It's funny, and you'll learn about that of which 95% of UK citizens are ignorant - black women's hair. African-American comedian Chris Rock takes us on a personal journey of discovery through the multi-billion dollar world of black people's grooming products, extensions, weaves, and wigs. Along the way you will be informed, worried, and made to laugh. A lot.
Do you know what hair relaxer is? Creamy crack? What are the groundrules when making love to a woman with a hair weave? No? You must be white. And need enlightenment. Whatever your skin colour, you need to see what happens to a Coke can when immersed in the same chemical as straightens hair.
Rock's odyssey begins and ends with an apparently simple question from his adorably beautiful - and of course black - baby girl. "Daddy, why can't I have good hair?" Good meaning straight and fine, like the white folks. Rock explores the highly toxic chemicals used on children as young as 3. The hair that is given away in India for nothing, then fixed onto black women's heads in the US for anywhere from $1000 to $3500. The huge and highly profitable industry which is mostly owned by white people.
A celebrity line-up of actresses, models, hairdressers, plus no less than Maya Angelou (first straightened her hair at the age of 70) and the Rev Al Sharpton (first straightened his hair to have more political impact) provides an entertaining and always insightful flow of hilarious testimony. Structured around the narrative thread of an astonishing high-end hair styling championship. Who will win? The black woman who cuts upside down? The one who cuts underwater? The gay black man? Or the gay white man? Hold your breath.
GOOD HAIR is a rare feature theatrical release as it works equally well on two levels, as great and unrelenting comedy, and as a serious documentary asking serious questions about fashion, ethnic identity, and commercial exploitation.
It's one disappointing weakness is it's cop-out ending. What will Chris Rock say to his baby girl about her hair?
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
David recommends . . . go and see VINCERE. And reviews THE KILLER INSIDE ME, THE HAPPIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD, and FOUR LIONS
VINCERE is a must see, best film currently on release. Italian language historical drama about the spurned first wife of a young Benito Mussolini.
In the heady days before World War 1 Ida and Benito are revolutionaries and lovers. They marry, she has a baby boy - Benitito. During the war they lose contact. The War splits the European working class movement, into Communists, Social Democrats, and Nationalists. The latter develop into Fascists. The rest is history.
Ida bumps into Benito, fast rising in Italian politics, and is horrified to find he has a new wife and more children. Mussolini is equally horrified. Ida and Benitito are a political embarrassment and a threat to his rise and that of his party. They must be got out of the way. Enter Blackshirts, corrupt officials, oppressive psychiatrists and enveloping nuns.
As mother and son are separated what follows is a heart-rending tragedy, but stands as an homage to the endurance of the human spirit. Ida's and her son's respective struggles against an engulfing power which demands they deny reality can be read as a metaphor for Italy, and Europe, under totalitarianism.
Go and see it. Took me a while to get over the fact that the young Mussolni appears to be played by a cross between Groucho Marx and Michael Corleone at his angriest. But it's wonderful.
THE KILLER INSIDE ME, or "The Violent Film" as my friend called it who was not planning to see it. That reflects an unfortunate trend in the reviewing which has emphasised the violence in the film and especially that against women.
But much of this attention has seriously misrepresented the film. It is not in any way misogynistic. 50% of the victims of the central character are male. Equal Opportunities psychopathy if you will. Most of the screentime does not involve violence. And in act is slow and lyrical, with high visual production values. Imagine LA Confidential set amid the Texan desert and filmed by Terrence Malick.
It is precisely this languid feeling which sets up the shocking nature of the violence. Those episodes are, as anyone in Cumbria will tell you, a sudden and brutal interruption into the normality of rural life. IN the lead role Casey Affleck portrays just that. His Deputy Sheriff, mocked for not even carrying a gun, appears hyper normal, in a rather boring, nerdy way. The typical "quite loner" in a "tight-knit community". A quasi-Freudian backstory establishes, as with so many violent men, motivations around the very oppoaite of domineering machismo.
Hence the reviews do not reflect characterised throughout with ceaseless, brutal violence. This is not an action movie. Suddenly and without warning we find ourselves watching what is, indeed, one of the most distressing look-away sequences I have ever seen. This sequence is overwhelmingly responsible for the accusations of gratuitous and misogynistic violence. For unusually, the camera remains relentlessly on the victim's face, in close up, as they are bludgeoned. No cutaways to the killer, or to blood spattering on a wall.
An alternative reading to this sequence can suggest two things. First that we are being forced into the position of the killer. Seeing the victim's face gives us his point of view. That makes us extremely uncomfortable, as we all wish to deny our own potential for aggression and violence. Secondly, and via the suddenness of the violence, we are forced to face up to the reality of domestic violence. Thus we are in that long-running debate about the nature of violence in film. The argument that if we are to have violence in films it ought to be realistic. Otherwise film-makers are accused of dishonesty, even of minimising it.
Hence a dilemma for filmmakers. Omit domestic violence as a subject and they will be accused of ignoring a huge and serious social problem and the most acute manifestation of men's oppression of women. Include it in the script but do not show it on screen, or show it in sanitised form, and they will be
accused of inadequately representing its' full evil.
Darling of British art cinema Michael Winterbottom has taken the third option and pushed the envelope. Extreme domestic violence is hard to face up to. The victim's disintegrating face is equally hard to look at. I initially looked away then forced myself to watch, to honour the honesty and daring of the filmmakers. It was not fun. But then murder is not fun, whereas in thousands of popular movies it is treated as fun or at the least as not a big deal. If you are going to see a film about a killer this year, this is it.
THE HAPPIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD
Second best film out at the moment. A gentle, wry, observation comedy from Romania.
Mum, Dad and teenage daughter Delia are hicks from the sticks on the way to Bucharest. Delia is miserable, hence the irony of the title. Arriving in the big city she exclaims "There are just so many of them - people!"
This clash between rural Romania, expressive of the old days of Communism, and the brash, modern, increasingly Western city culture of the capital lies at the heart of the film.
For Delia is here to film a TV commercial for orange juice, having won a car in a competition organised by the manufacturers. To get the car she has to do the ad. Which puts her and her embarrasing rube parents into the alien world of capitalists, advertising agencies, film crews, and all-round commercialism. Will they sink or swim? Mayhem ensues.
Conflict are everywhere. Mum and Dad appear to hate each other. Delia seems to hate them both. She wants to keep the car, while Dad is fixing up a buyer even while she is filming the ad. Another metaphor for changing Romania. Dad needs the money to solve the family's financial problems and invest in a new capitalist enterprise, a guest house.
Andreea Bosneag is superb as the unremittingly unhappy adolescent, tubby, spotty, awkward, unreasonable, tearful. Parents of teenage children will both love and hate her. Yet by the end of the film we admire her strength and determination. Perhaps a third and final social metaphor, as she stands up to the harassment of Mum, Dad, the make-uo lady, the bitchy ad agency woman, the director, the client . . .
FOUR LIONS
A tragedy. Chris Morris is a comedy genius. How did he make this rubbish? How did this script get the money to be made? It is just not funny. In an audience of 20, one man laughed at intervals throughout and one woman laughed several times in the final few minutes. The other 18 of us? Not a titter.
The set up must have looked promising. Morris as the creative behind it. Timely and yet controversial subject matter as four home-grown British Moslems plan a suicide attack on the London Marathon.
But it is just not funny. And there is not enough going on until the final minutes to work as drama. The characters and and their motivations are unbelievable. A rare strength is Riz Ahmed's strong performance as leader Omar, constantly frustrated by the incompetence of his fellow jihadis. But not strong enough to raise this dire production.
Miss it at all costs.
In the heady days before World War 1 Ida and Benito are revolutionaries and lovers. They marry, she has a baby boy - Benitito. During the war they lose contact. The War splits the European working class movement, into Communists, Social Democrats, and Nationalists. The latter develop into Fascists. The rest is history.
Ida bumps into Benito, fast rising in Italian politics, and is horrified to find he has a new wife and more children. Mussolini is equally horrified. Ida and Benitito are a political embarrassment and a threat to his rise and that of his party. They must be got out of the way. Enter Blackshirts, corrupt officials, oppressive psychiatrists and enveloping nuns.
As mother and son are separated what follows is a heart-rending tragedy, but stands as an homage to the endurance of the human spirit. Ida's and her son's respective struggles against an engulfing power which demands they deny reality can be read as a metaphor for Italy, and Europe, under totalitarianism.
Go and see it. Took me a while to get over the fact that the young Mussolni appears to be played by a cross between Groucho Marx and Michael Corleone at his angriest. But it's wonderful.
THE KILLER INSIDE ME, or "The Violent Film" as my friend called it who was not planning to see it. That reflects an unfortunate trend in the reviewing which has emphasised the violence in the film and especially that against women.
But much of this attention has seriously misrepresented the film. It is not in any way misogynistic. 50% of the victims of the central character are male. Equal Opportunities psychopathy if you will. Most of the screentime does not involve violence. And in act is slow and lyrical, with high visual production values. Imagine LA Confidential set amid the Texan desert and filmed by Terrence Malick.
It is precisely this languid feeling which sets up the shocking nature of the violence. Those episodes are, as anyone in Cumbria will tell you, a sudden and brutal interruption into the normality of rural life. IN the lead role Casey Affleck portrays just that. His Deputy Sheriff, mocked for not even carrying a gun, appears hyper normal, in a rather boring, nerdy way. The typical "quite loner" in a "tight-knit community". A quasi-Freudian backstory establishes, as with so many violent men, motivations around the very oppoaite of domineering machismo.
Hence the reviews do not reflect characterised throughout with ceaseless, brutal violence. This is not an action movie. Suddenly and without warning we find ourselves watching what is, indeed, one of the most distressing look-away sequences I have ever seen. This sequence is overwhelmingly responsible for the accusations of gratuitous and misogynistic violence. For unusually, the camera remains relentlessly on the victim's face, in close up, as they are bludgeoned. No cutaways to the killer, or to blood spattering on a wall.
An alternative reading to this sequence can suggest two things. First that we are being forced into the position of the killer. Seeing the victim's face gives us his point of view. That makes us extremely uncomfortable, as we all wish to deny our own potential for aggression and violence. Secondly, and via the suddenness of the violence, we are forced to face up to the reality of domestic violence. Thus we are in that long-running debate about the nature of violence in film. The argument that if we are to have violence in films it ought to be realistic. Otherwise film-makers are accused of dishonesty, even of minimising it.
Hence a dilemma for filmmakers. Omit domestic violence as a subject and they will be accused of ignoring a huge and serious social problem and the most acute manifestation of men's oppression of women. Include it in the script but do not show it on screen, or show it in sanitised form, and they will be
accused of inadequately representing its' full evil.
Darling of British art cinema Michael Winterbottom has taken the third option and pushed the envelope. Extreme domestic violence is hard to face up to. The victim's disintegrating face is equally hard to look at. I initially looked away then forced myself to watch, to honour the honesty and daring of the filmmakers. It was not fun. But then murder is not fun, whereas in thousands of popular movies it is treated as fun or at the least as not a big deal. If you are going to see a film about a killer this year, this is it.
THE HAPPIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD
Second best film out at the moment. A gentle, wry, observation comedy from Romania.
Mum, Dad and teenage daughter Delia are hicks from the sticks on the way to Bucharest. Delia is miserable, hence the irony of the title. Arriving in the big city she exclaims "There are just so many of them - people!"
This clash between rural Romania, expressive of the old days of Communism, and the brash, modern, increasingly Western city culture of the capital lies at the heart of the film.
For Delia is here to film a TV commercial for orange juice, having won a car in a competition organised by the manufacturers. To get the car she has to do the ad. Which puts her and her embarrasing rube parents into the alien world of capitalists, advertising agencies, film crews, and all-round commercialism. Will they sink or swim? Mayhem ensues.
Conflict are everywhere. Mum and Dad appear to hate each other. Delia seems to hate them both. She wants to keep the car, while Dad is fixing up a buyer even while she is filming the ad. Another metaphor for changing Romania. Dad needs the money to solve the family's financial problems and invest in a new capitalist enterprise, a guest house.
Andreea Bosneag is superb as the unremittingly unhappy adolescent, tubby, spotty, awkward, unreasonable, tearful. Parents of teenage children will both love and hate her. Yet by the end of the film we admire her strength and determination. Perhaps a third and final social metaphor, as she stands up to the harassment of Mum, Dad, the make-uo lady, the bitchy ad agency woman, the director, the client . . .
FOUR LIONS
A tragedy. Chris Morris is a comedy genius. How did he make this rubbish? How did this script get the money to be made? It is just not funny. In an audience of 20, one man laughed at intervals throughout and one woman laughed several times in the final few minutes. The other 18 of us? Not a titter.
The set up must have looked promising. Morris as the creative behind it. Timely and yet controversial subject matter as four home-grown British Moslems plan a suicide attack on the London Marathon.
But it is just not funny. And there is not enough going on until the final minutes to work as drama. The characters and and their motivations are unbelievable. A rare strength is Riz Ahmed's strong performance as leader Omar, constantly frustrated by the incompetence of his fellow jihadis. But not strong enough to raise this dire production.
Miss it at all costs.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
David recommends . . . . . . that you go and see THE BAD LIEUTENANT: NEW ORLEANS - PORT OF CALL
This is the best movie currently on UK release. It's Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend meets The Wire, then speeded up, and with gags. This is what a Quentin Tarantino movie could be like if he wasn't so pompous, derivative, and over-indulged. In post-Katrina New Orleans, Nic Cage is a cop hero who goes off the rails via prescription drugs and then too much coke.
Forget Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant. That was all Catholic wallowing in guilt and remorse. This is the Protestant version, fast action, witty one-liners, and redemption. For as our detective hero spirals down into the traditional drug-fuelled personal hell he never loses sight of his core and morally pure objectives. Put away the Bad Guys. Protect your loved ones. Even if he starts hallucinating iguanas on the way.
Forget Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant. That was all Catholic wallowing in guilt and remorse. This is the Protestant version, fast action, witty one-liners, and redemption. For as our detective hero spirals down into the traditional drug-fuelled personal hell he never loses sight of his core and morally pure objectives. Put away the Bad Guys. Protect your loved ones. Even if he starts hallucinating iguanas on the way.
Art movie fans wil be tempted to avoid BL:NO-PoC because it stars Nic Cage, sparkles with street talk, and looks like a would-be blockbuster. Popcorn fans may do the same because it's directed by, gosh, Werner Herzog, usually in the Euro-subtitle category at the video store.
But the whole point of this film is that it proves the fallacy of the rigid split between art house and commercial. Like all socially constructed tribal differences, those two gangs have been popping off at each other like, well, the drug gangs in this film.
But the whole point of this film is that it proves the fallacy of the rigid split between art house and commercial. Like all socially constructed tribal differences, those two gangs have been popping off at each other like, well, the drug gangs in this film.
But as Nic goes loopy we see a fine film which operates in an overlapping filmic space. Who better to direct than Herzog? Famed for portrayals of weird and / or obsessed men: Aguirre - Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo, The Engima of Kaspar Hauser, Nosferatu the Vampyre. BL:NO-PoC is a thoroughly intelligent piece which invites us to reflect on morality, duty, family and the parallels of social and personal breakdown.
Who better to play the eponymous hero than Cage? For whom this film also represents the healing of a his own schizoid career. Since appearing as Nicolas Coppola in wacky High School movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High, he has alternated between zany comedies and rom-coms (Raising Arizona, It Could Happen to You, Honeymoon in Vegas), and would-be Arnie / Bruce / Stallone hard-man action flicks (The Rock, Lord of War, Con Air). With attempts at serious drama in between (Leaving Las Vegas, City of Angels).
So the at first sight unlikely pairing of ultimate Hollywood brat Nic and former New German Cinema wunderkind Werner really works. BL:NO-PoC is fast and sassy and an engaging drama, while at the same time being genuinely funny, on the dark side.
Cage is surrounded by a rich and multi-ethnic cast of character actors whose cops and gangsters could be interchanged, and supported by gorgeous pouting Eva Mendes in the strongest performance of her career, also set free from popcorn action like 2 Fast 2 Furious.
Cage is surrounded by a rich and multi-ethnic cast of character actors whose cops and gangsters could be interchanged, and supported by gorgeous pouting Eva Mendes in the strongest performance of her career, also set free from popcorn action like 2 Fast 2 Furious.
Yes, Hollywood can make a seriously good movie. And above all, BL:NO-PoC shows that the Academy must set up a new Oscar, the award for the Best Performance By A Reptile.
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