Looking like Yves Saint Laurent and often sounding like a mid 70’s era Micheal Caine, Firth’s smart debonair literature professor George Falconer is still quietly grieving the death of Jim (a very confident Mathew Goode), his lover of 16 years and trying to hide from the world in a designer wood and glass house within the normality and vicinity of 1960’s suburbia. The house also comes complete with Aldous Huxley books, a maid and a stark homosexual repression subtext.

The film unfolds slowly and beautifully. Falconer wakes and readies himself for the day, watches (and perhaps secretly in some way, envies) his neighbors and their accepted lifestyle choices from his toilet, no less. We follow him to class while a specter of death in the form of the Cuban Missile crisis hangs over 1962 America, to see an intense turn in a lecture and, after a dangerous flirtation with a young male student (Thunderbird doll Nicholas Hoult) and some under the desk drinking, we begin to suspect that old Georgie boy might be a little further gone that we thought. As we learn that Falconer is seriously entertaining thoughts of suicide A Simple Man sets itself up well as a kind of morose but stylish one last fling.

His best friend and once hopeful lover Charlotte (a super duper poshed up Julianne Moore) seems to be the only real friend left in Georges life, and bar a handful of encounters with some random beautiful people straight of a Levis commercial, the plot darkens but strangely finds it’s feet with some surprisingly funny moments. The lead’s dinner date is particularly good and if Moore’s weird little ya-ya accent doesn’t grate you too much, stands out as the films high point.

Ford fixes his focus firmly on Firth for the film (woah… that’s hard to read back) and delivers a solid work, attractive; but not without its problems. Firth’s scenes with a pretty wooden Hoult occasionally put the film out of step and, though Falconer’s lusting after younger men is handled well, openly and without derision, something which may leave some audiences cold, it also manages to sadly slow it down towards it’s conclusion.

Ford’s over use of heavy handed colour boosts from the film’s purposely drab tones during moments where any hope springs, is basically the on screen equivalent of rising strings to tell an audience how they should be feeling and occasionally borders on patronising, but these are minor beefs with an assured, certainly pretty and rather affecting first effort with both Firth and Moore on great form.

As the first words of the The Book of Right On fell out of this beautiful thing, cradling a ginormous harp and as everyone else in the room grimaced at her “squeeky” voice, It was then that I pretty much fell in love with the girl who “killed her dinner with karate“.

Loving Joanna Newsom can be an alienating experience as some of you may know. In the same way that being a  fan of Tom Waits or Daniel Johnston or of Randy Newman or even Kate Bush can be. Though my Mum still maintains that she sounds like a drunk Lisa Simpson it is, never the less, a brilliantly perverse feeling, putting on Ys (Newsom’s second LP) for people and watching their face twist; sometimes even in wonder.

Good news fluttered on to the inter web this week then. Newsom’s eagerly awaited third record entitled Have One On Me will drop on the 23rd of Feb. Based on her recent live performances in Australia the record seemed to sit nestled, sound wise, between her punchy hook filled debut The Milk Eyed Mender and epic 5 song Ys (strung by the most excellent Beach Boy’s maestro Van Dyke Parks).

That was until very recent reports from a magazine who’s name I shall not mention, claim Have One On Me is in fact a triple LP. A triple.

After her debut cemented a devoted fan base, Ys garnered many critics praise and more fans for its unconventional instrumentation, voice and language it could only be speculated what the young songstress would come up with to top it. With the shortest track on the record being just shy of 8 minutes it certainly took some time to get your hooks into but after it did it was the epitome of of what people mean when they say “grower”.

Can she do it again?

Expect songs about bears and rivers, birds and seas and (if the rumors are true) times all of it by three.

When he decided to follow up the brilliant Hitchcock influenced Read My Lips, with a remake of James Toback’s little seen Fingers, he garnered his first world wide hit. The Beat My Heart Skipped showed a knack for character amongst the “cool” that few directors can balance so well.

A Prophet, Audiard’s follow up to new offering takes the now somewhat cliche ridden aspects of crime genre films and crushes them into dust. These tales which we all know in one way or another, including the mob boss and his sidekicks, initiation rituals, double crossing and family hits are filtered carefully through the micro society of the prison system with fierce results.

We join a young Muslim man Malik el Djebena (an intense Tahar Rahim) on his way to a six year jail term for a  crime which will remain unknown. We settle into prison with him in a familiar opening sequence but the tension that Audiard builds is quite incredible, every frame is loaded with menace. From the whirring sewing machine that Malik works on during shop time to that first lonely walk in the prison yard. The atmosphere builds unbearably and it becomes apparent very quickly that his heads down loner approach isn’t going to fair well on the inside.

When veteran prisoner and Corsican mob boss Cesar (A beast in an old man’s suit; Niels Arestrup) eyes Malik to kill an in transit inmate who will testify against some of his friends on the outside, our “hero” suddenly finds himself between a rock and a hard place.  It’s kill or be killed and in return for his deed Cesar will protect Malik in the clink. It’s only after the harrowing and brutal murder (a scene destined to be a classic) that you can relax a little and Audiard settles A Prophet into a different place.

As Malik’s confidence grows inside the prison so does the tale’s scope, encompassing education and redemption. It’s a series of leave days from the prison that turns A Prophet on its head. Though my first doubts about the film began to surface at the point in which we are on the outside the jail, Audiard’s masterful handling of the plotting that develops in the real world only helps to strengthen it.

Now running both against and with Ceasar on the  inside and on the streets the story deepens so quickly and effortlessly. It’s development as a saga is beautiful to watch and is certainly one  in which a viewer’s affection for an totally unlikeable person is tested the most extreme and original ways.

Tahar Rahim’s performance is wonderful, playing the lead with a solemn uncertainty and yet also with a dumb childish swagger. A lost little boy in the films first third before growing into a confident and intelligent wise guy towards it’s conclusion. He cements a definite and powerful breakthrough role. Audiard regular Niels Arestrup plays Ceasar brilliantly; a fearsome Svengali to begin, yet towards the films end, somehow, an incredibly sad one.
Although punctuated with definite moments of style (Bold captions over slow motion shots mark Character’s names and loose chapters within the film) thankfully they only exist to help get a grip on a faint outline of the complex story threads and multiple relationships that sit atop.

Surprisingly, Audiard also uses a ghost of Reyeb, the man Malik killed for Ceasar, to good effect. It’s not a scenario I’m a fan of, however, apart from providing some genuinely creepy moments, his presence is used mainly as a reminder of Malik’s sin, to hound and educate only to be eventually accepted over the film’s course as he becomes more and more en-raveled in the crime world.

The camera work and pacing are what we have come to expect from Audiard and even after the brilliant Read My Lips and former career best The Beat My Heart Skipped, A Prophet puts the French film maker top of his class. The intense and almost documentarian way A Prophet depicts the prison world is flawless. There is a strange ultra realistic sense when within the four walls, a feeling of truth and sick nervousness not unlike the real life asylum used in Milos Foreman’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.

Put simply, A Prophet is one of the best mob (or prison films; take your pick) in recent memory and a piece of cinema that any real fan of it’s visceral power should see.

Essential.

The Road is definitely a cinematic novel. So vivid is McCarthy’s writing and so brilliantly placed is his dialogue (Read No Country for Old Men as proof; Even dialogue kings, The Coen Brothers dared not mess with it) that even I could see every scene and every shot laid out end on end as a full feature. Sparse, dark, slow and all enveloping.

It would seem, however that Aussie John Hillcoat (Director of the horribly underrated The Proposition and the almost unseen Ghosts… of the Civil Dead) had precisely the same idea and, more than that, the means to do it. Despite its obvious filmic quality it’s a daunting premise to be shifted in to a movie as much of the strength of the novel relied on only two real characters and the author’s unbelievable knack for making a desolate gray landscape so unbelievably readable, consistently for 300 pages.

The worry for me, when thinking about The Road on screen, was that the images, as beautifully harsh as they are, outside of a readers head, just mightn’t be able to hold their intensity the way McCathy’s text does for feature length.

The premise is as bare boned as the starving travellers in it: 10 or so years after an unexplained global catastrophe, The Man (Viggo Mortenson) and The Boy (Kodi Smitt-McPhee) walk a destroyed desolate landscape somewhere in America, heading south for a warmer climate, which may or may not still exist. The road they walk is also inhabited with survivors who also scavenge the land for food and the odd scant human to nibble on. As epic a tale as this sounds the story is immediately compacted when the focus pulls immediately to one framing a story of a father and son.

In Mortenson’s soft but dense voice over and with flashbacks of The Man’s wife and The Boy’s mother (Charlze Theron) adding a varying impact and necessity, the film unfolds, admirably, much like the novel and Hillcoat thankfully doesn’t tamper with the brilliantly minimal dialogue between the characters. Theron does a great job as The Woman with only a few scenes. The Man and The Boy are played with both care and passion by Mortenson and Smitt-McPhee. Robert Duvall and Guy Pearce Lend a hand in small roles but the stars of the film are really the only two that could have been.

As far as a straight adaption goes Hillcoat nails the bleak, powerful atmosphere, it’s design and mood certainly makes The Road a difficult film to enjoy in the truest sense of the word. It has to be said that, while certainly not a feel good film in anyway, and despite some heavy handed scriptwriting in the final moments there is a definite beauty and undeniable weight in the pair’s relationship and the film is undoubtedly a success because of it.

The harshness of the landscape, the films overall pace and the unexplained end of the world scenario will definitely will frustrate some cinema goers (The snoring lady in the front row at the screening I attended would certainly agree) but if you’re looking for a challenging piece of mainstream cinema and don’t mind some difficult ground underfoot you will certainly get something out of Hillcoat’s relentless, tough and bold film. Just make sure you line up a few beers and some good conversation afterward.

I’m Gonna Explode introduces us to Maru and Roman, social out casts in their schools, both in their own special way. Maru is bored with her world and her friends and holds a simple hatred and complacency towards everything. Roman’s disposition is one more tinged with violence than boredom. He writes and fantasises about killing his teachers and himself and, when a gun is found in his dorm room desk, he is forced to move schools.

It’s only when Roman performs a mock hanging at a talent night that he wins the heart of Maru and before you know it, the pair have shot up the school and gone on the run. Oddly the pair decide not to go too far thinking that the safest place to be would be one that Roman’s preoccupied politician Father and Maru’s Mother would never think to look…

It’s an enjoyable introduction to the pair and if not for the great performances that Naranjo gets from newcomers Juan Pablo de Santiago and Maria Deschamps one which could have fallen short. They work well together, testing each others patience and working one another out while in hiding, biting at each other and having fun in equal measure; For better or worse and in effect, a constantly up and down tone is inflicted on the audience while we wait for the pair to formulate a plan.

The Jean-Luc Godard influences in the editing and voice over are more than apparent and the whole film borrows, what some might call shamelessly and some lovingly from the french master’s Pierrot Le Fou especially. The colours of the pairs hideaway tent and Maru’s Polka dot pajamas doing more than enough to evoke the surreal 1965 movie.

Though I’m Gonna Explode suffers from its outset in as much as it really is impossible to have an audience believing that it will all end well when you’re dealing with young lovers on the run. Weirdly, the romanticism of the tragedy in the genre is almost written in stone. We somehow know we are in store for a massive comedown once all the railing against society is over.

That being said though, the film does have staying power. A sharp shift in mood in the final 20 minutes could have been a bit of a mistake but it makes for a strangely lasting resonance after the credits have rolled. Sadly not enough to put this textured and spiky little film up there with the very best of the Mexican New Wave.

I’m sure the thought of Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White sitting in a room together would have even the most modest player salivating on their pick guard, but does the film have anything to offer the casual fan or does it scream some kind of vanity (read: fret wanking) project?

Although the three of them meeting for the first time (or so it feels like) in a back lot, set up with all of their gear, to have a bit of a no pressure chat (and who knows, perhaps, maybe, um… I don’t know, if we’re lucky… a jam?) is a terribly forced situation to base a documentary on, thankfully, it seems like less than a quarter of the film is really spent there and the scenes which are picked out for inclusion nail the sentiment of the film completely.

Instead Guggenhiem smartly treats it more like a loose situation to build a small history of each player upon and skillfully highlights a story of one of the most revered instrument in rock and roll as much as he does to illustrate its unique qualities in the hands of these three very different players.

The White Stripes/Raconteurs/Dead Weather guitarist favoring reel to reel recording, old condenser microphones and little effect work, Zep’s Page with his trusty Les Paul and blues and skiffle roots and the complex layering of The Edge’s delay/reverb stadium sounds are picked (no pun intended) apart by Guggenheim. We discover sweet little stories of first guitars, bands, performances , favorite songs and various other opinions on why it is that the three figure heads of rock keep going back to their six string mistresses.

The opening shots in which Jack White makes a one string guitar out of an old piece of wood, some nails, a coke bottle and pick up is a beautiful illustration of his simple approach to music. “Who say’s you need to buy a guitar?” he quips as he stumbles through a cow field in a bow tie and bowler hat, still somehow managing to look like the coolest man on earth. Edge heads back to Ireland and plays around endlessly with a thousand foot pedals looking for a perfect sound that only he can hear, looks back at band practice with Bono and plays us old cassette demos of Where the Streets Have No Name. Page’s history is a little more filled out going back to his session musician days before The Yardbirds and Led Zepelin and taking us to the house where they recorded those drums on When the Levee Breaks.

The film is full of gold for fans of the bands and, even for those who aren’t, it’s interesting to hear where some of the music which has influenced them came from and why it still moves them. Watching Jimmy Page’s face as he drops the needle on and air guitars along to Link Wray’s Rumble or White putting on Son House for probably the 10,000th time is like watching a small child finding a bag of sherbet in his pocket.

Although it never really gets all the way up to eleven and the ending (a hokey rendition of The Band’s The Weight) is a little too limp for these three juggernauts, It Might Get Loud is still a worthy film about one of life’s remaining pleasures and people who are passionate, nay, obsessive about what they do for a living and through that, make you realise that you probably should be too…

Otherwise what’s the point?

Raised by his tight lipped Aunt Mimi (an equally tight lipped Kristen Scott Thomas), Lennon (a most non Lennon looking Aaron Johnson) was only introduced to his mother Julia (a youthful Anne-Marie Duff) at the age of 16 and the bulk of the film sits between these two relationships. We watch a battle of loyalty within Lennon between his new found free spirited rock and roll loving mother his stoic but honest guardian become a force in eventually driving him to music.

Wood’s film is surprisingly and thankfully straight laced. Avoiding any of the pitfalls of making the leap from artist to director she has made a serious and affecting mainstream film. Through Control writer Matt Greenhalgh’s script comes a film which memorably paints a 50’s England without making it look too depressing and drab, such is the way with most films of that time and place. Though not exactly bursting with colour the there is a sense of fun present  in Nowhere Boy and something freewheeling about Taylor-Wood’s direction that comes from a different place than that of her overtly postured photographs.

The performances (most notably Scott Thomas) are solid and though, bearing pretty much zero resemblance to Lennon, Johnson makes up for it with a bucket load of swagger and cheek. He’s a confused character, quick witted but brash and stupid at times, sometimes likable but often not.  Thomas as Mimi is by far the stiffest character but her timing and presence is brilliant and she’s dishes out a surprising share of chuckles. Anne Marie Duff’s portrayal of Julia is sometimes too sugary but its balanced well with her slightly incestuous dark side and the ability to make her young son and most of the audience feel quite uncomfortable. The relationship between McCartney and Lennon (and later Harrison) is also looked at a little closer with Macca as the young and sensible imp trying his best to control his boisterous friend.

The film, book-ended by funerals and concluding with Beatles heading to Hamburg, is admittedly a bit of a bumpy ride but it chugs along and, although becoming an bit of an onscreen tear fest in the last 30 minutes, it somehow remains a feel good film and certainly isn’t bogged down by it.

It’s also a film in which, although important, the music which the band would go on to make is kept secondary, even shying away from mentioning the B Word or (from memory) even uttering McCartney’s last name. Somehow its the exclusion of these details and the focus on the two mother figures which makes Nowhere Boy a film of it’s own instead of being one which could have inadvertently seemed to be just about the Beatles.

Although not as taught or affecting as Control, Nowhere Boy is another success for Greenhalgh and shows the steady hand of Sam Taylor Wood on her first feature outing.

Its a weird egg too so I must apologise.

You know one of those ones with two yolks in it or a smaller egg? One of those that people might say is actually from 2008… you know?… one of them…

Over the last 8 months I have seen Charlie Kaufman’s almost unpronounceable first film as director, four times. I suppose its power the first time around was its comedy (yes it is in there) and its overwhelming ambition as a piece of film-making. In short at first glance I thought it was fascinating, exhausting and totally unique. Like forcing yourself to go for a run. The subsequent times, going over it, revealing in the details and the mood, the surprises and the brilliantly confusing road it treads, Synecdoche, New York has, has, in my mind now formed a completely amazing puzzle, a piece of work that I will no doubt see countless times.

Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Caden Coutard, a death obsessed play-write. His marriage with his artist wife (Catherine Keener) is on the rocks and after she leaves with his daughter for Berlin and success he gets to work on his masterpiece, living his life though it. A world, built as a play, mimicking and devouring his years.

As far as the term “in a nutshell goes”, that’s about it but the amount of balls out, mind boggling ingenuity that Kaufman has pumped into the two hours is nothing short of staggering. Art and life mix together, time slips by and the film becomes almost a means to its own end. There are jokes within jokes, film posters and books referenced within which have only been invented mere scenes earlier, burning houses, clues, potholes, dead ends and total and utter frustration but above all else it has more imagination and smarts than anything in recent memory.

It is granted that Adaptation had a similar theme, where film and artist were looked at as Auroborus. A snake eating its own tail, a sign of infinity and unending. What Kaufman does with that concept here is more frightening and complex and much, much more sad. Character’s become real, and unreal, Coutard’s set (a giant airship hanger of sorts) becomes a replica of the city its built in, complete with a smaller airship hanger, it’s as if every aspect of the film is a Russian doll. The performances are even treated so;

Samantha Morton’s horny/gawky box office girl is, played by Emily Watson within the “boundaries” of the play, while her brief affair with Coutard is mirrored outside it, while a stalker of 20 years, who may or may not be a manifestation of Coutard’s dead father is brought on to play the director himself. Hoffman’s performance is absolutely perfect as is his support, the editing is bizarre, layered and beautiful, Jon Brion’s score is as dream like as anything he has ever done and the film and passes years like seconds and there are as many amazingly sad moments as there are beautiful ones.

The film/play becomes more melodramatic to watch towards the end in much the same way that Adaptation became riddled with cliché, mainstream film twists and pop music. Despite this its leaps in bizarre developments come thicker and faster almost devouring itself. Whether or not this is on purpose or unintentional seams of little consequence as when the sheer weight of the films final 10 minutes presses down on you it’s suffocating.

Yes, it’s confusing, yes, it’s over reaching to a fault in places, yes it’s dark and to be brutal, quite depressing. In talking with numerous people young and old over last year it would seem to me that this is generally nowhere near as revered as Being John Malkovich, Adaptation or even Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in the causal cinema goers book but as Kaufman’s first film as a writer and director it really is most the most astounding achievement. A voice so strong in his writing that you get the feeling that has been a powerful tool in locking Spike Jonze into the style he now makes feature films in. Kaufman, some how manages to come across much darker, mixing David Lynch and Alain Resnais.

I have always felt left with when Caden gets his final cue from his new “director”, is not a sense sadness or pretension that hits me, but one of wonder and intrigue in a true mystery of a film that has not yet diminished ever after multiple viewings and which I’m certain will survive many many more.

The darkest, strangest, grandest and most head destroying film of 2009.

The Cove takes us to a small beach near Taiji, in Wakayama, Japan, which O’Barry has discovered is actually a dolphin slaughtering ground where upon a handful of intense fishermen are reportedly capturing and killing more than 2,000 dolphins per year for their meat only after picking specimens to be sold into aquariums.  Along with National Geographic photographer and the films Director Louis Psihoyos, O’Barry seems intent on giving the town’s dirty little secret to the world and it’s his always wet eyes and an affecting sincere way of speaking about his favorite animals which is the stand out hook in a documentary film that is as exciting as it is shocking.

The Cove is no way subtle but with its themes how could it be? Psihoyos presents the documentary as a kind of mission: impossible story and has layered this blunt little film with equally blunt techniques. Its riding orchestral music places it deeper into the realm of a John Grisham cover up thriller from the early nineties and although sometimes it’s far too much, sign posting the action,  some how it works. As the team which O’Barry and Psihoyos assembles grows so does their curiosity and before we know it we are dodging the corrupt police force with them and watching the infiltration of the cove through night vision cameras. Most brilliant is the sequence where small DV cameras are mounted in fake rocks built by Industrial Light and Magic.

Though the doc stays sharply focused on the goings on at the cove it also attempts to touch on Japan’s policies with regards to whaling, the over fishing of our oceans and the struggle that the governing bodies have with trying keeping these in check. All this together with the bizarre notion that dolphin meat (which is unsafe to eat due to high levels of mercury) is being sneakily served up as fish at the local schools it makes for a full yet compact and very watchable piece of drama.

It’s interesting to note that as big and brash as the ideas on the peripheries of the film are, it’s still that tiny beach in Japan and the films closing scene in which O’Barry finally gets his footage seen that linger in your memory.

Though undoubtedly heavy handed, The Cove is an extremely well made documentary and no doubt a sure bet for an Oscar Nomination in 2010.

Only this time its message is more loud and clear.

Zach De La Rocha and his band of politically savvy rockers dropped Killing in the Name way back in 1992 to much controversy but it seems like the stomping song will be sound tracking many turkey dinners this week much to grandma’s dismay if it manages to hold <insert 2009 Xfactor winner (when I can be bothered to look it up) here> from reaching the top spot.

News all over the web this morning is leaning hopefully towards the fact that this Xmas there will be a statement of potency and anger (albeit a 17 year old one)  in the charts once more as more than 760,000 people have pledged to buy the track online. Is the move a hollow statement much too late or finally a shift in mass public consensus against a vile approach to selling average records?

Yes, Sony BMG will probably profit from your purchase anyway and Simon Cowell may be able to buy another speed boat or get one more flap of skin tucked back behind that ridiculous hair line but at least there’ll be something with some kind of pathos, social conscience (and a killer riff) ahead for once in an industry so desperate for a change of any kind. With the Facebook members and supporters also pledging money to charity “Shelter” (£30,000) raised so far I feel the “anti-anti’s” as I’ve been calling them are seriously missing the point.

Cowell stuck out at the group earlier in the week and in typical big headed moronic style attacked the campaign as a direct slating of him (also missing the point), calling the stunt “pointless” and “cynical” and “backward”.

People in glass houses, Mr Cowell…

You can buy Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name on iTunes and any good online retailer and you can give to Shelter HERE.

You should do both… hey it is Xmas!