octopusluke Reviews

Broken (IV) (2012)

Britain has never looked so grim

[5/10 · 9 July 2013]

Theatre director Rufus Norris borrows from the tropes of classic kitchen sink melodramas for his ambitious filmmaking debut. A film so relentlessly grey and grim that it could only ever be British.

As in Harper Lee's visionary coming-of-age novel To Kill A Mockingbird, Broken projects an image of a woebegone society through naïve eyes. Played with astonishing poignancy by newcomer Eloise Laurence, our protagonist is the cheerfully named Skunk, a cheery and inquisitive 11-year-old girl whose wide-eyed worldview is eradicated one day when she returns home from school to witness her belligerent neighbour Bob Oswald (Rory Kinnear) assaulting mentally challenged neighbour Rick (Robert Emms) who is falsely accused of raping Bob's lying, malevolent daughter. In turmoil, Skunk turns to her older brother Jed (Bill Milner), live-in au pair Kasia (Zana Marjanovic), kind schoolteacher Mike (Cillian Murphy) and doting father Archie (a fatigued Tim Roth) for solace; unbeknownst to her that this is only the start of what will be a life changing and unremittingly traumatic summer.

Set almost entirely behind the three closed doors of this small cul-de-sac, Norris and screenwriter Mark O'Rowe are blithe voyeurs; looking through the keyholes of a contemporary British society without giving us much in the way of reflexive social commentary. Instead of providing an authenticated, perhaps more neutered presentation of London suburbia, the constant lashings of disquieting drama make Broken look and feel like a particularly depressing feature-length soap opera.

Adapted from Daniel Clay's novel, the twisty plots are exhaustively interweaved for the screen – and at such a breakneck pace – that performances and small character nuances are left underdeveloped, culminating in a clichéd dream sequence which attempts to suggest narrative equilibrium, but falls short of mawkish contrivance.

The one beacon of light in all this darkness is Skunk's blossoming relationship with Dillon (played by fellow newbie George Sargeant), a shoot-from-the-hip young vagabond who longs to whisk her away to sunny Florida. Achieving a goofy, but moving first-love chemistry, their performances together give this black-hearted film a beating heart, and their schmaltzy, Disneyfied pipedreams some legs. After all, anything is better than 'Broken Britain'.

Harmony Lessons (2013)

A severe, sombre social commentary

[9/10 · 20 April 2013]

-- Review originally published at www.theframeloop.com --

Acclaimed Berlinale Golden Bear award winning debut Harmony Lessons makes it's way to the CPH PIX Film Festival. A terse, gruelling Darwinian drama, and just about the best film I've seen so far this year.

We're first introduced to lonesome thirteen-year-old Aslan (Timur Aidarbekov) while he chases a bouncing sheep across his grandmother's farm. It's a playful sequence, totally transformed when – with an unnerving stoney complexion – Aslan proceeds to capture the ewe, slit it's throat and prepare it for food. Perhaps it's a normalised, essential activity in bucolic Kazakhstan, but it's nevertheless a poetic foreshadowing of the savagery we will soon witness.

Life in the classroom is far from peachy for Aslan either. After a malicious sex-ed prank leaves him humiliated and ostracised, he's left wandering alone in the shadows of the school corridors. Like any institution, there is a strict hierarchy here. Top of the wolf pack and chief tormentor is Bolat (Alsna Anarbayev) who, with his team of subservient wing-men, run an underground extortion circuit; swiping money from the smaller school kids, and passing it upwards to those older and taller than he. Meanwhile, the OCD suffering Aslan returns to his home chambers every night to conduct callous scientific experiments on the defenceless insects that populate his decrepit home. When these acts of brutality no longer suffice, Aslan calculates a scheme that he hopes will overthrow the horrendous autocracy.

Baigazan exhorts a great deal of ingenuity into the ripe Lord of the Flies rehash premise, even if his necessity for allegory may be considered to some as a little belaboured. An adept purveyor of cinematic symmetry, he uses the drab school compound to reflect the prismatic, oppressive and religiously conflicted society these youths will soon be forced into. But, for now, they are still precarious teenagers; cloaked in ill-fitting school uniforms like would-be mafioso clobber. This is no song-and-dance Bugsy Malone, however. Framed with morbid fascination by cinematographer Aziz Zhambakiyev, the situation is observed rather than explored, with Aslan kept at such an objective distance that he is presented as more of an emotionally vapid wild beast than a despairing child. Found by Baigazan in a children's shelter, there's such a haunting sincerity to Timur Aidarbekov's performance that the social unrest subtext is palpable to all, and – despite your eagerness to look away – the tragedy is so cinematically entrancing that you won't be able to.

As writer, director and editor, cineaste Baigazan's debut is enriched with nods to other filmmakers, deploying a Bresson-like moral economy to the portrait of grim suburban schooling, mixed with the severity of the Dardenne Brothers' L'infant, and subtle glimpses of Tarkovsky's oneiric surrealism come the film's beguiling, unforgettable end. Even still, Baigazan is working within his own aesthetic realm, with a rare, vehemently grim portrait of life in Kazakhstan. Primitive and poetic, Harmony Lessons tackles the universal theme of angst-riddled adolescence and merciless social autonomy to both cruel and beautiful aplomb.

-- Review originally published at www.theframeloop.com --

Olympus Has Fallen (2013)

Standard Have Fallen

[2/10 · 17 April 2013]

Oh no, it's happened again, we're on the brink of World War III. Fear not, Frame Loopers, for the Land of the Free and Gerard Butler are here to seize the day!

The allegedly hunky Scot stars as Mike Banning, the former head of security for the universally adored President Asher (Aaron Eckhart). After a fatal accident eighteen months ago leaves the Asher family in tatters, the disgraced Banning is pushed back to a side-line government role. Meanwhile at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, a clan of highly skilled North Korean terrorists infiltrate the world's most fortified house without hiccup, and take the president hostage. Not only do they want American forces to withdraw their support for South Korea, they intend to use the States' own nukes to turn the nation into a destitute wasteland. With the acting president, House Speaker Trumbull (Morgan Freeman), and the rest of Team America in dire straits, it's left to the broad-shouldered Banning to use his Intel and military expertise to save the President – nay, the world – as we know it.

With the spin surrounding a potential North Korea nuclear attack, seeing this star-spangled, preposterously right wing American film is a little discomforting. Not because it is an intelligent and harrowingly coincidental portrayal of the current situation, but because one can imagine gun-toting Americans taking some sort of solace in this inherently prejudicial picture.

Directed by Training Day's Antoine Fuqua, it's a clunky, 'one man vs. the world' procedural which plays out like a deviant adaptation of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six series, mixed together with Die Hard. Unlike Bruce Willis, Butler is so devoid of humour or charm that his boisterous action-hero shtick – not to mention a sketchy American accent – are excruciating.

Relying on bloodied fight sequences and shoddy CGI explosions, the supporting cast (including Oscar winning Melissa Leo) are given nothing in the way of a good script or space to show off their acting credentials. Instead, they're left hanging off the screen looking either despondent or aghast. After stomaching this two-hour snooze fest – so drenched in American jingoism – I was beginning to share their pain.

Gimme the Loot (2012)

Goofy gangster fun

[6/10 · 17 April 2013]

--Review originally published at www.theframeloop.com--

Jam-packed with lofty art-house endeavours, CPH PIX Film Festival proves it has a soft-spot for feel good cinema with presentation of Adam Leon's impressive, Kickstarter funded debut, Gimme the Loot.

Presented by The Silence of the Lambs' director Jonathan Demme, the SXSW favourite is a platonic relationship comedy about a pair of aspiring, Bronx-based graffiti artists, Sofia (Tashiana Washingthon) and Malcolm (Ty Hickson). Discovering that a rival gang has trashed their turf, the pair hatch a plan to 'bomb the apple', AKA to tag the New York Mets' Home Run Apple at Citi Field stadium. It's a tough, nonsensical mission – the likes of which have been attempted in real life for the last twenty years, to no avail – but one that our teenage whippersnappers think they have the prowess to conquer. But first they need to raise $500 as a bribe for a guard at the ballpark.

And so sets off a picaresque pursuit for the dollar. Candidly shot across New York's Bronx and Manhattan neighborhoods (presumably without production permits), they hoist in a little help from their small-time gangster buddies for a series of heists and loots. Apparently anything sells in New York, so the savvy Sofia pawns off half empty spray cans, second-hand cell phones and used Nike sneaks while, a few blocks away, the scrappy Malcolm goes rogue with a pot dealers' weed and sells the stash to rich BoHo chick, Ginnie (Zoe Lescaze, looking much like a young Sissy Spacek). Invited in for a little tomfoolery, the inexperienced Malcolm is instantly besotted with her, but it won't stop him from swiping her extensive jewellery collection.

Allegedly taking influence from Raymond Abrashkin's iconic 1953 Coney Island classic Little Fugitive, writer-director Leon tells the featherweight story with tremendous zeal and a curiously observational approach, that is more akin to the French New Wave than the typical American indy. His New York is not of the resplendent Woody Allen persuasion, nor that of Scorsese's foggy urban sprawl. If anything, Leon presents the city like the warts-and-all melting pot that it really is, which is once again reflected in the diverse soundtrack's blend of R&B, experimental rock and original East Coast hip-hop.

While the graffiti surface story stinks of adolescent desperation, it is very much a red herring to the real story of oblivious teenage angst and love. Their first starring roles, newcomers Washington and Hickson have an exuberant chemistry together, which makes their covertly flirtatious banter and naturalistic prattling all the more charming, and the stagnated climax at the very least tolerable.

Gimme the Loot is somewhat of a rarity. Nonjudgemental of his protagonists, Leon's debut is a sweet natured gangster flick which neither glorifies thug life nor condemns it. It's slight, knowingly goofy filmmaking – the likes of which are so rare in modern, message-laden cinema - and proves the young débutant, his impressive cast and cinematographer Jonathan Miller as promising future talents.

--Review originally published at www.theframeloop.com--

Pieta (2012)

Disturbing retelling of grief and Greek Tragedy

[7/10 · 15 April 2013]

• Review originally posted at The Frame Loop. Visit www.theframeloop.com -

Even before the first image of an ominously hanging, rusty hook, Pieta comes to CPH PIX Film Festival with a great deal of infamy. The latest from South Korean, art-house provocateur Kim Ki Duk (3-Iron, The Isle) this unnerving revenge drama wowed last year's Venice Film Festival jury so much that it went on to beat Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master to the coveted Golden Lion award. Is it a better film than that aptly titled PTA project? Absolutely not. Is Pieta a gritty, harrowing and wholly engrossing exercise in cinematic tolerance? You're damn right it is.

Li Jung-Jin stars as Kang-Do, the merciless henchman to a crooked Seoul loan shark. Living in a threadbare apartment, with a diet consisting of half-cooked meat, he scuttles across the city, ruffling up people's feathers and making sure they pay up their debts, or else suffer the brutal consequences. His lonesome, pitiful existence is transformed by the arrival of Mi-Sun (Jo Min-Soo), an elderly woman claiming to be his estranged mother. Seeking repentance and the love of the inhumane monster she birthed and abandoned, the disbelieving Kang-Do puts her through a slew of horrific tests that will prove their bloodline, from eating dismembered body parts, to unsolicited incest. Boundaries are crossed, taboos busted open, and a repugnant relationship ensues.

Despite the industrial slum setting and the subtext of tooth/limbless capitalism, Pieta conforms to a typical Greek tragedy plot line. With each revelation more traumatic and sickening than the last, Kim tells the story with brute emotional force and savagery, without ever resorting to the ultra-violence made so common in South Korean cinema from the likes of Park Chan-Wook and The Vengeance Trilogy. While Jo Young-Jik's curious hand-held cinematography may look away from the most distressing of graphic acts, the pain lingers on the screen through Li and Jo's fantastic, expressionistic acting. The pair have a terse, inflammatory chemistry which is so enthralling that the mother-son relationship is all the more sickening.

Perhaps the film's success in Europe isn't all that surprising. Tackling the cruel storyline through emotional heft – without the archetypal glossy production values of the region - Pieta could be mistaken for a Lars von Trier or Gaspar Noé project. With a sublime first act, Kim gets lost in the knotty narrative he has laid out before him, and ties everything up in a stirring denouement that brings some genuine heart to the otherwise pitiful portrait of dog-eat-dog, Seoul city-living.

In that brilliant opening third, Mi-Sun turns to Kang-Do to denounce money as the 'beginning and the end of all things: love, honour, violence, fury, hatred, jealousy, revenge, death.' Unsavoury topics abound, Kim Ki-Duk combats them all with severe conviction in Pieta. If you can stomach such callousness, then this is diatribe is well worth a watch.

• Review originally posted at The Frame Loop. Visit www.theframeloop.com -

Closed Curtain (2013)

Panahi returns, more scathing, reflexive and indulgent than ever

[4/10 · 11 April 2013]

www.theframeloop.com

Directed alongside fellow Iranian and the criminally underrated filmmaker Kambuzia Partovi, Panahi's latest manifests the same vehemence for the tyrannical Iranian government as in last year's deconstructionist documentary This Is Not A Film. His first full length feature film since 2006′s brilliant Offside, Closed Curtain is a more aggressively political comment on the creative restrictions he has bestowed on him, and his unrelenting perseverance to conquer them.

With the Iranian government banning citizens from owning dogs as domestic pets (harrowingly, a true sanction), an unnamed screen-writer (played expertly here by co-director Partovi) flees to a remote beachside villa with his furry best friend, a beautiful little dog called 'Boy'. In constant fear that he will be caught – with the dog left for dead – the erratic scribe quite literally shuns the outside world, barricading the doors and blacking out the windows. Stuck in their new, isolated sanctuary, the man and dog are paid an unexpected visit by two young Iranians (Maryam Moqadam and Hadi Saeedi). Like our hero, they too are on the run from corrupt state officials.

Forty-five minutes in, the austere, naturalistic situation is dispelled by an indulgent second half with many increasingly odd moments. These include the visionary's quintessential reflexive streams of consciousness moments; a break in the fourth wall with Panahi's jarring on-screen presence; and a discombobulating critique on the very unorthodox nature of filmmaking and hiding from the reality that lies beyond the camera lens. Some of these moments are unnerving in all the right, satirical ways, whereas some of these 'experiments' are so dispiritingly chaotic that one would think they were coming from filmmakers of far younger vintage.

In one particularly seething encounter, a friend of Panahi's suggests to the on-screen director that there is more to life than work; to which the candid director suggests that all other things are 'foreign' to him. After countless censorship cases and one two year long house arrest, it's perhaps unsurprising that Jafar Panahi is so entrenched in – and haunted by – his nefarious creations that he has become removed to the life outside. Stuck on a critical parapet, Closed Curtain takes a panoptic glance at silenced Iranian society, without ever feeling like he is gallantly speaking for it as he has done previously with Crimson Tide and The Circle. The result means that this clunky social commentary feels like it can only resonate in an audience of a similar distance – that of a Scandinavian film festival, perhaps – rather than the homegrown audience he has become the audacious patron of.

Despite an endearing first half, the drama wallows for too long in opaque political allegories and slight-of-hand trickery. Considering the limitations and policing these filmmakers encounter on a daily basis, it seems churlish to quarrel about the film's production values. Even still, it must be noted that Closed Curtain has some of the most horrendous sound recording and mixing I've witnessed in recent memory.

Forgetting these flaws, there is one half of an exceptional, poetic drama hiding behind the curtain here. An alienated chamber piece, Panahi and Partovi highlight the grave situation facing artists and freedom of expression in an otherwise oppressive Iranian regime. For, as long as they continue to fight the system from within and make films, I am happy to watch and recommend them.

www.theframeloop.com

The Place Beyond the Pines (2012)

A mix of Scorsese, Malick & Nuri Bilge Ceylan, THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES is an ambitious, but uneven drama.

[5/10 · 10 April 2013]

www.theframeloop.com

Following 2010's chamber love(loss) drama Blue Valentine, filmmaker Derek Cianfrance returns in more virtuosic style with The Place Beyond the Pines.

Don't let the tomfoolery of gross mis-marketing fool you. Despite the somewhat frenzied trailers and occasional heist-turned-motorcycle chases, Cianfrance's latest is just as hermetic and character driven as his last. Wrestling with themes of familial disconnect and moral ineptitude, the exhausting 140 minute running time swims around all of these ideas without ever attacking them head-on. Nurture vs. nature, it bears some mercurial resemblance to Terrence Malick's recent The Tree of Life, only this time with a few more drugs and a few less dinosaurs.

It kicks off with Ryan Gosling as Luke, a nomadic motorcycle stunt rider in a travelling carnival show. Finishing up one night of dizzying feats, he stumbles into former lover Romina (Eva Mendes), who drops a colossal bombshell telling him that, after one night of passion a year ago, he now has a son. Stunned, the capricious Luke quits the stunt game and uses his 'motobandit' skills to pull a series of bank robberies.

Following 45 minutes of masterful crime-drama storytelling, Cianfrance segues into a phlegmatic middle chapter when we're introduced to law-school graduate turned ambitious police officer Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper). The law enforcer is quickly on our antihero's tail, while the venal police department he works for wait for him surreptitiously in the wings. The third, redemptive instalment to the story looks at the fatal impact and legacy that the two hunks' confrontation has had on the present day, and the prism of deceit, corruption and hidden truths that continue to whistle through the trees of Schenectady New York, aka 'the place beyond the pines'.

Just as in Blue Valentine, Cianfrance proves himself to be a quintessential 'actor's director', coalescing with his cast to create a handful of career-best performances. Striking gold twice with Canadian heartthrob Gosling, whom is so entrenched in the intricacies of his character's architecture that the results are quite literally worn on his sleeve and the meticulous, self- designed tattoos. His portrayal of Luke is so enigmatic and alluring that it will distractingly remind you of his turn in Nicholas Winding Refn's 2011 Drive, a superior, but equally cryptic movie.

While her screen-time is limited, Eva Mendes impresses in a testing, warts-and-all performance as the forlorn lover/mother Romina. In a film so emotionally opaque, she resonates as the bare, beating heart of the film. The biggest thespian accolade has to go to Bradley Cooper as the centrepiece player of the story. Unlike the smouldering Gosling, the Silver Linings Playbook star uses deafening silence to present his character's complexity and moral dilemma, rather than cloak it. Two great films in a row, it's a shame he will next be gracing multiplex cinemas with the turgid end to The Hangover trilogy, as he certainly has an indisputable dramatic aptitude.

The support are also on top form, most notably Australian sideliner Ben Mendelsohn as a grimy mechanic looking for a quick buck, and the inexplicably menacing, young hopeful Dane DeHaan, whose character we meet in the lacklustre final story. In fact, the only entirely redundant on-screen performance comes from Ray Liotta, phoning it in with the same bad guy mobster shtick we have seen from him countless times before, and really have no desire to see again.

Director of photography Sean Bobbitt (who dazzled previously working on Steve McQueen's Shame and Hunger) brings more fervour to the picture with cinematography that is plush when it needs to be, and claustrophobic during the more intense narrative moments. Sonically, Faith No More/Ipecac Records nut Mike Patton puts in a similarly frantic score to some success but, like some of his musical endeavours, is prone to being aggressively distracting.

Cianfrance's ambition is admirable, and he certainly has an idiosyncratic style that nestles in somewhere between early day Scorsese, Terrence Malick and Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Unfortunately, nothing here holds together long enough to be a consistently involving movie. For every great cinematic moment, there's two steps back, with croaky script beats and what appears to be a complete lack of post-production editing prowess. Overpacked and exhausting, The Place Beyond the Pines is certainly a place worth visiting, but it's not the accomplished masterpiece it deserved to be.

More reviews, interviews and other things at The Frame Loop: www.theframeloop.com

Ginger & Rosa (2012)

A star is born

[4/10 · 7 April 2013]

Far from the swinging sixties, filmmaker Sally Potter's depiction of a 1962 London is a far more sobering affair, with food and work scarce, tireless peace protesters, and the increasing threat of a Cuban Missile Crisis lingering in the city smog. It's a tough time to be an adult, but seemingly even tougher for two teenage girls in Ginger & Rosa.

Elle Fanning stars as the first titular character, Ginger. Nicknamed as such for her (awfully dyed) rouged hair, she's a fiery character all-round. 17 going on 30, the aspiring poet and leftie activist takes inspiration from the grim life both outside and at home with her bickering mother Natalie (Christina Hendricks) and step father Roland (Alessandro Nivola), a boisterous, but charming boho-academic and once imprisoned pacifist. Outside her turbulent domestic situation is where Ginger really lets loose, embracing nascent womanhood with best friend Rosa (Australian newcomer, Alice Engelt). They live in each other's pockets; scalping fags, shrinking jeans in the bath, attending 'Ban the Bomb' rallies and hitchhiking across rural England. With only her aloof mother at home, Rosa is the more assertive of the pair, hoping to speed through adolescence as quickly as possibly and meet her knight in shining armour. When Cupid strikes his bow in the most unlikely and disturbing of places, Ginger struggles with the realisation that they are not only growing up, but also growing apart.

Still revelling in her critically acclaimed adaptation of Virginia Woolf's Orlando from 1992, Potter's unique art films are so ornate and divisive that at best could be compared to a sumptuous renaissance painting, and at worst shunned as pretentious poppycock. Thankfully, Ginger & Rosa sees Potter toning down her highbrow inhibitions, telling the universal story of rebellious youth through Robbie Ryan's charming, naturalistic cinematography. The nomadic period in the girls' lives is also reflected in the expert use of music, mixing traditional bebop jazz from Charlie Parker with the jaunty Rock & Roll of Little Richard.

Despite these nice flourishes, Potter's casting choices make certain scenes, and entire characters jarring and trite. Particularly hokey is Christina Hendricks, cast against type as the pinny wearing stay-at-home mother, a far cry from the buxom matriarch Joan in Mad Men. Elsewhere, fellow American Nivola lacks the magnetism needed to pull off a nascent father figure, doubling up as an irresistible sex symbol. Fortunately it's not all that bad on the wings, with Timothy Spall and Oliver Platt providing some much needed comic relief as Ginger's genteel godfathers Mark & Mark Two; with Annette Bening as their visiting American poet chum.

Despite some sweet moments, it's often unclear what kind of story Potter is trying to tell. Starting as a small coming-of-age Cold War story, the tension escalates to an embellished and bungling finish.

All that said, there is one shining beacon of majesty in Ginger & Rosa though, and her name is Elle Fanning. The 14-year-old American, and younger sister of The Twilight Saga star Dakota, proves herself an effervescent screen presence, articulating the bulk of the drama while Engelt's Rosa, whom is also impressive, strives to blur it. Not only does she handle the Queen's English with great aplomb, Fanning has a quivering timbre in her voice that is both fragile, yet imperious, and totally representative of a typical teenage girl encroaching on womanhood. If only the performance had been in a different movie, she would have bagged up an Oscar nomination this year. Resembling an almost Meryl Streep-like grace and zealousness, something makes me think we'll be seeing more excellent performances from her in the years to come.

More reviews, interviews and other such stuff over at The Frame Loop: www.theframeloop.com

Parker (2013)

Silly Stath, smash things

[4/10 · 6 March 2013]

There's always something devilishly exciting about a new Jason Statham movie. Sure, it's no Shakespeare, but the baldy British action star has enough charisma and faux-Cockney swagger to make films like The Expendables and the ludicrous Crank series entertaining, in that silly, popcorn-chomping sort of way.

Parker is no exception. Based on the novel 'Flashfire' from Donald E. Westlake's hardboiled crime series, The Stath stars as the eponymous, hard-as-nails master thief with a questionable moral compass and a hulky scarred torso. After leading a successful million dollar heist on a local Ohio state fair, his crackerjack crew turn against him, leaving him bloodied, wounded and left for dead by the roadside. Unfortunately for them, Parker is seemingly indestructible, and limping with a vengeance. Deserting his girlfriend Claire (Emma Booth) and her Mafioso dad (a cameo from the gravelly voiced Nick Nolte), he hunts them down to the lavish Palm Beach Florida, and enlists a fledgling realtor Leslie (Jennifer Lopez), together they hatch a plan to catch his former crew whilst they undertake a jewellery auction heist.

The first thing worthy of mention is that the plot, like all good/bad action B-movies, is utter balderdash. What could a shrill real estate agent know about the criminal underworld? How could The Stath survive a point blank bullet wound to the chest. And, most preposterous of all, how could anyone ever believe the Brit's lame Texan accent? Parker is the sort of film where you need to leave such questions of plausibility at the door, and just enjoy the gaudy action spectacle.

Helmed by the Oscar nominated director of The Devil's Advocate and Ray, Taylor Hackford blends grisly film noir tropes with ultra-violent action set pieces. Getting off to a rollicking start, as the narrative takes prominence, Parker sluggishly tumbles through the two hour running time. It needs a good edit. Although J-Lo's screen presence is magnetic, her character is entirely superfluous, attractive window dressing.

Is it a 'good' film. Of course not! The plot is derivative, the 'stick 'em up!' dialogue cringe- worthy, and the characterisation ignominious. Nevertheless, it's mindless entertainment, which you can't help but succumb to.

More reviews, interviews and other bits at The Frame Loop www.theframeloop.com

The Bay (II) (2012)

WTF is going on? x 100

[4/10 · 1 March 2013]

Like any commercial industry, film follows trends. Along with superheroes, the other trend that has been bothering multiplexes cinema screens over the last ten or so years is the faux-found footage schtick. From the groundbreaking Blair Witch Project, up to the abysmal Generation X, it's been an appropriately shaky gimmick, but hopefully Barry Levinson's 'eco-horror' The Bay will be the final nail in the coffin.

The chameleonic director behind the phenomenally casted thriller Sleepers, and satire Wag the Dog, Levinson's latest is his first ever straight up horror flick; a mock polemic that perfectly fits the found footage aesthetic. In the summer of 2009, the idyllic provincial town of Chesapeake Bay, Maryland was put into red light crisis mode when an unknown sea critter infected the water supply. Quickly enough, people start showing signs of infection, from rashes, to swellings and bugs crawling out of places where bugs should not be crawling out of. The entire town is shut down, and things start to get even more desperate as people fight for survival and dead bodies start crowding the streets. Right after the crisis, the government confiscated all video footage and proof of the crisis, but good old WikiLeaks has managed to release some of the evidence. Now it's up to aspiring reporter and survivor Donna (Kether Donohue) to tell the world the shocking truth.

His first foray into horror, Levinson handles the required jumps and tonal unease well, whilst also using the sloshy found footage aesthetic with such panache that you feel like you're watching a trashy TV documentary, minus the ad-breaks corny voice-over.

For all the daringness of the directing, it doesn't stop The Bay from being an incredibly ugly and unfulfilled film. Because the story is played out in a mockumentary format, neither the characters, nor the audience have any idea what is going on. Just like the Dogme '95 movement, every found footage movie breaks it's limited format in the post- production department, with heavy jump cuts ladened with the routine suspense music of Marcelo Zarvos.

Following Soderbergh's Contagion, perhaps there is a new, icky trend in the eco/epidemic horror. However, the experience of seeing The Bay is just like any uninspired modern horror (and there are many). Sitting in the darkness watching purposefully shitty quality footage for a thankfully short 84 minutes, you're gingerly waiting for the next scare, rather than getting anything truly transgressive narrative depth or momentum.

After some disappointing comedies and TV movie work, it's great to see Levinson given the chance to tell stories on the big screen, even if The Bay is best suited for a home viewing. Whatever you do, don't start a google image search of the film's villainous aqua critter. I found the footage, but I really wish I'd left it lost.

Compliance (2012)

Irrevocably awful, and not in a good way.

[1/10 · 25 February 2013]

Compliance is just about one of the most abhorrent films I've ever seen.

In 2007, there were 70 exceptional cases were reported across to the American Police department. While they all had their own, unsettling idiosyncrasies, they were all loosely connected by subterfuge and prank calls. This is no Steve Penk or The Jerky Boys, but real vile cases of human maltreatment.

It's an extraordinary topic that is crying out to be debunked in an explorative, Errol Morris style documentary. Compliance isn't that film.

Writer/director Craig Zobel decides to focus this seeming pandemic on one exceptional example, based on a mélange of different real cases to make one mega-horrific fictional one. It's just another regular day at an Ohio fast food chain, until a meticulous prank caller convinces the restaurant manager (Ann Dowd) that one of her employees Becky, Gossip Girl's Dreama Walker, is being accused of stealing from a customer. What proceeds is a manipulating interrogation, where everyone idly agrees to whatever increasingly insane task the caller will have them do. Why? Without proving any of his credentials, the prank caller deceives everyone involved into believing that he is a police officer, and thus establishing his unobjectionable authority. By Compliance's nasty end, Becky is naked, humiliated, and sexually violated, and the audience are accomplices; watching on through guarded eyes and clenched fists.

Even though the story comes from a bastardised real place, Zobel really pushes the boundaries of plausibility. Not in a "stranger than fiction" way, but rather because the characterisation, narrative, and Zobel's misguided compulsion to tell it, is shallow. The ninety minute running time lingers for what feels like days and, whilst the repetitious sequences are relatively tame and implicit, it all feels incredibly ugly and exploitative; as if Zobel is forcing the audience to watch a security camera.

At it's most tenuous, one could wring-out a slapdash argument that the film is forcing the audience to look at this injustice like a reflexive meta-narrative, like Haneke's Funny Games. Unlike the unflinchingly austere Austrian, Zobel lacks directorial flare and balls to actually critique or comment on the true events and populace servility to the law.

Even when the film was snapped up at the Sundance Film Festival last year, it was met with notoriety, with walkouts and boos. Later, in a public Q&A, Zobel plainly admitted that the film is misogynistic. But for what reason? Zobel is trying to be forthright and polemical with Compliance, but simply projecting these images isn't enough to warrant a political license. An artless, meaningless, pseudo-video nasty that doesn't earn the discomfort it will leave you with.

My full review, and other things, right here: www.theframeloop.com

This Is 40 (2012)

This is Tawdry

[3/10 · 13 February 2013]

Marketed as the 'Sort-of sequel to Knocked Up', writer/director/producer Judd Apatow returns with his regular blend of bickering tragicomedy, only this time it's more cantankerous, self-aggrandising, and – most painful of all – longer then it ever should or deserved to be.

An odd follow-up indeed, instead of following Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl's story of blossoming parenthood, Apatow focuses on a two-point-four family in full-swing. Living in a rich suburban LA neighbourhood, record label owner Pete (Paul Rudd) and his wife, health- freak boutique proprietress Debbie (Leslie Mann), are on the brink of their fortieth birthdays. Rather than a cause for celebration, it's a period that puts the pair in the doldrums. His business is close to going bust, and she is in denial about her age, taking out her frustration on their two kids by enforcing wheat-free diets, witch doctor remedies, and culls of internet usage (although that doesn't stop Pete from dwindling away the hours playing iPad games whilst sitting on the porcelain throne).

From the film title, to casting your real life friends, wife and kids in central roles, this is undoubtedly Apatow's most personal film to date. Some have took his humility as a valiant artistic flourish, but really it just boils down to creative idleness. Everything is lazy here. Instead of structuring a through-line, the unremarkable story unfurls as a series of semi- improvised vignettes, which shift from the family bickering, to love-ins and make-up sex; then repeated, as (apparently) necessary.

Thankfully, Apatow does move it away from the kitchen sink and gives us a hefty serving of enjoyable, but ultimately under-fulfilled bit-part performances. Megan Fox is the token hot chick working at the boutique, then Lena Dunham and Chris O'Dowd crop up as snarky record label assistants. Then there's Jason Segel as the sleazy life coach, AND Melissa McCarthy as an irate school mom, AND John Lithgow as Leslie's bemused, reticent father, AND British rocker Graham Parker as British rocker Graham Parker, AND Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong as Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong, AND singer-songwriter Ryan Adams as singer-songwriter Ryan Adams…

With so many extraneous guests, all of which have threadbare characterization, This Is 40 is at risk of imploding in it's own sloppy misdirection. Limping to the end of its' 133 minute running time, there are scenes and characters that could be cut in their entirety and would leave a resoundingly positive impact on the film's temperamental plotting.

Fortunately, he gets one thing right in casting neurotic comedy patriarch Albert Brooks as Pete's money-grabbing father Larry. Much like his roles in underrated gem Modern Romance, Brooks perfectly balances the deplorable character with genuine poise and wit, only making everyone else on screen is just plain vexatious.

The blackened, beating heart at the centre of the film is Rudd and Mann, who bizarrely manage to put in career best performances, whilst also outliving their single-faceted characters; who are more willing to blame everyone but themselves for their patchy relationship. Both are desperate for our sympathy, but all we want is to see them get their comeuppance.

Maybe it's the BMW cars, or plethora of Apple hardware that fills their massive house, but This Is 40 does nothing more than mimic mundane, upper class familial disconnect. If this is Apatow's honest depiction of fortysomething life, I wish he'd just man-up, stop drowning in bathos, and go back to trying to make us laugh. This is tawdry.

More reviews and interviews at www.theframeloop.com

Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

Bulldozing his way to victory

[8/10 · 6 February 2013]

After a stomping success in the States, this witty retro gaming homage is the first bow in the Disney Animation Studios' arrow to be as ardent and artistically ballsy as the work from those neighboring Pixar bigwigs.

John C. Reilly heads a staggeringly good voice cast as the eponymous Ralph, an oafish behemoth who has spent the last thirty years as a bad guy in an old fashioned arcade video game. His daily routine sees him having to smash up an apartment building, only to find goody-goody superbuilder Fix-It Felix (voiced by 30 Rock's Jack McBrayer) come whizzing in to repair the damage. An outcast amongst the rest of the game's characters, Ralph sits in on existential Bad Guy group counselling classes. While he may have friends in fellow heels Dr. Robotnik and Bowser, Ralph wishes that he could give up on the villain's life entirely and switch over to the light side. On a pursuit to prove his valor, he wanders across various gaming platforms on the hunt for a honorary golden medallion, which sees him taking orders from bossy Sergeant Calhoun (Jane Lynch) in a Halo style shoot-em-up; to meeting kindred spirit Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman), a lost little girl stuck inside a sickly sweet K- pop parody racing game called Sugar Rush.

If, like me, you spent many rainy day hours festering in front of a gaming console, you will simply adore this film. The first twenty minutes are brimming with nudging sight gags that pay homage to old greats like Space Invaders and Sonic. Directed and co-written by Rich Moore (The Simpsons, Futurama), Wreck-It Ralph successfully adopts the Toy Story model by being genuinely universal; entertaining both for the nostalgic Generation X adult audiences and their iPad wielding children. It's artistically ambitious too, embracing the old fashioned, staccato movements of 8-bit arcade games in one scene, and then moving to contemporary, HD fluidity in the next. Equal parts traditional and transgressive, it means that the impressive 3-D rendering benefits the story, rather than impinges it.

Another huge achievement is in the pitch-perfect casting. Reilly is sublime as the downbeat hero at the heart of the film, perfectly complemented by Silverman's shrill as precocious girl- racer Vanellope. Fans of the recently terminated NBC series 30 Rock will cherish hearing McBrayer going full-on Kenneth mode as the ebullient, Super Mario styled Felix, and Lynch, well, Lynch is always fantastic, isn't she?

It won't turn you into a blubbering mess like the regular gushing Pixar fare, and the story of heroism and friendship is hardly revolutionary, but Wreck-It Ralph is a defiant and highly entertaining passion project. Similarly to Sony's fantastic Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, Disney have created a CGI animation feature which will eventually become known as a retro cult-classic.

More reviews, interviews and other film stuff over at www.theframeloop.com

A Liar's Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python's Graham Chapman (2012)

Sex, Lies and Parrot Sketches

[4/10 · 31 January 2013]

Graham Chapman was erratic, flamboyant and, so close friends attest, somewhat unknowable. Before his death in 1989, The comic and Monty Python member completed a bizarre book full of his singular humour, formative experiences recounted in typically skewed fashion, surreal fabrications, and hints towards his struggle with alcohol (he was known to drink several pints of gin daily).

As animation producer Justin Weyers disclosed during the aforementioned workshop, the production team, headed by directors Bill Jones, Jeff Simpson and Ben Timlett, required a certain scope and diverse approach to do justice to the subject matter. What resulted is a patchwork of various animation methods from fourteen different creative teams, helped along the way by vocal contributions from the Pythons, and sewn together with occasional film and interview clips.

The film leaps briskly between animation methods, including cell techniques and stop motion, all converted into stereoscopic 3D. This may sound a jarring and disparate visual style, and it sometimes is. But the piece is helped enormously by the audio narration Chapman recorded of his book, which ties the threads together and drives the whole thing along. There is a clear standout aesthetic, achieved by oil painting every frame onto glass. Wielding rich, textured results, this visual style illustrates the darkest portion of the film, concerning Chapman's attempts to confront his alcoholism. These scenes were so striking it's almost a shame when the section utilising this method drew to a close, other animation styles seeming comparatively flat.

Other highlights arrive in the form of recounted Python meetings in which the comics are for some reason reimagined as monkeys, comically graphic sex scenes, and surreal flights which variously find the comedian wandering around space, and sipping spirits with the Queen. There's an evident attention to craft throughout.

As to be expected from this sort of project, there are sections which don't work as well as others. A stern talking to from a stop motion Sigmund Freud, voiced by Cameron Diaz (who else), is a disappointingly dry episode. On the whole, this is a camp and absurd, sensitively crafted film, at turns irritating, but ceaselessly creative; a fitting tribute to an unpredictable, distinct talent.

www.theframeloop.com

Skylab (2011)

Le Skylab

[8/10 · 31 January 2013]

Julie Delpy is a French-American filmmaker who has weaved between roles in acclaimed films, most notably Richard Linklater's (soon to be) Before trilogy, and making accomplished films herself. As a director she is best known for 2 Days in Paris, a refreshing and genuinely funny romantic comedy which managed to deftly sidestep cliché, as well as follow-up 2 Days in New York. This, her fourth feature, is set in 1979, and centres upon a summer holiday family get together in Brittany, disrupted by the falling to earth of the space station which gives the film it's name.

Delpy drew upon her own childhood experiences during writing, and even admits that "a lot of the lines in the film are literally out of my memory", with many of the characters inspired in some way by family members. The filmmaker stars as Anna, mother of Albertine, the nine year old obsessed with the satellite and unable to understand her elder's relative disregard of the news story unfolding in their direct vicinity.

Similarly to both 2 Days films, Delpy's dialogue is natural and well-crafted, her characters discussing age, sex and politics with poignancy and unforced, subtle humour. Politics, however, is much more an explicit presence in Le Skylab than her other features. The adults of the group, reluctant to discuss the unfolding news story at first lest the children begin to panic, soon begin to speculate wildly, to results both humorous and unnerving.

There's a tension which creeps into the extended family's interactions and results in many purely dramatic scenes delivered convincingly by the strong cast. The filmmaker's father, Albert, plays Herbet, a man struggling from the onset of mental illness and depression, and proves a compelling screen presence. Elsewhere, scenes exploring early-teenage sexuality are well-judged and compelling. Delpy handles these darker themes with confidence and dexterity, and Le Skylab is an engrossing film, elegant yet unshowy, and a strong addition to the career of a highly talented filmmaker.

See more at www.theframeloop.com

Flight (I) (2012)

As flavourless as an airline dinner

[5/10 · 30 January 2013]

After dabbling in the world of creepy pseudo-realistic motion capture with Beowulf, The Polar Express and A Christmas Carol, Robert Zemeckis returns to the land of the living with the tonally muddled, Oscar-ripe drab-drama Flight.

Academy Award winner Denzel Washington stars as Whip Whitman. After a night of debauchery, he wakes up in his birthday suit, swigs on leftover beer, tokes a joint, does a line of coke, and fools around with the brazenly naked lady at his bedside. All that before breakfast, he heads out to work, donning aviator's uniform and a beaming smile. "This guy's a pilot? For whom? Ryanair, surely?" We should be appalled by his unethical and offensively illegal behaviour but, hey, it's Denzel. Who can argue with that lovable rogue?

This is ostensibly Flight's irrevocable issue. Playing a neglectful father, a repressed manic depressive and an irresponsible substance abuser, this may be his most psychologically enriched character since his eponymous turn in Spike Lee's Malcolm X , but Denzel is just too darn charming for the drama to resonating or have the impact it is so desperately hunting for. It's a good performance, but one stifled by Zemeckis' lack of ballsy direction.

This isn't for lack of trying, however. In what must be the most extraordinary, and vicariously terrifying flight scene in cinema history, Zemeckis hangs the narrative on one paradoxical dilemma: is Whip the one-in-a-million hero who defied logic and saved 96 passengers in an emergency landing; or is he the inebriated killer of the unfortunate six who failed to escape the crash? It's a burden that the audience struggles with, whilst the character on screen continues with his alcoholism and emotional inertia.

Placing the monumental action set piece in the first quarter of the film was always going to be a brave narrative ploy, but in effect it's an unsatisfactory one, as the rest of Flight wallows in psychological, even biblical turmoil. During a cheeky hospital stairwell fag break, Whip meets recovering heroin addict Nicole (played by fiery English actress Kelly Reilly). In no time at all, they are romantically linked, both out of sexual attraction and mutual desperation as sparring buddies to help kick their addictions. All the while, pilot union official Charlie (Bruce Greenwood) and acerbically tongued attorney Hugh Lang (Don Cheadle) try to convince airplane manufacturing officials of Whip's honour and innocence. It's a court battle that will be easily won, but one that Whip can win only if he stays sober.

Written by Real Steel's John Gatins, the Oscar nominated original screenplay is riddled with redemption story clichés and pious undertones. There's also an odd mix of tone, shifting between the melancholic (an emotionally draining father and son confrontation), to the downright frivolous, (with John Goodman stepping in, in true Argo fashion as Whip's wise cracking coke dealer). Such ping-ponging leaves you confused in the middle. It's as if Zemeckis wants to tell daring adult stories through feeble sentimentality, a la Forrest Gump.

A dogged fan of 2000′s Cast Away, I was thrilled to see Zemeckis' return to live action filmmaking. Thirteen years later, with three disappointing motion-capture animations in the can, it's as if Zemeckis has forgotten how to engage with real human emotion altogether. A fantastic opening thirty minutes, but the less aggrandised, more cerebral moments that follow fail to strike a chord.

Give this project to Darren Aronofsky or Sam Mendes and you could have had a mini masterpiece. With Zemeckis, it's as insipid and synthetic as an in-flight dinner.

Reviews, short stories, and more at www.theframeloop.com

Lincoln (2012)

The Frame Loop's review of Lincoln

[8/10 · 25 January 2013]

Yes, Lincoln has certainly pandered to the awards academies, racking up a formidable 12 nominations at the Oscars next month. Most of it's gong chances are debatable, but there's one performance that is more than worthy of a 13″ inch golden fella.

Let's just get it out of the way, Daniel Day-Lewis is the beating heart of the film, the commandeering force behind it's successes. His stalwart depiction of Lincoln is awe-inspiring and unparalleled, even by his own legendary standards. Think back to his moustachioed villain Bill the Butcher in Scorsese's Gangs of New York. Flamboyant, erratic, and equally Oscar tipped, that knife wielding maniac is the antithesis of Lincoln, and Day-Lewis is equally unrecognisable. He plays the president of towering stature with a reedy, borderline warbling tenor, yet incongruously still embodies Lincoln's well documented charisma and affability. It's difficult to attest how historically veracious it all is, but the performance is so astonishing in fact, that it is rendered invisible; as if Spielberg has stumbled upon a time machine and gone back to pick up the bona-fide bearded lawman.

Usually such a consummate performance would render any other performances obsolete, but not here. Tommy Lee Jones is perfectly cast as the po-faced and silver tongued radical Thaddeus Stevens, the staunch opponent of slavery who helped reach the momentous verdict with his political prowess. It could be quite a dowdy slog to the attested outcome, but the appearance of James Spader and John Hawkes as conniving spin doctors gives the film some desperately required levity.

If Day-Lewis is taciturn, Sally Field is the portent thespian, portraying the psychologically perturbed first lady with raw emotional impulse in a performance that borders from the cerebral to the melodramatic. It's far from a romantic film, but Spielberg doesn't cower away from presentation of Lincoln as a complex family man, torn between doing what is good for the country and good for the home (which includes a bit-part from Joseph Gordon-Levitt as reluctantly drafted son Robert).

The sole issue Lincoln suffers with is it's smacks of self-effacement. A worthy picture on a worthy subject – from the quotidian American populist filmmaker, no less – some of its' plaudits are more akin to tokenism than genuine merit. John Williams' drab and utterly forgettable scoring, Kaminski's mundane cinematography, Michael Kahn's serviceable editing. None of these aspects are particularly bad, but they're hardly gong-worthy. It also comes woefully close to a bore whenever Jones or Day-Lewis aren't lingering in the frame. Fortunately, that isn't often enough to dampen your engagement in the story, or the peculiarly nail biting amendment verdict.

While the film won't go down in the history books, it's handling of a difficult subject matter, and that awe-inspiring central performance certainly will. While I much prefer Spielberg in 'fun for all the family' mode, this adult chamber drama has a profound resonance, which makes it well worth watching.

Read reviews, interviews and the like over at www.theframeloop.com

The King of Pigs (2011)

Gritty, brutal and totally unmoving.

[3/10 · 24 January 2013]

Ever since Osamu Tezuka's early 1960s work, Japan has become the controlling monolith of Asian animation. The King of Pigs dares to try and buck the trend. A Cannes Film Festival favourite from new-gun South Korean Yeon Sang-Ho, it's an unflinching take on class hierarchy and savagery in an inner city high school. Dangerous Minds meets Lord of the Flies? There are piggies abound, but the gangster terrains are far from paradisal.

After a fifteen year absence, old school friends Hwang and Jong reunite over dinner. But nostalgia isn't on the menu tonight, through lucid flashbacks, the pair discuss their upbringing with utter contempt; both still psychologically troubled by the culture of bullying, whereby the rich designer wearing kids prevail and the lowlives are berated, spat on and beaten to a pulp. Not a moment too soon, their lives are transformed when the ghostly student at the back of the classroom Kim Chul teaches them how to fight back in the most malevolent way possible.

Animator/director Yeon presents a truly vile story in the most attractive way possible, with the rusty Seoul backdrop lusciously well drawn and the school boys presented autonomously, yet each have their own striking gaze. Also working as the editor and screenwriter, the vengeance tale is presented in such a raw and aggressive way that the fight sequences are often uncomfortably palpable. A stunning quality for a animation picture to obtain.

But this is ultimately The King of Pig's undoing. While some of the hand-drawn animation and raw emotional connect leaves you gawking, the gritty and unsettling portrait of school feudalism is just so severe. Quite rapidly, Yeon shifts from the profound and resonating to the hysterical, particularly a painfully shouty final showdown. It's a great shame. What starts as an entertaining watch culminates in a sensorily attacking one.

Read more reviews at www.theframeloop.com

Django Unchained (2012)

Tarantino's best since Jackie Brown

[8/10 · 17 January 2013]

Although he'd probably negate the claim, Tarantino is one of America's last standing auteur filmmakers. He's crafted his niche, with a mixture of horror-show violence, expletive-laden dialogue, pop soundtracking, cinephile anachronism and Samuel L. Jackson cameos. Following several fanboy duds, Kill Bill, Death Proof and Inglourious Basterds, he returns to the big screen with Django Unchained; more nefarious, iconoclastic and iconographic than ever. In short, it's Tarantino, through-and-through, and the best film he's released since Jackie Brown.

A playful homage to the old fashioned tropes of Blaxploitation cinema, Spaghetti Westerns, and Corbucci's landmark 1966 outlaw, Tarantino transports the eponymous Django – aka, 'the fastest shooter in the South' – to a pre-Civil War America, and gives him a racial transformation, to boot. Superbly played by Jamie Foxx, our beloved hero starts out as a shackled, cowering slave, being dragged through the forest to an auction house. Along the way, he is bought by Dr Schultz (Christoph Waltz), a verbally dexterous German dentist turned mercenary. After a gory transaction, the pair start out an unlikely business partnership as salt-and-pepper bounty hunters, catching outlaws and picking up the state-paid levy. They even get the chance to rub out an impish gang of Ku Klux Klan copycats (they hold no purpose to the narrative, but their Blazing Saddles style idiocy routine brings some excellent bawdy humour to the bloodied proceedings).

This first story takes up about 80 minutes of the film's overall running time. We get to see Django go through class elevation, from slave to a cowboy on horseback, to a free-man with a vengeance. The pair set out to find Django's wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), now the property of Calvin Candie (DiCaprio) a savage Mississippian plantation owner, notorious across the land for treating his slaves like butchered flesh. I think a showdown is in order.

Not only is the story complex and novelistic, the characters are fabulously drawn, with some beautiful set and costume design from Leslie A. Pope and Sharen Davis (both cheated out of Academy Awards nods). After a defining performance as a smooth operating Nazi general in Inglourious Basterds, Waltz puts his natural charisma to the force of good as the affable Shultz, twiddling his moustache and moving with a sprightly gate, perfectly matched with Foxx's cool, swaggering renegade. It's also the best DiCaprio performance I've seen in recent memory, so pantomimic as the venemous Candie, a man who details African slaves' inferiority through insipid phrenological study, whose astonishing good looks cover up his black heart, and blacker teeth.

As if that wasn't enough mesmerising performances to get to grips with, Tarantino calls upon old favourite Samuel L. Jackson as Stephen, the supreme leader to Candie's impoverished slaves. He's an Uncle Tom, of sorts, eerily servile and complacent to the white family which he longs to be a member of, whilst deducing the people of his same African patronage off to be mercilessly sold like cattle. Every time he chuckles along with Candie you feel like retching, whenever he callously drops 'the n-word' it leaves an impact like a shotgun wound. It's the most wretched, unsettling character Tarantino has ever created, and certainly a career best for the admired Mr. Cruel Cool.

Like many a Tarantino project, the film's main issues are in it's pacing and meandering direction. It's as if he and editor Fred Askin were too busy geeking out over fanboy film chat that they forgot to produce anything more than a loose rough cut. However, just like his previous work, Django Unchained is never boring. In fact, it's often absolutely mesmerising, with dirtied lensed visuals mixed with a cine-literate soundtrack of arcane Ennio Morricone orchestrations, mixed with present day hip-hop from Wu-Tang Clan chief RZA.

Some have perceived it as a gross opportunistic rehashing of America's darkest era, but I think that does the film a great disservice. Unlike Spielberg and his current Lincoln movie, or Zero Dark Thirty from Kathryn Bigelow, Tarantino has somehow earned the right to produce films which are exempt from scruples and questions of veracity. You simply get them or you don't. If you're after a history lesson, this is certainly not the film for you. If bloodied, hilarious and offensive entertainment is the order of the day, then Django Unchained is a must-see. Welcome back, Tarantino; you brilliantly stubborn bastard, you.

The Sessions (2012)

Genuine feel-good drama, which is never twee or overly sentimental

[8/10 · 17 January 2013]

I expected the insipidly titled The Sessions to be one of two movies. Firstly, it could have been an indie darling. Dished up to the swooshing Sundance Film Festival and the annual Little Miss Sunshine-worshiping crowd as a brave (meaning that the two leads are unsympathetically filmed in their fleshy birthday suits), and treacly (meaning, well, treacly) look at relationships and the woeful public perception of disability.

Secondly, it could have been a Judd Apatow movie. An overlong and ultimately unsuccessful exercise in balancing arcane screwball comedy about awkward sex, whilst still trying to say something prophetic about relationships and the woeful public perception of disability. Thankfully, The Sessions is neither of these things.

Based on the self-penned article On Seeing a Sex Surrogate', it's the true story of Mark O'Brien, a semi-polarized survivor of polio who spends his life being pushed around on a gurney by day, and sleeping in an iron lung at night. He's accomplished a lot for a man of such limited physical capacity; charming character played by charming character actor John Hawkes (Winter's Bone, Martha Marcy May Marlene), who acts his socks off without ever lifting a finger.

But there's something missing in Mark's life: sex. After a trepidatious hunt for the right service, Mark hires surrogate sex therapist Cheryl (Helen Hunt) to fulfill his needs. Like most fumbling male virgins, the road to sexual prowess proves bumpy (so I hear). Caught between a rock and a not-so-hard place, Mark seeks sexual advice in the laid-back catholic clergyman, Father Brendan (played by the ever-segacious old owl, William H. Macy). Through the six sessions, Mark is sexually liberated, and his heartstrings are plucked.

It could have been a source for crude slapstick comedy, but director and adapted screenplay writer Ben Lewin doesn't settle for cheap sight gags and befuddled pious figures. The unflinchingly presented scenarios are certainly humiliating, but more poignant then hilarious. When we do laugh, Mark is in on the joke, more often than not he is telling it; from his belief in 'a god with a sinister sense of humour' to jousting with the priest about sexual positions.

While Hawkes' astounding performance comes as expected, Helen Hunt is the real revelation and beating heart of the film. Her Oscar nominated appearance as the naked counselor is so multifaceted and melancholic. A career best for her, in so few words Hunt manages to detail how Cheryl gets just as much emotional connect out of 'the sessions' as Mark does.

It's not twee, laugh out loud hilarious or deeply profound; it's not even that remarkable. What Ben Lewin does deliver is a drama-comedy in the purest sense, filled with fantastic performances, an excellent script and an unashamedly feel-good factor at it's core.

Read more reviews at www.theframeloop.com

Sightseers (2012)

Keep Calm and Carry On Killing

[9/10 · 31 December 2012]

After only two films - cul-de-sac gangster comedy Down Terrace and the horror mindf*ck Kill List - British filmmaker Ben Wheatley has quickly developed a remarkable talent for taking well-versed sardonic British humour and subjecting it to abuse under the weight of grim story lines. For a mean-spirited bastard like me, I've relished seeing my native pastures hung out to dry and tormented, and his latest film Sightseers is no let-up. A dysfunctional rom-com road movie, it makes you squirm and swoon in equal measure.

Celebrating their three month anniversary, aspiring novelist Chris (Steve Oram) takes his dimwitted girlfriend Tina (Alice Lowe) away on a lovely caravanning holiday across rainy, pastoral England. They spend their time visiting such world renowned attractions as The Blue John Cavern in Derby and the Keswick pencil museum by day, returning for steamy, constrictive mobile-home sex by night. It's an odd couple, but it's no doubt that they are head over wheels in love. A love which is tested when the quaint travel across England turns into a bloody summer holiday. Some couples play scrabble, Tina and Chris kill people.

Whilst Ben Wheatley and regular DP Laurie Rose certainly have creative license on the look and macabre tone of the film, a great deal of Sightseers depth, and even heart, naturally emerges from the collaboration between lead players Oram and Lowe. Spending five years nurturing these characters through stage shows, sketches and a TV pilot, they disappear into the characters, and have a fantastically effervescent chemistry together; expressionless Oram perfectly matched with Lowe's jittery energy.

The characters complete each other - Tina is the softly spoken, mumsy type with a little sadistic side, and Chris is the the lonesome renegade, sickened by the lack of civility he sees in modern society, where people litter in public spots and have an unearned sense of entitlement. Instead of that overzealous, ever so British mantra 'Keep calm and carry on', calculative Chris just can't help but carry on and keep killing, with the doting Tina right at his side.

At 88 minutes, it's an enthralling watch throughout, just when the joke wears thin, Wheatley surprises us with a brilliantly blunt finish. A collaborative effort with just enough grizzly violence matched with romantic light touches and huge belly laughs. Some excellently tongue-in-cheek use of Soft Cell's 'Tainted Love', to boot. I worry that Sightseers will be remembered as Bonnie & Clyde meets Mike Leigh's Nuts in May. Beyond the boundaries of that gimmick is the best British film of the year.

Killing Them Softly (2012)

A dazzling existential gangster movie, spoiled by imperious political subtext

[6/10 · 31 December 2012]

Andrew Dominik, the Kiwi filmmaker behind dogged magnum opus The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford returned to screens this year alongside the perfectly coiffed Brad Pitt with another dose of savage Americana in Killing them Softly.

Based on George V. Higgins 1974 novel Cogan's Trade, it's a grimy story of the insipid Boston underworld. Laundromat man by day, mid-level gangster by night Johnny "Squirrel" Amato (Vincent Curatola) hatches a plan to knock over a mob-protected card game and frame the game's crafty operator, Markie (Ray Liotta). He hires a couple of young hoods to do his dirty work: the anxiety riddled Frankie (Scooter McNairy) and his ex-con pal, the sweaty Aussie junkie Russell (Ben Mendelsohn). The job pays off, but the card playing mobsters have their bent attorney (Richard Jenkins) hire the enigmatic hit-man Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt) to clean things up and get their revenge.

Dominik makes the bare-bones crime story ooze with cool, with abstract slow motion shoot outs, hazy heroin binges. The sublimely inventive cinematography from DP Greig Fraser is a treat, with cameras attached to car doors and tracking shots all heavily influenced by Blaxploitation pictures like Black Caesar. It all sounds great too, with Pitt's badass Cogan being introduced to the tun of Johnny Cash's 'The Man Comes Around'. What a cast of heavies Dominik manages to wrestle in too, with Goodfellas' Ray Liotta as the pusillanimous game organiser and, best of all, The Sopranos' James Gandolfini as a nihilistic old hit-man more committed to the bottle than his gun.

So far, so good, but Dominik inflates the hard-boiled story with some extraneous narrative flourishes. Lifting the film from the seventies to late 2008, we get the backdrop of financial meltdown and the presidential election. Only they're not background concerns, ringed out instead on billboards, car radios and TV broadcasts. It's all window dressing for the characters involved, who rarely pay attention to the orations, yet Dominik wants the audience to be made glaringly aware of the political allegory. Instead of wry satirical subtext, it's ham-fisted, gross prophesy, an omen to these despicable men and their dog-eat-dog mentality.

Just like Peter Yates 1977 movie The Friends of Eddie Coyle – yet another adaptation of a Higgins novel – Killing Them Softly is an existential gangster drama, where gangsters are gangsters purely because they don't know how to be anything else. Unlike that cult classic, Killing Them Softly's message of America's social unrest hits like a repetitive thud around the head, crassly blending gruesome mob activity with hindsight-laden subtext. Whilst it may be one of the most visually ambitious films of the year, Dominik's latest is so glaringly unsubtle with his commentary that the entertainment factor ends up obfuscated. The characters may be killed softly, but Dominik has no problem berating the audience.

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Haywire (2011)

An utterly forgettable action slog

[3/10 · 30 December 2012]

For a director who constantly claims that he'll soon be bowing about of the despicable movie business, it's been a mighty busy few years for Steven Soderbergh. Alongside the thriller-epidemic drama Contagion, and the greased up stripper drama Magic Mike was Haywire, released back at the start of 2012. I'm so close to finishing up this 366 movies in 366 days task, that I was quite excited about sitting down to this 89 minute action romp. It's reckless, rambling and certainly pulls some punches, but the repetitive blows to the head didn't stop me being bored throughout.

Gina Carano plays a black ops specialist and hitwoman. We meet her when she picks up a timid teenage boy (Michael Angarano) and takes him as a hostage. Driving across a frozen forest, she is all too willing to divulge how she's end up being this woman on the run. When a mission in Dublin reveals her employer's true motives, she goes rogue. With a slew of assassins on her tail, she's seeking vengeance on all the men that have screwed her over, and she'll go through rooftop chases and hotel bust-ups to get what she wants.

The attractive face of women's mixed martial arts, Carano's lack of acting credentials doesn't impinge on the movie. That's mainly due to her not getting much time to act, spending most of it running, hiding, or kicking ass. However, when she stops to a halt and is asked to bring a little bit more than brawn to the role, she falters, with the overdubbed dialogue and bemused, 'who farted?' facial expressions unintentionally recalling old Jackie Chan bust-em-ups like Rumble in the Bronx.

With his, at least, commercially successful Oceans Trilogy, Soderbergh is used to working with big ensemble players. Haywire is nothing different, with a machismo-heavy supporting cast worth gawking at, with Michael Fassbender, Antonio Banderas, Michael Douglas, Channing Tatum, Bill Paxton & Ewan McGregor all fighting for screen time. All but one of them will feel the pain of Carano's wrath, but until then they are relied on to bring in some degree of prestige. So much potential, yet they are all virtually superfluous thrown into the one movie.

Unlike Gareth Evans' surprise hit Indonesian movie The Raid: Redemption, which did away with any plot and just focused on the balletic, martial arts action, Soderbergh tries to have his cake and eat it with Haywire, filled with some fantastically choreographed bust-ups, whilst trying to thread an intelligible narrative. The result is formulaic and anodyne, with stylised fight sequences so far removed from reality that it all felt clinical and robotic, made only worse by the fact that, despite all the face-pummeling, there's not a single drop of blood in the movie.

Whilst it could be the launch pad for action woman Carano, Haywire is a disappointing revenge movie for everyone else involved. Shot by Soderbergh under his alias Peter Andrews, it has that standard rough and tumble, no movie light aesthetic which has permeated throughout his work since his career best, Traffic. Ugly, uninspiring and utterly forgettable.

Seven Psychopaths (2012)

Self righteous exploration of Tarantino's notebook

[5/10 · 28 December 2012]

I'm in the minority who just didn't 'get' Martin McDonagh's In Bruges. The Beckettian sparse comedy fell flat, the boozed up Colin Farrell was whiny and annoying, and an otherwise reliable Brendan Gleeson stood on looking exasperated; most shocking of all was the austere Ralph Fiennes stealing the limelight as loose canon henchman Harry. Such lack of enthusiasm meant that I had little to no expectation for McDonagh's follow-up movie Seven Psychopaths. Replacing the dry British humour with crude genre parody, the acclaimed theatre playwright's second feature sees him being so nakedly reflexive about the nature of filmmaking, matched with a off-kilter genre irreverence which comes right out of the Tarantino handbook.

It's the story within a story tale of Marty (Colin Farrell) a budding screenwriter with a pen in one hand, and a bottle in the other. He spends his days boozed up, slaving over a new movie project, but only able to come up with a name, 'Seven Psychopaths'. Thrown out by his discerning girlfriend (Abbie Cornish), he moves in with best friend Billy Bickle, a wisecracking punk who, along with the cravat adorning cool dude Hans (Walken), makes a living stealing dogs and returning them to distraught LA pet lovers for a hefty reward sum.

Their business backfires after they wind up a Shih Tzu named Bonnie, owned by a gun toting, dangerously unstable mafioso Charlie (Harrelson). A final showdown is in order, but not before a Waiting For Godot desert hideout, a few more clichéd flashbacks and the trio bouncing around script ideas.

Without trying to labour the point, Tarantino, Tarantino f'ing Tarantino. It may sound like a sweeping generalisation, but I just couldn't get his far superior films out of my head whilst watching this. It's nothing about the genre or narrative, rather the priggish, postmodernist exercise in style – mixing black comedy with bloodied violence and atypical gangster misogyny; the last of which McDonagh awkwardly tries to redeem with a knowing wink to the audience when Hans criticises Marty's script for mistreating the pointless female characters.

Like Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation the reflexive screenwriter is a fantastic premise, and could have been well served within the irreverent snapshot of LA gang culture. Unfortunately, Seven Psychopaths is inflated with too many half-wit ideas, quips, stylistic nodes and, most crucially, too many damn psychopaths that the kernel of a good movie gets lost.

Even still, Seven Psychopaths is still worth a look, even just for that rare glimpse of Tom Waits performing as a bunny wielding "killer of killers", and Christopher Walken in his total element as a dog mapper with a dark history.

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Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

Oscar contention aside, this is a funny, sassy and empathetic look at mental illness

[8/10 · 28 December 2012]

Following 2010′s stodgy boxing drama The Fighter, the notoriously difficult filmmaker David O. Russell returns to the big screen with buzz movie Silver Linings Playbook. A warts and all look at mental illness, it's a film of unassuming beauty, pottering along with great ease during the two hour running length, but underneath the breeze is a resonating story of strength, courage and a love the likes of which we rarely see on the big screen.

Annoyingly, if you take a quick glimpse at the synopsis, Silver Linings Playbook wreaks of Academy Award worthiness. Adapted from Matthew Quick's debut novel, it's the story of Philadelphia, bi-polar thirty something Pat (Bradley Cooper), a high school substitute teacher who's mother (Jacki Weaver) has just bailed him out of a mental institution – against doctor's orders – after an eight month residency. What caused him to snap? He came home one day to find panties on the floor, his Stevie Wonder wedding song on the stereo, and his wife Nikki having sex with another man in the shower. Traumatized, he beat the guy within an inch of his life, and since then has lost everything – the job, the wife, the life and his sanity.

Pat returns to the real world and moves in with his doting mother (Jacki Weaver) and gambling addicted Eagles devotee father (Robert De Niro). Down but not out, he's convinced he can get his life in gear and win back his wife, even though she has sold their house, moved away and has a restraining order on his head.

Along the way, he meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), a young widow turned sex addict, fired from her job after sleeping with everyone in the office. Like Pat, she's a little bit crazy, and they turn their unlikely power dynamic into a therapeutic friendship. Spending every day together, the two compare medications, partake in public fits of rage, and find themselves trading favors – and dance moves – to get what they want.

Whilst the young Lawrence has already put in some astonishing performances so far with Winter's Bone and The Hunger Games, Cooper is the real surprise treat here, finally matching his affability with a character of some depth.

Together thought, they have a natural magnetic charge which drives the film and elevates it from being another harangued look at mental illness. De Niro puts in his best performance in recent memory as the negligent OCD father trying to win back his son's love. Even Chris 'Rush Hour' Tucker is great in a brilliantly muted performance as Pat's delusional friend. When that guy shuts up, he really has some screen presence.

But all of these performances would be nothing without O. Russell's eloquent screenplay. Whilst his jolting hand-held cinematography suggests child's play, his words are that of a seasoned professional. Whilst it is no doubt a marketing catastrophe, the script makes the film unclassifiable, vigorously shifting between comedy, drama and tragedy, whilst never waning the audience's interest, or turning to the quirk/irksome like O. Russell's god-awful I Heart Huckabees.

It's nowhere near the best film of the year acclaim I've seen it garnered with – the pacing can be off, and it doesn't really get moving until Lawrence turns up on screen – but Silver Linings Playbook is nevertheless a great movie. With just enough crowd-pleasing sweetness, sexiness and O. Russell idiosyncrasies, it's an empathetic and moving look at people in dire straits, on the search for a silver lining. Tiffany and Pat find it in each other, and you'll find it in this film.

More reviews at www.366movies.com