By Orla Smith.

What is it like to be Terrence Malick? Along with ‘why did they make Cars 3 before The Incredibles 2?’, ‘how is a two and a half hour Transformers movie possible?’ and ‘what is Collateral Beauty‘, this is one of cinema’s unanswerable questions. The legendary auteur probably lives in some hermit’s cabin on a mountain in his spare time, and he refuses to give interviews, yet his brain is an object of fascination. How it works is any of our guess.

If the exact same film were under the name of any other director, I might be willing to call Song to Song pretentious. But with Malick… a pretension would be a falsehood, and I can’t shake the feeling that this is just how he sees the world.

Does Terrence Malick experience time in a different way to the rest of us mere mortals? Does the wispy voice of some Hollywood A-lister whisper sweet nothings into his ear 24 hours a day? Does he wander through fields of wheat at magic hour? Like, all the time?

Song to Song wavers languidly between beauty and nonsense, and its ludicrously unnecessary two hour runtime will convince any audience member who starts off willing to give the film a chance to lean towards the latter. I would be giving you a brief introduction to the plot at this point, but there isn’t one.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL0FYUpXuoo

Plotlessness isn’t Malick’s problem though. It’s focus – he used to have it, but in his recent, prolific years, he’s become distracted. Song to Song begins with Rooney Mara’s Faye, and as a character study of her, it holds some genuinely brilliant moments that manage to graze something resembling insight.

It’s never clear exactly what she does, but it’s something to do with music, or at least walking around near to where music is happening. With its attention on Mara’s face and the ways in which she is withdrawn, the first quarter of Song to Song is promising.

There’s a good movie in here somewhere, one that’s at least 30 minutes shorter, and one that picks its main character and sticks with her. However, everything tumbles down when Malick decides that one is not enough. As BV, Ryan Gosling fits surprisingly well into the Malickverse, but the film should not be as interested in him as it is.

The same goes for Michael Fassbender’s Cook and the diner waitress he picks up, played by Natalie Portman. Their tendrils are explored beyond the ways in which they relate to Faye, leading to brief encounters with some other famous actors that undoubtedly filmed a lot more than we were allowed to see. Blink and you’ll miss Cate Blanchett and Holly Hunter, but at least they’re in the movie. Original promotional images from back when the film was called Weightless seemed to imply that stars such as Christian Bale and Haley Bennett would lead the film, but in the finished product they’re nowhere to be found.

Malick’s decision to expand his horizons to include a large ensemble of characters exposes another fatal flaw: his view of women is worrying, with each new female character falling into an archetype of the vulnerable innocent who needs to be shown the way by a man.

Cate Blanchett’s appearance is particularly startling – to give an actress with such authoritorial presence a role this lacking in agency should be a crime.

They’re all weak at the knees in the presence of the men in the film, and the conclusion that Malick seems to draw on Faye and BV’s relationship is blindly conceived. It’s a beautiful film (which is no surprise given Emmanuel Lubezki’s involvement), but there are too few moments when it’s able to harness those images to create one of those moments of pure cinema that Malick is always striving for.

In a film set in and around the Austin music scene, his choice of music is patchy, but there are a few instances of classical pieces that work wonders. Unfortunately, these flashes of perfect synthesis are too few and far between to count. It’s a shame that these moments that I used to admire him for are now so infrequent that they feel like accidents.

Song to Song will be released in select UK cinemas on 7th July

By Orla Smith.

While at Cannes the Netflix logo that precedes Okja was met with boos, it’s difficult to imagine that this bizarre, absurdist super-pig film would be with us at all without the multi-billion dollar company. It’s a shame that a film of this scale, with this amount of rambunctious energy, will be seen mostly on a small screen, but at least we have the film in the first place – and in the form that its director intended.

That director, acclaimed South Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho, had an experience with the Weinstein company while making his English language debut Snowpiercer, that was proof enough that Netflix might be the only place where his unapologetically wild stylings would be allowed final cut. The Netflix model is far from perfect, but we should be grateful that we now have this: Okja, a blockbuster-sized adventure that fluctuates between absurdist comedy and Holocaust drama with gleeful abandon and haunting soul.

13 year old Ahn Seo-Hyun is note perfect as Mija, an orphan living in the lonely mountains of South Korea with her grandfather (Byun Hee-Bong). Her days pass happily alongside a creature named Okja, a sort of pig-hippo creature with elephantine ears, apparently inspired by a manatee that Bong once saw, whose air of sadness lingered in his mind.

The film’s action takes place in an alternate present, save for a 2001-set prologue featuring Tilda Swinton’s Lucy Mirando performing a well-rehearsed, flashy corporate speech to a bunch of suited business executives. Her cheery appearance, fit with braces and pastels, attempts to convince innocence, although her role in the film as Lucy represents one of capitalisms many faces.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjCebKn4iic

She tells of the super-pigs she has bred and sent to various farms around the world. Okja is one of them and ten years on, having grown up alongside Mija, she is ready to be sent back to New York as the winner of Lucy Mirando’s super-pig competition (essentially a pubic front) before being slaughtered and sold in supermarkets across the country and the planet.

Mija and Okja’s unbreakable bond, as well as the little girl’s youthful resolve, leads her to fearlessly travel into Seoul in order to steal back her best friend from captivity, leading to one of the most kinetic and flat out crazy chase sequences cinema has ever seen. Corporate suits, hired guns, a group of aggressively non-violent animal rights activists, a young girl and her best pig friend all collide in a frenzy of imagination, colour and flying souvenirs.

It’s astounding how many characters Okja manages to cram into its two hours, and even more astounding that each pops with such vibrancy.

Leading that animal rights group – the ALF (Animal Liberation Front) – is Paul Dano’s Jay, a calm and kind animal lover with a hidden ferocity that, when it shows, is somehow both frightening and hilarious.

Along with him comes Red (Lily Collins), Silver (Devon Bostick) and Blond (Daniel Henshall) – all named for their hair – and K (Steven Yeun), who acts as a Korean translator for Mija when the group helps her out and explains their plan to save Okja and her fellow super-pigs from the Mirando Corporation.

I’m almost impressed that I’ve managed to write so much about the film without mentioning its wild card: Jake Gyllenhaal is Dr. Johnny Wilcox, a zoologist / TV personality / drunk / psychopath / general crazy person. His first appearance is extremely alarming, and I spent quite a while trying to figure out whether his acting qualifies as good before I decided that I didn’t care. It’s this year’s Eddie Redmayne in Jupiter Ascending, only somehow more over the top. It is a glorious thing to behold.

It’s not that Okja is a perfect film, but like an uncontrolled explosion, it’s advisable to simply gaze at it in awe rather than attempting any kind of critical analysis.

The film never achieves anything in its second half (which moves from Korea to the US) on the energy level of the chase at its centre, but it’s hard to see that as unintentional when noting the tone of the finale, which is less of a final flourish than an exhalation of bated breath.

There are points towards the film’s close when you might feel like you’re watching a Lars Von Trier film, so genuinely harrowing is Mija’s discovery of the process of animal slaughter and meat processing. If you’re on the verge of vegetarianism, watching Okja will make that decision a lot easier. But Bong Joon-ho himself is not a vegetarian, and neither is Mija. He allows you to take from the film what you will – and that’s a whole buffet of choices.

Okja is bursting at the seams with stuff, and it may have collapsed completely if it wasn’t orchestrated by such a master conductor. It was undoubtedly filmed for an explosive night out at the cinema, but wherever you watch Okja, its sense of fun, heart and pure audacity will burst through. It may not be shown in a movie theatre, but I dare you to call this anything less than pure cinema.

Okja will be available on Netflix and in select theatres on 28th June

By Orla Smith.

Particularly in this golden age of television, when it would be unfair to assume a TV show may have less cinematic value than any given film, the boundaries between mediums are steadily becoming more and more blurred. What even is a film?

Earlier this year, the Oscars decided that an eight hour televised documentary could count, but even that comes a lot closer to the definition of ‘film’ than Paris Can Wait, which barely registers as anything at all, let alone a piece of cinema. There are images on screen, with sound to accompany them, and it’s all tossed together to comprise a rough feature length, but that’s about as far as it goes.

But who could blame Eleanor Coppola? Being the wife of Francis Ford, mother of Sofia and relative to so many other cinematic icons (as well as having directed the legendary Apocalypse Now documentary Hearts of Darkness), she has the agency to make whatever film she wants, and it seems that this time, what she wanted was to bring a camera and mic along on her vacation with Diane Lane and some French dude (aka Arnaud Viard). You can sense the crew waiting just out of frame to join in during all of the film’s countless scenes of fine dining.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTrT6QSqnGs

I don’t imagine that anybody who worked on Paris Can Wait much cared whether or not anyone would end up watching it. It’s slight enough that the idea could have been conceived, written, shot and edited within the span of about a month.

Structureless and aimless to a fault, we follow Anne as she travels to Paris with the rich, charming and very French friend of her film director husband (Alec Baldwin, there and gone in a minute). It is only factual to state that nothing happens in the film that follows, either textually, subtextually, romantically or emotionally. All that there is to witness is a lot of food consumption and just generally being very, very rich. And when I say very, I mean very.

Apart from a brief and bizarre attempt to add tragedy to Anne’s past (which is never subsequently revisited or used to add context to her actions), the film aims for nothing higher than utter vapidity. It’s almost commendable.

There isn’t an ounce of skill or effort to behold in Paris Can Wait, but everyone who worked on it seems to have made peace with that.

It hasn’t anything to offer – not humour, drama, character or fun – but they don’t seem to care. There are no ill intentions here, an so it’s impossible to hate this film which is thinner than the finest tissue paper. I can’t get mad that it exists, because I’m having a hard time convincing myself that it does.

Yes, factually, I sat down in a cinema for 90 minutes and watched Paris Can Wait.

There are witnesses to prove it. I even have a ticket as physical evidence. But my brain refuses to register it as anything but a dream, a wisp lost into the ether. After I finish writing this final line, it shall never cross my mind again.

By Orla Smith.

Not to be dramatic, but Modern Life is Rubbish is one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. Not that I seek out bad films like someone with a death wish, but I’ve done my time – I saw Grace of Monaco, Assassin’s Creed and Dracula Untold. I even saw The Do-Over (feel free to thank me for my service), but this, quite possibly, tops them all.

Making its world premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival, lead actor Josh Whitehouse told us that he hoped we enjoyed watching it as much as he enjoyed making it. I’m struggling to work out if that was a genuine sentiment or a coded cry for help, but I would fear for the life of anyone who had the same experience on set as I had in that theatre.

Set in London over the course of a poorly defined ten years, the film flashes backwards and forwards through the relationship between Liam and Natalie, a twenty-something couple, both of whom are missing that one key ingredient – a personality.

Although, to be fair, there are a few descriptors I could apply to Liam, none of which would be fit to repeat in polite company. I’ll say this about him – he loves his music, and god help you if you own an iPod. He tends to his extensive collection of physical media with the preciousness of an overprotective parent. One might almost think that the whole film was just an excuse for director Daniel Jerome Gill to show off his record collection.

As Natalie, Freya Mavor is less of an actress than a victim. The couple’s meet-cute in a record store sees Liam lecturing Natalie on why she shouldn’t buy Blur’s Greatest Hits (it’s cheating, apparently), in an epic feat of terrible writing that seems to directly challenge its audience: if you thought that Ryan Gosling mansplained jazz, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Natalie shuts him down a few times, and the film seems to think that’s enough – yet she still falls for him, despite his complete lack of redeeming qualities (except looking a bit like if Harry Styles tried to grow facial hair, if you consider that a positive). He acts awfully to her throughout, to the point that the film would work better as a dark drama exploring one woman’s crushingly low sense of self worth.

But Modern Life is Rubbish sees itself as a cute rom-com, peppered with awful indie rock and quirky “humour”.

I watched most of from behind my fingers, needing that barrier as a shield against the full force of the horror playing out onscreen.

Some films are bad because they’re mind-numbingly dull – see Guy Ritchie’s recent King Arthur – but then there are those bad films that are just so baffling that they have to be seen to be believed.

It’s not that I’d recommend Modern Life is Rubbish – I lost enough of my self respect actually watching the thing – but it’s something to be gawked at. Almost like a parody of a man who can’t write women, it’s also a handy guide of avoidance, containing almost every single cliché that we’re always chastising filmmakers away from.

It’s not a particularly long film, numerically speaking, but mentally it drags on into an endless abyss of dark despair. By the end, I felt like Dr. Dave Bowman watching the universe unfold before him at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, only this time the stream of garish flashing lights were coming from one of Liam’s concerts – in which he plays his “music” (which is brilliant, apparently) – instead of the infinity of space and time. Nevertheless, the immensity of both experiences are pretty much the same. Modern Life is Rubbish is titanically terrible, with the deal being sealed when it dares to end in the way that it does. It’s… rubbish.