LFF: Blood

Craig here with a report on a new British film showing at the 56th BFI London Film Festival.

Paul Bettany in "Blood"

Nick Murphy’s Blood (showing in the festival’s "Thrill" strand) explores the secret cost of human damage on a small group of people in a north of England town. Bodies are invaded and battered; the red stuff is in plentiful supply. Cops, criminals and their families all reach the end of the tethers in this stern, cold police drama about the murder of a teenage girl and its aftermath. Police detective brothers played by Paul Bettany and Stephen Graham investigate the crime. When they begin to question a local man with a shady past things turn grim and complicated. Blood follows Murphy’s previous film The Awakening (which David and I discussed here) as a LFF selection and, as in that spooky throwback, there are ghostly appearances albeit in more subtle ways. Murphy’s direction is as suitably restrained as before, but he adds a touch more immediacy and grit to this contemporary story. The precise, stripped back tone matches the heavy severity of the material, making the most of the script’s gloomy turns. Tough, thankless work is carried out in chilly conditions (both literally and emotionally) by Bettany and team. Every character appears to be on tenterhooks twenty-four-seven, either harbouring grim secrets or desperately striving for unsavoury answers.

However, the ominous intriguing central mystery eventually gives way to some rather wearing British drama clichés. Rote police dialogue – all hard words spouted with brash perplexity – dominates the script and too-familiar character types come and go as the plot plods to its final stretch. Bettany gives an intermittently sly lead performance and a fraught late encounter with Brian Cox as his dementia-ridden dad is moving. But Blood lacks the kind of searing character interaction and enduring mystery that these kinds of gritty dramas thrive on. Perhaps if I hadn’t recently seen Charlie Brooker’s very funny and spot-on police-drama parody A Touch of Cloth (think Inspector Morse meets Frank Drebin) I might have felt more of a connection. (Coincidentally, Cox appears in both Blood and Cloth and plays strangely similar roles) Even just a dash of levity here and there might have made Blood a more invigorating and less brusquely dour experience. C-

Thoughts I had looking at The Guilt Trip poster

presented without self censorship or editing as they come to me...

• Initially I kept comparing this to Something's Gotta Give (2003) as to its awards chances -- Oscar Best Actress Nominee -- and now I'm embarrassed about that and wish I had compared it to Mother (1996) -- Golden Globe Best Actress Nominee.
• Babs still gets top billing. As it should be but she hasn't made a movie in how many years?
• those Focker movies don't count.
• How much would your typical Barbra Streisand fan(atic) pay to have their cheek pinched by her? I'm guessing thousands because the prices they'll pay to see her in concert. Yeesh!
• People who do not think Barbra is a brilliant actor have not seen Funny Girl or The Way We Were. They have maybe seen Prince of Tides or Meet the Fuckers.
• Who else is in this movie? Wouldn't it be so weird if it was all Sleuth like two-hander?
• My whole life I've loved the tradition of seeing a movie on Christmas day with family & friends. But now every movie opens on Christmas and it's so annoying! I'm buried in prezzies and I'd prefer them metered out a bit.
• Do you think Abbas Kiarostami is totally dying to see this? Road trip!

007 Favorite 007 Films

Deborah Lipp, the Ultimate James Bond Fan, is listing 007 of her favorite things as we count down to Skyfall

I spent a couple of years compiling lists made by James Bond fans; primarily favorite movies, least-favorites, and  ranked lists of the whole series. The fun thing to discover is, when it comes to James Bond, everyone's an outlier. Every single movie appeared on someone's favorites and someone's least-favorites. Plus, everyone's list had a unique feature, an eyebrow-raiser. I bet if we did a poll here -- should we do a poll here? -- the same thing would happen.

So, eyebrow-raiser and all, here's my top 007 Bond films...

001 From Russia With Love (1963)
To me, the second Bond movie is the greatest of them all. It's the perfect blend of Bond ingredients: Action, adventure, exotic locations, sex, mystery, espionage, music, humor, visual impact, and an outstanding cast. Beyond Sean Connery and the other regulars (including the introduction of Desmond Llewellyn into the series), there's Robert Shaw, Lotte Lenya, and Pedro  Armendáriz in his final role.  Eunice Gayson returns from Dr. No: a rare recurring character role. Plus, this is the movie that introduces Blofeld as a hand petting a white cat. Underground catacombs in Istanbul! Gypsy mud wrestling! Daniela Bianchi wearing nothing but a ribbon around her neck! All that and a North by Northwest homage too. It's perfect.

002 Goldeneye (1995)
Restart the series after a six year hiatus, during which the audience went from anticipatory to disinterested. Introduce a new Bond to a new generation. Make Bond modern in a post-Cold War era without throwing away tradition: Goldeneye succeeds on every level. Hey, this is the movie that introduced Judi Dench as M, and wasn't *that* a great idea? The cast is incredible—in addition to being Pierce Brosnan's first outing, we have Sean Bean, Samantha Bond, Famke Janssen, Izabella Scorupco, Robbie Coltraine, and Joe Don Baker. The stunts are mind-blowing (the dam jump? Holy wow!), and the deft mixture of action, drama, humor, and globetrotting is out of this world. I'm happy every time I pop this one into the DVD player.

Daniel Craig, Roger Moore, and... Timothy Dalton (?!?) after the jump.

Click to read more ...

Cry Face, Dance Breaks, Doc Shorts

The Claire Danes Cry Face Project as wonderful as it sounds
iTunes Trailers Django Unchained got himself a new one just as the buzz was dipping to pin drop status
John August reacts to the lower-than-expected box office for Frankenweenie (which he wrote). I love how candid he is about temporary disappointments and what it all does or doesn't mean.
Nicks Flick Picks has been surveying the best of... 2012 in multiple categories (so far)
Movie City News on Seth MacFarlane's first Oscar sketch
Awards Daily Meryl Streep and other Hollywood power women are Drawing the Line about reproductive rights. Good for them! 

IMP Awards new character posters for Les Misérables
LA Times RIP to actor /sports star Alex Karras (TV's Webster). I'm disappointed that so few of the obits have featured Victor/Victoria in any memorable way! That's what I remember him best from.
Stale Popcorn on Bret Easton Ellis, Twitter and the Canyons trailer
/Film Shailene Woodley to become Mary Jane Watson in the new Spider-Man series. "Downgrade!" - crazed Kiki fan.
TV|Line Bryan Fuller's forthcoming Munsters remake series starring Portia deRossi may end with the pilot, which is airing as a standalone tv special this month
People did I forget to congratulate Audra McDonald and Will Swenson on their marriage? Two fine musical theater talents now legally fused into one power couple 
The Envelope on Lincoln's debut at NYFF. I love the opening 'graph referencing War Horse. Hee.

Steven Spielberg's long-gestating "Lincoln" finally arrived last night at the New York Film Festival, and as with any blessed event, the debut prompted a level of excitement not seen since ... well ... the last time Spielberg made a much-hyped, awards-season movie.

Must See
I can't stop watching this clip of Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Maggie Cheung courtesy of Criterion

Apparently In the Mood For Love (one of my favorite films evah!) was originally conceived as a much lighter piece. Watching one of the all time great movie couples dance together all flirtatious/cool is multi-orgasmic. Try it! If you've never seen the movie get right on that. A wondrous film experience awaits you.

Oscar Documentary News!
Finally, the eight finalists for Oscars best Documentary Short have been announced. They are...

Paraíso (10 minutes) is about Mexican immigrants who clean windows on skyscrapers

• The Education of Mohammad Hussein (Loki Films)
• Inocente (Shine Global, Inc)
• Kings Point (Kings Point Documentary, Inc)
• Mondays at Racine (Cynthia Wade Productions)
• Open Heart (Urban Landscapes Ic)
• Paraíso (The Strangebird Company)
• The Perfect Fit (SDI Productions Ltd)
• Redemption (Downton Docs) 

You can read about all of those shorts at our newly updated Oscar Documentary Prediction Page. Enjoy

LFF: The French are coming!

David here, heralding the return of the BFI London Film Festival – Craig and I are back again, and we’ll be bringing you various updates across the next two weeks. The 56th festival kicked off last night with the European premiere of Frankenweenie, but my first round-up post has more of a Francophile feel to it…

Matthias Schoenaerts and Marion Cotillard in 'Rust & Bone'

With Rust & Bone, director Jacques Audiard is still in the business of tempering abrasive, down-on-their-luck characters in the French banlieues with a style that smears the poetic and the aggressive into one confrontational melting pot. It seems to be part of Audiard’s intention to throw severe miserablism at his audience just to see if they can survive. Still, such a vibrantly aggressive film with a charged sense of the physical is a rare thing, and Audiard works to balance the lead performances by Marion Cotillard (whom Jose was just raving about) and Matthias Schoenaerts between a dark emotional percolation and a keen awareness of their physicality and the relationship of their bodies. Cotillard is expert at scorching her character Stephanie’s lust and enhanced sense of her own body onto the screen, and the building frisson between Stephanie and Schoenaerts’ Ali happens less through dialogue (the brisk, careless attitude of Ali puts paid to that) and more through the relation of their bodies and faces. The film may tilt wildly into grandiose dramatics or voracious sentimentality and some notes may strike an off chord, but they are all part of Audiard’s passionate approach; they reflect the beautiful, distorted, uncomfortable mess of a world that these two people inhabit. The rust rubs up against the bone and they spark, hurting but creating fire and feeling. (B+) (full review)

Wild in a different way is the narrative conceit of François Ozon’s In the House, confident again after the successful pastiche. French literature teacher Germain (Fabrice Luchini), despairing of his students’ lack of talent and effort, is intrigued by Claude’s (Ernst Umhauer) piece on the homelife of his best friend Rapha (Bastien Ughetto). Pushing his new protégé to enliven his continuing stories, the lines between fiction and reality blur as Claude, Germain and Germain’s wife Jeanne (Kristin Scott Thomas) become more invested and obsessed with the lives of Rapha’s family. There are echoes of younger Ozon in the cautious dissection of a middle-class family home by an Umhauer’s enigmatic potboiler, but the director sticks less rigidly to the theatrical setting of Water Drops on Burning Rocks and 8 Women and delineates various domestic and public spaces with distinctive mise-en-scene. With this consistent shift in setting come the frivolous shifts in tone – Claude’s interpretation of Germain’s literary suggestions remain unpredictable to all but him, and so the audience is thrown between caustic parody, sensual romance, ghostly thriller, and myriads of diverse moods with gleeful abandon. Ultimately, Ozon makes little of what amounts to a toe-dip in social politics, but it skips along at a brisk pace and Umhauer’s pleasingly chilled performance is matched by Emmanuelle Seignier’s melancholy, spaced ennui as Rapha’s mother. In the House is a unique prospect and even if could’ve been so much greater, it’s a pleasant way to pass a couple of hours. (B-)

Jean-Louis Trintignent holds Emmanuelle Riva in 'Amour'

As you might expect, Michael Haneke’s Amour is pretty much the opposite proposition. Haneke presents the story’s end before his title card prompting a rewind to the beginning. The udience knows they’re in for a wearing, emotional experience to reach the beatific sight of a decomposing body surrounded lovingly by petals. We’re in familiarly confrontational territory with Haneke here, but the title suggests the tender centre of this enterprise, inhabited by breathtaking work from Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva. They play a wealthy, elderly French couple whose life becomes confined to their apartment after Anne (Riva) suffers a stroke. Haneke’s camerawork is predominantly his usual tableau-style observation, but increasingly, as Anne worsens, the close-ups proliferate. The actors and the camera draw us deeper into the nauseatingly devastating slide towards death. Such is the power of Anne’s irascible pride that Haneke feels intrusively cruel when he won’t let her escape his camera, cutting across the apartment to catch her wheelchair zooming away from her husband. Questions niggle about why Haneke felt the need to film such a painful story, but it gains infinite legitimacy and value from the presence of Trintignant and Riva, who uncover every emotional nook and cranny of the wounded dignity and painful decisions involved in such a lengthy and dedicated love. (B+)

Follow David on Twitter @randomfurlong for instant, 140-character screening reactions.