newtt11 Reviews

Camille Rewinds (2012)

Sweet and funny but also life-affirming

[9/10 · 10 November 2012]

Caught this film at the Sitges Film Festival, and wasn't sure what to expect. It sounded like a more serious version of 'Peggy Sue got Married' from the description, and I didn't really have any expectations for it, but I was kind of blown away a little.

Although mostly a comedy, with light-hearted/comic situations as Camille returns to her teenage years, this film treated the conundrums/ paradoxes of time travel in quite a serious way at times and was actually quite thought provoking. And a tragic scenario involving Camille and her mother is set up incredibly well, so when it arrives it is just absolutely heartbreaking. Seriously, take tissues.

The director/actress really gives a fantastic performance - convincing as both the bitter, washed up Camille in the future and a mix between this and the wide-eyed teenager she becomes in the past. She does a great job of juggling the comedy and dramatic moments, as both actress and director. I'm surprised never to have heard of her before, but I'm sure after this film she will receive more exposure. She also had a colourful,interesting visual style going on, not least in the extremely cool backwards slow-motion opening credits.

Animals (I) (2012)

Derivative in parts but very interesting, visually stunning film

[7/10 · 10 November 2012]

First off, It's clear that the major influence on this film is Donnie Darko, and at times the film feels a bit too derivative. There's many a shot of the protagonist moodily riding his bike down pine tree-lined mountain roads; there's a scene where supposed 'bad kids' shoot bottles off logs with pellet guns; there's a Halloween party that goes awry; and there's the very fact the premise of the film is based around a disturbed teenager who talks to a furry imaginary friend. Saying that, though, there is something incredibly fresh and beguiling about this film that makes some of this mimicry forgivable.

The film explores the relationship between Pol, a confused teenager, and his imaginary friend/teddy bear Deerhoof, and the fallout that comes when he tries to leave this comfort toy behind and move into the 'adult' world. Although this sounds like the recent film Ted, the tone is about as far away from that film as you can get. But surprisingly, this serious treatment really works, and the relationship between the two is nicely observed and actually quite poignant. Deerhoof is an awesome creation, a beautifully manoeuvred puppet that's a breath of fresh air in CGI-overkill modern fantasy cinema.

Besides charming teddy bear puppets, many scenes and ideas in the film are just inspired, and make for exhilarating cinema. There's the interesting fact that the film is presented in a mix of Catalan and English, something that could go horribly wrong, but comes across as genuinely interesting, despite the English/Catalan school bubble feeling a little unbelievable. Also, the lush, dreamy cinematography by Eduard Grau is just beautiful...and the film presents a picture of a lush, lake and mountain filled Catalan community rarely represented on film. The soundtrack is fantastic... on its own, it's great, but like all the best films the popular music it uses reflects the protagonist's psyche/frame of mind. The use of the A Frames' punky, angry Memoranda to score some scenes was awesome; the long take of Pol emerging from a tunnel in the early morning with a bleeding wrist set to that song is just electric. I couldn't get that song out of my head for a good couple weeks after seeing the film.

Oriol Pla gives an impressive show of adolescent angst and makes for a sensitive, sympathetic lead ...plus the guy has gorgeous killer cheekbones. The script unfortunately makes his character a little powerless in the final reels though, and there's a feeling of him being pushed aside for random, barely developed goings-on to take over. He definitely has a bright film future ahead though. Agustus Prew was a bit bland for my liking as the love interest...I didn't really see why half the school was slobbering over him. Roser Tapias fares better as Pol's confidante and secret admirer Laia, and Maria Rodríguez Soto makes a beguiling impression as the pixie-like Clara, even in a tiny role.

When Martin Freeman said in an interview he accepted the small teacher role he has in this film because he felt the script had something to say, I think he hit on the head what makes this film special: even though humans have a frustrating habit of complicating things, at the end of the day we're all just animals...Oh, and that growing up is a bitch!

Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

Atmospheric, loving homage to Italian horror

[8/10 · 26 June 2012]

Saw the film as part of EIFF today, and I mostly liked it. It's an immensely stylish homage to 70's Italian horror cinema. I was ridiciously excited for it going in , being a big fan of Peter Strickland's last film Katalin Varga, and it only really disappointed me towards the end.

The sets, costumes, lighting, music and most importantly sound effects all gave the film an awesome 70's atmosphere not dissimilar to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy that kept me transfixed throughout.

And something that surprised me: as well as being unsettling, the film was actually really, truly funny in parts (humor wasn't a big part of Katalin Varga). There's a lot of winks and nudges to fans of films like Suspiria, that would have been made in these studios in the first place. The ridiculous descriptions that the sound recordist gives of the scenes we only ever hear- "the two women creep along the secret subterranean poultry tunnel only to find the putrid corpses of the witches" - are hilarious. The tension and uncertainty builds slowly as Toby Jones ' gentle British sensibilities clash with the gruesome scenes he has to score (he has to stab cabbages, pull apart radishes and smash in courgettes) and with the brash Italians (some really well played escalating conflict).

But in the last act the film became a little too ambiguous for my liking. It seemed to attempt a Mulholland Drive-style reversal which for me didn't really work...I didn't really get what the intention was, and felt like Strickland had just used it as a flashy excuse to avoid giving it a real satisfying conclusion.

Still, I had a lot of fun watching the film and would definitely recommend it.

An irony was that, for a film so dependent on sound for it's atmosphere,during the screening there was construction going on outside the screen. So to add to the diagetic horror sounds we annoyingly had some non-diagetic construction noises!!

Isn't Anyone Alive? (2012)

Definitely one of the worst films I've ever seen...

[1/10 · 26 June 2012]

I thought this film was terrible... I could see it was trying to make a satirical point about 'today's vacuous youth' or whatever, but did it have to do it in a structureless, horrifically drawn out 2 hour+ feature??

We spend the first 20 minutes watching various students, teachers, café workers and doctors wander around a rural university campus, and chit-chat in annoyingly long mundane scenes. And then, one by one they start to faint, convulse, and die inexplicably, in patience-trying protracted death scenes. One particularly annoying character chokes and gasps for 5 minutes before dying...only to come to life again and then spend another 5 minutes dying.

There is no explanation for the deaths . Some early chat about urban myths is dispelled mid- way through the film, and the focus is just on watching all the many characters die. There is no structure to this film, no protagonists to root for. The characters swap around interchangeably, so a fairly interesting girl who appears to be a key character for the first 20 minutes suddenly dies and we are left to follow her underdeveloped friends for 20 minutes until they too die, and we are left to follow some random people they crossed earlier in a café and so on and so forth.

The tone is all over the place, and later in the film juvenile humour prevails. We are invited to laugh at one dying character who believes his intestines are falling out of his ass, so walks around clenching his butt desperately, in several tasteless and horribly judged scenes.

It does function at several unbelievably bad moments as an unintentional comedy...but if you're brave enough to try, I'd recommend watching it on DVD so you can skip past all the ming-numbingly dull sections where nothing happens or the characters just repeat what they've said about 20 times :S Seriously, don't the Japanese have script editors??

Mermaid (2007)

A fantastic modern fable

[9/10 · 26 June 2008]

Mermaid is an awesomely bizarre tale of a strange girl called Alisa, who, as a little girl, lives by the beach with her comically grotesque mother and grandmother and pines for her father to come and rescue her . Later on in her life she is forced to confront reality when she travels to Moscow with her family, and as a teenager, finds out all about all the wonders of the world, including love, jobs and friendship, all seen through an impossibly optimistic and offbeat sensibility. Mermaid plays like the second coming of Amelie, and everything about it is utterly charming; the fantastically upbeat, jazzy score, the dreamy cinematography tinged with realism, the quirky scenarios, but mostly the utterly charismatic and awesome central performances from the two girls playing Alisa, who like Audrey Tatou before them, will make you fall in love. Alisa is such an endearingly odd character, charmingly offbeat and naive, while remaining startlingly independent and fierce. A last act stumble provoked by a tangle of superfluous characters dampens the charm of the film somewhat,and it meanders in parts, but on the whole Mermaid is an almost note-perfect film that will leave you with a dreamy smile on your face and a longing for days of lost innocence.

Tucker (2000–2001)

Bring this out on DVD!

[10/10 · 4 January 2007]

I loved tucker!!!!! It was so great and true and funny........i cant believe it was cancelled ..........we never found out if he got the girl! This needs a DVD release now!!!!!!!! Plus it's got Seth green and Alison lohman : so they can use them to sell it!!! Katey Segal was so funny as the evil auntie-she reminded me of my own aunt who i had to stay with sometimes! I just remember how much i loved the episode where it was thanksgiving dinner- and they all went to the resteraunt where tucker's mom worked to see her and then tucker had this big dream sequence where his mom + dad got back together+ it was really hilarious when the auntie pulled the waitress outfit off.........hilarious. Yet another great nickelodeon show that has been buried instead of given a great DVD release-along with Sabrina the teenage witch and Are you afraid of the dark?.....Get them out on DVD now, Nickelodeon!!!!!!