Slow West.

Its 1870 and 16 year old Jay Cavendish travels from a privileged life in Scotland to America in search of the love of his life. Rose Ross and her father had to leave their croft in Scotland following an altercation with 16 year olds father, Lord Cavendish, John Ross knocks the man to the floor where he bangs his head on a rock and bleeds out. Completely unprepared for the journey across the prairie its not long before the naive young boy needs rescuing. Knowing more than he lets on Silas Selleck offers, for a price, to assist Jay in his search for Ross and her father. But Silas and Jay are not the only ones looking for the father and daughter.  A ruthless gang of bounty hunters led by Payne are also on their trail.

 

The naive Jay Cavendish.

This exceptional debut feature film has been directed and written by John Maclean who some may remember from his involvement with the Scottish band The Beta Band and a couple of short films he made with Michael Fassbender who also stars in this movie as the cheroot chewing Silas Selleck a man of mixed emotions. Kodi Smit-McPhee, a budding young actor who can be seen in various films that have included the Hammer remake Let Me In (2010) and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014), plays Jay Cavendish. We also get another wonderful lesson in ‘menacing’ by the brilliant Ben Mendelsohn as Payne.

 

Silas Selleck, a man who knows more than he admits.

The menacing Payne. 

Starkly beautiful, Slow West (2015) is a brutal film that involves a misdirected love affair that unfortunately leads many to their deaths. To John Maclean’s great credit this promising young filmmaker gives us a movie that percolates realism displaying what the people and the landscape would have been like in 1870’s Colorado. In my opinion it’s a film that demonstrates humanities greed where people are sacrificed, one way or another for personnel gain – some things don’t change. Certainly a western with a difference, unglamorous maybe, but one not to be missed. 

         

12 Years a Slave.

“There is no sin: I can do what I like with my property” says cotton plantation owner Edwin Epps when whipping a female slave, the same slave he rapes on a regular basis. This one episode really sums up the mentality between people who are financial capable of ruling other’s of a lesser social standing.  London born Steve McQueen’s third film, after his debut Hunger (2008) that dramatizes the events in the Maze, 6 weeks prior to Bobby Sands death on the 5^th May 1981 and Shame (2011) a film that involved sex addiction, is based on a 1853 memoir written by Solomon Northup a free African American[1], married with two children living in Saratoga Springs, New York who earned his living as a skilled carpenter and fiddle player who is duped, kidnapped and ends up as a slave to William Ford in the Southern States of America. 12 Years a Slave (2013) is the story of Northrup’s experiences working and living as a slave for twelve years of his life unable to admit to his masters who he really is and having to deny the skills he learnt as a free man, all in fear of a near death beating, and going as far has having to except a different name ‘Platt’.

 

'You just don't have any say boy'

The superb screenplay is by John Ridley; the cinematography was the responsibility of Sean Bobbitt who had worked on The Place Beyond the Pines (2013) and the vampire movie Byzantium (2012) as well as McQueen’s previous two films. German born Hans Zimmer, who has been answerable for over 100 films, composed the soundtrack. The ensemble cast is notable for performances from Lupita Nyong’o as Patsey the young and beautiful slave girl that Epps has love hate relationship with, the vicious slave owner Edwin Epps is played by another McQueen regular Michael Fassbender, with William Ford a kinder, less aggressive plantation owner performed by Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, seen recently in Prisoners (2013) as Platt’s arch enemy John Tibeats and a small, but important role for Brad Pitt as Samuel Bass.

 

'A thin line between love and hate'

This is an exceptional film not just because it won a very deserving BAFTA for Best Actor for  Watching this historical drama exhausts you, drawing out every piece of emotion, a brutal, but moving film, that everyone should take time out to watch if for nothing more than to act as a lesson on how not to treat your fellow human beings. Bearing in mind that slavery can take many different forms, not always as psychically brutal as shown in the film but equally mentally demeaning.  Cinema to be appreciated rather than to be enjoyed. Chiwetel Ejiofor as Northrup and a BAFTA for Best Film, but also because it tackles a subject that is not normally told in such an honest and forthright manner.

'Southern trees bear a strange fruit'

[1] In United States history, a free Negro or free black was the legal status in the territory of the United States of an African American person who was not a slave. The term was in use before the independence of the Thirteen Colonies until the abolition of slavery in the United States in 1865 after the American Civil War, when the status ceased to have any relevance

Hunger.

Bobby Sands was only 27 years old when he died after 66 days on hunger strike in the Maze Prison where he was serving a sentence for possession of firearms. He was the leader of the 1981 hunger strike in which Irish Republican prisoners sought to gain special category status. Sands was elected as a member of the British Parliament during his time in prison. His death resulted in an upsurge of support and interest in the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

Fassbinder as Bobby Sands.

 

Steve McQueen’s directorial debut film Hunger (2008) dramatises the events in the Maze 6 weeks prior to Sands death. Michael Fassbender gives a compelling performance in the lead role in what is a very gruelling and bleak movie. The film is notable for an unbroken seventeen minute scene where a priest, played by Liam Cunningham, tries to talk Sands out of his protest with the camera remaining in a static position for the duration of the scene. It is thought that this is one of the longest single scenes of its type in a mainstream film. Hunger was voted the best film of 2008 by the Sight and Sound Magazine.

Inglourious Basterds.

Ten years in the making, Quentin Tarantino’s homage to the war movie, Inglourious Basterds (2009) was originally planned as a follow up to 1997s Jackie Brown. The Tarantino penned story tells of two linked plots. The first concerning a young Jewish girl Shosanna (Melanie Laurent), who runs a small cinema in Paris, secretly waiting an opportunity to avenge the deaths of her family by the Nazis Jew hunter Hans Landa. The second features the Basterds of the title, a gang of mainly Jewish-American soldiers led by Lieutenant Aldo Raine who are parachuted into occupied France to wage a guerrilla war against the evil occupying force. Their brief consists of ambushing, torturing and collecting scalps!! 

The film stars Brad Pitt, who hams it up as Aldo Raine, a cross between Clark Cable and Popeye, Christoph Waltz plays Colonel Hans Landa, a character destined to become one of cinema’s great baddies and a role for which he won a Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival. Michael Fassbender who gives a great pastiche of a young George Sanders portrays the British Lt. Archie Hicox. German actress Diane Kruger plays the beautiful Bridget von Hammersmark, a film starlet and double agent.

Some scenes outstay there welcome, going on far too long and therefore tend to weaken the tension. The normal Tarantino trademarks, good fast paced dialogue, tongue in cheek humour, good sharp acting, great wardrobe, and first-rate camera angles are all there plus a brilliant spaghetti western type soundtrack. The film is loud and brash, with characters speaking their own language, which makes the whole affair more authentic. No it’s not QTs best film to date, but it’s still a very enjoyable slice of the maestro’s work and well worth seeing. Incidentally many of the set pieces were shot at the Babelsberg Studio in Potsdam Germany, which is the oldest large-scale studio in the world and was in use during the war to produce films for the National Socialists!

Colonel Hans Landa is even a bigger basterd!

Prometheus.

The Beginnings of Mankind?

There is certainly no doubt that the British film director Sir Ridley Scott has provided a great deal of entertaining cinema since he made his debut feature film in 1977, The Duellist a film set during the Napoleonic War and one that I saw at the RBC in very early days of the Film Club, others include Alien (1979) Blade Runner (1982) Gladiator (2000) Black Hawk Down (2001) American Gangster (2007) Body of Lies (2008) Robin Hood (2010) and my own personnel favourite Thelma and Louise (1991) where a waitress and a housewife take off for the weekend in a 66 Thunderbird and go on the run after shooting a rapist.

Prometheus Spacecraft.

His latest production is a return to the science fiction genre that originally made his name. Billed as a prequel to Alien, Prometheus (2012) is set before the horrifying events that take place on spacecraft Nostromo. This intriguing new film is a complex story about unearthing the origins of our universe and poses the question: are we all descendants of Aliens and therefore did they actually visit our planet to procreate the beginnings of mankind? 

Noomi Rapace as Elizabeth Scott.

Our story starts in Scotland on the Isle of Skye in 2089; two Archaeologists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) discover cave paintings that indicate that at the beginning of mankind aliens, known as Engineers, visited our planet. The evidence gathered points to a far away moon called LV-223. We then move on to the year 2093 and the spacecraft Prometheus lands on LV-223. The Weyland Corporation, headed up by a Robert Maxwell look alike Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), finances the journey and appoints a director in the sinister form of Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron). During the voyage an Android known as David (Michael Fassbender) guards the sleeping passengers. Upon waking, the scientific team along with the Android explore this inhospitable moon an action that leads to catastrophe, tragedy and some startling discoveries.

Michael Fassbender's spooky Android.  

This is a very watchable movie that holds your attention throughout helped, as you would expect, by some great special effects and some powerful role-playing by both the lead stars. Noomi Rapace, who was completely wasted in the dreadful Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) returns to form depicting Elizabeth Shaw from the timid God fearing young women at the start of the movie to a feisty battling one that will do anything to stay alive. But its Fassbender that steels the show as the mysterious Android who was built to resemble a human being, a creature that models himself on Peter O’Toole in the film version of Lawrence of Arabia (1962), but to me he resembles Hugo Barrett, Dirk Bogarde’s character in the Joseph Losey masterpiece The Servant (1963).

Noomi Rapace on set.

OK its not perfect and I’m sure sci-fi fans can find plenty to complain about with comparison’s to Alien raising more question’s than it answers and probably makes a sequel almost certain to bridge the narrative gap between the two films, but that in my humble opinion that’s not a bad thing. I truly enjoyed this film it does what it set’s out to do, provide an evening’s entertainment and makes a awfully good job of it.