Soul Power (2008, Dir: Jeff Levy-Hinte)

The opening credits of Soul Power play over a black background, with the sound of James Brown teasing the audience (and his band) with the well known introduction to Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine. Eventually, we are shown Brown, resplendent in a blue jumpsuit, step away from the microphone for an instant. He drops like a dead-weight onto the stage floor into the splits, and springs back up again like a jack-in-the-box. The band takes this as the cue to start the song. It is jaw-dropping.

Soul Power is a documentary film about the Zaire ’74 music festival which preceded the ‘Rumble In The Jungle’ between Mohammed Ali and George Foreman. It works perfectly as a companion piece to Leon Gast’s 1996 Oscar-winning documentary When We Were Kings (it was assembled from the 125 hours of outtakes from that film). But where Gast’s film focused on the boxing and Ali in particular, Soul Power is all about the music. James Brown shines here, headlining a music festival that also includes BB King, Bill Withers, The Crusaders and several African artists.

Although we get snippets of Ali being interviewed, it’s never enough and leaves you wanting more. The lengthiest interview shows him too slow to swat a fly on his leg, and in response launches into an amusing explanation that African flies are faster than American flies – because they don’t eat as much. Aside from this, the funniest segment is a sparring match between Ali and Philippé Wynne - the lead singer of vocal group The Spinners. Wynne and his entourage take the opportunity to play the occasion for laughs, with Wynne aping Ali’s footwork, and the rest of the band making him out to be a heavyweight contender. However, as soon as Wynne enters the ring, one hit from Ali puts him in his place, cowering much to the amusement of his audience.

Although promoter Stewart Levine came across as a dope-smoking mess in When We Were Kings, he is in contrast extremely alert in Soul Power, holding the fort with a telephone constantly lodged between his face and shoulder. In this film, it is a Stephen Merchant look-a-like who takes the reins as the film’s token ‘out of place white man in suit’.

Many years ago I was thrilled to find that the DVD of When We Were Kings contained the entire ‘Rumble In The Jungle’ and ‘Thriller In Manilla’ fight telecasts as bonus features. Hopefully when Soul Power is released onto DVD, the extras will contain a wealth of musical performances left out to counter for the obligatory one-song-per-artist limitation that burdens such concert films.

In the end, Soul Power leaves you with the same feeling that Mohammed Ali proclaims to a smiling James Brown in Zaire in 1974. He might get the lyric slightly wrong, but the feeling is still there:

“I got ants in my pants - I gotta dance!”

Thirst (2009, Dir: Park Chan-wook)

Thirst, or Bakjwi to give its original Korean title, is the new film by Park Chan-wook, the renowned director of the Vengeance trilogy. It is a dark comedic tale of a priest, Sang-hyun (Song Kang-ho), who is rapidly losing his faith. Deciding to take the ultimate sacrifice, he volunteers to take part in an experiment to find a vaccine for a deadly virus.

Sang-hyun is a fine player of the recorder, and when not using the instrument as a self-flagellation tool on his thighs to keep feelings of desire at bay, he sits and plays tunes in his bedroom. Once he is infected with the deadly virus, it is during one of these musical moments that Chan-wook shows us what kind of film Thirst is going to be. We pan around Sang-hyun as a river of blood falls out the end of the recorder.

Fans of Park Chan-wook would expect something like this. His Vengeance trilogy is a visual feast, with a taste for the extreme, and Thirst doesn’t disappoint. Once Sang-hyun leaves the hospital, covered in bandages – seemingly unaffected by the virus – the film takes a left turn and begins to head towards the genre it’s directed at.

You see, Thirst is a vampire film. Or at least it’s been described as reinventing the vampire genre. I’m told that Twilight has recently done that, but I’m not a 14-year old girl so I wouldn’t know. In fact, I wouldn’t mind watching Twilight – I’m a huge fan of Kristen Stewart, for all the wrong reasons. She’s hardly Oscar-material, but always good to watch.

Speaking of eye-candy, Thirst has a beauty of its own in Kim Ok-bin as Tae-ju, the love interest of Sang-hyun. She lights up every scene and steals the show from Kang-ho, a veteran of Korean cinema. Once our hero begins to realise he’s a vampire, he meets Tae-ju and everything starts to unravel. Desperate to remain a good person, Sang-hyun tries to feed his thirst for blood not by killing people, but by sucking blood from an obese coma-patient in the local hospital. Inevitably, Tae-ju becomes infected, and from that point on things really do take a turn for the worse.

Like the Vengeance trilogy, Thirst is all over the place in terms of pacing. My only criticism is that the film is slightly overlong, and takes a good while to get going. Watching it with a festival crowd, most of the audience knew what to expect and were happy to wait for the pieces to fall into place. A wider international audience would not be as forgiving, and you can almost predict the film’s future as a cult classic.

Bright Star (2009, Dir: Jane Campion)

I first saw Ben Whishaw in the television comedy Nathan Barley, as the long-suffering Pingu. He then starred in the lead role in 2006’s Perfume: The Story of A Murderer - a literary adaptation that was accidentally hilarious. Now if you’ve never seen this film before, you really must. It just about happens to be one of the funniest films ever. For all the wrong reasons.

After Perfume..., he turned up as one of the more interesting Bob Dylan characters in I’m Not There. It says something that he shares the spotlight here with Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere and Heath Ledger. Somebody out there has a lot of faith in him, and rightly so - he’s a bloody good actor.

So it’s a good thing that he’s the lead in Jane Campion’s new film Bright Star. Whishaw plays Keats, famous to his friends but generally an unknown quantity. The film tells of his romance with local seamstress Fanny Brawne (the exquisite Abbie Cornish). If that all sounds as depressing as hell, don’t worry – there’s plenty to enjoy.

I was quite worried myself, when the opening credits played over a close-up of somebody sewing. It was like a nightmare coming true: a period romantic drama, about sewing. So I seriously considered falling asleep. Can you even escape a nightmare by falling asleep? Thankfully, I didn’t have to find out.

From the first scene, Brawne’s relationship with Keats’ best-friend Charles Brown (Paul Schneider) is hilarious. Brown takes every opportunity to snipe at Brawne, whilst Brawne gives as good as she gets with expert retorts. Their interplay alone is enough to make this film watchable, and that’s before you throw Whishaw into the mix.

Even when the two leads fall in love, the film doesn’t drag. Their childlike infatuation with each other – a pairing made impossible due to Keats’ lack of funds and stature – is sweet to watch, and definitely a welcome change from the sickly saccharine romances that usually litter period dramas. Campion’s keen script keeps everything moving along nicely, and she doesn’t mire the dialogue with reams and reams of Oldspeak.

The end of the film (which you can see coming if you know anything about Keats) is a sad thing to watch. Let’s just say that when I left the cinema, I made sure to put my coat on.

Looking For Eric (2008, Dir: Ken Loach)

I was forced to watch Kes at school. I haven’t seen a Ken Loach film since. On the basis of Looking For Eric, maybe I’ve been missing out on a lot.

It’s a nice little British film, set in Manchester, about a postman called Eric whose life is going down the drain. He manages to get back on track, mainly through the guidance and advice of his imaginary friend: one Eric Cantona, in fine form.

I managed to watch this film in a very bizarre frame of mind. On my way into the cinema, in Auckland, New Zealand, I bumped into an old friend – a guy I used to know around 6 or 7 years ago, in Manchester, England. So that’s weird enough. Then we go into the cinema and begin to watch this kitchen-sink drama filmed in Manchester – on a huge screen in a really opulent theatre – and some of the settings start to look familiar. Turns out the film was shot in Chorlton – the corner of Manchester where I used to live before shipping out down under.

Anyway, back to the film. There’s some fine humour here – humour that probably wouldn’t translate around the world, especially to American audiences – but for everybody else, it’s a riot. John Henshaw (Early Doors) and Justin Moorhouse (Phoenix Nights) round out the cast and provide a nice bit of support to Steve Evets – former bass player for The Fall – as Eric the postman.

As with a lot of social realism, the laughs only really pay off because life looks so damn miserable. Eric the postman’s main problem is that he doesn’t know how to reconnect with his estranged ex-wife, and his stepson is mixed up with a local gangster. A couple of joints later, and a few visits from ‘King Eric’, and everything starts to get back on track.

It’s an odd choice for a plot device, and the film would probably have worked without him, but Cantona’s appearance elevates the film to somewhere special. He also lends something to the finale of the film, which is an absolute joy to watch from start to finish. I always respect a filmmaker who leaves something important out of the trailer and its accompanying promotional campaign. It restores my faith in cinema; that it’s not all just dollars and cents and doing whatever it takes to get people through the doors.

It is for most filmmakers – but thankfully not all of them.

Che (2008, Dir: Steven Soderbergh)

Che is a two-part biopic of Che Guevara, directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Benecio del Toro as the revolutionary hero. The two films, separately titled The Argentine and Guerrilla, total almost four and half hours - a mammoth piece of filmmaking.

Of the two, The Argentine is a masterpiece. The film starts with the first meeting between Guevara and Fidel Castro in Mexico, after which we are thrust straight onto a boat headed for Cuba. Intercut with the main narrative are flash-forwards to a 1964 visit by Guevara to the United Nations; and an interview in the same year, which plays as an intermittent voiceover throughout.

We follow Guevara through his journey from combat medic to Commandante, and from the jungles of Cuba down into the cities. Along the way, he exhibits a degree of humanity that instantly warms him to everyone he meets. We’ve seen this side of him before, of course: as portrayed by Gael García Bernal in 2004’s The Motorcycle Diaries (adapted from Guevara’s diaries, as are Soderbergh’s films), and it is this attribute of Guevara’s that is key to understanding his effect on others.

Del Toro is amazing in the title role, and it’s a travesty that he – or for that fact any other contribution to the film – was not up for anything at the last Academy Awards. Perhaps it was due to the Spanish, the overall length or the fact that it was split into two – but not even any nominations? Apparently Sean Penn made reference to this when he picked up his Best Actor award for Milk, and rightly so.

It’s also nice to see Soderbergh doing something to stretch his legs after the yawnfest that was the Ocean’s 11 films. I felt violated after Ocean’s 12 – to the extent that I can’t even bring myself to watch the third one. Much to my amusement, he brings in Matt Damon for a very brief cameo during Guerrilla, as a German priest. Thankfully, George Clooney and Brad Pitt don’t appear as Bolivian peasants.

Aside from another brief cameo by Lou Diamond Phillips (yes, you read that correctly), Guerrilla doesn’t really offer much in the way of interest, at least during its first half. Guevara attempts to take his ideals to Central America, but the Bolivians don’t appear to be interested in a revolution. He hints at this during The Argentine when he says “Revolutions are not transferable,” but tragically doesn’t heed his own advice.

The ends of each film couldn’t be any more different. The Argentine ends in triumph after the battle of Santa Clara (but still with Havana to take); whilst Guerrilla closes with a muted telling of Guevara’s inevitable capture and subsequent execution. Unfortunately for me, in the final few frames of the film as Guevara’s body rises into the air strapped onto a helicopter, an inconsiderate female sat behind me decided to answer a phone call.

Hopefully, when the revolution reaches New Zealand, one of the first things to be addressed will be cinema etiquette.

Moon (2009, Dir: Duncan Jones)

In 1969, David Bowie released the song Space Oddity – about a lone astronaut in space. 40 years later, Bowie’s son has directed a film about a lone astronaut on the moon. God knows how Bowie’s grandchild will extend this concept further in 2049...

Moon, directed by Duncan Jones (or Zowie Bowie, as fans of rock trivia may know him) tells the story of Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), a jobbing space-worker stationed on the far side of the moon to harvest helium. Bell’s only companion is a robot named Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey), and that’s about it.

In terms of construction, this film isn’t entirely original. It’s assembled from parts of Alien, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Dark Star, to name just a few. But at least it’s shameless in its influences: the set looks like a side room inside the Nostromo, Bell’s conversations with Gerty reek of the interplay between Dave and Hal; and there’s more than a shed of Sgt. Pinback in the insanity of Sam Bell.

It’s strange – after waiting for decades for a decent British sci-fi to come along, two turn up at once. But where 2007’s Sunshine was a relatively glossy affair, Moon is starkly minimalistic in comparison. We’re not talking Prisoner: Cell Block H production values here – the special effects are awesome, but it’s pretty clear they were reeled off by someone proficient enough to know what they were doing, without resorting to Hollywood-style CGI overkill.

But it’s Sam Rockwell’s film from start to finish. He delivers a powerhouse performance, and with no other actors to bounce off, he’s left with just himself and his android pal to talk to. Rockwell has been a joy to watch in everything he’s been in since he turned up in The Green Mile (however my favourite performance has got to be in Galaxy Quest, as a bit-part actor convinced of his inevitable demise) but Moon gives him the chance to shine, and he takes up the opportunity with relish.

I had the pleasure of watching it with a splitting headache, and I believe this added to the film’s perplexing effect. We’re given subtle clues to the true state of affairs throughout, and as a result you end up connecting the dots at the same time Bell does. It’s also a film that demands a second viewing.

Is there life on Mars? Don’t know but there’s definitely something fishy happening on the moon.

A Conversation With Louie Psihoyos‏

You know how it is: you start a film blog, email the first review to the director of the film, and he emails you straight back. Result!

My email:

15 July 2009 - 21:08

Hi Louie,

Saw The Cove in Auckland on Saturday 11th July and was completely blown away - a tremendous acheivement. Well done.

Apologies you had such a small audience on the Saturday - I was kind of surprised at that myself - but I hear that around 600 attended the second showing so I hope Auckland wasn't such a disappointment for you.

Well, I'll be pushing the film on as many of my friends and acquaintances as possible so I hope you manage to secure a general release over here.

Congratulations again on making a film of such power. I'm sure you're sick of reading reviews, but here's my two cents: http://popcornlogic.blogspot.com/

Take care,

Johnny

And his reply:

15 July 2009 - 21:55

Nice review Johnny, many thanks for the support. I was disappointed with the Saturday attendance but I am always aware that even an audience of one is an opportunity to....just had an earthquake here in Wellington... I'm not use to this...pretty cool.. hotel room is rocking....wooowwww.. as I was saying....every screening is an opportunity to shake someone up.

At the Saturday screening was Katy from the NZ television station and several reviewers, including yourself. You never know where or when change will occur, but if you put a good film out there my hope is it will build an audience and then multiply.

At the second screening was the head of Greenpeace New Zealand, we had drinks for an hour or so afterwards and enjoyed each others company with some other NGO's and then she split - I had no idea who she was until somebody said, "Do you know who that was?" I heard from friends of friends she was moved and my hope she will tell her friends as you told yours...so the screening last night was a great success because this is a word of mouth film and now we have exponentially more mouths to tell the story of their experience.

Frederick Briand, the IWC delegate from Monaco, who in the film says, "Don't say you don't know about it - you know about it!" wrote me last week after he had seen The Cove at a special screening at the lWC and paid the film one of the best compliments I've heard, he told me, "The Cove is worth a thousand speeches," and this from a man who has written some of the finest speeches I've heard at the IWC. I'm going to have to start trusting those words next week when we go into theatrical release in America and I can no longer be at every screening...

Onward,

Louie














(Hopefully you won't mind me reprinting your words Louie - I'm desperate for content and it's not every day I get an email from a film director in the middle of an earthquake registering 6.6 on the richter scale!)

The Cove (2009, Dir: Louie Psihoyos)

Back in the 1960s, Ric O’Barry trained dolphins for the Flipper television show. He now blames himself for single-handedly kick-starting the worldwide ‘dolphin-arium’ business: “I’ve spent 10 years building this industry up, and the last 35 trying to tear it down.” But O’Barry doesn’t target the large American tourism giants like Seaworld – his focus is almost exclusively on one small fishing village in Japan by the name of Taiji.

Enter former National Geographic photographer and first-time filmmaker Louise Psihoyos. Once aware of the importance of the film’s titular location, Psihoyos assembles a crack-team of specialists to head to Taiji with a view to documenting and exposing some unsettling and horrific events. At one stage even Industrial Light & Magic are enlisted to create covert cameras to assist Psihoyos’ team (a sequence featuring a brief behind-the-scenes look at George Lucas’ special effect studio, and - much to my amusement - a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it glimpse of the ‘Vigo the Carpathian’ painting from Ghostbusters II, propped up against the wall of a junkyard).

Psihoyos’ film plays like an environmental espionage thriller, and there are definite echoes to James Marsh’s 2008 Oscar-winning documentary Man On Wire - another film where the thrill of the chase is almost the equal of the catch. However, Marsh’s film was hampered by its dramatic re-enactments, and further still on the (unfortunate but beautifully handled) reliance of still photographs to reveal Philippe Petit's final glory over the World Trade Centre. Psihoyos doesn’t have any such limitations, and The Cove is a far more visceral experience as a result.

Where Man On Wire was careful to avoid direct reference to the man-made atrocities surrounding the location of Petit’s tightrope climax, The Cove pulls no punches in showing us the brutal and unsettling horrors that a small Japanese community undertake to supply the world’s aquariums with dolphins and the uninformed Japanese people with what they believe to be whale-meat.

The Cove is not an easy film to watch – in fact, it’s terrifying – and due to Japan’s stance on whaling, it looks unlikely that the practices unearthed here will change at any time in the immediate future. Only with a snowball effect by way of word-of-mouth can the film reach a larger audience, and only then can any action be hoped for. Critics may argue that there are far larger issues to deal with, but as Psihoyos himself points out, “how can we expect the bigger stuff to get sorted out if we let things like this happen?”

Pass it on.