Thoughts on... A Town Called Panic (2009)

A Town Called Panic (French: Panique au village), 2009.

Directed by Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar.
Featuring the voice talents of Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar, Jeanne Balibar, Bouli Lanners and Benoît Poelvoorde.


SYNOPSIS:

A trio of plastic toys embark on a series of surreal adventures.


Due to the predictability and unoriginality of a large proportion of cinema releases these days, it’s often not particularly difficult to predict the entire plot of a film having only seen its title and viewed its trailer. If a film’s advertising does manage to retain enough ambiguity regarding what Jennifer Aniston is going to do about her romantic predicament by the end of the movie, or whether or not Will Smith will be able to save the world from giant, man-eating, robotic, flying dinosaurs; it’s still safe to say that you’ll probably still have a relatively good understanding of a film’s concept before you head off to Cineworld to see it.

My viewing of A Town Called Panic, however, was one of those rare occasions where this was definitely not the case. I had literally no idea what to expect from the French/Belgian/Luxembourgian/ British stop-motion animation that apparently starred cheap toy figurines and looked quite a lot like the Cravendale milk adverts. I was none the wiser after viewing the intriguing, but slightly baffling trailer. Even watching a couple of the five minute episodes of the TV series on which the film is based just confused me further as much as I enjoyed them, I wasn’t sure that the adventures of the miniature, plastic characters could be efficiently stretched out to a full length feature film.

As usual, however, I was wrong. A Town Called Panic turned out to be unique, vibrant, funny and completely bonkers. It focuses on a cowboy, an Indian and a horse that share a house together in a small but chaotic village. One morning, Cowboy and Indian wake up to discover they’ve forgotten Horse’s birthday. In an attempt to make up for neglecting their friend’s special day they decide to build him a barbeque - which subsequently leads to them completely destroying their house before pursuing some thieving aqua-monsters to an underwater parallel universe, journeying across the arctic and travelling to the centre of the Earth. Horse, however, spends the entire adventure trying to deal with the more pressing issue of getting back to the village in time for a piano lesson with his particularly enticing music teacher.

Inevitably, the film is a bit relentless with regards to the amount of adventure that continuously hurtles towards the audience. On a number of occasions I found myself completely immersed in some ridiculous situation that the trio had got themselves into, but completely forgetting how they had managed to get there or what had been happening in the previous scene. You pretty much have to give into the fact that you have to take the film moment by moment as you watch the chaos unfold, and, considering that the characters get themselves into a number of scrapes and always emerge unscathed, that you’re witnessing a world where action and consequence don’t necessarily always come hand in hand.

This definitely isn’t a bad thing though and there is enough humour, charm, and visual wit to keep this rolling for seventy five minutes. Considering that we live in an age where computer animation is so advanced that you could convey all the complexity of any human emotion on an animated piece of cling film if you so desired, it’s pretty impressive that the relatively static and expressionless stop-motion figurines of A Town Called Panic can seem so vivacious. They all have individual personalities with their own, unique quirks which is testament to the voice actors’ and animators’ talents who bring these characters to life so vividly.

In terms of both style and content, A Town Called Panic is probably one of the most imaginative films you’ll see at the cinema for a while. It’s sharp, clever and proof that Pixar aren’t the only ones that can tell a good ol’ ‘toy story.’

Amy Flinders

Movie Review Archive

Thoughts on... Inception (2010)

Inception, 2010.

Directed by Christopher Nolan.
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, Marion Cotillard and Michael Caine.


SYNOPSIS:

In a world where technology exists to enter the human mind a single idea can be the most dangerous weapon or the most valuable asset.


Corporate thief Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an expert in stealing information from where it is most unattainable, the inner-most depths of the human subconscious. Highly skilled in the practice of extraction, the process of entering an individual’s dream to steal their thoughts and secrets, Cobb’s life has become completely dominated by his intricate and dangerous career. Wanted by the police and unable to return home to his children, Cobb takes on one last job for wealthy business man Saito (Ken Watanabe), who promises to make it possible for Cobb to travel home should he and his team complete the mission successfully. However, Saito does not want to steal an idea from an individual’s mind, he wants to plant one. Cobb and his team believe this process, known as inception, to be near impossible; but driven by the desire to escape his life bound by a world of dreams and haunted by the guilt surrounding a past personal tragedy, Cobb delves into the target's subconscious in the hope he can finally return to reality.

Observing a group of fast-talking dream thieves as they wander in and out of each other’s subconscious minds whilst appearing in what seems to be reality in one moment, and then in an horizon-bending dream world the next, obviously involves mustering up more concentration than you normally would during an average trip to the movies. And this is ultimately a good thing. It’s refreshing to watch a contemporary action/sci-fi movie where you actually need to rub your brain cells together to really get to grips with the narrative.

Few would dispute that Nolan is a master of intellectually and laboriously piecing together unique, high concept narratives and forming visually stunning worlds in which he can play out his original ideas. Memento and The Prestige are testimony to this and Inception acts as further proof. However, ideas and spectacle (and a spectacle it surely is – we’re presented with weightless bodies fighting in a zero-gravity hotel corridor, cliffs crashing into the ocean and Paris folding in on itself) seem to be the driving force of the film, and so much effort is required from the audience to keep track of the barrage of new concepts being hurled at them, that initially it’s difficult to engage with the film on anything other than surface level.

Leonardo DiCaprio is relatively convincing as the intense, intellectual criminal whose strength is faltering under the unmanageable guilt he suffers after his world-class skills in extraction cost him the most important thing in his life. However, at first I found it difficult to devote much sympathy to Cobb’s plight, as any essence of feeling evoked by the characters seemed completely dwarfed by the enormity of the plot and the huge number of technicalities there were to keep track of.

Cobb has an assorted crew at his aid which faces the challenge of inserting an idea into the mind of Saito’s new business rival Robert Fischer Jnr (Cillian Murphy) that will subsequently lead to the failure of his family-owned company. His team include his right hand man Arthur, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who occasionally contributes to some of the more comic moments, but generally comes across as annoyingly and laughably smug . There’s Eames, a forger who can shape shift once inside a dream, an enjoyable performance by Tom Hardy that provides some much needed humour to lighten the generally solemn tone of the movie. Ellen Page plays Ariadne, the astutely eager, yet slightly naive young architect that Cobb hires to build the dream landscapes in which the team’s mission will take place. As the newest member of the squad, Ariadne’s function is essentially to stand alongside the audience, to have every elaborate detail of ‘inception’ explained to her via a number of arduous tutorials from Cobb which inevitably leads to some necessary, but quite clunky dialogue.

Surprisingly, the films length, a running time of nearly 150 minutes, actually works in its favour, as it gives you the time to digest what you’ve just seen and begin to build an appreciation for it. I think this is what essentially turns the film around and rescues it from being a flat, two dimensional effects-fest that’s too concerned with pummelling the audience with new ideas and facts, instead of investing in any kind of depth and sentiment. Of course, there can be nothing wrong in a good old flat, two-dimensional effects-fest if that’s all a film claims to be, but Inception gives the impression that it’s really trying to be about something more profound, about the real human reactions to this unreal, fantastical concept.

At first, I was too busy trying to stop my cerebral cortex from catching alight whilst keeping up with the narrative to detect any of this, and having an endless parade of information passing before me just left me feeling that the film was quite shallow. However, once Cobb’s lectures had fizzled out and the crew embarked on the mission inside Fischer’s subconscious, the narrative advanced into more of an intriguing story as opposed to a set of instructions that the audience were required to follow. After a while I found myself settling into the world of Inception, and it felt easier to emotionally engage with the characters and their personal plights. I wasn’t completely blown away by it, but what essentially started out as just a clever idea expressed against a backdrop of slow-mo explosions and cool bendy buildings eventually grew into something a little more meaningful, even if it did take the entire two and a half hours to get there.

Amy Flinders

Movie Review Archive

Related:

Theatre of the Mind: A Christopher Nolan Profile
Short Film Showcase - Doodlebug (1997)
Movies... For Free! Following (1998)

Thoughts on... Cop Out (2010)

Cop Out, 2010.

Directed by Kevin Smith.
Starring Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan, Sean William-Scott and Adam Brody.


SYNOPSIS:

When a veteran NYPD cop's rare baseball card - his only hope to pay for his daughter's upcoming wedding - is stolen, he recruits his partner to track down the thief, a memorabilia-obsessed gangster.


Two buddies and long-term cop partners Jimmy (Willis) and Paul (Morgan) get suspended without pay from a case after proving that their policing skills are perhaps a little too maverick for their own good. This throws Jimmy into a dilemma as he has promised to pay for his daughter’s upcoming wedding and needs to raise the money through other means before his daughters smug, cash-flashing step-father (Jason Lee) finances the wedding himself. He decides to sell a rare baseball card but his plan is immediately thwarted after the card is stolen by a loud-mouth mugger (William-Scott) and sold to a notorious Mexican gangster with a penchant for baseball memorabilia. Jimmy and Paul set out on a mission to retrieve the baseball card whilst simultaneously entangling themselves within the messy world of the gangsters they are trying to track down.

Kevin Smith usually exercises a talent of being able to combine gross out humour with funny, likeable characters and a plot that usually has some point, or at least some heart to it. Unfortunately, Cop Out seems largely devoid of any such talent. It’s the first film that Smith has directed but not written, and I think this might be the main, even if it’s not the only problem with the movie. It boisterously crashes through its storyline without giving much time for any of the events to actually mean a great deal. I’m not saying that each audience member should be desperately longing with all their heart and soul for Jimmy to get his baseball card back, but in Smith’s other films – for example his last effort Zack and Miri Make a Porno – the leads are easy to warm to and you usually find yourself rooting for them pretty quickly.

I think the absence of this in Cop Out is not only down to the heavy handed plot and largely poor dialogue but also due to the fact that the actors just aren’t doing a particularly good job, or perhaps just haven’t been directed that well. Some of the characters are cartoonish and exaggerated to a point that’s beyond humorously appropriate and just becomes irritating. It doesn't take long before you find yourself wishing that Tracy Morgan’s wacky, screechy, wise-cracking Paul was bound and gagged in a padded cell and on a heavy dose of Ritalin, instead of still bull-dozing around on the screen in front of you. And it seems as though Jason Lee only needs to have a long black moustache to twiddle between his fingers to complete his relatively unconvincing performance as the uber-conceited step-father. Other actors swing in the opposite direction and spend the film teetering on the edge of the persona they are trying to take on. Bruce Willis is supposed, I think, to be playing the slightly cooler, more cynical, but still fairly incompetent, one of the pair – but ends up impersonating a wardrobe that can occasionally fire a gun.

Despite what I’ve said so far, the film isn’t all that bad. It’s still vaguely entertaining in parts and there are one or two laughs to be had, although they aren’t exactly rib-cracking moments that will stay with you long after you’ve left the cinema. There were several occasions in the film that had the potential to be funny but were let down by lazy writing. For example; at the very beginning of the film Paul interrogates a suspect using various famous lines from well-known movies, a scene that could have been quite amusing if it weren’t for the awkward and clunky cuts to Jimmy watching behind the dark glass, who helpfully names each film for us like an IMDB robot. Later on in the film, Paul rambles on to Jimmy for a while about his bowel movements – a speech that Smith may have been able to bring some humour to if he had written it himself – but essentially just comes across as an annoying man talking annoyingly about his annoying poo.

If you literally just want to have something in front of face that fills an hour and a half then perhaps Cop Out would fit the bill, as regardless of what I’ve said I can’t really accuse it of being boring - there’s so much going on it actually manages to be fairly engaging even if only on a superficial level. However I believe that there will probably be quite a few Kevin Smith fans out there that are going to be disappointed. Hopefully next time he’ll stick to telling his own stories instead of other people's.

Amy Flinders

Movie Review Archive

British Cinema: Cemetery Junction (2010)

Cemetery Junction, 2010.

Directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.
Starring Christian Cooke, Tom Hughes, Jack Doolan, Felicity Jones, Ralph Fiennes, Emily Watson, Julia Davis and Ricky Gervais.


SYNOPSIS:

A British coming-of-age comedy set in the not-so-swinging '70s.


In 1970s Reading, three friends, Freddie (Christian Cooke), Bruce (Tom Hughes) and Snork (Jack Doolan) split their time between chasing girls, working in a factory and spending the night in the local police cell. Fully aware that their home town isn’t a hotspot for hope and opportunity, the boys dream of a more fulfilling future – whether it’s Bruce’s ambitions to travel the world or Freddie’s aspiration to raise a family in a beautiful, expensive home with a Rolls Royce parked on the driveway. Whilst Bruce’s globe-trotting fantasy barely gets beyond a daydream, Freddie tries to get closer to his imaginary money pile by taking on a new job as a door-to-door insurance salesman, working for the highly successful but equally sinister Mr Kendrick (Ralph Fiennes). When Freddie is reunited with his high school sweetheart, Julie (Felicity Jones), who just happens to be Kendrick’s daughter and inconveniently engaged to her father’s Number Two, Mike (Matthew Goode), both Freddie and his friends begin to realise that they might need to follow a slightly different path in order to find their way to freedom and success.

Because I am quite an irrationally stubborn individual and am very reluctant to change my hasty opinions once I have formed them, it is quite rare that I will be completely won over by and in awe of a film that throughout its first twenty minutes had me wondering whether or not it would be too late, and too humiliating, to go and beg the good people of Cineworld for a refund for my £12.25 ticket. Ricky Gervais’ and Stephen Merchant’s film debut as a writer/director duo however, is one such rarity.

Cemetery Junction opens with some sepia-toned establishing shots of Reading that are slightly nauseating and look like they should have Edvard Greig’s ‘Morning’ accompanying them on the soundtrack. This is shortly followed by an introduction to several cardboard cut-out characters that crack a few corny jokes – the content of which made me slightly apprehensive as to what the rest of the film’s humour was going to be like, including when Bruce tells Freddie to ‘Stop listening to music made by poofs – stick on some Elton John!’ Yes we get it, coz like it’s funny coz they’re in the past and we’re in the future, so we know stuff that they don’t. Ha-di-ha.

However, after twenty minutes of teeth clenching and eye-rolling, the film quite miraculously turned itself around and ultimately revealed itself to be a genuinely moving and often very funny portrayal of three lads who are trapped by their uninspiring home town and frustrated by the dreams that seem so agonisingly out of reach. The film is full of those small yet poignant Office/Extras-esque moments that could end up looking cheesy or cliché in the hands of any other director, but are so well written and directed by Gervais and Merchant they always come across as tender and identifiable. I’d already been warned that Emily Watson’s performance as Mr Kendrick’s long-suffering wife would bring a lump to my throat, but there were also several other occasions in the film – particularly the scenes between the defiant Bruce and his world-weary father - that had me desperately trying to disguise my embarrassing, whimpering sniffles from other cinema-goers sat in close proximity.

Of course the warmth and authenticity behind these moments is not only due to the writing and directing but also down to a set of outstanding performances. Cemetery Junction is impeccably acted by every cast member; Christian Cooke, Tom Hughes and Jack Doolan in particular manage to bring life to three essentially quite stereotypical characters – the sensible one, the rebel and the clown - and skilfully steer away from cliché to give us realistic, honest and enjoyable performances.

Before I’d seen the film I’d heard Ricky Gervais say in an interview that it’s probably less of a comedy than people might expect, so I was quite surprised when I found myself chuckling away on numerous occasions throughout the movie – and not just when Gervais is on the screen in his small role as Freddie’s father. It was probably intended to be less of a comedy than his last feature The Invention of Lying but is actually a lot funnier, more skilfully crafted and is a far more credible film in general – which perhaps suggests that Gervais needs Stephen Merchant to keep him on the right track.

Cemetery Junction is a well-measured fusion of both heart-warming and heart-breaking. Any moments that appear to be straying into over-sentimental territory are quickly rescued by the writer/director duo bringing warmth and reality to the characters and their situations. It is a highly enjoyable film, which avoids seeming too far-fetched in its unabashed optimism and is instead a charming and refreshing coming-of-age tale.

Amy Flinders

Movie Review Archive

Cult Classics: The Room (2003)

The Room, 2003.

Directed by Tommy Wiseau.
Starring Tommy Wiseau, Juliette Danielle, Greg Sestero.


SYNOPSIS:

A black comedy about love, passion, betrayal and lies.


After hearing this film be described as ‘one of the worst films ever made’ and a ‘mix of Tennessee Williams, Ed Wood and R. Kelly’s 'Trapped in the Closet' I was naturally quite intrigued and even, because I don’t get out much, a little bit excited about my first viewing of Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. I tried not to get my hopes up though and attempted to ignore all the tales I had heard of cringe-worthy dialogue, bizarre plot holes, excruciatingly bad acting, tacky sets and dodgy editing, as I think that cinematically appalling ‘gems’ are often most appreciated when you stumble across them, not when they’ve been massively over-hyped and you’ve been told eighty times how unbelievably embarrassing and hysterical it all is. It turns out there was no need to try and dampen down my hopes.

The film is based on a novel and play by Wiseau and was released in 2003 after he funded a mammoth publicity campaign which included plastering his own scowling face over a giant billboard on Highland Avenue in L.A. The film was branded the ‘Citizen Kane of bad movies,’ but not long after its release it managed to gain a cult following of people who were absolutely fanatical about it. Special screenings were set up for which audience members would dress up as the main characters which still take place today in both the U.S.A and the U.K.

The Room is a melodrama revolving around a group of friends that conveniently all live in the same apartment block. There’s Mark (the sexy one), Denny (the pervy, slightly sinister teenage boy one), Johnny, played by Wiseau himself and Lisa, Johnny’s fiancée. Johnny and Mark are BFFs, which makes things a little awkward when Lisa and Mark start having an affair. Denny has also succumbed to Lisa’s mysterious charms but is more of a spectator, watching eagerly from the sidelines with his hand down his trousers, not really getting in on any of the action. And boy is there a lot of action. I’m talking three, very extended sex scenes, complete with Johnny’s RnB nookie tape blaring away in the background, all within the first twenty five minutes.

The rest of the film deals with Mark and Lisa’s affair, and eventually the consequences of it. The sub-plots, however, provide a substantial amount of the entertainment. It would make a fun game to see how many extra story-lines you can spot that are introduced and then pretty much forgotten in an instant. A couple of the most bizarre examples are when Lisa’s mother casually announces that she has breast cancer, and Denny’s roof top encounter with a gun-wielding drug dealer – neither of which are mentioned again during the rest of the film.

Wiseau’s performance as Johnny is generally quite baffling and slightly absurd. He skulks around looking a bit like a Neanderthal that’s just been thawed out after 500,000 years of being preserved in a Siberian ice cave - part of me wouldn’t have been surprised if this turned out to be an actual sub plot. Perhaps that would explain Johnny’s slightly peculiar take on the English language and his apparent inability to interact normally with Homo sapiens. The film is littered with bouts of oversimplified and unrealistic dialogue and after about twenty minutes of watching the film I came to the conclusion that Tommy Wiseau must have never had a conversation with anyone before. Ever. It’s the only way to explain the following dialogue, which is a little snippet of conversation from a scene in which Johnny and Mark are discussing the troubling topic of women-folk:

Johnny: I’m so happy I have you as my best friend, and I love Lisa so much.
Mark: Yeah man, you are very lucky.
Johnny: Well maybe you should have a girl Mark...What happened? Remember Betty? That’s her name?
Mark: Betty? Yeah, we don’t see each other anymore. She wasn’t any good in bed. She was beautiful, but we had too many arguments.
Johnny: That’s too bad. My Lisa is great when I can get it.
Mark: Aw man, I just can’t figure women out. Sometimes they’re just too smart. Sometimes they’re just flat-out stupid. Other times...they’re just evil.

Oh Mark, don’t underestimate your knowledge. ‘Smart, stupid and evil’ is the Holy Trinity of the female species. It seems like your philosophy on women is almost complete.

Many have wondered how legendary ‘bad director’ Ed Wood would have dealt with his infamy if it had all started before his death. Unfortunately for Tommy Wiseau, he is very much still alive and so must face the scrutiny of both his critics and his audience. It seems that if your film develops a cult status for being utterly dreadful you can do one of two things. The first option: hold your hands up and admit it was you that caused the cinematic stench permeating the nostrils of your suffering audience. The second option: Denial. Strangely enough, it seems like Wiseau has plumped for both. He often appears at the special screenings of his film and answers questions from his audience, so he must at least have a hunch that their appreciation of it is somewhat ironic. However, Wiseau has also denied that his film was intended as a straight drama, and has claimed that it was in fact intended to be a black comedy...a statement that a number of the film’s actors have claimed is untrue. One anonymous member of the cast said "He is a nice guy. But he is full of shit. He was trying to put together a drama. It was basically his stage to show off his acting ability.”

All in all, The Room is somewhat of an unlikely masterpiece. Although it could never be taken seriously, I think it’s probably been enjoyed by everyone that’s watched it - a bit like a theme park ride that’s a lot of fun, but also makes you feel a little bit sick. And you have to hand it to the guy, Wiseau’s dedication and unshakable faith in his project paid off eventually, even if it isn’t in quite the way he initially imagined. And although the audience may not come away pondering his psychologies on relationships like he may have wanted them to, at least you come away with something. And that’s more than you can for a lot of the studio funded Hollywood disasters out there. Well done Wiseau, keep up the good work. Actually, on second thoughts...

Amy Flinders

Director Profile: Lynne Ramsay (Part 2)

Amy Flinders profiles Scottish director Lynne Ramsay in the second of a two-part feature... read part one here.

With three critically acclaimed shorts and a mantelpiece full of awards, Ramsay won another cluster of prizes, including a BAFTA for most promising newcomer, for her first feature Ratcatcher (1999). When asked how the idea of Ratcatcher came to her, Ramsay has said:

‘I remember the dustmen's strike in the 1970s, and it was quite weird because there were football pitches filled up to the goalposts with rubbish…It was also the time when punk rock was starting and the Labour government was coming to an end, so there was a depression and an excitement in the air…So it started off with a place of deterioration with something new happening with a boy caught up in a very macho environment - he's quite sensitive, but he's not supposed to show it. It felt like a beautiful backdrop for that.’

And almost miraculously, Ramsay does manage to turn a grey, deprived, 1970s Glasgow – every corner of which is packed with overflowing bin bags - into a oddly beautiful setting as the narrative follows twelve-year-old James after he plays a part in the accidental drowning of one of his friends. James must deal with the guilt that arises from this inadvertent act, which makes his developing adolescence an even more uncomfortable and turbulent experience.

Whilst Ratcatcher seems purposefully slow as time plods uncertainly along for James, each shot is as engaging as the last as Ramsay repeatedly captures a profound sense of emotion from seemingly still, small moments. Ratcatcher is a film for more than just the eyes and ears, as some of the images on screen are projected so intensely you can almost feel them. For example, when James first meets his new friend Margaret, he touches her grubby, grazed knee and we witness that first awkward spark between them that lingers in the friendship they have throughout the film. In another scene, James notices a hole in the toe of his sleeping mothers stocking. In Ramsay’s words,

‘He's always wanting her to be perfect, so he tries to pull the toe of the tights up, so she hasn't got this hole. For me it says about how he loves her; a tiny detail that says something about their relationship.’

James fantasizes about the perfect family and the perfect home and Ramsay again creates a profound contrast between the character’s dreams and the bleak reality of the narrative. James takes a trip one day to an empty building site of clean, brand new, partially built homes, his dream being that one day his family will move in to one. James climbs out the window of one of the houses into brilliantly sunny cornfield, the director again using this environment to represent her character breaking free from his hostile constraints.

The film includes a nod to a director much admired by Ramsay, Terence Malik. In a scene where James’ sweet but slightly simple friend Kenny ties his pet mouse to a balloon, the song Musik Für Kinder, a song repeatedly used in the film Badlands (arguably Malik’s most famous work) plays on the soundtrack as the red balloon floats into the sky, a symbol also used in Malik’s film. James seems tragically adult-like as he later tells Kenny that his mouse is dead and hasn’t landed on the moon. Perhaps James is gradually losing his innocence after the various incidents in his life, much like Anne-Marie in Small Deaths.

Her second feature, Morvern Callar (2002) , takes a different tone as Ramsay moves from representing childhood and the notion of families sticking together, to portraying the life of a very solitary individual in an adult world. Morvern (Samantha Morton, the first time the director has used a well known, professional actor) wakes up one morning to find that her boyfriend has killed himself. In his suicide note, he asks her to take his newly finished novel to a publisher and to pay for the funeral with the money on his credit card. Instead, Morvern publishes the novel under her own name and uses the money to splash out on a holiday to Spain with her best friend, Lanna (Kathleen McDermott).

Unlike the Alan Warner novel from which Morvern Callar is adapted, the film has no interior monologue or any access to Morvern’s thoughts. On altering the quantity of speech for the film Ramsay has said,

‘The monologue in the book, well, she never explained her actions. It's quite existential. I was open to the idea but I wrote it without the monologue and described the actions visually, because most of them were, and it really worked. It had a real atmosphere to it.’

Instead of using her raw amalgamation of sound and images to depict the nit-ridden hair and grazed knees of childhood, she adapts her sensual style to portray Morvern’s more seductive, adult world. In a scene where Morvern goes to a party for example, Ramsay occasionally moves the images out of focus whilst the scene dips in and out of slow motion while the sound and dialogue remain at normal speed, expertly capturing the party’s ambience and perhaps the sensation of being under the influence of alcohol or drugs. She uses the same technique in her earlier short, Gasman, but on that occasion to portray the energy and excitement of a children’s party, proving that Ramsay’s techniques are not limited in the environments they can represent and atmospheres they can create.

Although the film received a number of awards, including a double win at Cannes in 2002, and yet more acclaim and recognition for its director, it has been argued that it is not as strong a piece of work as her first feature. In an interview with her, British director Mike Leigh said he thought that there was ‘a quality in Ratcatcher and the shorts that somehow doesn't survive in Morvern Callar.’

One criticism of the film has been that the title character is perhaps a bit too emotionally distant and not particularly easy to identify with. Ramsay has commented that,

‘Morvern Callar's a really weird film, in a sense, where I was trying to experiment with taking things in a different direction, and it kind of half works and it half doesn't. And I kind of felt with that film that perhaps I should have pushed it more into the realms of black comedy slightly.’

In February 2001, Ramsay was hired to write and direct an adaptation of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. The book had not been completed at this point, but eighteen months later Sebold's novel had spent numerous weeks at the top of The New York Times best sellers list, and Hollywood began to show an interest. Ramsay has said of the project,

'...it was one of those situations where I was given the manuscript of a novel that wasn't finished. There was something interesting in it, I thought. It was set in America, which I felt was a big leap, but it wasn't attached to any studio deal - it had been passed by everybody for being too dark. But the bottom line was that the book came out and became a massive bestseller. And it was also such a well-loved book that I didn't want everyone talking about the difference between the book and the film.'

She left the production in 2004 and the film eventually went to Peter Jackson to direct (his adaptation will be out in UK cinemas at the end of this month).

Since her departure from the production of The Lovely Bones, Ramsay has directed a music video for the single 'Black and White Town' by indie-rock band Doves. Her distinct style is as prevalent in this as it was in her features and shorts, as she again implements her ability to accurately capture the energy and frustrations of youth, a skill that will most probably be exercised in her latest project, an adaptation of We Need to Talk About Kevin. Lionel Shriver has stated that she wants the filmmakers to 'look beyond the novel's thriller aspects'. If she wants a filmmaker that can look beyond the surface material and dig deep to expose the core meaning and emotion of the text, then Lynne Ramsay is the director to do it. Hopefully the film's release will see the Guardian-voted ‘world’s 12th best film director’ bounce back onto the big screen to the critical acclaim she is used to, and thoroughly deserves.

Amy Flinders

Director Profile: Lynne Ramsay (Part 1)

Amy Flinders profiles Scottish director Lynne Ramsay in the first of a two-part feature...

Despite only having two features and a handful of short films to her name, Lynne Ramsay has managed to captivate audiences and critics alike and is well respected as a prolific and innovative director. It is perhaps the inspired combination of her vigilant, sensuous style with her often raw subject matter that allows her to create a powerful and enigmatic atmosphere in her films, whilst also concentrating on the small, finer details of life that her audiences can recognise from their own homes, families and childhood. After an eight-year break from feature filmmaking, Ramsay is soon to direct an adaptation of the Lionel Shriver novel, We Need to Talk About Kevin. In anticipation of her long-awaited return to the silver screen, this profile will offer a retrospective of her work and the techniques that have caused many to be enchanted and moved by her films.

Ramsay began her career with photography, which she studied at Napier College in Edinburgh. She has said that going to the cinema should be about the ‘cinematic experience,’ and she certainly practices as she preaches when it comes to using sound and image to tell her stories in vivid and engaging ways. After working as a director of photography, Ramsay felt that she needed to write authentic stories which she would illustrate using her unique and perceptive style:

‘I did photography before and I felt I should be there trying to experiment with the form. So I was really disillusioned by some of the scripts so I thought I'd write something a bit closer to home. So I started writing some short stories which I showed to an editor I'd worked with as a director of photography and she said that I should make them.’

She trained in cinematography and direction at the National Film and Television School and her graduation film, Small Deaths, won the 1996 Cannes Prix de Jury. This film was the first to illustrate Ramsay’s interest in telling stories about children and young people, which she developed later in a later short, Gasman (1997), and in her first feature, Ratcatcher (1999).

Small Deaths portrays three events at different stages in a young girl’s life. On the surface these occasions don’t appear to be particularly momentous, this perhaps being the first time that Ramsay exercised her talent in capturing ‘isolated, crystallised moments.’

Childhood and adolescent experiences are often perplexing and difficult, and it seems as though the girl, Anne-Marie, suffers a loss of innocence at the end of each segment. Ramsay has said that where she came from, children often grew up in ‘a tough environment but there was a lot of beauty too, in a sense.’ This statement is clearly dramatised through Small Deaths, where the visual imagery alone represents a striking juxtaposition between beauty and hardship. For example, in the second section Anne-Marie and her sister tumble around in a cornfield, the camera energetically swooping through grass and then high above the girls as they play. The tone shifts dramatically as they discover a dying cow that has been attacked by a group of young boys. The camera is suddenly very still as it shows the cow’s bleeding wounds in close-up, intercut with the girl’s sorrowful faces. The aggressive sounds of the boys’ attack on the cow are heard and then die away as the scene ends in silence.

Her second short, Kill the Day (1996), won her the French Grand Prix at the Brest European Short Film Festival and the Special Jury Award at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. The film tells the story of a young man, James, who spends time in prison for theft. Ramsay poignantly portrays James's current entrapment by contrasting it with idyllic memories of his youth. He remembers playing by a river (again, in a cornfield) with two friends, and the scene almost reminds one of watching a home movie. The slight sepia glow of the image gives it a very soft, warm feel, as does the gentle rustle of crickets which is the only sound in the scene. This chorus of crickets then turns into the buzzing of a solitary fly as we cut to the next scene: James lies in his bed in his small, grey room, a far cry from the freedom expressed in his childhood memories.

Ramsay is known for using very little dialogue in her films, a lack of speech being particularly evident in Kill the Day, as there is only about a minute’s worth of dialogue during the 17-minute short. As someone so concerned and so accurate with her utilization of sound, she is especially selective when it comes to the inclusion of dialogue:

‘Sound is the other picture. When you show people a rough cut without the sound mix they are often really surprised. Sound creates a completely new world. With dialogue, people say a lot of things they don't mean. I like dialogue when it's used in a way when the body language says the complete opposite...I love great dialogue... but I think expositional dialogue is quite crass and not like real life.’

In her third short, Gasman, Ramsay shows just how effective a small amount of speech can be in a film that is free from excessive dialogue. A young girl, Lynne (played by Ramsay’s niece, Lynne Ramsay Jnr, who also features in Small Deaths and later in Ratcatcher) and her brother, Steven, are taken to a Christmas party by their father. On the way, their father meets a strange woman on the railway tracks who drops off two children: another boy and girl of a similar age to Lynne and Steven. Later, the party, which is aurally constructed of a mixture of energetic Christmas music, the laughter and cries of children and the occasional low mumbling of the adults talking in the background, is penetrated by Lynne’s distressed whine as she accuses the girl of ‘sitting on her daddy’s knee.’ Both the actress and director accurately portray the heartbreaking circumstance of a young child slowly realizing, but not yet fully understanding, something about her father that she’d rather not know. Gasman won Ramsay the Jury Prize at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival and Best Short Film at the Scottish BAFTAs, the Atlantic Film Festival and the Locarno International Film festival.

Part two.

Amy Flinders

Thoughts on... Up (2009)

Up, 2009.

Directed by Pete Doctor and Bob Peterson.
Featuring the voice talents of Edward Asner, Christopher Plummer and Jordan Nagai.


SYNOPSIS:

Carl Fredricksen spent his entire life dreaming of exploring the globe and experiencing life to its fullest. But at age 78, life seems to have passed him by, until a twist of fate (and a persistent 8-year old Wilderness Explorer named Russell) gives him a new lease on life.


Pixar’s latest adventure tells the story of Carl, an elderly man who decides to take to the skies in the most extraordinary way possible, in order to make the journey he and his deceased wife Ellie never managed to experience as a couple. After a brief montage that gives us the lowdown on their long and happy life together, we cut to a solitary and cantankerous Carl who is mourning the loss of his wife and ignoring everyone else in the process. Carl is tolerating the last years of his life by shutting himself away in the home he shared with Ellie, the one physical, tangible link he still has with his wife. With shady bosses of the neighbouring construction site constantly pestering him to sell his home to their development, Carl decides to escape his surroundings in the way that we all would; by tying thousands of helium balloons to his house and floating away into the sky.

I must admit that although I was initially enjoying the film to a certain degree, it wasn’t until this point that I began to really appreciate Up for the charming, insightful work of art that it is. Whilst I did sympathise with lonely Carl as I watched him grouchily rattling around his home, I primarily didn’t find him that engaging as a lead character and I doubted whether this would trump any of Pixar’s previous universally adored releases. However, as soon as the thousands of multi-coloured balloons exploded onto the screen to take Carl away into the sky, the film transformed into an exhilarating, uplifting tale, with plenty of brilliantly bizarre moments that will leave you wondering how the hell anyone managed to come up with them.

Let’s face it, if you’re a boring grown-up like me, you’ll know exactly how every children’s film is going to end as soon as you start watching it. But this won’t deduct a moment of satisfaction whilst watching Up. Yet again Pixar has exercised its expert ability in keeping you teetering on the edge of your seat in the genuinely exciting action scenes and swallowing that persistent lump in your throat during the sentimental moments, even though everyone over the age of ten is perfectly aware that everything will turn out fine and dandy in the end. I even managed to remain engaged despite having a row of five year old girls sat behind me in the cinema who were constantly piping up with; ‘Mummy, what is the man in the film doing?’ or ‘Mummy, why is that man always sad?’ or ‘Mummy, why does that lady in front keep turning round and staring at you? She looks mean Mummy. I don’t like her.’

In the past, Disney’s main characters have chiefly consisted of finely chiselled, heavily dimpled 2-D hunks like Tarzan or Hercules, or a parade of (all very similar-looking) princesses who are all mainly concerned with the pressing issue that they don’t quite belong. More recently, Disney Pixar films have featured the likes of furry rodents, talking cars, superheroes and cute and colourful fish. It is quite courageous of Pixar then to focus the attention of their new film around an old man who misses his dead wife. Perhaps this is why it took me a while to warm to Carl as a main character, as I too had been suckered in by the cute and energetic individuals that have been on our screens until now. However, Carl’s presence ultimately becomes an entertaining and refreshing one, offering new perspectives on typical Pixar themes such as adventure and confronting danger; a particularly hilarious example being the fight he has with his arch enemy, which results in being more back-cracking than swash-buckling.

We can assume that Carl intends his helium-fuelled flight to be a one way journey, his final wish being to spend his last days in Paradise Falls, the place he and his wife dreamed they would go together. This all changes when pudgy, pre-teen Wilderness Explorer Russell ends up clinging to Carl’s front porch as it sails off into the sky. Russell is delighted as this means he can achieve his final Wilderness Explorer badge which involves ‘assisting the elderly.’ Russell ‘assists’ Carl by helping him drag his house through the jungle in search of Paradise Falls, the two of them literally being weighed down by Carl’s ongoing devotion to his wife.

Through the well-crafted dynamics between Carl, Russell and other characters, such as loveable Labrador Dug, whose hi-tech collar exposes us to his doggy stream of consciousness (far more funny and perceptive than your average ‘talking dog’ character), Carl begins to realise that he needs to look for new experiences instead of yearning for the life he has already lived. Up is a film about not forgetting, but letting go of what’s weighing you down, a poignant message that isn’t lost amongst the many laughs, the captivating plot or the vivid and stunning visuals. I think Up is probably the best film I’ve seen at the cinema this year, so if you haven’t seen it yet, stop what you’re doing and go and see it now.

Amy Flinders

World Cinema: Let the Right One In (2008)

Let the Right One In, 2008.

Directed by Tomas Alfredson.
Starring Kåre Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson and Per Ragnar.


SYNOPSIS:

A 12-year-old outcast who is frequently picked on by his classmates dreams of getting his revenge, and with the arrival of his new next-door neighbour, he may finally have found a friend, ally, and first love.


[SPOILERS AHEAD]

2009 has been a pretty good year for vampires. A few months after thousands of twelve year olds around the globe swooned over the poster-perfect adolescents that vogued their way through Twilight, a slightly more mature audience went equally as mental over Tomas Alfredson’s vampire movie for the slightly more discerning cinema goer.

Let the Right One In is an adaptation of the John Ajvide Lindqvist novel of the same title. It tells the story of Oskar, a lonely twelve year old living in suburban Stockholm in the 1980s who befriends Eli, a vampire seemingly the same age as him who moves into the flat next door. The two of them form a friendship that provides solace for the pair of them, as Eli battles with the guilt that results from her blood thirsty nature and Oskar deals with the frustrations of bullying, the separation from his father and feeling isolated in a world where no-one seems to understand or appreciate him.

Boo bloody hoo. Please excuse me whilst I try and swallow the bulging lump in my throat and wipe a tear from my welling eyes. Judging by the number of reviewers that not only sang the praises of this film, but wrote their own mini opera in fervent celebration of what has been referred to as the ‘best foreign language film of the year’, I’m guessing that there were indeed quite a few tears shed over the ‘sweet, cute, innocent and gentle’ relationship between boy and vampire. I however, remained dry eyed from start to finish. After forcing myself through a second viewing to see if I could catch even a momentary glimpse of what apparently everyone was wetting both their eyes and their pants over, I continued to be completely baffled as to why this movie was repeatedly having ten, eleven, twelve and probably even a hundred stars thrown at it by every single person who had seen it. One reviewer even said ‘I was moved beyond my ability to wholly put how it made me feel into words.’ Yeah, so was I. Mainly because I was too busy choking on my own disbelief that this film was being hailed one of the cinematic masterpieces of the year.

Ok, so I wonder how many enemies I’ve made already. It’s ok guys, you can stop waving your middle finger at your computer screen, I didn’t think it was all bad. In fact, I really didn’t think it was a bad film, just entirely average. It was more entertaining than say, staring at a shelf of envelopes whilst you wait in an hour long queue at the post office, and probably more fun than doing a non-calculator maths exam, but on reading numerous reviews that mainly consisted of critics getting right up the films metaphorical arse and snuggling in its small intestine, I was more than a little confused as to why it was getting so much attention. So my opinions are mainly driven by huge sense of mystification over these rave reviews, not hate for a dreadful film. Ok, maybe a little bit of hate. Just a smidgen. This small amount hate began a-mustering when I could literally only find one reviewer who had the same kind of indifference towards to the film as I did, and even then his main criticism was that it didn’t make any sense, which unless you’re non-Swedish speaking and watching it without subtitles, this just shouldn’t be the case. The film isn’t confusing, it’s just is a bit slow which I didn’t have a problem with, in fact I thought the pace of it worked reasonably well. The whole slowness of it was enhanced by the cinematography with its long takes of the wintry Swedish landscape, and I also liked how some of the shots were cleverly multilayered in order to isolate certain characters away from others. Oh and it had cats in it. I like cats.

However, I did find myself getting a bit bored with it all, mainly because I found it so hard to care about any of the characters. Please see fig 1. for a pictorial representation of this boredom.



Fig 1. This is the result of the moment, about a third of the way through my second viewing of the film, when my left hand, a black marker and a crumpled bit of paper became far more interesting than what was on the screen before me.





The majority of its fans harped on about how unique it was, which I can kind of see at first, but once you get over the fact that the blood-hungry subject of the film and her new companion/boyfriend/possible next meal are both children, I don’t think there’s much originality left. He’s a lonely, bullied odd-kid who lives in the middle of nowhere and has parents that don’t really have much time for him, she’s a vampire that suffers from post neck-chomp guilt, and then of course there are the inhabitants of the surrounding area who are ‘onto them.’ I found it all quite achingly predictable from the first moment she appears ragged and barefoot in the snow, being all eerie and giving Oskar the old ‘I can’t be friends with you’ line which we all know means the exact opposite. She might as well have said, ‘Good evening. For the purpose of maintaining the inevitable ominous nature of our first meeting, I will momentarily pretend that I can never be associated with you. But just to give you a heads up, we will in fact be best of buds by this time tomorrow. Then you will give me your Rubik’s Cube as a gift after I tell you I’ve never received any presents before as surprise surprise, I don’t know how old I am or when my birthday is. Will I have inexplicably solved this almost impossible puzzle by the time I return it to you the following day? I course I fucking will. Pleased to meet you.’

Maybe it’s just me, perhaps I’m just an emotionally vacant android with a lump of concrete instead of a heart, but I really didn’t believe the relationship between these two. As well as feeling quite frustrated at the end by the quite easy and unsatisfying conclusion in which Eli returns to save Oskar from the bullies like we all knew she would, I was also left feeling quite cold and detached from it all. Kind of like the feeling you get when there’s nothing on T.V, so you end up watching a documentary about some bloke you’ve never heard of who was from a place you never even knew existed and did something vaguely heroic during a war you never realised had even taken place. That sort of cold and detached. I did find the relationship between Eli and Hakan, the peculiar older man that she lives with in her dank flat slightly more interesting. Who was he? Her father? Her slave? A former childhood friend who has now grown up and can’t separate himself from her? I guess we’ll never find out seeing as she ripped out his throat and threw him out a window half way through the film. As for Oskar and Eli, I was pretty much just sick of looking at the pair of them by the end of the film and was almost hoping she would eat her snivelling little pal, before turning her blood encrusted gob on herself, gradually gnawing away at her own limbs until she was just a head and torso rolling around in the pretty white snow. At least she would be more interesting to look at than when she’s skulking around with one facial expression like she is for the rest of the film.

At the end we see Oskar and a big wooden box sat on train. Where are the boy and his contained vampire friend going? I have no idea, and as long as they don’t make the return journey for the sequel I really couldn’t care less.

Amy Flinders

British Cinema - London to Brighton (2006)

London to Brighton, 2006.

Directed by Paul Andrew Williams.
Starring Lorraine Stanley, Georgia Groome, Johnny Harris and Sam Spruell.


SYNOPSIS:

A gritty and unflinching drama about the lowlifes and criminals that inhabit London’s seedy underworld.


Kelly and eleven year old Joanne burst into a grim public toilet at 3am in the morning. Joanne is frantically sobbing and Kelly’s face is severely swollen and turning black and blue. London mobster Duncan Allen has been stabbed in his bedroom and his son Stuart wants to know who is behind his father’s imminent death. Stuart realises that Duncan had a prostitute with him that evening and calls upon local pimp Derek to find him the answers he needs. Derek knows that Joanne and Kelly are responsible for Duncan’s condition and that he must find them before he pays the price for their actions. Kelly and Joanne must keep running to stay alive and they head to Brighton to take cover, but those who are on their trail aren’t far behind.

London to Brighton starts by throwing the audience right into the action of the narrative, beginning with an intense energy that rarely falters throughout the following 85 minutes. The film actually begins in the middle of the narrative’s timeline, and Joanne and Kelly’s escape to Brighton is often interrupted with several scenes set in the past which reveal exactly why the two of them are on the run.

The film deals with a shocking and controversial subject matter mainly focusing on the depravity and corruption of child prostitution. Kelly is summoned by her pimp Derek to find young girl for Duncan Allen, and Kelly, who relies on Derek to look out for her, doesn’t have much choice but to head to the streets to look for a pre-teen prostitute. She stumbles upon runaway Joanne, who tries her best to act tough and agrees to Derek’s proposition of ‘spending an hour’ with a stranger for the grand sum of £100. This difficult topic is handled in a way that doesn’t shy away from disturbing the viewer (a film about child prostitution that wasn’t unsettling would clearly not be doing its job) but doesn’t cross boundaries into the unacceptable. A scene between Joanne and Duncan isn’t avoided and illustrates just how warped and sadistic he really is, but what I personally found most unnerving was the constant juxtaposition between Joanne’s innocence with the perverse and brutal world she is being dragged into. Scenes in which Joanne enthusiastically tries to win a teddy bear in an arcade, or vigorously bounds towards the sea to splash in the waves, or has various shades of primary colours plastered onto her face before declaring she has never worn make up, all poignantly remind the audience that Joanne’s fragile childhood is under threat from her corruptive pursuers.

Joanne’s innocent character and the sordid circumstances she is being subjected to are not the only two aspects set in contrast. The film is full of such elements, some of which also serve to make the atmosphere more unsettling, such as Duncan Allen dressed completely in white in his eerily pure and pristine home, which is later the scene of such evil and vulgarity. However, I think the changing tone possibly provides one of the most interesting comparisons. London to Brighton is constructed from a hybrid of genres. It clearly has elements of ‘Brit-grit’ realism, a gripping thriller, a British gangster flick and an unconventional revenge story, all of which create an often fast-paced, tense atmosphere that leaves the viewer literally on the edge of their seat (sorry to use a bit of a tired phrase here, but I think it quite accurately describes my behaviour whilst watching the film).

Contrary to this however, there is also a prevailing tone of languid desperation which permeates the narrative at certain points. Whether it’s Kelly’s lethargic friends in Brighton wordlessly lounging around their house and lazily smoking a joint first thing in the morning, Derek’s ‘girlfriend’ passively accepting to have group sex with his friends in his grey, dreary flat, or the various pathetic characters such as Derek and his sidekick Chum radiating a sense of uselessness, there is certainly a sense of lost hope, which suggests that many of these characters are trapped in a despondent life they have little hope of escaping from. The viewer can only hope that Joanne does not suffer the same fate.

London to Brighton is tense, melancholic, unsettling, heart-breaking and yet occasionally satisfying and optimistic, so I was understandably left a tad overwhelmed after my first viewing, especially as it’s quite short; the whole thing feels a bit like you’re caught in a whirlwind that carries you from city to seaside and back in under 90 minutes. However after a few moments of collecting my thoughts I realised that this is ultimately a good thing, as there are very few films that have left such a strong impression on me. I quickly came to the decision that this is one of the most well-crafted examples of recent British cinema, with an utterly absorbing plot and accurate, honest performances. It’s not an easy watch, but it’s certainly a rewarding and compelling one.

Amy Flinders