London Film Festival: Anvil The Story of Anvil

A former roadie for Canadian heavy metal group, Anvil, director Sacha Gervasi catches up with the band twenty years on as they make a last ditch attempt at success.

It's possible, if not probable that you've not heard of Anvil; I'm ashamed to say that I hadn't. Thankfully, right from the get-go Gervasi shows us how fucking awesome they were by having metal legend after metal legend sing their praises. Tom Araya from Slayer, Scott Ian from Anthrax, Lars Ulrich from Metallica; When people that cool tell you the band were good, you soon sit up and start paying attention. While archival footage shows Anvil playing a stadium in Tokyo, Japan, an audience going wild for their theatrical performance and extrordinary musicianship, the talking headbangers wonder what happened after, since Avil's  album Metal on Metal was so influential on them. It turns out that the band carried on putting out music, but outside of a small, dedicated fanbase, no one was listening. While their progenitors thrived throughout the eighties and beyond, Anvil got by in blue collar jobs. Watching Steve "Lips" Kudlow, a man able to command the attention of a crowd of thousands making a living out of delivering school dinners reminds you just how fickle and luck based the entertainment industry is. What makes the film, and the band special though, is that there isn't an overwhelming sense of failure or regret. The band carried on with Lips and best friend and drummer Robb Reiner (we'll get to the irony of that name later) at their core. They scraped together the cash that wasn't being used to support their families to put out albums, all for the love of the music.

Lips and Reiner seem like genuinely nice guys, and they look like they're entertaining as hell to be around. For a start, they're Candaian, which gives them a fantastic accent and folksy charm, which when combined with the overblown histrionics of heavy metal results in comedy gold. This is probably the point to bring up the shadow that looms large of this documentary: This is Spinal Tap. It's pretty amazing just how many times this film reminds you of that mockumentary. It seems like it's both that the other Rob Reiner's movie was pretty much bang on in representing rock bands, but also that it's become such a cultural touchstone that the band feel like they should live up to the image; you're never sure where reality and knowing self-parody begin and end. Since it's pretty clear that most people will be thinking about Spinal Tap at some point, Gervasi embraces it, realising that scenes like Lips and Reiner talking about one of their early songs is errily reminiscent of a similar scene between Christopher Guest and Michael McKean, and going so far as to include a close up of an amp being turned up to eleven.

I really loved Anvil! The Story of Anvil. It's film that wears it's heart on its sleeve, daring you to feel anything but admiration and affection for its subjects. While a young teenager on a reality TV show might talk about deserving fame and fortune because they've worked hard for a few weeks and believe themselves to be on some kind of great journey, this is a film that shows what the genuine reality for most musicians is like. These are guys who've worked hard, struggled, and done it because they love being in a rock band. By the end of the documentary's brief running time, you're genuinely invested in seeing the band achieve some form of success, and what ends up happening is really poinagnt.

London Film Festival: Achilles and the Tortoise

Following on from previous films, Takeshis' and Glory To the Filmmaker!, Achilles and the Tortoise sees Takeshi Kitano bring a more focused, semi-autobiographical slant to the absurdist comedy kick he's on right now. While the previous films were somewhat uneven, here a focus on character means that the experience is far more engaging and ultimately quite moving. That's not to say that it doesn't also have the same unhinged, not sure what's going to happen next streak running through it, just that it's more restrained, and makes the film feels much more of a whole.

Tracing the life of an artist, Machisu, from his early school days, through adolescence and into adulthood (where he is finally played by Kitano himself), the film does a wonderful job of conveying the idea that art and its creation should be about personal satisfaction, rather than financial or critical acclaim. Machisu begins as a young boy, drawing and painting at every opportunity, even when he should be listening in school or doing chores at home. By the time he's an adult, he's moved away from that pure love of creation and is desperate to be recognised as a successful artist. He tries to get his work exhibited in a gallery, but is repeatedly told that it's not what the curator is looking for. Machisu returns time and time again, constantly chasing acceptance by imitating a style that is apparently the hot thing in the gallery that week. Each visit is generally the culmination of a hilarious attempt to make something he can sell, but each visit is also a step further away from his art being infused with his own personality. From the surreal, almost child-like paintings that have become a staple of Kitano's films of the past decade (some even make reappearances here), to a failed attempt at graffiti, to directing his wife to ride a bike through some paint and onto a sheet, there's a sense of the absurd to it all, but also an underlying sense that Kitano genuinely dislikes any idea of pretentious modern art and it's fans.

Though it is often slapstick and surreal, like a lot of Kitano's comedy there's sometimes a slightly sadistic streak to it that can be quite uncomfortable. While it's generally because it's Kitano in the more dominant role that leads to this feeling, it's also true that any sense of him being a bully is somewhat offset by how self-deprecating he is. As the film progresses it becomes darker and possibly more autobiographical. Machisu works harder and harder to achieve recognition as an artist, but it is to the detriment of his family. It's easy to see Kitano as the man obsessed over a creative endeavour, taking his family for granted and lost as to how to deal with the consequences.

While the last few films Kitano has made have been more experimental, here he really seems to have figured out the balance of character, social realism and surreal comedy to make a much more cohesive movie. The clear love he has for painting and creating is infectious, and as someone who really likes his paintings and cinematic style, I felt like Achilles and the Tortoise was a genuine return to form for Kitano, even if it's again a let down that the score isn't by Joe Hisaishi.

London Film Festival: Largo

Filmed over a period of months in the soon to be closed and relocated club in Los Angeles, Largo is a farewell film to a place that built a reputation as a seriously cool nightspot. Resident musician Jon Brion and owner Mark Flanagan filled the stage with all manner of musical artists, stand up comedians and cabaret acts, launching the careers of some and simply revelling in the talents of the rest. Largo by all accounts was an exclusive and intimate venue where the people in the audience were as likely to be as famous as those on the stage, with surprise guests a constant fixture.

Over the course of what is essentially a concert film, the breadth of performers that would play at the club really comes across. Ranging from Jon Brion himself and his circle of musical compadres like Michael Penn and Fiona Apple to comedy acts like Flight of the Conchords, Patton Oswald and probably the highlight of the whole film, John C. Reilly (his tale of Burt Reynolds thinking an Irish accent would suit his character in Boogie Nights is worth the price of admission alone), it seems like it must have been a pretty amazing place to spend your weekends in. And that's the problem. This is a film that feels like it was made for a very specific audience of people that used to frequent the club. The fact that the artists are only identified in the closing credits gives you the sense that if you're not cool enough to know who they are, you've no business watching the film. This isn't helped by what seems like a staunch refusal to show the club itself. Only at the end when the bar staff are clearing away the empty glasses of a departed audience do you get to see the space the film has taken place in. On the one hand, it's great that there's a focus on the artists themselves, but with the stage essentially a big black curtain, it could really have been anywhere; there's little sense of the kind of magical atmosphere the place is reported to have had. Though the sound recording is excellent and goes someway to capturing the feel of a live performance, you're still left with the feeling that you really had to be there to get it.

The sheer number of acts that come and go means that if someone isn't really doing it for you (Gregg Proops, Zach Galifianakis? Not so much), there'll be someone along soon after that probably will (Jon Brion, Mark Everett? Oh hell yes), Even though there is something about the way the film is constructed that pushed me away from it a lot of the time, it is beautifully photographed and the sheer quality of some of the performances pulled me through, and had me revisiting some of the artists on my iPod immediately after; Aimee Mann on dark and rainy South Bank is highly recommended.

London Film Festival: Tyson

Everyone thinks they know Iron Mike Tyson. We all know the tale of the delinquent teenager, saved by a natural talent for boxing that took him to the very top of the sport in flamboyant style. Then we know of the downfall: a conviction for rape, reports of domestic abuse, boxing matches spilling out of the ring and into the real world, and of course, the biting of Holyfield's ear. Tyson went from being seen as a masterful professional sportsman to a crazed animal on the path to self-destruction. James Toback's documentary attempts, if not to set the record straight, to at least allow Tyson to put his side of his story across. The direction is at times exhilarating, with snappily edited archival fight footage, but the way Toback pieces together the central interview with Tyson is often quite intrusive - Tyson is a mesmerising enough interviewee who doesn't need stylistic tricks like splitscreen shots and overlapping soundbites to keep an audience interested in listening to him.

This is wholly Tyson's film; no other interviewees are present, and save for the occasional newsreel and fight commentary, he's the singular voice. But what a voice it is. Tyson is a commanding speaker, articulating himself in a mix of street vernacular and new age philosophy, and though there's obviously a degree of worry in allowing such a controversial figure free reign, the film lays it's subjectivity right out there from the get-go, allowing the audience to ultimately decide where they feel the truth lies.

Tyson never portrays himself as a saint; he is as aware as the audience of his deficiencies, but clearly sees this film as an opportunity to set the record straight about people might perceive him. He alleges for instance that his biting of Evander Holyfield's ear was prompted by the inaction of the referee against Holyfield repeatedly headbutting him. He also vehemently denies that he was a rapist. The result is that this isn't always a comfortable watch, with affection and dislike for Tyson swinging from moment to moment (any moment when he discusses women or sex is particularly uncomfortable) but there's also the sense that this is someone who was shaped by an impoverished background, forced to carry its burden to this day. The child of a broken home in the housing projects of 70s Brooklyn, Tyson led a daily fight for survival where he had to learn to hit hardest or risk being killed. The fear of being back in that situation is one that continues to drive him and results in some painfully honest moments where Tyson allows us to see a side of him we didn't even know existed. He reveals a scared, insecure man, haunted by the loss of his mentor and trainer, Cus D'Amato just as he was hitting the big time and just when he needed him the most; The question of how Tyson might have developed as a person with this parental figure still present hangs over the film.

London Film Festival: Tokyo

From New York Stories to Paris, je t'aime, from Four Rooms to Grindhouse, anthology films are always a mix of quality. While one or two stories in the group might hold your attention more than others, there's also the tendency for one to be absolutely atrocious. Tokyo! presents three such short films: Michel Gondry's tale of a struggling filmmaker and his long suffering girlfriend moving into a tiny apartment in the titular city is the kind of capricious, bittersweet tale you'd expect; Bong Joon-ho tells a twisted and melancholic love story between two hikikimori (a Japanese phenomenon where people retreat from the stresses of everyday society by living hermit-like existences, often supported by family members); Leos Carax gives us an ill-judged, borderline racist tale of a homeless lunatic that speaks in his own language of grunts and teeth flicking that goes wild with a box of hand grenades before being put on trial.

Gondry's Interior Design paints a picture of a struggling film director, in love with the act of creating art, and with the moments of idiosyncratic charm that the city of Tokyo throws up on an almost constant basis, but someone who takes his partner for granted. This latter aspect feels the most autobiographical; It's easy to see Gondry as the artist, expecting his partner to understand his need for time and space to work, but also worried about the consequences of such neglect. The rather sinister outcome of the girlfriend's story feels like both wish-fulfilment and a feared possibility of the director. Though the film feels slightly uneven, there's enough of Gondry's quirky low-fi aesthetic and unusual sense of humour to keep it enjoyable throughout, with the artist's anarchic film premiere being a particular highlight.

Were it not for the prospect of Bong Joon-ho's third story coming on after (Memories of Murder is a modern masterpiece), Leos Carax's Merde would have had me leaving the cinema. It opens with a bedraggled weirdo emerging from a storm drain and wreaking havoc on a street full of the Japanese public. He marches down the pavement, stealing people's lunches, licking schoolgirls' armpits and generally scaring the shit out of everyone before returning down the nearest sewer. As a two minute short, there might be something darkly amusing in these unhinged, unexpected actions, but when the film carries on for another forty minutes, and as the man moves into murder, terrorism and eventual imprisonment, it becomes increasingly ill-judged, flip-flopping in tone to a truly incredible degree. There's a sense that the man is supposed to be quirky and amusing with his absurd invented language; the way the film portrays him in television news reports, even appears to suggest that we should see him as a misunderstood victim. The culmination of this is a trial with nods to Guantanamo Bay and an eventual execution that features Christ-like overtones. The reality is that it feels deeply offensive to have random acts of violence carried out on innocent Japanese civilians (especially when it's perpetrated and filmed by a team of outsiders) and then be asked to find it funny, no matter how eccentric a story it's wrapped up in.

The final story is thankfully far better and feels the most authentically Japanese of the three. Bong Joon-ho's Shaking Tokyo, takes the uniquely Japanese concept of hikikimori and turns it into a Brief Encounter-esque love story. A man who hasn't had any human contact for years, finally finds the courage to look at a girl delivering him pizza, instantly forming a bond with her. It's a film about courage, loneliness, and love being for everyone, and the result is the most human of the three films. Bong shows us a man's apartment filled with character; The stacks of books, magazines and obsessively arranged takeaway boxes tells it's own story of someone trying to stamp order on an unpredictable world. Watching someone force himself to set that kind of single-minded obsession aside in order to step outside because of his love for another person feels really quite special. As the story unfolds, it becomes more fabulist, pointing towards a nightmare scenario where current lifestyle patterns of overworked Japanese could have devastating consequences for the country as a whole. While it lacks the lightness of Gondry's film, Shaking Tokyo is probably the most even and successful of the three.

When viewed as a whole, the most surprising thing about Tokyo! is the lack of a sense of place, since although the idea of foreign filmmakers being inspired by such a vibrant city is an intoxicating one, the outcome is less successful. While the film manages to avoid the stereotypical landscapes of a bustling Shibuya or tranquil shots of Shinto temples, one can't help but think the narratives for some of these films were ideas the directors had at the back of their minds already, figuring this film would be a way of getting them made, rather than being inspired by the city directly; Only Bong's film really feels as though it's about something unique to this part of the world.

London Film Festival: The Class

No doubt because the film's leading actor and writer Francois Begaudeau, is a former teacher playing a simulacra of himself, The Class is a film which absolutely reeks of authenticity. Following the progress of a class of French students in a multicultural Parisian high school, the narrative unfolds slowly, taking greater pleasure in observing and giving voice to a group of disadvantaged and often troubled teenagers. The film feels incredibly believable with a lot of the scenes obviously improvised to some degree; All the students feel totally natural, displaying many of the same loves and fears as any of us felt in our early teens, but they are also very much kids of a particular place and social background. This is a truly multicultural group of students that even thought many of them were born in France, are troubled by questions of identity - most brilliantly emphasized in an argument about which national football team people should support - and exist in an atmosphere of simmering racsism between not only themselves, but also the teachers.

The way the film manages to distill such large issues and use this class as a microcosm of wider social concerns in France and the rest of the world is one of its great successes. A greater success though is that while The Class might sound like a worthy and overwrought polemic, it is in fact eminently watchable and entertaining, in no small thanks to a brilliantly cast group of kids that manage to stamp their personalities on the scenes. Over the course of two hours the kids never blend into one and never seem like caricatures intended to voice an opinion of the filmmakers. In one particular moment of the film, a kid has to leave the room because he's got ink all over his hands. If this wasn't a direct reference to Truffaut's The 400 Blows, it certainly made me think that The Class shares a similar combination of social realism and entertaining, empathetic characters.

This is a film which asks some tough questions: Are these dysfunctional kids failures, too lazy to work hard and pull themselves out of the ghetto, or have they been failed by an educational and social system which hasn't drawn out the dormant talents they might possess? Francois as a character is a teacher who attempts to inspire his students, forcing them to think when they argue with him, looking to encourage when they display a gift for something, but at the same time is frustrated, feels unappreciated, and in the end isn't prepared to put his students education before his career. Francois as a writer makes it clear that everyone can make more of an effort, and no one should be abandoned.