Black Book

Paul Verhoeven’s tale of injustice, romance, duplicity and war is one of just a handful of films I’ve watched twice this year. I saw it first in early January and was blown away by the story and acting and jumped at the chance to watch it for a second time. Carice van Houten, best known to English speaking audiences as fiery Priestess Melisandre in Game of Thrones plays a young Jewish woman in hiding from the Nazis in the Dutch countryside towards the end of the Second World War. After her hiding place is destroyed and following a traumatic encounter with the Germans she joins the Dutch resistance, going undercover inside the German Headquarters in The Hague where she agrees to seduce the local commander (Sebastian Koch - The Lives of Others).

Black Book is a fantastic film which is full of moral ambiguity set in a time of deep mistrust and hardship. One of the greatest things about it is that very few characters can be described as good or bad. The vast majority of the large cast of characters lie in a grey area somewhere in between and I think this adds reality to the film. The film bravely suggests that not all Nazis were bad and that not every resistance fighter was good or moral. There is a great deal of anti-Semitism even amongst the so called good guys. It’s an interesting idea which works incredibly well and helps to keep the viewer on their toes.

Shoulder Arms

Set partly amongst the trenches of the First World War, Shoulder Arms was a bold film for Charlie Chaplin to make in 1918 given the wide reaching criticism he received for failing to sign up to fight. He was advised by close friends to abandon the film for something less controversial but Charlie battled on and despite the possible outrage and backlash the film became Chaplin’s most critically acclaimed and financially successful film up to that point, was particularly popular with returning Doughboys and features a couple of scenes which may well be recognisable to people who have never even seen a full Chaplin film.

Charlie plays a young recruit who is sent over to France to join the war. Despite typical problems to begin with he soon discovers that he is a more than competent soldier and after numerous brave exploits ends up in the house of a French woman (Edna Purviance) who tends to his wounds. With the help of his new love and a dear friend from the trenches, Chaplin ends up winning the war for the allies. Or does he?

The Prestige

Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige is a story of obsession and sacrifice and stars Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale as two up and coming magicians whose lives are transformed into an increasingly disastrous struggle of one-upmanship following a tragedy on stage. Each tries to out wit and out trick the other by disrupting each others acts, leading the other down blind alleyways and twisting reality through illusion and showmanship.

Mirroring the rest of Nolan’s filmography, The Prestige is a smart and beautiful film that is full of big ideas, well explored themes and unexpected twists and reveals. Nolan appears to take great delight in playing with his audience and treating them as intelligent equals, almost leading them along with him, through his twisted and mystifying subjects, knowing that by the time they reach the other side they will thank him for it. Nolan’s films are about ideas and he doesn’t shy away from presenting them to the audience without subtlety. Where he is perhaps more subtle is in his delivery which as usual is pitch perfect here.

The Bond

A half reel propaganda film, funded by and starring Charlie Chaplin, The Bond is a unique film in Chaplin’s cannon in that it is the only film he ever made to be filmed in front of a plain black set. There are just a few dimly lit props littered around the stage alongside the actors, Chaplin regulars Edna Purviance, Albert Austin and Sydney Chaplin. The film depicts several sketches along the theme of bonds, from friendship to marriage to the most important, Liberty Bonds.

Though not in the least bit funny the film is still an interesting watch and Chaplin’s simple to understand depiction of what Bonds actually did would have been seen by millions of people across the world. In a very simple sketch Chaplin offers up his savings to Uncle Sam who in turn gives it to Industry who finally furnishes soldiers with rifles. The idea is simple and easy to understand despite the lack of dialogue. In the final scene, Chaplin uses a large hammer with the words Liberty Bonds engraved on the side to smash the Kaiser into submission, thereby further expressing the idea of the difference the bonds can make.

Chariots of Fire

Winner of Best Picture at the 1981 Oscars, Chariots of Fire is set around the 1924 Paris Olympics and concerns two young British runners who are not only running for themselves and their country but for deeper, more personal reasons. Cambridge Undergraduate Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross) has faced anti-Semitism throughout his life and wants to run and win to put that out of his mind and show he is not deterred by the hateful language and attention he receives. Scottish Christian Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson) is devoutly religious and believes that his speed and determination is a sign from God that he should run. Both runners along with their friends Aubrey Montague (Nicholas Farrell) and Lord Andrew Lindsay (Nigel Havers) enter the Paris Olympics with dreams of winning gold.

Chariots of Fire, though now over thirty years old has recently returned to the spotlight thanks to the 2012 London Olympics. The film’s famous opening has been repeated over and over and was even used as the basis for a comedy skit by Rowan Atkinson during the Opening Ceremony. Vangelis’ famous score also featured during medal ceremonies. I’d never seen the film before today and although I think it was worth seeing, I certainly won’t be in a hurry to watch it again.

Hotel Transylvania

Fed up with being persecuted by humans, Count Dracula (Adam Sandler) decides to build a hotel for monsters that is protected from humanity by haunted forests and zombie filled graveyards. His ulterior motive though is to keep his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) safe and secure and away from anything that can hurt her. Dracula is planning a huge birthday party for Mavis with all of his monster friends in attendance when he is shocked to discover that a human (Andy Samberg) has found the hotel and is threatening to bring his and his daughter’s peaceful existence to an end.

Having been disappointed by ParaNorman and still waiting to see Frankenweenie I went into Hotel Transylvania with some trepidation. This feeling of weariness was heightened by the fact that I deeply dislike the majority of the voice cast. Even so I went in with an open mind and came out the other side thinking, “meh”. Overall I enjoyed the film more than ParaNorman but the initial conceit, which was a very good idea, couldn’t be sustained for ninety minutes. As a result there were large chunks of the film which were quite boring but were occasionally livened up by a decent joke or some attractively busy animation.

Chunking Express

Set deep inside the sprawling and sweaty mega city that is Hong Kong, Chunking Express tells the story of two love sick policemen who have lost love. The first story stars Takeshi Kaneshiro as Cop 223 who was dumped by his girlfriend on April 1^st and decides to wait for her to change her mind until his birthday a month later before moving on. At this time he meets a mysterious woman in a blonde wig (Brigitte Lin) who has connections to the underworld. The second story features Tony Leung Chiu-Wai as Cop 663, a man who has recently been dumped by his air hostess girlfriend. He frequents a small food stall called Midnight Express where the quirky and attractive Faye (Faye Wong) works.

At times I struggled to follow the storyline of the film which was a huge problem for me but there is enough to like besides that, that the film was really enjoyable and it features some great cinematography and quirky ideas. I loved the shots of central characters in slow motion with the rest of the world sped up. They looked fantastic and also worked as a metaphor to show the disconnection and loneliness that you can feel in a big city. The locations were also really interesting as I haven’t seen much Hong Kong cinema before; most of the places were new and exciting to watch.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey… The cult hit musical The Rocky Horror Picture Show currently holds the record for the longest running release in cinema history having never been pulled by 20^th Century Fox since its release in 1975. Chances are if you are in a large city that you’ll be able to find the film on at a midnight screening sometime in the near future. Though in no way a hit on its release, the film has since made one hundred times its original budget and has become one of the most popular musical films in history and my personal favourite.

Brad Majors (Barry Bostwick) and his new fiancée Janet Weiss (Susan Sarandon) are on their way to visit their old college professor when they break down in the middle of nowhere. Spotting a castle not far away they head off to see if they can use the phone but discover on their arrival that they have turned up on the night of an unusual party hosted by transvestite scientist Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry) to celebrate the birth of a creature that Frank-N-Furter has created in his lab.

The Damned United

The Damned United is a sports-drama based partly on facts surrounding the meteoric rise and subsequent fall of the outspoken but gifted football manager Brian Clough. We follow Glough (Michael Sheen) back and forth from the late 1960s to 1974 beginning with his and Assistant Manager Peter Taylor’s (Timothy Spall) triumph in taking lowly Derby County from the bottom of the second division to national champions. This remarkable feat is spliced with events several years later when in 1974 Clough, without Taylor as his Assistant, took over the job of managing Leeds Utd, then the dominant force in English football. Clough’s time in charge of the club was to last just 44 days and this film portrays what happened during that turbulent month and a half as well as the years that preceded it.

The accuracy of the film’s ‘facts’ is open for debate with family members and players who knew Clough claiming that the portrayal of events are inaccurate but what can’t be denied is that Michael Sheen pulls off yet another pitch perfect performance in a film that is a fascinating watch for a football fan and a great story for someone who is not.

Led Zeppelin - Celebration Day

On December 10^th 2007 the seemingly impossible happened. Led Zeppelin, the world’s original super group and one of the few bands in history who could rival The Beatles for fame and popularity at their height, reformed for a one off concert at London’s O2 Arena for the Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert. The show set a world record for ticket demand with over twenty million people (including myself) registering online for a chance of one of the 20,000 tickets. Like close to twenty million others I didn’t get a ticket for a show that myself and other fans had been waiting for, for over twenty five years.

Fast forward nearly five years to October 17^th 2012 and the concert was screened for one day worldwide in cinemas ahead of a DVD and Blu Ray release on November 19^th. This time demand wasn’t so high and I managed to get two tickets for a screening at my local multiplex. While in no way the same as seeing the band, my favourite of all time, live, the two hours I sat in the cinema were amazing. The band showed that despite having barely played together in thirty years and missing original drummer John Bonham whose death in 1980 was the trigger for the band’s breakup, that they are still able to rock with the best and sounded close to as good as they have on any other live recording I’ve seen.