The BFI London film festival came to a close this week with Lynne Ramsay's mesmerising and haunting 'We Need To Talk About Kevin'; a film I caught on it's opening Friday night, scooping the top prize for best film. Jury president John Madden said of the film it 'is made with the kind of singular vision that links great directors across all the traditions of cinema', having now seen the film I couldn't agree more with the statement. It's gratifying to see Lynne Ramsay back in the director's chair, ever since watching the magnificent Ratcatcher all those years back and then a couple years later Morvern Callar, there hasn't been a year where I haven't mourned her absence, a singular talent like Ramsey should never been hid away for too long. Nine years is a long time to wait but as 'We Need To Talk About Kevin' has shown she hasn't missed a beat and I can only hope she will once again be a more permanent fixture on the film scene.
At the UK cinemas this week we saw the release of the much hyped Steven Speilberg directed and Peter Jackson produced 'The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn' which has been met with nationwide indifference from the film critics of the leading broadsheets and journals with Peter Bradshaw's lambasting review from the Guardian being my favourite read. Elsewhere, new releases I will be watching include Gerardo Naranjo's 'Miss Bala', though I found his last film 'I'm Going To Explode' disjointed, Paul Julian Smith article for Sight & Sound has certainly whetted my appetite, George Clooney's thriller 'The Ides of March' and the intense German crime thriller 'The Silence' which offers 'no easy answers', as surmised by John A. Riley in his review for Electric Sheep Magazine.
It's been a slow week for me film wise, having just come back from a two week holiday I'm finding life back in the real world a bit sluggish, however I'm continuing my enjoyable box-set binge watching 'The Killing (Forbrydelsen)'; from the heaps of praise thrown at this show I sometimes feel as if I'm the last person to watch it and trying to avoid spoilers is proving stressful. I'm halfway through the epic crime saga and no closer to guessing the murderer, which makes it all the more enjoyable, and it has me pointing the finger at nearly the whole cast. It's certainly one of the most well-executed crime dramas, whodunnits, I've ever had the pleasure to see, from the underlying immigration issues that are rife in Denmark, the slow procedural jigsaw puzzle of Nanna Brik Larsson's final hours, right down to her grieving family who find their lives turned upside down by the murder of their daughter, The Killing is riveting stuff and highly recommended.
Films I did manage to catch include the disappointing 'Norwegian Wood' which despite some stunning cinematography, a real sense of space and time, brilliant understated acting with moments of real pathos and beauty can't help but feel a bit padded out, less than the sum of it's parts and therefore underwhelming. Tran Anh Hung does a fine job of catching the emotional and sensual connection between the two protagonists, the yearning and loss of a dear friend but it's at the expense of the viewer who feel very little for the pair and their lives. Then there is the other end of the spectrum with the almighty tour de force that is 'We Need To Talk About Kevin', I shall write more on this film another time but suffice to say that alongside 'Meek's Cutoff' this is the best film to come out of America in 2011, highly recommended. Lastly this week I got my first taste of Jacques Tati's world with the sublime 'Mr Hulot's Holiday' and it's a place I care to visit as often as I can, bring on Playtime. Enjoy your week folks and here's some Tati to start the working week with a smile.
