This Is England

Over Easter there was a British film season on Film 4 and I only managed to catch This Is England.  I have been waiting to watch this film for a while, and I was in the midst of ideas for my British Stamp project so it felt very relevant.

Set in 1983, a 12 year old boy gets mixed up with a gang of Skinheads after his father is killed in the Falklands war.  He spends his summer holiday with them and they soon become like his family.  However he soon gets involved with the drinking, drugs and sex of the older kids, and when the leaders Nazi pal gets out of jail, he unwittingly gets sucked up into a racist, right wing movement, which ends in murder.

This film is a harsh and tear jerking adaptation of Thatcher's Britain and youth sub-culture gangs.  The whole film feels desolate and there is always this sense of impending danger.  There is some great acting from all the cast, especially Shaun the boy.  It succeeds in making you feel like you've been transported back to 80's England, and similar to Billy Elliot, you really feel that sense of desperation and low moral from the community.

I would recommend this film to everyone!

Alice in Wonderland

I posted about this film way back in the summer and then I read the books for the first time at the end of the summer so i've been looking forward to this ever since I found out it was going to be made =)

I read quite a few reviews before I went and there was a mixed feeling towards the film. However I thought it was great!! It's based more on the second book through the looking glass, and the story line and characters are very toned down compared to the book, with a lot of 'adapting' but still it made a great film and the interpretation was great if somewhat commercialised.

The scenery and costumes were amazing, the characters were good and, I thought, well played. The best thing about the film was how funny it was - I wasn't expecting it to be funny and I laughed all the way through especially at the hare and tweedledum and tweedledee! There was just the right amount of crazy randomness from the original to make it quirky.

We went to see it in Imax 3D which was super - after Avatar now I think when I go to normal cinema it's going to be a big fat let down! It really felt like you were falling down the rabbit hole and running through the enchanted forest with Alice!

In the Loop

I watched the film In the Loop recently. I had never heard of it before and didn't know anything about it. It had a very 'office' feel to it, a 'real' fly on the wall style with shaky camera angles and blunt performances. A very satirical look at America and Britain in the run up to going to war. I'm not sure how much of this is based on any fact, maybe suspected facts or suspicions, but when your watching it you can certainly imagine that your peeking into the Whitehouse or 10 Downing street. I don't think this film is for everyone, it's very fast paced and you need a dry sense of humour and an interest in politics to get through it, but it's just my cup of tea and I loved it. The acting is impeccable and the direction is flawless, i'd recommend it to anyone who loves Peepshow / the office / shameless or just a good conspiracy theory to go see it!

''The US President and UK Prime Minister fancy a war. But not everyone agrees that war is a good thing. The US General Miller doesn't think so and neither does the British Secretary of State for International Development, Simon Foster. But, after Simon accidentally backs military action on TV, he suddenly has a lot of friends in Washington, DC. If Simon can get in with the right DC people, if his entourage of one can sleep with the right intern, and if they can both stop the Prime Minister's chief spin-doctor Malcolm Tucker rigging the vote at the UN, they can halt the war. If they don't... well, they can always sack their Director of Communications Judy, who they never liked anyway and who's back home dealing with voters with blocked drains and a man who's angry about a collapsing wall.''

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Nine

Went to see Nine... ooh la la yummy.

Packs the raunchy punch of Chicago.

The glitz and passion of Moulin Rouge.

A mix of European elegance, artistic direction and Hollywood blockbuster.

Throw in some sex and a tortured Italian director and you've got yourself a film!

This is the story of tortured but genius Italian Director Guido Contini and his women. His wife, his mistress, his muse, his seamstress, his mother...

Let the right one in

I hate scary films - hate blood and gore and everything that's jumpy and i'm afraid of the dark. I have such a vivid imagination I can never sleep or stop dreaming/imagining things afterwards ever since I was little, so I generally avoid anything like this on screen. I'm not at all squeamish in real life but for some reason I can't stand it on screen.

Tucked in jumpers, Fake snow and blood aside however... this was a great film and I actually quite enjoyed it. I have come to expect a high standard of films on Kino4 night now so this was no surprise.

It was about half way through when I started to wonder if the girl was real or not. I think I kind of concluded in my mind that she wasn't - that it was the boy doing all those things and she was in his imagination to help him to get through the bullying. There was a few points through the film that made me think that - the conversation about her killing because she has to and him killing because he wanted to. Then at the end when she rescued him from the pool, the closing scene when he was on the train doing Morse code to her - that was strange?

I don't know if i'm right or not... There were obviously lots of things that suggested the girl was real - the guys in the cafe said the man who moved in had a child, and the woman who was bitten... I don't know... but in my mind that's what I was imagining. This film reminded me quite a lot of Pan's labyrinth.

It was a great film though, a good one for halloween. Quite a touching love story really! I think the bleak Swedish council estate was the perfect backdrop to the film. The children were so pale, like they were as pure as the snow. One thing I couldn't get over was how good the children were at acting. The story centralised around them and they're acting was flawless, so emotional and just so far beyond what most established adults could do. The intertwining story lines addressed - Oscars father and mother, the bullies and Eli's 'carer' made this a much more complex film, raising so many questions and emotions.

le scaphandre and la papillon

le scaphandre and la papillon - Directed by Julian Schnabel

''Elle France editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, who, in 1995 at the age of 43, suffered a stroke that paralyzed his entire body, except his left eye. Using that eye to blink out his memoir, Bauby eloquently described the aspects of his interior world, from the psychological torment of being trapped inside his body to his imagined stories from lands he'd only visited in his mind.''

I remember this film being at the cornerhouse and I very nearly went to see it but never got round to it. I can't believe I didn't know what I was missing out on. As everyone has said, this is an absolutely beautiful film, perfectly directed and it so captured Bauby's experiences and emotions.

I know many people have said that they found this film an emotional roller-coaster, but for me, although it was a very touching and tender memoir, I didn't cry, and I'm a crier! I felt all the way through that Bauby was a very strong character before his stroke so I have to admit I never felt pity. His tone of voice - the dialogue he continues to have through the film that no one else can hear, was always sarcastic and humorous. Yes he did go through the self pity, I want death thoughts but somehow the overwhelming feeling that I got from him was realisation and a stark take on reality, and above all defiance.

The fact that he died 10 days after his book was published is a miraculous true story which made everything he did seem even more an act of enormous strength and self preservation. I think that human will power and strength can be an incredible thing that can allow people to hold onto life until they have accomplished what they need to.

La Jetee - by Chris Marker (1962)

Oh how I adored this film. It was so mesmerising. The images were so atmospheric and communicated so much. I've never seen any piece of moving image that seemed to work so simply. I never would have thought of using stills as being an effective way to create moving image. I particularly liked the use of shadows in the images, so much was unseen or covered.

It also interested me how important the narrative was to the story. I'm really interested in reading at the moment - in my silence work i'm experimenting a lot with looking at the experience of reading as opposed to looking at visuals and how it differs. The stills gave a strong indication of what was going on, set a visual scene, but the narrative was vital. I wondered if you took the images away, how would the visuals materialise individually in people's minds? No doubt it would be a totally different experience for each person. Something totally unique.

The powers that be

There seems to be a running theme of the movies so far... The Corporation, If, Rollerball, Goodnight and Good luck.

This is really lucky for me as it fits quite nicely in with my essay, so getting lots of inspiration from them so far. I always think there are just so many great movies out there that I want to see and don't even know about and this is a great opportunity to actually spend the time sitting down to watch them.

I enjoyed rollerball a lot, and although I got the overall message from the plot and the sport itself- the themes of violence and control, there was loads of bits that I didn't understand. One of my favourite visual bits was the when the men and women from the party went out across the fields and started shooting the trees. I couldn't take my eyes off the strange women and all their billowing dresses. What was that about? Was it me or did all the women seem kind of different from the men? Like the stepford wives. Was that deliberate?

I was pleasantly surprised with George Clooney's film. I watched with my mum too, and she thought it was made in the 50's/60's so the visuals had her fooled. I'm not sure how she figured George Clooney was in it but still! I think it's interesting he chose to direct something so niche rather than something more commercial, which i'm sure he could have done if he wanted to. Granted, I got a little bored when watching it, but I admired the style, the authenticity of the smoking and the black and white and thought it was a quite brave and surprising film from Clooney.

My favourite parts about If... were the flips from black and white to colour. Obviously the film was flitting between reality and imagination, but I liked how it wasn't one or the other, but mixed. Of course, the Tiger scene was breathtaking, really nicely directed and quite a contrast from the rest of the film. I think it captured the sexual tension perfectly. I also liked the scenes when they were getting drunk in their room. The bit where they were laughing 'I don't see what difference the speed makes... the speed of the nail', was strangely mesmerising and more real, like a real moment.
I was rivited by the information I got from the Corporaion... Corporations operate within the law as individual humans... you can patent Life... Its often cheaper to be illegal and risk getting caught than operate in the law... Corporations are legally bound to put their bottom line ahead of everything... Humans potentially own everything from the air we breath to life itself and this could all be made privatised... The song Happy Birthday is owned and every time it is used it costs thousands of pounds...

The mind boggles!