★★★★★

Five Stars

Any film that is ‘based on true events’ or labelled as a ‘historical drama’, creates an altered viewing experience. The plot is tautological, we often know the outcome, and the film instead becomes about detail, nuance and interpretation. At least, that is what a good film should do.

Zero Dark Thirty, a highly controversial work from director Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker), is no exception to this. In a blur of documentation and dramatization, the film details the decade long hunt for America’s Public Enemy No.1, Osama Bin Laden, culminating in his grisly assassination. From that description alone, I had my misgivings, furthered by the inevitable backlash from all corners regarding Bigelow’s extremely uncomfortable depiction of torture. This film could have so easily become a vehicle for patriotism, propaganda, and large men dressed as Navy SEALS chanting ‘USA’ in front of a rippling star spangled banner. However, Bigelow’s intense, pared down filming combined with Mark Boal’s unforgiving and unsentimental script  creates a brilliant take on what is vast becoming its own genre; the ‘War on Terror’.

The secret lies in the film’s main motive. This is not a film about torture, or politics, or America. It is barely a film about Bin Laden. Much like The Hurt Locker, it is a film about obsession. CIA agent Maya (Jessica Chastain) is almost fanatical in her search for OBL (the film is thick with jargon); to the extent that the emotional core of the piece is the search itself.

Characters come and go, torture is used and dismissed almost ambivalently, and leads are found futile, until the only thing left is Chastain’s fragile, exhausting, and utterly compelling performance. She, like the majority of the characters, is without past or future, and figured only within the context of the mission.

This centrality allows Bigelow to depict the political undercurrents and relationships without letting them become the chief objective. In this creative environment, co-stars Jason Clarke, Mark Strong and Joel Edgerton give excellent performances with little material to work from. Bigelow did deviate a little from her nameless character trope by casting John Barrowman as a White House suit, however. Go back to Wales, Captain Jack.

Though the tracking progress takes centre stage in Zero Dark Thirty, the film’s climax is of course the success of the mission. After hurtling through years of work, with some slightly clumsy examples of terrorists attacks (including the London bombings), we finally reach the night Maya has waited for. And Bigelow makes us wait as much as her heroine has to. The pacing is steady, but the suspense is relentless, drawing out every detail of the raid until the task is complete and the audience’s energy is utterly spent. Here Bigelow is at her filmmaking best.

Unexpectedly moved to tears during the last part of the film, I am made to face the most uncomfortable reality yet. Though a ‘historical drama’, unlike Lincoln or some others of this year’s Oscar contenders, the politics of Zero Dark Thirty is on-going. However, it is not the political element that inspired the strongest reaction, but a single shot of Chastain’s face when her task is finally complete. The film may have its controversies and its flaws, but it remains a fantastic piece of cinema and for that, I give it full marks and any Oscar it wants. 

There is a faraway land that independent filmmakers dream of. It is a land of untold (six-figure) riches. It is a land of ice palaces and pleasantly guffawing Hollywood bigwigs. It is a land where the manicpixiedreamgirl roams free. It is Utah. Welcome to the Sundance Film Festival.

Sundance is the uncontested champion of independent film competitions. Founded by Robert Redford (the original Sundance Kid, hence the iconic name), the festival takes place in Park City, Utah every winter. The festival was originally called the Utah Film Festival and took place in the height of summer, when Utah is about as interesting as the Book of Mormon, but was rebranded and moved to winter on the advice of the late Sydney Pollock, who sagely noticed that the movers and shakers of Hollywood would be more interested in the film festival if they could use it as an excuse for a skiing holiday.

Sundance has cemented its position as one of the most important film festivals in the world: whilst Cannes, Venice, Toronto and Berlin are still the go-to prestige events, Sundance is a showcase for films financed outside of the studio system. Filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, David O. Russell, Paul Thomas Anderson and Darren Aronofsky all got their big breaks at the festival and, as a result, the queues of independent filmmakers lining up to follow suit are miles long. In 2012 there were in excess of 10,000 feature films submitted, with only 200 films programmed, which works out as a one in 50 shot at getting in. Apparently that slim chance is worth the $100 entry fee.

But whilst the festival is something of a gladiatorial arena for indie filmmakers, for the discerning cinephile it’s a veritable bordello of unheard treasures. Last year’s top winners in the Documentary and Dramatic awards, The House I Live In and Beasts of the Southern Wild, have both been nominated for Oscars. Other recent hits at the festival include Lee Daniels’s slightly nauseating social chore Precious; the greatest hillbilly Western of all time, Winter’s Bone; and 2012’s unnerving but electric Martha Marcy May Marlene. Not a bad selection of films to get to see, especially given the fact that the distributors will all be in the audiences in Park City, like circling sharks waiting to snap up a commercially viable indie hit, so these films won’t be in cinemas for another year or so.

The 2013 Sundance promises to be every bit as intriguing. Given that Redford’s experimental Sundance London project at the 02 has been a massive critical and commercial failure, you probably won’t be bothering to watch these films for a while (unless you’re planning to hotfoot it to Utah and bail on 3rd week). Matthew McConaughey’s Mud is being pushed for acting prizes already, whilst Before Midnight (the sequel to Before Sunrise and Before Sunset) is hot property and currently without a distributor. I think Park Chan-Wook’s Stoker looks dynamite, whilst there’s also some good buzz surrounding The East, starring Brit Marling and Ellen Page. And, if worse comes to worst, you can always fix your attention on Kill Your Darlings, which stars Daniel Radcliffe as Allen Ginsberg (looking strangely like Dan from Gossip Girl).

Sundance is a film festival that holds enormous power in the industry and, therefore, gets a huge number of column inches devoted to it. But it deserves every one of them, because it’s the single biggest platform for indie films and manages to level the playing field somewhat. So, Sundance, have a few more inches, courtesy of Cherwell.

★★★☆☆
Three Stars

Gags left me feeling cautiously confident about Oxford’s comedic future.

This was a performance that was in many ways akin to having a deep, unctuous full body massage: initially rather painful and awkward, but surprisingly enjoyable and refined at the end (if leaving you slightly conflicted).

Comprised of a series of small sketch pieces, Gags highlighted contemporary obsessions with the minutiae of social mores, from the Attenborough-eqsue “mating ritual” in a seedy Sainsbury’s to politics of Power Rangers clothing. The ensuing chuckles certainly held a mirror up to the great British obsession with social mores, whether concerning those who sniff the scented air of society’s upper rafters or those you find lurking in the smoking area at Camera at 2am. A sketch about a man in his car frantically trying to reach his child bearing wife only to be obstructed by a ticket machine left me cackling quietly away to myself, although this could only be because I’ve witnessed this problem several times at Heathrow Airport.

The first half was definitely the weaker of the two, but was marginally redeemed by its emphasis on physical comedy rather than witticisms; perhaps that’s why some of the writing in the first half stood out to me as weaker than the second. Thankfuly this was raised by strong performances from Rachel Watkeys Dowlie and George Mather, the latter of which has one of those semi-innate senses of comic timing. Funniest of all though, was a performance from Joseph Morpurgo, giving us a quick succession of stereotypes with sharp improv and a nice bit of audience interaction thrown into the mix. Whether or not this was purely down to him, the humour in the second half seemed to be sharper and the writing tighter, particularly the slightly metafictional doctors sketch about a dying joke- or to paraphrase, “penises are always funny”.

Gags is not a bad show. More to the point, it is not an unfunny show, and it’s laughs come by cleverly either confirming or subverting our preconceptions-particularly in the latter half. But as I left I left the Old Fire Station, I couldn’t help but feel that the humour was a bit, well… safe. The darkest it got was a few puns about a professional assassination service. Next time, less Armstrong and Miller, and more Frankie Boyle please guys.

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Hacked Off film’s immersive cinema screening of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off always sounded like a great way to spend a Friday evening. My only concern was whether expectation would match the reality of screening an 80s classic in an academic building. How would the escapism of Ferris Bueller translate to a space more used to Shakespeare, Milton and Literary Theory?  Would the joy of John Hughes’ vision be dulled by the subterranean setting?  But as I swiftly realised, this was a stroke of excellent planning by Owen Donovan and Edd Elliott, the brains behind Hacked Off Films. As the 120 strong crowd started to seat themselves (about the size of my own school year back in ’03) I felt increasingly part of Ferris’s world. In our assorted 80s gear, inside our own concrete classroom, we were the ‘sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads’ of Hughes’ High Schools. A postgraduate tutor (Michael Mayo) who had been fortunately coerced into portraying Ferris’ economics teacher emerged into the Lecture Theatre. This led to a genius sequence in which he used the audience to call the register. We scrambled to claim “Atkinson” “Blasingham” or “Bruton-Jones” for our own before leaving “Bueller…Bueller…Bueller…” hanging as the opening titles rolled.

There was a collective sigh of meta-cinematic satisfaction as the English lecture scene on screen echoed the audience, right down to matching lecterns (a parallel not even the Hacked Off team anticipated, as I later learnt). These moments of grin-inducing realisation were what characterised Hacked Off Film’s approach, bringing surprise and novelty to a film that I imagine most of the audience had seen many a time before. There were slight technical issues but these were minimal and dealt with well, using the same economics teacher we’d met at the start.

The actors mingling with the audience in the foyer set the tone from the beginning. Several carried Pepsi cans, asking for donations to ‘Save Ferris’ whilst really collecting coppers for their chosen charity ExVac. Dougie Young, last seen in Angels in America, brooded in the corner as the drug-addled delinquent played by Charlie Sheen. Becca Fallon, a fantastically cast Jennifer Grey lookalike, scowled at all and sundry as Ferris’ sister Jeannie.

Donovan and Elliott had clearly thought a lot about their immersion experience, keeping it casual but clever, and full of little surprises. The duo say they’re proud that they’ve managed to keep their events cheaper than regular cinema, and they’ve clearly spent their limited funds wisely.  Details like placing a packed of Oreos and a Pepsi (the original sponsors) at each place, and borrowing paintings from Exeter JCR to make a mini-gallery were both low-key and greatly appreciated. They left the larger stunts for appropriate moments later on in the film – complementing the ‘Twist and Shout’ carnival scene by releasing balloons and firing confetti cannons.

Producing ‘SAVE FERRIS’ t-shirts was a smart move, showing just how tuned into the cult the organisers are. They matched savvy audience awareness with their own ingenuity at every turn. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is a much-loved film, as indicated by the audience’s quiet chant of “Let my Cameron Go” and our crooning along to Wayne Newson’s ‘Danke Schoen’ at appropriate points. Its cult following made the film a brilliant choice for this sort of screening and gave Hacked Off a bit of a head start for success. What Donovan, Elliott and their team did so well was tap into its tongue-in-cheek, camp, homespun energy.

This is only Hacked Off Film’s second immersive cinema event, building on the success of screening Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in Exeter’s Dining Hall last Michaelmas. But they’ve clearly hit on a winning formula, and are aware of the importance of their choices of film and location, not using the same space twice so that each time it really fits the theme. The commitment to detail and sheer enjoyment evident throughout Friday’s show promises great things for the future of Hacked Off Films. Their other endeavour, the Oxford leg of The Future Shorts Festival is already a firm favourite of the Oxford Hub, and fast approaching as part of the Turl Street Arts Festival.  Further information about this and all of their future projects can be found on their facebook page, which is well worth a look and a ‘like’. Elliott told Cherwell that the main focus for him was always “how much fun can we have”. This is precisely what came across. The experience was fun rather than flashy; the film was enhanced rather than overpowered. I felt like this was something thrown together by and for Ferris’s friends. And I loved it for that.

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