The Lobster.

I agree with Peter Bradshaw when he writes that The Lobster (2015) “appears to run out of idea’s at its mid point”[1] It’s a film of two halves the first holds your attention but the second half can not be accused of the same.  The films turning point comes when the main character escapes the confines of the hotel and joins the loners in the woods. This dark dystopian satire is the work of Greek born Yorgos Lanthimos who has directed and produced some of the most atypical but enjoyable movies of the last few years including the chilling fairy tale Dogtooth in 2009 which deservedly won the Prix Un Certain Regard at 2009’s Cannes Film Festival, the strangely watchable Alps in 2011 and also worked as co producer on the appealing Attenberg (2010) one of Movie Rambles most blogged movies. As is quite normal with films that involve Lanthimos the synopsis makes strange reading….

 

David with the Lisping Man and the Limping Man.

Sexual relief can only be administered by the Maid.

It’s the present, we are somewhere in a mysterious Europe country. David’s (Colin Farrell) wife has left him and we find him in a hotel where the rules state that if you don’t find a compatible ‘mate’ within 45 days you will be turned into an animal of your choice, in David’s case a lobster. David is there with his brother who has previously been turned into a dog. The Hotel Manager (Olivia Colman) sets the rules and they must be obeyed. Sexual relief by masturbation is not allowed but sexual stimulation by the hotel Maid (Ariane Labed) is. Dances are arranged so that partners can be viewed but to form a qualifying partnership with someone you must have something in common with each other. Everyone can extend their stay affording extra time to find a partner by hunting and tranquilizing escapees known as Loners who live in the nearby woods.  David decides to escape from the hotel and join the band of Loners lead by Loner Leader (Lea Seydoux). Here in the woods the rules are different. Above all they must remain single, romance and sex in any form is not allowed. Deviation from the rules is punishable by violence. 

 

Davids getting to know the Nosebleed Women....

....before joining the Loners and disobeying their rules.

You would certainly have to see the film to understand Lanthimos’s script and even then the movie probable requires more than a single viewing to fully understand the intricacies of this strangely hypnotic story.  The film has a great cast list, as well as these already mentioned it includes Rachel Weisz as the Short Sighted Woman, the lovely Jessica Barden as the Nosebleed Woman, Ben Whishaw as the Limping Man and old friend of Movie Ramble Michael Smiley as Loner Swimmer. Of all the films involving Yorgos Lanthimos that I have seen this is not his best work, interesting but not quite up there with his previous movies. It’s a real shame that the second half of the film was not as good as the first or it could have been one of his best outings.

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[1] The Guardian 18^th May 2015.

We Are the Freaks.

Director:	Justin Edgar
Country:	UK
Year:	2013
Running Time:	80 mins
Principle Cast:	Michael Smiley	Killer Colin
	Jamie Blackley	Jack
	Sean Teale	Chunks
	Mike Bailey	Parsons
	Rosemund Hanson	Clare

Written and directed by Justin Edgar and based on his own life experiences, this is not a movie for the staid or conservative film fan, although Margaret Thatcher does play a large part in the films narrative. Made in Edgars home town of Birmingham and set at a time just after the above women was booted out of number 10 by her own party it involves three teenage friends who embank on a traditional weekend of sex, drugs and rock and roll.

Dirctor Justin Edgar.

Jack has a boring job in a bank and is waiting for news of a grant that will enable him to go to University. Parsons has a girlfriend with a tight snatch that nearly rips off his cock. He also has a sexual fixation with Mrs Thatcher and receives life guidance from a drug dealing hard man called Killer Colin who lives in a caravan below a flyover. Last but not least we have Chunks a rich kid who has never had to worry about money, wears a fur coat and drives a red Porsche. These three misfits are the freaks of the title.  

The wonderful Michael Smiley.

The Q&A that followed the film's World Premiere at the 2013 EIFF involved not only the director and the producer but a large contingent of the films cast including the great Michael Smiley who made the sell out audience laugh when he told us that that film had such a low budget that the food that the production company 104Films (which made Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll 2010) provided was shite and that every body involved in the project lost weight! The director informed us that the film was made over a year ago in just three weeks and he felt that it would resonate with today’s teenage youth. He also told us how he managed to develop an acting style right across the cast and how a lot of the dialog was improvised whilst carrying out rehearsals.  All the cast agreed that it was great fun to make and this does come across in the final cut. Probably the most entertaining and humorous film I’ve seen so far at this year’s festival. It underlined the energy of youth with its fast pace, clever and imaginative cinematography with everything shot wide screen, which worked extremely well, and to top it all a great soundtrack: highly recommended. 

P.S One of the tag line’s for this observantly written film inform us that it is not a teen movie, well thank God for that, which means people of any age can happily enjoy a movie about the coming of age of three teenagers! 

Svengali.

Director:	John Hardwick
Country:	UK
Year:	2012
Running Time:	90 mins
Principle Cast:	Jonny Owen	Dixie
	Vicky McClure	Michelle
	Roger Evans	Horsey
	Martin Freeman	Don
	Maxine Peake	Angie
	Michael Smiley	Irish Pierre

Actor, writer and producer Jonny Owen introduced the   World Premiere at the 2013 EIFF and explained that the concept for Svengali started life on You Tube in 2008 as a nine episode series before it was decided to expand the story and the narrative and turn it into a ‘star studded’ feature film.

Basically a story about a man, his love for a girl and a band he wants to manage. The man is Paul Dean a postman from South Wales known as Dixie who has a passion for music and a dream: he wants to discover and manage a great rock band. The girl is his long time soul mate Michelle who shares his passions. It’s when Dixie is trawling through You Tube that he discovers the Band of his dreams: The Premature Congratulations. The young couple head for London in their quest to make The Prems famous and earn their fortune and get married. If only life was that simple and straightforward? What they don’t consider is the sharks, charlatans and moneylenders that are found in temple of the metropolis known as the big city where Dixie is forced to decide what his real priorities are.

 

Dixie and Shell.

An enjoyable and entertaining 90 minutes but not a movie that will exactly set the film world on fire. It did remind me however of Good Vibrations (2012), the story of Terri Hooley and the Belfast punk scene but without that films underlying tension. The opening credits were very good as was the soundtrack. Most of the celebrity cameos were very amusing and the other main actors were convincing.  But the luckless main character of Dixie Dean actually got on my nerves the more the film went on and to be honest I found the whole thing a little dated.

For Those in Peril.

Director:	Paul Wright
Country:	UK
Year:	2013
Running Time:	93 mins
Principle Cast:	George MacKay	Aaron
	Kate Dickie	Cathy
	Nichola Burley	Jane
	Michael Smiley	Jane’s Father

with Kate Dickie.

Following the screening of director Paul Wright’s impressive debut feature film I asked him if when he wrote the story he had based any of it on the Solway Harvester disaster, a scallop dredger from Kirkcudbright Scotland which sank off the coast of the Isle of Man in heavy storms on 11^th January 2000 loosing all seven crew members, as his film had brought this terrible tragedy to mind. His answer was that he knew nothing about this sinking until after he had completed the screenplay. Later when talking to Kate Dickie, who comes from Newton Stewart, she told me it was her that brought the similarity between the real life incident and the movie to Wrights attention.

Kate with Michael Smiley and a young 'Aaron'

Working along side his brother Michael on the fishing boats had been a dream for Aaron. When he finally gets his wish tragedy strikes and the boat claims the lives of five crewmembers including his brother. The only survivor is Aaron who cannot remember what happened. He refuses to believe that his brother and the other crew members are really dead and that some how the local legend of the sea monster, that was told to him as a young boy, has come true and if he can get back to sea he can, some how, rescue them and bring them back alive.  Gradually the village folk turn against him, their animosity towards him driving him to feel ever more alienated. Suffocated by his own anguish the only support he gets is from his mother Cathy and Michaels grieving girlfriend Jane.

 

The talented Paul Wright.

Originally premiering at this year’s Cannes Film Festival its UK premiere was the first time most of the cast had actually seen the film. Also in attendance were families from the coastal fishing village of Gourdon in Aberdeenshire where the film was shot on location.

The fractured narrative and the various film formats added to the darkness that’s always involved with the mysteries and the power of the sea.  Images, the director stated, was his main motivation along with the story’s he heard as a child living by the sea. Mention must be made of the films young lead George MacKay whose portrayal of the anguish and torment that possesses Aaron is powerfully believable and the backbone of Wrights movie with Kate Dickie giving her normal assured performance as Aarons mother. The premiere's Q&A finished with a promise by Scotsman Paul Wright that he was more than happy to continue to make films in his home country but with the skill he has shown in making this movie the attraction could be there for him to move further a field to practice his filmmaking trade: lets hope he doesn’t.

A Field in England.

This is the first UK feature film to be available simultaneously in cinemas, on freeveiw TV, on video-on-demand and on DVD and Blu-ray. Since its release I’ve watched it twice, the first time, admittedly fairly late in the evening, I didn’t really understand what was going on, the second time I’m still not totally sure but enjoyed it a great deal more. In an interview that followed the Film4 screening Ben Wheatley admitted that its not meant to be easily understood and deliberately nothing in the movie is explained, we are just parachuted in to a different time zone and left to get on with it!

This is the fourth feature film that Wheatley has directed and edited. The first in 2009 was Down Terrace this was followed by Kill List in 2011 and then came his most successful film to date the black comedy Sightseers (2012). Each of these films is different from the last and the A Field in England (2013) is no exception.   

A Field in England.

Its 1648 and we are in the midst of the English Civil War which , as every school boy will tell you, involved Oliver Cromwell’s Roundheads and King Charles the First’s Cavaliers, a war which eventually lead to the curtailing of the Monarch’s power only allowing them to rule with the consent of Parliament. The first character we meet is the academic astrologer and lace maker Whitehead (Reece Shearsmith) who escapes from his master and henceforth the battle. He meets up with two other deserters, Jacob (Peter Ferdinando) and Friend (the comedian Richard Glover) a man with the gift of reincarnation, a fourth man appears, Cutler (Ryan Pope) and invites the others to join him in a nearby Ale House (old fashioned parlance for a pub) and sets out across the field of the title which we notice has a wonderful crop of magic mushrooms which at one stage get cooked and eaten! Part way across this piece of English countryside our four travellers literally pull, with the aid of a rope a fifth man, the Irish alchemist O’Neil (the star of this years EIFF Michael Smiley), who suddenly appears, tortures Whitehead, then instructs him to locate the spot where some undefined buried treasure is hidden and orders the others to dig it up.

The academic astrologer and lacemaker Whitehead.

Shot in monochrome in a field in Farnham Surrey, this unique movie has been written by Amy Jump, who had an input into the scripts for both Kill List and Sightseers, whose dialog contains an imaginative use of the English language as well as a great sense of humour which runs right through its 91 minutes running time. In fact some of it is laugh out loud funny including a great line about Essex and dirty hands, and also the ‘I’m going for a shite scene’ which is hilarious in a crude sort of way and there’s Whitehead great line ‘books are easier to turn than people’.   Laurie Rose’s cinematography brings the story to life with a monochrome texture that creates a distinct period feel. Also of note are the posed shots that give the impression that they are being posed for a future generation like the portraiture found in books of the Wild West.   An clever and effective piece of avant-garde film making from Mr. and Mrs. Wheatley, If this humble piece has intrigued, then watch the movie: at least twice!