In Contention

Tag: Ken Loach

  • LIFE WITHOUT OSCAR: 1969 and 1970

    Catch up with the idea behind this series here.

    As the 60’s came to a close, Oscar decided to embrace its dirty side and give X-rated “Midnight Cowboy” the top prize. Coming a year after “Oliver!” makes it quite a juxtaposition and the film remains one of the most interesting picks by the Academy, particularly as it triumphed in the “Year of the Western.”

    “The Wild Bunch,” “True Grit,” “Paint Your Wagon” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” all found themselves up for top prizes in a year that Tapley would probably have died to cover. Also great to see “Z” become the second foreign language Best Picture nominee in a year that Wikipedia claims is still the highest rated Oscar telecast ever. Take note current producers- there was no host and it lasted 145 minutes.

    The 70’s were introduced with “Patton” earning Best Picture. War, epic, biopic, strong male lead; it completely fits the bill for a Best Picture winner. Of course, George C. Scott would famously become the first actor to refuse his award this year.

    It was also the year The Beatles finally won an Oscar (for “Let it Be”) but had already broken up and failed to appear. Timely as ever, Academy.

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  • Loach’s ‘Route Irish’ joins Cannes Competition lineup

    I told you on Friday that a 19th title was going to be added to the selection of films vying for the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and lo and behold, here it is. Variety reports that “Route Irish,” an Iraq War drama from festival habitué Ken Loach, has joined the lineup — just one year after Loach brought football-themed comedy “Looking for Eric” to the Croisette.

    It’s probably not the film that most people were hoping to see as a last-minute addition, but it does bump up the number of English-language titles in Competition to three, while also boosting the “venerable auteur” count.

    This marks the tenth Competition entry of the British director’s career — he won the Palme on his eighth attempt, with “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” in 2006 — and if that’s not a record, it confirms him as one of the festival’s true pets.

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  • SHORT TAKE: “Looking for Eric” (**1/2)

    Looking for EricIt’s been a long time, if ever, since Ken Loach made a film that could legitimately be called a crowd-pleaser, but this is precisely what he has made in “Looking for Eric.”

    Gentle, undemanding and buoyed by the effortlessly charismatic presence of the titular football god – it’s certainly the first Loach film to possess anything approaching star power – it’s less overtly comedic than the marketing campaign would have you believe, but also warmer and less agenda-driven than most of his work this decade.

    With that said, Loach’s renewed emotional engagement has sadly come at the expense of any tonal cohesion whatsoever. As the veteran filmmaker fumbles for the buttons to alternately tickle and touch his audience, his film lurches wildly from a jolly working-class jaunt in the vein of “The Full Monty” to reflective character-oriented miserabilism à la Mike Leigh.

    Paul Laverty, Loach’s longtime screenwriter, wields neither the broad drollery of the former, nor the penetrating human insight of the latter, so roughly halfway through, he finds a third way: falling back on the earnest social commentary of his and Loach’s own “Sweet Sixteen.” With the film shifting its story emphasis through each of these multiple personalities, any sense of narrative continuity slips through the cracks.

    If it sounds like I’m being overly harsh on a film for which the placatory adjective “nice” might have been invented, it’s because not enough people are doing the same: that such a minor-key and formally slapdash film should have played in competition at Cannes is generous enough, but the multiple festival reviews hailing it as some kind of paean to the human spirit are a little puzzling.

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  • IFC to bring ‘Antichrist’ to U.S.

    Willem Dafoe in AntichristSpeaking of “Antichrist,” while some doubted that the controversial pic would see the light of day Stateside, IFC Films is ensuring that it will. The indie outfit has picked up U.S. distribution rights to Lars Von Trier’s film, and moreover, has announced that no cuts will be made to film ahead of its release. IFC president Jonathan Sehring’s states:

    “Since it premiered at Cannes on Monday, we haven’t been able to stop talking or thinking about ‘Antichrist’ … It is a towering work of cinema by one its greatest directors.  We are incredibly excited to bring this film to America and expect it to have a major impact on audiences not only in America but worldwide.”

    Given that the film will unquestionably land an NC-17 certificate, not to mention further media ire in the States, it’s a courageous move from IFC, and I think they should be commended for it. “Antichrist” certainly stands in stark contrast to IFC’s other Cannes acquisition of the day: Ken Loach’s gentle, well-liked character comedy “Looking for Eric.”

  • Polite reception for Loach’s latest

    Eric Cantona in Looking For EricAs I expected, Ken Loach’s “Looking For Eric,” his first Cannes entry since winning the Palme d’Or in 2006, hasn’t exactly set the Croisette alight. Critics seem to agree that the football-themed comedy is a modest charmer, but too slight to really hold its own in the competition. (Probably a welcome shift in pace, what with critics still reeling from “Antichrist.”) Variety’s Derek Elley speaks for most of the critics with his kind but reserved take on the film:

    Loach and writer Paul Laverty’s ninth feature together is a curious hybrid: Three movies — boilerplate, socially aware Loach; personal fantasy; romantic comedy — wrap around a central core of a hopeless soccer fanatic who’s given a second chance to sort out his life. As in many of Laverty’s scripts, problems of overall tone and character development aren’t solved by Loach’s easygoing direction, though when it works, “Eric” has many incidental pleasures.

    The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw also likes it well enough, drawing comparisons to “Play It Again, Sam,” and describing the presence of football legend Eric Cantona — certainly the film’s biggest commercial drawcard, in France especially — as “excellent comic value.” The word “nice” is used at several points, which seems rather telling.

    As much as I like the 72 year-old director’s work — though it’s been aeons since he made anything approaching the level of “Kes” or “Poor Cow” — one has to once more wonder whether this is the kind of film that really needs to be on the Palme d’Or shortlist, at the expense of bolder, less exposed talent.

  • Cannes: sizing up the Competition, part one

    Penelope Cruz in Broken EmbracesWith the Cannes Film Festival only two days away, it’s time to take a long hard look (or just a look, if you prefer) at the 20 films in contention for the Palme d’Or, a typically eclectic bunch married by only one factor: all but one are from directors who have been in the race before. (And people accuse the Oscars of playing favorites.)

    Cannes is a notoriously tricky (and often well-nigh impossible) contest to predict: partly because the voting body is an ever-changing template, but largely because there’s been no time ahead of the festival for any kind of critical or popular consensus to build around the mostly unseen films on the shortlist.

    This may mean that in some cases the jury is susceptible to a film’s auteur cache — think “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” in 2006 — but it also allows for surprise attacks by less heralded titles on the basis of quality alone. Though it may seem an obvious winner in retrspect, few were talking about “The Class” last year before it snuck up on the last day and slayed the competition.

    With those caveats on the table, here’s a film-by-film (10 today, 10 tomorrow) rundown of this year’s lineup, detailing the Cannes credentials of each director, and offering some thoughts as to where they may sit in the competition. I make no promises — except that at least half my speculation will likely be proved wildly wrong in a fortnight’s time.

    “BROKEN EMBRACES” (Pedro Almodovar)

    The pitch: Already widely seen and reviewed, the film marks a return to film noir territory for the Spanish master, a complex melodrama headed by Penelope Cruz as an actress trying to rid herself of an aging lover. (Spanish dialogue)

    The history: On his two previous Competition appearances, for “All About My Mother” in 1999 and “Volver” in 2006, Almodovar entered the race as the bookies’ favourite, only to land the consolation prizes of Best Director and Best Screenplay, respectively.

    The outlook: Reviews so far have been kind, if reserved; several critics appear to delight in Almodovar’s trademark color-saturated visuals and off-kilter humor, but few have suggested that this ranks among his finest works. Almodovar is surely overdue for the festival’s top honor, but if a more unanimously lauded work like “Volver” couldn’t do the trick, my guess is that “Broken Embraces” won’t either. I think the jury may pass altogether.

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  • Almodovar, Campion, Lee in Cannes lineup

    Abbie Cornish in Jane Campion's Bright StarThe official list of films competiting for the Palme d’Or at next month’s Cannes Film Festival is out, and while it’s not a very surprising list — it’s been a given for some time that “Inglourious Basterds,” “Broken Embraces” and “Antichrist,” among others, would be in the mix — it still an exciting one, packed to the gills with auteur works from both regular visitors (Michael Haneke, Ken Loach) and long-absent ones (Jane Campion, Alain Resnais).

    I’ll dig into the selection in more depth later, but for now, here’s the list:

    “Broken Embraces” (Pedro Almodovar)
    “Fish Tank” (Andrea Arnold)
    “Un Prophete” (Jacques Audiard)
    “Vicenre” (Marco Bellocchio)
    “Bright Star” (Jane Campion)
    “A L’Origine” (Xavier Giannoli)
    “Map of the Sounds of Tokyo” (Isabel Coixet)
    “The White Ribbon” (Michael Haneke)
    “Taking Woodstock” (Ang Lee)
    “Looking for Eric” (Ken Loach)
    “Spring Fever” (Lou Ye)
    “Kinatay” (Brillante Mendoza)
    “Enter The Void” (Gaspar Noe)
    “Thirst” (Park Chan-Wook)
    “Les Herbes Folles” (Alain Resnais)
    “The Time That Remains” (Elia Suleiman)
    “Inglourious Basterds” (Quentin Tarantino)
    “Vengeance” (Johnnie To)
    “Face” (Tsai Ming-liang)
    “Antichrist” (Lars Von Trier)

  • Cannes-bound?

    With the “news” (which has, of course, been common knowledge for the better part of a year) that Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” is set to compete at Cannes, it’s time to start contemplating what else might appear in the festival lineup.

    For my money, one of the safest bets has to be Ken Loach’s latest, “Looking For Eric.” A comedy centred on a working-class football fanatic who receives life coaching from legendary French footballer Eric Cantona, it looks like a refreshingly fanciful departure for a filmmaker celebrated usually for bleaker social-realist fare. That may not exactly sound like a festival gimme, but it’s been almost two decades since a Loach feature didn’t compete at one of the three major European fests — Cannes being the most hospitable of his work.

    Loach has an enviable track record at the Croisette — though 2005’s “The Wind That Shakes The Barley,” which finally netted him the Palme d’Or after eight attempts, never really caught on after the festival. The chirpy teaser below suggests to me that “Looking For Eric” may find more of an audience, even if it’s less award-friendly than previous Loach efforts. (Thanks to commenter Han for the tip.)