Overweight, directionless and unrepentantly dickish, Swanson, had the film had more money, might have been played by Zach Galifianakis. Instead he’s played by Tim Heidecker, famous for being one half of cult comedy duo “Tim & Eric” on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. Assured in his finances thanks to an inheritance he’ll receive from his wealthy father once the old man kicks the bucket, Swanson spends most of his daylights hours drinking in the homes of his equally pathetic and repulsive friends, and most of his moonlight hours drinking alone in bars, or on the small yacht that serves as him home. The rest of the time, he wanders aimless through a world that has long grown tired of his once invigorating screw the system attitude.

With dialogue entirely improvised by its underground comic cast, The Comedy sets out to challenge notions of what can qualify for the title that it itself so sneeringly wears. These days especially, comedy is increasingly about breaking taboos; about asking what gross, horrifying, and amoral thing can be done or said to shock the audience next. Consider last years smash sequel hit The Hangover Part II,  which set a new high – or low, depending on how you look at it – for depravity in Hollywood comedies when one of its lead characters, played by Ed Helms, is revealed to have been anally raped by a transvestite hooker. Deeply disturbing, yet it’s an involuntary sodomy that scored enough stunned laughs to generate over $580 million at the worldwide box office.

The difference between Hangover director Todd Phillips and Alverson (well, one of many differences) is that Alverson doesn’t try to make it funny. Ratchet up the insanity, have your actors scream a lot, and throw in a few denim wearing, cigarette smoking monkeys, and suddenly the Polaroid images of Phil, Stu and Alan banging strippers and snorting coke is hilarious. But show Swanson and buddies sitting silently on a couch watching a slideshow of family photos intercut with pornography – presumably because they think that kind of thing is funny – and you suddenly realise how sad and embarrassing this kind of behaviour is.

Swanson himself flies in the face of conventional comedic leads, despite the fact that at first glance he fits perfectly into the slacker-who-redeems-himself mould — currently personified by Seth Rogen — who audiences grow to love. With Swanson, however, while you’re meant to occasionally laugh and frequently cringe at his antics (which include chanting in gibberish during a church service and hypothesising on his sister-in-laws oral sex technique to her face), you are never meant to love him. And you won’t. At one point Alverson hints at a salvation of sorts through the introduction of a love interest, only to pull the rug out from under us in the film’s most disturbing scene, in which Swanson’s behaviour sinks to new and wholly more despicable depths.

Of course on the flip side of all this, The Comedy actually succeeds as a comedy (albeit one with an extraordinarily niche appeal). While you will certainly feel contempt for these characters, their conversations, if not so much their actions, are, in my opinion, frequently and genuinely funny. And when all is said and done, by what other measure should you judge a film with a name like this?

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The Comedy was reviewed as part of our coverage of the 41^st International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).

You can read all of Tom Clift’s coverage of the festival here.

Kotoko (IFFR Review)

Still Life [Stillleben] (IFFR Review)

Alps (IFFR Review)

Ace Attorney (IFFR Review)

When the Lights Went Out (IFFR Review)

While the conceit is not immediately apparent – it takes several scenes like the one already mentioned before you piece things together entirely – Alps is about a group of four people – a paramedic, a nurse, a gymnast and her trainer – who offer their services to grieving families as fill-ins for recently deceased loved-ones. For a small fee they’ll be your daughter, your father, your wife. They’ll watch TV with you, hold your hand, tell you they love you. Of course while it takes a certain amount of despair to consider hiring an “alp”, it pales in comparison to the psychological issues it takes to be one. As conflicts within the group start to surface, the distinction between their actions and flat-out prostitution becomes increasingly difficult to make out.

The four key cast members, including and especially Dogtooth carry-over Aggeliki Papoulia, do an excellent job playing characters who, ironically enough, are pretty terrible actors. Watching the group members awkwardly attempt to fill the shoes of a sixteen year old tennis prodigy or a husband of fifty years is ludicrously unconvincing, and frequent tongue-in-cheek references to Hollywood actors and movies only highlights this fact. Whether it’s parents asking their “daughter” about her day, or a lamp salesman re-enacting the end of his marriage with a happier ending, comedy and tragedy are two sides of the same coin in a Lanthimos production, and are communicated with the exact same deadpan indifference.

With its somewhat lethargic pace and consciously alienating premise, Alps will not be for everybody. But the direction – tiresome out-of-focus backgrounds aside – also creates some fantastic scenes of uncomfortable suspense. A single moment of violence is timed for perfect effectiveness, while the climax blends the bleak and bleakly comedic with incredible skill. Given its obvious tonal similarities to Dogtooth, one wonders if this film is meant as a part two in a surreal, depressive thematic trilogy. Fingers crossed.

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Alps was reviewed as part of our coverage of the 41^st International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).

You can read all of Tom Clift’s coverage of the festival here.

Still Life [Stillleben] (IFFR Review)

Room 514 (IFFR Review)

Kill List (IFFR Review)

38 Witnesses [38 Témoins] (IFFR Review)

When the Lights Went Out (IFFR Review)

In a nerve-wracking performance, Japanese singer Cocco plays the title role of Kotoko, a frail, mentally disturbed single mother who hallucinates about strangers attacking her, and fantasizes about dropping her baby son off of a roof. It’s not long before social services take the child away from her, leaving her to descend even further into madness and mistrust. Yet in spite of her insanity, love is not off the cards for Kotoko: a famous novelist, played with adorable persistence by director Shinya Tsukamoto himself, soon begins to seek her hand in marriage.

Truthfully, Kotoko barely has a plot. Not much actually occurs in the film, and what does makes very little sense. Tsukamoto, who writes, directs, produces, acts and edits, is aiming more to cultivate an atmosphere; a kind of Black Swan style intensity that captures the total chaos of his heroine’s brain. In that he is successful. His frantic camerawork, editing and sound-design overwhelm the senses, while tranquil interludes accompanied by children’s music box music or the sound of Kotoko singing only increase the audiences suspicions that they themselves are going crazy.

The film has no discernible genre either. Kotoko is frequently violent and disturbing, yet at other moments it’s downright hilarious (in the darkest of ways, mind you). But what’s most surprising is how touching it is. When Kotoko is given permission to visit her son, now living happily in the care of her sister, their interactions are heartbreaking. The interplay between her and her suitor, meanwhile, almost resemble that of a romantic screwball comedy… if Katherine Hepburn repeatedly stabbed Cary Grant with a fork, that is.

One criticism of Kotoko is that, even at only ninety-one minutes, it feels a bit too long. The film is a weird and wonderful assault on sense and sensibility alike, but the mind can only take so much, and the last fifteen minutes could have been cut entirely without any real damage to the story (what story?). Even so, as an exercise in madness, Kotoko is kind of incredible.

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Kotoko was reviewed as part of our coverage of the 41^st International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).

You can read all of Tom Clift’s coverage of the festival here.

Ace Attorney (IFFR Review)

When the Lights Went Out (IFFR Review)

Still Life [Stillleben] (IFFR Review)

The Comedy (IFFR Review)

Room 514 (IFFR Review)

Protagonist Jasna (Isidora Simijonovic) is a teenage girl who seeks to drown her misery in the desolate shallows of sex, drugs and alcohol. Alienated from her home life, she treats her family – younger sister, overworked mother and terminally ill father – with hostility and contempt. Her nights are spent in dingy clubs or wandering the desolate streets of her decaying Serbian town with her friends, camera phone permanently recording in her hand, trying desperately to gain the favour of Djordje (Vukasin Jasnic), a popular boy in her class. And she’s willing to commit the most humiliating sexual acts in order to do so.

The callousness of Djordje treatment of Jasna is abhorrent, but what disturbs even more is her continual compliance. Miloš shoots the sex scenes as she shoots the rest of the film: with a detached stillness that neither judges the characters or spares their audience from discomfort (the depiction of sexual activity in this film is extraordinarily explicit). She also frequently intercuts footage from Jasna’s phone, which the misguided girl uses to document every facet of her life. This is a particularly brilliant touch that not only adds a sickening layer of realism to the film, but also raises questions of viewer culpability in regards to the contemporary cultural obsession with viral videos…and amateur pornography.

Simijonovic performance – a debut – is haunting. Beyond obvious compliments about her unflinching bravery in going through with such a role, there is a clear internal sadness to her portrayal of Jasna that is profoundly moving. Specific reasons for her characters behaviour are never outlined – is it her failure to deal with her father’s illness, poor parenting, or just a typical teenage desperation to belong? Her horrible treatment of her family makes it hard to like her, but her suffering makes her pitiable.

Clip falls into the same category of recent films like Snowtown and The Human Centipede 2: brave in its content, compelling in its bleakness, impressive in its artistry. The kind of picture you can appreciate and be glad you saw, then never watch again.

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Clip was reviewed as part of our coverage of the 41^st International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).

You can read all of Tom Clift’s coverage of the festival here.

Still Life [Stillleben] (IFFR Review)

Room 514 (IFFR Review)

Ace Attorney (IFFR Review)

When the Lights Went Out (IFFR Review)

The Comedy (IFFR Review)

When we get our first glimpse a doddering old woman out to buy a pint of milk, it’s hard to believe that she was once one of the most divisive political figures of the late twentieth century. Well into her eighties, she spends her days bickering with her doctors and state appointed carers, and attempting to resist the slowly creeping fingers of senility. It’s a disconcerting, unexpected portrayal, but effective in cultivating the audiences sympathies. It’s only after we’ve gotten to know this elderly Maggie Thatcher – who her husband (Jim Broadbent; A Good Year) affectionately calls “M.T.” – that director Phyllida Lloyd (Mamma Mia!) introduce, via flashbacks, the woman that history remembers; a woman whose political beliefs were handed down to her by her father, and whose unwavering determination and refusal to compromise saw her climb the greasy pole to become the most powerful person in the country.

Entirely central to the success of The Iron Lady is the performance by Meryl Streep. It may seem redundant to call the two (perhaps soon three) time Oscar winner amazing, but the truth is that few actors a famous and recognizable as Streep are capable of totally disappearing into a role like she does. With every movement and mannerism perfectly attuned, Streep will have you believing that she is the genuine article; the real Iron Lady, back to do battle again. Lloyd’s skills are, unfortunately, a little less polished, and a couple of her directorial decisions – canted angle to depict Thatcher’s paranoia, opera to accompany her fall from grace – are obvious and a little clichéd. But with the exception of a few eyebrow raising moments of overly stirring “movie dialogue”, Abi Morgan’s screenplay is strong, chocked full of withering barbs – such as Thatcher’s verbal smack-down of an American ambassador – that Meryl can deliver with relish.

As the film races through years of turbulent British history, there were times where things might have been slowed down. As someone who wasn’t alive at the time that Thatcher was in power, it would have nice if the film had taken a little time to contextualise some of her political skirmishes, particularly her struggles with the terroristic IRA. Similarly, battles with the unions and her decisions during the Falkland’s War are portrayed as being motivated largely by personal stubbornness – something that I suppose may be true, depending on whom you ask. For its own part, The Iron Lady makes few claims to objectivity, and argues that Thatcher’s dictatorial methods, although often unpopular, always came from a place of good intentions.

But even those who will be irked by a sympathetic Thatcher may find themselves swayed by the quiet tragedy of the present day sequences. While Streep’s portrayal of Thatcher in office is a spot-on imitation, her portrayal of Thatcher in her later years is an even more astounding feat. As her mind gradually deteriorates, Streep captures the slow, inevitable heartbreak of a person – not a politician, but a person – unable to hold on to the woman she once was. There’s something incredibly sobering about watching an iconic historical figure – especially one as strong willed and imposing as Margaret Thatcher – reduced to such a frail, pitiful and inconsequentially human being. She may have lived her life as “The Iron Lady”. But she ends it – if the film is to be believed – simply as “M.T.”

Julie and Julia (Review)

Doubt (Review)

Edge Of Darkness (Review)

Cowboys & Aliens (Review)

Brooklyn’s Finest (Review)

Personally, I have not read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and therefore cannot speak to its quality. But after watching both the laborious 2009 Swedish version, and now Fincher’s English language remake, I am beginning to suspect that Larsson’s book just isn’t very good. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it outright bad, as the core murder mystery is gripping in a Agatha Christie meets Hannibal Lecter kind of way. Furthermore, at the hands of Fincher, the screenplay’s disjointed first act, bloated runtime and pandering sexualisation of its protagonist all seem like far smaller problems than they might otherwise have. Still, I’d be lying if I called The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo anything other than a serviceable thriller, or a glossy waste of a talented filmmaker’s time.

Fincher plays his strongest card first, opening with a phenomenal credits sequence that, along with those from Seven and Fight Club, deserves to be remembered as amongst the best of all time. Immediately thereafter we are introduced to Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig; The Adventures of Tintin), a middle-aged journalist whose credibility has recently been shattered after being sued for libel by a wealthy industrialist he was investigating for criminal activities. Forced to take an extended sabbatical, Blomkvist accepts an intriguing job offer from another wealthy business man named Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer; Beginners), who promises to help the disgraced writer rebuild his career if he can unlock the secret to a 40-year-old murder.

With pale blue eyes and hard set jaw, Craig fits well into the part of the weary Blomkvist, an idealistic man turned cynical by the injustices in the world around him. But he’s overshadowed by the diminutive Rooney Mara (The Social Network) as the titular heroine and Blomkvist’s eventual research assistant: Lisbeth Salander, an anti-social, punk-rock computer hacking savant. In truth, I’m not nearly as enamoured with the character as others are; she’s too ludicrously cool to be believable, and the handling of her sexual identity is extremely problematic (I’ll get to that in a minute). But she fits well enough into the dark, bitter universe in which the story takes place, and it’s hard not to be impressed by the fearlessness of Mara’s vulnerable yet venomous performance.

The greater issue surrounding Lisbeth’s character is where she fits in to the plot. While the investigation into Vanger’s cold case eventually forms the backbone of the narrative, it takes close to an hour before the two protagonists actually share the screen. Prior to that, we are treated to an entirely unrelated story in which Lisbeth is repeatedly sexually assaulted by her state-appointed guardian. They’re an ugly sequence of scenes that, although admittedly compelling, serve zero function other than to redundantly link Lisbeth with the theme of misogyny present in the rest of the story. On a more pressing level, with the film coming in at a whopping one hundred and fifty eight minutes long, this irrelevant subplot could easily have been cut, and the film would have been tighter and better as a whole.

But trust in Fincher and he will deliver. This kind of material is his bread and butter, and his control over his film remains as meticulous as ever. From the crisp cinematography by Jeff Chenoweth to the pulse-setting score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, everything about this film – on a sensory level at least – is perfectly calibrated to put you on edge. The distinct scarcity of suspects makes the perpetrator of the Vanger murder obvious from pretty early on, and yet Fincher still manages to make the investigation worth following. Under his lens, a character shuffling through photos and police reports becomes as thrilling as a high speed chase, while a climactic conversation between Blomkvist and the killer (mirroring a similar scene from Zodiac) will set your stomach churning with uncertainty and dread.

Still, the inherent shallowness of this material is never more apparent than in the sexualisation of Lisbeth. As strong as Mara’s performance may be, the fact remains that her character functions not to empower women, but rather to pander to the erotic fantasies of men. Sexually aggressive, barely legal, petite, bi-sexual, and clad from head to toe in leather and piercings, Lisbeth satisfies to a wide range of pornographic archetypes. But despite being all too happy to have one night stands with other woman, Lisbeth only opens up emotionally after she is “conquered” by a man (and one twice her age at that). Even the film’s sickening (and, I reiterate, wholly unnecessary) rape scene feels a lot like it was included to satisfy the morbid fascination our society has with sexually related violence.

Of course it’s by no means immoral for fictional works to play to these curiosities, any more than it’s wrong for audiences to enjoy watching Lisbeth enact her brutal revenge upon her rapist. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo delves the dark waters that aren’t meant to intrigue us but do. And with Fincher at the wheel – and with Mara riding shotgun – it does so with enough style and tension that it’s easy enough to forgive its faults. But high art it is not. Make no mistake: for all its mewing about misogyny, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo remains a decidedly male oriented piece of lurid pulp fiction. Strikingly shot, impressively acted and generally suspenseful, yes. But with nothing more insightful to share than an average episode of Law & Order: SVU.

The Girl Who Played With Fire (Review)

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Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Review)

This new Holmes adventure sees the obsessive detective (Downey) face off against his greatest foe: Professor James Moriarty (Jared Harris; TVs Mad Men), a cunning criminal genius that matches Holmes’ own intellect. With the reluctant assistance of the recently married Dr. Watson (Law) and a fortune-telling gypsy (Noomi Rapace; The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) that he saves from an assassins blade, Holmes’ pursuit of Moriarty takes him from Baker Street London to the opera houses of Paris and the snow covered mountains of Switzerland, as he races to unravel an international conspiracy that could throw all of Europe into a cataclysmic world war.

Not unlike Brad Birds’ Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, there is a refreshing sense of brevity to Ritchie’s Holmes films that set them apart from so many other recent Hollywood franchises. Blame 9/11, Columbine, Jason Bourne or Christopher Nolan’s gritty take on the Batman franchise, but the twenty-first century action hero is a very serious fellow, too busy brooding to ever crack a joke, flash a smile or acknowledge the sheer absurdity of the situations he constantly seems to find himself in. But there is always a twinkle in the eye of Sherlock Holmes, and from his tongue the jabs fly thick and fast. Between Sherlock Holmes and Iron Man, Downey has revamped his career playing the part of the eccentric debonair. Law, meanwhile, is having so much fun as Watson that he can scarcely keep the smile from his face.

Proving a worthy adversary for Downey’s Holmes is British character Jarred Harris, who plays the diminutive Moriarty with gleeful soft-spoken cockiness. A foil of a very different sort comes in the form of Steven Fry (Alice in Wonderland) as Holmes’ oddball brother Mycroft. By comparison Rapace’s performance is rather unremarkable; truthfully the character doesn’t feel particularly necessary, although at least the screenwriters never try to fashion her into a love interest. That said, you’d need a butcher’s cleaver to cut through the sexual tension between the sleuth and the doctor, whose bickering is far and away the most entertaining part of the film.

As he tends to do, Ritchie shoots the movies’ many action sequences with an unabashedly frenetic style, loading the film with enough slow-mo and speed-ramping to put even Zack Snyder (300, Sucker Punch) to shame. It’s over the top, but appropriately so, and comes to an operatic and actually rather artful climax in a chase scene through a German forest. Hans Zimmer’s off-kilter score bounces along through early scenes with barnyard merriness, before taking on shades of his more full bodied orchestral work, as heard in The Dark Knight and Inception.

Yet for all the visual and aural bombast, Holmes’ deductions are just as much a part of the action as the gun-battles and the fisticuffs. Game of Shadows boasts a genuinely witty script, and listening to Downey casually unravel puzzle after puzzle, however absurd, never stops being entertaining. And while one could never accurately describe Ritchie’s Holmes franchises as a “smart” series, it at least gives a cursory nod to intellect, a quality most other Hollywood blockbusters are all too willing to ignore.

Where A Games of Shadows will suffer is in comparisons to another, undeniably superior take on the Sherlock Holmes mythos: the fantastic BBC series Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, which premiered its second season just seven days ago. But perhaps the lodgings at 221B Baker St are big enough for two. Just like the first movie, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is a frolicking adventure film that flies by in a flash.

Sherlock Holmes (Review)

The Disappearance of Alice Creed (Review)

Contagion (Review)

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (Review)

Competition: Win tix to see DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK!

The sequel picks up exactly where the first film left off. Indeed, instead of a title card, we are offered a small segment of the first films’ end credits, which are then rewound as we realise that we are watching someone else watching The Human Centipede. That someone is Martin (Laurence R. Harvey), a short, sweaty, mentally disabled English security guard, whose obsession with Six’s film, along with a long history of sexual abuse at the hands his now imprisoned father, and the homicidal tendencies of his frail but vicious mother all accumulate in Martin attempting to create a centipede of his own. And for all his shortcomings both physical and psychological, one thing that cannot be said about Martin is that he is unambitious. Where his hero Dr. Heiter was satisfied with three segments, Martin’s centipede is to be made up of twelve.

The first notable thing about The Human Centipede Part 2 is how much more competently made it is than the original. The 2009 film was shoddily shot and atrociously written, with only a few moments of genuine suspense or horror. By comparison, this follow up could almost be described as elegant. Six’s decision to shoot in black and white may well been motivated by a desire to mask the less-than-convincing special effects (if so, it worked: the gore looks hideously real), but it also gives the film a gritty edge that is befitting of such a tale. Pale white skin and eyes stretched wide in terror strike unsettling contrast against ever flowing streams of rain and blood, each as black as pitch. The soundtrack grinds and rumbles like a great mechanical storm, laying on a thick layer of tension and deathly anticipation that was totally absent from the first film, but dominates the first half of the second.

Admittedly, Six’s writing is not amongst the list of the things that have improved between the films. The dialogue delivered by the supporting characters – mostly played by less than stellar actors – is generally quite cringe-worthy. But on the whole, there is blessedly little dialogue in The Human Centipede Part 2. After all, a majority of the films characters spent most of their screen time with their, uh, mouths full. And in another particularly audacious and superbly successful gamble, the film’s protagonist (if you can call him that) never utters a word. Rather than attempt to one-up the comically over-the-top villainy of Dieter Laser as Dr. Heiter, Six has taken his new amateur surgeon in a totally different direction.

Where Heiter was tall and skinny with angular features, Martin is short and fat, with a face that puffs and bulges like dough. Where Heiter might be considered a mad genius, Martin is a barely functioning psychological cripple. Where Heiter was evil, Martin is sick. And where Heiter espoused his intentions at great lengths, Martin communicates only with a series of high-pitched squeals that burst from his lips whenever he becomes excited. Martin is one of the most excellent villains in recent cinema history; menacing, gross and totally without mercy, yet also somehow sympathetic. And Lawrence’s performance – his first, and one that requires him to frequently go naked, don a prosthetic penis and simulate acts that are morally reprehensible and deeply traumatizing – is for my money the bravest, most committed, and most memorable performance of the year.

The second half of the film is where things get really nasty. Once he has acquired his subjects – mostly unfortunate souls who made the mistake of using the multi-storied car-park where this wannabe Frankenstein works – Martin sets about the task of linking his creation together. But while Heiter was a trained surgeon gone bad, Martin’s only training is comes from his compulsive re-watching of his favourite movie. Again, I must stress, the graphicness of this film cannot be overstated. As Martin goes about hammering out teeth, scissoring through tendons and staple-gunning the centipede together – all of which is depicted unflinchingly and at extensive length – audience members may find themselves feeling the involuntary urge to empty their stomachs. Incidentally, in a great piece of marketing, viewers at my screening were presented with a complimentary puke bag, emblazoned with an image of Martin and a single word: “sick”.

But the construction is only the beginning. Once the centipede is on its feet, Martin needs to feed it. Dog food laced with laxatives makes for an appropriate meal, and soon shit is spraying from any and all unplugged holes, splattering across the room and the camera, the only substance in the movie not restricted to black and white. These moments, along with some ridiculous sequences of violence (including a scene involving a new born baby that needs to be seen to be believed) are played for outrageous black comedy, and will provoke disbelieving squeals of laughter. Other moments – most notably a hideous rape scene – will be received in silence. Yet even when the film is viscerally disturbing, there is undeniably talent on display. The gore is completely convincing, and the concepts are audacious in their own disgustingly original way.  And the sound effects – the screams and the squelches – will linger long after the move comes to an end.

Of course even when you question the morality of the film, it’s abundantly clear that Six intends everything as tongue-in-cheek. From homages to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho to the satirising of Freudian psycho-analyses (via a beared psychiatrist who attempts to both diagnose and molest Martin, only to end up one of his victims), The Human Centipede Part 2 is blatantly self-aware, and uses its status as a meta film to comment not only on the reception and notoriety of its predecessor, but also on violence in cinema in general, and the contentious argument that it somehow can be blamed for violence in real life. If we take this film to be real life, then the original Human Centipede – and by extension, the viewers who elevated it to a cultural phenomenon – could be considered responsible for the crimes that Martin commits.

And so Six punishes. He punishes the characters in the film – supposedly real people – with a torture more hideous than most normal human beings could imagine. He punishes audience members – especially those people who were disappointed by the lack of gore in the original film – by offering us a sequel more graphic than we could have possibly desired. And, in a brilliant plot point, he punishes one of the actresses from the original film for taking part in the project at all. Posing as a casting agent for an upcoming Quentin Tarantino movie, Martin lures actress Ashlynn Yennie, star of the first movie, to London, and forces her to re-enact her career defining role.

The Human Centipede Part 2: Full Sequence is not what you’d call an enjoyable film, and the social commentary it attempts is handled with about the same finesse at the titular creatures’ creation. Nevertheless, it is a film – a fictional one – and those who call for the movies’ censorship would do well to remember that fact. If you don’t want to watch Six’s movie, then don’t. You won’t regret your decision. But for fans of graphic horror films, The Human Centipede Part 2 offers great gore, a fantastic villain, and some genuinely interesting ideas to devour.

Note: The Human Centipede Part 2: Full Sequence received a brief theatrical release in Australia this November with an R18+ rating, before it was reviewed and reclassified RC (refused classification) by the Australian Classification Review Board at the behest of conservative lobby groups and the New South Wales Attorney General. An RC rating is tantamount to a ban, and means the film cannot be screened, sold or hired anywhere within Australia. An edited version of the film, with approximately thirty seconds of footage removed, recently received an R18+, and is due to return to screens in December. The following review is of the full version of the film, which cannot currently be legally obtained in this country.

WTF: ‘The Human Centipede’ vs. Roger Ebert

Clip [Klip] (IFFR Review)

Senna (Review)

Unknown (Review)

Wall Street (DVD Review)

So yes, I have dueling personalities living in my organs, and yes, I gave into the calculated charms of We Bought a Zoo more than I probably should have. In my defence, there isn’t a single film out there that doesn’t try to coerce the viewer into feeling this or that, so a movie that wears its agenda on its sleeve – consciously or not — is actually kind of refreshing.  You don’t ever feel “played” watching We Bought a Zoo because, right from the word go, every move is obvious. Instead, you feel more like you’re just playing along, enjoying the journey despite knowing the destination, happy just to be a part of something unashamed of being nice.

Just to make sure we’re still on the same page, We Bought a Zoo is a story about a family who buys a zoo. (It’s that degree of insight that makes me the movie critic, and you, well, someone with a real job.) More specifically, this is the story of globe-trotting journo Benjamin Mee (Matt Damon; Contagion), who after losing his wife to cancer, decides that his midlife crisis will involve zebras. Much to the chagrin of his brother (Thomas Haden Church; Easy A), Ben spends a good chunk of his life savings to purchase the dilapidated park, which is home to 200-odd animals and half a dozen zookeepers. One of them is Scarlett Johansson (Iron Man 2), so I think we can all agree that Ben made a wise investment.

Also along for the ride are Ben’s 7-year-old daughter Rosie (Maggie Elizabeth Jones; Footloose) and 14-year-old son Dylan (Colin Ford; Push), the former the kind of perpetually cute, do-no-wrong child that only exists in movies, and the latter a moody and resentful teenager that parents wish only existed in movies. Before Ben can open the zoo to the public, he needs to get the tick of approval from zoo inspector Walter Ferris (John Michael Higgins; Bad Teacher), who is such an ass, they might as well put him in a pen beside the horses. Walter is due to evaluate the zoo in a couple of weeks, yet there’s more than a couple of weeks work to be done, so Ben and his crew must kick into gear should they hope to pass the test while inspirational music swells in the background.

Believe it or not, We Bought a Zoo is based on a true story, but judging from Crowe’s melodramatic direction and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna’s prescription plotting, you’re probably going to err on the side of not believing it. Still, Benjamine Mee does exist, he did buy a zoo (in England) and did encounter many of the problems movie Ben faces in his effort to reopen it. He probably didn’t look like Matt Damon, sure, but just knowing that the story did happen does give the drama a bit more kick. Besides, between all the forced sentiment, McKenna’s screenplay occasionally stumbles upon a few moments of real emotion, which is a lot more than I was expecting from the writer of 27 Dresses and Morning Glory. I was also pleasantly surprised by the way Crowe chooses not to personify or overplay the cuteness of the animals, which would have been mandatory had the movie starred Eddie Murphy or Brendan Fraser. Instead, he has the good sense to portray the animals as caged beasts, not domestic pets, that answer to no one. This allows the movie to deal with the loss of both human and animal life in ways that are far more convincing than what the sugary-sweet premise might let on.

It’s a shame, then, that in place of the cutesy animals are a bunch of shallow and goofy humans, many of whom can best be described accordingly: monkey-on-shoulder man, inexplicably-nasty inspector, perpetually-drunk Scotsman and so on. It’s also disappointing to see Elle Fanning, so radiant and engaging in J.J. Abrams’ Super 8, reduced to a role where she does nothing but dote upon gloomy Dylan as though it’s her sole purpose in life.  Kelly, Scarlett Johansson’s workaholic character, fairs a little better because she’s given slightly more to do than just stand around and flirt with Ben, although to say she’s involved for any greater reason than to attract Dads to the cinema is probably wishful thinking.

This brings us to Matt Damon, the bread holding this ham and cheese sandwich together. Looking over his CV, Damon only ever plays the earnest everyman, the kind who seldom puts a foot wrong, and if he does, it’s rarely his fault. Such a role played by someone other than Damon — say, Mark Wahlberg; his evil doppelganger — often comes across as bland and unconvincing.  At best, they’re likeable, but rarely ever lovable. Yet Damon, a master of the ordinary, can create a rounded, convincing and utterly engaging character out of just about anyone, Benjamin Mee included.

So it’s thanks to Damon that I connected with We Bought a Zoo, despite knowing all too well that, objectively speaking, it’s not a very good movie. But no one can objectively speak when it comes to watching films, not even a critic. I went with my heart on this one, and even though my inner cynic lost this bout, I’m sure he’ll be back soon enough to enact his revenge.

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But enough about Murphy; how’s the rest of the movie? Well, it’s certainly no Ocean’s Eleven, even it has been co-written by the very same Ted Griffin. It’s just not clever or slick enough, but it’d be wrong of me to assume that it intends to be. It’s what you’d call a casual heist movie in that it’s played for laughs, not smarts. It’s also about as good as you’ll ever get from Brett Ratner, the by-the-numbers Hollywood director whose crowning achievement is, well, Rush Hour. Ratner is all about getting the job done, and with Tower Heist, he does exactly that. Nothing more, nothing less.

Tying nicely into the current credit crunch, the story sees the employees of a luxury apartment complex endeavour to steal back their hard-earned dosh from their sleazy boss Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda; The Aviator), a villainous member of the 1% who swindled all their pensions to keep his Wall Street enterprise from going under. (Of course, it doesn’t undermine the potency of the message at all that the 99% are being represented by some of Hollywood’s highest paid actors.) In one of his more sympathetic roles, Ben Stiller leads the charge as Josh Kovacs, the building’s manager whose convinces concierge Charlie (Casey Affleck; The Killer Inside Me), elevator operator Enrique (Michael Peña; Battle LA), maid Odessa (Gabourey Sidibe; Precious) and ex-investor Mr. Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick; The Producers) to help pull off the heist. The plan is to break into Shaw’s heavily-guarded penthouse suite and claim the millions hidden inside a safe in the wall for themselves. But there’s a slight problem: none of them know anything about stealing things.  That’s where Eddie Murphy comes in as Slide, a small-time criminal Kovacs brings on board to help give the would-be crooks a crash course in thievery. Lesson number one? Never trust a thief.

Not since 1999’s Bowfinger has Murphy been this entertaining on screen, his signature boisterousness working comedic wonders against the reticence of the rest of the group. He can’t quite create a character out of the caricature he’s given, but that’s hardly his fault, and his presence alone gives the film the kind of spark needed to keep things funny and fresh going forward. Kudos also to Matthew Broderick, who underplays his crestfallen character to precision, and Alan Alda, who makes for the kind of vile villain audiences love to hate.  In fact, everyone in front of the camera is doing their best to make the screenplay by Jeff Nathanson and Ted Griffin work, which unfortunately, often doesn’t. The ugly scars of rewrites are all over this one, from subplots that go nowhere to cavernous gaps in logic that are impossible to ignore. Look, I’m all for suspending my disbelief, but please, don’t pretend I’m not familiar with how gravity works. I do know, and let me tell you, it doesn’t work like THAT.

Luckily though, this is a light comedy first and a heist thriller second, so it gets away with being an average example of the latter. All in all, I honestly expected to loathe Tower Heist given the people involved, but there I was, smiling my way through what simple pleasure the film has to offer, merely pleased to be able to enjoy Murphy’s presence on screen again, let alone tolerate it. It was almost as if the last decade never happened!  Almost.

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Tangled 3D (Review)

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In brave defiance of the ban – an act that may very well have contributed to the rejection of his appeal just a few weeks ago – Panahi collaborated with another Iranian filmmaker named Mojbata Mirtahmasb (also now imprisoned) on a documentary project that is sardonically, or perhaps cautiously, entitled This Is Not A Film. Documenting a day in Panahi’s life, we watch as he attempts to strike some small, perhaps foolhardy blow against a dictatorial system that seeks to silence his voice — and the voice of countless others — in an admirable work of life affirming, art affirming, freedom affirming creative expression.

The events depicted in the seventy-five minute film are of no particular importance; were it not for the fact that their very existence were an act of searing civil disobedience, they might even be considered mundane. Panahi eats his breakfast, feeds the family pet — an adventurous Iguana named Igi — and speaks to his lawyer on the telephone (whose prognosis for his future is grim). Soon Mirtahmasb arrives and they go about their task, a project born from a combination of frustrated boredom and the desire to rebel. Mapping the outline of a small room with masking tape on the living room floor, Mirtahmasb shoots Panahi reading from his most recent script; the film Panahi would have made before he was arrested by government officials. Amidst stoppages and jokes, Panahi muses about various pictures he’d wanted to direct, only to have them shot down in the developmental stages by stringent censors.

As the day continues, Panahi watches clips from his earlier movies’ Crimson Gold and The Circle, recounting the way in which the real world influenced what you see in the films. In a similar fashion, the spectre of oppression hangs heavily over This Is Not A Film. Even as the two men work, gunfire and sirens can be head out the window in the distance. A scene that should be funny – Panahi awkwardly telling his neighbour he doesn’t want to dog-sit her incessantly yapping pet – is made tragic by his inability to venture beyond the threshold of his doorway.

The fates of Panahi and Mirtahmasb are not anomalies. While the sentence of ninety lashes for actress Marzieh Vafamehr’s for appearing without a headscarf in the Australian produced My Tehran for Sale was recently overturned following international media attention, many others, including Panahi and Mirtahmasb, still remain unfairly imprisoned. This Is Not A Film – which had to smuggled out of Iran on a USB drive baked inside of a cake – is an important, courageous cry for justice that deserves to be heard.

Please help spread the word about the plight of Iranian filmmakers. For more information visit Amnesty International.

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Higher Ground visits Corinne at various stages of her life, at each point considering her relationship with her family and to the church. After narrowly avoiding tragedy by way of a car crash, the young Corinne (played by Farmiga’s younger sister, Taissa) and her husband Ethan enter in earnest to a born-again Christian. Shortly after, we meet an adult Corinne and her family in their position as prominent members of their evangelical community in the 1960s. One would be misleading to describe Higher Ground as a film in which “lots of things happen”. Honestly, they kind of don’t. Rather, it’s a fascinating and occasionally moving portrait of a vibrant, intelligent and naturally curious woman who feels increasingly stifled by her conservative yet well-meaning circle of existence.

What’s immensely refreshing about Higher Ground is that none of the characters — be they believers or otherwise — are ever portrayed as anything more than they are. Corinne’s alcoholic father (John Hawkes) is never a villain. Her devout born-again ex-musician husband (Joshua Leonard) isn’t depicted as a religious nut, nor are the other members of their congregation. Never are believers portrayed as having all of the answers, or anything resembling a perfect life. Equally, neither is it implied that without faith also comes an unfulfilled existence. Yes, Corinne does feel suppressed in her marriage, as well as in a community where she’s reprimanded for appearing to be “preaching” to male members of the congregation. That being said, however, Farmiga doesn’t take any heavy-handed shots at the members of Corinne’s sect; they’re all decent people doing their best to be good people (while also spending a hell of a lot of their time plucking at guitars and singing). At one point Ethan cries out for assistance from above in ridding Satan from the car in which he and Corinne just fought. This scene could have been mined for a cheap laugh at the hands of another director, or as an example of over-zealous weirdness. Yet under Farmiga’s guidance, it manages to be a sincere and honest glimpse at a man struggling to deal with the set of hurdles his life is suddenly faced with.

While we’re on the topic of sincere and honest (how’s that for a segue?), the great joy of Higher Ground are the performances to be found within it. Joshua Leonard is excellent as Ethan, as is Damara Dominczyk as Corinne’s free spirited confidante, Annika. Taissa Farmiga is a perfect little mini-Corinne, possessing the same quiet and enigmatic gaze as her elder sister. The director/star though, is truly the sight to behold. Farmiga carries the film with ease, as well as with those alarmingly blue eyes and a cackling, infectious laughter. Farmiga imbues Corinne with a believability, both within her faith and her increasing disillusionment. Plus, the camera is absolutely in love with her face. That much can’t be denied.

I’m sure that some who sit down to watch Higher Ground will have gripes with the pace and the lack of action, but I had no such complaints. Frequently moving, frequently funny, a pleasure to look at, a fascinating world to drop in on; Vera Farmiga has added yet one more notch to add to her belt of things that she is good at.

Abbie Cornish joins Vera Farmiga for Madonna’s royal scandal biopic ‘W.E’

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Up in the Air (Review)

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Indeed, from the opening frame, as feet dance and jump across a beer-staineddance-floor to the tunes of that infectious main theme, the level of energy in Footloose is clear. The premise is the same as last time: rebellious city boy Ren McCormack (Kenny Wormald) comes to live with his aunt and uncle in Beaumont, a small country town with an unlikely law on the books that prohibits any kind of lewd and lascivious behaviour, including and especially provocative public dancing. As with the original film the screenwriters fight something of an uphill battle trying to sell the premise, although pinning the blame on a conservative Christian preacher (Dennis Quaid) is at least believable enough that you can suspend your scepticism. In any case, the Beaumont highschooler’s are having none of it, and regularly meet in secret to pop and lock in protest of the law.

In the leading role, Boston native Kenny Wormald looks less like a young Kevin Bacon than he does a young James Dean, and although he doesn’t have the acting chops of either, he is talented and charming enough to keep you engaged. Truthfully, with the exception of the wonderfully goofy Miles Teller (Rabbit Hole), most of the young cast are better dancers than they are actors. This goes especially for Julianne Hough as the preachers unruly daughter who soon catches Ren’s eye. (For a moment near the beginning I thought Brewer might be daring enough to pair our young hero with Hough’s homely friend. Sadly, it was not to be).

But what Hough lacks as an actress she more than makes up for in exceptional dancing and scorching sex appeal. Throughout the entire film, her short shorts remain perfectly sculpted to her rear end, while her bronzed breasts are in a perpetual state of almost-but-not-quite falling out of her top. But why shouldn’t they be, when Footloose is a film all about erupting sexual energy. Brewer’s camera clings to the bodies of the dancers who emit more heat than the burning Southern sun, and while Hough and the rest of the female cast are certainly sexualized, they are never subjected to undignified or tokenistic objectification (à la the young women in a Michael Bay film). Besides, there are enough shots of Wormald in a two-sizes-too-small white singlet to quash arguments that it only goes one way.

Somewhat unfortunately, even Brewer’s direction can’t overcome the more predictable and unimaginative moments of plotting that dominate the third act. In a lot of ways it feels as though the movie still needed to go through one or two more rounds of editing – several scenes run on too long, or cause confusion as to character’s motivations. But unquestionably, the first thing that should have been lost on the cutting room floor is the character of the preacher’s wife, played with overwrought sentimentality by Andie “where have I been for the last fifteen years” MacDowell (Groundhog Day). A train wreck of screenwriting, barely present for the first hour, her character suddenly pops up to deliver a dreadful speech to her husband, at which point the movie takes a nosedive into treacle from which it never fully emerges.

Still, with the exception of one or two ridiculously inspirational monologues, the teenagers in Brewer’s film, even as they look and dance like they just fell out of a music video, talk more or less like teenagers. It is that rare, genuine, down to earth quality, when combinde with Brewer’s sense of style and fun, that makes Footloose an uncommon remake that manages to capture the same spirit of the original. Of course the irony of the film is that the target audience for teen dance movies are hardly a discerning bunch, and most of them probably won’t notice or care that the film is so much better than what they are normally served up. However, if you are a movie lover who stumbles, is dragged, or, as I recommend, walks freely into this film, then you should be pleasantly surprised.

Fame (2009) (Review)

Step Up 3D (His Review)

We Bought a Zoo (Review)

Fright Night [2011] (Review)

Crazy, Stupid, Love (Review)