ANGER

BEGETS
G R E AT E R

ANGER.
 Three Billboards
Outside Ebbing,
Missouri
Directed by
MARTIN MCDONAGH
Starring
FRANCES MCDORMAND, WOODY HARRELSON, SAM ROCKWELL
Released
12 JANUARY, 2018

ry to define grief and you’ll likely end up tongue tied angry gratification. And these emotions aren’t projected through

T and trounced. Just as that big, unfinishable Sudoku

brainteaser we call mortality is something you’ll
never quite master, grief too can be a bitch to unpack
and understand. It can give rise to ideas and schemes
that defy all sensible rationale. Mildred Hayes is hurting hard as a
result of the premature death of her daughter Angela. Let’s not beat
around the bush: it was bloody murder, the kind that any mother
worth her salt can not and will not forget in a hurry.
We meet Mildred at a moment of divine inner revelation, when
her grief takes on a darker, more corrosively acidic form. As played
by the great Frances McDormand (who is even greater than that
informal prefix may have prepared us for), Mildred is a wadded
mass of contradictions who is magnetised towards a course of
violent direct action. The first time we see her face up close, in
the midst of a single second she rides the gamut of emotions from
workaday desperation, momentary disorientation and, finally,
painted, well-worked expressions, but entirely in the eyes and the
most minute-but-meaningful lived-in facial contortions. At this
point in her life, God is no friend of Mildred Hayes, but through
this moment of sublime clarity, one she experiences while driving
her puttering, wood-panelled family saloon down an unused
byway, she still believes there might just be somebody up there
keeping the lights on.
As much as it looks like it on the surface, Martin McDonagh’s third
feature, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, is no simple
revenge yarn. The film is about a woman who decides to light a
firework up the ass of a man she feels has done her wrong, yet in
truth, the film is less about retribution and more about why we do
it. What does it take to tip a person over the edge to potentially
sabotage their own wellbeing for the sake of some destructive
greater cause? In that moment, Mildred makes a decision, and
she knows that to carry it out would involve ignoring a set of

06 LEAD REVIEW
LEAD REVIEW 07
 “MILDRED IS
PAINTED AS A
FEMALE AVENGER,
STYLED AFTER THE
FAMOUS ‘WE CAN
DO IT!’ AMERICAN
WARTIME
PROPAGANDA
POSTER.”

08 LEAD REVIEW
wider consequences. She knows that people will be offended by
her brash actions. She knows that it will unlikely have the desired
effect. She knows that she will no longer be a figure of pity, but of
hatred and derision. She will drive her family and friends away, all
for the cause. But, hey, what the hell, right?
Per the title, Mildred decides, on what appears to be a whim, to
resurrect three musty advertising billboards sat out in the boonies
of the hokey fictional burg of Ebbing, Missouri. With chunky black
type on a blood red background – much like the title cards of some
French movie from the 1990s promising hard sexual violence – she
poses a question about her dead daughter. The police report from
seven months back claimed she was “raped while dying”, and such
being the case, why hasn’t Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson,
in “career best” mode) gotten off his rumpled keister to catch the
killer? It’s a poser that festers in the minds of the polite townsfolk,
but Mildred decides to splay it onto the landscape as both a
monument to her fallen kin and a battle cry against those who
refuse to dedicate every waking second to the pursuit of justice.
What’s great about this film is it’s absolutely nothing like you
expect it to be. The early trailers give very little away, hinting
at a broad comic tone but delicately swerving the philosophical
meat of the matter. McDonagh’s writing toys with archetypes but
sends everything and everyone in the wrong direction. Mildred
is painted as a female avenger, physically styled after the famous
“We Can Do It!” American wartime propaganda poster that was
latterly co-opted as an icon of modern, can-do feminism. Yet she
is no mere emblem, and her reasoning, while often extremely
entertaining, often overlooks the deeper nuances of human
compassion. She’s still canny enough not to bring a knife to a
gunfight, trading body blows – literal and figurative – with anyone
prepared to step up. But she’s developed a way of working out how
to hit people in the places where it really hurts.
In the mix, too, is Willoughby’s mamma’s boy protegé Officer Jason
Dixon (Sam Rockwell), who the local constabulary paint as an
essentially “good man” despite his predilection for torturing black
suspects. His defence is that he’s happy to torture folks of all creeds
and colours. He’s certainly wild, but he doesn’t appear to take any joy
in busting the skulls of irritant locals. While sat at his desk, usually
shotgunning cookies and flipping through the funny pages, he can
see one rat bastard up through the window – young Red (Caleb
Landry Jones), snap-talking honcho of the Ebbing Advertising
Company whose willingness to play by the rules of capitalism also
enables Mildred’s public tirade. Rockwell’s immaculately judged,
tragi-comic turn brings together self-determination and self-
loathing. One moment he’s receiving an orgasmic thrill from the
freedom afforded to him by a badge and a gun, the next he’s a broken
man, fully aware of his unstable present and grim future.
LEAD REVIEW 09
 The script lashes down twist after twist, but McDonagh’s
structuring finesse means that it never feels as if he’s just
switching things up for the sake of it. In Three Billboards,
plot twists are equated with the mysteries of human impulse,
accounting for the fact that a person’s life can change in an
instant and it doesn’t have to feel like a clever-clever writer
casually nudging chess pieces around a board. The film works
because McDonagh never judges his characters or their
motives. He never hints at who’s right and who’s wrong. Indeed,
the very idea of there being a binary solution to any social
situation is sheer madness. In this sense, the film feels like a
drolly amusing riff on David Fincher’s 2007 classic, Zodiac,
itself about the folly of searching for finite truth. It also brings
to mind a Coen brothers movie, but maybe not the one you’re
thinking. Mildred bears little in resemblance to Fargo’s happy-
go-lucky cop, Marge Gunderson, in 1997’s Fargo, but the film
does recall works like Miller’s Crossing or The Man Who Wasn’t
There – both head-spinning narrative contraptions built on a
deep foundation of melancholy.
It’s a story that’s jerry-rigged to perfection, but it never feels
contrived or overly desperate to make a single big statement.
Mildred’s billboards act as a totem for a lost daughter and a quest with
no discernible end point. The tone skirts between splenetic farce
010 LEAD REVIEW
and a deeply soulful lament to the pains of memory. The dialogue
is tart and tasty, but McDonagh refused to allow things to stray too
far into the realms of the theatrical. Though the orbiting players
are vital cogs in this ruthlessly efficient machine, McDormand is
the crude oil that keeps things purring. It’s something of a cliché to
even say it, but she has the ability to make you laugh and to make you
cry. She makes you love Mildred and makes you loathe her too. She
makes you understand her and disapprove of her. There is nothing
easy in this life, and there are no answers to be had, so at the end
of the day, you’ve just got to make your move and be done with it.
She embodies the idea that a flawed human can still be deserving
of love. DAVID JENKINS
ANTICIPATION.
McDonaugh’s previous film, Seven Psychopaths,
was a volatile hoot, but was unloved by many.
ENJOYMENT.
The rumours are true – this is an absolute joy.
IN RETROSPECT.
Give all the awards to McDormand, and then invent
a bunch of new ones for her too.
 THE THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI ISSUE

FEATURE CONTENTS
24 – 32

14 – 18 GOOD COP / BAD COP

MASTERS OF WAR
A conversation with Three
Billboards director Martin
McDonagh on getting the best
from his leading lady, Frances
McDormand.
20 – 23
Our definitive line-up of cinema’s
most angelic and devilish screen
law enforcers.
34 – 37
WOMAN BLUE
A short history of the most potty-
mouthed dames that Hollywood

BLUE FLAMER:
ever saw.

A SAM ROCKWELL
CONFESSIONAL
The beloved character actor offers
his first-person testimony on how
best to play a member of the police.
40 – 41
THREADS # 4
Christina Newland explores the
world of female headscarves in
her regular column on clothes
and movies.
 ILLUSTRATION BY ORIANE DUFORT & LAURÈNE BOGLIO
page, or a line of dialogue. Once you’ve started with someone
who is strong and provocative, every next scene they’re in
becomes about how other people react to that. So, if a priest
comes into the room, what’s that going to be like? Or if she
goes to the dentist, what happens there? I really didn’t know
what she was going to do from scene to scene. I didn’t plot
anything out. I’m not sure if there really is a structure to the
film. It feels like the characters just react to each other and
that creates the next scene. It’s like a photo of something
taken in between two violent events... perhaps.
And Frances... you wrote the script with her in mind?
Yeah. It had to be someone who was a number of things:
an intelligent actor who wasn’t going to sentimentalise the
part or make it Hollywood – because Fran’s never been that
– but also she’s a working-class character and I didn’t want
to patronise that. She’s a working-class woman from quite a
working-class background, so it was very important to the
two of us that we wouldn’t lay it on thick about that stuff.
What did Frances bring to the role?
It’s more about what she didn’t bring. Sentimentality is one of
the first things that an actor will want to add. Like, having the
scene and showing a tenderness out of a desire to be likeable.
To show that maybe she’s not a hardass the whole time, that
she’s a loving mother really and this is all about grief and pain.
But we said that whatever happened in the year between the
death of the daughter and when we meet Mildred – which
we thought was probably depression, not getting out of bed,
all the stuff that can come about as a result of intense grief
– we wouldn’t touch on that because the story we wanted
to tell is about the billboards and the anger and the war that
she unleashes. It’s war without tenderness. We didn’t want
to show the motherly side, we didn’t want her going to war
each day and then when she’s back with her son it’s all lovey-
dovey. I guess that’s part of what Fran brought to it – maybe
Mildred always was a bit of a cow. She’s not necessarily a bad
mother, but she’s a mother who fights, argues and is tough.
But then maybe she wasn’t always this way...
When you understand where that toughness comes from, it’s
almost out of necessity.
Exactly. And with Fran there’s an intelligence – just basic
smart choices. The costume was all her idea. The bandana,
the whole outfit, is like a uniform. She gets up, puts it on
and goes to war every morning. And she never changes, even
when she goes on a date. I thought that maybe it could be
kind of sweet if it’s the one time she doesn’t wear it, but Fran
said, ‘No, it’s war,’ and I’m glad she did because it’s kind of
funny that way. Also, there’s a lot of humour in the script, but
she never plays anything for laughs. She knows it’s funny and
I know it’s funny, but there’s never a wink to the audience.
Everything she does is deadpan. I think some of the other
characters are a bit more on the funny side, but nothing
017
 “I THINK A LOT OF THE
JOY OF IT FOR FRANCES
WAS BEING ABLE TO
DO SOMETHING THAT
ACTRESSES JUST AREN’T
ALLOWED TO DO.”
about her plays up to the comedy. The most important thing
between us was to always remember what happened to the
daughter, and even in the edit I had to remember it was a film
about that rather than a quirky black comedy. Weirdly, the
laughs almost work better that way because they’re born out
of such honesty and tragedy.
Some of the encounters she has with the townsfolk are great.
How comfortable was Frances with some of those scenes?
She loved kicking those kids! She couldn’t get enough of
it. I think a lot of the joy of it for Fran was being able to do
something that actresses just aren’t allowed to do. In terms
of kicking children, getting to do a one-page speech taking
apart a priest, and, you know, the dentist thing, she was very
joyful on those days I think. With the kids especially. The stunt
guys put rubberised pads on the actors, but it’s still getting
quite close to the old dodgy areas – but she never held back.
There are some real emotional moments too. How much do
you need to direct an actor like Frances in those moments?
It’s all on the page in terms of dialogue, but the deer scene, for
instance, or the scene on the phone near the end, were the
moments where I felt she’s allowed to be more emotional than
anywhere else in the film. I thought there could even be tears
in those scenes, but Fran was quite adamant that even at those
points she couldn’t, or wouldn’t break down. At the time I was
thinking that I’d rather have both options, but she was pretty
determined that tears weren’t part of it. In retrospect I think
it’s perfect the way it is.
It’s in the eyes...
You know, I haven’t made that many films, and you can forget
that with good actors there’s something in the eyes. You
might not see it on the day, but when you look back at the
rushes afterwards, it’s there, the camera gets it. With good
actors the camera catches it – it catches something you
don’t necessarily see.
018 The Three Billboards Issue
Was there ever any conflict between you?
We did go back and forth a little bit. I like sticking completely
to the script, and she would do that but she would sometimes
want to cut lines or cut words, and I’m against that.
Who won the majority of those battles?
I would say I did, she would say she did. I think we were about
a week in – it might have been the deer scene actually – where
I just thought, ‘She’s so good’. There’s no need to fight about
five per cent of the script when someone’s talent is so self-
evident. But there was also a mutual respect there which
I think came from our shared theatre background. I avoid
working with cunts anyway. Of course, you do your research
into people or you meet them and you kind of know. I know the
people to avoid. But then there are certain actors who come
with a reputation of being tough, and that can mean anything.
It can mean just paying attention to the details. I worried that
Ralph Fiennes might have been a bit tough to work with, and he
wasn’t, he was just really, really specific, almost method about
the character. And I love that stuff. I’d rather someone say, ‘No,
I’m not walking down the street unless I’ve got a passport in my
pocket because I’ve just come off the plane.’ That’s brilliant,
that’s what you want in an actor.
It’s different for men and women. It will be easier for
someone like Colin Farrell to find roles in his late fifties.
Exactly, which is an issue with the film business of course.
You would hope, though, that with something like this you can
break the door open a little bit. Obviously these things are
dependent on making money, but if this made money with a
60-year-old woman in the lead you’d hope it could become a
template for others to follow. But there’s no point in breaking
down boundaries – feminist ones or gay ones or persons-of-
colour ones – unless the films are good. The great thing about
Moonlight wasn’t that it was an all-black cast, or the gay side of
it, but that it was a brilliant film. That’s what’s got to happen, I
think. There’s no point us all being able to make shit films.
On the money point, if you’ve got a script with a 60-year-old
female lead, is that an instant turn-off for certain financiers?
Yeah, well, unless you stick Julia Roberts in it. Hollywood loves
‘starry’ stars. That’s what ticks the financial box. I’d be happy
to not make films if I’m not going to get to make them the way
I want to. It’s fine, I’ll slink back to the theatre. I’ve never had
money people let me do exactly what I wanted to do, and this
time we did. Not a note, not even a set visit. It was insane. I’d
heard that Fox especially had been quite interfering in the
past, but the people who are running it now are completely
easygoing. I guess it’s a bit easier for me now because they have
the script, but they also have the evidence of In Bruges. So if
they’re smart they’ll trust that it’ll come out okay. Sometimes
things don’t come out okay, even though you try to make them
that way. Seven Psychos is probably that way. I’m glad that this
one followed a different route
020 The Three Billboards Issue
AS TOLD TO ADAM WOODWARD COMICS BY ORIANE DUFORT

BLUE
FLAMER
A SAM
ROCKWELL
CONFESSIONAL

“I
've always wanted to play a cop. I played one in
THE STAR OF THREE an episode of Law of Order once, very briefly;
I rat out one of my friends who’s a gay cop.

BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE But I never really got to do much research for

that part. With Three Billboards, you almost get the impression
that my character, Jason, watches Cops. I actually watched
EBBING, MISSOURI ON some of that show in preparation, and even did some ride
alongs with real cops: one in LA and one with a guy in southern

REUNITING WITH ONE Missouri. We ran through some of my lines, we had a good
time, it was interesting. They have this term for a rookie cop
who’s a bit overeager, a little too enthusiastic, and it’s called
OF HIS FAVOURITE “blue flamer”. The guys in Missouri talked about that, and they
talked about other stuff like racism, which I don’t think is as
rampant within the police force in the United States as people
COLLABORATORS AND think. It’s definitely prevalent, it’s happening. There’s definitely
a racism problem in the United States. But the cops I met
FULFILLING A CAREER- seemed to be good guys, and they recognised that this film was
a dramatisation. They recognised that I was portraying a certain
type of person, and more importantly, that the journey of the
LONG AMBITION. character is really complex.

021
022 The Three Billboards Issue
“RACISM, MISOGYNY... ALL OF THIS IS VERY
TIMELY BECAUSE OF WHAT’S GOING ON IN
THE UNITED STATES. BUT, YOU KNOW, A LOT
OF THESE MOVIES WERE IN PRODUCTION WAY
BEFORE TRUMP WAS IN OFFICE.”
“I’ve been very fortunate to have had a few parts written
specifically for me. Moon was one of them, and Three
Billboards is another, along with Seven Psychopaths which
Martin also directed. We had a really great time working
on this. Most of my character was on the page but Martin
did leave something open to interpretation. We did some
tricks with the look, we made me heavier. These guys are
not sinewy creatures, they’re big strong boys, so we did
some padding, I drank some beer. Just little tricks like that,
physical things. And I was consciously trying to appear more
heavy in the way I stood. I’m pleased with how it looks as
if I’ve gained more weight than I actually did. The whole
padding idea, Melissa [Toth], the costume designer, stole
that from a film she did with Colin Farrell called Pride and
Glory, where he played a cop. You’ve got to have tricks
otherwise, what, are you going to gain 40 pounds? It’s not
for me.
“In the beginning Jason is a bit of a goofball, so we imagined
him turning from Barney Fife into Travis Bickle or James Dean
or something like that. Not cool necessarily, but kind of an
anti-hero. My dialect coach, Liz Himelstein, helped a lot also.
She always helps me find someone with the dialect. For Three
Billboards she found this cop from southern Missouri, we taped
him reading the lines for the script and I listened to it for a while
and I said, ‘You know Liz, I’m really sorry but I don’t think this
guy is quite right, I think we’ve got to find somebody else’, and
I felt bad because she put in a lot of time to find this guy. So
she said alright and eventually she called me and said, ‘I found
the guy, he’s got just the right amount of dialect.’ Because
Martin didn’t want something too twangy, but I wanted a little
bit of a twang. He was perfect. One time he said, ‘She’s in the
clank’ instead of ‘the county’ and Martin liked that. And one
time he said, ‘Get out of my ass’ and I loved that, so I threw
that in there.
Martin and I had a big discussion about the haircut. He
wanted longer hair and I had to really fight for the short hair,
because that’s authentic. It’s almost military, it is military. And I
think that’s important to the character. Because the guy fancies
himself a kind of a Navy SEAL, you know. But he became this
small-town cop. I spent some time filling in his backstory, not
necessarily during filming. I look at it now and think he was
probably beaten by his father, and his mother probably let that
happen. But the key to him is his gullibility, and the way to play
that is to be genuinely surprised by each moment. If you’re
really in the moment and you say to me, ‘Hi, Santa Claus’ and
I look over… that becomes me believing that Santa Claus is
really stood behind me. I think that’s how you play a character
like that, like Forrest Gump or Tim Robbins in Bull Durham,
characters that are gullible and innocent, I think you have to
remain very open and that’s not always an easy thing to do. Think
about when you’re first waking up, you’re kind of out of it. If you
can accentuate those parts of yourself you can find that quality.
“It’s interesting that Three Billboards was written way
before Ferguson, because I think that there’s a new light being
shed on the piece because of all the stuff that’s going on right
now. Racism, misogyny... all of this is very timely because of
what’s going on in the United States. It’s been an interesting
year for women, I think. But you know a lot of these movies
were in production way before Trump was in office. Like,
Wonder Woman is directed by a woman, it’s a hit movie, it’s
about a really strong, sexy woman. The plot is sort of Superman
meets Splash, with Chris Pine playing the Tom Hanks character
and lots of cool fighting. And we’ve got Frances [McDormand]
kicking ass like John Wayne, you know, and then we’ve got
Greta Gerwig with this great movie she’s directed called Lady
Bird. So it feels like the year of the woman, and whether
that’s because we’re looking at it through a different lens or
whatever, it feels really exciting
023
 WORDS BY ADAM LEE DAVIES & DAVID JENKINS ILLUSTRATIONS BY DIEGO HUACUJA

“I DID SO MANY BAD

THINGS. I TRIED TO
DO… I TRIED TO DO
THE RIGHT THING,
BUT I’M WEAK. I’M
TOO FUCKING WEAK…
PLEASE FORGIVE
ME FATHER!”
The Lieutenant, Bad Lieutenant (1992)

We hold those deposed to protect to us to such

impossible standards that we inevitably pounce upon
their every human frailty. Harvey Keitel’s mucky
lieutenant is often cited as one of the very worst screen
lawmen, but even he, during one of his many base,
cock-dangling interludes, tacitly understands that the
obverse is also true: that our predisposition for all that
is wicked and depraved cannot help but poison those
sworn to sift through the villainy, inhumanity and chaos
we leave in our wake.

But what is a Bad Cop? Who is worse – Michael Douglas

helping himself to a slice of hard-earned drug bunce
after a splashy bust in Black Rain, or Tommy Lee Jones’
courteous, by-the-book, totally ineffective sheriff
achieving the square root of bugger all while arriving late
to every party in No Country for Old Men? Is it nobler for
our boys and gals in blue to suffer the slings and arrows
of outrageous fortune, or to take up firearms (and the
occasional backhander) against a sea of troubles?

Not all shady cops are bad at their jobs, just as not all
straight-up-legit do-rights are good at theirs. Here we
present 10 law enforcement officers that for reasons of
instability, ineptitude, temperament, corruptibility or
duplicitousness should never be allowed near a gun, a
badge or a doughnut stand ever again...

024 The Three Billboards Issue

 GOOD COPS
PHARAON DE
WINTER
Emmanuel Schotté in L'Humanité (1999)
Sometimes, when all else fails, you just want to stow away
badge and gun and let the good times roll by practicing a bon-
tempi organ in your living room. There’s a case to be made
that Emmanuel Schotté’s Pharaon de Winter may be the worst
cop in the history of cinema – he’s meek, mild and has no idea
where to start when it comes to cuffing an on-the-lam rapist/
murder on the windswept meadows of northern France’s Opal
Coast. Bruno Dumont’s second feature is a French policier with
a twist, more interested in capturing the collected depravities
of a lower working class community than it is delivering a
tense, meticulously plotted crime yarn. De Winter is not too
far removed from someone like Mr Bean in his all-consuming
ineptness, but at his core, he is a good man. A twist which sees
him levitating while wandering through an allotment, might even
infer that he is Jesus, aka history’s first Good Cop. David Jenkins
DETECTIVE
JOE FRIDAY
Dan Aykroyd in Dragnet (1987)
The long-running American TV serial Dragnet showcased the
crimestopping prowess of double-hard LA shitkicker, Joe
Friday. Flash forward to the late 1980s, everyone’s half cut on
Babysham highballs, and the light blinks green for the inevitable
comedy remake. Saturday Night Live alum Dan Aykroyd goes
hardboiled for hyuks as his Friday takes on Laurel Canyon
hippy cults and fends off the threat of toxic gas annihilation,
all while preserving the saintly image of Alexandra Paul’s
“Virgin” Connie Swail. Fearing that Reagan-era audiences
wouldn’t see the joke through all the orange Cheeto fumes,
the film opts for miss-matched high jinx by inducting Tom
Hanks’ Pep Streebek as a shouty comedy foil. Of course, it’s
only when Friday’s stick-up-the-ass fastidiousness combines
with Streebek’s quick shootin’ impulsiveness that a model of
assiduous law enforcement makes its appearance. DJ
025
026 The Three Billboards Issue
 BAD COPS
DETECTIVE AZUMA
Takeshi Kitano in Violent Cop (1989)
When your cop protagonist’s first act is to headbutt a child,
you know you’re in for a bumpy ride. Detective Azuma (Takeshi
Kitano) is not bloodthirsty, disturbed or a martyr to his temper, he
just understands that if you’re going to make an omelette, then
you’re going to have to bust some skulls. A bandy-legged, slow-
witted, hair trigger attack dog in an ill-fitting wool suit, Kitano is
on the trail of the gang that killed his partner and kidnapped his
sister, and there’s going to be plenty of Nagasaki ketchup spilled
along the way. When he eventually finds and, naturally, kills the
Yakuza scum, he also discovers that they’ve gotten his sister
horsed-up on the skag. Does Azuma throw a brotherly blanket
round her shoulders and rush her to a methadone clinic? No. He
does the decent thing and blows her junkie brains out. Like we
say - the guy doesn’t mess around. Adam Lee Davies
AGENT RICHARD CHANCE
William Petersen in To Live and Die in LA (1985)
Few cops are screaming down a highway to the danger zone
with such fatalistic, cocksure alacrity as Richard Chance. He
is dangerously overcranked hard-on in a fake leather blouson,
stacked cowboy boots and nut-busting stonewashed Wranglers.
Not so much a bad cop as a reckless, vacuous prick with a gun and
badge, Chance (hobby: base-jumping off condemned bridges)
puts the law, his partners and the good burghers of Los Angeles
in the firing line every time he steps out the door of his faceless
seafront condo (natch). Nowhere is this headlong imprudence
better exemplified than in the sublime hattrick finale in which he
robs a Federal agent of fifty large, gets him killed and then drives
like a hooligan the wrong way into oncoming freeway traffic. ALD
OFFICER CAROL BRAZIER
Rosie Perez in Pineapple Express (2008)
We are never told enough about her to know what exactly turned
her into a wrong ’un, but Officer Carol Brazier has embraced the
dark side of the force with feral abandon. Quite the toughest nut
in our rundown, Brazier is permanently and splenetically furious,
wholeheartedly homicidal and completely round the bend. She
also seems to have given up on anything approaching police
work in favour of near full-time employment as the trigger hand
of big time drug lord Gary Cole. A bad cop in every sense, Brazier
is not only a spectacularly rotten apple, she can’t even manage
to pull together her years of training and experience to track
down the two dumb, stoned, innocent naifs (Seth Rogen and
James Franco) who witnessed her blowing someone away. ALD
THE KEYSTONE KOPS
George Jeske, Bobby Dunn, Charles Avery, Edgar Kennedy,
Slim Summerville, Mack Riley, Hank Mann in various
Barney Oldfield’s Race For a Life, Hoffmeyer’s Legacy, A Quibble
Over a Penny Farthing… Nobody’s ever seen a film starring the
Keystone Cops. No, you haven’t. We even made one of those
titles up just to prove the point. And yet everyone is 1000
per cent certain who the Kops are and what they represent.
It comes as some surprise to find that the lads’ first movie
introducing them not as the energetically bumbling uniformed
city police farce, but as shovel-bearded, waistcoat-sporting,
hoe-toting hipsters driving a reclaimed jalopy in the 1913 short
The Bangville Police (Keystone was the name of director Mack
Sennett’s film company). Immediate breakout stars, their mob-
handed, wholly useless style of policing had ’em rolling in the
aisles for much of the next decade. ALD
CAPTAIN HANK QUINLAN
Orson Welles in Touch of Evil (1958)
Barely comprehensible from beneath the layers of blubber,
booze and stubble, slobby, bobby Hank Quinlan nevertheless
produces a masterclass in malice, sleaze and fraudulence that
is virtually unmatched in all of cinema. James Woods in Cop,
perhaps? Joe Pesci’s visibly disintegrating turn as David Ferrie
in JFK? Gary Oldman in Leon? Nick Nolte in just about anything?
The list of pretenders to Quinlan’s slimebucket crown is short
and squalid, but none of them are quite sordid or immoral
enough to dethrone Big Hank. Whether it’s planting evidence
(a speciality), arranging druggy gang rapes or simply fitting up
the hispanic denizens of his flyblown border town for crimes
random and various, Hank’s your man. ALD
LIEUTENANT RENÉ BOIROND
Phillippe Noiret in Les Ripoux (1984)
If the British or American equivalent of René Boirond spent his
entire beat thieving, pimping, extorting boulangeries, glugging
gallons of gratis Chablis and whacking people upside the head
with the Paris telephone directory, the result would be uneasy
and disturbing. Yet French star Phillippe Noiret makes it all
look so... stylish. The arrival of a high flying partner (François
Lesbuche) is met with no more than a Gallic ‘meh’. Yet Noiret
has his new buddy in the frame for beating up a suspect, hooked
on high end call girls and accepting shady merch. Lesbuche is
soon practicing his quickdraw in the mirror, poncing about in
a biker jacket and planning bullion heists that far exceed his
mentor’s grubby shenanigans. Beau travail, monsieur! ALD
027
 GOOD COPS
OFFICER FRANK
SERPICO
Al Pacino in Serpico (1973)
It’s hard to believe that anyone joins the police force with
an eye firmly on having first dibs on the evidence room
skag hauls, or being able to tramp the sidewalks with
baton-swinging impunity. That comes later, when your
shiny-booted feet are firmly under the desk. As the title
character in Sidney Lumet’s seminal critique of rampant
police corruption, Al Pacino’s Frank Serpico is a man who
choses to dedicate much of his time and all of his energy to
resisting such squalid temptations. He is caught in an awful
bind: how to remain clean without implicitly critiquing the
foul play of his increasingly bent colleagues. As soon as he
takes a bite of this big, bitter cookie, then everyone’s got
dirt on everyone else, the equilibrium is balanced and the
double-dealing can continue unabated. The way Pacino
essays this real life thorn in the side of the NYPD is as if
he’s the criminal for simply wanting his colleages to just
play by the rules. DJ
028 The Three Billboards Issue
DETECTIVE
AXEL FOLEY
Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop (1984)
Having already seen the fun that could be had by giving Eddie
Murphy a badge, a gun and letting him intone funny swears
in 48 Hours, those crazy cats down in Hollywood decided to
alchemise that unstable precious metal into snap-talkin’ gold.
As leasurewear-sporting Detroit superdick Axel Foley, Murphy
imposes the law of the Detroit mean streets to the pant-
suited yo-yos of that luxe LA enclave known as Beverly Hills.
But while sunken-eyed fashionistas and Eurotrash gallery
owners sup the sweet milk of no-limit affluence, practically
minded local businessmen such as Steven Berkoff’s Victor
Maitland are free to run ramdhod over basic civility with their
bazookas and whatnot. Foley hops with light feet across the
Thin Blue Line, risking everything to honour a fallen pal who
happens to be scuzzbag with a rap sheet as long as Wiltshire
Boulevard. He proves that top-tier law enforcement can be
fabulously annoying for the perps and delightfully funny for
an audience. DJ
 BAD COPS
JOSÉ LUIS TORRENTE
Santiago Segura in Torrente (1998)
As Spain’s unasked-for and somewhat belated answer to Dirty
Harry, José Luis Torrente is every bit as racist, sexist, fascistic
and trigger happy as his Bay Area counterpart. He is also a
braggart, a liar, corrupt, ugly, bald, fat, fervently anti-communist
and a spectacularly fairweather fan of Atlético Madrid.
And he’s not even an actual cop. Drummed out of la policía
for reasons undisclosed (but all too easily imaginable) Torrente
nevertheless continues to make nightly ‘patrols’ of his run-down
neighbourhood. These consist of shaking down immigrants
for their food shopping, getting hammered on other people’s
coin and optimistically molesting every female in the vicinity.
The film, it may be helpful to point out, is a comedy. Although
you may need to be Spanish or a big, big fan of thundering panto
clichés to winkle out many actual chuckles. No matter! It broke
Spanish box office records, made Torrente an Iberian icon and
spawned four sequels that boasted cameos from such cool cats
as Javier Bardem, Alec Baldwin, Atléti legend Fernando Torres
and a method acting walk on from Oliver Stone as ‘Drunken
American’. ALD
SHERIFF LYLE
‘COTTONMOUTH’ WALLACE
Ernest Borgnine in Convoy (1978)
This slot could have been taken by any number of vindictive,
dyspeptic backwoods movie lawmen. Brian Dennehy’s initially
solicitous but ultimately hippie-haranguing Sheriff Teasle in
First Blood (“If you want some friendly advice, get a haircut and
take a bath - you wouldn’t get hassled so much!”) has a lot to
offer. As does the non-stop Burt-baiting of Jackie Gleason’s
unremittingly spiteful Sheriff Buford T Justice in Smokey and
the Bandit. None, however, are quite as obstinate or bastardly
as Cottonmouth Wallace. Plus the fact that Ernest Borgnine’s
burnished visage looks like some especially infernal wood
carving sawn from Hell’s own bannister. A bizarre character in
a bizarre film, Wallace’s beef stems from being gypped out of
a measly $50 sweetener by some unkempt truckers. It is to his
credit that he doubles down on this minor fiscal setback to
create an inexorable spiral of sadism, racism and murder that
ultimately takes in the Governor of New Mexico, the National
Guard and Ali MacGraw in a disco fright-wig. ALD
029
 GOOD COPS
NICHOLAS ANGEL
Simon Pegg in Hot Fuzz (2007)
Maybe “good” is the wrong word to describe Simon Pegg’s
ice cool metropolitan sergeant Nicholas Angel, but he’s
certainly a fine cop when it comes to getting the job done.
As colleagues slumber in squad cars blanketed in pastry
crumbs and expired Tango, he’s out pounding the pavement,
enforcing the law down the letter, and making everyone
else look like rank amateurs. And so he is transferred to
the quaint English provinces, where petty crime is scarce
but isolationist death cults are rife. Edgar Wright’s Hot
Fuzz is a film about how a driven and lonely man finds his
sense of compassion by learning to love Olde England, but
it also fights to ensure that honest-to-goodness town pride
doesn’t mutate into hard wired xenophobia and sundry
bloodletting. Sound familiar? DJ
OFFICER MEGAN
TURNER
Jamie Lee Curtis in Blue Steel (1990)
There was a time when the very notion of a female police officer
was nothing more than an hilarious joke within the bro-heavy
Hollywood firmament. “Sleep tight America. These women
carry guns” ran the tagline of 1988’s lady policeman craptacular,
Feds. Just one year later things got gnarly when Kathryn Bigelow
unlocked the festering chauvinism beholden by the boys in blue,
and splayed it across an unwelcoming NY backdrop like so much
stinking vomit. It follows fresh-faced rookie beat cop, Megan
Turner (Jamie Lee Curtis), as she blows a lunatic perp through
the front window of a supermarket on her first patrol. DJ
MARGE GUNDERSON
Frances McDormand in Fargo (1996)
The art of being a good cop can come from just not trying too
hard. Unlike the grizzled all-in types like Frank Serpico, Marge
Gunderson dodders around Minnesota, taking her sweet time
about things. The Coens’ 1997 breakthrough contains that
rare thing: a cop who smiles, is civil and also carries with her
a graceful physical fragility. And yet, she detects foul play in
an instant, as seen in the scene where she grills happy-clappy
crook Jerry Lundegaard (William H Macy) and her benign jabs
end up tipping him into a childish hissy fit. Fargo works as a
film about a lone shining light of untrammelled goodness that
exists in world of bumblers, fumblers and men happy to feed
their bessie mate into a wood chipper. DJ
030 The Three Billboards Issue
PC GEORGE DIXON
Jack Warner in The Blue Lamp (1950)
Basil Dearden’s stunning 1950 film offers a glowing endorsement
of the British bobby, presenting these gentleman warriors as
cultured, polite, fraternal and utterly incorruptible. PC George
Dixon is Edgware’s finest, a salt-of-the-earth “Peeler” who
is seen as the glue that keeps society from crumbling and
then ransacked by armies of braying spivs. He loves his job,
to the point of wanting to defer his retirement. He not only
takes Jimmy Hanley’s newbie PC Mitchell under his wing, but
essentially inducts him in as a replacement for his own dead
son. When he’s not laying his life on the line, he’s part of the
station’s male voice choir, and he’s also rather nifty with the
darts. He has everything going for him, until the night he steps
up to Dirk Bogarde’s trigger-happy goon following a bungled
heist and happily gets slotted for the cause. DJ
CAPTAIN JIM WILSON
Robert Ryan in On Dangerous Ground (1951)
In Nicholas Ray’s On Deadly Ground, a red-eyed beat cop played
by Robert Ryan has reached the point where violence has
become a means to an end. He barrels around town, pouring
sweat, bellowing into his radio receiver and just living on the
precipice. Seeing that he’s on a hiding to nothing, his boss posts
him on the equivalent of a well-earned spa retreat: to a snowy,
depopulated tundra where he can hopefully learn to chill the
fuck out. This is a film about the necessity of slowing down,
reconnecting with humanity and comprehending the dismal fall
out of free flowing violence. When he comes into contact with
Ida Lupino’s blind shut-in Mary, he begins to comprehend why he
opted to keep the peace in the first place. DJ
“KEVIN" CHAN KA-KUI
Jackie Chan in Police Story (1985)
In the opening salvo to Jackie Chan’s exemplary destructo-
opus, Police Story, his elastic stunt cop Kevin heads
up a major drug bust which results in an entire hillside
community being remodelled as a sprawling refuse dump.
Yes, everything he touches turns to shit, but his dedication
is such that he always gets his man in the end, even if it
means that he’s administering roundhouses to the face
of a private goon army across multiple floors of a shiny
department story. Extra LOLS come compliments of a
closing credits blooper reel in which Chan incurs sustained
brain injury from repeatedly swan diving off a carpark just to
“get the shot”. DJ
031
 BAD COPS
DETECTIVE DANIEL CIELLO
Treat Williams in Prince of the City (1981)
Have you ever been out so late on a weeknight that you’ve
woken up at 11am still drunk? You’re two hours late for work
and you haven’t even brushed your teeth. Shame, fear, booze
and confusion claw at your addled brain - a brain that’s busy
using all of its depleted computing power calculating the
collateral damage of last night’s carnage while formulating a
believable narrative for your boss. That’s Danny Ciello’s every
waking moment - except that instead of being tutted at by his
line manager, given some sticky bantz from his colleagues and
looking forward to a quiet night in front of the telly, he’s more
likely to to be iced by the mob, ratted out by his squad or end
up doing 20 to 10 in the pen. Ciello and his crew have been
treating New York like their own private piggy bank for years,
but after his pangs of conscience become too discordant to
ignore, Danny’s wearing wires, crossing lines and dobbing in
his own crew. His actions will either clean up the force or
bring it crashing down. ‘A cop is turning. Nobody’s safe,’ went
the film’s tagline. Danny least of all. ALD
032 The Three Billboards Issue
OFFICER MATTHEW CORDELL
Robert Z’Dar in Maniac Cop (1988)
If you had told the long-haired habitués of ’80s video
stores that Maniac Cop would, 30 years hence, be held
up as a classic of the scuzz genre or would be remade
by an arthouse auteur, you may as well have told them
that Stanley Kubrick wanted to retool Turner & Hooch or
Derek Jarman planned to restage The Goonies as a series
of homoerotic tableaux vivant. Maybe it’s the iconic title.
Or the skeezy appeal of pre-Giuliani New York. Either
way, Maniac Cop is now viewed as a lost gem, and Nicolas
Winding Refn has been trying to it get remade for years.
God knows why – it’s terrible. But for this purpose, it’s
fried gold. Framed for police brutality and sentenced
to life, Officer Matt Cordell (Z’Dar of the big jaw) is
perforated in the showers (!) before coming back to life
as a superstrong flatfoot zombie who/that embarks on a
spree of pointedly random killings. Can anybody stop him?
Well, there were two sequels, so you can probably work
it out from that. Bad cop. Bad film. Bad idea, Mr Refn. ALD
 NEW BOOK
FALL 2017

A DANCE WITH
FRED ASTAIRE
—
Jonas Mekas

anthologyeditions.com
034 The Three Billboards Issue
035
 Words by Caroline Golum
A brief history of the female pioneers of Hollywood
who brought cussing, swearing and censor-bating
provocation to the masses.
new star has been added to cinema’s foul-
mouthed firmament. Frances McDormand, best
known for her Academy Award-winning turn
as Brainard, Minnesota’s “gee whiz”-ing police
chief in Fargo, pulls no punches – linguistic or otherwise – in
Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
On paper, Three Billboards could be mistaken for another
prize-grubbing entry into the “dead kid” cannon (cf Sean
Penn’s “Is that my Oscar in there?!” breakdown), but what sets
the film apart from the usual prestige pablum is the masterful
way McDormand wields McDonagh’s trademark fondness for
profanity. A red band trailer might be an unorthodox PR move
for an awards season release, but the film – and McDormand’s
praiseworthy performance – are in fact apiece with a broader
history of great actresses spewing noxious jargon.
036 The Three Billboards Issue
Illustrations by Justin Poulter
As enlightened as today’s film audiences profess to be,
the site of an A-list actress allowing a rude word to fly still
sends childish tee-hees through cinemas and living rooms
alike. How else to account for the appeal of Bad Teachers
and Bad Moms and Bad Driving Instructors? Often associated
with gross out comedies and tough-guy action flicks, the use
of profanity still carries with it a masculine connotation. That
this assumption persists is no surprise, but foul language
in cinema has a long history of popping up in unexpected
places. And in everything from early musicals to kids’ movies,
cult films and indie darlings, actresses have dropped their fair
share of bombs – F, S, D, you name it.
The earliest instance that we have at the ready is rather
tame by today’s standards, but is notable nonetheless.
Glorifying the American Girl from 1929 could have just as
easily been called Glorifying the Glorifier of the American
Girl, produced as it was by Broadway impresario and cutie-
wrangler Florenz Ziegfeld – incidentally, the film’s subject. An
unremarkable story, made luminous by a who’s who of stage
and screen cameos, the film has secured its place in history
for an unlikely reason. Here, the first-ever use of “damn”
is uttered not by some trashy chorine, but by a pigeon-
bosomed matron: stage doyenne Sarah Edwards, playing the
well-meaning, old-fashioned mother of an aspiring Follie
filly. Her lone imprecation, expressed in private, is casual
but surprising. And while pre-Hays Code audiences certainly
expected a dash of the rude and crude, hearing a respectable
woman take the Lord’s name in vain must have raised a few
well-shaped eyebrows at the neighbourhood picture palace.
Any armchair historian of American cinema knows what
happens next: in 1934, amid accusations of corruption and
vulgarity from the Legion of Decency and the Roman Catholic
Church, the Hays Code is adopted, effectively reigning in
those heretofore unbridled depictions of gangsters and gun
molls, alongside such other troublesome subject matter.
But to paint Hollywood’s post-Code pictures as insipid or
wholesome is, however, a hair too hasty. Studios will always
make concessions for larger-than-life personae, and in the
1930s and 1940s Mae West had the largest persona going.
A saucy, Brooklyn-born provocatrice, West’s mastery of
the double entendre coupled with her husky voice made
even the dullest, most expository lines sound like dirty jokes.
Her early theatrical career was at once impressive – she
wrote many of her stage successes – and scandalous, as
much of her work was concerned with sex, hypocrisy and
the lengths a man will go to for a good turn. One apocryphal
account has West waiting out a brief prison sentence – on an
obscenity charge for her play Sex – in her own silk underwear
(apparently the prison warden was a fan).
Sensing a box office draw, Paramount soon came knocking
and, in 1932, the star – by then pushing 40 – was Hollywood-
bound. But with her preponderance for smirking come-ons
and sly jabs, West’s transition from pre-to-post-Code was
a rocky one. At the height of her stardom, in memorable
comedies like She Done Him Wrong and I’m No Angel, West was
one of the studio’s biggest box office attractions. Everything
about her was outsized: her zaftig figure and flashy jewellery,
that endless supply of one-liners, and a very real fondness for
the stronger sex. It’s no accident that her supporting male co-
stars were often tall, dark and handsome (none handsomer
than young Cary Grant), and she made no attempt to disguise
her appetites in that regard, on screen or off.
But as the decade wore on, her trademark penchant for
the wry and rude attracted the attention of censors both on
and off screen. In 1937, West was hit with a one-two punch:
her contract with Paramount lapsed, and she earned the
distinction of being the first Hollywood star to be banned from
radio. West had appeared on the wildly popular radio program
‘The Chase and Sanborn Hour’, alongside Don Ameche and
Charlie McCarthy. Her tendency toward innuendo, so beloved
by movie audiences, attracted the attention of the new-ish
Federal Communications Commission. Fearing a fine, or worse,
the National Broadcasting Corporation shifted the blame to
West herself – it would be her last radio appearance for nearly
two decades, until she returned again in 1950.
Even within the confines of the Hays Code, the years
following its adoption proved to be some of the most fecund for
Hollywood. As the seventh art reached new technical heights,
studios expanded and increased their output, and a kind of
sneaking ingenuity developed, effectively keeping sex and
“In CinemaScope epics of
marauding centurions and
seductively-posed slave
girls, profanity still proved
a bridge too far.”
violence on screen (within the limits of good taste, of course).
Still, amid CinemaScope epics of marauding centurions and
seductively-posed slave girls, the use of profanity continued
to prove a bridge too far. It isn’t until we get to the tumultuous
post-World War Two years – that Age of Anxiety, all backlit
dark alleys and smoky bare bulbs – that Hollywood’s binds and
tongues are loosened anew.
It’s telling that former child star Elizabeth Taylor, who cut
her teeth in family fare like 1944’s National Velvet and 1946’s
Courage of Lassie, would emerge from a decade riddled with
scandal to smash the idols of film decorum. Her unflattering,
earth-shattering turn as Martha in Mike Nichols’ auspicious
debut, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? from 1966, ushered in
a new, more mature era for both the star and her chosen
profession. Martha’s language is one colour in a palette that
includes alcoholism and delusions of grandeur: each element
adds dynamism to Taylor’s portrayal of an ageing, neglected
professor’s wife. Her profane speech, often directed at
her cowering husband – played by real-life partner Richard
Burton – is unsurprising to anyone who’s been married (for
any length of time). But it’s the on screen reactions from
a young married couple, fresh-faced and a little tipsy, that
move the needle of our own regard from shock, to pity, and
back again. Unabashed and nakedly vulnerable, Taylor as
Martha is often credited as the performance that convinced
Jack Valenti to toss out the Hays Code in favour of something
more “modern.”
037
 The solution was the MPAA rating system, and it is a flawed
one. But credit where credit is due: this new standard afforded
“serious” filmmakers a little more latitude where language was
concerned. Beset by changing tastes and mores, Hollywood
ended the tumultuous 1960s over a proverbial barrel, beset
by waning box office numbers and a jaded public. In response
to these threats, studios began to experiment, pushing the
boundaries of acceptability and previous notions of propriety.
Some, like Paramount and Universal, began adding lesser-known
television, theatre and independent film directors to their
stable, bestowing upon them a laxity that resulted in the ‘New
Hollywood’ era much-beloved by bad boys with neckbeards.
Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H, released in the early stages of
this Renaissance (1970), has aged into an evergreen movie trivia
night answer, most notably for being the first Hollywood film to
use the word “fuck.” The mother of all swear words, growled
by John Shuck on the 30-yard line, is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it
moment, but it was Sally Kellerman’s voluptuous performance
as Major Margaret "Hotlips” Houlihan that set a new high
water mark for female-driven filth in a major studio release. In
addition to the aforementioned place in movie history, M*A*S*H
deserves special mention for its early inclusion of unchecked
female sexuality: while liaising with comrade Major Frank Burns,
038 The Three Billboards Issue
played by Robert Duvall, Margaret’s seductive pillow talk is
surreptitiously broadcast for the whole unit to hear, with one
phrase in particular earning her a telltale naughty nickname.
Although her passionate invocations are devoid of censorable
expletives, the orgasmic tone is surprisingly explicit.
With the MPAA ratings system in full effect, foul language
became another metric by which to assess a film’s age
appropriateness – and, by default, commercial viability. Ratings
like R, for Restricted, NC-17 for “No Children Under 17,” and X
for – well, you know – limited adult language and sexual content
to strictly grown-up fare. But by the 1980s, America’s rising tide
of neoconservatism was no match for the newfound era of
profanity that tsunamied into suburban multiplexes. And so we
must reserve a place in the trophy cabinet for 1987’s Adventures
in Babysitting, a teen comedy with a longstanding presence in
the Hall of Cable Classics.
Elisabeth Shue, cute as a button, stars as babysitter Chris,
desperately trying to keep her brood together during a night
out in the big city. All your Reagan-era fears of decrepit
urban decay are there, including a memorable exchange on
a municipal bus between an “ethnic” gang leader and our
squeaky-clean heroine. “Don’t fuck with the Lords of Hell,” he
sneers, repping the least imaginatively named gang ever. Chris
 wastes no time getting in his face, with a
retort – “Don’t fuck with the babysitter” –
that launched a thousand t-shirts. Since its
release, the MPAA has enforced the rule that
PG-13 films (you know, for kids) are entitled
to a maximum of one “fuck.” Anything more,
and you’re in Restricted territory – heaven
help you at the box office.
Like Ms Taylor before her, Winona
Ryder effectively buried her childhood
screen persona with a sardonic leading
performance in the 1988 cult film
Heathers. Known previously for supporting
parts – usually as coltish pre-teen –
Ryder perfectly embodied the role of
Veronica Sawyer, an erstwhile geek who
gains acceptance into the “Heathers,” a
clique of bratty rich girls who delight in
tormenting Veronica’s old set. The arrival
of a mysterious, babely loner (Christian
Slater, at peak babe/loner) casts a harsh
light on Veronica’s social station, and soon
she and her lover begin to pick off their
rivals in a series of escalating “accidents.”
The proliferation of casual F-bombs,
and its decidedly dark subject matter,
earned the film an R rating upon release,
but anecdotal evidence suggests Heathers
became an instant sleepover staple for teen
girls of all ages. Now pushing 30, the film’s
dialogue has remained timeless, which is
more than you can say for its wardrobe. The teen slang, much of
it concocted by writer Daniel Waters, features timeless digs like
“Diet Coke heads” and “Swatch dogs,” alongside arguably the
greatest sarcastic kiss-off of the 1980s: “Fuck me gently with a
chainsaw,” Veronica sighs, “Do I look like Mother Theresa?” Oh,
to be a fly on the wall at the AMC in Petaluma, when hometown
hero Ryder dropped that one on a paying audience.
This uptick in swearing on screen eventually made its mark
on the Academy, too, with Marisa Tomei’s dark horse Best
Supporting Actress win for My Cousin Vinny in 1992. A near-
perfect film that – not unlike Three Billboards – offers its own
wry take on backwoods law enforcement, Vinny also has the
rare distinction of earning its actress a statuette for a comedic
role. Tomei’s gum-snapping, potty-mouthed performance
was charming enough to beat heavyweights Vanessa Redgrave
and Judy Davis (for Howard’s End and Husbands and Wives,
respectively). As Mona Lisa Vito, an otherwise broad ethnic
stereotype, Tomei is the perfect foil for squawking New Yawk
lawyer Vinny (Joe Pesci in, arguably, his best role), who heads
down Dixie way to defend his cousin against a trumped-up
murder charge. More than the usual “fish out of water” story,
Vinny is unique in its sincerity, attention to legal procedure and
affectionate portrayal of two people who – while clearly in love
– address each other with a profane frankness that makes rush
hour in Manhattan look like a Circle of Friends meeting.
New Hollywood rule-breaking, followed shortly thereafter
by the box office-driven excesses of the 1980s, effectively set
the stage for a coming wave of independent filmmakers, many
of them weaned on the cinema of Cassavetes, Altman, et al.
This new guard began making waves with small-ish films that
“pushed the envelope” the way mainstream studios could not
(usually with nudity), effectively achieving indie credibility on
the festival circuit before opening at finer theatres on the
coasts. The most notorious graduate of this video store school
is, arguably, Quentin Tarantino, who scatters his oeuvre with
four-letter words as though they were breadcrumbs at a duck
pond. In the Tarantinoverse (shudder), men and women are
equally terrible, unashamed and quick-tempered, and with
vocabularies to match. With his third feature, Pulp Fiction,
Tarantino rocketed to mainstream auteur stardom, due in no
small part to the record-breaking number of “fucks” spewed
by characters of every gender and race.
And there is no fouler lass, in this film, than character
actress Amanda Plummer, playing the better half of husband-
and-wife stick-up team Honey Bunny and Pumpkin. Although
she has precious little screen time, what little time she spends
is electrifying: her shaggy red ’do and sharp features frame a
mouth that more resembles an open sewer than a Cupid’s
bow. Plummer’s first scene perfectly sets the tone for the film’s
ensuing mayhem, and the intonation of her stick-up threat,
ending with a hearty “executeeverymotherfuckinglastoneofya,”
is delicious foreplay to the Dick Dale-soundtracked
hullabaloo that serves as the film’s now-iconic opening credits.
“Heathers boasts
the greatest sarcastic
kiss-off of the 1980s:
‘Fuck me gently with
a chainsaw’.”
As a daring actress who doesn’t shy away from untidy
dialogue, Frances McDormand is in apparently good company.
One could argue that a profane performance is a veritable rite
of passage for great performers, the kind of risky career move
that has – for the better part of 80 years – alchemically recast
fresh-faced moppets into master thespians and bit-players
into icons. Decades from now, the willingness of legitimate
stars to swear on screen may well be considered a sort of
bellwether. By giving would-be historians a peak into the alter
egos of A-listers, viewers can look back at the barriers broken
while anticipating the shattering of our remaining taboos
039
040 The Three Billboards Issue
 A column about clothes and movies by Christina Newland
Threads Illustration by Laurène Boglio
#4: The Headscarf
hether decorative, functional, or symbolic of female
W modesty, headscarves have accompanied women in
their work and play for centuries. Born as a simple hair-
covering garment for religions dating back to ancient times - in fact,
the garment predates both Christianity and Islam - they have evolved
and shifted alongside the history of womanhood itself. From the
Virgin Mary to Rosie the Riveter, from the hijab to the bandana, a
completist survey of women’s headscarves would likely require a
book-length treatment.
When it comes to cinema, the headscarf has often epitomised
female glamour. Take Clara Bow, one of the bombshells of the silent
era, in 1927’s It. The film was a breakout role for Bow, fixing her in the
public eye as a so-called ‘it girl’ and trendsetter for ladies’ fashion. The
social climbing shopgirl she plays in the film displays carefree spirit with
her wild bob and flowing headscarves. Her sensuality is underlined by
the fact that her scarves rarely cover her bouncing red curls.
Still, the headscarf also had a strictly utilitarian purpose. During the
’30s and ’40s, factory girls and farm workers wanted to protect their
tresses from dust, grease and all manner of industrial dangers. During
the wartime years, where women turned to factory work in droves,
this was a particularly vital measure. In one fascinating newsreel from
the early 1940’s, film star Veronica Lake encourages young women to
clip their hair back rather than let it flow free, for fear of injury. The US
News Review footage includes a series of women putting safety caps
over their pinned hair. Although this was deemed practical, the image
of a red-lipped woman with pinned down, headscarf-covered curls
became iconic in its own right. It also came to be inextricably linked
to newfound female strength outside a domestic setting. Wartime Brit
star Patricia Roc is fantastic in the criminally underseen film Millions
Like Us from 1943, where she and other women from a wide swathe of
society find adventure and love through work in a munitions factory.
Roc and her female colleagues are equalised and empowered through
their uniforms and protective headscarves.
Perhaps the headscarf is most ingrained in cultural memory
through those images from the American mid-century – years of
conservatism and affluence, where icons like Grace Kelly sported
elegantly wrapped Hermès scarves around their heads and cruised
around in wide-finned cars. Elizabeth Taylor (Suddenly Last Summer,
1959) and Audrey Hepburn (Charade, 1963) could often be found
sporting the same accessory, exuding ideals of ’50s femininity at
its most shining. These women were sexy but demure, as indicated
by their chic hair-covering tactics. Their entire aesthetic implied
impeccable overdressing, an excess inevitably linked to the wealth
and capitalist prosperity of that era.
Yet the headscarf could hold meaning even in its most seemingly
frivolous incarnation. In John Ford’s romantic adventure film
Mogambo from 1953, Grace Kelly finds herself seduced by the older
Clark Gable, and Gable ravishingly removes her headscarf to reveal
her hair. The sexual implication is clear. In Todd Haynes’ Far from
Heaven, set in the Eisenhower-era suburbs of Connecticut, Julianne
Moore’s lovelorn housewife wears a gorgeous violet headscarf in
the final, heartbreaking scene of the film. It may look beautiful
against her auburn hair, but it also implies a return to modesty - an
acknowledgement of the impossibility of carrying on a forbidden
love affair.
In a more serious religious and political vein, three Algerian women
rip off their traditional head veils during Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle
of Algiers from 1966. As they prepare to fight for independence from
France as guerillas, the women adjust their appearances to look
‘European’ and not arouse suspicion. For these female militants, their
identities must be temporarily rethought in order to achieve their
goals - and their head-coverings are central to that identity.
Far from the presumed chastity of the past, women’s headscarves
and coverings can be fluid in meaning - and their presumed
relationship to their wearers is incredibly elastic. Ridley Scott’s
Thelma & Louise from 1991 sees Susan Sarandon donning a chiffon
headscarf as she hits the road with her best gal pal, borrowing from
both the ’40s conception of female strength and the glam ’50s
motoring culture that came to be so closely linked to the garment.
Terrence Malick, too, uses the item as a shorthand for female
adventure in his twisted criminal road romance Badlands from 1973.
Sissy Spacek’s teenage narrator Holly ties a bandana around her head
and goes on a killing spree, wonderfully deconstructing the idea of
the headscarf as a dainty ladies’ accessory – possibly forever
041
 THE THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI ISSUE
REVIEW CONTENTS
44-46 Interview:
David Fincher
48 Good Time
49 The Disaster Artist
50 Lu Over the Wall
52 Jane / Wet Women
in the Wind
53 Brigsby Bear /
Mountains May Depart
54 Most Beautiful Island
56 Mudbound
57 Interview: Dee Rees
58 Ingrid Goes West
59 Thelma
60 Film Stars Don’t Die
in Liverpool
62 Happy End
63 Interview: Michael Haneke
64 Stronger
65 The Killing of
a Sacred Deer
66 Manifesto
67 Battle of the Sexes
68-69 Interview:
Andrea Riseborough
70 Human Flow / Trophy
71 Brakes /
Roman J Israel, Esq
72 Interview: Michael Green
74 Professor Marston and
the Wonder Women
75 The Florida Project
76-77 Interview: Sean Baker
78 Molly’s Game
79 Marjorie Prime
80 Suburbicon
82 The Prince of Nothingwood
83 Blade of the Immortal
84-85 Takashi Miike’s
Top 15 Films
88-91 Home Ents
92-93 Journeys: The Toronto
International Film Festival
IN CONVERSATION
David Fincher
The alchemist behind Fight Club and The Social
Network offers a new kind of true crime saga in his
Netflix original series, MINDHUNTER.
N
etflix has come a long way since the launch of its flagship in-house
production, House of Cards, back in 2013. The first two episodes
of that landmark series saw one of American cinema’s most
fastidious craftsmen, David Fincher, make his first foray into television.
Now he’s back and doubling down, helming four episodes of 2017’s most
anticipated binge-fest, an adaptation of the memoir by FBI agent, John
Douglas, the criminal profiler who served as inspiration for Jack Crawford
in Thomas Harris’ bestseller, ‘The Silence of the Lambs’. Fincher gave
LWLies a call to talk all things MINDHUNTER.
LWLies: Was MINDHUNTER a project you developed yourself? Fincher:
Yeah. Let’s see, Charlize Theron called me, I think it was 2009-2010. It was
definitely before House of Cards. She owned the book and had the idea to
develop it as a TV show, so we started talking about what it could be, and
I’d never done TV. I was like, ‘I don’t know enough about it.’ We developed
it together with a writer that she had sort of already hired. I was only kind
of tangentially involved, I wasn’t in the driver’s seat and more of the mind
that, if something can come of this, I’ll certainly direct the pilot.
We went down a road where I met with the writer Joe Penhall and laid
out the things that I’m not interested in, the most important one being
the notion that a fine line separates the FBI agent from the serial killer.
I felt that it was well trawled, I felt that it was a literary conceit and really
had nothing to do with why I think people are interested in serial killers.
I don’t think people are interested in serial killers because they’re so much
like them, I think they’re interested in the aberrant because it’s so hard to
understand. So, I really felt that this was an opportunity to reclaim, not the
genre, because I hate the idea that serial killer films are a genre, but more
the idea that the serial killer is some kind of Wile E Coyote super genius.
There are a lot of ideas that need to be transmitted to the audience
in terms of what the lead character is trying to do, so that when the
first serial killer interview with Ed Kemper comes, they’re effectively
asking the same questions of him as the FBI agent. You once said that
“The first rule of cinema is that a movie has to teach an audience how
to watch it.” I sent it to a friend of mine who’s a stone-cold genius, just this
great screenwriter. I showed him the first two episodes and his comment
was really interesting. He said, ‘You’ve done the exact opposite of television,
where your character is always the perfect person to solve the dilemma of the
show. They may have a problem with alcohol, or may have lost a loved one, but
they’re always the perfect person to wrestle with the problem that the show is
Interview by MATT THRIFT I l l us t rat io n by AARON MANCZYK
going to posit.’ He said what we’ve done here is taken somebody who’s in some
existential malaise – which is something that Joe and I talked about a lot - and
it’s the most difficult thing to dramatise, someone who doesn’t feel like he’s
accomplishing what it is he needs to accomplish.
Joe did some really interesting thinking about how we introduce a character
and introduce his naiveté. I mean, John Douglas is not a naive guy, Holden is
a much more naive character. But through this naiveté we get to experience
how Quantico works and what they wanted from him, and how they expected
him to behave, how they didn’t consider themselves to be outmoded and
outside the vanguard as it relates to criminology. So we got to experience a
lot of that stuff in the first hour. That’s not to say that’s the only way to tell a
story, but we were looking to do a bit more of a hybrid between a movie and
a TV show.
What does that look like to your mind? I don’t know that the golden age of
television is really television as we know it. It’s something that’s grown out
of certain expectations, blurring and subverting a lot of those expectations
in surprising ways, and I really do feel that what’s interesting about the
Netflix model – that they don’t have to worry about capturing an audience
on a given night, that they don’t have to worry about cliffhangers – is that
the way people experience it is much more like literature. You can set the
remote down like you’d set the book down, on your bedside table. It has a
different relationship to its audience. The movie business has become about
the urgency of Friday to Monday, and network television has become about,
‘From the makers of…’ using the hit show as the introduction to the new
show. Then there’s Netflix, which is about, ‘Look, when you get around to
it, we’ll be here.’ It’s a different problem, it requires different things of the
audience’s time. Ultimately I think it requires a different kind of television.
Do the requirements of uniformity throughout the series mean that
the series’ other directors will have to ‘do a Fincher’ moving forwards?
I hope not. Nothing makes a filmmaker more self-conscious than watching
another filmmaker doing an interpretation of what you’ve done. The director
of photography was fairly well versed in what the style was. The style is really
just let’s not be afraid of conversations. It’s My Dinner with Andre the Giant.
There’s a sequence with Jerry Brudos that Andrew Douglas did that’s just a
stainless steel picnic table inside a chain-link cage inside a maximum security
concrete bunker that has razor wire over all the windows. The guy comes in
and it’s a conversation about cigarettes, whether they can un-manacle him,
whether he can fix the guy’s tape recorder. I know that there are filmmakers
INTERVIEW 045
 “The reality of moviemaking is,
y’know, it’s a rat fuck.
Every day is a skirmish.”
who, if you presented them with a long scene of two guys over a picnic table
would go, ‘Oh my God, where do you go with this?’
When you’re approaching a scene that’s 11 pages of dialogue, is that all
shot and cut in your head first? You’re always shooting coverage, because
coverage just means… Look, you can either embrace coverage like an
interior house-painter, as in, ‘I just need to get as many coats as I can,’ but
starting wide, there are practical implications to taking two cameras and
shooting as wide as you can, as a lot of the time you can learn from them.
A few takes and a master can just be a case of ‘I gotta have a master’ or it
can be, ‘So later when I get into this, are you intending to move here…’ It’s
plastic. You don’t want to become a Disneyland animatronic, you want
to leave room for inspiration. We did not storyboard, but if you say that
you’re a director, I don’t want you to become reliant on close-ups.  stuff comes together, and the notion that anyone could say, ‘This is precisely
I want to see the physicality. I want to see the shoulders of this character.
I like the worn nature of what these guys wear. How they walk when their
gait can only be two feet. What does that do to you? How bodies express.
The slouch of somebody who has all the time in the world and the erect
spine of the guy who’s trying to glean something from them, and how the
FBI agent plays with his tie or rolls his eyes and is already packing his stuff
to leave… All that stuff goes into it, and a lot of television is, ‘Get that Tony
Scott close-up.’ We talked about all that stuff.
You loathe the term “auteur”, so much so that you basically gave it to Ed
Kemper’s serial killer as a means of describing his “oeuvre.” My distaste
for the term was exactly the intention. Like, what the fuck? What is he talking
about? The problem with auteurism is that it presupposes that one person
can impress upon 95 people, so clearly, that the manifestation of whatever
it is going on in your head can be clearly attributed to them. The reality of
moviemaking is, y’know, it’s a rat fuck. Every day is a skirmish, and you might
escape every skirmish, but there are injuries and there are losses, and there
are things that you had ten meetings about that go off perfectly, and there are
things that you’ve had no meetings about that ended up taking 8 of the twelve
hours in the day because you didn’t think it was going to be so complicated.  find your worth
My issue with auteurism is, how do you attribute a master plan to a happy
accident. The extent to which things work or don’t work for an audience
046 INTERVIEW
can’t be pre-decided. You have to work at it, and you have to know what it is
you’re trying to do and impart that to an army of people who all have their
own ideas about what’s important. 
Everybody who comes on to a set looks at it from a slightly different
standpoint. You can’t say to the third violinist, ‘This is what the totality of the
thing should sound like.’ You just need to get them to do their thing. When
you hear it, it either moves you or it doesn’t, so you have to figure if it needs a
little bit more of this or that. That’s happening in the rehearsal, it’s happening
in the coverage throughout the day. You hone in as you get tighter and tighter
and tighter on people, but you’re also getting tighter in terms of time. You’re
honing in on one little thing, and then you do the same again in the edit, with
the sound effects, with the music, with the colour grading. Suddenly all this
what it’s going to look like,’ to me is amazing.
But there is a directorial perspective, a subjectivity that is distinctively
yours. That isn’t perhaps as distant as say, a Kubrick, or as immersive
as say, a Spielberg, but that’s definitely identifiable and consistent. And
that’s a decision. I love both those filmmakers. I like dispassion because I
like what it does to the audience, I like to see things as wide as I possibly
can. I don’t want to be in the middle of every transaction. Spielberg’s
staging in a lot of ways is about putting you in harm’s way. Jaws and Close
Encounters are two of my favourite movies. But I look at the stories I’m
interested in telling, or I look at the stories that I have been interested in
telling, and I sort of go, ‘There’s no place for that here.’ You pick and choose.
The important thing is to know what you intend to impart. It comes from
the aesthetic. There are things that you hold dear aesthetically, there
are things that you hold dear behaviourally, there are ways that a scene
unfolds that feel realistic to you. If you’re responsible for how it’s all going
to come off and for how it’s all going to come together, there’s no way that
you can’t inform that. The notion that someone is going to direct a film
and not reveal what it is they like about cinema, or how they prefer things
to be revealed to them or the audience, it’s impossible. You’re doomed to
MINDHUNTER is available on Netflix now.
FRENCH FILM
CLASSICS

AVAILABLE NOW

Directed by
JOSH SAFDIE, BENNY SAFDIE
Starring
ROBERT PATTINSON
BENNY SAFDIE
JENNIFER JASON LEIGH
Released
17 NOVEMBER
ANTICIPATION.
The Safdie brothers are
America’s most exciting
independent filmmakers.
ENJOYMENT.
If you haven’t already guessed,
that title is ironic.
IN RETROSPECT.
An intoxicating downer odyssey to
the inner depths of NY crime.
Good Time
T
here’s a scene in Benny and Josh Safdie’s
2014 feature, Heaven Knows What, where
junkie protagonist Harley (Arielle Holmes)
is shown watching one of the Hellraiser sequels on
TV while high. It’s a fleeting moment of escapism
from the real-world horrorshow she is living, a brief
intermission in an otherwise unrelentingly bleak
study of addiction. Respite is even less forthcoming
in the Safdies’ electrifying, similarly downbeat
follow-up, Good Time. In it, Robert Pattinson plays
a petty crook who scrambles to post bail for his
learning disabled brother (Benny Safdie) following
a comically sloppy bank job. The word ‘comically’
applies here in the most darkly ironic sense, because
while there is an element of farce about the heist
itself, the consequences for both men are grave.
The setting is present-day New York City, yet the
film’s ultra-gritty, gutter-level milieu instantly recalls
the past masters of Gotham pulp: Abel Ferrara, Paul
Schrader and Martin Scorsese. The Safdies were raised
in Queens and Manhattan, and they populate their film
with precisely the kind of “scum” which the city’s most
famous fictional anti-hero, Travis Bickle, so aggressively
stood up against. Pattinson’s Connie Nikas might be
the filthiest of the lot – a deeply troubled, dangerously
impetuous blue-collar criminal who appears to have
snapped the needle off his moral compass and stuck
it into his arm. The role was written for Pattinson
after he reached out to the Safdies expressing a strong
desire to work with them, and it’s clear he relished the
opportunity to put himself through the ringer, imbuing
Connie with a tragic sense of despair while channelling
the bug-eyed intensity of Al Pacino in his pomp.
That said, for all that Pattinson is a fine actor
capable of shedding his celebrity skin for a down-and-
dirty picture such as this, the idea of casting a bona
fide A-lister seems at odds with the Safdies’ fiercely
independent style. The directors generally use non-
professional actors, often basing their scripts on the
real-life experiences of people they meet. On the
other hand, it’s great to see two supremely talented
filmmakers finally receive the wider recognition
they deserve. Not just because their work is formally
audacious but because it is so unflinchingly, thrillingly
true to life. Where so many young filmmakers have a
tendency to wear their progressive politics on their
sleeve, the Safdies address everyday social injustice in
more subtle and telling ways. In one scene a desperate
Connie breaks into an amusement park after hours in
search of a soda bottle filled with LSD, and the resulting
skirmish with a security guard leads to a racial profiling
incident that is shocking in its matter-of-factness.
Much of Good Time was filmed at night, and
cinematographer Sean Price Williams’ decision
to shoot on 35mm with a widescreen aspect ratio
punches the film’s naturalistic aesthetic up several
notches. Added to this, the combination of hand-held
camerawork, harsh artificial lighting and an erratic
grunge-synth score by Brooklyn-based electronic
musician Daniel Lopatin (aka Oneohtrix Point
Never) lends a heart-pounding fever dream quality
to this nightmarish vision of urban decay. Yet the film
never feels like anything less than an authentic trip
through the brothers’ backyard. It’s hardcore stuff,
and proof that American cinema’s best kept secret is
well and truly out. ADAM WOODWARD

048 REVIEWS
 The Disaster Artist
A
Directed by ny self-respecting film fan has at least
JAMES FRANCO heard of Tommy Wiseau’s The Room.
Starring Frequently referred to as one of the worst
JAMES FRANCO films ever made, the self-funded romance/drama/
ALISON BRIE accidental comedy has achieved cult status since
KRISTEN BELL its 2003 release, and its director/writer/producer/
Released star has become the patron saint of Hollyweird.
1 DECEMBER Who better to tell Wiseau’s story than director/
writer/producer/artist/Columbia professor/actor
James Franco?   It’s just as well too, as the film lives and dies
  If you’re familiar with The Room, the plot
and the story behind it are self-explanatory
(relatively speaking) but for those who aren’t… In
1998, Greg Sestero met Tommy Wiseau at a San
Francisco acting class, and the two struck up an
unlikely friendship. After moving to Los Angeles
ANTICIPATION. together and failing to hit the big time as actors,
Franco. Wiseau. Let’s get weird. they decided to make a film of their own – written,
funded, directed by and starring Wiseau, with Greg
playing his best friend. It was to be a dramatic
masterpiece featuring Johnny, a true American
hero. Wiseau named it The Room. The Disaster
ENJOYMENT. Artist seeks to tell the story behind the $6 million
Funny, heartfelt, flop which somehow became the toast of the town,
and utterly bizarre. boasting sell-out global screenings and celebrity
fans, and it does so impressively, with a surprising
amount of warmth and compassion.  however, doesn’t stop The Disaster Artist being a
  After all, it would be all too easy to take the
mickey out of Wiseau, the cartoonish, imposing
IN RETROSPECT. figure with a strange, possibly eastern European
Maybe not a cult classic in accent and questionable dress sense, but there’s a
the making, but Franco’s done sense that both Franco and the film’s writers went
his homework. to great lengths to avoid mocking their subject.
It’s as earnest as the real thing, and while Franco’s
physical likeness to Wiseau sculpted from make-up
and prosthetics is uncanny, it’s his enactment
of his subject’s unique accent and mannerisms
that elevate the film to greatness. It’s one of his
best roles to date, unhampered by pretension or
attempts to give the audience a knowing nudge in
the ribs. Franco’s Wiseau is as sincere, baffling and
mesmerising as the real thing.
on Franco’s impressively mature performance.
Little brother Dave is charming but slightly
unremarkable as Tommy’s best friend Greg, and
there’s a solid supporting cast of Hollywood
comedy talent including Franco’s own BFF Seth
Rogen, but as The Room was Wiseau’s magnum
opus, this is Franco’s – everyone else is a bit player.
  Yet despite the undeniable magnetism of
Franco, there’s always a sense that something’s
missing. Wiseau remains an intentionally
mystifying figure as the story is told through the
eyes of straight man Greg, but Sestero isn’t a strong
enough character to carry the story next to Wiseau,
and it stumbles several times into formulaic,
clichéd territory that renders it forgettable once
the end credits roll. This failure to really ignite,
whole lot of fun – nice touches include a shot-for-
shot comparison of the two films and a brilliantly
eclectic soundtrack – and fans of The Room will
likely enjoy this fitting tribute. If you’re not
convinced, don’t expect Franco and co to change
your mind. HANNAH WOODHEAD
REVIEWS 049
 Lu Over the Wall
H
Directed by ot on the heels of his previous feature The
MASAAKI YUASA Night is Short, Walk on Girl, Masaaki Yuasa
Starring returns with a much more mainstream
KANON TANI offering, the family animated adventure Lu Over
SHÔTA SHIMODA the Wall, which received the top prize at the Annecy
SHIN'ICHI SHINOHARA International Animated Film Festival, beating
Released Japanese critical hits In This Corner of the World
6 DECEMBER and A Silent Voice. After over a decade of Yuasa
pursuing his own unique creative impulses, this film
sees the director pulled into the tractor beam that
targets most up-and-coming anime directors: Lu
Over the Wall is his attempt to ‘do a Ghibli’, and craft
an animated fantasy in the much-vaunted tradition
ANTICIPATION. of Hayao Miyazaki.
The second film in a year Playing like a fusion of the whimsical adventure
from this mad scientist of of Ponyo and the emotional textures of teen
Japanese animation. dramas such as Whisper of the Heart, Lu Over the
Wall homes in on Kai, a reclusive high schooler
trapped in a run-down fishing village by the sea.
Something of an aspiring bedroom DJ, Kai dabbles
with multitracks and overdubs, and uploads his
ENJOYMENT. musical experiments online – causing a stir when
Too long, but a dazzling attempt one effort, under the alias ‘Merman’, goes (locally)
to wrangle Ghibli themes viral. Before long, he’s unmasked and cajoled by
into Yuasa’s wacky world. schoolfriends into joining a band and venturing
out to the abandoned ‘Merfolkland’ amusement
park for secret practice sessions. There they rouse
a mermaid called Lu who has two overwhelming
obsessions: music, and Kai himself.
IN RETROSPECT. The character of Lu is a fascinating mash-up of
Perhaps not a keeper, but Yuasa familiar figures from Ghibli and beyond. Her very
is still the most exciting anime conception suggests Ponyo, the excitable fish-girl
director working today. who latches onto a human boy, while her design
050 REVIEWS
shifts and morphs under scrutiny: part Ponyo,
naturally, but her wide grin and Betty Boop eyes
recall the startling gaze of My Neighbour Totoro’s
Catbus, and her green-blue hair, not to mention her
perky, possessive demeanour is oddly reminiscent
of Lum, the magical girlfriend from legendary ’80s
manga ‘Urusei Yatsura’.
It’s a barmy concoction of styles, and so is the film
as a whole. Yuasa’s off-kilter pacing and charmingly
wonky designs give the film an unpredictable
energy, and exceedingly odd, surreal visual ideas
flow freely from minute to minute. Merfolk, like
vampires, transmit their condition through biting,
so when Lu scoops up a kennel full of pets and has a
nibble she creates a clan of… mer-doggies. Later in
the film, a gigantic shark strides into town, wearing
a bulging business suit and tiny top hat. This is Lu’s
dad, who offers his silent service in revitalising the
town’s failing fish processing industry.
Unfortunately, such eccentricity only stretches
so far, and at nearly two hours in length, Lu Over
the Wall slightly outstays its welcome. An extended
disaster-movie sequence, where the town is flooded,
leaving humans and merfolk to club together to save
their shared home, bloats what could have been a
light trifle of a tale. Alongside the twee tones of Kai’s
coming-of-age dilemmas – should he stay in the
band? Can he sing? What precisely are his feelings
for Lu? – it feels parachuted in from another film.
Ultimately, though, it’s merely yet another stray
idea thrown gleefully at the screen, like so many
colours, characters and creative flourishes - all part
and parcel of a typical Yuasa joint. MICHAEL LEADER
 ADVERTORIAL

LWLies and Staffordshire University present…

Five Essential
Experimental Short Films
1. Un Chien Andalou
Luis Buñuel, 1929
When it came to forging a blueprint for the wondrous and
exotic possibilities of experimental cinema, this is pretty
much the equivalent of a sparkling summer blockbuster.
A scandalous miniature dropped during during the twilight
years of the Jazz age, it marks a marriage between the
unique sensibilities of the surrealist art-world provocateur
Salvador Dali, and the arch, anti-authoritarian filmmaker,
Luis Buñuel. It’s a film which offers a barrage of stark,
surprising images, witty juxtapositions and florid eroticism.
Its shocking centrepiece – a razor sliding across the
surface of an eyeball – remains an unwatchable gore effect
for the ages.
2. Meshes of the Afternoon
Maya Deren, Alexandr Hackenschmied, 1943
Fans of David Lynch will definitely want to seek out this
1943 masterpiece from husband and wife Maya Deren and
Alexandr Hackenschmied. It’s an example of film as pure
atmosphere, where the camera imbues banal household
objects such as a loaf of bread, a key and a record play
with a sense of pure dread. It channels classic Hollywood
noir and gothic horror while employing a range of simple
techniques for innovative, expressive effect. It deals with
dreams and doubles, and the meshes themselves are
both decorative, billowing curtains and a portal into an
alternative dimension.
3. Mothlight
Stan Brakhage, 1963
If someone tells you that the only thing you need to make
a movie is a camera, tell them it’s not true and direct them
to Stan Brakhage’s 1963 short Mothlight. Instead of using
the camera eye as perspective point, Brakhage instead
collected moth wings and various other fragments of
flora and fauna and physically pressed them on to a strip
of 16mm film. The result is 24 unique images per second,
as we can see the intricate capillaries of a moth wing as
swiftly as we would had it had fluttered past our eye line in
real time. It’s a film which exemplifies the director’s project
of merging organic and mechanical forms to create
transcendent visual beauty.
4. Dimensions of Dialogue
Jan Svankmajer, 1982
The essence of language and the impossibility of
communication are the subjects of this stunning 1982
triptych from Czech animator Jan Svankmajer. Employing
tactile clay models and stop-frame animation, this singular
director offers three examples of human discourse with
each one breaking down into impassioned violence. The
highlight is a couple merging in a loving embrace, synched
perfectly to Jan Klusák’s baroque, viola-driven score.
Later, the mood switches on a dime and the pair literally
start clawing chunks out of one another. Grotesque body
horror has seldom looked this gorgeous.
5. Outer Space
Peter Tscherkassky, 1999
Some of the best experimental films take classical genre
as a bedrock, and build upwards from there. Austrian film
collage artist Peter Tscherkassky takes as his base material
a section of footage from 1982 pulp horror film The Entity
– in which Barbara Hershey plays a women who is being
sexually abused by a mystery apparition – and builds it
into something more abstract and terrifying. By layering,
churning and bruising the image, he creates a mood piece
that is completely original and which taps a completely
different vein of visual fear. A sound bed of aggressive white
noise is what nudges this into the realms of greatness.

Want to be able to make movies like this? Staffordshire University’s unique Experimental Film
Production degree allows you to combine being a creative artist with becoming a filmmaker of
the future. It is ideal if you’re interested in establishing a career in film, television and the arts.

Head to facebook.com/experimentalfilmproduction for more information. Apply at ucas.com

 Jane
Directed by BRETT MORGEN
Released 24 NOVEMBER
ew images are more immediately satisfying than the one at the start
F of Brett Morgen’s archive-led bio-doc: a picture-postcard scene
that sees beloved primatologist Jane Goodall sitting atop an arching tree,
surveying the luscious green expanse in front of her. She is queen of her
domain, and friend to all apes. This is one of many captivating scenes in a
magnificent-looking doc which finds new life in a well-covered subject. Its
visual narrative is assembled from 140 plus hours of newly available, almost
incomprehensibly luscious 16mm archive recorded by Goodall’s jungle
confidant, ex-husband and famed nature photographer Hugo van Lawick.
Cut rhythmically over Goodall’s expository narration and Philip
Glass’ sonorous score, the footage alone – an intoxicating wash of vibrant,
hyper-saturated colours and immaculate compositions – is enough to
sweep the viewer in. Goodall makes an irresistible subject, describing
her experiences affectingly as Morgen pieces together cuttings from the
recordings to fit the shape of the story she offers, vivifying the footage
through dramatic montage and the insertion of artificial sound.
Jane’s story – that of the self proclaimed “strange white ape” who
wanted “to be like Doctor Dolittle” but ended up uncovering some of the
most vital discoveries about man’s relation to his four legged forefathers
in the history of modern science – is a compelling, if familiar one. Initially
chosen for the pioneering project which most of the footage focuses on
(intensive chimpanzee observation in Gombe, Tanzania) for her humility
and naivité, through an intensive dedication to her work, Goodall became,
as she sweetly puts it, “closer to animals and nature, closer to myself,”
observing behaviours believed impossible in non-human creatures.
It’s a little disappointing then, that a film all about the excitement of
breaking new ground does not reflect this inventiveness in the shape of
its own form. MATT TURNER
ANTICIPATION. NatGeo documentary on well-
documented, rightly adored figure. Still, chimpanzees.
ENJOYMENT. The splendour of nature and science. A
chimpanzee stealing a hand of bananas from a scientist’s tent.
IN RETROSPECT. A charming, formulaic portrait of
a wonderful woman and the chimps of her life.
052 REVIEWS
Wet Women in the Wind
Directed by AKIHIKO SHIOTA
Starring YUKI MAMIYA, TASUKU NAGAOKA
Released 24 NOVEMBER
n the late ’70s, Japanese film studio Nikkatsu quite literally
I hit pay dirt with their output of ‘Roman Porno’ movies – swiftly
produced softcore B pictures which ran to about the 70 minute mark.
The studio has decided that now is the time for more Roman Porno
films, and so has commissioned a clutch of five – Akihiko Shiota’s
Wet Women of the Wind is one of them, and a very good one at that.
Eschewing dark sexual despair almost entirely, this disarmingly
jolly roundelay plays like a drolly erotic farce, with the characters
dispensing of their outwardly coy, intellectual personas in the search
of more animalistic pleasures. A young woman named Shiori (Yuki
Mamiya) emerges from the sea wearing a T-shirt which says, ‘You
need tissues for your issues’. She then locks limpet-like to the back of
Kosuke (Tasuku Nagaoka) a morose playwright from Tokyo who has
embraced a reclusive life of abstinence in order to locate his muse once
more. He lives in a rickety shack and sleeps in a dinghy, while Shiori
– whose appearance arrives concurrently with the escape of a tiger –
is determined to have him, but only on her terms.
The film plays sex for laughs, and though the very idea might be a
red flag for some, Benny Hill this is not. The pair execute gymnastic
positions, holler and moan and even attempt to carry on with domestic
life while clamped to one another. The notion of sex as a kind of theatrical
game is teased with a number of ad-hoc dramatic exercises and Kosuke’s
preening, hollow commentary. Things start relatively slow and wind
towards a euphoric three-way climax, and the comic tone is augmented
by Shunsuke Kida’s popping jazz score. In fact, the film is so much fun, you
can’t help but wonder if Hollywood would ever have the nerve to delve
back into its archives and dredge up something so deliciously tawdry.
DAVID JENKINS
ANTICIPATION. Roman Porno movies
are back, but are they here to stay?
ENJOYMENT.
Here’s hoping. This one is an absolute hoot.
IN RETROSPECT. Keen to catch up with Nikkatsu’s four
other neo-Roman Porno movies now.
 Brigsby Bear
Directed by DAVE MCCARY
Starring KATE LYN SHEIL, KYLE MOONEY, MARK HAMILL
Released 8 DECEMBER
his is the story of an emotionally stunted 30-something who can only
T conceptualise the world around him through cultural iconography,
which might make it sound like it’s a serious work about a film critic. Instead,
it’s an off-kilter, open-hearted comedy.
For decades, James (Kyle Mooney, also co-writer) has lived with his
supposed parents (Mark Hamill, Jane Adams) in a secluded bunker. He
was kidnapped from hospital as a baby and raised with no connection to
the outside world. His every waking thought is consumed by educational
sci-fi series Brigsby Bear Adventures. Unbeknown to James, all 700 plus
episodes of the show, and some merchandise, were produced by his captors,
who used it to instil certain values into the lad, such as how curiosity is
an unnatural emotion and how frequently one should masturbate. Think
Barney & Friends written while high(er).
About 10 minutes into the film, James is rescued by the authorities,
who explain his abduction and return him to his biological parents (Matt
Walsh, Michaela Watkins). Amid his uncomfortable discoveries of the
real world is the realisation that no one else knows of Brigsby, and that
the show’s nonsense mythology will never be concluded with its maker
now imprisoned. Neglecting his real family’s attempts at bonding, James
becomes obsessed with making his own feature film conclusion.
SNL veteran Dave McCary largely manages the difficult balancing
act between earnest emotional trauma and silly comedy, though it never
truly embraces this latent dark streak. Every time the script flirts with
psychological pathos, attention is quickly whisked away to more clichéd
American indie tropes, with James assembling and inspiring a ragtag crew
– like some aspiring actor-detective – to pull off his dream while following
their own. For all the film’s celebration of imagination as a tool for escape,
the trajectory it follows is too uninspired. JOSH SLATER-WILLIAMS
ANTICIPATION. Room meets Be Kind Rewind
is certainly an intriguing premise.
ENJOYMENT. The comedic mileage from its faux
show goes a long way.
IN RETROSPECT. The film’s own arrested development
bothers with post-viewing distance.
Mountains May Depart
Directed by JIA ZHANG-KE
Starring ZHAO TAO, ZHANG YI, LIANG JING DONG
Released 15 DECEMBER
t’s enervating to chart the progress of Chinese director Jia Zhang-ke.
I He has moved away from stark, politically corrosive inquiries into
economic displacement and the shifting sands of the Chinese landscape,
to channel similar themes into more, shall we say, broadly approachable
packages. Mountains May Depart is an impressive triptych feature
which combines a florid family melodrama with themes of tradition,
technology, pride and rampant globalisation. The film opens in gala
fashion, as Jia muse Zhao Tao – delivering an astonishing performance
– dances to the Pet Shop Boys’ version of ‘Go West’ in the year 1999.
Initially set in the mining town of Fengyang, the film carefully sets up
a fractious love triangle between shop clerk Tao, a wheeler-dealer who
wants to take her away from the squalor, Jinsheng (Zhang Yi), and a
self-hating working class labourer, Liangzi (Liang Jin Dong), who sees
her as his romantic equal.
The opening chapter charts the emotional push and pull between
the characters while keeping one eye closely on the rotten system that
drives these people to make the decisions they do. The film soon skips
forward to 2014, and then later, to a futuristic rendering of Australia in
2025 which features a mighty fine broadside aimed at Google Translate.
As is customary for Jia, any scintilla of initial hope is crushed and then
crushed again, as his characters are put through the ringer in the name
of a withering cultural critique. Even considering the few moments
that don’t quite gel (the 2025 segment occasionally feels a little half-
cocked), it’s a unique and eccentric achievement from one of the most
consistently challenging, exciting and angry filmmakers currently on the
circuit. It’s a shame, then, that UK audiences have had to wait two years
for it, as it premiered in competition at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.
DAVID JENKINS
ANTICIPATION. Everything this director makes should be
considered essential viewing.
ENJOYMENT. Some light scuffs at the edges,
but delivers a major emotional wallop.
IN RETROSPECT. Zhao Tao proves that she’s one of
the greatest living screen actors.
REVIEWS 053
 Most Beautiful Island
T
Directed by his film opens with scenes of the morning
ANA ASENSIO pedestrian rush in downtown New York.
Starring It is a series of crowd shots, each with
ANA ASENSIO a different woman at its centre. By the time the
NATASHA ROMANOVA camera has settled on Luciana (Ana Asensio, who
DAVID LITTLE is also debuting here as writer and director), we
Released are not sure what connects her, beyond her sex, to
1 DECEMBER all these other women. We are, however, already
under the impression that hers is just one face
in the crowd, with an experience shared by many
and a story so timeworn that could equally be
someone else’s.
The film follows a day (and night) in the life of a
vulnerable yet resourceful illegal migrant haunted
by the pain and guilt of her young daughter’s death
back home. Luciana struggles to build a new life
ANTICIPATION. below the radar with hand-to-mouth jobs, and to
Heard good things, and get her nausea and nosebleeds treated without
like islands. medical insurance – in the land where, as her new
friend Olga (Natasha Romanova) puts it, “anything
is possible.” Yet so great is Luciana’s grief, despair
and lack of self-worth that while having a bath, she
accidentally releases a nest of cockroaches into the
ENJOYMENT. room and neither flinches nor flees.
Long day’s journey into “I am having nightmares again,” is Luciana’s
skin-crawlingly tense night. first line in Most Beautiful Island, spoken into a
phone (its credit ticking down) to her mother far
away. The film’s ironised title is also a message
scribbled by Luciana on an insistent rent demand
that she has folded into a paper aeroplane and sent
IN RETROSPECT. flying out her shared apartment’s window to the
The plight of America’s dreaming cityscape beyond. Her dreams too, very much of
paperless, in devastating diptych. the American variety, are right there for her to
054 REVIEWS
see, yet always beyond her grasp – whether in the
affluent privilege of the two demanding young
children she babysits, or in the haute couture
stores whose goods she cannot afford.
Risk and opportunity come when Olga offers
Luciana a highly paid and potentially regular
gig to attend a party in a cocktail dress. “It is not what
you are thinking,” Olga reassures her, and indeed,
it will turn out to be something else, more akin
to Luciana’s nightmares, as the social realism
of the film’s first half gives way to an altogether
more genre-bound affair in the basement
of a New York building. There Luciana will not
only join all the women glimpsed in the film’s
opening sequence, but also find herself making
unwelcome contact with another female group
brought in illegally from abroad, and exploited
at the whim of elite sado-spectators.
In the skin-crawlingly tense scenes that
ensue, the everyday danger and helplessness of
life as a paperless migrant is transformed into
an “entertaining” game of chance. These later
sequences are reminiscent of Géla Babluani’s
2005 film 13 Tzameti in which a clutch of poverty-
stricken men gravitate to the countryside to
play Russian Roulette as a means of economic
survival. Asensio’s film ends near the point where
it began, on the streets of New York, during the
wee hours of the morning, and focusing on a
poster that reads, “Big Apple, Big Dreams”. By
now Asensio’s grippingly double-edged tale has
exposed that dream to be rotten to the core.
ANTON BITEL
 IN CINEMAS DECEMBER 8TH
/ARROWVIDEO /ARROWFILMSVIDEO
 Mudbound
T
Directed by he expansive scope of Dee Rees’ third
DEE REES feature, Mudbound, is a spectacle to behold
Starring and cherish. It offers burning proof that
CAREY MULLIGAN cinema can be employed to capture the grand sweep
JASON CLARKE of history and the slow, grinding tectonic plates
MARY J BLIGE of “progress” without the aid of swelling budgets,
Released intricate special effects and armies of extras. This
17 NOVEMBER pulverisingly sad historical saga is ripped from
the pages of Hillary Jordan’s 2008 novel which
centres on a plantation in the Mississippi Delta
througout the 1940s, dividing its objective eye
almost 50/50 between the upwardly mobile white
landowners and the dirt-poor black household who
live on and work the fields. From the outset, Rees’
coolly majestic film displays all the trappings of a
ANTICIPATION. handsome prestige picture purpose built for the
Director Dee Rees made big waves awards set, though it’s not long before a deeper,
with her 2011 feature more lyrical work blossoms. As its story develops,
debut Pariah. we are allowed access to the inner monologue of
most of the key players. These aren’t direct portals
into the mind that offer instant emotional insight,
more literary musings on life, the world, religion,
family, economics and conflict. The wistful poetics
ENJOYMENT. of Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven instantly spring
The filmmaking here is a thing of to mind as a transcendental touchstone.
consummate beauty. Brothers Henry and Jamie McAllan (Jason Clarke
and Garrett Hedlund) are seen digging a pit in the
driving rain. They discover a skull in the ground,
and Henry says they have to start again, as his father
can’t be buried near a slave grave. Henry’s wife Laura
IN RETROSPECT. (Carey Mulligan) enters the fray, and everyone looks
A slow and brutal burn, but worth nervous and a little contrite. Black farmer Hap (Rob
it for the devastating finale. Morgan) and his family trundle by in a cart, and he
056 REVIEWS
sends an icy glare to Henry when asked to help lower
the coffin into the ground. The film flashes back to
build out the earth-shattering context for this strange,
awkward set-to. The Jim Crow south remains a hotbed
of persecution and hatred, and it transpires that the
McAllans find themselves split between the attitudes
of Henry’s hardcore racist pappy (Jonathan Banks)
and a desire to transcend this antiquated and evil
system of oppression. The Jackson clan do their best
to keep their heads down. They make sure that their
cordial relationship with the McAllans never develops
into something that may eventually cause them harm.
Mary J Blige is extraordinary (and unrecognisable) as
Florence Jackson, the only character able to see the
shifting of cultural sands. She speaks in muted, husky
tones, perhaps knowing that darkness lurks ahead.
Her stripped-back performance is spellbinding, as
she imbues the stock “strong” matriarch character
with a persistent sense of helplessness and
suppressed longing.
Mudbound feels unique in its drive to place
issues of race against a broader backdrop of global
historical events. Jamie and Ronsel Jackson (Jason
Mitchell) head to Europe to fight the war, and even
though they come back changed men, they find a
country that has been preserved in sticky, opaque
amber. They witnessed blood being spilled in the
name of freedom, and can’t comprehend why the
fervour to preserve a society fuelled by compassion
rather than contempt doesn’t yet exist at home.
Rees works the material slow, hard and long, and so
it’s only when you reach the closing chapter that her
brilliant MO is fully realised. DAVID JENKINS
IN CONVERSATION...
Dee Rees
The director of
Mudbound on how
she grappled with the
legacy of slavery in
the Deep South.
W
atching Mudbound is like watching the
past and present blur into one. Set in
post-World War Two-era Mississippi,
it scans like an old-fashioned family epic with clear
literary origins (Hillary Jordan’s 2008 novel). Yet
the tense dynamic between a neighbouring black
and white family and the huge emotional moments
afforded to each character could – unfortunately –
be ripped from any time. Writer/director Dee Rees
spoke about crafting a multi-perspective film out
of history and how she prepares with actors.
LWLies: How would you describe the feeling
you get when you chance upon a source of
inspiration that you know has potential to be a
film? Rees: The feeling is what can you bring out
of it or what story it tells. In Mudbound I saw my
grandmother’s story. She was from a town called
Ferriday in Louisiana. Her whole thing was that
she decided she was not going to be a sharecropper,
she wasn’t going to pick cotton, she wasn’t going to
be a domestic worker. She decided she was going
to be a stenographer and she was the first person
in her family who wanted to be a stenographer.
Wo rds by SOPHIE MONKS KAUFMAN I l l us t rat io n by AARON MANCZYK
So she moved to California. She would tell me
stories about her family. Her family owned their
land but her parents farmed, they picked cotton.
After I read the book it had diagrams of how the
cabins were and what things they used and what
things cost and so it was a chance for me to dig into
that.  Both of my grandfathers fought in different
wars. My maternal grandfather fought in World
War Two and my paternal grandfather fought in
Korea so it was a chance to tell the story of black
soldiers who come back. The opportunity to delve
into all that was what what attracted me and also
the multiplicity of voices.
How do you shepherd all of that into something
that you know will work as a piece of cinema?
As a writer, you just know that each family,
each character, has to have agency. No one is
a supporting character in someone else’s life,
everyone has their own life. With seven characters
and six voices there’s a danger of it not being
anyone’s story and somehow you’ve got to make it
everyone’s story.
It feels very elegant the way you’ve knitted
together so many individual threads. A lot of
credit goes to my co-editor Mako Kamitsuna.
Because we were on this independent film, we
had the leisure of editing in this place in upstate
New York. Instead of being in a posh studio,
we had this raw, industrial space: a couch, a
computer, a lamp and a dog. We had freedom and
took our time and played with many different
structures. It was a centring thing to do each
family separately and then join them together.
You figured out how each family can work as its
own arc. Each family can stand alone and then
if we meld them together, it just amplifies them
and makes it stronger.
How did you direct your actors in a short
amount of time to hit emotional cues that are
the result of years of accumulated feeling in the
lives of their characters? I don’t do rehearsals
where I’m running the lines. I do relationship
workshops where we do the pairings between
each of the key actors and that really gears up
the core of things. I had Carey Mulligan and
Mary J Blige in a room together face-to-face
just repeating over and over again, ‘You have the
power’, ‘No, you have the power’ and then vice
versa because that was the core of these women,
each feeling that the other has power over them.
From that, in every scene they knew how it was
going to go. And then Henry and Ron had a talk
about how they met. They built an imagined
personal history together and the same things
with the sons, so to create the dynamic between
Pappy and Jamie I had Jonathan Banks and
Jason Clarke and Garett Hedlund sit in a room
together and have a therapy session where, in
character, they could bounce off one another.
Is this technique something you have used
before? I used it on Pariah with Kim Wayans,
Charles Parnell, Adepero Oduye and Sahra
Mellesse. I had them sitting on the couch and I
had a woman who pretended to be a therapist, who
wasn’t a therapist! But she asked them questions
about the family dynamic, and that was great.
I really like this therapy session set-up because it
lets the actors get close in character and to really
get a sense of the arc of these relationships and the
unspoken desire
INTERVIEW 057
 Ingrid Goes West
E
Directed by arly on in Matt Spicer’s spiky Ingrid Goes
MATT SPICER West, golden-locked Instagram influencer
Starring Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen) posts a
AUBREY PLAZA photo of Joan Didion’s ‘The White Album’. Her
ELIZABETH OLSEN caption quotes the first line of Didion’s 1979 essay
O'SHEA JACKSON JR. collection: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
Released Although the moment is a fleeting part of a larger
17 NOVEMBER montage that serves as a #nofilter introduction into
Taylor’s carefully-curated world, this clever co-opting
of Didion’s line fittingly connects her words with the
narrative making inherent in social networking. Spicer
and David Branson Smith’s Sundance-winning script
ANTICIPATION. lays forth a vision of social media in which everyone
A promising scenario nabbed both is a custodian of their own image, over-documenting
a valuable Sundance prize and an themselves for outside consumption.
utterly idiosyncratic leading lady. One of those consumers is Ingrid Thorburn
(Aubrey Plaza), an unstable loner who has just been
released from a mental institution after pepper-
spraying a woman at her wedding. While flipping
through a lifestyle magazine, Ingrid discovers Taylor,
ENJOYMENT. the Platonic ideal of Insta-celebs, and is instantly
Plaza takes some audacious smitten. Using a recently-acquired inheritance, Ingrid
chances even as her film’s own relocates to LA, dyes her hair, and gains access into
riskiness pays fewer dividends. Taylor’s privileged circle. During a trip to Joshua Tree,
Ingrid and Taylor snort coke, party at a roadhouse,
and stare at the night sky, their acquaintance solidified
into a seemingly star-crossed bond. In these early
chapters, Ingrid Goes West remains an entertainingly
IN RETROSPECT. lived-in parody that continually runs the risk of being
An appealing cast gives its all to too glib about the culture it lampoons. Our obsession
a highly-charged satire that stays with social media is ripe for mocking and even
as skin-deep as a selfie. The fuss merciless comedy, but Spicer and Smith reach for only
was all about – and it feels good. the lowest-hanging fruit, tossing out straightforward
058 REVIEWS
gags about superlative-slinging millennials with their
hashtags, selfie-taking, and avocado toast. Nothing
cuts with the knife-edge sharpness of Ingrid, a nervily-
conceived character whose funny-frightening persona
is owed largely to Plaza.
With her scowling raccoon eyes and irony-laden
monotone, Plaza can be a difficult actress to cast, but
Ingrid is an ideal venue for her uneasily intimidating
aura and tart sensibilities. She feels in total kinship
with the troubled, territorial Ingrid, embracing her
jagged edges with an id-driven vigour and finding
depth beneath easy punchlines. She also sparks,
quite spiritedly, to O’Shea Jackson Jr, a deeply
charming presence as Ingrid’s Batman-idolising
landlord. Their chemistry becomes a haven as Ingrid
veers further away from the film’s examination
of manufactured 21st century role-playing. The
introduction of Taylor’s live-wire brother, a repellant
creature played by Billy Magnussen, transforms the
film into a thriller and entails a gradual drift from
Olsen. But these emphases on other actors only
diminish the acerbic potency of Spicer and Smith’s
central premise.
Through Plaza, Spicer’s film achieves the high-wire
humour it seeks, but its thematic heft is light and its
dual depictions of addiction and mental illness are
rooted in a reactionary finger-wagging that leaves its
antiheroine more diagnosed than explored. Ingrid
Goes West is a film that knows that people like Ingrid
tell themselves stories in order to live but doesn’t
entirely understand why, betraying a gap in knowledge
and lived experience that makes for a satire not only
lacking teeth but imagination. MATTHEW ENG
 Thelma
T
Directed by there is an energy that powers the first two
JOACHIM TRIER features by Norwegian director Joachim
Starring Trier – 2006’s Reprise and 2011’s Oslo,
EILI HARBOE August 31st. By comparison, his fourth feature,
KAYA WILKINS a return to Norwegian language filmmaking
HENRIK RAFAELSEN after 2015’s American experiment Louder Than
Released Bombs, may appear as bafflingly sedate. Thelma
3 NOVEMBER unfolds in the cold, slow force field of its cold,
slow antiheroine. As, like the frozen lake located
beside her family home, something disturbing lies
beneath the surface of this film. Trier relies on this
intriguing absence to sustain attention over the
best part of two hours.
To bludgeon our senses into knowing that all is
not well with first year university student Thelma
(Eili Harboe), Ola Fløttum’s electronic score
drones across most sequences. Something is also
ANTICIPATION. amiss in the family dynamic. Father Trond (Henrik
Trier’s first two features give him Rafaelsen) is peculiarly over-involved (he knows
a lifetime pass to our interest. when Thelma makes a new friend on Facebook)
while mother Unni (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) is
embalmed beneath a sorrowful glaze.
The first indication that something is wrong
comes when Thelma has a seizure in a university
ENJOYMENT. study room – an event portended by a bird flying
Intriguing and well-made, into a window and a “hi” from beautiful fellow
but also trying and inhuman. student, Anja (Kaya Wilkins). As she falls to
the floor, a wet patch spreads out on Thelma’s
jean-clad groin. By the next scene her whole body
is wet as she swims in a cavernous swimming pool.
Anja joins her in this lonely space and kneels down
IN RETROSPECT. on the pool edge to check on Thelma’s wellbeing.
Way too cool for school. The pair share loaded eye contact.
Aided by occasional flashbacks to Thelma’s
girlhood, the narrative unfolds not so much by
parcelling out chunks of information but in tiny
slivers. Harboe delivers a deliberately blank
performance. As with Ryan Gosling in Drive, when
asked a question she gazes before responding. It’s
hard to get stuck into a character given so little
colour beyond a mystery affliction. In the absence
of personality, the camera drinks in her athletic
prettiness through close-ups and scenes where she, a
loner, is the only moving element in the frame.
Only the introduction of Anja means she is
less alone. The flip side is Anja’s nearness incites
sexual longing and this longing incites more
seizures – psychogenic non-epileptic seizures as
they are later diagnosed. Fantastical sequences
indicate her mental abandonment: veins beneath
the skin are lit up by electrical currents, glass
shatters, a snake glides around a neck as a hand
slides into underwear. The visuals are compelling
but something is missing. The tone is too flat and
the world-building too smooth for this film to ever
come fully to life. Where it’s going is fascinating
enough yet without an undercurrent of the
human life caught in this horror, Thelma feels too
stark an exercise. One is left with its ideas on a
theoretical level rather than a gut-wrenching one.
The reveals open up a philosophical goldmine,
but these shining offerings end up scattered on
the surface. Trier’s first two films proved him
a genius at rendering the heat of emotional
intensity. One wonders why he has turned so cold.
SOPHIE MONKS KAUFMAN
REVIEWS 059
 Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool
“S
Directed by he was a big name in black-and-white
PAUL MCGUIGAN films, not doing too well in colour,”
Starring we’re told near the start of Film Stars
ANNETTE BENING Don’t Die in Liverpool. “Always played the tart.” Of
JAMIE BELL course, there was a lot more to Gloria Grahame
VANESSA REDGRAVE than that, but film biopics have an unfortunate
Released habit of flattening out the complexities and
17 NOVEMBER inconsistencies of a person’s life to fit a familiar,
simplistic template.
In the 1940s and ’50s, Gloria Grahame was
involved in some of the greatest films of the studio
era, winning an Oscar for The Bad and the Beautiful
and being nominated for Crossfire. She had four
marriages (including a notoriously tumultuous
ANTICIPATION. one with Nicholas Ray), and her insecurity about
One singular Hollywood star her looks led her to undergo a series of damaging
takes on another. plastic surgery procedures. Paul McGuigan’s film,
however, is interested in just two things: her late-
in-life romance with a much younger man, and her
sad decline as she finally succumbed to cancer.
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool is adapted from
ENJOYMENT. the memoir by Peter Turner, who fell in love with
Film stars might not die “Glo” in 1979 and then cared for her through her
in Liverpool, but they sure illness in 1981. If the prospect of viewing a female
spend a long time dying there. Hollywood icon through the lovestruck eyes of
a young Englishman provokes queasy memories
of My Week with Marilyn, you can relax a little,
because this one at least boasts two lead actors who
share a genuine chemistry. While Annette Bening
IN RETROSPECT. might not look much like Gloria Grahame, there’s
Well, it’s no In a Lonely Place, something irresistibly spirited and beguiling
or The Big Heat, or Human about the performance she delivers. She relishes
Desire or... the opportunity to play an unapologetically sexual
060 REVIEWS
55-year-old, and her flirtatious exchanges with
Jamie Bell (who gamely keeps pace with her) make
the film’s opening scenes glide by smoothly.
The problem is the rest of the movie. McGuigan
handles the transitions between time periods in
imaginative ways, but the trips to 1981 are so much
less engaging and rewarding than those initial
encounters. Gloria and Peter’s visits to the US
are plagued by horrible rear-projected backdrops
(perhaps intentionally to create a dreamlike
atmosphere, but they just look cheap and tacky),
and by the time everyone has gathered together in
the Turner family home, with Julie Walters dusting
off a rote “Scouse Mum” turn from her repertoire,
the unexpected sense of vitality and intimacy
that we enjoyed earlier in the film has long since
disappeared. There’s nothing left to do but watch
as Gloria gradually deteriorates, and while the
filmmakers work hard to construct a tearjerking
climax, it has no weight because it just feels like
we’re going through the biopic motions.
It has become standard practice for biopics to
end with real images of the people involved and
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool shows us Gloria
collecting her Best Supporting Actress Oscar
before the credits roll. But the film’s most striking
use of archive footage occurs much earlier, when
we’re treated to a clip of her singing ‘Ace in the
Hole’ from the 1954 noir Naked Alibi. It’s only
a brief glimpse, but it might be enough to make
you wonder why you’re not spending this time
just watching a Gloria Grahame picture instead.
PHIL CONCANNON
 5 DECEMBER – 27 JANUARY
BASED ON STORIES BY ROD SERLING,
CHARLES BEAUMONT AND RICHARD MATHESON
ADAPTED BY ANNE WASHBURN | DIRECTED BY RICHARD JONES

Image by Dewynters

Principal Partner

Registered charity number 282167

TM & © 2017 CBS. ARR.
Tickets from £10 | almeida.co.uk
 Happy End
T
Directed by hat title, if it really needs to be confirmed, is
MICHAEL HANEKE ironic. Michael Haneke is modern cinema’s
Starring tomb raider of abject gloom. His camera is
ISABELLE HUPPERT minutely calibrated to capture (and amplify) human
JEAN-LOUIS TRINTIGNANT suffering, and also the humans who precipitate said
FANTINE HARDUIN suffering. And then, on top of that, you have what we
Released might term “ambient suffering”, which is an entirely
1 DECEMBER natural, non-man made form of suffering that comes
part and parcel with the burden of human sentience.
His intriguing and oblique new puzzle
film  presents this suffering in all its disparate
forms, and focuses particularly on how it has
manifest within the ranks of an affluent family of
coastal French industrialists, the Laurents. Ice cold
Anne (Isabelle Huppert) is head puppet master,
pacifying members of the clan and keeping business
ANTICIPATION. dealings bubbling over. Brother Thomas (Mathieu
Haneke is one of the big dogs Kassovitz) is bunking over with his depressed
of Euro arthouse cinema. daughter Eve (Fantine Harduin), whose mother
(his ex-wife) is critically ill in hospital. Family
black sheep Pierre (Franz Rogowski) vents his
frustrations through gymnastic karaoke sessions,
while Anne’s cantankerous father George (Jean-
ENJOYMENT. Louis Trintignant) is in constant search of the title’s
This is his usual thing but with illusive happy end.
a rather bizarre comic twist. Haneke’s previous film,  Amour, saw an  old
couple condemned to deal with the grotesque
process of mortality, but in Happy End Haneke
suggests that the possibility of love is dwindling in
a world in which digital interfaces serve to thwart
IN RETROSPECT. physical relationships. In one sequence, George
Dryly humourous and shows some old photographs of his late wife to Eve,
exceptionally sour. and a sentimental bond is formed. The primacy of
062 REVIEWS
photography retains its value – it’s when you add
caption boxes and a live streaming video option that
matters become more complex.
As usual, Haneke stages mundane domestic
scenes in a way where a sudden outburst of extreme
violence should never be discounted. You watch
each shot with a single thought: what could possibly
go wrong here? He uses the frame in intriguing ways,
planting red herrings in the backdrop or tucking
them away in a corner. Anne and Thomas argue in
his apartment, and a frazzled Thomas drifts ever
closer towards the balcony as it’s looking more likely
that Anne has him verbally pinned.
This hair-trigger sensibility is the remarkable
quality on which Haneke has built his kingdom, and
it makes his films compelling even when (like here)
there’s no conventional narrative thread. This is a
film which will no doubt reward repeated viewings
as a way to catch all of the subtle symmetries and to
divulge the true meaning of each enigmatic scene.
There’s one sequence where Eve wanders through
a garden party and overhears random snatches of
dull conversations – like a walking, talking social
media feed.
Happy End is a Haneke mega mix, and the haters
are very much gonna hate. But there is something
irresistible about the director’s hostile precision and
the way in which he offers a surprise along with every
lacerating cut. It’s a film about a world gradually
sliding into an abyss of moral degradation, but at the
same time, there are traces which make you think that
Haneke secretly believes it’s a world worth saving.
DAVID JENKINS
IN CONVERSATION...
Michael Haneke
The Austrian auteur
explains why he had
to create a Facebook
account for his new
film, Happy End.
T
he vaunted writer/director of such
monolithically bleak films as Amour,
The White Ribbon and Funny Games
explains how, in his new one, he combined the
digital world with an abiding interest in suicide.
LWLies: You started writing a film
called  Flashmob  which you abandoned –
did any of that film evolve into what became
Happy End? Haneke: There is one thread in the
film that does come from Flashmob, and that is
about the girl who poisons her own mother. It’s
based on a story I read a couple of years ago in
the newspaper – a girl who did just that, tried
to poison her mother over a long period of time
and published it, wrote about it on the internet.
It’s something that I wanted to put into a film for
many years, but that was the only thread that I
took from Flashmob.
Do you engage with the internet a lot? For this
film I opened up a Facebook account myself. I
explored a little bit, had some experience, to
do basic research. It would be the same thing
Interview by DAVID JENKINS I l l us t rat io n by AARON MANCZYK
if I were making a film about a musician for
example. I would want to learn more about
their world. I’m personally not a student of
social media. I use email. I use the internet.
When I want to research things quickly, of
course, I have an iPhone, and use it to talk to
people. But social media? Trust me, I don’t
have time in my life to waste sitting in front of
the computer and surfing.
Regarding your Facebook page – was that
under your own identity or under the identity
of a child? No, I didn’t use an account using my
own name, as I would have been flooded by fans.
I wanted to remain anonymous.
But it wasn’t a child? No, it wasn’t.
Where does your interest in suicide come from?
I couldn’t very well imagine that, at a certain
point, given circumstances, you’d want to end
your life. I grew up and was raised by my aunt,
and at the end of her life, when she was 92,
she reached a stage where she didn’t want to
go on living. She asked for my help. She wanted
to take some pills that would allow her to end
her life. At that time I was simply too cowardly
to want to help her out. She attempted suicide
and I found her at home and saved her. When
she woke up in the hospital room and she saw
me sitting there, she looked at me and said,
‘Why did you do that to me?’. Then she waited,
and at a point when I was away at a film
festival she did it, and this time she succeeded.
But I think she was right to do it. I think it
should be a person’s right to be able to end
their life.
Did you have any discussions with her about her
impulse? Yes we spoke about it and it’s a decision
or a desire that I approved of entirely. She told me
that all of her friends were dead, she had no one
else she could talk to, that she was bored so she
spent all of her days in front of the television. The
first thing in the morning, she would be worried
whether she’d be able to get to the bathroom in
time because she wasn’t able to stand. ‘Life’, she
said, was ‘a continual series of indignities and
humiliations’, and she asked for my help. But I
was too cowardly. I said, ‘No. You know in your
will you’ve named me as your inheritor, your heir,
and if it came out that I’d helped you to commit
suicide, then I would be legally prosecuted.
They’d think that I’d done it to get your money.’
But it was a decision that I entirely approved of
and I wish that I hadn’t been this cowardly and
had been able to help her. 
That’s an incredible story. It’s a very common
too. I think it’s wrong that society imposes the
obligation to remain alive on such people. I want
to be clear and more specific on that because
I’m afraid of being misinterpreted, so let me
come back to that and say that I understand, at
the same time, that its impossible – or at least
difficult – for the state to make assisted dying
legal. That would open the door to murder, for
example, and it’s very difficult to regulate. All
the more so in German speaking countries,
given our past and with the role that euthanasia
played in the Third Reich. So that would be
very dangerous. But at the same time I am
sympathetic to the sense of humiliation that
comes from forcing people to go on living such
an unworthy existence
INTERVIEW 063
 Stronger
M
Directed by ama always said life is like a David Gordon
DAVID GORDON GREEN Green movie: you never know what you’re
Starring gonna get. The one-time heir apparent of
JAKE GYLLENHAAL the American indie cinema crown has safely emerged
TATIANA MASLANY from his stoned sojourn in the woods of weed
MIRANDA RICHARDSON comedy, and yet not fully intact. His Prince Avalanche
Released and Joe flashed enough glints of his patience and
8 DECEMBER bone-deep humanism to confirm that at least they
were still present in his brain, then along came the
shoddy, unfocused Manglehorn and Our Brand Is
Crisis to cast doubt on his competence all over again.
If nothing else, Green’s blossomed into a wonderful
suspense filmmaker, in the sense that the varying
levels of quality in his work become apparent with all
ANTICIPATION. the tension of a Shyamalanesque twist.
Dramatising fresh tragedy is It’s a pleasant surprise, then, that the version
a waltz through a minefield, of Green who knows what he’s doing shows up
and Green’s recent output has for the sobering, unsentimental Stronger. He
been spotty. brings his A-game to a project more fraught with
trainwreck potential than anything he’s tackled
before, demonstrating a refreshing shrewdness
and restraint in a narrative that could have easily
melted into gooey hagiography or pat
ENJOYMENT. inspirationalism. Like so many biopics that have
Well-observed, and almost come before, the account of Boston Marathon
entirely free of the usual biopic bombing survivor Jeff Bauman (Jake Gyllenhaal)
BS — almost. revolves around the virtues of resilience and
courage. And in telling the stirring story of
the double amputee’s rocky journey back to
functionality, Green redefines the quality of
bravery. Not by lionising his subject’s choices or
IN RETROSPECT. behaviour, mind you, but rather by heroically
Green is back, baby, he’s back! confronting the truth that Bauman is no hero.
064 REVIEWS
In actuality, the guy is kind of a dick, and
Bauman’s guilt that he doesn’t deserve his
newfound status sparks the difficult drama
elevating this film. Green sidesteps most of
the horseshit endemic to the biopic genre —
undue adulation for the subject, overly tidy
presentations of contradictory lives — by focusing
on the incongruity between undependable
wastrel Bauman and the symbolic mantle thrust
upon him. Bauman’s more comfortable throwing
back Miller High Lifes with his townie buddies
than playing poster boy for the Boston Strong
movement, and his lingering PTSD doesn’t make
the transition into a public figure any easier. (In
its most vulnerable moments, the film evokes the
story of Harold Russell in William Wyler’s classic
melodrama, The Best Years of Our Lives.)
Aside from a few mawkish missteps near the tail
end, this film feels like the product of a confident,
able and self-aware director. Green steers his
actors towards underplayed subtlety; Gyllenhaal
doesn’t shy away from the uglier sides of Bauman
and his predicament, and Tatiana Maslany nearly
steals the film as his long-suffering girlfriend Erin
Hurley. Green knows to lean into the regional
specificities in New England native John Pollono’s
script, rooting Bauman in a recognisably realistic
setting far from incidental to the plot at hand.
Everything’s working as it should be. Green’s
pendulum has swung back in the direction of
favour, but with his Halloween sequel not far on
the horizon, the question persists for how long.
CHARLES BRAMESCO
 The Killing of a Sacred Deer
Y
Directed by orgos Lanthimos’ latest is as much about
YORGOS LANTHIMOS deer, sacred or otherwise, as his previous one
Starring was about lobsters. So, while The Lobster was
COLIN FARRELL decidedly light on crustacean action, sensitive souls
NICOLE KIDMAN will be relieved to know that no deer are actually
BARRY KEOGHAN harmed on-screen here. Greek viewers and classicists
Released however, will probably register the title’s reference to
3 NOVEMBER Euripides’ ancient drama, ‘Iphigenia in Aulis’, where
a sacred deer is indeed slain. But before you head to
Wikipedia, be advised that knowing the whole story
amounts to a major spoiler for this movie. Better to
ask what exactly a mythological tale from 400 BC has
ANTICIPATION. to do with the life of a comfortably-off modern-day
Where do you go after the full-on Cincinnati cardiologist. That’s the question facing
weirdness of The Lobster? Sign embattled Colin Farrell as he realises his fortunes are
us up. being shaped by a completely arbitrary set of external
values. It’s the anxiety of discovering your life is not
your own.
The source of this life-changing bewilderment is
teenager Barry Keoghan, whose somewhat unnerving
ENJOYMENT. stare (used to very different effect recently as the
Starts off ominously unsettling, doomed innocent on Mark Rylance’s small craft in
before an out-of-nowhere Dunkirk) masks the true nature of his relationship
twist leaves us totally with Farrell – not his son, or seemingly his lover, so
adrift on a sea of anxiety. why does the lad keep hanging around the hospital,
and why is the latter buying him expensive watches?
Lanthimos fills their scenes with purposefully
vacuous small-talk, but we know something’s up,
and when it’s revealed, it’s certainly from out of left-
IN RETROSPECT. field. Even creepier, Farrell and trophy wife Nicole
You end up slightly awestruck Kidman’s adolescent son and daughter soon succumb
at the imaginative confidence to a mystery condition leaving them unable to walk.
behind this film. The sight of these two hauling themselves
horizontally along the floor of a hospital corridor is
utterly unsettling, and typical of the way Lanthimos’s
films mess with our heads by putting a different set of
rules in play. Where Dogtooth contained the weirdness
within a well-to-do household, and The Lobster
allowed it to unfold in an alternative universe which
only looked like the world we know, the storytelling
here’s even more confident in the way the mythological
overlay acts on everyday circumstances. It’s like some
unseen, unfathomable force which imbues every
waking moment with inexplicable doom. The Haneke
of The Seventh Continent or Code Unknown might be
a reference point, but just as relevant is that sense of
mysterious undertow in Kubrick’s 2001, particularly
when Lanthimos makes such adept use of the
oppressive tracking shots and pressure-tightening
slow zooms which were such a key part of Kubrick’s
formal armoury.
While delivering his lines in an uninflected
monotone seemingly giving little away, Farrell’s
remarkable contribution exudes unease from every
pore, bringing an emotional veracity to these austerely
pointed environs as a man daunted by the enormity of
his responsibilities. Kidman makes an effective foil,
the hardness in her looks simply intensifying the
punishment. And although Lanthimos and regular
co-writer Efthymis Filippou took the Best Screenplay
award in Cannes, it’s the film’s sheer all-of-a-piece
execution – from pacing and composition, to brilliant
use of contemporary composers including (Kubrick
fave) Ligeti and Gubaidulina, and expertly modulated
performances – which holds you in its steely grip and
just never lets go. TREVOR JOHNSTON
REVIEWS 065

Directed by
JULIAN ROSEFELDT
Starring
CATE BLANCHETT
Released
24 NOVEMBER
ANTICIPATION.
Can Cate Blanchett breathe
life into an extended
criticism and theory lecture?
ENJOYMENT.
Occasionally obscure, but
bold and abrasive. Never
fails to command attention.
IN RETROSPECT.
This unashamedly conceptual
piece has endless implications to
consider and re-consider.
Manifesto
T
his multi-screen art installation, now
condensed into a single 90-minute feature,
is an utterly singular experience. Julian
Rosefeldt’s Manifesto sees Cate Blanchett star as
13 different characters who deliver 13 different
monologues, each one derived from artistic
manifestos throughout history. Structured as a
series of intercut vignettes, the film dwells on the
question of what constitutes art, and the extent to
which it can ever be separated from other aspects of
modern life.
With Manifesto, then, writer/director Rosefeldt
is dealing with big ideas and abstract concepts,
but he does so with a reassuring sense of wit. He
transmits the feeling that his film is aware of its own
light absurdity, which prevents it from slipping into
the conceited crevasse in which such a weightily
conceptual project could reside. One sequence
set in a television studio plays out like a farcical
parody of broadcast news, with Blanchett essaying
caricatures of a glamorous anchor and a rain
drenched correspondent.
Indeed, the power of Blanchett’s performance(s)
is perpetually captivating, even when her monologues
veer into the esoteric. The film’s characters allow
her the scope to fully tap in to her astonishing
range, covering everything from a quietly nuanced
housewife to a delightfully overinsistent male
vagrant. She breathes life into lectures which might
otherwise feel verbose and inaccessible.
Although the film is open to any number of
readings, the most obvious is as an examination of
the relationship between art and the wider human
experience. Each of the intercut scenes provide
a snapshot of life – an office, a family dinner, a
dance rehearsal – and, by placing the manifestos
against mundane backdrops, the film challenges
the viewer to relate theory to experience. Slowly,
the constructions of everyday life begin to appear
as contrived and affected, as if life is a conceptual
performance piece. “All art is fake”, proclaims the
opening title card, and the question of authenticity
and originality runs throughout the movie.
In deriving an art film purely from examples of
artistic theory, Rosefeldt has turned the existing
relationship between the two on its head. Analysis
that is written in response to art has become the
subject of art itself, erasing the invisible barrier that
exists between the two disciplines. It’s an interesting
notion that might not have much cinematic clout
were it not for Blanchett’s presence, which helps to
provide a soulful anchor for an otherwise obscure
topic. Indeed, it is not without irony that one of the
featured manifestos focuses on the inaccessibility of
conceptual art.
Manifesto is a film that wills you to indulge
in its own metaphysical abstraction, wearing its
ambiguity proudly on its sleeve. By its very nature,
the film offers few ideas of its own, but it does
invite audiences to consider a range of existing
(and often contradictory) perspectives within a
new, Blanchett-enthused package. It might not
make for an afternoon of light entertainment,
but it’s still an enthralling mental exercise and a
vehicle for one of the screen’s most charismatic
and chameleon-like stars. MARK ALLISON

066 REVIEWS
 Battle of the Sexes
T
Directed by his is a film about trolling. It could be,
JONATHAN DAYTON pending deeper research by vast armies
VALERIE FARIS of social historians, a film about the first
Starring and most high profile example of trolling, or to use
EMMA STONE non-digital terminology, an altercation that’s not
STEVE CARELL quite provocation and not quite harassment. Bobby
ANDREA RISEBOROUGH  Riggs was a jocular grandslam tennis champion
Released during the 1940s who, by the 1960s, had become a
24 NOVEMBER beloved mainstay on the senior circuit. Life after
relative sports stardom didn’t quite happen for
him, but the thrill of the court remained. It’s hard
to tell from Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’
glossy feature, Battle of the Sexes, whether Riggs,
in his twilight years, was motivated by fame, a fear
of falling from the limelight, or maybe just a love of
ANTICIPATION. the game. But something certainly drove him to lay
Emma Stone rebounding from an down one hell of a thorny wager.
Academy Award win. Yep, we’ll At a time when heinous gender inequality
take a look-see. within the ranks of professional tennis was an
accepted norm, Riggs had the temerity to propose
a crackpot theory which suggested that a woman
could never beat him (a man) on the court due to
a natural genetic superiority. As played by Steve
ENJOYMENT. Carell, Riggs is every bit the garrulous jester who
A fascinating story, rendered in tailgates the tides of sexual politics and women’s
broad, middlebrow strokes. lib to his short term economic advantage. The
media slavishly lap up his ploy. What he does is
proto-trolling, plain and simple: he makes a brash,
offensive statement which has no basis in reality,
and laughs all the way to the bank as rivals clamber
IN RETROSPECT. in outrage to prove him wrong.
This still might be the greatest This led, in 1973, to the eponymous ‘Battle
tennis movie ever made. of the Sexes’, a high profile exhibition match at
the Huston Aerodrome for which Riggs went up
against Billie Jean King – essayed here through
a sparky performance from Emma Stone. The
film follows the two protagonists as they prepare
themselves for the must-win contest, Riggs with
hardcore conservative male chauvinism behind
him, and King with women, enlightened liberals
and just about everyone else. What’s interesting
about the film is how it explores the grim reality
of Riggs’ terrible proposition. While he clearly
saw it as a wind up, many took his words at face
value and became empowered by his bigotry. In
grudgingly accepting his challenge, King knew
that she had to win or these male idiots within the
tennis bureaucracy would co-opt the showdown as
a rigourous social study and it would justify their
decisions to, say, pay women much less than men.
Sound familiar?
Yes, it’s a film that chimes very nicely with
these crazy times, and it’s just a cryin’ shame that
the direction and script (from Simon Beaufoy) are
about as vanilla as they come. Behind the scenes,
King struggles with her sexuality, gravitating away
from her doting husband Larry (Austin Stowell)
and towards bombshell salon stylist Marilyn
(Andrea Riseborough), and though the actors bring
an emotional charge to their roles, there’s little in
the way of actual drama. Yet this is a rare case of a
sports movie that’s actually about something more
than the personalities on show. It’s light and fun in
the moment, but works far better as an alternative
reality fantasy to the jerkoff-riddled hellscape
we’re experiencing now. DAVID JENKINS
REVIEWS 067
IN PROFILE
Andrea Riseborough
The British actor discusses her love of diving into a character and
why the gender pay gap in the film industry is still far too wide.
W
hen meeting Andrea Riseborough, it’s hard not to be surprised
by and envious of her style: her leather skirt, tank top and short
blonde cut are so completely at odds with the ’70s long-haired
ginger hippie she plays in Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’s Battle of
the Sexes, but she wears both styles with the same natural confidence. “I’m
just really interested in physicality and exploring a character. I have very
little interest in playing myself. I do that quite well, I do it every day. Yeah,
God! That would just be really boring for me.”
As Marilyn in the new film from the Little Miss Sunshine directing duo,
Riseborough is playful, soft-spoken and sensual. Her character catches the
attention of Billie Jean King, the famous feminist tennis player brought to
life on screen by Emma Stone. Despite the still-fierce misogyny of 1970s
America and the taboo which surrounded female homosexuality, Marilyn
is liberated and helps BJK to accept herself. “We wanted to focus on that
scintillating effervescence of when you’re falling in love. It’s forbidden in
a sense, but still happening. It’s a really joyful period and it’s nice to play
somebody who embodied the freedom and spirit of that time.”
Riseborough has played several real people before, but often at more
difficult times in their lives. As the Iron Lady in Margaret Thatcher: The Long
Walk to Finchley, or controversial socialite Wallis Simpson in Madonna’s
W.E., she’s had to feel and channel the pain of others because to her, acting
is not simply pretending. “I don't know how to do it without feeling it, if that
makes sense. Maybe some people can give the impression that they’re sad, and
disconnect with it inside, but for me it really does affect me quite a lot. But I
think that’s also, in a way, honouring the story.”
Her passion for acting feels raw, stemming directly from a profound
interest in people and their stories. To prepare for Marilyn, she listened
to music of the time, but also re-read Germaine Greer’s groundbreaking
1970 feminist book ‘The Female Eunuch’. “It was hugely helpful because
it smashes down any sort of received gender stereotype that we feel we
have to fulfil as women. I wanted Marilyn to embody that change. I think
the real Marilyn did.”
Riseborough also takes acting as an opportunity to educate herself,
and others. “It’s something that I like about my job – you can almost
thoroughly imagine what it was like to be in a time and everything is set
up to enhance that. It really gives you a lot of perspective on life. You get
to learn about so many things, like Billie Jean King for instance.” She finds
it “criminal” that she had to be in this film to learn more about this story.
“I knew about her in adult life, but there were so many events that formed
the long struggle for equal pay, and that was a really important one that
was completely negated in my education.”
Wo rds by MANUELA LAZIC I l l us t rat io n by AARON MANCZYK
She also isn’t afraid of calling out the hypocrisy of the acting industry.
“A wage quote for an actress can never be as high as a guy’s because
films just aren’t about women in the same way they are about men. So
they have a higher quote than us. We cannot be paid equally, and that’s
everybody’s excuse.” She blames this backwardness in the industry on
a lack of education, which she hasn’t found in theatre. “The great thing
about theatre is, you enter the rehearsal room, there’s a bunch of liberals,
you know they’re all talking about what Thai massage they got, or which
exciting book they read, and you don’t feel like an underdog as a woman.”
Working in film was confusing at first: “You’d be at the end of a scene and
they’d tell you to go home because they could use somebody else’s body
from behind because your body wasn’t the right shape.
“I get on a film set and I brace myself to be patronised. And also make
lots of friends.” This enthusiasm for teamwork explains the diversity of her
filmography, from the Oscar-winning Birdman to the small British comedy
Mindhorn. “[Birdman] felt so strangely important as we were doing it because
we had no idea whether it was going to fucking work or not. Each piece was
put together like a dance.” She easily navigates between genres and sizes
of production because, for her, success depends on collaboration. Her
involvement in Mindhorn happened “a bit last minute” because she simply
wanted to work with Steve Coogan and Julian Barratt.
She cares as much about her characters as she does about the people
she works with. “I have no interest in working with misogynists, small-
minded people, people who are going to drag females kicking and
screaming back to the 16th century. That’s including women.” Despite
general improvements, she doesn’t see much progress in how cinema
portrays women. “We used to have Bette Davis, and Katharine Hepburn
and great female parts. Many of the most powerful actors in Hollywood
were women! Now we have horrible franchises, like Transformers and Fast
and the Furious, which I think really perpetuate negative images.”
Telling BJK’s story goes against those tendencies. “Her message is
inclusion rather than separation, which is really admirable. And you have
to be a really strong, courageous person, to go through so many struggles
just to make the bread and butter which you deserve. It’s difficult not to
be bitter, and you feel unseen and unheard as a woman.” Riseborough
understands that rampant misogyny makes it difficult for women to ask
for more. “It creates a feeling of deep inadequacy in women and just a
desperation to get any job, any sort of piece of opportunity to get on the
front cover of Women’s Health.” But she herself has other goals. “I really
want to work with artists and I like weird stuff. I’m a bit of a weirdo. I like
other weirdos”
F E AT U R E 0 6 9
 Human Flow
Directed by AI WEIWEI
Released 8 DECEMBER
ocumentaries so often tell the stories of what has passed, but a
D new film by artist and activist Ai Weiwei puts the camera into a
very active issue. Spanning 23 countries, with over 200 crew members,
he observes the mass migration of refugees currently happening
across Europe and the often hostile reaction to their arrival by various
destination countries. Talking to people affected in a variety of ways and
propelled by hope alone, this is a justifiably harrowing look behind the
headlines. Yet Ai doesn’t weep and wail. There’s no overt provocation
here. Instead, the artist paints portraits. Walking through the borders
(sometimes infuriating patrol guards), he meets the people affected
and sees them for who they are. Not the faceless, huddled masses of TV
reports and charity adverts; but people with names, pets, smartphones.
In between the moments of despair we see moments of levity, such
as a child poking her mother with a balloon animal, or Ai ‘swapping
passports’ with one of his interviewees. Optimism is as important to
this story as outrage or despair.
Identifying the dispossessed in such an unpatronising, human way
has a devastating impact. At one moment the camera sits quietly as
brothers hold each other and weep, unsure of what to do next. The next
it soars over camps watched by entranced children. Local politicians,
administrators and academics point the finger of blame in various
directions (mainly westward), outlining the frustrating complexity of
the argument that keeps these people in stasis. Whatever your politics,
however, it’s hard to imagine the images Ai captures on the ground not
eliciting a deeply emotional response.Rather than simply lecturing,
rather than agonising, Human Flow invites you to feel. Ai’s intention is
to draw compassion, and in that sense the film is an absolute triumph.
JAMES LUXFORD
ANTICIPATION.
A unique voice takes on a vital issue.
ENJOYMENT. Beautifully filmed testimonies that tear
at your soul.
IN RETROSPECT. It’s unlikely anyone who can
invoke change will see it.
070 REVIEWS
Trophy
Directed by CHRISTINA CLUSIAU, SHAUL SCHWARZ
Released 17 NOVEMBER
apitalist greed is manifest in all its glory at the Las Vegas Hunting
C Convention. It’s a gathering that lives up to the horror of its name
as fanatics choose from a ‘menu’ of wildlife and book their kill. The stark
contrast between the stats (‘since 1970 the world has lost over 60 per cent of
its wild animals’) and the ruthless greed of trophy hunters creates a furious
tension necessary for this documentary to take effect. Trophy captures
the South African savannah as a sublime killing ground in this powerful
exposé. Christina Clusiau and Shaul Schwarz collaborate as both director and
cinematographer, and their film reveals the brutality of the hunting industry,
where people can selectively kill wild animals for sport, in exchange for
financial contributions to conservation. It is about the strange juxtaposition
of acting inhumanely for a supposed greater good.
John Hume is introduced as a rancher who domesticates rhinos and cuts
their horns to make them less desirable as prey. The documentary doesn’t
tee up good versus evil, but explores a curious and complex grey area – it is
about compromising, prioritising and questioning the strength of your belief
system. In the case of Hume’s rhinos, the film questions whether human
interference in nature is preferable to escalated poaching. It implicitly asks
if we can turn a blind eye to cruelty in the hope that, in commercialising and
containing, we can prevent extinction. Grappling with these topics through
interviews and statistical analysis, the film observes and contemplates, using
a mixture of finely drawn areal shots and rougher, hand-held footage.
Trophy doesn’t shy away from the implications of such breeding
methods – there is a lingering shot of a wounded elephant, dying in agony,
as a group of trophy hunters watch with abject indifference. In some scenes,
the camera hides behind the hunter to build a sense of dread. In these
moments, we are just as powerless as the prey and even more fearful for it.
ISOBEL RAPHAEL
ANTICIPATION. Wrongly assumed this was
another vegan-friendly, anti-human documentary…
.
ENJOYMENT. A powerful film, but
also sometimes very tough to watch.
IN RETROSPECT. Is it brutal enough to really
change viewers’ minds?
 Brakes
Directed by MERCEDES GROWER
Starring JULIAN BARRATT, JULIA DAVIS, NOEL FIELDING
Released 24 NOVEMBER
he idea for actor Mercedes Grower’s directorial debut Brakes is an
T endearing, ingenious one: tell the tales of London romances gone
wrong, but first you see the break-up, then the initial meeting. Then, gather
a cast of talented comic and dramatic actors to bring all these sorry folk to
life through improvisation. This second step clearly went well, with Julian
Barratt, Noel Fielding and Julia Davis heading up the packed roster of game
actors. If anything, it went a little too well. There are nine couples to break
and hook up on screen in 90 minutes. The film aims to capture a cross-
section of London life, but is a subject from every borough really necessary?
The key problem with this number of mini narratives is that break-ups
don’t carry the element of surprise, especially after you’ve seen the first
few. By the end, the couple aren’t together and they are upset. Yet there
are individual triumphs: Davis is heartbreaking and hilarious as a failing
actor desperate for success and affection, while Fielding and Grower’s blow
up in an underground toilet is melancholy humour done well. Yet half the
film’s run time is dedicated to this very specific romantic dynamic without
actually ever commenting on its relevance or importance. The second half
is mercifully more varied as we learn the origins of all the heartbreak, and
the improv acting is given more room to shine. A public swimming pool
meet-cute becomes as glaring as a floating verruca in the hands of brilliant
comic actors Kelly Campbell and Steve Oram. It’s a shame it all the good
stuff arrives far too late.
Brakes seems a little like it was conceived in a morning and filmed that
same afternoon. It wouldn’t be surprising to discover if in some scenes, the
motivation was little more than a cursory note, leaving remarkable actors
like Kerry Fox floundering for inspiration. There’s so much going on in such
a short run time that it’s hard to make a commitment to anyone or anything.
SARAH GOSLING
ANTICIPATION. Killer cast put a new, intriguing spin
on the rom-com... sounds good.  from the violence and nihilism of Nightcrawler.
ENJOYMENT. There are some great moments, but they’re
tarnished by slack pacing.
IN RETROSPECT. Charming and could easily have
been brilliant, if only it had been more concise.
Roman J Israel, Esq
Directed by DAN GILROY
Starring DENZEL WASHINGTON, COLIN FARRELL,
SHELLEY HENNIG
Released 1 DECEMBER
hree years after his directorial debut Nightcrawler, acclaimed
T screenwriter Dan Gilroy offers another riff on the weakness at
the rotten core of human nature, albeit this time in a far more classical
register. In a straightforwardly awards-baiting role, Denzel Washington
plays Roman Israel, a defence attorney whose righteousness and
profound dedication to altruistic work makes him stand out from his
peers. That is, until he discovers inconsistencies in the papers of the boss
he looked up to for most of his career. When he meets rich, elegant and
amiable attorney George (Colin Farrell), Israel is already re-evaluating
his high moral standards. Looking for direction in a world where the
distinction between good and evil now seems blurred, Israel is soon
seduced by George’s laid-back attitude and charm. It isn’t long before he
commits an illegal and unethical act that haunts him even as he finally
enjoys the pleasures of material success.
Despite a vivid interpretation from Washington and a soundtrack
full of jazz and blues, Gilroy again strives to keep the film in the realm of
the allegorical. The artificial look of the images and the limited number
of characters give an odd claustrophobic and surreal feel to proceedings.
Yet where the clinical aesthetic of Nightcrawler completed its nihilistic
world-view, the moral centre of Roman J Israel, Esq is never lost, and
Gilroy does not delight in Israel’s sinful ways. If the film plays with
Washington’s screen persona of moral fortitude, it does not destroy
it. In fact, the film’s ‘wholesome Denzel Washington’ performance is
perhaps its biggest strength. Still, the actor’s talent for demonstrative
performances feels restricted in the role of a reclusive, socially awkward
man. Clearly conceived as a morality play, the awkwardly titled film is
too contrived and predictable to efficiently deliver the emotional punch
it aims for. ELENA LAZIC
ANTICIPATION. This looks like an interesting departure
 
ENJOYMENT. A little all over the place and too abstract
to be truly moving.
IN RETROSPECT. An interesting experiment but not a
completely successful one.
REVIEWS 071
 IN CONVERSATION...
Michael Green
The screenwriter of
Murder on the Orient
Express on dragging
Agatha Christie into
the 21st century.
M
ichael Green has adapted everything
from comic books to the Bible.His
recent credits include co-writing
Logan, Alien: Covenant and Blade Runner 2049.
But we wanted to know about the journey of
adapting Agatha Christie’s classic ‘Murder
on the Orient Express’. Green calls himself a
‘tolerated convert’ to the ‘English civic religion’
that is the work of Christie. Originally not the
biggest scholar or Christie fan, in adapting
‘Murder on the Orient Express’, he has gained
an interest in and appreciation of her work.
LWLies: Agatha Christie famously travelled
on the Orient Express before writing this
book – did you undertake such a journey
yourself? Green: When given the good fortune
to adapt ‘Murder on the Orient Express’, I had a
lot of romantic ideas about going on the actual
Orient Express –but the truth was I was so busy
writing the film and enjoying writing the film that
I never got around to it. The reward came a year
later after Kenneth Branagh came on as director.
I got a wonderful email asking if I wanted to go
072 INTERVIEW
Interview by EMILY BRAY I l l us t rat io n by AARON MANCZYK
with him and several of his department heads on
a scout of the Orient Express to actually see it and
we got to imagine the story – in situ.
The last big screen adaptation of this
material came in 1974. What challenges did
you face in adapting it for a new audience?
The first thing to consider is an awareness
that this is a meaningful property to a lot of
people – myself included. A beloved character
brought to life is at the very least of interest
to many and can be meaningful to even more.
For a modern adaptation, we had to make the
emotional connection to the characters and
their predicament grounded in an emotional
reality that today’s audience can appreciate
and connect with. And second is to take the
characters, and while honouring them, make
them feel like real people in a real place. A
version for today demands more rounded and
diverse characters.
What do you think it is about this Agatha
Christie book that has had such lasting
intrigue? It’s a combination of the best of
what she does. It is one of the more exotic
locations, the solution to the case is one of the
more unusual and it’s a Poirot story. It takes
place in an idealistic locale – it has a totem,
the train itself is such an aspirational image.
The ones set in sleepy, rainy Dover mean a
lot to people who have English passports and
have a working knowledge and references of
the time and place but generally the totems of
some of the smaller books are Poirot himself.
But Murder on the Orient Express is an
experience of when moustache meets train.
Do you see Poirot as a superhero? Having
done superhero adaptations, it gave me a
working knowledge of what not to do with
Poirot. From day one, my marching orders
to myself were to defend Poirot. He’s not an
action hero. In the very first meeting I just
said ‘you know we’re not blowing up the train,
we are not sending it in to space, but there will
be moments of true danger.’ Which is not to
say that we don’t love comic book heroes – we
do. But when you get the toy box that contains
the Poirot, you want to play with the Poirot.
And what that meant was to take a character
who is endlessly entertaining in his cerebral
passiveness and find ways of honoring that
and portraying that in the film.
Christie fans are fiercely protective over her
works. Have they reacted to a new adaptation?
Not really. Having adapted comic book characters,
the Bible and Neil Gaiman, I am very familiar with
what it is to play with other people’s toys. You have
to come in as big a fan as any of them. But you also
have to know that if you give the rabid fan base
exactly what they want, then they will hate you
even more for it. What I’ve learned in my time
adapting is that the fans want you to detect their
memory of reading the material, which is very
idiosyncratic and all you can do is to try and offer
the audience your experience of how you enjoy
the reading material. It will be idiosyncratic to
you, and you just need the hotspur to think that
that is enough – which is arguably the job of the
screenwriter when adapting anything
Murder on the Orient Express is released in
cinemas on 3 November.
 Professor Marston and the Wonder Women
I
Directed by n an origin story that’s been re-vamped and
ANGELA ROBINSON revised for several decades, Wonder Woman’s
Starring inception has ranged from clay moulding to
LUKE EVANS the loins of the loud-thundering Zeus. Her real-
REBECCA HALL world beginnings – born of psychology, polyamory
BELLA HEATHCOTE and the polygraph machine – seem almost as far-
Released fetched, and provide the foundation of Angela
10 NOVEMBER Robinson’s handsomely staged Professor Marston
and the Wonder Women. While the ingredients are
all in place for a weird creation myth worthy of the
character’s unusual history, the narrative becomes
pedestrian and vanilla in comparison to the frames
of early comics that often fill the screen.
At one stage, the eponymous Dr William
Moulton Marston (Luke Evans) is instructed
ANTICIPATION. by the comic book pioneer Max Gaines (Oliver
Comic origins and pre-watershed Platt) to “cut the kink by 50 to 60 per cent.” While
period kink?  Nah. Marston bristles at the note, the film largely takes
it on board. The opening act sees 1920s Harvard
psychologist Marston and his academic wife
Elizabeth (Rebecca Hall) exploring the prospect of
a ménage à trois with comely student Olive Byrne
ENJOYMENT. (Bella Heathcote). There’s a real frisson in these
Sparks fly in first act early scenes – you’d be hard pressed to find a more
foreplay but ardour cools. charged use of a lie-detector test – particularly with
regards to the two women’s anxiety and excitement
about the transgression of their mutual desire. This
drops off markedly after they consummate their
threesome. By the time they’ve all been ejected from
IN RETROSPECT. academia for their choice of lifestyle, and Marston
Charismatic performances has stumbled across the world of bondage and
just about stave off post- pornography that would lead him to invent Wonder
coital malaise. Woman herself, the atmosphere has stultified.
074 REVIEWS
Despite the repercussions of their actions
having clear, far-reaching effects, the stakes feel
diminished. This is even – in fact, especially – the
case during Marston’s grilling by censors about
Wonder Woman’s BDSM content which provides
a framing device through which the story is told in
flashback. He’s attempting to defend the comics, and
secretly his lifestyle, to Connie Britton’s head of the
Child Study Association of America, but the debate
never reaches a rousing climax, let alone a resolution.
Robinson’s screenplay engages with all the right
elements, discussing the empowerment and equality
that Marston was striving for alongside the personal
sexual proclivities that he conveniently couched
them in. There’s ample complexity and nuance
written into these issues and characters, but it only
intermittently coalesces to truly satisfying ends.
Evans imbues Marston with an easy charisma
and admirable resolve, but he can’t help playing a
leering third wheel to the more compelling dynamic
at work – that of Elizabeth and Olive. Right from
the first moment, Rebecca Hall steals every scene;
a brilliant intellect hamstrung by the gender
myopia of her time. She’s steely and combative in
the face of a world that refuses to recognise her,
but wonderfully vulnerable when confronted with
a life her radical principles endorse but the living of
which remains terrifying. Marston’s name may be in
the title, but it is the relationship between the two
women - the dual inspirations for the icon – that
is most –onfidently handled by Robinson and that
remains riveting even as the wider drama tails off.
BEN NICHOLSON
 The Florida Project
F
Directed by or the hair-raising  opening scene of Sean
SEAN BAKER Baker’s astonishing neo-realist fable, The
Starring Florida Project, three overstimulated
BROOKLYNN PRINCE toddlers – Moonee (Brooklynn Prince) Scooty
BRIA VINAITE (Christopher Rivera) and Dicky (Aiden Malik) –
WILLEM DAFOE dash with arms flailing from The Magic Kingdom to
Released Future Land. Though they are nestled deep in Disney
10 JULY country, their situation is far from enchanted, as these
locations are in fact opportunist motel blocks named
in order to lure holidaying saps into their grimy net.
Hard cut to Kool and the Gang’s ‘Celebration’ for the
opening credits, and we’re all set to go.
Even though the world of this film consists of
ANTICIPATION. outstretched carparks, giant dumpsters, novelty fast
What will the industrious food concessions and scads of overgrown scrubland,
maestro behind Tangerine Baker constantly assures that there is always a dash
do next? of fairy dust in the air if you know where to look for
it. He carries over the raucous spirit of his pervious
iPhone opus,  Tangerine, and then boldly notches
things up a level for this new one. It feels like his most
epic and profoundly affecting film to date. And it’s not
ENJOYMENT. that it looks expensive or that the story is broader
He’ll deliver a shot of in scope than usual. More that it offers a trenchant
pure, delirious, humanist and compassionate political statement about the
movie energy, that’s what. condition of working class America without once
resorting to bald point making or cliché.
Bria Vinaite is a major new discovery as tatted-up
single mom Halley, a woman-on-the-verge who
suppresses all fear and takes care of business when
IN RETROSPECT. she has to in order to raise her wisecracking lil’
Don’t believe the hype, as this is terror, Moonee. She charges towards life and doesn’t
probably even better than the care about what others think of her, even though she
hype suggests. doesn’t really abide by any traditional standards of
motherhood. The film is about how this duo are able
to keep their head bobbing above the poverty line,
but it’s also about how Halley allows her daughter
to exist in a world of make-believe, knowing that
the crushing reality of their circumstances might
sap away her infectious joie de vivre. That sense of
unalloyed freedom might be the one thing keeping
the tiny firecracker aflame.
Then, playing the wise old sage who tries to
keep crazy Halley under his wing (and out of jail),
is a magnificent Willem Dafoe as doormat motel
manager Bobby, a harried man who is just about
able to keep his rowdy tenants in check. And that is
pretty much that. The film follows the kids on their
daily adventures to surrounding lots and allows us
to giggle at their monkeyshines. It’s a celebration of
innocence and energy, but it also never once makes
out The Magic Kingdom to be an off-ramp hellhole
full of life’s unfortunate dregs. This film pulses with
empathy – Baker loves these places, and for more
than reasons of high kitsch.
Laughter and sadness co-mingle until a euphoric
finale scene sends the story into the realms of pure
candy-coated fantasy. It’s a breathtaking vision
of fighting spirit and how the modern American
underclass take any action available (legal or
otherwise) for the purposes of self-betterment.
Cinematographer Alex Zabe bathes the landscape
in misty peach hues and laces it with never-ending
rainbows. And what more is there to say? You must
see this beautiful, vibrant, heartfelt and hilarious
movie as soon as you damn well can, bi-yatch.
DAVID JENKINS
REVIEWS 075
IN CONVERSATION
Sean Baker
The director of The Florida Project is quietly redefining
concepts of movie magic and what it means to be a star.
C
atching Sean Baker’s The Florida Project at the Cannes Film
Festival – an arena dominated by big beast auteurs and their
sombre epics – felt like discovering a new cinematic language
defined by colour, humour, energy and emotion. His sixth feature tackles
the hidden homelessness in America, but peripherally. Front and centre
are the sugar-spun daily adventures of six-year-old Moonee (Brooklynn
Prince). Her mother Halley (Bria Vinaite) shields her daughter from their
perilous economic reality, doing everything in her power to drum up days
buoyed by love and excitement. Willem Dafoe, as motel manager Bobby, is
the only established star.
LWLies: What do you think makes a movie star? Baker: People have
been trying to figure that out for a hundred years – that indescribable ‘it’
thing, an impact. It’s a persona that the public connects with and we don’t
really know why. With The Florida Project, there’s something we all saw in
little Brooklynn Prince. Immediately we thought: she’s a little superstar.
What guides you in creating your energetic and vibrant visual
language? First thing: you never want to bore your audience. The energy
is dictated by the time in which you're making a film. Audience members
are used to absorbing information faster than they did in the past. Now that
shouldn’t dictate the way you make a film. I love slow cinema. If I could find a
financier to back me up I would do 12-minute tracking shots. But financiers
have to make their money back, and you have to satisfy audiences to a
certain degree. I embrace that because I am trying to reach a large audience
with these films in order for the message to have impact and for awareness
to be brought to a certain subject. I am using style to capture a bigger and
a younger audience. The younger audience is very important because they
are moving towards television and shorter content like webisodes. I want
the younger generation to still hold onto cinema and keep cinema alive. And
part of that is to give them what they want. This can be achieved in a way that
doesn't undermine what I want ultimately.
What draws you to paint empathic pictures of countercultural
protagonists? Well it’s really a response to what I’m not seeing in
films, especially American films. The UK is a lot more socially active
in filmmaking. A lot of my peers have been incredible with embracing
social issues but I would like to see more of it in US film. What I’ve been
drawn to are stories that haven’t been told yet – that’s not exactly true, I
take that back. I like telling universal stories about people who haven’t
really had stories told about them, underrepresented people. It really
Interview by SOPHIE MONKS KAUFMAN I l l us t rat io n by AARON MANCZYK
comes from me wanting to know more. I feel that the more diversity
there is in front of – and behind – the camera can only help. It shines a
light on communities of people that don’t usually have a light shone on
them and it shows that we are all human.
You sound so saintly. There is also a selfish thing going on too. It’s my
personal education, it’s my way of knowing more about the world, it’s
my way of making films that I feel I haven’t seen before.
What’s the juiciest or weirdest script you’ve been sent since your profile
has grown? Every time I make a film, Hollywood puts me in a pigeonhole
until I make my next film. When I made Prince of Broadway I got every black
script in Hollywood. When I made Starlet I got all these scripts about elderly
women. When I made Tangerine – my god – all I got were transgender scripts.
People wanted to make a Tangerine television series. I was like: no, absolutely
not! That’s ridiculous. The film should be its own thing. Why are we now
trying to monopolise it? After The Florida Project I guarantee I’m going to get
a tonne of scripts about little kids. It’s just the way Hollywood thinks.
What do you love about movies? I love the escapism aspect, but at
the same time I love that they can change the world. They really can!
There’s a platform for diplomatic engagement, but it’s not in your face.
It’s not telling audiences, ‘you must think, you must act’ – no it’s doing it
through entertainment. It’s actually a very subversive art. You can make
change by entertaining people, which is very unique. Film is maturing and
getting to the point where it’s understanding what audiences want and how
to manipulate that. But there’s something also about film that... There’s that
awe. Filmmakers are always trying to... There’s something that happened
when we were kids seeing films in a dark movie theatre, there was something
that struck us and had such an incredible impact and we can’t properly
articulate it but it had such an incredible impact that now as filmmakers, we
are trying to recapture that and, oh, it’s impossible.
You can’t as an adult recapture that amazing feeling that Spielberg gave you
when you saw Raiders of the Lost Ark when you were 11. But I’ve gotten to
the point now, and it's taken me like six films to do this, where I’m realising
that it’s my responsibility as a filmmaker to try and give that awe to the 11-
year-olds out there now – it’s our responsibility as adults to excite the next
generation. That’s what I love about films, and that’s also what I hate about
films! It’s very rare that I’m very excited or moved by the medium but I know
that there are people out there who are and it’s my job to build it up
INTERVIEW 077
 Molly’s Game
I
Directed by n recent years, Jessica Chastain has shown a
AARON SORKIN determination to portray strong women. Her
Starring choices to star in films such as A Most Violent
JESSICA CHASTAIN Year, Miss Sloane and The Zookeeper’s Wife reflect
IDRIS ELBA this desire, and Aaron Sorkin’s Molly’s Game comes as
KEVIN COSTNER a logical next step for this rightfully fiercely feminist
Released actress. Sorkin has demonstrated his ability to turn
26 DECEMBER highly ambitious and self-destructive real life (male)
characters into compelling, pathetic yet admirable
individuals in his screenwriting work. Finally turning
to directing after writing major scripts for the likes
of Mike Nichols, David Fincher and Danny Boyle,
he doesn’t quite find his feet, although the result is
bizarre enough to be entertaining, even when the
whole thing eventually turns sour and ridiculous.
ANTICIPATION. Molly Bloom was raised to be competitive,
Sorkin knows drama. Molly knew and after an unbelievably unlucky skiing accident
poker. Could be a winner. at the 2002 Olympic qualifiers (a scene that gives
Sorkin the opportunity to playfully display his love
of numbers and useless geometry à la The Social
Network) she soon enough entered into the equally
risqué field of brokering highly exclusive poker
ENJOYMENT. games in Los Angeles and New York. Chastain’s
Cool story. Silly direction predilection for tough women is unfortunately
and bad acting, though. rarely matched by her performance style, and
although it is understandable that a woman in such
a male-dominated environment would choose to
keep her emotional distance and play it cool, her
take on Molly Bloom is too stilted and robotic to be
IN RETROSPECT. truly captivating, let alone a figure of empowerment.
A game that lacks aggression, and Chastain’s more sensitive female characters – it’s no
a goofiness that should be surprise that her turn in Terrence Malick’s The Tree
more enjoyable. of Life made her the star she is today – may not be
078 REVIEWS
as obviously cutthroat, but they allow the actress to
be more subtle and effective in making the audience
care for and revere these women.
Kevin Costner’s appearance as Molly’s father
deserves an honorary mention, if not praise. Distant
and borderline cruel in his sarcasm, Costner imbues
this controlling dad with a dose of humour and
oddness that brings some much needed liveliness
to the narrative, as neither Chastain nor Idris Elba,
as her lawyer, provide much energy. Costner’s
typically awkward screen presence, combined with
the script’s quirky sense of humour, nevertheless
leave a disquieting aftertaste when the father opens
up to his cagey, defensive daughter, in what feels like
the draft version of this year’s trope of the father
confessing to his offspring – the better result being
Michael Stuhlbarg’s deeply affecting turn in Call Me
by Your Name.
Sorkin’s decision to slightly alter the facts of
Bloom’s story, delivering details via flashback as
she awaits trial on criminal charges, is a mark of
the self-awareness he’s displayed in all his writing.
As a directing choice, it proves unsatisfactory. If
The Social Network is still praised today for its
ferocious and sweeping script, David Fincher’s
direction is another key factor in its progressive
build up of tension. Sorkin’s camerawork and editing,
by contrast, are overblown rather than virtuosic,
confused rather than bold. His tongue-in-cheek
approach soon becomes irritating, and turns Bloom’s
tale of the nightmarish American Dream into a silly
joke instead of the thrilling and, later, devastating
tale it so desperately tries to be. MANUELA LAZIC
 Marjorie Prime
I
Directed by n the opening scene of Marjorie Prime, an elderly
MICHAEL ALMEREYDA woman and a younger man sit across from each
Starring other in a plush living room and have a long
JON HAMM conversation. If something feels a little off about the
GEENA DAVIS way they are interacting, we soon learn why. Marjorie
TIM ROBBINS (Lois Smith) is 85 years old and in the early stages of
Released dementia, and the man she’s conversing with isn’t a
10 NOVEMBER man at all. He’s a sophisticated hologram, or a “Prime”,
programmed to look and sound exactly like her late
husband Walter (Jon Hamm), and to recall memories
that Marjorie and her family have fed to him. For
example, Walter remembers the time he proposed
to her, after they saw My Best Friend’s Wedding.
“Julia Roberts, etched forever on our lives,” Marjorie
complains. “What if we saw Casablanca instead? Let’s
say we saw Casablanca in an old theatre with velvet
ANTICIPATION. seats, and then on the way home, you proposed. Then,
A talented filmmaker adapting by the next time we talk, it will be true.”
an acclaimed play with a first- The malleability and unreliability of memory is
rate cast. one of the central themes in Michael Almereyda’s film,
which he has adapted from Jordan Harrison’s Pulitzer-
nominated play. Marjorie Prime is a science-fiction
film built around ideas rather than spectacle, and while
Almereyda’s vision of the future won’t dazzle anyone
ENJOYMENT. (the whole film takes place inside a blandly decorated
An elegant, absorbing and beach house), the questions that it raises about how we
stimulating experience. approach death and the ways we memorialise the dead
will surely resonate with many viewers. What are we,
ultimately, but the memories that exist for those we
leave behind? If they choose to alter those memories,
or refuse to recall things too painful to remember – as
IN RETROSPECT. they do with Marjorie’s first born child here – it might
It will stay with you this one. be as if we had never existed at all.
Harrison and Almereyda approach these
complex issues from a variety of perspectives, with
Marjorie’s daughter Tess (Geena Davis) and son-
in-law Jon (Tim Robbins) each coping in different
ways with her imminent decline. Tess is troubled by
this living facsimile of her late father while Jon is an
advocate for the Prime’s value as both a companion
for Marjorie and a grief aid, but they each find their
positions shifting in subtle but striking ways as time
passes and death alters the dynamic between the
characters. It’s hard to remember the last time Davis
and Robbins were allowed to give such rich, multi-
layered performances on screen, while Lois Smith
– who played this role twice on stage – is entirely
wonderful as Marjorie, alternately charming and
heartbreaking as her character slips in and out of
lucidity. Their beautifully calibrated work ensures
that what might have felt like a cerebral exercise
remains deeply human.
Marjorie Prime never shakes off a certain
staginess and it’s regrettable that Almereyda
doesn’t do more to try and distinguish his film
visually, particularly when he has the talented
cinematographer Sean Price Williams at his disposal,
but he makes bold choices in other areas. Mica Levi’s
keening score initially feels at odds with this quiet
chamber piece, but it’s a gamble that pays off, while
editor Kathryn Schubert’s precise work is vital,
with the use of ellipses and flashbacks towards the
end of the film having a powerful emotional impact.
It’s these moments that linger as Marjorie Prime,
fittingly, expands and deepens in the memory.
PHIL CONCANNON
REVIEWS 079
 Suburbicon
I
Directed by nspired by events in Levittown, Pennsylvania in
GEORGE CLOONEY 1959 – when a well-to-do African-American family
Starring were violently harassed by white supremacists
JULIANNE MOORE shortly after moving to the all-white suburb – George
MATT DAMON Clooney’s latest directorial outing could hardly feel
OSCAR ISAAC more prescient. Updating a 1980s Coen brothers
Released screenplay which crackles with trademark tropes
24 NOVEMBER and flourishes, Clooney revises the Blood Simple-
era material with bite and sizzle. Although shooting
wrapped a year ago, the film chimes with America’s
current POTUS–sanctioned race war. Clooney’s
instinct for storytelling now means that Suburbicon
take on a whole new layer of meaning.
Matt Damon and Julianne Moore are Gardner and
Rose Lodge, an apparently perfect American couple:
ANTICIPATION. him a suit-and-tie vice president at an ad agency, her
It’s been a while since Clooney the a housewife with an inquisitive but isolated young
filmmaker struck gold. son to raise. When the family – augmented by Rose’s
identical sister Margaret (also played by Moore) – falls
victim to a home invasion, the neighbours are quick
to blame the black newcomers for an ensuing tragedy.
But Gardner, who seems strangely unflustered during
ENJOYMENT. this ordeal, has more than his share of secrets, which
Dual narratives – where fact soon begin to spill out as the action turns more violent,
meets fiction in race-hate in a deranged and satirical way. Damon and Moore
America – work a treat. are particularly good here, with the former releasing
his pent-up rage like a man dispossessed, and clearly
enjoying playing against his goodie-goodie type.
Oscar Isaac provides support as an oily insurance
man who wants more than a cut of the action. It’s
IN RETROSPECT. deliciously dark stuff, with brutal mobsters contrasted
A timely, relevant refresh on by laughably stiff suits, neither of whom have any clue
classic-era Coens. what their everyman victim is capable of.
080 REVIEWS
The racial elements, added by Clooney and
co-writer Grant Heslov, flesh out what would
otherwise feel like familiar Coen territory. Indeed, as
Clooney happily clarified during the press call at the
2017 Venice Film Festival, the reason why the script
had been gathering dust for so long was simply because
the Coens felt they had covered this territory already.
Given this unusual scenario, it feels quite the treat to
see a filmmaker like Clooney pick up an unpublished
Coen script and run hell for leather with it.
Behind the veil of respectable suburbia lies a
well of sin just simmering under the surface. The
couple’s son Nicky (Noah Jupe) accidentally walks
in on Gardner spanking Margaret with a ping pong
bat (S&M 1950s-style), while it becomes evident
that the two adults have been plotting some saucy,
sordid business for quite some time. A running
gag about eloping to Aruba (a Dutch protectorate)
works nicely as the tension builds to a devilishly
effective climax.
Suburbicon, which is lensed by There Will be
Blood’s Robert Elswit (and boasts an effective score
from Alexandre Desplat), is Clooney’s most startling
work behind the camera since Good Night, and Good
Luck – and something of a return to form after the
best-forgotten romp that was The Monuments Men.
With a clear sense of story and purpose, the film not
only serves as a shot in the arm for independent
narrative cinema, but also as a rallying cry for those
determined not to see the US go to the dogs. Clooney
is unashamedly patriotic, and this often comes
through in his work, no matter how wayward the
characters. Long may it continue. ED GIBBS
“AN ELE GANT, HAUNTING FUTURISTIC DRAMA”
LA TIMES

“COULD DOUBLE AS THE BEST-WRITTEN

EPISODE OF BLACK MIRROR YET ”
THE FILM STAGE

++++
THE GUARDIAN

++++
TIME OUT NY

++++
THE UPCOMING

++++
HEYUGUYS

++++
SCI-FI NOW

IN S E L E C T C INE M A S A ND
10 N O V E MB E R
 The Prince of Nothingwood
T
Directed by owards the end of a long excursion to
SONIA KRONLUND Bayram, a Baghlan Province village in
Starring north eastern Afghanistan, director
SALIM SHAHEEN Salim Shaheen takes his guest/documenter Sonia
SONIA KRONLUND Kronlund on a detour to visit Ali’s Dragon, a rock
QURBAN ALI formation said to be the body of a giant serpent
Released slain by the sword of Imam Ali. When Kronlund
15 DECEMBER asks him, “Do you think it’s a true story,” Shaheen
responds hesitantly, “I couldn’t say,” insisting
upon the power of storytelling and tradition.
As the maker of more than 100 amateur feature
films, this singular, strutting auteur is himself a
central figure in Afghanistan’s creation myths,
recruiting its landscapes and people to stage
inspirational stories where the downtrodden
rise and the powerful fall. His films are full of
Bollywood-style singing and dancing, fighting,
ANTICIPATION. gore and absurdist heroics (typically with
Sounds like 2010’s The Peddler. Shaheen himself in the lead). He and his team have
also been willing to take great risks for their art,
shooting scenes amid rocket attacks and shooting
of an altogether more pernicious kind, as one war
after another has raged through the nation for
ENJOYMENT. decades. A popular, larger than life character,
A hilariously self-aware take Shaheen is also a great mythologiser of himself,
on a frontline cottage industry. diplomatically claiming that his mother was born
in whichever part of the country he happens to be
filming, and - as Kronlund makes her documentary
on him – shooting two new films simultaneously
that chronicle his own early years. In these, he is
IN RETROSPECT. played by one of his sons – although it is clearly
The myth behind the man who is always a struggle for Shaheen to resist stealing the
Afghanistan’s biggest film auteur. limelight or hogging the camera.
082 REVIEWS
Accordingly, The Prince of Nothingwood
comes with a peculiarly involuted dynamic
– Kronlund filming Shaheen filming his own
story – from which we get a picture of the man
and his myth, two inextricably bound aspects
of a filmmaker who has always built his fictions
upon the foundations – and ruins – of his nation’s
realities. In the cinematic spaces that he has
created, contradictions and critiques emerge –
like Qurban Ali, the actor whose flamboyant
campness and penchant for cross-dressing find
an acceptable outlet in the name of “just providing
some entertainment.” The scene in Shaheen’s
film where Ali, in skirt and burqa, plays Shaheen’s
mother and laments her son’s vocation as a dancer
and an artist, comes with an obvious resonance
for Qurban himself, giving him a platform to
explore the taboo of an identity frowned upon
by a distinctly homophobic society. Qurban,
incidentally, is married with children, though
when asked by Kronlund how many wives he has,
laughs a little too hard as he answers: “I have one,
and I don’t want any more.” Through the play of
Shaheen’s films, Qurban is able to be himself, with
public approval.
It is a different matter for women who are
not allowed to watch Shaheen’s films in cinemas
– though they are able to see them on DVD or
broadcast on one of Afghanistan’s 175 TV stations.
To justify the propriety of working alongside
Kronlund herself, Shaheeh insists that she is
actually a man, Mr Sonia. Myths like this can –
slowly – change the world. ANTON BITEL
 Blade of the Immortal
R
Directed by ivers of blood quite literally flow through
TAKASHI MIIKE Blade of the Immortal, Takashi Miike’s
Starring pristinely wacko adaption of Hiroaki
TAKUYA KIMURA Samura’s manga about a cursed samurai with a
HANA SUGISAKI katana blade to grind. Never one to shy away from
SÔTA FUKUSHI a good slaughter, the prolific Japanese auteur
Released dials up the violence even by his high standards,
8 DECEMBER orchestrating not one but two massive battles of
attrition that a pit lone wolf swordsman against
absurdly large numbers of disposable enemy
combatants. Challenging the time period’s
conservative formality and tradition are dangerous
characters decked out in wild costumes and
accessories. These fringe personas give the film its
singular sensibility; think Shogun-era melodrama
possessed by George Miller’s The Road Warrior.
In typical Miike fashion, arterial spray washes
ANTICIPATION. over the very first frame. Duped by his corrupt
A return to the Shogun-era for superior into assassinating an innocent local
Japan’s most prolific auteur. official, disgraced samurai Manji (Takuya Kimura)
retaliates with force, but his thorough reprisal has
grave familial consequences. A showdown with
violent bounty hunters seemingly gives Manji the
brazen suicide mission he so badly craves, but the
ENJOYMENT. mysterious Yaobikuni (Yôko Yamamoto) salvages
Miike relishes in the his ravaged body with regenerating bloodworms.
absurdity of endless violence. Fifty years later, Manji has accumulated
countless more scars but nothing close to
redemption. He lives on the outskirts of Edo, a town
recently hit with attacks on traditional dojos by
the subversive Itto-ryu, a new school of lethal
IN RETROSPECT. fighters led by baby-faced Anotsu (Sôta Fukushi).
This slice-and-dice epic has soul. One such strike leaves a young girl named Rin
(Hana Sugisaki) orphaned and enraged. Eventually,
she convinces Manji to help her enact vengeance.
With its momentary fits of comedy and noir
banter (“It’s a perfect moon for last rites.”), Blade
of the Immortal carves out a distinct identity
in comparison to Miike’s self-serious period pieces
(13 Assassins, Hari-Kiri: Death of a Samurai).
There’s a specific looseness to the narrative that
allows for past trauma to linger and the entire
film feels haunted by regret. Because of this
pervasive subtext, quiet moments between Manji
and Rin are just as impactful as the grandiose
fight sequences, which are admittedly brilliantly
staged exercises in protracted carnage. The
lengthy duration calls attention to the numbing
qualities of cyclical violence, which Miike depicts
as a relentless degenerative disease with inter-
generational reach.
As if to invert the classic tropes and mad dog
characterisations made famous by Akira Kurosawa
and Toshiro Mifune’s Samurai films, Blade of the
Immortal shrewdly skewers the idea that honour
can be achieved through sacrifice and death. The
pain Manji feels each time his body must regenerate
is far more palpable than the countless head-shots
and bludgeoning’s enacted during the insane final
battle sequence involving an axe-wielding Anotsu
and a legion of government conscripts. Thankless
victories, no matter how hard fought, don’t get
you any closer to transcendence, if such a thing
even exists. But believing in (and fighting for) an
empathetic ideal just might. It’s what separates
good people from the barbarians. GLENN HEATH JR
REVIEWS 083
15 GREAT FILMS WORDS BY ANTON BITEL

15
Great Films by Takashi Miike

Outsider. Maverick. Outlaw. Punk. These terms are regularly applied to Japanese director Takashi
Miike, who has helmed more than 100 features and TV series since he debuted in 1991 with Toppuu!

1
Minipato tai – Aikyacchi Jankushon about police using gymnastics. Born in Osaka to Korean
parents and mentored by the great Shohei Imamura, Miike is at home with the codified criminal
demimonde of the yakuza, but frequently mixes and matches genres to delirious effect. His films are
notorious for their jaw-dropping ‘Miike moments’, yet he easily passes from the grindhouse to the

3
arthouse, and is as deft with subtle ambiguity as with bombastic excess.

The Bird People In

China (1998)
Two outsiders – a Japanese mineralogist (Masahiro
Motoki) and a yakuza (Renji Ishibashi) – struggle to
work out their place in a remote Chinese village, even as
its supposedly ancient mystic traditions turn out to be
rooted in more modern, foreign influence. In this locus
of extreme marginalisation, Miike lets his lost characters

4
take miraculous wing over issues of globalisation
and ecology.

Audition (1999)
“I feel like a criminal.” Having tricked young, sensitive
Asami (Shiina Eihi) into a fake audition that he is using,
in the most underhanded way, to screen potential dates,
the otherwise sincere middle-aged widower Shigeharu
(Ishibashi Ryo) is haunted by his sense of loss, guilt,
betrayal and gynophobia. He gets the girl, but also
succumbs to crippling (self-)torments – yielding the
Ichi the Killer (2001)
This colourfully complicated tale of a vengeful
mesmerist (Shinya Tsukamoto) manipulating a crybaby
voyeur (Nao Omori) into confronting a yakuza gang’s
sadomasochistic deputy (Tadanobu Asano) kinetically
translates all the energy, anarchy and illogic of Hideo
Yamamoto’s manga with hyperviolent, psychosexual glee.

2
most viscerally tortu(r)ous nightmare of cinema’s last It also dramatises how easily violent acts are learned,
two decades. imitated, and misdirected, engendering endless cycles

5
Dead or Alive 2: Birds
(2000)
This is the middle film of Miike’s loose Dead Or Alive
trilogy, as two urban contract killers (Sho Aikawa, Riki
Takeuchi) meet by chance back on the island where
they had spent their childhood at an orphanage. Upon
rediscovering lost innocence, they decide to convert
their lives of sin to angelic good. “Where are you?”,
on-screen text repeatedly asks – and as nostalgia,
magic and ultraviolence weirdly converge, viewers may
struggle to answer.
of revenge where real satisfaction is impossible and
disappointment inevitable.
Gozu (2003)
When yakuza Ozaki (Shaw Aikawa) loses his mind,
underling Minami (Hideki Sone) is ordered to kill him,
but loses the body in Nagoya. So begins a surreal quest
in a place where criminal and infernal underworlds fuse,
where hybrid monsters and genres emerge, and where
boundaries blur between sanity and madness, male and
female, life and death. The gob-smacking results are, as
Ozaki says, "all a joke, so please don’t take it seriously.”

0 8 4 F E AT U R E
 11
Visitor Q (2001)
As in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Theorem (1968), Visitor Q sees
a visiting stranger shake up a dysfunctional family. What
comes out is incest, prostitution, drug taking, murder,
necrophilia and extreme lactation. Shot low-budget
as part of CineRockets’ series ‘Love Cinema’, Miike’s
satire converts the inadequacy, alienation and repressed
sexuality felt in many Japanese families into breath-
7 12
taking, bourgeois-baiting hilarity.
13 Assassins (2010)
As much a reimagining of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven
Samurai as a remake of Eichi Kudo’s 13 Assassins from
1963, and bloodier and more raucous than either, Miike’s
Meiji-era ‘total massacre’ is also a revisionist western,
pitting a wild bunch of samurai against a psychopathic
lord of the dying Shogunate. It marks not just the end of
8
an epoch, but the boundary of a genre.
13
Hara-Kiri: Death
of a Samurai (2011)
Miike is not normally known for subtlety, and yet this
remake of Masaki Kobayashi’s 1962 classic Harakiri
preserves the original’s stately staging and pacing, as
well as its focus on the clash of words over that of swords,
while adding 3D not for comin’-at-ya gore but to make
the interior spaces of the Ii clan house echo with the
9 14
emptiness of honour’s trappings.
Over Your Dead Body
(2014)
While starring as the wronged wife in a modern
theatrical production of Tsuruya Nanboku’s 1825 kabuki
play Yostuya Kaidan, Miyuki (Ko Shibasaki) finds its
events restaging themselves in her elegant, minimalist
15
apartment. Miike’s mannered horror sees classical
themes of conjugal betrayal and ghostly revenge echoing
10
across time and through the fourth wall, and birthing new,
monstrous forms.
Agitator (2001)
Written by Graveyard of Honour’s Shigenori Takechi, this
kaleidoscopic, convoluted crime epic explores the power
vacuum left by the murder of a yakuza boss. Keeping most
of its violence offscreen (unlike the similarly premised
Ichi the Killer), this is a densely layered, multi-faceted
portrait of honour, even love, amongst thieves, showing
Miike at his most mature and complex.
Graveyard of Honour
(2002)
Barman Ishimatsu (Goro Kishitani) saves the life of a
gangland boss, and works his way up in the organisation,
with his mercurial temper and violent impulses proving
both his best assets and his ultimate unravelling. Miike
remakes Kinji Fukasaku’s 1975 film, while ingeniously
remapping Ishimatsu’s rise and fall onto the landscape of
Japan’s economic bubble in the early 1990s.
Big Bang Love,
Juvenile A (2006)
One young offender (Ryuhei Matsuda) is found astride
the corpse of a fellow inmate (Masanobu Ando). As
detectives investigate the history of these murder
convicts, Miike plays out the gay yearnings of Jean
Genet’s ‘A Song of Love’ on stylised Brechtian sets. It is a
complicated, at times cosmic, probe into the prison house
of adolescent masculinity.
Blues Harp (1998)
Kenji (Seiichi Tanabe) has an ambitious plot to displace
his yakuza boss, but his wandering eye for local mixed-
race lad Chuji (Hiroyuki Ikeuchi) will prove his tragic
undoing. Meanwhile, orphan Chuji himself rises to
success with his harmonica skills, forming a family
with his pregnant girlfriend Tokiko (Saori Sekino). An
outsider’s tale of confused identity and rock-n-roll.
Rainy Dog (1997)
Second part of the Black Triad Trilogy, this Taipei-set
noir sees exiled yakuza Yuuji (Sho Aikawa) on the run
from both a local Triad and a rival Japanese hitman. With
the mute young son he never knew he had and a local
prostitute, Yuuji discovers something resembling family
life - but then his past catches up with all of them.
Sukiyaki Western
Django (2007)
Miike’s postmodern riff on Sergio Corbucci’s 1966
spaghetti western Django traces the internecine conflicts
of the oater all the way back to the clash of ancient clans
recorded in classic Japanese epic ‘Tale of the Heike’ and
Shakespeare’s ‘Henry VI’. There is also a didgeridoo
dance, and a cameo from Quentin Tarantino, whose
genre-leaping influence is felt throughout.
F E AT U R E 0 8 5
best of 201
collector’s editions
7
one-eyed me
jacks bring ead of
spotlight on h
the o garcia
dual format
a murderer edition alfred
dual format blu-ray
edition

the city
of the dead donnie
dual format ed
ition darko
blu-ray

ronin
blu-ray
my life
as a dog
blu-ray

the tree of
wooden clo
blu-ray gs

the hunt
blu-ray

the culpeppe
cattle r
company
blu-ray

blood
feast
blu-ray
a fish
called
wanda
blu-ray
the magus the iron
dual format curtain
edition dual format
edition

rawhide
blu-ray

the mep s tage

waltz histo blu-ray coach
blu-ray ass
precault on
blu-r inct 1
ay 3

el sur at
dual form
edition

last
the crying the ail
t
de rmat
game fo
dual format dual ion
edition edit

ity t
fat cfo rma
dual n
editio

son
ander
the es
tap ay
blu-r

the lad
shanghy from
dual ai
format e
dition
fopp stores
bristol college green
cambridge sidney st
edinburgh rose st
glasgow union st & byres rd
london covent garden
manchester brown st
nottingham broadmarsh
shopping centre
oxford gloucester green
 Pulp
Directed by 1972
MIKE HODGES
Starring Released 6 NOV
MICHAEL CAINE
MICKEY ROONEY
LIONEL STANDER Blu-ray
op eats itself then projectile vomits into the gutter in Mike Hodges’
P 1972 flop, Pulp, the British director’s salty, self-referential follow-up
to iconic north/south hardman caper, Get Carter. Michael Caine plays
Mickey King, a slick-johnny writer of crime fiction, turned out in a cream
suit, purple-tinted shades and a swooping side parting so mighty you could
pretty much slalom down it. In search of filthy lucre and perhaps a modicum
of critical acceptance, he accepts the task of ghost writing the memoirs of a
mysterious client who has transplanted from Hollywood to the wilds of
Malta. Hodges has fun mixing spoken passages from King’s trashy tomes
(sample title: ‘My Gun is Long’) with his own inner monologue, as the
worlds of fact and fiction inevitably collide. The daft plotline takes in fake
murders, femme fatales, cross-dressing assassins, package sun holidays,
the absurdity of the criminal underworld and self important, over-the-
hill movie actors. The archly comic tone makes it feel like a Godardian
trifle, one which picks apart and rearranges the conventions of hardboiled
literature and cinema with cheerful abandon. It reaches the point where
what’s happening is less important than how it actually happens, with
one slapstick set piece on a beach hitting home despite making no sense
whatsoever. The snide humour is occasionally a little clever-clever for
its own good (lots of bad puns, but guess that’s very on brand?), and it
certainly succeeds in its Chandler-esque MO of spinning out into infinity,
with no end in sight. And Caine, even though this is something of an ironic
commentary on his patented lovable cockney geezer act, still manages to be
quite charming as the patsy at the centre of this silly game. This underloved
feature has been dredged up from relative obscurity and remastered for a
plush new Blu-ray release by Arrow Films. DAVID JENKINS
088 REVIEWS
Street Trash
Directed by 1 9 87
JIM MURO
Starring Released 20 NOV
MIKE LACKEY
BILL CHEPIL
VIC NOTO Blu-ray
his vital 1987 film delivers a trenchant appraisal of how America
T dealt with soldiers who returned from Vietnam as men out of time
and out of mind. It is a broken-hearted lament to the platoons of patriots
who weren’t able to neatly slot back in to society, and instead were forced
to compete in an horrific race to the bottom. It asks: what good is a country
that can’t do well by those willing to risk their lives for its upkeep? The
film also contains numerous sequences of hobos literally melting into
puddles of colourful slurry. The original poster for Jim Muro’s Street
Trash contains an image of a man screaming in agony as he’s being turned
into neon slurry while sat on a toilet bowl. His dismembered hand hangs
on the chain as he flushes himself into oblivion. Against all odds, the film
absolutely delivers on that breathtaking, grungy image, delivering regular
parcels of incredibly visceral and inventive splat, while also sneaking in
social critique by the hundredweight.
We’re introduced to various marauding bums who scavenge the filthy
New York sidewalks for their next booze rush. Luckily for Fred (Mike
Lackey), the local off licence has a special on a cachet of purple tonic
named Viper, recently located at the back of the store room in a dusty
wooden crate. Little does Fred know, but just a tiny sip of this cut-price
concoction is enough to turn the drinker into a human quagmire. Clever
allusions to the the no-holds-barred combat in ’Nam are cut through with
a game of catch with a severed penis and a punch-up which climaxes in
spectacularly gross fashion, right in the trough of a feculent public urinal.
Fans of Frank Henenlotter’s brand of putrid body horror (Basket Case,
Frankenhooker) will find themselves in hog heaven with this vomit-lashed
delight. DAVID JENKINS
 The Iron Rose
Directed by 1973
JEAN ROLLIN
Starring OUT NOW
FRANÇOISE PASCAL
HUGUES QUESTER
NATALIE PERREY Blu-ray
f you decide to watch a movie by the late French filmmaker Jean
I Rollin, it’s highly likely you’ll be treated to a taste of his trademark:
the sexy vampire. All Jean-Luc Godard needed to make a movie was
a girl and a gun, but for Rollin, it’s a girl and a graveyard. And if there
happens to be a gothic castle in the neighbourhood, then why not? He
struck kinky horror gold in 1968 with The Rape of the Vampire, and
after punching out a few variations on this effective formula, Rollin
took things in a slightly different direction for his masterpiece, 1973’s
The Iron Rose. A young, nameless couple meet at a provincial wedding
reception and decide to break away for some no-strings canoodling.
Eventually, they agree to go on a date in the local graveyard, in
which they tool about, make love, get lost and finally go berserk. The
customary lashings of sex and violence are dialled back greatly, even
though the film’s main star is Penthouse Pet Françoise Pascal who
spends much of the film in an unbuttoned yellow blouse.
This is largely a mood piece, where Rollin builds up an atmosphere
of surreal dread then expertly sustains it across feature length. Though
there are various macabre characters wandering around in the the
plumes of fog – including a clown who, movingly, places flowers next to
a tombstone – the film traces the romantic push and pull between the
impulsive young lovers, using offbeat situations as a way to exemplify
the gender-aligned power struggles of this tempestuous relationship.
It doesn’t make much sense when taken literally, but it does manage
to be Rollin’s most powerful and expressive film, coming to a head
with a dazzling extended dance sequence which channels both erotic
fulfilment and full-bore lunacy. DAVID JENKINS
Tag
Directed by 2015
SONO SION
Starring OUT NOW
REINA TRIENDL
MARIKO SHINODA
ERINA MANO Blu-ray
here was a time recently when you couldn’t read a movie review
T which didn’t employ the term “batshit” to connote a certain
sense of highwire zaniness. If something on screen didn’t tightly
confirm to the strictures of Hollywood convention, it’s probably
batshit crazy. Through overuse, the term is now in decline, yet it feels
necessary to break it out just one more time in honour of this mind-
frazzling 2015 existential odyssey from Japan’s Sono Sion, as there is
quite literally no other word that fits the bill. Tag opens on a picture
of tranquil innocence, as a coach-load of shrieking schoolgirls head
on a trip, with Mitsuko (Reina Triendl) sat quietly scribbling in her
notebook. During a pillow fight, she drops her pen and kneels down to
pick it up. It’s lucky she does, because at that very moment, the bus is
suddenly split in two, right down the middle, and all of her classmates
are severed at the waste, their torso’s swooping off in the wind, like
gore confetti. She stands up to fountains of blood, then makes a dash
before whatever did this comes back for her.
The remainder of the film takes in the directly ensuing events, as
Mitsuko eventually finds sanctuary in a school, only for things to get
even darker. Amid the bouts of deranged comic book violence, Sono
offers a succession of emotional grace notes in which our heroine is
able to experience the euphoric highs of love and friendship before
things inevitably go dark once more. Explanations are stifled until
a final reel that gives the game away, but for an hour at least, Tag
just piles on the mad twists and jack-knifing tonal flip flops, and it’s
kinda brilliant for it. And yes, batshit is most definitely the word.
DAVID JENKINS
REVIEWS 089
 Miracle Mile
Directed by 1988
STEVE DE JARNATT
Starring OUT NOW
ANTHONY EDWARDS
MARE WINNINGHAM
JOHN AGAR Blu-ray
f you have yet to experience Steve De Jarnatt’s 1988 film Miracle
I Mile, it’s best to do so knowing as little about it as possible. It begins
as the most charming romantic comedy you could possibly imagine, as
a nervous courtship takes place in the aisles and alleyways of a natural
history museum in LA, between Anthony Edwards’s jazz trombonist
Harry and Mare Winningham’s odd-jobbing Julie. A time and place is
set for date, but an electrical snafu means that Harry sleeps through
his alarm. He rushes to the spot, the diner at which she works, but it’s
too late. And then, while pondering his next move, a payphone rings,
and he decides to pick it up. And then…
Even though the direction of the story alters radically from this
point, the film still sees through its suggested fairy tale romance as
Harry and Julie have to reconvene against mounting odds. Aside
from its bold sleight-of-hand plotting, Miracle Mile is notable for its
depiction of this architecturally fascinating neighbourhood where
Art Deco apartment blocks buffet against modernist sky scrapers
which sit adjacent to classic ’50s diners, all lining the same grand
carriageway. With the help of cinematograher Theo van de Sande,
De Jarnatt manages to frame the action against the eerie grandeur
of this gaudy if magnificent concrete backdrop, with buildings often
looming over the tiny figures as they dash across the landscape. The
film flopped on its initial release and it’s easy to see why: it doesn’t
play nice, and the more you watch, the more you realise that it is
willing to take its bombastic subject matter very seriously indeed. Yet,
it unequivocally succeeds in its attemtp to depict a world consumed by
mindless and meaningless violence. DAVID JENKINS
090 REVIEWS
The Colour of Pomegranates
Directed by 1969
SERGEI PARAJANOV
Starring Released 20 NOV
SOFIKO CHIAURELI
MELKON ALEKYAN
VILEN GALSTYAN Blu-ray
very frame is a painting in Sergei Parajanov’s gorgeous 1969 cine-
E poem, The Colour of Pomegranates, which triumphantly makes its
way on to Blu-ray care of a newly-minted restoration. This remarkable
feature packs so much into its curt runtime that watching it is like
descending into a narcotic reverie, where details flummox and enthral
in equal measure. It loosely comprises of scenes from the life of the
16th century poet troubadour Sayat-Nova, but there’s little in the way
of narrative or dramatic sweep. Instead, the director serves up decorous
tableaux, each one more intricate and wild than the last, to offer a
impressionistic version of the life of this tortured artist.
Though it’s fun to try and unpick the meanings of the surreal
symbols on show, it’s a work that can also be appreciated for its striking
choreography, its dynamic use of colour, its extraordinary use of depth of
field and the insane attention to detail that goes into every immaculate
set-up. Fruit appears to represent the body, death and eroticism, while
books are knowledge and religion a source of poetry and containment.
There’s very little dialogue, but Parajanov employs the sound design
to make inanimate objects speak – he has particular fun with running
water and the squelch of grapes being trodden underfoot. It’s hard to
imagine how such a film was ever commissioned, and that’s exactly
why it deserves to be treasured for generations to come. It was the
subject of heavy censorship by the Soviet government of the time due
to its obscurest mode and lack of simple biographical detail. Yet it was
hailed as a masterpiece abroad, a film that simultaneously celebrates the
past and the future of cinema as a conduit for boundless imagination.
DAVID JENKINS
 Bottle Rocket
Directed by 1996
WES ANDERSON
Starring Released 4 DEC
LUKE WILSON
OWEN WILSON
LUMI CAVAZOS Blu-ray
t took a seriously long time for Wes Anderson’s perky debut feature
I to wend its way to UK shores – those who fell in love with 1998’s
Rushmore and 2000’s The Royal Tenenbaums had to make do with the
NTCS VHS version that was available commercially. Which was sad,
because Bottle Rocket is by no means the reckless early missive of a
talent still finding his footing – it’s as close to a fully-formed feature as
you can get. Before his move into whimsical, ornamental caper films,
Bottle Rocket proved that Anderson could wear his heart right there on
his sleeve, and there’s a simple, sentimental core to this episodic tale.
It’s about ways in which we pacify friends to stop them from hurting
themselves, or how certain situations can make us feel responsible
for the loneliness of others. It was all downhill for Owen Wilson after
his spry, wide-eyed turn as flat-topped goofball Dignan, a lovable
psychopath in a canary yellow jumpsuit who is helplessly enamoured
by a life of petty crime. Or perhaps he sees crime as a way to be part
of a crew run by charismatic crook Mr Henry (James Caan). His pal
Anthony (Luke Wilson), humours him to prevent him from getting into
too much trouble, but also seems like he keeps company with Dignan
through duty rather than desire.
The film is packed with crackling zingers and a clutch of radio
rock bangers ripped directly from the Martin Scorsese school
of soundtracking (Scorsese, incidentally, is a big fan of the film).
A romantic sub-plot involving Anthony’s wooing of a Paraguayan motel
maid named Ines (Lumi Cavazos) remains one of the most nakedly
earnest things Anderson has ever done. This new Criterion release
comes with bells, whistles, the whole bit. DAVID JENKINS
Celine and Julie Go Boating
Directed by 1 974
JACQUES RIVETTE
Starring Released 20 NOV
JULIET BERTO
DOMINIQUE LABOURIER
BULLE OGIER Blu-ray
he chance to take another magical journey to 7 bis, rue du Nadir-aux-
T Pommes is upon us once more as Jacques Rivette’s semi-improvised
spectacular takes a giant leap on to Blu-ray. It’s true, there’s very little
actual boating in Celine and Julie Go Boating (a couple of minutes at about
two-and-a-half hours in?), but this off-the-wall defiance against primitive
rationale is what fuels this hallucinatory masterwork. To put it simply, this
is a film which attempts to encapsulate the giddy thrill of watching films.
And it doesn’t achieve this by, say, filming characters watching films and
smiling. It instead views cinema as a psychic portal to another time and
another place – a projection of ideas born of two minds meeting. And the
more you decide to visit that place – here with the help of a magic bon-bon
– the more you’ll be able to comprehend it and, eventually, manipulate it
and enjoy it. ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ by Lewis Carroll feels like
a touchstone, particularly as the film begins with Dominique Labourier’s
Julie chasing Juliet Berto’s Celine around Paris before they become fast
friends and flatmates.
Casting aside the film’s bounty of surreal pleasures, it also offers one
of cinema’s most realistic and affectionate platonic female friendships.
The pair even talk in a mumbo-jumbo language that only they can
decipher, their conversations peppered with acrobatic wordplay and lots
of very bad puns. There is a chance you might find this film shrill and
meandering in the extreme, but you very much have to play Rivette’s game
by his rules. He is a director who makes fantasy films but without any of the
expected artificial signifiers. You have to see this invisible world through
the eyes of his characters rather than expect it to be explained to you.
DAVID JENKINS
REVIEWS 091
JOURNEYS
Family dramas
at the Toronto
International Film Festival
B
efore TIFF 2017 began, festival director Piers Handling
announced he would be stepping down after its 2018 edition.
As the festival wound down, an 11 page investigative article was
published in The Toronto Globe and Mail heavily criticising TIFF’s
business operations and treatment of workers. So it is fitting that the film
programme involved the theme of family troubles.
Björn Runge’s adaptation of Meg Wolitzer’s novel ‘The Wife’ is a
slow-burn subversion of a marriage that initially presents as comfortably
traditional. Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce), a celebrated novelist,
professionally dominates his supportive wife Joan (Glenn Close) who
is foregrounded by the title but backgrounded within the narrative. As
the film begins, the pair are waiting in the wee hours of the morning for
a call that will reveal he has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. They
celebrate together as a team. Only Glenn Close’s frosty eyes belie her
character’s dissatisfaction.  more realistic but still unusual. It is cherished TV comic Louis CK’s third
Flashbacks reveal that she once wanted to be a writer and he was her
professor. What happened to her dreams? Why is he the figurehead
of their marriage? Christian Slater plays Nathaniel Bone, a would-be
biographer sniffing around the Castlemans trying to uproot the true
dynamic of their partnership. The sensitive male ego comes in for a
skewering from a script that eloquently displays how power dynamics
shift between public and private life, taking every opportunity to slam
the wretchedness of how Joe is behind closed doors in contrast with his
public grandiloquence. “You don’t have to do anything, just lie there,”
he says to Joan in the opening scene, wanting sex to take his mind off
the anxiety of waiting. As he tries to seduce a photographer half his age
using a walnut (a gimmick from his first novel) a woman beside me in the
screening yelled “grotesque!”.  room. The character and atmosphere is presented with less nuance and
“Is this about a woman with no agency? Am I a woman with no agency?”
is a note I took during Darren Aronofsky’s mother! a film that has since
been released and drummed up enough warring column inches for it
to break out of the arthouse bubble. My observation seems babyish
in comparison with the current slew of analytic hot takes. Still, in my
then context of having just acted against my self-interest in a personal
Wo rds by SOPHIE MONKS KAUFMAN I l l us t rat io n by SOPHIE MO
situation with men – feeling shaken by this and unreachable by subtler
movies – I found something unflattering, unprogressive but true in the
gender relations depicted in this fireball of cinematic bombast.
On the note of cinematic bombast, enter Brian Tayler’s Mom and Dad –
starring Nicolas Cage and Selma Blair as the lead parents in a community
overtaken by the urge to murder their kids. Broadly motivated by jealousy
for the extra life the children have left on them (and in one mother’s
case the youthful physique of her daughter), the parents are depicted
as sorrowfully ambushed by middle age. The movie never tries too hard
to wring the poignance out of this emotional landscape, as it's too busy
delivering inventive, high-adrenaline cat-and-mouse sequences, but a
drop sneaks out nonetheless.
I Love You, Daddy presents a different type of parent-child conflict, one
foray into feature filmmaking (after 1998’s Tomorrow Night and 2001’s
Pootie Tang). It feels more like an extended sketch show than a film with
believable characters but it sure does the Louis CK thing of jumping in at
the deep end of a controversial issue. In this case Pedophilia: The Grey
Areas. Chloë Grace Moretz plays CK’s 17-year-old daughter who ends up
dating his hero, a 68-year-old auteur, played with transcendental finesse
by John Malkovich. CK spends the whole film wrestling with how his
sense of artistic relativity clashes with his responsibilities as a parent.
Even he is a better dad than the stern and violent patrician in Iram
Haq’s disappointing culture clash drama What Will People Say. This
unrelenting tale covers the ordeals of a free-spirited Norwegian teenager
after she is caught by her traditional Pakistani father with a boy in her
conviction than similar issues in Haq’s debut feature I Am Yours (well
worth seeking out). 
To save the best till last, there could be no more idealistic vision of a family
than the Perlmans in Call Me by Your Name. There was no moment in all
of TIFF to equal what came into focus after Michael Stuhlbarg's speech
about allowing yourself to feel every moment of this bittersweet life
F E AT U R E 0 9 3
 TRUTH & MOVIES

10%DISCOUNT
Get 5 issues for as little as £22.50*
with the code LWL72

To subscribe, head to lwlies.imbmsubscriptions.com

Or call us on +44 (0)1293 312096

*Discount off full subscription cost of £33 for 6 issues.

Delivered over 14 months. Applied at checkout.
The Movie
Memory Game
& Making Your
Own Movie Guide
Use code LWL35 to get 35% off
at www.laurenceking.com
Also available in store at all good
bookshops now!
Little White Lies
Published by TCO
Little White Lies – Huck - 71a

Words, pictures, thanks... Mark Allison, Anton Bitel, Emily Bray,

Charles Bramesco, Phil Concannon, Adam Lee Davies, Oriane Dufort,
Matthew Eng, Ed Gibbs, Caroline Golem, Sarah Gosling,
Glenn Heath Jr, Diego Huacuja, Trevor Johnston, Elena Lazic,
Manuela Lazic, Michael Leader, James Luxford, Aaron Manczyk,
Sophie Mo, Christina Newland, Ben Nicholson, Isobel Raphael,
Josh Slater-Williams, Matt Thrift, Matt Turner
Special Thanks: Kayte Lawton, Luke Norton

Editorial Publishing
Editor Publisher
David Jenkins Vince Medeiros
david@tcolondon.com vince@tcolondon.com

Digital Editor Head of Operations

Adam Woodward Taryn Paterson
adam@tcolondon.com taryn@tcolondon.com

Social Producer Head of Partnerships

Hannah Woodhead Chris DeHaney
hannah@tcolondon.com chris@tcolondon.com

Contributing Editor Media Sales

Sophie Monks Kaufman Oliver Slade
sophie@tcolondon.com oliver.slade@tcolondon.com

Interns Special Projects

Isobel Raphael Steph Pomphrey
Emily Bray steph@tcolondon.com
Ella Kemp
Legal
Art Alex Wade
Art Director - LWLies
Laurène Boglio General Manager
laurene@tcolondon.com Wendy Klerck
wendy@tcolondon.com
Art Director – Huck
Oliver Stafford
oliver@tcolondon.com On the Cover
Laurène Boglio
Graphic Designer
Simon Hayes The articles appearing in this
simon.hayes@tcolondon.com publication reflect the opinions
of their respective authors and
not necessarily those of the
TCO - Agency publishers or editorial team.

Managing Director TCOLondon 2017 (copyright)

Simon Baker
simon@tcolondon.com Published by
TCO Publishing
Editorial Lead 71a Leonard Street
Michael Fordham London EC2A 4QS UK
michael@tcolondon.com +44 (0) 207-729-3675
tcolondon.com
Head of Strategy info@tcolondon.com
D'Arcy Doran
darcy@tcolondon.com LWLies is published
5 times a year
Head of Production
Rachel Goldsworthy Advertise in LWLies
rachel@tcolondon.com Oliver Slade
oliver.slade@tcolondon.com
Producer +44 (0) 207-729-3675
Zach Sebastian
zach@tcolondon.com Stock LWLies
Circulation Marketing &
Project Manager Distribution
Helen Jackson Intermedia Brand Marketing Ltd.
helen@tcolondon.com getintouch@inter-media.co.uk
01293 312110
Account Manager
Louis Tagliaferro Specialist Distribution
louis@tcolondon.com MMS Ltd
Info@mmslondon.co.uk
Branded Books 01992 676064
Clive Wilson
clive@tcolondon.com Printed by Jimenez Godoy

71A Gallery Lwlies.com

Studio Manager
Jon Denham
jon@tcolondon.com
LIGHT SHOW
#1
A Celluloid
Weekender
8 – 10 December 2017
ICA London
Line-up revealed soon

Curated by MUBI, ICA

and Little White Lies

mubi.com/lightshow
 LWLies:
movies?
love about
What do you
agh
Martin McDon dn’t
life. I woul
th in k mo vi es saved my musi c or
Jesus… I ng about writin
g or
tood anyt hi RU
have unders OPV , VD ZZKHQ,ZDV
XWWKH º ckground
DFWLQJZLWKR at so me on e from my ba
en know th Because it
I didn’t ev wi th out movies.
ti stic a bit too
could be ar an d books seemed
s for su re , d books
wasn’t play n; ev en though I love
highfaluti uld do, it
distant or in g I thought I co
r so me th XPDQDQG
it was neve ºO PV L WVHHPVVRK
%XWZ LW K gs
VWLOOLVQ±W all the thin
smar t an d stupid and H ,
d VWW LP
beautiful an ,W Z DV OLNHWKHºU
FDQ EH  side
WKDWPRYLHV e artistic
ey es we re opened to th ntia lly
guess my e pote
the ac ce ss ible, or th
d
of life, an de of life.
artistic si
accessible

Sam Rockwell eatre and

ke be in g in a dark th
just li d being take
n
Um… Wow. I your life an
ping fr om thin k
kind of esca y. And I
a jo ur ne y, hopefull an d
It’s urney,
somewhere. the bigger the jo
the scre en I
the bigger the journey.
mo vi e the better u
the better
th e at home yo
,
g to wa tch a movie
u’re go in KWV G
DQ
think if yo O\ D QG WXUQRҬWKHOLJ
LWVHULRXV . Get seriou
s.
VKRXOGWDNH al ly get into it
inds , re ent.
draw the bl ld be an ev
’s a ri tu al, it shou
It