Whether you are mildly interested in space in its infinite wonder and possibility or are indeed a hardcore science geek, it would be hard for anyone to find fault with Elmer Reynolds’ brilliantly executed documentary The Farthest. Chartering Nasa’s historic Voyagermission into our Solar System and beyond, the film tells an emotionally charged story about the hard work that went into achieving such a momentous achievement.
Intercut with interviews with members of the original Voyager team, and a number of respected scientists and experts, The Farthest does a fantastic job in capturing the feelings of hope, doubt, and euphoria felt by all during those times. Reynolds’ carefully navigated voyage into the past allows audiences to reconcile themselves with the importance of space exploration and how vital it could one day prove to be to our continuous existence as a species.
In 1977 Nasa launched Voyager, a vessel which went on to change the way we view our own standing in the cosmos forever. With meticulous calculations and years of hard work, what followed was one of the greatest spectacles known to man. Managing to not only transmit back what it saw back to earth, Voyager went on to even correct misconception and discover a whole set of new truths which might now be take for granted. Set against a turbulent political landscape of the Nixon presidency, Reynolds manages to gather all the principle players from that era, whilst striking the right balance between excellent commentary and archive footage.
With the presence of the much loved scientist Carl Sagan acting as some sort of middleman between the science world and the layman, the film manages to almost bring him back to life, as if he too were a talking head. Add to that some genuinely impressive editing work throughout, the film uses the usual tried and tested trick of B-rolls and clever reenactments, but is never any less convincing or in any way tiresome. In fact, Reynolds goes even further by allowing those who were there the first time around to talk candidly about their excitement and expectations, which in turn gives the film a sense of warmth am familiarity. With a rich soundtrack from the era, the film also manages to avoid looking cheap or made for TV, which isn’t always an easy thing to achieve.
On the whole, The Farthest is a genuinely touching film – even if not very dirty – which not only allows those who knew nothing of this mission to learn about it, but also manages to make a valid point about the importance of Voyager and its discoveries. Reynolds cleverly conveys a sense of golden era for space discovery in these times of obscurantism where experts and maligned in favour of greed and self-righteous ignorance. A thrilling documentary that lends itself to repeated viewing no matter who you are or where you live.
The Farthest is out in cinemas on Friday, September 1st. Voyager 1 and 2 achieve 40 years of operation and exploration this August and September, so the timing of the film launch couldn’t be more appropriate.
We at DMovies have finally decided to review trailers as part of our service. These vids help to shape the identity of a movie long before it’s released. Trailers can be very useful when deciding whether to watch a film, and their value as a marketing tool is unquestionable. But they can also be misleading and disappointing, and set the wrong expectations. We are to look at them for you and to raise dirty questions, helping to establish whether you should be looking out for it or not.
“We knew the difference between right and wrong but we also knew the difference between the classes”, this is how the trailer for the upcoming documentary Dennis Skinner: Nature of the Beast opens up. It looks like first-time director Daniel Draper intends to deliver a romantic tribute to the legendary 85-year-old MP for Bolsover, in Derbyshire. He has held his seat for nearly 50 consecutive years.
Describing the energetic and outspoken politician as a “miner”, “activist” and “socialist” is probably very accurate, yet it remains to be seen whether draper will investigate the most controversial aspects of Skinner’s career. The Labour veteran has been a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn throughout the decades, but the nature of their relationship right now is a little blurry. Plus Skinner is a vocal Brexiter, and he actively campaigned for “Lexit”, which raised many eyebrows within his own party as well as other progressives.
Dennis Skinner: Nature of the Beast is out in cinemas across the UK on September 8th.
Guillermo del Toro’s latest movie comes tightly packed in a liquid wrapping, and it’s difficult to decide where to start opening it. Fluid and delicate, it’s a tale of a modern time when minorities get together in order to restore dignity in their wrecked lives through mutual love. It all starts out as your standard blockbuster, but suddenly the dirty elements step into the picture: there’s plenty of nudity, female masturbation, bestial sex, plus a very wet and messy orgasm. Nothing is toned down or hidden, like you would expect from your average Hollywood flick. It’s like watching a Disney film in which Lilo shags Stitch. You will eventually get hooked and excited about The Shape of Water. Or maybe even aroused.
The mute protagonist Elisa is played by superb Sally Hawkins, and she might get an Oscar nomination for this role [our writer’s prediction has since materialised]. During the Cold War era Elisa is trapped in a life of silence and isolation with many other people. One day she discovers a classified secret experiment in the high-security laboratory where she works: an aquatic monster from the Amazon, fully alive. In a way, this is a subtle denunciation of Operation Condor and US meddling in Latin America during the Cold War.
As you’d expect from del Toro, the film comes with an astonishing photography and sparkling with visual effects. But The Shape of Water‘s biggest achievement is to blend Hollywood taboos such as sex and nudity with the fiery topic of American interventionism. The struggle of the minorities is an allegory for the struggle against Imperialism. All doused in del Toro’s dark yet plush filmmaking style. Ultimately, the powerful elites are the real monsters that should be kept silent and caged.
The Shape of Water is out in cinemas across the UK on Wednesday, February 14th.
This review was originally written during the 74th Venice International Film Festival, where the film premiered and also won the Golden Lion, the event’s top prize. The film has since been nominated for 13 Oscars, including Best Picture.
London belongs to an elite category of modern super cities alongside the likes of Paris, New York and Hong Kong. Its status as the centre of Englishness has been commodified around the world through red buses, beefeaters and its rich iconic architecture. Still, like any of the these cities, behind this foundational image lies a melting pot of lifestyles, religions and geography. Choosing to explore London through the template of early cinema practices, director Alex Barrett composes a film that speaks a 1,000 words- even though only the two primary elements of cinema are employed.
Separated in four different sections aka ‘movements’ within the film, London Symphony depicts a plethora of the daily life in the city. A variety of footage is captured right across every borough of London in over 300 locations. The filmmaker’s commitment to capturing literally every angle of London imbues a feeling a magnificence and awe. Whether it is the idyllic parks where people congregate to exercise, streets filled with markets or the striking distinctions in architecture, these movements and images reflected what any great city holds: diversity.
Adopting the format of silent cinema, James McWilliam string-based compositions create their own miniature narratives within each ‘movement’. The transgressions from beautiful, luxuriously rich buildings and skylines to the dark and sometimes rainy streets serve not only as a juxtaposition in imagery but also sound. The swelling and joyful orchestra shifts towards deep and more blown musical instruments when the cinematography captures the night life of London.
To witness such a score live, as will be available with multiple screenings of the film at The Barbican Centre (3rd Sept), the Brutalist Alexandra & Ainsworth Housing Estate. (17th Sept) and the Shree Ganapathy Hindu Temple (October 28th). Credited towards five separate filmmakers, the cinematography zooms, whips and flies right across the city. All perspectives are given in an effort to instil an omnipresence. Such a notably artistic decision deepens the symphony and unlocks London’s more hidden locations.
Captured or edited in black and white creates clear distinctions within the frame. Akin to the greatness of such a colour palette’s use in film noir, the images on screen are cut together quickly and decisively. Although a patient edit could have been deployed, the continual presence of new images emphasises the hustle and bustle of the city. Occasionally showing some flare, Barrett’s images intermittently merge and cross cut over one another. Evidently referencing the great silent German filmmaker F. W. Murnau words as a poignant homage working with the frame work of early filmmaking.
Revealing the true nature of London behind its mainstream depictions is a welcome experience in recent time of focus upon the grotesque acts of terrorism. Likewise, in a Brexit Britain questioning its true identity, London Symphony echoes that through accepting and embracing a variety cultures, religions and lifestyles will something beautiful be created, as the city of London represents.
London Symphony will be released in the UK on Sunday, September 3rd. There will be the live performances mentioned above as well as regular film screenings in selected cinemas. Click here for more information about the film.
One big star producing and starring in the movie? Tick. Two strong female protagonists? Tick. Innovative genre device? Tick. Major twist at the end? Tick. Predictable moral message? Tick. The Vault has all the ingredients of a highly formulaic 21st century horror. It will surprise and scare you, but it’s in no way a memorable film that will stay with you for a long time.
Estranged sisters Vee Dillon (Taryn Manning) and Leah Dillon (Francesca Eastwood) decide to rob a bank with the support of some accomplices. Later in the movie we realise that they are, in reality, kind-hearted people engaging in a crime for a very altruistic reason: in order to help their mother. Despite their good intentions, they fall prey to a vengeful entity inhabiting the bank’s vault. The institution saw a robbery-turned-massacre decades earlier, and the evil spirit of the dead criminal and his victims just refuse to budge. Will they now impose the same horrific fate on the two sisters and their associates?
There are some very good jump scares in the movie, and some very disgusting gore. The problem is that the storyline becomes a bit hackneyed after a while, and the twist at the end is highly predictable from the moment James Franco’s character (the bank manager) first shows up in the movie. The very last scene is the biggest conceivable cliché of horror, and you might find it funny rather than scary.
This is uncompromising entertainment, still fun to watch. Eastwood is very good, particularly with wig on (pictured above): she deftly blends moral hesitation with criminal determination. Taryn Manning is also very convincing. The two sisters deliver a passionately dysfunctional duologue. And Franco is very sexy with his corporate moustache, in the skin of the ultra-good guy who will risk everything else for the security others.
The Vault is in cinemas across the UK on Friday, September 8th (2017). On Amazon Prime on Friday, August 27th (2021).
Few sane people would disagree that the unexpected election of Donald Trump represents a social and political regression for the US and the world. Pussy-Grabber-in-Chief isn’t just a dangerous egomaniac warmonger and a misogynist; he’s also an outspoken xenophobe and racist. His ambiguous and grudging condemnation of the Charlottesville neo-Nazi is the icing in the cake for white supremacists. They are feeling very empowered right now, having the most powerful man in the world on their side.
But there’s also bad news for these white supremacists and racists altogether: cinema hasn’t and it will not cower to bigotry. DMovies has seen a very large number of powerful films coming from the US in the past 12 months or so and denouncing racism loud and clear. In fact, the majority of these films were being made before Trump was elected, suggesting that this might be just the tip of the iceberg of a much bigger movement to follow.
There are fiery documentaries about Civil Rights activists, the Ferguson riots and the Lovings, a blockbuster about the Algiers incident, two racially-charged horror movies and much more! The nine dirty gems below are listed alphabetically. Don’t forget to click on each individual film title in order to accede to our exclusive film review!
* The image at the top of the article is from an Afro-American woman yelling ‘Freedom’ when asked to shout so loud it could be heard all over the world during a Civil Rights March on Washington in August 1963. And the image just above if from the doc Whose Streets? (which is on the list below). Films can also send out screams across the planet!
person is shot every two hours and 45 minutes in Chicago. The rate is higher than the American soldiers death toll in Afghanistan and Iraq altogether. The title of Spike Lee’s new feature, Chi-raq, is a portmanteau of Chicago and Iraq, and a rapper’s nickname for the windy city. It is an artistic attempt to raise awareness of the tragedy in parts of the city, particularly the South Side. Afro-Americans are of course the most affected.
Spike Lee is a champion in the fight against racism towards black people. His films helped to catapult black rights in the United States decades ahead of other many other countries in the world.
The movie portrays the 1967 race riots of Detroit, focusing particularly on the Algiers Motel Incident in the evening of July 26th. The Incident should have been described as the “Massacre” instead. Following the report of a gunshot (which in reality came from a toy gun), the police invade the premises and hold the black guests plus two white females hostage for several hours. They consistently humiliate and sadistically torture the young men and women, and finally the succeed to kill some of them. They are convinced that Black people are criminals and therefore deserving of such treatment; they hardly hesitate before carrying out the horrendous actions.
You would hardly guess that this blockbuster was directed by a white woman, as Bigelow does wear the shoes of the “negroes”. Detroit does feel like a punch in the face of reactionary Americans, and a raging denunciation of an extremely brutal chapter in US history.
She’s white, he’s black, they’re urban, he needs to meet her parents who live in a house on a huge estate out of town. They find a pleasant white couple with black servants. The black servants appear to under some sort of mind control to make them more palatable to white people. The question now is: are they racist? This more or less sums up the plot of this racially-charged horror. Just be prepared for a major ugly twist at the end. Ugly as racism.
That inconvenient nigger is here to wreak havoc to your shady American freedom – I am not your Negro is a very provocative piece that uses incendiary language in order to inflame a deeply unequal, biased, hypocritical and racist society: the United States of America. The film will burst every myth of racial equality and democracy in the most powerful country in the world, and it’s an indispensable watch to all nationalities, races and creeds.
This documentary film by Raoul Peck is based on James Baldwin’s (pictured above) unfinished manuscript Remember This House and narrated by actor Samuel L. Jackson. It explores the history of racism in the US through Baldwin’s memories of civil rights leaders Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr, as well as their tragic and untimely death.
Also watch DMovies‘ editor Victor Fraga’s interview on Russia Today about I am not your Negro and racism:
At the age of 18, Mildred (Ruth Negga) fell in love and became pregnant with Richard Loving (Joel Edgerton) in Caroline County, Virginia. Mildred was a person “of colour”, while Richard was white. In June 1958, the couple traveled to Washington, D.C. in order to get married, thereby evading Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which made marriage between whites and non-whites a crime punishable by law.
hey were eventually arrested and sentenced to one year in prison, suspended for 25 years under the condition that they abandoned the state immediately. So they left their families behind and promptly moved to Washington DC. They were arrested again when they returned to Virginia so that Mildred could give birth to her first child at home. This real story is certain to move you profoundly.
Moonlight tells the story of a black male named Chiron at three stages of his life: childhood, adolescence and adulthood (played by a different actor at each stage). He is constantly seeking maternal love and affection, but his mother constantly shuns him in favour of her drug addiction. He ironically finds solace with a local drug dealer, who becomes a provisional father figure to the young black boy. He learns from him that his mother is his client and also, more significantly, the meaning of the word “faggot”. “It is a word to make gay people feel bad about themselves”, the unexpectedly gentle and caring man explains.
Moonlight isn’t just about racism, but also about homophobia and intersectionality. Having snatched the Best Picture Oscar, the film has become a landmark in the fight against bigotry for both Blacks and LGBT people.
Quest is a touching and sobering Dogwoof doc about Christopher “Quest” Rainey, his wife Christine’a “Ma Quest”, their daughter Patricia “PJ” and other relatives, friends and associates who live in North Philadelphia. They host a music studio at home, voicing local artists and providing a sense of identity to the community. Along their way, they have to face up a number of crises, including extreme violence, cancer and addiction. Very significantly, the documentarist Jonathan Olshefski follows the footsteps of the family roughly during the eight Obama years.
Sadly, the average Afro-American family faces problems, to which many white people are either alien or oblivious. A rapper in the movie rhymes it succinctly: “Racism still lives in the days, just in different ways”.
This is the perhaos least explosive film on the list, with a far more gentle and subtle – and yet conspicuous – anti-racist message. 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, a white girl named Sophie (Chloe Levine). At home, Milo lives with his former soldier elder brother Lewis (Aaron Clifton Moten), their mother having committed suicide some time previously.
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.
This energetic documentary by the activist and filmmaker Sabaah Folayan shows the inconvenient truth behind the dramatic scenes that took place in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. An African American unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, was killed by police and left lying on the street for hours, despite the many witnesses and a CCTV camera just around the the corner.
The Black vigilantes decide to become their own keepers, since the police was not doing their work, plus often disrespecting the Constitution. The protests include riots, arson and speaking up words of anger in front of troops armed with tear gas grenades, guns and sniffing dogs.
That’s perfect. That’s just what we needed. A film spreading fear of WMDs. Oh, and the chemical attack takes place in London. “One of the most lethal airborne pathogens” in the world, codenamed Satan’s Snow, is set to be dropped from the skies of the British capital and kill us all. Perhaps now we can invade yet another evil country in order to ensure that such tragedy never takes place. Just in case. Thank God we have the secret service to save us all from impending doom.
This blend of spy caper and frenetic action British movie goes more or less like this: boooooom, run!!! Shoot, shoot again, fa-thud, ZLOPP, BRATATAT, bratatat, HUGE EXPLOSION, run again, car chase, ROOOAR, sputter, sputter, sputter, boat chase (in Canary Wharf!!!), WHOOSH, bang, bang, bang, bang. Blood. Murder, Run, run, run!!! Bad guy hasn’t died, run, run, run, shoot, shoot, shoot. Another explosion, BRATATAT, bang. Yet more blood! Well, I guess that by now you have more or less worked out what Stratton is all about.
The problem isn’t just that this is an action movie entirely devoid of innovative devices and embracing akmost every conceivable action cliché, from exploding cars to Armageddon-like terrorist threats. This movie is about a British Special Boat Service operator called John Stratton (Dominic Cooper) tracking down an international terrorist cell. You don’t to know anything else. Everything else is redundant and gets diluted in the shambolic good-vs-evil narrative. The nationality of the bad guy couldn’t be more unexpected: Russian. Oh, and there’s some element of Iranian there. The Manichaeism is insulting.
But that’s not all. The make-up is also poor and the special effects are just about OK, but not impeccable (which most people expect in the age of CGI). To boot, some of the acting is extremely poor, to the extent it evoked laughter from the audiences for all the wrong reasons. The young actors try very hard to sound tough and authoritarian, like a good MI6 agent would, but some fail tremendously at doing so. The movie ending is particularly shambolic.
Stratton is out in movie theatres across the UK on Friday, September 1st. Be scared, be very scared. But it’s not of chemical weapons, but instead of poor filmmaking with hardly subliminal xenophobic and belligerent tones. WMD enthusiasts like Tony Blair and David Milliband might like Stratton, but you probably won’t. We recommend that you stay away from the cinema.
Move back to the late 19th century, take a little of Jack the Ripper, throw in a dash of Sherlock Holmes, squeeze in some theatre and cabaret acts and then add a final touch of feminism. The outcome is a very British film, with a top-drawer cast including Bill Nighy, Olivia Cook and Douglas Booth. The American-born director Juan Carlos Medina is probably the most un-British thing about The Limehouse Golem, which was penned by Jane Goldman. She is mostly known for co-writing the screenplays of Matthew Vaughn’s Stardust (2007) and X-Men: First Class (2011).
Elizabeth (Olivia Cooke) is accused of poisoning her husband, and she is awaiting a trial which is almost certain to culminate in her execution in the gallows. She is a music hall star from a humble background and a dysfunctional family. Her formidable mother was very abusive, as was the husband whom she’s accused of killing. Rookie detective Kildare is assigned with her case, and he soon begin to develop some fondness for the mysterious woman. He suspects that Elizabeth’s husband was in reality a sadistic serial killer nicknamed The Golem. He also thinks that the oppressed woman may not have poisoned him at all, or that perhaps she killed him in act of desperation (in some sort of Victorian Ruth Ellis act).
The fact that the screenplay was written by a woman is by no means irrelevant. Elizabeth is both ambiguous and empowered. She’s very comfortable and energetic on stage, and mostly sullen and introvert elsewhere. She seems to accept her likely death sentence with a stoic attitude, but there a certain cunningness in her apparent frailty suggesting that there’s more under the surface. Kildare is charmed and fascinated by this fine and cryptic female.
A number of twists drive the narrative of this very British horror movie, and it worth sticking to the end for a very nice surprise. And there’s just about enough gore (including eviscerated corpses very much à la Jack the Ripper) to shock you, without becoming exploitative. The grotesque murders are indeed fetishised, but this is not a bad taste movie. It’s more a fantasy horror flick instead. It’s not a perfect one, though. It sometimes feels a little self-conceited, too epic and grandiose, plus a tad too long at nearly two hours. To boot, the dark studio settings give the movie a TV series feeling, and perhaps it would be more appropriate indeed if this was made for a more mainstream television audience.
The Limehouse Golem was out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, September 1st. In late December, it was made available on all major VoD platforms.
Hip hop culture has become mainstream. Consider the amount of money hip hop artists earn now: Jay-Z signed a 10-year exclusive contract with Live Nation. But real hip hop lovers never forgot that hip hop emerged out of the poor living conditions in America’s inner cities, such as the Bronx. In the 1970s, the construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway divided the Bronx communities, relegating Caribbean immigrants to a life of ostracism. Patti Cake$ investigates what hip hop turned into. It’s time for a reinvention.
Newcomer Danielle MacDonald stars as aspiring rapper Patricia Dombrowski, a.k.a. Killa P., a.k.a. Patti Cake$. She is just 23 and she hasn’t done anything remarkable yet. She is surrounded by people who the system rejected – disabled, drunkards, the poor and the old. If Patti doesn’t wake up, she will end up stuck in a miserable rut. Her story is not too different from Queen Latifah’s.
Her naivité is evident. She hopes that a producer just like Jay-Z will rescue her from oblivion. In the film, he is an arrogant musician and producer who forgot his roots. She has a crush on another hip hop singer, which whom she once had a fling, but now sees her a human version of Dumbo, the elephant. They end up fighting in a new impromptu hip hop song, in the middle of the streets.
Patti Cake$ in the first feature film from music video director Geremy Jasper. Set in gritty strip-mall suburbia, Patti Cake$ chronicles a quest for fame and glory with humour, raw energy and inventive beats. The soundtrack is not exclusively hip hop. Patti spits her life drama in Mylifesfuckinawesome. She then allows other artists tell her story: Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, Skid Row, Run DMC and the Fugees. Jasper reintroduces the essence of hip hop to the mainstream rappers.
The film is full of memorable quotes. Check IMDB trivia in a few months from now. Rappers are sharp-tongued. Good scriptwriters, too.
Funny films are one of the great sources of creativity in cinema industry. But comedy doesn’t survive without an amazing cast. Patti’s grandmother is played by Cathy Moriarty, who was born in the Bronx, to Irish immigrants. Her background could have given her the status of a rapper. That didn’t happen. Instead, at the age of just 17, Moriarty became famous for her role as Vicki LaMotta in Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980).
In a nutshell, there are three very good reasons to watch Patti Cake$: the soundtrack, the reinvention of hip hop and the humour. It is out in cinemas across the UK on September 1st.
More than one million Syrian refugees live in Lebanon. Some estimates are as high as 1.5 million, and the country currently holds the highest refugee per capita rate in the world. Many of them work as builders, never leaving the construction sites. Taste of Cement portrays the sad and hurtful reality of these men as they erect a new skyscraper in Beirut, the country’s capital. In the unbearably hot weather, the constant construction noises aren’t just an annoying buzz: it evoke the sounds and traumatic memories of war, bombing and ruins.
Director Ziad Kalthoum revisits the dark experiences of the never-ending Syrian disaster through the portrayal of builders in exile. This film is visually compelling and tremendously poetic. It essays the barbaric conditions of Syrian workers in exile who survived tragic collapses of their houses and their cities but soon after found themselves working and living in yet another hellhole.
In their dark miserable cemented habitats somewhere in Beirut, a newsman or journalist on a small TV screen reports that racism towards Syrian refugees is spreading in Middle Eastern country. Sadly this isn’t a phenomenon confined to Lebanon: the media rhetoric regarding Syrian refugees isn’t particularly positive in countries such as the UK and the US. Research published last year points out that amongst others, the rightwing press in the UK endorses an ongoing anti-refugee approach.
The contrast between the present and past is seen in eyes, the skin and the soul of the workers who are never able to escape what they saw and what they still see. Their dreams of the past are gone, and the future ahead doesn’t look bright. The taste of cement from the destruction left behind as well as from the cement found in exile is well and alive in their collective memory. “Cement eats your skin, not just your soul”, the commentator’s voice cries, as they never stop working.
The situation in Syria is becoming increasingly hopeless, and Taste of Cement challenges the notion that “home is not where the heart is”. Home is nowhere to these refugees because their hearts have been destroyed along with everything else. Have modern societies become heartless and merciless, or have always been this way?
Taste of Cement is an 85-minute-long mournful and mostly silent journey. It is a raw documentary forging intimacy between the subject and space. The film is very thought-provoking piece. These people, like many buildings, are wrecked inside and even sleeping can be a painful and difficult task. Several moments are very disturbing to watch, and sordid reminder of what it’s like to be stuck in a warzone or a non-white refugee in the 21st century.
The imagery is the most striking element of the film, and a heartfelt powerful commentary about the past and the memoirs of a destroyed homeland (the filmmaker Ziad Kalthoum is a Syrian refugee himself). Taste of Cement is a poem without rhymes, a strict rhythm and structure. Ultimately, this is a film about “freedom” in captivity, the difficulties of detaching yourself from a stigma, and the pains of being a refugees in a world that rejects you. It raises a lot of questions about our complicity as viewers.
This very British buddy road movie is delightful. Or perhaps I should describe it as Celtic love triangle? Or is it a viking cultural journey? Well, in reality it’s a mixture of all of these things. And a welcome reminder of just how culturally and ethnic diverse our country is, even at the most remote areas. We’re not that insular, after all.
The action starts in the rocky and almost entirely treeless landscape of the remote Shetland Islands (probably not too different from the moon), a meeting point of Celtic and Viking culture. Michael (Jack Parry Jones) lives with his mother Anne (Claire Cage), his stepbrother Thor (Christy O’Donnel) and his father Maurice (James Sives). The two teenagers and the two adults are all extremely different, and they seek affection in very different ways. Maurice tries to please his son with clumsy Viking costumes and music, while Michael is a grudging yet secretly loving fan of Thor’s indie folk music. Michael and his mother are originally from Wales, emphasising the pan-Celtic nature of then film (this a co-production has money from various Celtic nations: Creative Scotland, Ffilm Cymru and the Irish Film Board).
Eventually Michael and Thor embark on an impromptu journey to Glasgow in search of Thor’s mother, who abandoned him as a baby. They gatecrash into a wedding in Orkney, pretending to be professional musicians. Upon being exposed for Michael’s lack of musical skills, they escape with the sexy and impulsive Irish waitress Caitlin (Tara Lee). The film then gently morphs into a tender romance and coming-of-age story teeming with folk music. Caitlin warbles her way into the heart of the young men and joins the ride towards Glasgow. The difference is that she’s not in search of a mother, but of a indie music festival instead. How could you get more British than that?
Moon Dogs isn’t just about Celtic and Viking culture, which are featured prominently and elegantly throughout the movie. It isn’t just about the eerie and yet majestic landscape that the trio encounter on their way, either. Ultimately, this is a film about reconciliation of dysfunctional families and making amends with past, which cleverly uses culture as an allegory of such profound sentiments. Sometimes you need to return to your roots in order to understand what lies in the bottom of your heart. Highly recommended!
Moon Dogs is the debut movie feature of established TV director Philip John (Being Human, Downton Abbey, Outlander). Ir is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, September 1st.
