Author Archives: Sean
Dancer in the Dark – review
The Palme D’or winner at the turn of the millennium feels all Danish mouth and no trousers, says Stephen Dallimore
Bjork – Dancer in The Dark. No, not redoing that Springsteen song.
DANCER IN THE DARK (2000)
DIRECTOR: Lars von Trier
COUNTRY: Denmark
RUNNING TIME: 140 minutes
WATCH IF YOU LIKE: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Melancholia
DANISH director Lars von Trier has always been something of a darling of the Cannes Film Festival, so it was of little surprise when his musical tragedy Dancer in the Dark claimed the festival’s top prize, the Palme D’Or, in 2000. The award completed a hat-trick of the festival’s top awards for von Trier, having won the Jury Prize and the Grand Prix previously for Europa and Breaking the Waves respectively.
The film polarised critics, with The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw branding the film “silly, shallow and manipulative”, and Variety’s Derek Elley dismissing the film as “artistically bankrupt”. Roger Ebert, in what was otherwise a positive review, said that those who despised the film had an “excellent case” for doing so.
So who was right? Had the Cannes jury seen something the critics hadn’t in Dancer or had they allowed their collective love affair with von Trier’s work to cloud their judgment?
The film tells the story of Selma (played with no little gusto by Björk), an immigrant Czech factory worker slowly losing her sight to degenerative illness. Selma lives in a small rented cottage on policeman Bill’s (David Morse) land and saves every penny she makes so that her son can have corrective surgery and thus prevent him inheriting the condition causing Selma’s blindness.
Within the first half hour of Dancer it’s easy to see where Bradshaw’s “manipulative” criticism came from. When we’re introduced to Selma, whose wide eyes and pale complexion make her resemble a china doll, she’s singing “My Favourite Things” from The Sound of Music. From there she endures a constant barrage of unpleasantness, ranging from robbery to unemployment to eviction to imprisonment. It’s not so much a character arc as it is a constant downwards trajectory.
The film’s intentions are never articulated in a way that makes it seem worthwhile.
On a narrative level, the film is impossible to take seriously. Selma is an unbelievably nice character beset by a series of unbelievably horrible events, all of which she accepts without complaint or any ill-will to others. Selma is just too much of a pastiche to relate to as a genuine, flesh and blood character.
That’s not to say that the film is without merit. The film is shot in von Trier’s trademark Dogme aesthetic, using handheld cameras and natural light which adds a sense of claustrophobia as Selma’s eyesight fades and her world shrinks. Set against this no-frills style are expansive, Technicolor musical numbers apparently imagined by Selma as an escape from her everyday life. These interludes (all original scores performed by Björk herself) are both well executed and incredibly jarring against the visual and tonal greyness of the rest of the film.
It’s clear that Von Trier is a talented filmmaker, and the use of huge colourful musical sequences which constituted a breach of his own Dogme manifesto (one of a great many such breaches in the film) shows he’s not afraid to be daring and bold. It’s from this point that it’s worth considering that there may be more going on under the insubstantial surface of Dancer.
Quite what else is going on, however, is unclear. It has been argued that Selma’s struggles are representative of the grim reality faced by immigrants to the United States, particularly when compared to the idealised impression of American life given by Hollywood and particularly the films to which Dancer nods (the above mentioned Sound of Music for example).
Juxtaposing the bleakness of Selma’s life with the imagined musical sequences could be seen as comparing those dreams to the harsher realities, but when Selma’s reality is more akin to a Greek tragedy that message is somewhat undermined. While it seems impossible that Dancer is as insubstantial and superficial as it first appears, particularly when coming from a filmmaker as challenging as von Trier, the film’s true intentions are never articulated in a way that makes the whole thing seem worthwhile.
Von Trier’s long association with Cannes ended in 2011 when the filmmaker made some particularly ill-judged comments regarding the Holocaust that led to his permanent exclusion from the festival. The comments started innocuously enough (von Trier was discussing his German ancestry, which he discovered late in life having been raised by Jewish parents) but as von Trier attempted to backtrack he dug himself a deeper and deeper hole. In a similar way Dancer in the Dark probably contains a valid point somewhere, but it gets lost under a deluge of exaggerated sentiment and suffering.
The result is an imperfect marriage of message and medium, a film which falls somewhere between grandiose melodrama and subversiveness without ever being a good example of either. Despite being a vast improvement on its predecessor (the juvenile and downright offensive “comedy” The Idiots) Dancer never feels anything but unsatisfying to watch.
Funny Man – review
A weird, wonderful and quintessentially British treat, says Sloame Ocean
The titular Funny Man
FUNNY MAN (1994)
DIRECTOR: Simon Sprackling
COUNTRY: UK
RUNNING TIME: 90 mins
WATCH IF YOU LIKE: Monty Python, League of Gentlemen
AH, the horror-comedy: so rarely scary, so rarely funny. When done well, we get a film as sublime as AnAmerican Werewolf in London. When done badly, the scares lack bite and the jokes fall flat.
One rare exception to this rule is Simon Sprackling’s subversive 1994 debut, Funny Man, a uniquely British film that mixes scenes of splatstick gore with an utterly twisted sense of humour.
The film opens with a prologue in which coke-snorting record producer Max Taylor (Benny Young) wins the keys to Callum Chance’s (Christopher Lee) ancestral home in a game of poker. Taylor wastes no time in deciding to move his family into the place. However, shortly after arriving, Taylor’s wife (Ingrid Lacey) informs him that she has no intention of living in the house and, as she’s ‘too rich to be unhappy’, Taylor acquiesces.
He informs her that as soon as his brother Johnny (Matthew Devitt) arrives with their possessions, they can be on their way. Johnny turns out to be a failed guitar hero fated to spend his days lamenting what could have been and operating a removal business.
On his way to the mansion, he picks up four hitchhikers: the Hard Man (Chris Walker), a misogynistic northerner; the Crap Puppeteer (George Morton), whose specialty is a politically correct version of Punch and Judy; the Psychic Commando (Pauline Black), a tarot-card reading Jamaican and finally, Thelma Fudd, (Rhona Cameron) a bird-watching nerd who bears an uncanny resemblance to Velma from Scooby-Doo.
As Taylor’s family kills time waiting for Johnny’s arrival by exploring the house – a wonderfully eerie location strewn with joker and other assorted playing card imagery – they come across a game room. One quick spin of a wheel later and the Funny Man (Tim James), a kind of demonic jester, emerges from the structure of the house itself and begins a murderous rampage that will occupy the remainder of the film.
The sub-genre to which Funny Man bares most resemblance is the slasher: one by one a group of characters is stalked, isolated and killed by a homicidal maniac. But the rules of the slasher typically require that we have at least one character with whom to identify, in most cases the Final Girl of Carol J Clover’s seminal discussion of the genre, Men, Women and Chainsaws. Yet in Funny Man, there are no real hero figures for us to get behind. The only viable option comes in the form of the Psychic Commando and while she comes closest to disrupting the Funny Man’s antics, she ultimately proves no match for him.
As with any such effort, not everything here works, but when it works, it works well
As such, Sprackling offers us no choice but to root for the Funny Man himself. Sure, he’s a violent killer, but he’s a lot more charismatic than Jason Voorhees ever was and he gets the funniest lines here. Fortunately, Tim James is more than up to the job that the role demands of him: his performance is an anarchic thrill. Whether he’s casually strolling the corridors and grounds of the house, hunch-backed and endowed with an over-sized phallus, or dressed in drag performing a most alarming striptease at Club Sexy’s Psychedelic Wig Evening, James is a delight. As the film progresses, the Funny Man dispatches the rest of the cast in a number of remarkably creative ways, while directly addressing the audience in a manner that makes us complicit in his actions.
Reviews at the time of the film’s original release compared it to Monty Python’s Flying Circus, an analogy which makes complete sense: the humour is undoubtedly British and more often than not, surreal. More significantly though, once the Funny Man appears, the film soon settles into something of a sketch-show rhythm. As with any such effort, not everything here works, but when it works, it works well.
Its ambitions are occasionally betrayed by its low budget, the film drags at times and the final 15 minutes are somewhat anti-climactic. Nevertheless, James’ gleefully manic performance more than makes up for these shortcomings and a willing audience will find much to enjoy here; Funny Man is an irreverent treasure ripe for rediscovery.
Piranhaconda – review
Ross MacDonald dips his toe into the dangerous waters of Syfy channel films, and finds something so awful it’s rather good.
Go on, piranhaconda lad.
PIRANHACONDA (2012)
DIRECTOR: Jim Wynorski
COUNTRY: USA
RUNNING TIME: 82 mins
WATCH IF YOU LIKE: the idea of genetically mutated fish, boobs, Sharktopus,
(WARNING: this review contains spoilers. But, you know. Seriously.)
“OF course it’s safe, this is Hawaii, nothing bad ever happens in Hawaii!”
[Cut to the poor wretched fool who uttered these words being devoured.]
There’s obviously an audience for these kinds of films, which is why they keep being churned out. The number of reptiles and fish that can be genetically fused together by some big bad government agency is getting silly now – don’t they know that it’s NEVER going to work? (Mind you, from the Alien franchise, The Weyland-Yutani Corporation will still continue to farm Alien eggs and sacrifice insurmountable numbers of scientists and military personnel to try and train/farm the acid-blooded killing machines and that’s THE FUTURE, PEOPLE.)
Supposedly a sequel to Sharktopus (which I thoroughly recommend) Piranhaconda is about a rescue. Two plucky Piranhaconda’s are looking for their missing egg. Who’s stolen it? Why, it’s Mr Blonde! Yes, instead of tying men to chairs and threatening to burn them alive, Michael Madsen is now spending his days stealing eggs from super-mutant snake-fish-things. He ends up hitching a ride to Kauai, Hawaii and meets up with a film crew and they’re all captured by some bad dudes who get them to film a ransom video.
Piranhaconda is the best film I’ve seen about a giant fish/snake mutant
Are you still with me? Good. Anyway, the piranhaconda family pops up and starts chopping on everyone and chaos ensues. The main dude and two girls (who just wear hot pants and bikini tops all the time) soon work out that Madsen has the egg and that they need to return it to the ‘Condas, and escape their kidnappers and avoid getting eaten.
As you can probably tell, this isn’t going to win any awards. Madsen looks like he’d much rather be anywhere else – he could have filmed all his scenes sitting in his trailer. Rachel Hunter is the other big name but only lasts about 50 minutes before the eponymous mutated fish/snake puts her out of her misery. The head kidnapper guy is playing his role 100% serious, making him seem even more ridiculous and weirdly, slightly camp, whilst the lead guy is obviously having a whale (snake) of a time, as he gets to hang out with Boobs McGee for the entire 82 minutes and drive a quad bike.
There’s several cuts away from the main plot to focus on various groups of scantily clad ladies, (some hiking through the jungle, some part of the film crew who have wandered off) and they all have similar life expectancies; short – very, very short. They’re just red shirts waiting to die and they achieve that role with 100% success.
Near the end, one of the two main girls (the stupid one) is eaten inside a van, whilst Madsen’s character falls in the water trying to save the egg, only to also be devoured, the poor bastard.
The final girl and a man who resembles a young Kevin Sorbo manage to lure the last piranhaconda (one of them is killed halfway through by the kidnappers, using a rocket launcher!) to a waterfall and kill it with a bomb made by the pyrotechnic guy from the film set. They then hug and do the whole: “It’s over! We won! Let’s get each other naked!” thing.
This is short lived, as (unexpectedly) they’re soon turned to a fine red powder by ANOTHER massive snake/fish mutant, which made me roar with laughter.
The end. Roll credits, roll the Piranhaconda theme song.
Fitting into the familiar ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ category, I have to say that Piranhaconda is the best film I’ve seen about a giant fish/snake mutant.
———————–
IF you’ve decided you want to watch this movie, here is a fun drinking game I’ve made to accompany it:
DRINK!
- Every time you see cleavage
- Someone says something stupid/blindingly obvious
- Someone is dangerously un-genre savvy
- Someone fires a gun
- Michael Madsen struggles to deliver a line with enthusiasm
- Piranhaconda is on screen
- Piranhaconda kills someone
- Piranhaconda says a witty one-liner
- Piranhaconda jumps over a helicopter on water skis and says “AAAAAAAYYYYYYY!!!”
- You hear the Piranhaconda theme song
SIDENOTE: the DVD cover – none of this happens. Rachel Hunter never wears a bikini, just an unattractive black boiler suit, and there’s one helicopter at the start, that’s neither of these helicopters. WHAT IS GOING ON?
FILM FACT: Kauai Hawaii, where Piranhaconda was filmed, is the same place they shot Jurassic Park!
High School Record – review
This offbeat and un-airbrushed mockumentary provides an appealing and accurate depiction of teenage uncertainty, says Femi Oshatogbe
HIGH SCHOOL RECORD (2005)
DIRECTOR: Ben Wolfinsohn
COUNTRY: USA
RUNNING TIME: 89 mins
ORIGINALLY released back in 2005, Ben Wolfinsohn’s off kilter indie comedy follows the efforts of Nicholas and his friend Susan. As part of Nicholas’s senior-year film project, they set about to capture the lives of six students who attend the eccentric and sexually forthright Ms. Farewell’s acting class.
High School Record managed to draw together numerous luminaries from the American alternative punk-rock scene, including members of No Age, Mika Miko, Lavender Diamond and The Minutemen. Principally told from a documentary perspective, it manages to create a hilarious and at times touching exploration of high school experiences.
The subjects of Nicholas’s project include Caleb, a social misfit and unconventional film maker who near the beginning of the film is working on a whimsical guide to children’s nutrition.His girlfriend, the terminally disaffected Sabrina, makes it clear that whilst she enjoys the more physical aspects of their relationship with him, she doesn’t – at least at first – appear to appreciate many of his more romantic endeavours. One of the reasons for that might be her crush on Eddie, the school’s resident womanizer, race-car enthusiast and the third documentary subject.
It focuses on the naivety and uncertainty of adolescence with an accuracy that leads to characters who are identifiable
Then there’s Erin, the health-obsessed popular girl of the school who dishes out fashion, beauty and health advice whether it’s appreciated or not. Perhaps one of the most endearing documentary subjects is Tomes, whose quest to find a girlfriend leads to some of films most amusing and painfully awkward encounters.
Much of the dialogue was actually improvised by the youthful cast, giving the film an added sense of authenticity and honesty which alongside the unpolished cinematography adds to the films breezy charm. Ultimately much of what makes High School Record such an appealing film, is rather than presenting a more edited, airbrushed version of high school, it focuses on the naivety and uncertainty of adolescence with an accuracy that leads to characters who are identifiable both through their flaws, pimples and all too familiar struggles.
Femi can also be found at http://whitelikeheaven.com and @whitelikeheaven
The King of Comedy – review
Long live the king
THE KING OF COMEDY (1982)
DIRECTOR: Martin Scorcese
COUNTRY: USA
RUNNING TIME: 109 mins
WATCH IF YOU LIKE: Taxi Driver, A Serious Man
“BETTER to be king for a night than schmuck for a lifetime”. Spoken from the mouth of our twisted hero Rupert Pupkin, they accurately capture the overarching themes of this film – obsessiveness, the fragility of the human ego and the never-ending quest for the everyman to ‘make it’ in showbiz.
‘The King of Comedy’ follows Pupkin (Robert De Niro), a lonely, vulnerable guy who has a simple, unassailable goal: to become a stand up comedian. To do so, he solicits the advice of talk show extraordinaire Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis). When Pupkin gets given the short shrift by Langford and the network higher-uppers, he resorts to more unorthodox tactics to earn himself a spot on TV.
It’s a bittersweet tale of a man trying desperately to be accepted
A somewhat forgotten film buried under Martin Scorcese‘s more universally celebrated works, ‘The King Of Comedy’ sees his famed partnership with De Niro take a sideways lurch away from gangsters, pugilism and vigilantism. A comedy in the darkest sense of the word, it is pitch-black in it’s depiction of a fanatical outsider. It’s easy to find yourself smiling through clenched teeth and a sagging heart throughout.
Pupkin’s character holds some similarities with another classic Scorcese/De Niro creation, Travis Bickle of Taxi Driver. But while Bickle resolves his existential crisis through violence and intervention, Pupkin internalises his anger and detachment from life. The viewer is never privy to any moments of reflection by the protagonist; instead we are shown his various fantasies coupled with his embarrassing interactions with Langford and the network’s establishment. His frustrations become our frustrations, and the film’s third act elucidates on his obsessive drive to be a comedian.
It’s a bittersweet tale about a man trying desperately to be accepted, and in the process hanging his insecurities and resentment out to dry on the most unforgiving stage of all, stand up comedy. While maybe not ascending to the dizzying heights of Raging Bull and Taxi Driver, Robert Pupkin is arguably De Niro’s most sympathetic role. Many of his characters concern figures on the margins of society, but whose shortcomings leave them on the margins of audience empathy.
Pupkin is a disturbing yet innocent victim, befallen by the imperative to firmly, and assertively, mark your individualism on the world, which many seek to achieve by genuflecting to the emptiness of celebrity culture. Unfortunately for Rupert, he is too naive and buoyed by self-sustaining optimism to be aware of this. But at least he has his fantasy world to dive back into.
My Fathers, My Mother and Me – review
A powerful portrait of a man looking for his upbringing, says Adam Turner-Heffer
MY FATHERS, MY MOTHER AND ME (2012)
DIRECTOR: Paul-Julien Robert
COUNTRY: AUSTRIA
RUNNING TIME: 93 mins
WINNER of the best documentary prize at the London Film Festival, My Fathers, My Mother and Me (or Meine Keine Familie) is a powerful, intriguing story of the film’s director Paul-Julien Robert’s upbringing. At the beginning of the 1970’s, Robert’s mother Florence joined a commune in the Austrian countryside – called the Friedrichshof commune – who believed that the nuclear family is a corrosive force to a child’s development and that all children should be brought up in a community rather than with singular parents. Paul-Julien is a product of this ideal.
My Fathers, My Mother and Me is a remarkable film largely because it is dealt with so expertly by the man who lived it. Robert isn’t even necessarily a professional director; this is his début and is more of an exorcism than a film, but it is crucial that it is auto-biographical. Otherwise, the effect would be lost.
This documentary works because of its structure. In the first half-an-hour of the film, Robert presents the commune’s ideals objectively and without comment; both in the use of the seemingly endless amount of archive footage and in his interviews with the participants (including his mother) early on. As a result, initially the Friedrichshof sounds fairly appealing. It’s ideas and manifestos are borne out of the real life struggles these young and frustrated (mostly German, Austrian and Swiss but some travelled across Europe) individuals who want to break away from negative conventions and create something positive. At first look, the commune is an appealing space for artists and free-thinkers to live, work and create in their artistic and sexual exploits, and it seems a positive experience.
It is a powerful and moving story, excellently presented by a man who lived it
However, once they put this theory of the nuclear family as corrosive into practice, things take a wild turn for the worse. When the first children of the extended family emerge, at infant level at least, things seem stable. Simultaneously, present-day Paul-Julien goes in search of his biological father, interviewing the three candidates who all had relations with his mother around the time of conception. He also interviews the fellow children, his extended brothers and sisters and cousins, and it is here that the cracks in the veneer begin to show. While the older, original members seem fairly content with their decisions, they are slowly shown to be largely in denial, as Paul-Julien’s generation are increasingly seen as having emotional and physical issues as they entered their adult lives. Paul-Julien himself openly admits he has struggled largely maintaining long-term relationships, while his brothers and sisters are depressed and angry at their parents.
At the heart of all this, is the Friedrichshof’s co-founder, artist Otto Mühl, who initially comes across as an intelligent, witty and urbane revolutionary. Spear-heading the commune and constructing its manifesto, as well as creating accompanying art-pieces, Mühl seems to be a great leader. But with all respect and power, so often follows corruption, and in perhaps the most dramatic turn since Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert, the charmer becomes the deceiver as time goes on. Mühl becomes increasingly bullying and authoritarian especially as the children become old enough to respond. Mühl forces the children’s biological parents to separate in order to work and raise money for the commune, and while they’re away, he repeatedly forces the children to “perform” in-front of the remaining commune and mostly for himself, which becomes increasingly menacing.
In perhaps the film’s most crucial scene, Robert and his mother sit in a small empty cinema, and he projects the archive footage from when she left her son to work. Earlier in the film, Florence is still confident in past decisions, happy she took part in a counter-revolutionary movement with various sexual partners and, somewhat unconvincingly, says she does not regret leaving her son to work. But after showing her the increasingly abusive footage, in which Mühl actively and repeatedly mentally tortures “his” children, Robert’s mother, and the audience invested, hopes come crashing down about this man.
It is a powerful and moving story, excellently presented by a man who lived it. It is clear throughout the film and in interviews or the Q&A he participated in after the screening, that he is a quiet and affected man, who has had to come to terms with not being brought up in the traditional manner despite having 3 potential fathers and being regularly abused by a man considered a saint by his own parents. It’s a stunning sociological story about the human condition and what would happen in practical terms. It’s hard to say if Mühl’s theories are indeed wrong, being as initially convincing as they are, yet, so often the case with any ideology, he manages to undermine them by becoming an abusive bully. Either way, it is a harrowing yet essential look into a very human story and a must watch where available.
Adam Turner-Heffer can also be found at http://adamturnerheffer.tumblr.com/ and https://twitter.com/Severed799
The Arbor – review
An unconventional docu-drama about playwright Andrea Dunbar, her family and her estate during and after her life is unusual and captivating, says Sean Lightbown
Lorraine and Lisa portrayed by Manjinder Virk and Christine Bottomley
The Arbor (2010)
DIRECTOR: Clio Barnard
COUNTRY: UK
WATCH IF YOU LIKE: Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1974, Raining Stones
Behind my house as a kid there was a field. It wasn’t big – maybe enough for two games of jumpers -for-goalposts football at a push – but it was enough to muck about on. On Saturdays the local kids and I would descend on it like locusts. It’d usually be football or tig, but sometimes we snuck into a neighbouring house’s back garden to climb one of its enormous 20 foot-plus trees. If you managed to negotiate the brambles and twigs and cuts and bruises and ever got to the top, you would see a vast, endless parade of terraced houses and tarmac. And then your mum would shout you in for tea.
These memories coming back was one of only a series of surprises with The Arbor, Clio Barnard’s first feature film from 2010. It is part documentary, part drama, telling the story of playwright prodigy Andrea Dunbar, a working-class Yorkshire lass whose plays, written from the tender age of fifteen, managed to find themselves played in London and New York theatres. And, in the case of her work Rita, Sue and Bob Too, becoming a feature film itself.
The fact that this unorthodox narrative doesn’t become tiring is a testament to the power of the story and indeed the performances of the actors
Yet to limit The Arbor as a portrayal of this colourful, brutal and tragic life – Dunbar died at the age of 29, leaving three kids from three different fathers – would be to do it a disservice. What we see for most of the film is her family and friends’ depiction of life on The Arbor – the estate road from which the play and film’s name comes from – how each of them saw it, and how each of them went on in life.
However, we do not see a Ken Loach-esque ‘warts and all’ portrayal. Instead, Barnard decided to use real-life interviews, and get actors to lip-sync them for the documentary. The result is an extremely powerful tale spanning generations of tragedy, regret and, in the end, some form of redemption.
‘Tale’ is the key word. While this is a documentary, we are constantly reminded throughout about how subjective personal accounts are. Andrea’s eldest daughter Lorraine, played superbly by Majinder Virk, provides consistently painful, hateful and sometimes chilling memories from her past and present. This is balanced well with accounts from her sister, Lisa (Christine Bottomley), whose almost-cheerful nature about her mother’s writing provides a clear antithesis. The effect of this, plus several other similar scenes involving Andrea’s siblings, friends and lovers, is that we’re challenged. We are given several accounts of the same events, but from different perspectives, and it is up to us to decide. Indeed, the opening sequence, featuring two dogs in a field chewing over what remains in a charred bonfire, is shot in such a way that you feel you are being pulled into a dream. In a recurring motif, scenes from Dunbar’s The Arbor play are acted out on the estate itself, with a crowd of (I assume) local residents gathered around watching and reacting. Fiction is being mixed with reality, and we are reminded that what we are watching is retelling and opinion, not wholly undisputed fact.
All this wouldn’t matter, however, if the stories and performances weren’t so compelling. From Lorraine and Lisa’s childhood memories you are drawn into a very dark and personal journey through these people’s lives and the life of the estate itself. We grow up with them, get in touch with their anger, and hear their reasonings and regrets. Alongside this sits several instances where actors perform sections of Dunbar plays in front of current residents of The Arbor, not only reminding us of the film’s insistence on blurring reality and fiction, but also showing us Dunbar’s dramatizations of life on the estate.
The fact that this unorthodox narrative doesn’t become tiring is a testament to the power of the story and indeed the performances of the actors. Bottomley and Virk’s portrayals of the two sisters – one filled with hope, the other regret and anger – are compelling, and they somehow manage to play off each other despite rarely occupying the screen together. The supporting performances are also strong, helping to provide more rounded, and on occasion, completely different, accounts of events, constantly keeping you wondering.
The Arbor is a brave movie, not only in subject matter but also in its execution. It is at once abstract and yet grounded. Where it is intangible it is also personal. It is quite original and, more often that not, brilliant.
The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue – review
In the age when zombies were a new film phenomenon, Sloame Ocean finds a European classic brimful of originality and brutality.
From a time when men were men, and zombies were…well, lots of things
THE LIVING DEAD AT MANCHESTER MORGUE (1974)
DIRECTOR: Jorge Grau
COUNTRY: Spain, Italy
RUNNING TIME: 95mins
WATCH IT IF YOU LIKE: Ceremonia Sangrienta, What Have You Done to Solange?, Lucio Fulci
WE live in a world populated by the undead. Ever since the unholy triumvirate of 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead and Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake hit cinemas in the early 2000s, zombies have been everywhere. This proliferation means the zombie template has been carved in stone. Zombies want to eat you. If you’re lucky, they’ll eat all of you. If you’re not so lucky, chances are that their bite will soon have you reanimated as one of them. Oh, and if you want to kill them, shoot them in the head.
Back in 1974, however, the world was a far more innocent, less zombie-ridden place. Night of the Living Dead (NOTLD) had been released only six years previously and its sequel, the original Dawn of the Dead, still lay four years in the future. Critically, things were much looser and there was still room for a film like Jorge Grau’s masterclass in creepy atmospherics, The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue. The movie borrows the basic notion of the dead returning to consume the flesh of the living, while riffing on that idea in some genuinely original ways.
One aspect that this Spanish/Italian co-production does share with NOTLD is its attitude towards its protagonists. George Romero’s film works in part because his characters are believably flawed and the same is true here. The film begins with George (Ray Lovelock), a London-based dealer in esoteric objets d’art, leaving the big smoke for a weekend in the countryside. While filling up with petrol, his motorcycle is backed into by Edna (Cristina Galbo) who seems to exist in a near-constant state of nervous exhaustion.
Upon learning that his ride is going to be out of commission for the next few days, George virtually kidnaps Edna, demanding that she drive him to the town of Windermere. Edna reluctantly agrees to do so, although George insists that he does the driving. Before long though, Edna is begging George that they attend to her wishes first: she is here to visit her heroin-addicted sister, Katie (Jeannine Mestre), and must get there as soon as possible.
When George stops to ask for directions at a local farm, two things happen: he discovers an experimental piece of machinery being tested in a field – the aim of the equipment is to destroy unwanted insects and parasites. Meanwhile, back at the car, Edna is attacked by a man who fits the description of Guthrie, a local ‘loonie’ who drowned a week previously. Could the machine have anything to do with Guthrie’s return from the dead…?
Neither of our two ‘heroes’ is immediately likeable: George is all brash 1970s machismo, while Edna seems like she might pass out at any moment. Eventually George and Edna make it to Katie’s cottage, arriving immediately after her husband, Martin (Fernando Hilbeck), has been dispatched by Guthrie. With this murder, the third central character is introduced, a police inspector played by Arthur Kennedy.
This figure allows Grau to launch a pointed attack on the establishment that Kennedy represents: he is a vicious thug, only too ready to physically assault George when he steps out of line. In many respects, Kennedy’s antagonistic attitude and his refusal to believe that George and Edna are innocent of any wrongdoing poses as much of a threat as the zombies; if a central theme that runs through zombie cinema is the idea of a previous generation returning to devour youthful vitality, arguably Kennedy is on the side of the flesh-eaters here.
Grau transforms scenes of pastoral beauty into something far more sinister
One significant way in which this film is very different from Romero’s original zombie trilogy is the fact that the action takes place across a variety of settings: once Romero’s zombies are up and stumbling, it isn’t long before a siege is underway, whether it takes place in a home, a shopping mall, or an underground bunker.
Here though, the action switches from location to location on a regular basis, with Grau knowing exactly how to extract the maximum from the film’s environments. Much of the praise Grau has received over the years for this film centres on how he shoots the landscapes of northern England, transforming scenes of pastoral beauty into something far more sinister. The photography is accompanied by an excellent score by Giuliano Sorgini, ranging from the funky opening track, John Dalton Street, to the throbbing synths that add texture to many of the scenes.
However, it wasn’t atmosphere and music that earned this film its place on the Department of Public Prosecution’s list of so-called video nasties back in the early 80s. Be warned, there are several moments of graphic violence here which compete with anything in the works of either Romero or Fulci. And of course, no European horror film from this era would be complete without questionable dubbing choices and a plot which is rarely logical.
If you’ve got a taste for this kind of film already, then you’re probably aware that for the true genre-phile such concerns are negligible. And for the uninitiated looking for some undead action from a time before the omnipresence of World War Z and The Walking Dead, some advice: just sit back and surrender yourself to the atmosphere of this underrated zombie masterpiece.
Kiss the Water – review
A documentary about an eccentric fishing-fly maker from the Highlands may appear niche, but Steve Dallimore finds heart in this dreamlike tale.
Fly-making – a labour of love
KISS THE WATER (2013)
DIRECTOR: Eric Steel
COUNTRY: USA, UK
RUNNING TIME: 103 mins
WATCH IT IF YOU LIKE: The Bridge, Bending Steel
IT’S often the mark of a good documentary that the film appeals to people with no real interest in the subject matter. So, when making Kiss the Water, a film about fly fishing in the Scottish Highlands, director Eric Steel must have either been supremely confident of making a good film or intent on appealing to a very niche audience.
The film is only Steel’s second after 2006’s The Bridge, a thought-provoking if morally dubious piece on suicide at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. While it’s understandable that he’s chosen a much lighter subject matter, the initial concern is that fly fishing may be a little too insubstantial to warrant 82 minutes of the viewer’s time.
Kiss the Water focus, however, is expert fly (a small fishhook tied with small colourful threads to act as bait) maker Megan Boyd, and when Steel explains that he first heard of Boyd when her obituary was published in the New York Times, it becomes clear that there’s more to her than to your average fly tier (if such a thing exists).
Despite rarely leaving the Highlands Megan Boyd’s expertise was of world renown, leading to royal appointment by Prince Charles and eventually an OBE. That Boyd declined to collect her OBE because of a conflicting prior engagement (she was due to attend a bridge game with a group of friends on the same evening) indicates the other reason she makes for a compelling subject: by any measure, she was an eccentric character. Boyd dressed in full suit and tie for her work and made any journeys for supplies by motorcycle in an era when few women drove at all.
Large parts of the film are made up of long, atmospheric shots of the Scottish countryside and innovative animated sequences, lending Kiss the Water a dreamlike air
That Steel eschews traditional documentary format to tell the story of a very non-traditional life is a masterstroke. While the film utilises talking heads to provide some insight into Megan’s life, large parts of the film are made up of long, atmospheric shots of the Scottish countryside and innovative animated sequences, lending Kiss the Water a dreamlike air, similar to Terrence Malick or the more meditative works of Gus Van Sant. Rather than being a point A to point B story, it feels more like a patchwork assembly of memories, and it’s all the better for it.
Conspicuous by her absence is Boyd herself, who only features once in the film. While to an extent this was due to a lack of usable photos or footage (Boyd retired in 1985 and died in 2001) there’s enough in the film to suggest it was also a stylistic decision.
Steel explains at the outset that there are two sorts of fishing stories; the one that you caught and the one that got away. It’s the latter that best describes Steel’s portrayal of Boyd; she’s the one that can never be measured or truly understood, the one whose story will always remain incomplete but is nonetheless worth telling, if only to let imagination fill the gaps the sparse facts can’t fill.
The film isn’t without its flaws. There’s a small segment that suggests an allegorical connection to Princess Diana that is poorly judged, badly realised and thoroughly unnecessary. The film’s ponderous pace and elegiac tone come perilously close to outstaying their welcome in its comparatively brief running time, but as this is only the second film of what is hopefully a fledgling documentary career for Steel, these are forgivable missteps.
The film’s tone and subject matter mean it clearly won’t be for everyone, but Steel has done an admirable job of turning what could have been a special interest curiosity into a charming, fascinating portrait of a truly unique individual. Indeed, it seems appropriate that the film should have as broad an appeal; as one of Boyd’s friends explains, she never enjoyed fishing either.
The Signal – review
In a genre littered with ponderous remakes and cliches, Christopher Devlin is pleased to find that horror can still find innovative ways to scare.
Mya in The Signal
THE SIGNAL (2007)
DIRECTORS: David Bruckner, Jacob Gentry, Dan Bush
COUNTRY: USA
RUNNING TIME: 103 mins
WATCH IT IF YOU LIKE: 28 Days Later, Sightseers, The House of the Devil
IT can be hard going for lovers of the horror genre. So often they are trapped between the straitened margins of Hollywood horror – as pumped out by Lionsgate, et al – and the scrappy, often unwatchably amateurish indie scene, which can be a slog to pan through and sift out the rare gems.
As such, when I watched The Signal on the Horror Channel last year, it was far more in hope than expectation. I’ve become wary of films shown there that were made in the last few years, especially ones with a cast of unknowns and no pre-approved “buzz”, having sat through more unmitigated shambles over the years than I care to count.
The film itself seemed to toy with these low expectations. It begins as a cheap-looking thriller in which a shirt-and-tie psycho hunted young women through a forest, the film’s name smashing into the scene on a red title card as he brandishes a hammer.
But then the image began to skip, and distort, and eventually was washed out in a storm of colourful, kaleidoscopic static. It then abruptly cut to a young couple in a messy bedroom being awoken by this image on their TV.
Immediately, the feel was different. The camera work was loose and intuitive, the acting believable, the pace unhurried. It was bracing to see such confidence and, frankly, competence, and having been wrongfooted, I was hooked.
The couple have to part, with the girl, Mya (Anessa Ramsey), forced to return to her husband, despite the protestations of Ben (Justin Welborn) and his talk of the life they could lead if they escape their obligations – and the ominously named city of Terminus – to start afresh. That this one scene constitutes the on-screen majority of a love story which forms the emotional core of the film, and does so successfully, is testament to the economy of the writers and directors.
This doesn’t mean that there is impatience to rush headlong from one set piece to the next. The Signal is as much about ideas and atmosphere as it is about bloodletting and shocks (though these arrive in quantity before too long). The economy means that there is a trust placed in the audience to absorb the themes and emotions, without resorting to reams of exposition and wasted running time.
You may have seen above that I pluralised writers and directors. That’s because this film has a wicked trick to play. That initial cut from creaky backwoods slasher to subtle scene of domesticity is employed to set the audience up for a game of exquisite corpse, a surrealists’ favourite. The three writer-directors helm one third of the film each, picking up strands the previous filmmaker has left for them and applying differing approaches to the same single narrative.
The Signal pinballs from tense to funny to mournful, yet the divergent approaches are not so jarring as to derail the movie
The first story concerns the TV static that woke up the couple. This spills out of every radio and telephone, broadcasting a signal which drives ordinary people to murder. As Mya makes her way back to her overbearing husband Lewis (A.J. Bowen), the eerie tension and rantings of her neighbours quickly and shockingly escalates into a corpse strewn hallway patrolled by a hulking figure slashing throats with hedge trimmers. This first act, by David Bruckner (V/H/S), is a tense, violent survival thriller, teasing out the eeriness and confusion of navigating a society without rules and totally devoid of trust. Sure, it’s a familiar subject, especially in the wake of 28 Days Later, but it is effective and shocking in execution.
Jacob Gentry’s second section shifts the action abruptly into a blackly comic, violent farce which still brims with menace. It also mines uncomfortable laughs with droll performances and bizarre non-sequiturs that the confused victims of the signal, including the wild-eyed Lewis now gate-crashing a truly bizarre New Year’s Eve party, spout while they are wracked with hallucinations and murderous paranoia. It’s a high-risk act of tonal plate-spinning which Gentry (director of the tacky MTV guilty pleasure My Super Psycho Sweet 16 movie series) pulls off with aplomb. The pace is slowed significantly, and the mood darkened still, for Dan Bush’s final act, reflecting on the carnage and returning us to the central story of Ben and Mya. His approach is more mysterious and more wearied, in contrast with the onslaught which preceded it.
The unusual nature of the The Signal’s creation keeps the audience fully engaged, not allowing it to settle in to a predictable narrative groove. It pinballs from tense to funny to mournful, yet the divergent approaches are not so jarring as to derail the movie as a single viewing experience.
As a film-making exercise which could have easily fallen into indulgence or disjointed shambles, the movie’s success lies in crafting something unique from recognisable elements, and something wholly satisfying from individual, diverse moments of brilliance. This is no small achievement, considering the additional difficulties of working at such a low budget, which it copes with creatively and admirably.
Above all, it provides encouragement that trawling through the morass of seemingly indistinguishable indie-horror titles can still, occasionally, yield something special, and, vitally, that the genre still has surprises to offer.
Christopher Devlin can also be found at http://quilllicker.blogspot.com/
Sod your multiplex 
