Review of Belfast

Nice, beautiful-to-look-at coming of age movie by Kenneth Branagh that is apparently autobiographical. Young Buddy is growing up at the start of the troubles - the first scene takes place in August 1969, in an idyllic mixed working class Belfast neighbourhood, where Catholics and Protestants live happily together. Perhaps it's too romanticised...I'm sure everyone who was there has their own version of what this experience was like. Certainly we don't see any sign of the symbols of sectarianism, no union flags or tricolours, no Orange lodges...even the murals on the gable ends of terraces are harmless.

But then we see things quickly slide into pogroms and burning-out of Catholics from the Protestant streets, and vigilantes and barricades - though only in a Protestant street. In fact, Catholics are largely absent from the story, except in the imaginations and conversations of the Protestant characters, especially the ones from the central family. 

One thing struck me - the family, especially the mum and the dad, and some of the other characters including the local Protestant thug-gangster - are all really gorgeous to look at. Funny how striking that is, because almost everyone in documentary footage from this period looks so ugly.

Watched in the Middle Floor at Springhill, via usb stick and informal distribution...one consequence of this was odd melting transitions between some scenes, because the video player couldn't quite cope. It made it even more arty.

Review of Aftersun

Moody slightly menacing film about a dad on holiday in a Turkish resort with his pre-teen daughter. At first it has all the dullness of a resort holiday (and I admit to having a little doze) but the mood and the menace take over, and I ended up being really quite moved by it. It's a depiction of a father-daughter relationship that's kind and loving, even though the dad is really troubled. 

It's occasionally a bit confusing - most of the narrative is set during the holiday but some of it is in the future when the girl is grown up and reflecting back on the past...and perhaps some of it is in the further past, depicting the dad's break-up with the girl's mother - it's not 100% clear. 

Not what you'd call enjoyable but I am pleased I watched it...via informal distribution and USB stick to the projector in the Springhill Middle Floor.

Review of The Last Letter From Your Lover

Sort of OK, watchable romantic drama with a split-chronology narrative. In the 1960s a wealthy socialite has an affair that ends abruptly, and in the present a young woman journalist finds love letters in her magazine's archive and becomes intrigued by the story. It's engaging enough, but not really great...the 1960s scenes are sumptuously filmed and the socialite wears some great clothes. Some nice backing track music.

Watched on Netflix - the film was produced independently but Netflix bought it up.

Review of Escape From Room 18

Unsettling but also unsatisfactory documentary about a Jewish young man who was a member of a Nazi skinhead gang in the US...at first the Nazis don't know he's Jewish, but then they find out and try to murder him, and he miraculously survives and escapes to Israel, where he and his family make a new life. Later - at the time the documentary is made - he meets up with one of his old Nazi skinhead friends, now no longer a Nazi or a skinhead, and they go on a trip to the Theresienstadt concentration camp together.

There's so much about this film that's weird - of course - but also so much that is unsatisfactory. There's not much consideration about the roots of Nazism and White Supremacy in the US, and no examination at all of what it means to escape from racists by going to live in Israel. The main character has moved to Israel with his mum, who speaks with a strong Southern accent, obviously misses the food and culture of the American South, and has a twin sister (who has also moved to Israel), and the two of them dress identically. Which would have been enough for a weird documentary in itself.

Review of Wild Men

 

Billed as a comedy but dark and violent and a bit nasty - a little like Riders of Justice. What is it with Danish comedies? Is the audience in a Danish cinema roaring with laughter at this, or do they just mean a different thing by 'comedy'?

This one features an unhappy man who has left his family to live in the wilds of Norway so that he can reconnect with his proper, natural, manly self...but he's actually not very good at it. Failing to kill anything to eat bigger than a frog, he ends up robbing a petrol station instead, and is then half-hardheartedly pursued by the local police, who are mainly oblivious of a trio of drug smugglers in their neighbourhood. The drug smugglers hit a moose/elk, and one of them runs off with the cash leaving the others for dead, but they aren't, and then they run in to the aspirant wild man.

Lots of violence, and blood, and unhappiness, and almost no laughs at all. Even so I found it quite thoughtful and interesting, though Ruth didn't.

Watched on BBC iPlayer. 

Review of Transition by Ian Banks

A novel set in the multiverse, with characters who are aware of and can travel between parallel universes. It's nicely done (or perhaps nicely overdone, since quite a lot of the descriptions are sort of camp in the way that steampunk sometimes is - especially the lavish settings and costumes of Madame d'Ortolan, who functions as a principal villain). 

Lots of drugs, some sex, not much rock and roll.

It took me a little while to get into it, but I ended up enjoying it and was almost sorry when it ended.