★★☆☆☆

The marketing campaign behind The Lone Survivor has been a clever one, courting Academy judges by posturing as an intimate film which interrogates the masculine bonds formed on a battlefield. However, in vying so ostentatiously “for your consideration” and selling itself as a ‘personal’ war-movie (in the vein of Kathryn Bigelow’s 2008 success The Hurt Locker) Peter Berg’s passion project about the four-man reconnaissance team who dramatically failed in their quest to track Taliban leader Ahmad Shah is exposed all the more conspicuously as a generic action movie. The movie isn’t merely mediocre, but actively disappointing.

The overall deflating experience was only heightened by the fact the movie gets off to such a promising start. The opening credits sequence is a ‘real-footage’ montage, containing clips which communicate the pain-staking pressures of American warfare – a hyperactive and claustrophobic assault of noises and images which is compellingly undercut by the first fifteen minutes of film, where the landscapes and narratives are introduced with a fly-off-the-wall kind of restraint. It’s thoughtfully executed, and it’s hard to believe that we are watching the work of the director behind Hancock and Battleship – a.k.a ‘Transformers with Rihanna’.

My mind was cast back to 2012’s End of Watch in that the narrative explores the moral dilemmas of individuals who are working within the parameters of violent institutions; Lone Survivor’s outstanding set-piece comes around the half hour mark, when the secret reconnaissance of the four soldiers is unwittingly discovered by an Afghan goatherd and two young boys who are held hostage. What follows is a brutal ethical argument, brilliantly performed by the lead cast-members, as they discuss whether to release the hostages and abort the mission, or to ‘terminate the compromise’, and kill the civilians. Where End of Watch was able to sustain this dynamic of personal agency, Lone Survivor’s script takes a drastic turn for the worse, becoming the most careless of action adventures.

Suddenly we reach the movie’s central set-piece, the four Americans defending themselves from an onslaught of Taliban soldiers, and I feel like I’m watching my house-mate play a game of Call of Duty; my eyes are mind-numbingly glued to the screen but my brain has switched off. While there is an impressive physicality to the conflict – bullets tear through flesh and bodies smack on to rocks with visceral force – the characters become rapidly depersonalised. As the action goes on, seemingly endlessly, the script begins to treat the soldiers less as people and more as weapons – underpinning the very military coldness that the story should surely be reacting against. It is evidence of Berg’s failure as a story-teller that we begin to care more for the strategy of their battle than we do for the psychological struggle they presumably experienced.

While half-hearted attempts are made at nostalgic speeches to uphold the pretence of ‘human drama’, Mark Wahlberg (a highly competent actor) is ultimately transformed from a man grappling with the responsibilities of leadership into a typical Hollywood action-hero, and the corresponding patriotism of ‘American man’ Vs. ‘hoards of faceless Afghan soldiers seemingly incapable of firing guns’ leaves a bitter taste in one’s mouth. The work becomes manipulative and the movie’s initial understated tone now gives way to a righteous display of how muscular men are driven to survive which borders on self-parody.

By the half-way mark, one begins to realise that The Lone Survivor is all over the place, marred by a generic and thematic inconsistency which is alienating. At one moment it is a personal drama, the next a nationalistic action-adventure and, in the movie’s positively ludicrous (and entirely fabricated) third act, a half-baked ‘issue’ documentary. If it wasn’t for absolutely stellar sound design, the whole movie would play out like a ‘first-draft’, a rough cut – most noticeably where the story of a certain young recruit is developed only to be abruptly side-lined.

Because Berg fails to extract a narrative coherency out of an unwieldy script, The Lone Survivor is never quite sure how it wants to play to an audience – resulting in a disappointment which wastes a capable cast.

Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave – part-art film, part-blockbuster – has attracted wild acclaim. This has, unsurprisingly, focussed on McQueen’s unflinching exposition of slavery. The feel and cadence of the Black Belt seems spookily precise; Chiwetel Ejiofor recently admitted that being on set felt like ‘walking with ghosts’. Central to McQueen’s achievement is the film’s veracity, but many critics have asked how 12 Years will influence our understanding of slavery. It is presently far too early to tell, but there can be no doubt that this film will greatly impact on how remember ol’ Dixie.

McQueen displayed real intelligence in choosing to bring Solomon Northup’s story to the screen. He has laboured the Anne Frank comparison a little in the public eye, but for good reason. There is much contained in the story of Northup’s capture and enslavement that reminded me of Holocaust cinema. It might seem reductive to argue that this film, vaunted for its depiction of such a distinct time and place, is somehow typical of another, equally controversial genre. Yet there are undeniable similarities toSchlinder’s List and The Pianist, which have embedded the Holocaust in Western memories.

There is the way McQueen presents slavery’s inhumanity. With minimalist camerawork, the director of Shame and Hunger shows us sadism with artful juxtaposition. Serene tableaux of rural Louisiana are invaded by pastiches of unfreedom. Black matriarchs sort through cotton, as the younger men are lashed in the background for not picking enough. In another scene, a botched lynching leaves Solomon half-dead, suspended from a branch framing the agrarian idyll behind him.

McQueen uses the tranquil backdrop of the American South to highlight slavery’s brutal aberration. But directors bringing the Holocaust to the screen have also used this technique. Roman Polanski focussed on Warsaw’s urbanity when charting ghettoization in The Pianist. A prosperous Jewish family become impoverished, brutalised and separated by German occupation. This process takes place in the foreground of Warsaw’s baroque cityscape. ‘The Girl in the Red Dress’, Spielberg’s iconic set piece in Schindler’s List, is given added pathos by Krakow’s elegant setting. This technique hammers home the inhuman, and McQueen uses it with haunting effect in 12 Years as Slave.

McQueen shows us slavery and authority in a way that is customary to the Holocaust genre. There are considerable comparisons to be made between Fassbender’s ‘nigger-breaker’ Edwin Epps, and Ralph Fiennes’ performance as Commandant Amon Goethe in Schindler’s List. Epps stumbles across his plantation charged by drunken paranoia, and his obsession with slave-girl Patsy – ‘Queen o’ the Fields, an’ God gi’ ‘er to-me’ – parallels Goethe’s lusting after a Jewish untermensch.

Epps’s luring after Patsy riles his malicious wife. Mary cuckolds Edwin in front of the other slaves until Patsy herself becomes the subject of his ‘nigger-breaking’, in a public redemption of authority. Goethe’s wanton killing of camp inmates, on the other hand, forms a macho display to impress his subordinates. Epps and Goethe are in similar scenarios, just different places. Both commit violence to shore up their authority, in a racial hierarchy where domination simultaneously enables and prohibits their sexual peccadilloes.

Perhaps the most legitimate point of comparison between 12 Years a Slave and the Holocaust genre is Solomon Northup’s story. A Freedman kidnapped in New York and sold as a slave in Louisiana; this broadly follows the trajectory of inmates we see inSchindler’s List. Prospering, urbane people who are dehumanised by their infernal captivity. McQueen chose Solomon’s story because it presented slavery in these terms, to Western audiences acquainted with the artistic pathos of Holocaust cinema.

We watch Solomon, an accomplished violinist, become the muted slave ‘Platt’. His enjoyment of writing and playing dissipates, as they come to threaten his survival among illiterate peers. Solomon’s first owner, Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch), warns him that ‘you are an exceptional nigger, but I fear no good will come of it’. Epps threatens him for playing the violin at a local judge’s home, accusing him of ‘charming with your slick nigger ways’. The violin that lays smashed at Northup’s feet by the end of the film is symbolic of his transition into the persona of a southern slave.

The vast majority of slaves were born and died illiterate on plantations in the South. Solomon’s kidnapping is a rare example that paints slavery as a dehumanising institution. This contains a pathos that is shared with The Pianist. Adrien Brody’s character, a Polish musician, survives the clearing of the Warsaw Ghetto at the cost of his own serenity. He becomes a brutalised husk of the man he was, in much the same way that, by the end of 12 Years, Ejiofor’s character looks physically worsted by his experiences. It is a distressing, but illuminating way of presenting slavery’s human impact.

There can be absolutely no doubt about the realism of McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, which has propelled it to assured Oscar success. But before considering the big question of how the film will affect the way we remember slavery, it is important to recognise the influence of Holocaust cinema tradition. 12 Years a Slave is an artful look at a brutal part of American history, and is likely to become an iconic point of reference for slavery, just like Schindler’s List is for the Holocaust. But when ‘walking with ghosts’ in war-torn Europe or the Antebellum South, it would seem that directors and audiences look for the same things.

★★★★☆

Following the success of the biographical film Coco Avant Chanel in 2009, directed by Anne Fontaine and starring Audrey Tatou, a new French biographical film has been released: Yves Saint Laurent.  Both films follow the classic biopic structure; a rather eccentric and undiscovered person finds their way to fame and high society, finding love along the way, encounters tragedy, and undergoes a ‘life changing’ epiphany, for better or worse.

However, this does well to capture an audience and make a moving and/or an exciting film. This said, Coco Avant Chanel was deemed dull by many, because it was too reserved, tasteful and refused to adhere to melodrama.  However, critics agreed that it was extremely moving. Yves Saint Laurent is arguably more exciting and just as moving, yet, it has slightly less beaming reviews, which I personally disagree with.

Yves Saint Laurent is a captivating watch. Based on Laurence Benaim‘s biography, it traces the hectic, passionate and poignant life of Christian Dior’s assistant, Yves, until his death in 2008. At no point does it bore its audience. Foremost, the theme of Yves’ (Pierre Niney) clandestine homosexual relationship with his colleague and friend Pierre Berge (Guillaume Gallienne) is absorbing, all the more for being so complex and discerning.  Yves and his lover Pierre have a tumultuous relationship, replete with passion, resentment, hate and other liaisons; one of them with the same woman. Pierre is a very touching character, who tries to help Yves with his overwhelming depression and descent into debauchery, and protect him from the dangerously excessive lifestyle his fame and wealth surrounds him with. He is constantly subject to Yves’ heart-wrenching abuse, abandonment and self-destruction, yet, he is a constant friend till the very end.

Yves’ transformation from a quiet, polite and humble young man into an abusive, wild, arrogant alcoholic is sudden and shocking. His change in personality is reflected in his change in surroundings; he spends weeks in a hazy delirium of pleasure in Morocco. The film portrays the vibrant, indulgent stupor of his new crowd, and the colourful seduction of the country. The sharp and rich cinematography renders this seduction all the more enthralling.

The theme of fashion in the film is secondary to the journey Yves undertakes as a character, yet the world of catwalks and beautiful models does not go amiss, and adds an entertaining aspect to the film, all the while adhering to realism and Yves Saint Laurent’s designs.

Pierre Niney acts extremely well, and is known to have practised the unique tone of voice he uses to capture Yves’ character for months before he perfected it. He even wears Yves Saint Laurent’s own glasses and wears a nose implant to fit the role. Extraordinarily, the late designer’s surviving dog reportedly thought he had been reunited with his lost master when on set. Guillaume Gallienne is equally convincing, and couldn’t be further from his very recent farcical role in the comedy ‘Guillaume et les garcons, à table’ which came out a month ago.

Overall, Jailil Lespert’s film is excellent, and I thoroughly urge you to see it. 

 I don’t really need to write an article about how good Foals are live. They’ve won awards for it. It was this guarantee of a fantastic gig (combined with Friday night Wahoo) that led me to drunkenly set my alarm for the optimistically (and arrogantly) early 7.30am on Saturday morning in preparation for the 10am release of tickets for Foals’ surprise homecoming gig. I sleep fitfully, plagued by Foals-ticket-disaster related nightmares. I arrive outside the O2 at 8.15am, and two hours later swagger away from the box office with tickets. I cycle back to college with extra caution. I tell my sister of my great achievement. “Voles?” she replies. I tell Joel Mann, Cherwell News Editor, and get the more positive response of “I hate you.” Yeah you do. In the upstairs room of the O2, the limited floor space meant more intimacy and more sweat. Plus, there weren’t that many tall people. Result.

One of the reasons Foals work so well as a live act is that they can showcase to the full their‘build-up-to-stripped-back-instrumental’ formula almost to the point of absurdity. they expand this, giving time for Yannis to go for a stage dive if he fancies (which he does, three times). Everyone surges forward to try and get a touch, myself included, and I totally get a touch of tattooed bicep. I’m confused about what I do with this hand now. Lick it? Wipe it on my jeans? Wipe it on the person next to me’s jeans? I temporarily go for this option before discovering that the person next to me is Phoebe From Made In Chelsea.

Halfway through Yannis thanks the crowd and tells us that all their songs were written here, in Oxford. This gets an appreciative woop from the audience, but then again so has everything else he’s said. During Spanish Sahara, a group in the middle of the crowd sit down and everyone else follows suit, and I’m thinking what a delightful way this is of creating a Spanish-Sahara-emotive ambiance. Like we’re being told off by our favourite teacher, Yannis shushes some hecklers singing ‘Sit Down if you hate City’ and I’m a bit confused. Things quieten down enough to make such a lush environment, the 14-year old couple in front of me start snogging, it’s that atmospheric.

The highlight comes at the end of the set with Inhaler, where I start jumping and moshing along during the chorus, and then realize two bars in that it’s a bit too slow to sustain so make the awkward transition from manic jumping to a slower, nonchalant groove, which I feel comes off well. During the encore Yannis has a cigarette, and then it’s all over. As they leave the stage, each band member approaches the mic, thanks us and tells us they love us. The feeling’s mutual.

Two things are always guaranteed to get my instant attention: £1,
 and nudity. This Bar-gain Bin find from
 the patron saint of
 purple, Prince, did
 both. Even if you
haven’t listened to Lovesexy, chances are you’ve seen the artwork. NME.com featured it as part of a gallery entitled “50 hilariously awful attempts at sexy album covers”, which seems a pretty apt judgement. It’s terrible, but I can’t help but also feel that it’s quite fun. Because heck, naked people quite simply are fun. A spin of the album would indicate that its loveably cringy artwork is a good indicator for the content.

“Ahh! You got me drippin’ all over the floor,” are the kind of lyrics that will always make you prick your ears up. Delivered in chipmunk squeak, however mediocre the music might be, you have to think, “bizarre, yes, but also rather wonderful?”

A quick check of Wikipedia tells me that the album is supposed to be about God and the Devil, and the struggle between good and evil. However, I can’t help but feel almost every track on here is about shagging instead, underscored by someone really enjoying the different fart-like voices for his synth.

But then again, he’s Prince, so all of this is not only acceptable but downright art.

Just after their debut album was released, ‘indietronica’ band Breton had to watch their home, an abandoned warehouse in South London, get demolished. BretonLABS was where they partied, shot video, slept and consulted artists. Releasing a sophomore on top of getting kicked out was a challenge, but luckily for us, this turned out to be just the boost needed to make War Room Stories, this time coming from an old communist radio station in Berlin, awesome.

It’s difficult to review a band that refuse to assign themselves to one genre, but the variation, which could have so easily made the album incohesive, messy and fluctuating, works incredibly well, to keep you excited for the next twist that’s going to come your way.

Take for instance the movement between opening track ‘Envy’, and its follow up, ‘S4’. The first sounds like it’s been taken straight from Yannis from Foals’ internal jukebox, a seductive pop riff delivered with tangibly British vocals and studded violin. When this is brought to a finish and replaced by the latter, a completely different atmosphere is brought to the forefront. A sound produced from a plucked violin underlays a dance music beat that, at exactly 2:13, drops a bass to turn it straight into Dubstep. It’s robotic, with frontman Roman Rappak keeping perfect, even rhythm over the juxtaposed instruments and beats.


Although it sounds like they’re leaping, the changes between each track are more like strides; noticeable, but not strenuous. By the time we reach ‘Legs & Arms’ on track three, we’ve moved away from the electronic backing again, but Rappak’s vocals are distorted, linear and almost aggressive.

Penultimate track ‘Brothers’ moves all over the place, from slow piano minimalism to multi-warble chorusing.

But what makes War Room Stories stand out and exceed its predecessor is its active voice, its energy. It’s restless, but by no means reckless. This is what glues the tracks together: drive and control.

Whether shaking your toosh at the indie disco or laying in bed with headphones, War Room Stories is the ultimate chameleon record.

The first thing that hits you when listening to Marissa Nadler’s July is her voice. De-spite being superficially rich and warm, closer listening gives you a nagging impression of the singer’s cool detachment from what she’s singing about.

On July her voice lilts and soars over the understated guitar, but is never emotionally extravagant; rather, she seems to be permanently subdued and defeated.

The music backs up this style well, only occasionally featuring more than a guitar or two, and almost always in the same rhythm, tying the tracks together sonically. The lyrical content is deeply personal and if it’s based on true experiences, you can see why Nadler would sound a little downbeat.

July is soporific in the best sense of the word. It flows quietly from track to track, and leaves you in exactly the mood that Nadler intended to induce. On that basis it’s a real success, but for exactly that reason it seems quite ephemeral.

None of the individual songs make a real impression, and the album is better listened to as an organic whole rather than dipping into tracks here and there.

Giving July your full attention is definitely rewarding if you’re in the right state of mind, but you probably won’t find yourself coming back to it all that often.

Ekoplekz is the alias of Bristol-based musician and blogger Nick Edwards. An active producer in the underground electronica scene for almost 20 years, his most recent release, Unfidelity, on Planet Mu records, could be the most widely publicised yet.

Planet Mu’s description of the album as a “flashback to the fuggy feeling of a teenage bong intake, with none of the nausea” becomes evident quite early on. The muffled, lo-fi textures of the opening track, ‘Trace Elements’, create a haunting atmosphere that fluctuates between feelings of comfort and detachment. Ekoplekz replicates early acid house with unpitched and sometimes harsh synth lines, helped by his all-analogue setup, whilst the thick layers of delay and reverb give a darker, dub-like texture.

Early dubstep comes out on tracks such as ‘Sleng Zen’, but at no point does the music have the same sense of intended groove. Instead, Ekoplekz allows the nuances of the analogue equipment to become the main feature of the record, and the album winds through with a non-teleological feeling of being in constant suspension. Whilst Edwards largely succeeds in what he sets out to achieve, Unfidelity can be quite a hard listen due its abstract nature. However, it’s a world of sound worth experiencing.

Mogwai’s break into the top ten of the Official UK Albums Chart is a victory not only for their new record, Rave Tapes, but artists everywhere that persist with a musical style regardless of changing trends. As Barry Burns says, “we’ve never written for an audience, we’ve only ever written music for ourselves.”

With haunting melodies that unravel slowly into tremendous movements of drums, guitar, piano and distorted effects, their music is painfully difficult to categorise – “post-rock” is sometimes used but it often does not suffice. The defining characteristic is that of contrast: gentle glockenspiel ostinati collide with intense guitar riffs and march-like drums. Burns appreciates this, but is not especially proud. “Isn’t all music (that’s any good) like that?” he asks me.

With a title like Rave Tapes you might expect a slightly different direction for the band – eight albums on, you might even think it was due. But the title is misleading, as a first listen will leave you with a sense of peace and solemnity. Burns acknowledges, “It is quite a stripped down album.”

But in much the same way as before, the music stirs you, taking you through the highs and lows of whatever you want a Mogwai track to be about. In fact, Burns reveals that their approach “hasn’t changed much” and, interestingly, “writing is a solitary thing, but then we get together and practise each other’s songs.”

While you would expect this consistency of sound and quality to have a set formula, this is not the case. Mogwai are still a very human band, Burns says, “writing these songs and getting them together is extremely difficult and slow.”

Lyrics continue to be something they avoid: perversely, it is the lack of words and vocals that gives the tracks their descriptive reach and emotional potential. Front man Stuart Braithwaite once said, “we speak with our effects pedals. We convey our inner thoughts through various tones of distortion.”

While this might sound like creative genius, Burns debunks this with a more matter-of-fact explanation. “Knowing Stuart very well,” he tells me, “he was either drunk or taking the piss when he said that! That’s hilarious. Adding more lyrics isn’t something we’re comfortable with and we’re not great singers.”

This is typical Mogwai – operating in their comfort zone and basically doing what they do best. While some bands toil away at reinventing themselves, Mogwai’s simple practicality has been the elixir of their long-lasting success.

Glasgow, too, has been important in their formation and development. “There’s a great desire in Glasgow to not sound like anyone else.” But while Burns talks fondly of the Scottish city, he has a more critical view of the United Kingdom and consequently the band’s “British” identity. “I’ve never, since I can remember, felt part of the rest of the ‘kingdom’”. His opinion on the monarchy is even more cutting: he terms it, “a wealthy figurehead, who instils an instant feeling of inferiority as soon as you are born, cannot be a good thing. It’s like a pointless celebrity.” On whether or not Scottish independence would have cultural repercussions, he is ambivalent. “Culturally, we’ll have to see. That feeling of independence might spur a lot of new things but it might not.”

Either way, if Mogwai’s political desires are realised, England will have lost a jewel in British instrumental music.