I honestly think I’ve seen more films this year than I have in a long long time, mostly due to me getting a membership at the Arts Picturehouse. So, in the spirit of the huge amounts of list-making going on, I’m putting up my favourite films of this year.

Before we start, a few things: some of these aren’t quite 2009 films. But Synecdoche, New York was released in the UK this year, and that’s the standard I’m going by. This isn’t a Top 10 – the list is in no particular order except in the rough order that I saw them. I’m not listing stuff I didn’t get to see – so the list may see some additions as more stuff comes out on DVD. And films like Moon and Public Enemies, which I enjoyed but wasn’t really moved to write about, are here in spirit.

Feel free to disagree, argue, or put forward your own favourites in the comments below.

Synecdoche, New York

Dir. Charlie Kaufman (USA, 2008)

124 minutes

My favourite film of this year, and one of the best of the decade, Synecdoche, New York is the apotheosis of Charlie Kaufman’s quixotic, occasionally annoying but always interesting work on memory, identity, loss and the creative impulse. It’s a horror film about that most universal of horrors – aging, death, losing everything we have – and about the defences people build against it.

Philip Seymour Hoffman’s hypochondriac theatre director is a man fundamentally afraid of life. Given the opportunity through a wildly generous “genius grant” he creates a life-size replica of his world and withdraws into it, directing actors to play himself and the people in his life. As years pass, all the characters and “characters” within the play age almost imperceptibly. Hoffman in particular is masterful at this, growing ever more bowed and shuffling as the weight of time and his artistic endeavour presses down on him.

Synecdoche can be unbearably – at times almost comically – tragic. But at its core there’s a small seed of hope, of the connections we can forge with people and how previous those links are. Hoffman’s epic play is brought to life with a brilliant visual sensibility, but ultimately it’s shown to be a hollow thing. And the final curtain call comes for him, as it will come for us all.

In The Loop

Dir. Armando Iannucci (UK, 2009)

109 minutes

The team behind peerless political sitcom The Thick Of It transfer to the big screen for a scabrous satire with more wit and outrage than the last fifty super-earnest political documentaries combined. Peter Capaldi’s foul-mouthed spin doctor Malcom Tucker, a character for the ages, is here set loose across London and Washington after a junior minister’s comments threaten to derail the build-up to a planned Anglo-American war. Loop has the furious pace of an action flick, unbearably cringeworthy moments, and lines like “‘Climb the mountain of conflict?’ You sound like some Nazi Julie Andrews!”

It would be easy for the creators to succumb to “Jack Donaghy syndrome” (which, to a certain extent, they did in the most recent series of Thick) and turn Malcolm into a lovable anti-hero. But to their credit, they never do. Malcolm is a shit, he disseminates lies and destroys people for political gain. But all the same, you thrill to his baroque explosions of profanity, and feel for him as he discovers his clout doesn’t extend across the Atlantic. Tucker may give his political masters what they want, but the film ends with a genuine sense of outrage; in a familiar-sounding situation, victory may have been declared, but no one has won.

District 9

Dir. Neill Blomkamp (US/New Zealand, 2009)

112 minutes

Bringing a bit of old-school subversion back to science fiction cinema, Neill Blomkamp’s scrappy actioner melds real-world satire with fantastical concepts in a way that recalls John Carpenter or Paul Verhoeven. The film’s initial pseudo-documentary style raises the stakes on the situation of mistreated aliens living in a refugee camp in Johannesburg. We follow one lackey for the standard evil corporation as he attempts to forcibly relocate the “prawns”. Sharlto Copley’s unsympathetic protagonist starts out as an illustration of the evil of banality, but after undergoing a bizarre transformation, we see him regain his humanity even as he becomes less and less human. As he bonds with the aliens (the ugly, insect-like creatures have some genuinely heartwarming scenes), they turn the tables on the human oppressors, delivering some excellently splattery violence and culminating in a sequence that rivals Children of Men for sheer tenseness. District 9 is a wickedly entertaining genre piece that doesn’t sacrifice genre fiction’s potential for wit or intelligence to provide thrills, but instead offers up both in spades.

Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Mesrine: Public Enemy Number One

Dir. Jean-François Richet (France/Canada/Italy, 2008)

113 minutes/133 minutes

Having been let down slightly by Public Enemies, this French true-crime double bill gave me all the brutality and law-breaking I could wish for. Based on the life of infamous bank robber Jacques Mesrine, the films are pretty much owned by Vincent Cassel, who gives a storming performance as the often-charming, mostly-psychotic crook, who we first see committing dirty deeds during the French war in Algeria during the 1950s. From there, it’s an easy step to a life of crime, working for Gerard Depardieu’s sleazy OAS man (a working knowledge of French post-war history isn’t essential, but it does add a lot of depth to these early scenes). We see Mesrine’s imprisonment in Montreal, subsequent prison break and life on the run, as his trigger-happy tactics turn him into a contemporary of 1970s left-wing terrorists. Both films are staged and directed with a gritty ’70 crime flick feel, shining a light on the darker corners of postwar Europe while staging a succession of shootouts and chases that feel genuinely terrifying. And as I’ve said before, Cassel is mesmerising.

Inglourious Basterds

Dir. Quentin Tarantino (US, 2009)

153 minutes

Out of all the films on this list, I had the most pre-viewing reservations about Quentin Tarantino’s long-awaited Second World War epic. The fitfully entertaining but mostly self-indulgent Kill Bill and Death Proof had convinced me that where Tarantino had once repositioned pop-culture detritus in thrilling new ways, he was now content to strew it around lazily in lieu of actual ideas. And the trailers for Basterds made it look like a farrago of misjudged “comedy” setpieces and terrible accents. A lesson I should have learned long ago: trailers lie.

The real Basterds, impossible to condense into a choppily-edited two minutes, consists of eleven or so very long scenes, almost short films in themselves, that are masterpieces in dialogue, gamesmanship between characters, and building tension to almost unbearable levels. The Basterds themselves feature more as supporting cast than titular characters. Instead, the film concerns itself mostly with Shoshana Dreyfus, lone survivor of the slaughter of her family in the film’s first scene, and SS Colonel Hans Landa, the “Jew Hunter”, who led the massacre.

Christoph Waltz and Melanie Laurent are undoubtedly the stars of the film, giving two of the strongest screen performances this year. Waltz is excellently scary as the suave Nazi who expertly toys with people throughout the film, from the innocent French farmer in the tension-filled opening sequence to Shoshana herself in an exquisitely nasty cat-and-mouse game played over pastries. Switching languages without blinking an eye, he’s the perfect character for a film where language, interpretation and differing readings become battlegrounds as important as the war itself. And Laurent’s performance as the steely Shoshana instantly establishes her as an iconic character, and one of the strongest onscreen women in recent years.

Make no mistake, this is Tarantino Getting Serious – but in about as unpretentious a way as you can imagine. Despite the Second World War background, the film still features Tarantino’s trademark queasy-comic violence and shaggy-dog plotting. But behind this, the bloody business of revenge is given a serious consideration, as the multinational cast converge on a Paris cinema for the climactic sequence.

Without giving too much away, the whole extraordinary ending, from the “armouring-up” scene set to David Bowie’s “Cat People” to the film’s final line, made me laugh, gasp and work my brain into overdrive to grasp all the different levels. It’s a delirious fantasy that makes you cheer for revenge even as you question it, where the logic and language of film extends into “the real world” and history is rewritten in a way that’s simultaneously tasteless, inspiring, and affecting. It’s Tarantino’s best film in years.

Thirst

Dir. Park Chan-Wook (South Korea, 2009)

133 minutes

Park Chan-Wook is one of the directors on my to-watch-anything-they-do list. Despite the current overexposure of vampires in pop culture, Thirst is a very worthy spin on the genre. The blood-soaked, guilt-ridden atmosphere of Park’s “Vengeance Trilogy” has a very Catholic sensibility to it, so I was interested to see him explicitly tackle the Church in one of his films. Thirst begins with a priest volunteering as a human guinea pig in efforts to cure some horrible blood-borne disease. He makes a miraculous recovery from near-death after receiving a blood transfusion, but discovers that the blood has given him some unwelcome new abilities.

Thirst makes an incredible amount of whiplash-inducing shifts in tone throughout its length. From an elliptical meditation on sin and death, to bizarre comedy of manners, to low-key horror film, to doomed romance, we are taken through one man’s journey into a moral void. In a way, this is a distilled version of Park’s vengeance trilogy work, where he takes an ordinary person and twists their moral compass until they are driven to committing terrible acts. In this film, the priest sees himself as a monster, but is still driven to justify his actions, until he realises there is no way out. The astounding final scene ranks as one of the most straight-up cinematic moments of this year, utilising Park’s gift for visual invention in the service of a devastating emotional gut-punch.

Le Donk and Scor-Zay-Zee

Dir. Shane Meadows (UK, 2009)

71 minutes

Coming off the success of This Is England, Shane Meadows’ follow-up may seem deliberately slight. The fact is, this low-budget mockumentary about a roadie (Paddy Considine) with big dreams for his Nottingham rapper protégé is the best comedy of the year. Reaching almost Spinal Tap heights of hilarity, it still has some touching moments and a nice message about creative ambition. For anyone who’s only seen Considine in scarily intense roles such as Dead Man’s Shoes, it’ll be surprising to see him give such a relaxed comic performance. The whole film has a loose, semi-improvised feel, taking in the low-rent triumphs and disasters of taking a show on the road.

Despite his ramshackle charm, Considine terribly towards rapper Scor-Zay-Zee (Dean Palinczuk), pushing him to the side to gain attention from documentary-maker “Shane Meadows” (plays by the real-life Meadows) in scenes that skirt Alan Partridge/The Office levels of awkwardness. Nevertheless, all comes good in the end, and Meadows’ soft spot for the outside allows a feel-good finish. (And a credits sequence where Considine tells the Arctic Monkeys a yarn about having sex with a transvestite.)

The Hurt Locker

Dir. Kathryn Bigelow (US, 2009)

131 minutes

Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker is a thrillingly intense, nightmarish exploration of the insanity of combat and the damage done to occupants of a war zone. While carrying little in the way of an obvious “message” – most of the film is a disconnected montage of scenes showing a bomb disposal unit going about their day-to-day business – The Hurt Locker has more to say on the business of war and its effects than the pious, self-important films that have tried to deal with Iraq over the last few years.

After a brutal opening sequence showing the consequences of failure for bomb technicians, we are introduced to gung-ho Sergeant Jeremy Renner, who tries the patience of his fellow soldiers as he gets them into ever more dangerous situations. As Renner ambles towards another device clad in his heavy bomb disposal suit, tension is pushed to the breaking point by slowing down the action; while the characters are trapped in life-or-death situations, we have room to feel every moment of them. A slow-motion duel between snipers . As they encounter bombs placed in a variety of locations, from a busy intersection to a car boot to a bloodied corpse, the damage done to Iraq by jihadists and occupying troops is rendered in starkly literal terms.

The Hurt Locker is not a perfect film – Renner’s behaviour strains plausibility, and a muddled attempt at a subplot doesn’t add anything in particular. But the most jarring shift of all comes in the film’s final minutes, with a return to civilian life. And it’s here that the film’s most devastating point is made. The final shot – and the final subtitle – is a killer.

A Serious Man

Dir. Joel and Ethan Coen (US, 2009)

105 minutes

The Coen brothers’ latest is one of their more obviously philosophical outings, and their most obviously Jewish film to date. Beginning with a dramatisation of a bizarre folk tale from the old country, A Serious Man drops us into the life of academic Michael Stuhlbarg, who tries to do right by his profession, family and religion in 1960s Middle America, despite the myriad obstacles in his way.

Typically for the Coens, it’s a very handsome-looking film, with the mid-60s interiors designed to perfection, and Roger Deakins doing typically majestic work with very down-to-earth settings. Performances are uniformly great, although Stuhlbarg anchors the film as the put-upon nice guy of Hollywood cliché filtered through the Coens’ dark imaginations.

While I loved the offbeat experience of the film, others may dislike its unwillingness to give up a clear-cut message. Despite the foregrounding of different methods of inquiry into the world, the film works against any definitive answer. The convoluted equations that Stuhlbarg’s physics professor scrawls on the blackboard are as opaque as the rambling anecdotes told by the various rabbis he asks for advice, or his deadbeat brother’s strange attempts at numerology. In the end, all we can do is “embrace the mystery”.

I got back from Leeds Festival a couple of weeks ago. It was my first experience of a “proper” camping-on-site festival, so I thought I’d write down a few recollections and thoughts I picked up during the weekend.

If you’re going to go, go volunteer

I went to the festival as a volunteer for Anti-Slavery International. Staffing for the bars is organised by the Workers Beer Company, and volunteers work a six-hour shift each day, with their salary being paid back to the charity they volunteer for. In return, you get free entry to the festival, access to a staff campsite with its own beer tent, and meal vouchers. I couldn’t recommend it highly enough – you bond with your fellow volunteers, you get to experience a festival without paying £150-plus for a ticket, and raise a bit of money for a good cause.

Meeting people is easy

Over the weekend, I worked with just about the nicest people you could hope to meet. Everyone was more or less in the same boat, and people who had volunteered before had advice and anecdotes to share. When my shift was over, I’d wander around with the friends I’d made and see bands, chat, have a few drinks and relax.

Afternoon shift is fine…

I was lucky enough to serve my shifts at a bar directly across from the main stage. My two 11am-5pm shifts took in some relaxing times, when the flow of customers wasn’t too hectic, and you could listen to the bands playing the main stage as you worked.

Unfortunately, the sound mixing for the main stage started out pretty bad each day, so if you were a band playing the first few slots, any high notes or vocals would get lost in a muddy sludge of bass and feedback. The only afternoon set I heard with decent sound was Noah And The Whale (who aren’t very hard-rocking, so that may have been it).

…Evening shift is where Shit Gets Real

My Saturday shift was from 5pm to 11pm. From a music standpoint, this couldn’t have been better – I got to watch Vampire Weekend, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bloc Party and Radiohead playing the main stage in front of me. But of course I had to work, and encountering the great British public in varying states of drunkenness is pretty hairy at the best of times, but mildly terrifying when you have to take their money and provide them with more alcohol.

Don’t be afraid to try new things

I didn’t have much time to look at the schedule before I went, but I’d seen a line-up, and had a fair idea of bands I really wanted to see. Beyond that, I was open to suggestions. And exploring the festival with friends exposed me to some cool stuff I wouldn’t have bothered with otherwise.

On the Saturday afternoon I went with them to the Radio 1 stage to see … Lethal Bizzle! Definitely not someone I’d go see of my own accord, but he put on a great show. That, to me, is what a festival is all about; not just a laundry list of Bands You Want To See, but taking the time for something that comes out of left field and surprises you.

Scheduling can let you down

I’m not just talking about when an awesome band you really want to see is playing another stage while you’re on shift (The Gaslight Anthem … sniff). There were some odd decisions in the scheduling of bands, which led to sets that could have been better.

For example, Friday night’s headliners were Arctic Monkeys, preceded by the Prodigy. I’m not a huge fan of the Prodigy, but they tore the place up – their lighting show alone looked like the end of the world. Following that, the Monkeys couldn’t help but seem a little subdued. They’re a small-venues band (which I mean in the absolute best way possible) that have grown to stadium size, and their live shows reflect that.

Similarly, on Saturday night Bloc Party’s muscular, dance-tinged set, heavy on tracks from their third album Intimacy (I was one of the three people who actually liked Intimacy, so that was great for me) segued into Radiohead’s headliner slot. It was Radiohead, so of course it was amazing, but the lead up of three mainstream indie/rock acts didn’t quite lay the ground for their daring, slightly experimental live experience – almost more of an art installation than a traditional rowdy singalong festival headliner. This isn’t to say anything against rowdy singalongs, though…

This is an irony-free zone

I made friends with another volunteer who wanted to see Kings of Leon play the headline slot on Sunday. Not being greatly invested in the band, I tagged along, and was treated to an INCREDIBLE set. In between songs the lead singer would address the crowd, telling us that they wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for us. Usually, such sentiments would come across as calculated, or just a little embarrassing. But standing in the middle of a huge crowd, singing along to their songs, it was impossible to take that kind of sincerity at anything but face value. Normal rules don’t apply at a festival. Which leads nicely into my final bit of advice…

Go with the flow

Head along to see a band you haven’t heard before – they might be really good. Or they might be a complete mess, but at least you’ll have something to talk about afterwards. Talk to people – you’ll have an interesting conversation, even if it does vary between “lovely-interesting” and “terrifying-interesting”. And never conclude that you’re done for the night. Because while walking across the deserted main arena after the headliners have finished, you might just come across a tent containing Future Of The Left, playing what must be the very last gig of the festival, and end your weekend on the best note possible. Roll on, next year’s festival season!

Here are the bands I saw:

Friday

(During shift)

Fightstar

Eagles of Death Metal

Enter Shikari

The Courteeners

(Off shift)

White Lies (partial set)

The Prodigy (partial set)

Arctic Monkeys

Saturday

Noah And The Whale

Lethal Bizzle

The View

(During shift)

Vampire Weekend

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Bloc Party

Radiohead

Sunday

(During shift)

Sonic Boom Six

Madina Lake

Alexisonfire

New Found Glory

Funeral For A Friend

Deftones

(Off shift)

Kaiser Chiefs

Kings Of Leon

Future Of The Left

As the third season of acclaimed US TV drama Mad Men gets underway in the States, I’ve decided to go back over the first season on DVD, to see if what is now one of my favourite shows ever looks different on a second viewing. This piece will combine impressions of the first episode, “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”, with consideration of how the show has grown from its origins. (Contains spoilers for the first episode, and general discussion of subsequent ones.)

On its debut, Mad Men seemed extremely committed to proving the old maxim that “the past is a different country; they do things differently there.” The world of 1960s America, as seen from the New York advertising industry, seems impossibly remote, and is made to look and feel so. One of the most well-known aspects of the show is its poised elegance, not only in set and costume design, but also in the composition and editing of its shots (particularly the office sequences, which owe a lot to The Apartment). There is a deliberate sense of distancing from the characters and the period they live in, at first holding up the 60s as a polished façade, then delving beneath the surface.

The first we see of Don Draper, Madison Avenue adman and the closest thing we’ll have in the series to a hero, is the back of his head as he leans back in his chair – a deliberate mirror of the last shot of the opening credits sequence. There’s a deliberate opacity to this introduction: we know no more about him than the black waiter he chats with about preferred brands of cigarettes, or the other patrons at the bar (all also smoking) who he studies in slow motion. His job is getting into people’s heads and working out what they want, but we already get the sense that he himself is a closed book.

The flipside of this polish is a fascination with the clothes, the lifestyle (drinking in the office!), and the sexual adventures of the privileged few in this era of unprecedented prosperity. But the series is just as interested in showing how the not-so-privileged fare. We follow Peggy Olsen (Elizabeth Moss) on her first day as a secretary, and witness her dealing with the rampant sexism of the young creatives, and the sly put-downs of Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks), the immaculately poised queen of the typing pool.

It’s a tough ride for Peggy. A recurring motif is her seeing another secretary crying in the ladies’ toilets; by the end of the day she is no longer visibly upset at this. Indeed, there are hints of the inner steeliness she will have to develop to make it in this world. (Not to spoil anything, but Peggy’s journey is one of the most fascinating parts of the show.) From an appointment with a doctor (smoking, of course) to provide her with the contraceptive pill, to a highly charged encounter with newly-married creative Pete Campbell, she seems to be breaking free of the gender roles that are presented as omnipresent.

And on that note … oh, Pete Campbell. I don’t think I’ve ever loved and loathed a fictional character so much at the same time. Any actor can get a decent amount of acclaim by playing a psychopathic bad guy, dripping charisma and chewing scenery. To me, it takes real bravery to abandon all pretences of vanity and play your character (as Vincent Kartheiser does brilliantly) as a complete douchebag.

The excellently slimy Campbell is a man who tries to walk the walk, but constantly fails. From the frequent mentions of his moneyed origins, to the slightly-too-tight bright blue suits he wears, subtle details give him away as (quite literally) a boy in men’s clothing. His efforts to outflank Draper at a crucial presentation to the top brass of Lucky Strike cigarettes are weaselly, but almost understandable, when earlier in the episode we see alpha-male Don brush off his pathetically eager attempts at friendship.

Here we have the essential dynamics of the season, and maybe even the series; the man who is supposed to have it all, yet feels empty; the woman who wants more than to be a pretty face at a typewriter; and the boy-turned-man who finds the traditional masculine roles much tougher than they appear.

And yet, and yet … there is a lot about Mad Men’s first episode that feels rough and unformed, especially in contrast to what will come later. Don, Peggy and Pete are pretty much perfectly formed right out of the gate, but it’s surprising on a second watch how much of the supporting cast is barely sketched in. The creatives and account managers – Harry Crane, Ken Cosgrove, and Paul Kinsey – are an indistinguishable bunch of rowdy schoolboys, and Joan at this point is just a stylish/bitchy female, with little hint of the depths her character will acquire. The same goes for Don’s boss Roger Sterling (Jon Slattery), and even Don’s wife Betty (January Jones) who only appears at the end of the episode.

If supporting characters are only sketched in during the pilot, the setting is laid on very thickly indeed. There are numerous instances of unsubtle period detail: Joan, showing Peggy her desk, which features a typewriter and speakerphone, remarks “Try not to be intimidated by all this new technology”. Don, while confronting Pete over stolen material in the pitch meeting, wisecracks, “It’s not like there’s some magic machine that makes identical copies of things.” Couple this with the numerous shots of people smoking in wildly inappropriate numbers and situations, and Mad Men starts off almost desperate to assure its viewers of the gulf between the past and today.

However, this clumsiness quickly fades as the series progresses, and the characters and setting become deeper. An apt comparison to this progression would be The Wire. For all its groundbreaking qualities, the first episode features a lot of cop-show clichés; the untouchable crime lord, the maverick cop looking to bring him down, the ball-busting superior, etc. But from these stock elements and exposition, it builds a cohesive world that will sustain all the inventive directions that David Simon et al will take it over five seasons.

Mad Men came to screens with buzz around its creator Matthew Weiner, a former writer on The Sopranos, and the setting and subject matter. But buzz will only get you so far. Mad Men’s first episode is an extremely assured and confident debut that may not have every detail of the series intact, but embarks on a journey that will use the medium of serial television to its full potential. Two series later, I’m more than happy to be along for the ride.

Strangers On A Train (1951)

Dir. Alfred Hitchcock (USA)

101 minutes

Screened: Friday 26th September 2008

I tend to divide Hitchcock’s work in a strangely arbitrary fashion; between his black-and-white and colour films. Although he used a lot of innovative camera tricks throughout his career, I can’t help but think of the Technicolour panoramas of North By Northwest or the psychedelic craziness of Vertigo, and see his black-and-white films as restrained by comparison. In Strangers on a Train, rescreened as part of a Warner Bros. retrospective at this year’s CFF, this restraint works, as a nightmare unfolds from a seemingly innocuous event.

Strangers was adapted from a Patricia Highsmith novel, and her and Hitchcock have many preoccupations in common. Highsmith’s novels and short stories read as if they’re filmed in tight close-ups, dragging you into the protagonists’ distrubed minds and desperate actions, which are terrifying precisely because of their seeming banality. The film begins on a lighthearted note, as starstruck Bruno encounters famous tennis player Guy on a commuter train. Guy tries to fend off Bruno’s attempts at conversation, but by the end of the journey, a plan for the two men to “swap murders” has been set in motion, without Guy knowing it.

Late ’40s/early ’50s America is a good-looking, peaceable place in Strangers, but with a secret rottenness to it. Both the pivotal event of the film – the murder of Guy’s estranged wife, Miriam - and its climax are set at a fairground, and Hitchcock wrings equal amounts of irony and suspense from the location. The former scene is a masterpiece in slowly building tension, as Bruno tails Miriam through the rides and stalls, and eventually strangles her. Heightening the eerie atmosphere, the murder is seen reflected in the victim’s glasses, soundtracked by the haunting lilt of fairground music.

The downside to this is that when we spend more time with Guy, the film grows curiously inert. As Guy, Farley Granger has an endearing woodenness which actually works for the purposes of the film, like Laurence Harvey in The Manchurian Candidate. Strangers never recovers the disturbing atmosphere of the fairground scene, but offers up an entertaining set-piece in which Guy must race Bruno to the site of the murder in order to prevent him planting evidence – but not before winning a tennis match. The climax, too, is well-staged and terrifically paced. Unfortunately, the bizarre shift in tone afterwards, with Guy going from murder suspect to free man in five seconds flat, and on the flimsiest of evidence, rings false. Still, the fact that we want to spend more time with the cold-blooded sociopath is credit to Hitchcock’s skill, and perhaps proves his point about the murderous nature of seemingly ordinary people.

Time Crimes (Los Chronocrimines) (2007)

Dir. Nacho Vigalondo (Spain)

88 mins

Screened: Thursday 25th September 2008

Anyone who knows anything about writing will be familiar with Chekhov’s quote about the gun on the wall in the first act that must be fired by the third. In this time-bending Spanish thriller, Chekhov’s gun signifies almost anything onscreen, as seemingly innocent objects and events become pieces in the grand puzzle that is the film’s plot.

Hector, relaxing in the garden of his new house, catches sight of a naked woman through his binoculars. He goes into the woods to investigate, and is attacked by a man whose face is swathed in pink bandages. Fleeing from the stranger, he takes refuge in a nearby research institute, and seeks the help of a young man, whose motivations remain unclear. The man convinces Hector to hide in a mysterious chamber, which sends him back in time to before his nightmare began. But in fact, it is only just beginning.

From here on, the film stops being a straight chase thriller and becomes entertainingly loopy (in both a temporal and mental sense). Post-time travel, “Hector 2″ is forced to retrace his steps and undertake actions that will affect ”Hector 1″’s behaviour, causing him to get in the machine and travel to the past, thus creating Hector 2. Cause and effect become their own opposites, or the same thing. Or something.

While I saw from a mile off the obvious twist [SPOILER ALERT] – that Hector would become the bandaged man - this development does interesting things with the sense of tension created in the film’s first section. We see our protagonist become the terrifyingly blank assailant, and some of the efficient jump scares are repeated, but this time played for laughs as we know who is inside the bandages.

Although the timeline loops back on itself several times over, the narrative remains linear, charging along on sheer energy as Hector tries desperately to repair the mistakes made by his past selves. It’s also worth mentioning the amount of damage he takes, as the progressively spreading cuts and bruises he sports help to distinguish the versions of him running around on the same stretch of hillside.

This kinetic quality makes the film terrific fun to watch, as you’re figuring out what Hector will do/has done in the future/his past. But it also leads to a certain shallowness, as it never stops to allow serious examination of the moral consequences of his manipulation of events. The ending sees him relaxing at home with his wife, seemingly never considering the misdeeds he has committed to save them both.Time Crimes flies when it’s having fun, but unlike Hector, once it’s finished you will have little motivation to go back to the start.

Screened: Monday 22nd September 2008

In addition to the feature films I saw at the CFF, I caught one of the three programmes of short films from the UK. They were a real mixed bag, so instead of reviewing the programme as a whole I’ve written a short piece on each film.

Speechless

Dir. James Cooper. UK. 8 mins.

First up, an engaging little short that took a neat concept and spun it out for maximum laughs. Devoid of spoken dialogue, the film shows a conversation in text message form between two gangsta-rap-obsessed teenagers. Very funny, nicely shot to show the texts against the locations, with a decent payoff.

Time Out

Dir. Angus Gafraidh. UK. 8 mins.

A man finds a copy of tomorrow’s newspaper, and uses it to his advantage. The film unfortunately kept skipping at odd moments, which at first I thought was just terrible editing. Pretty silly, but I have a soft spot for the goofy comedy feel of it, because it’s probably the kind of short film I’d make.

Terrafarmer

Dir. Will Adams. UK. 2 mins.

The adventures of an astronaut and his bumbling robot. Too short to make much of an impression, it had the feel of a channel ident.

Blunder

Dir. Simon J. Riley. UK. 8 mins.

Yet another addition to the overcrowded sub-genre of “sales rep goes to the rescue of an apparent kidnap victim, only to discover that she’s a happily married S&M enthusiast” slapstick comedies, with little to differentiate it from classics of the form.

The Legend of Ol’ Goldie

Dir. Matthew Snyman. UK. 8 mins.

A lonely young boy keeps a pet goldfish, but has to keep feeding it… A great combination of real footage and CGI, with a suitably absurd sense of of humour driving the twisted fairytale to its logical conclusion.

And The Man Is Born

Dir. Pavel Prokopic, Marie Morgan. UK. 9 mins.

A tale of unwanted pregnancy and 80s pop stars, with a bizarre mood enhanced by some well-chosen shots, and a nice performance from the lead actress. If you’ve ever wondered what Eraserhead might look like from a female perspective, this film will show you.

Sun In The Night

Dir. Anne Wilkins. UK. 4 mins.

Deep within woods that are more suggested than drawn, a story of grief and imagination is played out. Poignant and a little eerie, the animation style is a big plus.

21 Seconds

Dir. Ru McArdle. UK. 9 mins.

A drama about a security guard and a suicidal actress, set over one night in a car park. The decision to shoot in speeded-up long takes portrays the characters as immobile statues against a stream of rushing headlights, and lends the film the insomniac’s feel of a long night, not passing nearly fast enough. A great visual style, but almost ruined by the “message” at the end of the film: “Every life lost to suicide is a tragedy.” Yeah! Take that, suicide!

Charon

Dir. Chiara Ambrosio. UK. 13 mins.

A marvellous stop-motion animation depicting Charon, the figure in Greek mythology who ferries the dead over the river Styx. Charon is a hunched, wizened figure wrapped in tattered robes, moving in achingly slow jerks that seem eerily lifelike. The sound design brings every wheezing breath to life, as he moves on in a uniformly dark landscape. The standout short of the programme.

Sundays

Dir. Sarah Bick. UK. 6 mins.

This didn’t make as much of an impression on me as the others. The memorable parts were more about the art and design featured onscreen (a girl dressing up as a cupcake, etc.) than the filmmaking.

The best of the bunch? Charon, with Speechless coming in second.

Katyn (2007)

Dir. Andrzej Wajda (Poland)

118 minutes

Screened: Monday 22nd September 2008

The opening scene of Katyn takes place on a bridge where two crowds of fleeing civilians meet. One group is running from the invading Germans, the other from the Red Army. It’s a bleak opening to a bleak film, and one that reduces the tragedy of Poland’s experience in the Second World War to a human scale, in order to tell the story of the massacre of thousands of Polish officers by Soviet forces in 1940.

The isolation of individual stories among the multitudes is skilfully done, as the camera moves past the crowds to seek out a few characters. And yet, in the shocking final scenes, we revert to an impersonal, far-off view, as the main characters become just a few faces among many. For most of its running time, Wajda focuses on the struggle of several families, as the men are held captive by the Soviets, and the women are left to hold their lives together. It is a film with a strong focus on the domestic, but we only ever see the full family unit in scenes of heartbreak and farewell.

The characters, who come from various segments of society, are connected to each other in ways that are sometimes implausible; I can’t have been the only audience member to find it unlikely that everyone in Krakow knows each other. Another distraction was the English subtitling, which frequently ended up mangling the dialogue (something that I assume will be cleared up if/when the film gets a wider British release).

Katyn has the look of a standard WWII prestige film, all immaculate interiors and well-fitting costumes. However, the overly comfortable mood of many British and American war films is absent here. There is no assurance of eventual triumph – the massacre is compunded by the Soviets’ repression of the truth after the war ends. The later sections of the film bring home the poisonous atmosphere of doublethink pervading the post-war Eastern Bloc, as Katyn becomes a propaganda tool for the Soviets, and writing the wrong date on a headstone can become an offence.

The denial of the right to remember compounds the tragedy, a message emphasised in the final shot, as a hand clutching a rosary is covered by earth, leaving no trace. The film’s natural style brings a deep horror to the scenes of the massacre, and the struggles of those left behind serve as a grim reminder of more recent attempts to pile atrocity upon atrocity by by wiping out the memory of murder.

The Lark (2007)

Dir. Steve Tanner, Paul Farmer (UK)

70 mins

Screened: Saturday 20th September 2008

The debut feature from Cornish film-making collective War-rag is an arresting achievement, if not for its accomplishments then for the way it transcends its limitations. Shot in HD digital video for less than £10,000, the film used a mix of amateurs and professionals, some of whom donated their skills and experience for free. It’s an authentic slice of independent film that makes the most of its tiny budget with an amazing location and impressive lead performance.

The film begins with Niamh (Mary Woodvine) entering the derelict complex of buildings where she lives with her two young children, clad in a boiler suit and respirator. Her over-riding concern is to protect her children from the poinonous world outside. The early scenes of this family group have a touching intimacy, an initially set the scene for a post-apocalyptic drama. But the plot thickens as it soon becomes apparent that not everything Niamh sees is actually there.

For long stretches, The Lark is essentially a one-hander, and Mary Woodvine carries the film with a skilful combination of exterior toughness and a hidden vulnerablity, as she explores her surroundings. Each location, strewn with rubble, broken glass and enigmatic grafitti on the walls, adds to the dark and claustrophobic atmosphere, and Niamh’s occasional hallucinations of crowds of people filling the place only serve to emphasise the desolation that surrounds her.

It’s only with the arrival of two visitors from the outside world that the film loses its sure footing. During the scenes where Niamh interacts with Jackson (Mark Jackson) and Siobhan (Helen Rule), the dialogue too often turns elliptical for its own sake, and Jackson falls into the improv-class pitfall of SHOUTING HIS LINES TO BE DRAMATIC. However, after a brief wobble the film regains the emotional intensity of Woodvine’s performance, as fantasy and reality are reconciled.

In the interests of full disclosure, I’m a huge fan of twisty, identity-based thrilers that feature unrealiable narrator/protagonists. If a film bears the slightest resemblance to Fight Club, Memento or The Machinist, it’s odds on I’ll enjoy most of it. Also, in the interests of full disclosure, I got to meet the director and hang around with him before and after the screening. We had a pretty interesting conversation about (among other things) the logistics of filmmaking, festivals and the appeals and pitfalls of making a genre film.

Modern independent film is unafraid to embrace and borrow from mainstream genres. But the best art is acheived when genre is used as a springboard for original ideas. In the director’s words, The Lark started as an attempt to make a straight horror film. Where it ended up is unclear, but it is definitely an original creation.

While working as a volunteer for the Cambridge Film Festival, I’m trying to see as many films as possible. Everything I see will be reviewed on this blog, along with a short write-up of the outdoor screenings the Festival is running this year.

Gomorrah

Dir. Matteo Garrone (Italy)

135 mins

Screened: Thursday 18th September 2008

 Portrayals of organised crime onscreen have often glamourised gangsters, even as they seek to deliver a moral message. The Sopranos, among others, has recently shown the everyday “work” of the Mafia in a banal and grubby light. But at its heart, the mobsters are the main characters, and we still root for them. There is no such symppathy in Matteo Garrone’s crime drama, adapted from Roberto Saviano’s bestsellling expose of the Camorrah, the main organised crime family of Naples. Taking the form of a series of interconnected stories, it explores the effect of crime on already desperate people.

A young boy living on a warren-like housing estate aspires to join the local gang. A pair of Scarface-obsessed teenagers plan to steal a cache of weapons. A tailor is squeezed by his boss’s orders to work harder for less money. A senior mob figure oversees the dumping of toxic waste in a disused quarry. The last story ingeniously mirrors the way the Camorrah’s activities and the ensuing moral corruption poisons everything it touches.

The film’s deliberately unglamourous and naturalistic style emphasises the squalid nature of the criminal activities portrayed, with long hand-held takes leading us around the locations, which range from cramped apartments to a desolate stretch of beach. Apart from a short scene in Venice, there is hardly anything recognisably “Italian”. This is a trans-European world of open borders and globalised crime, where human life, along with everything else, is judged on a financial basis. The characters caught in the web of the Camorrah are commodities, as much as the dresses turned out in sweatshops to be labelled haute couture, or the peaches gifted by a civilian to a mob boss, who then tips them out of his car to rot by the side of the road.

Ultimately, the bleak conclusions to the individual stories was never in doubt. But I would have liked to travel further up the food chain, and see how government and the police deal with the gangs. (Collusion? Hostility? Resigned tolerance?) Regardless, Gomorrah is a dark but essential drama, part City of God, part The Wire, and all about the way our continent, and our world, lives now.

My bad habit of reading entertainment blogs when I should be working has finally got the better of me. A post on the Guardian’s film blog about Oliver Stone’s forthcoming biopic of George W. Bush, which will star Josh Brolin as the prez, has now taken up residence in my brain and will not leave.

My first thought: dear God, what are we in for? Stone’s sledgehammer-subtle approach to film-making turns everyone into either a hero or a villain. And somehow I don’t think Dubya will come out as the latter. Stone

says his biopic will be “a fair, true portrait of the man” and will “contain surprises for Bush supporters and his detractors”.

This is absolutely the wrong way to go about it. If you’ve read anything about Bush’s early life, or his current administration, the only way to do it is complete gonzo black comedy. Go for the sickest laughs possible, because what other running joke has a body count in the hundreds of thousands? Stone doesn’t do laughs. All his films are excessively noble and po-faced, with the highest regard held for the office of the President. (See JFK, his paean to the titular president.) If I was doing it, it’d be different. For starters, it would have a tiny budget because I’m not Oliver Stone.

And so to the question from the original blog post that’s been occupying my thoughts — how to cast the Bush administration? Here are my ideas for the senior players in a story so bizarre it had to be true.

George W. Bush – John C. Reilly. Sure, Will Ferrell may bring the goofy expressions, but Reilly has both the goofiness and the narrow-eyed, grown-up frat boy malevolence that  pops to the surface when Dubya is (very) occasionally challenged on something. Chris Cooper also did a very good impression in John Sayles’ Silver City, but he may well come up further down the list.

Dick Cheney – Jon Voigt. Or any other old-ish actor with a line in creepy authority figures. To be honest, Cheney has a kind of sinister non-presence, which could best be replicated with an unknown actor. Whoever plays him though will have to master the growled delivery of “Go fuck yourself” to get the true character across.

Donald Rumsfeld – Chris Cooper or John Doman. Cooper’s experience at playing sinister, violent right-wingers will be obvious to anyone who’s seen American Beauty. Nevertheless, Doman (who plays ruthless senior cop Rawls in The Wire) is a pretty good prospect. Don’t tell me you don’t want to hear Rumsfeld referring to “this beshitted department” or calling a subordinate “a gaping asshole”.

Condoleeza Rice – Marianne Jean-Baptiste. Unfortunately, there’s not as great a range of black female actors as there are old white male actors to choose from, but the top-tier Hollywood set, the Halle Berrys and Thandie Newtons, don’t display the kind of toughness that Rice exudes. My choice would be for the British Jean-Baptiste, most famous for her performance in Mike Leigh’s Secrets and Lies, but doing an American accent in police drama Without A Trace.

Paul Wolfowitz – Steve Buscemi. Picture him sucking on that comb. See it? Suddenly don’t want to eat for a while? No, me neither.

Colin Powell – While Denzel Washington has been stacking up a series of stellar performances, there’s every chance he could act everyone else off the screen, which was in fact the opposite of what Powell did. Forced to go to the U.N. and drum up support for a war he didn’t believe in using fake evidence, he seemed diffident, defeated, compromised – the kind of role Don Cheadle would do great things with.

Tony Blair – Michael Sheen has become the go-to Blair impersonator following stunning turns in The Deal and The Queen. But that only makes him the predictable choice, prompting me to go left-field. David Tennant can do bug-eyed staring, weak, insincere grins, gulping faux-emotional delivery – in short he’s all of Blair’s tics and hang-ups. Add in puppy-dog admiration for Dubya and you’re there. And in the event of a British government spin-off, David Morrissey can reprise his role in The Deal as Gordon Brown. Then, the stage is set for Tennant and Morrissey to sing together in a retread of so-insane-it-was-brilliant musical drama Blackpool.

Any role you can suggest? Saddam Hussein played by the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld? Alberto Gonzales by that guy from Memento? And the all-important consideration – the violence is all there, but how are we going to get some sex into this thing?