Robert Downey Junior attempts a hop, skip and jump from the world of Iron suits to that of gold statuettes with this admittedly heavy-handed but, at times, quite enthralling story of a slick lawyer’s return to his hometown and the defendant he is forced to take on. The case: a puzzling hit and run. The main suspect: his own father.

As most things American, this is a film about father and son, played here by Roberts Duvall and Downey Jr. respectfully. Dad’s an honourable judge in small town Indiana; his prodigal son a hot-shot defence attorney living in Chicago. The younger man returns home to attend his mother’s funeral but is met with little warmth. He’s quick to turn on his heels but the homecoming is unexpectedly prolonged when dad kills a man while out driving that very night. Downey Jr. steps in to defend his old man, not knowing the ethical and emotional conundrums which lay in wait.

The set-up packs a few surprises and, for the most part, it works. Duvall’s staunch geriatric sees the law as something honourable and just; but to his son it’s a malleable profession, open to interpretations. You would hope that such moral Rubik’s cubes would offer director David Dobkin enough to go on but instead we’re forced to swallow whole helpings of sentimental clichés. We could scrap the older brother with the lost baseball career and the younger brother with the disability and still have a fine, presumably more focused, film, but then award season does beckon.

 Indeed, with its heavy handed deliveries and earnest sweeping emotions, The Judge does little to dodge those pitfalls we’ve come to expect around this time of year. And yet, seeing swaggering RDJ and tireless Bobby Duvall duking it out over all that moral code and retribution stuff, I can think of worse ways to spend a cold grey autumn evening.

(Insert courtroom pun ending here).

Stories We Tell
Sarah Polley

She moved us with Away from Her and divided us with Take this Waltz, now actor turned director Sarah Polley brings her most remarkable film to German shores. Using documentary as her toolkit and pivoting her story on interviews with her family and the eloquent, heart wrenching narration of her nurturing dad Mike, Polley sets out to finally determine who her biological father is but instead finds something stranger. A devastating, beautiful film about fatherhood and memory, Stories We Tell picks apart the documentary rulebook before opening a window to that most endearing of bonds.

Tracks
John Curran

Mia Wasikowska gives a windswept, organic central performance in this walkabout film that stays light on its feet while sidestepping many of the pseudo spiritual pitfalls these types of self discovery adaptations tend to take.

She plays Robyn Davidson. An Australian woman who in 1977 set out with her dog Digitty- and four Camels whom she had personally trained- to walk from Alice Springs to  the west coast, a journey of roughly 1,700 miles. She tells us she’s sick of the pessimism of her class, sex and generation. We also learn that she lost her mum. To fund her trip she accepts a deal with the national geographic for a concluding article on her journey and for a photographer (played by rising star Adam Driver) to join her at certain points along the way. He seems to represent everything she’s trying to escape and yet, the two form a bond.

Expressing such raw free spirited emotion on an often populist and, let’s be honest, capitalist medium can prove awfully tricky. Pretention seems to lurk at every corner and yet director John Curran looks to have pulled it off. He keeps things grounded and natural while capturing all of the skin tones, hues and shades which his native outback has to offer. Worth the journey.

A Long Way Down
Pascal Chaumeil

Jesse, Jesse, Jesse… What happened bitch? A mere six months after the Breaking Bad curtain rapturously closed, co-star Aaron Paul finds himself in the cinematic wilderness. His latest subpar outing is a Nick Hornby adaptation (a wandering cinematic beast all its own) which finds four would-be suicides (autopilot Pierce Brosnon, misused Toni Collette, irritating Imogen Poots) on the roof of London’s fictional Toppers House on new year’s eve. The group form a pact to keep themselves intact till Valentine’s Day and worthless schmaltz ensues. Do us all a favour and jump.

A retired professor and a young female escort spend a Tokyo night and day together in this patient film from celebrated director Abbas Kiarostami. Forever obsessed with people talking in cars, that’s exactly where this film, for the most part, takes place. The high-rise Tokyo backdrop merely acts as a windshield reflection as his characters skim the surface of everyday life. The abrupt conclusion might rub some the wrong way but this remains a crisp, humanist film of near transcendental beauty. 

Upon first viewing of this wide eyed retelling of Walt Disney’s attempt to win the production rights to Mary Poppins one could be forgiven for feeling much like Emma Thompson’s P.L. Travers- eyes set to roll, cynicisms at the ready- but despite its blatant fabrications, the film’s charms, much like those of the studio it portrays, can be difficult to resist.

With flashbacks of her childhood throughout, the story’s main arc follows Travers on her first trip to Los Angeles- financial difficulties having finally forced the author to consider the advances of a determined Walt Disney to bring her beloved character to the big screen. She sees her creation as quite realist fare and so fights her corner on everything from animated penguins to the Sherman brothers’ now iconic songs. Of course we all know the outcome so the fun comes in seeing Tom Hanks’ bumbling Walt trying to woo the cold dame over.

Is the Mouse House attempting to cement Disney into our collective psyche as America’s most beloved leading man instead of the alleged chain smoking anti-Semitic chauvinist of whom we’ve heard? Presumably so. But then again, perhaps such sunshine and fantasy is profoundly fitting. A spoonful of sugar indeed.

Arriving less than two months after Nelson Mandela’s death, Mancunian director Justin Chadwick’s thorough biopic is a balanced and fitting eulogy to the revolutionary ANC leader.

Based on Madiba’s autobiography and with a towering Idris Elba at its core, Chadwick’s meaty 141 minute film takes us from a young Mandela’s tribal initiation to his eventual inauguration as president of a new South Africa. The film focuses on both reluctance and resistance. A cocky young barrister at first, it takes a cracked down peaceful protest to get him involved and later, the Soweto massacre for him to take arms. He meets his wife Winnie (A fiery Noamie Harris) along the way and during his incarceration on Robben Island it’s she who takes on the struggle. He’s released 27 years later an old man but Winnie’s mentality remains on the front line. They barely recognise each other.

Such dramatic timing should set the cash registers ringing but this should prove an interesting document for other reasons. Since passing, voices have sounded from all camps as to how Mandela’s legacy should be defined and Chadwick’s film might be the most balanced offering we can hope to see. Elba’s Mandela builds bombs and cheats on his wife; he’s part saint, part sinner, but most remarkably of all, a human being like us.

Keanu Reeves takes a swipe at a comeback with this huge retelling of an 18^th century Japanese tale; Kurasawa it most certainly ain’t but as big scale actioners go it’s an awfully pretty one. That said, the thing cost a fortune to make and early reports suggest that gamble might prove a poor one. Celebrating such misfortune can prove a cruddy sort of exercise but then who knows, a backlash might just bring us closer to the day when Keanu puts down the Katana and picks up the surfboard once again. 

A Touch of Sin:
Operating independently of the state run Chinese production company, Still Life director  Zia Zhangke hammers home the mood of anger and disillusionment in Chinese society through the loosely connected stories of a rural man (Jiang), a high end prostitute (Li), a man returning home to the city of Chongqing  and a labourer working a grim production line. They’re all at their wits end and act accordingly. Shot with marvellous scale, A Touch of Sin is violent, blaring with conviction and strikingly subversive.

12 Years a Slave:
Having navigated a mist of eye watering hype, Steve McQueen has emphatically delivered with his long awaited slavery drama. Based on Solomon Northup’s book of the same name, his film is about as marvellous, gruelling and brutal an exercise in cinema as you are likely to see.

We follow Northup’s (Ejiofor) odyssey from respected musician living with wife and children in Saratoga to his kidnapping in Washington and subsequent decent into slavery. We meet his first master, a somewhat decent man named William Ford (Cumberbatch), and then his second, a cruel maniac called Edward Epps (Fassbender). Northup is told constantly to keep his head down and survive but the free man inside strives to “live” again.

So would this British video art director be marginalised by such sweeping moves on Hollywood? It would seem not. Hans Zimmer might know when to kick in the string section but the brutish composer is just a deft with the drill and Sean Bobbitt’s photography has lost none of its poetic hostility. Indeed, McQueen may have his sights on LA but his eyelashes have yet to flutter and with 12 Years he shows us the fear and hatred which governed these peoples’ lives in a way few American film makers have been able to muster.

Unknown Pleasures Festival:
Oscar hopefuls and kickstarter darlings will once again be rubbing elbows for this year’s Unknown Pleasures fest as the American independent showcase with the Mancunian album name reaches its sixth year. Opening night hosts the Berlin premiere of James Gray’s sepia drenched Ellis Island fable The Immigrant; concerning a Polish woman, delicately played by Marion Cotillard, who is forced into prostitution upon arrival in New York. Gray’s film premiered at Cannes last May alongside one of this year’s more light-hearted offerings, Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, in which Bruce Dern offers a fine reminder of his talents as an ailing man on a cross state mission to cash in a dubious sweepstakes letter. Robert Redford gives a similarly late flourish as he faces the elements on board a doomed sailboat in J.C. Chandor’s one man show All Is Lost. Redford’s Sundance film festival is represented here of course with two of last year’s best received films: I used to be Darker is Matthew Porterfields story of an Irish runaway and the crumbling Baltimore relatives with whom she takes refuge and Brie Larson stars as a foster care worker in Destin Daniel Crettin’s Short term 12. This year’s Special Program will focus on socialist documentary maker Travis Wilkerson- including An Injury to One; his study of Frank Little, a union agitator who was lynched by the capitalist leaders of Butte Montana. A town whose factories provided 10% of the world’s copper – as well as a number of restored films including Thom Andersen’s Los Angeles Plays Itself, a video essay on the city of Angels comprised entirely of clips from the movies. Sounds swell.

 

Oldboy

A cinder-block shaped Josh Brolin grunts and groans his way through this fine remake of Park Chan-wook’s Korean-Wave favourite. He plays Joe, a despicable drunk ad-man who is framed for his wife’s murder and left in single room confinement for twenty years before being mysteriously released. Lee took a mighty risk taking on such a beloved cult hit but fans can breathe a collective sigh of relief. He keeps it visceral and strange while, quite remarkably, upping Park’s wicked videogame violence. He even gives a short cameo to a certain squid- and a slightly bigger one for a certain hammer…

  

The Counselor

Like a penalty skied over in the Champions League final, the shear catastrophic calibre of this film is a sight to behold. Michael Fassbender stars as a legal aid to the criminal elite who finds himself in hot water when a sewage truck full of Heroine goes missing on the U.S.-Mexico border. Fassbender is just one of many glittering names responsible but, regretfully, much of the blame must rest on the weighted debut screenplay of Pulitzer Prize winner Cormac McCarthy- or perhaps whomever let him loose... Oh, and Cameron Diaz has sex with a Ferrari.

Carrie

Chloë Grace Moretz takes on the infamous roll of a teenage social outcast with supernatural powers for the third adaptation of Steven King’s debut novel. Ms. Moretz leads a strong female cast with Judy Greer as her supportive teacher and Julianne Moore playing mother dearest as director Kimberly Pierce takes aim at a younger demographic. The results are decent despite lacking the strangeness of Brian De Palma’s classic but- in light of recent events- seeing kids get mowed down in a U.S. school gymnasium just doesn't sit right. 

Back to showcase their picks from the international film community’s elite festival circuit is Berlin’s increasingly sleek looking Around the World in 14 Films and following on from a rather high calibre year, the self-proclaimed festival of festivals has found a selection worthy of such a title with 4 continents and 15 countries represented over this terrific program. It all kicks off in Kino Babylon with A Separation director Asgahr Farhadi’s The Past. Tahar Rahim and Bérénice Bejo both star as Farhadi swaps Tehran with Paris for another familial drama. Legendary space cadet Alejandro Jodorowski will be in attendance as the festival screens his understandably surreal autobiographical film The Dance of Reality. Jem Cohen mixes a visual poem on Vienna with a charming peripheral love story in his quietly beautiful Museum Hours. Out east, Jia Zhangke expresses the bitterness and disillusionment in Chinese society with his violently subversive A Touch of Sin while Hirokazu Kore-Eda continues to find great young performers with his latest effort Like Father, Like Son. Both picked up gongs at Cannes last May. Screening in Thalia Potsdam, Inside Llewyn Davis- the Coen’s wonderfully lonesome take on the pre-Dylan folk scene in New York- offers the festival’s biggest hitter but if there’s one film to seek out, it comes from a little further north as Toronto born Sarah Polley examines our relationship with fatherhood and memory in her soaring documentary heartwrencher Stories We Tell.

Paul Greengrass takes his docudrama toolkit to this true life tale of an American freight ship captain’s run in with a band of Somali pirates. A gripping globalisation allegory told through the microcosm of two sparring men.

Tom Hanks plays the beleaguered Richard Phillips, captain of the Maersk Alabama for its journey from Oman to Mombasa. Whilst in International waters off the coast of Somalia, the container ship is boarded by four pirates- led by Abdulawi Muse (Barkhad Abdi)- and a 48 hour showdown ensues. 

Bred on his early career documenting conflict hot spots, Greengrass has gained a knack for leaving his audience on unsure footing. He shot the majority of this film on open water, only adding to that uncertainty. The vastness of the Alabama and the surrounding Indian Ocean give the conflict a tremendous sense of Isolation too.  It distils it somehow. Before the action we see Muse and his crew with scarcely any options for work. He later tells Phillips he would have been a fisherman had America not fished the waters bare. It’s clear what the director is getting at.

Greengrass chose to cast Somalis in their respective rolls and Abdi is strong as the fierce and desperate Muse. Opposite him, Hanks looks to finally be growing comfortable in his years and will, in all likelihood, pick up an Oscar nod in January. His director should too. Greengrass' remarkable sense for tension, pace and realism are here for all to see and it's all driven home with another muscular Hans Zimmer score.

Beyond the Hills

The favourite son of Romania’s New Wave follows up his jarring, Palme d’Or-winning masterpiece 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, with another film about two quietly defiant young women- their struggles and their friendship. Cristina Fluter and Cosmina Stratan play Alina and Voichita, two orphaned friends whose troubled past we can only guess at. There are hints that abuse and paedophilia plagued the girls’ orphanage but still, they survived. They also fell in love. We pick up with Alina returning home from a working spell in Germany to find that Voichita has taken solace in the local Orthodox convent. Alina is distraught. She wants nothing more than for Voichita to join her abroad and so decides to fight the priest for her affections. She lashes out and throws fits but when it goes too far the nuns suspect possession. The leading ladies shared the acting plaudits at Cannes for two greatly complimentary performances with Stratan remaining distant and tender while Fluter writhes with fury and passion. Framed beautifully in the grey autumnal light, there’s a fitting coldness here too. Like 4 Months…, this is a film devoid of any sentimentality, there’s just no room for such indulgences. With all of this Beyond the Hills should feel like a horror but amazingly, it looks like real life. Indeed, the films of the Romanian New Wave have seldom told us how to feel. They simply tell us how it is. 

Chasing Ice

National Geographic photographer James Balog assembles a crack team and sets out to gain visual evidence of our planet’s retreating glaciers by painstakingly capturing time-lapse footage over a number of years. Director Jeff Orlowski shoots a travel log of the mission intercut with the usual ominous looking graphs and interviews with straight shooting intellectuals. Orlowski’s documentary can feel a little sparse at times but unlike many of its kind it chooses sentimentality over scaremongering, portraying these vanishing behemoths not as something to fear, but instead as an endangered species. 

Chris Hemsworth lifts the mythical hammer for his second solo outing as the Nordic god and while the name might suggest the usual gritty sequel syndrome, The Dark World seems more interested in slapstick, tragedy and theatrics and it’s all the better for it.

                We’re up in Asgard. Battles have been won and we look to be entering a time of peace. The warriors enjoy their spoils but Thor still pines for a lady down on earth. She’s a physicist called Jane and she’s played by Natalie Portman. Down the alleys of central London, Jane slips through a portal and stumbles upon an ancient weapon. It takes her body as host and so Thor must re-unite with his old flame and take her to the Dark World in order to destroy it before it destroys her. But when Asgard comes under siege from an awakened foe, Thor must spring his disgraced brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) from prison to guide him there. A Smeagol for their journey into Mordor.

                Hemsworth leads a strong cast with Anthony Hopkins and Stellan Skarsgard both putting in shifts but Tom Hiddleston’s Loki looks the pick of this respectable bunch. His enduring villain is no doubt an underdog- the illegitimate brother of a popular, showboating, insanely handsome prince- Loki’s a backstabber and a megalomaniac but it’s difficult not to love him. And Hiddleston, all gaunt and slimy, is brilliant in the roll.

                So Marvel’s megabucks project looks in good health, it’s found a nice groove and in some ways we have Thor to thank for that. A character of such fantasy, he always looked a tough sell alongside all those mortals- even with their shiny suits- but Marvel seem to have accepted the absurdness of their space god and the result is gratifying, devoid of pretention and leaves plenty of room for gags. Do we want an explanation for the gulf in abilities between him and, say, Capt. America? No. Do we want to see what Thor is like on the tube, or what he does with his hammer when he’s visiting friends? Yes. And lots of it. 

Much lauded as a taste-maker in Toronto and Sundance, our continent’s annual red carpet Gala offers its own people’s choice award for the 17^th time. Touching down in Berlin this December the European film awards will dish out its publicly voted gong to one of eleven thoroughbred crowd pleasers. Not forgetting Amour ransacked the place last year without a mention in this category so best to forget your Ulrich Seidls for now and cast a vote for one of these gentler efforts. With 11 countries represented, nominees range from Amour’s fellow Oscar nominee Kon Tiki to everyone’s favourite South African legend Searching for Sugar man. Joe Wright’s glittery Anna Karenina and the Ewan McGregor tsunami vehicle The Impossible add a little showbiz to the pack but perhaps we should all keep a finger or two crossed for a local effort as Tom Schilling’s crisp Berlin odyssey Oh Boy steps up to the plate.

Runner Runner

Likable Justin Timberlake plays an unlikable Princeton student paying his way through school by playing the numbers on an online poker site. He loses it all in one sitting but is convinced he’s been duped so he tracks down the sites sleazy mastermind (Ben Affleck). Furman’s film is slick but charmless and seems to buckle under the weight of its two stars. Nominations and facial hair had Affleck looking like a Hollywood heavyweight eight months ago but we seem, once again, to be veering off course. The Bat-Signal beckons.  Sighs all round. 

Kim Ki-Duk Retrospective

“Why was this old world cursed with a creep like me?” asks the troubled lead of Kim Ki-Duk’s debut film Crocodile. The director arrived on the cusp of the Korean Wave but was far more interested in the depraved end of society than any of the country’s financial muscle. So as the nights grow darker what better time to delve into the director’s work. This month Kino Arsenal showcases a whopping 17 of the directors 19 features; from the aforementioned Crocodile- concerning the tender awakenings of a bridge dweller who picks the pockets of suicide victims on the riverbed- right up to last year’s Gold Lion winning Pieta, in which a cruel loan-shark deals with some troubling mommy issues; but fellow Venice darling 3 Iron- about a young drifter’s love affair with an abused housewife- might just be the pick of the bunch. 

Room 237

Wild rumours of underlying messages in Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 classic The Shining have been doing the rounds for years. For Room 237 filmmaker Rodney Ascher brings together five major fanatics to shed some light on their theories. Greatly detailed throughout, the ramblings range from interesting points on layout and design- which perhaps seem reasonable enough given the director’s infamously meticulous nature- to some fairly way out conspiracies. A large grain of salt may be required but be you sceptic or converted, this a film about the director’s lingering aura. Not some crackpot’s unsolved mystery.

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones

Following Twilight’s dominance at the box office it was only a matter of time before something new arrived to keep that demographic all hot and bothered. Adapted from the first book of another bestselling series, City of Bones follows a young woman named Clary (Lily Collins, daughter of Phil) as she juggles with revelations about  her past, pesky demons and  boy troubles while trying to unearth some sacred cup. Miserable stuff (unless you’re into that sort of thing) but hey, at least the werewolves are Irish.

Storm Surfers 3D

Two aging championship surfers spend the southern hemisphere’s winter months trekking out to big-wave hot spots off the Australian coast, using someone called a ‘surf forecaster’ – which is a real job apparently- to monitor oceanic swells and predict what region to hit. There’s some painfully staged basecamp stuff and a rather clumsy narrative but with Red Bull-who have become the Medici of this sort of ludicrous behaviour- .providing some serious equipment, whenever we look to the ocean, Storm Surfers offers plenty to get the heart racing. 
 

There have been some dazzling moments in this year’s blockbuster season but it’s safe to say most offerings have left audiences, not to mention the big studios’ pockets, feeling rather empty. What better time for Neill Blomkamp to drop his second feature. His excellent debut District 9 managed to bag a tonne of cash on the relatively micro budget of 30 million dollars. It also made an alien slum in Johannesburg seem entirely plausible. Blomkamp’s kitty is a touch larger this time but it certainly hasn’t blunted the director’s edge. His second feature Elysium is a breathless spectacle; chock-full of the sort of ideas which make the sci-fi genre great.

The year is 2154 and the wealthy elite have flown the coop to the orbiting paradise of Elysium; a sterile, Villa-laden space station where sickness and aging have been eradicated- as long as you’re a citizen that is. Things aren’t so rosy back home. Earth looks to be one sprawling Favela. Matt Damon plays Max, an earth dweller struggling to leave behind his misspent youth and earn an honest buck. It’s proving tough. Max’s past seems to keep getting him in hot water with the authorities- a now automated droid police with a real knack for human bureaucracy- while the only work on offer lies in the hideous local munitions factory. An accident in work leaves Max four days to live with his only hope for care on the distant Elysium. A cyber revolutionary named spider offers to get him there but Max will need to mech-up and steal the neuro-information of an Elysium citizen, while a frightening mercenary named Kruger lies in wait.

Fans of Blomkamp’s first film might find this story arc a bit familiar- South African mercenaries in a helicopter chasing a somewhat mutated human with some lucrative otherworldly attribute through a shanty town- but it would be absurd to call this film unoriginal. Refreshingly economical with its use of CGI, the array of weaponry and machinery are a feast of design while the casting offers a host of delicious scene stealing; Jodie Foster’s Machiavellian minister has some interesting shades of Christine Legarde (Unintentionally surely?) while Shartlo Fookin Copley is immense as the Kitana wielding Kruger.

Aside from all that showmanship Elysium, like all good Sci-Fi, thrives on a simple idea. A touch of social commentary makes for good science fiction and while the underlying theme here is painted with a giant clumsy roller, there is something a bit subtler at work. Blomkamp might like to put his heroes through the ringer but it’s not all for thrills. The director seems to have a belief in human perseverance, especially from those of lesser means, and despite Hollywood’s supposed liberalism, for a tent pole summer film to have that sort of ethos these days still  feels subversive. Given the Dream Factory’s increasingly risk-free assembly line, the film’s non-sequel/adaptation/remake-ness is also an anomaly. Steven Spielberg thinks that assembly line will eventually produce an “implosion” in the film industry. If the moneymen throw more cash at people like Blomkamp there might still be some hope.

                Ears are liable to perk up when a British director shoots his debut feature in the rural back lands of Transylvania but Peter Strickland has little interest in comfort zones, his new film Berberian Sound Studio drops a mild mannered Englishman into the eerily hostile production rooms of a Giallo inspired Italian horror company. We went to talk to the bright young talent and find out what it is about all this dread and foreboding which excites us.

                “The gore and the sadism is only one aspect, if you don’t have the suspense, the atmosphere, personally I’m not so interested” says Strickland, a sharp and affable sort well versed in the world of gothic horrors, a love affair which sparked after attending a two month retrospective of Giallo horror originator Mario Bava in London’s National Film Theatre. “It’s the poetry of it, the atmosphere. They were just so ethereal and strange. The way they were lit, the costumes, the hair and of course the soundtracks which were such a strong counterpoint. They were always so beautiful and yearning.”

                While these more classic influences are apparent in Strickland’s work, the dread which his films evoke comes from something more modern and ambiguous. “The two films I’ve made, they use genre as a starting point but I wanted to go down my own path. I wanted to eliminate things. In Katalin Varga, take the rape away, in Berberian, take the horror away but still follow the dynamics of a horror. It might not be as scary as a horror, as grotesque, but you still have that intensity. If you couple that with some ominous music, the dread just comes naturally from there.”

These ominous sounds are largely provided by Broadcast, in what would be their last full length album before the tragic death of front woman Trish Keenan. Strickland got the group to soundtrack the film within the film, the wonderfully titled Equestrian Vortex, a film we never see but for the sound effects and score. “I was a fan since 1996, I used to collect these Stereolab, duophonic 45s and 12” records. They put out broadcast’s second and third singles and I loved them. I just thought they were really unique and they referenced a lot of that stuff. In a way I got into it through Broadcast, they were talking about the Italian stuff and also the British stuff like Basil Kirchin, who is what we know as a Garden Shed Eccentric.”

Toby Jones plays Gilderoy in the film- who himself is a bit of a garden shed eccentric and loosely based on Kirchin among others. Gilderoy is a timid type of fellow and in a lesser actor’s hands he could have disappeared amidst all those fiery Mediterranean types, but Jones is becoming somewhat of a master of this particular craft. “What was really hard to convey to him was how to maintain that stillness while engaging the audience. As a director it’s very difficult to do that and you trust the actors to find that in themselves, to bring that up. That was a very tough role to talk about with him, the spectrum was so narrow. It was a general long conversation we had, about that type of person.”

Another great presence in Strickland’s film is the stacks of Analogue equipment which make up the old style sound studio. Modulators flicker, dust falls through projector light, celluloid cracks and burns, it’s all very seductive. “People say it’s all obsolete but it’s not, it’s all part of this analogue iconography”- Strickland then points to the sound recording app I’m using to record this interview, a screen complete with an image of an old style mic and its own faux flickering dial -“it’s the same fetishizing thing. I wanted to make a tactile film about sound, sound that you can physically touch. You can slash it with a razorblade; you can loop it around the room. There’s this performance aspect to sound which you don’t have now, I couldn’t make Berberian set in 2012 with a bunch of plug-ins. You could fit that whole room on an IPhone. But there’s a magic to seeing someone get up on a ladder to turn some dials and oscillators. I’m not trying to romanticise it and say it was better, as with anything it’s all pros and cons. There were better things and there were worse things, I worked on analogue back in the 90s so I can certainly attest to that.” Strickland shot his first film on super 16mm but despite a greater budget- and considering the irony of Berberian’s love for analogue- he decided to switch to digital. “It was largely a financial decision. The production design was a huge thing; we had to build a studio within a studio. It seems perverse to shoot a film about analogue on digital, but we thought, let’s embrace that perversity. Argento was always using the latest technology so if digital had of been around then, we thought, lets continue the spirit of that. But to speak quite brutally I was told I would have been fired.”

The worlds of Strickland’s films are certainly hostile places, akin to a recent trend in British cinema. As with Shane Meadows’ Dead Man’s Shoes, or Ben Wheatley’s Kill List there is a current taste for these foreboding worlds. “My next one will be a bit lighter, I could do with a bit of lightness.” An historic piece set in Russia- again not shot in Strickland’s native tongue- before the First World War is on the cards which Wheatley himself will be producing. Light indeed.

                On the evidence of Man Of Steel there is no reason to believe director Zach Snyder has done any growing up. His dark modern take on the Superman franchise is so concerned with its own immensity that amongst the onslaught of CGI spectacle and mushy mid-west Americana anything relatable is lost.

                We begin a little earlier than previous films with Krypton on the brink of destruction and the Machiavellian General Zodd (the great stone faced Michael Shannon) attempting to save his race by purging the lesser bloodlines. The new born Kal-El -soon to be Clark Kent- is sent to Earth by father Jor-El (Russell Crowe in full Shakespearian mode) with the hopes of his people hidden on board. From here we skip to a brooding older Kent (Henry Cavill) trying to find his way and keep his abilities somewhat under-wraps while a series of flashbacks build his mythology before a scorned Zodd returns to exact revenge.

                Dark Knight scribe David S Goyer takes up writing duties with Chris Nolan’s Syncopy productions pulling some strings in an attempt to continue the gritty universe of Nolan’s hugely successful Batman series. Sadly the end product feels miles away from Gotham city. As far as event cinema goes Man Of Steel commits a cardinal sin of sorts, as unlike the slick Noir of Nolan’s films, it just doesn’t look all that good. A metallic colour pallet of greys and blues combined with some shaky Bourne style camerawork- both of which are blurred considerably by the post produced 3D- results in a finale so difficult to decipher it might make Michael Bay blush.

                Snyder simply fails to provide any humanity to anchor these scenes.  One of Superman’s charms was the earnest rapport he has with his adoptive race but the only real glimpse we get of this-with Lois Lane (the ever-affable Amy Adams) in a military interrogation room- lasts for little more than a minute. A lighter touch just wouldn’t fit with the execs over in Warner Bros and their gritty DC dream. The moneymen seem desperate to kick-start a Justice League series and while Snyder’s film is far from deserving of spawning such a project, if and when the big bucks come in there will be little left to stop them. Sighs all round. 

Snitch

When a young man’s first drug offence lands him with a 10 year minimum sentence, his father (The Rock) enlists an ambitious judge (Susan Sarandon) to help take down a local drug dealer in exchange for his son’s reduced sentence. Any high profile film willing to point a finger at the slaughterhouse ethos of America’s drug laws deserves credit but Snitch seems lost in its naiveties; Indeed, when a desperate leading man on the verge of vigilantism types ‘Drug Cartel’ into Wikipedia we know what sort of film we’re in for. 

Freiluft Season

Freiluft season kicks up a few gears this month with the prolific folk in Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain, Rehberge and Mitte all screening movies on a daily basis. Freiluft Kino Mitte will continue their stroll through the vaults with a wonderful selection from cinema’s greatest moments; the startling Americana of Wenders’ Paris Texas(02 Jun, 21:30), the chilling neo noir of Polanski’s Chinatown(21 Jun, 21:30) and the stark Neo-Realism of On the Waterfront (26 Jun, 21:30) look to be the picks of the bunch. Over in the idyllic surroundings of Volkspark Friedrichshain’s seated amphitheatre there is a bunch of this year’s best on show with Hitchcock’s shocker classic  Psycho(9 Jun,21.30) thrown in for good measure. Freiluftkino Kreuzberg in cooperation with Exberliner will show Wenders’ documentary Pina (15 Jun, 21.45), cult classic The Big Lebowski (18 Jun, 21:45) and Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (26 Jun, 21:45) amidst their packed out program. A little further out under the trees at Volkspark Rehberge there will be a chance to catch the screwball comedy of Silver Linings (21 Jun, 21:45) alongside Soderbergh’s big-pharma swansong Side Effects (26 Jun, 21:45). Ben Wheatley’s horror-in-the-great-outdoors, Sightseers takes itself to the great outdoors as it hits Cassiopeia’s open air screen (27 Jun, 22:15); and Yorck cinemas begin their summer program in Potsdamer Platz with the latest Ryan Gosling/Derek Cianfrance combo,  The Place Beyond the Pines (12 Jun, 21:45). 

Solar flares still burst across the screen in J.J. Abrams’ second Star Fleet excursion but- lest we forget we’re in sequel territory- the Enterprise has lost much of its gleam. If the title hasn’t given it away yet, things are getting darker. Our heroes must struggle with themselves and one another while a new foe, more deadly and unpredictable than the last, threatens some sort of almighty destruction.
                We hit the ground running and after a thunderous opening sequence we find our heroes roughly where we left off. Despite their friendship, Spock and Kirk (Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine) remain at odds with one another with the Vulcan’s cold logic still grating on the captain’s human instincts. We learn that Star Fleet is on the verge of war with the Klingons and a deadly fugitive
(An underused but mighty Benedict Cumberbatch) is hiding out on their home planet. Revenge is in the air and the crew must ponder what Star Fleet is really for, with Scotty (a wonderfully overused Simon Pegg) proclaiming in a moment of great tenderness: "This looks like a military operation, I thought we were meant to be explorers..."

                Abrams employs 3D here for the first time and for the opening sequence he pulls it off with aplomb- Arrows unashamedly flying from the screen in a fashion you might expect from the wide eyed director- but as the film progresses it all gets a little stuffy. Overall it does lack that lean feeling of the first film- which managed to seem neat and compact despite having a plotline containing black holes, time travel and alternate realities- but Into Darkness is still razor sharp blockbuster cinema; a finely delivered thrill-ride blasted home with Michael Giacchino’s enormous score. Sadly it looks like J.J.’s last stint in the Enterprise’s director’s chair (for the time being at least) as his eyes- and everybody else’s- turn to Lucasfilm, Lightsabers and that other great space opera.

Iron Man 3

                The Marvel wing of the Mouse House enters “Phase 2” of its multi-billion dollar franchise with the same man who started it all and if the past decade of blockbuster cinema has thought us anything then by now it’s clear: When the big baddies have been defeated, our heroes look inward. Iron Man 3 doesn’t break the trend but it still holds on to its playful flavour. Rattled from his near-death experience at the end of The Avengers, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is in full contemplation mode, struggling to define his ever changing relationship with his suit. A bio technician (Guy Pierce) jilted by Stark years ago returns with some alarming discoveries and a Bin Laden looking criminal (delightfully played by Ben Kingsley) named Mandarin is terrorising the airwaves. An attack leaves Stark in a small rural town with his suit in tatters. A Spielberg looking sequence- complete with a young back-talking technician friend- plays out as our hero attempts to rise from the ashes.

                Director Shane Black re-unites with Downey Jr. for the first time since his comeback-sparking turn in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, with Black once again choosing the backdrop of Los Angeles in the festive season. It’s an absurd setting by all means, not least for an early summer blockbuster, but for a film series which has prided itself on RDJ’s tongue-in-cheek arrogance it seems to just about fit. Downey Jr. has hinted this will be his last appearance in the red and gold suit. Some very large cheques will beg to differ. 

Evil Dead

Humour takes a back seat as bodily fluids pour by the gallon in this passable re-work of Sam Raimi’s shocker classic. We follow a young lady as she attempts a rehab weekend in the woods but when an evil incarnation is muttered a demon rises from beneath and proceeds to swallow everyone’s souls in increasingly grotesque fashion. Fans of the series are given the odd groovy wink but there’s little else here to compare with the mischief and chaos of the original. 

Chimpanzee 

The latest offering from Disney’s big budget Nature series focuses on the daily struggles of an orphaned chimpanzee, nicknamed Oscar, in the Ivory Coast’s Tai National Park. Viewers used to the dignified tone of David Attenborough might find Tim Allen’s dubious Americanized narration a little stomach turning but with so much terrific footage and an irresistibly feel good narrative- apparently the first of its kind to be caught on camera- it would take a cold heart to find nothing to like.