Cold War - Review

It might be a weird thing to say but with Cold War, Pawel Pawlikowski and his cinematographer Lukasz Zal have produced a black and white film that is bursting with colour.
The story of a love affair witnessed episodically over the years between a Polish songwriter and pianist and a young singer who become intrinsically linked through a love of music and then each other. An attraction that crosses and bridges barriers of age, politics, distance and borders.
Similarities could be drawn to the central pairing of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg in Jean-Luc Godard's A Bout De Souffle. On paper the combination shouldn't really work but the chemistry between Tomasz Kot and Joanna Kulig is undeniable and the sparks that fly between the two of them are hot enough to burn through the cinema screen.
As Eldon Tyrell tells Roy Batty in Blade Runner, "the light that burns twice as bright burns half as long and you have burned so very, very brightly".
With a passion this intense, it is clear that the relationship is ultimately doomed but something keeps drawing them back together. Like a moth to a flame.
No stranger to doomed romances (My Summer of Love, The Woman in the Fifth), with Cold War Pawlikowski has created a film that feels like a blend of La La Land meets Casablanca that has been directed by Ingmar Bergman dabbling in a French New Wave style.
That sounds like a rather jazzy way of describing this mix of notes and style but it all blends together perfectly to produce on of the best films of 2018. One that, unlike the central couple Wiktor and Zula, will find an audience and will never let them go.

5 stars

2017 - The Year In Review

2017 - A Year In Review

It would be easy to write up a review of the year looking at the big stories of the year but it would make for depressing reading now and no amount of "Now Wolverine can team up with the Avengers" can make up for that.

Instead this will be a bit of a statistical analysis of my year of cinema going along with my picks for the best (and worst) films of the year along with movie moments and performances.

When compiling my list of what I had watched this year, it became apparent that I will need to move with the times in 2018 as I only had kept track of films that I had seen at the cinema and not at home via Netflix, such as Gerald's Game and The Circle.

From 1st January, that will change as there are more and more original films being released via online platforms, including Duncan Jones's upcoming Mute (which will hopefully also receive a small theatrical release).

Films watched at the cinema - 142

New releases watched in 2017 - 115

Repeat viewings of new releases - 9

Classic re-issues watched on the big screen - 18

Worst Films of 2017

1. Transformers 5: The Last Knight
2. Song To Song
3. The Snowman
4. Geostorm
5. The House

Movie Moments Of The Year

1. Luke & Leia (The Last Jedi) - Don't want to go into spoilers but safe to say that when Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher are reunited on screen, it is a scene that would turn even the most hardened Sith back from the Dark Side.
2. Joi, K and Mariette (Blade Runner 2049) - The A.I. Joi melds with a replicant prostitute in order to become physical with Gosling's K and the CGI used in this scene is the most stunning that I have ever seen and blew my tiny human mind as it struggled to comprehend what it was seeing.
3. Epilogue (La La Land) - A beautiful "What If" recap of this stunning, joyous musical which simultaneously becomes the most bittersweet ending to a romance since Casablanca.
4. Spitfire vs the Bomber (Dunkirk) - The airborne dogfight cinematography is the highlight of Nolan's film but the acting and emotion cannot be overlooked during the scene where Hardy's pilot silently decides whether to fly home to safety or turn around to take on a German bomber to save more soldiers, knowing it will leave him out of fuel and probably sending him to his death.
5. The Knock On The Door (Wind River) - When Elizabeth Olsen knocks on the door of a cabin, what happened next completely threw me for a loop.
6. Post-credit Sting (Split) - One comes to expect a twist from an M. Night Shalamyan film and this was no different but when the film revealed where the story would go in the future I properly "marked out" and was astounded and delighted we would see more from the world of *redacted*
7. Bellbottoms (Baby Driver) - The opening bank robbery and resulting car chase is a tour de force of action directing and editing, with all the action set out meticulously to the soundtrack of Bellbottoms by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and sets the tone for Edgar Wright's bold, brash and brilliant Baby Driver.
8. Anything with Korg (Thor Ragnarok) - Taika Waititi's hilarious rock monster Korg was the breakout character of Thor Ragnarok. Always there to undercut the tension with a joke or two, I certainly hope to see more of Korg and Miek in the MCU.
9. Michael Stuhlbarg's monologue (Call Me By Your Name) - Stuhlbarg steals the film out from under the feet of Chalamet and Hammer right at the end with a tender, beautiful speech to his son that earns him the title of best movie parent since Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson in Easy A.
10. "Oh hai Mark" (The Disaster Artist) - Yes it was featured in the trailer but the filming of this scene in The Room is fantastic (as is the spot on recreations of scenes from the film played side by side during the end credits).

Best Performances Of The Year

1. Emily Beecham (Daphne)
2. Tom Hardy (Dunkirk)
3. James Franco (The Disaster Artist)
4. Harrison Ford (Blade Runner 2049)
5. Jessica Chastain (Miss Sloane & Molly's Game)
6. Michael Stuhlbarg (Call Me By Your Name)
7. Rafe Spall (The Ritual)
8. Mark Hamill (The Last Jedi)
9. Hugh Grant (Paddington 2)
10. Jack Black (Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle)

Most Enjoyable Cinematic Viewing Experiences

1. The Room
2. Edinburgh International Film Festival Q&As - This year I was lucky enough to host a couple of Q&As at EIFF including Daphne with a breakout performance from Emily Beecham and a packed house in Filmhouse 1 for The Beautiful Fantastic with Jeremy Irvine.
3. Raiders Of The Lost Ark with live score at Usher Hall - One of the greatest films of all-time with one of the greatest film themes of all-time played live by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. What's not to love?
4. Star Wars: The Last Jedi Midnight Screening 
5. Dunkirk on 70mm & IMAX - Flawless projection from the team at Filmhouse for the gorgeous 70mm print. Sadly there were projection issues at Glasgow IMAX but I did notice the reactions of audience members around me with one girl utterly engrossed with the dogfight scenes so much that whenever Tom Hardy appeared on screen, she moved forward to the edge of her seat. At the end when he opens the cockpit to parachute to safety she started to cheer, only to look around at other people in shock when he closed it to safely land the plane on the beach and burn it so the Germans couldn't use it. It reminded me of the power that cinema can have over people.

Top 17 Films of 2017

1. Blade Runner 2049
2. Dunkirk
3. Wind River
4. Get Out
5. The Last Jedi
6. La La Land
7. A Ghost Story
8. Baby Driver
9. Mother!
10. The Disaster Artist
11. Logan
12. T2 Trainspotting
13. Call Me By Your Name
14. Paddington 2
15. Raw
16. Kaleidoscope
17. It Comes At Night

Honorable Mention: War Of The Planet Of The Apes - Who can honestly say that in 2011, when a prequel/reboot to a Sixties sci-fi film that spawned a number of terrible sequels and remakes would produce one of the greatest film trilogies of ALL-TIME, anchored by an incredible central performance from Andy Serkis as Caesar.

La La Land - Review

"City of Stars, are you shining just for me? City of Stars, you never shined so brightly"

The bright lights of Hollywood draw in and seduce many a dreamer, like moths to a flame, but do their dreams come true and end up with their name in lights or do they go down in flames?

Films set in the City of Stars can go either way. The Neon Demon and Mulholland Drive show the dark side of what can happen to innocent souls in pursuit of fame and fortune but La La Land, from the outset anyway with a glorious opening number Another Day Of Sun set in a traffic jam, certainly feels like it is full of rays of sunshine, hope and optimism.

This is the L.A. from the movies where anything is possible if you believe you can make it.

Of course, we've all know that isn't strictly true and our main characters Mia, a barista and aspiring actress, and Seb, a jazz pianist who wants to open his own club, both have their own dreams and the film follows them as they face obstacles to their goals and the prospect that what they have been seeking all this time might not be success but actually each other.

If Hollywood still operates under the Studio System, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone would be permanently paired together for the rest of time. The chemistry that was first showcased in Crazy, Stupid Love is off the charts here and is one of the major reasons that the film works so well.

Another reason it works is that it is not beholden to the pitfalls of a stage-to-screen adaptation. Sometimes musicals when they transfer from stage to screen (Chicago, The Producers) struggle to escape the feeling that you are just watching a show. La La Land follows in the footsteps of modern musicals such as Moulin Rouge, South Park: Bigger, Longer Uncut (yes, it is a musical and a damn good one at that!) and has a natural ebb and flow as it follows the central relationship through the seasons.

There were sequences in the film that caused a smile to break out across my face from ear to ear and fill me with a joy I haven't felt in a cinema screen since the final tap dance number in The Artist. And like that film, expect to hear "And the Oscar goes to... for La La Land" quite a lot as Hollywood loves nothing more than a film that celebrates the industry.

There are references to an entire library of cinematic classics; including Singin' In The Rain, Vertigo, Rebel Without A Cause and Casablanca. Like these films, La La Land remembers that the purpose of cinema is to provide an escape from everyday life, to transport you to another place and time and it certainly does that.

City Of Stars might be gaining all the attention but it was the song Audition (The Fools Who Dream), which reminds me of The Rainbow Connection, I was transported back to Studio 54 watching Emma Stone perform in Cabaret, where she first proved that she could hold a tune. Gosling equips himself well too and while not quite Fred and Ginger, they are the modern day Fred and a Ginger.

To quote an internet meme, find someone who looks at you the way critics look at Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone look at each other on screen.

5 stars