The Runaways - Punk Chicks

I was very interested in this film when its release was announced last year, but obviously it was nowhere to be found at any of the local cinemas in Berkshire. 'The Runaways' details the dramatic rise and fall of the all-girl punk band of the same name. Manufactured by sleazy record execs (is there any other kind?) in the mid 1970s as an attempt to tap into a new market, they lived a hectic drug-fuelled life and toured briefly before falling apart in a blaze of Rock 'n Roll clichés.

Kristen Stewart (well-known as 'the chick from Twilight') plays the driving force behind the band, Joan Jett, while Dakota Fanning (I'm not quite sure how to put this without sounding like a pervert - but Fanning has grown up a lot since she starred in the remake of 'War of the Worlds') is Cherie Currie. Jet is depicted as a street kid with a craving to dress in leather and play guitar while Currie is an aimlessly rebellious David Bowie wannabe, plucked out of a crowd at a grungy night club to become the face of the band. The Runaways' producer shamelessly selects Currie for her jail bait appeal, before anyone even asks her if she can sing a note. The band have their first practice in a trailer park before going on to tour various scummy bars in the USA and later Japan before quickly splitting up.

I was worried that the film might try to claim that the Runaways were actually good, or that what they were doing was somehow musically valid. Of course musically they've never made a blip on anyone's radar. I'm glad that the film didn't try that kind of re-writing of music history as it would have devalued the whole thing. Instead we see a story of the band without anything in the way of positive spin. The film focuses on the fact that punk music in general was pretty much rubbish from a pure 'music' point of view, and that everything in that scene has always really been about the look (both for the guys and the girls). There's no real difference between a typical punk band and an all-girl combo who snort cocaine and prance around stage in their pants screaming about hating their parents - it's no more or less musically valid than most of the punk scene.

By the end of the film I wasn't entirely sure what the point was. There was clearly no intent to re-invent rock history, nor was there any real attempt to cast the creation of The Runaways as either a good or bad thing for music, women, the music industry or anyone else you'd care to think of. Perhaps the point was to tell us about the existence of this experiment in manufacturing bands and highlight how the cynical manipulation of musical talent by 'the industry' is no new phenomenon? Maybe we're expected to make our own minds up about whether The Runaways were exploited unfairly, blazed a trail for other young rebellious women or perhaps simply weren’t very good and deserved to fail (although Jett has since had moderate success). Whatever the reason for making this film, it was fairly interesting and reasonably absorbing for its 2 hours runtime. Kristen Stewart was especially good I thought, I expect she'll have a career outside of the Twilight series after all.

Black Dynamite

Black Dynamite does for Blaxploitation films what Machete did for the wild west revenge flick genre. It's a tongue-in-cheek film in which the stereotypes and tropes of a genre are exploited to great comic effect. Everything from the 1970s Blaxploitation era is here, from massive hair to clean-cut suits, exploding cars to laughably evil white characters and phrases like "Jive Turkey".

The plot (as much as it matters) follows the exploits of 'Black Dynamite', an all-round paragon who discovers that local drug dealers have killed his brother. Black Dynamite is some kind of amalgam of all the heroic figures of Blaxploitation movies; he's a kung fu fighter, ladies man, Vietnam-vet, ex-CIA agent and all-round legend wrapped up in a perfectly-tailored suit with his very own theme tune for when he walks into a room.

Not only is the material of the Blaxploitation era lampooned, also the production values of many of the films of the era are too. One awesome moment sees the main character stand up quickly from a desk and hit his head on a sound boom while the camera struggles to follow. It gets even better a few minutes later when an actor changes in the middle of a fight scene. There's also a surreal sequence when Black Dynamite and his crew 'solve' the central mystery in a diner with some fantastically illogical thought processes ("The Roman god of war is Mars, which if you spell backwards and remove the 's' is Ram - which is the symbol of the astrological sign Aries" and on and on...).

It all goes a bit mental at the end when Black Dynamite has a nunchucks fighter with Richard Nixon in the Oval Office (seriously - that's what happens), and obviously it's not 'Airplane', but as spoofs go there have been few funnier in recent years.

The Fall - looks great, but what is it?

Saw a film last night as part of our ongoing 'weird film night' series that emphatically ticked the weird box. 'The Fall' is about a girl (Alexandria) and a man (Roy) who are both stuck in hospital wards, Roy has suffered a terrible injury and has been dumped by his girlfriend - I think. He wants to kill himself and so starts telling Alexandria stories as a way of befriending her - his goal is to get her to bring him the drugs that he can use to overdose himself. At least that what I think was going on.

This all sounds fair enough, but 'The Fall' isn't a traditional kind of film. It focuses on the fantasy that Roy is telling Alexandria rather than the real life drama in the hospital. This fantasy tale could be derived from any number of standard fantasy tropes (band of heroes, evil overlord, freeing the slaves etc) and is the centre piece of the film. It's shot on a variety of locations where there's lush scenery and ample opportunity to dress everyone up in big bright colours and weird outfits. It certainly looks great, but it lacks any connection to the "real world" in the film and so any metaphor they were going for ends up falling flat.

No amount of interesting cuts, clever cinematography or quirkily amusing mispronunciations by Alexandria can make up for the fact that there is no plot or narrative in 'The Fall'. Most of the time the characters are difficult to understand or connect with, while events in the real world seem to have been made deliberately confusing as some kind of attempt at 'art'. By concentrating on the - admittedly great-looking - fantasy world of Guy's story, the story of the real world is completely lost. By the end I wasn't sure who the main character really was, if his girlfriend had really left him or even if I cared about any of it to be honest. The best bit was the montage of 1920s film stunts at the end - they really didn't have health and safety laws back then!

In reality 'The Fall' shouldn’t be called a film at all, it's more of a weirdly interesting art installation. I wont be recommending it.

The Black Swan

Let's start this review with a statement: Black Swan is not a dancing film. Much in the same way that Aronofsky's 'The Wrestler' wasn't about the amateur wrestling scene, Black Swan is about obsession, blood, sweat, tears and a near pathological dedication to the sometimes unhealthy pursuit of perfection. It's a psychological thriller in which Natalie Portman plays Nina - a young woman long repressed by her mother and living in fear of her own dreams. Nina dances for a famous New York City ballet company and is selected against her expectations to play the lead part in their new adaptation of the classic Swan Lake - the role of a lifetime.

Nina is required to play the parts of both the black and the white swan. The ballet company's creative director Thomas (Vincent Cassel) tells her that her perfect form and attention to detail make her the ideal white swan, however her black swan lacks the danger, swagger and seductiveness that the part requires. Try as she might she is unable to perfect the moves that will bring the black swan to life. Perhaps there's something deep inside her, something hidden and repressed keeping her from exploring her darker side. She looks to flamboyant and sensual co-dancer Lily (Mila Kunis) to find the darkness she craves - but what Pandora's Box will she open by finding it?

Against this setting we have a superbly-pitched psychological horror / thriller in which Nina wrestles with her own conscious, slowly loosing her mind as she tries to escape her mother's clutches to find her hidden dark side - a dark side she has to embrace to become the black swan. The film's main theme is the idea that striving for perfection demands not only dedication, but obsession bordering on psychosis - for anything less means you didn't try hard enough. Nina becomes embroiled in her own obsession with becoming both sides of the swan, as she strives towards her own vision of perfection she isolates herself from friends, people, the world and eventually her own sanity.

It's a stunning performance from Natalie Portman. The camera is relentlessly in her face, never giving the audience time away from the physical pain, paranoia and fear her character exudes. God knows how much effort she had to go through to learn the ballet moves required of her. The film even serves as an allegory for the actress demanding perfection from herself in the role. There are several single-shot takes of Portman's dancing, there's nowhere for her to hide and no chance for a stunt double to come in - if no-one gives her an award then there's no justice. Aronofsky has outdone himself with the way 'Black Swan' looks. Claustrophobic from start to finish, the world of the film is eerily pure (lots of pure white and pure black colours going on) and unrelenting in picking Nina's life apart as she surges stutteringly towards her artistic finale. So typical of Aranofsky's films to look amazing while showing you a character's world falling apart.

Some might say the story is unoriginal and pretentious, others might point to the stereotypical characterisation of Nina and Thomas. With execution this good though I'm happy to put any of these doubts to one side. It's terrifying and beautiful at the same time, and the more I think about this the better I think it was. Black Swan has gone straight to the top of my preliminary 'film of the year' chart.