From the ever-prolific cult Japanese filmmaker Sion Sono comes Tokyo Tribe, an anarchic hip-hop musical about gang warfare that may be the director’s most unhinged film yet. And that’s saying something, considering the man’s made at least one four-hour movie about an upskirt photographer…
Monthly Archives: August 2016
Gary Numan: Android in La La Land (Rob Alexander/Steve Read, 2016)
With so many music documentaries around that focus on great artists with a tendency towards egomania, it’s refreshing to find one that’s about a musician – and a highly influential one at that – who seems entirely uninterested in self-mythologising. Android in La La Land profiles electro pop pioneer Gary Numan, who was derided and revered in the press in equal measure as he went about selling millions of albums in the late 1970s and early ’80s, before it all came crashing down…
The Library Suicides (Euros Lyn, 2016)
After a string of high-profile TV gigs on the likes of Daredevil, Broadchurch and Happy Valley, The Library Suicides sees director Euros Lyn return to the feature filmmaking fold with a twisty psychological thriller. Adapted from the Welsh-language bestseller Y Llyfrgell by Fflur Dafydd, what sets the film apart in the current British cinema landscape is its retaining of the Welsh language, a unique setting for its cat-and-mouse games, and a committed dual performance from Catrin Stewart…
Things to Come (Mia Hansen-Løve, 2016)
After a streak of films (Eden and Goodbye First Love) largely concerned with the notion of faded youth and lost loves, Things to Come sees French director Mia Hansen-Løve take a noticeable shift. Her protagonist is Nathalie (Huppert), a middle-aged philosophy teacher, who isn’t yearning for some better times in the past, but rather practically and calmly trying to assess where her life goes in the future, after the sudden departure of her husband of 25 years (Marcon), after he confesses to having an affair.
Elsewhere, Nathalie’s overbearing mother (Scob) seems to be approaching death’s door, while Nathalie’s perspectives on the world are consistently being questioned and reshaped by the unfettered ways of both her adult offspring and, in particular, a former pupil, Fabien (Kolinka, who had a major part in Eden), whom she’s reconnected with. Additionally causing a further upheaval to the status quo of her life is a loss of income from publisher shake-ups seeing her respected textbook being deemed out of vogue. Essentially, what we have here is evidence that no matter how well-adjusted you may think you are, the proverbial excrement is always bound to hit the fan at some point. And sometimes, you’ve just got to make something out of the lemons life gives you, even if it’s not lemonade…
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