This zero-budgeted, home-produced web serial highlights the gulf between mainstream film and television and those of us involved with film-making outside of the mass audio-visual media’s elitist and restrictive processes, and draws attention to the inability of some working at this level to accept their alternative, revolutionary status. A bravely personal mix of documentary-style footage and dreamy introspection, the series chronicles the tense but necessarily routine journey of a soldier trapped behind enemy lines, with helmer Saunders and creative collaborator Alex Brown utilising their meagre resources on and off screen to occasionally powerful effect, this avoids the political band-standing of high-profile productions like Strike Back (2010), The Hurt Locker (2008; dir. Kathryn Bigelow) or The Unit (2006-2009), in favour of a gentle, almost mystical suspense.

Though somewhat hampered by the youthfulness of  its cast, and containing some awkward, superfluous effects work – again, as in this review here, suggesting that more tactile solutions to these problems must be found – this nevertheless stands apart from the majority of military-themed productions thanks to Saunder’s existential approach: hardly anything happens for a very long time, and, when it does, we’re surprised by its downbeat relevance. This, coupled with Saunders’ symbolic use of elements within the mise-en-scène, reinforced by Brown’s quasi-religious voice-over, remind us that a serial like Combat Diaries would be impossible in the eyes of mainstream theorists and practitioners, many of whom are taught that ‘cinematic’ equates fast-cutting and pointless close-ups, and that the self-contained narrative is an irreplaceable god, instead of the melancholic plotless chaos Saunders creates here.

Interestingly, with a second series reportedly in the works, and the lukewarm reception given to the show by some viewers, it will be interesting to see if Saunders remains true to this vision or bows to outside pressure. As a series released on a public platform like YouTube, Combat Diaries is open to criticism from a number of opinions; perhaps the most damaging of which is that from similar amateur or semi-professional filmmakers who, even though they are outside of the MAVM and free from its inhibiting power structures, have been likewise taught – and, more dangerously, grown to honestly believe – that its hierarchical, manipulative practices are the only methods employable on film and television production. Saunders would do well to think twice about implementing any advice that persuades him to conform to accepted but misguided narrative and stylistic choices: only by example can we see the success of alternative styles within the form, and only through success can we begin to break the stranglehold that the MAVM has tightened around creative thought. Saunders has shown himself more than capable of achieving this, and should stay true to his and Brown’s personal, inventive vision with any further installments of this slow-burning but ultimately rewarding web-based drama.

Watch Combat Diaries on YouTube

Combat Diaries is not on the IMDb

Jobson here continues his masturbatory fantasies, begun with 16 Years of Alcohol (2003) and continued through films like The Purifiers (2004) – reviewed here – this time not only over-indulging the ego of a pampered and vulgar actor (the impossibly pathetic Dougray Scott) but further revealing his obsession with A Clockwork Orange (1971; dir. Stanley Kubrick) – just as 16 Years of Alochol recreated scenes and dialogue from that film, here clubbers are decked out in similar costumes. But whereas Kubrick was interested in things other than the visceral, asking questions about neo-fascism and British social obsessions, Jobson wants to recreate something he’s seen too many times down his local multiplex: the plot bears comparison with Das Millionenspiel (1970; dir. Tom Toelle) – also reviewed here – or The Most Dangerous Game (1932; dirs. Irving Pichel and Ernest B. Schoedsack), but is strung-out in the most unconvincing and contained manner, which, accompanied by Jobson’s cliched and pretentious imagery, results in the film being less than the sum of its inspirations: there’s virtually nothing original or interesting here, only Jobson’s lack of cinematic intelligence.

Again, this film is co-financed by Scottish Screen, the national body for film and television in Scotland which pours public money into cinema and television projects without a realistic goal or ambition, and the question needs to be asked why money is being wasted on shit like this when more thoughtful and sustainable film projects could be completed at half the cost. Filmmakers like Jobson, whose CV increases almost every other year with fucking awful films like this, are given funding precisely because of the volume of their work, rather than their quality: once they’ve got their claws in an endless source of funding, their privileged position is maintained and elevated by those who run the funding bodies, in the mistaken belief that they are somehow supporting and establishing a sustainable film industry in their region. The sooner they wake up to the fact that audiences despise turgid crap like Jobson’s, and are desperate for a national film identity alternative to the one they see on mainstream cinema and television, then the sooner Jobson’s film career will come to a welcome close.

New Town Killers at the IMDb

This is the fourth in a series of high-budget, low-expectation films begun by The Terminator (1984; dir. James Cameron). Helmer McG and his creative team show themselves capable of exploiting the cinematic spectacle for a few powerful sequences – a battle along a desert highway marries Mad Max 2 (1981; dir. George Miller) with a sense of the epic missing from the similar Transformers (2007; dir. Michael Bay) – but too much of the film is purely perfunctory, relying on over-the-top sound effects and a whole spate of digital imagery that brings into question the validity and necessity of computer-generated images in cinema.

Modern cinema, especially the films of Hollywood and its imitators, has an over-reliance on digital manipulation that not only borders on the pathological but, whereas there is some argument to suggest that realism has no place in cinema, this practice denies the audience (and filmmakers) an essential sense of ‘the real’ – which is intrinsic to the success of a film. Terminator Salvation, Avatar (2009; dir. James Cameron) Australia (2008; dir Baz Luhrmann), The Lovely Bones (2009; dir. Peter Jackson) – reviewed here – or even The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007; dir. Andrew Dominik) rely on post-production techniques that belittle the power of the filmed image, and insult the work of artists and technicians who worked before the advent of computer technology to meet the same results through tangible and altogether more successful means.

Producers, directors and technicians who indulge in these practices hide behind their insistence that computer-generated imagery keeps costs down – this is bullshit. High-end commercial films today cost just as much, if not more, as they always have. The true reason for their increased reliance on CGI, which infects even the simplest productions, is born out of the media professionals’ anxiety at affordable, home-grown technologies: now anybody can shoot almost anything they want on broadcast-standard equipment, using real locations and real people. The mass audio-visual media, which constantly seeks to widen the gulf between their privileged positions and those of us they deem consumers, has added the saturation of digital post-production work, which represents a highly skilled and totally undemocratic profession, to its arsenal of elitist, hierarchical practices.

Terminator Salvation, and any other film that rejects the real world in favour of spectre-like illusions, further decreases the likelihood of modern cinema audiences feeling empowered enough to attempt film-making themselves, unless through the restrictive avenues offered by mainstream media education, which supports this . Anyone seeking honest alternatives to this widespread attitude of indoctrination through indifference should actively disregard digital manipulation in cinema and television, reinvesting time and effort in ‘the real’. Imagine a film like this with 99% real effects and locations – watch Lawrence of Arabia (1962; dir. David Lean), Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1972; dir. Werner Herzog), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977; dir. Lewis Gilbert) or countless other pre-CGI films and you’ll understand cinema needs that tangibility to be truly powerful, and perhaps also why the MAVM would rather ignore that fact and retain the creative power for themselves.

Terminator Salvation at the IMDb

This British film, co-financed by public money through Scottish Screen, and helmed by former punk singer Jobson, comes across as a shit version of The Warriors (1979; dir. Walter Hill). Unlike that film, which is at least entertaining and ethereal, this takes place in an undetermined future, with rival gangs fighting for power over various ‘zones’ of a city. Not only is the film cliched and unimaginative – Hill made much more apocalyptical use of New York than Jobson does of a ridiculously clean Edinburgh – but it also features some of the dullest fight scenes since Dr. Jekyll’s Dungeon of Death (1979; dir. James Wood).

The lack of originality on display here only further adds to the sorry state of the British film industry: money is wasted on macho vanity projects or pathetic attempts at mainstream comedy, with producers and financiers desperately trying to replicate a commercial – for which read ‘Hollywood-inspired’ – and therefore totally unsustainable product, rather than looking for homegrown alternatives. Conventional narrative cinema is not the way forward for the UK in terms of a national film identity – one certainly can’t be found in films, like this, which conform to stereotypical cause-and-effect plot-lines, and indulge in the worst kind of cinematic posturing.

The Purifiers at the IMDb

The attitude toward film-making in this country is, unfortunately, one that panders to the Hollywood style and system. British filmmakers, unlike their foreign contemporaries, are primarily raised on films that originate in North America, and have scant knowledge of the wealth and beauty of cinema from outside of that region, let alone in their own country. This film from the early days of the laughable British film industry shows that we have always been suckered with producers and directors desperate to imitate the disgusting American style: Hepworth’s film – the direction of which he tellingly relegates to a subordinate – owes much to The Great Train Robbery (1903; dir. Edwin S. Porter) and, whilst it expands on that work’s groundbreaking continuity editing, laying the foundations for nearly every commercial film since, it’s precisely this need to take from and feed back to the Hollywood model that both inhibits and repulses.

Cinema Europe (1995; dirs. Kevin Brownlow and Dan Carter) – recently reviewed here – presents an alternative view of cinema history, showcasing the frankly stunning achievements of countries like Sweden or Germany, but reducing this country to a caricature evolved from this crap and a few (admittedly brilliant) silents by Hitchcock and Asquith. Little has changed in the intervening hundred-plus years, and, despite claims to a brief quell in originality during the 1950s and 60s, the United Kingdom is today left without a film industry unique to itself or recognisable to the world. The attitudes of commentators, theorists and practitioners – some of whom laughably suggest any film, regardless of nationality, produced on British soil somehow qualifies as a product of these shores – revolve around a set of filmic preoccupations derived from the same corrupt and restrictive templates that Hepworth aspired to.

Rescued by Rover, and its legacy of bitter hopes and small-scale dreams that pepper our cinematic history, pertinently reminds us, in a time when film production in this country is confined to deeply unfunny comedies and gross tabloid sensationalism, that the UK will never move out of Hollywood’s shadow until we can leave behind our fascicle reliance on the hierarchical myths it popularises – which are scandalously perpetuated at the most basic level of media education by pretentious and redundant egotists, who would prefer their students adhered to the same strict codes of film-making that stunted their growth rather than explore the true principles of cinema – and attempt to establish a national cinematic identity by evolving seperate processes wholly relevant and original to this country and its people.

Rescued by Rover at the IMDb

Siegel’s distant, relaxed compositions and evenly paced editing style here craft a well-intentioned if predictable thriller. This sense of hyper-realism, where actors are allowed to explore characters and situations in much the same way the audience’s eye is allowed to float across the frame, would seem to be lost in a sea of increasingly adolescent and flashy pictures that have lead to the cul-de-sac of empty-headed film-making prevalent today, and are typified by films like The Transporter (2002; dir. Corey Yuen), Gamer (2009; dirs. Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor) or The Expendables (2010; dir. Sylvester Stallone). The attention to time and place, and the photo-realist sensitivity exhibited by The Black Windmill are values which have been lost in a climate that somehow equates shot length to the level of suspense and excitement felt by an audience.

that said, the film features an intrusive jazz score by musician Roy Budd – proving the point made in this review here – and another deplorable performance by actor Michael Caine. As discussed in our review of Flick (2008; dir. David Howard) – read that here – British actors are often cast not because of their skill but because of an attitude in the British film industry which seeks to perpetuate their involvement for facile and repulsive reasons. Caine is possibly the most successful of these and is still cast today above-the-title in thoughtless, unimaginative films – the less said about Harry Brown (2009; dir. Daniel Barber) the better. Caine possesses extremely crude and unenviable abilities, which he marries to a vulgar, working class persona that belies his egotistical, ruthless pursuit of stardom, during which he has shunned more talented actors and filmmakers whilst elevating himself to the level of monarchy within the British acting fraternity.

On the other hand, Delphine Seyrig is here wasted in a throwaway role as the villain’s floozy, much as she was throughout her career. As an actor, her talent is considerably greater than Caine’s, and her championing of feminist issues in cinema, including the right of female actors and directors to equal input in the creative processes as their male counterparts, should be applauded and imitated in a world that still sees actresses relegated to second-hand roles, mostly as sex objects or harridans. Despite The Black Windmill‘s merits as a well-constructed thriller with claims to democratic alternative processes other than those employed in modern cinema, the fact remains that it would’ve been a far superior film it Caine and Seyrig’s roles hand been exchanged, perhaps offering a much more progressive reading of the film, especially given its child-centric plot and castrating final showdown.

The Black Windmill at the IMDb

This French co-production is another adaptation of Robert Sheckley’s satirical short story – previously filmed as Das Millionenspiel (1970; dir. Tom Toelle) and reviewed here. Taking its cue from crass Hollywood action films of the time, Boisset’s film is more concerned with visceral thrills than it is with dissecting the media mindset: the producers and crew of this film’s death-hunt TV show are pantomime villains seeking to perpetuate their corrupt lifestyles, rather than the more realistic scenario Toelle offered of ordinary people caught up in a misguided cultural cul-de-sac.

It’s an easy solution to view the perpetrators of any social, political or personal injustice as unremitting villains and gangsters, and all too often films that confront such important issues portray their causes and advocates as nefarious, bigoted and, occasionally, insanely ‘evil’. A film that aims to be objective – and, let’s face it, modern media professionals pride themselves on liberal, populist ideals – should never draw conclusions as to the moral righteousness of a scenario, but present as much material as possible regarding the topic and, most importantly, suggest alternatives that may be of more benefit to the participants. This process, which is negated by the common practice of false-objectivity (read about that here), is totally absent from films like Le prix du danger and similarly-themed productions like The Running Man (1987; dir. Paul Michael Glaser), Rollerball (2002; dir. John McTiernan) or even Thank You for Smoking (2005; dir. Jason Reitman).

This is an important cinematic lesson that remains untaught on the curriculums of universities and colleges, those compiled by lecturers who are far too eager to perpetuate the manipulative processes of the MAVM. By disregarding notions of democracy and objectivity within cinema, they conform to the myths that one day may land them a low-key documentary or drama on one of the UK’s leading broadcast channels. Negative stereotypes of villainy will continue in mainstream cinema and television until the didactic structure of much narrative filmmaking is revealed and replaced, ensuring that proper discourse regarding important issues – ones which reflect our anxieties in day-to-day living and for our future on this planet – will remain absent from the mass audio-visual media for some time to come.

Le prix du danger at the IMDb

This adaptation of Robert Sheckley’s 1958 short story “The Prize of Peril” perfectly captures the inane and shallow manipulations of television producers and personalities, whilst also commenting on the fraudulent nature of most documentary film production. The film shows vain presenters ad-libbing to cover unscripted breakdowns and over-worked gallery staff managing impossible edits within a vérité framework, much like the pre-arranged stage direction that litters many modern documentary or reality TV programmes. Made at the time when the mass audio-visual media was only just starting down the cul-de-sac that it’s currently trapped in, this should have been seen as a warning to media professionals against their own egotistical and devious choices in the creative process, but it fails to offer alternatives and in part buys into the same contrived, inhibiting values that the majority of the MAVM learn at university or apprentice level.

With British television enjoying a surge of ‘event’ programming – read a little about that here – this German film exposes the exploitative nature of such scheduling: the event is a transitory and throwaway experience that’s elevated into something of importance and relevance by pre-broadcast advertising and the show itself, its producers aware all along that it will be replaced next month by something even more ‘important’. This constant up-scaling of temporary material into ‘events’ of life-changing credibility is here taken to its logical conclusion, with a contestant in a game show literally risking his life every cycle of the show – something which seems laughable and unthinkable in reality and should therefore be viewed as a metaphorical connotation. The MAVM is too concerned with maintaining its saleability and broad range of audience appeal to risk anything so extreme, thereby isolating a large portion of its audience share, and, as this film consciously reminds us, modern media professionals aren’t evil dictators presiding over mind-control gladiatorial games but misguided and badly educated bores trying to please their bosses.

Das Millionenspiel at the IMDb

This tense, nervous film succeeds in creating a threatening, silent world where its main protagonists are watched, suspected and hindered in their attempts to steal a lucrative payroll from within the confines of an army base. Lead and held together by the indomitable yet fragile star persona of forgotten 1960s leading man Stanley Baker, the trio of robbers face a palpably frightening atmosphere that reeks with Pinteresque menace. Cinema is a place where bad things happen to good people, so we are in no doubt that these three borderline criminals are facing a sticky, fiery end.

Heist movies can often be jokey, slick and fast-moving, but here the pace is drawn out to a sombre, almost preternaturalistic state. The abstract unrolling of the narrative – with people doing things we don’t understand in a world we barely recognise – plays perfectly on our innate fears of violence and exposure. Whilst the film loses its way near the end, with the introduction of a conventional suspense narrative, the opening is a forceful and essential reminder of the power behind the cinematic spectacle. Likewise the end, which is signposted all too early, manages at least to regain the films earlier glory: the savage scenes of flame-throwing desperation carry with them the brutality and humiliation of a caged animal.

A Prize of Arms at the IMDb

Another variation on the alien-policeman-hunting-quarry-on-Earth hook that also informed The Hidden (1987; dir. Jack Sholder) and TV mini-series Something is Out There (1988; dir. Richard A. Colla). Amidst the shoot-outs, explosions and car chases, there’s some interesting character work, allowing action star Dolph Lundgren to imbue his streetwise, kick-ass cop with traits otherwise absent within a macho framework. Unfortunately the film is a vacuum-packed, studio manufactured example of Hollywood’s obsession with narrative devices and supposed character-driven storytelling.

With students packed into universities and colleges, attending misguided and outmoded film education courses, and professional wannabes paying hundreds of pounds to attend seminars and lectures by so-called respected screenplay gurus, the myth of narrative as a central component to film production and theory needs to be exposed for cinema to drag itself out of the over-produced, over-budgeted quagmire it’s currently sinking into. Narrative – as defined by modern film theorists – is manipulative and shallow, hung up on a myth that the character defines the action of the plot whilst in reality the screenwriter deludes themselves with a form of backwards psychology, shaping their characters to fit overly structured plots that bear little resemblance to the human condition, other than the emotions and experiences we project onto the film during and after viewing. Likewise the notion of ‘character development’ is an illusion generated by the cinematic spectacle but misappropriated by theorists and practitioners alike into their elitist narrative regimes. The most important element of the cinematic narrative is consistently downplayed and ignored: the audience is central to the process of cause and effect that occurs during the viewing experience.

Film education and production needs at least to bring the concept of the audience as narrative elements into their dogmatic theories, and place it before such fondly-protected, ridiculous ideas such as story arcs, scene construction and mid-act climaxes. Ignoring the importance of the viewing audience on the film’s construction denies the possibility of thought-provoking, metaphysical, educational and, above all, entertaining works, reducing any potential to the level of aseptic, contrived productions typified by Dark Angel and apparent today as the norm rather than the unfortunate exception.

Dark Angel at the IMDb