matthewhaddrill's reviews

Season 2 of the Dutch language Belgian series 'The Twelve' is more low-key than its predecessor. Characters like Josse De Pauw's portrayal of defence attorney Ari Spaak, Maaike Cafmeyer's accused headmistress Frie Palmers and Johan Heldenbergh's Stefaan De Munc, the troubled ex-husband, in Season 1, make for a powerful courtroom drama, and the focus on the jury gives it an extra dimension, the feel of an ensemble piece. I couldn't get as excited by the performances in 'The Cinderella Murder', the story of a daughter (Julie Bergman played by Louisa Peeter) who is accused of protecting her father (Anton Bergman; Koen De Graeve) from the murder of her stepmother (Marianne Coens; Katrien De Ruysscher). The drama gets weighed down by some of the technical details of the case. I found it difficult to judge characters and kept asking myself "And how is this evidence relevant?". The main problem may be the format, a 'reveal' at the end of each episode but crucial details withheld until the very end. I found the plot device quite frustrating.

'The Twelve' still works well as a drama. The Belgian court system, rules and procedures are fascinating. I can't imagine, for example, jurors in a British court being allowed to ask questions during the trial itself. The strength of the series is in the human perspective it provides, however. Jury members respond to events in their own lives as well to the matters of the case they are considering. Issues never seem black & white, a credit to writers Sanne Nuyens and Bert Van Dael who cleverly place the lives of the jurors adjacent to the people they pass judgement on. As Jesus once put it: "He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone". Equally interesting (and worrying!) is how split the jurors are about the final verdict, so, Murad (played by Yassine Oaiche) comments to fellow juror Nico (Emilie De Roo), herself a court journalist, that the jury may not be able to convict the defendents with the evidence provided. And in one final twist, the truth about Marianne's murder comes to light ...

8 episodes is a lot to sit through to find out the most interesting part of the story, but 'The Cinderella Murder' comes good in the end. You can find both seasons of 'The Twelve' on the UK's Channel 4 streaming service 'All4', on 'Walter Presents', with I believe a third, 'The Botox Murders', currently under production.

There's a sophistication and subtlety about Payal Kapadia's 'All We Imagine As Light' which may have escaped some. Sure, you've got the conventional storytelling narrative, the 3 women's lives and struggles playing out in modern-day Mumbai, but a lot of the film is shot in an imagistic minimalistic style, showing long shots of city life and tantalising the senses with rain storms, noise, dirt and bustle. Main character nurse Prabha (played by Kani Kusruti) uses words sparingly and tellingly to reveal her loss and longing, youthful Anu (Divvya Prabha), also a nurse, is vivacious but vexed by her love situation, while Parvathy (Chhaya Kadam) the hospital cook is wrapped up in her own struggles with a greedy landlord. And yet the main character is really Mumbai itself and the great sea of humanity these people's lives are swept up in. Sometimes it feels slightly voyeuristic, like part of a dream sequence. I found the whole film deeply moving and intriguing. The 'Light' of the title is I think deliberately more imagined than real. The camera often dwells in dark places and Mumbai is highlighted at night as the women sweep past in the metro on their way home with barely lit buildings in the distance. Prabha struggles to read under the light of her phone at home, lamenting her estranged husband: "you might think you know someone, but they can also become strangers; then, all that we see is darkness, no light.". These themes of light and darkness are returned to throughout 'All We Imagine As Light'.

The stories of the main characters are resolved in a brief trip they make to help Parvathy start her life again in a Konkan coastal town away from Mumbai. Prabha magically projects a conversation with her estranged husband onto a villager who she saves from drowning. The stranger admits to Prabha that he spent so much time in darkness he went blind:"In the darkness you try to imagine light but you cannot". 'All We Imagine As Light's multiple themes left me wondering. Kapadia's darkness is perhaps the bold cinematic statement that sheds light on these women's lives. There's a lot more to say about this film, and while it may have its technical flaws and leave you scratching your head somewhat, rough and ready and dreamy magic realism is basically the reason I watch. Highly recommended.

I quite like dramas that re-examine Britain's colonial past ('Jewel In The Crown' and 'Indian Summers' spring to mind as good examples) but they need to be properly researched to have any historical value. Peter Moffat's 'The Last Post' was produced in 2017, but is currently available on UKTV (or 'U') in Britain. I wanted to be able to recommend it, but I can't really.

The 6-episode miniseries is set in a British Military Police camp in Aden, in the south of Yemen, 1965, during the middle of an uprising by rebels trying to win independence from British rule. Captain Joe Martin played by Jeremy Neumark Jones arrives with his wife Honor Martin (Jessie Buckley) to take over the running of the camp from his predecessor Captain Nick Page (Joseph Kennedy). In 'The Last Post' you get a glimmer of what life was like for the BMP's stationed in Aden, but little analysis of what was actually going on at the time. It's mostly a period drama, I could even call it a 'soap' in the trivial way it's put together. There's the usual British obsession with social class which clearly runs all the way through the military. A lot of the drama focuses on the lives of the 'closed' community of ex-pats, British military and their wives and children. I suppose that's fair, but Yemeni's are portrayed mostly anonymously in the plotlines: crowds, fighters, "terrorists" even. It's all a bit clichéd and a one-sided view of events of the time. Disappointing. That said, it's well acted and has a certain 'period' charm about it. Although it looks like Yemen, it was actually shot in Cape Town and Simon's Town Bay Naval Base in South Africa.

Moffat introduces characters to whet our appetite but doesn't really develop them. Apart from the British, there's the rather idiosyncratic Yemeni rebel leader Kadir Hakim ('Starfish') (played by Aymen Hamdouchi) who seems wise and doesn't fit the usual "terrorist" stereotypes. Why not bring him into the drama? Also there's a love interest, the nanny of one of the families Yusra Saeed (Ouidad Elma) who young Lance Corporal Tony Armstrong (Tom Glynn-Carney) falls for. Both these aspects could have been spun out into rather different stories which would have humanized the Yemeni's a bit. I suppose it would have required a much deeper analysis and serious historical and social research which perhaps time and the budget of the series didn't allow for? Instead, there are loose dramatic subplots, the attack on Captain Page, the taking of the son of Major Harry Markham (played by Ben Miles) as a hostage, and a lot of time taken up with 'personal' matters, like Markham's wife Mary (Amanda Drew) giving birth to their second child, or the tribulations of unconventional Lieutenant Ed Laithwaite (Stephen Campbell Moore) and his wife Alison (Jessica Raine) who is evidently unhappy. Christmas, even, for God's sake!! It felt like the producers had hired all these fine actors so they had to make use of them. Very ponderous at times. I kept thinking to myself "What is the point of any of this?". Brits abroad in a difficult situation? No real attempt to get to grips with the period of history involved which would have made 'The Last Post' much more interesting.

The military stuff would also have been opportune for taking the series in a different direction, with the so-called 'Aden Emergency' woven into the plot 'The Last Post' would have had a lot more depth. Aden was a protectorate with a British-approved government at the time. There's little understanding of how the conflict unfolds. What was the intelligence the British had at the time? Who were the 'National Liberation Front' and what demands did they make of the British? Was all that meant for Season 2?

We'll never know. By refusing to put a single 'hat' on, part-history, part-imperialistic nostalgia trip, part-military conflict, 'The Last Post' jumps around too much and fails to establish a clear identity for itself. A great missed opportunity in my view, one that could have been put right with even a few simple tweaks. Unsurprisingly in 2018 it was cancelled for the second season. Mr Moffat, get yourself a team of writers/creators.

Like the struggles of Helene played by Mala Emde in Johannes Boss's German comedy-drama 'Oh Hell' , some of the quirks of this series are quite fun but others take us to rather dark places. Hell's autobiographical telling of events as friends, family, colleagues etc., are drawn into her tragic orbit is similar in bleakness to 'Fleabag' (no imaginary 4th wall though!). It doesn't have the lol comedy of tragic figure David Brent in 'The Office' and something of the writer's wordy artfulness gets lost in the translation for me, but there's enough here to feel sympathy for Helene's troubles and the impending doom that comes from her actions. 'Oh Hell' constantly tugs at our emotions, if you don't laugh you'll cry etc., so surely quite clever? I'm not a psychiatrist/doctor, but recognize Helene's oddball behaviour is likely mental disorder, OCD, Asperger's maybe, but she's also knowing and kind so her friends discuss in the 7th episode how to help somebody so 'special'. The see-saw ending leaves things hanging in the balance, good because I think we still want to fight Helene's corner and help her as she navigates reality, a credit to Emde's sympathetic nuanced performance. After all, Hell's finally found a great job that suits her aptitudes! I hope they continue with the series. The deconstructed music along with commercial songs provide a fitting bumpy road soundtrack, along with the memorable theme tune 'Dilemme' by Belgian-Congolese rapper Lous & The Yakuza. Post-modern, post-feminist bleak comedy drama ...

The sequel to Fabien Nury's period French Noir 'Paris Police 1900' is more of a slowburn than the first series. You don't get to know the important details of 'Paris 1905' until the final episode, so a bit more patience is needed. I kept thinking to myself "Well, I'm enjoying this, but is it really as good as the first one?". I'm not sure. I still love its attention to period detail, real life historic events, amazing sets and props, great filming technique, gripping drama and action, a credit to everybody involved in its production and a work of art you could say! But the subject matter of the second series is a bit obscure (also sleazy, but I guess that's the point, Paris social underbelly etc?), and, as another reviewer has pointed out, the writers occasionally fall into explaining language which suggests some sort of confusion in the plot. Most of the characters that we grew to love in the first series are still there, retired Prefect of Police Louis Lépine ("the little man with the big stick") played by Marc Barbé is now bereaved as his wife died of Sepsis, and is joined by his daughter Louise (Mathilde Weil), maverick officer Joseph Fiersi (Thibault Evrard) is adjusting to retired life, and, of course, it's still hard to resist the secret love between detective Antoine Jouin (Jérémie Laheurte), now 'happily' married, supposedly, and lawyer Jeanne Chauvin (Eugénie Derouand). Among other things, of course, lots of interesting stories continue to be woven into the main plotline. That said, I found it hard to get totally into 'Paris Police 1905', but held on until it came good in the end, patience! Good that BBC Four and iPlayer have made the Canal+ series available in the UK. I hope the makers decide to continue, as I'm sure there are loads more events they could feature around the turn of the century in Paris.

Xiaoshuai Wang's 'So Long, My Son' is the first part of the writer/director's 'Homeland' trilogy in which drama stories are set alongside social changes in the last 40 years of China's history. The first part takes an unflinching look at the struggles of a couple from Northern China following a family tragedy, and how they adapt their lives to some of these changes. Events take place from the 80s onwards in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, and end with a friends reunion about 30 years later.

The film maker 'chops' events up in a semi-chronological way, muddling but keeps focus on the main themes which centre around the family's loss, their migration to Fujian province in the south to try to start again and the economic and social hardship they face throughout their lives. Memory is also a long-running theme which the film is in a good position to examine.

It had me gripped for the whole 3 hours. The director doesn't fall into the trap of sentimentalizing the hardships the people in the story face, and in the midst of all the upheavals the couple remain true to each other which makes the film very heartening.

Xiaoshuai Wang occasionally uses a long shot technique which I like very much, events often set against very dramatic backdrops. The acting, although a little wooden at times, is basically first rate, Wang Jingchun playing the husband Liu Yaojun and Yung Mei playing his wife Wang Liyun were both commended for their roles, but all the actors performed well. I particularly liked the mini-supporting role of Qi Xi who plays Moli the sister of one of the other characters who has a crush on Yaojun and the complexities their lives take which keeps you guessing.

Looking forward to the next part in the trilogy ...

'The Velvet Underground' is certainly artful and reverential to its subject. No stranger to music, Todd Haynes also made the fictionalized Bowie story 'Velvet Goldmine' (1998) and mysterious Dylan fantasy documentary 'I'm Not There' (2007)). Making the definitive VU documentary is something of a holy grail for film makers, but I'd say Haynes enjoyable film achieves its aims partially.

It's fair to say The Velvet Underground blazed the trail for punk and indie music 70s and onwards. Lou Reed, John Cale ... but so much more! Brian Eno famously once said: "Their first album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band". For Haynes film, the music nerd in me would have liked more information about the various songs (titles, albums, dates, producers etc.), even art history like this needs its points of reference. I guess it wouldn't bother most newbies as info can be checked easily these days, but I'm old school and like films to organize and document their subject matter, too difficult to catch everything in the final credits.

If you are coming to The Velvet Underground for the first time, they were only together roughly 1966-1970 so their music isn't hard to navigate. Counter intuitively, tackle the studio albums in reverse order. Start with the 4th and final 'Loaded' (1970), great songs by Lou Reed as he contemplated a solo career ('Sweet Jane', 'Waiting For My Man', 'Rock'n'Roll'), then go back to their eponymous 3rd (1969), 'unplugged' beautiful achingly sad songs in a story cycle again by Reed ('Pale Blue Eyes', 'Candy Says', 'Beginning To See The Light'). The band's 2nd 'White Light/White Heat' (1968) is chaotic and avantgarde, but its song 'gems' shine through all the noise, Cale and Reed shared the songwriting duties but it was to be Cale's last as a band member ... and finally there's 'The Velvet Underground & Nico' (1967), legendary, but so much written about it already. Live album '1969' is a nice homage to Reed's guitar playing, and 'Live at Max's' is a very collectable if poorly recorded bootleg of the band late career. Happy exploration!

Nice to hear people like John Waters and Jonathan Richman among many others contributing to Haynes' film ...