This week the most exciting thing around was Netflix’s new big title. However, with both Portsmouth and Exeter having play off campaigns in the coming weeks and it being about 6 weeks until the new Nolan movie hopefully I will soon enough return to normality and have activities keeping me away from the eternal gloom of the BBC Home Page. In the mean time, I’ve been filling my week with movies and some not bad ones at that.
Spike Lee Season
After Do The Right Thing was my film of last week, I decided to give some more films of his a watch in preperation for Da 5 Bloods.
First up, I watched his directorial debut She’s Gotta Have It (1984). Following around Nola Darling, we see her have relationships with three men simultaneously. It’s a mix of mock-umentary and drama. Mostly in black and white 16mm, this stylistic choice made it feel more like a home movie. Sure it was low-budget but it didn’t matter. It was creative with its use of music showing how Nola viewed each of her relationships.
Where the film may have gone wrong is that we never explored the characters as deeply as we could. However, this may have been a strength as one notable thing was that we watched Nola without judgement. The film does take darker turns and is definitely not one to watch with parents.
A not bad first effort which was worthy of four stars, you can see She’s Gotta Have It on Netflix.
Inside Man (2006) was a relatively smart well put together piece about a bank robbery and hostage situation. A relatively standard heist plot sees detectives played by Denzel Washington and Chiwetel Ejiofor try and catch Clive Owen who along with three accomplices go to rob the bank of an item.
We see some traits of a Lee film with his anger towards the police and issues around their racism and brutality, it just didn’t quite capture his spirit and came across as a secure box office hit. I may be acting harshly. It was well put together and helped build tension well.
It’s a decent heist film which is worth your time. It’s just not a very Spike Lee film. It’s worthy of its 3.5 Stars and is on Netflix
I may be doing a full review of Da 5 Bloods (2020) soon, but I’ll give it a quick overview here as well.
Four black American veterans go out to Vietnam to recover their captain’s lost body and some gold they found out there. The premise of the film is that these black soldiers go out and sacrifice themselves at war, while they can’t get basic freedoms at home where there is a war. The first five/ten minutes of the film is footage from the war-time era looking at war footage and racial tensions in America. We then cut between the present day and the past to gain some context.
The whole cast is fantastic. Each individual has been affected in some way by the war and as we move from social drama to adventure story, we see more themes of corruption and power come into play. At 2 hours and 35 minutes, Spike Lee has a lot to say and says it all. The cinematography is lush as well. With ‘Flight of the Valkyrie’ playing, there is some clear inspiration from Apocalypse Now. We also see a character talk directly to the audience for good Lee measure.
I would happily put money on this film being nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. Delroy Lindo was particularly brilliant as Paul and it would be a crime for him to not be nominated for Best Actor. This is one of Spike Lee’s best and most ambitious films and is worthy of a watch. I put it in the 4.5 stars area and it’s available on Netflix.
Elsewhere This Week
Short Term 12 (2013) was on the agenda. Focusing on a care facility for vulnerable children we see Brie Larson’s Grace lead this facility. However, when a new child comes along and reminds her of her traumatic past, she has to face these challenges.
With a brilliant cast in play, this film could have been great. Young Kaitlyn Dever (Booksmart) and Lakeith Stanfield (Knives Out) give us two interesting characters amongst many and it was a solidly written story. However, I must admit I’m not a huge Brie Larson fan. I can’t quite work out what it is, but between this and Room, I just haven’t engaged with either character particularly well.
I guess what I really would have liked to see was a character driven narrative instead of a story driven one. While at first each character seems volatile, in the end I felt that every action was in there to move the plot forward and seemed predictable.
There is something there, although I couldn’t find it. I give it 3 stars as it was competently put together. If it takes your fancy, it’s available on both Amazon Prime and BFI Player.
If you haven’t heard of Hirozaku Kore-Eda, I must emplore you to find his films. Shoplifters is probably the most famous and Still Walking my personal favourite of his. This week, I watched After Life (1998).
The basic premise of this film is that after you die, you spend 7 days in a purgatory picking one memory to take with you when you move on. That’s all we know about this old looking hotel and there is no further context. We follow a group working out their memories of choice as well as the staff at this place.
It’s all very low-tech and low-budget. The film moves along at a nice pace allowing your mind to wonder what memory you’d pick. Everyone is quiet as there isn’t this huge drama and the whole film is rather meditative. It’s not my favourite Kore-Eda film as it feels like it misses the sense of community that make his later films thrive, but it’s not a bad effort. I’d give it 4 stars and you can watch it on BFI Player.
The most peaceful film I watched this week was Good Morning (1959), a film by Ozu who is most famous for Tokyo Story. The film is pretty much about nothing, if not the meaninglessness of conversation. We see housewives and mothers discussing where their fees for the ladies club has gone missing as well as two children taking a vow of silence in protest until they get a new TV. That’s it.
Full of fart jokes (Suggesting the way that children communicate through flatulence is no more useless than adult small talk), the whole film feels like a meditation experience. There are no real stakes here, just characters living. Ozu will put his camera anywhere in a room, compared to most films where cameras remain on one side, which while disorientating just makes the films slightly more intimate.
At just over 90 minutes, it’s just an easy relaxing watch. It’s worthy of four stars and nothing will make you smile more than young Isamu randomly saying ‘I Love You’ to everyone he sees. It’s available on BFI Player.
Film Of The Week
This week we go to a scary open place in the world where everything is dangerous. That’s right, we go to the seventies where we find Walkabout (1971). Based in the Australian outback, a father takes his two children out for a weird picnic, before drawing a gun and trying to shoot them. Failing that, he sets the car alight and shoots himself. Struggling and on the edge of death, the two children meet a teenage aborigine boy on his walkbout, a 12 month rite of passage where they live alone. He helps them survive and teaches the older sister not to be so uptight.
The whole film in a cinematic wonder. Using pictures of the bright sun to push the climate and close ups of animals which you wouldn’t be suprised to see David Attenborough commenting on, it really takes you somewhere different. Throw in random scenes of other things happening in the outback and you see these two unlikely people are more similar than you think.
We don’t see one group as better than the other. The aborigine boy won’t go to the modern world, neither will the city girl remain here. There is a question of a deep emotional connection or whether this relationship is a means to an end. The soundtrack is also fantastic, whether classic music or a digeridoo.
I really wish I could’ve seen this film in the cinema with it’s lush cinematography, which offset some pretty awful child acting. It’s a very odd film, but if you give it a chance its worth the watch. I gave it 4.5 stars and it’s available on BFI Player.
For more of my casual witterings I am on Letterboxd, a film based social network where you can keep a diary of what you watch.
The Film Ramble 