Wow, does ANYONE like this film? Talk about taking masses of critical, commercial and worldly admiration from your last film, and completely dissipating it all with the follow-up. Julian Schnabel must be in a weird headspace right now. He certainly seemed to be at the Gala Premiere of Miral at the London Film Festival last night. Introducing the film he told the audience that “making Miral caused me to get a divorce”, but that he didn’t “regret doing it”. Well. I hope that works out for you in the long-term, because nobody likes the film mate. Sorry.

Although saying that, I didn’t actively dislike the film as much as many others, although it is saddled with an awfully plodding, often ridiculous script. Miral focuses on the Palestinian sacrifices in the Arab-Israeli conflict, primarily through the titular character, played by Freida Pinto, although a host of other female characters are also covered, most notably Hiam Abbass’ orphanage founder Hind Husseini. Guy Lodge has already pointed out many of these ridiculously clunky scripted moments, from the young Miral’s constant and earnest declarations of love, to her soundbite attitude to activism, aptly summed up by her conscientious neigh “I feel so useless, I really want to do something!”. “You don’t understand!”, is another, and pretty much becomes her catchphrase. The character is no more than a willowy cardboard cutout of the girl she is supposed to represent. There’s reality in there somewhere, but mostly the script calls on Miral as a sounding board for sweeping political statements or hackneyed emotional displays.

Saying all this it’s not that bad to watch. In fact I quite enjoyed it. The familiar directorial touches from Schnabel give it an alright visual feel. Pinto and Abbass are constantly fighting the duff things they are being made to say, and despite floundering a few times, largely come out unscathed. Freida Pinto really is stunningly beautiful as well. I know it shouldn’t matter, but, well, wow. She was there to introduce the thing too, and a prettier lady I am yet to see.

This is well worth a miss, but if it comes on TV at any point I’d give it a bit of your time. Also watch out for the most pointless and obvious cameo ever from Vanessa Redgrave.

I’ve just got back from a London Film Festival screening of Never Let Me Go, the film which opened the event only last week. Both Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan covered the press the next day, Britain’s brightest, most beautiful starlets, adorning the country’s headlines. But hardly anyone was talking about the film in which they were promoting. It was the afterthought. Fox Searchlight had actually taken it around the festival circuit pre-London, playing at Telluride and then Toronto, and then released it in America in a very limited capacity. By doing this, the quite considerable buzz for the film completely evaporated. Average-to-good reviews at the festivals and an incredibly lacklustre stateside box-office (hardly a surprise) meant the film sunk like a lead balloon. WHY DIDN’T IT PREMIERE AT LONDON? This would be the perfect moment to capitalise on huge anticipation for a niche Brit-centric prestige romance. It’s such a shame, but it looks instead like the film is destined to be largely overlooked.

Regrets aside, I was absolutely engrossed by this. I read Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel of the same name three or four years ago, and I had an incredibly personal reaction to it then, which has been absolutely echoed by just watching the film. Never Let Me Go follows three children into young adulthood as they are purposely born to follow a path unlike that of ordinary people, one that strips them of the right to live and love and choose their own destiny. It’s a dark, lonely and drastic take on illness, death and the threat of being taken away from our loved ones and our ambitions before we are ready. What really hit me is the poignancy of the three lead characters resignations, as they slowly and painfully become aware they’ll never live the life they so desperately want to.

The beauty is in the tone, which feels so authentic and honest to me. I admit this is something probably fuelled by my knowing and loving the novel and its characters so well already. I can’t quite guess how an audience not familiar with the source material would react, but I suspect this might be where some of the lacklustre reviews have sprung from. Because at its heart, this adaptation is a faithful, graceful, yet not especially groundbreaking stab by director Mark Romanek. But so what? So amazing is that source material, so masterful are the central performances, and so beautifully realised is the end product (especially in score, art direction and cinematography), that it virtually ticks all my boxes. There are issues with pacing, I’ll admit, but it didn’t dampen my overall experience one bit.

And let me just say, these three performances are heartbreaking. Carey Mulligan, who I am not particularly disposed toward usually, is the absolute anchor, and she pitches it perfectly. And I’ve said time and time again that Keira is Britain’s great acting hope for her generation, and again she is absolutely perfect here. In the last third especially I was engrossed by her character; resigned and redundant against a world that has rejected her. Andrew Garfield, in perhaps the most significant role, is equally exciting, and I was reminded of his incredibly empathetic breakout turn in Boy A. I wasn’t sold on Sally Hawkins though, notching up another incredibly mannered performance in the early part of the film.

Ethically the film is somewhat of a warning, but emotionally it confronts you to accept you may run out of time, that your body may give out, and that you might never be able to get by on love and hope alone. Essentially a paean to a beautiful novel, it is luscious enough to warrant a good chunk of your time.

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d;

I love this film with every fibre of my being. When I ask myself “why is it you love films so much?”, Eternal Sunshine instantly and always jumps out at me. It is the scene in which Clementine, embracing Joel under the sheets of their bed, dowsed in orange light, begins to talk about an ugly doll she had as a child, which she named Clementine. She goes, “Sometimes I think people don’t understand how lonely it is to be a kid, like you don’t matter.” The intimacy is palpable, and when I first saw this in the cinema, as a 16 year old boy, nostalgia and sadness and happiness all washed over me. It’s the first time I had ever felt my own voice and emotions captured in a film. I’ll remember it forever. From that moment on, and every subsequent time I’ve watched it, the film just carried me away. Every character is just so pitch-perfect and real to me, every line like I’d thought it myself before it was spoken, and every shot familiar and comforting. If this film was a person, I’d be hopelessly, pathetically in love with it.

In every respect it’s a deeply personal film for me, and I’ve no doubt I’ve long since lost the ability to be objective about it, so I won’t really try here. It came at a time where I was just becoming an adult, learning what it felt like to fall in love, to feel emotions, and all those cringeworthy adolescent things. It’s no wonder the film hit me like a tonne of bricks. I view this film as the masterpiece that it is because, above all, it evokes the comfort and dependability of our own memories, thoughts and internal monologue. It challenges me to address my sense of self, whilst at the same time always asking us to celebrate who we are, and be thankful for what we love. Kaufman is a genius, no doubt about that. I can’t stress enough how everyone should watch this film multiple times, it never stops giving. Once is not enough!

And I can’t deny what this film means to me in terms of my eternal Kate Winslet devotion. I guess this is really surplus to the film’s artistic merits, but to me it symbolises my first really hardcore Oscar-watching season, and the culmination of everything I’d wanted for Kate since I fell in love with her back in 97. On top of the fact she gives a towering, tour-de-force performance, the like of which I’d never seen before, other people seemed to agree! Despite an early release-date, internet hype kept her performance fresh, and she scored her fourth Oscar nomination in the Best Actress category. It was the moment for Kate; she started appearing on all-time favourite performances lists, and critics began hailing her as the best actress of her generation. It was heaven for me, and despite the fact that she had no hope of winning, I didn’t care. It was the nomination that was always the goal. Kate had brought it home, she’d done good. I still have my homemade FYC signature that I displayed all season at the Oscarwatch forums, now Awardsdaily. Check it out:

Bless.

Anyway, if you do one thing today, go out and watch, or rewatch, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

In the screening and subsequent Q+A I’ve just been lucky enough to attend, Derek Cianfrance, the director of Blue Valentine, spoke of the film as a “duet”, the beginning and end of the same relationship unfolding in the space of a single non-linear narrative. Love and loss intertwine, as we see Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling fall in love and fall apart. These actors are seriously hot and seriously amazing. Their transformation from happy-go-lucky (in the preferable, non-Sally Hawkins-esque way) to being a bitterly confused couple, unsure of who they are, is so crushing and yet so unbearably poetic that I came away both elated and ennui-ridden.

What is the point of pursuing anything or anybody? Why try when two infinitely more beautiful, talented and wonderfully suited characters couldn’t get their shit together and just be happy? I guess you just never know if you’ll be one of those infuriating few who buck the trend, so you gotta keep trying. I guess. The honesty in the portrayal of these characters is so intense, and so successful, that these are the questions the film prompted in me.

It’s that sort of personal response Cianfrance is driving from his audience. The film isn’t overly plot-focussed, and whilst being funny and also viciously dramatic in parts, there are plenty of lulls and quiet moments where the fictional couple are used to force a mirror onto the viewer. It works. I was engrossed.

The film works on another level too, though, and that is simply giving the viewer the opportunity to revel in two tour-de-force performances from Williams and Gosling, undoubtedly the two finest American actors of their generation. So consistently am I dazzled by these two, and the eclectic, challenging choices they make in their careers. Here they are never better, sparking instant empathy and understanding in you, just through flickers in their expressions, uncertainties in their voices, and lurches in their bodies. They are so instinctive and so perfectly matched here. I doubt either gives a performance that will be rewarded by an Oscar, more’s the pity, but if the frankly ludicrous NC-17 rating recently bestowed upon the film deprives it of even more widespread recognition it is a sad day for quality independent cinema. Seek this out, it’s a gem.

Now call me an angst-ridden masochist who likes going to the cinema completely alone and welling up silently in the dark (actually don’t, it’ll make me feel neurotic), but I REALLY like this film. Winter’s Bone is the mercilessly grim tale of Ree, a 17 year old girl who eeks out a life caring for her mentally ill mother and two younger siblings in the cold and unforgiving Ozark Mountain region of America. The young woman is forced into a perilous search for her absentee drug-dealing father, who will have their family home possessed unless he turns up for his court hearing. If I write the word BLEAK out several times you will get a slight indication of the film’s tone. BLEAK BLEAK BLEAK. But great.

As a film, it very much reminds me of great female-centric independents of recent years like Wendy & Lucy or 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, in that it isn’t so much about the plot, but more a study about the cumulative experience of one girl. As absorbing and extraordinary as the story was, the greatest thing I took away from the film was the spirit of Ree, and the texture of her life. It really hit me. It’s a totally different approach to the one taken by Lee Daniels in Precious, which I raved here last year. That film did linger over story and plot and past, as was appropriate in order to achieve the power and depth of emotional reaction to Precious’s character from the audience. Here, director Debra Granik simply presents the action as it is, without much embellishment or sentiment. Because of this the film is always forward-moving, and the catharsis of the piece rests on the grace with which Ree cares for her family, never complaining, always stoically keeping things together. I think I even prefer this sort of approach.

And fuck me Jennifer Lawrence was stunning. I thought she might be someone to watch for last year when I saw The Burning Plain, as I stated here, and by fuck did she come through on that hunch. This is career-defining work from a nineteen year old. Ree is an amazing character, and Lawrence imbues her with this old-school Western heroine vibe. She is ethereally good-looking, and sometimes her face catches the light in such a way that you just can’t help but fall in love. The power of the performance is the juxtaposition of her innocence and beauty with the harsh overgrown world in which she lives.

I definitely want to revisit this as soon as possible, and by god I hope it maintains some of its awards buzz. I’m thinking a double hit of Screenplay and Actress Oscar noms (a la Frozen River) is probably the ceiling, but we’ll see.

It’s taken me five years to get around to Rob Marshall’s Chicago follow-up, Memoirs Of A Geisha, such was the buzz coming off it around release. Generally panned as a lifeless tech-fest, based on the celebrated book by Arthur Golden, the film follows Sayuri, a young girl from a fishing village who manages to rise to the heights of the celebrated Japanese geisha. Winner of three academy awards (Art Direction, Cinematography and Costume Design), yet without a single nomination in the main categories, it’s fair to say that this film is completely throttled by its own sumptuousness. Visually it’s the cinematic equivalent of drinking three bottles of champagne. Every frame is astonishingly beautiful, every actress is perfect, and every period detail captivating. Headily so. The actual story is diluted down to a predictable melodrama, that absolutely takes second seat.

But does this really matter? I confess, not so much. Despite being hammy and crudely drawn, I went along with the ridiculous ride that was Memoirs Of A Geisha. Sometimes when the artistry is just that mind-blowing, it becomes a cinematic spectacle all of its own. I didn’t care that all the characters acted with ridiculous predictability, or that most of the Chinese/Japanese actresses had clearly all learnt their lines phonetically (without being able to speak English), or most of all, that the story was handled in such a knowing, bloated way, with Rob Marshall self-consciously bigging up its own ‘epicness’ at nearly every turn. Sometimes a big stupid movie is just big stupid fun. And boy this is.

Plus, watch out for Gong Li on fierce form as embittered geisha Hatsumomo. It’s one of the most deliciously camp, ridiculous supporting turns I’ve seen, and Li even manages to inject some actual pathos into the proceedings at moments (something nearly every other actor fails to do here).

Watch and enjoy, but you’ll probably need a lie down afterward.

Certified Copy is a strange film, hinged on a central concept that I’m not sure really works. The film follows a middle-aged English author (William Shimell) and a French antique dealer (Juliette Binoche) who convene in Tuscany, where the woman lives, and the man is promoting his latest book. Prompted by their shared interest in antiques, the pair seemingly decide to spend the afternoon together before the man get his train home in the evening. But what at first appears to be a random meeting of two strangers turns into a fraught reunion of an absent husband and bitter wife. We are not sure if the couple have devolved into some sort of masochistic or cathartic role-play, fuelling or exorcising demons that plague them in their own lives, or if this is real, and the pair have actually been married for fifteen years.

Binoche won the Best Actress prize at Cannes for her performance here, and the film came in for some pretty heady praise after it first screened there. Amongst many, Guy Lodge, a favourite blogger of mine, was particularly ecstatic, calling it a film “with an ardent curiosity about language and people and the ways they live, love and deceive themselves in the process”. I get this praise, and Binoche is unsurprisingly marvellous. I let the film wash over me, and its languid structure and conversational focus is charming and evocative. It really does feel like you are wandering around Tuscany with them. Perfect.

Except, that actually, I didn’t really respond to the core idea of this film. I just found it irritating that the audience weren’t allowed into the secret or reality of the couple. I understand that one of the main points of the piece is that we are supposed to gain a catharsis from the couple, irrespective of whether their relationship is real or not. The lines of reality and deceit are blurred, as they usually are in our own real-life emotional consciousnesses. I just didn’t feel this added anything much to the overall proceedings. It was all a bit wanky and pretensious for me. And it’s a shame, because I really enjoyed the simple Before Sunset vibes and fantastic central performance from Juliette Binoche. If only it had been left at that.

Andrea Arnold’s debut feature film, Red Road, is an engaging, but intensely bleak piece of filmmaking. It follows a bereaved woman as she goes about her job, monitoring Glasgow’s many CCTV cameras from a dark, lonely control room. We see her character (girded with a steely grit by Scottish actress Kate Dickie) suddenly confronted with a face from her past all over the CCTV screens. It is the face of a man she is determined to conclude unfinished business with.

Red Road’s strength lies in the desolation of the main character, and Kate Dickie’s fearless performance. The dénouement of her story is both heartbreaking and touching. One scene in particular, shot from outside her kitchen looking in, shows her character sobbing uncontrollably as she clutches a bundle of children’s clothing. It has a directorial authority that is chilling and uncomfortable; the sort of confrontational scene that makes you feel lucky in your own life, regardless of circumstance.

Let me say though, this is no picture-postcard for Glasgow. The photography and locations are so relentlessly desolate and unappealing that upon watching Red Road it would take a saint not to be reaching for a stiff drink. The tone matches as well, as the film quietly follows this stern young woman, giving us sparse nuggets of plot as we go. In light of this you might be quick to dismiss the film as a quiet, sombre independent. Whilst partly true, the it is also a classic tale of revenge that on-paper follows quite a linear path. This combination resonates emotionally to a point, although ultimately becomes frustratingly forgettable. The distance at which Arnold keeps the audience from the protagonist’s plight is the root cause of this. In line with crafting the film as a sombre mood-piece, typical of its ‘independent feature film’ status, we are denied substantial plot and characterisation, so that the emotional pull we need to really care just isn’t there. Cumulatively, there’s just not quite enough on-display to truly feel knocked out by this woman’s story. Dare I say it, without such a tour-de-force from Kate Dickie there wouldn’t be much feeling in the piece at all.

What is noticeable, plot and character points aside, is the strident way in which Arnold captures gritty, urban Scottish life. It’s immersive, and a telling preamble toward her second feature, Fish Tank. Really though, once you see that film, Red Road hardly holds a candle, and unfortunately becomes rather redundant.

Overly twee. Overly stylized. Thoroughly enjoyable. I just can’t deny that The Royal Tenenbaums is anything other than super fun. It’s so charismatic and watchable. The costumes, the props, the decor, the music, the colours – there’s always something of interest on the screen. Wes Anderson dominates every scene, directing it all to within an inch of its life.

And let’s be honest, who doesn’t want to be a Tenenbaum? The characters are delicious – especially Gwyneth Paltrow’s Margot Tenenbaum, one of the performances I continually point out to the many naysayers of her talent. The love story between her character and Richie Tenenbaum (Luke Wilson) is a perfect mix of tragedy and comedy, and what’s more it occasions one of my favourite uses of a song in contemporary cinema, as Nico’s These Days plays when Margot and Richie are reunited at the beginning of the film. It’s a lovely scene – have a quick watch:

In some ways, the frustrating thing about The Royal Tenenbaums is that I want to love it more than I actually do. Which is a shame, because I really like it, just as it is. But I think because the film is so unique in visual terms, so kitsch and knowing, it has a lot to live up to with regards to story and an emotional connectivity with the audience. The film is visually iconic in the same way that other 00s classics Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Lost In Translation are. As such you really want to think of it, like those films, as a cornerstone of modern cinema. But this is all before you’ve even had a chance to connect with the story, and feel something from the damn thing.

For me, the film never quite gets there because sometimes the story does drag. It is slightly longer than it needs to be, and although there are some really touching moments (Ben Stiller’s “I’ve had a rough year, dad” is always one that sticks out), they never quite come together as a whole. There is no strong emotional hook that keeps me coming back to the film. But I guess when it looks as lovely as it does, and is as hilarious and quotable as it is, it’s hard to resent The Royal Tenenbaums for all this too heavily.

I really wanted to love I Am Love. I knew that this was going to be a beautifully slick film, the story of which focuses on a wealthy Italian family, in a melodramatic and even operatic fashion. I’d seen various stills and posters that had stuck in my mind, and the whole concept of beautiful Italians captured in their dazzling haute-bourgeoisie existences had really whetted my appetite. I suppose the film does deliver in this respect. The cinematography and visual identity of the piece are luscious. Shots stick out here and there as being picture-perfect. My favourite is an aerial shot looking down on the family hallway’s golden carpet, as the cosseted but contented mother of the family meekly glides across it. Another shot of the same character climbing Milan’s duomo is similarly entrancing, and elaborate foods and dishes are captured with a verve that oozes out sensory delights.

This is all well and good, but I’ve come out of the screening struck by these shots as images and sequences in their own right. Their memorable beauty is independent of the film, which itself is a rather deafening melodrama I found difficult to form any sort of emotional connection to. We follow the mother of the family as she experiences her own semi-adolescence whilst her children begin to fall in love and mature into adulthood around her. Called Emma and played expertly by Tilda Swinton, I won’t deny she is a character full of interesting traits that make her refreshingly believable. The female head of a glamorous family, she decides to stay in her room reading instead of socialising as a huge party takes place beneath her. This interest only goes so far, however, as the film carries with it a sort of emptiness that pervades throughout.

Valiant acting can only do so much when characters are unevenly fleshed out. The plot is driven by emotion and melodrama, yet this falls flat because no real effort has been taken to make these people of any worth to the audience. Despite the characters feeling authentic, you never really get to know any of them, and so it all becomes a giant ‘so-what?’ thats predictability becomes ever more noticeable. It’s a real shame, because there are elements of the production that are very much world class.