Every now and then, a film comes along which pushes the boundaries of what we have come to expect from the action genre. Back in 2003, Ong Bak played to worldwide acclaim because of the real stunt and martial arts work of Tony Jaa. In 2006, Crank, starring the one and only Jason Statham, upped the pace at which you can hammer your way through an action film and ignore plausibility in favour of ridiculous fun.
This year, we have The Raid: Redemption, an Indonesian action film, directed by a Welshman by the name of Gareth Evans. The basic premise is that a SWAT team have gone into a high-rise building to flush out a drug baron. Think the end scenes of Leon, with more martial arts and a much higher body count and you’re getting there. This promises to be a film for action purists, concentrating on delivering more punches and kicks per scene than you’d ever thought possible.
Cast: Neil Maskell, Martin Compston, and Paul Anderson
Maybe this review should start with the phrase SPOILER ALERT. There you go, alert given, spoilers ahead. But they’re not really spoilers, because Piggy gives you it’s Fight Club-esque clever little twist within the opening monologue. Piggy (Paul Anderson) is Tyler Durden. Piggy is everything that Joe (Martin Compston) is not, although more in terms of ability to kick seven bells out of a man than get Helena Bonham Carter into bed.
Joe is a mild-mannered, quiet and introverted man whose London life is plodding along without really going anywhere. He really likes his brother (Neil Maskell), they get on very well, you could even say they’re best friends. Some local thugs kill his brother and this makes Joe sad. After some time alone being sad and angry with the world, he meets/imagines Piggy and they resolve to kill all of the men who killed his brother. This is about as complicated as it gets.
What ensues is a series of gratuitously violent revenge set-pieces, designed to inspire revulsion in the viewer. And it works, the violence is hard to stomach. What doesn’t work is the lack of a deeper narrative stringing all the beatings together. We get the point that director Keiron Hawkes wants to portray violence in a “realistic” way, and make us react in the same way as if it were happening right in front of us. And there are plenty of films lately that have had the same ethos of not glamorising violence: The Killer Inside Me, Kill List, and Snowtown have all done that. But the difference between those films and Piggy is that they give you something more than the bloodied faces and the crunch of bone.
One saving grace is that Piggy is a fairly well made and put-together film. The cinematography and lighting is pleasing on the eye, emphasising the fact that the world Joe inhabits at night is vastly different from his days. The editing keeps the pace reasonably brisk, and Paul Anderson’s performance as Piggy is suitably unhinged. All good points for a director’s first film, which this is. And, as a Camden borough resident, I did enjoy playing spot-the-location.
However, so violent is Piggy that it could really be classed as a horror film. But it lacks the suspense or menace of the genre, being as it is, about as subtle as a hammer to the head. Which, incidentally, is how one of the victims is partially beaten to death. You keep on thinking that there is going to be a twist somewhere, to prevent it being a straightforward kick-the-shitathon, but alas no. The twist never comes and interest wanes as it all becomes more and more nonsensical.
1 / 5
Piggy is in cinemas from 4th May and available to buy on DVD from 21st May.
It’s a dark and stormy night in 17th century Spain. The wind is howling, a storm smashes it’s way through the night sky and a woman carries a baby wrapped in rags. That child is deposited upon the steps of a monastery inhabited by Capucian Monks, who decide that the child is a blessing and they will take him in and raise him as their own. The child becomes Ambrosio (Vincent Cassell), the most devout Monk and famous preacher in all of Spain, and for his sermons people will travel from miles around.
All sounds fairly straightforward so far doesn’t it? Well, from there on in, the film gets increasingly bizarre, in keeping with the Gothic novel of the same name that it’s based on. Director Dominik Moll, like anyone adapting a book for the screen, has had to strip it down to a narrative that can fit into a film, but he has certainly maintained the essence of madness and religious fervour that dwells within.
When one of the older monks, who is close to death, confides to Ambrosio that the devil is close at hand, we suspect he is talking about the latest addition to the monastery, Valerio. Valerio (Déborah François) wears a scary looking mask, which supposedly hides his hideously burnt face, and can cure Ambrosio’s crippling headaches with only his hands. So, clearly not your regular new recruit then.
Ambrosio must remain pure and devout in the face of temptation, and this is the film’s central theme; whether complete religious devotion is enough to sustain a man. Will Satan tempt Ambrosio onto the wrong side of the tracks, or will our pious protagonist stick with the teachings of the good book?
There are parts of The Monk which are, quite frankly, mad as a barrel of monkeys. Not least the murderous nuns who sentence a girl to death for having accidentally become pregnant. The way in which Ambrosio is healed when he has been bitten by a highly poisonous insect, is… well, let’s just say not available on the NHS. And, from a technical viewpoint, there are several occasions in the film when the editor chooses to fade between scenes with a kind of spotlight fade, which might have been more at home in the sixties television series of Batman.
All of which makes for an unconventional and at times slightly incoherent, but enjoyably bonkers religious thriller. Vincent Cassel puts in a wonderfully brooding and pained performance as Ambrosio, and the atmosphere maintains a suitably Gothic level to suit this tale of the spiritual, the supernatural and the satanic.
Well, the people over at Fizz and Ginger Films certainly know how to make a fun-sounding horror-comedy. The Curse of the Buxom Strumpet is set in 1730′s England, in Upper Trollop, and there are zombies afoot. Period costume drama zombies! The cast is pretty immense for a zombie film too, with Sir Ian McKellen narrating events from the comfort of his study (pictured above), and Gillian Anderson, Mark Williams, and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett all involved too.
Filming has begun, and as far as I can tell, it is potentially to be a 2012 release date. For more information, have a look at the website of the production company Fizz and Ginger Films, who are partly basing The Curse of the Buxom Strumpet on their 2010 short ‘Egad, Zombies!’
I already like this film a lot, based on a synopsis, cast list and a couple of stills alone, so watch this space for more news/trailers/etc as and when.
If a charming animated film is what you’re after, then you could do a lot worse than hunting down a cinema with good enough taste to be showing A Cat in Paris. The eponymous cat is a house-cat by day but assistant to a cat-burglar by night, jumping across Parisian rooftops, exploring (and helping to rob) the French capital from above.
Fans of the Sylvain Chomet school of animation, i.e. masterpieces such as Belleville Rendezvous and The Illusionist, will find an immeasurably pleasing time spent in the cinema surely awaits.
As is often the case, the trailer below does a better job of summarising the film and getting you all excited than these letters loosely strung together into things resembling sentences, so give it a watch.
“Wild” Bill (Charlie Creed-Miles) is a man who wishes to be wild no more. On his release from prison after eight years, all he wants to do is get his things from his Stratford council-flat and leave his old life of crime behind him by moving to Scotland. Problem is, when he gets home, he discovers his two young sons have been left to fend for themselves, and with social services asking questions, he needs to look after them or they’ll end up in a care home. So, Bill faces a dilemma: be a good father, but risk getting mixed up with the wrong crowd again, or make a run for it.
He doesn’t exactly choose to take the good father option entirely of his own accord, but his reintegration into the shattered family unit is at the heart of what is, at times, a very touching parental drama. His youngest son Jimmy (Sammy Williams) has got himself mixed up with the local drug dealers, who are ex-acquaintances of Bill’s, and it is therefore up to him to try and use some of hid old influence to keep his son out of trouble.
If you watch the trailer, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Wild Bill is just a straightforward, British gangsters calling each other ‘slags’, crime-caper in the Layer Cake or Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels vein of things. But alas, while shady types who can’t pronounce their H’s, dealing in illegal substances is a part of the film, it is far more rounded and multi-faceted story, which even has time to ponder what kind of impact the new Olympic site has had on Stratford.
It’s an impressive directorial début from Dexter Fletcher. He’s best known as an actor and most people will recognise him as Soap from the aforementioned Lock Stock. It’s a debut behind the camera which is just as impressive as Attack The Block’s Joe Cornish, another man better known for his efforts in front of the camera (or radio mic) before doffing the directors hat.
The young actor Will Poulter puts in a very strong performance as the elder of the two sons, Dean, forced to leave school early and work on a building site in order to make ends meet and put food on the table for his younger sibling. After eight years of managing without a father, and six months of also coping without a mother, Dean has understandably formed a tough shell around himself, with the sole aim of not letting his brother get put in a care home.
Wild Bill is an incredibly British film, but at the complete opposite end of the social spectrum from something like The Kings Speech. It is part Ken Loach social-realism with a dash of Guy Ritchie and a sprinkling of Eastenders. A fun cameo from Andy Serkis, as a behind-the-scenes crime boss, tops off a compelling ninety-or-so minutes that feels like a very relevant film for contemporary Britain.
No, it’s not the Peter Jackson film that’s in trouble, but a Southampton pub that has gone by the same name as the JRR Tolkien book for the last 20 years. Long before Hollywood had started the ball rolling on the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, The Hobbit in Portswood was a Southampton institution. Now, the Saul Zaentz Company want the owner, Stella Mary Roberts to change the name and re-brand the place entirely at great personal cost, or face legal action.
Now, let me clarify my interest here. I’m not just jumping on a stand up for the little guy bandwagon. I have been found in various states of inebriation in The Hobbit more times than I care to remember, and I know that the same can be said for many people who have lived in Southampton at some point in their lives. My friends and I still go back there whenever we can, because big shiny-balls London, no matter what it does have to offer, does not have The Hobbit.
In a world with far too many uniformly bland chain pubs and bars, The Hobbit is a uniquely weird and wonderful beast. Numerous attempts to give it a facelift have never really worked, and that’s the way we love it. They serve largely terrible pint-cocktails of Lord of The Rings themed drinks such as Legolas and Gandalf. And in case you were wondering, Gandalf is a fizzy blue pint of a cocktail, sweet enough to rot your teeth from ten yards, the individual ingredients of which should never have been combined to make a beverage. But they have, and that’s why we love The Hobbit.
And yes, for a bit of balance in this argument, it could be argued that the pub owners have been playing rather fast and loose with copyright law since The Hobbit first pulled it’s first pint of ale. But at what cost to the JRR Tolkien estate, or those who are now demanding the name change? Is going to a pub called The Hobbit going to make you any less likely to see the film or buy the DVD, or the myriad of other merchandise? If anything, having a drink in The Hobbit is more likely to have the subliminal advertising effect on a person that would help line the undoubtedly threadbare pockets of the Saul Zaentz Company and their affiliates.
Even Stephen Fry, set to appear in the December 2012 film adaptation of The Hobbit has shown his support on Twitter. And everyone knows you should always listen to Stephen Fry.
So, you get the point. This is just a bit of ridiculous litigiousness from a big company trying to stamp it’s authority on a local pub that has been happily going about it’s business with the same name for 20 years. Yes, 20 years: it’s not like the owners saw Elijah Wood and Viggo Mortensen cocking about in Middle Earth at the cinema and then decided to name the pub! We say Save The Hobbit!
Daniel Edelstyn is a British documentary maker who has set out to delve deeper into his ancestral history after discovering a long-lost manuscript in an attic. What he reads there leads him to the Ukraine, and to a vodka distillery owned by his relatives of many generations past. However, it is now a faltering business, and is on the verge of collapse, so while researching his family roots, Daniel also wishes to re-brand the vodka for the British market, and hopefully keep his ancestral legacy alive, while keeping many people in the village of Dubouviazovka in a job. An entertaining and humorous documentary with a personal charm.
How to Re-Establish a Vodka Empire gets a limited release on 19th March
Starring the very talented and endlessly watchable Argentinian actor Ricardo Darin (The Secrets In Their Eyes, Nine Queens), Carancho is a thriller about the black market in false insurance claims following traffic accidents. It all takes place amongst the seedier side of Buenos Aires, with road injuries aplenty and Darin’s character Sosa out to make a fast buck from those involved in a crash, as a con-artist lawyer wanting to fleece accident victims. Needless to say, the lengths that Sosa will go to are a little bit more inventive than a text message that says “you have £3000 in unclaimed damages waiting for you: please call this number”.
Artist Brandon Bird has been selling the Nicolas Cage Adventure Set on his website www.brandonbird.com for a year or more now, but I have only recently discovered it. And I want one! It’s a Nicolas Cage Adventure Set, just think of all the sticker-based fun you can have with him!
There are two backgrounds on which you can place your re-usable vinyl stickers of the man who invented his own style of acting and called it “nouveau shamanic”. (this is entirely true, and should you need proof it can be found in this here interview) Add to that, three different Cage outfits and a selection of accessories, and there is literally* no limit to the fun you can have
