thecatcanwait Reviews

O'Horten (2007)

Not odd enough

[5/10 · 6 January 2012]

Watched this in the summer and was bored by it. Lets try again.

Odd Horten. A 67 year old pipe smoking train driver about to retire. Lights up pipe. Taciturn. Sucks on pipe. Reticent. Puffs on pipe. Expressionless.

Has he got a daft sense of humour? No. A wacky hobby? No. A naughty sex life? No. Has he got any inner life at all? Er, no.

The lighting and puffing of this pipe. Is about as interesting as Odd is going to get.

The acting is deliberately doggedly dull. The actor is doggedly dull too. Too dull. Distinct lack of oddness.

I need some quirk. Eventually some quirk comes. A dry kind of daftness.

"All my friends jumped but not me. And now its too late" laments Odd. "It seems most things come too late in life".

Well, its never too late. To make that (ski) jump.

He jumped (of course) Maybe I've only watched this cus its a Norwegian film. And it's December. And i needed to see some lonely snowy winter.

What was this film? A tribute to the Everyman – or in this case a Norwegian Nobody.

It fell as flat as Bent Hamers other film, that misfiring dud Kitchen Stories.

A lot of pipe smoking in that too.

Unrelated (2007)

Awkwardly authentic

[7/10 · 6 January 2012]

Not the most imaginative title for a film. But it does describe what goes on.

Hot summer holidays in Tuscan villas. When the Sienna Palio is on. I've known one of them. Lazing about with strangers. Wondering what, or if, you've got anything in common.

I wouldn't have wanted to have been holidaying with this lot though. With this well to do poncey lot. Even the pompous prig George is calling Oakley his "supercilious prat of a son" (Oakley, i ask you!) The dope smoking teenagers are spoilt public school types. Whooping and whaling it up. Pinching traffic cones. Wrecking the neighbours car. I wanted to give that Oakley a slap around his conceited curly big head.

I didn't feel much sympathy for Anna either. I've known women like her: self-absorbed middle-class 40′s something women who self-pity about not having kids, and are neurotically going through a self-induced mid life crisis about everything (failing relationship, career choice etc) but also about nothing at all really: you're no longer young; you can no longer have it all – flippin get over yourself! That's what i would have wanted to say to this Anna. If I'd been there. But I wasn't. Small mercies!

Yes, this film actually makes you feel relieved not to have been there in sun-drenched Tuscany; such summer holidays seem like excessively empty exercises in vapid self-indulgence. Especially given todays impoverished (and imperiled) economic climate.

Anyway, Anna tries having a crush on Oakley. She's old enough to be his mother. She's misread all the signs. Or maybe the conceited prat has sort of idly lead her on. But I feel little sympathy for her. In a way, its good he rejects her; wakes her up to herself, how adrift she is in her life. Painful realisation. Gotta grow up here. Get back into Adult. So lets drop that little sh and it in it (he'd wrecked the car and tried to get away with it) Not that she's done it out of adult moral responsibility – more like vengeful spite (at being rejected) Anna's late confessional scene with friend Verena in hotel is overwrought and self-consciously neurotic – but that could have been the over-reacting of the actress – not able to suggest more sympathetic qualities (maybe that's why this was her first film – her acting isn't up to much)

Interview extra with Joanna Hogg:"Many of the important events are off screen – its more powerful when you hear something and don't see it; what the audience is imagining is happening is a lot more interesting than what i could show them" Which might be another way to say i don't have the ability to make it imaginatively interesting. A kop out. But I'll give her rationale the benefit of the doubt.

Anna is trying to capture unexpressed adolescent yearnings (the hanging out with Oakley and Co) But its all vanity. And all in vain. So grow up!

"I tried for not an obvious kind of beauty ala Merchant Ivory heritage Tuscany" Yes, i could see that. Mind you, sometimes the camera-work could have done with being of a better quality: night scenes were chronically under lit; dialogues were indistinct, sometimes inaudible. But Hogg says they had a cheap camera to work with. Explains, but doesn't excuse why you can't hear half of whats being said.

Says she was aiming at a truth – true for her – that expresses what she hears and sees is true-to-life of the life and particular milieu around her. I got that. And i think she achieved it. Despite my criticisms i think this film did capture quite authentically something awkward and actual, something painfully real. About how social and self exclusion often feed off and into one another.

Watching this privileged lot smugly sloshing back their red bottles of vino I'd have felt – and was feeling – as unrelated as Anna was.

Alexandra (2007)

Oddly disengaging

[5/10 · 6 January 2012]

Grandma Alexandra (Galina Vishnevskaya) looks very fed up. She's got the whole of Mother Russia on her back – so is needing to walk much Great Suffering out of her tired legs.

She's gone to see Dennis (Dennis?!) her army officer grandson, where he's making war in the Chechen Republic. Whys she there? I mean, how credible is this? Why is she allowed to be there? Why is she allowed to wander around the front line faffing her fingers at the bored border guards? This situation seems like a contrived set-up of Sukurov's to facilely juxtapose women as nurturers against the bad boys (men) of war.

It's soon turned into one of those films where questioning plot plausibility becomes irrelevant – cus there is no plot. Nothing very interesting happens. And nothing very interesting is said. She gets shown around the dusty hot base, the dirty combat vehicles. Now she's examining their shiny equipment. She's brusque, dismissive. Seen it all, done it all. "All" meaning all the suffering already. All the suffering these bored boys are too insensitive – or desensitized – to suffer, with all this impersonalised shooting off of these weapons of destruction they do.

So she's wandering about the camp mumbling and muttering to herself like some grumpy old Mother Archetype. Its "Alexandra Nikolaevna" this and "Alexandra Nikolaevna" that (thought that only happened to characters in Tolstoy novels). Keeps needing to sit down cus tired. More than likely made tired; by the moral torpor shes witnessing – as accentuated by the drained out greeny gray the film is being filtered through.

"What do you actually want? I don't understand you" says Unit Commander. I don't understand her either. And its hard not to feel disengaged by all this gruff antipathy she's wearily trudging around the camp with. They can't help it – the poor lambs; they're just being soldiers. Making war and killing people is what soldiers do. Even if they are only little lads. If you don't like being there Gran – go away!

And she's gone. Leaves as disgruntled/ crotchety/ lonely/dismayed(take your pick) as she came. Mind you, there's been a big granny love-in at the train departure; reinforcing how instantly, easily, connective womenfolk can be together. Because they – the grannies, (whether Russian or Chechen) represent humankind's best, possibly – only – hope against war (I doubt Sukurov meant anything as trite as that – but its as much thought as i want to give this film for now)

Christmas in August (1998)

Stop that silly laughing, you're dying!

[4/10 · 6 January 2012]

Bespectacled photographer with fatal illness indulges in hapless hopeless non romance with meter maid.

"Why are you smiling at me?" she asks. Yeah, why is he? And flippin laughing all the time. Having this terminal cancer (or whatever it is) is dead funny.

But he doesn't look very ill, seem ill, act ill. The ugly pain of dying from this mystery malady is mostly airbrushed out.

Is his Shy Smiley Man persona a way of keeping people out? Putting an ever so brave and humble front on? Or a genuine expression of joy at the preciousness of life? Or an absurd abreaction to how funny-odd life is? (when death is all there is at the end of it) Or a surreptitious wink of denial, contrived to con the people around him to lighten up, and smile – cus I'm dying man! (but I'm being a brave little boy by not making a great big song and dance about it) I'd quite like him to stop doing that stupid little laugh. Its not funny. Its ingratiating. This diffident shy charm act is fake mate.

But he still carries on insinuating the phony feel-good happy vibe with clueless girl. Smiley smile, noddy head: "Look I'm nice. I'm gonna die but i can't stop being nice about it. How happy dying makes me feel. I'm making you (meter maid) want to fall in love with me. But I'm not going to tell you. I'll keep me – and the actual Truth – quietly to myself thank you very much. I won't let love in and i won't let love out. I won't share what is really going on with me. By staying passively withheld, and impassively withdrawn, i'll hang onto some kind of sad self-effacing virtue. Which of course will make all of you watching me go "Awww" and want to give me a nice little hug".

Personally, to get more empathetic response from me I'd have needed him to drop the phony nice guy act, stop the twee smile and the ingratiating laugh, stop the wanting me to feel sorry for him (as watcher of film) – and get real. Be in authentic engagement with the people around him (in the film) Tell the girl the truth instead of doing this tepid half baked withheld involvement thing with her.

If i think about it – its the actors performance as much as his character i couldn't buy into. Too smoothly pathetic. Pathos superficially acted out but not internalised or deeply enriched from within. The bland smiley facade was all Suk-kyu Han's.

Overall, Christmas in August is disingenuously sly. The suffering is synthetic, not sympathetic. The sweetly winsome little soundtrack strokes you to be sad every 5 minutes; pouring sugary sad sentiment into the gaps were engaged characterisation should be, enlightening script – and genuinely involving, involved emotion.

A manipulative little sham this film.

Øyenstikker (2001)

Quietly convincing

[7/10 · 4 January 2012]

Eddie is a chubby beardy bear of bloke living out in a big wood timbered farmhouse next to a lake with his young girlfriend Marie; far away from everyone and everything ."All i want is you" says she. "And i want you" says he. Cushty. Maria is up the duff.

But somebody is going to ruin this lovely life in a minute. Cue Kullman. He too wants some of what they want.

"You have a good life" says Kullman envious. "Want to play a game?" He gets them both to close their eyes. Boo! "You knew something horrible was going to happen. And then it did. That's what makes it so terrible" says Kullman. Maria doesn't want to play. She's sussed his game.

After this I'm suspecting Kullman is going to be a menace in a psycho nutcase kind of way. And as if to confirm this suspicion he's deliberately sliced his leg with a chainsaw to get to stay longer. She knows. Then neighbours dog is in boot of Kullmans car dead. Claims he ran over it. Next, a nearby barn is on fire.

"She's too good for you" says Kullman to Eddie. And for a while Eddie goes a bit bonkers with jealous rage.

A distinct change has taken place: it's Eddie – rather than Kullman – who is "ruining everything" stamping about and chucking tiles off the roof. His aggressive old thuggish self is jumping about, scaring Marie off. Kullman, by contrast, seems like a little boy lost, just wanting to belong, be accepted, be included; share in some of the good stuff Eddie has been having (living here in this rural idyll with the lovely Marie) The Bad Guy role has been subtly switched. Gradually, I'm feeling more sympathetically inclined towards Kullman – which i guess is what i was meant to feel.

At the end Eddie comes back to his cuddly - huggy baby - bear self again. Although he does give a metaphorical slap to Kullmans face: "You were never really a friend, not really". And Kullman is left there, friendless, alone, unwanted, rejected. Yes, i did feel sorry for him.

Its a relief the film hasn't got all silly with contrived thriller genre plotty twists and potty turns. It's kept true to its melancholic undertow, mostly – stayed close to its quiet Norwegian roots.

Life in a Day (2011)

I YouTube therefore I am

[8/10 · 4 January 2012]

A mish mashy melange was my first reaction on watching this. Then i watched it again and could see more coherence in it.

It's structured around all the ordinary small stuff we have to do to get through the every day: waking up, washing, brushing teeth, shaving, making breakfast, lunch and so on.

And then there's the bigger life-events like coping with illness, getting married, having babies.

Questions are asked like, "What's in your pocket?" or "What do you love/fear? A lonely guy loves his cat… another guy loves his fridge.. another guy fears his hair falling out… a woman fears "not being a mummy"… and so on..

At times the editing is very fast: periodic montage sequences whizz by a conveyor belt of micro images like a Planet Earth ad break.

But then there are several personal pieces that follow individual situations. I liked these slower stories better, such as

The post-graduate returning to Essex to catch up with his "old man" dad, both sat in the car, sharing a burger.

The gay guy coming out to grandma on the phone ("I love you too" he's saying to her)

And the sad scenarios: of the father lighting incense at shrine of dead wife – and the little sons perfunctory remembrance of his mother; or the "Family project" of mother dying of cancer, trying to help her anxious young son make sense of it; or the thankful – tearful – Aussie in hospital after major heart surgery "I'll be out there again, doing crazy things, and enjoying life" he says. But you sense he probably won't.

There's smiley bits too, like the Peruvian shoeshine boy; the rude wedding vows read by the English vicar.

And some nasty bits, like the slaughter of cow, its throat being slashed into to let blood – and there's a rapidly cut together montage of scenes of violence and fighting – deliberately rushed through so as not to dwell too long. The shoplifting Russian/Slav is a bit dismaying too (firstly, that he's filmed getting away with it; secondly that the clip gets sent to be included in the film; and thirdly – that it is included!)

Throughout, is the continual narrative thread of a Korean cycling around the world for the last 9 years – feeling homesick for Korean flies.

Come the afternoon outdoor pursuits – like skydiving out of planes – and Life in a Day has got to feel exhausting.

So much packed in, so much to pack in. I think a million sub-editors were needed to prune the 4500 hours of submitted footage into a mere 90 minutes – just a blink of the Earths eye really.

To begin with i was wanting not to like it, but come the end i was won over. Out of all this mashed up diffuseness something cogent got produced. Although I wonder how much actual directing input Kevin MacDonald did to it. It looks more like a cut and paste collaboration, the chopped up product of countless hours of endless editing – rather than something that's been singularly created.

Question is, would selective clicking on any YouTube vids on any day of the year produce the same result? No, cus this is more of a polished product. But watching a load of randomised clips would probably seem as arbitrary as this film feels. And the effect would feel similar: trawling in too much information just makes the net of your attention go saggy.

I might watch this again one day (Unless they come up with another life in another day next year)

At the end – 2 minutes before midnight – there's a girl in a car bemoaning the fact that "I spent the whole day waiting for something great to happen….all day long nothing really happened…i want people to know that i'm here…. i don't want to cease to exist"

"I don't want to cease to exist". As long as you're seen on YouTube, you can pretend you don't. If you get my drift.

Hotel (2004)

A dull hotel

[5/10 · 3 January 2012]

Boring Austrian hotel requires boring receptionist to replace previous receptionist (probably also boring) who has disappeared, or been disappeared, into surrounding dark spooky forest; possibly gobbled up in the cave. By our Lady of the Woods. As boredom material.

Actually, I might have assumed too much there – imagined too much drama, or too much haunty horror. Which is no doubt what the director would like me to do: see all the strange goings on she's – deliberately – not been showing. And also reading into the narrative all the story she's not been developing, or even really providing. The new receptionist Irene never says very much; and the other characters don't say much to her either. Is something "funny" going to happen to her? Hopefully yes – otherwise watching this film will have felt like a waste of time.

Come the end something funny does happen to her. But it still felt like a waste of time. There's been too much concealed as opposed to revealed or released dramatic tension. The direction far too mutedly mannered. Far too withheld.

Still Walking (2008)

Didn't feel at home in this family

[4/10 · 12 December 2011]

If the title music is anything to go by this will be a gentle sentimental sad little film.

Grandma is wrapping sea urchin in cucumber. The sushi preparations made me hungry for some (corn tempura anybody?) It bimbles along, amiable in-house family chat.

By about half way I've got bored by it though, even slightly irritated; the life-in-a-day ordinary everydayness has become prosaic and dramatically underdone: too much mundane chat of the "Not a lot on telly these days" variety is being slopped into that sushi.

And that sugary guitar soundtrack motif keeps smoothing in swashes of sentimental reverie; nice-ifying and prettifying up scenes as though they were meant to be meaning something sweetly sad.

I appreciate Koreeda wanting the acting to understate feelings so as to avoid melodramatic clichés; but he should be doing something more actively engaging with the screenplay. In the absence of enacted – or dramatically expressed – emotion just sticking a sad guitar in there now and again is too easy.

Koreeda – on the DVD extra – actually seems like quite a nice person; sweetly souled, gently dispositioned; smiles more than he says, but a sad touch to his looks sometimes. This film a kind of personal testament to his mother who'd died 2 years previously. And although i usually like films that feel intimate, are right up close and personal – this seemed almost like a vanity project; too narrowly self-absorbed, too self-indulgently fussy.

In the end i was glad to get away from the whole family set-up. There are times when the ordinary everyday requires a bit of a kick up the ..... This was one of them.

Better Things (2008)

Grin and bear it - but worth it

[8/10 · 7 December 2011]

Three times i've seen this without being able to write about it. Watching it feels as painful as the pain its trying to show.

"It hurts when we love somebody. Because loving is a painful thing. That is its nature. Our loving is hurting us" reads dumpy adolescent Gail (what is the book? My guess is R D Laing)

"Love hurts" is the over-riding (sometimes overbearing) theme of the film. The thematic treatment supplants any kind of plot or through-run story.

Therefore condense drama to concentrate emotion: still the life, compose the frame, minimalise the dialogue. No panning or tracking or moving off with camera. Stay still. Be here. With this that hurts. The effect is to feel oppressively overloaded on monochromal, monotonal, misery.

This is all stylistically engaging. Racing in the car fast down a dark country lane; all the sound is cut except for the 2 boys talking – like being immersed inside the bubble of them, cut off from the outside, focused right in to the heart of their isolation.

Better Things is relentlessly, almost - courageously - grim. A lot of very miserable face going on. Faces without smiles, without warmth, lacking, unwarmed by love. Faces of lads are all so null and void its hard to distinguish one from the other.

All is shadow and blue inertia, with very little light to provide contrast.

This isn't so much about the perils of doing drugs. It's about how difficult it is to love when love feels out of reach. Deprived of love, life disappears, becomes denuded – gets gloomily unbearable. Seems to be the message.

Disturbingly, the setting isn't inner-city London, Manchester – but the least place you'd expect to see urban anomie and alienation, – the supposedly "lovely" Costwolds.

I'll be saving this film. Doubt I'll want to watch it another 3 times though.

Keep Your Seats, Please! (1936)

Lets go daft

[7/10 · 5 December 2011]

In this film - as in every Formby film - goofish gormless George always gets the girl. Why?

Cus he's a soft daft lad with a happy ukulele - and he's got all the best tunes.

Admittedly, the daft antics get more farcical - even positively ludicrous - as this film goes along (goat carried onto crowded bus wearing a dog mask being the silliest example)

The scene where a matronly nurse tries to take George's trousers off made my girlfriend laugh her mascara off. "Never touched me!" Not!

I was starting to feel myself "going daft" quite a bit at that too.

If you can't let yourself go daft watching a George Formby film you may as well watch something else.

No Limit (1935)

A laughalong romp

[8/10 · 2 December 2011]

What a jump up in quality No Limit is from George's first 2 films ("Boots!, Boots!" and "Off The Dole")

More lavishly produced, more of a story, more of a drama, more of a genuine laugh.

More of a proper film really (instead of the disjointed bits of skits and sketches of the previous films) professionally directed by Monty Banks (Gracie Fields husband)

I could imagine going to see this in the cinemas in 1936 and having a "reet rollikin good laff"

George singing "Riding in the TT Races" to a carriage full of smiley fat faces gives a little tug on the happy string in your heart.

The TT race finale is a thrills and spills rompalong (how close the dangerously careering bikes are to the crowd around would give the present day Health & Safety police kittens)

It all ends predictably and happily ever after.

I'd pick a rainy Sunday afternoon to watch this film, cuddled up on the sofa, drinking pots of tea, munching Eccles cakes.

Off the Dole (1935)

Pell & Little's dance is brill

[4/10 · 2 December 2011]

Watching Formby films in chronological sequence as part of a 20 film collection. This was his 2nd film, and for the most part looks as inept as the 1st was.

Contains all the same deficiencies as Boots! Boots!: negligible plot, Am-Dram theatricals, cheap production values, inane script, laboured set ups etc.

After a while i was fast forwarding the contrived story elements just to get to the songs.

But then - near the end - comes along the Stan Pell and Stan Little dance skit in the school. Brilliant! Funny! At last something to be genuinely merry about.

If i ever watch this film again I'll go straight to Pell & Little's merry mad dance. And watch some of the songs again too (like "With My Little Ukulele In My Hand")

As for the rest of the film - forget it.

Boots! Boots! (1934)

For Formby fanatics only

[2/10 · 2 December 2011]

Possibly has a certain curiosity value for lifelong members of the George Formby Appreciation Society; his first ever film, and with wife Beryl in it too.

But its got no credible story, a hammy script, wooden acting, static camera, hardly any direction, and zero narrative propulsion or purpose.

It looks like it got made for about 10 bob.

Most of the disconnected bits of sketches and set ups don't work in isolation either; comedic routines, like the excruciatingly infantile "No, I'm you, and you're me" skit are embarrassingly unfunny.

I suppose if you're a die-hard Formby fan you'll forgive how inept it is just to hear songs like "Why Don't Women Like Me?" and "Sitting On The Ice In The Ice Rink".

Boots! Boots! is only worth watching for the dedicated George Formby Completist.

Riff-Raff (1991)

How you expect cowboy builders to be

[18 November 2011]

Ken Loach doing his usual social documenting of working class nitty grittiness.

It's "Boys from the Blackstuff" meets "Auf Wiedersehen Pet"; indignant about the selfish "Me Me Me" property developer greed of the Thatcher years – but leavened by typical Scouse (and Manc) sarcasm, and softened with a short if not so sweet romance.

Robert Carlyle is Stevie, fresh out of jail, and having a go at life outside Scotland; gets taken on as a construction worker; is found an empty council flat to squat; is quickly shacking up with Susie, a fragile, troubled, Irish singer. He's soon back into his petty thieving ways; knocking off machinery from the site. "Labourin is rubbish, boxer shorts is better (selling of)" seems to be the extent of his aspiration. Stevie and Susie are both "unstable" characters so arguing is bound to be happening; he's having to drag her out of bed: "Depression is for the middle classes – the rest of us have got an early start in the morning". Then he gets news his mothers died – so he's off up to Scotland for the funeral. Cue a black comedy scene at the crematorium with inept swinging of urn – mother ash thrown all over the party of mourners.

Returning, Stevie is just in time to see Susie sticking a needle up her arm. It's at this point Robert Carlyle breaks out into a warm up version of Begbie from Trainspotting: nut-ting people in the gob, stamping on their wotsits etc. And as for Susie: She's dumped. End of. No sympathy with junkie smack-heads has Stevie. Or Begbie. Or even Robert Carlyle.

Ricky Tomlinson is in the film too – as a mouthy Trade Union sympathiser, his Commie vitriol redeemed by sarky gags and loud laughing; a bit like a younger version of Jim Royle, minus the beard.

Towards the end i was thinking: someone's gonna be falling off this dodgy scaffolding without his tin hat on in a minute – and sure enough, he was. And Them Barstewards are gonna have to pay for that. We need some Natural Justice here. Lets burn the whole flipping lot down. Any volunteers? Yeah. Stevie will do it. With glee.

The film is unaffected in its down to earth portrayal of the working class bloke: the thieving cheating lying lazy barsteward that skives around as cheap casual labour on building sites while fiddling the dole type of working class bloke. The type that doesn't really give a monkeys. As long as it gets paid. Even if it doesn't get paid enough. Cus the company employing it is an exploitative cheating lying greedy barsteward too.

Its a right riff raffy racket is the Building Trade. Seems to be the message. Something i – and all of us – knows already. So nothing new there then. But my – and your – cynicism will get a nice pat on its back.

I wouldn't want any of this lot building a house for me.

Career Girls (1997)

Irritating characters doing irritating acting

[6/10 · 17 November 2011]

First time i saw this film (a few years ago) I thought it was dreadful. Irritating actors doing irritating characters doing irritating acting.

And having seen it again they're still irritating.

There must come a point in Mike Leigh's much vaunted "method" of character improvisation where he loses objective judgement; he's so closely, and myopically, caught up in the whole process he can't see how parodic his actors "charactering" is becoming.

There's a scene in a pub illustrates how embarrassingly bad this improvised method can get; you've got social phobic psychology student Annie (Lynda Steadman) flittering away with fidgety fingers over itchy twitchy face; sat next to her is fellow psychology student, fat Ricky, spluttering and stammering with wild flailing blind arms like somebody with jerky Aspergers; and opposite is cynical Hannah (Katrin Cartlidge) sneering with quotation mark emphasis at their "pretentious psychobabble" doing a mocking beaky hand thing. Tics and fidgets and jerks gone galorious – and non of it is meant to be being "funny". It's not p--s-taking you're seeing, it's seriously intended role-playing. But i thought to myself: this is just mimic mania gone mad; parodic mannerism has now subsided into ridiculous pantomimic absurdity. It was like witnessing Neurosis overload; these 3 hapless actors in a Mike Leigh film had just allowed themselves to be turned into grotesque caricatures, riddled with hopelessly unfunny autistic distortions of Tourettes syndrome.

Oh dear. I've seen this neurotic OTT grotesquery before in Mike Leigh films; how ruinously afflicted Jane Horrocks was by it in Life is Sweet (and Timothy Spall too); Brenda Blethyn in Secrets and Lies with all her self-pitying "sweed arts" and "darlins" got pretty close to unbearable too. I suppose its par for the course. You have to expect that Mike Leigh films come with this trademark neurotic – bordering on mental illness - characterisation. Sometimes it leads towards heartfelt Pathos. And sometimes it veers off into something unbearably unbelievably Pathetic. Which unfortunately it does for big chunks of this film, especially in the retrospective flashbacks to when they were playing themselves as "immature" polytechnic students.

In the other - friends reunite – half of the film the tics and twitches have calmed down or grown up a bit. Annie is still doing that mad eyed down turned petrified stare when stressed or confronted; Hannah has stopped doing the beaky hand thing, but the sour antipathy hasn't really sweetened any, its just found less obvious streams in which to curdle; she's professionalised her cynicism, forged a career for herself out of the energy of her anger. Ricky, however, hasn't survived – he's gone full on bonkers. One of life's sad little causalities, left to wander off on his own down the career-less path to nowhere.

I suppose thinking about it i did feel a bit more in sympathy with the general premise of the film this time: the whole reflecting back on how we once were, and what we now like to think we've become, how much better or improved we like to seem to ourselves, while knowing all the while – deep down – that nothing much has changed about us at all, and nothing ever will. We're more or less stuck with our silly little selves for the duration.

Mind you, at least i'm not stuck inside a character in a Mike Leigh film for the duration. Lol. That would be purgatory!

Dialogue avec mon jardinier (2007)

Watch while fishing

[16 November 2011]

This is a nice film. Not too twee. A bit better than bland. It rolls easy-goingly along.

I'm writing this review about a month after watching it. Usually i'll watch films a second time in order to review them – but with this i don't feel the need. I got the point the first time round. The point being: middle-aged friendship between blokes is something to be nurtured, treasured.

I reckon Auteuil and Darroussin – a pair of safe solid hands – didn't have to stretch themselves too far to play these roles. It seemed as easy for them acting it as it is for us watching it. The brotherly bonhomie between the two appeared inherent, generous, unaffected.

Darroussin (The Gardener) gently undermines Auteuil (The Artist) bourgeois values with simple ignorance – or better put, peasant commonsense; calls Auteuil "The Dauber". The Gardener hasn't got The Artists wider range of experience, or supposedly higher culture – but he knows a thing or two (like always having on your person a pocket knife and some string) The Dauber finds The Gardener's lack of pretension, his salt of the earth, ordinary simplicity, appealing – and eventually, even quietly enlightening.

Its feel-good cinema but understated; little feelings are allowed to bubble up subtly, like small ripples on a naturally occurring pond – while waiting patiently for that feel-good fish to present himself.

I'll watch it again when i'm in a dozy fishing kind of mood.

Its extremely pleasant. Lol

Summer Interlude (1951)

More good stuff from early Berrgman

[16 November 2011]

Another B/w Bergman film from the 1950′s. Most of them seem indistinguishable from one another. But if this is anything like "Summer with Monika" I'm in for a treat.

Ballet and ballerinaing is not a good subject for me. Hope this doesn't stay too long stuck up a tutu.

The boy interest is Henrik. She – minxy Marie – is offering to show him wild strawberries. "I'm never going to die" she says. "I wish i could burst into bits, vanish, become nothing" she's gushing to the lovelorn lad.

Its got similarities to Summer with Monika; young love and first kisses; sleeping together in a lakeside cabin (possibly first fcuking too?) boating about archipelagos abundant with bird songs, skimming stones, canoeing by moonlight, sharing those wild strawberries:"Days like pearls, round, iridescent, on a thread of gold. Days full of play and caresses, nights of wide-awake dreams" she wistfully reflects later on. Happy days. But will it all go sour for Marie like it did for Monika? Well, Henrik is afraid he's"going to slip over the side into something dark and unknown" And a shadow just passed over the sun. And an owl is hooting. This doesn't bode well. Happy days are numbered for Marie and Henrik. Prepare for the worst all you young lovers.

And here it is: Henrik dives off a rock, breaks his head. Goes comatose. Won't be recovering.

The last 20 minutes is shadowed by this tragedy. Young lovings bloom withered so soon. A catcher of fleeting moments Marie was meant to be; but her moments to come won't be iridescent pearls on threads of gold; Marie's days are gonna get long and hard, and be old already.

"I don't believe God exists" she snarls. "I'll hate him until i die". She wants to spit in Gods face.

Old Uncle Erland – the Lech – is there to console her: "Protect yourself. Wall yourself in. I'll help you. I'll show you how to build a wall" he says. What terrible life denying advice that is! But, unfortunately, she's listened to him. Has walled herself in. Erected a wall around her heart for 13 years. Eventually forgets Henrik.

A final scene has her sitting in her ballerina dressing room wiping off her painted face and facing up "really" to the reality of being who she is: a resigned old woman of 28. But this realisation transforms rapidly – all too easily – into a sense of renewal. (I'm not getting that at all) Still, it's been a lovely film. Not quite as good as Summer with Monika – but still good enough.

The Hide (2008)

Twitchy twitcher twit

[16 November 2011]

Lush orchestral strings swing wide over moody panorama; and then in small we go, into the solitary Hide – or glorified shed – on the Fenland Marches where Roy Tunt is, laying out fastidiously, his paste sandwiches, binoculars, his twitcher credentials: "It's all go in here" he says to himself self-mockingly.

He's gonna be an odd-bod is Roy Tunt; replete with mild-mannered, typical, quirky, English eccentricity; he'll amuse us for a while; and bemuse – or baffle – the dark taciturn northern stranger Dave who stumbles into his seemingly benign, nerdish birdy world: "I'll let you get on with your twatting" says Northern tyke Dave swigging back his bottle of hard stuff. Roy Tunt is not amused. He rebuffs the slight with snobby aplomb. He's posh see. Or at least more highly educated than "Drum & Bass raver Dave. Knows his who's from his whoms does Roy.

The dialogue between the 2 is spun beguilingly – in terse, Pinteresque pauses and platitudes; all sorts of murky things being twitched and twatted at. Dave keeps having gory flashback visions to crows feasting on flesh – designed to make you think he's been up to something a bit nasty and bloody.

When the switch came i was half expecting it but still unnerved. Especially at what Roy Tunt had been putting in those paste sandwiches (which Dave was hungrily gobbling up) The shocking shift into violence at the end seemed clamped on to add gory reward for the watching and waiting we've been patiently doing: ear chewing and brains being splattered kicked us into another genre of movie entirely. "Rather unseemly and unnecessary if you ask me" would have been a Roy Tunts cursory verdict with his bird-watcher hat on. Minus the sticks of dynamite under his cardigan vest.

Alex McQueen did the whole posh twitchy twit thing off to a tee. I'd watch the film to watch him watching his birds.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962)

Running to try and get lost

[16 November 2011]

What a great find off YouTube this was. Adapted by Alan Silitoe from a short story.

Colin Smith (Tom Courtney) has been sent to a Borstal. He's not feeling remorseful for the petty pinching "wrong" he did: "I got caught – I didn't run fast enough".

Turns out he's probably gonna be on the run, running away, all his life. But he seems to like running, is born to run – and he runs fast; "All i know is you've got to run, run without knowing why" We get flashbacks to his "previous" life, all run-of-the-mill working class delinquent stuff: pinching a car with mate Mike (James Bolam); picking up a couple of birds, going off on a joy ride. Dreams of going down to London. A quick snog with the birds. Return car. A couple of mischievous misfits – harmless really.

Back we go to the Remand Centre for naughty boys where Smith can turn himself into a good boy if he wins the Cup for The Governor; only he won't allow himself to be corrupted by a non-working class, institutionalised, poncey, version of being good: "I'm gonna let them think they've got me house-trained. But they never will – the bastards". Another version of Arthur Seaton's "Don't let the bastards grind you down" is Colin Smith.

Flashbacks to back story: Dad dies. With £500 cash pay-out mother is going on a shopping spree, buys a telly. Colin is not impressed. He burns the (blood) money she gives him. Those birds are picked up again, taken to Skeggy, snogged a bit, fallen in love with a bit. He's confessing to his bird Audrey (Topsy Jane) this sad realisation: "I run away to try and get lost. I was always trying to get lost when i was a kid.I soon found out that you can't get lost though".

And then he's done a burglary with Mike and unwisely stuffed the cash up a drainpipe: "Whats the first thing you'd do if you won £75,000 quid? asks Mike" "Count it" comes the droll reply. Yeah, count it, make sure you know how much you've got even if you've got no idea what you'd do with how much you've got. Mike asks, "What do you want to do Col?" "I don't know. Live i suppose. See what happens" says Colin. Hasn't got a clue what to do with his hopeless life has Colin Smith. Except keep running fast, running off, running away.

And running free. Which the Governor has allowed Colin to do: run unsupervised outside the perimeter fence. Trusts him. Cus he's "the Governors blue-eyed boy now" isn't he? No he's not. He's not been "had". He's gonna want to lose that race surely. I was ambivalent watching him run it (which i suppose is what i was meant to be feeling) I wanted him to lose the Cup (for The Governor). But i didn't want him to lose the race (for himself) And in the end he didn't lose. Or did he? Well, he hadn't lost his self-respect.

And he'd won.

At being a loser.

Which is frequently where you can find all your slowed down "thievin little bastards" like Colin Smith.

Bænken (2000)

Should have stayed on the bench

[16 November 2011]

A freebie film off the Internet. Part of a trilogy directed by Per Fly portraying the upper, middle, and under strata's of Danish society. I saw The Inheritance - the upper strata part – back in May 2008; it was – like this is – competent Sunday evening TV drama (more BBC2 than 1) Acceptable misery entertainment.

Jesper Christensen as street bench alkie Kai gives good grumpy and gruff; actually, its more than grumpy and gruff, its downright sh-tty horrible. All that swigging and puking up, and stinking beer sweat – not attractive; disillusioned hopeless weary woeness is pitched the right side of ugly: Kai is gonna drink himself to death – and you can all fcuk off! I work with park bench alkies; they swing erratically from cynical self-loathing to sentimental self-pity on a daily basis; depends on what state of boozy obliteration they're in or out of – so this gritty portrayal is pretty good as far as pretty bad is concerned. The drunken slide into down and out destitution is relentless, becomes inevitable.

Problem with this film is it doesn't have the guts to stay still - and hopeless – with the drunks on the park bench. It wants to move into movie melodrama all too readily. The whole father/daughter redemption story is too neatly plotted and packaged to be street credible "realism". Too much of what happens gets to feel conveniently contrived so as to forward the narrative as conventional cinematic drama, while running away - scared – smack into a redemptive "dying in daughters arms" ending. This guy Kai has done 19 years of alcohol abuse. He deserted – after beating her up – his wife and little daughter. He's an ugly self loathing ass-hole. He doesn't deserve redemptive endings. Get real! I would have dropped all the daughter drama. Stay on the bench. Get right in the "earth ass-hole" these bench alkies are stuck in. And mine their assholes for worms of dirty gold. But i suppose to do that you'd need Samuel Beckett writing the screenplay.

This film wants to leave the ass-hole its poking into before it gets too disgustingly sh-tty. We're too amused by distractions like "jazz popped trumpet music" and an eccentric character who seems to have wandered in lost from a Mike Leigh film "overeaten of Soren Kierkegaard" (to quote a Danish reviewer)

The Dreamlife of Angels (1998)

Flawed Angels

[16 November 2011]

Its hard to see why film critics are so enamoured with this film.

I felt no sympathy at all for Marie. Not sure how much that was the actress (Natacha Regnier) or her acting putting me off. Her intention seemed to be to repel men rather than attract them. And yet blokes were attracted to her nevertheless; so that means either the bloke is too soft in the head (like the fat dopey biker bouncer was) or the interest is casual exploitative sex (which was the motive of the oily night club guy)

She certainly repelled me; my antipathy antennae had tuned in to her screwy lack of self-worth right from the first scene: a skinny female with a thin sneery mouth and short hair who isn't exuding erotic sexuality, but denying, repressing it; scared of her innate desirability, her womanhood has inverted into something wilfully antagonistic. I think that was what i was picking up – and probably meant to be picking up; but the "unloved" nature of this Marie character seemed over determined, too self-consciously emphatic. It's OK to have characters who are unlovable; but when they're also not very likable – like this Marie/Natacha Regnier wasn't – any empathy i could have felt re her vulnerability wasn't switched on.

The other skinny little girl Isa was more sympathetic; warmer and less neurotically self-absorbed than Marie; a spaced out nice natured skank, creating her little cards out of mags, smoking her rollies with stubby painted nails. And whereas desperate Marie is out having self-centred hurty sex and doing her bad love shtick, Isa is showing self-effacing concern for "angels" in coma's.

Actually, come to think of it, you could see Isa and Marie as angels too, if your definition of angel is something like "innocent naivety, unfit for earthly life". Isa is the good angel, her innocence is ungrounded yes (few skills, little education), but her naivety is blessed by kindness and compassion. And Marie is the bad angel, the angel who fell to earth with too much of an ugly clunk, and become too buried in the dirty ground, her innocence contaminated, and deluded, by what she can no longer clearly see. An angel with broken (damaged) wings.

But she's sat back on a cloud now. Letting the loved people live life instead i suppose.

Comrades (1986)

Solid but too long

[16 November 2011]

Bill Douglas – the director – might have been born to tell this story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs; his own Scottish childhood had been something of a martyrdom to working class deprivation and poverty.

I vaguely knew about these Tolpuddle Martyrs from school history: how 6 humble farm labourers in rural Dorset of the 1830′s had dared to form a union and ask for higher wages , and as a sorry consequence got deported to Australia.

This "poor mans epic" was a flop in the cinema and got dropped after a couple of weeks, never, or hardly ever to be seen again. I can sort of see why it didn't have general commercial appeal.

At times Douglas's way of telling the story gets in the way, slows down, or even just undercooks, dedramatises – deliberately? – the films propulsion, pace, purpose. I suppose i've been too used to being spoon-fed glossy costume dramas on prime-time BBC 1: narrative elements – exposition, explanation, transition – are all smoothly storyboarded in to give you the slick entertainment experience this film seems resolutely not to want to give you.

It could be that Douglas wasn't experienced enough as a film maker to make a grand epic drama (he'd only made his small-scale low-budget autobiographical Trilogy previously) The toil in the soil, the squelch of the mud, the hovel-like existence of downtrodden agricultural workers – not many rights or entitlements, very little power, hardly any choice in the matter – you do get a sense for all of that in this film. It feels like a dirty life, basic survival existence, punctuated by simple "entertainments – lantern shows, travelling fairs, communal singsongs, folk dancing – with life's inevitable fall ameliorated via mutuality, familiarity, warm comradeship.

There's a lot of film technique on show, which might be Douglas's self-conscious need to make it look stylistically different, uniquely his own: lots of long shots and slow shots, and focusing on still faces looking straight into the camera; abrupt and occasionally jarring transitions; using a lantern show to pick out salient features in the narrative – which i found a bit irritating (too fairy-tale like – i craved more of the nitty-gritty squelchy mud realism!) The last third of the film moves to Australia; we've already had 2 hours or so – and another hour gets tacked on. The shift to somewhere else breaks the intensity of focus; the immersion in that localised rural reality of rainy dirty Dorset becomes too dissipated. I felt most of this Australia section could have been edited down into a 5 minute montage.

After watching this film i was curious to find out more about what happened on Google. I read several articles.

So i guess if a film has inspired me to want to know more, get further "inside" the history of these Tolpuddle Martyrs – then as a historical document its succeeded. But as a Film film perhaps less so. I doubt i'd want to watch it again.

Still, i feel enlisted as one of Douglas's "comrades" now. I'm one of them. One of him.

Sexo por compasión (2000)

Simplistic

[16 November 2011]

I rarely feel much affinity with Spanish speaking films, especially when set in Latin America (this one's in Mexico) And yet another fantastical (as in "Spanish") Magic Realist fable.

Plus much Catholic preoccupation with sin and sinning. Plenty mucho of "God is punishing me". Oh dear. This is definitely not going to be my cup of cha.

I'm writing this as a i watch.

Plumptious Lolita is doing all the local whores out of business by servicing every sad bloke in town – for free. They all line up outside her bedroom; the door is closed; then come out half an hour later all loved up and shag-happy. What did she do? What does she give them? "Desire for self improvement" is the correct answer (the perfect blow job would be a very bad answer) You don't see any of the "action" (sex) or any of Lolita's special "loving". But lets just take it on trust: she's got the "magic touch".

Therefore the cure all for all known ills (including premature ejaculation) in the blighted town is stick it in chubby Lolita! Saves all the womenfolk the trouble of having it stuck up them. And the hubbies come back more cheerful after they've been seen to by her with these big soppy sloppy grins on. Shagging is sorted. Made wholesome. Guilt-free sinless sex. And sin shorn of guilt becomes unpunishable (from Him upstairs) Sinning is sorted too.

This lovely Lolita has – amazingly, as if miraculously – revitalised the desire to live, the desire to desire, in all who experience her. What a Saint she is.

I suppose if you like your subtitled foreign films to be feel good cumfy corny, easily digestible, with fat dollops of softly poached sentimentality plopped on top this is the film for you.

I'm possibly deliberately misinterpreting – wilfully distorting – the film. But as i won't be watching it again. this first impression will have to do. But when I don't feel sufficiently engaged by a film, the sympathy – the good willingness – is not active enough to want to understand it.

Côte d'Azur (2005)

A silly soufflé

[16 November 2011]

Some sauce is going on, and gay going on. Is girly haired son Charly a? No, turns out his dad is.

"Its nice being bored on holiday" says Mother to Charly. No it isn't. You've got to be up to something. Have your skinny balding lover arriving for some shagging on the rocks; he keeps his flat cap on.

More jerking off in the shower (friend Martin) Dad is getting stiffies watching and imagining.

More jerking off in the shower (Dad now) It's a beautiful world this Cote D' Azur if you lay back, and do who or whatever you want.

Occasional "step outside the frame" song and dance routines occur to inflate light-hearted larkiness but come across as looking ludicrous.

"Silly soufflé of seaside shenanigans, sexy secrets, and jerking off in the shower" would be my strap line.

I learnt that sea violets are a soft shellfish.

I'm scratching my head why BBC4 showed this.

Dumplings (2004)

Not as revolting as it seems

[16 November 2011]

"Contains scenes of abortion, incest, and cannibalism that some viewers might find upsetting" warns Film4. I don't remember it being especially upsetting the first time i watched it. Odd yes, but not graphic enough to be gruesome.

Mrs Li wants rejuvenation. She gets Chinese Auntie – or Doctor, or ex-Abortionist – Mei to cook her up some nutritious little sushi parcels of power packed badness.

You hear these dumplings being slowly crunched and scrunched down Mrs Li's pretty throat. Mrs Li knows, but isn't bothered, by eating dead baby dumpling. Crunch, crunch, crunch. Mrs Li vainly wants the "best stuff" so as to entice her philandering husband back; our Auntie Mei reckons first born foetus from a girl freshly raped by daddy is best. "A child of incest has extra potency". Chop, chop, chop with that meaty cleaver Auntie Mei, pop it in those funny tasting dumplings.

They seem to have done the trick. Mrs Li is looking radiant, and Mr Li is all over her again. But there's an unfortunately side-effect: Mrs Li's skin has started to stink – like dead fish.

Mr Li, the adulterous pig, is off to Aunt Mei to find out what's going on. Cannibalism was permissible in old China for medicinal purposes she tells him "When 2 people are deeply in love they desire to devour one another, to be inside each other" she's saying. That's urged him on to be inside her, shagging at her savagely over the kitchen table. Then he realises he's ravishing a pensioner (she eats her baby dumplings too) It's occurred to some critics – although not me – to see this film as a satire of China's authoritarian 'one-child' policy (which resulted in abortions galore) slyly soused inside the free market cannibalism of Hong Kong's capitalist consumerism.

Reading this you might be feeling revolted at the mere notion of raw foetus being cooked up in dumpling. But because it's all glossily – even glassily – filmed, and synthetically conceived, you don't really feel like you're watching horror or horrible at all.

Mind you, it did occur to me while watching that it's the South-East Asian appetite for exotic culinary ingredients that accounts for why half the planets population of tigers, whales, bats, etc is endangered.