LFF 2017 Wrap-Up: From Blade of the Immortal to Three Billboards…

My film-watching this year has been spotty at best, but I was determined to make the most of the BFI London Film Festival rolling into town to get a head start on a bunch of films coming out in the next few months, in the hope I might be able to catch up on those I already missed in the meantime. Here’s a bunch of short thoughts on all the mostly excellent movies I watched.

Blade of the Immortal / The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Blade of the Immortal (Takashi Miike)

Though book-ended by spectacular multi-man sword-fights, Blade of the Immortal sags somewhat in its episodic middle, as our antihero (garbed in black-and-white, yet even the villains operate in shades of complex grey) encounters bossfight after bossfight, with gradually diminishing enthusiasm. The choppy construction and editing also leaves some head-scratching jumps in time and location that disrupts the flow. But it’s worth sticking through it for flashes of strange, bloody hilarity, and for a climax that has a body count around the 400 mark. No 13 Assassins, mind.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Yorgos Lanthimos)

Lanthimos’ skilled skewering of social norms was deployed to brilliant effect in his English-language debut, but not even The Lobster could prepare you for the strange, dark avenues he takes us down in The Killing of a Sacred Deer. It’s opening shot is a bold statement – this isn’t going to be pretty. But he manages to make the awkward and uncomfortable incredibly funny, though much of that will depend on whether you’re on the same wavelength (if you didn’t like The Lobster, this isn’t going to change a thing). The stilted dialogue, the removed camera, the matter-of-fact approach to disturbing scenarios, all present and correct. A game cast playing things deadly straight. As before, the best point of comparison would be a feature-length sketch from Chris Morris’ Jam.

It’s tense and disturbing and mysterious. I was grinning throughout.

The Florida Project / Close-Knit

Close-Knit (Naoko Ogigami)

At first, the cheery plinky-plonk piano score that plagues 90% of cutesy-poo Japanese dramedies saw me brace for tedium, but Close-Knit proved me wrong. A delight and a surprise, sensitive, charming and funny that still manages to be quite frank and upfront about how far transgender acceptance has come, but also how far it has to go. As it is viewed through the eyes of a child (wonderfully played by Rinka Kakihara), it is simple and gently told, though just because it’s not a heavy “issues” drama doesn’t mean it shies away from anger and sadness – indeed, it makes those moments all the more emotionally powerful (a few moments had me verging on blubbing). That it generally plays things broad and safe shouldn’t be held against it, this has potential to be a crowd-pleaser that may in turn change perspectives of those who would not ordinarily seek out LGBT fare, including families and kids. It’s the kind of film that should be shown in schools, and I mean that in the best possible way.

The Florida Project (Sean Baker)

Moonee and Scooty: great rebel icons of cinema history.

They go on adventures. They get into all kinds of scrapes. They fly in the face of authority. They talk back to grown-ups. Particularly Willem Dafoe, who spends most of the film exasperated by everything and everyone, but his firmness comes from a place of kindness. He’s great.

It is all very very funny, and though there is a universality in its portrayal of childhood, it gives a snapshot of a world of which I’m unfamiliar that feels authentic without judgment, warm and uplifiting without shying away from the rough edges.

The bittiness of the kids’ escapades and encounters, and Halley’s “no fucks given” atittude, means that my patience and sympathies were somewhat tested by the end of it’s running time. There was clearly too much gold to keep from us, and it would’ve risked someone’s favourite line being cut, but a good 15-20 mins cut out would’ve kept the energy up and my enthusiasm for the characters and their situation in check.

But if you don’t come away from it feeling that Moonee is some kind of hero, then you’re dead inside.

You Were Never Really Here / The Shape of Water

You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay)

A harrowing take on the hitman thriller, that has elements of Leon and A History of Violence, but is very much its own beast. Joaquin Phoenix dominates, a physical force to be reckoned with, but suicidally depressive, suffering deep mental trauma, scars internal and external. This is aggressive film-making – flashbacks tear through the present with a jolt, brutal violence leaves you wincing if you can even bear to look, and Jonny Greenwood’s pulsing, swirling, juddering score combine to create a real assault on the senses. Its lean running time is to its credit; any longer and it might be all too much to take. But boy howdy is it something.

The Shape of Water (Guillermo Del Toro)

Once more, Del Toro invites us to take a swim through his myriad genre interests, but The Shape of Water is just the sum of its parts, nothing more, nothing less.

Though it does a decent job of marrying a modern fairy tale with Cold War intrigue, for all its visual magic wonder, it feels oddly hollow, Del Toro caught up in the aesthetic trappings, boo-hiss villains and sudden, bloody violence, but unable to really sell the central chemistry, no easy feat between a mute and man in a rubber suit, despite the best efforts of Sally Hawkins. It’s surprisingly stronger as a comedy than you might expect, and it embraces and accepts the weirdness of its tale.

Meanwhile, Michael Shannon plays the “Michael Shannon” role. Octavia Spencer plays the “Octavia Spencer” role. It’s Richard Jenkins who is the real reason to watch though – if the film’s heart is anywhere, it lies with him. Someone get that guy a merman to love.

Ghost Stories / Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri

Ghost Stories (Andy Nyman, Jeremy Dyson)

A successful transition from stage to screen, that manages to capture some of the energy of live performance and theatrical craft with its intense atmosphere and strong performances. In some ways a throwback to the horror anthologies of yesteryear, though it’s certainly more of a complete piece than just a smattering of unrelated shorts like so many recent takes on the format. There are loud noises and shocks and jump scares to appeal to the Friday night popcorn crowd, as well as some lovely silly humour to break the tension just a touch, but the lasting impression it leaves you with is its haunting imagery and ideas that are hard to shake.

Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri (Martin McDonagh)

McDonagh’s best film yet, with all the offensive dialogue you’ve come to expect (this is Trigger Warning: The Movie, folks), but more rounded, textured and emotionally rich than before. There’s a maturity and a sense of purpose here, just with lots of fruity, laugh out loud lines layered on top. You believe the characters, their behaviour, their actions (depiction isn’t endorsement, remember), and you get caught up in the machinations of small town America the way you would one of them “slice of life” podcasts you get these days.

Goes without saying Frances McDormand is top-tier, and this is further proof that Sam Rockwell is maybe the best actor working today to still not receive a major acting award nomination (correct me if I’m wrong), but the film is stuffed with good turns all round. Pretty dang great.

LFF 2015 Wrap-Up: The Lobster, The Assassin, Anomalisa, The Boy and The Beast

The 2015 BFI London Film Festival has long been and gone, but I’ve finally gotten round to doing a quick wrap-up of all the films I saw. Admittedly, I only managed to see four out of a line-up of hundreds but they are all worth talking about, and three of them are waiting to be released in the UK.

THE LOBSTER

My most anticipated film of the festival (and also the one that was released right after its LFF screenings) also ended up being my favourite. Billed as an unconventional love story from Dogtooth and Alps director Yorgos Lanthimos, The Lobster depicts a world in which singletons are taken to a remote hotel where they must find a partner within 45 days or face being turned into an animal. Though absurd in its set-up and often very funny, like the best sci-fi (or alternate near-future semi-dystopia or wherever/whenever the setting might be), it has a lot to say about our own reality, namely love and relationships, and the weird rituals, mechanics and quirks that make no sense taken out of context and viewed dispassionately – even if there is something strangely moving about the central character’s own quest for companionship. Though his first film in the English language, Lanthimos’ dry deliberate tone and stilted dialogue fits well with the international cast, lead Colin Farrell especially good playing our sadsack ‘hero’. It’s weird, sad, dark and hilarious, reminiscent of Chris Morris’ Jam if anything, and one of the best films of the year.

THE ASSASSIN

Winner of the Best Director prize for Hou Hsiao-Hsien at the Cannes Film Festival and topping Sight and Sound’s Critics Poll as the best film of 2015, The Assassin comes already heavily garlanded. But it’s a case of cinematic Emperor’s New Clothes if there ever was one. Critics may fool you with words like transfixing, captivating, or imaginative to describe the film. But what they really mean is that it is empty, dull and plays around with its aspect ratio a bit. It’s possible to have a beautiful film that also manages to captivate with its story and character, but The Assassin is deliberately vague on both counts for seemingly no reason other than perhaps to make snobby arthouse audiences feel like they are watching a proper film rather than something as trifling as a simple ‘martial arts movie’. And what action is here is incredibly brief, a rush of fast edits that amount to very little, simply there to punctuate the tedium and keep you from dropping off to sleep. The bulk of the film involves people in pretty clothes walking into nicely decorated rooms and telling other people what is happening, who then sit there and think about it for a bit, and then onto the next scene. And yes, there are some rather gorgeous shots, but nothing more breath-taking than any desktop backgrounds that come pre-loaded onto a new laptop. If you don’t find yourself checking your watch repeatedly throughout, you’re either lying or not wearing a watch.

ANOMALISA

The LFF Surprise Film is always a hot ticket and a bit of a treat (though the list of past entries is an eclectic bunch all right). And out of all the potential offerings, Anomalisa was the one I hoped for after hearing great things coming out of its other festival appearances. And lo and behold, so it was. Charlie Kaufman’s latest work is naturally as Kaufman-esque, for want of a better word, as previous favourites, witty and strange and emotionally engaging. But in teaming up with co-director Duke Johnson, together they have also crafted a quite remarkable animation to boot. And it’s not just a gimmick, rather the animation serves many functions, story, character and humour, creating a distancing effect while simultaneously making you invest more as you find humanity in something not quite real without a living, breathing human being entering the picture and spoiling everything, much as with Don Hertzfeldt’s It’s Such A Beautiful Day, for example, makes you care deeply for a stick man. Here though the 3D printed models offer greater detail but also a deliberate sense of the uncanny, especially as our lead character, a relatable but crucially not necessarily likeable writer (played by David Thewlis) is surrounded by a sea of identical faces, be it man, woman or child, all voiced by Tom Noonan. To describe what Anomalisa actually is would perhaps reveal too much as the story itself is slim and contained (not unlike The Lobster, set largely in the confines of a hotel, the unnatural atmosphere of which Anomalisa perfectly captures), but the directions it takes and the choices it makes offer much to take away for further thought and reflection. And yet, how it ranks amongst the likes of Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Synecdoche New York is hard to say. Upon initial viewing, it didn’t quite make the same impact on my heart, gut and mind as those films. I liked it a lot, but perhaps the second time, when its aims are clearer, it will connect more. Still, for any fans of his previous films, it is essential viewing.

THE BOY AND THE BEAST

With The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars, and Wolf Children, Mamoru Hosoda has become maybe the best working anime director currently in the business. His latest is as thrilling and beautiful on a technical and emotional level as one has come to expect, though suffers from a few too many standard anime narrative conventions and character beats to be considered one of his best. A young street urchin finds a passage to a world of anthropomorphised animal creatures and is taken under the wing of a grumpy bear who reluctantly decides to train him as an apprentice so that he then may challenge for rule of the domain. There is an enjoyable antagonism between the two; even when there is the risk of their relationship sliding into sentimentality, the film holds off from letting them become too fond of one another, so when those emotional payoffs come, it feels earned and genuine. And it means you get more entertaining scenes of them getting on each other’s nerves. It does however lose its way during the inevitable segment in which they go their separate ways, a return to the human world and a forced love-interest perhaps adding an extra dimension to the characters but offering very little that’s engaging. It adds a fair chunk to the run time too, bringing a lively buoyant fantasy up to that point to a halt. But for the most part, whether through its entertaining mismatched-buddy comedy or its spectacular action set-pieces, The Boy and the Beast still has much to offer.

FILM REVIEW: Seven Psychopaths (LFF 2012)

In the episode of The Simpsons ‘Saddlesore Galactica’, the character Comic Book Guy notes that the story (the Simpsons get a horse) is a retread of an earlier episode, to which Homer retorts to the effect of “Does anyone even care what this guy thinks?” Later on, Comic Book Guy wears a “Worst Episode Ever” T-shirt as the plot devolves into nonsense about jockeys being evil elves. However, by highlighting the deficiencies in the story, the writers are pre-emptively steeling themselves against inevitable criticism. Unfortunately the gambit does not pay off, and The Simpsons would just never be the same again.

Martin McDonagh’s Seven Psychopaths follows a screenwriter called Marty (Colin Farrell) suffering from writer’s block and struggling to gather his disparate ideas together for a screenplay called ‘Seven Psychopaths’. Do we all get what’s happening here? See, as great as In Bruges is overall, it is not without its flaws, and seemingly makes self-reflexive excuses for them (“Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf” sort of sums it up nicely). Seven Psychopaths, with its story-telling segments revealing the titular nutjobs destined for Marty’s work-in-progress that seep in and out of reality, feels like the work of a director who can’t even be bothered to apologise for its scattershot approach, papering over the cracks with claims of metatextuality. Greatness can be borne out of this frustration (see Barton Fink), but Seven Psychopaths comes off as a rather disjointed crime-caper-cum-Hollywood-satire the likes of which you’d thought dried up circa 1999. And what’s more, it knows you know it.

But, BUT, BUT! Amongst the mess there is a lot of very good stuff. The aforementioned psychopath backstory vignettes are impressive. By erring a little too close to real events they are borderline distasteful, and there is some genuinely shocking and bloody violence which jars with the goofy madcap comedy, but they make for interesting standalone tales amid the main narrative thrust – Marty’s dog-napper friends (Sam Rockwell and Christopher Walken) have stolen the wrong person’s pooch, owned by crime lord Woody Harrelson. For all the jokiness about Harrelson’s missing mutt, it actually leads to some genuinely tense confrontations. And there’s one highly entertaining scene of Rockwell contributing an action-packed climax to the script, thereby anticipating but deliberately undercutting that of the film itself.

It also helps that McDonagh has assembled a quality cast, even if he seemingly doesn’t know what to do with most of them. Clearly In Bruges was enough of a calling card that you get a bunch of familiar faces in distractingly small roles. Of the main players though, Farrell is engaging, Walken is dependably dry and amusing, and Rockwell is practically in Zaphod Beeblebrox mode. Yet, the film’s overly cynical outlook and simultaneous desire to both unravel itself and tie itself up in knots means it is sorely lacking an emotional core. It comes close with Walken’s character, but not close enough amongst all the hubbub. In the end, it all feels a bit mean and nasty, but that’s probably the intended response in a “hey, isn’t Hollywood an awful place for making violence paltable?!” kinda way.

It’s still certainly worth a watch though – its plus points outweigh its negatives – but as far as sophomore efforts go, and despite being a sloppy mish-mash of the two, Seven Psychopaths is no Pulp Fiction and/or Adaptation.

Now, why was I talking about The Simpsons again?

FILM REVIEW: Silver Linings Playbook (LFF 2012)

The 2012 London Film Festival Surprise Film, Silver Linings Playbook, was in many ways the ideal surprise film, at least from my perspective: not just because it was a total surprise in that I didn’t even know it existed, but the film itself has its own share of surprising turns. I didn’t even know the talent involved (David O Russell), nor the title (I had assumed it was “Excelsior” given that’s the first written word that appears frame centre and features prominently throughout – though perhaps it had too much association with South Park’s Al Gore), let alone where the story was going. It’s so rare I see any film with such a lack of prior knowledge, I should really think about doing it more often. How it got under my radar (it’s based on a book, trailers abound and it’s already screened at festivals in Toronto and Mumbai), I don’t know.

Okay, so the film then. We start with former teacher Pat (Bradley Cooper) who has just been released from a brief spell in a mental institution following the breakdown of his marriage. Moving back in with his mother (Jacki Weaver) and superstitious football fan father (Robert De Niro), he attempts to rebuild his life and reconnect with his estranged wife. However, a chance meeting with a friend’s recently-bereaved sister-in-law Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) leads to a proposition where she will help him contact his wife so long as he becomes his partner in a dance contest.

It all sounds terribly corny and improbable – both entirely predictable yet baffling in a way only Hollywood can manage – but the film seems intent on reflecting the bipolarity of its main character, similarly trying to keep the comic and dramatic balanced as it does the two key relationship strands (Pat and his father, and Pat and Tiffany), and it just about manages to keep it together. Russell is seemingly not so much trying to make the story believable in of itself, but the characters themselves. He understands the narrative turns allow for interesting character beats, thereby relying on his cast to ground it in reality.

It’s just as well then that in its two leads, Silver Linings Playbook manages to achieve this feat. Anyone familiar with Cooper only through his Hangover outings (though look out too for an in-jokey gag with a brief glimpse of a cinema showing The Midnight Meat Train) will be pleasantly surprised by his sensitive, sweet-natured and charming portrayal of a man trying his very best to take control of the issues that plague him. It’s clear that if people didn’t have as much faith in Cooper’s ability to deliver the goods when given the chance as Russell, this will soon prove to be quite the calling card. Lawrence meanwhile just continues to impress and impress, with perhaps her finest performance yet. Utterly compelling, convincing and equally adept at pulling off moments of lightness and darkness, she totally nails a tricky role.

There’s solid support too from Weaver, Julia Stiles, and  a near-unrecognisable Chris Tucker (both on account of him reigning in his schtick and the inevitable weight-gain that happens when you don’t have another Rush Hour film to get off the sofa for). And when was the last time you could say De Niro was any good? Reunited with his Limitless co-star though, their affection for one another clearly shines through, and while he is perhaps saddled with some of the clunkier developments, he does well to challenge the young bucks for the emotional core of the film.

Thanks to these performances, Silver Linings Playbook manages to transcend its more preposterous qualities. Even the incredibly contrived climax and obvious signposting of the big themes at play throughout can’t quite spoil the overall good will. Strictly Moneyballroom it may be, but don’t let such frippery put you off.

FILM REVIEW: Doomsday Book (LFF 2012)

Kim Ji-woon (A Tale of Two Sisters, I Saw The Devil, Arnie’s forthcoming The Last Stand) and Yim Pil-sung (Hansel & Gretel)’s long-in-the-offing anthology about the end of days arrives as an apocalyptic triptych that achieves a rare consistency in look and theme, but not so much in tone. The central story, Kim’s Heavenly Creature, breaks up the schlock of Yim’s opener Brave New World and the goofiness of his closer Happy Birthday, but still feels like an odd entity unto itself, perhaps much like its central character.

In this future, a robot repairman is called to assess a guide droid at a Buddhist temple that may or may not have achieved enlightenment. It’s certainly the only one of the three to convincingly deal with classic sci-fi themes: what it means to be human, artificial intelligence, playing God, etc. However, at the same time, it all means there’s nothing really here we haven’t seen before. Even the robot itself is practically a carbon copy of the Bjorkbots in Chris Cunningham’s video for ‘All is Full of Love’. It’s not a wholly po-faced philosophical tale (there’s a fun scene with a robo-dog, for instance), but, neat special effects aside, its attempts at profundity are at best well-worn, and at worst, hammy.

That’s not to say the first story is particularly original either. We’re talking a zombie outbreak, for pity’s sake. Nevertheless, Yim has enough fun with the concept to get a passing grade, managing to convincingly suggest a larger scale than its budget could clearly afford. Here, a case of dodgy beef is the cause, and a grisly montage showing its trip to the dinner plate is enough to put you off meat for a good while afterwards.

But probably the most entertaining of the three though is the one where the stakes are at their highest, as the final segment concerns a giant meteor hurtling towards Earth, en route to wipe out the human race. One family though are prepared, and retreat to an underground bunker, keeping tabs on the meteor’s trajectory through the last TV broadcasts (both Brave New World and Happy Birthday feature wonderful comedy snapshots of how the media are dealing with their respective crisis). However, they soon realise one of their number is responsible for the impending apocalypse – and only they have the power to stop it as the countdown nears zero. It’s certainly the silliest of the bunch, but charming and surprising with it too.

Doomsday Book is one of the stronger portmanteaus out there, and doesn’t suffer from the same mixed-bagginess that is often characteristic of the device. If Kim Ji-woon’s offering isn’t quite as satisfying or connected as the others that book-end it, all three are visually and technically impressive, and overall make for an interesting whole.