Beasts of the Southern Wild

As my daughters (aged 6 and 8) get older it’s interesting to see how and when they graduate from “kiddie” material (as regards books, TV and films) to older, more complex stuff. Recently I’ve been trying out some films on them which aren’t necessarily targeted at them, but which they might appreciate. With that in mind, this weekend I took them to see Beasts of the Southern Wild.

Beforehand I’d checked out the “Parental Guide” page on IMDB to see if there was anything in the film I didn’t want them to see, but all they mentioned was a little mild profanity (“Shit” and “damn”), an intense storm scene, some animal carcasses, and a splash of blood. One user says there’s some nudity from behind, but that’s incorrect (although even if there were, I think they could stand the sight of a bare bum with being psychologically scarred). I was surprised to see that it’s rated 12A in the UK, as I think a PG rating is plenty, and my girls certainly weren’t disturbed by anything in this film.

Interestingly the film itself deals with growing up, as a five-year-old girl living in harsh conditions has to learn self-reliance, confidence and independence and trying to understand her place in the universe. For a supposedly adult film it’s told almost entirely from the small child’s point of view, complete with heightened perceptions and imaginary monsters. Initially my daughters were unsure about it, partly I think because it was so different in style and approach from the things they’re used to seeing. Halfway through one of them turned to me and said “I don’t want you to buy this film” [on DVD]. But by the end they’d changed their minds and had really gotten into it. They had a lot of questions, and we talked afterwards about poverty, people who live on their own and who don’t want help from outsiders, even when their health or safety are threatened, and about why the father seemed angry all the time and what “tough love” is.

On the whole I’d say it was a pretty successful experiment, and while they’re not ready to ditch Disney just yet, I’ll be keeping my eyes open for other alternatives to Hollywood CG cartoons in the future. Especially things like this which open their eyes to other cultures and ways of life.

The one thing you need to be aware of when taking kids to non-kid films at the cinema, however, is the trailers, which are likely to be for other, more “adult” films. My heart sank when the trailer for Quentin Tarantino’s violent (duh) western Django Unchained came on. Thankfully it was only a brief, non-violent teaser featuring plenty of shooting but no blood. The 6yo said “I don’t want to see that film. It’s all about guns”.

Dredd

Last night I saw the new Dredd movie. As a kid I’d read some (although not all) of the comics. Enough to be able to judge (ha) if any cinematic adaptation had got it “right” or not. Plus, I’d seen the much derided 1995 Sylvester Stallone version, so I could compare with that too.

By the way, Stallone’s version can be seen in its entirety here:

The new version is very much a product of its time, which is to say that it’s gritty and downbeat and takes itself a little too seriously. It does get Dredd himself pretty much right, or at least more right than Stallone did. I liked the way they laughed off any attempt to dig deeper into Dredd’s character in an early scene when the psychic Judge Anderson tries to read his mind. She says that he has enormous self-control, but that there’s something else behind it, something…only to be interrupted by her boss and told that it won’t be necessary to continue.

I did start thinking, both during and after, about how to view Dredd and the judges as a whole. People make comparisons with Dirty Harry and call him a “fascist“, but I think that’s a lazy, knee-jerk response from people who view any form of authority or control as fascistic. Harry Callahan was a maverick who decided to take the law into his own hands and make his own decisions about who deserved to live or die. Dredd is simply a product of the system, which itself is an extraordinary response to an extraordinary situation (the collapse of society). You can argue about the appropriateness of that response, but you can’t blame Dredd himself. As the film takes pains to point out, he only wants to serve his city and he follows the rules to the letter, never overstepping the bounds of his authority.

The violence may concern some. It’s quite spectacularly bloody, and gratuitously so. I guess they felt it was necessary in order to portray this chaotic, amoral society where life is cheap, but mostly I feel they just thought that it would look really cool in super slo-mo 3D. I found the 3D itself, as usual, to be occasionally impressive, occasionally irrritating, and mostly forgettable.

The things I think are missing from both film versions so far are some of the things I enjoyed about the comics: the absurdity, humour and fantastical elements. The comics show us a much larger world than “Dredd” could afford on its relatively small budget, full of mutants and supernatural beings and the various weird tribes inhabiting both Mega-City 1 and the Cursed Earth outside. I’d love to think that sequels could expand into these realms, but I get the feeling that that would be at odds with the fairly straight and stripped-down approach they’ve taken in this film.

Maybe I should just go back and read the comics again.

 

Cinema weekend

Trips to the cinema, eh? None for ages, and then three come along at once, in the same weekend.

Friday: Magnifica Presenza

This was the opening film of the 12th Mediterranean Film Festival in Brussels. I’d seen a couple of the Turkish/Italian director’s films before (most recently the highly enjoyable Mine Vaganti) so I thought I’d give it a try. It’s an Italian comedy with a supernatural twist, which makes an interesting comparison with the 1961 film Fantasmi a Roma which I saw earlier in the summer. The Italian comedies I’ve seen tend to be a little broader than their French equivalents, but there were some good gags (I liked the snarky Pope joke), sympathetic characters, and some interesting darker undercurrents relating to the loneliness of big city life, gay-bashing, and wartime atrocities. Oh dear, I’m making it sound a bit depressing, aren’t I? Really, it’s lots of fun.

Less fun was the fact that we had to wait almost an hour for the film to start. As part of the “festivities” planned for the opening of the festival, an ear-splittingly loud Macedonian brass band (famously featured in an Emir Kusturica film) took to the stage and proceeded to blast us with their repetitive, tuneless parping for about half an hour, making it virtually impossible to converse with my friend, unless I fancied bellowing directly into his ear, nightclub-style. Then we had to sit through another twenty minutes of waffle from a TV presenter, several local politicians and a couple of random actors and directors who were in the audience and who felt the need to announce to us all how honoured they were to be present and to watch out for their new films due out next year.

Saturday: Le Jour des Corneilles

I took the girls to an afternoon screening on Saturday, while their brother was at a birthday party. I gave them the choice between two recently released French films. They’d already seen one of the Kirikou films, and so were open to the idea of seeing the third in the series, Kirikou et les hommes et les femmes, but in the end plumped for something new: Le Jour des Corneilles. It’s a fairly simple story of a boy and his father living wild in the forest, and of how the boy has to venture into the local village when his father is injured. I loved the look of the film, with what seemed to be visible pencil lines and brush strokes giving it a nice handmade texture. I guess this effect was probably replicated digitally, but still. There also seemed to be a bit of a Miyazaki influence, with the forest and some of its supernatural animal-headed denizens reminding me of Princess Mononoke. The girls loved it, and had no problem with some of the darker moments when the Ogre father’s past is revealed.

This morning I found this version of the trailer with subtitles, so it looks like it might get some kind of English language release.

Sunday: Skyfall

Ah, Mr. Bond. I was never the biggest fan, but I’m always open to the idea of action-packed international thrillers, and I liked the slightly more modern turn the series had taken with Daniel Craig. I still think the series as a whole is far too beholden to its own history and iconic status, and I wish they’d take more risks with it. I really don’t need endless references to earlier episodes in the series (Look, he’s driving an Aston Martin! Just like he did in one of the other films!) cluttering up the story. On the other hand there was a lot to like this time around, from the largely British setting to the more personal stakes involved, both for Bond and M, the efficient but not bloated action scenes, to the hugely enjoyable scenery-chewing performance from Javier Bardem as the villain.

Warning – LARGE SPOILERS HERE:

I was impressed that they’d managed to keep M’s death (and Ralph Fiennes replacing her as M) a secret, but I was slightly disturbed that, of the two main female characters, at the end of the film one of them was dead and the other, an apparently capable, intelligent and interesting field agent played by Naomie Harris, had volunteered to take what appears to be a glorified secretarial job and was revealed to be the new Miss Moneypenny. And people say that Bond is sexist…

End spoilers.

Films I’m hoping to make time for between now and Christmas include Amour, Dredd, Looper, Argo, Premium Rush, The Bay, and Beasts of the Southern Wild.

The Expatriate

As previously noted, the places I’ve lived in haven’t tended to be the kind of places that feature as glamourous locations in big budget movies. Imagine my excitement (well, mild curiosity, perhaps) to discover that Brussels had recently been used as the location for an American action thriller, The Expatriate. Now Brussels has been used plenty of times for local productions, but this is the first time (as far as I can tell) a fairly high profile Hollywood shoot has used my adopted home, and in such a prominent fashion.

I wasn’t initially sure whether I was going to bother seeing it, as it had received only a few, pretty lukewarm reviews, and my only real interest in seeing it was the location. The last film I’d seen for solely that reason was Genova, and that didn’t turn out too well, so I wasn’t particularly excited about paying to sit there just so that I could point at the background and say “Look, there’s the Koekelberg Basilica, for a fraction of a second, blurred by the frantic camerawork!” But we ended up going along anyway, also because there isn’t much else on at the cinema at the moment.

And? Well, it was ok. As a film, it was a functional thriller. Not startlingly original, the villain is one-dimensional, it’s a little hypocritical in the usual way of American movies which try to convince you that killing people is awful, unless the hero does it in which case it’s ok for him to beat to a pulp/blow up anyone who gets in his way. But it moves quickly and efficiently through its set pieces, and the performances by Aaron Eckhart and Liana Liberato as his daughter are just good enough to keep you involved.

And as a Belgian big screen experience? Well you see quite a lot of both Brussels and Antwerp, so there are plenty of location-spotting opportunities. It’s normal for films to cheat locations and geography, but a couple of examples jumped out at me here. In one scene we see what’s very obviously a Brussels tram rolling down a recognisable Brussels street, but the scene is supposed to be taking place in Antwerp. A scene set on the steps of a courthouse was actually filmed on the steps of the stock exchange.

On the plus side the film hints (albeit only briefly) at the difficulties of the expat life, not only for wealthy Americans but also for immigrants from poorer countries. It was heartening to see the Arabic community portrayed in such a positive way when they could easily have been either villains or victims. I know that sounds like faint praise (“Congratulations on not being racist!”), but it’s still not that common in this kind of film.

But worst of all? During most of the scenes set in Antwerp, when the protagonist talks to his colleagues in the office, he talks (and they respond) in French. Did no one bother to explain to the writer that Antwerp is in Flanders?

Toy Story

The Nostalgia Toy Museum in the town of Godshill on the Isle of Wight was quite a trip down memory lane for me. I already knew about their impressive selection of Star Wars memorabilia. Look, the Cantina Playset (lightsaber-severed limbs not included)!

Look, both versions of Snaggletooth! (I used to have the red one, myself).

Ah yes, Princess Leia. Heroine and role model for a whole generation of girls starved of any other female characters in the Star Wars films. Experienced diplomat, courageous Rebel leader…oh wow have you seen what you can do with her hair?!

And then I noticed the non-Lucas items. I used to have one of these Superman dolls (“No, no, it’s an ACTION FIGURE!”). I remember accidentally breaking off one of his arms once (so much for his “invulnerability”) and being so pleased when my Dad fixed it that I left him a thank you note the next morning while he was having a lie-in.

I also had a Hulk, although I don’t think he had this shirt. Note the description “Full of loveable ugliness”.

I never had a Batmobile as far as I can remember. At least, not an Italian one.

Much less a Chinese train which makes an exciting whistle.

It could have been worse. I could have been stuck with having to dress up dolls in swinging ’60s clothes.

And doesn’t “Paul” look happy? Look closer at the booklet, where his ensemble is described as “Motorway Man”. Sounds slightly sinister, if you ask me.

Good old-fashioned entertainment

I recently introduced my children to Star Wars. All three enjoyed it, although my eldest daughter took to it most enthusiastically, bombarding me with questions and spending every spare moment with her nose buried in the Star Wars Visual Dictionary. So far the only criticism they’ve voiced is that there’s only one female character. Strangely they don’t refer to the films by their actual titles, but by their numbers: Star Wars 4, Star Wars 5, etc.  They’ve yet to watch the prequels, although they’re aware of their existence, and they’ll see them some time soon. I’ll be interested to see how they react. I’m sure they won’t complain as much as we first generation fans did.

I’m always slightly surprised when our children enjoy older films; not because I think they’re not as good, but because they’re often quite different from modern films in terms of pacing. Certainly the first Star Wars is amazingly slow and uneventful for the first hour, even in comparison with the other films in the series. This is somewhat reassuring as a parent, as it means that my children have a decent attention span and can cope with films which don’t feel the need to bombard them with something loud or flashy every two minutes.

Daddy, meanwhile, went this past weekend to see another fantasy blockbuster: The Avengers. Despite feeling a bit of superhero movie overload recently I was keen to see this one, mostly because it was written and directed by Joss Whedon, of Buffy and Firefly fame. I was expecting to enjoy it, and it has had good reviews, but still it surprised me with how sheerly entertaining it was, although this may be at least in part a comment on how low our expectations are these days for comic book spectaculars. The film offers FX-filled action on a par with anything in, say, the Transformers films, but manages to find the time to delineate characters and their motivations enough that you actually care about whether or not they make it out of the rubble. It’s also hilariously funny, with Hulk in particular getting some of the biggest laughs. While some comic book films strain for depth and “edginess” by cranking up the angst, violence and pretension, these recent Marvel films manage to be a lot of fun, without tipping over into outright parody.

A couple of small nitpicks, which are slightly spoilerish if you haven’t yet seen the film.

1) A couple of characters spend the first half of the film brainwashed and under the control of the villain. This hold over them is broken by…you guessed it: a blow to the head. Joss Whedon seems to be aware of the ridiculousness of this narrative shortcut, even acknowledging it in the dialogue. When [redacted] asks how [redacted] brought him back to his senses, she replies “I hit you really hard on the head”.

2) The climax uses the same trick as The Phantom Menace (never a good sign): once the mothership is destroyed, all the soldiers conveniently fall over, deactivated. Because the best soldiers are remote-control ones with no autonomy, right?

Tables and walls and ceilings

Another Saturday morning browsing in Pele-Mêle bookshop. No purchases this time, but I paid a little more attention to the décor than the inventory. Although this display of French adventure novels caught my eye.

I got to see some of the illustrated tabletops in more detail.

This one is frankly unsuitable for minors and should be placed more discreetly.

Speaking of discretion, the amenities are identified with charming illustrations.

However, should you feel (and I couldn’t blame you if you did) that the gender of the figure above remains ambiguous, there is a helpful and strategically placed caption.

Outside, photogenic urban decay.

Sunday night, and a trip to the cinema with Ian to see Lo Zio di Brooklyn, a grotesque and surreal Italian comedy, showing as part of the Offscreen festival in the Cinema Nova. This was only my second visit to the Nova, which is a dilapidated but charming place which gives the impression of being housed in an abandoned warehouse decorated by your old, mad aunt.

Here’s the ceiling above the screen.

And here’s one of the pictures in the basement bar. The eyes move slowly from side to side, scanning the bar patrons for a likely victim.

Britflicks

The Iron Lady

While almost everyone agrees that Meryl Streep gives a phenomenal performance in this film, it’s taken a beating from reviewers for not being an hysterical anti-Thatcher tirade, for not portraying her as a hideous, baby-eating monster. Which is not to say that it glorifies her either. In some ways it’s quite balanced. The problem is not that it veers to one side or the other of the political divide, but rather that it has very little to say about the politics at all, which could be seen as a slight flaw in a film about such a controversial and memorable political figure.

What we get instead is a film about a lonely old woman rattling around her house, hallucinating arguments with her dead husband, and occasionally flashing back to her heyday as Prime Minister. This is actually a refreshingly original approach, and I almost wish they’d pushed farther in this direction into black comedy/psychological horror. But of course they have to give us a potted history, a grossly simplified greatest hits package of poll tax riots, miners’ strikes, IRA bombs and Falklands War montages, most of it without any kind of context or analysis. I even got the impression that they mentioned the IRA just so that they’d have the excuse to throw in a couple of explosions.

But there are some effective and amusing scenes, and it deserves the two Oscars for which it’s been nominated: Best Actress and Best Make-up.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

I haven’t read John Le Carré’s novel, but recently I tried to watch the 1979 BBC TV adaptation on DVD. Really, I tried. I don’t have a problem with long, slow dramas, and I realise that this is Le Carré, not Ian Fleming, but this was a bit extreme. I made it through one and a half episodes before deciding that life’s too short. So when a friend suggested we see the recent film version I was a little wary, but I figured that a two hour version of the story was bound to be at least slightly snappier than the seven hour version.

It was interesting to see where they’d tightened the storytelling a little, and to compare the casting. I think Beryl Reid was better in the original than Kathy Burke in the same role in the film, but Tom Hardy makes for a better Ricky Tarr – more vulnerable and nervy – than the original’s Hywel Bennet. Gary Oldman’s almost as good as everyone says he is, although I think there’s a fine line here between underplaying and just not doing very much.

The plot jumps around quite a bit, without necessarily telling where or when you are, so it was a challenge to keep up, but I did manage. My main problem with the plot was the final reveal. Without getting into spoilers, we’re told at the start that one of four men is the mole, and at the end they just point to one of them and say “It was him”, which is anticlimactic to say the least. And since we’ve been told little or nothing about any of these men in the preceding two hours, there’s no emotional impact to the revelation. Later we find out some of the characters’ secrets and it add some much-needed dimension, but surely this stuff would have been better placed earlier in the film? Plus, as my friend remarked, the “Ooh, wasn’t 1970s Britain grim and grey and depressing” atmosphere is laid on a bit thick.

Jedi Burger

Many of you will have seen news stories recently about French fast food chain Quick’s three themed burgers featuring on their menus in February to tie in with the 3D re-release of the Star Wars prequels.

I make very occasional visits to Quick when I’m in the mood for a burger but not too fussy about quality. I’d say they’re better than McDonalds (although I haven’t been to one of those for over a quarter of a century) but not quite as good as Burger King or Wendy’s. Naturally I had to go along and see what all the fuss was about, especially as far as the black “Dark Vador” burger was concerned. This is the one which caused much “ew!”ing amongst internet commentators, despite the fact that it’s a simple matter of flavourless food colouring. I’d have been more interested if they’d flavoured it with blackcurrant, liquorice or squid ink, but I was willing to give it a go anyway.

Then yesterday I discovered to my dismay that of the three burgers, only two would be available in Belgium and Luxembourg. That’s right: those damn Frenchies were keeping the black burgers all to themselves! Quick’s French management had decided (how is not clear) that the black burger wouldn’t be so popular outside France, so we had to settle for the Darth Maul red burger and the white Jedi burger. The red one contains more pepper (because pepper is EVIL) and the Jedi one has a layer of mozzarella. Couldn’t they have gone the whole hog and made the Jedi one green? Maybe they thought that would put off customers by making them think it was healthy or contained some kind of vegetable.

Up until the last minute I wasn’t sure which one to go for. I asked for a sample of each to help me choose, but was told “Eat, or eat not. There is no ‘try’”, so I plumped for the Jedi burger.

I opened the box and what’s inside? A rather limp, plain burger with a little extra cheese.

I was inevitably reminded of this scene from Falling Down:

It supposedly also contained (midchlorian?) mustard, but the whole was distinctly bland and lacking in punch. Not that I expect a taste explosion from a Quick burger, but their standard offerings are much better than this  “special edition”.

Remember, I ate this so you don’t have to.

You’re welcome.

The look

Disclaimer: I tried and tried to find all the clips I needed for this post on Youtube. I tried to rip them from my own DVDs but they were copy protected. Even grabbing stills from the DVDs seemed unnecessarily complicated. Hopefully you get the idea in most of the cases. If not, go and see these films yourself, as they’re all pretty good.

Charles Barr, my film studies tutor at university, once told us an anecdote about actor Alan Ladd. A group of stuntmen are sitting around comparing scars and boasting about all the daredevil stunts they’ve performed that day, and about how hard they work. Alan Ladd walks past. They look at him and one of them challenges him “And what did you do today?”

Ladd thinks for a moment and replies “I did a great look.”

Depending on how you view screen acting you might think that this is either an hilariously inadequate response, indicating just how much Hollywood actors are paid for doing nothing much at all, or you might think that this is a perceptive remark that goes right to the heart of what it is that actors do best in films. Great performance moments in films aren’t necessarily about Oscar bait speechifying and blubbing, but sometimes can be as simple and effective as a meaningful glance between one character and another, which communicates more than any number of pages of dialogue. What follows is hardly a definitive list, and is compromised by my inability to find all the relevant clips online, but here are a few examples off the top of my head.

1. The whole of this scene (indeed, the whole film) from There Will Be Blood is worth watching, but the part that raises the hair on the back of my neck is the look Daniel Day-Lewis gives Paul Dano at the 2:13 mark in this scene. For context, Day Lewis wants to drill for oil on land owned by the church. In exchange, Dano insists that Day Lewis be baptized first, thus setting the stage for a very public humiliation:

2. Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai is a minimalist materpiece, with a stoney-faced performance by Alain Delon that makes Buster Keaton look like Jim Carrey. This makes it all the more devastating when he ever so slightly loses his cool at the 9:06 mark of this video. The darting eyes and mouth hanging open tell us that his world is falling apart and that the betrayal he has suffered has removed all the certainties from his previously perfectly ordered life.

A couple I unfortunately haven’t been able to find on Youtube, so you’ll have to take my word for it:

3. An early scene in Disclosure. Michael Douglas and his wife Caroline Goodall are chatting with his colleagues at a party. It emerges during the conversation that an ex-girlfriend of his, Demi Moore, is coming to work with him. He hadn’t told his wife. She hides her shock by smiling and pretending nothing’s wrong, but then she flashes a brief but poisonous look at her husband as if to say “Oh my god wait until I get you home you’re in SO much shit”. The next scene shows them arguing and explaining their true feelings, but it’s superfluous as her look (and Douglas’ queasy reaction) tell us everything we need to know.

4. Heat. Near the end of the film (yes, small spoiler here) De Niro is about to make a clean getaway. Amy Brenneman is waiting for him in her car. Just as he’s about to get in he sees Pacino closing in on him, gun drawn. We are reminded of De Niro’s assertion earlier in the film that he allows himself nothing in his life which he isn’t able to walk away from if he spots the “heat” around the corner. Any now he has to walk away from the woman he loves. He glances between Brenneman and Pacino a few times, as if trying to decide, but he knows already what he must do:

5. Aliens. Ripley has rescued Newt and is making her way out of the alien queen’s lair. Soldier aliens close in from either side, but Ripley threatens to destroy the alien eggs, so the queen calls the soldiers off. Ripley and Newt continue backing away, but at the last second an egg nearby starts to open, threatening to unleash a face-hugger on them. Ripley turns to the queen, cocks her head to one side, and gives her a look that simultaneously says ”Oh, that’s how it’s going to be, is it?”, “I’m so disappointed in you”,  and “Well f*** you too”. Then she lets rip with her flamethrower.

6. Miller’s Crossing. This is the final scene so beware spoilers if you haven’t seen it (and if not, why on earth not?). There’s a lovely exchange of looks between Byrne and Finney at around 2:00, but the clincher is the final look after he adjusts his hat. Will we ever know what Tom’s real motives were, whose side he’s really on?

7. A bit of an obvious choice, possibly, but it’s still a classic reaction shot, followed by an all-time great line of dialogue. Although watching it again now I have to wonder how come Hooper doesn’t hear the noise of the shark breaking the surface of the water…

8. This one’s a bit hard to see in this small screen version (maybe click through to see it on Youtube and expand to fullscreen mode), but Kristin Scott Thomas’ dismissive look just after receiving a compliment on her dress just after the 4 minute mark is a lovely throwaway gag.

Further reading:

Film critic and novelist Anne Billson’s list of her favourite facial close-ups.

David Bordwell’s fascinating post about eyes and looks in The Social Network.