LFF review: The Brothers Bloom/Vicky Cristina Barcelona

The Brothers Bloom and Vicky Cristina Barcelona are a pair of character-driven, four-hander comedies, achieving quite different levels of success. In the first, Brick writer/director Rian Johnson spins the ripping yarn of the two best con-men in history – the titular brothers, Mark Ruffalo and Adrien Brody – and their last mark Penelope, played by Rachel Weisz.

Johnson’s intention was to give equal priority to the characters as to the con itself, contrary to most con movies – and while he does that, the con itself loses focus and arguably goes on too long.

The art direction and production design lend the film a timeless feel, while the cast varies in performance and sympathy/empathy: Ruffalo is good as the older brother/bully but there’s still something slightly vacant or absent in his screen persona; Brody is appropriately moody, but brings some warmth to the loneliness and bitterness of the younger brother; Weisz almost steals every scene she’s in, playing the eccentric, kooky Penelope; and Rinko Kikuchi (Oscar-nominated for Babel) plays wonderfully dumb for most of the movie.

The essence of the con movie is that it even as it reveals the working of its tricks it must con the audience as much as target in the narrative: and The Brothers Bloom does leave you guessing until the very end.
Score: 7

Woody Allen’s VCB is not the ever-trumpeted return to form. It’s neither that funny, nor insightful and squanders a fantastic cast: Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall and Patricia Clarkson.

And just as Match Point presented a post card picture London, so VCB gives us the titular city as all tourists see it, not as the inhabitants live it.

For what it’s worth, the film tells the story of Vicky (Hall) and Cristina (Johansson), two friends, with polar-opposite views of love, on holiday in Barcelona, where they meet Bardem’s free spirit artist and eventually his crazed ex-wife Cruz. Vicky’s and Cristina’s views of love and themselves are changed through their relationship with Bardem and Cruz (both stereotypically Spanish…).

The more I think about it, the more offended I am by how inoffensive, unchallenging and uninspired this film is. Woody: do better – or don’t do at all!
Score: 3.5

LFF review: Synecdoche, New York

Synecdoche, New York is quite possibly one of the maddest and most baffling films I’ve ever seen. This is not entirely surprising when you consider that not only did Charlie Kaufman write it, he also directed it too. This goes beyond Lynchian non-linear madness, elevating Kaufman-esque into a whole new league of craziness.

The cast reads like a whos-who of indie cinema: Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Hope Davis, Catherine Keener, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Samantha Morton, Emily Watson and Michelle Williams to name a few.

The story, such as it can be detected within the madness, concerns theatre director Hoffman’s emotional, psychological and physical breakdown as he ponders the meaning of his life and death and his fear of failure that utterly constrains him. Ultimately his meditation/investigation of his own soul becomes living theatre in a huge warehouse.

Using a time-slip device, not dissimilar to the internal dream logic that held Spotless Mind together (or apart!), Kaufman subjects Hoffman to witnessing those around ageing hundreds of times faster than him, so that the four-year-old daughter he’s missed for a week is suddenly 10 years old.

There are many genuine laughs as well as the trademark unsettling stuff from Kaufman, backed by some heart too. It’s nowhere near as emotionally nourishing as Spotless, but the relationship between Hoffman and Morton is well-staged and played and represents the emotional core of the film.

There will be some reviewers who’ll say that you need to watch this stoned, but that’s simply a cheap escape from trying to make sense of the madness – for there is method behind. Nevertheless this is challenging viewing and maybe better suited to home viewing.
Score: impossible to calculate!

LFF review: Che Parts 1 and 2

Epic in length (4.25 hours in total), if not in scope, Che Parts 1 and 2 is a vain-glorious folly for Steven Soderbergh. Wilfully self-indulgent, intimate without being revealing, this biopic of Ernesto Guevara is an ambitious failure. Part 1 focuses on Che's part in Castro’s revolution in Cuba, while Part 2 charts Che’s attempt to replicate their success in Bolivia

The film’s (or films’) considerable problems should not prevent awards recognition for co-producer Benicio del Toro, who turns in another highly committed performance in the title role. Although it should be noted that demands of the narrative in Part 2 give him little to play with.

Part 1 is the much more satisfying experience, having something close to a narrative arc to follow, rather than Part 2’s by rote history lesson. Part 1 also benefits from more substantial characters for Che to interact with.

Artfully filmed throughout by Soderbergh, both Parts are beautiful to watch. But, and it’s a big but, if you want to see an entertaining, revealing film but Che, you would do better to re-watch the Motorcycle Diaries…
Score: Part 1 – 6.5; Part 2 - 4

LFF review: The Baader Meinhof Complex

While not quite in the exalted company of Downfall and The Lives Of Others, The Baader Meinhof Complex provides a riveting account of the terrorist organisation’s founding and its first decade or so.

With the cream of German acting talent and director/co-writer channelling John Frankenheimer’s touch for classy 70s-style international thrillers, this is a must.

The film successfully draws all the strings of the 60/70s protest movements together, ensuring that we don’t see the Baader Meinhof as lone gunmen but more part of a greater worldwide struggle. Let’s be clear though, the film does not glorify terrorism nor does it overly criticise the West German government – the failures and the costs of action/inaction of both parties come under the spotlight. Indeed, the only likeable character, somewhat perversely, is the chief of police.

The principal leads – Martina Gedeck as Ulrike Meinhof, Moritz Bleibtreu as Andreas Baader, and Johanna Wokalek as Gudrun Ensslin – are all superb, ably backed by an arguably more glittering support cast and cameos.

The film is action-packed, intelligent and revealing. That the film has so much resonance for a modern audience simply highlights the similarities between the 70s and the Noughties: for Nixon, read George W; for US imperialism, read, er, US imperialism…

Highly recommended.
Score: 8.5

LFF review: Broken Lines/Frozen River

These two films, the first British and the second American, are about isolation, but the latter is the more satisfying experience.

In Frozen River, two mothers, unified by their circumstances of loss and driven by desperation, join forces to smuggle immigrants across the border between New York state and Canada. The crossing point is a frozen river that forges thorugh the Mohawk reservation, meaning the smuggling is not illegal until the immigrants leave the reservation.

Melissa Leo is tremendous as the resourceful mother crossing lines to support her family, while Misty Upham also does well with the less sympathetic role of the Mohawk mother. The relationship between the two mothers never truly thaws until the end – again, like the genesis of their relationship, this is as much driven by circumstance as the need to acknowledge the sacrifice of the other.

There’s an air of Lynchian dread throughout, and a fascination with nature’s power.

By no means a happy film, the conclusion is at least satisfying and the characters are believable and sympathetic. Score: 6.5

The same can not be said of Broken Lines. This is a typically unsatisfying slice of London-as-dystopia; indeed if I was to be really harsh, I could say that Broken Lines is nothing more than an 18-rated, feature-length episode of East Enders.

The film depicts the journey of shallow, young property developer (Dan Fredenburgh) as he returns to his Jewish London roots for his father’s funeral. Unable to successfully establish connections with his past and failing to deal with the loss of his father, he hooks up with a woman (Doraly Rosa) working in a nearby café, who’s never the left the locale. Inevitably they have an affair – and of course they force each other to take their first steps towards resolution and maybe happiness.

The cast perform superbly – but we’ve seen it all before. Disappointing.
Score: 4

LFF review: W.

W. is a curious piece that ultimately disappoints. Oliver Stone’s imagining of the life and times of George W Bush is simply not as critical as one might have expected or as the material demands – indeed it’s too even-handed.

W is cast as an unworthy son trying to earn his unforgiving father’s respect and trying to serve penance for his many sins. Stone picks up on W’s conversion to Christianity (off the back of AA meetings, natch) and ultimately the father and son relationship is presented as God and Moses.

While the film is revealing about what a black sheep W was, there is still so much of his journey from there to president that isn’t touched on.

The cast, generally, are superb, especially Josh Brolin, who is superb in the title role. The voice and the physical posturing are spot-on to the point you forget it’s an actor performing. James Cromwell is his usual effective self as George Bush Snr.

And while Stone is not critical enough of W, he’s quite happy to paint the joint chiefs of staff as venal, self-serving incompetents.

W. is a strange hybrid, an ‘imagined biopic’ of a world leader while technically still in power; the trailer presents the film as a comedy – however the only moments of humour in the film are those in the trailer, so it’s no satire. There’s also a sense of West Wing-lite going on too.

It was intriguing seeing this a few days after Religulous: W runs for president because God told him too (a moment so shocking, even W’s preacher is incredulous!).

Come back the hectoring, angry Ollie Stone: all is forgiven!
Score: 5

LFF review: The Warlords

The Warlords is a brutal Shakespearean tragedy set in late 19th century China during the Taiping rebellion. While it never quite scales the heights it is striving for, it does so with class.

The powerhouse Far Eastern cast, Jet Li, Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro (the Hollywood equivalent would be Tom Cruise, George Clooney and Leonardo di Caprio), play three sworn brothers: the first a failed army general and the other two bandits. Circumstances bring all three together, running their own army against the rebels to gain favour with Li’s former masters.

Remarkable battlefield success after success sees Li moving up the greasy pole – but at what cost to the blood bond with Lau and Kaneshiro (appropriately wild-eyed and passionate as the youngest of the three). Ultimately, absolute power must corrupt absolutely and so it does with tragic consequences.

While the battles are impressively and viciously staged, the emotional journeys and political intrigues are less well-handled – look past the epic sweep, the costumes and the gravitas the cast lend to the script and there’s not that much there.

The film swept the board at the Hong Kong Film Awards, taking eight gongs including Best Film, Director (Peter Chan), Actor (Li) and Cinematography, and was a huge hit throughout the Far East. However, I can’t help but wonder if it might have been better served with Tony Leung in Li’s role. Li is by no means out of his depth, effectively portraying his character’s deep need to prove himself to his superiors, but there’s not enough of the character’s heart for us to fully understand his relationship with Lau’s wife upon which some of the tragedy is founded – this may have of course be a failing in the script or the editing.

But I can set all this aside because the battle scenes are magnificent, all death and glory. Indeed the sheer weight of the blood bond between the three is similar to that of the Fellowship of the Ring – if one of the three leads urged you into battle, you’d surely follow.
Score: 7.5

LFF review: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is an indie rom-com lifted above its station by its charismatic leads, Michael Cera and Kat Dennings.

The story is largely predictable: boy’s been dumped, girl is mostly single, friends push them together at a gig but can they escape their baggage and find each other? What do you think?!?! But there is a charm, a sweetness (without being saccharine) to it all that makes this almost impossible to resist.

Indeed Dennings could charm birds from trees, while Cera is so innocent and good-natured (without being naïve) that he must be an angel. In fact as worldy-wise, nerdy geeks go, Cera is the MAN.

The New York locations are appropriately offbeat, and the direction by Peter Sollett of Raising Victor Vargas fame is spot on.
Score: 8

LFF review: Anvil! The Story of Anvil

Anvil are a metal band that never made it. Despite influencing future million-sellers Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax, Anvil never had a hit record. But that hasn’t stopped founders Steve ‘Lips’ Kudlow (vocals and lead guitar) and Robb Reiner (drums) striving for success for 30 years.

This documentary charts their attempts at one more shot at glory. It’s an emotional roller coaster ride, filmed with full access by Sacha Gervasi, a British writer/director who ran away from home at the age of 16 to join Anvil on tour. He’d lost touch with them for 20 years before hooking up again a few years ago. The film is not a fan’s unquestioning review – the full access means we do see the band in warts and all reality.

This inspirational film has already won audience awards at the Sydney and LA Film Festivals – and must stand a chance of picking up the LFF award, particularly as the band came on stage at the end to perform some of their classics to a cheering audience (below).

















This is the metal film that you don’t have to enjoy metal to like as it’s as much about universal human values like friendship, passion and dogged determination as anything else.

Ultimately, this knocks spots off Metallica’s Some Kind of Monster. Where that revealed how thoroughly unlikeable the band were and how bloated by success they’d become, Anvil reveals two honest, hard-working guys who are not yet prepared to give up on their dreams.

That thanks to the film they may yet achieve their dreams gives hope to us all.
Score: 9
(Photograph courtesy of J Moore Esq)

LFF reviews: The Class/A Perfect Day/A Christmas Tale

I’m lumping these three foreign films together because they were all more than slightly disappointing. The Class (or Entre les murs) won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes festival.

Based on a script written by a real teacher (who then acquits himself superbly in the lead role), this is the story of the academic year as experienced by a class of kids (real kids, not actors) and their French language teacher.

Set in an inner-city school, with children drawn from different races and religions, this touches no new ground for a British audience well versed in the likes of At The Chalkface and Teachers. The cinema verite style is something of a hinderance too.

It’s well made, well-acted – but has nothing new to say.
Score: 6

A Perfect Day is anything but – don’t be fooled by the name or the poster! This Italian melodrama, while beautifully shot and acted, is really quite depressing.

Borrowing from Tarantino and Arriaga, there’s multiple connections between the characters that seems to serve the script in no positive way.

Isabella Ferrari suffers exquisitely as the single working mother with two kids by her estranged wifebeating husband – who is a cop. There’s no set-up, so we don’t see any of the former couple’s history – which makes them hard to care about.

Horror upon horror is heaped upon Ferrari until her depressed husband does the inevitable and takes his life as well as those of the kids.

Pointless, really.
Score: 3

A Christmas Tale is written and directed by Arnaud Desplechin. Before the screening, he said the film was partly inspired by Wes Anderson’s Royal Tenenbaums – that was the first and only warning! This marathon 150 minutes of dark French so-called humour, anchored around a family Christmas, left me cold.

Catherine Deneuve, at her detached best, is the matriach of the family, hit with a fatal illness. The patriach, a wonderfully resigned Jean-Paul Roussillon, calls the clan together, part in hope of finding a bone marrow donor among the family, and part in hope healing old family wounds in the light of the bad news.

The principal wound is one of the script’s key problems: the reasons for the estrangement between the daughter, the beautifully depressed Anne Consigny, and her eldest brother, played to the manic hilt by Matthew Amalric, is never adequately explained, ensuring we can feel no sympathy for her and the long-term impact it has on the family.

Once again, as with the previous films, it’s all done with style and class and intelligence – but no humanity. So, in the end who cares? Er, I certainly didn’t.
Score: 3

LFF review: Religulous

Religulous is a painfully, shockingly funny documentary in the style of Michael Moore. Fronted by US comedian Bill Maher, who’s always probed religious dogma in his stand-up routines, and directed by Larry Charles, co-creator of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm and director of Borat, this is a timely work, investigating religious beliefs of all shades throughout the world.

Maher’s basic thesis is why do rational people believe and allow their beliefs to over-rule their reasoning – and where does that lead us?

Maher doesn’t just use his comedic talents to shoot down his interviewees – he’s done plenty of research too, and frequently runs (apparent) rings round his subjects. In fact more than a few seem at points to be lost, almost questioning their faith.

While many of the interviews are akin to shooting fish in a barrel, they are very dangerous fish and for our sakes need to be shot!

Maher’s final call to arms (almost literally) tells non-believers to get in the fight (well, debate) before it’s too late – and he’s right.

In an ironic coda to the showing of the film, the Q&A with Larry Charles was hijacked by a Christian eco-warrior…
Score: 8.5

LFF review: Frost/Nixon

The making of one man’s reputation, the final dismantling of another’s, Frost/Nixon is a tremendous work and a fitting continuation of Fourth Estate movies at the London Film Festival (Good Night, And Good Luck in 05; Lions For Lambs in 07).
Brilliantly adapted by Peter Morgan from his own award-winning play, this is compelling, thrilling, darkly funny and tragic cinema, reflecting on living history, and while time and place are beautifully realised, it has points to make about the present and future too.

There are several keys to the success of this movie: one, Morgan’s script which is as unflinching on Frost as it is on Nixon; two, the superb cast, including Michael Sheen and Frank Langella reprising their London and Broadway performances and chemistry, backed by well-picked support (Sam Rockwell, Oliver Platt, Matthew Macfadyen, Kevin Bacon, Toby Jones and Rebecca Hall); and three, consummate, unintrusive direction by Ron Howard.

Shot as a faux documentary, the film charts both protagonists’ reasons for wanting to do the interviews, Frost’s trials and tribulations in setting the interviews up, the preparation (noticeably more focus on Frost here) and then the interviews themselves and their aftermath.

The interviews, if predictably set up as rounds within a boxing match, are astonishing - and the excerpts well-chosen to highlight the protagonists’ strengths and weaknesses. The confession, when it comes, is riveting cinema.

At times in fact, it’s hard not to see Langella replaying one of his great roles: there is more than a whiff of Dracula about Nixon – and the relationship between the ex-president and the TV celebrity is not dissimilar to that between the Count and Jonathan Harker.

At first acquaintance, Frost/Nixon seems endlessly watchable – I suspect repeated viewings will not diminish its power.
At this stage, it’s hard to see any film beating it to all the key Oscars and BAFTAs. This is just plain outstanding.
Score: 10

LFF review: The Other Man

The Other Man is Richard (Notes on a Scandal, Iris) Eyre’s latest effort – and it continues with some of the themes established in his earlier work (loss, betrayal, broken relationships, loneliness).

Using Hitchcockian or even Shyamalan-esque storytelling techniques, this adult drama bears witness to Liam Neeson’s reaction to finding out that his apparently missing wife (the ever excellent, ever beautiful Laura Linney) was/is having an affair. It doesn’t ruin the story to tell you that the other man is played by Antonio Banderas. It almost goes without saying that no-one is quite what they seem.

While the film could be described as charting the problems of rich people’s lives, the performances from all the cast keep it grounded in reality. Neeson is as Neeson does, and unravels excellently; Banderas gets to subvert his Latin machismo; and Linney is given just enough to do to make Neeson’s behaviour understandable.

The shocks and surprises as they come are well-handled by Eyre. However, one of the many criticisms levelled at him on Notes was the intrusive score: he seems to have learnt his lesson, but only a little – the score is always there in The Other Man, but is certainly not as intrusive.

This won’t play as well as Notes on a Scandal, but is worth seeking out when it opens.
Score: 8

LFF review: Dean Spanley

An absolutely fantastic start to my festival, Dean Spanley almost defies description. How do I tell you how good it is without revealing the story? How do I persuade you to see it (and you should) without you thinking it sounds completely mad?

Based on Baron Dunsany’s novel, the story is set at the turn of the 20th century and focuses on the transmigration of souls and essentially four characters: the curmudgeonly Horatio Fisk (Peter O’Toole), his son Henslowe (Jeremy Northam), a colonial fixer (Bryan Brown) and Dean Spanley (Sam Neill) from the local church.

As a diversion to entertain his father, Henslowe and Horatio attend a lecture on the transmigration of the soul where the four first meet each other. Henslowe, dealing with some family trauma, is keen to spend time with the Dean to find out his thoughts about transmigration. To persuade the Dean to come to dinner to discuss the matter, Henslowe procures rare Hungarian wine, Tokay, from Brown’s fixer.

Under the influence of the Tokay, it becomes apparent that the Dean may be living proof of the transmigration of souls – and that proof affects the lives and relationship between father and son and hints at revelations to come for the fixer.
By turns whimsical, uproariously funny, and moving, the film is well directed by Toa Fraser. It’s hard to say who fares best among the cast: early on O’Toole is just playing O’Toole, but further depth and character is revealed; Northam adds some soul to his normal stiff upper lip; Brown reveals himself to be a fine character actor; and Sam Neill delivers a performance that will live long in the memory.

There is so much to say about this film – but only once it’s been seen! Certainly offbeat, definitely worth seeing.
Score: 8.5