The Sundance Film Festival has the honour of being the first major festival of the New Year and also lands in the middle of awards season, when the conversation is focused on last year’s most important films. This could be considered a blessing, especially for those who are promoting new material whilst getting lauded for previous work, but it could also be quite distracting as the Oscar nominees proceeded to land in the middle of the festival diverting attention away.
So, let’s take a break from the awards season fare and look at what might feature in next year’s race or what either way will be hitting screens later this year. The nine films that I have chosen to showcase stood out for a variety of reasons and include comedy, drama and documentary. I have not seen trailers for any of these movies and was drawn to them because of the cast, the story and from festival buzz.
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It’s hard to fathom that Roman Polanski has been making films for 50 years now. His early output was a revelation, making a name for himself with a unique brand of taut claustrophobic thrillers (See Knife in the Water/Repulsion). Seething with a palpable sense of anxiety, Polanski pushed his subjects to psychological breaking point with the enclosed surroundings amplifying the tension to almost unbearable levels. In short, they were bad places to be, especially if you happened to advocate bourgeois values. Downton Abbey, had it been made in 1960′s Poland probably would have had the entire cast holed up, soiled knickers and all, in the study with wolves roaming the corridors. It was in its mockery of the Bourgeoisie that European cinema was in its element. While never overtly political, Polanski revelled in using them as fodder. Even through visions of the American dream in Rosemary’s Baby & Chinatown, widely considered all-time greats, many of the hallmarks of his previous work shine through.
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Unlike last week’s parade of mostly bland box office dead weight, this week sees a number of highly anticipated new Blu-ray releases. With numerous quality titles for your delectation, the end of January could bring with it some financial difficulties for those of us with a pathological need to ‘collect’.
First up this week is Nicholas Winding Refn’s 70’s throwback Drive.
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Only those closest to me know that my full name is actually Bernard Lewis Raymond Swift. So, when Sony offered to name their latest technological leap after me, I was incredibly flattered. After a brief market scrap with the boringly titled HD DVD, B-Lew-Ray became the dominant HD home entertainment format of choice ,and as prices drop, the format is threatening to overtake DVD as the new standard.
Of course, fifty percent of that last paragraph was bull shit but I promise that what follows will be a combination of facts and personal opinions that will hopefully allow you to optomise your spending in this period of economic crisis. As you might expect, the weeks directly following the festive period tend to be a little thin on the ground regarding big releases but there is at least, this coming week, a vast cocktail of titles coming your way.
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The summer big noises speak for themselves;
Early glimpses of The Dark Knight Rises and Ridley Scott’s return to the Alien universe with Prometheus in IMAX & 3D respectively, look certain to be the years most complete cinematic experiences.
Elsewhere, you have a bumper fix of Marvel comic book action as the superhero equivalent of The Breakfast Club finally arrives in the form of The Avengers ,as well as a reboot of the oh so profitable Spider-Man franchise. Autumn/Winter will bring us Sam Mendes’ contribution to the Bond series in Skyfall, Peter Jackson’s return to Middle Earth in The Hobbit, ‘Tarantino does a western’ in Django Unchained and Baz Luhrmann’s intriguing 3D take on The Great Gatsby. There is plenty more to be excited about in 2012, but here are my ones to watch in the coming year:
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Over the last few years or so, it seems that the meaning of taboo has gotten lost. For the most part, we have become desensitised to extreme violence and sexual content. Hell, violence is becoming forever sexualised, with sex being occasionally and manipulatively violencised (I’m not the first person on the internet to ever use that word before). And religion? You can pretty much say or depict it in any way you please without hardly offending anyone, it seems. That infamous scene in 1971′s ‘Straw Dogs’ has become entirely socially irrelevant. In fact, not only has it been all but forgotten about, it’s been remade this past year to the sound of little controversy. Where a certain film’s graphic scenes of torture once ignited conversation about how they made us squirm, we all now laugh at the many sequels that followed, praising the most creative ways in which a filmmaker can take a life. So what is left to shock us? What is left to challenge our principles and arouse what is left of our senses?
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It would seem that contemporary Hollywood’s current love affair with the silent era isn’t going away anytime soon. Following on from last years Hugo, a love letter from Scorsese to pioneer Georges Méliès, this weekend sees the release of Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist.
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Love and loss are two common themes in storytelling and my favourite film of the year certainly encapsulated both. Beginners weaves through the past and present as Oliver (Ewan McGregor) is coming to terms with the death of his father Hal (Christopher Plummer); the twist on the relationship here being that Hal had only recently revealed that he was gay after Oliver’s mother (Mary Page Keller) had died. In Oliver’s present he meets Anna (Mélanie Laurent); a French actress who has a complicated family history that bonds the pair but also has the potential to drive them apart.
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2011 has been a weird year for cinema. Lars Von Trier admitted to being a Nazi, A werewolf fell in love with a baby in a 12A and one of the best films of the year was a documentary (Senna), WTF right? All this has meant that choosing one film to crown as my annual favourite has been even harder than usual. Then there’s the films I haven’t even seen yet; Take Shelter, Money ball and The Artist could all as yet take the crown but for now they’ll have to wait.
To make the task arbitrarily easier I have also discounted those movies decorated by the Academy earlier on in the year. Using my dog eared collection of ticket stubs I whittled the list down to fifteen movies then to ten, then to three, then finally to one. The ticket that remained read simply ‘Submarine’.
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As the red carpets are rolled up, smashed champagne flutes are swept away and the giant cock and balls complete with hairy sack which a dejected Banksy tagged onto the side of the Kodak theatre is covered with something less offensive, it’s time to reflect on the 83rd Academy Awards. And time once again to point out where the voters went wrong.
In this humble writer with a big dicks opinion The King’s Speech was an undeserved victor. The film, while joyous and more than an accomplished piece of film-making, did not exemplify the best of what this little blue planet as to offer. It was ‘the film of the moment’ not ‘a film for the ages’. In my mind that honour goes to The Social Network.
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