A Serious Man (2009) Dir. Ethan & Joel Coen

Larry (Michael Stuhlbarg) tries to stop his brother's (Richard Kind) life from unravelling at the same time as his is reaching crisis point.

Rating: 10/10

The Coen Brothers have returned in fine form after the (in my humble opinion) disastous Burn After Reading. This film seems to be a much more personal one set as it is around a Jewish neighbourhood in the suburbs of Minnesota in the sixties. It focuses on maths professor Larry Gopnik (a brilliant Michael Stuhlbarg whose lack of fame means he is the perfect everyman) a man in crisis (and the Coen Brother are brilliant at doing men in crisis just look at the excellent Barton Fink) whose life starts to quickly unravel to his utter bewilderment. Larry is your average unassuming Jewish middle-class man with a family, wife (Sari Lennick), steady job  and nice house  in a nice suburb who makes sure (or tries to make sure) his children attend hebrew class and looks after his wayward unemployed brother Arthur (A brilliant Richard Kind). Naturally then he does not understand the shit storm that hits him.

It starts off with his wife leaving him for widower Sy Ableman (a brilliantly patronising and ridiculously zen-like Fred Melamed) forcing him to move to the Jolly Roger motel, we then quickly also see that his kids do not respect his authority and are not serious about hebrew lessons, to them he’s the one that fixes the satellite. Meanwhile, he is pestered by a Korean student Clive (a brilliantly presumptious David Kang) who wants a better grade and tests his scruples by leaving him money, his brother is found to soliciting illegal homosexual encounters and he possibly faces losing his job over his lack of published work and negative letters from Clive’s dad. And if that wasn’t enough he could also have a potentially serious medical condition.

Vigilante Justice- The Return of the Revenge Film

Is Harry (Michael Caine) taking it too far in his pursuit of revenge?

This is an article I wrote a few weeks back for the website I write for Sound Screen, hope you like it and feel free to post your disagreements and comments .

Revenge is a dish best served cold but  it certainly seems to be (ahem) hot right now in the cinema.  With the recent releases of Daniel Barber’s Harry Brown and F. Gary Gray’s Law Abiding Citizen and the latest instalment of the Saw franchise, as well as the less bloody Gran Turino last year the revenge film’s popularity certainly isn’t waning. And this is despite the criticisms the genre has received since revenge films like Micheal Winner’s pro-vigilante Death Wish (1974) was branded a ‘poisonous incitement to do-it-yourself law enforcement’, and legendary film critic Pauline Kael called Sam Peckinpah’s  Straw Dogs (1971) ‘a fascist work of art.’ While others simply see the films as thrilling and fun. So which is it? To answer that question it really comes down to characterisation, the angle taken and the level of violence depicted.

13th UK Jewish Film Festival: The Girl On The Train (Le Fille Du RER) (2009), Dir. André Téchiné

Tension mounts for Jeanne (Émilie Dequenne) as she sits with Samuel Bleistein's (Michel Blanc) family

Rating: 7/10

The film concerns the twenty-something Jeanne  (a luminous Émilie Dequenne) and the consequences that come about when she makes up an anti-Semetic attack. It starts by showing the close relationship with her caring single mother Louise (the brilliant Catherine Deneuve), making her fall from grace more baffling and disturbing to Louise and the audience. When Jeanne is looking for her job Louise finds her a secretarial role at her old friend (who formerly wanted to marry her whiole she was married to Jeanne’s late father) Samuel Bleistein’s (Michel Blanc) law firm.

However she does not get the job and instead meets a man Franck (an intriguing Nicholas Duvaucelle who bears more than a passing resemblance to Tom Hardy) while skating who pursues her (after cleverly scamming her a suitcase) until she finally agress to meet up with him again (*spoiler warning read on to next paragraph if you don’t want to know all the plot details*). He then gets her involved unknowingly in a drugs ring so he can afford to live with her. An incident with a drug dealer then leaves him hospitlaised and prompts him to break off with her, angry for getting attached and annoyed  that she lied to him about her job as  a secretary. The whole incident leaves Jeanne traumitised and partly explains her fabrication of the anti-Semetic violence against her, showing her need for love and attention in this time of crisis.

London Film Festival ‘09 Review

So there was plenty of great looking films to choose from (I particularly wanted also to see Jacques Audiard’s  A Prophet as recommended to me by Julien Planté, Joon-Ho Bong’s Mother, Jacques Rivette’s Around A Small Mountain, Elia Suleiman’s The Time That Remains, Jarmusch’s The Limits Of Control and Mia Hansen-Løve’s Father of My Children amongst others, guess I will have to wait for the DVDs) and I eventually chose rather a mixed bag.

Jeunet's latest stars Dany Boon (centre) as Bazil, here with his adopted family of eccentrics.

The first film I saw was the Gala opening of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Micmacs (Micmacs À  Tire-Larigot) which I found to be not quite as good as Amelie of City Of Lost Children. Jean Pierre-Jeunet’s  last film A Very Long Engagement marked a departure to a more serious tone and epic scale and it’s been five years since then after an adaptation of Yann Martel’s Life of Pi  (tis a  shame I would’ve liked to have seen that) got too expensive, as Jeunet himself told us introducing the film. So there was a high expectation for this one.

Interview with Julien Planté, artistic director of French film channel Cinémoi

I personally think that the French make some of the best films in the world, they are often sophisticated, nuanced, intelligent and complex, embodying the great artistic visions of directors like Godard, Truffaut, Audiard, Denis, Chabrol, Moll, I could go on. So it was great to meet a man who knows so much about them, having also worked as programmer at the French cinema Cine Lumiere. I met him at a suitably French bistro in Soho to discuss the channel and the state of French cinema amongst other things.

What do you love most about French film?

It’s a tricky question, but I think there is this particularity in French film that the French respect the auteur and before that there is a long history of French cinema. And what is great is that there is an ongoing thing since the first creation of the cinema itself with the Lumière brothers, that’s very particular. And there is the history of cinema itself with the Lumière brothers, that’s very particular. And there is Pathé production before the war  and there is all these great traditions of films. But I think generally I like this particularity in French cinema of giving the final cut to the directors, I think it’s very rare.

Do you think there is a lot more creative freedom in France?

Yeah, I mean I don’t think you should generalise and say that, because you know there is 250 films produced in France every year. But it is a particularity that is very rich and that ‘s why I like French cinema and that’s what I want to show as well on the channel, that French cinema is not a genre in itself , so of course there is commercial films like anywhere. But what I like is the auteur and my favourite directors, most of them are French it’s true. I love Claire Denis, [Arnaud] Desplechin, Agnes Varda, I really love them because they have real vision and because I think their producer respects their views and vision. And like is often the case for a lot of French actors they’ve got the final cut.  It’s what I read David Lynch as well said about the French , they’ve got the final cut. That’s why Lynch himself is produced by the French, by Studio Canal.

District 9 (2009), Dir. Neill Blomkamp

Wikus (Sharlto Copley) squares up to 'prawn' Christopher Johnson (Jason Cope).

Rating: 6/10

If  it weren’t  for the fact that this film was set in South Africa, I may not gone to see this film not being particularly moved by films of the great-special-FX-but-ridiculous-plot-and-dialogue variety. But this film manages to transcend the inane jingoism of blockbusters like Independence Day by the fact that the film acts as a metaphor for the apartheid, and the  continuing poor living conditions and persecution of many black people and immigrants, including the current situation with  Zimbabweans as  David Cox points out.

Coco avant Chanel (2009), Dir. Anne Fontaine

Alessandro Nivola as the dashing Arthur Capel and a captivating Audrey Tatou as Coco Chanel

 

Rating: 6/10

I liked this film more until looking at the details of Chanel’s actual life I found out that she slept with a nazi during the war, and that she was a a bit of a liar making up her whole aspects of her upbringing, which is not represented here. Of course to portray a sympathetic heroine it would be hard to include this. But I think that they put too much emphasis on her as a pioneering woman, as Colin Mc Dowell points out in The Sunday Times , Poiret released women from the corset before Chanel and women like Lanvin got into the fashion business also long before Chanel built her empire.

It is then a bit of a hagiography and clearly not as good as the film it was trying to cash in on, La Vie En Rose, and it’s certainly not as dramatic as this film even though it does follow the same rags to riches formula; seeing her go from a strict catholic orphanage, to a singing career in a brothel  to a successful career. Nonetheless, it is entertaining and Audrey Tatou is always a delight to watch beautiful (especially when dressed in  a suit), luminous and engaging if a little gaunt (perhaps she slimmed down for the role?). It is fact her who makes the film, though Benoit Polvoorde (who was also excellent in Man Bites Dog) is also good as the wise-craking but immature Etienne Balsan. The man who, at first reluctantly, takes on Chanel as his mistress or as he prefers it to see it his ‘geisha.’

 

Kisses (2008), Dir. Lance Daly

Rating: 7/10

I saw this as part of the Kilburn Film Festival at the Tricycle in a half-full (if that) cinema. Which is the problem with these small British, in this case Irish, films they just don’t attract the crowds like a Transformers can. Something to do with marketing and money,was ever the way.

Which is a shame because this is a good film, honest and touching in a way that reminded me of This Is England or In Search Of A Midnight Kiss. Though not quite as good as these two films it came close. Writer and director Lance Daly has also managed to get a great and natural performance out of the two young leads Kelly O’Neill and Shane Curry as Kylie and Dylan.

Overrated Classics

Micheal Haneke: Provacative, maybe, enjoyable, decidedly not.

What is it with critically lauded films that are for the most part confusing , frustrating and makes you feel like nearly everyone-else understands or gets it apart from you, and therefore you must  either be a philistine or just a little bit dim. Neither of which you feel you really are. Watching two films by recent Golden Palm winner Michael Haneke, Caché (2005) and Funny Games (2007) (admittedly not the Austrian original but seeing how the US version is meant to be virtually identical it probably doesn’t make that much difference) the other day I felt quite cheated (which I suppose people will say was Haneke’s intention meaning you never can win an argument with a Haneke fan). But having heard so much about this director, and having sucked in by the many film festival plaudits and recommendations I was convinced that I would like him.

Interview with John Simm on The Devil’s Whore

John Simm as Edward Sexby in The Devil's Whore (2008)

This is the interview I did with John Simm (extremely nice guy, very down-to-earth) for my MA project on period dramas, not techinically cinema I know but thought I’d include it as I know there are many John Simm fans out there, me for one. And I still really have to see Human Traffic!

 What drew you to the role of Sexby?  

Marc Munden wanted me to play John Lilburne so I read the script and I just totally fell for the part of Sexby, and once I had it on my head I couldn’t possibly play the part of anybody-else, so I told him that. And I had to audtion for it which I hadn’t really done for a while but I went in and fought for it.

And what particularly about the role of Sexby attracted you?

 It’s just a hell of a role, it’s one of the best parts for an actor I’ve ever read I think.  He’s soulless, godless, he’s a mercenary, he’s got a metal hand, he’s a brilliant swordsman and horseman.  He discovers love, he discovers honour and he gets his head turned by so many different factions. It was such a rich, rich multilayered part. And as an actor I’m drawn to darker roles and he’s a swashbuckling anti-hero. And when your kid as an actor those are the parts you dream about playing.  That was my Clint Eastwood man with no name. It was  beautifully written by Peter. It was one of those I just thought I’ve gotta play Sexby.