Midnight in Paris.

Allen's whimsical love letter to Paris.

I refer social realism rather than upper middle class whimsy; this is probably why I cannot warm to the recent films directed by my old movie adversary Woody Allen.  The only film I can honestly say I thoroughly enjoyed was Radio Days (1986) because it dealt with ordinary people in a fairly normal situation. Monday nights Robert Burns Cinema Film Club tortured my viewing sensibilities once more with the showing of Mr Allen’s latest cinematic offering to a full house.

The evening started well enough with a first rate introduction to the evenings “entertainment’ by Rachel Findley, who I know appreciates the work of the Brooklyn born director. Midnight in Paris (2011) involves Woody Allen; oops I’m sorry I mean Owen Wilson, who plays the Hollywood screenwriter Gil, who along with his snobbish fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) are holidaying in Paris. Gil is working on his first novel and after a disastrous meal with Inez fascist parents he goes on a solitary walk around the streets of the city. As the clock strikes midnight he’s whisk back in time to the 1920’s and meets all sorts of famous cultural figures who give him advice and therefore the confidence to edit and finish his book and see the error of his miss matched relationship.

Admittedly I was in the minority going by the after film discussion, most of whom were pretty keen on the movie but I personally could not buy into the films time travel concept or the constant bombardment of ‘oh so clever’ artistic references.  Owen Wilson’s impersonation of Allen was annoying and most of the modern day characters in this film were extremely disagreeable. Allen love letter to the city of Paris, just like London in his last four films, was dreamlike and artificial. Sorry Rachel, sorry RBC Film Club perhaps I’ll like his next one, I heard it was going to be a western “The Return of the Magnificent Allen”

Real Steel

Noisy Boy prepares for battle.

I wrote a piece on sport in the movies as an introduction to The Fighter (2010) for the RBC Film Club, in it I stated that boxing has been the sporting genre that movie lovers and critics alike seem to have a great affinity for. Well there was a very different type of boxing movie at the RBC on Friday and Saturday night last week. Best described as Rocky with Robots, the American science fiction film Real Steel (2011) is set in the near future where the great sport of boxing has gone high tech!

Charlie Kenton, a washed up conventional boxer, lost his chance at a title bid when 2000 pound, eight foot tall steel robots took over the ring. Now a small time promoter he earns just enough money pitting his scrap yard robots in low-end bouts travelling from one underground venue to the next. Charlie who owes large sums of money to the wrong people, discovers he has a son from one of his past romantic liaison’s and now has to appear at a child custody hearing following the death of the boys mother. He’s more than happy to sign young Max over to the boys Aunt, but she cannot take custody until after a prearranged trip to Europe!  The boy is therefore left with his father until after the summer. Charlie agrees to help his newly found son build and train a new robot.

Charlie trains Atom.

Directed by Canadian Shawn Levy, whose body of work I’m not familiar with, and starring Hugh Jackman as Charlie Kenton, Lost star Evangeline Lilly as Kenton’s love interest and the twelve year old Dakota Goyo as Max Kenton. Loosely based on a 1957 short story Street by Richard Matheson, Real Steel is absolute nonsense, entirely predictable from the very first scene and the product placement is diabolical, but the whole thing is terrific fun. The robots are totally believable and the films highpoints are the brilliantly staged fights between them, like the recent Planet of the Apes movie; motion capture technology is used. As my colleague said a great Saturday night movie, the RBC will be selling popcorn next?

Atom's ready for his bout.

Savage Messiah - Ken Russell RIP.

Mr and Mrs Ken Russell.

Following two recent strokes the brilliantly controversial British director Ken Russell has passed away. He was a larger than life character that I met at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 2010 for a very rare showing of Savage Messiah (1972). In Ken’s memory I reproduce the ramble as follows.

Savage Messiah

Ken at the 2010 Edinburgh FilmFestival.

 ‘Art is sex. Everything else is propaganda’. Watching this vibrant biopic six row’s behind one of the most infamous British directors of all time was quite surreal, it made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up: strange feeling! This very seldom seen movie (a DVD has never been released any where in the world) is based on the life of French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and his infatuation with an older woman Sophie Brzeska, the love of his life. H S Ede’s book of the same name came from the letters exchanged between the pair. The book was adapted for the screen by Christopher Logue.

Dorothy Tutin plays Sophie in a performance that’s has to be seen to be believed; Henri is well served by the mysterious Scott Anthony who, we where informed by Ken Russell and his wife, has vanished from the face of the earth and cannot be found! How do you recommend this film, perhaps by just saying it’s a typical Ken Russell or perhaps pointing out that Derek Jarman designed the sets or maybe the very naked form of Helen Mirren who portrays the feisty suffragette Gosh Boyle with such panache? Visiting Tate Britain encouraged Russell to make this film he has, like some of his other movies, provided something once seen, you’re never forget.

British cinema will miss the likes of Henry Kenneth Alfred Russell a film director never afraid to make films in his own inevitable way. As the BBC News web site said this morning :

He specialised in the interpretation of the great classical composers, extravaganzas that matched powerful images with a dramatic score. They were not for the faint-hearted. Audiences would be regaled with the sight of women cavorting naked in railway carriages, nude actors wresting in front of roaring fires and nuns indulging in orgies.

My commiserations to his lovely caring wife.

Taxi zum Klo.

Original poster.

German actor, film director, author and contemporary of Fassbinder, Frank Ripploh is best remembered for his semi-autobiographical 1981 movie Taxi zum Klo (Taxi to the Toilet), a relationship drama between a gay teacher called Frank (Ripploh) and his jealous lover Bernd (Bernd Broaderup). Frank spends his nights looking for casual pickups in public lavatories while marking the homework of his young students. Bernd on the other hand wants to settle down with Frank in a monogamous relationship; something he’s not prepared to countenance, enjoying his free and easy gay life stile in pre-aids Berlin.

Described as ‘not a pornographic film just one involving a love story about sex’.  It was banned for public release by the BBFC for a total of 25 years because Ripploh would not agree to cut scenes involving fellatio, anal sex and a golden shower. At that time it could only be seen in privately licenced clubs and cinemas, although it was shown at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 1981 where it received threats from the local authorities that it would be impounded and the only subtitled copy in existence would be burnt, thankfully this never happened.  In 1995 a heavily cut version was released for public consumption. Film4 resubmitted the film to the BBFC in 2005; it was reassessed and in its restored and uncut form was broadcast for the first time on Film4’s TV channel under the Extreme Cinema strand, introduced by film critic Mark Kermode.

Frank and Bernd party.

The strength of this film is its honest approach to the gay lifestyle. It’s raw, explicit and sometimes shocking but Ripploh documentorial approach gives a realistic and ordinary view of gay life at that time. Seen as a revolutionary film in the development of gay cinema in America, it bucked Hollywood’s saccharine view of gays and their lifestyle but one can’t help but wonder if this film would be made today? Admittedly not to every one’s taste, but in my opinion well worth a look. Available at Love Film.

Albatross.

You’ll know exactly what I mean when I describe watching a movie with a permanent grin plastered on your face? The latest film to inflict this condition was the British coming-of-age drama Albatross (2011) Niall Maccormicks debut feature film that’s set on the South Coast of England but filmed on the picturesque Isle of Man. His previous work has been in television including 2008’s award winning Margaret Thatcher: The Long Walk to Finchley.

A new lease of life for Beth.

Seventeen-year-old Emelia Conan Doyle gets a job as a cleaner at the Cliff House Hotel. The hotel is home to a author who has suffered writers block for twenty years and his dysfunctional family which includes young Posy, teenager Beth (Felicity Jones) and the long suffering and brittle Joa (Julia Ormond) wife and mother, ex-actress and now head cook and bottle washer at the hotel, to this ensemble our newly employed cleaning lady injects a renewed enthusiasm for life. The writer Jonathan (The Lives of Others (2006) Sebastian Koch) falls for Emelia while dispensing creative writing lessons in his private study. Beth strikes up a close friendship with Emelia persuading her to accompany her to Oxford University where Beth is to take part in the entrance interviews. While there and under the tutorage of Emelia, the naive Oxford hopeful learns that there is more to life than studying!

Oxford visit.

Reading some of the reviews you get the impression that the British critics were not convinced by film but I must differ. Although the narrative was a little lightweight I found it to be a very pleasurable and amusing 90 minutes greatly helped by the pitch perfect performance from Jessica Brown Finlay as the charismatic Emelia. I agree that the plot’s important, but even with the best-written screenplays the cinemagoer is not always as entertained?   

Can Emelia unblock Johathan?

Criminal Lovers.

Francois Ozon second feature film is a psychological thriller that’s comes across like a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. Criminal Lovers (1999) stars Natacha Regnier as Alice who persuades one of her more gullible student boyfriends Luc, portrayed by the now very popular French actor Jeremie Renier in only his second feature film, to murder Said a student who Alice accuses of instigating a gang rape. Luc agrees and stabs the boy who Alice has deliberately lured into a honey trap in the school shower. All goes to plan until unbeknown to them they are seen burying their victim in an isolated forest, on the way back to the car they get lost in the woods. Stumbling upon a hermit they discover that this strange man has dug up Said and intends eating the body. Alice is locked in a cellar with only rats for company while the mysterious hermit keeps the nubile young Luc as a sexual plaything.

Alice and Luc admire their handy work!

You just know this is not going to end well!!! Ozon’s mix of sadism, sodomy and cannibalism is an early example of the director’s diverse body of work. A very interesting take on Hansel and Gretel which could be a bit of a shock for these that were attracted to the French director by his latest movie Potiche (2010).