Ratcatcher (1999) dir. by Lynne Ramsay
Starring Tommy Flanagan, Mandy Matthews and William Eadie

***

By Blair Stewart

Being a child of the '80s I was deprived of first-hand experiences of the previous decade, but one impression left with me from the '70s is garbage. Rotten, stinking, fetid, obese black plastic bags plump with vermin, spilling their messy guts out of city dustbins over every street. That's the imagery I've taken away from Western cinema during the period with Scorsese's 1976 Manhattan buried under trash (both figuratively and literally) in Taxi Driver, and a refuse-strewn London in the grip of public-works strikes and punk anarchy in Julien Temple's ode to the Sex Pistols with The Filth and the Fury.

Scottish writer/director Lynne Ramsay's own turbulent life experiences included a 1973 sanitation strike while growing up in working class Glasgow. And by 'working class' I mean the dwellers of housing estates, the odourless British euphemism for ghettos. Against the backdrop of poverty Ramsay colours her 1999 near-autobiographical roughneck debut with streaks of childhood bewilderment to salve young James's (William Eadie) dire existence atop playground trash piles.

Da (Tommy Flanagan of Sons of Anarchy recognition) is an unrepentant drunkard through-and-through, while Ma (Mandy Matthews) is tenuously holding her family together with the older sister in the micro-skirt sneaking off for carnal knowledge. Just below their eye line wee James will gain an understanding of death as his playmate drowns in the local open sewer - a more terrible form of adult knowledge known than his elder siblings. The guilt spins James away from his family towards the used neighbourhood bike's comforting arms and the empty outskirts of the city where a better life might come with the construction of nicer housing estates for all. Not exactly the stuff of Wonder Years, but an honest take on systemic rot, and despite a false note in the final scenes, often a superb one.

By occasionally using surreal mise-en-scène Ramsay strips away the brutal reality of U.K. kitchen sink/working class drama covered in the works of Loach, Leigh and Clarke from the protagonist's eyes as he grasps onto his innocence. Ramsay's cast is excellent but nearly unintelligible, their Glaswegian brogue impossible to my Canadian ear, which is saying something since my Mom comes from a bunch of thick old Weegies. Regardless of necessary subtitles, the actors are well chosen and appear as suited to their surrounding in front of the camera as desperate Hollywood starlets in search of spiritual enlightenment in India aren't to theirs.

According to the hallowed annals of the IMDB most of the actors in Ratcatcher haven't made another film, which is a damn shame based on the results. Thankfully, after an eight-year hiatus, Lynne Ramsay returned with last year's controversial We Need to Talk About Kevin.

Cowboys and Aliens (2011) dir. Jon Favreau
Starring Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, with Paul Dano and Sam Rockwell wandering around looking kind of lost.

*

By Blair Stewart

To be honest with you good readers I have a soft-spot for westerns and sci-fi, snooty cinemaphile pretentiousness be damned. I know every note of Morricone's 'Ecstacy of Gold' score like it's a childhood pet, and there's isn't another film release I anticipated in adolescence more than "Alien 3" (I learned the disappointments of youthful hope on that Friday in '92, and a few years later with Eyes Wide Shut after I got into Kubrick in order to pick up arty broads, so lesson learned on 'anticipating' I suppose). Anyways, there are many ways one could make an enjoyable film concerning Cowboys and Aliens, certainly when you have $160 million to toss around like a big shot, but one method you shouldn't use is half-assed.

How I hate this film, oh lordy lordy let me count the ways.

Emerging from the chintzy-hole of other hacky cash-grabs executive producer Steven Spielberg with his fellow hydra heads of Brian Glazer and Ron Howard join forces with masters of episodic boilerplate prose Lindelof, Kurtzman and Orci to bring a forgettable graphic novel to the screen because, dammit, it was easy to sell to Universal. No doubt the post-pitch words ringing through the hallways of movie-studio purse strings were "You know, for kids!?" Most likely empty terms like 'dynamic storytelling' and 'emotional resonance' were used in the early press releases before cameras rolled. Jon Favreau then wandered in bewildered and feverish from being lost in the Alkali salt wastes and was coerced into signing on in return for some refreshing Evian, so here we are.

A Man with No Name named Jake (Daniel Craig, stage name Sir Pouty Lips McGillicutty) wakes up in the Arizona badlands of 1800-something-or-other with an iWatch from Centaurus welded to his wrist. He shoots some blaggards with fireballs he nicked from Street Fighter II's Ryu-'Hadouken!'-and is eventually dragged to jail in a one-horse town to face the wrath of cattle baron Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford with sly comic timing for a dude who is always really high on-set, but otherwise lazy) for crossing paths with his weasel of a son Percy (Paul Dano, paying bills). Meanwhile, strange local woman Ella Swenson (Olivia Wilde, who on her Wikipedia page states about herself being "really critical and analytical" hahahahahawhataboutthisfilmladyhahahaha?) appears when the story needs her to fill in exposition and cover plot potholes. Aliens show up, Indians show up, Daniel Craig does mescaline and nearly relives the utterly terrifying abduction sequence of D.B. Sweeney from 1993's "Fire in the Sky", shit done gets blown up good yessir, FIN, $160 million poorly spent.

Now how could I hate a film like this? It's supposed to fun and lightweight and all homagey to the John Fords and Ridley Scotts of their genres? Because it's average. It's average in scope, in imagination, in intention, its dialogue and mood and filming and pacing and entertainment and acting-average, average, average. The aliens themselves? Totally forgettable, and probably their concept was a rush-job like the rest of this film. The only thing that isn't average in "Cowboys and Aliens" is Craig and Wilde's performances, both of which are terrible, like most of their work. Let us just listen to the title alone: "Cowboys and Aliens". Couldn't even bother to come up with a nifty title like "Strange Rider" or "Deadcreek" or "Showdown at the E.T. Corral". Nope, "Cowboys and Aliens", from the studio that brought you 'Explosions and Tits', cue the lousy guitar solo, now stuff your face with some popcorn.

Riding home from the theater after watching this I discovered I had left my phone somewhere in Leicester Square and never found it. I blame this shitty film, which is now yours to own on BluRay, DVD and online from Netflix.

The Kid with a Bike "Le Gamin au Vélo" (2011) dir. The Dardenne Brothers
Starring Cécile de France, Jérémie Renier, and Thomas Doret

***

By Blair Stewart

Belgium's Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Rosetta, The Son and The Child) return to Cannes with their winning cinéma vérité formula. Approaching films with a focus on lower-class European sociology, the Dardennes' storytelling engages you with films of emotional complexity that are told with what initially appears to be docu-drama simplicity.

The Kid with a Bike follows the lousy situation of 11-year-old Cyril (Thomas Doret), dumped by his father (Jérémie Renier, a grown-up follow-up to his role in The Child) into foster care. Cyril is a ball of thwarted energy, furiously pecking away at his perceived imprisonment by jumping fences, badgering his councillors and doing anything to burrow back to his absentee pa. He breaks out of the home and runs smack into hairdresser Samantha (Cécile de France), who in turn establishes an often fraught relationship with Cyril as she becomes his surrogate mother. The baggage and vulnerability of Cyril is a weighty task for Samantha, with the child's greatest danger coming from a mentorship with an adolescent thug cut from the same cloth as the boy. In the thug, the Dardennes effortlessly sidestep trite judgement of Cyril's bad company with a simple moment involving the thug caring for his invalid grandmother. A moment like that sticks with me, as a dimension is added to a stock character who has his own motivation for why he would commit crimes. The story has a circular purpose to it, with Cyril's behaviour dictated by his father's choices in another pleasant surprise where I'd almost taken the Belgian filmmaking duo for granted with their script.

The Kid with a Bike doesn't break new ground for Jean-Pierre and Luc, but of their major releases over the past two decades, this is their most overtly sympathetic film – it hurts to watch Cyril. Cécile de France is lovely in her working-class role, as she communicates the interior scheming of a good woman nursing a damaged kid. Thomas Doret is a wonderful child actor, his buzzing restlessness reminiscent of Antoine Doinel in The 400 Blows. I thought of Truffaut's film often during the long moments of Cyril riding his bike, urgently trying to gain a step in a hopeless situation.

What's kept me from rating The Kid higher is that with each new film, the Dardenne pair tread closer to old grounds and could certainly expand well beyond their safety net. The film's soundtrack is also periodically breached with an overwrought score yearning for catharsis rather loudly.

While The Kid with a Bike doesn't have the heady morality questions of The Son and its payoff, the Dardennes' latest is a fine film that will reward their audience.

Michael (2011) dir. by Markus Schleinzer
Starring Michael Fuith and David Rauchenberger

**1/2

By Blair Stewart

The man is a blank.

Balding, pasty, forgettable. Bland suit, bland shoes, bland words. He arrives home from the insurance office, removes the bland suit and shoes, makes a snack, goes downstairs to his padlocked basement, into the playroom of the 10-year-old boy he's held captive for months, and he rapes the boy. That's his routine.

This is the reality of Michael, Markus Schleinzer's debut feature after cutting his teeth as a casting director, most notably for Michael Haneke. His influence hangs over so many of the art-house releases these days, he's like a trend instead of an auteur. Michael deals with the outrage of the Josef Fritzl revelation and other cases of child enslavement within our generation.

Michael Fuith is Michael the adult, an obsequious middle-manager type of deep silence, hard-wired as a sexual predator, matter-of-fact and mostly competent in his crime. David Rauchberger is the boy, required to engage Michael in sex, expected to play the role of a playmate and chattel. The film shifts between the man's outside existence and his casual trips down to the basement, absolute evil reduced to banality. The scenes of molestation are mostly implied but brutal to fathom, even if you're not a parent. The film doesn't insist exploitation or controversy, it confronts an aspect of human nature that's existed since the catamites; it could occur, and has already, in small-town Austria, Afghanistan, California.

As a film, in regard to design, Michael is accomplished but unspectacular and quite predictable. But to be fair, if the story was sensationalized, I'd be furious – Schleinzer has made a mostly honest film from an unfathomable source. It does pander though in having Michael as a vacant monster, Todd Solondz was much braver in humanizing Dylan Baker's paedophile in Happiness. Fuith and Rauchberger are committed in their roles and commendable in their bravery. Michael is a film of great unease that I don't want to watch again, but it’s worth respecting.

"But I... I can't help myself! I have no control over this, this evil thing inside of me, the fire, the voices, the torment!"
-Peter Lorre in Fritz Lang's M.

Miss Bala "Miss Bullet" (2011) dir. Gerardo Naranjo
Starring Stephanie Sigman, Noe Hernandez

****

By Blair Stewart

Sometimes I come out of a movie theatre and the film I've just seen is mighty enough that I want to walk along the streets afterwards and express my happiness to passing strangers. Tonight I had that rare joy. Gerardo Naranjo's Miss Bala is pure cinema, a head above the mostly minor works I've seen so far at Cannes, a coal-black rat maze of a film with a young woman tumbling up the steps of Mexican border anarchy towards absurdity.

Stephanie Sigman is Laura, the dirt-broke shirt-vendor in Tijuana, starting her day by entering into the local beauty pageant and ending the night an ensnared accomplice in a freeform ground battle between kingpin Lido (Noe Hernandez), his army of triggermen and Lido's local wonk officials going all-in against the gringos of the D.E.A. After witnessing Lido's Darwinistic housecleaning aptitude, Laura's safety is now tied to the drug-runner with her prospects on par with that of Schrodinger's cat. The story takes the humble girl and pitches her through unceasing sequences encapsulating Naranjo's disgust with the systemic rot of the federales, the silence of the feminicidios and the cartels above all, from the Baja to Tamaulipas state and San Diego to El Paso.

Miss Bala shifts so many gears it could enter an off-road rally and win, and it often appears to be heading towards preposterousness before wantonly leaping right into it. Lately, having watched so many unambitious releases coming from the mainstream and the art-house, it is so gratifying now to see a film that ignores plausibleness and the audiences' expectations to just keep running you ragged for two hours.

The tension of Laura's endangerment is perfectly sustained, only for Bala to dip into cruel satire until the story once again kicks into escalating carnage of ambitious direction. Stephanie Sigman is the same kind of sympathetic 'living barometer' of vast human destruction as Polanski had done when he focused on the plight of one man to express the enormity of the Holocaust in The Pianist. In his first role, Noe Hernandez as Lido has a fearsome Charles Bronson quality about him with dull black eyes and the odd charisma of a man who massacres casually.

Naranjo takes the myriad of ongoing violations between/against his countrymen, distills them into the plight of a lone girl at the mercy of Mexico's (and America's) phantom war dividing her land, then uses action as a Trojan horse to unleash his indignation when the audience might be hoping for entertainment. How awesome.

The script by Naranjo and Mauricio Katz is economical and confident in character and action, but the tandem of Naranjo and his cinematographer Mátyás Erdély is where the film succeeds. It’s a collaboration reminiscent of Alfonso Cuaron and Emmanuel Lubezki's best work together. Dollies, brilliant crane shots, Steadicam, mise-en-scène – the film is in constant, justified movement to match the pace of the story, and Naranjo knows what a camera is capable of and how it should really move.

I expect Miss Bala to be somewhere high up on my year-end list of best films.

Brighton Rock (2010) dir. Rowan Joffe
Starring Sam Riley, Andrea Riseborough, John Hurt, and Helen Mirren

**

By Blair Stewart

Youthful Pinkie Brown has a pretty boy smile with a heart and soul like a burnt-out piece of meat, nothing left on the plate but some gristle. As the razor-thugs of Brighton cannibalize each other for the protection money and racecourse stubs Pinkie peeps opportunity after his mentor cops it to their rivals. The lad might look a small fry in a sordid haunt but once implicated in gangster payback by a good-girl Catholic witness our wee Pinkie becomes a shark in blood-waters.

Graham Greene's Brighton Rock clawed at the squirmy underbelly of England between the Great Wars, a filthy country stewing in vices and religious angst with Pinkie's teenage psycho on a moral see-saw across from the dull, virtuous Rose flagellating for the Virgin Mary. A 1947 film adaptation by John Boulting not only introduced a memorable creepshow Sir Richard Attenborough in his breakthrough lead role, but the film itself now resides on the same shelf of British film standards along with The Third Man, A Matter of Life and Death and Great Expectations.

Rowan Joffe, son of Roland, who was responsible for The Killing Fields, takes a ballsy step in his debut by updating a classic with Pinkie in the middle of the 1960 Mods and Rockers youth riots of Quadrophenia lore. Sam Riley (who previously made for a bang-on Ian Curtis in the Joy Division biopic Control) steps into Pinkie's shoes, a thirty-year old acting as a teenager more admirably than most people, namely my own broken-down ass. As the Irish waitress, Andrea Riseborough plays an oblivious small-town Red Riding Hood as she mistakes Pinkie's skulking for courtship. Hovering about the curdled love story is Helen Mirren as Rose's knowing boss with raised hackles around the boy, and together with an elegantly wasted John Hurt they play junior detectives. In a cameo, Andy Serkis leaves a trail of resplendent Brylcreem sleaze as the local heavy.

The desperation of scrubs on the margins of the criminal trough produces a yearly crop of worthy film subjects, with David Michod's recent and most excellent Animal Kingdom coming to mind, but this remake (or 're-imaging' or 're-invigorating') of Greene's work has too much starch to it and just ends up poorly baked. Although I can believe Mirren and Hurt as wastrels killing time off the clock in the local pub, the rest of the main cast has a sheen of fakery around them, with a pivotal riot sequence sticking out artificially in example. The 'rampaging' Teddy Boy extras look like they're just going through the motions, and I couldn't buy into Joffe's version of the time, place, or as mentioned, most people. Riley and Riseborough simply don't inhabit their characters, and no amount of vintage set decoration could distract from the dearth of mortal guilt in their eyes when their mouths were saying otherwise.

I came away from Brighton Rock with the impression that the story was updated by three decades for the simple reason of Pinkie on a 60's Vespa looks cool, which just doesn't cut it. Style can only go so far when you fuddle about with the classics. Classics might have heaps of style, but it's the substance that gives a work longevity.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams 3-D (2010) dir. Werner Herzog
A documentary featuring Werner Herzog

**

By Blair Stewart

The Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave in the south of France was an early turning point in human expression, intuition and endurance when you factor in the climate during the Upper Paleolithic period (32,000 years ago, or when most of Europe was a continental ice cube). In 1994, a team of speleologists followed an air draft down into the untouched cavern that preserved the oldest cave paintings in recorded civilization, which provided incredibly vivid detail.

Beyond piles of outwitted predators' bones from prehistoric rituals, the paintings were found etched with a three-dimensional perspective. A horse with an outline of eight legs flowing across limestone that was radiated by dancing firelight would have the illusion of movement, no doubt a source of joy, long before Muybridge's mark was due. Because of the fragile existence of the unearthed treasures, the French government has kept public viewing of the cave under tight restrictions.

Enter Werner Herzog, one of the leading figures of the New German Cinema movement encompassing both fiction and documentary. World traveller, opera director and a deadpan old-kook to boot, Herzog was granted limited access to Chauvet for an excursion into 3-D filmmaking. The turquoise beauty of the Ardèche river region certainly pops in that format, but the billowing details of the actual paintings themselves sadly can't translate well in the muted glow of the handheld camera lights and necessary cinema glasses. The imagery captured despite the limitations of 3-D are still striking. A preserved child's footprint seems freshly laid if not for the elapsed time, the red handprints of one caveman share space with the clawed graffiti of extinct cave bears, and everywhere stalactites hang rudely in the frame like a dog's drool.

The cave is a film's dream setting, and yet I found myself drifting into slumber despite my eagerness for Herzog's documentaries due to his many triumphs, from 1974's The Great Ecstasy of the Woodcarver Steiner to the 2007 Oscar-nominated Encounters at the End of the World. The mixture of a heavy cello score, Herzog's unhelpful monotone voice-over and the dim image was too much for my wits. The director's patented curveball-logic questions during his geological/archaeological interviews about the dreams of the long-dead artists detracted from the subject, as did the blatantly obvious written moments for his scientists (Herzog's best fictional work has the quality of fact, while many of his documentaries have meddling fingerprints somewhere among the pre-planned set pieces) and an ill-suited coda involving crocodiles.

The lingering questions that remain from the paintings will mostly be left unanswered, and while it's important to ask about their intentions and praise their achievements, it's mostly futile to put words in a dead caveman's mouth.

Chico and Rita

The Unforgettably Forgotten Great and Good Films of 2010

By Blair Stewart

Editor's note: Here's an alternate Best of List from UK-Based DFD contributor Blair Stewart

Happy New Year and all that jazz folks, here's a rundown of 2010's finest slept-on films that unfortunately were wedged between the bluster of "Inception" and the perpetual infernal mechanized horsepoop contraption that is "Twilight: Eclipse". No "Shutter Island" or "Winter's Bone" to be seen here, but plenty of head-scratching and highfalutin cultural snobbery to be had. No "I Am Love" included either, the ending was an embarrassment.


"Machete" dir. by Robert Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis
Starring Danny Trejo, Jessica Alba, Jeff Fahey and Jeff Fahey's sweet-ass mullet

I've despised 90% of Robert Rodriguez's efforts, and after the letdown of "Predators" (great concept dulled by tacky execution), would have happily skipped "Machete" for a long night of sweet F.A. despite Danny Trejo's leathery mug. Thankfully Rodriguez and his editor/co-director Maniquis have taken a highlight of 2007's "Grindhouse" experiment, the 2-minute fake trash trailer of which this film is born, and expanded it into a piss-taking scattershot lampoon of Rodriguez's own body of work. Sometime around a climax of Robert DeNiro channelling Foghorn Leghorn as a US Senator caught on the warpath of Lindsay Lohan in a nun's habit I fell in love with the tastelessness of "Machete", John Waters would have made a logical pick for story consultant if asked. The blowhards involved in the US-Mexico border controversy deserved this lovingly bloody satire, and with his part as DeNiro's greasy hatchet man, I now demand more Jeff Fahey roles in my American mainstream movies. Hell, Fahey in Mexican ones, too.


"Cane Toads: The Conquest" dir. by Mark Lewis
Featuring Cane Toads, Rural Australians

A sequel to the 1988 documentary "Cane Toads: An Unnatural History", the disastrous introduction of the American reptile to Northern Australia becomes a cautionary lesson in man's ecological blunders and decoration for the interviewed weirdos of Oz's hinterlands. As humorous, terrifying, frustrating and educational as losing one's virginity, "Cane Toads" was a Sundance festival hit that at best may yet see a limited release, otherwise Netflix beckons. The 3-D format was used effectively in raising my blood pressure as a solitary toad hopped into the foreground space amongst Queensland's beauty on the cusp of conquer. Then another toad arrived. Then another. And two more. And another one. And three more. And another......


Exit Through the Gift Shop dir. by Banksy
Featuring Banksy and Thierry Guetta

Joining "Catfish" as the other documentary this year to give me pause in questioning its truth, "Exit Through the Gift Shop" was a series of happy accidents (graffiti art fan Thierry Guetta with A.D.D. and O.C.D. records Banksy, the hyped zeitgeist of illegal street art, before gaining more financial success than his mentor, and despite the fact that his art sucks, only for Banksy to become a fine director of Guetta's footage, uh-huh) that resulted in a wildly entertaining film. Whatever the processes required, 2010 was a year in which the non-fiction material ("Collapse", "Restrepo", most of "I'm Still Here") exceeded the fictional work in my admiration. As additional viewing incentive Banksy is a caustic narrating genius and the eye-popping sight of an elephant spray painted burgundy simply must be seen.


"Enter the Void" dir. by Gaspar Noe
Starring Nathaniel Brown and Paz de la Huerta

The acting is mostly atrocious, the story a haberdashery of "The Tibetan Book of the Dead" and DMT-laced spliffs, and despite the immense audiovisual acumen of "I Stand Alone" and "Irreversible" notoriety Gaspar Noe isn't the brightest of filmmakers, just the flashiest. Yet "Enter the Void" was an overwhelming experience; a CGI-fireworks merging of Tokyo's electric hum, the free-floating camera crane movement of Kalatozov's "I Am Cuba" with trust-fund carnality that briefly overruled Mckee's screenplay formulas and mixed-marketing tie-in tentpole franchises. Perhaps Paz de la Huerta won over my better judgement, but I'm alright with that. It was a heady trip at the cinema in an otherwise stuffily unmemorable year.


"Chico and Rita" dir. by Javier Mariscal and Fernando Trueba
Featuring the music of Bebo Valdés, Tito Puente and Charlie Parker

Oh to be young, carefree and lustful in pre-Castro Havana around 1948. Rich Yankee dolts from the brownstone smokestacks are pouring into town for a weekend fling; Cuban superpowers of bebop and mambo are following them out. A roughly animated lark on the high times of Cuban beat in the way-back-when, "Chico and Rita" was predictable and saccharine but it had good tunes and hot sex going on, therefore making it the best date movie possible for anyone anywhere anytime. I have never found turquoise blue as fine a colour as I have while watching this.


"Trash Humpers" dir. by Harmony Korine
Starring Harmony Korine and Rachel Korine

Like a lost VHS tape that escaped from Gary Busey's private snuff collection "Trash Humpers" is off-limits for those of us with decency and good taste. Squalid freaks in old folks masks destroy property and, you know, hump trash, where the overwhelming mood of chaos in 78 minutes created a feeling of dread in me greater than all the cannibal extras in "The Road" could muster. Art gallery owners in Soho and Williamsburg wept.


"Four Lions" dir. by Christopher Morris
Starring Riz Ahmed, Kayvan Novak and Nigel Lindsay

A ballsy flogging of radical fundamentalist hive-thinking and the sorry state of the U.K. in general, "Four Lions" was blessed with superbly funny dialogue when I could understand whatever the hell the Jihadists were saying. A plotline about an incompetent sleeper-cell in the Yorkshires had too much baggage for major North American distributors, despite qualities including Riz Ahmed's excellent lead performance alongside Chris Morris gold-standard in British comedy direction. The idea of a modern farce's last reel concerning the gang's attempt to bomb the London Marathon would be depraved if not for the example set by "Dr. Strangelove" during the Cold War's depths. Some jackasses might be less inclined to publicly blow themselves up under the wilting onslaught of such well-conceived mockery.


"The Illusionist" dir. by Sylvain Chomet
Starring the animated ghost of Jacques Tati

Trading in Gallic whimsy for Gallic melancholy, Sylvain Chomet of "The Triplets of Belleville" adapts an unfinished Jacques Tati script into a hand-drawn torch song for Tati's cinema/vaudeville legacy and the worn cobblestones of Edinburgh. When I have kids I intend to screen this for them as I want them to get a head start on disappointment, heartache and quality foreign films.

Collapse (2009) dir. Chris Smith
A documentary featuring Michael Ruppert

***

By Blair Stewart

At some point in our present existence predicated by its own existence civilization will run low on oil. In lockstep with this fact is the exponential swelling of our populace while entrenched battles for fossil fuels causes the global economy to pinball around. Until then.

Made by Chris Smith, the documenatarian responsible for "American Movie" and "The Yes Men", "Collapse" probes the career of Michael Ruppert; former LAPD officer, investigative reporter, publisher of the underground newsletter 'From the Wilderness' and possible Oracle of western civilizations decline. Together they sit in a grubby warehouse for an interview as tentacles crept their way around my plans for a fat retirement.

Locked into a single-person bull session with an old man shouldn't make for an unsettling experience and yet the intelligence and the paranoia and the devout cynicism of Ruppert did just that to my placidity. Switching between Ruppert's talking head and related footage of his scorn for most media, government, higher law enforcement and alternative energy, "Collapse" maps out the fierce bush humanity may need to hack through for progression. No doubt an ego boost for survivalist and vegan hippies alike. Like a knowing horror film where bloodshed outside of the frame is far worse for the imagination a similar effect is had just from Smith's subject talking. This doesn't make everything Michael Ruppert is saying to be cardinal virtues from hell; it's that he has a convincingly burnt-out way of pointing out likely cataclysms and the realities of overpopulation and peak oil overpowers my personal horseshit detector.

"Collapse" is a stylistically unusual documentary for Smith as it has an Errol Morris "Fog of War"/"Mr. Death" touch to it from the film's setting to the Philip Glass-ish soundtrack down to the poster design. This is akin to Soderbergh blatantly aping Wong Kar-wai's style and odd as Smith is one of the best in his field. A form of flattery perhaps, and possibly the proper (only?) way to approach the singular personality of the cigarette-punishing Ruppert. A good documentary on a great mouthpiece, and worthwhile viewing for everyone who has a stake in the derivatives of oil.

N.B. One piece of sage advice is passed along: buy perennial vegetable seeds for your garden, you might need them down the road.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) dir. by Apichatpong Weerasethakul Starring: Thanapat Saisaymar and Jenjira Pongpas

***

By Blair Stewart

Like an animal rejoining its pride, Uncle Boonmee returns to his rural Thai birthplace to die as he has died many times past. This is the jumping-off point for the narrative of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, which isn't concerned with telling his story as much as it wants to instill in the viewer a languid, surreal spiritualism.

While fading with kidney disease Uncle Boonmee's sister and nephew have joined him on his farm along the dense jungle of the Laotian border. As Boonmee is making peace with his most recent life his house welcomes the arrival of his long-dead wife and the presence of his missing son in the form of a simian-like entity with beaming red eyes. While his life winds down Boonmee reflects on his previous incarnations around his stomping grounds; a rebellious ox gone walkabout in the countryside, a talking catfish who has a tryst with a Princess-or was that Boonmee who was once the Princess? Boonmee will express guilt from his time spent spilling blood for the military, his fears of a future police state for his nation, all the ebb and flow of departed time.

This would be silly if it weren't for the hypnotic nature of the film's mood from the first shot on; no manipulative bedside performances, instead a Zen acceptance of death on moonlit rice paddies. It helps that both the night pilgrimage of Boonmee towards his possible destination and the ghostly appearance of his son are so full of sublime imagery that they've stayed with me for days afterwards now. I'll say further that the introduction of his dead son's ink-black apparition is a moment of profound dread and wonder rarely found in today's theaters.

The performances by a cast of unknowns and non-actors are unruffled in matching the relaxed nature of the graceful old man's passage. As a director who shares the talents of Wong Kar-Wai's detached romanticism, Tarkovsky's haunted mysticism and Buñuel's playful weirdness, Weerasethakul also has a habit of esoteric onanism at the expense of my patience. If you enjoy elegant plotting or you prefer your ghost tales with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore you'll likely want to avoid this work. The many transgressions from Uncle Boonmee's main story can often frustrate but I see why it won film's highest honour, (the 2010 Cannes Palme d'Or) Weerasethakul has an understanding of filmic mood that can translate into masterpieces. Despite its memorable qualities, I don't think Uncle Boonmee is that masterpiece, but still a perplexing and spiritually rewarding piece of cinema.

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010) dir. by Tsui Hark
Starring Andy Lau, Carina Lau, Li Bingbing and Tony Leung Ka-fai

**

By Blair Stewart

A timely response to Guy Richie's recently daft "Sherlock Holmes", Tsui Hark's long-gestating "Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame" fancies a Tang-Zhou Dynasty court official as that of a wuxia ass-whupping crimestopper.

Di Renjie was a 600 A.D. chancellor during the reign of Empress Wu Zetian whose pluck in matters of political stratagem were such that centuries later he has reemerged as the imperial gumshoe in a mystery novel/film adaptation fighting against the status quo and the supernatural. And by supernatural I refer to our hero drop-kicking a pack of CGI-talking deer. As one would.

The coronation of Wu (Carina Lau) as China's sovereign comes fast as a towering Buddha is being erected to honour her but a rash of self-combustions amongst her lackeys forces the Empress's release of Dee (Andy Lau) to crack a case tied to her own hubris. Tailing the erstwhile revolutionary Dee is Wu's loyal right-hand, the fetching Shangguan Jing'er (Li Bingbing), and together they join forces with albino policemen and syphilic dwarf witch-doctors to solve the riddle. From the plot synopsis I digress that most Mandarin folk tales were conceived by monks and poets on epic opium binges the night before their telling.

Using his powers of deduction, foresight and body blows, Dee goes high in the Imperial Court and low in the underworld bartering caves to figure out why Wu loyalists are turning to ash. Andy Lau makes for a charming rogue in the lead; his spiky beard twitching in the company of his unscrupulous royal bailbondsman. It would be a geek pleasure to see Lau's Dee bounce ideas off of Poirot and Holmes, but that's a crossover for another day. There's a good cast in "Dee" mostly buried under silly costumes with Carina Lau's Empress showing interesting shades of grey in her role and Tony Leung's most welcome inscrutable mug in a small appearance.

Despite their work the fundamentals of a good film are often ignored in "Dee" to make room for some lousy f.x., creaky plot machinations and wan fight scenes. This latter problem exists despite the presence of wire-fu choreography by Sammo Hung and the director being, you know, Tsui Hark of "Once Upon A Time in China" and "Time and Tide" action acclaim. Too many damn computer effects and quick-cuttings I say, not enough in-camera tricks and long takes.

Along with these qualms I was also bothered by the obvious digital look of the film that often took me right out of the story (a similar problem I had with Gibson's "Apocalypto"), and the same nagging sense from the revealed theme late in the story as I had watching Zhang Yimou's 2002 "Hero" for the first time: Sacrifice yourself for the good of the people, a unified country is most important for the people, and sometimes those people need a ruthless leader. Somehow I don't think this film would have been made with yuans paying the budget if it had been called "Detective Dee vs. the 1000 Corrupt Party Members".

A promising Asian compliment to "Harry Potter" mysticism and "Indiana Jones" daring-do is stunted by these flaws, but perhaps success will iron out those kinks in Dee's future Detective adventures. Mind the flying unconscious deer.

Sex and the City 2: The Quickening (2010) dir. by Michael Patrick King
Starrin:g Sarah Jessica Parker, Chris Noth, Kim Cattrall and Father Time

*1/2

By Blair Stewart

I recall watching the first "Sex and the City" movie in a half-empty gravel courtyard on a ratty screen showing a used 35mm print along the shores of the Adriatic. Slouched in a plastic lawn chair, drunk on Karlovačko with the heavens above me and a fine lady by my side, my eyes occasionally glanced at the on-screen circus before I would drift back to the Milky Way's brushstroke and Orion's belt above.

The film, as they say, was not my cup of tea.

Move forward several years and despite the advances in digital film presentation the theater I was in couldn't project a clear Croatian night-time sky along the ceiling as I watched "Sex and the City 2". If only, if only.

Picking up two years after their successful heist of the Lindbergh baby (as I seem to recall), Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and her gang of upper-lower-eastside-westside Manhattanite B.F.F.'s Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha (Cynthia Nixon y Kristen Davis und Kim Cattrall) from the HBO show team up to whinge about their frenzied relationships, workplaces and the lousy Mexican/Korean/Puerto Rican help raising their kids. As Carrie grows distant from the hairdresser's dummy that is her husband (Chris Noth cruising along in 2nd gear and squinting to read the cue cards just off of the 'A' camera sightlines) she joins her gals in a runaway trip to Abu Dhabi to shop passionately and talk about penises. Cue that Alicia Keys song about 'Newwwww Yorkkkkkk' to highlights scenes of 'life lessons' and 'friendship' with all the subtlety of clanging death.

Sadly the film was released over a year after the 'global downturn', therefore making "SATC2" as out-of-touch with the mainstream line as Norman Mailer hanging out with 1978 gutter punks at Max's Kansas City for a Ramones gig. "Sex and the City" once mattered when the audience could still pay their bills, now it just seems wasteful. Regardless of reality our plucky gals still buy the fancy shoes and make awful puns, like the traumatic moment when Cattrall cracks the line of "Lawrence of my labia" and I had to leave the theater due to the whooshing sound of my deflating genitals. Exacerbating the patchwork script is Michael Patrick King's episodic direction-lots of reaction shots, lots of montages, lots more sound and fury. I'd bitch some more but I'm tired of swinging a crowbar at this corpse and I can tell from the confidences of a few "SATC" fans that this is a watered-down version of the original they once loved.

Only in two moments could I understand the initial draw of the TV series from the results on film; in the scene where Charlotte and Miranda speak frankly of the anxieties in raising children as career women, and in the later stages when the girls are clued-in to the hypocritical nature of a decadant modern Middle East where women are kept invisible. A little more sharp writing as the motherhood scene attests, a little less Liza Minnelli-singing-at-a-gay-wedding cliches, and perhaps "SATC2" would have dragged itself out of the used clothes bin.

My gal also wanted me to tell you I liked this film more than the above review claims, but she's just a catty, lying slut.
Meeeeeooooooooooowwwwwww.

Sex and the City 2 is available on Blu-Ray and DVD from Warner Home Video