Author: BRWC

By Fergus Henderson. It is hard to say what Oliver Cane’s feature debut Eyes and Prize is actually about. Its story is kept entirely within the walls of an anonymous flat. Four contestants are locked inside it. They are watched from all angles by CCTV cameras, and believe themselves to be in a reality show competition. It soon becomes apparent that they have been fooled, and are now imprisoned by a mysterious figure. We and their sinister overseer watch as they descend into panic and terror.

It would be easy to imagine the morality tale Cane could have wrung out of such a premise. Four people chasing fame and exposure, willing to sacrifice privacy and dignity in order to achieve it. This might have washed a few decades earlier, when angry filmmakers made self-important value judgements on things they didn’t understand. Times have changed.

We are all aware of reality shows, and no matter how lurid and cruel they might still be, they are generally highly monitored affairs with mental health experts on set. Television has evolved a system of ethics around an entertainment that was once considered scandalous. The characters in Eyes and Prize are aware of this. Cane is aware of this.

Tellingly it is the oldest contestant Ron (played with jocular confidence by Gerard McDermott) who has the most faith in the glaringly absent social contract of their captivity. Fresh faced Marcus (Jackson Bews) and Abbi (Alanna Flynn) are quicker to realise the gravity of their situation.

Eyes and Prize unfolds as more of a formally experimental horror film than a social commentary. The film alternately tells its story in extreme long takes and rapid, aggressive edits. This bold, odd stylistic approach clues us in to the film’s more abstract ambitions. It is here that things become unclear.

At its heart, this is a violently ugly, ghoulish film, about humanity reduced to fear and helplessness. It is the kind of dispiriting experience that makes you exclaim in dismay as it ramps up its cruelty. The cast perform the awkwardly forced familiarity of reality show contestants with canny precision, balancing self-deception with mounting paranoia. Brief hints as to their motivations and general humanity surface in these moments. But beyond this well-rehearsed ensemble dynamic, what is the film saying?

There are shades of the archly clinical camera work of Antonio Campos’ Afterschool. Cane, however, keeps us much closer to the characters. The camera is never surrogate for the viewer. We are never implicated in this cruel voyeurism. 

Occasionally we dive into computer screens as the contestant’s social media is hacked by their captor. Is Cane suggesting that our lives have been rendered ephemeral and mutable thanks to our screentime? Or that depravity springs from our entertainment? Certainly the cruelty of reality TV allows them to plausibly deny their situation for longer than it should. Cane seems to hint at these ideas, but instead of going deeper he traps us within the confines of an ambient horror film in which feral, traumatised people travel towards certain doom.

Eyes and Prize frames its characters as desperate figures that have been dropped into a void in which they must reckon with themselves. And yet they have every reason to be terrified. Their only crime was believing the website that advertised the ‘show’. So the film does not seem to truly cast judgement on these poor people, but as it reaches its climax it becomes so punishing that it starts to feel like a Hostel film as hallucinated by Pasolini or Bunuel. It also never reveals the motives of its villain, a frustrating decision that reinforces a more abstract reading.

Oliver Cane and his admirably brave cast have made a film that tells its story in a totally unique way, full of left-field decisions that hit hard. It reveals itself to be a horror film of singular vision, and a truly dark one at that. There really aren’t many filmmakers out there that make the weird choices that Cane does. If he can focus himself on a clearer end-goal next time around I believe he will produce a truly great film.

By J Simpson.

You’re either going to love Softness Of Bodies or you’re going to hate it. Some reviewers call it “a frustrating watch,” due to the main character’s “entitlement and narcissism.” Others liken it to “a really bad wreck that you just have to see as you pass by it,” lamenting the character’s lack of development,” asking the question, “Is a movie about a self-destructive character something I should watch?”

In this case, the answer is: yes. If you can handle kind-of aimless indie drama about lost youth in Berlin and their weirdly scrabbling, scribbling lives that is. 

Softness Of Bodies mostly orbits Charlotte Parks, “Charlie,” an American poet living in Berlin, scratching out an existence while she aspires to a poetry grant, played liked an unlit firecracker by the delightfully droll Dasha Nekrasova. She rides a bicycle, smokes hand-rolled cigarettes, is a barista. She’s also a kleptomaniac, is having an affair, and is probably a narcissus. 

Charlie spends her days pilfering high-end boutiques, upgrading her all-too-chic wardrobe. Charlie steals everything, though. This begins to have ramifications immediately. 

She gets busted shoplifting and suddenly has to raise 800 euro. She also finds out she’s up for a prestigious poetry grant and that she’s competing against her poetic rival, Sylvie (Nadine DuBois).We begin to meet the network of people surrounding Charlie at this point, as well. Her gay best friend roommate Remo (Johannes Frick) and his search for love. Her boyfriend Franz (Moritz Vierboom), who happens to be married. Charlie’s photographer ex-boyfriend Oliver (Morgan Krantz) shows up from L.A., complicating matters further. 

Things begin to topple fairly quickly, although Charlie’s already been starting to unravel, at this point. Not that you’d ever know it. Nekrasova’s Charlie is cool as a glass of Grey Goose on ice; as unreadable as a November lake. She appears untroubled, while trouble spirals all around her. 

Charlie steals a pair of shoes from Franz’s house, ultimately tipping off his wife, Marianne (Lena Reinhold) to their affair. Oliver’s seducing Charlie’s contemporaries, meanwhile, getting close to her life. Franz leaves his wife on a whim, moving into Charlie’s flat unannounced. All the while, Charlie’s still trying to raise the money to pay her court fee and write her grant poem. She’s working her barista job and hosting poetry readings at night. 

Outside her apartment, Marianne punches Charlie in the face, and the final dominos begin to fall. 

Softness Of Bodies final third explodes, the dry powder keg tension of all the proceeding ugliness and messiness. And yet, still, you never see it coming. And it’s not the full point of the film, anyway. 

Joel Blady’s poetic, cinematic, steamy, sleazy, tawdry, wonderful debut ends with Charlie reading her poem to the grant board, an original composition of Dasha Nekrasova’s, who supplied all the film’s poetry. It reads like a laundry list of all the happy things that money can buy – lilacs and silks and cuts of red, marbled meat. It reads like a litany of desire, and ends with a shrug. 

Other reviewers have talked about how Softness Of Bodies revolves around Charlie, and it does, but not entirely. She is a poet, a wordsmith, a psychic dowser, giving voice to the unspoken cravings and desires of what unfolds around her. The question was asked “should we watch films about self-destructive characters?” and the answer is “Do self-destructive characters exist?” 

An earlier reviewer referred to Softness Of Bodies’ “millennial navel-gazing.” They’re not wrong. But while Lena Dunham once called herself, annoying, “the voice of a generation,” perhaps, then, this film could be the zen nihilistic cosmic Tumblr epiphany that shakes you to your core at 3 a.m.

The devils are in the details with Softness Of Bodies. There’s fine performances all around, with props once again to Dasha Nekrasova. She’s the embodiment of slack, detached self-obsessed creation. She moves like an arrow through life, like her trusted bike, with which “she shares a spiritual connection.” And while Charlie may be expressing and emoting for the people, places, and things, this is her story, at the end of the day. It’s a fascinating window into a not-exactly-likeable character, that is still rivetingly watchable. 

The cinematography is wonderful, as well, casting Berlin in a faded nocturnal glow, giving a timeless, worn quality to what unfolds. Stylish, tense, incredibly well-acted, exquisitely produced, Softness Of Bodies is a triumph and a poetic evocation of a lost generation. 

By Siobhan Eardley.

I could happily never watch another MCU film after Endgame because it perfectly concluded the journey we have all been part of for the past eleven years. Endgame is a truly special film, it is the culmination of years of hard work, which was all pieced together with such care and attention, I couldn’t help but adore it.

I will say this, Endgame isn’t anything special in terms of film making, but when have we ever expected that of a Marvel film, really? What Endgame’s succeeds at is that it shows off how much thought, time and care has been put into the MCU over the years, and it takes you on a wonderful journey that makes you reflect on what has been achieved in this time.

The story was great, I can’t go into much detail about it at all, because I don’t want to risk ruining anything for you guys, but I really think they did a great job at following on from the devastating ending of Infinity War Pt.1. The opening scene was perhaps one of the most impactful scenes of the MCU so far. It set the dark and foreboding tone for the rest of the film, truly showing what was at stake for the remaining Avengers.

Even though there were a lot of darker moments throughout Endgame, there were a lot of injections of humour, that really broke the tension, but never felt crow-barred in, they were all natural, and provided some of the funniest moments we have seen in an Avengers film so far.

Endgame also showed off some of the best performances we have seen from the cast so far, especially from Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner, who both were given so much more depth in this movie. Something that I think a lot of us have been hoping for over the years.

The dynamic between the remaining cast was also very well handled, I think one of the issues with Infinity War was how overcrowded it was, and although I think it was managed well, Endgame felt like a well-needed rest from the chaos, and it enabled some deeper exploration into certain characters.

Overall, Endgame was a very satisfying and extremely emotional end to an epic saga. It is truly the best we could have hoped for and it did not disappoint and although there were a few questionable moments, they were outshone by everything else. Like I said at the beginning, I would be content if Marvel left it at that, however, there is a part of me that can’t wait to see where they take the universe next!