The Island President

THE ISLAND PRESIDENT (Jon Shenk/US-Germany/2011)

Jon Shenk's faithful and intelligent documentary is about Mohamed Nasheed, the first democratically elected President of the Maldives in 2008, this documentary follows him for the first 18 months of his Presidency culminating in the 2009 Copenhagen Conference on climate change.

The Maldives whilst an image of paradise and a font of luxury tourism, is sadly gripped by the rising water levels due to global warming.  Its main island is at risk from rising sea levels, sitting only 1 metre above sea level.  As he expertly tells a New York radio presenter who attempts to shout him down stating that climate change is a developing world problem - Nasheed states that Manhattan is in the same position as Male (the Maldives capital) sitting just 1 metre above sea level.

Nasheed is an articulate gentleman, at times outspoken but a good orator and delegate, a politician who mixes the personal beliefs with those of the people who elected him with grace and humour; his smile is one that can light up a room.

Sadly, since this documentary was completed, on 7th February 2012 there has been a military coup against Nasheed by the same supporters of his dictator predecssor, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, a warlord who was the only leader for whole generations of the Maldives. 

Nasheed was a figure for a small island, inserted as a symbol of hope and change (not unlike his American counterpart, Barack Obama), the black cloud though of climate change and global warming has been shunted and forgotten from the world consciousness due to the grip of the poor economic global climate. 

The story about how he came into power against the might of Gayoom is quite gripping, yet Nasheed's past as an investigative journalist where he exposed corruption was going to be the same reason he was usurped by the military coup.

Money makes the world go round it seems, yet Nasheed will not be forgotten about, as he speaks directly to the camera, 'We just can't disappear. We just can't'.  This timely and well produced documentary which has unprecedented access to the workings of a government's interior and cabinet is insightful and deeply assertive of the climate change situation in the world, may end on the worry of disappearance yet warrants to be seen by the masses - at least before paradise is lost.

The Island President is available now on DVD.

Bonsai

Based upon the award-winning cult novella of the same name by Alejandro Zambra, fellow countryman Chilean Cristian Jimenez has described his second feature, Bonsai, as a tribute to the art of lying.

The film centres on Julio (Diego Noguera) an introvert who wants to be a writer, however when he is turned dow by Gazmuri - an established novelist - to transcribe his latest oeuvre, Julio decides to write his own to impress his next door neighbour Bianca (Trinidad Gonzalez), however Julio is easily distracted and he ends up entangled with his memories of the past illicit affair he shared with Emilia (Natalia Galgani) some eight years previously.

Jimenez uses this device of looking back at one affair in order to kick start a new one with a simple flashback/flash forward device - whilst Julio is an unreliant narrator he nevertheless is unable to decipher the difference between the two source material, and so becomes the subject of his own book. 

The profoundity of the situation should not be lost on Julio who we meet first reading Proust, after initially saying he had already done so.  This existentialsim will also be lost on Julio ultimately, as he loses sight of the present by focusing too much on the past.  There are two funny jokes about Proust at the film's beginning - Julio lies about reading it, gets a copy, goes to a beach to read it and falls asleep in doing so after three pages and then endures a suntan on his chest of the books outline having fallen asleep.

Bonsai is a film about memory and how the past intrudes upon your present and inevitable future.  Jimenez cleverly gives the two women - Emilia and Bianca - different tones when we see their stories when with Julio.  Emilia is dark, morbid and full of shadow harking her emotional fragility, whilst Bianca's world is bright, sunny and full of optimism and promise for Julio, the tone is helped by the work of cinematographer Inti Briones.

There are few surprises though when it comes to it, as in the opening sequence the film's narrator states, 'Emilia dies and Julio will remain alone.  The rest is fiction', and Jimenez joyfully has fun with his free adaptation of Zambra's novella with the arrangement of the film in chapters to make this an objective love story for a besotted soul, who takes his eye of the ball to focus on unrequited love.  Not to say that Julio  is a fool, Jimenez does adore him and the doe-eyed performance of Diego Noguera is key to winning our affection and sympathy.

Bonsai is out on Friday 30th March on limited release from Network Releasing.

Tiny Furniture

Heralded as the future of American comedy, Lena Dunham is somewhat of an internet phenomenon who is being granted the opportunity to be the voice for a generation.  Tiny Furniture is her first feature-length film, and is very much an autobiographical piece where she plays a version of herself with family and friends surrounding her.

Dunham plays Aura, a recently graduated student from an art college in Ohio, who has split up with her 'feminist boyfriend' of two years.  Aura returns to her mother's home, Siri (played by Laurie Simmons, a famous New York photographer - and Dunham's real life mother).

When we first encounter Siri she is busy photographing miniature furniture/props (which gives the movie its title) with a model who is her sister Nadine (Grace Dunham - real life sister), who is immediately competitive with her elder sibling, 'So how long are you going to be living in our house?'  This line spoken from a low angle shot, with Nadine towering over Aura symbolises the dynamic of the two.  Whilst Aura is talented, Nadine is even more so in terms of going to a more celebrated college, and word is mentioned of her winning a prestigious poetry prize (as Grace did in real-life).

They say to young writers, write what you know. Dunham has taken this to the nth degree, without it being over-celebratory or self-important.  Dunham's skill is writing believable dialogue for the situation, not prompting histrionics or hyperbole from her well acted characters, albeit with a SoHo edge to it of self-reflexion, 'I just got off a plane from Ohio - I'm in a post-graduate delirium'

Dunham's skill in the future will be the reliance of this dialogue and writing.  Like a fellow New York writer, Woody Allen, she will not raise the bar in terms of film language.  Her positioning of the camera at medium shot allows the actors to inhabit the screen and move as they would in real-life, there are no fawning close ups which intrude upon a moment of reflection.

Another plus for Dunham is that she portrays a woman (albeit a version of herself) that is one rarely seen on screen in American cinema.  From the outset, she is not afraid to walk around her home in knickers and a t-shirt, depicting her pudgy frame for all to see with no shame; oddly it does not put you off her as a person, you reward her bravery and lack of shyness by empathising her character and the predicaments she comes across.

It is a small piece, should she get a job or not bother, should she date this guy or the other guy, I felt by the end it became a love letter to her mother - who has remained successful and raised two children brilliantly.  Dunham's hero is her mother and in a lovely conclusion, she tells her Mum, that she wants to be as successful as her, her mother responds in kind stating she will be more so.

Dunham is helped by the sheenness of the cinematography, photographed by Jody Lee Lipes who went on to shoot Martha Marcy May Marlene this year and a typically bohemian soundtrack by Teddy Blanks.

All in all, this is an accessible piece of cinema for people who want to see a platform for a new comedy voice; unlike say Tina Fey or Kirsten Wiig, which embraces the looniness of Saturday Night Live sketch comedy, Dunham's voice is the eye for detail and behavioural patterns, and a kitch in the normal - the nice guy turns out to be a creep. 

Dunham is currently working on a HBO series called Girls produced by Judd Apatow, as for her next foray into mainstream cinema, hopefully she will be given a larger canvas to work upon away from her comfort zone.

Tiny Furniture is released on Friday 30th March from Independent Pictures

In Praise of....Peter Crouch

In a footballing career, there are those players who will never give up.  There are those players who will always try to be better than they are expected to be; either due to physical attributes, perceived expectations, or people think of them as weaker than they are.

Scott Parker has overcome a veritable lack of pace to be a marshall of recent midfields he has played in leading to the captaincy of England in his possession; based upon being the most consistent player of the last two seasons and a genuine respect by his peers.

Grant Holt was thought of as a plodder from the lower leagues whose Championship prolifigacy would not translate to the upper echelons of the Premier League - he has now scored 12 goals, is the spearhead of his club side Norwich City and is now realistically being considered for the England squad this summer at the European Championships.

Peter Crouch is one of those players who is always considered to be a laughing stock, always cast away from a side as an expendable commodity, or a scapegoat if a side comes up short.  If he is such a scapegoat why do teams keep writing big cheques for him.

What other player at 6' 7'' would be able to translate such a lanky frame into a winning role for each side - having struggled to gain a regular first-team place at Aston Villa, Rafa Benitez took a punt on him in the transfer window after their glorious Champions League triumph of 2005 as an additional piece to the puzzle as they attempted to win the domestic league. 

He never the less scored goals in the league, and Champions League including a spectacular overhead volley at home to Beskitas.  Sadly he only won an FA Cup at Anfield before being sold to Portsmouth, and scored 11 league goals that season.  Pompey's financial dilemma led to another sale to Tottenham Hotspur, his boyhood club and the side that was the first to cast him off back in 1998 for no fee.  To get him back it cost £10million,

Yet Crouch more than made up for that fee, when his crucial goal in the 1-0 victory away to Manchester City guaranteed Spurs their first taste of Champions League football and all the purse money along with it.

He scored vital goals again in Europe's premier competition including the winner away at AC Milan when he converted Aaron Lennon's square ball, his composure and assuredness gave Spurs the one goal advantage that they held onto at White Hart Lane.

Sadly, he fell out of favour as Spurs failed to breach the Top four and avoided the Champions League at the expense of Manchester City.  Seeking a new club, Stoke City forked out £10m for the big man and he is fitting in well into the Stoke system of long ball set pieces, and his close control is being helped by scoring vital goals, already 12 this season including the spectacular long-range volley that evaded England team-mate Joe Hart's grasp, a special goal from a rarely praised player.

Whilst many pine for Andy Carroll to grow up and out of his funk and join the England ranks, thier seems little reason for England and Stuart Pearce to ignore the good work ethic and purple patch of Crouch. Don't forget he has scored 22 goals in 42 appearances for his country, a stupendous return for a man who is thought of as plan B. 

And come a major championship, a tournament where Wayne Rooney is absent for the first two games due to his suspension, Crouch can be a pain for European defences with his height and he always proves a good link-up with quicker teammates such as Darren Bent or Danny Welbeck.

Crouch is a man who always seems to come up with the goods when it is needed, vital goals on big occasions, and always able to answer the critics with a piece of outstanding ability that bucks the trend that a big man cannot do flexible things.

Credit to him.

The Doom Generation

Released today on DVD is Gregg Araki's 1995 teenage road movie The Doom Generation starring Rose McGowan, James Duval and Jonathon Schaech.

Following in the footsteps of Natural Born Killers and Kalifornia, the film follows would be femme fatale Amy Blue (McGowan) with her doe-eyed boyfriend Jordan White (Duval), who get wound up with a psychopath Xavier Red (Schaech), who kills people and end up as accomplices on a road trip from hell across the Californian state highways.

Araki, is a huge film fan, but a director who in spite of his ability has never had the huge crossover hit, and watching this film you can see why.  Araki sometimes has too many ideas going on at one time, or he has too many influences running through his head and the wish to embrace and appraise said influences sometimes does a disservice to the film as a whole.

Not to say it is bad for end of the millenium directors to have influences, yet Araki does join Tarantino and Eli Roth as directors who cut and paste films based on their film viewing without having a distinctive authorial voice.  Whilst Tarantino has the uncanny ability to whip out five pages of memorable dialogue, this foregoes the lack of visual flair; and Roth falls back on the ability of shock and awe to enhance his failure to write good dialogue.

Araki has the ability to have his finger on the pulse of an ever-changing youth culture; when we first encounter Jordan and Amy it is whilst Jordan is in a moshpit and Amy is telling some guy to f off who asks her for some drugs. 

Yet you never get the impression that these drifters are apparently drifting, or they will eventually drift back to normality once Xavier is out of their lives.  Araki's penchant for a mixture of sexual exploration for the characters, combined with a healthy dose of gore does go hand in hand - in recent films post-Millenium, Araki has explored the notion of sexual politics in the youth culture from both hetero- and homosexual stances, as he did in Kaboom (2010).

This does not make the film Doom Generation, a bad one there are enough to keep you interested and it does have some great set pieces of violence in the vein of Stone's masterpiece, Natural Born Killers, yet it is very much a case of a director trying to do too much in a very short space of time.  Whereas those killers were very violent and knew that they were inherently evil, these ones are a little too reflexive and unaware of their actions.

The Doom Generation is out today from Second Sight Films courtesy of Aim Publicity

Justice (DVD review)

Starring Nicolas Cage, January Jones and Guy Pearce, Justice is released on DVD by PremierPR on Monday 26th March

Directed by Roger Donaldson (No Way Out, Thirteen Days), Justice tells the story of Will Gerrard (Cage), an inner city high school teacher who is married to a beautiful musician wife, Laura (Jones), they live the perfect life until their world is shattered when Laura is violently attacked and left for dead.

Searching for answers and vengeance, Will is approached by a mysterious man, Simon (Pearce) who promises him justice without the need for an unwanted trial.  Simon says they can do away with the killer, and all Will has to do is do a favour for this vigilante group in return at some point in the future.

Whilst Will agrees to the proposal, he soon realises that even justice must come at a price.

This is Cage's umpteenth movie in less than two years and whilst he still has that silver screen allure and magnetism you can see that part of him is definitely phoning it in - which is a shame as the possibility of doing a decent thriller with this solid supporting cast and director who has covered this ground previously has been missed.

At times the tension is never cranked up, and some of the set pieces have not been handled effectively. Tellingly, a producer of the film was Tobey Maguire, you can maybe see Maguire playing opposite Jones and being manipulated by someone older than him like Pearce - but here you have to get over the fact of Cage being married to Mrs. Don Draper from Mad Men (a big leap in itself), and Cage sporting another silly piece of facial hair to distract you from his receding hairline.

Justice is out on 26th March on DVD (£17.99) and Blu-Ray (£19.99) from Momentum Pictures.

Wild Bill

Dexter Fletcher has been a staple of British acting for the past 30 years starring in Grange Hill and reaching a zenith in terms of exposure when starring in Guy Ritchie's seminal Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.  Fletcher has always given the impression of an articulate and intelligent man, and therefore one for whom will not be put off by the director's chair.

Fletcher makes his directorial debut with Wild Bill, a film set in the East End of London in the shadow of the Olympic Village sprouting up around its characters.  It tells the story of Bill (Charlie Creed-Miles), a convict just out of prison who returns home on parole after an 8 year sentence, who returns home to find his two boys Dean (Will Poulter) and Jimmy (Sammy Williams) alone after being abandoned by their Mother and fending for themselves.

Dean is the 15 year old who has had to grow up fast, working on the Olympic site to earn some money ('Go on then, go build me a velodrome!') whilst Jimmy is easily distracted from school.  Bill learns that Social Services are on to the boys, so he acts up as the caring parent to make sure the boys are not kicked out of their home.

Bill's return leads to heads turning as drug dealers new in town get wind of him being back, the head of the gang Glen is played by Andy Serkis.  A lot of the characters tell Bill things have changed, but so has Bill from the tearaway lunatic who would knock a man out sparko for even looking at him the wrong way - he seems a reformed character who yearns for the stability of a nuclear family and domestic household.

Fletcher should be applauded for getting the tone right on this movie.  When you hear that an actor from gangster movies is doing a movie set in the East End of London, you fear for a kinetic, visceral spectacle.  Far from it, here Fletcher has created a movie that has a lead character that grows in front of your eyes, the casting of Creed-Miles is key as his lack of pre-conceived notions means the audience can warm to him easier than say a Jason Statham/Nick Moran sole.

At times the film is very funny; there is a brilliant running joke with the boys fear of cleaning the toilet in the house and Fletcher is helped by the impressive ensemble cast which is what you would expect from an actor in the director's chair.

The title may allude to the notion of a western, and Fletcher does lend a certain few generic conventions of the the Western film - the stand off, the whore Roxy (Liz White) with a heart of gold, the boys who need a permanent father.  Films that he doths his cap to are Unforgiven, Pale Rider and Shane.

The film ends somewhat ambivalently, yet it has such a great final shot which fixates on Creed-Miles who does nothing but look ahead at the horizon and his eyes tell the story.

The pleasure sustained from this film is that it is an amazing surprise which far exceeds any of the low expectations there may have been - people going to see a gangster film, will be surprised by seeing a very human piece told with great clarity and accuracy.

Wild Bill is released on Friday 23rd March nationwide and hopefully will receive a huge wealth of acclaim and box office fortune.