The Kid With a Bike

The Kid with a Bike (2011) dir. The Dardenne Brothers
Starring Cécile de France, Jérémie Renier, and Thomas Doret

***

By Blair Stewart

Last year Belgium's Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Rosetta, The Son and The Child) returned to Cannes with their winning cinéma vérité formula. Approaching films with a focus on lower-class European sociology, the Dardennes' storytelling engages you with films of emotional complexity that are told with what initially appears to be docu-drama simplicity.

The Kid with a Bike follows the lousy situation of 11-year-old Cyril (Thomas Doret), dumped by his father (Jérémie Renier, a grown-up follow-up to his role in The Child) into foster care. Cyril is a ball of thwarted energy, furiously pecking away at his perceived imprisonment by jumping fences, badgering his councillors and doing anything to burrow back to his absentee pa. He breaks out of the home and runs smack into hairdresser Samantha (Cécile de France), who in turn establishes an often fraught relationship with Cyril as she becomes his surrogate mother. The baggage and vulnerability of Cyril is a weighty task for Samantha, with the child's greatest danger coming from a mentorship with an adolescent thug cut from the same cloth as the boy. In the thug, the Dardennes effortlessly sidestep trite judgement of Cyril's bad company with a simple moment involving the thug caring for his invalid grandmother. A moment like that sticks with me, as a dimension is added to a stock character who has his own motivation for why he would commit crimes. The story has a circular purpose to it, with Cyril's behaviour dictated by his father's choices in another pleasant surprise where I'd almost taken the Belgian filmmaking duo for granted with their script.

The Kid with a Bike doesn't break new ground for Jean-Pierre and Luc, but of their major releases over the past two decades, this is their most overtly sympathetic film – it hurts to watch Cyril. Cécile de France is lovely in her working-class role, as she communicates the interior scheming of a good woman nursing a damaged kid. Thomas Doret is a wonderful child actor, his buzzing restlessness reminiscent of Antoine Doinel in The 400 Blows. I thought of Truffaut's film often during the long moments of Cyril riding his bike, urgently trying to gain a step in a hopeless situation.

What's kept me from rating The Kid higher is that with each new film, the Dardenne pair tread closer to old grounds and could certainly expand well beyond their safety net. The film's soundtrack is also periodically breached with an overwrought score yearning for catharsis rather loudly.

While The Kid with a Bike doesn't have the heady morality questions of The Son and its payoff, the Dardennes' latest is a fine film that will reward their audience.

The Kid With a Bike is available on DVD this week from EOne Films in Canada

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) dir. Tomas Alfredson
Starring: Gary Oldman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hardy, Mark Strong and Colin Firth.

***

By Blair Stewart

Espionage writer John le Carré created one of fiction's finer bureaucrats in George Smiley, a grey splotch of a man you'd think nothing of challenging to a duel until you've found he's outwitted you out of all your bullets. Forcibly retired from the early 1960's spy trade due to circumstances similar to the plotline, le Carré's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy rebuffed the good-times fantasia of Ian Fleming's James Bond series. Spy work in Cold War-era Britain was lousy business-Agent 007 never had to take a red-eye flight to East Berlin in winter, and he likely would have snapped and killed a few of his superiors from paperwork-induced boredom in the 'Circus' (le Carré's affectionate term for the HQ of the British intelligence arm MI6). In bald contrast to Fleming's more well known creation, George Smiley isn't a very dapper or handsome gent, and yet he's the dog to pick in a fight between the two. Smiley is gifted in memory and anticipation, all sangfroid calm, and loaded with connections throughout the branches of government intelligence-he's a worthy adversary for the the KGB foil of the Circus, the Russian spymaster Karla who hovers just out of reach.

Less a remake of the original BBC serial of Sir Alec Guinness' career-best Smiley, Tomas Alfredson's new release is more so its own stuffed adaptation of the book, compacting the spycraft jargon and labyrinthine relationships into a concise narrative that nearly satisfied my inner "Tinker" fan. Based on what they've managed to retain from the book the script by Bridget O'Conner, Peter Straughan and Peter Morgan has similarities to a clown car with enough space to successfully fit a full troupe.

Gary Oldman stars while looking as anemic as he did in Bram Stoker's Dracula, his Smiley having been shuffled off to early retirement when the operation to out a Russian mole within the Circus by his boss Control (John Hurt) nosedived. Despite Smiley's suspicions about Control's failed trap that devastated his department he can't nose around further until the appearance of the prodigal field agent Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy) on British soil confirms the Circus has indeed been compromised. Smiley enlists the help of other forcibly retired Circus staff (Kathy Burke, Stephen Graham) and his now-downtrodden former protege Peter Guiliam (Benedict Cumberbatch) to reveal who's the fink among the bureau's top brass: Percy Alleline (Toby Jones), Bill Haydon (Colin Firth), Roy Bland (Ciaran Hinds), and Toby Esterhase (David Dencik), with Control once having suspected Smiley as well.

While successful in Scandinavian film for some time Tomas Alfredson came to light in the (English-speaking) mainstream with 2008's Let the Right One In, his superb take on the John Ajvide Lindqvist novel linking a forever-pubescent vampire in early 80's Stockholm with a sheltered boy in need of schoolyard protection. Alfredson was not only competent enough to hire the correct technicians to believably recreate and capture the fluorescent plastic dourness of Eighties state housing but he also communicated a sweetly-creepy sense of adolescent love/lust between the two leads. As a director Alfredson is capable of establishing le Carré's mood of Red Scare secrecy through his expansive framing and chilly Scandinavian colour palette (this is his second collaboration with DOP Hoyte van Hoytema) while making do with his cast of a Murderers' Row of English acting talent who mostly fit except for Graham and Mark Strong performing while appearing unintentionally hilarious in 70's threads and hair - no fault of their own, it was just a lousy decade for menswear. Oldman, despite seeming to speak all of three words in the first thirty minutes, is nearly equal to Guinness as Smiley, especially in scenes of contained fury when he's interogating the culprits of MI6's downfall.

Despite Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy being finely made adult entertainment that's pretty much catnip for year-end 'Best of' film lists a few problems emerge: while the script's inclusions of period music is damn fine (Julio Iglesias's "La Mer", Sammy Davis Jr.'s "The Second Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World") the score by Alberto Iglesias is underwhelming, especially in comparison with the use of Danny Elfman's 'Wolf Suite Pt.1' for the film's first trailer. Another problem is the choice made by director Alfredson in several instances to extinguish suspense from the film, particularly in the climax, which is an admirable approach to an anti-Hollywood spy movie yet still left me dissatisfied, the audience has been patient for two hours, might as well give them something. Overlooking flaws with the adaptation there's still a great deal of quality in quantity with le Carré old-school espionage classic, a Smiley's People follow-up to Tinker by Alfredson would be most appreciated. Karla would approve of it.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy opens theatrically in Canada on Friday from EOne Films.

The Guard

The Guard (2011) dir. John Michael McDonagh
Starring Brendan Gleeson, Don Cheadle, and Mark Strong

By Blair Stewart

***1/2

John Michael McDonagh's "The Guard" approaches the hoary old fish-out-of-water/mismatched buddy-cop genre and leaps nimbly over those critical beartraps as if it were a ballerina in the pub avoiding a snoring drunk. Brendan Gleeson, the Irish character actor of great repute and anamorphic girth, is the local Guarda (Gaelic for 'Cop') none too perturbed about his work as long as it's not interrupting his casual whoring and chemical intake. As amusing as it would be to spend a few hours or so with the big ginger lug shirking duty a great calamity befalls our Sergeant Gerry Boyle: he has to get off his ass when big city criminals-tailed by sedulous FBI bigshot Wendell (Don Cheadle)-show up in County Galway.

On cue a corpse pops up in the area after the rumour of a boat carrying half-a-billion in street value coke ("What street are you buying your cocaine on?" -Gerry) is on the way, and our anti-hero pairs with Wendell to take the piss out of the Yank while they slap down the bad guys. Said bad guys on the opposite end of the thin blue line (that Gerry crosses all the time with gusto) is a trio of enjoyably literate thugs played at descending levels of cynicism by Mark Strong, Liam Cunningham and David Wilmot. Eventually they'll all run into each other and wackiness will ensue.

Typically when faced with a plotline that could reasonably be described as an 'easygoing Lethal Weapon meets Local Hero with a dash of Western Ireland malarky' I would attempt to pull a fire alarm or commit an act of self-harm, and yet McDonagh's film works for me. In the tailored role Gleeson is superbly entertaining as Gerry, his dopey grin taking the edge off of the small-town racism/tactlessness booming from his mouth. I can only count on two hands a cinematic character as enjoyable to watch as Gleeson's Gerry, somewhere between Tom Regan and Sanjuro on the right one. How much better Hollywood would be if Officer Gerry could pop into some earnest Oscar chaff to dress down the Sean Penns and Will Smiths in a cameo, I'd happily pay top dollar to see that. Don Cheadle's Southern accent slips a few times but one of his strengths has been his ability to sell a reaction shot, and The Guard (which he helped produce, good on him) has a slew of those while Gleeson does his shtick.

As unfortunately most mainstream (or even indie whether local or abroad) films demonstrates it is unwise to slavishly follow the formula of a genre completely. Where a tired formula can be improved upon is in individuality, as McDonagh trots out memorable oddballs from his neck of the woods-or his parents really, John and his brother Martin of "Six Shooter"/"In Bruges" fame grew up in London-to liven up the surroundings, and in treating his audience with respect by making his oddballs witty, and thankfully, intelligent. "The Guard" earns it's climax when I actually cared about what happens to Gerry and Wendell, something very few films succeed at.

If the disposable likes of "Cowboys and Aliens" depresses the hell out of you and you enjoy a filthy joke as much as the next guy, give this film a chance. After all, Ireland's economy needs the money.*

*Sorry, couldn't resist.

Life During Wartime

Life During Wartime (2010) dir. Todd Solondz
Starring: Shirley Henderson, Ciaran Hinds, Allison Janney and Paul Reubens

**½

By Blair Stewart

As we get older we may get a little softer, and to a degree you can say that about Todd Solondz. His ferocious one-two punch of Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness in the ‘90s received as many accolades as abuse for their subjects of human perversity and cruelty between the beltways of American cities.

Just behind the ugliness of his characters is the humanity; Solondz can make a child rapist or murderer seem unexpectedly and pathetically human using small details instead of monsters made of broad strokes. A sequel to 1998's Happiness, with returning roles given to different actors (like the abortion-themed quagmire of Palindromes), Life During Wartime is a duller blade than its predecessor with words like 'forgiveness' tossed about often. The film is also thankfully devoid of ejaculate if you're familiar with the original.

Once a down-to-earth family man and pedophile, Bill Maplewood (Dylan Baker's best role in Happiness, now Ciaran Hinds) is released from prison and seeks his adult son, Billy, for a chat. His ex-wife, Trish (Allison Janney), has fled with the rest of the litter to the melanoma Jewish strongholds of Miami and her young Timmy is on the cusp of his Bar Mitzvah passage. While Timmy eeks out the meaning of becoming a man, Trish's dysfunctional sisters come back into the fold. Humanity's apologetic doormat, Joy (Shirley Henderson), flees her wayward husband, Allen (Michael K. Williams, or to you fans of The Wire: Omar!), and artist/writer/full-time crazy bitch, Helen, has left the East Coast to screw around in Hollywood. As Trish reaches out for affection from the leftover male side of the Weiner family from Welcome to the Dollhouse, Bill rolls into town. Lacerating humour ensues.

Having sat on Life During Wartime for a few days, my feelings of admiration for Solondz remain, and yet I fear he's bound to a similar fate as Kevin Smith's redundant universe. Both have travelled in circular patterns with their characters, returning to the same well for inspiration, and both provide signposts for us as we age and break down spectacularly. But Solondz has the talent to tell his stories in other categories and genres – Terry Zwigoff is a good example of a parallel talent over the past few decades. The world doesn't need a Solondz comic book popcorn-muncher, but it could use his take on the romantic comedy or the courtroom drama.

The camera of Ed Lachman (I'm Not There, The Limey, Ken Park) is sharper than in previous efforts from Solondz, and the writing and acting are strong with Hinds radiating a sweltering presence as the father figure and Janney chewing on the ironic deadpan gristle of her dialogue. But the spark of the new film from the writer/director has been withered by a decade of Internet porn and Vice Magazine.

The kindness more overtly shown to the players is appreciated, but one of the top American filmmakers of the ‘90s needs to leave his comfort zone.

Life During Wartime is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

Naked

Naked (1993) dir. Mike Leigh
Starring: David Thewlis, Lesley Sharp, Gina McKee

**½

Guest review by Blair Stewart

The international breakthrough for Mike Leigh, David Thewlis and British kitchen-sink drama, Naked took home the Best Director and Best Actor Prizes at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival with a bleak journey into London's lower-class depths.

Johnny (David Thewlis) is an embittered creation that steps out of the pages of a Malcolm Lowry screed as we join his stifling presence in post-Thatcher Britain. Stealing a car after drunk alley sex becomes a rape, Johnny flees Manchester for the big city to reunite with his ex, Louise (Lesley Sharp). After spurring Louise and seducing her skid row roommate Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge), Johnny stalks the back streets with a prophecy of doom and seeks release through pleasure and/or pain. He passes through encounters with various characters living on the fringe while the depraved landlord of Louise's flat lurks in the periphery of the story.

Sharp-witted and depressive, an idealist on a nihilistic jag, Johnny is the most memorable character either Thewlis or Leigh have been involved in during their careers. Leigh has even said it’s the great tragedy of Thewlis's career that he hasn't found a role on par with his role in Naked.

Suffering from headaches and mood swings, Johnny makes acquaintances with a lost Tourettic drifter played with relish by a young Ewen Bremner and a night-watchman Brian (Peter Wight) loafing through a steel and glass complex containing 'empty space'. Enjoy the following exchange between Johnny and Brian:

Johnny: And what is it what goes on in this post-modern gas chamber?
Brian: Nothing. It's empty.
Johnny: So what is it you guard, then?
Brian: Space.
Johnny: You're guarding space? That's stupid, isn't it? Because someone could break in there and steal all the fuckin' space and you wouldn't know it's gone, would you?
Brian: Good point.

Johnny wanders off in pursuit of various women for comfort before the skies darken, and after searching for it, he is beaten up twice by toughs. Meanwhile, Jeremy the landlord skulks into Louise's flat and ruthlessly exploits Sophie before many of the characters come crashing back home.

Although made by a former theatre/TV director and having a protagonist spot-on for an existential novella that might have hindered it in other hands, Naked’s success on the screen is due to the confidence of the actors’ time spent on improvisation and rehearsal before filming. Also benefiting the film is Dick Pope's lighting, capturing the zombified pale faces of Londoners in winter and the grey concrete of their uncompromising city. And of course, as mentioned, David Thewlis is excellent as that loud cock-eyed man you have likely avoided looking at on the subway while he's stared intensely at you.

I hadn't seen Naked in 10 years, and I loved it on my first viewing. But after watching it again certain issues arise. First, Jeremy is a lousy antagonist whose bouffant hair and tantrums I interpreted as commentary about the class disparity between his acceptable upper-class sadism and Johnny's invisible working-class instability. In hindsight, Jeremy doesn’t come across so much as a privileged, systemic monster, but as an unruly, spoiled child.

Another problem is the overwrought nature of the characters with the actors and script playing up the emptiness of their lives, the Armageddon of a generation saying "fuck it" and the creators trying too hard to capture that voice. There is nothing wrong with a film engaging the company of unpleasant humans, but after hearing many of Johnny's rants the movie often slips from truth into pretension.

These issues aside, Naked is worth seeing for the early ‘90s urban decay, the chemistry between the actors and the push it gave Mike Leigh towards the likes of the great Topsy-Turvy and Secrets and Lies. And if you would like to spend the night with one of God's angry children, give Travis Bickle a pass and eavesdrop on this lone British madman.

Naked is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

Another Year

Another Year (2010) dir. Mike Leigh
Starring Jim Broadbent, Lesley Manville and Ruth Sheen

**1/2

By Blair Stewart

One of 2010's critical darlings, Another Year charts the four seasons of middle-class Londoners Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen) while they idle on down the road of mutual contentment. As the married couple potter about their garden share, the household peace is breached by the pitiful lives of friends and family, with Mary the secretary (Lesley Manville) leading the parade of the wretched.

Like a bleeding mutt following Gerri home from the office, jittery Mary is a post-menopausal harpy who's desperate for the stability of her friends and hungry enough for a man I'd spray her with a fire extinguisher if I met her at a party. Tailing right behind Mary in the Failure Olympics is Tom's old chum Ken (Peter Wight), a shlubby wreck in track pants reeking of smoked B&H fags and spilt ale. As Mary sniffs about their adult son, the happy duo goes about their simply wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful lives together.

Another Year can be viewed in duality: either Tom and Gerri exist as kind hearts who chide their loved ones for moronic choices; or maybe they're sanctimonious bastards who gain illumination and contentment from the follies of the world's Marys and Kens. The opinion of my gal had the sun shining out of Tom's and Gerri's backsides, but to me they had it both ways – I've revelled in others' lousy relationships and most likely so have you. It's a better past-time than golf and far more stimulating.

I'm surprised Another Year was the highest-rated film among critics at Cannes. This doesn't speak well either of Cannes 2010 or the attending critics. The acting is mostly first-rate (I like Jim Broadbent's work in Leigh films, with his best moment as W.S. Gilbert in 1999's Topsy-Turvy) with some solid laughs, but when Mary and Ken communicate their demons to the audience it's usually shrill and transparent enough that I wondered if anybody else sharing their scenes was deaf or just slow-witted.

My concerns with Manville’s and Wight's performances lie with Mike Leigh's direction and his editor for the camera takes that were selected – unless all takes featured caricatures of desperate binge-drinkers, in which case the fault is all on Leigh. If Mary showed up in her state and I was a geological engineer like Tom or a councillor like Gerri I'd have her in the back of a taxi towards a shrink with a pile of Xanax in double-time. Yet, in Another Year the Broadbent and Sheen characters remain frustratingly, unrealistically serene about Mary for most of the film. This unreality wouldn't fly in an NYU student project, and this shouldn't fly in the work of a master. Additionally, the bait of an early subplot with Imelda Staunton is dispensed as load-bearing for the theme instead of a worthy story of its own. Leigh has again also chosen to film in a 2:39 aspect ratio that's ill-suited to his comedies and dramas. Unless Ruth Sheen is going to crack open corruption in MI5 and Broadbent is off to sack Rome, perhaps the use of anamorphic lenses creates false expectations in a middlebrow film, no?

Despite my grievances there is some good to this film.

Another Year is available on Blu-ray from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

CANNES 2011 - Wu Xia

Wu Xia "Swordsmen" (2011) dir. Peter Ho-San Chan
Starring: Donnie Yen, Takeshi Kaneshiro, and Jimmy Wang Yu

**1/2

By Blair Stewart

A dash of Rashomon, a pinch of A History of Violence, with Donnie Yen's left foot crushing your windpipe, Wu Xia takes a few chances with the Asian martial arts genre and mostly succeeds.

In 1917 China, two marauding bandits of great repute accidentally give up the ghost to local “aw' gee shucks” farmer Liu Jinxi (Donnie Yen with blindingly white teeth for a humble peasant) in a foiled village robbery. All appears on the up-and-up to the local officials except for Detective Xu Baijiu (Takeshi Kaneshiro) and his B.S. alarm. He's the sort of sleuth who can pull off the calabash pipe look. In a superb sequence, Baijiu's inspection of the crime scene recreates the battle, as the three combatants fling themselves around in slo-mo with projectile CGI teeth pinging about. Questions are raised about Liu's past, as the detective peels away his facade, inadvertently catching the attention of a fearsome Triad with a stake in the matter.

The touch of the detective in Wu Xia is far more subtle than that of Tsui Hark's overblown Detective Dee from last year, as Kaneshiro's character is enjoyably worthy of his own film. It would have been interesting to see him use brains in order to outwit flying-fist Shaolin monks and roadside bandits on his own. The rest of the story in Wu Xia is mostly enjoyable hokum with its x-rayed pressure point brutalities and acupuncture needle assaults. This film mostly suffers from a lack of epic rumble like those the Chans and Jaas have previously delivered. There's just something about one mean hombre taking out an army that puts a hop in my step. Despite Yen's immense skill and screen charisma, the fight sequences often suffer from being cut too quickly. The longer the take holds, the greater my admiration grows for what Ho-San Chan's stars and stuntmen can accomplish. Outside of these qualms, the film is commendable for experimenting with a formula that was once at its most basic – foot + face = awesome.

CANNES 2011 - The Tree of Life

The Tree of Life (2011) dir. Terrence Malick
Starring: Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, and Jessica Chastain

**1/2

By Blair Stewart

With his fifth feature, Terrence Malick doesn't necessarily need to make another film after The Tree of Life. In gestation for decades, it’s his Apocalypse Now, his Ran, his Once Upon a Time in the America. There is a hugeness about it, as Malick has crafted a work about life, the afterlife and all known creation that boomingly expresses his philosophies and elements of his childhood. The Big Bang (or Genesis) is painstakingly re-enacted from the first pop to forms of interlacing DNA with the consultation of Douglas Trumbull, which gives the film a 2001 star sequence quality. I should mention that the birth of the universe through to evolutionary bloom occurs in the 2nd reel. What could a director possibly do afterwards to top that?

Tree is an unabashedly spiritual experience that irked my inner Agnostic. And yet, overlooking the predictability of whispering voice-over as hands brush past rock and weed as we'd expect from Malick, the film's scope was quite humbling – a one-second shot of a supernova is still pestering me hours later. Just about every thistle in existence is preciously filmed, as Malick and returning New World cameraman Emmanuel Lubezki tilt the image upwards to turn an oak orchard, crevasse or Brad Pitt into iconography. The film is mostly a multimillion-dollar home movie for the director and merges into a dense narrative successor to Godfrey Reggio's QATSI series.

The more recent planetary-bound story is split between little Jack O'Brien's (Hunter McKraken) Texas childhood with his father (Pitt) and mother (Jessica Chastain), embodying combustible nature and gracefulness, and the cross-cutting of the grown Jack (Sean Penn) and his alienation within cityscapes. Pitt is the featured star, but his role is more of a presence than a performance, a figure of mythical proportions in the household to his children as their saintly mother (Jessica Chastain) is in tune with their nature. The Tree of Life might plumb overwrought moments of golden-era 50s innocence, but the brief sparks of transcendence (kids shadows at play shot with an upside-down camera, Pitt's mute reaction to an unpleasant phone call, the fog of pesticide, Saturn) act as a counter-measure to occasional sappiness.

My star rating is a smokescreen. The Tree of Life could be four stars next week or one. I'm baffled by its leaps in logic and scenario, as Malick's impatient cinematic language is spoken quickly. I'm only certain that it is worth seeing. And my head is throbbing right now.

CANNES 2011 - Footnote

Footnote "Hearat Shulayim" (2011) dir. Joesph Cedar
Starring Shlomo Bar-Aba, Lior Ashkenazi and Micah Lewensohn.

**

By Blair Stewart

What a wonderful plot for a comedy. What an utterly over-directed film.

Footnote from Israel prods at two universal sources of humour – the persnickety egos of tenured professors, and the buffoonish moods of fathers and maybe, just maybe, their sons. Perhaps.

Professor Eliezer Shkolnik (Shlomo Bar-Aba) has been buried so deep in Talmudic studies he's emerged on the late side of life a grumpy old homunculus. One of his many rivals in Jewish academia on the opposite end of what he regards as frivolous research happens to be his son Uriel (Lior Ashkenazi), who is more gregarious but retains that Shkolnik family touchiness.

From the opening, comprised of a close-up of Eliezer listening to a long painful speech, the backstabbing and pettiness in their insular world bleeds out. Eliezer has been waiting on the coveted Israel prize for his painstaking study of his peoples' history, but several decades of zilch has reduced him to a curmudgeonly existence. Shkolnik's disposition hasn't been helped with the cherry-picking by his arch-rival Grossman (Micah Lewensohn, blessed with one of the great knotted brows in cinema, as he appears to have sand dunes attached above his eyebrows) of his life's work and his only claim to fame a throwaway mention in an obscure book: Eliezer is the footnote. The story shifts around leading up to that speech, as the Shkolnik clan all spin off in their different trajectories.

An intelligent comedy that lampoons the intelligencia, Footnote distracts from the humorous performances of Ashkenazi, Bar-Aba and Lewensohn with unnecessarily flashy inter-titles, cross-cutting and deadweight voice-over. It's a droll comedy, directed like a David Fincher thriller.

The stylistic choices are the director's literal expression of Bar-Aba's study, and the film needed something much more subtle. After the first scenes of witty dialogue supported by actors with chemistry and pace, they're let down by moments of tedium. For instance, why are there needless moments of characters walking about, often away from the camera? Is their ass supposed to be funny, or is it a break so I can catch my breath from the guffaws? I appreciate a film told with clarity. We don't need to see the short-ends.

A few notable supporting characters are also either vastly underwritten or have had their lines splashed across the cutting room floor. Earlier scenes of promise featuring the supporting cast members never receive a payoff, which makes the previous time spent with them wasteful. Lastly, the score of Footnote is painfully insistent throughout, as it constantly crashes into the movie as if it was a drunk elephant on a cruise ship. Silence would have sufficed.

Footnote is a waste of talent, but my dad just might enjoy it for Bar-Aba's grouchiness.

CANNES 2011 - We Need to Talk About Kevin

We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) dir. by Lynne Ramsay
Starring Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly and Ezra Miller

***

By Blair Stewart

Tilda Swinton faces terrible labours as a mother in We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lynne Ramsay's beautifully flawed return after her 2002 masterpiece Morvern Callar.

To Eva (Swinton), her first child Kevin (played at various stages through youth by Rock Duer, Jasper Newell and Ezra Miller) is not a welcome addition to the tidy life she keeps with husband Franklin (John C. Reilly). From an early age the child plays sides between his parents effortlessly, with Eva usually holding the losing hand during the potty-training and spelling lessons stages. We see from her splintered memories of Kevin's upbringing the irksome stare he commands in diapers at a tender age, as if the boy is channelling Vincent D'Onofrio's Pvt. Pyle from Full Metal Jacket.

Kevin acts like a little monster, but surely most kids can be bastards in the playground sandpit. Kevin's ambiguity as a major brat/minor sociopath is out of his mother's grasp, and the film jumbles up Eva's past with her raw present as a subjective bookend to the tragedy of Van Sant's Elephant. Could we be seeing the sum of her mistakes as a parent that lead to disaster, or did she do all that was within her power to steer her supposedly loved child from his deeds?

This is Swinton's film, as the camera locks on her face like sunlight through a magnifying glass baking a crippled ant. There is a moment early on in which Swinton, with a look to an off-screen character, accomplishes more with her silence than pages of superfluous dialogue could possibly accomplish. All that cauterized emotion comes right out of her eyes, and she really is one of the great actors working today. On point and a coup for Ramsay is Billy Hopkins' casting of Ezra Miller as the teenage Kevin skulking about the house. In Millers’ uniqueness, Ramsay chooses to indulge in fetish-like close-ups of his shredded skin and open pores like an insect in the pupa stage, a kind of grotesqueness that would fit well with the fleshy horrors of Cronenberg.

While We Need to Talk About Kevin is heavy material to digest, with the mesmerizing and unexpected opening to the framing of Kevin's actions, it's skillfully made throughout. There's been much acclaim for this film thus far here at Cannes. Where I differ is in the non-linear structure of the story that saps the work of tension. By the middle half of the film, I wasn't engaged with the events as much as I was watching a rockslide gain momentum where the end results were fairly obvious. There's also the niggling issue of why Eva would stay in a town of often broad American caricature in which she is a pariah akin to that of Emily Watson in Breaking the Waves, but just as well she could be carrying a mother's great burden into extremity.

Kevin is a powerful view at the nasty before and after of accumulated mistakes.

CANNES 2011 - Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty (2011) dir. by Julia Leigh
Starring Emily Browning and Rachael Blake

***

By Blair Stewart

Few subjects raise the hackles of cinema-goers quite like a sexual power-play when the woman is the willing submissive, as Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty portrays. Arriving from a familiar but far crueler vein to Bunuel's Belle de Jour, young Lucy, as played by Emily Browning, is a striking, almost-pubescent college student with a hazy past of addiction and the trashy roots of the low-class family she's shucked. She's also a trendy bar-bathroom prostitute, earning her keep and dirty knees in the stalls when an offer arrives to join sex games for the contentment of elite men – Berlusconi himself just as well could show up as the master of ceremonies.

Lucy's job offer is that of a 'Sleeping Beauty', a doped-up, unresponsive play doll to be used by old-moneyed hands for any vice 'excluding penetration'. Leigh's film charts the spiral of Lucy's warped sense of curiosity and loathing through this degradation. This is neither a straight drama nor an erotic seduction piece, as the graphic scenes of Browning being pawned by sagging leathery men would corrupt most libidos. Having withheld Lucy's backstory (I'm certain every art-house film withholds backstory these days) and left us with just scraps of dialogue and small twitches of personality indicating why she's chosen her unique, necrophilic field, the work has the quality of an airless art gallery piece, or the political sex-bombs that Catherine Breillat has tossed in the past.

The unconscious transactions with Lucy's clientele have a creeping dread in them helped greatly by the hum of Ben Frost's ambient score. The film itself is pieced together with a minimum number of cuts, or as a fellow critic pointed out, the movie doesn't have scenes as much as vignettes. The framing is classical with brief but soft camera movements, which show us an influence from Michael Haneke's own twisted works.

It's an interesting time for Australian film. Since the productions of the Star Wars prequels and the Matrix films, Hollywood has largely left Oz's shores. Now the homemade independent/arts-funded films have stepped into the spotlight again. At the same time, the films themselves have looked to foreign influences in their themes, with Animal Kingdom sharing a kinship with Michael Mann's L.A. crime swagger, The Proposition an Outback mule-kick that could have been transported to the Rio Grande, and now Sleeping Beauty with the European austerity of ruling-class perversity.

Under the mentorship of Jane Campion, this is the film debut of praised author Julia Leigh. Given the choice of subject matter, attention will likely be focused on the grimy parts of her film. But her star, Emily Browning, a ballsy actress for such a petite woman, and Rachael Blake as Lucy's sangfroid Madam, are both sterling. The film is decisive and unpleasant but also undeniably skillful in its creation, reminding me of the glow of a Francis Bacon painting: both striking and terrible to look at. As you have already gleaned, the American Midwest is surely going to love this.

CANNES 2011 - Midnight in Paris

Midnight in Paris (2011) dir. by Woody Allen
Starring Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard and Michael Sheen.

**1/2

By Blair Stewart

I had a dear old friend so hung up on the past that not one conversation went by without him whining about his disgust at being born 40 years too late. Music back then had a genuine animal strut to it; revolution applied to politics instead of a buzzword used for the latest flavours of Coke; early Godard was a genius instead of the cranky old hermit he is now. In hindsight, that friend depressed the hell out of me, and as his time-displacement dilemma is central to Midnight in Paris, I hope my old mate watches Allen's latest when it's released. But he'll likely complain about the cost of tickets nowadays.

The old spoilt trollop that is Paris is given more praise, as Woody Allen eavesdrops on neuroses along the Seine, and his camera professes love for her streets while conveniently overlooking the banlieues. On holiday with his fiancée, Inez (Rachel McAdams), and her ugly American in-laws, Gil (Owen Wilson), a milquetoast scriptwriter, is overcome by the nostalgia of the city's belles-lettres heyday of Stein, Hemingway and Fitzgerald.

Making a midnight jaunt to avoid his fiancée’s faux-intellectual admirer (Michael Sheen), Allen nicks from his own Purple Rose of Cairo, as Gil strolls into a 1920s phantasmagorical Madame Tussaud's exhibit where he can hobnob with his dead heroes (Cole Porter, T.S. Eliot, the Surrealists) until the tourist needs to wake up to the present or before Ernie H. gets too drunk and punchy. Gil's dallying is complicated by the arrival of Picasso's fetching muse played by Marion Cotillard as a gal most folks would happily build a time-bending DeLorean for.

As is the case with his recent, too-kind travelogues of Barcelona and London, Woody Allen portrays Paris in the kindest light possible and doesn't upset his own aesthetic applecart at all – faint praise for a comedy that has a couple of smart jokes sprung from characters that, in order to get belly laughs, thankfully lack a) cheap profanity and b) sexual depravity.

Midnight in Paris is a mostly enjoyable, though slightly forgettable, work by Allen, not surprising as the last great film he's made goes back to the previous decade, 1999's Sweet and Lowdown. Back to his Bottle Rocket roots, Owen Wilson is as likable as always, Corey Stoll does Hemingway justice, and Marion Cotillard is the charming quasi-ingénue as all heck.

If anything, Midnight is worth seeing for Adrien Brody's small but fantastic turn in one of the more memorable bits of screen-thievery in recent years.

Archipelago

Archipelago (2010) dir. Joanna Hogg
Starring: Tom Hiddleston, Lydia Leonard and Amy Lloyd

**1/2

By Blair Stewart

Featuring a family that's adrift from each other while periodically acting windy and volcanic, Joanna Hogg's Archipelago in hushed tones drags up memories of that most peculiar endurance test over minefields and barbed fences – a family holiday in tight quarters.

On the English Isles of Scilly, the stiff-lipped trio of adult son Edward (Tom Hiddleston), daughter Cynthia (Lydia Leonard) and mother Patricia (Katy Fahy) reunite to see Edward before he's off to Africa for missionary work. The exterior surroundings of weathered, broken trees hemming in the unstable nuclear family are far more hospitable than the interior of their summer house; not for the first time, father has gone AWOL and Patricia is on the phone in the other room talking about it. While his mother's banshee caterwauling seeps through the walls, Ed has sunk into a post-everything ennui with AIDS work as a balm for his stunted growth. And in the next room over, Cynthia's depression has settled into misanthropy. They're joined within the stuffy chamber of mutual acrimony by Rose, the sensible cook (Amy Lloyd) who will no doubt have an anecdote to tell at her own family gathering, and Patricia's painting teacher (Christopher Baker), who toddles about to offer gentle wisdom on dull ears.

The environment of the kitchen becomes damp with Ed's awkwardness when he develops a half-hearted shine to Rose, but just as well, as he could be passing the time until the poisonous fumes clear upstairs (which is unlikely to happen). If the mood was any more unpleasant, the rental car stuffed with my bickering relatives from a traumatic childhood road trip to Disneyworld would arrive - pass me the comic books and kiddie asthma inhaler from the glove compartment please.

A window briefly illuminated with sunlight until the clouds obscure the dark rooms once more, the emotions of Archipelago flutter about without culmination. Patricia and her brood have been stuck in repressive silence for ages, and we're just witnessing the present lousy vacation until future lousy weddings/funerals/reunions. Hogg's interest isn't in mainstream emancipation of the soul but the aesthetics of simmering resentment in off-kilter surroundings, with close-ups avoided for locked-in middle-distance framing heavy on indoor shadows, somewhere between Haneke's interiors and an upper-class fishbowl. The acting, some of which is performed by non-professionals, is uncomfortably good, with Tom Hiddleston's Edward a fine specimen in impotence and Leonard's Cynthia a powder keg bitch. It also helps that the siblings are the strongest written characters in the film.

Archipelago isn't for all tastes despite the intelligence of its construction. Outside of the craggy, inspired setting on the island, the story seems better suited to the stage, where an audience can sweat it out in the same room as the miserables. Otherwise, the work is lacking essential drama. We have walked into the middle of a protracted dispute of mutterings in long-shot, and I was in need of some shouting and a revealing close-up.

Archipelago is a skillfully made film of detail, but one that underwhelmed in ambition.

Meek's Cutoff

Meek’s Cutoff (2010) dir. Kelly Reichardt
Starring: Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood, Will Patton, and Shirley Henderson

****

By Blair Stewart

It was around the lengthy shot of Shirley Henderson running across the waste of Oregon's Empty Quarter that I had an inkling I was watching a good film. A pack of emigrants in the awkward stage of the American westward migration follow wilderness trekker Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood) on his uncharted hunch towards points unknown. As this film is a bastardized true story, you can assume the settlers’ decision made for a historically unwise shortcut.

A survivalist Western or a cautionary tale from the female perspective, Meek's Cutoff depicts the struggles of human endeavour from the micro-level of three covered wagons at the buffoonish mercy of Meek, all tan buffalo hides and cowboy-shirted bluster, onwards to green grasses that might just be over another hill, thataway. Michelle Williams is Emily, one of the wagoners' wives, cannier than Henderson's brittle missionary, braver than young Zoe Kazan of the fickle gold-seeking couple. Emily and her husband Solomon (Will Patton) stand across the divide of gumption from Greenwood's Meek, and as the wheels croak along dry beds, the campfire whispers grow louder as the water becomes scarcer.

Beyond the dehydration, mountain fever, and Meek's unreliable drunkard shtick that could kill all of them, the tension is further ratcheted up for the travellers with the capture of a lone Indian (Rod Rodneaux), who could be hostile but will also suffice as their saviour if they correctly understand his foreign gestures for water.

Meek's becomes a parable for our age at the fault lines of race and global cohabitation, with the dilemma of the Indian's presence depicted honestly. He thankfully doesn't speak in honourable platitudes, with his strange nature and pagan tongue matching the unease of the dire surroundings. So the wagons stumble down deeper into the valley.

It's rare to view an overlooked perspective on an old-hat film genre such as the lonesome Western, but Meek's succeeds in depicting the quiet dread of the women folk going about their chores while the men folk, out of earshot, discuss the facts of their survival and whether anyone needed to be lynched or throttled that day. Emily and the wives are off-stage extras eavesdropping on a sloppy performance concerning the slim chances of their existence. The mere act of loading gunpowder into a rifle becomes as leaden with portent as the hypothermia killing Jack London's protagonist's in To Build a Fire.

The cast is mostly sterling aside from my indifference for Paul Dano's mannered work, with Greenwood as enjoyably broad as his beard is manky, seeming to arrive straight from the same off-beat travelling Wild West act as Jeff Bridges recent take on Rooster Cogburn. Michelle Williams, in her second lead role for a Reichardt film, plays a fairly modern protagonist (and a mildly unbelievable one based on the time period) with aplomb and admirable cunning when needed. As the director of the praised indies Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy, Kelly Reichardt climbs above the modest ambition of her past work into the forefront of American filmmakers making essential stories, as the ending of Meek's Cutoff itself arrived with the surety of buckshot over the plains. So far, it's the best film of 2011 I've seen.

The Way Back

The Way Back (2010) dir. by Peter Weir
Starring Jim Sturgess, Ed Harris, Colin Farrell and Saoirse Ronan.

**

By Blair Stewart

Slawomir Rawicz performed a heroic feat of endurance after the Polish army officer was imprisoned to suffer the likelihood of a wintry death in a Stalin-era gulag. But Rawicz's memoir The Long Walk told the story of him breaking out of the gulag with a ragtag gang of prisoners and their feats of survival as they traversed the unforgiving lands of Siberia, the Gobi desert and even the mighty Himalayas to find a safe haven in British-occupied India. It’s an extraordinary tale of courage and fraternity under the most dire of circumstances, worthy of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay's stamina or the Stella Maris College's Old Christians Rugby Team survival while trapped up in the Andes.

Sadly, The Long Walk was mostly bunk.

A Soviet amnesty pardon for foreign soldiers saved Slawomir's hide, not an indomitable will to live, no doubt much to the chagrin of explorers who've retraced Rawicz's steps after being inspired by his negligible exploits. He was also jailed for killing a member of the NKVD (the KGB back in the old days) instead of false charges of spying by the Soviet authorities, as he had stated. I found this out after the film, but with my opinion of The Way Back fairly concrete by the time, I was doubly-disappointed. Oh well, Farley Mowat's a pretty good bullshitter too, and you don't see too many Canadians complaining about Never Cry Wolf, do you?

Peter Weir, as one of Australia's greatest directors, had the rug pulled out from under him on a recent adaptation of Shantaram with Johnny Depp, most likely buying property in development hell for good. This despite Weir's 2003 Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World standing as one of the finest films Hollywood has produced in the past two decades, and a fair reason why I was looking forward to The Way Back. Jim Sturgess stars as a noble Rawicz-ish fellow unjustly imprisoned in Siberia. Our protagonist hatches a plan to escape through the Earth's cruelest terrain with the accompaniment of a wildcat Russian thug (Colin Farrell) of unknown whereabouts, a taciturn American (Ed Harris) of unknown whereabouts, a Polish girl (Saoirse Ronan) of unknown whereabouts and the other escapees consisting of a hodgepodge of unknowns.

Now, the essentials of a great movie are all in play; Weir's directing, Russell Boyd as Weir's cinematographer, a fine, if unspectacular, cast and an epic story from a now-iffy source. And yet the journey becomes a chore.

The obvious challenge of telling the story is taking the viewer from point A to point B while maintaining interest in what happens within the vacuum, and The Way Back can't sustain internal drama during the travels.

The problems build from the title card. After the enjoyably self-indulgent sequence of Hans Landa's verbal jousting in Inglorious Basterds’ opening act, it's hard to view the cross-examination of Sturgess's character by the Russkies in this work and not feel the moment should be filed under 'canned predictable interrogation'. We've watched this scene many times before, so how can it be done better? Perhaps lay a sacrifice at the risky altar of 'artistic license'?

The usual plot boxes are ticked off on the path to the end credits – water and food are found, water and food are lost, a few contract players and a top-liner drop dead, life goes on, roll credits and get the hell out of the theater. I found the predictability of The Way Back crushing. This could have been a subject worthy of a Maurice Jarre sweeping score and iconic roles for all. Colin Farrell does fine work as the wild card murderer, and Ed Harris does his Ed Harris thing, but otherwise it's just English actors doing their best Russian impersonations on the cusp of looking for 'moose and squirrel'.

Now, despite my regard for Master and Commander, there's a flaw to it that still pricks me on subsequent viewings, and it occurs once again in the first half of Weir's latest. It's his disregard for building dramatic action in vital scenes. In the climax of Master and Commander, when the French warship is barrelling towards Russell Crowe's men, Weir eschewed the tension as they quickly leapt into battle, whereas the likes of Leone would have drawn out the drama like putty.

If the audience hasn't walked out on you, why not have some fun with suspense and denial of release? In his latest work, a pivotal moment would be the jailbreak before the death march down to India, where tension can be ratcheted up as the men flee their captors. But what do we get? A few hushed exchanges and then a sharp cut to the men stumbling through a blizzard post-escape. If the source material is faked, surely you could take liberties, no? If the rest of your film is exhaustion, starvation and walking (and walking, walking, walking...), perhaps one should make the most of the opportunity. This struck me as a dry, half-assed approach to the material – a re-hashing of movie tropes to 'just play it safe'. Perhaps the family-friendly influence of benefactors National Geographic Films and Imagenation Abu Dhabi weighed upon the filmed content, as in reality, Saoirse Ronan wouldn't have lasted long in the company of desperate Russian criminals. I'm not too certain of the validity of some of the classic sequences in David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai and Malick's The Thin Red Line (my Dad, after viewing the latter, spoke of the Malick scripted soldier's voiceover as, "Any Marine who started whining and going on about nature like that during the battle of Guadalcanal would have been shot for sedition."), but I can't argue with their cinematic results. You take a risk, you might get an award. You play it safe, and the film passes you by.

I hope this isn't the case with Peter Weir.

White Material

White Material (2009) dir. Claire Denis
Starring: Isabelle Huppert, Isaach De Bankole, Christopher Lambert

***

By Blair Stewart

A bitter, brittle remark on colonial Africa just before the whites all fled, Claire Denis revisits her childhood days in the great Continent. Isabelle Huppert is Maria, a prime mover, the workhorse behind a desperate coffee plantation on its last legs in a barely-democratic nation on its last legs.

As Maria busts ass to replace fleeing workers and plug holes before the harvest the radio crackles with death against the land's old masters there and abroad. Her motives to stay are perplexing with the anarchy her own family faces if caught between piecemeal child soldiers and the local militia. Initially Maria's son Manuel (Nicholas Duvachelle) chooses to fade away over burning out while her hustler ex (Christopher Lambert) cuts deals for a lifeboat out of the civil war. Emerging from the wild onto the family's coffee fields an enigmatic warrior (Isaach de Bankole) appears. We follow the eerie sight of the sharp, pale figure of Huppert as she crosses a landscape of sanguinary earth and lewd jungle overgrowth, her surroundings shouting blood against her European roots.

An accomplished follow-up to the highly praised "35 Shots of Rum","White Material" is mostly successful in part to the obvious casting of Huppert as a morally specious colonialist with her head just above water. She has a tense intelligence that makes it believable Maria could have long survived in the 3rd world.

As her partner Christopher Lambert returns from the dead in an excellent casting choice as he's always possessed the smile of a Master Bullshitter. Lamentably the charismatic Bankole from Jim Jarmusch's recent work is given scraps for his role while the metamorphosis that Duvachelle's character experiences becomes a stretch on credibility.

While the imagery Denis conceives is effective, and the collaboration with cinematographer Yves Cape bears fruit from a setting of ghostly rescue choppers and the dead below, to open the film with its climax is a regrettable one. What could be accomplished by revealing the fortunes of your players before they have a chance to engage the audience in their fate?

Regardless of the choice in prologue "White Material" is worth seeing for its unsettling 2nd act alone. A worthy addition to Old World griefs in the New World, but not a flawless one.

World's Greatest Dad

World's Greatest Dad"(2009) dir. by Bobcat Goldthwait
Starring Robin Williams, Alexie Gilmour and Daryl Sabara

*1/2

By Blair Stewart

Reminding me of a salad I recently had that tossed bacon and blueberries together, "World's Greatest Dad" ruinously mixes a darkly-comedic plot with a cloying sense of morality near the film's end. The cloying morality would be the blueberries, damnit.

Robin Williams stars as present-day high-school poetry teacher Lance in a time and place where poetry is generally frowned upon. A failed writer of such rejected gems as "Door-to-Door Android" and "The Narcissist's Life Vest", Lance suffers with a funding axe looming over his program and a relationship with the hot art teacher Claire (Alexie Gilmour) still in the difficult early stages. Assailed by insecurities, Lance's buttons are further pushed by Kyle (Daryl Sabara), his only teenage son and a perverted, indolent shitstain of a human being. Kyle's failing studies and increasingly grody sexual tastes drive a wedge between father and son, where upon the plot takes a brilliant turn into the macabre (before flying off a cliff into the unforgiving wasteland I call Sanctimoniousburg). Lance responds by putting himself in a compromising position with his work and lifestyle improving as long as he maintains a fib about his son.

I won't spoil the obvious, but World's Greatest Dad, before the turn of plot, was biting in an amiable way and upon its reveal steadily shrinks its balls by becoming humane, sentimental and tedious. This begs the question: was Dr Strangelove humane when Slim Pickens straddled the H-bomb ('Hi There!') down to Ruskie soil? Was the ending of The Fireman's Ball sentimental? Is Borat tedious? If you're making a black comedy, particularly an indie with an old comedian in need of a splash in a marketplace where films battle against TiVos and Playstations for attention, shouldn't the laughs be braver? Burn everything to cinders and maybe salt the ground a little? Instead of Lance simply keeping his falsehood alive, why doesn't he go to the extreme hilarious lengths to keep the status quo? You might not win the box-office with this reasoning, but perhaps an Indie Spirit award and a solid week of sales on Netflix. Or my respect at the very, very least.

Now I don't have a problem with Robin Williams performance in World's Greatest Dad; his ADD is kept in check, and the ghosts of past terrible films never rear their head. Williams has been through the Hollywood ringer and would likely be happy to bellyflop into a low-budget satire. My issue is with writer/director Bobcat Goldthwait wanting to briefly titillate his audience with some naughty bits only to deliver a toothless, sappy second-half that takes birdseed potshots at trendy bemoaners and tragedy media. Additionally, outside of the leading roles the film is peopled with background characters bereft of character and dull as cardboard, an unforgivable sin when the foreground players stop laughing.

The work of Williams and Sabara (who's role here might be more than a stone's throw from his Spy Kids" days) aside, "World's Greatest Dad" is an ignoble failure.

Enter the Void

Enter the Void (2009) dir. by Gaspar Noé
Starring Nathaniel Brown and Paz de la Huerta


***

By Blair Stewart

KRAZEE CREDIT SEQUENCE! STROBING LIGHTS! LOUD NOISES! TOKYO BUZZING AT NIGHT! MOST LIKELY FILMED AROUND SHINJUKU AND SHIBUYA! PAZ DE LA HUERTA AS THE INCESTIOUS SISTER! THAT NATHANIEL BROWN GUY CAN'T DELIVER HIS DIALOGUE FOR SHIT! "FREAK" BY LFO IS A GOOD SONG! 'THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD' AS YOUR THEMATIC CENTERPIECE! MAN, WHENS THE LAST TIME I SMOKED WEED? THREE YEARS? I SHOULD HAVE SMOKED WEED FOR THIS! STROBE LIGHTS! GUNSHOTS! PAZ DE LA HUERTA NAKED....YEAH! TONS OF CGI! 'POWER. SEX. MONEY.' IS A CLEVER NAME FOR A STRIP CLUB! MORE STROBING LIGHTS! NOW MY NOSE IS BLEEDING, THANKS GASPAR! COMPARISONS TO MONTGOMERY'S 1947 "LADY IN THE LAKE" SHOOTING-STYLE IS NIFTY AND ALL BUT I'M ALSO REMINDED OF BIGELOW'S UNDERRATED 1995 CYBERPUNK FLICK "STRANGE DAYS"! WHAT THE HELL IS THAT BROWN FELLA SMOKING? DMT? YOU CAN SMOKE THAT? I'M GOING TO BUY THE FILM SCORE BY THOMAS BANGALTER OF DAFT PUNK, HIS WORK IS STERLING! I HOPE DAFT PUNK'S SOUNDTRACK FOR THE NEXT "TRON" MOVIE BUSTS SOME HEADS AND TAKES SOME NAMES! TONS AND TONS AND TONS OF CRUNKED-OUT BASS LINES! WHY IS EVERY WOMAN IN THIS FILM A LUSTY BABE AND NAKED AND SCREWING EVERYONE?

OH WAIT SAME THING GOES FOR THE DUDES IN THIS! WALL-TO-WALL SEX! IS GASPAR NOE A DRUG-MUNCHING RABBIT? THANK GOODNESS THERE ISN'T ANY BRUTAL RAPE SCENES LIKE NOE'S REVILED/REVERED "IRREVERSIBLE"! BECAUSE OF GASPAR NOE'S ENFANT TERRIBLE NATURE LIKE ANY NEW WORK BY TARANTINO OR VON TRIER OR PARK CHAN-WOOK HIS FILMS ADD AN ELEMENT OF DANGER AND SPECTACLE TO THEATERS THAT A 100 BASHFUL SUNDANCE INDIE DARLINGS CAN'T MATCH! OUTSIDE OF THIS WORK WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SEX IN MATURE MODERN CINEMA, BOTH MAINSTREAM AND ART-HOUSE? THE BY-GONE DAYS OF "DAMAGE" AND "LAST TANGO IN PARIS", YOU KNOW? I BLAME THE INTERNET!

SOME OF THE DIALOGUE IN THIS FILM IS AWFUL,
YET LOTS OF SHINY, SHINY LIGHTS!

DIMETHYLTRYPTAMINE!

GRAPHIC CAR CRASH! PAZ DE LA HUERTA NAKED ONCE AGAIN! WAIT, I PUFFED ON A JOINT OUTSIDE OF THAT 'COOL' BAR IN SHOREDITCH A YEAR AND A HALF AGO WITH THAT HIPSTER GUY FROM SPAIN! THAT GUY WAS A HORSE'S ASS AND TWICE AS DULL! GREAT SET DESIGN BY MARC CARO OF "DELICATESSEN" ACCLAIM AND HIS CREW! NOW OUR P.O.V. IS THE BROWN GUY'S SPIRIT FLOATING THROUGHOUT HIS SHORT LIFE AND OVER/IN/AROUND TOKYO! "ENTER THE VOID" BUDGET COST ABOUT 1/10TH OF WHAT WAS SPENT TO MAKE "AVATAR", BUT I FIND THIS FILM TO BE MUCH MORE BEAUTIFUL IN ITS TECHNICOLOR DAY-GLO SPLENDOR!

HOORAY FOR CINEMATOGRAPHER BENOIT DEBIE AND BUF COMPAGNIE'S VISUAL EFFECTS!

PAZ DE LA HUERTA NAKED....YET AGAIN! SOME OF THESE CHARACTERS ARE STOCK AT BEST, BUT THE FILM SEEMS TO BE BUILT FOR EXPERIENCING ON AN ENTIRELY EMOTIONAL LEVEL INSTEAD OF AN ANALYTICAL LEVEL, OTHERWISE IT'S QUITE FLIMSY! I MUST ADMIT THOUGH, IT IS AN EXPERIENCE! THE DIRECTOR'S CUT IS THREE-AND-A-HALF HOURS LONG! I WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN ABLE TO STOMACH THAT VERSION!

PEOPLE WHO SAY YOU'LL EITHER LOVE OR HATE "ENTER THE VOID" ARE FULL OF SHIT, IT HAS GLARING FLAWS AS I'VE MENTIONED ABOVE BUT IT HAS ITS QUALITIES TOO! YOU COULD SAY THE SAME ABOUT MANY OF KUBRICK'S FILMS, HIS "2001" WAS A BIG INFLUENCE HERE! PINK FLOYD'S "THE WALL" BY ALAN PARKER IS VASTLY OVERRATED IN STONER CIRCLES!

SOME MORE DISTURBING IMAGERY, ITS RATED 18A FOR A REASON, YOU WERE WARNED! NEON TWINKLING TOKYO! ORGIES! PAZ DE LA HUERTA MIGHT BE AN EXHIBITIONIST!

I JUST WANNA DANCE! RIDICULOUS FINAL MINUTES, BUT APPROPRIATE AFTER WHAT'S PRECEDED IT! DESPITE MY ISSUES NOE'S LATEST TRIP IS A GREAT LIVE-ACTION DRUGGIE TRIP ON PAR WITH GILLIAM'S TAKE ON "FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS"!

I JUST HAD AN ACID FLASHBACK, AND I'VE NEVER TAKEN ACID!
DO YOU HAVE ANY WEED?

HERE COMES THE EPILEPSY!

Samson and Delilah

Samson and Delilah (2009) dir. Warwick Thornton
Starring Rowan McNamara and Marissa Gibson

***

By Blair Stewart

In the godforsaken terrain of the Australia's Northern Territories a young Aborigine couple form a rickety bond as they flee the reservation. The surroundings of the Outback are equal in its cruelty to the circumstances of Samson (Rowan McNamara) and Delilah's (Marissa Gibson) off-kilter courtship as they stagger into adulthood. A near-mute love is possible for them despite the boy being blasted out of his skull on gas fumes while the girl cares for her brittle matchmaker of a granny.

Soon fleeing their dismal community for Alice Springs the young lovers suffer hardship in the strangeness of the white man's land. They'll be reduced to living under a highway bridge as challenges faced by the couple both within and outside of their grasp are often more appropriate for that other biblical subject Job.

An Australian award-magnet by novice director Warwick Thornton, "Samson and Delilah" is something I would classify as being critic-proof (young talented director + little-known foreign culture + a few tragedies + unknown actors= 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes) that succeeds despite some contrivances. The acting by McNamara and Gibson is certainly lovely for roles that require them to work almost exclusively only with their eyes, and this debut feature would have failed without their ability to do so. If non-existent dialogue and stories told in repetitive motifs aren't your bag, you should avoid it.

I also had the niggling sense of seeing this film before, as if some of the Dardennes and Ken Loach's sensibilities had recently snuck down south. Despite these qualms, Thornton's skill as both a director and cameraman are apparent in the beauty of his cherubic main subjects against the cauterized expanse.

"Samson and Delilah" doesn't shy away from the generations of punches the Aborigines of Oz (and other parts of the New World) have rolled with in the guise of these two kids, and if this is the early results of a new generation in native cinema, the future is bright.

The Yes Men

"The Yes Men" (2003) dir. by Dan Ollman, Sarah Price and Chris Smith
Starring: Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos

**1/2

By Blair Stewart

Two men on a stage for a World Trade Organization conference somewhere in Stockholm or Cleveland gloss over collusion between business interests and local governments with a steep price paid by the countries of the third, second (Cuba? North Korea?), and occasionally first world.

Blah-blah-blah-unsafeworkingconditionsandabunchofchinesefolksdie-blah.
Yadda-yadda-industrialwastedumpedintoalake-yadda.

Then two other men get up and in a factually roundabout method that might segue into gold lame bodysuits and edible shitburgers say what the intentions of the W.T.O. and their global enablers really are.

I'd much prefer watching the latter. The W.T.O. would not.

Taking the prank-conscience activism of 'Adbusters' with a splash of the Situationists and swinging a wrecking ball at globalization, "The Yes Men" are a pack of good samaritans shaming corporation flunkies worldwide. An eponymous documentary on the two main wise-asses, 'Mike Bonanno' (Igor Vamos) and 'Andy Bichlbaum' (Jacques Servin), who go about these conferences nodding, shaking hands and smiling in suits until they get up on stage and stir shit up with their truth-telling. They've accomplished this by posting fake websites with subtle jibes towards the corporate world. Predictably by not reading-deeper this has lead to trade organizations inviting our heroes to conferences all over the globe, with the occasional appearance on primetime news. Poker-faced, the Yes Men argue in preference towards 'remote-controled foreign labour' and recycling fast-food burgers so we can sell them back to Bangladeshians. An inflatable phallus even puts on a show for the crowds.

Overwhelmingly in these situations 'Bichlbaum' as his alter-alter ego "Hank Hardy Unruh" (love that name) is met only with blank faces from the donkeys he's pinning a tail on.

A chilling reveal on the inhumane nature of capitalism while also being an enjoyable lark of a documentary, "The Yes Men" isn't exceptional in part due to an ending that peters out and the slight reveal on the real lives of the subjects. I found my latter issue surprising as co-directors Chris Smith and Sarah Price were responsible for such highly-praised works as “American Movie” and “Home Movie”, especially with “American Movie” digging right under the skin of its sad-sack dreamer Mark Borchardt.

Despite these qualms the anti-W.T.O. story is told with a lighter touch than Michael Moore's to which I am grateful, and I look forward to watching the sequel “The Yes Men Fix the World”, which involves the Halliburton-designed 'SurvivaBall', used to combat the effect of climate change. But of course.