Film Reviews by Alphaville

A film about the end of the golden age of samurai films gets the golden treatment from director Ken Ochiai. The wonderfully expressive Seizo Fukumoto plays an ageing sword-fighting stuntman who strikes up a friendship with an aspiring samurai actress. In real life Fukumoto is indeed a famous samurai extra – ‘the man who lives for the art of dying’. He has been killed on screen literally tens of thousands of times, with his signature death inspired by the way Chaplin executed his pratfalls.

This is an elegiac film about a lost way of life and is full of poignant moments. There’s lots of choreographed sword-fighting on film sets to enjoy, with some scenes even recalling Truffaut’s paean to filmmaking ‘Day for Night’, but it’s the human drama that draws you in. The climactic fight scenes even pull off the remarkable trick of being both exciting and moving at the same time. This is a beautiful film that grows on you with every frame.

The good news is that this is one of Spielberg’s adult films. The bad news is that he’s overcompensated with laboured direction. Mark Rylance’s performance as the suspected Russian spy in 1950s America is likewise woefully understated. Tom Hanks’ usual lively performance as Rylance’s attorney consequently provides a welcome breath of fresh air.

The plot holds few surprises even if you don’t know the real-life story on which it is based. It does become more interesting when the ‘action’ moves to Berlin… after a whole hour, but that’s too late to pick up much dramatic momentum. Adding to the underwhelming package is Thomas Newman’s irritating score, which visits every cliché from military trumpets to plinky-plonk piano. You can imagine the kind of scenes to which such snippets add unneeded emphasis.

Described as a dramatic thriller, the film is rarely dramatic and never thrilling. The best Cold War thriller remains Martin Ritt’s The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. If you haven’t seen that, do so.

Nearing his 90s now, the incorrigible Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky has lost none of his verve and imagination. Expect startling images, sweeping camerawork and sumptuous surreal scenes of epic proportion. Jodorowsky also appears as himself, talks to the camera, does voiceover… he never does things by half. Unfortunately it won’t make any sense to anyone but him (it’s about his childhood). In his own words: ‘Something is dreaming us. Embrace the illusion.’ Newcomers to his work may find it hard to do so. It ranges from deliriously cinematic through impossibly irritating to downright boring.

It’s his first completed feature film for 26 years but seasoned Jodorowsky hands will feel at home with scenes containing, Nazis, amputees, maggots… Newbies may well watch proceedings open-mouthed. Anyone for a full-frontal female urination scene (his mother’s ‘healing waters’) performed as an opera? If you haven’t seen a Jodorowsky epic before, perhaps it’s better to start with The Holy Mountain (1973).

Punchy drama-cum-thriller about a British squaddie caught between Protestants and Catholics during the Northern Ireland ‘troubles’. The mise-en-scene, aided by an insistent soundtrack, is terrific but there are two major downsides. Would-be exciting scenes are ruined by the use of irritating shaky-cam and the central figure of the squaddie is too poorly fleshed out and acted to make us care enough about his predicament. The tragic pointlessness of the conflict certainly comes across but that makes it a depressing watch. That may be the point, but the best war films can be uplifting, using the tragedy of war to heighten a lust for life. Nevertheless, a promising debut feature from director Yaan Demange.

Judged purely as a film, this is no more than a TV-style documentary with notable directors talking about Hitchcock’s films, together with extracts from the famous week-long interview that resulted in Truffaut’s ground-breaking book on his work. For anyone who loves cinema it’s nevertheless a fascinating document. Both directors were great filmmakers who believed, in Hitchcock’s words, in ‘pure cinema’. There are plenty of great clips from Hitchcock’s films to illustrate this, with extended analyses of Vertigo and Psycho. The extras, including Q&As with director Kent Smith, are also worth watching.

Of course it’s an important and worthy film. It couldn’t BE more worthy (in Chandler’s voice). It ticks all the politically correct boxes required to vacuum up Oscar nominations. Add plinky-plonk piano and swelling strings where appropriate and it’s a shoe-in. Judged purely as a cinematic experience, however, it’s more of an obligation than a pleasure to sit through.

It has one thing to say. The clue is in the title. It’s an in important thing to say but it’s rammed home again and again with no discernible increase in impact. The story is entirely predictable and overly precise direction robs even tragic scenes of their emotional impact. A less heavy-handed approach might have enabled the story to breathe. Instead we have an historical document. A one-note, episodic, polemical treatise on the awfulness of slavery.

It sounds churlish to say so but this makes it a less than riveting watch. Any film you can fast forward and dip back into without missing much lacks something. Everyone acts their socks off and the camera loves to watch them do it. There’s only one major exception: an intense whipping scene near the end, filmed imaginatively in a single take by a roving camera. It shows what the film could have been.

A minor made-for-TV unfunny absurdist comedy set in a small coastal town in northern France. It was devised as a four-part TV serial and its bland TV aesthetic shows. It unaccountably gained some positive reviews from critics who see no difference between TV and film but if you watch the trailer first you’ll know not to look any further.

This is a deceptively inconsequential little film that sneaks up on you until it grips. In the wrong hands, understated acting and precise direction can render the most exciting story bland, but here it serves to ramp up the tension. Director Saul Dibb sets a perfect tone and leads Matthias Schoenaerts and Michelle Williams (never better) are equally perfect as the German officer and the Frenchwoman (with a faultless English accent!) with whom he is billeted.

This may not be the first film to explore star-crossed relationships in wartime but it's a riveting addition to the genre. Shot entirely on location in France and Belgium, it is a beautiful, subtle, elegant film that has a cinematic aesthetic unusual for a director from a documentary background. Adding to its authenticity is the fact that the story was written at the time, in the 1940s. If the title means nothing to you, it certainly will after the poignant climax and end-titles.

It turns out that Prince Vlad (aka Dracula) was actually a nice guy who became a vampire simply to gain the strength to lead his motley band of Transylvanians against the superior Austrian army. Who knew? This is a crossover movie that wants to be an epic but is in fact a load of tosh. There's even a 'brothers' backstory between Vlad (an underwhelming Luke Evans) and the Austrian commander (an underused Dominic Cooper), which rips off the Judah/Messala dynamic from Ben-Hur.

It's all so earnest and downbeat, with unexciting cgi battle scenes and a generic orchestral score that puts a damper on everything. Even worse, we have to sit through lashings of boring melodrama as a simpering Vlad deals with his psychological demons. Nice ending, though, and this sort of thing CAN work. Check out the wonderful Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Slayer, where Dominic Cooper really gets to do his stuff.

Another wearing effort from 'master Swedish director' Roy Andersson. A grim, absurdist, dry-as-dust comedy that is no more than series of formal, stilted, TV-like sketches filmed as single shots with a static camera. This does not constitute cinema. It is unlikely to hold the attention.

Everyone connected with this ridiculous sword-and-sorcery fantasy, from the writer to the cast, seems to realise it's a load of nonsense so they might as well go for broke. The result is an unexpectedly entertaining feast of hokum and mayhem with a nice Gothic atmosphere. Master knight Jeff Bridges hams it up with an impenetrable accent. Julianne Moore matches him as his dragon queen nemesis. Ben Barnes does his best as Jeff's bland apprentice who must learn how to fight evil (yawn, yawn). Sergei Bodorov provides snappy direction with colourful, panoramic vistas (the British Columbia locations are stunning).

There are some fun special effects and silly creatures such as the blind but persistent boggart. Jeff's despairing cry 'We're having a boggart problem!' deserves to become a generic catchphrase.

What's it about? Who cares? None of it makes sense so just sit back and enjoy the mayhem. An instant late-night cult classic.

This is the kind of Euro arthouse movie that wins prizes at festivals from people for whom theme is everything. The kind that loves to show us people talking to one another, placing soapy conversation above drama. The kind that would never use anything but snippets of classical music on the soundtrack. The kind that, out of nowhere, suddenly ends. You know the kind. It's slow, dull and conspicuously devoid of any cinematic imagination.

You may find the story, about an ageing actress (it was specifically written by director Olivier Assayas for Juliette Binoche) interesting or not, but it has all the screen life squeezed out of it. Some critics have compared it to 8½ but Assayas is no Fellini. Eric Rohmer could wring cinematic magic out of the most ordinary of dialogue exchanges but Assayas is no Rohmer.

Chloe Grace Moretz plays a starlet who is to play the role that made Juliette's name as a young actress, but it takes an hour and a half just for them to meet, and that turns out to be not very interesting either. Meanwhile the underrated Kristen Stewart is wasted in a large role as Juliette's P.A. The actors are poorly served in general. Because of the poor dialogue, absence of drama and lack of visual interest the concentration on acting merely highlights the artifice of the whole affair. Just watch them act! Thanks to cinemaphotographer Yorick Le Saux there's occasionally some pretty Alpine scenery but not enough to merit giving the whole enterprise a single star. Such a waste.

Well, it's a cheap and fast way of making a film. Shoot two hours of footage in a single handheld take and don't edit it. Sure, it's a technical tour de force. So what? Improvisation rarely works with actors and even more rarely with the camera. For half an hour Victoria wanders the streets of Berlin with a bunch of losers. Yawn, yawn. Best of luck sticking with it this far before any plot sets in. It's impossible to care about any of the characters, even the photogenic but gullible and irritatingly stupid Victoria.

After a whole hour she joins the losers in a heist Some frenetic home-movie wobble-cam (the worst since Blair Witch) is used to mimic tension but this only increases the arbitrariness of the image and makes the screen even harder to watch. Call it cinema verite, call it guerrilla filmmaking, it's still like watching the home movie of someone who can't hold a camera steady. And there's still another hour to sit through. All-in-all, 132 minutes you'll never get back.

Ignore the unaccountably good reviews this style-free so-called film somehow garnered. Some critics would probably see the emperor's clothes. It is simply one terrible home movie, like a talentless version of Run Lola Run. Watch that again instead.

This lo-key ‘thriller’ concentrates on painstaking detail to build up tension, but director Jeremy Saunier is no Hitchcock and his best friend Macon Blair, cast as the lead, is charisma-free. His diffident screen presence brings an air of lethargy to the whole enterprise. He sets out to avenge a murder and we follow the ramifications of his decision, but would-be tense scenes are merely flat and the few flashes of action lack clarity and pass without much ado.

Kudos to Jeremy and his mate for cobbling together the money to make the film and see it achieve success at indie fests such as Sundance, but it’s a sluggish affair. Like most films that are a slow burn, if you wait for fire you’ll be disappointed. As lo-tempo thrillers go, it’s just about watchable but it cries out for some Wow factor. The punchy edits and exciting score of the trailer simply mislead. To see how it should be done, watch top-drawer thriller Cold in July.

An intermittently compelling film about the efforts of photographer Dennis Stock to get those iconic Life magazine photos of James Dean. No film about James Dean and his starry 1950s circle could be without interest, but this is a leisurely, meandering piece that won’t suit anyone looking for action or plot. Indeed, the film almost grinds to a halt after an hour when Jimmy takes Dennis home to his Indiana ranch for some family time. There’s also a boring subplot about Dennis’s inability to relate to his young son. It’s Jimmy we want to see, and bigger cameos for Natalie Wood, Elia Kazan, Eartha Kitt etc.

But the main problem is simply that Dane DeHaan is miscast as Jimmy. Not only does he not look or sound like him, he comes over as mumbling, whiny and eventually irritating. Dean’s charisma and nervous energy are conspicuous by their absence. The problem is exacerbated by the casting of Robert Pattinson as Dennis Stock. As he showed in his riveting portrayal in Remember Me, he’s the modern actor who most closely reincarnates Jimmy.