Revenge (2017)

In my post about The Mafu Cage, I mentioned writer Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, who has also written a book about the Rape Revenge film. This recent French outing fits into that particular sub-genre, which sort of lurks off to the side of the horror film, its films often nasty and exploitative, which can be varied as to the way they treat the moral quandary at their heart.

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This is definitely one of those films that feels like it’s in dialogue with retro trends. Like The Guest and its ilk from the US, it seems to be reimagining the 80s exploitation flick, with a helping of French cinéma du look values, while also in those bold title cards and twisted sexual politics calling back to Baise-moi (2000) and films by Gaspar Noé, et al., which attacked with glee certain notions of gendered violence. But if you are willing to accept its larger than life formal qualities — a saturated sun-drenched Mexican setting, its rape-revenge premise, the superhuman survival qualities of its four characters (a woman and three nasty, predatory men), and all the fake blood that exists in the world (that hadn’t already been used by Raw the year before) — it’s quite a ride. Its central character of Jen (Matilda Lutz) starts out as the kind of cipher for female sexuality you might find in a Michael Bay heroine, but soon comes to find a stoic resilience to pain that sets up the final two-thirds of the film, though beyond that there’s hardly much characterisation: this is a very simple concept, executed (as it were) very well.

CREDITS
Director/Writer Coralie Fargeat; Cinematographer Robrecht Heyvaert; Starring Matilda Lutz, Kevin Janssens, Vincent Colombe, Guillaume Bouchède; Length 108 minutes.
Seen at Curzon Bloomsbury, London, Saturday 12 May 2018.

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Two Recent Nollywood Films on Netflix: Lionheart (2018) and The Department (2015)

These two recent Nollywood films (which is the popular name for mainstream film production in Nigeria), both by women directors, share that they are set against the backdrop of office politics. Within them is the suggestion, though each follows its own genre cues, of a shared problem in how the country deals with women in positions of authority. They may not have the polish of Western films (thanks largely to their shoestring budgets), but both are pretty successful exercises and well worth watching. It’s worth noting that the director of The Department has also made a number of documentaries, including Faaji Agba (2015), which I reviewed a few years ago.

Tank Girl (1995)

A colourful, brash and cheerfully perverse action film, Lori Petty seems well-matched to the title role, being every bit as quirky as a comic book character brought to life might be — somewhat hyperactive, but quirky without being grating. That said, it feels like the key here is that she isn’t constantly trying to present herself as sexually available at the same time as fighting off bad guys and blowing up compounds (a direction you imagine a male filmmaker might have gone, and one that has certainly hampered female characters in a lot of other comic-book and sci-fi films). There’s a kind of camp at play here that’s reminiscent of the Wachowskis in Jupiter Ascending (2015), with busy set design worthy of Terry Gilliam. The kangaroo creatures spoil it all somewhat, teetering too close to the cult perils of Howard the Duck, and the action sequences go on somewhat, but on the whole this remains good fun, with an iconic 90s alternative rock and ‘riot grrrl’-influenced soundtrack.

CREDITS
Director Rachel Talalay; Writer Tedi Sarafian (based on the comic by Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett); Cinematographer Gale Tattersall; Starring Lori Petty, Naomi Watts, Reg E. Cathey, Ice-T, Malcolm McDowell; Length 104 minutes.
Seen at home (DVD), London, Monday 15 May 2017.

The Fate of the Furious (aka Fast & Furious 8, 2017)

An enormously silly movie. The gang is still led by Vin Diesel’s Dom, but his allegiances are placed into question by the arrival on the scene of cyberterrorist Cipher (Charlize Theron). The script still throws around the word “family” the requisite number of times, and truly my heart is warmed by seeing Jason Statham properly brought into the fold — even if he’s still somewhat an anti-hero, he is at least now aligned with the forces of good, with a rather heavy-handed Hard Boiled hommage which nevertheless plays into Statham’s established heroic character trait of protecting kids. And yet… and yet, I’m not convinced. I’m not convinced by Dom’s actions, nor by Charlize’s villain — though, incidentally, possibly the most furious thing in the film is the fingers of her and Nathalie Emmanuel’s hacktivist Ramsey (introduced in the last film), as they (ridiculously) hack and counter-hack one another. I’m also not convinced by the fate of poor Elsa Pataky, sidelined since Michelle Rodriguez returned in the sixth film. Look, I still like everyone involved and I’ll still go see number nine (can I get an early vote in for some kind of K9 pun?) but this isn’t their finest work.

CREDITS
Director F. Gary Gray; Writer Chris Morgan; Cinematographer Stephen F. Windon; Starring Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Michelle Rodriguez, Kurt Russell, Charlize Theron; Length 136 minutes.
Seen at Odeon Holloway, London, Friday 14 April 2017.

ピストルオペラ Pisutoru opera (Pistol Opera, 2001)

Unquestionably a singular and odd film by veteran filmmaker Seijun Suzuki, revisiting themes in his early-career masterpiece Branded to Kill, albeit with a woman assassin. The ‘opera’ aspect of the title shouldn’t be underestimated, as, although without songs, it has a lot of the theatricality of that format: the frontal staging, addresses to camera, the high-key lighting in a very clear and uncluttered frame, and the very frugal use of movement. Suzuki at times prefers to use empty shots with strong sound effects over people doing things in frame. So in short, it’s not your ordinary film. Like opera, though, the plot is actually fairly straightforward: an assassin (Makiko Esumi), ranked #3 by her Guild, has to contend with her fellow assassins (not least the mysterious Hundred Eyes, #1), in order to claim the first place, while also being stalked by a 10-year-old wannabe (Hanae Kan). It may be filmed in a very idiosyncratic way, but it’s never without visual flair and parades an array of gorgeous saturated colours.

CREDITS
Director Seijun Suzuki 鈴木清順; Writers Kazunori Ito 伊藤和典 and Takeo Kimura 木村威夫; Cinematographer Yonezo Maeda 前田米造; Starring Makiko Esumi 江角マキコ, Sayoko Yamaguchi 山口小夜子, Hanae Kan 韓英恵, Masatoshi Nagase 永瀬正敏; Length 112 minutes.
Seen at home (DVD), London, Tuesday 17 January 2017.

Criterion Sunday 108: The Rock (1996)

The Criterion Collection hit an early nadir with Michael Bay’s bombastic world-destroying Armageddon (1998) — I imagine some people even consider this the worst film in the whole collection (though for me, so far, it’s Chasing Amy, sorry Kev). So it’s fair to say my expectations weren’t high for the film Bay made just before it, The Rock. That said, there are no more of Michael Bay’s auteurist Gesamtkunstwerken in the collection, so I need never watch another of his films again, and perhaps this buoyed me into actually — a little bit — enjoying this festival of silliness. That said it might just as easily be the presence of Nic Cage, an admittedly unreliable but off-the-wall star (still holding it in a little, as he was wont to do at his awards-feted mid-90s height), or the steadying effect of Ed Harris and Sean Connery, two fine screen actors. I didn’t believe for a moment any of the plot contortions that see Ed Harris’s rogue military man take over Alcatraz and threaten destruction on the people of San Francisco — events that lead to Cage and Connery’s involvement. Indeed, I feel little interest in recounting these here. Twenty years on from its release, you’ll have seen the film already, or you’ll have decided not to bother with it, and who am I to criticise your decisions, borne of a cultural awareness hard-won for all of us labouring through those squalid trenches of mainstream blockbuster moviemaking. Still, if you were forced to see it — let’s say, if you were watching the whole of the Criterion Collection from earliest to most recent — then you could do worse. And, after all, how can you ever appreciate the austere rigours of arthouse at its most steely if you don’t also watch the popcorn-munching chemical-warfaring action nonsense too.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Michael Bay; Writers David Weisberg, Douglas S. Cook and Mark Rosner; Cinematographer John Schwartzman; Starring Nicolas Cage, Sean Connery, Ed Harris, John Spencer, David Morse; Length 136 minutes.

Seen at a friend’s home (DVD), London, Sunday 7 July 2016.

Jason Bourne (2016)

Paul Greengrass is a good filmmaker and has a stylish command of the visual vocabulary of film — he’s done great work on the two previous instalments of this spy series, not least. It’s just that other pesky vocabulary — which is to say, the words the characters speak, their motivations, that sort of thing — which seems to elude him here somewhat. Coming after a previous non-Damon outing with Jeremy Renner, I never found this latest instalment of the Bourne series boring, but it’s very silly, and the very quality that is supposed to differentiate Bourne, of being recognisably grounded in our world, seems to slip away. Granted we get a few mentions of Edward Snowden, but otherwise characters do the same stupid things they do in countless other spy thrillers, like hacking into networks where covert operations are held in a file folder on the CIA mainframe called “BLACK OPS”, calling out to “ENHANCE!” grainy photos, saying “Let’s use SQL to hack into their system!” Computers do all kinds of whizzy things that just don’t ring true at any level, and character motivations seem flimsy at best, though at least some of the other details of setting have a certain feeling of authenticity, not least the opening sequence at an Athens anti-austerity protest. Moving from this, we get the usual Bourne stuff of whizzing about from location to world location, making deals, stabbing and backstabbing, running and shooting, and all that stuff. It’s all done fine on screen — as I said initially, with plenty of visual flair — it’s just a pity it had to be so stupid.

CREDITS
Director Paul Greengrass; Writers Greengrass and Christopher Rouse; Cinematographer Barry Ackroyd; Starring Matt Damon, Alicia Vikander, Tommy Lee Jones, Vincent Cassel, Julia Stiles; Length 123 minutes.
Seen at Cineworld Wood Green, London, Wednesday 27 July 2016.

るろうに剣心伝説の最期編 Rurouni Kenshin: Densetsu no Saigo-hen (Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends, 2014)

Another film I’ve belatedly caught up with for my 2015 New Year’s Resolution (one of the co-writers is a woman), I must confess that I’m not familiar with the source material or either of the two previous films in the trilogy, so this is all a bit of a blur. However, it’s an attractively-mounted 19th century period film blur, awash with rich costume design and the swish of samurai swords. If anything, the film resists the lure of its comic-book origins to give in to a videogame or clip-show editing style, and instead essays an almost traditional filmic sense of the jidaigeki, the camera movements more calm than the frenzy of blades one might expect. That said, the heroes all have floppy fringes in the modern style, and beyond their matinee idol looks, I’m not entirely sure a lot more is going on. Still, it’s a good deal better than one might fear and if I just had an investment in the story, this might be a more attractive proposition.

CREDITS
Director Keishi Otomo 大友啓史; Writers Kiyomi Fujii 藤井清美 and Otomo (based on the manga るろうに剣心-明治剣客浪漫譚 Rurouni Kenshin by Nobuhiro Watsuki 西脇伸宏); Cinematographer Takuro Ishizaka 石坂拓郎; Starring Takeru Satoh 佐藤健; Length 135 minutes.
Seen at home (Blu-ray), London, Wednesday 30 December 2015.

Brothers (2015)

During this, my year of inadvertently watching more Indian films than I’ve managed in the rest of my life thus far, I’ve frequently come to wonder what explains the fact that so many of them are so tonally indistinct — whether travelling around, shoehorning in scenes of overblown family melodrama or pummelling action, and cuts to undermotivated dance sequences shot like music videos. Of course, what I’ve been struggling to realise is that it’s because they are literally made for everyone, so have to work to keep a wide audience interested. Brothers is little different from the rest in this respect, and while this could be a taut action film focused on its titular protagonists (and its second half largely functions as such), it instead spends a lot of time building up the brothers’ home life and weak father figure Gary (Jackie Shroff), with detours into some overt weepiness when it comes to their mother’s backstory.

Basically, David (a very capable performance by Akshay Kumar) is the elder half-brother to Monty (Sidharth Malhotra), who have fallen out over the years largely due to the actions of their alcoholic and violent father, released from prison at the film’s start (which incidentally features a glorious scene of overacting using just hands). This story is unfolded in flashback, and relatedly there’s a particularly fine coup de théâtre at an emotionally-charged funeral, in which the key actors and their younger selves stalk around a grave. In fact, the technical credits here are uniformly excellent, with some fine cinematography, the finished film all largely put together with verve. In any case, these two brothers have grown up learning to fight on the streets, and their skills are targeted by a new mixed martial arts (MMA) league being started in India. This is the focus of the film’s post-intermission second half, as the tournament progresses, and there’s very little spoiler factor in telling you that it moves towards a climactic showdown in the ring between the two brothers.

The film’s failings are not so much in the tonal changes (though they take some getting used to), as in some of the more boneheaded plotting, whereby certain key events are supposed to come as a surprise (that these two fighters with the same unusual surname are both brothers seems unknown to the MMA league’s organisers, for a start). The role of the father also doesn’t fully ring true, as I would think his actions certainly seem worthy of a far harsher judgement from his sons. And yet the action scenes have a kinetic quality that never quite lets up, no matter how outlandish the matches, and the acting from the two lead characters is both charismatic and subtle when it needs to be.

CREDITS
Director Karan Malhotra करण मल्होत्रा; Writers Garima Gupta and Siddharth Singh [as “Siddarth-Garima” सिद्धार्थ-गरिमा] (based on the story of the film Warrior by Gavin O’Connor and Cliff Dorfman); Cinematographer Hemant Chaturvedi हेमंत चतुर्वेदी; Starring Akshay Kumar अक्षय कुमार, Sidharth Malhotra सिद्धार्थ मल्होत्रा, Jackie Shroff जैकी श्रॉफ; Length 156 minutes.
Seen at Cineworld Haymarket, London, Monday 17 August 2015.

Born of War (2013)

I really wanted to like this film. It seems like a worthwhile pursuit, recasting the internationally-set counter-terrorist action thriller with a female hero, fighting the good fight against a confluence of terrorism, governmental corruption and capitalist business interests while dealing with the trauma of her own family background. Sofia Black D’Elia in the central role of Mina does decent work limning these various divides, it’s just that she’s not really given much support from the other actors or, more importantly, the script. A lot of the plot contrivances feel fairly perfunctory in order to move the narrative along, and even veteran English actor James Frain seems a bit lost with some of his lines. It doesn’t help either that the villains lack a certain charisma, with the role of Mina’s tormentor/father, an interesting character certainly, succeeding neither at being a vengeful terrorist or a sympathetic freedom fighter. Still, it’s filmed with panache given the presumably low budget involved, and vigorously works through the (over-)familiar setpieces to set up a final confrontation with a female antihero.

CREDITS
Director Vicky Jewson; Writers Ben Hervey [as “Alan Heartfield”], Jewson and Rupert Whitaker; Cinematographer Malte Rosenfeld; Starring Sofia Black D’Elia, James Frain; Length 109 minutes.
Seen at home (DVD), London, Tuesday 4 August 2015.