Monthly Archives: October 2019

Film, Little White Lies, Reviews

Earthquake Bird (Wash Westmoreland, 2019)

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A few minutes into Earthquake Bird, Alicia Vikander’s Lucy Fly is shown translating an English-language film into Japanese for what we soon learn has been her job in Tokyo for a number of years. The film in question is Black Rain, Ridley Scott’s cross-cultural action movie in which Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia play New York City cops escorting a Yakuza member back to Japan for extradition.

It’s a cute nod given that Scott Free Productions is one of the companies behind this Netflix-distributed film, and that Black Rain opened in 1989, the year in which Earthquake Bird is set. But the reference ends up backfiring. While the general consensus on Scott’s film remains largely negative, not least due to its use of Asian stereotypes, many of its detractors have nonetheless pointed to the director’s stylistic excesses as a positive. By contrast, Wash Westmoreland’s adaptation of Susanna Jones’ 2001 novel is a pedestrian thriller lacking any zest or flair…

Full review for Little White Lies

Film, Interviews, The List

Adam Pearson: ‘I thought it was a really clever script and premise for a film commentating on the history of disability in cinema’

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A meta filmmaking comedy set around the making of a low-budget horror, Chained For Life skewers and examines notions of on-screen representation of disabled or disfigured bodies to entertaining effect, while also avoiding being a patronising, didactic story.

Activist Adam Pearson transitioned into acting with Under the Skin, opposite Scarlett Johansson. In Chained For Life, he plays Rosenthal, one of a number of disfigured or disabled performers in the ensemble of the movie-within-the-movie, under the questionable direction of a supposed artistic visionary. Jess Weixler (The Good Wife) plays the able-bodied lead actor, whose role is as a blind woman, slowly connecting with Rosenthal in-between filming…

Full interview for The List

Film, Little White Lies, Reviews

Chained for Life (Aaron Schimberg, 2018)

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A lengthy Pauline Kael quote about the good looks of actors benefitting cinema precedes Aaron Schimberg’s Chained for Life. Its opening shot, of a young woman (Jess Weixler) navigating a corridor in a shell-shocked but glowing state, appears to complement Kael’s musing.

Yet beauty is about to be imperilled as this woman is actually starring in a horror movie. And then it’s quickly revealed that this horror movie is within another movie, where notions of beauty and representation of bodies that don’t fit societal norms will be skewered to delightful effect…

Full review for Little White Lies

Film, Reviews, VODzilla.co

Non-Fiction (Olivier Assayas, 2018)

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Arriving just before his new political thriller, Wasp Network, and just after his Kristen Stewart-led horror riff, Personal Shopper, Non-Fiction finds writer-director Olivier Assayas back in the witty ensemble story mode of earlier career highlights Summer Hours (2008) and Late August, Early September (1998), but merged with the industry satire of Irma Vep (1996). There, it was the film industry skewered with affection; here, it’s the world of novels. Non-Fiction’s original French title, Double Vies, translates to ‘double lives’, and the inherent narcissism found in concealing one’s infidelities while also profiting from them is of particular interest to the director…

Full review for VODzilla.co

Film, Little White Lies, Reviews

Monos (Alejandro Landes, 2019)

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The blistering third feature by Colombian-Ecuadorian filmmaker Alejandro Landes starts with training rituals that recall the physicality of Claire Denis’ Beau Travail. Its characters are eight teenage guerrillas serving the orders of a mysterious force known as The Organisation, stationed to wait for further instructions beyond guarding both an American prisoner (Julianne Nicholson) and a loaned dairy cow.

While some have code names referencing pop culture (Rambo, Smurf), others (Bigfoot, Wolf) evoke folklore, myth and fairy tales. Their base of operations does similar, with a mountaintop fortress filmed by DoP Jasper Wolf as though it’s an island floating in the clouds, while the arrival on horseback of their adult drill sergeant, a minuscule but extremely muscular man, amplifies the surreal, fantastical quality. Were it not for the fact they’re firing guns and holding a woman hostage, the group’s early joviality and camaraderie would suggest a more gender-inclusive Lost Boys (JM Barrie’s, not Joel Schumacher’s)…

Full review for Little White Lies

Film, Interviews, VODzilla.co

Kantemir Balagov talks ‘Beanpole’

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Beanpole, the extraordinary sophomore feature of writer-director Kantemir Balagov, earned the young filmmaker the Best Director prize in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, where it also won him the FIPRESCI Prize for the section – his second in a row after Closeness in 2017.

Set in Leningrad after the Second World War, it follows a number of injured or, at least, traumatised survivors attempting to restart their lives anew any way they can. Although a number of compelling characters shine in subplots, Beanpole’s central relationship is that between Iya (Viktoria Miroshnichenko), a very tall, pale and softly-spoken woman, and Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina), a smaller brunette with a more outwardly fervent personality…

Full interview for VODzilla.co

Features, Film, The Skinny

French Film Festival 2019: Five highlights

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From some of the cream of the Cannes crop to restored classics and mainstream hits, the French Film Festival is a much-appreciated annual event for the UK’s Franco-cinephiles. The 27th edition is packed with new works from heavy hitter directors like Bruno Dumont, Céline Sciamma, Quentin Dupieux, Arnaud Desplechin and Christophe Honoré, which feature such onscreen favourites as Catherine Deneuve, Chiara Mastroianni, Léa Seydoux, Jean Dujardin, Adèle Haenel and Fabrice Luchini.

The entire programme’s worth checking out, but here are five we’re particularly keen to see…

Full feature for The Skinny

Film, Reviews, SciFiNow

The Prince’s Voyage (Jean-François Laguionie/Xavier Picard, 2019)

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In 1999, Jean-François Laguionie, a French animator with directing credits dating back to 1965, made his third feature, Le Château Des Singes (The Castle Of Monkeys). It followed a rebellious teenage simian discovering an ostensibly more civilised society of simians, only to get caught up in a plot to murder a king. In the UK in 2000, the film was released as A Monkey’s Tale. The screenplay was considerably reworked in the translation to English, Rik Mayall played a comic relief villain, and the marketing campaign heavily promoted a soundtrack song by Westlife. It’s basically the epitome of a dawn of the millennium bastardisation of a foreign animation.

What does any of this have to do with Laguionie’s charming new film, The Prince’s Voyage, co-directed with Xavier Picard? Well, although it is not an explicit continuation, the new film sees Laguionie explore new ideas and stories within what seems to be the same universe. The lead of this film shares the design and royal lineage of a supporting character from A Monkey’s Tale, and that previous film’s lead character is alluded to in a flashback. But The Prince’s Voyage requires absolutely no knowledge of A Monkey’s Tale to follow its story – a relief to many…

Full review for SciFiNow

Film, Huck, Interviews

The Sundance breakout taking on gentrification

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Winner of two awards at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, The Last Black Man in San Francisco is stylistically bold and dryly funny – a soulful tale of friendship, gentrification and solitude, set in the titular city.

Jimmie Fails – who shares a writing credit with Rob Richert and Joe Talbot, the film’s director – plays himself in a narrative partly informed by his own experiences. The film sees the onscreen Jimmie, close friend Montgomery (Jonathan Majors) at his side, searching for home and belonging in a rundown part of SF.

An opportunity presents itself over in the Fillmore District when a Victorian-style house reportedly built by Jimmie’s grandfather is abruptly vacated by the current occupants in the now predominantly white neighbourhood. Jimmie sees a chance to reclaim the house, and all it represents to him – by any creative means necessary.

Huck spoke to Fails and Talbot at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, where their film played outside of North America for the first time…

Full interview for Huck

Another Man, Film, Interviews

When Black Children Were Farmed Out to White Families

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Over a 25-year onscreen career, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje has become a character actor favourite, balancing key supporting parts in blockbusters (The Bourne Identity, Suicide Squad) with steady TV work, including major roles in two of the most influential series of their time: Lost and Oz.

His autobiographical feature debut as a writer-director, Farming, now arrives with starry names like Kate Beckinsale and Gugu Mbatha-Raw in its ensemble. The title refers to a social practice in which Nigerian immigrants to Britain would temporarily give their children to white foster families, sending money for a child’s keep while they studied to make a better life for themselves. Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s onscreen surrogate, Enitan, is played as a teen by the magnetic Damson Idris, who picked up the Best Performance award at the Edinburgh International Film Festival where Farming also won Best British Film…

Full interview for Another Man