Edinburgh University Film Society

Week 7: Never Let Me Go

Tuesday 1st October
The Study Teviot

Mark Romanek, 2010
Running Time: 103 mins

When writing film reviews, there is often an inner conflict as to how much detail should be revealed so that you, our readers, have enough information about the film without having it spoilt at the same time.  Never Let Me Go poses such a problem.

Based upon Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel of the same name, we follow Kathy H. (Mulligan), Ruth (Knightley) and Tommy D. (Garfield) through various stages in their life from their days at a rather sinister looking Boarding School through to adulthood, and inevitably the trials and tribulations of love and friendship. However, it is a mistake to categorise this as an atypical love story between 3 friends/ lovers, such as those portrayed in other films. The films dark underlying plot plays its part beautifully, making this film more of a questioner of people’s morality and views on life than a straightforward romantic drama.

The film also serves to further enhance the reputation of a certain Andrew Garfield. Having made his name in The Social Network, his performance in Never Let Me Go perhaps deserves even more plaudits, and does nothing but help the upcoming star to cement his place as a future powerhouse of British acting talent, alongside names such as Inception’s Tom Hardy. The future spider-man actor’s performance stands out against BAFTA winner Mulligan, a feat that should not be underestimated, more for its subtlety and plausibility given his characters situation in life, than for any outlandish overacting.

Never Let Me Go is an example of British cinema doing what it does best. Subtly questioning the audience’s views on the world without being patronising, presenting a situation with characters that are not only plausible, but completely human, with identifiable flaws. Never Let Me Go is essential viewing.

Written by Mathew Seccombe

Week 6: Tangled

Directed by Nathan Greno & Byron Howard
100 minutes
2011
30^th October, Sunday. Pleasance Theatre.

You can be forgiven if you missed Tangled in the cinema, but hopefully you will right this wrong and check out the 50^th film by Walt Disney as it is bound to delight.

The revised version of Rapunzel (Mandy Moore) has her as the baby of a King and Queen that gets kidnapped by Gothel, an old woman (Donna Murphy) who stows her away in a tower all in order to harvest the magical powers her long golden hair provides; the magic of youth.

As she grows up, Rapunzel is content with her isolation believing her kidnapper is her mother and that she is not allowed to leave the tower because the world in a dangerous place and she must stay safe. But when Rapunzel nears her eighteenth birthday her one wish is to travel to the nearby castle to witness the spectacular lanterns that float into the sky every year perfectly coinciding with her birthday. Of course Gothel will not allow this and so Rapunzel changes her wish and asks Gothel to give her these specific paints as a birthday present, that require Gothel to go away for several days to acquire the materials to make it, that should be enough time to sneak away and see the lights…

As timing would have it, a dashing thief named Flynn Rider (Zachary Levi) is making an escape from accomplices and stumbles across Rapunzel’s tower, our feisty heroine knocks the stranger out and sensing his urgency blackmails him into being her tour guide to the castle to see the lights to which he agrees. Of course then, Gothel finds out that Rapunzel has left the tower and is hell-bent on finding her.

Great amusement and surprising action, Tangled is a joyful watch. Packed with excellent characters and superb animation you might just show it the same amount of affection you did for the classic Disney of your youth.

Written by Raymah Tariq

Week 6: American Psycho

Directed by Mary Harron
2000, 102 minutes

Thursday, 27th October
The Study, Teviot: 7:30pm

Week 6: Uncle Boonmee

Dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul
2010
114min

The Study, Teviot 7:30pm
Tuesday, 25th October

Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s film is a meditation on death, rebirth, and memory.  Boonmee is ill, and as his life approaches its end he begins simultaneous journeys among the people and events in his life, as well as through the spectral terrain of his past lives.  Ghosts take up residence in the family home; dinner is interrupted by humans transformed into animal spirits; a princess has a brief affair with a catfish in a moonlit pond fed by coruscating waterfalls.  All this as the family prepares to send one of its own off into this spirit world which surrounds them all.

Each remaining moment is precious and Boonmee is determined to savour each one.  Accordingly, Apichatpong Weerasethakul cannot allow the film to race giddily from one apparition to the next.  Each event, each visitation, each memory is one of a very finite number left in this man’s life, and the audience is made to feel the beauty and fragility of each second.  By contemplating the minutiae of Boonmee’s last days, the film shows us the objects and events of our world, and the processes of our own memories, in a new light.

Each scene of Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is a quiet, sublimely beautiful celebration of this life, and a growing acceptance of, and comfort with, the mysteries which surround us, and which wait for us in the end.

Written by Mr Phil

Week 5: Night Watch

Dir. Ole Bornedal
1994, 107min
Sunday 23rd, Pleasance Theatre 7:30pm

Martin (Nikolaj Coster Waldau of Game of Thrones) is a law student in Copenhagen who needs a job to finance his studies.  When he finally does find work, it is as the night watchman in a morgue.  The job offers good pay, few responsibilities, and many quiet hours for academic reading, even if it is a creepy place to spend the night alone.

As Martin begins his new employment, someone on the streets is murdering prostitutes, and the victims all wind up beneath Martin’s new roof.  The crimes are frightening, but the killer is outside, and the bodies needn’t be feared.  Certainly there is no reason for Martin to worry.

But when the detective leading the investigation begins calling at the morgue with a growing interest in Martin, this student finds himself a potential suspect in the grisly murders.  As Martin tries to figure out a way to prove he is not a killer, he finds that the police may be the least of his worries, for the bodies in his care—the morgue’s newest tenants—have begun acting quite strangely.

Fusing the serial killer film with suggestions of the supernatural—and even a hint of the college comedy—and filmed in a style which owes as much to classic haunted house pictures as it does to murder mysteries, Nightwatch gradually moves from normal, to weird, to outright bizarre as the killer, the cops, and the corpses all close in on Martin and turn his new job into the worst decision he’s ever made.

Written by Mr Phil

Week 5: Naked Gun

David Zucker
1988
85 mins
Thursday 20th October, The Study, Teviot

“Drebin!”

“Frank!”

“You’re both right”

Developed from the comedy TV Series ‘Police Squad!’(starring many of the same cast members), The Naked Gun lampoons classic cop films in the same way its predecessor ‘Airplane!’ (also directed by Zucker) ridiculed the disaster movie. While ‘Airplane!’ was the film that introduced the deadpan genius of Leslie Nielsen to the world (he had previously been known primarily as a serious actor in such classics as ‘The Forbidden Planet’) it was The Naked Gun and its sequels which cemented his reputation as a great comic.

The Naked Gun centres around Lt. Frank Drebin of Police Squad as he attempts to foil the assassination of Queen Elizabeth II, who is on a tour of Los Angeles. As he attempts to uncover the culprit behind a series of hypnotically controlled assassins, Drebin finds himself drawn to Jane Spencer, personal assistant to mysterious businessman Vincent Ludwig. Of course, this is merely a framework around which is draped some of the finest puns, slapstick, and double entendre you’ll find in cinema.

It’s only right that the most memorable aspect of the Naked Gun is the sheer volume of jokes crammed into its 85 minute runtime. In fact, it’s likely you’ll miss some of the vast array of banter on offer as Drebin lurches form one crime scene to the next, unaccountably solving the case despite displaying an extraordinary degree of ineptitude. Nielsen truly shines in the role, his acting background really paying off in such a madcap role, giving him a bizarre measure of gravitas while accentuating the joyous absurdity of the situation.

This is not one to miss folks

Written by Lauchlan Hall

Week 5: Raise the Red Lantern

Directed: Zhang Yimou
1991
125 minutes
Tuesday 18^th October , The Study, Teviot

A young university student, Songlian, is sold – against her will – by her bankrupt family to a wealthy landowner as a “fourth wife”, or rather a third concubine. After arriving at the palace – a sealed-off world, a compound from which none of the women may leave – and meeting the three other wives, Songlian is soon initiated into the absurd games of power, deception and trickery which must be played in order to win and maintain each day the master’s favour and hence the few trifling joys available to them: the master’s company in bed, a foot massage, the choice of meals for the following day, red lanterns raised outside their chambers.

Zhang’s precise visual compositions exude the intense frustration of life wasted: wide shots of figures enclosed within the stone walls of the palace, or in enormous bedchambers so luxurious as to be a cruel mockery of the characters’ deep inner dissatisfaction, all framed with an eye for terrible crushing symmetry. The foreboding tower at one corner of the palace, where disobedient wives are sent to be dealt with, casts a sinister shadow over proceedings. Tales of the sad fates of those previous wives serve as a constant warning to Songlian; a threat to ensure that she plays by the rules of the house. Yet even those wives who resign themselves to such a life can only succeed for so long: the ageing first wife, all but forgotten by the master, is a constant reminder of the ephemerality of the beauty and sexual desirability upon which these women are forced to rely. Raise the Red Lantern is a moving tale of the slow, torturous suffocation of desire and the will to live.

Much has been said already (by people vastly more knowledgeable and articulate than I) about the visual beauty of the film – its painterly compositions, its sumptuous colours, and so on. But here you see I am falling back on those familiar, vague adjectives which are so fuzzy-edged as to be meaningless: an evasive technique, I know. For whatever reason beyond my ability to comprehend, Zhang’s visuals here have an unspeakable effect on the pleasure centres in my brain, and they are better seen than read about.

Written by Sean Ferguson

Week 5: Source Code

Directed by Duncan Jones
93 minutes
16^th October, Sunday. Pleasance Theatre.

Hot off the success from Moon, Duncan Jones stays with the science fiction vein and gives us an excellent concept of a thriller with Jake Gyllenhaal playing the lead role of a US military helicopter pilot who is part of a scientific project tentatively titled ‘Source Code’. The Source Code is a project that allows you to be inserted into the last eight minutes of someone’s life and assume his or her identity for that amount of time.

Pilot Colter Stevens finds himself as a train passenger, a teacher called Sean Fentress. Confused, Stevens fixates on the woman he seems to be travelling with, Christina Warren (Michelle Monaghan). Questioning her, admitting he is not ‘Sean Fentress’ and then, at the end of eight minutes, explodes as the train is targeted by a bomb attack, destroying two trains and ending the lives of the passengers.  Stevens then wakes up, disorientated, he his contacted through a video link to Air Force Captain Goodwin (Vera Farmiga) who informs him of his involvement in the project. Panicked and full of questions Goodwin evades answering and informs him that time is of the essence and that Stevens must go back into the Source Code to try to find out who it was on the train that caused the bomb to go off as there is another threat of attack on the city.

The film goes at a hurtling pace and at no point do the relived motions and actions get tiresome. Gyllenhaal proves to be the anchor of the film: likeable, smart and adaptable which just makes you root for him to succeed.

Source Code is definitely a science-fiction to bookmark. Exciting, stimulating and emotional – Jones shows that in the wave of newly noticed directors, he is here to stay.

Written by Raymah Tariq