Child 44.

A grand cast doesn’t always equate to a grand film and one such case in point is Daniel Espinosa’s Child 44 (2015). Espinosa you may remember was the director behind the best of the Easy Money trilogy Snabba Cash (2010) and two of the stars from the trilogy appear in this latest movie, Joel Kinnaman plays Vasili Nikitin a middle-ranking officer in the Ministry of State Security (MGB) and Fares Fares who plays Alexi Andreyev. The main star and the films narrative backbone is the popular British actor Tom Hardy who plays Leo Demidov. As a child Demidov was orphaned during the Holodomor[1] in the Ukrainian SSR that took place in the 1930’s but manages to escape from the orphanage and is taken in by some kindly Soviet soldiers eventually becoming a war hero. After the war Leo Demidov becomes a MGB agent and uncovers a series of child murders but the MGB leadership refuse to except the death as murders because Soviet doctrine states that murder only occurs in capitalist country’s “There can be no murder in paradise” One of the dead children is the son of Leo’s best friend Alexi Andreyer and even he does not believe that his son has been murdered! The female lead in our story, which incidentally is based on a novel of the same name published in 2008, is another favourite of Movie Ramble Noomi Repace who plays Leo’s wife Raisa. When Raisa is accused of being disloyal to the state Leo refused to denounce her, both are sent to the town of Volsk and given demeaning jobs.  Both suspect that Vasili Nikitin is behind their downfall. Other well known and respected actors the calibre of Gary Oldman, Vincent Cassell, Paddy Considine, Charles dance and Tara Fitzgerald all have prominent roles in the movie.

 

Even a cast this good can't rescue this movie. 

But as I said at the beginning of this ramble a well known and respected cast does not always mean that what we are about to see is going to be something to rejoice over and I must say that this is true in the case of this movie. On the face of it this should have been an exciting mystery thriller but I’m afraid it’s completely lacking any real excitement, Its far to long, the story is made too complicated when there is no need to bogged down with unnecessary subplots.  The heavy “Russian” accents of the various actors force you to put on the subtitles to help understand what’s being said. Perhaps someone could explain to me why the story was not centred on the murder mystery, why the film was not made with East European actors with undertitles and why everything had to be so dark? The Ministry of Culture had the good sense to block the screening in Russia, as did other Eastern Block countries - but it was made available on DVD in these same countries even Russia has a bargain bin!

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[1] A man-made famine in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1932 and 1933 that killed an estimated 2.5–7.5 million Ukrainians, with millions more counted in demographic estimates. It was part of the wider disaster, the Soviet famine of 1932–33, which affected the major grain-producing areas of the country.

The Monk.

“Satan has only the power we give him” Words uttered by a 16^th century Spanish monk, Friar Ambrosio who sold his soul to the devil. The Monk (2011) is based on a 18^th century Gothic novel written by the English author Matthew Lewis, a close friend of the notorious Lord Byron, which was first published in 1796. Since then it has been performed on stage and has three movie adaptations. The first was in 1972, the second in 1990 and now co-written and directed by Dominik Moll, best known for the psychological drama Lemming (2005) which starred the two Charlotte’s, Rampling and Gainbourg, it has been adapted for a third time.

 

Convert the nonbelievers....

It tells the story of temptation, sin and carnal lust involving a hypocritically pious Friar who started life as an abandoned infant left outside the doors of a Capucin monastery in Madrid. He grows up to be a charismatic preacher that can equally convert nonbelievers and make young women swoon at his feet making his eventual full from grace even more astonishing!

 

....and attract the females!

Originally to be filmed in the UK and in the English language, the location was changed to Spain because of production and funding problems. The dark evil atmosphere is helped by the formidable presence and acting talent of its main star Vincent Cassel, who plays Ambrosio as though he was born for the role, and the superb camera work of Patrick Blossier.  Although a strongly impressive piece of work by our German born director it portrays a very depressive story with a complete lack of humour, making a very dour watch. I would suggest, just to cheer you up, you may like another viewing of Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971) just for some self-righteous indulgence!

Trance.

Danny Boyle is certainly a man of principal. When he won awards and plaudits for Slumdog Millionaire (2008) he resisted a call to work in America and then he turned down a gong offered to him after masterminding the opening ceremony of the Olympic games that took place last year in East London.

The Auctioneer.

 On leaving the Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre following a screening of Trance (2013) I was asked if I liked the film and my answer was that I didn’t know? Its convoluted story was something I would have to think about, all I could say was that it took along time to get where it was going! In a recent interview the director said ‘all the dark stuff that we could not put in the Olympics has ended up here’[1]

 

The Gangster.

It’s the sort of film where the less you know about the plot, the more chance you have of enjoying it. Set in modern day London, Simon an art auctioneer colludes with a gangster Franck, in the theft of a painting by Goya only to develop amnesia after hiding the work of art. His only hope of retrieving his memory and hence the painting, is to engage a hypnotherapist Dr Elizabeth Lamb. The real subject of this psychological thriller is not finding the painting but recovering the stolen memories that Elizabeth Lamb finds in Simons subconscious. Actually most of the films action seems to take place in people’s heads, and it’s left to the audience to decide if what we see is really happening.

 

The Hypnotherapist.

This twist-laden story, described by Boyle as a cruel film, is inspired by Nicolas Roeg and brings to mind Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010). It was based on a little known 2001 British television film of the same name. The three central characters are played by, James McAvoy (Simon) who also narrates the story, French actor Vincent Cassel plays the brutal Franck and Rosario Dawson plays the sexy American femme fatale Elizabeth Lamb. So have I made my mind up if I like the film? Well I’m afraid the answer is locked up in my subconscious so you’ll just have to see the film and make your own mind up!  

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[1] Interview Sight &Sound April 2013.

Our Day Will Come.

Prejudices come in all shapes and sizes and in Romain Gavias debut feature film Our Day Will Come (2010) it's colour, not skin colour but hair colour in this case red hair!!!!   Remy (Oliver Barthelemy) is the red head in question; he lives in an uninspired small insignificant French industrial town and subject to bullying, even by his own mother and sister. Following a particularly bad spate he retaliates and attacks his mother, which results in him having to leave home. He teams up with a renegade psychoanalyst (Vincent Cassel) who also has red hair, well for most of the film! The pair has a plan; they must travel to Ireland, which Remy speculates is a safe haven for redheads. This film has been described as a metaphor for the minority and social abuses perpetrated by mainstream French society. Enjoyable up to a point but looses its way towards the end.  

Black Swan

Performing ballet is a very high risk way of earning ones living even excluding the obvious stress and the backstabbing there’s the physical injury to the dancer’s body and like some performance sports you can only “play” for so long. At the heart of Darren Aronofsky sensational fifth movie Black Swan (2010) is Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake where it’s expected that the same dancer would play both the White Swan and the Black Swan. This is the dilemma that confronts Nina Sayers, told by impresario Thomas Leroy that she is obvious choice for the role of the White Swan but her frigid sexual nature precludes her from playing the Black Swan. Nina’s obsession with playing the Swan Queen forces her to go deep into her psyche to discover her inner Black Swan, she begins to experience unknown aspects of her personality all mirrored by this almost gothic world of dance.

On one level it is a terrifying psychological thriller; on another it shows brilliantly the world of the ballerina from inside the mind of one of its performers. A study of insanity and obsession seen through the eyes of a young woman who has a driving ambition but a low self esteem. This superb piece of modern film making stars Natalie Portman as Nina Sayers, who quite rightly won the Oscar for Best Actress at the 83rd Annual Academy Awards in February, the great Paris born actor Vincent Cassel as Thomas Leroy, with Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey and Winona Ryder in major supporting roles.

This film completely blew me away and I seriously think this is the best English language film after Winters Bone (2010) and I’m surprised it did not win Darren Aronofsky the Oscar for Best Director. This sensual and somewhat erotic movie harps back to the ethos of the Thatcher era when success must be achieved at all costs. All of us are flawed and we all have split personalities to some degree which I think is why Aronofsky allows us empathies with the Nina Sayers character even when she plummets to the depths of her own personnel darkness. Powell and Pressburger raised the bar for ballet films with their 1948 masterpiece The Red Shoes but Aronofsky has taken the “bar” out of sight with his best film to date.