Trinity Film Review - The Music in Film Issue

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HIS ISSUE PAYS TRIBUTE to my twin passions of music and film.

Music has held an integral place in the medium of cinema right from the early days of silent film. The two are inseparable. It is impossible to imagine a film like Taxi Driver without Bernard Herrmann’s swaggering score, and Simple Minds’ ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’ is, as Clare Martin rightly points out in this issue, forever tied in our memories to The Breakfast Club. We have articles covering soundtracks, musicals, documentaries, and biopics, so we hope you’ll enjoy delving into the world of music in cinema.

This is my last issue as editor, so I’d like to thank everyone who’s helped me along the way. The magazine would simply not have been produced this year without Dermot O’Riordan’s work on the layout, and Sorcha Ní Cheallaigh’s continued support to us and to every other small publication on campus. I would also like to extend my thanks to the talented Alice McLoughlin who produced the beautiful cover for this issue. To my team of assistant editors, and to all the students who contributed both in print and online, your passion for cinema and dedication to the magazine has ensured its status as one of the strongest publications in Trinity. I wish next year’s editor, Rebecca WynneWalsh, all the best for the coming year, the publication is in a strong place and I’m sure it will continue to grow. Finally, I’m grateful for the ongoing and future support of the Publications Committee.

It’s been an absolute pleasure to edit Trinity Film Review this year. I’m hugely proud of all the work we’ve done over the course of the year, and I’m excited to pass the magazine on to the next generation of writers and next year’s editing staff, and to watch the direction they take it in. Trinity has a strong film culture, and I know that this magazine offers an empowering and unique space for students to critique and create.

Yours in film,

issue Editor Liam Farrell

Deputy Editors Ken Donnelly Finlay Glen Naomi Keenan O’Shea Clare Martin Anna Mc Namara Taylor Contributors Caolainn Daly Leo Hanna Dara McWade Jake O’Donnell Ellen Pentony Rebecca Wynne-Walsh Oisín Walsh Layout Dermot O’Riordan Cover Alice McLoughlin

Liam Farrell | editor

contents

Trinity Film Review • Vol. VIII – Issue 2 • April 2017 Playback: Music in Film

Page 04

Review: Moonlight

Page 20

Feature: Remembering Amy

Page 06

Modern Masterpiece

Page 22

Feature:Dylan in the Movies

Page 08

Overrated

Page 24

Review: Get Out

Page 12

Underrated

Page 25

Review: The Eyes of My Mother

Page 14

Hidden Gem

Page 26

Review: Beauty and the Beast

Page 16

Feature: Teen Movie Sountracks Page 27

Review: Kong: Skull Island

Page 18

When Marty Came to Trinity

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playback | Music in Film

Velvet Goldmine (1998) | Rebecca Wynne-Walsh

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ODD HAYNES’ VELVET GOLDMINE is a film that deserves to be a lot better known than it is. First and foremost, every member of the incredible ensemble cast gives a stellar performance. Christian Bale is the innocent but determined young journalist searching for the truth about reclusive glam rock star Brian Slade. Slade is rendered larger than life yet innately relatable by Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Although Meyers’ career output has been somewhat

underwhelming of late, his work in this film reminds you why he briefly reigned as king of screens worldwide.

Ewan McGregor’s turn as rock star Curt Wild ultimately steals the show with McGregor refusing to shy away from the ‘Wild’ aspects of the Iggy Pop/Lou Reed-based character. Curt Wild’s concerts see McGregor shun regulation, conservatism and even his clothes in favour of the uninhibited glam rock revolution.

Velvet Goldmine is not so loosely based on the late great David Bowie’s

Ziggy Stardust period. The similarities led to some legal issues with the man himself, this in turn led to some partial rewrites. Velvet Goldmine is a biopic without being a biopic. It’s a psychedelic portrait of the glam rock musical phenomenon that exhilarated half the world and terrified the rest.

Velvet Goldmine is above all a well written, well realised film about the reinvention of rock and the lives it shaped.

Nashville (1975) | Liam Farrell

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obert Altman’s Nashville is one of the only films to truly come close to capturing the soul of America. The movie matches the country’s epic scale, featuring no less than twenty four characters, played by a range of famous faces including Ned Beatty, Michael Murphy, Lily Tomlin, and Jeff Goldblum, whose lives overlap in a storyline which weaves together strands dealing with romance, politics, celebrity culture, and most importantly, music. Set in and around

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the Tennessee city known as the home of country music, the film features an hour’s worth of musical performances which capture the essence of a certain American identity. The dewey-eyed kitsch pride displayed on-stage is contrasted with the realities of life offstage, as we see the heartbreakingly entangled love lives of the characters, the queasy exploitation of country megastar Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakely) following her nervous breakdown, and the shady politics surrounding the upcoming rally to be held in

Nashville by radical presidential candidate Hal Philip Walker, who remains mysteriously unseen.

It is a magnificent, meandering spectacle, making full use of Altman’s trademark wandering camerawork and overlapping dialogue. By the time the film reaches its shocking, gospel-chorus conclusion you’ll have glimpsed the humanity of the vast nation, and seen its best and worst characteristics up close.

TFR writers on the films that have been on their minds

Up (2009) | Ken Donnelly

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P IS THE GREATEST Pixar picture of the 21st century to date, and it probably wouldn’t be if it weren’t for Michael Giacchino’s wonderful Oscar-winning score.

Many recent Pixar and Disney films have been plagued with generic and largely forgettable scores (see Finding Dory and Inside Out) which is in part down to their unwillingness to risk sticking by a main theme and their need to maintain a pan-global

appeal. However, with Up, Giacchino has been given free reign to compose a score that shapes the movie. The main theme is centred around just 4 notes, and is reused throughout the film with differing tempos, dynamics and instrumentation to best fit the scenes. The same theme manages to capture Up at its swashbuckling and awe inspiring best but equally at its lowest and saddest ebbs. A film of such creativity and brilliance deserves no less than Giacchino’s instantly

recognisable score. The music stunningly imitates the dazzling colour that bursts out of the images on screen, whether it’s thousands of balloons emerging from the old man’s house against the blue skies of New York or a journey across the foggy plains of a mystical South American landscape. Up is not a film that will fade into the recesses of Disney history, and for this Giacchino’s score deserves a lot of credit.

Kill Your Darlings (2013) | Anna McNamara-Taylor

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ut to – Dane DeHaan, Ben-Hur and Harry Potter breaking into Columbia University. They’re wearing beanies and Aran jumpers, not ironically, but to cloak themselves so they can pilfer through the restricted and censored section of the library, full of all the best ankle flashing and throbbing members that only becomes pornographic classical literature.

‘Wolf Like Me’ by TV On the Radio crackles through your laptop speakers as you watch the beautifully lit bandits who look way to old to be freshman commit an act of defiance you could

only dream of doing at such a liberal and progressive college like Trinity.

Kill Your Darlings, directed by John Krokidas, is a magnificent dissection of the beat generation on the cusp of becoming the artists we would all eventually long to imitate, and the graphic and violent explosion of life and death that made Alan Ginsberg, Kerouac and Willie Burroughs worthy of the paper they are printed on. Music director and composer Nico Muhly masterfully paints with broad strokes, inserting tracks like ‘The Pioneers’ by Bloc Party, and ‘Don’t Look Back Into the Sun’ by The Libertines to give this

1940s New York psychedelic biopic a warm wash, carrying you through the heart of the film. There’s also an excellent selection of jazz by the likes of Slim Gaillard and Louis Jordan. Not scary, intense jazz, rather the kind of jazz you could get away with playing at pre-pre-drinks. After watching Kill Your Darlings you’ll feel niche and snazzy, you’ll walk around with rosetinted glasses (probably from Topshop or Penny’s, this isn’t just a metaphor) imagining that your life is full of the exact same amount of angst, creativity and begrudging individuality that you’ll find in this movie.

Green Room (2016) | Leo Hanna

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EREMY SAULNIER’S GREEN ROOM perfectly reflects the punk lifestyle. The early scenes of Anton Yelchin’s poorly organized group of rockers show them sleeping in Vans, playing to less than ten people in a dingy diner and siphoning gas as a means to save money. Based heavily on Saulnier’s own experiences touring with a juvenile band, it showcases the appalling standards that these sub-par punks live by. The chaotic

nature of their music becomes more pathetic once we enter the second act. Their nervous rendition of The Dead Kennedys’ ‘Nazi Punks Fuck Off ’ displays their earnest intent to shock. But once they are presented with the genuine chaos of Patrick Stewart and his menacing group of skinheads, the angry punk attitude is quickly dropped. Instead we are shown frightened and confused kids.

The soundtrack perfectly reflects

this change of tone, juxtaposing the early heavy sound with a sleeker, more refined soundtrack. Whereas notes were thrown away with reckless abandon early on, later each one is as cautious as each footstep the protagonists take. Music is used perfectly in this ‘Nazi’s vs Punks’ flick, truly one of the under-appreciated gems of 2016.

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feature | Ken Donnelly

AMY

REMEMBERING

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OCUMENTARIES HAVE THE POWER to rewrite history. They offer us alternative ways of looking at the world and provide the catalyst for a shift in perceptions and attitudes. They are not merely the exploitation of subject matter for the monetary gain nor are they an exercise in manipulating the truth for dramatic purposes. With Amy, the 2015 Oscar winning picture on the life and death of Amy Winehouse, filmmaker Asif Kapadia has given the world the opportunity to atone for the way it treated the late London jazz idol. It reinvents the narrative of Amy’s short life, depicting her as an inspiring presence, an innovator, and a musical genius as opposed to the reckless socialite who was portrayed across the media during her career.

Kapadia adopts a similar documenting style as seen in his 2010 cinematic triumph Senna, based on the life and death of Brazilian Formula 1 superstar Ayrton Senna. Both films involve the intricate piecing together of archived footage and photographs together with old and new audio interviews. No new shots were used in either film. The style puts the subject matter first and demotes the interviewees to an accompanying role.

In Amy, there is a great immediacy about

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the images. Heavy use of interviews with Winehouse herself allows her story to be told on her own terms. The lack of reliance on new footage lets us see Winehouse as a living and breathing human being as opposed to a nostalgic figure of the past.

Kapadia has wonderfully constructed a space where Winehouse’s music and personality can shine through.

One of the great successes of Amy comes in its devotion to the songs and musical development of the titular singer.

Early scenes establish the deep emotional connection Winehouse has with her music. One scene of an eighteen year old Amy casually performing an early acoustic version of “I Heard Love Is Blind” in an attempt to woo a record company leaves the viewer in no doubt of her unique talent.

Lyrics appear on screen accompanying live recordings and live performances are often flanked by scenes of great significance to the songs involved. Kapadia provides a window into uncovering the realities and contexts behind Amy’s confessional music, specifically bringing to light the disturbing effect of the commercial world on the development of Amy’s music and career.

Despite Kapadia’s championing of Winehouse as a musician and as a warm vibrant human being, the lasting power

of Amy is in its inspection of her public struggle and tragic demise. Throughout the first half of the film, a young Amy is heard consistently disparaging the prospects of her potential fame. “I don’t think I’m going to be at all famous. I don’t think I could handle it. I’d probably go mad, y’know what I mean?” - she remarks in one particular interview. This light hearted statement coupled with an awareness of what is to follow is just one of many moments of intense sadness.

As the film progresses, the scenes become more and more unsettling, tapping into a darkness built to match the crushing lows of Amy’s mental illness and worsening alcoholism and drug addiction. However, what shocks us the most is undoubtedly the extent to which Amy’s struggles were in public view. The world watched Amy Winehouse dying in front of their own eyes and just sat back and enjoyed the ride. Paparazzi’s cameras flash like a barrage of gunfire while TV personalities make her the butt of every joke. While Kapadia spends a lot of time exploring the culpability for Amy’s demise of those in direct proximity to her, such as her father Mitch and her boyfriend Blake Fielder, the film puts pressure on the individual to assess our complicity in creating and permitting the vicious

landscape of celebrity culture. Disturbing footage of Winehouse stumbling on stage and refusing to sing at a festival in Belgrade just a month before her death provides a forceful indictment of the exploitation and mistreatment which got her to this point.

Winehouse’s tentative adoption of celebrity status inevitably evokes the attitudes of the late American folk songwriter Elliott Smith. In a similar vein to Amy, the 2014 documentary Heaven Adores You tracks Smith’s personal and musical development before zooming in on the depression and drug use which lead to his suicide in 2003. Smith’s deepseated reluctance to enter the world of fame permeates the film, culminating in the unsettling reliving of his performance of the song ‘Miss Misery’ at the Oscars in 1998. Throughout the film, director Nickolas Rossi sets up an acute juxtaposition between the artificiality of the music industry against the immense honesty and transcendence of Smith’s music.

“Something is happening...and it’s real and it’s cutting a raw-nerve”. These are the words of Seán Croghan (a mainstay on the Portland music scene at the same time

as Smith) in reaction to some of Smith’s early acoustic performances. At times in Heaven Adores You, Smith’s music leaves you utterly mesmerised. Recordings of songs such as ‘Waltz #1’ and ‘Say Yes’ along with rarely seen footage of unreleased music reveal the innate connection Smith maintains with his music. Much like in Amy, Smith’s immense talent radiates

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Amy’s struggles were in public view through the film, only contributing to the immense tragedy of its conclusion.

Both Amy and Heaven Adores You take on the extremely difficult question of how to portray the lives of individuals whose personal struggles and tragic deaths have dominated the way they have come to be viewed. While their situations and backgrounds obviously differ greatly

both films should still be credited with valiantly trying to remove the stigma from their central characters. Both films also explore the devastating effect of the musicians’ personal struggles on those close to them. Winehouse’s friends and family are left to suffer while the media continues to sneer. Meanwhile, those close to Smith are seen helpless in preventing his downfall, despite the public nature of his distress. He is seen cutting sets short and forgetting lyrics as the depression takes over.

Amy is not a comfortable viewing nor is it a nostalgic glorification of the singer’s life. It is a repackaging of recent history, and with that comes the danger of annoying a lot of the people involved.

However, it is impossible to overlook the problems and abuses which the film unearths. In highlighting the nature of Winehouse’s tragic demise and specifically the callous sentiment of the wider world, Asif Kapadia has created a picture which resonates loudly with western society. It rehumanizes Amy Winehouse, who has been cruelly misrepresented. Crucially, it incites a change of attitude, an awareness that the world of fame as it is and was must be called into question and rejected.

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feature | Finlay Glen

dylan in the

movies

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OT BEING OLD ENOUGH to live through the 1960s even vicariously through parental anecdote, the story of the rise of Bob Dylan through the decade registered as myth in my imagination before it registered as actual history.

The transformation of the scruffy Jewish boy that turned up with a guitar in Greenwich Village in 1961 into the protest singer, prophet and ‘spokesperson of his generation’ who sang at the March on Washington in August ‘63, and onto the great betrayer of his erstwhile folk fans and the electric Dylan of the ‘66 world tour, is bound up with the story of America and the story of the 60s.

It is almost impossible to think of anyone more appropriate to chronicle Dylan’s journey on the big screen than Martin Scorsese, a visionary creative artist himself and a master of sound and style in his films. Scorsese has been drawn to the betrayal narrative before, and the most famous event in the Dylan story (alongside Pete Seeger’s apocryphal attempt to cut the speakers’ cables with an axe on Dylan’s first electric performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965) is an iteration and an inversion of the The Last Temptation of Christ.

At the Manchester Free Trade Hall concert of his ’66 world tour, as the customary chorus of boos subsided at the end of a song, a betrayed folkie shouted out ‘Judas’ to Dylan on stage.

‘I don’t believe you, you’re a liar’, he drawled back into the microphone, and then turned to his band. It sounds like he says to them, ‘play it fucking loud’. They comply. The drums, guitars, and organ all come crashing in for an electrifying performance of ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, the song that signaled a revolution in popular music, and that is about

someone who has to change, someone who has ‘no direction home’. Dylan is both Judas and Jesus in No Direction Home, the arch-betrayer and the betrayed who was crucified by the baying crowd. Dylan withdrew early from the tour after a motorcycle crash in July 1966 and retreated to upstate New York to convalesce. He didn’t tour again until 1974. The story is steeped in cinema and in great music.

I can only encourage you to watch the movie, which charts the journey from his childhood in provincial Minnesota through to the motorcycle crash in July ’66.

The desire to mythologise the life of Dylan is a tempting one, not least because he regularly indulged in the activity himself. Speaking on ‘Folksinger’s Choice’ with Cynthia Gooding back in early 1962, Dylan told his host that he had run away from home at twelve and joined the carnival. On other occasions he told people he was an orphan, or that he had bummed around out West playing guitar with Woody Guthrie and Blind Lemon Jefferson. The truth was far from that. Robert Zimmerman was a middle-class boy from Hibbing,

Minnesota whose dad ran an electrical appliance store. He had completed his secondary education and enrolled at university in Minneapolis before he came to New York. An interesting lie was favourable to the mundane truth. As Mark Ford puts it, “In the early Sixties in particular Dylan’s life seems to have been one continuous imaginative performance,” and the myths that Dylan has spun have served as a platform for many of the transitions and transformations in his music going well past the 1960s.

These oft-noted transformations and acts of self-creation create a tension between absence and presence in the figure of Dylan. He is someone who seems to always remain elusive, unwilling to be settled into a fixed interpretation. Process has always appeared more important than message in his work and becoming more important than being. As a consequence of his slippery identity fans and critics have become even more determined to understand him, to pin him down, just as he is equally determined to evade their grasp. Images of the outlaw, the hobo, the drifter, the outsider, and the figure that defies interpretation are everywhere in Dylan’s lyrics.

From ‘Drifter’s Escape’: “Just then a bolt of lightning / Struck the courthouse out of shape / And while everybody knelt to pray / The drifter did escape.” Similar characters repeatedly appear in movies that feature Dylan and movies that are thematically invested in his songs: ‘I’m Not There’, ‘Masked and Anonymous’, ‘The Ballad of Jack and Rose’. In Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid Dylan plays a character called ‘Alias’, to which someone asks “Alias what?” “Alias anything you please,” he replies.

Just a brief glance at the titles of movies that Dylan has been involved

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Heath Ledger in I’m Not There

in tells you that filmmakers are clearly drawn to the enigmatic quality of the subject, the figure who is torn between a potential home and a restless desire to move on (‘Don’t Look Back, ‘No Direction Home’, ‘I’m Not There’, ‘Masked and Anonymous’). According to Dylan, the camera “makes ghosts out of people.” It frames a subject, packages it, ties it down. Over the course of No Direction Home we see his attitude to the camera evolve from playfulness in the early years, to wariness and detached irony by 1964, to weariness and outright hostility by 1966. When Dylan took the editorial reins for the D.A. Pennebaker followup documentary to Don’t Look Back about the ’66 world tour, in what was eventually released in 1972 as Eat the Document, he chopped up the footage to create a wilfully chaotic bricolage that is often incomprehensible. Once again, the title tells you a lot.

Todd Haynes had fully digested the document by the time he directed the Dylan anti-biopic biopic I’m Not There in 2007, which casts six actors to play different variants of the many-faceted musician. Haynes

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filmmakers are clearly drawn to the enigmatic quality of the subject, the figure who is torn between a potential home and a restless desire to move on

rejects the pretence of a linear, singular narrative and instead creates a sprawling, dizzying kaleidoscope of a movie which is more interested in proliferating the paradoxes and ambiguities of Dylan than resolving them. As someone that did a PhD on Arthur Rimbaud (according to his Wikipedia page) and who calls one of his Dylans Arthur Rimbaud (played

by Ben Whishaw), Haynes recognises that so much of Dylan’s creative energy in the 60s came from the fact that he was always ‘un autre’, in some sense invisible, not quite there. But as a consequence of this alternate framework in which to visualise Dylan the film feels invested in its own mystified, nigh divine version of the artist. It is highly referential (giving a nerdy satisfaction to eagereyed Bobcats), deeply reverential, and, at times, definitely pretentious.

A major problem of Dylan in movies is that the people that make them often seem caught up in the mythology themselves. He despairs in ‘Idiot Wind’ that, “People see me all the time / And they just can’t remember how to act / Their minds

are filled with big ideas / Images and distorted facts.” All you have to do is sit through Masked and Anonymous, the 2003 film that Dylan starred in alongside a bevy of Hollywood dignitaries (Bridges, Goodman, Cruz, Kilmer, Lange, Rourke) to attest to the veracity of those lines. You could just as well substitute the words ‘how to act’ with ‘how to do their job’ or ‘how to say no’. When you’re in a state of reverence or fascination your critical faculties can escape you.

An attendant issue is that some of the films can try and reflect too strongly the nature of Dylan’s own art. Spontaneity has always been an essential part of Dylan’s work, with songs often being written, re-written, or discarded in the recording process.

I suspect that Haynes tried to capture this principle of inspiration and improvisation in the editing of I’m Not There, but it’s a touch overcooked.

Cinema is a larger form that requires a greater degree of scaffolding and structure than popular music, and movies can collapse without the necessary foundations in place. The differences cut both ways. Dylan is wonderful at balancing lyricism and narrative in his lyrics, but it is usually

lyricism that presides. Only with the collaborative influence of Jacques Levy on Desire was Dylan able to fully explore the potential of cinema in songwriting. Levy co-wrote most of the songs on Desire, some of which really are like miniature movies, packed full of visual and dialogic tropes. ‘Hurricane’, ‘Joey’ and ‘Isis’ could not have been written, or would have emerged as very different songs, without Levy.

Whilst Haynes’s spontaneity turns I’m Not There into an endless, impressive play of formal inventiveness, Dylan’s spontaneity is generally in service of a more emotionally substantial art. The song from which the title of the biopic is taken is a perfect example of Dylan’s gift of improvisation. In ‘I’m Not There’, recorded in 1968, the lyrics are part-improvised and emerge halfformed to create a shadow of a song with an indeterminate meaning.

At the same time the song is heartrending, filled with pain and loss, pregnant with a kind of meaning which reaches beyond words. The listener is drawn into the song, into the deep emotional space out of which Dylan is singing. He doesn’t

just disappear, he disappears into the song, becomes its medium. And when you focus on what is not there you can lose what is there.

I’m Not There is so bound up in the endless refracted images of Dylan that after watching it I just wanted to go back and listen to the songs.

The film, and this is also a wider reflection of Dylan in the movies, is really a portrait of how the artist is perceived by others, the different ways in which he has been constructed and construed. The feeling of his songs has always been more important than their meaning, and people would do well to give up obsessing over the latter. After all, there is so much in the music. There is humour, rage, righteousness, whimsy, pain, love, spiritual rapture, spiritual emptiness.

All filmmakers have to do is steal the songs and put them in their films, if Dylan will let them. I’ve been vaguely tracking down and half-watching movies that use his music since I thought of writing this article, and still the most satisfying example I have found is ‘The Man in Me’ in The Big Lebowski, a film that unsurprisingly has, as far as I can tell, absolutely nothing to do with Bob Dylan.

Marcus Carl Franklin in I’m Not There

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review | Clare Martin

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ORDAN PEELE’S DIRECTORIAL DEBUT Get Out opens with the abduction of a young black man (Lakeith Stanfield of Atlanta fame) in a white suburb where he clearly feels out of place. He is quickly hunted and incapacitated by his masked captor in a shiny white sports car. This feeling of being hunted follows the protagonist of the film, Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya, who has appeared in Black Mirror and Kick Ass 2). He’s visiting the parents of his new, very white girlfriend Rose Armitage (Allison Williams – Marnie in Girls). She admits to Chris that she

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hasn’t told her parents he’s black, but argues that this isn’t a problem since “my dad would have voted for Obama for a third term if he could have”.

Chris’ best friend Rod, a TSA guard played by LilRel Howery, who brings some much needed comic relief, is less encouraging. “Don’t go into that house,” he warns Chris.

Soon we find Rod’s words to be true. The Armitages, on the surface welcoming, are bubbling with raciallycharged creepiness. Rose’s brother Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones) tells Chris that with his ‘genetic makeup’ he could be a great UFC fighter if he really pushed himself. The family’s

help, a black man named Walter and a black woman named Georgina, glide around the house happily with Stepford Wife eeriness. The patriarch, Dean Armitage (a very disturbing Bradley Whitford), struts around the house calling Chris “my man”, a phrase that Rose insists he had never used before that day. The situation only worsens as the family’s annual garden party with their white friends (and one Asian man) gets underway.

Peele expertly taps into the discomfort of people racially targeting him and other people of colour through the interactions at this party. An old white lady fondles

Chris’ muscles, an elderly white man eagerly tells Chris how he knows Tiger Woods, and another Caucasian couple expound on how “fair skin is out, black is in’” The fear builds inside you during each unsettling interaction as you mentally chant the movie’s title ‘get out, get out, get out’ to Chris. Your stomach squirms, both out of empathy for our hero and the scary, guilt-wrenching thought: ‘Have I ever done the same to a person of colour?’

One of the most interesting parts of this film is that it condemns the fetishizing of people of colour. As Peele said in an interview about the film, “The exotification and the love of the black body and culture is just as twisted a form of racism as the darker, more violent forms of racism.”

There are lots of films about racism from a historical point of view or a factual point of view. All of them are essential and insightful. Get Out stands apart from these because its fiction manages to tap into the visceral side of racism. Its imagined plot evokes this emotion in a way that non-fiction movies are not always able to, since people are still at times trapped in their own perspective when viewing such films. As a white person I will never fully understand what it is like to be seen as a race first rather than as a human being, but this film showed

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it condemns the fetishisation of people of colour

me a sliver of what the experience is like. That sort of dehumanization is possibly the scariest monster ever to appear on the silver screen.

Get Out hits all the right notes. It’s scary, stomach-churning, and funny when it needs to be. Howery stands out as a hilarious sidekick-turnedhero, and Kaluuya leads the film well with a keen intelligence. Peele shows his versatility here, departing from the goofiness of Key & Peele and delivering an enlightening, wellcrafted horror film. Get Out shoves a big mirror into the face of society. It’s not a pretty sight, but it is absolutely necessary.

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review | Jake O’Donnell

THE EYES OF MY MOTHER

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HEY SAY THAT BEAUTY is in the eye of the beholder and while that could be applied generally to all horror films, the aphorism is perhaps most applicable to director Nicolas Pesce’s debut film, The Eyes of My Mother. The film chills, unsettles and horrifies from its opening act.

But, an original and well done film, there is undeniably a nightmarish beauty to it, even for the noncertified horror fan.

The film is the story of a disturbed antagonist, Francisca (played by Kika Magalhaes as a woman, and Olivia Bond as a child), who desperately, and by all means necessary, tries to escape the isolated nature of her life which was induced by the horrific deaths of her parents during her 14

childhood.

Living alone in her run-down family home on a secluded farm somewhere in rural America, Francisca as a young woman only wants company, but her traumatic childhood and apparent lack of formal and social education lead her to seek it out in increasingly troubling and horrifying ways throughout the film.

Having been taught how to dissect a cow and remove its eyes as a child, adult Francisca uses what her mother taught her and takes a keen interest in some rather unorthodox surgery and anatomy, w h i c h is shown in some of the most

unbearable scenes your typical movie-goer will witness in a cinema. Unlike a lot of horror films though, the backstory to Francisca’s twisted and disturbed nature is not weak and illogical. We see her suffer in her isolation and there is a misplaced logic to even her most horrifying of actions.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, eyes are prominent features in many of the film’s main characters - at least those that still have their eyes in their head. The cold soul-splitting eyes of Francisca’s Portuguese surgeon mother (played by Diane Agostini) dominate the camera’s attention in the first scene as her heavy dark eye makeup and big black pupils leap out, even in the movie’s entirely black and white cinematography. Francisca’s eyes are large and striking too, and it’s clear that a production emphasis has been put around the eyes of

other figures throughout the film.

The technique of extending scenes to their absolute limit is employed time and time again throughout the film by Pesce, and effectively so, permitting maximum drawn-out discomfort during the film’s most horrific scenes.

Francisca’s father’s elongated drive home in addition to a shaky over the shoulder camera shot in the film’s opening builds suspense as we await to see

the extent of the tragedy suffered at home after Francisca’s mother lets a passerby in to use the bathroom.

Most of the film takes place in Francisca’s isolated farmhouse and detached barn, which along with monochrome visuals and productive use of shadowing and lighting lends the film a heightened classic horror feel. Francisca is a troubled main character, unwilling to let things go and ultimately desperate to get what she wants

the most - human contact and affection.

A strong story with depth, crisp skillful cinematography, and capable of terrorizing your most basic of human emotions, this film stands out as strong a debut as any for 26 year-old Pesce. Eerie, unsettling, and wholly horrifying, The Eyes of My Mother is certainly beautiful in the eye of this beholder.

Stronger than your average horror film, but not for the faint-hearted.

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review | OisĂ­n Walsh

R

EMAKES ARE INEVITABLY GOING to be immediately weighed against the original production. It has been 26 years since the original release of Beauty and The Beast in 1991, so now at the time of the live-action remake will the fans that grew up with the original be rewarded with a faithful adaptation?

Quite simply: yes. Beauty and the Beast, directed by Bill Condon, is full of charming characters, pretty visuals, and impressive musical numbers. The film’s premise is essentially the same as the animated version. Belle (Emma Watson) is a well-read, clever woman who is not

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fond of living in her dull provincial French town until she happens upon an enchanted castle where the servants are household objects and the master of the castle is a Beast (Dan Stevens).

The characters have changed in a number of ways. Belle is still independent and intelligent, but she is now a more active character (she actually tries to escape the Beast’s imprisonment). She is fully aware there is a curse on the Beast and his servants and offers to help them break it; she is no longer blind to the situation.

Maurice (Kevin Kline) is no longer a foolish man who needs to be supervised by his daughter, but merely an eccentric a r t i s t / inventor who loves Belle and wishes to keep her safe.

The character who has possibly changed the most from the original is LeFou (Josh Gad), who is now Disney’s first openly gay character.

He is no longer a mindless minion of Gaston (Luke Evans), but rather a faithful, if misguided companion who tries to restrain Gaston’s violent temper; Gaston now needs LeFou as much as he needs Gaston. Gaston himself succeeds at being both a comedic character so vain it’s laughable and also a fearsome villain, who bullies, intimidates and frightens the villagers to take control.

The most striking new character in Beauty and The Beast is the castle itself. It bears almost no resemblance to the animated

version but it is all the better for it. Every inch of its design is a glory to behold, and this is clearly seen as Beast sings ‘Evermore’ towards the end of the film. He scales up and around the castle’s towers to get a better view of the horizon and we get to explore the castle’s majesty on his way up. It’s a moment where the visuals and music are truly stunning, creating an original feeling not based off the source material.

M o s t important for a musical film, however, are of course the musical numbers, particularly when the majority of the audience are highly familiar with the songs. Fortunately, Condon succeeds in retaining the quality of the numbers from the original and mixes them up just enough to ensure that they don’t feel like a stale rehash from the 1991 film. ‘Be Our Guest’ is a rollercoaster of intoxicating

visuals and is delivered fabulously

by Ewan McGregor as Lumière.

Emma Thompson’s soft voice is perfectly suited for Mrs Potts and for singing ‘Beauty and the Beast’, and ‘Gaston’ will produce more than a few chuckles in the audience. There are also a number of new songs introduced which add freshness to the music of the film such as ‘Evermore’ and ‘Days in the Sun’.

Along with original musical numbers, this remake also introduces some new elements to the narrative, such as Belle’s desire to know about her mother (who was absent from her childhood) and The Beast’s relationship with his own parents. One could claim that these elements are tacked on purely for sake of making the film different to its source material, but that would be denying the benefit of these new features. In including them, Condon creates deeper and more interesting characters and also allows fans of the original to discover something new about the characters they already know so well.

Beauty and The Beast is possibly as good as a remake can be, being faithful and unique in even measure and it gives me hope for the quality of Walt Disney’s future remakes such as Mulan and The Lion King which will be released in the coming years. Beauty and the Beast is a warm and fun treat that everyone can enjoy.

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review | Dara McWade

KONG: skull island

L

ET ME PUT THIS out there first: Kong: Skull Island surprised me.

There is an anxiety around big monster or horror studio blockbuster franchise starters like Kong after so many bad ones. From Dracula Unchained, to Van Helsing, to Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla, there have been been more bad or underwhelming entries than good over the years. Legendary, the studio behind Kong, did prove that they are committed to making quality monster movies with Gareth Edwards’ 2014 Godzilla, a divisive yet ultimately worthy film, but the early trailers and news around Kong suggested a 18

continuation of the drudgery. I am more than happy to report, however, that Kong is one hell of a good time. Stylish, pacey, funny and legitimately spooky, Skull Island is a place that you’ll want to spend some time on.

Taking as many cues from Apocalypse Now and Journey to the Centre of the Earth as previous King Kong films, Kong builds its own thematic premise out of a genre-standard plot: a government agency, represented here by the inimitable and always-entertaining John Goodman, leads an expedition to an unknown area, and bad things happen. The difference is, of course, all in the details.

Vogt-Roberts pitches the film as a Vietnam movie with monsters, and it shows: the film is set against a backdrop of the disastrous end to that war, with soldier characters scarred and affected by their time in combat. In introducing this aspect early on, it also manages to turn the investigation of the island into a metaphor for the Vietnam war, with the US often creating enemies in their attempts to curb enemies. Yet alongside all this talk of politics and war, the film remains an adventure movie, introducing us and the characters to a new world to explore.

Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts, best known before this for low-

budget indie darling The Kings of Summer, brings his A-game to the ultra-budget world of monsters and creepy crawlies, managing to keep a sense of personal style in the often homogeneous blockbuster market. The opening team-gathering scenes, often the most boring part of any genre film, here excite, with intense lighting and visuals, fast and clever editing and a sense of pacing that builds to the expedition quickly. The team itself is surprisingly welldeveloped; the cast is large but each member of the team from the soldiers to the civilians are given a personality that makes their red-shirt status seem less cynical.

While the film does give many minor characters an extra shot, this does come at the expense of the two stars. Tom Hiddlestone’s “sexy veteran” and Brie Larson’s “spunky photo-journalist” characters are a little one-note, but the pair do get some good moments, including an awesome scene where Hiddlestone chops flying monsters from the sky in a tank top and a gas mask surrounded by yellowish-green toxins.

The film belongs to two characters though. Samuel L Jackson imbues the traditional gung-ho general with a wounded pride and a sense of genuine affection for his men, and the film uses his iconic energy to legitimise the stakes in the conflict between him an Kong. You’ll believe Sam Jackson can kill the beast. The true surprise in this film however is John C. Reilly, who appears a third into the film as a sort of stealth protagonist. A WWII soldier trapped on the island for the past 40 years, he is the one that introduces the audience to the idea that Kong is God, and protector, of the island. He’s gone native, in a way - but the film knows that going native isn’t always a bad thing.

“

alongside all this talk of politics and war, the film remains an adventure movie

But a monster film would be nothing without the monsters, and in that, the film delivers. I would hesitate to spoil some of the wonders that the film puts into its intricately designed Skull Island, but Kong has wonderful design of creatures and locales that make the world feel lived-in and terrifying.

Kong himself is wonderfully realised - a 50 foot tall imposing gorilla that you can still recognise as having a human spirit. Much of this is down to Toby Kebbell, who cut his motion-capture teeth on Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and appears here (less memorably) in person as one of the soldiers as well.

The film itself shouldn’t work.

It’s big-budget studio schlock with a large cast, a franchise premise and an island full of potential CGI disasters. Yet, Kong: Skull Island works, keeping you laughing and on the edge of your seat until the end of the film. It is that most unlikely of films, quite like Kong himself, that most unlikely of heroes. In the end, beauty did not kill this beast.

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review | Naomi Keenan O’Shea

B

ARRY JENKINS’ MOONLIGHT IS a salient portrayal of contemporary African American life experienced through the lens of the film’s predominantly silent protagonist Chiron. The audience watches a cruel world unfold against him in three stages of his life, beginning with Chiron at nine and following him into his teenage and adult years (played

by Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, and Trevante Rhodes respectively).

He struggles silently against a negligent upbringing with a single 20

mother (Naomie Harris) who is addicted to hard drugs, and he holds reticent ground against the ritual harassment and beatings he endures at the hands of his classmates throughout his youth.

When we meet Chiron as an adult, in the final chapter of his life on screen, he has metamorphosed into the masculine hard body that has plagued him physically and emotionally since childhood, and which he struggles to reconcile with his homosexuality.

The moments of immense tenderness that populate an

otherwise gruelling and painful film are continually undercut by the tragic reality of Chiron’s world; even Juan (Mahershala Ali), the man who first saves nine-year old Chiron from the loneliness that defines his life, cannot reconcile his love and devotion to the child with the reality that he is his mother’s drug dealer. He can offer Chiron a safe place to sleep and a deeply empathetic perspective on his sexuality, but he cannot separate himself from the role he plays in the disintegration of Chiron’s home life. Moonlight explores, in

profound and devastating ways, the moral ambiguities that underpin every person’s character, achieving its most profound resonance in Chiron’s complex relationship with childhood friend Kevin.

The three different actors that play Chiron at each stage of his life display an astonishing ability to seamlessly assimilate the depth and richness of Chiron’s character across several decades.

His vulnerability is carried through unfalteringly in each scene; his character is narratively developed with both nuance and intensity throughout the three stages, with the actors maintaining the distinguishing body postures and facial expressions across the three different roles. His silence is offset by the expressiveness of his posturing and eyes; Kevin, who Chiron shares his first sexual experience with as a teenager, affectionately tells him when they meet again as adults that he has not changed because he still

refuses to say more than three words at once.

Chiron’s refusal to speak out against the onslaught of hatred and misunderstanding that characterises his life resonates tragically within the viewer.

When we come to meet him in the final phase, now named Black, we can understand fully and without judgement the change he has undergone into adulthood. Armored physically

against the world now, Chiron retains a fragment of his true identity through his silence.

Moonlight speaks most poignantly through what the film leaves unsaid, until its momentously powerful final scene. It visually focuses on the details, colours and textures of its characters lives, and it negotiates the complexities of identity, sexuality and masculinity with real delicacy and measure. The scope of the film in temporal and emotional terms is immense, yet remains continually focused and faithful to its characters.

Moonlight offers an intimate portrayal of humanity, tragedy and love, and Chiron is one of the most uniquely realised protagonists to emerge in many years. The deftly negotiated fragments of Chiron’s life coalesce into a deeply human whole, never losing their beauty and pathos as individual moments in a profoundly powerful and important film.

21

modern masterpiece | Oisín Walsh

T

HE FIRST TIME I saw the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis I was on an airplane heading to New York where ironically the film is primarily set. I watched the film on a cruelly small screen and undoubtedly much of the visual appeal was lost as a result, but I was fortunate enough to be armed and ready with a pair of high quality headphones which would prove invaluable to the experience. I am by no means suggesting that an airplane is the ideal location to view a film but music and sound design play a crucial part in cinema. It was this unconventional cinematic environment which reminded me of the importance of sound in cinema. This film is guided by 22

its music; it opens with a shot of a single solitary microphone before the camera gently turns to face our protagonist, Llewyn, as he sings the opening number: ‘Hang Me, Oh Hang Me’ which sets the tone for this quiet and modest musical masterpiece.

It is truly tragic to watch someone with talent fail to succeed, to watch someone fail because of a series of mistakes which prevent them from reaching their full potential. Inside Llewyn Davis is a quiet, sombre film about a struggling folk musician in New York in the early 1960s. Llewyn (played by the charismatic Oscar Isaac) has no foresight; when he is asked what he thinks about the future he flippantly replies “You mean like flying cars?” It is his lack

of foresight that eventually leads him to disaster. Yet, he pushes through obstacle after obstacle with remarkable resilience. He never resorts to complaining about how difficult it is for a folk singer to make a career, he doesn’t make excuses for his lack of success; he allows a keen observer to recognise the difficulty of his struggle.

It is clear from the outset that music is Llewyn’s passion and the reason for his resilience; he is not guided by a desire for fame or fortune. He begins his morning, not as many of us would with a shower or breakfast, but by crawling out of bed, and still in his underclothes playing his guitar; music is his first port of call in the morning.

However, Llewyn is not an easy character to like. He is often rude and callous to the people around him, whose generosity he often relies on. Jean (Carey Mulligan), his married friend whom he gets pregnant berates him; she tells him that everything he “touches turns to shit. Like King Midas’ idiot brother”. Yet, he makes little gestures which show him to be a kind and, deep-down, a good person. He leaves notes apologising for his poor behaviour and feeds a hungry cat with some milk; he recognises his mistakes and has a natural quiet sensitivity to him. His humour is what truly amps up his likability. Despite the issues he faces day to day (perpetual poverty, homelessness, hunger) he tackles each situation with quick wit and a joke.

We become affectionate for this underdog, in a similar fashion to Charlie Chaplin’s ‘Tramp’ character. We want to see him succeed and when he laughs at his situation we laugh along with him. It is for this reason that it is heartbreaking to see his big break, a Chicago audition, go awry. His performance is met with the club owner’s curt response: “I don’t see a lot of money here”. This is his moment, his chance to succeed and we have to watch him fail.

Matters are only made worse when we discover a song he recorded earlier in the film “Please Mr. Kennedy” is set to become a popular hit, despite his dislike for the track. This should be good

news but due to Llewyn’s lack of foresight, he surrendered his right to royalties to receive his money up front.

Isaac gives an incredible, understated performance.

Despite all of Llewyn’s trials and tribulations he never becomes overdramatic, he never breaks down in a fit of tears. By the film’s conclusion he is worn out and he quietly tells Jean “I’m done”. It would be tempting for an actor to milk a scene like this, expressing all of Llewyn’s repressed emotion instead Isaac maintains his composure and the result is remarkable. To see a character who possesses great energy and humour accept his defeat with such dignity is stunning. We want him to succeed and a plot like this leads us to believe that he will get his big break and finally be rewarded for his pain, but the Coens deny us, and Llewyn, this conclusion.

Moreover, Oscar Isaac delivers all of the film’s songs

wonderfully with a singing voice full of emotion letting us feel the soul inside Llewyn Davis and a skill for the guitar to match. He is accompanied by the vocals of Marcus Mumford who acts as the voice of Llewyn’s old partner who has recently committed suicide and also by Justin Timberlake and Adam Driver who sing ‘Please Mr Kennedy’ along with him.

The film’s final scene is a reprise of its opening. We see Llewyn get beaten up in an alleyway for his rowdy behaviour in The Gaslight Café the previous night. But in the closing images we don’t see him defeated, broken or hopeless lying in the gutter. We see him sit up against a wall, watching his attacker hail a taxi and leave.

He slowly raises his hand and with a rapid salute, and bids him ‘adieu’.

Llewyn may not achieve success by the end of the film’s narrative but he is not broken, he is still very much himself, held together with his good sense of humour.

Despite the melancholic journey we see Llewyn experience, we are still allowed a slight glimmer of hope. We are sung out by an artist who did achieve fame, Bob Dylan. This film chooses to end on the reminder of another’s success as opposed to Llewyn’s comparable failure.

The Coen Brothers are by no means discouraging the perseverance of young artists aiming to attain their high ambitions but are merely highlighting their struggle with this masterful work of filmmaking.

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overrated | Rebecca Wynne-Walsh

F

ROZEN EXPLODED ONTO OUR screens aiming to enter our hearts, instead it entered our shops. Frozen was added to the hallowed list of classic Disney princesses, but did it really deserve to be? While the staff of every Disney shop was singing Frozen’s praises I was lamenting. This is not a film that will define childhoods, only Christmas lists. They say that in these matters only time will tell, I wager that in twenty years, long after the Olaf adorned pyjamas have been forgotten, it will be Beauty and the Beast (1991) or The Little Mermaid (1989) on the television, not Disney’s flash-in-thepan cash-cow.

Every element of Frozen was carefully curated to be marketed.

Even its title is a commercial strategy.

The reason behind Frozen not being called The Ice Queen – after the original fairytale – is a simple one, as apparently more boys will go to it if the title doesn’t directly reference a woman. However, while the eponymous Mulan and Pocahontas were off defending countries from invasion, inspiring boys and girls alike to exceed expectations, Anna and Elsa pale in comparison.

Frozen adapts what could be important morals to suit t-shirt slogans and Buzzfeed puff pieces.

Frozen’s music is severely lacking. The Little Mermaid has “Kiss the Girl”, “Part of Your World”, and “Under the Sea”. Beauty and the Beast has “Belle”, “Gaston”, and “Be Our Guest”.

Cinderella (1950) has “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes”, “So This is Love” and “BibbidiBobbidi-Boo”. This is the tip of the musical iceberg in previous Disney princess films. Frozen has “Let it Go”, a song that serves only to prove the inadequacy of the rest of its mediocre soundtrack.

Frozen is one great song surrounded by opportunities for

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merchandise.

Each secondary character is developed with a toy in mind rather than any kind of depth.

Olaf (played well by Josh Gad in fairness) is more a cuddly toy than a worthwhile sidekick. Mulan’s Mushu and Aladdin’s Genie would be horrified to see the comic relief stretched no further than a snowman who doesn’t know he’ll melt in summer.

Frozen’s underwhelming sidekick is nothing to its completely underdeveloped, unexciting villain.

The motive and execution of Hans’ supposedly dastardly plan offer nothing beyond cookie-cutter villainy. Hans leaves you longing for the villains you loved to hate and hated to love. Where’s the high camp of Jafar, the

comedy of Hades and the show stopping musical numbers of Ursula? You can’t help but wonder what kind of film Frozen would be had they followed through on their original plan. Elsa was intended to

be a glorious villainess in the vein of Sleeping Beauty’s Maleficent. To top it off, she would have been played by Megan Mullaly of Will & Grace, so we know she would have been fabulous to boot. Considering how much money Disney is making out of both Anna and Elsa costumes, Frozen having two princesses and a forgettable villain saw Disney double the value of merchandise at the expense of the narrative.

As for the seemingly purposeless forest troll things, so much of their content ended up on the cutting room floor that what was left served only as flimsy backstory. For some reason the characters continue to return to these magical trolls whose magic is of no help. The troll characters, and I use the term “character” loosely, are a poor man’s Grandmother Willow, sub-par attempts to repeat the success of The Lion King’s Rafiki.

The basic narrative, characters, and even the title of Frozen were overhauled in favour of commercial value.

It seems Disney did not set out to make an animated classic but a feature length advertisement for a new set of toys. In the wake of the wildly successful live-action Beauty and the Beast, Frozen’s weaknesses have never been more exposed. Children of all ages are still being brought to tears when it seems the Beast is lost forever, still singing all the words to ‘Belle’ and still laughing at the witty banter between Lumiere and Cogsworth. You have to wonder, what will be remembered of Frozen beyond that one good song, and the Olaf Christmas jumper you wore when you had nothing else for the 12 pubs of Christmas.

Ellen Pentony | underrated

A

S SOMEONE STUDYING FILM, you’d expect my favourites to entail Tarantino, Bicycle Thieves and some obscure critically acclaimed piece of world cinema. Some of this is true, Django Unchained and the Mexican film Amores Perros are two of my favourites. And I actually really do like Bicycle Thieves. But there is merit beyond the realms of five star reviews from critics masquerading as Roger Ebert or Best Picture Oscar nominees.

Amongst my cini-literate friends, only two had even heard of Frank Oz’s Bowfinger (1999) and only one had actually seen it. Snubbed time and time again at award ceremonies, the comic form, as critic Frank Krutnik notes, is “consigned to the ghettos of film cultism”. In fact comedy, it seems, cannot be critically praised unless it is somehow tied to something more serious. Take the side-splitting scifi comedy The Martian, which won a Golden Globe - yes in an actual comedic category- as example of the disregard for pure comedies.

There seems to be a lack of awards recognition for pure comedy, comedy in a generic sense - where plot is subservient to slapstick, absurdity, wit and one liners.

Taking a swing at Hollywood itself, Bowfinger tells the story of Bobby Bowfinger (Steve Martin) a small time director looking to make it big with his first picture ‘Chubby Rain’ - a B grade sci-fi pic about the invasion of an alien life force. Using a jar of savings amounting to $2,184, the wannabe director rounds up a motley crew to shoot his masterpiece. Steve Martin, who wrote and produced Bowfinger, expertly takes aim at everyone in the film, constructing characters who are little more than exaggerated archetypes. He himself plays the wishful i n d i e d i r e c t o r,

while Eddie Murphy portrays the self-indulgent and off the rails A-lister Kit Ramsay. Making up the secondary characters are Daisy (Heather Graham), a doe-eyed Midwesterner who asks ‘where do I go to be an actress’, upon setting foot in Hollywood, Carol (Christine Baranski), a middle aged actress still looking for her big break, and Afram (Adam Alexi-Malle), an aspiring screenwriter stuck in a dead end job.

Failing to capture Kit Ramsay as his leading actor, Bobby decides to proceed anyway, shooting scenes around the actor without his knowledge. The characters are never the butt of the joke, however; instead ,the interactions between Kit and the equally oblivious cast who are told he is ‘method acting’, give the film its comedic edge. Bobby and his camera crew always film from afar, capturing Kit’s bemused reactions when approached by Carol in a restaurant.

She verbally insults him, making statements which obviously make no sense to Kit, who sits confused while she grows increasingly dramatic and erratic. This sets the tone for the remainder of the film, with Kit growing increasingly spooked at these strange interactions.

Adding to the humour is the fact t h at Kit is a

member of MindHead, a Scientologylike organisation, and as the film progresses he grows increasingly agitated as he senses he is actually being followed by aliens- unwittingly playing his role in Bobby’s film to perfection. Murphy’s cartoonish physical humour complements the film’s comedic style perfectly and his panicked facial expressions and reactions give rise to some of the film’s best comedic moments. In perhaps the film’s most iconic scene, Kit is followed in an underground car park by a dog wearing 4 small red high heels. The dog’s small stature provides perfect cover as Kit repeatedly turns around only to see nothing, only hearing the click clack of the dog’s movements. Murphy also plays Kit’s twin brother Jiff, who is hired to masquerade as Kit when he goes into hiding. Jiff is decidedly less confident than his brother and in a calamitous scene is forced to run across six lanes of traffic on a highway outside L.A. The chaos continues when Kit resurfaces. Now fearing for his life, he agrees to accompany Daisy, unknowingly walking into the mocksci-fi conclusion of ‘Chubby Rain’ .

Disaster hilariously ensues, though Bowfinger stays true to comedy’s happy ending trope when the film is not only released, but given the red carpet treatment. Bobby Bowfinger has finally made it.

Bowfinger’s excellence lies in its simple devotion to the devices of comedy. While critically acclaimed films may deservedly have their merit, give me the choice between The Revenant and Bowfinger, and I’ll choose a dog in high heels over Leo grimacing his way through the snow any day.

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hidden gem Caolainn Daly

S

COTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD is a marvel of a film.

With Edgar Wright, director of the Cornetto trilogy, at the helm, it is tightly crafted and irresistibly watchable. The film infuses so much of the energy and vibrancy of its source material into its cauldron that Scott Pilgrim vs the World cannot help creating cinematic delight.

The film is set in modern-day Toronto and depicts the life of lowly Scott Pilgrim, bassist of the up-andcoming band ‘Sex Bob-Omb’. He falls head over heels for a girl who is literally of his dreams, the enigmatic Ramona Flowers. Only Scott discovers that if he wants to be with her, he must defeat Ramona’s seven evil exes in hand-tohand combat. The premise sounds immature because it is. The film is set in a quasi-fantasy world where video-game references, mechanics and sensibilities are woven seamlessly and whimsically into the narrative.

Oftentimes a heads-up-display will appear to aid Scott or to inform the audience of something, or a musical cue will start playing to denote the appearance of a new character or the like. Again, this sounds immature, because it is. This film is so crushingly adolescent and myopically youthful that it will charm the pants off any viewer.

Michael Cera plays the lead, and in Scott Pilgrim he has found a role that perfectly utilizes his underspoken, boyish quirks. Cera puts in an admirable performance as the bumbling, bungling Pilgrim who is at once lost in the world and in his life. Mary Elizabeth Winstead does a stellar job as the mysterious Ramona, a girl who, per one bystander, “kicks all kinds of butt.” A host of supporting characters are also present, including Scott’s “fake high school girlfriend” Knives Chau (Ellen Wong), his libertine housemate Wallace Wells (Kieran Culkin), and his own ex and frontwoman of the far more successful rock band ‘The Clash at Demonhead’,

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Envy Adams (Brie Larson). This is not to mention the appearance of each of the seven exes, along with backstory on their relationships with Ramona.

Most impressively, never does one get the impression that the multitude of characters spreads the film thin.

Every character is memorable and given just enough screen time and good dialogue to make their appearances welcome. This is Edgar Wright at his best; that is to say, this is Edgar Wright.

It is a quintessentially Wrightian film at its core, which is why the film shines. The nature of the dialogue throughout is undoubtedly peculiar.

It is farcical, bizarre, but most importantly crafty. The dialogue is coherently incoherent. It comes across so naturally and in such an apparently unstructured and cacophonous way, but in fact is so considered and deliberate that purely on a technical level it is outstanding.

The visual comedy is no different. In one instance, Scott is confronted with two courses of action he could take to defuse a situation, “Tell her” or say “I gotta pee”, at which point a roulette wheel appears above his head to help him decide, only for his choice to be “I gotta pee on her”. This is one example of many where the airtight script works in tandem with visual gags to produce characteristically Wrightian visual comedy. The world he creates is one that is equally strange. It is primarily a non-fantasy world, and so when a fantasy element appears it is recognised as being bizarre, while in the same breath another will manifest itself and it is not even acknowledged

as being out of the ordinary, but as one would expect from Wright, its inconsistency never goes to undermine itself. It just works. In fact, the attention todetail and precisionism overall is just marvellous. In the DVD extras one of the scenes is displayed where Scott signs a delivered package and subsequently throws it over his head into a bin behind him which he cannot see. The shot was taken as many times as it took Cera to land the package into the bin because the insistence was to get a continuous, unedited, over-the-shoulder shot where nothing less would do.

The film bombed at the box office, grossing just over half of its budget. One of the speculative reasons for its failure was that it did not appeal to a wide audience. On paper, this is true. The film deals with quite a specific subculture of metropolitan youth, a subculture that is part hipster, part geek. That is not what the film is about. In Scott Pilgrim vs the World, Edgar Wright has created a whimsical, colourful comedy that, for a film of a supposedly specific subject, crosses many different genres of film.

It is a fantasy film, a meta-fantasy, a rom-com, an action, a coming-of-age film but perhaps most importantly an Edgar Wright film.

Clare Martin | feature

The

Devolution of

Teen Movie Soundtracks

I

T’S 2030. A TEENAGE girl pops in her vintage CD of the What a Girl Wants soundtrack and sighs to herself, wondering why she couldn’t have been born in the noughties. Why does this image just feel so… wrong?

Teen movie soundtracks are special little musical time capsules.

They capture snippets of what teens were listening to at that time. But what does a good teen

movie soundtrack do? It captures the decade the film is set in and contains music by relevant artists from that era. It finds success on the Billboard chart, or in a cult following after. It even, in many cases, launches musicians’ careers.

However, it feels like that hasn’t been happening as of late.

Has modern music just gotten bad? Are filmmakers picking bad songs? Or do we just not look back on them with the same nostalgia

we do ‘classic’ teen movies, and so they don’t benefit from those rosetinted glasses?

Let’s start by looking at some of the greats. John Hughes proved himself the master of creating a great teen movie soundtrack.

Pretty In Pink, which was released in 1986, was probably his biggest soundtrack success. It features new wave music and quintessential 80s artists like The Smiths. The album even made it to #11 in Rolling 27

Stone’s best 25 movie soundtracks of all time. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark recorded ‘If You Leave’ specifically for the film, and as a single made it to #4 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.

Hughes also knew how much music serves as the lynchpin of iconic scenes. The prime example: ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’

by Simple Minds playing in the background as Bender raises his fist in triumph in The Breakfast Club (1985). The song subsequently became a number one hit, an anthem for all the criminals, basket cases, and geeks who felt like they had a chance because of that film.

The iconic song has been repeatedly referenced by subsequent teen movies, from American Pie to Easy A, even featuring on their soundtracks. The Breakfast Club soundtrack itself peaked at #17 on the Billboard charts.

Clueless came out in 1995, with a soundtrack featuring artists from Radiohead to the Beastie Boys to Coolio – a veritable cornucopia of 90s musicians. The soundtrack also includes a number of covers of 70s and 80s songs, including The Muffs’ cover of Kim Wilde’s ‘Kids In America’.

Covers are a staple of the teen movie soundtrack.

Why? Perhaps it’s because the use of covers in a soundtrack is a good analogy for teen movies in general.

Everyone throws back to what we know and what we like because we’re human and 28

find familiarity comforting. But a new artist records it, bringing a modern appeal. Likewise, these teen movies don’t contain the most original premises. Clueless itself is loosely based on Emma by Jane Austen. Teen movies reuse the same tropes, but they’re just presented by the newest, shiniest actors.

What A Girl Wants was released in 2003, starting the downward trajectory of teen movie soundtracks. Most of the soundtrack consists of forgettable songs by forgettable artists, and some sappy, milquetoast songs from the film’s love interest Oliver James. There are a couple of oldies featured, like the Clash and Rick Derringer, breaking the tradition of teen movie soundtracks featuring just songs from their era. The soundtrack just wasn’t a commercial success like teen movie soundtracks of

the past. Mean Girls (2004) has a marginally better score, featuring some solid tunes like ‘Milkshake’

by Kelis, but in general it feels a bit all over the place, lacking the lightning in a bottle quality of its predecessors.

Then in 2006 John Tucker Must Die comes along. It’s not notable for its good soundtrack – in fact it’s exceptionally bad – but it features one important harbinger: a song chosen through an Internet competition. Bands were asked to submit their songs on MySpace to be featured in the film, with a band called Rockett Queen taking first prize. Rockett Queen never ‘made it big’, but that competition signified that the Internet was changing things.

The same year that John Tucker Must Die was released, Facebook allowed anyone over the age of 13 with a valid email address join. Kids were spending more and more time online. The way our generation consumes music changed entirely with the advent of the Internet.

We didn’t just have to listen to the radio, we weren’t limited to the CD selection in the corner store or whatever tapes our parents will let us buy.

It became harder to capture what teens were listening to in one soundtrack as access to diverse kinds of music opened up.

This can most clearly be seen in Juno, a commercial hit like the teen movie soundtracks of the 80s and

90s, but in an entirely different style. Juno’s soundtrack came out in early 2008, but it features music from decades past, including songs by Buddy Holly, the Kinks, and Sonic Youth. The rest of the soundtrack is primarily comprised of tracks by Kimya Dawson of the Moldy Peaches. The indie rock and folk feel of the soundtrack was a success, launching it to #1 in the U.S. Billboard 200 and even a platinum status.

Contemporary-music focused soundtracks are still around, but they feel a little bit more contrived than their predecessors. It can be seen most clearly when we contrast two cancer-centered teen movies: The Fault in Our Stars (2014) and Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl (2015).

The Fault in Our Stars is a bit more mainstream than Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl, and its soundtrack shows it. The artists range from the well-known (Ed Sheeran, Charlie XCX) to the lesser known (STRFKR). The soundtrack is a bit overly sentimental, featuring

a plethora of sap from Birdy, but makes sense considering the context. Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl is a lot weirder and a lots more like Juno in that it has tracks by older artists like Lou Reed and Cat Stevens, even featuring some classical music. Most of the soundtrack is written by Brian Eno, a self-described ‘non-musician’ who brings trippiness instead of drippiness. This rings a lot more true than the glurge of The Fault In Our Stars. Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl’s soundtrack captures the feel of the movie, rather than trying to wring feelings out of the audience.

The nature of teen movie soundtracks are changing, since so many feature tracks from the decades before. You can listen to quintessential teen movie soundtrack of yesteryear and feel like you’ve been transported back into that time. But now it’s different.

Thanks to the Internet and being raised in a ‘nostalgia culture’, what we listen to is much more niche and not even necessarily from our era.

We are born wearing rose-tinted glasses, from our baby boomer parents always talking about the good old days, to the increasing popularity of vinyl records and vintage clothing. And perhaps this too is why we prefer ‘the good old days’ of 80s and 90s teen movie soundtracks.

Teen movies themselves are changing as well. The Internet has connected people in ways that make us more socially aware.

Movies can’t just generically be about jocks and nerds anymore.

They have to be quirky. They must appeal to an audience that’s smarter when it comes to tropes, having been raised on pop culture references. Our adolescence is such a far cry from our counterparts from years before, and it’s reflected in the films about us.

One thing hasn’t changed though – we are always on the hunt for that song (or soundtrack) that captures the intensity of our teen emotions.

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when Marty came to Trinity | Liam Farrell

T

here was an understandable buzz in anticipation of Martin Scorsese’s visit to Trinity on a gloomy Friday evening in late February. As Phil President Matthew Nuding reeled off the director’s five-decade CV, it was hard not to be impressed. Perhaps due to the sheer longevity of his career, we have a tendency to take Scorsese for granted. He continues to produce work at a steady rate, last year’s Silence being his fourth film of the present decade, and though opinion on the quality of the films varies, they continue to bear his remarkably persistent authorial stamp. He has managed to return to many of the same themes which defined his stellar earlier career, notably masculinity and faith, without descending into the kind of stagnant self-parody of which his contemporary Woody Allen has been justifiably accused.

However, the legacy of the masterpieces upon which his legendary status is built is impossible to avoid. When films like Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, or Raging Bull are mentioned, you begin to realise why crowds of people have lined up for nine hours to see him. They are totemic names, titles which resonate throughout popular culture. From his dizzying 1973 breakthrough Mean Streets onward, Scorsese’s films brought a uniquely American stylistic panache, marrying bubble-gum pop music with the grime of his beloved New York to create a world of explosive hyper-masculine angst. Along with figures like Robert Altman and Francis Ford Coppola, his films helped define the period in American cinema from the late 1960s to the early 1980s as one of the most iconic eras in film history.

T h e diminutive septuagenarian entered the s p l e n d i d surrounds of the Exam Hall, the room 30

filling with rapturous applause. After receiving the customary medal from The Phil, the discussion began with a question about the relationship between plot and character. Although, discussion may be the wrong word. The billing for the event, ‘Martin Scorsese speaks to The Phil’, turned out to be apt, as the man can certainly talk. I mean really, really talk. By my count, a total of six questions were asked over the course of the hour-long event. Due to some issues with the venue’s sound, we had to strain to hear him speak.

It’s fortunate then, that Scorsese’s loquacity is matched by his ability to engage an audience. He came across as an intelligent, witty, and self-deprecating presence. His opening answer took in a huge sweep of topics, as he touched on the battle for control of The Departed with the studio, and his original intention for the film to be a sort of “B-film”, a cheap and cheerful low-budget release which would be a welcome release after the stress of managing the spectacular production of The Aviator. He is famously cine-literate, and made reference to John Ford’s Dublin-set IRA drama The Informer, noting the 1935 film’s fatalistic morality as an influence on The Departed. For a director so embedded in the machinery of the Hollywood film industry, he was remarkably candid about the compromises a director makes in working in such a context. He admitted that “the nature, the value, and the depth” of what a director tries to say “has to be limited” in a profit-driven industry, and expressed frustration at the necessary c omprom is e s that must be made in making a film like The Departed when funded by studio money.

A question about what attracts him to a script quickly deviated into a soliloquy on the danger of celebrity, a topic Scorsese so brilliantly explored in the criminally underseen

The King of Comedy. The film is a disturbing black comedy, featuring one of Robert De Niro’s most subtle and unsettling performances as the moustache-toting wannabe comedian Rupert Pupkin, whose attempts to garner popular acclaim escalate from pathetic, to desperate, to psychopathic.

It divided critical opinion and bombed at the box office (Scorsese recalled its grand unveiling on TV show Entertainment Tonight as ‘The Flop of the Year’) upon its 1983 release, but its reputation has rightly grown in the decades since. Scorsese rightly labels it a prescient film, asking difficult and dark questions about what drives our ever-escalating obsession with fame, a “serious illness” in his eyes. He recalled De Niro reflecting on the idea of obsessive fans: “What do they want from me? To be next to a star? What are they missing in their lives that they’re putting on me?” Though the media landscape may have metamorphosed, few films since have been able to match The King of Comedy’s savage critique of the insecure desire which propels the need for the reflected glory of being close to fame.

Scorsese’s monologues moved swiftly from topic to topic. He shared his thoughts on the cinema of the past, explaining that New York was deluged with

the work of foreign auteurs in the 1960s to the extent that people “became bored with the masterpiece of the week...we were thinking ‘ugh, another Bergman film’”. He also touched on the future of the medium, in particular the storytelling possibilities of Virtual Reality headsets. A supporter of the Democrats, he expressed anxiety over America’s foreign policy, pointedly stating that the mistakes of the Bush administration had created “thousands and thousands of Travis Bickles”, united in the conviction that “we’re not going to lose”.

After a final few platitudes, the director was whisked out the door and driven off to his next engagement. His time in the country was treated with the same decorum and fanfare as the trip of a foreign dignitary, representative of the distinguished status he commands. The road he has taken from transgressive Hollywood rebel to elder statesman of the cinema is long and marked with masterpieces, fascinating failures, and intriguing detours. His time with us mostly tread familiar ground, and his naturally talkative manner means it would have taken much, much longer to cover his entire career, but it was certainly a rare pleasure to spend an hour in the company of a true film legend.

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