Film review - The Social Network

The Social Network is a very exciting and funny film about computer programming. That may seem like an oxymoron, but when the programme in question is one of the most significant websites in history, one that changes people’s lives on a daily basis and is worth billions, it perhaps isn’t that surprising.

The film tells the (possibly quite apocryphal) story of Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), the founder of Facebook, from the creation of the website until he settles the various lawsuits it in turn created. After his girlfriend dumps him, Mark gets drunk and creates a website in a night so that people can rate the hotness of female students. This gets him a lot of attention, including from the Winklevoss twins, giant blond rowers who have plans to build a dating website exclusively for Harvard students. Mark agrees to help them while at the same time building thefacebook.com. We all know which site came out on top.

It is quite unusual to have a main character of a film that is so unlikable. Mark is like Sheldon Cooper with a sex drive and without the charm – selfish, terrible in social situations and with a fragile ego. Eisenberg doesn’t try to make him sympathetic and turns out a very good performance. Mark may be the brains of the operation, but his business partner and best friend Eduardo Saverin is the heart. Played by the lovely Andrew Garfield (last seen in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus), his betrayal is very sad to watch. Justin Timberlake also gives a fine performance as the founder of Napster. Refreshingly, he plays a prat rather than a cool guy.

The journey from college dorm room to Silicon Valley is fast-paced and hilarious, thanks mainly to the script by The West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin. It’s full of lines perhaps even too clever to be spoken by a load of Harvard smart alecs. The direction by David Fincher is as cool, swish and grubby as you would expect.

Despite all the quality on screen, what perhaps is most striking about the film is how recent the events depicted are. Facebook was founded in early 2004 but a world without it already seems unthinkable for many. Perhaps it is too recent, both for the filmmakers to understand the impact of the website and for the real people portrayed in the film. However, it’s hard to quibble when seeing the film is such an enjoyable experience. Roll on Wikipedia: The Movie, I say.

London Film Festival Review - Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

I’m half Finnish, and I’m always telling people that Father Christmas lives in Mount Korvatunturi in Finnish Lapland. No-one ever believes me! They think he lives at the North Pole. Like that’s even possible.

It was therefore exciting to see that a film confirming the real origins of Father Christmas was showing at the London Film Festival. Little did I know that I had a lot to learn about Santa Claus myself. You see, the cuddly figure we’ve been brought up with was just the creation of Coca Cola. In reality, he is deadly.

Rare Exports follows Pieteri, a little boy living in the shade of Korvatunturi with his father. An American mining company has been digging deep into the mountain looking for the real Father Christmas. When children start going missing, Pieteri begins to suspect that something evil has been unleashed.

On the surface this should be a children’s film – the main character is a classic lonely child who is not taken seriously by adults, and it’s about Santa Claus. However, it is much too scary for children. The monsters evoke a strong sense of menace and are just real enough to be believable. Though perhaps not an out-and-out horror, most adults should be at least creeped out by it. British and American parents may also feel that the more relaxed attitude to nakedness shown, though typical of the Nordic countries, is not suitable for their offspring.

Rare Exports is based on two short films made in 2003 and 2005 by director Jalmeri Helander. Like District 9 before it, one interesting idea has been successfully developed and expanded into a feature. Funny, shocking and sweet, this film is very different from your usual Hollywood holiday fare, and all the better for it. I don’t think I’m ever going to look at Father Christmas the same way again.

London Film Festival Review - The Parking Lot Movie

I love slackers and slacker culture. I would like to be a slacker myself (I certainly watch enough television), but my work ethic and drive have always been just strong enough to get in the way. Spiritually, though, I am at one with these people. The Parking Lot Movie is a portrait of a slacker paradise that has been lovingly cultivated in Charlottesville, Virginia, for over 20 years. Like a documentary version of Clerks, it shows the titanic struggles and absurdities of the service industry through the eyes of these outsiders.

The Corner Parking Lot is a little car park situated opposite the University of Virginia owned by Chris Farina – a very relaxed guy who likes to wear shorts, and who also happens to be a documentary film maker himself. Chris only lets friends work in the car park, or friends of friends. This policy has meant that all his employees have been intelligent slackers – philosophy graduate students, musicians, dreamers. Director Meghan Eckman spent three years filming the goings on at the car park, and interviewing current and past attendants. The results are hilarious, moving and fascinating.

Working at the parking lot involves mostly just sitting alone in the ramshackle booth and taking money from customers. Eckman allows her subjects to go through the minutiae of all the tasks, the little rituals that have developed in this strange island of space-time. The job gives plenty of scope for these underachievers to analyse their lives, themselves, and the nature of the car park, producing many of the best lines. For example, one describes the role of the parking lot attendant as that of a “creator-destroyer god”.

Unfortunately the attendants’ philophising and mucking around has to be interrupted by those who want to use the car park. In the words of Randal Graves: “This job would be great if it wasn’t for the customers.” The interviewees do not prescribe to the maxim that “the customer is always right”. It’s more a case of “the customer is always a douche”. When you realise they deal with a lot of SUV-driving frat boys, it’s not surprising that they are cynical.

There is a sense of desolation running between the laughs, of course – no one dreams of being a car park attendant. However, for many it seems the job gave them time to find out what they wanted to do, and to grow as a human being while they did it.

Slacker culture held the Zeitgeist during the 90s, and so the The Parking Lot Movie seems to come from that decade – it’s so lo-fi that it should be soundtracked by Pavement. The low budget feel is charming, however, and doesn’t detract from the subject at all.

Eckman has found a wonderful bit of weirdness to focus her camera on, filled with droll and witty people. This documentary has everything from the sublime to the ridiculous, the mundane to the profound, the pitiful to the inspirational. And it has all been found in one little patch of concrete.