Out now: 78/52, Thelma, The Florida Project Reviews

Still in cinemas around the UK are some more films that I saw at the London Film Festival including Psycho documentary 78/52, Scandi-sort-of-horror Thelma and Sean Baker's Tangerine follow-up The Florida Project.

My review of 78/52 is up at Starburst Magazine here and this is is a snippet from the review:

"Director Alexandre O. Philippe takes the approach of honing in on one famous sequence; the Psycho shower scene. Hitchcock’s most famous set piece is put under the microscope, subjected to rigorous analysis, and (excuse the pun) showered with praise by a gaggle of talking heads including critics, directors, actors, editors and professors. Philippe has assembled an impressive list of some of the master of suspense’s biggest fans and all are eager to pore over the minute details of the sequence that has 78 cuts and 52 camera setups (hence the title)."

Also out is Joachim Trier's oddball horror film Thelma which I also reviewed at Starburst Magazine here. Here's the synopsis of the film from my review:

"The titular character is a young woman who has arrived in the city to study biology at university, for the first time living away from her rural-living religious parents. While Thelma makes friends and enjoys her new found independence, her strict parents are frequently phoning to check up on her. When Thelma meets classmate Anya, something awakens in her that is not just about her sexuality, but might also be supernatural."

Finally, The Florida Project is also out at the moment and though I have not reviewed this elsewhere, I have to highly recommend it now. The film mainly follows a child that lives in a motel down the road from Florida's Disneyworld theme park. She lives in poverty with her weed-smoking, foul-mouthed and irresponsible mother. 

I found this film incredibly depressing. What interests me is that many critics have gone on about the joy of the film. Seeing the story through the eyes of this young carefree girl makes it all seem so much more innocent and magical than it really is. What The Florida Project really deals with is inequality on a terrible scale, but also the way that some people fail to help themselves time and again. 

It angered me. It made me think of some old friends of mine. Friends that can barely make ends meet, but still manage to take drugs even though they now have children. People that I find it hard to call friends now even though I know damn well how hard their lives are. 

I think The Florida Project  is a brilliant film and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it pretty much everyday since I saw it two weeks ago. I found it very hard not to judge some characters and by the end, it left me thinking even more about someone close to me who works in social services. It's definitely not a barrel of laughs and I found it hard to see the joy that so many others saw in it. But it is brilliant, and strangely beautiful, with some of the best performances of the year across the board and a perfectly tragic open ending. See it if you can.

More from the London Film Festival 2017 
 

Hitchcock Review

Inviting comparisons to Psycho is never going to help a movie. Making a movie about one of the greatest film directors in history is not going to guarantee you a great movie either. With Hitchcock, director Sacha Gervasi is aiming high but also cruising for a bruising. Despite stars Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren and an almost never sweeter Scarlett Johannson, Hitchcock is overall not as suspenseful as a film about the master of suspense should be.

While Hopkins does a pretty good Hitchcock, it is far from one his best performances. Mirren fares better with her loving and loyal wife Alma being the revelation of the story, both in performance and narrative positioning. Hitchcock is the story of how Psycho got made. Taking us from the success of North By Northwest to the premiere of Psycho and detailing both the personal and professional problems Hitchcock faced in getting the film made.

It has some wonderfully weird additions. Ed Gein (the inspiration for Psycho) repeatedly showing up to toy with Hitchcock is effective at the start but eventually fails to maintain interest. However it does make me wonder what Gervasi could do with a horror film as the production design of the scenes featuring Gein are great. Hitchcock talks to us in the audience at a couple of moments as he did in his trailers occasionally adding an amusing touch.

However, the best and most obviously unfortunate scenes on the film are the recreations of the Psycho set and watching Hitchcock at work. While these scenes are brilliant to watch and any film fan will find the the recreation of the production of the classic film Psycho as enthralling as watching Melies creating Voyage to the Moon in the recent Hugo, they also mean that the only way that Hitchcock could end satisfyingly is by being a double bill with Psycho itself.

The end of the film just can't compare to being able to sit and watch the fruit of Hitchcock's labour. If the film just ended with us being able to watch Psycho all the way through from start to finish, it would have made Hitchcock an infinitely better movie. As it is, Hitchcock will interest fans of the master but I'm not sure many others will be lured.

Hitchcock is out February 8th 2013 in UK cinemas.Watch the trailer below:

Upcoming Screenings: Rebellion, No, Hitchcock, The Paperboy

I have quite a few exciting screenings lined up over the next month. Next week I'm seeing both Rebellion, directed by and starring Mathieu Kassovitz and No starring Gael García Bernal, a film where 'an ad executive comes up with a campaign to defeat Augusto Pinochet in Chile's 1988 referendum.
 

I'm extremely excited about Rebellion as I love Kassovitz's La Haine and though his career has never reached those heights,on the strength of the trailer and the subject matter I have high hopes for this one. No, on the other hand is also very promising as it is the first time Chile have had a film nominated for the best foreign language Oscar.

Both of these I will be reviewing for Filmoria ahead of their releases in February. Below are the trailers:





Later in February I have managed to line up screenings of two more films so far; The Paperboy through the Total Film Screening Club and Hitchcock through ShowFilmFirst.

Judging from the amount of times I've seen the trailer for Hitchcock, I think I might be bored of this before I even get to the cinema, though it does look like it has some fun performances from Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren.

The Paperboy is from the director of Precious, Lee Daniels and is packed by a fantastic cast and looks sweaty and trashy as hell! Below are the trailers:





What do you think of these trailers? Any take your fancy?

Movie Icons: A Very Interactive Post

What is an icon?  I start this post with a question because I wish to begin as I intend to continue.

'A person or thing regarded as a representative symbol of something: e.g. "an icon of manhood".'

That's one of the only answers you'll get today.  Wikipedia says 'Some writers say that the terms "icon" and "iconic" have been overused. A writer in Liverpool Daily Post calls "iconic" "a word that makes my flesh creep", a word "pressed into service to describe almost anything."'

I can understand their point.  Somewhere in the back of my mind I remember knowing that an icon is a representative symbol of something.  But when I use the word iconic, I think I'm actually thinking more along the lines of 'unforgettable'.  I think somebody once told me that icons could always be recognised by their silhouette.  So in Hitchcock's final film, Family Plot, we recognise his cameo appearance just from his silhouette for example.

But then I type 'movie icons' into Google images and I get this:

I guess these little pictures are just icons because they are representative of the actual characters that they stand for.  Is that right?  And could somebody enlighten me as to who the last one is please?  I was expecting actual pictures of Monroe, Bogart, Chaplin but not these little ladies and gentleman.

In fact I scroll down and the first actual pictures of people I get are quite a way down:

Which gets me thinking?  Is there room for debate about who our movie icons are?  Or do some higher powers have to bestow the term 'icon' before us common muck can use it?  Why are the above characters iconic?  How long does it take to become iconic?  Is it instant?  Was Ledger and Nolan's Joker instantly iconic?  Was the Joker already iconic before The Dark Knight and therefore any fresh incarnation of the villain will always be iconic?

What is Frankenstein a representative symbol of?  The undead?  The arrogance of man messing with the powers of God?

I am aware I'm rambling but I wish to get to the bottom of this.  Can I say that any film character is an icon if I feel s/he is a representative symbol of something to me personally?  Do I have to justify my use of the word iconic to anybody?  I recently heard a blogger ranting about the over use of the word masterpiece.  Do we really need to hold back on using words like iconic and masterpiece and save them for only the specialist occasions.  I'm sure most people do but doesn't it all come down to opinion?

What about stars?  I can clearly see how characters can be iconic.  Many characters are written to be symbols.  But stars?  How can they be iconic?  I mean really iconic?

MSN thinks they can be:

In the 00's we have: Will Smith, Nicole Kidman, Natalie Portman, Will Ferrell, Sean Penn, Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley, Clooney, Winslet and Jolie.

In the 90's we have: Pitt, Hanks, Willis, Thurman, Julia Roberts, Susan Sarandon, Jim Carrey, Winona Ryder, Meg Ryan

In the 80's we have: Eddie Murphy, Bill Murray, Schwarzenegger, Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, Molly Ringwald, Kathleen Turner

The list goes on and on, check here for the 70s, the 60s, the 50s, and apparently MSN then decides there were no icons before this last decade.  So no Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy etc.

I'm just not sure if all of these stars are really iconic.  I mean what is Brad Pitt a representative symbol of?  Now Tyler Durden maybe... but not Brad Pitt himself surely?  And what about Johnny Depp?  Edward Scissorhands I can see being iconic, Captain Jack even maybe at a stretch... but not just Johnny Depp.

So another question for you and I hope you are making a note of all these because I NEED answers!  What makes a star iconic?

Finally, I'm more interested in iconic images than I am with iconic stars or even iconic characters.  So what do you think are the most iconic images of cinema?  For me it just doesn't come any more iconic than this.  I could talk about this image all day but I'll leave that for another post.

Over to you!  Please give me some answers to my endless questions and I will be forever in your debt!

More popular posts at I Love That Film:

TV in 2013: Breaking Bad, Dexter, The Walking Dead, Homeland and more

Analysing La Haine

5 MUST SEE films at the BFI London Film Festival 2014

Valentines Day; Time for Romance

The Femme Castratrice in Horror

Why I Love The Hunger Games

Using Critical Approaches to Study Fight Club

  

Short Story: LIVING FOR THE WEEKEND