Toni Erdmann, Germany, Austria, Romania 2016.

Feb 3, 2017Feb 3, 2017 / keith1942 / 1 Comment

Daily from Friday February 3rd till Thursday February 9th.

This film won the Best Film and two acting prizes at the European Film Awards 2016. It is also being considered for the Academy Awards and the UK BAFTAS. And it is one of three titles in line for the European Parliament’s Lux Prize.

The film was screened at the closing night of the 2016 Leeds International Film Festival. It is a long film, running for 162 minutes. It also has a very open narrative: the resolution is ambiguous and there are aspects of character and situation that are unexplained and/or unresolved.

“…it’s full of surprises, very warm and touching and frequently hilarious.” (LIFF Catalogue).

It does hold the interest, partly because of the central performances of Peter Simonischek as Winfried alias Toni and Sandra Hüller as his daughter Ines. The film moves from Germany to Romania and from the comic to the dramatic and back and forth between these modes. Writer and director Maren Ade generally handles this very well though at times I found the opacity of the narrative slightly problematic. Ade includes a strong set of social themes, which I think is one reason for the film’s critical success. Sight & Sound placed it first in its top twenty films of 2016.

Definitely to be seen but prepare for a possible challenging two and half hours.

European audiences could vote for the film for the Lux Prize [including British citizens as we are still in the European Union]. There are two other finalist films; My Life as a Courgette / Ma vie de Courgette (France 2016), an animated film which was late addition to the Leeds International Film Festival programme; and As I Open My Eyes / À peine j’ouvre les yeux (Tunisia, France, Belgium, United Arab Emirates 2015). Unfortunately My Life as a Courgette seems to only have had the LIFF screening so far. And there is no sign of As I Open My Eyes at all. Final straw, the voting ended on January 31st!

Jackie

Jan 28, 2017Jan 27, 2017 / jakebaldwinson / 2 Comments

Showing daily from Friday 27th January

“She remembers the roses. Three times that day in Texas they had been greeted with bouquets of yellow roses of Texas. Only, in Dallas they had given her red roses. She remembers thinking, how funny – red roses for me; and then the car was full of blood and red roses.”

This stylised and unconventional film about the experiences of first lady, Jackie Kennedy, in the wake of the assassination of her husband, takes it’s inspiration from a literary/journalistic source; an article written by Theodore H. White for the December 6 1963 edition of Life magazine entitled For President Kennedy, An Epilogue.

The interview White conducts with Jackie Kennedy Onassis at her home in Hyannis Port provides the framing device for the fractured narrative in which we look at the events that took place after the assassination, in particular, the funeral service in Washington D.C. and the changeover of presidency and occupation of the White House to Lyndon B. Johnson.

There are some great stylistic elements at play here. The White House set (filmed in a studio in France) is impressive, and the film was shot on super 16mm by regular Jacques Audiard DP, Stéphane Fontaine. It is also framed in the 1:66 aspect ratio, giving a convincing period feel, which beautifully recreates vintage newsreel footage.

Natalie Portman gives a strikingly un-melodramatic central performance as a self-possessed woman, struggling to appear strong and composed in the public eye, and angry at what she believes is the bad hand her husband had been dealt.

I also have to mention the great orchestral soundtrack, performed by Under the Skin composer, Mica Levi, which swells and threatens to overpower the images in parts.

La La Land, USA / Hong Kong 2016

Jan 13, 2017 / keith1942 / 3 Comments

Daily from Friday January 13^th

This film challenges the conventional wisdom that the Hollywood romantic musical is dead or moribund. Deservedly the film has won awards at the recent Golden Globes, as has writer and director Damien Chazelle; the two stars Ryan Gosling (Seb) and Emma Stone (Mia); and the composer Justin Hurwitz. But praise is also due to the cinematographer Linus Sandgren; editor Tom Cross; and production designer David Wasco. I should add a special mention for choreographer Mandy Moore as the two stars are not experienced dancers, nor are they as skilled as Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron, who receive a homage in the film. But the songs, dances and presentation are all completely engaging.

Apart from the homages to the great 1950s Hollywood musical the film also has parallels with Jacques Demy’s Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967) and Martin Scorsese’s own foray into the genre, New York New York (1977); the latter was presumably an influence on the title. And as with Chazelle’s previous film Whiplash (2014) we can also enjoy references to the world of jazz.

The film is a bitter-sweet affair. Whilst the ‘Lighthouse Café’ [seen in the film] can still be enjoyed the ‘Rialto Cinema’ [another actual setting] is sadly closed. However, this film is so good I think we can expect to enjoy a further musical.

2017, 100 years on …

Jan 1, 2017 / keith1942 / Leave a comment

So welcome to the year in which we celebrate the centenary of the Great October Revolution. One enjoyable form of celebration will be to watch some of the masterworks of Soviet Montage Cinema. One obvious candidate is Sergei Eisenstein’s film of the historic event, Oktyabr (Ten Days That Shook the World, 1928).

Other key films that we may hopefully see this year on 35mm [four with live music) would be:

The New Babylon (Novyy Vavilon, 1929) directed by Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg. A powerful dramatisation of the historic Paris Commune of 1871: a forerunner for the October revolution.

Mother (Mat, 1926) directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin. Set during the Russian Revolution of 1905 and based on the 1906 novel ‘The Mother’ by Maxim Gorky.

The Girl with a Hatbox (Devushka s korobkoy, 1927) directed by Boris Barnet and starring Anna Sten. The film satirises the ‘Nepmen’, entrepreneurs who were allowed to conduct commercial business during the New Economic Policy of the 1920s.

Earth (Zemlya, 1930) directed by Alexander Dovzhenko and dealing with the process of collectivization and the hostility exhibited by the Kulak landowners.

Enthusiasm (Entuziazm / Simfoniya Donbassa, 1931) directed by Dziga Vertov. A film celebrating Socialist Construction in the Don Valley of the Ukraine. Needs to be seen with its original soundtrack rather than with live music.

Arrival, USA 2016

Dec 26, 2016Dec 26, 2016 / keith1942 / Leave a comment

Tuesday December 27th at 3.00 p.m.

A chance to catch one of the best English-language films of the year. The film tends towards what is called ‘hard science fiction’, that is concern with the theoretical and scientific aspects of the future. That is part of its entertainment value, though it is also well produced and enjoys a fine central performance from Amy Adams. She is a linguist recruited by the military to attempt to communicate with visiting aliens. The design of the aliens is as innovative as I have seen in years. A central theme is time: the resolution of the film unlocks the complexities this involves.

The director is Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve who was responsible for the very fine drama Incendies (2010). His two other films have been Prisoners (2013) and Sicario (2015), demonstrating a varied approach to genre. Whilst the film bears the US tag it was filmed in Canada. The screenplay by Eric Heisserer has been adapted from a short story by Ted Chiang. He seems to specialise in shorter fiction writing and has a high reputation in science fiction circles. This tale has an interesting treatment of language as well as of time.

If you have time and are feeling a little frustrated by the few quality films around over the festive season you can wait a little while and catch a classic: In the Heat of the Night (1967) with award winning performances by Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger.

The Unknown Girl / La fille inconnue, Belgium / France / Italy 2016.

Dec 16, 2016Dec 16, 2016 / keith1942 / Leave a comment

Opens Friday December 16th at 6.00 p.m.

This is the most promising title in December, not a great month for new releases. It is the latest film from Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Their track record over the years offers series of very fine films. Their work is best described as social realism. They started their career with documentaries and there is still a touch of the documentarily style about their films. But there screenwriting also offers drams that are intense as well as socially relevant.

They won the Cannes Festival Palme d’Or in 1999 with Rosetta, which followed the efforts of a teenage girl to free herself from a dysfunctional family situation. The Son (Le Fils) was nominated for the same prize in 2002. This tale studied a young man and a relationship with a surrogate father. The Child (L’enfant) was again the winner in 2005. This was an intense drama about parents living on welfare and their newly born child. Lorna’s Silence (Le Silence de Lorna) received a another nomination for a study of a young woman who undertakers an arranged marriage. Once again in 2011 the brothers were nominated for The Kid with a Bike (Le Gamin au vélo), a more upbeat tale about a young boy and an effective surrogate mother. Two Days, One Night (Deux jours, une nuit) also received a similar nomination in 2014. This film parcelled both the British I, Daniel Blake and the French La loi du marché in the tale of a young female factory worker.

Now this year The Unknown Girl received the Dardenne Brothers seventh nomination for this prestigious award. Clearly Cannes juries like these filmmakers: deservedly so. The films are simply yet beautifully composed. They work with their cast with real skill. And the stories they present are intriguing and powerfully relevant. Their latest film follows an investigation into the death of an unidentified young woman. It sounds like familiar Dardenne territory and whilst is has received mixed reviews it remains a promising film to watch.

The Dardenne’s have explored the world of the young, exploited oppressed and disenfranchised youth in many of their films. It is remarkable that they do so with such skill since they are both now in their fifties. And in that time they have produced a series of films that are equal to the work of other leading European filmmakers.

Note the film opens today with the only early screening. The following ones on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday all run up to or pass 11 p.m.

Christmas in Connecticut

Dec 9, 2016Aug 1, 2019 / fohpph / 1 Comment

For our Friends’ Christmas special this year we are pleased to present Christmas in Connecticut (1945) this Wednesday 14th December.

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Members are invited to join us from 5.45pm for a mince pie and a glass of sherry and to meet and speak with other members of the Friends then the film will screening shortly after 6.30pm.

This showing is free to members of the Friends but everybody is welcome and normal ticket prices apply to non members.

The film follows a sharp writer who, despite never setting foot in a kitchen, writes a cooking column for a women’s magazine. In order to trick her publisher, she poses as a happy homemaker, complete with husband, baby and country estate. Her goose is cooked when the publisher arranges for her to host a sailor over the Christmas holidays. The journalist has to marry her boyfriend, find a home and prepare a spectacular meal for a huge magazine spread. Things grow even more complicated when she starts to fall for her guest.

Paterson France, Germany, USA 2016

Nov 23, 2016 / keith1942 / Leave a comment

Daily from Friday 25th November

This new film from Jim Jarmusch was the opening film at the Leeds International Film Festival. Jarmusch also scripted the film and the Festival Catalogue quotes him:

“I love variation and repetition in poetry, in music and in art. Whether it’s in Bach or Andy Warhol. In the film I wanted to make this little structure to be a metaphor for life, that every day is a variation on the day before or the day coming up.”

What we get in the film is the slight variations in the life of Paterson (Adam Driver) who lives and works in the city of Paterson. The city is famous for the Great Falls situated on the Passaic River and as the subject an epic poem by William Carlos Williams, a member of the US modernist poetry movement.

Paterson is an amateur poet who works as a local bus driver. The variations in his life and work take place over seven days. We see him frequently writing poetry in his notebook. and there are occasional encounters including with a much younger would-be poet.

Mornings, evening and night-times are spent at his house which he shares with Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) and her dog Marvin (Nellie, playing in a cross-gender role). Laura seems mainly involved in domestic labour. Marvin, a ‘British Bulldog’, clearly is jealous of Paterson. But Paterson take shim for his regular evening walk when he visits a local bar where we see the more local inhabitants and some of the drama in their lives.

The film offers low-key humour. The observation of Paterson and his environs is absorbing. However, he is a slightly fey character and Laura is even more so. I did think that Farahani’s part was seriously underwritten. I thought that Marvin was more developed in character. It would seem though that this will be Nellie’s only film role as an end title is dedicated to her memory. She won the 2016 Palm Dog posthumously.

The production of the film is well done. The cinematography by Frederick Elmes is clear, direct and makes good use of settings like the Falls. And the editing, by Alfonso Gonçalves, works well and makes some of the humour in its cuts. The composer Carter Logan, who worked on Jarmusch’s last film Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), adds to the irony with judicious music.

I should note that the Sight & Sound review by Henry K. Miller thought this the best work by Jarmusch since Ghost Dog (1999). If your taste is in Jarmusch movies then you will likely enjoy this.

Napoleon France 1927

Nov 11, 2016Nov 11, 2016 / keith1942 / Leave a comment

Sunday November 13th at 11.15 a.m. in The Victoria Hall

This silent film epic is screening in The Victoria Hall with a pre-recorded musical accompaniment. The film itself, directed by Abel Gance, is one of the outstanding achievements of European silent cinema. Epic well describes the over five hours which only take in Napoleon’s youth and early career. Gance and his production team, especially the lead cinematographer Cinematography by Léonce-Henri Burel, were in the vanguard of film technique in this period. In an early scene the mobile camera brings out the dynamism of young Bonaparte: and these techniques are paralleled on many occasions especially in a dramatic sequence in the French Assembly. The film makes extensive use of tinting and toning, reproduced in this version. Finally the film ends with a precursor of the Cinerama format, as the entry of Napoleon’s army into Italy is presented on three screens in a magnificent panorama.

The film has been transferred to a digital format. So whether this will be equal to the thrill of 35mm presentations has to be seen. However, Kevin Brownlow, who painstakingly restored the film over many years, made the point that it will look better than on the 9.5 mm gauge in which he first viewed it. And it will certainly look better than on a Blu-Ray or DVD. On the large screen at the Town Hall, 12 metres across, the framing will be about 27 by 20 foot. And the final triptych has been folded into a 2.39:1 frame, stretching across the entire screen. Added to this, the score that Carl Davis composed to accompany film screenings, based extensively on music contemporary to the time, will be in 7:1 Dolby Surround Sound, and the Town Hall has good acoustics for music.

The film falls into three parts, though this screening has three intervals, so I am unsure where they will fall. Still, if you have never seen Napoleon on the big screen then this is a cinema must.

Woman of the Dunes/Suna no onna, Japan 1964

Nov 3, 2016Nov 3, 2016 / keith1942 / Leave a comment

Friday November 4th at 4.30 p.m. and Wednesday November 9th at 1.00 p.m.

This is one of the classic films screening at the Leeds International Film festival and one of the few in the original format of 35mm. It is part of a retrospective ‘Soundtracks’ and the film has a minimalist and modernist electronic score by Japanese composer Takemitsu Toru. He was a regular collaborator with the film director Teshigahara Hiroshi and this is the latter’s most notable film. It won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes International Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Foreign-Language Film category.

It is an example of the modernist film-making found in the Japanese New Wave of the 1960s. It is a film of ambiguities but with a fascinating narrative and characters. An etymologist goes to the beach collect specimens for the day but events prevent his return to the city in the evening. The story develops in beautifully unexpected ways. Visually the film is a tour de force, especially in the black and white deep focus cinematography of Segawa Hiroshi. The imagery at times is abstract and the music of Takemitsu adds to the unconventional feel of the film.

The film also has a strong set of social themes running through it. These receive extra emphasis from the opening and closing credits which offer an added dimension to the allegory. The film runs for just over two hours and exercises at time a hypnotic feel. Not to be missed on the big screen.