Archive for the ‘DIFF’ Category

Frank

Director: Lenny Abrahamson

Starring: Michael Fassbender, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Domhnall Gleeson. Scoot McNairy, Francois Civil, Tess Harper

Director Lenny Abrahamson’s quirky film Frank which premiered at the Durban International Film Festival examines the pressures of belonging to a rock band and the celebrity status attached to its lead singer. The fact that this lead singer Frank wears a giant false head for three quarters of the film is both alienating and annoying and serves its point about the underlying pressures of mounting celebrity facing a bands lead singer or frontman. Take Adam Levine of Maroon 5 or Harry Styles from One Direction for example. Except with these bands unlike Frank’s bands obscure name, at least the music is palatable, not to mention commercially viable.

Frank as a film was so bizarre and utterly random as the narrative follows Jon played by Domhnall Gleeson (Anna Karenina, Dredd, True Grit), son of Irish actor Brendan Gleeson, an aspiring songwriter who becomes the keyboardist and journeys with the band from a remote Irish location to the hippie South by South West music concert in Austin Texas. The band members are all clearly deranged and part of some grand lunatic fringe reinforced by the irrepressible Clara, wonderfully played by Maggie Gyllenhaal (Hysteria) and by the lead singer Frank played by Fassbender, which clearly begs the question what was he thinking after being attached to such prestigious films as 12 Years a Slave, Shame and Jane Eyre.

Although parts of the film are hilarious and very funny, other parts are equally irritating and stupid which just goes to show how Youtube got such a massive following so quickly. Post any ridiculous video online as a social media experiment and there will always be a plethora of bored American teenagers waiting to watch it on Youtube. Then maybe that is the point of this film.

Only towards the films end are explanations given as to why the lead singer is wearing this massive false head as seen in the poster after Jon tracks him down to his parent’s home in Bluff City, Kansas and Frank’s mother played by indie star Tess Harper explains the singers childhood trauma which lead to some deviant form of mental obsession.

Frank is well executed as a film about band members on the road, but too bizarre to be taken seriously and lacks the visual punch of Paolo Sorrento’s spectacularly weird road trip film This Must Be the Place. Viewers will differ in opinion regarding Frank, as there was much laughter coming from the cinema auditorium at a DIFF http://www.durbanfilmfest.co.za/ screening.

Director Lenny Abrahamson’s Frank will have a very limited appeal, not helped by the onscreen presence (or lack there of) of Gyllenhaal and Fassbender, whose chemistry together is pointlessly obliterated and nullified by a giant false head. Frank will definitely not be everyone’s cup of tea, but will have comic appeal for those that appreciate deadpan humour and the effortless blending of banal social media.

Cold Harbour

Director: Carey McKenzie

Starring: Tony Kgoroge, Deon Lotz, Fana Mokoena, Yu Nan

South African actor Deon Lotz first came to prominence in Oliver Schmidt’s award winning impressive film Skoonheid. The actor is now back starring in Cold Harbour a noir thriller about nefarious Perlemoen trading in Cape Town along with Tony Kgoroge (Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom) as conflicted detective Sizwe Miya and Fana Mokoena as the Cape gangster Specialist.

South African director Carey McKenzie film Cold Harbour which premiered at the Durban International Film Festival http://www.durbanfilmfest.co.za/ Should really take a leaf out of the more sophisticated 1985 Michael Cimino film The Year of the Dragon which dealt with the infiltration of Chinese Triads in New York.

It seems the Chinese have been painted as one of the bad guys along with a host of morally dubious characters in this ominously lit film Cold Harbour which in true film noir tradition there is no clear cut hero versus villain, especially in McKenzie’s uneven and contrived portrayal of the Cape Town crime world.

McKenzie’s version of Cape Town as depicted in Cold Harbour is another reason not to visit the mother city in winter as she paints the supposed design capital as a bleak and unsettling city with unfinished highways surrounded by the freezing and unforgiving Atlantic Ocean. The director does not even give the much celebrated Marina del Gama complex in Cape Town near Muizenberg a forgiving depiction, a place where Lotz’s character Venske resides.

Cold Harbour is an unevenly scripted and confusing crime drama with several characters muddling through an unforgiving landscape and not really coming to any cathartic release.

Instead it’s a mismatch of cultures and characters speaking a range of languages from English, Afrikaans, Xhosa and Chinese without the subtitles being removed once, so even when the characters spoke in South African English subtitles still remained on the screen? This must be to hopefully market Cold Harbour to American audiences who will surely not find any comfort in this thriller and reaffirm the international notion that South Africa is indeed a nation ravaged by crime, poverty and corruption.

As a film about illegal international Perlemoen trading, Cold Harbour had great potential but unfortunately got muddled in its film noir aspirations. Not recommended viewing.

Boyhood

Director: Richard Linklater
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette, Ellar Coltrane, Lorelei Linklater, Marco Perella, Jamie Howard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys-mbHXyWX4

Texan director Richard Linklater’s 12 year cinematic achievement, Boyhood comes to life in a 164 minute film which seamlessly blends the course of existence for Mason from aged 6 to aged 18 is both fascinating and compelling. The fact that the director used the same four actors to make up the quasi nuclear family is equally impressive.

Ellar Coltrane plays Mason, the central character in Boyhood along with the director’s daughter Lorelei Linklater who plays Mason’s on screen drama queen sister Samantha and Hollywood veteran actress Patricia Arquette as his struggling unpredictable mother along with Linklater favourite Ethan Hawke (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset) as Mason’s drifter musician father Mason Senior.

In that rambling talkative style which has become a trademark of Linklater’s films, Boyhood as seen at the Durban International Film Festival is shot all over the director’s home state of Texas from Houston to Austin and even rural parts of the state, as the journey from innocence to experience for Mason as he along with his sister is dragged by his mother to many step-families with a variety of equally unimpressive stepfathers from the cruel and vicious psychology lecturer to the Afghanistan war veteran.

As the children change schools as the mother moves around in search of a better life and career opportunities, cinema goers gradually see the development of the central character as he charts the difficult teenage years, while Linklater provides a fascinating socio-political commentary of American daily life, from the effect of foreign wars on the average population, to the financial crisis, to the usurping influence of technology on the children’s lives as they become teenagers.

The three sections of the film is separated by the family or one of the family members making road trips signifying a different phase of their average but equally interesting lives. The viewer follows Mason’s school years as he succumbs to peer pressure, discovers the mysteries of the opposite sex to eventually having his first sexual experience in his sisters college dorm room.

Despite the length of Boyhood, Richard Linklaters script remains pertinent and fascinating as he provides an insightful analysis of the cultural cornerstones of American 21^st century society from religion to guns to politics and even to the environment. Fans of Linklaters triptych, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight, will be in familiar territory and will surely acknowledge that this is the directors most significant and ambitious cinematic achievement especially because of his lack of any aging makeup or special effects, the mere fact that this film, Boyhood was imagined and conceived in real time makes it even more remarkable, one of the reasons that Richard Linklater won the Best Director prize at the 2014 Berlin Film Festival.

Patricia Arquette (True Romance) and Ethan Hawke are clearly competent actors to hold their own in such a cinematic canvas as are the two child leads with Ellar Coltrane’s nonchalance clearly perceived at every transformation of Mason’s character as he goes from childhood innocence to young adult experience. Boyhood is highly recommended art house viewing and a dynamic cinematic tribute to American socio-political commentary, while remaining a classic Richard Linklater masterpiece.

Cosmopolis

Director: David Cronenberg

Cast: Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Matthieu Amalric, Paul Giamatti, Samantha Morton, Sarah Gadon, Jay Baruchel

Published in 2003, American writer Don DeLillo’s philosophic diatribe on the randomness of contemporary American culture showcases a society on the brink of paranoia, valueless violence and dysfunctional oligarchs, Cosmopolis was originally praised by literary critics as a prediction of a truly unpredictable urbanized consumer society which thrives on wealth and more inherently lack of wisdom. Naturally the book is set in Manhattan, New York, the site of the 9/11 terror attacks on the Twin Towers and the heart of Wall Street, where corporate greed has run riot, a metropolitan pantheon of the perverse.

Cosmopolis focus on the young,  vain, egotistical and hypochondriac billionaire Eric Packer who trades in all the world’s fluctuating currencies from the comfort of his sleek, multifaceted stretch limousine. A vehicle, where he can have sex with his financial advisor, have his prostate examined while predicting the currencies in Asia, pour a vodka and unemotionally view the thronging masses rhythmically rioting on the Manhattan streets as they protest job losses, raising inflation and an impending economic meltdown. DeLillo’s post 9/11 novel, almost predicted with certainty the 2008 financial crisis of Wall Street rupturing the entire American Capitalist system as the collapse of the subprime mortgage lending schemes which crippled international banks and caused contagious economic havoc.

Enter Canadian director David Cronenberg (The Naked Lunch, A History of Violence), whose claustrophobic film version of Cosmopolis starring Twilight’s Robert Pattinson as the deadpan, psychotic bored billionaire Eric Packer along with a host of briefly seen international stars from Juliette Binoche (The English Patient), Matthieu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) and Samantha Morton (The Libertine) who are all captured in a series of sporadic dialogues with Packer which ultimately serve no purpose whatsoever emphasizing DeLillo’s dissatisfaction with contemporary discourse and the apparent random rhetoric attributed to contemporary language, making for a quirky and unintelligible script, purposefully devoid of significance.

Whilst as a novel, DeLillo crisply conveys the descent into chaos and violence that Packer’s journey across downtown Manhattan will lead to, all in the search of a haircut, the novel’s perilous message is lost on the big screen. Cronenberg’s Cosmospolis does not convey many exterior shots of New York but like the novel confines the action mostly to the limousine and the diner, inherent symbols of American excess and corporate convenience: a dystrophic society ready to consume itself.

Cosmopolis is difficult to watch, almost uncomfortable from the random and bloody violence to the prospect of seeing Pattinson cooped up in a Limo for most of the film, and unlike Mary Hatton’s brilliant film adaptation of Brett Easton Ellis novel, American Psycho, does not make use of the Manhattan skyscraper iconography. Unlike American Psycho, Cosmopolis comes across onscreen as a pretentious film without much substance, but then that is conveyed more accessibly in DeLillo’s slim and scathing prosaic prediction of an American society consumed by greed, vengeance and mistrust.

Best part of Cosmopolis is the final scene between Robert Pattinson and Paul Giamatti (Sideways, The Hangover Part II) who adds an uncharacteristic level of deviousness to an otherwise thinly plotted but ultimately vacuous narrative.

Audiences should not expect stunning visuals or any cathartic release, after all this is pure Art House Cinema Cronenberg returning to eccentric cinematic form and not intent on delivering  a more substantial mainstream thriller like his brilliant Russian gangster film Eastern Promises.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Director: Mira Nair

Cast: Kate Hudson, Kiefer Sutherland, Liev Schreiber, Martin Donovan, Riz Ahmed, Om Puri

Indian director Mira Nair’s elegant and gripping film adaptation of the brilliant Mohsin Hamid novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a riveting tale of cross cultural clashes which occur when a wealthy Pakistani Changez, played by Riz Ahmed goes abroad and studies at Princeton and then pursues a cutthroat career in global economics at a prestige New York firm, Underwood Samson.

Hamid’s novel takes place as a dialogue between Changez confessing his love affair with America  to a yet unidentified man at a cafe in Lahore amidst growing tensions in the wake of 9/11 and America’s war on terror in Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan. It is an elegant and evocative tale of how Changez, was offered the American dream on a platter and then see it disintegrate before his eyes under the horrific aftermath of the Manhattan terror attacks. In the midst of his shifting view of the American dream, from being strip search at JFK to being humiliated in America’s corporate and artistic worlds, Changez’s embarks on a cross cultural relationship with a liberated Upper East side conceptual artist Erica.

Nair’s well crafted film version of The Reluctant Fundamentalist differs in parts to Hamid’s novel, exploring the inherent dangers of pursuing a Capitalist dream in a Western society which turns its back on you, in the wake of a Terrorist attack and the resulting shifts in American and Pakistani  perspectives. The film delicately portrays the backlash suffered by many American Muslims living and working  in the US, particularly New York in the aftermath of 9/11.

Changez as one of the bright young stars, recruited directly out of Princeton for the international corporate fixer agency Underwood Samson by the sexually ambivalent Jim Cross as his mentor, gorgeously underplayed by Kiefer Sutherland (Flatliners, The Sentinel), is sent on global excursions from Manila to Atlanta to Istanbul to assist companies in downsizing their labour force and maximizing profits with their corporate maxim being focus on the fundamentals.

At the start of his professional Manhattan career, Changez meets the dynamic and liberated Erica and soon embarks in a passionate affair. In Hamid’s novel , this complex romance is evocatively  told as part of Changez’s confessions to a supposed stranger at the Lahore cafe. In Nair’s film version this doomed relationship reaches a climax in a particularly poignant scene at a swish Manhattan gallery opening when Erica’s displays her vision of conceptual art and inspired by her own relationship with Changez through the title: I slept with a Pakistani once.

I slept with a Pakistani once.

Erica, awkwardly played by an auburn haired Kate Hudson (Nine, The Skeleton Key), unburdens her own guilt by embarking on a rebound affair, as a way of dealing with the sudden death of her boyfriend Chris of which she was the supposed cause. While the relationship between Changez and Erica is not as well sketched out in the film, the ambivalent dialogue in the Lahore cafe is fully realized in the scenes between Changez and Bobby Lincoln an experienced CIA operative played by Liev Schrieber (Defiance, Salt and the excellent TV series Ray Donovan) who is trying to get vital information out of him about a suspected Al Qaeda kingpin operating in Pakistan, whilst also suspecting him of masterminding an established or imagined terror network.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist expertly delves into the disillusion of the American dream from a Pakistani perspective. Like other Mira Nair films always with a flair for the dramatic most notably Vanity Fair and the award winning Monsoon Wedding has stunning  production values, compliments this visually rich film with a wonderfully evocative soundtrack.

The film’s script by Ami Boghani intelligently explores the common ties of humanity despite different cultures and the journeys of self discovery required to fully appreciate the fundamentals of a fulfilled existence. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a an ultimately flawed but brilliantly told international thriller which is better appreciated if viewers have first read the novel. Recommended viewing.

Great Expectations

Director: Mike Newell

Cast: Jeremy Irvine, Ben Lloyd-Hughes, Holliday Grainger, Helena Bonham Carter, Jason Flemyng, Ralph Fiennes, Sally Hawkins

Charles Dickens published Great Expectations in 1860 just ten years before his death in 1870 at the height of his literary fame. Naturally over the past half century there has been several film versions of this classic realist novel, but Four Weddings and a Funeral director Mike Newell has captured the essence of Dickens in the new film version of Great Expectations starring Oscar nominated British actors Helen Bonham Carter (Les Miserables, Wings of a Dove) and Ralph Fiennes (The English Patient, The Duchess) as Miss Havisham and Abel Magwitch respectively.

Newell’s triumph in this version of Great Expectations is capturing the essential British aspect of the story about Pip, a poor orphan who is rescued from the fate of becoming a rural blacksmith and elevated into London’s fashionable high society by a mysterious benefactor whose fate he is inextricably entwined with right from the beginning.

The other great triumph of this version of Great Expectations is the superb casting of energetic young and gorgeous actor Jeremy Irvine as the twenty-something Pip who has to negotiate rite of passage in London’s high society inevitably through his men’s club the Finches with the help of his tutor the practical solicitor Mr Jaggers beautifully played by Robbie Coltrane.

Pip through the eccentric Miss Havisham, eternally bedecked in a spidery wedding gown, wonderfully played by Helena Bonham Carter is first introduced to her ward Estella, who soon grows up into a magnificent young woman, wonderfully played by Holliday Grainger and over the course of the two hour film, Pip and Estella’s lives interlink through past connections and present repercussions.

Besides Alphonso Cuaron’s 1998 version of Great Expectations modernized and set in Florida and New York starring Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow, the previous version of this novel was filmed by the great director David Lean back in 1946. With the current trend for traditionalist entertainment especially in light of the success of British TV series Downton Abbey, director Mike Newell’s significant decision to leave Great Expectations in its rightful Victorian setting is an important and ultimately shrewd choice. From the gorgeous sets to the fantastic male costumes of the young Victorian dandies, enough to inspire a flamboyant range of Vivienne Westwood menswear collection, this version of Great Expectations will make all period purists rejoice at its elegance and simplicity.

Naturally in line with similar Dickens novels Great Expectations is populated with an eccentric and unique range of delightful Victorian characters one of the reasons which have made his novels so evocative and enduring. Pip is surrounded by his simple country Uncle Joe Gargery played by Jason Flemyng and Mrs Joe played by Sally Hawkins and in London is guided by Mr Jaggers’s generous assistant Wemmick played by Ewen Bremner of Trainspotting fame. The alpha male in the young gentleman’s club, the Finches of Avery Square and Pip’s nemesis is the ruthless Bentley Drummle played by Ben Lloyd-Hughes.

Great Expectations like any rags to riches story, similar to Vanity Fair and My Fair Lady places its narrative arc firmly in the tough lessons of Life and Etiquette and is essentially a wonderful coming of age story of a young person who is mysteriously placed in opulent circumstances only to discover the sinister motives behind such an unexpected social elevation. The costumes are superb, the acting brilliant, helped especially by Fiennes and Bonham Carter and made more palatable by the enthusiasm of screen newcomer Jeremy Irvine who embodies everything the hapless handsome hero should be: innocent, impressionable and ultimately fated to discover his true origins.

The only criticism of Great Expectations is that the first part of the film is severely dark and also the editing and cinematography could be better, whilst the narrative and rich characterization makes this version of the English literary classic worth watching on the big screen, hopefully reintroducing 21^st century film audiences to the wonder of Dickens as its never seen before.

Ginger and Rosa

Director: Sally Potter

Cast: Annette Bening, Elle Fanning, Alice Englert, Christina Hendricks, Alessandro Nivola, Jodhi May, Timothy Spall, Oliver Platt

British director Sally Potter renown for such art house films as the brilliant Orlando starring Tilda Swinton and The Tango Lesson, comes up trumps with her latest film Ginger and Rosa, featuring the uber-cool cast of Elle Fanning as the vulnerable Ginger, Alice Englert as the seductive Rosa, along with a supporting cast of Christina Hendricks (Drive) Alessandro Nivola (Coco Avant Chanel) as Ginger’s father Roland along with Oliver Platt, Timothy Spall and the always brilliant Annette Bening (Being Julia, Bugsy, The Kids are Alright).

Ginger and Rosa follow the entwined story of two girls born in 1945 as Hiroshima was decimated by a Nuclear Bomb ending World War II and traces their radical progression into adulthood in London in 1962, characterized by a growing social disenchantment with the establishment. The fact that Ginger’s Mom Natalie an aspiring painter turned housewife played superbly by Hendricks and her pacifist and ultimately selfish father Roland played by Nivola are not exactly conventional, helps in Ginger realizing her taste for social activism drawing her to the CND. As both teenage girls experiment with sex, booze and drugs, Ginger turns more to the growing Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) which was fuelled by her awareness of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Ginger whilst reading T.S. Eliot’s poem The Wasteland, soon finds herself got in a private crisis as her promiscuous friend Rosa puts their relationship in a delicate and complex situation. Rosa’s absence of a father figure spurs an inner sexual rebellion as her seldom seen working class mom Anouska played by Jodhi May last seen in the World War II drama Defiance, leaves Rosa feeling neglected and continually searching for love.

Sally Potter is clearly enchanted with Elle Fanning the younger sister of Hollywood actress Dakota Fanning and her performance in Ginger and Rosa is flawless conveying a wondrous vulnerability about the challenges of youth. Elle Fanning has become the darling of Art House cinema being cast in Sofia Coppola’s tale of a father and daughter’s relationship in a celebrity obsessed world in Somewhere and now Ginger and Rosa. Elle Fanning first came to attention in J.J.Abrams brilliant homage to Sci-Fi in the film Super 8 and has since caught the attention of cinema’s more influential female directors like Coppola and Potter.

Whilst the supporting cast in Ginger and Rosa are superb, especially Hendricks and Nivola as Ginger’s Bohemian parents and the rare glimpses of Annette Bening as a hardened radical feminist Bella who eventually coaxes the truth out of Ginger’s psychological and social dilemma, the film remains Elle Fanning’s with the cinematography capturing the intensity of activism versus vulnerability on the young Ginger as she negotiates a more complex environment both domestically and socially.

Ginger and Rosa is an intelligent exploration of betrayal, activism and social comprehension in a world which has become increasingly turbulent especially in the face of growing distrust of established social conventions governing family, relationships and role models in the light of a broader context of a society which is turning to radical activism as the main form of protest against Western governments using its nuclear power to obliterate cities and the pure carnage of war as illustrated in the post-World War I T. S. Eliot poem The Wasteland published in 1922.

Bel Ami

A French Quartet!

Directors: Declan Donnellan & Nick Omerod

Cast: Robert Pattinson, Uma Thurman, Kristin Scott Thomas, Christina Ricci, Colm Meaney, Holliday Grainger, James Lance

Robert Pattinson is desperately attempting to shed his alter cinematic ego Edward Cullen now that the Twilight series has wrapped up and stars as Georges Duroy a manipulative and penniless soldier who returns to Paris in the 1880’s after fighting a colonial war in Algeria and soon rises to the heights of Parisian society through various indiscriminate sexual liaisons in the film adaptation of the 19th century writer Guy de Maupassant’s novel Bel Ami, meaning Beautiful Friend.

Uma Thurman is desperately trying to recapture that Parisian intrigue in Bel Ami starring as Madeliene Foster who soon becomes embroiled in an ill-fated love quadrangle with Georges and two other influential and wealthy woman. Unfortunately for Thurman, Bel Ami is no match to the extraordinary brilliance of Dangerous Liaisons the 1988 hit film starring Thurman along with the brilliant Glenn Close, John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer and whilst the latter was skilfully directed by Stephen Frears with a razor-sharp script by Christopher Hampton, Bel Ami lacks the uniformity of vision which Dangerous Liaisons so clearly perfected as a masterpiece in drawing room cinema.

Kristin Scott Thomas is no stranger to scandalous period films and has starred in the Oscar Winning The English Patient along with Up at The Villa and Paul Schrader’s film The Walker and in Bel Ami, Scott Thomas plays Virginie Rousset a pliable 19^th century cougar who falls victim to the charms and seduction of Georges played by Pattinson.

Christina Ricci seen in the fabulous retro series Pan Am is most famous for The Adams Family and Monster, stars as Clotilde de Marelle another wealthy Parisian housewife who assists Georges in climbing the social ladder rather rapidly in French Society to such a point where he abandons his former lovers and shocks everyone even his former employer, a newspaper editor Monsieur Rousset oddly played by Colm Meaney.

Bel Ami is a fun foursome period romp with some sultry sex scenes to spice up a rather vacuous tale of ambition, betrayal and seduction in 19^th century Paris, but is no match to films in a similar genre most notably the brilliant Dangerous Liaisons and the equally enjoyable Belle Epoque set drawing room drama Cheri also directed by Stephen Frears and starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Rupert Friend and Kathy Bates.

For those who love scandalous liaisons and seduction with Robert Pattinson as the young ruthless seducer, then Bel Ami will most certainly appeal especially the final and rather hilarious wedding scene where Georges takes revenge on all those socialites who scorned him in his ambitious rise to power and wealth, a plot only to be found in a fashionable French novel.

Lacking in singular direction and a brilliant script, Bel Ami directed by Donald Declan and Nick Omerod is entertaining, slightly provocative and relies too heavily on raunchy sex scenes and occasional nudity than on the sophisticated art of seduction.

Three Sixty

From the Brazilian Director Fernando Meirelles whose previous films include the Oscar-winning adaptation of the John le Carre novel, The Constant Gardner and the highly acclaimed City of God, comes his latest film Three Sixty collaborating with Oscar winning scriptwriter Peter Morgan (The Queen) who deftly interweaves a complex narrative tapestry focusing on humanity’s ever spinning carousel of desires connecting each character around the world. Three Sixty premiered at the 2011 London International Film Festival and the 2012 Durban International Film Festival and is a brilliant virtuoso look at how humanity is connected through love, weakness, temptation and sex.

Three Sixty features an international cast and is a series of interconnected character studies set in Vienna, Bratislava, Paris, London, Denver and Phoenix and includes wonderful yet brief performances by Rachel Wiesz, who garnered an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in The Constant Gardner, Jude Law, Ben Foster, Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Secrets and Lies) and Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins as well as a host of lesser known Eastern European, Brazilian and French stars.

Three Sixty is a thought-provoking look at how sexual desire traverses all geographical boundaries while love, temptation, blackmail and infidelity abound around the globe connecting all nationalities, cultures and religions. Watch out for a wonderful performance by Anthony Hopkins as a recovering alcoholic searching for his missing daughter in Phoenix, Arizona or Jude Law as a less than proper British business man Michael Daly being caught in a web of blackmail in Vienna and Rachel Wiesz as his wife Rose who is far from faithful back in London.

The real star of the film is Ben Foster in a superb cameo as a shaven-head ex-con Tyler, recently paroled sex offender stranded in the snowbound Denver International Airport en route to Phoenix struggling with his inner demons. Russian actor Vladimir Vdovichenkov makes an impression playing Sergei a Russian gangster’s driver willing to make a break from an abusive boss and escape with an innocent woman. Three-Sixty is in German, French, Portuguese and English but is a spell bounding portrayal of humanity traveling around the globe and taking all their urges, desires and ambitions with them, a surprising sexual thriller by one of international cinema’s more enigmatic and brilliant directors. Recommended as a thought-provoking film and will surely make any viewer want to hop on a plane to an exotic city and escape, transfer or express one’s own forbidden sexual desires…

31 Million Reasons

Fantastic Heist Film

31 Million Reasons is part Jackie Brown part Slumdog Millionaire and is set in Durban, Chatsworth and the surrounding areas and focuses on the daring heist of R31 Million from a cash holding facility in Pinetown back in 1997 , dubbed the SBV Robbery. This sleek action heist film based on the book by Naresh Veeran of the same name, premiered at the Durban International Film Festival in 2011 and is brought to the big screen by the producing team of Ross Garland and Brad Logan who make up Roguestar Films responsible for such South African hits as Spud and Confessions of a Gambler.

31 Million Reasons directed by John Barker shows Durban in the opening sequence as hot, sexy and sleek as there is a wonderful opening shot of the palm-tree lined Esplanade, making Durban look its best in a truly Miami-style crime thriller with Barker playing homage to movies like Bad Boys and Jackie Brown. The film focuses mainly on the South African Indian community and follows the adventures of crooked cops in Chatsworth and a shady gangster in the city centre, who plan to rob a cash holding facility in Western Durban. The gang of thieves include Ronnie Gopal played by TV star’s Jack Devnarain, Reggie played by ECR deejay Neville Pillay and theatre personality Hamish Kyd playing Uncle.

There are 31 Million Reasons to go to the cinemas and see this fast paced and entertaining film, with great acting, slick directing and some wonderful Cameo’s by Ben Voss and Jason Fiddler whilst showing off Durban in a truly spicy, cosmopolitan, sometimes sleezy light as a sultry and vibrant African port city.

Like any heist films there are those that get away and those that are caught and while the thieves are trying desperately to conceal such a large amount of cash there is a sharp detective Sashwin played by Meren Reddy who solves the daring crime.

31 Million Reasons is a great testament to the blossoming and diverse South African film industry which will be a sure to attract a wide audience on commercial release and is thoroughly entertaining. Highly Recommended like a Durban Bunny Chow!