When I'm sleepy I sometimes find my shoulders slumping forwards. I'm sitting at my desk and when I look up, my hands are clutching the sides of my chair to keep myself from falling forward into my laptop. It was exactly this posture in which Joyce Kinney sat throughout her extended interviews, which form the centrepiece of Errol Morris' new film: Tabloid. It's called Tabloid and not Joyce Kinney because the film is about the story of this woman's life, not about the woman herself. Which is probably why she looks so Atlas-y, so tired.

Joyce Kinney has had a very strange life. She kidnapped a Mormon. She upstaged Joan Collins at the premiere of The Stud. She jumped parole dressed as a nun. She had her dog cloned, for $150,000.

Where did she get the money? I don't know.

Did she actually kidnap Kirk the Mormon? Did he go willingly? Was it a bit of both? Don't know either.

The movie is not begging us to buy into any of the three hypotheses which it poses in its opening interview. Which is nice. Perhaps though it is not quite as anti-didactic as it seems to attempt. We cannot help but feel sad for Joyce. She lost the love of her life, whether by fault or misfortune. Maybe inescapable I guess.

And still, the film is full of laughter. Which I think is a strange and imaginative touch from Morris. We are used to his haywire, colourful, collages. The constant gurgling and giggling of the talking heads as they dissect the peculiar tragedies of Joyce Kinney's life add a wierd, Gilliam-esque, macabre to the piece. I like it a lot.

One thing that jumps out is the retreat which Joyce makes, immediately after her brief flirtation with fame. The symmetry is quite astounding. She emerges from rural isolation into the real world; the real world she experiences is a complete catastrophe; she retreats back into rural isolation. Wierd.


Another thing, that I did think about when I was coming to the end of the film was the way that Joyce's parents (or father at least) surfaced and then dissappeared again. It doesn't constitute a loose end, but it made me feel a bit stray, a bit strange. It just made me think that somewhere there, without it being noteworthy, Joyce was orphaned and that she will orphan nobody and that that seems such a thickset footnote.

Philip Goes Directing

When I arrived at the screening place in Soho to watch this movie, I found a dusty old frontage with a dog weeing on the front doorstep. I mopped at the window with my cuff and peered inside. There sat the seats, there was the screen, tattered and torn. I felt an icy hand on my shoulder and turned to find an elderly gent.
“There hasn’t been a cinema there for fifty years.” He said. I realized that I had been caught in some kind of time-warp.

Excellent, I thought, this is the perfect place to watch (have watched?) a movie which is about time: about the unnerving passage of time; about the aggressive qualities of time; about the occasional and almost (almost) supernatural layering of present and future.

Hoffman has said that, simply, this film is about the admission that “if I fall in love with you, I need to be prepared for pain.” This is a peculiarly Calvinist statement. Beneath it lie that deeply Calvinist rhythm: the “doom, doom, doom” of a big bass drum.

Jack is a guy who lives in the future. This is a point which Hoffman hammers home a little too determinedly, but its an interesting point, so we’ll forgive him for it. Jack spends the whole film waiting for summer, waiting to be able to swim, waiting to be able to cook the perfect soufflé for his date. Jack’s done so much waiting that he’s found himself old, when he was once young. The action of the film is set in a period in Jack’s life when the future starts invading the present.

Good things come towards him, out of the future: The girl who he’s waiting for, steps up the pace. The job that he’s waiting for, lands on his doorstep. But bad things come out of the future also: He has a very intelligently staged vision of the relationship that lies ahead of him; the perfect, future, soufflé which lies in the future, emerges from the oven burnt to a crisp. Jack reacts badly. The brilliant climax has the idea of rape (the most potent and immediate occasion of future invading present) being tamed by a triumphant Jack.

It’s all handled with a fair amount of aplomb. Hoffman shambles through the film with his typical charm and charisma. There are some concerns about the romanticism of his image of working class life in America. But this is a movie of pulsing, absorbing rhythms, which draws you in and spits you out, once every twenty minutes or so. It is an excellent debut. It is a grand idea, masked with humility and cosiness. Which we like.

Interview with a...

The trees are coming into leaf, like something almost being said. The spring is here. The oscars are over. Life begins again. Cannes rumors are emerging.

The Academy awards fall only a couple of months before Cannes. So why do they feel so far apart in my head? Cannes feels like life and the Academy is quite simply death death death.

I'm sure that my idea of Cannes is romanticized, and that my idea of the Academy is concertedly jaded and adolescent. But this is not about them, its about me asshole.

There used to be a little rope bridge across the Atlantic. It linked Los Angeles to Les Alpes-Maritimes. The bridge was called the Best Foreign Language Film. No more though.

This years Cannes saw fisticuffs between the venerable Abbas Kairostami's Certified Copy and the blistering Of Gods and Men from Xavier Beauvois. In the end, a cheeky little dynamite merchant and architect called Apichatpong Weerasethakul snook it. Wow. None of the things which you just read in italics was even shortlisted for an Oscar. All of them should have.

Why would they do that? They seem to do it every year. Why do they want to be so separate from Cannes? I guess maybe they don't want to box in the same category as them? Maybe they just have different tastes? Maybe they have no eyes?

Even if they had no eyes, I'd be annoyed with those guys. Man, they missed so many beautiful films! Whats more they made thousands of other people miss those beautiful films. It makes me mad. But Cannes is round the corner. Last year is dead, it seems to say. Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

The Emperor's New Bollocks

When I was in school they taught us about the Tudors and Stuarts. Later on in the same day, they’d teach us about Shakespeare. When I realised that the both things happened at the same time, I was annoyed. I just thought that if somebody had sat me down and explained to me that everything, that all the bits, fit together. I would have enjoyed school more than I did.


The Hunter, directed by and starring Iranian filmmaker Rafi Pitts, is out on DVD. From the credits onwards, The Hunter is an emphatically political movie. It is a portrait of Iran in the build up to the 2009 presidential elections a time of discontent and disharmony and broken promises. Ali, the main character, takes a misdirected revenge against the state after his wife and child are literally and tragically caught in the crossfire.


It is also an examination of what it is to be a man. Ali searches for a masculine role to inhabit: a husband, a father, a hunter and, finally, an avenger.


This is the issue. The political message of the film naturally subjugates the central figure of Ali. He necessarily becomes an x, a diode in the political discussion. In the meantime, by presenting a thesis on modern masculinity, the political and social setting of the film becomes backdrop or at best metaphor. Both of these could be viable but I feel that neither would be palatable to the director. He tries to do both and in the end does neither.


And neither is handled particularly well. The colouring in of Ali’s character as “Modern Man,” is a clunky litany of clichés. Ali is a man, ergo: He is protective of his family; He is haunted by his infertility; His face is fixed with a Bogey-esque scowl; He likes carrying guns to kill animals and people with; He feels the need to avenge his wife’s death.


At the end Ali concocts a method of suicide, which centres around his inhabiting the role of a violent cop. I’m not sure what the point of this is, but I’m positive there is one.


The political messages of the movie is equally doltish, transmitted through loud images of the 1979 revolution and blaring radio commentaries on the political situation. Heavy handed. Botched.
But beneath all of this, is a successful and moving Hemingwayan ditty. The movie painfully dramatises the bureaucracy of death in the modern world. It examines the insanity of bereavement, not just in Ali’s gun-toting epiphany but in his little accidents and eccentricities. It is also a beautiful film, a Satyajit Ray-ve of pastel colours and funny little cars and 1970s nostal-chic. Mohammad Davudi’s majestic photography must also be applauded for capturing urban and wild Iran with an almost uncomfortable proximity.


And yet you kind of feel that for Rafi Pitts, this is not enough. That for him, “Message” is the penis of serious cinema. For Pitts’ simply telling a story about a man and about life, is small, is effeminate, is too insubstantial for a substantial film-maker like himself.


In the end Pitts’ eminent merits as a film-maker do not rescue this film from its pretentiousness, its didacticism and its hectoring. What it does do: it does make you want to take him by his lapels, and wag your finger in his face, and tell him, in no uncertain terms, to stick to the gay job.

And a Car made of Blood

There have been times in their careers when the Coen Brothers have taken time off from making astonishing movies to make very good ones. The Hudsucker Proxy emerged from one of these periods as did The Man Who wasn’t There. True Grit is the latest.

On first glance, this seems like a vessel built from borrowed lumber. Jeff Bridges admirably reprises his Lebowski role (a useless man who is startled to find that he is useful), while Matt Damon strings out his famous Matthew McCanaughey impression to feature length. It will also be noted that this latest offering from the eclectomanic Coen’s is their second Western in three or four years.

None of this knowledge dampened my enjoyment of the movie at all. This is far from rehash. In fact, it slowly dawned on me as I watched, this is perhaps one of the most truthfully Coenish things they’ve ever done. It plays to their strengths perfectly: It is hysterically dark and appallingly funny. The setting also allows them to experiment with language in a way that has often sat uneasily in their other movies. Who the fuck knows how these 19^th Century nutjobs spoke after all? I’m pretty sure it was well peculiar.

Intelligent Westerns have been the order of the day in recent years, and the fad has served up some good movies and some bad movies. Over the past decade we’ve seen Home on the Range, Brokeback Mountain, The Three Burials of Melchiadez Estrada and of course No Country for Old Men. So, in a season when its traditional to talk about the true meaning of things, its refreshing to watch a movie which reminds us of the true meaning of Westerns: Blood, dead, horse, gun, man, beard.

Fist pump.

A pudding made with champagne.

When I'm riding in my pink limousine, clutching a globeful of napoleon brandy and fondling two mixed race ladies, I like to watch movies about famous people. Especially ironic 'uns. Make me feela better about myself.

Only joking about the limousine and stuff. But I did just watch Somewhere.

Its a film about a famous man who, in his relationship with his daughter finds meaning to his existence.

Its essentially a pornographic enquiry into the way the other half live. I would imagine that this is the extent to which most people will enjoy the movie. It tries to redeem some vestige of intellectual credibility at the end, by cleaving on an existential crisis from the protagonist.

The most insidious thing about this movie is that it is one which Sophia Coppola has made before. Four movies is too soon into a directing career to begin rehashing.

Debauchee becomes jaded. Meets girl. Girl shows him the meaning of life. Debauchee has existential crisis. This movie is called Lost in Translation.

In fact, the only innovations made in this movie are the most insipid and saccharine and fraudulent elements. Almost everything interesting about Lost in Translation is chiseled away.

There are some redeeming qualities. There are several very wry visual gags. The acting is exceptional at times particularly from Ellie Fanning and the quite remarkable Chris Pontius. There is also some experimentation with audio. But all this serves to highlight one daunting fact: Sophia Coppola is an excellent film-maker, just not a very interesting one. If you disagree with me, feel free to through champagne in my face.

A Good Movie

I feel like maybe The Kid Are Alright is an important film.

Before going into that let me just say why it is a good film. This is a movie made with clarity and attention and diligence. Its characters are expertly drawn. There are no villains and yet they are all villains. There are no heroes and yet they are all heroes. There are moments of heartbreak. There are moments of real heartbreak.

I think this movie might be important because, really its not important that the protagonists are gay. Like, this is a movie about a gay couple without being a gay movie. Maybe this is really semantic of me.

Whatever. Thats the feeling I got. This is a movie about some people who find themselves in a difficult situation. Its not about gay people. The people in the movie happen to be gay. I think that thats an important moment in our culture.

Less importantly, or maybe more importantly, this is a movie which is unabashedly about the middle classes, about liberals, about trendy suburbanites. In that way it sort of reminded me of Jonathan Franzen's novels.

I think that its very difficult for people to make movies which aren't self-conscious about being familiar with these people. Which is strange because I imagine that most people in the movie industry come from this demographic. I think its interesting. Maybe movie-makers won't feel that they have to be Mike Leigh anymore. Just in the same way, perhaps, that Will Smith felt like he didn't have to be Paul Robeson.

I don't know if I'm being melodramatic, maybe I am. I certainly thought it was an interesting movie. I also think maybe its an important movie. I have been wrong about these things in the past.

Man with beard masturbates for money

Literally the whole point of sarcasm is like to emphasise the opposite point. Like if you want to say that something was really stupid you have to say:
"Yeah that's clever."
If you want to say that a girl is really ugly then you might say:
"Yeah she's so pretty."

The point of I'm Still Here, an exclamation mark, filmed by good-time pals Joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck, is that Joaquin Phoenix is not an irritating, self absorbed, neurotic naughty.

Phoenix bamboozles his way through the movie pretending to be a drunk, pretending to be pretentious, pretending to be an absolute twat.

It leaves a bad taste in the mouth. A taste like semen. For two reasons.

Its the same semeny tang left by movies like Oceans 13 and Cannonball Run II, movies which were actually made from little slices of testicle. These movies are about how fun it is to be a famous person. CCTV cameras are trained on prepubescent millionaires as they have ostentatious fun together. The same semen has been weaved into a movie in the case of I'm Still Here.

Also its like "The Dude is way protesting too much." It seems like way too much effort for a previously cool man to expend on proving to people that he's not a twat. I for one never thought that he was a pretentious person. I sure as hell do now.

What a bumhead he is. No scratch that. He's a boring cockhead.

Carlos the Cock-Tease

On occasion I will watch a movie in order to make me feel cool. Mean Streets might be one. Otto e Mezzo or Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I used to watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s to make me feel like a writer. I will watch the Sopranos to make me feel cool.

I sat down to watch Carlos when I was feeling less cool then ever. Some boys had just been picking on me because of the poor attempt at a moustache that was accumulating on my upper lip. I trudged home and illegally downloaded Carlos, the Olivier Assayas epic about Carlos the Jackal, to make me feel 5 hours cool.

Dissapointment and horror. A film which is soul destroyingly uncool. Carlos is to cool what the Khmer Rouge is to nice.

This is good and thoughtful work from Assayas, a movie which achieves a magnificent feat of deglamorisation. The violence and danger which Carlos the Jackal makes you think of is written off as posturing and pretention. The depiction of Carlos himself, played with effortlessness and sleaze by Edgar Ramirez is of one man too long on a gap year. His speeches and ponitifications ring false and narcissistic and irritating. What more needs to be said: The man wanted to be Che Guevara. Into his forties. 

The movie tumbles along through all of Carlos' bunglings and comes to a cripplingly depressing halt with a moment of perfection and symmetry: Carlos gets botox. This revolutionary, this gigantic, terrifying piratical swashbuckler, gets botox. What a knob.

It felt like a subtler, cleverer, more bilious, more ruthless Spinal Tap.

Maybe I’m off kilter here. Maybe the movie is more forgiving, less clever than I am giving it credit for. Maybe Carlos just reminded me of a bellend I met at university. Who cares. I loved it.

You stab my kids, and I'll stab yours...

If your late for anything at the cinema then owlish eyes glare at you in the dark while you find your seat. This time I was a bit late to see a double bill of Frank Capra films at the British Film Institute HQ but it was worse because there was only five pairs of eyes in the place. Five pairs of owlish eyes swivel. Famous eyes. But the jokes on them because I seen the movies already. The movies are It Happened One Night and Forbidden.

They've been polished up and re-released by our country because we think Frank Capra is so good.

When I came into the cinema, I was so nervous about being late, that my heart was going “Potato Potato Potato!” Thats the kind of thing that a snappily dressed, hack journo might say in a Frank Capra film, the kind of thing they frequently do say. Pure Runyonese. I wonder if people really did speak like that back then or if these guys just created a whole language. I don't know what is more interesting. I think the second one.

Staples? Gruff amoralists with hearts of gold. Mephistophelean newspaper editors. Sassy, intelligent flappers. Homeless men. Chauvinists. All of them jollying along in the foothills of the Big-Rock Candy Mountain.

This is not to say that Frank Capra is pantomime and gaiety. Nor is it to say that these things are bad things. At the heart of these films is something good and important. It Happened One Night manages to pull off being a pretty graphic, Steinbeckean social commentary while making you laugh. It is a demonstration of a quiet fury, a smiling, passive aggressive film. Violence is never far off, but it is always throwaway, comic, empty threats. Claudette Colbert asks for a burger and burly six-footer Clark Gable threatens to break her neck. Another time Gable threatens to kill some guy’s children. The guy is scared and so he runs away and falls over.

It makes you laugh, but it's hard. It's difficult.


Even more anachronisticky is Forbidden. Its the story of a librarian who fucks a politician but holds onto his secret and his lovechild til he dies. Powerful stuff. In 1931 it must have been insane. Like Taxi Driver and L'Etranger and Brief Encounters (or Close Encounters!), it holds up the monster by the scruff of the neck to show the douche-bags that (Hello?) the monster is (of course) a human being. No mean feat.

Even in a technical sense, these are movies that feel suspiciously of our generation. They are snappy. The scenes race across the screen with accuracy, and exactitude and economy. There is no fluff. It feels way more adult and clinical than the flabby poesy of, say, the Magnificent Ambersons, or even Casablanca with its mawkish soft-focus bullshit on the hour mark. (You forgot about that right? Those flashbacks?) He's classy Frank Capra. Like Frank Sinatra. I get the feeling that if he had been as good at Facebook as he was at making movies he'd be like the most popular guy I've ever met.

I still feel like I’m underselling all of this?

Listen. I'm the kind of guy who thinks Preston Sturgess is better than Frank Capra. That Hannah and Her Sisters is better than Annie Hall. All that should tell you is that I am a speccy, circumcised pansy, gym shorts around my ankles and my underwear wedged into my behind. It should tell you, also, that Frank Capra is the land that's fair and bright, where the handouts grow on bushes and you sleep out every night, with the birds and the bees and the cigarette trees and the lemonade springs, where the bluebird sings. He's the Big Rock Candy Mountain.