Paweł Pawlikowski directs Joanna Kulig, Tomasz Kot and Borys Szyc in this doomed romance film following a world weary music teacher and a grifting young singer as they fall in and out love over decades of Soviet rule in Poland. 

Hauntingly beautiful black and white photography capture the sexiest onscreen pairing in years. Broken and imperfect, internally and externally, you feel the attraction and the betrayals of this mismatched pair. The novella like format reduces what should be Doctor Zhivago epic love story down to a series of elliptical vignettes. Compelling, seductive, misanthropic stuff.

8

 

Denis Villeneuve directs Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal and Paul Dano in this grim thriller where a set of parents make dehumanising choices after their children go missing and the police release their only suspect. 

Villeneuve is clearly a fine filmmaker. He approaches his cinematic storytelling with patient mastery, both unshowy yet confidently deliberate. He imbues his genre works with a craft that elevates them up out of being mere entertainments. And Prisoners, like all his other projects, skirts around some unwieldy issues without ever letting them consume the narrative propulsion. Faith, grief, child abuse, vigilantism, torture, truth, alcoholism, class and parenting are all explored in their darkest aspects. He wrings out committed, subtle performances from an enviable mix of big name stars and A-game supporting actors (Dano is excellently creepy). The film has small scale set pieces that grip and motor the generous running time. The thickly tangled mysteries and twists surprise though make sense as they unravel. And yet… and yet… the film leaves me cold. Both watches I appreciated the top to bottom quality of the production, the sensitive exploitation of the risky subject matter and the intelligence with which the ideas were batted about. Yet I just can’t get attached to Prisoners beyond deserved respect. An unjustifiable forcefield exists that stops the film from touching me, provoking me. Happened at the cinema, happened here on an open minded revisit. It is a movie that does everything right, except win me over. I’m left watching a daring formal exercise that doesn’t put a foot wrong, that should be my kind of cinema, wondering why I care so little about it… during and after.

6

Perry Henzell directs Jimmy Cliff, Carl Bradshaw and Janet Bartley in this Jamaican drama that switches into a crime thriller, starring the reggae superstar.

A movie that will always be more famous for its perfect reggae soundtrack (one of the best LPs ever released) than its content. The music from Cliff and contemporaries gives the haphazard plot an energy and life that not even far less naive jukebox movies have ever matched. The first half follows a country boy with a dream struggling to survive in the big bad city. It is a simple piece of neo-realistic filmmaking, one that fits Cliff’s limited but charming central turn. And while he has a hard time making his mark in Kingston, a city of corruption and hypocrisy, you couldn’t predict where the film will swerve halfway in… unless you’ve seen him brandishing guns on the poster. Midway through his tough new life, Cliff’s Ivanhoe Martin goes to the cinema and watches a cowboy movie. He cheers at the black hat taking down the law. Then for rest of our story his hustle shifts; he records a hit song, gets the girl, becomes a drug dealer, an outlaw and a folk hero. Is this a hard working boy’s fantasy or the tough path of crime readily open to a kid with stunted dreams in an unfair society? I’m not sure the film ever knowingly asks that question. Henzell just wants to get some exploitation bolted on to his production. Some shoot outs, some sex and violence to make itself marketable. And why not? So two films in one, both of which might be technically unnoteworthy but have a unique liveliness and milieu that win you over. The Harder They Come is the dictionary definition of a cult item but the unabashed positives of it make it very enjoyable.

8