November 2017 film review

CAMERAPERSON (Documentary) 2016 D- Kirsten Johnson
Kirsten Johnson is a highly respected documentary film maker who has stitched together moments from many of her films to make this extraordinary melange of her life’s work, which might be summarised as: people, and how they struggle with the adversities of their lives. We see civilians coping with the aftermath of the vicious inter-communal violence in the Balkans, a Nigerian midwife going about her daily work, and, perhaps most movingly of all, snatches of film of her mother, by now locked into a losing battle against Alzheimer’s.
           We see her standing still in a room, a look of complete befuddlement on her features as she perhaps wonders what she is doing there and what she is going to do next: maybe go and stand over there and do the same thing? The parallels with my own mother are frightening, but then many, many people around Britain and across the world will watch this footage and be thinking the same thing about their own relatives.
           A beautiful little film, full of the wit, joy and tragedy that makes up the human race.

BLADERUNNER 2049 (2017) D- DenisVilleneuve
It is 30 years on from the time Deckard was commissioned to off a band of renegade replicants and then walked off into the sunset with one of them. K (Ryan Gosling, who else?) is a replicant himself, hired to do the same job as his forebear. And when it is discovered that 2 replicants may have had a baby together, he is tasked with finding the offspring, and killing it.
Denis Villeneuve, like many of us, holds the original Bladerunner in such high regard he was initially reluctant to make a sequel. So when he eventually agreed to direct the movie, it turned out in many ways to be a tribute to Ridley Scott’s classic. Much of the feel of the movie takes us right back to the original; the cinematography, the music, the terse, spare dialogue. Of course by now Denis had about twenty times the budget to work with than did Ridley, and that shows clearly on the screen. But he never allows the special effects to overwhelm the plot, such a big temptation in modern blockbusters, and what emerges is a clever, intriguing plot which is extremely effectively told. And if they decide to make another sequel, another 30 years on, and if they put Villeneuve in charge again, I’ll pay good money to see it.

THE CRAFT (1996) D- Andrew Fleming
A high school student (RobinTunney), recently translocated to LA, notices she has powers of telekinesis. She is latched on to by a group of 3 fellow students who are interested in the black arts. She joins them, forces a brutish jock to fall hopelessly in love with her just for fun, and it all goes from there.
          Think Heathers meets the TV series Charmed and you begin to get a glimpse of this picture, which isn’t too hard because Tunney was brought in to replace Shannon Doherty in the latter. All the players work well together, especially Fairuz Balk who adds a special sense of alluring menace. Good fun, if not exactly earth-shattering.

THE DEATH OF STALIN (2017) W/D Armando Ionucci
It is 1953, and uber-tyrant Uncle Joe is at the height of his terrible powers in Soviet Russia- until he suddenly drops dead of a stroke. The other members of the Politburo vie with one another as to who will don the purple. Who will it be? Khrushchev (an, as usual, brilliant Steve Buscemi) seems a front runner, but never forget Lavrenti Beria (Simon Russell Beale), head of the KGB, a man who holds in his little safe blackmail evidence on all the others. Someone has to assume the reins of power, but whoever it is they’d better do it quickly. No one wants to be dumped in the Gulags or take a pistol-shot to the back of the head, just like all the other unfortunates they’ve been screwing for the last 30 years...
            I’ve been loving Armando since he co-wrote such classics as Alan Partridge, then went on to The Thick of It and most recently Veep. His ear for dialogue never fails him, neither does it in this fine adaptation of a French graphic novel. This film is both hilarious and terrifying at the same time, as we learn (hopefully not the first time) the lengths humans will go to in order to gain power.
Highly recommended.