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Not kidding around: competitors in The Hunger Games Here's some advice: stay alive. So advises a key character in  The Hunger Games, the first film version of the Suzanne Collins books. Like most fantasy fiction set in a dystopian future, everything is meant to reflect the present. Consider the bizarre ritual of The Reaping where, every year, 24 kids from 12 North American districts are chosen at random to fight to the death on reality TV. Is this a comment about growing up? Is it meant to be a comment on the process of going to war? About the age of reality TV? And what do we make of the weird disparities of wealth in this fantasy future, where one half of the population seems to live in some kind of Rococo world inspired by the punk wigs of Amadeus , pink and blue cotton candy and Nikki Minaj? They seem to enjoy the ritual of The Reaping and its violence, not unlike Romans enjoying the gladiator pits or the Spanish bull-fighting. The movie's star is the talented Jennifer Lawr...

Antonio Banderas in The Skin I Live In This is the creepiest Almodovar film yet, and that's saying something for the great Spanish director. La Piel Que Habito is an uneasy blend of suspense/thriller and melodrama. To describe the plot is to rob the film of part of its considerable power. That said, the movie follows a crazed plastic surgeon (Antonio Banderas in the performance of his career) and his experiments on a woman he keeps captive at his home. From the start, an overwhelming sense of mystery intrigues each scene. Slowly, bit by bit, Almodovar lays down plot pieces of a complex puzzle which coils into a frenzy of sex, violence, gore and murder. The film falters and lags, however, in its middle section, especially after Almodovar deploys the device of the expository conversation to reveal crucial plot points. Also, the film sometimes lacks the flair we expect from Almodovar. It's as though the weirdness overwhelms key plot sequences which, in an Almodovar film, normally...

TT Film Festival 2011 There is a lot happening in Storm Saulter's Better Mus' Come . I found myself no longer grasping for plot, but rather searching for a space beyond the narrative and between the images. This is a bold kind of film with a lot of energy, stunning images and unforgettable moments. The film is set in Kingston, Jamaica, in the late 1970s as gangs war. It would be easy to explain the gang warfare at the heart of events at the film by blaming politics, but there are other forces in operation as well: economic, social, cultural and even in terms of gender. The film makes no didactic points about governance but it places human relationships at its core. Some of it is heavy-handed and at times I yearned for a more simply edited story. But at the end, it was a moving treatment of a seldom depicted moment in Caribbean history. ***/4 I have never forgotten The Warrior since I first saw it in 2003. And in particular I will never forget the moment when we see the warrior ...

TT Film Festival 2011:  Hit Me With Music  ( 74 mins, Directed by Miquel Galofre) Here is a film which understands all sides of its subject matter, dancehall. Miquel Galofre's sharp documentary examines how dance becomes a mode of expression, a realm of violence and, for some, an act of redemption. We eat, sleep, dream dance, one dancer remarks. In Hit Me With Music , this becomes poignantly true. The film, screening at the TT Film Festival makes keen social observations without coming to a didactic conclusion. It is an open, breathing, living thing that reveals its director's understanding and compassion for humanity. This is one the best films of 2011 and continues a winning streak for Galofre whose last film was Why Do Jamaicans Run So Fast? Here   is a director of great sensitivity whose films play like odes to the people who inhabit them. ***** SCREENS ON SATURDAY, 7pm, MOVIETOWNE Miquel Galofre

FILM REVIEW:  Dark Tales From Paradise THE CHALLENGES of making a competent film locally cannot be underestimated. Film-makers may have problems with technical issues, with funding and with accessing markets, even their own. Additionally, in a country where cinema is tied to notions of watching other societies on screen (our idea of “film” is tied to the US and European fare which is sold to us), seeing ourselves depicted on-screen, and inevitably simplified, for the purpose of “entertainment” can trigger complex reactions.  But these are all challenges which a group of three film-makers have embraced with some boldness. The tag-line for  Dark Tales from Paradise , which screened this month at the Harvard Club St James at a TT Entertainment Company/ TT Film Company event, is “3 Dark Tales, 2 Beautiful Islands, 1 Kind of Film”. It is a provocative series of short films, assembled together in one feature “grind-house” style. In Ryan C Khan’s ‘Midnight Affair’, an American s...

Mia Wasikowska in Jane Eyre THE LATEST film version of Charlotte Bronte's novel understands, perhaps more than those that have come before it, that the book's melancholic gothicism goes hand in hand with its eroticism. From the very opening of the film, there is an overwhelming sense of the more sensational aspects of Bronte's novel which is famous for defying genres and for hiding different strands of critique within its tightly wrought Yorkshire coils. Mia Wasikowska is the best Jane on film (there have been many fine renditions, including those by Samantha Morton (1997) and Charlotte Gainesbourg (1996)). She understands Jane's deeper conflict and temptations, as well as her purity, integrity and naivety. As Rochester, Michael Fassbender never quite manages to escape Orson Welles' shadow (1943) but he brings a sense of the scoundrel that is at the heart of a character who must be attractive, yet, in some ways, repulsive. Plus, he's easy on the eyes. Unlike pre...

FILM REVIEW : X-Men: First Class *** James McAvoy and the great Michael Fassbender in Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: Origins X-Men purists scoff when I say I enjoyed X-Men Origins: Wolverine . Apparently the first few films in the franchise were more faithful to the spirit of the X-Men (though there are question marks over Halle Berry’s infamously bad wig in the first film). So fans everywhere should be relieved to learn that the latest reboot of the franchise, X-Men: First Class , is not bad and is even at moments intensely enjoyable. The film is an interesting combination of the buddy/bromance genre that Judd Apatow and company have made de rigueur in Hollywood in recent years (witness The Green Hornet , Batman and Robin ) and, well, X-Men comic book stuff. We get a lot of the background facts that established the ground-rules in the later movies and learn the back stories of the major characters: we find out how Professor X ends up in a wheelchair, what turns Magneto ‘bad’ (though t...

1. Pedro Almodovar's The Skin I Live In It's a bad title (reads better in Spanish: La Piel que Habito ) but Almodovar has been on a winning streak for the last decade starting with Habla Con Ella . A string of films: Bad Education , Volver and Broken Embraces have cemented his technical proficiency. Of these films, Bad Education remains my personal favorite with its particularly dark humour, kinkiness and treatment of a deeply taboo subject. The film resembles something of a personal fetish and a prayer; the tone is one of a hidden secret which the director is seeking to set free amidst a puzzle of plot devices. Unforgettable. Volver was a perfect film; perhaps a little too perfect. Broken Embraces was a stylistic tour de force that lacked something of the edge of the best Almodovar. The subject matter of The Skin I Live In (a plastic surgeon who keeps his wife prisoner) seems like the perfect antidote. 2. Terrance Malick's The Tree of Life I enjoyed Malick's The N...

The Kids Are All Right has a cool title. All right  as in a concession to the fact that children come first and are always right? All right as in they turned out okay? All right as in all from the right wing, conservative camp? Lisa Cholodenko's film is a gently humourous melodrama that is something of a political statement without overtly being one. It's something of a miracle that this small film got nominated for Best Picture. Catherine Shoard of the UK Guardian is convinced the film has not a chance in hell ( SEE this ) of winning, though. The movie is great because, finally, it's a gay film in which nobody dies. This is a daring feat in itself (consider Philadelphia : Tom Hanks dies of AIDS after listening to opera with Denzil Washington; Brokeback Mountain : Jake Gyllenhaal is murdered in the desert leaving Heath Ledger to sniff Jake's bloody shirt to get high; Kiss of the Spider Woman : John Hurt gets killed after going Latino in prison, Milk : Sean Penn finall...

True Grit is a better movie than you expect it to be. And it's truly great. It's not a remake but rather a reboot. A second adaptation of a 1968  bildungsroman by Charles Portis. At first blush, this is not material you expect to be a right fit for the Cohen brothers ( No Country for Old Men , Fargo ). There's Jeff Bridges in an eye-patch-wearing role first taken up by John Wayne. Bridges does not play Wayne here. He's Jeff Bridges playing Rooster Cogburn, a boozy hired vigilante with an apparent soft spot for little girls. Also with a soft spot for little girls is Matt Damon, playing LaBoeuf, who, with Cogburn, hunt down the murderer of Hailee Steinfeld's dad. There are enough Freudian impulses going on here to easily take over what could have been a simple wild wild American west movie. Instead, the Cohen brothers go for edge, for character, beauty, intensity and, ultimately, the bittersweet and sublime. It's like No Country for Old Men but with spanking! U...

Black Swan is a cruel and terrifying film. It plumbs the depths of one character’s fears and insecurities and makes us reflect on our own. It is not at all concerned with ballet, but rather the study of a character who achieves tragic proportions. And as with all tragedy, it is built upon one character’s fatal flaw. “The only thing in your way is you,” the artistic director of a New York ballet company tells Nina (Natalie Portman). The artistic director is Thomas Leroy (played Vincent Cassel) and he issues this advice at a crucial point in the film. One of the strongest aspects of Black Swan is how it is not about the world of dance, even though it is anchored in it. To say that it is filled with dance-movie clichés is to miss the point. Here is a thriller that is more Rosemary’s Baby and Repulsion rather than The Red Shoes . The film is almost certainly set in Nina’s mind as she pirouettes to a breaking point that is possibly physiological or psychological—or even both. The plot f...

Intoxicating song which comes at a crucial moment of Almodovar's last film, Broken Embraces , starring Penelope Cruz. The film itself is standard Almodovar: dark, self-reflexive, profound and hilarious. It is, like all Almodovar films, essentially a soap opera with a plot so effortlessly convoluted and full of secrets that it cannot be summarised. This time, though, it lacks the edge and genuine complexity of some of the Spanish director's earlier work like Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Bad Education and Talk to Her . But it is still unforgettable.

It's good. Thank goodness. And the fact that it ends mid-way through the action is a huge plus, avoiding all that sentimental wrapping-up that often accompanies the denouements of the prior films. If you have not read the Harry Potter books, you may at some points have NO IDEA what is going on. But this does not stop any of the fun. I sometimes found certain lapses of logic and then I snapped out of it: after all, it's a film about a bloody boy wizard flying around the place on a broomstick. HELLO! The acting in this film is also up a notch, the characters have matured a bit, though they remain stockish. The use of landscape in this film was incredible and, for the first time in a Potter film, I found the special effects completely convincing. Not spoiling things too much I will say this: like in the last film, a major character dies. Be prepared for tears. ALL IN ALL: **** 

(WARNING REVIEW HAS SPOILERS) I disagree with Roger Ebert who claims this is one of the best films of the year. My favorite films this year, thus far, are: Eyes Wide Open , Inception , The Social Network, The Ghost Writer and Stone . The American simply does not make the cut. It is not suspenseful and is rather slow-burning in a bad, predictable way. George Clooney is dreary in a dreary film with no life. I guess this mirrors the central character's dilemna, but alas, the film replicates this far too effectively. We sit and watch for minutes and minutes as nothing really happens, and then he dies at the end (or kinda) as he drives towards a woman he likes. People in the cinema walked out constantly. Sheesh. It's like the James Bond film when he gets married and then the wife dies. Cept this time its the man, not the woman, that goes down in the name of love. Rating: ** From the best film of the year, Eyes Wide Open . WATCH trailer here .

  An artificial face, for an offensively artificial character, in an offensively artificial movie . How dare the makers of For Coloured Girls bring Nina Simone into their stinkie kankatang? Tyler Perry has hit rock bottom here with this offensive crap. Here are the reasons why: 1. I know it's based on the 1975 "choreopoem" For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange, but since when have we reverted to the practice of calling black people "coloured"? 2. Nothing in this film is inherently unique to black people. Perry's adaptation has turned something that might work on stage into something quite offensive. In fact, on screen, it all comes across as a re-reinforcement of black stereotypes: black preacher woman, black slutty woman, black bitter woman, black indie woman, black abusive husband, black virile rapist man, black criminals...and on and on, with dialogue that--when it veers from the original poetry of the...

Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Timberlake  in David Fincher's  The Social Network I first heard about Facebook at university, around 2004/2005. At the time, I was studying at King's College, London. Everybody at King's was on Facebook. Like for most universities, there was a special category for us on the website: our own network.  But one day in class there was a heated debate going on about this new rival to Hi5 (you remember that other social networking site that was so hot before Facebook?) In the middle of a class on moral philosophy, fellow student Rob passionately argued that the whole idea of Facebook was premised around elitism and exclusivity. At the time, I remember thinking, "gee what's Rob going on and on about? It's just a website! Relax bro! Sheesh."  Rob then segued into further arguments about capitalistic society and Weber's iron cage. When I then spent a year in Belgium at one of the oldest universities in Europe, Facebook became an inva...

"It starts with the image of a woman’s eyes. Then, slowly, dancing plumes of white and pink smoke. Then the woman again, dancing. An opening title tells us the history of the indentured East Indians who came to Trinidad in the nineteenth century. Two narrators — one a young Indo-Trinidadian woman, the other an older man — use sometimes rhyming verse to weave the central conflict that is the subject matter of Coolie Pink and Green: a conflict left unresolved at the end of this poetic short film by the Trinidadian scholar Patricia Mohammed..." READ the full review at the Caribbean Review of Books' special section on Caribbean film here . FIND out more at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival blog here .

5 stars Does it have a flaw? Possibly. Probably more than one. But you don't really care by the time you've come out of the cinema. Because you have been blown away. One of the great things about Christopher Nolan's film is how it so convincingly fuses genres and then wraps itself around the audience like a python: crushing you in a tight coil. The plot is at once classic film noir meets sci-fi meets spy thriller/action flick. The characters are stock, but unforgettable and attractive. The experience, beneath all its hysterical thrills, is profound: it is like an extended meditation on a dream, a startling metaphor for film-making and a deep question about life. You could read a summary of the plot, but that's not going to help. That said, it is clear that the film is about people stealing ideas by entering dreams. And with that, the intriguing possibility of doing the inverse: implanting ideas to attain certain objectives. Is this germ not itself a metaphor for the cin...

Leonardo DiCaprio suffers from one hell of a migraine  The buried subject of Martin Scorcese's Shutter Island is more surprising than the film's final twist. While any viewer is likely to see the closing 10 minutes coming from the start of the movie, she is not likely, however, to have expected Scorcese's brilliant (and oblique) examination of World War II. True, Scorcese's source material, a novel of the same name penned by Denis Lahane (author of Mystic River) does deal with the aftermath of the war. But in this film, the director of Taxi Driver  and The Departed  is doing far more than being faithful to his source material. In 1954, U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio in his best film performance to date) is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Boston's infamous Shutter Island Ashecliffe Hospital. With his partner Chuck (the undervalued Mark Ruffalo), he sets off to the island and arrives to find one hell of a creepy institution. ...

By Lesedi Tidd * PLEASURE blogger “Accept with simplicity everything that happens to you” The Coen Bros. are weird. Not David Lynch weird, but still weird. It’s as if they approach their projects with a self-serving ambivalence which, more often than not, manages to appeal to the (or rather, ‘an’) audience.  A Serious Man  seems to exemplify that very idea. For an everyday audience the movie may be inaccessible; it is ambitious in the way that Coen Bros. jaunts often are (i.e. somewhat), but the darkly intelligent and absurdist humour which holds the film together is bound to go over the heads of the average moviegoer. This isn’t by any means a bad thing, as it draws on a twisted Woody Allen-esque pastiche of Jewish wit and neuroticism, but it’s bound to present a hurdle to some viewers and, at times, even utterly alienate the audience. I suppose however, that it’s par for the course when the movie is supposed to be a modernized reinterpretation of the Book of Job. It begins w...