Archive for Good

The Class (2008)

October 11, 2009 at 8:34 am · Filed under Good

To begin with i thought this was a documentary. Or maybe a docu-drama. But not a film film. Too improvised to seem scripted.

Turns out the “story” was improvised from a whole year spent in this real school, this real classroom, with these real kids. Kind of being like themselves. Only more so. Accentuating a few salient attributes to act out “in character”.

It’s a multi-ethnic classroom; everyone is from somewhere else other than France: Mali, Morroco, China, Jamacia etc. They don’t know French too well (don’t know their pluperfects from their subjunctives). They’re mostly under-achieving misfits. Not delinquents exactly but, well – just not comfortably fitted in to white society, marginalised and made different by virtue of their ethnic diversity.

It’s not an easy film to watch cus it hasn’t got those Hollywood hooks that derive facile sentimentality from “inspirational” Teacher films; ala Robin Williams doing his charismatically charming schtick – and transforming a load of underachieving dimwits into perfect students. This film is far tougher than that. The kids aren’t especially likeable, the teacher isn’t especially inspiring. Or charismatic. He’s fallible. You watch him struggling to keep these dispirit adolescents interested and motivated. It’s hard work. It’s not easy. It doesn’t seem particularly rewarding.

I liked the film though. Cus it got me there. Got me into that classroom. Observing with fascination: the trials, troubles, and travails of being with such a chaotic bunch of misfits. But i was thinking to myself: Thank God i’m not teaching them!

Dir: Laurent Cantet, France

7/10

Leave a Comment

Le Chignon D’Olga

October 8, 2009 at 7:41 am · Filed under Good

Mom has died. Life is going on, but not going on as well as it did. Julien won’t play piano anymore; Emma doesn’t love boys anymore; Dad can’t write his kids books anymore. Grief is surreptiously stymying the good for life in them.

Lucien has got the hots for a bookshop assistants “bun” (not her buns – her bun, her chignon) But she’s not going to be available. Who is available is Alice, his childhood best friend; who steals sweets, smokes and gets pissed, is fucking an unsuitable blonde tart of a boyfriend.

Lucien would be more suitable. We see that, we know that – but will they? They get on so easily and intimately with one another. And Lucien is such a nice sensitive lad; he buys a book of poems for his dad’s birthday for christ-sake! (Good to have a dad you could buy a book of poems for i was thinking – no, lamenting – to myself)

Some of the attempts at humour don’t always work; the scene where Lucien co-opts a family friend to help him pick up Olga is supposed to be deliberately contrived, farcical; but it comes across as being abit fake, the acting not up to Chaplinesque slapstick. Dad watches b/w Chaplin movies to absurdly cheer himself up too – all abit too obvious.

Overall it’s a nice watch. The acting is appealingly understated,  the direction seemingly nonchalent, minimalistic. The mood wryly melancholic.

Lucien and Alice finally get it on, go to bed together (as we always knew they would) As Alice lies sleeping, Lucien goes over and sits at the piano. Maybe the lovely lad will start playing again. Or maybe not.

Dir: Jerome Bonnell, France

7/10

Leave a Comment

Gallivant (1997)

September 23, 2009 at 9:16 am · Filed under Good ·Tagged

I’m going to give this a better review than i thought i would.

For about an hour i was more aware of the film techniquery than the film itself. It felt like all the experimentation going on was getting in the way, was too conspicious.

The camera speeds up, the camera slows down. There’s loads of this time lapse photography ala “Koyaanisqatsi” that gets to jar your sense of view, dislocate – deliberately – the perspective of normalised time you expect to have as a watcher of a documentary.

Actually, it’s not a conventional documentary. It’s not a typical travelogue either. This isn’t “Coast” educating you with all those sensible BBC facts of life.

This is “at you” with its quirkiness.

Possibly hidden inside all the filmic gimmickry is a small and slightly dull documentary (like” Coast”)

He – Andrew Kotting, the director – is travelling around the coast of Britain with his 90 year old gran Gladys and his 7 year old disabled daughter Eden. She’s got a brain disorder called Jouberts syndrome which makes her look and act like a deaf spastic; communication is done through sign language (makaton) I didn’t feel engaged by her cus she’s in such an isolated, cut-off, estranged world. Empathy felt difficult to find; abstract compassion easier. Kotting’s  old gran Gladys was a bit dull too. Sweetly ancient, in the way old Grannies are supposed to be – but not overly endearing or especially eccentrically quirksy of personality.

So my guess is Kotting had to contrive the oddity – by jazzing up the way it’s all being filmed, making the style of filming look quirky, eccentric, odd.

Mind you,  he’s on the look out for English eccentricities out there on the coast too; it’s an island  rimmed with Gurners and Moaners, Mouth Organists and Accordionists, Pagan Long-Sword Dancers, Lollipop Ladies, Award Winning Toilets Attendants – and madcap film-makers.

“Daddy is being silly” says Granny Gladys to great grand-daughter Eden. And he gets sillier and sillier; carries an armchair on his head up a Scottish glen for his old gram (to sit on presumably) Breaks his bleedin ankle being silly.

Bleak and windy is Scotland. And windy.

“We got to go back to that miserable place of England” says Gladys glumly to Eden. Actually Granny is getting a bit quirkified now: she’s wearing a blue tea-cosy as a hat.”Condensed milk is part of our Heritage” she says. Yep, she’s caught the odd-bod bug off her odd-bod grandson (by now he’s asking strangers if he looks like a monk)

There’s an interiew with the “fackin” owner of the “Kit-Kat Cafe” in Rye  (I’d interview somebody that had a Kit-Kat Cafe too) Kotting suggests a swim in the sea with all their clothes on. Daft.

I might have slowly warmed to the film by now. I might be needing to watch it again. I might be turning into a quirky oddball meself! I might end up in the next Andrew Kotting film. No, lets not call it a film; lets call it a “cinematic essay”. I mean, he is a Lecturer in “Time-Based Media” at Maidstone Univeristy for the Creative Arts. Stands to reason he ain’t gonna make yer normal bog-standard ordinary film.

It’s simply gotta be idiosyncratic. The idiosyncraticer the betterer.

Dir: Andrew Kotting, England

7/10

Leave a Comment

Secrets & Lies (1996)

September 18, 2009 at 11:36 am · Filed under Good ·Tagged , , ,

I saw this back in the 90’s. I remember Brenda Blethyn crying all over the place and being irritatingly self-pitying.

Blethyn is Cynthia, the weary middle-aged mom of surly Roxanne. Cynthia works in a cardboard factory, Roxanne is a roadsweeper. They ain’t exactly come up in the world.

Timothy Spall – Maurice – as Cynthia’s  steady-eddie younger brother has; he’s got his own wedding photo’s business; he’s got a stroppy cow of a wife – Monica – at home who can’t have children (one of the secrets nobody should know about)

There’s a melancholy Mike Leigh chamber music soundtrack – so we know the mood we’re meant to be setting ourselves in: minor miserableness.

Cynth had Roxanne out of wedlock. Turns out she had another bastard too, who got given away for adoption. The baby is now a proffesional woman, an optometricist – and black. Goes by the name of Hortense Cumberbatch (bit of intended inverted irony there) Hortense – Marianne Jean-Baptiste – is possibly the most straight, sane, boringly normal character i’ve ever seen in a Mike Leigh film. She’s like me and you! Meaning, she’s merely ordinary, rational, credibly believable. Not a tic in sight! A proper Adult person.

Lets leave the grotesque neurotic  exxageration, the parodic tics and mannerisms to dear old Bren (Blethyn) She’ll drive you up the wall with her “Sweed arts” and “Darlins“. Pathos slides  into pathetic and keeps sliding on down into almost unbearable sobbing self-pity. This is Blethyn doing a repreive of Glor (from Grown-Ups in 1980) Just as irritating, but more whiny. She’s got the hands twitchin and fiddlin. I can’t believe she got the Best Actress Award at Cannes for this.

And yet she got me at it too – cryin i mean! Eventually.

At this scene especially: Maurice has come around to visit, and she just can’t take it anymore, can’t take how lonely and unloved she is. “Give us a cuddle Maurice – please, Sweed Art!” she’s pleading with him. It’s heartbreaking.

“You love me dontcha?!” “Hold me tight Maurice – please!” she sobs into his fat gaping arms. Maurice doesn’t know where to put himself. He wants to love her. But he doesn’t know how to do it. Hasn’t been schooled in how to show or share the affection he feels (for her, and maybe his wife too – he comes across as kind-hearted, but emotionally stymied)

Hortense wants to meet her birth mother. So they do. Cue awkward embarrassment, more self-piteous sobbing, more leaking of pain from Cynthia. Hortense just sits there looking quietly bemused. “I must be a bit of a disappointment to ya. You been better off without me” blurts Cynthia. Hortense says nothing. Doesn’t buy into it. “You gotta larf Sweed Art. Else you’d cry” sniffles Cynth. Only there ain’t anything to larf about. This ain’t even remotely funny.

Hortense does the compassionate Adult thing. She wants to see Cynthia again. It liberates her mom. From being the Great Unwashed she becomes wanted, wantable. Needed. Necessary. Maybe  inside all that self loathing,  a little bit lovable.

At the end theres a Big Scene where all the  niggers come out of the woodwork (so to speak) It’s this scene that redeems the film of it’s minor irritating faults and wobbly excrutiating fallibilities.

“Secrets and lies. We’re all in pain. Why can’t we share our pain. I’ve spent my entire life trying to make people happy, and the 3 people i love the most in the world hate each others guts. I’m in the middle and i can’t take it anymore!” Maurice shouts in anguish.

Cynth has gone over to cradle Monica’s sobbing head in her arms; then she’s crying; then Roxanne’s crying. Then i’m crying!

It’s got to me. I’ve finally got into the bleedin heart of this sad little film.

We’re all in pain.

Dir: Mike Leigh, England

7/10

Leave a Comment

The Pumpkin Eater (1964)

August 28, 2009 at 8:13 am · Filed under Good

Much better film than the title would suggest.

Apparently the title refers to a kids nursery rhyme: “Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater /Had a wife and couldn’t keep her/ Put her in a pumpkin shell/And there he kept her, very well“.

Which in a way doesn’t make sense; it’s not Peter (Finch) who can’t keep his wife (Anne Bancroft); it’s his wife that can’t keep him.

(I still think it’s a crap title)

About 15 minutes in there were these oddly punctuated pauses in conversations. This sounds like Harold Pinter i thought. It was.

Anne Bancroft is great as the depressed wife of philandering Peter Finch. Actually lets call him more than “philandering”; he’s a lying cheating bastard!

Bancroft seems to have it all: big house, loads of sweet kids (6) and a handsome screenwriter husband (No 3) “We’ll have the same life” she says to him swoonily. Well, actually she won’t as it turns out. She might be married, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be together. He’ll be absorbed in his writing, in his film world. He’ll  go off her sexually and be fancying other woman. Not only fancy them but fuck them. And she won’t really know who he is. She’ll love him to death but she won’t like him very much at all.

Anne Bancroft conveys her inner wretchedness, beautifully, brokenly. Says alot with out having to say anything, just says it with those big luminous dark pools of eyes of hers.

The pithy Pinteresque screenplay adds to the terse dislocation of the characters, their estrangement from one another. They keep mis-communicating because language, words, are hopelessly inadequate at bridging the alienating aloneness human beings seem to have to suffer together.

It’s to Anne Bancrofts credit that i  was empathizing with her Mommies, Daddies, and Nannies world of privileged class snooty exclusivity. But i could. I did. She was all too Human

Dir: Jack Clayton, England

7/10

Leave a Comment

High Hopes (1988)

August 5, 2009 at 11:01 am · Filed under Good ·Tagged , ,

Yet another Mike Leigh film i’m watching off YouTube.

In the early days i’d come to his films expecting to be amused by how “awfully” comic his neurotic characters are.

But this film didn’t make me laugh much. Made me feel sad and slightly depressed.

It starts off promisingly. You’ve got Phil Davis as Cyril, a beardy biker scruff into rolling joints on his “Lenin for Beginners” book. He keeps cacti with names like “Bollock, Turd, Thatcher“. He sleeps on a mattress in the living room cus the cold bedroom is too expensive to heat. He’s living with long-term girlfriend; broody Shirl (Ruth Sheen) with the goofy teeth. They give off a laidback vibe of warm smiles and easy teases with one another – 2 gentle potheads together. For once in a Mike Leigh film we seem to have a relatively “normal” – as in not dysfunctional – relationship to enjoy.  Some ordinary tenderness going on – they’re even snuggled up on the settee kissing in front of Cyril’s old Ma!

But old Ma Bender is miserable, losing her marbles. And she’s living next door to a couple of snobby posh gits: Laetitia Boothe-Brain (Lesley Manville) and her Hooray Henry of a husband Rupert. Comes an excrutiating scene when old Ma loses her door key and has to be taken in by Laetitia – “Come along, chop! chop!” – to ring for help.

Valerie  -the daughter  – turns up to snoop around; wife of a used car dealer, she’s either screeching histrionically, or laughing hysterically. We’re back to typical Mike Leigh; the “I’m an OTT Grotesque Caricature” School of Acting. You want to slap her silly stupid head.

Lesley Manville as Laetitia is equally as Grotesque. Parodic. But not comic. Nasty. Full of cool but cruel Top-Dog class condescension. Probably quite deliberately so. Leigh asking her to give snotty-nosed Laetitia a  sneery vicious bite.

Both of these selfish uncaring  grotesques – manipulative Valerie and hateful Laetitia – threaten to overwhelm the film with too much heartlessness.

And throw in Valeries car dealer geezer husband, replete with fat cigar, fast car, gold bling – you name it, the misogynistic cunt has got just about every dodgy dealer wheeler cliche going

He can’t be bothered to fuck, let alone make love to Valerie anymore. “You start” she says “No, you bloody start” he says. “Oh, come on!” she says “You get on top” he says. “ Start what anyway?” he says “You’re Michael Douglas. I’m a virgin” she says. He turns over on his side….guffawing

Priggish wine-dealer Rupert is chasing Laetitia up stairs in her lingerie. On the top step she’s saying “Mr Sausage deserves a smack!” “On the bottie!” pants Rupert clambering up to get at her.

Misery-guts Ma Bender is vacantly staring out on everything in stupefied befuddled helpless bitterness…..

Spirits are starting to sink. I don’t know about “high hopes” – no-hope more like it….A hopelessly dystopian world.

The 2 potheads – Cyril and Shirl – can’t do anything. Or won’t do anything “I sit on me arse” says Cyril. He won’t even give Shirl the kid she so desperately wants “They’re out of date familes. They ain’t no use anymore. Two’s company”. Two gentle souls, laidback, harmless enough – but ineffectual.

All they’ve got is their bit of love to keep them warm, keep them going. And maybe they can give a little bit to Ma too. Be caring of/for her too. Well, for a bit.

They just about redeem the film of all it’s yuppified, Me-Centred, heartless, hopelessness.

Yes, i think calling the film “High Hopes” is an example of Mike Leighs famous “black humour”.

Dir: Mike Leigh, England

7/10

Leave a Comment

Grown Ups (1980)

July 15, 2009 at 11:36 am · Filed under Good ·Tagged , , , , ,

Strictly speaking this isn’t a feature film but a play made for BBC 2.

You’ve got “Mand” (Lesley Manville)  as the newly married working class wife (with a fag on in that pic there) of Dick (Philip Davis) in his horrible cross-ply synthetic cardigan.

They’ve just moved into their first house/home together in Canterbury. Next door happens to live Mr Butcher, their old RE teacher and his Brummie wife (Lindsay Duncan) “I ated im, he used to keep goin on abaht me teef” grumbles Dick.

It’s a typical Mike Leigh film. Intensely improvised “types” who are crudely characterized by habitual tics, mannerisms, catchphrases. Kind of like comedy sketch characters from the Fast Show, only sadder – and with pretensions at depicting real-life pathos. There’s

Surly “Mand”: doing her fish-face “Don’t be so stewpid Dick”

Sullen Dick: “I’ll get er oova“…. lying like a lazy lump on the settee “I’m bleedin tellin ya – make me a cup of tea!“

Sister”Glor” (Brenda Blethyn): popping around all the time “Hello Dick, here i am again”

Mr Butcher: Loch Ness Monster obssessive with peculiar clearing his throat voice mannerism.

Mrs Butcher: doing her Brummie accent “Cheerio”.… knitting away “Some of your ex pewpills here”

Very surly friend of “Mand”  Sharon (Janine Duvitski) popping around to cast a moany eye on their new home “It’s filthy. He’ll never lift a finger will he?” She can’t stand Dick. Cus he gloats at how boyfriendless she is.

It’s a world where you put the milk bottles out in your fluffy blue slippers with that perpetual fag on, making endless cups of tea. House warming is a Party Can of Watneys and a fry-up on toast. Dreary suburban 1980’s life on a Canterbury council estate.

Mand wants to start a family “I fancy getting a dog” says Dick. She wants to come off the pill. “I’ve told you – you’re not! You’ll stay on the pill if i have to ram it down your bleedin frote!” he snarls.

Sharon is still on Sweets and not getting anywhere finding a bloke.

Mr Butcher  is demanding of Mrs Butcher “Get me a biscuit. I want a Garribaldi” Her shoulders visibly deflate.

Dick and Mand are getting fed up of “Glor” popping continually around “Thought you were going home Glor?”

Glor don’t get the hint. “She’s soft in the bleedin ead!” shouts Dick. A ruckus kicks off. Dick throws Glor out. She runs off hysterical to the Butchers next door and locks herself in their bathroom. Much shouting and argy bargy trying to wrestle Glor down the stairs. “Grown-ups” acting – and regressing – to being the bleedin kids they mostly are, is the message.

With Mrs Bucther acting as the capable Mothering person she is never going to be. There’s a touching moment of pathos in bed later when she finally, desperately, lets out that “I want sex, i want love – and i want a family, thats what i want”. And goggle-eyed Butcher carries on reading his encyclopedia regardless, impervious – stone-cold as the abstract “facts” he’s obssessing about.

It’s funny – it is i suppose. You find yourself laughing at how grossly trapped they all are in their tic-fixated stuck personalities. Yes, they’re amusing to wryly chuckle at; and yet they’d get very irritating eventually. Luckily, you’re only stuck in a film with them; where a credible story is being shaped out of all this thick neurotic pathos, and it’ll be all over with in 90 minutes.

Phew! Glad i don’t live next to, or with, any of that bunch of sorry saddo’s.

Thats the feeling you have. I always have anyway, whenever i watch a Mike Leigh film.

You’re laughing at how crudely, and sadly, pathetic all us human beings unwittingly often are.

Dir: Mike Leigh, England

7.5/10

Leave a Comment

Three Monkeys (2008)

July 7, 2009 at 4:13 pm · Filed under Good ·Tagged

Watched this film twice; second time around not quite so impressed.

Maybe because the pace is a little too studiously slow, the characters a little too earnestly construed, the photography a little too artfully deliberate.

It’s still pretty good though. And Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “pretty good” is both pretty to look at, and good to ponder over, be seriously in contemplation of – not only after the film has finished – but during the film, as you sit there, quietly watching.

There’s not that much talking going on between the 4 main characters; a lot of looking, and a lot of thinking – or ruminating, or worrying – and a lot of internalised emotions simmering away just underneath the cracked surface.

The restless heat of a Turkish Summer insinuates these sultry emotions through windows of listless curtains, or through half opening doors; the boy – the son – keeps going back to flop apathetically on the bed, escape the oppressive heat, or his lack of energetic purpose.

The father is in prison, so his energetic purpose is momentarily stymied also.

Until he gets out. And he finds out whats been going on. The wife at it behind his back – with the very person he went to prison for (it was for money though, not altruistic sacrifice)

This film is like the other films of Ceylans i’ve seen; isolated people, separated or separating from one another, finding it difficult to connect; taciturn individuals infected with melancholy and undisclosed sadnesses; not able to talk about anything very much, not able to articulate the deep human hurt that has got into their souls, stuck there, beyond redemption or transformation.

There’s an air of futility about these films. Something sadly human, but futile. Travail is omnipresent. Hope isn’t coming.

Dir: Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey

7.5/10

Leave a Comment

Pi (1998)

July 3, 2009 at 8:27 am · Filed under Good

An odd film about an odd  skinny reclusive Jewish bloke. Prone to attacks of panic. Has intense migraines. In need of medication. In need of maths. In need to know the meaning. Behind numbers.

Using Number Theory punched through Main Frame computers in his bedroom Max Cohen is looking for a “Pattern” to reveal the Meaning of Everything.

Beardy Jewish Kabbalists are after his Number. A Corporate Agency is after his Number.

“This is insanity Max” says his Maths Mentor Sol. “Maybe it’s genius?” says Protege Max

“The answer is 216″ (a string of 216 numbers that is)

“You’re driving yourself over the edge – you need to stop” says Sol. Numbers are spirally around his head. He shaves his head. Draws numbers in ink on head. Drills into his heady head head – with a drill.

Corporate Agent corners him, “I don’t give a shit about you. I only what what’s in your fucking head” she screams. She’s not gonna get the Number.

Beardy Kabbalist Sect capture him. He’s not going to reveal to them the Number either, “The number in my head is the true name of God” he says maddeningly.

The film making “style” is conspicuously foregrounded;  in stark black and white, claustrophobic camera close-ups, intrusive shots, reclusive angles. I suppose you could say “Artsy”. Some people might even say “Fartsy”.

I don’t quite know what it’s all meant to mean. It means 216. It meant some freaky Jewish genius went a bit mad. Then saw the light. Through the trees.

Dir: Darren Aronofsky, USA

7/10

Leave a Comment

Simple Men (1992)

June 4, 2009 at 7:33 pm · Filed under Good ·Tagged ,

The Deadpan Po-Mo School of film-making. That’s where Hal Hartley belongs, along with directors like Jim Jarmusch, Aki Kaurismaki

Oddly punctuated dialogue, peculiar pauses; as if characters are talking with comic book style speech bubbles hanging ironically over their heads.

It’s all deliberately contrived to be cod-philosophical, cod-comical.

Mocking serious pretension with knowingly mockingly serious pretension.

“There’s no such thing as adventure or romance. There’s only trouble and desire. And the funny thing is when you desire something you immediately get in trouble. And when you’re in trouble you don’t desire anything at all“

Says Robert Burke. Is that meaningful? Or is it simply something clever to say? Or is it something so clever it’s winking at itself with inverted commas at how “meaningful” it’s supposed to be being?.

Who knows. The characters seem to be saying things that might be meant to be meaning something else. Fraught with implications. Or maybe just fraught for the sake of being fraught (cus its a film, and films are meant to be “at you”)

It’s contrived melodrama shorn of melodramatic cliches or clinches, but also drained dry of plausible emotional engagement by virtue of this deliberated deadpan detachment.

There’s a funny oddball dance about an hour in (in the pic above); i can imagine film graduate oddball-wannabes dancing it in a line in the living room when they’re getting warmly pissed together on wet communal Saturday afternoons.

Its cool man. We’re taking the piss out of bad dancing. But there’s no need for an exclamation mark. We know we’re cool. We’re deconstructing our idiosyncrasies.

You have to be in the mood – or a mood – for this kind of film. A mood of sincere bullshitlessness.

Dir: Hal Hartley, USA

7/10

Leave a Comment

Older Posts »