Blue Valentine

I finally got round to watching Blue Valentine, directed by Derek Cianfrance. I thought the film looked really promising and I’d wanted to see it for a log time. The film didn’t exactly break any box office records, but it had won a small handful of awards at American independent film festivals. Anyhow, I didn’t see how I could go wrong with a romance starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle William, two of my favourite actors. The film included improvised dialogue from the actors during the film, which is just one of the current and contemporary things about the film.

Blue Valentine is a film about a couple called Cindy and Dean. The film cuts back and forth from the early days of their relationship to its painful breakdown years later. The film shows them meeting when Cindy is a student living with her unhappy parents and looking after her grandmother, and Dean is working for moving and storage company. The couple rush into a marriage after discovering Cindy is pregnant, even though they are not sure whether Dean is he father, or if it is Cindy’s previous boyfriend. There is a strong contrast between their life as a young couple, when they are beautiful and effervescent, to the future when Cindy and Dean are older and their exhaustion from their relationship is all too apparent.

 The film is incredibly sad and somehow completely unromantic. It’s a completely realistic and unflinching love story. It is basically about a relationship where once they were devoted, and now one of them just has nothing left to give. The performances were, of course, stunning, as was the whole production of the film. The film included an excellent use of music, and I can’t usually hack it when songs have been written especially for a film, but I thought it worked really well on this occasion.

Blue Valentine takes a very alternative and simple approach to the almost taboo subject of falling in then out of love. I couldn’t fully get my head around it and I think that’s why it will stay with me for a long time.

Me, You and Everyone We Know

Me, You and Everyone We Know

This film for me wasn’t terribly boring or exciting, it was average. Whilst some of the narrative was strange and confusing others were funny and smart, which was something I especially liked about this film. The quirky and slightly edgy humour in this film is again something that I liked, but at points I wasn’t sure whether I should have been laughing or not.

The narrative is loosely based on Miranda July’s character but more on the diverse and strange relationships that surround her. With the two best friends who are constantly competing with on another or the two brothers weird and lonely relationship with horny people on the internet. The film’s ending was quite unresolved and annoying; whilst the relationships carried on I felt the characters had not developed or changed enough for me to like how it finished. Although Miranda probably wanted an ongoing story; one which wasn’t defined by the ending. It left me feeling almost betrayed in not letting me know what to take from this film; was it a hilarious, unusual and terribly honest  take on modern relationships or a very pessimistic depressing view on how most if not all relationships are somehow based around sex. Or maybe I too misjudged the film entirely.

In conclusion my opinion on this film is unsure, whilst my age and interest in other genres might make me bias to hate this film I don’t; and so believe that this film is decent and at least 3 stars.

Joel Hooper

The Craft

The craft is a very unusual and intrepid take on a high school drama/ coming of age film, but although its fictionally based it still surprisingly manages to detain some familiarity with modern high school life, even with it being more then 10 years old.  Strangely I found the narrative of this film to be a lot like “Mean Girls” but obviously with a fictional subtext and a much darker ending. Retrospectively I found this film is very smart in the way it portrays different social groups with different characters and the way they react given the supernatural context. Obviously this familiarity doesn’t really apply to British high school life but might still have some relevance in American high school life, which not only says a lot about this film but a lot about high schools.

The story bases itself around Sarah; a newcomer to a Catholic High school who’s moved with her father to Los Angeles, but soon falls into the wrong crowd and when rumours about her start to stir Sarah decides to seek friendship in a strange group of girls. When Sarah realises they’re withes she decides to join them but they all underestimate Sarah’s power and soon after face fatal consequences for it.

I like this film for its originality in genre mix and narrative, although at points I felt disappointed with the narrative/character arks chosen for individuals but also felt that the narrative for some characters wasn’t in depth enough for the narrative to flow properly. But what they attempted to do with this film was incredibly smart and gutsy.

I would give this film 3.5 stars; for its originality, good narrative and interesting and smart interpretation of teenage life.

Joel Hooper

Wuthering Heights

I watched Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights recently and I rather enjoyed it. Everything about the direction was so different to what I had known to be conventional for classic stories. I felt that Arnold took a different approach to the story and for the first time I got to see a classic as I had never imagined before. Maybe my experience for classics isn’t vast but from the adaptions of ‘Pride and Prejudice’, ‘Great Expectations’, ‘Oliver Twist’ and indeed ‘Peter Rosminsky’s’ 1992 version of ‘Wuthering Heights’ with ‘Ralph Fiennes’ I know that what Arnold did with the timeless classic was certainly different to the films listed.

The film concentrated on the relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff, leaving out the second half of the original book where Emily Brontë focusses on characters Nelly Dean and Lockwood. When Cathy and Heathcliff are both young, they share scenes of openness and happiness. Both Cathy and Heathcliff expressed a knowing innocence when they were alone. Although it was a romance, they never broke the boundaries of their fabricated sibling relationship. It was also a relationship that didn’t fit the period time love story. It was quite raw and unrehearsed. The unsteadiness of Cathy and Heathcliff’s relationship was reflected in the cinematography, powerfully orchestrated by ‘Robbie Ryan’. The harsh, choppy, rough handling of the camera perfectly replicated the immeasurable emotions of pain, anger and love- Key themes in this story.

Arnold also justifies the use of weather and landscape in her adaption. It was as if the weather was the commander of fortune and most of the time it was merciless. The rain brought Heathcliff to the Earnshaw family which eventually became the root of his pain and suffering in many ways. The entwining branches reflected complication, the open moor allowed Cathy and Heathcliff to be together and happy , the darkness mirrored secrecy and the mist and fog appeared at times of confusion and ambiguousness. Now and again I noticed that the camera would emphasise the attention to an animal or a plant. Perhaps this was to remind the viewer of the original inspiration of the book and the importance of the setting. Or maybe it was to remind the viewer of natural beauty in unlikely things; after all, the focus on the setting was a sharp difference from some of the intensity of the acting. I did feel that the landscape and setting ran parallel alongside some characters; Cathy a bird, Heathcliff a venerable animal taken to slaughter and Hindley a loud dog.

Overall I really appreciated this film. Arnold’s ‘Fish Tank’ and ‘Red Road’ were superb and I felt she lived up to her expectations with this rendition of Wuthering Heights. This film was bleak, depressing and sad but I still loved it.

 

Me and you and everyone we know

‘Me and you and everyone we know’ written and directed by Miranda July, received mixed reactions across the board. Some hailing it as ‘a quiet masterpiece’, others appeared to frankly detest the whole film. I have to say, I found watching the film not exactly a pleasant experience. As I did when watching Terence Malick’s ‘the Tree of Life’, I felt as though I was being excluded by the film by the fact that, ‘I didn’t really get it’. I often enjoy alternative films, but I just couldn’t see the emperor’s new clothes here.

The plot, a word I’m playing a bit fast and loose with here, focuses around Christine (Miranda July), a cab driver and video artist, trying to get her work displayed at her local gallery and Richard (John Hawkes), a shoe salesman and recently single dad. The two of them eventually end up together, after what seemed like a lifetime of their mishaps and struggles. It was enough to make me want me yell at them through the television screen to ‘get a grip’. The film included a whole other variety of characters though. There was Richard’s neighbour, a little girl who collects kitchen appliances for her ‘dowry’. A rather bleak sentiment, I felt. There was an art gallery curator who liked send dirty messages to whom she hadn’t realised was Richard’s young son (creepy). The was also Richard’s colleague at the shoe shop, a man who leaves sexual messages for two teenage girls to see, about what he’d ‘do to them’ (creepier). The art gallery served nicely as a metaphor for the film whole pretentiousness. Like the scene where an artist puts a hamburger wrapper on the ground and calls it art, they apparently filmed some weirdo’s stumbling around and called it a film.

Overall, I feel the film had an effect of indie blandness, the jokes weren’t funny and the characters had no likeability. I didn’t understand why the characters acted in such a bizarre acted way. For example, there was a scene in which Richard sets is hand on fire, this apparently an act to represent his turmoil into despair and his struggle to stay afloat, but wasn’t it just an incredibly stupid and irresponsible thing to do? The film especially awful, it just didn’t do it for me. It made me realise why I love socially realistic films, because they’re about real people, with real problems, and these are dealt with. However, this film won awards at the Cannes and the Sundance film festivals, so what do I know.

The Life Aquatic

Wes Anderson creates a bizarre, cerulean world in which the characters are as unrealistic as the film itself. After losing his best friend, Esteban du Plantier, to an unidentified creature conned as a "Jaguar Shark", Steve Zissou is adamant to see to the creatures destruction. Bill Murray plays the part of Steve Zissou to be two-dimensional, yet at the same time essentric, often showing him to be contraversial, or even crazy as he requests for dynamite to aid in the annihilation of the Jaguar Shark. 

It is interesting to see the characters develop through the film as Ned Plimpton, later on referred to as Kingsley (Ned) Zissou, is under the impression that Steve is his biological father and offers to finance the new film with his inheritance. This leads to Klaus Daimler, another member of the crew portrayed by Willem Dafoe having a rather humorous dispute with the said Ned Plimpton which is perhaps the only time I cracked a smile at this film. 

The plot thickens and becomes more intense after the first part and the playful nature of the film is abolished in order for the emotional and complex themes to be shown. From the perspective of someone who is perhaps younger than the target demographic for this film I thought it was too unrealistic to captivate me and for me to relate to the characters. 

House of Flying Daggers

I watched the film House of Flying Daggers not long ago and to my surprise I rather enjoyed it. I’m not sure if it was the vivid colours and patterns involved in the costumes and setting, the cleverly orchestrated fight scenes which looked like synchronised dance routines or simply the exploration into a different type of film.

This film had an air about it, right from the beginning. I felt immediately transferred to imperial China- Zhang Yimou did a great job in staging all the scenes. I was also transfixed on Mei played by Zhang Ziyi, as many others within the film were too. She took on the role a canny woman who seemed to be able to do just about anything, if she wasn’t singing like a song bird she would be effortlessly walking in mid-air or gracefully slaughtering mere enemies. I loved her character from the start however my affection for her grew thin as I saw her slowly turning into the conventional female protagonist that falls at the hands of a relationship and a happy ending. Luckily not all is what is seems and everything works out in the end, in context maybe not quite the happy ending that was hoped and indeed not the ending a viewer would predict early on in the film but for me and purely on principle it was satisfying. I thought that I could predict the ending of the film quite early on but it proved me wrong. It took a different trajectory and for that I am grateful as it allowed me to be overcome by someone else’s imagination and not just rely on mine.

Whilst watching this film I couldn’t help but to compare it with ‘The Hunger Games’. Both stories have the themes of survival, oppression, dishonesty, and combat. These similarities became more prevalent as ‘The House of Flying Daggers’ progressed and Jin played by Takeshi Kaneshiro said ‘you and me are just pawns on a chest board- no one cares if we die’ ‘part of their games’ as said by Peeta in ‘The Hunger Games’. We all know how two films can be so opposing yet, at heart; hold the same feeling and moral thought. It takes a ground breaking film to offer us something new, to spark inspiration, to tap into an undiscovered emotion and although, as far as concepts go, this film wasn’t a jump into the void of originality, I certainly enjoyed it.