Under The Radar: San Sebastian Film Festival: First Report
Posted on Tuesday September 25, 2012, 20:04 by Damon Wise in Under The Radar
 The 60th San Sebastian kicked off on Friday with Arbitrage, a surprising choice for opener since it sees the financial crisis through the eyes of Wall Street banker (Richard Gere) who is involved in a fatal car crash while in negotiations to sell his deeply fraudulent company. Austerity measures are big in San Sebastian this year – the whole Basque region is closing down tomorrow as part of a mass regional protest – but the presence of stars Gere and Susan Sarandon perhaps diverted a bit of attention from the film's somewhat kid-gloves treatment of the rich and immoral. Hollywood types are big round here, and even Oliver Stone's tepid Savages – which barely caused a stir in the US and was dismissed almost entirely in the UK – found a good reception here.
Otherwise, San Sebastian remains an excellent catch-up festival (not to mention a great place to get a steal on the upcoming London Film Festival). Such films included... Continue reading... Comment Now
Back To TopUnder The Radar: TIFF 2012: The Impossible and Song For Marion
Posted on Saturday September 15, 2012, 20:24 by Damon Wise in Under The Radar
 The Impossible was one of two films that, though well received by the public, were subjected to a number of swipes by some of the more heartless critics. Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona, director of the supernatural thriller The Orphanage, it is a spectacular and very direct film that perhaps succeeds too successfully in what it sets out to do, since there are no genre trimmings, next to no action-based subplots or any nuances to “read” into. For me, it worked perfectly, but others complained that there wasn't much to it. Seeing as it tells the story of a very real family of five whose lives where changed forever by the Thailand tsunami of 2004, I thought that was a tad unfair. Another criticism was that the film was in some way “Hollywoodised” and an insult to the local people killed in this tragic event, but, personally, I thought it worked having a very ordinary western family as the focus (the original family seem to have ... Continue reading... Comment Now
Back To TopUnder The Radar: TiFF 2012: Zaytoun, Apres Mai, Underground: The Julian Assange Story, End Of Watch
Posted on Saturday September 15, 2012, 20:10 by Damon Wise in Under The Radar
 Zaytoun (pictured) is a somewhat leftfield next movie for the people behind The King's Speech. One would assume it might be something slightly bigger and starrier, maybe even more American – in short, something like Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close. Instead, they have given us Zaytoun – from the Arabic word for olive – which couldn't be more different. Although it also comes from a very worthy place, Eran Riklis's film goes to the opposite side of the world for this sweet, subtle road movie. Like The King's Speech, it is the story of a very unlikely friendship, this one much explicitly crossing the tracks, so to speak, since the gulf here is so much more than social. My one quarrel with Zaytoun is that, for once, it requires the viewer to do a lot of catching up from the outset. Thankfully there is no voiceover, and neither should there be, but it takes a little while to get a handle on the history of the film's setting. We begin... Continue reading... Comment Now
Back To TopUnder The Radar: TIFF 2012: Genre round-up
Posted on Saturday September 15, 2012, 14:00 by Damon Wise in Under The Radar
 A quick word on the genre titles. TIFF's Midnight Madness strand at the Ryerson theatre – which is a bit of a hike to get back from when it's raining, but worthwhile for the atmosphere – is where Martin McDonagh's Seven Psychopaths premiered and went down a storm. Sadly, some of the other films I saw in this selection didn't really come close. The ultraviolent No One Lives played out like one of the subplots in McDonagh's meta comedy, since it involves serial killers being chased by a serial-killer killer. It reminded me a bit of the Butcher Brothers' FrightFest entry The Thompsons (sequel to The Hamiltons), since it involved a band of outlaws who meet their match, and it was certainly splashy enough to please that film's demographic. The self-consciously “sassy” dialogue drove me a bit nuts however, as it did in the 3D drunken-exorcists horror-comedy Hellbenders, which had a great idea – a kind of defrocked-priest... Continue reading... Comment Now
Back To TopUnder The Radar: TIFF 2012: Silver Linings Playbook, The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, Cloud Atlas, The Place Beyond The Pines
Posted on Thursday September 13, 2012, 15:39 by Damon Wise in Under The Radar
 Excuse the delay, TIFF is an incredibly overwhelming film festival, where so much clashes, it's much harder than it is at the big European festivals to create any kind of meaningful schedule. This means that I saw Silver Linings Playbook at a private screening before most of the US critics, who immediately cleared a space for it on the 2012 awards table. I have to say, it mystified me, and I have no idea what the film's chances are in the UK, since the title is a riff on a very well-known American football term (I kept waiting for an explanation but none came). It's also, like many of the indies on offer here, somewhat rooted in the American culture of self-medication, with characters that owe more to Benny and Joon – not to mention Romy and Michelle – than Harry and Sally. Bradley Cooper stars as Pat Solitano, a former teacher who is released from a mental institute, into the care of his parents, after spending eight months there for the savage beating o... Continue reading... Comment Now (7 comments)
Back To TopUnder The Radar: TIFF 2012: Jason Reitman's Live Reading Of American Beauty
Posted on Monday September 10, 2012, 16:07 by Damon Wise in Under The Radar
 Owen Nicholls reports...After the triumph of Looper and Argo, the first day of the Toronto International Film Festival 2012 finished with a film launched by the Canadian fest nearly a decade and a half ago; American Beauty. Rather than a 3D Conversion in which the plastic bag looks real enough to touch, or another example of a “too soon” Hollywood reboot, this evening's entertainment was the latest “Live Reading” arranged by Jason Reitman. No rehearsals, no cameras, music only used as a header and footer, the night is about the actors, Alan Ball's words and how one of the first steps in the artistic operation works. Once it was announced that American Beauty would be the chosen, film speculation immediately began as to who would play the lead. The first to jump to my mind was Steve Buscemi, simultaneously capable of playing put upon and being different enough from Spacey to not feel like a carbon copy, which is never the ... Continue reading... Comment Now
Back To TopUnder The Radar: TIFF 2012: Argo, Seven Psychopaths
Posted on Saturday September 8, 2012, 19:22 by Damon Wise in Under The Radar
 Ben Affleck makes it three for three with Argo, an extraordinary true story, set in the late 70s, about a plan by the American government to free six diplomatic workers hiding out in Iran after armed, revenge-seeking, Ayatollah-sanctioned revolutionaries stormed the embassy there. Taking another giant stride after The Town, it is a broad but still intimate story that captures an extraordinary time with a lot of credibility; the 70s fashions are unavoidably distracting, but Affleck nevertheless creates an authentic world that always feels fresh and never retro. Once again, he is the lead, this time playing CIA man Tony Mendez, who is brought in after such brilliant ideas as sending in spies with bicycles have been floated and found wanting. Mendez has an even more impractical brainstorm, but this is the best bad idea in a very, very, very bad bunch. Mendez's plan is to arrive in Tehran with a punch of fake passports, pick up the six – who are hiding out at the C... Continue reading... Comment Now (1 comment)
Back To TopUnder The Radar: TIFF 2012: Looper
Posted on Friday September 7, 2012, 17:17 by Damon Wise in Under The Radar
 My TIFF 2012 experience began with a chance encounter at Toronto Pearson airport, when I happened on Emily Blunt, who was waiting for her bags like a real, normal person (which is what she is, coming from the Barnes area, I think). Ms Blunt has two films here, one being Arthur Newman with Colin Firth, which I should be seeing Monday, the other being, of course, the mighty Looper, which I saw in London a few weeks ago. She was especially hyped about the Looper premiere, since it was then being trailed on TV screens by the carousels, and if she had any doubts, I should think they were wiped out by what I'm hearing was a fantastic reception last night. For me, Looper is the sci-fi of the summer, which, accounting for climate change, is a good thing right about now. After the disappointingly wishy-washy Prometheus, which raised more questions about its questions than it ever had answers for, and the Swiss cheese of plotholes that was The Dark Knight Rises, Looper comes a... Continue reading... Comment Now (1 comment)
Back To TopUnder The Radar: Venice 2012: To The Wonder
Posted on Monday September 3, 2012, 13:54 by Damon Wise in Under The Radar
 Terrence Malick's To The Wonder was, after The Master, perhaps the hottest ticket on the Lido this year, but the scenes outside the cinema at yesterday morning's press screening were nothing like the carnage that occurred before the equivalent screening of Tree Of Life last year in Cannes. Perhaps it's because attendances are down this year, maybe it's because Ben Affleck is no Brad Pitt, or it could just be that Tree Of Life was so long in the making that it became almost mythical. Any which way, it just didn't seem that there was the same level of interest in Malick's relatively rapid follow-up. Which was perhaps just as well, since To The Wonder is a very disappointing film that borders on self-parody with its tics and flourishes. I wasn't wild about Tree Of Life, but I did feel that – outside of the dreadful Sean Penn scenes – it had a visual lyricism and a strong narrative angle,... Continue reading... Comment Now (2 comments)
Back To TopUnder The Radar: Venice 2012: The Master
Posted on Saturday September 1, 2012, 12:02 by Damon Wise in Under The Radar
 The Master is one of those films that takes on a life before anyone has seen it, fuelled by rumour and information of the dis- and mis- kind. Before going any further, I feel duty-bound to say that this film is not in any way “about” Scientology or a takedown of L Ron Hubbard and his pseudo-scientific “religion”. If anything, it is a very old-fashioned love story, forged in the style of Nicholas Ray or, at a push, Douglas Sirk, and should perhaps be regarded as a man's picture of the kind lately being made by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Biutiful) or Jacques Audiard (Rust And Bone). Where to start? After There Will Be Blood, this is another outstanding technical achievement from Paul Thomas Anderson, and, visually, the film is near faultless. Some felt it a little long, and it does wobble slightly in the second half, but this felt more controlled than its predecessor, at least to me. If TWBB was about the founding of contemporary America in a ... Continue reading... Comment Now (2 comments)
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