Staking a Claim for Kill List

Playing ‘spot the location’ with Kill List is a pretty thankless task for a Sheffield resident. The better part of the film is set either in soul-less ring road hotel suites, if not in equally beige new-build suburbs. In a Q&A following a preview screening in Sheffield, the director even made it clear that “it’s not supposed to be Sheffield, really” and that a local audience could probably pick holes in a story that purports to stretch across a large, if indefinite, part of the country. And a near anonymous backdrop makes sense for an occasionally graphic horror film, the emotional imbalance of the hit-men set against a strangely lonely and faceless world.

In a country covered in generic branded service stations, corporate hotels, and near identical high streets, the setting almost gives the film a universal quality; a dullness any Brit could instantly recognise. And it’s hardly the first time that Sheffield and its environs have taken the role of ‘wholly generic British backdrop’. In most recent memory is the 2008 horror Hush, where the lifeless scenery of Yorkshire service stations punctuates the stalking terror of a motorway trip from hell. Finding horror in the everyday is something you might normally associate with British cultural staples like Dr Who or John Wyndham, and both Kill List and Hush do a fine job of conjuring really quite unsettling weirdness in a rather mundane world.

Those in the know will already have spotted that the common link between the two horrors is Warp Films, the independent film production company based in Sheffield. Higher up the funding chain we find Screen Yorkshire, who no doubt played a big part in selling the city as the best place for filming. One of my favourite, if somewhat esoteric, of film artefacts is a Screen Yorkshire location catalogue, a lavish picture book of sites around God’s Own Country that can represent a surprisingly broad range of settings.

It’s not quite as wildly optimistic as this location map put out by Paramount in 1927, yet the case it states is quite the same: Yorkshire’s more versatile than you might think.

Yet the degree of recognition any given audience can find in a film presents all kinds of issues. My previous post on Four Lions stirred up quite some interest in Sheffield readers keen to pinpoint those backdrops they half recognised from the film. You could even say that the local audience actually claimed some small ownership of the film, with the film screening for close to three months straight at the Showroom cinema in town, representing one of their largest ever box office successes. The fact that scenes of the film were shot on the roof of the same cinema probably didn’t hurt sales either.

Stepping back from this local perspective, even Four Lions positioned itself in a broad and non-specific setting. Its backdrop is a working class Northern city with a muslim population, which could easily be any city North of the Watford gap. Yet even this regional nuance was lost on some international critics, with the film reviewer of the Toronto Star noting that the film’s bumbling jihadists ‘live in or near London’; a misobservation a Sheffield local would likely not take lying down.

But to return to a question of audiences and ownership, what stakes can we ever legitimately claim to a film? Sheffielders took Four Lions to its heart, but in all probability won’t do so with Kill List, as there’s nothing local which they can claim as their own. Conversely a wider British audience of film critics and genre fans have already started championing Kill List as the best ‘British Horror/Thriller/Genre Film in Years’, garnering it with awards galore at FrightFest, with and four and five star reviews both left, right and centre.

Much as I enjoyed the film, it still somehow felt uneven, brilliant in parts but never with enough momentum to give the story’s twists and turns the heft to ever be convincing. The blowing of trumpets and banging of drums which has since followed all feels a bit out of proportion for a film which is good but still flawed.

Yet like a number of others who share these reservations, I still side on the concluding remark that it is worth seeing, and that we should all get behind it, more of this sort of thing, yes thank-you kindly! The ownership here is towards something broader, namely an independent British genre film with a modicum of ambition. Perhaps it’s a gross disservice to claim that people like the principle of the film more than the film itself, but I think you’d be hard pushed to ever actually separate the two.

However complicated and thorny this question is, the film is definitely worth a look. If nothing else I’m keen to hear how the film lands with others less conscious of championing or scorning the film. And furthermore and most importantly, I’m ever keen to hear from those who might be able to contribute to the location map below. As before, be warned for HERE BE SPOILERS:

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Oh, Isn’t That… Thomas Jane?

There’s a breed of actor that’s strangely recognizable by sheer dint of being a through- and-through jobbing actor. You might classify them as the more than competent character actor, others have an even simpler function as the rent-a-stock figure. Rarer still are the dashingly handsome not-quite-leading types, whose old-skool Hollywood good looks get them parts in the strangest films. For the casual film fan these actors represent a familiar but nameless presence (“oh, I know him, where do I know him from?”) For the obsessive follower of film (and increasingly TV as well) their appearance is like seeing an old acquaintance. The more you watch, the more rewarding the echo of recognition, irrespective of the feature itself. Match enough of these appearances with unheralded yet unexplainably brilliant films and you get a dangerously unquestioning devotion.

Which is to say, I absolutely love Thomas Jane and the frankly baffling films he’s been in.

He partly falls into the category of the chisel-jawed would-be leading man, having even had a crack at the BIGTIME™ twice, first with the shark-baiting shenanigans of Deep Blue Sea, and later with dangerously wonky yet flat comic-book adaptation The Punisher. But for his failure to launch in these hero driven action flicks, it’s in the role of the Average Joe thrust into extraordinary circumstance where Jane has really come to shine. The handsome everyman who in spite of his dashing looks is quite easy to relate to; a touch self effacing, a little world weary (but not resigned), and probably unshaven. Effortless in so far as he could not care less.

He pops up in a brilliant and rather broad range of bit parts and cameos: the bushy moustachioed drug dealing partner of Boogie Nights lead Eddie Adams; the high-fiveing officer of the Vegan police force in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World; playing himself as a method acting tramp in Arrested Development; and perhaps best of all, a soldier at the end of Thin Red Line with a brief reflection on being left behind. Some might take the fact that Terence Malick cut scenes with Mickey Rourke, Adrien Brody, Martin Sheen, Billy Bob Thornton, Viggo Mortensen, Gary Oldman and Bill Pullman from the final cut, but left in Thomas Jane in for all of minute and a half as sign that there’s something special about the guy.

My first brush of surprise came with a mob of friends in a videostore, for reasons untold picking up the unassuming Thursday. Settled architect (Jane) is caught up by his drug-dealing/guns-blazing past, with a series of increasingly inexplicable characters appearing at the door of his suburban home. The film more than lives up to its risible blurb as a ‘post-Tarantino’ film, but for all its deficiency of imagination in regards snappy camera work and shuffled narrative, the twists in the pretty daft tale keeps bubbling along.

Jane’s role is the hub around which the whole film spins, the man trying, and failing to be a suburban nobody, deflecting the increasingly bizarre procession of callers that come throughout the course of the day. He’s matched by the suitably smarmy Aaron Eckhart as his wheeling and dealing partner of old, and the clash of the not-quite-leading-men makes this a surprisingly strong pairing. The film’s pretty garish at points, and the ending’s a complete cop-out, but a conveyor belt of recognisable faces (Mickey Rourke/James LeGros/Michael Jeter) lifts a uneven script. The film barely works as a whole, but by force of a baffling cast, some disjointed humour and fair dollop of misplaced passion it sort-of pulls it off.

The second Jane-related broadside came in the nigh forgotten Stander, the embellished story of a real-life South African police officer turned bank robber. I’m sure the first  time I noticed the film was in the queue at a supermarket, the floppy wig, big sunglasses, automatic weapon, and competitive price point (~£3) more than enough to catch my eye. Cost aside, the film is rather neatly summarised as being about a man dressing in silly get ups for increasingly brazen hold-ups. Set in 1970s South Africa, Andre Stander is the cop fed up with enforcing the cruel Apartheid rule of law, and recognising the stupefying goodwill shown by banks towards white folk, decides to exploit the system. What starts off as a nihilistic dare turns into a rather elaborate scheme, with a criminal crew, nationwide hunt, and constant misleading of his police colleagues.

The exposition of the righteous political motives behind Stander’s wreckless campaign aren’t the most robust, but Jane throws himself into the role with a dizzying level of eagerness. The accents are surprisingly solid, the dynamic between the criminal compatriots a nasty mix of best-buddies and fiery contention. The disguises used in the bank heists are almost as ludicrous as the 70s fashion on parade, and the small but tight action sequences are underscored by an absolutely thumping afrobeat score. It’s one of those films where the cast are having an absolute whale of a time, and thankfully that enjoyment is incredibly infectious. By dint of being a rather small indie action film it’s probably going to be forgotten at the bottom of the bargain basket, but honestly, dig it out wherever you can.

Finally a mention has to be made to The Mist, the Stephen King short story polished to perfection by Frank Darabont with a cast of actors each of whom could readily qualify in the category I tried defining in the opening paragraph. The approach of the ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances is pretty much King through and through, but Darabont brings an edge of physical horror with some gorgeous b-movie Cold War/War-on-Terror undertones to the piece. Jane is a jobbing film poster artist living in a picturesque small town East coast USA, and following a particular bad storm gets stuck in an old fashioned supermarket with his son when the store gets swathed in an almost noxious looking mist. Panicked citizens rush in screaming of unfathomable horrors lurking in the gloom, the captured crowd stuck in two minds whether to venture out or not.

The film develops into a sort of one room drama, with die-cast characters bouncing off each other in paranoid delusion, in bickering drama, in all kinds of stupid powerplays for control of the group. Again Jane is the hub of the film, the unassuming hero that desperately doesn’t want to be leading things, but who will none the less step up in the moment of crisis. The kind of hero we flatter ourselves by relating to. There are set piece dramatic confrontations, real fireworks that play right to the strengths of a cast of character actors more used to the stage than the screen. Then the monsters actually start to appear, or at least poke a toe in, and then things get a little Jurassic towards the frankly spectacular final reel. To say its bleak would be a cruel understatement, but through the course of the film you get pulled emotionally in every direction, Jane standing as the anchor you’re left clinging to as the whole world collapses around him. Monster movies with grander subtexts rank very high on my list of odd subgenres, and this comfortably tops that list.

Sadly 2011 doesn’t hold much promise for the Thomas Jane acolyte. A rom-com starring Miley Cyrus, whose title is an explanation of what LOL means, followed by an independent project, I Melt With You, co-starring Sasha Grey (aka, the actress whose filmography is probably funnier than many a film you’ll see this year). There’s another season of Hung due on HBO, which should hopefully see Jane on run-down form as the unwitting Michigan gigolo, but that’s unlikely to set the world alight. Not that Thomas Jane ever will set the world alight, but I’m ok with that, and hopefully he is too.

A Seagalian Sidestep: When Justin Met Steve

Say what you will about Channel ‘owned-by-a-porn-baron’ Five, but they’re doing a good job of showing some of Seagal’s worst films on a dizzying rotation of almost two a week. I guess someone must have joined the dots in their weekend schedule and thought that human-labrador Justin Lee Collins would make for interesting ratings if matched with the mighty Steven Seagal. And so we have the aptly search engine optimised ‘Steven Seagal v Justin Lee Collins’.

For all my eye-rolling at seeing the ads for this, the sum-total of the thing is not that bad. All things considered. Honestly. The duo worked together on the pretty tiresome Friday Night Project which Seagal hosted a couple of years ago, so they aren’t complete strangers. Nor do they have the unbounded rapport that Collins insists on pointing out to the camera before every advert break. But considering Seagal’s a lumbering sphinx with not a blind bit of reason to be talking to any kind of press, Collins does an alright job in keeping him talking, and surprisingly laughing, albeit at the expense of some pretty forced wank gags.

Despite being the sort of show which furiously chops up 25 minutes of footage and elliptically repeats itself across twice the runtime, the show does throw out a few odd facts, and a couple of quirks that were news to me:

Steven’s allergic to ‘a lot of things’. Specifically gluten.

Steven’s made a lot of money. Probably double what you’ve imagined.

He’s got a samurai sword worth ‘about a million dollars.’ It’s pretty cool looking.

He’s got an iphone.

The most memorable gig on his last UK tour was in Llandudno.

He can just about pronounce Llandudno.

He likes his guns.

This may stem from his latent fear of home invasion.

His new home is in the middle of nowhere.

He’s surprised that a Brit would know the phrase ‘young, dumb and full of cum’.

He once gave a drunk man a flying punch out of his Tokyo dojo.

He’s good at keeping his belly covered whenever he’s sat down.

Considering my expectations were rock bottom going in, I must say I was pretty pleasantly surprised. The show won’t be of any real interest to anyone that isn’t much of a fan, but Seagal fan’s and their inherently low expectations can find the programme streaming on Channel 5′s Demand 5 site until 02:00 on the 5th of August, 2011.

Showing at the Showroom: Never Let Me Go

Die-hard romantic? It’s a lovely notion, but one I’d be hard pushed to apply to many films. The infinitely personal applied on a dizzying and sweeping scale? It’s not something that jumps to the fore in your average with a ROM prefix. Maybe I just need to do some more dredging through the classics (who doesn’t), maybe I just need to open up a bit more (again, who doesn’t), but it’s not often I get unwittingly caught up in the emotional tumult of other-people-who-happen-to-be-fictional. Full credit to Never Let Me Go then for absolutely broadsiding me.

At it’s emotional core the tale is one of unrequited love, which against better judgement I’m an absolute sucker for. I guess it’s not that hot on the Hollywood slate of rote narrative structures, as you inevitably can’t avoid misery for at least one, if not all of the characters. This isn’t the bog-standard love triangle, with it’s obvious guilt and the promise of some kind cathartic ‘action’ but rather the agonising, needling pain of what doesn’t happen, or worse still, what almost happens. The witheringly handsome trio of Knightley/Mulligan/Garfield manage the heavy-duty thesping that’s demanded of them, going from the sweet childhood flutters of love, up to the uncertain impasse of young adulthood. It’s all too easy to be sniffy about these BrightNewActors™ especially Her of Piratey Fame, but they all come into their own bringing these strange characters to life.

The strangeness comes from the soft science fiction situation of the story, which manages to take the stark alienation of an alternate world and cast it into scenes of discomfort readily familiar to the universal teenager. To take a separate (but well worth reading) parallel from Charles Burn’s comic Black Hole, the fantastical elements act as an obvious metaphor for the frustrations and confusion of being an average hormone-addled teenager. But obviously there’s more to it than that. It’s almost misleading to describe the film as science-fiction as it’s almost tertiary to the human drama. To exaggerate a tenant of good sci-fi, it’s greater empathy found in the alienation of circumstance. Romance has to build itself up on the bedrock of empathy, and heaven knows you have enough of that when you come around to the emotional crunch of this film.

Perhaps it’s because my teachers plied me with Petrarch at a dangerously hormonal age. Maybe I got dangerously empathetic to the story as I took a shining to Andrew Garfield’s wardrobe (it’s very nice in a futuro-rustic way), but it’s really the actors who bring the goods to what is a really superb story. More than a passing infatuation I like to think, but I can’t wait to see it again.

Five out of Five

Never Let Me Go is showing at the Showroom cinema in Sheffield from the 11th of February 2011.

Not Seen at the Showroom: Brighton Rock (2010)

It’s all too easy to cry foul when an adaptation doesn’t match your lovely and elaborate memory of fictional scenes, but the new Brighton Rock did a spectacular job of setting off on the wrong foot. Having had the novel battered over my head by a terrifyingly Anglophilic Swedish English-teacher [yes, exactly that] one of the early scenes of the novel, in a small, dingy, absolutely despondent pub on a weekday lunchtime, for some reason struck a chord with my teenage self. There’d be mould on the walls, an air of resignation as thick as the smoke, and despite all this the brash yet unequivocally human character of Ida Arnold appears.

The opening of said scene in the film puts it in a gleaming palace of brass and porcelain, the sun streaming in, the patrons elegantly propping up the bar with poised noses. They’re still drinking gin, but for all I remember it may as well have been to the clinking of dry martinis. And then Helen Mirren opens her mouth and my vague reminisces of dialogue appear to have taken the form of an Eastenders audition tape. It’s hard not to get stuck on a hundred little hang-ups, but the whole thing just sat really badly.

And then the story starts to unfurl, and well, after a while I fell asleep. It was the middle of the day, I’d had a coffee before I went in, it wasn’t particularly warm in the cinema, but still I was out like a light for a good half hour. I’m not prone to cinematic snoozing unless under certain narcoleptic duress, but this certainly wasn’t one of those instances. Boredom might be the short word for it, but I just didn’t care about the characters, their motivations, anything. A complete failure to engage on nigh on every level.

I like to kid myself that while I snoozed I dreamt of alternative approaches to the film. Maybe one set in modern Brighton, or perhaps in a completely distinct criminal subculture. Or maybe abroad, a Polish Brighton Rock could be interesting, especially as the tale of an anguished lapsed Catholic has more resonance there. Just anything that had a spark of imagination with the source material would do. Anything but what we got in this film.

Fell Asleep out of Five

Brighton Rock has been showing at the Showroom in Sheffield from last Friday (the 4th of February  2010.)

Pistol Whipped: Part (3) in the Seagal Odyssey

Having started backwards through Seagal’s nigh neverending  filmography I’ve always managed to find a hook, a blip, or an absurdity to cheer me up. All too often I’ve got hung up on  some oblique choice of direction, some incoherent narrative leap, or just the terrifying ineptitude of production. Sometimes the degree of our man’s involvement is a sight to behold, especially in what might loosely be described as ‘action sequences’. More than a few of his films have gone to print being far short of what you might call ‘complete’, and the often numerous short comings are an insight to the pressures of independent film production beyond the arthouses. Barely a rung above the porn industry in terms of budget and artistic integrity, the blunt commercial interests of the direct-to-video sector is just a microcosm of the larger forces at work in any Hollywood production. An uncanny parallel, a dark mirror, just something to put it all in perspective.

Pistol Whipped manages to go one further by spectacularly failing to elicit anything. Pure and undiluted apathy in cinematic form. To say it’s boring would be to credit the film with a form of emotional impact it still falls short of.

Lance Henriksen’s in it. You know, Bishop from Aliens, he’s in absolutely everything these days. At one point you see the camera crew reflected in the very shiny door of a car, and that made me laugh. At another Seagal starts drumming on a car window with his knuckles, brushing dangerously close to improvisation, at least in musical form. A priest turns up a couple of times in a cod-confessional scene to help flesh out Seagal’s character, and we get a bit of exposition too. He gets killed at the end, and that’s a bit of a shame, even if he did seem to have come straight off the set of a 90s Werther’s Originals advert. And coincidentally, it has been widely observed that at no point does anyone in the film get whipped by a pistol. This might very well be the only notable thing in the whole film.

I’ve dragged myself through the film twice, rewatched bits, and that’s the sum of all I can muster in recalling the film. The DVD cover is filled with poker and gambling bits and bobs, which I guess is one way of tapping into a big obvious market. Just Googling this film leaves me with a deluge of ads trying to sign me up to Cool Lonely Manly Solitaire with Built-in Money Loss. Of course there’s not much actual poker in the game. Seagal plays a bit at the beginning and fails spectacularly, which is perhaps ironic considering the man is afflicted with a permanent poker-face. Perhaps the wind changed sharply one morning.

So, Seagal sucks at poker; he accrues a lot of debt; being an effective hitman is  good way of dissolving such fiscal obstacles, and therein a plot. There are sub-plots too, but have a guess as to what they might be and you’re probably right.

I’m tempted to say that Seagal just seems contemptuous of even having to be present in this film, but again that might suggest some undercurrent of tension in the film. Which there isn’t. It’s a complete and utter non-entity. It isn’t even bad. It isn’t anything. The whole thing is just a gaping void. I’m sorry to even have to mention it, let alone dwell on it, but this voyage wouldn’t be complete without it.

Showing at the Showroom: Blue Valentine

It’s perhaps unjust to damn a film for not exceeding expectations, for just being quite good and not a lot else, but Blue Valentine hits a strange middle ground. It comes at the height of the awards season, and standing alongside other expectant contenders it’s been pinned down as the ‘actors film’. A hard hitting relationship drama, with Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling doing some real emotional heavy-lifting, being brave and going where few other actors dare. And they do, and brilliantly so. But that’s about it.

The crux of the story is a splintered and disjointed tale, following the slow coming together of the unexpectant young parents Dean and Cindy. At the start they’re the very model of a dysfunction, a bouncing young five year old daughter delighting the man-child Dean, the burden of being a grown-up wearing thin on Cindy. The live in a big house, surrounded by beautiful long grass which the morning sun catches nicely. The camera likes staying tight on their faces, the many splinters between the couple writ-large on their every darting glance.

Having left the little Frankie with the gruff grandfather, Dean corrals Cindy into taking up a boozy weekend at a saucy novelty motel, to ‘rediscover that spark’ and find the woman he first fell in love with. A nasty passive-aggressive car drive later and the film takes off on an unclear flight towards rediscovering that love from it’s first instance. Unfulfilled prior relationships come and go, and unlikely re/encounters lead towards a beautifully smoldering kindling of love.

From the grating petulance of his older self earlier in the film Gosling goes into an unremitting charm offensive to win over the coy and reluctant Williams, and effortlessly woos the audience along with her. Having a front seat to an almost bottomless falling in love is a warm and fine thing indeed, and in spite of skirting dangerously close to a mobile phone advert [warm colours, du jour indie soundtrack, a stubbly stud wooing a round cheeked girl with A BLOODY UKELELE] of course you get carried along with it.

All the better having then reached the carefree heights of a love unbounded to the pull the chord towards a spiraling tail-spin of bleakness when the realities and hardships of life get, well, very REAL. Which is when the award-winning performances come to the fore, with the daring and brave sex scenes, the raw-like-onions emotional tussling and rending of hearts and wills. The performances are tremendous, make no mistake, and in their strongest (often drunken) moments the film brings to mind the fraught feelings and jangling genuine anger/love of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Yet despite its’ best efforts, Blue Valentine just hasn’t quite got the same painful edge.

To say it almost feels engineered to bait American critics is to paint the film as cynical. Which it isn’t, but by dint of it’s approach it manages to tick a slew of awards worthy boxes. Which isn’t to say it’s pedestrian either. It’s gripping, involving and tremendous in it’s way, but having long left the cinema the film just hasn’t stuck with me beyond the moment itself.

In isolation the constituent parts of the film: the acting, the cinematography, the soundtrack, are all superb and more than worthy of all the prizes and plaudits you care to heap on it. It’s just by some unholy logic that the sum of said parts don’t quite match that same standard.

Three out of Five

Blue Valentine is showing at the Showroom cinema in Sheffield from the 14th of January 2011.

Showing at the Showroom: The King’s Speech

Perhaps wary of stick-waving, royalist-poking republicans everywhere, The King’s Speech is almost a little desperate to win over any audience that comes across it. You WILL get behind the unproven hero, and whatever your allegiance, lords knows you WILL be rooting for him come the final act. In the simplest terms the film is Rocky recast in a royal mould, with all the pent-up British decorum that might suggest. It’s thoroughly enjoyable for it too.

The underdog is the unassuming Albert, Prince of York (Colin Firth), and the film is his path to succeeding the Edward VIII (Guy Pearce) and becoming the Reluctant King George VI. His struggle is with himself, battling a debilitating stutter which neuters him in the one demand of a royal, that of the public speaker. He was never meant to be a contender, swiftly consigned to the sidelines from birth, the knock-kneed, tongue-tied younger brother had steeled himself for a life outside the spotlight. Not that occasion didn’t demand of him to speak publicly, and the opening scene of the film sees Albert failing to address both an attendant Wembley stadium, and a nation of listeners on the wireless. Ushered in by the King’s finest English, a waiting nation is left hanging in silence, Albert humiliated, unable to even trip over a single word.

Having given up on the prospect of curing his affliction, ‘Bertie’s’ patient and supportive wife Elizabeth (Helena Bonham-Carter) corrals him into trying one last Doctor, whose ‘unorthodox’ approach had a good record of success. Descending into the bowels of Harvey street they meet the gauche Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) who’s at no pains for airs and graces around the royals.

The initial session starts with an awkward bickering between a jovial therapist and prickily prince, the question of ‘how -do- I address you?’ opening up the formal and psychological minefield that the two of them spend the rest of the film trying to traverse. It’s not a million miles away from the therapy couch sessions of the equally guarded and overblown Tony Soprano; both subjects in desperate need of therapy, but outwardly set against the idea at every turn. The film skirts past the threat of overt psychoanalysis, as Bertie insists it’s a mere ‘physical affliction’ and that it should be treated as such. The coach (and the audience) obviously knows better, but our champ has to get in the comfort zone if he’s going to win the bout conquer his condition.

Of course, with the unwitting regent-to-be there’s the added tension of how Logue can interact with him on even the simplest of physical planes. The blocking of scenes is something you shouldn’t be too conscious of when watching a film, but the slow unstiffening of protocol, the opening of personal space is a nicely subtle way in which the drama plays out. As the Rocky has to learn to raise his guard (and slip the jab) so Bertie has to learn to drop his.

There’s initial doubt, the sudden epiphany, a training montage, an early victory, the inevitable rejection and push for independence, and the desperate and grovelling return to the mentor. Where the kernel of the story is drawn from historical details, the grand narrative arc is straight out of The Hero With a Thousand Faces, and there’s something shamelessly enjoyable in seeing an underdog overcoming adversity and winning through in the end.

Having become the king, and following the nation into war Edward VI manages to lurch his way through a rousing speech to an uncertain nation. For all the grandstanding, the new found pomp carefully undermined with a human touch, the film goes all out to convince you Edward alone practically won the war before it had really begun. And the most embittered republicans aside, it’s very easy to get swept in the swoon of it, and no shame for that.

Many a voice online has been keen to echo this film as ‘one of those Sunday afternoon’ films. A DVD for the parents for Christmas. A safe bet. Could have been made for TV.

But that’s to do the film a disservice, and for all the film’s period trappings and royalist clappings, the heavyweight cast all pitch above average in trying to win you over and get you behind Team Bertie. The film is shot with a slight flair, the struggle (internal and external) played out more in personal space and in strangely conflicting shot-reverse-shot sequences. It’s a treat in more ways that one, and worthy of more than just your distracted ITV-matinee attention.

Four out of Five

The King’s Speech is showing at the Showroom cinema in Sheffield from the 7th of January 2011.

Showing at the Showroom: Catfish

It’s a hopeless period for films of the less-said-the-better ilk, but the new documentary Catfish hangs on this ledge more precariously than most. Acutely aware that reviews built on nothing but vagueness and generalities make for incredibly tedious reading, I will keep it brief. The short message: go and see it, preferably before some blabbermouth spoils it.

The thumbnail synopsis is that it’s the record of a slowly blossoming internet relationship-come-romance between a young New York photographer Nev, and Megan the half-sister of an 8 year old painting prodigy that’s taken to painting Nev’s work and sending it to him. Egged on by brother and friends, a trio set off to finally unite Nev and Megan ‘in real life’. When they finally get to rural Michigan ‘all is not as it seems’ and shit gets very ‘real’.

Beyond the contrivance and thriller cliché of the film’s blurb, the film builds towards its grand reveal, the volte face, the upending of everything by almost convincing you of its predictability. The endless narcissism of the project and its filmmakers gives the whole thing a decidedly questionable whiff of the Blair Witch Project, and the rather earnest and self-involved inflection of the oh-we’re-not-fauxumentary. And then the almighty SNAP comes, and you’re just left struggling to hold onto what the hell is going on. It’s frankly terrifying, and quite brilliant for just that.This is far from the first documentary this year to have foyer-critics hemming and herring over ‘what is REAL, really, in the greater scheme of things?’ But film philosophy undergraduatese aside, it delights me that in a connected dispute over music rights, the filmmakers might be forced to swear on oath to the veracity of the film. On oath! The TRUTH will finally come out! Or maybe we could just enjoy the film for the tangled and baffling mess that it is?

Five out of Five

Catfish is showing at the Showroom cinema in Sheffield from the 17th of December 2010.

Showing at the Showroom: Monsters

“A film about illegal ALIENS, the America fears of the unknown SPRAWLING issues South of the border, and the stretching TENTACLES of Latin influence into the States.” It’s all too easy to make light of Monsters‘ premise, but for an independent film in the true spirit of a B-movie it manages to deftly juggle a minimal budget, some impressive special effects, quite a few gripping moments, and that ever so essential political subtext, in really quite a brilliant fashion.

It’s an easy cop-out to state that “the less you know, the better” but Monsters is definitely one of those films. The situation is a near-future Central America, where half the sub-continent has been fenced into a quarantine zone following the destruction in low orbit of a returning NASA probe full of ‘alien matter’. Xenomorphic creatures have erupted into the area, and now the US army is effectively at war trying to keep these monsters at bay. In what remains of Mexico south of the zone, we find the Americans Samantha and Andrew, the latter being a photo-journalist tasked by his bosses to escort the former back to the States in one piece.

Needless to say it’s quite an eventful journey.

In such a curt synopsis the film can easily sound like a dunder-headed action film, but that isn’t the case, but neither is it an indie-schmindy mumblecore film either. A LOT of hoopla has been made about the film’s humble budget, and its profile as a breakout independent with a CGI edge to match many a blockbuster. But leaving value for money aside, Monsters is still an Action-SciFi-Thriller with two leads fated to be drawn together: one a pretty bottle-blond in hot-pants, and the other a tussle-haired handsome thing with well crafted stubble. The film is unashamedly pitching for the mainstream, taking as it’s starting point the child-friendly-but-wholly-terrifying 12A/PG13 perfection that is Jurassic Park. This is far from a bad thing.

The film is still brave in where it takes the audience, being more than comfortable at leaving a few things hanging, and giving those who want it something serious to chew on as well. Sometimes the symbolism can be a little blunt, perhaps self-consciously so, but equally there’s a fair portion of nuance in there as well. There are action-kicks, and things to think about, and that ticks many a box on my scorecard.

On reflection, credit goes to my friend who was along for both Monsters and Machete, to point out that both are ostensibly B-movies about real world issues (just like any B-movie worth its’ salt). It’s just that Monsters knocks Machete into a corner with a cocked sombrero in terms of actually having anything to say about something very current. A terrific achievement for a first time director with a tiny budget, but also a tremendous film quite in it’s own right.

Four and a Half out of Five

Monsters is showing at the Showroom cinema in Sheffield from the 3rd of December 2010