Good afternoon. I have a confession to make. I am a fan of Rebel Wilson. She is the best actor in the world. Forget Frances McDormand and Saoirse Ronan, there is no greater actress than Rebel Wilson. From her role as large, clumsy woman in Cats to her role as large, clumsy woman in Pitch Perfect 2, Rebel Wilson shows a real range of emotions that even Orson Wells wouldn’t have been able to do justice to in his writing. I have written this statement of my own free will and with no threat to my life. Long live Rebel Wilson.

Lets start this week by talking about Peru’s submission for the 2021 Oscars best international film category, Song Without a Name (2019). Honestly, it probably won’t win in, because the film was kind of boring. Set in an era of political unrest, the story follows a woman who has given birth in Lima, however she has done so in a fake clinic and her baby is stolen. She wants to find it and turns to a journalist. Then some things happen. I’m not really sure what as it got really slow and didn’t seem to go anywhere.

Visually, the film was wonderful. The cinematography was great and the use of camera was interesting and reminiscent of Roma. The lead actress Pamela Mendoza was also good. Her grief cut through the screen brilliantly. I wanted her to find her baby and maybe if the plot moved along, she would have had the chance to. Nice to look at, but not especially exciting, I don’t have any huge reason to recommend the film, although I didn’t hate it.

Song Without A Name is available on MUBI

My French Film Festival will be wrapping up very soon, and I used it to tick Central African Republic off my map of films with the movie Camille (2019). The film sees French photographer Camille go to CAR during the conflict to record what is happening and befriend some of the soldiers, while occasionally telling them they were wrong.

The film was well made and the parts that focussed on the CAR citizens was interesting, especially as I have little knowledge of the conflict. The movie felt like a documentary at times and I really wish it was. However, my big issue was Camille. I didn’t care about the character, the outsider saviour narrative or her plot about being a real photographer. You find out in the first scene that she gets shot, and I was waiting for that so we could focus on the interesting parts. Decent film with some good elements.

Camille is available on Prime Video and BFI Player

The Wild Goose Lake (2019) is Wuhan’s second most famous export of recent times. Zhou Zhenong has accidentally shot a policeman in a gang related incident and is now on the run. Not sure who he can trust, he meets Liu Aiai, a friend of a friend who tries to help him and his wife get away. The first half of the film is really interesting as Zhenong and Aiai tell their stories through flashbacks, Zhenong describing the incident which lead to here and Aiai describing what she’s witnessed. However, in the second half it slightly goes off the rails and struggles to find itself.

Visually, the film is wonderful. It’s use of lights in night time scenes was great to watch. The characters were all interesting enough, and I was following along enjoying what I was watching. Zhenong’s choices and motives all lead to a really engaging character study, as did Aiai’s as we worked out whether to trust her. However, as everyone turns on one another and we just end up in a violent mess in the second half, it lost that subtlety which worked so well in the first act. If it’s free, then it might be worth a watch. If you have to pay for it, it probably isn’t.

The Wild Goose Lake is available on MUBI

I probably wasn’t awake enough to fully appreciate Frances Ha (2013) when I did watch it. The black and white Noah Baumbach film starring Greta Gerwig follows the titular character struggle in her life in New York. Friendships and relationships all seem to go wrong as she can’t tell the truth about how she’s struggling both career wise and mentally. As a comedy, the film doesn’t work, but much like Marriage Story it’s a really interesting movie.

The film is held well by a decent script and a very good lead performance. As well as Frances, there is an interesting eclectic set of characters around her. The film does frustrate you, but that’s what it looks to do as Frances falls deeper and deeper into a world of disappointment. It felt like a story by Baumbach about his life, yet one that many could relate to. The choice of black and white didn’t really do it for me here, and I don’t know why he did, but it doesn’t bother me too much. Not his best movie, but an interesting and uplifting character study.

Frances Ha is available on Prime

Cartoon Saloon are one of the big upcoming animated film studios, really dominating the hand drawn 2d style, the soulless disney execs have left behind. The last major one of the catalogue which I hadn’t seen was Song Of The Sea (2014). Following the death of their mother, Ben and Saoirse are taken away from their father and want to get back to him. In the meantime, it turns out that Saoirse has some magical powers and needs to save the sea people.

The film, which I watched with the family, was certainly a nice watch for all. It was enchanting and had the Cartoon Saloon trademark interesting style. While not as good as some of the later films they made such as Breadwinner and Wolfwalkers, Song of the Sea was a step up in quality from their first film and a nice watch. It was really nice to look at and a competent, if slightly loose story. “It was good” – Mum.

My second favourite film where a mute person floods a bath and becomes overly obsessed with sea creatures.

Song of the Sea is available on Prime

It was a really close two horse race for film of the week. The one which lost marginally was an intriguing twisting story of power, corruption and revenge, the sort of story that would rival Shakespeare and Kurosawa in script writing, yet in a much more contemporary setting, reflecting the attitudes of a modern society and the issues that cause problems for all of our society. Of course, I am discussing the much acclaimed film Mean Girls (2004).

You may think I jest here as I did in the introduction, but I went into this film with rock bottom expectations, partly curious as to why this film has remained a cult classic over the past 15 years, but now I totally understand why. Cady is new to high school, having previously lived in Africa and been home schooled. Of course, she is totally ignorant to social norms and pop culture. Soon, she meets Janis and Damian who are outcasts and they become friends. They teach her about all of the cliques, including the plastics… This of course doesn’t refer to Chelsea fans, but to the popular girls lead by Regina. Soon they become interested in Cady, leading Cady and Janis to plot how to take Regina down after a party incident. Now inside the plastics gang, Cady starts to take down Regina from within, yet as she grows stronger she becomes more corrupt and soon becomes the very thing she seeks to destroy.

This spy/gang/coming of age drama really did a great job. It was incredibly funny and it gave acros a message about how we shouldn’t beat eachother down in rder to make successes of ourselves. The pacing was fast and interesting, and sure some of the jokes wouldn’t be eternally loved by the woke crowd, but it doesn’t really matter as you kind of just get swept along. Each character transformed throughout and both Cady and Regina were hilariously manipulative. It was also telling that our good person Janis was just as toxic and self-interested as all the plastics. The psychology of the film was fantastic and we could discuss it for hours. Although it’s a bona fide “chick flick”, that shouldn’t matter at all, and everyone should watch it as they’d have a great time.

Mean Girls is available on Netflix

Film of the week

This week, many of the awards shows have been releasing their long lists of film which may be nominated in various subjects, one of which is documentaries. You can see the Oscars list here. While I’ve watched a number of them, one that I had been meaning to get around to was My Octopus teacher (2020). This film was a phenomenal documentary. Craig Foster had been suffering depression, so at home he decides to go diving, as he did when he was a kid. One day he meets an octopus, then he meets it again the next day, the day after and every day for a whole year. You see them build a trusting friendship and how this octopus hunts and avoids predators in the dangerous underwater.

It was an absolutely beautiful film to watch. The light and mysterious world of the underwater were great on the TV and for the first time in a while, I truly wished I could’ve watched this on the big screen. I was engaged for the whole film about both the life of the octopus and the relationship they had. I didn’t care about the director’s issues as much, but they added to an interesting narrative. It really was a unique idea to focus on one single animal as opposed to a whole environment. I knew nothing about octopus lives before hand and now I am basically a marine biologist. It was a fascinating must watch film.

My Octopus Teacher is available on Netflix.