Reviews Archives - Page 7 of 9

October 16, 2015

Film Review: A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night

Our guest blogger is hobbyist film and TV series reviewer and writer Harry Casey-Woodward:

A Girl walks home alone at night, 2015, 18, dir Ana Lily Amirpour, 3/5

I’m not a big fan of vampires movies, unless they’re done well. I dislike the way certain films and TV shows (cough cough Twilight cough) have portrayed vampires as surly, sparkling love interests. I’m more a fan of the old fashioned kill-them-first-shag-them-later variety. I also dislike the fact that vampires have been done to death. But I guess vampire films are like any other genre. Out of the majority of over-clichéd, over-sexed muck rises a few gems that dare to do things differently and show everybody else how it’s supposed to be done.

There was Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In in 2008. I liked its original premise of a young girl vampire making friends with a human boy. However I don’t know if it was the film’s sparse, sombre tone or there was something wrong with me when I tried to watch it but I just found it a bit dull. This was certainly not the case with the subject of this review.

This year’s vampire flick (now on DVD and blu-ray) is the most striking and unusual of its kind I’ve ever seen. For one thing, it’s set in Iran with dialogue faithfully in Farsi while remaining an American production. Elijah Wood is one of the executive producers and he features in the special feature interviews.

Watch these interviews and you will understand exactly how an Iranian vampire film came together. The director Ana Lily Amirpour has an Iranian background and comes across as a female version of Quentin Tarantino. She swears a lot and chatters enthusiastically about her favourite things, which include spaghetti westerns, pop music and vampires. She set out to write a screenplay that brought all these elements together. She had already shot a couple of shorts set in Iran and when she tried on a chador veil one of the extras was wearing, she knew her vampire had to be Iranian. Of course.

But she’s not just planted a vampire in Iran. She’s planted a vampire in a fictional desert town named Bad City , home to various social misfits including a prostitute, a pimp, a transvestite, an urchin, some spoilt kids, a junky and his son Arash (Arash Marandi) who dresses like James Dean and drives a hot vintage car. Even when his beloved ride gets taken as payment for his father’s drugs and he breaks his hand punching a wall in anger, he still looks cool with a cast and a bicycle.

While he’s trying to look after his father and cat, make money and keep on looking cool, the vampire simply named the Girl is prowling the streets at night, looking suitably menacing yet somehow cute in a black flowing chador as she preys on scummy men, terrorises children and steals their skateboards.

The actress Sheila Vand gives an astonishing performance. She never smiles and her lines are rare too, but she communicates so much menace and loneliness through her expressions you don’t know whether to be scared or feel sorry for her.

The sparse dialogue in this film is a merit. It’s clear that Amirpour has learnt a lot from her favourite Sergio Leone. Her movie runs on the less-is-more principle, relying on the actor’s expressions and actions to tell the story rather than dialogue. She also makes heavy use of atmosphere and suspense rather than gore in the horror scenes, which is refreshing regarding most blood-spattered horrors today. In fact for a vampire movie there is very little blood, except for one nasty scene and even then the film is in black and white.

It’s clear from the start that this is not a straightforward horror. Amirpour is more concerned with giving her audience a visual feast. She is also a big fan of David Lynch. With the film being black and white and featuring various long shots of industrial scenery, as well as being an urban nightmare populated by sad freaks, I couldn’t help being reminded of such Lynch films as Eraserhead and Blue Velvet.

However, while the film is a banquet for the eyes and ears (the soundtrack consists of Iranian and Western pop mixed with spaghetti western-style music), perhaps the film is too concentrated on style and trying to be hip. For example, amidst all the culture references the plot boils down to a love story between Arash and the vampire. It’s the film’s presentation of romance which gets on my nerves. These two very good looking people meet, are instantly attracted to each other and their lovelorn talk consists mostly of comparing life to music: ‘don’t you wish you could live in a song?’ etc. I’m sorry but this fantasy does not match my past awkward, bumbling attempts at dating and thus I believe it encourages unrealistic romantic expectations. Then again the film is just that, a fantasy.

Nevertheless as cool and fun and imaginative the film is, I couldn’t help feeling a little underwhelmed at the end. The film bends over backwards to satisfy you superficially with stunning visuals. When it comes to the plot however, I feel the film could have gone for more emotional impact with the dramatic events it depicted. It’s cool that the film opted for a less-is-more approach concerning the dialogue and emotion depicted, but there’s never any real conflict between the characters. So as dark as the film gets, it doesn’t really pack a punch. Still, it’s worth seeing for the cat Masuka’s performance alone.

This is still the coolest and most genre-busting vampire movie you will ever see and I applaud Amirpour’s unique vision and cinematic enthusiasm. I’m looking forward to her next movie The Bad Batch, a love story set in a cannibal colony in a Texas wasteland. I hope she does a western.

Images from IMDB

October 10, 2015

Film Review: Fear and Desire

Our guest blogger is hobbyist film and TV series reviewer and writer Harry Casey-Woodward:
Fear and Desire, 1953, dir Stanley Kubrick, cert 12, 3/5

Stanley Kubrick is one of my favourite directors, so I was rather excited when back in 2013 Eureka released his debut as part of their Masters of Cinema series on DVD. They even added, as special extras, three short documentaries Kubrick did, two of which are his earliest examples of film making. So you’ve got a nice little package of Kubrick gold if you’re a fan; the beginnings of a career that would span nearly fifty years. To be honest, we’re lucky to be able to watch Fear and Desire on DVD at all. Kubrick detested it so much he removed it from circulation in the 60s when he became more recognised, with only one print surviving in New York.

Fear and Desire

You can kind of see why. Kubrick referred to his first film as a ‘bumbling, amateur film exercise’ and to be honest that’s the impression I got before I even read that quote. The plot is a bit loose for a start. The film is set during an unknown war in an unknown country and focuses on four soldiers who are stranded behind enemy lines when their plane crashes. Their plan is to get to the river so they can raft it past the enemy and back to base. It sounds quite a straightforward plot, but Kubrick uses all his art cinema influences to give us a strange and striking one hour viewing experience.

As expected from Kubrick, the film is beautifully shot. It was filmed in a national park in California and Kubrick fully exploits the picturesque woodland and river scenery, even if it conflicts with his grim plot. Even though the film is black and white, it also boasts some impressive lighting, most of it natural. There is one scene in particular where the soldiers attack two sentries at their post at night. We get shots of half-lit angry men’s faces as they beat their foes to a pulp rapidly cut with close-ups of the enemies’ hands squeezing fragments of the bread and stew they were eating for supper. The result is an intense but bizarre and unrealistic fight scene which sums up the creative but naive ambition Kubrick applied for his first movie.

Fear and Desire

So while we can agree that Fear and Desire is not as stylistically or literally coherent as Kubrick’s later masterpieces, it still packs a lot into such a short running time. On one hand it’s got a typical war action storyline of GIs busting through enemy lines and attacking an enemy base which they discover nearby. On the other, there are elements that foreshadow the styles of modern anti-war classics like Apocalypse Now and even Kubrick’s later films like Full Metal Jacket by several decades. For one thing, Kubrick used stylish film techniques like poetic interior monologues to death, which the 1998 equally dreamy war epic The Thin Red Line also did with its parade of military characters.

There is also an episode in Fear and Desire where the four soldiers capture a native girl, which is also the plot for the 1989 Vietnam war film Casualties of War, in which five American soldiers kidnap and rape a Vietnamese girl. While the men of Fear and Desire don’t go that far, they express their desire for their captive. One who actually goes mad through some extreme form of PTSD (in a typically Kubrickian over-the-top performance foreshadowing Jack Nicholson in The Shining) kisses and presses his body on her when she’s tied to a tree. This scene was used to sell the movie as a sexploitation, which were all the rage in underground 1950s cinema. Randy audiences must have been quite disappointed when subjected to Kubrick’s dream-like war allegory.

The attitude towards war exhibited in Fear and Desire (which is carried on in other Kubrick films) is strikingly modern and pessimistic regarding 1950s American cinema. All the four soldiers want to do is survive and when they do take some military action in attacking the enemy base, the results are bittersweet. All four men are damaged in some way by their experiences. Though the film is short and a little disorganised, it has a surprisingly deep and haunting message about war’s senseless brutality.

But does the film stand up on its own apart from being Stanley Kubrick’s first film? Almost. It’s certainly not as good or cohesive as Kubrick’s later works and there are much stronger and more noteworthy films that came out at the time. The other short films on the DVD are a little interesting and a little dull. It’s best to view all the films on the disc as a worthy director stretching his wings, and Fear and Desire as an experimental indulgence in metaphors and literary references. However there was enough plot, good acting and filmmaking to keep me gripped. It’s a strange but beautiful gem, a little rough on the edges but with enough of an intoxicating gleam to draw me back into this absurd dream on war. It’s also noteworthy for being the first wholly independent US movie, for it was financed by donations from Kubrick’s family and friends. I’m just glad that they had faith in him and this restoration finally got release in the UK. Plus it’s short so if you hate it you don’t have to hate it for long.

[Quotes and background information from ‘No other country but the mind’ by James Naremore, an essay included with the DVD.]

October 2, 2015October 5, 2015

Five Best Tattooed Film Characters

Our guest blogger is hobbyist film and TV series reviewer and writer Harry Casey-Woodward:

5 best film characters with tattoos

5) Name: Jack Sparrow (sorry, Captain Jack Sparrow)
Played by: Johnny Depp
In: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, 2003
Tattoo: A sparrow on his wrist

If you’re on the run (or sail rather) from the Royal Navy or the terrible clutches of the East India trading company, surely you wouldn’t get a certain avian tattoo on your forearm that would give a clue to your name?

4) Name: Leonard
Played by: Guy Pearce
In: Memento, 2000
Tattoo: Daily reminders all over his body

Here’s proof to your disapproving elders that tattoos can be useful. In a more interesting movie by Christopher Nolan than his Dark Knight films, Guy Pearce plays a chap searching for his wife’s murderer while suffering from short term memory loss. To combat this, he tattoos of all the things he needs to remember like clues, who he can trust and I guess daily reminders onto his body. However useful and painful the process, it’s best to keep those shopping lists short. I guess it’s quite impractical stripping off in a supermarket just to check you’ve got everything.

3) Name: Lisbeth Salander
Played by: Noomi Rapace
In: Män som hatar kvinnor or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 2009
Tattoo: A dragon on her back, in case you were wondering.

Lisbeth’s huge tattoo on her delicate frame is a sign of the power and strength she felt she lacked as grew up watching her father beat her mother. She is a world class hacker and all round computer goddess, but she is a troubled heroine. She is ruled legally incompetent as a child and lives under the care of a legal guardian, initially the kind hearted Holger Palmgren. When Holger suffers a stroke, he is replaced by Nils Bjurman (Peter Andersson). Nils is a heinous man to say the least. He abuses his position to extort sexual favours from Lisbeth and eventually rapes her. She catches the entire incident on film and threatens to ruin him unless he gives her full control of her life – and uses a tattoo gun to write across his belly “Jag är ett sadistiskt svin och en våldtäktsman” – I am a sadistic pig and a rapist. Lisbeth has everything her tattoo embodies – triumph over adversity and strength from pain.

2) Name: Francis Dolarhyde aka the Tooth Fairy
Played by: Ralph Fiennes
In: Red Dragon, 2002
Tattoo: Also a dragon on his back.

Probably one of the greatest tattoo identity crises. In this prequel to Silence of the Lambs, Ralph Fiennes (who has an arsenal of terrifying performances including a Nazi, a gangster and a psychotic megalomaniac wizard) portrays a serial killer who has a William Blake Biblical dragon painting tattooed all over his back. This is not just because he likes it but because he wants to become it. In his most deluded scene, he displays his mighty sexy dragon body before a captured Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is clearly terrified at the amount of days, agony and expenditure that went into that ink.

1) Name: Harry Powell
Played by: Robert Mitchum
In: The Night of the Hunter, 1955
Tattoo: The words ‘love’ and ‘hate’ tattooed on his knuckles.

For marrying a widow to get her ex-husband’s money, killing her then stalking her runaway children across the country, this devilish preacher surely wins for being the creepiest inked character in this classic film noir. His most sinister feature besides his eerie singing are the striking tattoos on his hands. One hand bears the word ‘love’, the other ‘hate’. He uses these to physically represent the struggle between the two emotions in a one-man arm wrestle. What they may actually signify is the duality of his personality, a criminal masquerading as a Christian, and perhaps in conservative 1950s America a man with tattoos was surely disreputable? Whatever the meaning behind the tattoos (if there is any, for they might be his tenth and meaning stopped mattering a while ago) and even though they are basic compared to the other tattoos in this list, they are instantly iconic and a bizarre and original character trait for 1950s cinema.

All images from IMDB

September 18, 2015

Film Review: Berberian Sound Studio

Our guest blogger is hobbyist film and TV series reviewer and writer Harry Casey-Woodward. In this post he reviews Berberian Sound Studio directed by Peter Strickland released in 2012…

Sometimes, you’re sure that you’ve seen a good film, and the critics say it’s good. You just can’t see why.

Toby Jones plays a British film sound technician named Gilderoy, who arrives in an Italian sound studio in 1976, where they’re recording the soundtrack for a horror. Tensions among the crew rise, and Gilderoy becomes increasingly alienated and disturbed, though he doesn’t show it, since Jones gives a great reserved performance, communicating isolation with as little emotion possible.

This film works best as a tribute to 70s Italian horror and as an exploration of the art of film sound effects. Watching the sounds of mutilation being provided by hacking up vegetables, and demonic screaming being produced by weirdly talented vocalists are the movie’s most fascinating elements. Technically, the film is impressive, with great lighting, sound, and shots, all creating suspenseful atmosphere.

Unfortunately, the film only offers suspense, which never builds up to much. It felt like an experimental indulgence in technology that shunned sense, confusing and excluding the average filmgoer. Some scenes questioned film violence and expectations of the horror genre. Overall, however, it tried to say something without saying it, which annoyed me.

Though original and inventive, it felt atmospheric and menacing just for the sake of it. As much as I applaud cinematic strangeness, a film is only threatening if it shows what it’s threatening you with. The fact that the film tried to say lots through the exclusive setting of a sound studio just felt (though I hate using this word) pretentious.

Image From Worn by Heroes and ICA

September 11, 2015

Film Review: Horns

Our guest blogger is hobbyist film and TV series reviewer and writer Harry Casey-Woodward…

Horns 2013, 2/5
A while ago I saw Daniel Radcliffe’s face emblazoned on a magazine cover. He was unshaven, had a steely squint and a smoking cigarette dangling from his lips with no consideration for influencing young wizards with this dirty muggle habit. The headline was ‘Harry Potter gone bad’ or something silly like that.

Daniel

My guess is that Radcliffe’s new bad boy image had something to do with this film I’m reviewing, for his character does indeed smoke, drink, curse, fight, has some sex and looks as if he could do with a bath, some attitude counselling and a good night’s sleep: you know, like a normal young adult.

This is not the first time I’ve wondered if Radcliffe is taking the same career path as Elijah Wood; in other words, attempting to trash the cute boy wizard/hobbit roles that made them famous by proving they can do darker, mature roles. For example, Wood starred in Maniac in 2012 as a woman-slaughtering psychopath and in 2014’s Open Windows he played an internet creep stalking his favourite actress (who happened to be played by porn star Sasha Grey to add further controversy).

Radcliffe has gone down a less violently extreme image-trashing career path than Wood, but his angry young man take in Horns is still hilarious, especially since he’s adopted an American accent. As grating as this sounds, you do get used to it and surprisingly I ended up caring a little bit for his character. He plays a young man named Ig living in some insignificant backwoods town whose girlfriend Merrin (Juno Temple) has just been murdered and everyone thinks he did it. After a drunken emotional night, he wakes up to find a pair of horns sprouting out of his forehead. He then discovers that everyone he talks to confesses their deepest, darkest secrets and desires. He decides to use this new awkward gift to seek out his girlfriend’s killer and force a confession.

As imaginative and darkly hilarious this setup is, it’s not really explained and doesn’t make a lot of sense. I’m not one of those people who like every aspect of the plot dictated to me and I do believe a little ambiguity is good for a film. However, If director, Alexandre Aja, is trying to make some moral point about Ig being cursed with demonic powers it’s missed because there’s no reason for it. I don’t know if the novel by Joe Hill offers more explanation and, like Kubrick did with The Shining , Aja decided to sacrifice some of the novel’s explanations for the film’s imagery.

But in The Shining, there is a vague justification for the weird spooky stuff, in that it’s a reflection of all the dark stuff that happened in the hotel’s past. In Horns Ig never does anything that justifies his curse. Sure he’s a surly, indulgent, non-believer like every young adult, but he’s not evil. If anything, he’s the character most wronged. The only heretic thing he does is smash the Virgin Mary figurine at his dead girlfriend’s shrine, pee on some candles and then rant about what good going to church every Sunday did for her. Do any of these pathetic, slightly justifiable actions merit the horror thrust on his life, whether by God or the Devil (unless either one has a very bitter sense of humour)? And if this curse is a punishment for whatever darkness lies in Ig’s heart, surely it shouldn’t give him advantages? Halfway through the film snakes swarm to Ig, willing to obey his will, I guess because he’s now tainted with evil? So he uses them for vengeful purposes, thus making him more evil than when he started. If God’s trying to punish him He’s doing a bad job and if the devil’s trying to corrupt him, why him? He wasn’t exactly a pure being to start with.

I do admire films that do weirdness for the sake of it, but only to an extent. Traditionally in Gothic moral narratives, like Doctor Faustus, religious phenomena that has a negative impact on the protagonist’s life has a moral purpose, in order to give didactic instruction to the audience (let’s ignore the film Stigmata, which is based on random religious phenomena). With Horns we have what feels like a traditional Gothic narrative. But the fact that the reason and nature of Ig’s non-deserved curse, whether it’s a blessing or a punishment, is hidden to the audience means that the moral we’re expecting is not very clear. All we get is a character that has a lot of weird, bad stuff happen to him. This doesn’t do much for a story and throws up more questions than answers. The other thing that lets the film down is Radcliffe. As hard as he tries, whether he’s being distraught or vengeful, he’s never very convincing. He always looks like he’s straining when he should be easily slipping into these emotions. Unfortunately, since the entire film consists of him having emotional conflicts with every character, we’re stuck with Radcliffe in tantrum mode.

I didn’t expect the film to be great from the offset, as I’m not a fan of Radcliffe, but I was surprised at how gripping and entertaining it was on another level. Despite the vast room for improvement left by the issues discussed above, it’s still a good murder mystery and the idea of a superpower that removes people’s inhibitions is an original idea that leads to some hilarious and cringing scenes. The story and dialogue is good, even if it’s a lot of flashbacks and emotional angst. All the performances, apart from Radcliffe, are good too. Juno Temple playing Ig’s girlfriend shows Radcliffe up on convincingly portraying a troubled young adult. Even the child actor playing Ig in the flashbacks does a better job than Radcliffe. We also get Heather Graham in a great minor role as a publicity-crazed waitress.

So if you want a supernatural murder mystery with a thrilling plot that looks cool but you don’t care about the supernatural part making much sense, knock yourself out. Other than that, there isn’t much substance here and the film will probably only be memorable for Harry Potter joining the forces of evil.