Leave it on the Floor review

"Work those pleats!" is a rather inconsequential line, but said by the right person can in fact become one of the greatest lines in cinema. Come on girls! The 80s are retro and Voguing is back in fashion! To hell with Madonna prancing around on tour like a 50 year old wannabe, Voguing began its life in the Drag Balls in Harlem and was created and pioneered by the gay African American community waay before Madonna made it famous. What Leave it on the Floor offers is a fantastical journey into a world we bet most of you didn't even know existed. Get your glitter on and work your "realness" and come with us down the rabbit hole.

In 1990 filmmaker Jenny Livingston made Paris is Burning, the first documentary which provided an in-depth look into 80s Harlem ball culture. In 2011 director Sheldon Larry and Glenn Gaylord (for real) made the all-singing, all-dancing, all-spandex version. Leave it on the Floor, takes its message from Paris is Burning and builds on it creating a world of drag queens, dancing, song and a multitude of costumes even Lady Gaga would be proud of. Expect bitchiness, the snappiest of snappy one liners and a love story which sadly feels a bit like it was just added in at the last minute.

Ball culture has saved the lives of many people over the years. Runaways who are not accepted in their own communities and who have often suffered violence and abuse for being gay, transsexual and transgender are accepted into a world where they finally can feel like they belong. This is the same for Brad (Sykes) who is kicked out of home by his mother for being gay and left to fend for himself on the streets of downtown L.A. A chance encounter one night with drag ball performer Carter (Myers) leads Brad into the underground world where he feels for the first time that he is surrounded by people who he can be himself with. In order to fit in however you most belong to a House who you perform and live with and he is introduced to the head of the House of Eminence, Queef Latina (Barbie-Q), who sadly does not trust him. She tells Brad that in order to earn a place in her house he must prove himself first but Brad makes a fatal error which not only jeopardises his only chance at belonging, but a meaningful relationship with Carter too.

For a musical that was made on an extremely small budget, Leave it on the Floor is actually very impressive. The dance routines are fantastic and the music (which was arranged by Beyonce’s creative director) is fun, especially the up-tempo songs “Knock the Motherfuckers Down” and “Justin’s (Timberlake) gonna call.” Match this with the witty one liners and you almost have an award winning creation. Almost. Humour is weaved in throughout the film from character’s names (Queef Latina – amazing – and the impossibly pregnant transsexual Eppie Dural) right through to all of the bitchy looks and “mmmm hmmms” that can only be pulled off if you are gay and fierce. The gayest and fiercest of them all (Paris so should have had THAT on his golden apple) is the catty, man and trophy stealing Princess Eminence (Evelyn) who tries to steal Brad’s attentions away from Carter. It is Evelyn’s character that is the driving force keeping the action flowing and our interest hooked. Sadly, Brad is a bit of a weak lead, who is too focused on his problems in life and potential suicide whilst also being irritatingly blind to what is around him. But boy, can he dance. Seriously, he makes a gazelle look like a fat bloke in front of the telly.

Perhaps the biggest problem with this film sadly, is that it does not go far enough emotionally and this is why it is almost an award winning achievement. Yes there are eleven original songs (I honestly can only remember about 6 of them) but it seems that too much time was spent on the musical aspect and not the central love triangle story or more importantly, the reasons why gay African Americans have such a difficult life striving for acceptance. Whereas similar musicals like Rent manage to make the social aspect apparent throughout, Leave it on the Floor glosses over it and decides to stick a tragic car crash into the plot when really it should have been something more relevant like a gang attack or domestic abuse to show the plight of the characters more. The script is rather patchy in places and the character relationships feel a bit contrived, nevertheless this fails to put too much of a damper on all of the glitz and you leave knowing what the message is – accept everyone for who they are. Respect ladies! I loved being allowed entry into your magical, mad world full of bitchy queens. If you support any aspect of the LGBT movement then this is one for you.

Dark Mirror DVD Review

Are you in the mood for a horror film? Then stay away from this turkey. If you ever thought it was impossible to make a horror with zero scares in it then think again. Dark Mirror manages to be one of the most tedious films ever made, which is strange as the idea behind the story is tried and tested and even features in old children's show Are You Afraid of the Dark. The children's version however is far scarier than this could ever be and better acted too. If you had a camera that killed whoever you took a photo of, what would you do? I'd find the director of Dark Mirror and pap the crap out of him...

There is an old, aboriginal belief (as we know well from Zoolander), that having your photograph taken actually steals a little bit of your soul each time. Watching Dark Mirror felt like my soul was being wrenched out out of my eyeballs. The director Pablo Proenza decided to break with horror conventions by showing us all of the scares in this film in broad daylight or in one of the main characters’ camera flashes, which was a bold move and by all accounts a totally stupid one as it doesn’t work. Some rules are there to be broken, and some really, really are not.

The film is about photographer Debbie (Vidal) who is looking for a new house in Southern California with her husband who has landed a cushy job there. After seeing many houses and generally being a mardy cow about all of them, Debbie, her husband and irritating child find a house that used to belong to an artist who disappeared one day without a trace. Debbie loves the sultry and clearly artificial light that shines in through the windows in the house and decides that they will move in. One evening in the bathroom Debbie takes a photo into two opposing mirrors which reflect endlessly into each other (remember how cool those were when you were like, eight?) and unleashes a hooded stalker into this dimension (who resembles a chav hanging around Croydon). Also the camera Debbie used to take the mirror picture begins to kill everyone she photographs. Cue the ‘is she going mad or is the house haunted’ parts of the script and wait until her son decides to take a photo of himself and her husband forcing Debbie to figure out what is going on once and for all.

It is all pretty predictable stuff and not in the slightest bit frightening, well apart from the performances which are truly terrifying. It was also incredibly light (no pun intended) on ‘so bad it is funny’ moments with only one scene making me burst into laughter when Debbie and her mother (Ontiveros) between them somehow seem to know enough off hand information about the Japanese art of trapping spirits in glass they could write a thesis on it. Perhaps the most irritating though is Debbie’s son whose name I didn’t even bother remembering. At one moment nameless child gets locked in the bathroom and has the most ridiculous and over the top freak out in cinema history. To be fair, it looks like the evil chav monster is in there with him but he doesn’t know that. The ungrateful little brat is then released and has no kind word to say to his mother who later has to calm him down AGAIN when he thinks there is something scary in the chimney. (There once again isn’t).

Other irritating things about this film? The main character’s nails are far too polished and perfect to be a photographer. I don’t know why this bugged me but it did, and the dialogue is ridiculously clunky. There is also a scene (not to give away too much but really, why would you want to watch this film) where a character manages to crawl around the house for about an hour with an eight inch knife stuck into her abdomen. Ok, it’s Debbie. Sue me. (You see it in the very opening of this film anyway). This film manages to be lacklustre from start to finish with no explanation about why any of this is happening. If you want to have a really boring evening then by all means, buy this film. But don’t come crying to me afterwards saying I didn’t warn you…

The Tunnel DVD review

Cripes! It looks like the Australian government is trying to cover up a bonzer story! Grab your camera and your torch and let's head down into some dank tunnels to investigate...and die... That is the premise behind this latest offering to the found footage genre by Australian filmmaker Carlos Ledesma. Found footage? Straight to DVD? Now I know what you are all thinking but stop it right now, as this is actually quite a good film. The acting is strong and the locations are brilliant. Is it groundbreaking cinema? No. But hey, two out of three ain't bad.

Before getting stuck into the gritty details of the plot, it might be best to tell you something about the back story to this film first. No, it isn’t ‘based on real events’ or any nonsense like that, The Tunnel was made by a company called the 135k Project and the money to create it was raised by private investors and film fans who helped get the filmmakers to their AUS$135,000 target. Most interestingly of all is that after the film’s completion it was released online for free. This really is a movie made purely for the telling of the story, not just a celluloid pile of shite churned out to make the producers rich, like similar horror films Creep and Chernobyl Diaries.

The difference between The Tunnel and every other low budget film of this ilk is that they at least try to do something different with the format. The Tunnel is essentially a horror mockumentary, complete with interviews from the survivors (so you kind of know who lives and who doesn’t from the start) and news footage which tells the story of a team of investigative journalists, as they try to uncover why the government in New South Wales has abandoned plans to unearth water supplies trapped underground in tunnels beneath Sydney. The team, lead by female reporter with something to prove Natasha (Deliá), also discover that homeless people who live in the tunnels under the city are going missing and that the government are trying to cover these stories up. After being refused permission to film in the tunnels, the team break in one night and soon realise that in the depths beneath Sydney, they are not the only ones there, and something much better suited to the dark conditions is hunting them down.

The way that this film is structured is quite interesting. Using ‘real’ news footage and survivor interviews to frame the back story we follow how the team began to sniff out the history of the tunnels. They find footage of attacks on YouTube and even manage to track down a homeless man who briefly lived in the tunnels and who begins to try and tell the story of what happened to him and why all of his friends are missing, before spazzing out and quivering in the corner of the room. All of this just screams ‘don’t go in the tunnels, you idiots’, but being horror movie characters they of course pay little attention. This is where the film has its biggest problem. The character stories are just folded in with the rest of the action, and it takes at least forty minutes before anything actually happens inside the tunnels. The beginning is spent developing the reason for them to go in and we only get snippets of character stories, like the fact that Natasha will be fired if she screws up on another news story and that there is already a certain amount of dissent amongst the crew, which is a real shame as if the director had managed to create slightly better characters this would have been a real triumph of a film.

The way that the tension is developed throughout the film is electric. Once the team enters the darkness with only the top light on their camera and a few torches (which obviously go missing unexpectedly) things really get ramped up and every time the camera does a sweep of the tunnels I was convinced that we were going to see some hideous creature, which does not happen for a very long time. Whilst showing your monster is never too good an idea, I was really hoping that, like The Descent, we would occasionally see a snippet of something. Alas with the small budget, the creature is not as frightening as it could be but writers do a good job of building suspense rather than relying on cheap tricks to scare their audience.

Whilst the acting is good, (in particular first time actor and real life camera man, Steve Davies), it is the tunnels themselves which are the real winners. Dark, claustrophobic and endlessly eerie, the director really goes to town in them creating a genuinely scary setting for his film. It is as much the tunnels which begin to get to the TV crew trapped there as the creature and when they begin turning on each other, it feels very genuine. Although there are some scary moments and the tension keeps you hooked throughout, this film is rather flat in places (especially the beginning) and falls into the irritating found footage pothole of never explaining what is actually going on. Despite this, I quite enjoyed The Tunnel and commend the makers on their achievement. Oren Peli you could learn a thing or two from these guys.

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

"Armageddon outta here" is a joke that no one says in Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. But someone should have, because that line is much funnier than anything else uttered in this supposed Rom-Com, which is really a rather telling sign. Lorene Scafaria's directorial debut feels rather forced and is incredibly irritating which is a shame as the premise is so promising. The good things? Keira Knightley's life is threatened by a big rock. The down side? She is taking us all with her. Bitch.

What would you do if you only had 21 days to live before the Earth is destroyed? Would you party hard and do a lot of illegal things? Would you hop on the next plane to somewhere you have always wanted to visit, or perhaps just hunker on down at home andfinally watch Citizen Kane? Hopefully what you wouldn’t do is mope about sadly musing on your dull, pathetic life with Keira Knightley. Watching Seeking a Friend for the End of the World almost made me wish the Armageddon would come sooner, just so I wouldn’t have to look at Knightly and Carell kiss anymore. Eurgh.

The film opens with the news that the latest attempts to destroy a meteorite hell bent for Earth have failed and the world is doomed to be destroyed in 21 day’s time. Upon hearing this, Dodge (Carell)’s wife, Linda (played by Steve Carell’s actual wife) makes a break for it and runs away from her tedious husband. Dodge continues on with his daily life whilst the world around him begins to rapidly fall apart and manages to acquire a little dog. One day Dodge bumps into irritatingly alternative, Penny (Knightley) who reveals that she has been holding onto his mail for the last few months (isn’t that a federal offence?) and discovers that his first sweetheart wrote him a letter a while ago saying that she still loves him. Things soon get a bit ‘London Rioty’ in the city and so Penny and Dodge embark on a road trip together to find Dodge’s long lost love and get Penny on a plane back to England to see her family one last time before everyone in the world dies.

I know it is odd to say this giving the film’s subject matter, but I was really expecting a few more laughs to be present. What you end up with instead is a lukewarm version of Lars von Trier’s Melancholia. The film begins with all of the right intentions but fails miserably with its two terrible lead characters who are so lifeless one would be forgiven for thinking they had already been hit by a meteor. At a dinner party one evening, Dodge refuses to join in with the ‘it’s the end of the world’ drinking, choosing instead to sit alone in a bathroom. Are you starting to see why this film was so hard to warm to? His behaviour is so far from what any normal human being would do that it makes it virtually impossible to identify with him. Whilst one could argue that he is merely sticking to his morals, others would say WHO CARES? Get your freak on Dodge and try having some fun, something that he clearly has not had much of in his life.

The greatest thing about this film, and I NEVER thought I would ever say this, is Adam Brody, who at one point uses Keira Knightley…as a human shield! Way to go, Brody! Sadly his attempt does not work and he is left out of the action pretty quickly by the ruthless and self-obsessed Penny. For all of her weed-smoking, record-listening ‘lovable’ quirks ultimately I was just staggered how director Scafaria thought she had written a likeable character when all she does is moan about how bad she has it in life. We are then expected to believe that over the space of a week that she and Dodge fall madly in love. Essentially the film is just a series of conversations over various tables in the Eastern Seaboard which does not make for the liveliest viewing experience.

Most annoyingly of all is that this film actually moved me. It wasn’t anything to do with the characters and their journey, but instead some of the small details of human life battling on with normal activities despite knowing that death is coming. Fathers continue to mow their lawns, mothers continue to have their yard sales, and each moment of getting to know each other is precious. Despite this, the film lacks the oomph and charisma needed to make it endearing and if the world is ever going to go out with a very large bang, rest easy in the knowledge that it will take Keira Knightley down too.

Bol Bachchan review

It is miserable and grey outside. There is also very little prospect of us having an Indian summer. This suggests that maybe you should head inside the cinema to go and see Bol Bachchan to combat both of the aforementioned problems. Well, maybe if you are really, really bored you should. But this film may make your boredom even worse. Beautiful locations, ridiculously pretty female leads and a few ok dance numbers fail to elevate this film to anything above blah.

Bollywoods are always a laugh. There are great songs, overly expressive faces and some hilariously translated subtitles. It is a real shame then that a film trying to be a comedy really did not manage to be all that funny. What begins as a very slickly edited, well shot and well acted farce slows down to a pace even a snail would find tedious. Whilst it is sumptuously beautiful and makes you want to book a ticket for the next plane out of the UK over to India, ultimately it fails to move.

The film (I think) is about Abbas Ali (Bachchan) and his sister, Sania (Thottumkal) who are in a legal battle with their cousins to keep living in the house their parents left them before they died. They lose the case however and realise that they are penniless. Their friend persuades Abbas and his sister to come to Ranakpur with him where he will ask his boss, the powerful Prithviraj (Devgan) to give a job to Abbas. One day in the village some stupid kid falls off a wall into a locked temple. In order to save the boy’s life Abbas has to smash off the temple lock. Unfortunately Prithviraj and his entourage turn up at this moment and asks who opened the temple door. Abbas’s friend lies and tells Prithviraj Abbas is called Abhishek Bachchan, as the village would be outraged if they discovered that a Muslim opened the doors to the temple. Prithviraj is impressed and gives him a job. The only problem is that Prithviraj hates liars. He unleashes a whole world of pain on liars. So what follows are a series of mad capped capers to ensure he never finds out the truth. This ultimately leads to Abbas having to invent an identical twin, gay brother with Bachchan having to act out both roles.

Confused? Boy, I really was. For about eighty percent of the film it is hard to follow just what the heck is going on because the powers that be decided that it would be a good idea not to subtitle the songs which seem to provide Hindi audiences with a lot of the important plot points. The other, perhaps bigger problem is that the film is two and a half hours long. At the beginning, the film zips along so fast you are in danger of having an epileptic fit and then decides to add in a million side plots, involving evil cousins, nuclear power plant plans and many Matrix esque fight scenes all of which have no importance whatsoever but are vaguely amusing. The film essentially is a parody of all other Bollywood action films, with overused dramatic music motifs to highlight “important” moments that at first starts out as quite funny but soon becomes insanely irritating.

The greatest thing about the film is the wonderful, all mighty Prithviraj who is perhaps the biggest bad ass that cinema has ever seen. He kicks baddies so hard out of his way that they fly through the air with the greatest of ease and at one point even manages to take out four people with a ladder in order to save his sister Radhika’s life. Go, you mustachioed burly dude! He is the Mrs Malaprop of his time and believes that he is the best at speaking English in the village, coming out with lines like “hard work is the keyhole of saxophone” which are vaguely amusing moments. The fact that half of the Hindi is interspersed with English kind of ruins the joke that he is really bad at speaking it, but heigh-ho. I went with it.

Then all of a sudden…there is an intermission!! What the fuck? What do they think they are? Gone with the Wind? This really was a shocker. The whole film really only needed to be ninety minutes long at most, but they manage to drag it out for what seems like forever destroying any dramatic tension and all of the humour. There are a few good fight scenes, not NEARLY enough dance sequences and some strange moments where I had no idea if one character was Prithviraj’s reincarnated sister or lover…

I really was looking forward to seeing this film but sadly, as Prithviraj would say, it really just was “not my cup of lassi”.

A Simple Life review

Ann Hui's glorious new film A Simple Life is based on a true story which is clearly close to the director's heart. The film is acted and shot so beautifully that you feel at times you could be watching real people in a documentary. Touching, charming and melancholy, it is an understated portrayal of deep loves and relationships that mean everything to us but go unspoken for so much of our lives.

We will all get old. That is just an inevitable fact of life that we all have to face. And with getting old also comes a whole host of other problems that affect our independence. What happens when your whole life has been about caring for others and you are no longer able to continue doing that? Life becomes somehow meaningless unless the people around you are able to adapt and create a new role for you in their busy lives.

This is exactly what happens in Ann Hui’s A Simple Life. Ah Tao (Ip) has been a servant to the same family in Hong Kong for sixty years since she was orphaned as a little girl. Over the decades most of the family has emigrated to the US and now only Roger (Lau) remains living and working in the city with Ah Tao looking after him and their cat. Roger is a busy man and works in the film industry as a producer, work that takes him away from Hong Kong on a regular basis. Returning from a trip one day, Roger finds Ah Tao has suffered from a stroke and has her rushed to hospital. Ah Tao decides that she wants to retire from serving and asks Roger to be put into a home. Soon the roles reverse and Roger has to care for Ah Tao whilst also learning how to fend for himself.

And that is pretty much the entire story. So simple indeed! But in fact it is so much more than that. The film opened to rapturous praise in Hong Kong and also internationally winning Deanie Ip the Venice International Film Festival award for Best Actress for what truly is the performance of a lifetime. Ip is immediately likable as the funny, caring and ultimately fragile Ah Tao and you genuinely fear for her wellbeing throughout the film. The cinematography highlights this fear fantastically, by suggesting and hinting at danger everywhere and you pray that everything will work out well for her. However Ann Hui is very careful not to let this happen and keeps the action one hundred percent believable, never once allowing the film to become overly sentimental as life itself rarely is. The old people’s home is a business, and the inhabitants have to try hard to forge friendships and carve out some kind of normal life for themselves in what little time they have left there. Whilst this may seem very foreign to us and although we consider that we take better care of our elderly population the film makes you question whether you really are doing all that you can to care for your own loved ones.

Hong Kong superstar Andy Lau, who is best known for his action roles in films such asHouse of Flying Daggers and the Infernal Affairs trilogy, delivers a composed and measured performance as the master Roger, showing us how one man’s world depends entirely on the health of someone else. Deanie Ip is in fact, Lau’s real godmother and the chemistry between them is incredible. Roger and Ah Tao know everything about each other and have fun reminiscing on the time they have shared together and you see how difficult it must be for someone like Ah Tao to share all of the family’s dearest memories but remain an outsider due to her place and the fact that she is not related to them.

As Ah Tao’s health deteriorates, Roger cares for her like she is his mother and essentially her role has been that of a matriarch for him as she has seen him grow up every day for forty years. Together they laugh about all of the potential lovers they had in their respective lives and Roger teases Ah Tao in a flirty, familiar way winding her up about the men she now lives with at the home and asking her why she never got married and moved away.

To balance out a lot of the sadness in the film are moments of humour and A Simple Lifehas some genuinely laugh out loud scenes showing us that jokes about bureaucracy, the way we perceive ourselves and the film making industry travel across all continents. There are a few drawbacks, the most major one being that although this film is about a simple life, it runs for nearly two hours which at times does feel overly long. However, it’s ultimately a joy to float along in Roger and Ah Tao’s charming, funny and very moving world.

Storage 24 review

The ubiquitous Noel Clarke is back once again with yet another Brit Flick. This time however he is steering clear of urban gang culture and trying his hand at sci-fi/horror instead. Noel, haven't you heard? If you can't do anything good then don't do anything at all! Here you go everyone, I saw Storage 24 so you don't have to.

How many possessions do you own? Enough to fill up whatever place you live in I guess. Perhaps the most shocking and unbelievable thing about low budget indie flick Storage 24is that we are somehow meant to believe that one couple has managed to acquire so much stuff over the space of a five year relationship that they need to hire a 24 hour storage container to hold it all. Wow. That’s a lot of crap. Pretty much like the film itself.

The film opens in a storage facility somewhere in London as a massive plane crash happens outside. But it is no ordinary crash, as we see military containers broken open and dotted nearby. Due to the crash, the security system inside the storage depot has been ruined and the doors sporadically keep locking. En route to said storage location are Charlie (Clarke) and Mark (O’Donoghue). Charlie has just been dumped by girlfriend of five years, Shelley (Campbell-Hughes) and they must begin the arduous task of dividing their belongings. Charlie and Mark finally get to the location and meet an engineer trying to get the doors to stay open, but who accidentally locks them all inside instead. Charlie and Mark bump into Shelley and friends Nikki (Haddock) and Chris (Jamie Thomas King) who had all intended not to be there when Charlie arrived. It is rather “tense” and “awkward”. Well, as tense and awkward as the acting will allow for by any rate, but soon the gang have other problems to deal with as it turns out that some evil creepy beastie is locked inside the facility with them and has a appetite for human body parts.

You can see where Noel Clarke’s inspirations have come from for this movie and perhaps he spent a bit too long inside the Tardis with David Tennant as essentially this is just an overly long episode of Dr. Who with a lot more Kensington Gore splattered in. The plot is lifted from Alien and the alien is lifted from Predator. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be french kissed by a Predator? Take it from me, once you have seen this film you really would not want to try it. To give the film some kind of credit, the blood effects and the alien are quite impressive for such a small budget production, however, as soon as the creature begins wandering about it loses a lot of its initial scare power and I was more disturbed by the crazy, old man who appears half way through the film brushing his teeth in his dressing gown. Seriously, this happens.

The biggest problem is that no one seems to know what the tone of the film is and the director (Roberts) gives us no indication whatsoever. Are we meant to be laughing at everything that was happening, or taking it as seriously as Noel Clarke appears to be? And when there are moments which were clearly intended to get a laugh they dropped flat (in particular when they strap a whole load of fireworks onto a mechanical toy dog). The film offers nothing new to the horror genre and the cast bravely hammer out their parts without any support from the script. It is also a bad sign when the action is interspersed with really tedious, lingering close ups on people’s eyes, bits of plastic, and what ever else happened to be lying around, almost as though there was nothing else in the script of worth to shoot.

Sadly this will just be another movie to assign to the “terrible British sci-fi/horror” shelves. I bet you are wondering if maybe a twist ending could have saved it? Well, it does have a twist…actually it is more like a fumble but by that point I was so bored I was counting all of the ceiling tiles in the cinema. Sorry Noel.