Ex Drummer

Belgium | 2007 | Directed by Koen Mortier

Logline: A manipulative and cynical writer joins a desperate punk band under the pretence he is as handicapped as the other three, when the reality is he simply wants to shake up his complacent existence and disturb theirs.

You want to upset your cinematic sensibilities, then leave it to the wayward Europeans to throw a spanner in the works, and they’ll twist the tool for all its worth, prizing the cogs apart with malicious and sordid glee, yet maintain a compelling edge of pure cinema so you can’t tear your eyes from the screen.

For his feature debut Koen Mortier tackles the angry, belligerent, contentious novel by Herman Brusselmans and fuses his own misanthropic perspective to the narrative delivering a furious portrait of dysfunctional machismo and sociopathic chaos. It’s also a movie that frequently swerves from the sincerely grotesque to the unexpectedly provocative, and on rare occasion lingers on an image of isolated beauty such as a hazy sunrise.

Ex Drummer is a movie of fractured emotions and jagged rhythms, surging backwards as it does at film’s start, and careening forward in slow motion as it does at film’s end. It’s a difficult movie to find empathy within as none of the leads characters are likeable; they’re unhinged, misogynist, or violent; all of them obnoxious or reprehensible in some way. Even Dries (Dries Van Hagen), the chain-smoking writer pontificating philosophically, seduced by the anarchic possibilities within the punk rock scene, is a volatile and unpleasant man. He’s an opportunist, and he milks the moment, then spits in its face.

When he’s in his squalid apartment lead singer and guitarist Koen can only exist upside down, walking and sleeping on the ceiling. It’s very strange and surreal. Rhythm guitarist Ivan lives with a junkie wife and their toddler in just as squalid conditions. Ivan is at the end of his tether. Bassist Jan has a bung arm, grapples with homosexuality, and lives with his insane pa and butch ma. Dries languishes in a stylish high rise apartment with his bisexual girlfriend Lio (Dolores Bouckaert) and muses about the late King of Belgium.

With Dries on board as drummer (although he’s never been one) The Feminists enter a battle of the bands competing against rival rockers Henry Mulisch who have Big Dick (Jan Hammencker) as front man, a ferocious toad with a cock as long and thick as a baby’s forearm clutching a peach (in the movie’s most disturbing – but morbidly funny – scene Big Dick sodomizes a male groupie in the bar toilets). Another band competing are called Six Million Jews. The humour is as vulgar and crass as it is darkly hilarious.

Dries is the evil god descending into the village to cause upheaval amidst the struggling peasants. His intelligent analysis rivals their pathetic knee-jerk reactions just as their insolence threatens his complicity. The stew brews to boiling point and explodes in a violent frenzy. Koen Mortier wants to shock with moments of graphic sex and violence, yet a dark fascination seethes under the surface. This is a brutal study of the grim determination of those that lay in the gutter and stare up at the stars.

Sweat seeps, saliva dribbles, tears run, blood flows. Ex Drummer barks loud, bites savagely, wags its tail furiously. Rock and fucking roll. Enter at your own risk. Leave your inhibitions and sensibilities at the back door.

The Tin Drum

Die Blechtrommel | West Germany/France/Poland/Yugoslavia | 1979 | Directed by Volker Schlöndorff

Logline: In Danzig, Germany, as WWII begins, a three year old boy with extraordinary intellect and a distorted morality decides to stop growing in defiance against the absurdity and contradiction of the adult world he sees around him.

Based on the 1959 best-selling novel by Günter Grass Die Blechtrommel is a saga of morality, deception and resignation. It is a tale that resonates with dark poignancy, reverberates with an element of the perverse, and echoes with touches of surrealism. It’s a film of disquieting brilliance that won the Palm d’Or at Cannes and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Central to the film’s conceit is the extraordinary performance of young David Bennent who was 12-years-old, but plays troubled Oskar from an infant through to almost 21. His odd features, like that of an old man trapped in a child’s body, captures perfectly the sense of curiosity and exasperation that is Oskar. He is both inquisitive, yet defiant in his perspective of the world.

Adults are creatures of lies and betrayal, and foolish folly gives way to ignorance and tragedy. As Oskar realises the followers of Hitler and the Nazi party have mistaken him for Santa Claus, but really he was the Gas Man. World War II becomes both a literal and figurative metaphor for the lust and corruption that permeates Oskar’s world. His family is torn apart, as his German father Alfred (Mario Adorf) is seduced by the Fuhrer and his Polish uncle Jan (Daniel Olbrychski) is ostracized. His mother Agnes (Angela Winkler) is sleeping with them both, and Oskar finds himself inexorably instrumental to their plight.

Right from the dreamlike opening scene where Oskar narrates how his grandmother met his grandfather and conceived his mother in a potato field, the tone and style of the film is set; Fellini-esque, yet with strong Eastern-European flavours. The rustic, striking cinematography enhances the vivid visual narrative, while Maurice Jarre’s distinct score adds an unusual sense of black humour to the drama.

The film constantly contrasts images of beauty and sensuality against the grotesque and disgusting; a decomposing horse’s head is pulled ashore with eels snaking in and out of its orifices, Oskar is forced to drink frog and urine soup. Oskar climbs to the top of a bell tower with his trusty tin drum, surveying the spectacular view, then hammering away and screeching his glass-shattering vocals. Oskar’s tin drum is omnipresent, and when it’s damaged, he gets a new one. Apart from his unusual voice, the tin drum speaks for him. It challenges everything he doesn’t like or understand.

The film has courted controversy for its depiction of Oskar’s sexual awakening, in particular two scenes with his father’s young lover Maria (Katharina Thalbach): Oskar (aged 16, but still looking like he’s barely 10) buries his face in Maria’s naked crotch, and he shares her bed, licking sherbert from her navel, then mounting her. These are important moments, integral to the story, and are filmed tastefully, but the film was banned in the State of Oklahoma for many years, and was cut in the UK for breaching the law for the Protection of Children Act. The film has since been recognized for its artistic merits and the ban and the cuts have been waivered.

Die Blechtrommel is an utterly unique film, often startling, frequently amusing, strangely sensual, curiously affecting. It’s a beautiful and sad parable – and a savage satire – of prevailing innocence, corruption and inhumanity, hope and acceptance … and the simple chaste beauty of the potato.

Cheap Thrills

USA | 2013 | Directed by E. L. Katz

Logline: A mild-mannered man out on his luck reluctantly humours a reunion with an old buddy only to find himself embroiled in the lucrative game playing of a wealthy couple.

I missed this dark gem at last year’s Sydney Film Festival where it screened as part of the Freak Me Out section (and I wish I'd got to see it with a late night cinema crowd). Finally I get to see what all the fuss is about, and I can very happily agree that Cheap Thrills is as brilliant as I’d heard it was. A black eye comedy as perverse as it is entertaining, as clever as it is simplistic. It slaps your funny bone and kicks yer ass into the middle of next week. Boom! Whack! Tish!

E. L. Katz is good mates with Adam Wingard and Ti West, and the three directors share a similar penchant for inventive fiendishness. I’m not much of a fan of Wingard’s work, and although I loved West’s The House of the Devil, I was very disappointed by You’re Next. Katz, on the other hand, has raised the bar. Cheap Thrills is easily one of my favourite movies of the year, and up with Sightseers as the best black comedy/horror of the past ten years.

But it’s not just Katz dynamic direction, and the fantastic performances he gets from his cast of four leads; Pat Healy as hapless Craig, Ethan Embry as his dodgy old pal Vince, David Koechner as scheming Colin, (and who threatens to steal the entire movie), or Sara Paxton (who was great in West’s disappointing The Innkeepers) as Colin’s dark filly Violet. The screenplay to Cheap Thrills is a fucking corker. David Chirchirillo and Trent Haaga (who penned the irritating, but compelling Deadgirl) have written an instant cult classic.

Craig’s having the day from hell; an eviction notice on his front door, then he’s let go from work. Whilst drowning his sorrows in a beer, plucking up courage to face his wife and toddler, he’s grappled by an old buddy from his more reckless days of youth gone by. Vince is an ex-con, but he seems to mean well. Hey, one more beer for the road … Enter Colin and Violet, the couple with a serious agenda for fun. Yup, there’ll be plenty of tears before bedtime. Tears of laughter, tears of pain.

Cheap thrills, indeed. Such a witty, bang-on title. This modestly-budgeted, well-paced morality tale has more stings than a fierce wasp, and the buzz is well-deserved. I can’t stop thinking about how fucking good this movie is. Sure, it’s far-fetched, but, and here’s where the script and direction jump in bed and roger hard, Katz and his small cast nail the dialogue and scenes with a furious bam! Thunk! Crack!

Vulgar and gruesome (oh yes, I winced, grimaced, and gagged), Cheap Thrills is the most reckless, hilarious, twisted night you’ve had in a long time. Leave your sensibilities at the door, grab a bottle of top-shelf tequila, prepare to be knocked to the floor.

 

Cheap Thrills is courtesy of Madman Entertainment, many thanks!

To Live And Die In L.A.

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USA | 1985 | Directed by William Friedkin

Logline: A Federal Secret Service Treasury agent becomes recklessly obsessed with bringing a dangerous counterfeiter to justice after the criminal has his older agent partner murdered.

This was the quintessential 80s cop thriller; fast-paced, action-packed, violent, and profane, but more importantly, unpredictable, uncompromising, and that Wang Chung soundtrack. William Friedkin was back on the streets delivering the other side of the coin to his seminal NYC cop thriller, The French Connection, and it’s vibrancy holds steadfast.

Director Michael Mann tried unsuccessfully to sue Friedkin for ripping off his Miami Vice concept, but apart from the torrid urgency and a throbbing synth soundtrack, Mann was clutching at straws. Sure, Miami Vice was slick and provocative, but it was television; it simply wasn’t anywhere near as dangerous or volatile as Friedkin’s adaptation of Gerald Petievich’s incendiary novel.

William S. Peterson’s performance as treasury agent Richard Chance is blistering. He’s a determined asshole, treats his informant girlfriend like shit, and throws tantrums whenever something doesn’t go his way. But somehow the audience cares for him, or at the very least we want him to succeed. Willem Dafoe as his nemesis, the cool, calculating, creepy Eric “Rick” Masters, is a deadly creature. Furiously talented, both as an artist and as a counterfeiter (the montage sequence of Masters making the fake paper is brilliantly authentic), Masters is also a hit with the ladies, and he treats them real nice.

Chance’s new partner John Vukovich (John Pankow) is the nervous type, but he’s up for the mission, and it’s a crooked trail they’re on. As it turns out these boys are well above the law, and they’re up to their eyeballs in bureaucracy. It’s as if the City of Angels is treating them like Lucifer’s little helpers. Masters is always one step ahead, and they’re falling behind.

The fiery palette is courtesy of masterful cinematographer Robby Muller, and much of his location camerawork is astonishing. The extraordinary car chase scene that ends up with Chance driving down a motorway the wrong way has to be seen to be believed; Friedkin actually gives his own amazing car chase under the railway from The French Connection a run for its money! Meanwhile the sweat pours from the actors, and perspiration builds like a film over the audience.

But there is a curious subtext at work through the movie; a homoerotic element. In fact there are numerous gay/lesbian references not only in dialogue, but also imagery, not usually seen in such highbrow Hollywood fare. In many of Friedkin’s movies his characters display a misogynistic streak, yet conversely his movie Cruising was heavily criticised for his strange treatment of the New York underground gay scene, and yet Friedkin's earliest lauded movie is the gay stage adaptation The Boys in the Band.

Friedkin always casts his movies superbly. There’s great support from Dean Stockwell as a cigar-chomping lawyer who represents Masters, but also ends up giving advice to Vukovich when things start getting really sticky. Debra Feuer as Masters bisexual lover Bianca, Darlanne Fluegel as Chance’s ill-treated girlfriend, John Turturro as Carl Cody, another of Chance’s thorns, and Michael Greene as Chance’s doomed first partner Jimmy Hart who falls prey to Master’s henchmen, “Buddy, you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

There is a fantastic, yet utterly shocking twist which occurs in the movie’s last quarter. The movie's denouement caused the producers to panic and they demanded Friedkin shoot an alternate ending. Friedkin complied, but threw it out before the picture was locked off; he was never going to accept such a cop-out.  Friedkin explained that the nature of the movie and the way the characters are behaving it was obvious the original ending was very likely to occur, and it is one of the many reasons why To Live and Die in L.A. resonates so potently. It takes no prisoners.

The Thing

USA | 1982 | Directed by John Carpenter

Logline: A scientific research station in the Antarctic is infiltrated by a xenomorphic alien life-form that steadily consumes and imitates each member.

John Carpenter’s brilliant re-imagining of Howard Hawk’s The Thing from Another World (1951) is without a doubt one of the greatest modern horrors ever made. It is a masterpiece of escalating dread, atmospheric density, and a visceral intensity that is truly spectacular.

Although it performed poorly on its initial theatrical run it went on to garner an extraordinary cult following, and these days it is considered by many as a classic of its kind, especially in the science-fiction/horror camp, and, like another masterful example, Alien, little of it has dated. The uncompromising elements that made it difficult for audiences to deal with back in 1982 are now considered its strengths. It is with few peers, certainly in its practical effects, with Bill Lancaster’s terrific screenplay following the original source material much more closely than Hawks original B-movie (which is why, technically, it’s not a remake).

Based on the novella Who Goes There? by John Campbell, it’s a gripping and increasingly disturbing account of a highly intelligent alien life-form trapped in an inhospitable environment, attempting to ensure its own survival. As the movie’s tagline described, “Man is the warmest place to hide.” To the humans trying to deal with the incomprehensible the creature is seemingly a parasite, with astonishing capabilities. It absorbs its “prey” completely, then swiftly changes to mimic exactly the life-form it just consumed. When the movie opens the alien is mimicking a husky (unbeknownst to the audience), and has escaped from the ruins of a Norwegian research station with two surviving members in hot and desperate pursuit. The Americans rescue the dog with no idea of the horror they’ve brought into their fold.

Interestingly there are no female characters in the movie, there is no sexual tension, heterosexual or homosexual, there is none of the distractions that are often found in other horror movies. The closest thing to a female is the computer voice that is playing opposite MacReady - Kurt Russell in a career performance - at movie’s beginning. “Checkmate,” she tells him rather coolly. MacReady responds by pouring the remainder of his Scotch into her air vent causing her to short circuit. Ironically, it’s this aggressive, cold attitude that keeps MacReady alive in the latter stages of the movie. But only just.

The rest of the cast are all excellent, especially Donald Moffat as Garry and Wilford Brimley as Blair. Ennio Morricone composed an unusual, highly-evocative electronic score, providing further ominous edge to the atmosphere of distrust that permeates the ice station and its hapless team. But special attention goes to Rob Bottin (only 23-years-old at the time) who created the ingenious special effects make-up designs. These horrific, outlandish depictions of the alien in various states of being and change are arguably the best prosthetic and animatronic effects of the 80s (alongside Tom Savini’s work on Day of the Dead). Carpenter had the savvy to put a significant amount of the budget aside for the special effects. It may have alienated a large part of the movie’s unsuspecting audience at the time (apart from us horrorphiles who were squealing with delight in the cinema), but over the next decade Bottin’s work wasn’t just being singled out for being authentically repulsive, but for being genuinely astonishing.

The Thing is claustrophobic and nerve-wracking, a masterfully suspenseful study of paranoia, steeped in cosmic dread, and its ending is suitably - and bravely - saturated in dilemma and dark speculation. The alien was trying to escape, but has it? Will it? Has it infiltrated either of the two survivors? Both men are wary of each other, as they pass the bottle of whisky between their frozen fingers; “If we’ve got any surprises for each other, I don’t think either one of us is in much shape to do anything about it.”

The Addiction

USA | 1995 | Directed by Abel Ferrara

Logline: After a gifted philosophy student is accosted and bitten on the neck by a strange woman she struggles to understand the ethical complications of her affliction and an overwhelming bloodlust.

This is the vampire tale for the intellectually-anemic; soul food for the hungry undead. An existential study of vampirism juxtaposed against the social degradation and moral corruption of humanity. This is a primal headfuck; horror turned on its head to question just what it is that makes humans so evil … It seems we commit evil because we are evil.

Abel Ferrara has had a checkered career; for every great movie there have been miscarriages and interminable diatribes. The Addiction stands up with a clutch of intense and lingering studies of violence and corruption, both moral and physical; Ms .45 (aka Angel of Vengeance), King of New York, Bad Lieutenant, and The Funeral. These are Ferrara’s best works. The Addiction, however, is his most abstract and poetic, both in visual style and thematic weight.

Kathy Conklin (Lili Taylor, in a startling, frightening performance) is completing her doctorate at New York University. She has been attending lectures and viewing harrowing footage of atrocities in the Vietnam War and the Holocaust. She works diligently on her dissertation and discusses philosophy with her colleague Jean (Edie Falco). When glamourous Casanova (Annabella Sciorra) pulls her down under the sidewalk to give her a vampire’s kiss her whole world is turned upside-down and inside-out.

Kathy is both horrified and fascinated by what she’s become. She’s a vampire contradiction; no fangs, no transformation into a bat, no sleeping in a coffin, yet sunlight hurts her eyes, her strength is enhanced when she’s well-fed, and she can’t commit suicide.  She is forced to murder in order to drink the blood she craves. This of course challenges everything she has learned about humanity.

The Addiction is metaphor. We are essentially creatures of desire, capable of transgressing will and restraint and resorting to base acts of rape, murder and possession; we will continue to consume with greed and pillage without remorse regardless of what history has taught us. The screenplay by Nicolas St. John (Ferrara’s long-time collaborator) is a brilliant treatise; verbose, yet minimal, dense, yet spare. The movie is littered with anachronism and rhetoric, irony and reflection (although Kathy soon covers all her mirrors).

Ferrara has deliberately shot the movie in high contrast black and white to tone down the sensationalist aspect of vampirism: the blood, yet he heightens the xenophobic element, the racial undertones. Many of Ferrara’s movies deal specifically with religious and social constraint and inner, spiritual emancipation. Just like another hardened New Yorker, Martin Scorsese, Ferrara is compelled and tortured by his own Catholic guilt. It is this potent element which embraces Kathy and provides the narrative with its supernatural denouement.

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Christopher Walken plays Peina, whom Kathy tries unsuccessfully to lure for food. It turns out he is one in the same, although he’d beg to differ. He has been fasting for forty years - a vampire sage - ready to dispel any confusion Kathy is feeling, keen for her to suffer until she comprehends exactly what she is and what her addiction means. She tries to slit her wrist, and Peina simply informs her, “You can’t kill what’s already dead.” Walken is only on-screen for ten or so minutes, but he commands with such disquieting authority, it’s up with his very best performances.

The play of light and shadow on the streets and inside the architecture of New York is manipulated and used to both subtle and powerful effect; fantastic work from Ferrara’s often-used cinematographer Ken Kelsch. Also notable is Joe Delia’s brooding subterranean score, which contrasts with the moody hip-hop on the streets. This is the most ghastly and beautiful vampire movie since Murnau’s German Expressionist masterpiece Nosferatu, indeed a rare and handsome beast.

“In the end, we stand before the light and our true nature is revealed. Self-revelation is annihilation of self.”

Lost Highway

US | 1997 | Directed by David Lynch

Logline: A jealous musician seemingly murders his wife, the psychological consequences of which plague him so severely he suffers a psychogenic fugue.

 “Dick Laurent is dead.”

Whatever conclusion you arrive at, there’ll still be several pieces that don’t fit the puzzle, and that’s just how David Lynch and co-screenwriter Barry Gifford want it. This is the dark side of the road, the section of gravel between the hot asphalt and the ragged grass; this is the black magic hour. Fire walk with me and I’ll show you the way inside the Black Lodge.

Indeed, Lynch has confirmed that the world of Twin Peaks and the world of Lost Highway are one and the same. It is in this world of false beauty and genuine evil that Fred (Bill Pullman) and Pete (Balthazar Getty) and Renee and Alice (both Patricia Arquette) exist. It is also the same underworld where Mr. Eddy and Dick Laurent (both Robert Loggia) dwell. And the same limbo where the Mystery Man (Robert Blake) floats and asks the question, “We’ve met before, haven’t we?”

Lost Highway operates like a supernatural film noir dream. Of course, this can be said of most of David Lynch’s movies. He hates to explain them, instead offering vague, often cryptic, explanations, or more precisely clues. If Lynch hadn’t become a film director I’m sure he would have made a great illusionist. Of course he paints, and his ciné palette is one of the most alluring of contemporary American filmmakers.

David Lynch dislikes documenting events on video, preferring to remember the moment and recollecting in his own way, not necessarily the way it happened. This is the essence – or at least one of the essences, for Lost Highway has many off-ramps – of the movie. Identity becomes blurred just as memories implode. Circumstance becomes crucial, yet remains elusive.

Lynch described his movie Eraserhead as “A dream of dark and troubling things.” An apt description for For Lost Highway of which he simply calls “A psychogenic fugue”; which is a dissociative order where an individual forgets who they are and embarks on a new life. Their perception and elements of their consciousness are impaired and if they recover they almost never retain any memory of the fugue period.

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Lost Highway is packed full of loaded symbolism, metaphors, clues, narrative booby traps, and probably a couple of red herrings for good measure. The narrative relies almost exclusively on the mise-en-scene, and the plot plays second fiddle. There is definitely a prologue and an epilogue, and significantly the ending and the beginning aren’t necessarily the finish and the start. Lynch loves toying with time and space, and his most curious movies indulge in this without compromise: Eraserhead, Dune, Twin Peaks television series, Mulholland Drive, and more recently Inland Empire.

There is a jarring garish quality to Lost Highway, an aesthetic that I liken to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. They are very different films, but they command with a similar raw energy; very designed, very deliberate, creepy and grotesque, sensual and provocative. They both glide across the same strange carpet. But while they both court surrealism Lost HIghway beds down with the bizarre.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Jack Torrence visited the Black Lodge as well.

The soundtrack – music and sound – is always imperative in a David Lynch movie and joining Angelo Badalamenti’s dreamy score are moody songs from David Bowie, Nine Inch Nails, Rammstein, Lou Reed, and Marilyn Manson. The call girl dances with the Devil in the pale moonlight. Be careful what you desire … and whom you trust; some lies are improvised, others were born evil.

 “Dick Laurent is dead.”

Carry Me Back

New Zealand | 1982 | Directed by John Reid

Logline: An old farmer dies whilst on a visit to the city and his two sons decide to smuggle his body back to the property in order to claim their inheritance.

Overshadowed by the roaring success of Geoff Murphy’s anarchic road trip, Goodbye Pork Pie, John Reid’s gentler comedy of errors, released a year later, is almost a forgotten Kiwi gem. It’s an altogether more affectionate tale of camaraderie, mishaps, and the search for acceptance, and though it shares with Murphy’s movie a taste for the absurd, it’s less obvious, less rambunctious, a comedy that doesn’t try so hard.

It’s set in a time “Back in the days when blokes were blokes and sheilas were their mums.” And although the old bugger, T.K. (Derek Hardwick) and his sons, Arthur (Grant Tilly) and Jimmy (Kelly Johnson) appear to be floating in a 1950s Marlborough, South Island, farm homestead, its very much a late 70s/early 80s time period once the three men catch the Picton ferry to Wellington to attend the Ranfurly Shield rugby match.

Athough there are two key female characters, both of them wonderfully portrayed by Dorothy McKegg (Aunty Bird) and Joanne Mildenhall (girl – her name never given), Carry Me Back is more male-centric, and has a great time poking fun at blokey tradition and bravado. The script is based on a story by Graeme Cowley, the movie’s cinematography and producer, and the screenplay is by Reid, actor Keith Aberdein, and Derek Morton. It crackles along with some terrific dialogue, and, in the movie’s most unexpected scene provides Tilly with a moving monologue to his dead father seated beside him in the car as they make the home stretch to the farm.

The city of Wellington hadn’t been captured with such character and charm in a feature before (much of it doesn’t exist anymore!), and a who’s who of the then local stage and screen edge their way into the story; Frank Edwards, Michael Haigh, Brian Sergent, John Bach, Fiona Samuel, Peter Tait, Alex Trousdel, Ian Watkin, Katy Platt, Kate Harcourt, Tony Hiles, Marshall Napier, Joe Mustapha, and Bruno Lawrence as a motorway traffic cop. Director Reid makes a cameo as a country coffee trap, and Lee Tamahori was boom operator!

Carry Me Back is a classic old-style comedy, and as such the movie’s title carries a play on words. It’s a caper flick, quirky moments rear up, but the real charm is less intentional, as the movie is very much a date-stamp, and in many ways is more interesting, even fascinating, now than it was at the time of its release. The fact that so many reputable stage actors (several of them no longer with us) are in the cast is a rarity now as we living in an age where actors train specifically for screen.

I grew up with the movie’s poster gracing our dining room; the risqué image of the sexy topless stripper (Angelique Meyer)’s nipples covered by rugby boot studs an adolescent distraction. The scene where Arthur pulls her g-string off, only to be denied the flash of the merchandise as the lights go out, is one of the movie’s comedy highlights. Carry Me Back is just that, a cheeky, mischievous tease, but one that ultimately satisfies without trying too hard.

NB: In the last couple of years of my father’s life I tried unsuccessfully to get a DVD release to include an audio commentary from him (Tilly) and director John Reid reflecting back on the making with their usual entertaining repartee.

Bad Blood

New Zealand/UK | 1981 | Directed by Mike Newell

Logline: The true story of Stanley Graham, a poor farmer, who shot dead seven men during a WWII arms surrender, then hid in the surrounding bush land, whilst a manhunt was launched.

Despite the B-movie title this is a highly competent production with a compelling narrative and excellent acting. The movie is based on the book Manhunt – The Story of Stanley Graham by Howard Willis, and was written for the screen by Andrew Brown. Englishman Mike Newell was given the director’s chair, and is often the case when an outsider directs a movie in a country not of their own they pick up on local nuances, idiosyncrasies and foibles a local director might oversee.

Newell’s career would go on to greater artistic heights and commercial success, most notably Four Weddings and a Funeral and Donnie Brasco, but he’d been directing British television and the odd feature since 1964. Bad Blood is a much under-rated study of small town prejudice and the thin ice of vengeful violence. Stanley Graham (Jack Thompson) was a ticking time bomb, whose wife Dorothy (Carol Burns) fanned the flame that lit the fuse.

The West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand is the setting; a prehistoric-looking landscape of harsh hinterland and a rugged mountain range known as the Southern Alps. The small farming community of Koiterangi, Kowhitirangi, was rocked to its core when Graham, an embittered man, and his paranoid wife, find the pressure of being ridiculed by the locals all too much. When an acquaintance of Graham’s, who happens to be part of the local constabulary, tried to enforce the surrender of Graham’s rifles, the farmer loses the plot.

Several police arrive at Graham’s cottage to seize his weapons and Graham opens fire killing three men. He panics and flees into the bush. Later he tries to get back into his house, but it’s been commandeered and subsequently he is badly wounded by gunfire. His wife and two kids are left to fend for themselves. Despite his savage reaction, there is a universal empathy with the cruelty set upon Graham and his family.

Jack Thompson delivers a powerhouse performance as Graham (which he acknowledges as one of his finest films). Also of very high calibre in the acting department is Martyn Sanderson as Les North, a farming colleague of Graham’s, and Carol Burns, as Graham’s hardened wife Dorothy. Mind you, almost the entire cast is a who’s who of the then top shelf Kiwi stage and screen actors; Michael Haigh, Donna Akersten, Marshall Napier, Ken Blackburn, John Bach, John Banas, Alan Jervis, Dulcie Smart, Miranda Harcourt, Dorothy McKegg, Bruce Allpress, David Copeland, Ian Watkin, Peter Vere-Jones, Desmond Kelly, and Kelly Johnson (who starred in the international Kiwi success Goodbye Pork Pie). Many of these actors are from my home town of Wellington, which makes me curious as to why my father, who’s acted with all these people, wasn’t cast.

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In 1990 a similar event occurred also in the South Island of New Zealand, in a small fishing community near Dunedin called Aramoana. A lone gunman – also unhinged, but much more so – went berserk and killed thirteen people before eventually being gunned down by the Special Tactics police marksmen (back then called The Anti-Terrorist Squad). The crime shocked the country, just as Graham’s murderous spree did back in 1941. A dramatisation of the Aramoana massacre called Out of the Blue is a well-made movie, but a more speculative perspective, whereas Bad Blood is ultimately a more honest portrayal of a similar crime that shook an otherwise quiet, peaceful country.

Smash Palace

New Zealand | 1981 | Directed by Roger Donaldson

Logline: A former Grand Prix driver and obsessive auto mechanic resorts to desperate measures in order to maintain custody of his young daughter after his wife walks out on him and takes his close friend as her lover.

Roger Donaldson would go on to direct the excellent Hollywood political thriller No Way Out, but his second movie is my favourite New Zealand feature. There’s a spare momentum that drives the narrative, and a deep sense of melancholy that permeates the characters. It also happens to be filmed in a region very close to my heart; near Mt. Ruapehu in the volcanic plateau of the North Island.

The "Smash Palace" of the title refers to a massive, sprawling auto cemetery (in reality the legendary Horopito Motors); a junkyard owned by Al Shaw (Bruno Lawrence) who lives there with his French wife Jacqui (Anna Jemison) and their 8-year-old daughter Georgie (Greer Robson). A mate Tiny (Desmond Kelly) helps out in the main garage, while local police officer Ray (Keith Aberdein) is Al’s drinking and snooker pal.

Jacqui, however, is not a happy woman. Al doesn’t pay her enough attention, too absorbed in his vehicular tinkering. He’s got an important upcoming race and he wants his beautiful machine in perfect condition. So Jacqui finds interest elsewhere; Ray, to be precise. Al takes things badly.

With a stunning score by then-popular Kiwi songstress Sharon O’Neill and beautiful cinematography from Greame Cowley - the opening scene is brilliant; (the gaffer, Stuart Dryburgh, would go on to become the best cinematographer New Zealand’s ever seen), Smash Palace captures a lingering sense of rural loneliness that becomes a subtle metaphor for the breakdown of Al and Jacqui’s marriage and the alienation that threatens Al’s sanity.

The screenplay, co-written between Donaldson, Peter Hansard and Bruno Lawrence is tight and effective balancing scenes of emotional fragility, lighthearted frivolity, and when the moment serves, intense drama. There’s also a surprisingly erotic sex scene, and in the movie's most disarming scene, an equally frank moment of full-frontal nudity from Lawrence (Bruno was never shy about getting his gear off for the sake of a good story).

Apart from the powerful thematic elements to the movie, it is the central performances of Jemison and Lawrence that give Smash Palace such resonance. There is chemistry between them, even if it’s already dissipating from movie’s start, and you genuinely feel Al’s frustration and rage, as well as Jacqui’s own frustration and anguish. Caught in the middle are Georgie and Ray. Not to forget young Margaret Umbers amusingly irritating, brief role as a hysterical pharmacy counter girl whom Al takes hostage.

A curious aside: In New Zealand there was a division; the police, and as a separate law enforcement body, the traffic cops. The fuzz were in blue and white cars and the “coffee traps” (as my father used to call them) were in black and white. Eventually they merged as one long arm of the law.


Wake In Fright

Australia/USA | 1971 | Directed by Ted Korcheff

Logline: An English Outback teacher on route to Sydney finds himself trapped and out of his depth in a small township, caught up in the local pastime of drinking, gambling, and aggressive hospitality.

Based on a blistering first novel by Kenneth Cook written in 1961, with an excellent screenplay from Evan Jones, and helmed by the man who would direct the under-rated Rambo movie First Blood, Wake In Fright is a descent into a Dante’s Inferno of temptation and ridicule; a Dionysian-tainted nightmare where a naïve, mild-mannered man is forced to learn a few hard truths about the darker side of his own psyche.

It’s a terrific-looking picture, with stunning cinematography from Brian West (the opening 360-degree pan is a knockout), superb location shooting in Broken Hill (for all the exterior scenes set in the fictional township of Bundanyabba), and expressionistic editing from Anthony Buckley. The casting and acting is all top-notch: Gary Bond as the hapless English teacher, Donald Pleasence as his nemesis, Jack Thompson (in his feature debut), and Aussie legend Chips Rafferty (in his last movie). There’s also memorable support from a myriad of other actors, including the hilarious monotone receptionist (Maggie Dence), the beer-guzzling hotel proprietor Charlie (John Meillon), and a brief exchange from Outback legend Jacko Jackson as a truck driver (“Ya mad, ya bastard!”)

With his earnest intent on rendezvousing with his Bondi surfer girlfriend John Grant (Bond) is inadvertently thrust into the dark heart of the Aussie machismo machine affectionately called the ‘Yabba. It’s a crash-course odyssey in Two-Up and West End tinnies, a listless and toey woman, a stodgy ‘roo breakfast, broke as a bicycle seat, and surrounded by the ever present stinking hot, filthy, dust-laden long arm of Murphy’s Law.

The dialogue crackles with a ferocious authenticity, but it can now be appreciated as a fantastic date-stamp of a different era (6.30pm closing time for starters). Still, the key themes are timeless and universal, and the kangaroo hunt is just as confronting and shocking, despite the disclaimer at movie’s end stating emphatically that the kangaroo scenes were legitimately staged hunts by professional marksman.

Savage ‘roo hunt (and boxing) aside, Wake In Fright is a sensational dramatic-thriller and seethes with cult status, standing alongside Nic Roeg’s Walkabout and Peter Weir’s Picnic At Hanging Rock as Aussie desert gems. How the original negatives ended up in a Pittsburgh bin marked for destruction is crazy! Thankfully, after Anthony Buckley's discovery and lengthy negotiations with the American rights owners of the original film materials, they were shipped back to Australia to be held at the National Film and Sound Archive, which is where the 2009 digital restoration took place.

Wake In Fright was titled Outback in the States, with the only other difference being an early morning scene where Bond has his gruts on instead of being totally starkers. It's a bona fide Australian classic. Yes, technically a co-pro, but it's most definitely my favourite piece of Ocker cinema. 'Struth mate.

Burning Man

Australia | 2011 | Directed by Jonathan Teplitzky

Logline: A young father struggles to keep his job, his various relationships, and most importantly his sanity from falling apart as he deals with a personal crisis.

Grief can do terrible things to a person. It is also a powerful emotion capable of transcendent healing. Love can do wonderful things to a person. It is also a dangerous emotion capable of blurring one’s vision and causing irrational and reckless behaviour. Cinematic narrative is an extraordinary device, capable of transporting a viewer on a roller coaster ride of intense, exhilarating, and soul-wrenching feelings and emotions.

Tom (Matthew Goode) is an ex-pat English chef working in a successful Sydney restaurant near the beach, Sydney’s most famous beach in fact, Bondi. He is both driven and highly-strung. He has a young son, Oscar (Jack Henly), who he loves dearly. He also has several women in his world, some he likes, some he dislikes, some he loves, and some he just fucks. To say he’s a womaniser would be too easy a label. Let’s just say he’s complicated.

Tom has a beautiful wife Sarah (Bojana Novakovic), but there is trouble in paradise. Burning Man is Tom’s tale; a tale that wags like a dog, swishes like a cat, and is sometimes tucked between his legs. Tom is burning the candle at both ends and the wax is splashing on his skin. He is crying out. As the tagline says, “Don’t go so far out that you can’t find your way back.”

Jonathan Teplitzky also wrote the screenplay. This is his third feature and it’s easily his most accomplished work. It pulsates with a dramatic vitality and dynamic sense of narrative adventure. The key element is the non-linear narrative, this is what makes Tom’s story so compelling, so intriguing, and so satisfying to watch. Like a puzzle his joy and sadness pieces together slowly and surely. It’s a sad story, but it is punctuated with a genuine sense of humour.

Movies with such stylised presentation often come undone, or simply fall out of the starting blocks. Burning Man ignites with a ferocious energy and never lets up. Beautiful shot by Garry Phillips it depicts a Sydney not often seen, yet so familiar to those who live here. The performances are dynamite it’s hard to actually single any out; suffice to say that Matthew Goode being the fish far out of water (geographically, that is) triumphs. The cast includes Essie Davis, Rachel Griffiths, Anthony Hayes, Dan Wyllie, Kate Behan, Gia Carides, plus three Kiwis, Simone Kessell, Robyn Malcolm, and Kerry Fox. It’s a striking, talented bunch indeed.

Tom is trying to get himself together and with the help of his friends and the love of his son he might just make it back from the brink. Burning Man is one of the best Australian features of the past decade, blistered hands down, reminding us that it’s not just the story, it’s how you tell it.

Hail

2010 | Australia | Directed by Amiel Courtin-Wilson

Logline: A world-weary criminal is released from prison and reunites with the love of his life, but finds he cannot escape his inner demons, the trappings of crime, and the all-consuming spectre of tragedy.

Hail is the kind of movie that only comes along once in a dark blue moon; a tour-de-force of visual poetry, visceral emotion, and dizzying psychological intensity, yet is delivered in an intimate, but distinctly expressionist style. This is a movie of contradictions and abstraction, a raw and powerful indictment of unbridled love and rage, as out of control and indulgent as it is stripped back and honest. Hail rains down like a force of pure cinema, dramatic and uncompromising.

This is a docu-drama unlike anything you’ve seen before, certainly nothing like this has come out of Australia, and even more extraordinary is that it is the director’s first feature (having worked prior on documentaries and shorts). Basing the threads of his narrative on the stories and life experiences of lead actor Daniel P. Johns (who essentially plays himself) Amiel Courtin-Wilson (just thirty years young, but exuding the directorial maturity of someone much older and wiser) has constructed an awesome picture that deals openly and corrosively with the poison of love and hate, each organic imbibed in different doses.

Shooting on 16mm cinematographer Germain McMicking has achieved some truly astounding imagery especially in the movie’s second half when the mise-en-scene becomes entrenched in Daniel’s grief and wrath absorbing and reflecting as visual metaphor and symbolic motifs. The director favours the use of extreme close-up. One image in particular will haunt me for years to come, I’m sure; that of a dead horse plummeting to earth, the wind buffeting its neck and legs giving the illusion that the creature was still alive and writhing in abject terror.

The performances, that of 50-year-old Daniel P. Johns and his lover Leanne Letch (both of them born on the same day, month and year), are exceptional. Whilst Daniel has had acting experience with Plan B (a theatre group made up of ex-cons) Leanne had never acted before in her life. Their naturalism imbues the movie with an honesty that is profoundly affecting. The movie balances the grotesque with beautiful. Daniel and Leanne live on the fringes of society, and it is the sharp darkness that lurks close to those edges that frequently scratches, and can cut deep, sometimes to the bone.

The source music is inspired, but it is the spectacular sound design courtesy of Robert MacKenzie that pushes Hail into an audio experience league of its own. One doesn’t hear this kind of experimental assault on the senses very often, combined with Amiel Courtin-Wilson and Germain McMicking’s visuals, and the editing of Peter Sciberras, it is truly powerful, and resonates like a dream-soaked-nightmare.

One must surrender to Hail and allow Daniel’s journey of hope and promise that spirals into the darkness and violence of his despair and confusion to engulf and overwhelm you. There is reward; a genuine sense of inspiration from the uncompromised artistry of the director, his muse, and his collaborators. Hail takes no prisoners, let the elements be.

La Grande Bouffe

Italy/France | 1973 | Directed by Marco Ferreri

Logline: Four wealthy and successful middle-aged men, in contempt of their lifestyles, move into a plush villa and proceed to overeat until they expire.

There’s not a straight forward translation for this exceptionally uncompromising display of gastronomic, erotically perverse and scatological self-indulgence. In Italy it is called La Grande Abbuffata, which translates roughly as The Big One Eaten like a Pig, while in the rest of Europe, America and Australasia La Grande Bouffe is interpreted as The Big Blow-out (“Bouffe” can also be read as “eat” or “feast”). Put simply, it is orgiastic and unforgettable.

For years the movie could only be seen on late night television or if you were very lucky on a rare VHS copy. It became the stuff of legend, the movie guaranteed to put you off pâté for life. Only Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, comes close in its unholy mixture of food and sex and death.

Director Marco Ferreri has always been intrigued and compelled to portray the darker, base nature of men and women, and La Grande Bouffe brilliantly captures a primal desire to push the boundaries of good taste. It is a sweet and savoury satire, a black pudding comedy, a character study of bourgeoisie manners that will make you smirk and gag, and then gag and maybe even retch, this is the kind of Euro descent that takes no prisoners; its rich filling must be consumed with caution, then thrown to the flatulent wind.

Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) is a pilot, Michel (Michel Piccoli) is a television executive, Philippe (Philippe Noiret), a judge, Ugo (Ugo Tognazzi) is a chef. They’ve decided enough is enough. Philippe’s urban villa will play host to their last supper, to be spread over a weekend. But they must have some human flesh to feast upon besides the animal carcasses, so three tasty whores and a plump schoolteacher are hired for dessert. It doesn’t take long for the hookers to depart in disgust, leaving rotund Andrea (as Andréa Ferreol)’s enthusiasm to match the mens’.

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The performances (curiously all the lead character’s first names are their own) are exemplary, as is the art direction. The dialogue sizzles like pork crackling, the cultural references are as sophisticated as caviar, yet the consequences of their actions result in gut-churning revulsion. The combination of such extravagance and contrast makes the movie a thoroughly unique experience. It’s as if you’re watching the apes at the zoo, mimicking human behaviour with total disregard for decorum. You recognise everything, perhaps secretly (and perversely) wondering if you could indulge in the same way, just how far would you go.

This is a tragic-comedy on an intimately epic scale; the scene near movie’s end where Ugo is shoveling handful’s of pate into his mouth as he lays outstretched on the kitchen table while Andrea jacks him off is arguably the movie’s penultimate moment. Or perhaps it’s the upstairs toilet exploding? Personally I love the establishing scene where the men watch as all the ordered food arrives at the villa by truckload.

La Grande Bouffe is a surreal dish on a plate of existential sadness. The four men unwind and expire one by one; resigned to their fate from the outset, determined to be consumed by their own consumption. Could a movie of such profound indulgence ever be remade? I sincerely hope not. This is a delirious example of excess that could only have been made by the Europeans in the heady, carnal decade of the 1970s.  Cheers! Tuck in, relish, savour, and remember to belch long and hard.

Dark Star

1974 | USA | Directed by John Carpenter

Logline: The plight of four astronauts in deep space whose mission aboard the Dark Star is to dispatch bombs to destroy unstable planets.

Galactic inertia and deep space ennui forms the backbone of this strangely endearing void of cosmic (a)musing. Following the trials and tribulations of Pinback (Dan O’Bannon), Doolittle (Brian Narelle), Boiler (Cal Kuniholm), and Talby (Dre Pahich), four astronauts bored out of their minds, clutching on to whatever small pleasures and inane dialogue they can muster, whilst they inch closer and closer to the end of their twenty year mission: destroying unstable planets within the galaxy that may have been considered suitable for colonisation.

Dark Star was John Carpenter’s film school graduation project. His completed version ran 68 minutes long. A Hollywood producer, Jack Harris, saw the student film and convinced Carpenter to shoot an additional fifteen minutes. Harris then released the sixty-thousand dollar movie in 1975 and this launched John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon’s successful careers. Carpenter edited and scored the movie, and co-wrote the screenplay with O’Bannon. O’Bannon also supervised the clever special effects (considering the budget limitations), so the project was very much a collaboration.

O’Bannon had intended the movie to be a comedy, but early audiences failed to appreciate its deeply sardonic sense of humour. The movie didn’t do very good box office, Carpenter would have to wait for the release of Halloween three years later to reap the big rewards. O’Bannon was very upset that he had failed to communicate a comedy, and subsequently his next project adapted an element from Dark Star – the alien aboard the ship – from being an amusement to being a nightmare; Alien (or Star Beast, as O’Bannon’s early drafts were called). Dark Star went on to garner a strong cult following upon its domestic VHS release (and in the wake of Halloween and Escape from New York).

The Dark Star is in the galactic sector of EB – base 2 – 90, eighteen parsecs away from Earth, a ten-year delay in communication. Commander Powell (an uncredited Joe Saunders) is in deep freeze having recently passed away. When Bomb #20 decides it doesn’t want to carry out its programmed duty, the astronauts are in a quandary. Doolittle requests advice from Powell’s half-living soul via a special electronic communiqué device and ends up on a spacewalk to discuss the finer existentialist points of life and death with the temperamental and insubordinate thermostellar device.

Talby, who spends almost all his time in the observation portal, talks dreamily of the Phoenix asteroid cluster. Pinback and Boiler squabble. Doolittle seeks solace adjusting his musical vibes. These men are terminally at the end of their tether. Only a mischievous alien creature that looks like a beach ball with clawed feet, and Bomb #20, are providing the men with any real connection with the universe’s rich tapestry, and life’s little ironies. But the stellar tide will soon turn, and Doolittle will ride that cosmic debris on the red wave of re-entry with abandon.

Dark Star is an unusual cult movie in that it is a universal censor’s rating of G: General Exhibition. There is no real violence, no profanity, no distinguishable nudity (the Playboy magazine pinups in the living room scene have been deliberately blurred in post-production), and no drug use. Yet Dark Star is by no means a children’s movie; even most young teenagers would find themselves bored and restless after ten minutes. Dark Star is for curious B-movie lovers and quirky sf freaks.

Solaris

Solyaris | Soviet Union | 1972 | Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky

 Logline: A psychologist is sent to a space station operating above the sentient oceanic planet Solaris to investigate the strange behaviour of its remaining two scientists, and is bewildered when he is visited by his wife, who committed suicide years earlier.

One of the most philosophical, perplexing and haunting science fictions ever made, often compared to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, but more in tone and feeling with Chris Marker’s extraordinary muse on memory, guilt and desire, La Jetée, Solaris is a visually hypnotic and oneiric study of loneliness and quiet desperation, a metaphysical portrait of the human mind from the perspective of the alien … or perhaps the other way around?

Based on the brilliant 1961 novel of the same name by Polish author Stanislaw Lem, yet screenwriters Fridrihk Gorenshtein and director Tarkovsky added a key element; the narrative prologue set on Earth where cosmonaut psychologist Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) visits his home to say farewell to his father and watches archival footage of cosmonaut Berton (Vladislav Dvorzhetsky)’s official hearing over the death of another cosmonaut who vanished on the surface of Solaris. Solaristics (the on-going study of the living planet) has revealed that the human endeavours in understanding this incredibly advanced alien life form are proving potentially futile.

Novelist Lem (who apparently hated the movie, especially what he saw as sexual perversity) went to great lengths to describe that human science was unable to properly handle a truly alien life form; that it would be beyond human understanding. Tarkovsky, however chose to focus on Kelvin’s feelings towards his wife, Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk), his guilt over her death, and the effect space exploration has on the human condition.

In the movie Dr. Snaut (Juri Javet) says “We don’t need other worlds. We need mirrors.” It’s a powerful statement that ricochets in the mind. Essentially human kind is a naïve race, embroiled in our own psychological and emotional stew, and perhaps ultimately not intelligent enough to be dabbling the way we do, and will continue to do, with the cosmos. That’s not to say space exploration is out of bounds, but intelligent alien life may very well be our psychic undoing.

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Both Lem and Tarkovsky’s intent is partly to show that we can only ever understand the universe in human terms, and even if we are presented with something ineffably strange we will inevitably humanise it. Nearly every science fiction movie that deals with an alien life gives it a form and/or personality based on something familiar on Earth, and that is an incredibly narrow-minded school of thought.

The concept of the alien planet physically manifesting the memories and fantasies of the humans who are in close proximity to its surface is an extraordinary idea, and especially fascinating is Hari’s contrasting warmth and fragility, returning to plague Kelvin in slightly different versions. It is this “spectral physicality” concept that prevails and provides the movie with its provocative, revelatory end, which is fantastic as it is deeply melancholic.

The movie is restrained in its use of special effects, but the end result transcends any limitations. Tarkosvky was adamant not have the movie tied to genre; to have a science fiction film that meant more than its generic trappings in terms of its humanity. Still, the movie’s production design is excellent in conveying the desolate and dissolute state of the space station. Kelvin, Snaut and Dr. Sartorius (Anatoli Solonitsyn) are disheveled and sweaty, and space station cluttered, yet hollow (Ridley Scott must have been influenced somewhat when he made Alien).

Solaris is very long (nearly three hours) and very languid in its visual narrative (Tarkovsky always preferred long takes, lingering gazes; the moment within the moment), so it is a demanding film. It’s not as experimental as his two later movies, The Mirror or Stalker, not as epic as his earlier Andrei Rublev, or as intimate as his last movie The Sacrifice, but in an elusive, strangely affecting way Solaris is his most satisfying movie (ironically Tarkovsky considered it his least favourite).

Steven Soderbergh made a surprisingly decent, atmospheric remake in 2002, starring George Clooney as Kelvin and Natasha McElhone as Rheya (changed from Hari).

Fallen Angels

Doh Lok Tin Si | Hong Kong | 1995 | Directed by Wong Kar-wai

Logline: In an urban nightscape the lives of a contract killer and his agent working at a distance, a drifter searching for her ex-lover, and an eccentric mute vying for attention in outlandish ways, all cross paths.

Amidst the big neon glitter, the cluttered, claustrophobic alleyways, the towering architectural sheen, and the strangely lonely bars and cafes, five lost souls clamber and mumble, peer and glance, laugh, cry, perspire, and ponder. They dream of love and desire; of connecting in a trip-hop world of ordered dysfunction, searching for that elusive creature called belonging.

Auteur filmmaker Wong Kar-wai is one of the few true cinematic poets of the post-modern age; he paints mood and texture with light and shadow, sound and image, visage and montage, joy and sorrow. He is a superb sensualist who never compromises his elliptical story-telling by pandering to conventional narrative. His stories are more about expression than reason, less about rationale and more about emotional resonance tuned by moments. Wong treats cinema like fine cuisine; it is the exquisite taste in the mouth that is most memorable, and the memory of that sensation.

Wong’s long-time visual collaborator, his cinematographer, ex-pat Australian Christopher Doyle, is a gifted lensman. Doyle has shot all of Wong’s most notable features; Days of Being Wild, Ashes of Time, Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love, and 2046. Fallen Angels is Doyle’s most noirish and visually affecting work. The use of blurred motion and distorted composition, colour and monochrome, of wide-angle and extreme close-up; Doyle’s control is masterfully artistic. The movie has very little dialogue, but pulsates with (mis)communication.

Wong is legendary for not working closely with a screenplay, but rather notes, eschewing the rigidity of classical scene construction in favour of building and developing narrative out of location and character. With Doyle by his side (who is director of photography as well as camera operator), Wong’s approach to mise-en-scene is an organic process. Yet, there is a distinct stylistic at play. A Wong Kar-wai film is a Wong Kar-wai movie, no buts about it. William Chang is another of Wong’s faithful; he is the movie’s editor, production designer and costumer.

Most of Wong’s moves deal with moodiness and aesthetics, no more so than Fallen Angels (the title alone hints suggestively at both beauty and corruption). The handsome hitman, played with consummate suavity by Leon Lai, and his agent who cleans up after him, played by gorgeous Michele Reis (a former Miss Hong Kong), whom the killer holds deep affection for, but by code cannot disclose his desire, so he befriends Punkie (aka Blondie aka Baby), played by Karen Mok, a borderline hysterical, but endearing young woman trying to locate her wayward ex-boyfriend He (Takeshi Kaneshiro). While floating in the middle is another beguiling, good-looking loner, Charlie, played by Charlie Yeung, a mute (after eating canned pineapple past its expiry date!) who provides the movie with sporadic narration and amusing interludes.

Fallen Angels has no real resolve, has no real anchor, and yet is a profoundly beautiful, sporadically violent, dreamlike experience that floats in the heart and mind long after the mesmerizing, shimmering, rain-soaked imagery fades from the screen. This is a night poem for the soul; sexy posing, underground chaos, jukebox punctuation, and jazzy street magic entwined, stretching, aching, breathing, stumbling …. and finally still.

My Summer Of Love

UK | 2004 | Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski

Logline: A naïve teenager, in despair over her working class father’s born again Christianity, seeks solace and escapism in a romantic fling with an upper-middle class teenage girl.

With a cast of only eight speaking parts, five of which barely have more than a line or two, My Summer of Love is essentially a two-hander; the relationship between young Mona (Natalie Press) and young Tamsin (Emily Blunt), with Mona’s adult brother Phil (Paddy Considine) playing the part of the sub-plot that occasionally interferes. It’s a classic tale of love and betrayal, distinctly English and very feminine, yet the director is an ex-pat Polish guy.

The novel of the same name by Helen Cross is a disquieting tour-de-force of adolescent mischief, familial dysfunction, coursing with intense vernacular. The narrative is through the eyes of Mona, and she’s a lonely and damaged soul. It’s not entirely her fault, but she doesn’t help matters by drowning her sorrows in booze and whiling away her hours on the village pub’s fruit machines. Her exhilarating fling with a girl-that’s-out-of-reach - the aloof, yet utterly charming Tamsin - is precisely what she needs, but in the end the trust is shattered, the bond irreparably damaged, and the consequences are dire.

I shouldn’t compare the movie adaptation – penned by Pawlikowski in collaboration with Michael Wynne – with the book, simply because it is so very different, but it’s a curiously altered affair. Pawlikowski and Wynne jettison so much of the book one wonders whether it warrants comparison at all. Phil is an amalgam of Mona’s father and teenage brother, with her sister completely written out. In the novel there is no religious context whatsoever, yet the movie makes quite a deal out of Phil’s worship, and even uses his religious fervor to work against him in a superb scene of playful, but dangerous, manipulation.

The novel has a powerful and disturbing climax and a dissolute end, which the movie dabbles with, but ultimately abandons. However, it has to be said that the movie’s ending still retains a sense of purposeful drama, strangely poetic in its abrupt jagged end. My Summer of Love is a title of sweet irony, of bitter truth, but more importantly of heartache. The cruelty of those closest to us is the deepest stab to the heart. Mona storms away in wretched disgust, leaving Tamsin floundering, still wrapped in arrogance.

It seems their romance was an opportunist infatuation, less about sex and emotion, and more a calculated contempt for surrounding men, certainly in design on Tamsin’s part, more an influenced behaviour on Mona’s part. The cruelty of Phil, of Tamsin’s father, and of Mona’s older lover Ricky is refracted like the hot sunshine through a broken piece of glass lying in the grass, while the electronic folk music by Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory, in particular the dreamy melancholy of Lovely Head, fits like hand in rubber glove.

The mid-80s heatwave that encompasses the novel is less apparent in the movie, but it’s still unseasonably warm, and superlative performances exude from Natalie Press and Emily Blunt, complimented by the always-exceptional Paddy Considine. Yorkshire has a disarming beauty, the tiny township nestled in the valley, the tiny brooks weaving through the woods, the bulging hillside covered in lavender, while two young girls glowing with Sapphic sensuality, bristling high on magic mushrooms, musky with the scent of Sapphire gin, plan their sweet escape.