We can't predict whether the patrons will swarm, zombie-like, to the movie theatres to catch World War Z. It'll only happen if they've been able to avoid the editorial collateral damage inflicted prior to the film's arduous birthing process. And if the film does fail in the eyes of the industry, then it will be a failure akin to Heaven's Gate or Ishtar, where a deficit of ticket stubs and zeros on a spreadsheet will launch it into the annals history as an ignoble failure and a rare occasion where The System failed.

And if it does fail, one suspects it would be more to do with how its content gravitates a little too closely to the quasi-marginalised horror genre, rather than the bland, cover-all-base spectacles that are churned out by Hollywood as a matter of course. This, even though tight trims and careful visual stresses have been made to ensure the film connects to a general audience. There's even a dash of humour to leaven the hard survival tactics, including a gold standard "please put your mobile phone on silent" gag at a point of very high drama.

So, on to business: World War Z is actually pretty damn good, a sombre, globe-hopping apocalypse yarn whose simple, episodic story acts as subtle conduit for much thoughtful geopolitical subtext. One minute Brad Pitt's pony-tailed family man Gerry is cookin' up some pancakes for his kids in a scene of sun-dappled domestic bliss that's so "perfect" as to come across as lightly satirical. The next, he is Earth's only hope for survival.

A game of Twenty Questions in the car is interrupted by a sudden explosion in the background. Very Cloverfield. People start to panic. Gerry does whatever he can to get his family to safety. As an ace ex-UN operative, Gerry calls his old employers to find out the nature of the rumpus. And then he sees it for himself: dead-eyed humanoids with clacking jaws and amphibious body ripples, rampaging through the streets and infecting the innocent via a bite to the flesh. It's zombies. You know the score.

It's essentially a George A Romero film played out over a grand canvas in which the winners are educated, white and bourgeois, and the losers are ethnic minorities, the poor and the elderly. The action is intense and executed with a panache and logic not yet seen in Forster's back catalogue. There's a satisfying verisimilitude to the manner in which this end of days plays out, with recycled water tasting more and more like urine and "open" cities falling much more swiftly than the isolated likes of Israel and North Korea.

What's most interesting about World War Z is that it's a zombie film which addresses the issue of world overpopulation. One extraordinary scene sees the slathering hoards working as a single mass unit in order to mount a huge wall and infiltrate a thriving city. Zombie movies of the past – perhaps due to logistics more than desire – have attempted to give each zombie its own character, its own history, whether that be the farmer, the fry chef or the cowboy. Here, the zombies are faceless constituents of a single swarm where any remaining human constituents are null and void.

Even though the zombies are single-minded killers, there are hints that they may be the real heroes of World War Z. Would it be wrong to see them as angry protesters rising up for their cause, laying waste to the painted-smile normalcy of modern life in order for their voices (moans?) to be heard? The film does work on that level, particularly when considering the hushed finale in which the remaining fleshpods led by Pitt discover that the only way to attain equilibrium once more is not through unchecked aggression, but through deep and painful personal compromise.

Yet don't be fooled into thinking that World War Z is merely a stealthy political tract masquerading as a disaster movie – Forster avoids political didacticism at every turn, offering up raw material for audiences to pick apart in any manner they please. The film also works as a machine-tooled action extravaganza, buoyed no end by Pitt's strangely soulful and non-triumphalist central turn. If you stand there and let the haters hate all over you, chances are you'll miss 2013's most genuinely thoughtful blockbuster thus far.]]> Wed, 19 Jun 2013 10:49:00 GMT David Jenkins World War Z Ignore the haters – Brad Pitt stars in a soulful, politically-inflected disaster movie that's worthy of Romero.

Seidl, who was in the Cannes competition in 2007 with his similarly close-to-the-bone Import/Export, is not so much a director who likes to prod open wounds as one who likes to tear at them with a claw hammer. Paunchy, rosy-cheeked hausfrau, Teresa (Maria Hofstätter, offering the very definition of a fearless performance which could and should be in with a shot of a prize), heads to Kenya to laze in the sun with her friends, drink cocktails and hopefully become the "sweet mama" to one of the abundant supply of male escorts in the area. All she wants is someone to love her. Simple.

From the off, the devious game that Seidl plays is who’s exploiting who? as Teresa embarks upon her inexorable sexual odyssey as something of a lovable naif, then via various foul humiliations and expertly mounted emotional con jobs, gradually learns by her mistakes and starts to give as good as he gets. As scenes mount up, the film gets increasingly hard to watch, and as the characters exploit one another, you wonder how much Seidl is doing the same with his very game ensemble of actors.

If this sounds like some kind of racist OAP revenge movie, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Seidl forces us to stare prejudice and venality directly in the eye (as Teresa constantly demands of her love interests during foreplay) and know that while human beings walk this Earth, it will never go away.

Some of the visual metaphors are extremely blunt – ravenous crocodiles at feeding time, a beach segregated by race and class – but they all intricately executed. Many of the visual set-ups and cutaway tableaux have an attractive, painterly feel to them, referencing, among others, Lucian Freud to Beryl Cook. But this beauty, this 'paradise' is superficial at very best.]]> Thu, 13 Jun 2013 12:37:46 GMT David Jenkins Paradise: Love This withering essay on sex tourism and the cyclical nature of class exploitation is one of 2013's best.

The subject matter of Admission promises, if not great, then mildly interesting things: Fey is a bulldogish Princeton admissions officer who is on the prowl for the next catchment of bright (financially entitled) young things while desperate to impress her line manager (Wally Shawn) so that she might once day slink into his padded office chair when he retires. The complex ethical minutiae of this process is, alas, excised wholesale as the film goes on to chart her ditsy adventures in enforced motherhood as one of her applicants might, it transpires, be the estranged son she secretly put up for adoption when she was a teen.

We don't know what Admission "is". We don't know if Admission knows what Admission "is". It's not serious and thoughtful enough for drama and it's not funny enough to be comedy (and we can't emphasise this second point enough – there is one joke in the entire film, relating to racist jockey lawn statues). Fey's comic chops are certainly not stretched beyond a series of mugging reaction shots and the odd moment of textbook ritual humiliation.

Maybe pigeonholers out there will have to be satisfied with "light dramady" or "issues comerama", or something? Its makers seem loathe to do or say anything that might alienate the writhing middlebrow mass they've identified as their audience. Even Paul Rudd, who plays the dean of a new, alternative high school that teaches its pupils the ills of capitalism and how to dig irrigation ditches, seems like he's been forced to dial back his wide-eyed schitck to the point where there's no real point in him being there.

Fey, too, is given very little to work with, as director Paul Weitz steers her through a series of comic situations that are so rote, you begin to think there might be some strange meta-satirical edge to the material. So, we get to see her jazz-handing and "ewww!"-ing while being forced to deliver a baby cow, getting repeatedly humiliated by her shitdog ex-boyfriend who's knocked up a Woolf scholar, and watching in despair as her militant feminist mother (Lily Tomlin) man hates from her kitchen while preparing sausage.

Perhaps the main problem with Admission is that it takes as read that Princeton – or any Ivy League institution – is awesome and everyone who wants to go there is awesome by association. Sure, it cautiously mocks the preppy rich kids and the close-harmony barbershop groups they inevitably form, but the whole story is predicated on the fact that Nat Wolff's nebbish, Kaspar Hauser-ish autodidact is desperate to go to Princeton, despite the fact that he really doesn't need to and, to be honest, wouldn't really fit in. And would you believe it? Admissions officers are prone to nepotism and major lapses in ethical comportment – it's what makes us human, apparently.]]> Thu, 13 Jun 2013 12:34:02 GMT David Jenkins Admission Tina Fey doggie-paddles through a sea of blandness in this weak comedy-drama set in the crazy world of an Ivy League admissions dept.

Shot in the surroundings of the director’s sun-drenched Santa Monica pad, this delicious micro feature is immediately awash with a sense of homeliness. A crew of small-name actors from Whedon’s past projects assemble, decked out in crisp-cut suits and lil’ black dresses, like friends going to a party at the weekend. The only difference here is that they’re bashing out their thees and thous, and doing so with palpable comic effect.

Here the Bard’s words are stripped back to a level of high populism and they retain the subtextual weight. Whedon does well to remove all traces of theatre-luvvie pomposity that might hang around those stale, production- line Branagh adaptations. What we’re left with is a witty, charming creation leaving us on the comfortable home turf of character- driven comedy which comes as second nature to Whedon. It feels more like a teen drama than a highfalutin’ classical play. At times the script hangs in the wings, leaving you happy to watch the cast clowning around, open- handedly offering up the best jokes. This makes it the perfect palate cleanser to the smashing and bashing of Whedon’s big-budget endeavours.

Whether it’s Alexis Denisof ’s cocksure Benedick or Nathan Fillion’s puffed up, malapropic Dogberry, the effect is one of immediate surprise at the calibre of the performances. Whedon’s dexterous ability to direct seems to inspire even the most humdrum of actors to shine. Most impressive of all is Amy Acker’s pithy performance, letting the Tudor tongue twisters fall from her mouth with grace and refinement, often licked with backhanded bite.]]> Thu, 13 Jun 2013 12:29:11 GMT Joseph Walsh Much Ado About Nothing How does you follow-up one of the biggest box office successes of all time? With a nifty Shakespeare movie, that's how.

Perennial also-ran of American cinema, Greg Kinnear, plays an also-ran author who's been ditched by his wife, Jennifer Connelly, for a younger, buffer specimen. He mooches with unbecoming stubble and half-moon glasses in his blustery seafront stack, waiting for the day she returns to him while pawing hacky paperbacks and gladly accepting no-strings sex from his fitness freak neighbour (Kristen Bell). Meanwhile, his nerdlinger son Rusty (Nat Wolff) has hooked up with a classmate who has "issues" (she's a Bright Eyes fan and drug addict), and his repellant daughter, Samantha (Lily Collins), is having her first novel published and has let fame go to her head by porking slack-jawed jocks left-right-and-centre.

Writer-director Boone does little to convince that these characters are genuinely sensitive, intellectually superior, or more importantly, that their talents play any real part in alleviating/causing their worldly stresses. They too often come across as yapping mouth pieces for Boone's own artsy namechecking, his film more an undergrad reading/listening list than a movie rooted in the real world and interested in real people – the possibility that a person who hasn't read John Cheever might still be interesting is outlawed from the off. Also, a scene in which Lily Collins is moved to tears by Elliott Smith's Between The Bars being played through a car stereo as it pelts down with rain outside amounts to precious posturing, not deep emotional insight.

Though Greg Kinnear is an actor who seldom gives himself the opportunity to play someone who isn't Greg Kinnear (Paul Schrader's Autofocus remains his sole late-period gem), he still steals the show here with his unfussy hip dad routine. This is also largely down to the performances from the other cast members being either excessively annoying (Collins), charmless (Wolff) or just plain  weak (Connelly). Special mention, though, goes to Logan Lerman who essentially rehashes his goofball turn from The Perks of Being a Wallflower, but this time instead of it being  extraordinarily wet, it's actually kinda sweet.]]> Thu, 13 Jun 2013 12:28:42 GMT David Jenkins Stuck In Love A family of literary geniuses come emotionally a-cropper in this passable indie comedy.

His work still enjoys that attention of the well-to-do, with his paintings regularly fetching millions, while his sketches – used as greetings cards and to settle the occasional bar bills – have drawn prices in the hundreds of thousands. This film, with its screenplay drawn from the novel of the same name by Jonathan Smith, touches upon moments of a life lived, focusing on the few short years that Munnings spent in Cornwall prior to the outbreak of war and where he met and married his first wife, Florence. The story of unrequited love may be a familiar one but the strength of its characters – among which are the cliffs and coves of the West Country – set the scene for an engaging melodrama.

Emily Browning stars as Florence Carter-Wood who arrives in a small Cornish village to join the adventures of the Lamorna Group. This colony of artists – part of the Newlyn School - specialise in working en plein air, painting out in the elements, in and around the picturesque coastal coves near Penzance. The group orbit around the supernova-sized ego of Dominic Cooper’s AJ Munnings, a poetry-citing vagabond who has enjoyed his wicked way with many of his muses. Florence is initially drawn to the more straight-laced Gilbert, Dan Stevens’ softly spoken land agent who stands in stable contrast to elaborate parties and string of torrid affairs that surround Munnings. Inevitably however, she falls for AJ. Not just falls for, either. Reader, she marries him.

With that, all three are sucked into an epic melodrama of kisses stolen on rain soaked, wind machined and shutter flapping rendezvous. Browning plays it well, initially torn between the excitement of the ever over-the-top AJ and doe eyed Gilbert’s thoughtfulness and care for her. The more she learns of Munnings’ character, the more her heart sinks and, as her love slips away, it isn’t long before she falls into the tweed-clad arms of Gilbert. Heartbreak ensues.

The power comes in understanding that the story is seeded in truth, with Smith’s screenplay drawn from Gilbert’s diaries that accounted the affair in some detail. Perhaps more importantly, despite the bottle of poison and on-the-nose setting of cobbled streets, tortured artists, drinking and cavorting, this kind of stuff will be familiar to anyone who has enjoyed a wild youth, and to stretch the paraphrasing of song lyrics a little further, have collected the names of the lovers went wrong.]]> Thu, 13 Jun 2013 12:28:16 GMT Kingsley Marshall Summer In February The early life and loves of classical painter AJ Munnings are rendered as likeable coastal melodrama.

You only need to place a few frames of film on the lightbox to neatly encapsulate Snyder’s cinematic world. It all comes back to the iconic sequence in Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull in which De Niro’s Jake LaMotta is on the ropes, having his face pummelled in slow motion by Johnny Barnes’ Sugar Ray Robinson. There's a direct homage to the moment in the opening scenes of Watchmen as down-at-heel avenger The Comedian is similarly beaten about the head by a masked assailant. But it’s not just the choreography of the shot which suffuses Snyder’s work: it’s the horrific arcs of gore and suppurating wounds presented in microscopic detail; it’s the physicality and dance-like qualities of hand-to-hand combat; it's switching between immense, complex panoramas and near-imperceptible moments of suffering. The maximal and the minimal existing in the same space at the same time.

After commercials (Budweiser, Miller Lite) and music videos (Morrissey, My Chemical Romance), Snyder cut his directorial teeth on the fleshy neck of a classic horror remake, delivering a digitally enhanced riff on George A Romero's zombie-based takedown of blind consumerism, Dawn Of The Dead. His historical siege movie 300 marked the point where Snyder became a paid-up member of the blockbuster fraternity. He was then entrusted with an unfathomably risky property in the form of Watchmen, Alan Moore's late- '80s graphic novel which deconstructed superhero mythology by boldly re-imagining an American atomic era shaped by violent masked vigilantes. Purportedly “unfilmmable”, it had stumped six studios and four directors for 20 years. But not Snyder.

The ornamental blood-letting was eliminated (albeit not entirely) for his detour into kiddie town with anthropomorphic 3D animation Legend Of The Guardians: The Owls Of Ga’Hoole. Finally he gave the destructive, washboard-stomached machismo of 300 a female-fronted opposite in 2011's upskirt insanity aria Sucker Punch. It was pitched as “Alice In Wonderland with machine guns” and flouted Warner’s rumoured “no female leads” policy. Having been given what to unkind eyes may look like a set of directorial training wheels – in the form of Warner’s own Dark Knight Christopher Nolan, acting as producer – Man Of Steel looks to be both a soulful and emotionally sophisticated spin on Superman’s origin story. The odds are stacked very much in favour of this being Snyder’s magnum opus.

Whatever your thoughts on Snyder, the release of a film which has every possibility of strong- arming its way into the upper echelons of box office glory demands we look closer at the director’s body of work. The single narrative motif which links his five features is the idea of the few banding together to defeat the many. On paper, Dawn Of The Dead and 300 actually tell the exact same story: a small group of people – newly minted soldiers of fortune – are warned of encroaching hoards and then wade into a messy and usually futile showdown. Politically, one might even read Snyder's work as espousing Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism, in which the self-interests of a minority are placed above the needs of the masses.

From the brilliant opening scenes of Dawn Of The Dead, in which actress Sarah Polley escapes her suburban hamlet as it’s ravaged by the living- impaired (amusingly, they're never called zombies), it’s obvious how much Snyder enjoys stylising and framing simple actions. We flip between a POV shot inside a car with a bloodied windscreen to a panoramic bird’s-eye view of the road. We watch from above as a car spectacularly careens into a barn. Snyder is a director of extreme tendencies. Visually, there’s no middle ground. In 300, it’s either a breathtaking scene in which a fleet of galleons sway precariously on troubled tides or the path of a broadsword as it pierces enemy flesh. In Sucker Punch, it’s either the airship-scattered amphitheatre of some fantasy steampunk blitzkrieg or the snowflake that melts on Emily Browning’s eyelash.

Entire worlds are built from scratch in Snyder’s cinema and these worlds usually carry as much dramatic heft as the human protagonists. The mind’s eye skirmishes of Sucker Punch – extraordinary visions of Japanese battlebots, dragon mothers and clockwork German stormtroopers – act as a self-referential nod to the director’s love of constructing rich, immersive landscapes. Beyond the human cliques which receive a special focus, Snyder also like to paint with people. In 300 and Dawn Of The Dead, he marshals epic, swirling masses of bodies into the cramped frame. These stylistic precedents hark back to the silent era, to Griffith, De Mille and von Stroheim. Snyder’s maximal sensibility plus the way he naturally gravitates towards the grotesque also recall the quasi-surreal frescoes of Brueghel and Hieronymus Bosch.

Examining the manner in which Snyder sells his own films is a business for which face-palming was invented. In reaction to the accusations that 300 operated as neo-fascistic propaganda, Snyder simply shrugged off all who deigned to extract subtext from this worryingly ornate war opus. Critic Mark Cousins described it as “feral and Rumsfeldian”, combining the corporeal monstrosity of Tod Browning’s Freaks with the gaudy psychosexual overtones of William Friedkin’s Cruising. The Italian fascist party Alleanza Nazionale even co-opted the film's imagery in their marketing materials.Conversely, Slovenian pop philosopher Slavoj Žižek argued that the peculiar nature of this battle made it impossible to draw contemporary parallels. But according to Snyder, it was just “a bunch of guys stomping the snot out of each other” - a rare case of a filmmaker actually attempting to suppress the subtexts of his own work.

Had Snyder not been so cosily diplomatic in the assessment of his films, there's every chance 300 may have escaped its trial by fire. Paul Verhoeven knew exactly how to overcome the lefty naysayers when he released Starship Troopers in 1997. Instead of taking the fascistic tone of the source material at face value, Verhoeven delivered the film as an ironic takedown of cultural imperialism and the triumphalism of warfare. If Snyder had transferred his energies to thinking about what he was saying rather than how he was going to say it, 300 may have stood as a sharp and bombastically stylised treatise on race-hate and masculinity through the ages.

Alongside directors such as Michael Bay, Neveldine & Taylor and Tony Scott, Snyder could be termed a “vulgar auteur”, someone who retains an aesthetic continuity across an identifiable canon of work, but who makes genre films aimed at a mass audience. Does Snyder project himself into his own characters? It would be unfair to see him as plucky Barn Owl Soren from Legend Of The Guardians, who slowly learns to fly and finally defeats an enclave of evil slaveholding owls. Maybe he’s Babydoll from Sucker Punch, living in the paradise of his own dreams? No, Snyder is Dr Manhattan. He’s the melancholy, blue-skinned deity from Watchmen who holds the fate of humanity in his hands. His audience doesn't know whether to love him or hate him, can’t decide if he’s God or the Devil. He’s the embodiment of immense power and this power feeds his imagination. It’s his gift. His curse.]]> Tue, 11 Jun 2013 12:01:20 GMT David Jenkins Maximum Overdrive: The Cinema Of Zack Snyder The Warner Brothers' golden boy just can't get no respect, but is it time we took Zack Snyder seriously?

Crashing Kal-El back into our atmosphere seven years after Superman Returns, Man Of Steel is a curious polar opposite to Bryan Singer's big-screen fable. For better or worse depending on who you listen to, that film was romantic, nostalgic, witty, sensitive, short on action and big on character. But right from its apocalyptic sci-fi opening, Man Of Steel maxes itself out on relentless hyperbole.

Minutes after home-birthing his screaming baby boy – Kal-El is Krypton's first natural birth in centuries, as we're told on more than one ocassion by Goyer's slightly repetitive script – Jor-El (Russell Crowe) leaps atop a monstrous dragonfly that might have escaped from Pandora, suppresses a violent coup by General Zod (Michael Shannon), steals a mystical skull and blasts his son into space just before Krypton is consumed by fire.

Pause for breath? Not a chance. We leap forward: adult Kal is now a fisherman on Earth, bearded, bare-chested and on fire, launching into action to rescue the crew of a blazing oil rig. Just as suddenly, we leap backwards: child Kal is freaking out in class as his supersenses kick in. And again: there's teenage Kal rescuing a schoolbus full of his classmates from drowning in a river...

As Hans Zimmer's magnficient but overused score insists on high drama, Snyder's urgent stylistics – all lens flares and tight close-ups – just can't sustain this bold elliptical storytelling. Never fully settling, Man Of Steel just keeps bouncing from big scene to big scene. What's missing is the strong connective tissue inbetween them – the film doesn't earn its big moments and this highlight-reel cinema leaves little room for character development.

Straining in the opposite direction are a powerful cast, doing their best to level out Man Of Steel's forced gravitas. In the midst of a tornado set-piece, Kevin Costner shows how a quiet beat can carry 10 times more power than the biggest explosion.

Looking like he put Jason Statham in a blender and drank him, the physically epic Henry Cavill also underplays his role nicely, shading Supes with a loneliness and naïvety that adds further force to the vengeful pomp of Michael Shannon's charismatic villain.

Shame, then, that many of Man Of Steel's great moments – Kal pausing to feel the sun's warmth on his face, the cute interrogation-room banter – are too short to savour. Singer and Joss Whedon both showed how to disguise a compelling character drama as a superhero actioner. But in a film where dialogue feels written in large print, mostly bookends for the action, there's no patience here to build true romance between Kal and Lois (Amy Adams).

"You can save her, Kal," says Crowe. "You can save them all." And with that, Cavill pulls his best Space Jesus pose and freefalls from the heavens into a spectacular rush of noise and devastation that bulks out the last third of the film.

Planes, trains and automobiles are flung around like toys in explosive close-quarter carnage as Supes dukes it out with Zod's warriors in a series of cityscape smash-ups that scatter skyscrapers like Jenga towers, with Transformers: Dark Of The Moon cinematographer Amir Mokri again favouring chaos over choreography.

It's a rush, but not quite the right kind. Much earlier, a bar brawl that never happens tells us more about Kal-El than any fight scene. That Man Of Steel ends on a perfect note – a subtle, shared moment between two reporters at The Daily Planet – just reminds you what bits are missing.]]> Tue, 11 Jun 2013 03:59:01 GMT Jonathan Crocker Man Of Steel Zack Snyder aspires to something greater with this maxed-out comic book epic, but lays it on a little too thick.

THE BRIEF

Taking inspiration from the films of Terrence Malick, we want you to create a bespoke Little White Lies magazine cover. We're looking for something simple, unique and iconic that's in keeping with the magazine's bold cover tradition while demonstrating your own passion for design and movies.

The films you can chose from are:

Badlands

Days Of Heaven

The Thin Red Line

The New World

The Tree Of Life

To The Wonder

-Magazine cover specs are: 245mm X 200mm Portrait.

-All entries should be emailed as a PDF to wonder [at] thechurchoflondon.com

-See examples of past LWLies cover for house style here.

-The LWLies cover logo can be downloaded here.

UPDATE

Our judges will look more kindly on covers that strictly adhere to the LWLies house style, e.g. Full logo including issue details, title of the film featured on the cover.

THE PRIZE

We will select the 12 best entries which will then hang in the 71a gallery space for a special exhibition and screening of To The Wonder on the evening of 20 June. Each of the finalists will receive a Blu-ray goodie bag c/o StudioCanal, with one overall winner who will receive a framed print of their entry plus a one year subscription to Little White Lies.

THE DEADLINE

12:00pm Monday 17 June.

Good luck!

Terms and Conditions

1. Competition open to residents of UK aged 15 years or over, with the exception of those related to employees of the Promoter, their families, agents and anyone else connected with this promotion. Proof of age may be required. 2. Entries must be received by 12:00 Monday June 17. The Promoter accepts no responsibility for any entries that are incomplete, illegible, corrupted or fail to reach the Promoter by the relevant closing date for any reason. Proof of sending is not proof of receipt. Entries via agents or third parties are invalid. Entries become the property of the Promoter and are not returned. 3. All completed entries received before 12:00 Monday June 17 will be judged by LWLies staff, who will select the 12 winners and one overall winner. 4. In the event of unforeseen circumstances, the Promoter reserves the right (a) to substitute alternative prizes of equivalent or greater value and (b) in exceptional circumstances to amend or foreclose the promotion without notice. No correspondence will be entered into. 5. The prize for the 12 winners is a Blu-ray selection as provided by StudioCanal plus a feature spot in a Terence Malick-themed gallery exhibition at 71a Leonard Street. The prize for the overall winner is a print of their artwork, a one-year LWLies subscription and 6. To obtain details of the winners please email wonder@thechurchoflondon.com stating the name of the prize, and the subject line ‘Terrence Malick Creative Brief’ four weeks after the closing date.6. By entering this competition, all entrants consent to the transfer of their personal data to the Promoter for the purposes of the administration of this prize draw. 7. By entering the competition each entrant agrees to be bound by these terms and conditions. 8. The Promoter is The Church of London, 71a Leonard Street, EC2A 4QS]]> Fri, 07 Jun 2013 02:48:16 GMT LWLies To The Wonder: Creative Brief Design a Little White Lies cover inspired by the films of the great Terrence Malick.

This dream is rendered in stylish, high-contrast monochrome, the same used by Meadows for his miniature pre-teen moonlight flit movie, Somers Town. This endearingly earnest documentary runs with the notion of rock stars as mythic creatures. Meadows captures the sub-sonic buzz of something as utterly banal as Ian Brown wandering into a hotel room before a press junket and contentedly clasping hands with bass player Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield.

Though we’re given a decent potted history of the band and the scene they grew out of, Meadows’ film is more concerned with exploring the idea of hero worship. It’s about seeing rock bands as brands, religions, sects, cults, bodies for which one must pay penances and relinquish earthly souls. It’s about what it means to adore a group of people beyond basic emotional and economic rationality.

This idea is brought to life most vividly in an extraordinary, almost Fellini-esque sequence at the centre of the film in which Meadows captures the minute germination of a secret warm-up gig which is announced via social networking and radio mere hours before the fact. This segment achieves a rare feat within the music film pantheon in that it attentively captures the feeling of euphoria that comes with seeing a band play live. It’s not just hearing your favourite tunes, pogoing in tides of sweat and quaffing overpriced watery lager from plastic cups. It’s the queuing, the waiting, the sacrifice and finally, the fevered, post-coital comedown after the band has left the building.

Though fans of the Roses will no doubt feel sated by the hit-happy song selections and performances (culled mainly from the seminal first album), it’s also interesting how Meadows has chosen to portray these artists. There’s a sense of unalloyed reverence here not seen since Martin Scorsese trained his camera on The Band for their farewell extravaganza. In one warm-up session, he films each band member individually and then presents them simultaneously in a split-screen mash-up. It may come across like a throwaway piece of post-production flash, but it also emphasises the precarious delineation of their unique collaboration and that, like The Beatles before them, The Stone Roses are these four people or no one at all.

For the film’s big encore, Meadows films a live version of ‘Fool’s Gold’ at Manchester’s Heaton Park. He includes the entire coda which famously consists of an intuitive and lengthy noodle jam between the players. It’s a lovely moment in which the focus of the film switches from the songs to the music. It also taps into a level of extreme devotion wherein a fan becomes immune to the creative indulgences of his or her idols.]]> Fri, 07 Jun 2013 02:41:02 GMT David Jenkins The Stone Roses: Made Of Stone Shane Meadows delivers a roistering film about extreme fandom under the subtle guise of a Stone Roses biography.

Yet the feeling with Behind The Candelabra, which is ripped from a novel written by one of the Liberace's spurned lovers, Scott Thorson (played here by Matt Damon), is that it lacks that noticeable Soderbergh touch. The subtle sense of subversion that lifts generic material beyond mundane, journeyman hokum is just not there, and while this is certainly a higher class of cinematic biography, it's still just does its job of hitting all the cosy beats we expect in this type of material.

Also, this is perhaps the first film since the Ocean's sequels where it would be tough to actually guess that it was Soderbergh's beady eye glancing down the viewfinder, as the film settles for a rote biography mode (let's call it a "Wiki-structure") which allows it to amply succeed as piece of kiss-and-tell yellow journalism, but not as a truly satisfying and original piece of cinema that reveals anything beyond the vulgar, secret life of its subject. While not as superficially entertaining, the director's near-abstract take on Che Guevara was a far more radical and full-blooded attempt to reconfigure the norms of life-of-a-man moviemaking.

Thorson, a Dirk Diggler-like party boy with a hot bod and flowing golden locks, heads to Liberace's cabaret extravaganza and is escorted back stage to meet the man who plays high-speed boogie-woogie piano with bejewelled digits and while propped behind a trademark gilded candelabra. It's not long before Thorson is making personal visits to Liberace's gaudy palatial homestead and is swiftly invited to reside there permanently as a live-in companion, sex toy and (potentially) adopted son. A coterie of mysterious young men strut around the place looking crestfallen and dissatisfied until they're eventually forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement regarding their nocturnal activities and sent packing with a roll of banknotes.

From there, the film treads a familiar path, with Thorson's affair ending up in exactly the place you expect it to on the back of all the unsubtle signposting that has come before it. As a character, Douglas's spirited, slimy take on Liberace never manages to transcend a pudgy figure-of-fun, and his fruity antics are never explained beyond a the suggestion of surface level eccentricity and greed. Episodes regarding the pair's experiments with plastic surgery suggest the film is about to stray into darker territory, but a jokey (and, admittedly, film-stealing) cameo from Rob Lowe plus some screwball-y surgery footage keeps the film well grounded in the cheery realms of light comedy.

Soderbergh casts '80s and '90s character stalwarts like Scott Bakula, Paul Reiser and Dan Aykroyd in supporting roles, but then neglects to give them anything to do. Aykroyd, who plays Liberace's cantankerous, Colonel Tom Parker-like manager is particularly wasted, as he's given a single phone call scene with Douglas and then spends much of the film's remainder just hovering in the middle distance with nothing to do or say.

Perhaps the single way in which Behind The Candelabra manages to speak of something beyond the details of Liberace's antics is in its exploration of what is meant by a private life. The film arrives at an interesting time in the UK, particularly as ongoing police investigations are routinely exhuming the devient predilections of a number of household-name celebrities which were thought to have been amply shielded from the public eye. Perhaps the film says that there will always be a witness to history, that money only buys silence to a certain degree, and that in death, any kind of assiduously manufactured image is unlikely to join you in the grave.]]> Fri, 07 Jun 2013 01:26:38 GMT David Jenkins Behind The Candelabra Steven Soderbergh's swansong (for real) looks at the private life of American light entertainer, Liberace.

But don't feel disheartened; you're not alone. You're merely a drop in an ocean of gormless, whooping dummies. You're a chime from a cash register. A keystroke on a quarterly report. You're not valued. You don't deserve nourishment. You deserve After Earth.

The latest in an increasingly long line of high-profile misfires from one-time Spielberg-progeny M Night Shyamalan, After Earth is a cynical, aggressively derivative endorsement of dumbed down mass entertainment. But Shyamalan isn't the sole perpetrator in this barefaced crime against celluloid (NB: this is his first film shot entirely on digital). The absence of the director's name on any and all promotional materials suggests this was a straight up paycheque gig, which is not to absolve him from liability as such, more to divert the accusatory finger. Of course, it may well have been Shyamalan's decision to distance himself from this cloudburst of creative anemia, in which case he's shrewder than he's generally given credit for. Which leaves...

Will Smith – aka the not-so-fresh prince – who not only gets his usual actor/producer credit but also, more tellingly, a writer credit. Indeed, it transpires that After Earth is based on a story by Smith, which can essentially be read as shorthand for a gnat-shart of an original idea culled from various post-Avatar actioners, crudely repackaged and pitched as a star [sic] vehicle for his teenage son/mini-me/heir apparent, Jaden.

The result, under Shyamalan's palpably insouciant stewardship, is a thinly veiled vanity project that painfully exposes Jaden's shortcomings as an actor. How far the once mighty Smith & Son have fallen since they first shared the screen in Gabriele Muccino's performance-driven 2006 charmer, The Pursuit Of Happyness.

The basic set-up goes something like this: A thousand years after being forced to leave Earth following some misc environmental hiccup, mankind's fate on the newly colonised Nova Prime rests with the Ranger Corps, an elite defense organisation formed to protect humanity from a nonspecific alien race. By utilising a fearsome predatory species known as the Ursa, which find their prey by smelling their fear, the aliens initially gain the upper hand before super Ranger Cypher Raige (Smith, Sr) learns to mask his fear, a technique known as 'ghosting'.

After leading the troops to victory, Cypher and his son Kitai (Smith, Jr), an angsty trainee Ranger with significant mental scarring, set out on a routine interstellar expedition. Inevitably something goes wrong and the pair suddenly find themselves Earth-side, where everything on the planet has evolved (somewhat rapidly) to kill humans, despite there being none to hunt for the best part of the previous millennium. With both of Cypher's legs bust, Kitai embarks on a perilous 100km-trek through dense rainforest and across mountainous terrain to recover a distress beacon stored in the tail part of their fallen spacecraft.

From here you would hope for Shyamalan and Smith to let their imaginations run wild. But After Earth pushes no boundaries, visually or narratively. There's zero suspense, very little action and, save a horribly clichéd father-son relationship subplot ("He needs a father, not a commanding officer!") no emotional hook. What unfolds is by turns an uninspired and unsurprising sci-fi coming-of-ager that will leave you dumbfounded as to how two former Hollywood golden boys conspired to make something so utterly devoid of character, so insultingly unoriginal, so sinfully dull.

The biggest problems are in the details. Earth Y3K is supposedly overrun with a diverse array of hostile creatures, yet fortuitously Kitai only comes up against a smattering of CG baboons, some vaguely modified big cats and a solitary giant eagle. The film's pièce de résistance, the snarling, slobbering Ursa, barely feature. Worse still, despite only possessing the ability to sense humans via a powerful pheromone secreted when experiencing fear, the Ursa are somehow able to strategically display human corpses in such a way as to induce fear from unsuspecting passers-by.

The more imminent threat to Kitai's life/mission is the dangerously fluctuating climate which sees Earth's surface freeze over each night, apart from for a few seemingly random hotspots, which our durable young protagonist repeatedly manages to reach Just In The Nick Of Time.

Additionally, After Earth isn't much to look at. Everything from the costumes and props to the overall set design and FX-heavy locations feels cheap. It's as if you've accidentally tuned into an episode of some tawdry mid-'90s after-school TV serial. Only much less fun.

Shyamalan has always been more a storyteller than a creator of worlds, but this one is artificial to the point of being categorically unconvincing. With nothing to snatch your attention away from the generic script and hollow performances, you'll most likely lapse into a state of torpid indifference. And, when it's all over, the only morsel of intrigue that remains arrives from entertaining the notion of Smith and Shyamalan's respective careers reaching a lower point than this.]]> Thu, 06 Jun 2013 10:42:53 GMT Adam Woodward After Earth M Night Shyamalan continues his run of ghastly misfires, this time with the Smith clan in tow.

What could have been another routine and exploitative grab-for-cash reveals itself to in fact be a creative slice of schlock. Taking a leaf from John Boorman’s maligned flop, Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), the plot focuses on the theme of rehabilitation, placing Nell Sweetzer (Ashley Bell) in the febrile environs of New Orleans.

Bell’s portrayal of the troubled farm girl is likely to make the actress a minor horror icon. It’s her ability to create a character that is fragile, jittery and, more often than not, bewildered, and juxtaposing such a persona with added layers of freakish verve, berserk meltdowns and temptress allure that impresses so much.

A mischievous approach to certain well-trodden clichés is another strong feature. The mythology, having disrobed its overt Catholic garb and strict Roman Rituals rules, is wide open for exploration. The Last Exorcism: Part II, like its predecessor, is a wily trickster. The evil spirit, known as Abalam, possesses not out of malice, but desire and love. The typical threat of fire, brimstone and eternal damnation is so passé.

This twisted approach, in fact, directly recalls the modus operandi of those vengeful creatures in Tim Powers’ fantasy novel, 'The Stress Of Her Regard': supernatural entities that hunt down and wreak havoc on the lives of their spiritually betrothed when feeling jilted or betrayed. It’s best to just give in. The demonic possession subgenre, thanks to The Last Exorcism Part II, now carries with it a dash of romanticism.

Nell’s eventual rejection of Christian martyr/victim status is a massive slap in the face to tradition. Stamm’s and Gass-Donnelly’s films have been on the side of the (fallen) angels all along. The Last Exorcism Parts I and II, therefore, levitate well above ordinary.]]> Thu, 06 Jun 2013 10:17:51 GMT Martyn Conterio The Last Exorcism Part II Fire, brimstone and eternal damnation are so passé in this surprisingly decent horror sequel.

LWLies: So whose idea was it to put Peter Bradshaw and The Rza on a jury together?

Andrew Simpson: I imagine they'll get on famously. With the jury, it's something that as a festival we have got quite a bit of form when it comes to doing cross-arts programming. We like to explore the links between cinema and other art forms. We wanted a broad base of people who could bring a variety of insights to the process of selecting a film. Someone like The Rza would supply that perspective on cinema that makes East End a slightly different type of festival.

Alison Poltock: I'd throw back your question. The idea of Peter and Rza in a room together is the reason. The way people think of Peter Bradshaw and the way people think of Rza is exactly why I want those two characters on a jury. That's what I think the festival does: it partners up very, very different works. It challenges preconceptions.

AS: But it's a really exciting jury. We have Nick Gonda, who has the experience of working with Terrence Malick, and he actually works on a digital distribution platform, so he'll have two perspectives he'll bring to the discussions. And obviously Sally El Hosaini is a recently established and very important new filmmaker and East London resident.

What's your big centrepiece screening this year?

AP: Well we've done church screenings in past years, but the big thing this year is that we've given birth to a little music festival.

AS: Yes, we've got 1970s alt rock band Pere Ubu who are supplying a new score to Herk Harvey's Carnival Of Souls in a church. Which is going to be a big thing.

AP: Last year we screened Nosferatu in Spitalfields market with the 60-piece choir and visual shadow installations. This year, we're doing a score with the film La Antena, which is a newer film. Esben and the Witch are doing the soundtrack and there will be dancers there too. That will be the big centrepiece event, I think.

AS: Also, doing La Antena links in with the Argentine focus we've got this year which comes off the back of Armando Bo winning the best feature last year with The Last Elvis. So we've got Jazmín López' Leones, Matías Piñeiro's Viola, The Wild Ones by Alejandro Fadel which was in Cannes last year and hasn't been anywhere since?

How important is it for you to build on relationships of the past? Do you keep in contact with the directors whose work you programme?

AP: Yes, very much. Opening night this year is a classic example. In 2010 we did a film called Rime of the Modern Mariner, which was by a filmmaker named Mark Donne. It was the story of the decline of dock culture and we did it in St Anne's Church. He's doing our opening night film this year, The UK Gold, which is a world premiere. We kept the relationship with the filmmaker, but also, he did say when I spoke to him about his new film, that he wouldn't consider screening it anywhere else. It felt like ours was the most politically relevant festival. Also we're screening a new film by Kieran Evans, who we've worked with numerous times before. He directed Vashti Bunyan: From Here To Before and Finisterre with Bob Stanley. I think the filmmakers come back because they know we don't just do a straight screening in the cinema, we always try and add extra activity where it's relevant.

How much are your selections influenced by the culture and geography of the area? 

AP: There is an element, especially with the British films, of programming a few things that we're pretty sure wouldn't get in to the London Film Festival. There may be rough edges, but the intent is there. We want to support those first steps. I don't know that's necessarily because we're in the East End. But we are the East End Film Festival and we're a place that can house the films that can't be housed anywhere else.

AS: And also, I do think that while it's grown from a festival that supports local film to one with a fully international programme, one of the reasons we select the films we do is the idea that they all present a total lack of artistic compromise. That's what we believe in as a festival. That's our identity.

What was the first film you programmed for the festival?

AP: Opening night, The UK Gold. Which is mad, as opening night is usually really difficult and comes in very late. We want opening night to be British, strong and relevant, and with this film is was entirely down to the filmmakers wanting to go with us. We got it in January.

AS: Bar a few conversations that have been happening a little longer, this was all programmed since January.

What's the ratio between you contacting filmmakers and filmmakers contacting you?

AS: Half and half? There are so many different routes you can take.

AP: A lot of the British films are submissions.

AS: Submissions, meeting at festivals, we occasionally get approached by distributors. That's out The East came about, when Fox came to us.

AP: There's a film called Generation Um, and the filmmaker, who's based in New York, got in touch and just said that this festival looked like the right festival for this film. It was the world premiere last year, so financially there was no way we could do it as we'd have to fly all sorts of people over. We couldn't do that. They've had the American premiere now, so we get the European premiere. A Keanu Reeves indie film! I'm really proud that we got Lovelace as our closing night film. I've known the distributor at Lionsgate for years, but you can go and drink with them every night and they won't give you their film unless you can prove that you can offer it a great enough platform. It's about us, over a period of years, really establishing ourselves.

AS: Last year was the moment where people really began to recognise what we do.

AP: Since 2007, there's been a 2100 per cent increase in the number of premieres. So it's grown a lot.

AS: I've been on the festival for three years and Its grown enormously in that time.

Is it case for you of trying to whittle a potential programme down or scramble for the right amount of films up to the wire?

AP: No, it's the former.

AS: We're trimming all the time.

AP: The festival was meant to be smaller than this, but it's our bad. One day I'll be telling him off and then the next day I'll have found this film that I need to programme.

AS: We have ambitions. It's important for the programme to remain cohesive and retain that commitment to emerging, brave, left-field directors. But also, we need to create something that is deliverable for a festival that is run with a core team of staff and a tiny budget.

If you had to both pick one film from this year's line-up that you'd urge people to get out and see, what would it be?

AS: I'd have to say a film called Halley which is by a Mexican director called Sebastian Hoffmann. It's something else. It's a mixture of urban existentialist drama and David Cronenberg. It's got this whole body horror genre element which is uses as a metaphor for its central character's despair. For a first feature, it's extraordinarily powerful, it looks beautiful and thematically it's so striking. It's an amazing film and also one of my personal favourites. Alison?

AP: I'd have to say The UK Gold, the opening night film. It's political and it's very well put together. It's potentially quite a dry subject, looking at government funding and where the money actually goes, but the filmmakers have approached it in such a way as to make it extremely accessible and exciting. If feels like an important film, a film you need to see.

AS: Another one which is worth flagging up is another Argentine one called Extraordinary Stories by Mariano Llinás. It's from 2008 and never got picked up. It's a four-hour meta thriller which focuses on characters who all go by these various strange acronyms. It's got this fantastic political subtext which addresses the modernisation of Argentine society while being completely thrilling and absorbing and confounding your expectations at ever turn. And that's the sort of film that, in the UK, you'll probably never get to see again.

The 12th East End Film Festival runs between 25 June and 10 July. All details for screening, events and tickets can be found here.]]> Thu, 06 Jun 2013 10:17:46 GMT David Jenkins Meet The Programmers: The East End Film Festival The top brass at the East End Film Festival sat down to tell LWLies how this year's massive programme came together.

The year is 1560, and Spanish conquistador Don Francisco Pizarro has been given his orders by the king of Spain to enter the heart of darkness and locate the mythical, gold-plated paradise of El Dorado. When rations run low, he passes the reigns over to Klaus Kinski's Don Lope de Aguirre who drags his advance party to the verge of insanity and beyond.

Listing this film's pleasures is an activity to which you could dedicate entire lifetimes, so here we're just going to focus on one: Klaus Kinski's miraculous central performance. It takes a while for him to become the central focus of the film, as his team of explorers is duly whittled down in the film's opening acts. He's initially reticent to take centre stage, even after fronting a coup which successfully ousts the de facto leader (who, with loathsome cowardice, wants to turn back).

Kinski projects violence through actions rather than words. He throttles his comrades with his eyes, transmitting sub-sonic hate bulletins via his brusque body language which state that anyone who dares affront his iron will might find themselves on the business end of his infinite ire. Democracy doesn't stand a chance against Kinski's laser eye, as seen in the riverside vote scene where Aguirre doesn't so much intimidate the electorate as psychologically fill their ballot papers in for them.

So he's something of a combustible presence, then. Yet there's something strangely pathetic about Aguirre, that his spindly frame might not fully support his splenetic bursts of anger. He has bizarre, simian hunch. He gallops inelegantly rather than dashes when the raft occasionally docks. It's like a reference to Richard III, a malformed tyrant whose personal concerns leave him entirely divorced from the primal desires of the remainder of the human race. With his shoulders at a constant angle, Kinski addresses his proclamations to the skies as much as he does his supporting cast, as if he's in a direct dialogue with God. It really is a performance that's been teleported in from the silent era.

He intones that famous line, "I am the wrath of God!", while momentarily staring direct to camera. For a split second, Aguirre's hubris suddenly extends beyond the closed world of the film and takes on a chilling universality  The power that his Aguirre wields will be the cause of all pain and suffering, not just his subjects in El Dorado. It's a chilling moment, glaring into those eyes and being told that you will be crushed by Aguirre. Time and geography offer no escape for nature's indifferent brutality.

And perhaps best of all is the haunting final scene where our "hero" is now left alone on his raft, blind to the onslaught of the cosmos and the slings and arrows being flung by the invisible indigenous tribes. Has he succumbed to madness or is this the full expression of his natural state?

There's cruelty in the way he picks up the monkeys and casually casts them into the river. But there's sadness too, as his uncorrupted self-belief remains, even in the light of overwhelming odds. Unlike, say, Antoine Doinel who reached the edge of the world and was forced to turn back, Aguirre doesn't even make it far enough to confirm that there was nothing there in the first place.]]> Thu, 06 Jun 2013 10:17:28 GMT David Jenkins Aguirre, The Wrath Of God Werner Herzog's 1972 masterpiece returns to the big screen, which is a cause for major celebration.

Unlike Henry Hill, however, Richie Kuklinski (Michael Shannon) never wanted to be a gangster. A regular family life is all he ever desired, but when made crook Roy Demeo (Ray Liotta, who else?) offers him steady work as a contract killer Richie’s sociopathic nature takes hold.

So begins Richie’s sharp rise from blue-collar schmo to gangland golden boy – his suits and goatee getting sharper with each reputation-enhancing hit. He woos the woman of his dreams (Winona Ryder) and for a short while everything is rosy. But greed and ego eventually get the better of him. After a string of messy jobs put the heat on Roy and his loyal right-hand man Rosenthal (David Schwimmer, looking like an early Noughties David Seaman or a Scouse Ron Jeremy), Richie’s number is up.

Shannon’s Richie is a fearsome anti-hero; a man of few words and capable of sudden acts of extreme brutality. He flinches only when his family are threatened, yet despite the occasional glimmer of vulnerability beneath the armour he is ultimately a difficult character to invest in. More engaging are Chris Evans, playing against type while upping the dodgy facial hair ante as ice-cream-truck-driving assassin Freezy, and James Franco in a memorable if all-too brief cameo.

The real Richard Kuklinski died in prison in 2006 while serving multiple life sentences for crimes carried out on behalf of various East Coast crime families – estimated at somewhere between 100 and 250 victims – over 30 years. The Iceman would have benefited from exploring the fractured psychology of America’s most notorious contract killer, but instead settles for being a hollow genre flick that fails to convey the complexity of its subject.]]> Thu, 06 Jun 2013 10:12:26 GMT Adam Woodward The Iceman A textbook life-of-a-gangster flick with Michael Shannon his usual lovable/loopy self.

Three mis-matched buddies are fed up with their lot in life – Josef (Tom Audenaert) is blind and always falling into rivers, crotchety Phillip (Robrecht Vanden Thoren) is paralysed from the neck down and Lars (Gilles De Schrijver) is living out his last days with a brain tumour. Their one common trait is that they all want to get their end away, and Phillip has found just the place to do it: at a specialist bordello on the Spanish coast. A yarn is spun to their understandably worried families who think they're off on a vineyard coach tour, and then the hijinx, mild peril and lightly smutty humour is allowed to unfold at the gentlest pace imaginable.

Though laudable in intent and boasting a couple of undeniably charming stand-alone episodes, this by-the-manual road movie rarely strays from the wide-lane A-roads, even though it does often finds itself awkwardly sandwiched between the twin juggernauts of lads-on-tour jollies and misty-eyed pathos. It's plotting, too, is a little off kilter, as Enthoven bookends the illicit elements of the trip about half-way in so he can focus his energies on the sexual awakening element in the remaining runtime.

Technically, it's a functional, ugly-looking film with lots of dull locations shot in dull medium shot. Even a cheesy dream sequence that sees the image covered with shards of white saturation resembles the "dream" function on some two-bit piece of editing software. It looks like something that would've found a more natural home on the small screen, as viewing it large would likely only emphasise its technical shortfalls (full disclosure: we reviewed this film from a DVD).

Perhaps the central problem with Come As You Are is it is exactly the film you would concoct in your head if you were to read a short synopsis. There's precious little recourse to originality, and the theme of triumph-over-adversity doesn't really go far enough to cover the emotional highs and lows of this strange situation.]]> Thu, 06 Jun 2013 10:08:52 GMT David Jenkins Come As You Are The sexual adventures of three disabled Belgians makes for a jolly, if slight and sentimental romp.

Mauriac wrote of his book: "I used some devices that came from the silent films: lack of preparation, the sudden opening, flashbacks. They were methods that were new and surprising at that time." These techniques translated into literature return in Miller’s film like Chinese whispers. Tempered by an unsettling chronology dictated by Thérèse’s diminishing mental state, the style of the film subtly harks back to early filmmaking's formative years.

Some of Miller’s abiding themes from films past are also present here. He deals with the emotional blossoming of young women, as he did so brilliantly in 1985’s L’Effrontée,where a 14-year-old Charlotte Gainsbourg sparkled with equal parts rebelliousness and vulnerability. And again in 1988’s La Petite Voleuse, where Gainsbourg returned as a girl who longs for maturity and freedom. Here, cruelly, the story of Thérèse seems like a continuation. But the freedom, the rebellion and the optimism of youth have been suffocated by familial obligation and etiquette. Instead we see a woman in mourning for a future that failed to materialise.

Momentarily, Miller also falls into what some will decry as a pastiche of Terrence Malick’s romanticisation of the natural sublime, but as much as Thérèse falls into familiar territory, it also contains momentsof brilliance. In addition to a simmering Sapphic desire between Thérèse and her sister-in-law Anne (Anaïs Demoustier), there are numerous shots and motifs that harrowingly summon the bell jar of depression.]]> Thu, 06 Jun 2013 10:03:48 GMT Basia Lewandowska Cummings Thérèse This ornate rumination on depression features a stunning central turn by Audrey Tautou.

With Pitt as an everyman hero – "Gerry can’t fly, he can’t beat up bad guys… he has no super-powers. He’s a dad, with a burning need to keep his family safe," the actor says – and the entire planet affected, World War Z is a fantastic but credible depiction of disaster.

But although its verisimilitude might be unusual, conceptually World War Z is merely the latest in a long line of worldwide catastrophe movies. And while subjecting the human race to great peril might be entertaining, each film also says something about the primary concern of its day, whether that be nuclear or germ warfare, scientific experimentation, overpopulation or rampant capitalism.

The principal has literary origins. Secular writers have set out apocalyptic visions of plague since at least the eighteenth century, and in later years found inspiration in profound technological or societal shifts. Rapid and dramatic advances in science saw Victorian fantasies of mad inventors holding the world to ransom, seized upon by cinema’s pioneers. The First World War made real the mass slaughter possible with such weapons, and the overwhelming impact of World War 2 and its atomic dawn was an obvious starting point for the post-war generation.

As man stepped tentatively beyond the earth and into space alien invasion actually seemed possible, although from the viewpoint of the United States this was clearly tinged with displacement anxiety – less green men from Mars than Reds under the bed. An unearthly foe of a different kind was the astronomical body on a crash course for our small blue globe.

The range of films reflecting this unease is therefore vast, from the Cold War paranoia of Them! and The Day The Earth Stood Still through the dystopian classics of the 1960s and '70s such as Soylent Green, Logan’s Run and Rollerball (as well as little-seen gems like The Ultimate Warrior or Saul Bass' Phase IV) to Children Of Men, The Road and The Book Of Eli today. Evolution, though at first a sign of enlightened understanding, drove the primal scream that was Planet Of The Apes, while The Andromeda Strain conflated space exploration, nuclear annihilation and biohazard research. Those worrying lumps of rock hurtling through space saw a response in Meteor, Armageddon and Deep Impact.

The film adaptation of Max Brooks’s 2006 novel 'World War Z: An Oral History Of The Zombie War', then, allows any number of interpretations. Pitt – who is also co-producer – sees a parallel in recent health scares, with the zombie contagion "spreading much like we’ve witnessed viruses such as SARS travel. What happens when this jumps the fire break…what happens when everything we concern our days with is rendered useless?" Fellow producer Dede Gardner views the story as a metaphor for disengagement: "People are tied to their screens and their monitors and their headphones - in the most basic sense, they do walk around like zombies by not interacting with other human beings."

Underlying theme aside, the principal challenge common to many of these productions is the realisation of destruction and desolation on a vast scale. Capturing abandoned cities and derelict buildings on screen once meant a few snatched minutes of location filming in the early hours before retiring to the backlot, but the digital revolution has brought lighter cameras and computer-generated imagery, yielding far more convincing vistas.

Resolving that "Audiences are smart, they know what different cities around the world look like", Gardner accordingly steered filming around the world, although work in the scripted locations was supplemented by footage shot in other, more accessible, cities carefully chosen to match. Thus Glasgow stood in for Philadelphia, with a fortnight’s shooting in George Square, whilst Malta played Jerusalem. The Royal Navy lent the production a serving vessel, RFA Argus, to represent the fictional American helicopter carrier USS Madison.

Designing the movement of the infected victims, the team borrowed from the natural world to create zombies that Gardner says are "stagnant, slow and wandering" when dormant, but when aroused to feed become what movement specialist Ryen Perkins-Gangnes describes as "rapacious and relentless". Many of the crew had experience filming simulated combat, bringing additional realism.

However it is made and whatever it might reveal of the present, World War Z joins a series of films that provide an alternate commentary on our times. Each of them is in the end about the same thing: fear. Fear of the different, fear of the other, fear of what’s outside and what’s inside. Fear, ultimately, of ourselves.

World War Z is released 21 June.

Chris Rogers writes on architecture and visual culture; see chrismrogers.net]]> Wed, 05 Jun 2013 02:00:59 GMT Chris Rogers Apocalypse How: The Unmaking Of World War Z Zombie pandemic thriller World War Z heralds the end of the world as we know it. Again. LWLies scrambles into the bunker and locks the door.

10. Where The Green Ants Dream (1984)

One of Herzog's lesser known fiction titles, the Australia-set Where The Green Ants Dream examines the diversity (and absurdity) of spiritual custom through the misted-up prism of light comic satire. A small cadre of Aboriginal tribespeople assemble on an area of parched desert in order to forcibly stymie the activities of a mining firm wanting to plunder the earth for minerals. These people have nothing, yet they will risk their lives so as no-one disturbs the dreams of the mythical, magnetic green ants, for it could place a horrible curse on future generations. Though the film is initially interested in lambasting corporate toadying, presenting the head of the mining firm bending over backwards to appease the cantankerous Aborigines, the film reveals itself as something bigger and more complex as it ruminates on the divisions in cultural attitudes that can never really be bridged and the poetic, often illogical schemes that people concoct inside their own minds to make life worth living.

9. Little Dieter Needs To Fly (1997)

That little yellow flower may look pretty, but in actual fact, it probably wants to kill you. Herzog's trademark editorial line is his doom-laden proclamations regarding the sublime indifference of nature towards human life, yet his 1997 TV documentary, Little Dieter Needs To Fly, (and its subsequent fiction re-make, Rescue Dawn) stated the opposite. An against-all-odds tale of human resilience, the film sees Herzog hooking up with the strangely happy-go-lucky German-American Navy pilot, Dieter Dengler, who totaled his plane in Vietnam, was interred as a POW and severely tortured before eventually making an unlikely escape. Herzog accompanies Dengler to the scene of the crime so as the details of his incarceration are writ large and gory. Plus, Herzog – a director who prides himself on his total fearlessness – clearly sees something of himself in Dengler while framing these ad-hoc reenactments as a form of dark, theatrical therapy.

8. My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009)

2009 was the year of auditions for Werner Herzog. His wild collaborator and muse, Klaus Kinski, had been dead for 18 years – had enough time passed to justifiably search for a replacement? And could Kinski ever be replaced? One possible candidate was Nicolas Cage, who slipped into a David Byrne-style over-sized suit and sucked on a lucky crack pipe as the Bad Lieutenant. The other, more feasible suggestion was "Mad" Michael Shannon, who starred in this eccentric contemporary refit of Herzog's own 1979 film, Woyzeck. Driven to kill his smothering, Flamingo-obsessed mother with a kitana sword, Shannon's Brad Macallam is the living exhumation of the ghost of Herzog's long-time leading man, right down to that piercing, thousand-yard stare and that singular sensation that the actor's head could explode at any minute.

7. The Great Ecstasy Of Woodcarver Steiner (1974) / Grizzly Man (2005)

Though Herzog is a man who routinely risks his own life and health at the service of his art (see Les Blank's Burden Of Dreams, or Herzog's own My Best Fiend if you don't believe us), two of his greatest documentary works question the absurdity of any form of pleasure-seeking that places one's mortal soul on the chopping block. The medium-length documentary piece, The Great Ecstasy Of Woodcarver Steiner, looks at the strange life of Swiss carpenter-cum-ski jumper Walter Steiner, whose sporting prowess sees him entering the domain of the unnatural, soaring with the freedom and grace of a bird but with the spectre of death constantly looming over his shoulder. 2005's Grizzly Man, one of Herzog's late period popular successes, chronicled the final days of one Timothy Treadwell, a lone-gun conservationist who believed that he had made significant psychological inroads with the brown bears that roamed the Alaskan planes. Both films present men who bite their thumb at the awesomeness of nature, one yielding spectacular, poetic results, the other with the most tragic result imaginable.

6. Fitzcarraldo (1982)

If fate conspires that you're only able to watch one Werner Herzog film in your lifetime, probably best to make it 1982's operatic downstream fantasia, Fitzcarraldo, a film whose own logistically tortuous production perfectly mirrored the designs of its fanatical lead character. Donning a white linen suit for the long haul, Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, AKA Fitzcarraldo (Klaus Kinski) packs up his gramophone and decides to take a steam ship down some of the most treacherous stretches of the Amazon with a view to bringing opera to the as-yet-uncivilised tribes of the deepest South American jungles. Although operating as a withering metaphor for extreme cultural subjugation, the film also works as an affirmative, yes-we-can odyssey which stands as a physical testament to the idea that even the most absurd folly can be achieved if you've got the mind and moxie to pull it off.

5. The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser (1974)

In which a foundling plays a foundling. Boasting the inimitable acting talents – actually, let's call it "otherworldly presence" – of Bruno S, Herzog's 1974 drama is based on original manuscripts about the short life of the eponymous Kaspur Hauser, a boy who was discovered at the age of 17 and had been deprived of all human interaction. We follow his journey from medical curio to ramshackle demigod and Barnam-esque toast of high society as no-one can quite seem to fathom exactly where he came from and where he could possibly go. What's more, Herzog surreptitiously pushes his indifference of nature thesis by suggesting that Hauser may have had more of a fighting chance at life if he'd remained locked up in that dark basement with only a toy rocking horse for company.

4. Stroszek (1977)

Thematically, you'd be hard not to chalk up Werner Herzog as a textbook pessimist. With his always-prying camera and a restless sense of inquisitiveness, he has an uncanny ability for locating the poetic and the profane in even the ugliest enigmas of the universe. Stroszek is a film about the universal language of suffering, in which an itinerant German drunkard (Bruno S) decides to up sticks with his old pal and a prostitute and seek his fortune in the glorylands of Wisconsin. While Herzog takes great glee in foregrounding some of the more laughable traits of and traditions of American midwest culture, this film – much like Kaspur Hauser – is about the ultimate unknowability of our fellow humans and the danger in thinking that society will benignly carry even the most lowly on its feathered wings. Stroszek also riffs on the subject of his short comic documentary, How Much Wood Does A Woodchuck Chuck?, about competitive cattle auctioneers who are able talk at speeds at which their words become inaudible to all but the most trained ear.

3. Fata Morgana (1971) / Lessons Of Darkness (1992) 

This extraordinary pair of experimental documentaries attempt to (and succeed in!) supplanting classically-rooted fictional narrations over images of contemporary global devastation. 1971's Fata Morgana (translation: Mirage) offers a compendium of imagery from civilisations on the outer-fringes of the Sahara desert. It's a film about humanity's flotsam and jetsam, mysteriously trapped in their entirely inhospitable climes but – like a logic-defying desert lizard – somehow eking out an existence. The masterful Lessons Of Darkness is perhaps Herzog's most surreal film to date – not that what the director photographs is particularly out of the ordinary, more in the way it's contextualised. Helicopters swoop ominously over the oil fields of Kuwait circa 1991, and later, men aim water cannons at gigantic fire sculptures while trying to tame the Earth's black bounty. It's presented a science fiction film, and these breathtaking images could indeed have been beamed in from another galaxy. Yet, the film is also a humane crie de coeur, presenting men to stand beside the Tim Treadwells and Walter Steiners and who chose to take the most cavalier attitude towards death imaginable.

2. Aguirre, The Wrath Of God (1972)

On any other day of the week, this German New Wave classic would have been number one with a bullet. And maybe think of this as a joint number one, as it's truly a cinematic experience like no other. Klaus Kinski is haunting-beyond-words as Don Aguirre, a 16th century explorer who is placed as second banana in an advanced party to travel down the Amazon via a raft, locate the mysterious golden city of El Dorado, then come back and collect everyone else so that they can create a new, perfect civilisation. Perhaps the ultimate expression of man's futility against nature, as the increasingly bedraggled crew chose to circumnavigate the rules of Spanish society to form their own primal system of law, the film is about monomania, about staring into the black abyss of life and thinking you can see a flicking light in the deep, all-cloaking darkness. Its opening shot, of the trail party tamping through the clouds along a precipitous mountain pass (quite literally descending from heaven), remains a sight to behold, while regular Herzog collaborators, Popol Vuh, supply the fittingly psychedelic soundtrack to all the madness.

1. Nosferatu The Vampyre (1979)

A remake/update of FW Murnau's silent, gothic classic, Nosferatu The Vampyre arguably stands as Herzog's most perfect cinematic achievement, a film which intertwines the fantastical mechanics of a vintage horror fable with modern notions of sexual longing, widespread disease and the hazards of a society lorded over by men. Bruno Ganz plays Jonathan Harker, the gallant keeper to lace-clad damsel, Lucy (Isabelle Adjani). He wants to buy her a bigger house, and is told of a castle in Transylvania which may fit the bill. Ignoring a veritable torrent of deathly harbingers, he travels through the night until he arrives at Castle Dracula. His sad-eyed and fang'd host is played by Klaus Kinski (in what must be one of his most delicately restrained yet intense performances) and it's not long before he's sating Dracula's eternal lust for human blood. Nosferatu is Herzog's twisted idea of a love story, and perhaps what makes it so miraculous is the way he is totally sincere in presenting the erotic dimension of Dracula's quest (culminating in Herzog's greatest single shot where Dracula tentatively ravishes Lucy in her quarters), while simultaneously depicting the horrendous fall-out that this doomed love-triangle has caused to the town at large.

Werner Herzog plays at London's BFI Southbank throughout June and July.

Aguirre, The Wrath Of God opens at BFI Southbank and cinemas nationwide on June 7

The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser opens at BFI Southbank and cinemas nationwide on July 5]]> Mon, 03 Jun 2013 04:24:24 GMT David Jenkins Ten Best: Werner Herzog Ten crackpot classics from the German maverick who is the subject of a two-month BFI retrospective.