Current release: MISTER LONELY

"Okay kid, what's the pitch?"
"Well, Marilyn Monroe meets Michael Jackson in Paris and they-"
"Wait, what is this, time travel or something?"
"No, they're not the real deal, they're just celebrity lookalikes."
"Right. So then what?"
"Marilyn invites Michael to come and live in their commune for lookalikes, in the Scottish highlands."
"Interesting concept. So what happens?"
"All these lookalikes - they just kind of, you know, do stuff. Everyday stuff."
"Give me a plot outline."
"Just think of the great, wacky scenes we can have - James Dean rounding up sheep, Abe Lincoln swearing a lot, Jacko playing Charlie Chaplin at table tennis..."
"Which leads to what?"
"That's the main selling point really. Seeing really famous people doing ordinary stuff. It'll be hilarious."
"So you mean it's just like STELLA STREET."
"Well, yeah, but... not as funny."
"And that's it?"
"No, I'll make it a bit weird in places and I'll add various arty flourishes - portentous dialogue laced with the odd nutty non-sequitur, a bunch of stuff in slow motion, and a quirky variety of songs."
"So like a Wes Anderson film then?"
"Well, yeah, but... not as funny."
"Can't you do something to make it a bit more substantial?"
"Well, yeah, Werner Herzog's going to be a priest."
"Are most cinema audiences even going to recognise a Werner Herzog lookalike?"
"No, he's not a lookalike. I mean the real Werner Herzog. He'll play a priest in the movie."
"I see. So how does his story tie in to the lookalike stuff?"
"Well, actually, it doesn't. It kind of pads out the running time a bit but doesn't really have any connection to the rest of the movie. It'll give film students something to analyse though."
"So we've got a bunch of lookalikes talking nonsense and doing ordinary stuff, and we've got Werner Herzog playing a totally unconnected character."
"Um... Herzog's story will involve some flying nuns though."
"Here's some money. Go make me a movie!"

I reckon there will be plenty of people who'll like Korine's latest and I admit that, the above cynicism aside, there were one or two brief moments that really appealed to me. But this has the feeling of being one of those films that you either connect with it and really get it, or you really, really don't. I'm afraid I'm in the latter camp.

Give the film it's due, it's not like much else you'll see and it certainly doesn't pander to the blockbuster crowd, but I just didn't take to it at all. That said, it's probably worth a watch anyway because I have the feeling that as many people will love the movie as will come away feeling, like me, that it was an opportunity (and price of admission) wasted.

If you're curious, by all means check it out. If you're just after a decent film, give this one a swerve at the box office and shell out on a ticket for THE ORPHANAGE instead. (I'll write about that one at some point soon - just like I was supposed to do with the now-long-gone I AM LEGEND and CLOVERFIELD.)

DON'T LOOK BACK (1967)

I recently went to see a new print of DONT LOOK BACK, DA Pennebaker's documentary film of Bob Dylan's arrival in England back in the mid sixties. I'd never seen it before, but as a fan of documentaries I thought I should take the opportunity. I should say before I go any further that I'm not a huge fan of Dylan - as a singer/performer he just doesn't really do it for me, though as a songwriter he's certainly in a league of his own. Or to put it another way, I like a lot of Dylan songs, I just tend to prefer other people's versions of them.

Nor am I particularly knowledgeable of the man or his history. Consequently the recent kind-of-biopic-but-not-really I'M NOT THERE left me cold. I had no idea what a lot of it was about and while I appreciated the Garrett/Guthrie segments for their cinematic qualities and quite liked Bale's turn, most of the film annoyed me, especially the Blanchett sections.

But I was supposed to be talking about DONT LOOK BACK...

I loved this movie, for numerous reasons. For one thing, like so many good documentaries, it's a valuable time capsule - not only for its look at the people of mid-sixties England, but the place itself. The dark, grainy black and white photography seems like it was invented for the sole purpose of filming working class England (see also RADIO ON) and many of my favourite scenes were simply of Dylan and friends either travelling across the country or walking the streets of urban England.

As someone who doesn't know much about Bob Dylan, I found the picture painted here of the artist at the height of his power an interesting one. His repeated refusal to be the smiling popstar answering questions with easy answers seems at time to show great wisdom and at others to just be obnoxious; there's a certain joy to be had watching him play mind-games with journalists and yet at the same time his rant against the qualities of Time magazine seemed to this viewer to be bordering on childish.

As for the structure of the documentary itself? There are plenty of great examples of documentaries that follow a character from A to B to C through a particular series of events that will end up shaping the film into a story with a narrative not unlike that chosen by any good fiction piece; DONT LOOK BACK, for me, is not one of them.

What I liked about this film was that rather than watching Dylan develop as a person or see him following some kind of journey, the film is more like a "best of" compilation from the period it covers. Scene after scene offers another highlight which can exist totally separate from any that have gone before or after.

Seeing the otherwise calm Dylan losing the rag over a thrown glass and the ensuing encounter with some drunks (and a performance by Donovan); Dylan stirring up a music journalist in a dressing room; the awkwardness as a kindly old lady tells Dylan what a wonderful role model he is and invites him to stay next time he's in England; manager Albert Grossman abusing a hotel manager; the Dylan-less scene in which Grossman negotiates a fee for a BBC show; these and many more held me totally transfixed. And yes, I even enjoyed some of the musical numbers.

I'm still not likely to be buying any Dylan albums in the future, but I can certainly foresee me watching this film again.

Glasgow Film Festival 2008 (the end)

Slightly later than planned (that's pretty much how I open all these blog things, isn't it?) here are my thoughts on the other films I saw at the Glasgow Film Festival.

I kicked off with THE WHALES OF AUGUST, showing as part of the Bette Davis retrospective. This was her final film, though as old and frail as she evidently was, she was still more than capable of offering up a typically Davis-esque performance as the bitchier of two sisters living a quiet life by the sea. She's in great company, joined by Lillian Gish and Vincent Price, and is in safe directorial hands with Lindsay Anderson. As nice looking as the film is, however, not much happens and the rather stilted acting in many scenes makes it far from the best performances any of these people offered in their careers. If you're going to seek out any films in the retrospective (as it's now touring the country) I'd stick one of the older classics.

BODY OF WAR is one in a long line of documentaries about the war on terror and its aftermath, this time focussing on the life of a young American soldier who came home with serious physical disabilities after a brief tour was cut short by injury. The documentary follows his every day life from the hardships of day to day tasks to his campaigning on the political trail. The examination of Bush's war, and the revelation that it might well be doing more harm than good, is nothing new. In fact, we've been inundated with such films of late. However, BODY OF WAR finds a slightly new angle to approach from (the life of the disillusioned and broken soldier compared with the process by which America ended up fighting the war to begin with) and while it might not reach any new conclusions, it at least reaches them in a fresh and insightful manner.

THE POPE'S TOILET [EL BANO DEL PAPA] is an difficult film to categorise. It's a farcical comedy. It's a heartbreaking family drama. It's a film about faith and about poverty. It's funny in places, yet sad in others.

This Uruguayan film relates the almost-true story of how a small village in the country reacted to news that the Pope was to visit them, and how people who were used to a backbreaking daily slog perceived this visit as a chance to either practice their faith or make a bit of hard cash quickly. One such entrepreneurial endeavour sees a local man plan to build a toilet, which he'll charge people to use, thus making a fortune from the expected 50000+ crowd.

As I said, sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's deadly serious - it's worth seeing, but without wishing to spoil the ending (look up the textbooks) you may have mixed emotions when the credits roll.

The last movie I took in was the closing night movie, LARS AND THE REAL GIRL, directed by Craig Gillespie and starring Ryan Gosling as a young man who has emotional issues which culminate in him ordering a life-size doll from the internet, whom he subsequently brings home to introduce to his family and friends - and gradually finds them willing to accept both his relationship and the titular "real girl".

A film about a delusional man who wants to marry a sex doll sounds like straight-up spoof material - but don't be fooled. A fresh and exciting script (deservedly Oscar nominated) handled with subtlety by the director and played totally straight by the cast all add up to one of the most moving films you'll see all year. I'm not making this up.

Gosling is brilliant and so is this film - take all your preconceptions that you've formed based on the plot outline and leave them at the door. This film is definitely not the film you are expecting, and I mean that in a good way. The film opens in the UK later this month and you'll be doing yourself a big favour if you and everyone you know go to see it.

JDIFF round-up, Part 2

THE LOOKOUT is the directorial debut of screenwriter Scott Frank, whose writing credits include GET SHORTY, OUT OF SIGHT and MINORITY REPORT. It stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Chris, a former school hockey star and all-round popular guy who, as a result of a traffic accident for which he is to blame, suffers various mental issues. His main problem is that he has trouble remembering every day tasks and details, the remedy to which is his habit of constantly writing instructions to himself in a notebook.

The supporting cast includes Jeff Daniels as Lewis, a blind man who is both friend and helper to Chris; Matthew Goode as Gary, a young man who sees the opportunity to exploit Chris while pretending to befriend him; and Isla Fisher as Luvlee, a pretty young companion of Gary's who seems to be in on whatever scam Gary is planning. The cast is the film's strongest asset.

Gordon-Levitt follows up the critically acclaimed indies MYSTERIOUS SKIN and BRICK with another role that proves he's one of the most promising young actors around (in terms of both his ability and his avoidance of the easy-money crap Hollywood would probably like him to star in); Jeff Daniels steals every scene that he appears in; Goode makes for a charismatic bad guy; and Isla Fisher does well in a role that's slightly more serious than her usual wacky oddball.

It's a satisfying thriller that takes one or two interesting twists, but never reaches the heights of convoluted cleverness that the MEMENTO-lite gimmick promises. Nevertheless, it's a satisfying thriller that will probably receive reasonable word of mouth without setting the box office alight.

Marian Quinn's Irish coming of age drama 32A concerns a quartet of young teenage girls growing up in Dublin in the seventies, with the spotlight in particular falling on young Maeve (Ailish McCarthy), as they enter that terrifying time when they're not longer little children but aren't yet women (the title of the film, in case you've not yet figured it out, is a bra reference).

In its treatment of the young girls' problems the film isn't exactly breaking any new ground - we've all seen similar movies, and as long as there are teenagers there will always be a market for such things - but its nevertheless a warm, moving and funny film with a likable cast, headed up by a promising group of young new actresses. Orla Long, Riona Smith and Sophie Jo Wasson are all great, but the film really belongs to Ailish McCarthy, whose leading turn as Maeve is truly wonderful, marking the debut of a young girl surely destined for bigger things.

Credit is also due to Quinn not just for writing and directing, but also (together with her crew) employing every trick available to recreate 1970s Dublin with a budget that would embarrass producers of more famous period films. The film is doing well on the festival circuit at the moment but I have no idea if it will score a wider release. While I can certainly see it happening in Ireland, I have my doubts as to whether or not any overseas markets will take a gamble on it. That's a real shame because despite the Irish focus, it's a universal story and one which possesses more heart and soul than a great many lesser Hollywood ventures into similar territory.

THE COTTAGE is a new comedy horror from Paul Andrew Williams, who recently scored a critical hit with LONDON TO BRIGHTON. The premise is simple - two brothers (Andy Serkis and Reece Shearsmith) kidnap a gangster's daughter (Jennifer Ellison) and hole up in a cottage in the country while their ransom plan unfolds. Alas, they are not alone...

So far, so cliched, and I'm not going to lie and tell you that this is particularly original. It's not, by any means. But if you're a fan of either horror comedies or good old fashioned gore and violence, you should enjoy it. I know I did.

Serkis makes for an amusing straight man, Ellison is competent in her role which basically requires her to swear, be violent and show some impressive cleavage and Shearsmith does that put-upon weedy kind of guy that fans of THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN will know him from. In fact, that series is probably a good indication of the kind of audience this film is aimed at - apart from the Shearsmith connection, the film has the same balance of dark comedy and unsettling horror that set the aforementioned series apart from other comedy shows.

The film offers up plenty of laughs, some genuine jump moments and some gore effects that are both gruesome and hilarious. The film is released in the UK on March 14th, and you could do a lot worse if you're looking for a fun night.

Which is not what I'd say about the final film I saw at the Dublin festival. When Nick Broomfield applied his years of documentary film experience to a documentary-fiction hybrid approach in the film GHOSTS (showing his take on the events which lead to a group of Chinese immigrants drowning off the coast of Morecambe), which I saw at a festival in Brighton, I wasn't particularly enamoured with it. His follow-up, BATTLE FOR HADITHA, employs the same technique on an unpleasant incident in the Iraq war and, I'm pleased to say, is a better film.

Broomfield treats all characters equally - the film suggests what may have happened when a group of American soldiers are alleged to have killed several Iraqi civilians in retaliation after falling victim to a roadside bomb, but there are no real heroes or villains in the piece. Given his association with documentary film and the fact that he has clearly gone out of his way to make this look like a documentary, you could argue that the film is perhaps slightly irresponsible; on the other hand, it expects a certain intelligence of its audience, who should know better. Whichever side of the fence you fall on, there's no denying it's a powerful film and one of the better attempts that movies have made to address this conflict recently.

That marks the end of my Dublin coverage, but I'll be back soon to conclude my coverage of the films I saw at the Glasgow Film Festival.

JDIFF round-up, Part 1

Only about a week late, which must be some kind of punctuality record for me, here's a brief round-up of what I saw at this year's Jameson Dublin International Film Festival.

I started with MUTUM, a Brazilian film about a little boy who doesn't do very much. Nick James, in his editorial in the latest issue of Sight & Sound, wrote about the emergence of this new form of cinema which I think he referred to as the "cinema of inconsequence" or something like that (I think his term was a little longer, but I've left my copy lying elsewhere so I can't check). Anyway, what he called it isn't what's important here, I just thought I'd take another opportunity to point out how much I dislike it.

It's another of these films in which not much happens, people don't do or say very much, cameras linger on uninteresting people for what seems like an eternity and the idea of adding a score that consists of anything other than the noises of crickets is firmly off-limits. I've seen a few films in this style now and I've never seen one yet that hasn't been a chore to sit through. I have always conducted myself against the misguided idea that I will never walk out of the cinema before the end credits of a movie, but the emergence of this banal new form of cinema is giving me cause to think that maybe I should reconsider. Avoid this film.

Things picked up a little with the Estonian movie KLASS [THE CLASS], a tale of a bullied school pupil and the retribution he delivers when he teams up with the one pupil who has defended him. Unfolding in chapters, each chapter sees the anger bubbling further towards to the surface until finally a particularly disgusting incident sets up an unflinching finale.

It's ironic that one of the best films I saw last year was the Australian drama 2:37, which also dealt with a high school tragedy and the build up to it and also happened to viewed by me at the Dublin festival. KLASS never quite reaches the power of that movie but isn't far off; 2:37 benefited from a melancholic tone that haunted the whole movie, while KLASS in comparison overuses contemporary music and flashy editing to turn it into more of a "youth" movie, an effect that is a little jarring in places and not really suited to the tone of the film in my humble opinion.

The next film I saw was U2 3D. Not the premiere which the band showed up at mind you, which you'll have seen in the press probably, but the repeat showing later at night. I like a lot of their music (without actually owning any of it) so was approaching the film more as a film fan than as a casual fan of U2. Nevertheless I left impressed.

It's become trendy to lay into Bono for a variety of reasons in recent years, but this film will leave you in no doubt that for all his pomp and preening, Mr Hewson and the rest of the band are still among the best live performers on the planet. The songs are as good or as bad as you know them to be, depending on your taste; the spectacle is impressive; and the digital 3D is stunning. With apologies for resorting to cliches, it really is the next best thing to being there (the concert was part of their recent South American tour). It was a little too much like being there for some people mind you as I ended up sat next to the one person who wanted to sing along with every song - badly, unfortunately - but it was still a highlight.

As was the next film on my list. LA RAGAZZA DEL LAGO [THE GIRL BY THE LAKE] is a new Italian film starring Toni Servillo (star of the fantastic THE CONSEQUENCES OF LOVE) as a police officer investigating a murder in a small rural town. There are various spanners thrown into the works - the victim appears not to have struggled, for a start - that keep the viewer guessing, and it all plays out against the backdrop of some beautiful scenery and a haunting atmosphere not unlike the similarly themed opening episodes of TWIN PEAKS. Servillo is terrific once again - marginally more emotional than he was in THE CONSEQUENCES OF LOVE - and around his performance is anchored a film that should surely garner some positive reaction whenever it hits the art house circuit.

The next film would have been MISTER LONELY but alas that screening had to be rescheduled, so I went for some food instead. If you ever find yourself looking for food in the Temple Bar area of Dublin, Fitzers make the best burger ever.

But enough for now. I'll finish my thoughts on what I saw at Dublin next time, including Irish movie 32A, Hollywood thriller THE LOOKOUT, Iraq war movie BATTLE FOR HADITHA and new British horror-comedy THE COTTAGE.