Ultra Culture Cinema #03: Mother

Deadly bitter rival movie blogger Charlie Lyne from Ultra Culture this week invited us all round to his place (I'm assuming he lives at the ICA, it's the only place I've ever seen him) for the third in an increasingly numerically sequential series of film screenings and pre-show entertainment. This month the film was Joon-ho Bong's murder-mystery Mother, which stalkers of The Incredible Suit will remember I saw at the London Film Festival last year.

My worthless opinion of the film hasn't changed - it's still too long and drags in parts - except that I neglected to mention a quite brilliant sequence involving a close-up of some fingertips and a puddle of water. If any of the Hitchcock comparisons Mother has attracted are deserved, that bit is the most Hitchy by far. I also failed to notice how good the score is the first time round, which makes me a pretty shoddy film reviewer even by my own low standards.

But Ultra Culture Cinema is as much about the experience as the movies. The random gift-giving continues - those of us who have loyally attended every screening were rewarded with a KitKat each (only two fingers, the tight bastard) - and the charmingly ill-prepared games are entertainingly baffling. When you can win a director's entire back catalogue by dropping a golf ball onto a piece of paper from a distance of about four inches you know you're not on University Challenge.

We were also entertained by magician Chris Cox, who got plenty of LOL-mileage from his surname and awkwardly failed to magic the clothes off an attractive lady, although he did convince her to remove her scarf.

The hopefully-now-mandatory introductory video, though, was the highlight, and these short films are fast becoming surreal mini masterpieces to be held in the same esteem as Pixar's pre-feature shorts. This one featured Some Guy from Some Indie Band and I'm pretty sure it hides a deeper allegorical meaning but I'll leave you to work out what it is.



Finally, anyone who doesn't bother reading the pass notes given out at each screening is a massive nob.

Next month's film is a secret that only The Incredible Suit and several hundred other people know, but trust me when I say that if you've got a family funeral, hot date or job interview to attend on the evening of Wednesday 25th August you should cancel it now.

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London Film Festival: Mother

The London Film Festival trundles on like a great big convoy of films driving through the middle of London honking their airhorns and leaving behind a choking fug of reviews all saying much the same thing. In today’s case that’s especially accurate, because I saw Mother, another slightly unhinged Korean film, the day after I saw Thirst (see Friday’s post), and I can pretty much just copy and paste the review from Thirst and swap the vampire priest for an over-protective mother.

Mother is the story of a woman whose 27-year-old mentally retarded son is framed for the murder of a local girl, and who goes to extreme lengths to prove his innocence and find the real killer.

The film begins with what I was sure was a lengthy scene of former BBC newsreader Moira Stuart dancing in a cornfield, and things didn’t really get any less weird from then on. Although not as supernatural or surreal as director Bong Joon-ho’s previous film The Host, Mother still firmly inhabits that world of Asian cinema where everything’s slightly skewif. The mother and son relationship, for example, is surprisingly close in more ways than one.

Like Thirst, the black comedy’s there, the cinematography – while not as impressive as Park Chan-wook’s – is excellent, and the two leads are convincing as an obsessive mother and a troubled son, but the longer the film went on the more I was fidgeting in my seat waiting for it to end. The mystery is eventually solved unnecessarily late, resolving itself primarily by having characters suddenly remember something which could easily have been remembered about half an hour earlier.

Still worth watching, then, but I’m still waiting for the next Oldboy to burst out of Korea and gobble up its contemporaries like a reluctant live squid.



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POMDEFCON 1

Just so you all know I’m not a complete movie philistine only concerned with Daniel Craig’s moustache, science fiction meat and an irrational vendetta against Shia LaBeouf, I’d like to point out that The Incredible Suit will be attending an eclectic range of cinematic arty-fartery at this year’s London Film Festival.

I can’t believe anyone’s that interested, but on the offchance that you are, and that you yourself might be mooching about on London’s South Bank with a leather satchel and an unkempt beard bemoaning the lack of interest in Italian Neorealism in today’s youth, I’ll be at screenings of the following films (foreign titles included for added pretentiousnessness):

Amintiri Din Epoca De Aur (Tales From The Golden Age)
Double Take
Madeo (Mother)
Underground
Un Prophète (A Prophet)
Ajami
Starsuckers

If you’re going to see any of those puppies, why not identify yourself as a fan of The Incredible Suit by wearing an incredible suit, or better still, standing up in the auditorium just before the film starts and shouting “All hail The Incredible Suit!” at high volume? Actually don’t do that, you’ll make everyone else cross and they won’t enjoy the film because they’ll be worrying that you’ll make another unintelligible outburst at any moment.

Anyway. I’m most looking forward to Double Take, Mother and A Prophet so I’ll let you know what I thought about them because I can tell you’re desperate to know. Who knows, The Incredible Suit might even make it onto a poster with a snappy quote. “This film is alright but goes on a bit”, something like that.

Just in case you weren’t sure how pretentious the London Film Festival can be, check out the BFI’s trailer for it. It firmly sets the pompous defence readiness condition at POMDEFCON 1, which as we all know represents the expectation of actual imminent attack from ageing, ponytailed, brandy-drinking film lecturers wielding sandals and battered copies of Cahiers Du Cinéma.

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