The Town (2010)

I normally think you can tell a lot about a film by what trailers are included on the DVD. Presumably some thought goes into it and the powers that be pick the trailers most suited to the feature film. Many films on my ‘to watch’ list have first come to my attention as trailers on DVD and I enjoy getting excited about new films almost as much as I do watching the film itself (OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration). It does however lead to the difficult situation where for every film you watch, you find two or three more that you want to watch. You’re never going to win that game. Unless of course you’ve seen all the films in the trailers already, then you get to experience a smug sense of useless satisfaction.

In front of The Town were trailers for Due Date, and Life as We Know it. Oh dear. This being one of the more mainstream films on my rental list, and one co-written and directed by Ben Affleck, I was prepared for something a little more blockbustery but Life as We Know it? Really? I saw bits of that when I worked at the Cinema and it has nothing in common with gun-wielding bank-robbers. It’s also a pile of shit. Maybe once you include certain actors like Ben Affleck, Jude Law, or Matt Damon films cease to have a proper genre and simply get put in a category of loud, bright, ego-massaging, Hollywood money-making schemes, so you can include any old rubbish you want. Or maybe the trailer-picker was hungover. Or maybe I should shut up.

Moving on.

The Town is set in Charlestown, Boston, and shows us the lives of people for whom crime is simply a way of life. Doug MacRay (Affleck) and his friends Jem, Gloansy and Dez, are professional bank robbers and the film opens with them doing what they do best and robbing a bank. They do it in style too, with some rather menacing Skeletor masks. For some reason they take the manager, Claire, hostage but later decide to release her without harm. This whole hostage thing is new for them and, unsure what to do, Jem suggests killing her to stop her talking to the FBI. Doug doesn’t think this is such a good idea though and follows Claire around for a bit to make sure she’s OK.

The problem is, he starts talking to her in the laundromat one day, and a romance begins to develop. Well that was never going to go well was it?

Not content with one bank, we see a couple more robberies from the group, with the police and FBI hot on their trail. The ‘jobs’ continue to be stylishly executed (mostly), with scary nun costumes and the smoothness of Ocean’s Eleven. Surely it can only be a matter of time before their luck runs out?

The problem Affleck has with The Town, and the problem he had with Argo, is that if you arm yourself with a great script, and a great cast, you will inevitably end up being the weakest part of your own film. That’s not something anybody wants to have to deal with. Luckily for Affleck, he also hired Blake Lively (Gossip Girl, Green Lantern). She plays Krista, the drugged up sister of Jem and sometime girlfriend of Doug (and possibly the mother of his child). I dislike Lively generally and find her really quite annoying so, by comparison, I found less to object to in Affleck’s acting. Until later on that is when she appears less. Oh well – you can’t have everything.

On the whole I was really quite pleasantly surprised with The Town, as I was with Argo. It’s a good film, and I cared about Doug and was routing for him throughout. I certainly enjoyed it and I would very possibly watch it again.

It’s just a shame about the ending.

Totally F***ed Up (1993)

This film is not, as you might expect, totally fucked up. How disappointing.

It follows several gay teenagers in the ‘90s, filmed in a pseudo-documentary hand-held camera style. Everyone’s annoying. There is no plot. The acting is porn-acting quality but despite the 18 certificate, there is no sex – or none to speak of anyway. So it’s not porn, and therefore it has no point.

It’s dated in every way, with bad actors playing annoying characters. I managed 45 minutes. Exactly 45 minutes – I found counting down to this time actually more exciting than watching the film.

Watch Mysterious Skin instead – it’s by the same director but is worlds away in terms of quality.

Precious (2009)

Precious is the story of Claireese Precious Jones, a 16-year old girl who lives in Harlem in New York. Living with her verbally and physically abusive mother, she is pregnant for the second time after being raped by her father. The film follows the next few months of Precious’s life as she strives to educate herself, despite her circumstances.

Initially I thought this film was a bit meh. Precious, played Gabourey Sidibe, is obviously in a horrible situation, and one which it is hard to see a way out of, but I found it hard to engage with her as a character, even with the addition of some first person voice-over. That’s not to say I didn’t care about what was going on, but for the 30 minutes or so I wasn’t that interested, and could have quite happily abandoned it.  That changes with the introduction of Ms Rain (Paula Patton) – Precious’s teacher at the new ‘alternative school’. Here was a bit of momentum to the plot and with it several new charismatic characters to liven it all up; and here was where I started enjoying it.

The problem is, it’s all just quite good, right to the end. I was never completely absorbed in the story – perhaps it’s simply because I can’t relate to it, but perhaps it’s because of Precious’s slightly sulky attitude which (while completely justified) does do much to make me like her. What lifts it all up is the simply superb acting by Mo’Nique, playing Precious’s mother. For such an attractive woman to turn herself into that miserable repulsive wreck is hugely impressive and I will recommend the film to everyone purely for the spectacle of that performance. Turning from an aggressive self-serving menace at the beginning to a vulnerable but cowardly woman at the end was a transformation that wonderful to watch and it’s a shame how few serious roles Mo’Nique has done. She completely deserves all of the Best Supporting Actress awards she received.

I successfully avoided getting annoyed by the cameos too. Mariah Carey is good enough as Ms Weiss, a social worker, and I didn’t even notice Lenny Kravits was the friendly maternity nurse John. Why everyone kept banging on about Carey in this is a mystery to me though. Well done her – she’s made herself look plain, unglamorous and 80s. In any other film I’d probably be impressed but next to Mo’Nique she just seems average.

I won’t bother seeing Precious again, but it is nice to have an opinion on it after hearing so much over the years.

Argo (2012)

I’m always very impressed with people that can keep secrets. I’m astonishingly bad at it myself, and the fact that Argo is based on a true story, one that remained a secret for 15 or so years is astonishing; even more so because it involves America giving credit to another country. Who’d have thought?

In 1979, Iranian revolutionaries invaded the American embassy in Tehran. The embassy staff were held hostage for over a year but six managed to escape and hid at the Canadian Ambassador’s house. Argo follows Tony Mendez, a CIA operative as he attempts to rescue these six, under the guise of scouting for locations for his new film: Argo.

Given that Argo is directed by, and starring Ben Affleck, and produced by Ben Affleck and George Clooney (among others), I wasn’t sure what to expect. Many actors like to give directing a go and it’s not always a good move. I’ve not seen The Town or Gone Baby Gone – Affleck’s previous full-length films, but the knowledge that this wasn’t his first foray into direction gave me some confidence. More than his acting sometimes does (Peal Harbour and Gilgli anyone?). To be fair the only reason I haven’t watched either of his previous films is because I just haven’t got around to it yet. And Blake Lively annoys me. And for all I love Casey Affleck after The Killer Inside Me (and, I’ll be honest, Ocean’s Eleven), it’s a bit twee to be employed by your big brother in his first film. Not that I’d say no if it was me.

Suffice to say I will now make watching both The Town and Gone Baby Gone a priority.

With a stellar, but surprising, cast including John Goodman, Tate Donovan, Alan Arkin and Victor Garber, you may spend a decent proportion of Argo going ‘where do I know them from!?’. Try not to worry about that. The plot’s not complicated but its scenes are subtle and the beauty is in the little things. That’s what made me like it. It has the feel of a much smaller film, made by less famous people, in the same way that Good Night and Good Luck did. Perhaps that’s Clooney’s influence. You don’t really find enough about each of the characters to really know them but there’s enough for you to care about them, and prefer that they didn’t get captured and tortured by crazy gun-wielding protesters. By the time they’re trying to escape the country I found myself genuinely nervous, hoping it would all go well and that they’d be ok.

Because it’s not just a film. This really happened. While I’m sure many details have been changed for dramatic effect, the basic narrative of trying to smuggle people out of revolutionary Iran is based on fact. It’s not just a film, and if it all goes tits-up and everyone dies, that’s real people. This really hits home in the credits when the actors’ photos are shown alongside the ID photos of each of the real embassy workers. Some look eerily similar, others not so much. If you weren’t hit by the seriousness of the event before, that’ll do the job for you.

Thumbs-up to the costume people by the way. There were some seriously good 70s/80s clothes, hairstyles and, most importantly, facial hair going on. Christopher Denham in particular looked casually fantastic with his hair and his massive glasses.

I’m not sure how many re-watches Argo could survive, particularly given its slight lull in the middle where I started to lose interest, but it picks up again and I would recommend this film to anyone who likes watching things about real-life events. It just adds that extra something to make Argo really very impressive. 

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (2011)

My initial assessment: the animation scares the crap out of me. It’s too good – as much as you kind of get used to it, it’s very strange to see the voice actors’ facial expressions appear on an animated character; all very impressive but highly unsettling.

I feel like I should come to review The Secret of the Unicorn with a thorough knowledge of all of the Tintin stories. I certainly read them growing up and also watched the animated series. I really love Tintin yet here I sit and I’m not actually sure I can fully remember any of the mysteries all the way through. Possibly a sizeable portion of my Tintin-reading has been attempting to battle through the various French copies we had lying around the house; lots of beginnings, but many many failures to get further than just a few pages in.

It turns out then, that me and my family are just Tintin groupies – complete with t-shirts, artwork, and various other bits of ‘merch’. I shall rectify this by reading all of the Tintin books by the time the next film comes out (or at least start them).

There’s no point in talking about the plot. It is what it is – apparently a mish-mash of a few stories together. There’re so many that there’s no worry about wasting them so why not take the best bits of several? It’s a nice little mystery and sets everything up neatly – we meet Captain Haddock for the first time and learn that he’s a little bit of a drunk. We hear ‘thundering typhoons!’ and ‘blistering barnacles!’ a suitable number of times and we see just enough of Thompson and Thompson. I have no problem with any of that. What I do have a problem with is the 3D.

Now, I didn’t watch The Secret of the Unicorn in 3D. It’s a year since it was out in the cinema so I, naturally, watched it at home on my TV. So a lot of effort has gone into making this film look amazing in 3D with the swooping camera angles and zippy market scenes but all of that was lost on me, and will be on everyone for ever unless you’re very posh and own a 3D TV. What remained were very glaring attempts at wowing a cinema audience and that, along with the high quality animation, made the whole thing feel a lot like a video game - specifically like Unchartered 2. You could actually split the film up into different levels on the game as you’re watching it – flying the plane, driving the car down the very busy road, being Snowy in the bit with the cows. That reminds me, Snowy is horribly under-utilised.

So if the 3D let the film down a bit (ironic really), it was completely raised up again by the voices. Maybe it’s a nice contrast given that I’d saw Skyfall for the second time the night before but I think Daniel Craig makes a very good bad-guy. He should really do that more often! Simon Pegg and Nick Frost do Thompson and Thompson very well (although you can’t really tell it’s them) and the king of crazy-good animation Andy Serkis was always going to be fantastic as Captain Haddock. I thought Jamie Bell as Tintin was only OK though, which is a shame given that he hasn’t done much of note since Billy Elliot (I must remember to watch The Eagle).

With possibly the most shameless and blatant sequel set-up I’ve ever seen (and that includes the second Pirates film) there’s a confidence with The Secret of the Unicorn that only someone with Spielberg’s ego could manage. Being of such a different style to the original comics they couldn’t really rely on hardcore Tintin fans to love it, and if it had fallen on its face and no sequel happened they would have looked frankly ridiculous. As it is, Peter Jackson is directing Tintin 2 so they’re ok, and I think it has a fighting chance of being a good film in its own right. There’ll need to be a lot of reminders of the plot though or it’ll be one of those franchises where you really need to watch the first film before embarking on any of the others. I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or not.

I hope the title will be less misleading in the second film. I was terribly disappointed by the dearth of unicorns in this one.

The Killer Inside Me (2010)

I won’t lie, the first time I watched The Killer Inside Me I was really disappointed. I’d first read about its existence in a magazine about nine months before it was released and got really excited. And I mean really excited! A film from the point of view of a sadistic, misogynistic murderer – totally my thing!

Eagerly anticipating something for an extended period of time is usually a guarantee that you’ll be disappointed because it’s never going to be what you imagine. This wasn’t helped by the fact that I found it really hard to understand what was going on. It might have been the shoddy sound system in the cinema I was in or Casey Affleck’s strong Southern accent but I kept missing details. Key ones too – which aren’t repeated.

So I missed a lot of the plot and that was a bit annoying, but I did manage to get something completely different and unexpected out of the film – Jessica Alba being beaten about with a leather belt. Turns out, that’s awesome! There are a lot of short sex scenes in this film and most of them involve some manner of violence. That’s really quite cool to watch and The Killer Inside Me has lead to a drastic change in my chosen film genres since. Multiple repeat viewings of this film have ironed out any confusion over plot and fully cemented this as my favourite English-language film ever! Which is really quite a big deal.

Words cannot express how much I now love this film. If I’m in a film conversation with someone new I will 100% mention it at some point. And then re-mention it several times at later dates. Everyone I know is undoubtedly bored of hearing me bang on about how much I love this film and I want everyone everywhere to at least have some sort of opinion on it. Even if they don’t like it. But how could you not like it? There’s wilful evil, sex, violence and Jessica Alba’s bottom. What more could you possibly want?

The book’s really good too.

Being in first person we not only get to see all the evil doings of Lou Ford – a respected sheriff in a small town in Texas – but we get to hear his reasoning. His logic and that he just knew he has to kill this person, or that one. Ford’s a clever guy who listens to classical music and does maths for fun – he’s not some random idiot with a gun. That makes everything a lot more beautiful to watch. He’s calm, meticulous. Obviously more a little fucked up in the head but there we go. The overall effect is that of quite a soothing film, albeit with some shocking moments at odd intervals. Everything just happens without any kind of horrible stressy build-up and I really really enjoyed it. Watching it again recently has just reminded me of how awesome it is.

Director Michael Winterbottom’s other TV and film offerings include 24 Hour Party People, A Cock and Bull Story, The Trip, and (most importantly as far as I’m concerned) Trishna – a fantastic film based on Tess of the D’Urbervilles and set in India. You should see that too. Apart from The Trip (can’t stand Steve Coogan or Rob Brydon) I’m going to put a decent amount of effort into watching as many of his films as possible and I’ll keep a sharp look out for The Look of Love which is due to be released next year. It contains so many famous British actors and comedians it’s unrealistic for me to try to name them all (I’ll begin with Stephen Fry, Anna Freil, Dara O’Briain, Matt Lucas…) and tells the story of ‘porn baron’ Paul Reymond – sounds a little bit cool.

Watch this film! All of you! I want to be able to talk about it with you at some point.

The Last Exorcism (2010)

Far from being the catastrophically bad, vomit-filled, cheap-tricks exorcism film that I was expecting from something with only two stars on Love Film, The Last Exorcism actually managed to entertain me throughout its entire length and I’d possibly even go so far as to say I actually enjoyed it. This is not my preferred genre of film so maybe it benefitted from me not being able to compare it with other, better, examples of the exorcism theme. It was a novelty, a temporary venture into demon-based horror, and novelties are always fun.

The Last Exorcism takes the form of a mock-documentary about the life of the Reverend Cotton Marcus – an evangelical priest who has been performing exorcisms for years. He doesn’t actually believe in demons though, so comes equipped with various gadgets and tricks to provide the right atmosphere and generally scare the shit out of everyone. What a nice man. This documentary is for him to show everyone that exorcisms are scams, to educate the extreme Christian mentalists and stop things getting out of control.

After picking a begging letter at random, he travels with the film crew to a house in the middle of nowhere in Louisiana. Here he meets Louis Sweetzer, who is convinced his daughter Nell is possessed. One fake exorcism later and the problem doesn’t seem to be solved, in fact it probably gets worse. And it all goes wrong from there really – Nell’s behaviour gets progressively more erratic and disturbing and the scary eyes come out. Cue forty-five minutes of odd noises, sinister prophesies, strange behaviour from everybody involved and an emerging back-story that many or may not explain everything without the need to involve the Devil.

There’s always a danger with hand-held cameras of it all going a bit Blair Witch. This unfortunately does happen towards the end what with the running and the trees and the heavy breathing but it’s mostly fine – this is a ‘professional’ film-crew after all and the documentary feel does hold through most of the film.

This being a horror and everything and an 18 certificate, I assume you’re supposed to find it scary. Perhaps if it was night-time and I was paying proper attention it would have been, but as it was it just wasn’t good enough. During the scary bits I was usually laughing at something rubbish a couple of minutes before and that does detract from the atmosphere and suspense somewhat. The girl is scary-looking enough though and that’s all you need to be called a horror. She has good scary-eyes and sufficiently lank hair, but she’s no match for the girl from the Ring. That was one kid you do not want to find in the corner of your (unnecessarily dark) room.

There’s also a strange brother that I think was under-used. He managed a very impressive balance of red-neck, religious zeal and social-ineptitude that was really rather unnerving. He added a lot to the feel of the film and I would have liked to see more of him.

We were looking for a shit film when we decided to watch this, and a shit film is what we found. Some parts are really quite laughable and we never did find out what was actually going on behind all the drama. Overall though it was very acceptable and it served its purpose very nicely. 

Toast (2010)

As far as I'm concerned Freddie Highmore is still a little boy. He’s Charlie from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the boy in Finding Neverland. A few years have gone by and now, suddenly, his voice has broken, he’s shot up several feet and he’s playing sexually confused teenagers. That was a shock.

Toast is based on the memoir of Nigel Slater – chef and restaurant critic. More specifically it centres on Nigel’s relationship with his father and his step-mother and the use of food and cooking to gain attention and power within those relationships.

Also starring the amazing Helena Bonham Carter, as well as Victoria Hamilton and Ken Stott (see him soon in the Hobbit!), this film is genuinely pleasant to watch. It’s not trying to be something it’s not and seems happy being a nice little British film with a happy ending. Lovely.

The Skin I Live In (2011)

I love this film so much. I first saw it about nine months ago and it amazed me. It was the first real film I’d seen Antonio Banderas in (I don’t think Shrek 2 really counts), and I love him. His acting in this as a creepy twisted scientist/surgeon is superb and it both scares and fascinates you.

I didn’t know all that much about the plot when I first saw this – the trailer is spectacularly useless in terms of giving you a feel for the story and pace – and online synopses don’t give you much to go on either. 

After the death of his wife in a fire several years previously, the creepy twisted surgeon has devoted his time to creating a magic skin – resistant to burns and insect bites and has been testing it on a human subject – Vera – whom he keeps locked in a room in his house. In between experiments and treatments, Vera (played by the ridiculously beautiful Elena Anaya) spends her time doing yoga and creating pieces of art from scraps of material. As you do. Her frustration with being locked up soon becomes apparent though and you begin to wonder how long she’s been there, and how she got to be there in the first place.

All becomes clear as the film progresses – we’re given the full story little bit by little bit. There’s a limit to what can be said without spoiling it all but suffice to say this film has the best “Oh my God!” moment I’ve ever seen. That point in the story when all these little scraps of knowledge all come together and leaves you with your mouth hanging open in shock, horror, and complete awe. That’s what it did to me anyway.

The only negative thing I can say about this (apart from a slight raised eyebrow at some of the weirder moments) is a scene in the middle of the film. They introduce some flashbacks to give us some of the history of the characters and they’ve chosen to do so through dreams. It seemed a bit lazy and I’m sure there’s a better way of doing it.

The skin I live in is shocking, it’s disturbing, and it’s completely engrossing. It’s reasonably slowly paced which shows excellent restraint by the writer/director Pedro Almodóvar who has directed some other quality films (Volver for example) and I’m definitely going to try to see many more of them. Having said that he also wrote and directed Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! – again starring Banderas. That was just weird. His next film, I’m So Excited, stars Penelope Cruz and Banderas yet again and I look forward to seeing it. I’ve got no idea what it’s about but its Spanish title – Los Amantes Pasajeros – translates as The Passing Lovers. I suppose that’s some clue.

God Bless America (2011)

I have a new hero. Joel Murray is not someone I’ve ever paid much attention to before, although looking back, he’s cropped up in a couple of things I’ve seen (Mad Men, Desperate Housewives) and he’s also in The Artist, which I have yet to bother to see. When Love Film finally gets around to sending it to me, I’ll look out for him – because he’s an impressive man. I’m reasonably sure his performance in this film borders on flawless and I was very pleasantly surprised to see such quality acting in a film that’s remained reasonably under the radar, for all its popularity.

In God Bless America Murray plays Frank – a tired, middle aged, divorced, recently fired, possibly terminally ill man with a growing hatred for the pile of celebrity gossip, prejudice, scare-mongering, and general crap that he believes America has become. Alone (again) one evening he retrieves his gun from a box on top of the bookshelf (why are they always in a box on top of a bookshelf?) and contemplates killing himself. Then he sees Chloe. Chloe is a rich, bratty, American teenager with her own reality TV show. With Frank, we see a quick flash of the programme – Chloe declaring boastfully that she rules her high school and screaming at her obnoxious parents for buying her the wrong car. After this, Frank rethinks his suicide plans. Why should he kill himself when there are so many better people to kill? Like Chloe for example.

Murray’s co-star in God Bless America, Tara Lynne Barr, is a new face for me. She’s been in a fair few things but usually single episodes of American TV series that I’ve never heard of. After a couple of shaky over-acted moments near the beginning, I really warmed to her in that comforting way of her reminding me of someone – but I can’t think who. She’s another person to keep an eye on in the future. Barr plays Roxy, a sixteen-year-old girl who meets Frank when he arrives at her school to kill the awful Chloe. Sympathising with his aims, she becomes his accomplis and they travel around America together imparting justice on those who ‘don’t deserve to live’.

There’s an extensive list of people in this category. I was doing well until they added ‘the givers and receivers of physical high-fives’. Well that’s me dead then.

For all their lack of care in their killings, they manage to get away with it for a ridiculously long time. You have to suspend your disbelief here for a while – I would like to think the police are a little more efficient than that at catching serial killers. It’s a detail I was quite happy to let go though for the sake of a better story.

While it doesn’t give you all that much to really think about or leave much of a lasting impression other than ‘well that was cool’, God Bless America might well end up on my list of classics – one of those that I’ll actually buy a physical copy of.

Skyfall (2012)

You cannot review James Bond. It is awesome and unreviewable.

Instead I will list some things that are awesome about James Bond (Skyfall in particular):
- It's British
- Daniel Craig
- Judi Dench
- Javier Bardem (I'd forgotten how much I like him and he's very cool in Skyfall!)
- The Bond-girls
- The chases
- The martinis
- The music
- It's Bond

The End.

Looper (2012)

The basic idea of Looper is reasonably easy to grasp. Time-travel is invented at some point in the future and then immediately outlawed. It’s used by gangsters of the future to dispose of their unwanted bodies, by sending people back in time to be killed by loopers – men hand-picked to be hit-men. Being a looper is well-paid and seemingly quite glamorous, but it comes with the rather large caveat that the loopers themselves will be killed off in 30 years’ time. But that apparently appeals to the live fast – die young type, and they don’t seem short of recruits.

The problem is, when in 30 years you’re sent back in time to be killed, you’re killed by yourself. The killing of your future self is known as ‘closing your loop’ and comes with a lot of money and freedom to live the rest of your life as you see fit. As long as you actually kill your future self, and don’t let them go – it all goes wrong for you if you do that!

And that’s where it gets complicated. Suddenly we end up with multiple versions of the same character, and multiple versions of events in time running in parallel. Even after serious thought and lots of discussion, these different strands still don’t seem to link together very well. I’m still not properly sure what happened or how certain people know certain things or even what order things happen in.

So if you want to watch this film I can only recommend one thing – don’t think too much! If you don’t think too much, and you just accept what’s going on as it's presented to you, Looper really is a very enjoyable film. Some bits are better than others, for example there’s a rather shabby time-sequence-montage-thing in the middle, but there is a fantastic, horrifying, amazing part reasonably early on where a future person’s body is changing in front of their eyes to reflect what’s currently happening to their younger self. A bit of a head fuck but oh so fascinating.

Another impressive thing about the film is how they managed to get Joseph Gordon-Levitt to look like a young Bruce Willis. The two men are completely different in every possible visual characteristic, but with a little bit of prosthetic make-up and a very good side-ways smirk by Gordon-Levitt it works – its magic!

The first third of this film is brilliant, and sets itself up to be an epic, but it all just falls away after that. From the first time you go ‘hang on – what?’ it gradually loses your interest, and instead of just being able to absorb it, too much of your brain is trying to un-pick problems and reorganise time. Reorganising time is exhausting.

Watch it, definitely watch it. But don’t think too much!

Hereafter (2010)

Everyone knows the name Clint Eastwood. It’s impossible not to – the guy’s been in God knows how many films and directed God knows how many more. Apparently though, this is the first film of his on either side of the camera that I’ve actually seen. I’m not proud of that – it shows a gaping hole in my film knowledge – but most of them aren’t really my thing so it’s a hole not likely to improve all that much. I might give some of the more recent ones a go – Million Dollar Baby, Gran Torino, Changling – ones like that.

Anyway, as you can imagine, I didn’t pick this film because of its director. Or because of its cast. Yes Matt Damon’s in it and he’s very good and everything but I have no special love for the guy. He’s the cause of me having to sit through The Bourne Identity and I harbour a little resentment for that (no, I didn’t like it).

The only reason I felt drawn to this film was because I remember the trailer being quite promising. A guy that can genuinely speak to the dead – it could be ok if it’s done well (OK maybe the names Eastwood and Damon helped me trust it a bit), but I never imagined it would contain any great depth or complexity. So I was quite surprised when the film opens to a scene containing some random couple speaking French. That’s good though, not being scared to include a few subtitles. It gives the audience more credit than a lot of other films do.

Unfortunately, for all its French subtitles, Hereafter not only lacks depth, it also lacks any real complexity. It’s three films in one, following three people and their experiences with death and the deceased. While initially promising, I lost interest in all three stories (and the people in them) reasonably quickly, and so gained very little satisfaction from their progress and subsequent acceptance of their various trials and troubles.

It would have done well to tug at the heartstrings a little more. Not quite sure whether to make a moving film about loss and grief, or a Hollywood blockbuster with bombs and magic powers, Eastwood seems to have created something that’s half way in-between. And so is neither. It manages to pack in two of the major disasters of the last 10 years in a dramatic showy way that shouts “Blockbuster” very loudly in our ears, but it also tries to slow things down to showing us the subtlety of the loyalty of two brothers to their drug-addicted mother.

There’s also a half-heated attempt at a romance. Just to complete things.

There wasn't really any conclusion either thinking about it. The three stories converged as they do tend to do but we didn’t get all that much closure to the stories. Not that I noticed anyway – perhaps I’d stopped concentrating by that point. I did try though.

So no, I didn’t particularly enjoy this and no, I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone. Even as a lazy Sunday night film it failed to keep me entertained.  Perhaps I’ll still give Eastwood’s other films a go but mostly because it seems blasphemous not to.  At the moment though, as far as I’m concerned, the best thing about Clint Eastwood is the song by Gorrilaz.

Lie With Me (2005)

Eric Balfour can be found in quite a few of the films and TV shows that I’ve watched over the last 10 years or so. He’s Theresa’s fiancé Eddie in The O.C., he’s Milo in 24.  He also crops up in What Women Want and Six Feet Under. He’s also apparently is in this.

‘This’ is basically a teen film. It revolves around the relationship of two uni students (Played by Balfour and Lauren Lee Smith) and the twists and emotional bullshit that inevitably goes with it. That’s fine, except it’s far far far too sexually explicit to be aimed at teenagers. The plot isn’t complicated enough to really grip an adult audience though. It’s very loose, and probably not very believable, but never mind eh? It’ll do.

It’s directed by Clément Virgo, who doesn’t seem to have done anything else that I recognise except for odd episodes of The L Word and The Wire. What a contrast. The Wire is supposed to be so amazing (no, I haven’t got round to watching it yet), but The L Word… well… that was a massive pile of wank. Apparently Lauren Lee Smith was in it at one point. The only interesting thing she seems to have done apart from that is a bit of CSI. Meh.

As a film Lie With Me is fine. I don’t consider it a waste of time and at no point when watching it did I get bored enough to bother switching it off. The plot’s vague and the general idea is a bit teeny but it held my interest well enough. I recommend it as a highly suitable film for those lazy days when you don’t really want to concentrate on much. Or fancy watching some poorly justified ‘artistic’ sex.

Mysterious Skin (2004)

I’m not sure where I first heard of Mysterious Skin. Perhaps it was as a trailer before another film, or perhaps it was recommended by someone. Whatever the reason, this film ended up on my ‘to watch’ list before I really knew much about it.

It’s about two boys, Neil and Brian, who are sexually abused by their baseball coach as children. This has left different effects on them as young adults. Brian, who cannot account for large periods of time from that period, begins to believe that he was abducted by aliens and begins a correspondence with local alien-enthusiast Avalyn. Neil on the other hand is gay and considers it part of his sexual awakening along with reading his mother’s Playgirls and fantasising about her boyfriends. He resorts to prostitution throughout his adolescence to satisfy his sexual compulsion.

I was surprised to see so many familiar faces in this film. Mysterious Skin stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt (10 things I hate about you, Inception, The Dark Knight Rises), and Michelle Trachtenberg (Eurotrip, Gossip Girl, Buffy). Another main character is played by Brady Corbet – a guy that I couldn’t pick out of a crowd but who has apparently been in three other films that I’ve seen this year (Martha Marcy May Marlene, Melancholia, and Thirteen) as well as a series of 24. He must be rather forgettable; he certainly didn’t leave any greater impression this time round. It’s a shame because he’s a good actor, and actually rather handsome when you come to look at him. I’ll try to pay better attention next time. His most recent film is called Simon Killer. No idea what it’s about but maybe I’ll give that a go and try to concentrate on him more. Maybe I won’t bother.

Perhaps I found him negligible because I love Joseph Gordon-Levitt. And Michelle Trachtenberg too come to mention it. Other actors do tend to get ignored if they’re on screen. And they’re very good – their relationship in Mysterious Skin, that of an old, comfortable friendship, felt real and believable. The whole film is rather slowly paced and was a nice easy film to watch. Despite the difficult themes of paedophilia, prostitution, and drugs, it wasn't difficult to watch. There’s only one bit where I winced.

I really want to watch this film again at some point, so I’m probably going to actually go to the effort of buying it, something which almost never happens these days. It might just prove one of my solid go-to films.

Baise-Moi (2000)

Under the guise of a film about female sexual empowerment Baise-Moi is really just an excuse for numerous gratuitous scenes of sex and violence. Excellent start. It’s in French, which takes any annoying American whiney element out of it. Even better. I don’t know about you but this was enough to sell it to me. A brief outline of the plot placed this film firmly on my ‘to watch – soon’ list.

Baise-Moi follows two young women, Nadine and Manu, as they travel through France on a sex-fuelled and thoroughly violent road-trip. After a chance meeting, their mutual hatred for the world and everything in it leads them to kill, first for money, then for fun and finally just for the hell of it. There’re a lot of guns, and a lot of blood, and a lot of sex.

Apparently my theme this week is ‘Is it a film or is it porn?’ - not hugely surprising for me but apparently this is my second film of the week to include the use of real hardcore sex scenes. Starring two real-life porn-stars Karen Bach and Raffaëla Anderson, Baise-Moi does not shy away from anything. There are scenes here which wouldn’t look too out of place in any proper porn film, and perhaps their inclusion is enough for some people to automatically class this as pornography – there has to be a line somewhere. For me though, this is definitely not porn. The music’s different. Or the lighting. Or the language… something. Something is there that definitely makes these scenes acceptable (if graphic) parts of film. Integral parts too as, at least in my opinion, anything softer would be at odds with the level of violence in the film. And toning down both the sex and the violence would render the whole film largely pointless. These women are angry and bored and drug-fuelled, and who wants to see a half-hearted, only mildly irritated with the world, semi-rampage?

For all this film promised (I had heard very good things about it), I found the beginning a little dull. It’s not hugely relevant, and the promised ‘violent gang-rape’ at the beginning was frankly a let down. In a very short film (only 78 minutes) they seem to waste a long time setting the scene. I forgot this after a while though, and was soon drawn into the plot. The film builds gradually, consistently and my opinion of it only improved as it went on. I did however start wondering how they were going to let it finish. Would they get caught? Would they make it over the French border? Would they both die in a massive gun-fight with the police a la Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? I wasn’t sure any of these would satisfy me and I hate it when good films are ruined by terrible endings (blaming things on aliens being the worst cop-out ending ever). Never fear though, it’s all good and while the ending is abrupt, it felt fitting for a film with such momentum.

Destricted (2006)

Destricted is not a film. Nor is it porn. It’s both. Or neither. Or something. I’m not sure quite what it’s trying to be really. It styles itself as an art-house collection of shorts that explore where pornography and art meet. It’s very sexually explicit. But it’s not erotic. Not really.

Notice the short sentences. I haven’t really had time to digest it yet and all I have is the vague feeling that I’ve just wasted a couple of hours of my life. Some of the shorts are barely more complex or arty than simply watching someone masturbate for a few minutes. Death Valley is a good example of one of those. It’s directed by Sam Taylor-Wood who also directed Nowhere Boy (Yeah – I bet that surprised you!). A more obvious director for such a genre is Gaspar Noé. No prizes for guessing which one he directs though. It’s exactly the same as Irreversible, right down to the weird background noise and the strobe lights. It does neglect to include the violent fire extinguisher murder though so that’s something.

Another of the films is a weird comedy-type thing about Balkan folk-law that involves various people in ‘traditional’ costume prancing about with their genitals on display. While it rains. And there’s a bit of animation there too for good measure.

This is definitely a contender for the weirdest film I’ve seen this year, if not ever. And it’s got some company. Irreversible, Dogtooth, Possession, Shortbus – knocks them all out of the park. The only strong competition I can think of is Missing. Korean cake-rape does class quite highly on the weird ratings. It makes me slightly long for the sweet innocent days of thinking Requiem for a Dream was fucked up.

The Help (2011)

The Help first appeared on my radar largely because my mum has been nagging me for a while to read the book. I’m sure it’s wonderful, but I haven’t got around to it yet. It made me notice the film though when it was coming out and I would have seen it then, were it not for my general preference of wanting to read books before watching the film version. Then came the BAFTAs, and the Oscars and there was no escaping the praise given to this film; particularly to Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis, actresses who play two black maids working for rich white families.

The first thing I think is worth noting is that The Help is set in the 1960s. I am astounded at how ignorant about racism issues people could be as recently as this. Being born in the ‘80s and growing up in an overly politically correct society doesn’t prepare you for such attitudes and I feel really quite ashamed of my naivety.

The film follows Eugenia (Skeeter) Phelan - a young white woman returning from university and embarking on a new career as a journalist in her home town of Jackson, Mississippi. As a girl she was cared for by a black maid and is now eager to publish a book telling the stories of maids in the city where she grew up. This is apparently an illegal thing to do and at first the only two to maids brave enough to talk to her are Aibileen and Minny (Spencer, Davis). As it turns out, they have a plenty of material. Skeeter’s attitude towards ‘the help’ is in contrast to the rest of her peers who, through disdain, fear, or peer-pressure treat their maids really rather badly, while trying to maintain their own position in the city’s social scene.

For all its difficult themes of racism, domestic violence, and generally dated attitudes towards women, this is actually a feel-good film. Davis as Minny provides enough comedy to almost carry the film herself (no wonder she won many Best Supporting Actress awards) and the warmth shown by Aibileen to everybody is genuinely uplifting.

While I won’t claim it is artistic genius, I enjoyed this film enough to almost want to watch it again immediately, and I will definitely sit down to watch it again fairly soon. I am also going to keep my eye out for any future work from director Tate Taylor. After a while acting in some rather negligible roles, I think he may well have finally found his niche.

The Woman in the Fifth (2011)

I want to like Kristin Scott Thomas, I really do. I think Sarah’s Key was one of the most moving films of last year and she’s fine (if rather forgettable) in things like Gosford Park and The Other Boleyn Girl. And if I’m thinking about it, she’s the reason I actually watched this film. It’s in French too and therefore my brain assumed it would be as good as Sarah’s Key. Yeah… not so much.

The Woman in the Fifth is about a man (played by Ethan Hawke who was rather awesome in Gattaca). As the film begins we see him going through customs – apparently he’s moving to Paris to be with his wife and daughter, who live there. That’s all well and good except it turns out they have a restraining order against him. Sad times. So, after he’s randomly robbed of everything except the clothes he’s standing in he’s forced to stay in some sleazy café/hotel on the outskirts of the city run by some kind of criminal. That he then has to work for to pay the bills. It all kind of goes wrong for him after that.

At a party, he meets an enigmatic woman, with whom he starts up a very vague sort of sexual relationship. This is ‘the woman in the fifth’, the fifth being the fifth arrondissement - an area in Paris. I don’t quite understand what’s going on there as she doesn’t really get very much air time but for some reason she becomes very important to him.

Not a lot happens in this film really - most of the time we see him writing a letter to his daughter. Most of what does happen is pointless and strange and seems to have very little motive behind it.

I’m giving up on French cinema.

Carnage (2011)

I don’t even know where to begin with this film. It stars some pretty famous actors – Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, and that guy from Chicago (John C. Reilly, apparently). Also some other dude who’s mostly been in German films. It’s directed by Roman Polanski who, in his time, has directed some of my favourite films ever – The Pianist (starring Adrien Brody) and The Ninth Gate (with Johnny Depp). I didn’t really think much of his last offering – The Ghost (Ewan McGregor, Kim Cattrall and Pierce Brosnan) – but I was expecting a well directed film from Carnage, despite its seemingly rather vague and simple plot. Indeed, because of its simple plot, Carnage relies upon good direction to give it momentum and flow.

The film doesn’t last long – only about 70 minutes or so. Thank God. Half an hour would have sufficed. Half an hour of bickering and moaning during which we establish a thorough dislike for every one of the four characters in turn.

The premise is simple. After a violent incident between two boys, two sets of parents are brought together in a New York apartment to discuss their sons’ behaviour and to establish a plan for ensuring both boys understand the seriousness of the situation, and learn about appropriate conflict resolution. It’s all very civilised and grown-up - the parents of the boy who attacked the other take full responsibility for their son’s behaviour. At least at first. Perhaps inevitably, after a while the formal meeting degenerates into an alcohol-fuelled shouting match, with increasingly childish behaviour, name-calling, and general… carnage.

The film is presented to us in real time, give or take. It’s 24 but with fewer terrorists, guns, digital clocks, and exciting bits. OK it’s not 24 - you wouldn’t catch Jack Bauer getting tremendously drunk from a small glass of whisky in the space of 15 minutes. Apparently the characters in Carnage can manage it though – how ridiculous. The drunkenness of course loosens their tongues and lets them blurt out what they really think about each other. Gone are repressed, polite, thoroughly middle-class adults, being replaced by whiny, indignant messes.

All four parents have their individual quirks. The hosts are apparently rather a normal couple, a little bit arty, offer home-made puddings to their guests, and write books about conflicts in Africa. The other couple are richer, posher, and very formal. The husband talks constantly on his mobile to someone at his office and the wife does something boring that possibly has something to do with investments. Their various quirks become more of a feature as tempers flare and gradually we see all four become thoroughly objectionable people. The question I have though is this - how am I supposed to care about a fight that I don’t want anybody to win?

Carnage is based on a French play – God of Carnage, by Yazmena Reza, so I can’t really blame them for the story, although the play’s apparently done very well, including as a West-End production. I think though, that it must have been toned down for cinema. A quick Wikipedia of the play tells me that it contains heated debates touching on homophobia and racial issues which have definitely been left out of the film. This leaves us with only the banal and trivial topics and I don’t care about those. Nor can I understand why they would get so animated about them. It escalates quickly, too quickly. I just don’t believe it.

I’ll possibly watch the play at some point and see how I feel about that. If it proves to be good then I can file Carnage away in the increasingly large section in my brain entitled ‘Films that have ruined good plays’. It can sit next to Closer and several of the Shakespeares.

Polisse (2011)

I enjoyed this film. I think. It’s candid (sometimes very candid), and follows a child protection unit (CPU) in the Paris police force. These are the people who track down runaway crack-whores and their babies, break up gypsy-run child exploitation gangs, and prosecute paedophiles. It sounds a fun job.

The film follows the group rather than individuals, although personal storylines of some of the characters are explored, and we see them together either at work or unwinding afterwards with food and wine – it’s all very French. They argue, they shout, they’re a group of passionate people. They’ve been thrown together in a difficult career and appear to have bonded through the difficulty.

Into this mix is thrown Melissa (played by writor/director Maïwenn), a photographer who wants to follow the unit, capturing key events and scenes on film.

It’s a film with a completely different style to what I usually experience when I venture into French film. Think of Amilé, Potiche, Delicatessen - all of them very different films but with that little bit of French quirkiness and oddness about them; the type of oddness that I can only usually deal with in small doses. Polisse has none of that and has encouraged me to try French cinema more often for it really is quite a good film.

Visually it isn’t particularly disturbing. They’re obviously not going to show most of the crimes that they’re dealing with on film. There are many police interviews however, which frequently go into detail of the offences the suspects are accused of – both with the suspects themselves, and with witnesses/children. This makes for some uncomfortable viewing. It would be hard to watch police interviews with remorseless paedophiles without some strong emotions rising up - the obvious surprise and shock, with a twinge of disgust and a base-note of anger. I personally enjoyed that though. They’re not feelings that get expressed all that often in day-to-day life and I think it’s good practice to bring them out every now and then.  Happy smiley films are all very well but I really value those films that properly affect you and the way you feel. Is that not what they’re for after all?

And if that does nothing for you, wait for the end. Set a little later after a summer break, it feels a little bit like it’s just been tagged on for completeness. It’s not quite long enough to assert itself as a decent section of the film and me with a new feeling – surprise, yes, but mostly confusion.

Bel Ami (2012)

I have no great love for Robert Pattinson, but having said that I don't particularly have anything against him. I will admit to having seen one of the Twilight films (for my sins) but he was in no way the most offensive part of it. He didn’t put me off this film and I’m even considering watching Cosmopolis, which seems to be not far off being The Pattinson Show. I won’t rave about his attractiveness though. The whole pale glittery vampire thing doesn’t really do it for me.

Sideburns and a cravat on the other hand…

Now, there are far too many close ups on Pattinson’s eyes and far too many would-be smouldering looks across a crowded room for the directors to be able to claim anything other than that this is basically a sex film. A lot of effort has gone into making us find this boy sexy - we as an audience need to want him. If we don’t, how can we understand why all these women are falling over themselves (sometimes literally) to have him? It’s safe to say that it works too. He’s hot - at least at the beginning of the film. As he makes his way through several influential men’s wives (played reasonably well by Uma Thurman, Christina Ricci and Kristin Scott Thomas), the impressive moody looks and subtle lighting start to wear a little thin however. I was over it, and over him, by the half-way point. Coincidently this was also the point where I stopped really caring about the film at all.

Sex (and the power that goes with it) is the main theme of the film. Monsieur Duroy (aka Bel Ami) starts off newly arrived in Paris, poor and friendless (mais oui) and, after a chance meeting with an old acquaintance, goes about sleeping with as many wives and daughters as possible in order to gain money, fame, and influence. It’s a flawless scheme… clearly, and in no way gets him in trouble.

There are other plot devises that go on amongst all this but frankly none of them are particularly interesting and the film ends up being a rather pointless, but harmless, affair (no pun intended) which was interesting enough to watch once. I’m also curious enough to see what the directors produce next – it’s their first full length film, and not a bad one at that.

Melancholia (2011)

This film doesn’t give you quite what you might normally expect from an apocalypse film. Or, if you didn’t know that it is an apocalypse film, quite what you’d expect from a film about a woman suffering from depression. It’s a film with seemingly two agendas, presented in two sections, and it took me three attempts to actually make it all the way through. It’s quite slow paced, not that that’s necessarily a bad thing, but I found myself easily distracted and twice paused the film to briefly do something else and just failed to return to it.

The opening sequence introduces the film dramatically with an arrangement of scenes in ultra slow motion set to some startling orchestral music (Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde). Not being one for lengthy opening titles though, I didn’t enjoy them, in spite of how impressive they undoubtedly are. I just found myself waiting for the film to begin and, after a while, stopped noticing the pictures and just enjoyed the music (a highly emotive piece which is repeated frequently throughout the film). While there is the danger that it might be ignored by many, this prelude may have been better placed at the end of the film with the credits. I don’t mean to belittle it by saying that – after all there seems to be a fashion at the moment for impressive credits (Suckerpunch for example). I re-watched the opening scene after finishing the film and found it much more engaging than I had the previous two viewings. The visual links with scenes throughout the film are much clearer (obviously), something which is lost to you if you haven’t actually seen the film yet. This dramatic beginning is also at odds with the first scene of the film, which is bright and up-beat – possibly the only scene that is – so it doesn’t give us the smooth transition into the film that one would assume the role of most opening sequences is.

Smooth transitions don’t really seem to be how writer/director Lars von Trier works. The arrangement of the film into two sections seemed to completely separate the two themes running through this story. The first section follows Justine (Dunst) struggling to get through her wedding day with feelings of depression and apathy, and upsetting several people in the process. The second follows her sister Claire and her family as they follow the progress of Melancholia – a planet which is about to pass very close to Earth but, they hope, not actually collide with it. Melancholia is not mentioned in the first half, nor is the new husband mentioned in the second. They’re almost two films. Separate, but happening to have the same cast. The opening sequence for me really represents what is the best thing about this film – visual artistry. Storyline aside, the scenes are truly beautiful and I enjoyed that aspect greatly, particularly in the second half when we are shown some almost breathtaking images of the planet as it hurtles towards Earth.

I would recommend that no one watches this film if they’re in a good mood. You can’t relate to the depression felt by Justine if you’re feeling happy and content. It just leads to frustration with her when she fails to perform seemingly basic tasks (such as getting into a bath). Equally though, I would not recommend watching it if you’re feeling low. You still can’t sympathise fully (well I couldn’t) and you get annoyed with the insensitivity of the other characters. No matter what mood you’re in, you may well find it difficult engaging with any of the characters in this film.

Melancholia was brought to my attention largely because of its cast. I haven’t seen any of von Trier’s other work (though I do need to see Dogville) but the names Kirsten Dunst, John Hurt, and Kiefer Sutherland were enough to interest me. After some initial research however, my first instinct was to leave it be. Apocalypse films aren’t usually my thing and nothing in this one screamed out at me as particularly special. For whatever reason though I changed my mind and I almost wish I hadn’t. I didn’t enjoy it. The second half is more enjoyable than the first as it gains a sense of momentum, but really the only reason I persevered in finishing it after abandoning it twice was that I would have felt silly posting it back to Love Film without having watched it all. I also didn’t feel I could have a proper opinion on it based only on the first 45 minutes and I do so love having opinions.