SCREEN SHOT - Exit 8

We are on a crowded train in the underground. A man by the carriage doors is listening to Ravel's Bolero on his ear buds. As he looks down the carriage to where a baby is crying. It's Mother is struggling to comfort it. A standing passenger, starts shouting and berating her for not doing more to quieten the child. He becomes increasingly agitated and rudely insults the seated woman. Just as the train pulls into a station, the man by the carriage door receives a phone call. It's a former girlfriend, she is in hospital, she has just given birth to a baby boy, who is his son. She wants to know whether he wants to be actively involved in bringing him up or not. As he exits the carriage the man is in a panic, he's coughing a lot, he reaches for his inhaler as he climbs the steps, heading for Exit 8. But as he progresses along the empty underground corridor it becomes clear he is going round and round the same circuit of tunnels, ending back at the same point. He is getting no nearer to Exit 8. Just one driven man with a briefcase keeps repeatedly passing him. What is happening here? becomes the question that preoccupies both the man and the viewer of the film.

This Japanese movie from 2025, directed by Genki Kawamura, is a psychological nightmarish drama. Taking the frequent premise of our nightmares of being caught in a situational loop, it takes its time to build it's world and the twisted incomprehensible logic of it. If indeed it has any. It's the sort of movie that leaves you pondering on what is occurring here, was this actually happening, or is it just his dreamworld, or a psychological conundrum he needs to work out before he can move on? Are all the people he encounters in the corridors simply aspects of his own psyche? Based on a computer game from 2023, Exit 8, the movie, exhibits all the recognisable tropes of being derived from that genre, but is not a slave to them, and actually makes something that is intriguing intellectually, which also engages you emotionally.  It is simultaneously a comment on the modern urban Japanese work ethic, where you can feel like you are trapped in this endless tragic life cycle day after day. And subtly drops a few comments and asides as the movie progresses. The driven man with the briefcase being once referred to as 'a monster'. The Escher poster on the corridor wall acts as a background motif for the whole movie, with it's number eight shaped loop.

The movie at just over ninety minutes long,  makes the most of this relatively contained time span. Just when you think you are becoming used to whatever is going on here, it suddenly upends the nature of it. If you are the sort of person who wanted to work out what was going on in the Matrix movies, this movie might give you something juicy to chew over. But putting aside all of that, this is a very effectively made and satisfying piece of film making, that I thoroughly enjoyed.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

SCREEN SHOT - The Amateur

Charles Heller ( Rami Malek) is a brilliant cryptographer, who spends far too many hours in dark soundproofed rooms scrolling through code looking for significant discrepancies. His wife Sarah ( Rachel Brosnahan ) is away at a conference in London. So he stays at work delving deep into a complex piece of data. He discovers that an operation previously slated as the work of a suicide bomber, was in fact a CIA black operation, and a deliberately focused unsanctioned drone attack. Instantly he realises he's stumbled upon something that is dangerous for him to know. The next day, when he arrives at work, he's called into the CIA Director's office. Suspecting his previous nights discovery may have already been exposed. But in fact she informs him that his wife has been killed in a terrorist attack on her hotel in London. 

Devastated, Charles starts to use all his own skills to investigate what happened, identifying three individuals responsible. In a discussion with Agent Moore (Holt McCallaney) he realises that they intend to do nothing to capture the folk responsible, saying they want to get the whole operation. Charles decides to tell them he knows about the Black Ops, and blackmails them into training him up to go in pursuit of his wife's murderers. It turns out in his training with Hendo ( Laurence Fishburne) that he's a hopeless shot with a gun. So he will need to use all his personal resourcefulness to develop an innovative approach to his mission. A mission no one seems to wants him to succeed in.

Though the essential premise of the movies set up is a tad unrealistic, the film does stick to its guns and does not pull any unbelievable punches in order to make it more dramatic. Malek is very good as the man that finds he's more than a little bit out of his depth, but remains driven by his own psychological compulsion to see this through. His facial expression shifts effortlessly from despair, desperation and deliberation, that feed into lightening responses in the moment. You are never allowed to forget this man is grieving and is seeking his wife's murders in order to have closure. When he does eventually find the gangs leader he asks him why his wife had to die. It was necessary in order for them to escape,he says, it was decided spontaneously, whereas Charles's revenge killings, well they are deliberate and remorselessly executed. Which is worse? Pointing out what his wife's death has driven him to do.The Amateur is a well paced thriller, that is never tempted to stray from the conceit within which it is set to operate. They carry it all off cleanly and with all the ruthless efficiency necessary.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

SCREEN SHOT - Oppenheimer

 

Though its running time might seem a bit of an ask when pinned to a cinema seat, Oppenheimer more than justifies its three hours dramatically. It is a visual tour de force from Christopher Nolan, maintained with consistency and flare. He has also assembled here some of the greats of modern day cinema. Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer) that most chameleon of actors is superb. As are Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt as his two unconventional wives, who both make the most of their limited screen time. Blunt in particular seems on fire playing the ever morally indignant Kitty.

The story arc of Oppenheimer is structured over the lamentable bones of a committee, trying to assess whether Oppenheimer should have his security clearance renewed.  This entails interviews of friends and work colleagues, secret documents, passed surveillance, all his passed actions trawled over in order to establish whether he was really a 'commie' or not. For the committee is really a set up, a kangaroo court, organised covertly by Lewis Strauss ( Robert Downey Jnr) to basically trash Oppenheimer's public image and reputation post war. In the process it tells the story of how the famous theoretical physicist took over the management of The Manhatten Project that devised the atomic bomb, in a nail biting aim to beat the Nazi's in developing it. Then to make the bomb in order to launch it against the Japanese and bring the war to a end.  Followed by his own guilt over the mass casualties and his part in that, and the public slandering of him and his reputation.

This story has everything going for it treachery, betrayal, sex, communism, rivalry, scientific break throughs, acclaim and infamy. And Nolan gives it all the punch and propulsion it needs to keep you with it. It is no wonder this has won so many awards, particularly for its leads. Whilst in the background you have notable cameos from the likes of Kenneth Branagh as Niels Boher and Gary Oldman as President Truman, who both give restrained toned down performances, for a change. At a few years distance I cannot for the life of me envisage why you would want to do a Barbenheimer and see Barbie and Oppenheimer back to back. Were they completely mad?

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

SCREEN SHOT - The Gorge

Levi (Miles Teller) is a much sought after American sniper/assassin. Now employed by Bartholemew (Sigourney Weaver) for a job she believes is ideal for his skill set. After a secret flight to an unknown destination, he is dumped for a year by an elaborate guard tower overlooking a deep gorge. Opposite is a similar guard tower on its other side. The man he is replacing shows him what the set up is, then leaves. But unbeknownst to Levi his predecessor is murdered before boarding the helicopter meant to be taking him home.

Dasha (Anya Taylor-Joy) is Levi's opposite number in the other tower. Through boredom she strikes up a conversation via a flip chart with Levi. Both wonder quite what it is they are defending, until the distant groans from the gorge manifest as bizzare human-planet hybrids that mount an assault upon the towers. Their interest in each other grows until Levi decides to take a risk and devise a way for him to cross the gorge, just to spend time talking with Dasha person to person. And it is this moment when both their romance and the shit really starts to take off.

The Gorge has a slow building tension, which I thought might not sustain itself through to the end of the movie. But actually it does, and though it has plot developments you can see coming a mile off, it is a quietly effective movie that doesn't squander any of its 127 minutes.

There are a few plot devises that stretch credibility. Depending on your level of tolerance for such things, you may decide to abort, head held in hands, at these points. There is no way the high-wire that Levi travels across the gorge on, could be single handedly made taught enough across such a wide span for him to zip wire along it. At one point they discover celluloid film stock that is supposed to be decades old, and yet still plays in a projector without fragmenting or melting. Likewise when they find a working computer screen. Both of these inform you of all you need to know about what is really going on in the gorge, in a matter of a few minutes. Its narrative convenience aside, at least these were polished off with matter of fact briskness.

There is a good chemistry between Teller and Joy. It's also great to see how handsomely buff Teller has now become. Now he is finally allowed to be middle aged, and not your perpetual teenager or not a very nice guy, he makes a believable romantic lead. The Gorge is, in the end, despite all the caveats about cliches and clunky plot devices, its a half decent movie and I quite enjoyed it.

CARROT REVIEW - 4/8

SCREEN SHOT - 2 Guns ( 2013)

 

Robert 'Bobby' Trench ( Denzel Washington ) and Micheal 'Stig' Stigman ( Mark Wahlberg) are two criminals about to make a bank robbery. Unbeknownst to either of them they are both working undercover, Bobby for the DEA and Stig for the US Navy Seal. They believe the bank they are about to rob is where a local Mexican drug lord Manny Papa Greco ( Edward James Almos) deposits his money. When they blast open the bank deposit boxes they find they are all stuffed with millions of dollars. Its evident this cannot be just one persons drug money. Whose money it is becomes all too apparent as they turn up looking for them. And the race to unpick what's happened whilst evading capture begins.

This is a classic American Cop Buddy movie, based loosely on a comic book series in a script by Blake Masters. Its very evident from the repartee and snappiness of the dialogue, that a lot of this has been improvised by the two leads. They spar off each other brilliantly, and the pairing is a very effective and amusing one. The script is tightly disciplined, and keeps you guessing as to what is really going on here, and still has a few twists up its sleeves even at the end. Baltazar Kormakur's direction is impressively fast and slick., the pace never slackening. All the leads are at the top of their form, what's not to like?  I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of this. It doesn't completely reinvent the genre, but gives it a very effective high polish.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

SCREEN SHOT - Manhunter (1986)

Will Graham (William Peterson) is a retired FBI profiler, he's trying to rebuild his life after a traumatic case catching the intelligent, but manipulative Hannibal Lector.(Brian Cox) Graham knows he is damaged goods, but is drawn back into profiling a new serial murder case, out of interest and loyalty, to Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina) his FBI superior. The perpetrator nicknamed 'The Tooth Fairy' is a tricky serial murderer, currently without a motive. The killer declares himself an avid fan of Lector. So Graham goes to consult with his former adversary to ask for clues to his new adversary's psychology. He knows this is a risky strategy, because you never know whether his offers of help also serve Lector's own purposes. Drawing Graham back into an interactive mindset that nearly broke his own sanity.

Manhunter is an early film directed and written by Micheal Mann and predates his biggest success Heat (1995), and other later adaptions of Thomas Harris's 1981 novel Red Dragon. Harris's novels, are known to be very detailed portrayals of the psychological underpinnings and thought processes involved in being a profiler or detective. They are thoughtful, densely and carefully written books, which a film cannot really capture effectively. Mann's film deliberately utilises a heavily stylised use of colour v monochrome, making great use of doomy synth to create odd and taut atmospheres. Mann never prettys the dialogue up, its self consciously acted flat with a low emotional tone, where internal thought processes are externally expressed, which can be a strategy that risks accusations of heightened theatricality. It does, however, exaggerate the sense of melodrama and the isolated unreality of the world that both the profiler and the killer exist within. This is great at creating the cat and mouse game between Graham and his serial killer prey.

Though it has an 80's aesthetic and style written all over it, this is quite a successful adaption of Thomas Harris. One gets the feeling that Mann made his films on a low budget, and at this stage could not call on top flight actors. Though Peterson does OK as Graham, one has the sense his limitations as an actor meant he couldn't psychologically draw enough out of the character to make it a compelling portrayal of a tormented man. He is often a bit too much of a blank canvas. This was Brian Cox's first Hollywood film, so was probably a relatively cheap buy, but a strong actor who could convey the devious playful character of Lector. Anthony Hopkins was perhaps closer to the Lector of the novels, in making his geniality slippery so that it gave you the creeps. 

At the time Manhunter was released, it did badly at the box office and with critics, they didn't like its tone at all. But over the years it has been reappraised and is something of a cult film now. I think its age and period have provided its stylistic eccentricities with an extra gloss that it now benefits from greatly. Not quite a classic in my book, but an early indication of what Micheal Mann could and would soon deliver.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8 

SCREEN SHOT - Queer

Queer the novella was William S.Burroughs second book, carrying the same frank realism that his debut Junkie had featured, but this time focusing on the expat American gay scene in New Mexico. Though written in 1952 his publisher at the time refused to publish it, because of the explicit homosexuality. It was finally published in 1985 when Burroughs had now reached literary legend status. Junkie and Queer are impossible to not see as semi-autobiographical in most of their scenarios. Written before Burrough's began his famous experimental cut up technique, Queer, the book, lays out the territory of his future trademark the laconic self lacerating mode of writing, sending up how lost an American exiled abroad can be. 

William Lee (Daniel Craig) is living in Mexico City, frequenting the many gay bars, and having casual unsatisfactory sex when he can get it. The city is full of draft dodgers, ex GI's and gay men escaping persecution or prosecution. For this one brief moment this district has established its own vibrant queer culture, that many men bath in and relax, .Lee is a gauchely awkward individual and lacks confidence in how to operate in this milieu. He views Eugene (Drew Starkey) from afar and fantasises about a relationship with him. Eugene himself is confusing to read, giving off mixed signals.. But slowly a relationship of sorts does evolve. Lee becomes totally besotted with Eugene, even though he remains unsure what Eugene's true feelings for him actually are.

The film is a desperately sad story of a man who wants a depth of human understanding and sharing of experience that he will never ever find. He hopes to discover it through a relationship with Eugene, and later through taking the hallucinogenic 'yage' brewed by Dr Cotter (a totally unrecognisable scene stealing Lesley Manville)  The first half of the film is bathed in the soft tones of yellow night lights. Becoming a fecund green as we enter the darkened jungle, the surreal nature of its drug induced dream scenes brilliantly realised. By Lee's return to Mexico City much later, the gay district has changed into cooler fresher blues, its literally cleaned up its act. 

This is Daniel Craig's film from start to finish, its the best performance I've ever seen him give, garnering award nominations along the way. Starkey is suitably enigmatic eye candy. There are cameo appearances by Jason Swartzman as Joe Guidry, an Alan Ginsberg type, and Drew Droege plays John Dume the classic arch eyebrowed aging gay man who you'll find in a gay bar anywhere, in any time period.

Luca Guadagnino's film of Queer, with a script by Justin Kuritzkes melds its rough edged narrative source with Guadagnino's altogether more polished and smoothly mannered film stylisation. Some reviewers have not liked this, and found its two and a quarter hour length an indulgence in which the characters lost all direction. I did not find that to be at all a true representation in my experience. The use of music often three decades later than its period setting, was actually utilised to beautifully counterpoint themes and moods. All adding to the overwhelming sense of loveless ennui inhabiting an unrequited life.   

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

SCREEN SHOT - Heretic

Two young Mormon girls, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) are doing street missionary work. They call on a reclusive man, Mr Reed (Hugh Grant) who has requested to know more about their faith. Mr Reed comes across as friendly and affable. As they enter nothing appears to be awry. They tell him they need his wife to be there or they cannot stay. Reed says she's out the back cooking Blueberry Pie, she's a little shy, but will be out later. 

Once they sit down and start conversing with Reed it becomes clear he is well versed in many faiths, and knows more than enough about The Church of Latter Day Saints. His questions start to get more pointed and there's a developing undertow of suppressed aggression. Whilst he is supposedly out the back talking to his wife to convince her to come and meet the girls, Chloe notices the perfume of the candle that is burning is called Blueberry Pie. Realising that they are in danger they attempt to leave, but the door they came in by is centrally locked. From here on it can only get worse.

Both the two female leads are ex-Mormons, and the directors Scott Becks and Bryan Woods consulted Mormon friends to get the detailed feel of the movie right. Hugh Grant is totally indispensable for the script to work. It needs someone who can be avuncular and seemingly unthreatening, but who can pivot into someone altogether darker. It was written with him specifically in mind, and it gives Grant a whole movie in which to display his acting ability. Something he's obviously relished after playing so many scene stealing cameo roles in recent years. He is utterly brilliant in this film. He is playing with, not against, his own screen persona and this makes even the off hand witticisms become unsettling 

The script itself is erudite and cleverly written, deftly exploring the issue of religious institutions versus faith, archetypes across world religions, all through Mr Reed's perverted agenda. The script and Grant's performance turn this movie into something well above ordinary. Even though it is quite contained and a three hander, it holds your attention for its entire length.  Lets see where this performance now takes Huge Grant in the sort of parts he gets offered.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

SCREEN SHOT - God's Creatures

This 2022 film was only Paul Mescal's second film after his TV success in Normal People. Its a small scale independent movie. The story centering around a small Irish fishing community, that survives on oyster farming and processing. Aileen ( Emily Watson) works as the floor manager in the villages only employer a seafood and fish processing plant. One day her son Brian (Paul Mescal) returns unexpectedly to the village after disappearing many years before. No one talks of why, and he evades answering questions how he survived in Australia. There had been a major falling out between Brian and his Father Con, which lingers on still on his return. What he did to deserve this is never really spoken of, but its an unresolved wound none the less. Aileen tries to help set him up as an oyster farmer, by stealing nets of oysters for him. But he also starts stealing other fisherman's catches and selling them, which if found out would bring down the law upon him, and ruin the families reputation in the village. He appears also to want to rekindle his relationship with his teenage love Sarah. She accuses him of rape, and Aileen lies that he was at home in order to protect him. But the burden of guilt at doing this begins to eat away at her.

This is entirely Emily Watson's film, she emotionally dominates every frame of it. Mescal's ability to exude charm, is effectively backlit by the growing sense through out the film, that he has a bad reputation and is a lot nastier a person than he presents himself to be. Both performances greatly elevate this film way above what it might otherwise have achieved. God's Creatures is a powerfully taught and gritty drama, depicting lives lived hovering along the edge of poverty, in a wildly hostile and unforgiving landscape. 

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

SCREEN SHOT - Conclave

The Pope dies suddenly and Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) has been appointed to oversee the whole conclave process for finding a new pontiff. Lawrence had wished to leave Rome to retire to monastic seclusion, to deal with doubts that have assuaged him of late, but prior to his death the Pope had convinced him to stay. He is aware who the likely candidates will be, and is a close friend with one of them Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci). Bellini is the leading figure on the progressive wing of the Curia. The other possible candidates Adeyema (Lucian Msamati) Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto) Tremblay (John Lithgow) are all traditionalists. 

Trembley in particular is a reactionary hard liner, and is the person Lawrence least wishes to see win. Just as they are going into seclusion for the conclave, two unusual things happen. Lawrence is disturbed to hear rumours that the Pope had told Tremblay to resign over his involvement in a scandal.  And a totally unknown Cardinal Benitez, secretly appointed by the Pope as Cardinal for Kabul turns up at the last minute. As the sequence of votes to narrow down the candidates take place, Lawrence reluctantly finds himself also emerging as a candidate, which begins to compromise his position managing the conclave. Particularly when circumstances start to suggest corrupt practices may have been used to tilt the vote in Tremblay's favour.

Based on the Robert Harris novel, Peter Straughan 's screenplay produces a tense and beautifully turned plot of intregue. In the centre of which Raplh Fiennes gives what can only be described as a star turn. He's in almost every frame of this film, with a worried or perplexed face trying to work out what's best to do. Needing to get to the bottom of the situation whilst not appearing to be prejudicially taking sides. Its a masterpiece of finely judged understated expression, whilst speaking volumes, that has rightly received awards nominations. Edward Berger's direction winds up the plot like finely tuned clock work, sharply and cleanly. With set piece bits of claustrophobic theatre in the Sistine Chapel that are expertly managed. This is a small unassuming gem of a movie.

 
CARROT REVIEW - 5/8  

SCREEN SHOT - No Other Land

Imagine that you live in a village. One where the country next to where you live, suddenly decides it wants to turn the area you are living in into an army training ground. Regularly the army then starts to arrive unannounced with bulldozers to knock down a house or two, barely leaving the inhabitants sufficient time to gather and save their belongings or livestock. You protest, but even the protesters are then attacked by the army, people are shot, some seriously injured or killed, relatives are frequently arrested. And this happens repeatedly, over and over again, like a form of prolonged unending torture. Imagine what effect this would have upon you. Do you resist, stay, rebuild and fight on, or do you give up and leave the land, the place your family has farmed for generations, and move into the city?

No Other Land is an extremely personal film, painful to watch. It shows quite graphically just what ordinary Palestinians have been having to deal with for many decades. The film was shot by Basel a Palestinian and his close Israeli friend Yuval. Though an ally, Yuval also has to deal with distrust and hostility from the people he's trying to help. Even Basel chastises him about how easy it is for Yuval, to walk away, to just drive over the border to the relative safety of his own home. He doesn't have to continue to live here. Documentary footage incorporates 'in time' recordings of these attacks, the villagers reactions, the heartrending pleas for mercy and understanding, their distress and depression afterwards. As Basel and Yuval ponder together quite what needs to happen in order for their films of the situation to get the public attention they need.

There is no way these ordinary people can effectively fight back against the US funded Israeli military. They do what they can but their homeland Masafer Yatta is being robbed from them piece by piece regardless. What is also clear is that the army training ground excuse is just a ruse. What they really want to do is push the Palestinian presence away from near-bye illegal Israeli West Bank settlements, with the longer term intention of expanding them further.  

Basel's family have a history of activism and fighting off the encroachment of settlers and demolitions. His Father was arrested a number of times in his hothead youth, until he settled down to man the village's petrol pump. The film mixes film shot in Basel's childhood and contemporary footage. It shows you the time Tony Blair came to see the village school which was under threat of demolition. A week later it was reprieved. However, towards the end of the documentary you see it being bulldozed as the school children watch on. The vindictive cruelty of it was all too apparent.  All of the modern footage was filmed between 2018 to 2024, and stops just prior to Hamas's murderous atrocity. And you realise when they say the only place for them to move will be into Gaza, they do not know that Netanyahu's government are about to lay waste to it in a genocidal level of revenge. 

No Other Land quite rightly won the 2025 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. It speaks volumes that the Director of The Brutalist, Brady Corbet had to make a plea at the ceremony for someone to distribute it in the US. Because so far no one will touch it. In the light of The Tangerine Emperor's fickle nature, no one is willing to incur the unforeseeable consequences of his vengeful wrath. That's shocking, but telling, like this important documentary.

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8

SCREEN SHOT - Vesper

 A teenage girl Vesper (Raffiella Chapman ) is rooting around in the scrub and rough earth to find roots to eat. She refuses to live under the control of Jonas ( Eddie Marsan) in the village near bye. The people are all subsisting and are as poor as the earth they fail to grow crops in. The seeds are genetically corrupted and sterile. Further away from here is the Citadel where only rich oligarchs live in luxury served by their synthetic servants . Vesper lives with her terminally ill Father, and is protected by a robotic sphere that carries the speaking soul of her Father in it, 

She is conducting experiments with seeds trying to find a way that they might be made fertile. One day she discovers an injured young woman Camellia (Rosy McEwan )from the Citadel in the forest. Vesper strikes up a friendship with her. Knowing full well that she spells danger, as eventually the Citadel will eventually try to find her. But not before she discovers Camilla is someone that could liberate the lives of everyone living outside of the Citadel.

This film offers you the bleakest of bleak dystopian worlds. With a very limited budget it makes the most of its Lithuanian landscape and mist, to conjure an entirely believable sub culture. It is slow moving and the story line is a simple one. This film is very much a mood piece, and spends its hour fifty letting you feel and comprehend the daily details of these characters existence. Whilst it may look like its a movie for young adults in the vein of Hunger Games, it isn't, and is not afraid to stick to its aesthetic guns and hold to its pace. Just so long as you are prepared to go with that, I think you'll find this ultimately a much more satisfying film than you might first think.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8 

      

SCREEN SHOT - Medusa Deluxe

This is a 2022 British film written and directed by Thomas Hardiman, is set during a regional hairdressing competition, run annually by Rene (Darryl de Silva ). Unfortunately this year one of its stylist contestants has apparently been murdered and scalped, it isn't known by who. The police have closed everything down, no one is allowed to leave, Much of the opening shots of the movie are of hairdressers and models bitching about not being able to get out. The dialogue contains often scabrous humour, gallows funny, mixed with anger and bitchiness between the rival stylists who can barely conceal their disparaging views of each other. Long held resentments bubble up, plus concealed drug trading, and a stylist whose found God.

There are a number of impressive techniques used in this movie. The use of heightened colours, the almost lurid lighting, all sick greens and bloody curdling pinks. There is also that it appears to have been shot in one continuous take, with only a couple of points where it has been edited. So there is a lot of in time shots of characters walking down corridors, through doors, up stairs. Your attention slipping from one character arc to another in a turn of the camera. The fluidity of this belies its logistical complexity. This form brings to the film its own sense of energy and pace, as the whodunnit gradually settles onto one character as the culprit.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, it was a bit of an unexpected gem.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

 

SCREEN SHOT - Night On Earth (1991)

Night On Earth is from 1991, and a portmanteau of short dramas written and directed by Jim Jarmusch. Each is set in a particular city around the world, each taking place in a taxi cab journey. So we have roughly twenty minutes spent travelling across Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome and Helsinki respectively. With a jazz inflected bordello music soundtrack that is inimitably Tom Waits. It has cameo performances from the likes of Gena Rowlands, Winona Ryder, Roberto Benigni, Beatrice Dalle, Rosie Perez and Giancarlo Esposito, to name but a few.

These short vignettes, are all glimpses into ordinary people's lives, whether cabbies or customers. All of the stories oscillating between being touching and hilarious. The evenings in all these cities have a particular urban atmosphere,in America its often active yet hostile, neon lit and garish. Whilst in Europe a city can be half romantic slum, half sublime architecture. A taxi driver knows it all. Night time is the part of the day when the poor and the less salubrious come out into the streets. People are drunker, louder and more argumentative. And often these worlds step over the gutter and into the life of the cab driver. Cab drivers are particular folk, between jobs, in the meantime making a living off driving a taxi. Often learning to be adept at managing and talking to people from all walks of life.

In Night on Earth - a female cabbie really wants to be a mechanic, not a film star - an ex-clown from Germany loves his job yet cannot even drive the cab properly - a french speaking cabbie from Cote de Ivory strikes up a conversation with a blind young woman who possesses second sense - an Italian cabbie instigates a long and embarrassing confession to a priest he picks up - a Finish cabbie listens to a tale of hard times from three drunken men, then tells them his own tragic tale of misfortune. The subject matter of the film may sometimes feel slight or incidental. But this film is really all about people spending a short journey together exchanging their shared humanity with each other. Its quite the most heart warming and delightful film and one of Jarmusch's best.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

SCREEN SHOT - Past Lives

When I was at Primary School, I escaped being bullied by the boys in the boys playground by taking refuge in the girls playground. I had 'girlfriends' and some of those girls professed their six year old love for me in letter form. Somewhere in my papers I still have two of their clumsily written notes. I don't remember them now as individuals that I once was in a naive 'love' relationship with. We all have memories from our childhood of deep friendships, that for whatever reason do not survive the test of time. My family moved away from the town of my birth when I was eleven. This effectively meant any sense of continuity between my childhood friends and my adulthood was cut off. There was no shared experience of growing up and maturing together.

Celine Song's wonderfully tender film takes the idea of soul mates from our childhood and says what if they came back to meet you in adult life? What mixture of emotions would this conjure up in you? The philosophical centre of this movie revolves around the Korean notion of 'in yun' that individuals you encounter do not come into your lives by chance, but by a type of karmic fate. That you have some previous past life connection with this individual manifesting in the moment here and now of your present life. But that is not always meant to be a love connection.

Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) were childhoods sweethearts, whose love and appreciation for each other was abruptly terminated when Nora's parents emigrated from South Korea to the United States. Twelve years later via the internet and Skype, they reconnect. Nora is at the beginning of her burgeoning career as a writer, Hae Sung still working his way through college towards a future career. Though they talk of meeting up, neither feels able to do so. Their conversations churn up Nora's emotions, they start to impede and confuse her career ambitions. Making her decide to cease communicating with Hae Sung. Many years later Nora, now married to Arthur (John Magaro) she hears from Hae Sung. That he is coming on a visit to New York. And its clear he has come to see her. 

This film is full to the brim with real heart, that doesn't avoid the complicated emotional territory these three individuals find themselves in. How does Nora feel about Hae Sung, and vice a versa? What on earth is Arthur to make of Hae Sung and his reasons for wanting to meet Nora? All the tender insecurities of Arthur's relationship with Nora's become exposed. Meanwhile Hae Sung stands there as one protracted ache of longing for a past life, he so much wants to reclaim, but finds he really cannot. Life has moved on, the depth of their childhood connection is lost in a past that only Hae Sung continues to live in.. At the end of the movie he asks Nora - do you think that our connection in this life comes not from the past but from a relationship in a future life? An unanswerable question which is holding out one last hope into the future, which is just a heartrendingly tough watch. This debut film of Celine Song's, which she both wrote and directed, is worthy of all the awards and praise that has been heaped upon it.

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8

SCREEN SHOT - Perfect Days

After Covid, Wim Wenders was invited to document The Tokyo Toilet project where seventeen new lavatories were to be redesgned by sixteen creators from around the world. What started as a documentary idea eventually became this film. Shot in the Shibuya district of Tokyo where these stylishly upgraded lavatory facilities are. The film features many of them, each one very distinct in its style and strikingly original. He co-wrote the screenplay with Takuma Takasati, and it was filmed over seventeen days. So it has a semi documentary feel, that won it Best International Feature at the 2024 Academy Awards. It is one of Wenders best films, simple in its execution and humanity.

The central character Hirayama, (Koji Yakusho ) works as a toilet cleaner in the Shibuya district. His life is organised and filled with regular routines. He organises the things he needs daily on a shelf by the apartment exit, regularly waters his Acer cuttings, sleeps, reads paperbacks, has a large collection of cassettes, doesn't have a computer, is not on social media and takes black a white photos on an old film camera. He appears to be a cultured man, who prefers to live life entirely as though he exists in another era, whilst he works cleaning these ultra swish paragons of 21st century modernism. He lives a life of quiet simplicity. Extolling to his niece his - now is now, next time is next time - philosophy. But gradually as the film progresses modern life begins to poke its head into his life, to disrupt this carefully maintained equilibrium, Though he has chosen a separate self contained life, a series of encounters awakens a need in him for human company.

This film has often been mistakenly presented as a peon to living a simple zen style life within an urban setting. It is only this in part. It also demonstrates how such a lifestyle can only be maintained as long as you have complete control over your conditions. That nothing ever intrudes to remind you that you could live your life another way if you wanted. By the end of the movie Hirayama is a man who allows himself to feel his own regrets that his life has turned out the way it did. That his chosen lifestyle has protected him from experiencing some of the consequences and pain of his past.

Koji  Yakusho is utterly brilliant in this film, well deserving of his Best Actor award from the Cannes Film Festival. His actual spoken dialogue is sparse. For much of the film he says very little, often just gestures or grunts in response. Yet his open face and expressiveness, tell you volumes about the interior life of the man, his real love of popular music, his silent appreciation for people and favourite places. Every night when Hirayama sleeps his dreams are full of beautiful black and white shadows cast across textural surfaces, with echoing scratching sounds in the background. At the end of the movie Wenders posts a definition of the Japanese term  Komorebi - which means taking delight in light and shadows filtered through the leaves in the present moment. Which reminds you that Hirayama regularly takes photos of light shining through the tree canopy

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

SCREEN SHOT - The Substance

There is quite a lot of Oscar buzz around this film. Demi Moore having already won a Golden Globe for her performance. And you can see why it might garner such recognition. Its a classic case of a female actor being willing to go all the way with not being attractive in a movie, all in the pursuit of truth and authenticity. Demi Moore is central to why this film works, and she is undoubtedly good in it, I remain to be convinced its worthy of being lauded with an Oscar, unless its simply for submitting yourself to the most extreme degrading form of prosthetics imaginable. 

The Substance, is a type of feminist parable, that the Director and Writer - Coralie Fargeat takes to its full gory conclusion. If you've heard that this is body horror, well it certainly is, and it is quite the most toe curling and gratuitously gross film I've ever seen. Though its utterly brilliant in what it does,  I will not be watching it again, nor recommending anyone else to watch it.. Just when you think its reached the peak of Yuck,! you realise there is still half an hour to go, and the Yuck! quotient has only just got started. If you do watch this movie, don't say you have not been warned.

The starting point of the film is an actor Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) a one time Oscar winner, who now earns a living as a TV fitness goddess. But she is touching fifty+ and the network drops her in pursuit of someone much younger. She finds out about The Substance, which if taken produces a younger version using your own body. Things start to go awry once Sparkle's younger body version, Sue (Margaret Qualley) takes over as the TV fitness guru. Even though there is meant to be an alternating seven days on meds and seven days off, Sue starts taking liberties and the relationship between them deteriorates. This is the relatively sane half of the movie. I wont go any further than that, because the film works best if you really don't know were its going to take you next.

The Substance makes its nods to a number of horror classics, The Shining, Carrie, The Fly. The fundamental story line being a feminist riff on Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. The ending has echoes of The Elephant Man. So this is a modern morality tale about the lengths women are expected to go to, in order to be still considered, not just attractive, but viable as a human being. Denis Quaid is superbly slimy and abrasive as the TV Executive Harvey, all fake suntan, snakeskin suits, who just wants women to smile beautifully, and has a fetish for boa feathers. All the men in this movie are ciphers for one sort of male entitlement or another. So, male representation here is deliberately cartoonish and consistently one dimensional. But then this is a film that is very very far from being cinema verite.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

SCREEN SHOT - Gladiator 2

It's a Ridley Scott movie. So this sequel to Gladiator from 2000, twenty five years ago, is a somewhat overdue follow up that manages to tick all the right blockbuster boxes. Huge sets, strikingly staged moments, battle scenes and gladiator fights. If there is one thing that Ridley Scott knows how to do in spades is please his audience. Plus gathering a very respectable ensemble of actors. He obviously hoped to lure Russell Crowe back to do some flashback type moments, because the film is littered with edits of him from the first movie. This does highlight one of the failings of this movie, that it does rely too much on basking in the glory that was Gladiator. 

From the first movie Scott has brought back Connie Neilson, and gives a cameo role to Derek Jacobi apparently simply in order to kill him off spectacularly. So there is a nod to continuity between the two films. Gladiator 2 is certainly much much bloodier than its predecessor, hands are lopped off, heads are sawn off in front of your eyes, so there is a huge amount of more gratuitous violence. But the structure of the narrative is basically another spin of the same story arc, but with a fresh set of actors, which is something Scott appears to do with some regularity, if you look at Alien and its recent prequels.

What Gladiator 2 has in spades is grandeur and spectacle, it takes the first movie and turns the dial up a few notches. Booking Paul Mescal and Pedro Pascal to play the two central leads was a good move. Both are still on an upward career trajectory, so appearing in this blockbuster will do both of them a lot of good in terms of the future films they get offered. So far Mescal has triumphed hugely within smaller scale independent films. But here he takes on a bigger character who has to appear to posses the same leadership qualities as his dead father ie Russell Crowe. I think Mescal does just about hold his own, using his lower vocal register more, looking more haggard, toning down his geniality and charming twinkling smile of his. And of course he's done the now ubiquitous bulking up, learnt how to ride a horse, and be flashily lethal with a sword. 

The real star of this movie is Denzel Washington, who steals almost every scene he is in. The character he plays Macrinus, an ex slave, now slave owner and gladiator owner, who is now using or creating unstable situations, through which to climb the greasy pole to political influence in Rome. Denzel plays Macrinus with all the intelligent charm you'd expect, but with an undertow of menace and manipulation of people to advance his own power. His is the only acting performance that truly grabs the movie and makes it entirely his own, in the same way Crowe did in the first movie.

This is a more than satisfactory and efficient sequel, one that fulfills most of your expectations of it. It is a bit mechanical in the way it lovingly recycles its tropes, which I think does prevent it from being as majestically a great movie as its first iteration. It has its weirdly off kilter moments like the gladiator fight with seemingly 'genetically' modified apes. But Mescal buffed up and in armour, what's there not to like?

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

SCREEN SHOT - Evil Does Not Exist

Drive My Car from 2021 won the Best International Feature Film at the Oscars for Rysuke Hamguchi. It was an ode to loss, love and grief, that was a slow, three hour elegaic movie that nevertheless managed to pack a huge emotional punch. His follow up Evil Does Not Exist, released in 2023, though only a hour and three quarters long, is equally quiet and measured in its pace, with a strong environment versus economics narrative.

The film opens with a very long continuous shot,as though we are walking through a forest of trees looking upwards. This cuts abruptly to Hana, an eight year old girl in the forest. She's the daughter of Takumi, a widower who describes himself as being a bit of an odd jobs man. He smokes cigarettes, chops firewood, collects stream water for the local restaurant and is devoted to his daughter. The mountain village he lives in appears peaceful. You get the feeling that everyone moves there to get away from modern urban life. Here they are just allowed to be.

Two representatives, a man and a woman, from a glamping firm hold a meeting in the village hall. They're making a presentation about the proposed development of a glamping site higher up in the mountains. All the villagers have concerns, mostly related to sewage from the site. Takumi points out that where they propose to site their septic tank is guaranteed to pollute the stream that brings water into the village. Plus, why is the tank of insufficient size to meet the camps needs when at full capacity? The couple cannot answer these questions, they are not responsible for making such decisions. They are merely the face of the company, they promise rather unconvincingly to take their concerns back.

In a subsequent zoom call with the glamping company's owner, its clear the operation is being run on a shoestring, is dependent on getting government subsidies, and hence is unwilling to make the changes the villagers request. But maybe they could pursued Takumi to become the site caretaker, then they might be able to get it passed the villagers. They return, but during the course of this there is an unexpected, mysterious turn of events.  

On one level this is an eco-parable, but it also presents to you a small closely knit community that knows everyone in it well. There maybe rough diamonds, but they'd be prepared to help anyone. The people from the glamping company are like fish out of water and always appear disingenuous. There is a clash of cultures here. The title Evil Does Not Exist appears in retrospect to be ironic. Because something nefarious does emerge, though it comes from an entirely unexpected direction. A melancholic and subtly haunting movie, that has hung around in my imagination for a long time subsequently.

CARROT REVIEW 6/8

 

SCREEN SHOT - Aftersun

Calum (Paul Mescal) is taking his 11 year old daughter Sophie ( Frankie Corio ) on a holiday to Turkey.  The holiday is documented via home movies and incidents viewed from Sophie's remembered perspective. Through it we see the adult Sophie's memories of her charming yet unknowable father. The film is peppered with a quickly edited slow motion disco scene where you see the Sophie looking for glimpses of her father in a crowded club, as an eleven year old, then an an adult. Her father coming suggestively in and out of focus. Quite often throughout the film Sophie sees her father slightly out of the frame, peaked at over or through something. These are just some of the visual beauties of this film debut by writer and director Charlotte Wells. Sophie is a girl on the edge of adolescence and is just awakening to being curious how older teenagers behave, and intimate relationships. The film expertly captures this halfway state between childhood and adolescence proper.

Initially this seems like just an ordinary holiday in a Mediterranean hotel. Calum is, however, not at ease with himself. There are hints of estrangement from his own family, that he never wants to return to Scotland. So much here is lightly suggested, because we are seeing things from teenage Sophie's recollection. Small things viewed from her adult perspective, have much more significance now. She has to ask her father twice what he did on his eleventh birthday, and begrudgingly tells her he had to remind his own family that it was his birthday. Sophie organises people to sing to him on his birthday, a scene followed by a back shot of Calum sobbing his heart out alone in the hotel room. A penultimate scene in the movie when they are both dancing to Under Pressure becomes unaccountably gut wrenching, as you can sense that this is a last goodbye. We are never told what happened to her father, nor why this particular holiday proved to be so significant. Its clear he has disappeared from her life at some point hereafter, we know not how or why and are left speculating. 

Charlotte Wells, is an extremely promising film maker, who was so fortunate to find a girl as naturally gifted as Frankie and obviously an actor of Mescal's caliber. Who does what he does best - suppressed emotion, staring self absorbed off screen, fleeting expressions almost thrown away, but all are tellingly significant. Aftersun is a movie with a quiet impact, unexpectedly grasping you and pulling you into its emotional undertow.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8