10 Films I Need to See at LFF 2015

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A Bigger Splash (Luca Guadagnino)

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Tilda Swinton collaborates again with Guadagnino after the wonderful I Am Love (2010) for this island set thriller co-starring Ralph Fiennes, Dakota Johnson, and Mathias Schoenaerts. 

Arabian Nights (Miguel Gomes)

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Tabu director Gomes mixes together real life stories with the Scheherazade in this three volume epic. 

Bone Tomahawk (S. Craig Zahler)

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Kurt Russell’s other Western this year is an intriguing looking horror/western with a strong supporting cast including Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox, and Sean Young.

Carol ( Todd Haynes)

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Haynes seems the perfect choice to direct Patricia Highsmith’s lovely sad novel about a love affair between a young department store assistant and a middle-aged woman in the 1950s’. 

The Forbidden Room ( Guy Maddin)

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This sounds crazy even for Maddin with a plot apparently involving lumberjacks and werewolves. Great cast as well including Geraldine Chaplin, Charlotte Rampling, and Udo Kier. 

The Lobster (Yorgos Lanthimos)

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Vying with Maddin’s film for the weirdest plot is The Lobster about single people being removed from society and placed in a hotel where they have 45 days to find a partner. Rave reviews at Cannes and Colin Farrell in melancholy comic mode make this a must see.

Ryuzo & his Seven Henchmen (Takeshi Kitano)

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Kitano’s been on a barren spell since Zatoichi (2003) but the lively trailer for this comedy about a group of ageing Yakuza taking on younger rivals looks promising. 

Sherlock Holmes (1916, Arthur Berthelet)

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Discovered in the vault of the cinémathèque française this ‘lost’ movie stars one of the key figures in the development of Sherlock Holmes in popular culture, stage actor William Gillette. 

Sunset Song (Terence Davies)

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With Bill Douglas sadly long gone Terence Davies is the best possible candidate to direct this story about a young Scottish woman’s upbringing in the North-East of Scotland. Fascinated to see this because part of it was filmed in the area where I grew up. 

Youth (Paolo Sorrentino) 

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Sorrentino’s follow-up to wonderful The Great Beauty (2013) stars Michael Caine as a retired composer who’s given up on life and Harvey Keitel as his filmmaker friend who wants to make one last great film.

Edinburgh Fringe Festival

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Relatively faithful adaptation of Franz Kafka’s short story ‘A Report for An Academy.’ Writer Guy Sprung updates the piece with heavy handed references to the American military complex and reality television but the essential narrative remains the same. An ape captured by an expedition recounts his journey towards becoming ‘civilised’ by his captors and becoming more human. Through his lecture he inadvertently reveals the anguish caused by his removal from his homeland and the subservience involved in adapting to stay alive at the expense of his own personal freedom. It’s energetically performed by Howard Rosenstein who bounds around the auditorium with ape like athleticism and the production captures both the pathos in Kafka’s story and its bleak humour. 

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Fascinating show about the problems faced by club impresario Norman Gosney and his Burlesque artist wife Amelia Kallman when they open a club in Shanghai. They went over with dreams of an exotic hinterland formed by Hollywood movies of the 30s’ but instead found themselves being leaned on by Triads and the Communist Party. Despite the huge popularity of their club with Westerners and locals alike the govt forced stringent checks on their routines stifling their creativity and would invent new ways to interfere with their business. Eventually they had to flee China after a tip off from a police source about their imminent arrest on trumped up charges. Gosney is a charismatic figure and a wonderful raconteur and he tells this story with considerable humour while Kallman’s routines are witty and informed with a love of old movies. As film buffs they should really have known it was tempting fate to call their club CHINATOWN though.

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Amusing send up of Conan Doyle’s detective fiction which lovingly deconstructs the flaws in Holmes stories (last minute revelations withheld from the reader, coincidence, absurd plots). Dr Watson (Thomas Parker) attempts to rescue Holmes (Jasmine Atkins-Smart) from his drug induced ennui by concocting an elaborate case for the detective to solve. Problems arise though when Holmes inadvertently kills the client with a 3-iron golf club and so begins an anarchic farce involving a deer stalker hat wearing Australian and an opium-addicted Queen. It’s slightly chaotic but held together by Parker’s charming comic performance as a Nigel Bruce type bumbling Dr Watson.

Stewart O’Nan on ‘The Last Tycoon’ – Edinburgh Book Festival

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Roundtable discussion into F. Scott Fitzgerald’s unfinished novel ‘The Last Tycoon’ about the downfall of a young movie mogul based loosely on the short life of Irving J. Thalberg. O’Nan’s latest work ‘West of Sunset’ follows Fitzgerald’s last few years struggling in Hollywood. Despite his talent for melodrama and telling stories about beautiful people Fitzgerald couldn’t adapt his writing style to the needs of the Hollywood studio system which for better or worse back then operated as a factory production line. Usually fired early on in a film’s development his only screen credit would be shared with another eleven writers for ‘A Yank at Oxford’ (38, Jack Conway).

 O’Nan filled in a great deal of the background around Fitzgerald’s time in Tinsel Town and went into the novel in depth. I was a bit disappointed to find out Fitzgerald was an angry drunk prone to violent rages rather than the sad pathetic lush I’d always imagined. It’s been a while since I’ve visited The Last Tycoon and I’m ashamed to say I’ve never seen Elia Kazan’s 76’ movie adaptation starring Robert De Niro.

Slow West (2015, John McLean)

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“Scotland is far far away…”

1870, Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is a young Scots aristocrat travelling through the wilderness to find his errant sweetheart Rose (Caren Pistorius) who fled to America with her crofter father, John Ross (Rory McCann). Though the story takes place during the Highland Clearances when landowners forced tenants from the land to make way for livestock there’s another reason for the Ross’s leaving which only becomes clear as the film progresses. Jay is hopelessly ill-equipped for his search. Though tender in years Jay represents an old aristocratic order which has no meaning in this New World. “We’re all sons of bitches…” says one character when he mentions his father’s a Lord.

Jay finds a protector in the form of Irish bounty hunter Silas Selleck (Michael Fassbender) who saves him from a trio of runaway Confederate soldiers. Offering to accompany Jay on his journey for a price, Silas has his own agenda. The Ross’s have a $2000 bounty on their heads and Silas hopes the youngster can lead him to his prize before a rival (Ben Mendolsohn) and his gang of killers gets to them first. This set-up seems simple enough and with a running time of just 85 minutes it seems obvious where this is all heading. Jay and Silas even feel like archetypes rather than fully formed characters. Jay is the romantic dreamer who follows his heart. Silas, an Eastwood-style loner, right down to his stubble and cheroot permanently hanging from the corner of his mouth. Rose a damsel in distress. Having presented these archetypes to us McLean then subverts our expectations of how they will behave during the final twenty minutes of the movie.

Slow West is an interesting addition to the modern revisionist Western though I liked it more afterwards when I had time to reflect on the film’s rejection of romanticism in favour of pragmatism. It feels to me Robert Louis Stevenson might be a strong an influence as the many Westerns Slow West recalls. Stevenson’s stories have relatively simple plots but complex human relationships at the heart of them. There is an otherworldly feel to Slow West too partly because the landscape doesn’t feel quite right. New Zealand fills in for America although the few scenes set in Scotland are filmed here. It suits the fairytale vibe McLean is going for. The Old West seen through the looking glass. Worth mentioning the accents too which won’t be appearing on any worst Scottish accents ever lists. Kodi Smit-McPhee (Australian) does a fine understated posh Scots accent while Caren Pistorius (South African born) does an impressive job of sounding like an authentic Highlander.

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The BFI closed their Marilyn Monroe retrospective  with a Study Day on Sat 27th July. Entitled Marilyn Monroe: Understanding a Cultural Phenomenon four academics delivered talks on various aspects of her career. Lucy Bolton asked why Marilyn’s stardom has endured even among people who have never seen any of her films. Sarah Churchwell, author of The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe, tore into the myths that have formed around Marilyn since her death. Laura Adams analysed Marilyn’s acting style and the clips back up her claim she was a much more gifted performer than many care to admit. Lastly Pamela Church-Gibson looked at the role of women in 1950′s society, and the emergence of Marilyn as a style icon during that era. Conspiracy theorists were mercifully given short thrift during the final round-table discussion. It’s also worth noting for an actress who is often dismissed as nothing more than a male fantasy figure the audience was predominantly female.