by Jonathan M

BG 17 – Red Faction : Guerilla

Futurismic have my Blasphemous Geometries column about Red Faction : Guerilla.

This piece was slightly wild.  I initially took as my inspiration Greil Marcus’ Lipstick Traces : A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989), one of my favourite pieces of writing about music.  the first chapter of the book begins with a song-by-song and almost line-by-line examination of the music of the Sex Pistols and I was struck, as Marcus was, by the enduring power of the opening line of Anarchy in The UK : I am an Antichrist, I am an Anarchist.  That desire to destroy and reject everything struck me as central to a proper understanding of Red Faction : Guerilla.  But then I came up with the idea of the idea of a suicide bombing simulator and was amused by the similarities and I let that Idea simply carry me home.

by Jonathan M

Public Enemies (2009) and Digital Projection

I will begin with a brief review : Michael Mann’s Public Enemies (2009) is a completely unexceptional crime thriller.  Its characters are extremely simplistic, its engagement with historical or social context is minimal, its writing is functional, its performances are adequate (with the exception of Stephen Graham as Baby-Face Nelson) and its pacing slightly saggy but ultimately reasonable.  Much like Mann’s Heat (1995), it is a film best remembered for one beautifully staged shoot-out.  However, despite having nothing to say and failing for all of the thematic reasons that Richard Kovitch mentions in his review, the film does do one thing well : It provides a fantastic justification for the roll-out of digital projection.

Continue reading →

by Jonathan M

Cinematic Vocabulary – Three Moments from Irma Vep (1996)

So far, Cinematic Vocabulary has focused upon isolated cinematic scenes.  The reason for this is that, while matters of style and technique impact upon entire films, it is frequently easier to isolate these aspects of a film by filtering out issues of narrative and characterisation that tend to function more on the level of entire films than on that of individual scenes.  However, as with atoms and tables, there is a point where the small things come together to form something recognisably large.  This column is about how a series of scenes can link up in order to form a part of a wider thematic arc.

A few months back, I wrote about Olivier Assayas’ Demonlover (2002).  Intrigued by the cerebral and somewhat extreme piece of French film-making, I tracked down the best known of Assayas’ works, Irma Vep (1996).  Set behind the scenes of a fictional remake of Louis Feuillade’s silent era crime pulp Les Vampires (1915), Irma Vep casts Hong Kong martial arts veteran Maggie Cheung as herself playing the titular Irma Vep character.  Much like Truffaut’s Day for Night (1974), Irma Vep uses its film-within-a-film structure to comment upon the nature of film production in general and the health of the French film industry in particular.  The result is a hugely rewarding film filled both with touchingly funny moments of human frailty and insightful critiques of what French film has lost and where it should be heading.

Continue reading →

by Jonathan M

REVIEW – 35 Shots of Rum (2008)

Recently, Ruthless Culture has become somewhat fixated with films that deal with alienation, death, misery, insanity and violence.  Fixated enough that I think a bit of a change might be welcome and I can think of no better a vehicle for change than Claire Denis’ 35 Rhums (2008).

35 Shots of Rum is a warm-hearted but utterly uncompromising drama revolving around a somewhat extended family grouping.  Lionel (Alex Descas) lives with his daughter Josephine (Mati Diop) in a block of flats that also serves as home to Lionel’s old partner Gabrielle (Nicole Dogue) and old friend of the family Noe (Gregoire Colin).  If I use vague terminology such as ‘partner’ and ‘friend of the family’ it is because, initially at least, many of the relationships in 35 Shots of Rum are unclear.  This lack of clarity is not only intensional, it is one that continues throughout the film as Denis tries to place us in the same position as her characters… we know how we feel but we do not know where everyone stands.

Continue reading →

by Jonathan M

Ballard before Cokliss, Cokliss before Ballard, Ballard before Cronenberg

I am currently researching a piece on the films of J. G. Ballard and I came across what appears to be a rather interesting cinematic feedback loop.  In 1996, David Cronenberg adapted Ballard’s 1973 novel Crash.  Crash was an expansion of the ideas contained in “Crash!”, one of the sections of Ballard’s splendidly disjointed modernist collection of condensed novels The Atrocity Exhibition (1969).

However, the line between “Crash!” (1969) and Crash (1996) is not that typical of most literary adaptations.  Traditionally, the progress of forms is from short story to novel and from novel to film.  However, in this case, the line is broken by a cinematic interloper.  In between the publication of The Atrocity Exhibition and the publication of Crash (1973), Ballard’s ideas found their way into a short film by Harley Cokliss.  Not only starring but also written and narrated by Ballard himself, Crash! (1971) is somewhere between a televised essay, a work of audiovisual art and a traditional short film.  It is also quite a distinctive work when compared to its literary precursor and successor.  Indeed, by looking at the changes between the different Crash pieces, it is possible to gain an insight into Ballard’s methodologies.

Continue reading →

by Jonathan M

A Week In Film Purchasing

One of the reasons for this blog’s existence is to provide a place for me to work through the ideas that are cluttering up my head.  I do not write for any particular audience, I write for my own sake because otherwise I would not be able to get anything done.  One of the topics I frequently wrestle with is the ‘job’ of the critic.  Its ethics, its philosophical posture and its practicalities.  However, a good film critic is not only an analyst, he is also someone who has to have a feel for the film business.  An understanding of the realities of film-making.  Last week, I experienced something that addressed this much neglected practical side of ‘knowing about film’.

My brother runs a film distribution business in France and he was over in the UK in order to attend the London UK Film Focus event at the NFT on the Southbank.  London UK Film Focus is essentially a series of screenings over a few days with some hospitality and drinks receptions thrown in.  The idea being that while a buyer might not travel to London to see any of the particular films of offer, they might well travel to see a dozen or so films screened back to back.  LUFF, as some call it (presumably those who don’t know about the always amusing Lausanne Underground Film Festival) has a rather Spartan website that gives few clues about what is being shown because the event is aimed not at journalists, cinephiles and critics but at buyers.  A lot of the films at LUFF were receiving their first proper screenings anywhere, before they even appear on the festival circuit.

I was there in order to give my brother my ‘expert opinion’ on which films were worth checking out.  However, I think it’s fair to say that I got more out of it from my presence there than he did.

Continue reading →

by Jonathan M

Blood Of The Beasts (1949) – Humanity’s Capacity to Dream

Georges Franju’s background was in theatrical set design.  As a set designer, he would have learned to create atmosphere through the use of subtle visual queues but he would also have learned that every scene and every shot are a world of their own.  Properly conceived, a single shot can convey as much information as an entire page of dialogue.  Where the camera focuses, when people enter, where objects stand and how they are lit are not merely aesthetic variables, they are to cinema what words are to poetry and literature.  As such, it is perhaps fitting that Ruthless Culture’s first look at a work of Franju should be a short film that is practically silent; His 1949 short film about Parisian slaughterhouses Blood of the Beasts.

Continue reading →

by Jonathan M

REVIEW – 20th Century Boys (2008)

VideoVista have my review of Yukihiko Tsutsumi’s 20th Century Boys.

Watching this film put me in mind of archeology or anthropology.  It is based upon a series of manga which, while hugely successful in Japan, have yet to acquire much of a cult status in the West.  Because of the popularity of the source material, the film and everyone involved in t seem to be making a real effort to produce a film as close to the source material as possible.  So in effect, the film is this huge homage to this pop cultural deity that I have never heard of.  It’s like some weird and incomprehensible religion; to those within the sphere of influence of the manga, clearly the film is a big deal.  To the rest of us all of the slavish respect seems irrational and incomprehensible.  Which is probably a good state to be in when it comes to popular culture.

by Jonathan M

REVIEW – Lynch (One) (2007)

July’s VideoVista has my review of the David Lynch documentary Lynch (One).

As I mention it in the review, Here is a link to my old review of Marconi’s Lagerfeld Confidential (2007).  Both films are clearly shot around their subjects with their passive participation rather than their active participation.  What I mean by this is that both films were made with the consent of their subjects (as opposed to say Broomfield’s Kurt & Courtney (1998) – reviewed by me Here) but neither of them really press their subjects for answers or try to editorialise about their subjects.  Both have shape simply by virtue of hundreds of hours of footage being edited into a series of largely disconnected but occasionally memorable scenes.

by Jonathan M

REVIEW – High Art (1995)

A new month and a new batch of reviews from VideoVista.  Here is my review of Lisa Cholodenko’s really rather spiffing High Art.

A comparison that occurs to me just now is that High Art is, in some ways, like an art house version of The Devil Wears Prada (2006) or How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (2008) except that rather than presenting the desire to prostitute oneself in order to get ahead in journalism as something a) natural and b) easily walked away from with few consequences, High Art presents it as profoundly soul destroying and incredibly costly.

I’m also pretty sure that a lot of other critics took this to be a fairly straight-forward tragic LGBT love story.