Film #107: Dig! (2004)

Rating: 4.5/5

“I’m not for sale. I’m fucking Love, do you understand what I’m saying? Like, the Beatles were for sale. I give it away.”

Filmed over seven years, Ondi Timoner’s documentary is a fascinating, gripping insight into the (mostly friendly) rivalry between two bands, The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre. It’s a story of egos and artistry, a cautionary tale about truly living the rockstar lifestyle and the hazards of becoming part of the corporate music industry – Timoner’s access to both bands seems to be entirely unrestricted, and nothing seems to be off limits. This must have dominated Timoner’s life for years – they seem to be completely comfortable with both her and the camera recording every move, and it seems like there’s nothing she hasn’t caught on film.

While it probably helps to be somewhat familiar with the bands, it’s not essential – most people will have heard the Dandy’s “Bohemian Like You,” but don’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of BJM – the whole point is that no one has. Narrated by Dandy frontman, Courtney Taylor (also the leading creative force in the band – he writes all the songs), early on he talks about his admiration for BJM’s frontman (and, similarly, the creative force), Anton Newcombe. In contrast to the fairly straight-laced Dandys, Anton is a self-destructive artist, uncooperative, unable to “play the game,” as it were, yet convinced that he doesn’t need to in order to start the necessary, inevitable “revolution.” While the Dandys smoke weed and drink and partake in that lifestyle, they like to remind us that they take their jobs very seriously, that they want to be successful, that they don’t mess around – they admit they are the “most well-adjusted band in America.” Imagine them as the straight-A students: Anton and the BJM are the ones smoking dope in the school bathrooms when they should be in class.

It often seems as though there’s a serious case of hero worship at play here. Taylor is clearly in awe of Anton’s talents – jealous, even (just as Anton seems unwilling to acknowledge his envy at the Dandy’s subsequent success). And more than that, it seems as though Taylor is also caught up in everything that Anton represents: that rebellious lifestyle, the anarchy stopping Anton from ever really achieving any kind of (dare I say it?) mainstream popularity. Fairly early on, Taylor joins the BJM on tour and, as expected, the gigs are a shambles. Anton seems incapable of showing any restraint: the shows are notorious, with fans coming just to see what chaos will unfold. Taylor, who would clearly never allow any such incidents at his own gig (on-stage punch-ups, impromptu resignations, riots…), evidently loves being a part of such bedlam – it’s not his tour, he keeps saying. He comes across as the sheltered kid hero-worshipping the bad boy, relishing that brief respite from normalcy before returning back to his neat house and his nine-to-five, safe in the knowledge that none of what transpired will really affect his life.

While the Dandys gradually begin to enjoy success – they get signed to a major label, David LaChapelle directs one of their music videos – it is telling that all the talking head interviewees (mostly comprised of A&R people from various labels) focus entirely on the BJM. They are the unsigned talent, the band they all loved listening to yet knew they could never work with. Anton is a hazard – too self-destructive, too arrogant, too delusional. He waxes lyrical about how many people he has influenced, about the mark he’s made on the world, about how he’s bigger than god. It’s almost pathetic, except that it seems so genuine. He really believes what he says, and he lives what he says. The rest of the BJM are merely his backing group, and in the twenty-odd years since the band first began, Anton remains the only consistent member – everyone else is expendable.

Although it would be easy for this to be a rather depressing tale – the tragic, doomed artist and his self-sabotage – it never is. Anton himself is never shown wallowing in self-pity. Instead, he’s a free spirit – a child of the sixties, out of time and place, caring only about making music. The other members of the BJM also seem to have been lifted straight from a more psychedelic time – Matt Hollywood looks just like John Lennon with his long hair and round glasses; Joel Gion seems to be permanently stoned, wearing a goofy grin and an impressive collection of gigantic, bug-eye sunglasses. In contrast to the Dandys, who often come across as quite bratty, the BJM match talent with madness, destruction with rebellion.

Timoner brings this energy to the documentary too; it’s raw, irreverent, a no-holds-barred punk tale. It’s got a grimy, lo-fi aesthetic, with poor-quality, hand-held, sometimes black and white footage edited together in such a way that it perfectly captures the psychedelic, retro tone of the bands’ music. It’s an engrossing, ironic, funny, tragic story – at times it’s like watching a car crash: you can’t look away, no matter how you want to. Like the A&R industry reps, and like Courtney, it’s easy to see that Anton is talented, that on the basis of his music alone the BJM should be successful and influential – all the things he says he wants (or says he is already) – but, like the reps, it’s equally easy to see what a disaster he would be. As someone points out in the film, Anton wants to live the rock’n’roll lifestyle, to be as big as the Beatles or Oasis (there are frequent references to the famous rivalries, Beatles/Stones, Oasis/Blur), but has failed to take into account that these bands were big before they started taking drugs and acting out. Anton has it the wrong way around, and even the labels that accept the challenge soon regret it. Yet, even ten years after this documentary was made, the BJM are still touring, still making music. Isn’t that the point?

Film #106: The Rutles: All You Need is Cash (1978)

Rating: 3.5/5

“Listen, looking at it very simply musicology and ethnically, the Rutles were essentially empirical malengistes of a rhythmically radical yet verbally passé and temporally transcended lyrically content welded with historically innovative melodical material transposed and transmogrified by the angst of the Rutland ethic experience which elevated them from essentially alpha exponents of in essence merely beta potential harmonic material into the prime cultural exponents of Aeolian cadencic comic stanza form.”

Conceived and written by Eric Idle, it’s no surprise that The Rutles has a distinctly Pythonesque vibe but, more impressively, it truly captures the heady delirium and quintessentially sixties qualities of the band they’re parodying, The Beatles. To be honest, at many points in this mockumentary – a precursor to This is Spinal Tap if there ever was one – could barely be considered a parody or satire, it seems to be so close to the truth. Perhaps that’s the beauty of it – no matter how you try and send them up, The Beatles still seem to have done it all first.

This is, really, a film for Beatles’ fans, with the rise and fall of the Rutles mirroring the rise and, well, not quite fall, but break-up, of The Beatles. The Pre-Fab Four, Idle’s straight-laced narrator informs us, grew up in Liverpool, played in the Cavern Club before travelling over to Germany and, soon after, conquering the world (musically, of course). There was a fifth Rutle at one point, but he climbed into a suitcase with a girl and disappeared. Their success was meteoric: soon girls all over the globe were smitten, and after a string of hits, the boys – Barry (John Halsey), Stig (Ricky Fataar, who, as the quiet one, never gets a single line of dialogue), Nasty (Neil Innes, who also wrote the music), and Dirk (also Idle – in typical Python fashion, he plays multiple characters) – decide to make movies. Throughout this mockumentary we see Idle and chums recreating the filmography of The Beatles, from the music-video-inspired British classic A Hard Day’s Night to the group’s more experimental fare, A Magical Mystery Tour. All You Need is Cash captures the sentiments of these movies perfectly – from the giddy innocence/ youth rebellion of a day in the life of the world’s biggest band (reimagined as A Hard Day’s Rut) to the drug-influenced surrealism of the band’s stranger filmmaking attempts (The Tragical History Tour, complete with “I Am the Walrus” parody, “Piggy in the Middle”).

Non-Beatles fans will no doubt still be able to appreciate the movie, though much of the nuance and humour depends on a fairly decent knowledge of the Fab Four. It seems like everything is covered: the relationships, the crises, the inspirations, the band’s developing sound. The Rutles make mistakes, like claiming they were bigger than God (just as Lennon was accused of doing). They fall in with a dodgy guru (here Arthur Sultan, the Surrey Mystic), get tired of all the girls screaming at their concerts, and openly experiment with tea. The girlfriends get a brief mention – Yoko, inevitably, fares the worst. Here her Rutles persona is the SS-uniform-clad daughter of the man who “invented World War II,” an artist who dreams of throwing musicians off buildings as part of her latest installation.

The Pre-Fab Four actors play their parts perfectly – it’s always clear who everyone is supposed to be, and they capture the carefree, impromptu nature of The Beatles. Their interview segments are brilliant, perfectly epitomising the bizarre, deadpan responses of the group to inane questions (“what’s your ambition?” asks one reporter. “I’d like to be a hairdresser. Or two. I’d like to be two hairdressers,” Barry responds). They’re supported by a superb cast of recognisable British actors and musicians, with some wonderful – if brief – cameos by SNL regulars. Dan Akyroyd pops up, so too does John Belushi and Bill Murray, while Mick Jagger waxes lyrical about how The Rutles influenced him. Paul Simon and Ron Wood also appear, as does Michael Palin and, as perfect evidence of endorsement, George Harrison has bit-part as a news reporter (Harrison was a big fan of Monty Python, and “pawned” his house in London to fund the troupe’s most famous, and controversial, and hilarious feature film, The Life of Brian).

The music is also pitch-perfect. Innes has cleverly distorted recognisable Beatles’ tunes, changing the lyrics and altering the sound just enough so that they remain obviously inspired by specific songs, but the recognition is often rather elusive. The earlier songs in particular are spot-on and often particularly convincing: “All My Loving” becomes “Hold My Hand”, “If I Fell” transforms into “Number One”, “All You Need is Love” turns into “Love Life”. Each song is performed with upbeat enthusiasm from the group, first in obvious studio settings, then moving beyond the constraints of stiff-upper-lipped BBC standards to the more hippy, freewheeling organic style of the Beatles’ later sound. By the end of the film, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish what is Beatles and what is Rutles, the two groups almost becoming interchangeable, such is the accuracy of Idle’s observations. It’s no wonder that the group – The Rutles, that is – have since released several albums and have been touring as recently as May this year. Ironically, the parody has survived longer than the original, although in terms of musical achievement, pop culture iconography, and influence, it’s the Fab Four, not their Pre-Fab counterparts, who reign supreme.

Film #104: Troll Hunter (2010)

Rating: 4.5/5

“They are not bright. They manage to eat. But how hard is it to survive on rocks?”

Almost as soon as it was released in the UK it was announced that Troll Hunter was going to be getting the now expected English-language remake. As of September 2013 writer-director Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers, The Descent) was linked to the film, admittedly making it a slightly more appealing venture, but quite frankly Hitchcock himself could be on board and it would still be an utterly pointless project. Fortunately there seems to be no recent information on IMDb, suggesting the remake has been ditched – fingers crossed. If people can’t be bothered to read the subtitles, then they can just miss out on this little genre gem.

Like many of the “found footage” films of recent years, Troll Hunter takes the realistic medium and adds a supernatural twist. Echoing so many films that have gone before (the horror genre in particular is over-saturated with cheap, shaky hand-cam found footage movies), opening titles inform the viewer that what they are about to see is some of 200-plus hours of footage shot by a small group of students. This proviso also handily explains why the film is so neatly edited – dead time is missing, and the pace (unlike so many inferior films of the genre) is quick, because someone has helpfully compiled all the stock into a palatable movie. And then it begins: three college kids, Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud), the announcer, seen most often on the screen, Johanna (Johanna Mørck), in charge of capturing sound, and Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen), the cameraman are out in the rugged wilderness of the Norwegian countryside apparently trying to shoot a film about bear poaching. Having spoken to some of the official bear hunters, it becomes evident that someone else is also on the hunt – a mysterious poacher with a ramshackle old caravan and a grumpy disposition. Initially reluctant to speak on camera, this gruff individual – Hans (Otto Jespersen) – eventually allows the trio to follow him on what turns out to be his troll hunting expeditions.

There’s so much to like about Troll Hunter. Despite its genre title and the overwhelming potential to be another disappointing, annoying, cheap found footage flick, it’s smart, dry, and expertly made, with some good jumpy moments and a healthy dash of humour. Poor Hans, Norway’s only troll hunter, finally agrees to be filmed not because he’s been caught out, but because he’s sick of all the bureaucracy and the lack of employment benefits – he doesn’t even get paid unsociable hours, despite being out hunting trolls every night. It’s a thankless job, and he’s sick of it. Like a troll-hunting Van Helsing, he works tirelessly to keep Norway safe and, although we find out very little about him, he seems to be a rather complex individual – worn out and tired of the bloodshed, yet unable to retire. In contrast, the kids – who we follow throughout the film – are excellent substitutes for the viewer: mildly irritating at the beginning, because of their doggedness more than anything, then suitably incredulous as Hans first comes rushing through the woods screaming, “Troooooooollll!” moments before something destroys their car and eats their tyres, then excited to be the ones documenting such a scoop.

And what a scoop it is. Also distinguishing it from the other cheap horror movies, Troll Hunter doesn’t shy away from showing its spectacle and, when the trolls are shown, they’re utterly delightful. They look exactly how trolls should look – depending on their breed, they’re furry, hairy, gigantic, have comically stupid-looking faces with bulbous potato-noses, yet still manage to look fearsome. As Hans says, they’re not the brightest creatures, but they’re still dangerous – particularly the ones the group are coming up against here, who seem to be acting especially erratically. It’s here also that it becomes so evident that a remake is pointless, because the trolls are so firmly embedded in Norwegian culture. The craggy, desolate but beautiful landscape has been shaped by the trolls – rocky patches of land are the result of feuding trolls throwing boulders at each other, for example. I’m sure native audiences would pick up on many more references, but even non-Norwegians ought to be familiar with some of the fairy tales mentioned in the film – there’s a clear reference to Three Billy Goats Gruff, for instance. There are also some interesting modern variations on classic themes – Hans warns the trio that they mustn’t believe in God, because trolls can smell the blood of a Christian man, yet later on no one is sure what will happen when a Muslim joins the group. It’s a wonderfully light touch, pointing out the flaws in local legends and pointing to the increased multiculturalism today (has anyone dealt with this in a vampire context, by the way? Would, for example, Indian vampires still fear the cross?!)

I’ve never been much of a fan of the found footage films – having had to watch far too many straight-to-DVD movies of the type for review purposes (like this one, or this), I’ve long tired of the shoddy, stomach-churning incoherence and unsatisfactory conclusions that dominate the style. Yet Troll Hunter stands apart from these shoddy disappointments: it’s great fun, clever and, unlike so many of the inferior examples, it truly delivers. By the end, I was completely sold: obviously there are trolls in Norway. Even the prime minister said so.

Film #101: Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010)

Rating: 4/5

“Are we today the crocodiles who look back into the abyss of time when we see the paintings of Chauvet cave?”

Finally, a Werner Herzog film (there are plenty more to come) – one of his most recent, and his only venture into 3D. Cave of Forgotten Dreams arrived on the big screen just as the arthouse cinemas were admitting defeat and installing 3D-ready projectors and screens, but I have to admit that, having watched it in both formats now, something is actually lost in the 2D version. Generally, I believe that 3D should only be used as a gimmick – at least when it’s used in films like Piranha 3D and A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas you know you’re going to get your money’s worth. 3D is, and always will be, a gimmick, so if there aren’t things flying out of the screen towards my face, generally I’m not interested. Herzog doesn’t throw anything at our faces here, but his subject matter – the spectacular cave paintings found, perfectly preserved, in 1994 at what are now called the Chauvet Caves in France – really benefits from that third dimension. In his narration, Herzog talks about how the painters used the undulations of the cave walls in their art; he attempts to recreate the flickering light of a fire to show how the pictures move and warp. In 2D it’s fairly easy to imagine, but in 3D – as loathe as I am to admit it – the effect is truly realised.

The Chauvet Cave paintings, the oldest known in the world, are somewhere in the region of 32 000 years old. Found in 1994 by three explorers, access is now severely limited – this is no tourist trap, but a carefully, meticulously examined and preserved site of huge importance. Protected by a landslide thousands of years ago, the cave is pristine – the floor is littered with the bones of long-extinct animals, now covered with a fine dusting of calcite, making everything sparkle. The paintings themselves – dozens of beautiful renditions of animals – are so fresh that, when they were found, they were suspected to be a hoax.

Herzog’s film offers people a rare opportunity to see such important works. With other cave paintings destroyed by mould that grew as a result of tourists’ breath, there’s no chance that us regular folk will ever be granted access. Herzog secured his visits by agreeing to take only one euro in payment, and his film was sponsored by the French Ministry of Culture. Using stringent methods, there’s a rawness to the resulting film – its guerilla-style filmmaking reminded me of one of Herzog’s early documentaries, the stunning La Soufriere, in which the director and a few friends travel to a small island about to be devastated by a volcanic eruption. The space inside the caves is often cramped and restricted so, as Herzog acknowledges, the tiny film crew (only four people for the interior shots) cannot avoid being captured on screen also. Their equipment is rudimentary, restricted so as to cause the least amount of damage to the paintings (it should be said that the sometimes shaky, hand-cam footage does not work in 3D at all).

Once in the caves, however, Herzog allows the paintings to be the star of his film. Long sequences pass by without comment, punctuated by the director’s trademark soundtrack, composed by long-standing collaborator Ernst Reijseger. The haunting orchestral score imbues the images, and the cave itself, with an solemnity – almost a spiritualism – and it becomes easy to imagine the space being once not only a special, but a sacred, place for the people who so carefully daubed the walls. These moments quietly ask for contemplation, and the absence of narration gave us time to discuss the implications of the images on screen. The paintings are stunning, perfectly capturing not just the physicality of these animals (bison, lions, bears, and horses, among others – there is one human on the walls, tantalisingly concealed behind a rock, but it’s the only painting that, to me, doesn’t immediately make obvious what its subject matter is. Is it really the lower half of a woman, with a bison head? The bison part is clear, but I remain sceptical of the rest – perhaps we’re just desperate to be represented) but their essence – they come to life on the walls. Yet there is so much more to them. Herzog doesn’t comment on the fact that the cave has now been sealed off from the world, perfectly, artificially preserved, but it seems particularly pertinent when he acknowledges that some of the paintings appear to have been done five thousand years apart. To put that into perspective – just over two hundred years ago, the Lewis and Clark Expedition set off to discover whether it was possible to reach the west coast of America. There wasn’t even a road, and now there’s LA – in the Chauvet Caves, five thousand years passed, and someone returned to add to the artwork. My brain cannot comprehend such vast swathes of time. Can you imagine someone going and touching up the Mona Lisa, or The Last Supper? Today, what is sacred is preserved, remaining untouched and hidden away from prying eyes or errant hands – it’s a curious aspect of humanity that, I guess, simply wasn’t a factor so many millennia ago.

He might not specifically question this, but it is still a Herzog documentary and, naturally, his interests are varied and obscure. He spends time considering “humanness” – what makes us human, whether these cave paintings are the first physical indication of the discovery of a soul. His interviews with scientists and archaeologists tends to deviate from specifically relevant information – he asks about their dreams after first seeing the paintings, talks to an “experimental” archaeologist and a perfumer trying to locate new caves using his sense of smell. Perhaps because he is just incapable of not adding his touch of Herzog-weirdness (or perhaps because we all expect it now), the film’s post-script features mutant albino crocodiles (mentioned in pretty much every review of the film) now living in an artificial nuclear biosphere a few miles away from the caves. Yet really the film is not about this strangeness, but about the paintings, and he presents them with a reverence that indicates his respect for such important works. For Herzog, the paintings are a key moment in human development, bringing beauty and life to the world like the opera does today. They might be hidden away from the hazards of flash photography, grubby shoes, and pesky carbon dioxide, but Herzog brings them back into the light, allowing us all to bear witness to what is arguably one of the most important cultural discoveries ever.

Film #96: Not Quite Hollywood (2008)

Rating: 3.5/5

Mark Hartley’s documentary, a unashamed fanboy look at Ozploitation movies, is fast-paced and frantic, and it’s a lot of fun. As someone who enjoys a good exploitation movie (here I’m using the term to describe the lurid 1970’s movies, filled with sex, gore and fast cars, rather than the classical exploitation films like Reefer Madness or Maniac) but knows little about the output from down under (Braindead is probably the closest I’ve come), Not Quite Hollywood plays out like a “best of” – it’s the kind of movie you feel you should watch with a pen and paper, just so you can make note of all the films to find on DVD later. Luckily for us, I’m pretty sure we have The Howling III: The Marsupials as part of a cheap double feature, but there were plenty more mentioned that looked just as ridiculous, and just as entertaining.

Among the various talking heads, mainly industry people who speak with both fondness and enthusiasm for their past lives, Hartley’s biggest name (for non-Australian audiences, at least) is easily Quentin Tarantino. He’s not listed as “filmmaker” or “director” but as “fan”, and he plays his role to perfection. Whether you’re a fan of Tarantino himself or not will probably influence your reaction to his segments – he drops bits of his own knowledge in, but mostly he comes across as someone emphatically trying to prove that he’s part of the gang. As a “fan” the anecdotes he details are the least interesting – it’s far more fun (and informative) to hear the stories from the people actually involved in the movies – but he does at least provide some context, and a recognisable face.

It is the films themselves who are the stars of the documentary, however. Hartley breaks up his narrative with sections focusing on specific strands of Ozploitation – the nudie pictures, the gore films, the racing movies. The general attitude running throughout is most definitely one of appreciation, with a healthy dollop of nostalgia thrown in for good measure: these were low-budget movies, made at a time when the Australian film industry was still a fledgling trying to find its place in the world, and for every Picnic at Hanging Rock, there were fifteen Turkey Shoot‘s being made to muddy the waters. It was a time of limited regulations, when stunt men risked their lives on a daily basis and women stood full frontal on screen and, while the rose-tinted glasses are definitely on, it’s difficult to not be slightly shocked at the hazardous working conditions rife in the 1970s. Even those involved must be quite surprised at how few deaths there were, considering what was going on.

While the films themselves are undeniably fun, compiled together in rapidly edited “best of” montages, Not Quite Hollywood starts to outstay its welcome a little bit. Perhaps it’s the obvious fan-nature of the movie that starts to grate – it’s interesting and informative, but at times feels a bit directionless, throwing another sequence of explosions and screaming women in rather than going beyond the surface. Evidently, while Ozploitation is not well known, there were a huge amount of films to emerge at the time, and Hartley seems to be trying to fit them all in, without really going into much detail about any of them. It is a fast movie, and it’s easy to be distracted by yet another reel of spectacle but, without my pen and paper at hand, the countless movies I saw clips of – the films I wanted to hunt down and watch in their entirety – have all blurred together to make one giant, mostly naked, slightly seedy, bloody, violent, apocalyptic road movie that only exists in montage. In fact, perhaps watching compilation videos of all the best bits of these films is actually the best way to watch them – surely I’ll be disappointed now, if I watched them; surely they’d never live up to the breakneck speed and apparently constant insanity that Hartley suggests?

After Not Quite Hollywood, Hartley went on to shoot the superbly titled Machete Maidens Unleashed!, another documentary, with the same formula (talking head segments interspersed with numerous movie montages), this time focusing on the American exploitation films shot in the Philippines. This is an area I’m more familiar with – Roger Corman shot several films there, as did Al Adamson and Eddie Romero – and the documentary was more fun for me as a result. However, my knowledge of the “Blood” series (Brides of Blood, Mad Doctor of Blood Island, etc) means that I am all too aware of the fact that many of these movies are slow, shoddy, and dull – until the few moments of outlandish stupidity. Is Ozploitation the same? If it is, Not Quite Hollywood does a good job at hiding this fact. And maybe really all you can do is watch the movies themselves to find out – if you do, I’m sure Hartley would consider his job done.

Film #83: Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1991)

Rating: 4/5

“There were too many of us, we had access to too much equipment, too much money, and little by little we went insane.”

Film buffs will probably at least be aware of how troubled the shooting of Apocalypse Now was. Filmed in the Philippines (like so many exploitation films around the same time), it was initially intended to be a six week shoot; principal photography eventually ended after sixteen months. Plagued with difficult actors, hurricanes, and political unrest that regularly forced Coppola to stop filming so that the government could use the helicopters that they had provided, not to mention copious amounts of drugs and the general day to day challenges of living in the jungle, what was meant to be a fairly quick, though ambitious, adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, became a monster that threatened to not only make everyone involved insane, but even almost killed its lead actor.

Today, Apocalypse Now is widely considered to be one of the greatest films of all time, capturing the horrors of the Vietnam War, still fresh in people’s minds when it was released in 1979. I’ve not seen it, and my knowledge of it is limited to general trivia and quotes (“I love the smell of napalm in the morning”), and the references to it in a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode (Restless). It didn’t really appeal to me, but Hearts of Darkness, which documents the problematic shoot and presents a fascinating insight into the heart and mind of a filmmaker determined to see his masterpiece come to life, instantly caught my attention, and did not disappoint. It’s a gripping documentary, with great on-set footage (shot by Coppola’s wife Eleanor) and secretly recorded conversations between the director and his wife. Early in the film, we hear Coppola plaintively stating: “My greatest fear is to make a really shitty, embarrassing, pompous film on an important subject, and I am doing it. And I confront it. I acknowledge, I will tell you right straight from… the most sincere depths of my heart, the film will not be good.” Yet despite the countless problems and issues, he refused to give up, and the results speak for themselves.

It’s hard not to be impressed, particularly today, at just how determined Coppola was. The money and time that was spent making his vision come to life, not to mention the amount of sheer man power (and explosives) is truly incredible – while a similar shoot today would no doubt substitute jungle life for green screens and napalm for CGI post-production effects, the 1970s were a notably different time for filmmaking, with the likes of Coppola, Scorcese, Kubrick, Lucas and Peckinpah paving the way as the creators of “New Hollywood.” Hearts of Darkness demonstrates how determined these new filmmakers were – no longer content with studio work, the 1970s saw a new kind of filmmaking, one that prided itself in realism and politics. It’s fascinating hearing Coppola talking about Apocalypse Now, and equally fascinating to hear his wife discuss her life as a result – the director dragged his whole family over to live in this troubled region. He is revealed to be dogged, obsessed even, and willing to do anything and everything to see his film completed. After Martin Sheen suffers a heart attack during shooting, Coppola responds by saying “If Marty dies, I wanna hear that everything’s okay, until I say, “Marty is dead,” perfectly capturing the dogmatic, ruthless supremacy of The Director.

This behind-the-scenes glimpse into Apocalypse Now, and the filmmaker(s) determined to bring a vision to life, is wonderfully honest, and filled with instantly recognisable faces – Marlon Brando, paid vast sums of money to appear in a small, though crucial role only to turn up on set tremendously overweight and sufficiently embarrassed about his physical condition that he refused to be portrayed as what he was; Dennis Hopper, clearly high as a kite during the shoot; George Lucas ruminating on Coppola’s vision and choosing to steer clear; a young Sofia Coppola suddenly relocated to the jungles while her father goes, as he himself admitted, insane. The stories told are evidence of the insanity, as the cast and crew remain isolated from the “civilised” world of Hollywood and the comforts of American living, as the money fritters away and the critics become more and more doubtful as to whether the film will ever see the light of day. It’s a true testament to Coppola’s determination that Apocalypse Now was finished – although one gets the feeling that, even had half his cast keeled over, if a hurricane had wiped out the country, if he had been declared bankrupt, he would have carried on, and even if it had killed him, his last breath would have been used to shoot that final image to see his movie completed.

Films #77 & 78: A Trip to the Moon (1902) & The Extraordinary Voyage (2011)

Ratings: A Trip to the Moon, 5/5; The Extraordinary Voyage, 4/5

It was impossible to give Georges Méliès’ short film anything other than five stars – it’s a mini masterpiece, with its images remaining some of the most iconic in cinema history. Over a hundred and ten years after it was made, A Trip to the Moon , perhaps the first true narrative film, is still breathtaking; Méliès’ unique vision is an example of pure fantasy, and it’s utterly bonkers. There are several versions of the film available, varying in length, colour, and quality. The version I watched is the best available; painstakingly restored, it is as crisp and clear as it ever was, the original hand-painted colours are gloriously psychedelic, the story finally told in its entirety. It comes with new accompanying music by French electronica band Air, whose specially written score is a perfect addition, adding tension and excitement at times, bringing (unintelligible) voices to the silent performances on screen, and adding another layer of whimsy and magic to the highly stylised, timeless images.

Film buffs will no doubt know just how important Méliès and his films were, but for those who don’t, a brief history lesson. While moving images had been around for several decades during the 1800s, the early pioneers of cinema were the Lumière Brothers and George Méliès. While the Lumière Brothers concentrated on providing spectacle through presenting general activities – leaving a factory, knocking down a wall, a train arriving at a station – in as realistic a form as possible, Méliès, a magician by trade, quickly saw film’s potential for trickery and fantasy. Having allegedly discovering such possibilities through a mistake – while filming an innocuous street scene, Méliès’ camera jammed, and it took him several seconds to get it running again, with the result being that, when he watched the footage later, a carriage suddenly transformed into a hearse – the filmmaker took full advantage of the new technology, and his early films are filled with trick shots and creative deceptions.

Rooted in fairground attractions and the sideshow, Méliès’ films generally consist of one or a series of staged tableaux; the camera doesn’t move during scenes and there is minimal editing, resulting in a distinctively theatrical style of presentation. Méliès was not concerned with realism, and his films in particular are obviously created, with painted sets and backdrops offering an instantly recognisable, entirely unrealistic aesthetic. A Trip to the Moon, featuring a group of academics who build a rocket and are shot through a cannon into the moon, where they discover a race of strange lobster-men, is overtly inspired by the written works of Jules Verne, and was later (illegally) remade by Pathé in 1908. The most iconic shot of the ambitious fifteen minute film, which became one of the earliest box office hits, is the rocket’s moon landing – splatting unceremoniously into the moon’s eye, it has inspired everything from music videos (The Smashing Pumpkin’s Tonight Tonight) to Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge). Yet none of the subsequent homages and rip-offs come close to matching the unfettered imagination of Méliès, whose vision is both childlike in its innocence, and absolutely mad in its showiness.

This restored version reveals the true beauty of this strange and unusual voyage, and each scene is a sight to behold – the troupe of scantily clad showgirls pushing the rocket into its launching position, the explorers first encountering the fantastical jungle on the moon, the fights between the lobster-men and the humans, the way in which the moon’s inhabitants are unceremoniously turned into multi-coloured puffs of smoke when hit with umbrellas. It’s one of the most important films in cinema history, and the fact that it still survives is a miracle.

While Méliès’ vision, and his influence on film history, is the initial focus of Serge Bromberg and Éric Lange’s accompanying documentary The Extraordinary Voyage, they also show the painstaking process of restoring the film. The colour version was believed lost until 1993, when a single print, in terrible condition, was discovered in Spain. With great care and optimism, the film was carefully unreeled, piece by brittle piece and, in a process lasting over ten years, eventually it was brought back to life. The documentary, including talking head interviews with Tom Hanks, Michel Gondry (The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), and Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist), reveals the restoration as a true labour of love – an impossible journey made possible, ironically, because of extraordinary technical advances. While perhaps not providing any new information for those with a basic knowledge of early cinema history, it does nonetheless offer an excellent overview, while also including a substantial number of Méliès’ other films, including The One Man Band and The Man With Four Heads, demonstrating the magician’s penchant for trickery and his undeniable achievements. What is so wonderful is that, while modern film effects can so easily be dismissed as CGI – without the viewer necessarily understanding any of the complexities involved in that process – the early trick films remain magical somehow. We know they are an illusion, but explanations remain beyond our grasp, and all the more impressive precisely because of this. Like a real magic trick, the solution is often infuriatingly simple, but it’s a cynical person who really wants to know it. Instead, we can lose ourselves in the illusion, and embrace our childish, often forgotten, sense of wonder and awe.

Films #57 and 58: Troll 2 (1990) and Best Worst Movie (2009)

Ratings: 1/5, 4.5/5

“But they’re trolls daddy! Monstrous beings!” – Troll 2
“I was in a movie called Troll 2. It’s the worst film of all time.” – George Hardy, Best Worst Movie

Yesterday was a fairly epic day of movie watching – Movie Lottery was temporarily abandoned so that I could catch up on some PhD-specific viewing, and so I spent the day watching some of the most notorious bad movies. Troll 2, a relatively recent addition to the badfilm canon, seemed like a pretty good place to start; having languished on my shelves for a few years now, it’s embarrassing to admit that this was the first time I watched it.

I knew what to expect, of course – Troll 2 has a rather colourful reputation. If I had never heard of it, I’m pretty sure the DVD box would have helped prepare me. I bought this on Amazon, from a reputable seller, but still this is obviously a pirate copy; the cheaply printed cover features some grainy stills from the film itself, and no credit information whatsoever. It does, however, talk about the “Trolls, which are a particularly dangerous breed live [sic] in the woods” who disguise themselves as “peasents [sic].” Naturally, my curiosity was instantly piqued.

For those of you unfamiliar with the film’s infamy, this was a straight-to-video horror film, written by Italian Rossella Drudi and directed by her husband Claudio Fragasso. Filmed in Utah, it stars a bunch of unknowns, and tells the story of Joshua Waits (Michael Stephenson) and his family who go holidaying in a quaint little town called Nilbog. Joshua regularly converses with his (dead) grandfather, who warns him of goblins. Joshua’s teen sister’s on-off boyfriend and his “boys” follow the family to Nilbog, where all the villagers act rather strangely and keep trying to feed the newcomers unappetising green and white mush. Because, as the DVD box says, “the trolls are vegetarians… And the food would turn the Waits into Vegetables!!”

Recounting the plot in a film like this is generally rather irrelevant; no one is going to watch this expecting a nuanced narrative. We watch because the legend of the film precedes our experience of it – it is notoriously bad, so we expect it to be so. And Troll 2 does not disappoint: it is really terrible. The dialogue is particularly dire (although somewhat justified now that I know it was written by a non-English speaker) – just consider lines like this: “Grampa Seth has been gone for more than six months now. You were at the funeral, and I know it was very difficult for you. It was also very difficult for your father, and for Holly, and for me his daughter.” Yes, it efficiently establishes the family connections, but, really? “And for me his daughter”? Oh dear.

The acting is equally bad, though to be expected considering the general amateur status of those involved. Delivery ranges from hysterical to flat; the mother constantly has the look of a confused deer caught in headlights; the “boys” are dreadful; Joshua’s sister is a late 80s cliché, first introduced in a high-cut leotard lifting weights (just to prove her femininity?!), caught in a love-hate relationship with her dimwitted beau. The only character who offers any hint of authenticity is the town’s shopkeeper, a sinister man with a suspiciously limited selection and a severe distaste for eggs and bacon. There’s also, bizarrely, a substantial amount of homoerotic subtext – I’m sure somewhere, someone has done a queer reading of Troll 2, and it would be fascinating to read. Suffice to say now, just consider the relationship between the boyfriend and his boys, not to mention one of the aforementioned boys’ sexual encounter with the Goblin queen and her particularly phallic corn-on-the-cob. Meanwhile, the makeup is cheap, the story makes no sense, at one point a character inexplicably engages with genial conversation with the goblins, there are theological and pagan subplots involving fire-and-brimstone preachers and Stonehenge, people are routinely turned into pot plants, and the goblins (because there are no trolls here) are (apparently) defeated by a gently lobbed hamburger. It is a truly dreadful film.

So why has it gained such a dedicated and devoted audience? There are several factors. Troll 2 has become the “badfilm” of a generation, a film first shown on HBO and cherished by small audiences who claimed some kind of ownership of the product. It gained popularity through word of mouth, rather than being a designated “cult classic” – it emerged out of nowhere, was not publicised, was barely even noticed by most. Yet unlike the older bad classics like Plan 9 From Outer Space, visually it is familiar – it’s in colour, it’s fairly modern; Troll 2 lacks the kitsch appeal of the older movies that can be used to justify their badness. Here, the (almost) contemporary setting is just recent enough for audiences to recognise, appreciate, and decry. We know the calibre of films of the time, and this falls way below even the poorest offering.

Crucial, of course, is its badness. Troll 2 does not just fail on one level; it fails on all of them. It is delirious and deluded, and utterly demented – the story is preposterous, the acting appalling, the props and effects sub-par. Yet it manages to be consistently entertaining – we stare open-mouthed in disbelief yet are never bored. It is, then, one of these cult films described as “so bad it’s good,” an exceedingly problematic term. It’s not good, that’s precisely its appeal. Instead, I would suggest “so bad it’s pleasurable” as a more appropriate term: we recognise and appreciate the complete and utter failure of the film, and are entertained as a result. Is it the worst film of all time? At one point, IMDB voters designated it as such; today it barely scrapes in at 100th place in the Bottom 100. Personally, it sits alongside Children of the Living Dead, which, in my mind was at least as bad and just as pleasurable.

In contrast, Best Worst Movie is fascinating – subtly insightful, poignant, engaging and very interesting. This is Michael Stephenson’s documentary charting the subsequent cult status of Troll 2, and it’s rather ironic that the bratty child star of that movie has so successfully created such a professional, eloquent film himself. Unusually, it is not Stephenson who is the main attraction this time around, but George Hardy, the father. Hardy is a likeable man with a constant smile on his face and a general vitality. He’s also a dentist.

Best Worst Movie attempts to reunite all the main stars of Troll 2, while following the film’s newfound popularity from small viewing parties to packed out cinema events. Initially, at least, Hardy and Stephenson are amazed at the film’s cult status, and they embrace the attention. Hardy joyfully repeats his most famous line, “You can’t piss on hospitality! I won’t allow it!” over and over, and rather than be embarrassed about his role, he delights in telling anyone who’ll listen that he was in the “worst film of all time.” For those who embrace the badness, it’s a particularly entertaining and unexpected stardom.

Not all the cast, however, have such well-adjusted lives. Margo Prey (the mother) has become a virtual recluse, locked away in her unwelcoming home caring for her elderly mum – her brief appearance in the documentary suggests a troubled and fragile person, and this is particularly enlightening considering my previous comments regarding her performance. Similarly, the shopkeeper, who I also discussed as being the only successfully sinister character, discusses his mental health issues at the time of filming, saying his performance was creepy because he was, at the time, a very troubled man.

Reputations and cult status really benefits from this kind of insight, and the interviews with these cast members reinforces one of the frequently discussed reasons for badfilm appreciation – that through the failure it is possible to witness something very authentic and genuine. Unlike “good” movies that disguise or conceal their manufactured nature, badfilms cannot hide, and everything becomes real, in a sense. Working in tandem with this concept is the idea that the film can be perceived as genuine in its intentions – as one of the fans remarks, there is no sense of irony present in Troll 2. Again, Best Worst Movie offers some particularly intriguing implications regarding the tension present in this “worst film of all time” status. This tension is most evident in discussions with the film’s director and writer – a married team who appear to truly believe what they have made is not only good, but profound in some way. Whereas the majority of the cast have embraced their cult status, Fragasso – much like The Room‘s Tommy Wiseau – evidently does not appreciate the constant laughter emanating from the audience of his mini-masterpiece. He frequently describes the actors as “dogs”, and is confrontational and argumentative in Q&A sessions. Yet what does the audience expect? If he embraces his film as bad, surely some of the cult appeal is lost. Better he remains blissfully ignorant and steadfast in his belief that Troll 2 is good.

The tension continues as Troll 2‘s cast – Stephenson and Hardy primarily – begin to lose their bearings. Whereas the sold-out screenings emerged rather organically, they start to force Troll 2 on the public, and their misguided, yet likeable, enthusiasm for the film’s popularity becomes all too clear when they find themselves among other areas of “cult” fandom – horror conventions and memorabilia shows sharply bring them back to Earth. Because cult is a tricky thing, and there are many layers of what makes something cult, and who is involved with that claim.

Apologies for the length of this post – generally I would try to keep it short. This double bill has provided many areas of interest, however. Troll 2 (and Best Worst Movie) offers badfilm theorists a wealth of information, due in large part to the fact that there is little information available about many of the older bad cult classics; most of the people involved were dead before the cult affiliation developed. Watching Troll 2 is a great experience, and it genuinely feels far more authentic than, say, the more consumer-driven output of the SyFy channel. It’s a terrible film – perhaps not the worst ever, but fully deserving of the title “badfilm”. In contrast, Best Worst Movie is eloquent and well judged, offering some valuable insights into the various tensions and stresses that result in unintentionally creating a crap masterpiece.

Film #54: Man on Wire (2008)

Rating: 5/5

“If I die, what a beautiful death!”

In 2009, James Marsh’s superb film Man on Wire won Best Documentary at the Oscars. In any other year, I would have been happy, but I must admit this win was tinged with sadness for me, because it beat Encounters at the End of the World. Yet general consensus quietly agrees that the latter was included predominantly because Werner Herzog’s previous documentary, Grizzly Man, had failed to even secure a nomination in 2006, and this was the Academy’s way of putting right an egregious wrong. So, as biased as I am towards Herzog, whose films have (sadly) yet to be picked out of the bag, even I must concede that if he had to lose out (again) at the Oscars, at least he lost out to a worthy opponent – and, to be honest, I doubt that the director himself actually cares at all. Man on Wire is fantastic, make no mistake – an exhilarating memoir disguised as a heist film, it gathers you up and pulls you into Phillipe Petit’s obsessed world until, finally, you are rewarded with an unforgettable moment: it’s a moment of lunacy, undoubtedly, but it’s also beautiful, serene, magical.

Based on a book by Petit, Man on Wire recounts the Frenchman’s efforts to achieve his dream – to walk along a tight rope between the Twin Towers in New York. It was an obsession that haunted him from the moment he first discovered the skyscrapers were being built in the early 1960s. It wouldn’t be until 1974 that he would finally have the opportunity, carrying out the “artistic crime of the century” with the help of a band of people who had been caught up in his wake and dragged along for this delirious ride.

The film’s style brings to mind that of acclaimed documentary maker Errol Morris, combining the traditional talking heads – a perfunctory inclusion that generally lacks visual dynamism – with monochrome re-enactments. Yet Petit in particular is such an engaging character that even his interview segments are filled with excitement and vitality – he is spry and hyperactive, expressive with not just his face but his whole body. It’s easy to see how he persuaded the motley crew of friends, associates, and virtual strangers to help him on what could so easily have been a suicide mission. The re-enactments, in contrast, are muted in colour and slightly grainy, yet no less engaging: Marsh cleverly creates his heist caper here, as Petit recalls the almost slapstick manner by which they broke into the Twin Towers, with their vast quantities of rigging and equipment. Were it not for the reiteration of his story by his co-conspirators, it would be easy to dismiss his version of events as fanciful and highly exaggerated: having to hide under tarpaulin while the security guards smoked cigarettes, the near-misses and ridiculous situations they managed to get themselves into. The good humour and often hilarious descriptions mask, or at least undermine, the criminality of their actions, not to mention the hugely dangerous potential of his dream, so that Man on Wire remains eternally optimistic and invigorating.

Alongside these talking head interviews and re-enactment segments, Marsh’s film undoubtedly benefits from an impressive wealth of existing footage of Petit’s various exploits. From his jaunt across the Sydney Harbour bridge, to small, tender moments shared between friends, the combination of photos and film footage nostalgically capture the decade just as they capture the closeness of this group of friends. They are an inviting bunch; if there were fights and disagreements, they are hidden away – what matters, it is implied, was the fun. For this period of time, the group lived, breathed, slept and dreamed Petit’s dream; they vicariously lived his obsession, which he had infected each and every one of them with. And, in the end, it was his life at risk, but they all reaped the rewards of his actions, as they helped him achieve something that was insane, of course, but somehow life-changing for them all. Just listening to his former girlfriend as she recalls watching him from the streets below, and you get the sense that there was something utterly profound about his actions; this was an experience shared by friends and strangers alike, one that would never be forgotten. Yet there is a somewhat bittersweet element here, emphasised in the film’s final moments as the group discuss what happened after they had finally achieved Petit’s dream. After all those years of planning, the obsessive detailing and meticulous (or not) preparation, what is left afterwards? It’s a poignant end to a beautiful, and ultimately very human film.

I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing James Marsh twice over the years, and you can read both interviews here:
Citizen Nim
Subdued Suspense

Cinema Lottery #10

Gravity
Release date: 8 November 2013
Rating: 4.5/5

After a string of films in which a (male) actor carries an entire film (Buried, 127 Hours, Brake, Moon), this time it’s Sandra Bullock’s turn. Gravity, written and directed by Alfonso Cuaron, is a claustrophobic, disorienting, and dizzying film – a disaster movie in space, with poor Ryan (Bullock) desperately trying to get back to Earth. Its plot is actually rather generic: Ryan is on her first mission, her charismatic associate Matt Kowalski (George Clooney, playing himself) is on his last. Inevitably, things go wrong, and continue to do so for a tense ninety minutes – Ryan’s misfortunes almost push her into Michael Bay territory (just consider the calamities that occur in Armageddon as a result of everyone’s sheer incompetence), but Gravity is executed with such a confidence and professionalism that it pulls it off. So Ryan is bounced off satellites and forced out of supposedly safe refuge, sent spinning wildly out of control into the vast nothingness of space and bombarded with high flying debris, and the audience is dragged along with her.

While Bullock should be commended for her performance, the other elements all work to support her role. The sound design is perfect – the “no sound in space” issue is bypassed by including muffled noises, as though one were hearing from within a spacesuit, and some uncomfortable, increasingly loud tones at moments of particular tension. Visually, Gravity is stunning, and its one of the few non-horror movies that really benefits from 3D, which enhances the feeling of weightlessness while also reinforcing the disorienting situations Ryan gets into. Cuaron captures the vast expanse of space, with the Earth calmly sitting below, and it is both beautiful and isolating – serene, yet terrifying. If ever there was a film made to be watched at an IMAX, by the way, this is it. Unrelenting and uncompromising, Gravity is one hell of a bumpy, breathless, ride. Suddenly, going into space doesn’t seem quite so romantic a notion.

Philomena
Release date: 1 November 2013
Rating: 4/5

In 2009, journalist and former Labour party spin doctor Martin Sixsmith published an article in The Guardian, with the attention-grabbing headline, “The Catholic church sold my child”. It was a story that had originated as a throwaway human interest piece, but as the truth emerged, it became increasingly shocking. Fifty years prior, Philomena Lee had given birth to a son in secrecy in a convent in Tipperary. Like many other young, unmarried women in Ireland at the time, she was forced to hand over control of the child to the nuns, who in turn had them adopted, often to families in America, in exchange for “donations” to the church. Having never forgotten this child, Philomena’s attempts to find him proved futile, so she enlisted the help of Sixsmith, whose investigative journalism background helped her to eventually discover what had happened to her son.

Stephen Frears’ film is an unassuming piece of work – understated and subtle, with a focus on the performances of both Judi Dench (as Philomena) and Steve Coogan (as Sixsmith). Coogan has also written the screenplay, and here he proves not only his capabilities as a serious actor, but a deftness of touch in his writing; there are just enough moments of light-heartedness, predominantly as a result of the relationship between the cynical Sixsmith and Philomena, that stops the film from becoming saturated in melodrama. Dench is, as always, utterly convincing. Despite the actions of the Church, she remains steadfast in her faith, both in God and humanity, yet her naivety is matched with wisdom, good humour, and a quiet determination. In this tale of conspiracy and cover-ups, charting one of the most shameful moments in Irish history, it’s a testament to the actors that they are not overwhelmed by the plot. Yet Philomena remains rooted in truth, and doesn’t need to exaggerate the events it portrays. At its core, this is less a ruthless expose of the Catholic chuch’s sins, than a film about a mother trying to discover what happened to her child – it just happens to have far-reaching implications. It’s a subtle, yet confident, piece of filmmaking, with an excellent screenplay and superb central performances – if this makes it to awards season, surely Dench should be at least considered for another accolade.

Bad Grandpa
Release date: 23 October 2013
Rating: 2/5

If you’re not already a fan of Jackass, I wonder, would you even consider going to see their latest gross-out movie? This is now the fourth cinematic outing for the team, who now appears to consist entirely of Johnny Knoxville – none of the others are present, and Knoxville himself is buried under a mountain of old-man make-up. Replacing his friends is Jackson Nicoll, who plays 8-year-old Billy, the grandson of the titular grandpa and easily the most engaging character – it mustn’t be that easy for a child to keep a straight face in these absurd situations, but Nicoll succeeds, and even manages to invite some degree of pathos while doing so. Yet Bad Grandpa is a flawed and self-indulgent film that makes some serious errors in judgement regarding its style.

There are two major problems at play. One is the decision to combine a fictional narrative with hidden camera scenes capturing the reactions of real people when confronted with this irresponsible, foul-mouthed, disgusting, perverted grandpa and his grandson; not only is the narrative flimsy at best, but it creates some suspicion as to the “realness” of the rest of it. The second big problem is the reactions, which are almost entirely apathetic; perhaps it’s a shocking indictment of American society that people are so accepting of the absurd and ridiculous, but more likely is that many people suspected some kind of foul play – we’ve become so saturated in hidden camera shows that it’s no longer a novelty. These might be the biggest problems, but they’re not the only ones. Knoxville churns out the now expected series of skits, and they’re all as immature as the next, lacking any real subtlety, intelligence, or originality, while, presumably, all those in on the joke pat themselves on the back. Unfortunately, no one else is laughing. There are a few moments, admittedly, when I sniggered a little, but every single one of those moments was in the trailer. My advice? You’ll know yourself whether this movie is for you or not and, if you think it is, my review is irrelevant. If you think it’s not for you, stay well away. You will gain nothing from seeing it.

Closed Circuit
Release date: 25 October 2013
Rating: 3.5/5

I’ve seen a whole bunch of British, gritty, political thrillers over the course of these press days, and each has been as generic and forgettable as the next. So Closed Circuit came as a pleasant surprise – not amazing, but by far the most polished and interesting film of its kind that I’ve seen this year. It’s also, intriguingly, almost entirely a red herring – despite the twists and turns, the actual outcome of the court case becomes irrelevant; instead, the focus remains fixed firmly on the ways in which politics (and politicians) invade and corrupt the supposedly impartial legal system, engineering situations to save face and get the result they desire. In doing so, the film manages to sidestep potential problems in a satisfactory solution, for example, because the solution is unnecessary.

Eric Bana is Martin Rose, the replacement attorney for a suspected terrorist, who supposedly masterminded a horrific attack on Borough Market. Along with another attorney (Rebecca Hall), he is tasked with defending a suspect with a mass of evidence so secret that not even Rose is privy to it; thus begins the conspiracy that the two lawyers must decide to either fight or accept. Bana and Hall are supported by a solid cast, including Jim Broadbent, Ciaran Hinds, and Julia Stiles, the latter of whom features for no reason whatsoever – as an American journalist, she appears in two scenes and is then quickly dispatched (off screen) and forgotten about. Her inclusion is one of the most obvious flaws in the film, which is, despite some weaknesses (Rose’s family life is hinted at but unexpanded and adds little; the title and opening scenes’ emphasis on CCTV footage is also ultimately irrelevant) reasonably engaging and intriguing. It may not be remembered in years to come, but seeing as I can remember it a day later, it has already exceeded my expectations.