The Agent is a two-hander in which a mild-mannered author blackmails his bastard agent into selling his book. It has good, strong characters, and whilst most of the dialogue consists of arguments between the author and agent, there's enough of an overall story to keep the film moving at a sensible pace. A thread of humour runs through the film, achieved with an admirably light touch. The cinematography is very stylised and obvious, but for the most part it is very effective. There are occasional snippets of either flashback or imagination which are less well dealt with and quite confusing in places. Overall, a very enjoyable film, if not one which leaves you thinking about it for hours afterwards.
White Lightnin' is a strong candidate for the most disturbing film I have ever seen. It is based on the life of
Jesco White, though (it appears from his wikipedia page) highly fictionalised. The film follows Jesco through a screwed-up childhood of lighter-fluid huffing, institutionalisation and poverty in the Appalachians. As a teenager, his father, a famous dancer, teaches him to dance in the hope of keeping him on the straight and narrow. And this works, after a fashion, though Jesco is always one step away from breakdown and disaster. After his father is murdered, he falls into a pit of violence and drug abuse, and becomes gradually more obsessed with killing the perpetrators. Eventually he tracks them down and - well, it's not clear whether the horrific killings which follow are real or delusional. What is definitely real is his accidental murder of a policeman. He runs away and hides in a remote cabin, where he has a religious fit and settles down to enjoy a quiet life of redemption through self-mutilation. It's a striking and effective film, the writing, acting and cinematography are first-rate. Do not see this film and expect to enjoy it, though; it's an incredibly harrowing and disturbing portrait of mental illness and you may well need a stiff drink afterwards (we did).
The Secret Agent is a fairly early Hitchcock, a very racy (for its time) story of spies and moral qualms. Though it's hard these days to see through the now-hackneyed signposting and the unreconstructed attitudes to women and foreigners, there's a gripping story here, told in a rather charming way. Although this film was made right after
The 39 Steps it doesn't have nearly such a Hitchcockian feel to it. There are occasional flashes of form though, including a beautiful chase scene through a chocolate factory. The main thing striking a modern viewer is the great dedication shown to smoking at all times, including whilst escaping a burning train, and whilst in the sauna, an environment which appears to cause cigars to spontaneously disintegrate.
Little White Lies is a German children's film set in the 1930s, about gangs and bullying, and about the mess that telling lies can get you into. It's inventive, engaging and delightful, if almost dangerously heartwarming at times. Being a children's film the story is quite straightforward, but with a surprising amount of moral depth, and its lessons are not hammered crassly home in the style of so many modern Hollywood films. It is beautifully shot and descends seamlessly into fantastic daydream on occasion, reminiscent of
The City of Lost Children. A thoroughly enjoyable film.
Desire is drab and dreary and not worth wasting 90 minutes of your life on. It's a tediously "meta" film about the writing of itself, and revolves around the relationship of a writer husband and actress wife with their black au-pair. The (male) real-life writer has taken his rather pedestrian wet-dream of a threesome with Hot! Bi! Babes! and dressed it up as a great existential study of desire and lust. The writing is truly awful, stilted and boring. At one point one of the characters disparages another for speaking as if they were in a TV soap, a level of writing and characterisation which we can only dream of this film meeting. The level of racism and entitlement displayed in the film is truly stunning and quite cringeworthy. Nene, the au-pair, is merely there as a sex object for the white couple. They perpetually barge into her room without knocking because neither they nor the writer thinks her deserving of basic human rights such as privacy. At one point they decide to have a race to see who can sleep with her first
whilst she is in the room. But it's OK, in this wet dream it just so happens that Nene is perfectly happy with all this, so it can't possibly be exploitation, right? I didn't stay for the Q&A, I might have been rude.
Pontypool is a work of utter genius. It's set in a tiny local radio station in the tiny Canadian town of Pontypool. Something odd starts to happen and the radio station staff are left holed in, reporting on a disaster they don't fully understand. The cause is a virus which is transmitted by words, and which turns its hosts into zombie-like creatures who latch onto anything they hear said. Despite being "safely" holed-up, the characters are still in danger because the virus can be spread by a conversation, a phone call, a radio broadcast. The writing and acting are superb; half the characters are never seen on screen, the rest are confined to the three rooms of the studio for the whole film, and we do not see a "zombie" until at least half-way through, and yet the suspense and atmosphere generated are incredible. Every line and every action leaves the watcher wondering whether the characters are still well or whether the virus has finally claimed them too. Add to this an unobtrusive touch of humour, both black and straight, and this is the best film I have seen in a very long time.
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damerell further opines that the lack of railings in the original trilogy is the result of the Empire Health & Safety Committee deciding that the presence of railings in Rogue One was a direct contributory factor to the leakage of the Death Star plans to the Rebels, and demanding they all be removed.
