Out in the UK This Week
The Kings of Summer (StudioCanal, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)
An immensely smart coming of age film pitched somewhere between Stand By Me and Superbad (ie dark undertow, with jokes). And itâs entirely on the side of the kids, whose decision to go off and live in the woods, leaving their sarcastic, obnoxious, bullying, superior parents clueless as to where theyâve gone, is never presented as the callow act of peeved teenagers. Out in the woods, our junior heroes build a rudimentary house, set about sourcing food (sometimes from supermarket bins), grow wispy beards. Meanwhile the film sets about building a dreamy, trippy, sunny song of summer and innocence, with a sweet soundtrack to match. Balancing drama and comedy brilliantly, pausing here and there for beautifully composed âpillow shotsâ (they are surely a cineastic reference to Ozu?), The Kings of Summer is brilliantly acted all round, and features starmaking performances by Gabriel Basso, comedic genius Moises Arias and Nick Robinson. It only falters slightly â dialling back from brilliant to merely very good â as it hits the third act, as it struggles to return the guys back to the status quo ante (their initiation into manhood complete), and us back to earth.
The Kings of Summer â at Amazon
The Iceman (Lionsgate, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)
Michael Shannon plays Richard Kuklinski, the contract killer so coolly ruthless he was known as the Iceman, and who operated in the New York area from the 1960s until his arrest in 1986. The big sell of this film being that his family had no idea about how daddy Kuklinski really made his money. Itâs a sign of Shannonâs exponential rise, especially since 2011âs Take Shelter, that this fairly small-scale gangster movie can attract stars such as Winona Ryder (the wife), Chris Evans (the psycho that Kuklinski goes into a side business with), Ray Liotta (the gang boss he works for), David Schwimmer (a schlemiel whose bad tache and pony tail mark him out for an early exit) and James Franco (an even sharper exit). As for Shannonâs performance, itâs a real dead-eyed turn, so good that it almost manages to hide the fact that thereâs not much of a plot here, other than âguy kills other guys because heâs asked toâ. As for an analysis of the Icemanâs psyche, Shannon tries to give us one, but heâs hamstrung slightly by a script that wants to keep us onside â ie it wants to make this a film that sits in the genre marked âgangsterâ rather than âserial killerâ. As I say, watch it for Shannon.
Citadel (Metrodome, cert 15, DVD)
Hereâs a film thatâs a lot better than its current 5.3 IMDb rating, starring rising British star Aneurin Barnard as a milquetoast being victimised by hoodie-wearing feral kids in the high rise he has the misfortune to live in. In fact the film opens with Barnardâs wife being somewhat ridiculously done to death by said hoodies, who stick a syringe in her pregnant belly, just to make sure sheâs dead, and to make sure weâre appalled. Theyâre faceless hoodies, by the way, and after a while it becomes slightly more clear that this isnât a grim British kitchen sinker at all. Itâs a grim zombie movie. This becomes totally, abundantly clear once the great James Cosmo turns up as a swearing rancidly angry priest with a mute kid in tow. Priests and mute kids being legal tender in the horror genre. If itâs not an even passable kitchen sinker, Citadel is not perfect as a horror either, though director/writer Ciaran Foy is doing some very interesting things, melding the concrete-cool of Let the Right One In with pissy reek of Attack the Block.
Frankensteinâs Army (E One, cert 18, DVD)
Iâll admit I was slightly struggling for films this week and only picked up Richard Raaphorstâs horror movie because there wasnât much else about. Iâm glad I did. Though initially I was all internal groans â oh god, not another found footage film. This one at least had a novel twist. It was ostensibly shot by a Soviet documentarian following troops as they advance across Poland, chasing the Nazis back towards Berlin. Or was it Czechoslovakia? It doesnât really matter. And nor does the fact that the found footage idea is not even followed through that rigorously. Because Raaphorst and his co-writers have come up with some ingenious ways of extending the life of the Frankenstein story, in the shape of a descendant of the Baron called Viktor (an energetic, committed Karel Roden), a Nazi taking bits of humans and merging them with all sorts of bits of jetsam. And so we have what looks like a walking washing machine, a teddy bear with a manâs head, half a giant lobster. “Only the Nazis would think of something like this â sewing people together, giving them knives for hands,” says one of the Soviets at one point. Itâs a raw piece of nonsense, it really is. But thereâs genius in the detail.
Frankenstein’s Army â at Amazon
Paris-Manhattan (Cinefile, cert 15, DVD)
The films of Woody Allen are a key reference point for this cute French romcom about an attractive, intelligent young woman who has a lot of trouble getting a man. Improbable, I know, but the French seem to be working the Richard Curtis Improbability Machine harder than most right now. Not to mention the Richard Curtis Charm Device. Because this is an immensely likeable if entirely unbelievable piece of fluff, sewn together with real care and attention, featuring the likes of Anita OâDay singing Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered on its jazzy soundtrack. Alice Taglioni is its star, the available babe mentioned above, and Patrick Bruel is the Serge Gainsbourg-faced older guy she ends up playing footsie with. Woody Allen turns up in a cameo, looking like heâd been talked into it in the corridor outside, and heâs all over the plot too (a Woody Allen poster on Aliceâs wall offers her advice, Ă la Play It Again Sam, and there are clear plot lifts from his films, some more obvious than others). At some level I clearly shouldnât be recommending something as cheesy, contrived, manipulative as this, but I do, because of the leads. I liked them therefore I liked it. Simple as.
The Brass Teapot (Koch, cert 15, DVD)
Juno Templeâs breasts. She clearly thinks she can build a career on them. And so does the director of this weird Hollywood drama about a couple whose struggle through the current economic downturn ceases when they find a magic teapot, an Aladdinâs lamp that grants wishes, but only when someone in its proximity feels pain, whether itâs physical, emotional or whatever. Within minutes of the teapot turning up the couple is living the high life and the film is in deep trouble. Is it trying to say nice people shouldnât be helped out of financial misery? Itâs not sure. Is it trying to say that money thatâs not properly earned is somehow immoral? Itâs not sure of that either. And so it hovers, while Temple and co-star Michael Angarano attempt to hide their desperation and the directorâs eye tracks the clock towards the magic 90 minutes. Doubtless it worked better in its original form as a 22 minute short (I havenât seen it), but the fact that this is actually ten minutes longer than it needs to be for business purposes (though an hour longer than necessary for dramatic purposes) is down to director Ramaa Mosleyâs blind faith that more shots of Temple in her scanties will somehow make this film work.
The Brass Teapot â at Amazon
Outpost 11 (101 Films, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)
Outpost 11 is a lighthouse movie. That is to say itâs a film about a small number of people trapped in a confined space, quietly going insane until⊠boom! Set in a parallel steampunk reality, it follows a trio of what look like First World War British soldiers â a drug-sniffing, masturbating corporal, a dithery private and a capable captain â doing some never-quite-specified monitoring in the Arctic while the war rages out in the wide world. Itâs a world of candlestick telephones, VHS tapes, clunky 1980s headphones, sci-fi spiders, a big brass engine-room which thrums away musically. This is an ingeniously cobbled-together world, slightly redolent of charity shops and Dr Who, with the plot accent firmly on the âwhat the hell is going on?â. I wonât say what the hell is going on, not least because I still wasnât sure by the end. I was sure that this is a confident film-making debut by director Anthony Woodley, who understands how to work with what heâs got, rather than against it, who knows how to conjure mood, and who has learnt the lesson that suggestion â what is that weird squeaking creature pulled out of a filter at one point? â creates better atmosphere than any SFX effect.
Outpost 11 â at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2013