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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.

Tags: British, cuties, Devil, fear, horror, terror, violence, wishes
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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.

Tags: British, cuties, horror, Irish
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Wanda Nevada

Sunday, August 8th, 2010

Hmm, I coulda sworn I had some semblance of a review sketched out to come back to for this, but it seems I don’t. I didn’t have a lot to say about it anyway. Contrary to the last two reviews where the movies had been in my must-see queue far too long and I found myself wondering why I hadn’t seen them sooner, this one (though also in that queue and, until it appeared on MGM HD, seemingly even harder-to-find) was mostly a disappointment, because I really was quite excited to finally see it.

As with Charlotte Gainsbourg in Charlotte For Ever, there’s a pure-aesthetic-ness that accompanied Brooke Shields almost everywhere she went in the mid-to-late 70s, and here is no exception. When she winds up on horseback towards the end of the movie, I’ll admit I personally couldn’t have been happier no matter how pointless the rest of the movie really was.

Like I said I was kinda stuck over what to write about this one but then I found the perfect one line on an IMDb comment, which simply says “too cute to be bad” and that’s really this movie in a nutshell. To continue the connection with the past couple of reviewed movies, like Sundays and Cybele it’s a sweet-natured Lolita story of sorts too, though it really harks back more to the likes of Little Miss Marker…

Peter Fonda wins Brooke Shields in a poker game then carts her across the country and they get involved in a treasure hunt. If there’s anything controversial it’s only at the end when he appears to sweep her away from the orphanage in a convertible. Still, overall, it’s really more fun than anything else, and for me just the pure shots of Brooke at that age in jeans on a horse are more than worth the watching for.

Tags: cuties, gambling, road movie, treasure
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Charlotte for Ever

Sunday, August 8th, 2010

I actually didn’t even realise this was like a full length movie until I got ahold of it some time in the past year… I might’ve been more anxious/excited about finding it had I known this, but to be honest, even then I was more excited when I got hold of the “soundtrack” to the movie, Charlotte Gainsbourg’s debut CD “Lemon Incest”, which despite being strange, tacky and cheesy, I still think is oddly addictive and I’d even go so far as to say has more to recommend on it than Gainsbourg’s latest album IRM (though her album 5:55, I rush to add, is aeons above anything I’ll mention here…)

The plot, if you can call it that, is simple… Serge Gainsbourg plays an heavily alcoholic (we see him throwing up in the sink – apparently Gainsbourg genuinely doing this for the camera – and pissing blood – it’s not for the squeamish) screenwriter, sole guardian of his daughter, his wife/her mother having died in a car crash which may or may not have been caused by him. Big Gainsbourg is suicidal, Little Gainsbourg apathetic and a teenager. There are arguments, nudity, it’s all very French. That’s… about it lol.

I kinda feel compelled, even though I respect all involved in the movie, to say, it really is pretentious twaddle. But like “Lemon Incest”, there’s just something about it… and maybe it is simply that Charlotte is just such a joy to look at, clothed or not; or that Serge has that non-acting way of acting brilliantly, his face so worn down by a life truly lived. There’s pure aesthetics here that need no human hands to turn into art, and it’s something I’ll come back to likely again and again.

Tags: cuties, father-daughter, French, music, trash
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Sundays and Cybele aka Les dimanches de Ville d’Avray

Sunday, August 8th, 2010

It’s a long time since a movie so quickly became what I’m sure will ultimately be one of my permanent all-time faves, and this one has been sitting in my must-see queue for far too long, almost a year which is crazy considering how long and how badly I wanted to see it following various recommendations.

To me, this is one of the best versions, if not the best version, of the “Lolita story”. I have to explain what that means to me because I know some would be quick to disagree because of all the controversy about the “original” Lolita and direct adaptations thereof. I use Lolita as a shorthand for any story that has this complicated type of relationship between an older man and younger girl… some are sexual, some are not, but they all bring something to the table of what I think one of the most important discussions to be had, and Sundays and Cybele brings heaps to that table.

The movie’s closest recent relative is probably John Duigan’s Lawn Dogs, which bears the same unique quality as Sundays in that the relationship concerned is immediately made somewhat more “appropriate” by the older man being a kind of child himself, a victim of the horrors of war resulting in amnesia. He comes across Cybele (whose name is never actually given until a crucial moment at the end; one could argue the French original title would probably make the whole thing more poignant) sort of accidentally but the nature of his attraction is immediately clear… there’s nothing lecherous here whatsoever, just a lonely man who finds happiness in a beautiful child’s face and then finds that she needs him too. Of course, as in life, not everyone sees it that way.

There is a beauty to the second act, which mostly concerns the man’s regular Sunday meetings with Cybele, which I haven’t seen in a long time and is hard to put into words. As they walk along the river in what seems to be a constantly thickening haze, sometimes seen in the reflection of concentric circles on the water surface (“We’re in our home now,” Cybele says over this image), I lost myself in this movie as I have in few others, and truly didn’t want it to end. Though the movie takes a tragic turn, it’s these earlier, happier scenes that will stay with me, like the best kind of summer romance movies, you almost feel like you had an affair with Cybele too, and no matter where the movie ends, nothing can take those moments away. Cybele not only refuses to tell anybody else her real name at the movie’s emotional climax, but denies the name given to her previously by the orphanage, leaving us the viewers as the only ones left who really “knew her”. Like I say it’s a rare film that breaks through the screen and touches me so powerfully.

Tags: age, crime, cuties, fear, French, friendship, misunderstanding, romance, time
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Toy Story 3

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

This is one of those reviews that’s kind of easy to write but at the same time kinda hard. Easy because I know exactly what I thought of it, hard because it’s all been said up to a month previously by other people, lol. As you probably have heard, this is pretty much one of the best movies of the year, it’s practically unanimous, and I’m glad to say that for once I agree with such a widespread view.

It’s kind of crazy to think that I’ve now seen every part of this trilogy in the cinema and even when I saw the first one, I wasn’t exactly a kid at 15. I remember taking my sister to see it, I remember loving the music (I was into all Disney music bigtime at the time) but probably more than anything revelling in the sheer hi-techery of the whole thing (“the whole movie was made on a computer!!”)

When Toy Story 2 was released, I forget what level of anticipation I really had for it. I was in the middle of college and pretty much high on Disney after Tarzan (I’d end up doing my final dissertation on Disney). What I remember is badly wanting my own Jessie doll after the movie, her story being the one that really resonated most with me.

I saw the first part again when it was re-released in 3D… part two never made it to our cinema in that form, or I just missed it, but these are movies that are always fresh in my mind. The 3D worked, I thought, pretty well in that re-release, but more than anything it was just awesome to see it on a huge screen again, and projected digitally. It felt strangely pure or something (as opposed to, say, a 70mm oldie being projected digitally).

I didn’t necessarily doubt this installment would be as great as people were saying (I’d seen the trailer and it really boded well on the emotional front). But having recently seen that first one and once again realise just how perfect it is, on top of the wonders that Pixar have given us even in the 11 years since part 2, I didn’t put my expectations too high.

Well I’ve seen Toy Story 3 twice now… first in a dodgy download version because I simply needed to see it before I read too much about it and spoiled it for myself. I trusted, as I always do, that if the movie was as good as people were saying, the quality of the presentation would not make a huge difference to the story, and I wasn’t wrong. Like many people, I bawled not just like a baby but like someone with serious mental problems LOL.

This movie has some serious emotional weight, like the most recent of Pixar’s productions Wall•E and Up. What’s different here, however, is how those emotions are spread throughout the picture. There are two intense emotional beats towards the end of the movie, but the melancholic undertones are there right from the moment (after a “fantasy” opening similar to the way the first two movies open) we re-enter Andy’s bedroom, through the POV of his mom holding a video camera.

I won’t talk about those two parts at the end, except to say that they worked just as well on my flat laptop screen as they did in enormous 3D. My opinion of 3D remains the same as I think I’ve said before, and it’s just exactly the same as my opinion of seeing movies on the big screen in general. It’s always nice to see movies larger than life, but it’s simply not always possible. Almost all of us have more favourite movies that we’ve never seen on the big screen than ones that we have, so I’m pretty sure we can all agree that if a movie is good enough it doesn’t necessarily need a big screen projection. It’s nice, it adds to the experience, it immerses you more, but it doesn’t change the quality of the film.

I’m still only giving the movie 4 hearts right now because I’m remembering the original and how absolutely perfect that was right down to the screenplay structure etc, and I feel like to a certain extent those massive emotional punches at the end throw this instalment off-balance in a similar way to those last two Pixar productions I mentioned (though by nowhere near as much… plus they made me cry a lot more). I’m in near total agreement however with those calling the trilogy as it stands one of the best trilogies of all time. The consistency over 15 years really is incredible, not to mention the sheer uniqueness of this world… and while I’ve really focussed like everyone else on the huge emotional impact of this one, it has just as much excitement, humour, thrills and invention as the others.

I wanted to say something about Jessie but I can’t find anywhere above to slip it in lol. Like I said I had a huge crush on Jessie after the second movie, and she had the big emotional moment of that movie that really made me love it most, in her backstory with Emily (cleverly echoed here in Lotso’s story; though Lotso of course reacts very differently to being left behind). I had actually almost forgotten how much I loved her so much that she wasn’t even a factor in my excitement about seeing part 3. Then she appeared and I just fell in love all over again. There’s more made of the funny relationship between her and Buzz that began in the second movie, and in the midst of this are some insanely stylised, romantically-lit shots of her that just wowed me. It’s her face that really carries the first of those aforementioned emotional punches at the end and all I need to do is recall that face and her hand reaching out to start crying all over again. This is a wonderful, wonderful addition to a practically perfect series of movies. But you know that already.

Oh yes: another extra thing to mention as I won’t write it anywhere else… moreso for me than the 3D among reasons to see this movie on the big screen is the short that precedes it. I always forget that Pixar put these shorts before all their features and this one like so many of them is so great it threatens to supplant the memory of the movie. It’s called “Day & Night” and combines 2D and 3D animation in an ingenious way that really can’t be described well to anyone who hasn’t seen it. It’s about conflicting ideas and perspectives from the broadest scale to the most specific (you could argue it’s simply about the co-existence of 2D and 3D cinema). It has insane technique and a great message in the perfect balance that the best of Pixar has to offer. I’ll be very disappointed if it isn’t at least nominated for an Oscar next year (likewise, of course, the feature it precedes!)

Tags: age, animation, cuties, Disney, Pixar, sequel
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Dr. Who and the Daleks / Daleks’ Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D.

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

So, background to my watching these is: the first part of the season finale to Matt Smith’s first run as The Doctor on BBC1 thrilled me so much, and there have been so many references to the legacy of all the old Doctors in this latest series, that I decided to watch the whole thing from the beginning. My plan was to watch everything (reconstructed episodes where necessary – a lot of stuff was “junked” by the BBC in the 70s) in the order that it aired or was released, and there were a few episodes between these two movies, but I ended up watching them one after the other, reasoning (despite the fact I really hate when fans talk of “canon”) that they’re not really canon anyway.

I’m kinda-sorta sure I may have seen the first of these at least before, but my early Doctor Who experiences are a major blur and the imagery so iconic across the board that I could really be remembering anything. Both these movies are remakes of existing stories in the Hartnell years, but from the very title music and credit design, you know the approach is gonna be different. The Doctor is painted here as a much more fun and contemporary character than he was in the early years of the TV series, if only through the way he’s presented (Peter Cushing’s actual performance is beautifully refined as ever).

You’ll find way better informed views on why the TV versions of these stories were ideologically better than these lavish remakes all over the net, and that’s why I decided to blend these two movies into just one review here. What will bring me back personally to watch both movies again is two-fold… firstly, that very lavishness in the design. Early Doctor Who on the TV was adventurous but because of the sheer number of episodes frequently came out wobbly, cheap, even to the point of line-fluffage from the actors. There’s none of that here, and the sets, effects etc are simply beautiful.

Secondly, and more importantly, there’s Roberta Tovey. I love that they make The Doctor’s granddaughter so much younger here. There’s something just plain more aesthetically satisfying about Susan being genuinely precocious, not to mention her physical size, in these environments. She’s far more convincing as “An Unearthly Child” for me than the teenaged Carole Ann Ford (though fine in her own way) ever was in the TV series, and her presence just makes the whole thing a little more fun. If I ever did see either of these when I was younger, there’s no doubt I related most immediately to her, and I’m not sure if anything’s changed

In short, these movies aren’t exactly essential viewing for anyone be they film-lovers, modern Who-fans or passing sci-fi geeks. But if you’re just a little of all the above, they are worth a look. For the time they were made they have crazy production values and Cushing makes for a Doctor so good (if, as I said, you can ignore the presentation) that you almost wish there was more.

Tags: cuties, sci-fi, time travel, TV
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Harriet the Spy: Blog Wars

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

Words can’t express how much I feared this one, but I knew I would have to watch it if only so my objections could at least be informed, lol. It sat in my collection for a few months before I finally plucked up the courage (okay, I just wanted this week to get my total 2010 movie views up to 10 so I could post a list before the middle of the year… additional: I’m running about 3 weeks behind in actually posting stuff right now so that doesn’t quite make sense lol…).

The first 5 minutes surprised me. Much of the style feels drawn straight from the (in my opinion) flawless 1997 movie by Bronwyn Hughes. It feels very much like Michelle Trachtenberg’s Harriet grown up a few years. It reminds you that, actually, that treasured first film incarnation of Louise Fitzhugh’s eponymous heroine was also a modernisation of the original, which was set in time it was written, the 1960s. Then, “Spy Teen” appears. A typical, commercial, teen movie with a heartthrobby star. The fear strikes, oh no, this über-modern Harriet is surely going to fall for him and the movie’s about to collapse. But she doesn’t… it’s hate at first sight. That’s our Harriet.

And you know what? Despite my stoic expectations that at some point it would surely turn awful somehow, for the life of me I can’t say it did. Of course it’s nowhere close to the Trachtenberg movie let alone the books… and of course I’d still prefer they never even tried this version of the story at all. But given that they did try, this is about as good as they could’ve made it. They genuinely nod their head to the ’97 version, and excuse themselves for any failing in the far worse “Spy Teen” subplot. Even on the Disney TV movie level that it stands, it’s a hell of a lot better than Camp Rock or Get a Clue, etc… but more importantly it was so better than my expectations. I mean I’d actually probably watch it again. For fun.

Tags: adaptation, cuties, remake, sequel
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