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Films Worth Watching by
iofilm
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| For Sweet Sixteen,
director Ken Loach hired his lead actor Martin Compston (left)
from a local Scottish soccer team |
Sweet Sixteen
By The Wolf
After a trip to La-La Land for Bread And Roses, the team of director
Ken Loach and writer Paul Laverty is back on home ground. The last
time they were in Glasgow was for My Name Is Joe, where Peter Mullan
played a recovering alcoholic in a performance that won him Best Actor
at Cannes. This time last year, it was Laverty’s turn. He took
the Best Screenplay award.
With his socially conscious working class dramas, Ken Loach continues
to follow in the Italian Neo Realist tradition (Bicycle Thieves, Il
Posto), which is beginning to look dated. Now that the legendary Polish
director Krzysztof Kieslowski (Dekalog, The Colours Trilogy) is dead,
there are few exponents of the genre left, outside of Iran and China.
He goes further in Sweet Sixteen and uses a predominately amateur
cast. His lead actor is 17-year-old Martin Compston is from a small
Scottish soccer club, Morton F.C., and Michelle Coulter - Martin’s
mother in the film - has worked in drug rehab for the past ten years.
Needless to say, they are utterly convincing. In fact, Compston’s
performance dominates.
He plays Liam, a 15-year-old scammer from a housing estate in Greenock,
near Glasgow, who lives with his elder sister Chantelle (Annmarie
Fulton) and her wee boy. Their mum is in jail and Liam’s dream
is to find enough money to buy a home for her when she comes out.
The only way he can do this is by dealing drugs, which brings him
into conflict with the real hard men who
control distribution in the Port Glasgow district.
Laverty’s script is so bare of sentiment, it hurts. Liam’s
story leaves a scar. For those unused to the Glaswegian dialect, it
is not easy to follow, hence there are subtitles. Liam’s relationship
with his grandfather is as bad as that with his mother’s lover.
Humour is fraught. Even Liam’s best friend (William Ruane) has
a screw loose. Chantelle is a rock, but her sympathy does not stretch
to criminality. Liam’s heart is in the right place, but his
methods are dubious.
Together
By Robert Alstead
Chinese director Chen Kaige, who made Palme D’Or winner Farewell
My
Concubine, returns to music for inspiration in his latest movie,
Together (Han ni zai yiki). Where "Concubine" covered
opera this is a sweet, coming-of-age story about a teenage violinist
prodigy who travels from his peasant village home with his doting
father to develop his musical career in Beijing.
The green lad and devoted dad must overcome various travails as
they strive to make it in the rarefied world of the concert musician
without connections and little money. Along the way, Kaige warms
to his themes about choosing between ambition and love and the nature
of good art.
Characterisation is somewhat flat in this simple story, but the
cast make up with vivacious performances, in particular a strong
and often comical turn by Liu Peiqi as the opportunistic father
and Chen Hong as the material girl with a soft centre who the boy
befriends. Tang Yun as the wide-eyed boy gives a muted performance
until he picks up the violin and lets rip. This is also a beautifully
shot movie, perhaps too beautifully (the streets of China seem surprisingly
clean), a fact that underlies the sentimental nature of the film.
Beijing Bicycle
Now would seem an appropriate time to get out Beijing Bicycle (Shiqi
sui de dan che), on either DVD or video, this being Bike Month in
Vancouver. Few films feature as many bicycles. A taciturn, country
bumpkin finds a job as a cycle courier in Beijing. The boy clearly
relishes the work as he cycles through the packs of cyclists that
crowd city roads, making deliveries to plush hotels and offices.
However, the day before he has paid off the courier company for
his prized silver mountain bike, it is stolen. His livelihood gone,
he decides he must retrieve it, something that proves harder than
you can imagine. Slow-moving and stylishly shot, with lingering
visuals of bicycles in slomos, the strength of this fable-like film
is its ability to surprise you. Cyclists, you’ll never forget
your u-lock again. (RA)
How will The Matrix end?
Much is made of the religious metaphors in sci-fi thriller The Matrix.
In Matrix Reloaded, the second instalment of the trilogy, the "saviour"
Neo (Keanu Reeves) and companion Morpheus even wear what look like
Catholic priest’s cassocks.
In the second installment Neo must travel to "the source",
apparently a mainframe computer, and break the program that enslaves
humankind in the virtual world of The Matrix. When he is not doing
acrobatic high kicks or motoring about the sky like superman Neo
and friends do a lot of passing through portals and expounding on
the meaning of fate, will, life, and The Matrix. Writer-directors
The Wachowski brothers aren’t letting on what’s coming
in the last part of the trilogy, The Matrix Revolutions, due out
in November, but we can make some educated guesses about the outcome
for the messanic Neo. Crucifixion, anyone? (RA)
Movie reviews provided by iofilm.com.
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