Bushwick (USA 2017: Dir Cary Murnion, Jonathan Milott)

Ok, I'll own up. I saw this at home via an on line screener: this is a movie you really need to see at the cinema. Bushwick is an exciting film in its own right but it's also a great and affectionate recreation of 1980s post Escape From New York ripoffs, in the same way achieved by the most recent film in the 'Purge' franchise (Purge: Election Year).

Lucy is a post grad student who is taking her boyfriend Jose to meet her family in the Bushwick area of Brooklyn. Disembarking at an unusually deserted subway station the couple encounter a man running down the steps onto the concourse. He is screaming. He's also on fire. As the camera follows Lucy to surface level she's greeted with the sight of open warfare slap bang in the area where she grew up (Jose's toast by the way, caught in an ice cream van explosion). The masked and heavily armoured antagonists could be terrorists, but we later find out that they're actually southern state secessionists who have decoupled themselves from the Union and are waging war against the Democratic north.

Taking refuge in a church, the frightened and seemingly helpless Lucy meets Stupe, an ex marine turned janitor who's a handy guy to be around. From then on the film follows Lucy, Stupe and Lucy's rescued druggy sister Belinda, as they try to try to make their way to the demilitarized zone on the other side of the city, where they can be transported to safety.

Bushwick is an unashamed exploitationer, the like of which generally aren't made any more. It's clearly limited in budget; the crowd scenes are sparse and most of the hardware seems computer generated, but what it lacks in spectacle it make up for in bravado. It's in thrall to the movies it's honouring, with its cast of tough knocks military guys, gang leader mommas and disillusioned priests. In Lucy (admirably played by Brittany Pitch Perfect Snow) we get a heroine who makes the familiar journey from defenseless screamer to gun toting action figure. She even gets one of the film's best lines: examining the remains of her left hand 'wedding ring' finger, shot off in an exchange of gunfire, she asks "How am I going to get married now?" Dave Bautista (Hinx from Spectre and Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy) plays Stupe (not Stupx), a mumbling angry bear of a man with, you know, a heart of gold.

New York under attack in Bushwick

Murnion and Milott, who previously made the lively and inventive comedy horror Cooties back in 2014 (itself a homage to 80s wildlife-gone-bonkers films and a sign that maybe you're not meant to take this film too seriously) handle the action well; the smooth camerawork, which glides around the mayhem and hitches a ride onto passing motorbikes from time to time, tries to convince us it's all shot in one continuous take - it isn't, but points for trying - achieving a kind of 'found footage' realism without the irritating bits and cleverly covering up some of the limitations of the effects work.

The directors have clearly tapped into the political realities of the US in 2017; this is arguably the first Trump inspired action movie (but it almost certainly won't be the last). It's telling that the southern state insurgents didn't take their beef to Washington but to New York, the heart of the liberal left. This movie may not be very bright, but it is a load of fun to watch, albeit with a slight sense of dread. Go see.

New Films Round-up #10 - Reviews of We Go On (USA 2016), Voice From the Stone (USA/Italy 2017), Brackenmore (Ireland 2016), Media Studies (UK 2017), The Triangle (USA 2016) and 68 Kill (USA 2017)

We Go On (USA 2017: Dir Jesse Holland, Andy Mitton)  Holland and Mitton previously wrote and directed the rather odd, atmospheric 'missing townsfolk' film YellowBrickRoad and the 'Listen' segment of the 2013 anthology Chilling Visions: 5 Senses of Fear. They're back with this very likeable, if a little uneven supernatural movie with comic flourishes.

Miles Grissom (very well played by Clark Freeman) is a young guy, obsessed with thoughts of his own mortality after losing his father at a young age, who is desperate for first hand proof that there is life after death. He offers $30,000 via a newspaper advert for anyone who can convince him conclusively that there are such things as ghosts. Aided by his mum Charlotte (a sensitive performance from the still vivacious Annette O'Toole, whose luminous presence in the movie served to remind me how little she's been seen on the big screen in her career) the two sift through the responses, meeting up with a man of science, who proves to be a fake, and a medium who seems like the real thing.

Miles then meets Nelson, who works for the local airport, and shows him something that provides the irrefutable proof that he needs, but at a price. He is now haunted by a figure, stuck between worlds, whose only chance of release is for Miles to perform an act of murder.

We Go On is that rare thing, a film which manages to elicit laughs, raise chills and occasionally a lump in the throat. Miles is a complex character whose neuroses would repel viewers in less talented hands than Freeman's, and his touching relationship with his mother (this is pretty much a two hander movie) gives an emotional depth I was quite unprepared for. In some ways the film touches on some similar themes to this year's A Ghost Story, directed by David Lowery, but whereas that film was a (failed) meditation on love, loss and time, this is probably nearer to a low budget Poltergeist (1982) in exploring the worlds beyond and the human interaction with them. Very enjoyable and distinctly bittersweet, I look forward to seeing more work from Holland and Mitton.

Voice From the Stone (USA/Italy 2017: Dir Eric D. Howell) Baby-faced Emilia Clarke is Verena, a nurse in 1950s Italy, with a successful track record of staying with families and healing young people, in Eric D. Howell's distinctly autumnal supernatural drama, which takes more than a few stylistic notes from Nick Murphy's 2011 movie The Awakening.

Verena moves in with a family whose young son Jakob has remained both mute and uncommunicative following the death of his mother Malvina from an unknown illness. The boy's father, Klaus, is both in mourning for his wife and frustrated at attempts by previous nurses to draw Jakob out of himself. Verena spends a lot of time drifting around the Tuscan mansion where the family live, but her attempts to get him to speak are slow going. In fact this is all rather slow, perhaps reminiscent of a winter costume TV drama, where all the money seems to have been spent on the clothes and location rather than the script.

Into this admittedly beautifully shot but rather tepid drama a romance builds between Verena and Klaus, and before you know it things have all gone a bit Henry - not M.R.- James, and any supernatural elements are supplanted by heaving bosoms and furrowed brows. The final scenes suggest that some form of transference might have happened, but it's all rather bland and inconsequential by this point. The movie is an adaptation of a 1996 novel by Italian author Silvio Raffo called La voce della Pietra, which judging by the story is probably heavily indebted to Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca. Pretty but empty.

Brackenmore (Ireland 2016: Dir Chris Kemble, J.P. Davidson) Surviving a car crash back in Southern Ireland which kills both her parents, little Kate grows up and moves to London, with no memory of the event. When an uncle dies, leaving her a house, she moves back to her home village of Brackenmore to sort things out. But strange things happen while she's there, and Kate begins to feel that the village is harbouring a secret. Do the strange symbols she sees indicate something sinister, or is she just distraught at the failed relationship she's left behind in London? And can she really trust new guy on the scene Tom, who seems to good to be true?

Of course he is, and if you're ever seen Kill List or A Wicker Man you probably know the answer to the other questions as well. Brackenmore is a very slow paced, but enigmatic and beautifully shot film about small communities and how they deal with outsiders. Its central 'weird' premise is decidedly undercooked, however, which means the film is all build up and no last reel delivery, or at least a climax to justify the ponderous pace of the first hour.

Sophie Hopkins, an accomplished actor, seems rather uncertain in the role of adult Katy, and DJ McGrath as Tom fares little better. It's a pity, as with more convincing leads and a better script this may have gripped. But it's lovely to look at, and doesn't outstay its welcome at just over an hour - it just doesn't offer anything new or inventive.

Media Studies (UK 2017/2015: Dir Warren Dudley)  It's getting on for twenty years since The Blair Witch Project (1999) and I think we have to conclude that the 'found footage' film is now here to stay. The people in front of and behind the camera in Media Studies were toddlers when that movie came out, so, bless 'em, they'll not have known a time before shaky cams and pointless running and screaming in films.

Three young filmmakers, Raz, Raz's girlfriend Charlie and classmate Jess are given an end of term Media Studies project, to make a film and include lots of extras showing behind the scenes footage of how it was put together - a rather flimsy ruse to justify Raz filming everything. But hang on, haven't we seen these three before? Why yes, in Warren Dudley's last but one movie, 2015's The Cutting Room, which featured the trio as, you guessed it, three college students at work on an end of year Media Studies project...ah, it's the same film, repackaged with a more subtle title for the arthouse crowd. Come on, who'd fall for that bit of marketing? Oh.

Anyhow, our three chums decide to make a film about cyber-bullying. They focus on a girl who has gone missing in the locality following some on line persecution, interviewing family and friends but mainly bickering between themselves (quite convincingly, as it happens) about the process of making the doc. After another girl goes missing, the trail leads them to an abandoned barracks, where they uncover the secret behind the missing and, in so doing, must fight for their life.

I confess that I quite liked this. The three actors playing the students are sufficiently morose to convince (Charlie particularly, played by Lucy-Jane Quinlan, captures the sulky 'whatevs' mood perfectly), and in a nice have-your-cake-and-eat-it moment, there's a parody of TBW earlier on in the film, but then the director mines the same film for his final reel tension. And tense it is too, with a rather good end of movie reveal that I wasn't expecting. By no means a fantastic film, but competent and with a very personable cast.

The Triangle (USA 2016: Dir David Blair, Nathaniel Peterson, Adam Pitman, Andrew Rizzo and Adam Stilwell) Yep, it's more 'found footage' but this time served up as a proper documentary which is so well made, acted and edited that had you come in after the credits you could easily be fooled that this wasn't fiction.

Summoned via a postcard from a friend, a group of young (ish) filmmakers travel to the heart of Montana to seek out their mate who has joined a commune. But before you summon up thoughts of cults and films like Ti West's The Sacrament, this group of truth seekers seem to be a lot less loony tunes than the average. Quite what their credo is remains undefined for most of the film, but, as many critics have commented, the less you know about The Triangle the better.

The filmmakers are slowly introduced to and accepted by the commune, and find them to be independently minded old school hippies. Much of the film is devoted to the observance of their routines and rituals, which does make things rather slow going. Thankfully the characters are well defined and the film is shot very convincingly; after a while this viewer became rather envious of the lifestyle he was witnessing. But of course it can't end happily, although to comment more would be to give a way the big reveal.

Like most FF films this is really something out of nothing, but the film's directors use a kind of cinematic sleight of hand to persuade you that there's more bulk to The Triangle than actually exists. The good news is that the trick works - the bleak Montana mountainscapes are a great backdrop to the circle of yurts that is the commune's home, and it's that sense of oppressive arid environment encroaching on the idyllic lives of the communards that leaves the lasting impression. Not action packed then, but very good.

68 Kill (USA 2017: Dir Trent Haga) "A punk-rock after hours about femininity, masculinity and the theft of $68,000" is how this one's described in the publicity. Full of characters best described as Rob Zombie-lite, 68 Kill is playing at this year's FrightFest, and I can't help feeling that despite the smart script and sharp performances, this is going to disappoint the horror crowd.

Matthew Gray stars as Chip, as luckless and stuck as the fly caught in spilt honey under the credits at the start of the movie. His rather dominant and morally wayward girlfriend Liza (AnnaLynne McCord, as impressive as when I last saw her in Excision) shtups the landlord in lieu of rent and has her eye on the 68 large in his safe, aiming for a new start in life. Roping in Chip for a spot of housebreaking, things go wrong when Liza kills the landlord and seems to get off on it. The two escape with the money, and what follows is a road trip across the southern states with Chip falling into bad (and occasionally good) company. It's all pretty fast paced and frantic but sadly rather one note, and despite the fact that the key characters are all women it still doesn't really pass the Bechdel test, and everyone is so ludicrous and over the top that it's hard to see it from a feminist perspective.

This is Trent Haga's second film - his first, 2011's Chop trod a similar path of comedy and violence, which is I suppose what you would expect from someone who cut his teeth on Troma movies both in front of and behind the camera. But 68 Kill outstays its welcome very quickly, and is neither as sexy as the advertising suggests nor as gory.

Your Name (Japan 2016: Dir Makoto Shinkai)

I will be the first admit that my knowledge of Anime is not huge - in fact, call me Mr. Pitiful - but that doesn't stop me from knowing a good thing when I see it. And Your Name is a very good thing indeed, a decidedly literary film which deals with some big concepts in its hour and three quarters; its combination of buzzy ideas and stunning visuals rightfully put it on many critics' 'best of'' lists in 2016, and it's now getting a welcome re-release in cinemas, including some IMAX showings.

Taki and Mitsuha are respectively a teenage boy and girl; he lives in Tokyo, while she resides in Itomori, a village in the country. Mitsuha, who with her sister has been brought up by her grandmother, is bored with rural life and also with being a girl - she shouts from the rooftops that she wants to be reborn as a boy in Tokyo! By some unexplained means both get to swap bodies, albeit briefly. After the swap they can remember little about their alternative lives, but take it in turns influencing each other's future. However, the approach of the Tiamat comet brings consequences for both Taki and Mitsuha that tests both their strange friendship and their hold on youth.

A quirky sort of love story which shifts its temporal perspective on several occasions, this is a film that is at the same time funny, sweet, bewildering, and heartbreaking. For anyone has seen the mawkish but odd 2006 US romance The Lake House (or even the 2000 South Korean film Il Mare of which the US movie was a remake), you'll have some idea of the mid film twist that takes things from mildly diverting to potentially tragic. The body swap theme is popular in Japanese literary culture - Shinkai based his film on sources as diverse as Shuzo Oshimi's body swap Manga Inside Mari and Torikaebaya Monogatari, a story from the ancient Japanese Heian period. With the arrival of the comet and in the film's last scenes there are also echoes of the disaster movie - it's a film that mixes the east and the west very satisfyingly.

Despite the timeless nature of the story, the characters of Taki and Mitsuha are superb creations - lively, enquiring, both amused and frightened at their experiences, but the supporting cast are also beautifully realised: Mitsuha's spunky younger sister Yotsuha, who in a running gag constantly catches Taki, while in her sister's body, fondling her/his own breasts; Hitoha, Mitsuha and Yotsuha's grandmother, who has brought them up on her own following their mother's death and local mayor father's abandonment, and is the custodian of the making of the kuchikami sake, an ancient family tradition; and also Taki and Mitsuha's schoolfriends Tsukasa, Shinta, Tessie and Sayaka, who help to flesh out the lives of the central characters and are a great supporting cast in their own right.

But the real hero of Your Name, as you would expect, is Shinkai's animation. A combination of stunningly realistic (and occasionally rotoscoped) backdrops which capture the bustling, anonymous cityscapes of Tokyo and the tranquility of Itomori (a fictitious area realised from a combination of Nagana, Gifu and, for the area where the comet hits land, Aogashima Island). Shinkai's use of the weather - scudding clouds, rain and snow - adds an extra dimension to these already vivid scenes. Like Ozu before him, Shinkai's frequent use of passing trains, whizzing through town and country, represents both the distance between the characters and the means of connecting them.

Onto this backdrop a fairly straightforward teen romance becomes increasingly complicated (you may want to see it with English language enabled, as I found the combination of a complex story, gorgeous visuals and subtitles at times overwhelming), raising questions about gender and culture which I wasn't expecting. Personally I could have done without Radwimps' (a popular Emo-lite Japanese band) rather generic - and overused - songs, feeling that this might unfairly date the movie in years to come. But this is a small criticism of a film which offers so much visually and narratively. See it on a big screen if you get the chance. Or failing that a very big television. Excellent.

Victim (UK 1961: Dir Basil Dearden) - notes from an introduction to a screening of the film at East Dulwich Picturehouse 15 August 2017

“It is extraordinary, in this over-permissive age, to believe that this modest film could ever have been considered courageous, daring or dangerous to make. It was, in its time, all three.”

That was Dirk Bogarde writing about the film Victim in 1979. A further 38 years of ‘permissiveness’ in society has taken place since those words were written, which makes it very difficult today to appreciate just what a risky, brave and powerful film Victim was.

Two separate events were responsible for the film’s genesis and eventual release.

The first was the publication of the Wolfenden report, or to give it its proper title, The Report of the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution; published in 1957, the result of a three year long enquiry, its intention was to bring about the repeal of the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act, which made any homosexual acts between men illegal. It was an Act that was still being rigorously enforced by the Police in the 1950s, encouraged by overzealous politicians; between 1953 and 1954, for example, over two thousand men had been prosecuted and gaoled for offences under the Act. This meant that homosexuals, particularly high profile ones, were vulnerable to people aiming to make money out of their sexual orientation remaining secret. The Act therefore became known as ‘The Blackmailer’s Charter’ and it was reported at one point that 90% of all blackmail cases that came to court involved the persecution of gay men – you’ll hear both of these facts mentioned in the film tonight.

The second event was the appointment of John Trevelyan as Secretary to the British Board of Film Censors in 1958. His tenure at the BBFC ushered in a more liberal approach to film censorship and, at a time when film makers would routinely have to submit their scripts to the Censors before any filming was done, a more collaborative style of working alongside the film making community. Importantly, Trevelyan’s view on films with direct homosexual themes, rather than being banned outright (which was the BBFC’s prior stance), was that they should be allowed for submission to the Censor provided that the subject matter was handled ‘responsibly.’

Victim’s director Basil Dearden was no stranger to controversy. His 1950 film Port of London contained the first interracial relationship in a British film. Eight years later he directed Violent Playground, whose subject matter was juvenile delinquency in Liverpool; and in 1959, along with Victim’s producer Michael Relph, he made Sapphire, a crime film with a largely black cast, its subject matter triggered by the 1958 Notting Hill riots.

Dearden’s scriptwriter on Sapphire was Janet Green, and it was Green who, with her husband John McCormick, came up with the story which would eventually be developed into Victim’s final script. It was inspired equally by the Wolfenden Report – or more particularly the fact that after its publication there was widespread debate but little legislative action – and the reality of the continued blackmailing of gay men; this became the core of the story, with successful QC Melville Farr (played by Dirk Bogarde) becoming embroiled in a blackmailing ring and risking both his career and exposure as a homosexual to take action against the blackmailers. The film started life under the name Boy Barrett, after the young clerk who is blackmailed over his association with Farr. It was changed to the more immediate one word title against Green’s wishes.

Dearden and Relph approached a number of actors for the lead role, including Jack Hawkins, Stewart Granger and James Mason, who for various reasons were unable to accept the part of the QC, originally designed to be an older character. Deciding to reduce Farr’s age and making him someone who has just made silk, they approached Dirk Bogarde. The actor – real name Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde  - was coming to the end of his contract with Rank, who had marketed him throughout the 1950s as the clean cut ‘idol of the Odeons,’ with some success. But Bogarde was keen to take on roles which moved him away from a youthful image – he was nearly 40, after all. So he jumped at the opportunity that Victim gave him, even though he knew that being included in the film carried enormous risks, which would probably lose him a lot of his fanbase. He may also have trusted Dearden after the director gave Dirk an early role as cop killer Tom Riley in the 1950 movie The Blue Lamp.

Bogarde threw himself into the part, preparing detailed character notes and contributing to the script – in fact, one of his criticisms was that Farr wasn’t homosexual enough; and he had a point; in Victim homosexuals are treated either as objects of pity or revulsion, but it's left to the supporting cast to personify any specific 'gayness.' Bogarde himself rewrote the key scene in which his wife Laura (a rather underdeveloped role for Sylvia Sims) confronts him about his relationship with Barrett, and it was this scene, with its doubly delivered "I WANTED him!" which gave Trevelyan as Censor one of his biggest headaches, even though it's disclosed that Farr didn't act on his desires.  

Shooting of Victim took ten weeks, starting in February 1961 with a budget of just over £150,000; it premiered in September 1961, with Trevelyan awarding it an X certificate with only minor dialogue trims, effectively over-ruling his colleagues on the Committee.

But Relph and Dearden were worried. Their previous movie, the rather clunky sci-fi comedy Man in the Moon starring Kenneth More, performed poorly both critically and at the box office. Also, the backlash received by Michael Powell following the release of his film Peeping Tom in 1960 showed exactly what could happen when film makers misread the mood of the critics and the viewing public.

But they needn’t have worried – press reaction overall was positive, and it did very well at the box office (making a profit of around £50,000, although only half that of Sapphire). Sadly it wasn’t welcomed with open arms in America. The MPAA insisted on the removal of the word ‘homosexual’ to guarantee a commercial release, but Dearden and Relph refused; so Victim was denied the MPAA Seal of Approval, killing any hope of commercial business, and was relegated to art house screenings only.

So the final question: did Victim achieve its aims, as Relph and Green hoped, to help the cause of the Wolfenden report? It’s difficult to say how much influence the movie had on the post Wolfenden debate, but it was the first English language film to use the word ‘homosexual’ and some of the script of the film sounds like it’s lifted direct from Wolfenden, so it’s reasonable to assume that it would have taken the issue to a much wider audience. What we do know is that, ten years after the publication of that report, in 1967 the Sexual Offences Bill was finally enacted, which provided that for men over 21 a homosexual act in private was no longer a criminal offence. It wasn’t an acceptance of homosexuality – far from it, police arrests continued after the Bill became law - but was at least a move in the right direction.

Enjoy the film.