spend a little too much time reading about box office performance.

In 2006, Oren Peli decided to make a film about a couple being haunted by an otherworldly force in their home. After taking a full year to prepare for the film - even redesigning his house to fit the story - Peli screened it at festivals and began giving out DVDs in the hope of finding a distributor. Eventually, one DVD wound up on Steven Spielberg's desk and he was suitably impressed enough to agree to fund a big budget remake. Then something weird happened. The film got such strong reactions from a screening with an audience that the remake was canned and the original was released. As of the time of writing, a film made for only $15,000 has grossed over $40 million and rising.

Knowing all this going in, I had very high expectations. Its surprise success suggests that Paranormal Activity has captured the imagination of America in a way that few recent films have and a lot of the buzz suggested that it would be TEH SCARRIEST MOVY EVAH! but would it meet these expectations?

Initially, I didn’t think that it had. I left the cinema thinking "that was okay, nothing special", having enjoyed the film but not been bowled over by it. Then I started walking home, and realised that I was looking over my shoulder, my heart was beating quite fast and I was purposefully taking the long way home so as to keep to well-lit main roads. Clearly, the film had gotten to me.

Why did it affect me so? It's hard to say. It certainly wasn’t the story, which isn’t especially new; a couple hear things at night and the boyfriend (Micah Sloat) decides to set up a video camera in their room to see if anything weird happens, which it promptly does. We hear banging, doors move of their own accord and Katie (Katie Featherston) suffers violent nightmares, all accompanied by an ominous and oppressive white noise. This is a story that has been done before in the likes of The Orphanage and, most obviously, Poltergeist (they even bring in a psychic at one point) so there is little surprising about the plot.

Was it the intimate style of the film that got to me? Again, I wouldn’t say so. The film is presented as in-camera footage of Micah's recordings, which consist of night-time observation and day-time aftermath, which mostly consists of Micah and Katie fighting over how best to deal with their intruder and the strain its presence has on their relationship. Off the top of my head I can think of half a dozen fairly recent films that use that same or a similar conceit and most of them did it much better, though none as economically.

What sets the film apart, though, is its atmosphere and the relationship at its centre. The film features no music, almost no blood and relies almost entirely on in-camera effects. These create a believable environment for the film, maintaining the verisimilitude of the concept, and Peli uses them to very slowly build the tension. It wasn't until about 20 minutes in that the film got a reaction from me, but it shocked me because I hadn't realised how engaged I was and how much I was dreading the next night-time sequence. Dread is really the key word here since Peli's ability to establish and maintain that sense of dread is crucial to the ambience of the piece; its strength lies in the way that it often frustrates your expectations by giving you the set-up without the punchline to keep you anxious, making the moments when the scares come all the more effective. Then again, it's not that scary, it's got more of a creepy atmosphere to it which is actually more effective.

Micah and Katie are central to the film, being pretty much the only characters on screen throughout, and the way in which they interact with each other really feeds into the growing sense of doom that suffuses the film. Early on, as is so often the case in films that use the 'real event, handheld camera' idea, they are quite annoying as we see them being overly jovial for the camera and joking about their endeavour. As the film progresses, though, it takes the audience closer and closer to them, taking away the wall that separates us and letting us see the characters as they really are; terrified and powerless in the face of forces they can’t possibly comprehend or hope to defeat.

Micah, in particular, is a great example of this aspect of the film. He presents this alpha-male ‘this is my house and I’ll fix the problem’ machismo, which manifests itself in his repeated goading of the demon, but when anything actually happens he is completely helpless to stop it. Furthermore, he’s so afraid of being emasculated, either by the demon or by any experts he might call in to help fight it, that he winds up making the situation much worse for the real victim, Katie. His powerlessness, even if he can’t perceive it himself, ultimately defines the film.

It is a film that is almost destined to divide people – at the end of the screening I attended someone proclaimed loudly that the organiser of the festival should get his money back – but if it works for you then it'll really get into your head. It clearly worked for me, which is why I am writing this in a very brightly lit room and is also why I am acutely aware of even the slightest noise being made in my house at the moment.

Funny People

You always wanted too much from me, and I'm very mad at you.


Before reviewing Funny People, it's best to consider it mathematically.

Funny People is two-thirds of a good film, in that the first two thirds are really strong and the last third is knuckle-chewingly terrible, but the opening two-thirds are riddled with problems which in turn make them only two-thirds good to one third bad, whilst the final third does have enough redeeming features in it to make it about one-quarter good. So, we have two-thirds of two-thirds, which is 44%, and 25% of one-third, which is 8.33(recurring). Add this together, and we can conclude that Funny People is 52.33% good to 47.67% bad.

Let's consider the good two-thirds. The relationship between Ira (Seth Rogen) and George (Adam Sandler) is fascinating, largely thanks to Sandler's ability to play an embittered and angry rich man isolated by his wealth and confronted by his own mortality and his profound existential loneliness. He needs Ira in order to get by on a daily basis, yet he hates having to depend on someone so there is a constant sense of antagonism in their friendship that frequently veers from joking into abuse. It's a relationship that feels very volatile and real, something that could only have come into being during such heightened circumstances as George facing his own death.

It also works as an examination of Adam Sandler, albeit through the cypher of George Simmons. The parallels between the two men are manifold, from their level of success to the types of movies that they made their money with (I could easily see My Best Friend Is A Robot, co-starring Owen Wilson, being made as a Sandler vehicle) and the film even opens with real footage of Sandler making prank phone calls when he was younger (keep an eye/ear out for super-young Janeane Garofalo, Ben Stiller and Judd Apatow). I don't know how aware Sandler was of what Apatow was doing with the story, but the fact that he is prepared to be so thoroughly unpleasant and to utilise so many of his usual tricks (you want annoying voices? He's got 'em!) to that end suggests that the two of them were in cahoots when it came to deconstructing Adam Sandler, the comedy icon, though I think that one or both of them did mediate it to prevent it getting too dark, which is more the pity.

The film represents a crossroads for Apatow as he moves into dramatic territory that he has dabbled with in previous films but never to such an extent. Rather than wholly embrace that ethos and strike out for something new(ish) and make what he clearly wants to make, a James L. Brooks weepy mixed with a Hal Ashby subdued comedy, he relies on his standard dick-and-fart jokes as a crutch. However, rather than propping up the film they frequently trip it up. Whenever things get to serious or interesting, someone will swear or say something stupid, not so much cutting the treacle as burning the whole cake. It's very, very frustrating.

And that's without even getting on to the stand-up in the film which, for a film with 'funny' in the title, is painfully un-so. Often this is intentional, with comics like Randy (Aziz Ansari) serving to illustrate what Apatow considers to be bad stand-up, but that practiced by Ira and George isn't much better. There are some good routines in there, but most often they're just crass and dumb. Maybe it's just my taste in stand-up but I for one found it really tough to sit through so many routines that had so little impact.

The number of celebrity cameos in the film is also incredibly distracting, to the point that you end up with a scene in which George gets life lessons from Eminem, who then proceeds to scream abuse at Ray Romano. A sequence that is delirious in the moment, but really has no place in the film.

The number of routines and cameos showcases the other problem with the film; its general lack of focus. When the film was announced, many people seemed to think that it had the potential to be Judd Apatow's Annie Hall, the film that took him from being just a comedy film-maker to a film-maker of substance. Sadly, it isn't his Annie Hall, it's his Anhedonia. At two and a half hours, the film is way, way, way too long and there are so many bits that do nothing to enhance the story. Subplots such as a romance for Ira with another stand-up, footage of the sitcom that his roommate (Jason Schwartzmann) is on and the entire final third (in which a long-lost love plot is introduced) only serve to distract from the central relationship. You can't help but think that if Apatow had had what Woody Allen had, i.e., a really tough editor who could say ''this is terrible. Cut in half, get rid of the murder mystery and focus on the relationship with Annie'', then he could have delivered a film which was so much more potent and focused, not muddled and indigestible.

I think that people should see Funny People since, if nothing else, it boasts some great performances (I've not mentioned Eric Bana because he's only in the awful final third but he is great and is the only reason that that part of the film could be left in) and, for all its frustrations, it remains above all other things a very interesting failure.

Inglourious Proof/Death Basterds

As those of you who read this blog regularly (or anyone who has the capacity to look slightly to the left) will know, yesterday I saw Inglourious Basterds, the latest film about Quentin Tarantino. With the sort of synchronicity that so often befalls in life, I saw the film almost two years to the day after I wrote this long but not too bad article for [sadly now defunct website] Shefsteel.com, which I re-read to see what I had written about his career up to that point.

Apart from my pleasant surprise at seeing how good it is (aside from a few dalliances with grand sweeping statements, a pet hate of mine since it runs the risk of rendering the writing pompous and amateurish, though I think I get away with it), the biggest shock to me was how positive I was about Death Proof, Tarantino's half of the Grindhouse project. This surprises me because, in the subsequent two years, I have become quite hardline, regarding it as a sign of a director of great talent sliding inexorably into a regressive state of creative adolescence and obsolescence. Looking at my article then, I realised that much of what I wrote about Death Proof echoes what I wrote about Inglourious Basterds, and I began to wonder why I turned so strongly against Death Proof, and whether or not, by the time that Tarantino's next film comes out, I will regard it with the sort of barely suppressed contempt that I currently reserve for Death Proof.

Why do I dislike Death Proof so much?

Well, it's at least partly the result of discussions I have had about the film with people who like the film. Being somewhat on the fence about it when it was released, I was always in the centre of the arguments surrounding the film, and the more I encountered people who defended the film, the more I found to dislike in it. It's like an allergic reaction; I produced vitriol as a response to intrusions of contentment.

Aside from this, though, my problem with Death Proof can be summed up fairly simply. The film is (1) too long, in its uncut form, and even in its 90 minute/one half of Grindhouse form it felt sluggish and there were long, dull patches in which (2) the dialogue between the main characters dragged inexorably. Tarantino's dialogue is often the focus of the praise he receives, often justly so, but in Death Proof it falls completely flat. I can't tell if this is the result of the writing or the performers (I lean towards the latter, though more on that in a second) but the language feels tired and strained, it's like a bad cover version of Tarantino-esque dialogue. The film also (3) clearly doesn't know what it wants to be, and it's clear to the audience that Tarantino doesn't know what he wants it to be, though it is ironic how a film that is so unclear so clearly demarcates between the disparate elements that constitute it. Tarantino claims to love exploitation cinema so much and that the film is an homage to it, yet the film seems to feel that it is above the very kind of film that it seeks to emulate. Unlike Robert Rodriguez's half of the Grindhouse project, Planet Terror, which gleefully embraces the sleaze and shittiness of that style of film, Tarantino only really pays lip service to it in his film. The central concept, of a stunt driver who 'Death proofs' his car so that he can get involved in accidents that will kill his passengers but leave him unscathed, is rife with possibilities for a dark and dirty piece of sleaze, yet that aspect of the film so rarely surfaces, and is instead obfuscated by interminable stretches of dialogue between (4) uninteresting characters. Finally, (5) the film is rife with indulgences that distract, most notably the casting of Zoe Bell, a stunt double friend of Tarantino's, as 'Herself'. It's a piece of casting that might have added to the intensity of the film's (too) few chase scenes if Bell could act, but she sorely cannot. This is not wholly her fault, there are few things more daunting than being told to just act naturally in front of a camera or to 'be yourself', especially in a fictional film, but it's a self-consciously quirky idea that detracts from the film immensely.

So, those are my problems with Death Proof, are there any parallels to be drawn between it and Inglourious Basterds? Yes and no.

Both films are overlong, though even though Inglourious Basterds is clearly the lengthier effort, it is Death Proof that feels longer, thanks largely to its boring conversations between boring characters. Basterds gets one over on it thanks to its compelling characters, in the form of Hans Landa, Shoshanna Dreyfus and Bridget von Hammersmark (note how all the best characters in the film are and are played by non-Americans) and from having actors who can deliver the sort of fizzing dialogue with which Tarantino made his name. As much as I love Kurt Russell, he wasn't able to imbue Stuntman Mike with half the malevolence, sadism, intelligence and, perverse as it may seem, charm as Christoph Waltz is able to give to Hans Landa. So there seems to be a pro-, or at least lack of re-, gression on display here.

However, both films show signs that Tarantino's problems as a film-maker are deep-rooted and not down to problems of material or casting. Both films suffer from that confusion - no doubt the result of a hyperactive mind cartwheeling between ideas at the blink of an eye the shutter of a camera the tap of a key - that arises when Tarantino can't decide what film he wants to make. Both films have elements of the sleazy exploitation cinema that Tarantino so adores, yet they also seem like attempts to improve on it, make it serious, essentially stop it from being exploitation cinema anymore. This just doesn't work, making the moments that could be genuinely, unabashedly fun seem arch, and the serious moments seem out of place. Basterds is a better film than Death Proof because its non-exploitation moments (those featuring Hans Landa and Shoshanna) are so compelling, but they highlight one of the main problems with Inglourious Basterds; the Basterds themselves. Only two, maybe three, of the Basterds have any degree of flesh put onto their bones, and they don't show up in the film nearly enough to deserve a title being named after them. They often serve only to divert our attention from the interesting stuff that is going on elsewhere.

Thinking on it, Inglourious Basterds is a Frankenstein's monster of a film that has been assembled from two distinct, possibly unwilling, organ donors. It seems as if Tarantino came up with the subplot about Shoshanna and her cinema, realised how good it was, but was then lumbered with the Basterds, so he cut down their screen time but kept them in to keep the title (and the financial viability it entails). The two stories at no point cross paths, at most they come within an inch of touching each other when they happen to reach their respective crescendos in the same building, and even then they, independent of each other, achieve the same goal. The lack of integration between the plots (in every sense of the word) means that they could, like siamese twins, be surgically removed and the two could survive separated. The Basterds' film might be the weaker twin that dies shortly after the surgery, but it could still function shorn of its stronger sibling.

The two films also share moments of stunt casting that unbalance the film as a whole. Though Zoe Bell does no favours to Death Proof, Inglourious Basterds features the more egregious lapse in judgement on Tarantino's part since he decides to cast that odious spectre of former comedy glory/society's brief descent into idiocy, depending on your take, Mike Myers, in a brief role as a British general. With Zoe Bell you can kind of excuse her performance - she's a stunt person, who could have guessed she would be a bad actress? - but we all know how terrible Mike Myers can be. We've seen Goldmember, and we all fell over ourselves to avoid seeing The Love Guru. Surely any residual warmth felt towards him over Wayne's World can't extend to giving him a small role that you know he will ruin? Apparently not. He is allowed to inflict himself on the audience for an awkward scene of (Basil) exposition that serves only to introduce a character who, despite being played by the brilliant Michael Fassbender, doesn't make any real impact on the story beside being charming and spiffingly British.

Having exorcised some of my demons (and exercised my fingers), what conclusions can we draw? Will I look back on Inglourious Basterds as unkindly as I have looked back on Death Proof? I'd say 'no'. Both films show that Tarantino, whilst talented, has reached a point at which he has stopped trying to improve as a director, instead preferring to work within his own parameters and aiming his work at his fans, but there is more of a spark of the old magic in Basterds than there ever was in Death Proof. The moments that work show how good he can be, and even though the final package disappoints, it gives me a vague sense of hope that he could one day be the man who made Jackie Brown.

Reasons to be Cheerful: The Lovely Bones

Alice Sebold's 'The Lovely Bones' is not a good book. It's an interesting idea - a young girl looks down from Heaven to watch her family cope with the aftermath of her murder, as well the hunt for her killer - that too often indulges in grandiose statements about the nature of existence. It's a banal exercise in faux-intellectualism wrapped up in the sort of pretty precious prose that guaranteed it a place of honour in Richard and Judy's Book Club.

If I have such antipathy towards the source, why then am I so excited about the film version? Two words: Peter Jackson.



The New Zealand director behind The Lord of The Rings Trilogy, as well as a diverse filmography that covers zombie splatterfests, sweary puppets, killer teens and wacky ghosts, has directed the film and I have a great deal of faith in him as a film-maker. He is one of the few film-makers currently working who understands how to ground fantasy in a real world and who can combine spectacle with emotion. The Lovely Bones seems tailor made to his sensibilities, encompassing the aspects of horror, mystery and vaguely supernatural drama that characterised his 1994 masterpiece, Heavenly Creatures, but which also allows him to display his visual talents and love of effects, as evidenced in the picture of Susie Salmon's 'Heaven' above, and in the trailer:

You can view the trailer at the official site for the film

The few glimpses we get of heaven suggest that Jackson and his team have let their imaginations go wild with this one; shifting landscapes, a field of stars and flowers that unfurl under giant ice-sculptures. If nothing else, the film promises to be a visual feast.

Jackson and his co-writers, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, also have a history of turning books that aren't that great into terrific films, as evidenced by their sterling work in turning Tolkien's hugely imaginative but languidly paced and turgid tome into three wonderful films. Turning Sebold's novel into a workable film should be a snap for them after that mammoth undertaking.

The mere fact that The Lovely Bones is a bad book may play into the film's favour, There is a long and storied history of bad books being turned into good or great films. Orson Welles quite famously took on the book Badge of Evil, a book he considered terrible, to prove that he could make a great film from a substandard book. The film he made was Touch of Evil, one of Welles' finest films and a strong contend for one the best entries into the film noir genre. If the adage that a bad book could be turned into a great film holds true, then The Lovely Bones could wind up being a classic.

It's also got an amazing cast. Saoirse Ronan, who shot onto the scene as a young girl who does a terrible thing in Atonement, plays Susie, the girl whose murder sparks off the events of the story; Mark Walhberg and Rachel Weisz play her parents; Susan Sarandon plays her grandmother; and Stanley Tucci plays her murderer. That's a hell of a collection of character actors, and that's before we even mention that further down the cast list we have Michael Imperioli (Christopher from The Sopranos) and Thomas McCarthy (writer-director of The Station Agent). That much talent should hopefully be able to bring the rather limp narrative to life.

I still have reservations about the film; early problems such as Ryan Gosling backing out from playing the father over creative differences, and rumours that production was stopped due to Jackson fighting with his art director, suggest that it may not have been the happiest shoot (then again, history is littered with great films that emerged from the unhappiest circumstances). And, of course, I am still worried that all the talent in the world could not make a good film out of a bad book (then again, I'm sure people didn't think you could make a good film out of say, The Godfather). We live in hope, as always.

Mesrine: Killer Instinct

No-one kills me until I say so



There is a history in French cinema of fetishising American culture, appropriating their styles and iconography to their own ends, often doing it much better. This is most apparent in their adoption of the film noir genre as their own, as seen in the early films of the New Wave period, such as Breathless and Shoot The Piano, two noir-ish tales that put a Gallic slant on the gangster picture. In a summer that saw the anaemic Public Enemies, it only seems appropriate that a full-blooded gangster film should come from France, in the form of Jean-Francois Richet's 'Mesrine: Killer Instinct'.

A loose biopic of Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel), one of the most famous and notorious criminals of the post-war period, it follows Mesrine from his beginnings as a veteran of the struggles in Algeria who gets drawn into a life of petty crime, through his gradual indoctrination into the seedy underworld inhabited by the likes of Guido (Gerard Depardieu) and his eventual escape to Canada after he started robbing the wrong people. All of this takes place in just under two hours, making for a rather breathless experience.

Killer Instinct deals with many of the same ideas and motifs as Public Enemies, but it handles them in a much more deft and interesting way. Much like John Dillinger, Jacques Mesrine is a man who commits crimes almost for the thrill of it, both achieve a level of notoriety, even celebrity from their crimes, and both have great difficulty deciding whether to continue with that life or to settle down and pursue a new course. Both also feature, amongst other things, bank robberies and prison breaks, but whilst Public Enemies revels in the complexities of them, Mesrine approaches them in a sublimely simple way. If you want to break out of prison, why not just wait until the guards are hungover and cut the wires in the fence in broad daylight? This simple audacity marks not only Mesrine as a character, but also Mesrine as a film.

Richet's film manages to encompass a great many themes about France in the latter half of the 20th century. We are first introduced to Mesrine at the end of his life, as he is about to be gunned down by the French Secret Service, before the film takes us back to 1959, when Jacques is a soldier fighting against the rebels in Algeria. Already, we get a sense of France's shameful colonial past as Jacques is ordered to beat a man for answers, then is told to shoot the man's sister in order to get him to reveal the location of a bomb. Later on, when we are introduced to Guido, passing mention is made to Charles de Gaulle's 'Secret Army', suggesting that some of Guido's activities may have been sanctioned by the government, and the film is rife with references to the period and the confusion that existed in France in the early-50s and 60s.

Killer Instinct meticulously recreates the style of the eras it inhabits without obsessing over. It may evoke the calm cool mystique of the time, and the films that defined that era, but it does not dwell on them or try to emulate them, instead being happy to let them serve as dressing to its own story.

It would run the risk of being a mere indulgence in cool if it weren't for Mesrine himself, who is a fascinating character. Rife with inconsistencies and complexities, he's an all too human character. His relationship with women, in particular, often does a volte-face from tender and loving to ambivalent. Early in the film, we see Mesrine wreak bloody vengeance on a pimp who has badly disfigured a whore that Mesrine was seeing, displaying a distorted chivalry in his belief that a real man would not hit a woman. Later, however, when his wife Sofia (Elena Anaya) threatens to call the police to stop Jacques from going out and committing crimes, he beats her and shoves a gun in her mouth, revealing that he would always side with his friends if he had to make the choice between them and her, which contrasts sharply with early scenes in which he is shown to be a loving husband who is trying to go straight for the sake of his young family.

He's also very charming and cool. He's the sort of man who, after robbing one bank, would agree to rob another right across the street since he would have just enough time before the cops arrived. The sort of man who, when interrupted in the middle of robbing a house by the owners, would pretend to be a police officer investigating the scene of the crime. He's a smooth operator, yet also a clearly terrible person that the film shows little interest in redeeming. This dichotomy would not be possible without Vincent Cassel in the lead role.

Vincent Cassel absolutely dominates the film - as well he should, given the title - as Jacques Mesrine, displaying an ability to encapsulate two separate, opposing ideas at the same time. The script gives Mesrine his complexity and duality, but it is Cassel who is able to make him into a believable character, making Mesrine seem human, rather than a collection of anachronisms.

It's difficult to judge Killer Instinct since it is only the first part of the story, with the second part, Public Enemy No. 1, due for release next month. The very nature of this style of storytelling prevents the film from having any real sense of resolution, though it does at least offer up a defining final moment, rather than just a cliff-hanger followed by ''to be continued''. However, as a singular entity is a fine film and I was left slavering for more.

Observez l'annonce

Dark City

Shut it down.



Being a male in his early-20s, I spent much of the years 1999 to 2003 proselytising about the merits of The Matrix. As time has gone on, and sequels to that film have been released and polluted its memory, I've increasingly found myself at odds with my earlier opinions about it. As I've aged, I've started to question whether or not its Fauxdrillardian (one for my post-modernism peeps out there) philosophical musings were of any real substance, and whether it was just a pile of pretension built around some admittedly amazing action sequences.

The reason I mention this is that I can say with some conviction that Dark City, Alex Proyas' neo-noir masterpiece, is the film that The Matrix wishes it was.

Dark City is a triumph of visual design. Proyas, who has since gone on to direct such high-concept, low-quality, big-budget tripe as I, Robot and Knowing, imbues every frame with more visual imagination than most directors fit into entire careers. It takes place in a city that is controlled by The Strangers, a group of grey-faced monsters with psychic abilities who are able to change the nature of reality. Unbeknownst to its citizens, every night the Strangers alter the shape of the city, the composition of its skyline, the order of its streets, and the very nature of its people by altering their memories.

One such inhabitant is John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell), who wakes up to discover that he has been missing for three weeks and is being hunted as the lead suspect in a series of grisly murders. As Murdoch tries to unravel the mystery of his own life, he finds himself coming into contact with Dr. Shreber (Kiefer Sutherland), a psychiatrist who seems to have an intimate knowledge of The Strangers, and that he is being pursued by Inspector Frank Bumstead (William Hurt), a dogged policeman who finds something fascinating about John's case.

Thanks to the ever-shifting nature of the city, Proyas and his production designers are given free reign to mash together buildings, devices and vehicles from many different periods. The different styles exist at the same time, creating a disorientating world in which nothing is ever certain, not even memories. In much the same way as it combines visual sensibilities the film combines the genres of science fiction and film noir. As we follow John through the maze of his mind and his city, we are drawn into his paranoia. The Gothic design of the world perfectly compliments Murdoch's search for himself; they form a maze, a collection of claustrophobic passages and towering buildings that obfuscate the nature of the world, in much the same way Murdoch's past has been obfuscated by The Strangers.

As the story progresses, we learn that John has somehow developed the same abilities as The Strangers, and that he is able to bend reality to his whims. This does make for one of my minor gripes with the film, that the way in which psychic powers are demonstrated is through having the air blur in a funnel shape. It's a bit distracting, and just serves to underline how little cinematic potential there is where psychics are concerned, but once you've acclimatised to the effect it really doesn't matter.

Philosophically, Dark City represents a literalisation of Last Thursdayism, the notion that for all we know the world might have been created at any term, as early as last Thursday, and that we would be unaware of this because the world would have been created to seem like a much older world. It's an idea that has always fascinated me (or has? Have I always been fascinated by the idea, or do I only remember being fascinated but did not exist until last Thursday?) so I pretty much instantly got on board with the ideas of the film.

The Strangers' experimentation with transplanting memories, instantly changing their lives in an instance, questions the very nature of humanity. Are we merely the product of our memories, or is there some fundamental part of us, some soul, that truly defines who we are. The film is suffused with an existential dread that enhances the already impressive designs of the world, creating an holistic view that is exhilarating, both on a visual level and an intellectual one.

If you are going to watch any version of the film, I would recommend tracking down the Director's Cut, for no other reason than it cuts out the studio-imposed opening narration, which ruins some of the plot twists.

The Trailer

Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince

Or, Harry Potter and The Raging Hormones



Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) returns for his sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. This year, he tries to figure out what Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) and Professor Snape (Alan Rickman) are up to, who is trying to off Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) and try to get information out of the new potions teacher, Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent). Oh, and there's some stuff about kissing and some book.

By this point we are six films in and we know pretty much what to expect from a Harry Potter film; the three principle actors will be either good, functional or annoying (Radcliffe, Grint, Watson respectively), the supporting cast of thesps will be fantastic, regardless of how minor or important their roles are (Jim Broadbent as Horace Slughorn is the standout this time around, veering from awkward good-humour to deep personal tragedy in an instance) and the effects will be terrific. And, of course, things will get darker and scarier.

What is different this time around is the energy of the film and its tone. One of the major hurdles that confronted the Harry Potter films is that they have been hamstrung by J.K. Rowling's books. Now, I love the books, but any fan would have to admit that, after the major event of Goblet of Fire (the return of Voldemort) the series went into a holding pattern as we waited for the final showdown to come in Deathly Hallows. There were big events in the in-between books, deaths of notable characters and the introduction of the Horcruxes, but they are largely set up for what is to follow.

The previous film, The Order of the Phoenix, and this one have both had to deal with being essentially filler, and it is a remarkable achievement that the two stand up so well as films in their own right, even though not very much happens in either film apart from the hinted character deaths.

Much of the credit for this must be given to David Yates, who directed both Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince and is currently working on the two-part finale, The Deathly Hallows. Yates made his name as a director for the BBC, most notably directing the original TV series of State of Play, Paul Abbott's tense and dense journalism drama from 2003. It's quite surprising that he has so adeptly shifted from medium-budget drama to big-budget fantasy, but the series as a whole seems to have benefited from his involvement.

Much like Alfonso Cuaron, who directed the best film in the series, The Prisoner of Azkaban, Yates has a keen visual sense, coupled with an ability to square whimsy with darkness and a dramatist's grasp of emotions. Each shot in Half-Blood Prince is lovingly framed, each camera move seems imbued with a sense of the mystical, and every exchange drives the story, with little flab to slow it down.

This stems at least in part from Half-Blood Prince being the first film to be released after the books have all been published. Before, directors and writers were unsure what to cut and what to leave in, resulting in either sluggishly paced, overly faithful adaptations (Chris Columbus' first two offerings) or aimless, digressive pieces that kept as much as possible to avoid cutting anything that might be needed later (Goblet of Fire). Knowing now what needs to be in and what doesn't, Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves are able to focus on what matters and what will serve the final chapter of the story best. This gives the film its energy; gone are the extraneous plot divergences and lack of focus, replaced by a clear plot, even if it is one that is only leading up to an unhappy event. It's two and a half hours long and it didn't feel like it at all.

The other element that sets the film apart from its brethren is that it is funny. And not in the ''Oh, aren't those kids precocious'' way that the early films were or the slightly forced style of humour more recently adopted. It is genuinely funny and wittily written. It's like an odd mix of conspiracy thriller, horror and Richard Curtis. When not focusing on attempted murder and manipulation of an old man, the film spends its time detailing the love lives of its main characters. The very, very English repression of their emotions makes for a surprisingly funny comedy of manners, like Jane Austen with wands. Seeing these young people struggle with burgeoning emotions is surprisingly real, given the nature of the film, and apart from the frequent use of the word ''snogging'' (seriously, does anyone use that term past the age of 12?), a hangover from Rowling's rather awkward depictions of love in her novels, its surprisingly engaging.

Hangovers from Rowling's work do cause problems elsewhere, though, as the film comes undone slightly in its final act. It's been a while since I read the book, but I remember that the search for the identity of The Half-Blood Prince was one of the key plot threads and presented Harry with a personal mystery to solve that lasted all the way to the end of the book. Here, it plays an important part in an early scene, gets a cursory mention halfway through, then isn't mentioned until the Prince's identity is revealed.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, as I've said, the trimming of fat from the novel makes the film all the stronger, but it is really distracting when Harry mentions the Half-Blood Prince because he is so otherwise absent. It made me wonder if the film couldn't have been improved if they had removed that aspect entirely. It's not like films haven't done that before; where the hell was the Ultimatum in The Bourne Ultimatum?

Some fans have complained about changes to the story, particularly the way in which the end was staged, but I can't really find anything to complain about. The lack of a big battle makes the finale all the more powerful, the attack of the Weasly's house is a visually striking set-piece, and Harry's actions towards the end add an ambiguity that was lacking from the book.

Six films in and the series has all the right elements that have made it so good in the past but it also seems to have found the director that it needs to bring about a satisfactory conclusion. Here's hoping that Yates can shoulder the burden and give us the climax we all deserve.

Ed's Top 10 of the Year (so far)

Okay, I know what you're thinking; why are you doing a top ten of the year when the year isn't even through, and why are you doing it two-thirds of the way through the year when halfway through would make so much more sense, isn't that kind of stupid? And to that I say, ouch, that hurts. Why would you think that, it's just a mean thing to think. You know what, I'm not going to bother. No, you can't get me to continue, you've hurt my feelings. Fuck you.

Okay, I'm back. Anyway, the reason I'm doing this because when I usually do top 10s for the end of the year I invariably leave out something I watched in the first half of the year and slap myself on the forehead when I see them on other top ten lists, so this is kind of a midway point so that, if the rest of the year is a bust, I'll at least have this list to fall back on to remind of how good the first 7 months of the year were. And I'm doing this now for two reasons; 1, I originally planned to do this at the end of June, but The Dark Knight and WALL-E would both be released in July and they were my two most anticipated films of the year, so I put it off until I'd seen both; and 2, I just got lazy and didn't get around to writing this up after I'd seen them.

So, without any further ado, here's the list and my reasons for them.

10. Iron Man - It's not the best comic book adaptation ever made, it's a bit too stupid for that and if you even begin to think about the morals of it then it starts to resemble something co-written by a 5-year old with a tenuous grasp of how the arms trade works and an indecisive 20-something having an argument and constantly backtracking. That aside, it's a fun piece of popcorn entertainment that is firmly anchored by a great performance by Robert Downey Jr. and manages to be interesting for a full hour before descending into Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots territory for the last half an hour, at which point it gets a bit tiresome.

9. Cloverfield - Say what you like about the direction, the unlikable characters and the sheer stupidity of their actions (who climbs a building that is about to fall down for no good reason? How can someone who has had a FUCKING GREAT BIG PIPE through them survive for another couple of hours?) it's still a visceral experience that had me gripped enough not to notice all the problems with it until after I'd left the cinema, and that first viewing alone is enough to warrant a place in my Top 10.

8. No Country For Old Men - Bleak, nihilistic brilliance played out over the vast expanse of Texas and New Mexico, it's a taut thriller and an interesting discussion about the nature of the world and humanity in general. Javier Bardem is brilliant but Josh Brolin and Tommy Lee Jones are his equals and the whole package is great.

7. Lars and the Real Girl - A funny, sweet film that makes the most of its own subject matter and manages to follow it through to its logical end, something that a lot of films with interesting ideas in them fail to do (Hello, Stranger Than Fiction). Ryan Gosling proves himself to be one of the most versatile actors of his generation and his Lars is one of most lovable misfits you'll see in any film this year.

6. The Mist - I'm a big admirer of Frank Darabont's work and this was no different. A relentlessly bleak film about the willingness with which people will tear each apart that also packs in plenty of B-movie thrills. The ending is a bit of kicker as well.

5. Enchanted - I grew up during the American Animation Renaissance, a period which saw Disney awaken from two decades of creative stupor after the death of Walt Disney to produce some of their best work and Enchanted is an affectionate, playful tribute to the films I grew up loving and those that preceded them. Amy Adams is beautiful and naive as the Disney princess transported to real-life New York, the songs are great and it's got Timothy Spall in it.

4. There Will Be Blood - For the longest time, this was at Number 1 on the list, but a couple of late entries and a rewatch of another candidate has shoved it down the list a few places, but that's not to take away from a visionary work from a great director. It's a masterpiece, for sure, and one of the most daring and unique filmic experiences that I've ever had. Sadly, it didn't quite worm its way into my heart and brain as much as...

3. WALL-E - I'm a Pixar fan boy, again, that stems on from my childhood love of Disney and animation in general, and it's rare that a year that sees a new release from them goes by without that film winding its way into my top ten, and this one really deserves. A funny, painfully sad and sweet film with more heart than its robotic stars would lead you to believe it had.

2. The Diving Bell and The Butterfly - This is the older candidate I alluded to earlier that, after I rewatched it, displaced There Will Be Blood, and I stand by that. Julian Schnabel's adaptation of a story that was previously thought unfilmable is technically impressive, as the director takes us inside the body and mind of a man all but totally paralysed, but it's also a breathtakingly beautiful and heartbreaking story of the imagination and hope.

1. The Dark Knight - You know, I may watch a lot of so-called 'art house' films but at heart I'm still the 7 year old who saw Jurassic Park because it had dinosaurs in and loves a big old blockbuster, so to see a film which marries those two sensibilities is a rare pleasure. Or it would be had Christopher Nolan not already done it once before with Batman Begins. I don't really need to add anything else to the review I wrote before, other than I loved it from beginning to end and hope that that creative team can reconvene to make a third one and that it's even half as good as this one.