Because where else will you get to read reviews of Blue is the Warmest Colour, The Sixth Sense, and Confessions of a Shopaholic all in one glorious place?
The following is a roundup of every film Dave watched in October 2014…
A Dangerous Method (dir. David Cronenberg, 2011)
Image via Lionsgate
Adapted from a stage play, Cronenberg’s extensively scripted drama observes the relationship between Carl Jung (played by a brilliant Michael Fassbender), Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and the frenzied influence of Jung’s patient Sabina Spielrein (Kiera Knightley), who brings the two titans of psychoanalysis together. The film is an intense, at times airless, saturation of dialogue, sparring intellects and the tense merging of hypothesising into uncontrollable impulses. The directorial quality of Cronenberg and the strong and committed performance by its three main leads ensures the demanding script remains interesting throughout, and at times borders on the uncomfortably hypnotic – which seems apt, given the centrality of the ‘talking cure’ in its infancy. Keira Knightly performs the hysteric contortions of Spielrein with worrying conviction. An echo of Cronenberg’s history in body horror can be sensed as, without effects, Knightly is able to jut her chin in spasms that have to be seen to be believed, in all their obscure and horrifying unexpectedness. If there were to be any complaint it would be that the film is perhaps a bit overlong, drawing the drama of its dialogue-heavy substance just beyond its optimum point. However, in true Cronenberg style, this is still a great and fascinating film by a great and fascinating director.
Cuppa Critics Rating: 
Spring (dir. Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead, 2014)
Image via Metrodome Distribution
A film that flirts with the expectations of genre, Spring enjoyably melds elements of body-horror, teen vampirism, road trip adventures and a romcom narrative into an interesting and offbeat viewing experience. The film often loses its way and stumbles into stylistic inconsistencies that feel underdeveloped or distracting, but, for the most part, it keeps the attention and bumbles along with the amiable aspirations (if not the actual fruition) of something a bit different.
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Maps to the Stars (dir. David Cronenberg, 2014)
Image via Focus World
A stunningly hysterical performance for Julianne Moore that strains, shrieks and trembles with the decaying glamour of Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (just with added organic yoghurt). Cronenberg’s latest is at its best in this wry dissection of a very contemporary Hollywood (complete with name check references), but it ultimately seems to fall short of its combined parts. The trauma, ghosts, hollow fame, and therapy all fray with a desperation that never quite achieves cinematic satisfaction… instead, separate strands are left ineffectually flaying, leaving one with the impression of very interesting moments but – overall – an underwhelming lack of cohesion.
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Young Adult (dir. Jason Reitman, 2011)
Image via Paramount Pictures
A wonderfully written tragicomic drama. Young Adult invokes the warped romanticism and unrealities of ‘American College’, as revisited in the – ‘now its all gone to shit, what did it mean… I was popular, dammit!’ – drab existentialism of a late twenties crisis, and simultaneously provides an unremittingly self absorbed protagonist of infinitely hatable proportions; the film manages to combine these two (relatively under-represented) elements with wit and cringe-inducing success!
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Blind (dir. Eskil Vogt, 2014)
Image via StraDa Films
An imaginative and intelligent exploration of what it might be like to be suddenly, and without any expectation, robbed of sight. Stranded in her flat, too scared to navigate the potential newness and unknowable terrain of an outside darkness, the female protagonist cathartically lives out her anxieties in a novel, the narrative of which twists with expert agility and nuance with her own reality. This is a memorable and impressive representation, not only of blindness and its heightening of other senses (fascinatingly worked out through the film’s sophisticated use of sound and the entertaining digressions of a mind trying, in the absence of sight, to reimagine the world in cutaway minefields of ‘what if…’), but also of a creative mind facing the isolating realities of a disability. Blind deserves more time and thought than it gets in this brief summary; my only wavering doubt was of its use of nudity, which – in the central character – although seemingly expressive and at times artful and playfully erotic, seemed to raise unresolved questions of gender that resonated with a sub plot involving a man who (graphically) digests copious amounts of online porn. (The problematic tensions of what we can and can’t see, and what we expect to see in film – another aspect of blindess – relating to the eternally gendered and oppressively patriarchal sight of cinema… perhaps this is another, and intended, dimension to the film; ‘she’ must always be a blind object, while ‘he’ is always behind the camera, eyes lustfully directing what is seen). Worth seeking out.
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Confessions of a Shopaholic (dir. P.J. Hogan, 2009)
Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Knowingly God-awful but, unfortunately, not knowing enough to prevent it from still being overwhelmingly GOD-AWFUL. Imagine an extended advert (because, being the casualty of commerce, it is only fitting that its ruinous greed be communicated via its own language: advertising) for all that is corrosively wrong with the plastic and addictive momentum of capitalist oblivion… frosted with a spattering of hollow laughs and an upsetting turn from Kristen Scott-Thomas in what can only be described as a shittingly God-awful cameo. But y’know, considering the title, Confessions of a Shopaholic is at least predictably God-awful.
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(As close to no mugs as it’s possible to get… it’s really a ‘we’re fucking out of teabags’ scenario.)
Patience (After Sebald) (dir. Grant Lee, 2012)
Image via Soda Pictures
A unique and moving documentary that perfectly collages its form into melancholy correlation with the original Sebald text. Following Sebald’s rambling walks through Suffolk and the meditative digressions on enigmatic or obscured history, memory and the simmering decay of past traumas, the film creates an appropriately drifting sadness – beautifully accompanied by a haunting soundtrack from ‘The Caretaker’ (also known as Leyland Kirby).
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The Great Beauty (dir. Paulo Sorrentino, 2013)
Image via Artificial Eye
A gliding tour of Italian opulence that drinks from the same decadent spring as Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. Extravagant party sequences pile their hollowed revelries on top of one another in a cascading attempt to divert Jep Gambardella (played with suave detachment by Toni Servillo) from the aching lack of fulfilment behind his cynical superiority. The dazzlingly choreographed cinematography, in its cool precision and artful flourishes, perfectly visualises Jep’s own ornate commitment to the artifice of beauty.
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The Avengers (dir. Joss Whedon, 2012)
Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
I’m not a big superhero film fan, but this got lots of very positive reviews, loudly exclaiming its sense of ‘fun’; in contrast to Nolan-esque gravitas or a glibly established psychological backstory to tightly-costumed crusaders of muscled virtue, I was expecting a fast-paced, tongue in cheek and witty romp driven by the reliable motor of Joss Whedon’s writing. Alas, I found it dull… and, on occasion, just annoying. Scarlett Johansson’s ‘Widow’ character, for instance, is offensively shoehorned into the adolescent dream as the token ‘female avenger’… sexualised into a ridiculously sultry ninja with eternally figure-hugging outfits, then manoeuvred into lamely transparent excuses to witness S&M fantasies acted out under the thin guise of fight scenes.
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Celeste & Jesse Forever (dir. Lee Toland Krieger, 2012)
Image via Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Low-key but occasionally endearing and quietly entertaining comic drama that takes a sitcom-meets-indie stab at the best friends or in love conundrum.
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Kill Your Darlings (dir. John Krokidas, 2013)
Image via The Works UK Distribution
Poetry rarely fares well in filmic representation and, to my mind, this is certainly no exception. Daniel Radcliffe is an increasingly likeable screen presence but this still can’t save the film from being a little too impassioned with the beat mythology. Whilst laudably exploring a far less known dimension of Ginsberg’s biography – and the darker underbelly of beat history – it still struggles to shake off the wide eyed spirit of adoration that undercuts its power… not as ambitiously wrong-footed as the visual fireworks of Howl, but still lacking the perspective needed to add something genuinely new to the beat’s legacy in cinema.
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The Sixth Sense (dir. M. Night Shyamalan, 1999)
Image via Buena Vista International
Bruce Willis as a compassionate therapist deeply immersed in his work of rescuing troubled minds is, despite the film’s iconic moments of shock, still a fairly tough pill to swallow. I just wanted him to rip out the pitiful remnants of his wilting mop of follicles, tear off his shirt, grab a machine gun and go all DIE HARD on the supernatural. I can’t say I was massively won over by this established classic of sorts; there were some isolated fun moments – and a wonderfully unexpected and creepy cameo from the OC’s Mischa Barton as an energetically vomiting child ghost – but, overall, I was a bit disappointed. I think it’s clearly a case of seeing the film through its less than discreet legacy and reputation, so that I no longer ‘see dead people’ but simply see the lumbering ghost of the film, staggering to remember the reception of its past life. I was also a tad annoyed by the over-insistent score – a kind of souped up Spielberg vibe – which leant the film a patronising enforcement of its (already less than subtle) revelations.
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La Dolce Vita (dir. Federico Fellini, 1960)
Image via Momentum Pictures
A tumbling sequence of Italian extravagance that rolls through its sequences with a genuinely innovative opening of narrative… no longer structured as a story arch but haphazardly blustered through with impressive momentum. The film behind The Great Beauty ponders masculinity, mortality, love and lust – all while slightly tipsy and in the snapped frenzy of journalistic disarray. Deservedly a classic.
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The Godfather (dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
Image via Paramount Home Entertainment
A film that I have to confess to admiring and not enjoying.
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BREW OF THE MONTH
Blue is the Warmest Colour (dir. Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013)
Image via Wild Bunch
A stunningly acted and filmed portrayal of young love and lust between two girls. The film creates an overwhelmingly ‘real’ feeling through its combination of naturalistic acting and close-lingering cinematography, and balances its poetic eye for striking imagery and realism with masterful skill, allowing for scenes that reach into Malickian territory without inheriting his latter-day tendency for a kind of saturation of sentiment (I’m not out and out decrying sentimentalism in Malick films, just saying that, at times, his imagery borders on becoming far too enthralled with its own profundity). This is a brilliantly realised film, blending emotionally absorbing and relatable drama with a delicate sensitivity for finding the poetic in shots of believable realism.
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