LONDON FILM FESTIVAL: AMERICAN HONEY review

Andrea Arnold's latest film stars Sasha Lane and Shia LaBeouf as part of a crew of magazine salespeople travelling across the American heartland. A band of roamers drifting from town to town, partying and falling in love with each other, when they pass through Star's (Sasha Lane) town, she jumps at the chance to be taken away from her life of familial burden, line dancing and Nickleback. Using the same method to find a lead actress as she did when casting the unknown Katie Jarvis in Fish Tank, Andrea Arnold found Sasha Lane during a visit to the American college blow-out spring break. Star is in almost every frame of the film, and Lane's wide eyed innocence helps inform the journey her character takes.

The film looks beautiful, as you would expect from cinematographer Robbie Ryan, who shot Arnold's debut Fish Tank as well as last year's Slow West and Catch Me Daddy, two vibrant and visually arresting films. Arnold's films have always encapsulated a kind of social realism that seemed to be utterly British, but these often undocumented and neglected areas of the USA (where she went to study film before returning to Blighty) fit her lens perfectly. The use of music is also greatly important in creating the tone. Most of the music comes from within the film, during the group's journeys where they sing along collectively as if it's some bonding ritual, and by using the particular genre of hip hop that it does, it makes no mistake that this is a film about the youth of today.

One of the most powerful aspects of American Honey is how it shows the watered down element of the "American Dream" that is still available to these kids. Whereas their parents may have sold cars or real estate, these poor and unskilled kids are selling magazines. That's not to say they're not good at it, and there's a number of scenes where Shia's Jake shows Star how he uses his charm and wit to sell magazines door to door. There's money to be made, and the group lie, cheat and steal in order to get a sale. It's here that Jake and Star differ on their outlook at life, as she wants to show the truth, not more bullshit. Star resorts to using her sexuality and femininity to make sales, jumping in the back of cars with men she doesn't know, giving the film a palpable undercurrent of sexual threat that's unnerving and constant.

The developing relationship between Star and Jake is infectiously romantic, and the film as a whole has a strong sense of physicality to it. As Jake, Shia delivers a fantastic performance. It's fair to say that after his wilderness years a lot of people will have written him off, but this is a real coming of age as an actor for LaBeouf. Still under 30 when  this film was shot, the maturity he displays in comparison to his younger crew members shows the treacherous chasm there is to cross in your twenties, and how difficult it can be to come out the other side unscathed. The supporting cast (also largely cast via Arnold's preferred method of finding untrained actors from real life characters) don't really have a lot to do besides party, although Riley Keough's Crystal at least is able to provide an antagonist for Star as her permanently angry boss.

Like any road trip, you've got to make sure the passengers are entertained before they get irritated, and American Honey does suffer the issue of being over long with a few false endings, repeatedly placing Star in situations not dissimilar to one she was in twenty minutes ago. I wouldn't call it an issue with pace, as the film relishes in taking its time and stargazing from the off, but could be improved with a tighter edit towards the finale.

A sometimes meandering look at a journey across the American heartland, Andrea Arnold has nevertheless created another believable world where real life experiences have informed the performances of her cast. A film about youth, love and the vibrancy of living life, American Honey is among the year's most beautiful and best, anchored by a strong performance by Shia LaBeouf and the announcement of a new talent in Sasha Lane.

Verdict

4/5

LONDON FILM FESTIVAL: WE ARE X review

Part of the London Film Festival's Sonic strand, We Are X charts the 30 year career of X Japan, a glam metal band from Japan in the run up to their performance at New York's Madison Square Gardens.

It's hard to see a music bio-doc these days without what I call "getting a touch of the Anvils". The life of a musician is a ridiculous collection of screaming fans, cliches and rock star behaviour, and although there's clear comparison points with Anvil, X Japan are a rock band who actually made it, but with a surprisingly small following in the western world.

Director Stephen Kijak's previous films include the Scott Walker documentary 30 Century Man and the Backstreet Boys doc, Show 'Em What You're Made Of, and here he wisely chooses to focus his lens on Yoshiki in favour of the other band members. He is the heart and soul of the band of almost indeterminate age (he could pass for someone younger than the band he created), who has dominated Japanese music, fashion and art, starred in his own comic book by Stan Lee and is shown to be kept together by doctors who allow him to keep touring and performing. I'm sure there's a certain amount of showmanship involved, but Yoshiki wears a neckbrace when he drums to combat the damage from the excessive head-banging of his youth, which might be the most rock and roll injury there is.

The running joke in This is Spinal Tap is that the drummer's chair is a continuously revolving door due to its occupants choking on their own vomit/spontaneous combustion, but the opposite is true here. Yoshiki is the band's creator and chief songwriter who has remained the one constant, but there has been an immense amount of tragedy within the other roles in the band, including multiple suicides and unsolved deaths. These subjects are handled sensitively and are a tad under investigated, but in order to focus on the band as a touring entity, that's understandable. There is also a certain amount of unexpected comedy to their larger than life career, and lead singer Toshi's brainwashing by a religious cult is approached as a shining example of the pressures of being in the band.

There are a number of talking heads from famous western rock stars, including Gene Simmons who puts forward the idea that if X were comprised of white, English speaking men, they would be the biggest rock band in the world. He may have a point. Although I was not familiar with the band at all before the screening, during the post-film Q&A with director Stephen Kijak and band drummer/songwriter Yoshiki it was abundantly clear that X Japan fans are amongst the most fevered and loyal in the world, and that Yoshiki was probably the most famous person I had ever been in the presence of, despite not knowing who he was two hours earlier.

The band, like their epic 30 minute rock ballad Art of Life, have many different facets to their success, and this documentary (made with the full co-operation of the band) goes a long way to respectfully cover as many aspects as possible. When watching We Are X it's hard not to fall in love with this band, and even if you are unfamiliar with them going in, the performance footage with thousands of cheering fans chanting their battle cry "We Are X!" will soon change that.

Made with real affection for the band and its fans, We Are X is a crowd-pleasing documentary that proves that X go all the way to XI.

MAN VS SNAKE review

In 1984 Tim McVey achieved what was thought to be impossible. He scored the first ever billion point game on Nibbler, armed with no more than a quarter and two days in which to do it. Receiving notoriety, fame and even a day named in his honour by the city, McVey returned to his life as a casual gamer until, 25 years later, he was forced to come out of retirement to protect his record against a number of new challengers.

Man Vs Snake assumes you've already seen 2007's highly successful documentary King of Kong, which let's be honest, if you're taking the time to read a review of a film that revolves around an arcade game called Nibbler, is probably true. Undoubtedly made to capitalise upon and continue the legacy of that film, Man Vs Snake fleshes out the world and community these guys live in, in particular the Twin Galaxies arcade owned by Walter Day, a man who seemingly spends half his life dressed as a sports referee despite the majority of arcade game achievements being a one man triumph against the odds with no real reason for a mediator.

"The Dodge City of video games where people would come for a showdown", it just so happened that the mild mannered Tim McVey lived on Twin Galaxies' doorstep and so was able to spend his youth honing his skills at the arcade, alongside the often shameless self-promoter (and by most accounts the villain of King of Kong) Billy Mitchell. Mitchell returns here, but is a secondary character in McVey's story who, although not quite as sympathetic a person as Kong's Steve Wiebe, appears to be a thoroughly likeable average gamer who once achieved something impressive.

Much like the arcade games itself, the film is able to be alluring and addictive, despite the game carrying no way near the same cultural cache as Donkey Kong did for King of Kong. Essentially the same game as Snake from Nokia phones from the early 2000s but played in a Pac-Man maze, Nibbler is a relatively obscure game that was all but rendered obsolete through advancements in games in the mid-80s. However, for retro gaming fans there is an obvious charm to it, and watching the aforementioned Nibbler dart around the screen at an ever increasing pace does become hypnotic to watch.

This covers a lot of similar ground to King of Kong, but without that central clash of characters, focuses more on McVey's family life and the support of his wife through his pursuit of regaining his title. The film tries to emulate the sense of competition that drove King of Kong, and although there is potentially foul-play gaming bad-boy Dwayne Richard and an Italian Kickboxer to contend with, it's clear that regaining his record is an endurance contest that McVey has to achieve by himself. It may be a strange world where the records are verified by the philosophy spouting Walter and his Twin Galaxies scoreboard, but be in no doubts that this is a sports comeback story on a par with Rocky Balboa.

Shot over a number of years and using some well realised animated sequences to fill in the gaps, Man Vs Snake is an affectionate look at an often bizarre sub-culture that is able to raise a number of laughs, but crucially not at the gamers or their pastime pursuits. A charming and enjoyable tale.

Verdict
4/5

BITE review

People often return from holiday with many things. Memories, photographs, possibly a straw donkey. Well, Casey (Elma Begovic) has come back from celebrating her bachelorette party covered in insect bites and with an, ahem, nasty infection. Returning to the apartment building that also houses her domineering and disapproving future mother-in-law, Casey's bite soon becomes an oozing mess that she tries to hide from her friends and fiance as it changes her into...something else.

After the brief pre-title sequence that sees Casey on her bachelorette party where she received her bite whilst having a dip in a remote spring (captured as if it's found footage; an over-used gimmick in the horror genre currently, that is thankfully jettisoned when the film returns home), the majority of the film takes place solely within Casey's apartment. A budgetary choice i'm sure, but it works well in amplifying her increased isolation as the sickness takes hold. Retracing her steps by watching the video camera footage her friends captured on holiday in order to find out what actually went on, as she undergoes her transformation the film certainly delivers the ewww factor, turning her from a clammy mess into something amphibious and genuinely disgusting. Even the neighbours dog doesn't want to be walked by her anymore. 

What works is that the bulk of the odd and disgusting things around her apartment are achieved practically rather than relying on CGI effects. What's missing is any real sense as to why this is happening to Casey. The obvious touch point for any body horror is David Cronenberg's The Fly, which tapped into the 1980's fear of the AIDS pandemic to deliver a film with a real social conscience. Bite does cover a similar theme with Casey's potential promiscuity whilst abroad and the consequences therein, but there's a concerning implication that her desire for a normal sex life is what is being punished, something I doubt the filmmakers were aiming for.

There's some ropey acting among the supporting cast that detracts from the game portrayal of Casey by Elma Begovic (her mopey fiance does little more than stare at himself in the mirror, raising serious questions about the plausibility of their relationship), but as direct to VOD/DVD low budget horrors go, Bite isn't terrible, and the suitably slimy effects work alone warrants a watch by any fans of the body horror genre. Kudos to Begovic for creating pathos for a character who could be seen as a simple monster; it's just a shame that the dark sense of humour shown in the opening and closing stings is absent from the rest of the film.

Verdict
2.5/5

YARN review

As shown from the opening title card, director Una Lorenzen's Yarn wants to draw parallels between the noun (continuous strand of twisted threads) and the verb (a long, often elaborate narrative). To do that it follows a number of artists with differing approaches to their use of the medium of wool, with vastly differing ideologies and outcomes.

If you were hoping for a history of knitting and crocheting, this film is not it, more an exploration of how the metaphorical and literal capabilities of woollen thread has been been adopted by the art community and used for a multitude of artistic sensibilities. The large sculptural pieces that blend the functionality of the thread with an inherent playground potential created by Japanese artist Toshi are incredible, and it's interesting to hear how the art community's stance on her work changed once children decided to enjoy her work in a more tangible way.

Also featured prominently is Tinna, the Icelandic graffiti artist who specialises in adorning grey lampposts around cities with her colourful political statements. She is most vocal about what changes she would like to see in the world, and what her philosophies are about how her work can help. Olek the crocheter is also a major figure in this sub-sub-genre, and has a number of impressive pieces featured that find a clash between mother nature and this creative method.

Oddly fascinating if not a reel too long, it's an entertaining globe-trotting adventure that proves interesting to see how the public react to these artworks, from huge crocheted canvasses telling us to "keep calm and eat my cock" to people walking around cities knitted into full body suits. There's a number of scenes that show the interaction of the general public with these works, although this doc chooses to capture what's going on rather than attempt to interview anyone in conventional documentary fashion. It would be interesting to hear their responses, but director Una Lorenzen has chosen to position her camera alongside the artists and their co-conspirators during these collisions of worlds.

Witnessing a crocheted mermaid swimming under the sea of Hawaii is undeniably beautiful, but despite the efforts of the artists to bring their work to the world, it's fair to say that this is a niche interest film. It's a shame that the feminist thread wasn't pulled a bit harder to uncover why there is such a gender disparity within the artists who use this medium, but Yarn is not short of charm and creativity, and might just be the most colourful film I've ever seen.

Verdict
3/5

THE GUV'NOR review

Upon its release in 1998, Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels instantly became one of those films you could completely devour, finding out about who these actors were and where they came from. Did you know Jason Statham used to be an Olympic swimmer? Or that Dexter Fletcher was in The Long, Good Friday as a child? Or that the Cockney henchman used to be a bare knuckle boxer with ties to London gangsters? Guided by his son Jamie, The Guv'nor looks at the history of the man who started out as muscle for hire, became known as 'The King of the Bouncers', and then eventually a film star, Lenny McLean.

Aided by the use of grainy videotape that shows him scrapping in the ring, right from the off the film announces who McLean was, then follows Jamie on a trip around London to try and find out why he was the way he was. Included on Jamie's tour is the run-down shed where his father trained to be a boxer (now a public park), and the location of the nightclub where his father was shot while working on the door (now a Pret a Manger). This was a very different London, and Lenny was tough enough to survive it.

Jamie is a lively cockney geezer, and like his father, a natural in front of the camera. It's clear that Jamie has been delivering stories about his father for his entire life, but that he sees the documentary as a chance to dig a little bit deeper into Lenny's past, despite the reluctance of a number of family members to take part. Still, this absorbing documentary doesn't shy away from talking about the demons that made him the man he was (some that appear to be present in Jamie, albeit diluted), and despite his public history as a boxer and late in life film star, there's still a few things that prove to be revelatory.

His time as a fighter is well documented here, and even goes to the lengths of visiting a modern bare-knuckle boxing match to show how tenacious a fighter he was in comparison. His rivalry with Roy Shaw (in which he took over the mantle of The Guv'nor) is used to show how committed to the art of boxing he was, and there's a number of talking heads, including Lock, Stock co-stars, who describe what a tough but loveable man he was in his later years (the film was dedicated to him after he died a few weeks before its release).

In pugilists parlance, this documentary doesn't appear to be pulling many punches, but it chooses to slip past some topics it prefers to leave alone. There's a lot of talk about how things were done "in them days", including some stories of horrific violence inflicted by Lenny, but (perhaps not surprisingly) there's no one willing to say a bad word about him on camera.

In that respect The Guv'nor is an often one sided depiction of McLean, but this film (from the producers of Gascoigne) uses its impressive resource of archive footage to paint a portrait of a family man who, with incredible ferociousness, fought his demons his entire life to become a modern folk hero. There's a recently wrapped dramatisation of his life on the way coming from the same producers, but they've got a fight on their hands to cover Lenny's 'Raging Bull meets Legend' life story as well as this documentary does.

Verdict
4/5

UNDER THE SHADOW review

A big hit at this year's Sundance Film Festival, Under the Shadow is director Babak Anvari's debut feature film, drawing on his childhood experiences in Tehran for this claustrophobic tale of a mother trying to protect her daughter from a malevolent danger.

When Shideh (Narges Rashidi) is rejected from continuing her studies to become a doctor due to accusations against her, she retreats to her apartment building home with her husband and daughter, Dorsa. When her husband has to leave the city for work, she is left to care for Dorsa alone, who has begun to see strange things around the apartment and speaks of a Djinn; a malevolent spirit that is plaguing her.

Set during the Iran-Iraq conflict of the 1980s in a time of great social upheaval, the first half of the film is less about scares and more about keeping you on tenterhooks with the ominous threat, second guessing what it may show you next. However, as the film progresses it becomes clear that Under the Shadow is well aware of haunted house conventions and uses them for its benefit, playing with the audiences expectations.

Under threat of bombings at all times, almost the entirety of the film takes place within the apartment complex. It is Shideh's bunker (complete with taped up windows to protect from shattered glass), a place where she can feel safe and free from the oppression of having to cover her hair, and where she is able to watch her (forbidden) Jane Fonda workout videos.

Under the Shadow brings to mind recent horrors Insidious, It Follows, The Babadook and the best of the J-horror sub genre (Dark Water, Ring, etc) in its ability to present its story within the framework of a basic family drama. The film is largely a two hander between Shideh and Dorsa, and has smart comparisons between the way Dorsa is being treated and corrupted by this force, and the regime that has almost overnight changed the way Shideh is seen within society. The subtext is clear and palpable.

The camera is kept close and fluid, and like Insidious it creates tension from the things you think you might have seen, with glimpses of obscure shapes around the room. Something as simple as a child's coat hanging from a hook proved particularly nail biting for me.

An extremely promising debut from director Babak Anvari; tense, claustrophobic and extremely unsettling, Under the Shadow is a nerve shredding experience that won't be easily forgotten.

Verdict

4/5

LIGHT YEARS review

Now touring cinemas across the country is director Esther May Campbell's feature film debut, Light Years. When Rose leaves home in search of her absent mother (folk singer Beth Orton), her siblings leave the familiarity of their surroundings to try and track them both down and bring them home.

Expanded from Esther May Campbell's BAFTA winning short, this is a world where the children exist largely without adults. Beth Orton (best known as a folk singer who has occasionally collaborated with the Chemical Brothers) in her second big screen acting role, plays a character who exists as a spectre in the lives of her young children. They all know their mother is ill and that the cause of her issues may come into play in their lives as they get older, and although it would be unfair to categorise her as a bad parent, her illness has left an indelible mark on the lives and growth of her children. It's this fractious relationship that provides the backbone to the film, although the lack of clarity towards the direction of the film can prove frustrating to watch.

Shot by Zac Nicholson and Will Pugh, the film is a visual delight, with the drab greyness of an industrial estate representing adulthood clashing with the surrounding blooming countryside of childhood. There are moments when these two worlds collide for the young characters who have been forced into early adulthood by their parents, such as one scene on a motorway bridge that audibly expresses the thundering journey they are on, and another where teenager Ramona (Sophie Burton) finds young love as a train roars past. Rather than coming across as heavy handed or cod-philosophical, it's these moments of contrast that end up bringing the film to life, albeit fleetingly.

The most intriguing character in the film is a scrappy little kid on a bike called Levi, who appears to exist in a world that's somewhere between Harmony Korine's Gummo and This is England. On the periphery of the story but with a vocal romantic interest in youngest daughter Rose, when he inexplicably disappears from the narrative as the focus shifts onto Orton's character, his presence is sorely missed.

Light Years is a sleepy sunset of a film, and although there is an undeniably beautiful and lyrical quality within its photography, the visuals far surpass the performances and the family puzzle at the heart of the film is one that ultimately you may not care about seeing solved.

Verdict
2.5/5

THE CLOSER WE GET review

When Karen Guthrie’s mother Ann suffered a debilitating stroke, she returned to her hometown of Largs on the Scottish coast to help care for her with the rest of her family, including her father who had moved out of the family home fifteen years earlier.

Delivered from the point of view of someone trying to make sense of her parents’ relationship, the narration from Guthrie is often raw and poetic. As she talks of how she returned home when “the doctors couldn’t put mum back together again”, it’s impossible not to empathise with her and feel her pain. As the incidences that have shaped her family (including her father’s decision to change his career and moved to Djibouti for work for ten years) are recounted, it reveals an untied family unit.

Karen’s father is a delightfully interesting figure; often cantankerous, always pre-occupied, sometimes shouting at the televised sport he enjoys watching. He returned to the family home fifteen years after separating from his wife, bringing with him a number of additional secrets (that I won’t reveal here) that shook the foundations of the family.A complicated man with a number of contradictions on display, he as it once traditional with grand expectations of what his sons should achieve (with the French Foreign Legion touted as a viable career path) and the architect of this modern arrangement that falls under the umbrella of his family.

Guthrie has documented her family for a number of years, so the film is able to flash back to earlier years before Ann's stroke  made her a near silent observer, to when she learnt about her husband's time abroad and his reasons for leaving the family home. She is visibly chagrined at having spent many years as the dutiful wife, just to see him pursue his personal desires, so perhaps it's some sort of recompense that he returned to act as a companion to Ann.

There's a number of fascinating characters within the family, and although this was clearly a cathartic exercise for Guthrie herself, under explored is the effect this unconventional family set up had on her siblings (including her brother Mark who was a member of the 90s Britpop outfit The Supernaturals).

What works is the overwhelming normality of the situation. There's no huge dramatic outbursts, no accounts of fights and accusations. This is a family existing in the wake of revelations that could tear apart many families, and the entire bizarre tale is told with a great dignity. As Guthrie reveals every twist and turn of this unconventional set up, it's an honest and often raw portrait.

With echoes of Sarah Polley's Stories We Tell, The Closer We Get is a very personal account of family life, and an often heartbreaking, deeply affecting story.

Verdict

4/5

MATILDA - SCRATCH 'N SNIFF CINEMA review

Re-released as part of the Roald Dahl On Film season that celebrates the centenary of his birth, a special "Scratch 'n Sniff" version of Matilda is now touring cinemas.

I'll be honest that I've always been sceptical of this sort of 'stunt cinema'. I blame it on too many dodgy 3D films spoiling what could have been a pure cinema experience and a level of old man apathy. But on a quiet Bank Holiday Monday with a film that I already know I like, why not give something new a try?

Using a card with ten differently scented circles on it to scratch off throughout the film and a somewhat rudimentary process where a member of the cinema team sits at the front of the screen and shines a torch at the appropriate point of the film, we got to discover the delights of fresh pancakes and fish paste accompanied by the delighted chatter of little voices eager to take part.

Scratch 'n Sniff Cinema have previously created screenings for The Wicker Man and The Goonies, but this is by far the biggest film they have done to date. The often gross and gloopy works of Roald Dahl fit this medium extremely well, and DeVito's film is not only a delight to see on the big screen, but the ideal adaptation to undergo such a process. It's a curious array of scents with an unmistakable synthetic funk filling the cinema screen as they all got scratched away, and although there's a certain amount of suspension of disbelief needed to fully immerse yourself in the fragrances, the whole experience made for a wonderfully fun and smelly time.

Engaging young audiences with cinema is an incredibly important thing to do to, and this certainly did that. Captivating the young and old members of the audience alike, this newly scented version of Matilda is a family favourite made more fragrant.

If you're interesting in joining seeing where Matilda is showing next, visit the Film Hub Wales website, or for more information about all of the Roald Dahl centenary celebrations, visit RoaldDahl.com.