John Smith with special guests Dennis Ellsworth & Jamie Brewer

A review for Skiddle

Shuffling into an intimate room ready to hold over 100 eager folk fans at its capacity, it was clear that an evening of inspiring music was ready to be lapped up by all. With the arrival of Jamie Brewer onto the festively-lit stage, that inclination was confirmed. Handling his Takamine guitar with great dexterity, Jamie started the night off with a blend of acoustic tracks spanning across his own material to cover versions of Marvin Gaye’s ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’ and an atmospheric rendition of a piece from the Final Fantasy VII soundtrack. Confessing, in a somewhat self-effacing manner, that his own material tended to appeal more directly to “guitar nerds”, it could certainly be said that it was on his own compositions that Jamie was able to show off his sheer technical ability which he has devoted a great amount of time to perfecting. Using his instrument for both percussion and string purposes, Jamie delivered a master-class in this innovative and compelling method of guitar playing. It was a set that was as mesmerising as it was impressive. One could run out of adjectives.

Described affectionately by John Smith as a “beautiful brute”, Dennis Ellsworth next brought his slice of Americana, though Canada is his home country, to Preston’s Continental. Adding a touch of sincerity to the evening, the prolific songwriter played tracks largely from his latest release in a wealthy back-catalogue, Hazy Sunshine; a selection of songs which suited the December weather outside as they touched on love and loss as well as drunken ramblings around Central Park after a lengthy pilgrimage from the Canadian capital (we’ve all been there, right?).  The change in mood was tactile as Ellsworth played through his set with assured confidence, allowing his distinctive voice to carry the power of his material to an attentive audience. The inclusion in his set of a track that both he and Smith wrote together whilst our headliner was visiting Ellsworth in Canada served as the perfect set up for the main event.

So it was time, 9:30pm arrived and John Smith climbed to the stage joined by revered double bassist Jon Thorne, who had played a homecoming gig in Manchester with Smith only the night before. Despite this being the Great Lakes Tour, Smith didn’t want to confine himself to tracks wholly from his new album – one which marks a slight change in direction from his more bluesy, and “dense” (in his own words) previous offerings. Instead, he embarked on a medley of songs that showcased his unprecedented talent for crafting as well as executing music of great beauty and truth. Hearing the Devonshire-cum-Liverpudlian man’s nimble guitar picking layered over Thorne’s expressive bass playing left the audience enraptured; a sentiment which was also picked up on the other side of the stage with Smith being taken aback by the intensity of an audience he had expected to be much smaller. Indeed after the first song, Smith kindly requested that the entire monitor be turned up: the size of the crowd soaking up the resonances that he had set up previously.

Shifting momentarily from his own material, the crowd of folkies were treated to a lively cover of Queen of the Stoneage’s ‘No One Knows’ before returning back to his latest album with an exquisite rendition of his wonderful single ‘Salty and Sweet’, a track which Smith originally wrote for Lisa Hannigan before deciding rather sagaciously to keep for himself. Not wishing to cut all ties with the song, Hannigan lends her beautifully delicate vocals to the recorded version which appears on the album; a collaboration which Smith seeks to commemorate in his live shows with a vibrato of his voice that shows off the full extent of his impressive vocal range. Furthermore, it must be said what an astounding voice this songwriter has. Drawing numerous comparisons to the recognisable vocals of John Martyn, Smith’s voice is one which seems to know no bounds as an encore consisting of his seminal ‘Winter’, a track which influenced the lap-tap guitar playing of Jamie’s opening set, and a collaboration with Dennis Ellsworth on a cover of Elvis Presley’s unreleased ‘Dark Moon’ serves testament to. Keeping the audience engaged throughout the gaps in between his songs in which Smith plays around with a great number of tunings, the singer-songwriter wins over the room. Indeed it is in one of these moments towards the end of the set that he gets his biggest applause of the evening, proclaiming that it is on nights like this that he has trouble believing the rumours circulating that the music scene is dead. He finishes this speech with an expression of touching gratitude to the people that have come to see him play: “Thank you for keeping live music, well, alive!” No John, thank you. 

Review: Only God Forgives

A review for WAXXX Magazine

Vengeance permeates Nicolas Winding Refn’s latest film since 2011’s cool, Cannes-appreciated Drive. Indeed, its solitary figure of justice, Lieutenant Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm), cuts through the movie just as his executioners-sword cuts through the sinners that fall into his path; evoking the mercilessness of an Old Testament God amidst this fable of violence and confused sexuality set in the near-nocturnal world of the Thai capital. Yet not all is as driven as Refn’s previous outing with Ryan Gosling. In fact, with the exception of Chang’s ruthless progression through the criminal underworld of American expatriates and Bangkok gangsters, all is impressively still.

It is in this stillness of the dojos, brothels and Thai streets that cinematographer Larry Smith (The Guard, Bronson) creates a sensory overload of vibrant neon and textured walls, forcing us to recognise the beauty in brutality as Julian (Gosling), his mother Crystal (Kristen Scott Thomas) and Chang proceed, however slowly, along their violent paths. It’s a visual aesthetic that led critic James King to the observation that, for Refn, ‘it’s not film noir, it’s film rouge.’ Importantly, the transgression from black to red identifies the difference in the nature of the crimes between the two. If noir is concerned with cynical gangsters running rackets and fending off snooping cops, rouge is concerned with the crime of passion: murders committed in the name of revenge or, in Chang’s case, from a warped sense of justice. The problem, for Crystal, the icy matriarch of the film that takes the femme-fatale to a whole new level, is that her one remaining son, after her first-born is murdered in the opening scenes thus setting the revenge tragedy in motion, is less willing to fall under her dominant control as she would like. Sure, Julian’s there to light her cigarettes and sits obediently by as she identifies his supposed jealousy towards his brother as being rooted in penis envy; after all, ‘it was enourmous. How could he compete with that?’ But, he is crucially reluctant to commit himself to the acts of vengeance as she would like. Their relationship, culminating in a scene in which Julian perversely attempts to return to his mother’s womb in a bid to severe his connection from her forever, is a psychoanalyst’s wet dream, and an intrigue to see played out on the screen.

In the closing credits, Refn dedicates the film to Alejandro Jodorowsky, the kingpin of Transgressive cinema whose mark can be felt so pervasively on Only God Forgives, whilst offering special thanks to Gasper Noé: the French filmmaker also invested in making neon-lit transgressions of his own (Irreversible, Enter the Void). Cliff Martinez, whose soundtrack for Drive was perhaps equally as popular as the film itself, provides a backing track to the drama that heightens tension and chimes with the evangelical justice which is centred in Chang, as the sounds of an organ builds eerily on top of a whirling synth. At Cannes Film Festival Only God Forgives wasn’t welcomed with the open arms that Drive was, but then this is a film that is going to split audiences with its sheer perversity. With this in mind, can you see the beauty in brutality? Those who do not may find this a gruelling watch, with a substantial amount of time being afforded to the shifting of eyes or the image of Gosling in thought; after all, his lines come few and far between. However, for those that do, Refn and his DP have created a mystical Bangkok that is as thrilling to watch as the action itself. 

Wheatley's World: A Filmmaker in England

An article for WAXXX Magazine

In Ben Wheatley’s England, the countryside is a place where the occult lies, thinly-veiled, behind the façade of a bucolic paradise. In his latest film, written by frequent collaborator and spouse, Amy Jump, Wheatley allows his fascination with British folklore, a fascination that can be identified in each of his three other feature films, to take precedence in this tale of an unlikely band of tripping treasure hunters. Beginning in a council house in Brighton, it is possible to trace the evolution of a certain breed of unscrupulous figures as they set about ascribing their own warped sense of morality onto the world through the filmography of this incredibly productive filmmaker. Wheatley’s characters, in essence, can be found throughout British history manifesting at various times as hit-men in Sheffield, caravan enthusiasts in the Lake District, or, most recently, as renaissance men in A Field in England (2013).

Down Terrace (2009) is Wheatley’s first feature in which he introduced audiences to the convoluted logic that his characters often implement to defend their actions. In this film, the director’s presence is felt in his typically untypical approach to the genre he is about to take on. As such, Down Terrace is a crime film in which not an awful lot of crime takes place; that is, not outside of this circle of supposed gangsters. Opening with the image of a father and son, played by real-life father and son Robert and Robin Hill, leaving court after being acquitted for a crime we are never made fully aware of, the film develops into a character study of this blackly comic troupe of criminals and the paranoia that engulfs them. When this paranoia reaches boiling point the family unit, completed by a magnificent Julia Deakin as the omniscient matriarch, begin to wage war on those close to them before eventually turning on each other. Indeed, the scale of their self-delusion can be determined by the way these characters, after murdering the charismatic Michael Smiley, deem the death to have been selfishly brought on by Smiley’s character himself. As the murder toll increases, with Wheatley’s camera leaving the confined space of the terrace house very rarely, the drama becomes focused on the dynamics of this unusual, but in ways wholly recognisable family. One thing that is notable from this first offering is Wheatley’s use of music, with the drama pausing frequently as Bill (Robin Hill) plays archaic British folk songs that chime closely with the songs we hear from A Field in England’s 17^th-century soldiers.

For his second outing, Kill List (2011), Wheatley continues to keep his camera facing toward the British criminal underground that he presents us with in his debut. Where Down Terrace had its grounding in black comedy, however, Kill List introduces us to Wheatley’s distinguishable brand of horror. Whilst comparisons have been made with British horror classics such as The Wicker Man (1973), such analogies only prove partly true. Instead, the film plays out as a triptych of different genres; moving from the close-knit drama of domestic arguments and dinner parties, to the hit-man film draped in realism, before finally dealing in explicit horror made all the more effective by the film’s initial refusal to place its audience in an escapist world where the supernatural is allowed to exist. The result is one of the most intense cinematic experiences you could ask for, with Wheatley’s use of editing and expert handling of the genre allowing him to create a film that, despite including a modern-day cult that harks back to the British folklore, seems entirely plausible and free from artifice. Whereas Hollywood would no-doubt turn such a script into a film that is sold to the viewer as a piece of fantasy, Wheatley creates a film in which the horror seems suited to both the real world and the paganistic days which were thought to be long forgotten. It is a technique which has not been implemented so well since 1999’s Blair Witch Project. Here, however, it is Britain’s dark history and even darker secrets that, in Wheatley’s world, are never too far away from broaching on the present. The result is a very particular and terrifying brand of homemade horror.

Working from a script devised by the film’s stars Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, with additional material provided by Amy Jump, Sightseers (2012) sees Wheatley combine his love for comedy, one which can be traced through his television career working on shows such as Ideal and The Wrong Door, and his fascination with charismatic murderers. The set-up is entirely British; a pair of lovers set out on a caravanning holiday around the north of England, absorbing the culture of pencil and tramway museums that would drive anybody to mass murder. When the violence does arrive, it is Wheatley’s unflinching directorial style that provides the shock as he refuses to cut his camera away from horrific images in a bid to tap into the YouTube sensibility that he has admitted as being an influence on his filmmaking. The result is a combination of twisted comedy and stark horror that complement each other perfectly and signal once again the ease at which Wheatley is able to shift between different genres. As in Kill List, the vistas of the English countryside prove once more a troubling place in Wheatley’s world. The reason, offered by the auteur in a recent Q&A at Latitude festival, lies in recurring nightmares that he suffered from, born out of an uneasiness induced by the woods near his childhood Essex home. In his latest film, A Field in England, Wheatley traces this uneasiness back to the 17^th-century, a time when an entire class of forgotten people roamed the British countryside searching for, according to this film, an interesting combination of friendship and hallucinogens.

A Field in England is a monochrome Civil War film in which you will find no scenes of battle, connecting it quite interestingly with the criminality of Down Terrace. Evoking the godless symbolism of Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal, the film is guaranteed to etch many a memorable scene in the mind of the viewer; that is, of course, if one is able to keep hold of it. Warnings before the film begins regarding stroboscopic sequences do little to prepare you for the mind-blowing effects created by Wheatley and Jump’s remarkable editing, especially during the hallucination scenes caused by the consumption of some rather suspect mushrooms. If the countryside has been a place of danger up until this point in Wheatley’s career, it has now transcended that as the field in which this film takes place, reminiscent of Kaneto Shindo's terrifying Onibaba (1964), becomes very much a character of its own, warping the minds of this already quite twisted group of deserters led by Michael Smiley (Down Terrace, Kill List) and The League of Gentleman’s Reece Shearsmith. One scene that particularly confirms this film’s long-lasting impression on the viewer involves the scholarly Whitehead (Shearsmith) exiting Smiley’s tent, his face painted with one of the most demonically disturbing expressions that horror cinema has to offer. As well as innovative editing, Wheatley also makes use of the avant-garde technique of tableau vivant, capturing his actors in still motion as a means of cementing even further the absurdity of this truly bizarre trip into Britain’s past. Following on from the comparatively commercial Sightseers, the distributors of A Field in England, under Film 4’s newly revealed creative banner Film 4.0, opted to release the film in cinemas, on video-on-demand, on DVD, and on the Film 4 channel all at once; a suitably interesting distribution process for such a bold film as this. What’s more, the film’s executive producer, Anna Higgs, has confirmed that this release strategy has led to an increased amount of awareness that has actually seen more cinemas requesting the film, despite viewers having the option to watch it at home. Quite rightly so, too, as the film’s tagline promises a ‘trip into the past’ which, on the big screen, couldn’t be more vivid if you were in the field with a belly full of mushrooms yourself; which, on the grounds of this film, you want to steer well clear of. 

Review: The House I Live In

A review for Waxxx Magazine

Beginning with the personal story of Nannie Jeter, the Jarecki family’s housekeeper and friend, The House I Live In explores the destructive nature of drugs on both an intimate and national level. It is a subject matter defined by its capability to ruin the lives of those who have been unfortunate enough to become embroiled in it. In this documentary, Jarecki gives voice to not only the academics that have spent their lives researching the war on drugs, but the judges, police officers, drug dealers and users that have been central to it. Early in the film the writer of The Wire, David Simon, pithily addresses Jarecki’s central message: ‘what drugs haven’t destroyed, the war on drugs has.’ It is this destruction that Jarecki seeks to attack, confronting the way in which the war on the drugs has failed all those involved in it. Initially, the oppressive rhetoric was deployed by Richard Nixon in 1971 with the intention of gaining votes for the upcoming election. Forty years later, Jarecki shows how the so-called war on drugs remains fundamentally rooted in gain, both political and monetary, and not, in fact, in reducing the damaging effects of drugs. The result of this exploitation is what David Simon, who proves an eloquent and knowledgeable speaker, compellingly describes as ‘a holocaust in slow-motion’, were the victims are the lower classes that find themselves confined by the hermetic nature of America’s drug policy.

In an interview promoting the film in Los Angeles, Brad Pitt, who shares producer credits with Russell Simmons, John Legend and Danny Glover, described the war on drugs as ‘a charade.’ Looking at the overwhelming amount of money that has been spent, and more startlingly the lack of progress that has been achieved, it would be difficult to argue against him. In the forty years since Nixon waged an unrelenting attack on drugs, one that has cost one trillion dollars and has seen forty-five million arrests, nothing has changed. In reality, Jarecki suggests that ‘drugs are cheaper, purer, more available than ever before…and we have the largest prison population in the world.’ The documentary begs the question then: who exactly does the war on drugs serve? It evidently isn’t drug users, who are treated and sentenced as severely as murderers for an offence which many speakers in the film suggest should be treated as a public health issue, not a criminal one. Interviews with depleted police officers also reveal that the war isn’t serving their interests, with any faith in the strategy’s ability to take drugs off of the streets fading further the longer it goes on. The true benefactor, the documentary argues, is the capitalist system upon which America has laid its foundations. Since 1971, the number of offenders imprisoned for drug charges has increased twelvefold, yet illegal drug use continues to flourish. As a result, there is a wealth of potential prisoners waiting to serve their role in increasing the profits of the vast amount of corporations, ranging from private Taser gun manufacturers to phone companies, which have been built on the incredibly lucrative prison market.

Ultimately, David Simon acknowledges, ‘capitalism is fairly colour-blind’. Towards the film’s conclusion, Jarecki reveals how increasing numbers of white Americans, largely due to the emergence of methamphetamine, are being exposed to the stern and rigid drug sentences that have crippled black communities for decades. The link between the two communities and their fall into drug use is explicitly exposed in the film as a shared feeling of dejection. With no prospects, no future, and no income, drug dealing and drug use offers escape to lower class Americans that are struggling to find any existential meaning in their lives. By weaving in Nannie’s personal story of loss and frustration amidst the powerful polemic against the war on drugs, Jarecki delivers a thesis regarding the ineptitude of America’s drug policy that is certain to provoke thought. This is undoubtedly what the filmmaker has set out to do: expose the injustices of a futile system that has been operating for so long, and with such damaging effects, under the pretence of ridding America of a drug problem that has done nothing but grow.  

Review: The Place Beyond the Pines

A review for Waxxx Magazine

Derek Cianfrance wastes no time in capturing Ryan Gosling’s mythic abs as he opens his latest film, ambitious and mythic in tone, with the image of a pacing stunt driver confined to his small trailer, the billowing sounds outside those belonging to a funfair. Cianfrance’s camera doesn’t cut. Instead, we see Gosling stab his flick-knife into a wall, pick up his red jacket, slip on a Metallica vest and make his away across the carnival landscape. We follow from behind, the announcer calls the name of Handsome Luke and Gosling mounts his motorbike, the camera still doesn’t cut. Immediately there is a sense of importance, and The Place Beyond the Pines is definitely treated, and consequently feels spectacular and reverent as Cianfrance proceeds to tell a story of fatherhood amidst a cops and robbers narrative spanning over 15 years.

Despite receiving great critical acclaim at Sundance, Cianfrance’s first feature, Brother Tied, failed to pick up distribution. His second, and first outing with friend and subsequent colleague Ryan Gosling, had no trouble picking up distribution when Harvey Weinstein displayed interest. Blue Valentine went on to deliver awards for Michelle Williams in the Best Actress category whilst Cianfrance himself admits that it was the success of this film that allowed him to go on to make The Place Beyond the Pines, a film less about the faltering relationships of a modern day couple and more about the faltering relationships of modern day families. The story unfolds as a triptych. Gosling’s taciturn stunt driver, reminiscent of his role in Drive, is confronted upon his return to Schenectady, an upstate New York town with a name that translates from Mohawk to ‘the place beyond the pines’, by Romina (Eva Mendes) and the news that he has fathered an infant son. He wants to provide for his son, but as a friendly fugitive mechanic played by Ben Mendelsohn tells him, the only way to do so is by using his particular skill set. Unlike Liam Neeson and the deployment of his skill set in Taken, however, Luke is clearly affected by his foray into bank robbing, and the result is realism.

Consequently, Luke crosses paths with a fresh-faced Bradley Cooper, just out of law school and eager to make an impact on the New York police force which holds as much integrity as the one Al Pacino faces in Serpico. It comes as no surprise that Ray Liotta’s character, the frosty and domineering Deluca, is central to such corruption. Cooper and Gosling provide a strong basis for the film and yet, surprisingly, the film doesn’t falter in its third act which, after some tenuous expositional scenes, provides a satisfying, cathartic conclusion. Impressive parallel shots serve to enforce the link between the three stories and a score from Faith No More’s Mike Patton heightens the film’s grandeur. Cianfrance’s third feature film is certainly more ambitious than the character drama of Blue Valentine and is all the richer for it. With a running time of 140 minutes it doesn’t outstay its welcome and, instead, leaves you thirsting for whatever Cianfrance does next. With Gosling claiming to be taking a break from acting, he may well have found his new leading man in Bradley Cooper, an actor who has shown truly unexpected promise and talent since The Hangover.