Five Films, Three Days, Three Venues (including my house)
Flexing my “crap at taking holiday leaves me with a bunch of days left at the end of the year” muscles, I took off a couple of days earlier this week to immerse myself in the throbbing underbelly of cinema that is the London Film Festival. Well, by that I actually mean that I went along to three not particularly edgy festival films as well as Somers Town at the Prince Charles Theatre, the latter probably being the most extreme thing I did during the two days. Other than waiting outside the London Transport Museum reading my book in the cold waiting for Annie Mole, Mondoagogo and Utku to appear so that I could swap a copy of Maniac Cop 2 for one of Raw Meat (aka Death Line) with Ms Mole. That’s pretty extreme. Even if the book was the rather excellent Gig by Simon Armitage, a rather unextreme poet, purchased mainly because Mark Kermode was so impressed by the references to the Comsat Angels. I bought an album by The Fall the other day, I think my musical taste is getting worse.
So first up was Gonzo: The Life and Works of Dr Hunter S Thompson, which was a quite good documentary that doesn’t really say anything more about HST than most fans (who are probably those going to see it) know already. I’m sure it’ll be on TV sometime in the future and I recommend that you all watch it if you have any interest in the madman end of the journalistic spectrum - he was a nutter and proud of it.
Next, with a mere 20 minute break to let me fight my way through the crowds of builders in Leicester Square constructing a venue worthy of the next night’s Bond Royal Premiere (Premiere Royale?), was The Brothers Bloom, second film from Rian Johnson, rather talented director of one of my favourite films of last year, Brick.
He even turned up to say hello to everyone before and after the show, and he seemed like a thoroughly nice chap. The film itself was excellent for the most part, dropping a bit in the final act - something that isn’t particularly surprising when we heard from the director that they cut a lot of it, trimming down the complex finale into something that didn’t quite feel like a pay-off for the rest of the film. It’s Johnson’s take on the con-man film, with Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo taking on the roles of the titular brothers, with Rachel Weisz as the mark. Totally unlike Brick in many ways, there’s a definite similarity in feel, with the world being not quite as we know it, mixing a 30s aesthetic with chunks of modernity. It’s funny, it’s touching, it’s sad and, apart from towards the end, it zips along keeping you grinning as it goes. Special mention has to go to Rinko Kikuchi, the mysterious deaf girl with no pants from the otherwise woeful Babel, who comes in here as Bang Bang, sidekick to the brothers and lover of explosions. She takes the almost entirely silent role (she is said to only know three words of english, and what excellent words they are) and makes it something special. Anyways, I recommend it thoroughly: a more mainstream vision than Brick, and just as well put together.
I was planning on going to see The Wackness at the Prince Charles, but various circumstances (not being able to buy a ticket in advance due to the queue to get tickets for Hellyboy 2 and also being in a restaurant for the whole time the film was playing) conspired to keep me away from Gandhi trying to be from New York, and I left more movie delights until the next day.
I wandered in a bit late on Wednesday and got to the cinema with minutes to spare (partly thanks to the entirely unuseful crowds of people starting to mill slowly due to the Bond buildup) before Synecdoche, New York - the directorial debut of rather fine screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, of Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind fame. It’s another film that starts out excellent but loses its way towards the end. It is a surreal trek through the mind of Kaden Cotard, the theatre director protagonist and obvious stand in for Kaufman (a man who likes being in his own stories, to the extent of Adaptation having him in it twice…sort of), as he works on his new play and examines his fear of death and his relationships with the women in his life, both romantic and paternal. It meanders, it winds, it doesn’t make sense, it does make sense… At the end of it you know you’ve seen a film, but you may not be certain what you’ve seen. In classic Kaufman fashion, I suspect that a second viewing will reveal even more going on than you remember and research of names, places and words used in the film reveal “easter egg” style pieces of information that give further hints to how dense and complete his writing is - to start with, have a look at Cotard’s Delusion and the word synecdoche itself. Overall I rather enjoyed it, although I can see the surrealness and confusion that gets layered on top of the fairly dense scripting putting many people off. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is his normal excellent self and Samantha Morton is also rather good as his foil through the film, with everyone else turning in pretty good performances despite the randomness of the material. Even though it does disappear up its own bottom as it closes, with literal stories within stories within stories, it’s worth a watch.
After that I finally made it to the Prince Charles for Somers Town, my last film of the festival season, even though it wasn’t part of the actual festival. Having seen Shane Meadows’s last few films (This is England and Dead Man’s Shoes) I’ve been meaning to get to this for a while. Mildly controversial due to its sponsorship by Eurostar and also quite short (at just over an hour), it’s also rather good. Black and white, apart from a small section, it chronicles a couple of days in the lives of a runaway from Nottingham (Thomas Turgoose) and a boy from Poland, both recently arrived in Somers Town, the area around Kings Cross. It’s a film where stuff happens and Marek and Tomo wander around doing things, without any particularly overt plot. It’s short, funny, has a great ending, and definitely worth a watch. A lot less bleak than Mr Meadows’s other films.
And then last night I watched Jason Statham and Jet Li in WAR. It was awesome. You’ve got to have some balance between pretentiousness and kicks to the face. I like kicks to the face. As long as it’s not my beautiful face being kicked. That would’t be fun.
There may be some more haiku reviews up in a bit, if this chicken needs as long as I think it does in the oven…
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Posted: November 1st, 2008 under blog.
Tags: films, kicks to the face, lff