2073**

Just watched Asif Kapadia’s new film 2073. It’s an odd and not particularly successful mashup of 80pc contemporary political doc and 20pc dystopian fictional film. The doc is depressing but doesn’t have anything new to say about how Big Tech is subverting democracy. And even Samantha Morton can’t save the awkwardly morose 2073 sections set in a climate-ravaged world. I think the problem may be that in a week when Elon Musk is literally trying to subvert British democracy and Mark Zuckerberg decided to appease the Felon-In-Chief, we don't really need a nicely edited clip reel of how the world is going to hell in a hand basket. The issue isn't complacency. The issue is that we are all too well-informed and all too clueless as to how to stop it. (You notice here, that I assume no-one who like Musk and Trump are going to watch this, let alone be persuaded by it). So, in the final analysis, this is just a pointless but worthy agit-doc that is preaching to the converted.

 

2073 has a running time of 85 minutes. It played Venice, Sitges and London 2024. It opened in the USA on December 27th 2024 and in the UK on January 1st 2025.

CIVIL WAR*****

CIVIL WAR is a film that is politically, visually and aurally challenging. It is vital, important and politically astute.  I think a lot of criticism that's been thrown at it about being apoliticalis unfair and I'll get into why.  But most of all this is a film that sits with you - that moves you - that provokes you to thought and also features one of the most hilarious drop tracks of De La Soul's Say No Go! What more can you want from a film?

CIVIL WAR has been written and directed by Alex Garland who started off as a novelist with The Beach and then moved into writing for film and then directing. He created the amazing TV show Devs and actually a lot of the cast from that reappear in this film. He has come to represent one of the most thoughtful voices about the real structural challenges facing us as a species which I can't believe I'm saying because it sounds so pretentious! But films like EX MACHINA and 28 DAYS LATER challenge what it is to be human and a morally centred being. And now with CIVIL WAR he is tackling head on political divisiveness and everything about the current times in which we live that pit person against person, identity against identity, and tribe against tribe.

In its structure, this movie it is a road movie.  It's four journalists in a car going from New York to Washington DC. It stars Kirsten Dunst as Lee Miller, named after the real life journo who was first into Dachau. This is referenced in the film so Alex Garland is being very explicit about his references. I also think the character is based on the late Marie Colvin.  Lee is accompanied by Joel who's played by Wagner Moura of Narcos fame. He is charismatic and a really good counterbalance to Kirsten Dunst's Lee who is  held together tightly as if all her trauma might spill out if she cracks a smile. Lee and Joel have two interlopers in the car. First, we have have Sammy played by Steven McKinley Henderson. He'll be known to you if you watch Devs. He is an old school reporter and it's implied that he worked or still does work for the New York Times. He doesn't think they should be going to DC but he also wants that story. Lee and Joel are also accompanied by a very young aspiring photo journalist who kind of blags a ride. She is called Jesse and is played by Cailee Spaeny, who recently played Priscilla Presley in Sophia Coppola's biopic.  

In a sense the Journey of the film is twofold.  We're going from New York to DC to see what hell is happening in America but also I think that there's a message about generation Z having to confront the reality of what is happening and get blooded into war. There is a tragic mantel being handed from Lee to Jessie - a toughening up and a hardening and a locking down of emotion. I have seen some people criticize the character of Jessie and I would say the only flaw I find in this film is the final interaction between the two photo journalists. I'm not going to say more for fear of spoiling it but I think I would have maybe played that slightly differently or written it differently.

Our four journalists start off in a New York that is having power cuts and where there are violent protests and suicide bombers. As they journey down to DC they've got to skirt around Philadelphia to somehow get to DC which is the front line of the Civil War then as now.  They're seeing an America that's ravaged and where armed militia have taken the breakdown in institutional authority as an opening to wield their own authority.  

Nowhere is that more chillingly conveyed than in a short cameo by Jesse Plemons, who of course is the real life husband of Kirsten Dunst. He has a very small role to play but it's absolutely I think the the philosophical and political heart of this film. He asks a question of each of our journalists: "what kind of Americans are you?" I think that to me is the line of the film because it hints at the fact that it's no longer enough to say you're an American.  You have to say if you are a progressive or a Republican or a Mega supporter or a whatever it is - whatever label - whatever qualifier.  This is the problem that leads to the War, and I would bet you money this scene comes half way through the film.

The political setup of this film has caused a lot of controversy and I don't really understand why. There is a president of the United States and it is not ambiguous at all: this guy is a fascist! How do we know? He serving his third term and we know that's illegal under the Constitution right. We know he's abolished the FBI. We know he has ordered the Army to shoot on American citizens. So this guy's a Fascist and later on when they're talking about potentially getting an interview with him Sammy who's the older journalist says you know these these dictators always disappoint you when you meet them - Ceaucescu, Gaddafi et al - when you meet them in the flesh they are smaller men than you think they're going to be so he's clearly bracketing the President in that category.

What is I think troubling to some people is that the people fighting this fascist takeover or the two states of the Western Forces are Texas and California that's blowing people's minds right because you have what's perceived to be a very right-wing State and a very left-wing State joining forces in this film.  But you've got to free yourself from your contemporary politics and you've just got to see this is the way the film's going to position itself so as to speak to both sides of the aisle.  Moreover, the film is making a point about how people abuse military power. We see the official United States Army massacring civilians but we also see individual militia committing extra-judicial murder and lynchings and even the liberating WF army is shooting unarmed civilians. So  I think there is a message there about how invading forces act and maybe it's a commentary on what Imperial forces have done throughout history but I think the message that Alex Garland is going is giving in this film is they're but for the grace of God. I think he's making a point that however this fascism begins and whichever of the states comes together to fight against it it's going to unleash the worst of us.

I cannot speak highly enough of this film. I think it's beautifully shot and beautifully acted.  I would love to see Kirsten dun and Jesse Plemons up for awards.  I think it packs an emotional punch.  I think there are images that are just haunting and I really hope it serves to tell its audience on both sides of the political aisle "look where this leads if we don't find some kind of common ground and some kind of ability to talk through our differences in a civil manner (pun intended) as opposed to splitting into identitarian tribes where one side's good one side's evil and and conversations impossible and we are only left with the most extreme options this is film making at its finest and I hope it gets the audience it deserves."

Civil War is rated R it has running time of 109 minutes it it is currently on release in the UK and the USA. It is no coincidence that it's been released on April 12th - 13th - the anniversary of the Battle of Fort Sumter in 1861 and the start of the US Civil War.

THE KITCHEN** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 Closing Night Gala

Acclaimed actor Daniel Kaluuya (JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH) turns his hand to writing and directing in partnership with Joe Murtagh (AMERICAN ANIMALS) and Kibwe Tavares respectively.  Together they have crafted a film that is superficially a dystopian political nightmare about gentrification and police brutality.  But it soon becomes apparent that the film's real themes are of fatherhood and community. 

The film takes place in The Kitchen - the last piece of social housing in London. The government wants the residents cleared out so that they can build luxury flats instead, and when the residents refuse to leave they are punished by having their utilities cut off and periodic brutal police raids. Against this backdrop we meet Izi - a cynical man desperate to leave The Kitchen for luxury housing but constrained by the sudden appearance of a young boy called Benji who may be his son. What are the stakes of this film? At first we think they are whether Izi will have the money to move out. Then we think it's going to be a struggle for Benji's future - on the straight and narrow with Izi or joining a biker gang. 

Part of my problem with this film is that actually the dystopian future idea is never particularly well fleshed out. We are just meant to understand - instinctively - as contemporary Londoners - that the housing situation is rigged. Maybe we do - but will global audiences?  My second issue is that there are literally zero female characters that matter. In 2023. In a progressive, politically aware film.  Seriously? I guess the writers might say that this is because the entire point of the film is to focus on fatherhood, and that its key narrative arc is a selfish man taking on that responsibility. Maaaaybe. Overall, the film just feels underwritten and lugubrious. I enjoyed the creation of The Kitchen in the first hour but very little actually happened.  As I said, I could and did enjoy derping around with these characters for a while. I really enjoyed the more informal banter about cardamom flavoured pancakes and Hawaiian dancer lamps. But at some point we need to get out of The Shire.

In front of the lens, Kane Robinson/Kano (Top Boy) shows little range as Izi, playing him as looking conflicted and staring into the middle distance all the time. He doesn't have much help from a script that makes him taciturn so this role needed some good, nuanced facial acting and we just didn't get it.  We are on far more impressive ground with Jedaiah Bannerman, who is both heart-breaking and hilarious as Benji. He is an actor to watch.  I will also confess that I got a thrill from seeing Ian Wright playing the voice and heart of The Kitchen, a DJ who spins classic vinyl while preaching solidarity. As a Gooner, I could happily watch hours of Wrighty vibing along to classic tracks. I am pleased and relieved to say that this is no cheap cameo either: Lord Kitchener is the emotional heartbeat of the plot.

Behind the lens, production design did wonders with what I suspect was a small budget. I loved the grungy, vibrant, rotting, exciting, space of The Kitchen.  It felt real somehow, and something worth fighting for, which is really important. This also felt disturbingly like the present - maybe because the budget to do anything too radical wasn't there - maybe because the film-makers were making a point - maybe because I am so familiar with the shooting locations I knew exactly where they were. Isn't it funny how people wanting to create the future always come back to my beloved brutalist notorious Barbican Centre?  I also really loved the aural landscape of this film - the richness and diversity of hearing a cappella gospel; bass-thumping EDM; and classic tracks from Lord Kitchener. But films start and end with scripts and this one needed another pass.

THE KITCHEN has a running time of 104 minutes, is rated R, and will be released on Netflix in 2024.

FINGERNAILS** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Official Competition - Day 6

FINGERNAILS is a social satire that reads like LOBSTER-lite in a retconned 1980s America - sort of like Lanthimos meets Gondry but with a gentler more sporadic sense of humour.  I suspect that inside Christos Nikou's two hour film there's an absolutely cracking one hour episode of Black Mirror waiting to be edited out on Final Cut Pro. 

The high concept of the film is that couples can check if they are really in love by allowing scientists to yank off a fingernail each and run some kind of cockamamie test. The problem is that most couples, who might have been quite happy, discover that the computer says they are not compatible. Similarly, our protagonist Anna (Jessie Buckley) has tested positive, but is actually running through the motions with her boyfriend Ryan (The Bear's Jeremy Allen White).  The person she's actually attracted to is her colleague at the Love Institute, played by ROGUE ONE's Riz Ahmed. 

I guess there's some interesting stuff here about the social pressures of the wellness industry making you second guess your own instincts. But we've seen this done better, darker, nastier and frankly funnier before. The only real saving grace of this version is Riz Ahmed, who is really very funny indeed.

FINGERNAILS is rated R and has a running time of 113 minutes. It played Toronto, San Sebastian and London 2023. It goes on limited release in the USA on October 27th before being released on streaming on Apple TV a week later globally.

This is not a review of WHITE NOISE - BFI London Film Festival 2022 - Day 2

Noah Baumbach's adaptation of the Don DeLillo academic / western proseperity satire is mystifyingly opaque and uninvolving. We are presented with a central couple that are spoiled, self-involved and unlikeable. The dad is an ego-driven college professor who teaches Hitler studies but can't speak German. He's married to a woman, Babette, who is numbing herself to the inevitability of death with pills. They have a gaggle of precocious kids who all seem to be obsessed with death and calamity while all the while being surrounded by the detritus of American consumerism and endless layers of meaningless conversation and noise. There's no-one to like. That's probably the point. But then it makes it harder to care about their reactions to the Airborne Toxic Event that happens when a lorry crashes near their home town.  They're evacuated. The dad is exposed to toxins. Or is he? Is the evacuation real or a simulation or a simulation that takes advantage of real events?

It's all very clever but I feel reality has moved beyond what this movie was satirising in the mid 80s.  Academia is now so far up its meta-textual Critical Theorised arse that the de-contextualised lecture duel between Driver's Hitler professor and Don Cheadle's Elvis obsessive seems pale meat compared to the BS that actually takes place now. (I should explain I am academe-adjacent IRL).  

And yes, the film is making a point about late-stage capitalism and misinformation and misdirection but I feel that in a post-Trump world this is all stuff we a) know and b) get bigger darker laughs from on the Colbert Late Show each night.

So I walked out after an hour.

WHITE NOISE has a running time of 137 minutes. It played the Venice and BFI London Film Festivals and will be released on Netflix on December 30th.

This is not a review of DON'T WORRY DARLING

....because my husband and I left the screening after an hour of tedium. He suggested I title this non-review, Worry Darling, but I responded that this would imply a level of engagement and giving a shit that simply wasn't earned.

To be clear, I came into the screening without prejudice, and with some hope of a good time given how much I liked director Olivia Wilde's debut feature, BOOKSMART.  But as the soon as the movie began there was an eery feeling of being trapped in a mash-up of all the fake-world dystopian greatest hits, with all of the style and little to actually say that was new and of note.  A cursory googling of the remainder of the plot reveals that my husband and I had predicted the plot twist and inevitable ending.

I do rather wonder how this movie was greenlit. In a world where STEPFORD WIVES is so commonplace a concept in popular culture - where we've all watched Westworld and Good Life - where we've all seen THE VILLAGE - did anyone stop to ask if Wilde had anything new to say on the subject of men trying to control women in a fake 1950s world?  

Even the look of the film is derivative. There's nothing in the way the characters are dressed that costume designer Janie Bryant didn't do better in Mad Men. And as for Wilde's choice of framing and camera shots, this all felt overly stylised but not to a constant theme - as if she were throwing together every outlandish idea without a real directorial vision of what she was trying to achieve. Worst of all there was no slow build of tension and unease, as in Jordan Peele's superb GET OUT. For a film that wants us to hate a misogynistic husband for telling his horrified wife to stop being hysterical, this movie is hysterical from about 7 minutes in.

In front of the lens, Florence Pugh is a rare talent and carries this film such as we saw it. Harry Styles is basically Harry Styles as her husband. One wonders if they wrote in that he was British because he couldn't be arsed - or simply - literally - just didn't have the acting talent - to do an American accent. The only performance that felt raw and moving was that of Kiki Lane as the profoundly and rightly disturbed Margaret, but we saw precious little of her, as reported on her social media. 

DON'T WORRY DARLING is rated R and has a running time of 123 minutes. The film played Venice 2022 and is on release in cinemas.

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

You can listen to a podcast review of this film here or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

In a post-apocalyptic future, petrol and water are scarce. Daddy controls the water in Citadel and so controls the people. The young woman are Breeders to be used at will, the old women provide mother's milk, the men are turned into fanatical warriors bewitched by a cultish vision of glorious death and Valhalla.  Into this world steps a hero. Not Mad Max but Imperatur Furiosa - Charlize Theron as a kind of Ripley - riding the War Rig to Gastown across the Badlands until she hangs a right and goes off-road to the Green Place, carrying Daddy's Breeders.  So begins a two hour car-chase of epic and gonzo proportions. The war-rig, guarded by its henchman, gone rogue.  Daddy following with all the martial glory of the Citadel - chopped up bikes and cars teeming with war-boys & a fire-breathing guitar not to mention all the gangsters roaming the sand-dunes.  But Furiosa is better than them all, and this is her story, her journey and her redemption.  Max? Well, Max is just a blood-bag, strapped to the front axle of a war-buggy with a blood transfusion feeding a war-boy called Nux.  He's not peripheral. But he's not central either.

INSURGENT

You can listen to a podcast review of this film below:

INSURGENT is the second instalment of the Divergent series based on the popular young adult novels by Veronica Roth.  I didn't review the first film even though I did see it on DVD. The movie just struck me as so derivative and banal and mechanical that I just couldn't be bothered. There wasn't anything bad about it per se - it was slick and well-acted for the most part - but there wasn't anything to get me excited either.  Sadly, that characterisation applies to the sequel too. It's well-made, well-acted for the most part, and full of great CGI action set-pieces.  But it's so mechanical, so derivative and so predictable that I found myself watching it in a rather mechanical way - utterly detached from the emotional journey.

THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY - PART 1

The late Philip Seymour Hoffman as show producer Plutarch Heavensbee
and Julianne Moore as rebel President Coin.

MOCKINGJAY is a dirge of a film. Two hours of hackneyed dialogue, J-Law stumbling around debris with PTSD interspersed with the occasional attempt at a rousing speech for rebellion.  The movie has no pace, no flow, no excitement, largely because it's basically pre-amble to the final showdown between the oppressed masses and the ruthless President of this dystopian future dictatorship.  I'm not sure how the young fans of Suzanne Collins' wildly successful books will react to the style and content of this film but I found the shift in tone from the gladiatorial action of the first two films to the attempt at earnest commentary on war jarring.  Which isn't to say it isn't an honourable attempt at engaging with contemporary politics, but my god it isn't entertaining either.  

As the movie opens, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) has been rescued from the Hunger Games and wakes up traumatised in District 13 - an austere military bunker run by the sinister President Coin  (a typically steely Julianne Moore).  Coin decides to pimp Katniss out in much the same way as her nemesis President Snow (a 2-D villain played with mustache-twirling glee by Donald Sutherland) did.  Instead of schmaltzy TV interviews for the state, Katniss now does supposedly impromptu Churchillian speeches urging the rebels to rise up - all of which have been expertly stage managed by Coin and her on-the-ground director Cressida (Natalie Dormer).  The movie cruises toward the inevitable showdown contrasting the "propos" with the terrorist/freedom fighter acts in various districts. And all the time, in the background, there's Katniss' demand that Peeta be rescued, culminating in an extraction that is clearly inspired by the Navy SEALS raid on Abbotabad.  All of this is fine, except that it gets undercut by the hokey dialogue and plot turns.  Of COURSE, when Katniss rescues her sister's cat we just now there's going to be some perilous plot moment when rescuing the cat places Katniss in jeopardy.  And the scenes near the end when President Coin commands her troops against a state bombing campaign reeks on the final scenes in STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE.

Overall, I'm not sure whether they really needed to cut the final book into two films. This first part could easily have been much shorter - just one propo - just one montage of the people rising up - because what we want to get to is the final fifteen minutes of Part 1 and then all of Part 2.  I applaud the good intentions to get gritty and real but once again, I'm just not sure how this constitutes any kind of credible storytelling in a world of such outlandish fantasy costumes and hokey dialogue and cartoon villains. 

MOCKINGJAY has a running time of 123 minutes, is rated PG and is on global release.

THE MAZE RUNNER

THE MAZE RUNNER is the latest in a series of dystopian action films aimed at the teenage market and adapted from successful Young Adult fiction franchises.  As with HUNGER GAMES and DIVERGENT we find ourselves in a post apocalyptic America where teenagers are pitted against each other in a kind of mad game, society riven by factions and controlled by some kind of overlord.  In this case, the protagonist isn't a girl but a boy, Thomas (Teen Wolf's Dylan O'Brien) who wakes up to find himself inside a Glade enclosed by the Maze.  A society of Lost Boys explains the rules to him - each person has a role in society, and the runners get to go inside the Maze and find food, although to be trapped overnight is to be killed by the Grievers.  A girl called Teresa (Kaya Scodelario) is sent into the mix with two vials of anti-venom and a jolting Big Reveal in the final 30 minutes of the film.  Be assured that if you're familiar with the genre, it won't be a big surprise.

What the plot lacks in originality or genuine scares, it makes up for in good acting. The mostly British lead cast sport know how to sell the complex emotions of abandonment, brute cruelty, camaraderie and mistrust.  Thomas Brodie Sangster (GAME OF THRONES) is very sympathetic as one of the Glade's leaders, and Will Poulter is, as ever, the most captivating of the actors in a tricky unsympathetic role. The movie has a far lower budget than HUNGER GAMES or DIVERGENT but this isn't a problem. It is beautifully designed and the lack of big show piece effects focusses the audience's attention on the characters. 

Overall the familiarity of the set-up is a bit of a problem, as is the occasionally hammy dialogue. But I'm sufficiently interested to see what's next to welcome the inevitable sequel.

THE MAZE RUNNER has a running time of 113 minutes and is rated PG-13.  The movie is on global release.

Random DVD Round-Up - DIVERGENT

DIVERGENT. Hmmm. What to say about this film, based on a wildly successful set of Young Adult books by Veronica Roth which I have not read, and which from the look of this film are unfortunate enough to sit in the shadow of THE HUNGER GAMES. To wit, we are in an American dystopian future with people oppressed by some kind of self-elected elite.  Our plucky heroine, Tris (Shailene Woodley - THE DESCENDANTS) is much like Katniss, someone of unusual talent and resourcefulness competing in a a kind of martial game to break through into some kind of better future.  In this case, the citizens of the world are categorised by their dominant personality trait. Tris, in true Harry Potter style, sits uneasily across the thresholds and opts to leave her parents 'house' Abnegation for Dauntless, while her brother opts for the Erudites. What follows are training challenges that play out much like Games, and a good dose of romance with the enigmatic but hot "Four" (Theo James).  Naturally, Tris hooks up with a bunch of the least promising trainees, and guess what, they eventually come out on top after banding together and being nice. Ultimately there is some kind of showdown in the first strike in a civil war between the factions.  There's meant to be a hugely emotional moment but at this point I was so numb to it, it floated right by me. I just didn't care about the people, the fight, and the whole movie felt like a pale shadow of HUNGER GAMES.  Maybe that's unfair - maybe if I'd seen or read Divergent first I wouldn't have felt so turned off. But it is what it is.  Shailene Woodley is a great actress but somehow a soupy romance with Four plays far more simplistically than the complex triangle comprised by political exigency in THE HUNGER GAMES.  Or maybe it's because THE HUNGER GAMES pushes the dystopian fantasy farther and crazier - Effie Trinket, I'm looking at you - or that it's satire on modern pop culture is more biting.  Whatever the reason, DIVERGENT feels very, very thin by comparison.  

DIVERGENT has a running time of 139 minutes and is rated PG-13. It is available to rent and own in most countries. It opens in China on September 8th.

DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES is a handsome, earnest if somewhat hamfisted sci-fi action movie that dazzles visually but grates emotionally.  

Five years after the events of the reboot, Caesar (Andy Serkis), the genetically modified intelligent ape has founded a colony and a family in the forests outside of San Francisco.  His original owner (James Franco) is presumed dead from the deadly Simian Virus that has reduced mankind to small isolated survivor groups of the genetically immune.  The structure of the story is symmetrical - the apes and humans have to fashion a new society and decide how to engage with their enemy. In both camps we have the peaceful diplomats - wise Caesar and scientist Malcolm (Jason Clarke).  And in both camps we have the battle-scarred and distrustful war-mongerers - Koba (Toby Kebbell) and Dreyfus (Gary Oldman).  

MOOD INDIGO aka L'ECUME DES JOURS

The movies of Michel Gondry have a kind of whimsical joy in making and doing - a kind of home-made gonzo cut out and paste feel that belies their deeply felt emotions and philosophical musings.  And MOOD INDIGO, his latest movie, is very much in that tradition of surreal, tragicomic, visually inventive joyousness - a movie that could only ever unmistakably have come from his imagination - that echoes all that is glorious in THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP.

Based on the French cult novel by Boris Vivan, the movie begins as a magical surreal love story with the earnest, generous and lovely Colin (Romain Duris - MOLIERE) wooing and winning the equally adorable Chloe (Audrey Tautou - COCO BEFORE CHANEL). At the same time, the apparently independently wealthy Colin lives a life of crazy cocktails, dance crazes and eccentric friends. He has apparently hired a high-powered lawyer (Omar Sy) as his chef and he's bankrolling his best friend Chick (Gad Elmaleh) as he wooes his sweetheart Alise (Aïssa Maïga - BAMAKO). But as the movie progresses, the colour literally drains from this fairytale world of wind-up toys and stop-motion bubble-car chases.  Poor Chloe inhales a waterlilly seed that grows on her lungs and threatens her life. We start to see the sci-fi dystopian reality at the edges of this picture-postcard world. Some kind of strange war or maybe an environmental disaster overlaid with a wasting of money and dark addiction. 

The resulting film is hard to categorise, and I would imagine, hard to sell. Is it a light romantic comedy complete with its own trademark dance craze? Or is it a deeply depressing dirge? Can it be both whimsical music-box and profound comment on inner corruption?  Yes - triumphantly yes!  It's like Gilliam and Disney and Jean-Pierre Jeunet mixed together in a delightful, provocative confection - a film that is genuinely unique - and my film of the year to date. 

MOOD INDIGO has a running time of 131 minutes but the version I saw had a running time of 94 minutes and is rated 12A for moderate violence and nudity.

MOOD INDIGO was released earlier this year in Belgium and France. It opens this weekend in Hungary and the Netherlands. It opens on June 27th in Russia, on June 28th in Brazil, on July 5th in Poland, on July 18th in the Ukraine, on August 1st in Hong Kong, on August 2nd in Lithuania, on September 6th in Taiwan, on September 12th in Australia and Italy, on September 27th in Spain, on October 3rd in Germany, on October 5th in Japan, on October 24th in Greece, on October 25th in Finland, on November 7th in Denmark, on December 19th in Singapore, on December 20th in Sweden, on January 2nd 2015 in Portugal, on January 17th in Mexico, and on July 18th in the USA.

HOW I LIVE NOW

HOW I LIVE NOW is a deeply odd film - half teen angst romance, half dystopian road movie.  In the first half, precocious teen actress Saoirse Ronan (ATONEMENT) plays the rebellious American teen Daisy who is shipped by her uncaring father to stay with her country bumpkin cousins in England.  At first, she's cool and aloof but is soon won over by their ramshackle charm - especially that of the brooding eldest son (and her first cousin) Edmond, played by George Mackay (SUNSHINE ON LEITH).  The backdrop to this sunkissed coming-of-age summer is an impending war.  What I really like is that because these kids are in the country, rather than in some sprawling urban metropolis, we're not seeing those standard shots of terrorist bombs in London. Rather, we're seeing fighter jets fly over head and small kids say, "wow, that's cool" before running off to a picnic.  

Once the war comes, the surrounding topsy-turviness allows Daisy and Edmond to have a taboo relationship and to commit, in their narcissistic teen angst, to make their way back to the farm if they are split up, which naturally they soon are.  What then follows is a kind of road movie through wartorn Britain, where we see the standard, rather lazy shots of cars overturned on motorways, and troops rounding up civilians.  There are hints at how the terrorists have brought England to its knees - and apparently much of Europe too - by poisoning the water supply, for instance.

Each part of the movie worked well enough on its own terms.  Ronan is a good enough actress to bring greater authenticity to the love story than the kids in TWILIGHT ever did.  And I liked the hints and glimpses of the dystopian England and found them to be truly sinister.  I even liked the fact that director Kevin Macdonald was allowing his heroine to be spiky and selfish rather than an instant maternal figure for her little cousin.  But the two halves of the film just didn't cohere.  And despite some strikingly gruesome visuals, I never felt the heroine was in genuine peril - or at least enough peril to make the final road movie genuinely thrilling.

All in all, a rather disappointing film, then - bulging with interesting ideas but lacking in follow through. 

An audio review of this movie is available below:

HOW I LIVE NOW has a running time of 101 minutes and is rated 15 in the UK. It played the Toronto Film Festival in 2013 and is currently on release in the UK, Ireland and Hungary. It will be released in the USA and Russia on November 8th, in Greece on November 14th and in France on February 19th. 

London Film Fest Day 11 - METROPIA

METROPIA is a derivative dystopian sci-fi flick raised above the parapet by its superb and novel animation and brought back down by the essential ridiculousness of its main concept.

Set in 2024, humanity has been brought low by environmental degradation. The world is enveloped in a grey fog, concrete buildings rot, and litter scatters the streets. In other words, this is the environment of every sci-fi flick you've seen. As usual, big business is the enemy, as embodied by Ivan Bahn (Udo Kier), the head of Metropia - the company that linked all of Europe's metro systems. The project was conceived as a peace initiative - making Europe truly one country - and of course, all of us have horror-flashbacks to the last person who tried that, and indeed the last movie, set on a train system, to explore it, Lars von Trier's superb EUROPA EUROPA aka ZENTROPA. Writer-director Tarik Saleh also takes no chances on his protagonist, a boring everyman call-centre worker called Roger. He's firmly in the vein of Orwell's Winston Smith, or Terry Gilliam's Sam Lowry. He has a lovely girlfriend but he dreams of the hot chick on his shampoo bottle. He's also convinced that something's not quite write on the metro and takes the seemingly outlandish step of riding his bike to work. The movie works as a sort of Hitchcock thriller, in which our hero gets enchanted by a Hitchcock blonde - the beautiful Nina of shampoo-bottle fame. Together they try to work out why Roger can hear a voice in his head telling him what to do.

Now, my fundamental issue with the film is that I find the precise means by which the standard-issue evil corporation is going to take over the world absolutely ridiculous. Because, ladies and gentleman, The Man is going to control your mind through.....wait for it.....anti-dandruff shampoo. Yes yes.

The good news is that this film is so technically well-made and perfectly cast that you can almost ignore the fundamentally stupid concept at its centre. The film-makers have basically photo-shopped the frack out of real photos of real people. The result is incredibly unsettling and alienating - characters that look recognisably human but have been subtly distorted. It gives you the creeps - in a good way. The same can be said of the design of the environment. It all looks like our world but subtly distorted - made to look older - like a WW2 film - but futuristic at the same time. It's wonderfully unsettling. Vincent Gallo is superb as the voice of Roger - capturing the whiny, paranoid but no-nonsense character - and Alexander Skarsgard (of TRUE BLOOD fame) is spookily well-matched as his "inner voice" Stefan.

So what can I say? On balance, do I think this film works? For me, no. But my goodness, it was wonderful to look at.

METROPIA played Venice, Sitges and London 2009. It opens in Sweden on November 27th.