Author: BRWC

I feel a quote from the much under-rated TV comedy Mongrels sums up my feelings towards this film.

“It is a shitty movie! I want to take a dump in the sandpit of the director who made this shitty, shitty movie, so that his children play in the sandpit, and catch the roundworm parasite, and go blind!”

The Disco Exorcist is supposed to be a pastiche of grind-house sexploitation films. Actually the makers may have been trying to make a genuine entry into the genre. Perhaps they thought that cinema reached it’s zenith then and instead of trying to bring anything new to the party decided to retreat into the past where things were safer, simpler, joke could be implied through a wink and a flash of boob without the need to create actual jokes. You could shoot on shitty, shitty sets and not bother dressing them up because it added to the cheap aesthetic of it all. Everyone could takes their clothes off several thousand times whether you wanted them to or if they should. I have seen lead actor Michael Reed’s rear-end enough for a thousand life times.

The cast and filmmakers seem to be having fun. In fact it feels like one big in-gag that only they will find funny watching back at 3am when they’re all drunk and can nostalgically reminisce about the great time they had making that ‘funny film about boobs and demons’. The Disco Exorcist is not funny, it isn’t scary and it isn’t in the least bit titillating. In that regard it has succeeded in being like a 70s sexploitation, they weren’t very funny, scary or sexy. But by-gum they were liberating! Or some other gubbins like that. Anyway I’ve already said way too much than this film deserves. Bye.

I don’t like running. It hurts by legs. Makes my chest ache and embarrasses me in public. So with that in mind I sat at home and watched other much faster men run very quickly.

Produced last year for the American TV series 30 for 30 and shown on the BBC earlier this year, 9.79* received a small cinematic release to coincide with the 25th anniversary of its events. Them events involving the Seoul 1988 Olympics which saw American hero Carl Lewis battle Canadian upstart Ben Johnson for gold in the 100 meters. In a massive upset Johnson claimed the medal. Three days later though Johnson was very publicly stripped off the title when he failed a drugs test. Imagine if you will the scandal that befell John Candy in Cool Runnings and you’re half way to realising the shit-storm of controversy at work here.

Director Daniel Gordon scores the impressive feet of assembling all the runners who took part in the race along with trainers. A couple of folk are no longer on this mortal coil so don’t get to have their say. The main person being the doctor who prescribed athletes with performance enhancing drugs. Almost surprisingly Johnson himself turns up, whilst never fully explaining or apologising for his actions. Then again the reasons are obvious and the time for apologies have probably past. He comes across as stoic to the point of boredom. Carl Lewis comes across as much more jovial (read; smug), sat comfortably in the knowledge that in his prime he could trounce anyone who wasn’t using performance enhancers. Plus for me growing up in the late 80s/early 90s it’s always nostalgic to see Linford Christie.

The film tracks the training processes of each of the key athletes, the event itself and the impact the drugs scandal had on the sport. Johnson’s transformation from struggling wannabee to Carl Lewis’ villainous rival is an intriguing proposition and  whilst an interesting subject overall the film is documented with the dryness of a cracker. This is despite the constant uses of bombastic music to try and heighten the tension, much like a US episode of Hell’s Kitchen. Someone dropped something…. BOOOOOOMMMM! There’s also a fantastic epilogue to the proceedings where it reveals that pretty much all of the god-like Olympians where taking performance enhancing drugs at some point which goes to show that if you want to get somewhere faster, cheat. And in case you were wondering the asterix in the title indicates the disputed time. Fascinating is it not?

Getting on with your life sucks.  At least, that’s the impression cinema has given us this past decade.  Gone are the stories of love-at-first site and happily-ever-after; instead replaced with the harsh reality that times have changed and there’s little to look forward to but isolation, disappointment and wasted opportunities.

So it’s refreshing to see Enough Said grace our screens this year.  Nicole Holofcener (Lovely and Amazing) brings us her fifth feature, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Seinfeld) and James Gandolfini (The Sopranos).  Louis-Dreyfus plays Eva, a middle-aged divorcee who meets Albert, artfully performed by Gandolfini, at a party.  We watch them waltz through their budding relationship (toe-stubs and all) as their children mature and fly the nest and Eva enters a tentative friendship with a new client of her’s (she’s a masseuse) whilst spectating on the trials and tribulations of her existing fiends’ marriage (portrayed dynamically by Toni Collette and Ben Falcone).

Enough Said breaks the mould of the dystopian middle-aged future by bringing us on a totally believable, and yet delightfully intimate and humorous journey through Eva’s life at a major junction.  Holofcener has written and created a story that speaks straight to the heart of everyone in the audience, man or woman, young or old.  The story isn’t groundbreaking nor the plot revolutionary, but it’s irrelevant.  Instead, the film is a character driven explorations of what the course of relationships is now and how we second guess ourselves in our culture, told with the charm of a Woody Allen classic.

However, what really makes this film is the beautifully nuanced performances of Gandolfini and Louis-Dreyfuss.  They compliment each other perfectly, the interplay and dialogue utterly truthful and compelling.  You come to love each of them and you smile, laugh, cringe and squirm on cue, and the movie is all the better for it.  It’s reminds you of how much a tragedy it was that this was one of Gandolfini’s last characters, and the world is a darker place for it.  Make sure you don’t miss it, your life will be all the better for seeing this picture.

Movie stars don’t get much more iconic than the original blonde bombshell herself, Marilyn Monroe. Her astonishingly photogenic face and infamous curves have been splashed across prints, paintings and all amount of paraphernalia since her rise to fame in the 1950s.

Her character, equally, has been the subject of numerous documentaries and dramatisations, such as 2011’s My Week with Marilyn, as a slew of writers and directors try to get underneath her flawless skin to the troubled personality within.

Love, Marilyn (2012) is director Liz Garbus’ attempt to shed new light on the Monroe story. As explained in the film’s introduction, personal documents written by Marilyn herself were recently unearthed, giving Garbus the opportunity to let us hear the tale of Marilyn’s life in her own words.

What makes this Marilyn documentary noticeable amongst the masses is – aside from this new material – the big name stars charged with bringing it to life. Uma Thurman, Evan Rachel Wood and Lindsay Lohan, among others, stare back at us as they read Monroe’s scribbles, whilst male stars such as Paul Giamatti or Adrien Brody dramatise the writings of the men who knew her.

It is this feature which is, in my humble opinion, the undoing of this documentary. If anything, rather than adding to the audience’s perception of Monroe’s voice, the actors’ recognisable features distract from it. The real problem, however, lies in the scrappy editing – the actors jump around on badly-edged green screen with shots of Monroe’s writing swimming in the background;  frequent sudden cuts and pans are jarring, taking you further from the story. In the DVD extras, Garbus explains that this dramatisation technique was a risk: an attempt to bring something new to the documentary genre. I’m not sure the risk really paid off, as it feels more like a student soliloquy exercise than a professional production.

Having said that, once you look past the distracting editing, this documentary does offer some interesting insight in to the life and career of one of Hollywood’s biggest icons. Monroe was a fascinating character and Love, Marilyn does draw you in to her complexity: the contrast between her sexy public persona and internal battles and desires. I’m not sure that this documentary adds much to the story for existing fans, but for anyone who knows no more of Monroe than her face on a poster, it will shed a great deal of light on what an intelligent and driven woman she really was.

Out in cinemas today and on DVD on 28 October.