Silent Night

It’s Beginning To Look
A Lot Like Apocalypse

Silent Night
Written & Directed by Camille Griffin
UK 2021
Marv Films

Warning: Yeah, I think to do this incredible film justice, this one’s going to have all the spoilers in it. So do yourself a favour if you’ve not seen this one... don’t read this, go into the film blind and then, if you feel like it, give it a read after.

Silent Night is a film I think I might have heard recommended on the All The Colours Of The Dark podcast at some point but, I don’t think I knew it was a Christmas movie. When I was looking at festive movies to watch this year I stumbled upon it and, yeah, I do have vague recollections of it being recommended on that show/cast. I have to say, I was absolutely blown away by Silent Night (why it’s yet another film with this title, I don’t know).

It starts off all jolly and fun as a mother and father played by Keira Knightley and Matthew Goode are getting ready for Christmas guests, their college friends, on Christmas Eve. Their children are all being given the usual, ‘get ready and this is not what to do’ talks and these three kids, just like everybody else, are absolutely amazing in this... and they’re also the sons of the writer/director Camille Griffin. A special shout out to the lead son Art, played by Roman Griffin Davis, who really hammers home the social messages of the film. And then all the guests begin to arrive, played by various actors and actresses who are all absolutely brilliant in this movie... including (and this is by no means an exhaustive list of the incredible talent in this) Annabelle Wallis, Lily-Rose Depp, the extraordinary Lucy Punch and the incredible Kirby Howell-Baptiste (Death herself, from The Sandman, reviewed by me here).

And, as the night of the party gets going, little clues which support the premise of what’s really going on here, start to come into play. It’s an incredibly subtle movie (in some ways... some of the characters are, themselves, far from subtle) and it slowly unfolds the truly horrifying concept. So, for instance, everyone, including the various kids in the movie, are all swearing like sailors as their parents are now allowing it. And the chickens who live in the grounds of the beautiful country manor, where the party is being held, are let loose because... and this is the first real hint... it’s kinder to let them get killed by foxes than the alternative. Another sign that things are not quite right... when the parents forgot to get the sticky toffee pudding in for one of the kids... is that one of the guests goes to the shop to get some. Never mind that the shops are all closed now... just smash through one of the windows and take what you want with, apparently, no real consequence.

Then, things really get spelled out, when everybody is eating Christmas dinner and the kids are discussing whether the Queen will be giving a speech on telly this year (yeah, it’s unfortunate but, this really dates the film) or taking shelter in a bunker somewhere. And so, if you hadn’t somehow already figured it out, we get to the main premise of the movie...

And I tell you now this is not just one of the most awesome Christmas movies I’ve ever seen, it’s also by far the grimmest and downright horrifying... although it’s not really a horror film. The quick summary I read had it pegged out as a horror comedy but, although there are a lot of laugh out loud comedic moments in the movie, right through to the bitter end, it’s not really that either. I’d plump nearer to black comedy but, no, it’s premise and the magnificent way the director, cast and crew manage to hold the tone of the idea, puts it far away from the humourous shenanigans which lightly sprinkle and season this festive feast of despair.

Okay, last chance to stop reading before the big spoiler...

So the central premise is... well it’s technically global warming, in a new form. People have been abusing the earth for so long now that the earth has struck back, with mini twisters which are slowly unveiling a poisonous gas, eventually covering the entire planet. And not just any old poison gas either... one which has you choking up your own guts and bleeding to death in spasms of agony. So, in their wisdom, the governments of the world (most of them) have issued painless suicide pills to everyone who they recognise as being citizens of their lands, to take just before the mini, swirly air currents of doom hit their region. Everyone in the house knows this is their final night before they all take their 'exit pill' and, yeah, its grimness incarnate. As Art says at some point, when everybody is opening their Christmas presents... “The batteries are going to last longer than us.”

And it’s a sweetened pill for the audience too with, like I said, some very funny moments and a wonderful Christmassy score by Lorne Balfe which... well, I wish they’d have put it out on CD rather than just some useless electronic download. It also has a very satirical edge to it too. I’m writing this review just a few days after the death of Irene Cara but it’s a tragic irony that there’s a scene in this where all the party guests are dancing to Fame but with none of them noticing that they’re singing “I'm gonna live forever”. Plus some wonderfully healthy side swipes at the current UK government, particularly and quite blatantly the Tory party, who in their infinite wisdom have decided that no homeless people or illegal immigrants will be allowed the painless death of the ‘exit pill’. I find it amazing that this movie actually started filming before the Covid pandemic hit (and picked up filming after the end of the first lockdown, from what I understand) since it’s very much a prophetic parallel of just how the idiots in power respond to something which they can’t stop or monetise.

The only thing I will say is that the end of the movie is pretty easy to predict... in fact, I’d already figured out what the last shot of the movie would surely be so, when the camera started panning on that particular reveal (you’re bound to get there too, I suspect) then I already knew I was watching the final shot of the film and just what would happen. But, honestly, it’s not a let down of a final moment by any means. I’d rate it right up there with the ending of the movie version of Stephen King’s The Mist for all time downbeat endings, although it’s a little more subtle until you start thinking of the implications of the final two seconds of the movie. So, yeah, I wouldn’t have wanted any other ending on this and the director was right to roll the credits exactly when she did, I think.

And that’s me about done with Silent Night and, I can’t stress enough how much of a recommendation I’m going to give this one to my friends and just what a stupendous movie this is... especially since it’s Camille Griffin’s debut in directing a feature length film. Why hasn’t this woman written and directed more movies already? This is amazing stuff and it’s completely criminal that this has been under seen in this country (as far as I can tell) and that if I want a Blu Ray of this one... and I certainly do... then I’m going to have to import one in from Germany (which I certainly will).  So, yeah, can’t endorse this movie enough. Definitely grab this one for your grimmest Christmas viewing ever.... with the caveat that, although the child actors in this are truly wonderful, I wouldn’t necessarily condone watching this with children present in the room. You have been warned.

Pirates Of The Caribbean - At World’s End

Depp-reciating Returns

Pirates Of The Caribbean
At World’s End
USA 2007 Directed by Gore Verbinski
Disney Blu Ray Zone B

Wow... this is not a good movie. I’m kinda surprised this one got the box office it did after the second movie was not so great. You’d think it would be a case of once bitten, twice shy but, then again, in order to get good box office, Hollywood relies on repeat viewings of a film from the same audience... I just can’t imagine anyone wanting to watch this thing again after they’ve just had to sit through the interminably long (almost three hours) running time of Pirates Of The Caribbean - At Worlds End.

To be fair, there are one or two good moments in this but they all seem to be front loaded within the first half an hour. The film opens strongly with what can only be described as a musical number set to a hanging. The song a little boy sings before he is executed with various other pirates is a nice opening set piece from Hans Zimmer and it’s quite striking but, the reason for the song and the comments made by onlookers makes absolutely no sense and it’s only briefly touched upon later in the most vague and confusing way. In other words, it’s a completely pointless scene which, honestly, works very well as such but, for some reason, the filmmakers try to justify its inclusion into the narrative space of the film (you wouldn’t catch someone like Fellini trying to rationalise what he wanted to do like this) and this kind of dilutes the effectiveness of the scene to some extent. Throwing in a sense of logic where none is required (film is art and art doesn’t have to mirror reality, people!).

This is followed by another strong sequence of stealth followed by action as the various pirate crew members from the last movie team up with the newly resurrected Captain Barbosa (Geoffrey Rush) and go to Singapore, to the stronghold of infamous pirate villain Sao Feng (played by Asian superstar Chow Yun-Fat) to retrieve a map to a place in the afterlife. This is a pretty promising sequence which, maybe, loses something on home video but I remember it being quite a spectacle at the cinema. And then we get some assorted plot snippets thrown into the mix as Keira Knightley’s Elisabeth Swann and Orlando Bloom’s Will Turner, plus assorted regulars, go off to find Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow in order to bring him back from his own, personal space in Hell.

And, surprisingly, this is where this film suddenly falls flat. I find it ironic that the original, classic Pirates Of The Caribbean movie (reviewed here) only came alive once Johnny Depp made his memorable entrance but this time around, the whole first half an hour of the movie, which is Depp-less, is the strongest part of the film. Things really begin to flag by the time Jack Sparrow is introduced... in a curiously surreal but bewilderingly boring sequence with multiple versions of the character occupying the same space. I don’t know why the film never really recovers from here on out but I understand the script was still incomplete when filming commenced on this one so, yeah, maybe not the most ideal conditions to make a piece of movie art under, for sure.

Once again there are strange creatures at large (most of them seen in the last film, as the Flying Dutchman and its crew return to add drama to the proceedings) and big set pieces with cannons and crossed swords but, without really having any good filler for the calm moments to allow contrast and highlight the ferocity of the action sequences (not to mention the confusing editing in these scenes) the whole swashbuckling yarn seems a bit bland and... well... less swashing and more ‘let’s all go and have a sleep on the sofa until this monstrosity of a movie passes by’ it seemed to me.

The one ray of light in this film comes in the form of Hans Zimmer’s excellent score. Using the same musical language of the previous installments we have some cracking tunes that, while ultimately failing to break through the lethargy of the finished product, does at least support this bloated behemoth appropriately and, to boot, is an enjoyable stand alone listen away from the movie. Of special note, asides from the opening song (which is curiously truncated on the CD soundtrack) we have a stand out piece of score which Zimmer excerpts in his live concerts for the scene where Jack gets everyone to topple his ship upside down, called Up Is Down on the accompanying soundtrack album. It’s moments like this which, at least, had me tapping my feet along to the music while I tried to find something visually interesting on the director’s canvass.

And there you have it. An extremely short review for a movie that, as far as I’m concerned, joins its sequels in proving that the original film was a bit of a fluke in terms of being a truly great movie (although I also liked Verbinski’s The Lone Ranger, against all the odds, which I reviewed here). Honestly, though, I can’t really recommend any of these films to a movie lover barring the first one and, by this third go round, it really did seem like all involved were flogging a dead sea turtle, truth be told.

Pirates Of The Carribbean - Dead Man’s Chest

Kraken Mad

Pirates Of The Carribbean - 
Dead Man’s Chest
USA 2006 Directed by Gore Verbinski
Disney Blu Ray Zone 2

And so I bravely tread into my rewatch of the second of the movies inspired by the long standing Disneyland ride, Pirates Of The Caribbean - Dead Man’s Chest and... you know what... this is not nearly as dreadful as I remember. I recall finding it fairly dull the first (and last) time I saw it, at the cinema back in 2006 and, although that’s probably still an accurate description of it, in all honesty, it’s by no means the complete disaster that I originally perceived this huge, box office burster to be. I think my extra disappointment with the film probably came for the fact that this was, in no way, a worthy sequel to the fantastic debut in the series (reviewed by me here). Yes, that’s true enough, as it is for all the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies but, back then, I actually thought, until I started watching it, that it may give the first film a run for its money. Alas, it’s not nearly an adequate sequel of a movie but, now that enough water has flowed under the hull, I can at least look at it with less expectations than I did on my initial viewing and find that it’s really not that offensive. Bits of it are even watchable.

Okay, so the film opens with a bit of a shock (good... nothing wrong with that to help get the audience interested) as two of the main protagonists of the first film - Elisabeth Swan, played by Keira Knightley and Will Turner, played by Orlando Bloom - are arrested and awaiting execution for their part in the escape of Johnny Depp’s scallywag rogue Captain Jack Sparrow at the end of the last movie. However, a deal is struck for Turner to find Sparrow and bring to the new Governor of... wherever the heck the characters in these films are all living... Jack’s magical compass. He goes off and, when Elisabeth escapes, she also goes after him.

Meanwhile, Johnny Depp’s opening scene is... well it’s not bad actually. A coffin is thrown into the sea and a bird lands on it and starts knocking on it with it’s beak. After a short while of this a shell flies through the wood of the coffin, fired from inside, eradicating said bird in a quick flurry of black feathers. A hand holding a flintlock pistol pokes through the hole left in the wake of its deadly harbinger and looks around as if it were a periscope. The lid is then lifted from inside, revealing Johnny Depp in his Jack Sparrow form as he then uses the leg of the skeletal corpse he is resting on to start rowing his coffin to his destination. And it really isn’t a bad character intro but... don’t try and compare it to the first film, where Depp’s entrance into the picture was a wake up call to great character entrances the world over. It’s a bit of a shame that this moment here isn’t remotely able to compete with that first intro but, like I said, divorce it from your treasured memories of The Curse Of The Black Pearl and... it’s really not a bad entrance, methinks.

And then everything gets really silly with Depp being struck with ‘the black spot’ (fans of Treasure Island should know that reference) and the main villain of the piece, Davy Jones (Hey, hey!), played by Bill Nighy as a Cthulhu-like squid creature, is after Depp with the similarly mutated crew of the famous Flying Dutchman. He will stop at nothing, including unleashing the fabled Kraken of myth, to track down Jack Sparrow to pay his debt of servitude to him unless, in a new deal, Jack can bring him 100 other souls. Meanwhile, Jack wants to find the key to unlock Davy Jones' chest (I'm guessing that would be Davy Jones locker then?) and free himself from his debt by piercing the living, beating heart of the skipper enclosed within.

And that’s as much of the silly plot that I can remember, to be honest... the rest of the film being one set piece after another while Depp tries to show off his tremendous acting talents with, it has to be said, a script not that worthy of him and with lots of chases played for comedic effect. The fight choreography doesn’t seem quite as good as the first one and, although there is an okayish extended swordfight between three main characters towards the end, it’s really not that swashbuckly and, in what is presumably an attempt by the director to try and top his first installment, the simple pleasures of the cutlasses clashing is mostly abandoned as he tries to find bigger set pieces to make everything seem like it’s delivering a lot more when, as it happens, it’s just delivering more a lot less effectively than the previous time around.

Now there are some nice moments, to be sure, with some great little throwaway jokes which look back to the previous adventure, such as when Jack first realises he is back in the company of Elizabeth Swann and, recalling a certain scene, he whispers to a crewman to “hide the rum”. And the actors are all good in this as they try to work hard and perform wonders with a script that is really not delivering on either the comedy or action in the same way as it did before. There also seem to be some huge story jumps between the two films as we find, for example, what became of Jack Davenport’s character Norrington... which doesn’t really help when it comes to echoing the feel of the original. And then there’s those set pieces...

Gore Verbinski must really like action sequences when everything is out of control and without the heroes able to do too much with the situations they find themselves in. In fact the action feels very repetitive... especially when we have a scene where Jack’s crew are trying to break out of spherical bone cages which they then proceed to roll around without much control when, later on in the film, we have a watermill which comes off its central axle and the three swordfighting characters... Jack, Will and Norrington... are fighting both inside and on top of it as it rolls around the environment, out of control. I was, at one point, wondering when the next inanimate object would somehow break free and start rolling around and causing our heroes more problems.

I also missed the pirate skeletons of the first film. Sure, the writers tried to deliberately hit that same supernatural undercurrent which made the first film a little fresher but, to be honest, fish/squid/what the heck people, while nicely surreal, kind of detracts from the atmosphere in this one, I reckon and I would have much rather they’d taken the supernatural element out of it altogether on this one rather than what they pushed it to here. It just seems very dull, at times.

That being said, the film isn’t all tedious and it still does entertain enough to keep you watching for what is, it has to be said, a monstrously unnecessarily, ginormous two and a half hour running time. One of the things which makes it so watchable, of course, is Hans Zimmer’s wonderful score for the film. Now, I don’t like this score as much as I liked Klaus Badelt’s original but this is still pretty good and it certainly keeps your toes tapping while the action sequences are playing out (and honestly, without the music, the film really would have been pretty much unwatchable). So a big shout out to Hans for this one and, of course, also to the cast of first rate actors who are able to make some of this dialogue sound half credible. This film wouldn’t be a recommendation from me but, of course, since Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man’s Chest was made back to back with the next installment, you need to see this one before you can make sense of the next... especially since this one leaves it on a bit of a cliffhanger. Although, if memory serves, the next one suffers from having a really strong set of opening scenes followed by more of the 'less-than-exciting' shenanigans which marred this one, to an extent. Of course, I’ll only know that for sure by rewatching it so... you know... watch this space.

Pirates Of The Caribbean - The Curse Of The Black Pearl

Her Cool Pirate

Pirates Of The Caribbean -
The Curse Of The Black Pearl
USA 2003 Directed by Gore Verbinski
Disney Blu Ray Zone 2

Here we go then. It so happens that it’s finally time to watch the Pirates Of The Caribbean films again from the start, since I’ve not really watched these since their cinematic release. My impression of these at the time was similar to what I later thought of Michael Bay’s Transformers movies... that being that the first one in the franchise is a pretty good film and that it’s been followed up with some truly dreadful sequels, none of which has managed to disprove the old adage that, in terms of the quality of both series’ of movies, lightning doesn’t strike twice.

This first one is, in retrospect and as I look at it now, just a little too long in terms of its total running time of almost two and a half hours. That being said there’s very much a case to be made, in my mind, that the movie is made watchable by one particular actor and, coupled with a pretty cool score, he’s the thing which makes this one worth watching at all... although that’s not to dim the light of the other very good performances in this.

The film is based on the 1967 Disneyland attraction of the same name (minus the subtitle). It was the last such attraction to have been steered by Walt Disney himself, although he died a few months before it opened and it’s kind of ironic that, since this film was so financially successful and popularly received, the ride was closed down for a while to make it even more like the movie version... although there are apparently plenty of references to the original ride in this film.

The opening of the movie is a prologue chapter on a ship under the command of a character called Norrington, played by Jack Davenport. Here we see the younger versions of Elisabeth Swan and Will Turner before they grow up, by the next sequence, to be played by Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom. Elisabeth’s father, played by Jonathan Pryce, is quite keen that Elisabeth marry Norrington, even though there are obviously years between them (although Jack Davenport doesn’t seem to age at all in the time between the sequences). Of course, she is in love with the village blacksmith, the aforementioned Will Turner, who she knows to have something to do with piracy from the opening sequence, although she’s doesn’t reveal this information to Will. I remember sitting in the cinema and watching this first ten or so minutes of the film and looking at my watch and thinking... please don’t let the entire film be this dull and boring all the way through. Luckily, it’s just at this moment that we get the opening salvo of shots of Johnny Depp’s entry in the story. The music swells as the camera holds back from an establishing shot and we see Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow in command of his vast ship and the score gives wind to his sails. It’s only then that it’s revealed that Sparrow’s ship is, in fact, a tiny boat with one smallish sail and a reliance on how the camera can change the perspective of a shot and flatten it out. A nice little punchline as the boat is obviously sinking and Jack starts trying to bail it out as he nears port. A follow up shot not so long later sees Jack gliding confidently into port with a pullback to reveal he’s standing on top of the still sinking mast which just manages to get him to port so he can gracefully step off as the boat goes under. Nice stuff and this has got to be one of the best and most elaborately shot entrances for a character in modern Hollywood.

And then the writers throw a plot and some action at everything of varying quality but the film is, frankly, completely reliant on Johnny Depp’s exaggerated performance of Captain Jack Sparrow as the very heart and soul of the entertainment. Without Depp, in this case, the film would be nothing but here he really adds the ingredients so sorely missing from the sequences which find themselves "Deppless" and some nice concoctions of skeletal pirates, blood sacrifices to Aztec gold, coupled with some great swordplay and chase choreography make the film a pleasure to behold. Admittedly, it’s a slow trundling pleasure but there are some nice little movie references too, to keep the weary audience afloat and there are a lot more doubloons than duds in this one... something which sadly can’t be said for the other films in the series, if memory serves.

There’s a nice moment, for instance, where Jack Sparrow and Will Turner decide to team up and use an overturned rowing boat to walk beneath the surface of the sea, like a miniature submarine, using the naturally formed pocket of air left in the top of the boat to breathe. This is, of course, a nice little shout out to the exact same submersible solution created by James Hayter in The Crimson Pirate, as he uses the idea to transport himself, Burt Lancaster and Nick Cravat out of trouble (if you’ve never seen this marvellous movie, make a point of doing so... not only does Hayter’s character invent this submersible when called for... he also invents gun powder and the hot air ballon throughout the course of the story). Similarly, a well choreographed bit of ‘rescue nonsense’ at the end of the movie where Turner tries to get Jack Sparrow away from his impending execution is similarly choreographed almost like a dance routine and recalls the acrobatic antics of Lancaster and Cravat in certain scenes in The Crimson Pirate.

And then there’s the score. Although it’s composed and credited to Klaus Badelt (who also did a marvellous score for the reboot of The Time Machine), he also had a lot of help, primarily from Hans Zimmer who wrote the themes and, according to the original soundtrack album credits, ‘over produced’ the CD release. When you start digging deeper, however, you start to realise that there were a few composers working on the movie but, be that as it may, it’s a great score. There have been some marvellous scores over the years for pirate movies... the as yet unreleased score for The Crimson Pirate by William Alwyn and the much re-issued John Debney score to Cutthroat Island, to name but two... and The Curse Of The Black Pearl certainly joins them in having a rousing and much loved score. It does the job admirably and the strong Jack Sparrow action theme, albeit somewhat similar to something which originally appeared in Zimmer’s score for Gladiator, is one of those cues which people will be humming through the ages. It’s mixed quite heavily into the foreground in this movie and, frankly, it’s all the better for it. More movies these days, where the sound designers are in love with their own miasma of audio bombast and submersion, should give the music greater room to breathe, in my opinion. The films would certainly reap the benefits.

So there you have it. Well before Pirates Of The Caribbean came out, I was an admirer of Johnny Depp as a great actor and on screen personality and, although I’ve learnt in recent years that a good Johnny Depp performance isn’t always enough to save the day (Secret Window, The Tourist, Mortdecai etc.) this is definitely a film where he shines enough to carry the action and weight of the movie on himself and turn it into something quite watchable. There’s much buckling of swashes to be had in this first installment of Pirates Of The Caribbean - The Curse Of The Black Pearl and, though I couldn’t watch it every decade, I feel like there’s still a few viewings of this one left for me. If you like big adventure movies and you’ve never seen this one before... you’re in for a good time.

Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World

All’s World That Ends World


Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World 
2012 USA/Singapore/Malaysia/Indonesia 
Directed by Lorene Scafaria
Playing at UK cinemas now

Warning: Big, big, big spoiler giving away the film’s ending in here. If this is one you definitely want to see... you might want to carefully consider this before reading.

Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World is not the movie I was expecting it to be.

But that’s good, actually. Because, rather than being the nauseating US romantic comedy with a cornball ending I thought it was going to be... it actually turned out, instead, to be more the movie I was hoping it would be. Which is a turn up for the books.

To explain... I had nothing invested in this movie. I like Keira Knightley as an actress, for sure, but I’d only ever seen Steve Carell once in a movie (the latest remake of Get Smart) and I didn’t know the writer/director, Lorene Scafaria’s work either. I just saw the trailer and saw what looked like a fairly gentle movie with a little bit of a bite to it in that, you know, it’s about the end of the world and such. The end of humanity. The death knell for our entire species.

But then I figured... modern US movie. This is going to be a light romantic comedy, which in some ways it actually is, and it won’t exactly have an ending where it “does what it says on the tin”, so to speak. So I decided I wouldn’t go and see it because, frankly, I don’t like modern US romantic comedies all that much. They tend to have no real substance to them. As far as the last ten or twenty years go, I generally tend to prefer romantic movies if they’re made by the French. I don’t know why but they just seem to have more of a real life, up close and personal relation to this kind of subject matter and dare to show love as it truly is... compared to a lot of the US (and even UK) films of this nature which I’ve seen. So I pretty much had stopped going to them.

But then, when I had to meet a friend in London on Saturday and we decided to go to the cinema, there was nothing else really on at the time I was around for (I’d already seen The Amazing Spider-Man and The Dark Knight Rises, which seem to be dominating a fair amount of screens over here) and so we settled on this movie.

I’m really glad we did because, much to my surprise, it actually does do what it says on the tin.

Steve Carell plays a downbeat insurance salesman whose wife leaves him after the announcement that the final attempt to save the earth from destruction by asteroid collision has failed. This all happens before the title of the film has even come up. The character he plays, Dodge, trundles depressingly on even as those around him are either killing themselves or having apocalyptic end-of-the-world sex with each other. He meets a girl called Penny (played by Knightley who is, as always, excellent), from the apartment downstairs from his... and when the rioting and looting starts in their area they set off on a road journey to try to a) reunite him with his first ever sweetheart and b) to get Penny to his dad who will be able to fly her back to England in his plane to meet up with her family... it’s the last month of life on planet Earth and the airways have stopped flying.

True... over the course of their journey they bond and become romantically entangled, but that’s okay and can be a nice thing if the tone is caught right in a movie... which it is here. But there’s always the dark reminders of the character’s plight of, you know, dying by the end of the month and their adventures on the road are at times violent and at times comical but the low key, laid back approach that the film seems to create around its lead characters is nicely handled and doesn’t once become boring.

I said, before I saw this film, that I was hoping that this would be the American answer to Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia. And it kinda is in a way. It’s like a more cheerful, less introspective alternative to Von Trier’s masterpiece. Luckily, the two leads are able to more than make up for the lack of comedy bells and whistles set pieces which a lot of films of this nature might have resorted to. And that’s something to be thankful for.

At the end of the day though (or even end of the world), the surprising thing is that it doesn’t cop out and give the planet Earth a reprieve like you are expecting it to. Dodge and Penny have finally figured out that what they want from the world is really just, each other. They lay talking on a bed and their conversation gets interrupted by the boom of the asteroid entering earths atmosphere in the sound mix and I remember I leaned over to my friend at that point and said... “I wish these guys would just roll the credits here, that would be perfect.” And then, about ten seconds later, they did just that. A white out as the characters finally find each other but die at the end of the world... is followed by the end credits. A perfect ending for this movie and I was really grateful that Hollywood didn’t go for the unbearably happy ending on this one.

Written and then directed with a deft touch by Lorene Scafaria and well acted by all the principal cast (including Martin Sheen as Dodge’s estranged father), Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World is not, as the quotes on the posters may have you believe, “a feel good movie”... but it’s certainly a nice movie about love and loss and the way the pursuit of something can sometimes lead you to finding something you weren’t looking for, which turns out to be exactly what you need. If you like gentle movies with just a dash of, admittedly lightweight, depth to them, then this movie is highly recommended.

A Dangerous Method

Jung At Heart

A Dangerous Method 2011

UK/Germany/Canada/Switzerland

Directed by David Cronenberg

Screening at UK cinemas.

Warning: This review will certainly contain some dangerously

heavy spoilers... and probably a few Freudian Gym Slips too!

I’ve mostly enjoyed the movies of David Cronenberg and have followed his work with great interest. Although marginalised, perhaps rightly for a while, as a horror movie director and, on top of that, a “body-horror” director (a marginalisation of a marginalisation), he has come to be a little more well respected over the last few years with releases of movies which are not obsessed with the disintegration, metamorphosis or derangement of the human body but which fall into more “popular” concerns. As this happened, the mainstream audiences and critics seemed to have been happy to have embraced him almost instantly... it’s as if they needed an excuse to let him into their club.

I’ve never thought any less of Cronenberg for being a horror director. Frankly I’ve never thought of him as anything other than an auteur... a man holding a genuine artistic vision which he uses as his goal posts to plug in various talents such as Carol Spier (who’s not with him on this production), Denise Cronenberg and Howard Shore to help him to realise his vision on celluloid (or whatever today’s nasty digital equivalent of celluloid is called). As someone trying to talk about him (or write about him and his work) here, I find it problematic that he’s moved away from horror films because his stylistic traits are much easier to tag on something like eXistenZ or Videodrome where I can lazily just point out the obvious similarities in the amorphous, fleshy environments his characters populate. Take away little “critic crutches” like this and I really need to go back and watch his movies again and dig deeper than what seem to have become merely surface details... or maybe just another phase of his career as an artist. I don’t have time to do that here though so, don’t expect much insight into his leanings from me here on this one.

One thing, however, that I did realise about Cronenberg's output while watching this one in particular, which perhaps should have been obvious to me before now (and perhaps it was and I just forget... I’m in my forties now, I do that) is that, although he certainly has a very sharp eye for the details and look of his movies, he is very focussed on performance. He wants to take the actors away from their own comfort zone and to strip away their body props and trade tricks and force them to explore the depths that his characters are reaching... and his characters do usually go right into the depths of their own dark psyches, more often than not, with the obvious luxury (seeing as he’s done so many horror movies where such conclusions are not necessarily considered box office poison by the producers) of being able to leave his characters wallowing in their own darkness, or often dead from it, at the end of the movie.

A Dangerous Method is a case in point. Keira Knightley’s performance, especially at the start of the film, is phenomenal. Yeah, yeah, okay... it could be considered oscar bait posturing (play a character with a physical or mental impairment and they’ll love you for it and awards will be falling on you out of trees) but, frankly, I found her absolute paroxyms of “out of control” emotional outrages to be really quite naturalistic and, in some instances, almost disturbing to watch... which is all good. I honestly haven’t seen Knightley attempt anything half as hard as this kind of role in the past and I think it’s a credit to both Cronenberg and his actors that they will push themselves and dive into these depths for him.

The film tells the real life story of Jung (Michael Fassbender) and one of his patients, Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), and also his relationship with Sigmund Freud (played by Viggo Mortensen). Once Jung has ascertained the true nature of Sabina’s debilitating mental abberation, and pretty much cured her of this, the two embark on a sado-masochistic affair before Jung calls it off due to feelings of guilt about his wife. However, by the end of the movie and after his split with both Sabina and Freud, Jung is left alone and regretting ever leaving the woman he loved to this infinitely passionate degree for the rest of his life. Confronted by a married and pregnant Sabina towards the end of the movie, after having left her twice, he refers to her bump and says that “that should have been mine”. This movie proves without a shadow of a doubt that when it comes to the person you come alive for, whether you are already married or in a relationship or not, you choose to ignore the obvious passion of the person you are destined to be with at your peril.

It’s a very talky movie (which is fair enough since it’s based on both the play called The Talking Cure, as well as the book A Very Dangerous Method) but this is really not a problem... the screenplay is well written and interestingly, indeed, devastatingly (in Keira Knightley’s case) performed and will hold your attention if you are aware of the nature of the subject matter beforehand (I even found Vincent Kassel watchable in this... which is something that never really happens to me... maybe he’s an entertaining actor after all, I’m thinking). Basically, if you like pipes, sex, lots of smouldering (and that’s just in the male leads!) and a bit of “original” BDSM, then you are in for a treat with this one... and Keira Knightley goes topless too which is another good thing (and I’m guessing Mr. Freud might have applauded me for pointing that important fact out). Catch it while you can!