I've been through a run of 'meh' films recently (and I've also been very lax at writing up the reviews which I'm in the process of addressing) but this is one of two goodies - the other was the Woman in Black.
It's another low budget sci-fi about three high school kids, naturally one is the bullied outcast, who discover they have special powers after an encounter with a mysterious power source. They have to learn how to use their new powers and explore their different skills, moving large objects, making things float, flying, that sort of thing, having a bit of fun along the way.
But soon mistakes are made and they begin to question what is right and what is wrong to use their new found skills for.
And I really liked it. It is very human in its approach. If you found out you could move a car just by thinking about it you so would move the car a woman had just parked at the supermarket and then wait for her reaction when she returned to find it was in a different bay.
Yes there is a message there about with great power comes great responsibility but it doesn't feel over-egged and is nicely handled. And OK the special effects aren't the best in the world but they are more than adequate creating some quite dramatic set pieces.
Chronicle is a good fun, 90 minute movie. Hurray for low budget, independent film I say.
Finally got to see Parked last weekend and must admit I was feeling slightly 'meh' about it for the first 20 minutes. It seemed to be heading dangerously one-way down cliche cul-de-sac but thank goodness it managed to find a way out.
It's basically about two men who have ended up living in their cars and form an unlikely friendship. Ok I can feel some of you cringing. There is a little bit more to it than that.
Colm Meaney plays Fred who has returned to Ireland after drifting from job to job in England. He is stuck in a housing catch 22. He can't go on the waiting list for social housing unless he has a permanent abode and he can't get a permanent abode until he gets social housing.
Little Colin Morgan plays Cathal (Cal) who's left or been chucked out of his father's house after his mother died. He's a heroine addict who owes money to his dealer.
Cal, is an experienced car-dweller and sort of takes Fred under his wing, showing where he can shower and helping him with the welfare department. Fred meanwhile becomes a protective friend, a genuine friend among Cal's associates of smack-heads and dealers.
There is a little romance thrown in as Fred catches the eye of a woman he meets at the swimming baths and Cal helps engineer a meeting.
Meaney and Morgan both put in great, contrasting performances the former understated and the latter all twitches and ticks. It's great to see Colin stretching his acting muscles outside Merlin.
Parked is a nice film delicately balancing the twee with some of the more brutal reality of drugs and homelessness which saves the day. It doesn't go down the cul de sac which is also a saving grace. It's not going to win any awards from me but is a nicely moving film.
It held so much promise. An intriguing sounding indie flick about a young woman Lucy (Emily Browning) who in order to fund her way through college starts working for a mysterious organisation that can best be described as offering alternative titillation services.
This isn't prostitution in the traditional sense, this is an art flick after all. At first Lucy has to serve at a dinner party where all the female waiting staff are bare-bosomed or in stockings and basques. Then she graduates to a service where she is drugged into an unconscious state and men - all at the older age range - can do whatever they want with her naked body except penetration and with the proviso they don't leave any marks.
The film's blurb concentrates on the fact that she becomes curious about what the men do while she is in her drug-induced sleep and so sets up a secret camera. However, the film takes an awful long time to get that point and it is something that is concluded very quickly.
Ultimately it is unnecessarily arty, self-consciously so, with lots of lingering shots and people not saying very much either with or without words. You don't get to know very much about Lucy and how she really feels about what she is doing and what impact it is having on her.
She visits a man with whom she seems close who spends most of his time in bed but who he is or what the relationship is, isn't explained. Towards the end of the film she gets into a relationship with a fellow student but again the impact of her job on this isn't explored.
There is much that could be delved into in this film but just isn't. It just feels risque for risque sake rather than having any real depth. I left the cinema feeling only disappointment and a little bit cross that that it failed to deliver on any its promises.
This year is shaping up to be a cracking year for British film making and in particular low budget films. So far we've had Submarine, The Island and Third Star all proving that with a great story and not very much money you can make a cracking film. And now stepping into the arena is actor Paddy Considine's writing and directing debut Tyrannosaur.
If I was to say it was about an unlikely friendship it immediately conjures up all the wrong sort of cliched images but that is sort of what it is in essence as two very different people help each other escape their lives.
Joseph played by the wonderfully craggy-faced Peter Mullan is a drinker with an explosive verbal and violent temper and a good line in remorse the morning after. He is trying, with intermittant success, to break out of the destructive cycle he's got himself in.
Olivia Colman plays Hannah, a devout Christian and seemingly happy and friendly charity shop volunteer who is being abused verbally and physically by her husband James (Eddie Marsan).
The first thing to say about it, is Olivia Colman is stunningly good in this. She's one of those jobbing actors you feel has just been waiting for a chance to show the breadth of her talent and here it is. If there was any justice she would win lots and lots of awards. (The film has picked up some gongs at film festivals).
Peter Mullan too is superb. Joseph carries an air of threat about him so when he says to Hannah "you aren't safe with me" you know it is true but at the same time his self redemptive qualities make Hannah's trust believable.
There is a great supporting cast from the likes of Sian Breckin who plays the daughter of Joseph's dying friend and Ned Dennehy who plays his alcoholic friend. And I always love Eddie Marsan who is just chillingly abhorrent in this.
Tyrannosaur is far from an easy watch. It has a gritty and brutal realism that is probably more well observed than we'd care to admit from the comfort of our cosy cinema seats. While there are tender moments and glimpses of human kindness it never falls down the cliche trap door but is instead a tense, gripping and utterly moving film.
When the writer and director stand up and say they sold their house in order to make the film you are about to watch there is a big part of you hoping that it is good. And they - Antony Neely and Sloane U'Ren - did just that ahead of the cast and crew screening of their film Dimensions yesterday at the BFI.
It is a romantic sci-fi set in 1920s/1930s Cambridge about a boy, Stephen, who after an encounter with a professor becomes interested in time travel. A tragic incident results in Stephen growing up obsessed with going back in time.
And there is much to be admired in Neely and U'Ren's endeavour. Both have a lot of experience in film and television, Neely in composing and U'Ren as an art director and it is these areas that really shine in Dimensions. It is beautiful both in its settings, costumes and how it is shot. Neely isn't listed as the composer but the music is certainly atmospheric.
It's weakness is, however, its script. The dialogue feels awkward and cliched. While the plot's premise is an interesting one there are a some scenes which seem forced in order to contrive the plot and there are also some plot holes.
There are some good performances from the younger cast and Henry Lloyd Hughes does a reasonable job as the grown up Stephen but there are also some stiff performances and often the extras in background look staged.
Parts of the film feels like they lack confidence while others feel experienced and accomplished.
Dimensions was certainly a brave venture for a first movie and I'm not sure Neely and U'Ren pulled it off which is a real shame because I so much wanted to like it.
This is a first for me. I've been invited to a screening of a new film. It's a indie Brit flick called Dimensions and the trailer looks rather interesting.
The screening I'm going to is also the cast and crew screening - another first. Looks like it's going to be an interesting afternoon.
It is a shame that Third star is on such a limited release because once again we have a cracking low budget indie Brit flick that few are going to get the opportunity to see.
I saw it last sunday at the Empire in Leicester Square's smallest screening room which is up lots of stairs and has a screen that seems too big for the size of the room. It was virtually sold out which meant Poly and I had to sit on the front row about two foot from the screen.
The plot does sound a little depressing and a little predictable. It's central character James played with beautiful subtlety by Benedict Cumberbatch* is 29 but dying of cancer. He wants to hike to his favourite beach in Pembrokeshire one last time and so his three childhood friends decide to take him, aided by a wheelchair come rickshaw contraption for the equipment and when he tires.
British filmmakers have been ploughing a rich seam in the last 18 months. There have been some cracking low-budget indie flicks - Skeletons and Monsters to name just two. And directing duo Brek Taylor and Elizabeth Mitchell's debut, Island, is another to be added to that list.
OK there are one or two clunky moments but this is an otherwise beautifully shot and acted piece which is intriguing from the outset. Protagonist Nikki (Natalie Press) travels to a remote and bleak island, hell-bent on revenge on her mother Phyllis (Janet McTeer*) who abandoned her as a child. But her plans go awry when she realises she has a brother, Callum (Colin Morgan**) and her mission becomes more about wresting him from matriarchal control.
But weaving its way, like a cat around its owner's legs at meal times, are a series of delightful myths and legends which Nikki and Callum tell each other - almost recreating the childhood they never had together. It lends the story a hint of the fairytale but fairytale of the Grimm vein where there is hint of the grotesque and sinister. Something that is not that far from the truth as revealed in the films final scenes.
Definitely a palette cleanser after the dreadfulness of recent Hollywood fare I've enjoyed it packs a lot of visual and emotional punch. It gets 79% from me but as it has such a limited release at present doesn't yet feature on Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic so you'll have to take my word for it.
* After the screening there was a Q&A with Brek and Elizabeth who said that Juliet Stevenson and Anne Marie Duff were originally lined up for the female leads. Can't quite see that working as well somehow despite them being such good actors.
** Doing a wonderful Scottish accent - he really is a master but would love to see him do something in his native Northern Irish at some point
My third film of the weekend (although I'm writing the review out of sequence) is from Polish writer/director Jerzy Skolimowski and is a pared down political thriller about a prisoner, Mohammad, escaping from his American captors.
Now I like a pared down film, a film that allows you to focus on a few essential ingredients, letting things such as performance and perhaps setting do all the talking. But never have I seen a film of this subject matter quite so distilled. And I'm not so sure it works.
The scene is set with Mohammed* brutally killing three Americans in an unidentified barren desert canyon - presumably Iraq or Afghanistan - for reasons that aren't explained.
He is quickly captured, imprisoned, dressed in the infamous orange jump suit, water-boarded and put on a plane with other prisoners to an unidentified snowy and mountainous country. The truck in which he is subsequently being transported crashes and he escapes. The rest of the film then concentrates on his fight for survival.
Mohammed never says a word throughout the film, indeed what little dialogue there is is largely incidental which at first is affecting as it gives you a sense of the alienation of the protagonist without the distraction of other narratives. But the problem is that you end up becoming detached.
Vincent Gallo does an amazing job of conveying the physical and mental anguish and pain of Mohammed but you know little more of him at the end as you do at the beginning.
Essential Killing certainly stays with you afterwards but more because it perplexes. It is a brave approach to the political thriller especially in that it doesn't patronise its audience with details of the conflict and its rights or wrongs but in doing so becomes a film about survival and for that to work you need to be behind the person who is trying to survive. And I'm not sure I was by the end.
It does succeed in igniting a debate on when or even if killing can be essential and for that it gets a round of applause but overall it feels a little too minimalist for its own good.
Since writing this I've taken a look at Rotten Tomatoes to see what sort of response it's getting and it's interesting that critics are generally positive with an average rating of 81% based on 21 reviews but only 45% of visitors to the site have given it a positive rating. I'm giving it 59% because it is trying a different approach but I didn't like it enough to push it over into what would be four star territory.
* I only know that he is called Mohammed because that is what he is listed as on IMDB as far as I remember his name isn't given in the actual film
If you take what Warner Bros spent on broomsticks for Harry Potter 7, slightly more than double it and you have the entire film budget for Gareth Edwards' Monsters. Which when you watch the film is gobsmaking.
A low budget monster flick should by all accounts be cliched, cheesy, amateurish and well a bit dodgy but this one isn't. The story is set six years after samples of alien life were accidentally dumped in northern Mexico and subsequently grew up into fully fledged alien life forms. The area has been quarantined, huges walls built and there is a growing battle to contain them.
Magazine photographer Andrew Caulder is in Mexico trying to get the one shot that will earn him lot of cash. However, he is tasked with getting Samantha, the tourist daughter of his publishing house boss back from Mexico after an incident with an escaped alien leaves her slightly injured.
On paper it appears predictable but there are several things that raise this film above and beyond. First is its reportage style which gives it an edge of realism. OK so the idea of aliens on earth is fantastical but this movie feels like it could be real. Edwards shot everything on location, often without getting permission first, drafting in people that happened to be around to make up the extra characters.
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