| THE ESSENTIAL BIFF : Bradford 2007 roundup |
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| Wednesday, 18 April 2007 | |
 BIFF 2007 OVERVIEW/introduction including essay on special section Uncharted States of America ANALOG DAYS : [7/10] USA 2006 : Mike Ott : 80m : seen 23rd March at Pictureville cinema Engaging, nicely-judged tale of post-teenage life in small-town, backwater California; great use of music (combination of original score and well-chosen pop/post-punk tunes); spot-on performances from the ensemble (Ryan Johnsen the droll, deft standout as the perpetually-bemused-by-life Fenster.) Ott's debut is firmly in the leftfield/rough-edged "US indie" tradition, but execution is surprisingly slick - he could easily 'go commercial', if Hollywood happens to be his immediate goal. Film concentrates on a smallish, loosish grouping of pals who attend Newhall Community College - their insecurities, jealousies, cliques - but also makes some topical (occasionally, it must be said, somewhat unsubtle) points about wider political issues. Ott includes some (deadpan-hilarious) sequences "in class", but the bulk of the movie consists of the characters just "hanging out" and shooting the breeze: at parties, in each others' apartments, in bars. Screenplay is rather more intricate in its structure than it may initially appear. Impressive cinematography by Jay Keitel (director of Black Dragon Canyon); watch for an amusing drunken-karaoke cameo from Lee Lynch (director of Transposition of the Great Vessels) - Keitel, Lynch and Ott studied together (under the likes of James Benning and Thom Andersen) on the esteemed film program at CalArts; on this evidence, Ott should appear in the college yearbook next to the phrase "Most Likely To Succeed." BLACK JACK : [7/10] UK 1979 : Ken Loach : 110m : seen 14th March at Cubby Broccoli cinema This costume-drama-cum-children's-film is one of Loach's least-known works, but is one of his more satisfying features. Based (somewhat loosely, one deduces) on a novel by Leon Garfield, it follows the misadventures of a young York apprentice in the early 19th century after he (somewhat reluctantly) teams up with a man-mountain French criminal. The pair go on a haphazard journey through the East Riding countryside, in what amounts to a junior version of Kubrick's Barry Lyndon. As with several early Loach works, the underlying theme is the treatment of the mentally-ill: here represented by the fate of a shunned, delicate girl rescued (twice!) from the grim confines of "institutions." The lass thrives when exposed to conversation and company, in what could be described as an early vision of what Britain's Tory government of 1980s notoriously termed 'care in the community'. The difference being, of course, that the bonds of community are still sufficiently strong and vibrant here to effect a positive outcome. Though evidently filmed on a shoestring, period detail is unobtrusively and convincingly evoked throughout - if anything, too convincingly: the way Loach captures the "gentle" pace of Olde Worlde life would surely have tested the patience of juvenile audiences even as long ago as 1979... DANGEROUS MEN : [8/10] USA 2005 : John S Rad : 80m : seen 24th March at Cubby Broccoli cinema Though seemingly shot in the eighties, completed in the nineties, and "released" (thereby hangs a tale!) in 2005, Dangerous Men is very much a throwback to the midnight movies of the 70s. It's an utterly deranged, delirious and delicious 'thriller' that demands to be seen with as large and noisy (and drunken) a crowd as possible. This that rare film which pretty much defies conventional description or synopsis: what starts off as a revenge drama (a mousy twentysomething woman becomes a breezily homicidal 'angel of vengeance' after her fiance is killed by a pair of brutish bikers) very rapidly spirals into absurdity, mayhem and weirdness, nearly all of it executed with a level of technical ineptitute that must be seen to be (dis)believed. Though one or two scenes do seem to be played very much for laughs, elsewhere the tone is so deadpan it's impossible to tell whether auteur Rad - responsible for pretty much everything we see, including the jaw-droppingly tacky electronic score and priceless "songs" - intended to make a brilliant parody of a bad film or a bad parody of a brilliant one. Whatever the origins of the project - and there's always the possibility that Rad actually wanted the film to be taken seriously - Dangerous Men is easily one of the most sheerly enjoyable and consistently hilarious features you'll see all year. .........................................................[original review/preview]............... ........................... JOHN RAD OBITUARY from the LA Weekly magazine ..... FANTASMA : [9/10] Argentina 2006 : Lisandro Alonso : 63m : seen 24th March at Cubby Broccoli cinema A superb, straight-faced, cosmic joke: a glacially slow, near-wordless art film which reveals its subject-matter to be the fact that very few people these days want to see glacially slow, near-wordless art films. Though its careful rhythms may take a little adjusting to, Fantasma works on multiple levels and is that rare film to clock in at exactly the correct length. The two (non-pro) stars of Alonso's previous works La libertad and Los muertos visit (separately) a Buenos Aires arts complex for a screening of the latter. Both seem much more interested in exploring the building's labyrinthine interior - especially non-public areas - than making their way to the auditorium. Meanwhile their peregrinations - and the activities of the building's staff - are examined via Lisandro's silently prowling camera. Fascinating compositions and a remarkable attention to sound are just two of the many delights in this deft, expertly-pitched minor masterpiece. It was supposedly intended as an "in between" work while Alonso readies his next 'major' feature, provisionally entitled Liverpool and set in Argentina's snowy extreme south. But Alonso may find Fantasma - which plays to his considerable strengths - an unexpectedly tough act to follow. .......................................................[original review]............................. ISOLATED : [7/10] Aislados : Spain 2005 : David Marques : 80m : seen 23rd March at Cubby Broccoli cinema Disarmingly down-to-earth Ibiza-set Spanish comedy which maintains our interest surprisingly well considering how little actually 'happens' and the fact that the picture essentially consists of two pals shooting the breeze on a range of pop-culture subjects as they bask in the sun and savour the scenery. Presumably influenced by Clerks, Pulp Fiction et al, Marques explores the characters of these two mid-thirties blokes by having them ramble on and on, mixing personal memories with opinion, mock-insults, jokes and non sequiturs. It's all shot in an agreeably basic, unpretentious manner, and doesn't exactly linger especially strongly in the memory once it's over - but Isolated (an odd choice of title for a picture that's partly about a casually warm friendship) is, in its own unassuming and unpretentious way, an original and uncompromised little movie that makes rather a lot out of the most meagre of materials. LOREN CASS : [7/10] USA 2006 : Chris Fuller : 83m : seen 15th March at Cubby Broccoli cinema Aggressively rough-edged and in-your-face chronicle of disaffected youth in St Petersburg, a coastal Florida city perhaps best known for being the place where Jack Kerouac died in 1969. Just under three decades later, the area was the site of race riots which made national headlines; Loren Cass is set in the immediate aftermath of these events, pungently evoking a volatile environment where violence is seldom far away. Amid this downbeat moodiness, writer-director Fuller (who also pseudonymously stars) inserts a lightly-sketched, laconic, nocturnal romance which is all the more convincing for being so casual and unforced. Dialogue is sparse and terse, while the "plot" is a jagged, fragmentary, episodic affair which "samples" various "found" audio and visual material (including a spectacularly messy real-life suicide, captured on live TV). Fuller's stylish technique occasionally gets out of hand, resulting in some moments of affectation here and there - but this is an impressively surly and uncompromised debut from a confident, promising young filmmaker. SIX FIGURES : [7/10] Canada 2005 : David Christensen : 108m : seen 22nd March at Cubby Broccoli cinema As with A History of Violence - made in the same country, and in the same year, and also based on literary material - Six Figures is on one level a psychological drama which pivots on the issue of trust, specifically the extent to which a wife trusts her husband after violence intrudes into their lives. The major difference here is that it's the wife herself who is on the receiving end of the violence - she's attacked with a hammer - and the husband is viewed by many (including the police, and the victim's mother) of being the most likely culprit. The assault is filmed in such a way that the audience doesn't get a sufficiently clear look at the assailant - meaning we too must make a judgement about the husband's guilt based on how we see him behave elsewhere. As played by J R Bourne, he's a tough "read", his eerie blue eyes and slightly wolfish smile occasionally taking on a decidedly sinister air. It isn't giving too much away to say that Six Figures doesn't provide a conventional "solution" to the whodunnit: this is a poised, arch, evenly-paced study of individuals in crisis: "None of us knows anybody", as someone remarks at one stage. The picture works best in its early and middle sections, as the financial and professional pressures on the protagonists are traced with a claustrophobic intensity that slackens somewhat after the hammer attack and the focus shifts to matters of guilt and innocence. The low budget occasionally intrudes, and some of the supporting performances are a touch wooden, but Bourne is a compellingly ambiguous presence at the centre of the narrative, and Joyce Gordon is quite outstanding in her intermittent appearances as his guilt-ridden mother. TOMORROW MORNING : [6/10] Sutra ujutro : Serbia-Montenegro 2006 : Oleg Novkovic : 84m : seen 23rd March at Cubby Broccoli cinema The studiously downbeat Tomorrow Morning is a case of 'friends reunited,' Serbian-style. After a dozen years living in Canada, thirtysomething Nele (Uliks Fehmiu) returns home to Belgrade with his bride-to-be Maya (Ana Markovic). He soon falls back in with his old pals, and is forced to re-examine his priorities and his plans for the future. But it's shadows of the past which hang heaviest over all the lives we see: Nele and company are clearly still haunted by the suicide of their friend Sima (Milos Vlalukin), who took his own life shortly after Nele's departure. Then there's the matter of the Yugoslav civil war, which seems very likely to have hastened his exit to calmer shores on the other side of the world. Sima's death is a recurrent subject of conversation here, and the man himself makes intermittent appearances via a poignant, grainy VHS tape he recorded before his suicide - in which he sings the mournfully, memorably anthemic track which provides the film with its title. The war, however, is the proverbial "elephant in the living room" - never mentioned, but impossible to avoid. Milena Markovic's script is full of believable dialogue as it follows the characters around some dingy corners of the Serbian capital. Performances are strong, and director Novkovic pungently evokes the milieu of a particular time and place, achieving a gritty kind of poetry amid the grey tower-blocks and scruffy streets. But there's also something frustrating about the way the focus is so squarely on the grim aftermath of such seismic events: it feels like Novkovic and Markovic have arrived on the scene a dozen years too late, and occasionally their tone is a little too grimly glum - the film, while often impressive, ends up feeling rather longer than its deceptively brisk-looking running-time would seem to promise. Focussing so squarely on Nele is also a questionable tactic - he's by no means the most interesting character on view, and his actions eventually reveal him to be somewhat immature and unsympathetic. WHO KILLED COCK ROBIN? : [8/10] USA 2006 : Travis Wilkerson : 73m* : seen 14th March at Pictureville cinema Wilkerson's triumphant follow-up to 2002's rousing - if ultimately somewhat hectoring - An Injury To One , Who Killed Cock Robin? again concerns itself with the economic woes of the film-maker's Montana home-town, Butte. But whereas Injury examined historical events in a largely documentary style, Cock Robin relates modern-day goings-on in a "fictional" format. That said, Wilkerson's ambitious drama has an appealingly rough-edged, experimental air: the actors (and only three have significant roles) seem to be playing variations on themselves; many scenes have a loose, improvisational feel; screen-filling captions keep us updated on the passage of time and the fluctuating price of copper (upon which the town's prosperity now depends). The focus is mainly on Barrett (Barrett Miller), a rangy, tattooed twentysomething struggling to make ends meet via a series of dead-end jobs. He spends much of his spare time drinking beer, debating local and global political issues with his best friend Dylan (Dylan Wilkerson) and/or his landlord Charlie (Charlie Parr), although his relationship with both men comes under severe strain when Barrett's financial woes worsen and he falls foul of the law. Wilkerson observes the lad's decline with a certain sympathetic distance, implicitly linking it with the misfortunes of Butte (town and resident share initials), and by extension the whole of the USA (and its "moral, social decay.) Barrett finds solace in the example of rebels from previous generations - sustaining himself, in one especially searing scene, with a rendition of union-martyr anthem 'Joe Hill.' But it's left up to the audience to decide to what extent Barrett is victim of economic and political circumstance, or a ragingly self-pitying, self-dramatising author of his own misfortunes. Wilkerson shifts between various film formats (including what looks like a very grainy form of 8mm) to create a deceptively casual but cumulatively vivid portrait of an individual and his environment. As with Injury, he makes particularly imaginative and stirring use of music throughout, from the opening performance (by Charlie) of the "title track" to the astonishing, extended scene that forms the film's climax - scored (and seemingly propelled on by) the concluding section of A Silver Mt Zion's spare, haunting 'God Bless Our Dead Marines': "when the world is sick / can't no one be well / But I dreamt we was all beautiful and strong." It's an unexpectedly shattering and poignant finale to a brave, uncompromised, savage, unsparing film. WINDOWS ON MONDAY : [6/10] Montag kommen die Fenster : Germany 2006 : Ulrich Kohler : 91m : seen 23rd March at Pictureville cinema A woman goes in search of herself - and finds both more and less than she bargained for - in Windows On Monday, writer-director Kohler's cool-verging-on-lukewarm study of contemporary bourgeois anomie. Ultimately falling a little short of his acclaimed, promising 2002 debut Bungalow, this new film confirms his status among the strong current crop of youngish German film-makers (he's 37), although there's little here - either in terms of concept, subject-matter or execution - to make him stand out from the pack. He adopts what's become the default mode of artistically-minded European film-makers in recent years - longish takes, contemplative mood, sparing dialogue, minimal score - to craft a character-study of his protagonist: Nina (Isabelle Menke) is married with a child, and suspects that another is on the way. One weekend - after working on the house into which she and her family have recently moved (and which, pace the title, is to receive new windows at the start of the following week) - she abruptly decides not to return home ("Ich nicht zuruck," she matter-of-factedly informs her startled husband over the phone) instead escaping to her parents' summer cottage in the heavily-forested countryside - a cosy spot where her younger brother is currently staying with his girlfriend. Nina explores the surrounding area, clearly weighing up her options in what amounts to a placid form of mid-life crisis. She discovers a large, modern, rather fancy hotel where she wanders the corridors until she eventually meets has-been tennis star Ionescu (played by real-life former tennis star Ilie Nastase.) Nina toys with the possibility of infidelity - but by this stage has realised that she can't postpone dealing with her problems indefinitely... Certain viewers may wonder why we should be particularly bothered about this well-heeled middle-class woman's turmoil and existential travails, and they're unlikely to be much satisfied by the meanderings of Kohler's pared-down script. And there are static spells where one wonders whether making Nina an anaesthetist is some kind of deadpan in-joke. But, thanks largely to a compelling performance by Menke, there's much here to sustain and reward the interest of patient audiences. Literary echoes abound: Nina's impulsive, out-of-the-blue flight recalls the opening of John Updike's Rabbit, Run - though what follows has rather more in common with Peter Handke's slow-burning, psychological novels of multi-layered ennui. The latter sections, in which Nina's husband becomes more central to the narrative - and the picture gradually turns into an anatomy of a break-up - perhaps don't work so well as the early and middle sections (in which we share Nina's quiet exhilaration at her new-found, ill-fated liberty) and the inconclusive conclusion feels like a bit of an arty cop-out (and surely a less oblique-sounding title could have been found?). But there's an appealing, crystalline simplicity to Kohler's approach that ensures Windows On Monday lingers with surprising vividness in the memory. He remains very much one to watch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Neil Young International Programming Consultant, BIFF (and responsible for programming all of the above, with the exception of Black Jack) April/May 2007 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- all films seen at National Media Museum, Bradford (UK) - Bradford International Film Festival (complimentary tickets) * Who Killed Cock Robin? : this new edit is approximately 12 minutes shorter than the version of the film which premiered at Sundance in 2005  BIFF 2007 OVERVIEW/introduction including essay on special section Uncharted States of America |
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