The Skin I Live In

Pedro Almodóvar's latest must-see is one of the best films of 2011.

The last ten years have seen Spain reaffirming itself as the most productive breeding ground for top quality cinema.

Álex de la Iglesia (La Habitacion del Niño), Guillem Morales (Los Ojos de Julia), Jaume Balagueró (REC, Fragile), Rodrigo Cortés (Buried) and Juan Antonio Bayona (The Orphanage) are only a handful of directors typifying Spain's current cinematic run of form.

And that's without counting, of course, one of country's most celebrated film-makers, Pedro Almodóvar (of Volver fame), whose latest film The Skin I Live In (original title La Piel Que Habito) is one of his most remarkable ever.

Put bluntly, Almodóvar's films are generally weird. But I mean good and watchable weird. Never pretentious or self-indulgent, let alone overly arty and elitist, which is this blog's pet hate. You can watch almost every Almodóvar film and expect the seediness and the various quirks along the way to finally make sense at some point.

By the time you've spotted the twist coming or have clocked it altogether, the story will have drawn you in so much that you'll simply want to find out how or why right until the very end.

Given how rich and carefully textured the plot is, there's not much we can reveal about The Skin I Live In. Even the slightest clue may easily turn into the most irritating of spoilers.

The film is in one go horror, psychological thriller, crime, film noir, and distorted love melodrama as well. All the while, underlying ethical questions are posed over the extent to which Frankenstein-like medicine can go.

But, while most directors would have lost the plot trying to juggle too many genres at the same time, Almodóvar pulls it off handsomely.

His rich colours and obsessive themes are not, unlike many other directors, cheap gimmicks, fillers or clever tricks. They are integral part of his narrative.

The film is also the moment when Antonio Banderas, one of Spain's most famous actors, reaffirms his acting credentials. Often slammed as wooden, here he's absolutely superb, oozing mystery and charisma and carrying the whole weight of the film from start to finish.

Watch The Skin I Live In and you'll lose yourself into its slow but intense pace and into its intriguing and relentless buildup, while the different ends of the same web gradually come together against a backdrop that is both creepy and fascinating at the same time.

The Rite

Add a 't' in front of the title and you get the general idea.

How many films can be made about exorcists and possessed women (and why is it always the women, by the way, have you noticed...?) swearing in several languages before people realise that it's totally useless?

How many times, before producers actually decide to pack it in and focus their attention and cash elsewhere? The troubled, sceptical priest under the guidance of an older, wiser maverick. The mandatory car accident. The chained sweaty woman telling them both to fuck off. In Latin too. The cross and the prayers, the spitting and the red eyes, the premonitions, the insects and the lot...

This one here comes about 35 years too late, as it would only matter to those few souls who never watched The Exorcist and its multiple spin offs and rip offs.

If there's one thing the makers of The Rite got almost 100% right, that was the film title. They forgot to add the letter 't' in front of "Rite". Then it would have made sense, Anthony Hopkins or not.

Vanishing on 7th Street

When the apocalypse is so dull that you can't wait for it to come.

There's an unwritten rule in cinema, etched in capital letters, as old as the first reel to reel.

And it goes as follows. The fact that a director may have been behind a decent film and the fact that a story plot may also sound vaguely intriguing are no guarantee of a good film.

Brad Anderson may have been the man behind both Session 9 and The Machinist, and his latest Vanishing on 7th Street may also sound like your perfect so-called "post-apocalyptic" story. Unfortunately though, it's painfully weak as well as way too flimsy and badly acted to actually go anywhere.

For all the amount of semi-deserted, mysterious-looking and Twin Peak-esque scenes set in an old neon-lit bar, the plot is simply too feeble and anemic (yes, thanks thesaurus) to strike any chord with the viewer.

Not to mention that Hayden Christensen and the other actors are so wooden that, put next to Pinocchio, they would positively make him look like Plastic Man.

Which wouldn't be so bad were it not for the fact that character development is below zero.

The thrills evaporate after about fifteen minutes as you quickly realise that a single episode of the Teletubbies will carry more suspense than this pap.

What seem to be the only four survivors to a mysterious plague that snatches people away, are just sitting there, fiddling with ice cubes and fuel, and periodically wailing that they have lost their kid/mum/colleagues/ex wife.

That's all they seem to be saying. And after you've heard the same lines 7 times in a row you just start hoping for the entity to put the inept four out of their misery once and for all.

As for the apocalypse, it must be the most docile one to be ever conjured up by a cinematic mind.

The same monstrous thing that hits people in an instant in the first part of the film, is later on so slow that even a snail would crawl back to safety once they twig that they're about to be snatched.

Vanishing on 7th Street is like a fantastic initial idea that crashed into the worst of writer's blocks within ten minutes.

Which, given how crowded the post-apocalyptic genre is starting to look, makes this film even more redundant.

The Best Moment of 2011

The scandal that brought the most vicious media thugs to their knees.

The notion that nature will eventually run its course, even when it comes to the humbling of the most brutal bullies, came to a belated realisation with the News of the World scandal.

What a picture, to see that particular brand of vicious, foamin-at-the-mouth, self-righteous faux-moralistic fury turning on its own creators.

The succession of the nastiest bullies in the British media tumbling like sacks of rubbish in a garbage truck was just amazing: the arrest of Andy Coulson, the fall of Rebekah Brooks, News Corp withdrawing its BSkyB bid, and finally the News of the World going to the wall, while the two Murdoch thugs pathetically feigned amnesia in the background.

The phone-hacking scandal was just waiting to happen. When somebody's power to bully and intimidate with such impunity is allowed to fester to such poisonous proportions, it's just a matter of time til the putrefying boil bursts.

No doubt soon things will settle and hordes of dimwits are already stuffing their gob with the notion that tabloid thuggery (ie the indiscriminate phone hacking of murdered children, dead soldiers and grieving relatives) is none other than "free press".

But for a moment, just a moment, it was nice to see journalism in the UK back to a version of itself that doesn't resemble a cross between Shaun of the Dead and The Wicker Man.

Paper Mask

British cinema's hidden gem.

This little-known British noir is testament to the fact that inflated Hollywoodian budgets are irrelevant when it comes to quality.

Unfortunately though, Paper Mask is also evidence that, no matter how good a film, without marketing machinery there's no chance of making it beyond -at best- a Channel Four 11 o'clock slot.

And that's how I first came across Christopher Morahan's hidden gem. It must have been at least fifteen years ago, late night at home while flicking through the channels only minutes away from hitting the sack.

I don't know what in particular, but Paper Mask grabbed my attention straight away. Mysterious without being contrived, minimalistic without being arty, chilling and disturbing without ever going over the top. Within a moment, I was hooked.

It's the story of a frustrated hospital porter (glib-tongued Martin, the excellent Paul McGann of Withnail and I fame) who, in a moment of madness, decides to steal the identity of a recently passed away surgeon.

The thing is, said doctor had just applied for a job elsewhere, meaning that it was the perfect chance for Martin to burn bridges and start with a clean slate, a door to prestige and riches that a lowly orderly would only be able to dream of otherwise.

Needless to say, however, Martin is heading for collision course. Aside from a vague familiarity with hospitals, the guy just isn't a doctor, which means a succession of wincing mishaps are constantly round the corner.

Yet his charming ways help him cajole nurse Christine (Amanda Donohoe, from Nicolas Roeg's Castaway) which, for Martin, would prove a godsend. At least for the time being.

Paper Mask guarantees suspence from start to finish. While the viewer is constantly wondering what is going to happen next, the concept is so subtle and original that you may even end up sympathizing with such a manipulative and dislikeable protagonist.

Alas, chances are you've never heard of this film.

Twenty years after it came out, there are rumours of a forthcoming DVD release which, if true, would finally hand one of the best thrillers to ever hail from the UK a belated chance to be enjoyed by the wider public.

A must-see if you can manage to grab hold of it.

Basement

"Face your deepest fears", says the tagline. That's right. You may have just wasted your money on the most useless film ever.

A few years ago my friends and I got into the habit of buying naff knockdown price DVDs for a laugh.

Two spring to mind, an American B-horror called The Dentist and an even worse one sporting the unbeatable title The Nosepicker. Proper cheap cheap cheap tacky dim-witted crap. We were pissing ourselves laughing at the crassness of the acting, the story, the soundtrack.

But it was great. There is something uniquely endearing about rubbish films.

In the unlikely event you may have heard of 2010's Basement, please be warned that it does not even make it into the above-described category. We are talking about something else here. Levels of nothingness that not even the most cynical of viewers could have anticipated.

Basement is the equivalent of being served a completely rancid dinner at a restaurant. Or the equivalent of buying a new suit only to discover that it's made of meat wrappers selotaped together.

What is unbelievable is the idea that someone, somewhere, thought that this thing could be knocked together, let alone produced, and that nobody along the way was honest enough to tell the director, the screenwriter, the producers or whoever that perhaps jacking it in would have been a more dignified move.

There's no danger of a spoiler because this film is about nothing. In theory the premises are interesting, not miles away from The Hole: a group of people are lost in the woods and end up in a dark and creepy basement. "Wow", you'd think, "Great!".

No it isn't. Because that's where it all ends. You wait and wait while the characters redraw the boundaries of the expression "dead end" and, within half hour, it's quite obvious that nowt's ever gonna happen.

The rest is some sort of tedious, repetititive, shallow, unengaging and inconsequential bilge. It goes nowhere. It says nothing. It's not even dumb. I guess it's the closest a film ever got to representing the concept of nothingness which, in a way, you could argue is actually an achievement.

Oh, and by the way, the acting is the worst ever. By far. Times ten.

"Basement" is like a Year-9 project carried out by a group of kids messing about with some recording equipment. Except worse.

Avoid.

Another Year

Mike Leigh's run of form continues.

Review by Claude Carpentieri

If there ever was an imaginary Award for Best Social Observation and another for Best Depiction of the Ordinary, Mike Leigh would probably make a clean sweep each time.

His new release Another Year follows in the footsteps of some of his best work - 2002's All or Nothing and 1995's Secrets And Lies to mention but two.

This, however, is probably the first time Leigh casts his lens solely on the middle classes.

Past criticism that most of his work is allegedly a patronising take on the working classes as downtrodden salt-of-the-earth types was always ingenerous. And, like in every other of his films, Another Year goes to show that dysfunctional interaction and social ineptitude, contentment and loneliness, delusion and caring alike have all little to do with class as they're just integral to humanity.

At the core of Another Year, a couple approaching retirement; husband Tom (Jim Broadbent - Slater from Only Fools and Horses), a geologist and wife Gerri (Ruth Sheen), a psychologist. Their house, a large and cosy one in a leafy London suburb. Their son, Joe (possibly separated at birth from Keane's lead singer), an affectionate, sensible young lawyer. Their relationship, an island of warmth, affection and security amidst a social cluster where all of their friends and extended family seem to struggle with solitude and assorted demons.

The film unravels over a year. Each season, a friend or family visits Tom and Gerri, initially proudly claiming that "all is fine" and that "they're happier than ever", only to gradually let on - generally courtesy of a few drinks - that the picture is a totally different one and that, actually, loneliness and ageing are corroding them from within.

Another Year works because of its contemplative, gentle pace and its minimalistic touches. It wouldn't be a Mike Leigh film if the camera work wasn't so subtly masterful and the depiction of the most precious details so intense.

But Another Year also works because it never wishes to lecture anybody on anything. It's just a take on the fact that sometimes companionship can serve as the best refuge against ageing, insecurity and depression.

An absolute masterpiece.

The Mechanic

Two reviews for the price of one.

One.
The mere sight of big/fast cars makes you wet your bed. Films where burly geezers square each other up without flinching one bit give you a feeling of excitement which is only comparable to when you squash bugs or when you watch Jeremy Clarkson testing a new motor.

You probably think that smiling at someone in public makes you a wuss because you're a true man and any deeper than The Fast and the Furious makes it too hard to deal with emotionally.

If you ticked all of the above (and also if your parents used to lock you in the garage when you were a naughty child), then you'll probably find that The Mechanic is genius and you should watch it and spunk in your pants.

Two.
You just know from the start that the main bloke in the film (Jason Statham) will survive with barely a scratch. He takes no shit and he's built like a brick shithouse. The words predictable and boring start flashing in neon lights as the first five minutes unravel.

This is a geezer's equivalent of Sex & The City, the type of stuff that girlfriends only watch at the movies just to keep their manly boyfriend happy and to make up for when they forced him to watch Valentine's Day and, of course, Love Actually.

Oh...and Donald Sutherland has gone downhill and you just don't think that lots of guns, car chases, broken limbs and gravity defying jumps make for good entertainment, light or otherwise.

The retro-looking poster is great though. The gun even matches the colour of this blog.