Short Review: The Great Beauty

(Dir: Paolo Sorrentino, 2013)

La Grande Bellezza is a beguiling film that pulls the viewer through a range of emotions on its continually intriguing journey of an aging writer (Toni Servillo) in Rome. Seemingly oblivious to the marching of time he spends his nights partying with friends as if he’s a third of his age, living a hedonistic lifestyle that appears fun but seems to hide a sense of loss that he feels deep within. He wants to be immersed with beauty, be it from the city he calls home and the flat overlooking the Coliseum, to romancing an aging stripper, yet all this seems like a crutch when he can never get back the one great beauty that existed and then eluded him in his youth. Something he only seems to realise now as time races up on him and those around him.

Rome is as much a character in the film, with plenty of lingering shots taking in its epic beauty but in perhaps not the most obvious places. It seems like the side that people residents who enjoy the city actually see. The fluid camera makes it feel like we’re moving around the city and getting lost in it ourselves, whilst every shot is framed to maximise the impact of its subjects. A similar effect comes from the broad range of musical styles employed on the soundtrack which ensure things never get boring. Servillo is excellent; instantly likeable and sympathetic as the madness of life progresses around him. Yet all the characters surrounding him are unique and intriguing on their own little ways too. Not only a film of total beauty but one that offers a full range of depth, life and comedy - La Grande Bellezza is fantastic and up there as one of the best films I’ve seen this year.

Review: Insidious // Insidious: Chapter 2

(Dir: James Wan, 2011 // 2013)

Insidious is a superior modern horror film because it gets the basics right and adds its own satisfying twist. I wish more modern horror films could follow this simple rule. For a good proportion of the film it's very content to just slowly build tension and atmosphere, creating a haunted environment that's intriguing and unsettling. Where it goes in the final portion is where the film undoubtedly loses some people, but it's a fascinating direction that allows for more creativity and to amp things up, which is something needed in horror. Take The Conjuring, director James Wan's other recent ghost story; a decent film drenched in atmosphere, but it ends with a generic conclusion that makes you wish for more. Insidious by comparison feels like it's running with scissors, particularly as everything escalates.

But even more impactful is an understanding of technique. Surely the three best ways to create fear are sound design, editing and placing of the camera. The scares are well assembled in Insidious but the way the camera moves before this takes place is most curious. There are times it moves forwards but backs off a bit before going into a room where a noise was heard, hesitant in a way that the viewer will subconsciously pick up on. Or the way it just generally moves around, or observes, or approaches an ominous looking door or gets lost in the fog. It's carefully considered for the environment. 

The music is a joy. It hearkens back to the old days of strings in horror - Bernard Herrmann's classic shower scene motif in Psycho comes to mind. It's the atonal pulling and scraping and screeching that rips right into the viewer. At times it seems almost excessively baroque, such as when the name fills the screen in a classic steely red font with a stark background, yet the fact that it's always on the edge of pushing too far heightens the unease and messes with one of the viewers two key film-watching senses. Sinister, with it's throbbing noise based score, was the last horror to hugely impress me on this front, but both Insidious films do something truly fantastic in this area.

It's important to not forget that all of the above mentioned aspects are only enhanced by the characterisation. Insidious splits the core duo into the believer (Rose Byrne's Renai) and the skeptic (Patrick Wilson's Josh). Nothing original there, but they feel convincing and don't do the stupid things most people seem resigned to do in horror films. Josh's trait of avoiding confronting things feels very real for example. The benefit of having decent actors in these roles. We're also presented with the expert (Lin Shaye's Elise) and her two comedy sidekick's (writer Leigh Wannell's Specs and Angus Sampson's Tucker). By not being portrayed as a "kook" who communicates with the dead, Elise seems relatively normal and trustworthy, whilst Specs and Tucker offer brief seconds of respite that don't disrupt the tension so much as give you more characters to care about. The role of the children is well judged, with Dalton (Ty Simpkins) showing a credible insouciance until things really start to turn weird.

Chapter 2 picks things up right where the first film ends and aims to follow through with all of the above. It's great to have a story that follows on rather than awkwardly shoehorning in some randomness to make a sequel somehow work - after all the first film ends with an obvious sequel route. There's a lot of potential within this story but it feels like it's somehow squandered. The building of sustained tension is greatly diminished by the need to jump the story around all over the place. So we have flashbacks, new character Carl (Steve Coulter) who takes Specs and Tucker on a (relevant) side plot, and of course the main plot. This breaks the singular focus that works so well in the best horror films, so that when there are creepy scenes in the house you have to readjust after having come in from a different side of the story.

Further distraction comes from a need to try and explain everything rather than letting things lie so your imagination can do its worst. Most critical is towards the end where a lot of what happens in the first film is run through from a different perspective which really ruins the magic and mystery of it all. I suspect knowing this may really hurt future viewings and the level of creepiness. I get that Whannell thought he had a great idea that can interlink everything but it's really not needed in a film like this, unlike Saw for example (which he wrote and starred in) where doing so leads to a beautiful sting in the tail. After all, isn't the beauty of these haunted house and ghost stories the unknowingness of it all, and if it has to be explained it better be something pretty hideous? The same applies to the unnecessary flashbacks to Josh's youth which only serve the interlinking - but on the plus side these scenes do feature Jocelin Donahue, the lead in the superb The House of the Devil [gushing review here], a film the first Insidious very positively reminds me of. 

Issues with how the story is approached aside, Chapter 2 adheres to a lot of the tenets that worked first time round. The superb music creates a continual sense of unease whilst there's more of the same interesting camerawork. The character of Carl is an interesting addition despite only serving "the expert" role, and Wilson gets to play Josh in a different way this time, which is good for variety but is really just symptomatic of the story going down a far too generic route. And again we're back to the story, which is an issue when the bar has been set high and a mix and match of standard horror clichés just don't do it justice.

Chapter 2 does a lot right and is an enjoyable horror, but the pull away from single mindedness ensures it never matches the quality or scariness of Insidious, where atmosphere and a strong focus rule supreme. But then this is a horror sequel so the law of diminishing returns are most definitely in play. Hopefully Wan changes his mind about no longer directing horror and comes back for the third chapter - he has proven he is one of the most capable genre directors around and there is some potential fun to be had with a third film based on where they've ended things.

Review: White House Down

(Dir: Roland Emmerich, 2013)

This is the year that Hollywood seems to be accepting the position of the USA in the world and that nowhere on its soil is ever going to be truly safe from terrorism; not even the sacred grounds of the White House. That's just the times - and so to White House Down, part two of this big realisation that teases us with bigger and better explosions and a different enemy. Part one arrived earlier in the year in the shape of Olympus Has Fallen, a dour and cruelly patriotic film that reveled in the blood of it's enemies through average action scenes and a terrible script and acting. It's the kind of film you can imagine being shown at military recruitment centres with the disclaimer - this is what is gonna happen if you don't sign up to fight to protect Merica. It's still one of the worst films I've seen this year. [Read my full review of it here]. 

White House Down attacks from a different angle and it has a better weapon - it's casting. Again this film is simply about terrorists wanting to take over the White House whilst a lone unwitting hero finds himself in the position where he must stop them and save the President. And it's the casting of these two key roles that make the difference. Channing Tatum's hero Cale, a bodyguard hoping to get into the secret service, is handy in a fight, has an easy nature that makes him perfect to root for and is easy on the eye in his suit and eventual obligatory McClane style white vest. We believe in him, we want him to succeed. Likewise Jamie Foxx's President Sawyer seems to have not let power go to his head and is likable too, but the key is when they're together, which takes us into quality buddy movie territory. They play off each other terrifically and this generates a much needed level of comedy, which also comes from forgetting some of the presidential deference that is rightly abandoned in this type of desperate situation - such as watching the President use a rocket launcher from a limo's window with wild abandon!

The rest of the casting pays off, with a host of recognisable faces popping up to add credibility to the myriad other politicians in the film. Maggie Gyllenhaal and Richard Jenkins are reliable and play their roles well, and it's great to see Lance Reddick pop up even if he does overplay his General a touch, whilst James Woods conforms to his usual type but dammit he's always good value. Most notable is the villainous side of things, where Jason Clarke has the right charisma to believe he's capable of leading a band of mercenaries and that he'll be determined and hard enough to succeed. And this is the key - we're talking a band of mercenaries, white power nuts and a hacker who want to take down the seat of power; Americans, not the North Koreans or some imagined Arab state. As such this is a far more interesting proposition that serves to highlight how there's now the need to look inwards, which is always potentially scarier. It also means there's less over-played patriotism because it doesn't quite turn into America crushing it's enemy. Kudos for that.

This year has been pretty weak on the action movie front, but White House Down steps up to the plate and satisfactorily fills this hole, playing the whole thing for maximum entertainment value with overblown explosions, crashing helicopters and the thrill of watching the President of the USA with a machine gun in his hand and a limo doing donuts on the White House lawn. Tatum has so much personality compared to Gerard Butler in Olympus Has Fallen, who is so wooden that he only comes alive with a knife in his hand. Again this is the John McClane school of hero - we like him, we believe he has it in him to win. Even more amazingly the film manages to not derail itself by mixing Cale's eleven year old daughter (Joey King) into proceedings, as she offers a well balanced counterpoint, even if they do seem to be overreaching with aspects of her characterisation.

Whilst watching White House Down I was struck by a realisation that I was enjoying it far too much - way more than I imagined in fact. Sure it's cheesy, unoriginal, too long, slow to actually get going and didn't need the final plot twists / action sequence, but it's the type of decent action film that Hollywood seems to be forgetting how to make, whilst proving that a quality buddy movie requires chemistry and some levity. And pitching it as a reminder that the greatest threat probably lies within rather than outside borders feels like a sensible direction, as well as dampening down the chest-beating patriotism. We certainly don't need two films with this identical plotting, but there's not a single reason to choose Olympus Has Fallen over the ridiculously fun White House Down.

Review: The Lone Ranger

(Dir: Gore Verbinski, 2013)

It would be impossible to write a review of The Lone Ranger without making mention of the mauling its received in the media, as well as the ludicrous reactionary comments made by the filmmakers [here] in response to the dire box office performance. If ever it seemed like the media wanted a film to fail, this was it. The reasons behind this keen knife-sharpening are mystifying, yet it's an attitude that seems to permeate large swathes of the media, who seem to foam at the mouths in anticipation of failure. How many times this summer have we read excited stories about box office bombs - After Earth, Pacific Rim, The Hangover Part III etc, or about films expected to be bombs. The media seemed pretty determined to highlight the plethora of issues that World War Z had getting made and reacted in surprise when lo and behold it did decent business, because you know, a troubled shoot and reshoots automatically equate to a rubbish film (look at how Apocalypse Now, Jaws and The Shining turned out after all). Why this desire to revel in failure? Whilst writing this I came across a ridiculous "feature" on Yahoo! Australia [here] highlighting the biggest box office bombs of the year, including The Bling Ring - a film with a budget of $8m that has made just short of $6m at the box office. A small independent film that's not pretending to be anything more - one of the biggest box office bombs of the year huh Yahoo? Get a fucking grip.

So what of those comments by Jerry Bruckheimer, Gore Verbinski, Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer? It's understandable they're defensive about the film, they've put a huge amount of time and effort into making it, but their righteous statement of its quality and how it'll be perceived differently in time seem blind. More worrying is their outright laying the blame for its failure at the critics door. Firstly, are they deluded enough to believe that critics play such a pivotal role in the decision-making process today? Yes, last century the opinion of critics proved a true arbiter of influence, but times move on and the public now has access to all the information they might need wherever they are. They can know everything about a film, watch it's five different trailers ad infinitum, have seen every leaked on-set photo, as well as know what their friends think about it all with the click of a button. These comments willfully ignore the fact that the world has changed and there are now other factors at play in opinion-forming. And with marketing activity now regularly starting so far out from release, including the media's excessive coverage of such big releases, it's not hard to imagine a bit of fatigue from audiences when the film does eventually get released. This can only impact the immediacy one must feel to see a film.

But regardless of all that, The Lone Ranger is still fighting something of an uphill battle right from the get go. Disney's decision to invest a reported and not inconsiderable $215m in the film was one hell of a gamble. Western's seem to be one of the only remaining genre poisons at the box office now (although this summer also seems to sadly suggest original sci-fi too). Cowboys & Aliens didn't do well last year, barely scraping it's way to $100m, whilst True Grit produced an exceptional $171m, but of course that was a Coen Brothers film aimed squarely at adults with the benefit of Oscar and awards recognition. Both The Lone Ranger and Cowboys and Aliens were aimed a lot younger, a considerable struggle when today's younger generation have moved on a long way from Westerns (for better or worse), seeing them as "old" and second rate in terms of the high-tech action they're used too. Yet Disney clearly approached this with the logic that pirates used to be box office anathema and we of course know what happened when Johnny Depp donned a ton of make-up, put on a stupid accent and climbed aboard a galleon. Literal box office gold. Perhaps not unreasonable then to believe that he could make it happen again?

Except Depp is one of the primary failings of The Lone Ranger. He's not necessarily miscast, but his tendency to overplay these sorts of roles works against the character. It just feels like Depp pulling the same schtick yet again and it's frequently difficult to divorce the man wearing the make-up from the character, particularly when there's moments of cheeky comedy or a strange selfishness that feels like it's playing up to the camera. Tonto is the most interesting character here - he has a curious past and a massive weight on his shoulders, but we have to put up with the annoying Deppish character traits that obfuscate this until the plot demands its revelation later on. Hammer's character, the Lone Ranger John Reid himself, is paper-thin, but he perhaps doesn't need to offer anything more than a classic heroism and a rote desire for revenge. Hammer is well cast, exuding a dashing quality that feels very rooted in the type of heroism of stars from the thirties / fifties (depending which iteration of the source you want to consider), that also feels like a perfect fit for the era of the films setting.

The villain side of things offers a similar split. William Fichtner's Cavendish is grimy and cut from the right evil cloth for someone to whom life is cheap - a classic seeming Western villain if you will. On the other hand Tom Wilkinson's Cole, who is pulling the strings here, is a pure cliché of power and industrialisation obsession, but with a decent beard. Meanwhile James Badge Dale provides some decent support and Helen Bonham-Carter is solely here for a two scene cameo and to ape one of the crazier ideas in Planet Terror.

Yet the curious thing about The Lone Ranger is that it's more entertaining than any of this suggests it should be. The story is pretty standard fare but it tries to offer up something with a bit more meaning around Native American rights, although the way it deals with this is pretty ham-fisted and you still feel like it's all about the white man winning in the end. At least the fact it's pointing in this direction is a positive thing. Visually is where the film really excels. Much has been made about the cost being so high due to shooting on location and trying to minimise the amount of the film constructed in computers. This shows, which makes it more interesting and somewhat more exciting to watch. It genuinely does look fantastic, but surely that's the least we should expect from modern day big budget films set in scenic locations? It's rarely boring yet it still feels overlong and bloated and some trimming would've really helped, particularly cutting out the execrable and entirely unnecessary framing device.

The Lone Ranger is successful at offering generic big budget fun. It's certainly not the car crash the media has made it out to be (much like the awkwardly unnecessarily media hate John Carter received last year) but it is a film with many issues that hold it back, not least of which is Depp. This is just another in a recent long line of films where he's excessively made-up and annoyingly hams it up, to the point where you're watching the actor rather than the character. His status as an interesting actor is now a long long way behind him, as even recent films where he's not playing dress-up have been poor. The worst thing he can do for his career now is another Pirates of the Caribbean film. But if you can get past Depp you might just be able to enjoy some well staged big action scenes, amazing scenery and classic heroism.

Review: Only God Forgives

(Dir: Nicolas Winding Refn, 2013)

Welcome to hell. That's seemingly what it feels like to enter Only God Forgives' Thai torture chamber. A harsh sounding intro perhaps, but an apt description of the seedy world we're thrust into from the start. This is not the "safe" world of Drive, as some might expect from a re-team of Nicolas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling. We're far from the familiarity of Los Angeles and the breathless romance of that film. This is an alien land. This is a form of purgatory.

Only God Forgives is the story of a man, Julian (Gosling), who knows he deserves to be stuck biding his time in this faceless, unglamorous, unfamiliar part of the world. His hands have had to do bad things and he wants rid of them. His mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) arrives here and is a hellish force of nature. Playing against type Scott Thomas is fantastic, with a controlling vitriolic manner exuding from underneath a trashy blonde wig. Is she really the Devil; the one pulling Julian's strings; the one that he's been waiting here for? At heart he has a sense of honour, seen when he learns the reasons for his brother's death, but something seemingly unacceptable to the evil dripping from his mother. Revenge begets revenge.

But they are not alone - the death of Julian's brother sparks police officer Chang's (Vithaya Pansringarm) interest in them. A quiet but effectively lethal man. An avenging, wrathful God even, meting out punishment to sinners from the blade of his sword. Julian knows he deserves to suffer, he wants to be judged for his sins, he wants to feel the swathe of the sword, even if it means picking a fight with God to get his just punishment. He is a righteous man struggling as the Devil pulls at him. A man who wants to take a sword to the Devil but despises the ability of his hands to do so. This is the world Julian is lost in, perhaps forever.

The visual style of Only God Forgives offers a striking representation of damnation. Hues of red and darkness amidst beautifully framed and composed shots enhance the detachment of this place and make the scenes of brutal ultraviolence even less surprising. It's never short of stunning to look at. Meanwhile a score that from the start shudders under its immense weight of portent, enhanced with the rhythm and booming of Thai drumming, ensures a deep undercurrent of unease. Mix this with minimal amounts of dialogue and Chang's karaoke, which ratchets up the level of local weirdness, and the effect is overwhelming.

Darkness pervades Only God Forgives. It's a gripping descent into the fractured world of a man facing his demons and the empty possibility of salvation. Gosling is the perfect choice - a master of quiet, enigmatic moodiness, yet stylish and good looking enough for the films arty visual approach. It's beautiful to look at, but intentionally weird and obtuse enough to frustrate many. It's full of fascinating themes, which it tempers with a savage violence. This ain't Drive mark II. This ain't a light watch. This is all the better for not being either of those things. Only God Forgives is a superb spiral into hell.

Review: The World's End

(Dir: Edgar Wright, 2013)

Is the reverence towards Edgar Wright justified? He stands in the intriguing position of being worshiped in geek circles, whilst being considered a writer / director worthy of affection by the mainstream media. The fact that his career is intrinsically linked to current filmic national treasures Simon Pegg and Nick Frost does him no harm. Spaced with its quirky late nineties / early noughties out-there-comedy says yes it is justified, as does the clever but not quite as amazing as some make out Shaun of the Dead. Scott Pilgrim vs the World certainly makes the case for yes, but Hot Fuzz has always been the weak link here, stretching a somewhat forced, thin idea far too far. That film could've been considered an anomaly, but the release of The World's End throws that theory up in the air.

The final part of the so-called "Cornetto trilogy", The World's End sees Pegg and Frost reuniting yet again, but this time in a slightly less buddy buddy manner. The film is about a gathering of former friends who have not seen each other since school days, returning to a home town they've almost all escaped from to complete a pub crawl that defeated them at age eighteen. But in typical Wright fashion all in Newton Haven is not as it seems.

As a set-up this falls on the unexciting side of adequate. The return to ones roots after many years apart always has the potential to be interesting, but to truly work it relies solely on decent characterisation, which unfortunately is something seriously lacking here. The cast of actors assembled is typically impressive, however when your group of friends consists of Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman and Eddie Marsan, it's criminal to under-use them. Marsan at least gets a couple of decent scenes, but generally they're all a bit bland and faceless. Frost's Andrew is the most well rounded character, a very satisfying change from both Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz where he is the annoying / slightly lacking sidekick. We get more background and a sense of him being a decent man; someone worthy to root for whom for the most part makes logical sense as logic escapes their situation.

For a change Pegg plays a character, Gary King, who is the complete antithesis - an extremely unlikable and irritating character without a single redeeming quality. His arrogance, narcissism and childlike obsession with recreating what transpired twenty years ago is left unexplained. He hasn't changed in that time, but we don't know why he was like that to start with and why intervening life has done nothing to alter his path. This raging ego means he continues to not give a damn about his so called friends, who themselves remain sceptical about why they even listened to him again. They don't like him and there's clearly no way the audience can either, so how do we root for him or the group to succeed? Attack the Block, another British film with this exact primary failing, comes to mind - that's a film that's impossible to like to due to detestable characters you desperately want to see lose. Pegg plays King really well, embodying his chaos and arrogance, but that's meaningless when the character is awful. And within this, sight of the deeper questions of where life has or hasn't taken you whilst reimagining your childhood aspirations, is lost in a reminiscence of the joy of getting pissed with your mates.

The film does have some interesting visual ideas as it takes its turn into sci-fi weirdness, such as the strange blue light emitted from the towns residents when they're displeased, but it's pure Invasion of the Body Snatchers homage, just with a Stepford twist. It's a shame that there's nothing more original to this aspect of the story, as the pub crawl surface layer is desperately crying for a more interesting story beneath it. This is supposed to be a comedy but there's precious little to laugh at - a handful of mildly amusing chuckles do crop up, but there's nothing to elicit an actual proper laugh. The previous films in this "trilogy" offer many more occasions to laugh, as well as more enjoyable silliness.

The World's End is a thoroughly disappointing film. There is some potential somewhere in there, if not from the blandly unoriginal story and poor characterisation, then from the decent cast. But a chief protagonist who remains detestable for the duration of the film, alongside a lack of laughs or even any sense of fun, leave an unappetising experience. In fact it's a boring film that seems to drag on interminably, and Frost is the only one to escape positively. This is easily the worst film Wright has made. Considering the quality and enjoyability of Scott Pilgrim vs the World, hands down Wright's best film and the only one without his usual cast of friends, it's positive that his next project, Ant-Man, is likewise based on a comic, suggesting there's still something curious to come from him. The World's End doesn't make it easy, but for now at least I still believe in Wright.

Review: Upstream Color

(Dir: Shane Carruth, 2013)

It's been nine years but the wait is finally over. Shane Carruth appeared out of nowhere to win the Grand Jury Prize at 2004's Sundance Film Festival for his mind-bending micro budget time travel movie Primer and then promptly vanished, as if he'd stepped into one of those machines hidden in a storage unit in some bland unidentifiable city. Primer's realist feel and well thought-out take on time travel has proven to be one of the most intriguing tales about the concept, requiring multiple viewings to even begin to make sense of what's happening. Then Carruth disappeared down a self-described rabbit hole as he tried to thrash out the intriguing sounding A Topiary, which unfortunately will never likely see the light of day. But true to form late last year it was announced out of nowhere that his second feature, Upstream Color, would shortly be upon us. Anticipation inevitably ran high.

Upstream Color is a film of shifting tone as it presents a certain cycle of existence. Starting out as a mysterious thriller with shades of early Cronenberg (think Shivers), Kris (Amy Seimetz) is kidnapped and infected with a parasite that leaves her compelled to do as instructed. After the ordeal her life is in turmoil but she meets Jeff (Shane Carruth) who's persistence and seeming kindred spiritedness leads to love, as the film shifts into gentler more romantic gears, but things never seem balanced as certain parts of their world start to make less and less sense. And what of the mysterious isolated pig farmer (Andrew Sensenig), who spends his time making albums of field recordings?

Like Primer, Upstream Color is a film that sits with you and plays with your brain. It's not something to be passively consumed and simply understood, with the underpinning layers and ideas crying out for repeated viewing and dissection. Where to even start? The film plays with the whole idea of existence alongside power and control. The characters are frequently compelled to act and behave in certain ways for reasons completely unbeknownst to them. There's a mysterious reason why they're being pulled like this that serves as a handy metaphor for all existence and all our experiences. Can we ever be sure why we do the things we do? There's a suggestion that a higher power might be at work, but not so much in the sense of a deity, but someone with a "playground" who is pushing and controlling life and everyone is but slave to this. Thus Kris and Jeff's meeting seems pre-determined. The recurrence of Henry David Thoreau's 1854 book, Walden; or, Life in the Woods implies that an observation of modern society and how we all fit together is at play here.

Then there's how the couple deal with a metaphorical loss and existential terror that profoundly affects them, pushing them together with a fear that their own existence is at threat. In "reality" it's a continuation of this cycle of life, but the event pushes them perhaps further than intended, awakening something. Intriguingly a merging of identities appears to take place as past experience and childhood's blur into one between the couple, with each claiming a remembered experience is theirs. Inevitably this leads to anger and confusion from the apparent memory loss - a result of parasitic invasion perhaps, but representative of the homogonisation of society and that no matter what we think, we're not really individual. Even so, transcendence is still always a possibility.

Visually I was instantly struck by a similarity to the work of Terrence Malick. The camera is fluid and there are many many close-ups in the film that linger on the minor details such as seemingly insignificant items or parts of the body, but this helps with creating a collage of mood and life, as if we're experiencing the film rather than being caught in a crystal clear linear narrative. As such dialogue is less prevalent which serves to enhance the "experience" aspect. It's a very striking and bold film, but still retains hints of Primer so it's clear it's same director at work. The score greatly enhances the film with moments of ethereal beauty or a droning hum that provides weight. Carruth composed an initial score whilst writing the film, which underlines its importance.

Upstream Color proves Carruth's status as one of the most intriguing auteur's in indie filmmaking and considering he wrote, directed, starred in, edited, scored, produced and acted as cinematographer, this is a film that is truly his vision and voice. Acting that feels down-played and a look and feel that recreates the essence of individual experience help accentuate the plethora of ideas deep within its pool, which phase from the abstract to less subtle. Like the most satisfying drink of water imaginable, rewatching will be difficult to resist as it holds much to uncover. And if it takes Carruth another nine years for his thrid film to appear, it'll be worth the wait.