Film Shapes

A new 'Director's Cut' of this 1971 cult classic has arrived in cinemas, with a couple of lost scenes reinserted (if you'll pardon the expression). Plaudits must go to esteemed pommy film critic Mark Kermode for finding them and helping get them back in there. Crikey though, it's not hard to see why they would have been removed back in the early 70s, considering that one scene is known as the Rape of Christ. Of course, it's mild by today's standards but society's pillars were made of meeker stuff back then, especially with regard to religion (see The Life of Brian bans, etc.). Based on the novel by Aldous Huxley, The Devils of Loudun , via a stage play, Russell adapts the story of Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed) and his conflict with high-ranking officials of church and state. Baron de Laubardemont (Dudley Sutton) wants to raze the towers of Loudun for fear of another Protestant uprising, and so manipulates the word of sister Jeanne does Anges (Vanessa Re...

The British Film Festival is upon us again and it looks purely belter this year. The preview film at Palace Raine Square was a teacher's nightmare called Bad Apples . Note the plural, not one bad apple but many. The film opens with a bunch of primary school kids on a tour of a cider house, presumably in order to highlight the analogy, as we see loads of apples on their way along conveyer belts. One lark, Danny (Eddie Waller) has lost his shoe in the machinery, causing frazzled teacher Maria (Saoirse Ronan) to lose her shit. Less anger than anguish, to be fair, as it unfolds that this wrong'un has been boiling her piss all year. Back at school the next day, Danny sends a girl to hospital, and gets suspended. Maria needs to make sure he doesn't come to school, primarily to avoid the government Ofsted inspector, so she goes to visit his dad. He's clearly strung out as well, so isn't much help. On her way back to her car, she confronts Danny and this is starting to rea...

Including this new film, Alejandro González Iñárritu has directed only eight features, and his resume has its ups ( Amores Perros , The Revenant ) and downs ( Birdman ). But I make Digger his best. He shares a writing credit with a number of other folk (sounds like too many cooks but they get away with it), and it's shot by the ever brilliant Emmanuel Lubezki. Kudos firstly must go to the trailer editor to sell it the way they did - it's a really eyebrow-raising subterfuge. I was expecting Dr. Strangelove , with climate as the nuclear bombs, instead we get a blend of films like Synecdoche New York , Beau is Afraid , and Birdman , and it's superior and more accessible than all of those. Colour me gobsmacked. From the start, Digger was heading one way and, had it continued that way, this would be a very different review. Luckily, it pulled a terrific gear change. In a nutshell, the Cruiser plays Digger Rockwell, a mega rich oil man who ignores all warnings of an impending d...

Pure class. A Hungarian director, János Zsombolyai, and his crew filmed Queen's concert at Népstadion in Budapest in 1986 with a fair number of 35mm cameras. It's recently been finessed for IMAX and the result is a bloody ripping concert film. There's a short preview promo featuring sit-down interviews with Brian May and Roger Taylor and then the concert begins. The band played this unprecedented gig at the end of July, just a couple of weeks after their Wembley sets, and as part of the Magic Tour. It was one of the first stadium concerts played behind the Iron Curtain by a 'Western' band, and apparently around 80,000 punters turned up, with more than half that number listening from outside the stadium. The band run through a typical set list of favourites, starting with One Vision , Tie Your Mother Down , and (my favourite from the gig) Seven Seas of Rhye . Other belting highlights include Under Pressure , Now I'm Here , Hammer to Fall , and Radio Ga Ga . Watch...

This latest Resident Evil is a slight zombie viscera flick that doesn't really say much but is a bit of fun anyway. Director Zach Cregger impressed with Weapons , and folk have good things to say about his film before that, Barbarian , too (I'm yet to watch). His latest is a reboot, retool, reimagining, however you'd like to put it, of the film series spawned from the game in 2002, that eventually mutated to six entries, all gamely starring Milla Jovovich. Now before this new iteration, I'd only seen that first one, but quite possibly one or two more (like the creatures in the film, I'm guessing they all meld together). My gaming credentials are even more paltry - I seem to remember playing a version once years ago, but it could have been any zombie shooting game. So drawing a long bow, I'm going to say this one aims more for the shits and giggles than the others, borrowing from Cregger's previous life as a comedy actor/writer/director. Austin Abrams plays ...

Here's another serving from the Italian Film Festival , this one set mostly in the fictional town of Bellesammama in Southern Sardinia, the beautiful Spiaggia di Tuerredda standing in for the beach paradise. The recognisable story goes that a rich company wants to buy up the land on the beach to build a resort, promising to create jobs and bring untold wealth to the struggling area. Everyone is confident things will be done and dusted in no time until the real estate company runs up against an immovable object, old farmer Efisio (Giuseppe Loi). Offered ever increasing sums of Lira, then as time goes on, Euros, he rejects all. This is his home, he doesn't need anything else.  The townsfolk cajole Efisio and chivvy his daughter Francesca (Virginia Raffaele), hoping they'll see reason. The head of the Milanese real estate firm, Giacomo (Diego Abatantuono), sends a foreman, Mariano (Aldo Baglio) to sort things out, and even enlists the local mayor and police. No dice. Althoug...

This solid, if not super original, slice of high school life in gritty Euro-environs looks to be a change of tack for director Umberto Riccioni Carteni. Much of his back catalogue appears to be on the frothy end of the spectrum, and oddly, Classmates is listed as a 'Drama, Comedy' in the festival programme. It's not all that heavy but it's a stretch to call it a comedy. It starts with English teacher, credited as Professoressa (Anna Ferzetti) arriving at her new school in a rough-ish area of north-east Rome called Rebibbia. The final year students of this class are generally downheartened nihilists, all carrying problems related to poverty, drugs or family. A more difficult start might have been expected for the Prof but most of her students respond well to her, due to a policy of treating them like humans, not the garbage they (and other teachers) believe they are.  A familiar trope of students shouting at each other, insulting and threatening, soon shows itself to be...