Exhibition: Take another look

Ai Weiwei: Making Sense
The Design Museum, London • 7.Apr-30.Jul.23

An expert provocateur, Ai Weiwei brings a show of everyday items to London's Design Museum for a four-month show that looks deceptively simple but continually challenges us to see human history from new angles. The exhibition is mainly in one large room, with a few items scattered around outside, and the juxtaposition of the various elements adds layers of intense meaning. So it's well worth paying attention.

All of Ai's various forms of expression - as an artist, activist, filmmaker, architect and collector - come together here, set out in three sections... 

Evidence features five fields of man-made objects on the floor: Stone Age tools, Song dynasty (960-1279 CE) porcelain tea spouts, ceramic cannon balls from the same era, broken sculptures from Ai's studio (destroyed by Chinese officials) and Lego blocks. It's fascinating to see the ancient items as everyday things that once weren't special at all. And an electrifying touch is the shape of an iPhone carved out of a Neolithic era jade axe, connecting the whole of human history.

Construction/ Destruction plays with both architectural ideas and natural and political upheaval. This includes images that document the building of the Beijing Bird Nest Stadium for the 2008 Olympics, which Ai helped design. Coloured photos aim rude hand gestures at various buildings that represent power and culture. Two dragons snake along the wall, one made of backpacks dedicated to students who died in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake (their names are also stamped in frames on the wall) and one made of live vests representing refugees coming to Europe. Through deconstructs Qing dynasty temple (1644-1911 CE), which is rebuilt into something new. And Monet's panoramic Water Lilies is re-created with more than 600,000 Legos.

Ordinary Things recasts objects we deal with on a daily basis out of new materials, from a glass toilet roll and jade handcuffs to a crystal hangar and marble takeout box. Two marble armchairs are in front of the museum. And then there's the brain-bending 2000-year-old Han dynasty vase emblazoned with a Coca-Cola logo.

While each of these pieces is powerful on its own, the way they are interact makes this exhibition extraordinary. Ai Weiwei is forcing us to look at ourself in the context of our own history, to see what humans have always been and what we have made of the world. It's a show that alters how we see everything around us. The question is how this might change the way we interact with the world we live in right now.

For information, visit DESIGN MUSEUM >

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5.Apr.23

Critical Week: The horse and his boy

I'm definitely enjoying the calm following the storm of awards and festival season, deliberately taking on less. Perhaps this is a way forward permanently! But we'll see how that goes, as I have a couple of events and trips planned over the coming months. Films I saw this week included Jackie Chan's Chinese action comedy Ride On, in which he plays a has-been stuntman whose friendship with his horse leads to a comeback that forces him to confront his age. Yes, there's a lot going on, and it's very engaging, even if the sentimentality gets rather corny. One of the year's best surprises so far, Jon S Baird's new film Tetris chronicles the birth of the iconic video game with another terrific lead role for Taron Egerton.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Joyland • Air • Tetris
Lola • Godland
ALL REVIEWS >

The anime epic Suzume is visually spectacular, and its mind-bending story about an unexpected relationship, childhood memory and parallel worlds is remarkably involving. The Dutch drama El Houb recounts a story about a Moroccan family confronting the eldest son's homosexuality. It's tough and unflinching, and very moving. The British doc Blue Bag Life artfully explores issues of addiction and motherhood from a sometimes startlingly intimate perspective. And the biographical doc Little Richard: I Am Everything is a skilfully assembled portrait of the artist who essentially created rock 'n' roll, then influenced everyone who came after him, from Elvis to Lil Nas X. Does racism and homophobia explain why it took so long for him to get the recognition he deserves?

I also attended the press view at the Design Museum for Ai Weiwei's new exhibition Making Sense, which is another superb provocation about human history, taking a sharp new perspective on everyday objects (review up soon). And I was at the press night for Akram Khan's Jungle Book Reimagined, a visceral take on Kipling's stories about the connection between humans and nature. It's dazzlingly staged with inventive dance, music and projected animation, although the message is a bit overstated (review is already up).

This coming week includes the four-day Easter weekend, and I'll be watching Nicolas Cage and Nicholas Hoult in Renfield, Henry Golding in Assassin Club, Shailene Woodley in To Catch a Killer, Jim Broadbent and Penelope Wilton in The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Teyana Taylor in A Thousand and One and the action thriller Once Upon a Time in Ukraine.

Raindance: Get a move on

The 27th Raindance Film Festival wraps up another big year tonight, having taken over the Vue Piccadilly and other venues for the past 10 days to celebrate truly independent films from all over the world. Of course, this kind of programming makes it tricky to sell tickets, and it has often seemed that audiences were made up mostly of accredited industry and press. But it's great to have the filmmakers on hand to introduce their films and offer Q&A sessions after each screening.

The Planters
dir-scr Hannah Leder, Alexandra Kotcheff; with Alexandra Kotcheff, Hannah Leder 19/US ***
Quirky and colourful, this offbeat comedy-drama centres on an unlikely friendship between two women, played by filmmakers Alexandra Kotcheff and Hannah Leder (above). The movie is sometimes a little too nutty for its own good, but this also makes it refreshingly unpredictable. Scenes are short and sharp, with witty observations about day-to-day life in a place that's rather a long way from anyone's dream... FULL REVIEW >

Ai Weiwei: Yours Truly
dir Cheryl Haines; with Ai Weiwei, Cheryl Haines 19/US ****
Beautifully assembled by first-time filmmaker Cheryl Haines, this documentary traces Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's exhibition exploring people who have been imprisoned for their beliefs and speech. His art is of course stunning, inventively unpeeling the themes to make them resonate on a powerfully human level. And Haines documents this project in such a clever way that the film carries its own emotional gut punch.

Schemers
dir Dave Mclean; with Conor Berry, Tara Lee 19/UK ***
"Proudly made in Dundee", this Scottish comedy kicks off in high-energy mode and stays there. With its early 1980s setting, a pulsing sense of pop music and a very thick brogue, the film explodes with attitude as filmmaker Dave Mclean recounts events from his own life. The characters are likeably hapless, scraping by on sheer bravado. But it's not easy to find a way into the story... FULL REVIEW >

Masters of Love
dir-scr Matt Roberts; with Ciaran Dowd, Sarah Ovens 19/UK ***
This nicely made British comedy-drama centres on a group of people in their 30s going through the usual transitions in life while the world throws all kinds of messiness at them. The film playfully skewers current social situations, most notably the impact of technology on relationships. There's nothing particularly revelatory in here, but it's sharply written, directed and played. So it occasionally strikes a nerve... FULL REVIEW >

Hilda
dir-scr Rishi Pelham; with; Megan Purvis, Yasmin Al-Khudhairi 19/UK ***
Sharply well directed and shot, this British drama has a terrific sense of London from the perspective of its teen protagonist. Lush and colourful, the film vividly captures youth culture and the attitudes that accompany it. It also has a lovely musicality to it, beautifully rendered by writer-director Rishi Pelham, who is also a composer. So the emotions are raw and honest. But everything is heightened and often rather hard to watch, as events are seen through the eyes of a child under duress.

Emma Peeters

dir-scr Nicole Palo; with Monia Chokri, Fabrice Adde 18/Bel ***.
There's jazzy sensibility to this cheeky Belgian film, which follows an actress who feels like she has missed her chance. Comedies about suicide are difficult to balance, so thankfully writer-director Nicole Palo keeps the tone light, making it clear without saying so that this isn't likely to end in tears. But the issues it touches on are real, and the gimmicky stylistic touches are good fun... FULL REVIEW >

The Racer [Coureur]
dir-scr Kenneth Mercken;with Niels Willaerts, Koen De Graeve 18/Bel ***.
With a thoughtful tone, this Belgian drama has a notably introspective perspective, based on the firsthand experiences of writer-director Kenneth Mercken. This makes it much more unblinking than other movie biopics examining the distinct issues that surround this sport. This is a sometimes difficult film to watch. And at its core, it's a bracingly complex coming-of-age story centred around a prickly, difficult young man.

The Long Haul The Story of the Buckaroos

dir Amy Enser; scr Kaleb Kerrwith John Betchtel, 

Keon Price, Josh Palmer, Erik Cargill, Jonathan Houser, Kaleb Kerr, Chris Pink

release US Jun.19 siff, UK Sep.19 rff • 19/US 1h24 ***

There's a lively energy to this documentary about a cabaret show at Seattle's legendary Can Can club. And director Amy Enser finds added interest as she digs into the idea of masculinity through the eyes of a group of male burlesque dancers who deliberately look like ordinary guys, as opposed to Magic Mike musclemen. The film is enjoyably intimate, centring on conversations with these men, although it feels oddly incomplete, never quite following through on some big ideas, letting plot strands fall away or become blurred, and pointedly avoiding some important questions.

Enser sets out the film in an experimental way, aiming for something interactive. Many sequences were staged specifically for the movie, hosted by writer Kerr playing a cowboy called T-Bone Tucker. These are intercut with more standard fly-on-the-wall documentary footage. While the two elements don't quite gel, they are both finely well shot and edited, recounting witty anecdotes and letting the audience into the personal lives of a handful of the performers. All of them are lively and positive, from the show's creator/papa bear John aka Bronco, to lifelong dancer Keon aka The Deputy and class clown Josh aka Slam. These guys are traditionally hunky, as opposed to the tall-skinny Erik aka Slim and the smiley-pudgy Jonathan aka Hoss. The audience of women and both gay and straight men goes equally mad for all of them.

This is the most engaging thing about this film, as it challenges standard notions of masculinity and what makes a man sexy. These guys have terrific camaraderie, which John compares to his days playing team sports. So when John announces that after 10 years he's leaving, it's understandable that the crew is shaken. The film's editing kind of botches this part of the story (he packs the moving truck but doesn't leave?). And Enser seems to deliberately want to avoid any questions of sexuality, which surely are salient, especially in the current cultural climate. But the film has a joyous bounce to it, lots of sexy footage and a wonderfully subversive sensibility that makes us hope that this kind of everyman burlesque becomes a thing.

---

Links:
Official RAINDANCE site
Shadows' RAINDANCE homepage (full reviews will be linked here)

Venezia74: Come swim with me on Day 2

It's hot and sticky in Venice at the moment, and the forecast is for thunderstorms over the next few days. Still hot and sticky, but extra wet. And hopefully not flu-inducing as I dart in and out of air conditioned screening rooms. Here's what I saw on Thursday...

The Shape of Water
dir Guillermo del Toro; with Sally Hawkins, Richard Jenkins 17/US ****
Guillermo del Toro lets his imagination run wild with this engaging and also rather dark romantic adventure. It's a riot of clever production design, witty dialog and heartfelt emotion that carries the audience on a journey along with the vivid characters. The whimsical family-movie tone sits a bit oddly alongside the film's resolutely adult-oriented touches, but for grown-ups this is a fairy tale full of wonder.

Zama
dir-scr Lucrecia Martel; with Daniel Gimenez Cacho, Lola Duenas 17/Arg **.
This is a fairly difficult movie even by the standards of adventurous Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martel. An existential odyssey based on the 1956 novel by Antonio Di Benedetto, it simply refuses to coalesce into any kind of sensible narrative as the title character's life becomes a swirling nightmare of bureaucracy and cross-cultural messiness. And that's actually the point. At least it's fascinating, beautifully shot and acted, and packed with witty satire.

The Insult
dir Ziad Doueiri; with Adel Karam, Kamel El Basha 17/Leb ***
A terrific personal Lebanese drama is somewhat swamped by much bigger issues, as filmmaker Ziad Doueiri floods the story with the complexities of the nation's history and politics. Everything in this film is important, but when they're all overlaid on top of a courtroom drama, it tips the balance away from the more resonant story of two men having a face-off over a deeply personal clash.

Human Flow
dir Ai Weiwei; with Ai Weiwei, Boris Cheshirkov 17/Ger ***.
At an epic two and a half hours, this documentary is a little exhausting to sit through. But the topic is hugely compelling for anyone who feels compassion about other people. It's a film about refugees, and Chinese artist Ai Weiwei cleverly uses a variety of cameras to visit camps around the world, capturing both the individual impact in specific stories and the global scale as millions are displaced around the world. Even without using voiceover narration, the amount of information in here is astonishing.

> Tomorrow's screening schedule includes Jane Fonda and Robert Redford in Our Souls at Night, Vince Vaughn in Brawl in Cell Block 99, Andrew Haigh's Lean on Pete and Samuel Maoz's Foxtrot.

EIFF 6: Watching for sharks

The Edinburgh Film Festival is usually drenched in rain, although this year there have only been a couple of proper showers. But the movies have been packed with seaside stories, perhaps because in these austere times the ocean is a rather spectacular, and cheap, visual effect! Or maybe it reflects the spectre of global warming, which has also been mentioned on-screen in festival films this year, often in a joking way. Anyway, two of the films below are set on islands (the photo above is from the Chilean drama The Lifeguard, which I'm seeing later in the week).

Day of the Flowers
dir John Roberts; with Eva Birthistle, Carlos Acosta 12/UK ***
A solid cast and picturesque locations make this film thoroughly watchable even as the screenplay grows contrived. It follows two estranged sisters (Birthistle and Charity Wakefield) who travel from Glasgow to Cuba with a friend (the superb Bryan Dick) to deliver their father's ashes to the spot where their parents fell in love. But if course nothing goes to plan as they travel across country, having a variety of encounters along the way. Intriguingly, the two sisters' disparate personalities provide the film with a some clever twists. And even if the two Cuban men they encounter (Acosta and Christopher Simpson) simplistically encapsulate all of the culture's good and bad elements, they're very well played and the actors both have strong chemistry with Birthistle. In the end, the plot resolutely refuses to hold water, but there's enough resonance to keep us emotionally involved.

Grabbers
dir Jon Wright; with Richard Coyle, Ruth Bradley 12/UK ****
A riotous collision of a British rural comedy and a freaky monster movie, this hilariously inventive Northern Irish film isn't perhaps what you expect to see at a festival, but it's a welcome respite from indie/foreign navel-gazing gloom. In a nutshell, alien squid-like beasts are terrorising a tiny Irish island community, where two cops (Coyle and Bradley) team up with a scientist (Russell Tovey) and a few lively locals to fend them off. The film gleefully plays with the genres, populating the film with riotously funny characters and situations that keep us both laughing and cringing from the screen. Indeed, some of this is startlingly scary, even though director Wright never stops poking fun at the situation. It's also cleverly played by actors who only rarely drift into goofy slapstick mode, against a seriously stunning landscape and tweaked with some inventive effects. But best of all is the way the film continues to develop the relationships right into the chaotic final act.

One 2 One
dir Mania Akbari; with Neda Amiri, Payam Dehkordi 11/Irn ***
This mannered experimental film from Iran explores the collapse of a relationship through a variety of isolated scenes, each shot in long takes that are centred closely on the faces of the people involved. These encounters take place in waiting areas, prison meeting rooms, on public transport, in a psychologist's office and at a fortune teller, and through conversations and voiceovers we begin to piece together the story of a love triangle in a society in which a woman's beauty is her most valuable asset, but men play all the cards. The harrowing events that drive the plot are all off-screen, but we relive them in the faces of the actors and the shifting layers of trust between the characters. It's pretty powerful stuff, even if the filmmaking style keeps us at arm's length, unable to emotionally identify with the characters. But it's an ambitious way to tell a story from a variety of perspectives, letting the nuances of modern-day Iranian culture come out in ways that are provocative and a bit chilling.

Critical Week: Man candy

This week's big press screening was for Steven Soderbergh's Magic Mike, the male-stripper drama based on the experiences of Channing Tatum (pictured above with costars Matt Bomer, Joe Manganiello and Matthew McConaughey). As if the film's heterosexual emphasis wasn't enough, the UK distributor screened the film to us after showing the England-France Euro2012 first-round match in the cinema, so it smelled like a locker room in there. Alas, comments on the film itself are embargoed for a couple of weeks.

Keeping with the theme here, we also saw heartthrob Robert Pattinson's new film Cosmopolis, a Cannes entry directed by David Cronenberg that's sleek and intriguing but ultimately impenetrable. Cillian Murphy stars in Red Lights, an increasingly strained supernatural debunking thriller costarring Robert DeNiro and Sigourney Weaver. Adrien Brody stars in Detachment, a ranty drama from Tony Kaye about the education system. And from Australia, we had the corny slapstick farce A Few Best Men with rising-star hottie Xavier Samuel.

And to appeal to our minds, we saw two potent docs: Searching for Sugar Man is a fascinating story of a forgotten Detroit musician whose failed recording career wasn't quite as disastrous as he thought, since he was bigger than Elvis and the Stones in South Africa. And Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry vividly chronicles the life and work of the charismatic, outspoken Chinese artist who is notoriously in trouble with his own government.
 

This coming week, London critics are watching Keira Knightley and Steve Carell in Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, Jean Dujardin and Michel Hazanavicius' next collaboration The Players, the Jo Nesbo thriller Jackpot, the Cannes-contending anthology 7 Days in Havana and the acclaimed Mormo-youth drama Electrick Children.

Finally, I'm heading to Scotland on Monday for the 66th Edinburgh International Film Festival (18 June-1 July), so the blog will reflect what I'm watching there on a daily basis over the next couple of weeks.