Steve

God’s Country

by
The sheriff and Sandra

Social media is never mentioned in God’s Country. No one even so much as pulls out a smartphone. And yet that seems to be what it’s about – the rush to judgment in a world of hot takes and the corrosive effect that that sort of behaviour has on public discourse. Thandie Newton is the star, now flying under her given name of Thandiwe, a woman we meet in a state of emotional shock after the death of her mother, a university teacher in a redneck world who becomes fixated on the hunters who park their red station wagon on her land before they head off with rifles for a day’s shooting. It’s … Read more

Speak No Evil

by
The two couples enjoy a meal

Another film that’s hard to like but easy to admire, Speak No Evil comes hot on the heels of a recent example of the same – Soft & Quiet – which I watched last week. Both set up and stoke a tension that becomes so janglingly unpleasant that, for this home viewer, pausing, getting out of the chair and walking around a bit became a necessity. I suspect the way to really watch this film is in a cinema, where there is more pressure to stay in your seat and not out yourself as such an obvious wuss. Again like Soft & Quiet, Speak No Evil starts out in the sunlit uplands of … Read more

The Appointment

by
Edward Woodward as the doomed Ian

Fans of plotless movies will love The Appointment, an increasingly cultish British horror from 1982. The only feature by Lindsey C Vickers, it was regularly described as lost until the British Film Institute got themselves together and released it as part of their Flipside series of under-appreciated left-fielders. As to plot, it’s the title. There is an appointment a man (Edward Woodward) is suddenly being forced to keep for work purposes, ruining his plans to be at a key recital by his daughter, a promising violin player. The daughter (Samantha Weysom) is upset he won’t be there. His wife (Jane Merrow) looks on as he insists he’s got to go and as the … Read more

Too Late for Tears

by
Jane, a gun and her husband

Misleading title, Too Late for Tears, suggesting there was a time for tears at all. By the time this 1949 film noir is done, the story of a woman rotten to the core, it’s clear that the time for tears – from her, or for her – might well be never. It’s Lizabeth Scott’s chance to chew the scenery, the furniture and her co-stars, playing a woman with a crushing sense of social inferiority who is transformed instantly when a big bag of cash suddenly lands on the back seat of the convertible she and her husband are powering towards a dreaded dinner party in the Hollywood hills. The car it came from … Read more

The Cathedral

by
Robert Levey II as Jesse

A film about a kid growing up, from 1980s birth to graduation, The Cathedral has Richard Linklater’s Oscar-winning, audience-slaying Boyhood to contend with. Which makes Ricky D’Ambrose’s debut feature even more impressive once you’ve seen it. The comparisons are still there, yet D’Ambrose has managed to make something recognisably operating in the same field as Boyhood and yet undeniably its own beast. Partly that’s because this is D’Ambrose’s own story – semi-autobiographical says the publicity – or more generally the story of his family, who as a group expend much psychic energy on their own affairs and ongoing family feuds, rather less on the future of the family, as embodied in the figure … Read more

Pitfall

by
Original cinema poster

A good example of a flat, stoic, buttoned-up film noir, Pitfall is as minimal and undemonstrative as they come, depending on how you view sex and death. The stars are Dick Powell, deadpan Dick as usual, while Lizabeth Scott is the femme fatale, a model (and so an independent woman) who’s not so much bad as elementally disruptive. There are three key men – Powell as the everyday happily married insurance man John Forbes, Raymond Burr as “Mac” MacDonald, the shifty private investigator Forbes sometimes uses in murky cases, and Byron Barr as Smiley, a crook now doing time for a bent insurance claim. All have lost or will lose their heads to … Read more

19 November 2012-11-19

by
Arthur Christmas and Grandsanta

Out in the UK this week Arthur Christmas (Sony, cert U, Blu-ray/DVD) After some awful homegrown CGI animations – anyone remember Valiant? –  the Brits have made a comic adventure about Santa Claus and family that’s witty, gutsy, insightful and entirely entertaining. A new Christmas classic, surely. Arthur Christmas – Watch it/buy it at Amazon Two Years at Sea (Soda, cert E, DVD) Hungarian miserabilist Béla Tarr is clearly a heavy influence on this artfully artless documentary following a hippie/hermit as he serenely goes about his hardscrabble life. For stressed-out, always-on screen-jockeys this could be the ideal therapy. Two Years at Sea – Watch it/buy it at Amazon Big Boys Gone Bananas (Dogwoof, cert E, … Read more

One Second

by
The fugitive and the orphan

If your only exposure to Zhang Yimou is The Great Wall, the Hollywoodised epic starring Matt Damon, which, like its namesake, goes on and on, One Second might come as a bit of a surprise. It’s Zhang back on form, the guy who made Raise the Red Lantern and House of Spinning Daggers, spinning a simple yet never obvious story of a man, a woman and a can of film into a stirring anthem to the power of cinema itself. Heroic cinema! Heroic cinemagoers! In the eye-catching opening moments we meet a man walking over desert sands to see a film screening at a remote cinema. It’s 1965 and Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution … Read more

Epidemic

by
A plague victim dies

Towards the end of Lars Von Trier’s second film, Epidemic, a film producer is handed a “finished” screenplay by Von Trier. It is only 12 pages long. “Is that it?” the producer asks, a hint of exasperation flickering across his face. Viewers of Epidemic may feel his pain. To explain: in meta-film-making style, Epidemic is both the story of a doctor (played by Lars Von Trier) going against the wishes of the medical establishment and heading out into the world to fight a deadly epidemic, only to find that he himself is what’s spreading the disease. And it’s the story of the writing of the film itself – how two guys called Lars … Read more

I’m Totally Fine

by
Vanessa and Jillian talk

Grief exploited for laughs. It’s not something you see every day but it works in I’m Totally Fine, the sort of film Frank Capra would recognise – funny, big-hearted, soft-centred and focused on a love between two people that’s not got even the tiniest shred of the sexual about it. In fact I’m Totally Fine pauses on two or three occasions, turns (metaphorically) to the audience and says it again, loud and clear – these two are friends. F.R.I.E.N.D.S – got it? It’s a two hander – give or take the odd intrusion by forces off to remind us of the non-sexual nature of their relationship – with Jillian Bell starring as Vanessa, a … Read more