DVD Review - Big Bad Wolves (2013)

Film Review - Tracks (2013)

Film Review - We Are The Best (2013)

Film Review - Pioneer (2013)

Conspiracy Theory Feature (Pioneer)

Bradford International Film Festival: Uncharted States of America - BNSF (2013)

Bradford International Film Festival: Exhibition (2013)

DVD Review - Teenage (2013)

DVD Review - Jeune et Jolie (2013)

Film Review - Stranger By The Lake (L'inconnu du lac)

Glasgow Frightfest 2014 Review: Savaged (2013)

Genre:
Horror
Distributor:
Raven Banner
Rating: 18
Release Date:
28th February 2014 (Glasgow Frightfest)
Director:
Michael S. Ojeda
Cast:
Amanda Adrienne, Tom Ardavany, Ronnie Gene Blevins
The opening feature at Glasgow Frightfest 2014 was arguably one of the best choices in programming over the entire weekend. Savaged, written and directed by Michael S. Ojeda, is a brutal revenge slasher hovering somewhere between I Spit on Your Grave and Evil Dead.

Basically the story follows what happens to Zoe (Amanda Adrienne), a deaf mute girl on a trip to see her boyfriend in Mexico, after she attempts to save a Native American from the clutches of a brutal red-neck posse. The girl is kidnapped, brutally raped and tortured, then murdered and dumped in the desert. Troubles don’t stop there: a Native Shaman attempts to resurrect her but her soul returns fused to that of an ancient apache warrior. Playing host to the vengeful spirit, Zoe goes on a blood drenched revenge trip.

When you write it out like that, the film’s true colours appear pretty obvious. The opening half’s intense portrayal of capture and rape seems so bleak and steeped in a kind of degradation and shame, reminiscent of Martyrs, that the film seems utterly upsetting. Queue a Raimi-esque twist that sees the fantastic Amanda Adrienne’s distraught victim go on an apache driven revenge trip. Here the film picks up with so much glee that it’s impossible not to have a good time watching. Ojeda keeps a tight hold on the tone of his feature though, making sure it never sacrifices its grim beginnings or bleak laughs. That initial path of utter degradation proves important in ensuring that – no matter how freaky things get- the audience always sides with Zoe. Even when she’s rotting away, duct-taping bits of herself back together between blood soaked fights and sadistic hunting games, somewhere under all that, Adrienne injects a crucial dose of humanity to the monstrous heroine.

Of course, there’s a strong silly element to the film, not least Zoe’s boyfriend who shows up seconds behind the action again and again, spouting laughably adolescent dialogue and painfully hilarious overacting. But his character, the only “normal” guy on screen, adds to the humour of the film as opposed to causing it any issues. Along with the over-exaggerated gore and fantastically executed action, any dodgy acting appears to fit the bill and give a far more rounded retrospective kind of black comedy.

By the finale, Savaged has become every bit as eviscerated, blood-soaked, and revenge driven as its main character. Some wasted screen time around frivolous details, such as a detailed introduction to her dad’s prized car and a grainy retro aesthetic seen in countless modern horror features, are just about the worst this film can offer, but even then that’s not enough to derail an otherwise impressive feature.

Ojeda deserves praise for great mix of funny and fierce filmmaking led by a uniquely successful blending of genre ideas. Savaged is as fun as it is depressing, as gory as it is humorous, and above all entirely watchable and rarely tiring.

★★★½☆

Scott Clark

DVD Review - Metro Manila (2013)

Genre:
Crime, Drama
Distribution:
Independent
Rating: 15
DVD Release Date:
10th March 2014 (UK)
Director:
Sean Ellis
Cast:
Jake Macapagal, Althea Vega, John Arcilla
Buy:Metro Manila [DVD] or Metro Manila [Blu-ray] [Amazon]

Coming after Thomas Clay’s Soi Cowboy (2008), Peter Strickland’s Katalin Varga (2009), and the more recent films of Gareth Edwards (Monsters, 2010) and Gareth Evans (The Raid, 2011), Sean Ellis continues the trend of British filmmakers plying their trade abroad with the Philippines set crime thriller Metro Manila.

Opening on the impoverished rice fields of the north we are introduced to Oscar, Mai, and their two daughters at a point in their lives where there is no option left for them but to sell their rice at a price so low they cannot afford the seed for next year’s crop. With nothing left for them to stay for the family decides to leave this life behind them and they head off to the bustling mega city of Manila.

Once there opportunities seem to fall into their laps as Oscar quickly finds the family a place to live and gains employment as a labourer. But, rather predictably, things aren’t anywhere near as good as they seem as Oscar finishes his first full day of labour to find his payment is a meagre amount of food and some bottled water. To make things worse, he returns home to find his family on the street having been forced to leave their home. The realisation that he was conned out of their life savings by an unscrupulous fake landlord soon hit home. With no money left, the naïve family is left with no choice but to move into a shack in the city’s slums.

In archetypal fashion, the female protagonist, Mai, is given the opportunity to help out her family by all-but prostituting herself at a seedy go-go bar. The scenes involving her work there are often too brief and underdeveloped to the extent that the only way to describe them is as objectifying. Ellis tries to defend this objectification by stating the rather obvious point that this is the reality for people like Mai. Now, this statement would be fair enough if he gave the character the screen time needed to explore her plight in a thoughtful and critical way but instead, and in deep contrast to the way Ellis wanted it to be depicted, her situation feels more like an aside for the glorification of female nudity.

Mai’s story is marginalised by the crime thriller story arch that emerges when Oscar finds a job as a security guard at an armoured transport company. But it isn’t just her story that is marginalised at this point. The socially conscious and realistic depictions of the ways in which corruption and exploitation strain the lives of this poor family’s existence get lost in the action when Ellis decides to focus all his attention on the action inherent in the thriller genre. He also moves his films theme away from exploitation and corruption and focuses on Oscar’s desperation. Convention takes over and the film begins its slow spiral toward an uninspired and inevitable ending.

But what riles me most about Metro Manila isn’t the decision to shift the focus of the story away from its social realism beginnings to a more conventional thriller narrative, as I thought it would be. It is the way that the film, by the director’s own admission, dilutes the reality of a life lived in poverty. This dilution is at its most prominent in the depiction of the go-go dancers’ world. Their reality isn’t as light as Ellis would lead us to believe because, as the director states in attempted defence of his representation, the reality is that these girls are prostitutes. He even goes as far as admitting that he diluted their reality to cater to audience expectations. Ultimately, everything fascinating this film initially had to offer is lost in an attempt to progress the plot.

★★½☆☆

Shane James

Blu-ray Review - Gravity (2013)

Genre:
Sci-fi, Drama
Distributor:
Warner Bros Pictures
BD Release Date:
3rd March 2014 (UK)
Rating: 12
Director:
Alfonso Cuarón
Cast:
Sandra Bullock, George Clooney
Buy Gravity: DVD[ + UV Copy] or Blu-ray [+ UV Copy]

What is there to be said about Gravity that hasn’t been said before? It’s one of the few films to live up to the hype, and it’s really the film that single handily saved the film industry’s enforcement of 3D to make more loot. Having seen the film in both 3D and the traditional 2D, it has to be said that the 2D version lacks the visceral experience of the 3D version; however it’s such a perfectly constructed film that it’s still an awe-inspiring watch on the second viewing.

The film starts with an unbroken single shot of Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and Lieutenant Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) working on the Hubble telescope. It’s one of, if not the best, shots of 2013 and it’s technically so mind-blowing you will literally watch it in awe. The film’s plot is as simply as you can possibly get - high-speed space junk hits the Hubble telescopes and the spaceship they took up there. It’s completely destroyed, and the two astronauts become stuck floating in space. They need to get to the International Space Station but everything that could wrong does. All they have is Kowalski’s thruster pack to get them to their destination.

It’s full of very long takes and due to the subject matter, some of the scenes are partly fake and filled with special effects, however it remains a total game changer. In its entirety the film has about 150 shots, which is very rare for a $100,000,000 film; the average amount is around 5000 for a normal Hollywood film. The special effects are also the most believable since Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and it’s similarly best seen on the biggest screen possible.

Sandra Bullock has never been better and hopefully, like Matthew McConaughey, it will be the catalyst for a new chapter in her career by choosing more interesting and diverse roles than she had previously. Clooney is charming as ever, but the film rests on Bullock’s performance: for a good majority of the film, it is just her isolated in space and dealing with every obstacle herself. It’s also worth noting Ed Harris’ voice cameo as mission control - an obvious homage to Ron Howard’s best film Apollo 13 and The Right Stuff in which Ed Harris played a similar role.

Now onto the director Alfonso Cuarón; he has managed to redeem himself after the controversial and atrocious Autism Speaks video he did in 2009. Autism Speaks is a fake pro-autism organization, which has sadly infiltrated parts of Hollywood. They are, in reality, a group that considers Autism a disease when it’s a social disorder. They are trying to find a cure for something that is incurable but part of the person’s identity.

Cuarón last directorial effort was Children of Men back in 2006 which one of the best films of the last 20 years, and like Gravity, it is filled with long takes. It’s more of a sci-fi film because of its dystopian story. Cuarón has said Gravity isn’t science fiction but a “drama about a women in space”.

Gravity was very much the film of 2013 due to its technical achievement and fantastic minimalistic story, along with the two 2 outstanding performances from Clooney and Bullock. There could be a pretentious comparison to the work of Robert Bresson because of his minimalistic approach to filmmaking, but it’s very slight. The blu-ray includes a very insightful documentary on the making of the film, in which much of the technical side is explained – and for this, it is essential viewing for any budding filmmakers.

★★★★★

Ian Schultz

DVD Review - The Last Days (Los últimos días)

DVD Review - Upstream Colour

Genre:
Sci-fi, Drama, Arthouse
Distributor:
Metrodome Distribution
Rating:
15
BD/DVD Release Date:
30th December 2013 (UK)
Director:
Shane Carruth
Cast:
Amy Seimetz, Frank Mosley, Shane Carruth
Buy Upstream Colour:
[DVD] or [Blu-ray] [Amazon]

Upstream Color is without a doubt the strangest film of 2013 and there have been some strange films this year. It’s the 2nd film by Shane Carruth who made a splash in the indie world 9 years ago with the incredibly overrated Primer which was made for $7,000 but it was unnecessarily complex for it’s own good. Carruth worked on a highly ambitious science fiction epic for the years in-between films but it eventually gave up due to lack of funding.

The film starts with a woman being tasered and kidnapped by a man called “The Thief” in the credits. She is under his mind control and forfeits her money to him and she is only allowed to small portions of water. The Thief performs surgery on her which involves putting a live roundworm in her which has blue tinged orchid leaves dust in it which infects her system.

She awakes and the roundworm is attracted by infrasound waves and she goes to a pig farmer/field recorder’s farm in trance. The farmer performs a transfer of the worm into one of his pig’s. She awakes and has no memory of what happened in her SUV. The woman finally realizes that all her money has been stolen and her employer fires her.

The film picks up a year later and she meets a man on a train (played by the director) and they bond and fall in love. They may have more in common than they initially thought. It then becomes increasingly stranger and stranger.

Carruth literally served as director, writer, producer, actor, cinematographer, editor, composer, casting director, production designer and sound designer… take that Orson Welles! His cinematography is reminiscent of the recent Terrence Malick films at times. The sound design is outstanding which he won a special jury award at Sundance for his sound design. Carruth is being a very talented director and he has the makings of a real auteur but give it a couple more films before calling him one.

It’s a very admirable film even though it’s extremely pretentious at times and utterly baffling. Despite some of the film’s problems it’s a breath of fresh air in a time of endless sequels and comic book films than somebody makes a film this out there. I don’t full understand what the film is about and it’s quite possibly Carruth himself doesn’t. It’s a pretty unforgettable film with plenty of ideas and an endlessly fascinating story that surprisingly wraps itself up in the end. There are still many unanswered questions and people will debate them for years to come.

★★★★☆

Ian Schultz

Broken Blu-Ray Review

Rating:
15
BD/DVD Release Date:
8th July 2013 (UK)
Director:
Rufus Norris
Cast:
Cillian Murphy, Robert Emms, Tim Roth, Eloise Laurence, Rory Kinnear
Buy Broken:
[Blu-ray] / [DVD]

Based on Daniel Clay's 2008 book of the same name, Broken follows 11 year old tomboy Skunk Cunningham (Eloise Laurence), her lawyer dad Archie (Tim Roth) and her brother Jed (Bill Milner) and their life in a London cul-de-sac. After Skunk witnesses a violent attack carried out by the father of the troublesome Oswald family, it sets a series of events in motion that will change life in the suburban North London close for all involved.

The first thing that struck me about the film was just how well acted it all was. It has genuine, human performances from the seasoned pros like Roth and Cillian Murphy all the way down to the kids. Eloise Laurence is astounding as Skunk. She sidesteps every precocious child actor beartrap possible and delivers a very real feeling character you relate to and care about. There are moments of real warmth and charm in the film that work beautifully and really draw you in to the drama.

Broken takes many of its cues from Harper Lee's classic To Kill a Mockingbird. Many of the characters and family dynamics are the same. For instance, Tim Roth plays the moral Atticus character “Archie” and the white trash Ewells are now the equally scummy “Oswalds”. It does a good job of modernising it too. The real strength of the film lies in the relationships. Archie's relationship with Skunk is very believable and her interactions with Murphy's teacher Mike are genuinely touching.

What isn't so great is when the film (and presumably the book) goes off at a right angle to the source novel and all subtlety is abandoned in favour of a thick layer of melodrama. I felt that once the film got rid of Mockingbird's stabilizers, it became a much shakier prospect. It does fantastic groundwork in making you root for these characters but when it comes to the final act it opts for a batshit smattering of soap-opera level drama which spoils things somewhat. A hackneyed fantasy sequence near the end had me mourning for the deftness of touch displayed in the first half.

First time director Rufus Norris does a great job. He chops and changes between narrative threads with confidence and the result is very engaging. However, there is an overreliance on standard “Brit grit” conventions and the whole thing feels very stagey. No surprise as both Norris and screenwriter Mark O'Rowe have theatrical backgrounds. Not to sell the film short, but I have the feeling Broken would work even better on the stage.

Broken is a well-acted, well directed character piece. The goodwill it earns is only slightly marred by an overdramatic, student film level bleakness towards the end. Recommended.

★★★☆☆

Ben Browne

To The Wonder DVD Review

To The Wonder is Terrence Malick’s latest film and it’s been released in the shortest period between films for him ever… a gap of one year! He notoriously didn’t make a film for literally 20 years between Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line. He has only made 6 films in his 40-year career of directing films (He wrote drafts of some films like Dirty Harry and Pocket Money) beginning with his masterpiece Badlands (a top ten film for me). He is considered by many to be one of the cinema’s greatest living talents and any new film by Malick is a real event.

Malick isn’t a director known for his great story telling ability. He makes great films but he is a mostly visually storyteller first and foremost, most of films have a very simple plot. To The Wonder is no exception and very possibly his simplest. French woman meets American man in Paris, they move to Oklahoma, it doesn’t quite work out, she moves back, he meets somebody else and it doesn’t work out, she decides to move back.

The film as is the case with all of Malick’s films to a extent is a deeply spiritual film. Malick own believes’ are truly unknown because he has been interviewed proper in almost 40s and is rarely photographed. The title To The Wonder has obvious spiritual connotations. The spirituality of a film is most obvious in its subplot of the film deals with a priest having a crisis of faith played by Javier Bardem.

The film has a very ambiguous ending not unlike his previous film The Tree of Life. Both films have been important in Malick’s career, both are much more overtly spiritual (they both deal with god, faith, nature as religion etc.), both are much more overly experimental than even stuff like The Thin Red Line or The New World. They have been critically very divisive even though The Tree of Life was more acclaimed on release. The films stars on both films have been even spoke of their reservations Sean Penn and Ben Affleck respectively.

However despite the very experimental nature of the film doesn’t mean its bad film, it’s a very good film. I’ve seen To The Wonder twice now, it’s clearly a meditation on love and faith and the loss of both. It’s beautifully photographed, which is always the case. The film’s biggest flaw is the subtitled narration throughout which can be really distracting from the stunning visuals but Malick is well known for using narration (it’s used heavily in every film of his). It’s a beautiful film even though it has some flaws.

★★★★☆

Ian Schultz

Rating: 15
DVD/BD Release Date: 17th June 2013(UK)
Directed By: Terrence Malick
Cast: Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Rachel McAdams, Javier Bardem
Buy To The Wonder: DVD / Blu-ray

These Boys Are Mad For It in Trailer for Spike Island

Every decade had it's moments which you could look back and say "where you there?" 1970's Glam Rock, Punk early days of dance music. 1980's new romantics, dance and late 1980's /early 1990's we had the Madchester scene. Spike Island is an coming of age story set in 1990 in the middle of the Madchester music scene of 5 young guys in a band determined to break into the music buy heading to Stone Roses legendary gig at Spike Island by handing their demo to lead singer Ian Brown.

Synopsis

Shadowcaster are a four-piece band from Manchester. Or more accurately, they are five lads with guitars and a garage and an ambition to forget school, forget their troubled home lives, forget GCSEs and see their heroes, The Stone Roses, as they play the biggest gig of their career.
As the defining concert of their generation is announced, the band are convinced that all they need is to get tickets, get to the gig, meet Ian Brown, give him their demo tape, and the rest, as the saying goes, will be history.
A simple enough plan, right? But with no tickets and a sold out gig to contend with, the boys embark on a road trip in a “borrowed” florist’s van to Spike Island. Along the way friendships are tested and their futures shaped – together or apart.
Consistently hilarious and heart-warming, Spike Island perfectly captures a defining era in British music history.

The Madchester scene is an era I can relate too as I was of similar age as the characters of the film, no matter what part of UK you came from, you couldn't go anywhere without hearing one band from the scene. Spike Island is looks like a love letter to Madchester or to be more precise Stone Roses which will be like a nostalgic ride down memory lane for fans. The film also stars Game Of Thrones Emilia Clarke which has put some weight behind the film however if your a fan of  British Independent films you'll want to check this one out.



Spike Island stars Elliott Tittensor, Nico Mirallegro, Jordan Murphy, Adam Long and the film arrives in UK&Irish cinemas from 21st June.