sneersnipe film review

Characters in a Ben Hopkins film tend to be shocked. They may not realise it but they will. His films hinge upon exchange or trade in an ever changing world. People try to cope with disruption only to realise that something much bigger is going on instead, be it technological, political or otherwise. Typically it crushes them.

Having made three longer documentaries and three feature films, Hopkins is a particular example of the transnational filmmaker travelling the world much like Michael Winterbottom, Alejandro González Iñárritu or Werner Herzog; Herzog particularly for telling his stories through both fiction and documentary. More so than these though, Hopkins seems fascinated with national borders and people frittering through and around them. Continue reading →

Somewhere between talent and beyond lie many of Asif Kapadia’s characters. Each of his features to date explore characters whose skills lead to this place. Accepting that Aryton Senna drove like magic in Kapadia’s documentary Senna may cause some to baulk; accepting that the Brazilian driver put on a great show swallows much easier.

Could you even dare to describe Aryton Senna’s talent as supernatural? I pose this to a work colleague, whether he would concede that the three time Formula One world champion racing driver had some ineffable ability beyond something as mundane as sheer raw talent. My colleague guffaws in denial: Aryton Senna was merely a good driver who repeatedly crashed and died young. Arguably my sparring partner on this issue might be the best person in the world to answer this one since he’s both an amateur magician and a petrolhead. With his ever-present deck of cards he seeks tirelessly for that sweet-spot where sleight-of-hand, showmanship and gullibility sing. Continue reading →

Andrea Arnold seems up for a fight. Certainly her lead characters are. At the start of Fish Tank teenage hothead Mia sears across her housing estate to find a friend who’s failed to return her calls. After discovering the friend dancing with a bunch of girls she doesn’t like she ends up headbutting one of them before pounding off in anger.

Similar scenes take place in most of Arnold’s films, particularly with characters glowering as they detonate towards or implode from a confrontation. Natalie Press striding across dessicated grass with a naked child under her arm in the short film Wasp; Kate Dickie taking the lift down from a tower-block flat, her motives finally uncovered in Red Road; James Howson smacking his head against the wood in Wuthering Heights. This sense of real people with lightning-rod temperaments sparking with grounded emotions as they prowl through their communities powers her work.

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Small Deaths won Lynne Ramsey the Prix du Jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1996. Watch it and you see why.

In this graduation short film three events play out in the life of a Scottish girl. First in Ma & Da we bear witness to her realisation that her parent’s relationship may be dysfunctional. Then in Holy Cow, the girl and a friend rush out into this Super-8-style primal-coloured countryside full of rivers, long grass and snails. It’s beautiful as they brush through corn and roll over, to a kind of jump-cut sense of time and turned-up pastoral sounds. Loud boys interrupt this idyll with their raucous behaviour which fascinates the older girl. Later they come across a blooded cow which may be due to the boys. Finally in Joke we reach the teenage years full of social housing corridors, group acceptance and the braying of a baby off-screen for what possibly awaits this character. Her life is doomed yet it’s heartbreakingly beautiful. Vitally, we immerse ourselves in her world whilst her thoughts on the situation remain guarded. Continue reading →