Welcome to this month’s book and film review, broken into several parts as is the custom imposed on me by my equipment.
Apologies for the paucity of my blogs lately. I have been, shall we say, a little preoccupied. Still recovering physically and emotionally from the threat of spending the rest of my life in prison for crimes I did not commit, and then completing a book on that very subject, I have found little time left over for broadcasting my views to the nation. I still have them, I assure you, and you will hear more, if you are interested. But today, please find May’s book review below. Enjoy.
WITHIN A BUDDING GROVE, by Marcel Proust
A young man in fin de siecle Paris falls hopelessly in love with a neighbour, and they have fun for a while, then she tires of him, or is the other way round? Even he isn’t sure. Then his beloved grandmother takes him to spend the summer on the Normandy coast, where he tries to forget his paramour by falling for another young lovely. Does it work? Read on...
A la Recherche continues with this marvellous dissection of the agonies of adolescence, told in Proust’s languid style, its prose shining like a duchess’s tiara. No one has ever written so sublimely on what it is like to be human, and I suspect no one ever will. But if you decide to delve, don’t expect a quick read. You must take your time with Proust. You don’t rush Pell-Mel through a beautiful garden, you wander at your leisure, taking your time to study the flowers, their perfume and the setting as a whole. And feel uplifted by the whole experience. That’s Proust. Go on, treat yourself.
A NECESSARY EVIL, by Amir Mhukerjee
India, 1920. The British Raj is thriving, but there are already murmurs of discontent from the locals. Then the crown prince of a small but wealthy state is murdered before the eyes of a local English detective. Who gains from such an atrocity? That’s our detective’s starting point for an investigation that takes him into the heart of Indian power-politics.
There appears to be an infinite appetite for murder mysteries among the reading public. From Sherlock Holmes through Nordic noir; historical detectives and American gumshoes, the list is long. And now we have Mr. Mhukerjee, with his modern ‘tales from the Raj’. He writes engagingly and uses an interesting added theme: following a war wound, our hero has become an opium addict...
THE INNOCENT MAN, by John Grisham
In 1980s Oklahoma, a young girl is raped and murdered. The police ‘like’ Ron Williamson, a young man who lives nearby: he’s a bit of a weirdo, been charged with rape before (though found not guilty in court) and drinks too much. It’s got to be him, right? It all fits, the police think, and the DA agrees. He is arrested, charged, convicted on the thinnest of evidence and sentenced to death. After 11 years on death row, he is given an appointment to have the needle placed in his arm just 3 weeks away. Almost at the last moment, Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project gets to hear about the case and manages to obtain a stay. But can he stop the authorities giving Ron a new date with the executioner?
John Grisham is best known for his fictional courtroom dramas, several of which have been made into highly successful movies. Here he makes his first foray into nonfiction, and produced a book every bit as gripping as any of his novels. His account of a case even more horrific than my own, Grisham has here written one of the most riveting, and disturbing books I have read in years.
THE EMIGRANTS, by W.G. Sebald
Comprising four tales of emigrants in the 20th century, all from Germany to various locations around the world. Why did they leave their homeland, and how did they manage in their adopted country? Read on...
In a recent blog I described Vladimir Nabokov as the writer of some of the most beautiful prose in the history of literature. In Marcel Proust we have another supreme exponent. And here, with ‘Max’ Sebald, we complete our triumvirate. What a wonderful treat for the mind it is to read Herr Sebald! Whether he is talking about a man who made his life as butler to an American playboy, or an artist who has washed up on the grimy streets of Manchester, one finds ones self totally immersed in their worlds, the breath almost taken away by his insight and charm. A.S. Byatt described this book as “strange, beautiful and terribly moving”. Wish I could write reviews like that.
Unmissable.
Thursday, 31 May 2018
Wednesday, 2 May 2018
April 2018 movie review
SEA FURY (1958) D- Cy Endfield
A crusty old tugboat captain (Victor McLagen) plying his trade on the coast of northern Spain is seen as the ideal husband for a Spaniard’s lovely young daughter (a very young Lucianna Paluzzi, who you may remember as the red-headed assassin in SPECTRE’s employ in the film Thunderball). Unfortunately she has eyes only for the first mate, a young and virile Stanley Baker. They keep their affair under wraps, but in a small town no secret remains secret for long. And when McLagen finds out he is being usurped, he is not best pleased, as we might imagine.
Cy Endfield achieved cinematic immortality when he directed Zulu, and in this earlier offering demonstrated his potential. This film, so British in its conception, is thoroughly engaging and really quite moving in its straightforward analysis of age versus youth.
This is one of the first films I watched on the relatively new “Talking Pictures” channel, to be found at no. 328 on Sky, and available on most other platforms too. It specialises in films from the 30s, 40s and 50s, many of which have expired copyrights and are therefore free to screen. See below for more.
THE STRANGER (1946) D- Orson Welles
A Nazi war criminal hides in plain sight in a small American town. He even manages to snag beautiful Loretta Young on the way, but Edward G Robinson is the Nazi hunter on his trail and determined to bring him to book.
Orson Welles is a one-off. Impossible to categorise, he secured his immortality with Citizen Kane, and spent the rest of his career trying to emulate that success. He never managed it, but got pretty close at times. Chimes at Midnight, A Touch of Evil, and perhaps this film, with its gothic feel and oppressive atmosphere are perhaps his best efforts. Gripping stuff.
THE SQUARE RING (1953) D- Basil Dearden
At a seedy pro boxing stadium a number of hopefuls and has-beens prepare to do battle for limited purses but with the dream of the big money that might one day come their way. Jack Warner plays the coach, worrying about his charges but doing the best he can to help them along.
What emerges is a fascinating series of vignettes of low-life aspiration to the big time which always stays just out of reach. Quality Brit cinema.
THE ROCKING HORSE WINNER (1949) D- Anthony Pelissier
A young lad is bought a rocking horse by his doting parents who can only just afford it. His mum is a would-be socialite spendthrift; his dad is a lousy card-player who loses every night. The boy is befriended by the handyman, who confesses his love of the gee-gees, and teaches him how to “ride” his rocking horse. He becomes obsessed by the horse, and then finds that if he rocks hard enough he enters a kind of trance in which the names of winners of real races are revealed to him. He passes the names onto the handyman, who begins to make a packet, for our young man’s predictions are never wrong...
Based on a short story by D.H. Lawrence, this strange little piece is really a very good film indeed. All the players are excellent, and the director does an extremely good job with his material. Highly recommended.
A crusty old tugboat captain (Victor McLagen) plying his trade on the coast of northern Spain is seen as the ideal husband for a Spaniard’s lovely young daughter (a very young Lucianna Paluzzi, who you may remember as the red-headed assassin in SPECTRE’s employ in the film Thunderball). Unfortunately she has eyes only for the first mate, a young and virile Stanley Baker. They keep their affair under wraps, but in a small town no secret remains secret for long. And when McLagen finds out he is being usurped, he is not best pleased, as we might imagine.
Cy Endfield achieved cinematic immortality when he directed Zulu, and in this earlier offering demonstrated his potential. This film, so British in its conception, is thoroughly engaging and really quite moving in its straightforward analysis of age versus youth.
This is one of the first films I watched on the relatively new “Talking Pictures” channel, to be found at no. 328 on Sky, and available on most other platforms too. It specialises in films from the 30s, 40s and 50s, many of which have expired copyrights and are therefore free to screen. See below for more.
THE STRANGER (1946) D- Orson Welles
A Nazi war criminal hides in plain sight in a small American town. He even manages to snag beautiful Loretta Young on the way, but Edward G Robinson is the Nazi hunter on his trail and determined to bring him to book.
Orson Welles is a one-off. Impossible to categorise, he secured his immortality with Citizen Kane, and spent the rest of his career trying to emulate that success. He never managed it, but got pretty close at times. Chimes at Midnight, A Touch of Evil, and perhaps this film, with its gothic feel and oppressive atmosphere are perhaps his best efforts. Gripping stuff.
THE SQUARE RING (1953) D- Basil Dearden
At a seedy pro boxing stadium a number of hopefuls and has-beens prepare to do battle for limited purses but with the dream of the big money that might one day come their way. Jack Warner plays the coach, worrying about his charges but doing the best he can to help them along.
What emerges is a fascinating series of vignettes of low-life aspiration to the big time which always stays just out of reach. Quality Brit cinema.
THE ROCKING HORSE WINNER (1949) D- Anthony Pelissier
A young lad is bought a rocking horse by his doting parents who can only just afford it. His mum is a would-be socialite spendthrift; his dad is a lousy card-player who loses every night. The boy is befriended by the handyman, who confesses his love of the gee-gees, and teaches him how to “ride” his rocking horse. He becomes obsessed by the horse, and then finds that if he rocks hard enough he enters a kind of trance in which the names of winners of real races are revealed to him. He passes the names onto the handyman, who begins to make a packet, for our young man’s predictions are never wrong...
Based on a short story by D.H. Lawrence, this strange little piece is really a very good film indeed. All the players are excellent, and the director does an extremely good job with his material. Highly recommended.
April 2018 book review
AGUA VIVA, by Clarice Lispector
A young Brazilian woman sits in her apartment contemplating the eternal verities: time, memory, love, and whatever else springs to her extremely adroit mind.
What emerges in this mercifully short book (it runs to only 90 pages) is an extraordinary stream of consciousness writing which is unique in my limited experience. I say mercifully because it is scarcely light reading. I could only manage 20 pages at a time, less than half of my usual intake, such is the density of her prose. With application, however, what emerges is a strange, surrealistic journey through the mind of one of Brazil’s most acclaimed writers. Dying much too young (she was barely 47) she could have gone on to far greater things. Go for it if you enjoy a challenge.
SWANN’S WAY, by Marcel Proust
A boy is growing up in a small rural town in northern France. There are two walks the family likes to take on a Sunday afternoon. One is the Guermantes way, a longish ramble that necessitates checking the weather first, lest they be caught in the rain. On that route they may be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the Duke of Guermantes’s family, local landowners and serious nobility.
The shorter route is the way by Swann’s, not a noble but a very well connected and wealthy man. There our hero might espy Swann’s beautiful young daughter Gilberte, with whom he is hopelessly in love, though she is barely aware of his existence. On either route, he can divert himself with such delights as the hawthorn blossom when in season, or an array of other bucolic delights to be found in the French countryside. Later in the book, Swann, the man in full, is described, with particular reference to his love for a Parisian coquette named Odette
Swann’s Way is the first in the six volume series of Proust’s masterwork A La Recherche du Temps Perdu (“In Seach of Lost Time”) which is described by some as the greatest novel ever written. As each book is over 500 pages long, it will not be a quick read, but oh my goodness, what a delight awaits!
I first read this book in 2005 and 2006 and determined immediately it deserved a re-read at some later stage. I have waited long enough to treat myself, and the time has arrived!
A young Brazilian woman sits in her apartment contemplating the eternal verities: time, memory, love, and whatever else springs to her extremely adroit mind.
What emerges in this mercifully short book (it runs to only 90 pages) is an extraordinary stream of consciousness writing which is unique in my limited experience. I say mercifully because it is scarcely light reading. I could only manage 20 pages at a time, less than half of my usual intake, such is the density of her prose. With application, however, what emerges is a strange, surrealistic journey through the mind of one of Brazil’s most acclaimed writers. Dying much too young (she was barely 47) she could have gone on to far greater things. Go for it if you enjoy a challenge.
SWANN’S WAY, by Marcel Proust
A boy is growing up in a small rural town in northern France. There are two walks the family likes to take on a Sunday afternoon. One is the Guermantes way, a longish ramble that necessitates checking the weather first, lest they be caught in the rain. On that route they may be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the Duke of Guermantes’s family, local landowners and serious nobility.
The shorter route is the way by Swann’s, not a noble but a very well connected and wealthy man. There our hero might espy Swann’s beautiful young daughter Gilberte, with whom he is hopelessly in love, though she is barely aware of his existence. On either route, he can divert himself with such delights as the hawthorn blossom when in season, or an array of other bucolic delights to be found in the French countryside. Later in the book, Swann, the man in full, is described, with particular reference to his love for a Parisian coquette named Odette
Swann’s Way is the first in the six volume series of Proust’s masterwork A La Recherche du Temps Perdu (“In Seach of Lost Time”) which is described by some as the greatest novel ever written. As each book is over 500 pages long, it will not be a quick read, but oh my goodness, what a delight awaits!
I first read this book in 2005 and 2006 and determined immediately it deserved a re-read at some later stage. I have waited long enough to treat myself, and the time has arrived!
Friday, 27 April 2018
The world changes before our eyes
The conviction of one of America’s most iconic and, in his day, most bankable stars would have been unthinkable just last year, when a hung jury let Bill Cosby off the hook. Last time around, Cosby’s lawyer, Jim Masereau, the world's most high profile Native American, and the man who secured an acquittal for Michael Jackson in the face of apparently unassailable evidence, prevailed, but the world has changed under his feet, and he could not pull off the same trick this time.
What has changed? Everything is the answer. And if you want to put a name to it, that name is Harvey Weinstein. Women are on the march and there’s no stopping them now. I watched University Challenge on Monday, and was foxed by a number of questions about women, as were the far cleverer contestants on that show. The questions were placed there deliberately, following complaints that too many questions hitherto have been man-based. Of course the problem there is that women’s voices have been silenced by men for so long there is a terrible paucity of women making their mark in history, culture, the arts and, I guess, everything else.
But they’re out there, and it’s our job to learn about them if we wish to be considered as truly well-rounded people.
The time is approaching rapidly when women will be equal to men in every walk of life, from pay, through artistic and political representation, all the way through to mentions on University Challenge.
And a good thing too.
What has changed? Everything is the answer. And if you want to put a name to it, that name is Harvey Weinstein. Women are on the march and there’s no stopping them now. I watched University Challenge on Monday, and was foxed by a number of questions about women, as were the far cleverer contestants on that show. The questions were placed there deliberately, following complaints that too many questions hitherto have been man-based. Of course the problem there is that women’s voices have been silenced by men for so long there is a terrible paucity of women making their mark in history, culture, the arts and, I guess, everything else.
But they’re out there, and it’s our job to learn about them if we wish to be considered as truly well-rounded people.
The time is approaching rapidly when women will be equal to men in every walk of life, from pay, through artistic and political representation, all the way through to mentions on University Challenge.
And a good thing too.
Tuesday, 3 April 2018
The wrong kind of Jews
Jeremy Corbyn has been criticized by members of his own party (I think we know they are) for meeting a Jewish group. But they’re the wrong kind of Jews. Jewdas is a dissident faction, a bunch of irreverent, semi-anarchistic bad boys whose greatest sin is that they refuse to support the Zionist hegemony which operates in their own land and the occupied territories of Palestine. They’re not antisemitic, but they don’t approve of Netenyahu’s near-fascist government.
The Zionist’s seek, and indeed succeed to a very large extent, to quell any opposition to their own party and its policies. A few years ago, for instance, an exhibition of art created by Palestinian children was doing the rounds in a series of American cities. Spreading the lie that the art was not created by the children, they went ahead of the exhibition and tried very hard to persuade the venues to cancel the exhibition. It worked, and many, many venues suddenly broke their promises and closed the doors against the exhibition. Of course what they didn’t like was what the art showed: bombs falling from Israeli jets, buildings and homes destroyed and dead and injured Palestinians lying on the ground.
The Israeli government and its many supporters around the world want you to believe the Palestinian people as a whole are terrorists to a man, woman and child, who need to kept behind high walls and killed should they protest, otherwise the Jewish people would be pushed into the sea. It seems now that even here, in the home of Free Speech, it is becoming almost a crime to mention that this is a cruel lie. Hence the concerted campaign to discredit Jeremy Corbyn and anyone else who stands up to the Zionist bullies. If they can, they’d like to destroy any chance of Labour winning the next election by disseminating these lies, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it works.
The Zionist’s seek, and indeed succeed to a very large extent, to quell any opposition to their own party and its policies. A few years ago, for instance, an exhibition of art created by Palestinian children was doing the rounds in a series of American cities. Spreading the lie that the art was not created by the children, they went ahead of the exhibition and tried very hard to persuade the venues to cancel the exhibition. It worked, and many, many venues suddenly broke their promises and closed the doors against the exhibition. Of course what they didn’t like was what the art showed: bombs falling from Israeli jets, buildings and homes destroyed and dead and injured Palestinians lying on the ground.
The Israeli government and its many supporters around the world want you to believe the Palestinian people as a whole are terrorists to a man, woman and child, who need to kept behind high walls and killed should they protest, otherwise the Jewish people would be pushed into the sea. It seems now that even here, in the home of Free Speech, it is becoming almost a crime to mention that this is a cruel lie. Hence the concerted campaign to discredit Jeremy Corbyn and anyone else who stands up to the Zionist bullies. If they can, they’d like to destroy any chance of Labour winning the next election by disseminating these lies, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it works.
Monday, 2 April 2018
March 2018 film review part 2
BOMBSHELL (2017) D- Alexandra Dean
Being the life and times of Heddy Lamar, one of the most achingly beautiful stars ever to shine on the silver screen. But make no mistake, this was no airhead bimbo. Her mind brimmed with bright ideas, and when a submarine sank a ship in 1942, drowning over 90 children, she worked out, with a friend, a method for detecting submarines under water. But nobody bought the idea. Or did they? Despite the fact that she never made a dime for her invention, the US navy did indeed use a modified version of her idea, and they continue to use of a form of it to this day.
Escaping from Germany prior to WW2, there was one thing she couldn’t escape from: her past. Turns out she made a nudie film in Germany, and this came to haunt her. Offered a series of parts that were beneath her, she accepted them to keep her head above water, and as a result her real talent never made it to the screen. Finally, and most tragically of all, she used plastic surgery in a desperate and wholly unsuccessful bid to hold on to her fading beauty.
An affecting and highly insightful story of promise denied.
A WAR (2015) D- Pilou Lindholm
A Danish commander under fire in Afghanistan (a brilliantl Pilou Asbaek) has one of his men badly injured and must get him out to save his life. There may be civilians in a hut he is attacking in order to effect this, there may not. He takes a gamble and blows it to hell. His man is saved, but the gamble failed. There were civilians in the hut, and they were all killed. Next thing he hears, he’s up on war-crimes charges.
This is how modern wars are fought. Everything is filmed, every command decision questioned, no matter the incredible stress the participants may be under at the time. Until quite recently, deaths under “friendly fire” or little mistakes where a wedding party is blown up rather than a band of terrorists were just put down to the fortunes of war. No longer. And perhaps that’s a good thing. But I worry that the human beings involved are now cut no slack at all for the incredibly difficult job their governments ask them to do.
Being the life and times of Heddy Lamar, one of the most achingly beautiful stars ever to shine on the silver screen. But make no mistake, this was no airhead bimbo. Her mind brimmed with bright ideas, and when a submarine sank a ship in 1942, drowning over 90 children, she worked out, with a friend, a method for detecting submarines under water. But nobody bought the idea. Or did they? Despite the fact that she never made a dime for her invention, the US navy did indeed use a modified version of her idea, and they continue to use of a form of it to this day.
Escaping from Germany prior to WW2, there was one thing she couldn’t escape from: her past. Turns out she made a nudie film in Germany, and this came to haunt her. Offered a series of parts that were beneath her, she accepted them to keep her head above water, and as a result her real talent never made it to the screen. Finally, and most tragically of all, she used plastic surgery in a desperate and wholly unsuccessful bid to hold on to her fading beauty.
An affecting and highly insightful story of promise denied.
A WAR (2015) D- Pilou Lindholm
A Danish commander under fire in Afghanistan (a brilliantl Pilou Asbaek) has one of his men badly injured and must get him out to save his life. There may be civilians in a hut he is attacking in order to effect this, there may not. He takes a gamble and blows it to hell. His man is saved, but the gamble failed. There were civilians in the hut, and they were all killed. Next thing he hears, he’s up on war-crimes charges.
This is how modern wars are fought. Everything is filmed, every command decision questioned, no matter the incredible stress the participants may be under at the time. Until quite recently, deaths under “friendly fire” or little mistakes where a wedding party is blown up rather than a band of terrorists were just put down to the fortunes of war. No longer. And perhaps that’s a good thing. But I worry that the human beings involved are now cut no slack at all for the incredibly difficult job their governments ask them to do.
March 2018 film review part 1
THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON (2004) D- David Fincher
A baby is born with the face of an old man. Horrified, the father snatches it and leaves it on an orphanage’s doorstep. As he grows up, his face gradually begins to look more youthful. A fulcrum point is reached in his thirties, when his face looks right for his chronological age. But then, curiously, as he grows older his face begins to look younger and younger. As he hits his forties he goes backpacking in Nepal; by his sixties he has entered his awkward adolescence . Finally, becoming shorter and shorter, he becomes a babe-in-arms. Through it all, he conducts a strange, off/on relationship with a beauful woman (Cate Blanchett).
Based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous short story, this is a fine attempt to bring that remarkable tale to the screen and won Brad Pitt an Oscar for his outstanding performance, though whether this short story warrants a 150 minute epic is open to question. But the director’s skill is undeniable and the film remains watchable throughout.
HARMONIUM (2016) D- Koji Fukada
A mother and her emotionally shut-off husband bring up their child in a Tokyo suburb when the father invites an ex-con friend to come and live with them. The new guest rapidly establishes a rapport with the daughter and teaches her the rudiments of the harmonium. Mum isn’t sure about her new house-guest, but puts up with it. Slowly it emerges that father too has a shady past, and that his friend may have taken the fall for a crime they both committed.
In some ways this film reminded me of the French classic Boudu Saved From Drowning, in the way a guest is invited in and gradually comes to dominate the family, and the atmosphere created in this film, as in the earlier film, is incredibly moving and powerful.
One of those few movies to come out of Japan which offers deep insights into Japanese domestic life.
CITY OF TINY LIGHTS (2016) D- Pete Travis
A low-life private dic bites off more than he can chew when he investigates a disappearance, stumbling into the world of Islamic politics as well as uncovering ghosts from his own past.
Riz Ahmed is one of the hottest properties in the world right now. Aclaimed actor, rapper and activist, Time magazine put him on their cover as one of 100 most influential people in the world - all this at under 30. Dontcha hate people who are that talented and successful? I know I do. Seriously, despite all this success, this movie doesn’t actually work. It can’t make up its mind what it wants to be; fictional autobiog, hard-bitten noir, political intrigue. And the result is an uncertain melange of plot and style. Oh well, Riz, you can’t win ‘em all, just most of them. I’m sure you’ll do better next time.
A FANTASTIC WOMAN (2017) D- Sebastian Lelio
In Santiago, Chile, a male-to-female trans woman is with her male lover one night when he drops dead just after completing the act of love. Tricky. The poor girl doesn’t know how tricky until the man’s family show up and seem to regard her as some kind of sub-human monster. She is barred from attending her lover’s funeral and told to vacate their shared apartment forthwith. Somehow she manages to pursue her career as a singer.
This film is a revelation. If you ever wondered what sort of problem transgender people deal with in the modern world you need look no further than this superb movie which shows, with stunning insight and clarity, that they face, really, the same sort of problems as gays did half a century ago: misunderstanding, fear, and deep, deep hatred.
Absolutely brilliant. Seek it out and be moved,
A baby is born with the face of an old man. Horrified, the father snatches it and leaves it on an orphanage’s doorstep. As he grows up, his face gradually begins to look more youthful. A fulcrum point is reached in his thirties, when his face looks right for his chronological age. But then, curiously, as he grows older his face begins to look younger and younger. As he hits his forties he goes backpacking in Nepal; by his sixties he has entered his awkward adolescence . Finally, becoming shorter and shorter, he becomes a babe-in-arms. Through it all, he conducts a strange, off/on relationship with a beauful woman (Cate Blanchett).
Based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous short story, this is a fine attempt to bring that remarkable tale to the screen and won Brad Pitt an Oscar for his outstanding performance, though whether this short story warrants a 150 minute epic is open to question. But the director’s skill is undeniable and the film remains watchable throughout.
HARMONIUM (2016) D- Koji Fukada
A mother and her emotionally shut-off husband bring up their child in a Tokyo suburb when the father invites an ex-con friend to come and live with them. The new guest rapidly establishes a rapport with the daughter and teaches her the rudiments of the harmonium. Mum isn’t sure about her new house-guest, but puts up with it. Slowly it emerges that father too has a shady past, and that his friend may have taken the fall for a crime they both committed.
In some ways this film reminded me of the French classic Boudu Saved From Drowning, in the way a guest is invited in and gradually comes to dominate the family, and the atmosphere created in this film, as in the earlier film, is incredibly moving and powerful.
One of those few movies to come out of Japan which offers deep insights into Japanese domestic life.
CITY OF TINY LIGHTS (2016) D- Pete Travis
A low-life private dic bites off more than he can chew when he investigates a disappearance, stumbling into the world of Islamic politics as well as uncovering ghosts from his own past.
Riz Ahmed is one of the hottest properties in the world right now. Aclaimed actor, rapper and activist, Time magazine put him on their cover as one of 100 most influential people in the world - all this at under 30. Dontcha hate people who are that talented and successful? I know I do. Seriously, despite all this success, this movie doesn’t actually work. It can’t make up its mind what it wants to be; fictional autobiog, hard-bitten noir, political intrigue. And the result is an uncertain melange of plot and style. Oh well, Riz, you can’t win ‘em all, just most of them. I’m sure you’ll do better next time.
A FANTASTIC WOMAN (2017) D- Sebastian Lelio
In Santiago, Chile, a male-to-female trans woman is with her male lover one night when he drops dead just after completing the act of love. Tricky. The poor girl doesn’t know how tricky until the man’s family show up and seem to regard her as some kind of sub-human monster. She is barred from attending her lover’s funeral and told to vacate their shared apartment forthwith. Somehow she manages to pursue her career as a singer.
This film is a revelation. If you ever wondered what sort of problem transgender people deal with in the modern world you need look no further than this superb movie which shows, with stunning insight and clarity, that they face, really, the same sort of problems as gays did half a century ago: misunderstanding, fear, and deep, deep hatred.
Absolutely brilliant. Seek it out and be moved,
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)