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Reason and rationality may be pursuing us, but we are faster.
Wittgenstein Blog: http://lwpi.blogspot.com/

Submarine
Story of a self obsessed teenage boy trying to lose his virginity and save his parents' marriage. Very funny and wisely told with bathos rather than pathos. Some excellent performances, particularly Yasmin Paige as the object of the boy's affections.
Forget the comparisons with Wes Anderson, this is a much more accomplished film than anything Anderson has made; the characters are more fully drawn and although quirky, it is an understated quirkiness, that reflects the quirkiness of the mind of a self obsessed teenager, rather than the shallow,quirky affectation found in the likes of The Royal Tennenbaums.
Not a masterpiece, but still highly recommended.

Animal Kingdom
Australian film about a family of small time criminals. At it's best in it's more low key scenes, where the under current of violence is formidable. Loses some of it's tension as the drive for narrative momentum undermines the films realism.
Flawed, but well worth seeing.

The Adjustment Bureau
Sci-fi conspiracy thriller adapted from a Phillip K Dick short story.
Entertaining, but the story doesn't lend itself to expansion as well as Minority Report or Total Recall (adapted from the story We Can Remember It For You Wholesale)
It seems that film makers are more keen to expand Dick's short stories than condense his novels into films. Maybe it's just too difficult to adapt the novels, although I liked Richard Linklater's film of A Scanner Darkly. Blade Runner is a good film, but doesn't have a the depth of the book.
Looking forward to seeing the film of Radio Free Ablemuth, which showed at last year's Sci-Fi London (unfortunately on a night I couldn't go).

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Curmudgeonly Rock 'n' Roll time traveller from ye olden days

2nd verse same as the 1st...

Just in case anybody here has never seen it, shame on you if that is the case, Henri-Georges Clouzot's excellent Les Diaboliques is back on a few London cinema screens at the moment.
Unreservedly recommended!

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Curmudgeonly Rock 'n' Roll time traveller from ye olden days

2nd verse same as the 1st...

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In work not working

Essential Killing
New film from Jerzy Skolimowski. A prisoner escapes from military internment and is pursued across a hostile terrain.
The Military are clearly American and the orange boiler suit worn by the prisoner would suggest Guantanamo Bay, but this is never made explicit and could just as easily be Afghanistan, Iraq, the Pakistani borderlands, Libya in the near future, or somewhere entirely fictional. Skolimowski's themes are universal; alienation, degradation, desperation, the quest for survival and are treated more philosophically than politically.
Filmed with very little dialogue, this is bravura, film making. In terms of technique, quite different from anything Skolimowski has done before, but in terms of it's central character and themes it is maybe less of a departure than it initially appears to be.
Skolimowski took a 17 year break from film making prior to his last outing, Four Nights With Anna, an underated film that sadly didn't get a UK release. I'm glad that he has not waited another 17 years before making another and also that Essential Killing has found UK distribution. I saw it at the Polish film festival, but it is due a full release in April.
Highly recommended.
p.s. Skolimowski's 1970 film Deep End starring Jane Asher & Diana Dors is back in cinemas in May. Must be at least 25 years since I last saw it, but if it's half as good as I remember it, then it is very good indeed!

Duffer
Not actually a new film, but out now, for the first time ever, on Blueray & DVD.
This would be a cult film, were it not for the fact that it has remained un-shown since it's initial release in 1971. Filmed around the Westbourne Park area of London (interesting to see what has and hasn't changed there), it concerns a teenage boy torn between the attentions of a kind hearted prostitute and a sadistic older man. It is a disturbing, austere film, though not one entirely lacking in humour, albeit a humour of a dark and twisted kind.
Never before released on video or DVD, turned down by both the London Gay & Lesbian Film Festival and the National Film Theatre's Flipside night curators (despite being released on DVD by their colleagues at the BFI's Flipside DVD imprint, apparently it's not the same people) this would have been the sort of film that played regularly at London's Scala cinema had it not slipped through the cracks. Prior to this DVD release you could barely even find reference to it on the internet, a review in the Time Out film guide was all I knew of it prior to it's one and only post 1971 screening, last year at Cinephillia West (in front of an audience of about ten people, myself included).
More people will hate this film than love it, but I'm one of those that loves it.

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Curmudgeonly Rock 'n' Roll time traveller from ye olden days

2nd verse same as the 1st...

Route Irish
I'm maybe a little predisposed to liking the films of Ken Loach because, along with the likes of John Sayles and Constantinos Costa-Gavras, he is one of the few overtly political film makers in mainstream cinema. However, this isn't one of his best. Although quite effective in portraying corruption in Iraq after the invasion, it's conventional thriller storyline doesn't exactly blend seamlessly into revealing the bigger picture and often seems a little heavy handed. Having said that, it does have a gritty intensity and a strong central performance from Mark Womack and as always with Loach it is impassioned and committed film making.
Worth seeing, but not without it's flaws.

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Curmudgeonly Rock 'n' Roll time traveller from ye olden days

2nd verse same as the 1st...

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Alas, not actually Gryff Rhys Jones...

"Little Jack Horner sitting on the corner
With no shoes and clothes
This aint funny, but he took his money
And sniffed it up his nose"

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Curmudgeonly Rock 'n' Roll time traveller from ye olden days

2nd verse same as the 1st...

Louise-Michel
Sardonic, sometimes absurdist black comedy from Gustave De Kervern and Benoît Delepine, who made the splendid film Aaltra in 2004. This one is actually from 2008, but has only just got a release over here.
Tells the story of a group of female factory workers who pool their redundancy money to hire a hitman to kill their former boss. The Fulll Monty this is not!
An excellent totally off the wall film, sometimes screamingly funny. Yolande Moreau & Bouli Lanners are both excellent in the starring roles.
Don't leave before the credits finish rolling, as there is a short scene right at the end featuring a cameo appearance from Albert Dupontel, whose film Bernie has a similar anarchic spirit to this one. Recommended!

(showing at the Institut Français, South Kensington until April 17th)

The Lincoln Lawyer
Mainstream suspense thriller from the novel by Michael Connelly, which has a grain of a good idea at the centre of it's plot, but is severely blighted by a poor screenplay, both in terms of dialogue and storytelling, characterisation thin enough to use as tracing paper and a director more interested in showy camera movements than creating any kind of tension.
Avoid!

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Curmudgeonly Rock 'n' Roll time traveller from ye olden days

2nd verse same as the 1st...

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Tall, moustachioed alcoholic - plays firewood with a bow.

Source Code
New one from Moon director (& son of David Bowie), Duncan Jones.
Jones directs the action well enough, but he is directing fairly lousy material. Starts with a preposterous premise, then fails to even adhere to the rule set implied by this premise. This film's half arsed attempts to explain it's sci-fi tech are so lazy it's insulting and does nothing to warrant a suspension of disbelief. The coda at the end of the film is just pure Hollywood corniness. Characterisation is cliched and acting no more adeqate than the quantum physics bullshit that makes up the films premise.

Little White Lies
A group of self absorbed, bourgeios friends sit about their holiday home and talk interminably, often hiding truths from one another, sometimes revealing more than they intend. With it's array of mildly unpleasant characters there is little chance of the audience giving a fuck whether there is any sort of understanding or concilliation to be reaced by the film's end.
Boring.

Sparrow
A group of Hong Kong pickpockets get more than they bargain for when they meet a beautiful woman. Enjoyable, if fairly insubstantilal new film from director Johnnie To. Less gritty than Election, showing an unexpected lightness of touch, particularly in a pick pocketing duel set piece towards the film's end. Worth a look if you've nothing better to do.

Cold Fish
Sion Sono's last film, Love Exposure, was a delirious four hour epic, concerning a teenage boy who gets his kicks surreptitiously photographing up girls' skirts, a misandrist girl and the leader of a brainwashing cult. Cold Fish is shorter and less exuberent, but almost as crazy. Black humour and extreme and bloody violence, combine with tropical fish retailing, in a tale of murder and madness. Like in Little White Lies, the characters are largely unsympathretic; unlike Little White Lies though, they are interesting.

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Curmudgeonly Rock 'n' Roll time traveller from ye olden days

2nd verse same as the 1st...

Sweetgrass
From the late 19th century, until 2003, every year ranchers have lead a massive flock of sheep almost 300 kilometres across Montana's Beartooth mountains for summer pasture. This elegiac documentary follows this epic journey as it is made for the last few times (2001 to 2003).
Bravely, the film makers forgo both narration and music. As the human beings in the film are a taciturn bunch, this means the sound track largely consists of sheep bleating. Amazingly, the film makers pull the film off with distinction. The photography, though shot on video, so not of the most high tech definition, is beautifully framed and the film is absolutely captivating.
This is an unsparing portrait of a disappearing way of life. The aging shepherds face challenges that subsequent generations will probably never experience. This is compelling cinema and is highly recommended.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec
Comic book adventure from Luc Besson (Leon, The Last Battle, The Fifth Element etc).
A would be comedy adventure for all the family in the Time Bandits or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang mold. Sadly, it is not any where near as funny as intended and simply fails to engage as an adventure film. Visually it is a treat and Louise Bourgoin (apparently a former weather presenter on Canal+) is always watch-able as the eponymous, Indiana Jones like, heroine, but the film is never more than moderately entertaining.

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Curmudgeonly Rock 'n' Roll time traveller from ye olden days

2nd verse same as the 1st...

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Reason and rationality may be pursuing us, but we are faster.
Wittgenstein Blog: http://lwpi.blogspot.com/

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Curmudgeonly Rock 'n' Roll time traveller from ye olden days

2nd verse same as the 1st...

How I Ended Last Summer
The only inhabitants of an Arctic meteorological station are an expeienced veteran meteorologist and a dilettante college graduate. Tension between them builds slowly to beyond breaking point in this naunced and subtle drama from Russia. Strong visually, good use of incidental sound and Sergei Puskepalis is excellent as the older man. The actions of the charaters are simutaneously strange and believable. A good film in many respects, but for some reason, maybe a failing on my part, one that I felt quite detached from.

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Curmudgeonly Rock 'n' Roll time traveller from ye olden days

2nd verse same as the 1st...

Cave Of Forgotten Dreams
Werner Herzog's 3D documentary about the stunning Chauvet caves of southern France, first discovered in 1994 and containing the earliest paintings known to man.
I've not previously been totally enamoured with 3D films, finding it little more than a gimmick, that bears little relationship to how we perceive three dimensions in real life. This film, however, is totally enhanced by it's use, brilliantly capturing the contours of the caves and how it's paintings embrace these contours. The depth of field is also staggering when looking at the numerous stalactite, stalagmites and animal bones that litter the cave.
Herzog's narration sometimes wanders towards mystical speculation (the films rather enigmatic title will give you some idea of what I mean by this), and the music (composed for the film) is sometimes a little too ornate for my liking, but these small reservations aside, this film is highly recommended.

Gantz
Saw this at Sci-Fi London, where it was showing in conjunction with the Terracotta Film Festival, so not sure if it's scheduled for a UK release, but expect it will at least turn up on DVD. It's a high octane live action sci-fi thriller based on a manga comic, that was also turned into a Japanese TV series.
Two teens get hit by a subway train trying to rescue a drunk man who has fallen on the track. They wake up in a room dominated by a mysterious black sphere called Gantz, which sends them out to hunt space invaders.
The film starts well, but becomes repetitive and starts to drag. This is not helped by all the battle scenes being shot in an overwhelming darkness, that is fine for one encounter but irritating by the third. I'm told that the original manga is a lot more depraved. I'm not giving any spoilers away by saying that the ending leaves things open for a sequel and with this film being a box office hit in Japan I would expect it to become a franchise, but the writers will have to offer a lot more to interest me in further films.

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Curmudgeonly Rock 'n' Roll time traveller from ye olden days

2nd verse same as the 1st...

Farewell
Spy story, based on true events about a Russian spy, (Serbian film director Emir Kusturica in a rare acting role) who leaks important documents to the French. A sober, slow paced film, not really a "thriller", but don't let that put you off. It is gripping, well acted, tightly scripted and has resonances that go beyond the specifics of the story.

Taxi Zum Klo
Landmark gay film from 1980, shown at the time in London, but only under club conditions at cinemas like the Scala, now on full general release, uncut, thanks to relaxation of UK censorship laws ( I'm pretty sure this must be the first film with an unsimulated scene of urolagnia, to be passed by the BBFC).
Directed and written by Frank Ripploh, this is an autobiographical film in which Ripploh plays himself. By day Frank is a teacher in an elementary school, at night he cruises parks and toilets looking for fleeting sexualk encounters, whilst caring and attentive Bernd, a pick-up who has become his lover stays at home preparing unappreciated dinners.
The film is honest, open, non judgemental and has several moments of disarmingly warm and droll humour. Filmed a year before the first recorded case of AIDS, the film has an added poignancy now, brilliantly capturing a subculture in a particular time and place. Recommended.

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Curmudgeonly Rock 'n' Roll time traveller from ye olden days

2nd verse same as the 1st...