CATHERINE CALLED BIRDY****

Lena Dunham's adaptation of Karen Cushman's apparently famous Young Adult novel is an absolute delight - but more than that - it's a film that is also profound and moving. It stars Bella Ramsay (Lyanna Mormont in GAME OF THRONES) as an early medieval tomboyish teenage girl whose impecunious aristocratic father has to marry her off to save his manor. We discover the constraints upon medieval girls through her naive but steadfast eyes. She is as fierce and captivating on screen as she was in GOT and shows real range - from physical comedy to high drama. 

But the real brilliance of this film is in the quartet of adults Dunham/Cushman surround Birdy with. Her father, Lord Rollo (a deliciously debauched Andrew Scott) could easily be the villain of the piece, given that he's effectively pissed away the family fortune, keeps knocking up his wife despite the risks to her health, and beats Birdy whenever she frightens away another suitor. But in writer-director Lena Dunham's hands, and thanks to an incredibly nuanced performance from Scott, Lord Rollo is actually a literally pathetic character - who knows full well the sacrifice he is asking his daughter to make, but sees no other way out. 

We get a similarly fascinating performance from Billie Piper as Birdy's "mumma" - a serially pregnant lady of the manor, with little actual power beyond endurance. She envies Birdy's spirit, which has not yet been broken, but sees no real out for her. We also see the possibilities within an arranged marriage - something that as an Asian I appreciated. Because while there is no doubt that Rollo married his wife for her title and money, there's also no doubt that he's desperately in love with her, and their children. Even if Birdy drives him nuts.

Similarly, the absurdly over-cast Sophie Okonedo (last time I saw her she was playing Cleopatra opposite Ralph Fiennes at the National for pity's sake) is joyously enjoyable as the glamorous, rich widow Ethelfrisa, but even she has to play the game within its rules, and yearns to run away. At first, we are seduced into the idea that at least SHE is picking her own spouse, and frankly, is objectifying him. But the reality is more complex. 

And then we have her spouse, Uncle George, played by Joe Alwyn aka Mr Taylor Swift - a man as his character used to being overshadowed by a brilliant, richer woman? His character is a meta investigation of the hero-knight teenage dream, clearly suffering from his experience in the Crusades, burdened with the unhealthy hero-worshipping of his niece, and in a marriage of convenience of his own.

Beyond the superb writing and acting, this film is extremely well put together, from its use of period locations, its character-propelling costumes, to a quite wonderful score from Carter Burwell that mixes haunting, otherworldly madrigals and recast modern pop tunes. If I were to have one criticism its that I found it perhaps around 20 minutes too long - a touch saggy in its middle sections before we continue on our plot-driven quest for Birdy's husband.

CATHERINE CALLED BIRDY is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 108 minutes. The film played Toronto 2022 and is on release on streaming services.

REBECCA

Daphne Du Maurier's nasty little thriller, Rebecca, is both iconic as a short story and as its film adaptation by Hitchcock. It's a grim tale about a banal simpering middle class spinster who falls for an unattainable rich aristocratic widower.  Which is not to say she doesn't attain him. For reasons that are still murky to me, he marries her, maybe to protect himself from the ghosts of his first and titular wife.  But the new, unnamed wife will never really possess her husband because he remains obsessed by the cynical and manipulative Rebecca - a woman beloved by all including her obsessive and diabolical housekeeper Mrs Danvers.  At the end of the novel, there is no happy ending. The couple are trapped overseas in a loveless and frigid marriage. The only triumph is that the second Mrs De Winter realises her husband never loved his first wife. At the end of the Hitchcock version we get a slightly soupier Hollywood ending. Joan Fontaine's second wife has gathered some courage and supported Laurence Olivier through his trial. He clings to her like a parasite. But it's no marriage of equals. Nonetheless, both original novel and film are of a tone - sinister, nasty, dark, cynical, blighted, thwarted and corrupt. It is Rebecca who sets the tone.

In this new adaptation by a director I very much admire, Ben Wheatley, the tone is altogether different. The south of France is lush and sunlit and Mr De Winter and his second wife (Armie Hammer and Lily James) seem young, healthy, vibrant and jarringly contemporary despite the period setting.  He takes her home to a lavish mansion but instead of the gothic gloom of the original we have Kristen Scott Thomas chomping through the scenery in a high camp version of Mrs Danvers that made me laugh at it rather than shudder from it. I had to question whether I was watching a Ryan Murphy film. And so it goes on, bad casting and bad direction. Sam Riley is utterly toothless as Rebecca's nasty cousin. The thriller/drama utterly uninteresting. It winds on to its ending which is about as cynical and Hollywood happy as anything I've ever seen. All is happy and sexy and fruitful. Rebecca has truly been vanquished. Along with any credibility Ben Wheatley ever had.

REBECCA has a running time of 123 minutes and is rated PG-13. The film was released on Netflix on October 21st. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR, COLIN BURSTEAD - Crimbo Binge-watch #2

HAPPY NEW YEAR, COLIN BURSTEAD is a darkly funny, very well observed  low budget British comedy from writer-director Ben Wheatley (FREE FIRE).  The conceit is that Colin Burstead (Neil Maskell) as has invited his extended family to a stately home for a New Year's Eve party. As with any good family drama, this exposes us to resentment, anger, jealousy, but also love and the hope of redemption.  Sam Riley (BRIGHTON ROCK) is particularly good as the black sheep of the family and Charles Dance is unusually avuncular as the paterfamilias. The feeling is Dogme with a sense of humour - raw, gonzo, truthful, sometimes brutal, but occasionally laugh out loud funny.  Well worth watching. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR, COLIN BURSTEAD has a running time of 95 minutes and was broadcast on British television this weekend.

BFI LFF 2018 - Closing Night Gala - STAN & OLLIE

STAN & OLLIE is a rather limp attempt to depict the declining years of what was once the most famous comedy double-act in the world - Laurel and Hardy.  

The movie opens with them at the height of their fame, but notoriously in a contract dispute with studio boss Hal Roach.  Laurel - the more financially astute of the pair - wants to leave Roach and take the risk of producing their own movies, and so make the phat cash that Chaplin is amassing.  But Hardy - a gambling addict who needs the steady income - is nervous. We then skip forward 15-odd years and the fashion for Vaudevillian slapstick has waned, and while Chaplin sits in tax exile in Switzerland, Laurel and Hardy are back in England, scratching out a tour in humiliating circumstances, trying to finance their final film. A slew of PR stunts has them reverse their commercial failure only to see old resentments and health concerns threaten to derail them again.  

Writer Jeff Pope (PHILOMENA) very much wants to depict this emotional conflict as that of a marriage brought down by betrayal - the duo love each other but Hardy working with another comic was like an act of adultery and betrayal than broke Laurel's heart.  This theme is hammered on again and again in this film and is ultimately asked to carry too much weight. It's also not born out by the historical record.  When Laurel was ill he suggested Hardy work with others! 

JOURNEYMAN - Day 9 - BFI London Film Festival 2017

JOURNEYMAN is a banal, thin, waste of time. A movie that says nothing new about boxing and adds little to the "Lifetime movie of the afternoon" genre that we haven't seen in rehab movies like STRONGER or MILLION DOLLAR BABY.  The direction is workmanlike, the scope narrow, and really the only reason to watch it is the characteristically good performance by Jodie Whitaker in one of the lead roles.  Paddy Considine plays a local hero boxer who gets punched into a coma in his One Last Match.  When he comes round he's frustrated, violent, and his wife (Whitaker) leaves him with their baby. His lovely friends who'd abandoned him then step in. By the end, everyone's back on side because, hey, they're all basically lovely people.  There's no dramatic tension. There's no real character development.  The boxing scenes don't work. The love story is so predictable it's frustrating.  And there isn't even any criticism of a sport that serially harms people.   I honestly don't know why this has been described as a tearjerker.  Frankly, Considine's performance is a series of physical ticks that was one stutter short of Simple Jack. This is a crashing disappointment after Considine's fantastic directorial debut TYRANNOSAUR - a movie of great artistic ambition and impressive execution. 

JOURNEYMAN has a running time of 92 minutes. It is rated 15 for strong boxing violence, infrequent strong sex. It will be released in the UK on March 30th 2018.

JOURNEY'S END - Day 3 - BFI London Film Festival 2017

Saul Dibb (SUITE FRANCAISE, THE DUCHESS) has directed what is the stand out film of this year's festival to date, an adaptation of R C Sherriff's stage play JOURNEY'S END.  This powerfully tragic tale of men on the front line in World War One has been brought from stage to screen still depicting the claustrophobia and tension of trench warfare without ever feeling "stagey" or merely a west end show with a camera put in front of it. Rather, Dibb uses his Welsh location to good effect - his film beautifully depicts the mists rising above the trench, and one can almost feel the damp, stale air.  And his use of candlelight inside the dug-out is atmospheric and sometimes even beautiful. 

The movie begins with a naive new officer requesting to join C Company in St Quentin, France, just as the troops are rotated onto the front line. Raleigh (Asa Butterfield) is full of that Dulce Et Decorum Est spirit, but is shocked to find that his schoolboy mentor Stanhope (Sam Claflin) has become a superb commander but also a cynical and volatile alcoholic - something that Stanhope is painfully aware of and scared Raleigh will tell his sister, Stanhope's beloved.  Thus it falls to Stanhope's two junior officers to take Raleigh under their wing - there's the affable, modest, epitome of the stiff-upper-lip, "Uncle" (Paul Bettany) and the working class jovial Trotter (Stephen Graham).  The officers are rounded out by Hibbert (Tom Sturridge) - a ladies man who may or may not be faking neuralgia to get away from the front - something that Stanhope is not having anything of.

Much of the action takes place in and around the officer's dugout as they unwillingly accede to an order for a near-suicide mission to fetch intelligence from enemy lines; and then as the men face a heavy bombardment for the start of the German's Spring Offensive. I found myself physically tensing throughout, I was so involved in the fate of the characters. In such an intense environment, one sees Uncle adopt an air of calm indifference and studied bonhomie to offset Stanhope's nasty aggression.  And it's the play between the two that's really at the heart of this film.  If Bettany's performance is the most instantly likeable it's Claflin who steals the movie. There's a deep and desperate vulnerability to Stanhope that reasserts itself in the film's final scenes. It's a bravura and committed performance that deserves award season recognition. 

JOURNEY'S END has a running time of 107 minutes and played Toronto and London 2017. It will be released in the UK on Feb 2nd. 

FREE FIRE - BFI LFF 2016 - Closing Night Gala - Day 12

Ben Wheatley's HIGH RISE may have been one of the most disappointing films of LFF2015 but his quick, scabrous shoot-em-up thriller FREE FIRE is a welcome return to form.  Moreover, after 12 days of melancholy art-house movies, it was the perfect palette cleanser and finale to this year's exceptionally good film festival. 

Short, sharp, cheap and nasty, the movie takes place almost entirely in a dingy warehouse some time in the 1970s.   Brie Larson plays the sole woman in the film and is presumably some kind of arms broker.  The buyers are two IRA terrorists played by Cillian Murphy and Wheatley alum Michael Smiley and the salesman are a South African (Sharlto Copley) and his enforcer (Armie Hammer).  Also present are associated side-kicks and half-wits played Sam Riley, Jack Reynor, Noah Taylor and Babou Ceesay.  Basically, this is a bunch of scoundrels, where trust and intelligence are both in short supply. So when a junkie driver brings up an old beef with another moron, shots get fired and pretty soon we're in a full on seventy minute shoot out.  

HIGH-RISE - BFI London Film Festival 2015 - Day Four

Yeah so, I love J G Ballard and High Rise is one of my favourite novels, and I really love Ben Wheatley's gonzo horror craziness, having done retrospective podcasts on his earlier films.  Tom Hiddleston is obviously not just a great actor but a nice guy.  So I was super excited about this new film.  The problem may have been high expectations. The problem may be that High Rise is a high concept novel and these can sometimes come across as flat on screen. But whatever the reason, HIGH-RISE was utterly underwhelming.

The movie, and indeed the novel on which it is pretty faithfully based, are set in 1970s England - another time of deep social inequality and financial disruption.  The high concept is that an architect has built a high-rise apartment block complete with all amenities - swimming pool, school, gym, supermarket - so that one need never leave.  And in classic English fashion, the social hierarchy is perfectly preserved inside - lower orders in floors 1 to 10, middle classes to floor 35 and upper classes above, with the architect as God in the penthouse.

A FIELD IN ENGLAND

Rounding out our Ben Wheatley retrospective, we come to his latest release, A FIELD IN ENGLAND.  This was remarkable for being the first British movie to be released simultaneously in the cinema, on TV and on demand.   I completely understand why Wheatley was in favour of this type of release. Going for a TV and OD release means that his film will be seen by far more people, and generate far more buzz, than with a conventional limited art-house cinema release followed at a distance by a DVD release. It's also another sign of the trend wherein TV and cinema have merged. In the old days, there was a snobbery about quality work being put out in cinemas, and TV being of lesser quality.  But now, with the HBO-isation of TV, we can see long-form drama of infinitely higher quality than shitty genre films, and budgets per minute that match anything Hollywood has to offer.  We're rapidly coming to a place where cinema, TV, ipads and phones are just media on which the content is delivered, and the hierarchy between them is being dissolved. To be sure, for any beautifully shot visual work, the bigger the screen the better, and there's always something to be said for the group experience, but modern life doesn't allow for the reverence of the movie theatre.  The common sense solution is simultaneous release.  To be sure, I'd urge you to watch visually arresting movies like A FIELD IN ENGLAND on a big screen. But if you don't live near an art-house cinema, that you can watch on its "opening weekend" is fantastic, even as the significance of that moniker in a Netflix mega-release world diminishes.

All of which is pre-amble to the review of the actual film, which is remarkable for its content as much as for the method of its release. 

The movie is set in the mid seventeenth century, during the English civil war - a period of history much under-filmed.  As the film opens, we meet a motley crew of deserters - Whitehead, an alchemist, fleeing his master, Trower, and Jacob and Friend, two deserters being marshalled by Cutler.   They amble about in a comedy of manners - the crude deserters making jokes about constipation and searching for an alehouse, while Whitehead asserts his delicate intellectual superiority.  The crew then come across the enigmatic O'Neill who, broadly speaking, asserts his authority, gets the group high on magic mushrooms, and forces them to dig for some unspecified, potentially magical, treasure. And then, in classic Ben Wheatley style, it all goes horribly, sickeningly wrong. 

For his fourth feature, Wheatley once again does something utterly different. After the domestic gangster flick that was DOWN TERRACE, and the cultish horror of KILL LIST, and the very darkly funny SIGHTSEERS, we get a period, black-and-white, cultish, trippy horror movie that defines all genre conventions.  A FIELD IN ENGLAND has elements of all of Wheatley's previous films.  We've got darkly funny comedy - jokes about constipation and nagging wives  - we've got a fascination with the mythic pagan magic of the English countryside - and we've got the seemingly banal slip into the bonkers and then finally the truly frightening.  And in terms of the formal direction, while this movie is in black and white, in period costume, and shot in a single film, A FIELD IN ENGLAND retains the elegant framing of DP Laurie Rose - arresting images that stay with us long after the movie is over - and ellipses that jolt us - in this movie, living tableaux. 

My view is that A FIELD IN ENGLAND is Wheatley most formally imaginative and daring film, and the visuals and sound mix are stunning.  There's a seen with a man being harnessed and driven like a horse that's as horrific as anything more graphic later in the film.  I love the casting of Reece Sheersmith, of A LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN fame, as Whitehead, and Wheatley regular Michael Smiley as O'Neill. And I love some of the early dark humour:

Friend: You think about a thing before you touch it, am I right? 

Whitehead: Is that not usual? 

Friend: Not in Essex. 

Brilliant!

A FIELD IN ENGLAND was released simultaneously in cinemas, on demand, and on TV on July 5th. It has a running time of 87 minutes and is rated 15 in the UK for strong language, one occurrence of very strong violence and gory images.

A podcast review of this film is available directly here, and by subscribing to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

SIGHTSEERS (2012)

You can listen to a podcast review of SIGHTSEERS directly here, or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

After the surreal gangster violence of DOWN TERRACE and the cult horror brutality of KILL LIST, director Ben Wheatley swung the pendulum back toward comedy with his 2012 film, SIGHTSEERS. This is black comedy at its very finest - full of dodgy sex jokes, British camp humour, jokes about gingers and the Daily Mail. 

The plot is simple:  poor, naive Tina (Alice Lowe - THIS IS JINSY) is swept off her feet by ginger Brummie Chris (Steve Oram) and taken on the holiday of her lifetime.....in a caravan!  It's all going well until she realises that rather than just get irritated by litterbugs, and sanctimonious do-gooders, he's actually murdering them.  This is revealed pretty early on, and the comedy then comes from how Tina, besotted with Chris, and actually rather liking have a guy stick up for her, is going to react to this news.  

I absolutely love this film.  It's so instantly quotable it's destined to become a cult film.  Lines like "he's not a person: he's a Daily Mail reader! or "Report THAT to the National Trust!" are pure comedy gold. The acting is pitch-perfect, there's the trademark Ben Wheatley person-getting-murdered-by-getting-run-over shot, and plenty of comedy caravan-shagging.  That said, I'm not sure how far it would translate to other countries that don't get the peculiarly British references.  

SIGHTSEERS okayed Cannes 2012 and was released in the UK, Ireland, Australia, France and New Zealand that year.  It opened earlier this year in Hungary, the Netherlands, Israel, Belgium, Poland, Germany, the USA, Qatar, Italy and Portugal.  It opens in Sweden on July 26th.

SIGHTSEERS has a running time of 88 minutes and is rated 15 for strong language, bloody violence, sex and sex references.

KILL LIST (2011) - Ben Wheatley Retrospective

You can listen to the podcast directly here or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

The next step in my retrospective of British horror director Ben Wheatley's career is the 2011 film, KILL LIST.  George Ghon reviewed the movie for this blog, but this was my first time watching the movie, and boy was I in for a shock.  

As with DOWN TERRACE, the first part of the movie is a quiet, unsettling take on modern suburbia, with snatches of violence occasionally visible beneath the cracks.  We meet Jay (Neil Maskell), a British war veteran back from what was obviously some kind of mission gone berserk in Kiev.  Jay clearly loves his wife and young son, but he's also clearly got some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder, compounded by his wife putting pressure on him to make some money. She leads him explicitly back into partnership with another ex-soldier called Gal (Michael Smiley) who brings him into the world of contract killing.  

What I love about this first act is that with Laurie Rose's handheld shooting style and Robin Hill's almost art-house Mallickian editing, combining voice-over or dialogue with a shot of a contemplative character, we get a real sense of intimacy with the family. I also love the foreshadowing - the idea that play-violence is everywhere - roughing up on the lawn, playing with toy swords - but that the real thing is just around the corner.  That said,  at this stage of the film I thought the hints of cult behaviour were a bit cheesy - viz Gal's weird girlfriend scratching a cult symbol on the back of Jay's mirror and stuffing his blood-stained tissue into her bra.  That seemed to me less scary than just embarrassing.

In the second act we see Jay and Gal embark on their kill list, and as with DOWN TERRACE, the movie strikes an uneasy comedy-horror tone as their deadpan nonsense banter is interspersed with acts of violence that go from being off-screen and subtly hinted at to more and more explicit. Even worse is the genuinely disturbing feeling that the victims actually want to be killed. This, for me, is where the movie really kicks into gear, just as Jay starts to unravel and we get hints of what may have gone wrong in Kiev.  As for the third act, well, I can't reveal too much or else spoil it for you, but suffice to say that it goes batshit crazy in the best way, with cultish violence, third-act reveals of who's pulling the strings.  But for a more spoiler-ish discussion of its textured and provocative denouement, feel free to stay listening to the podcast after the show-notes!

KILL LIST played the festival circuit in 2011 including SXSW, Frightfest and Toronto.  It was released that year in the UK and Ireland, and the following year in the USA.

KILL LIST has a running time of 95 minutes and was rated 18 in the UK  for strong violence and language. It is available to rent and own.

DOWN TERRACE

With the release of A FIELD IN ENGLAND, I decided to review the work of British writer-director Ben Wheatley, charting his move from well-crafted but fundamentally straightforward character dramas to surreal, obscure horror.  His first feature was the low-budget gangster drama, DOWN TERRACE, which garnered acclaim on the festival circuit but got only a small release in the US and UK in 2010. 

The movie follows a small-town British family for a fortnight after the mobbed-up father and son, Bill and Karl, are released from prison.  The first half of the film feels a bit like The Sopranos, as mid-ranking criminals are deadpan funny in their petty arguments about banal everyday problems, contrasting with their high-crime professional lives.  It's the kind of movie in which the assassin moans about having to babysit his toddler, and the long-suffering mother offers his little kid some orange squash while offering his father a selection of knives for his hit. And there's a scene at a bust stop that I hated myself for finding so funny. There's even a feckless son of a former friend who may or may not have grassed up the father - mirroring Tony's irritation with Chrisopher Moltisanti. 

Wheatley turns his small budget and limited shooting time into a virtue, creating a feeling of claustrophobia and slowly building tension as DP Laurie Rose shoots almost exclusively handheld in situ in a small terraced house.  The soundtrack is also effectively used as a commentary and a counter-point - beautiful blues music from Robert Johnson and folk music from Karen Dalton juxtaposing increasingly out-of-kilter violent scenes.  In front of the camera, we feel the menacing domineering presence of the paterfamilias, even when he's not on screen, and the relationship with his volatile son is brilliantly drawn - no doubt helped by the fact that most of the cast are related in real life.  But it's really Michael Smiley who steals the show as Pringle - the family's in-house toddler-toting assassin - and you can see why Wheatley chose to work with him in his subsequent movies. 

Overall, the movie is an assured and accomplished feature début that manages that truly difficult balance of dark humour and dark violence - combining an almost surreal descent into violent paranoia with some genuinely laugh-out-loud moments. It deserves to be seen more widely. 

A podcast review of this film is available on iTunes, by subscribing here.
It can also be played directly, below. 

DOWN TERRACE played a few festivals in 2009  and 2010 and went on limited release in the UK and USA in 2010.  It is available to rent and own, including on iTunes.  The movie was rated R in the USA and 15 in the UK for strong violence, drug use and strong language including one use of very strong language. It has a running time of 89 minutes.

George Ghon comments on KILL LIST

Here's a quick comment from Fashion writer, editor and stylist, not to mention friend of the blog, George Ghon:

British film doesn’t have a tradition of complete genre mash up à la Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, the two visionary directors who have pumped some pulp and horror into the American gangster film. Writer-director Ben Wheatley's (DOWN TERRACE) style is subtler, a bit more creepy, but no less genre defying. 

In his new feature KILL LIST,  he starts with a working class family drama that takes unexpected turns, evolving into a brutal hit-man saga, before finally plunging into the darkest territories of human interactions. It is deeply unsettling to watch, mainly due to the tension it creates between the normality of suburban life and scenes of surreal violence. 

A couple raises a 7 year old son, the father takes him on a casual stroll along the river, before he sets off to a series of kills, which is his job, but not only that. They are not handled professionally, but with utter, abhorrence for the victims, a style to kill that results from a dark past, which is left blank, unexplained, just exists as a haunting shadow. 

Reality is cut up, quite literally in an edit (Robin Hill) that occasionally runs the sound on a different time frame than the image, weirdly showing a character talking when he is actually displayed in silence on the screen. There are also gaps in the story line, certain things just don’t make sense, and the end is as chilling as it is ambiguous and hard to understand. But that does not take away the subliminal power that this film exerts, relying on close-up documentary style filming (DP Laurie Rose), and improvised dialogue. A welcome sign that filmmaking has not come to an end of commercialized standards that make us fall asleep every time we take a tenner out of our pockets in order to enter a movie theatre.

KILL LIST played Frightfest 2011 and is currently on release in the UK and Ireland. It will be shown at the Strasbourg European Fantasy Festival on September 17th.