The Facebook Films

In recent times two films have been released which explore the power of Facebook.

1) THE SOCIAL NETWORK

This film manages to do some amazing things. Not only does it make legal procedures and computer programming interesting, it makes it almost accessible. It also makes a film in which their is very little action feel exciting and captivating.

It would be easy to tire of a film which solely consists of people talking, but the script is phenomenal. Aaron Sorkin's dialogue is so fast paced and so exhilarating that you quickly become engrossed.

The first scene is a really fast paced conversation that acts a 'sink or swim' initiation to the dialogue, but half way through that scene you get used to the delivery and can just settle in.

The excellent script is then delivered by a group of young actors who are all delivering career best performances.

Special shouts out to Jesse Eisenberg who manages to play a different character without making him either particularly likable or hateable.

Justin Timberlake who is amazing! (specially if you just want to dismiss him because he's JT)

And Armie Hammer, who has a great name and who (beautifully subtly) plays two roles.

All in all, this is a film which feels more like a TV series, in that I would have happily watched those characters deliver that script for 5 or 6 hours.

And, the soundtrack is wonderful - definitely worth listening to!

2) CATFISH

Whilst The Social Network directly examines Facebook, Catfish is more about the general power of Social Networking. It is a film which begins in facebook, but which quickly crosses to other web media.

Catfish gets a UK release in December.... and PLEASE - Don't research it. Don't explore online. Don't even go to IMDB. Just go and watch it.

The trailer is probably the most information you'll ever want.

The trailer makes it nice and ambiguous: is it a documentary? Is it a Blair Witch style horror? Is it real?

I'm not saying anything, but I'm confident in saying that you will not guess the ending.

Absolutely brilliant.

And we saw it in screen 3 of the Vue - which has possibly the best leg room ever. It was also followed by a Q&A with the makers of the film.

I wish I could tell you more about the experience. But in this case, ignorance is bliss.

The Temptation Of St. Tony

We were surprised to see Screen 7 packed to the rafters and Sandra Hebron introducing the film herself.

We were confused when Anton Corbijn joined her in the introduction.

We were also a bit pissed off to see that people were in our seats.

Only they weren't. Our seats were in Screen 6....

Screen 7 was The American.

So, we were escorted out and led to a much smaller screen for our small art house cinema...

Imagine the worst kind of art house black & white subtitled foreign film you can. Now imagine it knew this and played on it. It embraced it's absurdity and encouraged you to laugh at the increasingly bizarre but knowing scenes....then imagine it punished you for laughing and enjoying it. This film is Temptation of St. Tony and from the very beginning it appears to be in on the joke and punishing you for being in on it too, parts of the film seem almost cliche but from the comedic beginning you get the feeling the director also knows this.

The film has a plot of sorts (or at least you create one in your own mind from the seemingly random shots and scenarios that come into play) but it is far too convoluted to actually go into - involving a struggling middle manager, relationship woes , dead dogs and a seedy underground club from hell .

Whilst the film becomes progressively more and more difficult to understand (ending up as just a series of nightmare images) it remains beautiful throughout.

There is some wonderful imagery, every screenshot could be an artistic photograph. It manages to be both captivating and chilling.

While it has an amazing soundtrack that manages to flip between live action accordion playing from old men, hard core electronica and a beautiful old blues number. It then manages to create a sense of dread with militaristic and clashing sounds worse then any recent horror film.

Altogether a film that is definitely one to watch...once.

Oh and excellent dancing.

Now that I can compare screens 6 and 7, there is surprisingly ample leg room in the west end Vue screen 6.