Author: BRWC

Its vampires in modern day society, but don’t worry you wont have to endure the painful acting/story of a Twighlight film this time. Tom Hiddleston (known to most as Loki) plays an underground musician who is reunited with his lover of the past centuries, set against a background of modern day Detroit and Tangiers and with his lovers unruly sister causing what can be assumed all hell to break loose.

The soundtrack provides an excellent, although at times repetitive and somewhat generic backdrop to the film combining lute music (by Jozef Van Wissem) with heavier rock based numbers complete with feedback sound effects by various other artists including White Hills, Yasmine Hamdan and the band SQURL. 

The album although an effective backdrop to the movie only contains a few gems such as the title track and Funnel of Love, with a large majority of the album forming a generic rock sound that can’t be really distinguished one track to the next.

3/5

There are stories about romance, stories about heroes, stories about the fall of empires and stories about the forging of them.  And there are stories about life.  Inside Llewyn Davis is the tale of a young man in 1960s New York, a folk singer struggling to pay the bills surfing from one couch to another each night.  In between trying to get his album picked up, an odyssey to Chicago and returning an escaped cat to its owners, we experience Llewyn’s life and his world.

What the Coen brothers have brought is a film based on strong, first hand source material – a film inspired by the life of Dave Van Ronk.  I can’t say that anything really stood out from the film, no strong scene or stand-apart performance.  Instead, the stellar ensemble cast weave a tapestry of the 60s Greenwich folk scene where we flow with the ebb and tide of Llewyn’s story, feeling what he feels as intimately as if it were written just for us.

If you know of Lost In Translation it’s a film such as that; a story you’ll love or hate.  You can find a deeper meaning in this movie if you choose, or you can be spectator to a week in the life of a folk artist.  What you can’t do, is ignore it.  Once you’ve watched this movie you won’t be able to talk about what happened, but instead about how it made you feel.

Inside Llewyn Davis is released in the UK 24th January 2014.

Despite being released in its native Belgium in 2012, The Broken Circle Breakdown is making the rounds in the run up to the Oscars, where hopes are it will take the prize for Best Foreign Film (and further add to its impressive list of accolades).  The story is of the life Didier and Elise, a couple from Ghent, Belgium, and follows 7 years of their lives through their meeting, falling in love, their daughter, Maybelle, and beyond – all to the integral soundtrack of the couple’s bluegrass band.  We join the non-linear narrative in the hospital, with the whole family as Maybelle is undergoing chemotherapy for cancer.

The Broken Circle Breakdown doesn’t set out to create a groundbreaking original story or visual experience.  Instead, the director (Felix Van Groeningen) weaves a bittersweet story of a young couple, their loves and their trials through their life.  At no point will you feel like you’ve seen something truly unique, but at the same time the way its told with its narrative style and beautifully nuanced performances will carry you along this most personal of tales.  The film dances a duet between using the bluegrass music as soundtrack, but also as a thread for you to follow; it feels like a visual telling of a classic bluegrass song.  Maybe that’s why it works so well.

There are aspects that are troubled, from Didier’s anti-religious spell and the contextualisation of the September 11th attacks on the TV, but they are logical developments in the story and characters, even if they don’t flow as freely into the rhythm as they should.  I truly hope this film picks up the awards it is due.  It is beautifully written and acted tale that will truly speak to your heart.  You’ll experience moments that will bring a gentle smile to your face, that’ll set your heart racing, and it’ll break your heart.  You need to see this movie.

In the past decade or so we’ve been saturated by the horror genre – be it the new dynasties of Saw and Paranormal Activity or resurgence of the zombie-craze.  It’s not surprising that more and more films are struggling to find their place in this ever more crowded fraternity by bending, or breaking,

And so we find ourselves sat around the dinner table with our upper-middle class, dysfunctional family attempting to enjoy our parents’ anniversary when crossbow bolts start flying through the air and the Chad Valley Farm Playset invade your home with machetes.    And so begins what seems to be the standard formula of “who’s next” with the added bonus of how.  That is until the director (Wingard) inverts the equation and we’re treated to a new take on the formula.

Don’t get me wrong, this is no masterpiece.  Actually, it’s quite the opposite.  But the film sets out to entertain, and if you stick with it through the chaff you’ll be treated to sweet wheat of what evolves into an 18 certificate edition of Home Alone with a heroine that can only be described as Xena after a heavy dose of meow meow.