Film Event Highlights German cinema, the Scottish Gone with the Wind and the Star Wars movie that George Lucas really doesn't want you to see Words: Jamie Dunn
Carol
G
erman cinema is celebrated this month in new season Fokus, a joint venture from Glasgow’s Goethe-Institut and Edinburgh’s Filmhouse. There are two mint fresh Berlin odysseys in the programme getting Scottish premieres: breakneck thriller Victoria, which was shot straight through in one take with no edits (20 Nov), and documentary B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin 1979-1989, a vibrant look at the underground music scene of the German capital in the years before the fall of the Wall. Fokus also pays homage to Rainer Werner Fassbinder with airings of two of his masterpieces, Fox and His Friends (25 Nov) and The Marriage of Maria Braun (26 Nov). As well as Filmhouse, you’ll find other Fokus screenings at venues across Scotland. For full listings, go to filmsfromgermany.co.uk Keen to see Terence Davies’ latest masterpiece a month before the rest of the UK? The Scottish premiere of Sunset Song takes place 11 Nov at Filmhouse, with Davies and his stars Agyness Deyn and Kevin Guthrie in tow to present the film. Those on the West Coast can catch it the following night at GFT, which will also include a Q&A. We called Davies’ film “a Scottish answer to Gone with the Wind.” Don’t miss it. Another unmissable screening is GFT’s showing of John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence (15 Nov), one of the very best films of the 70s, from 35mm. It’s the story of a married couple (played by Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk) where the wife is edging towards madness, and Cassavetes’ probing camera rings every inch of drama and turmoil from the simple set-up.
Steve Jobs
Carol
Steve Jobs
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Director: Todd Haynes Starring: Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Kyle Chandler Released: 27 Nov Certificate: 15
Director: Danny Boyle Starring: Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen Released: 13 Nov Certificate: 15
“I’m charting the correlation between what characters say and what they mean,” says a film buff while watching Sunset Boulevard in Todd Haynes’ Carol. This gloriously romantic film’s dialogue needs similar decoding, but not so its glances. As soon as flinty store clerk Therese (Mara) meets eyes with our title character (a radiant Blanchett) across a teeming department store, we palpably feel their attraction. This is the 1950s, though, and Therese is reticent to express her feelings: “I want to ask you things, but I’m not sure you want that.” “Ask,” replies Carol, achingly. These women are trapped by their era’s conformity. Carol and Therese try to kindle a love affair, but the men who wish to own them continually snuff it out. Haynes’ images mirror the couple’s imprisonment, framing them in doorways and through windows. But like Carol says to her jealous exhusband (Chandler), love is “like science, it’s like pinball.” Haynes is telling us that, thrillingly, passion burns hotter than fear. For Carol and Therese, the chemical reaction has begun; the ball bearings are in motion. [Jamie Dunn]
There are few writers operating in mainstream media today who exhibit the kind of auteurial control we see from Aaron Sorkin. His screenplay for Steve Jobs – full of the breakneck dialogue and quick-witted humour that characterises his work – even manages to overpower the trademark panache of Danny Boyle. If the film is a symphony then Sorkin is its conductor, and he’s fortunate to have Michael Fassbender in first chair, giving a remarkable performance as the fabled Apple co-founder. Myth-making is the film’s raison d’être. This is not a traditional biopic, but rather a character study meticulously constructed to reflect both incredible vision and inescapable faults. Separated into three 40-minute sections, each one chronicles a fictionalised version of the minutes immediately before a big product launch: the Macintosh in 1984, the NeXT in 1988, and the iMac in 1998. Accused by some of being a character assassination, this is much more than that: it’s a nuanced portrait of an undoubtedly great man through several complicated and sometimes fraught relationships. [Ben Nicholson]
Tangerine
Brooklyn
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Director: Sean Baker Starring: Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, Mya Taylor, Mickey O’Hagan Released: 13 Nov Certificate: 15
Director: John Crowley Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Emory Cohen, Domhnall Gleeson Released: 6 Nov Certificate: 12A
“Merry Christmas Eve, bitch!” So goes the opening line of Tangerine, a single-night screwball set on the West Hollywood strip that comes at you like a Jim Jarmusch movie on amphetamines. This exchange is between Sin-Dee (Rodriguez) and Alexandra (Taylor), who are best friends, trans women and working girls. They’re celebrating Sin-Dee’s recent emancipation over a donut when Alexandra lets slip that Sin-Dee’s pimp/boyfriend has been cheating on her with a “real fish” (meaning a non-trans woman). So sets off an apoplectic Sin-Dee out for revenge and a hilarious chain of events that ends before the night is through at the same crummy donut shop. Director Sean Baker’s expressive camera (remarkably, this gorgeous film was shot using iPhone 5s) keeps pace with his firecracker heroines – both non-actors – following their adventure through LA’s shimmering afternoon light. The film is so rambunctious and fast-paced that you hardly notice it slip into a humanist drama just sweet enough to oust It’s a Wonderful Life from your Christmas movie rotation. [Jamie Dunn]
Adapted from Colm Tóibín’s beloved novel, Brooklyn is a refreshingly oldfashioned melodrama with depths that transcend its initial lightweightlooking tearjerker packaging. Saoirse Ronan makes an impressive move towards adult leading roles as Eilis, a young Irish immigrant navigating her way through Brooklyn of 1952, her older sister having funded her move there for a “better life”. Devastating homesickness eventually makes way for hard-hitting romance as she falls for Italian-American lad Tony (Cohen, very sweet). But a disruption back in Ireland sees her return there for a while, subsequently falling for another man (Gleeson) as other forces seem determined to prevent her returning to her new home. Despite little flair in the visual storytelling department, Brooklyn is a touching romance and nuanced exploration of how perceptions of home and family shift as life throws us new opportunities. It’s also, despite the tragedy and longing, one of the year’s funnier films thanks to a game cast and Nick Hornby’s screenplay, the latter commendable for engaging with various ethnicities head-on without resorting to stereotypes. [Josh Slater-Williams]
Radiator
My Skinny Sister
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Apocalypse Now
An equally potent representation of madness is captured in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (Filmhouse, 1 Dec), which sees Martin Sheen’s Captain Willard track Marlon Brando’s Colonel Kurtz up the rivers of Vietnam. You need to see this big to appreciate its sound and fury. There’s another chance to get inside Brando’s head with ace new doc Listen to Me Marlon, which also plays Filmhouse 23-26 Nov. And finally, to whet your appetite for the release of a certain space epic set a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, the fellows over at Watch Bad Movies with Great Comedians (CCA, 2 Dec) have got their hands on the notorious Star Wars Holiday Special (George Lucas evidently failed in his attempt to “smash every copy with a sledgehammer”). If you haven’t seen the bootleg on YouTube, imagine Attack of the Clones, but even clunkier, with added songs and loads of incomprehensible proto-Skype calls with Chewbacca’s family. [Jamie Dunn]
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Review
Director: Tom Browne Starring: Richard Johnson, Gemma Jones, Daniel Cerqueira Released: Out now Certificate: TBC
Radiator ranks British film venerates Barbara Broccoli and Rachel Weisz among its squad of executive producers. Though this muscle is scarcely to be seen in a quiet effort from director Tom Browne, who also shares writing duties with co-star Daniel Cerqueira. The latter plays fictional Daniel, a middle-aged bachelor bidden to return from London to rural Cumbria by Maria, his fraught mother (Gemma Jones). She’s ostensibly concerned for the well-being of ageing patriarch Leonard (Richard Johnson). Just which of her two men, husband or son, she’s truly looking out for becomes less clear as things unravel. Johnson is certainly strong as the dying old lion to Cerqueira’s slightly wan whelp, but it’s Jones at the top of the acting triumvir. She’s both stoic and brittle in the face of her tyrannical invalid husband. She also does the best with Browne and Cerqueira’s occasionally stagey, self-conscious dialogue. Radiator is a thoughtful film, though, and not without moments of lightness and beauty. It gently probes the line between companionship and dependence. [Angus Sutherland]
FILM
Director: Sanna Lenken Starring: Rebecka Josephson, Amy Deasismont, Annika Hallin Released: 27 Nov Certificate: 15
My Skinny Sister follows the trials of bulimic teenage ice skater Katja (Deasismont) as seen from the viewpoint of her bright younger sister Stella (Josephson). With a mixture of awe and jealousy, Stella regards her older sister as an idol to be emulated, and it’s through Stella that with creeping dread we realise the extent of Katja’s eating disorder. Stella comes across Katja binging on crisps from the dustbin, peeks in through the toilet door to see her purging and witnesses her fainting on the ice. Coupled with Katja’s nose bleeds and increasingly panicked behaviour around family meals, My Skinny Sister offers one of the most accurate portrayals of bulimia on screen, and touches on the almost virus-like way in which eating disorders can spread to those around the sufferer, with Stella scrutinising herself in the mirror, losing body confidence and refusing food like her tortured sister. This strength is also Lenken’s film’s weakness, however. By the film’s denouement, Katja is little more than an object in Stella’s character development. [Rachel Bowles]
THE SKINNY