The Master

This film is an account of a fictional cult leader, Lancaster Dodd, and his acolyte, Freddie Quell. Quell is an emotionally damaged and alcoholic war veteran who meets Dodd when he stows away on a ship. There is some empathy between them and Quell joins Dodd's cult and becomes his eager fixer.

At the beginning of the film we meet quell as he returns to civilian life after the war. There is a long scene of Quelle and his sailor friends making a sandcastle in the shape of a woman so that they can feign copulation with it. The scene suggests that Quelle is more than averagely preoccupied by sex. There is a later scene where Quell is watching a group of people dancing in a room, then there is a close-up of his eyes and, when we cut back to the dancing group, all the women are naked. This scene seems to making roughly the same point as the sandcastle copulation scene. The dancing scene is held for an embarrassingly long time, causing me to reflect on the humiliations actors must endure to receive their fee. After all this emphasis on Quell's interest in sex he does nothing in the film that is sexually untoward. So what was all that about?

Quell Is played by Joaquim Phoenix, an actor I admire, and Dodd is played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. I have always thought of Phoenix as being quite well built but here he looks very thin and cadaverous. He gives an amazing performance, maybe slightly overdoing the talking-out-of-the-side-of-his-mouth schtick.

In civilian life Quelle tries a few jobs including photographer and making illicit hooch, but nothing works out. While stowing away on a ship he meets Dodd, and they seem to have an unlikely affinity for each other. Dodd is already embarked on his career as proselytiser and conman or,  as he puts it, 'I am a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist, a theoretical philosopher... but above all I am a man'. Quell joins Dodd's coterie and things jog along as Dodd finds wealthy sponsors and his enterprise grows. There is a disagreement between Quelle and Dodd and Quell goes his own way for several years. He returns to Dodd, finding him quite a lot more successful than he was when he left him.

This film has very little dramatic impulse. As one over-long scene meanders into another over-long scene I sat watching and wondering where it was leading. I thought of Dorothy Parker's description of Los Angeles as 'seventy-two suburbs in search of a city' because this film is seventy-two scenes in search of a story. This film is very well made and looks expensive, but the narrative arc is incoherent and lacks impulse, There are several unexpected scenes, such as one where Quell is made to blunder back and forwards, blindfolded, between the walls of a room, or one where suddenly they are in the desert playing with a motor bike, when I had no choice but to wonder where the scene was leading, whether it was entertaining, or what it was telling us of relevance to the story. The film is very much less than the sum of its parts. Maybe Anderson should try a little more delegation, particularly with screen writing. I liked Anderson's first three films but I did not share in the admiration for There Will Be Blood. This is Anderson's Heaven's Gate. As I watched Dodd's character - motivated by self-importance, vapid ideas and cliches - I wondered to what extent these qualities apply to this film.

It did not help this film's case that the film I saw after it was Michael Haneke's Amour, which cast into a horrible perspective the sheer banality of the points this film tries so expensively and incompetently to make. Those who like the idea of this film should give it a miss and obtain a DVD of Elmer Gantry instead.

Everyday

This is the film I preferred of those that I saw in the film festival in Dinard. It was introduced by its director, Michael Winterbottom, looking alarmingly young for a man who has directed 37 films. The film was made over a period of five years and it is about a family with four children. It shows in detail the day-to-day routine of the family's life, particularly as the children are got up, given breakfast and got off to school in the morning and collected in the afternoon. There are several scenes shot in the school showing the children during their classes. There are amazingly touching scenes of the children, who are real-life siblings and are too young to 'act', but are caught by Winterbottom in authentic moments of emotion and vulnerability.

The anomaly is that the father, Ian, is in prison so, very often, the children must be rounded up by their mother, Karen, put on a bus, then on a train, then into a taxi, to take them to visit their father in prison.

This film has not had a cinema release yet in the UK, although it has been shown on television. In Googling for reviews I did not find many, and some of those that I did find expressed disappointment that the film is boring because nothing happens. This is true, nothing happens, except Life. Those who make this complaint are those who have overdosed on Hollywood entertainment taken neat.

I very much admired recently the films of Asghar Farhadi, About Elly and A Separation. One thing I admired about these films was how, from very simple beginnings, the plot thickened, and how simple situations led to unexpected sequences. Everyday is the opposite. Little situations that may have made us tense because they may have led to trouble, didn't. This is just the same as how, usually, when one maybe forgot to lock the front door, one returns home to find that a no burglar has been in. These little anxieties occur but usually they are okay, and that is how it is in this film. The film is set in rural Norfolk and when one of the children, aged about seven, takes a hunting rifle and goes off into the woods looking for rabbits, nothing goes wrong and he is finally found by by his mother, given a smack, and sent to bed. I admired this film because it does not have acting shtick and it does not have dramatic shtick, which was so refreshing after so many films I have seen err in the other direction.
 
I course the mother does not need any more drama then she already has, with four children, an absent father, just a little occasional help from her mother in law, a job in B&Q during the day and a job serving in a pub in the evening. She is played very well by Shirley Henderson and her husband is played very charmingly by John Simm. The scenes of prison visits were shot in real prisons and the scenes in the classroom was shot in a real school.

The film is intercut with occasional scenes of the rural environment - fields, rolling hils, sheep and woods. The soundtrack has lovely music by Michael Nyman.

There are some scenes of family outings - trips to the seaside - showing that another man has seeped into her life, although we see no details other than that he occasionally joins them on outings and has tea with them. When, towards the end of the film, Ian is out of prison, there is a scene where they are in bed, him asleep and her, eyes wide, staring at the ceiling, and suddenly her eyes fill with tears and she says "You know, it was really hard, while you were away." He half wakes up

    "what...?"
    "I was seeing someone."
    "You were seeing someone while I was inside??"
    "Yes."
    "Who was it, who were you seeing??"
    "Eddy"
    "I don't believe it. You were seeing fuckin' Eddy??

So it goes on. There are shots of the children in their rooms hearing their parents' raised voices.The next morning Ian is at the breakfast table not looking as though he had a particularly good night but over it.

I think that with this film Michael Winterbottom has made a quiet masterpiece.

Argo

This is a very good film in many departments. It is gripping, entertaining, humorous, witty, well directed and well acted. It is a pity it has such a fatal flaw.

The film starts with a pre-credit sequence giving a decent summary of the United States' shameful diplomacy towards Iran. It recounts how, in 1953, United States destabilised and brought down a democratically elected government. Then it installed a puppet Shah and during 25 years provided him with money, arms and equipment so that he could terrorise, murder, torture and imprison its population, and humiliate them with enforced westernisation. All this was to enable American corporations to prosper and to ensure that the United States would have reliable supply of oil.

The film is based on true events centring on the siege of the United States Embassy in Tehran in 1979. As the embassy was being overrun six employees escaped out of the back door, ran through the streets, and found shelter in the Official residence of the Canadian Ambassador. The CIA sought to rescue these people, and that is what this film is about.

The film is directed by, and stars, Ben Affleck. Affleck has acted in more than 50 films and this is the third feature that he has directed. The previous two films that he directed, Gone, Baby, Gone and The Town Were solid, good quality films. With Argo I am sure that he will have a place at the high table of American filmmaking. The first time I saw this film, in the London film Festival in 2012, There was a round of applause in the cinema at a pivotal point in the story. The only previous occasions when I have experienced applause in the cinema have been during festival screenings when someone involved in the making of the film was present, not as a response to some development in the narrative. This, I think, is testimony to Argo's effectiveness as a gripping drama.

The film has good, juicy parts for John Goodman and Alan Arkin. Arkin is best known for his part Catch-22 and has acted in over 100 films. He was also a singer and has written several books. Goodman made his name in the television series Roseanne and subsequently established his reputation in films such as The Big Lebowski. Argo has a witty script, written by first-time writer Chris Terrio. Set in 1979, the film does a good job of reflecting the fashions and manners of that time without fetishising them.

Argo's problem arises from its internal contradiction. Its pre-credit sequence shows America's dreadful history colluding in the oppression of Iran for its own venal advantage; a history demanding justice. The bulk of the film, however, shows the United States cocking yet another snook at this unfortunate country, and emerging with the smirk on its face. Justice will not be done and might is right.

La Piscine

La Piscine was made in 1968 and it was directed by Jacques Deray. There are four glorious European stars in their prime: Alain Delon in a dark and complex role, Maurice Ronet delivering the superficial charm he does so well, Romy Schneider looking impossibly beautiful and Jane Birkin just out of nappies.

I have read several online reviews of this film and none of them understood it, most commenting that it is a bit too long and a bit too slow, and it takes too long for anything to happen. Thank God there was someone at the BFI who knew better!

I am a person who instinctively looks below the surface of things and for me this film is a feast.

It is set in a borrowed holiday villa in the south of France, where Jean-Paul (Delon) and Marianne (Schneider) are on holiday together and spend their days fooling around by the swimming pool. Suddenly a mutual friend, Harry (Ronet) telephones and invites himself with his daughter, Penelope (Birkin), and they arrive in an expensive and throaty sports car. They join in the fun by the swimming pool, prepare meals together and do a bit of shopping. Harry is a playboy type and an old friend of Jean-Paul, also a possible ex-lover of Marianne - it's for us and Jean-Paul to find out. As they play together there is a storm of undercurrents and one of the main pleasures of the film is enjoying the difference between their polite exchanges and what they are thinking. It has very often been commented that the cinema must accept the limitation that it can work with only surface appearances. This film is proof of the contrary.

Rendering the film more evocative is one's knowledge of Romy Schneider's tragic life (she had a son who died in an awful accident when he was fourteen years old, and subsequently Romy Schneider killed herself with alcohol and pills). Delon and Schneider had been lovers and after her death Delon arranged for her son's remains to be put in the same grave as her. Ronet, who as a painter exhibited alongside Dubuffet and played piano and organ, died of cancer a month before his 56th birthday; Alain Delon, now in his mid-seventies, is still a kingpin of the jet set life in Geneva, his adopted home, and we all know how Jane Birkin is!

This film reminds me of the work of Claude Chabrol and if this were a Chabrol film it would be one of his best. The restauration is marvellous and the image, the place, the Sun and the stars look wonderful up on the screen.

Skyfall

This is a hugely enjoyable film that should give the Bond franchise a new lease of life. It starts with a pre-credit chase sequence in which one has no idea what is going on, other than that Bond is being chased, if one recognises Daniel Craig. The film continues with this knowingness, riffing frequently and often humorously on previous bond films.

After the chase there is the most glorious credit sequence I can remember seeing for a long time, accompanied by the excellent theme song written and performed by Adele (known to her mother as Adele Laurie Blue Adkins).

Bond's adversary, Silva, is played by Javier Bardem and his boss, M, by the ever-present Judy Dench. In this film M is not just a remote presence, but she plays an active role in the proceedings. As I watched the film I was tempted by the idea that this, along with Live Flesh,  could be one of Bardem's best films. He has a lot to do and he throws himself imaginatively into his nicely characterised role.

I have much respect for Daniel Craig since I saw him in Our Friends In The North. I recently managed to see him in Layer Cake which, I have heard, got him the Bond role. Here, I thought, he was quite interestingly on the cusp of being too old for the part, although we see that his body is in magnificent condition.

One of the qualities of the film is its humorous riffing on other other films. There is a scene reminding us of Apocalypse Now, with a helicopter approaching blaring music from Tannoys. An old Aston Martin car from the previous bond film is dusted off and used here in tongue-in-cheek way. Although the film has plenty of scenes abroad, particularly in Turkey and Macao, it is not a rootless international mess, but is firmly rooted in a plausible London that would not offend Londoners. There is an excellent British cast, including Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw excellent as a computer geek, Rory Kinnear as a bureaucratic flunky and Albert Finney humiliating hidden behind a huge beard. Female interest is provided by Naomie Harris and Berenice Marlohe. My only slight disappointment with the film was the lack of wit and spark in the exchanges between Bond and these desirable females. These occasionally fell flat for me. I was recently reminded of what wit can do for a script while watching Argo.

This is Sam Mendes' eighth film as director and he has entered very well into the spirit of how a Bond film should be.

Polisse

This is a pretty bad film. At least, I hope it is because, if there is any accuracy in its depiction of a police child protection unit, then God help us. They are shown as a loud-mouthed, untrained, undisciplined, unprofessional rabble loafing around in their open plan office, demonstrating their barrack-room culture.

Interviews of a very intimate sexual nature are conducted with suspects in this open plan office with other colleagues than the interviewer overhearing and chipping in smart remarks and interruptions, and no evidence of any formalities at all. Part of the 'drama' is to show how much the events that they deal with 'get' to them, yet there is no suggestion that any back up or counselling is available. There is just a fairly incompetent boss who occasionally emerges from his office. When one of them jumped out of a window she seemed to be taking a wise course of action. I felt like doing the same.

Too much of the film shows the tedious private lives of these people, making much of the film like a dreadful soap opera, as they shout, argue and gesticulate exaggeratedly at each other. Scenes are often allowed to go on too long, for instance, when they all go to a nightclub and we have to endure an interminable dancing display.

There is an implausible and redundant character - a journalist who is on an assignment to photograph the police department. It didn't take me long to guess that this part was played by the maker of the film, Maïwenn, up to something tricksy and cute. She is really called Maïwenn Le Bosco, but has adopted the French affectation of giving herself a one-barrel label. She devoted too much of the film to showing herself in character taking snaps, and no shot of her failed to show the 'red spot' logo of the Leica camera she was using. This was outrageous product placement. I know enough about photography to know that an identical camera is available at half the price but with the Panasonic logo on it, and I can't imagine many serious journalists would pay the necessary extra cash to flaunt a Leica logo. This redundant character nevertheless gives the film maker a chance for a redundant romance in her narrative. As I watched this film, becoming bored with squinting at the face of my watch, I let my eyes close to keep the tediousness at bay. Apparently it won a prize in the Cannes festival.

Bhumika

Bhumika was made in 1976 by Shyam Benegal, the leading exponent of 'new' Indian cinema. This refers to films that sought to break away from the tradition of making song and dance entertainment films, now referred to as bollywood.

The film is based on the autobiography of the actress Hansa Wadkar, who worked in the 1930s and 1940s in Indian cinema. Her autobiography is a seminal feminist text in India. In the film she is called Usha, and is played by the beautiful and intelligent Smita Patil, who died in childbirth at the age of thirty. Bhumika was the third film she had made for Benegal and she was not sure she wanted to be an actress. Throughout the making of the film Benegal had constantly to urge her to remain committed to the film. Bhumika won several wards in 1978, and only then did Patil become a committed actress. She died aged 30 in 1986.

The film has a complex structure. There is a narrative in the present, with flashbacks to the past. The present is in colour and the flashbacks are in monochrome. The flashbacks show Usha's childhood with scenes from films she was in, and from films which influenced her. These scenes are, inevitably, from traditional (song and dance) Indian cinema. When Bhumika was made there was a shortage of film stock in India, and Benegal used in the flashbacks stock that would have been used at the time, because these older, inferior stocks were more easily available. this gives these scenes extra authenticity.

Usha as a child learnt from her grandmother to love music, and all she wanted to do was sing. A family friend, Keshav, had contacts in the film industry and found her a job there, and she became a film star.

There were five men in her life. Her father, who she loved, was an alcoholic and died when she was young. She married the family friend Keshav and he was cruel and venal, doing his best to exploit her earning power. She loved her co-star, Rajan, and he loved her, but he was commitment-phobic. Sunil was a charming, nihilistic and intellectual film director who led her into an unsuccessful suicide pact. Vinayak was a prosperous businessman who wanted her as a domestic captive to care for his son and paralyzed wife.

At the end of the film, unhappy and alone, she decides to make a life alone. At one point, as she is contemplating escape from Vinayak's household, his paralyzed wife says to her "Why do you bother? The beds change, the kitchens change. Men’s masks change, but men don’t change.” As Benegal put it, talking about the film, she had learnt that freedom has a cost.

In the flashbacks we see many scenes of song and dance, and we have the translation of the song lyrics. Each song encapsulates a woman's dilemma.  These songs, and Usha's story, make a very powerful feminist text. The flashbacks are objectified as such by the intrusion of cameras and technicians. The credit sequence is such a scene leading us to expect a bollywood-style film. Then, towards the end of the credits, a camera on a boom enters the frame from the right, a dancer falls over, and technicians rush to her aid, destroying the bollywood illusion.

It is astonishing that this powerful and memorable film, pregnant with meanings that are relevant for us today, should be so little known, and not celebrated as the masterpiece it so clearly is.

Free Men (Les hommes libres)

This film is interesting because it is about the Muslim community in Paris during the second world war. It concerns a small-time dealer, Younes, in the black market who becomes politicised. Younes is played by Tahar Rahim who impressed us in Jacques Audiard's A Prophet and here he is excellently cast, having the right blend of youthful innocence and disengagedness. ````

Michael Lonsdale plays the head honcho of the mosque where much of the film is set, doing his best to keep the Nazis on-side, playing a part very similar to his part in Of Gods And Men, and looking similar.

In addition, there is a Muslim singer who sings in a style that is very similar to flamenco.

The film tells a story having elements we have seen many times before - unsympathetic Nazi Germans in trilby hats and long, leather overcoats, black Citroen Traction-avants bulging with bulging-overcoated men. Although the film is set in wartime Paris I thought that more could have been done with the cinematography to render the setting more vividly. Also, the telling of the story was quite prosaic. If I used stars I would give it three.

The Turin Horse

I don't know whether Bela Tarr will keep to his word and not make another film but, if he does, he will have finished his film-making career with his best film. The Turin Horse is about very little and yet it is about everything. It is a symphony with wind, a horse and two humans.

In it we see the daily routine of an elderly man, Ohlsdorfer, and his daughter, who live a minimal existence in a rudimentary cottage in a God-forsaken place in central Europe, presumably Hungary. We see six days of their lives, each day introduced by a title. The highlight of their routine is their meal of a single boiled potato each, eaten with their fingers from wooden plates in about five minutes. When they rise in the morning Ohlsdorfer drinks two glasses of the local firewater, palinka, while his daughter goes to the well to fetch two buckets of water.

They have a horse which, at the beginning of the film, is linked to Friedrich Nietzche, and this little back-story succeeds in keeping the horse in our attention. In fact the horse, remarkably, in it's enigmatic speechlessness, becomes the emotional centre of the film. The Hungarian rain and mud that we became familiar with in earlier Tarr films is here replaced by a hellish wind, audible on the soundtrack throughout the fim. Even going outside is difficult, and the atmosphere is always laden with leaves and dust. There is a visit by a neighbour to fetch some palinka and, after he has unburdened himself of a political rant, he is sent on his way with a disparaging put-down by Ohlsdorfer. There was humour of this type in earlier Tarr films. Otherwise few words are spoken other than by Ohlsdorfer, who is elderly and slightly handicapped, to give instructions to his daughter.  Early in the film the daughter expresses a query that I'm sure is on many viewers' minds when she asks her father, after a brief conversation about woodworm, 'What's it all about, Papa?' He replies that he does not know. So little happens and yet I was gripped because the slightest change or incident in the routine makes one wonder where it will lead. One by one things on which their simple life depend start to fail, until the continuation of their life seems impossible, and the film fades to black. I was reminded of Beckett by the timeless fundamental nature of the world it depicts but with, instead of Beckett's abundance or words, Tarr's abundance of cinema.

The music is striking. It is a simple repeating dirge-like motive that could easily have come from Philip Glass. The wonderful monochrome cinematography, much of it in the near-dark interior of the cottage, is by Fred Keleman, the film-maker who made Abendland and the unseeable Frost, a film whose ownership is still the the subject of contention. Both Tarr and Keleman work in the European tradition of 'slow' cinema, traceable to Tarkovsky.

Compared to The Turin Horse, the other films I have seen recently have the weight of TV commercials. This film left emotions and images that will stay with me for a long time.

Moonrise Kingdom

This is a return to form for Anderson, after the wilderness of Steve Zissou and and The Darjeeling Limited. When I saw it the audience clearly enjoyed it, and there was even a half-hearted attempt by the audience to applaud the film at the end, even though most of them preferred to skip the amusing credits. It would be difficult to watch many frames of this film without immediately identifying them as the work of Wes Anderson. We have busy compartmentalised sets, diagrams and boats, all permeate by tongue-in-cheek visual humour.

There is a gold-star cast including Anderson regular Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton, Bruce Willis, Frances McDormand and Harvey Keitel. But despite the humour and the cast I was left unsatisfied because the humour doesn't sustain the film. It is a ninety-four minute joke that flags in places. There are some very good jokes, but I didn't really care about what was going on and the cast, with the exception of Bruce Willis who is very good, were required to parody rather than act, so I thought they were wasted. As an Edward Naughton fan I was very disappointed; and Tilda didn't do much for her fee.

I can see that this is a return to form for Anderson who, after Zissou and Darjeeling I had given up on, thinking that he had lost his way. Now he is back on track but I recognize that his track is not for me. All is not lost because I did enjoy Rushmore, Tenenbaums and Mr Fox, but I shan't be hurrying to see Anderson's next film.

The Kid With a Bike

This film, by the Dardenne brothers, is about a young boy, Cyril, who has been rejected by his father and who takes the duration of this film to accept that fact. We see him first search for his father, then make contact with him. He is initially living in an institution and is then taken in hand by a hairdresser, Samantha, who wants to care for him. She is played by Cécile de France who, like the film, is Belgian. She is the first star that the Dardenne brothers have used. I admired her in The Singer and in Un Secret and in this film she is excellent.

The film is very moving as Samantha tries to help Cyril to cope with his rejection and when she in turn has to cope with Cyril's bad behaviour, particularly when Cyril falls under the influence of a local hoodlum who wants to use Cyril as a junior partner in crime.

Corpo Celeste

This film has strong similarities to last year's Love Like Poison - both are coming of age films of a young female set in a strongly religious context. Corpo Celeste was made and is set in Italy and, like Love Like Poison, it is a first feature film by a female director, Alice Rohrwacher, who also wrote the screenplay.

The story is of a mother and daughter who move back to a poor town in southern Italy after a period living in Switzerland, and it focuses on the efforts of the daughter, Marta, played by Yio Vianello, to resettle in the community as she takes instruction in the Catholic church for her catechism. We are led through several telling and moving scenes as, in her growing awareness, she starts to question the authority figures around her and the path that she has embarked on.  Her sister is spiteful to her and her mother remained a rather shadowy figure. The film is very subtle as it shows her experiencing her first period and then cutting her hair as a mark of her growing autonomy.

A Dangerous Method

This is the story of Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud and Sabina Spielrein. A book was written about these people by John Kerr, and Christopher Hampton wrote in 1997 a screenplay based on the book and intended as a vehicle for Julia Roberts. This never came to fruition, and Christopher Hampton adapted his screenplay to a play, The Talking Cure, which had great success at the National Theatre in London, starring Ralph Fiennes and Johdi May. In 2002 David Cronenberg made, with Ralph Fiennes, the film Spider and, through his acquaintance with Fiennes, Cronenberg became interested in The Talking Cure. Christopher Hampton adapted his play back into a screenplay which became this film, A Dangerous Method. So - Is it a book? Is it a play? Is it a film? You decide.

Spielrein, played by Kiera Knightley, acting for all she's worth, was initially Jung's patient. The film recounts how she became his lover and subsequently became a psychiatrist. Jung was married with an increasing number of children, and whether there was ever a physical relationship between him and Spielrein is pure speculation, but it makes a good story. Jung is here played by the ubiquitous Michael Fassbender, and Freud is played by Vigo Mortensen. Freud in this film is really a spectator on Jung's antics, and these do lead to split between them because of Jung's deceptiveness.

This is a period film with some tendencies towards the worst of period films - idealisation of imagined past manners, immaculate interiors, beautifully-maintained old cars, scenes set in front of beautiful old buildings with immaculate grounds. etc. For Cronenberg this represents a considerable step towards the middle of the road. This film is dialogue-bound and not very cinematic. Worst of all, despite having been written by a respected playwright, it has some terrible lines. Cronenberg has said that he was drawn to this project. My only question is: what was he thinking?

I am not a fan of Keira Knightley but here she acquits herself well, with much effort and commitment. I couldn't understand why she was given a bath with her clothes still on, but I'm not worrying too much about that, although it was a bit disappointing. Mortensen has the best part as Freud while Fassbender's Jung seems young, one-dimensional and uninteresting. The story is really a romance dressed up in the paraphernalia of psychiatry and, although the film is not long, I found myself looking at my watch several times. There are some BDSM scenes which, I suppose, were useful when the trailer was made.

Rampart

This film embodies one of the raw essences that make me love cinema - it is hard-boiled and cynical in a tradition that goes back to Chandler and beyond, and to the best films noirs of the 1940s. It has wonderful cinematography that is simultaneously noirish yet very colourful and bright, contrasty, with burnt-out whites. It has an amazing cast, including Robin Wright, whose fan club I joined straight after seeing State of Grace, Ned Beatty, Sigourney Weaver and Steve Buscemi.

Co-written by its director Oren Moverman and James Ellroy, it is the story of a tough and cynical cop, Dave Brown, played by Woody Harrelson, in possibly the best part of his career. Womanising and filled with hate, he is torn between his two ex-wives, his daughters, and a crisis in his career brought on by an excess of violence. He is improbably self-aware and articulate as he copes with his superiors, seeming more savvy than them, and expressing the existential essence of the film. We are challenged to wonder whether he is in any way sympathetic and whether he is capable of redemption; whether he is producing the culture which he inhabits, or whether he is a product of it.

Moverman and his cinematographer, Bobby Bukowski, had a great time with a very mobile camera, achieving a noir style and conjuring many abstract images. There is one scene, towards the end, where Brown descends into a 'lower depth' of drugs and depravation where the film risks parody, but otherwise this is a treat for the movie-lover.

The Descendants

This is Alexander Payne's first film since he made sideways in 2004. It is an adaptation of the first novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings who collaborated closely with Payne on the film, even to the extent of being, along with members of his family, in the film.

This is, of course, a George Clooney film and he is excellent, playing an unhappy man coping with two daughters and wearing bad shirts, while his wife lay dying.

Some people have spoken of this film as a comedy but it is moving and tragic, yet laced with irony and humour in the way life can be for those who are sensitive to see it; and this is what Payne does so well.

Seeing this film made me think of Robert Redford, who was the previous generation's star of American cinema. Both Clooney and Redford are good-looking and serious, being politically engaged and directing films of their own. I like Redford but I'm now starting to think that I prefer by a small margin Clooney because of his modesty in taking unglamorous parts, and because he has made more angry and politically engaged films.

I think The Descendants stands up well as a George Clooney and as an Alexander Payne film.

Martha Marcy May Marlene

I enjoyed this film. It is well-made and thoughtful. The film starts with a young woman, Martha, played by Elizabeth Olsen, fleeing through the woods. She is escaping a backwoods commune that she has been living in. She is very distressed and is collected by her sister, Lucy, played by Sarah Paulson, and goes to live with her. Her sister is living a middle class life with her new British husband. The film cuts between Martha's life with her sister and flashbacks to the life she had on the commune.

The commune has its own belief system and new members are indoctrinated by the strong consensus of the members already there. The commune cultivates crops and dabbles in crime. There are many more women than men and the principal man, Patrick, played by John Hawkes, helps himself to the women as he sees fit. They feel honoured when they are chosen.

Martha, who is clearly a dropout, tries to adapt to her sister's life.

This is an honest, good and very well made film. I nevertheless thought that it has some shortcomings. Patrick's character is charming and devious. He is played by John Hawks who was previously in Winters Bone. Hawkes seems to be making a career of playing backwards types. If I had made the film I would've cast someone who is less in the ready-made mould of this type of character. The commune has all the characteristics - bizarre beliefs, amorality, sexual freedom - that someone like me, who knows nothing about it, has been led to assume that they have from various television programs. So nothing fresh there. While living with Lucy Martha behaves in ways that Lucy and her husband can't understand and are sometimes offended by. There are rows and Lucy tries hard to be kind and to accommodate her sister. I did feel that more could have been made of the contrast between Martha's alternative view of the world and Lucy and her husband's conventional middle-class view.

The film stopped abruptly and unexpectedly, leaving me unsatisfied.

The film is very well made with excellent acting and outstandingly good cinematography. I did wonder whether the things that happened after the film ended may not have been more interesting than the things that happened during it.

My Best Films Of 2011

All these films have had a UK release, so there is no excuse for you Brits for having missed any of them!

1) A Separation

2011 was a very good year in cinema and, out of a good bunch, for me, A Separation is unassailably the best. It is an excellent example of the art that conceals art. The story didn't seem like a screenplay, and the people in it didn't seem like actors. It was as though one was in that flat and all these events broke out around one - suddenly people are shouting at each other in the stairwell, or rushing into the street and having huddled conversations at open car windows. The story reverberates with many important departments of life, such as sexual politics and parental responsibility, and the way the plot just thickened from simple beginnings was very satisfying.

2) Poetry

I'm cheating here because I included this film in my list of best films for 2010. This year I've changed my rules and I've tried to limit my best films to those that have been released in the UK in 2011. I first saw Poetry in the 2010 London Film Festival, and it simply blew me away. It is the fifth film by its director, Lee Chang-dong, and as none of his films have been released in the UK I didn't expect Poetry to be released here either. Very fortunately, I was wrong, and it has opened in the UK, so I have an excuse for including it in my 2011 list. It has won many awards, so I know that I am not alone in thinking highly of it. It stars Jeong-hie Yun, who was one of South Korea's most famous and celebrated film stars, with a huge list of films to her credit, and who came out of 16 years' retirement to make this film.  The film's director, Lee Chang-dong, is also a novelist, playwright, theatre director, and has been South Korea's minister of culture. He has the Legion d'Honneur in France!  Needless to say he is unknown in the UK and Poetry is his first film to be released here. He has made five films all of which were interesting and diverse.

3) Oslo, August 31st

This is the second film adaptation of the French novel Le Feu Follet. I am quite a fan of the first adaptation, made in 1963 by Louis Malle, starring Maurice Ronet. This is a story of a man who, after a period in the drug rehabilitation clinic, is allowed out for his first day of liberty in preparation for his return to the community.  He tries to pick up the thread his old life by making contact with his friends and an old lover. He is taken to a party and he has a job interview.  As the day passes he sees how his friends have moved on and now have settled relationships, children and burgeoning careers, and he feels that the current of his life has slipped away and become intolerable. This film is pitch perfect all the way through, being very intelligently scripted, well directed and very well acted. It has a sublime ending that bears comparison with the best Antonioni endings.

As Derek Malcolm put it: "Lie's performance is pitch perfect, and Trier's direction almost flawless. We look at life as it is for this one person within an eloquent framework that never seems either self-regarding or indulgent. The director knows exactly what he is doing and does it impeccably."

4) We Need To Talk About Kevin

This film is being highly praised for Tilda Swinton's performance, but I'm including it so high on my list because I think it is a tour de force of adaptation and direction, for which Lynne Ramsay bears no small amount of responsibility. Tilda Swinton is very good as well.

5) Tyrannosaur

I'm not always very partial to British cinema, particularly when it involves working-class realism, yet here I've included two British films in my top five, one of which has plenty of WCR. Tyrannosaur is a triumphant first film by Paddy Considine, and it stars Peter Mullan playing the part he does so well - a self-loathing and violent man.

Tyrannosaur's strengths, apart from Mullan's performance, are the part played by Olivia Coleman as the woman he becomes interested in, and the sure way in which the film slowly reveals the sources of Mullan's unhappiness. Dog lovers are advised to see The Artist instead of this film.

6) Love Like Poison

This is the first film by Katell Quillévéré. It is a beautiful, intense and thoughtful account of the coming-of-age of Anna, played by Clara Augarde, as she reaches a more adult understanding of her separated parents, of a young boy who courts her and of the local priest. She is seriously thinking of going into the church and the role of the priest (seen in the image), both as a religious figure and as a man, is pivotal.

Her parents are separated, the mother being rather unstable and flamboyant while the father is irresponsible, charming and absent. The formative man in her life is her grandfather. She allows herself to be courted by Pierre who is a link between her rather intense and serious take on life and the more common current of life in the village.

This film is serious, sincere and well judged throughout. The only slight unease I have is with the casting. I felt the grandfather was little too larger-than-life, as though a comedian had been cast in the part. Also the mother, in her flamboyance, with her scarlet lipstick and black died hair, stood out startlingly among the other people of the village.

There are beautiful interludes when the camera is allowed simply to stare at a scene while lovely music plays on the soundtrack, allowing us to fully absorb the atmosphere of this provincial French village. The cast, particularly Clara Augarde and the priest, played by Stefano Cassetti, are excellent, as also is her father, played by Thierry Neuvic.

I saw the British film Submarine shortly after I saw this film and I simply could not take Submarine seriously.  They are both coming-of-age films, one treating it seriously and the other treating is as a vehicle for laughs and entertainment.

7) Margaret

This film, directed by Kenneth Lonergan, has a lot of ideas and concerns loosely structured around the story of a teenage girl, Lisa, played by Anna Paquin, who becomes involved in a road accident. In her immaturity she is not very appealing, at least to me, but as she is drawn through a sequence of events connected with the accident, we see her start to take a more mature view of things.

There is a rich cast including Matt Damon, Mark Ruffalo and Jean Reno. The film reaches a very moving conclusion when Lisa, who has some responsibility for the accident, but who has been in denial about it throughout the film, finally accept it.

8) Las Acacias

This film, mainly shot in the driving cab of a lorry, is a triumph of film-making. It is about lorry driver, driving a load of tree trunks from Paraguay to Buenos Aires, who has foisted on him a woman with a baby. It did occur to me to wonder why these tree trunks had to be transported so far because they seem to have plenty of them in Argentina, anyway.  The lorry driver, Rubén, played by Germán de Silva, is initially surly and uncommunicative. Very slowly his attitude softens and by the end of the film we see the possibility of a romance between him and Jacinta, played by Hebe Duarte. The star of the film, without a doubt, is the baby who is utterly and irresistibly charming.

9) Animal Kingdom


I was slow to see this film because I had heard that it is violent. I did not find it more violent than plenty of other films that I have seen recently. 

It is a gangster film about a band of brothers led by their mother. She is a pleasant and appealing person who nevertheless lacks a moral dimension. The brothers lounge around in the family bungalow in Melbourne, flaunting their tattoos. They are in engaged in a sort of war with the Melbourne police, and it is the brother, Pope, (left in the image) who initially seems quiet and self-effacing but who becomes the nastiest as they come under pressure. The film is extremely well made with a slowly tracking camera that pries on the goings-on of the family. 


10) Archipelago


This is the second film by Joanna Hogg, her first feature film being Unrelated. Like Unrelated it is about a family on holiday, this time in the Isles of Scilly. It is pleasant to see the British film which is not about working class people. We see tensions grown as the family members, each spoilt in different ways, struggled to get on with each other while the father, who was due to arrive later, fails to arrive at all.

There is a family friend, Christopher, played by Christopher Baker, who is a painter and he lives on the island. He is in fact not an actor but is a friend of the film's director, Joanna Hogg, who did coach her in painting. The film is well-made and thoughtful rather in the style of Antonioni.

My Best Films of 2011

Unlike last year, I have restricted this year's list to films that have been released in the UK. The order of films is not hugely important, although they do generally go in the direction of best film first.

1) A Separation

I think this film is unassailably the best film of the year. It doesn't seem like a film and the people in it do not seem like actors. It is as though one were there with them and the events break out around one - people shouting at each other in the stairwell, people rushing out into the street in distress. This film was written by the director, Asghar Farhadi, and it is a triumph. I'm very pleased to see that it is gaining recognition that it deserves. 

2) Poetry

I am cheating here because Poetry is one of my best films the 2010! I have included it again because it is a film of which I'm very fond and, quite unexpectedly, it obtained the UK release this year. Quite unexpectedly because this filmmaker, Lee Chang-dong, has made five very good films, and this is the first of his films to be released in the UK.

3) Oslo, August 31st

This film had a lot of impact on me because it is the second adaptation of the novel Le Feu Follet, which was adapted in 1963 by Louis Malle and now has been adapted again by the Danish filmmaker Joachim Trier. I thought this film was strong in all departments - acting, writing and direction, and it is a very moving film. It has a sublime in ending that bears comparison with the best of Antonioni.

4) We Need To Talk About Kevin

Many have praised Tilda Swinton's excellent performance in the main part, but this film is a triumph of adaptation and direction, which I attributed mainly to Lynne Ramsay.

5) Tyrannosaur

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2010)

I was very conflicted when I first heard about this film. On the one hand, here is a remake of a very recent Swedish film, and on the other it is made by David Fincher, who I respect. At least this isn't such a bizarre project as Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho My initial response was that I am not interested in seeing the film made for Americans who are too lazy to read subtitles. But - I can't be so against remakes because I very much like The Beat That My Heart Skipped, Which is a French remake of an American film. Anyway, I did go to see it.

It turns out that this film is comparable in quality to the Swedish adaptation of the novel, and it's pretty similar to it. Daniel Craig, an actor for whom I have much respect, is excellent, as is Rooney Mara, who has the required punk look and rides a mean motorbike. There is also Christopher Plummer, continuing the Indian summer of his career after the very satisfactory Beginners, Stellan Skarsgård, fresh from Melancholia, and Robin Wright, who I fell in love with in that sadly neglected film Stage Of Grace.

This is an intelligent film that does serviceable job of telling the story. One of its strengths is that it is firmly rooted in Sweden without in anyway taking a postcard, or Woody Allenesque, view of the country, and we really feel that it is a cold and snowy place. Daniel Craig, who I learned to like in Our Friends In The North, here plays the part with charm and modesty. One change is that the relationship between Craig and Mara becomes more of a simple romance than I recall it being in the Swedish adaptation of the novel.

The Artist

This film has received a lot of praise and is in some lists as one of the best, and in some cases the best, film of 2011. I went to see it with high expectations that came away a little disappointed.

The film tells a story spanning the years 1927 to about 1932 and is made in the style of a silent film.  It is a story of a silent film star, modelled after Douglas Fairbanks, and a young starlet. She finds success as his career declines because he is unable to make the transition to sound cinema.  The film has many imaginative and effective details. I particularly liked the use of a beauty spot. It has a truly splendid dog, played by Uggy.

I was a little disappointed because the film tells a simple and rather predictable story and ends up being a simple romance. It is as though the filmmaker, pleased with having come up with such an interesting original idea as to make a film that looks like a silent movie, was content then not to seek anything fresh or original in the story. Also, if I were nitpicking, I would say that the two leads do not look very authentically of the late 1920s, and neither does the quality of the image, apart from being in black and white . I am not sure whether this is an important detail. By some coincidence I recently saw again Woody Allen's is Zelig, which has some similarities to this film. Zelig is like a modern documentary about a figure who lived in the 1920s, and it uses simulated images of that character at that time. Of course Woody Allen plays that character and we see simulated images of him in the company of well-known figures, such as Adolf Hitler. I thought those simulated images, created by Gordon Willis, were more persuasive than the images in The Artist.

I found the music in The Artist truly trying and when I left the cinema I had the beginnings of a headache from its incessant and rather tedious quality. At heart The Artist tells a simple and rather sentimental and soft-hearted story. This may, of course, have been deliberately a part of its way of celebrating silent cinema. Nevertheless, 2011 was a very good year for cinema and a film would have to be more ambitious and complex than The Artist to become one of the best films of the year. I can understand that a film articulated around the transition from silent to sound cinema, as is The Artist, may have a special appeal to some film enthusiasts.