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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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 Posted - 12/12/2006 : 21:47:38
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Miss Potter
Under the watchful, occasionally mischievious eye of Babe director Chris Noonan, Ren�e Zellweger [coincidentally one of the film's Executive Producers] manages not only to animate childhood favourite story teller Beatrix Potter, but to convey her irrepressible inner life, squashed down under corsets and Edwardian morals. It's a performance so subtle and nuanced it might almost slip by as nothing special. But, believe me, it is!
As you'd expect from the BBC film stable, the technical achievements throughout are impeccable, particularly the production design, recreating period being something of a speciality for the network. Appropriately and unfussily accompanying the tale of the author's rise to fame is a score by Nigel Westlake, supplemented by Rachel Portman. Noonan cleverly synthesizes Potter's devotion to her characters by animating some of her drawings and illustrations, a decision which avoids becoming too cutesy because it's so intelligently as well as engagingly done.
Zellweger's supporting cast meets her exacting standard, from Ewan Macgregor charming as Norman Warne, Potter's young publisher and eventual suitor, his free-spirited sister Millie played with suitable verve by Emily Watson, Barbara Flynn and Bill Paterson as Beatrix's tradition-bound parents, and Lloyd Owen as her link with her beloved Lake District.
The biopic is sure to warm even the hardest hearts, saving its moments of angst till the final reel, and you can see why the filmmakers chose this particular emphasis on the earlier tale of Potter's quiet determination. But I think it's a structural choice which prevents the film from saying any more than 'Here you are, Beatrix Potter, ladies and gentlemen.' From the end title-cards summing up the rest of Potter's life it appears her later years were just as emotionally interesting, so did we really need so much screen time set in her childhood? The early life didn't make us understand her either as an author and artist nor a young woman past her bloom any more profoundly than the excellent scenes revealing the layers of relationships within a family which includes what used to be called a spinster daughter, and not a particularly attractive one at that. But script flaws aside, it's Zellweger's triumph, a creation born of the same courage that drove Potter herself.
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Edited by - BaftaBaby on 12/12/2006 21:49:04 |
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ChocolateLady 
"500 Chocolate Delights"
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Posted - 12/13/2006 : 06:54:44
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| Despite the flaws, this looks like one I'd enjoy seeing. Thanks. |
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BaftaBaby
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 12/15/2006 : 15:58:58
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Running With Scissors
If you were one of those purchasers who helped turn Augusten Burroughs's memoirs of growing up in not one but two dysfunctional families into a best-seller, don't expect the film to flow as engagingly, don't expect the depth of understanding of the characters, don't expect the charm.
Despite some extremely strong performances, writer/director Ryan Murphy fails Burroughs because unlike the memoirs which bring us closer, he erects a plexiglass screen around each character. Like students of ethology, we observe, we can dissect some fascinating morsels, but we cannot experience anyone or their situations viscerally. We cannot find the points of identity that draw us into the narrative. This must be a directorial choice because the actors themselves -- and especially Annette Benning as Burrough's schizophrenic and competitive birth mother Deirdre and Jill Clayburgh as Agnes, his more tolerant and homey adoptive mom -- all invest their variously disturbed characters with a cogent humanity.
POV is always a vital consideration in creating film narrative, more so when it's based on a real life. Murphy's film asks us to view with Augusten's eyes the increasing turmoil of his rites of passage from mother-obsessed mother-betrayed pre-pubescent emotional marshmallow into a self-accepting gay young man with a mind of his own. Fair enough. But what he sees around him becomes more fascinating than what he's going through, and it's this diffusion of focus which blights the film. Murphy seems aware of the dilemma, providing intermittent voice-over narration from Augusten, which only serves to hint at the nuanced human being we're missing on screen.
Vying for our attention like yappy puppies are Burroughs's two families. His doomed parents - Benning and Alec Baldwin [in a subtle and heart-wrenching depiction of a selfish though well-meaning guy who retreats into a bottle when the world becomes too real] - surround Augusten with the gamut of marital conflict that starts with a disapproving glance and ends in bleeding from the head, not to mention the heart. Benning's character herself changes personae as though they were underwear: one moment she's Augusten's big sister sharing a beauty regime, another she's his brutal rival, convinced her pathetic verses are destined to catapult her to literary heights. No wonder when hubby walks out she seeks professional help. Her bizarre therapist Dr Finch - Brian Cox willing again to explore the intelligent yet darker side of human behaviour masquerading as the straightforward - runs his practice from home as a tax dodge. His own family could easily be on his patient roster: wife Agnes puts up with his philandering and passive agressive domination over the family, trying to be the good wife yet repressing enormous hurt and rage; if Finch's two daughters represent The Good [Hope] and The Bad [Natalie], his adopted son Neil is The Ugly -- well, the ugly side of emotional development as a schizoid prone to violence and projecting self-hate into casual homosexual encounters. When Augusten becomes one such it's his first defiant act against the angst at home.
Deirdre, by now succumbing to the over-medication provided by Finch, arranges for the doctor and his family to adopt Augusten. She convinces herself it's to clear the space to develop herself as a major author, but Benning's remarkable performance lets us know it's because she realizes she cannot offer her son a place of emotional safety.
That Burroughs survived the chaos of his early life testifies to the indomitable human spirit. That he blossomed into such an accomplished author - able to appreciate the dark humour of his own life - testifies to his own special courage and talent. Sadly, Murphy's film does justice to neither.
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Edited by - BaftaBaby on 12/18/2006 13:26:54 |
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BaftaBaby
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 12/16/2006 : 14:01:01
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Eragon and Snow Cake
Eragon
Dragons, eh?! Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em! Well, not
if you're a Dragon Rider you can't. And, lo, into the Land of Alagaesia a baby dragon, as yet unhatched chooses her rider just as the legend foretold.
Oh, yeah? What legend was that, then? Oh, I see ... the one written by a 16-year-old who'd never written a book before, and directed by Stefen Fangmeier, a guy who'd only done visual FX [albeit on some pretty classy films], and starring Edward Speleers, a kid who'd never acted before. That legend!
Despite the fact that the entire film is a narrative set-up for a hoped-for franchise, I suspect this rip-off of Star Wars and LoTR among others will probably break even, luring kids seduced by the promise of flying dragons and young blond heroes saving their world from evil rulers and powerful sorcerors. The dragon, I grant you, is a screen treat. From its first moments as a wobbly hatchling who can nevertheless hunt its own food, to a soaring behemoth, voiced confidently by Rachel Weisz, the image evokes the kind of wonder that the real myth-makers must have imagined in their telling of tales from Beowulf to the Norse eddas to St George to Wagner's Siegfried from the Nibelungenlied. I can willingly suspend my disbelief when it comes to dragons, and the only question that intruded was when the dragon - as solid as Gibralter - couldn't manage to carry three people without weakening. Hey, that's a dragon that needs a gym subscription.
Fangmeier's visual influences are strong and he's steered his production designer to pay homage to a mix of stunning graphics from Myst to Hieronymous Bosch. Would that more attention had been paid to a screenplay that allowed more resonant dialogue, some genuine wit, and, heaven forfend, an actual plot.
Since the film is clearly such a set-up plot figures about as strongly here as in a role-play video game. Along with the dragon and rider the story is populated by Eragon's Obi Wan substitute [Jeremy Irons, giving the only real acting performance], the inevitable girly who must be freed from evil clutches of the evil Malkovitch [in what is almost a cameo performance], and his evil-er advisor Robert Carlyle in wig, make-up, and costume that came from someone's mom's dressing-up box. Set against this touching personal tale is the epic parallel wherein The Varden freedom fighters need protection against the nasty Urgols. Which begs the vital question: how come it's all right in movies to call the rebels against repressive regimes 'freedom fighters' but in real life you have to call them terrorists?
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Snow Cake
Before we start I have two words for you: Emily Hampshire, a Canadian
television actress whose aleatory meeting [as Vivian Freeman] at a roadside diner with Alan Rickman provides the 'inciting incident' [as they say in those screenwriting workshops] for Marc Evans very personal, often touching film. Hampshire only features in a few scenes but makes quite a quirky, charming, and attractive impact; you're sure to see her again.
Rickman's character Alex, over from the UK, is on the road across Canada to pay an awkward visit to the mother of the son he never knew he had. Hampshire's Vivian [a name derived from the Latin for life] is hitching back from the grandparents who raised her to visit her mother in snowy Wawa. Vivian sits at Alex's table because she needs a lift and likes to choose people who look lonely. When the car becomes involved in an accident as they're nearing Wawa, Alex takes it on himself to explain himself to Linda Freeman. This is another ironic choice of name since Linda is trapped within her autism and OCD. An intelligent, articulate woman who's protected herself and the demands she makes on life within the confines of a small town whose well-meaning inhabitants are themselves caught between nosiness and neighbourly values.
The heart of the film depends on how the characters interact and, as warmer weather approaches, thaw themselves from their emotional prisons, leaving them with a way forward. Evans handles the material intelligently, though he occasionally falls into the trap of some simplistic story-telling. He also betrays his Welsh television roots, more comfortable with a two-shot than a panoramic vista. But he certainly has a rapport with his actors.
With an autistic woman as a catalyst for the other characters' development, performance is crucial. Some may find Sigourney Weaver's portrait full of incredible tics and mannerisms, but anyone who's ever met an adult autistic knows how accurate it is. If anything, her caring, unjudgmental depiction of a woman who's hard to love but whom one grows at least to admire, is understated. As Alex, Rickman steers his own journey away from the ice with humour and a troubled charm; meeting him halfway is Carrie-Ann Moss [from The Matrix] in the part
of Linda's neighbour who's attracted to Rickman.
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Edited by - BaftaBaby on 12/18/2006 11:05:08 |
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BaftaBaby
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 12/17/2006 : 13:26:36
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Deja Vu and Dreamgirls
Deja Vu
If you thought the dragons of Eragon required some hefty suspension of disbelief, just wait till you get a load of Deja Vu! Time travel?Freeze frame reality? Oh, yes it's all here, folks. And I don't wanna
hear you liken it to Minority Report, which - granted - shares some of those qualities. Because MR is set in the future -- where, as we in movieland know, anything is possible. Deja Vu is set right here in the present, which forces us to accept that US government agencies already have the power to manipulate time. That they have the power to manipulate taxes, prison populations, voting boundaries ... I buy all that, all right! But Time?
Okay, once you get past that threshold, I have to admit, director Tony Scott [teamed once again with producer Jerry Bruckheimer and the actors, especially lead dude Denzel Washington] make it very easy to jump on this speeding thriller-come-techo-triumph ride and scream Oooo-eeee through the open window. We're in post-Katrina New Orleans, and in one sense the entire film is a Santa wish that someone can go back and fix the hurricane's devastation and its obscene after-math [actually they'd already begun filming when the storm came, forcing them to abandon the shoot and adjust the story]. Their desire to rewrite history parallels Stallone's attempts to re-fight the Vietnam war, but with a far more intriguing premise, one driven by intelligence rather than brute force: which is where the time travel comes in.
Scott pans the harbor where a ferry is boarding with USS Nimitz sailors and their families getting ready for a party afloat. The scene eerily evokes those b&w war films with the boys going off into the unknown. Then suddenly, KA-BOOM! the whole thing blows sky high and we're off and running. A quick word about the pace set by Scott and editors Jason Hellmann and Chris Lebenzon -- it's some of the best action shooting around, even rivalling Casino Royale, and that's saying something. This is a wonderful example of how concise editing helps the story-telling instead of being a way merely to get from shot to shot. Add a swelling score and you're more than halfway there.
With his longtime partner Larry away and unobtainable Washington's Agent Doug Carlin shows up on behalf of the local ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] who are sharing the investigation with the FBI. Val Kilmer's Agent Andrew Pryzwarra who heads the FBI team is so impressed by Doug's thoroughness and intuitive abilities that he invites him to join a brand-new cross-agency team when the terrorist and his methodology prove too elusive for easy answers. Complicating matters for Doug is another case which may or may not be related; a beautiful young black woman is found washed up in the bayou, and subsequently Doug finds out she's tried to call him, leaving a message to call her back.
Up to now the film follows standard narrative procedure, and it really is handled superbly. But now a plot which has been rocketing along the thriller highway hooks a sudden turn along an unsign-posted off-ramp and we can almost hear that woo-woo-woo-woo music in the background. Turns out the new unit operates not in the field but in a gallery jam-packed with amazing satellite equipment, screens, force fields -- the whole kaboosh. And more, which is only revealed to Doug and us a bit later. Meanwhile, Doug and the team combine these government-developed phenomena with good old-fashioned police work to establish that yes, the dead woman must have been involved in the terrorist explosion, and they can even identify just who that terrorist is.
How this mis-guided military reject manages to justify his actions in the name of patriotism and how Doug manages to go back in time to change events is the protracted resolution of the story. So, yes, at the level of plausibility it's very silly, never truly achieving a cogent explanation of how certain events can be affected but not others. But in its own terms, it's a cracking good cine-yarn, extremely well knitted and styled.
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Dreamgirls
The first thing to shout about in this funky transition of Tom Eyen's 1981 Broadway smash - which was fashioned in the mould of those 1930s rising star musicals - is: A Star is Born. Jennifer Hudson quite simply twinkles everyone else off the screen. And those 'everyone elses' ain't exactly chopped liver, including as they do Eddie Murphy [sharp, heart-breaking, magnificent as R&B singer Jimmy Thunder Early], Danny Glover, Jamie Foxx, and Beyonce Knowles among others. Hudson is sassy, she's funny, she can act, and despite her unfashionable chubbiness exudes sex appeal -- but most of all she can sing. Wow, can she sing! Yes, this is the same Jennifer Hudson who was royally slagged off by Simon Cowell as an American Idol runner-up. Well, who's laughing now, Cowell??
Writer/director Bill Condon has totally understood that although there are undeniable Motown biopic parallels to the tale of a trio of black singers who rose past white 1960s prejudiced America's hurdles to become international sensations leaving a trail of human waste in their wake, this is essentially a metaphor for an era. And if identifying the source is your thing, you'll have fun spotting The Supremes pre-and post Florence Ballard, Gordy Berry, even The Jackson Five. Condon's supported in the narrative by the amazing cast, each one giving generously to each other in every scene, whether it's a moment of irresistable rhythm, exhilarating professional triumph, or personal heartbreak.
Though Dreamgirls evokes old-fashioned musicals in its simplistic show-biz story, Condon's made a wise choice to retain from the Broadway version the use of songs almost as operatic arias which either reveal a character's inner life or express the status of a relationship. In fact some new songs have been introduced which emphasize that method of storytelling. In double fact, Condon's kept the spirit of director/choreographer Michael Bennett's original staging, understanding entirely that this is a showbusiness rather than an R&B story. At first the concept is almost alienating, inserting barriers of the wider socio-cultural tale between us and our ability to fully empathize with the characters. We're definitely not in sweet-saccharine-land. But by the end, that Brechtian choice has been delivered with such power by the artists - both as musicians and actors - that it would take a hard heart indeed not to be moved and involved.
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Edited by - BaftaBaby on 12/25/2006 20:49:50 |
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BaftaBaby
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 12/18/2006 : 11:00:00
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Black Christmas
Let's play a little game. I'll ask you some questions; you put the answers together and guess what they make.
First, which bunch of self-appointed movie makers in 2006 - who all need imagination transplants - decide to rip off a 1974 classic horror film?
In which sorority house of nubility personified is it set?
30 years earlier, which little boy witnesses his abusive mother murder his father?
What season is it?
Do the sorority sisters receive weird phonecalls?
Do the sorority sisters witness decapitations?
Ditto eyeball snacks?
Are there sibling issues?
Do the filmmakers exclude the abortion issues from the original film?
Is there much screaming in the snow?
Are there strange 'doings'in the attic?
Are there electricity problems?
Ditto Emergency Services problems?
Have you got it yet? Now, if only those pesky filmmakers had chosen a different colour, we'd have had a remake of the Irving Berlin musical instead of this tarnished tinsel.
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ChocolateLady
"500 Chocolate Delights"
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Posted - 12/18/2006 : 12:13:19
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BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
This is one time when it is a GOOD thing that almost no Christmas movies get to Israel.
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BaftaBaby
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 12/22/2006 : 15:51:17
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Superman Returns
Look! What's that floating up there in the sky accompanied by a celestial chorus? It's a bird, it's a plane, it's ... Jesus! Oops, I mean Superman. Yes, after a quick five-year hop to his home planet he's returned. Oh, would that he'd stayed away! For then we might not have had to endure this insufferable Christ in a cape, this only son given by Jor-L to fight for Truth, Justice, and the American way. Well, that latter is how DC Comics ended the motto, though only the first two tenets are quoted in this latest version of the film franchise -- as though omitting mention of the land of Macdonalds and the Neocons could counter the implication that the rest of the world is but a footnote.
Let me ask you something. If you had superpowers which enabled you to travel faster than a speeding bullet, to be alerted to all the injustice in the world at any given moment, to leap tall buildings at a single bound, to rival Atlas in strength and a kitten in sheer goodness ... let's see, what would you choose to do? Stop a traffic accident or bring peace to the Middle East? I know, I know, I should be entering into the spirit of the thing. Believe me, I want to. I really do. I've enjoyed past versions of Superman, and have even appeared in one of them! Other incarnations of the caped crusader have been able to parady the simplistic good versus evil message.
But Brandon Routh flies through a Metropolis that really takes itself seriously, and neither Soupy himself nor director Bryan Singer seems to have heard of post-modern irony, which, let's face it, is the only way this tale will work. Yes, you heard me right ... Bryan Singer. The same director of the very superior Usual Suspects. I'm so disappointed. Not that he chose to revive the DC franchise [and according to IMDB he's prepping the next one as we speak], but because he knuckled under to The Money with this lacklustre goody-goody treatment. Not even Kevin Spacey's Lex Luthor is allowed to approach the menace we know he's capable of. What's that you say? He uses a stash of kryptonite to endanger Superman's life? Well, duh! That's original!
Speaking of the story, it's not that it's terrible, it just doesn't take the icon any further. Routh's double performance is exceptionally uninspired; he and Kate Bosworth as Lois have neither chemistry nor charisma. Jimmy Olsen ain't near perky enough, goldarnit! And Frank Langella doesn't even get a chance to be grumpy --- and hey, this is a guy who won prizes as Dracula! Despite some elegant screen compositions by Singer, you never really get a sense of a big city with its inevitable social contrasts, let alone a troubled world. It's as though Our Town got planning permission for some metropolitan chic. There's just no dark side. Nor any urban humor. Instead we get enough unimaginative earnestness, apple-pie philosophy, and Christ-like iconography for a Mel Gibson film. And that just ain't the Superman I know and love.
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Edited by - BaftaBaby on 12/22/2006 15:57:07 |
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BaftaBaby
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 12/22/2006 : 15:52:00
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Angela-A
Luc Besson is nothing if not a stylist, and this overlong tale of redemption is as visually arresting as Subway or The Fifth Element with bells on. Or should that be wings, since perhaps the most astounding image throughout the film is the unlikely angel of the title. Besson's always had an unerring eye for a female screen icon, and he's certainly found a winner in Danish multi-lingual catwalk model Rie Rasmussen as the foul-mouthed chain-smoking ball-busting heaven-sent rescuer of the suicidal Algerian deadbeat Andr�. As played by Morrocan Jamel Debbouze, neither he nor his leading lady - towering over him by nearly a foot - is particularly experienced though both acquit themselves well in this contemporary fairy-tale.
Fast-talking Andr� blags his way through a meagre hand-to-mouth existence, substituting any attempt at real relationships with a facility for lies. He fools himself and sometimes others who either abuse him or use him and who only flash a smile when they actually receive the money he constantly owes. When even he can't escape his feelings of self-loathing and self-destruction, he determines to fling himself into the Seine. But before he can sink to watery oblivion he's confronted with Angel-A, and - as acting on some subconscious manifestation of his essential goodness - jumps into the water to rescue her. How she, in fact, helps rescue him provides the film's narrative.
With more than a nod to such disparate film angels as Michael and Bruno Ganz's Damiel in Wim Wenders Wings of Desire, and using narrative techniques developed by the Nouvelle Vague, particularly Godard and Resnais, Besson has no trouble creating a credible underbelly of Paris beneath its glamor. He's helped bigtime by the faultless black and white cinematography of Thierry Arbogast. What he's missing, though, is the kind of intellectual rigor demanded of the story in order to save it from becoming either pretentious or cutesy. He minimizes the latter largely due to the inante charm of Debbouze and the astonishing presence of Rasmussen. But ultimately the film fails truly to engage.
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Edited by - BaftaBaby on 12/22/2006 15:55:56 |
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BaftaBaby
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 12/22/2006 : 15:55:13
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The Pursuit of Happyness and Blood Diamond
The Pursuit of Happyness
Could this be Will Smith's Oscar year? Not since Six Degrees of Separation has he chosen a role that explores deeper than his powerful but easy facility for surface comedy. Whether his nuanced portrait of real-life rags-to-riches inspiration Chris Gardner is accurate really isn't relevant since it's the attainment of the American Dream that the film is about. You may or may not believe that the Founding Fathers meant their Declaration of Independence tenet of the Pursuit of Happiness to equate so completely to the Pursuit of Dollars, but neither Gabriele Muccino's film nor Steve Conrad's adaptation of Gardner's book ever questions it.
The narrative dogs the story of how a highly intelligent and super-motivated black man in the San Francisco of the 1980s overcomes relentless odds against his success to become [we're told in a post ending title card] a multi-millionaire. And, though the key relationship is between Chris and his [real life] son Christopher, the kid is treated as a plot device, as indeed is the relationship with the boy's mother who, refusing to go along with yet another of Gardner's schemes, leaves them for New York. There was plenty of screen time to pay more attention to defining these characters more convincingly, especially Linda, though Thandie Newton does her best given the stale crumbs she gets from the script. Instead, the film recounts far too many of the same kind of hurdles that Chris needs to vault, his progress never linear and upward, but more a matter of one step forward, two steps back. And because Gardner's real story was given such wide publicity at the time, it's no surprise that he's going to come out of this a winner. Hell, Hollywood wouldn't be remotely interested if he weren't.
But the choices made have a sniff of not wanting to reveal too much of the true tale lest someone doesn't come out smelling of roses. But that only makes you wonder about the consequences: why, for example, would Linda so willingly abandon her son to the partner she believes is a loser? Was she mentally unstable? A junkie? Did she supplement her menial jobs with something sleazier to bring home the rent money when Chris's schemes came up empty? Also, charming as the lad Christopher is, he appears far too old, not to mention possessed of such sassy confidence, to be in Day Care instead of school. He asks a couple of times whether his mom is coming back, but we never really get an insight into how Linda's abandonment truly affects him. And that's because the action refuses to explore consequences, but endlessly chases practicalities.
This is one of those cinema experiences that you want to be good while you're watching, you want to go along with Smith's infectious good-guy style to the happy ending. And so you do. Then afterward you realize the film's a con, you've still got a list of questions, and you're not quite as satisfied as you thought you were.
Blood Diamond
Set in and around the diamond trade of a conflict-weary Sierra Leone in the 1990s, it's a shame that Edward Zwick's powerful film splits focus so distractingly, especially in the run-up to a holiday which will probably see expensive jewellery nestled innocently under the tree. For that more socially relevant strand of the story leaves no doubt about why a diamond might be so tainted as to deserve its bloody epithet. The pursuit of that narrative stars Benin-born former catwalk model Djimon Hounsou as Solomon, a hard-working dedicated rural family man whose life is ripped apart when he's captured by a band of ruthless rebels to pan for rough diamonds, while his wife is incarcerated in a refugee camp with the two younger children, and his pre-teen son Dia is groomed by the rebels for one of those child armies still rampant in various African countries. When word gets out that Solomon's absconded with a stone as big as a bird's egg, he winds up in jail alongside Danny Archer, a morally-challenged white Zimbabwean mercenary, played with astonishing menace by Leonardo DiCaprio, making a decent stab at the accent.
This set-up offers the film a choice: to follow the trail of how complicit the west is in fuelling the international trade of sparkling gems in an obscene backing of regional chaos, brutality, and horror. How that very chaos is encouraged by the west, fomented so that very rich people become even richer, even as innocent black people are murdered, raped, have their limbs chopped off, have their children turned into drug addicts and encouraged to fire automatic weapons into villages to underscore a reign of terror. Alternatively, the film's other option is to concentrate on the thriller with romantic overtones. Hollywood being Hollywood, of course it's this narrative that the film pursues. Yes, we get glimpses into that other story, but only as it serves to move the thriller plot along.
Archer's determined to get his hands on the diamond; Solomon's buried it up in the rebel-held hills, and he convinces him to retrieve it in order to reunite his family and buy them out of Africa and into safety. But they need help. There to provide it is Jennifer Connolly as journalist Maggie Bowden, whom Danny meets in passing. Yes, of course, they're chalk and cheese, but yes, of double course, there's the obligatory uRST [unresolved sexual tension], and yes of triple course, it will be Maggie who ties together Danny's spiritual progress toward humanization and Solomon's more material salvation.
The west and rich white men are implicated in the film, but it's difficult to make that the focus for mainstream America, and increasingly for mainstream Europe. The trouble is, the thriller aspects of Blood Diamond don't sustain, despite the interminable length of the film. Still, that doesn't mean you shouldn't see it. The remarkably beautiful setting counterpoints the horrors going on beneath the jungle canopy, and the real story, equally protected by more commercial considerations, is worth being reminded of. Both male leads are excellent; someday someone will give Connolly a role worthy of her undeniable talent.
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Edited by - BaftaBaby on 12/25/2006 20:17:53 |
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BaftaBaby
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 12/25/2006 : 15:35:36
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Venus
When actors score so brilliantly in a film you really want the setting to justify all their hard work. Peter O'Toole gifts us with his best performance in years as Maurice, an ageing once beautiful actor reduced to playing corpses in tv hospital drama. He's wonderfully supported by the irrepressible Leslie Phillips as Ian his richer best friend, Richard Griffiths as their buddy ever-ready with balm to spread over the troubled waters that roil up between them, and especially by a luminous Vanessa Redgrave as his ex-wife.
Newcomer Jodie Whittaker isn't in their league, but does fine with the part of Ian's niece's daughter, the ultra nubile, intellectually unawakened Jessie, who comes down from the north to look after her relative and possibly snag a job in modelling. Phillips loathes everything she represents, most especially that his own era's passing, but O'Toole befriends her and, impossibly, falls in love with her. The film deals with their strictly platonic relationship, exploring their desires, both unlooked for and demanding.
The film itself isn't terrible, but it meanders like a jazz riff when it should build and explode like a symphony. Not only is O'Toole taller than all around him, he's towering, and he deserves a bigger platform. Movies being movies, however, this is probably the most he'll get at this stage and his age. The whole production has a lingering sniff of television: accurate but ultimately too contained for cinema.
Director Roger Michell particularly seems unable to escape its confines; this is his third collaboration with screenwriter Hanif Kureishi [who scored so powerfully with My Beautiful Laundrette]. Kureishi's dialogue crackles, each character defined by perfectly suited expressions. But the story is small and the near plotless plot doesn't give it room to breathe.
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BaftaBaby
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 12/25/2006 : 15:40:43
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Infamous
Writer/director Douglas McGrath, whose screenplay for Bullets Over Broadway proved his grasp of contrasting stereotypical American social worlds with humanity and humor, really lets rip with his treatment taken from George Plimpton's account of Truman Capote's research into what became In Cold Blood.
Because the meat of the film takes place in a world so alien to Capote's own, we're first introduced to him in his natural habitat of exotics. As played by British character actor Toby Jones [son of Freddie Jones, once a stalwart of the UK theatre scene] Capote's queen-y side is loosed in full, constrasting with Philip Seymour Hoffman's more contained performance last year. Jones finds the notes in Capote that made contemporaries compare him with Alexander Pope, both men being tortured, physically arresting, wittily acerbic, and willing to play the fool for attention and acceptance by a set they weren't born into.
So first we get Capote the court jester, flattering the New York beau monde whose toy he has become; he trades 'girly' gossip at fashionable cafes and Park Avenue parties with the likes of powerful trend-setters like Diana Vreeland, editor of Vogue, socialites Babe Paley, wife of CBS founder, and Slim Keith who acquired a title from her marriage to an Englishman. We also learn of his connections to a more international galaxy of celebrities including the British royal family, and intellectual equals Gore Vidal and childhood friend Nelle Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird.
We need early on to absorb such eclectic roots so we can fully appreciate the impact that Capote, landing in their midst as though from outer space, makes on the backwater Kansas town so shocked by the brutal shootings of a local family by two ex-convicts. It's their story and the effect of the killings on the American-dream town which fascinate Capote and will form the core of his book. What happens to him during the months of research, most particularly as a result of his growing intimacy with one of the killers Perry Smith is a revelation much more deeply realized than Dan Futterman's script of Capote last year.
McGrath's film, too, makes more of the wind of shock, acceptance, and change that had begun to blow across the American heartland. This was a seminal time of transition from a collective post-war exhalation that turned a drab world to color in every sense of the word. That Capote instinctively fathomed what import the Kansas murders would have on the cultural life of the nation testifies to his literary genius.
Jones hits all the notes provided by McGrath and he's surrounded by a stunning cast, whether in fleeting glimpses like Juliet Stevenson's Vreeland, or more sustained characterizations from Sandra Bullock as Harper Lee, and especially Daniel Craig as Perry. The film constantly imposes alienation devices on the viewer: first with the set-up of Capote's trivial side which serves to make his later soul-damaged revelations even more poignant, and by the flash-forward almost-to-camera interviews with his friends, lover, and social commentators underscoring the Capote we're getting to know and, yes, even love - though perhaps never quite to trust. The Hoffman version of Capote was dominated by his amazing acting job; McGrath's film is dominated by the man himself.
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Edited by - BaftaBaby on 12/25/2006 20:26:41 |
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BaftaBaby
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 12/25/2006 : 15:45:44
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Hollywoodland
What might have been an examination of the George Reeves/Superman phenomenon serving as a metaphor for the way Hollywood fantasies hide human truths loses itself completely in Allen Coulter's Hollywoodland. Instead Coulter and screenwriter Paul Bernbaum opt for what they thought would be the stronger story of a schnook of a petty-ante detective investigating the possibility that the television star's suicide was actually murder. Big mistake.
By diverting our focus into ersatz noir territory, ironically we're kept in the dark about more than just the unanswerable question of who killed the superhero. As the private dick Louis Simo, Adrien Brody simply cannot sustain the leading man status he's awarded here. He's miscast as that kind of lead, nor does the script help one little bit. His is a hackneyed tale of divorced loser, possibly ready for a kind of redemption which ultimately eludes him; but it's academic since we never really care about him, either whether he might successfully solve the case or whether he might learn to play a more mature role in the life of his estranged wife and child. As a kind of forced parallel to Reeves's sad life story it's just not in the same ballpark.
Ben Affleck, on the other hand, as Reeves is excellent, as is Diane Lane playing his slightly older paramour Toni Mannix, married to gang-connected MGM VP Eddie - Bob Hoskins finding all the humanity in another dubious character. Half a century after the event, how Superman died just isn't that vital a basis for a plot, especially as there will probably never be the evidence to prove anything one way or another. So you've got a fundamental ambiguity which in itself isn't strong enough even to be used as a central metaphor. What was going on in Hollywood at the time was far from ambiguous, albeit fascinating even today, since it sowed the seeds not only for how the studios' hold on popular culture was slipping, but for the near-total commodification of the arts and the explosion of a celebrity culture.
Reeves definitely played a part in that story, and has an interesting enough life to serve as its central character. By making Simo our point of identification and then abandoning him morally and emasculating him in terms of a solution to the death, we're left with all the gravitas of a tabloid headline. Too bad because this could have been a sparkling gem instead of the tin-plated Cracker-Jack toy it is.
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Edited by - BaftaBaby on 12/25/2006 20:32:37 |
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BaftaBaby
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 12/25/2006 : 15:48:03
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Pierrepoint
There's too much television thinking in this stylish realization of the life of one of Britain's last hangmen. The slice-of-life treatment of how an accepted legal practice, though too gruesome for polite discussion, evolves into one of the most potent symbols of social change, is essentially a small tale in narrative terms. There might be more epic ways to deal with the issues, but the quite claustrophobic suppression in this screenplay mitigates against a cinematic telling of the story.
That the film is so watchable despite this flaw is due primarily to Adrian Shergold's meticulous shooting and to the equally careful yet totally believeable and excellent characterizations of Albert Pierrepoint by Timothy Spall, his drab, loyal, and quietly intelligent wife Annie played by Juliet Stevenson, and Eddie Marson as his best friend Jim Corbitt. With Annie he can find the humanity he must leave at home to approach his odious task with detached professionalism, even managing to find pride in a job well done. With his friend, he's Tosh to Jim's Tish, as they provide impromptu entertainment in the pub.
Based on co-writer Bob Mills's longtime obsession with Pierrepoint's life story, we learn that the hangman's growing reputation as the best in England secures him a post war interview with Montgomery
leading to his employment at the Nuremberg trials in Germany. But the main problem with the screenplay is how many times we're told what is essentially the same thing about Pierrepoint, namely the ways he finds to justify his job. So instead of the story progressing to the point where it flips into a dramatic conversion, we become less and less engaged. We get only glimpses of a changing world without feeling how it's really becoming an incursion into an entire way of life.
The intimacy of television can capitalize on the reading-between-the-lines in small gestures, looks, and moments between friends, between strangers, but cinema demands more.
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BaftaBaby
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 12/25/2006 : 15:52:25
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Wah-Wah
Very much less than a sum of its parts, Wah-Wah centers on a late 1960s coming of age tale set in a British Empire outpost of East Africa which is soon to disappear like the raging red sun sinking behind the hills of the extended last shot. It's all based on debut writer/director Richard E Grant's own boyhood, growing up in the kind of dysfunctional family so exquisitely portrayed in White Mischief.
But whether he's just too close to the material or it's a mark of his inexperience, the film slips away from Grant despite some truly fine work by his cohorts. We're at the fag-end of white British colonial rule over an indigenous people we get to meet only as deceptively happy servants and menials. Things are done because that's the way they've always been done, and within the family of Harry and Lauren Compton that includes lots of extra-marital sex washed down with gallons of liquor, all not that well hidden from their son Ralph.
The dichotomy of hush-hush [and perfectly normal] human abandon and the repressive restrictions on behavior expected in public and in speech provide a telling frame into which an intelligent and artistically-inclined young boy must flounder to make any sense of his emotions. It's the script that lets the film down, presenting as it does a succession of scenes which don't coalesce into a filmic shape. Narrative paths are introduced and dropped, such as Ralph's first stirrings of teen love/lust with a neighbour's daughter. So we glimpse a wider world, but are kept too relentlessly enclosed in the repetitive tale of the demise of the family.
As you might expect from such a versatile actor as Grant, he coaxes absolutely marvellous performances from the cast, from leads to cameos. Gabriel Byrne in particular as Harry and Emily Watson as his second wife, the funny and adorably brash Ruby, are both magnificent. Nicholas Hoult is more than fine as Ralph, though doesn't even have to compete since the script uses him more as our pair of eyes than his own person. That's one of the weak points of the narrative, and I suspect it was Grant's choice as an antidote to sentimentality. But while he's avoided the latter he's also put a barrier in our way of
latching onto a character we can identify with, instead of forcing us to judge everyone else.
Not only has Grant thoroughly absorbed the geography of his childhood, he's managed to reveal it to us without our becoming overwhelmed by Swaziland's phenomenal beauty. Perhaps when he's given another directorial green light he'll consider having someone else
write the screenplay.
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Let the [BAFTA] viewings begin!
