SF Diplomat

REVIEW - Silent Light (2007)

Carlos Reygadas' Stellet Licht (or Silent Light) is a deeply problematic film as I argue in my review of it over at Videovista.

It's one of those long-takes, everyone-is-miserable, everyone-sits-in-silence art house films that drives me round the bend as a critic.  I find that kind of film-making so utterly formulaic and tricksy that I genuinely do not understand why so many mainstream film reviewers are happy to give this kind of film a pass.  I touched on this with my review of Nicolas Phillibert's Back to Normandy but I think the problem may well be that this type of direction is trying to push buttons that I simply do not have.

REVIEW - Blackmail is my Life (1968)

My review of Kinji Fukasaku's Blackmail is my life has just gone up at Videovista.

This is by the director of Battle Royale (you know... the one where a load of unruly kids have to fight it out to the death) and, much like that better known film, it left me feeling rather ambivalent.  Blackmail is my Life has a few nice ideas and quite neatly layers 60s gonzo with bleak social realism but the film never quite coheres into anything more than that.

REVIEW - Water Lilies (2007)

My review of Celine Sciamma's excellent Water Lilies (or Naissance des Pieuvres) has just gone up at Videovista.

I first saw this film at the 22nd London Gay and Lesbian film festival and while I adored the aesthetics of the film, I thought its content was pretty much identical to every other queer film I've reviewed over the last couple of years and so I made no attempt to write up my thoughts.

However, wanting to see the film again I requested the DVD and realised that there's a second and more interesting interpretation of the film that places the accent less on lesbian issues and more upon issues of female sexuality.

Weirdly enough, I think this makes the film seem less about oppression and alienation and more about change and growing up.  I suspect this might close to what the queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick called a "reparative reading" in that rather than deconstructing society and looking for hidden mechanisms of enslavement and oppression, it seeks out systems of support that might well not be obvious at first glance.  A traditional reading of the film's ending would see the main character's leap into the pool as a kind of return to the womb of innocence and childhood to escape a cruel world, but a more progressive one might well see it as praising friendship and the way in which friendship can help you move out of an unpleasant and oppressive social milieu.

REVIEW - Persepolis (2007)

Persepolis is one of this year's great films that I never got round to writing about because I was taking a break from blogging.  Happily, the film's imminent DVd release has given me grounds for writing about it over at Videovista.

I picked up the DVD while I was in Switzerland because I wanted to see the original French version rather than the redubbed American one.  I disgree with Mark Kermode who said that the film really lost something in translation as I think the film is as well written and performed in English as it is in French.  The only possible downside is that the American version is full of American swearwords such as "jerk" whereas the French version, reflecting the fact that up until a generation or so ago the lingua franca of cultured middle eastern people seems to have been French, is full of far more brutal expressions such as "con" and "va te faire enculer".  This is a relatively small matter but part of the film's charm is its clear message that people living in Iran are no different to us despite the veils and the beards and this is better served by proper swearing than by those weirdly neutered American 'curse words'.

REVIEW - Paris Lockdown (2007)

My review of Frederic Schoendorffer's Paris Lockdown (Truands) has gone up over at Videovista.

The title and DVD case are spectacularly misleading as between the idea of locking something down and pictures of explosions you might be tempted to think that this is an action movie whereas in fact it's a stylish if vacuous crime drama about Parisian crooks spending their lives snorting coke and fucking hookers.  Oh and it's supposed to be 'realistic', whatever that means.

REVIEW - Back To Normandy (2007)

For my sins, my review of Nicolas Philibert's horrific Back to Normandy has gone up over at Videovista.

I suspect that one could argue that the review says something about my growing maturity as a critic as instead of ranting about how much I hated the film, I turned it into a discussion of the more manipulative practices involved in film making and how a good director can make a film seem far more intelligent than it actually is by making the film look sophisticated and complex.

I mean just look at that tag line : "Memory fades... wonder doesn't".  What is that even supposed to mean?

It hooks up with some of the stuff I was talking about a couple of months ago in my Bergman review.

REVIEW - Education Anglaise (1983)

My review of Jean-Claude Roy's Education Anglaise has just been published by Videovista.

It is not the first time that I have reviewed softcore pornography, I am completely unashamed to add.  I have also reviewed Love Circles (1985), Frank and I (1984) and Black Venus (1983).

Aside from the issue of the changes in what constitutes a socially acceptable sexual fantasy, it is also interesting that mild S&M crops up in these films quite a bit.  Why? because spanking is clearly naughty, but it does not actually require you to show any naked flesh.

REVIEW - Yokihi (1955) and Akasen Chitai (1956)

My twin review of Kenji Mizoguchi's Akasen Chitai (1956) and Yokihi (1955) have gone live over at Videovista.

Also worth looking into, if you're into 1950s Japanese Cinema, are my reviews of Uwasa No Onna (1954) and Chikamatsu Monogatari (1954).

REVIEW - Benny's Video (1992)

Tony Lee's The ZONE has just put up my review of Michael Haneke's Benny's Video.

It's part of what has been called his Emotional Glaciation trilogy along with The Seventh Continent and 71 Fragments From a Chronology of Chance, which I reviewed for Videovista a while back.

REVIEW - Lions for Lambs (2007)

 

Originally written for the stage by Matthew Michael Carnahan (who also wrote the confused The Kingdom) and directed by Robert Redford, Lions for Lambs is an attempt at a thoughtful liberal response to the War on Terror.  Instead of sniping from the side-lines or cracking jokes, the film attempts to engage with the meat of the subject... namely the ideas and political thought behind the war.  The result of this is a film that feels a lot more like a series of lectures or overheard conversations than a coherent argument or analysis of the facts.  However, unlike other critics who have moaned about the preachiness or the talking head format of the film, my problem with the film lies at the level of the ideas.  Indeed, if this film is anything to go by then liberal America really has no idea as to what it should be thinking about the War on Terror.