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Film Comic book films are the new Westerns – the supposed fail-safe for Hollywood. Comic book heroes are deeply ingrained within popular culture, but over years of disappointment we’ve grown to blindly accept misjudged, big-budget arse flops. But now the comic book movie is starting to develop into the fabric of film itself, and it’s done that by breaking the shackles of the genre. Marvel has finally developed the knack to enthral, entertain and discuss what society wants to discuss as the books themselves have done since day dot. It’s been a long, soul-sapping journey, but with Days of Future Past they may have cracked it. Underwhelming blockbuster season is now well underway thanks to Godzilla; we also checked out indie oddity Frank, the life-affirming send off for Studio Ghibli master Hayao Miyazak, and strolled down to Bristol’s Arnolfini to learn more about the vastly influential DIY indie label Sarah Records.
08 MY SECRET WORLD: THE STORY OF SARAH RECORDS dir. Lucy Dawkins Starring: Clare Wadd, Matt Haynes, Alexis Petridis
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16 THE WIND RISES dir. Hayao Miyazaki Starring: Hideaki Anno, Miori Takimoto, Hidetoshi Nishijima
FRANK dir. Lenny Abrahamson Starring: Michael Fassbender, Domhnall Gleeson, Maggie Gyllenhaal Frank starts with its feet on the ground, exploring middle class mediocrity and a search for musical innovation, but before you know it you've spiralled off into whimsical indie fiction. Domhnall Gleeson is Jon Ronson, our vessel into this world, whose real-life experience of Frank Sidebottom and his band The Freshies inspired the screenplay for this widescreen realisation of a life lived through various shades of fictionality. Most of all, this is a film about creativity. Fassbender plays the artist, performer and songwriter that everyone aspires to be, the man whose every breath seems to be a ‘eureka!’ moment. The film’s soundtrack isn’t cut from the real life Frank’s brand of hyper pop and tacky keyboard samba presets to attuned but surreal commentary on British everyday life. Rather, the actors create their own music (with Maggie Gyllenhaal in particular proving quite the Theremin player), which ends up being an impossibly cool, genreevading emanation. As a film, Frank asks of us ‘what is art?’. Jon Ronson asks ‘who is Frank?’, and more simply ‘why the mask?’ And as spectators, we’re constantly being thrown off the scent of the answers, a liminality which embodies the real Frank’s existence. The narrative’s heels begin to drag when the band arrive at SXSW festival, replete with comments on social media and the music industry which tend towards the obtuse and obvious. But thanks to economical, palatable cinematography and a blend of black and slapstick comedy, all driven by this abstract notion of creativity, Frank makes for a hugely enjoyable film for the MTV2 generation. !
Tim Oxley Smith
The Wind Rises marks the end of an era at Studio Ghibli as the company’s co-founder Hayao Miyazaki steps down from the directorial role. Although his associate Isao Takahata who took up the director’s chair for Grave of the Fire Flies and Pom Poko will remain, Miyazaki is responsible for the majority of the studio’s most successful creations. Crack saw The Wind Rises in the subtitled format, but it’s worth noting the English translation features Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt and Werner Herzog on voiceover duties. The Wind Rises is set in early-to-mid 20th century Japan. A young boy, Jiro, dreams of becoming an aeronautical engineer, and we follow him as he grows up, falls in love with Noako and attains his dream at the time Japan were allies with Nazi Germany. Along with the wonderfully classical feeling, the story is undoubtedly one of (if not the) finest and most complete to come from Ghibli. On top of this sublimely-woven story, The Wind Rises surpasses Ghibli’s stratospheric standards of technical mastery. Without having to negotiate the boundaries of the typical fantastical diegetic world, Miyazaki and his animators face the challenge of bringing to vivid life a more realist universe. And in doing so, the simple movement of water, the exhilarating plane flights and, of course, the wind are rendered all the more sensuous. The capturing of the real and the tangible through thousands of little artistic triumphs seems effortless, supported by a story based on a period of Japanese history explored through notions of morality and love, and all harnessed by the care and attention of a master’s final offering to the world. An instant, definitive genre classic. !
Tim Oxley Smith
A poster appears on screen with the words ‘Because when you were 19 didn’t you ever want to create something beautiful and pure just so one day you could set it on fire then watch the city light up as it burned?’. It’s strewn across an image of Clifton Suspension Bridge. Those words accompanied Sarah Records' final release, and it’s since become one of the most romanticised stories of DIY success in the history of ever. The label’s temporal glimmer has been outlasted by its longstanding influence, and filmmaker Lucy Dawkins set out to find out exactly why through her debut feature length documentary My Secret World. The film lovingly explores the history of the label through interviews with founders Clare Wadd and Matt Haynes, the bands they put out and journalists like Everett True and Alexis Petridis as they attempt to unravel the mysterious, enduring draw of Sarah. Although Dawkins’s debut suffers slightly from technical difficulties (all of which could easily be sorted out in post production) and is perhaps 20 minutes longer than our attention spans – and bums – would’ve preferred in the Arnolfini’s practical seating, this is at its heart a fascinating and passionate portrait of a mythologised scene. !
Billy Black
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GODZILLA dir. Gareth Edwards Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Bryan Cranston Everyone’s stoked to see this movie. Unfortunately, unless you’re into unimpressive monsters walking about while unimpressive actors look on helplessly, there’s not a huge amount to get excited about (besides Godzilla puking blue fire down a monster’s throat, which was almost worth the price of admission alone). There’s a bewildering desire in the movie industry to shoehord in a boatload of emotional depth as some sort of high(er) brow justification for spending all that bloody money on giant imaginary creatures punching the shit out of each other. The reason we liked the first Transformers movie was for exactly that reason; the action took precedence over all, and sometimes that’s exactly how these things should be. Godzilla wasn’t like that. The monsters spent most of the film walking around while the human cast got worried and didn’t really do anything. The final third contained almost all the real action, but even that came across as underwhelming when it finally got going. It’s hard to admit that seeing skyscrapers get smashed to bits seems a bit old-hat, but that’s how it felt. Gareth Edwards clearly holds the original 1954 version in high regard, and shows an awareness of the Godzilla lineage by never making it clear whose side he’s on (Godzilla has fought both against and alongside humans over the course of his cinematic career). He also succeeds in building some genuine empathy for Big G, something which has also fluctated from film to film. His endearingly dog-like features strongly echo those early stop-motion Japanese versions, and he shows a palpable moment of regret and despair upon dispatching one of the baddies. There were some moments of beautiful cinematography which can’t be ignored, but overall this latest attempt at a Godzilla epic fell short. It should have been amazing. It should have been gnarly as fuck. It wasn’t. !
X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST dir. Bryan Singer Starring: Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, James McAvoy There isn’t a lot more you can ask for when a film is littered with the world’s favourite actors, the story is crisp and precise, and it’s bursting at the seams with action. We didn’t only immensely enjoy Days of Future Past, we also breathed a sigh of relief. This is the script where Marvel can finally lay claim to having made a ‘classic’ film. Days of Future Past has dropped the novelty of being taken from a comic book and discarded the irritating intertextuality which existed in the majority of previous Marvel offerings. With four previous X-Men efforts to dip into, the time-travelling story is consummated and carried off by the huge array of stars, none more so than Fassbender, whose natural menace conflicted against underlying humanity is irresistible, as are McAvoy and Lawrence. It looks brilliant too, and thought effects-laden, the audience aren’t left to rely upon relentless green screened spectacles. It also helps that the things that the mutants do are actually cool and, even more importantly, seem believable in the world that’s been offered up to us by the director. Nailed it. !
Tim Oxley Smith
Steven Dores