Roy Andersson directs Nils Westblom, Holger Andersson and Charlotta Larsson in this arthouse comedy where Swedish sad sacks and grotesques go about their dystopian grind.
More from Little Sweden. Pretty much the same vibe as You, The Living. A kinda utilitarian surreal sketch show. The recurring characters of two depressed novelty item salesmen are a welcome addition but the final sections lurch into an overly cruel set of tableaux that do little but visualise what we all already sadly know about humanity.
Orson Welles directs himself, Joseph Cotten and Dorothy Comingore in this fictional biopic of a newspaper tycoon whose hubris and wealth destroys his life and ideals.
I doubt I’ll find anything particularly new to say about the most overly assessed, praised and dissected film ever made. Rotting ever so slightly on its pedestal as the official, indisputable “greatest movie” does it no favours. It is a fine feature, ahead of its time, compulsively vibrant. It throws every experimental and flashy filmmaking technique against the wall and a lot of that sticks. I’m not entirely sure there is always purpose behind the revolutionary use of deep focus, sound design and jump cuts no matter how dazzling they are when combined together so insistently. Likewise the sheer cornucopia of motifs and clues and parallels can be heavy handed in their slutty desire to be unpicked and unpacked. Jigsaw pieces. Rosebud. Principles. The movie has grown on me. It does get better with every rewatch. It almost deserves to be forgotten then rediscovered. Unearthed and viewed through unprepared eyes. There are superb moments that nobody comments on. Seeded through the more iconic stuff. The faceless investigator’s casual jokey dismissal of other’s lives caught up in the behemoth’s wake. The eerie background disembodied scream as Kane’s second marriage falls apart. Welles trashing a room in a fantastic, unwavering single take. Citizen Kane is packed with juicy morsels. I just personally feel it is more impressive to make a narrative film that is at peace with being itself for the entirety of it runtime rather than a supermarket sweep of qualities and tricks.
Mat Whitecross directs Andy Serkis, Olivia Williams and Ray Winstone in this musical biopic of Ian Dury, essaying the punk legend’s difficult route to success.
A messy, earnest film that reinforces the maxim “Don’t meet your heroes.” Serkis’ take on Dury is unlikable and abrasive. That’s not the end of the world but the pub toilet hedonism and half heard music doesn’t justify looking this intently at the dark and ugly portrait presented. More Water Rats than The 100 Club. Naomie Harris does good work as the new girlfriend.
Richard Donner directs Mel Gibson, Donald Glover and Joe Pesci in this buddy cop action comedy sequel where Riggs & Murtagh take on some vile, racist, drug dealing South African diplomats.
“The Magic Is Back!” So heralded the poster and it didn’t lie. Gibson and Glover’s unmatchable onscreen chemistry mixed with Donner’s impeccable blockbuster instinct. Forget the shoestring plot, this is a pearl necklace of stand-out bits strung together on the goodwill of the excellent first film. The toilet bomb set piece was so perfect that they just used it as a trailer. The appetite to revisit these loveable characters so overpowering, that the film just starts mid action sequence (a bantering car chase where the family station wagon becomes a slapstick fall guy) and then doesn’t ever stop to establish a clear plot. Apartheid = bad = boo hiss racists we want to see get their just desserts. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that. We want to see the daughter’s big debut condom advert, “But…but you’re blick?!”, Leo Getz’s rant at getting the wrong sandwich at the drive-thru and Mad Mel sex scene the Oasis out of Patsy Kensit. You came for comedy… well the wisecracking repartee has matured with age, you came for bloody destructive vengeance… well… Riggs learns this time it is personal and becomes a rage monster for the final reel. To wit “I’m not a cop tonight, Rog. This is personal.” Donner literally plunges the sunny film into murky shadow to match his deranged hero’s moral state. The only area where this pure entertainment falters ever so slightly is that the action isn’t quite as intense as your standard Joel Silver production. Busy but not quite as high octane or necessary. All in all though this is about as pleasurable a Friday night video as you can rent, so generous and giving that you’ll want to rewatch it again the next morning before returning it!
Morten Tyldum directs Aksel Hennie, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Synnøve Macody Lund in this Norwegian crime thriller where a corporate headhunter moonlights as an art thief.
What starts out as a dry TV- resembling adaptation with staid narration and domestic setting suddenly warps into an absolute rollercoaster. By the midway point our anti-hero is covered in shit, hot wiring a tractor, a gunman breathing down his neck with a killer dog leaping at him… things only escalate from there. Wildly twisting until its last breath this thrashingly good rattler is hyper violent and blackly humorous. Askel Hennie stands out as the weasly lead who survives all manner of fatal situations even if it means continually degrading himself with improvised cunning. A nasty treat, one of the few movies to match the unpredictable glee of watching a Tarantino for the first time!
Steve McQueen directs Sheyi Cole, Robbie Gee and Johann Myers in this biopic of the early life of a black British youth who endured care homes, the Brixton riots and prison before finding his voice to become a Young Adult author.
The least focussed of the Small Axe so far. In moments it mimics McQueen’s Hunger or Shame as we witness Alex suffer under the white authorities. At other times it feels like a spoof sketch called “Black Harry Potter Goes Brixton”. Despite an overriding bleakness, this is the first of the films that made me laugh out loud with its sense of humour and period. It is hard to tally the occasional broad lightness with an interlude studying the aftermath of the New Cross arson attack with poetry and photography though. Likewise the riots themselves feel like an underwhelming skirmish. The best scenes are between a broken Wheatle and Simeon, an imposing dread with a good book collection, in a prison cell. They have best lines and, in Robbie Gee, the finest performance.
David Fincher directs Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried and Lily Collins in this Hollywood biopic following drunk cynical idealist screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz hobnobbing with the elite, framed by the writing of his first draft of Citizen Kane which lampooned those he witnessed.
Maybe we should have been warned this was going to be two hours of a souse in bed, making bad bets, rather than the Second Coming… A minor curio that cannot hold up to the weight of critical adulation (slim pickings for Oscar-fare this year) and personal expectations. Sue me: I was overly excited for Fincher’s first film in 6 years. What we get is a muddled bunch of gossipy half truths that anyone who has read more than one article on the inspiration behind Citizen Kane knows isn’t the big picture. Orson Welles barely plays a part (pointedly) and the battles Mank belligerently lines up for himself to win are resolved quicker than he has a chance to put his drunken dukes up for. Some of the glib fast solves for the dilemmas churned up are galling in their efficient tieing off.
This, like pretty much every film Fincher has directed since Alien3, is the study of an outsider assimilating into a flawed microcosm with disruptive emotions and philosophies. Whether Detective Somerset or Ripley, Tyler Durden or Zuckerberg… Fincher likes a protagonist trying to maintain order in a world even if it means burning the complacent belief system or corpulent structure that exists down. They are heralds of a better method of living, who feel apart from the current ways. Tellingly they nearly always persevere to the credits in a draw rather than a win. The alien is defeated but the cost is martyrdom. The killer is revealed but not caught, countless lives are ruined not just by his violence but by the grinding lonely obsession needed to crack the case. The accused husband is innocent but now trapped in an abusive marriage. The system wins, the best you can do is stay true to your values. Mank ends with a similar no sum game. It warps history to make it seem like a Pyrrhic victory but who am I to say that’s a negative. I love Braveheart and JFK even if they swerve into fantasy for the sake of narrative slickness.
We are left with a film where in the first half we are introduced to a menagerie of real life figures… some of whom we get no chance to invest in. Some of whom we shouldn’t bother to, as they make so little impact on the proceeding. Fincher’s father wrote this pet project, Forrest Gump and Benjamin Button’s screenwriter Eric Roth is a producer (and I’d wager uncredited script doctor). Like Roth’s other big Oscar projects I’d say he is responsible for the race around the museum nature of the experience. Here’s a bunch of famous names! Did you do your homework? Watch Kane in advance? Scout relevant Wikipedia stubs? Good… you still won’t care.
Mank looks sumptuous but doesn’t convince as a visual homage to the era. The monochrome focus is too crisp, modern in all but the absence of colour… Janusz Kamiński’s grainier yet rich work on Schindler’s List or Stefan Czapsky’s vibrant Ed Wood are more convincing period cinematography pastiches. Fincher should have known film over digital was the essential ingredient for what he is attempting to achieve. There are mannered touches that take you out of the story… cigarette burns to signal the end of a chapter rather than the messy unpredictable changing of a reel. The time hopping structure stops you from settling into one persuasive story arc. Fincher here is too OCD to match the script’s messy randomness.
Mank isn’t a terrible film, it just cannot reach its prestigious ambitions. Oldman tries to hammer some consistency into his character’s schizophrenic action and inaction. You couldn’t say he makes the old soak loveable. Arilss Howard does fine work as Louis B Mayer but again the movie struggles to tally the powerful man with the toadying scenes between him and Hearst. Was he a puppet? ‘Cause he really feels like a puppet master whenever we aren’t being told as such? And then there is the one true glimmer of stardom. Amanda Seyfried is luminescent as Marion Davies. Whenever she is on screen the project becomes an entertainment. I’d be surprised if Mank does much better than a lot of obligatory nominations at the Academy Awards, Seyfried though has to be the clever money bet for actually holding a statue at close of play. She probably won’t need to thank the credited (and uncredited) screenwriter though. Just make a note to praise Trish Summerville’s top costume design and you are golden, Amanda.
Henri-Georges Clouzot directs Simone Signoret, Véra Clouzot and Paul Meurisse in this French classic about a wife and her husband’s mistress who plan the perfect murder.
This moves at a leisurely pace but still waters run deep and treacherous. It is probably the most Hitchcockian film Alfred never made. And because it was made on the continent it is a decade franker about sex, violence and immorality than the Master of Suspense could be in Hollywood. The set pieces on paper are quite mundane: an unwanted hitch-hiker clambering into the back of a van, a set of keys needing fished out of the water, a walk down a long dark corridor to investigate a noise. Clouzot rings them for every drop of tension… even though with modern eyes you can see the big heart stopping reveal moving from under its sheet very early on.
Susan Lacy directs Steven Spielberg, Richard Dreyfus and George Lucas in this documentary following the career and life of the director of Jaws, Indiana Jones, Schindler’s List and Munich.
A 130 minute celebration of the blockbuster wizard that only gives his expert team of collaborators the spotlight in the final moments. Offers very little new insight to those of us who already cherish every release from the undisputed weaver of big screen dreams. Also the order it covers the productions in is chronologically nonsensical. We rush right into Jaws and then backtrack and as his oeuvre unfolds the order takes matching regressive loops. Strange? An above average DVD extra.
Cameron Crowe directs Bridget Fonda, Campbell Scott and Kyra Sedgwick in this romantic comedy that follows an apartment block of twenty-somethings as they fall in and out of love in Seattle.
Sitting slightly underwhelmingly between the Five Star Classics Say Anything… and Jerry Maguire, Singles is a gentler, less focussed Cameron Crowe release. The witty dialogue is still in full effect and we all know Crowe can lurch unexpectedly into drama without ever getting too saccharine. The film is noteworthy now for its wider influence… allegedly Warner Brothers’ impetus to develop the sitcom Friends. That evergreen hit wouldn’t want to contest a paternity test in court with what is fathered here… but neither would novelist Nick Hornby if we are being brutally honest. While some elements do get lost in the busy shuffle Fonda finesses a couple of lovely moments, there is a keen snapshot of the Seattle grunge boom, a wonderful Paul Westerberg score and Matt Dillon’s first forays into broad comedy. While Dillon is aiming for a different sound than the more solid work by the leads, he steals every scene he is in as the self-obsessed Citizen Dick frontman.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 