Month: October 2018

King of Crime

Posted on by victorfraga

The aptly-named Marcus King (Mark Wingett) has left old-school crime behind, swapping the guns behind for computers (although he still keeps a few guns around). Back in the day when you wanted to rob someone, you had to use force or charm; now they can be hacked into with just a few clicks. Living in the leafy suburbs just outside of Oxford, King is comfortable at the top of the criminal food chain. But then a new competitor muscles in on his turf: Islamic terror.

It’s a strange meeting of minds for sure, but King of Crime makes it seem believable. After all, both sides require significant capital to get started. Played with delightful camp by Vas Blackwood, nemesis Mr. Mustaffa seems like he is cut from the same cloth. A smart man, he realises that the best way to fund his campaign of terror is simply to take King’s infrastructure off him. The resultant drama blends old-school thrills with high-tech skills, showing that while some of the players might be the same, the nature of the game has completely changed.

The King family are nasty people. When a nice young girl who might be Marcus’ daughter comes around, his wife Yvonne (Claire King) stabs him with a kitchen knife. No one seems that bothered, suggesting that this kind of thing is a common occurrence. Our moral compass is found in Jessica Slade (Rachel Bright), girlfriend of Marcus’ son Andrew (Jonno Davies) and new employee of the King household. Despite being attracted to the allure of being a criminal’s moll, it is evident from the beginning not everything sits well with her. Testament has to go to Bright for being able to portray that conflict with her eyes alone.

Her first task is to dupe poor nerd Anthony Tully (Hainsley Lloyd Bennett) into hacking for the criminal enterprise. The way she goes about it is one of the best scenes in the film, a long-con so ethically dubious it leaves you wondering whether what occurred was actually simulated. Tully’s affection for her is genuine, working against the clock to do what he thinks is the right thing, giving the film its heart. Meanwhile, Marcus, noticing the walls creeping in, starts planning for an early retirement, ready to betray everyone in order to look after number one.

King of Crime has more twists and turns packed into its 100 minutes than most series of television – adding elements of the spy thriller to give it an extra edge. Perhaps it is worth watching more than once to see if you can spot its final reveal early. It really comes out of absolute nowhere, but makes sense the more you think about it.

The problems with King of Crime lays more in the execution than in the intent, taking something which should be very simple and making it unnecessarily complicated. There are a lot of layers to the story which could’ve been taken away and it wouldn’t have affected its core gangster theme. There’s a lot of brutal murders, sudden reveals and shocking twists that would’ve been more effective if they had been built up with a little more suspense. Nonetheless, considering the obvious low-budget, King of Crime is a delicious nasty little crime story that does a lot with just a handful of locations, hinting at a way forward for old-school British gangsters in a world where most crime takes place online. If anything, it’ll make you rethink your Facebook privacy settings.

King of Crime is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, November 2nd.

Foreboding (Yocho)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

This is not exactly a remake, not exactly a reboot, not exactly a sequel. Most definitely a companion piece, though, and arguably the more effective of the two movies. And apparently, an edit of the director’s five-part series for Japanese satellite station Wowow, although it feels like a (well over two hours long) standalone feature. Kiyoshi Kurosawa revisits Before We Vanish / Sanpo Suru Shinryakusha (2017) for another story about the aliens clad in human bodies who steal concepts from people’s minds by touching a finger to a forehead E.T. (Steven Spielberg, 1982) style prior to a full scale invasion of Earth.

Where previously the director took the material and threw a cornucopia of different elements at it, this time round his efforts feel much more thought through and the resultant film far more consistent overall – a creepy and unsettling sci-fi paranoia thriller grounded in compelling, character-driven human drama.

Kurosawa builds his reinvented narrative round shop floor worker Etsuko (Kaho) whose friend Miyuki is going mad because of the strange presence in her home. Is it a ghost? No, it’s her father but she no longer has any concept of father. Or mother. Or brother and sister. Or family. An alien has removed this concept from her brain.

Her hospital employee husband Tatsuo (Shota Sometani) is behaving oddly too – experiencing pain in his wrist. He has been turned into a guide – a human who tells his alien controller from which humans to steal concepts. His controller is the newly arrived Dr. Matsuka (Masahiro Higashide) about whom Etsuko immediately senses something odd when she meets him.

Tatsuo’s wrist pain comes from the process of turning him into a guide which involved Matsuka’s grasping him by the wrist. The pair have been going around stealing concepts from people’s minds with Tatsuo suggesting the people (picking those he doesn’t particularly like) and Matsuka doing the stealing. As it turns out, they weren’t responsible for what happened to Miyuki. That was another alien and guide.

It further transpires that Etsuko is somehow resistant to the alien concept stealing process, which means the government wants to work with her. Kaho is terrific as the woman trying to hold on to a husband being driven off the rails through a mixture of forces both within and beyond his control, conjured by a suitably agonised performance from Sometani. Higashide gives off just the right degree of unsettling otherworldliness to make you believe he’s an alien walking around in a human body.

It’s not just the playing of the actors that makes this work, though. Kurosawa invests the whole thing with an incredible sense of dread – what if I round the next hospital corridor and that alien is waiting there for me? – and stretches the tension about as near to breaking point as you can imagine. A late scene in an expansive interior is basically a woman with a gun looking for an adversary who we know to be holding an axe in readiness for attack.

Such a scenario must have been executed in countless thrillers with varying degrees of suspense or lack of it. You don’t always know what you’re going to get with Kurosawa, but when he’s good he’s very good indeed – and this is edge of the seat stuff. Hard to believe that his other version of the same story is so average, unfocused and generally all over the place by comparison.

Yocho (Foreboding) plays in the London East Asia Film Festival (LEAFF). Watch the film trailer (Japanese, no subtitles) below:

Hate is baggage: why American History X still resonates 20 years on!

Posted on by victorfraga

Everyone remembers the first time that their brains were forced to reconcile with that visceral and purposefully gruesome scene. Following an attempted car theft, the would-be assailant finds himself in dire circumstances, his front teeth clenched around the unforgiving edge of the curb. Forged by a maelstrom of unadulterated hatred, vitriolic rhetoric and an innate sense of injustice that he’d been wilfully seduced by in the face of a family tragedy, American History X’s (Tony Kaye, 1998) musclebound guide into the world of Neo-Nazism lifts his black combat boot and brings it crashing down upon the back of a young black man’s head with remorseless disdain.

One life extinguished while another is irretrievably altered, the close-up on the shaven headed, swastika emblazoned Derek Vinyard’s self-satisfied grin and callous stare as the LAPD close in has became an enduring parable for the ramifications of allowing hatred to warp a malleable young mind.

Having attained cult status since its release 20 years ago today, American History X may have been widely disavowed by its notoriously idiosyncratic director Tony Kaye but the pertinence of its characters’ journeys has never waned in cultural significance. In fact, the undiminished relevancy of its portrayal of pervading racial tension, the perils of gun violence and the indoctrination of disenfranchised men into hate-fuelled subsects is not only a testament to the film’s timeless story and the performances of Edward Norton, Edward Furlong, Beverly D’Angelo and others but a scathing indictment of society’s reluctance to broach these issues in the two whole decades that have elapsed since it first hit the screens.

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The collapse of the nuclear family

Orbiting around the ethnically diverse melting pot of Venice Beach, California, American History X may be a biting commentary on humanity’s misguided desire to impose barriers on our own kinship and compassion but is actually made all the more effective by being framed through the lens of a once harmonious turned highly dysfunctional brood.

The nuclear family personified, the Vinyards lived a comfortable life that contained all of the attributes of the ‘American Dream’ as viewed by an outside observer. Led by the patriarch Dennis Vinyard, the lives of his athletically and academically gifted eldest son Derek, wife Doris and kids Daniel, Davina and baby Ally all seem distinctly upper-middle-class. These characters can afford the luxury of discussing societal issues and the changing composition of the nation from the comfort of their dining room without having to worry about being unseated from their homely perch. Or at least that’s the case until the short-sighted vitriol that the father used to spew from the head of the table about “affirmative blacktion” and other such “bullshit” now has a warped affirmation for his kids due to his death at the hands of a drug dealer whilst on duty as an LA firefighter.

From there, all of the hardship and injustice that befell Derek Vinyard was inextricably linked to those convenient scapegoats that have been cited by the disenfranchised or aggrieved since time immemorial – those that are different from us. In the weeks and months that follow, the seeds of hate that were haphazardly planted on that day lead to Derek’s indoctrination into neo-Nazism by the parasitic Cameron Alexander (loathsomely realised by Stacy Keach) and his de-facto leadership of the “white power” gang the DOC that would eventually lead to his incarceration little more than 12 months down the line.

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History repeating

In one particularly galling scene that is taken from his tenure as the group’s organisational spearhead, we see Edward Norton’s Derek rally his troops with an impassioned speech about the plague of “border jumpers” that were “bedding down in their state” and wreaking havoc on the nation whilst they are, allegedly, “losing.” Preached to the converted assembly just minutes before they’d go on to raid a local supermarket owned by a Korean man and largely staffed by Mexican immigrants, the mobilising capabilities of this skewed ideology crestfallenly hits home when viewed in the paradigm of today’s US.

Just days ago, a right wing extremist that saw his nation as being defiled by the Jewish community took to a Pittsburgh synagogue with an assault rifle, killing eleven in total. “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered”, proclaimed Robert Bowers on the far-right social media site Gab just hours before the attack, “screw your optics, I’m going in.” Teamed with the horrific prejudice that was on display at last year’s Unite The Right’Rally in Charlottesville, it is hard to believe that verbal incitements such as Vinyard’s could retain every bit as much destructive power as they did 20 years ago. Until you remember that in this dystopian fever dream, they are actually vindicated by a president who actively refused to condemn neo-Fascists at the Virginia event and has unrepentantly dehumanised Mexicans and immigrants from other ‘shithole’ countries on numerous occasions.

Flash forward to three years on from the height of Derek running roughshod over Venice, he re-emerges as a vastly different man than the embittered young insurgent that was given the lesser conviction of voluntary manslaughter due to his brother Danny’s reluctance to testify. The recipient of a philosophical rebirth after he was not only forsaken by his white ‘brothers’ that aligned under their vacuous credo but saved from certain death by his black co-worker Lamont, his appearance and mindset may have been irrevocably changed during his time in the Chino correctional facility but the groundwork he’d laid on the outside world has been expanded upon at an unforeseen rate.

Rather than viewing his brother’s plight as a cautionary tale, Furlong’s Danny Vinyard has faithfully retraced his steps and is now a prized protégé of the same organisation which its former leader wishes to renounce. Upon re-entering society, Derek is immediately forced to rationalise with both the tangible and more deep-seated ramifications of his actions on his family. Rather than the picket-fenced splendour of suburbia where he perpetrated his most heinous act, his mother and the kids have been forced to downsize to a tiny apartment which is more akin to the conditions in which the disadvantaged minorities that he’d once seen as a societal scourge subsist in.

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Is there a way out?

Hoping to disassociate himself from the vile hate speech which he used to espouse, Derek ventures to the very party which heralds their prodigal son’s return in order to tell Cameron and his bumbling yet dangerous comrade Seth that both he and Danny will be taking no part in it from here on out. In a chilling riposte that seems sickeningly prophetic when viewed in a modern context, Alexander attempts to reason with the reformed skinhead by stating “wait until you see what we’ve done with the internet.”

As much as he attempts to show the world his propensity to change, Derek can’t outrun the chain of events which he set in place all those years ago. From the moment that he began to proliferate on the benefits of a racially pure nation, he’s been set on a collision course with tragedy that concludes like all too many do- in a hail of gunfire. In an unsavoury American tradition that dates back to the 19th Century, the propagandistic hubris of Danny would exact a heavy toll as he was gunned down in cold blood by another student due to his overt disdain for his gang-affiliated black classmates.

As he cradles his brother’s bullet-ravaged and bloodied body, an inconsolable Derek sees the entire tale displayed before him as he babblingly yelps “what did I do? What did I do?” Harrowing as it may be, this introspective enquiry bittersweetly correlates with the words of Avery Brooks’ Dr Bob Sweeney who’d posed a simple yet cutting question to the imprisoned Derek: “Has anything you’ve done made your life any better?

Far from solely serving as an unflinching look at the US’s systemic issues or the ruinous nature of hate and discrimination, this is one of a myriad of examples in which both writer David McKenna and Tony Kaye must be praised for the sheer efficacy of the approach they took to bring the film to fruition. A stylistic yet impactful choice, the juxtaposition of each of the film’s explorations of the past being rendered in monochrome whilst the present is seen in technicolour beautifully symbolises the transformation of Derek’s mind from neo-Nazism to a inclusivity-based stance. In the past, Derek’s life was rendered solely in black and white, with his worldview set in stone and governed by a series of puritanical absolutes. Yet once he’s underwent his deprogramming, Derek can now see all of the shades of grey that make societal issues less cut and dry whilst also regaining the ability to see the beauty in the world that had once been obscured by his father’s untimely death.

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A film in the woodpile

Alongside this visual metaphor, what separates American History X from other films that portray members of hate groups is the naturalistic approach it takes to the central characters’ development. As we follow Danny Vinyard over what turns out to be the final 24 hours of his life, we see a young man that is not simply a vessel for a corruptive outlook but a multi-layered individual that’s capable of the full spectrum of emotions. Mere hours after we see him appeasing the deplorable Seth with talk of his hatred for anyone that isn’t white protestant due to them being a “burden to the advancement of the white race”, we then watch on as he picks up his infant sister and lovingly gives her an ‘airplane ride’ before pleading with his ailing mother to quit smoking for the benefit of her health.

In this instance; alongside the aftermath of the infamous dinner scene in which Derek displays his slew of Nazism-inspired tattoos to dissuade Dr Murray (Elliot Gould) from pursuing a romantic relationship with his mother, the viewer is given a glimpse of the redeemable humanity, love and empathy that ill-fittingly resides within these men that strive to maintain an outward appearance of cold-blooded monstrousness. Aligned with its heartrending conclusion that abstains from giving us the sort of redemptive narrative that is so beloved by celluloid in favour of a realistic depiction of a man reaping what he’s sown, it shows that the greatness of American History X doesn’t spring entirely from its continued applicability as a look at society’s flaws but the fact that it remains a stellar work of cinema even if viewed in isolation from all of its pervading relevancy.

Just as Danny heeds Derek’s wisdom to “go out on strong” on the quote of another, there’s no way to better encapsulate what makes this film so enduringly horrifying and brilliant all at once than to conclude with this profound remark that comes to the surface in the wake of his death: “Hate is baggage. Life’s too short to be pissed off all the time. It’s just not worth it.”

Peterloo

Posted on by victorfraga

Mike Leigh has chosen the form of chronological historical narrative for his latest film. As I write this, I am wracking my brains to name a historical drama with it’s primary subject rooted in working class history. Representation of workers on film in any century prior to the twentieth are usually given in cozy form as good honest (or feckless) folk who know their place in the social order. Adaptions of Dickens or Hardy novels on film are perhaps the closest we get to portrayals of the ordinary citizen, but even these have a tendency to stray into either bathos or comedy relief. That’s why a major British film about a hugely significant event in workers history is both welcome and necessary.

Leigh has taken pains to tell this story in great detail and this makes for a long film at nearly two hours. The time taken to place the events of 16th August 1819 in a political and historical context pays off. We understand the hierarchy of 19th century Britain: the painstaking lengths that politicians and law enforcers go to maintain the stats quo has hardly changed. These efforts are fuelled by the twin paranoias of the French and American revolutions where the people did indeed overthrow their governors. Despite the sacrifice made by the common soldier in the recent Napoleonic Wars, here personified by Jospeh (David Moorst) returning home to his family, it is the leaders who are rewarded financially by parliament. The common people are left starving after the passing of the corn laws led to a ban on cheap imported grain.

Unfairness is meted out at every turn to a community of mill workers that is warmly represented by Leigh. Wages are reduced, work is lost due to mechanisation, beautifully realised in song by the Singing Weaver (Dorothy Atkinson), cramped living conditions, harsh statutes and punishment for minor misdemeanours. Top of this list, (as it affects all the others), is lack of representation. Large urban areas grouped together with one distant MP and no vote for the working people to determine who governs them.

We witness the lead up to the massacre and the massacre itself through the eyes of Nellie (Maxine Peake) Joshua (Pearce Quigley) and their family, the agitators and reformers and the area’s magistrates and constable.

The preparations for the march by reformers Joseph Johnson (Tim Gill), Samuel Bamford (Neil Bell), Mary Files (Rachel Finnegan), John Knight (Philip Jackson), John Thacker Saxton (John-Paul Hurley) and Richard Carlile (Joseph Kloska) are shown in a mixture of public and private meetings. Arguments for reform are place carefully in passionate dialogue and speeches, leaving the viewer a clear picture of what was at stake.

This period saw the establishment of the Manchester Female Reform Society and Leigh places this group of women front and centre of the action.

Excitement mixed with discord characterises Nellie’s family’s approach to the upcoming rally. The men excitedly report information gleaned at meetings and Nellie questions how this event will change anything. At times, this dialogue is a little clunky even in the mouth of an actress as skilled as Peake, but this can be forgiven in light of the directors mission to have his audience understand their history. Magistrates, MP’s Royalty and the military collude with spies in order to build a coalition in order to combat the “enemy”, of a section of the populace planning a riot. A superbly revolting Prince Regent (Tim McInnery) proclaims to his government ministers “I know what the people want better than they know themselves”. The common people are infantilised and oppressed by a system that sees them merely as cannon or factory fodder.

The anticipation for an opportunity to affect change is mournfully and elegantly shot by Dick Pope as workers march on Saddleworth Moor, practise instruments and prepare to bring their whole families on this ‘day out’. What began in their minds as a peaceful protest and demand for equality of opportunity turns into a nightmare skilfully edited by Jon Gregory to reveal Leigh’s intention of personalising an impersonal sabre charge at an innocent group of unarmed people. There are a number of shots of sabres begin wielded from horseback towards a single figure. This is resonant of the famous 1984/85 miners strike photograph of Lesley Bolton about to be struck by a police baton. We are reminded in the simplicity of focus, capturing punching, swiping and beating bystanders to the ground, of other confrontations where the government has used the army or law enforcement officers as an instrument of the state.

Indeed, these events are inescapably pertinent to the current state of the nation, disenfranchisement of large parts of the north of the UK, a disaffection with governance and the seeming march backwards to the divisions and inequalities of the 19th century. This is history firmly reminding us of what went before to illuminate where we are now. A call to arms, a disenfranchisement rousing roar of a film that deserves our full attention.

Peterloo is out in cinema across the UK on Friday, November 2nd. Available on VoD in March,

Been So Long

Posted on by victorfraga

London itself is one of the main characters in this simple yet deep love story that bursts with life and celebration of a city community that we can identify with. The audience at the screening I attended in East London whooped and called out with recognition as they saw people on screen who they felt as if they knew, telling a story of two ordinary Londoners falling in love.

Simone (played with punch and passion by Michaela Cole) has chosen to let go of her personal desires and needs, ij order to become the best parent she can to her daughter Mandy. This intention is thrown up in the air after she is persuaded on a night out by best friend Yvonne (Ronke Adekoluejo) and meets, newly released from prison charmer, Raymond (Arinze Kene). We follow their journey of romcom misunderstandings and missteps in parallel with Mandy’s search for a relationship with a father she doesn’t know. This sounds formulaic, but this is not how it plays out.

It is a breath of fresh air to see characters who have been in prison (Raymond) and addicted to drugs, Kestrel (Joe Dempsie) given life in a way which allows us to see that misfortune and regret can creep into anyone’s life given the wrong circumstances. Families in different shapes and forms are portrayed honestly, with recognition of their normality and place within a twenty first century city.

Love and life’s happenings occur in all the places everyday Londoners go, the market, the kebab shop, small cafe’s and pool halls. It is a thrill to see Mandy, a young wheelchair user living her life as any child does, challenging her parent with a desire for adventure and boundary pushing. Seeing Artemis (Genevieve Barr) signing her conversation in the party scene as just another element of this rich narrative tapestry that signifies progress in casting (Julie Harkin).

The film is billed as a musical, but this is not like any musical I have ever seen. Songs blend into the dialogue and sit organically within the story telling structure. A deliberate choice to have a rehearsal period prior to shooting benefits the final piece enormously. The actors were able to not only develop character and relationship but also to learn the choreography that would form part of the narrative. The dance and movement elements are used in a naturalistic way at times, and in other moments to dig deep into the inner life of the characters. This is especially true for the character of Gil (George Mackay) who haunts the action with martial arts style movement and a long held grudge against Raymond.

A rich colour palette is used for each main character by DOP Catherine Derry and the costumes (Lisa Duncan) are also a vital element in revealing the individuals choices and motivations. Gentrification is a theme that interweaves the plot as the camera pans over the Camden streets, and in digs that come from the cialogue about places to eat and changing businesses. Bar owner Barney (Luke Norris) is having to close-up, his traditional pub atmosphere is a dwindling commodity in an upwardly mobile landscape.

To elaborate on the plot would deprive the viewer of a chance to take this trip with the characters. A brightly lit fair ground ride that will leave you with a feeling of warmth and optimism.

Been So Long is available on Netflix from October, 2018.

Intention (Geunal, Bada)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

In 2014, Korea’s Sewol ferry capsized with considerable loss of life, some 304 people, many of those killed being schoolchildren. The families of those involved didn’t believe they were being told the whole truth. As with Yongsan and British disasters like Grenfell and Hillsborough, there was a feeling that the authorities were not interested in transparency and bringing those responsible to account. Instead, it seemed they wanted to cover up what happened, hoping allegations of wrongdoing would go away.

The situation in Korea in 2014 was exacerbated by a right wing administration that believed it could get away with falsifying evidence. The then President Park Gyun-hye was subsequently impeached for corruption in 2017, forcing a new election and a new, less right wing government within months.

Yet in the wake of the Sewol disaster, internet journalist Kim Ou-Joon felt that a documentary feature film could help clarify what actually happened and set the record straight. He turned film producer and raised his budget money via a crowdfunding campaign.

For director’s chair, the producer made the unusual choice of enlisting Kim Ji-young, who had trained as an electrical engineer. This might sound an odd background for a filmmaker, but given this is an investigative journalism type of documentary, it meant he possessed the ability to look at, for example, computer code readouts for the Auto Information System (AIS) that recorded the position of the ship throughout its voyage and see that the official data released by the South Korean government couldn’t possibly be correct, which is to say it had almost certainly been tampered with.

In fact – as he revealed in a fascinating Q&A following the LEAFF 2018 screening – he spent six months learning how to use the AIS programme so he could load data into it and see the results for himself.

Using CG infographics, Kim Ji-young shows us the ship’s route as defined by first the government’s bogus data, then by the Navy’s different data, then the data from the eyewitness accounts of both the Captain of a nearby ship and a number of passengers from the Sewol ferry who actually survived the wreck itself.

With each of the three sets of accounts of the incident, the route of the ship and its position and orientation at points along the way shift until an empirically sound and historically accurate picture is built up.

In addition, towards the end, the director examines and coordinates several cameras’ worth of CCTV footage from the Sewol’s cargo hold to show the audience what happened to a number of the cars and lorries parked below decks when the ship suddenly and rapidly capsized. This is followed by animated simulations if what happened to a number of individual passengers.

There’s no attempt to work out which individuals were directly responsible for the tragedy as at the time of the film’s completion there were a number of different theories but no definitive answer. The producer and filmmaker understandably felt that they wanted to get their film, with its many hitherto unseen findings, out into the public domain to be of nonpartisan use in bringing the responsible parties to justice.

Intention played in the London East Asia Film Festival (LEAFF). Watch the film trailer below:

Meerkat Moonship (Meerkat Maantuig)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Teenager Gideonette de la Rey (Anchen du Plessis) doesn’t like her name. In fact, our protagonist is convinced her unusual moniker carries a curse. Her father, the pastor of a small church, he assures her there’s no such curse. But then one day he’s found dead in the church building.

Gideonette is obsessed with the curse and begins writing a list of ways it might cause her to die. Her alcoholic mother (Hanlé Barnard) finds out and forbids her from looking at the list.

When her mother checks herself into a hospital “for some rest”, Nettie, as she prefers to be called, moves in with her grandparents Willem (Pierre van Pletzen) and Koekie (Rika Sennett) whose farmhouse is surrounded by countryside where she meets a younger boy Bhubesi (Themba Ntuli), a mute, who with the help of her grandfather is building a giant spaceship in the shape of a meerkat so that he can blast off into the stars…

The above probably sounds completely bonkers. But it’s really hard to do this film justice simply by talking about its plot. So much else is going on, not least the exquisite cinematography which lend many of Nettie’s scenes, some of them walking through vegetation in sunlight, an ethereal dreamlike quality.

This is a film about coming to terms with your past and letting go of fear in order to move forward. And then there’s the fact that this is a South African movie set in a loosely defined time presumably while the country was still under Apartheid, in which this writer, for one, kept wondering where all the black people were.

Well, the mute Bhubesi is black, as his briefly seen mum, and while the white Nettie’s relationship with him is quite odd, it doesn’t seem to be so much about race as about friendship for someone who needs a helping hand. Which both these characters do in their differing ways.

For the finale, all the hitherto hidden black people finally appear alongside the white Nettie and her grandparents with a feeling of different colour skinned people getting along together and moving forward. And of Nettie finding herself in this new context. A wonderfully and thoroughly subversive little film which deserves to be widely seen.

Meerkat Moonship played in the Schlingel International Film Festival where it deservedly picked up the Fipresci jury prize.

River’s Edge (Ribazu Ejji)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

A Tokyo high school. Haruna Wakakusa (Fumi Nikaido) is seeing Kannonzaki (Shuhei Uesugi) but not sleeping with him. So behind her back Kannonzaki looks around for someone more compliant and finds Rumi Koyama (Shiori Doi) who, with the aid of a line of coke or two, is as enthusiastic about having sex as he is.

Kannonzaki is also a bully who frequently targets the quiet Ichiro Yamada (Ryo Yoshizara) with whom Haruna strikes up a friendship. Despite the fact of his dating Kanna Tajima (Aoi Morikawa), more as a cover than anything else, Ichiro is actually gay.

Ichiro is full of surprises. He’s raising a couple of kittens in a cardboard box outside a local building and deigns to show Haruna his “hidden treasure”, a skeletal corpse lying in the reeds near the river that runs through the city. He’s only shared this secret with one other person, Kozue Yoshikawa (Sumire), who takes time off from school as a working child model for photo shoots. She’s also a binge eater who throws up after overeating, thus maintaining her figure.

When a rumour spreads that there may be money buried in the reeds, Ichiro enlists Haruna and Kozue to help him bury the corpse so that none of school’s treasure hunters will discover it.

As much as the movie is shown from any one character’s point of view, it’s Haruna’s. But it’s a film punctuated by character vox pops, as if it were a documentary, wherein a character is responding to questions both trivial and large. The large questions leave most of the characters with nothing to say.

There are also hints of plot to come, as for example with Haruna’s explaining in an early vox pop why she saved her teddy bear from a fire, an event which doesn’t occur until the closing minutes, although then we only see its aftermath and that only briefly. These little interviews to camera appear to have been conducted long after the events depicted have taken place.

Although it contains graphic scenes of teen sex as well as occasional bursts of violence, this is primarily a drama about teenagers relating to one another in a world where adults, while they impinge on it, are outsiders and never more than minor characters. It’s based on a manga by Kyoko Okazaki.

The characters remain fascinating throughout and if a variety of relationships straight and gay are to be found both within and on the fringes of the proceedings, at its core this concerns a deep friendship between a straight girl and a gay boy. There’s something really refreshing about that.

River’s Edge played in the London East Asia Film Festival (LEAFF) in 2018, when this piece was originally written. Available on Netflix in March. Watch the film trailer (Japanese, no subtitles) below:

Edhel

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Although her father was killed in a riding accident, Edhel (Gaia Forte) is training hard for an upcoming show jumping competition. Tensions are frayed at home where her mother (Roberta Mattei) constantly tells her off for wearing her hoodie over her head round the house. School is even worse. She won’t take the hood down and expose her head for anyone – and her classmates hate her for it.

Things change with the arrival of a new boy in the classroom who is far more friendly towards her. Around him she starts to come out of her shell. This is an amazing, really thoughtful film about people who are different. It has a lot to say about not only bullying and the cruelty of children towards their peers but also what goes on inside the head of the person being bullied.

Its narrative walks a very clever tightrope between its heroine having a physical deformity beneath the hood in the form of distinctive, pointy ears and the fairly preposterous idea that she might in fact be an elf. There are connections you can make to support the idea, but the style of shooting never goes beyond suggesting the possibility.

Silvano, a caretaker at the school who is also a sword and sorcery fantasy obsessive given to hanging out at the local comics store, is certainly convinced and becomes concerned for her. He thinks she needs to return to “her people”. His obsession gets him into trouble with his employers. And when Edhel vanishes for part of the final reel, it’s very tempting to agree with Silvano. But perhaps there’s another explanation.

However, the trailer boasts no such subtlety and screams at us, she’s an elf, she’s an elf, she’s an elf! No possible room for doubt, no ambiguity and – to all intents and purposes, not the film I saw. It’s a terrible trailer because it completely misrepresents the feel of the film and what it’s actually about. Although we’ve published it below, you’re better off watching the opening five minutes instead which provides a much clearer idea of the film (the clip is below the trailer – no subtitles, it’s in the original Italian, but you’l get the idea).

If you want to see how to promote a film like this, look no further than Border (Ali Agasse, 2018). That has some pretty clever surprises hidden in the twists and turns of its narrative (although no one in that film is an elf, in case you were wondering), but the clever trailer understands the game the film is playing and gives away nothing it shouldn’t. It’s a shame whoever did the trailer for Border couldn’t do the one for Edhel too. Both are subtle films which need the correct marketing to succeed and are likely to fail in cinemas without it.

Edhel played in the Schlingel International Film Festival. Watch the uninspiring subtitled trailer for the film below – or below that, watch the first five minutes instead for a more accurate idea of the film (in Italian without subtitles, sorry):

Do cowboys have fantasies?

Posted on by victorfraga

The movie that perfectly crystallised the schism of war and peace in 1960s America, Easy Rider (1969), made its director Dennis Hopper and producer Peter Fonda cultural icons. Easy Rider portrays two hippie drifters (also played by Hopper and Fonda) as they chase the American Dream on custom-built motorcycles across the land they call home, the same land that, ironically, does not want them there. The people they meet and the places they travel through define the 1960s in America. Easy Rider distils sadness, futility, and the improbability of living in a truly free society without ever commenting directly on the circumstances the country was facing, such as the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, and the Cold War.

The film’s success at the box office allowed Hopper and Fonda free artistic rein in the environment of the New Hollywood. Universal Studios were happy to supply the then-unprecedented one million dollars and cede complete creative control to each of these lucrative stars for their next film projects. Peter Fonda chose to direct and star in The Hired Hand (1971), a lyrical, slow-burning revisionist western in which he played a roaming cowboy returning home to his wife after seven years away. Hopper took his million dollars and his entourage of actors, friends, and hangers-on into the high mountains of Peru to make The Last Movie (1971), a tale of the adverse effects of an intrusive film production company on the indigenous people.

Hopper had envisioned the film as being his first directorial work. He and Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1956; pictured below) screenwriter Stewart Stern had begun the process in the early 1960s. However, the film strayed so far from the original screenplay that Stern felt it was not “… an accurate representation” of his work and that Hopper “didn’t use the scenes as they were written in the screenplay and that he chose to improvise with people who were not up to that kind of improvisation,” One could argue that Hopper’s own sense of mythmaking got in the way of producing a straightforward narrative film.

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Too dirty for school

As well as directing The Last Movie, Hopper also played the lead role of Kansas, a movie stuntman who stays behind once the production company has left and goes native with the Peruvian villagers. Perceiving some sort of (black) magic in the movies, the villagers begin to re-enact the pretend violent scenes they witnessed using wooden cameras, only this time the pretend violence they saw during filming becomes very real violence and Kansas is imprisoned and beaten by the villagers.

Both Hopper and Fonda’s films—though brave and in some quarters critically acclaimed—were commercial failures. The Last Movie won the critics’ prize at the 1971 Venice Film Festival, but its original New York screening lasted only two weeks. The film also failed to garner any respectable mainstream press or positive reviews. With the failure of The Last Movie, Hopper’s desire to make important, socially conscious movies came to an end, at least for a while.

He exiled himself in his New Mexico compound and waited for Hollywood to come crawling back for his bankability, or for Hollywood to catch up with his artistic vision. Neither of these things would happen for a very long time.

Despite all of this, The Last Movie is clearly an accomplished piece of art cinema. The film flows on a phantasmagoria of sound and images that conjure up a disjointed yet affecting experience. As Andrew Tracy, in his critique of the film for Reverse Shot, points out: “The overall effect is to remove the viewer from any kind of perspective perch, to erase the illusion of a guiding viewpoint and a stable base of judgment and force the viewer to confront the film as a persistently confounding object.” It is interesting to view the film as per Tracy’s description and to take oneself out of the narrative and observe the film as a singular artistic object.

The Last Movie positions itself as ethnography—a way in which one can study a culture and people by immersion. But this ethnography has now expanded to not just to include the indigenous people present within the film. In retrospect it is an immersive look at film culture of the early nineteen-seventies. The Last Movie is an example of Hopper’s desire to transcend film and art into an immersive and sensory experience.

However, the film’s title would be prophetic, as due to the critical backlash and commercial failure it was to be Hopper’s last directorial film for a nearly a decade. Yet it was also the first and last of its kind for a long time: an art house film made within the confines of Hollywood’s mainstream studio system.

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Dreaming, in retrospect

As a companion piece to The Last Movie, one must also witness the documentary film The American Dreamer (1971; pictured above). This voyeuristic film fills in some of the gaps and answers questions as to why Hopper’s relatively straightforward screenplay became so distorted.

The documentary was directed by Lawrence Schiller and L.M. Kit Carson. Carson would later go on to adapt the screenplay for Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, 1984) and write the original screenplay for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (Tobe Hooper, 1986), which would also star Hopper. The documentary chronicles the intense post-production of The Last Movie whilst also taking time to allow a tripped-out Hopper to theorise about life, film, art, religion, and sex. These stream-of-consciousness mutterings bear some resemblance to the madcap statements made by Hopper’s photojournalist character in Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1976)

The American Dreamer adds something to the mythical quality that Hopper was attempting to establish around himself. The rambling interviews interspersed with footage of Hopper – bearded and in ragged jeans, gun under arm, walking over windswept landscapes, accompanied by rambling folk songs on the soundtrack – are for the most part evocative of the outlaws and bandits that once roamed the frontier wilderness.

The interviews reveal a great deal about Hopper’s intentions and obsessions regarding his film and with film itself as an art form. It also demonstrates the many distractions and temptations that Hopper faced in the aftermath of Easy Rider’s fame. Drugs, drink, and women begin to pull him away from the task of finishing his film within the given time and budget. One scene in particular is deeply uncomfortable. A group of young girls are bussed in to actively participate in an orgy with Hopper. With his manic stare, shaggy beard, long hair, and surrounded by lovelorn females, one cannot help but see visual similarities to cult leader and serial killer Charles Manson. The American Dreamer is a shambolic attempt to paint Hopper in the colours of an American folk hero. To be fully understood, it has to be seen alongside The Last Movie and in the context of that film’s artistic triumphs and commercial failures.

Thankfully we have an official release and a clean digital transfer of The Last Movie that will hopefully open up the appreciation that this film truly does deserve. For decades the film has been viewed through the lens of its own obscurity. This has meant that audiences have either had to see it via film print at late night screenings or a distorted VHS transfer. If one cannot at least appreciate the narrative (or lack thereof) at least the film’s magnetic beauty can be seen in the glory in which it was intended.

A crisp and brand new 4k restoration of The Last Movie is out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 14th.

Find out more about late American artist in the book Essays on the Artistry of Dennis Hopper, also by the author of this piece.

Rhooba

Posted on by victorfraga

You are about to watch a delicately framed tale told through dance, metaphor and the dual languages of Tamil and English. This Canadian film shot in Toronto is part love story, part coming out journey depicting the lives of its two central characters. Both of them are trapped in some way, and they use their relationship as a means to find freedom.

Roobha (Amrit Sandhu) feels trapped in her male body. She tells her Mother: “you never had a son”. She sees visions of the goddess Martha whose legend is narrated at the beginning of the film as we watch this young trans woman apply her make-up ready to dance. Anthony feels trapped by the debts and responsibilities that engulf him as he tries to provide for his family. He is hiding in some way from the oncoming crisis of his credit issues and failing business and ignoring the health warning given by his Doctor.

Instead of speaking to his wife about his heart condition, he seeks solace in engaging in a flirtation with his customer Roobha. This leads to an intense relationship. His wife is too preoccupied with daughters and family finances to truly respond to her husband when he initiates a sexual encounter. Despite the the Tamil poetry he used to write her, their relationship has now become one of routine.

Dance and food are used profusely throughout the film in order to convey emotion, longing and a choice to break free. It is no accident that Antony’s daughter’s dancing is technically correct but lacking feeling and the dance Roobha performs for Anthony both in his pub and when they are alone, is abandoned and lost in the sensation of the movement. Anthony is able to escape watching his lover dance as she has been able to escape through classical Indian dance learned in Mumbai. Anthony’s wife and Roobha’s mother both use food as a token of love. This food is also a physical representation of their desire to keep their family together and to retain normality on their terms. When Roobha is befriended by two trans sex workers they introduce her to a cafe owner they call ‘Mum’. Once again, food becomes a token of love and belonging in this ‘chosen family’.

A flashback is used in order to depict Roobha’s estrangement from her family as she insists on planning surgery and living fully as a female. The challenges facing the older generation in this film are intensified by their position as first generation immigrants who have to work multiple jobs in order to make ends meet in their new home nation.

The conflict and tension of the scenes towards the end of the film as well as the nature of the relationship between an older man and a younger trans woman will ring bells with those who’ve seen A Fantastic Woman (Sebastian Lelio, 2017). The topic of choice between family and forbidden love is also present in both movies.

The cinematography (Arsenij Gusev) and colour palette are well chosen. The editing (Thomas Buschbeck) is very clever. The scene in which Roobha is attacked is particularly powerful. This is a beautifully crafted film. The final image of Roobha dancing echoes perfectly the opening shots with poignancy and yet a feeling of hope. A treat that’s both delectable and easy to digest.

Roobha shows at the 38th Cambridge Film Festival.