El Ministerio del Tiempo (The Ministry of Time) from RTVE is an unexpected find on Netflix. It’s English-subtitled, no need to take Spanish lessons, although if you understand (some) Spanish, it’s even better value, and in any case it’s far better viewing than 90% of the rubbish series available on Netflix or Amazon.
[WARNING: SPOILERS]
Widely lauded with wall to wall 5-star reviews, Blade Runner 2049 looks set to become the new reference for dystopian science fiction film-making.
I beg to differ.
Catching up on the cinema over the last 12 months or so… Continue reading
I created a new permanent page for Unwatchable Films. It’s a specific thing – not just bad films, but truly unviewable ones that have a similar effect to a general anaesthetic. They have their own criteria, and are nothing like the ’25 films so bad they’re unmissable’ lists you often see. I am talking cinema CRIMEs here. Please contribute.
Over the last few months, I have managed to squeeze in enough thought-provoking films to think that my favourite medium is still alive and well. We drown daily in a such a stultifying rain of nonsense and noise that it sometimes it seems that any sign of intelligence must be a mistake. Here are some rays of hope.
Melancholia (dir. Lars von Trier): ***
We need to talk about Kevin (dir. Lynne Ramsay) *****
The battle of Warsaw: 1920 (dir. Jerzy Hoffman) ***
Incendies **** (dir. Denis Villeneuve)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy **** (dir. Tomas Alfredson)
The Skin I Live In **1/2 (dir. Pedro Almodovar)
The Debt ***1/2 (dir. John Madden).
This Australian film has much to recommend it. It maintains a dark, slow-burn tension for the duration, a by-product of characters who while being completely believable become less and less predictable as time goes on. In a way the film is a kind of trick: you are initially not sure if you are in for a gangster story (will there be a heist, or a gangland battle?), a psycho-drama, or a character study.
I saw a trailer for Thor at a screening of Source Code (a film that although well acted, seemed pointless and not worthy of review). It looked fairly atrocious, something of the Blade or other superhero variety. However, by chance I noticed later that a) it was directed by Kenneth Branagh – which promised good acting not visible in the trailer, b) Thor is played by until now unknown to me Aussie Chris Hemsworth, who reminded me in the trailer of Aussie Heath Ledger in the execrable but nevertheless watchable Knight’s Tale – a performance that made you think he might just be a real actor in the making and c) it had a long list of other notables, including Anthony Hopkins, Stelland Skarsgard, Idris Elba (the great Stringer Bell from The Wire), Ray Stevenson (Rome), Natalie Portman etc, and finally d) I have never seen a 3D movie before.
Both The Way Back and The King’s Speech seemed to beckon in the last 10 days; one carrying the promise of great things from a great director, the other of great things from great actors.
The Way Back [IMDB]: Weir excels at small human beings struggling in/against huge landscapes (Master and Commander [IMDB] and The Mosquito Coast [IMDB]), and this film didn’t disappoint. From the swirling snowstorms of Siberia to the Mongolian plains to the sweep of the Gobi desert The Way Back looks great on the big screen. The acting is respectable, indeed very credible. Among the escapees, Ed Harris gives a fine performance, Colin Farrell is a surprisingly believable Russian gangster and Saoirse Ronan injects some levity into the long trek.
Two things let the film down in my view. The first is the lack of any obvious human tension. Escaping from a Russian Gulag is ‘drama’ to be sure, and so is survival against all odds, but somehow we are always searching for more than that, we need to know what people are thinking. One of the best, and surely most tense survival stories has to be Touching the Void [IMDB], about Joe Simpson’s escape from Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in 1985, which he climbed with Simon Yates. But if we think about it, the tension is not only about whether Simpson can manage to live, but the whole horror of Yates having to cut the line on him, leading to him being on his own. The Way Back lacks any real hook for getting into the minds of the characters. A few small incidents involving Farrell’s originally menacing, but ultimately, just cheeky, gangster are the closest we get. Continue reading
I have now mercilessly targetted friends around the world (and I’m not done!) for the list of ‘your 10 best films since 1980’, which can be seen on my film page. Some interesting trends are emerging. Firstly, the best of Hollywood has scored well on the lists of people with known subversive (i.e. artistic leanings)… The Matrix is doing well, as is Unforgiven, Pulp Fiction and Blade Runner. On the European side, we have heavy voting for Das Leven der Anderen (The Lives of Others), Cidade de Deus (City of God) and Amelie Poulin. Asian film just as strong, with Kar Wai Wong scoring with 2046 and In the Mood for Love.
It’s fun (for me at least) to connect the backgrounds of each person to the particular list of films they chose, both from a professional and geographical point of view. When this has gone on a bit longer, I may attempt a light-hearted statistical analysis!
A friend recently posted his 10 best on facebook (yes, I can’t avoid it since I need to find out when certain things are on in London that way). I challenged back, then he changed the rules to ‘only English language films’. Seems a pity to let my list go to waste, so…. in no particular order…. Continue reading
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