Joan Rivers - a Piece of Work

This film is absolutely hilarious!

An important and timely film about war in the 21st century. By John Pilger

Watch “Just Do It” in UK cinemas now.

Sound it Out - by Jeanie Finlay

This is a gem of a documentary, gently exploring the weird and wonderful characters in Stockton who visit Tom’s record shop - the last of its kind in the Teesside region. It’s beautifully shot, artfully edited, and laced with a superb cast of unique and charming characters. I laughed, I cried, and I felt uneasy about my recent plan to sell my record collection. After seeing “Sound it Out”, I’m not sure if I’ll add an instruction to my will to have my vinyl melted down and turned into a coffin (like one of the film’s characters plans to do), but I’ll certainly hold onto the bulk of my precious vinyl discs. This is a great film for music lovers who grew up with vinyl and also for the new generation of youth who have never even held (or heard) an analog music recording.

I only managed to see one film in Cannes this year, but I’m very pleased with the 8:30am invitation I managed to secure. Kaurismäki’s latest film is set in a simple French port town where our unlikely hero earns a meager living shining shoes. As soon his devoted wife falls ill and is hospitalised, the ageing shoe-shiner finds himself helping a young African refugee hide from the police. The film is full of laughs and has an unmistakeable Kaurismäki mise-en-scene that turns the sleepy port into a painterly colorful stage for a surreal array of antics and mischief. “Le Havre” is a truly delightful film - I would happily watch it over and over.

To Be a Nation Again - by Ben Kempas

A classic documentary about the rise (and fall) of the Scottish National Party in the run-up to the first Scottish Parliament elections in 1999. Director Ben Kempas gets fascinatingly close to the movers and shakers in the election race and reflects their ambitions and arguments off opinions of common people all over Scotland. We see how the SNP attempts to beat Labour by presenting the election as a fight between rule from Scotland (SNP) and rule from London (Labour). The parties are pretty much neck and neck for a while, but the SNP ultimately loses favour. The film raises some interesting questions - and we are left with the feeling that SNP’s insistence on completely separating Scotland from the United Kingdom ends up causing their downfall.

This is a great political documentary and timely viewing around this week’s Scottish elections!

Herzog gets unprecedented access to the Chauvet caves in France - home to the world’s oldest paintings. He muses over the meaning of these 32,000 year-old images of animals and over the people who study them. It’s a classic Herzog documentary, perfectly blending absolute fascination and respect with his unmistakable humour. Incredible viewing, and probably even more amazing in 3D (unfortunately I saw the 2D version). The film reaches its peak when we (humanity) are compared to albino crocodiles living in radioactive waters a few kilometers from the cave.

Believe the hype. Despite my high hopes, this film was (as I was warned) absolutely awful. While the film does feature some fairly impressive and unique visual experiences, by about halfway through the film they are so over-used that Noe is unwittingly parodying himself. The king of shock manages to turn what could otherwise be shocking into complete ennui. Everyone in the cinema was laughing at the ridiculousness of the repetitions and meaningless colours. And to top it all off, you spend about 2/3 of the film staring at the back of the lead actor’s head listening to his insipid voice. God awful.

Scott Pilgrim may just be the coolest - and simultaneously the nerdiest - film of the year. Acclaimed director of Shaun of the Dead (among others), Edgar Wright, demonstrates a real flare and sensibility for the comic book film genre. Anyone who has grown up in the video game generation will be immediately drawn into its kitsch and flashy visual and aural references to the Nintendo era, and the superb use of split-screen and visualised sound effects blend in nicely to create a fantastic mash of comics, video games and punk rock. The film suffers slightly with its confused sense of time and place (i.e. is it set now or 20 years ago?), but this inconsistency is forgiven immediately as the story and humour draw us in to an unlikely superhero nerd fighting his new girlfriend’s 7 evil exes to the death (or really a pile of coins, à la Super Mario). Even those who aren’t comic-nerds or gamers will enjoy the film and the violence is over-the-top enough to make it completely entertaining and refreshing.

If you’re a cel-animator in Hollywood, you should probably get out of town, since they seem hell-bent on churning out a pile of 3D computer-animated films each year. This one was a bit more original than most Hollywood kids’ movies, though it’s no Pixar film. It is entertaining enough and the animation has a bit of character. It’s fairly cheesy (both in content and precipitation), but it is sufficiently entertaining, with a Mr. T-like cop as a highlight.