Movie Reviews

“Chicken Town” is an endearingly daft Fenland crime caper

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By Cath Clarke

There are echoes of Shane Meadows and the Coen brothers in this cheerful crime comedy set in the Fens in eastern England. It’s endearingly daft and unexpectedly charming for a film about small-town drug dealers full of knob jokes – and contains no actual violence from criminals who are more crap than nasty. There are some sparky performances from the young cast, and it manages to pull off natural, easygoing laughs without the cringe that often seeps into British comedies.

Ethaniel Davy is brilliant as Jayce, who has just been released from 10 months in a young offenders’ institution – wrongly convicted for crashing a stolen car. Now that he’s out, he wants answers. What everyone except Jayce knows is that it was his best mate Lee (Ramy Ben Fredj, also terrific) behind the wheel of the car. Lee is the heir to a battery-chicken farming empire with links to organised crime. His dad, Lee Sr, has just remarried and sent him to live in a caravan at the edge of the family estate. Lee Jr is thick and spoilt, an adult man with a toddler brain, but like everything in the film, rather sweet underneath it all.

Meanwhile Jayce and his old schoolmate Paula (Amelie Davies) get roped into a drug deal, joining forces with retired busybody Kev (Graham Fellows). Kev has somehow (plot is not this film’s strong point) ended up with a shed in his allotment full of high-quality weed. The unlikely friendship between the two kids and Kev gives the film some of its funniest lines. In Kev’s front room, Paula is mesmerised by his carriage clock, a retirement present. “Is it ironic?” she asks, genuinely curious. “No, it’s brass.” And the final moment of comedy, a scene involving a joke about Kev’s 67-year-old bladder is priceless. This is a very likable film.

Source: Chicken Town review – endearingly daft Fenland crime caper has a shedful of charm | Film | The Guardian

Fim Review: ‘The Ballad of Wallis Island’ is a crowd-pleasing folk-music comedy worth crowing about

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British comedian Tim Key plays a millionaire fanboy who commands his favorite band to put on a private show, even though its singers Tom Basdan and Carey Mulligan have split

By Amy Nicholson

At this year’s Sundance, I blushed every time someone asked about my favorite movies of the fest. I knew I’d have to include James Griffiths’ “The Ballad of Wallis Island,” a twee-sounding British comedy about a folk musician named Herb McGwyer (Tom Basden) who plays a gig on a remote Welsh island for his No. 1 fan, Charles (Tim Key).

Sundance is all about championing bold new discoveries that will electrify the art form. But this sentimental charmer is literally acoustic: an expansion of the 2007 BAFTA-nominated short film “The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island,” which, like the feature, was directed by Griffiths with a script from Basden and Key. And it’s something almost as rare as a revelation: a crowdpleaser I’d recommend to everyone. And I have, from the grocery store clerks in Park City to my aunt to my metalhead pal — and now I’m tipping you off, too.

The core story has deepened over the decade and a half it took to enlarge it to full-length. Eighteen years ago, indie folk was ascendant in the U.K. with the formation of Mumford & Sons, and already on the airwaves in the States thanks to Sufjan Stevens, Fleet Foxes and the Plain White T’s. The short film’s incarnation of Herb McGwyer had more hair, more hope and more cool-kid credibility in pop culture. This older Herb knows his peak has passed. Once, he sold out shows as half of the folk duo McGwyer Mortimer; today, he’s a sell-out. His ex-bandmate and former girlfriend Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan) stopped speaking to him ages ago in favor of expatriating to Portland, Ore., to sell chutney at farmers markets.

We don’t hear any of Herb’s post-duo commercial hits, but we’re meant to assume they’re godawful. His mood sure is. Having sullenly agreed to a £500,000 paycheck for one show, Herb gets drenched as soon as his boat wobbles into Wallis Island and spends most of the film with his bangs plastered pathetically to his forehead. He’s even grown himself a hipster mustache of despair.

Herb’s patron, Charles, is a mysterious mega-millionaire who has spent a fortune for a private show. An apple-cheeked, motor-mouthed fanboy, he doesn’t fit the profile of, say, former Libyan dictator Moammar Kadafi who managed to command performances from Mariah Carey and Beyoncé. Charles swears up and down his fortune isn’t from anything evil and Key’s smile is enough to convince you. He’s never done anything crueler than return a library book past due.

Charles used a chunk of his money to travel the world and settled down with souvenir magnets cluttering every inch of his fridge. “Katmandu was very much a case of Katman-did,” the lonely widower says, bubbling over with his need to impress his famous guest or really, just to talk to anybody. The composer Adem Ilhan has written a warm score of creaky horns and foot-stomping jangles to pair with Basden’s 16 original songs, but the film’s actual soundtrack is Charles’ constant chatter. (Key acted a minor role as the Pigeon Man in Bong Joon Ho’s “Mickey 17,” but he launched his career as a comic poet.) Quips, puns, allusions — the nonsense tumbles out of him so fast, you barely have time to make sense of one joke before he’s onto the next.

I’d call “Wallis Island” a contender for the most quotable film of the year but there are so many good lines stacked on top of each other, and so much giggling on top of that, it’s impossible to keep up with Key’s wordplay. Presenting Herb with a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue, he calls it a “Winona.” As in Ryder, as in a tour rider, as in the goodies a musician expects in their dressing room.

Only once does Charles find himself stymied. “Well, I’m speechless,” he says to fill the silence.

“Well, you’re not,” Herb rebuts.

Yet, there’s a cyclone of emotions inside this goofball that he never lets out — never ever. If he did, the film would get maudlin. But there are clues: Watch how furiously Charles plays tetherball when no one is looking

The audience will see the surprise arrival of Mulligan’s Nell coming like a warship on the horizon. His estranged ex’s appearance alongside her new American husband, Michael (Akemnji Ndifornyen), gobsmacks this snob off his pedestal. Nell knows Herb well enough to be thoroughly unimpressed. When Herb reveals his new back tattoo, exposing that a guy who once prided himself on authenticity is now desperately chasing trends, Mulligan’s Nell barely cocks an eyebrow.

“Cool,” she says. Her neutrality is brutal.

Mulligan has been edging toward comedy without committing to it. She’s great in that sweet spot of playing either narcissistic fools (like “Saltburn’s” Poor Dear Pamela) or here, a woman who shows up with a game plan to be confident and droll. Although Mulligan is the newbie within this filmmaking team, she probably knows the folk-star world more intimately than any of them — she’s been married to the singer of Mumford & Sons since 2012.

The script promptly sends her fictional spouse off on a birding expedition so that Herb and Nell can get slowly and persuasively reacquainted. (Pun-happy Charles would no doubt call the conveniently exiled husband’s trip a McGuffin of puffins.) With just one other character worth mentioning, a daffy shop clerk played by “Fleabag’s” Sian Clifford, there’s only so many moves a story this small can make. The film can’t afford to be shy about contrivances, but it’s only willing to cheat on facts, not feelings.

You can imagine how things will play out and you’d be close but not exact. Griffiths doesn’t fight against the formula, he just takes our expectations for every scene and gingers them up a little, the movie version of a cozy sweater threaded with tinsel. It’s the music that takes things from pleasant to powerful — not just indie folk’s earnest refrains, but the way everyone hides behind the songs’ pretense of candor while keeping their own walls sky-high. All three leads croon along with these pure emotions, each one believing they’ve grown to know each other, either through their own lyrics or Charles’ nonstop blather. Yet whenever one claims to know what another person wants, they’re usually wrong.

Key, in particular, plays all the these layers beautifully. Blunt as his Charles is, he proves to be the most guarded of the trio; there are unsung stanzas of sadness in his eyes. He might open up if his heroes asked. Except he’s the geek, the hanger-on, the money man, so nobody does. Fandom isn’t painless. But “Wallis Island” is worth applause.

Source: ‘The Ballad of Wallis Island’ review: Carey Mulligan, folk star – Los Angeles Times

The Long Good Friday’: A Gangster Noir That Saw the Future

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London crime kingpin Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins) faces a disastrous Easter weekend as he watches his criminal empire disintegrate.

By Paul Parcellin

‘The Long Good Friday’ (1980)

(Contains “spoilers”)

As Good Friday approaches it’s fitting that we look at one of the slender number of crime films set on the holiest of Christian holy days. In filmdom, the connection between religious rites and acts of criminal savagery can be jarring (think of the baptism scene in “The Godfather”) and, by some viewers’ standards, just this side of blasphemous. But the marriage of the odious and the sacred often underlines the hypocrisy of those who tread on both sides of the fence.

 

In “The Long Good Friday,” which saw its U.S. debut 43 years ago this month, London crime kingpin Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins) faces a disastrous Easter weekend as he watches his criminal empire disintegrate. A stubby, barrel chested Tasmanian devil of a man, Harold is about to launch a multi-billion dollar redevelopment plan. The project is designed to revitalize London’s then desolate Docklands property and fill his pockets with more cash than an East End geezer such as he could dream of.

 

The idea is to remake himself into a legitimate businessman, more of less, with the help of some startup cash from the New York Mafia, a detail that casts doubt on his grand plans.

It’s 1979 and the Docklands and its surrounding area is depressed after the shipping industry moved on to larger, more suitable ports. With astonishing accuracy “The Long Good Friday” foretells the city’s future after the conservative government redeveloped the property into a sterile haven for the upper classes, a real-life outcome that would line up well with Harold’s planned cash grab.

We meet Harold after he touches down in a Concorde, returning from a secret mission in the States. He wastes no time getting down to business, entertaining guests on a cruise aboard his yacht on the Thames. Among the invited are corrupt cops and city officials as well as New York gangster Charlie (Eddie Constantine). With the zest, if not the eloquence, of an evangelical preacher, Harold pitches his scheme to rebuild part of the city in time for the upcoming Olympics (a London setting for the Olympic Games is purely fictional in this time frame). His goal, he says, is to make England a dominant European country again. As he speaks, he’s framed by the Tower Bridge which looms behind him, but as the craft glides onward the bridge recedes into the background and Harold stands alone, proclaiming his grand ideas and giving the impression that perhaps he’s grown too big for his britches.

 

Hoskins, as the blustery, violent and highly temperamental Harold, is the very embodiment of a gangland boss. But his inflated sense of self importance, his arrogance and overconfidence are among his greatest weaknesses and are instrumental in his ultimate downfall. He’s a character who can only be matched is sheer hutzpah by Edward G. Robinson’s Rico Bandello, another bullying fireplug who dominates the mob in “Little Caesar” (1931).

 

P.H. Moriarty, Helen Mirren, Bob Hoskins, Brian Hall

Keeping Harold anchored to terra firma is his girlfriend, Victoria (Helen Mirren), who, unlike Harold, the plain spoken ruffian, is educated and comes from a good middle class family. The role of Victoria was originally written as Harold’s bubble headed slice of arm candy, but Mirren fought with director John Mackenzie, insisting that the character take on a more consequential role in the story, and it’s a good thing that she did. Victoria is Harold’s guiding light, and later when she begins to lose her composure as Harold’s world crashes down around him, we know that things are bad. A side note: The world of mobsters is one that the actress knew first hand. In the scene aboard the yacht, some real gangsters were brought on as extras, and they were all familiar with Mirren’s uncle, who was himself a member of the London underworld.

Once Harold’s luck takes a turn for the worse, things come apart in rapid order. He hopes to dazzle the visiting money men, but inexplicably, bodies begin to drop and bombs detonate as he and Victoria try to make nice with the visiting Mafioso, hoping in vain that they won’t notice that something’s terribly wrong. But a bomb in the pub where he and the New York contingent plan to dine is proof positive that Harold’s plans are being swept away like beach stones in a tsunami. The bombings are a clue to who’s behind the mayhem — the story was pitched to producers as “terrorism meets gangsterism.” Incidentally, the pub that’s leveled in a bomb attack was merely a set, but must have been a convincing one because passersby popped in from time to time expecting to be served drinks.

Understandably, Harold’s at wit’s end and means to find out who’s liquidating his close associates and trying to wipe him off of the map. “I’ll have his carcass dripping blood by midnight,” he growls.

In one of the film’s more visually arresting and grotesque scenes, he rounds up a band of his associates and dangles them upside down on hooks in an abattoir, hoping to scare the bejesus out of them and learn who’s betraying him (If these are his pals, we’d hate to see what he does with his enemies).

Conditions get worse still for one fellow who endures some stigmata body modifications on a warehouse floor, a scene reminiscent of a real-life incident perpetrated by notorious gangster twins Ronnie and Reggie Kray, who lorded over London’s underworld in the 1960s. The film’s replication of that occurrence is a fitting if shocking development in this Easter tale beset by paranoia and blood letting.

Harold is continually one step behind his mysterious tormentors, but finally learns that, after a series of fumbled actions and misunderstandings, the IRA has put him in its crosshairs. Blinded by his arrogance, he opts to take an ill-advised path to sew up his problems, a drastic move that demonstrates Harold’s delusional thinking.

Although the film was completed in 1980 it wasn’t released in the U.K. until the following year and didn’t premiere in the U.S. until 1982. Britain’s ITC Entertainment originally backed the production, but got cold feet after seeing the final cut. The film’s political undertones and graphic violence prompted the firm to refuse the film a theatrical release. But Handmade Films, the company founded by former Beatle George Harrison, acquired the rights and agreed to distribute it. The delays, however, only served to build the public’s anticipation of its release and helped secure the film’s cult status.

For those curious about the real-life Docklands development project, which became Canary Wharf, the film predicted with surprising accuracy the project which didn’t begin until after “The Long Good Friday” was filmed. Unfortunately for many, much of the housing lost to the developer’s wrecking ball was replaced with high end living quarters and commercial buildings. Opinions on the project’s success are mixed, with some lauding the rejuvenation of the downtrodden docks, and many feeling that the working class was steamrolled over in this bid to create valuable properties and big profits.

While many of the Docklands denizens’ lives were adversely affected over time by the project, Harold’s world falls apart before his eyes, and in a most dramatic manner. As the film ends, he’s trapped in his fancy automobile, framed this time not by the magnificent Tower Bridge, but by the vehicle’s windshield, and he’s behind it, under glass, as it were. There’s no wiggle room for him to get away. Victoria is spirited away in another car and Harold, alone and vulnerable, is in the hands of one of his tormentors (Pierce Brosnan, in his first film role). There’s little else for him to do but ponder his past and try to work out how he ended up at this juncture. He’s been roused from his reverie and his dream may one day be realized, but by someone other than himself.

Source: life and death in l.a.: ‘The Long Good Friday’: A Gangster Noir That Saw the Future

1999 Scot film “Ratcatcher” is a “masterful piece of filmmaking.”

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One of the greatest British actors of his generation, Gary Oldman highlighted this indie coming of age drama as one of his favourites.

In terms of British exports to the rest of the world, one of the island’s products has got to be Gary Oldman. Born in New Cross, London, the master of disguise got his start in the theatre before appearing in various domestic films like Sid and Nancy, in which he played Sid Vicious of Sex Pistols fame, and Shakespeare spin-off Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He quickly used this as a platform to conquer the rest of the world, but he lost sight of his British routes. He won his Oscar for playing Winston Churchill, for goodness sake. It doesn’t get much more British than that.

Oldman owes his entire career to small British films, as he was inspired to become an actor by watching Malcolm McDowell in an obscure drama. This was represented when he was asked by Rotten Tomatoes to name his five favourite movies. Among American classics like Apocalypse Now, The Conversation, and The Godfather: Part II (he likes Coppola, ok?), he named a “small indie movie” from 1999.

Gary Oldham
Gary Oldham

“A Lynne Ramsay movie called Ratcatcher,” he said, rounding out his picks. “I just think it’s a masterful piece of filmmaking.” He went on to mention other contenders, mainly the works of Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese, but settled on Ratcatcher as his fifth and final selection.

Ratcatcher is the debut film from Scottish director Ramsay, who was also behind the camera for You Were Never Really Here and We Need to Talk About Kevin. Set in her native Glasgow, the film follows a 12-year-old boy named Jamie (William Eadie). It kicks off in a pretty grim fashion as Jamie watches his friend Ryan (Thomas McTaggart) drown in an accident. This results in a string of unfortunate encounters, as the young lad meets various other damaged children against the backdrop of the city’s poorest areas.

As bleak as Ratcatcher is, some people absolutely love it, calling it an essential coming-of-age movie that doesn’t pull its punches in exploring what it means to grow up in poverty. There are obvious comparisons to Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting for its Scottish setting and portrayal of a dark underbelly. Still, its child protagonist puts it more in line with Ken Loach’s Kes or Shane Meadows’ This is England.

The Sirius Black actor isn’t the only one who’s a big fan of Ramsay’s work. Ratcatcher was screened at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival and was then nominated for ‘Outstanding British Film’ at the BAFTAs, sharing the category with the likes of Notting Hill and East is East. While it didn’t win, it was awarded the ‘Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer’ trophy that same evening. The fact that it was made entirely by novices – Ramsay recruited a bunch of her friends from film school to help with its production – only makes this feat more impressive.

Given that he’s such a big fan of hers, it’s a shame Oldman hasn’t been to collaborate with Ramsay on anything. The director’s next film, Die My Love, has already announced a cast that includes Jennifer Lawrence, LaKeith Stansfield, and Robert Pattinson, but sadly, there is no Oldman. Whilst there’s still time for him to make a cameo, fans of British cinema will have to keep on waiting to see these two geniuses put their minds together.

Source: Gary Oldman’s favourite British movie