Life, Animated

Released from Dogwoof Entertainment on DVD this Monday 30th January, the Oscar-nominated Life, Animated tells the story of a young man, now aged 23, who is graduating after overcoming the debilitating condition of autism from the age of 3 years old; and how the watching of classic Disney movies helped him overcome his affliction and interact with the world especially his parents and family who feared they had lost him 'to the prison of autism'.

Directed by Roger Ross Williams, the film follows Owen Suskind who from the age of 3 was diagnosed with autism and how his parents Ron/Cordelia learnt that Owen through watching Disney films - Peter Pan, Aladdin, The Lion King - understood emotions of empathy, love and friendship; whilst his motor skills were slower he could process through the oeuvre of Disney pictures a place in society and how Owen fits into this real world.

The film is cautious to show Owen with his therapists and how wary they are about how his worldview may be clouded by the Disneyfication, how perhaps there may not always be a happy ending. This notion is put sharply into context when Owen and his girlfriend, Emily after a three-year relationship full of hugs and cutesy emotion is ended (somewhat abruptly) by Emily. This prompts Owen to ask, 'Why is the world full of pain and tragedy?' to his Mum on the phone, but this is part of Owen's learning that the world is not like the fantasy of Disney and can be cruel and big.

The film uses original animation sequences to show the formative years of Owen and his growing up in hand drawn storyboards. These sequences are endearing coupled with the story Owen wrote as a young boy called 'The Land of the Lost Sidekicks' incorporating the fact that following a brief episode of bullying at a special needs school, Owen felt less of a hero and more of a secondary character in his own narrative like a Baloo, Rafiki, Iago.

As a documentary film, this is the perfect format for such a delicate matter where certain viewers may still be ignorant of autism and its affects on behaviour, yet the film credibly attempts to show you the effects on the rest of the family including a poignant moment for Owen's brother Walt on the occasion of his 26th birthday, when he reflects on a time when his parents may not be around and he will have to protect Owen himself. The genuine warmth and affection between the family radiates off the screen throughout and is a real joy to witness.

The drawbacks on the film although minor is how does Owen interact with other films (although Casper is on his shelf) even alternative animation fare or is it just Disney films he watches regularly; no mention is made of the Pixar catalogue when a film like Toy Story about growing up and becoming responsible would ring true to Owen.

Delicately handled and beautifully edited Life, Animated is a vital portrait of a condition that the majority still are reluctant and ignorant to address.

Life, Animated is released on DVD on 30th January

The Killing of America

Released on DVD and Blu-ray by, The Killing of America is a film from the early 1980s that is being re-issued and is a prescient and telling documentary of it's own era and sends a shocking message about the problem America has with it's history of gun violence from presidential assassinations to race crimes with black on white crimes and vice versa.

The film uses a wealth of archive and newsreel footage to tell the history of the gun in America beginning with the shooting of John F. Kennedy on November 22nd 1963 in Dallas, Texas.  The film then goes to voyages past every major assassination both successful and unsuccessful from Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy to George Wallace and Ronald Reagan.

The film utilises an authoritative voiceover by Chuck Riley full of foreboding that does not attempt to provide answers nor sway the audience to follow a politicised agenda. The document simply wants to provide you with the (albeit shocking) evidence and you make up your own mind.

Huge credit should go to directors Sheldon Renan and Leonard Scharder, who had the vision in 1981 to foresee the dark road that their homeland was travelling down. We all remember Michael Moore's acclaimed Bowling for Columbine, and yet whilst that film made reference to gun violence and its influences, it nevertheless had an explicit political message at the heart of the film.

Yet in Killing of America you have killers kill random strangers because they feel bad for having killed a loved one, a killer say he wanted to be known and famous, Shiran Shiran killed Bobby Kennedy to free Palestine. The use of the Riley narration means you listen to his facts - such as gun purchases quadrupling following the JFK killing.

The combination of superbly edited sequences especially the memorable showdown involving John R. Hopkins who held a newsroom hostage combined with the startling facts make for a gripping and at times hard to watch experience, which nevertheless is a very important one that should be seen by all.

The Killing of America is on Blu-ray/DVD from Monday 31st October

Special features include:
Audio commentary with Sheldon Renan, Interview, 'The Madness is Real' with Sheldon Renan, 'Cutting the Killing', an interview with editor Lee Perry

Victoria

Directed by Sebastian Schipper, Victoria is a gripping look at a night in the life of a young Spanish girl who lives in Berlin, and gets sucked into doing something she would not ordinarily do.

Shot in real time, the film is supposedly shot in one take as the camera follows Victoria (Laia Costa) as she leaves a nightclub at 4am in the morning to go home before work. There she encounters four guys and there is an initial flirtation with Sonne (Sebastian Lau).  He and his friends are German, and Victoria cannot talk German fluently, so in broken English they communicate about life, drink and having fun.

Halfway through the film though, there is a shift in tone as the narrative takes an abrupt turn involving a favour ex-convict Boxer (Franz Rogowski) owes someone from when he served jail time.

The hand-held camera that follows Victoria and the real-time situation creates a fear of impending doom as we follow this vulnerable girl making hasty decisions revealing her naivety because she is alone in a big city abroad.  Until the abrupt turn in the narrative, this viewer feared that Victoria was going to be a victim of sexual assault, but the shift shows how immediate a world we live in.

This is a film for the millenial era - a generation of knee-jerks and instant reaction to feel like you belong to this world.  It is a film of the here and now, and how every decision can change the rest of your life, but also how fleeting moments and meetings with people can have a further longer lasting influence.

Shot with real panache by Director of Photography Sturla Brandth Grovlen (his is the first name credited at the end of the film - and rightly so), whose camera goes where the characters go into lifts and cars; there is never a let down in the tension as the narrative unfolds.

It is a credit that while the film could be marketed as a one-take gimmick film, the cast elevate the film to something more than its selling point and a film that stays with you due to the intense performances and conviction of a director to follow through on the potential of an idea to reach the ceiling and burst through it.

Victoria is out on DVD (£13.99rrp) and Blu-ray (£15.99rrp) from Curzon/Artificial Eye on 23rd May
www.curzon.com