Tag: Martin Scorsese

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Brainwashed:
Sex-Camera-Power

Director – Nina Menkes – 2022 – US – Cert. 18 – 107m

***1/2

A lecture on how movies treat male and female bodies differently, augmented with interviews from female directors, actresses, critics and others, using numerous film clips – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 12th

This is a film based on a lecture given by director Menkes under the title: Sex and Power, the Visual Language of Cinema. As far as I can tell from the evidence here presented, it is (or was) something like a TED Talk but much longer. It’s possible it may have worked better as a live lecture than as a film. I’m guessing also there’s something of the band Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense (Jonathan Demme, 1984) concert film about this: a live performing act wanting a film of their performance so it can reach a wider audience without the necessity of the performers physically touring the act. But where Stop Making Sense is a masterpiece of the filmed performance (or, technically, in that film’s specific case, the filmed music concert) genre, Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power is not. Even if you’re broadly in tune with its thesis (which I like to think I am), it does feel like you’re being repeatedly told the same thing and somewhere (perhaps around the 75 minute mark) you get fed up with it.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

Monty Python’s
Life Of Brian

Director – Terry Jones – 1979 – UK – Cert. 12a – 93m

****

An absurdist comedy about of Brian, Jesus Christ’s next-door neighbour, who falls in with left-wing activists, develops a religious following and ends up crucified – back out in UK cinemas in Glorious Standard Definition on Friday, April 7th

Like The Last Temptation Of Christ (Martin Scorsese, 1988), a Biblical epic made by a New Yorker who tries to bring first century Palestine to life on the screen by filling it with actors who speak as if they’re on the streets he knows, so too Monty Python’s Life Of Brian, made by the Monty Python team, nurtured first by Oxbridge student drama society culture then by British radio and television, attempts a comic equivalent of the Christian Gospel narrative by filling it with characters possessing such quintessentially English names as Brian and Reg and sporting English accents. For the Pythons and their audience, this strategy works because of its familiarity from Britain’s hugely popular Monty Python’s Flying Circus television show, made for the BBC. It’s what everyone attending the film in the UK expected.

The Monty Python team (Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle & Michael Palin) all wrote the film between them and take on multiple acting roles, with Jones also directing, animator Gilliam also taking on production design, and Chapman, who had studied medicine, also taking on the role of set medic.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

A Dirty Carnival
(Biyeolhan Geori,
비열한 거리)

Director – Yoo Ha – 2006 – South Korea – 140m

*****

As GoodFellas as it gets! Yoo Ha’s gangster film compares favourably to Scorsese’s classic on many levels, an underrated dirty gem of Korean noir – from the London Korean Film Festival (LKFF) 2017

Byung-doo, 29, (Jo In-sung) is a smart, lean and hungry gangster on the mean streets of Seoul, in A Dirty Carnival. As a debt collector he successfully collects payments from difficult customers. Yet his immediate boss Sang-chul (Yun Je-mun) pays him so little that Byung-doo must constantly beg him for the money to pay his mother’s apartment rent. Looking out for those beneath him and determined to better himself in the wider organisation, Byung-doo realises that its overall boss Hwang (Chun Ho-jin) would like nothing more than to get the sycophantic Prosecutor Park (Kwon Tae-won) off his back. Sang-chul clearly isn’t going to do anything about it so Byung-doo takes the task upon himself. He and one of his men drive into the back of Park’s car in a secluded spot and he kills the prosecutor when they get out of their cars to exchange details.

Byung-doo’s best mate Min-ho (Min Nam-koong) is an aspiring film director who can’t sell the script for the gangster film on which he’s working because the studio producer he approaches doesn’t think it’s realistic enough.… Read the rest