Category / Film

by Jonathan M

REVIEW – Red Riding : 1980 (2009)

On the 8th of March, the West Yorkshire Police Force received a letter purporting to be from the Yorkshire Ripper :

Dear Sir

I am sorry I cannot give my name for obvious reasons. I am the Ripper. I’ve been dubbed a maniac by the Press but not by you, you call me clever and I am. You and your mates haven’t a clue that photo in the paper gave me fits and that bit about killing myself, no chance. I’ve got things to do. My purpose to rid the streets of them sluts. My one regret is that young lassie McDonald, did not know cause changed routine that night. Up to number 8 now you say 7 but remember Preston ’75, get about you know. You were right I travel a bit. You probably look for me in Sunderland, don’t bother, I am not daft, just posted letter there on one of my trips. Not a bad place compared with Chapeltown and Manningham and other places. Warn whores to keep off streets cause I feel it coming on again.

Sorry about young lassie.

Yours respectfully

Jack the Ripper

Might write again later I not sure last one really deserved it. Whores getting younger each time. Old slut next time I hope. Huddersfield never again, too small close call last one.

The letters and tapes that followed were a hoax that sent the struggling West Yorkshire investigation into a tailspin, convincing several senior police officers that the Ripper was from Sunderland.  One particular way in which the letter hindered the investigation was by claiming responsibility for a murder in Preston in 1975.  A murder, it turned out, the Yorkshire Ripper was not actually responsible for.  James Marsh’s Red Riding : 1980, based on a novel by David Peace, considers what might have happened if certainly nefarious elements within the West Yorkshire Police Force had put Wearside Jack’s error to use for their own ends.

If Red Riding : 1974 is a film about the first bite at the apple of original sin then Red Riding : 1980 is the ensuing gag reflex.

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by Jonathan M

REVIEW – Red Riding : 1974 (2009)

When the Red Riding trilogy was screened on Channel Four earlier this year it came very close to making me regret an action I have come to think of as the great cultural emancipation.  Five years ago, I unplugged the aerial from my TV, I cut the wire at the wall and forever freed myself from the great cognitive heat sink that is television.  It was a close run thing.  I was this close to buying a set-top aerial.  A few months later with the DVD version now safely in my hands, I am still sure that I made the right decision as Red Riding : 1974 is a film that demands revisiting.

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by Jonathan M

REVIEW : Lakeview Terrace (2008)

VideoVista also has my review of Neil LaBute’s Lakeview Terrace.  As I explain in the review, the impression I was left with after watching this film was that I had just spent an hour and a half arguing with an idiot.  This is an impression I get whenever I watch a film by Neil LaBute.

Speaking of misfiring thrillers, I also reviewed Antonio Bido’s spectacularly patchy Watch Me When I Kill (1977).  Amusingly, the DVD includes a piece to camera by Bido himself in which he explains how few thrillers he has actually seen and how much he disliked the genre.  I’m reminded of the fact that, when he died, Stanley Kubrick had an entire library filled with the books he used while researching the films he worked on.  Hmm.

by Jonathan M

REVIEW : Manhunt (2008)

VideoVista have my review of Manhunt, the first film by Norwegian Horror wunderkind Patrik Syversen.

The film does not completely convince as it is more concerned with paying homage to great works from the past than it is with carving out new territory but Syversen shows a familiarity with the nuts and bolts of the genre that really suggests his next film could be something genuinely special.

Writing the review also inspired me to start researching a much longer piece.  So watch this space.

by Jonathan M

The Trap, The Wire and The Loop : Individualism as a Political Force

Over the past week, I have been thinking about two particular works.  The first, is Armando Iannucci’s spectacular In The Loop (2009) and the most recent of Adam Curtis’ documentary series The Trap (2007).  Both works examine the social and political fall-out from Tony Blair and New Labour’s decade or so in power.  Both present us with a post-modern political landscape in which facts and values are not only seen as open to manipulation by people in power, but where facts and values are seen solely as expressions of personal preference.  Far from being a hyperbolic and polemical accusation or a satirical construct, this understanding of human cognition is shared by people on the left and the right and has come to dominate the political and conceptual landscape to the extent that it is almost impossible to think of an alternative to it.  However, some films, such as those of Paolo Sorrentino present a radically different vision of human cognition.  One in which rational self-interest serves as a mask for much deeper and darker passions.

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by Jonathan M

REVIEW : The Bothersome Man (2006)

In 1927 Bertrand Russell delivered a talk entitled “Why I am not a Christian”.  In this talk he rejected the logic of the arguments for the existence of God before moving on to issues such as Jesus’ moral character and whether or not he actually existed in the first place.  In the 80 or so years since Russell gave that talk, the question of whether or not to be a Christian has come more and more to resemble the question of whether or not it is rational to believe in God.  This focus distracts from the fact, acknowledged by Russell, that even if the proof of God’s existence were overwhelming, there would still be good reason for refusing to consider oneself a Christian.  For example, one can question the morality of Jesus’ teachings, the value of his various churches and whether ‘worship’ is really the kind of activity that civilised human beings should be engaged in at the beginning of the twenty first century.  One of the reasons why I am not a Christian is that heaven does not sound like the kind of place I would want to spend eternity.  Clearly, this is a thought that has also occurred to Jens Lien, the director of Den Brysomme Mannen, (2006) known outside of Norway as The Bothersome Man.

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by Jonathan M

Rosemary’s Baby : Whimper Against the Machine

Polanski week has seen me write at length about the cinematic technique, intellectual pedigree and philosophical themes of Roman Polanski’s Apartment Trilogy but for Rosemary’s Baby (1968) I would like to take a different approach.  Arguably one of Polanski’s best known films, Rosemary’s Baby is wonderfully acted, perfectly paced and so tightly written and shot that not a single frame feels out of place or fails to pull its weight.  From the famously ‘Doris Day’ soap operatic opening scenes to the macabre ending, it is close to being a flawless work of cinematic genius.  However, where The Tenant (1976) and Repulsion (1965) are quite clearly about the descent into madness via sexual repression, Rosemary’s Baby deals in the more fantastical currency of witches, Satanism and the birth of the anti-Christ.  The use of such fantastical imagery invites us to wonder what the film is really about.  Rosemary is clearly not mad, nor is she sexually frustrated.

Rosemary’s Baby is a snapshot of social power dynamics in 1970s New York.  It is a film not only about the treatment of women at the hands of a powerful Patriarchy, it is also an account of price exacted from the young by the elderly in return for the transferal of power to members of a new generation.  Despite being a film about unearthly creatures, Rosemary’s Baby is ultimately a profoundly temporal film about man’s inhumanity to man (and especially woman).

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by Jonathan M

The Panic Tone – Polanski and Topor’s The Tenant (1976)

In my piece on Polanski’s Repulsion (1968), I highlighted the homage paid by Polanski to the generation of Surrealist filmmakers who came before him.  In this piece, I want to examine the similarities in tone between another of Polanski’s films and the branch of French Surrealism that provided the source material for one of Polanski’s best known films, The Tenant (1976).

By 1960, the vultures had started to circle the Surrealist movement.  What had started out as a desire to destroy and rebuild the iconography of Western Art in the aftermath of the First World War now seemed like a circular and pointless endeavour through which one section of the bourgeoisie tried to shock and outrage another section of the same narrow social institution.  While members of the Generation of ‘27 burned with anger at the Franquist government which had exiled and jailed them, the alliances with Marxism that would impact film-makers such as Bunuel were still a way off.  Facing such creative stagnation, Fernando Arrabal, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Roland Topor came together to form Burlesque, a creative clique which would later inspire itself from the god Pan and name themselves the Panic Movement.

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by Jonathan M

Polanski Week

While I try to move outside of my comfort zone in the films I choose to watch, sometimes I find myself in a place where only a certain kind of film will satisfy me.  At the moment, that type of film is the psychological thriller.  One of the masters of this particular genre is the Polish-French director Roman Polanski.  Holocaust survivor, husband to Sharon Tate (who was murdered by Charles Manson and his ‘Family’) and fugitive from justice, Polanski has made many powerful and disturbing films though perhaps none as disturbing as his Apartment Trilogy.

  • Repulsion (1965)
  • Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
  • The Tenant (1976)

In order to pay appropriate hommage to my current obsession, I have decided to turn Ruthless Culture over to the study of Polanski’s Apartment Trilogy for a period not exceeding one week.