Jenni Ajderian

Image from IMDB.com      First things first, if you like magic you will probably like this film. If you don't, you know that whenever the words Michael Caine and Bank Robbery are in the same film blurb, whenever Mark Ruffalo is looking grumpy and unshaven, whenever Morgan Freeman is, er, there, you know you'll like what happens next. But the like-love line rests on the reason why you like magic.      If you like it for the spectacle, the visual factor, the lights and the colours, you will love this film. Stunning cinematography and elegant graphics bring us from the spotless shine of a Las Vegas stage to the packed streets of New Orleans and the grimiest parts of New York, as a troupe of four magicians play out their unstoppable three-act bank-robbing cop-befuddling show.      If you like it for the performance, the audience banter, the misdirection, you will probably love this film. With a solid cast and a story full of enough twists a...

     Buddy-Comedy-Road-Movie-with-added-cathartic-death is perhaps an underpopulated genre of film. Between drunken stumblings and snap decisions to drive to Corsica, your three lead males from different corners of life have to calm down every now and then just enough to remember your lead female, tragically deceased. Don't worry, this isn't a spoiler- you'll find out as much from AlloCine 's page on the film. Point is, you might not get much more from the film itself.      Bitter and sweet are put very, very close together in this coming-of-age-slash-putting-feet-on-the-ground tale  of three friends united by their love, platonic or not, of Charlie (Mélanie Thierry), the vibrant sister-mother-lover of every Frenchman's dreams, with whose funeral the film opens. So our three musketeers Elie, Boris and Maxime (Nicolas Duvauchelle, François-Xavier Demaison, Pierre Niney) then decide to leap into a car and take the holiday they'd always planned with th...

     In the 50s, having a job as a secretary may have been considered modern, or even empowering, but mostly, as Rose Pamphyle (Déborah Francois) says in her job interview, it's the chance to work for an important man. Seen in this light, the rise and fall of a Speed-Typing champion is just as much to do with a woman's personal victory as it is to do with her boss' encouragement and coaching, as well as the freedom he allows her to have.      In the film, and in life, the Speed-Typing Championship probably stemmed from a cigar-fuelled "I bet my secretary types faster than yours" argument, and the exclusively female competitors inhabit a space somewhere between real sportsman(woman?)ship and simply being allowed to play. The rocky ground of post-war sexual power-play is tested with bright colours and the happy clack-clack of a typewriter, and leads us somewhere a little more patronising than first-time director Regis Roinsard may have been hoping for. ...

     A marriage rife with Bovarysme and ennui, this 1920s power-struggle follows the marriage of young Thérèse (Audrey Tatou), who sees only one route to life until her best friend shows her otherwise.      What is most interesting is that this girl, who crashes onto screen on a bike, kills rabbits and pidgeons for the family, takes a lover and is then imprisonned by her powerful parents, is not the protagonist. These are the actions of Anne (Anaïs Demoustier), the childhood friend of Thérèse, whose story, far more dramatic and classically cinematic, is told through letters and painful pleas for help. The two women are both destined for powerful marriages arranged to monopolise the ownership of riverside pine forests, and Thérèse, the elder, goes through hers first. As she does, Anne's story of forbidden love begins, and Thérèse sees that her path was not the only one available.      In some respects, this is a story we've heard before. U...

     There's a kind of irony in seeing a French-made film shot in New York. The city, like Paris, brings with it certain stereotypes and traditions of film-making, which will always creep into any director's vision, regardless of nationality. There will be a dramatic city-skyline shot, an inspiring panorama of downtown, a nice view of the Brooklyn Bridge. People like New York. People fantasise about New York. Even the French. New York is a kind of brand that can be put on a film to draw in an audience, but once we're there, we need a storyline to keep us there. This is when directors Géaldine Nakache and Hervé Mimran stopped trying.      Three French guys go to surprise-visit their two French girl mates in the Big Apple. And. That's about it. They make friends, they explore, they buy those annoying I Heart NY tshirts and they shout "Obama!" a lot. Between flash-in-the-pan arguments and on-the-spot personality changes we see the panoramas and the skyline sh...

     Goscinny & Underzo’s bandes dessinés are beloved by the French, and quite a few English people too. Trying to figure out how our copies of Asterix and Cleopatra and Astérix et Cléopatre corresponded with one another was the first time I really wanted to learn French. For those who have never read them before, it’s all about a tribe of Gauls who are the last stand against the Roman Empire, and spend their days hunting wild boars and occasionally chugging down some of Getafix’s magic potion so they can beat up their surrounding legionnaires with super-human strength and some very satisfying comic onomatopoeia. Oh, and they go on adventures around the world with their little white dog, meeting various different cultures, making jokes and sorting out people’s problems, so it’s kind of like Tintin, only, you know, good.      The studio may have been jumping on the Anglomania bandwagon following this summer’s Jubilee and the Olympics, but for a group...

          The more I watch countless music videos, movies, tv shows, there are things which stand out as themes that I love. Past your simple in-jokes and nice sepia tones, I've found cinematographical (sp?) techniques which always draw me in- The un-cut tracking long-shot is unquestionably my favourite of these in the world of film. Though I'm not entirely certain of the name, this involves an extended shot, usually following just one character, over the course of a few minutes with absolutely no cutting away, no extra angles, no funny business. Just a clean, long shot, and a lot of good timing and, presumably, luck on the part of the director.      Most recently I've found it on YouTube with Walk off the Earth's Gianni and Sarah Blackwood with a rendition of Love Sponge. The slow-motion sections add an extra something-something too.  Of course, your standard point-and-shoot youtuber vlog will be in this same format, but when we up the qu...

(originally published by The Student )      Watch any western, any black-and-white adventure film, any rags-to-riches adaptation, and you'll realise we've seen this all before. The guy gets the girl, the evil tyrant falls and the True King rises, be it Middle Earth or the Mid-West. We've seen these scenes repeated across time and space, and we know how it goes. Without the speech, the scene still goes the same way. New film The Artist proves this, without saying a word. Aside from the picture-perfect cast and a dog which will reach cult celebrity status any day now, the film addresses the transition between '20s movies and '30s talkies, and a sparse use of sound which offers a challenge to the film-makers.      In one scene, uncharacteristically static, a pair of old friends meet and greet, swap stories, laugh- the details, irrelevant, are replaced by an emotive score and some close camera-work, all of which makes us feel no less connected to the...

(originally published by  The Student )      For a film aficionado, Edinburgh is the place to be according to Chris Brooks,  archivist for the Edinburgh Movie Production Society. “ This is a good city to be in. There’s the film festival, and there are always contacts bubbling away,” said Brooks.      Founded in 2004, EMPS brings the complex art of film production to a more accessible level. Even those who have never touched a camera before can create something, while those with more experience have the opportunity to make films using top-of-the-range equipment and mentor others.      “There’s a danger people will assess us very quickly,” Brooks said. “That it’s just for geeks who know how a camera works, but most of the society is made up of people who don’t even study film.” Drawing its members from across the University, members’ knowledge of film-making varies, meaning a range of talents and styles ...

     When thrown head-first into the comic-book world of Bryan O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim, it's natural to feel a little apprehensive. Are those graphics going to come up for every sound effect? Is Pilgrim (Michael Cera) ever going to grown a backbone ? But then a certain charm kicks in, whether it's through Pilgrim's horribly funny one-liners, the dialogue between his bandmates, or a particular brand of magic realism which allows the first of seven evil exes to propose a duel to the death via email.      What ensues is a simple story of boy-meets-girl, boy makes a fool of himself but still convinces girl to come see his awful band play, and subsequently has to defeat her seven evil exes in Arcade fight scenes that would put the makers of Pokemon to shame.      It's rare to find an indie film with such great special effects, let alone one which speaks in precisely the same language as its target audience. By the time we're done w...

There was a philosopher who once dreamed he was a butterfly, but when he awoke he wasn't sure whether he was a man dreaming he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was a man.      When Jake Sully awakes from the butterfly world of the Na'vi, where he spends his time jumping from treetops, walking through ultra violet forests and riding huge blue alien dragons, only to see the same old research shack in the mountains, his understanding of which side he's on starts to slip.      What follows is a three-hour film which can only be described as epic, and which follows the same vein as the scifi parable District Nine. It's no coincidence that the film centres on an American mining company wanting to bulldoze alien holy sites for the rich minerals that lie deep in the ground. A small programme is set up by Doctor Sigourney Weaver to use Avatar bodies to infiltrate and learn from the Na'vi,...