Paterson, All This Panic, and Little Boxes: Your Week In Film (March 27-April 2)

The big sleep: Paterson celebrates the ordinary and everyday

What's worth watching on DVD, Blu-ray, VOD and TV in the next seven days...

Nothing much happens in Paterson (DVD, Blu-ray and VOD) WW½ and that is entirely the point. Jim Jarsmuch's film is about living an ordinary life and being perfectly content within it. Paterson (Adam Driver) lives in his namesake, Paterson, a small city in New Jersey - and couldn't be more of the place if he tried. He's a bus driver by day, during which time he writes poetry about life's mundanities (in a further 'coincidence', his favourite poet is William Carlos Williams, who just happened to pen an epic poem called Paterson). He also walks his dog, Marvin, hangs out with Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), his kooky wife, and sinks a beer or two at his local watering hole. Laura urges him to make copies of his poems or try to get them published but Paterson resists. Every day is pretty much the same, but our titular character finds joy in this routine existence.

Despite the film's celebration of the ordinary, there's the occasional bit of oddness to be discovered in its nooks and crannies. I wondered at first if Laura was a figment of his imagination as we never actually see her interact with anyone else in the entire film (no friends, no family), other than Paterson himself. She doesn't work, instead remaining at home during the day and throwing herself into all sorts of creative projects, including setting up a cupcake business and learning the guitar so she can become a country and western singer. Her constant effervescence is a pain in the arse, to be honest with you. Theirs is a weird relationship. In the week we spend with Paterson and Laura, they don't seem to have a sex life and are apart a lot, yet there's nothing to suggest their marital bond is weak. Perhaps they are simply so at ease with each other, grand romantic gestures and frequent lovemaking are no longer required to keep their relationship stable.

Unfortunately, once you see how the film is set up - every new day repeats like the verses of a poem or a song, with only a few events different - you soon tire of it. Even an incongruous incident with a gun in Paterson's local pub fails to inject any real drama, and its best moments come not when Driver's character is interacting with Laura or his friends in the bar, but with his fellow wordsmiths - a young female poet and a rapper, both of whom he meets on the street. Rejoicing in the mundane might start off as the film's strength but, as in real life, you soon realise there's only so much of the same-old, same-old you can handle.

Endless poetry: Adam Driver is the titular Paterson

I've quite lost count of the number of films striving to capture the sheer joy and horror of being a teenage girl that have popped up in the last few years - everything from Girlhood to Pariah, from The Diary Of A Teenage Girl to The Edge Of Seventeen. Jenny Gage's powerful and fascinating documentary All This Panic (cinemas and VOD) WWW is certainly a fine addition to the list. 

Exploring the lives of seven Brooklyn teens over a three-year period, Gage is granted extraordinary access. We see these soon-to-be adults at their best and more frequently their worst, as familial strife, relationship trouble and good old fashioned teenage angst threaten to overwhelm them. Her subjects are all sympathetic, even when their behaviour isn't, a situation personified by wild-child Ginger, a rather entitled wannabe actress who swerves college to follow her chosen career path, but who seems reticent to lower herself to actually auditioning for anything or even taking a few classes. Ginger's a force of nature - as petulant as a toddler but, in her own way, wise well beyond her years. I suspect she'll be just fine.

Her best friend is Lena, although the pair snipe at each other continually. Lena could not be more different - at the start of the film she wears a prominent brace on her teeth and is clearly uncomfortable in her own skin. Her family is disintegrating around her because of her father's mental health issues. Off to university, this should be the most exciting time of her life, but she's preoccupied with where she's going to live and having enough money to keep her head above water. The list goes on - Olivia, Dusty, Sage, Delia and Ivy. I really hope Gage gives us a follow-up film in a few years' time.

Teenage rampage: Jenny Gage's All This Panic

Rob Meyer's Little Boxes (VOD) WW½, is an intriguing culture-clash dramedy that explores race and class in the American suburbs. It sees a bourgeois family - black dad, white mum, mixed-race son - quitting multiracial Brooklyn for a sleepy, predominantly white town on the other side of the US - and should be applauded for having the balls to tackle the big issues, even if its conclusions are not especially profound.

Suffice to say, the move to the West Coast doesn't go smoothly as their belongings fail to turn up on time, their lovely new house has a serious mold problem, and they realise adapting to their new lives isn't going to be quite as easy as they'd hoped. But here's the interesting thing: instead of presenting a parade of stereotypical racists to be confronted and knocked down, the film pins some of the blame for their predicament on our protagonists themselves - not their attitudes to race as such but the airs and graces they've brought with them from New York.

One of the reasons their belongings are taking so long to arrive is because husband/father Mack (Nelsan Ellis - unrecognisable from his role as Lafayette in True Blood) has been calling the haulage company non-stop and has landed the poor blue-collar schmuck driving the removal truck across country in trouble with his boss. Furthermore, the author and jazz lover kind of struts about his newly-adopted home like he owns it, headphones permanently clamped over his ears, seemingly horrified every time someone new speaks to him. In fact, the only person he is interested in engaging with is the local bookshop owner but then only to see if it stocks his one and only novel. It isn't that Mack doesn't encounter racism - he certainly does and it's revolting - but he pretty much looks down on his square new neighbours from the start.

Mack's wife Gina (the excellent Melanie Lynskey), a newly-installed professor at the local college, isn't a lot more sympathetic, revealing, in an unguarded drunken moment, how much she misses her life back home, before adding, "My New York friends are so talented", the caustic implication being that her new gal pals simply aren't in the same league.

In fact, the only member of the family who seems to be having fun (at least initially) is naive 12-year-old Clark (Armani Jackson), who quickly falls under the spell of two young white girls - Julie (Miranda McKeon) and her gloriously dreadful friend Ambrosia (Oona Laurence). They compete for his affections by performing libidinous dance routines to loud rap music in front of him. But, unbeknownst to Clarke, it's his 'blackness' they are more interested in than anything else, like he's some kind of exotic creature visiting from a far-off land.

We've seen the whole 'nastiness bubbling under the surface of polite society' trope before and I'm not sure Little Boxes has anything new to offer on that score. Harbouring assumptions about people and their lives based on race, class, coolness or intelligence is pretty unpleasant and we should all just give each other a chance seems to be its message. In which case: well, duh. 

One false move: Tempers are frayed in Little Boxes

With Ben Wheatley's latest movie, Free Fire, landing in cinemas from Friday, Film4 is showing a season of the acclaimed British director's previous work this week (although, puzzlingly, not Down Terrace, his excellent feature debut from 2009). It all kicks off with High-Rise (Wednesday, 9pm) WW, Wheatley's so-so adaptation of JG Ballard's classic dystopian novel starring Tom Hiddleston, before things improve with Sightseers (Thursday, 11pm) WWWW, Kill List (Friday, 11.05pm) WWW, and A Field In England (early hours of Sunday, 12.20am) WWW. You can also check out a Free Fire Interview Special at various times over the coming week (starting this evening at 8.50pm), featuring Wheatley, as well as the new crime movie's stars, Armie Hammer, Cillian Murphy, Sharlto Copley and Michael Smiley.

What I shall be watching this week: I'm off to the cinema to see Life, aka I Can't Believe It's Not Alien.

Ratings guide

WWWW - Wonderful

WWW - Worthwhile

WW - Watchable

W - Woeful

High-Rise hits cinemas today... if only I could see it

High-Rise stars Tom Hiddleston, aka Loki in The Avengers

I live in Southend-on-Sea, a nondescript English town about 40 miles to the east of London. It has one cinema - an Odeon - and I'd be lying if I said it even came close to satisfying my needs as a regular filmgoer with eclectic tastes. 

I have no difficulty seeing the big blockbusters locally (I shall check out Zootropolis and Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice over Easter) nor high-profile Hollywood dramas and comedies. However, a problem arises if I want to see something a little more niche or, god forbid, with subtitles. Even with a gun to my head I could not reliably tell you the last time my local Odeon showed a film in a language other than English. (I don't think they even screened Pawel Pawlikowski's Oscar-winning Ida, despite Southend having a fair-sized Polish population). I could just about tolerate this state of affairs - after all, view on demand services such as Curzon Home Cinema show a lot of new-release foreign language stuff - if I was able to see a varied selection of British and American films locally. But I really can't.

Take this last couple of weeks as an example. Anomalisa is a critically-adored, Oscar-nominated stop-motion adult animation from the febrile mind of Charlie Kaufman - aka the guy that wrote Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. It isn't being shown at my local cinema. At all. Not even one late-night showing for students and beard-stroking film buffs. Nor is The Witch, a slow-burn horror movie that has done good box-office in the States and another film festooned with critical plaudits. 

Anomalisa: a stop-motion, adult animation from Charlie Kaufman

Most egregious, however, is the decision not to screen High-Rise, Ben Wheatley's long-awaited adaptation of the JG Ballard novel, starring Tom Hiddleston. That's Ben Wheatley, who has directed episodes of world-famous sci-fi TV show Doctor Who, and Tom Hiddleston, the actor who plays Loki in the mega-successful Avengers and Thor franchises. Even if you remove Wheatley, Ballard and Who from the equation, people will see High-Rise for Hiddleston. As well as playing one of the most celebrated movie villains of all time, he's also in the running to be the next James Bond and his BBC1 drama - The Night Manager - is coming to the end of its run on prime-time Sunday nights, garnering decent ratings and laudatory critical notices along the way. Even if High-Rise isn't as commercial a proposition as The Avengers, whichever way you cut it, the man's a big star with an enormous fan base. And yet his latest film - British film, I might add - can't get a look-in while the likes of Allegiant and Ride Along 2 can.

I'm sure Odeon aren't entirely to blame for the situation. I know distributors have limited resources and end up targeting their films in those areas where they think they'll perform best but I'm not sure why that would exclude Southend. There's a university here and, whilst I doubt its students wander about smoking Gauloises and quoting À Bout de Souffle at each other, I'm pretty certain their cinematic tastes extend beyond Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2. For whatever reason, Southend's cinemagoers are being shortchanged, especially those who have recently invested in one of Odeon's new Limitless cards. You pay £17.99 a month (more in London) and for that can see as many films as you like (a variety of restrictions permitting). Thing is, if there's bugger all worth seeing, where's the value for money in that transaction?

I reached out to Odeon on Facebook, asking them why High-Rise wasn't being shown in Southend. That was two days ago and I'm still awaiting a response.

The Witch: slow-burn horror set in 17th Century New England

So, if I can't see Anomalisa, The Witch, and High-Rise locally, what am I supposed to do?

I could try watching them illegally. I've no idea if downloadable files exist for these films but I certainly know where to look. That way, I'd get to see the films for nothing and the people who sweated blood to make them would receive bugger all in return. That doesn't sound like a good solution to me but it's little wonder piracy persists when it's often so difficult and/or expensive to see new-release films.

I could travel to the Empire cinema in Basildon to see them but that would involve train and taxi fares on top of movie tickets, bumping up the cost by around £20 each time. I would be left very out of pocket simply because I want to see a film at the same time as moviegoers in bigger towns and cities. How very unreasonable of me.

Or I could wait for the films to come out on DVD, Blu-ray and View On Demand. Let's have a look on Amazon, shall we? Anomalisa is released on July 11, The Witch on July 18 - both four months away - and High-Rise hasn't even got a release date yet. This isn't a good solution either because I want to see the movies now because it's the 21st century and, while we might not yet have jet-packs, instant gratification is supposed to be a way of life. But while I can buy any book, graphic novel, video game, DVD/Blu-ray, CD/MP3, car, toy or novelty hat at the same time as everyone else in the country, when it comes to new-release movies I'm screwed. 

It's a ridiculous state of affairs. Every week I read about these great new films in magazines and newspapers, or hear about them on TV and radio, but can't actually see them. It reminds me of that Jerry Seinfeld bit about TV cooking shows: “I will never understand why they cook on TV. I can’t smell it. Can’t eat it. Can’t taste it. The end of the show they hold it up to the camera, ‘Well, here it is. You can’t have any. Thanks for watching. Goodbye'.”

Steven Spielberg: one of the big names backing the Screening Room

Every now and again, some bright spark suggests a different way of doing things. The latest is Napster founder Sean Parker whose Screening Room project plans to make Hollywood blockbusters available for home viewing on the same day as they are released in cinemas. His scheme is reportedly backed by JJ Abrams, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Peter Jackson, with the likes of Sony, Universal and Fox showing an interest. But it wouldn't come cheap. A set-top box to receive the films would be $150 (a little over £100), each rental would be $50 (£35). To keep big cinema chains sweet (they usually insist on a three-month window between theatre and home release), Parker's suggesting they pocket $20 of every sale and that each rental comes free with two cinema tickets for the same film so they don't lose out on concession sales. Thirty-five quid to rent a film may seem a lot and it probably would be if you were viewing alone. Watching with family or friends, though, would soon bring that cost per head right down. 

As I say, the putative service would be for major Hollywood blockbusters and it therefore wouldn't solve the problem of being able to see smaller, niche films in their first weeks of release. But the fact such a service is even being considered is a definite step in the right direction. In the meantime, where's that timetable? I don't want to miss my train to Basildon...