360

Cecil says: We saw this a couple of weeks ago at the Queens Film Theatre in Belfast (a rather extraordinary Georgian looking townhouse from the front, but with a Tardis-like super-modern cinema inside).

Leaving a film so long before reviewing it can mean it fades into insignificance, especially if it was fairly mediocre or dull. One of the local papers, the Irish News, had given 360 a 'boring' label, so we weren't sure what to expect, although the plot sounded intriguing and the cast rather good.

Well, we certainly didn't find it boring. But, when I came to recall my impressions for this review, the odd thing is that the character that came back most strongly was the one played by Anthony Hopkins. This is by no means the main character, but Hopkins played the man so convincingly that his story stayed in my mind much more clearly than all the others.

You see this film is all about our different journeys through life, how they intertwine or connect, and how sometimes the decisions we take don't end up leading to the result we expect.

Hopkins, for example, plays an ageing alcoholic, whose daughter disappeared years ago. Every time he hears on the news of a young woman's body being found, he travels miles, sometimes across oceans, to check it isn't her.

On this particular journey, he meets a young Brazilian woman on the plane; now, she has just split up from her photographer boyfriend; but she also gets chatting to this recently-released sex offender...

I know, I know, it's all sounding rather convoluted, and I haven't even mentioned the Russian mafia or the Slovakian prostitutes, or the British car dealer...

But it is a very engaging film, and what's nice about it, for someone like me who has travelled a lot, is that it portrays travel and movement, and crossing borders as a very normal, run-of-the-mill business. Coincidences and chance encounters are now global.

On some levels it's a bit clichéd, but on others it's quite subtle, and I liked the way 'bad' people and situations are not ALL bad, through and through.

Whatever you make of it, it's not boring. And go to see Anthony Hopkins just for the great acting.

***

Bea says: 
I also liked the travel/movement theme to this bittersweet film - but for me it was really about the twists and turns that present themselves to us in life; about the opportunities we take, and the ones that we don't.  All the performances were good, although few can match Hopkins in a good role, and the writing was very good indeed - multi-story plot lines can be hard to pull off but this did it effortlessly without any of the "who's that again?"/"what's going on" that can plague them.

But above all, and it happens so rarely in film, TV and books now, this film made me happy, despite numerous very sad story lines, and made me think of the Sheenagh Pugh poem Sometimes - Sometimes, things don't go, after all, from bad to worse.... And that was a priceless feeling for a Saturday night in Belfast.
***1/2

Cosmopolis

Bea says: It's been a while since I've watched a Cronenberg film, but not too much has changed since I did. Still very avant-garde, but also very beautiful, and still obsessed with bodily functions.

The action of Cosmopolis mostly takes place inside a limousine, in a kind of not-too-distant, dispossessed future which is actually very scarily like our present world (currency collapse, the occupy movement etc). A series of guests visit our beautiful, young protagonist (last seen in Twilight!), the head of a multinational corporation, as he drives through the streets of a large city, protected, and cut off, by his bodyguards and the armoured vehicle he is in, and it is only towards the end of the film that he leaves it to meet two people important to his life in different ways.

This film has some of the clearest, most interesting and perfect dialogue I have ever heard, and reminded me of some of the old playwrights I have read - Brecht, or Beckett perhaps. I saw from the credits that it is an adaptation of a novel, and it feels like it.  It is something so sharp, so different, that holds up a mirror to our lives. If you like Cronenberg, see it. If you don't, well, maybe it would be hard going; nothing really happens, but actually lots does, all at the same time, but you might just find it stays with you.

What do I mean??
***

Cecil says: At first I thought this modern, arty cinema in Inverness had a fantastic sound system; but then, as the dialogue of the film continued in the crisp, clear tones Bea described, I wasn't sure whether it was the intention of the director or whether the Eden Court had a super acoustic. Thing is, I have no intention of going to see this film again anywhere else to find out...

It's not to say that it was a bad a film or even that I wriggled in my seat in a 'help-get-me-out-of-here' kind of way. But it wasn't a lot of fun, let's face it. I actually didn't really know who Cronenberg was, and maybe if I had realised, I might have chosen a different film.

That said, Bea and I did find ourselves talking about the film for some hours afterwards over dinner, so it was thought-provoking and challenging.

Bea's right that it felt a lot like a Brechtian play, with characters not quite talking to the camera, but certainly making comments on the world, the situation, life. But it also felt a lot as if it was trying to do for the 21st century what Metropolis did in the 1920s. A questioning of the way society is going and where we'll all end up.

Juliette Binoche intrigued me, as ever. She does sex on film incredibly well, but is it erotic? For some reason, not, but is THAT intentional?

I also liked the lead bodyguard - was he Danish? And rather disappointed as his fate...But I'll say no more or that might spoil the shocks...

**.5