We desperately need a loud, vicious, cracking, fiery and fierce voice screaming out our woes and frustrations, from the bottom of our lungs. The problem is that often such voice is poisoned with reactionary and populist filth, inflamed by extreme right-wing and racist politics. But not with the Sleaford Mods. The Nottingham duo, formed by vocalist Jason Williamson and musician Andrew Fearn since 2012, are here to convey a message of working-class disaffection and hopelessness without pandering to bigoted resentment and nationalism. Quite the opposite, their lyrics remind Nigel Farage of what is it that connects us: our humanity. It goes like this: “St George’s flag on white van/ This is the human race/ This is the human race/ UKIP and your disgrace”, in the song Tweet Tweet Tweet.
At more than 100 minutes, this slow-burn doc will follow Jason’s and Andrew’s footsteps as they conduct their daily lives and prepare for their concerts. Jason reveals that their music is entirely organic, there’s no planning and strict regime. He has no idea of “what it means to be big”. Their music is merely a reflection of their routinely frustrations. Jason used to work in a local chicken factory (also shown in the movie), and their music is undoubtedly a reaction to mundane banality and social maladroitness. These two c**nts turn fury into art (not coincidentally, “Kunst” in the film title is German for “art”).
Fans engage passionately with Sleaford Mods’ socially and politically-charged lyrics.
Their lyrics are expletive-laden and aggressive. If there was a beep for every bad word both their music and this doc alike would sound like a bizarre Disney cartoon. Yet there’s something mellow and gentle about the band, and – despite the brazen vocabulary – Jason’s demeanour is strangely calm. Their smooth anger is contagious. It’s cathartic. It’s a call to action. It’s call for a revolution, in a country that has never witnessed a large popular insurrection. It’s energetic and, if you can work out Jason’s thick Midlands accent, the message is clear as daylight: get out of the rat race, don’t get stuck in the benefit rut and, most importantly, capitalism and celebrity junk are NOT the answer to your woes.
Sleaford Mods are probably the most vocally anti-establishment band in the UK right now, and a much needed artistic force. Punk has become largely commoditised these days, and it’s anything but anti-establishment. Johnny Rotten – who lives in a big mansion in LA – recently endorsing Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and Brexit. I would like to think Jason and Andrew will never follow a similar path!
Bunch of Kunst is out in selected cinemas across the UK on Friday, April 21st. Meanwhile, you can watch the film trailer right here:
Milo (Eric Ruffin) is a young teenager living at a bottom of the social ladder on a housing estate in New York. He’s obsessed with vampires. He kills people and drinks their blood. He’s also a loner taunted by a gang of bullies. Sizing up likely prey, he makes friends with potential victim Sophie (Chloe Levine) who lives on the ninth floor and as it turns out is being abused by her grandfather (who we never see). At home, Milo lives with his former soldier elder brother Lewis (Aaron Clifton Moten), their mother having committed suicide some time previously. Mother’s room and her suicide deathbed still haunt Milo, who periodically sneaks in there when he can get past his brother. When he’s not out stalking and hunting, he watches vampire movies, reads vampire novels and writes extensive observations on vampire lore in his notebook.
The film deals with race in the sense that many of the housing estate residents including Milo and his family are black, and white people visit thinking they can buy drugs off dealers on the estate. But equally, Sophie is white: perhaps this is a consideration when Milo first stalks her, but it quickly becomes apparent to both him and us that she’s just as much an unloved and struggling teenager as he is. Once this barrier has been broken, it’s clear that race isn’t an issue between them at all and a romantic entanglement ensues. But while Sophie is drawn to Milo, as she browses his vampire notebooks in his absence she starts to get cold feet.
Will Sophie become Milo’s next victim?
There is an attempt to impose a plot – Milo has a run in with local gangs and playfully leads middle class white boy Mike (Danny Flaherty) trying to buy ‘C’ for himself and his girlfriend into a room where he meets the local gang who taunt him then (perhaps unintentionally) kill him. Milo is subsequently picked up by the cops which will have unforeseen consequences for him on the estate.
However the real interest here lies in the character of Milo himself, a conflicted, troubled soul trying impossibly to extract himself from harmful practices into which he has fallen. Ruffin gives an extraordinary performance as the boy, completely compelling and believable as well as beautifully understated. He’s matched by Levine as Sophie, even though she’s clearly the secondary character with less time on the screen.
Aside from the housing estate environment, the locations are school classrooms, underground carriage interiors, public lavatories and overgrown patches of waste land all of which add up to a bleak urban landscape matched by the barren interior terrain of the protagonist. Questions about God and money occasionally come up in conversation and an enthusiastic church congregation can be heard singing distantly in the background once or twice, but they barely impinge on Milo’s existence. Far from being a horror film per se, this is a powerful vision of a lost teenager’s desolate, internal world.
The Transfigurationis out in cinemas across the UK from Friday, April 21st. Meanwhile, you can still watch the film trailer below:
For an equally racially-charged if more mainstream horror movie, read our review of Jordan Peele’s Get Out, which is also out in cinemas right now.
Let’s talk about Iraq: “We promised an Arab government with British advisors and delivered it the other way around. We tried to govern and failed. In my opinion, we tried to govern too much”. Does this sound familiar, like these words were uttered last decade? In reality they are from Gertrude Bell in the early 20th century. This British woman, often nicknamed the “the female Lawrence of Arabia” is considered one of the champions of Iraq independence, if often overlooked. The irony that her commentary remains so current a century on suggests that British meddling in the Middle East hasn’t changed so much, perhaps just reinvented itself.
This documentary made out of black and white photographs and moving images, some reenacted and some original, contains so much historical information that you will either need a pen or a prodigy’s brain to in order to retain most of it. With Tilda Swindon as the voice of Gertrude Bell, the movie will take you on a journey and history lesson of British Imperialism, vested interests and female representation. The film is built in such a way that it isn’t always possible to distinguished between the real and the reenacted sequences. The talking heads interviews are clearly staged, as the people would now be dead or well into their 100s, while of the images from the Middle East are very difficult to date.
Letters from Baghdad is film made to look nostalgic. Thankfully it’s not nostalgic of British imperialism and grandiosity. Instead its nostalgic tone is lonesome and sorrowful, like the cry of a woman subtly dismissed from history simply because she was a female. Recognising a British woman as one of the champions of Iraq independence was just too subversive at the time. T.E. Lawrence patronisingly described her as “a wonderful person, not like a woman”, while a government official likened her writing of a white paper to “a dog standing on its hind legs”. Her determination was dismissed as arrogance and abruptness, in a stance symptomatic of sheer misogyny. Fortunately times have changed, and two female filmmakers have come to rescue and to reclaim her legacy.
The film explores Gertrude Bell’s personal life from her early attempts at marriage in the UK, following her infatuation with the Middle East, her later dalliances, her political influence all the way through to the time near her death at the age of 58 in the year of 1926 (from a controversial overdose of sleeping pills, which the film doesn’t discuss). There is also plenty of historical material, from the forced eviction of Arab locals in order to make room for British officials, the usual British disregard for a comprehensive political scheme and the all-too-familiar oil interests.
Bell is considered one of the most affable British agents in the Middle East, and one of the very few who could be vaguely trusted by the locals. She often traveled on her own and at her own risk, and she raises the fundamental question: “how can you persuade people to trust you and take your side when they don’t know whether you’ll be there to take theirs?”. She passionately related to the region, and that’s where she felt at home the most. She claimed: “I became a person in Syria”. She also stated “the me that they expect will not return”, indicating that she would feel like a foreigner upon coming back to her very own birth nation the UK.
This is a didactic and effective doc, if somewhat esoteric. Do watch it if you have an interest in British imperialism in the Middle East and women’s history. Despite blending old footage with reenactments, the film isn’t particularly innovative in its history-telling format, and it’s also a little monotonous in the historical wordiness. A good one for the history class, but not for Friday night.
Letters from Baghdad: The Untold Story of Gertrude Bell was out in UK cinemas in April 2017, when this piece was originally written. It was launched on VoD as part of a BFI collection entitled Folly, love and courage: three remarkable stories from international female filmmakers in June, 2018.
Blah blah Land. Another film about glamorous and sunny California. All works fine. Your dream is possible. Everything is possible if you work hard. Even flying! Hollywood couldn’t be possibly be any more spurious and fabricated. The Oscar blunder are a gentle reminder of how phony and fallible it can be. When I think of Los Angeles, I picture its darkest, gloomy side and the long and winding roads. When I think of Los Angeles, I don’t think of the dreamy La La Land (Damien Chazelle, 2017). I remember the gloomy David Lynch classic Mulholland Drive (2002), which was voted the best film of the 21st century by a BBC Culture poll last year and has just been rereleased in cinemas across the country.
Lynch’s references to Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950) and the decadent film star have much more to do with reality than the unrealistic picture of stardom that we see in La La Land. I can relate to a character that doesn’t know who she is and picks a name from a picture, as Laura Harrindon does when she calls herself Rita (Hayworth). I cannot relate myself to a singer who thinks of her aunt during her audition. Emma Stone singing “here’s to the fools who dream” is an insult to me. I am a dreamer and I am not a fool!
Below I have contrasted the two films: the formulaic 2017 musical against the 2002 dirty cult film. In a nutshell, I think that Mulholland Drive is a filthy and subversive La La Land. Or the other way around: La La Land is a clean and sanitised version of Mulholland Drive. Here are the reasons why:
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1. Complex mindset VS easy dream:
In both films, an actress is trying to break into Hollywood, yet they couldn’t be more different. In Mulholland Drive, Betty/Diane (Naomi Watts) arrives in town with high expectations. Her eyes look so fascinated by everything that surrounds her. She hopes her days of fame will soon begin, but what Lynch says to us is that there is more fantasy than reality in her aspirations. On the other hand, Mia (Emma Stone) of La La Land is a cafe waitress who goes from audition to audition seeking her role of dreams. She eventually succeeds.
In Lynch’s world, it’s the struggle in the mind of the actress that matters. Is Betty dreaming high? Does she have any talent? Can she compromise? In Chazelle’s fantasy land, what’s important is that if you try hard, you’ll be successful. It’s the fulfilling of the American dream. Dream on, little dreamer.
Living the dream: everything is wonderful and glitzy in La La Land.
2. Real music VS fake music:
Mulholland Drive is not a musical, but the film is solidly built around musical numbers. There’s the song that appears in the audition Betty goes, which refers to Doris Day’s filmography. There’s also the beautiful and cathartic number on the Club Silencio. The songs reveal the transformation of the characters and link them to their inner self. The characters don’t lie to us when there is music around. They reveal themselves instead.
La La Land is entirely a musical, that supposedly celebrates jazz, as Ryan Gosling’s character (Sebastian) is a jazz musician. He claims he loves free jazz and is determined to show Mia what jazz truly is. Only that the main theme of the film is not a jazz composition. Seb can’t write jazz. In reality, it is a little waltz. (Yes, it is!) There is nothing jazzy and cool in La La Land. La La Land exploits jazz.
3. Strong women VS frail women:
Mulholland Drive is all about Betty and who she truly is. The unrelenting search for success has turned her into an invidious, jealous and mean woman. She cannot stand the fact that Camilla/Rita (Laura Harring) took her part in the musical. So she seduces her. It’s never clear though if she really gets that woman, or if it’s all part of her paranoia.
In La La Land, the plot is far less complicated. Mia doesn’t follow hard enough her ambitions. She almost gives up being an actress and returns to her parent’s house just because she broke up with Seb. On the second part of the film, she is more a mother than an artist. This is why Lynch is more edgy than Chazelle. Lynch’s women are stronger than Chazelle’s. They don’t function according to men’s desire.
Strong and robust women are the centrepiece of Mulholland Drive.
4. Edifying diversity VS confused diversity
La La Land opening scene offers the diversity Chazelle wants to show, though Los Angeles consists of individuals from more than 140 nations, speaking 224 recognised languages. The Latins, Blacks, Whites and Asians are all at the same social level. They are all struck in a traffic jam, they all have cars. There is also a bad taste joke about Latin culture, revealing a confusion between Brazilian and Hispanic cultures. Sebastian’s favorite jazz club will be demolished and on its place there will be a “Samba Tapas Club”. Tapas don’t come from Brazil; and jazz is not superior to samba, they are just different.
In Mulholland Drive, Betty and Camilla are empathetic of Latin culture as they both fall into tears during the Spanish-language version of Roy Orbison’s Crying. The musical number contrasts truth and illusion. Here the diversity serves for the purpose of turning Americans into more sensitive human beings.
5. Non-linear narrative VS linear narrative
Lynch’s style of storytelling is non-linear. He comes and goes, mixes flashbacks with flashforwards, with some objects and characters suddenly reappearing in order to reveal a secret. It is as creative and unpredictable as life itself. La La Land tries to play a trick by faking a non-linear narrative. It shows a sequence which suggests what could have happened if Seb and Mia hadn’t broken up. In reality, this is just a breather, so viewers can resume dreaming of a happy ending shortly after.
Everything is colourful and everyone is jolly in La La Land.
6. Dirty sex VS sanitised sex
Let’s face it: you can’t get frisky with the love sequences between Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. They are not even naked! Taste the lesbian flare of Naomi Watts and Laura Harring instead. They will get much closer to your sexual fantasies, rest assured. Here’s what Harring declared about filming the sequence: “Even though I was nervous, he [Lynch] does everything with class. He knows how to get people to react – and without any special effects”.
This is not your average British indie shtick. The ruthless cop DS Blake (played by Andrew Tiernan, who also wrote and directed the film) investigates the cold case of a politician’s missing daughter, and he is soon caught up in a hurricane of dark secrets, lies, government conspiracy and backstabbing. But he’s determined to solve the mystery, even if he has to pay the highest price imaginable. Sounds vaguely familiar? Probably yes. It’s the level of careful detail within each frame and twist that makes Dragonfly special.
The tone of the narrative is somber throughout, so it’s only instinctive that Dragonfly should be filmed in black and white. It’s as if the director had decided to film in a dark environment where your cone cells responsible for colour vision are naturally switched off. The film has the thumping pace of an art film, without the unrelenting stamina of Hollywood thriller.
Dragonfly is a meditative and contemplative experience, not conducive to adrenaline rushes. Here the forensics are subordinate to the movie aesthetics. Its complexity lies is the nuanced black and white tones, and the carefully crafted photography. There are some particularly beautiful images of the London landscape and a park covered in snow.
Shona McWilliams (right) plays the film’s most surprising character.
Tiernan delivers a steady performance of a man tormented by the limitations of his job, and haunted by the prospect or not completing the task assigned to him. The cast also includes Wayne Norman as Blake’s sidekick Richard Price, Mark Wingett as the corrupt politician Francis Grosvenor (whose daughter has gone missing), Ann Mitchel as Francis’s wife and Shona McWilliams as a very ambiguous woman.
The film gradually blends in elements of film noir, detective story and occultism, but I wouldn’t want to get into too much detail without spoiling the movie twists. The story does however have some loose ends which at times are difficult to pierce together, particularly as you may get absorbed in the ingenious photography.
This is not Tiernan’s first film to deal with the subject of suspicion and mistrust in government organisations. His latest movie UK18 delves into the topic in a lot more detail, and the director has taken a lot more artistic freedoms: the movie narrative is partly devoid of chronological and logical linearity.
In 2013 the Egyptian military toppled the Muslim Brotherhood faction, two years after the demise of the decade-long dictator Hosni Mubarak. These events are directly linked to the broader movement in North Africa and the Middle East described as the Arab Spring of 2011. While hailed in West as a revolution of the people against autocratic and despotic regimes, the process wasn’t quite smooth (plus the outcome wasn’t always rosy, just think of Syria). Quite the opposite: these events have been fraught with sectarianism. This Egyptian fiction movie brilliantly synthesises these factional activities. It transposes the political tension into a confined space: a police van.
Quite literally, Clash offers an insider’s view into the conflicts that took place in Egypt in June 2013. Virtually all the action in the movie takes place inside the vehicle, and almost all the views of the outside are filmed from behind the bars of the van windows. It’s as if the filmmaker was a fly on the wall. Or an elephant in the room. What I’m saying is that the first-time filmmaker Mohamed Diab succeeds to capture the tension in every corner of a very small space populated with about 15 nervously haggling Egyptians, and yet his camera is never intrusive. There is a sense of claustrophobia and yet the film is never exploitative of the plight of the different characters, a balance difficult to achieve. The camerawork becomes particularly creative towards the end of the movie, when the action takes a very dangerous turn – once again, in the literal sense.
Not even a water canon can cool down the intense heat inside the police van.
Factionalism and division of all sorts prevail throughout the movie. Prisoners are categorised according to their political allegiance, nationality, job, gender, age and even their beard status. Unsurprisingly, these people argue relentlessly, and it’s not just their temper that’s at boiling point: the van itself is a heat trap for the African sun, and soon the prisoners begin to feel the effects of the extreme temperature.
The movie also has some teething problems, mainly in the script. The high numbers of characters prevents the filmmaker from developing them more thoroughly, and it’s difficult to feel allegiance towards any individuals. Perhaps this was intentional, as at such erratic times it’s indeed very difficult to pick your most reliable sidekick. There are some attempts at what seems to be sort sort of humour and flare, including a fat guy wearing a pan on his head, a man having to urinate in a bottle and a DJ reminescing his music but somehow this come across as a little contrived and awkward. Despite some flaws, Clash remains an effective and memorable movie.
Clash releases in UK cinemas on April 21st, with a few premiere screenings in London taking place before then. Get an idea of the claustrophobic feel and vibe of the movie by watching the film trailer below:
This year the Russian Revolution 1917, an event changed the world forever, is 100 years old. So what better way to commemorate than with an real Fabergé Imperial Easter egg made in the year of the Revolution but never finished? Or maybe not! If you think again you will easily realise that the legacy from the notorious Russian artist and jeweler Peter Carl Fabergé is in reality an insult to Lenin and Trotsky, and the antithesis of everything they ever stood for.
The doc Fabergé: a Life of its Own is an insightful and yet uncritical investigative piece of cinema looking at the early days of the Russian artist, his death drowned in despondency shortly after the Revolution all the way to recent days, when the House of Fabergé is still synonymous with extreme luxury. The movie blends images from the imperial Russian with interviews with business associates and surviving members of the Fabergé family. It also includes excerpts of recent television commercials and films like Octopussy (John Glen, 1983), which feature the Fabergé brand (which can now be found in perfumes and a myriad of other products). Gawping Americans enchanted by royalty are now amongst the big fans.
Fabergé’s unfinished and last Imperial egg is featured in the film
The movie reveals some interesting aspects of Russian history and contradictions. For example, despite the imperial nationalism, Saint Petersburg is a deeply European city: its fashion is French, its architecture is Italian and its is name German borrowed via the Baltic neighbours. And the doc has a very British accent throughout: the narrator sounds very British, many of the client are British and so is Sara Fabergé, the artist’s great-grandniece. In a way, Fabergé’s legacy and his hometown Saint Petersburg are a testament that culture of the various European countries (including Russia) is hardly inextricable.
The problem with the film is that it celebrates the taste of the super wealthy without criticising it. At one point, it does point out that the population of Russian was living in poverty without heat and sanitation before the Revolution, but it fails to delve into more detail. It doesn’t address Fabergé political allegiances and social concerns (or lack thereof). It’s as if the artist and his stinking rich clients lived in a bubble detached from reality. Which is probably the case anyway. It reminded me a little of the 2015 Channel 4 doc The Most Expensive Foods in the World, which was chastised in the media for celebrating vulgar taste.
How do you fit a ship inside an egg? Panic not, Fabergé has the answer for you!
Instead you will gain plenty of insight into gilder and enamel technique, the advanced engineering that allows for the encrusting of diamonds in a gosling hatching an egg (both the egg and the bird are mobile). You will also learn about the Chinese flowers which inspired Fabergé, the garland and the froufrou, the expensive gems used for eyes of the animals, and so on. All carefully polished and immaculately polished gems. Not the kind of stuff we like at DMovies. We tend to prefer dirty and unpolished gems.
Fabergé’s talent, flare and craftsmanship remain undisputed. But he’s the epitome of futility, a morbid reminder of the bizarre taste of the super rich, and most crude and accurate expression of capitalism. Inequality is recast as something virtuous. One of the last creations of the House of Fabergé is a peacock watch with moving feather et al – isn’t that just what you ALWAYS wanted? As an American television presenter puts it (in a clip featured in the doc): “this is the perfect present for someone who has everything”. Or for someone who has more money than sense. In a nutshell, Fabergé is the last symbol we need in a world increasingly unequal, where just eight people have more wealth than half of the world’s population. It’s as if the last Emperor of Russia Nicholas II reincarnated in an American multi-billionaire. Just a little bit of sad history repeating.
The three-year-old movie Fabergé: a Life of its Own is being relaunched this week in order to coincide with Easter. The DVD at £10.99 and the Blu-ray at £12.99 would make a perfect Easter present for your friends who don’t need anything – just click here for more information. Otherwise you can take delight in the equally luxurious and yet free to watch movie trailer below:
There’s something about the act of one person punching another full in the face. Again. And again. And again. In real life perhaps you’d intervene to try and knock the person out, stand gawping or get away from the immediate area asap. Indeed, we see all these responses and more from characters in Destruction Babies, but the camera just keeps on filming the perpetrator of the punches. And the staged violence appears to be for real here, not faked.
Certainly there are other scenes which mediate the fist fighting via the editing process. And the scenario (it feels more like a scenario for actor improvisation than a full blown script) introduces a number of other characters in addition to punching man Taira Ashihara (Yuya Yagira), most importantly girl shoplifter Nana (Nana Komatsu) and cowardly boy Yuya Kitahara (Masaki Suda) who starts beating up girls in Taira’s immediate wake.
Then towards the end of the film the plot puts the three characters in a car, enacts a male against female episode of sexual violence in the back seat then later stages a full blown car crash. The sexual violence is an unremarkable if sadly all-too familiar narrative device while the car crash is over very quickly. However the face-punching just keeps ongoing which is part of what gives it such extraordinary power as an image: it lingers in the subconscious long after the film has finished screening.
So Taira punches people. And punches them again. Until they run off or fall down, bloody faced and unconscious. Or until he falls down, bloody faced and unconscious. Only to later get up and start punching the same person’s face or another person’s face all over again, continuing the cycle. Why? What is wrong with him? The film never attempts to answer such questions, merely shows us Taira punching his way through much of the feature-length running screen time.
Is this movie a good thing? I’m not sure. It’s reminiscent of the DMovies poll as to whether or not it’s ok for movies to show real sex: you could ask the same question about movies showing real violence. What is true, however, is that it’ll stay with you for days afterwards, making you think about it over and over, just like Taira’s punches which keep on coming whatever happens. There’s no question but that the film demands to be seen.
Destruction Babiesis out on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK on Monday, April 10th, and it was made available on iTunes in December (UK only).
From the same team that brought us the science docLast Man on the Moon (Mark Craig, 2016), comes a new movie chartering the extraordinary achievements of a group of men who were at the heart of the Apollo space programme. Mission Control -The Unsung Heroes of Apollo is a bold and ambitious undertaking and focuses mostly on those who were as far away from glory as anyone could be in those extraordinary times. The film is mostly made up of archive footage, CG reenactments and a series of talking head interviews with these legendary figures. Highlighting the dynamic that existed between the people working tirelessly at mission control and the men they sent into space, the film is a genuine treasure trove of fascinating anecdotes spanning decades in the life of the American space programme.
The Mission Control team at NASA was at the heart of the US space programme which gained notoriety as the race intensified between the US and Russia to put the first man in space and later on the moon. Directed by David Fairhead and produced by Keith Haviland and Gareth Dodds, the film offers a compelling, yet not completely new story. With the help from Teesside University animation department which provided most of the CG reenactment, Fairhead offers a fairly straightforward story, with an exhilarating narrative arc. At the heart of the story, is the extraordinary retelling of the Apollo 13 mishap, and the near misses and fatal accidents that took place during that time.
In the absence of any historical female representation, Fairhead uses current female engineers working at Mission Control to introduce the men they refer to as “the founding fathers” of their profession. Although this is a stroke of genius on the part of the director, there remains a fact that the subject of women at NASA, or lack thereof, was not once approached here. As we delve deeper into the personalities of these brilliantly qualified boffins, it transpire that they are made up from men born against a backdrop of economic turmoil of the ’20s and ’30s as well as global conflict. Some came from a rural upbringing, while others grew up in blue-collar working class America. Referred to by JFK as “the most hazardous, dangerous, and greatest adventure upon which mankind has ever embarked”, the Apollo space programme saw these men rise to the challenge in an extraordinary fashion and work hard out of duty and out of sheer love for the job.
Publicity image from Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes Of Apollo
The documentary is at its best when it recounts the number of hairy moments encountered by the team, and the way they dealt with them. At no point does the story line attempt to sell these historical accounts as anything new, even when it uses suspense in retelling them. The absence of narration is also interesting, as it allows for the story to flow without any other constraints. Having the men tell these stories in their own way, adds a dose of trepidation and excitement as we see them reliving these historic moments decades later.
Despite the compelling nature of the film, it is hard to see who it could be aimed at. It isn’t quite brainy enough to appeal to those interested in the space program, and fails to bring anything groundbreaking to appeal to the layman. On the whole Mission Control is a brilliantly made documentary which is sure to appeal to TV audiences around the world, but one must wonder if anyone would go out of their to watch to on DVD or on a big screen. Perhaps a documentary chartering women engineers would have had more of an impact, especially after the huge success seen by this year’s surprise hits Hidden Figures.
MissionControl: The Unsung Heroes Of Apollo is available globally and on demand on Friday April 14th – just click here in order to pre-order it on iTunes. Meanwhile don’t forget to watch the film trailer below:
Read here in order to read our exclusive review of last year’s Last Man on the Moon.
In the article the writer goes to visit his former colleague at San Francisco’s young gay men’s XY magazine Michael Glatze who is now studying at Bible school in Wyoming to become a pastor. The XY period is covered towards the start of the movie while the Bible school episode appears in its last third. In between Michael and partner Bennett (Zachary Quinto) try and build a life together which later becomes a ménage à trois with the addition of Tyler (Charlie Carver).
Michael fondly remembers his late, practising Christian mother who never forced her own faith upon her kids. He often visits her ashes buried at the roots of a tree in a park. When one night he’s rushed to hospital with debilitating heart palpitations; he fears his life may end at any time. He begins praying and reading the Bible in earnest, flirting with Mormonism and Buddhism before Bible school, where he falls for the conservative-raised Rebekah (Emma Roberts) but alienates the staff over his interpretation of Christianity.
The couple leave to set up their own church with him as pastor. In a final, extraordinary note he waits for his new parishioners to arrive on Sunday morning: is he about to experience another heart palpitation episode?
Michael and Bennett make a loving couple whose relationship soon became dissolved
Franco is terrific as the gay man (or is he?) trying to come to terms with queer theory, his own identity and questions about his place in the universe traversing the labyrinth of different societal sub-groups. Quinto lends strong support as the partner who gets hurt and lashes out when Michael feels he can no longer live as a gay man, only to renew their friendship in later years.
Further unsettling contrary narratives underpin all this besides the two obvious ones. Cory (Devon Graye) is an openly gay Christian who reconciles faith and sexuality. The “straight” Michael’s rejection of the dominant ideas encountered at Bible school hint at different Christian viewpoints from that institution’s dominant, fundamentalist model.
Many people have struggled and continue to struggle with their own sense of religious and/or sexual identity, and so does this film. Its knife-edge ending neatly avoids the trap of being prescriptive and telling people that they should live their lives in any one particular, given way. It certainly understands a great deal about both sexual identity and religion and provides much food-for-thought afterwards. Its refusal to easily package itself for one target audience or another may explain why it didn’t make it to UK cinemas, but happily it can now be found on DVD.
I Am Michaelis out in the UK on DVD in first week of April. It’s also available for online streaming on BFI player – just click here for more information. And you can view the movie trailer right here:
I‘d like to imagine that Morrissey would be the first in queue to watch this film. The controversial “meat is murder” singer and animal rights activist once famously said “I hope to God it’s human [meat]” upon smelling barbecue during a concert in the US. Yet he’d probably become extremely disappointed. Raw is a very effective, clever and funny movie about a vegetarian who turns into a cannibal, but it is in no way an anti-carnivore statement. After all, meat is fun. Sorry, mate!!!
This incredibly well-crafted horror starts with a sequence that is guaranteed to get you jumping off your seat, only for the pace to slow down and gradually begin to build up again to the very graphic, repulsive and inevitable outcome: human eats human. At first, the film seems to be a very serious and stern horror with strong political and activist connotations, but then it slowly and willfully morphs into an absurd black comedy about wild and naughty university students and a very strange fraternal relation between two sisters. It will keep you hooked, fluttering and pulsating throughout. Much like a chicken in an abattoir.
You too may quiver and shudder in fear while watching Raw
Raw tells the story of 16-year-old Justine (Garance Marillier), who arrives for her first year in veterinary school somewhere in provincial France. She comes from a family of strict vegetarians, and she has never eaten meat herself, but she’s then forced to consume rabbits kidneys during an initiation ritual. She’s goaded by her upperclass sister Alexia (Ella Rumpf) to engage in the bizarre procedure for sake of acceptance. Soon after, a very bizarre accident happens, causing Justine to have her first contact with raw human flesh. You can work out what happens next without me having to dish out some tasters and spoilers of the ensuing feast to the eyes.
Cannibalism isn’t the only sort of interaction with the human body that you will encounter in Raw: there’s plenty of sex (both straight and gay), the most unorthodox university initiation rituals (Americans call them hazing) you’ll come across (including covering the rookie’s body in paint for a hilarious and colourful interaction) and even a Brazilian wax with a tragic outcome. Oh, and there are animals everywhere: dead or alive, put to sleep on ketamine or being cut open in an operation table. There’s blood, saliva, vomit and pretty much any sort of fluids you can imagine in there. And the ones you cannot imagine, too.
Justine is forced to eat raw rabbit kidneys during an initiation ceremony
This French film will deliberately join the pantheon of the most disgusting horror movies ever made, alongside the likes of Naked Blood (Hisayasu Satō, 1996) and The Human Centipede (Tom Six, 2006). But unlike the Japanese and Dutch films, Raw is a very clever film which successfully recycles cliches of university hazing films, with very strong performances, convincing imagery, a great soundtrack (there are some very energetic and nervous sequences on a dance-floor packed with randy students), plus a very sharp and dark humour.
Raw is out in cinemas across the UK from Friday April 7th. Make sure you attend sober and on an empty stomach, just in case. Meanwhile, you can watch the film trailer right here, which is far easier to digest:
