Cast: Sasha Lane, Shia LaBoeuf, Riley Keough, Crystal Ice
Writer/Director: Andrea Arnold
2hrs 43 mins
Andrea Arnold’s “American Honey” saunters in at nearly three-hours in length, but struggles at times to adequately grasp or engage the viewer’s attention. Arnold’s earlier outings “Fish Tank” and “Red Road” were memorable works but this goes erratically off-kilter at times, as we experience a soundtrack of variable content over a roadflick which hones in on the travels and travails of a bohemian bunch of magazine subscription-shifters for the full 163 minutes.
Star (Sasha Lane) is an 18-year-old girl, tired of babysitting for her country hoe-down mama and who is accidentally taken with one of the members of this bunch of makeshift travellers - Jake (Shia LaBoeuf). His chums seem deliriously at ease doing whatever takes their fancy, be it singing, dancing, smoking or rapping. This hugely attractive sense of freedom, as well as having a wee notion for Jake, intrigues Star. So when Jake invites her along with the gang – dipping in and out of different locations and multiple motels, she agrees to this being her potentially exciting new lifestyle choice. Sasha Lane, in this, her first film, gives a fine performance. Her character is shy and relatively inarticulate so Lane plays with the subtext and she does it extremely well. Arnold’s unobtrusive style remains here, despite the clearly larger budget at her disposal - offering a subjective point of view from the camera’s perspective. It’s overlong and a little rambling in parts, but the excellent performances and direction just about manage to get it over the line.
Cast: Louis Theroux, Mark Rathbun
Director: John Dower
99mins
You may well have felt, as did I, that Alex Gibney’s intensive and forensic dismantling of Scientology in his excellent film “Going Clear” had said all that needed to be said about this barking mad cult behemoth. However, Louis Theroux director John Dower's take on the movement may seem, initially, to be a pointless task, but this incredibly entertaining outing offers its own particularly stunning insights into the fiercely guarded Church of the Bold L. Ron.
I found special personal amusement in the utterly deranged bampot antics of the Scientologists’ own naff documentarist teams, anally retentive in their decision to film Theroux filming them. The bespectacled nerd-like but hugely engaging Theroux is a likeable chap, but it’s his befuddled and perplexed star Mark “Marty” Rathbun who steals the show. Marty is a former senior executive of the Church of Scientology who, after 27 years, felt the words ‘sod this’, or the American equivalent, emanating from his lips. In ‘Going Clear’ he was one of the Hubbarders' most outspoken opponents, but Dower and Theroux utilise him in broader way as he co-directs some re-enactments of the ludicrous behind-the-scenes nonsense instigated by and including the demented tactics of the odiously poison dwarf rapscallion – self-avowed Church leader David Miscavige, a twat about whom you would have few regrets, following the issuance of a severe slap. The film is certainly enough to concern Scientology’s paranoia-max twassocks' top brass as they appear to get the rage at anything other than total radicalisation. Part dangerous part ludicrous – a powerful mix indeed.
