“Something’s wrong here. I don’t know exactly what it is, but something’s wrong here.” Repeated by its protagonist throughout This Must Be the Place, the line captures the baffling quality of Paolo Sorrentino’s English language debut. An erratic merging of different forms and tones, it is a difficult film to describe and one even harder to discuss in regards to why much of it succeeds. It is certainly schizophrenic conceptually and stylistically, but it also never feels disjointed or packed with too many strands.

Sean Penn plays a wealthy former rock star of around 50 years of age, Cheyenne, bored and jaded while in long-implemented retirement in Dublin. Perpetually slathered in the make-up and attire of his goth rock career, as well as frequently wielding cat eye glasses and a shopping trolley, Cheyenne visually resembles a curious blend of Penn’s own inescapable looks, The Cure’s Robert Smith and a grandmother; his camp vocal intonations alternately bring to mind Truman Capote, canine cartoon star Droopy and a John Waters character. Residing in a palatial estate with his fire-fighter wife and emotional anchor Jane (Frances McDormand), the disconnected Cheyenne spends much of his time investing in stock shares and attempting matchmaking with a young Irish girl he has a tenuous connection to (Bono’s daughter, Eve Hewson). Upon hearing that his estranged father is dying, he makes the journey to New York in an attempt at reconciliation, only to find he has missed his chance. Never really knowing his father, Cheyenne discovers the extent of the man’s experience in Auschwitz at the hands of a particular SS officer, and with some guidance from a Nazi hunter (Judd Hirsch), sets off on a journey across the United States in order to track down the former officer, who had since moved to the country and may still be alive…

Full review at Sound on Sight

Lynn Shelton’s follow-up to her “mumblecore” hit Humpday retains frequent collaborator Mark Duplass and a focus on the dynamic between a small group of people, the trio of Your Sister’s Sister being Iris (Emily Blunt), Jack (Duplass), and Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt). Humpday’s character exploration was the heart of a quite high concept premise: two straight male friends decide to make a porn film together for an art project, testing their boundaries. Your Sister’s Sister’s storyline is not so easily definable, but does eventually reveal some similarly extravagant, outlandish developments. A thankful avoidance of any sitcom-like tendencies is achieved through not relying on the farcical narrative developments themselves, the film being bolstered by grounded, engaging characters that are very enjoyable to spend time with…

Full review at Sound on Sight

Play is a frequently harrowing and thoughtful film about manipulation, bullying, identity, race and customs. Primarily rooted in uncomfortable ambiguity, it is based on a series of real cases of bullying and robbery that occurred in Gothenburg, Sweden a few years ago. Set against the inner city backdrop of that city, the main narrative details an elaborate scheme known as the “little brother number”. Involving elaborate role-play and rhetoric rather than threats of pure brute force, the con of a gang of youths, like the film itself, is reliant on subtle, implied menace…

Full review at Sound on Sight

Ernst Lubitsch is best known for his work in Hollywood, operating as a master of comedies until his death in 1947. He left behind a legacy of films that includes the much beloved likes of The Shop Around the Corner, To Be or Not to Be, Cluny Brown, Ninotchka, Heaven Can Wait, and Trouble in Paradise. Prior to making the transition to American filmmaking, Lubitsch operated in his native Germany. He enjoyed a great deal of international success, though some of this was for large-scale productions and dramas that would not be a prominent feature of his Hollywood career. One of these films was The Loves of Pharaoh, or Das Weib des Pharao, a historical epic rivaling Metropolis in terms of ambitious German silent cinema, and Lubitsch’s last film made in the country. Incomplete prints of the film have existed for years, but the recent restoration now available is as close as preservationists have yet come to piecing together the full product…

Full review at Sound on Sight

James Bobin’s reboot of The Muppets provides another contribution to the trend of 2011 films rooted in nostalgia for cultural staples of the past, alongside the likes of Hugo, The Artist and Midnight in Paris. Opening with outright adoration for the original The Muppet Show, this new outing for Jim Henson’s puppet creations features an array of elements from their televisual and cinematic offerings of the past. 1984’s The Muppets Take Manhattan contained a very similar plot strand involving the group reuniting to put on a big show, while the much beloved song “Rainbow Connection” from 1979’s The Muppet Movie makes an appearance here. That latter film’s self-reflexive postmodern comedy based around breaking the fourth wall, as well as its road movie leanings and cameo based comedy, are prominent features of Bobin’s film, which is written by Nicholas Stoller and the film’s human lead Jason Segel…

Full review at Reel Time

This screened as part of the Glasgow Youth Film Festival, directly preceding the main Glasgow Film Festival.

Bulgarian film Avé is the fiction feature debut of its director Konstantin Bojanov. A road movie, it is concerned with two hitchhiking youths whose paths collide, leading them to travel together to a small town close to the Romanian border for the wake of the friend of one of them. The boy, Kamen, meets eponymous girl Avé at road side, both intrigued and repelled by her tendency to lie her way in and out of situations. Latching to him despite his attempts to escape her during his journey, she constantly reinvents a new story for their relationship and her past for everyone they meet, when they in fact don’t even know each other’s names. Never warning Kamen of her detours into fiction, she paints the boy as both her brother, her perverted boyfriend, and the grieving relative of a soldier killed in Iraq, while she paints herself as whatever she deems necessary to get ahead or to morbidly satisfy those she encounters…

Full review at Sound on Sight

This screened as part of the Glasgow Youth Film Festival, directly preceding the main Glasgow Film Festival.

Yoshihiro Nakamura’s fish-out-of-water comedy, based on a manga, concerns an Edo period samurai thrust forward in time to contemporary Tokyo and befriended by a single mother and her young son. Instead of a narrative rooted in the action film genre like one may expect from the man’s profession, the film’s concern is with the subversion of the samurai mindset and cutesy familial development. The samurai, Kajima, ends up stepping into a modern domestic role as a surrogate father and housekeeper, becoming a master of domestic duties. Discovering and developing a fondness for sweet food, he begins to hone skills in the art of pastry-making through the application of the same principles and dedication related to samurai training. This development alternately brings this new family dynamic closer together but also threatens to tear it apart…

Full review at Sound on Sight

This screened as part of the Glasgow Youth Film Festival, directly preceding the main Glasgow Film Festival.

French director Michel Ocelot is perhaps best known for his animated films Kirikou and the Sorceress, that film’s sequel, and Azur & Asmar: The Princes’ Quest. His latest feature Tales of the Night is an anthology film made up of six short allegorical folk tales. Derived from his television series Dragons et princesses, it extracts material from five episodes of that show, in addition to containing a sixth new tale. That root in an established television series is perhaps the film version’s only weakness; its recurring creative framing device for the stories is pleasantly unique, but there is no real elaboration regarding it for anyone unfamiliar with the show it perhaps comes from. Additionally, the film just ends after the final story’s conclusion, not returning to the characters of the framing device for a farewell, as though we will just see them again soon like we might on television. Despite these minor issues, there is very much a lot about this film to recommend…

Full review at Sound on Sight

A Dangerous Method sees something of a diversion from David Cronenberg’s typical brand of filmmaking, his common theme of corruption of the body and mind moving aside for an emphasis on dissection of the latter. A look at the birth of psychoanalysis in the early 1900s and the relationship between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, the only semblance of the director’s body horror motif comes through Keira Knightley’s facial contortions as Sabina Spielrein, an initial sufferer of what was then known as hysteria. The features of the actress’ physical acting in her early scenes allow for some visual resemblance to the type of facial manipulation in other Cronenberg films, just without the assistance of prosthetic effects enhancement.

A film dominated by conversation and the exchanging of ideas, the strongest moments are usually related to scenes of Michael Fassbender’s Jung and Viggo Mortensen’s Freud meeting face-to-face; their relationship becomes increasingly estranged and hostile, and harbours A Dangerous Method’s few flirtations with a comedic streak. Further highlights also arise from some stunning visual compositions in exterior scenes, and some intriguingly uncomfortable, off-centre framing during its one-on-one scenes of confrontation and discussion.

Awkwardly arranged on a narrative level, the abrupt structural editing choices not only cause unflattering comparisons to the source material’s stage roots but also a lack of any sort of graceful flow to events. Christopher Hampton’s screenplay is a constant barrage of bare details, each idea presented never being provided a substantial exploration beyond basic, surface level description. It becomes clear that concerns are not so much with the development of the ideas of these people, but rather how they reflect their own behaviour as individuals; nonetheless, the effect of a lack of fleshing out and conviction is still prominent with this exploration.

So lacking in density despite its constant dissecting discussions, A Dangerous Method’s staid approach too often feels at odds with the story’s concerns with avoiding repression and restraint. Perhaps the prospect of a longer running time could have dispelled this issue, as the rushed aura certainly provokes the feeling of an unfortunately neutered work.

One of Richard Linklater’s earliest features and a pioneering contribution to the independent American cinema canon of the 1990s, Slacker is essentially one hundred minutes of a cycle of disconnected dialogue. Each scene focuses on a conversation or monologue, ending with the introduction of a character that will take centre stage in the upcoming segment and following that person out of the frame and into a new location. Disengaging with traditional narrative, the film’s structure floats erratically through people and their moral and philosophical conversations, creating the sense of an anthological collection of tenuously related shorts, akin to a route Linklater would later explore with films like Waking Life.

None of the individuals ever reappear following their departure, but a portrait of the Austin community is eventually established cumulatively through its concentration on the generation associated with the film’s title. The more eccentric individuals tend to leave a strong impression, and there is the occasional dose of interesting musings. Promoting an improvised aesthetic, the film’s production is in fact rooted in tight screenwriting. This perhaps explains the off-putting nature of many of the scenes, which come across as clumsy, inauthentic and forced due to the writing and delivery. The structure of the film resembles the slacker culture it portrays, and it ends in a playful, exuberant conclusion perhaps fitting of its subjects: the final shot of a camera being thrown from a cliff almost seems like the filmmakers becoming idle and giving up themselves. Slacker is ultimately an interesting experiment, admirable for its approach, but frequently bothersome and not consistently enthralling.