Week 11 - Everything Must Go

Forgive me father, for I have only watched one film this week. It was late in the week and I realised that all I had consumed for the past few days was the fourth season of Person of Interest – a show that you primarily stick on in the background but end up restraining yourself from punching yourself in the face over the slight nuances in your favourite character’s speech pattern (I love you, Root, you do you).

The film that I picked out of all of the others on my list this week was Everything Must Go, a film based on the short story “Why Don’t You Dance” by Raymond Carver. It stars will Ferrell as Nick Halsey, a down-on-his-luck salesman whose belongings are cast onto the lawn of his suburban home after his wife changes the locks. The film touches on themes such as depression, addiction and, ultimately, the struggle we all face when we are forced to think of our regrets and failures. I'll warn you though, this ain’t no Anchorman 3.

I love Will Ferrell in a straight role, whether it be a broad rom-com (Stranger Than Fiction) or a bonkers indie (Casa de mi Padre). His commitment to the role, as well as the movie, reflects all of his other projects where he uses his everyman familiarity to connect with his audience. I’m a sucker for a comedy actor in a serious role. Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Rock – those who can make you cry after making you laugh are always more impressive than those who do the inverse. Compelling someone to take you seriously after spending so long convincing them to do the total opposite is an incredible feat and one that isn’t celebrated enough.

Is it as good as The Colour Purple? No, it obviously isn’t as good as The Colour Purple, but we’re not comparing the two. Everything Must Go is a charming film, co-starring my crush for all seasons Rebecca Hall and a very small part from Glenn “IASIP’s Dennis Reynolds” Howerton, bringing reflection and comic relief respectively. But my favourite part (read that as “the bit that made me do a stealth cry into my t-shirt”) is completely down to Christopher Jordan Wallace who plays Nick’s only friend in the world, Kenny, a stocky kid who just wants to play baseball. He allows Ferrell’s privileged asshole have his pity-party, but knows when it’s time to call a taxi home.

This film would never go on to win awards, but the cinematography, script and acting are just enough to keep Ferrell in my good books. Don’t let Jim Carrey in The Number 23 have paint comedians in the wrong light.

Films of the Week: Everything Must Go

Week 10 - Bachelorette

It was International Women’s Day last week and, good God, the media were all over it. Lots of strong, inspirational, aspirational icons dangled in front of us, each publication vying for our attention. It iss appreciated, but we’re still missing the mark: women just need to be allowed to live. Literally, all women want to do is survive on their own terms.

Coincidentally, I watched a lot of female driven movies this week, with a lot of archetypes to play with and analyse. In hindsight, not one of these films had a woman of colour in their main cast and the heteronormativity was through the roof. It’s dizzyingly boring but unsurprising – out of the last four weeks, there have been two people of colour in the main casts of the seventeen different films I’ve watched. We need to strive for representation in the media at all turns, using the privileges we have to highlight that the world on screen – as much as it is brilliant and vital and grounding – just doesn’t portray our lives.

Women in particular have been sold a pup since Eve was told that hair was an appropriate substitute for clothes. Be thin, be chaste, be a slut, be invisible. Only since fairly recently have women been able to be as average as the men, and the reaction has been shockingly positive. But this is just a version of a new persona: the ‘cool girl’ cometh.

But women weren’t having it. We’ve worked too hard for too little for too long to have our individuality rubbed out for a fake persona. But cool girls are fun! They’re so chill with everything! Chill is a cancer on society, and does nobody any favours. Since Jennifer Lawrence started fetishising normality (eating food and saying ‘fuck’ is not a personality trait, FYI), there’s been a real drive to tell the other side of the story: showing women being high maintenance, knowing what they want, saying ‘no’ to things they don’t like.

Bachelorette illustrates four women, who regret the mistakes they make when they’re drunk; who take recreational drugs and do not do well on them; who work hard at a job they hate; who are unattractive messes, not just clumsy supermodels (Mindy Kaling writes a scathing indictment of this trope in her partial memoir, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?).

I really liked this film. Bachelorette reflected the girls in my life perfectly: unfinished, vulnerable women who cry and jump to conclusions and say horrible things to and about each other but who would jump into the abyss for their fellow warriors.

When the film was being promoted, Rebel Wilson was at the helm of all interviews, but in reality, she was a minor character, this is not Wilson’s film, but Kirsten Dunst’s, who has been on teen screen queen trajectory since her dreamy portrayal of a girl under fire in The Virgin Suicides. Her portrayal of vindictive doer Regan is not what one would call a protagonist. Regan has no time for weakness and knows what she wants and how to get. If Dunst’s character was a man, he would be treated like a god, but as a woman, Regan is forced into a pigeonhole that she has no desire to occupy. Sound familiar?

Naturally, this film was trounced into the dirt by the glitzier, funnier and generally more appealing Bridesmaids, but if you want something that is going to make you wince at its familiarity and show you how women actually live their lives, Bachelorette is your ticket.

Films of the Week: Sweeney Todd, Bachelorette, Tiny Furniture, Serial Mom, Walk of Shame, Teeth

Week 9 – Frank

Why do films rely so heavily on music? Even films that aren’t completely revolved around film, its soundtrack is often one of the most integral characters in the movie. It sets the mood, the time, the pace for a couple of scenes until the next opportunity to play another one. It’s the music supervisor’s job to create another story from other people’s work that matches the one that the writer and director are trying to push through to their audience. Sometimes it goes well, sometimes it really doesn’t. It makes or breaks a film.

Frank is a twofer, both having a great soundtrack and being a film about music. The film follows a young man in a humdrum town who is willingly kidnapped by an elusive and mysterious band – the helm being manned by an ominous figure in a rugby-ball-shaped papier mâché head named Frank. The film holds a story that is intricate and, for want of a better word, interesting; the story doesn’t go stale at any point, it’s almost as if Jon Ronson and Peter Straughan wrote a number of vignettes and sewed them together with the thread of our young man on the keys, Jon Burroughs (conscientiously played by Domhnall Gleeson).

The film takes us on a journey not unlike a lot of coming-of-age stories with a killer soundtrack. Frank reminded me somewhat of Almost Famous in that way where a young boy is taken to become a man under the wing of someone not necessarily altogether themselves. Not as epic as its brother before it (are British films ever epic?), Frank’s talent, its USP, is that it teeters on the edge of mania throughout, and when the wheels do finally come off of Frank and Jon’s band, “The Soronprfbs”, it’s more unsettling than explosive, which is in turn a very deft homage to the film’s star and subject, Frank Sidebottom.

The character of Frank Sidebottom, if you were not aware, was the brainchild of Chris Sievey who tragically passed away in 2013, and left behind a nation of grieving fans of comedy, the surreal and the silly. During this period of mourning, and finding out that Sievey was facing a pauper’s funeral, thousands of his followers got his albums and songs back in the charts, paid for his send-off in style and, arguably, paved the way for this 2014 film. The film stemmed from a stroke of luck, actually: literary welterweight Jon Ronson wrote an absolutely gorgeous piece on his time with Sievey and what Frank Sidebottom – the real Frank Sidebottom – meant to him.

It does beg to be asked whether Frank is in fact a tribute to the late Sievey or, principally, a piss-take to a silly gimmick gone too far. Watching the performances – Maggie Gyllenhaal is as ever worth a shout-out for her barbed performance (a line to take away: “stay away from my fucking Theremin”) – and knowing the history behind this film proves that this isn’t a parody. In no way can you watch this and not feel like this was the true send-off that Frank and his big old napper needed.

Films of the Week: Frank, Chicago, It’s All Gone Pete Tong, Mamma Mia

Week 8 – Iris; Keith Richards: Under the Influence

Documentaries about specific people are made either because the people are interesting or because the people have enough money to have a documentary made about them, or a winning combination of the two.

Iris, the eponymous film regaling the life of designer, stylist and nonagenarian Renaissance woman Iris Apfel, is without a doubt in the first field. A charming if not sympathetic tone give the 2014 film an unspoken “thumbs up”; we aren’t watching with one eye squinted, waiting for a cut scene to a hospital ward, or a fade to black after an ominous coughing fit. Instead, we follow Apfel – who is relatively spritely and unparalleled in wit – around her house, through her exhibitions, at her “work”. She is fawned over like, well, a favourite aunt or a puppy, when in fact she should be revered and held up high like a pharaoh or… a puppy.

The late Albert Maysles (Gimme Shelter and Grey fuckin’ Gardens) does an exquisite job of not sugar-coating Iris and her cute as a button husband Carl’s slowing down of life, and part of this is because Iris and Carl aren’t stupid to think that they are young turks about town any more – there is a mutual understanding that this is a retrospective of Iris’ life, not an introduction of what is soon to be a glittering career. Another reason is that Maysles himself was 87 when directing this and so he too knew the ways of Apfel’s world. The pace of this film is gentle: you’re not being made to deep-throat someone’s existence (Exit Through the Gift Shop felt a bit like that at parts, however that was possibly due to its odious subject matter), but you can enjoy it all the same. You won’t be pumped afterwards, but you’ll be satisfied that when we get to the fine age of 93, we can still look fly and spit game like a true queen.

In comparison, Under The Influence could be described as what the film industry would call a 'vanity project': a medium that propels the star to a higher level within their field. Tammy, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Alpha Dog: films that create an environment for growth. The thing is Keith Richards doesn't need that. As far as hierarchies go, he can't go any further; Keith is king and he knows this. I've seen the Stones live and I don't think he approached Morgan Neville to make a doc about his life - he enjoys it too much. Although if are going to approach someone to make a documentary about music, Neville probably should be high up on your list. So why was this created? Simple. Netflix are opportunists, and know a cash cow when they see it. 



Their recent acquisition of the Marvel Defenders franchise and the rights to produce brand new Peewee Herman specials illustrate their keen eye for a trend (even if it is due to a woeful enjoyment of ironic participation) and so when the world seems to need a rockstar, Netflix are the only team on hand to pipe a shoot-by-numbers feature film into your house for a reasonable £5.99 a month.

Iris, on the other hand, was a piece of cinema. Maysles saw a beautiful subject and wrote a love letter to it- Apfel's life and indeed this movie proved that she did not need a vanity project. This film was created purely to let others know about this incredible woman and what she has given, before it was too late to shower her with the praise she has deserved over near century on this earth.

Both of these films were genuinely good, but you can get a dose of Keith Richards every day of the week (my personal favourite is his interview with The Times’ Caitlin Moran). Watch Iris and see a one-off, in every sense of the phrase.

Films of the week: Iris; Keith Richards: Under The Influence

Week 7 – Berberian Sound Studio

Netflix is an absolute boon to my bank account. if it wasn’t for that beautiful, red database, I would still be spending hundreds of pounds every year on weird films, on the basis that their trailers were okay – not okay enough for me to go see them at the cinema, but enough for me to own them for the rest of eternity. With the addition of Netflix, I can now just find all of these obscure movies that I once umm-ed and ahh-ed over in HMV, and not get weirded out by the sweaty people in terry-towelling standing by the ‘70s sitcom boxsets.

Out of the five films I went through this week, I guess you could consider three of those films to be dramas. There was a theme recently to shoot films with a sharper lens, a darker filter, sparser dialogue. This is fine if the subject matter calls for it – Closed Circuit was a fairly decent political thriller and suited the muted tones and clinical script that Steve Knight and John Crowley applied. Less can be said for Peter Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio. Not being content in creating a straight-forward horror or an existential thriller, or even a spoof, Strickland thought he’d roll all three into one and do so in under 100 minutes.




Clearly taking a fair bit of inspiration from Dario Argento and those films that weren’t quite exploitation films but got so close that you felt quite seedy in watching them, Strickland spends a whole lot of time introducing tone and suspending scenes in the ether for dramatic effect. But the result is that of boredom. Good ol’ Netflix categorises Berberian Sound Studio as a horror, but it isn’t. If anything, it is reminiscent of those iconic teen flicks that spent its whole budget on creating aesthetic choices and forgot to pay attention to anything else – films like Spring Breakers, Gummo and Blue Crush where everything looks gorgeous but nothing actually happens. And not in the good Harold Pinter way. No, this kind of time-wasting is palpable – you sit and you watch and you can feel your eyes distancing themselves from your brain, like they’re ashamed.

Toby Jones is, in my opinion, a deeply underused and underrated actor and so it annoyed me that he played the overworked, unrecompensed sound engineer that this film revolves around. This movie proved that you could be the star of the film and yet still be craved by the audience. There was no substance to Berberian Sound Studio. Not only did you not care about these characters, but there is no scenario on Earth that could allow you to, the story is so flimsy. A week after watching it and I am still wondering how it came to fruition. Maybe I’m just getting older – this might be an example of the personal growth I sometimes feel when I buy quinoa instead of Super Noodles – but I did not have the urge to watch this film again. Life is too short to try and understand films. Berberian Sound Studio is not a good film, and I don’t need to watch it again to prove that. Thank you, Netflix.


Films of the Week: Closed Circuit, Conversations with Other Women, Berberian Sound Studio, Spiceworld, The First Wives Club

Week 6 – Paddington

Following on from my sparse film watching last week, I tried my earnest to watch enough films to at least give me a choice in what to write about. However, I needn’t have bothered as the film that stood out to me the most this week was the first one I watched. As can be assessed, I really do love films and, what’s more, their potential to be something more than the story that they primarily pass over to us; small concepts are ultimately adorned with intricate detailing to create something quite, quite astonishing.

Comedies at face value often have ulterior motives – whether this is to highlight the double standards that the liberal communities extol on those less wealthy than themselves (Afternoon Delight, Margot at the Wedding) or to expose long-ignored truths about our relationship with race and just how deep that relationship lies (Dear White People), I get a kick to know that you can provide so much more to someone if you stick in a few jokes in between.

I think there have been far too many think-pieces written about Dear White People by white people for me to even consider writing one more, but I don’t think I would anyways, as the film that really grabbed me was, in fact, not a comedy but, once again, a children’s film.

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Paddington piqued my interest as soon as I read that Colin Firth had been replaced by Ben Whishaw as the voice of Paddington merely weeks before the release date. To be quite honest, casting the lead actor in your movie literally days before the posters go to print seems like quite the bad omen. The British film industry is often climbing an enormous, slippery hill and so a success story is taken to the hearts of everyone just as much as a bad film can dampen their spirits. The fact that Paddington Bear is so ubiquitously loved possibly made the stakes even higher so it was more relief than anything when it did so well.

The reason it did so well is simply because it is a lovely, feel-good film. So many filmmakers choose to add gravitas to the lightest of subjects (examples 1 through n: all comic book adaptations since 2008) and so it was such a delightful surprise when this film parodied that a number of times, to great effect. This film is for children after all, and to be quite honest, robbing them of joy is tantamount to stealing their innocence.



However, Paddington isn’t light on story or poignancy. Whether it was just my liberal mind-set finding its bite or not, I felt that there was a strong connotation in Paddington’s adventure to London to the current refugee crisis. His safety is not always guaranteed and it is up to the generosity of the Brown family to ensure his emigration goes as smoothly as possible. This poor bear has seen some shit, guys, and ignoring him in the train station is not going to make matters any better. The Brown family, headed by Hugh Bonneville and everyone’s low-key fave Sally Hawkins, are the average family in the not-so-average house. The day I see a realistic house in a film or TV programme is the day I will stop yelling at the screen about how this helps no one and puts fantasies and people’s head about where they should be in their own lives. It’s very detrimental to society. But I digress.

I’m not going to comment on the acting because it’s literally not bad or good – it is what you want from a children’s film; no one needs to put in an Oscar-worthy performance because you shouldn’t be desiring that from a children’s film, and if you are, you take yourself far too seriously and don’t deserve nice things. You want to know that the goodies are good and pure and the baddies are bad and stupid. However, I will say that casting Nicole Kidman as the vicious Millicent Clyde was a scientific stroke of genius. Do not let that solid turd of a movie The Golden Compass or this week's unintentional comedy Margot at the Wedding put you on the back foot – Kidman’s villain is pantomimic and fantastically so. She should have really received more praise for this.

With children’s films, all I want is to be entertained and comforted to know that this world isn’t completely awful. I got that with Paddington and you absolutely will too, unless your heart is as bitter as his sandwiches.


Films of the Week: Paddington, Margot at the Wedding, Afternoon Delight, We Are The Rileys, Dear White People

Week 5 – Josie and the Pussycats

I only watched one film this week, and it wasn’t even a film that I had planned to watch. I was sick and thought seeing something incredibly sad would make me feel better about my current situation and so I thought I’d see what the forbidden-love emotional-bulldozer Carol had to offer, but it was not to be and so I found myself in front of 2001’s comedic masterpiece Josie and the Pussycats. No, really.

I was nine years-old when this film hit the cinemas, and yet I don’t remember the TV show before it or the renaissance during the movie’s promotion afterwards. This isn’t to say that it was bad or beneath me, but it just wasn’t something on my radar nor was it on the radar of anyone else my age. This is possibly why it had such bad reception over here. That and that it would probably have absolutely no appeal to a child.

Josie, played by millennial teen queen Rachel Leigh Cook, and her Pussycats (Daredevil’s Rosario Dawson and the least child-friendly American Pie alumnus, Tara Reid) are the local band no one wants to hear until Alan Cumming promises to push them to the heady heights of rock stardom. But all is not what it seems, as it never is – children will know this as Cumming played the villain in the first of the Spy Kids trilogy that hit the cinemas months if not weeks beforehand. This is the first and only part of the film that treats children as their primary audience.

The rest is laugh-out-loud satire, probably putting their parents in a tricky position of not honking at the jokes too loud for fear of having to explain why it’s funny that Du Jour, the boy band whose tragic disappearance sparks Josie and the Pussycats’ rise to fame, have possibly died in a horrific plane crash – just after Cumming’s Wyatt Frame asks the pilots to take ‘the Chevy to the levee’.

I’m not ashamed to say that I laughed a number of times during this film, and it’s not because I have a terrible taste in comedy or that I wanted to like Josie and the Pussycats, but it’s because it’s genuinely funny and it doesn’t take itself seriously at all. So many movies these days want to be darker and grittier – even children’s television is becoming more complex by the episode – that it’s a complete joy to watch something that you’re not going to see six different think pieces on during the next week. Also, I fucking love Parker Posey and am happy any time she is earning that Hollywood money.

Of course the acting is not brilliant, and the script is written by numbers. But so were Scooby Doo and Spiceworld and all of the other nostalgia trips from the late 90s – early 00s, and I’m so glad because now we can go back and watch these films for what they were: stupid, earnest, universal comedies that we just don’t have enough of anymore. We shouldn’t have to rely on Disney to roll out one new kid’s film every year in hope that they reference Mad Men or something to that ilk. We need films like Josie and the Pussycats to teach our kids that having fun and being silly are a universal pleasure, and that it never truly goes away.

Films of the week: Josie and the Pussycats