London Film Festival review - The Central Park Five

This documentary looks at a high-profile crime and the less high-profile miscarriage of justice that went with it, showing how difficult it is to get justice when the public are baying for your blood.

In 1989 a young woman was raped and brutally beaten while out jogging in Central Park. At the same time in a different part of the park, a large group of teenage boys from Harlem were causing trouble. When the jogger was found barely alive, the police started interrogating the boys they had in custody, using the classic “good cop/bad cop” technique and telling each one that their friends had already dobbed them in. Using 14-, 15- and 16-year-old logic, five made statements that they saw the others rape the woman.

The Central Park jogger case was the last straw for embattled New Yorkers. Their city was a mess, ravaged by a crack-induced crime wave. Mayor Edward Koch called it “the crime of the century” (quite a claim for a town which a decade earlier had been terrorised by the Son of Sam, but there you go) and said that prosecuting these boys would be a test of the criminal justice system. The trouble was, the boys had nothing to do with it. Their statements didn’t add up, they didn’t know details of the crime, their DNA didn’t match, and the timeline didn’t make any sense. They had never been in trouble before. These small issues didn’t seem to matter to the police or the prosecutors. Or the jury.

The Central Park Five is a very angry film, showing the indifference, cruelty, racism and just plain stupidity of the system. The boys, now men, speak eloquently about what happened (after watching this and West of Memphis, I swear going to prison for a crime you didn’t commit makes you really clever and poetic). Directors Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon’s unfussy approach uses archive footage really well, painting a picture of a New York very different from the city seen today. Hopefully this means that mistakes like this are less likely now, but you just can’t be sure. If the press gets whipped up into a frenzy, the truth can still just go out the window.

London Film Festival review - Compliance

Truth really is so much stranger than fiction. While there have been films centring on a menacing phone call before, no Hollywood screenwriter would have come up with the plot of Compliance off the top of their head, it is just too outlandish.  These events happened in real life, making this low-budget indie thriller into an examination of the very nature of free will.

The film takes place over a day at a branch of the Chick-Wich fast food chain. Manger Sandra (Ann Dowd, the spitting image of Lisa Dingle from Emmerdale) is having a bad day because someone left the freezer door open overnight. But it is about to get worse. A policeman (Pat Healy) rings the office and tells her that one of her employees, Becky (Dreama Walker), has stolen money from a customer. This sparks off a chain of events which I won’t spoil, but suffice it to say that are as disturbing as they are unbelievable.

The cinematography is plain and to the point, bathing the claustrophobic sets in a sickly beige light which perfectly suits the events. All the performances are excellent and the characters feel real. Dowd walks the thin line between villain and object of pity well, and Walker puts her wide eyes to good use. I particularly liked Ashlie Atkins as Marti the shift supervisor, part of the staff who gave the whole thing a realistic workplace vibe.

Compliance is a film which asks us how much power we give to authority, how much we are willing to ignore for an easy life, and who amongst us will stand up and say “no”. To me it had echoes of the Holocaust, but interestingly at the LFF screening, a lot of the questions centred on America (both about the perceived passivity of its people and – for reasons I didn’t fully understand, other than some people see Iraq everywhere – its foreign policy). The director Craig Zobel explained that everywhere he showed the film people said “That could never happen here!” including in America, so nationality is probably a red herring. You would hope that most people would be more questioning than the characters in the film, but it only needed a few people for it to happen.

This is an uncomfortable watch, but one that will definitely spark a debate with your friends.

London Film Festival review - Bayou Blue

This documentary is an interesting counterpoint to West of Memphis.  What happens when the police investigate murders thoroughly, prosecutors act fairly, and the media doesn’t turn the whole thing into a three-ring circus? The right man is arrested and sent away for a long time.  Does it make an interesting film? Not really.

Bayou Blue looks at a spate of murders of young men that took place around New Orleans between 1997 and 2006.  Body after body was found face down in creeks or on verges, victims of rape and strangulation. Some of the men were openly gay, some were straight. The police were baffled as to how the killer had lured each one into his car and gained their trust enough to overpower them.

Eventually the killer was caught, but the world wasn’t interested and one of America’s most prolific serial killers hardly made the papers. In a culture obsessed with the grizzly details of crime, you’d think that the sheer number of victims would guarantee column inches, but in this case many of the victims were homeless, most were black, and the area they lived in was poor and remote.

This lack of interest on the part of the media is a scandal, but unfortunately directors Alix Lambert and David McMahon’s style doesn’t let the viewer get too worked up about it. The film is as lugubrious as the flow of the titular bayou. The story isn’t really shown in order, so there is no sense of a story unfolding, of the growing concern of police or really how they pieced together the investigation. It’s just one body discovered in 2003, one in 2002, one in 1999.

The families and friends of the victims are interviewed – their words heart breaking, their faces testaments to their hard lives. But their stories are presented in a very haphazard way, again chopping back and forth. The detectives come across as extremely professional people who take their work very seriously. We hear from the killer himself, but the audio recordings are crackly and just contain perfunctory details of each death that are played behind lingering shots of yet more barren fields and remote ditches. We learn nothing about the killer’s background, a staggering omission that leaves him an almost faceless figure.

Perhaps the aim was to make a quietly creepy film full of menace, but to me it was just dull. I don’t want to say that the papers and news channels were right not to cover this story – the victims deserve our attention as much as any middle class white girl who vanishes – but you have to prove its worth to the audience by making it gripping. It would have been better if the makers of Bayou Blue had used a few more of the enemy’s tactics and sensationalised what happened just a little to keep the audience’s emotional interest, rather than just piquing liberal guilt.

London Film Festival review - My Amityville Horror

I think I was the only person at the screening of this documentary who hadn’t seen any of the Amityville Horror films. While I am interested in the supernatural, I am not really into horror. Despite not knowing anything about the original case or its pop-cultural aftermath, I could still enjoy My Amityville Horror as a very odd character piece.

The film looks at Daniel Lutz, who was ten years old when his family moved into 112 Ocean Avenue in 1975, where the DeFeo family had been murdered a year earlier. The Lutzes abandoned the house after 28 days, claiming that they had experienced a smorgasbord of ghostly activity, including poltergeists, possession and ectoplasm.  It would be fair to say that these events have affected Daniel deeply. He is a very intense guy, a tough nut who left home as a young teenager never to return. He appears to have been in therapy for most of his life.

Director Eric Walter has been fascinated with the case for years, and started a website as a teenager dedicated to gathering together all the evidence he could. He said that even he found a lot of new information in Danny’s testimony. Certainly Danny’s feelings about his step-father bring a whole other dimension to this story.    

I have one specific issue with this film – the cinematography is a little too slick and artistic. Digital technology allows professional results at a fraction of the cost compared to a few years ago, but that doesn’t mean that it is always necessary to have moody lighting. In a documentary like this it seems unnecessary and distracts somewhat from the person in question.  

I don’t know what to make of the events at 112 Ocean Avenue, and we’ll never know what really happened.  The tales Danny tells seem unbelievable, but he does seem to believe them.  This is diverting rather than fascinating little film about a very strange guy who had some very strange experiences.  Though I’m sure it is essential viewing for classic horror fans.

London Film Festival review - Free Angela & All Political Prisoners

To most people, Angela Davis is the afro-ed figurehead of the Civil Rights movement whose trial for murder resulted in a worldwide campaign to free her.  Director Shola Lynch’s aim for this biographical documentary is to put some meat onto the bones of this image and flesh out Davis’s story. The result is only semi-successful, but it is still a fascinating look at a strange time.

Angela Davis was an activist and academic who accidentally became the centre of a political controversy when she was appointed a professor at the University of California in 1969. You see, they made the mistake of hiring a communist as a professor of Communism. Davis was fired by the university, and became heavily involved in a campaign to free the Soledad Brothers, three African-American prisoners accused of killing a white guard. Then in August 1970, the younger brother of one of the Soledad Brothers attempted to hold a judge hostage to negotiate the release of the prisoners, resulting in a shootout which left the judge and several others dead. The guns used in this crime were all in Davis’s name, so she went into hiding and ended up on the FBI’s most wanted list. She was later found and put on trial for first degree murder. The campaign to free Angela spread across the world, with children in East Germany sending sacks of letters of support.  She was cleared of all charges in 1972.

The film goes through these events, looking at how and why Davis became radicalised, and her feelings about the strange events of 1969 to 1972. Davis, who has been reluctant to talk about this time, is interviewed extensively, and it is great to hear from the lady herself. Archive footage is well used, and some scenes are recreated, with Davis’s niece playing her.

Unfortunately the details of the case are not explored in that much detail, making the film slightly confusing. I suppose the events are confusing in themselves (the kidnap of the judge strikes me as a very strange plan), but it would have been good to hear more about the evidence for and against Davis’s involvement. It would also have been interesting to look at what Davis has done since she was freed. It is mentioned that she has continued to campaign for prison reform, but there are no details of her life post-1972. These are the things which she wishes to be known for, rather than her arrest and trial, so it seems strange to leave them out.

With these additions, this could have been the definitive portrait of one of the key female figures in the Civil Rights movement. As it is, it is an engaging examination of a time when it seemed as if American society was teetering on the edge of anarchy.

London Film Festival review - West of Memphis

The West Memphis Three

Director Amy Berg does not shy away from heavy subjects. Her first film, the Oscar-nominated Deliver Us From Evil, examined the cover up of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.  This, her second feature, examines the murder of three eight-year-old boys in Arkansas in 1993, and the litany of mistakes and lies involved in the ensuing investigation and trials. West of Memphis is an exquisitely detailed look at how justice can remain elusive, and it is likely to make you very, very angry at the unfairness of it all.

When the bodies of three little boys – Stevie Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore – were found naked in a ditch in May 1993, the police believed that the murders had been part of a satanic ritual. Three teenage boys – Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, known as the West Memphis Three - were arrested. Misskelley, who has learning difficulties, confessed after a long interrogation, and implicated the other two boys. At the trial, witnesses came forward attesting that they had bragged about killing the little boys as part of an occult rite. In the end Echols was sentenced to death, and the other two were sentenced to life in prison.

Berg examines the “facts” presented at trial in detail. The level of incompetence on display and the wilful disregard for the truth is astonishing. But this documentary is not just about bashing the police or the American criminal justice system. It also looks at the effect of the crime on the families involved, adding to the emotional impact. The mother of Stevie Branch is interviewed extensively, and her words are painful to watch.

Despite the bleakness of the horrific events and their aftermath, there is some light in this film.  A huge campaign was launched in support of the West Memphis Three. People marched carrying banners, concerts were held, and celebrities got involved – really involved. Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam and Henry Rollins of Black Flag campaigned for over a decade, becoming friends of Damien Echols. Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson and his wife Fran Walsh (producers of this film) paid for private detectives, forensic experts and DNA tests. In this case, people power ultimately made the difference.

West of Memphis is a relentless look at how a triple tragedy became a sextuple one, and how hope can stay alive in the face of tremendous odds.  I urge you to see it.

Film review - The Dictator

I’ve been a fan of Sacha Baron Cohen since the Eleven O’Clock Show, where Ali G premiered and showed up a lot of posh people. When his power to make people say what they really think was combined with the genius of four Seinfeld writers, magic ensued in the form of Borat. After Borat and Bruno, Baron Cohen is now too famous to go undercover, and so he has to fall back on purely scripted situations. Unfortunately the script of The Dictator is patchy, revolting, and not funny enough.

The film follows Admiral General Aladeen (Baron Cohen), the all-powerful leader of the oil-rich African state of Wadiya. Just think of him as Borat, but in charge. This is a man who has everything he wants. He is also easier to upset than Stalin, executing all those who even look at him in the wrong way. On a trip to the United Nations in New York, his scheming uncle (Sir Ben Kingsley) tries to kill him and replaces him with a double. Alone and penniless, Aladeen is taken in by earnest health food store owner Zoey (Anna Faris).

The first half of the film set in Wadiya satirises Gaddafi and his ilk perfectly. The second half in New York, however, doesn’t live up to this good start. The plot is thin and badly sketched out, which would be fine if there were lots of good comic set pieces to keep us entertained. However, I can only think of one genuinely funny bit amongst a lot of disgusting ones. The only film I could relate it to is Freddy Got Fingered, but without the surreal heights of Tom Green’s magnum opus. Anyone who has seen Freddy Got Fingered knows that the comparison could never be complimentary.

I am shocked that the director Larry Charles and Baron Cohen’s co-writers Alec Berg, David Mandel and Jeff Schaffer – the brains behind Seinfeld¸ Clerks: The Animated Series and Eurotrip (I’m not adding that to the list as a joke, it’s a hugely enjoyable film – Scotty doesn’t know!) could create something with so many poorly conceived moments.

There are some lines that really nail American’s attitude to the Middle East and the Middle East’s attitude to Israel, but not really enough to make it worth the ticket price.

Film review - Mirror Mirror

The trailer for this film looked beyond awful – one of the dwarves actually said “Snow who? Snow way!” I was willing to give it a chance, however, as The Fall’s trailer was terrible but the film was great. Apparently Tarsem Singh’s films don’t trailerise well.  In actuality this reimagining of the Snow White tale is stunningly beautiful, frothy and fun.

Snow White (Lily Collins) has been held prisoner in her own castle by her wicked stepmother (Julia Roberts). When she falls in love with a handsome prince (Armie Hammer) that the queen wants for herself, she is banished into the woods. There she meets seven bandits of restricted growth who show her how to fight for her kingdom.

The storyline is quite simple and although it deviates from the original (Snow White sword fighting etc.), it doesn’t feel revolutionary in any way. What it is, however, is enjoyable, with good performances and a script full of nice touches. Julia Roberts is deliciously over the top, Lily Collins is cute as a button and Armie Hammer is suitably pompous and dimwitted. Nathan Lane also does a good little turn as the evil queen’s henchman, and it is nice to see Danny Woodburn (Mickey from Seinfeld) as one of the dwarves.

What really makes the film special, though, is the art direction and the costume design in particular. This was designer Eiko Ishioka’s final film, and she managed to surpass her work on Singh’s The Fall. All the clothes are exquisite – the massive dresses are sumptuous and detailed, in rich colours.

Mirror Mirror won’t change your life, but for all little (and big) princesses out there it is a delightful confection.

Film review - The Avengers

It has taken five films to get to this point – the backstories of the Hulk, Iron Man, Thor and Captain America have all been fleshed out separately and now they are to be brought together to form a superhero gang. Somehow it still takes this film a while to get going, but when it does it really soars.

Loki, Thor’s adopted brother, comes to Earth and steals the Tesseract (a magical power cube) from S.H.I.E.L.D (a powerful espionage agency). S.H.I.E.L.D’s leader Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) gathers together some of the world’s greatest heroes to retrieve the Tesseract and defeat Loki’s army of aliens.

The lengthy set up before the big battle involves a lot of waiting around on S.H.I.E.L.D’s hellicarrier, but luckily the audience is waiting around with some great characters and a script by Joss Whedon. The comic tone set by the Iron Man films continues here, and Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark is still a hoot. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is hilariously serious, and Captain America (Chris Evans) is also nicely confused by 21st century Earth. Even Scarlett Johansson isn’t awful as the Black Widow, doing a lot of nice double crossing.

The final battle is spectacular, if a little long. A huge amount of destruction takes place as the aliens attack Manhatten (which will always be less fun to watch than it was pre-2001), with the Hulk, Iron Man and Thor doing the heavy lifting, while the Black Widow and Hawkeye basically lend moral support.

Out of all the preceding films, Thor was the most silly, and The Avengers unfortunately uses that film’s main villain. Not that Tom Hiddleston isn’t good as Loki, or that the other possible villains are realistic and sensible, it’s just that after the first Avengers film we’ve already had a Norse god leading an army of angry aliens. Where do you go from here?

All in all the first Avengers film is certainly worth the price of admission – great one-liners married with decent action and excellent performances. Frivilous fun for superhero fans.

Film review - The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists

Aardman Animation’s first 3D film is a strange tale of plundering on the high seas. Although fun, it is not quite rollicking enough to be a classic.

Set in an imaginary version of 1837 where piracy is still a problem and every famous person from the 19th century is alive and in their prime, this is a surreal take on the popular pirate story. The film follows the Pirate Captain (voiced by Hugh Grant) and his band of “say what you see”-named pirates (the Pirate with Gout, the Albino Pirate, and – my favourite – the Suprisingly Curvaceous Pirate) as he tries to win the Pirate of the Year competition. On the way they meet a young Charles Darwin and have a run in with Queen Victoria, who really hates pirates.

Aardman films always have a lot of charm, and again The Pirates! has loads of little details – both in the backgrounds and the script – that firmly show its British roots and elevate it above the rest. The trouble is that the story and the characters just aren’t that memorable.

Film review - The Artist

So I’ve finally seen The Artist, after all the hype and the Oscar wins, and I wasn’t blown away. Sure, it is nice and well made, and obviously has a central gimmick that makes it stand out from the crowd, but this is a feather-weight confection.

The film opens in 1927, and George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is a silent movie star at the top of his game. He helps ingénue dancer Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo) get noticed by the studios. As silence gives way to the talkies, their careers take different paths.

Two things surprised me. Firstly, although this is a French-made film it is set in Hollywood and the silent lines are all spoken in English. This seems slightly strange considering every country had a silent film industry that had to adjust to sound, but I suppose it does make financial sense to set it in America. And you get to have people like John Goodman in it without making them mouth French lines. Secondly, it wasn’t as funny as I thought it would be. The dog was cute, and it was mildly amusing at times, but I was expecting more slapstick or something. There weren’t many laughs.

Having said that, Dujardin is excellent in the role. Bearing a more than passing resemblance to William Powell (who interestingly was one of the few silent film actors to have a successful career after the introduction of sound) he looks very much of the time and has such a hammy, expressive face. Bejo is all eyes and smile, and is adorable.

Basically, it could be 20 minutes shorter and a bit funnier. If you buy into the romance of the silent era, I’m sure you will love this. I, on the other hand, was a little bored, and really if I’m going to be a bit bored watching a silent film, I’d rather take my medicine and watch an actual old one. Obviously I don’t want to sit through Battleship Potemkin, but I know I ought to.

Film review - The Muppets

This new Muppets film is quite different from the Christmas Carol or Treasure Island adaptations we became used to in the nineties, wonderful though those were. It’s a post-modern take on the children’s film that also manages to go back to the group’s roots.

As the film opens, the Muppets have been largely forgotten by the public and have gone their separate ways – in this reality it seems as if The Muppets Show was their only success, and that finished in 1981. When an evil oil baron (Chris Cooper) threatens to take over their old theatre, they must put on a benefit show to stop him. Their biggest fans, Gary (Jason Segal, who also wrote the script), Mary (the wonderful Amy Adams) and Walter (a Fabricated American, to use the Greg the Bunny terminology), are ready to help.

This uber-hackneyed storyline – used in everything from The Blues Brothers to Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo – is played openly as a cliche. It’s just a McGuffin for all the fun, and there is a lot of fun to be had. Movie tropes are skewered in surreal fashion, there are great cameos at every turn, and the songs are weird, joyous creations (from The Flight of the Conchords’ Bret McKenzie).

Adults who can remember The Muppets Show will be happy to see all the old gang back together again. And I mean “all”, as some quite minor characters are featured heavily. Sadly my first Muppet experience was Muppet Babies during Going Live (I know, weep for those in their late twenties), so a lot of this went over my head. My only other minor gripe is that there isn’t enough Kermit and Miss Piggy, who seem to be slightly on the sidelines while Gary, Walter and Mary take centre stage. You can’t keep a good frog or pig down, though, and their charisma shines through.

Muppets make people smile, and when combined with comedy talent like this, they make people smile from ear to ear.

Film review - The Iron Lady

When I was between the ages of approximately five and seven, I idolised Mrs Thatcher. I’m not exactly sure why or how this happened. While my parents were not anti-Thatcher like everyone else’s seem to have been, I think it was mostly to do with my love of Spitting Image (she was the main character back then, you see). It certainly wasn’t based on a thorough examination of her policies – she was strong and had a distinctive voice and hair do. And I thought it was great that a woman was in charge.

Well, it seems that the makers of The Iron Lady share my seven-year-old’s view of Margaret Thatcher (Meryl Streep). Wasn’t she awesome? She didn’t give in, did she? She always stuck to her guns, whatever anybody said. And she was a woman living in a man’s world.

It’s a pity that the absolutely amazing performance by Streep has been somewhat wasted – this could have been the definitive Thatcher film, but it only scrapes the surface.

The film focuses mainly on Thatcher now, suffering from dementia. She remembers scenes from her past – working in her dad’s shop, becoming an MP, becoming PM – and talks to her dead husband (Jim Broadbent).

We see how her difficult early years in charge of the country (with soaring unemployment, riots and even an attempt on her life by the IRA) are all forgotten when she sticks to her guns and successfully takes back the Falklands from the Argentineans. After that, the 80s was all yuppies drinking Bollinger until she was rudely ousted by her own party in 1990.

Except, of course, that the Brighton Hotel bombing happened in 1984, two years after the Falklands War.

Trying to make a linear narrative out of a period in office (any Prime Minister’s period in office) can only result in gross oversimplification or confusion as we have here. I suppose you could say that the film sees events through her eyes, but as well as glossing over a lot of the bad stuff, the film completely misses out her success in the Cold War. Ronald Reagan isn’t even in it! Surely Maggie would think about Ronnie?

If the film isn’t good history, it is entertaining to a degree. Though a bit long, the performances make it worth seeing. Streep really transforms into Mrs Thatcher, so much so that it is slightly disturbing. The voice is absolutely perfect with no vowel out of place (something I have never heard from an American doing an English accent – it’s always a clanging vowel which gives them away). Broadbent plays Dennis extremely cuddly-y, Alexandra Roach is a wonderfully focused young Maggie, and Olivia Colman is a scream as Carol Thatcher.

The Iron Lady is a quite depressing look at ageing and a quite fun look at a very determined woman. But I think most people would feel there was more to say about Maggie than that she was determined and got old.