TFR: THE VICE ISSUE

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“IT’S ONLY A CHICK FLICK IN THAT IF YOU GROUND IT UP AND SERVED IT TO BATTERY HENS IT MIGHT BE BETTER SERVED THAN RUNNING THROUGH A PROJECTOR” - MARK KERMODE ON BRIDE WARS

WANT TO SHARE YOUR OPINIONS ON THE FILMS YOU LOVE AND HATE?

EMAIL US @ TRINITYFILMREVIEW@GMAIL.COM 2

In lieu of an editorial this issue I’ve opted instead to reveal the seven stages an editor goes through when putting together a Trinity publication. They are (reading from left to right and top to bottom) as follows.

1: Woo Hoo. New issue time. Let’s get cracking. Christ I’m organised.

2: Hmm. This is harder than I remembered. Oh for fuck sake just paste where I want you to dammit!

3: There...got it! Stop worrying. There’s plenty of time left. You’ve got this! God I’m great.

4: SWEET MOTHER OF JESUS ITS CRASHED. Its grand...my last save was EIGHT HOURS AGO OH SHIT! 5: I am a worm...a worthless unlovable worm who will never accomplish anything of value.

6: SNAP OUT OF IT. There’s five hours until deadline. Down that coffee and LETS FINISH THIS!!!

7: You’ve done it. It’s over. Your mind is gone but it’s complete. Lets lie on the floor now and never get up.

Jack

THE STAFF EDITOR JACK O’KENNEDY

CONTRIBUTORS MEADHBH MCGRATH LIAM FARRELL KEN DONNELLY CLARE MARTIN LUKE BATES CATHAL KAVANAGH RACHEL WAKEFIELD-DROHAN AMELIA MCCONVILLE LEO HANNA LEON HANRAHAN

COVER DESIGN SEAN NOLAN ILLUSTRATION JOHN TIERNEY EDITORIAL TEAM LOUIE CARROLL THOMAS EMMET EOIN MOORE SEAN NOLAN LUKE O’REILLY

PRINTED BY GREHAN PRINTERS 3

CONTENTS

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VICE 6 - LASHES FOR THE MASSES? BDSM IN CINEMA 8 - MODERN MASTERPIECE: SE7EN

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10 - LIST: INHERENT VICES 12 - THE BOOK WAS BETTER: Adapting beloved texts for the big screen

INTERVIEW 14 - TFR SPEAKS TO PATRICKS DAY DIRECTOR TERRY MCMAHON

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REVIEWS 16 - THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY 18 - CAKE 20 - KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER

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22 - VICTORIA

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FOLLOW US ON TWITTER AT @TRINITYFILM

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FEATURES 24 - UNDERRATED: LAKE MUNGO 25 - OVERRATED: SKYFALL 26 - MORE EASILY GOVERNED BY MY VICES: THE PERILS OF AWARD SEASON PREDICTIONS 28 - NETFLIX GRAVEYARD: MOST VALUABLE PRIMATE 29 - NETFLIX HIDDEN GEM: BLUE RUIN

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30 - GRADUATE FOCUS: GAVIN SITRIC FITZGERALD

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31 - 5 WORD REVIEWS: SEVEN DEADLY SINS

Trinity Film Review (TFR) is a Trinity Publication. It is funded by a grant from DU Publications Committee. TFR claims no special rights or privileges and any serious complaints should be addressed to: The Editor, Trinity Film Review, 6 Trinity College, Dublin 2.

Appeals may be directed to the Press Council of Ireland

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LASHES FOR T Meadhbh McGrath discusses the divide between mainstream and indie film with regards to their respective depictions of BDSM culture.

BDSM on film? There’s more to it than porn. It has long been a convention of Hollywood cinema to code BDSM as dangerous and destructive — the realm of the emotionally damaged, perverse, mentally unstable, and, frequently, the criminal. The cultural phenomenon that is Fifty Shades of Grey draws attention to popular cinema’s deeply problematic relationship with S&M sex. The villains of Western film, such as Norman Bates, Jigsaw, John Doe and Patrick Bateman, are often characterised as sadistic, with implied “perversions”, varying from homosexuality to incest to transsexuality to child or animal abuse.

The costumes and props of the stereotyped sadomasochist have become a common aesthetic feature of mainstream cinema; whips, chains, handcuffs, gimp-masks and PVC, rubber and leather outfits are regularly incorporated into film, television, advertising and music videos to indicate the hypersexualised, threatening woman. From Michelle Pfeiffer and Halle Berry’s Catwomen, Trinity in The Matrix, Goldeneye’s Xenia Onatopp and Sherlock’s Irene Adler to fetishistically-clothed pop stars like Madonna, Rihanna, and Lady Gaga. This mainstreaming has reduced BDSM to costume alone, implying sadomasochism can be taken on and off at will. This look has become so common that we immediately and implicitly recognise it as a signifier of something menacing yet desirable.

Mainstream Western cinema has been slow to embrace BDSM, but independent and arthouse filmmakers have been exploring BDSM for years. One of the most well-known and respected is Steven Shainberg’s Secretary (2002), which follows the relationship between Lee (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and Edward (the original Mr. Grey, played by James Spader). It’s worth noting that the majority of these films, including David Lynch’s Blue Velvet and Pedro Almodovar’s Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, focus on women in the “bottom” role of BDSM exchanges, and rarely feature male submissives.

In Secretary, the sadomasochist, so often the deviant or villain, is reconstructed as protagonist. Neither Lee nor Edward is punished for their “perversion”, and thus the film attempts to normalise BDSM as socially acceptable — except that, as the film begins, we learn that Lee has just left a psychiatric hospital for mental instability. Her new boss Edward teaches her how to embrace consensual S&M as an alternative to self-harming, as if to suggest that masochism is a less-destructive version of self-harm. Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher (2001) also depicts this

link between an interest in BDSM and a history of self-harm. BDSM pleasure is thus pathologised: by associating masochism with self-harm, the films present the masochist as mentally ill. However, Secretary can alternatively be read as proposing that BDSM can be a result of damage but can also be a way to heal.

Based on a short story by Mary Gaitskill (who dismissed the adaptation as “the Pretty Woman version”), Secretary is structured like a traditional romantic comedy, combining an S&M relationship with light, funny moments in an attempt to make BDSM more accessible. The film’s heteronormative closure raised problems for some BDSM practitioners, who criticised it for policing the boundaries between “normal” and “deviant” sexualities, and inevitably privileging the former. In giving Lee and Edward a conventional “happy ever after”, Secretary tries to legitimise BDSM by making it look as appealing as and as similar to vanilla as possible — just another route to heterosexual marriage.

Peter Strickland’s new film The Duke of Burgundy presents a different kind of kink. This is not the world of nipple clamps and Ben Wa balls, but instead focuses on the day-to-day power dynamics of a Dominant/ Submissive relationship between Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen) and Evelyn (Chiara D’Anna). The film addresses the less titillating questions about BDSM lifestyles: where do they buy their equipment? What happens if one of them has a back ache? What if they get stage fright during a golden shower? A lot of the film’s humour is found in the everyday monotony of long-term role-playing, as we watch Cynthia endlessly drinking glass after glass of water, or Evelyn irritably checking her watch as she impatiently waits to be punished. Ostensibly, Evelyn plays the masochist in their master/servant games, but outside of the role-play, she is the sadist in their relationship.

Cynthia may bark at Evelyn and punish her for doing a poor job polishing her boots, but these lines and behaviours have been provided for her in advance by Evelyn on neat white cards. As Sam Taylor-Johnson has professed to use sex as a storytelling device in Fifty Shades — rather than for titillation alone — so has Strickland employed the practices of BDSM to tell a more universal story about a couple’s struggle to meet each other’s needs. Is Cynthia a Dom, or is she submitting to the role Evelyn wants her to play?

In one scene, a craftswoman visits their home to discuss installing a chamber beneath Cynthia’s mattress which will give Evelyn the sensation of being

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THE MASSES? buried alive. When she suggests a human toilet as an alternative, Cynthia becomes immediately tense and excuses herself. This scene is crucial to the film’s wider interest in the importance of communication in relationships, and the discord that forms when two people love each other but have competing desires. As the film progresses, Cynthia grows weary of their scripted encounters, and begins to long for a more traditional relationship. She struggles to humiliate Evelyn while she masturbates, leading Evelyn to reprimand her, “Try to have more conviction in your voice next time.” She gets frustrated with the complex lingerie sets Evelyn has bought for her, and longs to lounge around in her stripy pyjamas. And it is Cynthia who becomes uncomfortable when locking Evelyn in the coffin-like box she sleeps in. They each assume roles that are meant to be liberating, but have become stifling for them. Strickland has emphasised that he did not attempt to ground the world of his film in actual BDSM subculture, and doesn’t claim to make a point about BDSM, but his film nonetheless carries a confusing message, as if to suggest that healthy, fulfilling BDSM relationships are impractical to sustain.

While Secretary and The Duke of Burgundy offer complex representations of the intricacies of BDSM relationships, they remain restricted in popular culture as underground art representing an underground lifestyle. Fifty Shades of Grey is the first film outside of arthouse cinema and the grindhouse circuit which carries enough mainstream power to reshape sexual norms and improve cultural awareness of BDSM. So what are we to make of it? Media outlets have rushed to gather reviews from real-life BDSM practitioners, which range from virulent condemnation to praise of its female-driven fantasy in a world that devalues female bodies. All depictions of women as masochists are open to criticism that they support patriarchal desires, but it’s important to recognise that fantasy is not reality, and that to play is not to be. To argue that filmgoers are unable to make this distinction is condescending and sexist, implying that female sexuality is dangerous, and to attack women’s BDSM fantasies as a glorification or legitimisation of domestic violence is equivalent to suggesting that women are responsible for their own victimisation.

One thing that can’t be ignored is that Fifty Shades is an extremely rare example of a blockbuster film whose screenwriter and director are both women, adapted from a trilogy of books written by a woman, that sold over 100m copies to a majority female readership. The emphasis is firmly on the female protagonist’s perspective, and, although her narration is thankfully removed, the film is driven by Ana’s sexuality, forcing the audience to reckon with female desire.

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Before Fifty Shades, there was Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris (1972), which generated a similar volume of discussion at the time of its release about BDSM in popular culture. Marlon Brando plays Paul, a widower grieving the loss of his wife to suicide, who works out his aggression by inflicting his pain on a young woman, Jeanne (Maria Schneider). Paul, like Christian Grey, is emotionally damaged, presenting another instance which conflates BDSM with abuse. This is for many viewers the mos difficult part of Fifty Shades. For Christian, a BDSM relationship is not a kink but a necessary means for him to avenge his neglect and abandonment at the hands of his mother, a drug-addicted sex worker.

This is the ultimate failure of Fifty Shades, that E.L James and Taylor-Johnson can’t escape the notion that BDSM practitioners are damaged people who want to hurt others.

Fifty Shades negotiates a delicate balancing act in attempting to depict a personal sexual fantasy in the mode of a widely accessible blockbuster film. In one notable scene, Ana (Dakota Johnson) and Christian (Jamie Dornan) have a (fully clothed) “business meeting” in his office to discuss the terms of their contract. Their negotiation develops into aggressive and erotic verbal foreplay, and manages to express the eroticism of BDSM without the use of a single butt plug. In another standout scene, Christian takes Ana into the Red Room of Pain, and has her get down on her knees. When he first hits her hand with a riding crop, you can palpably see Ana being taken out of her head and starting to enjoy her own body. These small moments suggest that we may not be far from a mainstream representation of BDSM that doesn’t play it for laughs, that doesn’t present it as a spectacle of freakish deviants, and that doesn’t attempt to normalise it through pathology. In the meantime, we’re left waiting for a film that doesn’t apologise for its BDSM. Illustration by John Tierney

“Mainstream Western cinema has been slow to embrace BDSM, but independent and arthouse filmmakers have been exploring BDSM for years.”

MODERN MASTERPIECE JACK O’KENNEDY TAKES A LOOK AT DAVID FINCHER’S DETECTIVE THRILLER AND CONSIDERS IT’S PLACE IN THE PANTHEON.

In Se7en’s opening moments, veteran homicide detective William Somerset finds himself at the scene of a murder in a dank apartment. The cop filling him in on what’s happened describes the incident as a “crime of passion” to which Somerset, whilst taking in his blood and brain stained surroundings, dryly quips “Yeah just look at all the passion on that wall”.

In hindsight, this opening exchange sets us up very neatly for what Se7en’s all about. Written by Andrew Kevin Walker (who was a Tower Records employee at the time) and directed by David Fincher, the world of Se7en is a cold, filthy and nihilistically bleak one, where people’s vices are exposed and magnified before being turned against them in the most horrifyingly literal way. The film’s suspense lies in the simplicity of its structure. Following the discovery of an obese man who has been fed til he burst and a hugely influential lawyer bled to death with the word “Greed” written in blood at his feet, the scenario becomes clear. Seven sins. Seven days. Seven bodies.

Newly partnered homicide detectives David Mills (Brad Pitt) and the aforementioned Somerset (Morgan Freeman) find themselves up against a depraved serial killer with a brutally elaborate plan and a penchant for classical literature (don’t they all). What follows is a deeply disturbing but always gripping detective thriller of the darkest hue imaginable.

Freeman’s Somerset is that classic archetype of the soon to be retired detective whose on his last week of the job, the kind of guy who has seen too much.

Naturally he’s partnered up with the new kid on the block, Detective Mills (Brad Pitt) who has a chip on his shoulder and is eager to a fault. This newbie and lifer pairing sounds old hat, but Se7en succeeds where other detective dramas fail by delivering us characters who feel authentic and lived in. Freeman has that perfect mixture of gravitas and weariness that conveys a man who is very good at his job but feels like he’s fighting a losing battle with the horrors of the world. With his blunt approach and impatient nature Pitt has never been better as the cocky upstart who relishes the chance to take down a “psycho” in his first official case. Their different styles set up a wonderful push and pull at the films centre but the characters surprise us as often as they conform to type.

Whilst Se7en is undoubtedly bleak, it is not unremittingly so, boasting a streak of humour that welcomingly breaks through the dreariness from time to time. Take Mill’s continued frustration with the impenetrable language of Chaucer and Milton that sees him clandestinely purchasing the Cliffs Notes version of The Canterbury Tale and Paradise Lost or Somerset’s comndemnation of the library security who are surrounded by “all these books, a world of knowledge at your fingertips, and what do you do, play poker all night?” Somerset and Mill’s antagonistic relationship gives way to moments of respite at times also, like their discussion about whether shaving off a nipple whilst prepping their chests for microphones would be covered by workmans comp

or the gales of laughter the two partners and Mill’s wife (Gwenyth Paltrow) break down into when the proximity of their apartment to the deafening roar of the subway is revealed.

Darkness is the order of the day here however and David Fincher delivers it in spades. Before making Se7en he was known primarily for his music videos, having directed for performers as diverse as Madonna and Nine Inch Nails. His filmmaking debut was the infamous Alien3 which he’s since described as “the worst thing that ever happened to me.” With his sophomore feature however he showed off the skills that would lead him to becoming one of the most consistently compelling American filmmakers of the last two decades. The film boasts several truly memorable set pieces, the most celebrated of which is the discovery of the third victim. When fingerprints are uncovered at the second crime scene and lead to a match we know they won’t send us to the killer. That would be too easy. What they do discover is something far more horrifying. The S.W.A.T. teams descent upon the house, their breaking down of the door and they way the light from their torches penetrates the dimly lit bedroom of their suspect is a masterful exercise in the art of building tension.

In this instance we have a switching off genres within the one scene, the tone shifting from thriller to full blown horror when the sheets are pulled back and the emaciated body of John Doe’s third victim is revealed. For a man who wasted the gift of life by dealing drugs and molesting children, Doe has decreed he be tied to a bed and kept barely alive whilst he literally wastes away. Fincher even throws in a jump scare for good measure, the victim springing to whatever version of life he has left as his sunken face is closely examined by a disgusted cop.

As compelling as the hunt for the killer in Se7en is, the film’s most intense battle is an ideological one.

John Doe cuts the game short. Rather than allowing Mills and Somerset to put the pieces together and bring him in themselves, he reveals himself to them with one of the most memorable introductions to a character in recent memory. Shot from behind at a low angle as he walks into the police station, his increasingly loud and deranged roars of “DETECTIVE” see Mills and Somerset turn on the stairs to take in the form of Kevin Spacey whose cut and bandaged fingertips are dripping blood across the station floor. What follows is an agreement that will see Spacey’s Doe reveal the location of the final two bodies, so long as only Mills and Somerset accompany him. Throughout the film we see the two detectives clash over the nature of their killer. Mills is dismissive, reducing their target to a jumped up mad man, one who will inevitably spout cliches like “the voices made me do it, the dog made me do it, Jodie Foster made me do it.” He lacks the experience of Somerset who puts together the methods, the victims and the high literary references to reveal a master planner who has a mission. These aren’t murders, they’re sermons. These different takes on the nature of the appropriately named mystery man that

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SE7 is John Doe are brought to a head in the car journey the three share in the films final movements. Doe shrugs off Mill’s assertions that he’s a lunatic, saying “it’s more comfortable for you to make me insane”.

Spacey delivers fully as the film’s depraved villain, emitting a disquieting calm that harbours a deeply twisted centre and when he finally gets to the reasoning behind his grand scheme he becomes disturbingly compelling.

“A woman... so ugly on the inside she couldn’t bear to go on living if she couldn’t be beautiful on the outside.

A drug dealer, a drug dealing pederast, actually! And let’s not forget the disease-spreading whore! Only in a world this shitty could you even try to say these were innocent people and keep a straight face. But that’s the point. We see a deadly sin on every street corner, in every home, and we tolerate it. We tolerate it because it’s common, it’s trivial. We tolerate it morning, noon, and night. Well, not anymore. I’m setting the example..”

What follows, as the trio’s car comes to a stop in the cities outskirts, out of range of the police radios, the pylons keeping the helicopters at bay, is an absolute powerhouse of an ending. Too often are we subjected to weak conclusions in this genre, with the detectives and killer engaging in one last, perfunctory race to save the final would be victim. Walker’s script turns the genre on its head entirely. The crime has already been committed. Doe is unarmed and at the mercy of Mills, but the power is in the killer’s hands. Mills’s cries of “whats in the box?” have since been endlessly parodied but on first viewing the tension that builds following Somerset’s grim discovery as we wait to see how Mills will react is nerve shredding.

Pitt does some fantastic work here, utterly stripped of his swagger, the emotions that play out on his face and through his voice never give away what direction he’ll go in, before the flash of a figure delivers an ending both inevitable and completely subversive.

There have been many pretenders to Se7en’s throne in the years since its release but none have matched its twisted worldview and thrilling story. It’s virtues are many but it does have one glaring sin of its own and that was reigniting the infuriating trend of films with numbers in their titles. Fincher’s film may be a triumph on every level, but its also to blame for mind numbingly stupid titles like The NIN9’S, Cradle 2 the grave and Tak3N. Have Doe round up and dispatch of all the writers and executives that come up with these moronic ideas and all will be forgiven.

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“Spacey delivers fully as the film’s depraved villain, emitting a disquieting calm that harbours a deeply twisted centre and when he finally gets to the reasoning behind his grand scheme he becomes disturbingly compelling�

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INHERENT VICES

The TFR staff take a look at some of their favourite depictions of vices on screen.

This Is The End

Being John Malkovich

Louie Carroll

Ken Donnelly

The debut directorial effort from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg is a film stacked full of vices, namely recreational narcotics. Hardly surprising considering Rogen is perhaps the most famous stoner in Hollywood. Here, other silver screen stars from within their group of friends are represented as a drunken and debaucherous crowd, contained within a party gone awryJames Franco’s house.

This is the End plays up to the persona of some stars such as Rogen, and subverts others like Michael Cera, here portrayed as a coke head with a penchant for threesomes.

What separates the film from other drug addled films is the creatively realised representation of being high on screen. Once the Apocalypse descends on chez Franco, the natural response from the desperate group is to do all of their supply of drugs in one go. What follows is a psychedelic trip in which bubbles shoot from mouths, rainbow fire flies from the screen and everyone turns a different shade of neon. You get the sense watching This is the End, that this is probably a pretty accurate depiction of what it’s like to do “all the drugs” given the people involved.

In Being John Malkovich Craig Schwartz and a host of other characters become preoccupied with exploiting the mind of the famous American actor John Malkovich, for their own personal gain. Craig (John Cusack) stumbles upon a magical portal in his workplace which, when entered, gives the user the bizarre experience of living life through the eyes and mind of the actor John Malkovich, for fifteen minutes. Craig then brings his wife Lotte (Cameron Diaz) to experience the portal. The experience gives Lotte the ability to escape from her mundane and

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deeply unsatisfying life and leads her to distance herself from Craig.

Lotte and Craig also agree to sell the experience to the public which leads to phenomenal demand. The ability to experience life through the eyes of someone else is immensely appealing to many people who couldn’t care less about the man whose mind they are exploiting. Ultimately, it appears that the initial use of the portal is the downfall of the characters that use it. It becomes clear that everyday life, for those who avail of the portal, becomes more and more unsatisfying. They become obsessed with the thrill of being someone else and leave behind any prospect of becoming content with their own original identity.

Adam & Paul

Juno

Sometimes in film a character appears who is so blandly good-natured that their vice is fittingly as milquetoast as their personality. Juno’s Paulie Bleeker is such a sweet, inoffensive kid that when the tituSometimes in film a character aplar character tells her dad that Bleeker impregnated who is so blandly good-naher, papa Juno incredulously remarks that,pears “I didn’t that their vice is fittingly as think he had it in him.” However, Bleeker’stured one vice is not unprotected it’s orange Addiction takes teenage centresex; stage in Tic-Tacs. milquetoast as their personality.

That’s his one weakness are those one Paulie Bleeker is such a Lennyright, Abrahamson’s Dublin od- tangy Juno’s calorie depicting breath mints.

The film’s Diabloinoffensive kid that when yssey, a day in thescreenwriter cap- sweet, Cody chose the Bleeker’s ital asoriginally seen through eyes strange of the addiction the titular character tells her dad as homage to a high school boyfriend of hers who eponymous junkies who meander that Bleeker impregnated her, also found Tic-Tacs irresistible. The orange Tic-Tacs from one to Juno. papa prove to be hare-brained a strange motifscheme throughout TheJuno incredulously remarks the next in search of a precious that, film is steeped in warm, autumn colors, and the “I didn’t think he had it in score.

The film darkly hilarious, him.” However, Bleeker’s one vice movie starts withis Juno tasting the citrusy sweetness of the mintstoonthe meek Bleeker’s breath bringing screen a cast ofthe night is notheunprotected teenage sex; it’s slips her thefrom sausage. thefamiliar end of the film, as anTic-Tacs. That’s right, his characters an Near all too orange apology Juno stuffs a hundred boxesof of Tic-Tacs in but rarely spotlighted periphery one weakness are those tangy one Bleeker’s mailbox.

The orange mints seem to prove the city. calorie breath mints. that, no matter what teenage blunders he commits while navigating through the emotional minefield It is an extremely of impregnating his bestunglamorous friend, Bleeker is The a goodfilm’s screenwriter Diablo depiction drugeven addiction, as the Cody originally chose Bleeker’s kid at heart,ofsweet in his vices.

Clare Martin

Shame

Eoin Moore

Liam Farrell

pair’s efforts become increasingly desperate, sliding from laughably pathetic attempts at shoplifting and stealing handbags, to one utterly reprehensible and harrowing scene involving a particularly malicious mugging. Tom Murphy and Mark O’Halloran are terrific in the central roles, resembling a dead-eyed, grimy Laurel and Hardy, constantly squabbling but completely dependent on one another, and it is due to their performances that the characters win our sympathy, even if their actions make it impossible to respect them.

Ultimately, Adam & Paul is an extremely raw and moving portrait of heroin addiction, stripped of the stylistic flourishes of films like Trainspotting, which leaves us with a powerful sense of lives destroyed by dependency, and a pair of childhood friends left pitifully hollow and ghostly in pursuit of vice.

strange addiction as an homage to a high school boyfriend of hers who also found Tic-Tacs irresistible. The orange Tic-Tacs prove to be a strange motif throughout Juno. The film is steeped in warm, autumn colors, and the movie starts with Juno tasting the citrusy sweetness of the mints on meek Bleeker’s breath the night he slips her the sausage.

Near the end of the film, as an apology, Juno stuffs a hundred boxes of Tic-Tacs in Bleeker’s mailbox. The orange mints seem to prove that, no matter what teenage blunders he commits while navigating through the emotional minefield of impregnating his best friend, Bleeker is a good kid at heart, sweet even in his vices.

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Steve McQueen’s Shame, starring Michael Fassbender as a sex-addicted businessman, is possibly best known for its graphic and at times disturbing depictions of sex acts. Fassbender gives into his desperate urges with a variety of people in scenes of visually striking debauchery and depravity. However, it is in the quieter scenes which surround these instances - of Fassbender taking the subway, working, and jogging - that best convey the all-consuming urge that overcomes him.

Fassbender’s subdued silence, paired with subtle, yearning glances and the deafening pulse of his restrained breaths, acutely illustrate the intensity of this barely contained hunger. In this way, Shame is a tremendous achievement in portraying the realities of addiction, as something that does not simply exist in the moments when it is succumbed to.

As the addiction is fed, and strengthened, every moment of the addict’s life becomes a fiercer battle for control. In Fassbender’s tortured performance, and McQueen’s measured, precise filmmaking, Shame gives us an insight into addiction as an ever-pressing burden. It dominates every moment of restraint in its thundering absence.

THE BOOK WAS BETTER The Academy loves them. The fans hate them.

EOIN MOORE takes a look at the problem of adapting novels for the big screen.

The film industry has an interesting relationship with books. Films constantly return to books as a source of inspiration. The reason for this isn’t obvious; the two are drastically different mediums, one visual and based around catching the attention of the viewer and holding it, the other entirely abstract, and determined by the investment the reader places into it. Yet, evidently, something about it works. Over the last ten years, half of the winners of the Academy Award for best picture have been films adapted from written works. For whatever reason, it’s a successful marriage.

Except in the case of the fans of those books, that is.

The phrase “The book was better” has come to hang ominously over any film which is created from a literary text. While the phrase “Based on…” at the bottom of your poster might encourage Oscar nods and attract critical interest, it also welcomes the scorn, derision, and hate of those who read “…” and will feel personally hurt by any mistreatment you do it. It’s strange that adapting a work of literature to film, a process which usually comes from a place of admiration and respect for the original text, so often results in such vitriol from those who enjoy the text the most.

The Inherent Vice movie has been getting its fair share of this lately. Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice was a satirical, trippy, detective mystery set in the early 70s,

which followed a stoner P.I. and his interactions with wacky members of the LA scene on the trail of a missing billionaire. Pynchon has often been described as an “unfilmable” writer, due to his unique, aggressively postmodern style of writing and his mind-bending subversions of plot, character, story structure, and narrative. Up until this point, no director had ever attempted to unlock the riddle of adapting him. This is the challenge that was taken up in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice. Anderson’s adaptation does an admirable job of remaining true to the text: the plot is kept in its original, convoluted form, almost every line of dialogue is taken verbatim from the book, and the performances and visual style capture the lazy, hazy atmosphere of the beginning post-hippy age which totally permeates the original novel. Of course, that last part’s just my personal interpretation – and that’s where the issues begin. Complaints have been levelled against Anderson’s film for being too spacey, too slow, and not exciting or funny like the book was.

While I think Anderson’s slurry, incomprehensible, offbeat approach to his film accurately captured the book, other people had very different interpretations and, as a result, to them the film seemed to betray the essence of the original text.

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This is largely due to the fundamental difference between books and films. Books are pure abstraction. Except in the case of House of Leavesstyle affairs where words splash across the page as a visual art form, in books the content is entirely descriptive. Any visual representation of a place, an object, or a character can only be determined up to a point with words on a page; the ultimate image is a unique creation of the reader’s imagination. Films are totally different. While the viewer still interprets, they can’t do so from a blank mental slate.

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overwhelming objective realness of the physical world that the audience can see drastically reduces their ability to imaginatively construct their own subjective version. In Inherent Vice the book, Doc Sportello is some guy wearing a Hawaiian shirt, a pair of shades, and some large sideburns. In the film, however, Doc is Joaquin Phoenix dressed in a specific Hawaiian shirt, a particular pair of shades, and an exact pair of sideburns. Whatever personal Doc the individual reader had in their heads before the film came out, it almost certainly wasn’t that one. This isn’t just in the case of visuals; every abstract element in the book that gets translated into a certainty by the adaptor takes away some of the text’s subjective elasticity. The adaptor constructs a concrete piece of cinema out of their personal interpretation of the book.

This process naturally risks the possibility of closing off avenues of interpretation which, to the readers, were essential parts of the text.

In an interview with Film School Rejects, the author Bret Easton Ellis had some interesting things to say on the subject of adaptations, in relation to Mary Harron’s adaptation of his

“Whatever personal Doc the individual reader had in their heads before the film came out, it almost certainly wasn’t that one.” own novel, American Psycho: “The movie is fine, but I think that book is unadaptable because it’s about consciousness, and you can’t really shoot that sensibility.” Ellis goes on to state that “If you’ve written a novel, you’ve written a novel because it is a novel.”

Mary Harron’s American Psycho deals with the issues of adaptation in an interesting way. Much of the book takes place within the mind of the protagonist, Patrick Bateman, and many of the book’s events may in fact be Bateman’s hallucinations. This ambiguity is more difficult to capture on screen, which is central to Ellis’ issue with the film as a whole: “you have to make a decision whether Patrick Bateman kills people or doesn’t. Regardless of how Mary Harron wants to shoot that ending, we’ve already seen him kill people”.

Thinking along these lines, it becomes evident that everything Harron does is some kind of “decision” of interpretation or adaptation. Everything she does in some way reduces the abstract possibility of the text to a singular, concrete certainty. This is a necessary step in the process of adaptation from book to screen. The clothing that appears in the film is a good example of this. Bateman and his coworkers are all well-dressed according to the upmarket fashion of the eighties.

However, in Ellis’ book the clothes as described are ridiculous, vibrant, and nonsensical. In choosing a more conventional clothing range, Harron took away that satirical element to better fit her own more sombre interpretation.

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A film which brilliantly addresses this issue of adaptation, by making that issue its central subject, is Adaptation. While technically adapted from Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief, Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation actually tells the story of Charlie Kaufman, played by Nicholas Cage, attempting to adapt The Orchid Thief. This film not only serves as a strong example of an adaptation having more to do with the adaptor than the original writer, it also ruminates on this fact in its narrative. Kaufman is portrayed as a nervous individual fretting over how to translate The Orchid Thief to the screen. As he toys with various ideas the film morphs to reflect his shifting mind: as his ideas become more avant-garde the film gets more avant-garde; when he starts considering more conventional approaches the film becomes an action-thriller. The entire film, from its insanely meta premise to its equally ludicrous finale, hammers home the work that is done by adaptors. The story isn’t simply poured from the book-shaped jug into the film-shaped one, it is rebuilt in an entirely new form. In the case of Adaptation, American Psycho, and Inherent Vice, the filmmaker is less an adaptor of a creation than a creator who must constantly learn to adapt themselves.

SAINT OR SINNER? Terry McMahon caused something of a scene with his debut feature Charlie Casanova back in 2012, a micro budget indie about a loathsome man who has utter contempt for his friends, family, society and himself. Charlie was met with equal contempt by the critics and the punters didn’t bother showing up to see what all the fuss was about. Returning to filmmaking with his second feature Patrick’s Day, the opinionated director talks to TFR Editor Jack O’Kennedy about story, process and the importance of art with a message.

TFR: Patrick’s Day seems to be resonating deeply with audiences, are you happy with how it’s being received so far?

TM: Yeah it’s one of those things, you know it’s not a movie for everyone. People are having a remarkable, visceral, collective response to it. At this stage we’ve literally received hundreds of letters and emails from people expressing the most incredibly private, personal emotion in a way that for them seems to be unprecedented. So there’s a power in there that’s something bigger than the movie which is very exciting.

TFR: You’ve written and directed both of your films so far. What’s your writing process like and in the aftermath of your first film, how did you get to Patrick’s Day ater Charlie Casanova?

TM: You mean that film was such a miserable piece of shit how do you get anyone to fund a second movie?

TFR: I think it’s fair to say ...Charlie Casanova felt like you were quite angry about Irish society and this maybe is angry but perhaps in a different way?

TM: Well they’re two profoundly different films and they require two profoundly different approaches.

Charlie Casanova was designed as a fucking hand grenade and you threw it in and it was supposed to cause as much collateral damage as possible. It was an act of terrorism against the government. It was supposed to do all those things and if it hadn’t have done those things it would have been disappointing. For me it was important that you provoked in the most extreme way and if you’re listening to classical music all day and suddenly a punk rock song comes on it shatters your ears it shatters your system and that’s what that film had set out to do so…despite all the attacks and despite all the insanity and despite all the mayhem not only do I have no regrets but I stand by the film with pride and with real affection. Patricks’ Day on the other hand is a very different kind of film. Patrick’s Day is about a guy who is so overwhelmed with emotion he can barely contain it. They’re two completely different films aesthetically, content wise, character wise, all those…Interesting to me, people said I was an incompetent fucking moron

when it came to writing Charlie Casanova and now they’re praising me for suddenly having learned how to write. What they don’t know is that both Patrick’s Day and Charlie Casanova were written at exactly the same time. You know it’s the approach, they’re two completely different films on every level and the next film will be a very different kind of film again and we’ll take a very different kind of approach.

TFR: You mentioned the term “hand grenade” in describing Charlie Casanova. It seems like with your films you’re setting out to achieve something. What would you say you set out to achieve with Patricks Day? TM: That simple notion that you don’t have to be alone and you don’t have to have someone tell you how to live your life. You don’t have to allow someone else to control your aspirations. Because we are becoming so increasingly oppressed within the regime that’s in place now that we don’t know who the fuck we are anymore.

And you don’t have to be that way and you don’t have to be alone in your fear.

TFR: It’s fair to say that Moe Dunford gives a pretty amazing performance as Patrick. How much of what we see onscreen is as written and how much did you and him work on the character together. Was it a long process or is that Patrick as you conceived him?

TM: Every single word was written, there’s not a half

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second improvised. But I think the difference is that I construct the narrative and I construct the dialogue and I construct the scenario but my job as a director is to empower everyone else on the set, to beyond what they thought they were capable of doing and that applies to the DOP, the sound recordist, the art director, everybody. But, particularly, more than anybody, the actors. You’ve got to try and find a way of taking someone to a place that they themselves didn’t think they were capable of going and when they make the discovery in real time and the camera happens to be recording it then we as an audience become empathically involved because there’s no lies, there’s no fallacy, there’s no presentation, it’s happening in real time for us and Moe did that. Moe had the raw courage to go there and then he learned the craft as he went on and now I think he’s one of those actors that’s going to be catapulted into a remarkable realm.

TFR: You set your stock up from the beginning with the dictionary quote defining mental illness. Films depicting mental illness…this kind of film doesn’t scream commercial. How difficult was it to get it off the ground?

TM: The definition at the start, its mental illness but that exact definition can also apply to love. Myself and Emer Reynolds, our wonderful editor, we were looking for something at the beginning and I thought okay, how do we set this up in such a way that we’re

deconstructing the academic, reductionist notion of mental illness and at the same time humanising a character who aspires to something as noble as love. We looked up mental illness and we couldn’t believe that the same description of mental illness could utterly be ascribed to love. Thematically I find that magnificently exciting. Some people see that opening and think that we’re being prescriptive when in fact it’s the opposite.

In terms of getting the film made, what happened was Tim Palmers saw Charlie Casanova and people forget that the film had some real heavyweight champions. In Australia and other continents we had extraordinary reactions to that film, We won a lot of awards and they saw it for what it was. They didn’t have that personal refusal to look in the mirror. I think with something like Patrick’s Day the story, the narrative, the script, seem to be the thing that hooked people early on. And Tim Palmer he got the money together. I told him look, we’ve got six months, if it’s not ready to go in six months I’m shooting it on my fucking phone.

regardless of the critical reaction to the film it is setting a precedent and that precedent is “get up off your fucking arse and make a movie”, its possible and to me that was very exciting and on multiple levels it seemed to impact on other people. The other night I got a letter from someone who said that they made their first film because of it. In terms of a bigger budget the same fundamental principle applies. I was on Christopher Nolan’s set. Wally Pfister is his cinematographer.

You’re watching Christopher Nolan and Wally Pfister and it’s a 120 million dollar movie and all they give a fuck about is what’s happening in front of the the other end of the camera. In Patrick’s Day how do we capture that indefinable moment of discovery in front of the lens of a camera, protect it throughout the entire post production period and get it in front of an audience where at least one person in the room might respond in a real way. That principle doesn’t change regardless of budget.

“We looked it up and we couldn’t believe that the same description of mental illness could utterly be ascribed to love. Thematically I find that magnificently exciting.

Some people see that opening and think that we’re being prescriptive when in fact it’s the opposite” That’s one of the benefits of having made something like Charlie Casanova, for less than 1000 euro. When you threaten somebody with something like that they think you’re fucking real, they believe you. It doesn’t matter whether its true or not they think “oh shit this prick is gonna make it on us”. So it becomes an easier dance. But Tim was brilliant, he was a stunning producer on every level and he made it happen in five months instead of six.

TFR: You put together Charlie Casanova on less than a shoestring, did you learn any lessons in the making of it that you brought to Patrick’s Day. TM: Charlie Casanova was made for less than a 1000 euro and it was picked up for distribution by Studio Canal and it was released in cinemas in UK and Ireland, that in itself is for me massively exciting because i it shows that regardless of the content of the film and

TFR: I think the film is about a lot of different kinds of love. I thought it was interesting the way that the love of Patrick’s mother works and the way it ends up being quite a destructive force when she wields it, even if she is wielding it with the best of intentions.

Do you think the film is about the different ways that people can use love for good and bad?

TM: When people are shocked by Moes mother’s behaviour, I always question it going, this woman fundamentally believes that what she is doing is right, she fundamentally believes that everything she is doing is in protection of her child. We lie to our kids every fucking day. So I don’t understand firstly why she’s cast as a villain and secondly why people seem to be so shocked by her behaviour.

If you were to talk about your contemporaries...the filmmakers whose work is being seen by Irish audiences, do you think Irish directors are doing enough to address social issues or do you think there’s a lack of engagement with politis by Irish filmmakers in general?

TM: I think there are some fine filmmakers out there, I think Ivan Kavanagh is a world class filmmaker. He made a film called Tin Can Man for next to nothing and now he’s just finished The Canal. I think Lenny Abrahamson’s film Frank is utterly stunning. I didn’t really understand his last couple of movies but I was deeply moved by Frank. I think Mark O’Connor was very ballsy with his film Stalker. I think One Million Dubliners is a profoundly exciting document. I don’t think they are driven by a political need in the way I might be but that’s probably because maybe they have better things in their life but I feel so ashamed in my own cowardice that I need to reflect on some level, that cowardice in terms of doing nothing and trying to find a way of doing something via film.

TFR: Earlier on you mentioned that someone wrote to you about the Charlie Casanova and fact that it cost you less than a thousand quid and it got into cinemas, the idea is just go out there and make it.

I assume that would be your advice to any aspiring filmmakers TM: Its even beyond the idea of go out there and make it, its, stop making imitative genre driven stuff, that you’re never going to be able to compete with anyway.

Sit alone in your room, think of the darkest secret that you’re embarrassed by, then think of one worse and then write about that. Because not only are you not alone, but there’s a whole bunch of people out there with that same secret who might respond.

TFR: We’ve heard you chat about two upcoming projects, The Dancehall Bitch and Oliver Twisted, are those still in the offing for you or what do you think will be your next project?

TM: Well there’s people who have told me that the Dancehall Bitch is literally the dumbest fucking choice I could possibly make for the third film.

TFR: Why is that do you think?

TM: Because it’s a very dark prison drama about what men are prepared to do to convince themselves they’re men and what they’re prepared to do to women to convince themselves they’re men, so thematically and dramatically, people go oh for fucks sake would you not make a Disney movie?

TFR: And what can you tell us about Oliver Twisted TM: Oliver Twisted is a dark, romantic comedy believe it or not. The title Oliver Twisted and the tagline, more Dick than Dickens should tell you the tone.

Patricks Day is still showing in selected cinemas

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REVIEWS

The Duke of Burgundy WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY PETER STRICKLAND STARRING SIDSE BABETT KNUDSEN & CHIARA D’ANNA RELEASE DATE FEBRUARY 20th “You’re late. Did I say you could sit?”

As the film opens it seems Entomology (the study of insects) professor Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen) is a grade A bitch as she orders her maid Evelyn (Chiara D’Anna) around her home. However director Peter Strickland soon takes us deeper into the complex, intimate and somewhat surreal world of Cynthia’s and Evelyn’s relationship.

The film neither gives an insight into to the beginning of this love relationship or the end but rather drops the viewers somewhere into the middle.

The naive Evelyn embracesthe lifstyle of the Sub, whether it being locked in a trunk overnight or urinated upon. Cynthia on the other hand enjoys the delectation of being the dominant mistress. However as Evelyn pushes the boundaries of Cynthia’s willingness to dominate further and further it is soon revealed who the true power holder is as the frailties of the women come to the fore. Cynthia desires a deeper more emotional relationship while Evelyn craves to go deeper and deeper into her fantasy world of submission.

While the conceit not surprisingly evokes the expectation of a nudey-rumpy-pumpy film, Strickland expertly crafts a picture devoid of nudity and instead suggests at the intimacy of the relationship through a variety of stylistic cues. Style cer-

tainly takes centre stage. The film is besotted with lurid colour schemes and a booming soundtrack.

It dazzles the senses, even becoming rather trippy at times but if feels as if it should not be any other way. Both Knudsen and D’Anna offer stunning performances capturing the emotional fragility of the relationships that fits into this stylistic setting.

Overall Strickland’s third production is a compelling piece yet arguably without the gripping performances and the style it feels the film would be rather lacklustre, as truth be told, not a hell of a lot actually happens.

“While the conceit not surprisingly evokes the expectation of a nudey-rumpy-pumpy film, Strickland expertly crafts a picture devoid of nudity and instead insinuates the intimacy of the relationship through a variety of stylistic cues” The women cycle through the cobbled streets of the village and the green luscious fields to Cynthia’s home. It certainly is an ambient atmosphere.

Inside Cynthia reads and writes in her study and chugs a ridiculous amount of water while Evelyn cleans, cleans and well, cleans. The creaky wooden floors and blue tiled bathrooms are spotless as she potters around the house awaiting her next instruction. While the central story is all a bit odd, so is the world it takes place in. This is a world populated solely by women, most of which have a yearning for all things butterfly. The only times we are ever taken out of Cynthia’s home and the neighbouring woodland is to visit the Institute of Entomology.

Strickland must be commended for continuing to blend the worlds of fantasy and reality with such ease. His second outing, the highly acclaimed Berberian Sound Studio pedalled the line between horror, fantasy and reality as it traced the story of a sound engineer working on a supposed film about horses. The Duke of Burgundy in turn gravitates between the fantasy world of sexual submission and the reality of the relationship.

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While watching The Duke of Burgundy one is distracted by the style and it is not until the end credits roll that you feel as if something was missing, leaving you to ponder some of the unusual obsessions of Evelyn and not really thinking about the actual relationship or where the story has brought us. Surface certainly takes precedence over depth on this ocassion.

Those hoping for a run of the mill beginning, middle and end dominance/submission story should perhaps stick with 50 Shades of Grey while those with a taste for a tantalising snapshot of a fraught and complex relationship should look no further thank Strickland’s latest.

LUKE BATES

Lone Gunman: Jack O’Connell as Garry Hook 17 in ‘71 17 17

DIRECTED BY DANIEL BARNZ WRITTEN BY PATRICK TOBIN STARRING JENNIFER ANISTON, ADRIANA BARRAZA & ANNA KENDRICK RELEASE DATE FEBRUARY 20th Let’s skip over the preamble about Jennifer Aniston’s place in the sitcom canon, her decade spent in rom-com purgatory failing to escape those shackles, and her new film Cake representing a great leap forward in the direction of the Californian becoming A Serious Dramatic Actor who acts in Serious Dramatic Films.

You know it all already. The least we can do is judge it not as a prelude to the long mooted Friends reunion, but on its own merits.

Such as they are.

It is a fine thing, surely, for an actor to give a performance good enough to transcend entirely the context of the film they’re playing in. Even more impressive, when the bar set by that film is so low that it threatens to drown the performance in a sea of cliché and idiocy. Thus, Cake. Golden Globe-nominated and arguably Oscar-snubbed Aniston is totally incongruous as the physically and psychologically damaged Clare Bennett, a lawyer recovering from an initially unspecified trauma which leaves her suffering from debilitating chronic pain. Her performance, on a higher plain altogether than absolutely everything around her, seems like it has been lifted directly from a completely different film: a film where plots include actual incidents, where dialogue isn’t lifted from a partcularly bad student movie and where supporting characters aren’t constructed out of actual flimsy plywood. She manages the rare feat of escaping any and all pre-existing conceptions audiences may hold

CAKE

of her. Aniston moulds Clare into what is to all intents and purposes a real person. One who, despite her unbelievable pronouncements and eccentric actions which must leave actual eccentrics scratching their heads, seems as if one of her greatest misfortunes in life is to have been plucked from reality and dropped unknowingly into this bafflingly uninteresting, intensely frustrating film.

We meet Clare in her sufferer’s support group.

Nina, a fellow sufferer played with a little too much earnestness by an occasionally appearing Anna Kendrick, has recently killed herself.

It is this that Clare seems to be trying to come to terms with for the majority of the run time.

You know the drill. She knocks back prescription medication bythe barrel. She fornicates with gardeners. She befriends the dead woman’s widower (a struggling with the platitudes Sam Worthington) and his child in a bizarre arrangement, while the dearly departed herself periodically surfaces in person to torment her with bitchy remarks.

The whole ordeal is painfully slow to splutter into life. It is as if director Daniel Barnz (Beastly) and screenwriter Patrick Tobin thought that the mere idea of making a serious, profound film was enough, and that frivolous concepts like realistic dialogue and characters were irrelevant to achieving their aim. Aniston is barely visible through a haze of exhausted clichés. Adriana Barraza plays Silvana as the only non-white character in the

film, who appears from early on as a Hispanic maid, and spends the rest of the film doing her best with a dreadfully underwritten take on how to do the hispanic maid thing. Clare wakes up sweating every now and then to discover that it was all a dream. Basic motivations are left unexplained. Why does she feel the need to get in contact with Nina’s family?

Why develop an obsession with her when, as we learn, she has plentiful supplies of tragedy of her own more immediately close to hand?

The dialogue is stilted, the outcomes of scenes telegraphed to the audience long before they have even begun.

Much like putting an original Rembrandt on the wall of your smelly bedsit kitchen, the brilliance of Aniston’s performance here is betrayed by the dullness of its surrounding context. By all means watch this film for a classic case of an actor outperforming her surroundings, for the strong, nuanced dealing with stodgy material that is the mark of a true talent. But don’t blame us if you try paying attention to nearly anything else in this tragically boring film.

CATHAL KAVANAGH

“It is a fine thing, surely, for an actor to give a performance good enough to transcend entirely the context of the film they’re playing in. Even more impressive, when the bar set by that film is so low that it threatens to drown the performance in a sea of cliché and idiocy”

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KUMIKO,THE TREASURE HUNTER DIRECTED BY DAVID ZELLNER WRITTEN BY DAVID ZELLNER & NATHAN ZELLNER STARRING RINKO KIKUCHI & NOBUYUKI KATSUBE RELEASE DATE FEBRUARY 20TH

‘This is a true story’ proclaims the text at the beginning of Kumiko: The Treasure Hunter.

In 2001 outside a city called Detroit Lakes in Minnesota, Takako Konishi, an office worker from Tokyo was found dead. The cause? She had been searching for the briefcase containing money hidden in the snow by Steve Buscemi’s character in the 1996 Coen brothers’ film Fargo and she died in pursuit of it. This is not the real reason and this is not a true story but it does form the basis for the wonderfully bizarre and fable like Kumiko: The Treasure Hunter, directed

by David Zellner.

The red sun rises on a rocky, barren beach as a red blot of colour strides along. Kumiko is wearing a vivid red jacket, reminiscent of Little Red Riding Hood’s famous cloak. And much like Little Red Riding Hood, Kumiko is on a journey.

With an indomitable spirit she is driven to complete a task of mythic proportions; that of finding the treasure from the film Fargo.

Zellner paints a convincing portrait of an outsider in society who longs to accomplish something truly remarkable. The world is insistent that Kumiko engages with it but she resists it completely.

Her boss calls her into his office to ask her about her future plans, an old friend or acquaintance wants to meet up with her, her mother calls her and berates her for a lack of progression in her career and bemoans the fact that her daughter is single. Kumiko herself is wild, secret, untamable and probably at least a little delusional. With only her rabbit Bunzo for company, she contents herself with making meticulous notes about the scene in Fargo in which Steve Buscemi hides the briefcase in the snow by the fence. This may seem like a baffling desire but its extraordinariness is what draws Kumiko and by extension us into this bizarre scavenger hunt.

At her job as an office lady, Kumiko is a bright, wild flower amongst her carefully manicured and bland colleagues. Her fantasy draws her away further and further from reality. This owes a lot to Rinko Kikuchi’s intense portrayal of Kumiko. Kikuchi creates an electric performance with minimal dialogue. Kumiko’s quest brings her to The New World,’ much like a Spanish conquistador. She travels to the Midwest in America where she encounters a plethora of comic and sometimes tragic characters who goshdarnit just want to help her. Although well meaning, there is a language and cultural barrier between Kumiko and the Midwestern folks she comes across.

More importantly, there is a gulf between fantasy and reality between too.

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The visuals are stunning in this film, the Japanese and Midwestern landscapes are authentically shot and we’re given a real sense of what these places are like. Kumiko’s coat is also a stroke of genius, providing a focal point of strong colour in often quite colourless and gloomy backgrounds. Also of note is the soundtrack by the Octopus Project; often unsettling but beautiful.

When something gets in the way of Kumiko’s task, an uneasy drone builds until it resolves. It is as if reality itself is imposing upon the well-ordered fairytale that Kumiko inhabits.

A melancholic, dark tale with a few comic moments, Kumiko: The Treasure Hunter is a delightfully enchanting fable. As Kumiko attempts to free herself from her own reality, there is a realization for the viewer that she herself does not understand the simple and kind beauty of the real world, best embodied by the compassionate people she encounters in Minnesota. She is like a woman possessed who must forge her own path and follow her quest to its terminus. It’s an enthralling story made all the more interesting by the fact that people thought it was true.

RACHEL WAKEFIELD-DROHAN

“As Kumiko attempts to free herself from her own reality, there is a realization for the viewer that she herself does not understand the simple and kind beauty of the real world, best embodied by the compassionate people she encounters in Minnesota�

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VICTORIA DIRECTED BY SEBASTIAN SCHIPPER WRITTEN BY OLIVIA NEERGAARD-HOLM & SEBASTIAN SCHIPPER STARRING LAIA COSTA & FREDERICK LAU RELEASE DATE JUNE 12th Sebastian Schipper’s ‘Victoria’ premiered in the Berlinale-Palast theatre, just off the high-rise bustle of Potsdamer Platz, at the heart of Berlin, a fitting location for a film that immerses itself so fully in the city.

Yet ‘Victoria’ presents to us an even more intense experience of the many-sided Berlin that enthrals, dazzles, frightens, and above all dares us to deny its authenticity.

We follow Victoria, a young Spanish woman who has moved to Berlin, as she dances alone in a nightclub. She befriends a group of young German men; Sonne, Boxer, Blinker and Fusse, walks with them, steals beers, and winds up on a rooftop in the early hours of the morning, amid cries of ‘We are the real Berliners!’. She is accompanied home by Sonne, where they flirt endearingly before being summoned away by Boxer, as the film takes its darker and more tense turn into thriller territory. Mere description in words cannot ever do justice to the searingly beautiful way that these at first unremarkable events are rendered by the talent of the actors, the ambitiously perfect camerawork, and the characterisation of the city itself.

Victoria is shot all in one take and achieves what the excellent but vainglorious ‘Birdman’ never could, a complete and utter authenticity of both form and content. The camerawork is seamless, it is nigh-on impossible to discern where any editing has been done, and the illusion of real-time is so perfect that it feels utterly believable that the sequence of events really does unfold within the 140 minute running time. The pacing is masterful, at no point do you question the timing of events, and truly extraordinary is the way that it captures without cuts the flow of a night out that continues on through the early hours of the morning. The dialogue in the film was mostly improvised and takes place in an authentic blend of broken English and German, which feels the furthest thing from forced, as does the tender flirting between Victoria and Sonne. That the film manages to make space to breathe and touch gently on backstories whilst never losing its forward momentum, is more praise to join the lengthening list.

The film’s execution is sufficiently impressive, but even more so is the scope of the themes it explores, an entire family dynamic is created over the course of one night that feels more genuine than some depictions of a lifetime of familial relations do on film.

Victoria deals with isolation, naivety, displacement and most importantly with modern Berlin itself as a complex and evolving city. The film is an authentic contemporary love-letter to the city, not least because of its warts and all honesty. It allows the beautiful and the terrible to co-exist, and explores the trajectory of a relationship that unfolds over one night in the city in the most heartrendingly beautiful way. Without ever sacrificing its verisimilitude, it even finds room for humour amid its meditations on love and loyalty.

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In every possible aspect, ‘Victoria’ is masterfully executed. The score is utilised perfectly, the minimalistic music propels the film forward and is allowed to take over in scenes of extreme emotion. Original compositions by German composer Nils Frahm blend the classical and the electronic to express the multifaceted city and the title character in the most hauntingly apt way. To watch the film’s premiere in Berlin, to hear richly deserved thunderous applause from the crowd of perhaps a thousand strong for the director, actors and production team, was a privilege. The undisputed highlight of the Berlinale 2015, watching the film in the city that it is so beholden to, as it makes its first of many, many waves yet to come.

AMELIA MCCONVILLE

“Victoria is shot all in one take and achieves what the excellent but vainglorious Birdman never could, a complete and utter authenticity of both form and content”

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“WHAT MAKES LAKE MUNGO SO AFFECTING IS ITS BRILLIANT HANDLING OF THE DIVIDE BETWEEN TRUTH AND FICTION AND ITS UNDERSTANDING OF THE GREY SPACE BETWEEN THE TWO”

What makes Lake Mungo so affecting is its brilliant handling of the divide between truth and fiction and its understanding of the grey space that exists between the two.

From a formal perspective the film is utterly convincing whilst masquerading as a documentary. The media blitz following Alice’s disappearance and during the recovery of her body feel very authentic.

What really sells this aspect of the film however, is the extensive use of talking heads throughout and in particular the performances of the actors playing her family during them.

The confusion and despair of her parents (played by Rosie Traynor and David Pledger respectively) as they publicly struggle to deal with the pain of a dead daughter who is seemingly still present in some form in their home is perfectly realised. Her younger brother (Martin Sharpe) goes the opposite direction, becoming incredibly insular and setting up cameras all over the house in an effort to uncover whats transpiring in his sisters room.

These blurred lines between fantasy and reality are the driving force of the films narrative also. We’re drip fed a series of clues relating to Alice’s disappearance and the seemingly unexplainable events that happen in its aftermath. Many of these turn out to be red herrings, many others turn out to have a completely different meaning for us when further information becomes available. Ultimately what the film does is create an ongoing sense of uncertainty, pointing the audience in one direction before suddenly careering off into another, leaving us breathless trying to catch up. At the same time, this push and pull feeds into the family’s now extremely fragile dynamic, seeing Alice’s father and brother retreating into themselves, leaving her grieving mother to suffer alone,. All of this culminates in a final few moments that somehow manage to combine everything seen so far; secrets, lies, love, fear, the natural and the supernatural to create an ending that is both profoundly unsettling and deeply moving.

LAKE MUNGO UNDERRATED

Late last year Australian director Jennifer Kent’s stunning debut film “The Babadook” was released in cinemas and wowed both critics and audiences alike. Its brilliant combination of horror and psychological drama created a film that featured both a terrifying monster and a moving depiction of grief. A lesser known, but equally affecting film that also manages to combine the pain of loss with overt horror is another Aussie import, the Joel Anderson directed Lake Mungo. Released in 2008, Anderson’s film made a very strong impression with the critics but failed to find an audience even among the most ardent horror fans and has seemingly since been all but forgotten.

JACK O’KENNEDY

Told in a faux documentary style, Lake Mungo tells the story of the Palmer family, whose world is upended after a family trip to the lake of the film’s title leads to the disappearance of their sixteen year old daughter Alice. Through a combination of artificial news reporting and talking heads intercut with more artfully shot doc footage we soon learn that Alice has drowned and her body has been recovered from the lake. The story then abruptly takes a turn for the supernatural as Alice’s parents Rosie and David and brother Matthew begin to notice strange noises in their home .

Suddenly what begins as a film examining the effect that the death of a loved one has on the family left behind is complicated by a ghostly presence that may or may not be real.

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However, the real offender here is Naomi Harris’ Moneypenny, whose entire character arc seems to conclude with the realization she’s not meant to be out in the field with the boys but working as a secretary behind a desk instead.

The decision to explore Bond’s past, a previously untouched area for the films, highlights the filmmakers desperation to find new territory to bring the character. Showing Bonds roots is a fundamental error that betrays the very essence of the character. James Bond arrived on screen as a fully formed entity in 1962, and has functioned as such for fifty years without needing a backstory.When it comes to the films climax, Mendes aims for Straw Dogs, but ends up somewhere closer to Home Alone territory.

So what next for the Bond franchise? Spectre being the title of the new entry, would suggest another attempt to call back to the characters legacy. Here’s hoping they actually get it right, otherwise just leave it to Jason Bourne in the future.

OVERRATED SKYFALL LOUIE CARROLL

Casino Royale should have been the last Bond film ever made! A controversial statement perhaps, but lets break it down. Heralded as the reinvention of the franchise, Casino Royale actually signaled the death knell for the series in terms of the relevance of the 007 franchise. In an effort to actually make a good film, director Martin Campbell wisely stepped away from everything that is iconic about Bond, thus proving that the Bond films were irrelevant in the era of Jason Bourne. If Casino Royale was the warning, Quantum of Solace was the nail in the coffin. Instead of building on the good work of its predecessor, the Bond genre proved it couldn’t sustain that level of high octane action without any of the trademark humour, resulting in one of the most dour experiences you’re ever likely to have at the cinema. And then came the arrival of the titular overrated film, Skyfall.

In 2012 Bond was fifty years old, it was time to celebrate all that was great about one of most culturally impactful icons of British culture.

But take a closer look, what is there to actually celebrate about this character. In twenty-four films, there have been a maximum of five quite good ones, and at least ten of them are unwatchable, that’s a pretty terrible batting average for a character that’s held in such high regard.

Rather bizarrely, the Bond that director Sam Mendes chose to bring to life was arguably the most irrelevant and dated of all available. Strangely, he made the decision to hark back to the Roger Moore era, with camp humour and outlandish set pieces aplenty. Not that there’s anything particularly wrong with camp Bond, but having seen the workmanlike Daniel Craig performance of Casino Royale in which he plows through walls and drowns people in a toilets, returning to the quippy, debonair character of a bygone era feels like a misguided and awkward transition.

Speaking of camp, the flirting scene between Bond and Javier Bardem’s theatrical villain Silva is one of the most poorly judged sequences in the franchises history and that’s saying something for a series that also had Sean Connery pretend to be Japanese in You Only Live Twice.

Also despite being a released in 2012, Skyfall is perhaps the most sexist of all the Bond films, and once again, that’s saying something for a series that previously featured a female character called Pussy Galore. Bérénice Marlohe arrives on screen for one shower sex scene and is then promptly dispatched in a most unglamorous manner, much like Gemma Arterton in Quantum of Solace.

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“Rather bizarrely, the Bond that director Sam Mendes chose to bring to life was arguably the most irrelevant and dated of all available”

MORE EASILY GOVERNED BY MY VICES Thomas Emmet on his own personal vice: predicting Oscar winners and getting them (mostly) wrong.

In a recent interview to promote his newest film Matthew Vaughn claimed that Oscar pictures send him to sleep and are more like TV films than cinematic entertainment. It is therefore ironic that Kingsman: The Secret Service reaches levels of pretension some of the Oscar grabbing “auteurs” are accused of and carries the TV movie message of “anyone can be a gentleman, even if you grew up in the most stereotypical council flat”. The film, a sometimes entertaining bastard love child of a Debrett’s how to guide and a seventies Bond movie, has spectacular action scenes but is too cheesy for its own good and occasionally veers into educational territory. However, Vaughn’s point still stands; the Oscars are becoming a pastiche of themselves. And yet it is my vice, that each year I watch all the nominated films and predict in my head which films will win what.

Since its beginnings the Oscars have been an enduring source of contention. When they awarded How Green Was My Valley the Outstanding Motion Picture over Citizen Kane at the 14th Academy Awards there was uproar.

Citizen Kane is now at the top of the “Greatest Films Ever Of All Time In The Universe Forever” list while How Green Was My Valley has since virtually fallen into obscurity (unless you’re like me and want to watch it so you can claim it is actually better than Citizen Kane).

They are seen as a repressive body awarding Paul Haggis’ workaday Crash Best Picture over Ang Lee’s gay romance Brokeback Mountain, and an unpatriotic one when Shakespeare in Love was awarded over Saving Private Ryan.

The stereotypes overshadow the actual ceremony: long speeches dedicated to dead parents and primary school drama teachers, misogyny

in having any shot with a flowing dress rather than a woman giving a diatribe on said misogyny, ham fisted jokes from the master of ceremonies that cause nominees to curl in their seats but display a mask of amused pacifism.

All in all the Oscars are not really that great, and yet it is my personal vice.

It is not that I get so excited when all the nominees come out and start predicting in my head who wins, its that I do it over and over again despite the fact I know I will never be happy about the results. Each year when the ceremony ends I curse the institute roundly, swear off ever watching it again and fall into a slump of incomprehension at why a silent film actor could possibly be better than an actor who has to use the full range at their disposal. However that is an aside. Come next December I’m paying close attention to the films hacks like myself are tagging with the label “Oscar nominations”. I’m carefully making a list of when these films come out so I can accurately predict which should win, because ultimately a student in Dublin is much more likely to predict the winner than any betting agent or renowned film professor.

The hype builds as it gets closer to the nominations being revealed. At this point there are so many films being predicted that there can only be a backlash when the official announcement comes out. And there is. Each year there’s the darling film that didn’t get nominated but the edgier film critics claim is “too good for the Oscars”. For 2015 it is of course the magnificent A Most Violent Year. The film is an odd experience, such is its massive build up to a miniscule climax. Initially I was under

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whelmed, but the more I think back on the film, the more it impresses me. The slow but ever-present tension, the constant sense of entrapment for Oscar Isaac’s Abel Morales and his increasing fear of the mobster lifestyle his wife inhabited before she married him.

Whether or not it makes it too good for the Oscars is questionable, because if it had been nominated and lost, the same writers would be saying the same things, just from another angle.

Another thing that adds to the Oscar furor is the other awards ceremonies that come before it. Eager viewers watch to see if there is a pattern emerging, whether the Oscars will complement or negate these lesser ceremonies. Whether these are lesser ceremonies is very much open to debate, as they are less surrounded by hype, so can do a better job of actually awarding the most deserving candidate.

The perfect example is the BAFTAs Best Supporting Actor this year. J K Simmons and Steve Carrell are both extraordinary in their respective films, but Simmons is a seasoned character actor who steals Whiplash, while Foxcatcher represents Carrell’s first truly serious film.

The award should not have gone to a gimicky performance, but fully realised and masterfully confident one, and it did in being awarded to Simmons. It is also fantastic that Carrell has been put into the right category, unlike in the Oscars where he is being nominated for Best Actor. The fact that Boyhood won so many of the larger awards may or may not be a portent for February 22nd.

As for this year and the actual nominees, there is a wide variety and I agree with most of the choices. The Best Picture can be summarized as follows: American Sniper is a middling war film with less substance than the controversy that has followed it. Birdman is exquisite once you get over the fact it’s a 119 minute tracking shot. Boyhood is that overachieving child in your class that you cant fault but don’t really want to be close friends with. The Grand Budapest Hotel is proof that Wes Anderson hasn’t lost his way after the borderline self parodying Moonrise Kingdom. The Imitation Game is solid, even if Keira Knightley does appear in it. Selma is the most current film on the list post-Ferguson and it doesn’t let itself down. The Theory of Everything made me look at every muscle anew. And finally Whiplash proves that drumming is really really hard work. I would have added Nightcrawler and Dear White People to those nominations, but it is a pretty strong list already and I don’t have any sway with the board at the Academy. Yet. Best Actor is just a selection of people form those above mentioned films (my money is on Steve Carrell), but Best Actress is far more interesting with the exception of Marion Cotillard (boo hiss) who has inexplicably been nominated for portraying the most glam working class depressive in cinematic history.

Julianne Moore, who won the BAFTA, plays a woman with early onset Alzheimer’s. Early reviews are very positive but I have yet to see it.

Rosamund Pike has gone from Bond Girl to Gone Girl (I am definitely not the person who came up with this so credit to that punny genius) and is in a two-way tie for who should win the award, with Felicity Jones’ exceptional performance. Reese Witherspoon, recently the subject of many peoples Christmas wreaths thanks to a well placed joke in the Mindy Project is a great actress. Sadly, Wild is an awful film. Maybe that’s unfair, if you like navel gazing redemption stories with occasional inspirational quotes, this is the film for you.

The only thing I found redemptive about it was Laura Dern’s performance, thankfully not overlooked for Best Supporting Actress.

The Supporting nominations are always more interesting than the Actor and Actress nomination I find. Where else would you find Robert Duvall from the overlooked The Judge?

Where else can Keira Knightley be the same as she ever was and get nominated? Where else can they can they cram a stock Meryl Street nomination? I would predict J K Simmons comfortably walking away with the Best Supporting Actor and I’d like to see Patricia Arquette get Supporting Actress.

Best Director is a four-way race. Other than an interesting name Morten Tyldum is at a slight disadvantage in the strangely alternative list.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu is the most creative of the directors, Wes Anderson the most bizarre, Richard Linklater the most dedicated, and Bennett Miller the most reliable. Any of these directors should get it, but I reckon it will be Inarritu.

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Those are the big six, the other awards don’t get as much focus on them. Best Original Screenplay should go to Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler.

Adapted Screenplay strangely has Whiplash in the category (being adapted from a short film of the same name) but will likely go to Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice, purely for the risky decision to adapt Thomas Pynchon that mostly does not pay off. Cinema walkouts for that film are at a record high. Ida and Leviathan are the frontrunners for Best Foreign Language Film, sadly I missed both of them on their original release. The Animated Film sees three films that are close to brilliance (Big Hero 6, Boxtrolls and How to Train Your Dragon 2) but miss it slightly. And if “Everything is Awesome” from The Lego Movie wins Best Original Song I fear I will tear off my ears.

I am very wary of writing a piece like this. My reputation (mostly in my head) must be considered. The chances are that I will be right on some categories and completely off-base on others. That is the vice, that like betting on cock fights, you can only be half sure the one you bet on will kill other one. Perhaps they should do that with the nominees. But then Meryl Streep, crazed by the disproportionate wins to nominations ratio might take on every nominee in every category. Then again I may be wrong on all fronts, in which case I will once again swear off the Oscars and fall into the slump of incomprehension I inevitably do every year until November when the so called buzz picks up and the process is repeated over and over and over. Insanity may be repeating the same thing and expecting different results but I, for one, am already stuck.

NETFLIX GRAVEYARD “ M . V. P. ”

HERE AT TFR WE ALTAR OF THE NETF THE MOST BENEV STREAMING BEING SENDING A MICROWA YOUR WAY ONCE IN AROUND LEO HANN GRIM GENIUS OF BLUE CARROLL WADES CINEMATIC SWAM

It took some serious digging in order to find a film worthy of this edition of TFR’s prestigious Netflix Graveyard title.

However, when you come across a movie about an animal playing a sport of any description, you know you’re probably on the right track. The nineties were a great period for athletic animals. There was Air Bud, story of a basketball playing golden retriever. There’s Joe,the Matt LeBlanc starring tale of a baseball-playing chimpanzee and who could forget Soccer Dog, the film about a..well you get the idea.

Perhaps the nadir of this era came in 2000 with the arrival of MVP: Most Valuable Chimp, another chimpanzee this time but one with a natural flair for ice hockey. Our hero is a genius primate called Jack. After the death of the college professor who cares for him, Jack escapes the university’s attempts to sell him to an animal testing facility. A missed stop on a train leads him to snowy Canada instead of his originally intended destination of an animal sanctuary.

Meanwhile a brother and sister pair of Steven and Tara struggle to adjust to their concurrent relocation to the Great White North after moving from California. Why are they there? (We never find out, not relevant.) Tara is deaf and finds it hard to make new friends at school. Steven is having problems of his own settling in to his new hockey team, the wonderfully named Golden Nuggets. Who on earth could save these kids from their predicament you ask.Fresh off the train Jack and Tara have a chance encounter and instantly become friends. She then brings Jack home to meet the family. After greeting everyone at the breakfast table, it’s not long before this chimp is sleeping in Tara’s bed, because that’s what you do with stray monkeys.

If all this seems a bit far-fetched, it’s nothing compared to the leap the filmmakers ask of you with the next big plot development. Jack decides to further integrate himself into the family by following Steven to his hockey training session, throwing on a pair of skates and trying his hand at the sport. Lo and behold, he’s the best player on the failing team, so naturally, they sign him up.

A hockey playing monkey is a pretty far out concept and the filmmakers make absolutely no effort to explain why Jack is so good at his newly adopted sport. No magic skates,no genetic enhancement, nothing. He’s a just a chimpanzee. Who can play hockey. Really well. And just like allowing an animal of unknown origin to sleep in a bed with a young girl, no one bats an eyelid when Jack becomes the star player. It’s not just Steven that Jack helps out. Tara brings her simian pal to school for show and tell, thus enabling her to gain traction with the other children, which is nothing short of vomit inducingly heart warming.

“The hockey choreography involving the chimp is undeniably impressive, if you’re into that sort of thing, and why wouldn’t you be” 28

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Most Valuable Primate is directed by Robert Vince, a man with a proven track record in the area of family friendly animal films. A quick glance at his imdb and it appears that this auteur has either produced or directed every single Air Bud, Snow Buddies and Santa Paws movie ever made. He’s also the driving force behind the MVP franchise, which, following this entry went on to include Most Vertical Primate (Monkey Skateboarding) and Most Extreme Primate (Monkey Snowboarding), be sure to thank him for those the next time you see him.

The performances are just about what you’d expect to find in a monkey sports movie. However, the hockey choreography involving the chimp is undeniably impressive, if you’re into that sort of thing, and why wouldn’t you be.

For those in search of a happy ending you’re in luck, Jack helps the Golden Nuggets win a very important trophy of some description, Steven gets a contract with a better team, and Jack gets to go live his family. If monkey sports aren’t your thing, Mr Vince also directed a film entitled Spymate, which involves a monkey super spy. Sounds promising.

WORSHIP AT THE FLIX GODS BUT EVEN VOLENT OF MOVIE GS IS CAPABLE OF AVED TURD OF A FILM A WHILE. THIS TIME NA CELEBRATES THE E RUIN WHILST LOUIE S THROUGH THE MP THAT IS M.V.P.

NETFLIX HIDDEN GEM

“BLUE RUIN”

While trawling through the many humdrum titles dotted throughout the expansive landscape of Netflix, one would not be blamed for skimming past ‘Blue Ruin’. The cover, while not without its merits, is relatively uninteresting and has the charm of any number of quasi Coen thriller knock offs. The kind that tend to be released and disappear into the Netflix ranks to be later lost between a brutal Robert de Niro romantic comedy and a schlockfest starring (insert failed action star here). But, what Blue Ruin has that these other imposters don’t is genuinely heart-ripping suspense, startlingly real performances and a sense of bleakness that would make Nic Cave pat you on the shoulder and say ‘Chin up mate, it’ll be alright’ The films opening introduces us to the heavily bearded beach bum Dwight who sleeps in his broken down car and breaks into houses from time to time to clean himself up.

When a police women stumbles across him and informs him that the murderer of his parents has been released, he sets out on an authentically realised though half formed plan for revenge that sees him scouring the dirty, dusty backroads of America and thoroughly deconstructs the romance and fantasy of the revenge thriller. This isn’t going to have Gerard Butler walking around in the nip and blowing up cars, nor does it depict Kevin Bacon shaving his head and waving a double barrel shotgun around. There is no hyper masculine superman hunting down his enemies with merciless efficiency in Blue Ruin. Dwight is a normal, soft spoken man of below average physical prowess and intelligence, and he acts as such. He constantly makes mistakes that any man would make, be it unsuccessfully trying to surgically remove an arrow from his leg in a similar vein to John Rambo or breaking his hand when trying to puncture a car tyre. His humanity and the fact that he is painfully ill equipped for this revenge mission is reiterated at every hurdle that comes his way.

“There is no hypermasculine superman hunting down his enemies with merciless efficiency in Blue Ruin. Dwight is a normal, soft spoken man of below average physical prowess and intelligence, and he acts as such”

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Blue Ruin is a film that expertly breaks down the typically black and white nature of revenge on film and it extends this notion to its protagonist and its unique cast of characters.. The majority of them are losers, plain and simple.

Dwelling in rundown backwoods housing and often living with their mothers, each and every one showcases the darker aspects of small town America. The majority of run of the mill revenge films give the protagonist that familiar character who acts as a voice of reason,who exists to tell them that what they are doing is morally wrong. Blue Ruin however is not most revenge films and it’s characters are more likely to revel in the carnage than oppose it.

Take Dwight’s distant though seemingly normal (which in the world of Blue Ruin is not saying much) who squirms with passionate delight once told of a killing or Dwight’s old school friend who takes a morbid fascination with his quest for revenge; no one is there to whisper in his left ear to let go! This is left up to Dwight’s whimpering psyche that wavers throughout and makes us doubt whether he can really go through completely with all his intended plans.

Jeremy Saulnier’s direction is superb, slowly ratcheting up the tension throughout. The close quarter nature home invasion scenes add a powerful sense of claustrophobia.

The cinematography is replete with desolate yet beautiful landscapes, which only elevate the alienating, remote nature of the movie and its protagonists grim goal. A low budget thriller Blue Ruin may be but it’s directed with such assurance and boasts such narrative flair that it could trade punches with any successful mainstream thriller of recent years.

GRADUATE FOCUS IN GRADUATE FOCUS WE SPEAK TO RECENTLY GRADUATED FILM STUDENTS FROM TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN WHO ARE NOW WORKING IN THE INDUSTRY. THIS TIME AROUND WE SPOKE TO GAVIN SITRIC FITZGERALD WHO ON TOP OF WRITING, DIRECTING AND EDITING HIS OWN FILMS WAS MOST RECENTLY THE DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY ON THE NEW RTE SHOW CHRONICLING THE CAREER OF IRISH MMA FIGHTER CONOR MCGREGOR, “NOTORIOUS”

TFR: What was your experience with film grow ing up, was there a particular moment or film that made you realise it was something you’d like to pursue as a career?

GF: Well I always loved films, a lot more than reading books! In transition year, we took a film course with my old English teacher and we talked critically about films. I remember watching Howard Hawk’s ‘The Big Sleep’ and enjoying talking constructively about it.

Poetry never got me as excited as films. I also lived in Ranelagh, right next to Laser, which is no more and I’d rent movies every weekend.

TFR: Sad to see it go wasn’t it? In interviewed the lads in the Georges St. branch the week before they shut the doors for good GF: Yes but you’ve got to adapt with the times. Television is changing, the ways we consume series are accelerating. I see the internet as a hub for opportunities in film.

TFR: You studied film in TCD. What was your experience of the film course?

GF: It was pretty good. I got exposed to a lot of films I never would have watched otherwise and it was interesting to chat with such a sophisticated group of people. Ultimately though practical filmmaking was the route for me and by the fourth year, I felt it dragged.

You’re so young going in and your mind develops a great deal within the four years. I have no regrets though and really enjoyed my time there. Well, I probably should have worked harder, ha.

TFR: Did you make any shorts whilst in college?

GF: Yeah, I made a bunch with the use of the filmmakers society. Technically speaking, they weren’t going to pick up any oscars but I believe they will become cult classics in years to come. I actually won €3000 for an Irish language short film I made with my girlfriend and a good friend of mine. It was called ‘Potassium’ and it meant that in the summer of 2009 I could sit in the Pav and buy an actual pint of beer. Anybody who’s even slightly into making films should try it out. They are my fondest memories of college.

TFR: So what was your first film related job outside of college?

TFR: What was the experience of shooting the show like?

GF: Well my first real job was in a rental house for film and television equipment. My job was to prep the gear for hires and to deliver the equipment to locations if needed. It was a really good introduction to the industry because I made a lot of contacts, learned which production companies were producing what and got up to speed with the equipment. It also gave me access to a room full of equipment and I made a number of shorts in my time there.

GF: It’s been a crazy experience following Conor around. This life is new to him too but he fits in like a glove. I’ve gotten to do a lot of traveling which has been great. Shooting in new countries is a wonderful feeling for a cinematographer. Everything looks new and exciting;the colours, the people, the energy. You just have to thrive off it! We work in a very small crew of one, two or three people so you are kept very busy but we all work hard at what we do and we put in the time to get the best possible footage.

TFR: That can be the most daunting aspect for most film graduates, finding that opportunity to get your foot in the door. Did you get your next job off of contacts made working in the rental house?

GF: Yeah I remember the feeling alright. You want to make films but have no idea where to start or know who could hire you. Ireland is a small film industry so the reality is, entry level jobs are sparse. After leaving the rental house I went freelance. Being self-employed gives you the freedom to take on whatever opportunities present themselves. Some people are daunted by this idea but my approach has always been to get better at what you do. You can teach yourself how to edit by looking at hours and hours of free videos on youtube.

You can buy a camera, even if it’s second hand and out of date and learn how to shoot with it. Don’t wait around for the ideal job, just get out there and practice.

TFR: So how did you come to be involved with “Notorious”. Were there many gigs in between leaving the rental house and working on the RTE show?

GF: A friend of mine runs an MMA site called SevereMMA.com. He wanted to do some video content for the blog so myself and a filmmaker friend of mine, Patrick Timmons Ward, called up to SBG on the longmile road and made a short piece on Cathal Pendred, who is now 3-0 in the UFC. Through him we met other fighters and made videos on them, one of which was Conor McGregor. We all got along and as his stardom grew, we kept close to him and he liked having us around.

The point being, we didn’t go down to the gym that day to make money. We were doing it because we wanted to. You never know where things lead so don’t let a bad attitude hold you back. If you want to make films then just keep doing it and you’ll get there eventually.

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TFR: Conor’s a very charismatic figure and I think you can see that kind of showmanship is something he gets from his Dad. He must be a great person to have as a documentary subject?

GF: You couldn’t ask for a more charismatic figure really. He’s so open, his family too. They’re good people.

With some documentary subjects you have to ask a lot of questions to get a great response but Conor is a soundbite machine. It makes our job easier!

TFR: The first two episodes have been great. What can we expect from the rest of the show?

GF: More access. We’re backstage for the Poirier and Siver fight. This is stuff people have never seen before.

It’s raw and nothing is set up. That and a whole lot of laughs. Episode four includes the Brazil trip. That was nuts.

TFR: Have you any other projects in the pipeline?

GF: Yeah 2015 is going to be a big year. I’m hoping a couple of new documentary ideas will be funded. I’ll be directing them. Then there’s some music videos to be made and feature films to be written. That and the matter of a title shot...It’s going to be fun!

INTERVIEW BY JACK O’KENNEDY

FIVE WORD REVIEWS SEVEN DEADLY SINS

LUST / SHAME / THE FASS AND THE BICURIOUS ENVY / FATAL ATTRACTION / RABBIT STEW FOR THE SOUL GLUTTONY / SUPER SIZE ME / PROLONGED SUICIDE SPONSORED BY MCDONALDS PRIDE / SCARFACE / PRIDE COMES BEFORE A SPEEDBALL WRATH / BLUE RUIN / BLUE IS THE WARMEST KILLER GREED / WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS / GREED IS GOOD. THIS ISN’T. SLOTH / OFFICE SPACE / FUCK TPS REPORTS, GET MONEY

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