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susyhawkes
Reviews
The British Guide to Showing Off (2011)
An OK film about an unusual and genuinely interesting subject
As a film, if we're talking about direction, cinematography, story etc, 'The British Guide to Showing Off' isn't likely to win any awards, but its subject of it is interesting enough that its worth a watch. Andrew Logan takes us on a tour of the history of the Alternative Miss World show, from the heady, druggy haze of 1972's 'Party' theme all the way up to the show he is planning in the film, 2009's 'Elements' theme. The viewer gets to learn about Logan as a person and an artist, we see many of his contemporary sculptures, discover he is the only living artist in the UK with his own museum, and find out how and why he created AMW, a transformative human art show in which anything goes. And AMW is something that needs a documentary to explain it, because it seems that unless you've been there, you might not understand...
We hear about the year Divine hosted, the year David Bowie couldn't get in because it was too jam-packed (even though Angie was a judge) and about the year Grayson Perry's naked ex-girlfriend swore at people on stage covered in felt-tip tattoos. We hear tales of drunkenness and debauchery that would curl even the thickest of false eyelashes. Best of all, we see scenes from the show, people preparing, old and new, famous and non-famous, female, male and everything in-between, and whether you'd want art like that on your wall or not, it's stunning. It's a joy to see what people can do when they are challenged creatively, and to watch the living, breathing sculptures, suspended in the air by their hair or surrounded by dancing minions, is to witness both the human imagination and the sense of fun at their highest levels.
I'm delighted to say this film inspired me to book tickets for the 2014 AMW show. I can't wait!
Poltergay (2006)
I can't really overstate how much I love this film
This is a gay/straight film starring straight and gay people. To explain, the subject is sexuality, but presented in a way that straight men can watch it and feel comfortable and understood. For example, the film acknowledges how uncomfortable it is to be a straight/questioning man in a gay bar, it makes jokes about being gay as well as being straight and talks about sexuality so casually, with jokes and a lot of silliness (its called 'Poltergay' for heaven's sake) that it makes everyone feel comfortable without hitting anyone over the head with heavy-handed politics. Political films about sexuality like 'Philadelphia' and 'Boys Don't Cry' are important, necessary, often fantastic and can change people's thinking, but life isn't just about misery and seriousness. Sometimes its about fun (hopefully a lot more than it's about misery). Frankly, if more films and books could hide their serious political arguments in frothy silliness with winged penises and Boney M's 'Rasputin' playing throughout, maybe this'd be a slightly happier world. Because what this film is saying, in the style of Stonewall ads, while dancing in flares and holding snooker balls in the air in a faux-spooky fashion, is 'some people are gay. Get over it!'
It's one of my top five gay films, and one of my top five French films. Because it's a clever, silly, gay- and straight-friendly story anyone can keep up with and it's funny. Occasionally a joke falls flat, and sometimes the acting feels a bit forced. But the psychic with the McDonald's makes everyone I watch this with laugh out loud, and you find yourself really routing for the lead man to sort out his life, and for the gay poltergeists to get what they want too. It's just the right length and it's not off-puttingly filthy (insert dirty joke here). It's just fun.
Compliance (2012)
I really, really loved this film
...and that's a weird thing to say about 'Compliance', because I've heard about all the different reactions it's got and even just reading a few of these reviews will paint quite a picture - people walking out of screenings, people desperate to disprove what they've seen with internet research, people badmouthing it in magazines etc. But it meant a lot to me.
This film is all based on true events. Events that happened over and over again, weird tricks that we all say we're too smart to fall for, and yet they happen. I found the subject fascinating and a couple of months after seeing 'Compliance' read a book about cults that frightened the life out of me. 'The Dark Side of the Moonies' by Erica Heftman is a true account of her time in a cult and a discussion of how easy it is for people to name themselves authority figures and start mistreating willing, confused followers. It's all the same principle, whether you're picked up on the street by a Scientologist or a Moonie and brainwashed into running away and working a twenty-hour day for no pay, whether you join Hitler Youth or whether you're convinced by somebody on the phone that they are a police officer and you do whatever they tell you to do, as happened in dozens of fast food restaurants and became the subject of 'Compliance'. It can be one of the reasons some people don't leave abusive relationships, and can be one of the reasons it is so difficult to get a conviction in a rape case; many rapes are, as in the film, not a result of physical force but a result of fear of authority and/or repercussions, and therefore a result of compliance, and with no marks on the victim it's easy to argue they did it willingly. All of us comply so often we forget to think about it, especially to authority figures, and that's why it's easy for evil people to take advantage.
I watched this film twice in a row, and I think that's all I'll need for the rest of my life. The cinematography was inventive and sophisticated considering the tiny set, the acting was superb, the writing was intelligent and yet so hard to believe, and that's why it was scary - it's horrible to believe that real people would be fooled like this, that we could be too, but honestly, we can. Since watching it, I've been questioning authority a lot more. Even just little things, like if someone in a shop tells me to queue somewhere, or someone wants to check my electricity meter. I ask why now, I ask for ID, and I won't get pushed about for no good reason. I think that's a very positive result for a movie to have, actually - it's made me aware of how susceptible people are to brainwashing, and therefore has made me want to guard myself against it by being aware of when it could happen. I'm a bit more confident with authority figures and less likely to comply without justification, because I'm aware of what could happen.
You probably weren't expecting to read that in a review, were you?
American Teen (2008)
Deserves to be more popular
'American Teen' was really good, better than I expected. There were some enduring images: the girl who is yearning to be loved, to the extent that she doesn't care who knows it and will jeopardize her whole future for a boy she's just met. The girl who, in a moment of wild, horny daring, takes a picture of herself topless on her phone and sends it to a boy she likes, and within hours its all over the web and the girl is in tears, socially reviled and the latest target of the school bully. And that bully, an unhappy, nasty, intelligent and hard- working over-achiever who is so far ahead of her friends and whose parents give her so much stuff but pay her so little attention, oh, she has stuck with me. I could imagine her going on to be the richest person in America, as well as the most emotionally immature. She shook me to the core because I'd never seen real, deliberate, bullying, as it took place, as a bully composed a cruel text message or wrote a homophobic graffito, and I felt so sorry for her and despised her so completely at the same time that I feel I'll never forget her.
Parts felt a little set up, as if the director had got there and said 'ok, now do something teenage', but maybe that was just the typical self-consciousness of youth - children act up when they know they're being watched, so it might have been as simple as that - some of them definitely dressed just for the camera, and even avoided doing shameful things in front of the camera. Despite that, there were a lot of places where the honesty of the teens was the most interesting thing - the nervousness of the band geek boy when going to a girl's house for a date was too much for him to cover up, and the relief of the jock guy who won the basketball game - the camera caught some real emotions. It wasn't the most exciting film of all time to be honest; none of the characters' stories were as exciting as Jason Bourne's and I didn't fall in love with anyone in it, so sometimes the pace did plod a little, but that's almost inevitable in a documentary with no set plot. I liked the range of different teens chosen, I was glad they weren't all from the same social group and loved that they weren't all sympathetic characters. I'd like to know where they all are now.
I was really glad I watched this film and I'd recommend it to anyone who's ever been a teenager. There are movies out there that tell us to be scared of teens ('thirteen', 'Requiem for a Dream', hell, even 'Mean Girls'). Then there are so many teen movies that over-emphasize that whole jock, nerd, band-geek cliché of American schools, and it was really interesting to see some people who were real, who weren't quite stereotypes, who were jocks but also poor, or tortured, or geeks but also confident and happy, or popular but also depressed. Everybody was well-rounded and had a chance to make their voice heard and let their personality be seen, warts and all, over the filmed year. Director Nanette Burstein really seemed to be fascinated by her subject. I love a documentary, and this is one of the best I've seen in the past few years.
Kuch Naa Kaho (2003)
Fun and frothy, but don't expect too much
Honestly, I love the songs - I've got this on DVD and seen it more than once and that's more for the songs than anything else. I really like Achchi Lagti Ho, and the title song is a lovely tune that makes a better use of whistling than any song since Peter, Bjorn and John's 'Young Folks'. Which is not a sentence you expect to write in any review, but it's true.
The good news is the acting is as good as can be expected with the material, the dancing is perfectly well-executed, the little boy is adorable, there's an interesting plot dimension (a philandering husband in a country where divorce is uncommon) and the leading couple have great chemistry (they are now married off-screen).
The bad news is that the whole film is completely daft, the characters make unsympathetic and unrealistic choices, the husband is a two- dimensional pantomime villain (boo hiss), the choreography's half-baked, there's a weird plot summary scene in the middle for no reason whatsoever, the Coca Cola product placements are eye-rollingly tiresome, the 'comedy' scenes are forced and embarrassing and the whole film is at least forty-five minutes too long. It's like directing by numbers in a lot of places, too: one scene you'll get an interesting shot of someone lit from underneath and think "hmm, maybe this bloke's OK" and then he'll have a scene where, seriously, the good guy's wearing all white and the bad guy's wearing all black. Even Disney doesn't do that.
I actually quite like Kuch Naa Kaho. I don't watch a lot of rom coms, but I like the songs in this and the fact that it's not Western and the story's not typical. It has too many bad points for me to ever seriously recommend it to anyone to expand their film knowledge, but I would say that it's a cheerful, inoffensive thing to watch while doing the ironing.