Video Dogs

January, New Titles, 'One Day', 'Beginners', 'Priest', 'Vigo'

2012-01-12T02:53:00.000-08:00

The worries about this adaptation of David Nicholls’ much-loved and likeable 2009 novel were obvious when it was first announced. Could Anne Hathaway pull off the character of a Northern lass (‘We spent all our summers in a caravan in Whitby’), first as an Edinburgh student and later a graduate working in a Taco joint? Would Danish director Lone Scherfig be sensitive to the book’s subtle but playful period stylings? Would the film’s makers resist the temptation to tip what was already a slightly gimmicky and cloying story into the territory of full-on romantic sap? And how could one film do justice to 23 eventful years in the lives of confident public-school boy Dexter and earthy, less assured Emma (Hathaway) – two opposites whom the novel visits once a year on the same date they first have a romantic encounter in 1988 as students?

The result is a compromise – but not a disastrous one. Nicholls’ script follows his novel closely as a ‘greatest hits’ spin on the book, rather than taking it anywhere new. Dexter follows a path of success, hubris and self-destruction, followed by rehabilitation, while Emma takes equally as long to discover what she wants from life and a friendship with Dexter, but without the accompanying obnoxiousness.

Other new stuff this week
SMURFS, THE (2011)
PRIEST (2011)
ONE DAY (2011) BLU-RAY
WEEDS SEASON 6 (2010)
COMPLETE JEAN VIGO, THE (1930-1934) CRITERION
LANDMARKS OF EARLY SOVIET FILM
RIVER MURDERS, THE (2011)
BEGINNERS (2010)
CHANGE-UP, THE (2011)
FROZEN PLANET
INTO THE UNIVERSE with Stephen Hawking

New titles, December, 'Gainsbourg', 'Senna', 'The Guard'

2011-12-29T05:41:00.000-08:00

First-time writer-director Joann Sfar, known for his popular comic ‘The Rabbi’s Cat’, tries to get under the skin of his subject, French pop crooner Serge Gainsbourg, rather than detail his every scandalous misadventure.

To a certain extent he succeeds, leaving us in no doubt of the lasting impression made on young Lucien Ginsburg by being forced to wear a yellow star in wartime Paris, where Nazi propaganda covered the streets with anti-Semitic grotesquerie. The film’s most daring move is to have one of these caricatures step down off the wall and become a life-size marionette which follows Gainsbourg around. However, instead of eating away at his confidence, ‘La Gueule’ (‘The Mug’) becomes a Tyler Durden-esque alter-ego prompting showbiz-aspirant Serge to further deeds of daring naughtiness. Yes, my boy, you shall shag Salvador Dalí’s girlfriend on the artist’s sofa!

With chic animated interludes adding to the appeal, it’s clear there’s an element of visual brio not found in every musical biopic, as this self-styled ‘Vie Héroïque’ happily encompasses sundry winning female performances (Anna Mouglalis as a slinky Ms Greco, Laetitia Casta as a voluptuous Bardot, the late Lucy Gordon as a gamine Miss Birkin) while happily spotlighting lookalike Eric Elmosnino's convincingly addled incarnation of the title role.

In the end the film suffers, as did 'Walk The Line' and a host of other music-star biopics, from following the lifestory too literally rather than taking a fictional whizz on the idea. Come back Ken Russell, all is forgiven.

Other new stuff this month...

5 DAYS OF WAR (2011)

CONAN THE BARBARIAN (2011)

GUARD, THE (2011)

CATCH .44 (2011)

GREATEST MOVIE EVER SOLD, THE (2011)

GANTZ (2010)

JANE EYRE (2011)

SENNA (2011)

SENNA (2011) BLU-RAY

COWBOYS & ALIENS (2011)

COWBOYS & ALIENS (2011) BLU-RAY

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (2011)

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (2011) BLU-RAY

GREEN LANTERN (2011)

LARRY CROWNE (2011)

BEAUTIFUL LIES (2010)

WU XIA (2011)

WICKER MAN, THE (1973)

CONAN THE BARBARIAN (2011) BLU-RAY

TREE OF LIFE, THE (2011)

TROLL HUNTER (2010)

FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS (2011)

CARLOS (2010) CRITERION

EVIL DEAD, THE (1981) BLU-RAY

EVIL DEAD 2 (1987) BLU-RAY

AO: THE LAST NEANDERTHAL (2010)

JOHNNY THE GIANT KILLER (1950)

STAR SPANGLED GIRL (1971)

FUTURAMA SEASON 5 (2009-2010)

A MAN VANISHES (1967)

R (2010)

30ROCK SEASON 4 (2009)

A BING CROSBY CHRISTMAS (1998)

THE COMPLETE HUMPHREY JENNINGS (1934-1940) BLU-RAY

THE COMPLETE HUMPHREY JENNINGS (1934-1940)

ORPHEUS (1950) CRITERION

GAINSBOURG (2010)

STRIP-TEASE (1963)

LE BEAU SERGE (1958) CRITERION

KURONEKO (1968) CRITERION

JUMPING JACK FLASH (1986)

CONTACT (2000)

Ken Russell (1927-2011)

2011-11-28T04:01:00.000-08:00

The great British director has died, aged 84; his most notorious film 'The Devils' will be released by the BFI this coming March.

In May this year, Ken Russell came to the first UK screening of one of his most notorious films, The Devils, in a newly restored form. He was frail and unable to make it down the steep steps of the Barbican’s main cinema screen, so sat at the back, but managed to participate in the on-stage Q&A thanks to a roving mike. Precise recall wasn’t always within his power, but a lot of the old fire was undimmed, as he recounted his battles with Warner Brothers over the cuts they demanded, and his pride at getting to see something close to the original assembly – thanks to the detective work of Mark Kermode, among others – with a sold-out audience.

Having caught only the tail end of the film on late-night Channel 4 in my teens, it was pretty thrilling to experience it fully and for the first time in the company of Russell himself. It’ll come to be seen as the defining film of a great hellraising career: one in which hell was sometimes almost literally raised, as at the castle of Lord Byron in his 1986 literary fantasia, Gothic.

Russell’s reputation for outlandishness – he was certainly one of the maddest imagists British cinema has ever spawned – should never be taken as the whole story, though. He could work within the establishment as well as outside it, and it’s interesting how many of his films launched themselves into mania from the springboard of seemingly respectable genres, such as literary adaptation (he returned committedly to DH Lawrence) or biopics of classical composers. An Oscar nominee for his direction of 1969’s Women in Love, which won Best Actress for Glenda Jackson, he even dipped his toe into Hollywood waters with the inimitably bonkers one-two of Altered States (1980) and Crimes of Passion (1984): a bit like slapping your host on one cheek, then the other, and wondering if you’ll be asked back.

There was mischief, insult and daring in Russell’s vision, and a playfulness that made him unique – his favourite game was to exploit the starchy norms of British prestige cinema and then abruptly throw an orgy, or blow loud raspberries in the direction of the church. In this sense he followed the rudely provocative tradition of Fellini or Buñuel , but fused that with an antic spirit of thoroughly British eccentricity. His idea of a costume drama was pretty much the antithesis of what Merchant-Ivory said it should be: one where everyone ran around giggling, things exploded and wigs went flying. Only with Mahler’s 5th playing instead of the Benny Hill theme tune. (Daily Telegraph)

Rent Ken Russell at Video Dogs - Women In Love, Lady Chatterley, The Rainbow, The Lair of the White Worm, Gothic, Mahler, Elgar, Delius, Lisztomania, Tommy, Altered States, Whore, and Billion Dollar Brain. Plus, Ken Russell at the BBC. Coming soon, 'The Boyfriend' & 'Music Lovers'

November, New Titles, 'Point Blank', 'George Harrison'

2011-11-14T04:45:00.000-08:00

Samuel Pierret (Gilles Lellouche) is a nurse who saves the wrong guy -- a thief (Roschdy Zem) whose henchmen take Samuel's pregnant wife (Elena Anaya) hostage to force him to spring their boss from the hospital. A race through the subways and streets of Paris ensues, and the body count rises. Can Samuel evade the cops and the criminal underground and deliver his beloved to safety?

The experience of watching it evokes visions of the inevitable US refit (‘Anything for Her’ was remade by Paul Haggis as ‘The Next Three Days’). Instead, we have Gilles Lellouche (pictured) as Samuel, a brawny but benevolent trainee nurse whose wife is on the cusp of dropping a sprog. In a standard wrong time/wrong place set-up, Samuel is coerced into smuggling Roschdy Zem's wounded crim out of hospital, only to be roped into carrying out more depraved deeds when he finds out his wife has been taken hostage.

It’s hardly what you’d call high art, but Cavayé knows how to push buttons when it comes to straight-up, palm-sweating spectacle. It’s dumb and manipulative, such as the scene in which the bad guys almost dispose of the pregnant spouse by tossing her out of a window. But it’s also brisk and unpretentious, with no hint that we’re meant to take anything more away from this than a cheap but effective thrill.

Other New Titles in November

GEORGE HARRISON: LIVING IN THE MATERIAL WORLD

BEASTLY (2011)

HARLAN ELLISON: DREAMS WITH SHARP TEETH (2008)

NURSE JACKIE - SEASON ONE (2010)

NURSE JACKIE - SEASON TWO (2011)

MORGIANA (1972)

MICHAEL CACOYANNIS TRILOGY (1977)

POINT BLANK (2010)

CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS (2010)

AVANT-GARDE 3: EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA 1922-1954

BEN-HUR (1959) BLU-RAY

INTIMIDATION (1960) CRITERION

BLACK SUN (1964) CRITERION

I HATE BUT LOVE (1962) CRITERION

THIRST FOR LOVE (1966) CRITERION

WARPED ONES, THE (1960) CRITERION

TWIN PEAKS DEFINITIVE GOLD BOX EDITION

SCREAM 4 (2011)

SENNA (2011)

MY FORBIDDEN PAST (1951)

BLOOD ON THE MOON (1948)

BULLET TO BEIJING (1996)

MIDNIGHT IN ST PETERSBURG (1997)

MADAME ROSA (1977)

KILLING, THE(1957) CRITERION

SZINDBAD (1971)

13 ASSASSINS (2011)

CUL-DE-SAC (1966) CRITERION

FATHER (1966)

TAKING OFF (1971)

KILLING BONO (2011)

TREACLE JR. (2010)

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES (2011)

POPE JOAN (2009)

HONEY 2 (2011)

WRECKED (2010)

RITE, THE (2011)

LITTLE WHITE LIES (2010)

SLITHER (1973)

MICKEY ONE (1965)

HICKEY AND BOGGS (1972)

BAL (2010)

October, New Titles, 'The films of Pierre Etaix'

2011-10-24T07:44:00.000-07:00

Long overdue, the films of French comedian, Pierre Etaix, have finally come to DVD after a long legal wrangle over the rights to the films themselves was won by Etaix and his supporters.

Pierre Etaix built his career principally around comedy. In 1954, he moved from his native Roanne to Paris where he would make a living as an illustrator and eventually as a solo performer in cabaret and variety venues. He would also work as a circus clown in partnership with Nino Fabbri.

In 1954, he met Jacques Tati for whom he worked for 4 years as a draughtsman and gagman in the preparation ansd shooting of Tati's film, My Uncle, and as an assistant-director during the shooting, also playing a small, uncredited role in that film. In 1961, he performed his own “number” in Tati's music-hall production. Jour de Fête à I'Olympia.

In 1961, he became a filmmaker, realising two shorts - Rupture (FIPRESCI prize in Mannheim 1961) and Happy Birthday (Oscar in Hollywood 1962) - both co-written with Jean-Claude Carrière. Between 1962 and 1970, he realised five features: The Suitor (Prix LOUIS DELLUC 1963; the Comic Film Prize of the Moscow International Film Festival, 1963), Yoyo (Grand Prize - OCIC International Festival in Venice 1965), So Long as You're Healthy (Silver Siren at the International Festival of Sorrento), The Great Love (Grand Prize of French Cinema 1969) and The Land of Milk & Honey(Pays de cocagne, 1970).

The box set includes all five features, which are available separately at the store as individual feature disks.

October, New Titles, 'Jane Eyre', 'Bridesmaids', 'Win Win'

2011-10-15T02:58:00.001-07:00

A mousy governess who softens the heart of her employer soon discovers that he's hiding a terrible secret. The latest adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's great novel about sexual harassment in the workplace. Jane's growing love for her employer, Mr Rochester, leads to some touching, but his inappropriate behaviour is punished with loss of sight. This like the last adaptation of the novel (BBC, 2006) was also filmed at Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, but for all the gloom and mood lacks the earlier film's sexual tension.

FORKS OVER KNIVES (2010)

A new documentary examines the profound claim that most, if not all of the so-called "diseases of affluence" that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by rejecting our present menu of animal-based and processed foods.

OTHER NEW TITLES

THOR (2011)
SHADOWS OF PROGRESS (1951-1977)
THOR (2011) BLU-RAY
BRIDESMAIDS (2011)
BRIDESMAIDS (2011) BLU-RAY
JANE EYRE (2011) BLU-RAY
SCREAM 4 (2011)
LAST NIGHT (2010)
LION KING, THE (1994)
LION KING, THE (1994) BLU-RAY
WATER FOR ELEPHANTS (2011)
WATER FOR ELEPHANTS (2011) BLU-RAY
AMERICAN BREAKDOWN (2008)
WIN WIN (2011)
FORKS OVER KNIVES (2011)
EVERYTHING MUST GO (2010)
CONSPIRATOR, THE (2010)
POETRY (2010)

September, New titles, 'Snowtown', 'Insidious', 'Hesher'

2011-09-23T07:21:00.000-07:00

Australia's worst serial killer, John Bunting, and the accomplices who fell under his spell are profiled in "Snowtown." An extremely bleak psychological horror-thriller with arty trimmings, the movie compels for a couple of reels before muddled plotting sets in and audiences are left with no one to connect with when the central character transforms from innocent bystander to participant in Bunting's crimes. Debut helmer Justin Kurzel guides a predominantly non-professional cast with distinction, but this descent into unremittingly depressing territory will require careful marketing and positive critical notices to attract viewers. (Variety)

INSIDIOUS

From the co-creators of ‘Saw’ (James Wan and Leigh Whannell, here director and writer) and the director of ‘Paranormal Activity’ (Oren Peli, producing) comes a project featuring nothing that was original, distinctive or scary about either earlier film. It starts like a haunted-house movie: spooked by something nasty in the loft of his parents’ new house, Dalton (Ty Simpkins) lapses into a coma. His mother, Renai (Rose Byrne), hires loopy medium Elise (Lin Shaye), who declares: ‘Your son is not in a coma. It’s not the house that’s haunted, it’s him.’ Renai’s sceptical husband (Patrick Wilson) is equally unimpressed when Elise calls in a pair of bickering, nerdy ghostbusters (Angus Sampson and Whannell), who arrive with tons of Heath Robinson gear. Suddenly, we swerve into a preposterous supernatural mystery – seemingly grabbed from the waste baskets of M Night Shyamalan and Sam Raimi – as Dalton is besieged by evil spirits and the medium spouts half-baked guff about astral planes. Not so much insidious as inexcusable. (Time Out Film)

HESHER

Loud music. Pornography. Burning shit to the ground. These are a few of Hesher’s favorite things. And they are what Hesher brings into the lives of TJ and his father, Paul when he takes up residence in their garage uninvited. Grief-stricken by the loss of TJ’s mother in a car accident, Paul can’t muster the strength to evict the strange squatter, and soon the long-haired, tattooed Hesher becomes a fixture in the household. Like a force of nature, Hesher’s anarchy shakes the family out of their grief and helps them embrace life once more. (Wrekin Hill Entertainment)

OTHER NEW STUFF THIS WEEK

HEARTBEATS (2010)

PROSTITUTE (1980)

MAMMUTH (2010)

LOST THING, THE (2011)

4.3.2.1 (2011)

CAIRO TIME (2011)

PATTON (1970)

STRANGE WORLD OF GURNEY SLADE, THE (2011)

JOANNA (1968)

PINTER'S PROGRESS & THE HOMECOMING (2010)

WARD, THE (2010)

TAKE ME HOME TONIGHT (2011)

CEREMONY (2010)

SOMETHING UNKNOWN (2009)

BURKE AND HARE (2010)

September, New Titles, 'Valhalla Rising', 'Super', 'Enter The Void'

2011-09-13T11:07:00.000-07:00

A brutal, mesmerising film from Dane Nicolas Winding Refn (‘Pusher’, ‘Bronson’), dominated by Mads Mikkelsen as a mute fighter, whose journey from twelfth-century Scotland to a strange New World is an odyssey of self-realisation. Enslaved by a pagan Scottish clan chieftain, the nameless warrior is chained and forced to fight to the death in hand-to-hand bouts staged for amusement and betting. Escaping with the help of a young boy, who names him One-Eye, the warrior learns to use weapons and joins a band of Vikings, but these are Christian converts bound for Jerusalem to reclaim the city for their faith. Their ship, however, is enveloped by a mysterious mist, which finally lifts to reveal an unknown land. Lost, hungry and under attack from the natives, the Viking converts lose their faith and lose their minds, turning on one another – but the enigmatic One-Eye discovers his destiny and embraces his essential self.

There are shades here of Terrence Malick’s elemental feel for landscape, the doomed colonial enterprise of Werner Herzog’s ‘Aguirre, Wrath of God’ and Vincent Ward’s visionary ‘The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey’, yet Refn makes this hypnotic, dreamlike film entirely his own.

Other New Stuff This Week

SUPER (2011)

VALHALLA RISING (2009)

POTICHE (2010)

DIARY OF A WIMPY KID 2: RODRICK RULES (2011)

ENTER THE VOID (2009)

HOLY WATER (2009)

MIDDLE MEN (2009)

MAD BASTARDS (2011)

MISFITS, THE (2011) SEASON 1 + 2

MAMMUTH (2010)

SOURCE CODE Blu-ray

Criterion CUL-DE-SAC

Criterion SECRET SUNSHINE

August, New Titles, 'Meek's Cutoff', 'Source Code', 'Battle Los Angeles'

2011-08-31T04:56:00.000-07:00

Kelly Reichardt's glorious slow-burn western, which had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, is finally on DVD.

Two equally cool, contemplative and plot-neutral films – ‘Meek’s Cutoff’ and Sofia Coppola’s ‘Somewhere’ – competed for the Golden Lion. One was universally lauded and touted as the surefire winner. The other was dismissed as shallow, self-regarding and meaningless. And the wrong film won.

The sheer gulf of quality and intention between these two superficially similar films couldn’t be wider. The ‘cinema of nothing’ that both Reichardt and Coppola practice may be currently in vogue, but their approaches to it differ wildly: where Coppola uses the camera to reflect her own celebrity-centric interests, Reichardt’s gaze is firmly fixed on the outside world, and particularly on those poor souls who have lost their place within it.

‘Meek’s Cutoff’ is a western, but it’s like no horse opera you’ve ever seen. Michelle Williams plays Emily, one of a small band of settlers wagon-training west, keeping their eyes peeled for Indian raiders. But with supplies dwindling and tough-talking guide Meek (Bruce Greenwood) looking increasingly out of his depth, the group reluctantly turn to a captured Cayuse warrior (Rod Rondeaux) for guidance.

OTHER NEW STUFF THIS WEEK

PAUL (2011) BLU-RAY
PAUL (2011)
SUCKER PUNCH (2011) BLU-RAY
SUCKER PUNCH (2011)
SOURCE CODE (2011) BLU-RAY
SOURCE CODE (2011)
SOURCE CODE (2011) BLU-RAY
SOURCE CODE (2011)
UP PERISCOPE! (1959)
YOUR HIGHNESS (2011)
BATTLE: LOS ANGELES (2011) BLU-RAY
MEEK'S CUTOFF (2011)
LOU (2011)
PLEASURE GIRLS, THE (1965)
PLEASURE GIRLS, THE
BATTLE: LOS ANGELES (2011)
REEF, THE (2010)
HEDGEHOG, THE (2009)
SCARFACE (1983) BLU-RAY
A CAT IN PARIS (2010)
EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF ADELE BLAC-SEC (2010)
HOUSEMAID, THE (2010)
TOMBSTONE (1993)
AMADEUS (1984) BLU-RAY
BOURNE IDENTITY, THE (2002) BLU-RAY
BOURNE SUPREMACY, THE (2004)
BOURNE ULTIMATUM. THE (2007)
ALIEN (1979) BLU-RAY
ALIENS (1986) BLU-RAY
ALIEN 3 (1992) BLU-RAY
ALIEN RESURRECTION (1997) BLU-RAY
MAKING THE ALIEN ANTHOLOGY (2010)
MUSIC ROOM, THE (1958) CRITERION

New Stuff, August, 'Submarine', 'Paul', 'Fast Furious 5'

2011-08-24T08:30:00.000-07:00

This is a spirited and warm film debut from TV comic Richard Ayoade, best known as an actor on ‘The IT Crowd’ and a little less as a one-time writer and director of ‘Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace’ for Channel 4 – as well as a maker of music videos for the likes of the Arctic Monkeys. Ayoade’s background is in telly, but his film is proudly cinematic – so much so that its big-screen influences are almost its defining characteristics.

Adapted from Joe Dunthorne’s 2008 novel, ‘Submarine’ is a retro coming-of-age tale about a teenage boy shell-shocked by everyday life in 1980s Wales. This is the story of Oliver Tate, a schoolboy whose life is a movie in his head, which explains why his parents, played brilliantly by Noah Taylor and Sally Hawkins, are such impenetrable but telling caricatures, weighed down by the hang-ups and deficiencies Oliver affords them.

IRONCLAD (2010)
MADEMOISELLE CHAMBON
BARNEY'S VERSION
COEUR FIDELE (1923) BLU-RAY
COEUR FIDELE (1923)
ROBINSON IN RUINS (2010) BLU-RAY
ROBINSON IN RUINS (2010)
A DAY IN THE LIFE (1953-1964) BLU-RAY
A DAY IN THE LIFE (1953-1964)
REQUIEM FOR A VILLAGE (1975) BLU-RAY
HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN (2011)
THEY MET IN THE DARK (1943)
SMALL TIME (1996)
BEDWAYS (2010)
LOVE LIKE POISON (2010)
SUSPICIONS OF MR WHICHER, THE (2011)
WARD NO. 6 (2009)
CAUSE CELEBRE (1987)
BETTY'S BATH (1928)
NAKED KISS (1964) CRITERION
BLACK MOON (1975) CRITERION
ZAZIE DANS LE METRO (1960) CRITERION
RED SHOES, THE (1948) CRITERION
CHAINS (1949) CRITERION
TORMENTO (1950) CRITERION
NOBODY'S CHILDREN (1952) CRITERION
WHITE ANGEL, THE (1955) CRITERION
DIABOLIQUE (1955) CRITERION
PEOPLE ON SUNDAY (1930) CRITERION
PATHS OF GLORY (1957) CRITERION
FAST AND FURIOUS 5 (2011) BLU-RAY
FAST AND FURIOUS 5 (2011)
ARTHUR (2011)
BRIGHTON ROCK (2010)
IT'S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY (2010)
EASTBOUND AND DOWN (2010) SEASON 2
TROUBADORS (2011)
SONS OF ANARCHY (2008) SEASON 1
GRAN TORINO (2008) BLU-RAY
KREMLIN LETTER, THE (1970)
GREAT WHITE SILENCE, THE (1924) BLU-RAY
GREAT WHITE SILENCE, THE (1924)
CARMEN (1984)
LATE AUTUMN & A MOTHER SHOULD BE LOVED (1960) BLU
LATE AUTUMN & A MOTHER SHOULD BE LOVED (1960)
REQUIEM FOR A VILLAGE (1975) BLU-RAY
STRAVINSKY (1982)
LE BOSSU (1959)

New Titles, July, 'Norwegian Wood', 'My Dog Tulip', 'The Trip'

2011-07-30T03:26:00.000-07:00

Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung has a distinct curiosity about the significance of music, both in everyday life and in cinema. A recurring scene from his gorgeous 2000 film ‘At the Height of Summer’ saw a young couple waking each morning to the strains of the Velvet Underground’s ‘Pale Blue Eyes’ and engaging in a ritualised early-morning ballet of stretches and ablutions. At a pivotal moment in his wistful and agonisingly poignant new work – a thoughtfully abridged adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s lilting 1987 chronicle of late-teen neurosis in 1960s Tokyo – a young woman, Naoko, who’s still traumatised by the suicide of a schoolyard sweetheart, breaks down when a friend casually strums through a rendition of The Beatles’ torch song ‘Norwegian Wood’. The idea that something as ephemeral as a pop song could release a storm cloud of sorrows encapsulates the objectives of this film. It asks: how can we ever really be sure of love without understanding the hidden impulses of others? And what’s the point of love if death’s cruel hand can swipe at any moment?

My Dog Tulip

This gently episodic film by Paul and Sandra Fierlinger manages to say more about man’s relationship with dogs in a single, lush frame than ‘Marley and Me’ would if it were to run on a loop until the end of time.

It’s attentively adapted from a memoir by the late British wit JR Ackerley, which offers – in infinitesimal detail – the mucus-slathered trials of life with his fusty Alsatian bitch, Tulip, in 1950s Putney. Ackerley’s bone-dry prose is the epitome of self-flagellating, post-war Englishness, recalling at once the instructional irony of George Orwell’s essays and the arch, self-effacing out-loud-thoughts of Alan Bennett.

Other New Stuff

Limitless

Way Back, The

Made In Romania

The Trip

Archipelago

L'Amour Fou

Company Men

Macbeth (2010)

July, New Titles, 'Carlos The Jackal', 'The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest'

2011-07-21T06:29:00.000-07:00

Continuing a pattern of switching between subdued ensemble dramas (‘Summer Hours’, ‘Late August, Early September’) and balls-out ‘global’ techno-thrillers (‘Demonlover’, ‘Boarding Gate’), French director Olivier Assayas returns with a hulking, seething, intermittently sublime, five-and-a-half hour film in which he manages to draw together elements from both of these distinct styles.

‘Carlos’ is the lightly fictionalised biopic of Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, known to the world – but not in this film! – as Carlos the Jackal, and it comes across as the mother of all New Yorker profiles writ loud and large on the screen. Central to the film is a passionate, technically complex (he’s fluent in half a dozen languages) performance from Venezuelan actor Edgar Ramirez who feels like the perfect, paunchy mouthpiece for Carlos’s fervent, if flawed, gunboat Marxism.

Covering the period between his joining the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in 1970 and his capture in Sudan in 1994 (as he was being treated for a varicose vein on one of his testicles), the film works best when it presents information visually rather than with swathes of ideological discourse. The highlight is a masterly rendering of Carlos’s raid on an OPEC meeting in Vienna in 1975 for which Assayas orchestrates detail in such a way that it speaks about the politics, fears, tactics and ambitions of all involved. Elsewhere, small episodes – such as the gun-toting capture of Baader-Meinhof wildcat Gabriele Kröcher-Tiedemann – feel like they’ve been included purely for the sake of thoroughness.

Assayas doesn’t try to reflect too audaciously on Carlos ‘the man’, though he does paint him as someone whose single-minded focus on political goals was partly fuelled by raging sexual desire. (NB: The film is also screening in a more compact 158-minute version.)

Other New Stuff This Week

GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST, THE (2009)

MECHANIC, THE (2011)

HALL PASS (2011)

OTHER GUYS, THE (2010)

BARNEY'S VERSION (2010)

KING'S SPEECH, THE (2010)

WAITING FOR SUPERMAN (2011)

WARRIOR'S WAY, THE (2010)

I SAW THE DEVIL (2010)

YOUNG AT HEART (1954)

MARRIAGE ITALIAN STYLE (1964)

INSIGNIFICANCE (1985) CRITERION

MAKIOKA SISTERS, THE (1983) CRITERION

SUDDEN FEAR (1952)

HIS KIND OF WOMAN (1951)

TOPPER RETURNS (1941)

Coming Soon

Steve Coogan's THE TRIP

NORWEGIAN WOOD

ARCHIPELAGO

Anton Chekhov's THE DUEL

Tony Gatlif's KORKORO

KISS ME DEADLY Criterion

ZAZIE DANS LE METRO Criterion

THE MUSIC ROOM Criterion

BLACK MOON Criterion

PEOPLE ON SUNDAY Criterion

DIABOLIQUE Criterion

NAKED KISS Criterion

RED SHOES Criterion

PATHS OF GLORY Criterion

LE BOSSU (1960)

BETT'S BATH & OTHER STORIES

TINTIN & THE MYSTERY OF THE GOLDEN FLAME

CHEKHOV COMEDY SHORTS

ON TOUR

LUNCH HOUR (BFI)

THE MUSIC LOVERS

SET THE PIANO STOOL ON FIRE

WARD NO. 6

DEEP END (BFI)

July, New Titles, 'Farewell', '127 Hours', 'Biutiful'

2011-07-07T03:50:00.000-07:00

Farewell

The Farewell affair was an espionage plot that unfolded in the USSR, France and the USA between 1981 and 1983.

Sergei Gregoriev (Emir Kusterica), a KGB operative hungry for change, begins feeding secrets to Pierre Froment, a French engineer in Moscow, who in turn takes them to François Mitterrand (Philippe Magnan), who passes them to Ronald Reagan.

While in Moscow, the households of Gregoriev and Froment come under increasing strain from their secret professional – and personal – lives. ‘Farewell’ boasts a strong cast – Willem Dafoe pops up as a CIA chief and Niels Arestrup plays his French counterpart – and is strong on life in Soviet Moscow. That rare thing nowadays, a Cold War thriller, reminiscent of 'Gorky Park'.

127 Hours

There’s little more gruesome and extreme than the story of Aron Ralston, an American outdoors nut who in 2003 went canyoning alone in Utah without telling anyone where he was going. James Franco plays the frenetic 27 year old as an experience junkie and sociable loner. He bombs through the desert on a mountain bike leaving a trail of dust behind him. He meets girls in the wilderness, makes them laugh and leaps into underground lakes with them before saying goodbye. He bounds over gulleys. Then he misses his footing, slips into a canyon and a boulder follows him down, pinning his arm to the wall just as he lands on his feet. He’s trapped, and the film’s kineticism turns in on itself: like Ralston, its energy is stuck in a hole.

Biutiful

Bardem plays Uxbal, a grafter who shuttles between corrupt police, Chinese sweatshop owners and illegal African street hawkers. He brings comfort to the bereaved by passing on messages from the deceased, while at the same time coping with his estranged wife’s bipolar disorder and facing the shadow of serious illness himself.

Other New Stuff in July

IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA SEASON 4 (2008)

BLOW OUT (1981) CRITERION

SOMETHING WILD (1986) CRITERION

PALE FLOWER (1964) CRITERION (REGION 1)

BEETLE QUEEN CONQUERS TOKYO (2011)

BIUTIFUL (2010)

METROPOLIS (1927) MADMAN RESTORATION

YOGI BEAR (2010)

WHITE MATERIAL (2009)

WE ARE WHAT WE ARE (2010)

CATFISH (2010)

TAMARA DREWE (2010)

HEART OF GLASS (1976)

TOM WAITS UNDER REVIEW 1971-1982 (2008)

RABBIT HOLE (2010)

127 HOURS (2010) BLU-RAY

127 HOURS (2010)

BLACK SWAN (2010)

GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY, THE (1966)

STORY OF THE KELLY GANG, THE (1906)

TRASH HUMPERS (2009)

HOLY ROLLERS (2009)

BLUE VALENTINE (2010)

DISTRICT 13 ULTIMATUM (2010)

REIGN OF ASSASSINS (2010)

HOWL (2010)

ROUTE IRISH (2010)

SUSPIRIA (1977)

GNOMEO AND JULIET (2011)

SEASON OF THE WITCH (2011)

UNKNOWN (2011)

UNKNOWN (2011) BLU-RAY

ADJUSTMENT BUREAU, THE (2011)

HEREAFTER (2010)

HEREAFTER (2010) BLU-RAY

FAREWELL (2009)

INTERLUDE (1957) MADMAN DIRECTOR'S SUITE

DAY OF THE OUTLAW (1959)

PRINCESS OF MONTPENSIER, THE (2010)

AGE OF REASON, THE (2010)

SANCTUM (2011)

SANCTUM (2011) BLU-RAY

PIANOMANIA (2009)

TREE, THE (2010)

I AM NUMBER FOUR (2011)

RANGO (2011)

FASTER (2010)

INSIDE JOB (2010)

AND EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE FINE (2010)

LEAVING (2009)

June, New Titles, 'True Grit', 'Blue Valentine'

2011-06-15T10:18:00.000-07:00

True Grit

The Coen brothers return, offering their own distinctive take on Charles Portis's revenge-western novel. Jeff Bridges assumes the role of the cycloptic avenger Rooster Cogburn which won John Wayne an Oscar in 1969.

Blue Valentine

The title of this mature and moving new US indie captures the tug of war between the excitement of new love and the misery of its slow, painful death. Young American filmmaker Derek Cianfrance bats us back and forth between all sorts of emotions and moods – hot and cold, hope and despair, energy and lethargy – as he shares with us the exciting beginning and dispiriting end of the five-year marriage.

Other new stuff

How Do You Know

Unstoppable

Marketing Of Madness

No Strings Attached

Glass Lips

Childrens Hospital season 1&2

June, New Titles, 'The Green Hornet', 'Next Three Days', 'Hit List'

2011-06-08T10:22:00.000-07:00

This wonky but charming action caper documents the crime-thwarting travails of Britt Reid aka The Green Hornet (Seth Rogen doing Seth Rogen), a lingo-spouting party boy and publishing heir, and Kato (a film-stealing Jay Chou), his quiet Chinese expat mechanic-cum-sidekick who is happily saddled with most of the inventing and fighting duties. Their enemy is debonair crime kingpin Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz, rolling out his Oscar-winning, hot-hot-hot-hot-COLD! Hans Landa turn), and with the aid of a slickly remodelled vintage Chrysler, some custom-moulded masks and a pair of silly hats, the pair set out to obliterate the criminal scourge of LA.

The Next Three Days

Fred Cavayé’s popular 2008 French prison-break melodrama ‘Anything for Her’ becomes a terse, overly serious, character-driven potboiler in the hands of Paul Haggis, the writer-director of ‘Crash’ and ‘In the Valley of Elah’. The plot – Russell Crowe’s browbeaten family man finds his life falling apart when his wife (Elizabeth Banks) is convicted of murder and decides to bust her out – promises high-stakes drama and high-octane action, so it’s a shame that it takes ‘The Next Three Days’ well over an hour to get going. When it does, the film is gripping, intense and highly enjoyable. But it’s a long, tough slog to get there.

Other New Stuff...

The Hit List (2011), Cuba Gooding Jr. in a twist on 'Strangers On A Train', as his wishlist of people he'd like dead start dying

Journey Of The ChildMen - Mighty Boosh on Tour

Wonders Of The Solar System

June, New Titles, 'Black Swan' 'Uncle BoonMee...' 'The Fighter'

2011-06-01T11:24:00.000-07:00

It’s best to switch off the more sensible side of your mind, along with any idea that you’re going to experience a documentary-style portrait of the world of ballet, before encountering Darren Aronofsky's ‘Black Swan’. It’s a film that really only works if you let yourself be swirled up, like its main character, in a storm of hysteria, paranoia and tears: it’s too impulsive and emotional to be picked apart at the level of logic and too ludicrous to exist in a world other than its own. It’s huge fun, but only if you’re willing to swallow its more bonkers excesses.

Uncle BoonMee Who Can See His Past Lives

And if that isn't the right kind of bonkers for you, then try this Thai noodle. The film joins a dumpy, softly-spoken tamarind farmer (Boonmee) as he takes metaphysical stock of his time on earth while he slowly, gracefully succumbs to kidney disease. As the film rummages through his subconscious, we meet friendly apparitions of his late wife and his son, the latter of whom has been cross-bred with a monkey. We even get a glimpse of a past life when he inhabited the body of a horny catfish.

Other New Stuff for June

La Signora Senza Camelie (1953) Region 2

La Signora Senza Camelie (1953) Blu-Ray

Map Of The Sounds Of Tokyo (2009)

Of Gods And Men (2010) Region 2

Inside Job (2010)

Tamara Drewe (2010)

Restrepo (2010)

Canterbury Tales, The (1972) Region 2

Lemmy (2010)

Last Train Home (2009)

Dead Man (1994) Blu-Ray

Made In Dagenham (2010)

American: The Bill Hicks Story (2010)

Eden Is West (2009)

Two In The Wave (2009)

Morning Glory (2011)

Fighter, The (2010)

Black Swan (2010) Blu-Ray

Another Year (2010)

May, New Titles, 'Glenn Gould', 'The Tourist', 'Love And Other Drugs'

2011-05-18T15:25:00.000-07:00

GENIUS WITHIN: The Inner Life Of Glenn Gould

It's an inescapable fact that Gould's singular musical insights – the way he brought out in Bach a mesmeric unity of sound – could only have arisen from a singular personality. An enigmatic musical poet — and the most documented classical musician of the last century — world-renowned pianist Glenn Gould continues to captivate international audiences twenty-six years after his untimely death. Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould humanizes the legend, weaving together an unprecedented array of unseen footage, private home recordings and diaries, as well as compelling interviews with Gould’s most intimate friends and lovers — all exploring the incongruities between Gould’s private reality and his wider image.

THE TOURIST

This is a remarkable film. Take the Oscar-winning director of the universally acclaimed ‘The Lives of Others’, and add not one, but two Oscar-winning screenwriters – Julian Fellowes (‘Gosford Park’) and Chris McQuarrie (‘The Usual Suspects’). Throw in Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, attractive locations in wintry Paris and Venice. Sounds like it can hardly miss, right? Well, ‘The Tourist’ is remarkable because its not inconsiderable talent pool has delivered a would-be ‘light-hearted international crime caper’ which runs the gamut from idiocy to tedium and back again, all the while exuding a smug sense of self-satisfaction which is frankly inexplicable. Long for the days of red London buses, Shirley MacLaine in oriental eye make-up, swishy dissolves and cocktail-hour music? Well, stick with the ’60s celluloid fluff of your choice because it certainly doesn’t get any better here.

(Time Out Film)

YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER

Woody Allen's latest continues his bumpy ride along the bottom. A shoddy, shallow, unfunny, medium-weight London ensemble drama upscaled to the big screen without a trace of Woody on it, save for the jaunty jazz soundtrack. Almost everyone is mis-cast. File alongside Stephen Frears' upcoming 'Tamara Drewe' for disappointing fare from formerly brilliant director now in the doldrums.

Oh, the story? Alfie leaves Helena to pursue his lost youth and a free-spirited call girl named Charmaine (Punch), Helena abandons rationality and surrenders her life to the loopy advice of a charlatan fortune teller. Unhappy in her marriage, Sally develops a crush on her handsome art gallery owner boss, Greg (Banderas), while Roy, a novelist nervously awaiting the response to his latest manuscript, becomes moonstruck over Dia. Zzzzz.

INSPECTOR BELLAMY (2008)

SOMEWHERE (2010)

BEHIND THE BURLY Q (2010)

GULLIVER'S TRAVELS (2010)

GULLIVER'S TRAVELS (2010) BLU-RAY

TANGLED (2010)

RUBBER (2010)

WAR YOU DON'T SEE, THE (2010)

I, DON GIOVANNI (2009)

LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS (2010)

LITTLE FOCKERS (2011)

LAST EXORCISM, THE (2010)

JACKBOOTS ON WHITEHALL (2010)

RED HILL (2009)

DILEMMA, THE (2010)

MORNING GLORY (2011)

May, New Titles, 'King's Speech'

2011-05-11T09:03:00.000-07:00

Buttoned-down British royal suffers speech impediment and hires unconventional Aussie quack to conquer his fear of public oratory. So it’s thanks to the best efforts of writer David Seidler, director Tom Hooper and, especially, leads Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush that ‘The King’s Speech’ isn’t just an enlightening period drama, but a very entertaining, heartfelt and surprisingly funny crowd-pleaser with a glint of Oscar gold in its eye.

Other new stuff in May

BIGGER THAN LIFE (Criterion)

WHO IS HARRY NILSSON?

HIDEAWAY

CANNESMAN

THE DILEMMA

DILLINGER IS DEAD

MACGRUBER

GENIUS WITHIN: Glenn Gould

KES

FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN

SOMEWHERE

BEHIND THE BURLY Q

BROADCAST NEWS

INSPECTOR BELLAMY

YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER

A WOMAN, A GUN, AND A NOODLE SHOP

April, New Titles, 'Harry Potter 8.1', 'Tron Legacy', 'Megamind'

2011-04-20T08:45:00.000-07:00

For over a decade, Disney’s ‘Tron’ was the red-headed stepchild of ’80s genre movies, seen as a blatant attempt to cash in on the arcade craze, a film bursting with style but lacking in substance. But as times changed, ‘Tron’ was re-evaluated: arcade culture was now fashionably retro, and as our world became increasingly digitised, the film’s ideas of virtual reality and complex computerised systems became oddly prescient. It also didn’t hurt that this coincided with Jeff Bridge's rise from dependable leading man to countercultural icon.

Even so, the announcement two years ago that Disney was beginning work on a sequel seemed optimistic in the extreme: not only would this be the longest-gestating franchise attempt in cinema history, but were there really enough retro-nerds around to make the film a genuine commercial prospect? Now, thanks to a geek-targeted marketing campaign of staggering intensity, ‘Tron: Legacy’ is one of the most anticipated multiplex releases of the season. But can the film live up to the slavish hype?

The answer is… sort of.

And then came Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, Part 1

Anyone who complained that the previous episode in the ‘Harry Potter’ saga felt too much like scene-setting for the final showdown will be equally disappointed with ‘Deathly Hallows Part 1’. A film with no beginning and no end but a whole lot of expository middle, this is the least satisfying instalment in the series since Chris Columbus folded up his director’s chair.

Bill Nighy's dour, dandified Minister of Magic sets the tone with a barbed speech bemoaning the state of the magical nation: murders, disappearances and raids are becoming commonplace and no one, it seems, is safe. Least of all our bespectacled hero, who bids farewell to the suburbia of his youth before being whisked away in the film’s only outright action sequence, a dizzying high-speed flying-bike chase through the Dartford tunnel.

Megamind

A steady flow of superhero-movie conventions are given the wink-wink treatment in this hyperactive Dreamworks animation about Megamind, a blue, bulbous-headed scoundrel, voiced by Will Ferrell, who plunges into depression when he unexpectedly kills his rival, Metro Man (voiced by Brad Pitt), and finds himself short of anyone to foil his schemes. At a low ebb (and holding a torch for feisty, Jean Seberg-a-like reporter Roxanne Ritchi, voiced by Tina Fey) he entertains the notion of giving up evil altogether.

If this sounds a little like the recent ‘Despicable Me’, that’s because it rolls with a similar idea, albeit employing a more realistic animation style and a strain of reference-heavy humour aimed at a slightly more mature audience. But the film also pinches a few pages out of the ‘Kick-Ass’ rule book, notably in the way it dismantles the archetypal ‘masked crusader’ and delights in revealing the mundane chores of life as a full-time master of chaos: those jumbo-collared leather capes don’t just stitch themselves, you know.

Other new stuff

Criterion's 'Sweet Smell Of Success'

Criterion's 'Topsy Turvy'

Criterion's 'Senso'

Criterion's 'Still Walking'

Blood Out

An Ordinary Execution

April, New Titles, 'Catfish', 'I Love You Phillip Morris', 'Red'

2011-04-08T12:38:00.000-07:00

'Catfish'

In late 2007, filmmakers Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost sensed a story unfolding as they began to film the life of Ariel's brother.. Riveting documentary about nerdy New York artsy hipster who Facebook-friends a gifted 6 year old rural painter in upstate Michigan and falls for her 19 year old sister Megan. His brother is filming the entire affair as it develops online, and they take a roadtrip, far from their metropolitan comfort-zone, to meet the family at last...

See the finished documentary that started so many arguments among old friends about whether it was a set up or not. (Clearly not, surely? - Ed.)

Other titles

Red

Voyage Of The Dawn Treader

Lemmy

Wild Target

Another Year

Certified Copy

The Maid

Peepli Live

Ivul

Get Low

Treme

The Magician (Criterion)

House (Criterion)

This Way Of Life

Wagner And Me

I Love You Phillip Morris

New Titles, March, 'Machete', 'Due Date', 'Saw Final Chapter'

2011-03-29T09:46:00.000-07:00

With its Mexican anti-hero Machete (Danny Trejo), its choreographed violence and its crude sexism, this gleefully excessive pastiche of an exploitation picture delivers everything promised by its own faux trailer. That trailer was part of the fake ‘Coming Attractions’ section of co-director Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Grindhouse’ double-bill; this indulgent fanboy vanity project is that cheapskate drive-in movie made real.

So if your idea of a nostalgic good time is a nonstop action-movie featuring a tight-lipped Mexican day-worker (Trejo) turned vigilante killer, a sleazeball Mexican drug lord (Steven Seagal), an opportunist Texan politician (Robert De Niro), his corrupt behind-the-scenes fixer (Jeff Fahey), a racist businessman (Don Johnson), a chilli-hot female immigration agent (Jessica Alba), a fiery freedom fighter who runs a taco stand (Michelle Rodriguez), a gun-toting padre (Cheech Marin) and an avenging angel in a nun’s outfit (Lindsay Lohan), this will toast your enchilada. The problem is that the overcooked plot tries to shoehorn in a political subtext about illegal ‘wetbacks’ and right-wing politicians and businessmen who exploit the racist backlash they incite.

Other new stuff

I'm Still Here

A Town Called Panic

Police, Adjective

Frontier Blues

White Material

Illusionist, The

Saw: The Final Chapter

Machete

Jackass 3

I Spit On Your Grave

City Island

My Soul To Take

Unthinkable

Skyline

Switch, The

Gainsbourg

Loved Ones, The

Due Date

March, New Titles, The Town, The American, A Prophet

2011-03-11T09:57:00.000-08:00

The Town

This is a slick but inert cops ’n’ robbers yarn from Ben Affleck (with his director-writer-star hat on) that feels all but indistinguishable from the thousands of similar films that have blazed a trail before it. Sporting a neat crew cut, a sweat-glazed six-pack and a nice line in ‘Boston’-emblazoned tracksuit tops, Affleck is Doug, the conflicted leader of a rubber-masked wrecking crew who take down banks on behalf of kingpin (and florist!) Pete Postlethwaite. Doug wants to take his loot and make a break for Florida, a desire fuelled by his relationship with Rebecca Hall's kindly soup-kitchen mama. But Pete’s got dirt on him, and even though the Feds are closing in (led by ‘Mad Men’ heartthrob John Hamm), the team keep breaking banks, leading to a minutely orchestrated take-down of the Boston Red Sox’s home ground.

The American

Anton Corbijn showed with ‘Control’, his film about Joy Division’s Ian Curtis, that, as a photographer-turned-filmmaker, he’s as happy to let his camera linger on a troubled character’s good-looking face or to indulge a moody landscape as to tell a story through traditional means. He pushes that approach to the limit with this attractive, quiet, passive study of Jack (George Clooney in his most downbeat role ever), the American in question, whom we first meet on the snow flats of Sweden and quickly learn has lethal potential despite his calm exterior and love of butterflies.

A Prophet

Malik, a French-Arab convict who enters a concrete-and-steel hell to serve a sentence of six years (so we know he can’t have done anything too dreadful) tries to keep his head down, but this isn’t that sort of place. The ruling bully boys are the Corsican inmates, led by ageing but vicious César (Niels Arestrup), who forces Malik to kill another inmate in a very successful scene that’s one of the most claustrophobic and disturbing episodes I’ve seen in a long while. From here, Malik is César’s vassal, committed to working for him on the inside and, later, using a series of day-release excursions to represent his criminal interests on the outside. But Malik is a clever individualist.

Also out this week

Summer Coda

Night Of The Hunter

Cronos

Hot Millions

Darjeeling Limited (Criterion)

Modern Times (Criterion)

Freedom's Fury

March, New Titles, 'Social Network', 'Paranormal Activity 2'

2011-03-02T08:17:00.000-08:00

The Social Network

Director David Fincher (‘Fight Club’, ‘Zodiac’) and writer Aaron Sorkin (‘The West Wing’, ‘A Few Good Men’) have made a mischievous, scaremongering tale about the origins of Facebook that combines the talky rigour of Sorkin’s writing with the spooky crispness of Fincher’s imagery.

It launches us headfirst into an intense exchange between two students, Mark Zuckerberg and his girlfriend Erica (Rooney Mara), sitting in a Harvard bar, opposite each other, nursing beers. You can hardly call it a conversation. She speaks smartly and normally; he avoids eye- contact, talks through her, responds selectively and, when the chat doesn’t go his way, needily asks: ‘Is this real?’

It’s a brilliant scene: on its own because it says so much about the filmmakers’ spin on Facebook founder Zuckerberg and the limits of interaction that his invention seeks to plaster over, and in the context of the work as a whole because it tells us straightaway that this is a film about a creeping void between people, whether or not they’re lovers, enemies, business partners or Facebook friends. It’s a savvy prologue to a story of how a perfect storm of social inadequacy, Ivy League exclusivity and computing genius inspired a global phenomenon.

Other new titles :

Stone
Resident Evil: Afterlife
Buried
Brotherhood
Messenger, The
14 Blades
Let Me In
Social Network Blu Ray
Paranormal Activity 2

February, New Titles, 'America Lost And Found: the BBS story'

2011-02-12T06:49:00.000-08:00

Like the rest of America, Hollywood was ripe for revolution in the late sixties. Cinema attendance was down; what had once worked seemed broken. Enter Bob Rafelson, Bert Schneider, and Steve Blauner, who knew that what Hollywood needed was new audiences—namely, young people—and that meant cultivating new talent and new ideas. Fueled by money from their invention of the superstar TV pop group the Monkees, they set off on a film-industry journey that would lead them to form BBS Productions, a company that was also a community. The innovative films produced by this team between 1968 and 1972 are collected in this box set—works that now range from the iconic (Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Last Picture Show) to the acclaimed (The King of Marvin Gardens) to the obscure (Head; Drive, He Said; A Safe Place), all created within the studio system but lifted right out of the countercultural id.

Other titles new this week:

Girl Who Played With Fire, The (2010)

Tangle Season 2 (2010)

Summer Of The Seventeenth Dol (1997)

Dear Wendy (2006)

Flipped (2010)

Down Terrace (2009)

Legend Of The Guardians The Owls Of Ha'hoole(2010)

Going The Distance (2010)

Tudors, The Season Four (2010)

Head (America Lost And Found) (1968)

Easy Rider (America Lost And Found) (1969)

Five Easy Pieces (America Lost And Found) (1970)

Drive, He Said/A Safe Place (America Lostandfound)

Last Picture Show, The (1971)

King Of Marvin Gardens, The (1971)

Red Shoes, The (1948) Blu-Ray

Deadly Impact (2008)

Crazy On The Outside (2010)

Experiment, The (2010)

Tudors, The Season 3 (2009)

January, New Titles, 'Boy', 'Kids Are All Right'

2011-01-21T07:03:00.000-08:00

'The Kids Are All Right'

It’s the warm, wise humour of ‘The Kids Are All Right’ that distinguishes it from the pack, even more so than American writer and director Lisa Cholodenko's decision to make a funny, mainstream drama about a pair of lesbian mothers and what happens when their two teenage children invite the anonymous sperm donor who is their biological father into their comfortable, progressive lives in sunny, suburban California.

'Boy' (New Zealand, 2010)

'Charlie St Cloud' (USA, 2010)

'Sorceror's Apprentice' (USA, 2010)

'Milk Of Sorrow' (Peru, 2010)

'Me Too' (Spain, 2010)

'Despicable Me' (USA, 2010)

'Four Lions' (UK, 2010)

'Exit Through The Gift Shop' (UK, 2010)

'Other Guys, The' (USA, 2010)

'Eat Pray Love' (USA, 2010)

'Last Airbender' (USA, 2010)

New Year, New Titles, 'The Ghost Writer'

2011-01-01T13:51:00.001-08:00

We’re so used to amped-up white-knucklers that the controlled approach of a filmmaker like Roman Polanski is immediately seductive. The director responsible for such mainstays as Chinatown andRosemary’s Baby (and of course his own real-life news cycle) turns Robert Harris’s political potboiler involving a ghostwriter (McGregor), a former British prime minister (Brosnan) and an isolated island home into a slow-burn near-masterpiece.

Other stuff just in...

A CHRISTMAS CAROL (2010)

BLISS (2007)

CITY ISLAND (2010)

CITY OF YOUR FINAL DESTINATION, THE (2010)

DESPICABLE ME (2010)

DIARY OF A WIMPY KID (2010)

DISAPPEARANCE OF ALICE CREED, THE (2010)

DOG DAY AFTERNOON (1975) BLU-RAY

EAT PRAY LOVE (2010)

EXPENDABLES, THE (2010)

FROM PARIS WITH LOVE (2010)

GHOST WRITER, THE (2010)

GREAT OUTDOORS, THE (2006)

GROWN UPS (2010)

INCEPTION (2010)

KILLER INSIDE ME, THE (2010)

LAST AIRBENDER, THE (2010)

MARMADUKE (2010)

MIDDLE OF NOWHERE (2010)

MY SON, MY SON, WHAT HAVE YE DONE (2010)

ONDINE (2010)

PAPER MAN (2009)

PIRANHA (2010)

PLEASE GIVE (2010)

SPARTACUS BLOOD AND SAND (2010) DISCS 1 + 2

SPARTACUS BLOOD AND SAND (2010) DISCS 3 + 4

WINTER'S BONE (2010)

YES MEN FIX THE WORLD, THE (2009)

New Titles, December, 'Tomorrow When the War Began', 'South Solitary', 'Splice'

2010-12-22T09:44:00.000-08:00

'Tomorrow When The War Began'

When their country is invaded and their families are taken, eight unlikely high school teenagers band together to fight.

7.5/10 on imdb

'South Solitary'

Meredith is a 35 year-old unmarried woman who arrives at a remote lighthouse island 1928 with her uncle the new head keeper

5.7/10 on imdb

'Splice'

Two young rebellious scientists are told by their employers to halt groundbreaking work that has seen them produce new creatures with medical benefits by splicing together multiple organisms' DNA. They decide to secretly continue their work, but this time splicing in human DNA.

6.2/10 on imdb

'Family Guy It's A Trap'

A Family Guy spoof on 'Return of the Jedi'

New titles, December, 'Special Relationship'

2010-12-16T09:36:00.001-08:00

THE SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP (Richard Loncraine, 2010)

A dramatization that traces former U.K. prime minister Tony Blair's relationships with Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

6.7/10 on imdb

THE EXPENDABLES (Sylvester Stallone, 2010)

A team of mercenaries head to South America to overthrow a dictator.

6.7/10 on imdb

SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD (2010)

Scott Pilgrim must defeat his new girlfriend's seven evil exes in order to win her heart.

7.9/10 on imdb

SHREK FOREVER AFTER (Mike Mitchell, 2010)

Rumpelstiltskin tricks a mid-life crisis burdened Shrek into allowing himself to be erased from existence and cast in a dark alternate timeline where Rumpelstiltskin reigns supreme.

6.7/10 on imdb

SALT (Phillip Noyce, 2010)

A CIA agent goes on the run after a defector accuses her of being a Russian spy.

6.5/10 on imdb

Also in this week, Damages -- season three

New Titles, December, 'Inception'

2010-12-14T16:03:00.000-08:00

INCEPTION (Dir. Christopher Nolan)

Nolan throws a perfect storm of stunts, effects, locations and actors at one big idea: that it’s possible to pilfer ideas from dreams by a process called ‘extraction’, which involves hooking yourself up to a drip, falling asleep and entering the world of the subconscious. The holy grail of this process is to reverse it, which is ‘inception’, the planting of a new idea in another’s mind. That’s the trick that experts Dom and Arthur, aided by new recruits Ariadne and Eames, try to pull off while hopping from Tokyo to Paris to Mombasa. They’re working for Saito in pursuit of business magnate Robert, and their motives vary, from financial to intellectual. But DiCaprio has another driver: the memory of his wife Mal is haunting him and it’s going to take a lot of psychological spring-cleaning for him to reconnect with that lost world.

December lead titles on general release

'Centurion', 'Killers', Thursday December 2nd

'The Karate Kid', Wednesday 8th December

'Scott Pilgrim vs The World', Wednesday 15th December

'The Expendables', 'Special Relationship', Thursday 16th December

'Death At A Funeral', Wednesday 29th December

'Piranha', Thursday 30th December

Notable new releases this month:

'Killer Inside Me, The' (Casey Affleck)

'City Of Your Final Destination' (Laura Linney)

'Winter's Bone' (Jennifer Lawrence)

'Please Give' (Catherine Keener)

'The Disappearance of Alice Creed' (Gemma Arturton)

'Middle of Nowhere' (Susan Sarandon)

'Cairo Time' (Patricia Clarkson)

'Helen' (Ashley Judd)

'My Son My Son What Have Ye Done' (Werner Herzog/David Lynch)

'Ondine' (Colin Farrell/Neil Jordan)

New titles, October-November 2010

2010-12-14T15:46:00.000-08:00

CONCERT, THE (2009)

DEAD SNOW (2008)

ACCIDENTS HAPPEN (2009)

ROBIN HOOD (2010)

ROBIN HOOD (2010) BLU RAY

COOKIES AND CREAM (2008)

WINSLOW BOY, THE (1999)

DAVID HOCKNEY: A BIGGER PICTURE

WINDRIDER (1986)

STRENGTH OF WATER, THE

SEPARATION CITY (2009)

REPOMEN (2009)

BACK-UP PLAN, THE (2009)

MAP READER, THE (2008)

STONING OF SORAYA M., THE (2009)

MOTHERHOOD (2010

LA GRANDE VADROUILLE (1966)

FOUR LIONS (2010)

EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP (2010)

PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN (1950) BLU-RAY

OLIVER TWIST 2 DISCS

TENDRES COUSINES (1980)

KING JOHN (1978)

ROBERTO SUCCO (2001)

DANGEROUS SEX DATE

PREMIERS DESIRS (1983)

IRON MAN 2 (2010) DVD

IRON MAN 2 (2010) BLU RAY

HARRY BROWN (2010)

I LOVE YOU TOO (2010)

IN SEARCH OF BEETHOVEN (2010)

HUMAN CENTIPEDE, THE (2010)

THIN RED LINE, THE (1998)

ANIMAL KINGDOM (2010) DVD

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (2010) DVD

LOVE LUST AND LIES (2009) DVD

SECRET IN THEIR EYES, THE (2010) DVD

RECORDING THE PRODUCERS (2001)

WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS (1956)

PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME (2010)

PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME (2010) BLU RAY

LOSERS, THE (2010)

LOSERS, THE (2010) BLU RAY

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (2010)

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (2010) BLU RAY

FLOWER OF EVIL, THE (2003)

COP AU VIN (1985)

ROAD TO CORINTH, THE (1967)

BREACH, THE (1970)

INNOCENTS WITH DIRTY HANDS (1975)

PLEASURE PARTY (1975)

A-TEAM, THE (2010)

ART AND SOUL (2010)

XXX BRA BUSTERS IN THE 1970S

HONEY WILDER TRIPLE FEATURE

LETTERS FROM FONTAINHAS3 FILMS BY PEDRO COSTA

BLACKMAIL (1929)

COCOANUTS/HORSE FEATHERS/DUCK SOUP/MONKEY BUSINESS

CARMEN JONES (1954)

WHAT PRICE GLORY (1952)

CHAOS (2005)

A TALE OF TWO SISTERS (2004)

MANDERLEY (2007)

THRONE OF BLOOD (1957)

JEAN LUC GODARD - DETECTIVE (1985) & 3 FILMS

KEYS TO THE HOUSE (2004)

EDWARD SCISSORHANDS (1990)

GET HIM TO THE GREEK (2010)

PREDATORS (2010)

SEX AND THE CITY 2 (2010)

GROWN UPS (2010)

LEGION (2010)

CRY OF THE OWL, THE (1987)

TOY STORY 3 (2010) BLU-RAY

TOY STORY 3 (2010)

I AM LOVE (2009)

DEXTER SEASON 4 1+2 (2010)

DEXTER SEASON 4 3+4 (2010)

PACIFIC, THE (2010) 1+2

PACIFIC, THE (2010) 3+4

PACIFIC, THE (2010) 5+6

HARRY BROWN (2009)

TIME TO LEAVE

GREENBERG (2009)

A CHRISTMAS CAROL (2010)

KNIGHT AND DAY (2010)

BREAKING BAD season 3 (2010) 1+2

BREAKING BAD season 3 (2010) 3+4

GOSSIP GIRL SEASON 3 (2009) DISCS 1 + 2

GOSSIP GIRL SEASON 3 (2009) DISCS 3, 4 + 5

KARATE KID, THE (2010)

SIMPSONS, THE SEASON 13 (2001)

CENTURION (2010)

IT CROWD, THE SEASON 4 (2010)

TWILIGHT ECLIPSE (2010)

KILLERS (2010)

EVERLASTING MOMENTS (2008)

THE END OF THE RAINBOW (2010)

Yasujiro Ozu

2007-08-23T20:34:00.000-07:00

On an island off the Queensland coast for a week, with dark worn timber floors, low couches, bamboo matting on the walls, watching the films of this, the master of making the same film over and over. Intricate dramas of choice in marriage. Whether to marry or not. The same actors over and over. The camera always at bartop height, peering upwards at characters. The viewpoint of an old man sitting in a deckchair. The sense akin to peering through a glass bottomed boat into a submerged world where rituals of today are performed alongside rituals of an extinct time. 'Autumn Afternoon'. 'Floating Weeds'. 'End of Summer'. 'Early Spring'. 'Late Spring'. 'Late Autumn'. 'Early Summer'. Only 'Equinox Flower' seemed a slight dip, or of less interest, the lack of familiar faces combined with the centreless story, but a petty quibble for this the most satisfying and consistent of directors. 'Floating Weeds' being the favourite by a nose, with its satisfying symbol of the drama troupe as the film-crew and their flat performances as the cinema screen, the audience bored but immobile.

Lady Chatterley (2006)

2007-08-09T20:20:00.000-07:00

French adaptation of the second Lady Chatterley novel ('John Thomas and Lady Jane') joins the queue of failed adaptations of Lawrence's final novel.
Irresistible the temptation to make a filmed version with carte blanche for heaps of 'justified' bucolic sex in the English countryside, but why French? The actress (Marina Hands) is lovely enough, fit to play lead in the film of Audrey Tatou's life, but no Connie, who is unquestionably English, plump, and sensual, not fey and boyish. The Clifford is about right, puny, scornful, meagre as a man (Hippolyte Girardot). But Parkin is all wrong. Rufus Sewell should play Parkin or Mellors, a re-run of his turn in 'Cold Comfort Farm'. Not this middle-aged grump, the bizarrely named Jean-Louis Coullo'ch, who moved the apostrophe in his surname for this film's credit to Coulloc'h.
No, this won't do. It's plain and boring, and more than a little redolent of soft-core. The book is full of dialogue, arguments, discussions, debates and verbal love-making, but this scriptmaker has stripped out everything not absolutely essential to pushing the plot forward, a good rule for film-making maybe, but not for adaptations of poetic fiction. There are long scenes where these fascinating characters say nothing to each other at all, when there is so much to cram into the 135-minute running-time. As for French actors playing characters with English names, referring to English place-names (Wragby, Uthwaite), this only heightens the sense of how absurd the whole project is. How much wiser it might have been to produce a French re-telling of the story, 'Rules Of The Game' meets 'Diary of a Chambermaid', give all the characters French names, and call the whole thing 'The Game-Keeper'. The recent BBC adaptations ('Daniel Deronda', 'Jane Eyre', 'Persuasion', 'P&P') have set the bar very high for filmed literary classics. Work like this looks very pedestrian and plain by comparison.
I'd like to see a 'Lady Chatterley' without sex scenes. That would test a director and make them get everything else right.

Exterminating Angels (2006)

2007-08-08T19:35:00.000-07:00

A director interviews a number of young French film actresses while casting his next film. Certain scenes will involve them in acts of lesbianage, cunnilingus, and attempts to perform a transcendental orgasm on camera. Most of the interviewees storm out, correctly identifying the bloke posing as a director as a cheap sleaze. Perhaps it's his creepy good looks, or that stare...
Eventually he finds two girls prepared to undergo the ordeal of being in a mediocre sexploitation flick.
Oops, sorry, cunningly contrived titillation that should just squeeze past the board and get a screening at film festivals. People will queue up to see it, too, because the poster can show a topless chick without misleading the audiences about what they will get on screen.
The idea's a good one (investigate the erotic power of women through interviews between a director and potential actors in his next movie), but the result is a low-range soft-core that might as well have been made in the late Seventies. But for haircuts and the high polish of the finished image it was.
The French have done their level best to marry art and porn. Several generations have had a jolly good go, and nobody has really pulled off the coup. Prompting once again the question, What is the deal with porn?
Why can't the French get lucky and combine art and porn with success? 'Romance' didn't really work either as drama or as arousal-material. Catherine Breillat went over the problem intelligently in 'Sex Is Comedy' which is actually a good film about a director trying to coach young actors in performing sex acts for the camera. 'Exterminating Angels' is simply the latest in a long line of duds. Most other efforts look like a poor man's re-tread of David Hamilton.
The litmus test is simple to conduct. Any amateur should be able to perform it at home.
Take out the sex scenes from a film and all scenes leading up to a sex scene, contrived purely to arouse, and what do you have left?
If there is still a solid plot-driven drama in which all the characters' motivation hangs together logically and coherently throughout the story, which also has a measurable degree of forward momentum, inclining us to watch to the end and feel satisfaction in and of the story itself, then we have something that can be said to be a decent film.
It's really irrelevant to the question of it being a good film whether or not it has sex scenes. There are good films with sex scenes, there are good films without. Most great films don't have them. But that is probably because of prevailing taboos at the time which obliged writers to sublimate their desires into symbolic forms, which become in the best cases cinematic images. A good thing for great cinema on the whole.
It has recently been shown by science that the sight of a nude woman alters the male brain so terribly that he cannot choose between 'red or white' (wine). We can also say that putting sex scenes in to a filmed drama unbalances the male mind to the extent that bad films are usually result. Bad films like 'Exterminating Angels' (not to be confused with Bunuel's masterly 'Exterminating Angel', a film to which this has no relation whatsoever. So why the title, Monsieur Brisseau?)
It would be possible for instance to pop in to perfectly good films sex scenes, and a board might be set up by the French government, or the council of the San Fernando valley (where most porn production takes place) to perform this useful function.
Take a perfectly wonderful film like 'Claire's Knee' or 'To Have And Have Not' and have directors and actors work carefully to interpolate scenes at regular intervals where the lead characters are seen getting it on, running the full gamut of sexual positions and now-ritualised 'steps'.
It might be a balancing response to what the Christians are doing in the States, bowdlerising movies by taking out the 'unclean' bits.

RIP: Bergman, Antonioni

2007-08-06T18:55:00.000-07:00

A double window at the shop in Carlton to commemorate the passing of two greats. Thoughts along the lines of 'the old way of making cinema has passed', but Bergman's 'old way' and Antonioni's 'old way' are quite different. Though they are not the new way of great bores like Tsai Ming-Liang or Sokorov.
When we say 'old' we are of course also talking about the 'old world', of the Fifties and Sixties when in Europe things were still very different, strange, quaint, and cinema of that time captured things, streetscapes, landscapes, ways of being lost to us now. 1957 was a very long time ago. 50 years ago. A man the age of Death when 'Seventh Seal' was made would have probably died of old age in 1982. Death certainly wouldn't be alive now. But the time when Death was alive and well and living on a beach in Sweden is preserved, conserved for us by the cinema of Bergman which is in turn conserved, at least for now, by the lovers of 'old' cinema.
What makes the 'old ways' fascinating and magical to us now is of course the era in which they were shot, the stock on which the films were made, the world they bring back to life for us. Now we must travel further to find the same oddness, to Kazakhstan or Kurdistan (Bhaman Ghobadi in 'Half Moon', Volker Schlondorff in 'Ulzhan') or to Turkey where old and new exist side by side. Nuri Bilge Ceylan has a character in 'Uzak' worry that photography may have been entirely superceded by cinema and now be a dead art. But cinema too is dead very soon after it is made. But our cinephilia is an absorbing fascination with the dead and how they live.

Woman In The Window, The (1944)

2007-08-01T18:56:00.000-07:00

Edward G Robinson as Professor Richard Wanley bids farewell to his wife and two children at the railway station - his life is in order, everything is fine - until he sees the portrait in the window next door to his club of a modestly beautiful young woman, heavily framed in gilt. Frame within a frame within a frame. And then, on the surface of the glass, he sees the face of the same woman reflected, only more ghostly. It is the face of Joan Bennett, as Alice Reed, who is flattered to find she has an admirer. Perhaps it is the older man's evident besottedness at her portrait which charms her to invite him out for a drink.

Women who chat men up and ask them out for a drink, I've always had a soft spot for them. And then she buys him another, and another, and despite his clubmen friends' warning not to make a fool of himself with younger women now that he has passed forty, Wanley goes back to her apartment where he settles down to enjoy another cocktail. Suddenly in bursts another gentleman caller, irate Claude Mazard (Arthur Loft), incensed to discover that his mistress is entertaining at this very late hour another admirer.

His temper gets the better of him: he pins Edward G to the couch, his hands around his neck, and seems intent on strangling him, when Joan Bennett's Alice Reed hands him the scissors, and before you can say "Fritz Lang!" the job is done and Claude is a dead man.

The couple then must figure out how to dispose of the body without leaving evidence for the investigators, not yet realising who the victim is a well-known, wealthy corporate tycoon, and that he has a bodyguard following him everywhere.

Professor Wanley's drinking buddy just happens to be the D.A. (Raymond Massey) and talks him through the investigation process, which takes place at a lick, almost turning Edward G's hair white. And the couple's attempts to get the better of the situation don't go too well.

The plot veers towards classic film noir: Joan Bennett is the femme and if the film followed through to its logical end then Edward G would be fatale, but for reasons that may have been due to its late-wartime period, then movie does not end in disaster (like DOA, Double Indemnity, Gun Crazy, Detour). But the charm of the piece is in the pacing, the graceful movement towards and away from the original murder, the elegance of Edward G Robinson's character under stress, the simple plain-beauty of Joan Bennett's Alice, the nobility of the original conceit: to fall in love with a work of art, to fall in love with the woman in the work of art, to behave heroically when placed in crisis by that love, all this your average passionate moviegoer can find it in his heart to admire. This must be Fritz Lang's most likeable film.

'Teeth' (Melbourne Film Festival)

2007-07-29T19:49:00.000-07:00

High school student, Dawn (played by Jess Weixler, resembling the love-child of Reese Witherspoon and Kate Winslet), is a goody-two-shoes promoter of waiting-til-you're married before having sex, and gives seminars to fellow students to that effect.
Unfortunately, she is also afflicted with a rare condition well-known to feminist theorists as 'vagina dentata' in which the organs denoting gender have the capacity to 'de-flower' males with whom she copulates.
This ponderous difficulty makes for a delightfully playful film, rather as if 'Election' was crossed with 'Girl's School Screamers'. A clever hybrid, rather in the way that 'Hot Fuzz' cross-fertilises 'Bad Boys 2' with 'Midsomer Murders', 'Teeth' has the droll fortitude of 'Groundhog Day' too, as the unfortunate lead drily endures their horrible position.
Dawn makes the most of her predicament, taking revenge on her brother from Hell, releasing a howl of delight from the audience, but the chief pleasure of the film is in the perfect casting of Weixler as the prim, squeaky clean girl who was happy to wait, but can't quite resist the temptation to find out what happens when...
Of course there will be those po-faced killjoys who point out that the film's underlying moral could be construed as conservative (and did so with recent frolics '40 Year Old Virgin' and 'Knocked Up'): give in to lust outside marriage and you will commit a sin tantamount to grievous bodily harm, if not manslaughter.
Amazingly, there were two walkouts at the screening I went to. Some people, as we know from observing the Mormons, are defiantly committed to not enjoying themselves.
The film had the same mordantly self-satisfied tone as comic short 'Happiest Day Of My Life', also shown at the Melbourne Film Festival, an LA wedding skit, in which roles are reversed and the women adopt the parts played by men in formal marriage rites, another satirical exercise that worked through all of the enjoyable consequences of its own inversions.
The film-maker introduced the short, which we would never have otherwise seen were it not for the Festival, though Film Festivals are rarely events to be celebrated so much as endured, the enforced viewings brought about by scheduling together with the concern that many films will never be seen again, or released at all, drives you to attend screenings you would otherwise avoid and brings on that peculiar sensation, 'film festival psychosis', in which the sufferer feels tormented by the conviction that he is constantly missing something, only to give in to the blurb-writers' puff and find out that he's missing nothing at all. Also that awful sensation of sitting through films with no merit, appeal or real value at all, interminable longuers, patched together out of various exercises in pretension, searching for but failing to find the way to rouse the emotion they long to evoke, while several hundred of us wait in the dark for something to happen which never comes about, experiencing that kind of headcrushing boredom only film festivals know how to bring on, then filing out and hearing that particular kind of sniggering among the relieved audience which can only mean, 'That was awful, why did we all put up with it?' Anyone who complains is told that they don't understand 'the Asian sense of Time'. But of course we put up with it because every now and then something like 'Teeth' comes along and provides an evening of pure delight.

Woman In The Dunes (1964)

2007-07-25T19:47:00.001-07:00

Let us pretend that this story does not happen in Japan, that it happens instead on the moon, and were it not for the occasional visitations by men who lower supplies by rope into the giant pit, we could be anywhere... Mauritania, the Gobi desert, Antarctica.
But there are certain concrete details: the village nearby has run out of water, the woman in the pit is charged with digging for water, her house will be engulfed if she does not keep digging. If her house is engulfed the village will be lost as well. If she stops digging the villagers come and shout at her to carry on. The villagers bring the entomologist to the hole into which he descends by rope ladder and then remove the ladder, ignoring his cries for help.
But what is it about this oddly surreal fable that makes it all the more believable, because it is set in Japan? What is it about our perceptions of Japan, and Japan's perceptions of itself that make this pared-down drama of a dual between a man and a woman seem all the more realistic than it would if were set in Europe or America?
It is a version of Robinson Crusoe, and Happy Days, but it is also a reverse of John Fowles' The Collector, in which a young man takes captive a young woman. The sexual passion which flares up between the two is a peculiar product of the imprisonment which in turn produces a child that in turn convinces the man remain in the pit with the woman, a spin on the old problem of getting stuck in a rut.

Valery Gergiev in Rehearsal (1997)

2007-07-23T20:03:00.000-07:00

Gergiev is not only a great conductor and a good Russian citizen for putting his local orchestra back at the top of the international league, but a fascinating, inspiring and charismatic figure. In 2002, he guided three young conductors in Rotterdam through a series of masterclasses ('The Master and His Pupil'). This is one of the great documentaries about mentoring, teaching, instruction, direction and guidance, and has something about it both of the 'Karate Kid' and 50s Westerns 'Tin Star' or 'Rio Bravo', the irascible older man teasing and tormenting, disciplining and shaping young, gifted but occasionally silly talent.

Unfortunately, 'The Master and His Pupil' is still not available on disk, but there is this fascinating consolation-prize from 1997, when Gergiev led the Rotterdam orchestra through rehearsals for the Prokofiev 'Scythian Suites'.

The pairing is doubly, trebly interesting, for Gergiev himself comes from the southern states of Russia, Ossetia in the Caucasas, a district known historically as 'Scythia', and the 'bright wildness' of these ancient peoples scared invaders off, centuries ago. That spirit Prokofiev attempted to capture with his bright, jagged music in this orchestral suite which ends with the astonishing 'rising of the sun' sequence, when the sound reaches a brilliant sustained crescendo which in Gergiev's hands becomes a moment of blinding zenith and riveting drama.

Prokofiev's son, Oleg, stands by and gives some intriguing comments to the camera. Archive footage of the premiere, photos from the period, and interviews with Gergiev make this a remarkable disk in its own right. As well as a concert version of the Scythian Suites, the Rotterdam Philharmonic performs Stravinsky's Fireworks and Piano Concerto with Alexandre Toradze as soloist, Debussy's Le Martyre De Saint Sebastien.

The Tin Star (1951)

2007-07-22T19:35:00.000-07:00

Henry Fonda is Morg Hickman, a cynical ex-sheriff turned bounty hunter who helps young, recently appointed acting Sheriff Ben Owens (Antony Perkins) with his craggy advice, his cynicism hardwon by experience, and his gun.
Immensely likeable Henry Fonda does not particularly want to help Anthony Perkins, but if he wants to get paid for his most recent bodybag-delivery as bounty-hunter, then he has to hang around in town and he might as well help the stsruggling young sheriff.
Perkins has exactly the right quality of edgy determination and haplessness to let you know he can't do his job but that he will press on regardless. Like Gary Cooper in High Noon, he has a struggle on his hands and the town aren't going to support him against the bad guy, in this case, Bart Bogardus (Neville Brand). Like Sheriff Chance in Rio Bravo facing off the bullying Burdette brothers who don't have respect for his authority of the law, Perkins doesn't seem to have much chance, but now he has put on the tin star he can't take it off.

Ace In The Hole (1951)

2007-07-19T18:19:00.000-07:00

Kirk Douglas played the villain in another key noir, Out Of The Past (1947), but his baddie here is altogether more chilling and compelling. Chuck Tatum is a hard-boiled reporter down on his luck who washes up in Alberquerque riding in his brokendown car hauled by a pick-up truck like a chariot.
After insulting the editor of the local rag, Jacob Q Boot (Porter Hall), he gets a job that he doesn't want, but having no money to pay for his car repairs, he has to stay anyway.. for two years.
By now, he's ropeable, so the editor sends him out of the office to a rattlesnake festival two hours away. En route, he stops at a tiny place called Escuando, and hears that local miner has got stuck underground, hunting for Indian pottery.
Sniffing a story, Chuck blags his way into the mineshaft and finds Leo, his leg trapped under a rockfall. But Leo Minosa (Richard Benjamin) seems more concerned that his violating Indian ghosts has brought about the collapse.
But to Chuck, this is his story, and he calls it in, creating what we now call 'a media frenzy'. Back then they called it a circus. Soon a vast carnival has assembled under the New Mexico sky. Chuck is in cahoots with the local sheriff (Ray Teal) who is seeking re-election and both decide to build the story. They persuade a reluctant Smollet, the mining engineer, (Frank Jacquet) to take the long way in to rescue the marooned Leo, and his fate is sealed. Seven days later they have a nationwide headline story, and a dead miner on their hands.
Chuck gets his comeuppance when he tries to start acting morally. His attempt to remonstrate with Leo's disenchanted wife, Lorraine (Jan Sterling) end in disaster.
Billy Wilder's film is a noir under a clear sky, a thriller that becomes a satire, a satire without any laughs, and a more bitter indictment of the modern media than Citizen Kane or Network. Long neglected, the film is at last available on Criterion in a deluxe edition with a long interview with Wilder on the second disk. Halfway through the movie, I had a flashback to the last time I saw the film, in a Welsh kitchen in 1986 as a first year student, and the film seems more disturbing now than it did then, for the cynical coercive mediua stuntmen, the spin-meisters have done much worse since.

Good Fairy, The (1935)

2007-07-17T19:28:00.000-07:00

Preston Sturges wrote this script and it is his hand which lies on this comic wish-fulfilment fantasy rather than director William Wyler's, or author of the play, Ferenc Molnar. Maureen Sullavan is Lu Ginglebusher, rescured from an 'orphan asylum' by to work as an usherette in a picture palace, but rapidly finds herself taken out of that world and placed under the wing of hotel waiter, Detlaff (Reginald Owen) who can do nothing to save her from the admiring attention of bored, ageing millionaire, Konrad, beef king of Latin America, played with chattery gusto like a youthful Wiener King (Palm Beach Story) by Frank Morgan.
'Good fairy' Maureen Sullavan tries to keep up her vow of doing one good deed a day and she sees an opportunity when the millionaire offers to make her rich, a gift she realises he would make to anyone she cares to nominate. Here is her opportunity to bring 'Christmas in July', but who to? Not the orphanage, anyway. That never seems to occur to her, and at a loss she turns to the phone-book and selects the 'poor-looking' name of lawyer, Dr Max Sporum (Herbert Marshall). He is soon the recipient of 120,000 a yaer (kroner). But has she done the right thing?

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai Du Commerce (1975)

2007-07-16T19:14:00.000-07:00

Chantal Akerman's three-hour study of three days in the life of a Belgian housewife - or is she a wife? There is no sign of a Mr Dielman, though Jeanne Dielman has a son, the vaguely moronic grown up boy whose sofa-bed she makes and puts away each morning. That is one of the rituals, customs, habits that she must repeat every day. Cleaning, cooking, bathing herself, shopping, taking lunch in a cafe, banking her income, and of course earning her income, which she does by entertaining gentlemen in the afternoons.
That we could then call her 'a prostitute' is perhaps made more complicated by the aesthetic decision taken by the film-maker to give equal weighting to the other activities in her day. By contrast, in other filmed portraits of 'women on the game' (Vivre Sa Vie, Belle De Jour, Working Girls) the women's other routines are glossed over and the performance of their duties is given most film-time, making the description of them as 'working girls', and nothing else, seem appropriate. Catherine Deneuve is a housewife who, bored of her eventless life, goes on the game; she then becomes a prostitute. Jeanne Dielman may not even be a housewife; she is a mother who cleans house, prepares food, washes herself, goes shopping, and earns income by welcoming men into her bedroom during one hour of the afternoon. What does this make her? It makes her 'Jeanne Dielman, 23Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles'. Quite simply, she is her address.
We see three of her clients, a white-haired old man, a youth, and a middle-aged Belgiques with a handlebar moustache. He is the unluckiest of the three, but we don't find that out until the 183rd minute of this careful, methodical study. this sequence of 'perpendicular' shots. Like the Dardennes brothers whose documentaries maintain an almost painfully steady eye on their subjects, Chantal Akerman likes to look from a certain distance, for long periods of time with an almost childlike unblinkingness. That quality may not be peculiarly Belgian, but for a small country an awful lot of people seem to get killed here, if all of the victims of the Poirot and Maigret novels are included. In this tiny notoriously neutral nation trapped between larger neighbours it has been their history to sit back and watch.
Chantal Akerman creates feminist films whose political concept matches their aesthetic form. On the same disk set, her films Rendez-vous of Anna, Je Tu Il Elle, Hotel Monterey, News From Home, and a documentary on Chantal Akerman, together with interviews with those who know her. and two early short films.

Big Steal, The (1949)

2007-07-15T19:34:00.000-07:00

Mitchum was let out of jail to film this Don Siegel road movie, on probation after being charged with possession of dope, and looks the part. The only other film he made with Jane Greer, 'Out Of The Past', made it clear the pair had chemistry, and in this film they squabble pretty much until the final big smile for the camera shot.
It's a neat much ado about nothing caper, Mitchum and Greer pursuing a flim-flam man, Fiske (Patric Knowles) and his suitcase of cash, while being pursued in turn by Captain Blake (William Bendix), enraged that Mitchum has been impersonating him and stolen his passport. A Mexican police caption almost outwits them but in the big showdown the pair, unlike their counterparts in 'Gun Crazy' (aka. 'Deadly Is The Female', 1950), get away with their big steal.
The DVD includes a colourised version (faces and backgrounds tinted pastel shades) which is of interest only to illustrate how the movie's classy look derives in large part, not merely from its era but from its form: in black and white it has great style, colourised that style is harder to see and the film looks more like the cheapish production that it probably was.
The pace at which the scenes are played, the beauty of the two leads, the thrill of a road movie going down deep into Mexico (The Getaway, Three Burials, Y Tu Mama Tambien) and the easy nonchalance, the controlled recklessness that Mitchum brought to any part, together with the beauty of Jane Greer, the whole thing has something of the charisma of 'To Have and To Hold'.

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951)

2007-07-11T19:08:00.001-07:00

A beautiful woman on a hot evening in the remote port of Esperanza somewhere on the Spanish main. Ava Gardner, possibly the most beautiful woman ever created, plays Pandora, a woman with the power to make men drop dead from futile devotion, the ultimate femme fatale, in fact, arriving at the very turning point of film noir in cinema history.
Ava Gardner is Pandora, but she is also a kind of Ingrid Bergman in Rick's, waiting and waiting for a man to arrive so she can get out of there, languorous, bored, worldweary. No man has ever managed to make her fall in love. She wonders if they ever will and is vaguely intrigued by the men who fall for her, and trails them along, perhaps to see if they will 'turn' her. But none do, until Captain Hendrik van der Zee's boat sails into the harbour.
James Mason is Captain van der Zee. He is also, it turns out, the Flying Dutchman, mythic Hollander cursed to sail the seas interminably until he can find a woman who will love him and that means die for him. An unlikely match: but we know it's going to happen, the two will pair up, because this is a movie and it's in Technicolor, and in the opening 'flash-forward' scene we watched as fishermen dragged up in their nets the bodies of a drowned couple...
In the first scenes of the film proper, Pandora's latest devotee, Reggie Demerast, almost dead from drinking, proposes to her and is rejected. He pops tablets into his own drink and swallows: it's poison! While she lazily pretends to play the piano, he pirouettes and drops like a stone.
As friends gather round, Sheila Sims accuses Pandora of heartlessness to which she responds with cool cynicism: she cannot be blamed for what men do to themselves in pursuit of her.
The film's literariness is unusual: it not only lards the story with mythic overtones but the script is written with ornate theatricality and some depth, which for the absurdity of the surface antics has Powell and Pressburger tendencies: superficially preposterous, but uncannily deep.
Shot in Technicolor by Jack Cardiff (Black Narcissus, Red Shoes, Black Rose), faces alter subtly from orange to yellow to green and back again: Technicolor introduces another preposterous tendency, but one which magicalises the image and makes it spellbinding. For religious reasons I try to avoid films that are not in black and white, but Technicolor is another form of black and white - the religious reasons that the film is spellbinding. Technicolor, like black and white, mythologises, though a film like Pandora with its generous helpings of mythologies (Carmen, Wagner, Pandora) hardly needs any help. But it is important to say that this fanciful, wispy looking film actually achieves that very difficult synthesis of realism and mythologism, much as the great Technicolor films of the era also managed to do: the Wizard of Oz, The Red Shoes, Reap The Wild Wind. The colour scheme heightens, amplifies, intensifies and deepens the illusion, resembling not reality - which we want to escape - but the dreams we would like to have. This romanticism is somehow missing from modern mythologies, say, the Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter series where the blend of realism and artifice somehow leads to pomposity, earnestness, heavyhandedness and silliness, all of the things you would expect of films like Pandora and the Flying Dutchman but are somehow lead away from by the seriousness and depth of the thought and reading that has gone into the script.
Godard said we look up at cinema-screen while we look down at television.

Passenger (1961)

2007-07-08T19:11:00.000-07:00

PASSENGER, Andrzej Munk, 1961-3 Poland

The final film of young Polish director of 'Bad Luck' (1960), a black comedy in which the little grey man of East European literature blunders through a series of misfortunes, in which he is mistaken for a Jew because of the shape of his nose, only to end up working as a camp for the German occupiers. In 'Passenger' (Pasazerka, 1963)) the Jews have been mistaken for people who deserve to die, and the camp guard is a woman, icily Aryan and Jodie Fosterish, called Liza.
The film contains at least one of the great sequences in post-war European cinema: the children descending the steps into the sealed chamber, accompanied by fat white-wimpled matrons and watched by Aleksandra Slaska (playing Liza, a minor SS supervisor). She stands on the far side of the wire 'unable to do anything' to prevent the massacre. Meanwhile a fellow guard pours white powder into the ventilation-shaft on the roof, rather ineptly, rather clumsily, haplessly doing his job...
In Auschwitz we are told, it is the sound of the wires singing at night which created perpetual terror in the inmates. We hear that sound in the accompanying documentary 'Last Pictures' (also on this admirable disk set from Second Run DVD, the UK releasing house now in the front rank of world distributors). What is Liza thinking as she stands there watching the queue of children descending into the charnel-house? What might she be thinking as she watches this? More importantly (for Liza is of course Slaska, an actor) is what the image prompts the viewer to be thinking, to experience, to imagine. Are we tempted by the questionable pleasures of watching such a film to empathise with the most unsympathetic people in the modern history, those who administered the death-camps of eastern Poland in the early 1940's, but did so with a kind of - dare we say? - conscience. The camera holds, and holds, until Liza is called away. She of course does nothing to stop the holocaust. The plot includes a segment (the film is unfinished and made up of surviving sections and portmanteau of stills put together by Munk's collaborator Witold Lesiewicz) wherein she does something to save Marta (a woman who fascinates her) from certain death, and to save a baby found in a pram after dozens of other babies had been incinerated. Then Liza is transferred and collects her bicycle, washes her hands of the whole fiasco, and walks away. Because she can.

Utterly chilling, and a marvellous artefact both from its period, the early sixties Polish new wave (evoked in interviews with Polanski in the accompanying doco) and from the 'holocaust era', a relatively early attempt to create art after Auschwitz.

Like Vigo, who left two films and two shorts, but an enduring reputation, Munk did so little (by comparison with the prolific and brilliant Polanski - five full-length features), but left a considerable mark as the best film-author of the Polish new wave. This kind of film-art it is tempting to put in the top drawer of all genres and styles for the effect it has on the viewer's mind is supremely elevating and humbling at once, while the helpless gallows-humour seems likely to be more appropriate in the end than melodrama or horror for treating this terrible subject.