The Lobster - the artsiest art film you will see this year

I do enjoy seeing a Holywood A-lister take on a slightly left-field project, and that is exactly what Colin Farrell took on when he accepted the role of David in this utterly bizarre dark drama / dark comedy / dystopian science fiction film.  It's a film that pretty much defies attempts to easily categorise it.  In fact it pretty much derails any attempt to actually enjoy it too, such is it's insistence on adhering to a flat tone that's initially intriguing but ultimately distancing to anyone but the most patient of audiences.

The premise is simple but utterly weird.  In some sort of dystopian near future, everyone in 'the city' has to find a partner.  That partner has to be 'compatible'.  If they cannot find a partner then they must go to a hotel where the other singles all gather.  If they still cannot find a partner within 40 days at the hotel, then they are turned into the animal of their choice.  Colin Farrell is one such singleton - having seen his wife die recently.  The animal he wishes to be if he dies - a lobster.

As if this wasn't weird enough, the world of the near future is populated with people who speak without inflexion, in a monotone and with an autistic appreciation of how their words will be heard by others.  Because of this The Lobster is a very hard film to watch, with any charisma or verve that the actors might bring to their roles hidden behind the insistence that everyone is monotone and - well - just plain dull.  Colin Farrell has the lead role, but the film also stars Rachel Weisz, Olivia Coleman, John C Reilly, Leia Seydoux, Ben Wishaw - all fine A-list actors who seem stunted by the film's tone.  Not to say that this doesn't mean there's no good acting or that the cast don't have to work their craft, just that it's extremely taxing to watch them do it.

It isn't hard to argue that The Lobster is a criticism of modern dating, the insistence on finding the 'perfect' match by ticking off a list of attributes you want your chosen partner to have.  David is allowed to be with one woman because the owners of the hotel perceive them to both be rather heartless.  David's friend is allowed to be with a woman because they are both short-sighted, though David insists this shouldn't be allowed as he thinks his friend is lying about needing glasses.  We then contrast the people in 'the city' and hotel against the rebels who live in the woods.  The second half of the film sees the action shift towards this hermit-like band, their rejection of the norms of coupling up has gone to such an extreme that they permit almost no friendliness at all lest it be perceived as flirting that might lead to a relationship.  Society has been distilled into two binary camps that have moved to such extreme positions that they cannot see the other side's point of view.  Just like much of the politics of our world today.

The film ends on a scene that is almost unwatchable (because it has the potential to be so nasty) and then we are left to make up our own minds about what might happen next.  I was left feeling that this is a film I am happy to have seen, as I know I will be able to bring it up in conversation some day and sound really clever about films.  But I would be lying if I said I enjoyed the experience.  Overall it is just making a series of fairly simple points about the disconnection that modern society is creating for itself from what romance, love and relationships actually are.  Did it needs to be quite this impenetrable?  I don't think so.  But like I said, I'm always happy to see big famous stars making weird artsy films.

Only watch if you're feeling really artsy.

T2 - no not that "T2", Trainspotting 2

Is there nothing left that can't be set aside from a film studio's obsession with making money?  It seems not.  The latest (well - 2 months ago now nearly) classic cult film to get the remake / revision / re-imagining / sequel treatment is Trainspotting.  Sigh.  Anyway, the studio know people like me are going to go and see it, if only just to check if it's terrible.  That's why they make films like this.  One of these days I'll stop dancing to their tune.

The new Trainspotting - T2 - is set 20 years after the original.  Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) has been living in Amsterdam since the events of the original and for reasons has to return to Edinburgh.  Cue a story about getting old, being old, and trying to work out what it is that went wrong.

The thing to remember about Trainspotting is that its place in the annals of British film came from two different angles.  Firstly, it documented a time and a place in British culture.  If you were in your late teens / early 20s in the mid 1990s and you wanted nothing to do with 'Cool Britania' and 'Blair's Babes', then you existed on the fringes of popular culture.  These were the fringes that Trainspotting did so well to record for posterity.  Secondly it brought Danny Boyle into the mainstream.  His eclectic and energetic style of direction is still copied by film-makers to this day.

I am not interested in nostalgiac wanders down memory lane.  I do not want to see parodies of scenes from an original film.  I don't want to watch Frances Begbie (Robert Carlyle) reprise his famous taunting of a crowded bar.  I don't want to hear Mark Renton update his "Choose life..." monologue for the 21st century.  I don't want to see callbacks to scenes that tick fanboy-boxes.  Enough of that goes on in the endless remakes and soft reboots spewing out of Holywood (Star Wars, Star Trek, Superman, Ghostbusters, Spiderman - they're all at it).  The only reason to make another Trainspotting film is if there is a story worth telling.

Thankfully - and you will understand that this was a very big sigh of relief for me - Trainspotting 2 does have a story to tell.  Rather than offer just a montage of throwbacks to the original, or crave for the nostalgia of the mid-1990s, T2 is about ageing and choices - you know, those things we do every day of our lives.  It's about waking up and discovering that you're suddenly 40 years old when your mind still thinks it's 18.  It's about wondering where time and opportunities have gone.

The film doesn't completely eschew the desire to provide fanservice and nob vigorously towards the classic scenes of yesteryear.  Am updated "Choose Life..." monologue is a particular low-point.  As is Robert Carlisle delivering a reprise of Begbie's most famous of lines.  In Trainspotting Renton's monologue broke the 4th wall - he was talking to us.  It shouldn't exist in the universe of the film.  Begbie's blood-soaked fight in the bar was portrayed as par-for-the-course event back in the day.  Why would this particular fight be memorable enough for him to remember it 20 years later?  We remember it because we watched Trainspotting.  There is no reason Begbie would attach any specific significance to that particular time he started one of many brawls.  These scenes shouldn't be in there, however they fact that they are short and noticeable by their contrast to the rest of the film is a positive.  These minor moments of fan-services I can abide - but I still cringed a little inside.

Given that they decided to make this film, I will admit that it was much better than I could have hoped or expected.  Minor criticisms aside, it tells a new story, largely avoids fan service and is rather touching.  British film fans of the 1990s can rest easy, and with luck Danny Boyle can now go off and create something new.

The Witch - an original and creative 'horror' movie

What an absolutely joy it was to watch this stripped-back supernatural thriller.  Written and directed by the completely unknown Robert Eggers, The Witch is set in 17th century rural New England and tells a tale of a puritan family who are expelled from their community and try to live off the land by themselves.  The family are a God-fearing bunch, typical perhaps of the time, with patriarch William (played by Ralph Ineson - who was also Finchy in The Office) opening the film admonishing the elders of their exiled village for being insufficiently pious.  Notions of religion, righteousness and fear are foreboded to be strong themes throughout.

The opening scene of the family going alone shows eldest daughter Thomasin (Anna Taylor-Joy) playing with her young baby brother.  She closes her eyes for a moment, and when she reopens them baby Sam has vanished.  She looks to the woods beyond as the autumn air blows eerily around her, what force could have taken her brother?

For the next 70 minutes the film tells a story that's almost-but-not-quite a straight horror thriller with a devilish coven of witches preying on the innocence of these pioneers.  Almost, but not quite.  The overt super-naturalism of the film is expertly portrayed so as to always permit rational explanation to the outside observer.  Much much more so than a traditional horror thriller ever would.  We are shown a witch luring a teenage boy in the woods.  But are we?  Teenage boys' minds do think in a certain way.  Certain creatures are possessed and act as if supernaturally powerful - but are we seeing this, or are we seeing this through the eyes of a witchcraft-obsessed 17th century peasant?  Seen like this the film is as much exploration of 17th century attitudes to religion, fear of witchcraft, fear of sexuality, repression and stress as it is a horror movie.  Even the film's final 5 minutes - which when seen as a straight depiction of events surely confirms the horror of what has passed before it - are only seen from one point of view.  This is the point of view of a repressed 17th century peasant convinced of the existence of witches and their own piousness before god.  Why wouldn't they see the world like that?

I hope you can tell that I really enjoyed this film.  If it was just the story thought it wouldn't quite be enough to rave as much as I am.  The experience of the film comes from so many elements coming together.  Everything is beautifully lit with natural light.  The framing is as much a part of the storytelling as anything, as we try to separate out what we are being told through the eyes of the characters and what is 'real'.  Even the soundtrack works.  And it really shouldn't when you think about what it is.  If you were ask you to make a slightly lame ghost noise, I bet you would make a noise that's not far from the sound the carries over many of the otherworldly shots of the barren New England forest.  It shouldn't work, but in the context of everything else it works perfectly.

Though the film deals with occult subject matter and is on the surface about witches and demons and the like, it only has a 15 rating.  That's reasonable as at no point are there any jump scares and blood is kept to a minimum.  It's all about atmosphere, lighting, space, mist, austerity and fear of the unknown.  As a non-traditional horror film I would recommend it even to people who perhaps shy away from scary movies.  Really quite happy to have kicked my 2017 in film off with this little gem from 2016.

Rogue One - Star Wars episode Meh

The new reality of the Star Wars 'franchise' is upon us.  Staying true to the mission they set themselves when they first acquired the rights from Lucasfilm, Disney have delivered a second Star Wars film in as many years.  Just as they promised, rather than continuing the narrative arc set up in last year's The Force Awakens, they have dipped into the back story of Star Wars to tell a one-off tale.  Rogue One tells the story of how the plans for the Death Star (that what they used to know how to blow up the Death Star in the original film) came into the possession of the Rebel Alliance.  Could be interesting.  Is it though?

The honest truth is that I am struggling to find anything to say that's hugely positive or negative about Rogue One.  When I heard that they were going to focus on the story of where the Death Star plans come from, I was wondering if we might get some sort of spy thriller.  But instead they put together the most basic of passable action films, with a whole bucket load of fanboy-pleasing nods to the original trilogy.

The Follows Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) on her quest to recover the Death Star plans.  Her father is a scientist who created the Death Star, and out of some remorse for what he's done he gets information to the Rebels that the plans are ripe for stealing.  The story then goes from Point A, to Point B, then to Point C, following a group of bland characters who's past histories and relationships are talked about but never shown, who's motivations are assumed but not established, into action sequences that are technically excellent but rather soulless. It then ends in a way that's hardly in keeping with a 12A certificate.

It's a film that feels like it was made by a committee that wanted to check just enough Star Wars boxes to make the fanboys happy while at the same time telling just enough of a proper story to keep a general audience on board.  It's a very well made film, it's well shot with some nice action scenes, sparse comic moments and a story that moves with a good pace.  However the characters are paper thin and the plot absolutely linear.  More than any major film release I can remember, this feels like it was made primarily for the money rather than primarily to tell a story.  It feels like it was scripted by a bunch of fanboys sitting in a coffee shop in one afternoon, who wanted to heave in as many Star Wars references as possible while counting the cheques for Disney.

Two points here.  One is that I am a Star Wars nerd.  So I do notice things like how when the X-Wings are shooting at the Star Destroyers and the dialogue says they would target their shields, that they're actually shooting at the bits of the ships that generate the shields.  I accept your sympathies.  However that kind of stuff doesn't make Rogue One a good film.  It's the sort of icing on the cake that they should be including as a little Easter Egg for the total nerds amongst us, whereas it felt like that sort of thing was meant to be the whole point.  Second point is that "This is a Star Wars film - of course it should have Star Wars references, what's wrong with that?" - you might say.  On one level that's fair enough, but if that's the focus of the film  then that's extremely limiting on what can be done and everything suffers as a result.  In the end the production team spend too long working on CGI recreations of Grand Moff Tarken and not long enough developing Jyn Erso's character.

What will the next one do (because this time next year the next episode will have been and gone)?  Can they keep harking back so strongly to the originals?  The Force Awakens was a remake of the originals.  Rogue One is a story set around the originals.  Has anything else ever happened in the Star Wars universe other than the force and this bloody Death Star?! There is plenty of Star Wars fan fiction out there that doesn't revolve around the original trilogy, why not mine that for story ideas?  There's a lot of galaxy out there to explore.  C'mon Disney - take some risks!

Dirty Dancing - Why am I reviewing this?

A very good question.  Well I happened to be at a small Christmas gathering last night and someone had the TV on.  Upon it there was Channel 5 (though not in HD on a massive HD TV - what on earth is the point?) showing the 1980s cult classic upon which this blog post will focus.  I have a slightly strange relationship with this film.  My Mum was a huge fan and my recollection is that she watched a VHS recording almost on repeat through a portion of the early 1990s.  Back in those days there was only 1 screen in the house, and as such it formed a small part of the background to my upbringing.  Seeing it again last night, I was surprised at the familiarity of the beats and cues of the film, almost as surprised as I was by the adult themes that had largely gone over my head as a 12 year old.

For those who have been living in a cave for the last 25 years, the premise is thus.  The Houseman family go for their summer holidays at a resort in upstate New York.  'Baby' Houseman (Jennifer Grey) is a young woman who falls in love with the resort's hotter-than-hot dancer Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze).  Citizen Kane it is not.

Sounds simple right?  Well it is.  So why is it so popular?  Well it's a question that on the surface has an obvious answer, but one can go slightly deeper and understand something about storytelling.  The obvious answer is that Patrick Swayze has amazing abs and dances like a god.  Women love dancing and washboard abs - so success is guaranteed right?  Well not quite.  Dirty Dancing is a film with a surprising amount of heart; it deals with issues of abortion, abuse, growing up and - crucially - has a central character in Baby who is the perfect every-woman.  Baby is assertive and confident, but also very vulnerable when she doesn't understand what's going on.  She has a father who is strong, understanding, supportive and emotional; he is a rock when she needs strength and breaks down in tears when she has disappoints him.  Oh and her lover is Patrick Swayze.  Who wouldn't want to be Baby?

This is the thing that so many rubbish films get so wrong.  It isn't enough to just tickle our visual taste buds (I'm talking about guns and action here just as much as I am talking about bums and abs), a film needs to have an emotional connection to make you care.  Don't get me wrong, Dirty Dancing isn't my kind of film, but I can relate to what is going on and I understand why it has come to touch the hearts of so many women (I would say 'people', but let's not kid ourselves eh?) out there in the movie-going world.

Of course there are numerous criticisms that we can legitimately level at the film.  For a start the sound track isn't completely of the 1960s, which is a huge mid-step for a film that works very hard to establish itself in that pre-Vietnam era.  Also it suffers from same as the main problem I have with the Twilight saga, which is that the main character is little more than an empty vessel on to which female viewers are encouraged to cast their own personalities.  I would argue that this criticism has less weight here than in the Twilight saga, here Baby's father and family have crushed her individuality and expression out of her, so we might expect her personality to be a little thin.  However I agree that this is one of the film's major weaknesses.

Certainly no-one is going to be persuaded to watch Dirty Dancing or not as a result of this blog.  These are merely some musings on a cult film that has firmly entrenched its place in the zeitgeist over the last 25 years.  I shall try to get another review in before 2017 - would be a bit weird to end the year on a film that was released in 1987 after all!

Seconds - very Twilight Zone

I honestly cannot remember now what it was that made me seek out this interesting film that's straight out of the playbook of classic 1960s The Twilight Zone, only with a twisted subtext that only gets darker as the plot comes to a conclusion.  Seconds is a minor masterpiece typical of the modernist science fiction thriller genre that was hugely popular in post war US mainstream culture.  John Randolph plays Arthur Hamilton, an aging city banker who is bored of his life and comes upon a secret society that promises him youth and a new identity.  His death is faked and he becomes Antiochus Wilson (played by Rock Hudson), younger, surrounded by youth, opportunity, and a sudden dislocation from everyone and everything he once knew.

If anyone ever wanted to do a study into the impact that direction has upon the tone of a film, then the contrast between the Hamilton and Wilson portions of Seconds provides ample material.  The director uses blocking and framing during the opening 25 minutes to convey the unease of Hamilton's world.  Everything from his dislocation from his wife and career to his fraught attempts to inveigle himself into the secret society - not a word needs to be said to tell us the alienation engulfing him.  Contrast this with the latter half of the film, the camerawork is free and feels more like a pop video at times as it effortlessly describes a world of youth, opportunity and new possibilities.

The film is very much a tale of being careful for what one wishes.  In the great tradition of The Twilight Zone the story presents a character with what the audience knows is a Faustian Bargain, a fact that only becomes apparent to the protagonist far too late.  Some may find the character's ultimately downward trajectory a little too depressing to take, but this is dystopian science fiction at its most pure so I would be shocked if it didn't appeal to a less-than-mainstream audience.  In the end I would recommend this to anyone with an interest in science fiction, especially those who have enjoyed and of the various incarnations of The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits or Tales of the Unexpected that have existed over the years.

Son of Saul - Bleak, Art, Important

The sort of film I definitely would have watched in the cinema back when I was at university and hanging out at Nottingham's premier arthouse cinema every week, Son of Saul is a brutal and terrifying depiction of a few days in the life of a Sonderkomando at Auschwitz concentration camp.  As it turned out, I only got around to seeing it a few weeks ago - one of the few films of 2016 I have actually seen in 2016.  One of fewer still that I have managed to blog about.

There is little shortage of depictions of the horrors of Nazi Germany on the silver screen.  The intent of these films is more often than not a message to the post modern world to not forget the horrors that the modern one wrought upon itself.  Sadly though, only 80 years since Hitler presided over the infamous Berlin Olympics, it feels like many Europeans have forgotten how easy it is to allow peace to slip away.  As far right movements once again take hold of populist politics in France, Austria, Hungary and to a much lesser extent here in the UK, it is more important than ever to reminder ourselves where the politics of hate end up taking us.

Which is exactly what Son of Saul does.  The film follows Saul Ausländer, a Hungarian Sonderkomando who is forced to undertake the horrific work of leading people into Auschwitz's gas chambers, and then sorting their belongings and clearing out their bodies afterwards.  The story is told exclusively from Ausländer's perspective, with the camera residing either just over his shoulder or closely in his face.  In this way, the horrors of Auschwitz are presented to us via his reactions rather than directly.  His reaction (or numb lack of reaction) to what we know is going on out of shot easily as effecting as seeing any other brutal depiction of the Holocaust.  The film is about hopelessness and the pain that people can inflict on their fellows when we stop seeing people as people.  If there is a glimmer of hope in the way the film ends, then it is perhaps a nod to the idea fact that the Holocaust did, eventually, end.  The hope was for a new generation to remember, commemorate, and say 'never again'.

It's a film that's deliberately hard to watch.  But that's the point, keeping the peace and working together for the benefit of all isn't easy.  It's something we all have to work for.  Son of Saul does its part to remind us of the perils of taking the path of the scapegoat.  Please Europe - Never Again.