This lovely little piece was written by my friend Jess Everett. One of the few sad things about being a new father is the fact that I haven't had many opportunities to go to the cinema - first world problems and all that, right? But there is something special about being in an enclosed space with smelly strangers, as Jess explains below.
As an aside, Jess has one of the best speaking voices known to man.Just saying.
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Attending the movies is a communal
experience and some movies were just meant to be seen in the theatre. Much like
music aficionados who claim the only way to really know a band is to see them
live, or sports fans who travel continents not only for the joy of cheering on
their team but also to experience being part of the crowd, when you go to a
theatre and watch a movie you become part of something.
Inspiring films move us more when watched
with others. The dread in a horror movie becomes more real as the person behind
you gasps and screams. Jokes are more enjoyable when others are laughing with
you. And epic moments are more memorable when you high-five the stranger next
you (this actually happened to me during the first screening of Attack of The
Clones. Apparently the gentleman really enjoyed a good Yoda fight).
Movies are a defining moment for
generations. Anyone who experienced the first Star Wars trilogy in the theatre
has an immediate connection. Growing up and watching every Harry Potter movie,
waiting in anticipation for the next Lord of the Rings, and knowing every song
lyric to The Lion King are moments that connect us all.
We all remember our first movie. The thrill
of watching the screen light up and seeing larger than imaginable characters
flood your view. The goosebumps that leave you feeling nervous and excited, and
the joy of having your very own popcorn and sneaking ninja cuddles*with your
movie date.
Although cinemas have been pricing
themselves out of relevancy for years, I will continue to make the sacrifice as
long as I can afford it. Why? Because for me there is nothing like a night out
at the movies.
*The phrase “ninja cuddle” and its adorable relevance to movie theatre watching is borrowed
from the film loving @8bitbatman
Secondly and more
positively, Idlewild was important because it was the first time I heard
Janelle Monae. She was the silver lining on that album. We both heard the death
of one of black music’s greatest and most innovative bands and the birth of
fearless young artist.
Fast forward to 2010 and
Janelle Monae showed that I was right to take notice. She released an album
which left my jaw on the floor. Although I am 26 years old, I feel like an old
bastard and regularly complain about the quality of music today – especially
black music. The ArchAndroid was all my complaints answered. It was ambitious,
expansive and it took risks jovially – sometimes it missed the mark
spectacularly (Make the bus, for example) but most of the time it hit highs
that left me in goosebumps (Oh, maker).
The ArchAndroid is a
modern day classic. I genuinely thought Monae did a Nas, she made her Illmatic
and would be hard pressed to repeat the trick.
…
With Electric Lady,
Janelle has proved how special she is. Monae has grown remarkably as an artist
and it shines blindly through on this album. Electric lady doesn’t manically
bounce from genre to genre like its predecessor, this is more of a traditional
R’n’B album.
When I say R’n’B, I am not talking about her contemporaries such
as Beyonce or Rihanna, I am talking the R’n’B of Prince, Stevie, Michael and
Aretha and Marvin – that is who you must compare Janelle to after hearing this
album. I can give no greater compliment than that.
Suite four is where all
the fireworks are stored. It tells you a lot about Janelle’s confidence when
she starts the album off with His Royal Purpleness. What makes ‘Give em what
they love’ spectacular is not only the appearance of Prince (by the way, this
is the Controversy, Dirty Mind, Sexy MF Prince and not the jut found religion
Prince), but the fact that Monae isn’t an afterthought once the song has
finished. She stands toe to toe with the great Purple one and this prologues the
greatness in the album.
In fact, every guest
appearance on this album manage to sprinkle a little bit of magic to the
proceedings and threaten to overshadow the headliner – but every single time
Monae manages to rise above them. When Badu strolls silkily onto the funky-ass
Q.U.E.E.N like a panther, Monae has a fierce rhyme reminiscent of Chuck D and
KRS-1 to bat her off with. Janelle response to Solange’s irresistible 90’s TLC
vide with a grin-inducing serenading rap-verse that makes you ache for Left
Eye.
When Primetime, featuring
Mugel, rolls around you start to appreciate the change in Janelle Monae’s
attitude and you suddenly realise a great flaw in her previous album. This
Monae is much more open than the one listeners met on The ArchAndoid. “Tonight, I don’t want to be mysterious with
you”, she says on what can only be described as a bedroom jam, a song which
would have never appeared on ArchAndoid. She no longer strictly sticks to her
alter-ego Cindi when she is performing, in Primetime you feel like you are
getting your first glimpse of Janelle.
…
Although Suite four may
have all the headliners, the best of the album is found on Suite five. This is
the Suite which propels this from just being a great album to being a jaw
dropping one. Suite five shows you that Janelle wanted achieve more on this
album other than catch people’s ear and show them how many different genre’s
she can pull off.
If you close your eyes,
you can see a young Michael Jackson shuffling around and singing It’s Code with
his brothers backing him up. Ghetto
Woman could happily sit in the middle of Stevie Wonder’s classic Innervisions
and not be out of place at all. This isn’t to say that Janelle Monae is trying
to imitate these artist, you don’t get that impression at all – you feel like
she understands what made the greats great and she taps into that and makes
their style her own.
In this regard, Ghetto
Woman is an extraordinary extraordinary song. She updates a sound which is
timeless and familiar and entirely owned by a legendary artist and claims it as
her own (I would kill for Stevie to cover this song). This is a worthy
successor to Living in the City and after Kelindo does his usual fantastic
guitar solo, Monae’s Andre 3000 like rap lifts this song into a stratosphere
that I thought modern day R’n’B would never reach. I would love to know what
Wonder thinks of this song.
Victory is my personal favourite.
Again, this song shows how much more willing Monae is to open up to her
audience. She feels vulnerable on this song, something that I never felt on her
previous album. It is a song for when everything in your life has gone wrong
and you need to find something, anything, to make you get up off the floor
before the count. Again, there are shades of the greats on this song – Aretha
and Ms Hill come to mind – but this song is totally Janelle’s own.
…
By the time the closer
comes to your ears with its 80s synth chords, you feel exhausted. It is a
different exhaustion to the one you feel at the end of ArchAndoid – here you
succinct impression is that Janelle has given you all that she can emotionally
as well as talent wise.
Some listeners will be
disappointed with this album for not being The ArchAndoid and not being as
experimental – I can understand that but I don’t feel that way at all. I have
someone I can champion after the untimely death of Amy Winehouse. Janelle could
be the woman to take black music out of its oversexaulised, boring and risk
adverse state that it has been in for years.
I am not naïve enough to
believe that this album will be a commercial success. I do think that people
will come to this album and this artist slowly throughout the coming years and
will see her for the innovator and trail blazer she is.
Janelle Monae is the real
queen of the new school and at 27 I don’t think she will let go of that crown
anytime soon.
One of the memories that still haunts me is when my family
were moving my father into a hospice. My dad was barely recognisable at the
time of the move. Gone was the strong and proud African I once knew and in his
place a silent, frail and delicate man holding on to the last flickers of life.
Just when we were about to leave him in what I can still
remember to be a pleasant but eerily place, my dad began to cry. I swear,
nothing has made me sadder or more helpless in my life – not even the day when
my mum rang to tell me and my sisters he had gone. I transferred all of my
frustrations and anger to my mother – how could she leave him in such a place?
Why couldn’t he be at home? Why couldn’t he die with his family around him?
I had this anger weighing me down after my dad passed until my mum started
telling me stories about the life she and my father had - the life I knew nothing
about. How they met, how they courted in the strange way Africans do, the
trials they faced once they were in the UK. I saw my mum trying to keep our
grieving family together with every fibre of her being and began to realise
what a remarkable woman she actually is.
I write all this because the film Amour reminded me of my
parents and Jean-Louis Trintignant’s Georges made me realise what a child I was
for blaming my mum during the latter stages of my dad’s life. Being a carer is
a ridiculously difficult job.
...
Amour is a film about an elderly couple, Georges and Emmanuelle
Riva’s Anne. The latter has a stroke and it is up to Georges to look after his
wife – especially after she makes him promise never to hospitalise her. The
film chronicles the couple’s lives as Anne health worsens.
...
Amour is a truly extraordinary film – for the first time
in a long time I can say that I haven’t seen or experienced a film like this. It’s
a harrowing film but extremely and utterly beautiful at the same time.
All my life I have been obsessed with Disney and the
interpretation of love that they have helped to instil in the films of today. Watching
Amour I realised the film was answering a question that I never realised needed
answering – what happens after the happily-ever-after?
Watching Georges look after his wife is the purest and
most striking representation of love that I have ever seen in a film. Usually
cinema will give outlandish scenario’s where characters prove their love by
committing criminal acts but, fuck, would the Prince push Cinderella to the
toilet, lifted her on it, wiped her when she was done and pull her pants up? And Aladdin do the same everyday while watching Jasmin's soul slowly ebb away?
...
Amour is a very difficult film to watch – so difficult
that Mrs Bear couldn’t bear to finish it. “Why is this enjoyable? Why would you
want to carry on watching?” All fair questions to ask. Why would
you want to watch an elderly woman struggling to read a book? Why would you
want to watch an elderly man struggling to feed his wife? You wouldn’t, but I couldn’t stop watching.
Every credit in the world has to go to the two main
actors in this film. I never once felt like I was watching a film, rather that
I was watching the intimate and very private moments of two people that loved
each other deeply. Not much is said about the two main character’s history but
somehow you seem to understand what they mean to each other and what they have
gone through.
...
I only saw a fraction of the stuff my mother did while dad was ill and never had the chance to glance at the really grim activities.
This film made me understand a little better what my mother had to endure and,
frankly, it made me proud that my mother held out sending him to a hospice for
as long as she did. I now understand how it can be overwhelming to care for someone who has been your
life for most of your life.
Happily-ever-after doesn’t end happily – Amour made me
realise this. It always ends in sadness, one way or another. The only solace
that I take from this new piece of information is that I want someone who will
nurse me and love me, like Georges loved Anne, if times get pitch dark.
Eddie Murphy is a legend. That seems like a controversial
statement to make nowadays, but it is true. He is probably one of the most talented men in
Hollywood and has films on his CV which are among some of my most beloved of
all time. But something tragic happened to his career.
Speak to any soul that knows an ounce about black
(African-American) comedy and they will let you know that Murphy sits upon a
tall pedestal. Comedians speak of Eddie Murphy with the same reverence they
give to Bill Cosby or, better yet, Richard Pryor – Murphy is truly of that
stature.
But think of Murphy now and I’d bet a lot of money that the
embarrassment that is Norbit or Scary Spice comes to your mind – not Raw or Delirious
or Boomerang. That is a tragedy.
…
The reason why Eddie still deserves to be held in such high
regard is simply because of what he achieved. He blazed the trail that allowed
other great comedians to walk the path to to superstardom. I still haven’t
forgotten the skinny (er) and goofy (er) Chappelle with his terrible hair cut
telling terrible “you’re so fat” jokes in the Nutty Professor.
I personally haven’t seen any of his earlier Saturday Night
Live Stuff, I only know Eddie Murphy through his film work and it wasn’t until
Beverly Hills Cop that I really started to take notice. It may sound like an
over-exaggeration but Axel Foley felt like the first black superhero to
me. I saw him do things and talk to
(white) people in a way that I had never seen a ‘brother’ do before. And
importantly he was funny, extremely funny but as well as that, he was strong –
this felt important.
…
And then there was Coming to America – a film which is so
important to me that it would take more than just a blog to clarify. As an
African kid in a stranger’s land, I could absolutely identify with Prince
Akeem. The film left me in awe of the world it created to a point where I
stupidly asked my father whether such a kingdom where beautiful servants woke
you up in such a wonderful way existed.
Coming to America is to me a classic and displays Murphy’s
talent in the brightest of light. His many disguises add to the comedy and wonder
of the film rather than distract from it like in his later exploits. The Randy
Watson scene (damn it, the whole church scene) is a slice of joy. Clarence the
Barber still raises a smile out of me.
Murphy also puts in a much understated performance as Prince
Akeem. He plays the royal as a charismatic and dignified young man who is
childlike in his excitement at being in an environment different to his
extravagant home life. Like all great
leading men you believe in the premise of the story because of Eddie Murphy’s
performance.
…
I believe it all went wrong when Eddie made a conscious
effort to stop making ‘edgy’ films and cater to the family audience instead. As
much as I love(d) the Nutty Professor, I believe that film was the start of the
ebbing out of Murphy’s creative talent.
Unlike Coming to America, Eddie Murphy’s prosthetics didn’t
add much to The Nutty Professor – in
fact they enabled him to tell lazy fat jokes and lean on ill thought out toilet
humour.
I have absolutely no issue with the film Shrek, I actually
think Eddie Murphy is great in it but the following inferior sequels are lazy
(there’s that word again). I am not naive enough to say that Eddie was wrong to
make those films – they generated a donkey dung (sorry) full of money but I can’t
help feeling that Murphy could have done more with his time. He could have
pushed himself.
The majority of films that he has had top billing in after
the Nutty Professor have been tragic (there’s that word again) save from a few
surprises. Eddie was actually ok in Tower Heist but this could be me giving him
a petty pass.
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I still believe that there is genius still left within Eddie
Murphy. That genius has shown flashes of returning (Dreamgirls) but I am hoping
that it makes a permanent reappearance in his future projects. Is the Beverly
Hills Cop television show the right platform for his fight back? I don’t know,
I have my doubts. I also shuddered when I read that Murphy was writing the
Nutty Professor 3.
All I can hope for is for Eddie Murphy to be bold again – to
be brave. Forget the family films, forget the fat suits – find that Eddie who
wanted to push black comedy further than it has ever been before. There is a
reason why Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Jamie Fox and Kevin Hart consider Eddie
Murphy to be god like and hopefully the miraculous performances are not in his
past.
While watching Oblivion, I found out some very interesting information from my other half. “Do you know that Tom Cruise made Katie Holmes have a baby in silence?” Truth is, I didn’t know that. I accepted my lady’s premise that, if true, this was cruel. Even if that was the case I failed, and still fail, to see why I should care and why that should influence my feelings on Oblivion. For the record, Oblivion is a good film – not spectacular, just good. It’s a comfort blanket of a film. Nothing about the film is remotely surprising, whether it be negative or positive. Most importantly, Tom Cruise is his usual competent and reliable Hollywood superstar self. But the way my missus made it sound, that just isn’t enough anymore. …
In fact, it isn’t just the missus who has beef with Tom, have a look the public discussions about Mr Cruise for the past decade, I wager the majority of it has little to do with his on screen exploits and more to do with what religion he follows. I get that people want to read about Tom’s big bad thugs spying on Katie or a woman who says she was auditioned to be his wife – all of this is sexy tabloid stuff and is to be expected when you have reached the status Cruise has. It no longer holds people’s attention to just be good at your job, they want something more interesting and Tom Cruise’s personal life is just that… apparently. The press are doing to Tom Cruise exactly the same as what they did to Michael Jackson. They are trying to find the Wacko in Cruise and as soon as he got on top of that famous black lady’s sofa, they had their fodder. It also doesn’t help that Cruise hasn’t had the greatest of film runs after that PDA moment – Lions for Lamb, Valkyrie, Knight and Day and Rock of Ages are beneath his talents. But putting these films to one side, Tom Cruise still has a stellar filmography post his jumping the Oprah shaped shark. World at War, Mission Impossible 3 and 4, Tropic Thunder, Jack Reacher and the aforementioned Oblivion are not slouch movies, but they don’t stretch Cruise’s acting muscles either. But, again, what is wrong with that? Hasn’t Tom Cruise earned his right to just be good instead of being great?
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It is actually shocking when you list the great films and performances Tom Cruise has under his belt. You almost have to double check to see whether you have it right or whether you are thinking about another actor. This guy has Risky Business, Top Gun, Rain Man and Born on the Fourth of July on his CV. After this he goes on to make his equivalent to Michael’s Thriller, Beat it and Billie Jean moment with the films A Few Good Men, The Firm and Interview with a Vampire. He doesn’t stop there, after that hot streak he goes on to make Mission Impossible, Jerry Maguire, Eyes Wide Shut and Magnolia. Admittedly after Magnolia his luck ends – if there is anyone on this earth that likes Vanilla Sky, please contact me and let me know why. He does get back on track with the fantastic Minority Report ( a truly wonderful film), the underrated The Last Samurai and a film which keeps getting better with every watch, Collateral. …
Collateral is one of the most interesting films in Cruise’s catalogue. It once again shatters the perception that Cruise has one gear as an actor and never takes risks. Like Interview with a Vampire and Magnolia and to a certain extent Rock of Ages, Collateral sees Tom Cruise play against type and to frightening effect. I am genuinely scared of Cruise’s Vincent and that is a great compliment to an actor who I know is shorter than me and isn’t that physically imposing. You watch that film expecting Mr Cruise to be as charming and charismatic as always, which he is but it is soured by a neck chilling menace which never escapes you from the moment he’s on screen to the moment he takes his last train ride. I think there is a deep intelligence to his role in Collateral. It is one thing to play a villainous vampire with a cake load of make up on your face and fake teeth, but to convince a world that knows you as the all-conquering hero and Mr Action Man that you are a bad motherf**ker takes a very talented actor indeed. Not many high status leading men in Hollywood can do it – Will Smith, for example, hasn’t showed nearly as much versatility as Cruise. …
Do I think Tom Cruise is nuts? Maybe, but he’s religious, being nuts comes with the territory? I can’t prove any of the crazy ass stories about his personal life and truth be told, I don’t care. All I know is that Tom Cruise is one of the greatest actors of my life time. I know that to be fact. Tom Cruise has shown breath taking consistency as an actor, consistency that only few working actors share. A Few Good Men, Collateral and especially Minority Report are some of my favourite films of all time and Cruise was a big reason why I enjoyed those films. It took the death of Michael Jackson for people to look at his work and ignore his personal life. What people found was, despite his quirkiness (mildly putting it), Jackson was a genius. I hope it doesn't take such an extreme event for people to see the same in Tom Cruise. Mission Bear
I remember when the Norwegian film Headhunters (Hodejegerne) was playing at the cinema and everyone was raving about it. Everything
Scandinavian was the rage at that time and for one specific reason I ignored
Headhunters – it looked boring.
I have never seen a more boring trailer than the one for Headhunters. It looked generic and in my opinion, lifeless. Even when I read reviews about Headhunters it sounded boring (which bodes well for this one) and I damn near struggled to stay awake when people talked about the film. Well I made a pretty big mistake.
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Simply put, Headhunters is a chase-thriller film in the same vein as your Terminator films. Instead of Arnie, you get the ex-military business man Clas Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau of Game of Thrones fame) going after a weasel of a man and the star of the show Aksel Hennie’s Roger Brown.
The real genius of this film is Hennie – how on earth I end up feeling sorry and rooting for Brown at the end of this film I will never know. Witch-craft is the only explanation.
Roger Brown is… where do I start. Roger Brown is a corporate headhunter by trade who appears to be very well off thanks to a supposed inheritance from his grandmother (or some relative). Roger Brown is married to the ridiculously beautiful Diana (Synnøve Macody Lund), a woman who is desperate to have his babies – something Roger is against from some stupid reason. Roger Brown also moonlights as an art thief, a pretty good and sophisticated one at that – so good he has the nation’s best detective after him. Finally, and most importantly, Roger Brown is a liar and Headhunters is about all of his lies coming back to haunt him.
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What I find most fascinating about this film is not the action scenes or the shit (you know what I’m talking about when you’ve seen it) but the psychological make up of Roger Brown. As a vertically challenged man myself (although, a bloody handsome one at that) with a stunning woman by my side, you can’t help but feel insecure when a chiseled SOB like Clas comes along. Headhunters, at its heart, is about Brown’s insecurities as a man – he doesn’t feel like he is man enough to have a wife like Diana so he creates a false reality for himself. When Clas comes along, it isn’t the opportunity he represents financially that most affects Roger, it’s what he represents as a man. Clas is genuinely successful , taller than Roger and good looking – It’s fascinating to watch Roger dealing with his inner demons.
…
Headhunters is a brilliant film – a truly great thriller. I spent a lot of my time “oohh”-ing and “ahh” –ing and “no ways”-ing throughout the film. That is a big deal for me, for too long I have felt numb to the thriller-genre in films and it takes quite a bit to impress me - Headhunters did that.
Headhunters is also the first foreign film which I would love to be adapted. For some reason I think Headhunters could translate very well to an English/American audience. I think it’s message of masculinity is an important one that should be heard.
Oh. And I dare you to watch THAT scene without gagging.
When the film finished, my missus couldn’t wait to tell me
how much she hated it. “It was sad. Why did you make me watch that for?”
That was the second time I watched Marc Webb’s film in a 24
hour period. I was so excited about what I had just experienced that I forced
the film on my uber-romantic woman. I felt, and I still feel, that 500 Days of
Summer is special. Not since Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind have I seen
a film that portrays heartbreak in a way that I can relate to. 500 Days doesn’t
tell the story of the sanitised, Hollywood heartbreak where there is a silver
lining – it tells the tale of a woman who rips a man’s heart out and gangster
leans her way out of his life. This is that real life, kick you in the nuts
heartbreak – the sort of heartbreak that stays with you and will probably
linger in your soul until your last breathe escapes you.
...
500 Days tells two stories – one about the relationship of
Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Tom and Zooey Deschanel’s Summer – and the second one
about how Tom handles their break up.
I’ll be honest, this dynamic, the man in pieces over a
relationship falling apart interested me the most because you rarely see it in
mainstream cinema. There is nothing stereotypically masculine about Tom, he’s a
mess from the start and my every being wanted to mock him, I wanted to tell him
to man up. I wanted to recite a number of offensive Snoop Dogg and Dr Dre lyrics (“You can’t
make a hoe a housewife” seemed appropriate) but the problem is I saw a lot of real world examples in his character. I’ve had to nurse my best friend out of a
heartbreak and that wasn’t pretty – we laugh about it now but at that time it was
bleak. Shit, I’ve had to recover from such a situation myself.
You come out of those situations hardened and unwilling to
open up and admit that you're weak and fallible You see that in Tom near the end of the film.
This fucked me up because it not only reminded me of how dangerous women are
(you’re all lethal ladies) but it also reminded me of how vulnerable men can be
– it reminded me of a time when I was at my weakest.
...
Importantly, there is a strong
willed, beautiful and intelligent
woman at the heart of this film. Annoyingly, Deschanel’s Summer does nothing
wrong in this movie. I spent the majority of my first viewing trying to find the hoe in Summer but there was none to be found. Summer tells Tom exactly
what she wants from a relationship and Tom ignores her.
The park bench scene near the end of the film is one of the
most brutal things I have ever seen on screen in my life - as violent and as
merciless as a gory thriller. After getting his life back
in order, Tom sees the person that bombed it pieces in the first place and when
he tells her that she was right not to believe in true love, what does
Summer say? To paraphrase: “When I first saw my husband I knew (he was the one) what I wasn’t sure
of with you”. Brutal. It hurt me deep.
...
So the question I kept asking after watching 500 Days was: do I consider Tom to be a man? Not biologically speaking, of course, but do I consider him
to be representative of how a man should behave in such a situation? This may sound like a stupid, offensive and un-PC question,
but you have to remember I am a product of a Christian African background with
a dollop of Dr Dre’s Hip-Hop splashing somewhere in the melting pot.
I think Tom is a man. We expect women to carry the majority
of the emotional baggage in depictions of relationship turmoil but what this film has reminded me is that times have
changed. I could say that this film is important for how it presents women,
but I think it is equally as important for how it portrays men. It is stunning
in the way it shows our kind as completely weak and emotionally crippled beings - it's actually refreshing to see. Tom is what he is – a shattered man – and that’s ok.
