Posts Tagged ‘British’

Heartless

Heartless

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

“The darker it gets the more you see, but it’s got to get a lot darker before you see me.”

I had to watch this again in the end before I felt remotely able to write about it and I’m still unsure of what to say beyond simply knowing this is an incredible movie. This is my first experience of Philip Ridley’s work but on the strength of it I’ll certainly be looking back over his back catalogue, which I’ve heard even more good things about than I did this latest production. When they talked about this movie on the Five Live movie podcast I knew I had to see it because it sounded fascinating… it turned out to be even more so than I even expected.

The most recognisable aspect of the story is the Faust-like “deal with the devil” idea – best done in cinema so far, perhaps, in Alan Parker’s Angel Heart – but to make comparisons between this movie and that is barely touching the surface of the painful depths it goes into with the main character Jamie, played terrifically by Jim Sturgess. Where Parker’s movie blended Faust with film noir, Heartless – with the rest of its cast including the likes of Ruth Sheen and Timothy Spall as Jamie’s parents – feels more like Mike Leigh‘s Faust by way of the recent Harry Brown …and still that doesn’t begin to cover it.

Jamie’s a young man born with a large birthmark on his face that makes him feel like he’ll never be loved as others around him, living in a terror-stricken city that he feels completely unable to deal with. We see scars on his wrists. His father is dead, and in a shocking early scene his mother, too, is taken from him (slight spoiler, sorry; but this is a movie I believe can’t even be spoiled if you’ve seen it 10 times). There seems to be something supernatural afoot, and Jamie in his desperation and sheer loss with the world (Sturgess plays much of his role with an almost bemused expression on his face even at the most horrendous scenarios) finds it all too easy to believe, so when a man steps in claiming he can fix it all with a molotov cocktail, he kinda figures what has he got to lose?

It’s at this point when I first watched the movie that it really and truly grabbed me. For reasons that will be clearer the better you know me, I’m something of a sucker for stories where wishes are granted by supernatural means, and the way Jamie’s “wish” is “granted” here, it’s hard to describe but I believed in it completely. If you hadn’t guessed, his wish entails the good riddance of his birthmark, and the love of an Eastern European girl he met earlier in the movie. If you hadn’t guessed, too, all is still far from as it seems. He gets all that, more, and bizarrely the strange man’s young Indian helper as a daughter… which makes this strange man just a little upset.

This is where I lose my train of thought as to where this review is going, lol. This movie just has so much in it that I won’t even feel like I can adequately sum up my thoughts about it after 5 or 10 viewings. I just know that I will watch it that many times. While the movie is assuredly of the horror genre, and has many spooky, grisly, indeed in places outrightly B-movie outrageous moments, it is also far from – as the title might suggest – heartless. The theme of the movie is torn between the beautiful lyric (from a song sung by Sturgess on the glorious soundtrack) above and the sentiment expressed by Jamie’s new and shortlived neighbour AJ, played by Noel Clarke: “That’s the real bravery. To know nothing means anything and still wanna get out of f**king bed.” The last half hour of the movie changes everything you feel beforehand, and that’s why I needed to watch it again, and I’m still wanting to go back for more. For what it is, it’s a stunning movie, heartfelt, dangerous, and willing to be a little strange. Sturgess is fantastic, and the soundtrack beautiful. You really have to see this movie.



The Daisy Chain

The Daisy Chain

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

I got wind of this one after someone compared it to one of my faves from last year, Orphan but, like the last few movies reviewed (lol this is turning into a theme), it sat in my collection for what in retrospect was simply way too long considering how much I got out of it when I finally gave it a chance.

What really struck me most about this movie was the atmosphere. As I often do, I tweeted about it while watching, and looking back one of my most succinct comments was that it felt so chilling that a Dementor (those soul-sucking ghouls from Harry Potter) could’ve made it. The movie opens on a young couple relocating somewhere in Ireland, the wife pregnant with child… they should be happy, you’d think, but melancholy hangs like a cloud over every move they make. You can’t help but wonder what darkness lies in their past, nor hope for the best of them in this new life (coupled of course, with the awful knowledge that you’re watching them begin that new life in what you know is to be a horror movie).

The reason they’re so sad is, they’ve lost a child before, but the sadness seems to spread beyond that. It feels utmostly raw in a truly British sense, that these are people kind of living in fear, struggling with life itself, even before any cinematic horror steps in. In other words, it’s the best kind of horror movie. Morton’s character spots a strange child living nearby, and a reclusive old man who damn near physically abuses her. The next thing you know, this girl’s home burns down, and she’s suspected by the community because they believe her to be a fairy changeling…

Morton and husband adopt her, and I think that’s probably as far as I need to go with any kind of plot description, lol. Though I’d agree with the recommendation of this as “a British Orphan”, it’s so much more than that. In Orphan, there’s that element of being slightly on the side of the evil child – at least there was for me, lol, and I don’t think I was alone… there’s something a little knowing, almost trashy there in that movie that brings out your own dark side. Here, the situation is so much heavier atmospherically and the situation that much more doubtful and real. One really doesn’t know what to think of the child here until more is revealed, at which point you feel too desperately for Morton to even question siding against her.

There’s a whole theme that runs right through to the end that makes you long to believe that Daisy is simply different, and victim herself to plain narrowmindedness, which is one the greatest and most common themes in horror itself, but it’s pretty hard to believe as the movie wears on. The climax of this movie is one of the closest things to making me physically look away from the screen that I’ve seen in ages, it’s really that tense. I admit the ending left me slightly disappointed… it’s not so much open as simply unfinished. But I’ll certainly watch this again in the future, and it’s easily one of the better British (ok, Irish, whatever…) movies I’ve seen in the past few years.

I probably don’t need to say how brilliant newcomer Mhairi Anderson is as the eponymous Daisy because in a movie like this I simply wouldn’t sound enthusiastic as this at all if the child actor weren’t perfect… but just for the record, she’s perfect, as are Morton, Mackintosh, and all the rest of the cast. I watched the movie a second time before finishing this review and it was just as compelling, so I feel more than confident in recommending it.



St. Trinian’s: The Legend of Fritton’s Gold

St. Trinian’s: The Legend of Fritton’s Gold

Monday, July 12th, 2010

As I said in my review of the first of these revivals of the old British series, I always loved the original Trinian’s movies, and since then I’ve seen them all again on DVD and can tell you I still pretty much do (some aren’t great but always fun). And I even enjoyed that first modern take on the idea… even if, to be honest, I can’t quite remember why right now. I do remember I loved the two first-years in that movie, though, and the first relief here was that they’re back… along with even more of the new intake.

For the most part, for its first half, this movie pretty much appeased my low expectations simply by being clear about its story and easy to follow, along with just a few good giggles (mostly from the younger ones, it has to be said… I can do without the “teen appeal” posing of the older set, I’m sure none of the original Trinian’s girls would’ve been seen dead in Gucci…)

Just when it began to get interesting, that is, delivering on all the setup, there’s a scene that pretty much killed it for me personally. It’s a straight up parody of The Exorcist only it actually concerns real possession, like, it’s not just done as a silly joke, it’s a plot point and everything. I know this is meant to be a silly movie, but that just seemed cheap and plain stupid. It’s not even contained to the one scene, and goes on way too long.

It picks up slightly after this but it’s a tough recovery. The final act here is practically identical to the first movie’s, with the girls descending onto London in a (pretty awesome to behold, has to be said) flashmob scene and infiltration of a Cultural Event. It feels a little lazy, but there is a least a little more from those younger girls from the first movie in this sequence. I think I was just still reeling from the terrible Exorcist gag to get back into it as much as I might’ve in the end. It’s a shame the people behind these remakes feel the need to go so low for a guaranteed laugh from the lowest common denominator etc. Likewise on the Sarah Harding casting and the “cool” treatment of the older girls. It’s way off the original concept to have such mainstream style in a St. Trinian’s movie, at least in my opinion. All this said, I’m sure I won’t be able to resist if they try again.



The Great St. Trinian’s Train Robbery

The Great St. Trinian’s Train Robbery

Sunday, May 3rd, 2009

This may be the only one of the originals to be shot in colour but I have to say I got almost nothing from it whatsoever. It irks me to say but here the kinky schoolgirl stuff evolves even further to the point where it is simply leery and smutty and not in the least bit sexy. To be honest, I’d kind of had my fill of the naughty schoolgirls by the time this one came around and I maybe didn’t give it a fair trial but it seems to me (if you’ll excuse the pun) the series had run out of steam too by this point. In 1966 cinema as a whole was on the verge of a giant tipping point that really blew up in 1967 and this whole concept is too much of the old world. I think there were still a couple of laughs to be had and if you like railways, particularly British ones, you’ll find plenty to behold – but it’s no Pure Hell.



The Pure Hell of St. Trinian’s

The Pure Hell of St. Trinian’s

Sunday, May 3rd, 2009

“There’ll always be trouble when there’s arson around.”

This gets off to a reassuring start as the school burns to the ground and all 200 pupils find themselves in a courtroom. As I said in the Blue Murder, it would’ve been easy to spin these off every year and just do the exact same story over and over again. The girls are even more sexualised here and ironically that makes it even less shocking really, there being nothing more pathetic in my eyes to people who clearly want to admit that some schoolgirls are sexy but their only way of showing it is to cast people who look to be 10 years out of school, lol. The Hamlet soliloquy to striptease is kind of brilliant (“It’s the suspense … it’s unbearable!”) and it has as many moments as the other films in the series, but again it’s hardly comic genius.

It could be the cumulative effect of watching them all so closely together (one does always need time to adjust to the style and tone of humour in older movies), it could be the beers I had while watching :-P Or it could be the image of the younger St. Trinian’s girls at the end storming an army base in tanks – nothing better in my mind than such a juxtaposition :) – but this is certainly my fave of the series so far and the one I’m likely to watch again sooner.



Blue Murder at St. Trinian’s

Blue Murder at St. Trinian’s

Sunday, May 3rd, 2009

This seems more like the St. Trinian’s I remember. What surprised me in the first of these was how many younger girls were in the cast. Here, most of the action involves cast whose average age probably rivals Grease for people playing schoolkids. There are still a handful of little ones, but this one clearly makes a move towards the “kinky schoolgirl” thing the series is perhaps unfortunately known best for. There’s some amusement as the girls hit the road and travel across Europe but this section is really a far too short montage when it could have made the whole movie. I was surprised how different the story was from the first movie – it would be easy with such a perfect set up to just bring in more girls and create more mischief in school bounds for 90 minutes. Having watched all four of the originals in one sitting, however, I must say this is one of, if not the, weakest.



The Belles of St. Trinian’s

The Belles of St. Trinian’s

Sunday, May 3rd, 2009

You’ve gotta love a movie that begins with the sound of machine gun fire over a girls’ school sign and a simple POV shot from the inside of a schoolbus over which is laid the sounds of its students screaming maniacally. I’ve probably seen most of the movies in this series in the past, I certainly remember watching at least one of them often when I was really little (which one, I haven’t a clue) – if you can call it watching, I probably liked the idea of mischief at school but missed most of the humour entirely.

What surprised me here is how much the recent remake resembled it – I had the feeling that from the start these movies were populated with much older girls wearing the uniforms etc but was surprised by the number of younger ones present here. Speaking of the remake, I feel the same way about these original St. Trinian’s movie re: the remake as I do the old Pink Panther movies … I’ve never been one to give any immediate high regard to a work on account of its age, and when it comes to discussing the remake in general many too many blindly overpraise the originals and slam the new when in purely objective terms they’re both just pretty unremarkable in the grand scheme of cinema. I really enjoyed the new St. Trinian’s movie, and I really enjoy this – neither will make it high on my faves lists.



Lola aka Twinky

Lola aka Twinky

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

I couldn’t help thinking of Melody during this for some reason. There’s something terrifically quirky about its treatment of what amounts to a slightly feeble Lolita story that’s kind of irresistible from the off, the stuff at the start pondering the pornography Charles Bronson’s character writes over a relatively upper class breakfast table (“Why do some of the boys have a capital F by their name?” “A CAPITAL F?!?!”) The matter-of-fact reveal of Lola’s relationship with Scott is actually at first kind of shocking, the way she jumps on him in their first scene together; but there’s something about the approach to it and Lola’s kinda uncontroversial age that quickly strips away anything salacious that one might come to the movie expecting – at it’s worst it’s still closer to St. Trinian’s than Nabokov … the acceptable face of hebephilia, which kinda isn’t that shocking in today’s climate let alone the late Sixties lol.

The music and clothes are all worth watching the movie for, though, and Susan George is kind of like a cross between Sue Lyon’s Lo and Hayley Mills (with a dash of the aforementioned Melody, Tracy Hyde, perhaps a few years later). It’s a cute movie for the most part, and it genuinely caught me off guard towards the end as Lola ponders, “is this the end for us?” and finally “divorces” Scott. It’s another obscure title I’m glad I got to see and took the time to watch.