This is not a review of - 2 DAYS IN NEW YORK

Because Sundance projected the film for 30 minutes without subtitles, then faffed about for 10 minutes, then cancelled the screening. In all my years of going to LIFF and watching c50 films per fest, I've never seen something like that happen. Just sayin'

TETRO - They fuck you up, your mum and dad - Part Four

TETRO is a beautiful, fantastical, shamelessly self-indulgent movie about family dysfunction and the impossibility of living with a self-proclaimed genius. It is worth watching for the cinematography and Vincent Gallo's lead performance alone - but there are many other joys to be had - not least a blistering cameo from Klaus Maria Brandauer; a cheeky little Dolce Vita moment featuring Carmen Maura; and a wonderful little Red Shoes homage.

The most surprising thing about TETRO is that is was written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola - indeed, it is his first writer-director credit since THE CONVERSATION. The result is a movie that feels nothing like Coppola's mafia epics - despite some similarity in the emotional material. TETRO also feels nothing like Coppola's last movie - another self-financed (and unjustifiably maligned) art-house flick - YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH. That movie was beautifully shot, but serious, mournful, byzantine in its structure and conceit. By contrast, while TETRO may deal with the most violent of emotions, but it always has a playful, self-mocking edge. At times, it almost feels like the lighter parts of Almodovar. Every character is sometimes aware that they are striking a pose - that is, except Miranda (Maribel Verdu - Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN) who is the emotional heart of the film.

Tetro is the pen-name of playwright Angelo Tetracini (Vincent Gallo). He cut loose from his domineering, Mephisto-like conductor father (Klaus Maria Brandauer) and ran off to Buenos Aires. This movie opens as his little brother Bennie (Alden Ehrenreich - a dead-ringer for the young Leo diCaprio) shows up on his doorstep - still hero-worshipping his elder brother but also angry that Tetro left him behind with the monster-father. Tetro's girlfriend Miranda adores having Bennie around, but for Tetro to come to terms with a relationship with Bennie, he will have to confront many family ghosts. That - and a performance at a arts festival in Patagonia - provide the narrative and emotional drive of the movie.

Gallo perfectly embodies the hard-faced charisma of Tetro. Ehrenreich has just the right mix of vulnerability and chutzpah to be able to pull off the central con of Bennie finishing Tetro's long abandoned play. Verdu's Miranda is charming and credible - anchoring a movie featuring all sorts of crazy characters. I particularly loved Carmen Maura as "Alone" - the theatre critic that allows Coppola to spoof the art-house world he is at once seeking to re-engage with. But the real masterstroke is casting Klaus Maria Brandauer (MEPHISTO) as Papa Tetracini - world-famous composer, charmer and shit. The genius is that even an old and flabby Brandauer can be charming enough to convince as the seducer of his young son's girlfriend - or as the firebrand Furtwaenglerian composer. He commands attention in every scene he's in and we can well understand why his sons struggle to escape from his physical and emotional presence.

I loved TETRO - moreso on the second viewing. And I am thrilled that Coppola is moving back to these self-financed, self-penned utterly artistically liberated movies.

Additional tags: alden ehrenreich, maribel verdu, rodrigo de la serna, klaus maria brandauer, osvaldo golijov, mihai malaimare jr

TETRO played Cannes and Toronto 2009 and was released in Spain, Greece, Portugal, Italy and France last year. It was released in Hungary and Brazil earlier this year and is currently on release in the UK.

London Film Fest Day 11 - METROPIA

METROPIA is a derivative dystopian sci-fi flick raised above the parapet by its superb and novel animation and brought back down by the essential ridiculousness of its main concept.

Set in 2024, humanity has been brought low by environmental degradation. The world is enveloped in a grey fog, concrete buildings rot, and litter scatters the streets. In other words, this is the environment of every sci-fi flick you've seen. As usual, big business is the enemy, as embodied by Ivan Bahn (Udo Kier), the head of Metropia - the company that linked all of Europe's metro systems. The project was conceived as a peace initiative - making Europe truly one country - and of course, all of us have horror-flashbacks to the last person who tried that, and indeed the last movie, set on a train system, to explore it, Lars von Trier's superb EUROPA EUROPA aka ZENTROPA. Writer-director Tarik Saleh also takes no chances on his protagonist, a boring everyman call-centre worker called Roger. He's firmly in the vein of Orwell's Winston Smith, or Terry Gilliam's Sam Lowry. He has a lovely girlfriend but he dreams of the hot chick on his shampoo bottle. He's also convinced that something's not quite write on the metro and takes the seemingly outlandish step of riding his bike to work. The movie works as a sort of Hitchcock thriller, in which our hero gets enchanted by a Hitchcock blonde - the beautiful Nina of shampoo-bottle fame. Together they try to work out why Roger can hear a voice in his head telling him what to do.

Now, my fundamental issue with the film is that I find the precise means by which the standard-issue evil corporation is going to take over the world absolutely ridiculous. Because, ladies and gentleman, The Man is going to control your mind through.....wait for it.....anti-dandruff shampoo. Yes yes.

The good news is that this film is so technically well-made and perfectly cast that you can almost ignore the fundamentally stupid concept at its centre. The film-makers have basically photo-shopped the frack out of real photos of real people. The result is incredibly unsettling and alienating - characters that look recognisably human but have been subtly distorted. It gives you the creeps - in a good way. The same can be said of the design of the environment. It all looks like our world but subtly distorted - made to look older - like a WW2 film - but futuristic at the same time. It's wonderfully unsettling. Vincent Gallo is superb as the voice of Roger - capturing the whiny, paranoid but no-nonsense character - and Alexander Skarsgard (of TRUE BLOOD fame) is spookily well-matched as his "inner voice" Stefan.

So what can I say? On balance, do I think this film works? For me, no. But my goodness, it was wonderful to look at.

METROPIA played Venice, Sitges and London 2009. It opens in Sweden on November 27th.