Gatsby, Gatsby, Gatsby, so much hype, so much prestige, it did so well in the box office.  The bottom line is if you aren’t a fan of Baz Luhrmann’s manic editing style, sheer opulence in visuals and big Hollywood glamour way of creating feature film narratives, you will not like ‘The Great Gatsby’.  It is what it is, bold and expensive.  Not so many fans of the short novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald have been fans of this screen adaptation, mainly because it’s a lengthy version of the events and highly dramatised.  Luhrmann is a director known well for his central focus on love and tragedy as themes, and as demonstrated with ‘Moulin Rouge’.  Early fame as a director from his ‘Romeo and Juliet’ adaptation saw a young Leonardo DiCaprio take the lead interest in the same light as a now more mature actor in the role of Gatsby himself.  The soundtrack is what’s causing an issue for those who think it’s too jarring to be situated in a Roaring 20’s period drama. I find issue with the CGI car sequences which seem overworked and very unnatural.  If it doesn’t take home a Golden Globe and and Oscar for costume design, especially with Prada at the helm, I’ll be extremely surprised.  Big hit, even bigger miss for some.  

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Last night I saw Werner Herzog’s ‘Aguirre, The Wrath of God’ for the first time.  It’s a beautiful film and definitely a narrative full of strange characters.  Amazonian jungle and the legend of El Dorado meets some crazy exploring soldiers.  Stunning cinematography with fantastic landscapes.  Re-released by the BFI as a remaster of the 1972 original version and getting a well deserved UK theatrical release.  Fans of Herzog’s later work in documentaries will immediately see his camera style and hopefully enjoy it in a fictional format.  This final sequence is a haunting piece of cinema…and also involves the casual tossing of a small monkey (that I had to quell the need to giggle for).

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Romanian director Cristian Mungiu’s previous film ‘4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days’ won him the 2007 Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival, but his latest feature ‘Beyond the Hills’ won Best Screenplay at Cannes in 2012 for it’s narrative about an Orthodox convent in Moldavia, as inspired by a 2005 Orthodox exorcism.  The narrative follows the daily life inside the convent and how life changes after an old orphanage friend visits the protagonist.  It’s hinted that their friendship developed into love as themes of trust, religion  hysteria and isolation all blend together in a drama that places emphasis on the lead character.  There’s long takes galore give the film it’s style, whereas a deliberately neutral and open narrative denies the placement of blame on any of the characters.  The result of an incident is traumatic but passes as a fly on the wall event wherein the audience isn’t invited to decide responsibility for that actions or consequences.  Unless you’re in the mood for a good ponder, it’s a bit lengthy.  

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Disney revisits the ever popular fables of the land of Oz in it’s latest live action feature ‘Oz The Great and Powerful’.  Starring James Franco as the man of mystery himself, there’s a lot of independent space for a spot of creative narrative altering without taking away from the much loved classic.  Plenty of characters are revamped and given more of an angle, but as the events here happen before the twister that brings Dorothy in from Kansas, there’s a comfortable level of explanation and character expanding developed.  Making it clear that the wizard is nothing but a travelling circus sideshow act, much of Franco’s performance is cheesy showmanship and womanising, but as it’s Disney morals prevail and everybody learns a lesson.  Perhaps a little too overt in the love triangles and feminist thinkers I’m sure would go to town on the representations of the women in Oz (all witches I might add).  CGI is as made for 3D glasses as it gets and the landscapes are suitably multicolored and  garish in keeping with Disney extremes and candy sweet fantasies.  The one element that gets my thumbs up is the use of black and white for the first section of the film, which transforms into full colour without so much as a gasp from the audience.  A skillful ploy on the fantasy genre’s behalf and a wonderful case to be made for those who proclaim audience demographics as set in stone, and something ‘The Artist’ shook the foundations with last year.  Somewhere along the line, the creators have had fun with this film, and it’s as family friendly as Disney promises.  

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‘In The House’ is Francois Ozon’s most literary narrative yet.  A wonderful approach to storytelling within film making that takes the power of narrative itself as the main theme.  When a fed up teacher notices some writing potential in a teenage  student, he encourages what becomes a dramatic essay series of revelations and intrigue.  A seemingly harmless writing exercise on what happened last weekend quickly escalates into an intense study on his friends family life. Sucked in by the possibility of outcomes, as a teacher where should he draw the line?  An exploration on the desire to gossip and weave extended truths with white lies that takes some interesting turns.  ’In The House’ is a narrative about relationships and understanding, freedom of expression, and how far you’ll go for an escape from the everyday life you lead.  

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