Pihla Pekkarinen reviews Zoé Wittock’s debut, as part of FilmSoc’s coverage of Sundance Film Festival 2020. 

Jumbo is about desire, about relationships, about love, about sex. It is also about a girl who falls in love with a fairground ride. 

Jeanne is a young girl who lives with her mother and works the night shift at the local fairground. She discovers a newly installed ride and begins to spend lots of time carefully cleaning it and chatting to it. One evening, she gets a reply; so begins a bizarre love story between girl and machine. Zoé Wittock’s debut feature Jumbo is a surrealist portrayal of object sexuality.

By night, Jeanne’s romance with Jumbo is sensual and sincere; by day, she seems insane and severely in need of help. The film skillfully uses lighting to capture this nighttime sensuality: Jeanne’s face illuminated in the dark by Jumbo’s bright neon lights is a visualization of their communication and intimacy. He is projecting himself onto her, and she unto him. Contrastingly, the moments we see Jumbo in broad daylight are jarring and upsetting. He appears as a hunk of metal the other characters cannot see past. We also see Jeanne as others see her: a frumpy girl in an oversized uniform who won’t look anyone in the eye. By day, the romance dwindles into a crazy obsession; by night, we return to the magical intimate space between Jeanne and Jumbo.

Producer Anaïs Bertrand describes the film as “a very classic story… about a young girl’s first love and how her mother adapts to this new situation.”  The conflict between Jeanne’s mother Margarette (Emmanuelle Bercot) and Jeanne is a central driving force of the narrative. Margarette is sexually permissive but cannot understand Jeanne’s attraction and attacks her for it. Bercot’s brokenhearted mother figure serves as both a source of reason and of frustration. Her physical altercations and screaming matches with Jeanne are reminiscent of ones between a homophobic parent and their child, drawing on emotional references that lend a new layer of meaning to their conflict. Jeanne’s boyfriend and manager Marc is another source of great discomfort, pushing the audience to sympathize with her romantic attraction to Jumbo. Her manager at the park, Marc, walks in on Jeanne while she’s changing clothes, and proceeds to pursue her against her wishes. Margarette encourages their relationship, even inviting him round to have sex with her daughter. This quasi-prostitutional treatment of Jeanne reinforces the film’s anxious tone, further elevating the sympathy we feel for her relationship. 

The film is bizarre and surreal in concept and style, but not in emotion. Noémie Merlant (A Portrait of a Young Girl on Fire) delivers a brilliantly subdued performance as Jeanne. Her anxiety toward men and her passion for Jumbo is palpable, and she manages to make a romance between a teenage girl and a fairground ride feel sincere and relatable. Together with Wittock, they turn a story that could have been silly and cringeworthy into one with real heart. Jeanne’s adoration for Jumbo feels true; her tears are heartbreaking and her passion is sexy. This narrative of forbidden love does not differ altogether too much from Juliet and Romeo, or Maria and Tony. The surrealist elements accompany a universal story of love and loss, surprising and impressive at every turn.

9/10

Jumbo is not yet available to stream or purchase. Check out the trailer below:

Never Rarely Sometimes Always, an Eliza Hittman feature in the U.S. Dramatic Competition category, is a quiet, contemplative film about an unwanted teenage pregnancy. Autumn (Sidney Flanigan) is a stone-faced seventeen-year-old who, upon discovering she is pregnant, travels to New York City with her cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder) to have an abortion. What follows is an intimate portrayal of a teenager and her friend navigating the complicated network of gender and relationships, accompanied by a sharp critique of social obstacles to medical procedures. 

The film is sparse in dialogue, with ambient sound and a single-note score dominating most scenes. Autumn and Skylar exist around each other, most things going unsaid. Autumn never utters the word “pregnant” or “abortion”, and neither does Skylar. The film dwells on uninterrupted shots, creating even more space and silence. In the titular scene, Autumn is being interviewed by a counselor ahead of her procedure about her relationships. The camera stays close to her face as she answers the interview questions one by one, painfully slow. The scene showcases Flanigan’s sublime performance, as Autumn’s stoic facade cracks and falls for a few moments when she reveals intimate details about her relationship. Nothing about her performance has been disguised by a cut, and Flanigan shines. 

The violence of the male presence is astounding. When laid out, Autumn and Skylar do not face much violence beyond what is ‘ordinary’: a man masturbating at them on public transport, a pushy customer, an inappropriate boss. But the discomfort we feel towards any man in the film is palpable, and a perceptive and honest depiction of the calculations women have to make every time they interact with a male stranger: are you a threat? The characters remain wary and alert, never letting their guard down, and we understand exactly why. The film orbits around gendered experiences, and depicts young female excitement – as well as fear – around the discovery of a new (sexual) currency available to them.

The film also provides an important critique of accessibility, with its portrayal of the abortion process refusing to sugarcoat anything. Autumn first visits a pro-life clinic in her hometown who administer a supermarket test and show her an anti-abortion film from the 80s, attempting to discourage her from the procedure. She then travels to a Planned Parenthood in New York – hidden in what appears to be an apartment building – before finally finding herself at a windowless medical clinic with chipping paint and bulletproof glass windows. The first scenes of the film betray no obvious clues as to the time period the film is set in, leading me to initially place the setting in the 70s or 80s, before realizing the film was contemporary. The timelessness serves as a sharp critique of the outdated medical and family planning facilities in the US. The entire abortion process, despite being fairly straightforward one, is immensely arduous. Whilst there are no direct references, Hittman lands clearly on the pro-choice side of the current political debate.

The film possesses few moments of levity; it remains a tense, urgent, intimate portrayal of pregnancy and womanhood throughout. Never Rarely Sometimes Always is a hard watch, but a necessary one. 

8/10

Never Rarely Sometimes Always will be released in North America on 13 March 2020. A UK release date has yet to be announced. Check out the trailer below:

Pihla Pekkarinen reviews Carlos López Estrada’s ode to Los Angeles youth. 

Following the success of Blindspotting, Carlos López Estrada’s second feature film, Summertime, is intended to be a love letter to L.A., told by the teenagers who inhabit it; a lament over gentrification and loss of spirit, a portrait of the “true youth” of the city of angels. However, the film fails to achieve the emotional poignancy it is aiming for; the tone is too inconsistent, and the jokes provide only brief moments of levity in what is overall neither a particularly funny nor moving film. The emotional climaxes flop, failing to provoke much sympathy, let alone a single tear.  

The film is described as a “free-verse poem,” featuring twenty-five teenagers performing spoken word poetry. This form – which speaks directly to the audience and necessitates their listening  – is meant to be a gut punch, shattering the listener’s view of reality and bringing about a new perspective. But this doesn’t quite translate to the screen as Estrada had perhaps hoped. Granted, the featured poems are written and performed by high school students, but some of the pieces are impressive. However, the film fails to do them justice, because in spite of the fact that this art comes from them, the entire situation feels inauthentic. The characters seem like they are performing for university admissions boards rather than for each other. 

The problem with Summertime is the classic “show, don’t tell” dilemma; poets monologuing about how they don’t feel part of their family, or how much they miss home, is simply not as poignant as literally watching characters go through and experience these relatable issues. Seeing a character fall in love only to get brutally rejected is much more heart-wrenching than watching her tell you about how depressed it made her to be told she was undateable. This example is taken straight from the film; in what is supposed to be a moment of standing up for herself and finally owning her narrative, a character details awful things said by a past unrequited love. He told her she was ugly, men only liked her for her breasts, that she was undateable and no-one would ever love her. While evoking sympathy, none of these statements really hammer home, because she is the one saying them. The film does not allow viewers to come to any conclusions of their own. It tells them what to think, how to feel, and when to feel it. 

The film floats in an awkward liminal space between documentary and fiction. In fiction, actors play parts outside themselves, allowing them to be ugly and complicated; in documentaries, directors work to capture the underbelly of people, an angle their subjects are unwilling to expose by choice. Yet, this film does neither. The characters are too guarded, unwilling to relinquish control enough to allow us to see them and relate to them. The glass wall between audience and character is bulletproof. Overall, the film would be improved if it were not only written by teenagers, but directed by  them too. Summertime feels too much like a performance, like teens who were given a chance by a professional and wanted to make the most of it, but in doing so, lose all authenticity and true emotion that their original performances on that spoken word night surely had. 

3/10

Summertime premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 2020. No UK release date has been announced yet. Check out an interview with the film’s stars below:

Pihla Pekkarinen reviews Taylor Swift’s new documentary.

Miss Americana is undoubtedly one of the most high-profile films arriving at Sundance this year. Taylor Swift first dropped the news of a Netflix documentary in a social media post publicly accusing Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta of attempting to prevent the film from being released due to their ownership of her original master recordings. Fans and fellow artists flocked to her defense and, three months later, her documentary premiered at Sundance Film Festival. Directed by Lana Wilson, the film spans several years of Swift’s life, and includes intimate interviews, recordings of studio sessions, and a few f-bombs which provoked audible gasps from the audience. According to an interview with Swift, Miss Americana looks at the “flipside of being America’s sweetheart,” exposing some of the challenges Swift faces as she embarks on the process of writing her latest album, Lover.

The film zeroes in on a few pivotal moments of the singer’s life, orienting itself around themes of change and growth. One of these moments is her public feud with Kanye West, which ended with #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty trending worldwide on Twitter and Swift disappearing from the public eye for a year to lick her wounds. To the film’s merit, there is no attempt to defend Swift or explain her actions. Instead, it simply states the facts of the feud, and focuses on the aftermath, including Swift’s reaction to going from publicly adored to generally reviled overnight. The film is (obviously) sympathetic towards Swift, but not as overtly as one might expect. 

Another pivotal moment the film details is Swift’s sexual assault trial and her subsequent foray into politics after years of public neutrality. Though  depicted to be an earth-shattering shift for Swift, she remains surprisingly apolitical throughout. Her discussion of the trial feels like the only moment in the film where she acknowledges her position of privilege, or the existence of an unequal society. Swift describes the ordeal as humiliating and degrading, “and this was with seven witnesses and a photograph. What happens when you were raped, and it’s your word against his?” Otherwise, the singer’s politics, which the film suggests are “radical,” seem limited to “women and gay people should have rights,” and this discrepancy proves grating.

Your enjoyment of this documentary depends entirely on whether or not you buy into Taylor Swift’s victim narrative. Miss Americana acknowledges this frequent criticism of her, but does nothing to subvert it. Swift is portrayed as a victim of the media, of the public, of her stardom – the odds are stacked against her, and she manages to rise above. The film doesn’t deliver on its promise to show the flipside of being America’s sweetheart; it’s simply another angle, still from the front, maybe with less shadows. The film was not during the worst year of her life; it was made afterwards, in retrospect, to ensure her performance remains slick and smooth. The vulnerability I was hoping for? The film fails to get there.

If there is one thing Miss Americana does right, it lies in capturing Swift’s spirit. The film is not aimed at finding new audiences: Swift doesn’t need to do that, and it’s doubtful she will gain any new fans from this documentary. But for pre-existing fans, it is a beautiful 90-minute concentrated dose of Taylor; kittens, clumsiness, faux-vulnerability, and all. If that’s your thing (like it is mine), it’s perfect. If it’s not, maybe give this one a pass. Miss Americana has little artistic merit beyond its subject matter, and if you aren’t a Taylor fan, this film probably isn’t for you. 

5/10

Miss Americana will be released worldwide on Netflix and in select theatres on 31 January 2020. Check out the trailer below: 

Pihla Pekkarinen reviews the much-anticipated Disney sequel.

Frozen, when it was first released six years ago, gripped the world. Frozen paraphernalia was inescapable. Anyone who had or spent time with young children in the first few years after its release was haunted by the spectres of Anna and Elsa. At the small preschool I taught at, there were at least three Elsas or Annas at Halloween and Carnival.

Frozen was hailed by parents and critics alike for its feminist undertones. The leads were two strong, independent women, and the film prioritized the relationship of sisterly love over romantic love. It depicted the difference between a manipulative romantic relationship and a supportive one, making clear how not all romantic relationships are equal. It embraced femininity as a strength rather than a weakness. Criticism arose too, with some claiming that the stereotypically princess-like appearances of Elsa and Anna contribute to unattainable beauty standards, particularly shameless in their targeting of young girls. Overall, however, the release of Frozen in 2013 was recognised as a huge step in the right direction for Disney.

Frozen II follows nearly the same path as its predecessor. Anna and Elsa set off on another quest for the truth, meet guiding characters, and eventually succeed in saving their people from peril once again. It is a heartfelt film with a formulaic plot and the occasional chuckle-provoking joke. The characters grapple with moral dilemmas but are never themselves at the center of them. The film reprises almost all the elements of the smash-hit “Let it Go” in a similar power ballad, with the main difference being that Elsa has graduated to letting her hair fall fully down this time. (One wonders what the next step will be: perhaps Frozen III’s Elsa will shave her head, or even dye it pink?) Frozen II is hardly revolutionary. Or is it?

In one scene, the beloved snowman-friend Olaf turns to Anna, confessing he feels angry at Elsa for letting him down. Instead of dismissing him, or encouraging Olaf to sympathise with and forgive Elsa, Anna immediately acknowledges and validates his hurt. Olaf’s anger is not treated as negativity to be suppressed, but rathe an emotion as valid and important as any other. In another poignant moment, as Anna rides into battle, instead of questioning her judgement or trying to protect her, Kristoff asks what she needs and follows through on her request. He later tells her, in one of the more memorable lines of the film, “My love is not fragile.” Their relationship is depicted as one of partnership and collaboration, rather than patriarchal oppression and imbalanced power. The film also features an indigenous community modelled after the Sami people of Northern Europe. The portrayal has been lauded by its Sami audience as both accurate and respectful. Frozen II acknowledges (in a limited, Disneyfied way) a history of oppression and violence against global Indigenous communities.

Frozen II actively responds to Disney’s troubling social legacy, toying with the stereotypes and tropes associated with the genre. The film is aware of the susceptibility of its young audience, and consciously attempts to send empowering messages. However, they are not particularly well-integrated into what is essentially a standard Disney princess plot, and older audiences may find this constant moral nudging slightly grating. But the film cannot and should not be faulted for trying to do better: the effort to create a more inclusive and empowering future for Disney is explicit.

Frozen II is unlikely to have the all-consuming legacy of its predecessor. The songs are less catchy, the new characters less compelling (due partly to their limited screen time), and the plot more convoluted. It is nevertheless a charming and heartwarming piece of entertainment which will undoubtedly prove popular amongst its young audience. At least Frozen II has some originality and is not a live action remake of an already existing film. Ultimately, Frozen II represents an effort on Disney’s part to do better–which counts for something in this wintery political climate.

Frozen II is still showing in cinemas worldwide. Check out the trailer below:

The FilmSoc team looks back at some of 2018’s prominent TV shows, some latest seasons and some new underrated releases.

There is no skirting around the fact that we are now well into 2019. Plenty of new and delightful shows have come out since the start of the year, and perhaps the gems of 2018 have been buried in the instant gratification of new Netflix shows coming out every other weekend. Nevertheless, the Filmsoc blog team got together towards the beginning of the year to write some flash reviews of our favourite shows of 2018. Read, reminisce, and perhaps you will wish revisit some shows that you binge-watched that one March weekend when you had an essay to write but couldn’t be bothered. Here is to more, hopefully somewhat mindful, watching in 2019!

Westworld Season 2 (Xinyi Wang)

The problem with Westworld that stood out in season two was its insistence on pulling an aha! pseudo-intellectual rug from under its audience’s feet. It remains one of the most captivating television shows out there, however it did also feel as if Nolan and Joy want to always one-up their audience: constantly challenging notions and concepts, usually leaving viewers rather confused and tired.

Season two always promises a revelation in the finale that whips its world and characters towards a new, unforeseeable direction while posing more questions – a fine, exhilarating device that is, for the most part, used brilliantly.  However, by opting for a circular narrative, working with even more timelines than before (are they simply refusing to create chronologically linear stories?), the season as a consequence suffers from narratively useless filler episodes that ultimately do not contribute to the finale, where twists edge dangerously close to “for the sake of it”. This is an issue that Westworld needs to overcome in the future.

It is not to say that the show is not a marvel in terms of production and narrative design – the episode ‘Kiksuya’ is a complete stand out that deserves all the praise it received, while the main cast continue to shine in their roles. Character arcs and dynamics are developed in interesting directions, and altogether Westworld continues its fascinating path: diving into questions of free will, humanity and cognition.

The Good Place Season 2 (Sabastian Astley)

Leading on immediately from its incredible twist, The Good Place Season 2 constantly reinvents itself, developing and transforming the show’s core concepts at an incredible rate. The show’s infusion of casual philosophy alongside an ever-developing cast, constantly evolving from episode to episode, helps to highlight The Good Place as one of the most original shows of 2018.

Call My Agent! / Dix pour cent Season 3 (Emma Davis)

This fun French television gem fills the hole in my heart that HBO’s The Newsroom left behind. As in everyone is a terrible person and shouts a lot. It’s taken an incredibly funny premise – of the slapstick and frustration comedy in French show business – and used it to tell the messy stories of mixing professional and personal lives. The third season is impressive in showing how the show can evolve from its initial case-of-the-week of a client causing trouble to commentary on the ridiculous French movie industry and geographic inequality of French society.

The End of the F***ing World (Pihla Pekkarinen)

This show is kind of like Scott Pilgrim, but with more swearing and violence. The End of the F***ing world was born from a graphic novel, and the original format seeps through the frames and graphics of the show. Alex Lawther is brilliant in his deadpan performance of a self-diagnosed teenage psychopath, and Jessica Barden, while somewhat overshadowed by Lawther, manages to lose her self-consciousness enough to portray a character so unlikeable that you end up rooting for the one who wants to kill her. Despite losing itself a little in the second half, as the macabre aesthetics are pushed aside to create a supposedly more heartfelt, yet unfortunately hollow, love story,  the cliffhanger finale ties the show together; leaving the audience with the perfect cocktail of bittersweet satisfaction. However, as a fan of self-contained TV shows, I am not thrilled about the second series currently being filmed: I have no doubt it will spoil the ambiguous ending of the first series, and am therefore doubtful the show will be able to maintain its charisma.

Riverdale Season 3 (Sabastian Astley)

Honestly, this show is the definition of nonsensical – place it against its freshman season and you will find two different productions entirely. Bizarrely enough, this is exactly what makes the latest season so extraordinary. Weaving in a cornucopia of plots – satanic cults and their use of ‘Gryphons and Gargoyles’ and a megalomaniac criminal taking over the town – throwing in musical episodes, and even an 80s-drenched flashback episode, Robert Aguirre-Sacasa suggests that there are no limits for Archie and his friends to explore. I’m sure you’d struggle to find another show that is unashamedly as strange as this.  

The Last Kingdom (Ælfwine the Precarious)

Granted the dubious honour of a Netflix purchase, The Last Kingdom’s fate was in the balance. At the BBC it was a suitably grounded and surprisingly historical venture, outshining Game of Thrones by the very murk of its lustre; much like the earlier seasons of Thrones, it is a series focused more on political machinations than flighty distractions of High Fantasy. Would Netflix sex it up with magic and mystique, kill the gylden gos with a Valyrian axe? Despite the introduction of a Norse spellstress, the thankful answer is a clear no. The Last Kingdom remains a grim, violent, and (still! vaguely!) historical traipse through Anglo-Saxon Britain.

Sharp Objects (Thomas Caulton)

Confronted with childhood traumas and her oppressive mother, tormented reporter Camille Preaker spirals into self-destruction while trying to uncover the truth about the gruesome murder of a young girl and the vanishing of another in the small Missouri town of Wind Gap, isolated in the heartlands of confederate America. The slow-burn narrative cuts deeply, maintaining an iron-fisted grip on the audience’s attention while drawing us further and further into Jean Marc-Vallee’s bleak and sultry vision. The masterful direction and unwavering visual style elevate Gillian Flynn’s source material, offering a relentless and mesmerising experience that establishes itself as one of 2018’s finest releases.

Bodyguard (Maeve Allen)

Jed Mercurio’s Bodyguard was nail-biting brilliance on the BBC. When David Budd (Richard Madden) is assigned a new role as bodyguard to the Home Secretary (Keeley Hawes), he must put aside his personal politics for her protection. Book-ended by terrifically tense scenes of attempted terrorism, this Sunday night series was a thrilling tale of forbidden love and crooked conspiracy. The story swerved and surprised, leaving the audience suspicious. Who should we trust? Is Keely really dead? When will I marry Richard Madden? It was Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: a properly perfect thriller.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace (Alexandra Petrache)

Delectable, decadent, disturbing: The Assassination of Gianni Versace carries itself magnificently, with an opulent production design and great acting all-around. Darren Criss puts on a stellar performance as Andrew Cunanan (the man who assassinated Versace) and manages to innovate his character; bringing out a new facet every episode, carving out a textbook psychopath with a lingering touch of madness. The viewer is taken on a journey that makes them feel pity, sadness, exasperation, disgust and fear. Some might even find it difficult to watch. The direction and plot are tastefully composed, albeit slightly convoluted at times. All-in-all, a great show gilded in gold, emotion and blood.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine Season 6 (Alexandra Petrache)

I must say I wasn’t sure Brooklyn Nine-Nine would manage to keep its comedic mojo for a 6th season – it somehow felt that Jake and Amy’s wedding sealed the end of the show. However, Season 6 is a bang! Slightly shy in the first episode, testing the waters with the return, it keeps picking up and even though the tone of the jokes is similar to the previous seasons, they feel refreshed and even funnier. The relationships between characters also develop and take slightly unexpected turns. Brooklyn Nine-Nine is crisper than ever before – I definitely recommend being loyal and watching on.

It’s festival season! The FilmSoc blog is covering the 62nd BFI London Film Festival (10th – 21st October), diving into the myriad of films and events on offer to deliver reviews.

Pihla Pekkarinen reviews the biopic of renown French novelist Colette.

The best historical dramas are ones that provide some lens for the present, to give us a way of looking at the past in order to be able to see the here and now. Colette shows promise in this realm as an exploration of gender and sexuality, but ultimately fails to deliver in the way it aims to do. And on the whole, it does not take an extensive vocabulary to describe the remarkably beige and bland tones of Colette.

The film is based on one of the most famous female French novelists of all time, who spent the first part of her life ghostwriting her husband’s most successful novels. Colette focuses on Colette’s (Keira Knightley) early adulthood and marriage to Willy (Dominic West), and the centre of gravity in this film is their manipulative and emotionally abusive relationship. Colette surprises though, by handling the subject with unusual nuance and grace. There are plenty of obvious moments of violence, such as when Willy locks Colette in her room, refusing to let her leave until she has finished writing the next instalment of her Claudine novels. But they are matched by moments of tenderness and kindness, resulting in a refreshing lack of villainization of Willy for the majority of the film. Colette stays in her relationship not because she is weak, or too in love, or any of the traditional cliches – she stays because Willy’s anger and abuse are merely a part of the relationship, not all of it, making them easier to brush off and excuse.

Colette indulges further into the theme of unconventional relationships through a half-hour sequence of both Willy and Colette’s parallel affairs. It is here where the film is at its most interesting, exploring the various dimensions of gender, sexuality, and monogamy without making too much fuss. But the film is too steeped in its central marriage to delve into this properly – everything Colette does relates back to Willy, making her affairs amusing but not particularly deep or thought-provoking, as they are probably meant to be. It’s nice to see Colette not really wrestle with her sexuality, simply allowing herself to exist, and the omission of the traditional ‘coming-out’ narrative is a relief. But without any audience commitment to the characters, the affair sequences do not come off as particularly heated or passionate. Rather, the adjective that comes to mind is “pleasant”.

The film loses itself in its third act with a bizarre detour by Colette into theatrical mime and dance, exposing the inherent problem biopics must grapple with: people’s lives don’t read like stories. Colette ends on a turning point in the titular character’s life, but in order to get there, we must follow her learning to mime. It could be argued that Colette’s venture into theatre is part of her exploration of her own potential, finding who she is outside of her marriage. But Colette does not present this as such; rather, it is an awkward diversion we have to sit through in order for the film to arrive at its natural conclusion. The film also throws away one of the striking moments of Colette’s life: the riot at her 1907 performance of Rêve d’Égypte following an on-stage kiss between Colette and her partner, Missy. Colette treats this moment as one of jealousy from Missy’s ex-husband, dismissing the riot as a display of drunk bravado from him and his friends. In reality, the incident nearly caused the shutting down of the Moulin Rouge theatre and prevented Colette and Missy from living together openly for the remainder of their relationship. To include such a pivotal moment of Colette’s life but only give it 30 seconds of screen time seems a careless choice, caused by either complete misunderstanding of or mere disregard for the moment’s gravity.

Colette is also largely uninteresting in its visuals. Usually, historical dramas are pretty much Production Design Central, but there is a shocking lack of creativity in the art direction of Colette. Again, it’s not that it is bad; the sets, Willy’s office in particular, are well decorated, the costumes are compelling enough, and Colette’s handwritten notebooks (prepared by a French calligraphy expert) are a nice touch. But compared to the visual triumphs of other recent period films (The Great Gatsby, The Shape of Water, The Danish Girl, etc), Colette falls a step behind. The design is, on the whole, convincing but unremarkable.

Colette has all the ingredients of the Academy Sweetheart, a crowd-pleasing historical drama. Keira Knightley and Dominic West deliver strong performances (though Knightley’s omnipresence in historical dramas injects her performance with a sense of deja-vu), and the narrative arc follows the pleasant structure we expect. The problem is, we have seen it all before. Colette is perfectly fine, but has nothing new to offer in the genre of biopics. Its explorations of gender and sexuality are surface-level at best, and no element of the film is striking enough to make it memorable. Colette is the film you see a poster of on the tube, make a mental note of and never end up seeing. My advice? Wait for it to come out on Netflix.

5/10

Colette will be generally released in the UK on January 11th, 2019. Check out its trailer below:

 

It’s festival season! The FilmSoc blog is covering the 62nd BFI London Film Festival (10th – 21st October), diving into the myriad of films and events on offer to deliver reviews.

Pihla Pekkarinen reviews the blood-drenching and Nicolas Cage-starring heavy metal rampage. 

“When I die, bury me deep, lay two speakers at my feet, put some headphones on my head, and rock and roll me when I’m dead.”

Before I walked into the cinema to see Mandy, I had never once seen someone walk out on a screening. But after the first half hour of this film, I had already been witness to five people just on my side of the cinema get up and leave. Mandy is far from bulk-standard. It is abrasive, unabashedly violent and therefore perhaps divisive. But if you allow yourself to succumb to its charm, in Mandy you find nothing less than a glorious, genre-bending, and delightfully gory homage to metal and hallucinogens.

Set in 1983 (the same year as Panos Cosmatos’ debut feature Beyond the Black Rainbow), Mandy is an 80’s cult thriller reimagined in the 21st century. The film is presented in two parts, split by the title card (which doesn’t appear until an hour in): the first half the murder, the second, the consequence. After his girlfriend Mandy (Andrea Riseborough) is killed by a horrifically violent cult led by Jeremiah Sands (Linus Roache), Red Miller (Nicolas Cage) goes on a rampant revenge spree against the cult members. The film idles for much of the first half, and my urge to step on the gas becomes more and more conspicuous as long takes seem to rule the earth while the minutes tick by. But what is lacking in energy in the first half is more than made up for in the second, wherein buckets of syrupy blood flow to the extent where you can practically feel the droplets hitting your face, and Cage’s brow seems permanently drenched in sweat. The adrenaline rush of the second half makes you grateful for the tranquility granted in the first, and you leave the cinema in a daze.

Throughout it’s two-hour running time, Mandy dips into the stylized worlds of a myriad of genres: thriller, slasher, horror, erotica, even animated dream sequences. And yet somehow, Cosmatos manages to maintain a golden thread throughout the feverish mania. Despite its patchworked nature, Mandy is far from messy. Cosmatos’s vision as a director is clean-cut and clear throughout, and the film comes across as a polished package, if drenched in blood and guts. Cosmatos, his cinematographer Benjamin Loeb and his editor Brett W. Bachman pack the film with texture: the trademark high grain footage, over-saturation and liberal use of the cross-dissolve give the film a layered feel. The film borrows and appropriates with a liberal hand, but with everything twisted and manipulated to fit Cosmatos’s vision, it resulted in what can only be described as a hallucination with a spreadsheet.

Among its other attributes, Mandy is also a tribute to music and metal culture. The opening credits are set to the languid tune of King Crimson’s “Starless”, a song pretty close to being the Citizen Kane of prog rock. The film contains almost no dialogue, and is instead driven by Jóhann Jóhannsson’s posthumous score, a gorgeous combination of moving melody and disturbing cacophony. Silence is also used sparingly to great effect. My favourite scene in the film comes right at the midpoint, where Nicolas Cage mourns his girlfriend by chugging a bottle of vodka and crying hysterically in his bathroom. The scene is one of only a few not set to music, and is both darkly funny and heart-wrenching as Cage delivers a convincing performance of unimaginable grief. Its naturalistic visuals and lack of music make it an obvious standout scene in the middle of Jóhannsson’s bass- and synthesizer-heavy metal-inspired score. (On a side note, other personal favourites include Cage snorting a virtual ant-hill of cocaine off of a shard of glass and Cage lighting a cigarette off of a burning decapitated head. Just so you get an idea.)

Mandy is, by no means, a perfect film. It’s self-indulgent and vaguely misogynistic, and on occasion, it even feels insecure in its own absurdism. There is a character in a camper van serving no purpose but to provide vague motivation for the mindless murder sprees of the central cult. The explanation (a highly potent form of LSD, apparently) only serves to disturb the illusion crafted by the film. Mandy exists in a very obviously nonsensical universe, and it doesn’t seem to serve any purpose for Cosmatos to prod at it. But the film’s high points far outshine its shortcomings. It is frenetic yet careful, senseless yet sensible, and pushes and pulls at all boundaries of genre. Whether you are charmed by the film’s nostalgic violence or not, one thing is inescapably clear: Mandy is the work of a visionary.

Mandy will be released in the UK on October 12th. Check out its trailer below:

Pihla Pekkarinen and Emma Davis review 2017 Grand Prix-awarded French drama.

120 BPM (Beats Per Minute) draws on the highly personal experiences of writer/director Robin Campillo and translates those experiences onto the screen with grace and dignity. At the film’s premiere at Cannes Film Festival, Campillo remembered his time as an ACT UP “militant” before grabbing the Grand Prix for this moving yet politically charged piece on AIDS activism. For the current generation, this film comes as an important reminder of one of the most painful chapters of LGBT+ history, elevating those stories to a worthy level of cinematic achievement.

120 Battements Par Minute, or BPM (Beats Per Minute), or 120 BPM, has as many plot lines as it has titles. Set in 1990s Paris, the film is a glimpse into the HIV epidemic plaguing France. At its heart lies ACT UP (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power), an activist group dedicated to spreading awareness of HIV prevention and campaigning for open and accessible AIDS treatment. The story is told from the perspective of Nathan (Arnaud Valois), a HIV negative ACT UP newbie who falls in love with Sean (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), one of the long-time members of the advocacy group. He guides us through the film as we meet characters upon characters, each with their own individual stories but united by their dedication to AIDS activism.

Beats Per Minute seems an accurate title for the film – it projects life, its heartbeat reaches beyond the screen, and is felt by its audience. This is true of the plot also; BPM is not so much a story as it is an entity, incorporating all aspects of life with no clear narrative arc. The film is about ACT UP, but it is also about AIDS, activism, youth, love, sex, and a million other things. This can feel disturbing at times, but it matches the naturalistic style the film clings to. Beats Per Minute has a strong heartbeat, palpable as we move through the various vignette-like scenes and necessary to create cohesiveness within them. With its documentary-like plot, fragmented edits, and naturalistic cinematography, BPM is a quintessential French New Wave film, fully confident and comfortable within its genre.

However, by the final hour, its stylistic elements have peaked and the film descends into an overly long dénouement as the various aspects of the plot are hastily and incoherently concluded. The actual ending of the film was undermined by the inexplicable presence of what felt like five alternate endings, with beautiful pans and zooms of a blood-coloured Seine or a staged lie-in outside the Parliament. All of these beautifully composed, balanced shots feel like endings, but the film carries on until it has exhausted all of its ideas. Even the actual finale of the film is not one ending, but three, awkwardly alternating between a club scene, a sex scene and a protest scene. The 140-minute film feels as though it should be 45 minutes shorter, but there is no single scene or plot line which you can point to which should have been cut. The attitude of “more, more, more” which BPM revels in makes it beautiful and unique, but also occasionally drawn out and exhausting.

The ensemble dominates the film, reflecting the themes of solidarity and unity. The various characters appear sporadically within the framework of the weekly ACT UP meetings, and their backstories are brought in through anecdotes and emotional pleas. However, there is a startling contrast between the vibrant personalities of the activists and their lack of significance as characters. The audience is not given the chance to know many of them, even our protagonists, as individuals. The characters are rather defined by the energy they bring to the film as a collective, an energy that counters the slow and evidence-driven response from the pharmaceutical company. The film eventually morphs into the love story between two activists, Nathan and Sean, a passionate whirlwind of a relationship defying the bleakness of Sean’s deteriorating health. But again, their characters remain somewhat underdeveloped. We learn about Sean’s family and history beyond the outspoken radical, but Nathan remains (at most) a link between ACT UP and Sean’s sickness.

In line with the organisation’s aim to speak up for the oppressed, the film is unafraid to show the intersectionality of those affected by the virus. A transgender attendee inquires about medication affecting hormonal transition. A deaf member contributes to a meeting’s discussion through an interpreter. The largely young and white activists demand action for prostitutes, drug addicts and immigrants. And a single mother’s right to speak up for herself and her haemophilic mixed-race son is respected. ACT UP members represent a wide spectrum of Parisian society, discarding any stereotypes of HIV victims and thereby defining the AIDS crisis as a national problem.

While the film is drawn out and convoluted at times, its overall beauty and empowering message are indisputable. It provides representation in an industry where it is sorely lacking, and it should be commended for its explicit effort to merge the marginalised with the mainstream.

120 BPM is out now in UK cinemas. Watch the trailer:

A month ago, we covered award season buzz and nominations on the podcast. Last week, you cast your votes in a few of the Academy Awards categories!

Well, with the ceremony last Sunday evening, the official results are in. Here’s a side-by-side of the FilmSoc poll results compared to the real thing, plus commentary by Pihla Pekkarinen.

Best Picture

FilmSoc Pick: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Official Result: The Shape of Water

These two films were firm favourites to snag this year’s Best Picture title, competing neck in neck during the awards season. Three Billboards had been in the lead, grabbing the BAFTA, Golden Globe and Satellite Award, so it was our favourite to win – but The Shape of Water came through and nabbed the biggest title of the year. The two films are so different, however, that it really comes down to personal taste (or maybe some controversy?). They also did similarly at the box office.

Best Director

FilmSoc Pick: Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water)

Official Result: Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water)

The Shape of Water was the fully thought out, cohesive, beautifully executed work of a visionary. Every single element, from the score to the cast to the production design to the cinematography is meticulously crafted under del Toro’s watchful eye. And while would have been nice to have Greta Gerwig help to diversify the Best Director winner list from 99% to 98% male, or witness Jordan Peele become the first black director to win the award, del Toro’s victory is undoubtedly deserved. And, we should take a moment to appreciate the fact that, thanks to del Toro, the current decade has been the first in which white directors have been the MINORITY in this category (3 out of 8 wins).

Leading Actress

FilmSoc Pick: Frances McDormand (Three Billboards)

Official Result: Frances McDormand (Three Billboards)

I can confidently say, staying up until 5am watching the Oscars was worth it just to experience McDormand’s speech in real time. The moment when all female nominees in the hall stood (“Meryl, if you do it, everybody else will”) was inspiring and empowering, but also highlighted how much work there is still left to do. The gender proportion of male and female nominees was nowhere near equal. McDormand’s encouragement to adopt the “inclusion rider” clause in filmmaking contracts was a reminder of the hope that someday the Awards could reflect today’s diverse America.

Leading Actor

FilmSoc Pick: Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour)

Official Result: Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour)

Oldman is one of the most established faces of British cinema, and he won his Oscar in a film about British history playing a British wartime hero (or villain, however you see it). Even his speech, asking his mother to “put the kettle on”, was so quintessentially British one couldn’t help but laugh. It felt cathartic to see Oldman get his Oscar after years of hard work in the industry.

Supporting Actor

FilmSoc Pick: Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards)

Official Result: Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards)

Rockwell’s performance in Three Billboards was received with universal acclaim, so this win came as no surprise. It is also worth noting that this category was the only nomination for one of the more “experimental” big films of 2017, The Florida Project. Many saw this Oscars snub as a surprise, whereas others viewed it as another demonstration of the overwhelming hesitation by the Academy to reward more radical or controversial filmmaking. Other similar snubs this year include The Killing of a Sacred Deer and mother!.

Supporting Actress

FilmSoc Pick: Allison Janney (I, Tonya)

Official Result: Allison Janney (I, Tonya)

Janney’s turn as Tonya’s off-kilter mother (a role written specifically for her) earned her not only the Oscar, but also the Golden Globe, the SAG, the BAFTA, and the Critics’ Choice awards for Best Supporting Actress. This win has pretty much been in the bag since the release of the film. Her Oscar was dedicated to her brother, who lost his battle with addiction and mental illness.

Original Screenplay

FilmSoc Pick: Get Out (Jordan Peele)

Official Result: Get Out (Jordan Peele)

The Academy may have seen rewarding Get Out the coveted Best Picture and Best Director titles as too much of a risk, but Peele’s win is nevertheless historic. Peele is the first black man to win an Original Screenplay Oscar, and not just with any story, with a story that is about racism in today’s America. With such a major win on his first feature, it will be thrilling to see where his directing and writing careers take him next.

Adapted Screenplay

FilmSoc Pick: Call Me By Your Name (James Ivory)

Official Result: Call Me By Your Name (James Ivory)

This was the only win for one of the most successful independent films of the year. James Ivory became the oldest competitive Oscar winner at age 89. Recently, Guadagnino has been dropping hints about a sequel to this awards hit, set against the backdrop of the 1990s AIDS crisis.

Animated Feature

FilmSoc Pick: Coco (Lee Unkrich, Darla K. Anderson)

Official Result: Coco (Lee Unkrich, Darla K. Anderson)

The Boss Baby is now an Oscar-nominated film. Slim pickings for the Academy in 2018. Though disappointed that Loving Vincent flew under the radar this awards season, Coco was a clear favourite and once more, a predictable but deserving winner.

Cinematography

FilmSoc Pick: Blade Runner 2049 (Roger Deakins)

Official Result: Blade Runner 2049 (Roger Deakins)

With a track record of a staggering fourteen nominations, Deakins’ first win couldn’t be sweeter. It’s been a long time coming. Blade Runner 2049 is some of his best work, with a mix of breathtaking long shots and thrilling action sequences, and overall one of the most beautiful films of 2017. This year also saw the first female cinematography nominee, Rachel Morrison for Mudbound.

Production Design

FilmSoc Pick: The Shape of Water (Paul D. Austerberry, Jeffrey A. Melvin, Shane Vieau)

Official Result: The Shape of Water (Paul D. Austerberry, Jeffrey A. Melvin, Shane Vieau)

There was really no contest for this award. Every single set in The Shape of Water was thought out down to the most minute detail, and the designers’ and dressers’ work here is nothing less than extraordinary.

Original Score

FilmSoc Pick: Phantom Thread (Jonny Greenwood)

Official Result: The Shape of Water (Alexandre Desplat)

Desplat’s score for The Shape of Water is ethereal, haunting, hopeful – everything you would want from a score. The use of wind instruments over the ever-so-popular strings is wonderfully refreshing. However, I can’t help but yearn to know what Jonny Greenwood’s Oscar speech would have been. Maybe next year.

Original Song

FilmSoc Pick: ‘Mystery of Love’ from Call Me By Your Name (Sufjan Stevens)

Official Result: ‘Remember Me’ from Coco (Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Robert Lopez)

The category of Best Original Song is probably the least adventurous in the whole ceremony – and that is saying something. Oscars aren’t exactly known for stepping outside the box. “Remember Me” is  exactly the kind of song the award usually commemorates. There is nothing wrong with it, but it’s not particularly memorable, either. But who knows, maybe Kendrick will be in the running next year for his turn in Black Panther.

OTHER CATEGORIES

Documentary Feature

Icarus (Bryan Fogel, Dan Cogan)

This was the first Academy Award win for Netflix, who are quickly becoming a big name in film distribution. This is a major benchmark in the shift from traditional cinema-centered distribution into streaming. Mudbound, another Netflix feature, received four nominations this year but won none. With a target of 80 new films to be released in 2018, this is a major step forward for Netflix in becoming a recognisable force not only at the box office, but also on the red carpet.

Foreign Language Film

A Fantastic Woman (Chile: Sebastián Lelio)

A favourite to win, A Fantastic Woman is a daring film about the struggles of a transgender woman inspired by the film’s lead actress, Daniela Vega. This film was the first feature to win an Oscar with an openly transgender lead and main character, and Vega was also the first openly transgender person to present on the stage at the Academy Awards. Check out our writer Diego on the Curzon podcast with the director!

Makeup and Hairstyling

Darkest Hour (Kazuhiro Tsuji, David Malinowski, Lucy Sibbick)

Gary Oldman mentioned in an interview with Vanity Fair that he wore the makeup for Winston Churchill 61 times, spending over 200 hours total in a makeup chair being transformed into the spitting image of the World War II PM. Impressive, to say the least.

Costume Design

Phantom Thread (Mark Bridges)

A film about a dressmaker which doesn’t win the Oscar for Costume Design? Unlikely. Special shoutout goes to Jacqueline Durran, though, for two nominations in one season for Beauty and the Beast and Darkest Hour!

Film Editing

Dunkirk (Lee Smith)

Sound Editing

Dunkirk (Mark Weingarten, Gregg Landaker, Gary A. Rizzo)

Sound Mixing

Dunkirk (Alex Gibson, Richard King)

Dunkirk scooping up three out of the four major technical awards towards the beginning of the night likely proved disappointing to any Nolanphiles watching – rule of thumb being that usually winning technical awards means missing out on the Big Five. Baby Driver was unfortunately overlooked in these categories, disappointing to many of us at Film Soc.

Visual Effects

Blade Runner 2049 (John Nelson, Paul Lambert, Richard R. Hoover, Gerd Nefzer)

Documentary Short Subject

Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405 (Frank Stiefel)

This short centers around Mindy Alper, a heavily mentally ill artist who channels their emotions into passionate art and sculpture. After a successful festival run, it was another favourite to win.

Live Action Short

The Silent Child (Rachel Shenton, Chris Overton)

In one of the most moving moments of the night, Rachel Shenton signed her speech for her 6-year-old star’s benefit, and thanked the Academy for bringing a story of disability to a “mainstream audience”. Among his thanks, Chris Overton mentioned the supporters of their IndieGogo campaign, an inspiring moment for low-budget filmmakers. (Speaking of, one of our very own affiliate projects, Jenny, is still looking for funding! Campaign is open for 5 more days at: indiegogo.com/projects/jenny-music-film)

Animated Short

Dear Basketball (Glen Keane, Kobe Bryant)

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Can we all please revel in the fact that not only are we now living in a world where Suicide Squad is an Oscar winner, we are also living in a time where Kobe Bryant is one too. Who’s next?

Overall, there were no big surprises; the Academy, as usual, played it safe. However, these Oscars were the most diverse we have ever had, with women, people of colour, and stories about LGBTQ+ and disabled people being brought to the forefront for the first time. Unlike at other awards ceremonies this season, there was no official #MeToo dress code, but the movement’s presence was nevertheless palpable. Not for the first time, the minorities in the film industry have raised their voices to say “enough” – but for the first time, they are being listened to.

Check out our pre-Oscars awards seasons discussion + Oscar nominations podcast episodes!

Pihla Pekkarinen reviews James Marsh’s take on a fascinating true story.

Director James Marsh (The Theory of Everything) is well-versed in the biopic. Subject Donald Crowhurst led an extraordinarily interesting life. Actors Colin Firth and Rachel Weisz both boast Academy Awards among their lists of accolades. The Mercy has all the makings of a cookie-cutter Academy-pleasing success story. And yes, it might be just that. But it is also incredibly dull.

The Mercy tells the story of Donald Crowhurst, who, after entering the 1968 Sunday Times Golden Globe race, begins spinning lies about his location and gets lost in his own fantasy of success. His family, sponsors, and everyone around the world believes he is traveling around the globe faster than his competitors, when in reality, he is stagnant and drifting towards insanity. The Mercy is an attempt to redeem the reputation of someone whose story has been told in largely poor light, and showcase Crowhurst’s story not as one of failure, but as one of human fragility. But in handling the story so carefully, it loses much of its vibrance and appeal.

Biopics have the opportunity to transform the way we recount history. They can bring forgotten people back into relevance, and show touching, relatable stories on the big screen that remind us of moments in the past that might have been overlooked. But how these stories are told makes all the difference. The Mercy is overly confident that the characters and story they have found is enough to be compelling that we would be forgiving of its flaws because it is based in truth. The filmmakers have been too afraid to touch their chosen narrative of redemption, to create dimension through angering moments or character faults, and have thus created a film which is lukewarm. The Mercy is constantly telling us exactly what to think and why we should think it. The story is being told at us, not to us. The beginning of the film is not gripping in the slightest. Towards the end, despite a dangerously high volume of unnecessary jump-cuts, the actors manage to transcend the mediocre writing and the film becomes much more touching and compelling. Unfortunately, because of the first lackluster hour, we don’t make it all the way back.

Colin Firth gives one of his best performances since The King’s Speech as Donald Crowhurst, moving swiftly and convincingly from the stuck-in-his-youth, glint-in-his-eye father looking for adventure into the lonely, isolated man stuck in his lies with no escape. His performance is charismatic and confident, and appealing in the way the film is aiming to be; even so, the part has set limiting parameters that even his skill cannot breach. When Crowhurst is forced to tell us why he is going, as if convincing us of his zeal for life, it ends up much more plastic than if the film had just shown us the close-ups of Firth’s wild smiles and left it at that.

It’s not that the film is bad. It’s not bad. Firth and Weisz give incredibly moving and convincing performances both together and apart, the pastel palette is very pleasing to the eye, and the production designer has paid meticulous attention to detail on both the ship and the home. But the film crosses the line into cliché one too many times, undermining the central message of Crowhurst’s redemption in the public eye. A shot of a school of dolphins leaping in the sea, another of a hopeful man standing on the deck of a hand-built ship, leaning onto the mast… they’re textbook. And standing alongside bold, beautiful films like Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Call Me By Your Name, Get Out and others which demand space and attention – it feels a little underwhelming.

The Mercy comes out in UK cinemas on February 9th. Check out the trailer below:

Pihla Pekkarinen reviews a few Netflix titles from the past year.

Netflix has recently set a target of releasing eighty new original films in 2018. That’s eight-zero. And 2017 wasn’t far behind that, with over fifty new dramas, comedies, and documentaries released into the world branded with the unmistakable red logo. Which is great for those of us who sometimes cannot be bothered to get out of our pyjamas and go pay twenty-eight pounds for a movie ticket (London, anyone?). If you feel the same, and are looking for some tips on what to watch next, here are my thoughts on seven of the films that came out this year. Enjoy a bag of microwave popcorn from the comfort of your bed and make the most of your Netflix subscription!

Worth Watching

I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore

Macon Blair has hit the ground running with his directing debut, I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore. The film tells the story of an average woman turned James Bond after uncooperative authorities refuse to help her solve the robbery of her house. And it does it in a completely original way. The pair of protagonists (played by Melanie Lynskey and Elijah Wood) are oddball hermits who are more and more lovable with every passing minute, and their reactions to being thrown in the midst of professional criminalism are so poignantly real that you can’t help but laugh. Indeed, this film might masquerade as a crime film but it’s a comedy through and through, from the absurdist violence provoking inappropriate laughter to the familiar attempts by the central characters to emulate what they have seen in spy films and failing miserably. The costume designer and hair and make-up artists have managed to create exceptionally average characters and even unattractive characters, which only makes me love them more. I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore is, despite its unnecessarily long name, absolutely my favourite Netflix Original film of this year.

Okja

Imagine Babe, but set in rural South Korea. With Cruella de Vil chasing after the sympathetic pig. Oh, and the pig is the size of an elephant. Then you have Okja, a new film about an environmentalist corporation breeding intelligent super-pigs for sustainable meat production. Okja is a classic tale told with a fresh perspective and a skilled manner, and there is a lot to like. The child actress Ahn Seo-hyun playing Mija, caretaker of the titular superpig, is phenomenal, as are the rest of the cast. The animation of Okja is precise and realistic, and the cinematography in general is balanced and beautiful. And while the story seems simplistic, good vs. evil, the black-and-white tonalities split into rainbows of gray as we are made to appreciate the antagonist’s motivations and exposed to the naïveté of the freedom fighters. If you are one to cry at movies, this one will turn on the waterworks.

To Each Their Own

Little Evil

I am the first person to admit my knowledge of horror films is pretty much equal to my knowledge of pharmaceutical engineering: that is, next to none. From what I have understood after further explanation, Little Evil is meant as a caricature of a horror film, poking fun at all the classic tropes and motifs of classic horror. As someone with no knowledge of the genre, what I saw was a poorly-executed, hardly frightening, half-hearted attempt at a scary film. I didn’t really have patience for Gary (Adam Scott) which made it difficult to root for the “good guys”, and was overall mostly bored. Looking back on it. I recognize that the gruff voice and countenance of the devil-child Lucas and the absurd scenes with the cult are meant to be funny references to genre-specific imagery, but I completely missed them the first time around. So, for someone who has a) watched a fair bit of horror and b) would be amused by a self-mocking comedy within that genre, this film may provoke the same positive reaction I had to I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore. Then again, I wouldn’t know.

The Incredible Jessica James

We have seen this film many a time before. The Incredible Jessica James is basically textbook: struggling artist in New York meets rich businessman, they overcome their differences and fall in love. Cue a lot of shots of the New York skyline accompanied by funky music, romantic two-shot strolls in Central Park and a phone call with an extroverted best friend from their respective bedrooms. However, this film is clearly from 2017: instead of a damsel in distress just waiting to be saved by the relationship of a lifetime, the protagonist is a six-foot badass black woman with piercings and an attitude. Jessica James dominates this film and its central relationship from start to finish, and is at times cocky enough to be annoying, which is wonderfully refreshing from a female protagonist. And while, yes, her best friend is nothing more than the usual bubbly, eternally single, always-there-for-you shell of a character, at least she’s a lesbian. That’s something, right?

To The Bone

Aside from Thirteen Reasons Why, To The Bone is probably the most controversial release from Netflix in 2017. It has been widely criticised for its glamorisation of eating disorders and the lack of cast diversity. In terms of its filmic value, it has been called “impressively accessible” (Hollywood Reporter) as well as “insipid and uninsightful” (The Guardian). Personally, I lean toward the latter camp. To The Bone claims to be revolutionary, a film which takes eating disorders and looks at them like no movie has ever done before. The result is a film saturated with stereotype, from excessive amounts of kohl eyeliner and an absent father to a supposedly unconventional therapist who comes off as condescending and power-hungry. The beginning is uncomfortable, the ending is bizarre, and the middle is a lighthearted young adult novel turned to pictures. However, Collins embodies the angry twenty-year-old character written for her to a T, and her relationships with her sister and the friends she makes at the recovery home do provoke some sympathy. And given the mixed reception for the film, you may find something more in it than I did – but the cynic in me can’t seriously applaud any movie with people dancing in a rain room just because they’re alive.

Don’t Bother

The Discovery

Premise: interesting. Execution: not so much. The Discovery, a film about the struggling son of a man who proved the existence of an afterlife, starts off tolerable, but quickly disintegrates into an overly dramatic, highly predictable cliché of a film. Beginning with the title all the way to the credits, screenplay is cringeworthy, and the lack of chemistry between the actors is striking. This film doesn’t shock, tickle, or move a single nerve. And while the philosophical questions posed at the beginning of the film are promising – if the proof of an afterlife caused millions of deaths, are they justified and should the man behind the discovery feel responsible? – there is no significant attempt to answer them. Overall, this film just feels like a poor man’s attempt at Inception or Matrix, so save your time and watch those instead.

The Meyerowitz Stories

The Meyerowitz Stories, a film centered around the interactions of a dysfunctional family, was, in a word, Groundhog Day-esque. Every time the screen cut to black and I sighed with relief that the film was finally over, it just kept going. It is tough to summarize what the movie is about, because it really isn’t about anything. It jumps around absurdly from scene to scene with no apparent connection between them, introducing new characters just to toss them to the side five minutes later, and the central characters who do remain are so unbelievably infuriating I wanted to bury myself in the ground. The choppy cuts felt as though I was supposed to respect them for their artyness (I didn’t), and I think I was supposed to read something into the ever-recurring shots of characters running places (I didn’t). There are some glimmers of hope: Sandler is remarkably less awful in this film than in his others, and Adam Driver’s brief appearance provides the only point at which I am able to laugh with the film, not at it, but these things are not enough to save the film from being a catastrophic trainwreck. I suppose it should be noted that other critics – professional ones, who know what they’re talking about – have hailed the film, calling it “flat-out brilliant” (Rolling Stone) and the best ever release from Netflix. I tried to see their point of view, I really did, but I could not escape the gnawing feeling that accompanied me throughout the film: all things considered, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.

With new shows coming out practically every week, each one different from the last, it would be easy to get lost in the whirlwind, give up, and re-watch Friends for the hundredth time. And there’s nothing wrong with that; Friends is a classic. But in case you care to venture beyond it, UCL FilmSoc has put together a handy guide to some of our favourite shows released by Netflix in 2017. Whether you’re hoping to watch something completely new or wondering whether it’s worth catching up on the newest season of that one show you sort of liked but don’t really remember, this is the place to look. Hope you enjoy, and here’s to more bingeing in 2018!

Thirteen Reasons Why (Season 1, March 2017)

If you were young and alive in 2017, it would have been difficult to miss hearing the words Thirteen Reasons Why. Probably the most talked-about release from Netflix this year, this series – centred around a high school suicide victim – provoked both praise and indignation for its graphic depictions of subjects such as rape and self-harm. The characters in this adaptation of Jay Asher’s novel are marvellously complex, most of them neither evil nor angelic (in a remarkable improvement from the book the series is based on) and the young cast does a terrific job of portraying high school angst. However, it is impossible to escape the fact that the series is designed for mass teen viewership: it drifts in focus as it tries to cater to every high school fad and relies heavily on an attractive cast and cliffhangers designed for optimum bingeing. Therefore, though the show should be commended on its expert handling of difficult themes and, additionally, its effort in raising awareness for suicide prevention, I remain skeptical of the upcoming second season of original material. Whether the show will be able to build on its momentum and succeed without Hannah Baker’s narrative arc as a driving force remains to be seen.

Mindhunter (Season 1, October 2017)

David Fincher’s Mindhunter is nothing short of a success. Its renewal for a second season, before the series even premiered, is proof of Netflix’s trust in the master filmmaker, who seems to enjoy his time away from the big screen. With witty dialogue and strong leads, this show about FBI agents unravelling the minds of serial killers feels fresh and new while staying true to the genre. Mindhunter is not groundbreaking, but it is up there with recent years’ best crime shows, such as Hannibal or True Detective. Despite its underdeveloped female characters, it is reassuring to witness a director’s fearless transition to television, especially one who is able to shoot long dialogue scenes without boring the audience to death. A proud successor to Zodiac, its suspenseful openings and cliff-hanger will leave the viewer wanting more; and we can be certain Fincher will do everything at his disposal to tell the story the way he wants to, regardless of expectations. Mindhunter leaves in its audience’s mind a bizarre, eerie mark, suggesting that anybody could be(come) a murderer, if exposed to madness for too long.

When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

Master of None (Season 2, May 2017)

To think that dude who played background characters in those Judd Apatow-y films (okay, he was amazing as Tom Haverford in Parks and Recreation) would make and star in a genuinely brilliant TV show is crazy – but now we have to think it. Master of None’s tremendous first season was an incredibly fresh taste of quasi-ordinary city life, with wonderful writing and humour backed up by genuinely clever and developed themes. In Season 2, Aziz Ansari has retained the same humour while taking the series into audacious but exciting territory.  Here he blends his comforting New York comedy (and added Italian twist) with more risky content, which could have been a disaster, but only adds to the show’s charm. Highlights include a wonderful episode on homosexuality and family, and the astonishing Robert Altman-esque episode New York, I Love You, which concretely transcends Ansari’s medium into something truly artistic – one of the greatest episodes of TV I’ve ever seen. His whacky ending and constant nods to Italian cinema makes the second season far less cohesive than the first, but its experimentation somehow almost always – against all the odds – works. I found myself baffled at not being able to name a current Netflix original with more stunning cinematography than a stand-up comedian’s comedy-drama brainchild.  With his always topical themes Ansari gives us with true passion and insight into his mind, and it’s a pleasure. It is a testament to him that even Netflix, which already carries his show, has developed shows inspired by Master of None, like the recently renewed Easy. He might well be a new, not-a-sexual-predator (fingers crossed) Woody Allen.

Stranger Things (Season 2, October 2017)

The Duffer Brothers have hit the sweet spot for the second time with the new season of Stranger Things. Given that last season wrapped itself up rather nicely, it might have been a challenge to make this new season feel necessary beyond resolving the cheeky cliffhanger with Will Byers. It succeeds in most regards. There are elements that don’t work as well – Jonathan and Nancy’s subplot feels like a bit of a drag, especially compared to the ascension of Steve Harrington to one of the best and most endearing characters. On the whole, however, it’s great. The dynamic between the kids sparkles even more, the new character additions are terrific – in particular Sean Astin’s Bob – the special effects are far more refined, and most importantly it captures that same old nostalgic joy while taking the storyline in new, sometimes quite daring, directions. And of course, Eleven, played once again to perfection by Millie Bobby Brown, is as great as ever.

Better Call Saul (Season 3, April 2017)

It took a while, but Vince Gilligan and co. have finally found the spark to make the Breaking Bad spin-off about everyone’s favourite scoundrel lawyer-in-the-making, Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk), click consistently. The previous two seasons had featured some great episodes and performances, but never quite cohered to make anything more than ‘pretty good’ television. This season, which focuses its scope on the battle of wits between Jimmy and his manipulative, bitter older brother Chuck (an amazing Michael McKean), while Jonathan Banks’ Mike gets pulled further into the underworld of drug dealers, with the welcome return of some very familiar faces. The pacing of this season is excellent, with no wasted line or scene, and every supporting character gets to shine – from Michael Mando’s increasingly sympathetic gangster Nacho to Jimmy’s legal associate/lover Kim (Rhea Seehorn). It maintains a vibrant, cheeky sense of fun throughout, while also becoming an exceptionally compelling drama when it wants, most notably in the courtroom drama episode ‘Chicanery’. It’s a fantastic season in which the show seems to finally become its own beast, rather than just the offspring of Breaking Bad.

American Vandal (Season 1, September 2017)

One of the surprise delights of the year, American Vandal’s ‘Making a Murderer’ investigation of high school parking lot vandalism, works primarily thanks to its “serious” approach. It’s not potential simple laughs at the phallic graffiti but the solemn reactions to them that really sell the humour of the show. The series as a whole is a very satisfying deconstruction of the ‘true crime documentary’ genre, but is so much more than just that. It captures a surprisingly natural and realistic feel of high school life, and actually grants some genuine emotional investment to the proceedings. It’s not flawless; a few of the middle episodes turn their wheels a bit in order to generate more ‘drama’. But on the whole, it’s a considerable success.

Orange is the New Black (Season 5, June 2017)

Oh, Litchfield. Five seasons in, Orange is the New Black has thrived in its pairing of familiar community feeling with outrageous spontaneity, but for how long? The fifth season keeps up the formula but, with overconfidence, often misses its mark. Continuing the political themes of the Season 4, we find the inmates smack in the middle of a riot that seems to somehow be going pretty well despite the total anarchy ruling the prison corridors. Poussey’s murder looms over the action as an all-too-bleak reminder of the show’s more realistic plot turns, but the 13 episodes fail to smoothly bridge the leap from this tragedy to its more comedic elements. Additionally, the writing messes with some of the most complex and sensitive characters and their trajectories. Piscatella confusingly switches from loathsome guard, to pitiful lost soul, to some kind of monstrous embodiment of evil masculine energy. Pennsatucky apparently not only forgives but pursues a romantic relationship with her rapist. Alison, a black Hijab-wearing Muslim inmate, was a refreshing addition to the cast last season, but her flashback plummets exciting potential into sheer disappointment. (Polygamy, really? Great job basing Alison’s backstory on an ‘Islamic’ practice that barely exists in the American Muslim community.) The season’s lowlights are met with a few enlightened philosophical moments, but overall it’s a bit of a mess – an OINTB-style mess, and thus mostly forgivable – but a mess nonetheless. OITNB’s fifth season may have lost its way, but there is high chance the talented writers may salvage it yet.

One Day At A Time (Season 1, January 2017)

One Day at a Time is a CBS sitcom developed by Whitney Blake – no, wait. One Day at a Time, which mimics its namesake in the broad structure of single-mother-with-teenage-kids and little else, is a sharp, compassionate family comedy with its feet firmly rooted in Netflix’s 2017 demographic. We follow the life of Penelope Alvarez (Justina Machado), Afghanistan vet and exhausted nurse, whose (outspokenly Cuban) mother (scene-stealing Rita Moreno) sleeps behind the living room, (outspokenly feminist) teenage daughter Elena (Isabella Gomez) has taken objection to the prospect of a quinceañera, and (outspokenly twelve years old) son is… twelve. (Sorry, Alex [Marcel Ruiz] – he rounds out the family perfectly well, just tends to take a back seat to the powerhouse women around him. To which this reviewer has no objection.) Throw in a halfway-to-self-aware white neighbour and Penelope’s addled colleagues, and you’ve got a recipe for hilarious and pointed takes on parenting, life after war, diaspora culture and plenty more in one of this year’s overlooked gems. If you do feel like catching up, you’d better hurry – the second season will be out on the 26th of January.

Big Mouth (Season 1, September 2017)

Adult-oriented cartoons have found new life in recent years with shows like Rick and Morty and Bojack Horseman. The latest feat in this genre is Big Mouth, a thoroughly funny time capsule that transports you back into life at thirteen. The early teen years are a sore memory for most, and Big Mouth unapologetically pokes fun at every aspect of tweendom: zits, hormones, awkwardness, and – most of all – horniness. The hormone monsters, stuck-in-high-school Coach Steve and the ghost of Duke Ellington, incite bursts of uncontrollable laughter and invite Netflix to employ it’s “Still Watching?” feature as you inevitably binge the short episodes back-to-back. Some of the moments are a little hard to swallow (pregnant pillow, anyone?), but if you don’t mind crude humour and are looking to shed any rose-colored glasses you might still view your middle school years through, Big Mouth is definitely the show for you.  

Bojack Horseman (Season 4, September 2017)

Hilarious yet heartbreaking in equal measure, BoJack Horseman has – for good reason – joined the ranks of the absolute best of not just Netflix, but of what animation has to offer on the small screen. Over the course of four seasons the show has skewered Hollywoo(d) and celebrity culture in ways that leave both those completely out of the loop and those following the film industry with a fine-tooth comb rolling on the floor with laughter, while packing an immense emotional punch, particularly through its portrayal of mental health issues and how society views them. It’s an incredibly silly premise that the show fully commits to and delivers on (animal puns aplenty); and while all that’s happening, it doesn’t shy away from pushing boundaries (the dialogue-free Season 3 episode ‘Fish out of Water’ has been hailed as some of 2016’s absolute best television) and tackling more emotional and tougher subjects with a surprising amount of gravity. And the cherry on the top is the cast: not only the voice actors (including Will Arnett as the titular horse, Alison Brie, Amy Sedaris, Paul F. Tompkins, Aaron Paul, Stanley Tucci, Olivia Wilde) but the countless animated celebrity cameos – sometimes voiced by the stars themselves.

The Get Down: Part 2 (April 2017)

2017 saw the return (and subsequent cancellation) of Baz Luhrmann’s The Get Down, set in New York City, 1978. Disco and hip hop mingle on hot summer nights in the Bronx; dreams are born and pursued; young people fall in love. I loved the setting of this show and the evocative cultural moment it captured, as well as most of the performances; Jaden Smith’s “Dizzee” Kipling aka graffiti artist Rumi 411 is the real laugh. The show was good, descending into decent by Part 2, but never great. And with a $120 million budget (The Get Down was Netflix’s most expensive show to date), you need great. Subverting expectations that the funds and creative team would take the show above and beyond television expectations, its narrative unfortunately sagged and became riddled with plot holes by Part 2, leaving only the excess of stylistic detail and shimmery dance sequences behind to support its appeal. The Atlantic rightly called it “the show that could’ve been”. Personally, I applaud the effort, very successful at times, and especially commend The Get Down’s diverse cast and killer soundtrack.

The OA (Season 1, December 2016)

From the fertile minds of Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij, the OA hits all the right spots. Written by by both, directed by Batmanglij, and starring Marling, the two continue to explore a cinematic partnership refined through years of collaboration. Both have backgrounds in film – the show’s cinematic structure is owed to this. However, Batmanglij has made full use of the episodic structure allowing for some sharp cliff-hangers. The show deals with very interesting themes, including consciousness, the afterlife, and near-death experiences. This is not surprising when surveying Marling and Batmanglij’s previous filmic pursuits (Sound of My Voice, Another Earth, I Origins). The plot centres around Prairie (Marling), a blind girl who disappeared several ears ago, returns to a Middle-American small-town with her sight restored and a whirlwind of a tale. The use of a plot riddled with twists and turns allows Batmanglij to explore of a plethora of interesting themes without neglecting audience entertainment. Sometimes it seems Marling and Batmanglij are so excited by their own ideas that they repeat them to the point of self-indulgence. Nevertheless, the show boasts beautiful visuals and good writing. The latter is a testament to polyvalence; Marling and Batmanglij managed to work in a selection of mood-board interesting concepts – from Russian aristocracy to Hans Christian Anderson to Stockholm syndrome. Combined, these concepts work together to create an extremely suspenseful, fantastical genre-bending drama. Sci-fi? Let’s have it. Fantasy? Toss some of that in there. Mystery? Why not. Coming-of-age? Sure. The show treads some familiar ground, and the question running throughout – whether we can believe Brit Marling’s fantastical tale – is not of huge importance to the plot. All in all, Marling and Batmanglij have managed to create a wildly entertaining show. It is thrilling. They know this.

Pihla Pekkarinen takes a look at the biographical film of a queer art icon.

“Tom of… Tom of Finland.”
“Tom of Sweden would sell more.”

In its portrayal of a legendary gay icon, Tom of Finland (dir. Dome Karukoski) makes a commendable effort to condense a lifetime of groundbreaking art and activism into a two-hour whistle-stop tour of its protagonist’s life. It follows the story of Touko Laaksonen, a gay World War II veteran living in highly homophobic 1950s Finland. Suffocatingly closeted, he turns to art to realize the fantasies he cannot otherwise express. Facing arrest and as a result living in deep secrecy in his hometown of Helsinki, he builds his portfolio and eventually sends it to the US, where his drawings quickly become emblems for gay culture. It’s a story worthy of careful biopic treatment but unfortunately, by trying to tick every box, Tom of Finland gets lost within itself and leaves its audience unfulfilled.

The film’s first minutes are characterized by trenches and gunfire interspersed with Touko’s homoerotic fantasies. The opening sequences set the tone for the rest of the runtime: this film oozes sex. We see the character of Kake (an unabashedly venereal biker in tight leather trousers birthed from Touko’s imagination) smirking at us at the most unexpected points, and the film does not shy away from the topic of sex, referenced to both implicitly and explicitly.

The cinematography of the scenes set in Finland is perfectly bleak and gloomy, with any traces of joy markedly absent and replaced by a painfully accurate atmosphere of general distaste for most things in life. The blue-toned and dark scenes, amounting to about 70% of the film in total, are contrasted with those set in underground gay bars, where the red ambient lighting screams erotica. These scenes feel dangerously thrilling, touching briefly on the dangers of being gay in a predominantly Nazi society. The L.A. sequences, on the other hand, are bright and bubbly, and the juxtaposition of humourless Touko against a backdrop of green grass and pools filled with phallic floaties is rather comic. The jump from Helsinki to LA, while abrupt, works surprisingly well with the story as it feels like a continuation of Touko’s imagination, an alternate reality where “everyone’s gay in LA.”

Pekka Strang gives a charming performance as Touko Laaksonen, a war veteran plagued by his past and suffocated by the present. He hits every marker of a true Finn: distant, reserved, and frugal with his words. He made me feel like I was home again. His sister, played by Jessica Grabowsky, is equally likeable, her obvious love and concern for her brother making her homophobic comments all the more piercing. Shamefully, her character is left underdeveloped and her eventual acceptance of her brother’s sexuality is unexplained, leaving us with a somewhat two-dimensional view of her.

The problems with the writing don’t end there. The scattered screenplay makes the film convoluted and prevents it from gaining any real depth. The PTSD element of Touko’s character dominates the first half of the film, but inexplicably disappears in the second; the central love story is surface-level and fails to gain our empathy; and the desperate attempt in the final five minutes to include a mention of HIV/AIDS seems misplaced and disrespectful to the sombre subject matter. Though the actors put their best foot forward, every minor character in the film is shallow and flat. The film lacks focus and structure, which ultimately makes the viewing experience disengaging rather than heartwarming. And, perhaps most disappointingly, the focus never rests on Tom of Finland’s groundbreaking art, disregarding his lifetime of achievements in queer culture.

Overall, there is a lot to like in Tom of Finland. The visuals and Strang’s performance come together to form an impeccable image of dreariness and misery, wonderfully familiar to any Finn. The shortcomings of the screenplay, however, prevent the film from reaching its full potential, and the result is an enjoyable but fragmented portrait of an illustrious man, attempting to cover the full timeline of his life but barely scratching the surface.

Tom of Finland was released in the UK on August 11th. Check out the trailer below.

Pihla Pekkarinen takes a look at the first entirely oil painted film in cinematic history.

The hypnotic quality of the moving brushstrokes mesmerises from the opening credits of the film. It bears resemblance to an optical illusion, the circular motion of the short signature strokes of Vincent Van Gogh. It has been obvious since the trailer – this film is like nothing you have seen before.

Loving Vincent is the world’s first film to be entirely oil painted. It is composed of 65,000 individual frames painted by over 100 artists. The plot takes place one year after Van Gogh’s death, and follows his friend Armand Roulin as he tries to uncover what drove Van Gogh to shoot himself apparently out of nowhere. The scenes were originally shot with actors on rudimentary sets to capture the movement, and the frames then replicated by skilled oil painters mimicking the style of Van Gogh. The film is a passion project, the result of over six years of teamwork, and it shows.

Loving Vincent is based around animated versions 95 of Van Gogh’s paintings, but is still constructed like a film, frame by frame. It is not a traditional animated movie. At times, the film is tough to follow, as it must adjust you to the language of brushstrokes in place of CGI. But it is worth the effort. Each character is an artful and unique blend of Van Gogh’s artwork and the actors’ facial features, avoiding the generic look characters in animated films often share. While the shifts in painting style through the film are occasionally abrupt and sometimes awkward, the frames stay true to the paintings they draw from. Douglas Booth, playing Armand Roulin, summarizes it best: “Sometimes you lose the artist in a biopic of the artist. This was telling his story through his art.” Loving Vincent is a homage not only to Van Gogh’s life and person, but to his artistic endeavours.

If you are looking for a condensed version of Van Gogh’s Wikipedia article, you won’t find it here. For a Van Gogh film, there is shockingly little of Vincent present. He appears in black-and-white flashbacks, a mostly mute character alive only in the memories of the film’s main personas. Instead the film zeroes in on the postmortem memory of Van Gogh. A feeling of uncertainty is ever present in the background: each character paints us a new portrait of the mad artist, and this many-sided construction of him might leave the audience perplexed. Carefully and cleverly, Loving Vincent gives us an idea of what Van Gogh was like without really telling us anything about him. We learn about his life, about his friends and family, and about the circumstances surrounding his death, but Van Gogh himself remains a mystery.

The hole of Van Gogh’s presence is filled by the charming character of Armand Roulin. He opens the film as an impertinent young man, the kind we have seen on screen a thousand times before, refusing to oblige to his father’s requests and erupting in a temper tantrum in the middle of a pub. But Booth’s earnestness as Roulin and his love for Vincent are, surprisingly, more than enough to drive the film. His implied romance with the innkeeper’s daughter is charming; his argument with her is upsetting; and his desperate need to find out the truth about Van Gogh’s death is shared with the audience. Overall, Douglas Booth does a stellar job in carrying the arc of the story.

Because it is the first film of its kind, it is difficult to assess the success of Loving Vincent. But if the aim is to tell a compelling and moving story about the darkest days of Vincent Van Gogh’s life, it would be tough to argue against the film’s success in doing so. It retains its focus, and explores the death of Van Gogh fully and completely, creating an atmosphere of intimacy through its narrow scope. And despite its occasionally gimicky exterior, Loving Vincent is, at its core, a story about companionship, misunderstanding, and regret, told in an elegant manner well worth the wait.

Loving Vincent is out now in UK cinemas. Trailer below: