When Isis surpassed Al-Qaeda as the leading jihadist group in 2014, the following three years would see a wave of terrorism sweep across the Continent, killing dozens in France, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Spain and the UK. Of these countries, France was hit hardest, with over 200 people dying between 2015 and 2017. This spectre of tragedy looms over Amanda, Mikhaël Hers’s quiet, unassuming drama.
The title refers to 7-year-old Amanda (Isaure Multrier), who lives with her mother Sandrine (Ophélia Kolb), an English teacher at the local école.Amanda and her mother have an authentic chemistry that’s established in flowing, naturalistic sequences in their light and airy Parisian apartment. Particularly endearing is a scene in which Sandrine explains to her curious daughter the meaning of ‘Elvis has left the building’, which, I must add, educated me as well as young Amanda.
All of this is tinged with dread, for Sandrine, we know, will be killed in a terrorist attack. When this moment comes there is no punch to the gut, but there is no cheap sentimentalism, either. The real pain comes after the event when David (Vincent Lacoste), Sandrine’s twenty-something brother, has to explain to Amanda what happened to her poor mum.
It is David who carries the bulk of the emotional weight in this tragedy. His occupation is that of factotum; when he’s not greeting tourists at Gare du Nord for a vaguely dubious landlord, he’s pruning trees and shrubs at local parks. He’s a good guy though; he may lack ambition and direction but he has a shaggy-haired affability that suggests he’ll get his sh*t together at some point.
David’s prospects are spiced up when he meets Lena (Stacy Martin), a Gallic beauty who moves into one of his employer’s properties. You feel the butterflies in their stomach as they hit it off, such is the understated power of Hers’s direction and the actors’ performances. Lena, however, is also caught up in the attack, suffering wounds to her arm and, most perniciously, her mind.
This is what Amanda is about – the fallout of tragedy. A moment’s violence can cause a lifetime of suffering, but it can also heal old wounds, too. For David and Amanda, Sandrine’s tragic death becomes an olive branch to Alison (Greta Scaachi), David’s estranged mother who moved to London long before her granddaughter was born. It is unclear whether amends will be made in the long run, but the situation rings true for those who have experienced such familial shock.
Ultimately, despite its context, Amanda proves to be a warm, subtle film with an effortless naturalism, yet it lacks a visceral quality that could have made it a more absorbing, affecting piece of work.
There is a short documentary webisode that lies on the DVD extras of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (George Lucas, 1999) that, thanks to YouTube, I often go back to. The scene begins on November 1st, 1994 and features George Lucas in his writing cabin beginning work on what will become the Prequel Trilogy of Star Wars films. He takes the camera crew around his den showing them his fresh paper pads and boxes of pens and his clunky desktop computer. He then collapses in his chair, exhausted by the prospect of writing these movies and sighs into the air “now all I need is an idea.”
What fascinates me about this footage is the fact that Lucas set out to write a film series that wouldn’t see the light of day for another five years. The Phantom Menace hit theatres in May 1999 and the subsequent films would be spread out over a further six years, with Attack of the Clones coming in 2002 and Revenge of the Sith [pictured below] in 2005. The Prequel Trilogy represents over a decade of dedication, not just Lucas’s part, but a whole team of creatives. As Lucas comments in the same clip “It starts with me sitting here doodling in my little binder but it ends up with a couple of thousand people working together in a very tense, emotional, creative way.” The Prequel Trilogy, despite its faults in direction, pacing, dialogue delivery, acting technique, racist stereotyping, and narrative elements that hinders the overall arc of Darth Vader’s origins, it has stood the test of time and like the Original Trilogy have become cinematic classics that have found a new life in the online world of memes and Reddit and YouTube theory posts. The dedication to scope, world-building, and mythology that might have slowed the films down to a death crawl has actually paid off.
Let’s talk a bit about about slow. Though I’m sure he wasn’t thinking of it at the time, Lucas’s decade long endeavour is an excellent example of the slowness philosophy that is often applied to other outlets: slow cooking, living, parenting, teaching, travel, and technology. The slow philosophy promotes attention to detail, to savour the moment, to experience something at a leisurely pace. These are attributes that rarely apply to blockbuster cinema. Knowing that a decade of one’s life is going to be set aside for the writing and production of three sci-fi fantasy movies is impressive, but what is more impressive is Lucas’s 15-year gap between the Original and the Prequel Trilogies. Star Wars was all but a forgotten pop-culture artifact when Lucas decided to resurrect it in the mid-1990s.
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Fast forward to the present
Our times are not the same as George Lucas’s heyday. When Disney purchased the Star Wars brand towards the end of 2012 the entertainment conglomerate pushed to have the new Star Wars films in theatres with almost immediate effect.
The first of the Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Force Awakens {J. J. Abrams) came in 2015. Since then a Star Wars related film has been released every year. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Gareth Edwards) followed in 2016, Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Rian Johnson) in 2017, Solo: A Star Wars Story (Ron Howard) in 2018 and finally as 2019 closes, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (J. J. Abrams) [pictured at the top and the bottom of this article] rounds off the Skywalker Saga. What took Lucas 28 years to complete with his two trilogies Disney has managed (minus one film, though the Disney+ show The Mandalorian is arguably an epic film-like production) in five.
I’m raising this point for a number of reasons. Firstly, the nature of cinema has accelerated to the point of almost exhaustive collapse. The Star Wars franchise is an excellent case in point but look to the Marvel Cinematic Universe for an even more hyperreal example. The first two phases, beginning with Ironman in 2008 (Jon Favreau; pictured below) and ending with Ant-Man (Peyton Reed) in 2015 saw 12 films issued, six films per phase. Twelve films over seven years is somewhat excessive, but no way in comparison to Phase 3 of the MCU, which unleashed 11 films in the space of four years. Secondly, the “quality over quantity” aspect of slowness has been reversed in this new accelerated cinematic landscape and the Sequel Trilogy and the Star Wars anthology films have been critically shredded and in some cases angrily dismissed by the fan base. All aspects of Disney’s production, from story to direction, art design to acting, casting to costume, editing decisions to the script has been dissected, ridiculed, memed, criticised and dispatched. A cottage industry has developed in which fans of the franchise call Disney out in public. Some of this criticism is justified – the narrative swerves and odd characterisation seen in The Last Jedi is somewhat meta for a blockbuster movie, whilst some of this criticism is uncalled for and downright cruel – the hounding of the films female actresses for example.
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All downhill from here?
Despite my admiration and even genuine like of the Sequel Trilogy, I realise something is off. There is a hollowness and lack of depth to the overall arc and coincidence and convenience has replaced storytelling in order to make the narrative of this trilogy happen. There is also the mismatched direction of J.J Abrams and Rian Johnson that barely correspond to each other with any fluidity. Though the Original Trilogy had different directors for each film, George Lucas was the overseer in creating a consistent set of movies. Here Abrams and Johnson have set out agendas and arcs only to retract, change, or ignore them completely. These elements might be answered in books, TV shows, cartoons, comics, and games, they will certainly be debated ad nauseum for years to come by Star Wars YouTubers and Reddit threads.
The Rise of Skywalker arrives with diminished fanfare and an expectation that the film will be a disappointment in some way or another. Script leaks captured early criticism and the recovery is not yet in sight. I’ll not divulge the narrative or offer a review as such. These have been offered in countless forums across the internet. What I want to discuss are elements of the film that hinders its overall impact as a film and a conclusion.
The film suffers from plot devices (I’m refusing to use the term ‘McGuffin’ though that is what they are), thrown in simply to get the action rolling at a chaotic pace. A Wayfinder device, an ancient dagger, an old adversary, a revealed heritage, the introduction of new (and old) characters, and new and unexplained Force abilities. In themselves, these are not bad ideas. What they are are underdeveloped ideas, ideas which would have benefited from inclusion and explanation way before this film. Suddenly, and as a reaction to the swerves taken in The Last Jedi, a whole new narrative apparatus has had to be created in order to get one movie on track towards the whole saga’s conclusion. It’s an exhausting experience that leaps from one planet to another at dizzying speed. Time accelerates in this film’s presence.
The quite literal resurrection of Emperor Palpatine [pictured above] for the final chapter is welcome only due to that particular character’s utter and delirious wickedness. In reality, it makes little sense and is never really explained, and despite denials from Abrams, the inclusion is an obvious quick fix for Johnson’s despatch of Supreme Leader Snoke in The Last Jedi. We’re led to believe Palpatine has been pulling the strings for the past three decades and with only a few flourishes of dialogue the whole dilemma is snuffed out without question.
Character arcs and actions are redundant or unbelievable. Many complained (including Mark Hamil himself) that Luke Skywalker’s grizzled and downtrodden turn in The Last Jedi failed to correspond with Luke’s optimistic and adventurous persona in the Original Trilogy. In The Rise of Skywalker, characters we’ve been shown to be egotistical devils are suddenly performing actions contrary to this perception. Take, for example, General Hux. In The Force Awakens, Hux is a proto-fascist zealot of the dreaded First Order. A man whom with spit in his mouth and tears in his eyes directs a destructive laser towards the heart of the New Republic government planets and snuffs out potentially billions of citizens. In The Rise of Skywalker, he turns his back on the First Order and allows our heroes to escape and set about the destruction of the First Order. This is not a realistic action of a character we’ve come to know as a snivelling repellent. It is an action that is nonetheless required by the script to get one set of characters from A to B.
And whilst the characters may physically move from A to B, their actual emotional arcs are pretty much stuck. The main character of Rey, for example, has garnered many Force abilities and earned wisdom from her adventures. But, ultimately, she ends up where she began the trilogy, alone on a desolate backwater desert world staring off into the horizon not really knowing her path. In the Original Trilogy, there was knowledge that Luke, Han, and Leia had weathered many crises in the intervening years between episodes. During the Galactic Civil War, there was genuine loss and upheaval. The end of the Original Trilogy showed (thanks to the 2004 Special Editions) citizens celebrating the end of the Empire across many different worlds. It was a universal victory. In The Rise of Skywalker, the victory, if there even is one for the galaxy, is far more subdued and personal. Has Rey really won a galaxy? Will she lead a new collective government of begin a new Jedi Order? Her story ends at the pinnacle of a new dawn with no victors as such and raises more questions for the wider galaxy than it can answer. Judging by some of her questionable Force actions (she shoots bolts of Sith lightning and destroys a ship supposedly holding her conrade), she might even be a future danger to the galaxy.
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Not all doom and gloom
The only character arc that is worth the whole saga is that of Kylo Ren/Ben Solo. As the main protagonist, Ren has carried a weight around his neck and his physical self seems in constant turmoil. When he succumbs to the Light Side as Ben Solo his whole body language and facial expressions become as light as a feather. His whole persona in the last half of the film is one of relief and we feel it with him. In this case Adam Driver really deserves the praise that has been granted him for this performance.
Criticism can be placed at George Lucas’s feet for many problems seen in past Star Wars movies. But his consistency in epic storytelling and worldbuilding was at least an asset. In The Rise of Skywalker, and the Sequel Trilogy as a whole, the whole galaxy seems smaller and you get the impression most have given up on the outcome of this conflict and that the battles are being fought on a much smaller scale in some deadbeat part of the galaxy. It is a reaction many audience members will also feel.
I will say The Rise of Skywalker offers the most complete Star Wars experience seen on screen since Revenge of the Sith, but its placement as a final chapter in the saga is ultimately redundant because of the previous inconsistency of The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi and now this film’s inconsistency to those films and the other trilogies. It doesn’t feel connected to past films. As a standalone film, The Rise of Skywalker is a treat, a rollicking adventure that twists and turns, offers plenty emotional gut punches, nostalgia kicks, and never for a moment bores. But it’s too little too late. The goodwill has been exhausted. The acceleration to rebirth Star Wars to a new generation is obviously rooted in firstly, making fast bucks, secondly, pushing merchandise and toys, and thirdly, signing up new subscribers to a streaming service. Intricate layered storytelling and gradual worldbuilding have been abandoned in this quest.
As a film, The Rise of Skywalker might stand as the final word in the Skywalker Saga, but what it should’ve been is the first word in a far broader and more expansive and diverse universe that was hinted at in The Last Jedi. But as the trilogy, and an entire saga is now at its end the roots have been severed from any potential future. Although I’m as eager as any Star Wars fan for more content, you wish in retrospect Disney had taken a leaf from Lucas’s book and just slowed down.
British actor Daniel Craig [pictured above] will wear the famous tuxedo one final time in No Time To Die (Cary Joji Fukunaga) next year before making way for the next in line. So it’s now time to find his successor!
Unsurprisingly, British actors dominate the field to be cast as the next 007. London-born James Norton is most people’s favourite to take the role, though Scotsman Richard Madden is also heavily fancied. Irish-German Michael Fassbender and British-Malaysian Henry Golding are also believed to be interested, while Irishmen Cillian Murphy and Aidan Turner are thought to be in contention.
Stars like Gillian Anderson [pictured above] have been linked with being cast as the first-ever female Bond, and insiders suggest there’ll be a prominent female role in the new story. Other potential female candidates include Emily Blunt, Angelina Jolie, Charlize Theron, Emilia Clarke, Jodie Comer, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Vicky McClure and Helen Mirren.
Recent YouGov data suggests that 51% of Bond’s British compatriots are ready to accept a female James Bond, and that appears to be a less controversial option than Bond being portrayed as from somewhere other than the UK; just 35% say they’d accept a non-British persona for 007.
The data also reveals that 29% of Brits would find it unacceptable for Bond to be black, while a further 13% admit to being unsure. Meanwhile, a gay Bond would be unacceptable to 40% of the UK population, and a further 13% are unsure, leaving just 47% who say they’d accept it. So, perhaps it’ll be some time before the franchise breaks with tradition when casting for their lead role.
Of course, looking good in a tuxedo is a must-have for the part, alongside knowing your way around a baccarat table. Luckily for the candidates, sites such as BonusFinder provide a full list of real money casinos for our would-be Bonds to explore while researching the role, including a healthy dose of bonuses to help you improve at your preferred casino games.
Here are our top five picks to be cast as the next James Bond:
James Norton – The 34-year-old is best known for his work in British TV, where he has starred in dramas including Happy Valley and McMafia. He also played the title role in 2019’s Mr Jones and will feature in horror-thriller Things Heard and Seen next year.
Richard Madden – Madden earned critical acclaim for his performance in the British TV thriller Bodyguard, collecting a Golden Globe for Best Actor. He recently played a lead role in war epic 1917 and is presently filming for Marvel’s upcoming picture, The Eternals.
Tom Hiddleston – Perhaps best known to American audiences for his recent appearances in Avengers pictures Infinity War and Endgame, Hiddleston is a relative veteran of the big screen. He has also recently captured attention as Loki in the Thor franchise.
Michael Fassbender – Born in Germany, Fassbender is remembered for his portrayal of Magneto in the X-Men series, after having appeared in 300 at the start of his bigscreen run. He received critical acclaim for his part as Edwin Epps in 12 Years a Slave.
Idris Elba – The veteran of our shortlist [pictured above], Elba’s major picture debut came before the turn of the century and enjoyed critical breakthrough in 2010 for his role as Luther in the TV series of the same name.
We’re still in the dark for now, and we’re likely to remain so until after the release of Bond 25 in April 2020. While we wait, we can turn our excitement towards that new film and enjoy Craig’s last outing as 007.
R[/dropcapey (Daisy Ridley) is the last of sea of Jedi, focusing her energies, powers and stances on her work as a swordsmith. Away from her, missionaries Poe (Oscar Isaac) and Finn (John Boyega) follow a lead sent by erstwhile Jedi master Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), as Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) encounters a force even more evil than General Snoke.
It’s a by-the-numbers Star Wars entry, all very ordinary rather than extraordinary. And there’s something very, very wrong with that. Starting in 1977, the Star Wars episodes boasted themselves on their unpredictability, instability and irregularity awash among the many laser effects and Wookie costumes. At their best, the Star Wars series opened a number of aliens experiencing the most inhumane of human feelings. Empire Strikes Back (Irvin, Kershner, 1980) ended with an amputee agonising over his learned parentage. Revenge of The Sith (George Lucasm 2005) watched the impeccable Anakin racked with guilt over the failings of the Jedi he so blindly followed. Then there’s the excellent The Last Jedi (Rian Johnson, 2005), an elegiac painting which showed that the universe isn’t a chamber piece of good and evil characters, but an orchestra of emotions swimming inside the varied territory lines. Even the risible Attack of The Clones (George Lucas) showcased a glorious gladiatorial fight which climaxed the 2002 flick with gun heaving gusto. This puts The Rise of Skywalker in pole position as the most unoriginal, the most boring and also the weakest film.
It has many, many things wrong with it. Watching the re-used Carrie Fisher footage from 2015, I felt a nauseating sense of deja vu for the Pink Panther films Blake Edwards churned out in the 1980s. This was supposed to Fisher’s entry, as The Last Jedi was Hamill’s and The Force Awakens‘ (J. J. Abrams, 2015) Harrison Ford’s. Fate played a different card, as the film changed direction as early as 2016. The 2017 dismissal of director Colin Trevorrow furthered the distance from original idea to fan-servicing, with Abrams’s reinstatement as director the final whistle to that particular tolling bell. Unlike Rian Johnson’s more measured approach, Abrams’ is frequently overshadowed, rather than guided, by his inner fanboy. His re-introduction of Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) comes shimmering in solely for the cheering salute of the fans who recalled the ship steering hero in 1986.
Nothing in the film feels subtle, an unusual thing to criticise a sci-fi film, but there’s little of substance to the proceedings. When Rey finally discovers her heritage, after three films of searching, the answer feels anticlimactic, unfeasible and insultingly predictable. Returning Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDirmid) is fan servicing at its worst, although credit to McDirmid, he gives a steely performance absent from Driver’s flatter portrayal.
This feels like a formulaic movie, the collective fingerprints of committee members, accountants and pie-charts holding up what could be a genuinely affecting piece of art. But it does have a genuinely affecting final scene. Rey, standing on her own two feet, feels comfortably at home in a series that feels like a stranger to its own series.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is in cinemas Friday, December 20th. On VoD in March.
Ballerina Victoria (Francesca Hayward) leads a troupe of feline singers, dancers and acerbic entertainers through a ceaseless song selection, paraded over a series of matchless designs and acrobatics. Whatever plot the Jellicle Cats face is hard to decipher (the story more or less revolves around a tribe of cats who must decide which one will ascend to the Heaviside Layer and come back to a new life), but that’s a small matter in a kaleidoscopic spectacle, detailed in one long dance through the Edward Hopper tinted town streets and skyscrapers.
Catsmight be the bravest, boldest and battiest picture that’s come this barmy year, and the kinkiest too! Everywhere, latex linen suits wade in the viewer’s eyesight, crotch capers carrying the eye-line of the camera’s attention. Sleek, the myriad dancers parade with gutty gymnastic poses, throwing each of their bodies into the multi-colored routines. The songs come interchangeably, frivolously feasting on their nonsensical verse and costumes. Exquisitely produced, the song’s take a sombre, affecting turn during Grizabella’s (Jennifer Hudson’s) Memories, an ageing elegy sung as the spinning camera eyes the falling debris that surround the commune of cats. This is visual art, shades of Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927) and Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) hanging on the architectural designs.
It’s an impressive cast listing, venerable custodians of the stage (Ian McKellen and Judi Dench) parading with the prescient pop artists of the millennial world (Taylor Swift, Jason Derulo and James Corden among the cast list). Parading in delightful nonsense, the catchy collection of cats emerge in the linen gutter filled paths, as others dine with cutlery items larger than the diners themselves. It’s utterly, joyfully offbeat, an illustrated adaptation of the wackiness T.S. Elliot intended for his creations. Behind the furry felines sits Idris Elba’s Macavity, purring in his criminal ambition. Elba’s resume has rarely shown such propensity for pantomime, eager in clawed posts to wander the variegated set pieces with playful rigor.
Through a Camp collection of colourful cuts comes the most exciting and invigorating of dance set pieces. In its own way, it’s the purest translation of musical theatre, expressing the animal atmosphere both the West End and Broadway productions produce. The costumes take centre stage, an overture of textures, colours, carousels and captures, a vehicle of fur for its centre cast. Clandestine changes of colour and choreography take precedence over semblance of plot. Instead, its the glorious engagement of vaudevillian value in all of its seductive permutation. Slick, shiny, sexy, colourful, creative and camp!
Afghanistan, 1989. The Soviet army is on the verge of withdrawing from the country when a bomber is shot down. A literal Chekhov’s gun is confiscated from the pilot, who turns out to be the son of General Vasilev. Thus, an operation is set in motion to rescue him from Mujahideen captivity. The typical band of misfits are gathered, and have to deal with rebels, smugglers, traitors, translators and an increasing lack of purpose.
A film of many names and based on actual events, Brotherhood (aka Leaving Afghanistan) can be seen as Russia’s first Vietnam movie (Kevin Reynolds’s solid Soviet-Afghan themed tank 1988 film The Beast was an American production). Bucking the last years’ trend of flag-waving films – such as Stalingrad (Fyodor Bondarchuk, 2014), Tankers (Konstantin Maximov, 2018) and T-34 (Aleksei Sidorov, 2019) – set during the Great Patriotic War, Brotherhood quickly ran into trouble in Putin’s Russia by instead dealing with the Soviet Union’s forgotten war in Afghanistan.
Some veterans were incensed at the unconventional portrayal of Soviet soldiers. And clearly the protagonists in the Soviet military are not presented as paragons of virtue. They are guzzling vodka and looting ’80s artifacts like ghettoblasters and the Sony Walkman.
But perhaps surprisingly, the film is rather even-handed in its portrayal of the Mujahideen enemy (who of course history would later see morph into warlord factions and eventually the Taliban). The other are given a voice in the form of an erudite leader figure and are seen as more than faceless fundamentalists. I would have wished for more depth to the Afghani liaison, representing the Afghanistan government. In the few scenes he features, it is mostly to beg for harder Soviet measures against the rebels. But that a multifaceted look at the deep complexities of the Soviet-Afghan War lies beyond what can be expected of one film.
Brotherhood only grants a minimum of exposition in the form of overheard TV spots of the Soviet withdrawal, and to get the most out of the film the average Western viewer would do well to at least visit Wikipedia for a history refresher.
Even with accounting for some beautiful mountain scenery (shot in the Caucasus rather than on-location, naturally), the film remains gritty rather than visually sumptuous. Despite the controversial subject matter, the director did have enough support from higher-up veterans in the Russian military that it was possible to shoot scenes with authentic APCs and Mi-24 attack helicopters, which adds a lot to the sense of realism. Special mention must go to some thoroughly disturbing sound effects. Never has the horror of trying to breathe with knife and gunshot wounds been better portrayed.
The war sadly remains topical, with the ongoing Western engagement in Afghanistan’s war without end. The competent Brotherhood is a must for anyone interested in the subject matter. A rare opportunity to see Russian cinema deal with its very own Vietnam.
Brotherhood is based on the memoirs of Afghan war veteran turned FSB spy chief Nikolai Kovalyov. Itscreened at the Russian Film Week in December, a month which also saw a French DVD and Blu-ray release. Streaming rights yet to be determined.
Another year has gone by and DMovies is now nearly four years old. Since we started in February 2016, we have published 1,400 exclusive articles and reviews. We have attended both big and small film festivals and industry events of Europe, always digging the dirty gems of cinema firsthand and exclusively for you.
This year alone, we have published 400 articles and reviews and renewed our partnership with organisations such as Native Spirit, the Tallinn Film Festival, the Cambridge Film Festival, plus VoD providers such as Walk This Way and ArteKino. What’s more, our weekly newsletter has highlighted the best films out in cinemas, festivals, VoD and DVD every Friday to our 20,000 subscribers! We have up to 100,000 monthly visitors on average.
So we decided to pull together a little list of the 10 dirtiest films of 2019. And what better way to do it than asking our most prolific writers and also our audience for their dirty pick of the year? This is a truly diverse and international list, containing very different films from every corner of the planet, some big, some small, some you can still catch in cinemas, some on VoD and some you will just have to keep an eye for, at least for now!
Don’t forget to click on the film title in order to accede to the our dirty review of the movie (not necessarily written by the same person who picked it as their dirty film of the year). The movies are listed alphabetically. And scroll all the way to the bottom of the article for the turkey of the year (a film so squeaky clean that you shouldn’t be sad if you missed it)…
The glorification of male companionship has been celebrated in tragicomedies such as Withnail & I (Bruce Ronbinson, 1987) and Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996). Animals, on the other hand, showcases the triumphant revelry between two young women, decadent in their communal taste for fermented depravity. Effortlessly translating Emma Jane Unsworth’s book from Manchester’s streets to the Irish capital, Animals zips with inspired zest, an energised exposition of elastic wit and inspirited storytelling.
Laura (the British born Holliday Grainger, complete with killer Dublin accent) fancies herself a writer, fancifully fantasising through voluminous bottles with the coquettish Tyler (Alia Shawkat). Their thirties fast approaching, the women see little reason to halt their precocious abilities to party, until love threatens to put these halcyon days to pasture. Minesweeping to Alphaville, Laura walks into the enigmatic Jim (Fra Fee), a precocious Ulster pianist whose scale painting conjures composites of satiated sexual desires. Between these silhouettes, a solitary fox walks, echoing the lonely poetry the film displays.
Dragged Across Concrete may not be the best film of the year, but it’s certainly the dirtiest. With it, S. Craig Zahler cements his status as a leading genre auteur, which is no mean feat. Few other filmmakers could get away with a 160-minute crime film of such deliberate pace and odious content.
For example, half-way into the narrative we are introduced to a young mother named Kelly, who is returning to work after three months’ maternity leave. Performed with heartfelt angst by Jennifer Carpenter, Kelly has clearly dreaded this day, tearfully lamenting how she ‘sells chunks of her life for a pay cheque so rich people I’ve never even met can put money places I’ve never even seen. With some degree of tough love, her partner persuades her to leave for the bus; what happens when she makes it to the bank will have you shaking your head in disgust. It becomes clear that the sole purpose of the character is to make you feel terrible, and it is this – along with the film’s pervasively bleak vision – that makes Dragged Across Concrete the dirtiest film of the year.
This film is basically Love Actually (Richard Curtis, 2003) directed by Roy Andersson. Comprised of only 56 static takes, Rúnar Rúnarsson calmly takes Iceland’s pulse during the Christmas season; delivering a panorama that is equal parts funny, sad, ironic and loving. Displaying a supreme confidence in direction and writing, this is a major step up in form and content.
It spans through the Advent season to the New Year, that time of year when families are reunited, stress levels are high, and wallets are strained. Everyone is in the mood to either try and enjoy themselves, or simply get through the darkest days in the year. Spanning from rich to poor, old to young, alone or surrounded with family, it feels like all of Icelandic life is contained within this film.
The Joker looks on its poster as yet another quirky, all-American urban mythology film, that appeals to that predictable audience base – it is anything but. With its extraordinarily talented performance by Joaquin Phoenix, it is up there with the greats of the Weimar cinema such as The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg, 1930) and Nosferatu (FW Murnau, 1922) as an exploration of the human psyche, that is both prophetic and insightful. It is about that phenomenon that Nietzsche called “ressentiment” in which the weak, talentless and envious take out their anger on the talented and intelligent and turn it into an internalised ritual of cruelty.
It the creed of the “people” versus the “elite”, the Nazi against the Jew, the herd against the thoughtful and intelligent. The Joker is a useless, bitter clown who in his resentments takes on the right to kill those who show him up for what he is. As such, in this age of social media, trolling and glib public opinion, this film is very modern and very prophetic. Joaquin Phoenix is up there with Emil Jannings in the complexity and depth of his performance.
What is art? Why do artists make art? These questions lie behind Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s latest film, like his earlier The Lives Of Others (2006) a German story exploring that country’s history and identity. It clocks in at over three hours, but don’t let that put you off because it needs that time to cover the considerable ground it does. Never Look Away spans the bombing of Dresden by the Allies in WW2, the liquidation of people considered by the Nazis inferior and therefore unfit to live and the very different worlds of post-war art schools in first East and later West Germany. This means it also spans two generations: those who were adults during the war, and those who were children at that time and became adults in post-war Germany.
Our audience’s pick is our most read review of 2019, and the film isn’t even out in UK cinemas yet!
The latest Palme d’Or winner at Cannes, and the first Korean film to win the prestigious prize, follows a small family of four They live in a shoddy basement flat in an impoverished district of Korea. They face unemployment, and the future does not looks bright. They steal wi-fi from their neighbours. They panic when the password is changed, leaving them disconnected from the rest of the world. But that isn’t their one “parasitic” action. All four are con artists. One by one, they take up highly qualified jobs with a super-rich family, which also consists of four memebers. They are very well-spoken and manipulative. Their bosses never suspect that there’s something wrong with their highly “diligent” workers. These impostors are also extremely charming. Your allegiance is guaranteed to lie with them.
Furthermore, Lucas wrote: “A home invasion-social critique hybrid that exposes the malaise of late-stage capitalism with a Hitchcockian flair, Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite is a film that rewards multiple viewings and is very deserving of every acclaim sent its way. The thriller establishes a sense of barely-contained mayhem early on and doesn’t let the audience go until the only way out is sheer chaos. A killer picture is every level”
Parasite is also pictured at the top of this article.
Across four decades of turbulent Chinese society, Wang studies a married couple, using the death of their son as a focal point around which to subtly explore the single-child policy and the impact of the Cultural Revolution.
The unconventional structure zips back and forth through different time frames, gradually moving along a central timeline. The story occurs in episodes which each have the feel of their own short story, but which fill in the details of the other things we have seen. Wang leans heavily on dramatic irony, raising the tension as we wait for truths to emerge. One wonders if he couldn’t have found a way to cut 15 minutes or so from the run time, so languid are the first two hours. It isn’t until the final 50 minutes that So Long My Son really pays off every beat he’s set up. Like a Koreeda film, revelation is piled upon revelation, disarming you with one bombshell and then slapping you with another. Wang even uses the flashbacks to abet this by undercutting the outcome of one scene with the reality of the past or present.
In addition, Patricia wrote: “A thoroughly engrossing film, beautiful to look at and outstanding in interweaving the personal and the political. It is an epic story covering the impact a tragic event has on a group of friends. Although long, it never fails to engage”.
Ricky (Kris Hitchen) is a building worker with an impeccable CV, living with his family somewhere in suburban Newcastle. He persuades his wife Abbie (Debbie Honeywood) to sell off her car in order to raise £1,000 so that he can buy a van and move into the delivery industry. A franchise owner promises Ricky that he’ll be independent and “own his own business”, and earn up to £1,200 a week.
The reality couldn’t be more different. Ricky ends up working up to 14 hours a day six days a week. He literally has no time to pee, and instead urinates in a bottle inside him own vehicle. His draconian delivery targets and inflexible ETAs (estimated time of arrival) turn him into a delivery robot. A small handheld delivery device containing delivery instructions virtually controls his life. Ricky has been conned. His “independence” is but an illusion. He might own his car, his company and his insurance, yet he’s entirely at the mercy of his franchiser.
Everything about Uncut Gems excites. A mythological sprawl that feels timeless, and tragic in its overall emptiness by the time Howard Ratner supposedly wins. I’m reminded of Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant with an ugly, repulsive enforcer addicted to chaos. Ratner is a study of desperation. An addict with nothing beyond his own stakes. Nothing to offer, nothing to redeem, a man always running even when he never actually has to. Everything that happens in Uncut Gems could’ve simply been avoided, and yet — the vile beauty of such a fact is that it wasn’t. It’s the story of a dreamer, a chaser, one for fool’s gold.
Effusing the nostalgia of 1950s small town America, director Andrew Pattinson’s debut feature is a near-perfect film, a quintessential addition to genre cinema. Set during one night in a small town in New Mexico, young radio DJ Everett (Jake Horowitz) and switchboard operator Fay (Sierra McCormick) set out to discover the origins of a mysterious frequency they hear over the radio. In those moments when strange incidents that may explain the mysterious frequency are recounted to Everett and Fay, Pattinson incorporates the oral storytelling and the literary traditions. He asks us to imagine for ourselves rather than to show us, and this makes The Vast of Night striking for its anti-cinematic shades. The stillness of these moments is effectively offset with the urgency of the pair to unravel the mystery before its too late, and an ending that effectively compromises on revealing versus preserving the mystery.
Virginia Woolf has never been this dull and joyless before! And love has rarely seemed more anodyne than in this awful biopic, which has a miscast Gemma Arterton and Elizabeth Debicki playing the two lovers. Here one of the most important women to have ever put pen to paper is reduced to a wholly passive, sickly, and sad woman, devoid of any true emotion, inspiration or true internalisation. Her lesbian lover, Vita Sackville-West fares no better, Gemma Arterton more focused on her aristocratic mannerisms than her transgressive personality or desire to shake the system. Together they seem like they’re still reading through the script.
When the trailer for 1917 debuted, it bore a similar aesthetic to Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017) – not an entirely bad thing, but not the preferred style, either. I had shared the minority view that Nolan’s film was, in the words of The Guardian’s David Cox, ‘bloodless, boring and empty’. The menace and spectacle of its opening quarter petered out into litany of tepid peril overcast by Hoyte van Hoytema’s gloomy cinematography.
Thankfully, 1917 makes a quick break from these facile similarities with its tight pace, raw emotion and staggering camerawork. It is one of those rare films where, as a reviewer, you risk getting stuck in a rabbit hole of superlatives – so here goes it.
Firstly, the performances, though good, are not what drive this film. It is instead an intensely sensory experience that demands to be seen on the biggest and best system. Roger Deakins’s masterful camerawork bobs and weaves through the trenches of the Western Front in seemingly one unbroken take, capturing the men of the British Expeditionary Force with a visceral fluidity. After ten years of excellent cinema, 1917 will be counted amongst the decade’s most impressive and absorbing.
Everyone in this film is under overwhelming pressure – few more acutely than Lance Corporals Blake (Dean Charles Chapman) and Schofield (George MacKay). The young men are ordered to carry a message across enemy territory that will prevent a British battalion of 1,600 men, which includes Blake’s brother, from charging into a death trap.
Chapman and MacKay both give strong performances. Blake is a chipper lad given to jocular anecdotes and crude jokes, while Schofield, apparently the more experienced of the two, has developed a war-weary reserve. There’s a mutual respect and affection for each other, though, and their extraordinary experiences only makes their bond stronger.
This tight, simple premise and character dynamic sets the stage for one of the most remarkable portrayals of combat in recent memory. It may not have the thematic depth of Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick, 1957), but Mendes conveys the all-consuming stress, misery and exhaustion of total war. Many of the men Blake and Schofield meet are in varying depths of hate and prostration, but most are driven by a stoic resolve to keep moving forward, whatever their dismal fate may be.
Key to the film’s immersion is Dennis Gassner’s epic set design. We follow the troops as they traverse yard after yard of dank trenches, and the scope becomes even more grimly arresting when they scale the parapet, entering a vast, ghoulish wasteland of sodden craters, splintered trees and mangled bodies. Indeed, there are moments across No Man’s Land that resemble the body horror of David Cronenberg; the attention paid to the grisly details of death and decay is disturbing as it is appropriate.
Inspired by the stories of his grandfather, director Sam Mendes and DOP Roger Deakins have made the biggest and best First World War film of the 21st century. This is important, because for better or worse, cinema has the power to reinvigorate history, to spread knowledge and awareness. After all, the First World War has been overshadowed by the conflict that followed, with its clearer moral compass and even greater level of destruction. Mendes’s film, while not a depiction of the war’s terrible stalemate, will nonetheless assault one’s senses and give them some idea of what their forebears endured in Britain’s deadliest war.
1917 is in theatres Friday, December 10. On VoD on Monday, June 1st. On Netflix on Friday, September 10th (2021)
M[/dropcap[ikhail Borisovich Khordorkovsky is charming, well-educated, self-confident and highly intelligent. He has suffered imprisonment twice for standing up to Vladimir Putin and his power apparatus in Russia. He runs a platform for genuine (as opposed to state) information about Russia (“Open Russia”). He is a major philanthropist and has the support of leading politicians in the West for his work defending human rights. Yet he is one of the notorious oligarchs. Like many of his kind, he bought up shares in defunct state concerns after the collapse of the Soviet Union, making millions in the process. He was appointed head of Yukos, a hugely successful oil company, which made him the richest man in Russia. He is still worth millions today.
The oligarchs controlled the Russian regime that emerged under Boris Yeltsin. It was the era of gangster capitalism. Much of Russia’s wealth was controlled by criminal gangs. Shootings and murders were common in Russia’s cities. With the collapse of the Russian economy, much of Russia’s population were impoverished and forced to sell prized possessions in the streets just to buy enough food. Boris Yeltsin, although he stood for democracy, was controlled by the oligarchs and had great difficulty in running the country. During this time, Khordorkovsky was suspected of arranging the murder of the Mayor of Nefteyugansk, Vladimir Petukhov, who stood in the way of the expansion of Yukos.
It comes as no surprise, then, that when Vladimir Putin, originally an obscure operative in the KGB, became president and started to challenge the oligarchs, arresting many and taking over their assets, his actions were immensely popular with many Russians. Indeed, Putin used this initiative to lay down the foundations of his control of Russia.
What is so useful about this documentary about the ambiguous figure of Khordokovsky is that it clarifies the reality in Russia. A simplistic Western view of Russia is that Russia is reactionary, backward and likes autocracy and is reverting to form. Putin is anti-liberal, anti-democratic and wants Russia to be “great” again. This is only half true. Putin inherited a situation of gangsterism. What he did was seize control of this gangsterism and use it for his own purposes. Russia was suffering disorder and poverty. He restored “order” and thinks he is building up respect for Russia. The concept of control is the key to understanding Putin. This is well illustrated in this documentary which shows the episode in which the relatives of the sailors of the submarine Kursk, that sank tragically in the Barents Sea, scream at officials for their dishonesty and inaction. One woman, particularly effective in her criticisms, suddenly has a syringe put in her arm and is “calmed down”. She is brought under control. What Putin wants is control.
Anything that threatens that control is dealt with. That was why Russian dissidents are not safe abroad, why the media is ruthlessly supervised, why interference goes on with foreign governments. Putin wants nothing that will call him to account. He wants to mess around with the processes of democratic governments because under their systems he would be called to account. He indulges in dog-whistle politics – rage against “filthy practices” coming in from the West (such as homosexuality), expansion abroad, paranoia about the “persecution” of Russia – because these themes are part of the Russian tradition. It is not that Russia is inherently reactionary. Many of the middle class in Moscow and Saint Petersburg loathe him. It is that many Russians are reactionary, and he wants to establish his base, in the same way that Trump wants to cultivate his base in Mid-America, and Brexiteers want to call up the prejudices and illusions of Middle England to establish their case.
The strange control of Putin is illustrated not just with the chilling events in Salisbury but also with the course of Khordorkovsky’s second trial. At the trial, after being previously convicted for embezzlement of Yukos’s money, in a contradictory way, he is then accused of not paying tax on the money he stole. This was so absurd that Khordorkovsky and his defence team in the court start laughing out aloud and mocking the inept Chief Prosecutor. This was captured on television and has made many Russians sympathetic to Khordorkovsky because it unmasks so well the injustices and pretences of Putin’s regime.
This documentary is a solid and efficient exposé of Putin’s regime. By concentrating on someone who is not entirely guiltless but seems to have been improved by his sufferings, it portrays the contradictions and tragedy of the modern Russian state. It won’t have the general public queuing round the block but catch it if you can. You will learn a lot.
Jojo Rabbit is like watching a sixth form revue whose student cast has just finished the CliffsNotes history of Nazi Germany and decided to play it for self-satisfied laughs. Now, Taika Waititi’s offbeat humour may have worked for Thor but it does not work for Nazism; his shtick is far too lame and toothless to produce anything nearing satire. And this is what Waititi thinks he has made, satire. It is a high-minded ‘anti-hate’ piece aimed squarely at contemporary right-wing populists. A worthy target, many would agree, but this edgeless juvenilia won’t challenge their beliefs for a moment.
The film’s milky satire is doubly disappointing, for the Nazis – both the first wave and their pathetic admirers – are very sensitive to parody. Charles A. Ridley realised this back in 1941, when he edited footage of Nazi processions from Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl, 1935) to fit the tempo of the Lambeth Walk, which one Nazi Party member had dismissed as ‘Jewish mischief and animalistic hopping‘. When Joseph Goebbels saw Ridley’s film, he was reportedly so furious that he burst out of the screening room – all 5ft 4 of him – and expressed his impotent rage by ‘kicking chairs and screaming profanities’. Alas, Jojo Rabbit is unlikely to rankle the contemporary far-right in such a fashion.
Parody aside, the central conceit of Waititi’s film is a tired morality tale. The story concerns Jojo (Roman Griffin), a 10-year-old boy whose imaginary friend is none other than Adolf Hitler (Taika Waititi). A committed member of the Hitler Youth, Jojo’s fanaticism is challenged when he discovers his mother has given refuge to a young Jewish girl named Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie), who hides in the rafters of the house. What are the odds that Jojo slowly warms to Elsa and sees the inhumanity of Nazism? That’s right, it’s essentially American History X (Tony Kaye, 1998) thrown into a dull stew of Life is Beautiful (Roberto Benigni, 1998) and third-rate Mel Brooks.
However, trite narratives can be buoyed by strong performances, witty dialogue – all manner of things. But in Jojo Rabbit there is nothing more than a litany of tired jokes and perfunctory German accents, with the worst of all coming from Rebel Wilson – the corpulent comedian of the moment. Negligibly better is Sam Rockwell, who coasts along as Captain Klenzendorf, a washed-up veteran. Waititi himself features as Adolf Hitler, in a performance that may have been daring 80 years ago but still wouldn’t have been funny.
A notably bad cameo comes from Stephen Merchant, who plays local Gestapo leader Captain Deertz. It is Deertz and his men who are most guilty of the film’s tiresome “Heil Hitler” gag, which consists of the characters repeatedly saluting Hitler to each other in a convivial manner. Clearly, Waititi thought this gag was a real winner, for in one scene each man of Geertz’s crew greets Jojo and Klenzendorf with cheeky salutations to the Fuhrer – it is an insufferably naff attempt at parody.
But remember, Jojo Rabbit isn’t just a parody, it’s an ‘anti-hate satire’; it’s here to help, to educate. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Waititi said, ‘there’s a danger we will forget the events of World War Two and there is another, deeper danger that some of those things will repeat themselves.’
This is an utterly risible statement. How can Waititi expect his film to comment on reality when it bears no relation to it? Jojo Rabbit is a facetious mess that presents Nazi Germany as a wacky pantomime full of goofy caricatures – it couldn’t complement even the most junior history syllabus. After all, the Gestapo did not consist of lanky, bumbling fools; they were sadistic thugs who maimed, tortured and killed – and that should be made abundantly clear to any student of history.
It would be unfair, however, not to mention the few, minor strengths. Scarlett Johansson gives the best performance as Rosie, Jojo’s mother. She has a ballsy eccentricity that steals several scenes, especially one in which she pretends to be Jojo’s absent father. There’s also Yorki played by Archie Yates, who shows a knack for dry humour that could bode well for the young actor.
But make no mistake, Jojo Rabbit is an abject failure. With its witless script laced with cringeworthy modern slang, you’ll find sharper humour in a YouTube Downfall (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2004) parody. And as a commentary on racism, there is more satire in five minutes of Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino, 2013) than the entirety of Jojo Rabbit. Waititi said that his film will ‘piss off a lot of racists’, but with an offering this milquetoast I’m afraid that’s just not going to happen.
Jojo Rabbit is in UK cinemas Wednesday, January 1st. On VoD on Monday, April 27th.
There’s one word you never hear in documentary The Kingmaker: “sorry”. Profiling the rise and fall and potential rise again of Imelda Marcos — former First Lady to the brutal dictator Ferdinand Marcos — it’s quite extraordinary that she still can’t see the consequences of her actions. This is a woman who assumes that she has done nothing wrong, determined to restore her family to their former glory.
Lauren Greenfield follows her for three years, providing a mixture of historical footage, talking heads and fly-on-the-wall campaigning as her son Bong Bong runs for Vice President. The result is truly compelling; kind of like The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, 2013) without the catharsis, a deadly warning that vast amounts of money has the ability to wipe away the sins of the past.
It begins with Imelda driving around the slums of Manila, handing out wads of cash to begging children and mothers. They know her by name, suggesting that this is a common occurrence. She later visits a children’s hospital built during her husband’s administration and complains that it looks nothing like it used to be. She hands out more money to mothers with dying children. The self-proclaimed “mother” of the Philippines and the world, the late octogenarian wants to be in charge of the country again. The question is how much cash should be handed out to make this a reality.
You’d think she’d know when to shy away from the limelight. Ferdinand established a deadly coup in the early 70s to consolidate power, killing thousands of people and torturing thousands more. Meanwhile, the family plundered the wealth of the country, holding the Guinness World Record for Greatest Robbery of a Government. She was a great believer in beautiful things, dubbed the “Marie Antoinette” of the Philippines due to her love of extravagant jewellery and her collection of over 3,000 shoes. Still, if you have vast wealth, anything can be possible. With the Marcos’ fortune estimated to be around $30 billion, and many in the country nostalgic for Ferdinand’s administration, they still possess the immense power to get things done.
Lauren Greenfield has scored a real coup here. Simply put, you’re unlikely to see a more fascinating subject interviewed all year. She would be a sympathetic figure if all you heard was her side of the story, yet Greenfield needfully speaks truth to power: she allows Marcos to say what she pleases, undercutting her lies by bringing in the testimony of activists, journalists and opposing politicians. It is the very opposite of Oliver Stone’s The Putin Interviews (2017), which albeit fascinating in their own way, inadvertently made the Russian leader seem even stronger. The depressing part is that nothing in this film will actually make a difference; it only lets us observe as the country struggles in vain to stop history from repeating itself.
And it probably will: Bong Bong narrowly missed the Vice Presidency in 2016 by just 0.64% of the vote to Leni Robredo. He appears to be a nice man, but he still cannot find a way to apologise for his father’s actions, even venerating him as a great figure. Yet they have an ace in their pocket with strongman Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency, which was partly funded by their money. Duterte and his Vice President Rebredo — who was elected separately — do not get on, with him stating that he wants Bong Bong to be Vice President with the expectation he will step down and let Bong Bong replace him. In The Kingmaker, the raw power of money has rarely looked so strong.
The Kingmaker is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, December 13th. On VoD in March.
