Category: REVIEWS

In the late 1970s an enigmatic young musician erupted into the limelight and created a signature sound that would resonate throughout an age and influence entire generations that followed. Through depression, anxiety, family strife and financial woes, Gary Numan struggled to maintain his livelihood while juggling a family, a career and dreams of the future. Over thirty years a once-bright and blazing artist flickered to glowing embers and six years of silence… until now.

Covering the inception of Numan’s seminal works, his childhood, family life, the prospect of creating a forthcoming album and a fresh new chapter in America, the candid conversations with Numan, along with his wife and daughters help to humanize a distinctly otherworldly persona. Steve Read and Rob Alexander paint a vivid picture of an ordinary man bestowed with extraordinary talents but it’s not all misty-eyed nostalgia.

Framing the documentary within the context of a creative surge, the recording and subsequent release of his album, Splinter (Songs from a Broken Mind) would ordinarily smack of cynicism IF the aforementioned LP hadn’t been released back in 2013. Instead we are given insight into Numan’s debilitating nervousness, his fractured relationship with his parents and coping with Asperger’s syndrome.

Transposing his family and studio from the luscious, green tranquility of the English countryside to the palm tree speckled circus of Los Angeles could have led to fish-out-of-water struggles but we watch as the Numans adapt, flourish and carve out a new life for themselves in La La Land.

The balance of performance footage, talking heads and contemporary imagery never dwells too long in any stage of Gary Numan’s life or career as the narrative structure deftly weaves through.

This is no Soul Boys of the Western World, slavishly documenting the heady heights and the crushing lows, neatly wrapping the final reel in a comeback tour resolution.

Numan’s fans haven’t left his side in three decades, and when those fans include the likes of Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson, the true extent of an artist staying relevant in the contemporary musical organism becomes clear. Android in La La Land is a biographical work that is triumphant in exposing the mechanic in the machine, affixing a lens on the shy talent beneath.

Gary Numan: Android in La La Land is in cinemas August 26th.

By Last Caress.

Messi, the documentary by Alex de la Iglesia (Acción mutante, 1993), looks back at the life of Lionel Messi, the diminutive Argentinian footballer who, despite being diagnosed with growth hormone deficiency at the age of ten, went on to star for Catalan giants FC Barcelona and for Argentina, and to become arguably the most gifted exponent of the sport of Association Football the world has ever seen.

The movie takes the form of Messi’s sporting contemporaries – mentor Johan Cruyff, teammates Andrés Iniesta, Javier Mascherano, a host of others – sitting at tables in an informal restaurant/bar alongside friends, teachers and other significant members of Messi’s upbringing, chatting in stilted, semi-scripted “casual” manner to writer Jorge Valdano about Lionel: The boy, the man, the footballer. This interminable get-together is interspersed with videoclips gleaned mostly from Lionel’s father’s private home collection, with glimpses here and there of Messi’s skills as we are familiar with them today, and – far too often – with dramatised reconstructions of this reminiscence or that. But is the man inside Barca’s no.10 shirt as thrilling as his own fancy footwork?

Well, no.

The fatal flaw with Messi is that a fantastic sportsman does not a fantastic character study make. The Damned United  (Hooper, 2009) was an interesting dramatization of a time in a football icon’s career because the late Brian Clough was and remains inherently interesting. Senna (Kapadia, 2010) was an interesting documentary because Ayrton Senna was interesting. Zidane, un portrait du 21e siècle  (Gordon/Parreno, 2006) was interesting because it kept its focus lazer-pointed at the area in which Zinedine Zidane excels like no other: The football pitch (this is an approach which would have undoubtedly worked well for Messi). There are thousands of biopics, documentaries, books, theses and papers dedicated to Muhammad Ali, but why? For his (admittedly sublime) in-ring skills alone?

Of course, even if sporting prowess alone guaranteed a fascinating subject for scrutiny and Lionel Messi was therefore by that token the most obvious candidate on earth for study, Messi would still be a dud, set as it is within a framework (that of friends/colleagues sat around in a restaurant, reminiscing) which, whilst attempting something fresh, really doesn’t work. His sporting peers seem uncomfortable, his mentors and guardians of old seem to lack much insight beyond recalling that he was quite good with a football. And the “reconstructions” of those recollections – sh*tting crikey! They make the reconstructions on Crimewatch look like clips from Lawrence of Arabia (Lean, 1962).

All of which gives me cause to wonder for whom this documentary has been made. Not enough new or revelatory information to interest a fan, not enough of his exceptional footballing ability to appease either a fan of Messi OR a football neutral who simply appreciates a bit of skill, and too awkwardly congratulatory for even the man himself or his very closest relatives and sycophants.

For the record, the DVD presentation of Messi courtesy of SODA Pictures is in Spanish of course with optional English subtitles and a choice of 2.0 or 5.1 audio, and no extra features whatsoever. Own goal!

You know what would make a genuinely riveting Lionel Messi documentary? One of those fan-made compilation videos of his finest moments on the pitch. And there are already hundreds of them on YouTube. Give Messi a swerve and watch one of those instead.

Messi is available at all good DVD retailers. It’s your dime.

Coalville Gold is directed by Ross Bolidai.

“Once a hardened criminal, Stevie finds redemption and fame in bare knuckle boxing. When he breaks his hand, loses the love of his life, and is challenged to a rematch against a far more experienced boxer, he has only his family and himself to lead him to victory.”

You would expect a film about bare knuckle boxing to be painful, and it is. But it’s not the boxing that had me wincing, it’s the forced personal drama between bouts. Oof. The training (cf Rocky, 1976) and fighting sequences are beautifully filmed and it is easy to see why people take part in these events.

An all too brief account of a post-mining town, industrial decay all around, full of lads with nothing better to do. 

The focus is on Stevie Gold, a 24 year old giant toddler-man with tattoos and a near-constant grin. I bet he was a big baby when he was born. I bet he was 14lbs. More wincing.

I recommend Coalville Gold as a pre-feature short to play at a screening of The Fighter (2010).

https://vimeo.com/158171375

By Jamie McNaught.

Rooster Teeth to the uninitiated are one of the internets prodigal sons, being most famous for the machinima series Red Vs Blue using the Halo Engine to create the show.  Now in its 14th season and boasting other series as RWBY, Let’s Plays, Podcasts etc.  As far as companies go on the internet, RT are up there.  So naturally, giving their successful move into live action shorts (all acted by the staff themselves) it was inevitable they would move into full featured films.  Originally set for a budget of $650,000 RT went about funding the film via Indigogo.  This modest aim was blown out of the water eventually receiving approximately $2.4m, a record breaking amount on the site for film funding.

So, for a Sci-Fi flick that budget equals that of the likes of SyFy’s ‘Big Sea Monster vs Ludicrous Robot Giraffe…’ This is a very low budget genre film.  The reason for the likeness is to highlight just how far the company stretches the money onto the screen to elevate itself from the schlocky efforts seen else where. With epic sweeping camera movements, many shots from the air, great SFX on the whole and quite frankly excellent lighting, this easily rivals mid budget films for pure aesthetics.

Just as the case in their shorts, most of the actors are directly used from the company and are not fully trained actors, with the exception of Alan Ritchson (Smallville, The Hunger Games) and Colton Dunn (writer on The Key and Peele and various RT productions).  Knowing this fact it does impress as the ensemble hold their own on the whole with their acting chops.  Michael Jones (RT’s Achievement Hunter shouty man) ultimately plays a Dude Bro Frat Boy, Zach, as 2D as it sounds, but he does it with fluidity and gusto.  Gavin Free of The Slo-Mo guys starts as an American Southerner with an absolutely awful southern drawl, limiting him to one liners and no chance to shine.  Luckily he later talks in his native English accent and begins to shine with his “Gavinisms”.

Writer and Executive Producer Burnie Burns plays a deadbeat cop Hagan, whom absolutely no one respects.  A role one would expect Burns to relish in but seemed rather stiff and felt a bit too try hard.  Onto Alan Ritchson and he plays his poorly written plot device character as well as he can.  Finally Colton Dunn raises a few laughs with his once great All American Football star turned large drunk.  However the tiresome cliched lines such as “Awww heeellll nooo…Oh no you didn’t” highlights the continued problem of African Americans being marginalised with such problems in many a script.

The script then, is poor overall.  It has a sense of a parodic love note to 80s/90s Sci Fi films with wise one liner cracks to some of the staples of the genre story arc.  The problem with these wise cracks are that they are generally the lowest common denominator, akin to what ‘that guy’ in the cinema would blurt out to get a raise from his friends.  The machine gun approach to jokes largely fall short, referencing Millennial zeitgeists, mainly involving social media or again, obvious jokes referencing exactly what the audience have just seen.  At times however the film shows a confidence in comedy timing and when they hit it will raise a titter or two.  One laugh out loud moment comes ripe from the likes of Road Trip/American Pie, working as a multi generational joke and a highlight for the film.

It is a shame then, knowing RT’s excellent body of work from the brilliant RVB to fantastic shorts that have done a lot better on parodying/being self aware genre pieces.  Maybe there is an amount of seeing people you know well from Let’s Plays etc that elevates the film, as if watching your friends do something funny within your circle but will pass others outside of that.

A fantastic achievement with it’s cinematography, SFX and lighting considering it’s budget and large use of non actors.  It is however ultimately let down by a script struggling to find an interesting group dynamic without repeating or stretching thinning ideas.  From the outside, it’s an incredibly average film, from the inside it may be a bit more interesting seeing the likes of Gavin Free being…Well, Gavin Free.  It is a positive move for the company however and certainly shows promise for future projects if they learn from the mistakes of this film.

Dugma; this is the button you press before you send yourself to martyrdom. Dugma – The Button is a powerful and eye-opening documentary about a small group of Islamic fighters who have pledged themselves to martyrdom as they wait and prepare for their final mission. Featuring a British outsider and a Saudi who loves fried chicken, Dugma looks at the Syrian conflict from of the point of view of those who’ve chosen to give their lives for their ‘righteous cause’.

If there is direction Dugma it isn’t obvious. Only in very rare moments do we see the camera man lead the questions directly. This leads to an incredibly powerful form of story-telling that really feels like the diaries and tales of those involved. Never questioning these men on their task or their belief, their actions are never celebrated or condemned and for this I have to credit Paul Salahadin Refsdal and his team. The viewer themselves are truly allowed to form their own opinion of what we see. Not only this, but by not only focusing on their task at hand, but also both their personal life and their social life you really get a sense of the their lives and personalities as they wait for their final task.

Refsdal’s documentary is also crafted and directed wonderfully. With a mixture of picturesque landscape, music, singing and joy as well as sombre silent moments, at just under an hour Dugma is well-paced and thoughtful. It rarely gets boring despite having some slower moments and although viewers not interested in the topic or with strong views might shy away, Dugma is a MUST WATCH for those interested to learn more in the Syrian conflict. I would recommend this documentary to anyone.