Christine's reviews

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Hey PW I haven't seen Curse of the Golden Flower yet, or 44 Inch Chest. Saw Bronson a while back, I got a review on this thread a few pages back.
Just come back from watching Michael Moore's Capitalism a Love Story. It was what everyone would expect I guess. I can't help liking the guy. He produces simplistic films, one sided but I think his heart is in the right place and I like him for that.



Exit Through The Gift Shop

On the surface this film is about Frenchman Thierry Guetta's obsession with videoing his life and how he gets in with a French graffitti artist, and from that goes to the US and films all kinds of street artists at work. His aim is to meet the elusive Bristol artist Banksy. He tells people he's making a documentary but really his thousands of hours of non stop videos are cast aside, bound together with elastic bands and chucked into storage boxes. When he eventually meets Banksy he introduces himself as a guide to LA for the visitor, finding him blank walls to work on. Pressed about where his completed film is, he makes one which is such a jittery mess Banksy suggests he has a go at street art himself. From here Guetta reinvents himself as Mr BrainWash and goes on to bigger and bigger (note I didn't say better) creations. Banksy takes charge of the video tapes and from them produces this film Exit Through the Gift Shop.

Straightforward? hell no, this is a spoof, a pisstake, but just how far are we being jerked around as an audience? Is Guetta for real or is he a icon of how gullible the public can be when someone is hyped to the max? Banksy appear in the film in shadows, hooded and with his voice electronically altered. Interestingly, he's always kept deliberately elusive, even when journalists try to out him, his audience somehow conspire to ignore whatever they write. Could Banksy even be Guetta, I mean the guy that creates Guetta's derivative art? Wouldn't surprise me as the world of street art by defination is underworld and sometimes self mocking.

Who knows and who really cares?
I know I stood in a queue for three hours in the summer to see Banksy's show at the Bristol Museum, and Bristolians seem to have taken him to their heart. 97% of Bristolians voted to keep this piece of graffitti art on a local building and the council even paid to have paint removed from it when it was vandalised. Now Bristol seems to have taken street art to it's heart and the council don't remove pieces of work that look to have some kind of artistic value.







Are we all being taken in or has Banksy sold out? Who is having the last laugh? He stays anonymous, but his artwork is commanding huge fees at art auctions, yet he seems to stay street.
Whatever your thoughts there's no doubt that he's produced a well made, entertaining and very funny film. It's also interesting to see artists at work late at night, how the large stencils are done and just how dangerous some of the situations are.


More images : http://www.banksy.co.uk/

4/5



Triangle written and directed by Christopher Smith


Chris Smith's first feature was Creep a horror set on London's underground, he went on to make Severance which I don't think got the attention it was due. It's huge changes of tone from funny to terribly gruesome keeps the viewer on their toes.

In Triangle a woman, Jess, who has a young autistic son turns up in a fragile state for a day out sailing with friends, leaving her son behind. There's five people on the boat, a couple, Jess, another woman and two blokes. A freak storm blows up and wrecks the boat, but a liner is passing and they board...but Marie Celeste comes to mind and what follows for Jess is is a mind boggling nightmare loop which is very creepy as well as frazzling your brain trying to work out the allusions and the meaning!



An excellent low budget film set in Miami, but has the unmistakable air of actually being filmed in Australia. Something to do with the light is a dead giveaway.



Army of Crime directed by Robert Guédiguian

Set in Paris in WW2, this film tells the story of the Resistance group the FTP-MOI (Francs Tireurs et Partisans - Main - d'oeuvre immigrée) which was formed from all sorts of people who were trying to disrupt the Nazi occupation of France. They were a disparate, international group encompassing Communists, immigrant workers, ex-Spanish Civil War fighters, Jews, Poles, Hungarians, and French citizens too - brave men and women working against terrible odds.

Missak Manouchian, an Armenian poet, became the leader. The director Robert Guédiguian's father is Armenian so the story is obviously close to his heart. Manouchian is given the task of bringing together some of the more foolhardy Resistance who are working independantly, assassinating Nazis and performing attacks of incredible daring.

The Nazis together with the The Vichy Regime - the French Government after the fall of France - understood that the FTP although anti Nazi, were actually mostly immigrants and Jews, a fact that could be useful propaganda. They presented the FTP-MOI to the French people as an Army of Crime, one that needed eradicating - how could immigrants have the same values or the same love for France? These facts pleased the Nazis and the Vichy collaborators, it gave them the ammunition to take an anti-semitic, racist angle on hunting them down.




The film shows the many acts of resistance which were carried out over the years by the group culminating in the assassination of an important SS General. Within months 24 of the group were captured, put on a show trial, and executed.* The famous Affiche Rouge shows some of their photos deliberatly labelled Polish Jew, Spanish Red, Armenian together with photos of their exploits.

The film opens with the group members on a police bus with their names read out and 'Mort pour La France' after each one, so from the start we know they're doomed. In contrast to many films about the period, the Nazis are shown as occupying bystanders, Guédiguian portrays the French police force enthusiastically routing out the resistance by any means. Of course not all the Police were willing to collaberate with the Nazis, so I'm glad to see he does have a Police officer arrested for leaking info. He suffers a similar fate, in some horrible scenes of torture in the cellars of the prison.

Army of Crime is a little stilted at times, without much character insight, but I think it tells of an important time in French history. One that wasn't faced up to after WW2. Guédiguian in giving us a film like this can redress some of the balance and pay tribute to the many immigrants that fought with all of the Allies.




*Olga Bancic, the one woman of the group captured, was taken to Germany and beheaded as French law did not allow for execution of women.

3.75/5



great reviews....



Looking for Eric directed by Ken Loach


Eric Bishop is a depressed middle aged postman. He abandoned his first wife years ago when their daughter was small. His girlfriend has left him leaving him looking after his two teenage stepsons. His house is a mess, one of the boys is keeping dodgy company and neither of them is taking much notice of Eric. Fortunatly for Eric he has some great friends, but even they're not having much success at rousing Eric out of his torpor...until footie mad Eric sees a vision of his hero Eric Cantona appear in his bedroom telling him to pull himself together!



So Ken Loach makes a film with one of Man United's most revered idols, so many years after he made that most excellent football scene with Brian Glover in Kes



for Ken Loach loves football, back to the roots footie, none of your Premier League but his team is Bath City currently 8th in the Blue Square South Conference League. Grass roots football, but he can appreciate the skills of Eric Cantona a footballer from the heart, who retired when he lost his love for the game not cos of injury. It seems no co-incidence that Ken Loach is highly regarded in France, maybe more than here in Britain where I get sick of people describing him as a director of miserable films. His films are about life, about ordinary people.

Steve Evets is an inspired choice to play postman Eric, he's small and wiry and has a brilliant hangdog expression, a veteran of dozens of bit parts in tv dramas. His struggle with depression is very believable given his circumstances, but what makes this film come alive, apart of course from the marvellously enigmatic Cantona, is the love that Eric's friends have for him and each other. This is a band of rough at the edges working men, led by Meatballs (a loveable character actor well known in the UK called John Henshaw), who aren't going to let their mate down.
Meatball's homespun philosophy scores when Eric's stepson Ryan gets in a whole load of trouble with a nasty local gangster, the guys work a cunning plan to help extricate Ryan and take the heat off the family.

Of course Cantona is a charismatic star, but Loach doesn't let him steal the film. The gentle rekindled old love story between Eric the postie and his first wife works really well, and all the strands of the story blend together to bring off a wonderful, magical ending. This is another of Loach's odes to the working man, with a little magical realism thrown in for good measure.

and of course, he's not a man, he's Cantona!

4.5/5



Buddha Collapsed out of Shame directed by Hana Makmalbaf


Hana Makmalbaf is part of a talented family. The daughter of famous Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, her sister and mother also make films, this film was made when Hana was just 19.
The film is set amongst the people living in the caves in the Bamaiyan Valley at the foot of the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan. You may remember back in 2001 the Taliban blew up some 1700 year old giant Buddhas which were carved in the rock amongst these caves causing a world outcry.

see before and after



The story is of little friends, Abbas and Baktay.


Abbas, as a boy, goes to school but Baktay is charged with looking after her baby brother while her mother shops and fetches water. Baktay is intrigued by Abbas being able to read, and becomes determined to go to school. The film is set over a day when Baktay trades some eggs to get money to buy a notebook, takes her mothers lipstick to write with and sets off to find the girls school.
On the way she encounters gangs of lads playing war games, copying their elders in their fight against the Americans.



The beauty of this simply presented film is the natural way it's filmed. Makhmalbaf is following this child with her camera obviously telling her what to do along the way from the shy glances you see the girl giving to the camera. Such a sweet child with a little innocent face, a symbol of childhood which is then contrasted with the older boys re-enacting what many children have experienced in the long years of war in Afghanistan.

The empty niche where the Buddha had been, looms over the film. The Buddha the figurehead of peace, destroyed by hate. The film is full of symbolism, some hardly subtle, but as a piece of work by a teenager it is remarkable.

4/5



The Sorrow and The Pity (Le Chagrin et La Pitié) directed by Marcel Ophuls

Following on from watching Army of Crime I rented The Sorrow and the Pity, a film I'd always meant to watch but never got round to. The film is a four+ hour documentary about the German occupation of France during World War II. Made for tv in 1969, it wasn't shown on French tv until the 1980s so deep were the wounds made on the French people by the effects of the German occupation.

The film focuses partly on Clermont Ferrand, an industrial city in the centre of France where Ophuls carries out a huge range of interviews with local people, and partly in Paris. Many middle aged and elderly people speak on film, men and women who lived through WW2. We hear their opinions and also ones from leading politicians of the time, like the UK's Anthony Eden (one of Churchill's wartime colleagues), Pierre Mendes-France who escaped from occupied France and who became Prime Minister in 1954, leaders from the right and left wings of politics.

The strength of this magnificent documentary is the way the director allows people to speak for themselves - every side is represented, it's put together like a jigsaw of opinions. There's some wonderful footage of former resistance fighters, specially two old farmers mulling over the past sitting in the kitchen with some of their neighbours who also were in the Maquis. Some great French laconic minimising of the chances they took hiding weapons and kit for men parachuted in by the Allies. Those guys were imprisoned and put in concentration camps but this has done nothing to make them regret anything they did. Brave men and woman.

On the other hand there's an extended session with a former Nazi high ranking officer filmed (strangely) at a family wedding, remembering what effect the Resistance had on the Germans. However this film isn't about the occupation from the Nazi point of view, it's about the French people themselves. Besides the Resistance fighters, at the other end of the scale there's a French aristocratic fascist who fought for the SS on the Eastern Front.

French opinions were divided during the war. Many felt ashamed that Marshal Petain ( a French hero after WW1) had formed a government in France (the Vichy government) under the Nazis and carried out a puppet regime, following orders from Germany. Theirs was the only occupied country to form a government and run their own country on behalf of the Germans. Indeed, the Vichy regime's enthusiasm in rounding up the Jews exceeded the Nazis requests. However, many felt that the threat to France came from the Communists and the Russians and they had justification in collaborating with the Germans against them.

Whatever people had done during the war, the secrets and lies, the stress, the terrible betrayals all came together after the war and led to this need to cover up and keep quiet. There was some rough justice meted out, mainly to women who'd consorted with German soldiers, but people didn't want to talk about what had happened. This is what Ophuls wants to air, and in the in-depth and often painful memories of ordinary people we can begin to see the dilemmas people faced day to day. He wants to show us that we can all condemn in hindsight, but if it had happened to your country what would you have done?



4.25/5



Comment J'ai Tué Mon Père (How I killed My Father) directed by Anne Fontaine

Jean-Luc (Charles Bering), a successful gerontologist to the rich, lives with his beautiful wife in a magnificent house, even has his own brother as chauffeur and helper. He has a modern, stylish clinic, wealthy clients and a biddable mistress, in short everything. Into his elegant evening garden party walks his long lost father, a doctor himself, who has been working in an unstable part of Africa. His father, Maurice (Michel Bouquet), is a charming but enigmatic figure who immediately forms a friendship with Jean-Luc's neglected wife, giving her the attention that she so needs. However the coldness that Jean-Luc feels towards his father feeds his bitterness about being abandoned as a child.




This is a mannered psychological study of Jean-Luc, a man who is in control of all parts of his life and of all people within his world, working and personal. Charles Bering is excellent as the steely Jean-Luc, seemingly happy within his perfect world, while his wife Isa (Natacha Regnier) falls apart. There's several allusions to unknown tablets she's taking prescribed by him, her overwhelming insomnia, and the emptiness of her life. Her young, open innocent face is a foil to Jean-Luc's hawklike outlook.
Maurice's appearence reaching out to his younger son and tenderly offering advice to Isa over friendly lunches and accompanying her on her charity outings, his elderly twinkly charm is met with a brick wall with Jean-Luc.

This is a strangely disquieting film, the answer to which may lie in the oblique end, a bookend to the opening which could make you rethink what you've just seen. Not a wholly satisfying thing, but still I did enjoy the film as a whole, certainly made me think over a few hours later.

4/5



The Savages directed by Tamara Jenkins

Jon and Wendy Savage's father lives in Sun City Arizona with his elderly infirm ladyfriend Doris. When she suddenly dies and Doris's children want him out of their house, Jon and Wendy are confronted by the reality of taking responsibility for their father who has never featured much in their lives, and has now been diagnosed with dementia.

Jon (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a writer and lecturer, Wendy (Laura Linney) is a part time temp and aspiring playwright, both have complicated love lives which adds to the difficulties of dealing with their dad.



I love both these fine actors, who always sit so comfortably in their roles that they're totally believable. Luckily I never had to deal with old peoples homes with either of my parents but we did with my mother in law so the guilt and confusion of feelings that the Savages felt with their father felt real to me.
Jenkin's film is strong on the relationship between Jon and Wendy. Jon, the shambling untidy man unable to commit to his girlfriend, and Wendy the unfulfilled playwright living on the crumbs of her lover's marriage. The realationship between brother and sister is a forthright, easy blend of bickering and unspoken fondness and closeness that comes across so well that this is really what the film is about. The presence of the father who is already fading in this small section of their lives, shows up later much more vividly when Wendy's play goes into production when you realise how much of a shadow he has cast over both their lives.

Well played, quiet appreciation of sibling love.

4.75/5



How I Killed My Father sounds very interesting. I'll keep an eye out for that. I've always wanted to see The Savages but, for one reason or another, I've yet to do so.



Once in a Summer sounds good, I wish necessarily it to look.



Le Donk and Scor-zay-zee directed by Shane Meadows



Le Donk is up for acting as manager for his lodger rapper Scor-zay-zee. He's approached by Shane Meadows to do a fly on the wall documentary about Le Donk's roadie work for the Artic Monkeys where he's hoping to get Scorz an appearance on stage at their Manchester gig.



Filmed in just five days this low budget, improvised mock documentary follows loudmouth Le Donk (Paddy Considine) getting ready for his assault on the Artic Monkey's stage with the ambling Scor-zay-zee (real life rapper Dean Palinczuk) in tow. On the way we get a visit to Le Donk's ex-wife Olivia's house where she explains to the camera why she doesn't want Nicholas (as she insists on calling him) at the impending birth of their baby. We see a stand off between Olivia's mild mannered new boyfriend and macho posturing Le Donk.

The trip to Manchester starts with these two, plus Meadows and his soundman squeezed into the camper van. Le Donk's grand plans for Scorz seem to actually involve him more and more to the extent that the act now appears to include him rapping on stage too.

This is a must for Shane Meadows fans like me. You'll possibly know that Shane Meadows and Paddy Considine are mates and go back a long way. If you've ever seen them being interviewed or talking together, there's a chemistry between them that sets off all sorts of daft stories and improvisations. This mock documentary is one of those things that developed over the years with the Le Donk character evolving as time went on. Everyone knows someone like Le Donk, full of plans and full of shite, and Meadows and Considine take an extraordinarily wicked delight in making Le Donk into such a plonker that you just laugh out loud at some of his pronouncements. This is not a mean spirited film, made just to laugh at Le Donk's character though, it's a warm hearted film that celebrates the final success of our pair up on stage playing to a real life Old Trafford crowd as openers to the Artic Monkeys.

It's nice to see Scor-zay-zee himself back. He's deliberately overshadowed by Le Donk, due to his character being so totally laid back, but he does have a couple of killer lines one of which made me nearly choke on a cup of tea He did have a track out a few years back that caused some controversy called
then disappeared for a while due to mental problems apparently. He's got a new song out this month tho so good luck to him.

Funny and heartwarming piece of silliness, possibly slightly self indulgent but if you're in the mood, it's typically British and a typically Shane Meadows take on life.

4.25/5



London River directed by Rachid Bouchareb.

You may remember five years ago this month four suicide bombers set off three bombs on the London Tube and one on a double decker bus, killing over 50 people, injuring hundreds and causing utter chaos in London. This film is set on that day and the few days following.

Rachid Boucareb's last film was the fine Indigenes (Days of Glory) about the little told account of African and Arab volunteer soldiers from the ex French colonies during WW2, and their shameful treatment. In London River he brings an outsiders eye to that terrible time in 2005 when we all realised that people born in our own country could be radicalised enough to blow themselves up, thus causing a whole new era of suspicion and fear.

Elizabeth Sommers (Brenda Blethyn) lives the quiet life on her smallholding in Guernsey (an island in the English Channel between France and England in case you don't know). She's a widow whose husband died in the Falklands War. Her daughter Jane has gone to live in London. Elizabeth sees the tv news on the morning of 7/7, and the chaos in London she tries to phone Jane with no success. When Jane still hasn't made contact, Elizabeth decides to leave the farm with her brother and goes to London to find Jane.

At the same time, Ousmane, an elderly man working as a forester in France learns from his estranged wife back in Mali that she hasn't been able to contact their son, Ali, who lives in London. Ousmane is charged with going to London to find Ali who he hasn't seen since Ali was six years old.

Thus the parallel stories begin, and eventually converge. I don't want to give you too many details cos although the storyline is slow and deliberate, the journey is fractious and there's many telling little incidents that convey our attitudes to each other as strangers.

Elizabeth struggles in London, a big cosmopolitan city surrounded by people from all over the world, so different from her quiet life in the countryside in Guernsey which is a conservative, affluent island. The police, overwhelmed by the emergency, cannot offer her help to find Jane apart from a list of hospital emergency departments to check. She wanders the streets showing pictures of her missing daughter to passers-by.
Ousmane heads for the nearest mosque and is helped to find some information about his son through the mosque links. Pointers start to emerge that Jane and Ali knew each other, which Elizabeth, increasingly distraught, fights to understand.



London River is on the surface the story of two people with missing children in a terrifying situation, but underneath is an age old tale of children living a life unknown to their parents. Elizabeth's gradual realisation of the truth of their childrens relationship is realistic and affecting. Ousmane's truth comes along with the realisation of the many years of not knowing his son.




Funny, my friend said she could barely watch Belinda Blethyn as she was so jittery but I found that extraordinarily realistic. Imagine yourself in her shoes at that time..jeez.
Sotigui Kouyaté who plays Ousmane is just a fantastic figure. Very tall, thin and dreadlocked, he strides slowly round London with his walking stick, calmly listening with an air of solemn acceptance. These two characters, seemingly culturally worlds apart have more in common than first appears - their links to nature and their faith brings them together.

Sadly, Sotigui Kouyaté a fine actor and griot (a traditional African storyteller) died a few months ago, but this film stands in tribute to his compelling screen presence and quiet dignity.

4.25/5



Memories of Matsuko directed by Tetsuya Nakashima


Sho, a young man existing in an aimless bored way in Tokyo suddenly has a visit from his father who's carrying a white box containing the ashes of his estranged sister, Sho's aunt. He asks Sho to visit his aunt's old apartment to clear out her possessions. Sho is shocked to learn his aunt's been murdered although he's pretty sure he's never even met her. When Sho gets to the apartment it's an utter tip and with a heavy heart he begins to sort through her possessions...

The aunt, Matsuko, played by the gorgeous and talented Miki Nakatani, starts life as a child ignored by a domineering father who doted on his other bedridden daughter. This lack of childhood love leads to insecurity and dreadful choices of lovers, making the classic battered woman taking the blame for the violence committed upon her.





What follows is a glorious technicolour rollercoaster through someones life from childhood to the moment of death. Interspersed with Sho's gradual realisation of what his aunt's life has been, there's flights of magical realism and scenes of terrible brutality. The film is a whimsical, musical whirlwind of the senses which lulls you into thinking it's a bright breezy piece of cinema but different emotions start creeping in for the viewer when Matsuko starts to lose her grip on reality. This is a film that startles the senses. Nakashima finds a way to show us how far a human soul can be destroyed by other people while creating a song and dance around it. Quite devastating.

4.5/5



Great reviews Christine... thank you for sharing them with us. My "to see" list just grew by leaps and bounds...
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Nakashima finds a way to show us how far a human soul can be destroyed by other people while creating a song and dance around it. Quite devastating.
I haven't seen this film yet, but this sounds a little like Dancer in the Dark maybe?

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These are all really great, by the way!
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