cinematographique

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.

There are (at most) three jokes in Jackboots on Whitehall. That’s a rate of one every thirty-one minutes. None of them are funny.

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.

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‘To The Sea’ – Alamar. An extraordinarily beautiful film. A slice-of-life drama – fictive yet with quite remarkable verisimilitude – it’s the most exotic, aesthetic and fragile life that’s sectioned. Back-story is told in pre-credit photographs. A beautiful child with his Hispanic father. Each is equally arresting, gorgeous brown, one dashing, the other miniscule. White Italian mother, whose voiceover details their romance, their separation, her return to Rome with child.

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.

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High School is too good to pass over, to consign as a mere stoner movie. It should be discussed in the same breath as the work of Hughes and Linklater, not merely in the same paragraph. A significant part of what makes High School so entertaining is the extent to which the audience feels part of the fun. Truly likeable characters and the excellent cast who bring them to life are critical to this. A sharp, original script with its fast and hard humour keep us on side, perpetuating the snowballing feel-good effect.

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.

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Toy Story 3 opens as an explosive action spectacular. The gang recall the childhood fantasies of their owner, Andy. The quality of graphic design is immediately apparent, though the usefulness of three dimensions remains unclear. Woody and Jessie chase a runaway train full of orphan Trolls, kidnapped by the wicked Potatoheads. The train flies into a chasm, before being rescued by Buzz Lightyear. Just as the heroes catch up with the culprits, making a getaway in Barbie’s corvette, evil Dr. Porkchop arrives in his porcine spaceship, and drops a Barrel of Monkeys A-bomb.

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).

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What do I think about Mundane History?

I left the cinema feeling truly elated, endorphins coursing through my veins.

I sat in the cinema for 75 odd minutes, comatose with boredom.

We watch a live-in nurse, Pun, care for newly paralysed upper-middle class youth, Ake.

Ake is unhappy with his lot, and rotten to his family, though eventually reaches out to Pun.

Pun is just about satisfied with life, and epitomises the kind of recognisably human character with whom I am likely to identify – who has had dreams but rarely chased them, or had the opportunity, and makes do with what is ready to hand.

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