The Master

Joaquin Phoenix meths it up.

Phoenix is Freddie Quell an alcoholic vagabond who by chance meets Lancaster Dodd, leader of philosophical movement The Cause. The two become entwined in a strange love/hate, father/son, envy/admire relationship.

Initially Freddie is an experiment for Lancaster, who sees him as unevolved mentally. Lancaster often remarks on his animal nature "laughing is an animal response" and has taken it upon himself to teach/break Freddie of his alcoholic and base human urges. In a stand out scene he performs a bewildering session instructing Freddie to walk back and forth across a room alternatively touching the window and then the wall. As the viewer this scene is relentless and Joaquin gets so method he smacks into a table, leaps up and nearly impales his head on a lamp.

Freddie is disorder but openly so. Lancaster while on the surface appears to have all the answers is the one living the lesser life by living a lie, constantly struggling against emotions like anger, frustration and lust.

Paul Thomas Anderson apparently based The Cause on Scientology. I once watched a dvd donated to the library that turned out to be a Scientology recruitment film (FYI if you donate items to a library they will end up at staff homes because a) it costs too much to incorporate them in the system and b) there's no room on the shelves)  It basically hinted at having the answers to why we're so unhappy even though we're all good looking and wealthy (not aimed at me then) As for similarities to The Cause, both founders have written books and are concerned with reincarnation and raising people to a higher state of being but the director is really just sampling aspects it's not a treatise.  The Cause like Scientology and like all cults is ultimately about deluded men being creeps and having multiple wives.

Paul Thomas Anderson has made a complex and beautifully cinematic piece of art - ambiguous the way good art should be.

YES - I'd sure like to try some of that rocket fuel but hold the paint thinner

The Tree of Life

human nature

This very beautiful film is a montage of images more than a linear story. We watch the birth of the earth, of life itself intercut with a family growing up in the 50s and also the elder brother (Sean Penn) as an adult. In fact it's as if Sean Penn's character is dead and he's rewinding and fast forwarding through the videotape of his life.

I really enjoyed the young actors in this and their scenes together ring true, successfully conjuring up that magical no-time of childhood, endless days and tireless play but also the equally important moments of strangeness, peer pressure and confusion. The trust scene of this film is heart wrenching and made me think of my own sister whom I put through the trust ringer by making her lie on her back while I dropped and caught objects over her face, including a pair of scissors tied to a string (!)

Unfortunately the adult actors are all miscast, the music is bombastic, there's a constant whispery voice over that becomes patronising and annoying and some extremely hammy choices of images to suggest heaven, doorways in the desert and people dressed in white on a beach - bleergh.

I've seen all of Maliks' films and he is a masterful film maker however this feels too soft for him and his theme of nature vs grace is somewhat preposterous. Being a good person and having fun doesn't have anything to do with grace (faith) and working hard at a job you hate and being a mean dad doesn't have anything to do with nature. Malik seems to see faith only in controlled nature not in true nature which includes death at any time for no reason.

In closing, I always notice actors with pierced ear holes in movies and this one has a nice close up of 1950s Brad Pitt with double pierced ears! come on cg it out.


NO - white bread

Blackswan

 jeezus get some optrex for fucks sake

I don't consider Natalie Portman a good actor but she does seem to have integrity so I don't believe she would choose an "out there" role just to win an oscar like Halle Berry in Monsters Ball. This has received universal good reviews but it's actually pretty average as is Portmans performance.

Fragile Nina is chosen for the lead roll in swan lake however stress and paranoia take it's toll and she becomes increasing delusional.

It's all a bit heavy handed with over the top use of mirror imagery, feathers and shitty talking paintings which is a shame as these overshadow interesting flashes of a doppelganger and some difficult to watch obsessive skin peeling.

I'm sure real world ballerinas will loath the depiction of their world but fuck them this is catty, sleeping your way to the top, pony tail, shoulder shrug, baby jane lesbian cheese.


YES - but for way better pretty girl psycho action check out Repulsion or for a more horrifying self mutilator check out the Piano Teacher

Monsters

Displaced aliens in a mexican safari park

The monsters of the title, huge iridescent cephalopods, only make very brief appearances throughout so it's exciting when they are on screen but this film is concerned with the interaction of the main 2 characters; wealthy tourist Sam and photojournalist Andrew who is charged with escorting her back to the states through alien occupied territory.

Director Gareth Edwards comes from an fx background and like Neil Blomkamp (District 9) he knows how to use cg within it's capabilities and more importantly how to light it.  This is his first feature and it's very impressive considering the low budget.

It's going to be too slow for some viewers and the lack of alien screen time is sure to disappoint people expecting a film like District 9. There's no typical story arc or nicely tied loose ends; not everything is explained and the ending will annoy those who are after all these things but I really enjoyed this and I especially like how the aliens are just messing about doing their own thing in the background.
 
YES - if Terrace Malik directed sci fi he would of made this

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

This David Lynch presents film by Werner Herzog doesn't actually have anything to do with David (except for $) but Werner seems to have absorbed his directing style for this film inspired by true events.  

Surreal imagery and strange dialogue make for a stilted but mesmerising viewing experience. I liked it mostly because of Michael Shannon with his boggle eyes and giant head (also great in Runaways and Boardwalk Empire) His character Brad is obviously mentally disturbed but the people around him are ignoring the fact or simply don't see it.

Apparently killing your mother with a samurai sword in a religious fugue isn't that uncommon and since this film there has been more occurrences, most recently the actor Michael Brea (from Ugly Betty) who decapitated his mother while trying to kill a "demon inside her"


YES - cold heart canyon

Blow Up

David Hemmings (looking a lot like the boy from the tin drum grown up) is Thomas, a fashion photographer who captures a strange encounter in a park. It's not until later after he plays around with enlarging the photo that he discovers he has taken a photo of a dead body.

He's a bit of a cock but I ended up liking him and you need to because he's in every scene. His fashion shoots are appalling but I love his studio home - black/white/grey an amethyst crystal on his coffee table - cool.

The pace is meandering broken up with some weird scenes a threesome on a giant piece of paper, Thomas diving to answer the phone, a disaffected rock concert and anarchist mime hippies playing mime tennis.

Ultimately the mystery of the photograph goes no where but it underlines the main theme of the film - perception which like memory is personal and mutable. We believe Thomas because we are watching through his eyes but imagine if he showed you the shitty photo and took you to see a dead body that wasn't there - would you believe him?


YES - cold mods

White Lightnin'

Stay off the lighter fluid

Jesco White is a real person made famous by the 1991 documentary the dancing outlaw. The main character is inspired by Jesco, an eccentric tap dancing, lighter fluid sniffing hillbilly - but this film prompty takes a massive departure from reality to religious revenge fantasy.

Carrie Fisher plays his wife and the way they meet in the film is actually true, well according to Jesco, he was hitchhiking and planning to steal the car but when Norma Jean stops to pick him up he falls instantly in love with her and even though she's a lot older than him they marry.

Told mostly in black and white with voice over, this doesn't feel authentic. The Hasil Adkins soundtrack is cool but Elvis Presley would be more fitting.

NO - gothic stereotype

Visioneers

fuck you work.

George Washington has a windowless office job working for the Jeffers corporation. He lives with his self help obsessed wife and a son they never see.

An epidemic of exploding is putting people on edge, no one knows why this is happening but having dreams is one of the symptoms and George is starting to have visions of his namesake. His life coach tries to get him back on track but after he also explodes, George becomes increasingly disillusioned.

This first film by Jared Drake, is not set in our world - there are bizarre toys, neck implants, handsign greetings and a different pronunciation of the word "chaos" but the concerns are familiar. It's a unique satire on work and family life, questioning how we think we should be living compared to how we actually want to live.

YES - brazil with a happy ending

Four Lions

harpo, groucho, gummo and zeppo or maybe hasan, gabir, ghulam and zafar

Chris Morris specialises in smart black humor. His groundbreaking television shows Brass Eye and Jam freaked out 90s viewers looking for relaxing come down tv and inadvertently stumbling across skit shows with themes of incest, the pimping of people with down syndrome and paedophilia.

He's more mainstream these days (Nathan Barley and IT Crowd) however with his first feature film he's returning to controversy by catering to the zeitgeist fears of suicide bombers.

The four lions are Omar, Barry, Ed and Waj who after attending a training camp in Pakistan, plan to use homemade bombs to kill themselves at the London marathon.

There are some very funny scenes; Waj training a crow to bomb a birdhouse, the running style to use while carrying bombs, and Omar indoctrinating his son using the lion king as a metaphor but these characters are too farcical. Omar the most intelligent seems to completely disregard the fact that two of his friends are retarded and the other is an insane sadomasochist.

It's not until the last part of the film where they reluctantly go through with the plan, that this hits home and becomes a moving tragedy.

NO - successful satire but low buffoonery

Day of the Locust

I knew this existed but for some reason never watched it, but wow holy shit I'm glad I finally did.

Directed by John Schesinger (Midnight Cowboy) and based on Nathanael West's book this film is a masterpiece.

Tod Hackett moves to sweltering 1930's hollywood with plans on becoming an art director, however he slowly but surely gets his soul sucked out by the flaky parasites who dwell there.

Karen Black as Faye Greener with her freaky cat eyes and trowel makeup make her a delicious horror to watch but the best performance comes from Donald Sutherland. His sad sack Homer is pathetic and while initially you feel sorry for him it's hard not to finally feel annoyance as the other characters do.  His loneliness has contorted him into a simpering parasite of another kind and watching him sitting in a deck chair, crying silently while his fingers clench and knuckles whiten, you know something bad is going to happen.

This symbolic surreal tapestry slow burns it's way to an unsettling final 20 minutes - where a crowd at a film premiere turns into a murderous mob.

Not a horror film but certainly about the horror of the film industry - the fakeness and desperation, the billions spent on creating illusion. Not a lot has changed really. Maybe plastic surgery.


YES - this is now in my top 10

Kiss of the Spider Woman

I really like the book by Manual Puig and wanted to see how it translates to screen.

It doesn't.

I'm not entirely sure why not. It's got two very meaty main roles but neither Raul Julia or William Hurt nail them and I think William Hurt got his oscar more for daring to play a queen which back in the 80s was a a bit riske, rather than the quality of his acting.

The film takes place mostly in their shared cell which gives the whole film a very theatrical feeling. Raul is a political prisoner who initially finds Luis's effeminate manner and tendency for escapism difficult to respect however this changes and they become intimate friends.

The spider woman of the title only makes a very brief appearance as the character of one of Luis's film stories that he tells Valentin to pass the time and distract them both from their grim circumstance.

NO - gay shawshank without the escaping

Trash Humpers

make it don't fake it.

It takes a while to settle into the tone but once you do this is really entertaining.

There's no plot or extended conversations just scene after scene of 4 young people with reasonably realistic old peoples masks on singing, riding bikes, drinking, killing, tap dancing, smashing stuff and yes dry humping trash (the trash humping is actually the least interesting part of the film)

This made me cry laugh out loud and also feel a bit sad watching the real old guy doing his pretty good train impression over and over.

YES - if you're after some art but if you want a nice story then this is probably not for you.

Where the Wild Things Are

I'm not a fan of the much loved children's book this is based on, I'm a fan of Spike Jonze and wanted to see what kind of world he creates with this and it is a beautiful one; forest next to ocean next to desert, wooden forts and a forever sunset light.

Max's parents are divorced and after getting into a fight with his mum he runs aways and ends up amongst the wild things who are essentially his personality split into different aspects. The wild things are looking for a king (parent) and Max takes on this role or tries to, it's hard being a parent.

A mixture of puppet and CG, the wild things are dirty, snotty, a bit ugly and a lot childish which helps Max in his transition to young adult. Max makes the important discovery that the world doesn't actually resolve around him.

The downers are the shitty soundtrack by Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the choice of voice actors for the wild things. I can never understand why directors choose actors with such well known voices for their none human characters. I can in a disney film where it somehow makes them more $ but this is art house and I don't want to see Tony Soprano coming out of a big puppet face.

YES - this is adults only.

Antichrist

Chaos reigns.

A woman and man are having sex, meanwhile their young son falls from the window to his death. The woman can't get over her grief and the couple retreat to their cabin where he trys to help her (he's a psychiatrist) but she becomes more unstable.

Lars Von Trier wants to make this about men and woman naming his characters She & He. The couple are adam and eve returning to eden which is no longer a haven, nature is now completely separate from the world of humans and the tree of knowledge is bare and dead.

This film looks great - scenes of their sons death, images of a churning forest and especially haunting are the animals Willem encounters. Actually I'm more disturbed/surprised by those animals than anything Charlotte does and she does some full on shit like snip off her own clitoris.

I enjoyed this because it's confronting and unusual, definitely horrifying but thought provoking as well and that's why it's art not Hostel.

YES - maybe Lars is a scientologist

The Tin Drum

I have been avoiding watching this for years and I'm not really sure why, it's a masterful film.

Set in Poland during Hitlers rise, Oskar in protest against his family, society and the world at large decides never to grow up and whenever any situation disagrees with him bangs a tin drum defiantly or emits a loud glass shattering scream.

A symbolic film if ever there was one, you can dig in if that's your thing but I let it wash over me for the most part just enjoying the amazing cinematography and the many beautiful and unsettling images such as Oskar's mother force feeding herself fish or Oskar licking lime fizzing powder off his young crushes belly button before going down on her.

There's only very oblique allusions to what was actually happening to the Jewish people in the camps but the rising dread culminates in the defense of the Polish post office, the first battle of the invasion of Poland.

The actor who plays Oskar is incredible. He was only 11 when he played this part and kicks the ass of Anna Paquin also 11 who won an oscar for her performance in The Piano. Be warned, his character is extremely difficult to like however that's part of the dark magic of this film.

YES - One human voice is a powerful weapon whether it be in defiance or leading a nation towards a heinous action.

Synecdoche, New York

It means when something is referred to indirectly by naming a small part or alternatively a whole part. Confused? you will be.

Hypochondriac playwright Caden receives a grant to create his masterpiece. This play drags on for years and becomes more elaborate and pointless and he recreates New York inside a giant warehouse, casts doppelgangers to play versions of himself and watches as they live more fulfilling relationships than he does.

Ultimately the play seems like it will never be completed and Caden remains alone and unable to accept any part of his life, the good or bad parts. All too late his life is over without ever having lived it or realising that the shitty, sad and difficult parts aren't failures but actually make up part of the living.

Starts off really interesting. Catherine Keaner is fantastic as always and Phillip Seymour Hoffman perfect as the morose Caden (but how did he end up with a woman like Adele?) however some way into this very long seeming 2 hours, maybe when Caden becomes his ex wife's cleaning lady or when he casts Ellen Barkin to play himself, the film just becomes a collection of short peculiar scenes, somehow detached from the whole of what should be a moving piece of film.

NO - starts off tight but soon unwinds into a mess.  

You, the Living

All the reviews I've read about this are glowing and a friend that I respect the opinion of loves it and bought it on dvd. I also heard this was hilarious - really? was I watching the same movie as these people?

It's weird watching a film made by someone who hates you but this is the feeling I got watching this. Every character in this film is living a relatively safe kind of life and goes about their day to day business of creeping along in traffic, having unrequitable crushes, buying the right rug, taking their pet's for a drag and attending ridiculous formal dinners.

It's trivial, banal stuff but that's exisistance. We ignore the fact we are going to die and piss around buying  jeans and watching screens.

I found it slow going and I didn't enjoy spending time with any of these people.

The surreal climax featuring a phalanx of planes flying over the city is a fitting ending. Are these mysterious planes flying a reconnaissance or are they a bombing raid? Nothing like a bit of crisis to make one realise what's actually important and start appreciating our 80 (give or take) years of living.

NO - Nice colour palette and clean scenes but too pretentious.

Permanent Vacation

Sex a ma phones are not cool - ever. When were they? and why do Jim Jarmusch and David Lynch think they are? Watching someone playing the saxaphone makes me fell ill and slightly angry.

Permanant Vacation is Jim Jarmusch's first film and it really feels like it. It has all his favourite things jazz, people with black hair, people sitting around drinking black coffee, woman who don't really say anything and John Lurie but the main guy is a dick so it's pretty hard to get through.

It's about a guy who likes dressing sharp, dancing to jazz and talking about himself. He doesn't have a job or a home and hangs out with random people he meets (they're all bums or crazy or both) He's in some kind of relationship but can take it or leave it.

Ive seen all of Jim's films (apart from his latest Limits of Control) and he's got skills especially Ghost Dog, that is some advanced shit, but Permanent Vacation is missing the care factor. The main character's persona seems forced and all his interactions with other people are one sided - his side.

NO - too cool for school   

The Case Against Saxaphones

exhibit 1.

exhibit 2.


and in closing

Wendy and Lucy

Low key but very affecting film with the type of female character you don't see often - single, loner, just getting on with the shit slog that is looking for a job, fixing your car and dealing with fuckwits. Michelle Williams is Wendy who along with her dog Lucy is driving to Canada because shes heard there's seasonal canning work there.

It's a slow moving piece, lyrical and shot beautifully. Michelle's acting is extremely subtle and shows a quiet strength which you can't help think is coming from the fact that she recently lost the father of her child in real life.

A lot of people will see this one as a downer especially with Wendy losing Lucy but this is real life so what do you expect?

YES - beautiful