Perhaps no other 20th century artist has captured the essence and the soul of male homosexuality as accurately and vibrantly as Touko Valio Laaksonen, best known as Tom of Finland outside his eponymous Scandinavian birth nation. Tom’s drawings of muscular men with bloated muscles and exaggerated phalli have featured in gay clubs, magazines and – most importantly – the imagination of gay men all around the planet at least since at least the 1980s. His immediately recognisable drawings continue to influence artists and to titillate libidos decades after artist’s death.
Tom of Finland is a very standard and effective biopic, portraying Tom from his youth at the aftermath of WW2 up until his death to emphysema in 1991. The five decades or so of his life are convincingly delivered by the Finnish actor Pekka Strang, who is both subtle and dramatic in his performance. Tom’s stoical attitude towards war, his insecurities in the face of homophobic scrutiny and a very Scandinavian sense of self-deprecating perfectionism are all there, composing a very complex and multilayered individual. This is no uni-dimensional character.
Overall, this is a very good movie, which provide moviegoers with both historical context and emotional insight into the life of a deeply subversive and provocative artist. It’s also a universal film that everyone – not just gay men – will find relatable. Tom’s work has drawn both admiration and disdain from different quarters of the artistic community, and the discussion whether his drawings are art or pornography will never cease. His influence, on the other hand, is not questionable.
The also Finnish filmmaker DomeKarukoski allow viewers to witness soldiers in Finland of the 1940s, the hedonistic underground of Berlin in the 1950s, plus the vibrant and colourful gay scene of California in the 1970s, and finally the Aids crisis of the 1980s. His ill-fated and tragic romance to a Finnish man called Veli (Lauri Tilkanen) is also a central topic, as and his affectionate yet somewhat distant relationship to his sister Kaija (Jessica Grabowsky). The movie also interestingly raises questions and notes some parallels between religion and gay culture: both are often insular and ritualistic. The photography is very convincing, even if at times a plush streak makes it more reminiscent of Pierre et Gilles than of Tom of Finland.
Karukoski deserves praise for making the film in Finnish (bar the bits in Germany and the US, where the respective local languages are predictably spoken), instead of opting for English in the name of commercial interests. He could have probably cast some international name such William Dafoe to play Tom of Finland, just like Abel Ferrara did three years ago in Pasolini. I am not a very big fan of films of movies that shun the local language in favour of profitability.
There is just one hardy and big problem with Tom of Finland, which wouldn’t be an issue for most films. Unlike many of Tom’s drawings, the movie Tom of Finland features no real sex and not even an erection. There’s what looks like a prosthetic penis being doused in a glass of beer, and a few naked Finns bathing naked in a river in the beginning of the movie, but otherwise this a very sexless endeavour. We doubt that anyone will ejaculate on the cinema seats or on the person next to them. How rude! This is of course a very significant flaw, as Tom’s work was teeming with explicit sexual activity (as you can see from the image above). It’s more of less the equivalent to making a film about Edith Piaf without music. Still, more than a worth a visit to the cinema!
Tom of Finland is out in cinemas across the UK in August, 2017. It’s now available on all major VoD platforms.
A war film should never be pleasant to watch, or convey feelings of grandiosity, pride and nationalism. There is no winner: everyone loses out at such conflicts. Land of Mine is extremely successful at highlighting the pointlessness of WW2 in all of its bizarre territoriality and forged allegiances. You won’t leave the cinema feeling enchanted and elated. Instead you will feel shocked and outraged, which is exactly what a war film should do.
The film starts out with Danish Sergeant Carl Leopold Rasmussen (Roland Møller) leading surrendered German troops out of the country in May 1945 and beating a few soldiers in the process. You would be forgiven for mistaking him for a Nazi: he speaks German, screams in a way not dissimilar to Hitler and embraces gratuitous and unprovoked violence. It’s almost as if the hitherto humiliated Danish took pleasure in becoming the oppressor, even if it’s just for a little while.
The Sergeant in then allocated to a beach where he has to supervise 14 German teenagers, who’ve been sent in order to clear some of of the 2.2 million mines placed by the German on the Danish coast – more than in any other European country. These boys are cleaning up the mess that their parents made in their neighbours’ garden. They have little understanding of the conflict. They don’t dream of world domination and instead just long for a job as mechanic upon their return home. But obviously not all of them will survive the ordeal. They are a testament that the Germans may have been prepared to go to war, but they were never prepared to lose the war.
No slippery fingers, shaky hands, hesitant thoughts and vacillating minds are allowed; the consequences of any minor error are obviously disastrous, ranging from severe mutilation to a horrific death. And so these untrained and emotionally immature boys begin to die, one by one. The Danish filmmaker Martin Zanvliet opted to show just one violent and gory death, which is extremely graphic and disturbing in its realism. It does the job of shell shocking viewers extremely well. But because there is no repetition, the violence is never fetishised and exploitative.
At war, there is no room solidarity and compassion, particularly towards the enemy. The sentiments that are the very foundation of our humanity become subversive. This explains why Sergeant Paul exhibits no sympathy for the young boys. He’s at ease in his sadistic skin, and grapples uncomfortably with the feelings of kindness and altruism. But Land of Mine has a very nice surprise in store for you at the very end.
Land of Mine isn’t the only WW2 movie set on an European beach and showing in UK cinemas right now. You can watch the far more celebratory and momentous Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017) in movie theatres across the UK. Land on Mine is out on Friday, August 11th.
Matthew Heineman’s recent release City of Ghosts offers a definitive insight into the so called Islamic State and their violent propagandist media regime in the Middle East, which has recently infiltrated British shores. Like Heineman’s film, A Good Day to Die, Hoka Hey explores the media’s relationship towards capturing war in its stark and destructive reality. Focusing specifically on the career of British photojournalist Jason P. Howe, Harold Monfils’s second feature does not dwell upon the politics of conflicts in Columbia or Afghanistan but instead shifts its efforts towards examining Howe’s constant desire to capture humanity in its most grotesque manner. Akin to Marlowe’s literary Doctor Faustus, the photographer’s passions lead him on a downward spiral into personal problems and spiritual discontent. Notably, the film elicits that the horrors of war will corrode the purest and most ardent passions.
Opening with hand held footage of Howe on patrol with British servicemen in Afghanistan, Monfils’s documentary throws the audience straight into the deep end. As the soldiers and Howe wonder through fields, tension within the frame is created through the claustrophobic and obscured shots of their surroundings; beyond the trees the Taliban could lay. Disaster strikes in the form of a soldier stepping on a concealed IED (improvised explosive device) warhead. Howe somehow manages to capture to the whole sequence in a clarity that is a stark juxtaposition to the surrounding world of ‘fake news’ and the POTUS’s bizarre “convfefe” tweet.
After this short prelude, the story of Howe’s rise in photo journalism unfolds. Simultaneously using film footage and his photographs inside the frame unearths the close connection between the two media. Further, merging the two arts together proves for an intellectual point of reference and discussion in a film so centred upon the banality of humanities destructive qualities. Spliced with Harvey Morpheus’s cinematography, utilising the talking head interviews of fellow photographers like Tim Page, Roger Arnold and Hector Emanuel gives a deeper insight into the psyche and nature of Howe.
Gaining his experience in Colombia during the governments conflict against the Farc (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), Howe was blooded into photo journalism through sheer impulsive desire to great provocative photos, which honestly reflected such atrocious to life. Evidently, during his time in Colombia, he became romantically attached to a Farc assassin.
Reflecting a more fictional element to his career, such a narrative element pulls the film out of focus from the true essence of the film; unyielding photography. As Howe’s career progresses, it becomes apparent that shooting conflicts have consumed his life. Leading to ramifications that would prove to spoil the story, his personal struggles in dealing with war are those akin to a soldier.
At a tight one hour and a half, A Good Day to Die, Hoka Hey interrogates the repercussions of authentic media coverage upon an individual. Howe’s haunting images linger in one’s mind long after the final scene. Unlike the suspenseful quality of another war film out in theatres right now, Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan), Harold Monfils’s film sincerely reflects his ambition to create a piece which portrays ‘the damage that happens to the soul when one is exposed to the horrors of war on the front line for 12 years’.
A Good Day to Die, Hoka Hey is out on DVD, Blu-ray and VoD on July 31st.
Echoing of not only the ‘seemingly inanimate object which is a demon in disguise’ horror movie (the Child’s Play and Annabelle franchises which involve demonic dolls) but also the Hellraiser franchise with its deadly puzzle box, the American Wish Upon is something slightly different from both. For a start, its title recalls the song When You Wish Upon A Star from Disney’s Pinocchio suggesting a fairy story with a happy ending. Which of course it isn’t, being a horror movie. It also recalls the 1902 short story The Monkey’s Paw, the archetypal ‘be careful what you wish for’ tale widely read in U.S. schools although in fact of English origin.
Having as a small child witnessed her mother’s suicide, teenager Clare (Joey King) comes across a Chinese puzzle box. Since she’s studying Chinese in college, she works out that the inscriptions on the box’s side indicate it can grant its owner seven wishes. Some of the wording proves harder to translate as it’s written in ancient Chinese. Unperturbed, Clare starts making wishes and can’t believe her luck when the wishes come true. The part of the inscription that she’s not yet read, however, requires that each wish granted be paid in blood: whenever one of her requests is fulfilled, someone that Clare knows dies in a gruesome fashion.
On one level, this is predictably silly horror fare which pushes all the right buttons to satisfy its target audience. However, there’s a lot more to it on the level of morality. All of Clare’s wishes possess a moral dimension. She wishes the school bully Darcie (Josephine Langford) would rot, which is a form of revenge. She wishes to inherit her late uncle’s fortune and that the boy she fancies at school (Mitchell Slaggert) would fall in love with her, both of which are forms of self-gratification. She wishes her dad (Ryan Phillippe) would stop embarrassing her by dumpster diving immediately outside her school and she wants to be the most popular girl at school, both of which relate to being socially successful. It later transpires Clare only gets seven wishes, so the last two become her attempts to combat the box as the screenplay attempts to close its narrative.
Thus the film cleverly explores female teenage mores as its heroine moves from object of bullying to object of admiration and from social outcast with two good and faithful close friends (Shannon Purser and Sydney Park) to popular girl who left those two friends behind as her popularity grew. Joey King plays the heroine as ordinary, banal even, which proves highly effective in terms of the audience’s relating to her character. You’re not sure if you would make the same choices of wish yourself but you can absolutely understand why she chooses the wishes that she does. When her apparent good luck turns out to be bad, you’re completely with her in trying to make everything right again and return her life to the way it was before.
To boot, the script and direction have a lot of fun with the murderous mayhem in the wake of the wishes which include kindly neighbour Sherilyn Fenn losing a battle with a kitchen sink waste disposal unit and relative of a friend Alice Lee accidentally impaling herself on the horns of a Chinese statue in her apartment. The seven wishes limit ensures the proceedings never outstay their welcome as they might so easily have done. It’s no masterpiece but a perfectly efficient and serviceable little horror flick with a provocative moral dimension for anyone who cares to probe beneath its surface.
Wish Upon is out in the UK on Friday, July 28th. Watch the film trailer below:
The movie theatre is a dark and claustrophobic space by nature, and hence the right place to watch this extremely jarring and oppressive movie. 47 Metres Down is the ultimate immersive cinema experience, very effective is its objective of keeping viewers biting their nails and on the edge of their seats throughout. In fact, my fear was such that my fingers were almost bleeding by the end of this 85-minute dirtylicious film experience.
Lisa (the gorgeous American actress Mandy Moore) and Kate (the equally pretty Australian Claire Holt) are sisters holidaying in Mexico. Lisa’s boyfriend has recently broken up with her, and so Kate is doing the best she can in order to cheer up her sibling. And so she insists that they go on a cage diving shark adventure. She disregards the poor conditions of the equipment and illegality of the bizarre joy ride, which is being conducted by a very dubious Captain Taylor (Matthew Modine) in a derelict and converted fishing vessel.
Exactly as you would expect, the cable breaks and they get trapped underwater at the depth described in the film title, surrounding by giant predatory shark, with their oxygen running out and unaware whether the men will come for their rescue or simply vanish. The claustrophobia and precariousness of the situation will get you sucked right in. You will feel as vulnerable as the two young females.
The director successfully recycles devices from various horror movies, such as sharks, underwater and confinement flicks. The creatures are believable enough, the photography is dark and convincing and so is the entire predicament of the girls. There is blood and gore, but not too much. And there are fantastic images and events in the final third of the movie, which are then accurately explained by the clever twist at the end of the movie. In many ways, this is still a formulaic horror: vulnerable females being punished for doing something naughty. But it works very well.
One interesting fact about this movie and other British horror films about going underwear/underground is that it hardly feels British and it’s set abroad. In the equally British and extremely scary The Descend (Neil Marshall, 2005) the action takes place in deep caves the in US, and the actors are a blend of American and Australian (just like here). And in the recent The Chamber (Ben Parker, 2017), a submarine crew gets trapped underwater in North Korean waters. All of these are very good movies, but they beg the question: do we have to move away from our territory so often in order to convey horror? Isn’t our little island scary enough? And does our British identity have to get diluted once we go underwater or underground?
47 Metres Down is out in UK cinemas on Wednesday, July 26th. Watch it in a large cinema screen with outstanding sound effects for the full experience
And click here for our review of another extremely riveting film to be watched on a very large silver screen (ideally IMAX), and also showing right now in UK cinemas.
Most literature and theatre fans would instantly recognise Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Soldier Schwejk, the most translated Czech novel in history, and a world-famous anti-war satire. Cinephiles less so. The book has indeed been adapted to the silver screen a few times – first in 1926 and then again in 1943 by Czech filmmaker Karel Lamač, in 1956 by the also Czech Karel Steklý and finally in 1960 by German filmmaker Axel von Ambesser. The problem is that these films are hardly available in the UK, and no other movies have been made since (except for television). This is about to change, as screenwriter and filmmaker Christine Edzard sets herself on a very ambitious mission.
Christina’s film will be neither an ordinary book adaptation nor a period drama selling a fake nostalgia (the type of movies Ken Loach has recently criticised). It is a very personal, audacious and groundbreaking endeavour spearheaded by a woman with a clear artistic vision and unambiguous peace ideology. It will be a very dirty movie in line with our vision and mission of cinema as a transformational tool. DMovies are absolutely thrilled and honoured to bring the details of this very exciting project firsthand to you.
Illustration by Josef Lada, from the book The Good Soldier Schwejk.
The good book
The Good Soldier Schweijk was originally written in four volumes between 1921 and 1923, and it was never completed. The unfinished collection of farcical incidents focuses on the eponymous fictional WWI soldier, his questionable allegiance, the ineptitude of the authorities and – most importantly – the pointlessness of war. The sharp and acrid tone prevails throughout, and the collection is often described as a masterpiece of black comedy.
It’s one of those ultra-subversive books, which remains relevant and urgent nearly a century later. It has been very popular with playwrights throughout history, with adaptations by Bertold Brecht and Joan Littlewood, to mention just a few names. There have also been several versions on television and radio in the UK, Germany, Finland and beyond.
Unsurprisingly, the novel’s mockery of war has not been very popular with warmongering and authoritarian regimes. Hitler infamously prohibited and burnt all the copies available at Bebelplatz in Berlin, where the Nazi book burning memorial now stands. It was also banned by the US Armed Forces. No books were ever burnt in the UK, but it’s extremely unlikely that Churchill, Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair ever read it.
Books being burnt by the Nazis at Bebelplatz, in Berlin; The Good Soldier Schwejk was amongst them.
The live performances
The ball started rolling between July 7th and 17th, when Christine held seven live performances of The Good Soldier Schwejk at Sands Films in Rotherhithe (in Southeast London). The play was scripted as a live, cabaret-style performance, reflecting the background of Schwejk’s original creator: Hašek was a frequent performer of politically engaged cabaret in Prague. Christine explains: “the first Schwejk was written as a sketch several years before the novel existed, so I’m just going back to that original idea.”
DMovies attended the play, which was fully interactive and filmed throughout. There were cameras strategically placed in various parts of the theatre capturing the reactions from the audience. Actors often appeared at the back of the theatre and they even sat down and mingled with the theatre-goers. We were given names of modern weaponry (those unpronounceable ones, such as AK47s and so on) and asked to shoot them out. In the metaphorical sense, of course: we were asked to shout the names out as loud as we could. You have probably gathered by now that no guns were ever triggered and no one got hurt.
The cast included Alfie Stewart (as Schwejk), Joe Armstrong, Kevin Brewer, Sean Gilder, Michael Mears Aaron Neil, Andrew Tiernan, Shona McWilliams and Michele Wade. Andrew and Shona are very well known to DMovies: we recently screened his deliciously dirty and dystopian sci-fi UK18 in central London – the movie was directed by him and starred by her.
Alfie Stewart is the protagonist of our anti-hero saga.
The location
Sands Films are located in an extremely charming and quaint historical building in Rotherhithe, where Christine, her husband (the film producer Richard B Goodwin) and their artistic partner Olivier Stockman have lived and worked since the 1970s. Christine explains: ” It was built in the 1780s with reclaimed ship timbers, and so it’s got ship interior features all over the building. It was a warehouse until 1976 when we came here. We started developing it into a studio. And I’m very proud to say, it has been a working building since it was built, as opposed to being converted into flats like the others [neighbouring buildings].”
The building is no stranger to film: “We’ve made quite a few films here, the one that people know most about is Little Dorrit [directed by Christine herself in 1987]. A six-hour impossible-to-make film, two-part adaptation of Dickens’s novel with a huge cast and quite successful. It was made partly filmed inside this building and partly in a purpose-built nearby studio.”
The charming Sands Films as seen from outside, in Rotherhithe.
She goes on to explain that the building isn’t just about film: “We build the theatre (inside the building) as a set for a version of [Shakespeare’s] A Midsummer Night’s Dream with children in 2000 [which she also directed herself]. The children watched the beginning of the play with puppets in the theatre. And then they get sucked into the story and became Hermia, Lysander and so on. So the set remained as a theatre and we’ve used it quite a bit in all sorts of ways. We also do live events, such as the reading of Robert Fisk’s big book on the Middle East by two actors.”
Finally, she explains the relevance of the building to the project: “I wanted to approach the subject within the confines of this building. Partly because that’s where we work but also because it makes it more concentrated, so we can deliver a concentrated message. With purpose of going into the relationships between characters, into the detail, into the thinking. It’s quite an experience, because it’s very different to rehearse and to deliver a play than to make a film.”
Andrew Tiernan gets prepared to perform.
The modern twist
So, what’s it that will be so special about The Good Soldier Schwejk? Well, it’s not a film set in the past. After years of research, Christine has added her very own personal twist to the play/film by blending in absurd quotes from very real, modern sources. The clumsy, ludicrous, wacky and preposterous words you will hear came from the mouths of Tony Blair, George W Bush, Colin Powell, Cofer Black and other wll-known figures. The conversation are sometimes so bizarre that they feel like five-year-olds squabbling, exposing the sheer absurdity of reality. There are also bits from George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde and Alfred Nobel.
Christine clarifies: “It was an enormous reading operation of research and discovery. Totally absurd things people have said. These quotes are all public quotes, speeches, things that have been printed. Really shockingly absurd.”
While the authors are mentioned at the end of the play, the individual quotes are never attributed to them, making it borderline impossible to identify who said what. But this does not make the play disjointed, quite the opposite. It gives it a strangely smooth feel. The idiocy of war is both anonymous and conspicuous, and it’s also intoxicating.
The dirty movie
Christine is now working on the final product: The Good Soldier Schwejk, a film like no other before. Its singularity doe not lie solely in the “modern twist”, but also in the fact that the movie will fuse cinema with live theatre. In fact, Christine is no stranger to innovation. Little Dorrit, which was made mostly within the confines of Sands Films, was so inventive that it landed her an Oscar nomination for screenwriting. We expect no less from her latest endeavour.
“I’ve never seen anyone else do quite like what we’re doing. Bergman’s The Magic Flute [1975] starts a little bit like that, but it abandons the idea very soon, and you lose the audience. And there was an interesting film with John Malkovich called Casanova Variations [Michael Sturminger, 2015], which was part film narrative part opera. In fact, we did costumes for it. It’s the nearest to this idea I can think of. But our project is still quite different!”
She goes on to explain: “I wanted to do a film about Schwejk, but in a way I could control. It’s not a documentary or a film on location or a filmed play. The film element gives it another life. From the beginning, it has been conceived as a film that would have a play at its core.”
Still from the Oscar-nominated 1987 movie Little Dorrit.
Political regiment
Olivier tells us about the political connotations of the movie: “It’s a type of protest. A protest against the fact that our society is drifting towards war right now as we speak. All of us, including middle class and educated people, are letting it happen. It’s down to us to stop it. We have to do something about it!
So, what’s happening next? Christine explains: “We’ve got lots of work to do, we have 60 hours of footage plus the shooting we’re doing this week. So I don’t think we can announce a date at this stage.” But don’t worry, DMovies will be keeping a close look and let you know about the latest developments. So stay tuned!
Olivier Stockman at Sands films; you can see the ship timber holding the building roof.
British filmmaker Christopher Nolan – now one of the highest-grossing film directors in history, with the Dark Knight Trilogy under his belt – has created a complex and multilayered film that cleverly interweaves three separate narrative strands: 1) on land over a week a young soldier (Fionn Whitehead) after he arrives alone at Dunkirk beach and falls in with others (including the music superstar and heartthrob Harry Styles); 2) on sea over a day a small, requisitioned, civilian boat (crew: three) go to bring home trapped combatants; and 3) in the air over an hour three Spitfires fly a sortie. Nolan is fascinated by time and runs these in parallel so that an incident partly revealed in one strand is later retold in another revealing more. There’s a constant sense of the clock ticking differently in the three time frames: mind-bending and exhilarating stuff.
The impressive analogue 70mm IMAX version puts you in there as if you’re escaping death on the way to the beach or in a Spitfire cockpit shooting at/being shot at by the enemy. It has everything you expect from a big screen war movie that small scale drama Churchill lacks. It’s a remarkable insight into the dirty side of being part of a war. The issue is survival: if not everyone can be rescued, who will be? The top brass organising the operation led by Kenneth Branagh must confront this issue to transport the maximum number of men home.
For those who are not familiar the events, the film depicts the Dunkirk evacuation of Allied soldiers from the eponymous beaches and harbour of France, between May 26th and June 4th 1940. It is believed that the extremely risky and unexpectedly successful operation saved the 330,000 British, French, Belgian, and Canadian troops from almost certain death under the surrounding German Army. Hence the “Miracle at Dunkirk” accolade.
As in the best horror films, anyone can die at any time. Not that this is a horror film. English soldiers are gunned down by French friendly fire. Spitfire pilot Tom Hardy’s broken fuel gauge makes him reliant on the pilot in the next plane relaying how much fuel that plane has left. Civilian boat captain Mark Rylance sails into a war zone with no weaponry or means of defence so he can rescue combatants. Shell shocked soldier Cillian Murphy completely loses it and injures someone trying to help him.
Men trapped in a beached boat are fired on from outside the hull by unseen assailants. People are trapped in spaces large or small which water threatens to fill cutting off their air supply. Swimmers covered wholly or partially in oil from crashed aircraft are forced to choose between staying underwater and not breathing and coming up to breathe when an inferno rages above the surface. Life and death situations.
Nolan manages some worrying tilts at British society circa 1940 which resonate today. A young soldier reaches the beach and joins a queue to be told to go elsewhere as this line is reserved exclusively for the Grenadiers. Another soldier who doesn’t speak much is accused by others of being a German spy. And an airman who nearly drowned in action is asked by an embittered evacuee, “where were you when we needed you?” British conformism, value judgments and prejudice are alive and well in the fight for survival. But so too are heroism and being prepared to give one’s life in the fight for a better world. Britain, now as then, is both good and bad.
Dunkirk, however, is consistently good. In fact, it’s likely the most impressive film you’ll see this year. It’s out in the UK on Friday, July 21st (2017). See the analogue 70mm IMAX version at BFI Waterloo London, The Science Museum London or Vue Printworks Manchester if you can.
On Amazon Prime on Thursday, April 1st (2021). Also available on other platforms.
Watch Dunkirk‘s two IMAX trailers below:
And here:
And click here for our review of another British historical film set around the same time, and still out in some UK cinemas.
A[/dropcap/s often is the case when it comes to documenting wars and conflicts around the world, the reality is sometimes far more shocking than any documentarian is able convey. Violent images from the forefront of Isil’s devastating hold over the city of Raqqa in Syria are replayed to audiences around the world, daily. From public beheadings and executions at gunpoint to the reckless destruction of ancient artifacts, no one could have ever imagined that the people of one of the most ancient countries in the Middle East would suffer this greatly at the hands of a small yet determined groups of fanatics.
In City Of Ghosts, Academy Award winning director Matthew Heineman (Cartel Land, 2015), takes on the plight of a group of men fighting to have the cries of their once great city heard. In this shocking yet essential movie, Heineman follows the journey of the members of a group calling themselves “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently”. This small coalition of anonymous-activists-turned-citizen-journalists managed to put themselves in the firing line by bravely exposing the barbarism of Islamic State. With intel from inside the occupied city, the men managed to run a website documenting what took place after a vacuum of power resulted in the occupation of Raqqa by Isil for years.
Offered incredible access to the men and, in some cases, their own family members, Heineman deftly allows his subjects to tell their own stories without injecting himself too much into their narrative. Stories of violence and murder coming out of the city are neither sanitised nor fetishised by the director. Using Isil’s own footage found online, the director allows his subjects to talk about the unimaginable ordeal they went through since the moment they started speaking out against their invaders.
From Aziz, co-founder and spokesman, who says he only got the job because his “english doesn’t suck too much”, to Hamoud who was once active in the early days of the Syrian revolution, the men speak of their frustration of seeing their own Arab Spring hijacked by a group of opportunists. Former Law School student Hassan, talks of the early days of the revolutionary movement which turned into a nightmare for him and his friends. While teacher turned reporter Mohamad found himself fleeing Raqqa when it became clear that he could no longer guarantee his own safety.
With a timely release after the liberation of Mosul last week, City Of Ghosts is likely to ignite interest in the stories behind the barbaric face of a rogue state which went on to destroy the lives of anyone that dared oppose it. As Heineman follows his subjects to Germany where they speak of their love for their homeland and the mixed reception they have had since moving to Europe, questions about what the future holds remain unanswered. Allowing those without a voice to put across their stories, will no doubt gain Heineman more accolades, but for all intents and purposes, it is his subjects who deserve every award and accolade just by remaining true to their mission to report the truth.
City of Ghosts is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, July 21st.
Click here for our review of the equally jarring and powerful Insyriated (Philippe van Leeuw), which is out in UK cinemas in September.
Just how loyal are you to your boss? Do your professional allegiances supersede your moral convictions? Would you stay silent in your job if you came across evidence of murder and other sorts of wrongdoing? And if you turn a blind eye and pretend you have no knowledge of what’s happening, does that make you an accomplice? This is more or less sums up the dilemmas that Duval (François Cluzet) faces in his new, highly secretive job.
The 50-something-year-old was made redundant from his lifetime job following an alcoholic episode, and he knows that long-term unemployment but an inevitability at his age. That’s why he finds it impossible to refuse when a mysterious businessman called Clément (Denis Podalydès) offers him a very well-paid position within his dodgy company. Duval has little awareness of what the job comprises, but he knows that he was chosen due to sharp eye for detail, tenacity, efficiency and commitment to work.
The job consists of transcribing intercepted phone calls from very obscure sources. Duval is required to work very specific hours within a very specific location, where he’s not allowed to use his mobile phone or even to smoke. He attempts not to pay attention to the content of the calls, and instead just to transcribe words mechanically. A little bit like a monkey dancing to an organ grinder’s tune. But then a third man steps in and Duval’s allegiance to Clément is tested, and his life becomes endangered. He is now fully immersed in the underground world of criminality and the French secret services, where the line between good and bad, between justice and transgression, between law and lawlessness is extremely blurred.
This is an effective political thriller with a dark and somber pace, with just enough emotional depth to keep you hooked throughout. Violence also comes in sparse doses, and so it won leave your body aching. The only problem is that the twists eventually become too abundant, and the narrative almost goes a off-rail towards the end.
Scribe has a little Latin American flavour: it feels like an Chilean/Argentinean thriller by Pablo Larraín or Pablo Trapero in its slow pace, dark photography and ambiguous political connotations. Cluzet even looks a lot like the überstar of Argentinian thrillers Ricardo Darín. At times the film also feels like a tribute to the American conspiracy thrillers of the 1970s, when the Watergate scandal shook the US and made espionage films extremely popular. The themes of surveillance and wiretapping technology are reminiscent of movies like Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974) and Don Siegel’s Telefon (1977).
Still, Scribe is not a film about the past. The very current subject of foreign meddling in French presidential elections is also a central topic. Did the first-time director Thomas Kruithof anticipate the controversy of the 2017 elections, when Putin was accused of conspirancy and sabotaging in favour of Marine Le Pen? Scribe is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, July 21st.
Next time you go to the cinema be careful. The outcome could be far from rosy. Some films are just so powerful that they can trigger the most violent and unexpected physical reactions from viewers. That apparently innocent and innocuous movie could have a devastating impact on your mortal body. And I’m not talking about sobbing and crying: that’s very vanilla. These films have made people vomit, urinate, ejaculate, have a heart attack, commit suicide and much more. Cinema can have incendiary and deadly implications to your health.
Of course we are not asking you to stop going to the cinema or to shudder in fear every time you press “Play” on your DVD or Blu-ray. We just want you to be aware that it’s never “just a film”! And sometimes your body has very strange ways of telling you something just isn’t right! So be prepared!
By the way, the picture at the top of this article at the top is not from a hysterical and bedazzled moviegoer reacting to a film. That’s instead Isabelle Adjani in the dirty 1981 classic Possession (Andrzej Żuławski). She’s expelling bodily fluids from pretty much every orifice of her body, as she has an alien miscarriage in a Berlin subway. Her reaction is not very different from some you are about read, so we thought this was a good way to start our discussion!
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1. Vomiting during Raw (Julia Ducounau, 2017)
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 and to develop a taste for cannibalism. Click here for our review of the film.
2. Explosion of bodily fluids during 50 Shades of Grey (Sam Taylor-Johnson, 2015):
The infamous 2015 American erotic romantic drama stirred a lot of controversy, churned plenty of stomachs and also, of course, aroused many viewers. Despite receiving generally negative reviews as well as winning six nominations at the 36th Golden Raspberry Awards, it was an immediate box office hit. The film is based on the eponymous 2011 novel by British writer E. L. James and stars Dakota Johnson as Anastasia Steele, a college graduate who begins a sadomasochistic relationship with young business magnate Christian Grey, played by Jamie Dornan.
A female at a packed showing of the film at the Cineworld Milton Keynes caused the entire audience to be evacuated after losing control of her bodily fluids. The woman, believed to be under the influence of alcohol, started vomiting. But then things got even worse when she lost control of all her bodily fluids, including her bladder and bowels. It’s not entirely clear which part of the film triggered such extreme physical reactions. She certain to make Isabelle Adjani jealous, and would be at the front of the queue for a remake of Possession!
3. Mass ejaculation, also during 50 Shades of Grey (Sam Taylor-Johnson, 2015)*:
In New Zealand, Matthew Garelli, general manager of Hoyts Cinemas New Zealand, told media today that he “understands fully” just how exciting the film will be “for some,” but asked viewers to please respect cinemas’ private property, and try not to leave “too much of a mess”. Moviegoers were kindly requested not to ejaculate on their seats or on each other, and instead to use specially designated cups handed out with their tickets.
4. Seizures while watching Twilight: Breaking Dawn (Bill Condon, 2011)
This apparently harmless romantic fantasy film is based on the eponymous novel by Stephenie Meyer, and it is the first part of a two-part film, and it also forms the fourth and penultimate installment in The Twilight Saga film series. All three main cast members, Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner, reprised their roles.
The unexpected problem with this film is a birthing scene, which could have triggered episodes of photosensitive epilepsy, according to medical experts in the US. A California man named Brandon Gephart, was reportedly rushed to hospital after getting sick while watching the sequence. He started convulsing, snorting and trying to breathe, and the screening had to be stopped when the paramedics arrived. Not quite the jolly experience you’d expect from a fantasy movie!
5. Heart attack while watching porn:
Be thrilled: we’re now back on British soil! Back in 2010, authorities found the seminaked body of Nicola Paginton with a sex toy and porn. The nanny was found in her bed by her employer after she did not turn up for work and police were called to investigate. She was without pants and had a pornographic movie on her laptop. A sex toy was found under the covers near her body. A subsequent pathologist’s report determined that she likely suffered a heart attack as a result of sexual arousal. Gloucestershire coroner Alan Crickmore had determined that her “sexual activity” triggered a heart attack.
6. Miscarriage during Freaks (Tod Browning, 1932):
Carnival sideshow performers with real deformities and medical conditions are the stars of the controversial Freaks. They includesthe Bearded Lady, the Stork Woman, the Half-Boy Johnny Eck, the conjoined twins Daisy and Violet, the Human Torso, the Armless Wonder as well as various sufferers of the Virchow-Seckel Syndrome (which gives humans a bird-like appearance with a narrow face and pointy nose). The central plot is around an able-bodied trapeze artist called Cleopatra, who deduces and marries the sideshow midget Hans upon finding out about his large inheritance.
The film was so shocking that it was heavily edited down to just 62 minutes (from the original 98 minutes). Still, viewers convulsed, vomited and left the cinema in droves. And a woman allegedly had a miscarriage while watching it. Just click here in order to find out more about Freaksand its impact on the people’s lives and the cinema industry as a whole.
7. Suicide after watching Stroszek (Werner Herzog, 1977):
Ok, we’ve cheated. Suicide isn’t exactly a physical reaction. But the implications for your body are immediate, and so we decided that it was just too closely associated.
A lot of people know that Joy Division’s lead singer Ian Curtis listened to Iggy Pop’s album The Idiot shortly before he committed suicide in 1980. But what a lot people don’t know is that he also watched the bleak Stroszek, by the German enfant terrible Werner Herzog.
The film follows the footsteps of Bruno Stroszek, an alcoholic recently released from prison in Berlin. He joins his elderly friend and a prostitute in a determined dream to leave Germany and seek a better life in Wisconsin. This is some sort of twisted American Dream, which obviously never comes to fruition. In fact, the characters excel in aimlessness, selfishness and scrupulousness. So much that Curtis decided it was no longer worth being part of this world!
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This is not the first time that we’ve discussed the effects of cinema on people. Last year we wrote about the top 10 films in which the character eventually found their way into the real world, often to catastrophic results. Real life imitates fiction, quite literally. Don’t be scared, click here for our very dirty list of films that became a tragic reality.
* Since the publication of this article, we have been reliably informed by a reader with a sharp eye for detail that the “mass ejaculation” source was a satire website. Blimey, why did it have to be the most fun of the physical reactions on the list?
Rock music can intoxicate your soul and give you a dirtylicious hangover. It has psychedelic qualities, and it will have a permanent effect on your nervous system. A positive one, of course. It will release a dormant feeling of liberation as well as a deeply-seated sense of creativity. Listening to rock is a ritual, a ceremony, and the process will cleanse your heart. But rock isn’t a purely auditory experience: images are an integral part of the it. Thankfully Mick Rock has been here for 35 years, making sure that such images are no inferior to the songs and the artists that they illustrate.
The doc SHOT! The Psycho-Spiritual Mantra of Rock provides a very intimate portrait of the London-born and New-York based rock photographer Mick Rock, who is often referred to as “The Man Who Shot the 1970s”. Rock’s surname is of course the ultimate example of nominative determinism – particularly given that this is his actual birth name. Rock has shot more than 100 album covers, including some of the most emblematic in history (think Lou Reed’s Transformer and David Bowie’s Space Oddity, and that’s just the very tip of the iceberg). He has snapped iconic photos of Iggy Pop, Queen, the Sex Pistols, The Ramones, Blondie, Rocky Horror Picture Show and much, much more.
There’s a touch of spirituality that gives Mick Rock’s images an ethereal feel. He perceives rock’n roll as some sort of mantra and describes its effects as a “psychedelic inebriation”. He believes that such music can open your “third eye”. And Mick’s fully immersed in his work: he’s not an outsider, a voyeur, an observer. He mingles and travels with his subjects (in both the connotative and denotative sense of the “travel”). He’s deeply sewn into the very fabric of rock’n roll. Or as he puts it himself: he’s like a “vampire” or a “dog” who bites and does not let go. Yes, I wanna be your dog!
Documentarist Barnaby Clay succeeds to capture not just the divine and metaphysical qualities of Mick Rock’s work, but also a huge contradiction wherein. How do you reconcile soul-cleansing with a cocktail of highly addictive and dangerous drugs? This paradox is epitomised in Mick Rock’s confession that at one point he simultaneously did copious amounts of coke and yoga three times a week. He even snapped the drugs he took: beautiful rocks of cocaine appear routinely in his picture portfolio. The chemicals were instrumental in Mick Rock’s life, both for developing his photographs and for keeping his body and his mind in motion.
The movie is dotted with very interesting anecdotes, including conversations with Iggy Pop, the late Lou Reed and the late David Bowie. The latter noted: “the artist never existed”, and that’s why mick’s role is ever so important: “he captures a supernatural deity”. The photographer here clenches the duality of the artist: does he exist or not? Is this real or not? Mick Rock raises pertinent questions about existence, mortality, artistry and divinity.
Some of the covers created by Mick Rock found inspiration in the most unlikely sources, some of which in cinema. The Talking Heads have a strange connection with the Children of the Damned (Anton Leader, 1964), Debbie Harry is Marilyn Monroe, while Elvis Presley is… well, I won’t spoil this one for you. Just go watch the film instead!
Special praise must go to the recreation of a near death-experience – lived by Mick Rock and devised by the filmmaker Barnaby Clay. Highly saturated images blend with photographic negatives in a kaleidoscopic fashion, all with a grainy, 1980s feel. Since the scary and yet enlightening episode (a nasty incident with cocaine and heart bypass surgery), Mick Rock has gone mostly clean.
SHOT! The Psycho-Spiritual Mantra of Rock was out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, July 21. It is now available on YouTube.
