The fifth film from Abderrahmane Sissako is an impactful look at the brief 2012 Islamist occupation of the iconic Malian city of the title. At times brutal, at others comedic, this film plays somewhat like an African ‘Four Lions’ (Morris, 2010) for its first half, humanising the terrorists through documenting their gaff-prone attempts to force the residents of Timbuktu toward their fascist worldview. With a virtually total non-diagetic soundtrack until around the one hour mark, the film plays out with an almost documentary feel as it chronicles the Islamists’ relations with the townspeople. When modern technology and ideology clashes with an ancient way of life, the results are equally humorous and disconcerting. Highlights include a stubborn woman refusing to wear gloves in the marketplace and demanding the militia arrest her – “How can I chop fish with gloves on? I’m fed up!” – and the local, moderate Imam extracting a chilling confession from the Islamist leader as to why a local teenager is being forced to marry one of his soldiers. His calm explanation will be deeply troubling for Western audiences, yet goes a long way to showing why the fight against militant Islam cannot be won with weapons alone. The all too brief moments in the mosque, where the two radically different interpretations of Islam come into contact, are some of the most fascinating in the film.
Sissako lulls his audience in with twin narratives; on the one hand the slapstick efforts of the Islamists to take control, and on the other a tale of enduring, loving familial bonds that blossom under the canvas of desert tent. The herder Kidane spends his days drinking coffee and exchanging pleasantries with his wife in this nomadic setting, while his adopted son tends the cows and his daughter sews and learns basic arithmetic. Yet the shadow of a threat looms over all this in the form of a brief, inconsequential visit from the Islamists. Even in the desert one can be reached, it would seem. And so it proves to be, as the second half descends into increasingly darker territory. Shocking highlights here include a vicious stoning of two adulterers and the arrest of a small group who dared to play music in their house; a crime under the new regime. The human face given to the extremists in the first half of the film makes their increasingly totalitarian behaviour all the more oppressive to witness once it’s begun in earnest. Read more
NEW TITLES ADDED TO SCHEDULE:
Still Alice is released on 6 March 2015 Read more
DCM's Tom Linay reveals his pick of the best films from the BFI London Film Festival 2014.
The UK’s premiere film festival and my favourite two weeks of the year are over for another 12 months and while I contemplate the sad situation that I’m no longer able to watch three exciting new films a day, I’ll instead reflect on what has once again been a huge success for the BFI, with record numbers of tickets being sold and some of the film world’s biggest names in attendance. Read more
Last week, The Maxime Cinema in Blackwood staged a screening of Northern Soul. The film, which has been 17 years in the making, completely sold out, with 220 people in attendance for the showing.
The film tells the tale of two Northern boys whose worlds are changed forever when they discover black American soul music. Northern Soul was phenomenally popular with British youths in the 1960s and 1970s, taking the North of the country by storm. Featuring Steve Coogan, John Thomson, Ricky Tomlinson and Lisa Stansfield, the film took director Elaine Constantine 17 years to make. Read more
The weekend round-up
The heroes in a half shell are back and as popular as ever. The new live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles opened with £4.8m, which includes £1.6m from previews. The last film featuring the pizza-eating reptiles was the computer animated TMNT in 2007, which kicked off with £1.3m and ended its run with £3m, so the newest incarnation has smashed through that benchmark. 39.4% of the £4.8m was from 3D presentations and with half term next week, there’s plenty more to come. Read more
Tyneside television favourite Byker Grove will be celebrated at an event marking the 25th anniversary of the show at the Tyneside cinema next month.
Hosted by the regional branch of the Royal Television Society (RTS), the public are invited to join in with the occasion and hear the ‘Grovers’ talk about what went on behind the scenes on the long-running series. Read more
Jon Stewart is one of the most revered television personalities in America and judging by the reception he received at the Debate Gala of his new film, Rosewater, he's held in equally as high regard this side of the Atlantic. He's obviously a man who engenders a huge amount of goodwill for often providing a lone voice of sanity in a media world where that is a surprisingly rare commodity.
So it's with a heavy heart that I report that his directorial debut is something of a disappointment. It's far from a disaster, but Stewart, with his incisive political commentary that is delivered in his trademark erudite fashion, has set a bar for himself that he's unable to attain in a new medium. Read more
The Wonders
Alice Rohrwacher's mood piece about a close-knit family of honey producers in the Italian countryside is a beguiling gem. 12-year-old Gelsomina is the eldest of four girls and essentially runs the farm on which they live. Along with her father, the irascible Wolfgang, she tends a series of beehives and harvests the honey, which is, by all accounts, as good as the golden sticky stuff gets. The family's way of life is simple and innocent and they're keen to protect it from the outside world, which every so often pierces their enclosed family bubble, particularly when the farm's financial woes become apparent. Read more
The quest for perfection. The lengths one goes to achieve it. The dangers of obsession. These are all explored in Damien Chazelle’s visceral musical thriller, adapted into a full length feature after its success at Sundance last year when it won best short film. Chazelle remains behind the camera for this heart pumping adaptation, and has made a potent film which gives both Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons their most exhilarating roles to date.
‘There are no two words in the English language more harmful than good job.’ This sums up the attitude of sadistic conductor Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), who takes charge of the jazz studio orchestra at the fictional Schaffer Academy in New York. Seeing something in 19 year old drummer Andrew (Miles Teller), he invites him to one of his practices, where his obsessive drive for musical perfection becomes dangerously clear. Hurling cymbals, chairs and venomous insults at his musicians who make mistakes, it’s evident that Fletcher has zero tolerance for failure, and will push all his students to the absolute limit in order to succeed. The film explores the relationship that develops between Fletcher and Andrew, the effects that the former’s values have on the latter and ultimately what the consequences are for both. Read more
NEW TITLES ADDED TO SCHEDULE:
The Green Inferno is released on 27 March 2015 Read more
Chanel No. 5 has launched a three-minute cinematic ad, The One That I Want, directed by Baz Luhrmann and featuring Gisele Bündchen.
Set to a slow version of the song You’re The One That I Want from the film Grease, performed by Lo-Fang, the ad resonates Chanel No. 5’s The Movie ad from 2005, which featured Nicole Kidman as her character Satine in Luhrmann’s film Moulin Rouge. Read more
The Weekend Round-up
Gone Girl stayed put this weekend, topping the box office for the second consecutive week. David Fincher’s thriller had a terrific hold, falling just 15%, once previews are removed, to £3.1m and now has a cume of £9.8m. It’s the second 18-cert film this year, after The Wolf Of Wall Street, to top the box office for two successive weeks and it should overhaul The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’s final total of £12.3m in the next week. Read more
