A documentary maker travels to Indonesia to meet a group of elderly men who led some of the notorious death-squad anti-communist purges in the 1960s. They were once small-time gangsters, who took advantage of the corrupt regime following a failed coup and became terrifying warlords; extorting from, raping or brutally murdering thousands. They have never been held accountable, and what is more, as the documentary progresses it becomes clear that they are minor celebrities still, admired seemingly by some, evidently feared by many others, and utterly brazen in their boasting of what they did.
Co-director Joshua Oppenheimer invites them to go beyond telling the stories of their atrocities, but to actually re-enact them for the cameras as mini-movies in the style of their choosing. An idea to which these elderly monsters, deluded by their own distorted egos and immunity from prosecution for their crimes, eagerly take. What then follows is simultaneously terrifying and absurd beyond belief as they rally locals as extras, and get into the mechanics of script meetings, location scouting, and marshaling the required production forces, while practicing their best strangulation and torture techniques on each other. One later proudly shows off the raw footage to his young grandchildren. Another, perhaps gradually and dimly comprehending the horrors he perpetrated for the first time, cuts a pathetic, tragic figure, literally chocking on the evil that is consuming him from within. I doubt there was a more astonishing image in cinema all year than that of a vile, bloated, real-life mass-murderer, cross-dressed in a gaudy pink ball-gown, swaying in front of a waterfall as he serenades a chorus-line of his departed victims spirits into the afterlife.
The fear and repression that infests the country still is no better illustrated than when the credits roll. The mostly Danish production team are naturally listed openly, while practically all the locally recruited crew simply scroll by as "anonymous", "anonymous", "anonymous"....
Rating: 5/5
Showing posts with label 5-Stars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 5-Stars. Show all posts
Sunday, 29 December 2013
The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug (2013)
This year's biggest (literally) pleasant surprise. After the long, slow start to chapter one had dampened the ardour of many a Middle Earth fan, I had more modest hopes for what could be achieved eking out yet another three hour behemoth from the middle chapters of Tolkien's modest children's tale and Peter Jackson has exceeded every one magnificently. Bold, energetic, funny, frightening, tense, and immensely spectacular. The clear aim now is to take The Hobbit as a skeleton structure that will be fleshed with all the immense back-story, parallel tales and grim foreshadowing of what is to come that it can withstand. It's a brave, and somewhat indulgent move, but it's coming together here with a bravura confidence that was sometimes lacking from part one. This is now just a dwarf's whisker from Lord Of The Rings greatness.
Rating: 5/5
Rating: 5/5
Saturday, 16 November 2013
Gravity (2013)
A masterful, lean, and utterly gripping action-thriller. Alfonso Cuarón further proves himself to be one of the most exciting and innovative directors working today. Sandra Bullock knocks it out of the park with a long-overdue starring role worthy of her talents, and 3D reaches a new zenith in a totally mesmerising, immersive and staggeringly beautiful FX tour-de-force. It is, ultimately, popcorn. But it's Michelin three-star popcorn.
Rating: 5/5
Rating: 5/5
Wednesday, 24 July 2013
13 Assassins (Jûsan-nin no shikaku) (2010)
The prolific and protean Takashi Miike, having already amassed a vast and varied back-catalogue of contemporary thrillers, romance, comedy, gore, action, drama and musicals in less than two decades, sucks it up and takes on Kurosawa with this period samurai epic.
Japan, 1840s. It is an era of peace. A time of waning power and relevance of the samurai order, and the decaying final years of the ancient feudal Shogunate regime.
Lord Naritsugu, the preening and sadistic younger brother of the current shogun, carves out a swathe of terror and suffering, seemingly out of mere listless petulance. But with higher political office likely to come his way soon, and following the protest of ritual seppuku committed by a wronged clan leader; Sir Doi, a senior official in the current political order, covertly seeks out an experienced samurai to help rid the land of this cruel and dangerous presence.
From this set up, you can probably guess the rough structure of what follows. Our de-facto master samurai must assemble a small group of warriors to ensnare and take down the evil overlord, protected as he is by a small army of his own. This will involve the recruitment of some grizzled old fighters who have seen better days, some over-idealistic young students who have yet to fight a real battle, and of course, an unruly, somewhat comedic outsider who will be grudgingly admitted into the ranks against better judgement to make some unlikely but crucial contribution.
Whether it's Seven Samurai, The Dirty Dozen, or Ocean's Eleven, this is a movie in that grand tradition of the numbered, but outnumbered team of good guys taking on a big bad against the odds. What matters here is not that we can't see what's coming, but that this is a movie that takes such care and pleasure in the unfolding of the story.
Naritsugu is a truly appalling creation, grotesque in the casual disinterest he shows in the terrible violence he inflicts, like a child half-heartedly pulling wings of insects in boredom. He's a man out of time, no longer of use to a Japan at peace and soon to join the modern world. He only seems to engage with anything when the heat of battle is up, but even then, not to care over the win or loss that he and his men might achieve or suffer, but merely to have, briefly, any consequence at all.
The samurai , we gradually comprehend, are in a similar situation. The long unfolding of the first act explores the archaic ritual and routine of their antiquated order, the rich and complex intertwining of codes of honour, and conflicting loyalties, but also of nostalgic wistfulness for glory days long passed. It's a powerful and telling moment when the leader Shimada is shown (in an effort to sway his heart in horror and pity to the mission being proposed), a woman tortured to a gut-wrenching, nightmarish vision of Dantean hell, and rather than displaying anger or grief, his mouth twitches into a wry smile. He's just been shown a reason and purpose for his continued existence.
After that, it's men on a mission greatness. Plans, maps, subterfuge and misdirection, treks lost in the wilderness, and the "let's make our stand here" turn, with all the classic war movie / western / A-Team tension-ratcheting preparation that this entails. The third act battle is coming, and it's going to be something special.
A smartly constructed, character-rich adventure that segues into an object lesson in clear, dynamic battle staging that takes up at least a third of this lengthy movie and never bogs down or loses focus. Takeshi Miike, the enfant terrible of Japanese gore, and crazed seven-films-a-year auteur of chaotic zombie-musical-comedy spoofs has pooled all his considerable talents here to craft an altogether more mature work. And, if he hasn't quite equalled the perfection of Kurosawa's samurai masterpiece, he's come majestically close.
Rating: 5/5
Japan, 1840s. It is an era of peace. A time of waning power and relevance of the samurai order, and the decaying final years of the ancient feudal Shogunate regime.
Lord Naritsugu, the preening and sadistic younger brother of the current shogun, carves out a swathe of terror and suffering, seemingly out of mere listless petulance. But with higher political office likely to come his way soon, and following the protest of ritual seppuku committed by a wronged clan leader; Sir Doi, a senior official in the current political order, covertly seeks out an experienced samurai to help rid the land of this cruel and dangerous presence.
From this set up, you can probably guess the rough structure of what follows. Our de-facto master samurai must assemble a small group of warriors to ensnare and take down the evil overlord, protected as he is by a small army of his own. This will involve the recruitment of some grizzled old fighters who have seen better days, some over-idealistic young students who have yet to fight a real battle, and of course, an unruly, somewhat comedic outsider who will be grudgingly admitted into the ranks against better judgement to make some unlikely but crucial contribution.
Whether it's Seven Samurai, The Dirty Dozen, or Ocean's Eleven, this is a movie in that grand tradition of the numbered, but outnumbered team of good guys taking on a big bad against the odds. What matters here is not that we can't see what's coming, but that this is a movie that takes such care and pleasure in the unfolding of the story.
Naritsugu is a truly appalling creation, grotesque in the casual disinterest he shows in the terrible violence he inflicts, like a child half-heartedly pulling wings of insects in boredom. He's a man out of time, no longer of use to a Japan at peace and soon to join the modern world. He only seems to engage with anything when the heat of battle is up, but even then, not to care over the win or loss that he and his men might achieve or suffer, but merely to have, briefly, any consequence at all.
The samurai , we gradually comprehend, are in a similar situation. The long unfolding of the first act explores the archaic ritual and routine of their antiquated order, the rich and complex intertwining of codes of honour, and conflicting loyalties, but also of nostalgic wistfulness for glory days long passed. It's a powerful and telling moment when the leader Shimada is shown (in an effort to sway his heart in horror and pity to the mission being proposed), a woman tortured to a gut-wrenching, nightmarish vision of Dantean hell, and rather than displaying anger or grief, his mouth twitches into a wry smile. He's just been shown a reason and purpose for his continued existence.
After that, it's men on a mission greatness. Plans, maps, subterfuge and misdirection, treks lost in the wilderness, and the "let's make our stand here" turn, with all the classic war movie / western / A-Team tension-ratcheting preparation that this entails. The third act battle is coming, and it's going to be something special.
A smartly constructed, character-rich adventure that segues into an object lesson in clear, dynamic battle staging that takes up at least a third of this lengthy movie and never bogs down or loses focus. Takeshi Miike, the enfant terrible of Japanese gore, and crazed seven-films-a-year auteur of chaotic zombie-musical-comedy spoofs has pooled all his considerable talents here to craft an altogether more mature work. And, if he hasn't quite equalled the perfection of Kurosawa's samurai masterpiece, he's come majestically close.
Rating: 5/5
Monday, 31 December 2012
Life Of Pi (2012)
Ang Lee is a capricious talent, capable of misfiring (Hulk), but when on top form there is almost no film-maker in the world today to touch him. His masterful adaptation of one of those supposedly unfilmable (pfft) novels has overcome the obvious technical challenges with possibly the best use of 3D and most realistic CGI animation yet put on screen. Such things will, in time, be surpassed; but what won't fade with the years is the virtuosic rendition in light and form of an apparently simple fable, but one shrouded in delicate layers of humanity and spirituality.
The central adventure and survival tale, ravishingly shot and stunningly acted by newcomer Suraj Sharma, is bookended by initially innocuous scene-setting and reminiscing sequences that gently, imperceptibly, shift the meaning from the story being told, to the meaning of the telling of the story. A sublime meditation on faith and the power of belief... with a stonking great tiger.
Rating: 5/5
The central adventure and survival tale, ravishingly shot and stunningly acted by newcomer Suraj Sharma, is bookended by initially innocuous scene-setting and reminiscing sequences that gently, imperceptibly, shift the meaning from the story being told, to the meaning of the telling of the story. A sublime meditation on faith and the power of belief... with a stonking great tiger.
Rating: 5/5
Monday, 17 September 2012
City Of Life And Death (Nanjing! Nanjing!) (2009)
There are a rare few films that have found a way to tackle some of the greatest atrocities ever committed by and upon the human race with such searing, unflinching emotional honesty that they move beyond the categorisations of drama or war movie to something that can best be described as bearing witness. Come And See and Schindler's List belong to this exclusive group, and so too now must Lu Chuan's extraordinary and harrowing City Of Life And Death.
It is 1937 in Nanking, former Chinese capital and scene of what is about to unfold as one of the greatest war-crimes in history (a massacre verging on genocide and an event which continues to sour Sino-Japanese relations to this day), but writer/director Lu Chuan is not here to analyse wider military events or stratagems. We open with the briefest glimpse of the Japanese assault on the city walls, and then before the credits have even finished rolling his camera is already patrolling the post-conflict city streets; a blasted, ruined landscape. His film picks up where the likes of The Pianist or Saving Private Ryan leave off, in the midst of a destroyed world, with the invaders and the surviving remnants of the defeated population already pitched together in a dangerous and disorientating mix of sporadic resistance battles, vast wretched prisoner encampments and perilously tenuous civilian "safety" zones.
Events are told in a masterful intercutting of macro and micro drama. We are introduced to only a handful of identifiable characters. Amongst them a Chinese bureaucrat trying to use his position to save his family, a young boy caught up in the resistance fighting, a naive prostitute (euphemistically referred to as comfort girls), one of thousands shipped to the frontline with no idea of the horrors awaiting them, and a single Japanese soldier with some semblance of conscience amongst his savage comrades. Their desperate personal stories intertwine inside the maelstrom of chaos and horror surrounding them.
The stunning black-and-white photography veers from stark, handheld and up-close, to vast and impressionistic sweeps that depict the large-scale massacres as nightmarish visions of some biblical apocalypse. The combined effect renders the feel of the movie as both something close to a rediscovered contemporary document and personal witness testimony, the small-scale drama illuminating the large-scale atrocity that might be beyond comprehension otherwise.
At times heart-stopping in its intensity and tragic almost beyond expressing. City Of Life And Death is a profoundly moving depiction of inhumanity at its most grievous. It simply should be seen.
Rating: 5/5
It is 1937 in Nanking, former Chinese capital and scene of what is about to unfold as one of the greatest war-crimes in history (a massacre verging on genocide and an event which continues to sour Sino-Japanese relations to this day), but writer/director Lu Chuan is not here to analyse wider military events or stratagems. We open with the briefest glimpse of the Japanese assault on the city walls, and then before the credits have even finished rolling his camera is already patrolling the post-conflict city streets; a blasted, ruined landscape. His film picks up where the likes of The Pianist or Saving Private Ryan leave off, in the midst of a destroyed world, with the invaders and the surviving remnants of the defeated population already pitched together in a dangerous and disorientating mix of sporadic resistance battles, vast wretched prisoner encampments and perilously tenuous civilian "safety" zones.
Events are told in a masterful intercutting of macro and micro drama. We are introduced to only a handful of identifiable characters. Amongst them a Chinese bureaucrat trying to use his position to save his family, a young boy caught up in the resistance fighting, a naive prostitute (euphemistically referred to as comfort girls), one of thousands shipped to the frontline with no idea of the horrors awaiting them, and a single Japanese soldier with some semblance of conscience amongst his savage comrades. Their desperate personal stories intertwine inside the maelstrom of chaos and horror surrounding them.
The stunning black-and-white photography veers from stark, handheld and up-close, to vast and impressionistic sweeps that depict the large-scale massacres as nightmarish visions of some biblical apocalypse. The combined effect renders the feel of the movie as both something close to a rediscovered contemporary document and personal witness testimony, the small-scale drama illuminating the large-scale atrocity that might be beyond comprehension otherwise.
At times heart-stopping in its intensity and tragic almost beyond expressing. City Of Life And Death is a profoundly moving depiction of inhumanity at its most grievous. It simply should be seen.
Rating: 5/5
Wednesday, 1 February 2012
The Artist (2011)
Comedy, love, and a bit with a dog.
It is the late 1920s, and a silent screen idol is at the height of his fame when a chance encounter with a girl in the crowd starts her out on the road to stardom, while his own hubris will cause him to risk everything when the coming of sound changes their fortunes.
If a few months ago, I had suggested that the best film of the year would be a completely silent movie shot in black and white, with intertitle cards, a 1.33 aspect ratio and all the rest of the 1920s movie trimmings , what might have you expected? Most likely a cunning spoof or skit on early movies, made with a knowing wink to a modern audience? Or perhaps a resolutely technical exercise? a slavish copy of the authentic article, perfectly reproducing every nuance of the form for a minority group of buffs to stroke beards sagely in appreciation of?
The wonder of Michel Hazanavicius' slice of silent heaven is that all the skills needed for the above, and more, are deployed invisibly, seemingly effortlessly, in creating pure, unabashed entertainment. This is a simple, but expertly honed tale of fame and fortune, of loss and despair, of romance, friendship and second chances. It is exactly the sort of charming, snappy caper that they (we are oft told) don't make 'em like any more, and the seemingly bold move to make a movie, about silent movies, as a silent movie, is no arch piece of artistic grandstanding, but a spot-on decision from a master craftsman to put film-making form totally at the service of the story being told.
Great performances abound across the board. The central couple of Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo are wonderful as the debonair, self-obsessed matinee idol, and the perky starlet-in-the-making. John Goodman has never been better cast than as a cigar chomping Hollywood producer, and the ever dependable James Cromwell oozes quiet dignity as a faithful assistant. But it is no poor reflection upon any of these uniformly superb players to note that they are nonetheless repeatedly acted off the screen by a Jack Russell named Uggie!
Whatever you may be expecting, whatever misgivings you might have about the idea of sitting for two hours in a darkened room watching what one could reasonably imagine to be some kind of quirky satire or art-house indulgence will swiftly be forgotten. The Artist is a perfect little gem of a movie, a joy for anyone who loves cinema.
Rating: 5/5
It is the late 1920s, and a silent screen idol is at the height of his fame when a chance encounter with a girl in the crowd starts her out on the road to stardom, while his own hubris will cause him to risk everything when the coming of sound changes their fortunes.
If a few months ago, I had suggested that the best film of the year would be a completely silent movie shot in black and white, with intertitle cards, a 1.33 aspect ratio and all the rest of the 1920s movie trimmings , what might have you expected? Most likely a cunning spoof or skit on early movies, made with a knowing wink to a modern audience? Or perhaps a resolutely technical exercise? a slavish copy of the authentic article, perfectly reproducing every nuance of the form for a minority group of buffs to stroke beards sagely in appreciation of?
The wonder of Michel Hazanavicius' slice of silent heaven is that all the skills needed for the above, and more, are deployed invisibly, seemingly effortlessly, in creating pure, unabashed entertainment. This is a simple, but expertly honed tale of fame and fortune, of loss and despair, of romance, friendship and second chances. It is exactly the sort of charming, snappy caper that they (we are oft told) don't make 'em like any more, and the seemingly bold move to make a movie, about silent movies, as a silent movie, is no arch piece of artistic grandstanding, but a spot-on decision from a master craftsman to put film-making form totally at the service of the story being told.
Great performances abound across the board. The central couple of Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo are wonderful as the debonair, self-obsessed matinee idol, and the perky starlet-in-the-making. John Goodman has never been better cast than as a cigar chomping Hollywood producer, and the ever dependable James Cromwell oozes quiet dignity as a faithful assistant. But it is no poor reflection upon any of these uniformly superb players to note that they are nonetheless repeatedly acted off the screen by a Jack Russell named Uggie!
Whatever you may be expecting, whatever misgivings you might have about the idea of sitting for two hours in a darkened room watching what one could reasonably imagine to be some kind of quirky satire or art-house indulgence will swiftly be forgotten. The Artist is a perfect little gem of a movie, a joy for anyone who loves cinema.
Rating: 5/5
Tuesday, 1 February 2011
Black Swan (2010)
Black Swan is not really a ballet movie.
Nina (Natalie Portman) is a young dancer in a prestigious ballet company, obsessed, as artists often are, with the perfection of her craft, and seemingly also driven by that age-old dramatic staple, the overbearing and overprotective mother. When she is promoted to Prima and has to take on the dual role of darkness and innocence at the heart of Swan Lake, she is pushed by the egotistical and possibly predatory director (played by Vincent Cassel) into exploring a darker, more sexual, more aggressive side of her nature.
Darren Aronofsky has made films about brilliant obsessive types, reaching for perfection and being driven to the point of madness in the past. His latest shares a lot in common with his stunning low-budget debut "Pi". Black Swan may have the big money and a star at its centre, but Aronofsky has lost not a jot of his obsessive intensity.
No movie about ballet, with a melodramatic plot centred around a fragile girl pushed to her limits can avoid comparisons with the legendary ne plus ultra of this micro sub-species, "The Red Shoes". However, while they share a common subject, stylistically this is a very different and altogether scarier proposition. Channelling the arch gothic thrill of Brian DePalma's Carrie, and a whole bunch of Dario Argento 1970s giallo chillers, along with the reality blurring bodily distortions of Cronenberg movies such as The Fly and Dead Ringers, Black Swan gradually builds to a fevered dream of madness and terror and doesn't let up till the credits roll.
So far, so unexpectedly, but entertainingly genre. But unlike many of its forbears, Aronofsky's picture is executed with exceptional art and precision. Close-up hand-held shooting keeping the frame tight in on every player, stripping away the artifice and closing in on the bone-crunching physical intensity of the ballet performances, or prowling the grimy backstage corridors, seeking out every darkened corner or artfully fractured mirror. There are fine performances from Cassel and particularly Barbara Hershey, as Nina's failed dancer mother, in a role that could easily have been grating and false. But at the heart of it all, and the making of the whole enterprise, is a heroically controlled performance from Natalie Portman, easily a career best. She runs the gamut of emotional states in a role which requires pushing them all to the extremes and yet she never hits a false note. Raw, honest, and totally empathetic, it's a miraculous achievement.
An intense, exhausting, brilliant, full-on, operatic, psychological horror. Black Swan is all these things; it's just not really a ballet movie.
Rating: 5/5
Tuesday, 5 October 2010
Gran Torino (2008)
Clint! You just gotta love Clint. Yes it's a touch predictable at times, but there are few greater pleasures in cinema than watching mean old Clint being old and mean and still tougher than chewing a mountain of bricks while taking double calculus. There's mostly great support from some believably rough-edged young unknowns (and some cranky old ones), who are assuredly handled by Eastwood's usual unfussy directorial style, which effortlessly avoids the melodramatics that could so easily have mired such a story in less experienced hands.
Though a much smaller film, in both theme and execution, than Unforgiven, this sits perfectly as a companion piece to the former: A final deconstruction of the unstoppable vengeance-laying legend of yore, and if this is, as is rumoured, to be Clint's final stand in front of the camera, then it could not be a more perfect send-off. Full circle for both a definitive character and the career of this great screen legend. Would that some other elderly icons (I'm looking at you Sean) choose so wisely. I'm still not sure about the singing though.
Rating: 5/5
The Wicker Man: Directors Cut (1973)
At last I have had a chance to catch the ninety-nine minute restored Directors Cut of this film. I won't waste time here re-reviewing this strange masterpiece of British Horror as a whole; suffice to say that the restored material makes it well worth re-visiting. Some extra opening scenes provide additional background to, and empathy with, Edward Woodward's devout police chief, while those added later on in the story give some well-judged breathing space to the slow-building tension as the initial quirkiness gives way gradually to something more sinister.
If you've seen and loved the eighty-odd minute edition that often turns up on TV then this edition is well worth seeking out. If you've never seen this film then I'd say this is now the definitive version to go for. But whatever version you are watching, for the love of god (or gods) don't go within a hundred miles of the hideous Nic Cage remake abortion!
Rating: 5/5
Audition (Ôdishon) (1999)
A subtle, slow-burning chiller; Audition is by turns touching, gently funny and rather melancholic, and comes on for half of its running time like some sort of Sleepless in Seattle as though directed by Ken Loach. However it slowly builds in layers of creepy unsettling atmosphere, before finally launching a full on assault in the last act that will leave you reeling.
The motivations and experiences of the main characters, all superbly played, seem to really have something to say about the traditions of Japanese male dominance and female submissiveness at odds with the modern world, and the dangerous psychology that can be nurtured by these restrictions and conformities. For me this raises this film not only above the level of other excellent recent Asian horror such as the much better known "The Ring", but easily knocks seven shades out of the current Hollywood trend for torture porn movies. Saw, Hostel and the like, which are just puerile adolescent gore-fantasy by comparison.
A deeply disturbing but profoundly moving experience. "kiri, kiri, kiri"!
Rating: 5/5
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)
One of the most lavishly executed films I have seen in a very long time. Full of gorgeous cinematography painted with the richest of hues, beautiful and haunting music (recorded by Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic no less!) and boasting clutch of excellent and charismatic performances, especially the strange and magnetic presence of relative newcomer Ben Whishaw in the starring role.
This is a Grimm fairy-tale of sorts, a dark gothic fantasy with pungent overtones; a film to wallow in and drink up as sheer experience. In the cold light of day it is easy to pick holes in the faintly absurd and rather episodic story, and the whole enterprise overreaches itself just a little at the end with scenes of spiritual ecstasy that veer dangerously close to parody. But such analysis does no favours to the film or the viewer. Perfume is a deeply sensual experience and a remarkable achievement at bringing a famously "unfilmable" novel so richly to life. Oh, and Dustin Hoffman is worth the price of admission alone. Few characters in all of film history have made such a perfectly judged exit.
Rating: 5/5
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