Song of the Sea (Amhrán na Mara)

Dir: Tomm Moore

2014

****

Tomm Moore's simple but magical tale Song of the Sea is a beautiful and refreshing animation full of joy and originality. It follows Ben (voiced by David Rawle), a 10 year old Irish boy who lives with his father (voiced by Brendan Gleeson) and younger sister on a desolate lighthouse. Although he looks after her (with his adorable Sheepdog Cú), Ben blames his young mute sister Saoirse for his mother's death after she died in childbirth having her. Ben and his father had become distant with each other since and soon both children are taken away to live with their no-nonsense grandmother in Dublin. However, young Saoirse soon discovers she is different and Ben discovers it too. Together they find clues regarding their mother and discover that Saoirse is in fact the last of the selkies. Selkies are seal folk in Scottish and Irish culture. They are said to crawl ashore at night, and change into beautiful ladies and handsome men with seductive powers over humans. "Selkie" comes from the Scottish word "silche" (seal) and they are said to inhabit the islands above Scotlandd: Orkney and Shetland. Additionally, in both Scottish and Irish mythology, female selkies can marry humans if a human man hides her selkie skin, but they may gaze lovingly out to sea. If the skin is found, then they must return to the sea, even if they already have children; with their skin, they will instantly turn into a seal when they step into the ocean. Saoirse feels compelled to go to the sea to free the fairy creatures trapped in the modern world by the Celtic goddess Macha, and Ben decides to help her. Director Tomm Moore states that the film is based of several aspects from his childhood. The film is set in October of 1987, which Moore remembered as rainy, and windy. Some characters also relate to Moore's family and pets from memories, pictures, etc but by and large the film is based on Irish legends. The few lines at the very beginning of the movie ("Come away, O human child!/To the waters and the wild/With a faery, hand in hand,/For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.") are from "The Stolen Child" by Irish poet William Butler Yeats, who was also a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival. Indeed, the film is a celebration of Irish culture, a side that not many people outside of the Emerald Isle may be aware of. The animation is full of colour but kept very simple. It's all hand-drawn, which is quite remarkable and it was rightly nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 87th Academy Awards in 2015. It's a beautiful fantasy, one that all kids will love, full of charm and adorable characters.

A Street Cat Named Bob

Dir: Roger Spottiswoode

2016

*

A Street Cat Named Bob is Marley & Me all over again. It's a lovely, uplifting story based on a book telling the true story of one man's struggle with homelessness and drug addiction and how a little Ginger Tom helped him overcome his problems. The book did well because it's a wonderful story but where there is a good book, there is a soulless film studio waiting around the corner looking to profit from it without truly respecting the real story. Okay, so Bob and partner James Bowen both agreed to it and also appear but even when I take my cynical hat off, this is nothing but a shameless cash in - done badly. Maybe not as bad as Marley & Me in terms of changing facts and tone to suit a family film but it skips over important issues regarding homelessness and is very lazy in how it deals with drug addiction. Bob the cat, who plays himself, is by far the best actor in the film and gives the best performance.  Luke Treadaway is awful, and Ruta Gedmintas and Joanne Froggatt aren't much better. It's like watching a group of RADA rejects putting on an am dram production of Trainspotting, but with a cat, directed by a dog. That may sound harsh but I'm not sorry, this is a shamelessly lazy adaptation with only money in mind, the sort of film that gets green lit by producers without them actually reading the book first. Roger Spottiswoode was the worst choice of director. i'm guessing he was hired because he was cheap and had some animal experience (Turner & Hooch). His cat's eye view direction was horrible to sit through and the man just doesn't know when to cut a scene. I'm not sure he's ever made a truly great film but he has many years’ experience, he should have been able to come up with something better than this. It's amateurish, not even good enough for very late night TV. The producers made out it was a Christmas film in the run up to its November release when it couldn't be further from a Christmas film. There is a Christmas scene in the film, shot in the sunshine with bright green leaves on trees in the background. Continuity wasn't considered at all. When the dialogue ran out, the camera just followed Bob, who just sat there for much of the film. It's one of the most contrived pieces of nonsense I have ever seen. I've seen James and Bob many times around Covent Garden, I like James's songs, although he was always more popular as a Big Issue seller. You don't see many cats in central London, so Bob was something of a novelty, but I wouldn't say people flocked to see him as suggested in the film. I'm very happy for James, but there is nothing unique about his story, other than most homeless people (and it should be said James didn't sleep on the streets for very long) don't have cats. Many have dogs but aren't seen as novelty. James is now a millionaire, and good for him, but take away the cat and it’s an age old story. There are many homeless people living rough out there who aren't given the opportunity, that don't have cats, and I'm afraid my cynical hat is back on my head. All that aside, the film is badly written and badly made in all ways. I recommend the book but certainly not the film.

The Yellow Sea

Dir: Na Hong-jin

2010

****

Wow. Na Hong-jin's relentless crime thriller is one of the best in the genre, I'm just not sure why it is still so relatively unknown. It tells the story of Gu-nam, a Joseonjok (ethnic Korean immigrant living in China) down on his luck working as a taxi driver. When not working, he is often found at gambling halls, finding himself further and further in serious debt. His wife left to work in South Korea and promised to send money back but he has yet to hear from her and is tormented by nightmares of her having an extra-marital affair. To make matters worse, Gu-nam is fired from his job and debt collectors take most of his severance pay. After witnessing a drunken display at a gambling hall, local gangster, Myun Jung-hak, offers him a deal. If Gu-nam goes to South Korea to kill a businessman, he will get CN¥57,000 (US$10,000). Gu-nam accepts and leaves for South Korea by train and a rickety fishing boat, with some money for expenses. When Gu-nam arrives in South Korea, he carefully scopes out his target for days, while also searching for his wife on the side. When the time arrives for Gu-nam to take out his target, a string of unexpected events occurs, leaving him desperately looking for a way out. Meanwhile, the police, the South Korean mob, as well as the ethnic Korean Chinese mafia, all frantically search for him. The speed of the film is overwhelming. We watch our anti-hero go from one impossible situation to another with hardly any let up in the plot. However, it is never too much for the senses, it's easy to follow and thrillingly entertaining. The stunts are amazing but never stupid, the action is high end but never ridiculous, indeed, this is an action/thriller that Hollywood would do well to learn from. It's hard to believe, even after watching, that The Yellow Sea is a whopping 140 minutes long. Unthinkable for an action film, or at least until now. To continue to build a film up to a climactic finish over that amount of time is unheard of, but somehow Na Hong-jin pulls it off, quite effortlessly too. It is ultra-realistic but has plenty of cinematic magic. It's pretty violent, brutal even but I have to say it was nice to see an absence of guns in such a film. The insight into Korean culture was also pretty interesting, the disdain for Joseonjoks in South Korea being an interesting plot device. The direction is superb, utterly stunning, hand-held for a lot of the time but still epic in the way it is shot. The performances are also brilliant, Ha Jung-woo is amazing as Gu-nam and Kim Yoon-seok is iconic in his role as the seemingly untouchable mob boss. The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and was easily one of the best films featured. It's awesome, a film that deserves far more credit and the first epic thriller of the decade and definitely one of the best.

Wonder Woman

Dir: Patty Jenkins

2017

***

Hailed incorrectly by many as the first ever female superhero-lead movie, Wonder Woman might as well be. I’m not hating on Supergirl, Catwoman or Elektra but..actually I am hating on Catwoman and Elektra, they were awful, Supergirl is an overlooked masterpiece but not quite right in terms of authenticity. 2017’s Wonder Woman has been hotly anticipated for quite some time, and in many respects the pressure was on to get her right, even more so than the other members of the Justice League, including Superman and Batman. I’m not sure why it took so long really, Batman proved he could be something more than a camp comic-strip in the late 80s and the comics themselves have shown Wonder Woman as the kick-ass superhero that she is for several decades now. So getting her to the screen was half the battle, so I celebrate her big screen debut like everyone else. I read reviews on the film’s first day of release, most were titled something along the lines of ‘Finally, a Superhero for women’ or ‘A female Superhero young girls can finally look up to’ and after watching the film myself I whole-heartedly agree. First and foremost, Gal Gadot’s portrayal of Diana Prince is near perfect. I say Diana Prince as that is who she really is in the film, she may have the costume but her Wonder Woman persona isn’t quite revealed. However, apart from Gal Gadot and the title character, I found the film to be somewhat underwhelming. There are many elements of the film that I did like, I just don’t think the amounted to anything extra special and I think mistakes were made. As far as the story goes, I thought it was a perfect take on Wonder Woman’s classical origin story. It’s pretty authentic, except for some subtle changes, although many of these changes have a appeared in more recent comic books. I loved that this was her journey, from naive idealist, to global superhero. I like that an appropriate amount of time was given to explore her relationship with her mother Hippolyta, Queen of Themyscira (played by Connie Nielsen) and her aunt and secret trainer, General Antiope (played by Robin Wright). Both Nielsen and Wright are awesome in their roles, as are the other Amazonians. Themyscira looked pretty cool too. I loved the development of Diana Prince’s character and the climactic bad-guy reveal was a piece of brilliant writing. I just don’t feel like an awful lot happened in the 2 hours + of footage. Some exterior shots looked like they were made for TV and some of the special effects moments looked like they were out of a late 90s Spice Girls music video. Much like the previous DC movies, the film desperately needed some colour and a bit more of a visual style and some flare. I didn’t like this version of Steve Trevor at all either. Chris Pine seemed like a good choice at first but unlike in all the Star Trek films he’s been in, I could only see Captain Kirk in his performance. It was like watching Wonder Woman and Captain Kirk fight in World War I together, which would have sounded great as a kid (and who knows, it’s probably happened in a comic somewhere) but it didn’t work for me here. I also think he should have been more of a damsel, like he is in the comics, this was supposed to be a female superhero film after all. Don’t get me started on the love scenes and the painful dialogue that accompanied them, I found them to be painful and unnecessary. I get that it took a bunch of World War I solders to teach Diana how to be a hero, and I liked Saïd Taghmaoui, Ewen Bremner and Eugene Brave Rock's characters, I just don't think they fit that well into the story and I'm afraid they were all portraying horrible stereotypes. I think the most interesting character of the whole film was Elena Anaya portrayal as one of Wonder Women's recurring villains Isabel Maru / Doctor Poison. Doctor Poison is a bit rubbish in the comics but this film adaptation of her is brilliant and full of depth. Danny Huston's General Erich Ludendorff is pretty standard if I'm being honest but David Thewlis's character/performance more than made up for it and ended up being the film's highlight - other than Gal Gadot. Overall I thought Wonder Women was brilliant, the character and the performance. The story was good too and I liked the twist at the end. I just thought the picture was in the wrong hands. Monster was a great film but director Patty Jenkins hasn't made a great deal since and I think she was the wrong choice for a big superhero flick. Marvel have pushed the boundaries so far far that I couldn't help but feel underwhelmed by the film in general. There was nearly a great scene but not quite. Every Marvel film has a great scene, the more recent ones have around three of four, Wonder Woman had half of one. I just think the visuals were below standard and let the strong story down and Wonder Woman deserved much more. I'm over the fact that Sandra Bullock nor Lucy Lawless ever made it in the role (as was mooted back in the early 00s) and I'm thrilled we finally have a female superhero film that holds it's own. I just think too many mistakes were made and DC need a re-think when it comes to their visuals. Also, I know DC don't want to go there but a Linda Carter cameo would have been nice.

Chicken

Dir: Joe A. Stephenson

2015

****

Joe A. Stephenson's feature debut (not including the TV movie he made the year before) is sensational. It's a sweet but dark exploration of mental illness and poverty, living on the edges of society. A bleak tale but with of the most wonderful characters in film history. Richard (played by the brilliant Scott Chambers) lives with his brother Polly (Morgan Watkins) in a dilapidated caravan in the grounds of a farm. The owners let them stay as long as they keep themselves to themselves but once the farm is sold and new owners arrive, the brothers find themselves anxious of the future and realise things can't go on the way they are. Richard has undisclosed learning difficulties and spends his days wandering around the farm with his pet chicken. He collects dead animals in the woods and dresses them up and plays tea with them. Kind and curious, he wants more interaction and longs for a normal life. Polly on the other hand is self-destructive, working poorly-pain cash in hand jobs which pay for nightly drinking sessions. Both boys are essentially starving, with no prospects. How they got in this position is never quite made clear, we learn a little about their upbringing and their parents until the film's shocking revelation explains it all. It is rare that a film makes my jaw hit the floor quite like Chicken did. When the new farm owner's daughter Annabell (Yasmin Paige) befriends Richard, he soon becomes besotted and confused. Annabel is brash and bolshie but is softened by Richard's temperament and his struggle. When Polly finds a way of escape, he lets out his own frustrations on Richard and the story comes to a head. It is desperately sad but weirdly uplifting at the same time. Chicken joins the many brilliant low-budget but largely unseen British films being made these days that really do deserve more love. I can't stress just how brilliant Scott Chambers is in the lead role. Joe A. Stephenson had both Chambers and Watkins write biographies from the perspective of their own characters. Stephenson would propose a shared event such as a family argument and would ask the actors to describe their respective reactions. It meant that both actors had a much keener understanding of their roles and it is clear to see they are both passionate about the project and have immersed themselves in their roles. This is how you make a film, any film, not just a low-budget performance driven one. The conclusion is powerful, simple but utterly convincing. A pleasant discovery and a real award contender, had anyone seen it.

Hardcore (AKA The Hardcore Life)

Dir: Paul Schrader

1979

****

Paul Schrader’s allusive 1979 thriller/drama went where many a 70s thriller/drama daren’t tread. Hardcore (or The Hardcore Life as it was known in certain countries – due to its title conflicting with another film), explores the murky world of ‘Hardcore’ pornography, via a neo-conservative revenge narrative. The story sees George C. Scott play Jake, a member of the Calvinist Church, searching for his daughter after she disappears from a youth Church trip to California. Before long, and thanks to the help of a straight-talking and brutally honest private detective Andy (Peter Boyle), he discovers that she is somehow involved in the secret world of 8mm porn films. The more suspicious the underground become, the more Jake plays a role that grants him access, leading him further and further down the rabbit hole. The movie was based on a real true life story. As a high school student, writer-director Paul Schrader had heard about a local teenage girl in Grand Rapids, Michigan who went missing and who eventually was found to have appeared in an adult movie. This local mini scandal organically evolved into the screenplay for this picture. Because of the very religious and conservative city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, the production operated under the name "The Pilgrim" during filming. When it was revealed that the title would be "Hardcore," many businesses and citizens were upset saying they would likely not have allowed production to film at their locations had they known the title. While there is nudity within the film, it isn’t what you would describe as ‘Hardcore’ but there is enough to shock a contemporary audience, never mind a 1979 audience. Pornography is out in the open these days, not necessarily a good thing but back in the late 70s it was still very underground in most cities. However, the dark and murky world of porn is still prevalent, today ‘Hardcore’ doesn’t mean quite what it did then, but underage films and ones involving snuff elements do sadly exist. So when Jake finds his daughter is involved with a man famous in the snuff world, he takes matters into his own hands, leading to a brutal climax. It’s classic Paul Schrader, both in the way it is written and how it is beautifully directed. Warren Beatty originally wanted to play the lead, but, according to Schrader, "he wouldn't take me as a director. And in his version, it would have been his wife, not his daughter, who split for the Coast. No good. I held out. I turned down a very large sum of money. I went after [George C.] Scott and I got him. One of the greatest actors in the world.” However, Scott and Schrader did not get along, so much so that at one point Scott refused to come out of his trailer and threatened to quit the film. Scott only agreed to come out after forcing Schrader to promise that he would never direct again (thankfully, Schrader went back on his promise). Peter Boyle and Dick Sargent are both good in their supporting roles but it is Season Hubley who really impresses in her somewhat broken role. Schrader was always very good an exploring sub-cultures and real lives that were secret and unfamiliar to many. Hardcore isn’t regarded in the same way as Blue Collar is, or seen as iconic as some of the other films Schrader has written in his career but for me it is up there as one of his best, and most overlooked. It’s worth watching for George C. Scott’s amazing performance alone.

Jagged Edge

Dir: Richard Marquand

1985

**

An intruder in a black mask ties up San Francisco socialite Paige Forrester (Maria Mayenzet) at her remote beach house and kills her with a hunting knife. He writes the word "Bitch" on the wall with her blood. Her husband Jack (Jeff Bridges) is arrested for her murder by Thomas Krasny (Peter Coyote), a district attorney. Jack tries to hire high-profile lawyer Teddy Barnes (Glenn Close) to defend him. Barnes used to work for Krasny, and she is reluctant to take the case, as she stopped working in himself in his cell," which distresses her. Barnes visits Sam Ransom, a private detective who used to work for Krasny's office as well. He stopped private investigations at the same time that criminal law after an incident with Krasny. Krasny runs into Barnes. He tells her that "Henry Styles hanged Barnes left Krasny's office, and it becomes clear that the Styles case was the reason. Barnes decides to take the case. While preparing for the trial, Barnes and Forrester spend a great deal of time together, and eventually sleep together. If this all sounds like a cheesy 80s murder thriller to you then you’d be right, that is exactly what it is. However, Jagged Edge is very much the wrong kind of cheesy. If I were to pick another dairy-themed method of describing I would probably describe Jagged Edge as rotten milk, the fragrant lumpy variety. I love Jeff Bridges and could watch him in just about anything but his performance didn’t work for me here at all, not because of him though, but because his character is so badly written. The whole film is badly written, it’s never clever, it just uses tired old tricks, the sort of tricks that Hitchcock condemned decades before. The killer uses a typewriter with a dodgy letter ‘t’, revelations about the case come out during the court hearings as if the case hadn’t been investigated before reacting the courtroom and the ‘bleedin’ obvious’ is constantly overlooked by each and every character. It is, at times, a frustrating watch. I can’t say I was that enamored by Glenn Close’s performance either, neither her nor Bridges were cast well. The supporting cast were pretty good, Coyote, James Karen and Robert Loggia’s performances were all fine, they were pros and gave their best even though I’m sure they knew the film wasn’t great. I had more fun however spotting the ‘before they were famous’ actors, Michael Dorn being my favorite. I got excited when I saw Lance Henriksen pop up but alas, his screen time was short lived. It is not a particularly thrilling thriller, it is full of clichés – done badly, and it was very clear who the killer was and what the final outcome would be. The ending is pretty horrible and it feels like a final insult when you realise you’ve spent (wasted) an hour and a half of your life watching it.