didier-20 Reviews

Creating Christ (2022)

Where's Jesus ! They forgot to mention ...... but here he is

[7/10 · 10 October 2023]

An interesting survey of roman imperial power and it's creation, adaptation, utilisation, neogtiation and final adoption of the emerging forms of Christian religion.

If there is a weakness it would be that the work has an american slant to the narrative and seems to have been made for american Christian digestion.

So with that said, the film misses a trick by mislaying Jesus Christ altogether. He simply occurs as a bit part player in the epilogue and one can't help wondering why the film does this, considering the apparant intended viewer.

The film comes close to but misses the opportunity of inserting a real Jesus.

1. It states in passing that the word 'Christ' is originally greek but omits to give further definition or explain what the original greek term reffered to, being the 'annoited one' mentioned as a messiah in Jewish scripture.

2. It notes that the gospels are much more literary device than factual testimony but fails to explain the origins of gospel writing which leads to a clue that Jesus may have been a real person.

If it's important to include the distant possiblity of the real Jesus, then the origins of gospel writing need presenting:

The roman world revered all Greek literature as the highest pinacle of human culture. In fact they revered all things greek in general and greek slaves were routinely employed to educate the aristoratic and elite's children.

Likewise, the roman empire relied on a news gathering network of 'libraries' which wrote the news of the day and this was done by 'scribes'.

The tradition of being a scribe was passed through the male line from father to son and the apprentice to the craft and job meant a life already determined but considered a privilldge to be born into such a fate.

Part of the training of the scribe was emersion in greek literature, with the work of Plato considered the highest quality, relating particually to the character of Socrates, someone we have only been able to know of through Plato's works.

So it is understood that in a far off province, a trial of a man called Jesus did take place and that the scribes were excited to see that the form of argument manifested during the trial resembled and evoked Plato's trial and Death of Socrates.

This contemporary manifestation excited the scribes and a tradition took root in training, to write the trial of an unknwn provoncial named Jesus in the manner of the Trial and death of Socrates so as to elevate the quotidian subject to the level of Socrates. This educational practice spread so that greek slaves educating roman aristcrats also applied what was in essence a literary exercise which gave insight into the strucutre of literature, drama, Plato and the character of Socrates.

So it was that by the time the gospels occur, the tradition of writing the trial of Jesus as a mark of a recieved greek education was well established.

The literay orgins of the gospels are part and parcel of the rite of passage of a well educated person in the roman world. The fall, trial and death of a man called Jesus as told in the gospels is a formal exercise in dramatic writing lifted straight from Plato's own work about Socrates death and a reading of the latter makes plain the evidence.

The fact that an exercise originally devised to celebrate and teach greek culture becomes included in the bible highlights the Greek literary root of Christianity alongside the more literary contributions of Jewish scripture. Both together make the idea of text and a book being central to Christian religion highly inevitable.

I think it's important to re-insert a real jesus into the picture this film makes, but from a historical perspective and the scribe exercise proposal fits as well as all the other historical assertions mentioned in the film.

Confessions of a Psycho Killer (2023)

There are problematics with this Mackay case review

[5/10 · 12 May 2023]

The documentary represents a survey of the Patirck Mackay case largely because he is now being considered for release.

However, there is careless handling which doesn't induce comprehensive assessment after his 47 years in prison, but rather opts for some of the cheap thrills.

The title's use of the word 'psycho' as well as a tendancy towards sensationalisation, even glamourisation of altered states of psychotic behaviour is not appropriate. The approach seems inspired by Mackay's own startling photo-booth images of himself as a young man pulling garish faces. But 'psycho' isn't a useful or accurate term and it's meaning is prejducial to notions of mental illness so why use it in the title ?

The film does cover some of the historical narrative concerning the significant level of neglect of mental health care Mackay expereinced in his youth. But it sidesteps the fact that found guilty of only 2 counts of manslaughter due to diminshed responsbility he was sent to prison anyway rather than a secure psychiatric unit.

This means there are now important questions as to the continued level of neglect of mental support Mackay may have exprienced during his entire prision term and to what extent this might form a miscarage of justice and a failure to apply the correct 'treatment'. The use of a young voice-over to narrate various quotes attributed to Mackay only highlight Mackay's lack of skill and insight into his own mental health whilst confirming neglect of any suitable psychiatric treatment has remained an issue.

Further there's a tendancy to over expose images of Mackay as a yonug man whilst ignoring the fact Mackay grows into a middle aged man in the prison system, experiencing some of the most progressive rehabiliative programs of the 80s and 90s.

The examination of the prision system Mackay will have experienced as well as Mackay as a mature man is absent as the film short cuts to an alarmism in the face of threatening assertions about Mackay's possible release put forward by the now retired nd aging police involved with the case over 40 years ago.

The film also makes some as yet unjustifiable assertions concerning suspicion about the numbers of people Mackay was suspected of killing, going as far as asserting he may be Britain;s most prolific serial killer. Yet Mackay was only convicted of 2 manslaughters and his own admissions were unreliable. The police have never proved his association with the mentioned cold cases.

Greater clarity as to if Mackay and his release constitutes a threat to public safety lies in all these absent examinations which the director substitutes instead with a strategy to influence political intervention on the matter through amplifyying sensationalist degrees of fear-mongering.

In my view, good documentary would have saught to present the complexity of grey area whilst upholding the idea that the prison system is a place of potential rehabilitation, a route Mackay was made subject of in his punishment and so it is this aspect of rehabilitation as well as a failure to provide appropriate psychiatric care as attitudes evolves over the decades which should be under scrutiny.

One only hopes that the parole board may be more enlightned in their views than this film and it's conclusions in the matter of creating suitable judegment of Mackay's rights as well as potential risks.

The 12th Victim (2023)

Continuation of a media circus into a 7th decade distorts facts and priorities

[4/10 · 16 March 2023]

There are only 2 unique characteristics to this crime story: 1. The body count in such a short time-frame.

2. The continuous exposure to tv moving image media of the central protagonsts and the case so as to constitute as a cultural event.

Beyond that, important factors have not been reviewed or understood.

1. Child killers, inclduing females, are not a unique phenomina in the USA. In fact there are 100s of cases of juveniles tried and found guilty of murder.

2. Juveniles tried as adults for gun related crimes is very common across the US. Is it right ? Many would say no, it's a distorted form of gun control, where juveniles are tried as children for almost every other crime they commit.

3. Being found guilty of first degree murder by association within a homicide context but where you did not actually commit the homicide itself is far from unique, being common in many states in the US. Is it fair ? Many would say no, but still it prevails.

4. The sentence of lfe without the possiblity of parole for juveniles was common for homicide related crimes until 2016, when the supreme court ruled it unlawful. However, the review of all existing cases has not seen a blanket application of parole applied to juveniles tried before 2016. In many conservative southern states, the now obligatory review of such cases typically finds the guilty party not suitable for parole at review. In some states this finding has been as high as 80%.

With those 4 important observations stated, lets now look at the case of Caril Ann Fugate as re-visited in this documentary:

1. Caril Ann Fugate's sentence compared to many juveniles across the US and considering the killing spree she witnessed had a high body count and also included her entire family; is actually very lean. She was granted life with parole, during a progressive era of prison reform and never served a full life term.

2. The documentary repeatedly incorrectly states that if this crime has occured today she would have been treated differently but this is entirely untrue. The only difference is that it would not have occured as a media event from inception. As with all other juveniles commiting similar offences today, she could have been tried as an adult and for first degree murder by association with the event context. In fact, given the extreme nature of the murder spree, she may well have been given 2 life sentences and the possibility of parole may have been subject to an extreme delay or rejection upon review.

Other points to observe: 1. Caril Ann Fugate is not different from any other notorious criminal exposed to the media, in that she has used it to court and manipulate it to her own interests. What's apparent is that Caril Ann Fugate is primarily obsessed with her own guilt. She sees the laws as about her own injustice alone. She alters the narrative repeatedly over time. She amplifies the original Folie a Deux M. O. which was one of a desire to manifest an absolute sense of freedom in the face of the status quo. By then end of the documentary the seeking of a pardon is exactly that sentiment made manifest a 2nd time.

The question here is why would have Caril Ann Fugate qualified for a pardon when many in her situation and who recieve worse sentences do not ? What is the pardon for exactly, given the manner in which the law continues to exist ?

The documentary is uncannily unspecific in exacting what the argument being applied is. A post me-too lens is evoked suggesting a degree of total innocence buy lieu of the fact she was an under aged female subject to an extreme form of male control and abuse. But a folie a deux dynamic is also evident and at a prior point both culprits were equally qualified as juveniles widely acknowldged by their community as in a lawful relationship.

Caril Ann Fugate was tried and given, in the end and relative to similar like her, a light sentence for the moral failure of not acting to appeal, intervene or place herself in any kind of compromising position in the face of acting as witness to a brutal string of murders.

Would every 14 year old girl in the same position have been so passive ? This is the primary question and the judgement in the end decides the answer is no. Fugate's choices and degree of culpability were to an extent unique to her. Every one is different and another in the same place may have saught to intervene. It's a horrible dilemma and clearly one Caril Ann Fugate was never able to come to terms with.

What this documentary failed to do was reframe the entire media circus in a historical examination and compare the case to similar in the US. It should have argued that the law continues to be applied in the same state and distort the nature of culpability and then promoted a debate for reform.

Instead the series simply continued with the media circus, spinning it through yet another round of self obsessed insularity which in the end argued that Caril Ann Fugate had no culpability.

Such a conclusion is simply the logical outcome of an endless playing out of criminal judgement as cultural entertainment, where all reason becomes fogged and the accused is given a controlling voice to re-shape the narrative.

Caril Ann Fugate had degree of culpability and was tried, as many others still are, by the law as it existed then across the US and still does today. The time she served was far less than many like her served since the events of the case.

It's a travesty of intellect that still after 70 years of media exposure, the real issue of the state and terms of the law as it is applied across the USA is still not subject to a wider public debate.

Monster (2022–2024)

Directors lost down the Dahmer rabbit hole

[4/10 · 29 September 2022]

There are several cinematic/tv accounts of Dahmer's life and all are dogged by the 'director down the rabbit hole' syndrome this story seems to bring.

Though they have moments of clarity generally they then plod mechanically through the telling of a now well known story lacking fresh insight or perspective and already subject to wide exposure via documentary, books and news accounts.

There is this repeat failure to get inside the head of Dahmer. Confrontation with such a formidable obsticle causes alot of narrative shuffling and substituting which in the end fails the work as a whole with defeat often acknowldged via a cap donning to a percieved exceptionalism directors in the end attribute to Dahmer himself.

Dahmer Monster - initially tries to avoid this scenario but almost immediatly shows the tell tale signs of having completely failed in much the same way as previous works have.

The compulsion to tell Dahmer's story still exists because his story has still not been fully understood nor fully layed bare. It's this inticement which will ensure he remains subject matter for future story telling.

So how should a director tackle what still needs to be told in this story ? There are a couple of key methodologies required.

First, do not make up parts of the story which simply did not happen. Dahmer Monster does this endlessely and it's the reason the director/s have blocked their own way into Dahmer's mind creating for the most part a voyeuristic meditiation on the impenitrable. The Dahmer story is like theatrcial classics in this respect. When doing plays like Shakespeare or any number of operas you never cut or alter the story. You bring to the story new information and resonance and you find ways to weave it in so as to amplify what is already there. Dahmer Monster strays so far from this rule it's no wonder it's being percieved as exploitative.

Dahmer's story has many key sensationalist, indeed infamous moments which successive directors are both initially drawn to and then repelled by as increasingly entangled in this dychotomy, they end up creating pieces which are more about the neccessity of a visual moral ettiquette rather than Dahmer the subject. This is again detectable in Dahmer Monster.

It needs to be noted that Dahmer himself invented and directed his own narrative and emphasis of detail when he fully confessed his crimes. Dahmer's control of his exceptionalism as sensational curio remains dominant in tellings of his story to date. The benefit of the doubt remains entirely in tact. The surviving police, detectives, journalists and authors are relient on the same because their reputations and life's work is invested so absolutly in it.

But look more closely at the repeat absences, gaps, jumps, and skips which occur in the repeat telling of Dahmer's story and you begin to see what Dahmer chose not to promote in his own myth making.

There lies a chain of unexamined key events and it is these which will finally enable entry into Dahmer's mind. Listed below are some of those details which if re-arranged so as to consitute the main part of his early story at least, tell a different story, of slow, natural, agonising, morose, mundane, ugly , calculating corruption and failure which speaks far less of exceptionalism and more of similarity to others like him.

1. An established acute alcoholism, dependant on spirits like vodka by the age of 14 maintained by chronic bouts drinking secretly both in and out of school remains highly anomalous and entirely unexplored as the sensational visual drama it actually is.

2. The comorbidity of deviant masturbation coupled with an increasingly evident indication of being highly skilled in the killing of animals where both are associated with his hyper private world of animal disection. The latter is a classic symptom of pre homicidality and links hime to the assured confidence by which he assumes the postition of assailant to a local jogger. All together these suggest the ferment of a homicidal, necrophile mindset fulled by alcohol misuse and even intoxification by chemicals used to preserve animal parts to the extent that murder and disection were very much part of the sexually contempleative minde set at the point of his first murder. I.e. Dahmer didn't stumble a nieve innocent into murder, he slowely developed and nurtured a precocious necrophile intent from his early teens and therefore cunning and calculation formed much of his creating situations in which harm or murder might occur. This is really important to establish because it alters his own versions of future murders to come all of which he sees himself simply as a passive anassuming protagonist subject to impulses he remains unaware of.

3. There are repeats of gaps Dahmer himself set in his own story. The gaps of no mention of his relationship to sexual exhibitionism / flashing, a chronic activity for which he was prosecuted once but which he engaged with on numerous occassions, particually when stationed in the army in Germany. Dahmer Monster clumbsily attempts to 'interpret' this as a recall of his first victim Wicks. But actually it's much more likley that Dahmer's exhibitionism is constituted of a kind of display of exceptionalism and sense of being other worldly and able to access rules outside the norm. In short he's sticking 2 fingers at the world whilst at the same time presenting himself as a product of their society. There's alot to be teased out here and it's telling Dahmer makes no mention of it as part of his conffession.

4. New information arrives all the time as time passes. Today we know he sexually raped and abused his room mates in Germany over a period of time whilst consuming huge quantities of alcohol and engaging in sexual exhibitionism in the local town, partoicually towards mothers and children. We know one night he inexplicably returned to a party with blood spots after storming off in a rage. We also know that his discharge was in many respects a cover up. All of this is repeatedly absent from Dahmers myth. Why ? Because it again presents Dahmer as a methodical abuser, seeking pleasure in any kind of subversive abuse he was able to access.

5. We also now know after the shame of being discharged from the army he delayed return home to his father and Wick's body, by spending time in Miami living with an english girl he led into a discussion about marrying. She was to join him once he returned home. But he omits any detail about Miami what so ever. So there's alot to consider about what he's really up to and going through while he's in some sense hiding in the light of this woman's innocents of his true nature.

6. Crucially a key symbols is repeatedly misunderstood. The existance of Wick's stashed whole skeletal remains at his father's home during the entire time in the army and Miami. Wick's body was decapitated as part of an essentially immeidiate and precoious need to deviginise his necrophile sensabilites. After his near capture, the body has to have been presereved for a deeper reason. It's preservation has to have acted as both a deterrant and mutually a draw. The body drew him back because it punctuates the narrative of homicidal Dahmer. It haunts his time in the army and Miami. It dominates his persona when he returns home to his father, completely incapable of making personal choices to an exagerated degree. The final destrcution of Wick's bones is an important moment because it simultaneously marks a desire to erase his deeds whilst also expressing yet more of the creative potential for absolute power inherent in the experience of necrophillia.

What we have here are neccessary re-examinations of parts already presented. Sadly Dahmer: Monster fails to bring the focus and integrity required to animate these calcualtingly ommited parts. It's noted that all this has occured by the time Dahmer is only 21 years old. He hasn't even began his killing career.

When it comes to his preented 2nd killing, in Dahmer's version the precise moment his serial killing career begins, at the Ambassador hotel the excepted narrative has to change. Dahmer presents as a highly proficient serial drug rapist who without knowing it 'accidentally' beat Tuomi to death. However if you alter the historical narrative by filling in gaps, Dahmer is transformed into a repeat perfecting and rehursing homicidal necrophile who has to some degree planned for the moment of murder. From that point on Dahmer's precocious proffessionalism is maintained as a central aspect of his decent into lustful oblivion. But the mess of rising frenzy isn't reflective of that fallacy. The penultimate frenzy arisies from the conflict which arises in the face of an absolute degree of satation of desire not in a dissacoated amateur and unaware mindset.

It's this absolute control of the accepted narrative Dahmer still has over the way he is presented as a protagonist in his own story which needs to be challenged and which remains frustratingly intact given the arrival of Dahmer Monster. Somebody must bring him down. The exceptionalism here lies not in Dahmer but in Society's capacity to examine an emerging, common understanding of taboo desires as they exist across those who have them.

American Werewolves (2022)

Disturbing but lacking heart and poorly made.

[4/10 · 9 July 2022]

The internet has seen the rise of the american rougarou or michigan dogman with plenty of podcast witness testimonies as well as self published books offering a wealth of compelling and not so compelling qualitative data for researchers to chew over.

Sadly, for Breedlove, this is a poor example. Considering the vigor and enthusiasm by which he began his cryto-doc career, the film shows a decided lack of effort.

That said it is disturbing but i''m not sure if it's disturbing for the right reasons. A mishandling of a young woman's death proves difficult to digest and lacks respect for both the implied victim and her family.

Breedlove needs to up his game. Trailing along behind the wider discourse devising morsels of adolecent horror isn't where this subject is at or reflective of where his career should be.

The rougarou is now potentially established as an actual being with further citings contentiously reported elsewhere in the UK, middle , eastern and southern Europe as well as the middle east and Latin America. The subject has a significant cottage industry presence which needs examining and the lore and history it's generated needs extracting, analysis and a wider telling.

If the animal exists then media disocurse needs to move away from sensationalist horror towards a different, more accomodating position. In short, stop posturing in shock and ore, grow up and do the public and the natural enviornment a service.

Stranger Things (2016–2025)

Old school absent and demonising LBGTQ troupes.

[3/10 · 4 July 2022]

The opening of season 4 sees the Duffer brothers go out of their way to establish a hetero max landscape where any form of hetero-normative courtship is the rule but suggestion of other representation is aggressively banished. There's being faithful to the 80s but then there's just being outright prejudice. In actual fact gay culture exploded in the 80s and there were plenty of out gay people of the age range depicted in the series.

Sadly, to add insult to injury, the Duffers then devise a classic negative gay sterotype in Henry, a queer, delicate and effate loner subject to lots of parental abuse who it is noted, develops into the primary antagonist and performs his worst believable crimes (familial murder) as a weak bookish boy. This tragic turned evil negative (implied sissy) gay sterotype is well documented and it's troubling to see the Duffers resurrecting it without any sense of self awareness or historical sensitivity.

Over-all Stranger Things is plagued by the adult Duffer's perpetual adolecence. This is made stark in the fantastical visual choices which are in fact typical of male pubecsent fantasy centred as they are around an anxiety, fear and fasination with bodily function, most notably here, the rear-end, faeces and any 'whiff' of the banished yet associated homosexuality. Tubes of brown colon filled creepers emerge as multiple penis substitute phallus, spreading across a convincing Dali / Elm Street franchise inspired alt world, while flower headed carniverous pansies feed like wild animals. The symbolism is really quite stark.

The Duffers have used the homophobia of the 80s as an excuse to exercise their own latent fears unchecked and once again prove that if you put cart blanche film making power in the hands of hetero males they just take it as a right to unleash their prejudices. The gay movement has spent 40 years critiquing and attempting to lay to rest LGBTQ cinematic prejudice, a task initiated by emerging queer theorists of the 1980s. In this light, Stranger Things is a shocking mark of cinemtaic immaturity for which the Duffers should be held to account.

In the immortal words of the hit gay 80s band 'Frankie Goes to Hollywood' , "Relax, don't do it, when you want to go to it, relax don't do it when you want to cum..." and we hope series 5 will address and put right much this review raises. Feel free to campaign on the Stranger Things twitter account.

The Power of the Dog (2021)

Old troupes, old tricks, new landscapes

[6/10 · 22 February 2022]

To be brief:

The adaptation of 'The Power Of The Dog' relies singularly on a ubiquitous french art-cinema plotting device; namely to pace with semi puzzling hyper quotidean observation right through and in the last instance drop a defining twist/revelation to induce a delayed congitve elevation in the viewer.

This long established Gallic technique typically draws the viewer into a hindsight type meditation on the work and has been a dominant strucutural solution for french dramtic realist film for at least 40 years, So in Hollywood orientated hands, it feels curiously new, perhaps even gimmicky.

Aside from the french technique steal, a couple of powerful central performances and a captivating landscape, the film is guilty of peddling two derided negative gender troupes, most probably caused by remaining faithful to the dated original 1960s novel.

The first is the negative gay character troupe, A disenfranchised, manevolant disruptor of the hetro-normative universe, destined to come to a miserable end. Interestingly here it is devised in a triadic force; as a troupe inverted, a troupe amplified and also the driver of the innovation ooccuring through genre blending.

The 2nd is the pathetic female lead troupe. In this case the depths of silly abject wraithness thrust upon the female lead appears quite unforgivable from a post modern progressive female director such as Champion, working in this post 'me-too' era. The emptyness of the females in general are all hyper exagerated. But amplifying the worn out troupe does absolutly nothing to expand and innovate female character representation. At best it offers opportunity for some compelling lead actress performnce.

Subsequently one's left with an anoyingly undecided sense about the piece as a whole, balanced as it is between good craft, gimmicky strategy and careless retention of the now unforgivable. However the performances and visuals are still likley to appeal as Oscar material.

Dead Man's Switch: A Crypto Mystery (2021)

Great soundtrack

[8/10 · 10 January 2022]

This story still requires a part 2 because the insinutation is that the story is far from over. The real treat here is the for-purpose designed soundtrack by Sung Tien Kao and co which really needs some exposure. Up the soundtrack onto youtube and do yourselves a favour folks.

Music Box: Mr. Saturday Night (2021) Season 1, Episode 5

Missing the gay history content

[5/10 · 19 December 2021]

The big elephant in the room, the notable absence here is the issue of Stiggwood's and Travolta's homosexuality. The whole narrative eventually focuses exclusively on the duo as they rise to an incredible degree of wealth and fame and yet virtually nothing is mentioned about this side of their lives and what is said only frames Stigwwod as sad and lonely. It's hard to imagine that a gay man who is fullfilling all his sensual desires doesn't have some kind of fullfilling sex life. Gay lives matter and were this made by an LGBTQ person, then this omission regarding the curious queer pairing wouldn't have gone unmapped.

This faux-pas mirrors a similar situation with two documentatires which appeared rpughly at the same time on the notorious lawyer Roy Cohn. One virtually omitted whilst framing his gay sexuality as sad while the other exposed a vibrant gay life.

We need another documentary which looks at how Stigwood supported and interacted with the gay people and their culture he came into contact with. The qestion of the handling of Travolta's bi/homosexuality (a long time open secret in tinsle town and it's gossip rags, resulting in scandal for Travolta) and the cover up required due to his bankability as a straight sex symbol also requires an historical examination. Without these insights this film's biography remains suspect.

Six Million Steps: A Journey Inward (2011)

90 minutes of pure navel gazing

[1/10 · 16 February 2020]

If you like listening to endless navel gazing people saying absolutely nothing at all continually, non-stop for 90 minutes then watch this film. As far as the trail itself.....you wont see any of it.

Bigfoot Girl (2019 Video)

Not a lot going down

[3/10 · 16 February 2020]

We liked Kiana and would have liked to see what she had to say given as much time as the over intense and dominating James Tyson, who for all his talk brought nothing at all to the question of captured Sasquatch evidence.

Tom Sewid was the charismatic star of the show for obvious reasons. His tales of Squatch encounters on Vancouver Island were compelling, not just because they constituted authentic oral evidence but because of their capacity to animate history, place and local culture.

But the problem with Squatch-world is it's full of blobs,fakes, fools, failures, and fantasists. A doc has to rise above that level to gain credibility. Besides our encounter with Sewid, there was the question of indented foot prints and a cast taken of one. But for the audience this was only ever presented as a question and without including the follow-on verification journey does not lift the film above the high water mark. Other reported sounds were not captured by the team's audio equipment and so again only leave them all looking suspect and silly.

If people are going to make a film then consider the fact viewers need to be included equally in all potential evidence events. Also why do Sasquatch-docs insist on using ridiculous horror film music for what they are trying to present as an ancient natural indigenous species ? Surely traditional Indian music will suffice.

In Search of the Port Chatham Hairy Man (2019)

Not exactly a blast....

[2/10 · 16 February 2020]

The world is full of fake, fantasy and failed Sasquatch hunters who fill our sad voids with endless dodgy blob-Squatches. This bunch of Charlie's seem to be on a race to the bottom to qualify for the title.

For: The Ariel photography of remote Alaska was a much needed relief from the pantomime on the ground. The trip itinerary itself was an interesting feat, including the chosen location and it's history.

Against: Unacceptable substituting of Squatch evidence with endless over enthusiastic expressions of wonder and certainty from the team about noises and sightings for which the audience has no proof actually occurred. Failure to use equipment to capture evidence for viewers when faced with potentially qualifying sightings and failure to install equipment so it actually works. Finally camera work that spent more time filming bums,tums, ankles and hats than scoping the fascinating landscape we had been taken to coupled with an intrusive musical soundtrack.

If the object of this film was to present an opportunity to retrieve evidence and show it to a viewing audience, then the whole boat sunk on departure. Next time, less talk, less unfit body, less annoying music, (maybe try local Indian music ?) - less technical incompetence and lose the enthusiastic cries of wolf.

The golden rule of Sasquatch docs is that only good quality audio and visual evidence counts and everything else brings reputation into serious disrepute. Maybe apply that rule next time.

Genius (2016)

mediocre script and weak direction creates unremarkable production

[17 October 2016]

I always worry when my mind out of boredom, turns towards trying to piece together and rate how a UK film pulled off setting a film in a foreign place without ever having left the country. There was a lot of that going on while watching this movie.

I notice that no script writer (John Logan) is listed in the IMDb entry for this film. It's a fair reflection of the kind of dead-beat, straight- laced, predictable and frankly damn-right safe and boring script writing that can hinder so many films emerging out of the UK. However compared to the usual UK output, this was sub-par fayre.

UK script writing tends to favour the safe and methodical approach to story telling, which while both appearing predictably ploddy and lacking imagination, usually throws in a couple of well constructed heart- wrenches for the audience and actors. The suspect heart-wrenches were predictably there, but by the time they arrived and were played out, i had lost interest in pretty well everybody in the film.

The well assembled cast were consequently left to their own devices. How were they ever going to deliver with a script and plot which falls below the bar ? Firth tried through his now trade-mark use of heavy silence while the rest opted for hysteria or appeal to the heart. The result was a rudimental and clichéd portrayal of an archetypal bad- boy writer. We got some interesting insight into Scott Fitzgerald and also an ability to briefly peer at the dilemma of being an editor, but Wolfe was reduced to type and the creative process revealed by his relationship with his editor Perkins was not remarkable or insightful.

I was left wondering whether Thomas Wolfe really deserved this film or if the film had let down Thomas Wolfe. I was also annoyed that apparently some Uk Film Biz insider could pull off getting a film made about an obscure American subject based on such a weak script and their own book- reading preferences rather that selection of more worthy subjects and script writing.

Dickensian (2015–2016)

Growing concern of the racism and homophobia in this series.

[4/10 · 31 January 2016]

A lot is already being covered about the virtues and flaws of this series in the press as it airs.

However a major concern is that the writer appears to be falling into an unforgivable trap with regards both it's ambiguously stated gay protagonist, Arthur Havisham as well as it's token ethnic-minority male, Artful Dodger. In both instances the writer, though appearing to be mold-breaking on the one hand ,has in reality, evoked the tired and well worn negative depictions of ethnic minorities and gays living in a straight white world, that belong to an era we should have moved away from.

The ambiguously asserted gay character, Arthur H, manages to adopt all the usual negative stereotypes assigned to a gay character for most of the 20th Century and widely castigated and made unpopular during the 70s and 80s. Havisham not only has no real voice as a gay individual, nor any active or satisfactory sexuality, but he's very much the victim, hysteric, corrupter, and corrupted all rolled into one. Usually the gay character with a negative stereotype has been assigned just one of these attributes. Yet Dickensian manages to roll all six into one. Not only is this unforgivable, It's totally anachronistic and homophobic.

Likewise for the token ethnic-minority male, assigned to the Artful Dodger. Despite all appearances of being ground breaking, what non- white male viewers can enjoy is the usual negative images of a black man (in this instance boy) already well versed in the antics of crime and actively untrustworthy and a suitable suspect for accusations of homicide.

As with LGBT depiction, this racist stereotype dominated for the best part of 100 years of moving image history, along side the more permissible image of the fun loving, cuddly, musical, cheeky but always servile black man. Artful Dodger appears to have been assigned something of all these negative stereotypes too. Here we are again, with the unconscious and unchecked racism of the writer and director who no doubt are both white and male, significantly, at a moment when there is uproar about this year's Oscars exclusion of ethnic minorities in the short lists of winners.

It's not a trade off either. Just because a portrayal of ethnically diverse adolescent romance is included, it doesn't mean the writer gets away with the failures described. In fact, the choice continues to affirm what is palatable to the white-male-heterosexual, being his access to the not-too-black pretty girl, alongside the denigration of the gay and non-white male, both who no doubt represent a threat to his power.

The series is still airing as i write, but one is now left speculating to what extent Havisham will escape an inevitable dismal ending (a nail- biter we've just gone through with the gay footman, Barrow of Downton Abbey)and the question of the degree of Dodger's immorality though of course where he'll be inescapably always bad. A good writer would have offered a different set of speculations.

If white heterosexual writers are going to write in LGBT & ethnic monitory characters, then they should at least be familiar with the mistakes and criticisms made against script writers of their profession in the past and undertake not to repeat them. It all boils down to very bad craftsmanship, not political correctness, a defence so often sited by the offending. It's time to grow up, we can't drag these cliché derogatory stereotypes into the 21st century.

It's All So Quiet (2013)

Typical of the current trend for feeling-focused, mood-piece cottage cinema

[5/10 · 2 June 2014]

A typical example of the prevailing trend among new low budget independent art house film makers today.

What's the hallmark of such works, compared to the art house movie of yesterday ? What you might call an extreme kind of minimalism that comes perhaps because of the empowering nature of new technology. Striped away are all the once essential components of a good film. It's a purist aesthetic but what does it leave us ?

We're left with work which is very firmly located in what historically we recognise as 'realism', hyper accentuated by an unnatural stripping away of the spoken word as anything but an indicator of underlying feeling. Sets and props are 'realist' and functional but encounters are strictly subservient to the re-ordered sets of directorial priorities. Typically nature features as an element is such films and it is found as such here.

The problem with this currently prevailing approach to making cinema is that is is somewhat repetitive in that it can be seen in many films being released today. It's as though the obsession to create the conditions that capture feeling entropy creative powers in each director in exactly the same way. The film maker becomes trapped by the schema which dictates the whole form of the work, added to which,in a gesture of self intensification, any attempt, if wanted, to veer away from the strategy is simply disallowed by the form itself.

The result is, well to be frank boring. Hasn't anyone told this new generation of film maker artists who are self confessedly preoccupied with the nature of feeling that the problem with feeling is that it doesn't go anywhere, lead to anything and is essentially nihilistic and inward bound. It's also notoriously difficult to convey or control in film, often leading to long empty cinematic voids whose best asset is the slowing down of pace. The idea that there is some kind of key to unlocking the cinematic propensity to convey the strata of human feeling is akin to the search for philosopher's stone. Does someone need to tell this generation to grow up and face reality ?

Talking of reality, the cliché of reality achieved through this technique needs to be scrutinised and questioned. I would propose that the realism shown here is in fact highly distorted by the entropic effect of the filmic technique which is so bent on prioritising feeling over plot or narrative.

In reality, a farm house can be a hive of activity and the stripped down conversation required for such films as these is highly unnatural and stylistic. The emerging untold story is the plight of the enigma of a gay farmer who is somewhat incidentally tossed into the mix yet is actually a radical and little explored subject. But nothing is given away, largely to maintain the conceit of feeling manifested over narrative. This represents a missed opportunity. The story is not being told. The hinted at relationship between the farmer and the milk collector only highlights that sense of something strategically avoided, if not entirely ignored. The addition of a gay responsive young farmhand becomes almost ludicrous, something closer to an isolated gay farmer's wet dream than anything real and yet the proliferating gay theme is integrated without any realistic sense of consideration or interrogation. Every gay male would comprehend that in reality if three gay farm workers were to converge in such a manner it should be something incredible and very unusual or unexpected. Perhaps a lot would even be discussed. The presence of this gay theme exposes the lack of realism at play here because something very natural is missing. I felt that the director used gay people for her own end whilst ignoring a story that most probably needs to be told.

In the end nothing is clear. The problem with these feeling films is that they leave us with no clarity, with nothing but elemental sensation. A bird, a smell, a bleat, a rustle. A hinted at theme in a throw away line. A lot of guess work. Rather than hover in this unsatisfying threshold, the poetically minded should leap fully into the 'other side' and meanwhile allow stories to reveal and tell us what needs to be told.

The fact that this methodology is currently being repeated over and over again by today's film makers adds nothing to the cause. In fact it conveys a troubling view of a generation so traumatised by the staggering quantities of information and knowledge now available because of new technology that they've backed themselves into a corner from which they must emerge and for which only the totally poetic can cater. Such films as these in the end are neither one nor the other. Meanwhile one asks with concern, which film makers have really got a handle on reality ?

Boxhagener Platz (2010)

Evocative meditation on history

[7/10 · 29 May 2014]

An evocative meditation on history, Boxhagener Platz moves at an effecting pace through a Brechtian degree of character study towards the resolution of the 'who-dunnit' that drives the plot forward.

As a film, several elements come together to manifest the film's focus which is preoccupied with the nature of History. The high standards of recreation of 1960s inner city East Berlin with an exemplary attention to detail contrasts with the constant call and recall the characters make to the recent Nazi past and it's ghostly spirit uncannily pervades the very air these people breath. The conflict and all defining issue of Ideology which defined the fate of the German people living in those decades is brought into high profile. The mostly wordless observations of the child protagonist acts to show the confusion of messages and cognitive processes required to adapt to that time and place.

The film's self absorption does indeed make this a particularly German 'Heimat' film but the film is clear in it's indication of the complex social condition which demands such attention.

Despite being an adaptation of a novel, the film is very evocative of Brechtian theatre in the pacing of itself primarily through intense character study. This aspect acts as the bind which synthesises the real and ghostly echoes of the Communist and Nazi reality whose spirited co- existence defines how the film presents History as it's main subject.

Floating Skyscrapers (2013)

out of date cinematic treatments of gay theme

[4/10 · 12 April 2014]

Tomasz Wasilewski has publicly declared this to be Poland's first gay themed film which is not true. In Poland at least the gay film genre is fledgling, but this film follows in the wake of more than half a dozen gay themed Polish films made in recent years. To insist on such a declaration betrays a failure to grasp the tradition of the gay themed film he has honoured himself with the task of contributing to.

Wasilewski's film displays good acting with a cast who are sympathetically engaging. Cinematically, the visuality is sophisticated, with obvious preoccupations with the elemental essences of spatiality and landscape. But this photographic style threatens to bow under the weight of it's own vacuity where style rules over substance once one considers the terrible treatment Wasilewski consigns upon his chosen subject matter, the gay themed film. Wasilewski can be seen on Youtube to say that his gay character is something new but what we in fact encounter is a much unwanted throw-back to the days when gays in cinema were always the unfortunate, the unfulfilled, the castigated, the bad, mad or murdered.

Eastern Europe is slowly emerging from a traumatised, isolated, abused and culturally starved recent past and at the time of this film's release Poland is dominated by a reactionary conservatism fuelled by a right wing anti-gay middle European Catholicism. But are things really this bad for gay people in Poland's capital ? Are options among the urban set so limited ? In fact there is much evidence that this is not the case. But more to the point, even if it were, then more so than ever, the film maker has in some sense a duty to use their imagination to elevate the gay themed film to a higher and better place. But this is far from what occurs in Floating Skyscrapers.

Despite initial indications of a touching and successful gay romance, Wasilewski freefalls somewhat inexplicably into negative clichés which one had been led to believe were consigned to the vaults of cinematic history. Hail the return of the tedium of the ultra magnified maladjusted gay, the threatened morally indignant heterosexuals, the traumatised parents, the proverbial slaps across the face, the long stoney silences, the angst, the intense sense of heavy burden of the oh-no-he's-gay! problematics and finally the inevitable gay bashing. If Wasilewski thinks this is something new then he needs a stiff pointing back to seminal gay discourses of the 1980s which exposed these negatively limiting stereotypes and were well aired in popular gay documentaries and books such as The Celluloid Closet. This is old hat.

The extent to which Wasilewski fails to grasp his subject continues. If there is something new about this character it is the possibility that he is in fact not a gay character but a bisexual character. Certainly he lives out all the primary psychological dilemmas that define the trials of true bisexuality. Bisexuality is one of the emergent sexual minorities of the era in terms of recent understanding and long held misconceptions finally being overturned. As a portrayal of the obstacles of bisexual fulfilment the story serves well. But Wasilewski falls into uninformed handling here, fixing the identity upon the axis of gay, while inferring notions about fluid sexualities which are currently thought to be wrong and damaging to understanding both the emotional needs of gay and true bisexuality.

Aside from the failure to handle the thematic politics of sexual minorities, somewhat incongruous with the level of prejudice portrayed, the film's characters hang out in art galleries, smoking dope, listen to cool music, socialise in underground urban gatherings, wear trendy clothing, have IKEA filled apartments and own all the latest gadgets which means crucially access to the internet. So how does Wasilewski imagine that the gay subject could receive such a unanimously negative reception among this set of people ? The only concession one could grant Wasilewski is that he is at odds to portray a Poland which may have had a material recovery but devoid of any tangible recent social revolution, it's social mindset remains effectively in the dark ages. Again there is evidence that this is not necessarily the case in Poland's capital. But also, once again if reality in Poland were so, then would it not be in some sense his duty to offer a different vision, a different way of thinking to the Polish ?

Unfortunately Wasilewski does not do this and what we have here is an example of social attitudes presented as cultural immaturity largely because the prejudice portrayed is omnipotent. What's more, the degree of prejudice remains both unexamined & unchallenged but instead accepted and perhaps even gratuitously celebrated. In Youtube interviews, Wasilewski fails to grasp the extent of his negative treatment of the gay subject and perhaps any ownership of his own internalised homophobia which his plot-point choices betray. Though publicly celebrated for creating a gay themed film, he has in fact unforgivably created a homophobic film which revels in the manifestation of gay victimhood and lacks the courage to establish a sustainable vision for sexual minorities in Polish cinema. Further more he plays into the hands of Poland's political right by confirming their beliefs that sexual minorities are unstable, disruptive and as the perpetrator of the unacceptable only ever to be perceived as a victim to be mistrusted. The extent of the failure of responsibility in this work runs deep and that is a shame where obvious cinematographic sophistication can be seen and a very good cast was assembled. Wasilewski needs to consider the charges laid here carefully and perhaps not back away from the subject but make another film which corrects his wrongs and enlightens the territory which this work fails to do.

Private Lessons (2008)

A film trying to be broad and clever ends up being too narrow and distracted by a lesser plot

[3/10 · 11 April 2014]

The problem with this film is that it appears to have set out with the intention to be broadly exploitative about the wider questions concerning the nature of seduction, sexual awakening, discrimination , freedom and so forth.

However the manipulative spectacle which governs the seduction of Jonas becomes so outrageous that it ends up becoming the central axis of anxiety that dominates the main thematics within the work.

We slide quickly from ambitious reaching for parallels which involve evocations of idealised intellectual emancipation and a nod to ancient Greek love. Where do we end up ? Subsumed in uncomfortable realisations about the clumsy motives which lie behind the adult desires to which we are spectators. There unfolds a glaring itinerary of dubious motives.

1. Jonas initially approaches his adult friends for help about a very specific issue (premature ejaculation) but far from helping him, they never identify the issue but rather use it to increase their grasp over the boy by introducing a confusing melange of pornographic speak.

2. The adult group effectively chase away Jonas' girlfriend presumably because she is not compliant with their intentions or power over Jonas.

3. We never actually see the scene where Jonas agrees to submit to a group sexual encounter. Because of this it is difficult to assess the moment he crosses over into their world and is entirely seduced.

4. When Pierre isolates Jonas and begins his own seduction the question which rises is whose pleasure is he really pre-occupied with ? The boy's own relationship with pleasure or Pierre's desire to sexually over- power the boy and fulfil his sexual conquest.

Both Jonas and his girlfriend challenge the adult's power by backing away sharply at some point. The very fact of this awkwardness indicates a failure of Pierre and ultimately the adult group to transmit his/their noble sexual awakening project. The question arises, why did it fail or why was it so flawed in the end ?

The abuse here is not strictly speaking outside the law and illegal so much as it is about the insensitivity of adults to the vulnerability and naivety of youth AS WELL AS to a notion of inter-relational abuse regardless of the issue of age.

The adults violate their relation to Jonas when they use his problem with premature ejaculation to ensnare him as a candidate for sexual recreation within their group by not providing clear solutions for his needs but instead playing with him. They further abuse him by openly ridiculing the boundaries of his relationship with his girlfriend in what is an unforgivable act of adult manipulation. Finally Pierre abuses Jonas by offering a sexual experience that is closeted, furtive, rather squalid, lacking in a sense of fun and ultimately serving his own interests and this a a far cry from all the talk about the freedom of sexual pleasure as a form of self emancipation.

It's a shame the film lost touch with what appears to be it's original broader potential. Had Jonas been seduced by someone who was more at ease with his sexuality, more playful, giving, indeed well adjusted as a feminine gay man, Jonas' seduction may well have been a positive portrayal of precisely the ideals Pierre harks on about. However the message of the film was in the end ambivalent concerning if it thought gay was OK as an option over and above a flawed notion of bisexuality devoid of emotional attachment which it was at odds to present to Jonas as the acceptable form of sexual fluidity. To this extent one had to wonder what Jonas had been taught in the end about sex, his body and power etc and if he had indeed missed out on a more effective awakening of sexual self knowledge which could have been experienced through more likable, well intentioned, wiser, better adjusted peers.

Sexual Chronicles of a French Family (2012)

Growing use of explicit sexuality in new cinema comes right to the fore

[7/10 · 16 July 2013]

A previous reviewer of this film suggests that people under the age of 35 might find this film difficult. However, i felt the opposite, that people over 45 would find this film blows away what they have previously known.

To the older generations raised on the explosive challenges of the post war decades of a cinema which raged against both repressive censorship laws and out-moded social norms, their sense of history is invested in what is understood to be a participation in an iconic sexual revolution among other things.

So many of the films of the 60s and 70s both punctuated a sense of historical change and ushered in a new permissiveness. Yet none could stand today against what we see in this essentially small film.

Today's youth are emerging and sex is still central to the radical. Not one of the great classic works of cinema which created a chime with sexual liberation depicted the level of explicit sex which is slowly becoming the norm in new independent cinema. It is in many respects an extraordinary shift in the language of cinema.

This new and overt form of sexual language is not a reaction against repressive norms as it was in the 60s, but rather reflects the effect on a generation of unbound exposure to pornography via the internet from early childhood. The younger generation are so sophisticated in their understanding of sex, that it is quite the norm to extend into the language of their cinema the digital habits which are available to them in private.

To an older generation this may come as a shock. We're not used to such a sense of ease with the genitalia. The male penis has been a heavily censored object in cinema until very recently, though largely through the prudish choice of a director-base which was essentially male and heterosexual. Surprisingly, considering the militancy of the feminist movement, depiction of the clitoris was associated very much with male exploitation of women and has never previously been celebrated as such in cinema. These old types of restrictions, essentially generated through the dialogues of the cultural liberators of the 60s, 70s and 80s appear to have had their day.

It is true that France, and Europe historically have been much more relaxed about the depiction of sex in cinema compared with for example the US and the UK. However this film really brings right up to date that natural licence and we move into a new territory of depicted sexual intimacy.

All of the films emerging which depict graphic sex and i could name at least half a dozen off the top of my head, are not dabbling in pornography. Rather, what is emerging is a new world, a new honesty, a new openness, a new level of maturity, of truth, a language of signs and symbols well beyond the old order of the avoided, couched, suggested and coded.

In this new utopia, the liberation has in some sense already been long around via the advent of the internet culture. Cinema needs to catch up. The old sexual reality are no longer contain the issues of the day. Sex now becomes a way of intensifying the present tense and claiming life through a sensuality finally contextualised by a pure kind of democracy. We can all see ourselves as sexual beings. We can all live, we can all have what we need. Because we all are anyway.

Sex has always been linked in some sense to the arrival of the revolutionary. Certainly this new level of sexually explicit toleration blows away the old struggles which turn out to have only come so far in the end. In other films of this kind, the ease with the sexually explicit has usually been attributed to the emerging younger generation. This film breaks the mold by suggesting that everyone has nothing to hide, both young and old. it's a good development and a generous form of inclusion. Until now one had the impression that the younger generation were only able to celebrate their own interests. This film confirms that this is no longer the case and both the curiosity and technology of the young is capable of transforming and touching the lives of all generations.

I Want Your Love (2012)

Innovative flashes but a growing sense of uncertainty about the new generation

[4/10 · 9 July 2013]

I was having problems with this film. It sagged heavily half way through. However it did continue to produce flashes of originality, the main points i list below:

1. Whilst struggling to stick with the film (see below), in an attempt to scrape the bottom of the barrel, i was gratefully amused for the slogan 'lesbian bed death' - referring to the condition of the cessation of sex in long term relationships.

2. The film documents a kind of fin de siecle moment for a San Franciscan gay generation who interestingly are not particularly defined by any significant notion in the political struggle for gay rights; a detail which is startling for the fact of it's final appearance after effectively 60 years of multiple generations entirely defined by successive phases of political struggle. The film also focuses on the twilight of youth, where the protagonist, Jesse, sensing his impending maturity into full adulthood seeks to return to the place of his youth and to leave the city which has defined the first part of his young adult experience. It is a timeless right of passage and small details capture that strange sense of change and reappraisal with a quiet sophistication.

3. Characteristic of this generation's gay themed cinematic work, perhaps because of a diminishing sense of identity rooted in oppression and struggle, lies a problematic vacuum. Films such as this and also for example, The Lost Coast, also set in San Francisco, evoke a genre, which though not so much narcissistic, display a lack of capability or willingness to dream up a relationship with the future and consequently portray an intense over involvement in the experience of the present. This creates a genre which has a tendency to over dramatise what could be undeserving issues. Relatively minor events in the path of life are over magnified and their importance exaggerated with a post/adolescent preoccupation whose departure is at times long overdue. One is left with a sense of a potentially lost and tragic generation, who have been entirely defined by a profoundly conservative free-market ideology and show no sense of having engaged in any real spirit of rebellion. What we see is reassuringly quotidian, but also lacking any connectivity to a wider social context.It's essentially stuck at the inward looking. Jesse's departure offer's no sense that this wider malaise is due for a change. It's frustrating to sit through, because cinema in the past has been so much more than this. It raises the question, where are we headed as this generation comes to power ?

4. Something the new generation do offer and which is seen extensively in this film is the growing trend to show explicit sex as an extension of the cinematic language of emotional intimacy. This film raises the bar and pushes that to greater heights than the plethora of recent films which have exploded with a laid back approach to cinematic (gay) sex. However, because the last third of this film is literally saturated in sex it did raise an interesting question. As i gagged and squealed my way through the images i wondered if sex in cinema was like sex in literature; namely incredibly hard to do well. It's not enough just to show the whole ugly load. You need to do something cinematically. Certainly i would not say this is manufacturing moments of porn. But it was also uncertain what it's intention was other than to revel in a new found freedom to let it all hang out. period. That's just not enough. It's immature because as happens in this film, it detracts from the essential flow of energy in the work as a whole, especially for a film whose story is so incredibly thin on the ground. What happens is the sex becomes just another symptom of the portrait of a generation who don't really have anything to say for themselves at all and remain largely undefined and invisible as an entity.

5. Regarding the title, 'I want your love', the meaning is ambiguous on inspection. Certainly the protagonist Jesse, spends the film contemplating the cessation or diminishment of his emotional bonds in general. He may be sensing a future to come where the definition of love is going to have to be far broader than his previous assumptions. The title could also refer to the short-sightedness and frustration of emotional bonds and sex in young adult groups in general. The people we meet here stand in contrast to the old 1970s and 80s San Franciscan gay 'communities' defined by a celebration of hyped up promiscuity as a mark of liberation and also the more recent era preoccupied with AIDS and death. But either way, it remains unstable as a title. It speaks more of insecurity, of a need unfulfilled rather than a love successfully acquired. To this extent it supports the idea of a new generation who remain undefined and occupy a vacuum, despite ironically, finally inheriting the legal right to fully love in public. Is this a depiction of a generation in shock at the arrival of the 'you are now normal' identity and it's options ?

I gave this film 4 because i do remain impressed with this new breed of actor who is willing to share their body so intimately. I also gave points for the 'lesbian bed death' slogan. But i remain concerned at the appearance of yet another film which portrays an emerging generation caught in a sense of unarticulated and broody crisis about their sense of purpose.

In the Woods (2010)

New generation - same rites - new cinema.....

[5/10 · 2 July 2013]

While watching this i became acutely aware of the generation gap between the new arrivals and my own who are most probably their parents or at least their uncles and aunts.

So i wondered how my niece or nephew might enjoy this film as a right- of-passage film which reflects their age group. For myself i felt a mixture of impatience and boredom mixed with reminiscence for an early adulthood which has truly past for me at least. To this extent, whilst needing something to think about, I was struck watching the film that humans are destined to rediscover the same universe with each new generation. The same rite's of passage, the same movement from childhood to adulthood, the same fumbling, the same moments of fascination and self absorption. I'm doing it even now, aged 48, where i find one is still fumbling forward in some sense but in a different sense to the age portrayed in this film.

That said, i did find the film almost painfully whimsical. Whimsy is the great undoing of youth. As an adult, there is little patience for such foibles, though again I was struck at how reflective of my own experience the furtiveness captured really is for the age-period of life portrayed. It was however, with great relief that having stuck out the ins and outs of this trio of characters, the film all but completed with what was a compelling, riveting and sensual threesome between the actors. Beautifully shot, a startling musical score and intense with a prospect of a director who finally might well have something to say. I could easily have done without most of what had gone before. The symbolism of fairy tale worlds,childhood, and so forth was all in keeping with it's thematics but left me still essentially bored and wondering if the film might be pointless.

I wondered if the car exploding was something which had really been earned by what we had witnessed ? It was slightly an inverted Zabriskie Point moment. Only with Zabriskie Point, the explosion metaphor stands as a symbol for absolute patriarchal rejection. Here, perhaps it stood for the end of what had gone before, but i still felt that the furtive post adolescent exploration of boundaries of which the film mostly consists, just aren't as significant or interesting as they may have felt at the time.

However as a symbol of a generation who usher in a new inter-sexuality which is indeed new, the opening and finale may yet still stand. Moving beyond the old order of straight, gay and lesbian, we are entering the dawning of multi-dimensional notions of both loving and gender. Certainly when new configurations of social sexuality emerge they are indeed socially explosive and one is left speculating if the three characters are coming to new conclusions or simply replicating the timeless experimentation of ages past. The gender politics portrayed was pretty conventional. The hansom 'straight'male, confident, at ease with nudity, the furtive more reticent 'gay' male, a little closeted, lacking confidence and quietly desiring the straight male body of his girlfriend's lover, the self absorbed enigmatic woman discovering her female 'power' - all standard non-boundary pushing portrayals. However the increasing representation of bisexuality in cinema is refreshing though reflective of that group's current emergence as a psycho-sexual cultural discourse.

Refreshing to the new generation though is a lack of prudishness about filming genitalia as an extension of the expression of intimacy.The camcorder shaky aesthetic also characterises freshness, though at times here was a little reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project in it's proximity to the sinister aspect of the woods.

I gave this film 4 and then 5 largely because i think it over rated the rites it portrayed but also then to acknowledge the bravery of the degree of nudity the actors were prepared to give of themselves. With regards the acting, it was difficult to give credit where it might be due, largely because of an absence of a script of any notional interest. The film was heavily reliant on a kind of 'pure' cinema with a stripped down plot mostly concerned with manifesting emotional tension above all else.

Dream Boy (2008)

Movie fine until last 15 minutes (contains spoiler.)

[6/10 · 8 February 2013]

This movie is fine until the last 15 minutes.

Some people here have said that the film could never capture the subtleties of the book. That may be so but the film does stand on it's own merit...until the very end.

I found the last fifteen minutes absurd and a difficult swallow. (No pun intended.)

Are we really to believe that Ray is willing to risk everything for a blow job in close proximity to his very straight and butch comrades ?

Are we really being compelled to believe that Nathan, who has obviously suffered sexual abuse from his father now dies whilst being raped by one of Ray's butch friends. Sorry, but it looks all too ridiculous on film.

Then the ending is fudged. Do they leave the body in the house undiscovered ? Did they show it to the father ? Did anybody find out ? Does Ray realize his blow-job has cost his lover Nathan his life as well as make his straight buddy a raping murderer ?

Do we assume it's Nathan's ghost that haunts Roy in the final sequence or that everything is back to normal and nothing actually happened ?

It all gets a bit Twin-Peaks at best with a big emphasis on the subject of being haunted, very muddled and confused and unbelievable for everybody else.

That's a shame as it had a thing going for it for the first 3/4s of the movie.

L'homme de désir (1970)

Both a queer and a queer film which stands at a social cross roads.

[7/10 · 13 January 2013]

This film is of a portrait of man's desire in relation to another man.

However, from a post modern point of view, the portrait sits on a historical crossroads.

A cynical appraisal of the story might tell of a bored, married, city commuter who is tied to the conventions of an office job and a marriage that has stagnated. The commuter seeks distractions from the hum-drum of his life and makes the mistake of falling for a bit of rough trade he picks up at the road side. The more he sees of the anarchy of the hustler's life the more he lets himself go. However, everything in the film want's you to believe in Etienne's (the city commuter) attempts not to see the situation in this way, but rather to share and perceive Etienne's ideas about spiritual love and redemption from suffering. In Etienne's delusions he is a Christian hero bringing salvation and peace by following the purity of his natural propensity to love. But from a Freudian perspective Etienne is a latent bi/homosexual in a state of contradictory denial and personal crisis characterised by self destruction.

From a post queer era perspective, actual verbal reference to 'homosexuality' is noted to be almost laughably absent from the film despite a repeated inference to a homosexual underworld which provides a good part of the setting of the story as much as an explicitly declared same gender love. It's a queer (in the old sense of the word) contradiction, meaning, it is rather 'odd'.

Anything gay is unmentionable and this cinematic convention towards omitting reference sets up typical devices which are left to carry any notions of 'gay' queer themes present. Devices like, the blurring of definitions, the creation of ambiguities, the muddling of religious ideas with social inferences and even ironically,the necessity of asserting a 'gay gaze' to negotiate the existence of all these devices. Perhaps the most classic of these devices is the untimely demise of the character who embodies the taboo emotions. Sadly, this film does present that cliché. The use of such cinematic techniques to undermine the subject to which it refers to, that is, sexuality, is nothing new, but the overt assertion of same gender love portrayed to such an obsessive degree does feel edgy and remains exciting.

The film works best if the audience is moved towards a state of intellectual enigmatic-ism. However moving away from this comfortable position and trying to provide answers to questions concerning the characters' actions feels like a decidedly queer task. At the heart of the question of the love portrayed in the film, it must be asked, what language best describes what has happened and who these people have been to each other ? This void in language is as relevant today to unfixing constraints and coming to a process of knowing as it has ever been. It's not a matter of labels but rather language. But at the same time this does not mean avoiding altogether reference to the obvious or major themes portrayed in the film.

In the Arms of My Enemy (2007)

brutal - pointless and wasted

[3/10 · 10 January 2013]

Brutal to the point of pointless. The over-repeated ring of bones crunching, snapping and breaking is what you shall take away with you. A wasted opportunity, considering the time, place and people in history are much neglected by western cinema.

The violence, which hogs everything, even itself becomes dramatically repetitive. The whole, inevitable, boring thing underscored by a vaguely religious male choral electronic musical voice which becomes camper and camper as the violence becomes more absurd.

The landscape is all but ignored. The people largely reduced and the protagonists used to synthesize the maker's own indulgent idea of tragedy and masculine beauty. Sadly,the taught notion that thoughtless brutality is somehow elevating when contrasted with the prettiness of youth (or is it meant to be the other way around?) just felt immature rather than informed or emotionally meaningful.

Such a waste. Just to add in it's favour, that the leads did bring good performances.

Interiors (1978)

Contains a master piece scene

[8/10 · 29 December 2012]

Standing back from the time of the 70s as we all do now, Allen's 'Interiors' does appear to fill a void by an unexpected style of turning inwards upon American representation, a particularly European intellectual sense of reality and successfully inhabiting along side the usual forms of representation, a deep, alternative yet compatible contribution to the received images of America.

The foreignness of the faux-style which was so criticised in it's day, it is fair to say, does resonate with the experience of loss and evocation which forms part of the language of the settled European immigrants who have made the landscape of New York, if not indeed the whole of America their own for generations.

The piece, therefore, and it's European influence as well as it's 'weakness' of fauxness proves to be an utterly authentic representation of the Euro-descendant American condition. It is precisely through this authentic synthesis, the piece becomes elevated to something Great.

Aside from the debate about the film's standing as a whole, It can be argued that the wedding dancing scene in the last third of the film is one of the greatest character portrayals of cinematic awkwardness ever produced. It is a mini but major triumph of agony, tragedy, and denouement and stands out as one of Allen's best from his Canon.

I think this film will continue to receive the revisionism it needs in proportion to the degree to which it has been overlooked and in the end could well be judged as one of the greatest of Allen's films rather than the one that just got through.