Tag: Film review

Viva La Vida (2021)

Written for RAF News October 2021

Predicated apparently on the discovery of a large number of unopened trunks that contained Kahlo’s possessions, now on display in an exhibit at her home, the filmmaker explores some of these belongings and their significance in understanding the person who became the legend. 

Frida’s life is split into chapters, introduced with a fun and frenzied montage of graphics and stock archive footage. Herein her life is explored through interviews, primarily those running the exhibitions, though we also hear passages of Kahlo’s own words whilst watching actors interpret the artist, roaming about the mountains or looking longingly out of windows. This varied and unconventional approach is stitched together with narration from Asia Argento who appears between segments, talking intensely to camera in vague rhetoric as though introducing an episode of The Twilight Zone.

This confusion of ideas is messy: information is given at inopportune times, missing the chance to inform the viewer of the importance of themes when they would be useful. There are some elements of Mexican culture that caught with joyous observational footage, but it lacks consistency with the subject and tone. However frustrating, it is always a treat to revel in the powerful and challenging work of Kahlo, and appreciate the pain and hardship that she endured throughout her life.

Unfortunately Frida. Viva la Vida feels like a recorded walking tour through an exhibition, an invasive one at that, though this actually exists in more rigorous detail account looking at Kahlo’s life through her work as recorded by Exhibition on Screen just last year. An admirably artistic take on a documentary that gets a bit lost in its ideas.

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In Full Bloom (2021)

Written for RAF News September 2021

In the wake of WWII, an American prize fighter with a string of losses competes in Japan against an undefeated boxer.

The politics in the background remains just that, as In Full Bloom avoids the path of Rocky IV and instead focusses on the meaning of the fight itself. It becomes less of a show for an audience or the media, and instead dives into the philosophy of boxing through the headspace of these two fighters.

It does this by taking an expressive, poetic form – earning obvious comparisons to Terence Malik through its use of whispered narration over the top of natural landscapes and stirring string compositions. This style is sustained for the entirety of the film, as we follow American Clint Sullivan (Tyler Woods) and the struggle he has in the locker room before the fight when his honour is questioned, or as we jump back in time to see the preparation undertaken by Japanese fighter Masahiro (Yusuke Ogasawara).

At a press conference, Masahiro is asked about his connection to a legendary figure – a former champion living out in the woods in isolation. Avoiding a collapsed montage with upbeat music, we instead see the ways in which this recluse becomes Masahiro’s very own Mr. Miyagi, stealthily honing fighting technique through various tasks and challenges, such as catching fish in a stream barehanded, or hunting whilst blindfolded.

The tone of the film seems to work more naturally with the Japanese characters, whereas dialogue feels a bit simple in the mouths of the Americans, perhaps losing something in translation. By the time of the fight however, none of this matters. 

The dialogue falls away, the crowd are blacked out and the camera circles the ring as we watch the first round play out in real time. In a dizzying whir of visuals and sound, this final fight is an explosion of style that pays off all of the films earlier meditations.

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The Djinn (2021)

Written for RAF News August 2021

A mute boy finds a dusty leather bound book with a pentagram on the cover that says it can fill his heart’s greatest desire – surely nothing could go wrong.

Set in the 80s (maybe just to include some 80s style synth in the score), Dylan (Ezra Dewey) has just moved into a small apartment with his radio DJ father now that his mother is no longer around. Even though the dialogue is signed, it is still exposition heavy. They unpack and try to settle down before dad Michael (Rob Brownstein) has to head out for his night shift broadcasting.

This gives Dylan enough time to continue exploring his new digs, returning to the cupboard where he spied the foreboding Book of Shadows. Gathering the bits needed to fulfil this dark ritual, he lights a candle and signs the text from the book into the mirror – unleashing the Djinn. And so all the young boy needs to do now for his wish to be granted, is survive an hour in this cramped three room flat with the satanic demon he just invoked.

The Djinn is a shapeshifter, and so takes on different forms whilst pursuing the boy from room to room, though the most scary would have to be its natural ghoulish appearance which, used sparingly, is pretty unsettling.

Setting the film in this small space is clever in as much as we learn the layout quickly, knowing that if the monster is in the kitchen, there is only one way past it. However it does stifle variety and the cat and mouse chase can’t help but become repetitive, kept alive with the constant jolt of jump scares.

Simple to the point of feeling like one protracted scene, this house invasion horror gets a little stuck for ideas and leaves itself with nowhere to go.

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Riders of Justice (2021)

Written for RAF News August 2021

Depending on the poster you see for this film, it could look like an action revenge movie or a Danish oddball comedy – fortunately Riders of Justice lands perfectly in the middle.

Director Anders Thomas Jenson has made a number of films with this same band of collaborators, sometimes absurd or grotesque, but always darkly funny. In this case a vengeance story, complete with fist fights and shootouts, is dropped into the laps of a bunch of damaged nerds, whilst their anti-hero leader Markus is probably the most damaged of all.

Markus (Mads Mikkelson) is serving in the military when his wife and daughter are involved in a train crash. Losing his wife in the accident, he returns home to be with his traumatised child when he is visited by another passenger from the train who insists that it was no accident, that he has tracked down the people responsible: a notorious gang known as the Riders of Justice.

This other passenger Otto (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) had offered his own seat to Markus’ wife before the crash and so appears to take responsibility. A statistician with a dark past himself, Otto keeps very strange company. There’s Emmanthaler (Nicolas Bro), the obese and aggressive surveillance pro; and Lennart (Lars Brygmann) the smug and socially inept superhacker. This group of weirdos become an unlikely gang themselves as they plot their revenge against the culprits, holed up in Markus’s gargantuan barn turned intel base. To remain incognito from Markus’ daughter (Andrea Heick Gadeberg), who worries about her father’s propensity for violence, they pretend to be a group of grief counsellors, and somehow, become more like a family.

A ridiculous premise that is played with the right balance of wackiness and heart. Dressed up as an action film, filled with oddities, but played straight down the line – Riders for Justice has its cake and blows it up/ is a symphony of nonsense.

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Dirt Music (2021)

Written for RAF News July 2021

Trapped in a loveless relationship, Georgie takes a midnight dip in the ocean, only to find a mysterious, hunky man poaching lobsters from her fella’s business.

Kelly Macdonald stars as the Australian fishwife, living on the coast, apparently under the watchful eye of her boyfriend Jim Buckrich (David Wenham) and his lobster empire. Warning this sexy intruder to go quietly in the night, it’s not long before he steals her away too.

Theirs is a strange affair, motivated by a shared desire to escape, Georgie from her present situation but for broody lobster thief and ex-musician Lu Fox (Garett Hedlund) it is his tragic past. But for all of their common goals, there is no accounting for chemistry and so there interactions feel strained and confusing. What is clear is that lobster boss Buckrich is not the forgiving type and so aims to catch up to them both as they head Perthward.

Lu Fox is presented as rugged and mysterious, down to his dog with no name. His quietness alludes to a dark past that will be eked out in flashbacks over the course of its full runtime of 105 minutes. It is some feat that the romance feels rushed and forced, whilst the film itself drags along and outstays its welcome.

We’re over half way into the film before we hear any of the music promised in the title, a Mumford and Sons style country-singing trio comprised of Lu, his brother, and sister-in-law. What became of the band will all be revealed, but far too slowly, to the point that you might lose interest.

Even the eventual revelation and original songs can’t stop Dirt Music from being as dull as ditchwater.

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