Inception.

Once you buy into Christopher Nolan’s premise ‘that the world around you may not be real’ you realise that Inception (2010) has a simple, but inventive story line. Professional extractor, Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), is a specialise in conning secrets from ‘marks’ by infiltrating their dreams. He is offered a chance by Saito (Ken Watanabe) to have a murder charge against him dismissed which will allow him to return to his old family life. Cobb must perform inception, which involves the complicated business of implanting an idea into the mind of Robert Fisher (Cillian Murphy), convincing him to dismantle his dying father’s vast corporate business empire.

An action thriller with a ‘slight science fiction bent’ (Nolan’s words not mine) that brings to mind the Matrix films crossed with a dash of James Bond. This exciting movie certainly warrants more than one viewing to sort out the intricacies of the gripping narrative but to Nolan’s credit he makes the dream levels easy to follow, as each setting is entirely different. In fact it’s really a bit of a good old-fashioned edge-of-your-seat adventure story dressed up in today’s technology.

Tropic Thunder.

Les is not happy about the delay!

Normally I would not get very excited by a documentary, but Tropic Thunder (2008) came highly recommended. This intriguing piece of work gives an account of the making of a Vietnam War movie after it was decided that the final part was to be actually shot in the jungle, on location. The reasoning behind this decision was to speed up the completion of the film when it was revealed to studio executive Les Grossman that his movie was more than a month behind schedule.

The first problem encountered on location was when the films inexperienced British film director, Damien Cockburn, got himself blown up when he stood on a land mine. The second, and consequently more serious problem, was when the actors and crew discovered that they had been dropped into the middle of the Golden Triangle. This area turned out to be the Heroin production base for the fearsome Flaming Dragon gang, an unremitting bunch of renegades lead by Tan an uncannily young looking gentleman. This gloriously convincing docu-drama charts the progress of the Hollywood team as they attempt to get back to civilisation with getting maimed or killed.

Sergeant Osiris is about to prepare supper.

The film these brave people were supposed to be making was allegedly based on the memoir of Nam war hero John ‘Four Leaf’ Tayback. A man who donated both his hands to the war effort, but it has since been rumoured that his book was a slight exaggeration and that Tayback actually served in a Coast Guard sanitation unit and no where near the front line! This tale of incredible bravery features such great names as Tugg Speedman famous for his lucrative Scorcher franchise but recently the poor man has only appeared in box office poison including his attempt to go upmarket when he accepted a more serious role in Simple Jack which raised controversy with disability activists for the repeated use of the term ‘retard’. His role of Four Leaf Tayback was an attempt to revive his film career. Bad boy Kirk Lazarus, the talented Australian who was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, had pigmentation alteration to play the African American Sergeant Lincoln Osiris. As normal Lazarus refused to break character even when he trying desperately to escape from the confines of the jungle. Jeff Portney well known for using flatulence in film’s, plays the raspy-voiced soldier named Fats. The drug addicted comedian/actor played all the parts in his previous movie The Fatties: Fart 2. Also worth a mention is the well known gay rapper Alpa Chino in this, his debut film.

Osiris apologises for his cooking.

I did enjoy what was probably the best documentary of 2008 and may, from now on, have to seriously revise my opinion of this genre?

Babette’s Feast

Babette prepares the feast.

Set in the mid 1800’s the Danish film Babette’s Feast (1987) is an adult fairytale, a whimsical story about a pair of pious Christian sisters living on the flat windswept peninsular of western Jutland. Life long celibates, Martine and Philippa, are still carrying out the work of their late father amongst the aging congregation. One day Babette Hersant arrives at their door with a letter from an ex-suitor of Philippa’s explaining that she is a refugee from a bloody uprising in Paris and wishes to become an unpaid housekeeper for the sisters. Babette’s only link with her former life is a lottery ticket that a friend renews each year. After working for the two sisters for some fourteen years Babette suddenly wins 10,000 francs from her lottery ticket. It is assumed she will now return to live in Paris, but instead she rewards the sister’s kindness by spending all her money on a real French memorial dinner to celebrate the late Ministers 100th birthday. Not only are the dwindling religious community invited but Martine’s former suitor and his aging Aunt are also encourage to attend. The magnificent feast is across between Holy Communion and the Last Supper!

The screenplay by director Gabriel Axel is based on a story by Isak Dinesen (pen name for the Baroness Karen Blixen) who also wrote the story that inspired Out of Africa (1985). The part of Babette Hersant was originally offered to Catherine Deneuve, but it was another French actress Stephane Audran who finally accepted the part. Very Bergmanesque with its grey landscapes and deliberately slow pacing, it deservedly was the first Danish film to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

White Materials (2009)

Maria Vail

Claire Denis followed 35 Shots of Rum (2008) with another rather baffling film White Materials (2009). Filmed in the Cameroon and set in present day Africa, French born Maria Vail is attempting to keep the family’s coffee plantation working during a bloody civil war. Her workers have run off and she is having problems getting a new crew to harvest the coffee beans. Isabelle Huppert plays Maria an exasperatingly stubborn colonial mother, blind to the war and carnage that goes on around her, in fact a similar role to the one she played in her last film The Sea Wall (2008) right down to the useless son.

Rebel Boy Soldier

The ‘white materials’ in Maria’s life are her son Manuel (Nicolas Duvauchelle) eventually driven from his lethargic life style into violence when he goes native. Andre, played by Christopher Lambert (best known for his role as Conner MacLeod in the Highlander franchise) is trying to get rid of the plantation without actually informing his ex-wife. Also living in the unfinished house where they all reside is her father-in-law Henri, played by veteran actor Michel Subor, a strange character who does not seem to be in good health, a man who wanders around all day in a robe. To add to her problems Maria is hiding the rebel leader on her estate, known as The Boxer (Isaach de Bankole) he lies badly wounded and bleeding.

Not a particularly gratifying film left this viewer with a sense of frustration.

Butterfly’s Tongue (1999)

Moncho and his Tutor

Its 1936, Spain, and there’s a civil war looming in the background. Eight-year-old Moncho, splendidly played by Manual Lozano, starts his formal education in the classroom of Don Gregorio, a beautifully understated performance by veteran Spanish actor Fernando Fernan-Gomez. Building a close relationship with his tutor and accompanying his older brother when he plays with a local touring band, Moncho begins to learn the ways of the world.

Based on three short stories Jose Luis Cuerdo's Butterfly’s Tongue (1999) fills every one of its 95 minutes. A coming of age drama with a bitter twist.

Still Walking

If it’s fast action movie you’re after then Still Walking (2008) is not for you, but if it’s slow pacing, first-rate dialogue and brilliant acting your looking for then this superb Japanese portrait of family life will fit the bill. Set almost entirely during a 24 hour period Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s film examines the tensions that arise when a middle class family gathers at the family home to observe the thirteenth anniversary of the tragic death of the younger of two son’s while saving another boy from drowning. The household consists of the unemployed elder brother, his wife and her young son by an earlier marriage, his sister who plans to move back in to her parent’s home with her husband and her noisy kids, the father a quarrelsome retired doctor and mother who spends most of her time preparing food. To round off this cauldron of family tension, each year they invite the lad that Junpei saved from drowning to force home the fact that he owes his life to their dead son. This beautifully observed film is highly recommended.

She’s A Chinese

Mei (Huang Lu) a young village girl leads a monotonous life in her dusty hometown in rural China, unfulfilled she leaves for Beijing where she becomes the lover of a professional hit man. Tragedy strikes and he gets killed. Mei’s restless nature compels her to travel to England, where she drifts through a series of affairs including marrying a retired widow and becoming pregnant by a Muslim café-owner! Writer and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo uses She’s A Chinese (2010) to explore various themes including love and desire, alienation, personal journeys and tragedy. An interesting film narrated with titled chapters and a great soundtrack. An acting lesson in two languages from Huang Lu.

When You’re Strange: A Film About the Doors.

‘You can’t burn out if you’re not on fire’ narrator Johnny Depp’s announces. Jim Morrison was not just another rock star that crashed and burned and after seeing Tom DiCillo’s justly reverential documentary When You’re Strange (2009) you’re know why. Morrison was not only the singer in one of the all time great rock bands but a intelligent writer and a poet, a man with charisma, someone you can’t take your eyes off when he’s on screen. The bands first album was released in January 1968 and continued with the same line up until Jim’s death on 3rd July 1971 in Paris. I never had the privilege of seeing them live when they appeared at The Roundhouse in Chalk Farm in September 1968, but I did have one of the most memorable highs while listening to their albums, o’ great times……

The Doors were part of political soundtrack to the sixties and DiCillo includes not only fantastic footage of the bands performances but links it with archive newsreel of the time including the assassination of both Martin Luther King and Bobbie Kennedy, the student killings at Kent University and footage of Charlie Manson. This accurate portrayal of Morrison also includes excerpts of his 1969 experimental film HWY: An American Pastoral which is said to be based on his experiences as a hitchhiker during student days. The Doors are one of the most influential rock bands in history and thanks to Tom DiCillo documentary should rightly remain so.

Jim Morrisons Grave - Paris

Tickets

Three highly acclaimed directors of international repute joined together to direct three interwoven stories that take place during a journey from Central Europe to Rome. Tickets (2005) was intended from its inception to be made as a single feature film and not as three separate stories. It was the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami who first suggested the idea and it was he who invited Italian director Ermanno Olmi and our very own Ken Loach to take part in this project. The three men had never met before but they were familiar with each others work. Total freedom was given to each director except for two rules: each of the sequences should be in some way connected and with the stories all taking place on a train. The first segment was by Olmi, the second by Kiarostami and the final by Loach in conjunction with writer Paul Laverty.

The characters in the stories connect through casual encounters and set forth a story of love, chance and sacrifice. An older businessman finds solace and a new insight into life when he is forced to wait at the train station due to bad weather. A young man is reminded of life's obligations and is introduced to love. Three Scottish lads on their way to the football match of their dreams are forced to open their eyes and see the bigger picture. This single train journey sparks changes for many people. This is a film about privilege and exclusion, and the reality of the value of just one ‘Ticket’.

Sit back and enjoy the work of three directors who obviously have a lot of mutual respect for each other.

Defiance (2008)

Bielski Brothers

I had previously enjoyed directorial work from the American director Edward Zwick including Legends of the Fall (1994) The Last Samurai (2003) and especially Blood Diamond (2006) which I have seen on a number of occasions, in fact its a subject that’s back in the headlines at present with the Naomi Campbell/Charles Taylor affair. Defiance (2008) is no where near as good as this previous work. This ‘war’ film is an account of the Bielski partisans, a group led by three brothers who saved and recruited Jews in Belarus during the Second World War. The film stars a rather dour Daniel Craig as Tuvia Bielski and Liev Schreiber who does manage to breathe some life into the character of Zus Bielski. Filming took place in Lithuania just across the Border from the actual location which at least adds a sense of authenticity to the proceedings.

No one comes out of this story with any credit; the passive Jews appear to care more for their possessions than their own lives, Soviet partisans are not fussed who they kill be it Jews, Germans or the local inhabitants who in turn seem to be quite happy co-inhabiting with the invading army and handing over the local Polish Jews. Well at least you know where you are with the Nazis! Zwick directs this unexciting movie with a very heavy hand. Not an enjoyable film and one I would not recommend.

Departures.

Its not very often you get the opportunity to see such an invigorating and life affirming film. Departures (2008) is beautifully serene, touching and virtually brings you to tears at times.

The dreams of Professional musician Kobayashi Daigo are shattered when the orchestra he plays for goes bankrupt. He sells his cello and returns with his wife Mika to Yamagata his rural hometown, taking up residence in the house that his dead mother has bequeathed them. Answering a mysterious advert for someone to ‘help with journeys’ which he assumes is something to do with the travel trade, but it turns out to be a vacancy  for a "noukanshi" mortician, someone who prepares corpses ready for cremation by ‘performing cleansing and beautifying services in the presence of the bereaved family, a ritual which combines an atmosphere of sympathy and reverence with a magician's sleight of hand’. Although he hides the true nature of his newly found position from his wife he soon realises that he has an aptitude for this work.

Directed by Takita Yojiro the film was ten years in the making and although the original idea came from the lead actor Matoki Masashiro, who plays Daigo, it is reputed to be loosely based on Shinmons Aoki autobiographical book ‘Coffinman: The Journal of a Buddhist Mortician’ Motoki spent months learning to play the cello and studying the art of encoffinment at first hand until he could perform the ritual like a true professional, while Takita attended funeral rituals to gain an understanding of how the families react.

Departures was the surprise winner of the Academy Award for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 2009 Oscars. "It's a great audience film," said Japan-based film critic Mark Schilling "It's got comedy, and it’s got emotions. It's dealing with something that everybody has to deal with, but in an unusual and interesting way." It’s certainly in a class of its own, head and shoulders above most other films your see and It’s not often that you sit through Japanese credits just to listen to its wonderful soundtrack, cinema at its very best, a film not to be missed.

Book Ends at the RBC.

  My trip to Edinburgh last week to assist my son and his fiancée with their move to a new flat was book ended by two visits to the RBC Film Theatre, one excellent and one not quite as good.

Filippo Timi as Mussolini

The story of Benito Mussolini’s first wife Ida Dalser makes for a very powerful movie. Dalser fell in love with ll Duce just before the outbreak of the First World War when he was still a militant socialist. To help the future leader create his socialist journal Avanti Ida sold all her belongings including her apartment and her shop. Although no documentation has ever been found an alleged marriage took place in 1914 followed by the birth of a son in 1915, also called Benito. Mussolini came back from the war in 1917 with changed political ideals: he abandoned socialism and founded fascism. In 1919 he went on to establish what would become the National Fascist Party. Three years latter Mussolini seized power and became the supreme leader of a totalitarian state. Once the dictator was in power Dalser and her son were put under surveillance and any paper evidence of their relationship was tracked down and destroyed by the ‘state’ in its attempt to erase all traces of her and her son but she continued her fight to gain recognition for them both. Eventually she was incarcerated in a ‘medical’ institution and no longer allowed to see her son. Eventually they both died in obscurity in separate mental institutions.

Giovanna Mezzogiorno as Ida Dalser

Marco Bellocchio has always been a critic of both Italian politics and its religious hypocrisy and with this his latest film his beliefs are plainly on view. The veteran filmmaker directed and part wrote the screenplay for Vincere (2009) with Daniela Ceselli. Although the film is a slow starter and some of the editing leave’s a little to be desired, the longer it went on the better it got with great use of archive footage and presenting some very strong images. Mention should be made of the impressive acting from the two leads, the proud stubborn Ida Dalser is beautifully played by Giovanna Mezzogiorno and Filippo Timi plays both Benito Mussolini before 1922 and as his adult son.


Director Andre Techine latest film offers us no easy answers. The French drama The Girl on the Train (2009) was inspired by a true story that shocked France in July 2004. It involved a troubled young woman who inflicted knife wounds on herself, cut out pieces of her hair and inscribed swastikas on her stomach; she went onto claim that she was a victim of an attack by a gang of anti-Semitic hooligans on a busy suburban Paris train who mistook her for a Jew. Some of her attackers, she alleged, where black.

Emile Dequenne and Nicolas Duvauchelle

The film is divided into two parts. The first entitled ‘Circumstances’ tells how Jeanne (Emile Dequenne) lives with her dotting mother Louise (the ever beautiful Catherine Deneuve). How she fails to get a job with the well respected Samuel Bleistein a Jewish lawyer and old flame of her mothers. How she falls in love with Franck (Nicolas Duvauchelle) an edgy young working class wrestler who finds them both work as caretakers of an electrical shop while the owner is away. We discover that this shop is a cover for drug dealing and when Franck has words with a dealer he is stabbed in an ensuing fight and arrested by the police. Following his near death incident he rejects Jeanne blaming her for his misfortune.

Emile Dequenne and Catherine Deneuve

The second part is entitled ‘Consequences’ and recounts the aftermath resulting from the above including the RER suburban train attack and the national outrage that followed.

Great acting from a very good cast especially the scenes between Jeanne and Franck which leaves you sitting on the edge of your cinema seat waiting for something unpleasant to happen. An interesting, absorbing watch.

More Joseph Losey.

The Sleeping Tiger.

Victor Hansbury was the pseudonym Joseph Losey used to direct his first feature film in Britain following his blacklisting in America. Some members of the cast were worried that they would no longer be able to work in Hollywood if it was discovered they where working with Losey in Britain, hence the assumed name. The Sleeping Tiger (1954) also marks the beginning of one of British cinema’s most important actor/director collaboration, Losey’s productive partnership with the great British actor Dirk Bogarde (The Servant (1963), King and Country (1964), Modesty Blaise (1966) and Accident (1967)).

A psychiatrist Clive Esmond (Alexander Knox) catches a young criminal Frank Clemens (Bogarde) while attempting a robbery at gunpoint. Rather than send him to prison he invites him to stay at his home as a social guinea pig to help further his theory that he can kerb a mans criminal tendencies. Tensions arise when the shrink’s wife (Alexis Smith) shows just a little too much interest in the social misfit.

This British film noir was said to be a dry run for The Servant due to the style of camera work and the ‘pithy insights into class hypocrisy and the base human emotions’ a fine start to Losey’s directorial film career in this country.


The Criminal. (Concrete Jungle)

By 1960 Joseph Losey was well established in the UK and following Blind Date (1959) he began to look for something more adventurous and settled on a script by Alun Owen. The Criminal (1960) is the story of an underworld kingpin called Johnny Bannion who when released from prison masterminds a daring racetrack robbery. The robbery is not a success and he is sent back to prison but not before he’s buried the spoils. Johnny must now survive an ordeal at the hands of fellow prisoners who are in cahoots with his previous accomplices who want to get their hands on the missing £40000.

The film depicts a harsh and very violent portrayal of prison life with Losey attempting, in his own words, "to show life in prison as it really was: where the guards were bribed and where there were ruling gangs in opposition to each other... where there was a kind of violence of unbelievable brutality but mixed with humour and a certain kind of compassion." This led to the film being banned in various parts of the world. Stanley Baker is said to have based his performance as Johnny Bannion on his friend, real-life Soho criminal Albert Dimes. The film also stars various well-known British character actors of the period along with American actor Sam Wanamaker and German actress Margit Saad. The compelling score also marked the beginning of a long collaboration between John Dankworth and the director. Dankworths wife Cleo Laine sang the film’s haunting theme.