Crooklyn

This semi-autobiographical directed by Spike Lee, and co-written by Lee and his siblings, Cinque and Joie Susannah.  The film is set over the spring and summer of 1973 in a tough but close-knit neighbourhood in Brooklyn, New York, and focuses on nine year old Troy Carmichael (Harris) growing up with four rowdy brothers and her troubled by loving parents:  Strict school teacher Carolyn (Woodward), who holds the family together, and ambitious but naive musician Woody (Lindo), who had some success with pop music covers in the past but now wants to concentrate exclusively on his own music.

The film is colourful, lively and is unusually light for a Spike Lee film, however there is still plenty of grit.  The neighbourhood is populated with eccentric characters, children play on the stoops and the street, everyone knows what is going on with everyone else and more often than not look out for each other, but it is tough, and there is always a threat of violence, although having said that, it's more likely to be a light punch rather than a gunshot.  The film is visually inventive.  Troy goes to stay with relatives in the South, which she finds very disturbing and disorientating, and these scenes are filmed in widescreen without anamorphically adjusting the image, which gives it a strange elongated look.  The performances are great, Alfre Woodward, Delroy Lindo and Zelda Harris are all superb, and the Carmichael family do feel like a real family, and your left wondering what happens to them after the film.  Spike Lee has a part as the neighbourhood glue sniffer Snuffy.  It's a loose film, without a strong plot, and feels quite baggy and episodic.  It's warm, funny, gritty and real, with a fantastic soundtrack of early '70s soul music.

Performance

This film was produced in 1968 but not released until 1970, and was directed by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg.  In London, Chas Devlin (James Fox) is a brutal gangland enforcer, who genuinely enjoys his work.  When he disobeys direct orders from his boss and kills a rival for personal, rather than business reasons, Devlin becomes targeted by his own gang.  He decides to hide out in the vast mansion of reclusive rock star, Turner (Mick Jagger), who lives with Pherber (Anita Pallenberg) and Lucy (Michele Breton).  In Turner's surreal, erotic, decadent world of drugs, sex and mysticism, Devlin finds the boundaries of reality and fantasy collapsing.

This is a film that, if you see it once, you will never forget it.  It's very much a film of two halves.  The first half is, in terms of plot, a great if conventional gangster film (in terms of style and technique it is a million miles away from an ordinary gangster film), and in the second it becomes a surreal fantasy of sex, drugs and identity.  It utilises a fragmented, stream of conscience style, using almost every cinematic trick in the book.  James Fox is perfect as Chas Devlin, someone who is, in British criminal slang, a "performer" (a gangster with a special talent for violence and intimidation), he frequently tells people "I know who I am", he lives in a pristine apartment, and is always immaculately groomed and dressed in sharp suits, and is always in control.  Mick Jagger's Turner is another type of performer, a rock star who has retired because, as he says "I lost my demon".  Devlin, a man who needs to be in control, suddenly finds himself, in Turner's house, in a situation where he has no control, where all the old rules just don't apply.  Very much a product of it's time, and full of references to Jorge Luis Borges and William Burroughs, this is still genuinely shocking and disturbing.

          

Mother!

A young woman (Jennifer Lawrence), referred to as "Mother" in the credits, although nine of the characters are named in the film, is married to a successful poet (Javier Bardem), who is suffering from writer's block.  They live together in a rambling country house which she is renovating after a severe fire.  One night a strange couple (Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer) arrive and insinuate themselves into the lives of the homeowners.  It then gets progressively darker and weirder as more and more people invade the couple's home.

This film from writer/director Darren Aronofsky is frankly bizarre.  It's full of striking, memorable images and sequences, and Jennifer Lawrence gives a fantastic, tortured performance.  Some of it though is frankly tedious, and almost the whole thing makes very little sense.  It's probably best to see the film as an allegory, not to be taken literally, and there is likely to be a lot of discussion about what it actually means.  My take on it is that Jennifer Lawrence just wants to be left in piece with her family, but it's impossible to escape from the demands and intrusion of the world outside.  It's worth watching for it's sheer ambition.  You'll likely not see much like this, certainly not from a mainstream Hollywood release.  Personally I didn't enjoy the film, but I'm glad that I saw it, and I*'m still trying to decode what the hell it's all about.

Shoot the Pianist

Shoot the Pianist is a French film from 1960, directed by the great Francois Truffaut.

It stars singer Charles Aznavour as a once famous pianist, reduced to playing piano in a seedy bar, trying to escape his shady past. However one night his brother comes in, pursued by a pair of gangsters, and the pianist finds himself involved once again in the world he seeks to escape from. 

Following Truffaut's celebrated debut film The 400 Blows (1959). the director wanted to make a film which paid tribute to his love of American crime films, and pulp fiction, as opposed to the "very French" (in Truffaut's opinion) 400 Blows.  He found his subject with the novel Down There by David Goodis.  The storyline of a man trying to escape his past being drawn into a dangerous criminal world is familiar enough, but Truffaut's French New Wave style elevates it to another level entirely.  Utilising a range of techniques (extended voice overs, out of sequence shots, jump cuts, and a grainy kinetic filming style) and paying tribute to the world of thrillers and film noir, this is a film which crackles with life and energy, and is often very funny.  However,l there are moments and elements in the film that are incredibly dark, and in amongst all the fun and vibrancy, there is a string tragic element.  As the shy, haunted, heavy eyed piano player, Charles Aznavour is perfect.

  

Osaka Elegy

Osaka Elegy, a 1936 Japanese film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi. 

It tells the story of telephone operator Ayako Murai (played by Isuzu Yamada), whose father is in serious trouble:  he is unemployed and facing arrest for embezzlement.  In order to help her father avoid jail, as well as pay for her younger sister and older brother's education, Ayako agrees to become the girlfriend of her unhappily married employer, Sumiko Asai (Yoko Umemura).  A decision which will have devastating consequences.

This is a dark and powerful drama.  Elegantly shot, composed mostly of long takes with the action often taking place at some distance from the camera.  The film deals with the inequalities and double standards facing women in Japan, and the conflicts between modernity and tradition, and men and women:  Ayako is very much a modern woman while her family are very traditional and judgemental; the Asai family are completely dysfunctional, there is no love between Mr. Asai and his wife, he doesn't even try to hide the fact that he married her for her money, and all their interactions are argumentative and humiliating.

   

Mistress America

This is a comedy-drama film from 2015, directed by Noah Baumbach and co-written by Baumbach and the film's star Greta Gerwig.  Set in present day New York City, eighteen year old student and aspiring author Tracy (played by Lola Kirke) is not enjoying her first semester at college, struggling both academically and socially, she is rejected by the university's literary society.  One night she heads out to meet Brooke (Gerwig) her thirty year old soon to be step-sister.  Tracy is fascinated by the free-spirited Brooke, and soon finds herself caught up in Brooke's impulsive, exciting lifestyle and crazy schemes.  

This is a very good film, but I saw it as more  light-hearted dramatic film than an out and out comedy.  It's not really a laugh out loud hilarious film.  It provides a fair few chuckles though and it's consistently entertaining.  Some may find the milieu of Manhattan hipsters not to their taste, but their are a few affecting moments about ageing and finding a place in the world, and their are some very funny jabs at writers and critics.  Greta Gerwig shines as Brooke, a character who is often not particularly likeable (she's feckless and rude), but Gerwig makes you care about her, giving her an air of brittle vulnerability and in the end making her seem almost heroic. Lola Kirke  is good as the quiet unhappy Tracy.