From the opening scene, in which lead character Swanson (Tim Heidecker) describes in detail the effects of an anal prolapse before insulting the sexuality of the male nurse whose job it is to take care of his barely breathing invalid father, Rick Alverson’s new film does everything it can to be as aggressively alienating as humanly possible. An ugly tale of a fat, over-privileged, middle-aged New York hipster stuck in the most dismal form of self-pitying arrested development, the title of the film is proclaimed in an apathetic opening credits sequence that reflects the cynical outlook of its protagonist. Whether The Comedy is an ironic name for the movie is debatable – it’s sometimes funny just as it’s sometimes repugnant. Most of the time, it’s both.

Overweight, directionless and unrepentantly dickish, Swanson, had the film had more money, might have been played by Zach Galifianakis. Instead he’s played by Tim Heidecker, famous for being one half of cult comedy duo “Tim & Eric” on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. Assured in his finances thanks to an inheritance he’ll receive from his wealthy father once the old man kicks the bucket, Swanson spends most of his daylights hours drinking in the homes of his equally pathetic and repulsive friends, and most of his moonlight hours drinking alone in bars, or on the small yacht that serves as him home. The rest of the time, he wanders aimless through a world that has long grown tired of his once invigorating screw the system attitude.

With dialogue entirely improvised by its underground comic cast, The Comedy sets out to challenge notions of what can qualify for the title that it itself so sneeringly wears. These days especially, comedy is increasingly about breaking taboos; about asking what gross, horrifying, and amoral thing can be done or said to shock the audience next. Consider last years smash sequel hit The Hangover Part II,  which set a new high – or low, depending on how you look at it – for depravity in Hollywood comedies when one of its lead characters, played by Ed Helms, is revealed to have been anally raped by a transvestite hooker. Deeply disturbing, yet it’s an involuntary sodomy that scored enough stunned laughs to generate over $580 million at the worldwide box office.

The difference between Hangover director Todd Phillips and Alverson (well, one of many differences) is that Alverson doesn’t try to make it funny. Ratchet up the insanity, have your actors scream a lot, and throw in a few denim wearing, cigarette smoking monkeys, and suddenly the Polaroid images of Phil, Stu and Alan banging strippers and snorting coke is hilarious. But show Swanson and buddies sitting silently on a couch watching a slideshow of family photos intercut with pornography – presumably because they think that kind of thing is funny – and you suddenly realise how sad and embarrassing this kind of behaviour is.

Swanson himself flies in the face of conventional comedic leads, despite the fact that at first glance he fits perfectly into the slacker-who-redeems-himself mould — currently personified by Seth Rogen — who audiences grow to love. With Swanson, however, while you’re meant to occasionally laugh and frequently cringe at his antics (which include chanting in gibberish during a church service and hypothesising on his sister-in-laws oral sex technique to her face), you are never meant to love him. And you won’t. At one point Alverson hints at a salvation of sorts through the introduction of a love interest, only to pull the rug out from under us in the film’s most disturbing scene, in which Swanson’s behaviour sinks to new and wholly more despicable depths.

Of course on the flip side of all this, The Comedy actually succeeds as a comedy (albeit one with an extraordinarily niche appeal). While you will certainly feel contempt for these characters, their conversations, if not so much their actions, are, in my opinion, frequently and genuinely funny. And when all is said and done, by what other measure should you judge a film with a name like this?

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The Comedy was reviewed as part of our coverage of the 41^st International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).

You can read all of Tom Clift’s coverage of the festival here.

Kotoko (IFFR Review)

Still Life [Stillleben] (IFFR Review)

Alps (IFFR Review)

Ace Attorney (IFFR Review)

When the Lights Went Out (IFFR Review)

If I eschew traditional film reviewing conventions here, it’s because the work I’m reviewing isn’t really a film at all. One of the features of the “Signals: For Real” section at this year’s International Film Festival of Rotterdam – a programme designed to challenge and subvert the ways viewers think about cinema – Soundtrackcity Rotterdam is in a lot of ways more like an audiobook than a movie – although it isn’t really much like an audiobook either. A forty-five minute walk accompanied by a specifically composed soundtrack, the idea behind the project is to get viewers – that is, listeners – in a different headspace. In the case of The Hive, it’s the headspace Korean actress Choi Jin-sil, who committed suicide after extensive online harassment. While the projects very conceit does in some way limit its success, my participation in Soundtrackcity Rotterdam was a memorable and thought-provoking experience.

Crafted by Dutch film journalist Jereon Stout and composer Jan-Bas Bollen, The Hive – one of four different walks at the IFFR – mixes music, ambient sound and narration in order to recount the story of Choi Jin-sil. A popular actress in South Korean film and television Choi Jin-sil became the centre of a feverish tabloid controversy when she was accused of being involved in the suicide of another actor. Having already been the victim of one media scandal after accusing her ex-husband of domestic abuse in 2004, the bombardment of rumours become too much for Jin-sil to handle. On October 2^nd 2008, she killed herself by hanging.

The experience of Soundtrackcity begins somewhat surreally. Given a map and an iPod, I was sent off to wander the chilly streets of Rotterdam in the dead of night. The Hive is set primarily by the waterfront, which makes for a beautiful sight when lit up by the lights of the city. As you walk, the “narrative” begins to unfold, as pair of female voices – one an actress playing Jin-sil, the other player a friend – converse back and forth as if via email. As the walk continues away from the river and down darkened streets, the story too takes a darker turn. Jin-sil’s voice grows increasing frantic, as do the whispers of hundreds of others, accusing her of being a monster, a liar and a slut. Eventually even her friend starts to believe the gossip, as the map lead me back to the river for the stories tragic and inevitable conclusion.

What fascinates most about Soundtrackcity is how it alters the idea of the “viewer” experience. Environmental factors can affect a film screening – for example, one cinema might have a better sound system than another, while a movie can be ruined by inconsiderate patrons whispering, texting or chewing their popcorn too loudly. But with Soundtrackcity, the variables are far more numerous, and can render far more disparate results. Everything from participant walking speed to weather conditions affects ones experience; had I embarked on the walk just a few days later, I would have been trekking through ice and snow.

The artists do make great use of concept. When characters make reference to buildings across the river, the effect is surprisingly potent. An atmosphere of paranoia is cultivated by mentions of eyes that might be watching from high-rise windows, while the sound of artificial footsteps had me glancing behind myself on more than one occasion. Yet the live-ness is also the projects weakness. At a key moment in the story, I happened to be walking along a main road, and the sound of the traffic drowned out the voices emanating from my headphones. Participants have the option to pause and rewind, but that only further pulls one out of the immersion.

Soundtrackcity may not really qualify as cinema. There’s no screen, no projector, no camera and, perhaps most pertinently, no way to replicate the exact experience, especially for those who live outside of Rotterdam. Regardless, the project is a remarkable experiment, and one I very much appreciated being a part of.

Room 514 (IFFR Review)

38 Witnesses [38 Témoins] (IFFR Review)

Kotoko (IFFR Review)

IFFR Shorts Programme

Ace Attorney (IFFR Review)

Rather uncomfortably, I’m typing this article from 40000ft in the air, approximately 15000km from home and with the glow of Moscow emanating through my plane window. I’m on my way to Berlin, you see, and since my postcard of a TV monitor has decided to shut down on me – perhaps it was just as fed up playing the Daniel Craig thriller Dream House as I was watching it? – I’ve got nothing better to do than to tell you why I’m heading to the land of the lederhosen.

This being a film site, the obvious answer would be that I’m attending the 62^nd Berlinale, the renowned film festival that showcases some of the finest international films of the new year before Cannes shows up and takes all the credit. But that’s only part of the reason. Coinciding with the festival is the 10^th Berlinale Talent Campus, a yearly event in which young and upcoming filmmakers are invited to Berlin to participate in a week of lectures, workshops and networking events led by industry professionals such as Werner Herzog, Mike Leigh, Keanu Reeves and many others. The Campus also invites a handful of burgeoning film critics to hone their craft under the mentorship of professional film writers, and after applying late last year, I was among the lucky few accepted to attend. That’s why I’m currently on a plane to Berlin, where I will be tutored on how to be a better film writer, as well as how to survive as a film critic in a world where film critics are not surviving. There aren’t many initiatives out there supporting the endangered art of film criticism, so I feel very fortune to be a part of one that does.

So now all I have to do is get there (preferably in one piece thanks QANTAS). I’m excited, nervous, tired and a little bit annoyed by the people casually trying to read what I’m typing whilst they queue in the aisle for the toilet.  (Yes you, gentleman in the blue shirt!) Still, ‘excited’ is certainly the prevailing emotion. I can’t wait to see what treasures Berlin has in store; I’m told it’s one of the most happening places on the planet, although given how bloody cold it is this time of year, I imagine that’s partly because you’ll freeze to death if you ever stand still!

If time permits, I plan to catch a few films playing at the festival and review them for this here website, but given that time will most likely not be very permitting, don’t be surprised if I don’t.  Besides, you can always re-read Tom Clift’s excellent coverage of the Rotterdam International Film Festival if you’re itching to know what’s happening on the festival circuit.

Ok, I’ve just been given that look from the person seated in front of me that says they want to recline their chair, so unless I want a laptop to the pancreas, I best be off. Auf Wiedersehen!

Room 514 (IFFR Review)

Portable Film Festival 2008

Alps (IFFR Review)

Cannes diary: Wednesday May 18th (Day Three)

Our picks of the 2012 Rotterdam International Film Festival (IFFR)

Any ghost story that claims to be “based on a true story” is already fighting an uphill battle, but when it’s as middling and generic as Pat Holden’s When the Lights Went Out, it’s even easier to dismiss. A stock standard haunted house story, the film follows an English family who experience paranormal disturbances upon settling in to a new home. Although not entirely lacking in creepy images or suspense, When the Lights When Out comes across for the most part as little more than a pale, timid and generally unscary reflection of the more iconic genre entries – Poltergeist, The Exorcist – which it somewhat unavoidably copies.

Pointing a mirror somewhere in the direction of the economic crisis of today, When the Lights Went Out takes place in Yorkshire, England in the early nineteen seventies, a period where the country was stricken by black-outs as a result of industrial strikes, and (implied) financial difficulty has seen the Maynard family – father Len (Steven Waddington; TVs Robin Hood), mother Jenny (Kate Ashfield; Shaun of the Dead), and moody thirteen year-old daughter Sally (Tasha Connor) – forced to move to another house. Soon after arriving in their new home, Sally begins to suspect that they are not alone – a suspicion that is largely confirmed when a grandfather clock goes hurting down the stairs, pushed by an invisible hand.

To Holden’s credit, the film doesn’t linger in the no-one-believes-the-little-girl stage for very long. But even when her parents get in on the supernatural action, their apparent ambivalence to it all makes very little sense. This is one of those movies where the passing of time doesn’t seem to match up with the behaviour of the characters; the haunting goes on sporadically for what must be weeks, yet it takes the Maynards almost the entire movie before they try and do something about it. Meanwhile, the reason eventually given for the haunting is extraordinarily bland, and the manner in which it is revealed is likewise unimaginative.

Holden’s direction is competently glossy, but he frequently relies on the most basic genre clichés – doors that won’t open, ghostly figures in reflective surfaces – to generate only a the most meagre level of unease. Admittedly, the performances are solid, especially from the young ladies Connor and newcomer Hannah Clifford as Sally’s only friend Lucy. The other impressive thing about the film is its really terrific period detail; Holden’s production design team have done a fabulous job recreating the hairstyles, clothing and hideous (by today’s standards) décor of seventies living, providing the film with a genuine sense of time and of place.

But avocado wallpaper and cigarette-smoking housewives are not enough to recommend a movie, especially when it’s meant to be a scary one. As a horror film, When the Lights Go Out is both sub-par and derivative, and never is this more apparent than in its “one final scare” ending that is simultaneously cheap, predictable and completely nonsensical. Although we’ve seen this story done worse – the recent Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark springs to mind – we’ve also seen it done a lot better.

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When the Lights went Out was reviewed as part of our coverage of the 41^st International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).

You can read all of Tom Clift’s coverage of the festival here.

Room 514 (IFFR Review)

Kotoko (IFFR Review)

38 Witnesses [38 Témoins] (IFFR Review)

Alps (IFFR Review)

Still Life [Stillleben] (IFFR Review)

A gangster movie out of Iceland, Black’s Game [Svartur-Leik] was executive produced by Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn. As such, comparisons to his recent Drive — the best film of last year — are inevitable and perhaps not unwarranted. Both films are unashamed in their attempts to make every frame as cool as humanly possible. But while Drive employed ice-cold restraint and was a success, Black’s Game goes the opposite direction, and fails rather spectacularly as a result. Stealing plot and technique from far superior crime films including (but not limited to) Run Lola Run, Goodfellas, Refn’s own Pusher trilogy and the combined filmographies of Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino, Black’s Game is a spastic blur of violence, drug use, frenzied editing and plagiarism.

The film begins with a title card that reads “inspired by some shit that actually happened”. It’s not clear whether this is a reference to real life or just the movies that first time writer/director Óskar Thór Axelsson borrows heavily from – in any case, the plot of the film largely follows the rise of inexperienced gangster Stebbi (Thorvaldur David Kristjansson) in the Icelandic drug trade in the months before the new millennium. The script peddles in all the typical clichés, from Stebbi’s induction by a charismatic thug (Johannes Haukur Johannesson), his ill-fated tryst with a lascivious blonde (María Birta, a dead ringer for Elisha Cuthbert), an inevitable addiction to the narcotics he peddles, and his eventual downfall brought about by the increasing erratic and violent behaviour of the gangs half-psychotic leader (a very creepy Damon Younger).

It’s fitting that Axelsson set his film at the tail end of the 1990s, since every directorial decision he makes feels like it’s been inspired by the legions of post-Tarantino knock-offs that arrived in cinemas at the same time that Pulp Fiction posters were replacing images of Scarface as the number one accessory on college dorm walls. Split screens, freeze frames and jump cuts all abound; particularly galling moments of thievery include a near exact recreation of the famous helicopter sequence (minus the helicopter) from Goodfellas, and a scene in which characters name-drop The Godfather even as Axelsson imitates Tarantino’s signature “trunk-shot”.

Indeed, so unashamed is this films re-appropriation that one could generously read it as a kind of Super 8-style tribute. Although if that were the case, Axelsson should have waited another twenty or so years, until this kind filmmaking seemed quaint and nostalgic, rather than just really, really outdated. That said, there’s a reason that this approach was popular. As derivative as it is, there’s an inherent energy to the films style that makes it impossible to be totally unengaged. But given that it’s shameless mimicry of genre conventions means you know exactly where the story is going anyway, I’d personally rather sit back on the couch and rewatch Snatch on DVD.

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Black’s Game was reviewed as part of our coverage of the 41^st International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).

You can read all of Tom Clift’s coverage of the festival here.

Room 514 (IFFR Review)

Ace Attorney (IFFR Review)

Kotoko (IFFR Review)

When the Lights Went Out (IFFR Review)

38 Witnesses [38 Témoins] (IFFR Review)

“All it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing”. Never has this famous saying been truer than in the case of the brutal stabbing murder of Kitty Genovese in New York in 1964, a crime that occurred within earshot of thirty-eight people, none of whom lifted a finger to prevent it. A grim indictment of human cowardice and apathy, the case has been referenced and recreated in numerous forms of media, most recently in the film 38 Witnesses [38 Témoins], which opened this year International Film Festival of Rotterdam. Belgian director Lucas Belvaux has a strong eye, and his cold visual aesthetic compliments the bleakness of the subject matter. Unfortunately, the script’s underdeveloped characters and over reliance on tiresome relationship drama ensures that 38 Witnesses never really manages to compel.

In the early hours of the morning, a young woman is murdered in the lobby of her apartment. The movie begins just afterwards, as the police arrive to cordon off the street and interview the surrounding neighbours, who all claim to have seen and heard nothing. Their investigation soon stalls, as does that of a hard-nosed reporter (Nicole Garcia), despte being convinced that there’s more to the crime than initially meets the eye. It’s only when introverted harbour pilot Pierre (Yvan Attal) admits to his girlfriend Louise (Sophie Quinto) that he heard screaming but did not call the police that a whole new insidious element to the crime is revealed, one that implicates thirty-eight people in the death of an innocent woman.

Belvaux’s shooting style, especially in the opening and closing sections of the film, does a wonderful job of building an atmosphere of cynicism. His cold crisp cinematography recalls the serial killer films of David Fincher, and the change in setting – from sixties era New York to present day in the French industrial port city of La Havre – leads to imagery that only contributes to the sense of gloom and melancholy. The score, dominated by single twanging guitar chords, does likewise.

Sadly, as the story starts to unravel, the audience finds themselves increasingly involved in the lives of characters they have little reason to care about. As Louise struggles with indecision about her relationship, it leads to argument after argument about what Pierre did, or rather, what he did not do. Obviously audience members are meant to ask themselves what they would do in the situation, but the scripts constant in-your-face moralising quickly becomes off-putting. We don’t care whether Pierre and Louise breakup; similarly, the investigation of the journalist holds little interest because she’s simply not an interesting character.

At a certain point it looks as though 38 Witnesses is going to change direction and focus on who actually committed the killing. Thankfully it resists this urge, and instead delivers one of the most fantastic closing sequences in recent memory, in which the witnesses are forced to re-experience the horrors of their inaction. But even that isn’t enough to resuscitate one’s interest entirely. There are compelling questions at the centre of this film. Unfortunately, they’re wrapped in a lot of teary shouting and unexciting melodrama.

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38 Witnesses was reviewed as part of our coverage of the 41^st International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).

You can read all of Tom Clift’s coverage of the festival here.

Room 514 (IFFR Review)

Still Life [Stillleben] (IFFR Review)

Ace Attorney (IFFR Review)

Alps (IFFR Review)

When the Lights Went Out (IFFR Review)

If ever there was a movie made for movie critics, it is Hugo. Directed by Martin Scorsese (Shutter Island), the film, based on the children’s book by Brian Selznick, is on its surface a bright and colourful 3D fantasy about a Parisian orphan boy in the 1930s, whose friendship with the granddaughter of an enigmatic toy-shop owner yields secrets about his own relationship with his father. But peel back that layer and what you’ll find is a love letter: a love letter to early cinema and one of its foremost pioneers; a love letter that has been immediately embraced by a critical community who have fallen head over heels with the pictures reverence for an art-form – movies – that they themselves also revere. In the face of such earnest and unabashed celluloidal enthusiasm, it’s perhaps understandable that those same critics have failed to recognise one thing. On some very basic levels, Hugo just isn’t very good.

It’s an easy mistake to make. Indeed, opening shot – which begins amidst the whirring cogs of a gigantic clock which then slowly fade to reveal the lights of Paris by night – is so utterly breathtaking that it alone might be enough to permanently dumbfound the less discerning. In the same singular take, Scorsese’s camera zooms through the streets and across the bustling halls of Gare Montparnasse railway station before settling on another clock-face. And behind this clock-face lives Hugo (Asa Butterfield; The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas). Once the son of a clockmaker (Jude Law; Contagion), the sudden death of his father in a museum fire left Hugo orphaned, with nothing to remind him of his old life other than a human sized mechanical figure – called an Automaton – the he hopes might contain a message from his father.

What surprises most about Hugo is how lacking it is in both stakes and momentum. Despite the fact that our hero spends a lot of time running from the cruel-hearted station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen; Bruno), there is hardly any sense of peril to this film, and zero sense of conflict. When the secret of the automation is eventually uncovered, the story swings abruptly off in another direction, resulting in awkward pacing problems and a climax that feels forced and underwhelming. All the while, the unrelated exploits of minor characters – such as the romance between a café-owner and her chubby patron – recalls Amélie so distinctly that it would be distracting even if I wasn’t one of the few people on earth who considers that movie overrated as well.

As Hugo himself, Asa Butterfield’s line delivery is stilted and awkward; as the wide-eyed owner of a heart-shaped key that will bring the automation to life, Chloe Grace Moretz is even more disappointing. After three times impressing us as girls wise far beyond their years in Kick-Ass, Let Me In and (500) Days of Summer, perhaps she’s just not capable of simply acting her age? But neither child is as cringe-worthy as Sacha Baron Cohen, whose high-voiced performance – meant to be funny – is quite simply unbearable to watch. Ben Kingsley (Shutter Island) on the other hand plays the toy-shop owner, an elderly man whose past is connected to the birth of an art form, with a quite sadness and dignity. The other highlight is Michael Stuhlbarg (A Serious Man) who enters the picture in its second half as an enthusiastic film historian whose presence is vastly endearing.

Eventually — spoiler alert! — Hugo is revealed to be a movie about the birth and history of movies themselves, and particularly the work of Georges Méliès, the silent film pioneer. Unfortunately Scorsese – so caught up in his adoration of Méliès – wades far too deep into romanticism. Time and time again characters speak about the magic and wonder of going to the movies, to the point that the effect becomes diminishing – self sabotaging even. Similarly, as much as I, a student of cinema, enjoy catching glimpses of classic films like The Great Train Robbery and Trip to the Moon when they flash across the screen, they don’t serve a whole lot of narrative point. Indeed, the second half of Hugo frequently feels less like a story and more like a lesson in film history.

Scorsese regains some ground with his visual filmmaking. Hugo is by far the directors most CG laden project to date, and new technologies have allowed him to craft some absolutely sumptuous images: alongside the opening, a time lapse shot of a building disintegrating under the elements is one of the most memorable sequences of the year. Unfortunately, it is diminished by the 3D. People have called this the best use of live-action 3D since Avatar, and they’re right. But it doesn’t matter. I will repeat this mantra until the day that I die: 3D filmmaking does not replicate how the eye sees three dimensions. 3D films look less like reality than 2D films. With the exception of certain animations, 3D films are NEVER WORTH PAYING FOR.

As I wrote in my review of this years likely best picture winner The Artist, 2011 may well be remembered as the year that Hollywood’s obsession with its own history reached new and unprecedented heights. Movies about movies are in vogue at the moment, although the disastrous box-office takings of this film suggest that viewers don’t care for the trend in the same way that critics and filmmakers do. In any case, where films like The Artist, Super 8 and even Hobo with a Shotgun all trump Hugo is in their narrative. Those films all pay tribute to a style of cinema – be it silent movies, Spielberg movies or gory, nasty Grindhouse movies – that their directors love and cherish. But they also tell a compelling story. Hugo simply does not. Scorsese’s latest is well-meaning nostalgia, but hollow.

Competition: Win HUGO tix + the bestseller it’s based on!

The Artist (Review)

The 10 Best Films of 2011

New Movie Releases 30/09/10: Dinner for Schmucks, Legend of the Guardians

Our picks of the 2012 Rotterdam International Film Festival (IFFR)

In the back of an ambulance, a paramedic tries to keep a critically injured car-crash victim talking. He asks her name, and if she has any siblings. At first it seems like he’s just trying to help her remain conscious, but then his questions grow more obscure and personal. It’s just one of many early clues in Alps that something in this world is seriously amiss. This new film from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos shares many similarities his previous Oscar nominated feature Dogtooth, the least of which is an obscure title that offers no information about the road of social and moral dysfunction that viewers will soon be travelling. A film of carefully muted tone and technique, Alps unwinds with the same slow tension and detached absurdity of its predecessor.

While the conceit is not immediately apparent – it takes several scenes like the one already mentioned before you piece things together entirely – Alps is about a group of four people – a paramedic, a nurse, a gymnast and her trainer – who offer their services to grieving families as fill-ins for recently deceased loved-ones. For a small fee they’ll be your daughter, your father, your wife. They’ll watch TV with you, hold your hand, tell you they love you. Of course while it takes a certain amount of despair to consider hiring an “alp”, it pales in comparison to the psychological issues it takes to be one. As conflicts within the group start to surface, the distinction between their actions and flat-out prostitution becomes increasingly difficult to make out.

The four key cast members, including and especially Dogtooth carry-over Aggeliki Papoulia, do an excellent job playing characters who, ironically enough, are pretty terrible actors. Watching the group members awkwardly attempt to fill the shoes of a sixteen year old tennis prodigy or a husband of fifty years is ludicrously unconvincing, and frequent tongue-in-cheek references to Hollywood actors and movies only highlights this fact. Whether it’s parents asking their “daughter” about her day, or a lamp salesman re-enacting the end of his marriage with a happier ending, comedy and tragedy are two sides of the same coin in a Lanthimos production, and are communicated with the exact same deadpan indifference.

With its somewhat lethargic pace and consciously alienating premise, Alps will not be for everybody. But the direction – tiresome out-of-focus backgrounds aside – also creates some fantastic scenes of uncomfortable suspense. A single moment of violence is timed for perfect effectiveness, while the climax blends the bleak and bleakly comedic with incredible skill. Given its obvious tonal similarities to Dogtooth, one wonders if this film is meant as a part two in a surreal, depressive thematic trilogy. Fingers crossed.

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Alps was reviewed as part of our coverage of the 41^st International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).

You can read all of Tom Clift’s coverage of the festival here.

Still Life [Stillleben] (IFFR Review)

Room 514 (IFFR Review)

Kill List (IFFR Review)

38 Witnesses [38 Témoins] (IFFR Review)

When the Lights Went Out (IFFR Review)

In Tetsuo: The Iron Man, a man’s penis turns into a power-drill while having sex with his wife. She’s into it. In the sequel, Body Hammer, a man’s arm ruptures and transforms into a gun, which he then uses to shoot his infant child. Japan’s answer to David Cronenberg (The Fly), the films of Shinya Tsukamoto have always been horrifically confronting. But his latest outing – Kotoko – deals less with corruption of the body than it does with corruption of the mind. Which is not to say it is any less hideous or bizarre. Exactly like its protagonist, with whom the movie shares its name, Kotoko is insane. Wild, beautiful, random, intense, surreal, suffocating, confusing, funny, disgusting, upsetting… and completely and utterly mad.

In a nerve-wracking performance, Japanese singer Cocco plays the title role of Kotoko, a frail, mentally disturbed single mother who hallucinates about strangers attacking her, and fantasizes about dropping her baby son off of a roof. It’s not long before social services take the child away from her, leaving her to descend even further into madness and mistrust. Yet in spite of her insanity, love is not off the cards for Kotoko: a famous novelist, played with adorable persistence by director Shinya Tsukamoto himself, soon begins to seek her hand in marriage.

Truthfully, Kotoko barely has a plot. Not much actually occurs in the film, and what does makes very little sense. Tsukamoto, who writes, directs, produces, acts and edits, is aiming more to cultivate an atmosphere; a kind of Black Swan style intensity that captures the total chaos of his heroine’s brain. In that he is successful. His frantic camerawork, editing and sound-design overwhelm the senses, while tranquil interludes accompanied by children’s music box music or the sound of Kotoko singing only increase the audiences suspicions that they themselves are going crazy.

The film has no discernible genre either. Kotoko is frequently violent and disturbing, yet at other moments it’s downright hilarious (in the darkest of ways, mind you). But what’s most surprising is how touching it is. When Kotoko is given permission to visit her son, now living happily in the care of her sister, their interactions are heartbreaking. The interplay between her and her suitor, meanwhile, almost resemble that of a romantic screwball comedy… if Katherine Hepburn repeatedly stabbed Cary Grant with a fork, that is.

One criticism of Kotoko is that, even at only ninety-one minutes, it feels a bit too long. The film is a weird and wonderful assault on sense and sensibility alike, but the mind can only take so much, and the last fifteen minutes could have been cut entirely without any real damage to the story (what story?). Even so, as an exercise in madness, Kotoko is kind of incredible.

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Kotoko was reviewed as part of our coverage of the 41^st International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).

You can read all of Tom Clift’s coverage of the festival here.

Ace Attorney (IFFR Review)

When the Lights Went Out (IFFR Review)

Still Life [Stillleben] (IFFR Review)

The Comedy (IFFR Review)

Room 514 (IFFR Review)

In Room 514, a young, idealistic military investigator tries to get to the bottom of alleged abuses of Palestinian civilians by a decorated Israeli commander. A minimalist low-budget drama set largely in the eponymous interrogation room, the picture is earnest in its attempts to explore the difficult issues it raises, and is at times compelling in its storytelling. But the ugly camera-work and unpolished script are such a constant hindrance, and make the movie impossible to recommend.

Room 514 is the first film from writer/director Sharon Bar-Ziv, and unfortunately, it shows. The central conflict of his script is really engaging, especially thanks to a determined performance from lead actress Asa Neifeld, and a terrific supporting turn from Udi Persi as the soldier she is interrogating. But the cinematography is unforgivably poor. Bar-Ziv jitters and wobbles his handheld camera – always uncomfortably close to the actor’s faces – in a typically misguided attempt to add realism and grit. He’d have been better off just sitting the thing on a tripod and letting the actors do the heavy lifting.

With only a handful of locations and half a dozen actors to work with, it’s obvious that the limited budget informed the script and has restricted Bar-Ziv’s ability to dive more deeply into the issues he is trying to explore. Instead, he offers up a boring subplot involving Anna’s sexual affair with her engaged superior officer, a thread which does little more than pad out the runtime, and inadvertently kill any momentum that the central conflict might have been gathering. The same is true of the seemingly random black-and-white cut away sequences of Anna in private (eventually revealed to be part of an ending that feels tacked on and redundant).

Although not without its strengths, Room 514 ultimately suffers due, mostly, to lack of money and experience. Other movies – Park Chan-Wook’s phenomenal Joint Security Area, for example – have done this concept better. As have most police shows.

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Room 514 was reviewed as part of our coverage of the 41^st International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).

You can read all of Tom Clift’s coverage of the festival here.

Joint Security Area [2000] (KOFFIA Review)

Kill List (IFFR Review)

Alps (IFFR Review)

Clip [Klip] (IFFR Review)

38 Witnesses [38 Témoins] (IFFR Review)

Prolific Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike is best known for ultra-violent, controversy-sparking pictures including Audition, Ichi the Killer and last year’s 13 Assassins. His most recent film, however, might be most readily described as a family comedy, based on a popular Nintendo video game called “Pheonix Wright: Ace Attorney”. Well, as it turns out, when it comes to Miike I’ll take bloody over funny every time. Goofy without being amusing, loud without being exciting, and arduously long without any reason to be so, Ace Attorney is completely intolerable, from start to painfully-protracted finish.

Narimiya Hiroki stars as Phoenix Wright, a low on the totem-pole defence attorney called up to the big leagues when he signs on to defend a young woman he believes has been wrongfully accused of murdering her sister, a woman who was also his colleague. As it turns out, this is only the first of several trials that make up Ace Attorney’s two hour and fifteen minute runtime – after going head to head with Phoenix in round one, star prosecutor Miles Edgeworth (Takumi Saito) also finds himself on the stand for murder. As things progress, it slowly becomes clear that all the killings are somehow connected to a cold case from more than fifteen years ago, which Phoenix must solve in order to clear the names of his clients.

It’s likely that some of the appeal of Ace Attorney lies in its cultural roots. There is a distinctly Japanese flavour to the movie, and from the over-the-top character mannerisms to the increasingly ludicrous hairdos, Ace Attorney frequently resembles a live action anime, manga or video game. Some audiences might find the pictures unabashed silliness endearing or entertaining, but from my perspective – a Westerner with no familiarity with the source material – the total absurdity of the picture almost immediately begins to grate. Wright himself goes from incompetent to legal genius then back to incompetent without a seconds notice, while minor comic characters, with names like Larry Butz and Dick Gumshoe (he’s a detective, get it?) stay excruciating useless throughout.

Miike is an extremely talented filmmaker, and occasional moments throughout the film – a shot here, a sequence there – reflect this fact. But that only makes Ace Attorney all the more baffling. Was this a passion projects of his, or did he simply do it for the paycheck? And why, for the love of all that is good and holy, is this movie over two hours long? At least comparable American “comedies”  like Zookeeper or Jack & Jill  (yes, it’s that bad) have the decency to keep things close to ninety minutes.

A lot of Miike’s movies feature torture. Watching Ace Attorney is torture. Avoid at all costs.

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Ace Attorney was reviewed as part of our coverage of the 41^st International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).

You can read all of Tom Clift’s coverage of the festival here.

Kotoko (IFFR Review)

The Lincoln Lawyer (Review)

13 Assassins (MIFF Review)

Still Life [Stillleben] (IFFR Review)

38 Witnesses [38 Témoins] (IFFR Review)

The Wicker Man by way of Pulp Fiction, Kill List does not go where you expect it to. Shot on an indie-film budget by sophomore director Ben Wheatley’s (whose debut film Down Terrace garnered considerable acclaim), the film follows two contract killers driving around the English country-side with a list of people they’ve been hired to rub out. But mysterious things are afoot, and soon the mission takes a nightmarish left turn. Smartly written, acutely acted, with a surreal atmosphere and some deliciously grizzly visuals, this is a smart and sinister concoction that comes out of the oven as one of the most fascinating thrillers of the past few years.

Jay (Neil Maskell; The Football Factory) doesn’t want to go back to work. Eight months after a traumatizing “incident” in Kiev, he’d rather spend time at home with his seven year old son, or work on installing a Jacuzzi in his backyard. But his wife Shel – a beautiful, fiery Swede (MyAnna Buring; The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn) – says they need the money, and she’s right. Unlike most films of this ilk, Shel knows what Jay has to do to earn a living. This idealistic family, like this film, is not what it appears. A dinner party with Jay’s old colleague Gal (Michael Smiley; Burke & Hare) – a good humoured Irishman – turns hostile when the issue of work arises. But it’s enough to prompt Jay to go back on the road, taking a job that Gal nonchalantly refers to as “nothing too strenuous”.

“Nothing too strenuous” turns out to be assassinating three people – a priest, a librarian and an M.P. Yet for Jay and Gal, it really isn’t that big a deal. Like Pulp Fiction’s Jules and Vincent, or Ken and Ray from 2008s phenomenal In Bruges, these two go about their business with calm professionalism, keeping themselves entertained in the interim with highly amusing banter. Minimalist and clever, the script is credited to Wheatly and Amy Jump, with additional dialogue “by the cast”. Maskell and Smiley have fantastic chemistry, and their naturalistic improvisation lends the picture an authentic feel that sticks around even as their missionbecomes increasingly bizarre.

But amidst the laughter, Wheatly lets us know early that something is amiss. Before the job even begins, a dead rabbit appears in Jay’s backyard. Later, Gal’s seemingly normal dinner date carves a demonic symbol on the back of a mirror when she’s left alone. Once the duo are on the job, the isolated locales – vacant hotels, rustling woods – carry an ominous emptiness that creates sensations of dread that are then heightened by jumpy editing and a wonderfully eerie score. Slowly these feelings begin to wear of Jay and Gal, who begin to doubt the nature of an employer who makes them sign in blood. When they discover a secret about their second target, Jay looks increasingly likely to snap.

When things change, they change dramatically. An absurd but wholly terrifying cavalcade of occult images that sear themselves into your brain, the climax of Kill List is the finest kind of gut-clenching, white knuckle horror. You’ll have questions regarding the ending – I certainly do. But “was it worth it?” won’t be one of them.

Kill List is currently available in Australia on DVD.

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Still Life was reviewed as part of our coverage of the 41^st International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).

You can read all of Tom Clift’s coverage of the festival here.

Room 514 (IFFR Review)

Alps (IFFR Review)

Ace Attorney (IFFR Review)

Still Life [Stillleben] (IFFR Review)

Kotoko (IFFR Review)