Film Shapes

Screening at the German Film Festival, this is a mind-boggling tale of a 'you-tuber' dickhead who nicked a short animation film off a couple of German university students and passed it off as his own work. The thief, or the 'talented' Mr. F. of the title, is Samuel Felinton, a ubiquitous pud with a probable case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). This diagnosis has been mentioned on Reddit but his baggage is weighty so fucks knows what's wrong with him. We open with Moritz and Julius, who made a cute little robot anime, uploaded it to YouTube to see if anyone liked it, and when it gained loads of hits and positive comments, took it down. Emboldened by this public favour, they then started to enter their short,  Butty, into various film festivals. When the replies came back that it couldn't be accepted because the film was already doing the festival circuit, the lads freaked out. Turns out Butty 's brief online life was enough time for Felinton to d...

This opening screening of the Perth Festival's Lotterywest Film season is a cinephile's delight. It documents the production of Jean-Luc Godard's seminal feature debut, À Bout de Souffle (or Breathless ). The title refers to the New Wave of French film from the beginning of the 1960s, which railed against the tired, old ways of film-making. Nouvelle Vague actually looks like it was shot on film, it's riddled with scratch marks, there's are many big black dots indicating the end of the reel, and of course, it's in black and white. The director, Richard Linklater, is obviously a huge fan of  Breathless . This is a lovingly made, breezy film, that isn't terribly hard-hitting or deep, but is a fine background to one of the classics. The casting is excellent, specifically the Jeans; Godard, Seberg and Belmondo, played by Guillaume Marbeck, Zoey Deutch and Aubry Dullin respectively. They all look the part and turn in performances just the right side of parody....

Here's the first of a few films I'm planning to catch at the British Film Festival so I'll attempt to keep the reviews relatively brief. This a documentary directed by Stephen Soucy about the legendary filmmaking team, Merchant Ivory Productions. The formidable ensemble consisted of producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory, writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and composer Richard Robbins. After meeting in 1961, Ivory and Merchant started a fruitful partnership, both professionally and romantically.  The film shows us their somewhat ramshackle early films, made in India, moving on to marginally more assured productions in the US, and finally to the English period dramas they became known for in the 80s and onwards. Together, they made over 40 films, some absolute gems among them. A Room with a View , Howard's End , and The Remains of the Day are probably their best, though you could throw in Heat and Dust , Maurice , and The Golden Bowl as very strong examples of their...

This is an engaging, relatively fluffy documentary about French filmmaker, Michel Gondry, directed by his regular assistant, François Nemeta. As such, it comes across as a bit of a fawning love letter to a genius. This may sound like damning with faint praise but it's a pretty infectious watch, mainly due to Gondry's sheer likeability. I can't imagine this bloke angry, and it's almost a twist when he marginally raises his voice in one section where he's directing a scene from Mood Indigo . Gondry started his arts career as a drummer in the band Oui Oui, where he made the music videos to accompany their songs. Soon enough, his talent for filmmaking outshone his drumming and he moved on to create clips for other musicians, including Thomas Dolby, Inspiral Carpets, Lenny Kravitz and Terence Trent D'Arby. But it was his association with Björk that propelled him towards stardom, making eight music vids with her, notably Army of Me and Human Behaviour . He was much s...

This is a 'talking heads' documentary about the famous (or infamous, depending on your outlook on life) Scala cinema that operated in London's King's Cross from 1978 to 1993. It's a snapshot of an era - this place was the muster point for a ragtag group of misfits during Thatcher's uncompromisingly nasty reign. There's a fantastic array of interview subjects: actors Ralph Brown (who used to work there) and Caroline Catz; comedians Adam Buxton and Stewart Lee; directors Ben Wheatley, John Waters and Mary Harron;  musicians Matt Johnson (The The) and Douglas Hart (The Jesus and Mary Chain); as well as numerous less well-known folk who attended screenings or worked at the Scala in some capacity.  The celebrity tales are fun but the meat comes from the staff - in particular one pretty tense retelling of a suicide at the theatre. And the building itself, still erect and acting as a nightclub not far from King's Cross Station, is the star of the film. Built ar...