The first I heard about "The Sessions" before it received it's short UK cinema run was that John Hawkes was thought to be a dead cert for another acting nomination at this year's Oscars for his performance but had ended up being snubbed completely, which caused something of a fuss. I've considered myself a fan of Hawkes since "Me, You and Everyone We Know", cemented by a pair of astonishing, unsettling performances in "Winter's Bone" and "Martha Marcy May Marlene" so I needed no excuse to catch his latest venture.
He pulls the rug from under the feet of his audience once again playing Mark O'Brien, a real writer and journalist who was paralysed from the neck down after contracting polio as a child, and a character as far removed from Teardrop Dolly or cult leader Patrick as you can get. Hawkes radiates pure heartedness, humour and intelligence in a performance that depends entirely on his face and his voice. He really is masterful.
That's not to detract from his co-stars - this is a very welcome return from Helen Hunt, who seems to have been absent from the big screen most of the last decade, who plays Cheryl Cohen-Greene, the woman Mark hires as a sex surrogate after he starts an article on disabled sexuality and realises his own need to lose his virginity. Hunts performance is brave and perfectly pitched, she manages some tricky emotional corners without bathos, and rightly also picked up a pile of Supporting Actress nominations. William H Macy is great value in a key role as Mark's priest and confessor Father Brendan, as is Moon Bloodgood also excellent as Mark's no-nonsense carer Vera.
The subject matter may put off the casual viewer - disabled man attempting to lose his virginity - but the acting is wonderful and the witty, thought provoking and moving screenplay, featuring Mark's own writing and poems, is great. To say any more about the plot would be to do a disservice to the film, it's worth discovering for yourself, but there's no doubt about it Mark O'Brien's a remarkable man, and he is well served by writer/director Ben Lewin in this film.
Terrence Malick's follow up to "The Tree of Life" will split opinion even more than that extremely divisive film did. As usual I mentally ticked off the experience of watching one of his films on the big screen...
Elegiac classic music, often Wagner - check.
Camera drifting across astonishing vistas of water, fields and skies - check.
Whispered poetic narration, often confusing, sometimes in another language - check.
Beautiful people looking sad, walking away from the camera, often in a sunset glow - check.
Also various annoyed audience members struggling with all of the above wondering where the story is. Check.
It's more Malicky than ever, almost to the point of parody if it weren't so masterfully executed - but personally I found it much less satisfying than "The New World" or "The Thin Red Line", possibly because a lot of the time is spent in unremarkable streets of suburban Oklahoma, and partly because it's a film very much about love in all its forms (romantic, parental, spiritual) and that depends far more on character and situation, something that Malick isn't particularly interested in.
Olga Kurylenko (best known for being the "Quantum of Solace" Bond girl) is the lead, and she is absolutely radiant and gives a nuanced, contradictory and heartfelt performance without very much to do. There's a star performance coming from her some time soon for sure. Ben Affleck is very miscast as the man who doesn't know what he wants - rather than supplying gravitas and complexity he just looks dumbfounded and disengaged for most of the film. Rachel McAdams and Javier Bardem have some good moments in supporting roles, hers stripped back to essentially one sequence.
It's beautiful, but has no time for happy endings, and takes a long time getting there. If you loved "The Tree of Life" you probably don't need anyone's advice about whether to watch this. If you hated "The Tree of Life" this really isn't going to be the film to change your mind about the idiosyncratic and uncompromising talents of Terrence Malick.
This is the long overdue follow up to "Somersault" from Australian director Cate Shortland; an adaptation of a 2001 British novel set in post-war Germany, but unexpectedly filmed entirely in the German language. It follows a group of siblings attempting to cross the ravaged country from the Black Forest to Hamburg after Berlin falls and their parents are arrested for their involvement in the Final Solution. The performances are exceptional, particularly from Saskia Rosendahl as the teenage title character - she undergoes an extraordinary arc from the innocence of youth combined with an innate moral superiority to adulthood and crashing reality as she realises what her Fuhrer and the father she adores have actually done, while trying to survive in a land suddenly lawless and dangerous. Add to that the presence of a young Jew, the only person who can help them survive, who is a man she instinctively hates because of her upbringing but also can't help being attracted to as her sexuality awakens.
It's stunningly shot, all deep forest colours in grainy film stock, and the camera lingers, fascinated by little details of the characters and the landscape they are travelling through alongside the blood and the grime. It's also extremely tense and difficult watch at times, but highly recommended if you like a dose of artistry with your war / coming of age / road movies.
South Korean director Park Chan-Wook's latest has nothing to do with Dracula, as you might assume from both the title and from his last feature length which delved into the vampiric, but is actually a psycho-sexual update of Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt" (with a twist). It is just as stylish, strange and bloody as you would expect from the man who made "Oldboy" ten years ago, but unfortunately this English language debut doesn't bear comparison to his stellar "Vengeance Trilogy".
The problem lies entirely with the plot and the script supplied, bizarrely, by Wentworth Miller (the smug, tattooed hero of TV's "Prison Break"), possibly as a star vehicle for himself, but it's British actor Matthew Goode who ended up taking the plum role of the smoothly malevolent Uncle Charlie and it's a perfect fit. It's his best screen performance to date with charisma to spare and he easily holds his own alongside Nicole Kidman who also does a great job as the repressed, recently widowed Evie. The film stands and falls with the performance of Mia Wasikowska though - she is suitably detached and creepy in a role that would have been taken up by Winona Ryder or Christina Ricci in yesteryear, but India is sadly a merciless bore as a leading character, blessed as she is with heightened senses, along with a heightened superciliousness and advanced gothic moping & pouting skills. She's also an expert at killing with a rifle, which of course comes in very handy in the latter stages of the film.
It's extremely well made, with some great cinematography, so it's a shame that the plot is a total dud - there's no rhyme or reason to most of what happens, and the biggest mystery is why we're supposed to care. Much has been made of the supposedly ingenious sound design, but I can't see a great deal of skill in effectively making sound effects louder to match India's abilities. Another misstep is the dependence on CGI special effects - especially the blood which looks terrible, as usual.
Unfortunately it's style over substance, never particularly exciting or horrifying, at best darkly intriguing at worst laughable and (most disappointingly) boring.
The last of the nine Best Picture nominees I saw in the cinema this year, and only the last because when it was given its relatively short UK cinema release I decided to give it a miss. I was probably as surprised as David O. Russell was when it picked up a mass of award nominations.
It's undoubtedly cut from a different cloth to your standard rom-com, that goes without saying, given Russell's extremely eclectic pedigree including "Three Kings", "I Heart Huckabees" and "The Fighter", and the clear intention to represent something of the real experience of living with bipolar is to be praised, but unfortunately it really messes it up in a big way.
The film starts out in indie drama/comedy territory with some refreshing dark elements mixed in with the character based comedy, comedy that is mostly dependent on Pat saying outrageously inappropriate things to relative strangers, and in my favourite moment throwing a copy of Hemingway through a window in disgust - easily the best use of "A Farewell to Arms" since "Evil Dead 2".
Putting Jennifer Lawrence's grieving Tiffany into the mix is the real catalyst for the film, and she is as impressive as expected as the ballsy widow, and a good match for Cooper, easily giving his best screen performance so far and showing he really is an actor of some clout. De Niro finally ups his game and gives something resembling an acting performance for the first time in years, and most surprisingly Chris Tucker is excellent as well in a supporting role.
But much like Pat's split personality the film takes a drastic turn into generic rom-com territory in the last quarter, clearly marked by a bizarre scene where Pat Senior discusses a "parlay" with his neighbour and baseball buddy over a bet and everyone fervently joins in as if this is the most important conversation in the film. This is meant to be funny, but it isn't, compared to the actually serious conversations about mental illness and grief that have some before it, but is there to set up the terrible dance competition denouement and 11th hour confessions of love we've seen a million times before. It's worth seeing for the performances and the quirky, often funny, sometimes painful script, but Oscar worthy? Not in my playbook.
A vicious pack of genetically modified killer dogs loose on an island outsmart and massacre a gang of dim, stereotyped holiday-makers. That's all you need to know about the plot, and that is the entire film in a nutshell. There's always a degree of guilty pleasure watching nonsense like this, more so when the general quality of the acting, script and cinematography is better than the standard. For the most part this one worked pretty well, the acting and script is mostly good but it all goes wrong with the plot (simplistic, stupid) and the dog wrangling (mostly unconvincing). It must be a tricky thing to pull off getting dogs to act like killers when they are furiously wagging their tails as they attack. My favourite stupid scene must be when the dogs chew away the rope of sea plane so the humans only hope of escape drifts away down river. Then all the dogs hide nearby (presumably giggling to each other) - and when one of the silly humans attempts to swim to the plane to get it back - shock reveal! - two of the dogs are revealed to be patiently sat on a previously unseen corner of the plane's roof and leap into the water to chase him back to the dock. It's comedy gold.
The tone for the most part is pleasingly dark, there are very few attempts to alleviate the sense of menace, particularly as tensions mount in the group as bitten party members start to take on aggressive traits - that's how genetic modification works, see? But then suddenly in the last reel Michelle Rodriguez's tough chick Nicki starts throwing off one liners like we've suddenly switched channels - "give Cujo my best" she quips as she stupidly blows up the entire building she's standing in (and somehow survives without a stratch). Tag on a "surprise" ending, and there you have it: dog shit.
Given the fantastic untapped potential of a whole rich and diverse world of computer gaming I was hoping for so much more from this latest Disney product, but after a giddy start it proved to be a crashing disappointment. In essence it's trying very hard to be "Toy Story" for computer gamers, but lacking the seemingly effortless charm and storytelling skill of that Pixar classic in almost every way. There are so many delightful ideas that are thrown away by a thin storyline and often painfully unfunny dialogue, combined with some inconsistent design decisions (Ralph is smoothly animated at all times, yet his 8-bit compatriots charmingly drop frames and move according to the limitations of their on-screen graphics). John C Reilly does a fine job voicing the conflicted anti-hero, but is consistently let down by the script. Sarah Silverman is just awful as the sassy "little girl" Venellope - at no point did I feel I was listening to a kid, which could have been charming, rather an extremely knowing and mannered adult voice performance of a terminally uninteresting character. "Shut up and Drive" indeed, Rihanna, I wish she had. Jane Lynch gives a fun performance as tough as nails beauty Sergeant Calhoun from made-up modern First Person Shooter "Hero's Duty" (writing that reminds me of Vanellope's string of shit jokes - in both senses of the word - that we had to endure) - a section that's the clear visual highlight, but as soon as the film reaches and settles in cutesy driving game "Sugar Rush" all the momentum falls away and predictable plotting sets in. As more and more time is spent there the potential thrill of jumping from game to game is squandered and my interest dwindled with each old cliche of self improvement, being true to yourself and finding the good guy within.
Finally - there's something I really don't get about the whole project - presumably just like the guys who made this film I grew up in the 8-bit era alongside the advent of personal computing in the early 80s and spent many an afternoon bunking off school throwing every 10p piece I could muster into arcade machines. I'm confused why something so heavily dependent on audience nostalgia is tonally aimed so strongly at younger kids who wouldn't know or care anything about that era. A great animated film for children doesn't have to be aimed at children, as Pixar have demonstrated again and again. It was great to see Q*bert, Tapper, Frogger, Sonic, the Street Fighter characters, and a whole host of others that would need a pause button to full take in, so much so that I ended up not caring at all about Ralph trading half hearted PG insults with Venellope, racing around "Sugar Rush" in her candy car. I suppose I wasn't the target audience - but somehow I was, and that contradiction bothers me greatly.
Extremely influential and entertaining portmanteau style horror film from Ealing Studios - the first British film of its kind in the 1940s following the ban on production of horror films during the second world war. Part directed by some of top talents of British cinema - Alberto Cavalcanti ("Went the Day Well"), Charles Crichton ("The Lavender Hill Mob"), Basil Dearden ("The League of Gentlemen") and Robert Hamer ("Kind Hearts and Coronets"), it features short supernatural stories that have all since become horror staples - a premonition that averts a fatal accident, an unusual encounter revealed to be supernatural after the event, possession via a malevolent item, a ventriloquist's puppet that may not be as innocent as it first appears, and a man doomed to act out his nightmare over and over again.
For the most part, even though the accents are clipped and the scares mostly suggested and subtle, it really works thanks to excellent pacing, strong performances and some brilliant cinematography.
The inclusion of the comical tale of two golfers, one haunted by the other after cheating on a vital match to decide who will take the hand of the woman they both love is an odd inclusion, featuring the renamed popular double act of Charters and Caldicott from "The Lady Vanishes" played by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne. It's well done but unfortunately lifts the tension expertly built up by the Haunted Mirror episode - possibly the best of the stories - before leading into the most famous segment featuring Michael Redgrave's twitchy, driven ventriloquist Maxwell Frere and his unpleasantly subversive dummy Hugo Fitch. The real mark of genius is how
all the stories unexpectedly all come together in the framing device, and when the grinning Hugo stands unaided to climb up onto the bed of unfortunate Walter Craig to strangle him - it's absolutely chilling, and a great moment in horror cinema.
If you want some old fashioned scares and some masterful examples of subtle suspense this is a must see.
Utterly charming and far better than I expected - partly because Amy Adams is absolutely radiant and gives a unashamedly sincere and wonderfully comic performance as Gisella, a naive but pure hearted (animated) Disney princess transported by her wicked stepmother to a place with no hope: (real life) modern day New York City, and partly because Disney have had the wit to mock and subvert their own stereotype - the scene where Gisella sings to the local wildlife to ask for help cleaning up the apartment of the divorce lawyer (Patrick Dempsey, good) and his young daughter who have come to her aid is brilliant - rats, cockroaches, pigeons and flies take the place of the traditional bluebirds, deer, rabbits and squirrels. The songs by Disney stalwarts Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz are all good, intentionally cheesy but undeniably catchy, and well sung in the house style by the whole cast. Marsden, Spall and Sarandon take the respective roles of prince, sidekick and stepmother perfectly, and the animated chipmunk sidekick (CGI in the real world, and unable to speak) gets a lot of comic business that is aimed at younger audiences.
There is the odd mis-step along the way, but ultimately by taking the Disney schmaltz seriously and applying some pure heartedness to our innate 21st century cynicism it reminds us why the cliche was charming in the first place and, delightfully, becomes genuinely romantic.
Hugh Grant does a great job leading the voice cast in this fairly straightforward animated adventure - and it's a great shame that it is straightforward and not the classic it could have been because the clay animation is typically superb from Aardman, and it's packed to the gills with some fun British humour with lots of witty Victorian and piratical details: one of the pirates has a "Blue Peter" badge on his hat for example, the check list for "Pirate of the Year" includes the option "Brian Blessed" as the top level of roaring (slightly less funny when he later pops up as the Pirate King) and the Elephant Man has a hilarious cameo in a pub scene, but the script never really takes off and the really innovative and fun moments are few and far between. Also, and it does seem like a strange criticism but none of the main pirate crew have names - I guess a hang over from the original series of books (hence the strangely clumsy title too) - as a result I felt it took too long to get involved with them as characters, although the burgeoning, presumably unintentional, romance between the Captain and Number Two was very sweet.
A fairly underwhelming, mostly fictional romantic potboiler as Walter Raleigh (a solid, handsome Richard Todd) comes to London to court favour with the Queen to secure ships to sail to the New World only to fall for one of the Queen's off-limits ladies in waiting (Joan Collins, pretty, and surprisingly pretty good) - which proves to be a bad mistake when the jealous Queen takes an overly romantic interest in her new captain of the guard herself.
Bette Davis gives a typically charismatic but oddly mannered performance as the titular Elizabeth, twitching frantically in every scene and barking out all her lines, but Elizabeth is a fascinating character and one she fully invests in. I've yet to see her first stab at the role in "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex" but am interested to see how the two relate in terms of performance style. This film is fine, but far from the "best of Bette".
A very under-rated, stylish film with a brilliant central performance - it seems to me audiences have long assumed that just because Stephen Fry made his name in comedy and is now best known as a television presenter and "national treasure" he's not really an actor. This film stands as a testament to how wrong that assumption is. He gives a nuanced, sympathetic and very moving portrayal of Oscar Wilde from his first contact with literary fame and forbidden homosexuality to his eventual downfall at the hands of the lawmakers of the late nineteenth century. The scenes of his trial and heartfelt but hopeless defence of "the love that dare not speak its name" is extremely moving. Fry is supported by a fantastic cast - Jude Law is suitably pretty and odious as Bosie, Tom Wilkinson equally unpleasant and more than a bit scary as his bigoted father, and Jennifer Ehle and Michael Sheen both give brilliant, understated performances as Wilde's long suffering wife Constance and best friend and former lover Robbie Ross respectively. It's also fun to see Ioan Gruffudd as John Gray (the inspiration for Dorian) and Orlando Bloom making his screen debut as a rent boy.
It's probably worth mentioning I watched this film on the day that the British government finally passed a bill through parliament to allow same-sex marriages. It has taken over a hundred years since Wilde was prosecuted and forced into two years imprisonment and hard labour for simply following his nature; we are lucky to be living in more enlightened times.
This is really just a showcase for the acting skills of Denzel Washington, and he grabs the role of "Whip" Whitaker with both hands - he plays an airline pilot, and desperate alcoholic, caught up in an investigation into his competence after his flight crashes even though he masterfully saves all but six people on board, including a flight attendant he's been having an affair with. He is brilliant, equally charismatic and ugly as the addict who can't save himself at any cost and is a worthy award nominee.
The opening sequence involving the disaster is absolutely gripping -after that 30 minute adrenaline rush it's left to Washington and his co-stars (Kelly Reilly in a career best performance as a troubled heroin addict, the ever dependable Bruce Greenwood and Don Cheadle, and an entertaining but bizarre comic turn from John Goodman as Whip's drug dealer) to maintain the energy, and for the most part they do, only let down by some formulaic plotting come the end, and a fairly unwelcome dose of religious moralising where none was required. The moral crux of the trial Whip faces, combined with the self destructive path he seems unable to get away from, somehow doesn't reward the way it should - it feels showy and grandiloquent in an old-school Hollywood way when the performances have mostly been suggesting something darker, more interesting and more subtle. It feels like Zemeckis is mostly to blame for this - he handles the action sequence with real flair but his direction elsewhere is solid but uninspired. He's not helped by a screenplay that often drifts into cliches and simplifications. In the end it's worth it for Washington.
As a side note, there's an example that springs to mind that seems a clear illustration of what I mean about how the film ultimately fails to hit the heights, if you'll indulge me:
Whip hears knocking. He investigates. He finds the pass door to the adjoining hotel room is open. [At this point most of the audience can work out exactly where this is going.] Close up on the door handle. Cut. Next Day.... That would be a brave piece of film-making.
Alternatively: Whip finds the pass door. Walks in. He looks around. The fridge in the corner buzzes into life. He looks at it. Close up of the fridge. Cut...That would be pretty great too.
But: Whip opens the fridge. Reluctantly picks and takes out a mini bottle of vodka. Debates with himself. Opens it. Changes his mind, screws the cap back on and places it on the top of the fridge, walking away. Close up on the vodka bottle. Cut.... That's good enough.
However: Whip snatches the bottle out of the frame with a resounding and portentous sound effect. Weak.
I was less convinced by this than those who claim "masterpiece" - it was, of course, an exceptional film for its time, with some clever camera work and beautiful art direction (including a wonderful shot of the enormously tall revolving doors in the Porter's dream), but Emil Jannings performance is so tiresomely melodramatic, endlessly staring with horror into the middle distance, it's a permanent distraction and more than evidence enough that the old dodderer needed to be replaced as quickly as possible (he miraculously straightens up and moves like lightening though when he has to sneak his uniform out of the hotel though). For such a simple story it makes very little sense; as greenhorg pointed out - one menial job is just the same as another to people who actually have no job, fancy uniform or no, and makes his family throwing him out of his own home for the shame of working as a toilet attendant as unlikely as the tacked on "dream" ending. Personally I didn't think it a patch on Murnau's other famous silent, supernatural classics - Nosferatu and Faust.
Brilliant, absorbing documentary about cinematographer Jack Cardiff - one of the unsung heroes of cinema history - who was responsible for the camera-work on an astonishing run of films from the 1940s up until his death in 2009, including the stunning technicolor visuals on the greatest of Powell & Pressburger's output ("A Matter of Life and Death", "Black Narcissus" and "The Red Shoes") which is as much as to say some of the best films ever made. In addition to his own directorial work including an acclaimed adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's "Sons and Lovers" he worked on films like "The African Queen", Vidor's "War and Peace", "Scott of the Antarctic", "The Vikings", all of which feature in this documentary. A wide range of notable actors and directors including Scorcese, Bacall, Heston and Kirk Douglas discuss Cardiff as a colleague and an influence - and delightfully Cardiff himself is interviewed in depth and his warmth as a man and passion for his work really comes across, his anecdotes fascinating, illuminating and sometimes hilarious: my favourite concerns the shooting of "The African Queen" where the entire crew were struck down with dysentery from drinking unfiltered river water apart from Bogart and director John Huston who never touched a drop of water during filming, only whisky. An intimate and charming insight into a humble film icon - highly recommended.
I like a good submarine movie - and this was one of a substantial list of them in the 1950s. Although I prefer the edgier "Run Silent, Run Deep" from the following year where the above and below water combatant's roles are reversed, Robert Mitchum and Curt Jurgens make a good pairing as the US Destroyer and German U-Boat captains testing each others strategic skills in the Southern Atlantic. What really works is the location shooting on board a real Destroyer, and the choice to make the protagonists equals and not sway the plot into a standard Allied flag wave: the German is no sneering Nazi, but a disciplined, respectful patriot eager to get his job done and get home: openly sceptical about the political machinations and bombast of the Fuhrer and his acolytes. It stumbles in places: the supporting cast are underwritten and mostly caricatures, Mitchum is rather too good at predicting the U-Boat's every move (a point the German remarks upon) and the conclusion is a bit disappointing, depending more and more on unconvincing models in a tank, and some dubious heroic moral choices made by both captains under imminent threat of death. The final message is a good one though, and makes for an all round satisfying rainy afternoon's entertainment.
A short French silent forever blessed (or cursed) to be forever connected to Pauline Kael - she stated in an interview that of everything she'd ever watched it was her favourite film of all time. A curse because that might raise some unlikely expectation in some minds, a blessing because it probably wouldn't be as much sought out today if she hadn't given it that lofty accolade - even so it currently still only has a meagre 820 ratings on IMDB. Luckily for us it's readily available on Youtube and it is definitely worth the watch.
Nadia Sibirskaïa is radiant as the wronged woman, the youngest to two orphan girls, following the violent murder of their parents, without guidance lured into a man's bed and then cast aside for her elder sister, leaving her pregnant, alone and desperate. She performs her sorrowful part with admirable naturalism, expertly captured with innovative camera work by director Dimitri Kirsanoff - the scene of her tearfully accepting food given by an old man on a park bench is rightly acclaimed: it's a beautiful piece of acting.
Although some of the early scenes where the sisters play children are a little dubious, the events of the conclusion are oblique and it can be slightly confusing in places without any inter-titles, even for a slight story, the performances and marvellous location cinematography make this a neglected 20s classic deserving of wider rediscovery.
A nice little animation, nicely combining hand drawn and computer generated animation techniques - the former make it feel almost traditionally Disney - with facial details and character quirks that are very much the "house style". As Marazmatique pointed out it owes a fair bit to the short "Signs", but personally it lost me when the paper airplanes go all "Sorcerer's Apprentice" which seemed a shame. Will be interesting to see if it's too slight or whimsical (or actually exactly right) to win the short animation Oscar.
Cletis absolutely nailed this one for me - that's a great review below.
I didn't care for The Hurt Locker at all, and was mystified when it won the Best Picture Oscar, but had high hopes for Zero Dark Thirty - Bigelow could fine tune some of her bombastic style at the expense of realistic psychology having now conquered Hollywood, it's based on specific thrilling modern events, it stars Jessica Chastain... I was expecting a great deal more. Bigelow is a gutsy and visually compelling director, but I'm less and less convinced she's a particularly smart one.
This is a story that takes a very, very long time to get anywhere. Certainly the efforts of the CIA investigation into finding Bin Laden were torturous (pun fully intended) and probably grindingly dull, but that's not an excuse to make the whole middle hour of the film feel like ten years too.
Concerning those scenes of torture that sparked the most debate - did it result in information that led to finding Bin Laden? In this version of events, yes, it looks like it. Does it glorify or justify the use of torture? Absolutely not, and I don't believe the film tries to. The opening scenes are harsh, unpleasant and interestingly provocative about the Bush administration and the lies they told to secure a viable and desperately needed target.
Bigelow fumbles this strong beginning in a truly bizarre way, seemingly not trusting in the intelligence of her audience. We're into the slow grind but each time something dramatic is about to "unexpectedly" happen the camerawork suddenly gets all edgy and portentous. This is not tension, this is spoon feeding.
The untimely end of Jennifer Ehle's oddly mumsy Jessica doesn't work at all because for five minutes we're waiting for the inevitable explosion brought about by her own over-excited lapse of judgement. If it actually happened in the way it's portrayed it's tragi-comic - but there's no excuse for the character to have been so unlikeable for us not to be too bothered either way. Maya is bothered but I was left wondering if it was because of the loss of a colleague or more the loss of a good lead - there was so little development between the two women there's no shaking off the thought that they probably continued to dislike each other from first to last.
I rate Jessica Chastain a great deal and have watched her rapid ascent to the top with wonder and admiration. Why, now she's been nominated for every major award for her performance as Maya, was I unimpressed? She's as committed and just as watchable as ever, but there's something missing which I can only assume is the thinness of material she's dealing with - I never thought for a moment I was watching an exceptional piece of acting, it honestly could have been anyone - there's some shouting, there are some tears, there's a lot of pensive looking. I don't get the praise this time. The acting honours, without question, go to Jason Clarke as Dan the torture man - a grounded, detailed performance that grows and turns in fascinating ways as we learn more about his character. Elsewhere the cast are patchy indeed, ranging from fine to terrible with a big chunk of "whatever" in the middle.
The final half an hour comprising the attack on the Abbottabad compound is well done, excitingly shot in real time and a little disturbing (why was there never a plan in place to attempt to capture Bin Laden, put him on trial and quash all inevitable conspiracy doubts about his death?), and although we know nothing about the men sent in to do the job, watching their work realistically enacted almost entirely in spooky night vision is fascinating and gruesome. Much of the praise lavished on the film seems to hinge on people's excitement at this part, which makes me wonder what kind of terrible film it would have been if the screenplay had gone into production before it had to be altered to include the events recreated in this conclusion. Even here there are bizarre moments where the logic stutters. One of the two stealth choppers we follow on the mission crashes but somehow the entire strike team all manage to get back to base on the sole remaining chopper, with a dead body and a dozen bin bags of files and hard drives. Obviously there were other helicopters, but where were they? At a vital moment like this I was left scratching my head in the dark (thirty). There are elements of the received version of events that are simply not touched on in this film, where mentioning them would clear up the inevitable confusion that leaving them out produces.
This is an ambiguity that runs through the film, often not in a good way, especially when the content is absolutely screaming out for an editorial voice. I'd argue not having one is more a case of lazing screenwriting than challenging cinema. When Maya finally sees the body and positively identifies him it's extremely ambiguous. Why? The US government went to great pains to prove it, naturally - but in the film we can only ask ourselves is it really him? Is she actually lying? When she leaves the Afghan base at the end of the film, alone on a huge aircraft she leans back and quietly cries - why? Is she relieved her mission is finally over? Lost now her life's work is complete? Dealing with the pointlessness of spending ten years, condoning torture and the loss of life just hunting one old man? Or dealing with the knowledge that her predictions were ultimately wrong? Who knows. But I have a suspicion that Boal and Bigelow didn't really know either.
It ends up being a frustratingly inconsistent film, one that may well end up being better remembered as the film that stirred up widespread discontent about the American government's stance on torture and military strike forces than being an often exciting, often leaden dip into recent political history.
Maggie Gyllenhaal gives a heroic, career best performance as Sherry Swanson, a heroin addict struggling to get her life back on track and reconnect with her young daughter Alexis after several years in prison. It's a bruising, emotionally raw performance bristling with barely contained frustration and desperation - at her brother and sister in law who have been raising Alexis as their own, at her parole officer, at fellow addicts in a half way house, and more often than not at herself. As with any film concerning addiction the proof is whether you care enough about the character to will them to succeed and feel their pain when they don't - Gyllenhaal manages this expertly. It's certainly not an easy film to watch, Sherry is far from a likeable character, behaving irrationally and selfishly at times, but her predicament is absolutely believable and involving. A harsh slice of life from debut writer/director Laurie Collyer, clearly a name to look out for in the future.
Several things raise this noir out of the ordinary and into the under-rated classic status - Nicholas Ray's clever direction; the beautiful B&W photography of shadow covered city and snow covered countryside; Bernard Herrmann's typically wonderful score and the lead performance of Robert Ryan as city detective Jim Wilson - stonily impassive and impressively grim. Driven by the loneliness of his life and the pressures of his job to a dangerous, sadistic loathing of the criminals he is dealing with, Wilson is sent out of the city for his own good to help investigate the murder of a local girl. His redemption comes in the shape of a blind woman called Mary (Ida Lupino), who knows more about the murder than she initially lets on. It's a shame that Ray didn't manage to stick with the originally planned ending -
Mary refuses Jim and he returns to the city alone but improved by his experiences and able to continue. As it stands the sentimental ending feels strange after all the sleaze of the city and the melancholy that's come before it,
but all the same it's a strong film; excellently made and well worth a watch.
Of interest mainly because it was directed and co-written by fine noir actress Ida Lupino, forging a way for female genre directors before Kathryn Bigelow hurt her locker and zero'd her dark thirty. For the most part it's a pretty clumsy tale, based on actual events but hamstrung by some lumpy dialogue and hefty overacting. William Talmann doesn't make a particularly convincing psychopath, he plays Myers more like a two bit thug, shouting and grimacing throughout and generally missing the menace that would have made some of the claustrophobic car scenes tenser. Edmond O'Brien and Frank Lovejoy are fine as the fishing buddies caught up in the killer's escape plan, but are fairly uninteresting, underwritten "ordinary joes". On the plus side - it looks great - the location shooting in the Mexican deserts and empty highways really works in stark B&W. Worth a look if you're a fan of American Noir.
It seems particularly churlish to kick a man who has only recently died, but I would be lying if I were to say David R Ellis was anything other than a truly terrible director. He made some rubbish in his time, after many years as a very successful Hollywood stuntman, including "(Motherfuckin') Snakes on a (Motherfuckin') Plane" and the recent "Shark Night" (no mothers were fucked in the making of that film, just careers). This fourth entry into the "Final Destination" franchise sits low even on his filmography.
I've been fairly ambivalent about the FD series on the whole - the first was a nice idea put together with some flair, the second (also directed by Ellis) ramped up the silliness, the third (back to creator James Wong) felt like a step back in the right direction - the over elaborate deaths were imaginative and gruesome and the initial roller-coaster sequence actually quite thrilling.
One of the main crimes of this Final, originally the final Final (but not actually final) is a sore lack of imagination. Like FD2 we are back with cars, but rather than a motorway pileup we're at a Speedway. To be honest not many people break into a cold sweat at the idea of a racing car track accident, unlike a plane crashing or a roller-coaster derailing. That's an instant disadvantage to the set-up. The cast, almost without exception, are weak, and never break out of their intentional stereotypes - The Racist, The Cowboy, The MILF, etc etc. There's no one of Mary Elizabeth Winstead's calibre in the cast to make any of the eventual massacre even moderately concerning... which just leaves the convoluted death sequences. For the most part they are crap:
Killed by a pebble. Crushed by a bathtub. Sucked through a swimming pool draining unit. And a feeble vehicle wipeout shamelessly ripped straight from FD1. Just when I was wondering if there was going to be a single innovation in the whole film there was one - dopey Nick has a second extended "real" vision rather than the hinty CGI visions prefiguring the individual deaths allowing for a fake ending but that's it. To be fair that does feature a witty moment of an audience of thick teenagers being incinerated in a fireball while sitting in a cinema
. Apart from that and a opening credit sequence where the FD's "greatest hits" are replayed in X-ray vision it's completely missable. It's probably of interest to note that it stands as both the highest grossing and worst reviewed film of the series, proving that 3D might rake in a few more dollars but shit in three dimensions is still just shit.
I'm certainly no expert on the topic devilsadvocado, but the film makes it pretty clear that to pass the amendment Lincoln, Stevens and the Republicans had to soft pedal against the clear tide of racism and appear to be acting solely for the interests of the whites to maintain enough support to pass the bill. What Lincoln said in public and effectively did in private might be considered quite different things. I also don't see how abolishing slavery gave Lincoln greater powers or strengthened the ruling class. He was effectively destroying part of the South's economy, dependent on black slave labour.
From a letter from 1855 to Joshua Speed, partially quoted in the film:
"In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-water trip, on a Steam Boat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio, there were, on board, ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together with irons. That sight was a continued torment to me; and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave-border. It is hardly fair for you to assume, that I have no interest in a thing which has, and continually exercises, the power of making me miserable. You ought rather to appreciate how much the great body of the Northern people do crucify their feelings, in order to maintain their loyalty to the Constitution and the Union. . . How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty."
I'm exasperated to read comments about how long and "boring" this film is. Yes, it's a terrible disappointment not to see Abraham facing off against some CGI vampires in slow motion... back in the real world this was an extraordinary, important moment in history and Spielberg, Kushner, Kaminski and the whole assembled cast recreate that moment assuredly and impeccably. It may feel like an extended history lesson, but what a lesson - you'll never see a handsomer one or one that so expertly balances the real and desperate dilemmas Lincoln faced to pass the 13th amendment: dangerously extending the civil war and potentially sacrificing his political career and the lives of countless soldiers, including his son, as a result of his desire to do the right thing. Personally it didn't feel slow to me at all, probably because I knew what I'd come to see and because I was paying attention.
Day-Lewis is as extraordinary as always - transforming himself yet again. Is there a greater film actor working? He simply has to win every award going for this performance. Not only does he vanish into the role he truly makes you understand what made Lincoln a superlative politician and a great leader - he's captivating from first to last and a thrill to watch. Delightfully he's wonderfully supported on all sides - Tommy Lee Jones deserves first mention as Thaddeus Stevens; his craggy, miserable face has never looked so fitting- his scenes are a delight, either chewing on the supporting cast or quietly underpinning the importance of the amendment. The resolution of his story is extremely moving. Sally Field is terrific as Mary Lincoln, tiny dynamite and all guns blazing. Elsewhere there are perfectly pitched appearances from ever reliable character actors like David Strathairn, John Hawkes, Jared Harris, Hal Holbrook and Bruce McGill. James Spader is a wonderful surprise in a corpulent, comical role. For fans of "The Fall" it's always great to see Lee Pace - he gives a memorable performance as Democrat Fernando Wood. Only Joseph Gordon Levitt is a slight let down - struggling with an one-note character, and never looking quite right in the period. Otherwise it's a fantastic cast doing fantastic work.
The climax of the film - the day of the vote - is brilliant cinema. When the amendment is passed (no real spoiler there given that slavery has been abolished don't you know) I was extremely moved. As much by the joyous celebrations of a great moment achieved, but also by Thaddeus Stevens' sad face seen through the crowds of cheering men, well aware in that moment of the magnitude of what has come to pass.
As I've been thinking about the film tonight the scene that perhaps has lingered the longest is conversation Lincoln and his housemaid Elizabeth have on the front steps of the White House about what she expects and thinks about the potential freedom of her people from slavery. How far the United States has progressed to now have a black man standing in that position of power. He has some extraordinary shoes to fill.
Simply, it's one of the best films of the year.
Comments 51 - 75 of 429
Movie comment on The Sessions
dombrewer
The first I heard about "The Sessions" before it received it's short UK cinema run was that John Hawkes was thought to be a dead cert for another acting nomination at this year's Oscars for his performance but had ended up being snubbed completely, which caused something of a fuss. I've considered myself a fan of Hawkes since "Me, You and Everyone We Know", cemented by a pair of astonishing, unsettling performances in "Winter's Bone" and "Martha Marcy May Marlene" so I needed no excuse to catch his latest venture.He pulls the rug from under the feet of his audience once again playing Mark O'Brien, a real writer and journalist who was paralysed from the neck down after contracting polio as a child, and a character as far removed from Teardrop Dolly or cult leader Patrick as you can get. Hawkes radiates pure heartedness, humour and intelligence in a performance that depends entirely on his face and his voice. He really is masterful.
That's not to detract from his co-stars - this is a very welcome return from Helen Hunt, who seems to have been absent from the big screen most of the last decade, who plays Cheryl Cohen-Greene, the woman Mark hires as a sex surrogate after he starts an article on disabled sexuality and realises his own need to lose his virginity. Hunts performance is brave and perfectly pitched, she manages some tricky emotional corners without bathos, and rightly also picked up a pile of Supporting Actress nominations. William H Macy is great value in a key role as Mark's priest and confessor Father Brendan, as is Moon Bloodgood also excellent as Mark's no-nonsense carer Vera.
The subject matter may put off the casual viewer - disabled man attempting to lose his virginity - but the acting is wonderful and the witty, thought provoking and moving screenplay, featuring Mark's own writing and poems, is great. To say any more about the plot would be to do a disservice to the film, it's worth discovering for yourself, but there's no doubt about it Mark O'Brien's a remarkable man, and he is well served by writer/director Ben Lewin in this film.
Movie comment on To the Wonder
dombrewer
Terrence Malick's follow up to "The Tree of Life" will split opinion even more than that extremely divisive film did. As usual I mentally ticked off the experience of watching one of his films on the big screen...Elegiac classic music, often Wagner - check.
Camera drifting across astonishing vistas of water, fields and skies - check.
Whispered poetic narration, often confusing, sometimes in another language - check.
Beautiful people looking sad, walking away from the camera, often in a sunset glow - check.
Also various annoyed audience members struggling with all of the above wondering where the story is. Check.
It's more Malicky than ever, almost to the point of parody if it weren't so masterfully executed - but personally I found it much less satisfying than "The New World" or "The Thin Red Line", possibly because a lot of the time is spent in unremarkable streets of suburban Oklahoma, and partly because it's a film very much about love in all its forms (romantic, parental, spiritual) and that depends far more on character and situation, something that Malick isn't particularly interested in.
Olga Kurylenko (best known for being the "Quantum of Solace" Bond girl) is the lead, and she is absolutely radiant and gives a nuanced, contradictory and heartfelt performance without very much to do. There's a star performance coming from her some time soon for sure. Ben Affleck is very miscast as the man who doesn't know what he wants - rather than supplying gravitas and complexity he just looks dumbfounded and disengaged for most of the film. Rachel McAdams and Javier Bardem have some good moments in supporting roles, hers stripped back to essentially one sequence.
It's beautiful, but has no time for happy endings, and takes a long time getting there. If you loved "The Tree of Life" you probably don't need anyone's advice about whether to watch this. If you hated "The Tree of Life" this really isn't going to be the film to change your mind about the idiosyncratic and uncompromising talents of Terrence Malick.
Movie comment on Lore
dombrewer
This is the long overdue follow up to "Somersault" from Australian director Cate Shortland; an adaptation of a 2001 British novel set in post-war Germany, but unexpectedly filmed entirely in the German language. It follows a group of siblings attempting to cross the ravaged country from the Black Forest to Hamburg after Berlin falls and their parents are arrested for their involvement in the Final Solution. The performances are exceptional, particularly from Saskia Rosendahl as the teenage title character - she undergoes an extraordinary arc from the innocence of youth combined with an innate moral superiority to adulthood and crashing reality as she realises what her Fuhrer and the father she adores have actually done, while trying to survive in a land suddenly lawless and dangerous. Add to that the presence of a young Jew, the only person who can help them survive, who is a man she instinctively hates because of her upbringing but also can't help being attracted to as her sexuality awakens.It's stunningly shot, all deep forest colours in grainy film stock, and the camera lingers, fascinated by little details of the characters and the landscape they are travelling through alongside the blood and the grime. It's also extremely tense and difficult watch at times, but highly recommended if you like a dose of artistry with your war / coming of age / road movies.
Movie comment on Stoker
dombrewer
South Korean director Park Chan-Wook's latest has nothing to do with Dracula, as you might assume from both the title and from his last feature length which delved into the vampiric, but is actually a psycho-sexual update of Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt" (with a twist). It is just as stylish, strange and bloody as you would expect from the man who made "Oldboy" ten years ago, but unfortunately this English language debut doesn't bear comparison to his stellar "Vengeance Trilogy".The problem lies entirely with the plot and the script supplied, bizarrely, by Wentworth Miller (the smug, tattooed hero of TV's "Prison Break"), possibly as a star vehicle for himself, but it's British actor Matthew Goode who ended up taking the plum role of the smoothly malevolent Uncle Charlie and it's a perfect fit. It's his best screen performance to date with charisma to spare and he easily holds his own alongside Nicole Kidman who also does a great job as the repressed, recently widowed Evie. The film stands and falls with the performance of Mia Wasikowska though - she is suitably detached and creepy in a role that would have been taken up by Winona Ryder or Christina Ricci in yesteryear, but India is sadly a merciless bore as a leading character, blessed as she is with heightened senses, along with a heightened superciliousness and advanced gothic moping & pouting skills. She's also an expert at killing with a rifle, which of course comes in very handy in the latter stages of the film.
It's extremely well made, with some great cinematography, so it's a shame that the plot is a total dud - there's no rhyme or reason to most of what happens, and the biggest mystery is why we're supposed to care. Much has been made of the supposedly ingenious sound design, but I can't see a great deal of skill in effectively making sound effects louder to match India's abilities. Another misstep is the dependence on CGI special effects - especially the blood which looks terrible, as usual.
Unfortunately it's style over substance, never particularly exciting or horrifying, at best darkly intriguing at worst laughable and (most disappointingly) boring.
Movie comment on Silver Linings Playbook
dombrewer
The last of the nine Best Picture nominees I saw in the cinema this year, and only the last because when it was given its relatively short UK cinema release I decided to give it a miss. I was probably as surprised as David O. Russell was when it picked up a mass of award nominations.It's undoubtedly cut from a different cloth to your standard rom-com, that goes without saying, given Russell's extremely eclectic pedigree including "Three Kings", "I Heart Huckabees" and "The Fighter", and the clear intention to represent something of the real experience of living with bipolar is to be praised, but unfortunately it really messes it up in a big way.
The film starts out in indie drama/comedy territory with some refreshing dark elements mixed in with the character based comedy, comedy that is mostly dependent on Pat saying outrageously inappropriate things to relative strangers, and in my favourite moment throwing a copy of Hemingway through a window in disgust - easily the best use of "A Farewell to Arms" since "Evil Dead 2".
Putting Jennifer Lawrence's grieving Tiffany into the mix is the real catalyst for the film, and she is as impressive as expected as the ballsy widow, and a good match for Cooper, easily giving his best screen performance so far and showing he really is an actor of some clout. De Niro finally ups his game and gives something resembling an acting performance for the first time in years, and most surprisingly Chris Tucker is excellent as well in a supporting role.
But much like Pat's split personality the film takes a drastic turn into generic rom-com territory in the last quarter, clearly marked by a bizarre scene where Pat Senior discusses a "parlay" with his neighbour and baseball buddy over a bet and everyone fervently joins in as if this is the most important conversation in the film. This is meant to be funny, but it isn't, compared to the actually serious conversations about mental illness and grief that have some before it, but is there to set up the terrible dance competition denouement and 11th hour confessions of love we've seen a million times before. It's worth seeing for the performances and the quirky, often funny, sometimes painful script, but Oscar worthy? Not in my playbook.
Movie comment on The Breed
dombrewer
A vicious pack of genetically modified killer dogs loose on an island outsmart and massacre a gang of dim, stereotyped holiday-makers. That's all you need to know about the plot, and that is the entire film in a nutshell. There's always a degree of guilty pleasure watching nonsense like this, more so when the general quality of the acting, script and cinematography is better than the standard. For the most part this one worked pretty well, the acting and script is mostly good but it all goes wrong with the plot (simplistic, stupid) and the dog wrangling (mostly unconvincing). It must be a tricky thing to pull off getting dogs to act like killers when they are furiously wagging their tails as they attack. My favourite stupid scene must be when the dogs chew away the rope of sea plane so the humans only hope of escape drifts away down river. Then all the dogs hide nearby (presumably giggling to each other) - and when one of the silly humans attempts to swim to the plane to get it back - shock reveal! - two of the dogs are revealed to be patiently sat on a previously unseen corner of the plane's roof and leap into the water to chase him back to the dock. It's comedy gold.The tone for the most part is pleasingly dark, there are very few attempts to alleviate the sense of menace, particularly as tensions mount in the group as bitten party members start to take on aggressive traits - that's how genetic modification works, see? But then suddenly in the last reel Michelle Rodriguez's tough chick Nicki starts throwing off one liners like we've suddenly switched channels - "give Cujo my best" she quips as she stupidly blows up the entire building she's standing in (and somehow survives without a stratch). Tag on a "surprise" ending, and there you have it: dog shit.
Movie comment on Wreck-It Ralph
dombrewer
Given the fantastic untapped potential of a whole rich and diverse world of computer gaming I was hoping for so much more from this latest Disney product, but after a giddy start it proved to be a crashing disappointment. In essence it's trying very hard to be "Toy Story" for computer gamers, but lacking the seemingly effortless charm and storytelling skill of that Pixar classic in almost every way. There are so many delightful ideas that are thrown away by a thin storyline and often painfully unfunny dialogue, combined with some inconsistent design decisions (Ralph is smoothly animated at all times, yet his 8-bit compatriots charmingly drop frames and move according to the limitations of their on-screen graphics). John C Reilly does a fine job voicing the conflicted anti-hero, but is consistently let down by the script. Sarah Silverman is just awful as the sassy "little girl" Venellope - at no point did I feel I was listening to a kid, which could have been charming, rather an extremely knowing and mannered adult voice performance of a terminally uninteresting character. "Shut up and Drive" indeed, Rihanna, I wish she had. Jane Lynch gives a fun performance as tough as nails beauty Sergeant Calhoun from made-up modern First Person Shooter "Hero's Duty" (writing that reminds me of Vanellope's string of shit jokes - in both senses of the word - that we had to endure) - a section that's the clear visual highlight, but as soon as the film reaches and settles in cutesy driving game "Sugar Rush" all the momentum falls away and predictable plotting sets in. As more and more time is spent there the potential thrill of jumping from game to game is squandered and my interest dwindled with each old cliche of self improvement, being true to yourself and finding the good guy within.Finally - there's something I really don't get about the whole project - presumably just like the guys who made this film I grew up in the 8-bit era alongside the advent of personal computing in the early 80s and spent many an afternoon bunking off school throwing every 10p piece I could muster into arcade machines. I'm confused why something so heavily dependent on audience nostalgia is tonally aimed so strongly at younger kids who wouldn't know or care anything about that era. A great animated film for children doesn't have to be aimed at children, as Pixar have demonstrated again and again. It was great to see Q*bert, Tapper, Frogger, Sonic, the Street Fighter characters, and a whole host of others that would need a pause button to full take in, so much so that I ended up not caring at all about Ralph trading half hearted PG insults with Venellope, racing around "Sugar Rush" in her candy car. I suppose I wasn't the target audience - but somehow I was, and that contradiction bothers me greatly.
Movie comment on Dead of Night
dombrewer
Extremely influential and entertaining portmanteau style horror film from Ealing Studios - the first British film of its kind in the 1940s following the ban on production of horror films during the second world war. Part directed by some of top talents of British cinema - Alberto Cavalcanti ("Went the Day Well"), Charles Crichton ("The Lavender Hill Mob"), Basil Dearden ("The League of Gentlemen") and Robert Hamer ("Kind Hearts and Coronets"), it features short supernatural stories that have all since become horror staples - a premonition that averts a fatal accident, an unusual encounter revealed to be supernatural after the event, possession via a malevolent item, a ventriloquist's puppet that may not be as innocent as it first appears, and a man doomed to act out his nightmare over and over again.For the most part, even though the accents are clipped and the scares mostly suggested and subtle, it really works thanks to excellent pacing, strong performances and some brilliant cinematography.
The inclusion of the comical tale of two golfers, one haunted by the other after cheating on a vital match to decide who will take the hand of the woman they both love is an odd inclusion, featuring the renamed popular double act of Charters and Caldicott from "The Lady Vanishes" played by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne. It's well done but unfortunately lifts the tension expertly built up by the Haunted Mirror episode - possibly the best of the stories - before leading into the most famous segment featuring Michael Redgrave's twitchy, driven ventriloquist Maxwell Frere and his unpleasantly subversive dummy Hugo Fitch. The real mark of genius is how
Movie comment on Enchanted
dombrewer
Utterly charming and far better than I expected - partly because Amy Adams is absolutely radiant and gives a unashamedly sincere and wonderfully comic performance as Gisella, a naive but pure hearted (animated) Disney princess transported by her wicked stepmother to a place with no hope: (real life) modern day New York City, and partly because Disney have had the wit to mock and subvert their own stereotype - the scene where Gisella sings to the local wildlife to ask for help cleaning up the apartment of the divorce lawyer (Patrick Dempsey, good) and his young daughter who have come to her aid is brilliant - rats, cockroaches, pigeons and flies take the place of the traditional bluebirds, deer, rabbits and squirrels. The songs by Disney stalwarts Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz are all good, intentionally cheesy but undeniably catchy, and well sung in the house style by the whole cast. Marsden, Spall and Sarandon take the respective roles of prince, sidekick and stepmother perfectly, and the animated chipmunk sidekick (CGI in the real world, and unable to speak) gets a lot of comic business that is aimed at younger audiences.There is the odd mis-step along the way, but ultimately by taking the Disney schmaltz seriously and applying some pure heartedness to our innate 21st century cynicism it reminds us why the cliche was charming in the first place and, delightfully, becomes genuinely romantic.
Movie comment on The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!
dombrewer
Hugh Grant does a great job leading the voice cast in this fairly straightforward animated adventure - and it's a great shame that it is straightforward and not the classic it could have been because the clay animation is typically superb from Aardman, and it's packed to the gills with some fun British humour with lots of witty Victorian and piratical details: one of the pirates has a "Blue Peter" badge on his hat for example, the check list for "Pirate of the Year" includes the option "Brian Blessed" as the top level of roaring (slightly less funny when he later pops up as the Pirate King) and the Elephant Man has a hilarious cameo in a pub scene, but the script never really takes off and the really innovative and fun moments are few and far between. Also, and it does seem like a strange criticism but none of the main pirate crew have names - I guess a hang over from the original series of books (hence the strangely clumsy title too) - as a result I felt it took too long to get involved with them as characters, although the burgeoning, presumably unintentional, romance between the Captain and Number Two was very sweet.Movie comment on The Virgin Queen
dombrewer
A fairly underwhelming, mostly fictional romantic potboiler as Walter Raleigh (a solid, handsome Richard Todd) comes to London to court favour with the Queen to secure ships to sail to the New World only to fall for one of the Queen's off-limits ladies in waiting (Joan Collins, pretty, and surprisingly pretty good) - which proves to be a bad mistake when the jealous Queen takes an overly romantic interest in her new captain of the guard herself.Bette Davis gives a typically charismatic but oddly mannered performance as the titular Elizabeth, twitching frantically in every scene and barking out all her lines, but Elizabeth is a fascinating character and one she fully invests in. I've yet to see her first stab at the role in "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex" but am interested to see how the two relate in terms of performance style. This film is fine, but far from the "best of Bette".
Movie comment on Wilde
dombrewer
A very under-rated, stylish film with a brilliant central performance - it seems to me audiences have long assumed that just because Stephen Fry made his name in comedy and is now best known as a television presenter and "national treasure" he's not really an actor. This film stands as a testament to how wrong that assumption is. He gives a nuanced, sympathetic and very moving portrayal of Oscar Wilde from his first contact with literary fame and forbidden homosexuality to his eventual downfall at the hands of the lawmakers of the late nineteenth century. The scenes of his trial and heartfelt but hopeless defence of "the love that dare not speak its name" is extremely moving. Fry is supported by a fantastic cast - Jude Law is suitably pretty and odious as Bosie, Tom Wilkinson equally unpleasant and more than a bit scary as his bigoted father, and Jennifer Ehle and Michael Sheen both give brilliant, understated performances as Wilde's long suffering wife Constance and best friend and former lover Robbie Ross respectively. It's also fun to see Ioan Gruffudd as John Gray (the inspiration for Dorian) and Orlando Bloom making his screen debut as a rent boy.It's probably worth mentioning I watched this film on the day that the British government finally passed a bill through parliament to allow same-sex marriages. It has taken over a hundred years since Wilde was prosecuted and forced into two years imprisonment and hard labour for simply following his nature; we are lucky to be living in more enlightened times.
Movie comment on Flight
dombrewer
This is really just a showcase for the acting skills of Denzel Washington, and he grabs the role of "Whip" Whitaker with both hands - he plays an airline pilot, and desperate alcoholic, caught up in an investigation into his competence after his flight crashes even though he masterfully saves all but six people on board, including a flight attendant he's been having an affair with. He is brilliant, equally charismatic and ugly as the addict who can't save himself at any cost and is a worthy award nominee.The opening sequence involving the disaster is absolutely gripping -after that 30 minute adrenaline rush it's left to Washington and his co-stars (Kelly Reilly in a career best performance as a troubled heroin addict, the ever dependable Bruce Greenwood and Don Cheadle, and an entertaining but bizarre comic turn from John Goodman as Whip's drug dealer) to maintain the energy, and for the most part they do, only let down by some formulaic plotting come the end, and a fairly unwelcome dose of religious moralising where none was required. The moral crux of the trial Whip faces, combined with the self destructive path he seems unable to get away from, somehow doesn't reward the way it should - it feels showy and grandiloquent in an old-school Hollywood way when the performances have mostly been suggesting something darker, more interesting and more subtle. It feels like Zemeckis is mostly to blame for this - he handles the action sequence with real flair but his direction elsewhere is solid but uninspired. He's not helped by a screenplay that often drifts into cliches and simplifications. In the end it's worth it for Washington.
Whip hears knocking. He investigates. He finds the pass door to the adjoining hotel room is open. [At this point most of the audience can work out exactly where this is going.] Close up on the door handle. Cut. Next Day.... That would be a brave piece of film-making.
Alternatively: Whip finds the pass door. Walks in. He looks around. The fridge in the corner buzzes into life. He looks at it. Close up of the fridge. Cut...That would be pretty great too.
But: Whip opens the fridge. Reluctantly picks and takes out a mini bottle of vodka. Debates with himself. Opens it. Changes his mind, screws the cap back on and places it on the top of the fridge, walking away. Close up on the vodka bottle. Cut.... That's good enough.
However: Whip snatches the bottle out of the frame with a resounding and portentous sound effect. Weak.
Movie comment on Der letzte Mann
dombrewer
I was less convinced by this than those who claim "masterpiece" - it was, of course, an exceptional film for its time, with some clever camera work and beautiful art direction (including a wonderful shot of the enormously tall revolving doors in the Porter's dream), but Emil Jannings performance is so tiresomely melodramatic, endlessly staring with horror into the middle distance, it's a permanent distraction and more than evidence enough that the old dodderer needed to be replaced as quickly as possible (he miraculously straightens up and moves like lightening though when he has to sneak his uniform out of the hotel though). For such a simple story it makes very little sense; as greenhorg pointed out - one menial job is just the same as another to people who actually have no job, fancy uniform or no, and makes his family throwing him out of his own home for the shame of working as a toilet attendant as unlikely as the tacked on "dream" ending. Personally I didn't think it a patch on Murnau's other famous silent, supernatural classics - Nosferatu and Faust.Movie comment on Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff
dombrewer
Brilliant, absorbing documentary about cinematographer Jack Cardiff - one of the unsung heroes of cinema history - who was responsible for the camera-work on an astonishing run of films from the 1940s up until his death in 2009, including the stunning technicolor visuals on the greatest of Powell & Pressburger's output ("A Matter of Life and Death", "Black Narcissus" and "The Red Shoes") which is as much as to say some of the best films ever made. In addition to his own directorial work including an acclaimed adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's "Sons and Lovers" he worked on films like "The African Queen", Vidor's "War and Peace", "Scott of the Antarctic", "The Vikings", all of which feature in this documentary. A wide range of notable actors and directors including Scorcese, Bacall, Heston and Kirk Douglas discuss Cardiff as a colleague and an influence - and delightfully Cardiff himself is interviewed in depth and his warmth as a man and passion for his work really comes across, his anecdotes fascinating, illuminating and sometimes hilarious: my favourite concerns the shooting of "The African Queen" where the entire crew were struck down with dysentery from drinking unfiltered river water apart from Bogart and director John Huston who never touched a drop of water during filming, only whisky. An intimate and charming insight into a humble film icon - highly recommended.Movie comment on The Enemy Below
dombrewer
I like a good submarine movie - and this was one of a substantial list of them in the 1950s. Although I prefer the edgier "Run Silent, Run Deep" from the following year where the above and below water combatant's roles are reversed, Robert Mitchum and Curt Jurgens make a good pairing as the US Destroyer and German U-Boat captains testing each others strategic skills in the Southern Atlantic. What really works is the location shooting on board a real Destroyer, and the choice to make the protagonists equals and not sway the plot into a standard Allied flag wave: the German is no sneering Nazi, but a disciplined, respectful patriot eager to get his job done and get home: openly sceptical about the political machinations and bombast of the Fuhrer and his acolytes. It stumbles in places: the supporting cast are underwritten and mostly caricatures, Mitchum is rather too good at predicting the U-Boat's every move (a point the German remarks upon) and the conclusion is a bit disappointing, depending more and more on unconvincing models in a tank, and some dubious heroic moral choices made by both captains under imminent threat of death. The final message is a good one though, and makes for an all round satisfying rainy afternoon's entertainment.Movie comment on Ménilmontant
dombrewer
A short French silent forever blessed (or cursed) to be forever connected to Pauline Kael - she stated in an interview that of everything she'd ever watched it was her favourite film of all time. A curse because that might raise some unlikely expectation in some minds, a blessing because it probably wouldn't be as much sought out today if she hadn't given it that lofty accolade - even so it currently still only has a meagre 820 ratings on IMDB. Luckily for us it's readily available on Youtube and it is definitely worth the watch.Nadia Sibirskaïa is radiant as the wronged woman, the youngest to two orphan girls, following the violent murder of their parents, without guidance lured into a man's bed and then cast aside for her elder sister, leaving her pregnant, alone and desperate. She performs her sorrowful part with admirable naturalism, expertly captured with innovative camera work by director Dimitri Kirsanoff - the scene of her tearfully accepting food given by an old man on a park bench is rightly acclaimed: it's a beautiful piece of acting.
Although some of the early scenes where the sisters play children are a little dubious, the events of the conclusion are oblique and it can be slightly confusing in places without any inter-titles, even for a slight story, the performances and marvellous location cinematography make this a neglected 20s classic deserving of wider rediscovery.
Movie comment on Paperman
dombrewer
A nice little animation, nicely combining hand drawn and computer generated animation techniques - the former make it feel almost traditionally Disney - with facial details and character quirks that are very much the "house style". As Marazmatique pointed out it owes a fair bit to the short "Signs", but personally it lost me when the paper airplanes go all "Sorcerer's Apprentice" which seemed a shame. Will be interesting to see if it's too slight or whimsical (or actually exactly right) to win the short animation Oscar.Movie comment on Zero Dark Thirty
dombrewer
Cletis absolutely nailed this one for me - that's a great review below.I didn't care for The Hurt Locker at all, and was mystified when it won the Best Picture Oscar, but had high hopes for Zero Dark Thirty - Bigelow could fine tune some of her bombastic style at the expense of realistic psychology having now conquered Hollywood, it's based on specific thrilling modern events, it stars Jessica Chastain... I was expecting a great deal more. Bigelow is a gutsy and visually compelling director, but I'm less and less convinced she's a particularly smart one.
This is a story that takes a very, very long time to get anywhere. Certainly the efforts of the CIA investigation into finding Bin Laden were torturous (pun fully intended) and probably grindingly dull, but that's not an excuse to make the whole middle hour of the film feel like ten years too.
Concerning those scenes of torture that sparked the most debate - did it result in information that led to finding Bin Laden? In this version of events, yes, it looks like it. Does it glorify or justify the use of torture? Absolutely not, and I don't believe the film tries to. The opening scenes are harsh, unpleasant and interestingly provocative about the Bush administration and the lies they told to secure a viable and desperately needed target.
Bigelow fumbles this strong beginning in a truly bizarre way, seemingly not trusting in the intelligence of her audience. We're into the slow grind but each time something dramatic is about to "unexpectedly" happen the camerawork suddenly gets all edgy and portentous. This is not tension, this is spoon feeding.
I rate Jessica Chastain a great deal and have watched her rapid ascent to the top with wonder and admiration. Why, now she's been nominated for every major award for her performance as Maya, was I unimpressed? She's as committed and just as watchable as ever, but there's something missing which I can only assume is the thinness of material she's dealing with - I never thought for a moment I was watching an exceptional piece of acting, it honestly could have been anyone - there's some shouting, there are some tears, there's a lot of pensive looking. I don't get the praise this time. The acting honours, without question, go to Jason Clarke as Dan the torture man - a grounded, detailed performance that grows and turns in fascinating ways as we learn more about his character. Elsewhere the cast are patchy indeed, ranging from fine to terrible with a big chunk of "whatever" in the middle.
The final half an hour comprising the attack on the Abbottabad compound is well done, excitingly shot in real time and a little disturbing (why was there never a plan in place to attempt to capture Bin Laden, put him on trial and quash all inevitable conspiracy doubts about his death?), and although we know nothing about the men sent in to do the job, watching their work realistically enacted almost entirely in spooky night vision is fascinating and gruesome. Much of the praise lavished on the film seems to hinge on people's excitement at this part, which makes me wonder what kind of terrible film it would have been if the screenplay had gone into production before it had to be altered to include the events recreated in this conclusion. Even here there are bizarre moments where the logic stutters. One of the two stealth choppers we follow on the mission crashes but somehow the entire strike team all manage to get back to base on the sole remaining chopper, with a dead body and a dozen bin bags of files and hard drives. Obviously there were other helicopters, but where were they? At a vital moment like this I was left scratching my head in the dark (thirty). There are elements of the received version of events that are simply not touched on in this film, where mentioning them would clear up the inevitable confusion that leaving them out produces.
This is an ambiguity that runs through the film, often not in a good way, especially when the content is absolutely screaming out for an editorial voice. I'd argue not having one is more a case of lazing screenwriting than challenging cinema. When Maya finally sees the body and positively identifies him it's extremely ambiguous. Why? The US government went to great pains to prove it, naturally - but in the film we can only ask ourselves is it really him? Is she actually lying? When she leaves the Afghan base at the end of the film, alone on a huge aircraft she leans back and quietly cries - why? Is she relieved her mission is finally over? Lost now her life's work is complete? Dealing with the pointlessness of spending ten years, condoning torture and the loss of life just hunting one old man? Or dealing with the knowledge that her predictions were ultimately wrong? Who knows. But I have a suspicion that Boal and Bigelow didn't really know either.
It ends up being a frustratingly inconsistent film, one that may well end up being better remembered as the film that stirred up widespread discontent about the American government's stance on torture and military strike forces than being an often exciting, often leaden dip into recent political history.
Movie comment on Sherrybaby
dombrewer
Maggie Gyllenhaal gives a heroic, career best performance as Sherry Swanson, a heroin addict struggling to get her life back on track and reconnect with her young daughter Alexis after several years in prison. It's a bruising, emotionally raw performance bristling with barely contained frustration and desperation - at her brother and sister in law who have been raising Alexis as their own, at her parole officer, at fellow addicts in a half way house, and more often than not at herself. As with any film concerning addiction the proof is whether you care enough about the character to will them to succeed and feel their pain when they don't - Gyllenhaal manages this expertly. It's certainly not an easy film to watch, Sherry is far from a likeable character, behaving irrationally and selfishly at times, but her predicament is absolutely believable and involving. A harsh slice of life from debut writer/director Laurie Collyer, clearly a name to look out for in the future.Movie comment on On Dangerous Ground
dombrewer
Several things raise this noir out of the ordinary and into the under-rated classic status - Nicholas Ray's clever direction; the beautiful B&W photography of shadow covered city and snow covered countryside; Bernard Herrmann's typically wonderful score and the lead performance of Robert Ryan as city detective Jim Wilson - stonily impassive and impressively grim. Driven by the loneliness of his life and the pressures of his job to a dangerous, sadistic loathing of the criminals he is dealing with, Wilson is sent out of the city for his own good to help investigate the murder of a local girl. His redemption comes in the shape of a blind woman called Mary (Ida Lupino), who knows more about the murder than she initially lets on. It's a shame that Ray didn't manage to stick with the originally planned ending -Movie comment on The Hitch-Hiker
dombrewer
Of interest mainly because it was directed and co-written by fine noir actress Ida Lupino, forging a way for female genre directors before Kathryn Bigelow hurt her locker and zero'd her dark thirty. For the most part it's a pretty clumsy tale, based on actual events but hamstrung by some lumpy dialogue and hefty overacting. William Talmann doesn't make a particularly convincing psychopath, he plays Myers more like a two bit thug, shouting and grimacing throughout and generally missing the menace that would have made some of the claustrophobic car scenes tenser. Edmond O'Brien and Frank Lovejoy are fine as the fishing buddies caught up in the killer's escape plan, but are fairly uninteresting, underwritten "ordinary joes". On the plus side - it looks great - the location shooting in the Mexican deserts and empty highways really works in stark B&W. Worth a look if you're a fan of American Noir.Movie comment on The Final Destination
dombrewer
It seems particularly churlish to kick a man who has only recently died, but I would be lying if I were to say David R Ellis was anything other than a truly terrible director. He made some rubbish in his time, after many years as a very successful Hollywood stuntman, including "(Motherfuckin') Snakes on a (Motherfuckin') Plane" and the recent "Shark Night" (no mothers were fucked in the making of that film, just careers). This fourth entry into the "Final Destination" franchise sits low even on his filmography.I've been fairly ambivalent about the FD series on the whole - the first was a nice idea put together with some flair, the second (also directed by Ellis) ramped up the silliness, the third (back to creator James Wong) felt like a step back in the right direction - the over elaborate deaths were imaginative and gruesome and the initial roller-coaster sequence actually quite thrilling.
One of the main crimes of this Final, originally the final Final (but not actually final) is a sore lack of imagination. Like FD2 we are back with cars, but rather than a motorway pileup we're at a Speedway. To be honest not many people break into a cold sweat at the idea of a racing car track accident, unlike a plane crashing or a roller-coaster derailing. That's an instant disadvantage to the set-up. The cast, almost without exception, are weak, and never break out of their intentional stereotypes - The Racist, The Cowboy, The MILF, etc etc. There's no one of Mary Elizabeth Winstead's calibre in the cast to make any of the eventual massacre even moderately concerning... which just leaves the convoluted death sequences. For the most part they are crap:
Movie comment on Lincoln
dombrewer
I'm certainly no expert on the topic devilsadvocado, but the film makes it pretty clear that to pass the amendment Lincoln, Stevens and the Republicans had to soft pedal against the clear tide of racism and appear to be acting solely for the interests of the whites to maintain enough support to pass the bill. What Lincoln said in public and effectively did in private might be considered quite different things. I also don't see how abolishing slavery gave Lincoln greater powers or strengthened the ruling class. He was effectively destroying part of the South's economy, dependent on black slave labour.From a letter from 1855 to Joshua Speed, partially quoted in the film:
"In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-water trip, on a Steam Boat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio, there were, on board, ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together with irons. That sight was a continued torment to me; and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave-border. It is hardly fair for you to assume, that I have no interest in a thing which has, and continually exercises, the power of making me miserable. You ought rather to appreciate how much the great body of the Northern people do crucify their feelings, in order to maintain their loyalty to the Constitution and the Union. . . How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty."
Movie comment on Lincoln
dombrewer
I'm exasperated to read comments about how long and "boring" this film is. Yes, it's a terrible disappointment not to see Abraham facing off against some CGI vampires in slow motion... back in the real world this was an extraordinary, important moment in history and Spielberg, Kushner, Kaminski and the whole assembled cast recreate that moment assuredly and impeccably. It may feel like an extended history lesson, but what a lesson - you'll never see a handsomer one or one that so expertly balances the real and desperate dilemmas Lincoln faced to pass the 13th amendment: dangerously extending the civil war and potentially sacrificing his political career and the lives of countless soldiers, including his son, as a result of his desire to do the right thing. Personally it didn't feel slow to me at all, probably because I knew what I'd come to see and because I was paying attention.Day-Lewis is as extraordinary as always - transforming himself yet again. Is there a greater film actor working? He simply has to win every award going for this performance. Not only does he vanish into the role he truly makes you understand what made Lincoln a superlative politician and a great leader - he's captivating from first to last and a thrill to watch. Delightfully he's wonderfully supported on all sides - Tommy Lee Jones deserves first mention as Thaddeus Stevens; his craggy, miserable face has never looked so fitting- his scenes are a delight, either chewing on the supporting cast or quietly underpinning the importance of the amendment. The resolution of his story is extremely moving. Sally Field is terrific as Mary Lincoln, tiny dynamite and all guns blazing. Elsewhere there are perfectly pitched appearances from ever reliable character actors like David Strathairn, John Hawkes, Jared Harris, Hal Holbrook and Bruce McGill. James Spader is a wonderful surprise in a corpulent, comical role. For fans of "The Fall" it's always great to see Lee Pace - he gives a memorable performance as Democrat Fernando Wood. Only Joseph Gordon Levitt is a slight let down - struggling with an one-note character, and never looking quite right in the period. Otherwise it's a fantastic cast doing fantastic work.
The climax of the film - the day of the vote - is brilliant cinema. When the amendment is passed (no real spoiler there given that slavery has been abolished don't you know) I was extremely moved. As much by the joyous celebrations of a great moment achieved, but also by Thaddeus Stevens' sad face seen through the crowds of cheering men, well aware in that moment of the magnitude of what has come to pass.
As I've been thinking about the film tonight the scene that perhaps has lingered the longest is conversation Lincoln and his housemaid Elizabeth have on the front steps of the White House about what she expects and thinks about the potential freedom of her people from slavery. How far the United States has progressed to now have a black man standing in that position of power. He has some extraordinary shoes to fill.
Simply, it's one of the best films of the year.
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