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The London Film Festival 2012 Part 1: We’re going to mix it up a bit for this year’s look back over the London Film Festival. In fact, we’ve got so much to say that DVDfever is splitting its coverage into three parts. In this first instalment we’ll look at the big movies from the major players in the US and UK that you should rush to see – or not – and why. Plus some of their more indie and offbeat offerings.
MAJOR PLAYERS
Phew! This was a London Film Festival bursting with new talents, gorgeous treats – and the odd turkey. Not to mention a high-profile, much-praised, Emperor’s-New-Clothes of a movie. Can you guess which one it is? All will be revealed…
There’s so much to say though, that we’re going to split our festival retrospective into a trilogy. A kind of Three Colours Red, White and Blue, if you will. Part one, right here, right now, is our review of the big movies from the US and the UK – and their more modest ones. Want to know what you absolutely must see? What’s worth your hard-earned cash? And what’s actually just smoke and mirrors and clever marketing and should be avoided? You’ve come to the right place. DVDfever always prides itself on sorting out the wheat from the chaff. Or as we like to call it, the overpriced popcorn.
Coming up in part two will be the lesser-known goodies and more exotic releases from all over the world – plus the best documentaries. Some fantastic stuff in here. And in part three we’ll unveil our ever-so-grand, yet entirely virtual, annual DVDfever awards.
In perfect symmetry, not only did director Tim Burton and his life-partner and muse, actress Helena Bonham-Carter, pick up fellowship awards from the British Film Institute, but their respective films also opened and closed the entire festival. It’s almost as if it were planned from the outset. Spooky.
And spooky is what Tim Burton’s rather splendid Frankenweenie movie is. It takes an old idea of his and expands it to a full-length, animated, black and white feature, complete with 3D treatment, gothic locations, and top-notch voice actors (Martin Landau, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara). The plot is straightforward: boy’s beloved dog dies; boy brings pet back to life in Frankenstein-style science project; his school chums copy his idea with horrific results. Anyone who has seen an old horror film will get the knowing references, from a poodle that looks like Elsa Lanchester and a teacher who is the spitting image of Vincent Price, to character and place names. There are even some rather topical anti-science, anti-progress references, and yes, the terrorised townsfolk do take up burning torches as they march through their small town. So although kids will love it, their parents will love it even more.
I would love to tell you that Great Expectationsis equally splendid. But sadly it isn’t. Nothing wrong with Helena Bonham Carter’s ripe portrayal of Miss Havisham or Ralph Fiennes as the convict, Magwitch, and Jeremy Irvine makes a (literally) handsome Pip. But it all feels a bit empty and soulless, which the Charles Dickens’ novel definitely isn’t. As a viewer you feel detached, rather than empathising with an orphan thrown into the midst of Victorian deprivation, excess, crime and squalor. Directed by Mike (Four Weddings) Newell, it’s less the genuine article, more like a paint-by-numbers Dickens tribute act (‘The Grateful Expectations’ perhaps) epitomised by casting the likes of David Walliams as a gurning Pumblechook. Plaudits however for supporting roles, from Robbie Coltrane and Ewen Bremner as Jaggers and Wemmick, to Jason Flemyng’s sideburns stealing every scene they’re in.
Argois based on the true story of a frankly ludicrous plan to rescue a group of Americans from Iran thirty years ago. And it’s a story which was kept secret until relatively recently, when a piece of journalism in Wired magazine inspired the film-makers, including star-director-producer and all-round renaissance movie man, Ben Affleck. Affleck himself plays a CIA agent posing as a sci-fi movie producer, with the group of endangered, frightened Americans posing as his production team, complete with bogus storyboards and media coverage, and fantastic support from John Goodman and Alan Arkin as his fake film bosses back in Hollywood.
It’s a terrific, gripping and often hilarious thriller, with the worst haircuts (this is the early eighties after all) and the best lines, courtesy of screenwriter Chris Terrio (sample: “You can teach a rhesus monkey to be a director in a day.”) For those missing George Clooney at this year’s festival, rest assured that he’s here in spirit, as one of the producers behind Argo. And this heart-thumpingly good film shows that Affleck himself has become a director to be reckoned with.
Another thriller that never lets up is director-screenwriter David Ayer’s End of Watch. Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena star as two buzzed-up, but good-hearted LA cops who nip and tuck around the rules and regulations, and get a kick from recording their daily duties on personal cameras. Ayer uses this effect cleverly to keep shifting our point-of-view and give a visceral, experiential feel for the viewer, especially when they’re in hot pursuit. But his main technique is to never let the pace slacken, dealing with the cops’ personal lives in similarly snappy style, and showing how perfectly their other halves (Natalie Martines, and Anna Kendrick of Up In The Air and 50/50 fame) complement them – and vice versa. Be warned though if you’re not of strong disposition – there’s some pretty full-on violence in here.
When it came to the Surprise Film, I can reveal that many people sitting around me (including yours truly) were hoping for The Master, so it was inevitable that anything else would disappoint. For some of the audience, however, the mere fact that Silver Linings Playbookstars Bradley (Hangover) Cooper, with Robert De Niro as his crusty dad, seemed to make them lose all critical judgement. This is a pretty average comedy-romance-drama in which you can predict the end point from fifteen minutes in – and not enough of the journey getting there is diverting. Director David O Russell previously let down his fans with the laughable I Heart Huckabees, and this tonally uneven, manipulatively warm-hearted film is only saved by the performances of Jackie (Animal Kingdom) Weaver as Cooper’s mum, and the remarkable Jennifer Lawrence as his troubled nemesis-slash-soulmate, Tiffany. It is a truth universally acknowledged that ever since Mr P Swayze swayed his hips, dancing and music have become cinematic shorthand for catharsis, self-knowledge and certain salvation (though in part two of our festival round-up you’ll hear about a film called TANGO LIBRE that’s rather better at this…) but surely Russell can do better than this?
When musical salvation isn’t available from dancing, the alternative is, of course, singing. As two feel-good, star-stuffed British movies demonstrate. With Terence Stamp as curmudgeonly Arthur, and Vanessa Redgrave as his terminally ill wife, Marion, Song For Marionis directed by Paul Andrew Williams from his own script. And though it also boasts Gemma Arterton as an eternally upbeat, female version of Gareth Malone, with Christopher Eccleston as the elderly couple’s son, it’s all about the acting chops of Stamp and Redgrave. How will Arthur cope as Marion worsens? Will her beloved OAP community choir also offer him a ray of hope? Introducing the film, Stamp quipped that finally playing someone of his own age was a huge step, as he’d been told that “once you go through that door you can never go back”. If it’s any consolation to him, he’s as good as ever, and should soon have a whole bunch of fresh scripts falling through his letterbox.
The first directorial outing for Dustin Hoffman, Quartet, is also aimed squarely at the Magnolia-Lavender-Calendar-Hotel empty-nest, Big Grey Market, which has always been around, but seems to have been rediscovered as rather lucrative. Unsurprisingly he has gathered together some of the finest thespians of a certain age – plus opera and musical theatre stars to play heightened versions of themselves, in an elegant but cash-strapped retirement home for musicians, run by firm but fair young Doctor, er, Sheridan Smith. Or the ubiquitous Sheridan Smith, to give her her full name.
The big names are snooty Maggie Smith and reserved Tom Courtenay as the star-crossed oldies with a past, plus dotty Pauline Collins and lecherous Billy Connolly as their sidekick friends. But you’ll recognise pretty much everyone else in the home, ranging from Andrew Sachs to Michael Gambon, and you’ll feel in safe hands with Ronald Harwood’s script (based on his original play). The real treat, however, is watching Smith dispense one-liners like confetti, which helps transform what could have been a cinematic comfort blanket into something more interesting.
Pitching itself somewhere between the Big Grey Market, Downton Abbey’s period frocks, and the outrageously successful King’s Speech, Roger Michell’s Hyde Park on the Hudson narrowly escapes failing on each count. Just. It features the same stuttering king (played this time by the excellent Samuel West) who made that speech, is similarly based on a true story, and is set just as World War 2 is on the horizon. In the main narrative, Bill Murray has a ball playing FDR, the president who can’t walk, but still charms every woman of a certain age, including his naïve distant cousin Margaret (Laura Linney). Margaret gives him, ahem, light relief and good company… but their blissful existence is interrupted by the visit of the British royal party, courting American allegiance as they address unfamiliar cuisine and conventions. Murray, Linney et al do their best with their lines and their idyllic, rural drives, but have the film stolen from right under their noses by the immaculate Olivia Colman as the culturally confused, brittle Queen who would clearly rather be anywhere else than the New World. Could she be the next Maggie Smith?
There’s a completely different slice of American life in Michel Gondry’s The We And The I, which tells the story of a “real-time” journey of a bus full of teenagers heading home at the end of the school year right now. Starting in Brooklyn and dropping kids off along the route, this feels like an early Spike Lee movie (Do The Right Thing, perhaps). Everyone has a wisecrack, a problem, an enemy, a secret, and their peers bully them and pick at their open wounds until they erupt. The kids are foul-mouthed and articulate, the booming old skool soundtrack is infectious, there is no preachy moral learning curve, but most of all it makes you relieved not to be at school any more, where it’s still survival of the fittest!
Also set in New York City is the very-low-budget Love Story, which feels more like a love letter to the city and its people, rather than director/star Florian Habicht’s passion for a tall Russian model with a penchant for red velvet cake. It’s an interesting idea: mixing improvised drama and documentary, as Habicht constantly consults random members of the public about what he should do next in his relationship (and we even see them signing their release forms), as well as getting his father’s input by Skype. By the end, however, this shapelessness veers from charming to annoying. But there is potential here.
Four is another lowish-budget affair, based on a play in which two slightly dangerous, linked liaisons take place on the Fourth of July, with fireworks and reveries as a backdrop. Starring Wendell Pierce (aka Bunks from The Wire), this chamber piece is executive produced by Neil LaBute, and written and directed by Joshua Sanchez. Pierce is a chatty, but closeted college professor having a one-night stand (if that) with a monosyllabic youth. Meanwhile his daughter is hooking up with her “unsuitable” Latino boyfriend. Their different rhythms and needs pulse through the film; they’re all lost and lonely, searching for something. But perhaps unexpectedly there’s no glib Hollywood resolution on offer.
By far the funniest film of the festival, and probably the entire year, is Sightseers. Forget about sure-fire starry names, hot director and huge budget. This is a laugh-out-loud, operatically bloody, surreal, yet entirely believable road movie. It’s as if the couple from Mike Leigh’s Nuts In May channelled Sam Peckinpah while driving their caravan around the minor tourist attractions of the UK. And when I say minor, I mean the likes of Crich Tramway Village and the Pencil Museum (the latter featuring my favourite scene). Directed by Ben (Kill List) Wheatley, its writers are also its stars: Alice Lowe as Tina, and Steve Oram as Chris, and there is an inner truth and honesty in their characters’ actions, no matter how outwardly outrageous and destructive they seem. Anything can make Chris’s temper flare, and when he gets angry he gets violent, testing Tina’s love and loyalty. Will she rein him in or stand by her man as they threaten to evolve into a less glamorous Bonnie and Clyde, killing and knitting their way around Britain’s hinterlands?
Go to page 2 for more from The London Film Festival 2012 Part 1.
There’s also quite a bit of homegrown violence, but very little in the way of laughs to leaven the thriller Blood. Directed by Nick Murphy (who made his promising debut with the ghost-story Awakening at last year’s festival) this is another kind of genre piece altogether, set in a fading coastal town where the police have a tendency towards retribution with or without the crucial evidence. Brothers Paul Bettany and Stephen Graham are coppers on the same force, just like their dad before them, the effortlessly excellent Brian Cox. And when they make a major, brutal mistake, they are forced to spend the rest of their time covering their tracks and selling their souls.
Shell is the remarkable debut of writer-director Scott Graham, set in the windswept wilds of Scotland, at a remote service station run by a father and daughter. Dad (Joseph Mawle) is an efficient garage mechanic who also suffers from epilepsy. His teenage daughter, Shell (the remarkable Chloe Pirrie), pumps gas, fends off unwanted attention from the regular male customers, and only has eyes for her father. Though the landscape is vast and stretches far away, Graham gives the film an unsettling, claustrophobic feel and coaxes two superb performances from his leads.
The best of this gritty British trio, however, is Broken (above), the cinematic debut from theatre director Rufus Norris. It’s a hot summer day, and as 11-year-old Skunk (a sensational performance by Eloise Laurence) wanders back to her home in a North London cul-de-sac, she sees a single, almost casual, violent act that unravels everything that knits the neighbours and her life together. Rory Kinnear is a doting single dad whose idea of Sunday dinner is cramming slices of processed ham directly into his gob, while his three wayward, spiteful daughters twist him round their little fingers. Robert Emms is the simple son of overprotective parents Denis Lawson and Clare Buckley, and he is suddenly beaten up by Kinnear. Skunk’s dad, Tim Roth, is a lawyer dragged into the whole situation, which is further complicated by her new teacher being Cillian Murphy, their childminder’s ex-boyfriend, who also gets attacked by Kinnear. But nothing is quite as simple as it seems, and there is at least one unexpected twist reminiscent of the unlikely redemption in Paul Haggis’ film Crash. Suffused with sunshine and sadness, this feels like a perfect snapshot of an imperfect bunch of people.
A couple of ambitious films are adapted from famous, prize-winning novels with mixed results, The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, and Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. On the plus side, Hamid’s book is more compact and open to interpretation by director Mira (Monsoon Wedding) Nair, and Hamid tackles the screenplay alongside two other writers. It also has the likeable Riz Ahmed in the title role, with Kiefer Sutherland impressive as his rapacious, driven boss. On the minus side, Kate Hudson is woefully miscast as Ahmed’s American girlfriend, and the clever “narrative within a narrative” structure of the book doesn’t quite come off in the film. But if you don’t know the story, it still works as a thriller.
With Rushdie’s remarkable novel, Midnight’s Children, voted the “Booker of Bookers”, I guess it’s understandable that the praise might go to his head. However, Rushdie has not only tackled the screenplay alone, but also provides the narration throughout. Quite frankly, I think I can safely say that all these roles are better served by specialists. It’s undoubtedly terrific subject matter: the real, rich story of a country as it gains independence from Britain, with the focus on two boys, Saleem and Shiva, born at the exact moment this occurs – two “midnight’s children”. If you love the book, you’ll no doubt be shaking your head at the bits they omit, but for the ordinary viewer the film is quite simply too long. Two and a half hours offer some action and romance, rather a lot of magical realism, plus a handful of winning performances. But these are crushed by the continuous Rushdie voiceover. It’s like trying to watch a film for the first time with someone behind you talking through the whole thing – or perhaps the writer’s self-satisfied commentary getting in the way with no way of removing it. Too much tell and not enough show, as they say. It probably seems picky to note that some of the phrases seem out of place (“gobsmacked” in the sub-continent in 1957?), but this is probably the least of the film’s problems.
Finally, for this part of the festival round-up, Beasts of the Southern Wild. Yes, it’s won best this and that, Sundance loved it, the posters make it look positively amazeballs, with multi-star ratings all over it. But I can reveal that this movie is the Emperor’s New Clothes in almost every way. The single saving grace is the incredibly young star, Quvenzhané Wallis, playing the main character, Hushpuppy. She is a revelation and stands out even more amongst a cast that cannot act their way out of a paper bag. It’s churlish to say this, I know, as they’re not actors, the budget was tiny and was probably set aside for the CGI work on the big, fantastical beasts that threaten Hushpuppy’s feral, watery community, the Bathtub.
This is the director’s first feature, based on a play, and attempts to say Big Apocalyptic Things about survival and the End of Days in the wake of Katrina. But what it ends up doing is prettifying, fetishising and patronising rural poverty, drenching it in a southern-fried soundtrack and constant alcohol. Ain’t they cute? Hell, it even romanticises a bunch of working girls, including Hushpuppy’s “magical” mom. It also boasts one of my least favourite cinematic tropes, the all-knowing voiceover, crammed with hackneyed truisms, from a child wise beyond her years. Okay, I didn’t hate the first half, but by the end it was too annoying for words. So be warned! Don’t believe the hype! Don’t get taken in again like you did with The Artist!
Coming next: part two of the festival review includes the best from the rest of the world – including The Best Film Of The Year – and we’ll tell you about the documentaries too…
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