Best of the festival part 1

Carlos
That’s Carlos the Jackal to you and me, one of the most notorious terrorists of the previous century.
Coming in at 5.5 hours, this is not a single movie, but a TV series that comprises three feature length parts. And it’s great ‘entertainment’.

Parts one and two are absolutely cracking, galloping along at a rate of knots that still leaves room for character development. We see the ‘birth’ of Carlos – the adopted nom de guerre and personality of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez – and follow his early years closely – almost too closely because you begin to cheer for him, as he moves from one terrorist atrocity to another.

As with so many other filmed fictions of gangsters/terrorists (Mesrine for example), the final part is not as strong as what came earlier – the bloated, paranoid petit bourgeois is revealed as Carlos drops off the media’s and security agencies’ radars. In the end, he’s as hollow as the next man.

Edgar Ramirez is simply astonishing in the lead role, speaking half a dozen languages with ease, capturing the insane charm that was supposedly typical of the man, and nailing Carlos’s physical changes without resorting to CGI.

This could easily be seen as a companion piece to the Baader Meinhof Complex, although it is not quite as strong and as satisfactory an experience as that German faction.
Score: 8/10

Blue Valentine
This US indie relationship drama is lifted from its emotional trauma by two searing performances from its attractive leads: Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams.

The film charts – in cross-cut, almost Memento-style fashion – the end and the beginning of the pair’s relationship. The beginning is, not unexpectedly, a more beguiling experience, the sparks flying as the two meet for the first time. The more challenging experience (for the viewer and the performers) is the end of the relationship: Gosling’s Dean has turned from passionate dreamer and romantic into an alcoholic and a waster, while Williams’ Cindy has disintegrated from the perfect girl next door to a bitter, loveless shell.

Both actors are at the top of the game, but it’s Williams who makes more an impact – I’ve never seen a duff performance from her, although it must be said that she is drawn to darker material than most actresses.

Definitely not a date movie! Or a post-break up movie!
Score: 6.5/10

Home By Christmas
This documentary about the memories of a New Zealand WWII veteran fails to scale the heights I expected.

Director Gaylene Preston made audio recordings of a series of interviews she conducted with her late father, Ed, shortly before he died in the early 90s. In those interviews, he discussed for the first time his war experiences – for the first time.
For it appears there is a skeleton in the national closet: nobody in NZ talks about the war, it’s a dark secret that doesn’t get discussed.

Actor Tony Barry brings Preston’s father’s monologues to life, the interviews recreated on screen.

From what we see on screen, Ed is a natural born story teller – and therein lies the film’s weakness: we never know whether what he is recalling is the whole truth, part-truth or a complete lie. The real story is not in what he says, but what he doesn’t.

That’s not to say the film isn’t affecting – it is, but not enormously so. But that reinforces the fact that it’s a daughter’s film about her own father, a man she clearly admired anyway.

A further, fuller, more objective investigation is required if this scar on the Kiwi national conscience is to be addressed.
Score: 6.5/10

Everything Must Go
This drama-comedy/comedy-drama (delete as appropriate) about an alcoholic salesman who loses his job and wife on the same day is anchored by an outstanding performance from Will Ferrell.

Locked out of his own home, all his possessions strewn across the front lawn, Ferrell’s Nick decides to live outside. Suspicious neighbours rightly assume the worst even as he lies to them, and ultimately he is forced to conduct a yard sale and sell off his possessions (apparently it’s illegal to live on your front lawn in Arizona!).

In the sale, he is abetted by a thoughtful neighbour (played by Rebecca Hall) and an innocent child, both of whom also aid him in his journey back to life.

Frequently very funny, and touching too, this is immensely enjoyable adult movie-making. It’s likely to be compared favourably to Up In The Air, although it’s not in the latter’s league: its slightly more contrived storyline means it falls short of the George Clooney-starrer.

Nevertheless, Ferrell’s Nick is one of cinema’s great losers who finds he can make his way back to being a winner.
Score: 8/10

The Ballad Of Mott The Hoople
Great documentary charting the all-too short life and times of Mott The Hoople.

The band members themselves tell the story of how they met, scaled up rock’s ladder to the summit, only to fall into oblivion after a very short time at the summit.

The film reinforces the band’s roots, and gives ample scope for revealing the true characters beneath all the rock n roll excess.

There’s some great live footage from throughout their brief career (this film reminds the audience of what a classy guitarist Mick Ralphs is and that Ian Hunter is among the top five rock singers this country has ever produced), but the film fails to take the time to chart what happened to the various band members in the intervening years until their belated reunion in 2009.
Score: 7.5/10

Cold Weather
This US indie is occasionally inspired, yet all-too-frequently beset by writer-director Aaron Katz’s amateurish student aesthetic.

This gentle character comedy focuses on Doug, a college drop-out with a passion for Sherlock Holmes and forensic science.
The set up is slow, but once the McGuffin is established, Doug sets up his own Scooby Gang (fellow factory worker Carlos, and his sister) to solve the mystery.

Each of the lead actors quietly impress, but it’s Trieste Kelly Dunn as Doug’s sister who does so the most – a greater career beckons than she has achieved so far, methinks.

The film has many genuinely funning WTF scenes – but against these must be weighed the many pretentious WTF scenes that serve no purpose in terms of plot or character progression, hence the score below.
Score: 6.5/10

The American
Anton Corbijn follows up Control with this fantastic thriller, in which George Clooney delivers another finely nuanced performance as a man at war with his past, clawing desperately at a dream of a brighter future.

The film opens almost Bond-style in the sense that we meet Clooney’s Jack Clarke and his girlfriend enjoying each other’s company and the scenery in their snowbound chalet in Sweden, only for their reverie to be cut short by sniper fire.

But Clarke is no Bond – he’s a working assassin and gunsmith, not a super hero. Forced into going on the run, he holes up in Castel del Monte in Italy, posing as a photographer.

With his regular but sinister broker offering him more work, Clarke’s would-be vacation is cut short as it becomes apparent the trouble he thought he’d left behind in Sweden has found him in autumnal Abruzzo.

Indeed, trouble won’t leave him alone: whether it’s the happy hooker from the next village, or his new client (a devastatingly beautiful assassin), or the shadowy figure watching him by night, or the local priest trying to get under his skin, Clarke’s abilities and conscience are beset on all sides.

Does he love the hooker? Can he trust the client? Is he paranoid? Does he want to confess? He must answer all these questions if he is to survive to see the future he desires.

Just as outstanding as Clooney’s conflicted Clarke is Corbijn’s assured and stylish direction. Almost every shot is beautifully composed and lit (especially the night shoots through the winding, rising and falling streets of Castel del Monte), no doubt helped by DoP Martin Ruhe (who lensed Control for Corbijn).

There are echoes of Day of the Jackal and other fine, grounded thrillers of the 70s throughout, although thankfully Corbijn’s direction and Rowan Joffe’s adaptation of Martin Booth’s source novel avoid the pitfalls of the Euro-pudding actioner.
Score: 9/10

Womb
This is a slow, morally questionable, small scale sci-fi investigation into the impact of human cloning.

Set on an unidentified barren, windswept coast, we watch a boy and girl meet; they get along like a house on fire; girl moves away; girl comes back 12 years later in the shape of Eva Green and reignites her relationship with the boy, now in the shape of Matt ‘Dr Who’ Smith.

All too seen, he dies. She can’t handle his loss, so has him cloned. This is achieved by her giving birth to her former lover.
The film then charts the psychological minefield the pair inhabit as the baby grows into a boy, and then into a man (Matt Smith again).

The Oedipal overtones are strong, and yet the writer-director Benedek Fliegauf contrives a happy ending (well, of sorts).
Eva Green suffers impeccably, and like so many beautiful foreign actresses before her seems hellbent on wallowing in the darker parts of the human psyche. Matt Smith, cast in the film before he secured Who, seems ill at ease with the role and its demands.

A curio best avoided, I’m afraid.
Score: 5/10