This Week On Demand: 26/08/2012

A particularly good week for world cinema welcomes titles from Iran, Chile, Japan, Turkey, and Italy alongside a double bill of American creature features and low-key independent documentaries. Again film history is well represented, our oldest new addition stretching back to the birth of Italian neorealism while the newest dates back just a few short weeks. Netflix continues to boost their considerable selection of this year’s films, this week alone adding a personal selection for one of the best films of the year, as well as one of the worst. It need not be said that the movies below hold something of appeal for every viewer; the varying posters alone should tell you that.

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A resolutely tragic tale of childhood destroyed by adult conflict, A Time for Drunken Horses looks to the fate of the Kurdish people on the border between Iran and Iraq. Suddenly finding himself the head of his family when his father dies, 12 year old Ayoub strives to support his siblings with heavy manual labour for which he regularly goes cheated and unpaid. The fractured innocence of youth is the film’s focus as it laments the hideous life these children are resigned to, Bahman Ghobadi’s script unrelenting in the extent of its suffering. His direction, too, brings to the material a sincere heaviness, the snowy mountaintops of the landscape casting a bleak shadow over Ayoub and his family. Ghobadi’s documentary-style aesthetic makes more real the emotive tragedy of this story; A Time for Drunken Horses is an accomplished tribute to the sad plight of a long-oppressed people. RECOMMENDED.

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Adapted from Alejandro Zambra’s celebrated 2006 novel, Bonsái is a deeply literary film, its dual strands set eight years apart as aspiring novelist Julio reminisces of his time together with college lover Emilia. Occasionally wandering off into the wrong side of quirk, it’s a tale of kooky characters and their eccentric relationship, Julio and Emilia’s ill-fated but vibrant romance juxtaposed with the comparatively empty attraction he feels to neighbour Blanca in the “eight years later” segment of the plot. Lead Diego Noguera is engagingly melancholy throughout, the obvious sense of loss he bears at his failed relationship endearing him to us from its earliest moments, as well as the film’s early warning that Emilia will die by the film’s conclusion. Witty, if never quite hilarious, Bonsái is an alluring portrait of lost love, succinct enough in its drama to overcome the overbearing quirk so much of its story indulges in. WORTH WATCHING.

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A strong contender for 2012’s worst film, Dark Tide comes with an air of smug self-righteousness, turning its nose up at the gory fun of many other shark attack movies and desperately striving to be “more” than those perfectly enjoyable treats. The presence of Halle Berry does little to improve things, hers a perfunctory performance in every way. A forgettable supporting cast fill their own roles with minimum effort, trite subplots and laughable efforts at tension among the characters perforating the story of a trauma-scarred diving instructor who takes a millionaire thrill-seeker out to see to swim with a great white. Nonsensically written from the start, Dark Tide’s inability to recognise its own stupidity is its greatest failing, the seriousness it carries itself with absurd to the point of idiocy. Director John Stockwell does little of interest with the material, the raging tide of the title never put to use for even a single exciting frame. AVOID IT.

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A small-scale thriller confined almost entirely to the titular location, Elevator comes loaded with potential, its story that of nine party guests trapped in the shaft of an investment bank’s Wall Street headquarters. Add to the mix a jaded former investor armed with a bomb and intent on revenge and you’ve got all the necessary ingredients for a timely satire. Yet somehow writer Marc Rosenberg manages to mess it up, his efforts at imbuing the script with humour predominantly flaccid, his intent on jamming in additional subplots more a hindrance than a help. The cast is similarly limited in its contribution, ranging from adequate to embarrassing. Director Stig Svendson at least demonstrates a certain degree of skill, making the most from a tiny location and ensuring the film is tolerable to the eye at all times. Predictable, poorly conceived, and unfortunately unable to deliver on its premise, Elevator might be a mild disappointment, but it’s a disappointment nonetheless. SO-SO.

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A wonderfully cheery documentary look at the life and work of Jiro Ono, proprietor and head chef of a three Michelin starred sushi restaurant in Tokyo, Jiro Dreams of Sushi poignantly details the fruits of prolonged labour, revealing the extraordinary dedication of Jiro to his craft. A noteworthy soundtrack adds a poetic sensibility to the many beautifully shot scenes of sushi preparation, emphasising the artistry that goes into ever dish Jiro prepares. Candid interviews wherein the man himself admits to putting his work above his family as well as conversations with his two sons, both of whom have joined the family business, make this a deeply human story that looks at both the positive and negative repercussions of committing one’s life to a single pursuit. Well paced, warm and funny, and constantly engaging, Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a lovely documentary, a charming and compassionate overview of a great man and his great work. RECOMMENDED.

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Adopted by white Jewish lesbians, Avery Klein-Cloud felt understandably disconnected from her identity as a black woman, setting her on a journey that Nicole Opper chronicles in Off and Running. The immensely unusual family structure of the Klein-Clouds—Avery has adoptive two brothers, both also with different racial backgrounds—makes for compelling drama as the effort to meet Avery’s birth mother yields questions as to what constitutes a person’s true family. The presence of writing credits, though not unusual for a documentary, lends weight to the niggling suspicion that Off and Running is more constructed than it claims, the tension and drama that perforates it a little too neatly cinematic to fully believe. Even with that concern, this is a fascinating film, raising important questions and allowing us to reach our own conclusions on them. Audience sympathies may diverge at times from Opper’s, but there’s no denying the gripping emotional power of this moving picture. RECOMMENDED.

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The latest film from Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia offers a highly distinct take on the police procedural, its winding path through the rural countryside in search of a dead body giving way to deep ponderings on the meaning of life and death, the extent of human cruelty, and the relation of mankind to the world around us. Ceylan captures his characters against the vastness of the world, his effulgent midnight photography combining with daringly staged protracted takes to give easily one of the year’s most visually rich and strikingly beautiful works. Meticulously paced, its scenes progress slowly and steadily, yet still manage to flow together without lagging. Ceylan’s remarkable ability to weave humour and pathos together at every turn crafts unlikely emotional involvement from a film that seems at first cold and removed; Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is strangely transfixing, its atmosphere slowly building a profoundly moving intensity. MUST SEE.

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The perfect antithesis to the dismal Dark Tide, Piranha takes a different approach entirely in how it presents itself, celebrating the familiar conventions of killer fish movies and thriving on the silliness inherent within the subgenre. It’s for the reason that it’s so much better a film, embracing exactly what we expect it to be and having fun along the way. Ludicrous flows of blood permeate the story of prehistoric piranhas unleashed on a beach town at spring break following an undersea earthquake, the gore turned up to 11 and deliriously enjoyable in its excess. It’s a shame that these terrific scenes are so few and far between though, the lacklustre story of a teenager who abandons his babysitting duties to shoot a porn video given far too much time at the disservice of the wild scenes of fishy carnage. Imbalanced to an almost disastrous degree, Piranha gets by on the strength of its relentless bloodshed. SO-SO.

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The second instalment in a trilogy studying the regime of Pinochet in Chile (the excellent first part Tony Manero is also available to stream, the conclusion No is currently making waves at film festivals), Post Mortem follows the life of lonely autopsy note-taker Mario just at the very offset of Pinochet’s 1973 coup. A dark, brooding, macabre portrait of contemporary Chile, the film benefits tremendously from the incredible lead performance of Alfredo Castro, whose similar role in Tony Manero marked him a leading man of extraordinary intensity. Writer/director Pablo Larraín opts to make his political points primarily through allegory, using Mario’s love life rather than the surrounding events of the coup itself, his subtlety enhancing the film’s ruminative power a great deal. Larraín has the directorial style of a blackly comic Haneke, offering welcome breaks in tension that allow the audience to breath and better absorb the political messages he brings to bear. This is a filmmaker to watch. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

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Among the earliest of the neorealist films that categorised Italian cinema in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, Shoeshine stands as an interesting precursor to Vittorio de Sica’s more esteemed works within the movement: Bicycle Thieves, Miracle in Milan, and Umberto D. The story of two young friends who sell illegal goods to wealthy Roman citizens before being arrested for a suspected robbery, Shoeshine uses the eyes of children to inspect the state of post-war Italy, finding in it a bleak future almost entirely lacking in prospects. Shot in glorious black and white that utilises the shadows of the cramped juvenile prison well, it’s a film that clearly demonstrates the budding talents of its director. The script co-written by de Sica’s regular collaborator Cesare Zavattini exercises the themes the two would go on to explore in greater depth in the following years; Shoeshine is not the strongest neorealist film, but it’s a no less important, emotionally rich one. RECOMMENDED.

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Uncompromisingly brutal in its execution, Justin Kurzel’s feature debut tells the true story of a group of serial killers who form around the charismatic John Bunting, never hesitating to show in graphic detail the horrifying violence the infamous gang meted out. Focusing particularly on Jamie Vlassikas, the 16 year old son of Bunting’s latest girlfriend, Snowtown harrowingly portrays his growth from terrified child to apathetic adult, his sense of wrongdoing and morality slowly fading to cold acceptance of the hideous crimes he regularly witnesses and, eventually, himself performs. Lucas Pittaway’s performance as Jamie is a shattering summation of the corruptible nature of humankind, Daniel Henshall’s a gripping incarnation of uncanny evil. What’s truly horrifying about Snowtown is that it makes us understand how Jamie can be drawn to this romanticised view of violence, a view Kurzel clearly eschews in his faithful depiction of these terrible horrors. The camera never looks away, but the audience certainly will. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

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An unusual combination of documentary and narrative, Fellini’s 1970 television film begins a semi-autobiographical story of a boy terrified of the circus that sets up close to his home but eventually morphs to a summative portrait of the performers who populate these acts in the modern day. Highly personal—Fellini’s obsession with the circus is well represented in his filmography—The Clowns links its director’s two greatest passions, showing the links between this kind of performance and that of Fellini himself. The many scenes where the camera simply watches the amusing shows of these clowns are perhaps the best of the film, certainly a good deal more interesting than the odd and often dull interviews with the people themselves. The Clowns has a few too many periods of uninteresting material sharing anecdotes that aren’t all that interesting, but its best moments are thrilling in their comedy, its director’s love of his subject shining through the material. RECOMMENDED.

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Ronan Doyle

Director of Movies On Demand & Sr. Staff Film Critic at Next Projection

Having spent the vast majority of my life sharing in the all too prevalent belief than cinema is merely dumbed-down weekend escapism for the masses, I was lucky enough to turn on a television at the exact right moment to have my perspectives on the medium completely transformed. Those first two and a half hours marked the beginning of a new life revolving around—maybe even depending upon—the screen and the depth of artistry, intellectual stimulation, and emotional exhilaration it can provide.

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