Among this years low budget hits Attack the Block was written and directed by Joe Cornish (from the TV Adam & Joe Show). This is an exciting funny and acute take on the alien invasion theme. It honours its filmic inheritance, but does not, a la Shawn of the Dead, parody it. Wyndham Towers is the tower block in South London attacked by aliens and defended by black teenage hoodies. It stars no-one you have heard of, mostly new faces, but they are convincing and engaging. It speaks up for inter-racial and inter-generational understanding, and is a kind of coming-of-age movie. Boys become men, or at least step towards true courage and dignity.
Monsters was made for less than £500,000, mainly because it was written directed, designed and photographed by one man, Gareth Edwards, with a cast of two, a largely improvised script and home-made special effects - again by Mr. Edwards This is Science-Fiction again, but with very different aliens, and a love-story. The director, actors and sound man traveled across Mexico looking for locations and recruiting amateurs as they went. No doubt he will be offered mega-bucks for his next movie, but Monsters showed that he does not need them to entertain us.
Ken Loach usually works on a low budget too (perforce) and his Route Irish is as committed and passionate as any of his works. Route Irish is the dangerous road that led through the Green Zone from Baghdad to the airport during the 2nd Gulf War and subsequent occupation. British troops in Iraq were gradually replaced by ‘private security personnel’ aka mercenaries (often the same men who had served as soldiers there). Mark Womack plays such an exSAS trooper, trying to find out what led to the death of his mate, played in flashbacks by the Scouse comedian John Bishop. But this is no comedy. It is a political and personal thriller, with serious intent. If you appreciate Loach’s films, see this.
I will include Eire as British in order or praise The Guard, written and directed by J M McDonagh, and starring Brendan Gleeson, Don Cheadle, Rory Keenan and Mark Strong. This was shot around my beloved Galway Bay, Gleeson’s homeland, and he plays the local Police - or Garde - sergeant, caught up in a drug plot being investigated by the FBI agent played by Cheadle (who played such in Traffic). This is a culture-clash comedy, a buddy movie, a comedy caper, and utterly unPC. I loved it.
Two more British films had bigger budgets, but did not use them for flash-bang-wallop. Strictly speaking Never Let Me Go is also science fiction, adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, (though of course if a novel is good surely it cannot be science fiction!). Carey Mulligan Andrew Garfield and Keira Knightley live in a parallel present to our own, and a darker one. Their performances are quietly underplayed, its moral message understated. and both are all the more moving for it. The film is beautifully shot, and scored.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor is adapted from John le Carre’s novel, directed by Tomas Alfreson, the Swede who made the brilliant Let the Right One In. Competing with the beloved 6 hour long BBC/Alex Guinness version is a hard task, but Alfreson concentrates on the feel as much as the plot, and it is not the world of James Bond. MI6 is presented as a seedy, squalid, suspicious, sexist, snobbish world (oh, rather like Bond’s after all). A wonderful (if rather under-used) British cast, includes Gary Oldman as George Smiley, Kathy Burke, Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt and Mark Strong. Despite the convoluted plot Alfreson has the courage to take his time, to allow us to watch Smiley, watching, thinking, suppressing his responses. A friend of mine said she loved it, but hadn’t a clue what was going on. I give thanks that an intelligent demanding movie topped the charts.
Another film with a British Director and leading actors is The Debt. John Madeen directed Mrs. Brown and Shakespeare in Love, but this is different, a thriller about an Israeli Mossad squad’s attempt to kidnap a Nazi war criminal and take him from East Berlin back to Israel to be put on trial. But the snatch goes badly wrong. Thirty years on we see the fall-out from that failure. Helen Mirren plays the older version of the agent played as a younger woman by Jessica Chastain, and Tom Wilkinson and Ciaran Hinds play her colleagues. This remake of an Israeli film has a script worked on by Peter Straughn, who also contributed to the adaptation of Tinker, Tailor…. and is a taut political thriller with a moral edge. What is the debt, and to whom is it owed?
Of course the biggest budget went to the last Harry Potter; the Deathly Hallows part 2. in which David Yates ‘brings the closure that Potter fans have been seeking and dreading – something they and Harry have in common.’ (BFI) For years I assured parents worried about the ‘witchcraft’ element that this series was simply a morality tale about the victory of good over evil, of love over hatred, and Harry did not win his battles by being a better magician than Voldemort, but by the courage and loyalty of his friends (and Hermione doing her homework!). The question was never 'will Harry defeat Voldemort', but how. Now we know that J K Rowling was a Christian all along, but did not publicize it. If I had, she said, everyone would work out the ending.
Source Code was the second film by the British director Duncan Jones, son of David Bowie, who had a critical hit with his low budget sf hit Moon in 2009. This time he used his bigger budget well, with Jake Gyllenhall and Michelle Monaghan (so good in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) a convoluted plot and great special effects – but the message is that love conquers all. Ahhh.
There have been some great classic DVD/Blu-ray releases this year including Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, Coppola's Apocalypse Now, Scorcese's Taxi Driver, and Blood Simple, (both the Coen Brothers dark original and a hilarious Chinese version by Zhang Yimou, of Hero, House of Flying Daggers and the Beijing Olympic opening ceremony fame). Also John Carpenter’s hilarious Dark Star, another low budget triumph and Douglas Trumbull’s prophetic Silent Running, and Roeg's The Man Who Fell To Earth and West Side Story.
So, three good new sf films and the release of three sf classics. Three handsome literary adaptations, and the best year of the British film industry for some time. I hereby declare 2011 to be a good vintage!
