Hailed as a success at Cannes and the BFI London Film Festival, We Need to Talk About Kevin has taken its time to filter over to UK screens. But it has been worth the wait. This masterclass in film adaptation from Scottish director Lynn Ramsay (Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar), rips out the bloodied, beating heart of Lionel Shriver’s novel and moulds it into something fresh, visceral and entirely unforgettable. With first-rate performances from Tilda Swinton (Burn After Reading, Michael Clayton), John C. Reilly (Magnolia, The Aviator) and up-and-coming young star Ezra Miller (Afterschool), We Need to Talk About Kevin is a profoundly chilling and utterly unique experience.

Tilda Swinton plays Eva Katchadourian, a mother struggling to readjust when her son conducts a brutally calculated high school shooting. Having been separated from her family and put on trial for parental negligence, Eva can look only to her bi-monthly prison visits for concrete ties to her old life. But the memory of what she has left behind lingers. Looking back at her former life from a grimy sofa in an empty house, she considers whether the relationship she had with her son formed the man he would become. Delving deeper even than Gus Van Sant’s Elephant into the stories behind the headlines, Ramsay’s film is a haunting study of the forgotten victims of these crimes.

It is Ramsay’s deep understanding of the power of imagery which sets Kevin apart from the rest. The narrative twitches erratically from past to present, splicing bright moments of familial bliss with the bleak, dreary reality of Eva’s existence in the present. Small visual cues thread the narrative together amidst all this chaotic toing and froing. A shot of cells dividing and multiplying – the moments of Kevin’s conception – is replaced by the similarly rhythmic, monotonous process of Eva’s photocopier in the present. Both suggest relentlessness, inevitability: there’s no turning back now.

We Need to Talk About Kevin is at its core a story about ambivalent motherhood. It poses the eternal question of nature versus nurture, of whether Kevin’s emotional disturbance is innate or learned. One element which Ramsay could have exploited more is the significance the book places on the ambiguity within the dysfunctional mother-son relationship. What is made clear throughout is that Kevin grows up with a mother who feels no connection to him. In the book Eva’s skewed unreliable narration prevents us from seeing the truth, so we never know who is truly to blame. One moment in the film does echo this idea. When Eva plunges her head into a sink of water, her face blurs and becomes that of her son. The similarity is striking.

While the book seems to suggest that they are ultimately both at fault, Ramsay’s film ultimately sides more with the idea of Kevin as the innately evil child and Eva as the fraught and helpless mother. However, this simplification is perhaps necessary for the film to work without the depth of explanation provided in Shriver’s novel. And this take on the relationship is backed up by some exceptional performances. Ezra Miller captures perfectly Kevin’s awkward, sneering sexuality; while Swinton remains vulnerable while still hinting at Eva’s stubborn and snobbish side with characteristically nuanced flair.

Adapting a novel which is so crucially tied to its narrative voice is no easy task. However, as Danny Boyle proved with Trainspotting, a successful adaptation harnesses the novel’s mood and tone and translates it into an entirely different vocabulary. While Shriver’s novel is dominated by Eva’s voice, Ramsay cannot not allow her Eva this outlet. Mired in thick and often unbroken silence, her life is haunted by words left unsaid. Johnny Greenwood’s score, complimented by a few artfully chosen tinkling 1950s pop hits like Buddy Holly’s ‘Every Day’, goes some way to filling this void.

What Shriver conveys through words, Ramsay must bring to the screen in images. Eva’s own culpability, for example, is referenced throughout by the constant use of red. The film’s opening sequence is slathered with it. Eva is held up above a crowd of revellers at Valencia’s La Tomatina festival, soaked like a new-born baby in deep red juice and pulp. As the narrative shoots back to the present we see her wake up, pale and groggy, bathed in crimson light. In an ominous warning from a targeted vandal, her house and windows have been covered in blood-red paint. But rather than merely painting over it, Eva dedicates what seems like weeks to sanding and scraping the paint away. This is a therapeutic process, a slow and masochistic search for catharsis that will never truly be realised. The Lady Macbeth references are rife; blood-red paint covers her hands, and turns up unexpectedly on her face and hair.

A moody, chilling and provocative rollercoaster of a film, Lynne Ramsay’s adaptation of Kevin is a masterpiece in its own right. Shying away from the sensationalist scenes which could easily have cheapened it, Ramsay’s film is bold but restrained. With dense imagery and whirlwind editing, We Need to Talk About Kevin is visually impressive and eerily affecting. Not to be missed.

“Love is a burden. A poison. Never fall in love.”

French thriller director Dominik Moll’s adaptation of this gothic 1796 novel is an ambitious attempt to revive an old and controversial story for a modern audience. Expectations were high, but despite starring the inimitable Vincent Cassel (Black Swan, La Haine, Mesrine) in the lead role and featuring a bold visual style, The Monk is sadly no greater than the sum of its parts.

Cassel plays Brother Ambrosio who, abandoned at a Madrid monastery’s door when he was just a baby, knows little of life outside its walls. Under the watchful eye of the friars, Ambrosio grows up to become a talented preacher with an apparently unimpeachable moral compass. However, when a dark presence arrives at the monastery the form of a stranger in a wax mask (eerily reminiscent of Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face), Ambrosio finds his faith tested for the very first time. Risking everything for a taste of forbidden fruit, Ambrosio’s inevitable descent into evil will lose him his profession, his standing and ultimately, his soul.

The Monk is heavily stylised, making great use of the surrounding landscape to create a striking balance of darkness and light. In a subversive play on familiar tropes, the monastery as a beacon of religious ‘good’ is shrouded in darkness while the outside world is bright enough to be almost blinding. As with his previous works Lemming (2005) and Harry, he’s here to help (2000), Moll admits that his visual style is greatly indebted to Hitchcock and this is quite apparent throughout. Certain homages to Hitchcock, like the ‘iris’ shots (where the screen is engulfed with a black circle to mark the end of a scene) seem a little gimmicky and out of place. The Monk often seems so preoccupied with its visual impact that other important elements are lost along the way. More time could have been spent on the costumes, for example, which look inauthentic to the point of caricature.

The performances are very much a mixed bag. Vincent Cassel flounders a little in the early scenes; portraying Brother Ambrosio as the embodiment of religious dignity and devotion seems a little out of his comfort zone. Perhaps unsurprisingly for French cinema’s go-to villain, Cassel thrives in the latter half of the film when he is thrown something a little juicier to chew on. Other stand out performances include Roxane Duran as the tragic and fragile Sister Agnes and Sergí Lopez in a brief appearance as the monstrous child-molester. Some characters, meanwhile, come across as rather two-dimensional and underdeveloped, making it hard to feel any emotional investment in their fates. The love story between bland suitor Lorenzo (Frédéric Noaille) and beautiful Antonia (Joséphine Japy) makes particularly trying viewing.

While The Monk does not lack ambition, with a highly controversial and rich storyline, the delivery is sadly lacking. Despite a strong story and adventurous cinematography, the film fails to pack an emotional punch. It is perhaps The Monk’s aspirations which are its outdoing; it may well have benefitted from a little toning down.

The Monk will be showing at the BFI London Film Festival and is set for general UK release in 2012. You can check out the trailer below.

Knuckle is a pull no punches (pun not intended) look into the secretive and downright terrifying world of the Irish Traveller community. Chronicling a history of violent feuding between rival families, the story focuses on two brothers as they fight for their reputations and the honour of their family name.

The Joyce and Quinn Families have been at war for almost a decade and filmaker Ian Palmer has been there every step of the way, capturing the emotional and violent feud as its unfolds. The feud began after a scuffle outside a London pub ended with the death of one of the clan members and a manslaughter charge for another. Fueled by taunting videos that the gangs make to provoke their rivals and a constant fear of disappointing their elders and brethren, they never back down and simple video taunts always end in a violent battle in a secluded country lane – usually video’d by family members and all documented by Palmer.

As a film, Knuckle falls down, hard to watch scenes and a lack of structure constantly pull you out of the action, but is that the intention? This doesn’t work as a film, but the scattered scenes and haphazard structure only serve to compliment the lives of those being captured on screen. Their lives have very little structure and whereas some would argue (especially the characters) that this is a tale of revenge and family honour spanning a decade – I would argue that these are just bored men who love to fight, and look for any reason to do so.

Palmer deserves credit for the danger he put himself in and throughout the film you genuinely fear for his safety as much as you do the men involved. You find yourself wanting to throw the towel in for everyone involved and hopefully put an end to what is male bravado at its lowest.

You can check out the trailer here and find our more at Knucklethemovie.com. The DVD hit stores this weekend and is available from all good retailers or direct from Revolver Entertainment

In the world of Monsters alien lifeforms have landed on earth 6 years prior and have inhabited a large portion The United States & Mexico, dubbed “The Infected Zone”. Its decided that the best way to contain the zone is to build two huge barriers at either side, containing the zone and keeping the alien life at bay. Down in Mexico, after a recent attack on several hotels and large buildings; the city is in disarray.  Andrew (Scoot McNairy) is an American photojournalist working in the city, he is tasked by his employer to escort the company director’s daughter Samantha (Whitney Able) back home to America. Andrew is not interested in becoming an escort and is dealing with the moral implications of his job and the types of photos he is forced to take and Samantha isn’t looking forward to her return to America, she is going through a crisis regarding her own position in life, her relationship with her father, and her impending marriage. The pair reluctantly set off towards the most northern point of the Mexican coast line to get a ferry to America before the yearly alien migration season begins and they are trapped in Mexico for the next 6 months; before another window is available.

Filmed on a meagre budget of just $15,000  and produced for a total budget of less than $400,000, its a remarkable achievment. To put those figures in perspective both the aforementioned comparisons (District 9 & Cloverfield) cost upwards of $25 million each! British director Gareth Edwards, wrote, storyboarded, edited, filmed and produced all the visual effects for the film.  The only hired actors in the film were the two leads, and everyone else were locals who happened to be around the area at the time. Everything was shot on location in Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Texas alot of the time without pre granted permission, over a period of just 3 weeks. With such a rough and ready schedule and style of shooting, coupled with the ad-libbing extras and non-actors, Edwards was left with over 100 hours of footage for the film. This shines through during the film as every aspect of the dialogue seems natural and unforced; helped by the fact that Scoot & Whitney are engaged in real life.

Instead of hindering the film, the low budget helped create a very natural film that shines as a beacon of what can be achieved in the digital age and on standard equipment & out of the box editing software.

The film has received mixed reviews, but most of the negativity seems to be directed towards how mislead people feel by the trailer and the publishers marketing of the project. But take this film as it is, and approach it with an open mind and what you will find is an engaging love story set against a very unusual backdrop.

Monsters is out in cinemas now, but you can check out the slightly misleading trailer below.

The Last Exorcism is a new fake documentary  horror film directed and edited by Daniel Stamm (A Necessary death) & produced by Eli Roth (Cabin Fever, Hostel, Inglorious Basterds).

The film is told from the perspective of a disillusioned evangelical minister Reverend Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), who after years of performing exorcisms agrees to participate in a documentary chronicling his very last exorcism while simultaneously exposing the fraud of his ministry & practice. The subject is chosen at random from a pile of letters and he is introduced to a farmers daughter ‘Nell’ who her family believe is possessed by the devil.

The film is more of a fake documentary in the style of the Blair Witch rather than the recent influx of “found footage” films like Paranormal Activity.  The film doesn’t quite fully deliver on its Blair Witch promises, but does bring plenty of chills and a level of originality and clever production to the genre. The Last Exorcism is a great piece of work and walks a fine line between horror-thriller & very very dark comedy, its very aware of its self and that plays to it’s advantage.

The Last Exorcism is in cinemas from today , and you can find out more about the film here. Or you can check out the trailer below.

Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley play couple, Clive Nicoli & Elsa Kast, two young scientists who experiment with animal genes with the goal of creating new genetic hybrids which will possess the characteristics of several animals. With their progress grinding to a halt, Elsa suggests the use of human DNA to speed up the process. Although at first hesitant about the idea, Clive agrees & after all, like a bottle of Dr.Pepper, Elsa suggests ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’. Which sets up nicely the moment where things inevitably do go wrong, I won’t say exactly what does go wrong but it’s quite predictable, if not inevitable.

The experiment eventually evolves into a part human, part animal hybrid which they decide to call Dren. Dren is played by French actress, Delphine Chanéac, but heavily drenched in visual effects and CGI to create the disturbing outer shell of her character. These effects are the stand out element of the film and are visually & technically impressive. However the dialogue and acting is a quite dreary at times to say the least and it tends to shadow the rare moments of good cinema that evolve from the visual effects and its unique premise.

Splice could’ve been brilliant & quite unique, but it just falls neatly into the Sci-Fi genre without the blink of an eye. Plus like the majority of so many genre films out there, it’s sometimes obvious that it’s just a mix of direct influences repackaged. It’s like building something out of Lego when you only have the rubbish pieces available. My main issue with the film is, it doesn’t take its premise far enough, it sort of skims around the edges and never really dives in, always acting like a spectator. If everything in the film had been slaved over half as much as the visual effects and cinematography, we would have had an incredible film on our hands.

At the end of the day, Splice is a modern take on the Frankenstein story in which the morale is, if you have a laboratory and the skills required to experiment with DNA then don’t. It’s not worth the trouble. There’s a line in the film where Elsa asks Clive ‘What is it?’ to which he replies, ‘A mistake’. I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Splice is all in good cinemas now. You can find out more info on the film here. Or take a look at the trailer below.

The performances given by the cast are powerful ones as Kristen Stewart tries her best to shake off any kind of typecasting – this role as Joan Jett is as far from the dull, pale faced Bella that she portrays in the ‘Twilight’ franchise as you can get, whilst Dakota Fanning’s portrayal of Cherie Currie is mature, emotive and as dynamic as any actress twice her age could give.

The plot’s a rather simple, yet effective one, a group of five girls form a rock band. They go through what most rock bands go through in the first stages, rehearsing in whatever space they can (a trailer), playing the dingy dives across the city (the difference being, The Runaways were performing in the same dingy dives as the then unknown, ‘The Ramones, Cheap Trick and Tom Petty) whilst trying to become noticed. Their live performances and success were fueled by the misogynistic views of the 70′s that ‘girls don’t play electric guitars’ and rock music should be left to the males of the world.

After a bombardment of bad press and struggles to be taken seriously, the girls are eventually given a chance by Mercury Records who offer them a record deal. The release of debut single ‘Cherry Bomb’ causes controversy in America, because of this the girls start getting noticed by the industry and after being ignored for so long, soon land themselves an overseas tour. It’s whilst being on this tour where they experience their own version of  ‘Beatle-mania’. They had it all; success, wealth, a fan base, support and a big tick of the ‘things to do’ list. However, like most high profile rock ‘n’ roll bands, they find that fame and fortune isn’t everything and Cherie (Fanning) soon realises that she doesn’t want the lifestyle anymore and eventually leaves the band to concentrate on her own personal issues. Despite seeing the girls as her family, the band never see each other again and even though ‘The Runaways’ didn’t split, the band were never as big as they were when Cherie fronted them.

Like ‘The Spice Girls’, ‘The Runaways’ still have  a huge fan base in Japan and on that note, I shall end this review and go listen to David Bowie demos.

The Runaways is released on August 26th by E1 Entertainment. For more info click here. Or you can check out the trailer below.

The new cast features Liam Neeson as Col. John ‘Hannibal’ Smith, Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson as Cpl. Bosco ‘B.A.’ Baracus, Bradley Cooper as Lt. Templeton ‘Faceman’ Peck and Sharlto Copley as Capt. ‘Howling Mad’ Murdock, who even gets the chance to reprise his District 9 South African accent early on in the movie: and it’s a movie so ridiculous that a heavily armed prawn making a cameo appearance midway through wouldn’t look an inch out of place.

In the twenty minutes running up to the opening titles our heroes have already found themselves in several easily-escapable elaborate execution attempts, have formed an alliance through some of the most careless and thrown together story telling in action-cinema history, and the trademark van has been destroyed before the adventure has even begun. As though that weren’t enough B.A. has already pitied several fools, deemed various incidents as ‘bulllll-shit’ and developed a phobia of flying at the hands of Murdock, all before Col. Smith has had chance to inform us of his unwavering affection for successfully formulated plans.

The main problem with the film is that, whereas most movies rely on the use of a script for direction and plot, The A-Team seems to have been recorded directly from the vivid imaginations of two eight year old boys who have been filled with sugar, given a bucket of Action Men, and taught the meaning of the word ‘shit’; and it makes for nothing more than a whole mess of noise, extravagant automobiles and explosions. Lots of explosions. The direction lacks any subtlety or grace and every plan or rescue mission is plotted and executed in two minutes of jumbled fast-paced editing, beneath a dramatic score that doesn’t stop from the opening scene to the last.

Okay. It’s fair to say that anyone going into The A-Team expecting an Oscar-worthy masterpiece that will reshape the face of cinema would be out of their optimistic mind. The movie is supposed to be nothing more than a whole heap of summer-time fun, 153 minutes of nonsense to provide enough time to pluck up the courage to kiss your date in the darkness of the cinema. But the movie is so ridiculous, so intellectually devoid, so incredibly outrageous that it goes far beyond some lighthearted cigar-chomping fun and leaves you pitying the fools that have paid to receive this slap in the face from Hollywood.

The A-Team is out 28/07/10 on general release across all UK cinemas. For more info about the film, click here.

As you all will know by now if you’ve been reading my blog recently, I have been getting very excited about The Creators Project. The Launch Party in London took place on Saturday night at Victoria House in Bloomsbury.

Victoria House was overflowing with artists, hipsters and journalists. Films were shown in the auditorium (I’m Here - a robot love story by Spike Jonze being a particular favourite- see the trailer below), the creators of fascinating electronic art projects which were scattered around the building made inspirational speeches, the music was brilliant (I’ll explain more about that later) and alcohol was free and unlimited all night.

Many of the art projects were interactive, for example The Radical Friend installation where you went into a large glass triangular booth, got your face scanned and then it morphed on a big screen. Its purpose – who knows – but it was fun and the guys doing the face scanning looked like additional members of Hurts. There was also interactive 3D drawing, an indoor enchanted pine forest corridor by Karl Sadler, and The Blue Box where each participant put on their favourite song on the laptop, danced around to it whilst being filmed and it was shown on a big screen duplicated. This was a lot more interesting than it sounded, especially after a few cocktails (stand out cocktails were Pom Collins and some sort of gingery one). We met some lovely, friendly people there including Will The Californian, who we later found hunched over outside looking just a little bit fucked, he couldn’t even tell us his name when we asked him, and the two french girls and a guy that we had witnessed performing a Napoleon Dynamite dance routine earlier.

We could not find the Ballroom for ages and therefore missed Flats and Yuck (the latter, very, very regrettably as I absolutely adore Yuck), I nearly cried when I found out that I’d missed them! But, I soon recovered from my disappointment as Mark Ronson and The Business International performed an utterly amazing set. Mark was joined onstage by guests Q-Tip, MNDR, Kyle from The View and Rose Elinor Dougall and brought to life tracks from all three albums, with ‘Valerie’ ft. Kyle as a finale.

Kele Okereke was also brilliant; after having sound problems him and his band returned to the stage and delivered an animated and well received set full of not only songs from his solo album but a Bloc Party medley, wrapping things up with the classic ‘Flux’. An excellent, memorable and interesting night with free alcohol, stunning art, great music performances and wonderful people. Bravo Vice/Intel, Bravo!

The Creators Project is a joint venture between Vice and Intel. You can find out loads more here.

The Collector

Despite the plots originality, the script leans more towards the standard horror rules Dunstan and Melton have played their part in creating and it often feels like scenes are included solely for the purpose of ticking boxes – the film’s main flaw. Dunstan gets caught up in a game of hot potato trying to juggle the genres tight restrictions and appease its bloodthirsty audience whilst simultaneously trying to inject his unique twist on the relatively new “House Invasion” horror sub genre. The film’s strength is the atmosphere Dunstan creates with his use of space and the excellent soundtrack which rises and falls perfectly to immerse the viewer in the film’s gory visuals and the emotional turmoil of both the main character and the captured family members.

At the end of the day The Collector features an insane murderer in a mask killing innocent people in various inventive ways – like many other films that have been and will come.  If you like horror films you will love this, if you dont – you could do a lot worse as the films obvious strengths outweigh its flaws.  It’s an original film in an often stale genre and I can already feel a sequel brewing.

You can find out more about The Collector here, or check out the trailer below.