Chris Curtis

Back!

Thanks to a billing error with Typepad, I've been unable to write anything for a couple of weeks. Now it's fixed, it's back to normal and I'm glad to say there's a lot to reflect on from a trip to the US where I managed to catch 5 movies, 3 of them at Arclight in Los Angeles, which is considered to be one of the best cinemas in the country...and lives up to that reputation with screen sizes and sound to die for.

Anyway, on to the real meat. First up was 'We Own the Night', a police drama with Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Wahlberg and Eva Mendes. It's a slighty corny plot with two brothers either side of the law: one as a policeman and the other as a night club manager, drawn into a world of drugs and Russian mafia. It was fun, though the plot holes were big enough to drive a police car through. Nothing special though.

Ah, but the next film was. 'The Darjeeling Limited' is Wes Anderson's latest and wonderfully absurd outing with a cast that includes Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman. It's impossible to describe this film and do it justice: everything works beautifully and there are some surpisingly touching moments for a comedy. Some people will hate this though: it's very off the wall. Easily in my top ten for the year, when I get around to updating it.

Now here's a film to divide people: 'The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford' weighs in at 160 minutes and it's fair to say that, for at least 100 of them, not much happens. However, like a novel, if you invest in it, the final segment is quite brilliant and the cinematography throughout is breath-taking. The opening scenes in a forest are so vivid and real you can almost feel yourself there. A shame it didn't receive a tougher deal in the hands of the editor.

'Rendition; is already out here and is a run of the mill thriller, nothing remarkable. Which leads me to '30 days of night', a horror movie with Josh Hartnett set in an obscure Alaskan tow that has to endure 30 days without sunlight every year. And what can I say? As a horror movie, it's very very good. The vampires are truly nasty and the story speeds along with some stunning action. Nice ending too. I recommend it to horror fans.

The Counterfeiters (Stefan Ruzowitzky)

A truly stunning telling of the German operation to counterfeit the British pound and the American dollar, in order to cause chaos in the banking system. The work took place in a special segment of one of the German concentration camps, where the selected inmates received food and other benefits denied to those starving outside. Therein lies the moral dilemma: to receive the possibility of living beyond the nightmare of the Nazi Holocaust, but to do so whilst those around die. Powerful stuff.

Control (Anton Corbijn)

There's something gloriously technicolour about 'Control', the biopic of Joy Division's Ian Curtis, shot in monochrome but somehow capturing the full spectrum of sights and sounds from the 1970's music scene. It's blazing experience to be thrust into the life of Ian Curtis, and so good is this film, that you do actually feel as though you've been thrown head first into the very heart of it. Its vivid sense of time and place - and we're talking about Macclesfield here, for goodness sake - is matched by a straight forward story empty of Hollywood twists and turns but the fuller for it.

The film follows Curtis from his mid teens through to his eventual suicide at 23, on the brink of making it big in the States, but overwhelmed by a melancholy brought on by an increasingly painful life that feels out of 'control'. I've never owned a Joy Division album - the best I could do with that decade was to discover Abba - but that doesn't stop you from connecting not only with this film, but its music too. Sam Riley is someone I haven't seen before, though I think he was somewhere in '24 Hour Party People', but he pulls off what might be the performance of his life.

And wow, Samantha Morton, you are a revelation. Utterly convincing both as a shy pubescent teenager and as a young mother clutching at, and losing, her marriage to Curtis. It's quite an achievement for someone who's just turned 30.

So it looks like another film is going to get pushed out of the top 10 for the year. 'Control' is a British film to be proud of.

Foreign Language Update

So September and October are piled high with new films in the UK and choice abounds. This week I managed to sidestep some of the mainstream stuff that frankly deserves to be missed, and catch some of the more obscure foreign language films doing the rounds. Was it worth the effort?

'Rocket Science' definitely isn't. It's a kooky American indie film about a stammering teenager entering the high school debating competition. It wants to be 'Election' but it isn't anything like as clever and is downright odd.

On the other hand 'The Singer' really is. It's one of those beautifully observed pieces about facing up to middle age and lost opportunities. Gérard Depardieu is Alain Moreau, a singer on the downslide of a small career, who meets a young woman, Marion, played by Cécile De France. It has quite literally no action, no chases and yet is as enthralling as anything I've seen in the recent months.

'Yella' is a German film that will inspire violent reactions of love or hate. It's a thriller of sorts, but not in any traditional way, about a woman a woman, who leaves her hometown for a promising job and a new life, but is haunted by the truths of the past. As her marriage to Ben broke and her professional career has no future in her native town in the Eastern part of Germany, Yella has decided to search for a job in the West. When she gets to know Philipp, a smart executive at a private equity company in Hanover, she becomes his assistant and gets involved into the world of ruthless and big business. Loved it, but an acquired taste.