Very hush-hush. The world of secret intelligence is one of private encounters behind closed doors: very hush-hush. There is something inherently dramaturgical about such scenarios, whose language games unfold in the absence of extras and their entire hubbub. This works to David Hare’s advantage: prolific he may be, at a writing desk, but his directorial prowess is oft maligned. Here, that singular theatrical flair produces character-driven drama, whose plot is intimate to the protagonist, propelled by his discoveries and self-reinventions. Don’t expect pretensions to international espionage intrigue, or the genre conventions of conspiracy thrillers. Page Eight is really about the climacteric of one senior officer’s life and the changing constitution of our security services.

Catch my review from EIFF 2011 at The Ooh Tray.

Not just a bad pun? Perfect Sense presents itself as a major event at the festival, reuniting director David MacKenzie and star Ewan McGregor – last seen together in the former’s dazzling debut Young Adam, which premiered at Edinburgh in 2003. It rapidly became apparent this is a smaller film, if not in ambition then certainly in accomplishment – a footnote to the otherwise inexorable upward trajectory of both men’s careers.

Catch my review from EIFF 2011 at The Ooh Tray.

Coco (Daniel Hendler) and Pipi (Jazmin Stuart) are not, despite their names, a pair of Argentinean glove puppets. Rather, they are a young couple living a somnambulistic existence in their new-build city-centre apartment. Phase 7 at first appears to be a peculiarly lifelike domestic sitcom, whose tone rapidly establishes this couple as believable and sympathetic protagonists. But wait, isn’t this supposed to be another post-apocalyptic shoot-out? It’s certainly described as such in the press notes.

Catch my review from EIFF 2011 at The Ooh Tray.

The decline of Bobby Fischer, one time chess world champion, is a sad tale to tell. And so it is to the credit of director Liz Garbus that her biography of the late great delights primarily in his earlier years, without refusing to flinch from the wretchedness to come. We witness the course of his career, from first finding his obsession at age six, through to winning the world title from Soviet Boris Spassky in 1972 (an event of such gravity that it dominated global sports coverage for weeks, before making Fischer the best-selling chess writer of all time), his recession from view and final re-emergence in the grip of madness.

Catch my review from EIFF 2011 at The Ooh Tray.

“I don’t give a damn ’bout my bad reputation”. Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) and Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) are provocative teenage girls in misogynist times. Both want to challenge gender norms, and idolise musicians who dispute the status quo.

Cherie introduces herself, after a menstrual mishap, with a high school talent show performance as David Bowie – an arresting and elegant routine concluded, amid jeers, with Fanning flipping the bird. Surely part of the objective in casting Dakota Fanning was to articulate the gradual corruption of her character: the progression from a famously recognisable face of innocence and purity to something crippled and despoiled is seamless; the joint is sewn up in several dreamlike scenes of performance and indulgence, sexual and narcotic. It is through musical performance that her self-assertion and, sadly, sexual commodification are fertilised. Her implicit corruptibility precipitates a spiral of self-destructive behaviours that lead ultimately to the band’s disintegration.

Catch my review from EIFF 2010 at The Ooh Tray.

Black Dynamite is my favourite kind of guilty pleasure. It is a perfect comedy, but its humour doesn’t turn on situational drama. Instead, it is joke driven, but those jokes are highly witty and expertly crafted homages to the whole gamut of Blaxploitation film. It has a mad brilliance which is wholly substantive. I would do Scott Sanders (aka DJ Suckapunch), Michael Jai White and Byron Minns a disservice to try capture its essence in a short review, particularly as I am so poorly versed in its source material. Take a peek at the youtube trailer instead (although be warned, it contains most of the best material). Not only does Black Dynamite put to shame Tarantino and other fanboys who have tried to resuscitate forgotten genres, but also leaves mainstream multiplex comedies of 2009 with significantly higher budgets trailing in its dust. I would pay for friends of mine to see Black Dynamite, and I look forward to seeing it with them. Let’s just hope that more of this sort of thing reaches a wider audience in the near future.

Black Dynamite, Dir. Scott Sanders, Writ. & Star. Michael Jai White & Byron Minns, ARS Nova, USA, 2009

Any attempt at a synopsis would appear much more enticing than the film itself – to avoid responsibility for any inflated expectations, I will just direct you to the trailer (which, as usual, reveals many of the ‘best’ bits).

It’s a script that sounds like one of two things. First, the catastrophic self-conscious abortion of a writer whose concept has unexpectedly secured funding, but who discovers too late that he can deliver neither character nor humour. Second, the vanity project of spoilt pseudo-aristocratic rugger buggers suffering from brain damage (was it the scrum or the lash, lads?) whose sole inspiration comes from reruns on Dave viewed through a groggy film of chunder.

Not one quip turns on something out of history – the complete absence of satire betrays the film’s unintentional historical illiteracy. It is not an irreverent film – it’s simply an ignorant one. Even if it is an attempt to pastiche pop-culture manipulation and mythologisation of the period, it fails to do so with more than half a brain cell.

The incredible and entirely wasted vocal talent behind Jackboots on Whitehall cannot conceivably have consented on the basis of the script alone. They must have worked on the presumption that the directors could bring humour with the visual component of the film (which, if I might remind you, is 90% of the playing field, boys). And while the film’s animation is competently designed, if underwhelming, there is a surprising lack of visual wit or slander.

It’s not far into the film that one start to realise why brothers McHenry have not placed themselves at the forefront of marketing. Light is gradually shed on the reason for which a film with such ostensibly ‘British’ (read, ‘English’) credentials was produced and sold from the United States. It might do well there, running late nights in small urban screens to cackling clutches of drug-addled idiots.

I will confess, there are actually two little chuckles in the film’s gruelling ninety-three minutes. Both are at the expense of camp renditions of Goering and Himmler. The Germans are gay and the British (sorry, English) are drunk and sweary – ha, ha.

I might have been able to enjoy the film’s closing passage, in which the Scots save the day under the banner of Mel Gibson. But Jackboots on Whitehall had been so consistently unfunny, slapdash, reprobate, that I was in no mood to make concessions. And while anyone who doesn’t take oneself too serious can have a laugh at their own expense, the joke falls flat if it ISN’T FUNNY.

Jackboots on Whitehall, dir./wri. Edward & Rory McHenry, star. Ewan McGregor, Rosamund Pike, Richard E Grant, Timothy Spall, Tom Wilkinson, Alan Cumming, et al., UK, 2010

After a long, tiresome journey with little Natan – boats, trains – we discover his father Jorge’s home. He lives by a tiny, remote island to the east of Yucatan, in a wooden house on stilts. They live literally on the water. Father and son work together. Jorge teaches his boy about everything, showing him by example. Soft and hard lessons in painting, joinery, fishing, by line or by pole, diving, the sea, the sea. Always so warm, they need only wear trunks.

These are the people of Banco Chincorro, the world’s second largest coral barrier reef. Its wildlife discloses itself at once as living being and resource. Natan discovers the means of feeding oneself. The food – grilled snapper, stewed barracuda, spiny lobster tails. Caught on hand-pulled lines, with the spear gun, or captured in their coral caves.

Together they work, sing songs, dance passionately, sleep arms round one another. Natan’s imagination is fed by the ever present threat of crocodiles, an over-confident African Ibis (which they nearly domesticate, feeding her household insects). It is like an interpretation of Peter Pan and one lost boy, set entirely in Terrence Malick’s environmental cutaways.

Alamar is preoccupied with how lives are lived immanently to nature. These beautiful brown bodies live on the sea. Many shots focus on their equipment, whether hunting gear, woodworking tools, or simply feet, grappling intuitively with steep inclines and wooden beams. Jorge is forever coping, in flow. His son is allowed to take risks, face danger, learn by involvement and excitement.

A celebration of fatherhood, with its joys and responsibilities. The actors Jorge and Natan really are father and son, as is so obvious from the film. That bond brings to life this fiction. Yet the fictive Jorge and Roberta cannot compromise, and provide a pair of loving parents to Natan. They must say good bye to one another. This is a great sadness of fatherhood.

A lament for feeling of ending, for father and son – particularly, in childhood. Life on the sea, from the perspective of a five year old boy, is entirely seductive. Even to us, it appears absolutely exquisite. Natan can just about bear to leave, not knowing what awaits him in Rome. “It doesn’t matter where you are. I’ll be taking care of you.”

What is ‘slow cinema’? What makes a film slow is nothing happening. In Alamar, every happening is an event, a little miracle. The acuity with which their exotic domesticity is photographed – detailed, privileged – and focusing on the most mundane but most fundamental subjects – fatherhood, childhood, endings – results in a film that is more captivating than most big narratives. Anything but slow.

Natan draws a tiny picture of his family in Chincorro, and sets it adrift in a gallon jug. Maybe it will arrive in Mexico. Maybe Italy. In the drawing he includes the cameraman, an suggestion that this could be real, that they have indeed lived together in that house all this time. A bout de souffle.

Alamar, dir./wri. Pedro González-Rubio, star. Jorge Machado, Natan Machado Palombini Nestór Marín, Roberta Palombini, Mexico, 2009

The two leads, Henry Burke (Matt Bush) and Travis Breaux (Sean Marquette) particularly impress. The former played our hero’s puerile nemesis in Adventureland, but is here cast against type as the straight-laced leading man, and pulls it off with aplomb. Meanwhile, the latter gets a little limelight after years as a teen actor on television, and convinces as the stoner with a heart of gold.

Subverting the typical anti-drug narrative exploited by reactionary campaigners and educational bodies in the US, Burke is a straight-A student destined for MIT. But in an impulsive moment of bonding and rediscovered childhood kinship, he takes a puff of “the sticky green…the cannabis sativa” from former pal Breaux (aptly named, indeed). This unfortunately coincides with their principal (by God, the most remarkable transformation of Michael Chiklis), whose shoulder carries a chip the size of Michigan, instigating a war on drugs, beginning with comprehensive drug screening.

The two teens are brought together by their near-forgotten friendship, a sense of responsibility for the screw-up, and a desperate need to save a promising future. The wicked scheme that Beaux concocts? You can’t expel Burke if the entire school tests positive…they hatch a riotous scheme to dope the entire school population. That is the whole premise, but it’s filled out and followed up with such wit and joie de vivre that this description fails to capture what makes the film so special.

There’s dope-fiend, drug dealer (and qualified attorney) Psycho Ed, played by an increasingly unpredictable Adrien Brody. How many left-field, low-budget roles has he taken on since King Kong? This must be the best. This is the guy our heroes choose to rob from for their madcap plan. We meet him as he sits in a cloud of weedsmoke by a tank, in which his pet toad croaks “Whut?”, to his perennial bafflement. He’s a dangerous element, though not ultimately a malevolent force.

The Board of Governors spends half the film touring their school, affording countless opportunities for ridiculous interaction with the stoned student body – particularly redolent of The Happiest Days of Your Life. Staff reveal their most intimate of intimates. And Brandon Ellis (Colin Hanks), the down-with-it Assistant Dean, riffs wildly on his half-baked jive talk, somehow managing to channel the early Judge Reinhold.

I must confess that there’s nothing unexceptional about any one element of the production. It is unremarkably shot, apparently effortlessly so, and in each scene they clearly stick to the script without creative spontaneity. What makes it more than the sum of is parts is the good job each component does, and the sheer sense of fun the whole thing is animated by. A simple, dirty good laugh – and the best (male) teen comedy since Superbad.

High School, dir. John Stalberg, wri. Linthorst, Stalberg, Susco, star. Adrien Brody, Colin Hanks, Michael Chiklis, Matt Bush, Sean Marquette, US, 2009

Such set-pieces are delightful – there’s a prison-break which injects real energy to the second act. As soon as plot is required to contextualise such coups de foudre, Toy Story gets pretty dull. It seems that Arndt, Lasseter, Stanton and Unkrich can architect exciting, dynamic scene sequences, but has trouble tying them together into a consistently entertaining whole. There are plot points that stretch the suspension of disbelief (so the toys, Once Again, don’t believe Woody, and this time on the rather mundane point of whether Andy’s mother was supposed to leave them as trash on the kerb – the instigating incident for the entire film).

Others will disagree, and I suppose my lack of enthusiasm stems from an overwhelming sense of deja vu. Toy Story 3 peddles the same charming and honourable nostalgia, the preoccupation with unrestrained childhood love, and the virtues of selfless service. Always a refreshing gear shift from the sort of revolting cultural assumptions that pervade most Hollywood fare, but can it sustain another sequel?

Then again, an inspired selection of new characters really lifts the film onto higher ground. Lots O’ Hugs is a delightfully Machiavellian Care Bear, whose sickly sweet down-home drawl hides a sinister side (and who has one of the worst puns of the film: “F.A.O. my Schwartz”). Ken (described pricelessly as Barbie’s accessory) provides most of the comic relief, and an excellent job he does too. Then there’s Chuckles the Clown, whose principal joke is simply his appearance.

The throwaway character gags make it worth sitting through, just. The original cast (those still among the living) continue to do an incredible job. My personal favourite is the excitable Tyrannosaurus Rex, voiced by the inimitable Wallace Shawn. And the addition of a prospective new owner for the toys, Bonnie (Emily Hahn), proves to be totally endearing.

I firmly believe Toy Story 3 to be superior in almost every way to its irritating predecessor. The visuals have enjoyed improvements in graphical technique over the intervening years, and are now simply delightful. It’s as effective, entertaining a mainstream American children’s film as one could imagine.

One big thing bothers me. It’s self-evident that 3D has added nothing to this film. As expected, Pixar offers a short film to preface the main feature. Night and Day, by contrast, is entirely predicated on three dimensional effects – so much so that it’s remarkably difficult to describe without seeing it. Two amorphous old-school animated gents run about in the foreground, while a background plane of various exterior settings acts as the texture for their blank bodies. These settings both express our characters’ emotions and allow them to argue, ogle, entertain, and otherwise communicate with one another. It is a delight to behold, and seems entirely original.

Unfortunately, half way through the characters’ bodies settle on a radio mast, and a voice over informs us that critics are only deriding 3D in the cinema because they are afraid of change, of the new. Frankly, I was insulted. If Toy Story 3 had fulfilled the promise of that short, and actually depended in some substantial way on the format, it would have been legitimate. Unfortunately for Pixar, they come across as complete hypocrites.

Toy Story 3, dir. Lee Unkrich, wri. Michael Arndt et al., star. Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack et al., US; released 23/07/2010