Persona review

 Number 172 on the top 1000 films of all time is Ingmar Bergman's psychological thriller Persona.

Alma (Bibi Andersson) is a nurse charged with looking after Elisabet Volgar (Liv Ullman) who has inexplicably become muter. Alma's matron believes Elisabet will better heal in a remote seaside cottage and send her and Alma there. Alma starts losing her minds as she finds it more and more difficult to distinguish between herself and Elisabet.

Film critic Thomas Elsaesser described Persona as "besides Citizen Kane, the most written about film in the canon," and it is easy to see why. Having watched The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries and Fanny and Alexander, I would characterise Bergman's films as classic arthouse that only diehard cinephiles would understand. Persona is no exception to this.

As the film begins, we are treated to an abstract collection of images including a tarantula, a crucifixion, all culminating with a young boy waking up in hospital. From there, we cut to Nurse Alma in the most minimalist hospital ever, being assigned her new charge of Elisabet. We then immediately see Alma's self-doubt about being able to care for her.

Things only get weirder when Alma and Elisabet move to the seaside cottage and Alma begins confiding in Elisabet about her own anxieties before eventually confessing to cheating on her husband by having an orgy with some teenage boys, one of them impregnating her which she later aborts. Elisabet then tells her that she should go to bed, but Alma dismisses this as a dream.

Upon delivering the mail, Alma reads a letter that Elisabet has written and find that her charge is silently studying and mocking her behaviour and a fight ensues. What was also interesting was Bergman's minimalist soundtrack. In pivotal scenes, such as the fight scene, where you might expect there to be music, Bergman solely employed silence. This did wonders for raising the suspense.

As did Bergman's minimalist style. Everything was so plain from the costumes to the interior set designs to even the seaside location. There was nothing there to distract you from the action happening on screen. 

As Alma's mental health deteriorates, she finds it harder to distinguish herself from Elisabet. At the film's conclusion, Elisabet's husband arrives and confuses Alma for his wife. Despite Alma initially correcting him, she eventually accepts her new identity and makes love with Mr Vogler. The film climaxes with Alma narrating Elisabet's tragic backstory. She became pregnant with Mr Vogler, but believing she lacked motherliness, she started hating her unborn child and repeatedly tried to abort it without success. When the child was born, she continued to hate it and prayed for its death.

The monologue is then repeated, but with the focus on Alma before a split screen shows both women's faces side-by-side, symbolising the changes of identity. Both women are also dressed very similarly in black dresses with the same hairstyle and they are very difficult to distinguish, all further symbolising Alma's deteriorating mind. After the monologue, Elisabet becomes completely catatonic and Alma later leaves with the camera showing that she is being filmed by a cameraman and a director. I thought that the two would undertake a full role reversal with Alma becoming catatonic and Elisabet regaining the ability to speak - whether she actually lost it in the first place is still up for debate.

As are many different aspects of this film. Why the imagery of the crucifixion? Why the footage of Buddist Monks self-imolating or the infamous Stroop Report photograph? Why did Alma force Elisabet to drink her blood? And why was Alma being filmed at the end? All of these questions and more have been analysed with no conclusive answer given. And I cannot offer any more answers here. For I am not a cinophile or film critic. I guess I liked the film, but it was also very surreal and very confusing. Instead, I'll concur with Bergman who has refused to give any concrete interpretations in favour of viewers making their own opinions. 

Hotel Rwanda review

 Number 169 on the top 1000 films of all time is the 2004 drama Hotel Rwanda.

Hotel Rwanda tells the real-life story of Paul Rusesabagina (portrayed by Don Cheadle) and his wife Tatiana (Sophie Okonedo). Paul is the manager of the Hotel Des Milles Collines during the Rwandan genocide. He becomes a reluctant hero as he and his family begin sheltering Tutsi refugees against the Hutu militias who want to kill them all.

Claudia Puig of USA Today described this film as an African Schindler's List - a comparison that was running through my mind as well. Like Oskar Schindler, Paul Rusesabagina, despite being Hutu and in a position of respect and influence, does everything in his power to protect the oppressed Tutsis. However, unlike Schindler's List and The Pianist which detailed an unflinching portrayal of the Holocaust, Hotel Rwanda is far more understated. While sometimes it is better to depict a genocide in all its atrocious detail, at times it is also better to leave more to the imagination.

Throughout Hotel Rwanda, we hear a lot about the machetes that the Interahamwe militia use to kill the Tutsi, we don't witness any of these executions ourselves. Instead we hear the victim's screams or in a particular chilling scene, upon negotiating with Interahamwe leader Georges Rutaganda for supplies and refusing his offer to give up the Tutsi he is harbouring, on Paul's journey home, he finds that the road he and his traitorous receptionist (more on this later) Gregoire are driving on is uneven and bumpy. However, due to a fog, they are unable to see anything. Upon leaving the van, Paul is horrified to see that they have been driving on a road of bodies. I found this to be a far more subtle and sensitive way to depict the horrors of the genocide.

But, also importantly, the film focused on the plight of those left behind. While the UN is present with its peacekeeping force, their orders are to only evacuate foreign nationals i.e anybody who isn't Rwandan. The local church with its white missionaries arrive to be evacuated but their Rwandan congregation is refused entry. In a film, littered with heart-breaking scenes, this was the scene that told me that Hotel Rwanda is too upsetting for me to watch ever again.

Joaquin Phoenix and Nick Nolte also star in supporting roles, Joaquin Phoenix as photojournalist Jack Daglish and Nolte as UN Colonel Oliver respectively. And while both men were only in supporting roles, they were some of the best characterisations within the film. Daglish is disgusted by a massacre that he films and the fact that he cannot do anything to help these people. Paul reassures him that when Western audiences see his footage, they will be moved to take action. Daglish disagrees with him, proclaiming that "they'll say that's disgusting and carry on eating their dinners." 

Truer words have never been spoken. Speaking as one of these privileged Westerners in my proverbial , ivory tower, it's difficult for me to truly connect with the struggles of these people as I am so far removed from them. And I think the same goes for lots of Western audiences. How many times have you seen a charity advert for starving African children and gone "oh that's awful. I can't imagine what that's like" before continuing on with your day? My answer to that. More times than I can count.

Nolte also bought a great humanity to the character of Colonel Oliver. In what could have easily been a generic army grunt, I truly felt the inner conflict that Oliver was feeling. Having connected with Paul and seen the horrors first-hand, he desperately wants to help them but his hands are tied by bureaucracy. Overworked and understaffed, I truly felt his frustration at his superiors who could not care less about the plight of the Rwandans for the sole reason that they're black. And I don't mean to be provocative, but truthful. Although interestingly Senator Romeo Dallaire, whom Oliver was based on, has always been a vocal critic of the film's historical accuracy.

And of course we have to applaud Don Cheadle who received an Oscar nod for his portrayal of Paul Rusesabagina and deservingly so.  He was playing a man who had to survive in an impossible situation, and not just survive, but keep his Tutsi family alive, keep running his hotel, fend off the Interahamwe and look after the 1000 Tutsi refugees that he is harbouring. And that is exactly what he did. He managed to get every single one of those refugees to safety. I just wish that Sophie Okonedo had more to do. She is a great actress and I think she was short-changed in this film. Okonedo was great in the parts that she was in and was deserving of her Oscar nod, but her part could have been more interesting.

All in all though this was a brilliant film that broke my heart and made me cry many tears. Just don't ask me to watch it again. My heart couldn't take that.

How to Train your Dragon review

 Number 168 on top 1000 films of all time is the animated film How to Train your Dragon.

  Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) is not your typical Viking. Scrawny and small, he is next to useless at defending his village from dragon attacks. His father Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler) has all but given up hope. Determined to prove him and everybody else wrong, Hiccup erupts in dragon-slaying classes but when he meets a Night Fury dragon that he names Toothless, he soon discovers that everything he knew about dragons was wrong.

This film franchise has always passed me by and if it hadn't been for this challenge, I probably wouldn't have watched it. Having seen it, I can understand why. It was released in 2010, so perhaps if I had seen it when I was sixteen instead of twenty-six, I would have liked it more.

That's not to say the animation wasn't cute and the design of the dragons creative, but the film did leave a lot to be desired. For one, the storyline was very predictable. It was obvious that Hiccup would go from the scrawny runt to the unlikely hero who saves the day, which is exactly what happened. All because he has been the first character ever to have taken the time to understand the dragons.

It was also obvious that Stoick would go from the badass warrior dragon-slayer determined to wipe out every single dragon to the soft-hearted father who saves Toothless' life. Both were predictable character arcs.

Apart from Hiccup, the characters were all very vaguely drawn. Hiccup trains with a supporting cast who were all generic and blended into one another. Although voiced by famous comedy actors like Jonah Hill, T.J Miller, Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Kristen Wiig, this did not make the characters anymore distinctive.

Even Hiccup's supposed love interest Astrid (America Ferrera) was more of an archetype, dare I say, cliche of the strong, independent woman with a softer side, than an actual character. The humour was also very immature and juvenile with an over-reliance on fart jokes that did little to make me laugh. And I was very confused by the weird mixture of Scottish and American accents. All of the adults were Scottish and the teenagers American. Why not make them all Scottish or all American?

For kids, I can definitely see why this movie would appeal but to a grumpy old-fogey like me, it was nothing special. 

Mary and Max review

 Number 167 on the top 1000 films of all time is the 2009 Australian stop-motion drama - Mary and Max, directed by Adam Eliot.

Mary (Toni Colette) and Max (Philip Seymour Hoffman) tells the story of the blossoming relationship of the two titular characters. Both social outcasts, they soon find connection when they become pen pals.

I watched this film with my dad and he said he hadn't watched a film quite like that before. Neither have I. It was abstract and surreal. Dark and creepy at some points, hilarious and uplifting in others. It was a film that I had never heard off before and, apparently it never received a wider theatrical release, although it did premier at the Sundance Film Festival.

Although, I am puzzled as to why it didn't receive a wide theatrical release, as it was a brilliant film. Perhaps because it dealt with some problematic themes and it has some off-beat, dark humour. But the way, it engaged with its troubling themes was sensitive and evocative. Mary is a little girl in Australian with an alcoholic and kleptomaniac mother and a father who is more interested in taxidermy than his daughter. She has a prominent birthmark on her forehead which leads to her being bullied at school. Upon recounting this in a letter to Max, she breaks down in tears. Considering 'Mary' was only a claymation sculpture and not a real person, this was very upsetting to watch.  Bethany Whitmore who played the young Mary did well to bring real humanity to the character.

Conversely Max is a morbidly obese, autistic man living in New York. Because of his autism, he finds it difficult to befriend anybody and he too is a loner. Despite this, he was an uplifting character who far from feeling sorry for himself is proud of being a self-proclaimed "aspie." It is a fundamental part of his identity and, despite what his therapist might say, is not something that needs curing. He may not understand human behaviour or why people throw away food while children starve in India, which only makes his connection with mary all the sweeter. 

His lifelong goal of making a friend, a goal he realises with Mary is all too relatable and powerful. He was a pitiful character, but a likeable one. And that is down to Adam Eliot's good writing and Hoffman's good portrayal. With autistic characters, there is always the danger of making them into a cariacture of themselves, but that didn't happen here.

If I were to describe this film to anybody, it would be as a real arthouse film, mostly because of its claymation style allowed Adam Eliot to tackle themes he might not have been able to do with more traditional film. Mary and Max's environments contrast so drastically. In sunny Australia, the lighting is bright, the locations spacious, but in New York, everything is dark, gloomy and cramped. Max is alone in a crowd of people. Mary is isolated in a close-knit community.

Even the colour schemes are different. Australia is brighter with an off-colour, soft yellow. Whereas New York is a dark grey-scale, almost monochrome, representing Max's confused viewpoint of the world. But when he begins corresponding with Mary, spots of colour begin appearing, like the orange pom pom that she knits for him. He attaches this to this skullcap, which he wears, not because of how he is Jewish, but because it keeps his brain warm.

The growing relationship between the two central characters climaxes in the worse possible way. In a misguided attempt to help Max, Mary enrols in university, to study mental disorders like autism, in the hopes of curing him. Using Max as her case study, she writers a book detailing the findings of her research.  But Max, believing she has exploited him and his condition, rips out the "M" key of his typewriter and mails it to her. This raises interesting ideas around "disorders" like autism. Is it really a disorder? Is it an illness that needs to be cured? What if the person is happy the way they are?

Upon realising how badly she has hurt her friend, Mary sinks into a deep depression, becoming a mirror image of her alcoholic mother. In the process, she loses her childhood sweetheart, Damian Popodopulous (Eric Bana) who leaves her for a sheep farmer in New Zealand. Her depression culminates in a suicide attempt which is set to a slowed-down version of "Que Sera Sera." This combined with the background scenery fading to black was the darkest, most haunting, but most powerful moment of the film. Mary is only saved by her neighbour who delivers a package from Max who has finally forgiven her.

Over a year later with Damien's child, Mary finally travels to New York to meet Max. Sadly, he had died earlier that morning, staring up at all of Mary's letters which he has stuck on his ceiling. One of many heart-warming moments in what is a very twisted, Grim Brothers-esque fairy tale. Amid all the surrealism and horror, there are valuable lessons to be gained about human connection. 

Mary and Max was definitely a film that took me by surprise. I don't know what I was expecting, but I certainly wasn't expecting a poignant, surreal, arthouse film about the importance of friendship and loving yourself.

Casino review

 Number 166 on the top 1000 films of all time is Martin Scorsesee's 1996 epic crime drama Casino

Sam 'Ace' Rothstein (Robert De Niro) is an expert sports handicapper, so much so, that the mob recruit him to oversee their casino Tangiers on the Las Vegas strip. They also send Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci) to watch over him. While things initially go well, Rothstein's contentious relationship with Santoro and Rothstein's wife Ginger (Sharon Stone) soon start showing the cracks in the empire.

Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci? Check. The mob? Check. Gratuitous violence? Check. Lots of swearing? Check. All the hallmarks of a great Scorsesee film? I'm not do sure about that. This isn't to say that isn't a good film, but I didn't think it was great either.

Having watched Goodfellas, Raging Bull and the Irishman, I have seen De Niro and Pesci excel together on many occasions and Casino was no exception. Pesci, as always, was brilliant as the little man with the big temper - particularly in the infamous 'head in vice' scene. And De Niro functions as a calming influence on his friend until their relationship takes a turn for the worse.

Sharon Stone was also great as Rothstein's duplicitous wife Ginger who is still in love with her pimp Lester Diamond. (James Woods) She starts two-timing and robbing Rothstein until her own self-destruction. Undoubtedly, this was one of the most tragic character arcs of the film, not just for Ginger, but Rothstein who was unreservedly in Love with Ginger.

The cinematography was also great with the sweeping master shots of the Las Vegas and interiors of the casino, conveying the true majesty and grandeur of the time period. The music was great as well with Martin Scorsesee always picking the right song for the right scene. I don't care how many times the Rolling Stones' Give Me Shelter is played in films and TV, I will always sing along. And lastly, I have to pay homage to the great Frank Vincent who played Santoro's number two. Although he only had a supporting role, it's always great to see him on screen. RIP.

So why don't I think this was one of Scorsesee's best? I was reading a listicle ranking Scorsesee's films from worst to best with Casino ranking number 16 because of how it didn't bring anything new to Scorsese's work. And I would be tempted to agree. I know I shouldn't compare, but Casino only came out five years after Goodfellas and it is difficult not to draw comparisons. Both films are about the mob, they share similar casts and they were both jnspired by books penned by Nicholas Pileggi. 

But by virtue of Goodfellas being released first, it did feel that Scorsese was retreading familiar ground - which isn't necessarily a bad thing, except when that ground was already broken by an objectively better film. Plus Casino was a touch longer than it needed to be. As a film in its own right, Casino was a good film, but when compared to Scorsese's other work, it pales in comparison.