sheilacornuk Reviews

Venus (I) (2006)

In need of Hollywood-style discretion

[4/10 · 28 January 2007]

There were lots of things to like about this film, mainly the set-decor for the interiors such as the the old men's rendezvous cafe and their cluttered flats. The Thames-side Regents Canal scenes, like the stately home film-set, the actors' memorial church and English seaside smacked of the tourism promotion shots familiar from Richard Curtis films.

The old men were well-portrayed in terms of contrasting characters, with a comic turn from Leslie Phillips and self-effacing support from Griffiths. Vanessa Redgrave turned her usual sterling performance as the deserted but forgiving wife.

I've endured enough Hollywood couplings of older men with younger women over the years to be prepared for a Spring/September romance, but Jessie, emotionally, educationally and financially vulnerable, was too easy a target for O'Toole's lechery. Shots of O'Toole's leering eyes and yellow teeth were too graphic, despite the face-lift ironing out some of the wrinkles, and I began to long for some soft-focus in the close-ups. I never thought I'd praise Hollywood for discretion, but we are usually spared the spectacle of geriatric tongues licking young flesh, and the hero's post-operative urine bag strapped to his leg. The spectacle of slobbering and groping was too nasty to be glossed over by waltzing to a church quartet or a seaside paddle.

What was all that stop-and-start camera work on the final journey at about? I'm sorry to say it, but I suspect it was so the tourists could look at the scenery.

Homage to aging actors are one thing, but when it's achieved with such cynicism and so little left to the imagination it leaves a nasty taste.

Dans Paris (2006)

Very French, very philosophical

[7/10 · 1 November 2006]

I liked the avant-garde touches such as the address-to-camera in the opening, the speeded-up lovers cavorting by the Seine and touches like Jon reading a copy of 'Franny et Zooey' (another story with a dead sister)or that he stops in front of two film posters in the street, neither of which I've seen but both of which I'm sure are relevant. The conversation Paul has with Jon's forlorn girl-friend about his theory of sadness is also very moving, as is Paul's reading of the children's storybook to his younger brother, if both are somewhat obscure.The father preparing dinner whilst his estranged wife outlines the difficulties of their previous relationship seems rooted in reality. Paul's self-destructive behaviour and the see-saw moods of his relationship are bizarre believable. The relationships are discussed in a way that is both reflective and expressive, such a change from the cutesy-clichés of American romances.

Snakes on a Plane (2006)

They're lovin' it

[8/10 · 25 August 2006]

Snakes on a Plane dir. David R. Ellis (2006)

The camera skims the overblown colours of Hawaiian beachscapes to lyrics about 'A Perfect Day'. It can only mean trouble. Suddenly, a man suspended head-down is telling us to run. In fact, he's addressing a witness to his imminent murder, but it's also a tip off to nervous audience members.

Nelville Flynn (Samuel L Jackson) is tasked to escort hapless witness Sean Jones (Nathan Phillips) from Hawaii to LA. Whilst his charge is docile enough to heed his warning 'Just do as I say and you'll survive', a planeload of fanged critters high on artificial pheromones plus passengers enraged at travelling 'coach' make Bruce Willis's 'Five Blocks' ordeal look tame.

Samuel L Jackson, with help from Julianna Margulies as Claire, the rock-steady stewardess anchor the movie, but the real stars are the snakes: blur-visioned heat-seekers who snack on one another when not biting passengers. They spring out of light fittings, overhead lockers and under deck holds like elongated tubes of fruit pastilles. One spends the entire film wrestling with an Hawaiian neck garland between the aisles, not so much 'Speckled Band' as 'in need of specs' band.

The inventive techniques of erstwhile stuntman David R. Ellis enhance 'Snakes on a Plane' as they did 'Final Destination 2.

Most of the jokes and the characters are hugely inventive and well prepared. The initial suspended-head-down shot is repeated with snakes throughout, and great play is made with the tangled wires of the planes electrics and their resemblance to the evil-minded slitherers – the films closest homage to 'Alien', apart from the giant python in the air-ducts. The formulaic passengers – egomaniac rock star, lady with yapping dog, children travelling alone are too numerous. On the other hand the ad-hoc use of onboard furniture - the escaped trolleys and inflatable life-rafts, especially the method by which an exasperated Jackson rids the plane of the stripy pests, are all pleasurably recognisable.

The end-story involves finding a 'hardcore snake expert' and more could have been done with his geeky persona, although he get the best line, reminding the ground-based police agent to hurry because 'Time is tissue' in collecting lifesaving serum. The pathos and passenger bonding moments fit the pattern of contrasts, creating pockets in the tension. The 'substitute pilot' joke is a masterpiece of slow-realisation comedy.

As with Jacky Chan films, it's a mistake to leave before the credits roll. The MTV –style ending with spoof airport smuggling scene reprises the energy and exuberance of the best moments in this film that more than fulfils its promise.

The Cave of the Yellow Dog (2005)

An Underlying Sadness

[7 July 2006]

Critics seem to have missed an important underlying message of the film: the life of the nomads is incompatible with the modern world and it is inescapable for this particular family, no matter how much they may want to move on. From the moment the returned child builds up the heap of dried dung to resemble flats we know she longs for the town. The parents talk of moving there when their daughter returns to school, but the father cannot earn enough to support them. His herdsmen friends talk of the number of people already gone. There is a lot of symbolism here, of which the melted scoop is only one, as well as spoken hints of a fate that traps people within it. As the older sibling tells the baby, 'You can't play with God.' (or, apparently, alter fate)The basket becomes a prison - literally, when the girl places it over the dog at one point - and the world of the steppes is dangerous, full of wolves, vultures and even storms. For all it's picturesque scenery and domestic charm, this is a redundant life, for which any political change will come too late; only the children will have a chance to leave - the symbolic yellow dog(s) of the wise woman's story, which the parents will need to sacrifice.

Tsotsi (2005)

After you at the Standpipe

[24 March 2006]

Africa seems to send cinematographers swooning and the scenery as in , for instance, 'The Constant Gardener' dwarfs the narrative. 'Tsotsi' shows more resistance, but not quite enough.

The scene where Tsotsi squats against the sky with baby in the carrier bag to listen to the gospel choir, kitted out in uniforms that wouldn't shame a Billy Graham rally, strains credulity,(check the bag motto- 'Expect More' - dumbed down, or what?) like the impossible saintliness of Miriam in her acceptance of the child. There are times when Soweto's picturesque appearance, teeming with life and colourful people seem almost to outweigh its inconveniences such as giant ants and outbreaks of violence, not to mention police-raids. I enjoyed the film but would have liked a little more realism and fewer chocolate box compositions - the childish profiles in the empty concrete drainage pipes, for instance.

Sheila

Munich (2005)

Misogynists delight

[6/10 · 12 February 2006]

Whilst I enjoyed the the exploding telephone, mattress and TV sets,with attendant suspense as to whether they'd go off and if so with how big an explosion, Europe was far too sketchy(even the London rain looks more like NY's, and pillar box, phone box and double-decker bus in a rapid chain of frames just look ridiculous- almost as bad as all the nine-branched candlesticks for the benefit of thickos in the later mother/son farewell scene) acting was weak and it went on too long, especially the meals. The worst bit, though, was the prolonged death scene on the houseboat with the woman staggering about half-naked, having been shot twice, then left full-frontal streaming blood in a deckchair. And is it just me who objects when a whole room of nasty men all slavering to have a go can blame a woman for giving the final order? Sheila

Koktebel (2003)

A thoroughly Russian Mystery

[8/10 · 1 January 2005]

I have just seen this film at the Renoir in London, and found much to enjoy. At first the basic story-line of the father looking for a haven and the boy for a world of adventure and freedom, seemed slow-moving but the early long takes gave the viewer time to absorb the landscape and the point-of-view, in particular the boy's slow awakening to the reality of his situation. His ability to 'see everything from above', demonstrated to the forest-dwelling girl early in the film when he drew a map of a terrain unknown to him, was an early signal of his superior grasp of reality and an introduction to the main metaphorical cluster of the film. The use of birds, glider and flying-paper imagery rang the changes on the visual representation of the boy's yearnings; a galaxy of Dostoyevsian larger-than-life and twice-as-unpredictable Russian characters met along the way added intrigue and ethnic authenticity to the story-line. The bizarre minor characters contrasted with the down-to-earth ordinariness of the tensions between the father and son. Their habitats were astonishing and yet completely acceptable within the heightened realism established in the early scenes - the railworker's shed with the lavatory doubling as a vodka store - the tumble-down mansion whose roof the father stayed to repair with disastrous consequences, the hillside ox-roast with flying sparks visible for miles and a suddenly-looming lorry-driver big as Brian Blessed hefting the boy across his shoulders with a triumphant cry of 'Meat! and a chill echo of 'Texas Chain Saw '.The Amazonian, silent 'Xenia', for all her 'sweatiness' complained of by the boy, was given a similarly apocryphal persona. All were separated by muddy fields and clawing shrubland which the camera allowed us to experience as visually alienating at a distance and unbearably uncomfortable up close. Questions raised were as much about Russian geography and history as about the central relationship and its outcome. By the end, the mention of 'Koktebel', whose very absence from the atlas referred to a historical shift in identity, carried the resonance of Chekhov's 'Moscow', in his masterpiece about longing and nostalgia, 'Three Sisters'. At the end of the film, when the uncertain pleasures of routine existence versus an ungraspable freedom had been clearly delineated, the binding ties of father and son remained as unresolved and problematic as at the beginning. Like the evenly-matched wrestlers in the hillside firelight, they were forced to declare an uneasy truce.

Baober in Love (2004)

Thank Heaven for Little Girls???

[31 October 2004]

(Plot Spoiler included)

'Baober' was one of several Chinese film selected for the London Film Festival. It's a shame that Chinese films now suffer from either too much funding, as in this case, or too little. On the one hand films have single-set locations and struggle to make up for the lack of a script with drawn-out shots a-la Chantal Akerman, or on the other hand are films with lavish spectacle fawning to the box-office and the tourist industry of whichever country puts up the money (see 'Balzac and the Chinese Seamstress', or 'The Emperor and the Assassin' (an assassin with bells in his hair?); similarly, 'Yiyi', an otherwise excellent Taiwanese film, with a holiday in Tokyo midway through) Even before I knew there was French money, the images of Baober's huge eyes and dewy lips reminded me of trailers I'd seen for 'Amelie' and I prepared myself with an inward groan for a cutsie romance with antecedents including the original 'BB'(or 'BeBe'), by way of 'Gigi' with a nod to 'Lolita' and all those Rohmer films with flat-chested heroines. Surprisingly, instead of a paedophiles' delight, this turned out to be revenge movie, a variation on the 'bunny boiler'. The married man who could only tolerate married life if he could at be free to ogle other women on the side, who wanted the 'high' of a sexual 'playmate' has a nasty shock when he learned the hard way that his 'child-woman' is seriously unhinged. The 'shock-by-modernisation', and the 'frightened by a cat' sequences, even the the reference to 'Carrie'-style menstruation trauma, were unconvincing explanations for Baober's condition, partly because they were so varied and disconnected. The real message is that infantilisation of women is a staple male strategy for coping with female sexuality, not female inability to cope with rapid modernisation. No wonder Chinese audiences were disappointed if they were expecting a film to celebrate Valentine's day. The female director has triumphed by subverting commercial norms, to get her real message across. It could have been lost amongst all the fancy special effects, but she seems to have succeeded, in much the same way as the Fifth Generation directors managed to subvert 'acceptable' government opinions about politics - take the money and then figure out how to make your own film in amongst the dross.