Isn’t it lucky when your favourite artists keep a record of their life through the medium of video? I’m certainly going to start filming more often after watching this doc! I’ll also get my best friend to film me too so they can release all the footage as a documentary in a decade!
That’s exactly what bestie of M.I.A Steve Loveridge has done with MATANGI/MAYA/M.I.A and the footage caught is really very special. The footage literally starts to roll from when Maya travels from Sri Lanka as a child refugee in the UK. We see her elevate from art school student to high profile groupie to global star, which is a lot in 90 mins!
This film is insightful, traumatic and eye-opening, covering topics from civil war to flipping off the NFL. Despite the film’s effort to capture the amazing career and life of M.I.A, Loveridge over saturates the documentary often making its impact less. One moment, we’re following Maya as she makes a documentary about her missing cousin in Sri Lanka, then to her having a fight with Elastica front woman Justine Frischmann.
Whilst I understand that the film is about M.I.A and all that she has accomplished, one side often take away the impact of the other. There’s a really honest and important story about the Sri Lankan Civil War. The film focuses on how she ‘failed’ making a documentary of her cousin who was ‘Missing In Action’ (which M.I.A) stands during the continuing conflict. There’s also a documentary about the toxicity of the music industry and the media. Her music speaks volumes about the terrors and atrocities of Sri Lanka, yet the lost, bolshy Maya we see in the documentary often mutes the poignancy of her most fought for cause.
A great watch and an amazing woman, but a little more structure would have made this documentary pack a harder punch.
The Clash. Talking Heads. The Ramones. Blondie. The Smiths. Adam Ant. Echo and the Bunnymen. These are just some of the artists mentioned at the top of the documentary New Wave: Dare to Be Different, all of which American FM radio station WLIR claim to have launched to notoriety.
Those who worked at the rural Long Island station tell of how, when they joined, it was a ramshackle station with outdated equipment and played mainly middle-of-the-road music. In the early seventies, almost in response to the changes in attitudes at the time, WLIR switched to playing progressive rock.
DJs started playing then-underground artists, but who would soon gained popularity and would go on to become the pillars of the music world they are today. U2 is one band in particular who saw their profile grow after receiving more airtime on WLIR, and would later thank the station on-stage while playing at Nassau Coliseum.
WLIR was a trailblazer in many ways: it imported records from the UK, launching a number of British artists in the States. It started its own Reggae show, a genre of music not played on commercial American radio at the time. Where elsewhere in the USA Live Aid was shown and played edited, WLIR broadcast it live from London. This was particularly important to the station, as the concert featured a lot of artists they had championed.
Showing a genuine love of the music they played, and introducing so many people to artists they loved, the station would go on to be a star, selling out shows at Madison Square Garden, before its sudden death in the late nineties, fittingly at the hands of the man.
New Wave uses original broadcast clips and gathers plenty of interviews with WLIR fans, original staff and DJs, including Dennis McNamara, John DeBella and Donna Donna. Also interviewed are artists including Billy Idol, Debby Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads and Eric Bloom of Blue Oyster Cult, who all tell of how important the station was for giving them more exposure.
Music producers, such as Sire Records founder Seymour Stein, talk about the influence WLIR had on record sales, and how coveted it was to be named the station’s ‘Screamer of the Week’ (most requested song).
British musicians including Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran, Midge Ure of Ultravoxx and Howard Jones say how WLIR helped open the door to bigger markets and audiences for them, as British radio at the time was dominated by hits.
Female artists, such as Joan Jett, tell of how having their music played on WLIR helped to break the stigma of women not being able to rock. While those who heard their music tell of how it inspired them to get into rock themselves.
New Wave: Dare to Be Different can be very giddy and exciting, but with no real twists in the tale, or any really memorable moments, the film does start to drag after a while, especially once it passes the hour mark. It can also become quite overly reverent on its subject matter, which can become wearisome.
That said, director Ellen Goldfrab’s has left no stone unturned in creating an extensive document on this little-known by significant piece of music history. The film does well to give a feeling being there at the time, and makes a compelling case for how radio connects listeners to music.
Fans of music will be right at home withNew Wave: Dare to Be Different‘s affectionate look back at an exciting time.
Keanu Reeves is one of these actors who you can enjoy by simply watching. No one can claim he’s a particularly good actor, but he brings a charisma to a role that a lot of other actors can only dream of. We’ve seen it throughout his career, from the now iconic role of Neo in The Matrix, through to his recent big-hitter, John Wick (which also boasts his impressive martial arts skills). Even in his earlier, goofier roles he was watchable; Parenthood sees him as the stoned dreamer and he manages to pull a lot of that films biggest laughs (seriously, that’s an underappreciated movie), while Ted Theodore Logan is always great to “hang out” with. Even when he’s struggling to make things work, like his hilarious turn in Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula adaptation, where he attempts an English accent and fails brilliantly, there’s something endearing and fun about his presence.
So, when Keanu Reeves can’t make your movie at least mildly watchable… well, there’s a problem.
Siberia is a film with lots of problems, and the fact that Keanu Reeves actually appears here is something of a mystery. His career has been on something of an up and down trajectory recently, with highs and lows all over the place. This definitely represents a low.
It’s not that Siberia is a particularly bad film, it’s just that it’s so stupendously boring I actually considered switching it off, reading the Wikipedia synopsis and kind of just paraphrasing other reviews. Sadly, for me at least, the Wikipedia page lacks an in-depth synopsis, and I feared that maybe the entire thing was some sort of test by the guys at BRWC to make sure I was actually watching and reviewing films correctly, so spent the last third of the movie waiting for some strange glitch or weird text to appear on the screen. The point being, I wound up watching the film from start to finish (okay, I went on my phone a couple of times, leave me alone) and it most certainly wasn’t an engaging experience.
It’s a confused film. It wishes it was Fincher’s Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, a stylish and cool character drama wrapped up in an engaging and engrossing plot involving conspiracy, corruption and sex, but actually it’s closer to the kind of thing you used to catch late night on Channel Five – back when most of us only had terrestrial television. It looks good, but there’s nothing beneath the surface. And it struggles to decide if it wants to be a deep and engrossing character study or a pulpy, noir-inspired crime thriller, and as a result it winds up being neither, and doing that pretty badly.
Seriously, I question again quite what Keanu Reeves is doing here. Does he really need to do this? Did he have faith in the script? I’m not sure quite why. But then I remember he’s the guy that was also in Eli Roth’s Knock, Knock, so… yeah, maybe he’s not the best judge.
The plot is paper thin, and, truthfully, I’m not sure I fully got all of it by the end. It twists and turns to give the illusion of a more complex narrative, but there’s nothing to lock onto here. A more talented and experience screenwriter or filmmaker might have utilised the opportunity to explore any number of the interesting ideas it throws up, but under the leadership of second-time director Matthew Ross (his first film being the crime drama Frank & Lola, which I haven’t seen but appears to be getting more love) it winds up dropping threads as quickly as it introduces them.
Considering that this kind of in and out, twist and twist again stuff is happening all the time it makes for something of a mystery quite how the film can feel so slow paced. Nothing seems to happen for long stretches of time. We have endless sequences of people discussing plot points. It’s a film heavy of expositional dialogue and light on visual storytelling, which is a big no, no as far as I’m concerned.
For anyone expecting an exhilarating, John Wick-esque action thriller you’re going to be sorely disappointed. This isn’t that. The marketing is most certainly misleading on that front. The film meanders, leading us around on a series of pointless side-quests that never seem to full connect, the larger narrative never really sustaining the momentum quite enough.
It’s a shame, a good movie exists in here somewhere, and occasionally we do get flashes of it, but the disparate pieces don’t really add up to a satisfying whole.
Mail Order Monster is a sci-fi tinged drama directed by Paulina Lagudi & written by Paulina Lagudi & Marc Prey. The film stars Charisma Carpenter (Buffy The Vampire Slayer/Angel), Josh Hopkins & Madison Horcher
“Growing up isn’t easy for Sam. She’s bullied at school and has trouble fitting in. She endures these struggles through her relationship with her dad, and her love of comics. Making matters worse, she’s getting a new stepmom! Desperate, Sam orders a robot monster through the mail that promises to solve her problems. But this friendly “Mail Order Monster” is more than she ever could have imagined.”
Ever wondered what would happen if you actually sent in the coupon from that old comic? That question is answered here as we follow Sam Pepper (Madison Horcher) as she struggles to deal with the loss of her mother. The film wears it’s nerd-cred on it’s sleeve as the film starts with a motion-comic sequence; a device that is revisited later in the film. Sam’s ordeal has left her isolated from her school friends and a strained relationship with her father (Josh Hopkins); as he wants them to move on with their lives and his new love-interest (Charisma Carpenter).
At it’s heart this is a small, yet powerful and beautifully told tale of a young girl struggling with grief and life. We also get a little sci-fi in the story as she finds comfort in her new robot companion; the titular ‘Mail-Order Monster’ (MOM) which provides some warmth and comedy while at the same time having an underlying threat of danger with plenty of kitch factor and lends an ‘Amblin’ feel to the film.
A poignant, well paced and emotional exploration of grief and more importantly how we continue with our lives that works equally well for adults and children alike; in-fact i would recommend watching this with your kids to help them understand grief. The third act especially delivered a powerful punch that is well earned. The film hangs on young actress Horcher’s performance as Sam and she delivers with plenty of attitude and also depth of feeling that easily connects with the audience. It is under-pinned by a subtle score from Robert Mai.
The aptly titled Red is a stage show about artist Mark Rothko. Personally, I had never heard of Rothko before now. He was a painter, who didn’t really relate to any particular movement – although apparently many place him in the abstract expressionist camp. Over the course of the play we follow Rothko, and his assistant Ken over a time period of roughly one year. Set entirely in his New York art studio, the story follows Rothko’s project of paintings for the Four Seasons and the trials and tribulations as Ken argues with Rothko’s ideas and ideals on colours and painting.
The play was written by John Logan and it has seen moderate success since its initial run back in 2009. While I can’t speak for his work in theatre, John Logan is a name I have come across a number of times in film. I’m very split on my thoughts of Logan’s work. On the one hand, I do (usually) like his dialogue. It’s well written, poetic and at times even grand. His dialogue alone is worthy of theatre. I also have a strange admiration for him taking stories that are just bare-bones and working to put meat on them. But that brings us back to the problem I have with his writing – it is over-indulgent at times. And, because of the bare-bones of his story, there are times when I just can’t get invested in his work because I have nothing to go back on with it. I will always appreciate the likes of Gladiator and Rango (although the script wasn’t the selling point with those either), but I will likewise be reminded of Alien: Covenant and Bats.
That is Red’s problem. It’s impressive dialogue with some very interesting philosophy – to one of the characters the colour black means death and decay, and to the other white means brutal murder and agony. I also liked the transitions between scenes – how the actors would move the canvases or paint in the background, an interesting way to do it. Even the sets worked at conveying the image of a rundown studio in the dark nights of New York City. But it all leads to nothing in a way. Yes, the characters discuss with each other and we learn about them, but it doesn’t lead to much. Rothko makes a decision about his art pieces and the story is over. Being unfamiliar with the man didn’t help matters for me either.
But this is not the plays core – that is on the performances. I can’t say that I’m familiar with Alfred Enoch, but the man does a good job. He comes off as being charismatic and eager to learn, yet never naive and willing to fight for his beliefs. He delivers his lines with confidence and gravitas. But he is overshadowed by Rothko actor, the great and criminally underrated Alfred Molina. There are few actors out there today who can fit into any role with this much ease. I struggle to think of a bad performance the man has done, if he even has done any. Every time he spoke I was captivated. It feels like he was born to play this role, but then again, I could say that about numerous characters that Molina has brought to life.
Red is not a show that I would watch again, but it was a mostly pleasant experience. It didn’t captivate me as well as I think it wanted to. If you are a fan of art and intelligent discussions and theatrics then I would recommend Red. It just wasn’t a story in my colour.
