Sunday October 31st 2010
Still reeling from the collective scorn of 1500 bitter horror fans after he pulled the film from Frightfest at the last minute, ex-enfant terrible indie king Gregg Araki brought his sci-fi sexfest Kaboom to the LFF on Wednesday and I was totally there watching it, yo.
I’m hardly an Araki completist (anyone want to lend me Mysterious Skin?) but I love Smiley Face more than Sandra Hebron loves tall shoes so I figured I’d be on safe ground with Kaboom.
And for a while, I was. The first hour is sexy, funny and unbearably indie in the most endearing way possible, and the cast are uniformly impressive (including Juno Temple, whose topless scenes made me concerned that the screening was actually an elaborate sting and we were all going to end up on the sex offenders register).
Unfortunately, as is so often the case, it all went downhill in the last half hour.
Maybe I’m just not cool enough to fully appreciate the power of The Araki, but there was a lot of laughing going on that I wasn’t party to, and a lot of total crap that the rest of the audience seemed to have missed.
In either case, I’m right and they’re wrong.
Sunday October 31st 2010
With its silent antihero protagonist, refusal to offer any indication of time or place, and outright rejection of politics, ethics and narrative progression, Essential Killing is perhaps better suited to a carefully considered deconstruction in Sight & Sound than an irreverent ramble on some blog full of distracting rollover ads.
Still, it’s totes gud bbz.
Sunday October 31st 2010
Generally speaking, you know what you’re getting with a Sofia Coppola movie: beautifully hazy scenery, quiet characters, intermittent dialogue, limited plot and, of course, a totally inspired soundtrack…
Somewhere has all of this and, miraculously, is actually pretty good to boot.
Father-daughter relationships and the trials of fame are both well-worn Hollywood themes, but Coppola (surely the only significant Coppola in 2010) is mercifully careful to avoid cliché, balancing the inate ‘in-ness’ of the whole thing with disarming honesty and delicate restraint.
Money Never Sleeps could learn a thing or two.
Saturday October 30th 2010
In their own uniquely British way, our awards-bait films are even more cynical than their American counterparts. Sure they’ve got classically trained actors, beautiful costume design and the requisite amount of ‘comedy swearing’ (maybe even a single ‘cunt’ if they want to get the broadsheets excited about ‘how refreshing it is to see a movie that isn’t running scared from the BBFC’), but underneath lies the same Oscar-hungry mind that’s ‘killing Hollywood’.
Such films have to be arty enough to get two thumbs up from Peter Bradshaw but not arty enough to alienate a multiplex audience. They’re intelligent enough to convince BAFTA members that they’re casting a worthy vote but not intelligent enough to scare off the casual cinemagoer. In short, there will be a dinner party discussion.
The King’s Speech (which, let’s not lie, is essentially a formulaic prequel to The Queen) is an archetypal example of this. It’s got plenty to admire (not least another phenomenal performance by Colin First – he sum kinda jeenyas) but when the credits roll and the lights come up, it’s difficult not to feel used.
