One Day Removals

Hands up who’s ever watched a Doric film? … noone? …Hands up who knows what Doric is?

Linguistically impenetrable for anyone born outside the North East of Scotland, One Day Removals should be shelved in the foreign cinema section of the video store. This is a comedy in the French farce tradition of face-palm misunderstandings  and wince-inducing slapstick acted out by real-life doric speakers. It’s good… It’s not great.

ODR suffers from a lack of budget. There’s an amateurish feel to it all and no matter how nostalgic I get for my home (I am from the area it’s set) I can’t see past that. The editing is stilted at times, it looks like it was shot with a camera you’d find in Dixons and there is little to no colour correction. I understand that these things are often not essential and can lend a film a certain rough and readyness, however given the classical formula followed by the script, it is shouting out for a polished veneer rather than a rustic finish.

So it wasn’t produced by a top Hollywood studio and visually it doesn’t take your breath away (a better DOP could’ve really brought the best out of the beautiful Scottish landscape) but the performances cannot be faulted. The two leads grab you by the balls and keep you within their grasp all the way through. There’s a genuine typically north-eastern sardonic ennui that seeps through the character’s wind-blasted skin. It’s a trait that’s hard to describe to anyone from outside the area but watch this film and you’ll get some idea.

Pitch: Diner de cons meets Scotland the What?

Award: Best Doric film. (ok, it’s the only Doric film, but still)

The Queen dir. Stephen Frears (2006)

I certainly don’t remember the Queen being quite so attractive back in 1997, nor Tony Blair so charming. Not to worry though, The Queen is more TV movie schmaltz than accurate depiction and such things are of little importance. Schmaltz is perhaps too strong a word… or not, considering the sickeningly over the top floral furore at the centre of this film. Diana’s death was a tragedy, yes, but ultimately a complete circus blown way out of proportion. Yet instead of being reminded of this fact, it is presented as a valid reason for mass hysteria. Real life footage mixed with intimate royal reaction really hammers home how everyone in the whole country was affected by her death. What I didn’t understand, and where this film fails, is where it stands on the issue at the heart of the event. Most people would agree that public reaction and media coverage surrounding that accident in Paris verged on the farcical. Maybe this is just a case of retrospective cynicism, but it did represent a significant shift in the relationship between the British public and the sovereign, as well as kickstarting the 24 hour celebrity-centric news trends we experience today. Frears steers clear of offering a bias in the discussion and for this reason The Queen shall remain a well acted but ultimately hollow affair.

The Lovely Bones (2009) dir. Peter Jackson

I’ve regrettably been living in relative ignorance of current cinema of late. Not been swotting up on new releases or reading any hype about upcoming projects. A post-LOTR Peter Jackson film I’m guessing stirred up quite a lot of anticipation. Especially given that The Lovely Bones contains no goblins, zombies or any of the other made-up creatures that have littered his films to date. So how does Jackson handle real characters? Well, in a word… terribly.

What started off fairly promisingly, as the characters were introduced with an engaging, if a tad cheesy voice-over and the premise was laid out, soon turned into a borefest the likes of which I haven’t endured since… em…well probably the last Peter Jackson film I saw.

As an Adobe After Effects showreel this film is an absolute triumph. Some of the heavenly sequences are a visual delight and if I had to say one positive thing about this film it would be that with them Jackson shows an imaginative and novel approach to using CGI that is not your standard impact action pieces. Special effects are used here in a more human and emotive way than we are perhaps used to. This is a good thing. What definitely isn’t good is the rest of the film.

An ever-brilliant Susan Sarandon and the odd moment of well paced suspense almost come close to saving the film but there really is very little to get excited about with The Lovely Bones. Even the title is awful. I still don’t know what it’s supposed to mean. A decent enough murder plot that is made numbingly boring by the constant insertion of contrived other-wordliness, this is utter fluff masquerading as profundity.

The sad thing is, I’m sure The Lovely Bones will win awards and gain the holy grail “critical acclaim” purely because it’s Peter Jackson attempting a bit of a thinker.

Pitch: Steven Spielberg trying to be Ingmar Bergman

Award: The ‘I’m sure your actually dead inside’ award for hollow acting goes to Mark Wahlberg.

Invictus. dir. Clint Eastwood (2009)

Bad accents in films are something of a pet hate of mine. I cannot help but think that for the amount of money top actors are paid to ply their trade a minimum requirement should be total credibility in their voices. The slightest wayward inflection or overly accentuated vowel is sometimes enough to ruin an entire film for me.  Whilst not quite spot on, the accents in Invictus weren’t as bad as I had feared. Morgan Freeman, instead of going Mandela at full-tilt which could have ended dangerously close to parody, affects just about enough of the great man’s stilted intonation and fragile mannerisms to keep his performance believable yet restrained. Matt Damon too does his reputation no real damage with his imitation of Francois Pienaar.

For audiences in rugby playing countries the end of Invictus will of course come as no surprise. But, in choosing this politically charged story of triumph over adversity Clint Eastwood may just have made a cinematic master-stroke. He has found one of history’s most powerful sports fairytales and, perhaps most importantly for the film’s success, one that American audiences won’t be entirely familiar with.  Historical backdrop aside, this is at the end of the day, a good old sports movie… the underdog, the big baddy (Jonah Lomu), inspirational team talks, training montages… Invictus ticks all the boxes and ticks them well. The rugby action is realistic and well filmed and the Springbok’s progression through the tournament is shown at a pace that exactly suits the film’s various sub-plots… a key detail in any good sports movie.*

At times this feels like a rose-tinted 2hr speech on racial equality punctuated by rugby matches and for this reason it is certainly no Ghandi. But, it is clearly not trying to be a legendary biopic. It is funny and sentimental, almost schmaltzy, rather than powerful or emotionally poignant

** All sports clichés definitely intended

Pitch: Malcolm X meets The Mighty Ducks

Award: The ‘I’m sure at some point there’s gonna be a slo-mo shot of a white hand and a black hand coming together in a moment of racial unity’ award for predictability.

Kenny. dir. Clayton Jacobson. (2006)

This Australian mockumentary about the life of a Port-a-loo company manager is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. The unsanitary subject matter alone is enough to put any sane person off. Even if you can stomach that, there is the lack of any flamboyant characters or over-the-top ‘turn it up to 11′ punchlines to contend with. We are never explicitly told when it’s ok to laugh, the humour here is subtle and the characters nuanced rather than in-your-face… Sounds awful so far right?

Well, I was surprised to discover that it is quite simply a terrific heart-warming and hilarious comedy. The only fault I could possibly pick out would be that, although both enjoyable, the 2nd half is noticeably better than the 1st.  The main reason this film succeeds is the fact that the principal character is possibly the nicest persona  ever put on-screen. He’s just a plain old lovely guy, albeit with a cracking turn of phrase, who at every juncture has your full attention and sympathy. When he gets insulted you feel bad but when things go right for him you cannot help but smile. I defy anyone to not like Kenny the toilet guy.

A lot of mockumentaries rely on conflict and awkward situations as their main source of humour but Kenny is different. The sheer likeability of the character’s personality turns simple throw-away lines and gestures into belly laugh moments and although there are scenes which you might describe as approaching classic spoof-doc territory, it never feels contrived. The most human and down-to-earth film I have seen in a long time.

Pitch: Best In Show times Trailer Park Boys to the power of Australian.

Award: The award for best use of out-dated slang goes to Kenny’s dad with: “I’m not a ding-a-ling”

La Haine. dir. Mathieu Kassovitz (1995)

Never has the value of good subtitling been more apparent than in the most recent version of La Haine. Hands down the best French film of the 90s, its initial English-subtitled release unfortunately suffered from terrible translation which may have lifted the language barrier but put in its place cheesy approximations and poorly sourced cultural equivalents. Thanks to the revised 2007 translation this disservice to the fantastic dialogue of the original can now be forgotten and English-speaking audiences are offered an experience of the film that is much ,much closer to its source.

The social realism of La Haine has been highly documented, even to the extent of it gaining a screening for Government officials looking at ways to tackle inner-city crime, and it is true that you really feel as if you’re getting a slice of life in the deprived areas of mid-90s Paris. Shot on location using a mixture of actors and real people and with pertinent ‘social’ subject matters relating to race, crime, unemployment and poverty… all the indicators lean towards the gritty. However, to describe La Haine as ‘gritty realism’ (yuk!) is misleading. From the opening montage, to the clever mirror scene (a gallic reference to Taxi Driver) and the expertly paced closing sequence, this is very much a stylised take on cinéma vérité, full of visual flair to accompany the volatility of the action. Add to that a soundtrack that’s as fresh today as the day it came out and a unique, at times surreal, sense of humour and you’ve got a film that will never lose its impact.

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Pitch: An infinitely better version of urban films like Kidulthood, Boyz in the Hood and Menace II Society with added Lacoste shellsuits.

Award: The age defiance award goes to Vincent Cassel (30) who plays a chav half his age. Also, the award for best post-shit speech by a short Jewish O.A.P.

The Invention of Lying. dir. Ricky Gervais, Matthew Robinson (2009)

I’m not entirely sure how to categorise this kind of film. I’m gonna go for the ‘what if Rom-Com’. i.e. A standard romantic comedy set in an alternate world. The premise revolves round the question ‘what if the world was like this?’ whilst it simultaneously follows the traditional Rom-Com pattern and this is the second of its kind to feature Ricky Gervais (after Ghost Town).

So this is what the world would be like if people couldn’t lie? Well, the pedant inside me wanted to sit and pick apart all the holes in the film’s logic but unfortunately the funny lines kept putting me off my train of thought. The mixture of comedy and Philosophy is definitely what this film has got going for it because despite the sickeningly predictable plot, there are enough good gags based around the concept to save it from mediocrity. The scene in which Gervais’ character introduces the concept of God to an infinitely gullible public is a standout skit of multi-layered genius and is worth the price of admission alone, being both a complete farce and a valid moral discussion. In fact, if the film followed that path instead of verging off into saccharine side-roads this would have been a classic.

Pitch: The Truman Show meets Pleasantville meets any Matthew Mcconaughey or Jennifer Aniston vehicle

Award: Wins the Golden Shoehorn for most philosophical romantic comedy of last year.