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.

Andy Gray

I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about what I think about the recent Andy Gray / Richard Keys sexism thing. My initial reaction was that I shouldn't be surprised to discover that someone in football is a sexist. After all, I recall a time at Vicarage Road when during the half time presentations a man proposed to his girlfriend on the field. The West Ham fans' immediate reaction was to start chanting "Does she take it up the arse?".

Against this background it is hard to be shocked by Andy Gray's comments. Spend any amount of time hanging around with many football fans and you'll discover that a certain level of sexism and racism is the norm. Therefore my reaction to Gray's comments were to shake my head and hope that the incident would be used to highlight sexism amongst fans to change attitudes. Instead we have had a media witch-hunt in which Gray and Keys have been targeted as a culprits responsible for a wider culture. With their sacking the story vanishes out of the media and football fans can carry on as normal.

It was, however, difficult to disagree with the sacking of such a self-righteous idiot as Gray. So I had until now been happy to go along with the media consensus. That was until I read Charlie Brooker's fantastic piece in the Guardian this morning in which he casts the debate in terms of freedom of speech.

Brooker has chiselled himself out a niche as the most ascerbic - and generally funniest - media commentator of the last few years. I'm beginning to agree with almost everything he says as he points out the contradictions, illusions and lies of the modern print and broadcast news. His recent TV series "How TV ruined your life" started well last week by focussing on how television uses fear to generate news and make the world seem scarier than it really is. His appearances on "Ten O'clock live" have been something of a highlight of a show that has had a bit of trouble finding its feet but shows promise.

So in conclusion, watch anything with Charlie Brooker on it as it's probably great. And if people want to have private conversations in which they're arseholes then they should probably be allowed to, it's when they convince others of their bilge that we should be worried.

The King's Speech - Oscar Bait

After Colin Firth's fantastic performance in 'A Single Man' last year, I changed my mind about the actor who until then had appeared in quite a lot of forgettable puff. Despite being a housewife favourite, starring in films like 'Love Actually', 'Bridget Jones' and 'Mamma Mia' aren't going to do a lot for your career from an awards point of view. As such I had seen him as an actor who was still living on the coat tails of being in the BBC television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice some 15 years ago, in which he became something of a sex symbol. In 'A Single Man' though he was extraordinary. He played a complex and tense character in a film entirely driven by his own performance. So when the acclaim for 'A Kings Speech' started to roll in before its release I hadn't much doubt that Firth was well able to give a performance worthy of Oscar consideration.

'The King's Speech' is on the surface a period drama about the recently-deceased royals of Great Britain. It is so much more than this. Colin Firth plays the soon-to-be George the 6th (aka Bertie), a man with a stammer that impedes his ability to publically speak. His father - George the 5th - sits on the throne and his brother is next in line, but soon circumstances conspire to make it clear that he will be the next king. With war against Hitler looming, Bertie's wife (Helena Bonham Carter) seeks help for him in the form of Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue - Geoffrey Rush.

This film could easily have turned into a lot of things that would have turned me off. We could have had a film that lovingly portrayed the royal family and fawned over their lives in a Hello! magazine style - at no point did I feel like it pandered to the "Aren't they lovely" crowd. We could have had a film where the relationship between the Australian and the King-to-be had been portrayed as a conflict of extremes, yet never did the story reduce itself to a stereotypical depiction of Australians as a people with a base wit and in-your-face confrontational 'charm'. Instead of any of this, the film tells a charming story about a man who is forced to confront his personal demons and rise to a role that neither he nor anyone around him ever wanted him to have. As far as I can gather it is very true to historical events, basing its depiction of the relationship between Bertie and Lionel on the speech therapist's memoirs.

Colin Firth's performance is outstanding, I have no idea how an actor manages to make himself stammer while at the same time emoting and getting through his lines. I'd just start laughing at myself if it was me. He plays the role of George the 6th as a man who is deeply insecure, but one who is prone to outbursts revealing his ease in his position within the British establishment. Firth is not the only actor worthy of praise here, Derek Jacobi plays the Archbishop of Canterbury and represents the dark side of the British establishment conspiring in the background while putting on a face of deference to the monarch. He's brilliantly two-faced. The inclusion of such a blatantly evil character who appears to manipulate the otherwise 'good' king and his wife was the only part of the film that made me question its portrayal of the royals. It seemed as if the film was going out of its way to try depict the royals as ordinary people while the 'establishment' is in fact the Archbishop, politicians and their other hangers on. This was a very minor point though, as everything else was brilliant.

I'm going to put on my Conspiracy Theory hat for a very short time now. Recently the director of 'Made in Dagenham' was vocal over the rating of his film as a 15 certificate. He claimed that thousands of kids who might otherwise get something out of the film have been denied the chance to see it. He claimed that the decision could well have been rooted in the subject matter of his film, and that the BBFC were motivated to deny a film about workplace rebellion a mass audience at a time of economic crisis. The BBFC responded that the film was classified a 15 as a result of frequent use of the word 'fuck'. In the case of 'The King's Speech' though, the BBFC argue that a similar level of usage of the word 'fuck' is in fact permissible at the '12a' certificate. They argue that the language is used in isolated bursts, not in anger and in an "unusual and very specific speech therapy context,". I contend perhaps that the BBFC felt a film about the royal family, in the year of a royal wedding and hotly tipped for Oscar success, couldn't possibly be doomed to the restricted audience that a 15 certificate would give it. Whereas a film about the oiks rebelling against their masters doesn't need to be seen by anyone in their formative years. Class war anyone?

Part coming of age tale, part period drama, part comedy, part bromance, part historical biography - there's a lot in this film for a lot of different people. In fact, when I saw it the cinema appeared to be populated with people who probably haven't been to see a film since George 6th was actually king - people who insisted on 'tutting' for some reason when an old newsreel of Hitler was shown. Be you royalist or republican, fan of Firth's or not - you will enjoy 'The King's Speech'. You need to see this film.

The Blind Side

Being a huge fan of American Football and heavily involved in the game in Britain I was a little surprised with myself that I never managed to see this adaptation of the excellent Michael Lewis book while it was in the cinema. After all, Sandra Bullock won an Oscar and my interest had been perked by the fact that the central character had recently been drafted into the NFL. Perhaps I was worried that in the process of going through Hollywood scriptwriters the story would have become unrecognisable from the original? Whatever the excuse, I only last week did I get around to watching 'The Blind Side'.

Some background on the plot then. Michael Oher is a street kid whose guardian gets him enlisted in a middle class Christian school in Memphis after the school sports coach notices Oher's sporting potential. Oher cannot cope with his surrounds until a local wealthy family - the Tuohys - notice him walking thestreets and give him a home. They nurture Oher's creative, educational and sports-playing side until he gets noticed by the coaches in the big leagues, and is wooed by every university in the southern US states. It's a fuzzy and warm story in which an underdog comes good and rich people are nice and philanthropic. The ideal Holywood yarn.

This is a true story, and one which is portrayed faithfully to the book. Sandra Bullock is ideally cast as Leigh Anne Tuohy, the rich matriarch of a family who have benefitted from everything that can work about the American dream but still carry the baggage of a world that will label them rednecks. She's a woman who is used to being able to get what she wants, isn't afraid to tell people some home truths when it suits her, admits to knowing no Democrats and is a card-carrying member of the NRA. Yet despite all the stereotypes, she is the driving force behind Oher's schooling and subsequent enrolment to play football at the University of Mississippi.

The film has no qualms about referring to the controversy that Michael Oher caused when he entered the NCAA system. A large black kid was plucked off the streets by a wealthy white family who happen to be fanatical fans of their Alma Mater's football team. He also happens to be the nation's hottest prospect at Offensive Tackle and - surprise surprise - ends up playing for exactly whom his rich benefactors support. No shock then that his case was investigated in detail by the NCAA. The film stays true to the book's portrayal of events, and shows the Tuohys as rich do-gooders who accidentally stumbled across a kid of extra-ordinary talent whom they nurtured. For me though, I find their story to be ever so slightly convenient. Although the book and film both imply that the Tuohys had no prior knowledge of Oher's sporting potential when they first offered him a bed for the night, it is only the word of Leigh Anne Tuohy whom we have to believe on the matter. Who is to say what the true course of events were?

This is a film that I enjoyed hugely. Firstly for Sandra Bullock’s excellent performance and secondly because it's a film that showcases just how passionate many in the southern US states are about American Football. All of this is done without ramming Gridiron down the audience's throat. Save for a brief introduction at the start of the film, there isn't any American Football until we're almost an hour in. It's a story that anyone should be able to enjoy regardless of what they think of a sport that many in Britain see as a poor man's Rugby League.