Make Up is a realist British drama with an aberrant psychological edge. It brings to mind The War Zone with its isolation and atmosphere, but Clare Oakley’s debut is a more inward experience, placing us in the protagonist’s headspace to feel her suspicions and confused paranoia.
The premise is simple. Eighteen-year-old Ruth (Molly Windsor) moves down to Cornwall to live in an off-season caravan park with her boyfriend Tom (Joseph Quinn), sharing various odd jobs. Within a day of her arrival, she finds traces of another woman – lipstick on a mirror, stray hairs on Tom’s clothing – that sends her into paranoia. This jealousy, however, morphs into something much deeper and sensual.
Ruth’s experience is more circumstance and environment than plot and dialogue. She’s young, unsure of herself and stuck in a bleak, windswept stretch of the Cornish coast, away from her parents for the first time in her life. She wanders from scene to scene, awkward and withdrawn despite the three years she’s been with her boyfriend. Ruth’s introversion requires a performer to act with their eyes and facial expressions, yet while Windsor is generally natural and authentic, she can also be overly blank.
Her counterpart is Jade (Stefanie Martini), a confident twenty-something who’s unconcerned about others’ perception of her. We see Ruth open up in Jade’s company, basking in the warm light of her bohemian living room. These moments best reveal Oakley’s tactile sensibilities, which are cinematically framed by Nick Cooke’s wide, arresting camerawork.
The psychodramatic trappings may misrepresent the film for some, because what Make Up amounts to is a quiet coming of age tale with a heart of social realism under all the menace and pathetic fallacy. It is a minor yet accomplished debut feature from Clare Oakley.
When we think of American fashion week you might think of Ralph Lauren, Vera Wang or Tommy Hilfiger. Or, like me, you might think of no one and potentially have to apologise to fans of fashion that read this review and see my complete ineptitude on the topic.
However, even the more fashion conscious audiences would be forgiven for not immediately thinking of Ruth Finley. Calendar Girl is a documentary here to SET THAT STRAIGHT.
Filmed over five years, Calendar Girl tells us of the rise, and quiet end of the ‘Fashion Calendar’, a fortnightly publication that outlines every fashion show in New York, where, when and by whom. Now that might not sound revolutionary in its own right, but Calendar Girl shows us that this is a truly unique event.
It’s also driven by kindness, a willingness to give new designers a chance without consideration of profit and a powerful and independent woman who in the 1940s was driven to run her own hugely influential business.
Calendar Girls takes us through Ruth’s life story and the origins of the publication Fashion Weekly whilst simultaneously recording the last years of Fashion Weekly with Ruth at the helm as it is forced to modernise and take on a new sense of self.
Christian D Brunn has done a brilliant job of using Ruth herself to tell her story, and her beauty of soul pervades through and draws the viewer in through this unique character. Although the story, the vision, the camerawork and the style are nothing unique and to me, the subject matter is even a little boring, it does succeed in keeping your attention throughout. Calendar Girl also features some beautiful shots of New York and must have been tireless work following Ruth around in what was an astoundingly busy schedule.
What made Calendar Girl most interesting was that it took something which we all have an impression of and an idea what the characters might be like and throws it away as it introduces someone who completely breaks that mould. Ruth was a successful business woman, a caring mother and a tireless worker. Strange…but exhilarating to watch it.
Calendar Girl is a solid documentary, easy to watch, interesting and definitely something fashion lovers will revel in as the history of this publication is so unique within that industry despite the confusing name for anyone who’s heard of Calendar Girls. Calendar Girls won’t be something I’ll be sending widespread praise about, but it is good, it features a unique topic and holds its own.
If you want to learn about a wonderful person watch it, if you love fashion, you NEED to watch it, but otherwise, might be one you miss.
Charlene (Raylene Harewood) is an aspiring stand-up comic, after her father dies, she realises that she wants to make his dream a reality, so she goes to New York in order to stand up on the stage in front of a group of people who have had too much to drink and make them laugh, sounds easy doesn’t it?
Bob (Brian Markinson) is a seasoned comedian whose best days are behind him. Bob retired from comedy years ago due to personal reasons and has never looked back. However, he still hangs around the comedy clubs, heckling the newcomers to see who can take it.
One day Charlene is that newcomer that feels the whip of Bob’s cynical tongue and after a humiliating moment, Charlene decides that she wants to learn how to be one of the best, and Bob will be her teacher.
All Joking Aside is the feature debut from director Shannon Kohli and writer, James Pickering. Setting the stage in New York shows the audience just how tough it can be in a city where so many comics made it big such as Jerry Seinfeld and Whoopi Goldberg. All Joking Aside is a slice of that life, showing that comedy isn’t just an art, but a science.
Written by what seems to be from a person with experience, All Joking Aside knows all the beats, all the put downs and all the things that make the perfect routine. However, those expecting a laugh a minute comedy may be disappointed as the movie takes the form of a feel-good father/daughter movie. Bob says early on that he’s seen this movie before and to an extent he’s right.
Saying that though, Harewood plays the part of the budding comedienne well, she sells the stand-up comic routines like they were her own and as her comedy gets better, the audience will understand what it takes to make it. Similarly, Markinson feels like a man who has been there and done that and there is a good chemistry between the pair. Not a particularly original routine, but the performances outshine the material.
There have been many myths and legends of creatures that have been sighted around the world. Creatures such as the Jersey Devil, the Loch Ness Monster and Even the Sasquatch otherwise known as Bigfoot or even Wildmen have been sighted and encounters have been talked about for years. However, out of all the supposed creatures which are reported to be roaming wooded areas or lakes, the Sasquatch seems to be one of the most documented creatures around.
Sightings have come from North America, Russia and Tibet where they’re known as Yetis and so it’s theorised that these ‘wildmen’ are in fact hominids, a subspecies of homo-sapiens (the human race) and that their existence, albeit rare, is still very real.
Sasquatch Among The Wildmen is a documentary that aims to explore the truth behind the supposed sightings that have been reported from around the world. With interviews from various people who all claim to have been close to a Sasquatch and some who even claim that they’ve made contact. Going into great detail to prove the existence of the creatures, some of the interviews and footage do drag a little bit, making it feel that Sasquatch Among Wildmen may only be for those who are interested in the stories on a forensic level.
After all the first-person accounts and shaky camera footage that you may expect from a show on this subject, the documentary does indeed get forensic and with the help from experts and enthusiastic investigators the documentary does go over things with a fine tooth comb. However, as this may delight some and may even tip the balance for some of the sceptics, it may bore others as it feels at times that the mystery behind the existence of some beings is more fun than the reality.
Sasquatch Among The Wildmen is a documentary that feels like it was a special episode of a television series rather than something that stands up by itself. So, as people may watch the show with varying degrees of interest, some may wonder if there were other such shows on different mythical topics that go into as much detail.
While he will always be known for his music career, RZA has established himself as an inspired voice in the film industry. Along with scoring memorable character actor parts (Funny People and American Gangster), the Wu-Tang Clan legend has established a visceral voice behind the director’s chair.
RZA’s debut (the hokey, but enjoyable Man with the Iron Fist) playfully conjures Wu-Tang’s kung-fu sensibility, while his follow-up (the overlooked Love Beats Rhymes) offers an emotionally-charged depiction of an aspiring rapper. Both efforts, while admittedly flawed, display a sharp and personal perspective, a foundation RZA ably builds upon with his latest endeavor Cut Throat City. While shaggy in its wide-eyed ambition, this heist-drama packs a potent thematic punch alongside its pulpy elements.
Cut Throat City follows four boyhood friends from New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward (Shameik Moore, Demetrius Shipp Jr., Denzel Whitaker, and Keean Johnson) who return after Hurricane Katrina to decimated homes, no jobs, and no help from FEMA. Out of options, they reluctantly turn to a local gangster, who offers them one shot at turning their situations around—by pulling off a dangerous heist in the heart of the city. When the job goes bad, the friends find themselves on the run, hunted by two relentless detectives and a neighborhood warlord who thinks they stole the heist money.
While the plot employs several heist movie cliches, screenwriter P.G. Cuschieri introduces an inspired narrative crux to center his devices around. The Hurricane Katrina zeitgeist isn’t an empty ploy, with Cuschieri utilizing the setting to confront the growing class divide pushing improvised communities away from a prosperous future. This is well-trudged territory, but RZA and Cuschieri seem well-aware of its circular nature. They wisely frame their narrative through the anvils of history and folklore, connecting the distinctly modern struggles to a lifetime of inequality. At it’s best, this well-flavored approach reaches grand and oftentimes poetic sentiments, presenting generational conceits through RZA’s alluring visual lens (his saturation of colors and kinetic framing leave a strong impression).
Cut Throat City’s massive cast features a bounty of assured performances. Most of them range from dramatically sincere turns (Shameik Moore and Demetrius Shipp Jr. display solid acting chops) to downright campy showcases (T.I., Terrance Howard, and Ethan Hawke chew the scenery with an infectious glee). This electric mixture would be tonally confused in the wrong hands, but RZA’s deft handling blends these elements cohesively. He meshes pulpy thrills with genuine dramatic steaks, thoughtfully building dimension for the film’s four underdog figures to flourish with.
Similar to RZA’s previous efforts, Cut Throat City presents itself in a shaggy final form. Cuschieri’s thematic ambitions often clash with the jam-packed narrative, as the massive rogue’s gallery of characters distract from the script’s finite thesis (Eiza Gonzalez has nothing to do as a straight-laced cop). New subplots are introduced at a nonstop pace in the second half, bloating a web of threads that Cuschieri never gets complete hold of. I also wish RZA refined the film’s focus, with our affable leads taking a backseat role in the second half to the grander plot elements.
That being said, Cut Throat City‘s falterings still register a certain earnestness, with RZA and company displaying a bold roller coaster ride that cleverly subverts genre conventions. It’s encouraging to see continued growth from RZA onscreen, and I can’t see what the star has in store next for audiences.
