Rian Johnson Talks About Under The Skin

Movie Review - Under The Skin

'Come To Me' Scarlett Johansson Goes On The Prowl In Full UK Trailer For Under The Skin

TIFF 2013 Review - Under the Skin

Rating:
15
Release Date:
9,10&15th September 2013 (TIFF) 13, 14th October (LIFF)
Director:
Jonathan Grazer
Cast:
Scarlett Johansson, Paul Brannigan, Jessica Mance
Directed by Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast) and filmed entirely on location across Scotland Under the Skin is a film flaunting incredible cinematography strung together by a predominantly performance-orientated narrative. Based on the Novel by Michael Faber, Under the Skin follows Laura (Scarlett Johansson), an alien from another world, as she travels across Scotland kidnapping young men.

Glazer’s latest is a sci-fi film akin to 2001: A Space Odyssey in that one of the film’s main components is its striking tone and total control over the presented image. Daniel Landin’s exquisite palette of subdued tones creates a grim atmospheric back-drop for the film’s often macabre visual style. The same gorgeous control over image translates the Scottish landscape into a strange muggy alien territory, foreboding and stirring in equal measure. Hundreds of directors have only seen fit to make such land a charming tourist spot, whilst Glazer has here crafted an environment that is as much a character as Laura herself.

  Under the Skin is a road movie of sorts, shot in a near-documentary style of lingering shots and snappy disjointed editing, which again expand on the notions of “alien” culture. We are presented time and time again with bizarre social situations; the crowds of Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street, Neds rampant in the night, masses of colour-coordinated football fans, all of them overpowering and vast, a sensory overload. But even these shots can tire on the viewer in a film with little dialogue and even less narrative explanation. As a companion to the novel, the film is possibly at its best, but still entirely able as a stand-alone project. For true intrigue: Glazer executes some of the most haunting, striking, and unsettling images of extra-terrestrial life ever put to film.

Glazer keeps the mystery of his alien culture tightly wrapped and that pays off big time, rewarding the audience with a kind of abstract macabre that strays into the realm of the horrific. The aesthetic of this alien technology is the definition of minimalism ensuring nothing can be deduced until the last moment, and though the use of contrast lighting is indeed perfect thinking , it at times crowds scenes with far too much shadow, erasing any finer details. In the same setting Mica Levi’s jarring and genius screech-synth scoring is at its best in Laura’s black widow sequences where it plays out like some bizarre striptease music done in pulse-like percussion. The young Londoner is proving a major talent in sound engineering and someone to keep your eye on.

Apart from the stunning cinematography, the most enrapturing thing about this film is Johansson’s turn as alien provocateur-cum-abductor. Relying less on her lines - which she drones in an awful regional accent - the starlet exhibits an accomplished and often intimidating portrayal of the alien amongst us. This is Johansson’s best performance to date. Johansson, as per, is stunning, and her beauty plays an important part in the alien’s role both during the alien’s predatory ventures, and in the film’s powerful lingering and poignant climax.

Incredibly beautiful piece of sci-fi horror with a stellar performance from Johansson and a soundtrack to compliment, Under the Skin is not the gripping sort of hunter/hunted thriller some may expect. If you can look past its relatively reserved lack of narrative you’ll find a powerful and considerate meander through the life of an alien in an alien land.

★★★★☆

Scott Clark

Hitchcock DVD Review

To fans, admirers he is Alfred Hitchcock but to his friends, colleagues to them you called him 'Hitch' hold the cock. Based on Stephen Rebello's Alfred Hitchcock And The Making Of Psycho, Sacha Gervasi's Hitchcock attempts to deliver the master of suspense at crossroads whilst creating his horror masterpiece Psycho. A film that has a rare insight into the relationship with the only woman to steal his heart and most of all his confidant, his co-collaborator Alma Reville (Helen Mirren) his wife.

Hitchcock starts at the premier of the 1959 North By Northwest, Alfred Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) is unnearved by a reporter who questions his ability at 60 to still produce the goods. With a new wave of filmmakers emerging could he still handle the pressure? Why not quit when he's ahead? Determined not to be pigeonholed  and not to become 'television show' Hitchcock searches high and low for that piece of magic to recapture his past glories delivering something fresh most of all something different.

It is thanks to the discovery of Robert Bloch's dark twisted Psycho Hitch finds himself a magical source, a novel based on the life of the infamous serial killer Ed Gein , but who'll support him?As ever Hitchcock's faithful agent Lew Wasserman but his support ended here as Paramount, the usual private investors all refused to support him forcing him to find the $800,000 needed to make the film in 30 days.

It's ironic you look at the relationship cinema has with Television now, the stigma of the reporter's TV comment  wouldn't raise an eyebrow when you see the likes of Steven Soderbergh's Behind The Candelabra only getting a TV S creening compared to cinema elsewhere. Even the likes of online with Netflix, Lovefilm, seeing someone like JJ Abrams, David Fincher direct tv amongst the cinema blockbusters wouldn't have been thought of in Hitch's time and now days the stress, pressure between the media are vitually the same.

Hitchcock is a film that really doesn't know what it really wants to be. Is it a Biopic? Soap style drama or comedy?If anything at times it's more like an extended Terry & June episode plenty of drama with a lot of comedy moments or was director Sacha Gervasi pulling off a McGuffin? What this film does do is capture a period of Hitch's career (Psycho era) rather than all his career and attempts to underline his fascination with Ed Gein. Hitchcock may not be a dark film tonely but it dips its fingers into that world nearly controlling his every move blurring reality  driving him into paranoia making him believe his nearest and dearest  was having an affair though we do see she was tempted on several occasions.

Anthony Hopkins may sound like the man nor a carbon copy lookalike of Hitchcock but what he does do well is capturing his personality, mannerisms, posture even his humour is near spot on too. The lack of delving into his past will frustrate some, even when they do in the briefest of moments to showcase his childlike, creepy voyeuristic tendancies is disappointing. In those scenes his fascination for blondes is touched going further into watching them from his peephole, a regular trait but not addressing the source which will annoy those thinking this is a 'biopic'.

Helen Mirren is personally the star of the show as Hitchcock's long suffering wife Alama. She is Hitch's rock, confidant, mother to his childlike traits most of all the driving force behind 99.9% her husband's success. Unaccredited but most of all deserving of the right to share in her husbands success which the film tries to attempt to fix, sort off. The fantastic chemistry between Hopkins and Mirren is one of the film's big selling points, compelling, funny and a distraction (in a positive way) as Hitchcock's family estate refused to show any of Psycho footage. This is also probably the reason why we see very little of James D'arcy who uncannily looks like a Anthony Perkins spitting image, Scarlett Johansson delivers a good astute performance as leading lady Janet Leigh.

Hitchcock may not be the perfect film nor totally satisfy the purists. At times it feels clumsy as if your been pulled in 2 different directions, so when it veneers one way just as the scene nears a conclusion it heads into something new making scenes feel incomplete. . As much as we've criticised the film, Hitchcock is still a highly entertaining film which captures the era very well, creating a stylish film. So when you have Hitch 'conducting' the screams of the people at the Psycho premier from behind the cinema doors, its certainly worth a look.

★★★☆☆

Paul Devine


Rating: 15
DVD/BD Release Date: 17th June 2013 (UK)
Directed by: Sacha Gervasi
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, Scarlett Johansson, Danny Huston
Buy Hitchcock: DVD / Blu-ray (+ UV Copy)

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