Best known for his work on Skins and Killing Bono, Ben Bond’s directorial debut The Drifters (positively being referred to as a post-Brexit love story in the media) mixes British hipster — drama with big impact issues. With nods to I’m Gonna Explode, True Romance and Natural Born Killers, this quirky love story starts strong, but just loses the race at the end.
Our two leads, Fanny and Koffee (brilliantly played by the talented Lucie Bordeau and Jonathan Ajayi) are English students studying in London. One is a French waitress, the other an African migrant – both yearning for their respective freedoms. The two develop a bond and, through a crime related incident through Koffee, they take a trip to the English coast to find freedom and fun at the beach.
The on-screen couple are, for the most part, a delight to watch and their love story is well scripted and kooky. The stylised nature of the film often works, using their learning of English as a side-narrative with large letters on screen. Or, using freeze frame, colour change and speed variation to recreate a Tarantino-esque tone (a reflection of Fanny’s obsession to be Mia from Pulp Fiction and addition for Taratino in Hollywood).
However, the build up for the film is somewhat rendered flat by the end, due to a few of the character arcs turning in a different direction, making the love story almost a pointless affair all together. But perhaps I’m missing the point of the film, in which case, the ending may make complete sense to you.
Beautifully shot, well acted and a fantastic tourism advert for the Great Britain, with enough odd balls moment to appease us cinephiles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOKZGNB-SzU
THE DRIFTERS is released in virtual cinemas from 2 April and on demand 5 April 2021 www.thedriftersmovie.com
Spring Valley is a documentary about the ethics of using SRO’s (School Resource Officers) in American schools, particularly focussing on one incident in Spring Valley High School in South Carolina in 2015.
An incident where a black teenage girl was forcefully removed from her seat and thrown to the ground simply for refusing to leave the class. The documentary talks to people from all sides, including Shakara, the girl who was assaulted and Officer Ben Fields who assaulted her.
Talking to Officer Ben Fields, at first it may seem like the documentary is siding with him to tell his story and set the record straight. However, the more he talks the more it seems that his refusal to take blame and accept responsibility may be a small part of a wider issue. Not only an issue among the police, but among white America.
In fact, the fact that Officer Fields had even agreed to be a part of the documentary shows a certain kind of arrogance as he constantly maintains that he did no wrong, despite the evidence of the contrary. Through discussions with Officer Fields and Black Lives Matter activists, there’s an attempt to try and show him what he did was wrong and that he should accept responsibility and this comes across well.
It not only shows how Officer Fields feels about what he thinks is right, but it also shows how other white people may completely ignorant of institutional racism as it’s just not been questioned in such an open way as it has been recently.
Spring Valley also talks about the history of South Carolina, from the slave trade and the Confederate flag which a lot of people still hold onto fiercely, despite its connotations with racism. It shows that society may have instilled racism into the blood of certain white Americans and that it can be very hard to change their minds. Especially when some consider they’ve done no wrong. Spring Valley shows that even in a post-Trump era, America still has a long way to go to reverse the damage caused by institutional racism.
Verdu, DC, Snyder: Weekly Round Up – It’s not unusual for these weekly roundups of movies news to transform into something not unlike a Disney/Marvel press release, such is the volume of news that comes out of the superhero focused studio. But this week the studio with the most news is in fact their main rivals, Warner Bros. and DC.
For those of you who don’t know, somehow, with the advent of the superhero movie and then the extended universe as formed and mainstreamed by Marvel, the other big superhero comic book producers, DC, were left in the dust and struggling to catch up. While Christopher Nolan finished off his critically and commercially acclaimed Dark Knight trilogy, the filmmakers turned their attention to Superman, arguably the world’s most iconic superhero, with the standalone adventure Man of Steel.
Now, that movie, starring Henry Cavill, was not all that poorly received in the grand scheme of things, but what followed was a mess of epic proportions. Whatever side of the fence you sit on when it comes to the dueling studios, it was clear that DC’s attempts to kick start their own Cinematic Universe simply was not working, and everything wound up coming to a head with the release of the now infamous Justice League.
As the story goes, Zack DC, Snyder was forced to step down (whether that be for tragic personal issues or a studio decision remains to be fully seen) and his version of the movie was chopped up, recut, and had new footage inserted by the studio’s new choice for director, Joss Whedon. The film was a mess, and after one of the biggest and most successful fan campaigns of recent memory, Warners agreed to allow Snyder to restore his version of the film, and thus the Snyder Cut was born.
Released this week, the Snyder Cut has been met with relative praise. There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s an improvement. It may be bloated, and it may struggle with the usual modern blockbuster issues of mistaking set-up for the sequel as story for the current movie, but there’s no denying it’s a more coherent, prettier, better made movie.
Perhaps inevitably the fans have already begun demanding the sequel that would be – something the film goes out of its way to play up to, given the last thirty minutes or so is essentially a commercial for it – but that looks incredibly unlikely now, especially given this week’s first piece of news. When asked about the likelihood of seeing the proposed two sequels to Snyder’s Justice League, the director responded with, “Warner Bros. haven’t really expressed any interest in making more movies with me, and that’s 100% fine. I understand”.
Sadly, then, depending on who you ask at least, it will seem that the Snyder Cut will be the last time Snyder has any active involvement in the DC Cinematic Universe, but it is worth noting that both The Flash, starring Ezra Miller and featuring Ben Affleck as Batman, and Wonder Woman 3 remain in development at this time.
Verdu, who some may recognize from Gullmero del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, is joining a pretty impressive ensemble that, alongside Ezra Miller, includes both Ben Affleck and Michael Keaton as Batman, Kiersey Clemons as Iris West, and Sasha Calle as Batgirl. The film is going to be directed by Andy Muschietti, who is perhaps best known as the man behind both the recent IT movies.
Of course, Joss Whedon was supposedly working on a Batgirl movie prior to his stepping down from the project, but it would seem that Warners are keen to keep this prospect alive and are intending to move forward with a Batgirl movie anyway (probably a good thing… but let’s not get into that). Whether or not this film will feature Sasha Calle remains to be seen, but a solo Batgirl big screen outing is quite an exciting prospect nonetheless.
*Billy Crudup is also in the theatrical cut of Justice League not just Snyder’s cut.
You know that sense of just not feeling quite right? People around you start noticing you are a bit off. Friends and family members start offering advice, recommend professionals; and before you know it, you have a regime of “experts” trying to diagnose and pin down the cause of your distress. This is the zone inhabited by director Antoneta Kastrati’s Zana. Lume (exceptionally played by Adriana Matoshi) is a woman upon which a number of pressures fall—gender expectations, family expectations, and Kosovan history.
Zana can easily be compared to Rosemary’s Baby in terms of its psycho/body horror tropes involving childbirth; and sure, childbirth is a major theme in Zana. There is, however, an additional thematic layer to Zana—the horrors of a society and its history as reflected upon an individual. One is reminded of Blue Velvet in this regard. Blue Velvet used a severed ear as a device for exploring the psychopathologies of American suburbanites in the Regan 80s. Zana uses Lume’s discovery of a severed cow head as the starting point for an exploration into the massacres of civilians committed in Kosovo in the 90s.
The gentle pastoral setting—beautifully captured by Kastrati—belies the internal angst felt by Lume. Her meddling mother-in-law (Fatmire Sahiti) and husband (Astrit Kabashi) pressure her to produce a child for them. Lume is passed along like a baton from a gynecologist that prescribes fertility medications, to a healer that prescribes an animal sacrifice, to a televangelist that confidently declares that Lume is possessed by a shapeshifting spirit. In addition to this pressure to get pregnant, Lume’s mother-in-law invites other women to the house as potential second wives for her son. All this is enough to make anyone lose their minds.
Lume is a vector for the pressures faced by women in their societies and during times of war. Her nightmares and understandable misgivings about getting pregnant are attributed to her diagnosis—a spirit possessing her.
Kastrati does a great job of making objects metaphors for the themes explored in Zana. Kastrati repeatedly contrasts life with death. The constant talk of fertility and birthing new life are concretized in the form of chicken eggs. As quickly as we see chicken eggs, we see a bullet casing in the soil. It is the old Freudian combination of drives, life and death, Eros and Thanatos. Kastrati is signaling that death and horror are always lurking in the background, in Kosovo’s history, they are underneath it all, buried in the soil, they are constants beyond life.
Zana does what all great art does: it attempts to put into artistic language the horrific, the grotesque, that historical reality that seemingly cannot be made aesthetic, but must be, so that we can begin to comprehend it. I insist that you try and seek out Zana. It must be experienced as a work of art, and as a potential starting point for viewers to investigate Kosovo’s history within the larger Balkan Civil War of the 90s.
There are several references in Zana to technology—mobile phones, YouTube, and video recordings. A recording of a wedding plays a pivotal role in the plot. The major point to remember; however, is that behind technology’s contribution to efficiency, to escapism, there are other realities—history’s brutality and a death drive embedded into our psyches. It would make anyone think twice about bringing a new life into this world.
Women Is Losers: SXSW Review – Celina (Lorenza Izzo) is a schoolgirl living in a Hispanic community in the Sixties. She’s like every other girl her age and spends her time with family and friends, living a simple and quiet life among the people she loves. Then Celina meets Mateo (Bryan Craig) and they fall in love and soon Celina finds out that she’s pregnant.
As the issues surrounding abortion were so much different than they are today then Celina is forced to keep her baby, and her story plays out through love, loss. Although this eventually leads to success as she navigates a man’s world in the Sixties.
Inspired by many other stories of women who have gone through the same experiences and the Janice Joplin song of the same name, Women is Losers talks about one such woman who defied the odds and fought for her independence.
A feel-good comedy drama written and directed by Lissette Feliciano, the story follows Celina from her teenage years right up to the point where she feels safe and secure in her future.
Right from the start, Women is Losers lays it all out on the table and sets the tone for the rest of the film. Breaking the fourth wall and identifying the cliches that often happen in films such as this, Women is Losers tells its audience just what to expect and it does it all with a knowing wink to the audience.
However, this fourth wall breaking is a little inconsistent and whereas there are times where it’s very funny, there are times that showing rather than telling would have helped. This is also the source of much of the comedy and it can take the audience by surprise a little, there are times where the audience may come to expect it – even in the more dramatic scenes.
Izzo gives a great performance and despite the budget as mentioned at the beginning of the film, she sells her character’s progression as time passes. However, for all its self-referential knowledge, the script for Women is Losers isn’t as self-aware as it likes to this it is.
