'Sightseers', 'Amour': review round-up, plus Special Ben Wheatley Interview Podcast!

Quick update with a couple of short reviews, but first I wanted to flag up the fact that the latest Splendor Cinema podcast is an interview with 'Sightseers' and 'Kill List' director Ben Wheatley. iTunes subscribers can get that now, whilst it will take a few days before it's uploaded to sound cloud (and streamable from this blog).

The interview was recorded during a Q+A I conducted with Wheatley following a rare screening of his debut feature 'Down Terrace' at Brighton's new cinema Duke's @ Komedia. It was the first such event hosted at the new venue and I was honoured to be able to host it. During the Q+A, the director talks about all three of his already released features as well as next year's 'A Field in England' and a few others besides.

Anyway. Reviews.

'Sightseers' - Dir. Ben Wheatley (15)
The pitch-black humour of this British comedy - about a resolutely ordinary, working-class couple on a caravanning holiday around Yorkshire who become serial killers - will come as no surprise to those familiar with the directors other films. 'Sightseers' finds Wheatley's by now traditional mix of the mundane and the ultra-violent, all with a low-key, sardonic sensibility. It's a film in which people's heads are staved in with visceral, cover-your-eyes detail only for the perpetrators to bemoan that their ghastly crime has "ruined the tram museum" for them now. Other gems in a smart and quotable screenplay include "he's a pig in clothes, Chris" and "he's not a human being, he's a Daily Mail reader"! It's a terrifically funny hour and a half that should build a lasting following over the years to come, in no small part due to the performances of co-writers Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, who create a memorable screen duo.

Like the two Ben Wheatley films that preceded it, 'Sightseers' could appear cold, cynical and nihilistic to some. However, the unease the director makes you feel at each killing, quickly making you question each knee-jerk laugh, shows to my mind a sort of humanism that elevates the material even further. The characters themselves maybe glib about killing and dismissive of their victims, but Wheatley's handling of each act is certain to have you torn awkwardly between horror and laughter - with no act of violence seeming to lack consequence (on friends and loved ones, if not the happy murderers).

'Amour' - Dir. Michael Haneke (12A)
Michael Haneke's previous Palme d'Or winning film film, 'The White Ribbon', was one of my favourites of that year. And though his follow-up also snagged that prestigious prize, 'Amour' is not in the same weight class - either in the way it's been made or in terms of narrative. It's a smaller film with a more intimate feel and a subject matter that - whilst huge in that it deeply effects each and every one of us - feels much more personal. As such the movie is fittingly filmed around one location - several rooms of a nice Parisian apartment - and features only a half-dozen actors, focussing for the most part around only two: an elderly couple hauntingly played by Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva.

It's an accomplished film, perhaps slightly over long, but boasting terrific lead performances and painting a very complex and non-judgemental picture of both a terminally ill woman wishing to die and her distraught, occasionally rash husband - who, in one tough scene, is driven so angry by her refusal to take food that he strikes her frail and immobile body. Yet this is overall a story about love, or rather which seems to redefine love or at least view it through a different lens. It's the final days of a couple who, it seems safe to assume, have lead happy and successful lives together, and yet we focus on a man caring for his sick wife and dealing with uncaring nurses and unwanted visitors (including the couple's demanding daughter, played by Isabelle Huppert). Haneke seems to be saying this is what love is, that everything else is perhaps the build up to this the greatest test of affection and, in a sense, romance.

It's a film called love in which, at least as far as I can recall, nobody says "I love you" or shows anything like passion. But 'Amour' is unmistakably a love story. Even if it's a troubling and depressing one without a solitary shred of hope! A terrific film, and an important one, but the scope and technical prowess of Haneke's previous instant classic (perhaps unfairly) casts an inescapable shadow over this more modest endeavour.

General chatter...

Aside from the previously reviewed 'Kill List' and 'Attenberg', I've not yet seen any of this week's theatrical releases, which include the poorly received 'Apollo 18' and the only slightly less shat-upon remake of 'Fright Night', so in lieu of any new movies to opine upon I just thought I'd post links to what I've published so far this week.

I've had another DVD review in The Daily Telegraph, this time casting my eye upon Denzel Washington's 'The Great Debaters' and yesterday saw me looking over the new Blu-ray release of Sergio Leone's seminal 'Once Upon a Time in the West' for What Culture.

At the moment I'm writing up transcriptions of my interviews with people from last week's IFA technology show in Berlin, and there's a two-month old interview with 'Warrior' actors Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton that needs to be readied soon for that film's release later this month. There are also articles about two of my great childhood loves, 'Star Wars' and 'Jurassic Park', to coincide with the upcoming Blu-ray releases.

Finally, I hosted a Q+A with 'Kill List' director Ben Wheatley and the film's DP Laurie Rose at the Duke of York's Picturehouse on Sunday night. It was a good turnout (just under 200 people) and a lot of them stayed at the end to ask their questions. They were a pleasure to interview and the whole thing was so relaxed (Ben is especially down to Earth and unflappable) that any stage fright I had quickly subsided once it was underway. The director's refusal to explain the film's ending frustrated some audience members, but there was still a lot of interesting stuff. For more of Mr. Wheatley, check out one of the most recent Splendor Cinema Podcasts where the director joined Jon and I to discuss everything from the rubbish marketing for his first movie 'Down Terrace' to our shared disbelief at the cheapness of 'The Planet of the Apes' Blu-ray box set.

'Kill List' Podcast with Ben Wheatley

'Kill List' and 'Down Terrace' director Ben Wheatley came into the projection booth of the Duke of York's yesterday to chat with Jon and I on the latest Splendor Cinema Podcast. Our 64th episode sees us talk to Brighton-based filmmaker about his upcoming horror film, before drifting off into random chatter about 'Planet of the Apes' on Blu-ray.

That podcast is available now to subscribers on iTunes, whilst it'll also soon be available in the embedded player on this blog's podcast page. My review of 'Kill List', which is released next Friday (September 2nd), will be up at What Culture some time in the week.

Also, on an unrelated note, I've just published a huge "top 30 games" feature on What Culture about the lovely SEGA Dreamcast. The near 10,000 word beast of an article can be read here.

'Down Terrace' review:

"Never judge a book by its cover" goes the saying - and it's equally true of DVDs. The UK release of Ben Wheatley's Brighton set debut feature 'Down Terrace' has a ghastly front cover: an old geezer in a sharp suit looking like he wants to nut you, with the film's title styled as a Union Jack. There is an obligatory "best British gangster film in years" quote from BBC Radio Five and the dreadful, hooligan-bating tagline "it's about to kick off". Yet, as you might infer from the way I began this review, this is not a fair representation of the sort of film 'Down Terrace' is: a smart, well observed and subtle family drama with a dash of crime to up the ante.

'Down Terrace' is, at its core, the story of a tired minor crime boss, Bill, and his browbeaten, manchild son Karl - played to great effect by real-life father and son Robert and Robin Hill - a bickering, hate-filled pair who resemble a modern take on 'Steptoe and Son'. Karl has recently been released from prison to find that his girlfriend (Kerry Peacock) is pregnant, to the disgust of his father and the family's worn down matriarch Maggie (Julia Deakin). A crime plot, involving a series of murders, misunderstandings and a few twists, gets underway as Bill and Karl come to suspect a rat in their midst, but this is really about the twisted, abusive relationship between Karl and his parents.



If you have to liken it to another gangster movie, it belongs in the company of moody Australian ensemble drama 'Animal Kingdom' rather than 'Lock, Stock', for many reasons (some of which come with spoilers attached). Though, with its naturalistic performances and dry wit, 'Down Terrace' is a closer cousin to Mike Leigh than anything else. It's a low-key British kind of humour that wins the day, preoccupied with mundane concerns and peppered with gentle stray observations. For instance, at the height of the drama Bill tells Karl that - were it not for the recent murders - he could have finished painting the breakfast room by now. One pivotal blackly comic scene sees the 35 year old son screaming "mum!" at the top of his voice because he can't find something in his cluttered bedroom.

Despite the Brighton setting, Wheatley resists indulging in the now cliche iconography of the city, such as the Pavilion and Palace Pier. There is one reference to "trouble in Whitehawk" that will make natives chuckle and a scene on the Sussex Downs, but on the whole the fact that it's set in the area provides character and nuance without being tacky or fetishistic (unlike some bigger productions). The whole thing speaks of great discipline and the director makes the best of film's low production budget by focusing on the claustrophobic interior of the family home and a small group of authentic seeming actors.



For those enticed to the DVD by enthusiastic pull quotes about its Brit gangster movie credentials: there are a few scenes of brutal, bloody violence and several foul-mouthed conversations about the importance of "family". But 'Down Terrace' is much more concerned with character and relationships. It's sinister, damn funny and, as it reaches its climax, even a little moving.

'Down Terrace' was released in 2010 and is now available on DVD. Ben Wheatley's new film, 'Kill List', is in cinemas from September 2nd.