Lydia De Matos reviews Kaufman’s latest experimental thriller.

A young couple is on their way to the guy’s parents’ house. They’ve only been together for six weeks. Or is it seven? They’re unsure. Nothing is certain, not even her name; it’s Lucy, or maybe Louisa, it might even be Yvonne. This is their first roadtrip together. She says they have a “real connection; a rare and intense attachment” – but the conversation is awkward, stilted. He’s excited for her to meet his parents. She hasn’t even told hers about them. He’s clearly aching for them to be perfect for one another. She’s thinking of ending things. 

Are you confused yet? If not, you will be. Charlie Kaufman’s latest feature, i’m thinking of ending things, is his least accessible yet, embracing the writer/director’s absurdist style and philosophy to an extent that only Netflix’s infamous do-whatever-you-want policy would have allowed. I don’t necessarily mean that as an insult, perhaps just more as a warning to go into this expecting something uniquely Kaufman-esque. 

The film’s emotional bedrock is uncertainty, especially in the first two acts. The film occupies itself with those uncomfortable stretches of time plagued by apprehension; waiting for someone you’re nervous to meet to finally descend the stairs, a car trip with a boyfriend you’re thinking of dumping, approaching a table full of people who are clearly waiting for you. Kaufman elongates these moments and drops us squarely into them, slowly creating an atmosphere of tense anxiety that sinks its claws into you, making it impossible to turn away. The intricately confusing wallpaper backdrop of the opening credits resembles something along the lines of what Charlotte Perkins-Gilman described in The Yellow Wallpaper, suggesting from the very outset that nothing we see is to be trusted. 

Indeed, every detail seems to shift constantly. It’s not only the young woman’s (Jessie Buckley) name that changes, but her major, the colour of her coat, how she met Jake (Jesse Plemons), how she feels about him, even her voice and face. These shifts are occasionally subtle, and occasionally glaring, challenging us to question them. The world around her changes too. Kaufman takes a very literal interpretation of eternalist philosophy; Jake’s parents (Toni Collette and David Thewlis) appear at different stages of their life almost simultaneously, and the young woman feels nostalgic for things that have not yet happened. Things characters say and do are taken wholesale from notable public figures, from the criticism of Pauline Kael to the paintings of Ralph Albert Blakelock, spoken and presented as though completely, spontaneously original. 

The film’s litany of references seems to be one only the most cultured intelligentsia-type would feel comfortable peppering in, or more accurately, the kind of person who desperately wants to be one of those cultured intelligentsia-types. The kind of person who corners you at a party, purely aesthetic cigarette in hand, starting a conversation about the essays of David Foster Wallace, but inevitably ending up talking about the crushing shame they still feel about having only gotten a participation trophy at their secondary school prizegiving. 

On the surface Kaufman seems to be making a fairly boring critique of the inauthenticity of modern times, the disconnect between our thoughts and our actions, our lack of original thought, something like that. But the further you get into the film, the more it feels like he’s deriding the kind of person who actually believes that such a critique is either pertinent or unique; the kind of person who needs to feel like the smartest in the room, a cut above the unwashed masses and their supposed disregard for “high culture”. The kind of person who oh so desperately needs their opinions to be validated that they’re incapable of connecting with the people around them. If you’ve seen anything else by Kaufman, you’ll recognise the pattern: he’s writing about himself. 

If that seems like a lot to throw at your actors, well, it is. But the whole cast handles it fantastically. Buckley in particular effortlessly attunes her performance to every deviation in tone and character no matter how minor or major. Jay Wadley’s score and ballet is brilliant, shifting from minimalistic terror to uplifting wonder with an ease that makes me question why I’d not heard of him before. 

Truthfully, i’m thinking of ending things is a difficult film. After the first viewing I found myself unable to decide whether it was a meaningful piece of art, or a wall at which everything had been thrown and few things had stuck. But I could not stop thinking about it, and desperately needed to discuss it. Once I’d had a chance to do so, and managed to formulate an interpretation that actually seemed to make sense, I found myself leaning more and more toward loving it and its wonderfully absurd, surreal terror. It may be a difficult film, but if you want to watch something that will stay with you, it is absolutely worth it.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things is now streaming on Netflix. Watch the trailer here:

Tomi Haffety explores the portrayal of the Mexican elite during the 1982 Peso Crisis through Las Niñas Bien

Las Niñas Bien acts as a cinematic tribute to the legacy of Julio Iglesias, the Mexican Pesos Crisis of 1982 and all those who subsequently fell from the elite with one capitalist swoop. The 2018 film is the second feature by Alejandra Márquez Abella and follows the life of the exclusive Las Lomas neighbourhood’s ‘queen bee’ Sofia (Ilse Salas), as she navigates her privileges amidst the worst financial crisis Mexico had experienced.

Opening with a scene at Sofia’s lavish birthday party, filled with rare octopus and expensive wine, Márquez Abella familiarises the viewer to the lifestyle that the guests share. This is subtly introduced by their removed attitude toward the failing economy, even using it as a punchline to their after-dinner jokes. Living in a palatial house with live-in staff who have been around for generations, Sofia, the protagonist of both the film and the social scene, sends her children to international summer camps to expose them to the world outside Mexico, even warning them not to mingle with other Mexicans. Along with the other housewives, she enjoys uninterrupted tennis matches and lengthy pampering sessions. She is untouchable, or at least, that is what she believes until reality starts to slowly creep in, and creep it does.

Márquez Abella exhibits a great talent for using subtle symbolism to carry the story forward and as the plot develops and cracks begin to show in Sofia’s perfect life, these symbols are given free reign. Beginning subtly with the lack of water the morning after the birthday party and the neighbours packing large bags in the car to go on a ‘long vacation’, it becomes apparent that the world Sofia was so comfortable in is beginning to slowly change.

The minimalist score composed by Tómas Barreiro has the mesmerizing power of complimenting the story and the repeated clapping symphony, aptly named ‘the war of the applause’, plays when the plot hits a climax to emphasise the agitation and discomfort felt by Sofia. Costume designer Annai Ramos played a vital part in telling the story through fashion as the clothes that the women wear represent their pristine lives, and they act as a base for much of the plot, for example Sofia wears a sombre black dress on the night that everything seems to collapse. Cleaners are left unpaid; a skin rash develops very visibly over her neck and Sofia removes the foreboding black butterfly from the parlour wall- an action she was warned against by the gardener as removing it would bring only bad luck.

Sofia’s ignorance and selfishness are represented through her continued avarice at the expense of her husband whose sobriety begins to decline with his wealth. The desperation to continue life as before is palpable and as the plot develops, it becomes obvious to everyone apart from Sofia that she no longer holds the title of ‘queen bee’ and is beginning to be usurped by a younger, new money housewife, Ana Paula. In this case, Mexican colourism and elitism is apparent in the way that Ana Paula is of Mexican descent whereas Sofia’s family are recent immigrants from the ‘fashionable’ Spain. This holds true in the repeated references to Julio Iglesias who, in Sofia’s eyes, stands as the pinnacle of cosmopolitanism and class- both things she is striving to obtain, and then maintain. A powerful scene towards the end of the feature presents two sides of Sofia’s life: she is pampered by others as she gets ready for an evening meal but she is forced to shower with stagnant pool water following the restriction on hot water. The juxtaposition between Sofia’s ties to her old way of living and new, forced way of living is a powerful metaphor of her fall from grace.

Las Niñas Bien begins with Sofia reciting a fantasy that is not too dissimilar to her reality, but by the closing of the film exactly a year after the exuberant party, Sofia sits with her husband at a dinner with her young nemesis. Márquez Abella has perfectly critiqued the instability of capitalism in a ninety-minute feature. Highlighting the insecurity of the wealth elite through regular wide shots, whether it be at the private tennis court or the palatial décor of the exclusive mansions, Abella presents as much wealth as possible into the frame. Sofia’s dramatic fall from grace and replacement as a key figure in her social circle is brilliantly narrated through Sofia’s fantasies and a reality which becomes increasingly nightmarish.

Las Niñas Bien is artistically shot and both the leading and supporting actors, who are dominantly shoulder-pad clad women, transform the story from a Desperate Housewives satire to a masterful capitalism-critiquing feature.

Las Niñas Bien is now available to stream on Mubi. Watch the trailer here:

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:

Dan Jacobson reviews the sequel to the Netflix smash hit.

In the very first scene of To All The Boys: P.S. I Still Love You, Kitty, the younger sister of main character Lara Jean, tells her that “It’s not the time to dream of being in an 80’s movie.” Lara Jean is about to go on her first date with her new boyfriend, the dreamy-yet-jock-yet-16-yet-emotionally-mature Peter Kavinsky, and she is dreaming of John Cusack with a boom box and Heath Ledger singing ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’. Kitty’s comment perfectly encapsulates the challenges Lara Jean is about to face, and the central ethos of the film itself.

To All The Boys I Loved Before – the 2018 predecessor to P.S. I Still Love You – was a smash hit. Over a single summer, alongside Set It Up and Crazy Rich Asians, the film managed (for an albeit brief time) to make romantic comedies relevant again. Atypically, the film did not do this by subverting or redefining the norms of the genre (although the visibility of Asian actors is undoubtedly praiseworthy). Instead, director Susan Johnson created a movie that – utilising the ‘Fake-Dating’ high school movie template – acted as a fresh and unapologetic homage to the films and stories which inspired it.

This inspiration is alluded to directly through Lara Jean’s love of John Hughes’ Sixteen Candles, despite the obscene stereotyping of the character Long Duk Dong. In fact, there are references to the past 30 years of romcom history everywhere; from Lara Jean’s impeccable fashion taste echoing Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’s Sloane Peterson and Clueless’ Cher Horowitz, to the vibrant pastels found in Legally Blonde and Grease. Whilst an inability to move away from the influences worn on a film’s sleeve can imply unoriginality (Joker, anyone?), To All The Boys managed to use these references in a way that produced a feel-good and heart-warming film. If the filmmakers had simply chosen to repeat the first film when making the sequel, that would have been more than enough for me.

I’m still not sure whether or not they tried to repeat themselves, but whatever happened, the spark has been buried. I hope it isn’t buried too far, because the third and final film in the franchise is in post-production. But I can’t find it.

At its centre, P.S. I Still Love You tells the story of a love triangle, one of the most popular romantic tropes of all time. After Lara Jean begins dating Peter, a crush from many years earlier – John Ambrose – comes back into her life when they both opt to volunteer at a retirement centre. The rest is self-explanatory. However, the sequel suffers from one key flaw: a juicy plot is favored over consistency and coherency. The entirety of the first film presented Peter as “perfect”; he is sensitive, respectful, and drinks kombucha at house parties. Now, to further the plot, the second movie has to undo all of that hard work. It’s an unfortunate crux that simultaneously reaffirms what made the first film so loveable, and the resulting sequel feels nothing but forced.

The contrived character development is evidenced in Peter’s brand new set of flaws, which pop up sporadically throughout the film’s first half. He is late to meet Lara Jean in a busy café. He always takes the last cupcake or slice of pizza. And, most importantly, he still seems to have feelings for his ex, Gen (this was also his sole flaw in the previous film, where we also learn that Lara Jean’s fears are unfounded). Additionally, John Ambrose is presented as flawlessly as Peter was. Maybe I, like most of the Internet, fell too easily under the spell of Peter, but I spent the entire film just waiting for Lara Jean to confirm that it is Peter who she loves after all.

Unfortunately, this laziness pervades too many aspects of P.S. I Still Love You. The film is driven almost entirely by voiceovers, giving the film an air of a 90-minute game of connect-the-dots, for which the final image is, somehow, exactly the same image as the one before. The soundtrack is boring and repetitive, anchored by soulless synth-pop ballads, whilst the previous film’s flawless blend of indie rock, electronic funk, and brooding dream pop – with ‘Everybody Wants To Rule The World’ thrown in for very, very good measure – was intrinsic in its fresh tone and modern feel. Oh, and the final scene has snow. SNOW! From out of nowhere. Seriously, nobody is wearing a coat. As I have mentioned, I have nothing against pandering to beloved rom-com tropes, but this one takes the freshly baked, Valentine’s Day snickerdoodle.

Where I will defend P.S. I Still Love You is in its continuation of the legacy established by its predecessor as somewhat “post-critic.” At its centre, the To All The Boys films are about love; the representations of young romantic love, sisterhood, and father-daughter love displayed by the characters, and also a love of love evidenced by the filmmakers. This love extends to television and music as well. Jane the Virgin, for example, has developed a cult following and critical success based on a love of insane Latin American telenovelas, alongside episode-length odes to Sex and the City, Fifty Shades of Grey, and The Bachelorette, to name a few (a Bachelorette-themed episode is how you do a love triangle). Artists like Charli XCX and Carly Rae Jepsen, who began the 2010s being presented as tween-pop, radio-darling, computer-generated one-hit-wonders, are now (rightfully) hailed as the most innovative pop stars of their generation. This “love” is not the voyeuristic schadenfreude of Love Island, or the ironic camp-worship of The Room – this is genuine, unashamed love.

The ubiquity of social media means that not only is everyone given a platform to air their opinions of films and music, but that we are exposed to these opinions more than ever before. This has caused a paradigm shift away from the dated, male-centric art criticism of bygone years, where ‘prestige TV’ was immediately lauded and any female-led shows were glossed over as ‘guilty pleasures’ or ‘candy’. In an interview with Vox, TV critic Emily Nussbaum says, “If it’s pink or brightly colored, fun or funny, or related in some way to soap operas, it’s coded as female, whether it’s female or not.” As a straight man with a love for romantic comedies, my perception of shows and films like this has evolved from “I’ve never heard of it” to “I don’t watch it” to “I enjoyed it” to “This is excellent.” If a show or film truly is worthy of praise, its genre should be irrelevant.

We haven’t reached equal respect for all genres just yet, but films like To All The Boys I Loved Before are rectifying this. I don’t know whether P.S. I Still Love You will cause a positive or even negative response in this regard, but the public’s anticipation for the film is proof that we are at least heading in the right direction. Like Lara Jean, I say we don’t need to hide our love of 80’s movies anymore. Whilst I may come to regret these words, I cannot wait for the next one.

To All The Boys: P.S. I Still Love You is available to stream on Netflix worldwide. Check out the trailer below:

Tomi Haffety reviews Kore-eda’s acclaimed film.

After its premiere at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Our Little Sister quickly rose to acclaim amongst both Japanese and global audiences, winning the Audience Award at the San Sebastian Film Festival in 2017. Set in Kamakura, a sacred coastal town south of Tokyo, the film follows the lives of the three Kouda sisters, who reunite with their younger half-sister, Suzu, after the death of their estranged father leaves her without a guardian and somewhat neglected by her step-mother. The sisters invite Suzu to live with them in their family home in Kamakura, and she quickly becomes welcomed by the family and community. This is as much a film about family ties as it is a coming of age story, and Kore-eda captures the blossoming relationships made as Suzu settles into the town.   

As a sixteen-year-old watching this film for the first time on a drizzly afternoon at home, I was instantly enchanted by Kore-eda’s subtle mastery of the representation of unusual family dynamics in the context of contemporary Japan. Our Little Sister is set during summer, the same season during which I regularly visit my family in Tokyo. Summer in Japan is like no other season around the world; the relentless symphony of cicadas onscreen is calming enough to make anyone nostalgic, even for the heat and humidity. The film makes me crave those family holidays in what is probably my favourite place on earth. From one of the earliest scenes on a small rural train, journeying to the bucolic edges of Japan’s eastern coast, to the sharing of cold soba noodles with their grandmother towards the end, this film could be a montage of my experiences of Tokyo. Our own trip to Kamakura to visit the Great Buddha is one that has resounded in my memory  – so vivid that as I watch Suzu cycle through a canopy of cherry blossoms, I can feel the same breeze. Taking lengthy walks around the town in the height of the summer, we visited temple after temple and ate enough kakigori (shaved ice) to keep us cool for the year. 

Although I am one of four sisters too, there are very few similarities between my family and the Koudas. While they all appear self-sufficient, my sisters and I still depend on our parents, and the positive relationship we have with them bears little resemblance to the one on screen. Because the sisters are adults when they welcome the youngest into their family, I watch the film as though the three eldest were the four of us, and imagine what it would be like for an estranged younger sister to join our already formed sisterhood. When I moved to London six months ago and found myself without my family for the first time, I re-watched Our Little Sister in an attempt to bring a piece of home with me. With all their contrariness, the sisters have an unbreakable bond of friendship, best conveyed during a scene towards the end of the film when, after having missed a summer firework display, the sisters return home and light their own in the garden. The unobtrusively wholesome scene captures everything that Kore-eda does best; the clear bond between the quartet is palpable in the dimly lit garden, with only fireworks lighting their faces.This moment is the perfect conclusion to a film about family reunion and the experience of sparking new connections with a person you have a biological bond with. 

My romanticised vision of Japan makes it difficult not to feel so attached to a place where I have only happy memories, and so through Kore-eda’s work I can relive those experiences again. A recurring scene in the film is of the four protagonists lounging in the heat in an open tatami room, sharing stories and snacking on cold plums. I could not count the times when my sisters and I have done the same in my grandma’s house, fighting over who gets to sit closest to the air conditioning. Our Little Sister helps me to transcend the physical boundaries of being apart from both my sisters and our happiness in Japan. When I watch this film thousands of miles away from them, I no longer feel alone.

Our Little Sister is available to rent and buy online. Check out the trailer below:

Natalie Wooding reviews Federico Fellini’s iconic film, in celebration of its 60th anniversary.

La Dolce Vita is a party. It is a world of glamour and sophistication inhabited by larger than life characters, ranging from the mass of scrambling paparazzi (a term this film coined, from the character Paparazzo) jumping from walls and tumbling over each other in an effort to get the most scandalous shot, to the glamorous Swedish movie star, gliding around Rome at 3am in a full length ball gown topped with, instead of a hat, a kitten she has found and picked up along the way. The film follows Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni), a jaded veteran reporter as he chases celebrity after celebrity through party after party, each one outdoing the next in decadent celebration.

Fellini’s hyperbolic style is often contrasted with the Italian neorealist movement that was popular when he began his cinematic career. With the aim of faithfully depicting the everyday lives of Italians suffering after the war, neorealist directors sought a sombre and objective style that distanced itself from Hollywood artifice and glamour as much as possible. In the words of Zavattini, a leading theorist and neorealist screenwriter, the aim of cinema was to represent “living social facts.” Films such as Ladri di biciclette, which depicts the struggle of a father trying to raise his son to be morally just in an unjust world, are heart breaking in their honesty and immensely powerful in their restraint.

By the end of the 1950s, Italy’s economy was thriving, and flourishing “made in Italy” design was quickly becoming world-renowned. In La Dolce Vita, life is an exciting celebration of opulence and entertainment, as the title affirms: ‘Life is Sweet’. In this world of glamourous parties, Fellini only refers to his neorealist forefathers playfully, with a knowing wink and a smile; when the audience are led down a series of broken steps into a flooded basement of a war torn building, the scene is not dire but comical – the professional prostitute who owns the house is swearing loudly and the two people she is leading fall into each other’s arms in a torrid affair. “Credi che il neorealismo italiano sia vivo o morto?” (Do you think Italian neorealism is alive or dead?) is one of the unanswered questions thrown from a horde of reporters to the glamorous actress Sylvia (Anita Ekberg) amongst “Do you practice yoga?” and “Do you like men with beards?”

Where neorealism offers sombre observation, Fellini uses all the tools of cinema at his disposal to offer scene after scene of beautiful, sensual and hypnotic cinematography. It is impossible to not get swept up in Fellini’s parties; to try to tear your eyes from the screen as the camera sways rhythmically, following Sylvia’s dancing to Nino Rota’s upbeat jazz soundtrack, leading a line of dancers as she sweeps across the screen; to not be enraptured watching Marcello decorate a drunken young show girl with feathers, the down from the ripped cushion swirling slowly around him.

La Dolce Vita is a film that does not shy away from the make-believe of cinema – it happily embraces spectacle to the point of being carnivalesque. The sets are vast and opulent; the costumes are heaving with feathers, adorned with glittering necklines and glimpsed suspenders between split skirts. Be they paparazzi, celebrities or wannabes, Fellini’s characters look up to professional actors, dancers, party-throwers, all happily immersed in the fairy-tale mythologizing of Hollywood. In the world of La Dolce Vita, everything is pretend and everything is wonderful.

Where Fellini differs from Hollywood’s superficial indulgence in visual glamour and movie star celebration is in the thread of existential anxiety he weaves throughout the film, an anxiety that eventually constricts every single character. La Dolce Vita follows characters’ drinking and sexual escapades without judgement, allowing the existential dread to manifest itself naturally through small details. In a hilariously chaotic scene where crowds of Italians run around chasing a miracle sighting of the Madonna, Marcello’s long-suffering fiancée Emma confronts an old woman who does not believe the miracle matters. “Why would you say such a thing?” presses Emma, who has just prayed that Marcello will finally marry her. By the time the most shocking and poignant scene of the film transforms La Dolce Vita into an ironic tragicomedy, we are already resigned to watching the characters entangle themselves in their superficially happy but empty lives. Fellini’s opulence and his cheeky joie de vivre conceal an underlying melancholy; for all their celebrating and elaborate costumes, all of the characters ultimately find themselves uncertain, lost and alone.

Fellini’s masterpiece is both a sumptuous visual feast and a social commentary on the post-war culture of excess. Perhaps, in his quiet observing and capturing of a generation’s existential ennui, he remains a neorealist after all.

You can catch La Dolce Vita at the BFI now, and the film is available to buy or rent online or in stores. 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:

Ellie Lachs reviews Wang Xiaoshuai’s emotional family epic.

Wang Xiaoshuai’s newest film So Long, My Son is a slow burner to say the least. The three hour ode to trauma slowly slips beneath the skin, unknowingly picking at any traces of complacency or contentment amidst its audience. The film follows two couples through China’s cultural revolution into modernity, skirting around, over and through the tragedies that hit each family.

So Long, My Son centres on a tight and traditional family unit in which friends are like family and family are like friends. The two central couples- Liu Yaojun and Wang Liyun, and Shen Yingming and Li Haiyan – all live in the same apartment block, work in the same factory and have sons – Liu Xing (‘Xingxing’) and  Shen Hao (‘Haohao’) – that were born on the same day. This intimate bond, established early on in the film, quickly dissolves with the onset of the 1980s and the implementation of the One Child Policy. These interpersonal and national conflicts result in an uncomfortable and upsetting end, only to be trounced with the accidental death of Liu Yaojun and Wang Liyun’s son. Such events make these tight-knight friendships too unbearable to sustain, and the result is a silent and grievous separation which only adds to the tragedies that have already taken place.

Where bereavement propels Liu Yaojun and Wang Liyun to the province of Fujian, an underdeveloped area on the southeastern coast of China, all their friends stride into the city and its developing economy, creating a near irreconcilable rift between the familial unit.  Despite these geographical disparities, lingering guilt, regret and unspoken apologies drive the action within; this underlying current of unresolved emotion plays an integral role in holding the audience’s attention for all three hours. 

The hidden emotional depths of the characters are also conveyed formally, with many of the film’s scenes rejecting dialogue in favour of undefined background noise. Xiaoshuai proves how much action can take place against the clapping of waves, clicking of car doors and boiling of water in pans. This abject use of showing rather than telling directs the audience’s attention towards the facial expressions and body movements of the actors. Xiaoshuai demands us to heighten our haptic engagement, and in doing so plants us into his scenes; we become participants in the action. When Liu Yaojun and Wang Liyun sit in their flat, stone-faced and glaring out of their window as the new year fireworks explode before them, they assume the same spectating role as us. The effect of the muted dialogue perpetuates the sense of ambiguity; we can only assume what is going on behind the deep-set countenances of grief and guilt. 

Xiaoshuai artfully pairs the constant state of questioning and anticipation with a decidedly non-linear chronology.  The director seamlessly flits between pre-Cultural Revolution, the centre of the Revolution, and the proceeding People’s Republic. The periods and plotlines are muddled, creating endless seconds of disorientation. The viewer is offered foresight without evidence and evidence without foresight, requiring them to decode the relevant plot details and distinguish the specific traits and lives of the characters within. 

This can, however, be possibly attributed to the circular nature of the plot. Many scenes echo former ones, causing the past to literally permeate the present. In three different scenes, the audience races down the same hospital aisle; under different circumstances but through nearly identical shots, the multiple casualties become intertwined. Equally, when Liyun and Haiyan are hospitalised at the same time, their diagnoses become tangled and it is unclear who the real centre of attention is. This interplay demands an enormous amount of audience concentration, as well as the perceptiveness to notice the undercurrent of subtle links that seep through the plot.   

The final note then resides in genre. That the film inserts itself so firmly within a realist narrative without imposing any political commentary is arguably what really allows tragedy to seep in. So Long, My Son is not meant to provoke or rile its audience, but rather to contemplate the fragility of life and examine the excruciating nature of loss. It is a tragedy with no one to scapegoat, with no political turmoil to blame, and this makes it all the more painful. Perhaps this is why we are privy to reject Yaojun’s early confession that ‘time stopped for us a long time ago, we are just waiting to grow old now,’ in the hope that the plot will unfurl into something positive, a reconciled series of events. In reality, the film exposes the kind of trauma that festers and blooms in continuous cycles; three hours suddenly feels like a small price to pay in comparison to the interminable suffering of Liu Yaojun and Wang Liyun.  

So Long, My Son is no longer in cinemas but is available to rent via Curzon Home Cinema. Check out the trailer below: 

Manisha Thind reviews Paul Wright’s 2017 documentary.

“A story of change, of people moving off the land and away from the country.”

Arcadia is a compelling odyssey concerning the mutating relationship between Great Britain and her citizens. Comprised of astutely selected archive footage infused with experimental and psychedelic scores courtesy of Adrian Utley (Portishead) and Will Gregory (Goldfrapp), the film is a historical reverie.

Juxtaposed next to the deep, choral incantations in the first clip is an ethereal chanting filled with the promise of spring. Thenceforth, director Paul Wright sets the tone of a hallucinatory atmosphere that persists throughout the documentary. Post-War English village life and agricultural occupations are exhibited for the first ten minutes of the film, characteristically merry and nostalgic. These elements starkly contrast with today’s more urban, global standards. The chirpiness of ordinary and habitual 1950s life is shattered by an unsettling score accompanying a foreboding statement: “Deep in the land comes another truth. A different truth. A secret past. A hidden history.”

Ominous transitions partition the various clips, and the audience spirals into an ever troubling and provocative pilgrimage through England’s socio-political rabbit hole. Footage of Lewis Carroll’s inquisitive Alice is followed by images of gleeful nudists and of well-to-do crowds in formal attire. Naturism and paganism are juxtaposed with depictions of foliage, mining and the Queen’s Guard. The archetypal nonconformism of the 1960’s is exemplified, overflowing with psychedelic freak-outs and unbridled love.

“A glimpse of Heaven. But this was only part of the story. To find our salvation, she had to understand the whole truth of this land.”

Merry Britain’s transformation into a troubled nation comes as the socialists and miners become marginalized, and the country is plagued by deforestation, landfills and hunting, whilst the elite idly stand by. Animal abuse is shown simultaneously with joviality, thus demonstrating the problematic ignorance that has neglected to confront the urgency of the climate crisis and animal rights. Far from ‘Merry England’, we are subjected to viewing the harsh realities afflicting the impoverished and underprivileged working classes. Community and spirit have declined to result in punks rebelliously raving, lads rolling down hills undeterred by ostensible injury, and a society sharing only consumerism in common.

“In the United Kingdom, a crisis of great dimensions is in the making, which, if it were allowed to run its course, would shake the world, and make our own position highly vulnerable and precariously isolated.”

Some may consider Arcadia to be no more than a glorified montage; however, the film provides a necessary reminder that Britain’s historical past has fashioned the present, and often mirrors it. Brexit, rising tuition fees and taxes, the attack on the NHS, and immigration are only a few of the issues that exemplify the current societal cleavages and national detachment that bedevils Great Britain. Arcadia proves incredibly relevant, both warning and prayer. That said, hyperbolic dystopianism and the incessantly pessimistic tone of the film leads to Wright deliberately negating footage that would otherwise show communities uniting to face adversity. Moreover, the film would have benefited from surveying more themes – such as racism, sexism and homophobia – in lieu of repeating the footage of pagans chanting. Nonetheless, fundamental national divisions persist despite advances towards liberty and enlightenment; this film intuitively captures these divisions, one which most would rather not acknowledge. Let us hope that subsequent generations will finally upturn this ceaseless spiral towards the Earth’s decay and societal partition, into something that more closely resembles a utopia.

Arcadia is available to stream on BFI Player or available to rent on multiple platforms. Check out the trailer below:

Daniel Jacobson takes an in-depth look at Noah Baumbach’s tender drama Marriage Story through game theory.

One of the most famous and widely researched thought experiments in game theory, the field of mathematics dedicated to studying strategy and decision-making, is called the Prisoner’s Dilemma, and it goes something like this:

You and your friend are being charged with bank robbery. You are separately interrogated by the police, who offer each of you the opportunity to testify against the other, or to remain silent. If you both remain silent, you each receive 2 years in prison. If you both testify against each other, you each receive 5 years. However, if one betrays the other, whilst the other remains silent, the person who remained silent receives 10 years in prison, and the betrayer walks away free. What do you do?

From the outsider’s perspective, the optimal result in this scenario is for both parties to cooperate, as this results in the least amount of shared jail time. However, if you remain silent, you are guaranteed either the same amount (2 years) or more jail time (10 years) than your friend. In this way, whilst cooperation is the optimal outcome for the ‘team’, individually, it is in your interest to betray your friend.

As a romance story addict who is just beginning a PhD in computational genetics, I have developed a fairly potent obsession with the application of mathematics to a variety of messy, real-life situations including, more cynically, love and relationships. In fact, I wrote a movie about it (Calculating Nora, the 2019/20 Term 1 Film, is coming soon!). Whilst people have tried, there are serious limitations to applying game theory to relationships because, at its centre, game theory is about conflict, and relationships, ideally, are not. You can’t win at love. But you can win at divorce, and the quicker you realise this, the better chance you have of doing so. This is the problem at the centre of Marriage Story, and by asking what happens to a relationship when a conflict becomes all-encompassing, its writer and director Noah Baumbach has created, in my opinion, one of the funniest, most moving, most thought-provoking, and most human films of the decade.

Marriage Story portrays the divorce between Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) and Charlie (Adam Driver), from couples’ therapy, through the proceedings, up to the two of them moving on with their lives. Both parties clarify from the beginning that they want a fair, equal, agreeable separation, mostly with reference to their son, Henry, and whilst they both carry their share of mistakes, admittedly skewed towards Charlie, the divorce is the finale of the simple realisation that, with Nicole taking a job in California and Charlie staying with his theatre company in New York, their marriage has, unfortunately, run its course. Neither side is thrilled by this, but if they can both just get through their 2 years in prison, they can begin moving on in the healthiest way possible.

The movement away from cooperation and towards conflict is best represented by their respective lawyers. Nicole’s transition into conflict is fairly understandable as, at least initially, she is more likely to be cast as the “victim”, whose life and work has become entirely intertwined with Charlie’s. It is fuelled, however, by her lawyer Nora, played by the astonishing Laura Dern, who coaxes Nicole’s insecurities to the surface during their phenomenal initial meeting, in which Nora all but seduces Nicole into viewing her divorce as a zero-sum game – if one person benefits, the other person must lose out. And Nicole is entitled to win.

This is clearly more difficult for Charlie who continues to convince himself that, despite hiring Nora and playing for favours with their son, Nicole is still dedicated to securing an equal settlement. His first lawyer (Alan Alda) is older and more modest, and instantly connects with Charlie on his own familiar, personal grounds. However, Charlie is forced to hire his own hot shot lawyer (Ray Liotta) once it becomes abundantly clear that by choosing to act cooperatively, he risks losing custody of his son. In their first meeting, Liotta tells him “If we start from a position of reasonable, and they start from a position of crazy, by the time we settle we will be somewhere between reasonable and crazy. Which is crazy.” He knows that when one side has chosen conflict, the other’s only option is to fight back.

This is what I personally found the most heart-breaking about Marriage Story. As we are aware from the beautiful opening montages, Charlie and Nicole love each other. However, they are led to believe that they are fighting a battle when, in fact, if they had chosen to settle out of court and without lawyers, as initially discussed, their separation may have gone more smoothly.

There are two gorgeous scenes of serious conflict, in a movie where Charlie and Nicole are often apart. One, the film’s most notorious scene, portrays their initial attempt to come to an agreement themselves, culminating in searing words and a hole in Charlie’s wall, indicative of the equally upsetting Before Midnight. Whilst they have the best intentions, both sides are still too wrapped up in their lawyer’s opinions to work through it maturely. The second, my favourite scene in the film, shows their court case, in which Charlie and Nicole sit quietly whilst their sides are presented almost entirely by their lawyers. Here, every moment in the film is twisted and subverted into ammunition against the other: a drink at dinner is presented as alcoholism, a dedication to work as negligence. Unfortunately, their eventual attempts to seek greatest payoff are alluded to during the introductory scenes where, amongst the endless references to being good parents and dedicated spouses, their only shared trait is to be “competitive”.

Of course, the incredible depth of character generated throughout this movie is testament to Noah Baumbach’s unbelievable script, which presents conflict in a far more nuanced way than any film I have seen in a long time. Baumbach is a filmmaker to whom I have, admittedly, not dedicated sufficient time. I enjoyed the first 25 minutes of The Meyerowitz Stories, before deciding that the film was long and I wanted a sandwich and it was on Netflix anyway so I could continue watching later. Additionally, my 16-year-old-self described The Squid and the Whale as “sanctimonious drivel”, albeit without a clear definition of “sanctimonious”. Yet he redeemed himself by writing these unbelievable articles for the New Yorker.

The richness in story and character created by Baumbach’s script arises from his focus on a dozen or so scenes from the divorce, as opposed to providing every event in the story. Similar to films such as Boyhood, many essential events throughout their story – the termination of Charlie’s Broadway show; the success of Nicole’s television show; even the final settlement – are glossed over in passing. This allows for the film as a whole to breathe and play out organically. It means that the audience has the time to acknowledge and comprehend Charlie’s desperation as he takes Henry trick-or-treating late at night. Nicole’s frustration and nervousness before handing over the divorce papers is palpable and hilarious. And when Charlie delivers a full rendition of Sondheim’s “Being Alive”,it is not a thematic titbit played momentarily in the background, but rather an opportunity for Charlie, and us, to reflect emotionally and critically on what has occurred and consequently, what we have learnt.

Interestingly, there is a solution for optimising your winnings during multiple consecutive applications of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, known as the “iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma”. In a series of tournaments created by the political scientist Robert Axelrod, hundreds of algorithms were pitted against each other to see which methods optimised the results of these games. The most consistently successful technique, as reported in his 1984 book The Evolution of Cooperation, was known as “tit-for-tat”. Introduced by the mathematical psychologist Anatol Rapoport, the technique dictates that one should begin by cooperating with the other person and continue to do so until they choose to betray you, at which point you simply copy them. This does make some logical sense. By applying tit-for-tat, one is able to benefit whilst the other is cooperating and retaliate when betrayed. Tit-for-tat is, incidentally, the general response during real-life applications of the Prisoner’s dilemma, notably the “Live and let live” non-aggressive trench warfare behaviour during World War One.

However, a key characteristic of tit-for-tat is that whilst it was the most successful technique applied in Axelrod’s tournaments, a player applying tit-for-tat can only ever do as well as its competitor, but never better. Instead, it optimises its own results by optimising those of its opponent. This is possible because the Prisoner’s dilemma is not a zero-sum game. In Marriage Story, when Nicole plays as the provocateur by meeting Nora, Charlie utilises tit-for-tat. As neither side is able to cease betraying, for fear of insurmountable losses in court, they enter a “death spiral”. It is only their agreement to relax their demands and begin cooperating again that allows them to reach the fair settlement they intended for in the first place.

My absolute favourite films, such as Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Little Miss Sunshine, and Marriage Story, have either influenced the way I choose to live now, or emulate what I would like to see in myself in the future. Whilst I might not be able to say the same for Kermack-McKendrick models, the Central Limit Theorem, or, indeed, the Prisoner’s Dilemma, I was struck by game theory’s ability to wholly encompass a story as emotionally harrowing and deeply personal as a divorce, without detracting from its nuances. You still can’t win at love, but it is naïve to suggest that conflict resolution and relationships exist independently. Whether we want to admit it or not, conflict is at the centre of all of our relationships and interactions, from family to flatmates, from loved ones to lecture buddies. I loved Marriage Story because, from my perspective, it presented a healthy method for dealing with these conflicts, one where seeking personal victories causes misery, and the choice to cooperate is beneficial both for the group and the individual. All it required was for Baumbach to put it so eloquently.

Marriage Story is available to be streamed on Netflix now and you can watch 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:

A selection of our writers take a look at the films that shaped them, and the world of film, this decade.

Waltz with Bashir (2008)

Never has an anti-war film felt as intimate and real as Waltz with Bashir, an animated autobiographical documentary about director Ari Folman’s experiences during the 1982 Lebanon War. The film has unique presentation. It is both a drama and a biography, with the director interviewing fellow veterans with the goal of recollecting his lost memories from the war. An animated documentary might strike some as odd, since documentaries are conventionally about documenting real life as accurately as possible. Yet the dreamlike presentation is purposeful; it meticulously captures the feeling of surrealism and alienation felt by young soldiers in wartime. Folman does not try to present his experiences in an objective, “news story” lens. What results is an extremely personal confession from the director.

Coupled with a haunting soundtrack by Max Richter, the film takes us through the absurdity of war, all building to one of the most shocking and disturbing finales I’ve ever seen in film. Waltz With Bashir is a prime example of cinema’s greatest strength: the ability to subjectively present a story that becomes more truthful than many other objective mediums of communication.

Bowen Xu

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

2010’s have been the decade of the comic book movie, in particular Marvel. The Marvel Cinematic Univerise has been the anchor in this area both in terms of popularity and arguably, quality. Avengers: Infinity War is, in my opinion, the mountaintop of the MCU. While it is debatable whether the film is the best comic book adaptation of the decade, it epitomizes the 2010s in film. The movie managed to do nearly all of its hugely popular characters justice by instead focusing primarily on the strongly crafted villain, Thanos. This meant the movie could experiment with many new ideas and offer non-stop fun for two and a half hours. It also had one of the best endings for a MCU movie, which usually suffers from similarly formulaic endings. The movie somewhat managed to satisfy almost all of its fans, which should have been an impossible task to start with, but it was also a great motion picture with strong performances, a flowing story, and fantastic visuals.

Kerem Uzdiyen

The Neon Demon (2016)

The Neon Demon is shimmering pearl of film. Nicolas Winding Refn has sifted through the silt and runoff of our culture, coalescing it into a warped, beautiful and giddying reflection of the decade.  The film follows an aspiring model, freshly orphaned, trying to make it in L.A. Elle Fanning is intoxicating, her innocence slowly souring into haughty disdain as fame drains away her humanity. Hunger haunts every frame: for fame, for survival, for youth, for beauty, for wealth. Fanning finds herself frequently isolated in frame, often in ethereal voids, her beauty centre stage throughout. We are carried along by Refn into the world of the superficial, finding ourselves yearning for the attention Fanning commands from the camera.

As we stare agape at The Neon Demon, entranced and horrified by the beautiful slow-motion death of Elle Fanning, we see ourselves and our present moment reflected back. A hall of mirrors shattering and reflecting back our million petty vices. We see Refn play out the death throws of the western cultural machine through the microcosm of the ultra-beautiful. Martinez’s sparse synths and the neon-heavy washed out set design are the bones of 80s excess, once fat on cold war clash of titans. All that’s left is the skin. Hollow excess and mouldering flesh beneath, Refn’s film is apocalyptic. One frame echoes Lynch, the next Fellini as Refn pinballs between influences, foregrounding the aesthetic above all else. Style becomes substance: The Neon Demon’s thesis is apocalyptic hedonism. All meaning has been lost, only the aesthetic remains, so we may as well relish in it. Touching on everything from abuse to the hyper-commodification of our lives to environmental havoc (the mountain lion in the motel room), the film is terrifyingly prescient. With the Epstein case coming to light the film becomes all too plausible.  Dangerous, beautiful and seductive, The Neon Demon is the quintessential film of the 2010s. A masterpiece for our end times, it presents the gaze from the abyss, daring you to stare back.

Jamie Cradden

Taxi (2015)

Taxi has been my favourite of Jafar Panahi’s “low-key” films since he was banned from making them for twenty years back in 2010. Mentored by Abbas Kiarostami, this film is highly reminiscent of the late director’s A Taste of Cherry and Ten, in the way it portrays modern Iran from the cockpit of a vehicle. In this docufiction in which Panahi poses as a taxi driver working in the city of Teheran, we meet a variety of different characters that hop in and out of the taxi and listen to their exchanges with their driver, which range from seemingly conventional to the most bizarre. Midway through the film, Panahi stumbles upon a bike accident, picking up an agonizing man and his wife. This ensuing scene brings to light not only the precarious situation of a lot of people in Iran, but also shows how it can push people to make morally ambiguous decisions in a way that is not only memorable, but rather harsh and is often echoed later in the film.  The use of the camera in Taxi is particularly creative; Panahi continuously plays with what the camera and audience can see, keeping certain characters and conversations off camera, while linking these with what is going on in front of the camera. This way of situating the viewer in the middle of the action might seem jarring at first, but develops surprisingly well as the film progresses. Out of Panahi’s most recent films, this one strikes me as the most creative, sharp and cinematographically interesting, and it is definitely worth a rewatch in the new decade.

Diego Collado

Roma (2018)

Roma came to us in the final hours of this decade. Netflix, front page: a black-and-white film, in Spanish and Mixteco, telling the story of an indigenous maid named Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) in late 60s, early 70s Mexico. To me, this was not only a monumental work of Latin-American cinema, but also a cultural moment: that such a high-profile director would return to where he came from and then choose to elevate this specific story — it’s simply unpredictable but Cuaron did it. Writing, directing, producing, and co-editing the film himself, his efforts produced an epic powerful enough to challenge his previous feature, Gravity (2013). Roma is the story of a woman, but like all good works of art it speaks to something greater. It is the story of the forgotten, disenfranchised, quiet, anonymous, working Woman, brown and indigenous. She exists, and she is so strong. Most importantly, Cuaron does not speak for her. In fact, this is a rather quiet movie, and beautifully so. Never has an indigenous person or story in film been given such intimate, syntonic treatment with such wide exposure. No one will remember Green Book but we will remember Roma.

Sofía Kourous Vázquez

Fatima Jafar pens a love letter to a beloved childhood film.

The first time I watched Monsoon Wedding I was ten years old. My mother sang its praises all throughout my early childhood, and I finally watched it sitting in my parents’ bedroom one summer. My most recent viewing was last week. Over the last decade, this film has snaked its way into each year of my life, appearing silently, softly, always when I needed it most: during the perennial tug of homesickness, countless flus, exam seasons, birthdays, goodbyes. I wanted to write something for the film, in exchange for everything it has been for me.

Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding tells the story of a summer wedding in a Punjabi Hindu family. On the surface, it appears a stereotypical ‘South Asian wedding movie’: peppered with a Bollywood Item number, family drama and, of course, romance. But Monsoon Wedding remains unwaveringly self-aware. Nair subverts the cinematic trope of brown weddings as exotic, vivacious, colourful — ideas which often cater to Western fetishisation of South Asian culture — and holds a critical mirror to the genre itself. 

The film places the viewer within the home of the Verma family, where Aditi Verma is about to be married. As the film begins, we see each family member arriving to the home, and the tension builds concurrently. We view each scene from inside the spaces that the characters occupy, traveling from bathroom to bedroom alongside each of them. This enshrines a deeply personal, intimate atmosphere that remains with us throughout the film– it begins to feel as though we are part of the family itself. 

 Once the family has arrived, a gnawing anxiety bleeds through the narrative. We see the relationship between Lalit and Pimmi—Aditi’s parents—straining, as the pressure of the matrimonial preparations builds. They argue about money, sending their ‘sensitive’ son to boarding school (he is chastised for enjoying cooking and dancing), and all the while their sex life remains stagnant. Lalit struggles financially, having to borrow money from his friends to cover the costs of the wedding. Pimmi feels constantly alienated by her husband, her sexual desire unfulfilled. As the film continues, their relationship is punctuated with short, explosive arguments that often end with the slamming of doors and cold silences. Nair sheds light on the perils of the idolisation of ‘wedding culture’ in many South Asian families. She reveals the debilitating effect ‘wedding culture’ can have on people, both financially and personally. 

While the tension in this relationship increases, Nair conversely explores the dynamic between cousins Ria and Aditi. They talk about men, sex, marriage, and familial pressure without a filter. The power and comfort that their friendship contains remains a rooting force throughout the ensuing chaos of the film. Nair deals with female sexuality with great sincerity,  creating an unabashed space within which these conversations occur, that never feels contrived or fetishised.– Aditi is set to marry Hemant in an arranged marriage, but is having an affair with her married boss. Aditi speaks of the affair openly with Riya and the strict margins of taboo are tossed out as each character confronts their own uncomfortable truths head-on. Nair is not interested in painting an image of the idealised Indian family; she is interested in telling the story of a real one.

 In an act characteristic of her subversion, Nair also brings the camera to the back of the house, away from the image of the upper-middle class family. At the back of the house, she explores the slow-burning romance between Alice, a woman who cleans the Verma home, and Dubey, the event manager of the wedding. Nair explores this love story in forgotten spaces: dirty kitchens, generator rooms, and balconies— hidden, secluded areas at the back of the home, where lovers cannot be seen by others. She explores the taboos existing around interfaith marriages (Dubey is Hindu and Alice is Christian), as well as the depiction of romance, love, and sex in non-upperclass, non-uppercaste contexts. 

The film focuses extensively on hidden spaces, the oft-overlooked rooms and areas where many things can exist at once: love, sex, pain, trauma, secrets. Nair presents a family with stories and experiences enmeshed in its fabric, and how these secrets become rents when the entire family comes together in the singular space of a home. The tension is pinned between the closed doors behind which conversations are held. As we watch the film we get the sense that, even if we are viewing a scene set in a certain room, much more is going on in the house than meets the eye. The deep-seated anxiety embedded within the film comes to the fore through the revelation of a pattern of continuous abuse occurring within the family. At this point, all of the seams binding the home and the family together, are torn. The facade of a perfect, happy family breaks down and the characters are left to contend with the truth. 

The reason I love Monsoon Wedding so deeply—a love that has been sustained over ten years— is because it is honest about everything that it is: it is a wedding movie, but also a film that critically explores marriage, sex, class, abuse, trauma, secrecy, and illusion. The viewer is never entirely sure of which neat genre-box the film ticks, and by remaining resolute in transgressing these cinematic borders, Monsoon Wedding does not exist as any one thing—it is a complex story about a family and the home they live in: closed doors, creaking floors and all. 

Kerem Uzdiyen reviews Martin Scorsese’s long-awaited gangster epic.

This review contains no spoilers.

Did Martin Scorsese follow up on his recent “real cinema” remarks by delivering some really good cinema? Yes, he absolutely did.

The Irishman is the story of Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran (Robert De Niro), a truck driver who becomes tangled up in the Philadelphia crime scene and forms separate partnerships with union teamster Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) and mob leader Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci). The film tackles quite well-known historical events that I personally did not know about going into the film; however, I believe this actually made the film more exciting, never knowing quite what to expect. 

Scorsese seemingly goes back to the good old ’90s, bringing De Niro and Pesci along with him. The comparisons to Casino and Goodfellas undoubtedly begin before the film does. However, Al Pacino (this is his first collaboration with the director) is not the only update to Scorsese’s cinematic world; while the film mostly takes place in the ’60s and ’70s, the film has a fresh element to it that seems very fitting for 2019. Very few films tackle the past with such loyalty and freshness, and this ultimately separates The Irishman from both its counterparts from the past and films that have come out in the last few years. After years of acting in tepid films or not at all, De Niro, Pacino, and Pesci show their maturation into cinema’s older leading men. Scorsese proves that he is as masterful as ever, the film showcasing even more of his signature style than 2013’s The Wolf of Wall Street.

So, let’s talk about the negatives first. Or, should I say, the single negative – and, no, this is not nit-picking a perfect movie, this is actually a bit of a problem. With a runtime of 3 hours and 29 minutes, The Irishman is a very long film, and, being very dialogue-based, it has a rather slow pace until the last act. I will admit, there were times I got bored and had to check my watch to see how much of the film we had gotten through. While the length didn’t bother me too much, the friend I saw it with had trouble sitting through the middle part; consequently, the running time caused him to have mixed thoughts about the film. In all honesty, you could easily cut 30 to 45 minutes from this film and it would be the same, if not better. A film that is too long risks the audience having a hard time following multiple characters and plot points, or weaker arcs being built, which can frustrate audiences. An undeveloped plot strand throughout the film is the relationship between Frank and his daughter Peggy (Anna Paquin). In fact, his daughter’s relationship with Hoffa (who becomes Frank’s mentor and possibly best friend) was somehow better developed. Admittedly, I would not have thought of this as an issue if the film was shorter, but it is disappointing considering the film’s length.

Despite it’s long running time, I believe The Irishman will be heralded as a classic, alongside Casino and Goodfellas. The average age of the main acting trio in the film is 77; they are so old that Pesci has barely acted since Casino in 1995. It’s easy to assume that, given their age and experience, Scorsese and some of his old pals would just be having a little bit of fun without giving a lot of attention or energy. However, I was shocked at the enormous amount of effort all three men put into the film and how new and fresh Scorsese’s direction felt. All their talents combine to make the film feel absolutely alive and monumental. I doubt this will be De Niro and Pacino’s last film, but I think they should ride off into the sunset after this one. De Niro leads with subtlety, never stealing the show entirely but always in control. It doesn’t feel like he’s acting at all; he delivers the performance so naturally that Robert De Niro and Frank Sheeran are indistinguishable by the end. The use of de-aging, especially on De Niro’s face, concerned me at the beginning, but the visual presentation of the film as a whole made the obvious visual effect completely fade from my attention.

Now that the Best Leading Actor nominee is out of the way, let’s talk about our two possible Best Supporting Actor nominees. Al Pacino gives a fantastically charismatic performance as the larger-than-life figure, Jimmy Hoffa. The film, along with Pacino’s performance, crafts Hoffa into a character the audience deeply cares about, no matter his flaws. Scorsese and screenwriter Steven Zaillian find different ways to show who Jimmy Hoffa is, sticking to a “show don’t tell” approach that lets the audience grow gradually fonder of the character until the very end. The biggest surprise – along with what I thought was the most impressive performance in the film – comes from Joe Pesci. His performance is so nuanced and convincing that it feels lived in, almost like he has been living life as Bufalino for the last 20 years. His commanding presence garners respect and inspires intimidation; while Hoffa comes and goes, Russ is a constant fixture brimming with charisma for three and a half hours. I can already say Pesci is my favourite for the Oscar race come February. 

A great writer is obviously necessary to make way for such great performances and Zaillian delivers, perfectly crafting dialogue that keeps the audience captivated for the lengthy runtime. Both the gangsters and the unionists are portrayed in obvious detail, doing justice to the source material (I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt) and historical record. The humour surprised me the most: the film absolutely excels with subtle, clever humour all the way through, making it so much more fun to sit through. I was surprised at how many times I cracked up laughing at a gangster film. The cinematography and production design is also what you have come to expect from Scorsese and his crew – consistently beautiful and grandiose, and always fitting the mood of a scene.

The Irishman is a perfect demonstration of Scorsese’s genius, at no point more obvious than the ending. As this is a no-spoiler review, I can’t tell you much, but the ending of this film is slightly unexpected and memorable, cleverly completing the three hour-plus ride with a powerful demonstration of the ramifications of mob life. The final shot leaves the audience to think about the true message lying underneath, made even more impactful by the old age of its director and stars.

In conclusion, if you have a long attention span, definitely see this film in the theatre. If you don’t have a long attention span, definitely see this film on Netflix. Overall, definitely see this film.

9.5/10

The Irishman is playing in cinemas worldwide and is now available to stream on Netflix. Check out the trailer below:

Kirese Narinesingh reviews Robert Eggers’ acclaimed new film. 

This review contains minor spoilers.

At one point in The Lighthouse, Robert Pattinson’s forlorn, spiritually exhausted character finally kills a bothersome seagull in an outburst of fury and violence, smashing it against the ground vigorously until nothing remains but its feathers and a broken body. The scene leaves the audience visually arrested, unable to move; a type of paralysis only achieved by the work of a director who knows what true horror is, and whose films actively reinvent the genre.

The Lighthouse takes place in 19th-century Maine, set against a harsh landscape of fog and interminable waves that crash onto the lighthouse’s rocks. The endless stream of noise deeply perturbs Pattinson’s Ephraim, while Willem Defoe’s rugged veteran lighthouse keeper, Thomas Wake, is humorously unaffected. Wake seems to have walked straight out of Moby Dick, possessing the nonsensical speech and ridiculous antics of a nineteenth century seaman. The dynamic first appears as no more than “gloomy, quiet youngster meets swashbuckling pirate,” but slowly develops into much more, as the unlikely pair are fated to spend four weeks together in isolation. The film’s premise immediately evokes Bergman’s Persona, with its similar feature of two protagonists on a deserted landscape, one of who becomes increasingly neurotic.

Director Robert Eggers seems to realize this particular situation can go anyway he wants; all creative directions are explored, culminating in a genre-defying blend of horror, comedy and psychological drama. 

The film slowly devolves into a dance of unadulterated madness. As both characters learn to coexist, with Ephraim admittedly bearing the brunt of this encounter—he is forced to put up with Wake’s endless stream of farting—they seem to grow increasingly mad. Ephraim’s madness is more pronounced, as he spends his days tormented by a certain seagull, constantly sexually frustrated and masturbating to a small relic of a mermaid. The pitiful performance is masterfully executed, with Pattinson managing to hold his own against an actor of Willem Defoe’s stature.

Defoe’s character Wake, however, may be the key to the film’s madness; he certainly incites it.  It’s not that evident at first (or maybe it is, in retrospect) that he might be slightly off, but this slowly changes. Defoe plays the role brilliantly, crafting a madness comprised of bursts of clarity amidst the insanity. He ironically warns Ephraim of the dangers of teetering madness, encouraging him to drink to stave it off, yet simultaneously imposes one unbreakable rule that causes the tension to turn into madness: the lamp at the top of the lighthouse is off-limits. It seems such a trivial thing, but for Ephraim, the lamp becomes a feverish, infectious obsession that Wake passes on to his apprentice. Eggers’ most interesting scenes come forth in these interactions, where the madness of each man seems to intersect and merge, their circumstances producing depravity, dramatic outbursts, and creative insults laced with deep frustration.

Can you blame them for going mad? They’re the only two real characters in the whole movie.  Yet it still begs the question of what exactly causes this madness to escalate—is it the barren landscape of the lighthouse, with its burning light and deafening foghorn, or the intense claustrophobia? The film is shot in black and white, allowing Eggers to ironically expand his palette by playing with and revitalizing the nuances of early horror cinema. Similar to films like Persona and The Innocents, the director uses the subtle greyness to explore a descent into the abyss of psycho-sexual neuroses.

Can we consider this a horror film? If so, this is Robert Eggers’ second foray into the genre. His first film, The Witch, was just as grounded in authenticity, with characters left to their own devices. But this film is evidently a different beast. The source of horror is left completely unseen and only hinted at throughout the film: is it the ominous, ubiquitous seagull, or the dream/nightmare of the mermaid, who tantalizingly and mockingly haunts Pattinson’s sexuality?

The Lighthouse has all the exciting suspense and whiplash thrills of horror, but I am still hesitant at the idea of firmly rooting it within the genre. The film feels like more than conventional horror, comprising a mixture of drama and psychological thrills, its protagonists proving more terrifying than any external force. There is no true supernatural entity; only two lonely men on a deserted island left to their own devices.

Once again, I watched Robert Eggers not only exceed but obliterate the expectations that come with making and releasing a horror film, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

The Lighthouse will be released in the United Kingdom on 31 January 2020 and is also showing at CINECITY 2019 in Brighton this November. Check out the trailer below: 

Editor KC Wingert reviews Michael Caton-Jones’ female-led film at BFI LFF 2019. 

The Scottish comedy Our Ladies made its world premiere on Friday, 4^th October, as part of the BFI London Film Festival. Given the popularity and critical success of the Alan Warner novel on which Our Ladies is based—which also spawned a West End musical adaptation from Lee Hall (Rocketman, Billy Elliot)—the film bills itself as a hilariously entertaining romp, documenting a day in the lives of five schoolgirls from the Scottish Highlands. Set in the mid-‘90s, Our Ladies could be an ode to navigating raging hormones and desperate crushes similar to Ten Things I Hate About You or a touching coming-of-age story á la Lady Bird. Unfortunately, Our Ladies is not on par with these nostalgic genre classics, missing a few of the key features that make its mid-‘90s teen comedy companions so great.

Orla, Fionnula, Kylah, Rachell, and Amanda are the self-proclaimed “partiers” of their Catholic school’s choir. They’re all completely obsessed with sex, gossiping about who’s shagged whom the entire bus ride down to a choir competition in Edinburgh. The girls make plans to spend the day drinking, shopping, and finding men to sleep with before their big performance that evening. However, as tensions among them unexpectedly begin to rise, they split off from each other, embarking on their own Edinburgh adventures.

Not all of these girls are as experienced as their open attitudes towards sex imply. Orla (Tallulah Greive), for instance, begins the film praying to a portrait of Jesus hung in her room that she might have sex that evening because, unlike Jesus’ mother, she “doesn’t want to be a virgin her whole life.” Fionnula (Abigail Lawrie), on the other hand, has slept with plenty of guys, but what she’d really like is to sleep with a girl—one of the few secrets she keeps from her friends. With womanhood fast approaching, the girls are forced to think hard about their futures perhaps for the first time, and the conclusions to which they begin to come make them realise they may have less in common with each other than they thought. For some of them, the thought of being a teen mum and staying in their small Highland town forever is the dream—while others in the group look upon that attitude with derision.

Though these characters’ separate journeys are entertaining to watch and elicit several genuine laughs, they get in the way of a cohesive plot. In fact, a lot of the characters’ actions feel less like they have narrative purpose and more like they’ve been shoved in as a punchline. The narrative structure of Our Ladies feels awkward and ham-fisted right down to the corny, character-by-character epilogues.

(Can I please take a brief moment to say how much I hate epilogues in fiction films? If this character’s future isn’t important enough to merit a sequel, it’s not important enough to show an inspirational music-backed freezeframe of that fictional character’s face with some text telling us where they fictionally moved after leaving their fictional hometown and what kind of fictional job they have, in this work of FICTION).

Our Ladies’ queer subplot ends on a triumphant note that feels wholly unearned, and the entire main conflict of the film is ameliorated with a hackneyed kumbaya moment after which everyone just carries on as usual. There’s even a random, inexplicable musical number written in, which feels out of place in a film that otherwise seems to be making an attempt at gritty realism. The final act simply devolves into a bunch of jokey bits that are meant to be funny but because of the subject matter—underage girls getting involved with older men—are actually just very uncomfortable to watch.

A good coming-of-age film should be one that almost anyone can see a little bit of themselves in. Unfortunately, Our Ladies doles out characters that are unlikable and unrealistic. It deals with the hormonally-charged boy-craziness of a group of teenage girls in a way that doesn’t highlight the hilarity and awkwardness of exploring one’s sexuality in the way so many great teen comedies do. Rather, it feels exploitative; the cast of young girls is depictd as gladly flirting with unbelievably creepy older men, having sex while completely wasted and then casually laughing it off later, and reacting nonchalantly when a man exposes himself to them and proposes an orgy.

Perhaps this exploration of teenage girls’ sexualities misses the mark because, despite the fact that the main cast is entirely female, neither the writer nor the director of this film a woman. In fact, Our Ladies’ unequivocally odd choice of writer/director is Michael Caton-Jones – otherwise best known for directing the 2002 feature Basic Instinct 2, which Wikipedia describes as an “erotic crime thriller” and Rotten Tomatoes describes as “bad.”

Our Ladies comes to us at a time when ‘90s nostalgia is in high demand and women’s stories are being celebrated in film more often than ever. The film has an incredibly talented young cast and a promising pitch, but potential alone cannot make a film good. Our Ladies lacks authenticity in its hollow attempt at sex-positivity, and because it deals with the stories of teenage girls, that failure comes across as not only sexist but also as downright creepy. I’m not going to say conclusively that men can’t tell girls’ coming-of-age stories—Bo Burnham proves they can with his 2018 feature Eighth Grade, for instance. However, Caton-Jones (who, again, DIRECTED BASIC INSTINCT 2) demonstrates that he does not possess the insight into the mind of a teenage girl necessary to tell this story well.

Our Ladies has not been issued a UK release date yet.

Audrey Ciancioni and Margot Lumb review Todd Phillips’ divisive new take on the infamous DC villain.

This review contains minor spoilers. 

The newly released Joker is dense in references to the DC Comics Universe, yet the controversy surrounding the film regards its artistic and ideological aspects, rather than the movie’s role in the existing superhero canon. Joker tells the story of how the infamous titular character could have come to be. To do so, Todd Phillips’ newest work attempts to take the form of a social critique, exhibiting society’s callous disregard for the feelings and wellbeing of the weak and the different.

The film operates on the assumption that the world is irrational and toxic, this nihilistic worldview permeating each frame. Gotham City is more than a general setting; it is alive, breathing, coughing – a character in and of itself. Transportation scenes – whether outside in buses and police cars or underground in the subway – exist somewhere between a scary dream and a beautiful nightmare. The city is the movie’s ultimate antagonist, leading souls astray and making havoc of people’s lives.

Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), a miserable, pathos-filled freak, turns into a monster in spite of himself. Society in this filthy city, overflowing with garbage and sliced up into connected rails and roads of loneliness, is rude and violent: “They don’t give a shit about people like you,” as Arthur’s social worker aptly puts it. A group of boys assault Arthur with a sign, transforming him into a bleeding hunchback; his alleged friend, an abusive and condescending Judas named Randall, betrays him; three drunk young men gratuitously attack him on the subway. Joker forms under the twitching lights of the underground tunnel, through the repeated strikes of his head against the glass telephone booth.

Joker was heavily criticised immediately upon release, with many claiming that the film not only blames society for turning the main character into a villain but also justifies the violence he commits as a result. However, Arthur’s violence is never excused; even if it could be interpreted that he is primarily a victim of difficult circumstances, the movie does not follow that narrative. Rather, it complexly rewrites a globally famous character so that, for the first time on the big screen, we see him as the main character of his own fiction – without making him a hero.

Even if Arthur believes he is right to express his anger, this does not excuse his exerting violence. The direct proof of this is an almost unbearable tension throughout the film, close to that of a horror movie. The movements of the scrawny clown are all too straight and stretched, his laughter all too loud, his smiles too tight, the music too prominent – the movie slows to force patience when viewing the misanthropic acts it pictures (such as gratuitous bullying, fridge-bathing, and knife-slaughtering).

Arthur sometimes serves as society’s scapegoat; other times, he is merely a lost soul among millions. The character alternates between moments of seeming-innocence and open violence; moments of individual significance, others of collective uprising. Hence, although being a grown adult, he remains child-like.

Arthur laughs like a child, behaves like a child, even smokes like a scared child. He is a ridiculous caricature; a running clown with fat shoes, a Charlie-Chaplin-puppet, a dummy dancing along to piano music. He expresses everything in an extremely direct manner, creating the impression that something surprising (or shocking) could happen at any moment. Arthur’s naivety and heedlessness make him act in embarrassing ways, leading to uncomfortable moments. He becomes cartoonish in his misfortune, and the viewer is invited to mirror Gotham, reacting with guilty laughter, betraying some sense of superiority over the clown’s all-wrong moments.

Yet, Joker is not a funny movie; it is a movie about laughter. As Arthur claims in his final speech, in front of a live, rich and well-bred audience: “You choose what is funny, and what is not.” In this final scene, a wonderfully mastered mise en abyme projects the viewers onto the TV-show’s audience. We become a faceless crowd, laughing under the scenic light, watching the slow transformation of the stage into a disturbing playground for the Joker to become the star of his own act.

Joker is not a political manifesto. There is no lecture being made, no incitement of violence. If violence is indeed pictured as a rational way to deal with an overly irrational world, Todd Phillips does not present it as a good response to society’s abuses; he presents it as one possible response, leaving the spectator to decide for themselves.

Joker is a difficult movie to deal with because it operates on many levels of meaning. What we can do is define it by what it is not: it is not a critique of society and is not searching to impose itself as the one true interpretation of the character. Although this could be said of any movie, the saying “it is what you make of it” particularly fits Joker. The only valid criticism one can have? The movie provides no answers, not one.

Joker is showing in cinemas worldwide. Check out the trailer below:

Milo Garner reviews Werner Herzog’s intimate new film at BFI LFF 2019.

Werner Herzog has a penchant for representing the alienated. His great films of the ’70s and ’80s have always centred on those who have lost touch – or who have never been in touch – with the world around them:  the raving king Aguirre stumbling on his forsaken raft; the vampire Nosferatu, reduced to a lovelorn welp; the wandering, ever-lost Stroszek drifting through the hinterlands of America. Even in his more conventional output – not least the Nicholas Cage vehicle Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans – his protagonists seem a step removed from their reality. Herzog himself might be described similarly. He is by no means a loner, nor a reject – few rejects nab a guest spot in The Simpsons, let alone a role in the latest Star Wars project – but nonetheless he seems to share something of the errant madness that infects many of his leading players.

His latest film Family Romance, LLC considers alienation from its inverse. It concerns Ishii Yuchii, the founder of the eponymous company, which provides a rental service for family members and friends. Though much like something pulled from a Charlie Kaufman script, this company is genuine, and while the incidents in the film are largely scripted, they often drift into the realm of documentary – a realm in which Herzog is, of course, immersed. The Japan of his film, and, by extension, the Japan of reality, is a country wherein alienation has become the norm – a country in which a company like Family Romance not only exists, but feels much at home. This film is sci-fi, dystopian, but not with much need to invent or fabricate.

The aesthetic of the film is notable in this respect. Shot on a handheld digital camera (operated by Herzog himself, with additional footage from producer Roc Morin), a visual style reminiscent of low-budget filmmaking techniques pervades throughout. The privilege of Herzog’s name is difficult to ignore; had a new director submitted a film of this technical quality, there is little chance his film would feature at such a prestigious festival as LFF.

However, this low-quality style – the rollicking, imprecise camerawork of an aging director using a relatively cheap camera – suggests a distinctly relevant aesthetic question. Considering the fictional premise, the imprecision implies an artificiality, as though the means of this film’s making are constantly revealed and thus a constant reminder of its untruth. This artificiality is then complemented by its opposite:  much of what takes place in the film is inescapably real. An extended scene of children playing with and petting a hedgehog is essentially documentary, as is the sequence of crowds gathering around a certain stunt pulled in the middle of the film. In these moments the ramshackle production no longer suggests falsity, as though the film exists on a thin line between an unconvincing fiction and an uncomfortable reality. No doubt much of the amateurism is a result of inexpert hands and low budget, but the effect suggested by these choices synthesises with the film otherwise closely and consistently.

The narrative of the film follows Ishii Yuchii – played, naturally, by himself – as he completes various jobs for his company. The most significant is to fill in as someone’s ex-husband, acting as a returned father to a young Mahiro (too young to recognize true- from false-dad). The ethics here are obviously sketchy, but more distinctly interesting is the question of affect. The happiness Mahiro experiences with her faux-father is no less ‘real’ than it would have been with her actual (and still absent) father.

This conclusion leads to the further observation that so much of the modern world is constructed through falsehood. Instagram is briefly mentioned (though not with the dismissive grimace of an angsty boomer; Herzog’s interest in burgeoning tech has aged him well). In this increasingly pervasive online sphere, reality and unreality are becoming more indistinct. In a chemical sense – the sense of dopamine and serotonin – the actions of Ishii Yuchi and his company could be considered noble. They are providing happiness where it would otherwise not exist. They are perhaps not a symptom of an increasingly isolated world, but its cure – the first step towards a future where artificiality and authenticity are intertwined and indistinguishable. This idea is not far from Kiarostami’s Certified Copy, a film that considers a similar ground to Family Romance, LLC, if more elegantly.

This sentiment, however, does suggest an unease – perhaps an orientalist, exotic discomfort for a Western observer. This burgeoning culture peals like a cheap sci-fi novel, and not one of the utopic bent. Herzog, while generally reserved in his judgement, seems to sympathise with this assessment; his inclusion of ‘LLC’ in the title, as noted by Peter Debruge for Variety, seems an ironic undermining of the two words prior. Eric Kohn, writing for Indiewire, further suggests that the film engages in a subtle critique of such widespread and all-consuming capitalism as Family Romance requires, in which commerce now encompasses friends, family, and love – all things that money supposedly cannot buy.

For Herzog, though, love is the problem. To quote the late Daniel Johnston, ‘true love will find us in the end,’ and this film proves no different. The dramatic crux – late in arrival but no less affective – concerns Ishii Yuchii and the realisation that he has begun to develop a genuine affection for his surrogate daughter. This is calamitous for his work. The ghost in the machine is just that – the artificiality of this new world can only function so long as its purveyors remain genuinely detached and unaffected. This, Herzog supposes, quite contradicts the human spirit.

While this is the lasting impression, it is not a conclusion entirely. Earlier in the film, Herzog follows Ishii Yuchii into a ‘robot hotel’ – a gimmick establishment in which the hotel staff and even its fish are robots. Herzog here suggests a cyborg future in which capitalist service might circumvent the foibles of human limitation. Even then, the director is wont to consider beyond this bleak premonition. Speaking a line that can be read in no voice but Herzog’s, Ishii asks the hotel’s (human) proprietor whether robots can dream – a throwaway ‘shower thought,’ for the moment. More so, however, this is Herzog thinking beyond the gimmickry of contemporary robotics. True love will find us in the end, sure – but perhaps it’ll find them, too. A scrappy, micro-budgeted, and inconsistent docu-drama, Family Romance, LLC rests far from Herzog’s most compelling output, but it is nonetheless a cogent, even affecting investigation of concepts central to humankind’s present and future.

7/10

Family Romance, LLC is showing in select cinemas. Check out the trailer below:

Milo Garner meets Orçun Behram’s horror debut, The Antenna, at BFI LFF 2019.

I met The Antenna at a party and he wouldn’t shut the fuck up. I was in the kitchen when he approached me, and initially, I’ll say it, I wasn’t unimpressed. He had a sort of stylish way about him. Not exactly well-dressed, no, but he’d thought it through. Nearly postmodern, angular, almost smart but not quite. He spoke to me first – of course he would, I would later think – something about an anecdote he’d heard about a man who fell off the roof of a tower block. The whole thing was very bizarre, very deadpan.

The music was quiet at this point – someone had put on one of Aphex Twin’s slow tunes – and The Antenna seemed to be in his element, talking in that kind of husky whisper that suits certain men. But soon after, things started to devolve. I wasn’t entirely sure what he was drinking – for some reason he’d poured whatever beer it was into a clear tumbler – but he had told me it was a lot like Kronenbourg. But not quite. Watered down maybe? Or, as I later came to suspect, his own imitation brew. He offered it to me enough, assuming – for a reason quite beyond me – that it’d be in some way to my taste. And sure, I do like Kronenbourg. I’d go so far as to say I really like Kronenbourg, in the right situation. But this diluted swill only got worse the closer I got to the dregs. And The Antenna seemed intent on not letting me leave the kitchen, that much seemed clear.

After telling me about the man who fell off the roof he segued – quite incoherently, I should add – into what would become an endless rant about television. Nothing particular, mind, just that TV was bad, and rotting our brains, and whatever the fuck else cliché you could pull out of a ’90s WhiteDot screed. He grabbed my shoulder emphatically more than once, only to let go with a theatrical raising of both arms at some sort of climatic ‘revelation’. I was meant to be wowed. I was not wowed.

Eventually, someone else was pulled into his gust of garrulous vapidity. The music had by this point degraded to an assault of ’80s pop hits. This girl, the new arrival, did not allow me the quick exit I was hoping for. Instead I was caught in a strange crossfire of The Antenna hitting on her, all the while keeping up his desperately trite narrative of TV-brain-rot with me. This would result in lengthy asides (during which the emphatic shoulder grab would reappear) where he would try and amuse her with what I assume were his best recollections of various true crime headlines. None of them were very entertaining, and in all honesty, I quite wished he could get to the end of his tirade sooner rather than later. The girl did leave, finally (what I’d do for that confidence, lady), but only after she and The Antenna shared a good minute or two of silent eye contact.

‘Dancing in the Moonlight’ was playing. His hand gripped my shoulder tightly. Christ. It was a little before this that his bullshit had outdone itself. He had begun to tie in a variety of statist conspiracies into his TV narrative – they’re behind it, he said loudly. They’re the ones making sure we all have a working set, he said even more loudly. His endgame was a kind of drone army of TV-infected slaves doing the government’s bidding or something. He even said something about them being faceless, but not like in a literary sense – literally faceless. Like in that episode of Doctor Who. On reflection, a lot like that episode of Doctor Who. I asked him if he’s seen it. Stupid question, no TV. That one’s on me. Then something truly inexplicable happened. Rodger Waters’ ‘Amused to Death’ blasted from the next room.

‘Finally, some real music.’ He skipped away, completely satisfied with how that conversation played out.

I finished the remnants of his fake-Kronenbourg and regretted it. What a waste of fucking time.

The Antenna has yet to get himself a UK release date, but you can watch the trailer below:

Emma Davis reviews Ciro Guerra’s latest colonial drama.

Waiting for the Barbarians follows a man called the Magistrate (Mark Rylance) over the course of a full year running the outpost of a small frontier town situated in ‘The Empire’. The film starts with the torrid arrival of Colonel Joll (Johnny Depp), a cruel and efficient officer who has been sent to quell any indigenous peoples’ revolt against the Empire. The Magistrate works closely with the oppressive Colonel, which leads the Magistrate to question his loyalty to the Empire – an uncertainty that acts as a catalyst to his eventual downfall. Despite a colour palette reminiscent of the Adventures of Tintin comics, this film takes on a surprisingly dark and serious tone.

This is Colombian director Ciro Guerra’s fifth feature film and first English-language one. Waiting for the Barbarians bears similarity to the director’s Oscar-nominated Empress of the Serpent and his crime drama Birds of Passage, which both explore the tumultuous relationship between Colombian indigenous peoples and their oppressors. Extrapolated to a more general context,  Waiting for the Barbarians centers the psyche of the coloniser, not the colonised. The script is penned by Afrikaner J. M. Coetzee, writer of the novel by the same name, who grew up in South Africa during apartheid. His best-known works are largely about people feeling like foreigners where they live—an idea that is explored with the Magistrate’s character in Waiting For The Barbarians.

Mark Rylance handles the character of the Magistrate astutely. His character is gentle yet strictly bureaucratic, a disposition nuanced by an obsession with the local people and culture. The audience feels unease as Rylance’s creepy performance and a strong script deftly handle issues of fetishization and the colonial gaze. The character of Colonel Joll serves as a great adversary to Ryland’s Magistrate. Johnny Depp plays the Colonel as cold, cruel, and deeply unsettling, a portrayal that avoids becoming a caricature thanks to the small amount of screen time given to his character. The body language and costume design of the Colonel juxtaposes that of the Magistrate, with the Colonel’s decadent black-and-gold uniform providing a stark contrast to the practical khaki clothing of the Magistrate. When the pair interact, their scenes reveal tension beneath the characters’ polite formalities. 

The rest of the characters are not utilised as well as Rylance and Depp. As Officer Mandel, Robert Pattinson makes an excellent late entrance to the film, but the rest of his time on-screen feels indulgent and is used to demonstrate increasing brutality against revolutionary suspects. Aside from these three men, Gana Bayarsaikhan plays a woman from the ‘barbarian’ nomadic tribes, simply called The Girl. Tall and beautiful, with a tragic backstory and incredibly muddled storyline, she simply exists to further the narrative development of the Magistrate. This issue extends to the rest of the supporting cast; while they could be interesting figures in their own right, they simply prop up their protagonist. 

The film plays with lots of ideas, but these ideas fail to impress. The whole movie feels dated, especially the tropes of colonial fiction used. The second half contains more physical violence than the first, exposing a greater depth of suffering to the Magistrate and, in turn, the audience. What pleasure would an audience receive from seeing a uniformed white man beating a row of Asian people? What do I, as a viewer, discover about human brutality by seeing women and children of colour being beaten? What can I learn about the tension between revolution and reform as forms of social justice? This movie portrays violence and suffering without actually delivering the substance it desperately wants to get across. Clunky narrative and weak thematic points let down an otherwise stylish film.

A modern audience would benefit from specific depictions of the injustices that speak truth to colonialism’s impact. For instance, I prefer the work of director Claire Denis in her cinematic explorations of the ‘white saviour’; compared to Denis’ filmography, Guerra’s direction and Coetzee’s writing look weak. Ava DuVernay’s series When They See Us takes the perspective of the victims of a wrongful conviction by New York Department of Justice. Any adaptation of Madame Butterfly will show how a white man in power falling for and seeking to protect a woman of colour in his imperial domain was a staple of 20th Century Asian representation. In literature, Nadine Gordimer puts nonwhite South Africans in the centre of her stories on apartheid South Africa, in contrast to J. M. Coetzee’s more limited scope. Gordimer is thus known for more politically-charged writing about apartheid South Africa than Coetzee (You can read about their debate on censorship around Salman Rushdie’s work here). When it comes to examining colonialism, I think it’s inappropriate to insist, as Waiting for the Barbarians does, on an almost fantastical setting when the costume design and colonial themes strongly invoke the very real memory of European violence. As such, exploring the perspective of the oppressor, no matter how sympathetic they are, is dangerous — and frankly, it’s boring.

The film explores the validity of indigenous peoples’ knowledge, and this produces the most compelling metaphor. As the Magistrate tells the newly-arrived colonial armed forces, the local people know the land better than the colonisers of the Empire. When suspects are apprehended by the armed forces, the violence is pointed: the indigenous captives’ eyes are ruined to blindness. They can no longer see the world around them or the land they live on. Their feet are burned, which also symbolically ruins the lifestyle of nomadic peoples: they are now deprived of the freedom to roam without subjugation and obedience to the Empire. But again, it is not particularly insightful to reap the suffering of people of colour on-screen when they are unnamed characters. In this film, they are reduced in the gaze of the Magistrate, their coloniser, as he questions his own allegiance to the Empire.

The inadequate handling of these narrative features distracts from the main cinematic elements of the film. No matter how well the cinematography serves the desert and mountains, or how intricate the costume design, the film’s analysis of colonialism feels strange amidst the realities of our modern discourse. It misses the mark on what kind of stories are needed today to discuss issues and repercussions of colonial regimes. Those in power have written their own history, and this film reinforces these narratives instead of directly confronting them.

Comparatively, Waiting for the Barbarians‘ attempt at commentary leaves audiences underwhelmed. The film clearly wants to be subversive—are the colonisers not the barbarians for their violence?—yet falls flat. The creative tools used to explore these ideas are employed awkwardly, making the stylistic and cinematic elements empty and the overall movie a drag. Whilst empire nostalgia is insidiously prevalent in European nations, I’m not sure to what audience this movie is meant to appeal.

Waiting for the Barbarians has had select showings at film festivals worldwide. A wide release date is not yet confirmed. Check out a sneak peek below:

KC Wingert reviews the buzzed-about dark comedy at LFF 2019. 

With her debut feature Lucky Grandma, a film about an elderly Chinese-American woman with a rebellious streak, writer-director Sasie Sealy contributes equal parts humour and suspense to this year’s London Film Festival. Tsai Chin plays the titular role of Grandma Wong, a gruff, chain-smoking loner whose expressionless indifference and grumpy demeanour has led me to dub her the Clint Eastwood of Grandmas. Grandma Wong lives alone in the small, outdated Chinatown apartment she and her late husband once shared. Though her daily schedule is monotonous—practising tai chi, lighting incense for her in-home Buddhist altar, evading her adult son’s requests that she move in with him and his family—Grandma Wong receives a reinvigorating jolt of excitement while visiting a fortune teller, a sequence which visually references the opening tarot scene of Agnès Varda’s Cleo from 5 to 7. The fortune teller presents to Grandma Wong a series of cards written in Chinese script and tells the old woman that she will have an incredible amount of luck on October 28^th (admittedly a very different fate than the one predicted for Cleo).

With fortune on her side, Grandma Wong empties her bank account on the 28^th and hops on a Chinatown bus headed straight to the casino. At first, it seems like the stars really have aligned for her; she beats incredible odds and wins at craps and roulette so many times that her tokens double, then triple, and then quadruple. Her lucky streak comes to an end eventually, though, and she returns to the Chinatown bus downtrodden, having lost all her savings in one bet.

Grandma Wong’s good luck seems to take a different form, however, when money literally falls into her lap on the bus ride home. The man in the seat next to her suddenly dies of a heart attack while everyone else on the bus is asleep. When the bus hits a bump and a duffel bag filled with money falls from the luggage carriers overhead, Grandma Wong realises that her deceased seatmate is in fact a gang member transporting money for the Red Dragon gang. Already panicked about her casino losses, Grandma Wong absconds with the money, inadvertently placing herself at the centre of a violent gang conflict over the cash.

The strength of this film is not necessarily the narrative, which at times feels muddled and confusing amidst its portrayal of New York gang politics and reaches a hasty conclusion in its third act. Rather, Lucky Grandma’s greatest asset is its characters, all fully realized through the little details which make up each person’s unique and entertaining personality. Grandma Wong’s lanky grandson David, for example, may play a relatively small role in the film. However, in the approximately 10 total minutes of screen time he has, viewers learn that he is a one half of a dance duo, making goofy, low-quality hip-hop music videos in his grandmother’s apartment with his chubby, twerk-happy friend Nomi. This small, endearing personality detail raises the emotional stakes later in the film when the Red Dragons demand Grandma Wong pay a ransom to spare David’s life. The same goes for the character Big Pong (Hsiao-Yuan Ha), the man Grandma Wong hires as a bodyguard after dopey Red Dragon gangsters Pock-Mark (Woody Fu) and Little Handsome (Michael Tow) show up at her apartment. Big Pong first appears to be quiet and intimidating, but viewers will find a tender sweetness in his character when he talks about being a vegetarian, describes the girl he loves who still lives in China, and scolds Grandma Wong’s grumpy neighbour for disrespecting an elder.

The main figures in any film are only as strong as the actors who play them, and the cast of Lucky Grandma brings these characters to life with quirk and charm. As the socially isolated Grandma Wong, Tsai Chin is often the only actor onscreen. The character requires an actor who can subtly convey large emotions with her facial expressions and body language, and Tsai Chin is more than fit for the challenge. She brings laughs just by widening her eyes, furrowing her brow, or turning her head—no dialogue required. As gangster hitman Little Handsome, actor Michael Tow somehow manages to be simultaneously terrifying and hilarious, sending chills down one’s spine with his threatening stare one moment and highlighting his character’s sheer absurdity with a goofy smile in the next. The talent in this cast alone could dispel any excuses Hollywood may make for whitewashing Asian or Asian-American roles (I’m looking at you, Scarlett Johansson).

Though it is not a life-changing or particularly profound film, Lucky Grandma is sure to make viewers chuckle heartily, scoot to the edge of their seats in suspense, and stare in wonderment at each creatively-framed shot. The plot leaves room for confusion and questions, but the dramatic achievements of the cast alone are enough to make this film a success among audiences. The film deftly combines humorous and whimsical moments with darker undertones. Considering the film centres on the identity crisis of an elderly Chinese-American woman—a demographic I can safely say is sorely underrepresented in American film—Lucky Grandma is a breath of fresh air and a new perspective in the comedy genre.

Lucky Grandma is still showing in select cinemas. Check out what influenced the film below:

Xara Zabihi Dutton reviews the highly anticipated Fast & Furious spin-off.

This review contains spoilers.

The moment Luke Hobbs (Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson) lifted his copy of the portable Friederich Nietzsche in an alternate rep to his dum-bell I was transfixed; as Hobbs sounded his mouth around the words of this universal hero of pseudo-intellectuals, my hand landed in a viscous lump of gum on the seat arm-rest. Like it or not, David Leitch’s Hobbs & Shaw had my undivided attention. 

Hobbs & Shaw, a spin-off of the Fast & Furious franchise, follows Luke Hobbs and Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) as their boyish rivalry is challenged by the task of ensuring a bio-warfare serum does not make it into the hands of Brixton Lore (Idris Elba). That’s about it in terms of followable plot.

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Hobbs & Shaw enters a particular kind of viewer (this viewer) into the entropy of what I will now refer to as the ‘Nietzsche-sticky-gum syndrome’. This entropy is defined by its back and forth motion between the heights of pretentious back-pattery, and the depths of the oversight excused during the glorification of All Things Trash (also see: ‘Just Let People Enjoy Things’). With just a little further stretch of the (viscous, sticky) imagination it also reflects the body-mind dualism within Nietzsche. As we see Nietzsche propose the improvement of the body in tandem with the mind, so Hobbs embraces his mental and physical development, and we embrace the stimulation of our ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ senses at the hands of David Leitch.

During the film, we see a shift from the appraisal of the potential of technology and the allure of an ever-improving body to a rising fear of the irreversible and inhumane changes impending through bio-enhancement (also see the controversies of Nietzsche, and the recent eugenics scandal at UCL). There’s a kill-or-be-killed element to even the technology within even our sad, physical combat-less daily lives. Failure to improve personal productivity through technology makes the scale of work we are expected to undertake untenable. 

Hobbs and Shaw overcome their rivalry in the common pursuit of disarming (unplugging) the antagonist of the film, Brixton, as they realise that his analytic implant can only address one opponent at a time. A symphonic dance ensues, as Hobbs and Shaw take punches for each other in order to preoccupy Brixton, collaboratively disarming him. Neither man has the ability (as individuals without bio-enhancement) to singlehandedly defeat Brixton. The gushy moral? Personal quests for self-enhancement must be foregone to defeat a technological system that will inevitably destroy them. This single scene encapsulates the ethical binary of contention within the film: the struggle between neoliberal individualism, and collaborative, community-based action.

The power of collective action comes to the fore once again when we are introduced to the family Hobbs had left behind for mainland America, after an influx of drug dealing tore apart the community he had grown up in.  To deactivate the serum implant Brixton quests for, Hobbs seeks support from his mechanically-gifted brother, who rewove his own extended family by providing employment, and a community hub by establishing his own car maintenance shop. Hobbs is the brother who left to strike out on his own because of the social trauma common to many indigenous communities. In this film, we see him seek support from that same, rebuilt, reunited community. No doubt, Johnson’s own Polynesian heritage is the inspiration for this appraisal. It is encouraging to see a mainstream celebrity use their clout to seamlessly integrate social issues into a mainstream film. As a franchise, Fast & Furious has exemplified the attainability non-tokenistic representation, in a string of financially profitable, blockbuster hits.

While Hobbs’ mother makes an appearance as the matriarch of the Samoan community, there’s no doubt that Fast & Furious female characters are defined by their relationship to men: women are Mothers (cue a dazzling cameo from Helen Mirren), Sisters, daughters or love interests. This is no hot-take – it’s a stone-cold fact. I doubt anyone’s even bothered to try out the Bechdel Test on this franchise. Hattie Shaw (Vanessa Kirby), Deckard Shaw’s woe-betided sister, is referred to (un)enigmatically as ‘the girl’.  The disinterest in representing women as anything other than adjunct genetic limbs to men means that we only encounter women defined by heteronormative and heterosocial kinship ties. 

And yet we find the reason to go on, to spend our Thursday evenings in the Holloway Odeon consuming media that just isn’t meant for us, in the hope that some auto-critiquing Producer will throw us a bone or an Easter egg (a signal of distress, perhaps), to show us that they find the films they’re engaged in the culture-factory of producing as monotonous as we do. And just when you’ve got no hope left, Nietzsche re-enters. After his first appearance in the opening sequence, Hobbs quotes Nietzsche in defense of the psycho-physical benefits of working out (hard). Hattie misattributes the quote to Bruce Lee in a quip which seems an attempt to de-intellectualise both Lee and Shaw. It has been noted by Reddit users that perhaps this is a gentle nod to Quentin Tarrantino’s racially caricatured depiction of Lee in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The fast turn around of films like Hobbs & Shaw provides ample opportunity for reactive references to films released in succession. In including this intertextual reference to Lee, David Leitch may be attempting to re-inscribe Lee in mainstream contemporary film as both a lauded and respected figure. In any case, the Lee-Nietzsche parallel drawn is intriguing – two adolescent- boy icons raise up and level each-other.

Parts of the script being in Samoan, the film is challenged by one of the greatest stumbling-blocks of mainstream cinema in the West: subtitling. Yeah, you heard, words at the bottom of the screen you’ve got no option but to read. When you want nothing more but to consume your adrenaline porn, subtitles are deeply unsavory. Hobbs & Shaw ditches the mildly alienating, oh-so-subtle white Helvetica associated with Arthouse and World Cinema for what, in all honesty, looks like WordArt text from 2007. The subtitling is unavoidable, slipping around the screen depending upon the speaker or action. It might remind viewers of the subtitling also implemented in the most recent John Wick: Parabellum (also co-directed by David Leitch of Hobbs & Shaw). The subtitles become incorporated as a paratextual counterpart to the high-octane aesthetic of action films (God-forbid a single viewer be visually under-stimulated).

So we write reviews which overburden the banalest aspects of culture with some kind of superlative critical significance, without being able to even faintly outline the plot. Not because we’re pretentious and can’t ‘just let people enjoy things’, but because this is still the centre-ground of cultural entertainment, and we refuse to be pushed to the fringes. The fringes of culture are expensive, alienating, and worst of all, no one’s there to listen to opinions about films they haven’t watched.

I could, at any point, walk out of this sticky-seated Odeon and go watch something which does not fill make me feel like I’m well and truly living in that thing they call the Metropolitan Liberal Elite. Tomorrow evening, you may well catch me in a screening of a seminal work of Czech New Wave at one of the thriving independent cinemas in London (£20 a ticket though, really?). But tonight, tonight I’m watching a spin-off of the Fast & Furious franchise that has received mediocre-at-best reviews from critics, and I am lovin it.

Hobbs & Shaw is still showing in select cinemas. Check out the trailer below:

Sam Hamilton takes a look at the next episode in the much-loved Pixar franchise.

The fourth entry in Pixar’s flagship franchise starts and ends, like its predecessors, with Randy Newman’s score. It is nothing short of remarkable (and fitting) that Toy Story 4’s audio design meets every single beat with the appropriate note, whether gleeful, melancholic, poignant, or silent, to form an audiovisual whole that moves its audience wordlessly. Pixar’s recent track record displays a penchant for this kind of traditional moviegoing experience – Up, WALL-E, Finding Nemo, or the “When She Loved Me” sequence from Toy Story 2 place equal importance on sound and visuals. Toy Story 4 continues this trend. 

In a similar tearjerking ilk to The Red Turtle (2016), Toy Story 4 makes for delightful entertainment, managing in ninety minutes to achieve an emotional depth far beyond that of other Disney products. It is no coincidence that the ‘original story by’ credit extends to eight names; we’re exposed to a finely tuned, endlessly multifaceted narrative that seems to deepen at every turn. Without venturing into the spoiler zone, this was always expected to be the concluding chapter of the Toy Story franchise and, providing it is, we fade out on a spectacular four-film dynasty that will surely set the family film benchmark for time to come. It is the end to the fable of loyal Sheriff Woody and his shepherdess-turned-Sarah-Connor amour Bo Peep, drawing the curtain on series icons like Buzz Lightyear, Rex, and Mister Potato Head. But the celebration of female characters Bo and villain Gabby Gabby forms Toy Story 4’s narrative heartbeat, effortlessly centering their ups, downs, and evolutions. 

Once again, the story beings with a young child’s craving for a friend; in this case, a friend crafted by the hand of  kindergarten-aged Bonnie with throwaway items. Brought to life in magnificent style by Tony Hale, the wacky character Forky is horrified by his own existence to the extent of believing he is not a toy, but trash. Forky’s addition to the gang turns out to be a literal fork in the road for Woody, a now sidelined character in Bonnie’s toy entourage replaced by the ever-cool Sheriff Jessie. Feeling overtaken – even emasculated – by his lack of purpose, Woody takes it upon himself to usher Forky into the realisation that everyone loves him deeply, a theme that continues to pervade the Toy Story extended metaphor. For a series that has always been ripe with intelligent imagery, Toy Story 4 unravels into a story so loaded with subtext that it could explode at any moment – not with complication, but with sheer compositional brilliance.

However, all this talk of imagery and endings treads over the irresistible charm of the script. Negotiating an ever-growing cast of stuffed, porcelain, and human characters is a task writers Stephany Folsom and Andrew Stanton approach with ease, peppering a clockwork-like structure with countless laughs. Pitch-perfect roles for comedy duo Keegan Michael Key and Jordan Peele ignite the second act with humor before a beautifully ironic Keanu Reeves cameo steals an entire scene later on. But Toy Story 4’s euphoric highs are often punctuated by ripples of concern, fear, and/or genuine sadness that weave into one other to create a realism that exceeds previous entries. These twists and turns of sentiment occur within individual scenes but never seem conflicted. Altogether, they make the runtime sweep by in a flurry of giggling joy and profound emotion.

So if you want heartwarming, you got it. If you want references to pop culture, Pixar films, and cinema history at large, you got that too. But as for the technical stuff? Simply put, the old cat is back. John Lasseter’s first entry, back in 1995, revolutionised mainstream animation by input of computer processing. It feels entirely appropriate that Toy Story 4 should once again make Pixar the poster boy for animation everywhere. Inside Out (2015) director Josh Cooley and cinematographers Justin Lin and Jean-Claude Kalache are all over this thing, and they want you to know it. From the very first shot of a worn-tarmacked Elm Street (the one where Andy lives, not Freddy Krueger) to the outstandingly picturesque finale, this is a visual tour de force to be watched, savoured, and watched again.

By the time the sun sets on Toy Story and the lights rise in the theatre, it becomes clear that the hesitant few who suspected this fourth entry to be an unnecessary extension to a perfect trilogy, it is a happy loss. This is the ending we never knew we needed – an instant Disney classic.

Toy Story 4 is still showing in select cinemas and will be released on DVD on October the 21st. Check out the trailer below:

Gwendoline Blangy reviews Quentin Tarantino’s newest film.

Bloody explosions, the n-word, swearing, unlimited violence, feet-worshipping…that’s what everyone expected when Quentin Tarantino’s 9th film made its premiere at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. And yet, while maintaining his notorious visual and narrative style, Tarantino still manages to surprise – but is it for better or for worse?

What strikes viewers the most while watching is the time they wait. The film is almost three hours of waiting, during which the narrative repeatedly tiptoes around any real action before trailing away. Once Upon A Time… in Hollywood tells the story of Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), a star actor in decline who is struggling to renew himself in his roles as a virile hero, and Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), his stunt double/driver/bodyguard/only friend. Rick and Cliff belong to a part of Hollywood that is dying out; Rick is being offered opportunities to fly to Italy to star in Spaghetti Westerns, while Cliff grows tired of being a stunt double. These two macho members of the John Wayne and Robert Redford generation no longer recognize themselves in the new era of cinema represented by Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) and Roman Polanski, who just moved in next to Rick on Cielo Drive and by whom Rick dreams of being noticed. It is within this generational clash that the backdrop of Los Angeles in the summer of 1969 is shaped, in which the hippies of the Manson Family, who settled at Spahn Ranch, threaten the rest of the characters.

However, the film actively rewrites history, justifying the title “Once Upon a Time” (which also pays tribute to Sergio Leone’s 1984 Once Upon a Time in America). Every shot is bathed in a strange atmosphere, a waking dream: viewers follow Sharon Tate as she watches her own film in a theatre with a happy look on her face; they discover an egotistical Bruce Lee who faces a calm and confident Cliff Booth in a scene which is very funny, but may not please the fans of the martial artist; and they witness an explosive finale that offers the spectator a breathtaking fifteen minutes in the purest Tarantino style one could imagine.

References to his previous films are constant; in one scene, Rick does an ad for Red Apple Cigarettes, a brand that can also be seen in Pulp Fiction or the first Kill Bill. Once Upon a Time’s basis in real-life events continyes Tarantino’s track record of historical fiction, seen in others films such as  Inglourious Basterds or Django Unchained. The film also fuels rumors of the director’s apparent foot fetish: the way the camera languorously focuses on the toes of Pussycat (Margaret Qualley), one of the young hippies who tries to lure Cliff to their ranch, reflects Tarantino’s passion for women’s feet, already shown with Beatrix Kiddo and Jackie Brown.

But perhaps the most complex part of this Tarantino take on a buddy movie is how Cliff reflects in reality what Rick embodies on screen. Rick Dalton has played emotionless cops, firemen, and bounty killers, yet cries as soon as he feels like he’s become a “has-been.” The increasing presence of hippies in Rick’s Los Angeles only reinforce his sense of belonging to the past. Cliff doesn’t need to pretend to be the manly-man of Rick’s movies. He knows how to fight and doesn’t hesitate to do so, and becomes to Rick – as the voiceover explains – “a buddy who is a little more than a brother, and a little less than a wife.” Cliff is a caricature of the masculine ideal of Hollywood’s golden age movies, and he becomes almost inhuman, unreal, just like the characters Rick plays on the screen.

So is this film a real success? It’s a good movie, but maybe not the best Tarantino. It is the most mature, perhaps, since it takes time to see the story to its finale. One may have the feeling that the elaborate sets, the masterful visuals, and the costumes overwhelm the stakes of the film’s central conflict, but the finale rewards viewers’ patience with a cataclysmic scene.

Nevertheless, one does wonder about how women are approached in the film. Violence against women is ever-present, and the final explosion makes it a little, one might say, gratuitous. That said, the main criticism against the latest Tarantino is that the director underused actress Margot Robbie, who, apart from wandering around and smiling, has little narrative purpose except to anchor Rick and Cliff’s story in a real context. Margaret Qualley lights up the screen as passionate Manson Family member Pussycat, but she tends to be hyper-sexualized, speaking only in sexual innuendos and constantly bending over in her torn shorts.

But can we blame the director for keeping some of the motifs that made the success of his previous films? With Once Upon A Time… in Hollywood, Tarantino does not deny himself his usual style; on the contrary, he takes time to develop it, to bring it to his paroxysm in order to create a mature piece of work in perfect agreement with his previous films. Additionally, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt give incredible performances, and viewers will enjoy seeing them in the car remembering the past or at the bar trying not to lose face in front of Al Pacino. Tarantino reinvents genre, history, and dialogue with every new film. To summarize the director’s collective works, it is better to quote him directly: “I am a historian in my own mind.”

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is still playing in select cinemas. Check out the trailer below:

Editor KC Wingert reviews our first film from BFI LFF 2019.

Warning: this review contains spoilers. 

Making its UK premiere at LFF, The Peanut Butter Falcon is a delightful dramedy from collaborators Tyler Nilsen and Michael Schwartz, whose writing recalls the humor and delight of American novelist Mark Twain and whose comical directorial style rivals the Coen Brothers for their quirky contribution to modern American folklore.

The first feature-length narrative from the filmmaking duo, The Peanut Butter Falcon tells the story of Zak (Zack Gottsagen), a young man with Down’s syndrome placed in  a nursing home after his family forfeits him to the state. Despite friendships with the elderly residents of his home and a close relationship to his direct caretaker Eleanor (Dakota Johnson), Zak feels imprisoned. He wants to explore the world before he gets too old, and his only respite from his monotonous life is his fantasy of becoming a professional wrestler under the tutelage of his hero Saltwater Redneck (Thomas Haden Church). He cleverly configures numerous madcap escape schemes with the help of his older roommate Carl (Bruce Dern), which provide many laugh-out-loud moments within the first 20 minutes. But The Peanut Butter Falcon is not all silliness—rather, it becomes a more tender film when, in one of his late-night escape attempts, an underwear-clad Zak stows away on a boat stolen by the churlish Tyler (Shia LaBeouf) as he skips town.

Stuck with a differently-abled stranger wearing nothing but his underwear, Tyler is at first disgruntled. LaBeouf masterfully plays this character as a surly loner whose gruff exterior slowly chips away as he befriends and aides Zak on a journey to the Saltwater Redneck’s wrestling school. Tyler, a sort of frontiersman/survivalist who seems to know how to navigate the rugged Outer Banks but can’t seem to stay out of trouble, is on the run from two fishermen from whom he stole crab traps and whose equipment he burned in retaliation for jumping him.

Tyler, we find out, has lost his brother—and blames himself for the tragic death. But as he grows closer to fellow misfit Zak, he finds fraternity in his relationship to his lovably idiosyncratic companion. Watching LaBeouf and Gottsagen onscreen together is an absolute delight; their palpable chemistry creates an incredible friendship onscreen. It is satisfying to see the goofy LaBeouf act without condescension alongside a young man with Down’s syndrome, especially in a story that is less about “overcoming” a disability and more about embracing the challenges and joys of understanding and loving someone with Down’s. As for Gottsagen, his empowering performance highlights the humour and skill so many people with Down’s syndrome possess while reminding viewers that having a disability does not always mean a person is helpless.

Overall, The Peanut Butter Falcon easily interweaves humour with heartbreak, moments of joy with pangs of dolour. It feels much like the tall tales of Twain’s Americana, with magical moments punctuating the narrative into a romantic frontier myth akin to those which make up much of American folklore. Themes of self-realisation and cleansing give the characters of The Peanut Butter Falcon beautiful, heartwarming redemption arcs which will leave viewers euphoric. Ending on a slightly uncertain (but happy!) note, this expertly-crafted story from Nilsen and Schwartz reminds viewers that one’s story isn’t over ‘til it’s over, and that there is always room in life for rebirth, restoration, and growth.

The Peanut Butter Falcon will be screening at the BFI London Film Festival on 3 October, 4 October, and 11 October 2019. Tickets are available to purchase on the LFF website. Check out the trailer below:

Angelos Angelidis reviews Daniel Scheinert‘s follow-up to Swiss Army Man. 

Warning: this review contains descriptions of rape and bestiality. 

Following the success of Swiss Army Man (2016), a movie about loneliness, shame and homoeroticism, Daniel Scheinert’s newest film The Death of Dick Long (2019) delves into a darker aspect of American life. Premiering at London’s Sundance Film Festival, Scheinert’s film – penned by Billy Chew – fomented hesitation in me but turned out to be an absolute delight both for its humor and its intellect.

The film follows the death of one of three friends living in a small town in Alabama. After a drunken night out, Dick Long is dumped outside the hospital by his friends Earl (Andre Hyland) and Zeke (Michael Abbott Jr.). Following his death, a police investigation begins while the two friends try to cover up evidence linking Dick’s death back to them. The majority of the film takes place within the twenty-four hours following the incident, charging the plot with panic as Zeke and Earl blunder their way towards vindication.

The police investigation is carried out by Sheriff Spenser (Janelle Cochrane) and the rather inexperienced Officer Dudley (Sarah Baker), whose inability to quickly put the pieces of the puzzle together alongside the foolish decisions and deficient alibis of Zeke and Earl aptly instil elements of comedy in an otherwise tragic story.

Dick’s death – which is initially thought to be a homicide following a brutal rape – turns out to have been caused by a horse. Zeke’s wife Lydia (Virginia Newcomb), after realising that something is wrong with her husband, asks him to come clean. Zeke confesses that he and Earl have been engaging in bestiality with Zeke’s horse for a long time, and that the horse bears responsibility for Dick’s death. The reveal not only causes an earthquake in Zeke and Lydia’s relationship but a huge rupture in what held the family together. The subtleties of everyday life that are so easily overlooked capsize to reveal a hidden underworld of perversity and sexual deviation. Thus, catharsis was not followed by absolution but by a radical reconfiguration of what Zeke’s life was to become.

The movie’s careful balance of darkness and humor does not necessarily present bestiality as the ultimate sin; rather, a lack of transparency or honesty ultimately leads to a dissolution of everything that holds the everyday life of the characters together. This reaches a peak when Dick’s wife visits Zeke in his stable, wondering if her husband is cheating on her while she is patting the very horse that fucked him to death.

An underlying tension of homosexuality is present both in Zeke and Earl’s character development, whose duplicity stems from a deeply repressed desire that goes against societal norms. This subconscious pressure to conform to American ideals of heteronormativity and propriety is in a way an engine of a largely invisible darkness within society, in this case resulting to the death of a friend. This repression is best exemplified by Zeke and Earl’s displays of toxic masculinity. Even if the message of the film is not that repressed homosexual desire leads to your friend dying in a bestiality accident, there is a clear need for the characters to be released from the structures of intolerance and judgement that underlay much of Southern United States, specifically in regards to sexuality, gender or skin colour.

The double-pun title implies the death of the toxic masculinity that leads to the whole situation in the first place. Zeke and Earl flee together and (in my imagination) are free to explore their bromance away from the small-town bigotry and its societal regulations. Life seems to move on as if nothing ever happened and the viewer is left with a deep internal itch. Could this have happened in the real world? Despite the bizarre scenario, the canny camera-work and spot-on acting makes me reckon that Zeke and Earl’s story is more real than mere facets of a scriptwriter’s imagination.

Rating: 8/10

The Death of Dick Long will be released by A24 in September 2019. The U.K. release date is not yet known. Check out the trailer below:

Editor KC Wingert tackles Bo Burnham’s directorial debut to celebrate it’s US anniversary. 

Embarrassing crushes, burgeoning sexuality, bullying, and mall hangs: Eighth Grade covers all the universal experiences that come with being a middle-schooler. But writer and director Bo Burnham’s first feature-length film offers viewers an in-depth exploration of the complicated nature of being a middle-schooler specifically in today’s hyperconnected society.

“Being in eighth grade is weird, and being alive right now is weird,” comedian Burnham explained to the audience at a screening, held in the auditorium of Joseph le Conte Middle School in Hollywood last July. The audience, an eclectic mix of creators, industry tastemakers, and actual eighth graders, murmured in agreement. In an age where social media rules and every kid has an iPhone, it has become harder for older generations to relate to the issues kids today face. Eighth Grade calls on older viewers to look on younger generations with compassion as they grapple with both the painful awkwardness of growing up and the additional toxicity that social media can add to their lives. At the same time, the film offers a hopeful message to its younger viewers along the lines of, “You’re going to be okay.”

Eighth Grade is the story of Kayla’s (Elsie Fisher) last week of middle school. Deemed “Most Quiet” in her school’s superlative vote, Kayla actually has a lot to say, and she documents most of it on her YouTube channel. She offers advice to her viewers through daily segments on topics like “How to Be Confident” and “How to Put Yourself Out There.” She tries really hard to apply her advice to her own life, too, by posting sticky notes with encouraging messages near her mirror and making lists of goals (“Be more confident”) and how to meet them (“Don’t slouch”). In her videos, she spends a lot of time talking about how she used to lack confidence, but now she’s doing great. However, this is not entirely truthful: although she definitely puts herself out there a lot by trying to befriend the cool girls and talk to cute boys, doing these things doesn’t always wield the results Kayla wants. Downtrodden, she blames herself and continues on her perpetual journey toward self-improvement.

This is where the pernicious influence of social media plays in: Kayla spends a lot of her free time scrolling through her Instagram feed and posting pictures of her heavily made-up face to Snapchat with captions like, “I woke up like this.” The omnipresence of social media in her and her classmates’ lives pressures Kayla to perform happiness. All of this is a ruse to impress the cool kids at her school, like the deliciously bitchy Kennedy (Catherine Oliviere), a rich girl who hates Kayla for seemingly no reason, and the tooootal heartthrob Aiden (Luke Prael), Kayla’s bad-boy crush who only perks up when she lies to him about taking naughty pictures.

Kayla looks at the images of her classmates on social media and compares them to her real-life, awkward self, prompting her to strive for self-improvement at all costs. If she were to look around her, though, Kayla would see that all of her peers are just as weird and awkward as she thinks she is. Unflattering close-ups of kids popping rubber bands onto their braces, flipping their eyelids inside-out, and pushing chewed-up bubble gum through their lips are peppered throughout the film.

By focusing so much on impressing the people who don’t like her, Kayla isolates herself from the people who truly love her and want to spend time with her. Finally, after a series of missteps including a harrowing conversation with a high school boy who pressures her to do something she doesn’t want to do, Kayla decides to open up to her father and let him in on her struggle. “It’s so easy to love you,” Kayla’s father, played by Josh Hamilton, assures his daughter in the most inspirational Dad Monologue to grace the big screen since Call Me By Your Name.

Eighth Grade joins other recent dramas with young protagonists like The Florida Project (dir. Sean Baker) and Spanish film Summer 1993 (dir. Carla Simón) in successfully portraying pain through the eyes of a child. Under Burnham’s masterful direction, 15-year-old Elsie Fisher’s powerful portrayal of the character, with her stumbling speech and nervous quietness, perfectly captures the essence of an anxiety-ridden teenage girl. Directing children is an admirable feat, and Burnham has done so with aplomb by choosing to highlight the fun quirks of the children he cast in his breakout film. The hilariously eccentric character Gabe, for example, could not have been brought to fruition had Burnham not taken care to embrace and highlight actor Jake Ryan’s real-life idiosyncratic personality on film.

Overall, Bo Burnham’s feature directing debut is an outstanding success featuring all the hilarity and heartbreak of being an average, everyday, middle-school girl. With stellar performances, gut-wrenching emotion, and an ultimate message of optimism, Eighth Grade is a film that people of all ages can enjoy.

Eighth Grade is now available on DVD and online. Check out the trailer below: 

Alexandra Petrache reviews Olivia Wilde’s anticipated directorial debut.

Director Olivia Wilde does “coming of age” effortlessly and hilariously funny. Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein) are two best friends who have spent high school getting the highest honours and studying hard so that they could get into the best US colleges. On their last day of school, Molly realises that they could have also had some fun in the process and convinces (read: forces) Amy to go to one party and make up for the years of shunning their more sociable peers. They go on a fun – and often weird – journey,  find out things about themselves and one another, and bond with their classmates.

The concept itself is not original, but the delivery is. The characters feel fresh, curious and explorative; importantly, they have chemistry. Damn, I want to have a code word with my friends now! Every character introduced in Booksmart has their moment and their backstory – they are all in this together and they are all archetypes we meet in school. Putting everyone’s experiences on an equal footing allows the film a light hearted and natural approach to Amy’s sexuality, too. It is emphasised, but in the same way that every other character’s sexuality is (even teachers get their moment). And for once, this doesn’t seem like an American high-school experience on steroids; it feels relatable and, for someone who went to high school quite a few years ago, nostalgic.

Booksmart finds a natural comparison in Lady Bird (Beanie Feldstein plays the best friend in both). Where Lady Bird felt forced and precious, Booksmart felt natural from beginning to end. Sure, some of the situations the two friends go through seem a bit far-fetched, but they feel right – and so does the progression of the film, the character development, and even the “girl meets boy” part. It doesn’t tell things just for the sake of telling them, it doesn’t aim to be another “rebel without a cause” story or roll its eyes in pastel colours. It feels real, light-hearted and very, very enjoyable!

Written by four females and directed by one, Booksmart is feminist without even trying. Even though the two main characters are female and the film is peppered with supporting female characters, it doesn’t for a moment feel like they’re in it “for the sake of it”. It also has solid male supporting characters with their own stories and voices. As in Lady Bird, those male roles are acted well too. Skyler Gisondo’s Jared was brilliant. At times I was more interested in his character development than in that of the leads. He plays an apparently arrogant spoilt boy with an inane vulnerability that appears from time-to-time, making you wonder whether there is more to him than meets the eye (spoiler: there is).

Booksmart is also humble. For all it’s worth, I did feel that the film’s peaks were reaching some form of a plateau – even the most exciting or interesting moments were sometimes not given enough space to fully develop. This could have gone two ways: make the audience feel unsatisfied, gagged; or make us feel like these moments are part of life and they will pass, because the world doesn’t stop for anyone. I’d say it made me feel a bit of both.

Go see Booksmart. It is an absolute feel-good delight: happy, effervescent, and nostalgic. Every punchline lands effortlessly. Kudos to the writers: Sarah Haskins, Susanna Fogel, Emily Halpern, and Katie Silberman.

This review was originally published here.

Booksmart is currently out in cinemas. Check out the trailer below:

Angelos Angelidis reviews the intersex-directed and starring short film.

Ponyboi is the result of a creative collaboration between co-director Sadé Clacken Joseph; writer, co-director, and lead star River Gallo; and executive producer Seven Graham. Following the story of Ponyboi, a Latinx, intersex runaway from New Jersey, the film exposes us to a life so contained physically and spiritually by societal restrictions through which non-normative bodies belong according to mainstream imaginations. Ponyboi works and lives at a laundromat, also prostituting themselves for a living. Meanwhile, the eponymous character is also caught up in a secret, coercive sexual affair with their friend’s boyfriend, who, at one point in the film, cruelly spits out to them that he decides “whether I fuck you like a bitch or like a faggot.”

But all that is swept away with the arrival of a very handsome and courteous cowboy who is almost too good to be true. In the short, it appears that the cowboy is only a figment of Ponyboi’s imagination; he encourages them to escape from the environment that restricts their self-expression. Breaking away from the abusive nature of allowing the world to determine such fundamental aspects of one’s self, like sex or gender, Ponyboi’s story can resonate with anyone who has too often caught themselves wishing for a more liberated, unbound life. Yet the film most importantly brings to the forefront the narrative of an intersex person, without making that the sentimentalist center of attention.

During this short film’s 19 minute course, time is visually bent, oscillating between dreamlike states and reality and between past and present in a style reminiscent of American New Wave films of the 1980s. Ponyboi takes us on an exquisite sensory journey exploring the reality of a character that has long been kept in darkness, unrepresented in mainstream film and television. Colour and lighting saturate the image and play with ideas of open and closed space, while editing adds a hallucinatory haze that transports the viewer straight into the mind of the protagonist. The music complements and skyrockets the cinematography — the best example of which being the establishing scene of the film, which sets the bar pretty high.

The screening was followed by an intimate Q&A with Seven, Sadé, and River, during which they opened up about trauma and about navigating the film industry as a person of colour, as a woman, or as a member of the LGBTQIIA community — especially an intersex person. Young directors like River and Sadé have continually been at the fringes of popular representation in the realm of the entertainment industry. They are claiming these spaces and helping raise the voice of thousands of people across the world through a film that pays homage to the existence, power, and perseverance of people whose identities do not fit into a binary. The fact that this film was made as a graduation project by River makes it all that more impressive.

The short is currently being extended into a feature film, so keep an eye out for this fresh art piece by following it on social media @ponyboi_film. I have a feeling that the cowboy might be more real than we are left to think (despite his dreamy looks) and I am very excited to follow Ponyboi on the rest of their journey.

Ponyboi was a part of the short film line-up at BFI Flare 2019. Check out the trailer below:

Sam Hamilton tackles the mega pop culture extravaganza that is the concluding chapter of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

WARNING: Spoilers ahead.

This may be a year of epic proportions. Game of Thrones, Star Wars, Toy Story, How to Train Your Dragon and John Wick may all be vying for your attention. But it’s April, so it’s Marvel time. Thanos is back and he wants your money.

To every story there is an end, to every odyssey a denouement, to every journey a destination. Then, there is the kind of world-crushing pop culture supernova that is Avengers: Endgame, the final(?) step in Marvel Entertainment’s twenty-two-film twenty billion dollar ‘Infinity Saga’ bonanza. Endgame is the brawl to Infinity War’s brains. But that is, unfortunately, in the worst of senses. At three hours and two minutes long, it has a clearly defined three act structure: to beat its audience into submission over a nonsensical plan, to carry out this plan, and subsequently undo the events of the previous film. There is an enjoyable two hour movie in there somewhere amongst the mayhem, but it was lost in pre-production: for when the dust settles, the dots of this film just don’t join up. And while the Russo brothers, so successful last time out, try desperately to inject some humanity into this narrative apocalypse, there is around five minutes of genuinely emotionally involving content to be found, surrounded on all sides by kaleidoscopic CGI chaos and plot threads more akin to Ben 10 than “the greatest experiment in cinematic history” (as put by Marvel). Avengers: Endgame is a cinematic monster of sprawling proportions, nonsensical notions and leapfrog pacing. For all the pomp and circumstance surrounding its arrival, Endgame seems an impossible task.

Those good five minutes I mentioned are soothing to no end amongst the otherwise sparse terrain of the film, and made by their actors. Though despite their efforts, this is not a case of small moments that make the whole worthwhile. Essentially these are small moments that make the whole survivable, the only successes in a film otherwise quarantined of stirring emotions and lasting impressions. They are the prologue, in which a society is ripped apart by the decimation of its populus, a moment which really belongs to Infinity War; a brief stirring encounter between time-travelling Tony Stark and his father at the halfway mark; and, at last, the final consolation that stoic Steve Rogers was able to use Mister McGuffin time-travelling device to right the wrongs of time, and return to his darling Peggy in the 1940s to live out the life he always wanted. While the final scene is by its own nature charming, the first two belong to the contributions of their respective actors, Jeremy Renner and Robert Downey Jr., who along with Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton and Mark Ruffalo belong in a better film.

The sight of Ruffalo as a big green domesticated suited-up Hulk is both disturbing and saddening – almost as saddening as what unfolds over the duration of this movie. This unfold allows us to draw at least one distinct conclusion; there is a bleak contrast in writing quality between Infinity War and Endgame. This time out, where screenwriters Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus are not deriving from earlier Marvel Cinematic Universe films or cinema at large (although I must admit I enjoyed Chris Hemsworth’s take on The Big Lebowski’s Dude), they are producing incongruent plotlines and sentences abhorrently cringeworthy when delivered with a straight face. “We’re all about that superhero life” stood out in particular. But their main fault, and really the endgame of Endgame, is the lazy time-travelling escapade that takes us from point A to point B plotwise. McFeely and Markus persevere to make the outrageous seem feasible with their own specially concocted brand of ‘science’, purporting quantum mechanics as the key to a quantum realm (ooh, ahh) that enables “GPS time travel”. Even after their own character points out that this is all risible, the writers go ahead with it anyway, serious enough about the legitimacy of this hokum to keep hammering home the pretence, for many tens of minutes, that this is all realistic. Ultimately, due to the film’s goal of overhanging fatalism, the film suffers both from a truth that its notions are crazy and a lack of courage to adopt the bashfulness of earlier Marvel entries and admit that truth.

The interesting part is, the movie all takes itself far more seriously than most of the time-travel movies their characters openly joke about, while most of those same movies do a far more capable job of navigating the intricacies of the concept. And while I enjoyed Tony’s representation of time travel as a möbius strip, his instantaneous ’solution’ to time travel established over a cup of coffee is the most ridiculous display of ‘this guy can do anything’ since Brad Pitt’s turn in World War Z. If the film didn’t take it so seriously, neither would I. Moreover, if you consider this film Disney property, and as such a kids’ movie, you must consequently ask what said kids are taught by Endgame: rue the past, reject the current state of reality, and do everything in your power to change it. This isn’t usually something I consider when watching a movie, but it does put a smile on my face.

Another crucial facet of Marvel movies is comic relief. And while the comedy seemed to be integrated smoothly in Infinity War’s synopsis insofar as the collisions between such giant personalities create a humorous conflict – take Tony Stark and Doctor Strange or Thor and Peter Quill – in Endgame comedy is a lifeboat, where scenes are made to be funny and funny alone such that the audience doesn’t drown in the gobbledygook. Some of them work, some of them don’t. But all of them are extraneous and fail to advance to the plot. In a three hour movie, there are questions to be asked when this is the case.

CGI is Disney territory, so naturally the visual effects team showed up in Endgame. Water is wet. The sun is hot. This $400 million action movie looks good. Canadian cinematographer Trent Opaloch constricts on Infinity War’s wide colour palette to a more constant royal blue that dominates for most of the runtime. But so much of these films are created in post production that cinematography and visual effects are virtually in union. Maybe in thirty years time, when Thanos looks like PS1 Hagrid, we’ll be able to make a more complete distinction. The character introduction of Hawkeye (Renner), a little less than half way through the runtime, was seized impressively by Opaloch in a long and intricately choreographed tracking shot that left me keen for a standalone ‘Renner as Ronin’ post-apocalyptic Samurai movie. The final throw down, on the other hand, was rather more of a cookie cutter Marvel third act, albeit with a few standout moments for Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa and Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch.

Concluding on the ‘Infinity Saga’ today leaves behind a mixed bag of feelings. We have witnessed a new specimen of studio entertainment develop (with a runtime that makes Lord of the Rings feel like an ad break), and Endgame is its elegy. For me, it is one both good and bad. The movie itself qualifies most of the bad. The good comes from a thin closure that Endgame strains to provide in the completed (given, muddled) character arcs of its two main characters, Captain America and Iron Man – or “America’s Ass” and “America’s Uncle”. Though the means may not be satisfying the end, in a way, is. Most of all it introduces an interesting question as to what respective actors Chris Evans and Downey Jr. will go on to do next.

From a larger perspective of the MCU, and where Studio Head Kevin Feige plans to take it next, the problems arising in Endgame do not make for especially good news. This film marks a conclusive preference for abiding by the status quo rather than boldly averting it as had done Infinity War. Infinity War, in its villain, its menacing sense of dread, and in its courageous character-killing conviction, was an exception that seemed to break free of the formulaic nonchalant comedy club filmmaking that has gripped the emerging ‘superhero genre’. Alternatively, Endgame confirms that the ‘Infinity Saga’ has endured a consistent diminuendo in attention towards narrative strength over crowd pleasing, an attention which even at first was tenuous, and is now virtually extinct. To equate, for example, the reasonably humanised, conflicted, and fleshed-out characters of ‘Phase One’ (Edward Norton’s Bruce Banner, Natasha Romanoff and Tony Stark to name but a few) to the sugary vacuous cardboard cutouts of ‘Phase Three’ (hello Ant-Man, Spider-Man Lite and Captain Deus Ex Marvel) is like comparing The Dark Knight to Batman & Robin. The prospect of continuation should be cause for concern as to where Feige intends to take us next.

We’re all for outlandish cinema. For elaborate stories. For huge spectacle. But this movie takes all three to enormous proportions, gets lost in the second part, compromises on the first, and relies on the third to salvage what remains. Minor successes do not discount major flaws. So when a raccoon, a tree and a flying woman on fire launch themselves into battle to steal the jewellery off a big purple man and his army of six-legged man-dogs, what’s alarming is not that this entire situation is completely ridiculous, or that the filmmakers have failed to craft a comprehensive narrative justifying that ridiculousness. What’s alarming is the emerging reality that the MCU’s pedigree in modern audiences allows them to get away with anything. This film will easily surpass its box office estimates, the executives will take note, and the die for the next ten years of cinema will be cast with the element of convincing drama established as low priority.

So when I sit here and read that Feige has recently released details of the seven thousand characters that he has rights for and “intends to use”, I wonder: Maybe somewhere among their ranks is Original-Movie Man, who brings down the Studio Empire with nothing but emotionally stimulating original entertainment that is never watered down, never the same as before, never restricted by political agendas and never conforming to predetermined formula. Or maybe, instead, we’ll have a 23 Jump Street, 24 Jump Street, 25 Jump Street rollout of Thanos 2.0 v Iron Lady and Ant Man v The Beatles. Who knows. Time will tell.

Avengers: Endgame is currently out in cinemas. Check out the trailer below:

Kirese Narinesingh reviews Jordan Peele’s anticipated follow-up to Get Out. 

If Get Out was a dip in the water for Jordan Peele, he has now dived in. Stunningly showing off his skills, he seems to go even bigger than before – as if he’s aware of the traditional “sophomore slump” of directors. More likely, what we see is an artist in development, experimenting with his vast, kaleidoscopic ideas. He’s also backed by a talented cast and a genuinely fascinating story, in which he seems to allow himself even more creative and imaginative scope. Unlike Get Out, Us is solidly fixed within the horror genre, but this should not imply that the film is in any way restricted to its conventions. It’s as if Peele is putting a mirror to our faces, and our expectations of horror, and saying: “Is this what you really want?”

The plot itself is uncanny. Peele plays on the theme of doubling; the title card quickly introduces the idea of another world, another self, beneath the ostensible idyllic “real” one by reminding us that there are numerous tunnels beneath the surface of America, simply left alone and ignored. The proceeding action is similar. It is like an excavation of the hidden and the ignored socio-political problems always lurking beneath the surface. Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o), returns with her husband (Winston Duke) and her children to the beachfront she visited as a child. It is partly told in flashbacks, recalling the memories of Adelaide confronting her doppelgänger. At the same place that haunts her memories, the family is presently affronted by their own duplicates, dressed in red and brandishing scissors, which already tells you how bizarre the rest of the movie will be.

Oddly enough the bizarre quality is what makes the film so entertaining. There is this unsettling feeling of satisfaction at watching the violence, because it is so artfully made, and (of course) the because of the musical accompaniments of “Fuck the Police” and “Good Vibrations” that mesh so well with scenes of gore. The performance of the cast is especially noteworthy – Lupita Nyong’o should never be overlooked. She glides through both roles as Adelaide and doppelgänger so seamlessly; as Adelaide, she is a traumatised, almost stiff. As her double, she is as nimble as a ballerina, with a perfectly haunting stare. Winston Duke is also impressively convincing as the stereotypical “Dad” figure, preventing the tone from being too dramatic and breaking tension with his comedic input.

The film is like a troubled image, because what Peele really does is show the cracks in the mirror. If you’re completely confused by what I mean, that’s kind of the brilliance of the movie: it says so much all at once, about society, inequality, and the psyche, that it’s almost like Peele dissected the meaning of horror and gave us something even more troubling and deeply disturbing. It is suspenseful, but interlaced with the comic – after all, true horror is absurd. Us also has a most chilling twist – but even if you read this, you probably won’t be prepared for what Peele has saved to shock us.

Jordan Peele is setting himself up to be one of the greats. He almost reminds me of Argento or Hitchcock, for his sheer potential to be brilliantly different, and his daring style that sets him apart from the mundane, by-the-book storytelling we’re so accustomed to. You can see how meticulous Peele is in his direction – it’s almost like watching a ballet. Every step is manoeuvred gracefully and deliberately, but Peele is never rigid. He’s a skilled technician experimenting with new movements that could honestly go either way – a misstep or just the right beat. And most of the time, he succeeds. I talk a lot about Peele here, but credit must go where it is due. It is one hell of a movie.

Us is currently out in cinemas. Check out the trailer below:

Diego Aparicio reviews Faith Akin’s controversial and violent thriller. 

Following The Golden Glove world premiere in Berlin, I’ve seen a few critics comparing director Fatih Akin’s latest to Lars von Trier’s The House that Jack Built due to the films’ common theme of violence against women. I am not a critic, and I have no agenda, so I’ll say honestly (and in my humble opinion) that this comparison is very superficial and suggests a lazy viewer. The similarity ends with the gore and misogyny portrayed on screen: while von Trier’s ‘construction’ oozed of egocentric and self-indulgent intentions, as if to explain himself and his oeuvre, Fatih Akin’s work seems, to me, at least a bit more nuanced.

A big reason why I appreciated The Golden Glove a great deal is the presence of what I interpret as literary metaphors, presumably stemming from Heinz Strunk’s 2016 eponymous novel. The time at which the novel was written makes me all the more eager to conclude that the film has a lot more to say about our times than what its 1970s setting might suggest. I am not a fan of violence, on-screen or otherwise, and, sadly, von Trier’s latest effort failed to convince me. But recently I’ve seen violence used as a means to a cinematic end – and not just for its shock value – much more effectively than I ever thought possible. The first time was in Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale; the second in The Golden Glove.

Throughout Akin’s film, we follow serial killer Fritz Honka (Jonas Dassler) in 1970s Hamburg. Most of the time, Honka keeps busy by overworking his liver at The Golden Glove – a pub where ex-S.S. soldiers, ex-concentration camp prostitutes, and other similarly unhappy people drink their lives away. Otherwise, Herr Honka spends his time picking up deranged, drunken homeless women at the Glove, raping them, and chopping them up into pieces to keep in his attic. Whenever the next victim asks where the stench is coming from, Herr Honka’s reply is always the same: it’s the Greek family’s fault, the one living in the flat below, always adding that disgusting garlic into everything they cook.

‘Gruesome’ doesn’t even begin to describe the horrors to which the viewer is subjected. (If we could describe everything with words, we wouldn’t need films in the first place). People walked out of the auditorium, brought their hands to their mouths and eyes, and turned their gazes away from the screen in disgust more than a few times during the screening I attended. But on behalf of those who didn’t walk out, I would like to argue that The Golden Glove is really not as pointless as some are calling it. Far from glorifying violence through the portrayal of his troubled – to put it mildly – protagonist, Akin gives us a taste of a reality unpalatable to humanity through the years: that the rottenness we so hatefully perceive around us, is very often an internalised hatred that we dare not admit.

One should not overlook the fact that this story’s characters are all victims of war:  a woman forced into prostitution during WWII; an ex-Nazi official with no purpose in life 30 years later; and Honka, whose father was arrested for being a Communist in Nazi Germany. In an early scene, we are introduced to the theory that there are three reasons for people to drink:  to celebrate the good things, to drink away the bad things, and to escape the boredom of nothing happening at all. Celebration seems to be the least likely reason for these characters’ severe alcohol dependence. These are people whose lives were forever dismantled by violence in all its unimaginable and horrific forms. It is a violence that is very much passed on and inherited, still pervasive in the lives of younger generations. No matter how we try to conceal the hateful acts of violence from the past, they inevitably slip through the cracks of the rotting attics of history, like maggots feeding off dead bodies.

Much like the characters in The Golden Glove, our own generation’s passive acceptance of violence and the inability to connect may have been inherited through postwar trauma in more ways than we realise. The fact that Fritz and Willi (Tristan Göbel) share a similar taste in eyewear and teenage girls implies a few reasons why the Honkas of the world have not yet ceased to exist. Akin does not force feed his audience this reading of the story, but there are hints supporting this reading inconspicuously scattered throughout the film:  WWII references occur more than a few times, and war becomes the common thread connecting all characters.

In The Golden Glove, men and women alike have to live with all the trauma that the war has brought upon them in a strongly divided Cold War era Germany. Honka and his brother seem to believe that women are objects made for their satisfaction. This unhealthy relationship between the sexes is perpetuated by apathy in a society whose wounds can only be numbed by alcohol.

The only glimpse of humanity we see in Honka is when he decides to stop drinking – which is also when he develops what appear to be feelings for a coworker. “I had dreamed that I’d do more in life than just clean offices,” she opens up to him. This is a cleaner who’s wasting her life away with an unemployed husband who spends her earnings on alcohol. Sympathetic as he may appear, Honka’s only verbal attempt to express feelings towards her comes when he’s once again drunk. “I love you. Now I want to fuck you,” he exclaims before violently assaulting her.

There is much power in Akin’s subtle insertions of the peaceful Greek family scenes amongst all the massacres and acts of inhumanity committed by the film’s antihero. Through this lens, see a family of refugees accused of creating the foul stench in Honka’s apartment, a situation which is likely to be a commentary on today’s increasing nationalism in various states globally. When read this way, the film appears not only to be opposed to war and toxic masculinity, but also to right-wing extremism.

The film doesn’t justify itself in any obvious way, but comparing The Golden Glove to The House that Jack Built seems unfair to say the least. Akin’s depiction of Honka’s monstrosity is ultimately unsettling for a much more profound reason: the real horror is that, in contrast to von Trier’s, this misogynist serial killer actually existed. Fritz Honka was alive in the 1970s, a product of one of the most horrific periods in recent history.

Overall, The Golden Glove was not a strong contender for the Golden Bear Award at this year’s Berlinale. Jonas Dassler’s extraordinary physical performance and Rainer Kalusmann’s commendably greasy cinematography were not enough for the jury. Still, I thought there was a case to be made in the film’s favour. Akin succeeds multiple times in drawing laughs only moments after showing a murder, and that says something very interesting about our attitude towards violence.

The Golden Glove (Der Goldene Handschuh) premiered at Berlin Film Festival on February 9th. It has yet to acquire a UK release date. Check out a clip below: 

Editor KC Wingert examines the female superhero in Marvel’s latest addition to their cinematic mythos.

I have to admit that I’m nothing more than a casual superhero movie fan. I’ve seen some, but not all, of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s seemingly unending filmography – and most of the time I don’t know what’s going on because I skipped Thor 18 or Iron Man 26 or whatever number they’re on. I don’t hate superhero movies, but do find myself feeling frustrated when I see a franchise churn out several films a year, some of which are disappointing at best (ahem, Ant Man), knowing that no matter what quality is achieved, loyal fans will continue to show up and spend their money on this cultural phenomenon.

I am especially jaded when it comes to female superheroes in these films. Hollywood’s brand of feminism is disheartening; they just can’t seem to get it right. Too often, the so-called “strong, female lead” is a mere token; her existence in a film is largely based on her sexual difference. She is the only woman in a group of men, whom she surprises with her incredible ability to kick ass and maintain visual desirability while doing it. She is intimidating, cold, and mysterious in a sexy way. She is not represented as a particularly complex or conflicted person until a male love interest comes along to “soften” her. (In case you’re wondering, yes, I am talking about Wonder Woman).

I am tired of watching films with corny, girl power-y lines that will inevitably end up emblazoned on a t-shirt sold by some twee Etsy shop that throws in a “Notorious RBG” pin in with every order over £10. I am tired of films that wrap up the battle women have been fighting for hundreds of years neatly, with a big pink bow—a sign that all is well, sexism and gendered violence are over, and we can go back to being pretty now. I am tired of seeing female protagonists with one body type, one skin tone, one sexual preference, and one purpose—either to mother or to seduce the men around her. I am tired of watching women who cope well, who don’t cry, who don’t show any fear or hesitation. I am tired of looking at women who are only there to be looked at.

It’s safe to say I’m a hard sell when it comes to blockbusters starring women—not because I don’t want women to star in big-budget films, but because I feel like they never quite capture what it is to be a woman, really. And with all that said, I must make another really big admission:  I absolutely loved Captain Marvel.

In Marvel’s first title film for a female superhero, Brie Larson stars as Vers, a Kree Starforce member of the planet Hala. Vers has the remarkable ability to produce photon blasts with her hands—a unique power she has not yet mastered and which she cannot even remember receiving. Her memory before becoming a member of the Starforce is completely blank, except for the bits and pieces of her past life that flash by in recurring dreams.

In a Starforce mission gone wrong, Vers is kidnapped by a group of enemy Skrulls, the alien shapeshifters attempting to infiltrate other planets by disguising themselves as their inhabitants. She manages to get away in an escape pod, which crash lands in sunny Los Angeles, California. It is here that Vers remembers more about her past—and discovers that she was a U.S. Air Force pilot thought to have been dead for six years after crashing her aircraft during a top-secret equipment test in 1989.

While on Earth, Vers makes the acquaintance of Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), a favourite for any returning Marvel fan. This is Fury in the early days of his career at SHIELD—before the eye patch, attitude, and seemingly unchecked power. (We find out, in fact, how Fury loses his eye—and it’s not as badass as you’d think). Together, Larson and Jackson have great onscreen chemistry; it’s an absolute delight to watch this odd couple escape the Skrulls and travel to find Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch), one of Vers’ friends from her human life. There are no faux-empowering moments between them—no “not bad for a girl” moments or “that’s my kind of woman” remarks. Fury and Vers are on a mission, and Fury doesn’t question Vers’ ability once. Unlike in many other films with a female protagonist, Vers is not someone Fury feels protective over in a paternalistic sense. Her value is not something that he expects her to prove before she can fight alongside him; in fact, in moments when they are not working together as equals, Fury looks to Vers as a leader.

Being the first woman to play a title character in a Marvel film is a high-stakes job, seeing as being the first female anything typically carries the pressure of making the entire gender look good—but it’s a job to which Brie Larson is suited, dare I say, marvellously. Larson is one of those actresses who brings a down-to-earth, relatable tone to whatever character she plays. She’s the girl who sat in front of you in biology, or the girl who played goalie on your field hockey team. She’s the girl who wasn’t loud and didn’t seek popularity, yet she seemed to be friends with everyone just the same. She is, at the same time, exceptional and ordinary. As Captain Marvel, a sort of accidental superhero, she expertly manages the bizarre duality of being both a totally average woman and an intergalactic warrior. It is this aspect of Larson’s performance which is most empowering; she tells us that any ordinary woman with a strong will can be a hero in her own right.

Another strength of Captain Marvel is that directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck have recreated one of the most exciting elements of the massively successful Black Panther:  they have put a black woman in a central and catalytic role in the narrative. The friendship between Maria Rambeau and Vers—whose name, we find out, was originally Carol Danvers—is a wonderful show of solidarity between two women who were once up against sexism in the U.S. Air Force and encouraged each other, instead of competing against each other, to fly in the only missions women were allowed to pilot at the time.

Before Carol’s “death,” these women took care of each other and had each other’s backs, both professionally and personally, to the point where Rambeau’s daughter Monica (Akira Akbar) refers to Danvers as “Auntie Carol”. For that reason, it only makes sense that Vers should now trust Rambeau to help her save the world, as all Marvel heroes must inevitably do—and help she does.

Rambeau is absolutely essential to the plot of the film. She helps Vers remember her life as Carol and unlock her true potential as Captain Marvel. She even outdoes Nick Fury himself in terms of helpfulness to the cause, by expertly piloting a spaceship she’s never flown before and fearlessly fighting the enemy. Next to Rambeau, the typically intimidating character Fury is practically only there for comic relief and to tie into the rest of the MCU. As a mother, a pilot, and a black woman, Rambeau is a complex and interesting hero herself, not a character boxed into the “sassy black friend” stereotype.

A film set in the mid-Nineties, Captain Marvel makes several cheeky jabs at the dismally slow-moving technology and now-defunct businesses of yesteryear (rest in peace, Blockbuster); this setting, of course, calls for a soundtrack that feels like a love letter to the female musicians of the mid-decade. (It’s worth noting, too, that Captain Marvel is the first Marvel film to be scored by a woman). From TLC to Salt ‘N’ Pepa, Elastica to Des’ree, Captain Marvel didn’t miss any of the hits or one-hit wonders that completely encapsulate the fun, laid-back vibe of its era. The film is heavily influenced by nineties grunge rock, too, in soundtrack and production design alike. Dressed in loose jeans and a flannel shirt, Captain Marvel at one point cruises down a highway on a motorcycle while Garbage’s femme grunge classic “Only Happy When it Rains” plays. Courtney and Kurt are included, of course, and No Doubt’s upbeat anthem “Just a Girl” sets the pace for one of the most crucial fight scenes in the film. The rebellious, riot grrrl-influenced soundtrack evokes a point in time when resisting the norm still felt productive and rebellion made a difference. The soundtrack isn’t just wistful reminiscence on days gone by, either; it serves a thematic purpose. These feminist grunge rockers rejected the testosterone-fueled rock scene of the early Nineties and challenged the status quo in a way that had a real affect on American culture. Captain Marvel provides a welcome escape back to a time when women’s resistance in the U.S. didn’t feel completely ineffective in the way that it sometimes does now.

Captain Marvel may not be the first female-led superhero movie, but it is, in this writer’s opinion, the most successful one. An entertaining adventure sprinkled with ironic humour, this is the film women who just want to be entertained without feeling objectified have been waiting for. For being in a film largely centred around fighting a hostile alien race, Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel is a surprisingly down-to-earth character whose wit adds richness to action-packed adventure, and whose confidence is empowering. Hopefully, Hollywood execs looking to add some feminism to their roster will see this film and understand:  Captain Marvel is how it’s done.

Captain Marvel is in theatres now. Check out the trailer below:

Sam Hamilton reviews the colourful Freddie Mercury biopic and Queen tribute.

Bryan Singer returns from the X-Men franchise to direct Bohemian Rhapsody: a big-budget, star-studded, thoroughly glamourised and oft-Americanised tale of the self-prescribed “hysterical Queen” that is Freddie Mercury. And despite first appearances, this is a film about the great performer and him alone. Yet whether it can be called a character study is debatable, since great swathes of darker material from the singer’s life are abandoned. Instead, Rhapsody opts for a more wide-release-friendly broad stroke of his wild persona. As such the plot reads like a formula Hollywood spectacle movie: rags-to-riches, abandons friends, realises wrongs, gets back together and blows-us-all-away. In many ways that is exactly what’s delivered. But in the magical sparks of Rami Malek’s virtuoso performance (as the one and only) and Newton Thomas Sigel’s sumptuous and smart cinematography, the film transcends what could have been just a Greatest Hits music video.

Malek works around a troublesome set of prosthetic teeth that belong more reasonably in parody than biopic. But he does so with great prowess: stepping skilfully into the glossy boots of a pop culture icon, never overdoing an easily overdoable character, adopting a near-flawless accent, and frequently playing down the big moments in such a way as to be at once mystifying and endearing. There is a charming and frustrating vulnerability to Malek’s Freddie that draws us in, very much like the camera, which often seems to linger in close-ups and carries our interest where the script cannot.

This is particularly the case in the film’s final third, where deepening troubles in Freddie’s personal life, and grappling tensions in his professional life, seem to evaporate just in time for the finale, leaving only a few stage nerves to stop him from acing it. A couple of vapid exchanges between band-members bury the potential for recognising a realistic conflict between them, the only memorable moments found in Roger’s (played smoothly by a charismatic Ben Hardy, the best of the entourage) sarcasm. There are many moments involving the crucial relationship between parents and son that fall short of eliciting any overwhelming response. And to add to this, scriptwriter Anthony McCarten injects a crowd-pleasing, sometimes silly, sensibility into many of the scenes where a straight approach may have been more effective – if at the expense of a few hushed giggles throughout the 2 hr 14 min runtime.

However, Rhapsody‘s chief sin is in neglecting the real weight of Mercury’s path towards recognising his homosexuality and the personal struggles that ensued – not to mention his fight with AIDS. Such an emotional tug of war is essentially muted, allowing only a handful of subtle moments to genuinely acknowledge the difficulties of hiding one’s true identity. This is where the film could have become the “epic poem” that Mercury describes Bohemian Rhapsody, the song, to be. This having been said, the gradually and tragically distancing relationship between Mercury and his “Love of My Life” Mary Austin plays out delicately, conjuring a throbbing sadness that remains one of the film’s most notable achievements. Other spellbinding moments include a captivating limo confrontation between Mercury and his managers as well as the always-priceless cameo contribution of Mike Myers, as a very distressed record label owner in Ray Foster.

Director Singer, arm in arm with longtime collaborator and cinematographer Sigel, battles any and all mundanity in the film with a vibrant colour palette and eclectic, energetic movement in and between set pieces. One particular shot of Mercury, stood tall, head rocked back at 90˚, balanced against an expressionistic array of interior decorations, played perfectly in scene; this and others reconfirm Sigel as a master of his craft in his best work since Drive (2011). Complete with an awesome (as if there could be any doubt) selection of tracks, and enchanting reenactments of some of the band’s top moments, Bohemian Rhapsody, even if it’s not the biopic Freddie deserves, warms the heart, salutes the spirit of its hero, and will endeavour to make you sing along.

7/10

Bohemian Rhapsody was released in October 2018. It is nominated for Best Picture at the 2019 Academy Awards. Check out the trailer below:

George Glover reviews the award-winning satirical biopic on US Vice President Dick Cheney.

Vice offers an alternate portrayal of the Bush administration, sidelining George W. (Sam Rockwell) in favour of his quiet, manipulative, Machiavellian Vice President Dick Cheney (an unrecognisable Christian Bale). Adam McKay’s film races through the last fifty years to show how Cheney utilised lawyers, journalists, and oil magnates to amass bureaucratic power and become the most powerful ‘Vice’ in American history.

After making his name with comedies such as Anchorman and Step Brothers, McKay earned newfound respect in 2015 with The Big Short, which depicted the events leading up to the global financial crisis. Instead of condemning greedy bankers, Vice takes aim at bureaucratic career politicians – particularly Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld (in one notable early scene, Steve Carell’s Rumsfeld is reduced to hysteria when Cheney asks him ‘what do we believe?’). Still, there are many similarities between the two films, most obviously McKay’s zany, fast-paced directing style and an examination of how the actions of the film’s antagonists affect ordinary people. Despite Vice’s comedic tone, the film ends with the sobering reminder that 600,000 civilians died as a result of Bush and Cheney’s invasion of Iraq.

Vice recently received eight Oscar nominations, and this critic anticipates Academy Awards for Best Actor (Bale), Best Film Editing (Hank Corwin), and Best Makeup and Hairstyling (Greg Cannom‍‍‌, Kate Biscoe and Patricia Dehaney). The film’s key strength is its cast – Bale has earned much praise for his portrayal of Cheney, and Rockwell and Carell are also excellent in more light-hearted portrayals of Bush and ‘Rummy’. Amy Adams is superb as Cheney’s wife Lynne, who emerges as Wyoming’s answer to Lady Macbeth. The humourless Lynne particularly shows her cold-heartedness in a side-plot centred on her daughter Mary’s sexuality.

There are a few problems with Vice’s narrative, which sometimes detract from the viewing experience. In attempting to cover such breadth of subject matter without creating confusion, oversimplification is inevitable. Several critics have accused Vice of historical inaccuracy, particularly problematic when the film begins with a disclaimer that McKay et al. “did our f***ing best” to tell the truth. McKay’s insistence on mixing black comedy and global tragedies leads at times to an uneven tone; for a Londoner, the scene depicting a Piccadilly line train carriage after the 7/7 bombings was particularly unsettling. Lastly, Vice’s obvious hatred of Cheney (Bale thanked Satan for inspiring him in his Golden Globes acceptance speech) can be exhausting for viewers. In The Big Short, Bale and Carell portrayed likable outsiders, but there is not a single redeemable character in Vice.

But when the jokes work – and they almost always do – McKay shows his feel for both base and sophisticated comedy. Vice is a subversive film that will entertain audiences while encouraging them to think about profound political issues at the same time. Bale and McKay combine to create a loathsome Cheney and place him at the centre of the ills of 21^st century politics. Indeed, considering the unrepentant hatred for its subject, comedy specialist McKay missed a huge opportunity in naming this biopic: instead of Vice, he should have just called it Dick.

Vice is currently out in UK cinemas. Check out its trailer below: 

Editor KC Wingert reviews Jon S. Baird’s homage to the Hollywood comedy duo. 

One of my favourite childhood pastimes was going to my grandfather’s house and watching old Laurel and Hardy films on VHS. I’d sit on the floor with my Gramps, almost 70 years my senior, both of us belly-laughing at the top comedic duo of the Golden Age’s unique brand of humour. I practically worshipped Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy—their slapstick act and cartoonish physicality were so entertaining that, 60 years after their heyday in Hollywood, a ‘90s baby like me preferred to watch their films over Saturday morning kids’ programming. Much to my chagrin, the average movie fanatic today might not be as familiar with Laurel and Hardy as they are with Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton, their comedy contemporaries. (Fun fact: Stan Laurel and Charlie Chaplin toured together with Fred Karno’s vaudeville company before they started working in film and were roommates for much of the tour). Hope is not lost, however, for fangirls like me; with the recent release of Stan & Ollie, starring Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly, the duo is once again being recognised for their timeless genius. The Jon S. Baird-directed biopic not only captures the comedic brilliance of Laurel and Hardy, but also tells a feelgood story of love and affection between two old friends.

Stan & Ollie finds Stan Laurel (Coogan) and Oliver Hardy (Reilly) about 20 years after their run as the top comedic duo in Hollywood, reunited for a live theatre tour of the British Isles. Broke and unable to find work in film anymore, the pair hopes the tour will regain them enough career momentum to convince a major London producer to work with them on their film adaptation of the Robin Hood story. Their live performances garner great audience reactions and, after several successful press ops played in character, Stan and Ollie’s careers start to gain traction again. When their wives Ida (Nina Arianda) and Lucille (Shirley Henderson) visit them, however, old rifts begin to widen between the men.

The injection of serious conflict in the otherwise cheeky rapport between Stan and Ollie begs the question of whether their relationship is a true friendship or simply a long-lasting business partnership. The concerns their wives have for their well-being, both emotional and physical, complicate the story well. Disagreements between the duo are gut-wrenching to watch, yet, in homage to the spirit of the real Laurel and Hardy, writer Jeff Pope punctuates these emotional moments with genuinely hilarious jokes. Moreover, Ida and Lucille become a sort of comedic duo themselves with their catty quarrels and equally strong personalities—expertly portrayed by Arianda and Henderson, who nearly steal the show. Pope manages to bring humour and lightheartedness to moments of sobering conflict and emotional depth, ultimately leaving viewers chuckling just a few moments after dabbing their eyes from tears.

Outside of the delightfully told story, Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly’s performances are the ultimate strength of this film. Each actor absolutely masters the idiosyncrasies of Laurel and Hardy, from their distinctive voices to their characteristic facial expressions. Laurel and Hardy are known for their impeccable comedic timing and perfectly refined slapstick act; Coogan and Reilly clearly put in the rehearsal hours to mimic some of the duo’s most famous performances. Coogan’s perfectly measured brow-wiggling and Reilly’s harrumphing, along with extremely convincing prosthetic makeup, allow the pair to perfectly embody their subjects, to the point where an audience might genuinely forget that it is in fact watching the actors behind Alan Partridge and Dewey Cox.

Ultimately, Stan & Ollie is a masterful biopic not only because of its incredibly realistic portrayal of an iconic Hollywood duo, but also because it exemplifies the transgenerational appeal of the comedy of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. This pair brought joy and laughter to so many people during their careers, and Jon S. Baird’s latest film is proof that the brilliance of Laurel and Hardy stands the test of time. Audiences of all ages will delight in this thoughtful and heartwarming comedy—“a fine mess,” indeed.

Stan & Ollie is currently out in cinemas right now. Check out its trailer below:

Alexandra Petrache reviews the surprisingly delightful addition to the Transformers franchise.

The making of Bumblebee almost slipped by me. It did not seem as hugely  marketed as the other Transformers movies from the saga, and I walked in not knowing what to expect. An origin story meant tying together the comics and cartoons with which many fans grew up and the films that started in 2007. The director Travis Knight did that very cleverly – Bumblebee (voiced by Dylan O’Brien) leaves his home planet Cybertron in search of a safe haven, and lands on Earth. After managing to accidentally cause some damage to a military base, the Autobot stays in hiding in the form of a yellow Volkswagen Beetle.

Fast forward and the Volkswagen is taken home by Charlie (Hailee Steinfeld), a rebellious 18-year-old girl struggling with family issues. She quickly learns that her car is an Autobot, and in true Transformers fashion, human and shy robot become friends. Their happy time doesn’t last for long; Decepticons (voiced by Angela Basset and Justin Theroux) are trying to track down Bumbleebee’s location and force him to disclose the location of his leader, Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen). Add some US government officials, a love interest (Memo, played by Jorge Ledenborg Jr.), and some kick-ass Transformer fights, and you have a cleverly orchestrated film that manages to captivate the audience from the first second.

Bumbleebee touches on several layered themes. It’s a young girl’s coming-of-age story – in contrast with previous Transformers movies, where the cars and robots are usually reserved for boys – and Steinfeld does a good job at portraying the teen. At times it felt that Bumblebee was alluding to what it means to be an immigrant – the Autobot arrives on a foreign planet and tries to convince the locals that he means well and wishes to just be left to carry out his business.

Satisfyingly, the film was stripped down to bare emotions and action. There were no oversexualised teenage girls, no over-the-top fights or unnecessarily ridiculous plot twists. Unlike the previous Transformer movies, Bumblebee is a down-to-earth, humble film, where the main characters have more of a hero-next-door kind of vibe. The signature Michael Bay explosions are gone as well.

Comedy is also catered for. There are a couple of funny scenes where Bumblebee completely ignores or misunderstands Charlie’s instructions and ends up creating chaos, making him even more of a lovable character – who wouldn’t like a robot that can kick ass and yet be completely unable to understand how a coffee machine works, looking desperately to the dog for help?

There was nothing that I did not like. If I were to find anything, I would be nitpicking – not necessary for a film that was better than expected. One thing worth mentioning is that, although it captures the heart and mind, and shows some solid acting from both the main and supporting characters, Bumblebee is not a risky film. It does not try to “make or break”, but rather aims to put up an intelligently crafted performance. And it does it well. Special shout-out to characters like Charlie’s brother Otis (Jason Drucker), her mother Sally (Pamela Adlon), her step-father (Stephen Schneider), and Jack Burns (played by John Cena), which were all played well.

Bumblebee has the air of an underdog. As a film it seems smaller, less “bombastic” and eccentric, than the Transformers franchise. However, that makes it refreshing and well-built. It mirrors some of the action from the previous films while managing to concoct its own formula. When I left the theatre on the evening of the premiere, I was asked whether I would give it five stars. I have a slight aversion towards rating movies, but I think it worthy of a least three stars (for the picky viewers), if not four (for nostalgics like me).

Oh, pay attention to the Easter eggs, of which you will find quite a few sprinkled throughout the film.

Bumblebee is currently out in cinemas everywhere. Check out its trailer below:

Sam Hamilton reviews the newest sequel of the Rocky franchise. 

It is heartwarming that the Rocky franchise has grown with its star, Sylvester Stallone. In Creed II, particularly, this idea comes to light, as the central themes become less about the youthful glory of looking towards the future and lean towards examining what was and what might have been. Creed II is about new beginnings – the fight to create them and the glory in achieving them. More so, the film focuses in on that which, in time, will be replaced. Where director Ryan Coogler’s first instalment of the series brought about the introduction of Adonis Creed, Steven Caple Jr.’s more subtly poignant sequel provides a triumphant realisation of the next big-budget boxing star and a satisfying swan song for Rocky Balboa.

The revelation of Balboa’s exit is no spoiler. Stallone has been vocal about his upcoming departure from the franchise, and this final performance – coupled with a script that, once again, he wrote – conjures the same mix of nostalgia and ruefulness that Balboa himself might feel watching the world move on. A shot of Rocky sat motionless, all alone in an emptying arena, brought about a resonant silence in the theatre around me and typifies the successes of this film. However, Stallone has made no attempt to write an art film, nor should he have. Rather, in a fashion not dissimilar to that of Antoine Fuqua’s The Equalizer II, he provides ample subtext through which small moments – the rain, dust, and grime, the sense that some things do die – shine through in an otherwise canonical plot. These moments serve as a testament to Caple’s direction, and in turn, Creed II packs a greater punch than its predecessors. It’s enough to make you think, not just feel.

This is highlighted in the strong character work, and not just in Rocky’s case. Both Creed, played with restraint by the returning Michael B. Jordan, and his enemy Viktor Drago are developed, explored, challenged, and motivated by the dramatically abundant difficulties in their everyday lives. Having said that, whether Viktor, as the son of the legendary, if disgraced, boxer Ivan Drago, would really have been raised on the factory grounds and lumberyards of Ukraine is uncertain. Despite this, the film’s first act is geared towards propagating a sense of dread in the audience, and Caple accomplishes this and then some. Even if Romanian actor Florian Munteanu, who plays Viktor, is no Tyson Fury, the clever manipulation of camera angles, beating musical refrains, skillful choreography, and gradual exposition of this bloodthirsty character create in him a forceful nemesis that would give classic Bond villain Oddjob a cold sweat. Viktor is presented as the Wladimir to Ivan’s Vitali – the younger and (statistically) superior family member.

Meanwhile, Creed’s life becomes complicated by the arrival of an infant daughter suffering genetic disorders, and he is forced through the inescapable challenge of facing the family who killed his father. At the heart of this, Tessa Thompson’s Bianca provides a sound and fundamental turn in the film as a moral anchor in the chaos around the central couple. Thompson also provides the vocals for two songs in the film, both standout performances. What this results in is a boxing picture with a deeply rooted focus on family dynamics. This theme emerges not in a superficial, Fast & Furious fashion but through obligatory familial responsibility, the painstaking failure of that, and the residual bitterness that may one day lead to a hope of recuperation. These are sentiments visited on all sides of the ensemble: in Adonis’ remembrance of Apollo, his deceased father; in Rocky’s attempts to redeem himself with his son; and in the conjoined struggle of the Drago family to finally have their talent realised by the country that forgot them. Moreover, the mistakes of the fathers fall upon the sons in this picture, and the real heroism seems to appear in ultimate closure and forgiveness. To say as much of a boxing picture is a testament to Creed II‘s underlying wisdom and lyrical sensibility.

Ultimately, though, it is a boxing picture. While the characters are sufficiently established, creating the emotional prerequisite for much cringing when the punches hit and the blood flows, Creed II demonstrates that the Rocky franchise has yet to reach the technical summit of boxing films. Chiefly, Caple borrows imagery from Scorsese’s Raging Bull, as seen in frequent against-the-ropes POV shots and soaring crane movements around the ring. While there are no attempts at gimmicky single-take tracking shots or flamboyance, there are some things left to be desired by the boxing sequences in general.

The visceral spectacle of a fight has to come together in the climactic match; such is a given for any action movie. In Creed II, however, the most visceral moments are in the early presentations of Drago’s might against puny challengers. When the big showdowns begin forty minutes into the film, it becomes clear that these are two actors acting, somewhat of a failure of immersion from a technical standpoint. It becomes common, too, for Caple to employ a rather unwelcomely snappy editing rhythm when the punches get going. This style, reminiscent of that of director Paul Greengrass, ensures that certain moments that should be monolithic fall short of an leaving an impact. No amount of bass, as provided by composer Ludwig Goransson, and no stylish assortment of hip-hop favourites can change this. However, your heart will get pumping in a standout third-act training montage with a soundtrack courtesy of rapper A$AP Rocky.

To watch Creed II is to witness the culmination of over forty years of polished boxers battling through obstacles with a prizefighter mentality, slurring through profound speeches, and fighting through their ordinary lives just as much as any man in shorts. Maybe Creed II isn’t better than the first Rocky, and the fight sequences are no match for those in Raging Bull. However, it closes the door elegantly on Stallone’s Rocky Balboa while notching up the required macho camaraderie of any boxing movie worth watching. Thus, Creed II affirms the Rocky franchise’s ability to entertain and justifies its long legacy.

Creed II is currently out in cinemas everywhere. Check out the trailer below:

Editor KC Wingert critiques Disney’s video-game based animated sequel and its relationship to today’s consumerist media landscape.

Ralph Breaks the Internet, the follow-up to Disney’s 2012 animated feature Wreck-It Ralph, finds Ralph (John C. Reilly) and Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) six years later. Now best friends, the two spend their days hopping from game to game in their small arcade, but Vanellope secretly longs for something more. Ralph, in an attempt to bring some excitement to the arcade for Vanellope’s sake, accidentally sets off a chain of events that breaks the Sugar Rush game’s steering wheel, shuts down the game console, and displaces all of its characters. In order to replace the broken wheel and save Sugar Rush from permanent retirement, Ralph and Vanellope must venture into the unknown world of the internet to buy the only Sugar Rush steering wheel available in the world, which happens to be listed on ebay.

This film uniquely imagines the internet as a real, physical place where humanoid avatars represent all internet users’ data footprints; where juggernaut brands like Google and Pinterest occupy giant skyscaper-esque structures; and where pop-up ads pester people on the sidewalk like annoying street hawkers. Many of the film’s jokes are references to memes—even the film’s title refers to Kim Kardashian’s now legendary half-nude PAPER Magazine cover—that will feel outdated to someone watching in ten years. With jokes dependent on content from a rapidly changing media sphere dominating the film’s humor, writers Phil Johnston and Pamela Ribon have essentially cemented their screenplay’s eventual obsolescence. Even the bonus scenes at the end of the film are references to memes and the film’s own marketing campaign. These extratextual references may prove delightful to children eager to be in on the joke, but they only serve as marketing for various websites and apps and feel unnecessary to the story.

Clearly the intention behind this film was not to create the lasting power of a positive message, as one usually expects out of a children’s film, but rather its purpose was to create another franchise designed to milk as much money out of loyal fans as possible. The only ultimately positive messages that could be eked out of this nearly 2-hour ode to the coterie of companies that profit from invading people’s privacy are: 1) don’t read the comments on the internet, because people can be mean, and 2) don’t try to prevent your friends from following their dreams.

Moreover, Ralph Breaks the Internet acts as a tool to promote brand familiarity in children, with happy-go-lucky shout-outs to Google, Instagram, Amazon, and other internet behemoths which we now know to be engaging in less-than-ethical moneymaking practices. With a children’s film about the internet, directors Phil Johnston and Rick Moore could have created a teaching tool for parents to broach the subjects of data harvesting, identity protection, cyberbullying, and other issues their kids might encounter online. However, Disney, a media conglomerate in and of itself, seems to view Ralph Breaks the Internet as an opportunity to tout its own influence over today’s media landscape.

A large segment of the film is dedicated to Vanellope’s newfound friendship with the Disney Princesses, whose cheeky introduction in the movie’s trailer went viral among delighted feminists and Disney-philes alike. The princesses, after hearing that Vanellope is also royal, try to find out what type of princess she is by interrogating with a line of questioning—“Were you poisoned? Cursed? Kidnapped or enslaved?”—to which Vanellope responds, “Are you guys okay? Should I call the police?” When Vanellope says that people assume her problems were solved when a man showed up in her life, they exclaim, “She is a princess!” But this humorously metatextual, feminist moment shouldn’t fool anyone hoping to find radical themes within the rest of the film. This portion of the movie also includes cameos from other Disney films—from Winnie the Pooh to Zootopia—as well as from Disney-owned subsidiaries like the Marvel universe and Star Wars. In this critic’s opinion, this clearly shows how the film serves as a tool for Disney to essentially trumpet its own media empire within one of its films, with thinly-veiled product placement. Ralph Breaks the Internet therefore becomes no more than a Disney marketing campaign that will inevitably pay for itself.

Ultimately, Ralph Breaks the Internet is a blatant initiative to sell, sell, sell to those among us who aren’t able to make informed decisions about their consumption: children. The film is a 2-hour long advertisement that would leave any children’s media literacy educator aghast. While the film’s story, visuals, and performances were well-executed, it is fundamentally a tool for indoctrinating children into complacency in a media landscape that serves massive companies, not individuals.

Ralph Breaks The Internet is currently out in cinemas everywhere, check out its trailer below:

Alexandra Petrache reviews the anticipated latest instalment to J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World franchise. 

WARNING: Contains minor spoilers.

The end of the Fantastic Beasts series’ first installation left us with an imprisoned Grindelwald (Johnny Depp), an Obscurial fragment who seems to have escaped the destruction of the Obscurus, and a couple of budding love stories. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald picks up the action right where it was left off. The beginning is dark and gripping, showing Grindelwald escaping from prison in New York with the help of a rogue American Auror. Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) also has a less-than-delightful meeting with his brother and an unsurprisingly confusing meeting with young Dumbledore (Jude Law). We get to catch a glimpse of the zoo of magical creatures Scamander harbours in his house – and can I just say that riding a Kelpie beats all water sports?

After Queenie (Alison Sudol) and Jacob’s (Dan Fogler) impromptu visit to London, Newt ends up in Paris looking for Tina (Katherine Waterston) and Credence (Ezra Miller) at Dumbledore’s suggestion. What happens next is a mix of magic, betrayal, loyalty, and guilt. Darker than any of the other films from the Harry Potter universe, The Crimes of Grindelwald has an adult tone. The title is intriguing, alluding to the eponymous wizard creating havoc and troubles, but in reality it feels like he somehow isn’t allowed centre stage and has to take a step back, giving way to various subplots.

The film features old and new characters in abundance – so many it is hard to keep count of them. Introducing a plethora of characters that all seem important and are mini Easter eggs for fans seem to be central to the film. J.K. Rowling, screenwriter and author of the original Harry Potter series, gets overexcited and introduces key characters to the Harry Potter universe who are quickly tossed aside to make room for new ones with every twist of the plot.Therefore, few characters have space to develop and conquer the minds and hearts of the audience. Queenie and Jacob have a likable development on their own and as a pair, and Newt and Tina share a few awkward moments. Grindelwald seems utterly delightful (albeit wearing too much powder) for such a bonafide bad guy.  He’s clever and cunning, and we hope the wizarding world can see through his carefully-constructed Nazi-esque propaganda.

The main story is slightly blemished by minor subplots that lead to a dead end, like when Leta Lestrange (Zoë Kravtiz) takes centre stage as the love interest of Theseus Scamander (Callum Turner) while focusing on the death of her brother – just for her story to end suddenly. Similarly, Credence’s unlikely companion and massive Harry Potter Easter egg Nagini (Claudia Kim) stands out as odd; she doesn’t seem to be part of any group and although potentially interesting and likeable, is not given an opportunity to shine.  

It seems that Rowling still writes film scripts as if they were novels and, as a result, they are highly lyrical but confusing and full of information. In the case of important details in Crimes of Grindelwald, if you blink, you miss it. The film is full of threads that are woven together and left unfinished, leading to the next film. (A friend described it as J.K. Rowling doing an Empire Strikes Back; I’d say it’s Empire Strikes Back meets the prequels). The Crimes of Grindelwald is also not as thrilling as the title makes it out to be, although admittedly, as someone hopelessly in love with Paris, some of the scenes stirred something sentimental inside of me. The final act of the film was, however, very good. Every line lands, complemented by an excellent score. The reveal that takes place in its final act is very theatrical and raises many questions that I bet will be answered in classic Rowling style. It’s a plot twist that at the moment seems highly improbable and needs another massive plot twist to answer the questions it raises.

Darker than its predecessor, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald takes us deeper on an enjoyable journey into the world of Harry Potter. It’s a shame that, with its many subplots and characters that are not given enough time to develop, the film feels claustrophobic and unpolished. Maybe they should have called it Fantastic Beasts: The Plot Thickens. 

6.7/10

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is currently out in cinemas everywhere. Check out its trailer below:

Hassan Sherif reviews Lukas Dhont’s award-winning and intimate debut feature on trans experiences. 

BFI London Film Festival’s Sutherland Trophy for Best First Feature was awarded this year to director Lukas Dhont for Girl, a stunning portrait of a transgender teen bruised by the struggles of her transition. It is steeped in melancholia, but boasts an uplifting message that powers through on account of a well-paced and intelligent script. The film’s intimate narrative style and honest performances ensured its success at Cannes Film Festival, where it received both the Camèra d’Or and the Queer Palm. Its lead, Victor Polster, as mesmerising as he is disquieting, was rightly named winner of the Un Certain Regard Jury Award for Best Performance. The film’s receipt of these successes is testament to the fact that Girl is not only a blistering new take on LGBTQ issues, but also that it masterfully and unforgivingly explores girlhood and maturity.

Polster is Lara, a fifteen-year-old who was born male but is now within the first stages of gender reassignment, preparing for surgery. Lara’s excitement at gaining a trial placement at one of Belgium’s most prestigious dance academies is undercut by the mounting mental pressure she experiences due to both internal and external sources. The factors of this oppressive unease include her frustration at the transition’s slow pace, her uncomfortable socio-sexual interactions, and her unrelenting training schedule. Polster’s physical and facial expressions are pivotal to capturing this frustration, as the script from Dhont and collaborator Angelo Tijssens deliberately limits the amount of verbal expression offered by Lara. She represses her emotions in the company of others, coming across as shy, quiet, and sweet. But Polster’s tortured eyes suggest a severe angst that speaks volumes over Lara’s restrained dialogue, rendered inescapable for both Lara and the viewer as there is a centrality to the protagonist in pretty much every frame. It is this underlying torment that builds up the tension so brilliantly throughout the film. For all the emotion welling up within Lara, she is never afforded a dramatic outburst, and ballet acts as a vent for her innate desperation. Every scene that sees her fight back tears is married to a beautiful sequence in which she explosively practises her routines, occasionally with difficulty. Dhont uses Lara’s training errors to scatter a forceful violence throughout the film; every brutal knock and every bloody strip of skin reminds us of the harsh reality that exists beyond Lara’s brief escapism.

But it is not just Polster’s breakout effort that will move viewers. Arieh Worthalter is phenomenal as Lara’s single father Mathias, a taxi driver on his own turbulent journey of finding new love while settling into a different life with his two children. His prioritisation of Lara and her baby brother Milo’s (Oliver Bodart) happiness is never once questioned, with moments of annoyance solely borne from his desperate hope for Lara to find peace. The mother figure is removed from the narrative entirely. In his post-screening interview at LFF, Dhont explained that this was part of his own mission to reduce the notion of toxic masculinity prevalent within LGBTQ films, in which the main antagonistic force that the queer character must battle is a straight male figure’s rigid intolerance. For Dhont, making the father and brother figures the film’s most accepting characters ensures that viewers do not paint such a topic in black and white. So, too, does Dhont’s conscious decision not to entirely victimize his protagonist; Girl is not a coming-of-age piece that reduces the young central figure to an emotionally immature teenager on a journey to adult liberation. Instead, it explores how Lara’s determination influences those around her for the better. The implied emotional turbulence of her past has elevated her maturity to an inspirational level, as we can see from Milo’s intimate gleams of admiration every time he is entertained by his big sister.

Girl truly is a film of intimacy, with emotional eruption a constant threat. Over five hundred actors auditioned for the role of Lara, and it is no surprise that Dhont’s extensive search for an actor with powerful emotional control and a masterful dancing technique was fruitful in its results. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s emotionally-charged choreography and Valentin Hadjadj’s sweeping orchestral soundtrack intensely accentuate Lara’s exasperation throughout. The film’s success lies in its simplicity and balance, placing side-by-side gripping dance sequences with moments of harsh, gritty realism. Dhont’s stunning directorial debut is an example of how beauty prevails among discomfort and pain.

8/10

Girl won the Sutherland Trophy at the 2018 BFI London Film Festival, and will receive its general release in the UK on March 15th, 2019. In the meantime, check out its trailer below:

Milo Garner dives into the medieval in cinema and Outlaw King’s position in its genre. 

What does the medieval look like on film? While this question suggests a great variety of responses, a cursory glance at mainstream medieval cinema defies any such conclusion. The main mode, one adopted by the likes of Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven and Robin Hood, or Peter Flinth’s Arn – The Knight Templar, is that of almost docu-fiction. Considerable efforts are put into what Robert Rosenstone calls ‘reality effects’, elements of production design that replicate what we know of the past; an attempt to resurrect what has long passed. As according to this philosophy, the filmmaking itself is rarely daring, always preferring a sense of the real. ‘Sense’ being the operative word here – as much as these films seek to replicate the past visually, they often forgo such shackles in their storytelling. Kingdom of Heaven’s Balian is presented as the perfect knight, other than that he’s a philanderer (permissive now, but a mortal sin then); Robin Hood’s French invaders land on the beaches like the soldiers of D-Day; the eponymous Arn appears as the rare Christian knight utterly bereft of prejudice against his Muslim foemen. The result is a bizarre mismatch of visual acuity and narrative anachronism, the supposed conclusion being that this ‘sense’ of the medieval is of far more importance than an embodiment of the time, its norms, its vagaries.

This anachronism need not seem so contrary to the otherwise clear efforts for ‘accuracy’ (a claim that has been attached to all three of the above films by their publicists). To consider another vision of the medieval, Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal seems a useful analogue. This is a film almost defined by its anachronism – in terms of content, it features a Crusade to the Holy Land, Flagellants, the Black Death, and the persecution of witches as contemporaneous events, despite these phenomena being separated by centuries. Even more troubling might be its philosophical core, which delves to the recesses of nihilism – a 20^th century philosophy with no grounding in the god-fearing past. Yet these contradictions of historical record do not render The Seventh Seal a poorer representation of the past than the films abovementioned, but rather combine into a far more effective communication of that period and its anxieties. Through contemporary atheistic philosophizing, Bergman presents a world defined by fear and suffering, one in which the plague stalked and superstition reigned. Antonius Block almost serves as a modern man wandering through a tableau of the Middle Ages, experiencing an expressionistic collage of their struggles through a lens the audience may be more familiar with. Instead of sanitizing the past, Bergman exploits its thematic potential – the result is a story that both informs the past and present in equal measure.

But even this might seem dissatisfactory, as to use the medieval experience to contextualize the modern experience one must undoubtedly corrupt its character in a direct sense, as Bergman has clearly done. František Vláčil presents a further alternative, his Marketa Lazarová delivering a sense of the medieval far more directly. Instead of considering his subjects in a way that might relate them to an audience, Vláčil instead engages with an expressive, even avant-garde manner of filmmaking. His medieval Bohemia is non-specific in date, a vagueness permeating its whole; Vláčil sees the medieval as strange and distant, fearsome and chaotic. He envisions the encroachment of Christianity into polytheist lands, the story (adapted from Vladislav Vančura’s novel of the same name) embracing a grim brutality totally removed from even Bergman’s bleak imagination. Understanding the medieval cannot rely on the simple recreation of past events, supposes Vláčil, but must instead somehow represent something of the medieval mindset, replicate how these ancient people might perceive their own realities. A question of texture over content.

Aleksei German’s Hard to be a God seems to be an ultimate answer to this question. While technically a sci-fi picture set on a distant planet, one far less advanced than our own, the film is essentially set in an equivalent of the Middle Ages. German’s filmmaking almost entirely disposes with narrative, instead focusing on a feeling of the medieval; despite its monochromatic arthouse veneer, it feels as though it should be seen in 3D on the biggest screen possible. Every frame drips with unsettling detail, with blood and unnamed fluids, with an almost visual stench. Filth and dirt seem to envelop everything, violence and misery never far from centre-frame. In one sense Robin Hood is by far the better representation of the past – its dates are correct, its characters are largely real, it is set on Earth. But while entirely fictional in detail and content, Hard to be a God nonetheless suggests a physical texture that Scott’s film doesn’t even attempt to convey.

Outlaw King’s position in this environment isn’t entirely straightforward, but for the most part it sits squarely within the first paragraph. Its set design and period details are well realized, and while its events and characters may be morphed, they are also a recognizable reflection of reality. Its hero, Chris Pine’s Robert the Bruce, becomes much like Orlando Bloom’s Balian in Kingdom of Heaven – a gormless and hopelessly bland embodiment of the hero template, a man who we must support for his doing the right thing, and nothing more. The brutality of the Middle Ages is not shrugged off, but it is also held in visible contempt. Robert the Bruce is better than this, and he fights for this betterment. His mission to “free” Scotland from the English is never granted much context (for all its bullshit – historical and otherwise – Mel Gibson’s Braveheart at least established proper character motivations), instead leaving the viewer to simply suppose he is doing the right thing. The film leaves little room for anything else. This progression is complicated by the film’s own adherence to certain historical events, however. In his largely passive drift through the Scottish wastes, one of Robert’s sole direct actions is the stark murder of a rival claimant in a church (which carries poor connotations now, but then would be a whole other bag of beans). This action the creates a new contradiction – the brutalism of the medieval mindset meeting the romanticized hero narrative of David Mackenzie’s film.

Had Mackenzie considered this action critically it might be more permissible – perhaps Robert had no other option, or perhaps more intriguingly, his ambition for the crown outweighed the clear immorality presented before him. Or both. But instead of a more rigorous examination of the past as per Bergman, or a more expressive (and as such, detached) observation of distant savagery, Mackenzie instead decides to offer a scene of a repentant Robert and then resume the narrative of a romantic king, one who refuses to sleep with his arranged wife after marriage (an unsubstantiated anachronism), and one who will almost botch his bid for the crown in a seemingly idiotic appeal to chivalry, falling foul of a night attack by the English. This second event is particularly interesting as it is, at least in concept, accurate to history. But without prior knowledge of exactly how a medieval king might perceive the world, it seems both foolish and contradictory to his earlier behaviour; any potential for intrigue or interest in Mackenzie’s narrative is lost to the strange marriage of modern morality and historical (mis)detail that so consumed Kingdom of Heaven and its ilk.

Even beyond its conceptual strangeness, Outlaw King fails in its filmic construction. Despite being twenty minutes shorter than its Toronto cut (and a good two hours from the original assembly), it is a film beset by a constant stream of redundant or featureless scenes. It has a romantic subplot which falls out of the narrative (only to return for a saccharine beach-meet finale), a whole slew of wandering-through-Scotland shots, and a distinct lack of substantial character motivations. A few are granted surface objectives, such as Douglas the Black’s mission to reclaim his family lands, but these are so thinly detailed that they are difficult to fully invest in. This isn’t to mention the inter-character relationships, whereby only two distinct relationships can be considered in any way developed. First, Robert and Elizabeth’s, and then King Edward and his son. In fact, the dynamic between the English royals, however simple, might be the only engaging element among the film’s long slew of faces. That, along with the film’s best image – a shot of the young Edward mid-battle cry, a dead swan held by the neck in each hand. Perhaps one of the few elements that felt entirely medieval in a textural sense, reserved to demonize a villain. And I suppose this is where Outlaw King stumbles most as a medieval film – instead of presenting a king that is part of a medieval world, it presents one who seems at odds with it.

To present Outlaw King as wholly negative would, however, be disingenuous. Beyond its impressive production values, the film very much embraces a sense of spectacle that is often reserved for the medieval genre. Its first shot is very much an example of this, a swirling and intensely choreographed long-take that encompasses Robert pledging fealty to Edward, duelling his son, and then witnessing the firing of a trebuchet at a distant castle. The shot functions as a sort of microcosm of the larger film, and effectively lays out Mackenzie’s ideas with an elegance that is never resumed in the two hours or so that remain. Also well realized is the final battle, a grisly and blood-soaked engagement that manages to coax a stirring climax from a film otherwise so desperately limp. Like that first shot, it’ll probably get better play on YouTube than Netflix, but perhaps that’s for the best.

Outlaw King is currently available to stream on Netflix. It is also released limitedly in UK cinemas. Check out its trailer below:

Alex Dewing reviews Simon Amstell’s bittersweet comedy.

A breakup plays out on the screen.

“I love you”, says one man.

“You hesitated too long”, replies the other.

It is an opening that takes you by surprise, no more so than when the reel seems to snag. A figure, the very same who hesitated just a moment before, rises in front of it all and turning, seemingly to the audience, asks whether the scene is any good. This is Benjamin, a filmmaker riddled with anxiety surrounding the release of his second film. A vegan who, as we come to find out, struggles more than most when it comes to the world of romance. From these opening minutes alone, it is evident that much of this bittersweet story comes from director Simon Amstell’s own experiences, and the honesty of it is palpable throughout.

Benjamin is a quiet film. Between the awkward meetings and charged arguments, there are journeys on the bus; moments where Colin Morgan’s Benjamin is free to smile to himself at the prospect of a new relationship, or start from a nightmare following a strange evening at a near-strangers flat. These meandering scenes offer brief respite amidst the non-stop grins throughout the rest of the film. As a comedy cynic, I did not expect to laugh as often or as hard as I did here, despite the film’s clear standing in the ‘Laugh’ branch of the festival. Even the movie’s humour is low in scale, though high in results. Media satire plays a large role here – a cameo by Kermode and Mayo certainly leaves a cinephile audience in stitches.

Meanwhile, Benjamin pokes fun on a more personal level; for every bumbling film screening introduction, there is an equally farcical attempt at making romantic advances, or consoling a friend. Underneath it all, too, is a consistent sense that the humour comes from a place of reality. Benjamin, alongside his best friend and stand-up comic Stephen (Joel Fry), unknowingly works his way into increasingly ridiculous and stressful situations. His comic troubles aren’t at all far from the awkward plights we find ourselves in day-to-day, which makes it that much easier to empathise and laugh with (and sometimes at) him. Speaking about his comedy, Amstell said that he is “telling the truth each time. And that’s what it will always be about”- an intention that is strongly felt through the entirety of the film.

Morgan carries a charm to the emotional disarray of Benjamin. His nihilistic attitude (to settle his fretfulness, his producer lies him down cooing “we’re all going to die”), as well as his nervous ticks (more often than not Benjamin just cannot keep his mouth shut) are characteristics that are certain to dissuade some viewers. But to many, these will anchor an emotional attraction. Simply put, he’s weird. And many of us are.

“He’s probably me when I was in my late twenties…” says Amstell “…so [he’s] like a deranged lunatic.” Morgan gives a strong and intimate performance, one that leads you to ask why he stars in so few films. Moreover, his chemistry with up and comer Phénix Brossard, who plays Noah (the “skinny and well-lit” French musician that Benjamin so desperately wants to fall for) is creditable, though the latter’s character is undeniably less fleshed out than his counterpart.

It is a shame that by the final act the film turns even further inwards. Narrowing the focus solely on Benjamin’s emotional troubles and thus rendering the film a little lost. With 15 minutes to go, it’s difficult to see how the narrative can be wrapped up, especially since it’s one that seems to revel in a more character driven approach. Benjamin’s arc rounds itself off slightly too neatly and without a truly satisfying catalyst. Similarly, a subplot centring around the emotional upset of Fry’s Stephen isn’t engaged with deeply enough to be justified, though further comments on the idea of the ‘tortured artist’ that seems inherently part of the creative industry today.  

It’s good to see Amstell developing a more assured approach to his work; in only his second feature, he shows huge promise. Benjamin has a cinematic softness to it, but finds itself strongest when celebrating its realism or relishing in its comedy. As heartfelt as it is hilarious, Amstell and Morgan find a balance between the humour and emotional drama. This is a film that will divide audience reactions but deserves to be seen, if only for a good laugh. 

8/10

Benjamin has not yet acquired a release date or trailer. It premiered at the BFI London Film Festival on October 19th.

Hassan Sherif critiques Carol Morley’s meandering and cosmo-pondering neo-noir.  

Carol Morley’s latest venture, Out of Blue, is grounded within the gritty urbane confines of New Orleans yet deals with a magnitudinous cosmic subtext. It aims to wear a viewer down with its exploration of the pessimistic thoughts that accompany deliberation over humanity’s insignificance. Unluckily for the film, it succeeds, and then some. The potential is endless when toying with astrological references, but this story of an existential crisis during a homicide investigation is often stale and unexciting, meaning that this slow film never really feels like it has begun.

This is most clearly down to the sluggish performances themselves, and not to the art direction: the dark ambience which imbues the film encapsulates well the crushingly world-weary mindsets of our protagonist (Patricia Clarkson) and the cast of characters around her. In Morley’s adaptation of Martin Amis’s 1997 novel Night Train, Clarkson is Mike Hoolihan, a veteran detective and recovering alcoholic. Her latest case concerns the murder of a brilliant young astrophysicist, Jennifer Rockwell (Mamie Gummer), noted for her disconcerting research on black holes and on our place within the universe. It also drowns Hoolihan in a dark wave of transcendental grief. Midway through the film, the identity of the culprit in this mystery is no longer the main focus; as time passes so does the detective’s sensibilities, transforming Out of Blue from a gritty whodunnit into a surreal portrayal of a deathly mid-life crisis.

As Hoolihan grows frustrated with the emotional vacancy of both Rockwell’s boyfriend (Jonathan Majors) and her sinisterly professional family, we’re left wondering just how much more powerful this production could have been with a more energised performance from its cast; Morley’s confident direction and the film-saving score from Clint Mansell are left hanging by imbalanced emotional execution from the primary actors. A poor attempt at realism means that they deliver their lines in a very resigned manner, and they almost seem distracted by how unengaging the script is. Majors tries to maximise his character’s grief, but unfortunately returns a painful few sequences of odd and unconvincing crying. Even Toby Jones looks disinterested as the dodgy Professor Ian Strammi, and these half-hearted performances cannot be resuscitated by a plot that largely goes nowhere. Although Clarkson’s overblown dreariness quickly becomes oppressive, her portrayal of a woman’s descent into broken stupor is bound to stay with the viewer. An hour and a half into the film and we think we know the monotonous rhythm of her speech, but a short, awkward drunk sequence showcases this professional woman embarrassing herself in cringe-worthy fashion. It is the first instance of cringe within the film that seems intentional, and actually adds to the portrait of a lady in distress, rather than displaying signs of weakness in a tired movie. We welcome this sudden change from the safe formula of poorly delivered one-liners and tautologous scenes that scream irrelevance.

On a more positive note, Morley’s recycling of the same locations complements her discussion of humanity’s limited time on Earth by creating a sense of claustrophobia within the large-scale setting of New Orleans. However, this quickly delves into repetitiveness, with the same three or four different environments revisited in every scene. Similarly, a flash back to Rockwell’s short monologue about how “we are all stardust” is churned out every ten or so minutes and eventually loses its impact – while starting to feel slightly self-indulgent. Morley’s script is obsessed with Schrödinger’s cat, and other such philo-psychological concepts, mentioning them so frequently that we soon feel like we are watching a badly taught lecture and as an audience, that we are not being taken seriously. For a script that repeatedly comments on how beautiful the unknown world among the stars may be, it is markedly unmagical. Thankfully, the ominous dénouement of the film is a powerful, hallucinatory, and most importantly satisfying farewell to an unnecessarily drawn out investigation, and to the portrayal of a middle-aged life locked in stasis.

4/10

Out Of Blue will be generally released in the UK on March 22nd, 2019. Check out a clip below:

Manisha Thind reviews Sinéad O’Shea’s first feature documentary on a troubled Northern Ireland community.

Bleak, grounded and revealing, Sinéad O’Shea’s first feature documentary ‘A Mother Brings her Son to be Shot’ comprehensively voices the story of the O’Donnell family. Living in a housing estate in Free Derry, Northern Ireland, paramilitary groups patrol the streets gathering intelligence and acting as the pseudo-police securing the community. “You are not entering free Derry,” a mural says. The peace process that vowed to deliver opportunities for the young generation and to stop the violence has not produced the fruits it promised. The promise is shattered within the first moments of the film with the sight of an armoured police patrol car passing; a sight more akin to the streets of Palestine than the United Kingdom. Drug abuse plagues the community. Suicide rates have doubled since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. The young wish for ‘The Troubles’ back out of sheer boredom. Revolutionary sentiments rumble, police-dissident corruption seethes, and above it all violence dominates. The director herself proclaims this documentary as “complicated… grey [and] both funny and dark.”

In short the story stems from one event: the mother, Majella, takes her teenage son, Phillip “Philly” O’Donnell, to a “shooting appointment”. Why? To be kneecapped by Republican dissidents, “The Ra”, for distributing drugs amongst other forms of alleged antisocial behaviour. This was the lesser of two evils; the other option was to be shot in the front garden and be put into a wheelchair. “Death to dealers”, the graffiti proclaims, and that is exactly what Philly dreads to the point of insanity.

The documentary opens with one of Majella’s sons wielding carefree a crowbar, a hatchet, a saw and finally a “torture weapon” – a bolt cutter. Eleven years old, this son, Kevin Barry, is the youngest member of the O’Donnell family. Whilst light-hearted, as a result of the shockingly amusing comments that Kevin makes accompanying his showcase, this scene alludes to the pervasive and cyclical nature of violence in this particular section of the community. Later the camera pans out to reveal Kevin bestowing his expertise on colt M19s and bullets to his mother; again the audience laughs in bewilderment. Comedy, in this documentary, is born out of shock-horror.

The despondency, fear and desolation in Majella’s eyes are representative of the O’Donnell’s situation, the disposition of their community and that of the overall documentary. Through her eyes we can gauge the most honest portrait. Taking diazepam, swallowing bags of powder followed by shots of Sambuca, going six days without sleep, hallucinating, having nightmares about masked men are all things attributed to Philly. He is paranoid, suicidal and psychologically traumatised. And his mother is aware of this. A deep regret clouds Majella – her decision to take her son to be shot. She lives with the knowledge that others call her a bad mother. She knows Philly’s life is still in danger. Yet he returns home in the morning, intoxicated, the shake of his hands immediately recognisable to his mother. Majella is powerless.

This documentary isn’t a political survey of the situation in Derry in the aftermath of ‘The Troubles’ and it doesn’t concern itself with wider political questions. O’Shea herself is delicate in her handling of the political aspect of this documentary being particularly pre-cautious in the use of terminology. Nevertheless, O’Shea subtly yet strikingly alludes to the political alignments of Ireland’s republicans, with Palestine for example, in murals across the region.

During a five-year period of filming, O’Shea has hour-long conversations with the Hugh Brady. This “realist [and] fatalist” was once part of The IRA, then was jailed for sixteen years and now acts as a mediator between The Ra and those in Philly’s predicament. Despite scraping at truths, stating that expelling armed Republicans is still viewed as “informing”, he is a deceitful character to some extent. Ultimately he was expelled from a movement he was committed to after being caught with cannabis and as a result was tied to a lamppost and “painted”. Montages of footage of Brady’s IRA past stress the magnitude of his loyalties and the bias that bleeds into his dialogue. Here it is important to congratulate O’Shea and her team in the thoughtful use of archived footage throughout the documentary.

It was the question and answer session with O’Shea that shed more light on the complexities. O’Shea herself proclaims that it was impossible to determine the truths from the lies during filming. Moreover elements are left out, such as two other siblings in the O’Donnell family; they did not want to appear on camera. This leads to a deficiency in the documentary – the audience doesn’t understand the extent of organised crime in the community. Kevin Barry discloses The Ra are actually taxing the drug trade. Whilst completely plausible it cannot be confirmed; in fact Kevin Barry emerges to be a reflection of his irrational older brother. Why is it plausible? The eldest of the O’Donnell brothers, who is omitted from the documentary, was a bigger drug dealer than Philly yet wasn’t shot. Was he taxed and allowed to carry on with trading in drugs? We don’t know. This dimension alludes to a more cautious O’Shea.

Conceivably the failings of the documentary were to a greater extent a symptom of factors out of O’Shea’s control. The ending is forced to some extent due to the lack of further contact with the O’Donnells. Still, the documentary manages to end on a cyclical note – the father Philip Senior is shot in both knees after being released seven years into a thirteen-year jail-sentence. Again the audience is left wondering as to why. It is only in the plenary session with O’Shea that answers emerge. Hugh, O’Shea tells us, argued that the aforementioned early release was due to Senior passing out information about the cause to the police and then the depositions being released. Senior on the other hand maintains it was due to a brawl or accident. O’Shea then reveals Senior was scarred on his thigh and not on his knees. It is infuriating that conclusions aren’t definitively reached in this documentary and a lack of a robust, objective, outside voice adds to the irritation. Truth is lost somewhere in the estates of Creggan. O’Shea’s narrative is limited and heavily constrained; an interview with a scholar of a related field could’ve added a much needed dimension of clarity.

Although O’Shea can be praised for her patience and dedication spent on the project, this documentary would have benefited with an additional year or more of filming (if funds allowed it of course). Kevin Barry is a refreshing subject in the documentary, and perhaps its true star. As stated previously he provides much comedic relief throughout; he is astonishingly intelligent as well as witty. At fourteen he begins taking drugs outside of cannabis and exhibits anger issues, especially in school, however he is able to channel the rage and aggression into boxing. Towards the end he is shown to be an exact physical copy of Philly implying to some extent a pessimistic future for him. Possibly the greatest tragedy to befall Creggan lies in the loss of Kevin Barry’s potential. The missed focal point in the documentary is the failure of Northern Ireland’s youth to find opportunity; maybe it’s because it is too common a tragedy to register. The documentary itself ends on a doubtful note for the future of the O’Donnells. Upon the film’s release, however, Kevin Barry proceeds to become a building apprentice. If filming had continued longer the documentary could’ve ended on a more positive note – arguably more in line with to actual trajectory of the O’Donnells’ futures.

O’Shea achieves an insight into a small faction of a community still troubled by ‘The Troubles’ themselves. Original in its primary subject matter, it accomplishes by bringing attention to a significant issue within the UK which news outlets don’t pay attention to. Once an invisible community and the people in it disposable, O’Shea manages to expose their realities to some extent. Solidarity against the authority and anarchy stage themselves in the final scene of a bonfire. The peace process hasn’t solved ‘The Troubles’, the war is still not over and a community of people in “Free” Derry continue to live in a post-war prison of violence. The Union Jack burns.

A Mother Brings Her Son To Be Shot was screened at UCL on October 18th. Check out the trailer below:

Editor KC Wingert reviews Jason Reitman’s political and timely biopic on the 1987 Gary Hart scandal. 

Director Jason Reitman has a penchant for stories about people whose morality sits firmly in a grey area. Avoiding concrete heroes and villains in his films, the Juno and Up In the Air director typically focuses on stories of ordinary people, and he does so with aplomb. However, his latest film focuses on the moral ambiguity surrounding a figure who errs more toward the extraordinary than the ordinary. With a surprising foray into the political drama genre, Jason Reitman’s The Front Runner is based on the true story of the 1988 U.S. Democratic primary hopeful whose political career was ruined forever following a massive sex scandal.

This film’s frenetic energy and quick pace paint a portrait of the exciting, albeit hectic, world of the team behind the ’88 primary campaign — and of the journalists reporting on it. Its visual style is characterised by a liberal use of sweeping, meandering long takes that hardly linger on any singular character long enough for them to speak more than one line. These quick glimpses of conversation between the staffers and journalists — a group comprised of familiar faces like J.K. Simmons as campaign manager Bill Dixon — emphasize the relative importance (or lack thereof) that these individuals hold when compared to the race’s front runner himself.

Hugh Jackman plays Gary Hart, a charming senator from Colorado whose fresh, liberal platform and comparative youth make him a candidate that the nation’s young voters can get behind. By most accounts, Hart is poised to win the Democratic primary and eventually become the next President of the United States. However, when caught having an extramarital affair, Hart finds himself caught in a media firestorm that he can’t seem to brush aside, despite all efforts to refocus the press back towards his political platform. With a stoic and largely unemotional performance, Jackman successfully paints Hart as a distracted, private man focused more on his career than on his personal life. But viewers should take care not to overlook the performers behind two figures so often silenced in any public figure’s sex scandal: the Other Woman, and the Woman Scorned.

Sara Paxton plays Donna Rice, the so-called bimbo who first attracts Hart’s attention at a yacht party off the shores of Miami. The juicy details of her affair with the candidate hit the newsstands, and her life is turned upside down. With an emotional performance, Paxton presents Rice as an ordinary woman: educated, successful, and now, permanently scarred and humiliated by the hate and abuse she receives at a national level after making the mistake of sleeping with a married man. On the other side of the coin, Vera Farmiga plays Lee Hart as a powerful figure who will not be humiliated— not by her husband, and not by the reporters covering his infidelity. Stony-faced and enduring, Farmiga’s Lee is formidable but never hysterical, a loyal wife who in return demands accountability and respect from her husband. Together, Farmiga and Paxton’s masterfully complicated depictions of Lee Hart and Donna Rice humanise the two figures in this scandal who perhaps suffered the most – more, even, than the candidate forced to quit politics forever.

In the wake of the scandal, the frustrated Gary Hart draws comparisons to the likes of popular liberal politician and notorious womaniser John F. Kennedy himself. Hart’s downfall begs the question: if his politics are good, should the gritty details of a public servant’s personal life even matter? Should the type of “gotcha” journalism typical of celebrity tabloids be applied to political news coverage, too? The Front Runner poses questions whose answers are not so simple – not in the 1980s, and especially not today. With a former celebrity personality currently occupying the White House despite countless political and personal controversies, director Reitman’s latest film is timelier than ever.

The Front Runner will be 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.

Editor-In-Chief Xinyi Wang reviews Lee Chang-dong’s mesmerising slow-burn thriller. 

There is a disconcerting quietness that casts an uncomfortable shadow over Burning. Its colour palette is cold, its characters detached. For a film associated with fire, its only instance of true warmth came from a ray of sunlight, reflected by Seoul Tower and beamed at a specific angle, allowed to softly seep through the windows into a room. Haemi states that it happens only rarely, and that you have to be lucky to catch it. That ray of sunlight disappeared after ten seconds.

Director Lee Chang-dong instead visually dedicates the titular description with the burning of cigarettes. We watch one cigarette after the other slowly dissimulating into ashes, dragged forcefully, as if rushing to finish. A desperate act by our protagonists, Jongsu (Yoo Ah-in) and Haemi (Jeon Jong-seo, a delight in her debut role) to keep some fire in their hearts, it is a warmth that is harsh. A warmth that is lonely.

Its premise is simple: Jongsu, upon coincidence, reunites with Haemi, someone from his childhood that he barely knew. The two soon become involved, but the dynamic shifts after Haemi meets Ben (Steven Yuen) on her trip to Africa. Burning takes a turn after Ben reveals to Jongsu his peculiar hobby – burning greenhouses. The film is about Jongsu as much as it is about Haemi, and as much as it is about Ben; a three-hander told through the perspective of one. It does have more or less a similar premise to the short story it’s based on, Haruki Murakami’s ‘Burning Barns’, except dragged out as a feature length film, and riddled with complications. However, there are certain choices made that require further examination.

For a film loosely adapting Murakami, Burning manages to insert more Murakami tropes than the original contained. The Manic-Pixie Dream Girl, a frequent cliché found and criticised in the women Murakami pens, makes a reappearance in the film, but was in fact not an element in the original short story. The lost and lonely young writer reappears as well, where the “lost and lonely” part is directly added on in the adaptation. In fact, Burning scored in seven boxes on the harmless Murakami Bingo, and that is not even counting what originally existed in the book. It is hard to tell if Lee is simply paying homage to Murakami, or attempting to reimagine the 18-page ‘Barn Burning’ as a full length Murakami novel.

As such, these elements become a double-edged sword. On one hand, for example, the addition of a cat that properly plays a role in the plot is a charming decision that gave heart to the film. The Murakami formula works, and certain details might play as innocuous Easter Eggs for fans. On the other hand, Burning as pastiche runs dangerously close to parody – there is no need for the Manic-Pixie cliché to accompany the critique of how violence against women goes unnoticed, especially when directed at solitary, self-destructive women. Even more, Haemi was reconstructed as an almost by-the-books Dream Girl – special quirks include pantomime, sexual freedom, ability to doze off anywhere, spontaneous travelling, and more – which feels like a gaping flaw and disappointment in an otherwise chilling thriller, and perhaps an unconsciously misogynistic choice in an otherwise gripping critique of a patriarchal world. It can be argued that her characterisation shows her complexity, but it is undebatable that Burning takes Jongsu’s perspective, which of Haemi is a victimised sexual-romantic fantasy that remains so throughout the film. Meanwhile, the choice to reset the protagonist as a lost, quiet, disconnected young novelist (opposed to a well-off writer in his thirties) is fine, but seems to be such a go-to characterisation, and such a typical Murakami protagonist, that I wish for more in a ‘loose adaption’.

Aside from this, Burning is a triumph in slow-burn filmmaking. Hints to answers are given, but Lee manages to retain a successful ambiguity and an alluring strangeness. Its slow pacing keeps one on the edge of their seat, especially in the second half, where Jongsu becomes growingly obsessed with Ben and his greenhouse-burning hobby. The camera takes its time, breathes, and remains on our characters and their environment, refraining from melodrama – which would be an easy option given the material. Two scenes in particular – one of Haemi dancing, and the finale – are shot with delicacy, capturing the beauty of destruction and a dreamy wonder that is breathtakingly simple at the same time.

Despite my complaints of Jongsu and Haemi’s characterisations, I do appreciate how well their disgruntledness and loneliness capture a side commentary on youth unemployment and its dissociative culture. Even better is Lee’s subtle approach to the subject. Two sides of the same coin, Yoo Ah-in and Jeon Jong-seo reveal their own distinct isolation and pain, the latter stealing the show with all of the character’s quirks and eccentricity (The Manic-Pixie is up to criticism, but it does intrinsically bring out some scene-stealing acting.) They are drawn to each other because they are both lost and forgotten by the world, but due to their weakness of character that attraction is ultimately disrupted by the presence of someone who engulfs and feeds on their infatuation with destruction – the character that, pun-intended, burns into memory.

Steven Yeun’s breakout performance as Ben is by far the highlight of the film, and personally a revelation of his talents. There is always something off about Ben – he is an enigma, suspicious and perhaps sociopathic, and thus the audience is encouraged, with Jongsu, to develop an obsession over him. Yeun carries the role with grace, complexity, and a polite smile, and it is refreshing and empowering to see an Asian-American actor stretch his acting muscles outside the restrictiveness of Hollywood. Gone is the heroic Glenn from the Walking Dead – in his place stands a strange man who enjoys burning greenhouses. Yeun’s range can definitely be observed here, and his intensity bounces off the increasingly frenetic Yoo Ah-in as the film takes a turn to the intense.

Burning burns like winds in the winter, scathing the skin with an expertly-told chilling story and insight. Flaws in characterisation aside, the film is utterly visually stunning and emotionally well balanced, bringing alive not only the three characters, but also the world around them. Lee takes his time to tell the tale, resulting in a fascinating crescendo that ends with powerful ambiguity.

Cigarettes are dragged and put out, but the question of greenhouses lingers on.

8/10

Burning (버닝) will be generally released in the UK on February 1st, 2019. In the meantime, check out its trailer:

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.

Milo Garner reviews Peter Jackson’s technically and visually experimental WW1 documentary. 

Among the unruly film conservationist community – an elusive and underloved subsection of society at the best of times – there is much discontent afoot. Peter Jackson’s latest project, a commission from the Imperial War Museum to mark the centenary of the First World War’s conclusion, has been considered by some to be an act of barbarity, an unjustifiable marring of historical record for the sake of empty titillation. This project, entitled They Shall Not Grow Old, is understandably controversial: Jackson has taken archive footage from the Western Front and not only colourized it, but dubbed it with sound and rendered it in 3D. That’s not even to mention blowing up 4:3 to 16:9, often considered a sin in its own right.

The arguments against this kind of treatment are plentiful and not without merit, especially the suggestion that in making these images more ‘realistic’, one forgets that they do not necessarily represent reality at all. Not only is much of the footage used staged or in some way manipulated – what is off-frame is often more indicative than what is on – but also an artefact of how these historical people viewed their own present. To ‘enhance’ these images with tools of modernity might, in an extreme example, not be so dissimilar to colouring in cave drawings in order to make the horses more lifelike. While yes, that much would be achieved, it would also be a total distortion of the way in which early man perceived and recorded horses – it may seem more real to us, but not in any helpful way.

This angle, while entirely valid, misses the aims of Jackson in creating this film. He is not attempting to make better the images of his forefathers, but rather to use the data contained within those images so as to construct a fantasy that might, itself, communicate an idea of the First World War. Little of what Jackson presents can be considered ‘real’ – the colours are imagined, the sounds invented, the voices guessed at – but just like any costume drama set in the Great War, that does not stop these from being authentic. By adapting the indexical record of the First World War, which even if staged or manipulated is still constructed with genuine soldiers in genuine locations, Jackson can then inject this impression of the past with his own expressive interpretation. This is not an improvement of old footage so much as an attempt to use this footage in an essentially fictional recreation of the First World War. He wishes to recreate it according to the aesthetic of direct human senses – we see in colour, we hear synchronised sound, we perceive depth. So too did the soldiers Jackson wishes to depict, and through their eyes he attempts to see. This is, of course, impossible – therein lies the art of cinema.

But does it work? In large part, I think it does. Jackson opens the film with framed and untouched (besides the unobtrusive addition of mild 3D effects) footage depicting recruitment and preparation early in the war. As this leads into the fighting – he structures the film in a simplistic, linear fashion – the various effects sweep over the screen. The impact is at first startling; the distortion inherent in the footage met with image smoothing techniques, and occasionally garish colours, initially suggests the tone of 80s video footage, almost as though we are viewing some kind of re-enactment. But as the film continues the imagery becomes more consistent, and at once more intimate. This is not to say that black-and-white footage is inherently alienating; rather that to see these young faces laughing or speaking, smiling in impossible close-ups, is to imbue them with something lost in the limitations of silent documentary of the 1910s. It feels almost wrong – especially as a student of history – to suggest such a superficial (and fictitious) adaptation of old images can change their effect in any meaningful way. Then again it is that replication of the human sensory condition, and application of modern aesthetic sensibilities, that in Jackson’s own words ‘reach[es] through the fog of time and pull[s] these men into the modern world’.

Unfortunately this fascinating gambit lies in contrast to the worn-over and school-friendly structure the rest of the film rests in (albeit understandably, given a copy will be sent to every school in the UK). Every theme is covered individually, each given a few minutes, the course of the war covered in as wide and generic a sense as possible. While the interviews that underscore the entire film are of course specific, they are rent from their direct context so as to allow them the bizarre position of ‘general anecdote’. The wheres and the whens are forgone for the general atmosphere of war. This is justifiable, but feels rote, and paradoxically impersonal. Jackson will often cut to close-ups of soldiers faces to directly humanize them, and yet these soldiers will remain anonymous, matched to voices that are not their own, intercut with battles in which they did not fight. As associative montage this might be effective, but it does seem a little at odds with Jackson’s initial purpose. This also leads to Jackson’s trouble when representing scenes of battle in a larger sense, as the exact kind of grittiness he would like to impart was never captured (or archived) on film, other than the grisly leftovers. As such he must fall back on printed images of battle, with a ballistic soundscape of artillery fire and the occasional bagpipe standing in for visual effect. A conspicuously absent feature given its core importance to understanding the experience of war, even if the descriptions on the soundtrack serve as adequate substance in lieu.

They Shall Not Grow Old is, as such, a strange contradiction of sorts. As a documentary, it is entirely uninspiring in form, and other than its brief treatment of the post-war experience it offers little novel in terms of structure. But the direct experience of witnessing these soldiers resurrected by digital technologies rebukes any loss in confidence instantly. To see these men looking so immediately real (the footage not only colourized, but stabilized, and smoothed) is startling. While the black-and-white footage untreated could hardly be described as inhuman, it has previously served as a unique sort of cage for the men of the early 20^th century. Where wars of deeper history lack such filmic record – and so are simply imagined in colour, inspired by clearly contrived elements of visual art (paintings etc.) – the nature of film is such that these monochrome images become a sort of phantom memory for those recalling these battles beyond their years. It is in much the same manner that young children often wonder if the past was in black-and-white entirely. And it is for these children especially that the film has been constructed; it aims to break this silver cage, and create a new, vivid, memory of the past. In this it undoubtedly succeeds.

7/10

They Shall Not Grow Old is currently showing at the Imperial War Museum. 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.

Raphael Duhamel reviews Barry Jenkins’ intimate and introspective drama on race and family.

Two years after I Am Not Your Negro, novelist James Baldwin’s singular voice still echoes in the heads of those who fight for equality. The American author’s fifth novel, If Beale Street Could Talk, is the quintessential expression of his talent, bursting with spirit and rage. Director Barry Jenkins’ adaptation unequivocally does the original work justice, successfully blending artistic prowess and grounded storytelling to surpass his own previous achievement with the Academy Award-winning Moonlight.

The opening credits only offer a few words from Baldwin, revealing that Beale Street is the metaphorical birth place of every black person in America, from his own drug-addicted biological father to the legendary Louis Armstrong. No actor or actress’ name is featured, and Jenkins himself is not even mentioned, which goes to show that his auteurism is first and foremost a respectful and restrained one, letting the narrative, rather than his newly established household name, affect the audience.

If Beale Street Could Talk recounts the passionate relationship between 19-year-old Tish (KiKi Layne) and her first and only love Fonny (Stephan James), who dreams of becoming a sculptor until he is unfairly arrested for rape. After Tish finds out that she is pregnant, her mother (Regina King) proceeds to do everything in her power to exonerate her stepson; however, they cannot move beyond the restrictions of African-American life in 1950s Harlem. Baldwin’s title finds its resonance in his characters’ tragedy:  if Beale Street could talk, it would cry out Fonny’s innocence and testify for him and every other blameless black person in court. But Jenkins’ film stresses that these innocents’ sufferings are doomed to remain silenced until their country wakes up from its deep and intolerant slumber.

Stephan James tackles the role of Alonzo ‘Fonny’ Hunt, an intrepid and charismatic young man with a singular expression, channelling Andre Holland’s performance in Moonlight. James’ slight squint gives him a piercing gaze, perfectly captured by Jenkins’ trademark portrait shots in which the actors to look directly into the camera, as if they were in direct conversation with the audience. This aspect adds a certain earnestness and poetic intimacy to the film, almost blurring the frontiers between fiction and documentary and turning the characters’ story into an account of African-American life in New York City. The feature boldly and seamlessly transitions between real photographic footage, narrated by Tish, and more cinematic episodes, a creative decision which never diminishes the story’s impact but rather reinvigorates it in a Spike Lee-esque fashion.

More personal sequences depicting Tish and Fonny’s relationship are equally well executed in an even more mastered and fearless style than in Jenkins’ previous picture. The two protagonists’ lovemaking is pure and candid, punctuated with quasi-Godardian dialogue in an otherwise conventional screenplay. Tish’s bright-coloured outfits seem to indicate her lively enthusiasm and youthful inexperience, contrasting with Fonny’s plain, working class clothes; however, she endures and survives with the help of her family, showing her hateful stepmother and the world that she is up to the task. Layne’s confident portrayal of this brave and reserved 19-year-old, embracing God’s gift of a baby boy, undeniably makes her the film’s true breakout star.

The rest of the cast is comprised of more familiar faces, such as Diego Luna and Pedro Pascal, all standing as emblems of various minorities. Their incorporation into the narrative reveals how intertwined their fates are with those of Tish and Fonny, perhaps demonstrating the necessity of convergence among similar struggles. Brian Tyree Henry only has a few minutes of screen time, but he manages to fit a memorable performance in a single exceptional sequence. The Atlanta star tells the story of his arrest and prison time – for car theft, in spite of the fact that he does not know how to drive – with such intensity and dignity that it suffuses the film and lingers in the spectator’s mind. Dave Franco, however, plays the role of a Jewish landlord, a confounding miscast considering that every other actor stands out in his own unique way. Franco is hardly believable as a religious proprietor, performing as if he had walked on set without reading the script and making no effort to transform into a credible character.

The two-hour drama, despite its focus on racial injustice, never gives in to Manichean representations of society. The woman who accuses Fonny of rape and is pressured to indict him is Puerto Rican, but her own marginalized social status does not influence her allegation; she refuses, even after Fonny’s stepmother’s ceaseless efforts, to change her testimony. Jenkins follows Baldwin in indicating that the American legal system is broken, achieving the unfortunate feat of cheating both the victim and the perpetrator in such cases.

If Beale Street Could Talk’s conclusion, however, ultimately demonstrates that these characters are far from leading the miserable existences one may have portended. Although the film does not imply that the fates of African-Americans can or will ever be equal to their white compatriots, the outcome of Tish and Fonny’s story is hopeful, rooted in the deeply Christian belief that suffering and hardship will always be redeemed in the kingdom of God.

If Beale Street Could Talk will have its general UK release on February 8th, 2019. Meanwhile, check out the trailer below: