Well they say best laid plans and all that. Well the plan to "up the ante" went about as well as could be expected...

I'm swamped with work presently. Just to give a little insight, I'm currently writing a feature with the delicious Jon Taylor called 'Supreme'.

I have also completed a speaking part in an advert for Crown Paints, yep that happened! We are round-tabling our comedy submission for BAFTA Rocliffe, and we are in the process of updating our extracts for that and many other competitions over the year.

This is also in conjunction with us trying to see if 'Cat's Cradle' could be made into an Animated Short. Then I went and broke my PC so, that needed fixing, brilliant!

The Films

1. Natural Born Killers

Like anyone who is a Quentin Tarantino fan, you know this is one of the scripts he sold to make way for Reservoir Dogs. This film I feel, is very much in keeping with Tarantino's aesthetic, but when it's handled by another director it lacks something.

The cinematography is inventive, but it feels forced. Like a cartoon but clearly that's the intent. The brief moments of madness reminded me oddly of Ken Russell, specifically Altered States. A lot of that film is about transcendence and well a lot of the psychopathy in this film is portrayed in a similar way. The freneticism and colour, though Ken Russell preferred heavy symbolism.

The film underlines its point quite heavily by the end. That level of auto-cannibalism inherent in society. These people are lauded over just as much as Bonny and Clyde for their anti establishment ideology, a Robin Hood ideal, though in reality its just two people who are broken and distant from us for their moral compass to make any sort of sense, though their own tragic lives gives us an idea of direction. The argument is "are they really mad, or is it us?"

Its them, within the confines of our modern world, in another time they may have had an advantage over the other apes. Food for thought. In the end it turns out alright though, in that way we all expect.

So to summarise, I enjoyed it but it's not a favourite.

2. Broadcast News

I quite liked this film at first. It had a Rob Reiner vibe from the off but then, well, it all got so serious and I couldn't quite get the tonal shift. Let me rephrase what I'm attempting to say. I got the shift in a sense that it mirrored reality, its just the set-up gave me certain expectations and the switch made the film a little unsatisfying.

I think that is kind of the point really, the reality versus the expectation. I didn't like the rivalry between the leads because one was a snide and a petulant wanker and the other was a charming bore. The rivalry didn't feel particularly authentic or the resolution of that relationship later. The best performance was quite clearly Holly Hunter, but her character reads as such a glorious bitch that its hard to sympathise at first.

I will say that the ending is total drivel. Everyone is pretending to be happy, yeah great well the news room didn't look all that grand in comparison.

Some good moments and performances but Network felt like an education, where as Broadcast News felt like a love triangle in a dynamic setting just like real life... I get it, life's shit and we are worms but how about a movie for a change. Moving on...

3. Terms of Endearment

So this time the same Director of Broadcast News is back, Mr James L Brooks, but what a different movie all together.

A lot of the emotional switching in Broadcast News feels so much clearer and correct in tone for this film. Shirley MacLaine doing her damnedest throughout and in a bit of a run of great and under appreciated films from this era, Postcards from the Edge being a personal favourite. Shirley's character is a bit guarded, a bit prudish, but we know her reasons, we know her personal beliefs and its wonderful seeing such a well developed character from the off.

Jack Nicholson doing his level best at being the charming, but weird astronaut neighbour. I think this part is the closest to the real Jack Nicholson we are ever going to get. Jeff Daniels, who like Shirley did an absolute set of scorchingly good films in the eighties that no one is talking about. This character being one, totally honest and yet no sympathy for the guy, until the very end at least. Also a great little one off performance from Jonathan Lithgow who nails it as that likeable Iowan.

Debrah Winger is just so damn likeable too and the revelation near to the end, gut wrenching.

Loved it, watch it and I'm not saying anything else, its got everything in it and me explaining wont help. Just see the damn film already.

4. Weekend

Jean-Luc Goddard, the apex of French New Wave (so called) made this total waste of time.

Here's the premise, lofty intellectual subjects conveyed in a fashion so slap dash and self serving not unlike the characters portrayed. A film about how society will collapse under the weight of consumerism played over a couples attempt to get out of the city and into the country for the weekend.

Want to hear more read a synopsis. I'm not wasting any more time talking about this total pile of arse feta.

Absolute self-masterbatory toss.

5. Ran

I'm a student of literature, I also was part of a performing arts school from an early age. So trust me when I say I know "The Shakespearean Tragedies". King Lear happens to be a personal favourite of mine.

Why? It bares witness to the cruelty of the world reflected in people, the needs of a man can lead to the suffering of a kingdom and only when all is lost does the mighty mad king see the truth in it. The only thing left to cherish is what you made in the world to make it better. For Lear, it was his daughters.

Ran takes the premise and passes it through Akira Kurosawa's lens with absolute ease. It was a subject destined for the mans hand. Its vivid, its bleak and its haunting, but most of all it conveys the power of the plays themes perfectly.

It proves without doubt, that though we are all separated by the confines of language and culture, the strife of man, the wrestling's of greed and power over love and virtue are universal, throughout time.

6. Grapes of Wrath

It's nearly ninety years since The Great Depression and it's hard not to understate the effect it had on our world today. What is even sadder is the brutal fact that we find people in exoduses from conflict and famine the world over. Some things never change.

The film follows a noble, but troubled man played be Henry Fonda as he attempts to find his family and head to the orchards of California for the hope of work. The Dust-bowl never looked so bleak.

Its potent, its bleak and I expect to close to reality for comfort. The film does not shy away from death, from suffering and from brutality. For its era its astounding. We always like to remember that "Forties Cinema" is quite cheery, the truth is the world was in a dark place soon to get darker, the minds of the public were about life and reality and that is how this film became real. We are better for it.

It really does show the dire nature of that families future and their situation and its heartbreaking. There is a light though. Brilliant film and as potent then as it is now, in the face of Syria and many other places on our Blue Earth.

7. Shoah

I must have asked about five or six people if they wanted to watch this with me. Only Jon Taylor said he would, bless you my good friend.

Shoah is a 9 1/2 hour film that contains absolutely zero archive footage and attempts to talk about and deal with the aftermath of the holocaust, from first hand accounts from all sides, Jew and Nazi.

I didn't finish it, for two reasons.

The first is time. Mubi was exhibiting the film and by the time I got round to watching it I didn't have enough time to watch the whole thing. The second reason is the tone. After about an hour and a half we have been told stories so heartbreaking I just didn't know if I could listen to so much of it. I will try to explain.

I've been to the medical experiment concentration camp, Saxonhausen. I saw with my own two eyes, where men were chemically and physically castrated. The ovens, which Japanese tourists took photographs of while laughing, at what, I have no idea but it still enrages me to this day. The track where Jewish men ran themselves to death in the pursuit of a new rubber soles for a Jackboot. The Green Dragon Officers Mess and the Officers Quarters. Just off to the side of the camp in a scenic wood with its own flower garden, carefully manicured under a gun, so we were told. Everything still etched in to the grey recesses of my twenty nine year old memory.

The worst memory I have from being there was the quietness of it. The utter fucking tranquillity of the place like nothing had ever happened. Like the camp came out of the ground on some idle Tuesday and no one batted an eyelash. There was one detail from the whole day that still sends a cold shiver up my spine...

No birdsong.

It was if the birds knew the memory of the place, while the trees and plants carried on their years regardless. Not a single chirp, whoop, or whistle. Just the sound of the summer air in the trees and the smell of browning grass in a warm August sun.

The same thing in Shoah, no birds at Auschwitz. It hit me like a tonne of bricks and I had to stop.

Maybe that makes me a coward, but being there and seeing human ash in the soil, seeing the oven that cremated the men of my grandfathers time and being lost in that moment, was a hard stark cold knife of realisation. One I will never forget and god bless Shoah and its creators for feeling the same and trying to convey that feeling. They succeeded.

8. Sex, Lies & Videotape

I heard more about this films risqué nature, than the actual content in the film. Well it was actually more tasteful than I was lead to believe, that's for sure.

James Spader is his sexually strange self, Andie Macdowell is tolerable, but GOD is here character a bore. Peter Gallagher who has played the same character since the making of this film and does what Peter Gallagher does. Laura San Giacomo is very attractive I have to say. I didn't have a thing for her at all growing up but now, well, I'm interested.

Without going into too much detail, It's the story of four people trying to find the truth. Some do find it and find a little more than just that. Others learn nothing and their world is forever changed, all from one little tape.

Good straight story with a really interesting premise and some great performances. Solid film and I really liked it.

9. The Purple Rose of Cairo

Woody Allen films are known to have a vibe unto themselves and some find that element inaccessible or in some cases a reminder they are watching a film. Well its just not the case for The Purple Rose of Cairo. Its a beautiful and inventive but sad picture.

I have to admit something, for the longest time I thought Mia Farrow and Sissy Spacek were the same person. Well Mia plays a character Cecilia, who is struggling during The Great Depression like everyone else did. A husband who is a miser and a rat. A job of thanklessness in a town with only one escape, the Cinema.

After repeat viewing of their newest feature and in utter desperation, the main character of the film notices Cecilia and decides to leave the film to pursue a romance with her. Then the film gets very real and very interesting. Watching the film you cant help but feel the justified reasons for Last Action Hero to exist at all and Deadpool today. The fourth wall break is so enjoyable to watch, its just such a satisfying thing to see characters play with the narrative form and actually extrapolate on their own character motivations and needs.

Its a wonderful film and now solely my favourite Woody Allen film.

10. Amadeus

I watched The Dualists a year back and my biggest take away was how close the film felt to the subject matter and the era it was set. Cinema has treated the Neo Classical era of history quite well over the years, and Amadeus is no exception.

The film is a work of historic fiction because of the deviation from the stated facts but its so bloody convincing that you forget that at the door. It's a little grand at times, a little too theatre, but you can't help but be enraptured in the lives of the time. The only oddity, if you can call it that really, is the cast is mostly comprised of Americans playing the Austrians. It's a little odd at first purely because historical epics have a tendency to prefer English accents but you soon forget.

I think there will be a few people who will dislike some elements of the film purely because the villain is the protagonist and Amadeus is the subject matter. Its always hard to root for a villain. F Murray Abraham does such an amazing job of humanising a callous monster but, in the end he is only too aware that though he succeeds in destroying the life of Mozart, he cant diminish his music. An allegory for many things we all face it seems.

One scene in particular where it all comes together in a narrative sense and in a character sense, is where we learn how Mozart hears music in his head. Mozart is attempting to write a new piece with the help of Antoni. You learn so clearly how a composer constructs orchestration and how it all fits together and its played so well between the actors and handled so well in the edit. It's such a joy to see.

Anyway pick it up, watch it, you're missing out.

So in summary (and it's a short one).

Liked: Natural Born Killers, Broadcast News, Ran & Sex Lies and Video Tape.

Loved: Terms of Endearment, Grapes of Wrath, Purple Rose of Cairo & Amadeus.

Loathed: Weekend.

Re-watch: Shoah.

Well next month will be small as well but looking forward to seeing some interesting films.

More to follow in Part 4...