Masters Of Cinema #54 - The Naked Island - Blu-ray Review

In 1960, his studio on the verge of bankruptcy, Kaneto Shindô retired to the isolated Setonaikai archipelago in South-West Japan, to shoot a film which needed to succeed if he and his crew were to continue their work.

For this film, that was to decide his and his studio's fate, what did he choose? The Naked Island, a near silent 'cinematic poem' to the inevitable hardship of life in isolation, featuring next to no dialogue, plenty of abstract imagery and not very much at all that would be considered 'marketable' today. How times have changed.

Where a studio now might turn to a superhero to save them, Shindô follows a family of four as they toil on their land, an isolated outcrop which requires them to row backwards and forwards to fetch the water needed to grow crops. Clearly, it's a hard existence, and the director goes to pains later on to show us just how hard it can be, his charges circling towards increasing tragedy varying from the mundane to the genuinely crushing.

The level that they live at, and the mundanity of tragedy, is shown early on when the mother (Nobuko Otowa) drops water it has taken her and the father (Taiji Tonoyama) many hours to carry from the mainland and then up to their hillside planting beds. She is hit by him and hit hard, dropping to the ground like the water from her long-carried bucket.

Water and the use-there-of seems to be a topic of some fascination to Shindô, who pans across the salty expanse and focuses in on the dusty soil the family are trying to give life to, absorbing their dribbled drops like a callous leech. His cinematic poem of hardship clearly recognises that which gives live, but it equally shows that obtaining such an everyday commodity is far from simple for many of the world's inhabitants.

There is then, a real sense of form and plenty of beauty in Shindô's depiction of a fruitless battle, but for many, this will prove a watch as difficult as the lives being depicted. There's very little narrative here, and that which is present in told in snatches of glimpsed story; a fish is caught (water again) and taken to market, where the family struggle to sell it; one of the children attends school whilst the other must help on the land. Like the crop which sprouts from the land, the morsels that Shindô offers hardly prove to be satisfying.

Endless shots of the mother walking up the hill to the family's house do accurately depict the life and journey Shindô wants to talk about, but there's a question here about how engaging they prove, a question which hangs over the film as a whole, successful though it was in saving Shindô's studio.

Founded in 2004, The Masters of Cinema Series is an independent, carefully curated, UK-based Blu-ray and DVD label, now consisting of over 150 films. Films are presented in their original aspect ratio (OAR), in meticulous transfers created from recent restorations and / or the most pristine film elements available.

The Naked Island is released in the UK on Monday 24th June 2013

By Sam Turner. Sam is editor of Film Intel, amongst other things, all of which are secret unless Jack Bauer says so. You can find him on Google+, Twitter and several places even he doesn't yet know about.

Game Of Thrones: Season Three - TV Review

'It's not the lack of action which grates, but the lack of intrigue. The question of who should be king used to be about investigation, fragile alliances, muddled bloodlines; now it's about who controls the largest group of men.'

Though it has a sprawling cast of characters, which seems to be getting bigger every season, one of Game Of Thrones' huge plus points over the last two years has been just how much it can make you care about the stand out players in its large ensemble.

In the first season I was entertained hugely by Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) and swept along on a noble quest with Ned Stark (Sean Bean). In the second year of the show, I thought Arya (Maisie Williams) took to the fore in terms of general plot interest and Jon Snow's (Kit Harington) pilgrimage beyond the wall, particularly in the opening episodes of Season Two, was daring and compelling.

The problem with Series Three, by far the weakest year of GOT so far, is that there's no replacement, in plot interest terms, for these stand out members of an eclectic cast.

Tyrion is now a pen-pusher, played into a corner by the wits of King's Landing, apparently having lost his job, his charm and his impact. Arya is, once again, in the clutches of someone she doesn't want to be, in the early episodes suffering the drink and sorcery-induced malaise of Paul Kaye (well cast) and his band of Robin Hood-alike merry gentlemen.

Potential replacements for these two are few, with perhaps Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) once again threatening to break out but then never actually doing so. For the third season in a row, she is stuck in her own little mini-series, all ten minutes per episode of it. If you can't move her location, at least show somehow how she might impact on the plot the rest of the characters inhabit. Leaving her abroad, absent, for another series is an increasingly painful element to contemplate watching in season four.

By the point episode six is reached, Carice van Houten's Lady in Red is telling us all about things that will happen between her and Arya. Hang on, how about things that are going to happen? Like now. Has this season forgotten all about that? Are we going to have to sit through another six episodes of vaguely soap-opera-ish posturing before someone does something? It's not the lack of action (though that is diminished) which grates, but the lack of intrigue. The question of who should be king used to be about investigation, fragile alliances, muddled bloodlines; now it's about who controls the largest group of men.

Finally, Aidan Gillen (underused) gets a monologue about chaos, which seems to wake GOT season 3 up, whilst Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Gwendoline Christie remain watchable and interesting throughout the early epsiodes. The much-talked about Red Wedding is a shocking sequence, but the characters whom it eliminates lead us only to a returning question. Key members of the cast have departed - is there anyone who can take the focus and fill the gap left, when season four spins around next year?

Trailer Of The Week - Week #25 - We Steal Secrets

As Julian Assange approaches a year living inside the Ecuadorian embassy, we get to relive his journey there. We Steal Secrets is the documentary-before-the-inevitable Drama about Assange and his Wikileaks website. The trailer goes for Bourne-level sensational conspiracy (and why shouldn't it?) and just about hits it. It comes to the UK in July.

Trailer Of The Week is a regular Film Intel feature which picks a different tasty trailer of delectable goodness every week and presents it for your viewing pleasure. Sometimes old, sometimes new, sometimes major, sometimes independent, sometimes brilliant, sometimes a load of old bobbins: always guaranteed to entertain. If you want to make a suggestion for Trailer Of The Week, see the contact us page.

Mama - Blu-ray Review

'I must at this point single out the fact - for what feels like the billionth time - that Horror films cease to be scary when the thing doing the scaring is revealed to be a shoddily composed CGI production'

As a troubled man heads to an isolated Cabin In The Woods, you start to wonder quite how much cliché you are going to have to cope with in Mama, the latest in a line of offerings 'presented by' Guillermo Del Toro. In comparative terms there's actually probably not all that much, but even 'not all that much' these days is still a sign that Mama wades knee deep into things you've probably seen before.

In that regard, it's not altogether unlike this review, which must at this point single out the fact - for what feels like the billionth time - that Horror films cease to be scary when the thing doing the scaring is revealed to be a shoddily composed CGI production. If you don't have the time or the budget for a significant gribbly, don't attempt to show one. In fairness to director Andrés Muschietti, he gets away with furtive glances until the final third, when predictably his source of evil starts to pop up all over the place, in distinctly non-scary ways.

The cliché and the poor antagonist then seem like afflictions ready to be levelled at almost any modern Horror film going. In contrast, there's arguably not many from the modern crop where you can praise their depth of theme and grasp of the central idea. Mama is interested in mothers; both the titular weird one and Jessica Chastain's reluctant Annabel, seen being relieved that she is not pregnant during the film's opening moments.

There's a decent amount going on here around the innate natural laws of protection and the-not-necessarily innate laws of becoming a mother and learning how the previous works. It's an interesting idea and it marks an all too rare female-led narrative, which doesn't rely on Annabel being a screaming damsel and instead relies on her being core to the plot and its ideas.

The 'horror' itself never really gets above tame, although one interesting scene, where we see one of Annabel's charges playing with a blanket, pulled by someone who we know cannot be in the room, is effective. There's an inclusion of the now regulation 'camera flash' scene, which hasn't been terrifying since the original Silent House for those who saw it there, but will probably hit home for anyone not well versed in its increasing usage.

The final third takes into account more of Del Toro's back catalogue and influence than it needed to, pushing us into a fantasy where previously the film hadn't really felt the need to tread. That, coupled with the lame reveal, means it can feel somewhat damp, though the previous fine good work, including from a dual-role playing Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and a bizarrely but attractively cast Chastain, shouldn't be forgotten.

Mama is out in the UK on Blu-ray, DVD and On-Demand from June 17th 2013.

Flight - Blu-ray Review

'The slow motion and fade-to-white of the final moments aside, Whip Whitaker's (Denzel Washington) upside-down descent into a field, via a church spire, feels about as close to an air crash as you'd ever want to get.'

The quiet/loud dynamic of Flight's opening scenes work to superb effect, as director Robert Zemeckis takes us from a pumping hotel room of nakedness, to pre-flight prep, to an outstanding crash sequence, to a quiet post-crash exit interview. Each works because of the syntax of Zemeckis' first act, constructed to lead from new chaos to gentle recovery. The FTSB interview sequence is, in its own way, the most notable. A behind-the-curtain view of how air crashes are investigated, it is so normal compared to the previous scene that it works perfectly in re-establishing us in a believable world.

Not that the crash of Flight in itself takes you far into unbelievable territory. The slow motion and fade-to-white of the final moments aside, Whip Whitaker's (Denzel Washington) upside-down descent into a field, via a church spire, feels about as close to an air crash as you'd ever want to get. It is claustrophobic and expansive at roughly the same time, Zemeckis again showing that a time away from live-action, adult, film-making has not entirely eroded his talents.

That though addresses moments of Flight in isolation. In individual moments, Flight is outstanding but as an entirety, it occasionally crumbles apart as readily as Whitaker does whenever he's in the vicinity of alcohol. Zemeckis has a tendency to play his drama out for several beats too long, composing a film which feels, at least in part, lacking the movement and pace it creates in the opening moments.

Some of that is doubtless down to the tonal shifts the bizarre mixture of characters create. Don Cheadle's lawyer cannot decide if he is smart, smarmy or both. Kelly Reilly, playing brilliantly against type, is from a different sort of addiction film and her relationship with Whitaker doesn't ring true. John Goodman's drug dealer is wildly over-played. Piers Morgan is Piers Morgan.

It stops a good film from becoming great but it can't take away from the main act: Denzel Washington partaking in epic levels of scenery chewing to attempt to replace the steeple-bothering action of his plane from the early moments. That he, for the most part, fills the chasm this could have left the film with is testament to just how powerful an acting presence he is; talking quietly to an investigator, or charging a plane to the ground, top first.

Why Isn't This A Film? - Cloud Road: A Journey Through The Inca Heartland by John Harrison

What have we got here then?

Cloud Road is a travelogue by John Harrison. It was published in 2010 and is available both digitally and in mushed-up tree and ink format.

OK fine. What’s it about?

Harrison sets out to walk the great Camino Royal through South America in search of a lost culture: The Incas. What is left of them? What is left of the road? What is left of his patience with his donkey? All vital questions, some with answers.

Interesting. Is there something more?

Like all great journeys, there is a personal quest here too, with questions to be answered about Harrison himself, for himself.

Save me the trouble then – is it any good?

Cloud Road is a very readable, knowledgeable travel book, with insight, education and history balanced amongst the local anecdotes and the funny donkey stories. At the beginning I felt as though Harrison's journey might be something you could strive to achieve one day, by the end I felt idiotic for even having such a thought. Walking the route he does is clearly some feat and having the strength of mind to provide such insight into it counts as a second one. In places, I was gripped, not something you can say of every travel book.

But…

The history is quite dense so maybe there is an argument that it won't be for everyone, but I personally found it thrilling. My only gripe would be with the personal sections about Harrison's life with his girlfriend, which I felt we could have left behind, though her appearances on the trip were not doubt an important part of the tale for the writer.

What are its chances of being made as a film?

As far as its possible to tell, the film rights haven't been snapped up yet and, sadly, travelogues are hardly Hollywood's favourite genre. Probably a no-go for now.

Will it be any good?

There's plenty of material here and, as with most travelogues, two routes for Hollywood to take. Give Harrison some money and a camera and you might get a decent documentary, or dramatise the piece as some sort of voyage of discovery/coming of age trek through foreign lands. In the case of the latter, there is material to mine from Harrison's personal to life, so perhaps it would be possible to get something, although you can see why Hollywood typically stays away from this sort of thing.

So... Why isn't it a film?

'Unattractive genre' is the main culprit here.

Anything else I should know?

The follow-up, Forgotten Footprints, which sees Harrison off to Antartica, is out now.


Why Isn't This A Film? is a regular Film Intel feature which takes a book (you know... one of those things with pages in, doesn't project on to a screen, makes small rustling noises), comic, video game or graphic novel and assesses its adaptation prospects. One day this feature will get something right and we will win something major and valuable. Possibly.

Ginger And Rosa - Blu-ray Review

'Cue histrionics, and then some, most notably from Rosa parent alpha, Christina Hendricks, wasted up till that point and then given the dishonour of the film's most clichéd moment.'

A prime example of the beautifully shot 'gorgeous nothing', where absent parents cause for all sorts of not-very-interesting problems for flame-haired Ginger (Elle Fanning) and stroppy rebel Rosa (Alice Englert), the film which takes its lead duos' names is as wet as a handshake with a nervous gentleman under Niagra falls.

Leaden down with false teenage angst, the leads amble around aimlessly for much of the film, before one inevitably takes it too far with a man she shouldn't have. Cue histrionics, and then some, most notably from Rosa parent alpha, Christina Hendricks, wasted up till that point and then given the dishonour of the film's most clichéd moment.

Not that the rest of Ginger & Rosa ever threatens to light up the screen like the former's hair, a fitting metaphor for a film shot beautifully Robbie Ryan but dropped into dullness by writer/director Sally Potter. It is telling that it is not the lead characters who hold our attention but the intriguing camp duo of Mark (Timothy Spall) and Mark Two (Oliver Platt), the latter as wasted as Hendricks, the former with the few moments to shine sadly denied him in recent roles.

Even they though, and fairly stirring performances throughout, including a trademark skin-crawling effort from Alessandro Nivola, cannot save us from really overt aimlessness. The opening ten minutes are a pastel perfume commercial. What follows is apparently a tirade against the nuclear bomb, many, many years out of date.

Finally, of course, the lingering metaphorical bomb goes off for Ginger in the aforementioned bout of family chaos, which would be worth caring about if you had reason to give a hoot towards any individual there present.

I'm not convinced that the story was ever there to begin with but if it was, it gets washed away under too many hues of boring nothingness.