Films I Saw In August

Un Prophète (Jacques Audiard, 2009)



An outstanding crime epic that sits alongside Mesrine as a double act of fine 21st century crime films, French or otherwise. Boosted by a towering performance from Tahar Rahim as a young convict who rises through the ranks of the criminal underworld while in jail, it offers a brutal and utterly convincing portrayal of the French prison system. It's long, but never drags and is the work of a director at the top of his game. We should play close attention to what Audiard and Rahim do next.







Capitalism: A Love Story (Michael Moore, 2010
Yet another infuriating, small minded, simplistic, patronising piece of work from the man who gives the left a bad name. "Capitalism" contains all the typical Moore hallmarks of ambushing undeserving targets and looking really hurt in the process and his manipulative montage techniques. Still, it's hard not to be moved by the plight of some of the families in this film, who have genuinely been let down by their government, but it's Moore's presentation that really irks me. Especially as capitalism has been clearly very good to him, and he declines to offer any reasonable alternative system at all.


Micmacs (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2009
Jean Pierre Jeunet has been building up to this film for a long time, his quirk-o-meter has finally exploded in this tale of circus style misfits who take revenge on an arms dealer whose bullets caused one of their members to fall into a coma and lose his job. Unlike Amelie, this film doesn't grip us emotionally enough to justify it's visual flights of fancy, as impressive as they can be at times. Again, it's a little too quirky for me but others may well like it.


The Box (Richard Kelly, 2010)
Richard Kelly's follow up to the bloated, batshit insane disaster that was Southland Tales is a rather disappoint sub-standard thriller. It begins with an interesting premise (woman recieves a box with a button, if she pushes it she will recieve a million dollars but someone she knows will die) but then descends into daftness involving spaceships and secret government projects all of which are pretty stock. Overall, very disappointing with poor performances from all, except Frank Langella who is very watchable as the boxes' mysterious owner.


Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010)
There seems to have been a bit of a backlash to Nolan's newest mind bending action thriller; I feel this is a natural consequence to a critically acclaimed film that has done well financially. The plot, too sprawling to explain here involves Di Caprio and his team trying to 'plant a thought' in Cillian Murphy's head. With its booming brass score, head exploding plot and thrilling action sequences, it's been a fully justifiable success. It's not a perfect film, the dialogue is a tad overblown, the characters are too similar and it is way too long, but it's a fine, intelligent big budget thriller and is well worth a go.


Gainsbourg, Vie Héroïque (Joann Sfar, 2010)
The current trend for musical biopics continues with this, a look at the life of French playboy singer/songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, played brilliantly by Joann Sfar. Unfortunately the film is very episodic in nature and consists of little more than our hero (accompanied by a puppet 'Gainsbarre' version of himself) wandering from woman to woman and getting rather drunk in the process. Much like Gainsbourg's life to be honest. Still, this isn't really film material, and there isn't much of an arc to keep it going despite very strong performances from Sfar and the late Lucy Gordon as Jane Birkin. Watchable, but a bit pointless.


Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (Mat Whitecross, 2010)
Yet another music biopic. As much as I like his music, I'm not sure the story of legendary pub/punk singer Ian Dury is really fit for a film. Sure, he overcame polio and a limp to become a celebrated wit and lyricist and had a slightly turbulant personal life (as all musicians seem to, as I've discovered) but that's about it. The film tries to overcome this however with a lot of 'over-directing' and visual gimmicks that don't always work. However it succeeds enormously with Andy Serkis' spot on portryal of Dury, looking at clips of the man himself on youtube and Serkis' portrayal, much like his of Martin Hannett in 24HPP is near flawless and elevates the film considerably as a result.


I Love You Phillip Morris (Glenn Ficarra & John Requa, 2010)
One of Jim Carrey's superior 'serious' films, 'I Love You Phillip Morris' is a strange combination of gay romance/prison/con artist film pulling each off pretty well. It tells the story of a con artist (Carrey) and his many prison breaks and frauduant escapades including successfully impersonating a lawyer, judge, doctor, and corporate CEO to various degrees of success, all the while trying to balance this with his prison cellmate Phillip Morris and it's all a true story! I can imagine this was quite a problematic film for the studio to market as it's quite off the wall for a true story, it's nearest cinematic cousin is probably Soderbergh's disappointing 'The Informant!'. Still, I really enjoyed this film, it has Carrey's best performance since 'Eternal Sunshine...' and although containing one of Ewan McGregory's 'American Accent' performances, it's his best for a while too. Well scripted, engaging throughout, funny and oddly moving at times it's well worth seeing.


Scott Pilgrim vs The World (Edgar Wright, 2010)
Edgar Wright's effective 'solo album' and Hollywood debut is a wildly enjoyable geek comedy. Michael Cera falls for the girl of his dreams (Mary Elizabeth Winested) and has to defeat her seven 'evil exes' in several street fighter like encounters. Although the film can be repetitive in it's fight scenes and Cera is a tad miscast in the title role, it's an exciting and vibrant film that's great fun to watch and has some great supporting performances (Jason Schwartzmen and especially Brandon Rourth are excellent as two of the exes). It's a bit too Geekcentric for some possibly, and I'm not sure how older or non gamer audiences would like it as much, but I thought it was great fun and bodes well for Wright's future directorial career.


Bad Lieutenant (Abel Ferrara, 1992)
The "original" to this year's Bad Lieutenant is, in reality, nothing like Herzog's crazed triumph, it's far darker, rooted in catholic guilt and features an even worse Lieutenant played by Harvey Kietel. Like most Ferrara films it looks grainy and bleak and is at times frustrating, sometimes it seems it's trying to shock just for the sake of it. Nevertheless, this features one of Kietel's best performances in his long career and has a moody over the top insanity to it. Personally I prefer Herzog's film, but in all honesty they are completely different.

Film Of The Month: Un Prophète