PREFACE
This is the sporadically updated blog of reviews by Harriet, author of In the Aquarium: a londoner's life.
I have kept the reviews separate to enable them to be indexed and therefore more easily accessible (see listing below).
FAVE FILMS DEAD MAN What an idea, the man is dying for almost the entire length of the film, the music is fantastic, its black and white, ideology, mythology, funny, sad, Johnny Depp sex god...
THE DRAFTMAN'S CONTRACT The first Peter Greenaway film I saw and possibly the most accessible. Beautiful set, costumes, direction. Fantastic soundtrack.
MULHOLLAND DRIVE I knew exactly what was going on right up until the last 15 minutes and damn it but then I lost it.
NIGHT ON EARTH Jim Jarmusch made the only film with Winona Ryder worth watching and it had Beatrice Dalle (say no more)
O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU? Roar out loud with laughter and tunes that make you love country music. My sister had to sneak out of the cinema ahead of our dad and me cos she was so embarrassed at our laughing.
ORLANDO Quiet, passionate, time travel.
PITCH BLACK Bails and I watched this with its bleached scenery and its whoar factor star. We LOVED him, Mr Diesel take a bow.
RESERVOIR DOGS Tight Tarantino gang heist gone wrong. Great soundtrack. And there's something about Michael Madson, dancing just before cutting off the cop's ear...
ROMUALD ET JULIETTE Truely lovely romance comedy.
THREE COLOURS TRILOGY Blue, White and Red. I liked them all. Quiet stories, beautifully shot.
THE USUAL SUSPECTS Its a story told. And the first time I saw it I didn't get the twist until just before it happened.
Seen The Reviews
29 October 2005 Broken Flowers Odeon Tottenham Court Road
Must remember that this is one of the last cinemas on earth to give you a seat allocation with your ticket. And also must remember there is no way to sit back and rest your head, and that in the smaller screens you can hear the sound from the other films being shown.
Despite all that the film was excellent. Love Jim Jarmusch movies. Partly because they are mundane, slow moving, about everyday life and everyday detail. Bill Murray's character is sent a letter telling him he has a son who may be looking for him, without knowing who sent it (no signature or other identifying marks). His friend and neighbour (and mystery obsessive) encourages him to take a road trip to visit all possible mothers (Bill having been quite a ladies man all his life).
Cut between the ordinary - driving scenes, in the airplane scenes, sleeping in shabby hotels and motels (stuff that is everyday even for non-movie people, really real) - are the extraordinary scenarios of him getting back in touch with girlfriends of 20 years past.
And heres the spoiler - the end comes without any answers which in the first couple of minutes of ending I found totally frustrating but as we talked about it on the way out of the cinema it was fitting for the film. The fact that this unknown son may exist was actually important to this bachelor in ways that he couldn't have imagined when he started his trip.
What can I say. A bad movie. All gorgeous young bronzed things semi-naked in the water, doing impossibly long dives to the bottom of the ocean without necessarily having scuba tanks. Lots of filming up the crotches of the young women (and the boyfiend claimed a. not to notice and b. refuse to recognise that this was for titillation of the young men who may love the movie). Beautiful looking water though. Hmm the caribbean, gotta get there one of these days.
So now we come to Rachel Whiteread - my one time lifedrawing tutor (at Middlesex Poly when doing art foundation). I've always followed her work out of interest. Loved House in Bow, Ghost and also the work that was displayed when she won the Turner Prize. While I liked Monument, the see-through upside down plinth she did for the fourth plinth at Trafalgar square, it marked the use of casting material which keeps less detail than plaster and cement. [There is something subtle and beautiful about the crisp details captured by castings done in such intricate materials (each little crack is filled by the tiny particles in the mixture).] So the fourth plinth work was much more about its invisibility, or see-throughness, but lacked the crisp edges of her previous work - and was a little reminiscent of (as someone pointed out to me) a fox's glacier mint, only lacking a polar bear.
This piece is made of casts of cardboard boxes. Cast in some white plastic-type material. Multiples of the same castings. Stacked in a number of ways across the space, chaotic and neatly, creating walkways. I liked the towering, and the vistas. But somehow was disappointed with the obvious repeats of some of the castings and again the less crispy feel of the material. Sugar cubes came to mind. But I suppose that in itself - that something so big can bring to mind something of a tiny scale - is interesting. And that's kind of what I felt - it was interesting but not as awe-inspiring as some of the other exhibits. But then again I was also not feeling well, so perhaps I'll have to go back.
14 October 2005 Underground Old Abbatoir, St John's Street
A promonade play. In the basement of an old abbatoir - two floors, interlinking rooms, some with steel pillars, some just tiny spaces - a set is laid out. Film is played on the walls, lighting dim.
A girl on a swing.
Urshered into a drinking den, shot of vodka pushed into your hand. A drunk man shares a drink with you. Prost. Laughing and jolly descending into alcoholic melancholy.
Then sneak into a secret winebar with a pianist playing to a tightly packed room, drapped with velvet. Red wine. Quiet chatter. A man circulates greeting the clientele, complimenting the pianist. The girl from the swing comes in. Nervous, unused to such luxury. He plies her with champagne. Massaging her ego, until she agrees to step outside into the alley where he pays her for sex up against the wall. She runs off. Inside we feel like perhaps we shouldn't watch. Back in the room his mood is dampened. The ghost that haunts him appears, he sinks further into his fear.
wandering around the damp and musty basements coming across details that slowly build up to a picture. A glimpse of a detective investigating a bloody handprint. A view of a house on a long siberian railway, day passes to night passes to day. Mirrors which suddenly provide a glimpse into some other clue. A murder happens. The police station. Investigation. A church. The snippets of scenes that you see, the ones that you hear but miss. Like a film that jumps from one time to another.
By the end of the evening the play has been performed 3 times, we saw 2.5, at which point we felt we knew what happened, despite the fact we were aware of missing some of it. Advised in the intro to follow a character (as a way of uncovering the play) I felt this worked rather badly - those that chose to do so, seemed to feel the need to be pinned to the characters back, failing to give them the space to do their thing. I preferred to wander around coming across characters.
Marvellous (to coin a much used phrase of my mother).
13 October 2005 Howl's Moving Castle Screen on the Green
I wasn't sure at first, it was a little bit too Dogtanian for me, but as it went along I got quite engrossed. Charming fairy story (albeit rather cringingly lovesick at the end). Amazing walking castle.
