HARRY BROWN - the only permissable bigotry

These days you can't hate people on the grounds of their race, sexual orientation, religion or political views. The only permissable form of bigotry in the UK is the hatred of the white working class, and in particular, white working class kids. The right-wing middle-class media make a living from depicting chav kids as feral, dope-addled, knife-wielding granny botherers and social menaces. English society is in decay! Suburbia is lawless! And it's all because a bunch of uneducated kids have taken to drinking cans of Super-tenants outside Burger King at 11 at night while wearing fake Burberry caps, and driving modified Novas. It says a lot about how insecure post-modern, recession-bound Britain is that the only new cinema we seem to be capable of producing is either lauding the "glory" days of 1980s soccer hooliganism (punching people IS our proud heritage) or decrying working class violence. Whether the films are glorifying or condemning chav-violence, they are still making the lethal assumption that this is the way life is. And you think to yourself, does Mike Leigh work in vain?

HARRY BROWN is a good film. It's technically well-made, visually impressive, suspenseful, and features a great central performance from Michael Caine as a pensioner who turns violent on the teenage drug-pushers terrorising his estate. There's a satisfyingly slow-build to a pretty convincing revenge thriller. Caine has some nice Tarantino-style one-liners while dispatching a dope-peddler. There's even some astute critiquing of how the police are riven by spin and politicking. Emily Mortimer gives a nuanced performance and Iain Glenn is absolutely menacing. There's no denying it - this is a good film. I would have really loved it had I not been continually wary of the fact that I was watching a sort of middle-class angst-porn, designed to push all my buttons as a tax-paying constructive member of society meant to be living in fear of being knifed on the Central Line.

I don't buy the Daily Mail and I'm not buying this. I don't care how nice the packaging and how gritty the performances.

HARRY BROWN played Toronto 2009 and is on release in the UK. It opens in the Netherlands on February 25th 2010.

Normal service resumes today!

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY - meh

BLAIR WITCH, CLOVERFIELD, QUARANTINE....We've seen this shizzle before. Low budget horror, filmed on DV, acted by unknowns, trying to get thrills by feeling "real". BLAIR WITCH was truly spooky - I still remember the scene with the guy standing in the corner of the house, facing the wall, like a kid being punished - but gave me motion sickness. CLOVERFIELD was like Godzilla and hi-fi, but gave me motion sickness. I guess the best thing that can be said about PARANORMAL ACTIVITY is that its mockumentary concept at least features fixed cameras. Katie and Micah are a young couple living in contemporary America. It's the America of STARSUCKERS and WE LIVE IN PUBLIC - a nation of people who believe that if it's not on TV it isn't real. So when Katie tells Micah she's being stalked by a poltergeist, his schmucky reaction is to video-tape everything. So follows footage of a normal couple bickering, interspersed by in-camera special effect horror. Spooky demon footprints in talcum powder etc. I'd love to know how they did it all in frame, but I really wasn't scared by it. And the reason I wasn't scared is because the mockumentary format is a distancing device. We know it's a trick and so we aren't involved. This applies to rom-coms as much as to horror, by the way, as I argue in my review of PAPER HEART. So, don't believe the hype. This film is entertaining enough as a post-modern comment on media-obsessed society, but it doesn't work as horror. And for all its lo-rent indie cred, I notice that the movie is "presented by Steven Spielberg", and that the director hasn't turned down the chance to make a studio-backed sequel to cash-in on this flick's commercial success.

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY was released in October in the US and Canada. It opened earlier in November in Greece, Russia, Singapore, Finland, Sweden, and Germany. It opens this weekend in Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK. It opens next weekend in France, Australia and Denmark. It opens in January in New Zealand and Norway and in Italy in February.

Random DVD Round-Up - ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL

Sacha Gervasi's debut documentary ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL reeks of a reality TV set-up in the way in which the narrative arc has been edited together from all the hours of footage. Gervasi tries very hard to make the story of ANVIL a "true underdog story" in the tried-and-tested Hollywood formula. First, you take a love-able loser, Anvil lead guitarist Steve "Lips" Kudlow. Second, you establish that they have been held down by some arbitrary force. In this case, bad management apparently prevented Anvil from progressing beyond initial success into truly successful Metal recording artists. Third, you have the protagonists start arguing under the stress of pursuing their dream. Finally, the love-able losers achieve success against all odds! We all love movies where Johnny Nobody makes it big because it makes us think it might happen to us too. But it's rare to see a director so blatantly try to manipulate us into that empathy. Just look at how he intercuts footage of Lips et al stressing about whether anyone's actually going to show at their Japanese come-back gig with footage of an empty stadium. And then watch him build to a crescendo - the camera panning out to the packed auditorium of Japanese metalheads.

This documentary has won a lot of critical acclaim and it has made a lot of money. People are describing as a feel-good doc - as Spinal Tap for real - as a heart-warming comedy. But it's not. It's a shameless and exploitative exercise. Gervasi exploits Anvil - posing them in scenes that recall SPINAL TAP. Gervasi exploits his audience in engineering the underdog-does-good climax. The tragedy is that Anvil are presumably all too happy to be exploited - finally getting some publicity after all these years. The only thing that saves this film is that the guys in the band are nice, so it's easy enough to spend time with them.

ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL played Sundance and Toronto 2009. It opened in the UK, US, Australia, Iceland, Japan and Canada in 2009 and is now available on DVD.

Random DVD Round Up - FIGHTING

Far be it for to criticise a movie in which the not unattractive Channing Tatum spends time bare-knuckle boxing, but FIGHTING really is a complete waste of time. It plays as a pastiche of every boxing movie you've ever scene. Debut director, often-time writer Dito Montiel (A GUIDE TO RECOGNISING YOUR SAINTS) tries to give his movie an air of authenticity and street-smarts with the seventies score and slang and a portrayal of corruption and underground power. But he fouls it all up with his sub KARATE KID plotting and phoned-in performance from Tatum, Howard and pretty much everything else. Worst of all, for a movie called FIGHTING, the fight scenes are brief and unimaginatively filmed. For all its affectations of grittiness, this film is basically just a schlocky romance whose plot gives Channing Tatum a chance to take his shirt off. To that extent, I almost prefer the more straightforward macho bullshit of NEVER BACK DOWN.

FIGHTING was released in spring 2009 and is available on DVD.

Pantheon movie of the month - DOUBLE INDEMNITY

Phyllis: I'm a native Californian. Born right here in Los Angeles.

Walter Neff: They say all native Californians come from Iowa.

DOUBLE INDEMNITY is a brutal, enigmatic film noir - one of legendary director Billy Wilder's best films (a bold claim seeing as he helmed SUNSET BOULEVARD, THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH and SOME LIKE IT HOT) - a slippery masterpiece, like all of Raymond Chandler's slippery thrillers - and creepily shot by John Seitz, DP on SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS. Watching the film today is to find a film that still feels modern, perhaps because of its cynical approach to relationships, and puzzling, because of the conundrum at its centre.

The film takes the form of a crime thriller. Beautiful Barbara Stanwyck is a ruthless woman who uses her sexuality to manipulate men for money. She does a quick number on an insurance salesman called Neff (Fred McMurray), convincing him to murder her husband but to make it look like an accident so that they can both collect on his life insurance. Under the double indemnity clause, an accidental death pays out double. What's completely bizarre is that there is no heat in the relationship between Phyllis and Neff, and it's not clear why he'd switch from being a successful businessman to a murderer. There is something willfully, arbitrarily self-destructive which is utterly sinister and incredibly compelling to watch. The relationship that's arguably even more compelling is that between Neff and Keyes - the boss sent to investigate the "accident", prove it was suicide or murder and deny the claim. Keyes (Edward G Robinson) is the hero of the piece, if you can have a hero in a noir. He forms a genuinely empathetic relationship with Neff and the real suspense of the film comes not from whether Keyes will track Neff down, but why Neff feels compelled to collude in that process.

DOUBLE INDEMNITY was released in 1944 and is available on DVD. It was nominated for seven Oscars. Barbara Stanwyck lost out to Ingrid Bergman for GASLIGHT; John Seitz lost to Joseph LaShelle for LAURA; Billy Wilder lost to Leo McCarey for GOING MY WAY; Miklos Rozsa lost to Max Steiner for SINCE YOU WENT AWAY; it lost Best Picture and Best Screenplay to the Bing Crosby comedy GOING MY WAY; it lost Best Sound to WILSON.

Eventual tags: barbara stanwyck, billy wilder, black and white, edward g robinson, fred macmurray, james m cain, jean heather, john seitz, miklos rozsa, noir, pantheon, porter hall, raymond chandler, thriller

Cube by Rinpa Eshidan

Rinpa Eshidan is an animation art collective that perform live-art events and film them on video. Their mission statement:

Instead of focusing on the finished project, we believe the process of creation itself is where art comes to life and our videos and live art aim to engage our audience in that process. Many people ask us how we can stand to erase the artwork we have worked so hard to create, but our focus is on the process of making art, not the end result. The good news is that the videos we make become a permanent record of the spontaneous artworks created during the filming.

They have just posted this new video 'Cubes' on their Youtube channel in order to promote their DVD which can be ordered by e-mailing a request to rinpaeshidan(at)me.com. The music featured on this video is by Super Samir. For more information on the group visit their website or contact them at info(at)rinpaeshidan.com