NUMBER THREE
Mac – Foxcatcher
We all have greatness lying dormant, deep within us. It simply rests there waiting to be awoken like a ferocious, untamable creature. We just need that one person to come along to shake the confines of our structured life and help us become who we where born to be. Right?
The criminally underrated, artful and riveting Foxcatcher is the bleak, spine chilling true tale of men, power and ambition. Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz is taken under the decaying wing of eccentric billionaire John Du Pont, who tasks him with building a wrestling team in hopes of achieving ultimate success at the 1988 Olympics. Released all the way back in January, Bennet Miller masterfully crafted a story that was punishing and uncompromising. Containing stunning career bests from all three lead actors, its unsettling and disturbingly quiet disposition will stick with you for weeks after viewing this powerful piece of cinema.
Full review here.
Callum – Mad Max: Fury Road
There’s a certain feeling that you get on your way out of a truly overwhelming cinematic experience. It’s a kid of exasperated queasiness, you have to adjust to being a part of the real world again, whilst also trying to process everything you just experienced. I don’t get it that often anymore, but with Mad Max I had it in spades. I remember that before the film started, we were unable to book enough seats to all sit together, so one of my friends had to sit right near the front, cut off from the rest of us. This seemed like a distractingly awkward issue, until about 10 minutes into the film, at which point I’d forgotten my own name, let alone who was sitting where. This fourth instalment in George Miller’s post-apocalyptic desert wasteland saga might not serve up the strongest narrative, but it’s the most ambitious, the most lovingly crafted and the most blisteringly exciting.
Just like The Lord of the Rings films, the reliance on practicality and craftsmanship resulted in something so kinetic, tangible and absorbing that you almost don’t even need a story to get lost in the bleak, cutthroat world being grafted to your senses. The fact that you get one, and a brilliant one at that, elevates it from a stunning action movie to an all-around masterpiece. The overt ridiculousness of this pantomime abomination that humanity has become is certainly entertaining to behold, but it also means that when some compassion does emerge, it’s all the stronger for the contrast.
Full review here.
NUMBER TWO
Mac – Ex Machina
There were more than a few cinematic thrills and spectacles this year, however, nothing quite blew us away more than when actor Oscar Isaac unexpectedly tore up the dance floor and began busting moves to the sound of Oliver Chatman’s ‘Get Down Saturday Night’, all in perfect synchronisation with his enigmatic Japanese house maid.
When a filmmaker’s directorial debut becomes an instantaneous classic upon it’s release, you know you had better keep pretty keen eyes on said filmmaker’s future. Alex Garland (28 Days Later) casually dropped a bombshell into the science fiction scene earlier this year with the astonishing, unforgettable and unsettling Ex Machina. When Caleb (Domnhall Gleeson) wins a competition to spend a weekend with the prominent tech genius and CEO Nathan Bateman (Isaac), he suddenly finds himself becoming the human competent in an experiment to test the artificial intelligence of Nathan’s new android. A story that ruthlessly questions the constantly shifting moral boundaries of human innovation and mankind’s reliance on technological advancement, it pins its sharp eyes on the increasingly unseemly computerised and calculated nature of mankind. Sleek visuals, transfixing storytelling and nuanced performances, Garland confidently made a bold statement with his first film whilst simultaneously proving to us that daring sci-fi isn’t dead.
Full review here.
Callum – Timbuktu
Mali has an incredibly rich cultural heritage, teeming with great musicians, artists and film-makers. It’s a heritage that Al Qaeda, Ansar Dine and others have done everything in their power to destroy since they arrived there some years ago. In 2012, Timbuktu was occupied by Ansar Dine, and during that time Sharia law was strictly and violently enforced, music was forbidden, as was sport, women were forced to cover themselves and the city was stalked by armed guards, day and night. This is the Timbuktu we’re acquianted with in the film, but rather than focuses solely on this issue, Timbuktu tells a smaller, but more thought provoking tale.
The main character is Kidane (Ibrahim Ahmed in an astonishing turn), a cattle herder who through a tragic twist of happenstance ends up on the wrong side of the jihadists. While all this is going on, we’re offered an insight into their lives as well, and it becomes clear that many of them are conflicted, displaced and are living in fear of the cult of personality their leaders propagate. It’s a daring film, and a beautiful one. The cinematography is staggering, the more disturbing scenes are handled with care and some of the music within the film is as wonderful as it is narratively significant. Singer, songwriter and guitarist Fatoumata Diwara gives an amazing performance as one of the put-upon youths, an inspired casting choice considering that she is not only Malian herself, but was actually forced into exile because she refused to stop playing her music.
The depth and moral complexity of the film is overwhelming, and what ultimately emerges as a guiding message is that you should never stop fighting for what you care about, what you really care about. The Malians are shown as defiant, even under the constant threat of lashes or being buried up to the neck and stoned to death. Children chase an imaginary football across the pitch, a fish seller brazenly refuses to wear gloves which would prevent her from doing her job and a girl being lashed for singing, continues to sing through the pain. We all owe it ourselves to gain a better understanding of the fundamentalist extremism choking Africa and the Middle East, and with this gem of a film, co-writer and director Abderrahmane Sissako has given us a way.
Some of the coverage you find on Cultured Vultures contains affiliate links, which provide us with small commissions based on purchases made from visiting our site.
