Innholdsfortegnelse for November - December 2016 i Little White Lies

We’ll never truly know whether Felicity Jones possesses strong memories of the 2001 film Albatross. Unless we ask her, that is. In it, she starred as a self-hating and stifled desk clerk at a novelty hotel on the Isle of Man. She harboured pent-up desires to defy her lowly lot and attend Oxford University. It’s a sweet film, but were she to create a CV which demanded she place her strongest screen credits closer to the top of the page, this one would likely rank mid-table at best. Back then she was still habitually being referred to as an “upand-comer” or “one to watch”. She was the chalet girl from Chalet Girl, someone who would go on to better, brighter things (side note: Chalet Girl is actually quite lovely). There’s…

Directed by_ PETR KAZDA TOMÁS WEINREB Starring_ MICHALINA OLSZANSKA MARTIN PECHLÁT KLÁRA MELÍSKOVÁ Released_ 18 NOVEMBER 3 ANTICIPATION_ Sensationalist cinematic clickbait? 3 ENJOYMENT_ Monster mashed with a bleak socialist-era aesthetic. 3 IN RETROSPECT_ A timely cautionary tale about the cycle of abuse. Prague, 1973. A young woman drives her truck down a bustling footpath, taking out a crowd of around 25 people. She, Olga Hepnarová, is convicted of mass murder and hanged less than two years later, thus earning the ignominious title of ‘last woman put to death in Czechoslovakia’. Forty years on, she is memorialised in I, Olga Hepnarová, the first feature from Czech directing duo Petr Kazda and Tomás Weinreb. With its plodding plot and penchant for moderation, this crime-drama-biopic lands with a final thud of realisation: I…

Directed by_ JEAN-PIERRE & LUC DARDENNE Starring_ ADÈLE HAENEL OLIVIER BONNAUD LOUKA MINNELLI Released_ 23 DECEMBER 4 ANTICIPATION_ It’s a new Dardennes film, but can they keep their hot streak going? 3 ENJOYMENT_ Adèle Haenel is a joy, but she seems to be operating in the Dardennes’ version of a TV soap. 3 IN RETROSPECT_ Has its moments, but this time the magic doesn’t quite happen. At their best, the Dardenne siblings construct compelling dramatic puzzles which don’t appear to be constructed at all. Instead their stories mark some inevitable destiny set in motion by their hard-pressed characters’ agonising decisions. Films like The Son and L’Enfant generate a palpable moral force precisely because they don’t appear to be pushing our buttons, just showing us a drama so real it doesn’t…

Directed by_ALEXANDR SOKUROV Starring_LOUIS-DO DE LENCQUESAING, BENJAMIN UTZERATH, VINCENT NEMETH Released_11 NOVEMBER You can’t help but be stunned by the insouciant confidence displayed in Aleksandr Sokurov’s dazzling plea for society to take better care of the art that it produces. We gather up the treasures of antiquity and store them in an impenetrable fortress like the Louvre. But nowhere is immune to the ravages of the environment or, worse, the destructive hand of man. Francofonia is a mellifluous, multi-disciplined examination of the ways art helps to define who we are as well as being a physical marker of a specific moment in history. “What is France without the Louvre?” he asks. The film is also in thrall to those who make it their business to quietly exert their limited power…

Directed by_ AMMA ASSANTE Starring_ ROSAMUND PIKE DAVID OYELOWO TOM FELTON Released_ 25 NOVEMBER 3 ANTICIPATION_ It's a great true story, but they don’t always make for great films... 2 ENJOYMENT_ So bland and simplistic you’re likely to forget it even as you watch it. 2 IN RETROSPECT_ You should probably read the book instead. When Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike) and Seretse Khama (David Oyelowo) met and fell in love in 1947, they knew their families would disapprove of the union. Yet they probably didn’t expect to find the full weight of national governments conspiring against them. She was a white Londoner working as an office clerk, he was an African prince and heir to the throne of Bechuanaland (now Botswana). Their marriage was seen as a transgressive, provocative act,…

Directed by_NA HONG-JIN Starring_KWAK DO-WON, HWANG JUNG-MIN, JUN KUNIMURA Released_25 NOVEMBER Alhough called The Wailing in English, Ha Nong-jin’s third feature (after 2008’s The Chaser and 2010’s The Yellow Sea) was released in its native South Korea under the title Goksung, which is also the name of the village where its mysteries unfold. Small-town values propel events here. Amid a bizarre outbreak of malady, madness and murder, local policeman Jong-goo (Kwak Do-won) seeks answers with the kind of bumbling backwoods incompetence last seen in Bong Joon-ho’s 2003 film Memories of Murder. Driven as much by crazy rumours, dreams, superstition and xenophobic scapegoating as by hard facts, Jong-goo is quick to persecute a limping Japanese recluse (Jun Kunimura). As Jong-goo’s own daughter Hyo-jin (Kim Hwan-hee) falls ill and undergoes a radical…

Directed by_ANNE FONTAINE Starring_LOU DE LAÂGE, AGATA BUZEK, AGATA KULESZA Released_11 NOVEMBER Poland, 1945: a young, French doctor breaks Red Cross protocol to deliver a number of secret babies. Actress Lou de Laâge turns in a detailed and subtle performance as medic Mathilde, who works in a Polish convent recovering from an “indescribable nightmare”. What first appears as a place of peaceful refuge that’s far from the bloody carnage of the frontline is unveiled as hell on earth. These women were repeatedly raped during a three day raid by Russian soldiers. They question their faith as their every thought is consumed by shame. The Innocents is a harrowing true story, so full of sorrow that watching it is a traumatic experience, but also a necessary one. The convent is a…

Directed by_ BEN YOUNGER Starring_ MILES TELLER AARON ECKHART CIARAN HINDS Released_ 2 DECEMBER 3 ANTICIPATION_ It takes a long time for Ben Younger to make a movie. So listen up. 3 ENJOYMENT_ A journeyman effort that’s satisfyingly light on melodrama. 3 IN RETROSPECT_ Miles Teller – not just a single string to his bow guy. A film about an underdog returning to the fray and beating insurmountable personal odds, by a director who hasn’t made a movie for 11 years. But first, we really need to talk about trailers, and how you should do everything in your god-given power to avoid watching the trailer for this film. Who knows what dark arts go into the production of trailers, that vital means of luring patrons to lay down their cash…

Directed by_ LLUÍS MIÑARRO Starring_ ALEX BRENDEMÜHL BÁRBARA LENNIE LORENZO BALDUCCI 2014 OUT NOW DVD It’s possible to see Lluís Miñarro’s acidic 2014 comedy as a malecentric analogue to Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. Both films explore the tumultuous modern history of their respective locales (Spain and France) by focusing solely on the domestic exploits of a bewildered and enforceably cloistered royal. The title seems apt, as it charts the gradual but consistent downward trajectory of King Amadeo I (Alex Brendemühl) between the years 1870 and 1873. Bundled off to a fortress to prevent assassination, he tools about in regal finery, attempting and failing to assert his influence on matters political, and eventually accepting his lot as a prisoner of tradition. Miñarro pieces the film together with great delicacy and a…

Directed by_ ABEL GANCE Starring_ ALBERT DIEUDONNÉ VLADIMIR ROUDENKO EDMOND VAN DAËLE 1927 Released_21 NOV Blu-ray This is a big deal. Books have been written and, no doubt, stern words have been traded on the subject of Abel Gance’s stupendous 1927 historical epic, mainly with regard to film preservation and ethical questions regarding cinematic reconstruction. Piecing a vintage film together from materials secured from sources around the globe isn’t just a simple case of finding the segments of a sprawling puzzle. It’s about second guessing (as best you can) the intentions of a long-dead director, as well as attempting to create a version of a film which hasn’t been manipulated and “improved upon” by modern techniques. The BFI’s three-disc Blu-ray is the product of years of dedicated work by film…

Let’s get the love-in out of the way early – British effects whiz-turned-expert blockbuster builder Gareth Edwards is one of our favourites. Everything was right there in his 2010 debut feature, Monsters, which fuses together a roughhewn, semi-improvised realism with gorgeous, computer generated, hovering glow-in-thedark squids. It was a low-budget labour of love which looked like it cost at least 50 times its minuscule $500,000 budget. Hollywood was watching, and it wasn’t long before Evans was over at Warner Brothers and handed the keys to a Godzilla reboot. The result remains one of the most majestic, awe-inspiring blockbusters of the modern age, an exemplary fusion of the classical disaster movie conventions with action sequences which often take on a near-experimental quality. Here was a director with the ability to personalise…

Every great artist eventually reaches a point where it becomes apparent that their best work is behind them. In all likelihood John Carpenter will never again reach the heights of his ’70s and ’80s pomp – in the five-year period between 1978 and 1982 he directed Halloween, The Fog, Escape from New York and The Thing – but while he may not be turning out era-defining genre classics at the same astonishing rate, the 68-year-old cult icon is showing no signs of slowing down. Having not occupied the hot seat since 2010’s tepidly-received psychiatric chiller The Ward, Carpenter has seemingly entered an exciting new phase in his career. Building on his earlier acclaimed work as a film composer, in 2014 (on Halloween, no less) Carpenter released ‘Vortex’, the debut single from his first ever stand-alone studio…

Directed by_ WERNER HERZOG Starring_ ELON MUSK LAWRENCE KRAUSS LUCIANNE WALKOWICZ Released_ 28 OCTOBER 4 ANTICIPATION_ Please nail the internet for us, Werner. 3 ENJOYMENT_ A phantasmagoric super-highway of information. 3 IN RETROSPECT_ More interpretation and less information would have led to a more lingering legacy. If the internet were to be formally recreated as a film, it might resemble Werner Herzog’s 10-chaptered spidery infoverse of a movie. Whether information presented artlessly on its own terms makes for a commendable viewing experience is all a matter of taste. Nothing narrated in the endearing deadpan of Werner Herzog could ever be dry. His curiosities regarding the riddles of the connected world are articulated with piercing intelligence and an impish relish for the absurd. Listening to his interpretation of our time’s greatest…

Directed by_ KIYOSHI KUROSAWA Starring_ HIDETOSHI NISHIJIMA TERUYUKI KAGAWA YÛKO TAKEUCHI Released_ 25 NOVEMBER 2 ANTICIPATION_ After the monotonous Journey to the Shore, expectations were tempered. 4 ENJOYMENT_ Kurosawa returns to his sinister roots with a brutal serial killer yarn. 3 IN RETROSPECT_ The stuff nightmares are made of. We’ve all had that bad feeling before. Interact with enough people in this world and someone ends up giving you the willies. Without pinpointing exactly why, your gut screams, ‘Run the other way!’ But do you? Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s new serial killer yarn, Creepy, embodies this conundrum from the start. The title is meant to be a blatantly inadequate descriptor for the unclassifiable actions of a person acting outside society’s normal social graces. How we interpret (and underestimate) these uneasy feelings conjures…

Directed by_TOMASZ WASILEWSKI Starring_JULIA KIJOWSKA, MAGDALENA CIELECKA, DOROTA KOLAK Released_18 NOVEMBER Only with great irony would you name a film so starved of emotion United States of Love. A thematic study of unhealthy relationships and obsession prompted by loneliness, director Tomasz Wasilewski’s film imparts an atmosphere thick with despair. Without introduction we jump right into the loosely connected lives of Agata (Julia Kijowska), Iza (Magdalena Cielecka) Renata (Dorota Kolak), and Marzena (Marta Nieradkiewicz). Think Love, Actually, but even more depressing. Agata is trapped in an unhappy marriage, empty of physical and emotional intimacy to the extent that she winces and brushes her husband away when he tries to touch her. Iza tries to pursue an affair with a man recently widowed, enduring physical aggression, taunting, threats, lies and betrayal to…

Directed by_ EWAN MCGREGOR Starring_ JENNIFER CONNELLY DAKOTA FANNING EWAN MCGREGOR Released_ 25 NOVEMBER 3 ANTICIPATION_ Seems a bold choice for a debut, and who knows what McGregor can do as a director? 2 ENJOYMENT_ Mildly boring, often offensive and repeatedly frustrating. 2 IN RETROSPECT_ A more audacious adaptation would have been welcome. If choosing to adapt a Philip Roth novel for the big screen is a challenge in itself, one which automatically opens up comparison with the widely admired source material, it is surely even more daring as a choice for a directorial debut. Adding to the difficulty, the director in question here is Ewan McGregor, a figure whose established status may not work in his favour in the eyes of a public always keen to pour scorn on…

Directed by_ROGER ROSS WILLIAMS Released_9 DECEMBER Disney, although a giant, corporate machine within the film industry, has historically been associated with creating work that teaches children valuable moral lessons. Films like Aladdin, Bambi and Peter Pan have enlightened a generation of kids on everything from the inevitability of death to the importance of letting go of the past. Even though they may offer some good advice, the crushing reality of ‘growing up’ forces us all to move on from these colourful worlds. This powerful documentary illustrates what happens if you never stop living by the laws of Disney. Roger Ross Williams directs the artfully told story of Owen Suskind, a man who discovered he was autistic at around three years of age. Spending months after his diagnosis mute and introverted,…

Directed by_ ABEL FERRARA Starring_ ABEL FERRARA CAROLYN MARZ BAYBI DAY 1979 Released_28 NOV Blu-ray For those who haven’t already partaken, a single question looms when it comes to delving into Abel Ferrara’s notorious 1979 “video nasty”: is it as horrifically violent as its poster (depicting a bearded man receiving the business end of a power drill through the frontal lobe) suggests? The answer is yes, but perhaps not in the expected ways. The Driller Killer does not skimp on scenes of graphic murder, but it’s more concerned with a society in which violence is has become part of the scenery. Ferrara himself stars as greasy, disillusioned, down-and-out painter, Reno Miller, and in one shocking sequence he glances down to the street from the window of his dingy apartment and…

Directed by_ PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON Starring_ ADAM SANDLER EMILY WATSON PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN 2002 Released_21 NOV DVD There is a crazy theory kicking about in the lower, seamier recesses of the internet which says that Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2002 feature, Punch-Drunk Love, is a science fiction movie. Yes, you can consume it as a charming, pleasurably off-key LA romance in which a harried malcontent (Adam Sandler’s Barry Egan) transcends his limitations as a man and secures the heart of the headstrong damsel, Lena Leonard (Emily Watson). Yet, the theory goes that Barry is in actual fact a superhero who is working undercover in a back-alley plunger sales outlet, his extravagant blue suit more a costume than casual attire. And Lena – get this – is an alien who has landed…

Directed by_ CLINT EASTWOOD Starring_ TOM HANKS AARON ECKHART LAURA LINNEY Released_ 2 DECEMBER 4 ANTICIPATION_ Eastwood is on a major roll at the moment. 5 ENJOYMENT_ Minimal tabloid sensationalism, maxium human insight. 5 IN RETROSPECT_ One of 2016’s very best. Clint Eastwood’s Sully exemplifies the director’s attraction to stories that reconfigure American icons. Be it the unreliable narrators of J Edgar or Jersey Boys that turned history inwards, or the heroes for sale in Flags of Our Fathers and American Sniper whose actions opened fresh wounds in the nation’s war-torn psyche. The subject in question is Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger (Tom Hanks) a name forever associated with an event coined as the ‘Miracle on the Hudson’ that took place on 15 January 2009, when a geese strike caused the…

Directed by_ TOM FORD Starring_ AMY ADAMS JAKE GYLLENHAAL MICHAEL SHANNON Released_ 4 NOVEMBER 4 ANTICIPATION_ Tom Ford's debut was beautiful; this long-awaited follow-up looks bigger, darker and stranger. 3 ENJOYMENT_ Gripping for its eccentricity, but too messy and frustrating. 2 IN RETROSPECT_ As gratuitously cruel as A Single Man was tender. Tom Ford’s long awaited follow-up to his directorial debut, A Single Man, confirms his dedication to style – unsurprising for a day-jobbing fashion designer. Yet it adopts a more playful approach. A two-part structure sees the director adopts two wildly different styles in order to reflect these bisecting narratives. A fluid camera follows Susan (Amy Adams) as she drifts through her LA art gallery or her modern house, melancholy and lonely despite her affluence and friends. When she…

Directed by_ SPIKE LEE Starring_ TEYONAH PARRIS NICK CANNON WESLEY SNIPES Released_ 2 DECEMBER 3 ANTICIPATION_ ‘A Spike Lee joint’ just doesn’t carry the same weight as it used to. 4 ENJOYMENT_ Dynamite stuff from an artist at the top of his game. 5 IN RETROSPECT_ Astonishing. Up there with Lee’s very best. “When I wrote this script, I had a black audience in mind. But that’s not to say that nobody else can enjoy it. It has been my contention all along that a black film directed by a black person can still be universal.” This was Spike Lee speaking to The New York Times in 1996 about his debut feature She’s Gotta Have It. Twenty years later those words ring especially true of his brilliant, urgent new film…

Directed by_ALEXANDRA-THERESE KEINING Starring_MANDUS BERG, ADAM DAHLGREN, MALIN ERIKSSON Released_4 NOVEMBER What would you do if you could spend a few hours living as a different gender? Director Alexandra-Therese Keining’s Girls Lost answers this question and much more as it follows teen trio Kim (Tuva Jagell), Momo (Louise Nyvall) and Bella (Wilma Holmén) as they discover a mysterious enchanted plant that, when ingested, temporarily turns them into boys. But it’s not just their sex that changes, the world around them and their perception of it does too. The nectar of the flower infuses them with new-found confidence and spurs a drug-fuelled rebellion that frees them from their daily repressions. Masks, lanterns, fairy lights and a bonfire in a forest at night – the girls dance under the moonlight to the…

Directed by_EUGÈNE GREEN Starring_VICTOR EZENFIS, MATHIEU AMALRIC, FABRIZIO RONGIONE Released_ 16 DECEMBER You could argue that the films of French director Eugène Green are a vacuum of emotion. He instructs his actors to intone lines directly to camera. The dialogue is slow and mannered, every syllable is roundly enunciated. Characters in his films don’t really talk to one another, they communicate in the way robots or computers might. And yet, for all the effort he takes to expunge anything that might be described as realism, his films exert a strange narcotic grip. By scraping back artificial emotion, you’re left with something very pure. His new film, Le Fils de Joseph, recounts the nativity in modern day Paris, reframing the immaculate conception as a single mother whose partner left her because…

Directed by_ JIM JARMUSCH Starring_ IGGY POP JAMES WILLIAMSON SCOTT ASHETON Released_ 18 NOVEMBER 4 ANTICIPATION_ One of the coolest directors profiles one of the coolest bands. ENJOYMENT_ Very entertaining, but not especially probing. IN RETROSPECT_ Could do with more raw power of its own. Jim Jarmusch directing a film about The Stooges is one of those perfect matches of artist and subject. Though the resultant documentary, Gimme Danger, is, at the very least, good, there’s the persistent sense throughout that something’s missing. For one thing, anyone looking for recognisable idiosyncrasies of Jarmusch’s fiction work will be disappointed. Structurally, this is, for the most part, firmly in the talking heads and archive material mode, with stories largely delivered by James Osterberg (aka Iggy Pop) and still-living collaborators in a variety…

Directed by_ROGER SPOTTISWOODE Starring_BOB, LUKE TREADAWAY, RUTA GEDMINTAS Released_4 NOVEMBER As anyone who owns either cats or dogs will know, after a long day at work there is no shame in returning home and talking to them. But if you engage in this patter, the instant thought occurs: is this just me? The silent wisdom of an animal, or our belief that they are really listening, can be a tonic for despair. A Street Cat Named Bob is the story of James Bowen, a former drug addict who lived rough on the streets of London. Bob, a stray tomcat with whom he strikes up a happy friendship, becomes his hero and redeemer, transforming the life of this one-time transient. However this film, directed by Roger Spottiswoode, is no saccharine fairytale.…

Directed by_DENIS VILLENEUVE Starring_AMY ADAMS, JEREMY RENNER, FOREST WHITAKER Released_10 NOVEMBER Given that personal trauma is the prevailing throughline of Denis Villeneuve’s filmmaking career so far, it’s no surprise to find Arrival anchored by a familiar narrative motif. In this low-key science fiction parable, Amy Adams plays a linguistics professor named Louise Banks who is enlisted by the US government to establish an open line of communication with a monolithic spaceship which is hovering somewhere over rural Montana. Eleven identical “heptapods” have popped up at seemingly random locations around the globe, and as the world’s superpowers clamour to ascertain the aliens’ intentions, another more pertinent crisis comes to the fore. After reaching out to these mysterious, hyper-intelligent beings, it becomes clear that the most meaningful connection she will make is…

Directed by_LOUIS BLACK, KAREN BERNSTEIN Starring_JULIE DELPY, ETHAN HAWKE, JACK BLACK Released_ 4 NOVEMBER There is already a great documentary about the working practices of Austin’s favourite son, Richard Linklater. It’s called Double Play: Richard Linklater and James Benning, and it was made by Gabe Klinger in 2013. Instead of traipsing on a biographical tour through the director’s life and work with added commentary and clips, Klinger filters the material through an artistic friendship, and taking great pains to use the films as a way to draw stylistic and ideological parallels between the two artists. Karen Bernstein and Louis Black’s Richard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny, by contrast, is a scrappy compendium of filched odds and sods with the feel of an electronic press kit. It comes across like an unofficial…

Directed by_ WILLIAM FRIEDKIN Starring_ WILLIAM PETERSEN WILLEM DAFOE JOHN PANKOW 1994 Released_21 NOV Blu-ray Like so many before him, the actor William Petersen failed to capitalise on his 1980s screen heyday. The one-two punch of Michael Mann’s Manhunter and William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in LA presented him as a wild dog who had been tamed, but was desperate to return to the nasty, bone-chomping old ways. In both films he plays a cop who appears to channel a form of sexual ecstasy from his work, where the eventual capture of an evasive suspect acts as orgasmic pay-off. In Mann’s film he (barely) remains within the bounds of the law, but Friedkin has him go so far off the rails, that it will make you question whether there…

Directed by_ KIYOSHI KUROSAWA Starring_ KATÔ HARUHIKO ASÔ KUMIKO ARISAKA KURUME 2001 Released_5 DEC Blu-ray The Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa has become something of a darling on the festival circuit, usually producing a film or two a year. Pulse initially appears as a copycat ghost story made on the back of the glut of titles that were marketed in the UK as ‘Asia Extreme’ or J-Horror, a trend that was kickstarted by Hideo Nakata’s Ring in 1998. While a lot of sub par cinema was given an easy pass in the name of shelf filling and trend hunting, Kurosawa’s film insidiously bucked the trend. It takes the fractured shell of a traditional ghost story and meshes it with more contemporary concerns, in particular an epidemic of depression that appears to…