I won't be going to the cinema this weekend, frankly I'm exhausted it's been a heck of a week what with rehearsing, classes and the 24/7 fringe festival. Not to mention having to do "real work" during the day. However if I were to go the decision might be a tough one, there's a couple of interesting looking foreign language releases and a new Superhero is coming to town, but in the end I'd have to choose, as the RLAG film of the week, Arrietty.
Arrietty
Studio Ghibli take the unusual step of adapting an existing, European story (Mary Norton's "The Borrowers") then still imbue the film with a unique Japanese feel and the traditional acceptance of the absurd. Saoirse Ronan and Mark Strong lead the voice cast as daughter and father in a family of miniature people living behind the skirting board.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●●●●○○○○
Captain America: The First Avenger
I have heard some great things about Joe Johnston's contribution to the pre-Avengers story, with many US critics calling it the best superhero movie of the summer. Chris Evans certainly looks hot in the trailers, and backed with a serious and exciting cast that includes Tommy Lee Jones, Stanley Tucci and Samuel L. Jackson what's not to like.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●●●○○○○○
Light Thief
A rare example of Krggyzstani cinema that examines the stature of ordinary technicians who restore electricity in the turmoil since the break-up of the Soviet Union. It helps that the main character seems a bit of a happy go lucky type.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●●●○○○○○
Poetry
Low-key existential Japanese movie about an old woman contemplating the meaning of life as she comes wearily to the end of hers. Heartbreaking and ultra-real this may still test the patience of most casual cinema-goers.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●●●○○○○○
Better Life
Slightly buzzed about immigration drama following an illegal gardener, Damien Bichir, in East L.A. trying to do right by his son whilst avoiding the criminal gangs and the authorities. Looks promising, but not exceptional.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●●○○○○○○
Zookeeper
Given it's poor pedigree and mediocre box office performance in the US it's hard to see why this Kevin James vehicle deserves 4 blobs. To be frank it probably doesn't however it does boast Nick Nolte as a gorilla as well as Sylvester Stallone and Cher as a pair of Lions. Sounds like prime crap at least.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●●○○○○○○
Horrid Henry: The Movie
There's clearly a market for this big screen translation of the very British kids stories, and no doubt it will clear up during the school holidays, but I don't think it's for me. What persuaded Anjelica Huston to play the stern headmistress I'll never know.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●○○○○○○○
Our Day will Come
Bonkers looking French pic starring Vincent Cassell as a ginger therapist who runs away with one of his patients (mmm ethical issues there) to find freedom in Ireland - the land of the red heads.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●●○○○○○○○
Jihne Mera Dil Luteya
Bollywood love triangle with two best friends falling for the same girl at Patiala University. Cue comedy hijinks and much singing and dancing.
Runs like a Gay Excitometer: ●●○○○○○○○○
Friday, 29 July 2011
It's a Big World out There (Out this week - 29/07/11)
Wednesday, 11 May 2011
Hanna
2011. Dir: Joe Wright. Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Cate Blanchett, Eric Bana, Tom Hollander and Olivia Williams. ●●●●○
We have an interesting parallel for my review with Thor last weekend. Like the Marvel adaptation Hanna feels almost like two films tied together, the first a look at the almost superheroic powers of our heroine Saoirse Ronan, the other a gentle fish out of water comedy as Hanna mixes with "normal" people - a hippy family floating around Morocco. Where this movie outperforms the former is the general sense of menace, the stakes here are real, people - the innocent as well as the culpable - will get hurt just for interacting with the girl.
The story opens with Hanna living with her father, Eric Bana, in a woodcutters cottage close to the Arctic circle. He's educating her in every skill she'll need to know; a selection of languages, how to gut a caribou, the theory of music and how to break a man's neck. Understandable it's not a normal child-raising but then Hanna is not an ordinary child. Able to beat her father in combat you can see the strength and agility in every move she makes. We learn little about her at this point, but pay attention as every point that's made will be important later in the plot. From her words to the deer to the Grimm's fairy tales book she reads.
Indeed it's that link to Grimm that completely overwhelms the basic story. This is a modern fairy tale, one that takes our heroine from her humble beginnings through a journey of self-discovery where she must confront an evil step-mother (semi-renegade CIA agent Cate Blanchett) and face some cold truths about her own origins.
The closest to reality this film has is the foster like family, led by Olivia Williams and Jason Flemyng as a bickering and fascinating couple taking their children across Morocco and Southern Europe and reacting to the introduction and consequences of meeting the precocious protagonist. In this middle section Hanna begins to emotionally connect to her new family, experiencing a sense of familial attachment for the first time. This family are built on love not on a desperate need to avenge history.
In the meantime Blanchett recruits her wolves. A peroxide wigged Tom Hollander camply preening around his sex shops and neo-nazi thugs oozing menace like a predator in tennis shorts.
All the performances work in context of the movie, the grounded work by Williams and Flemyng nicely counterpointing the overacting of Hollander and Blanchett who totally owns the role, completely unafraid of working the stereotypes. The revelatory performance though is from Saoirse Ronan, with her clear eyes and virtually translucent skin she perfectly portrays the innocence and tenacity of the character, facing the collapse of her world and fighting her way through to the other side. It's hard to imagine this is the same girl who deservedly earned her first oscar nomination as the meddlesome sister in Joe Wright's Atonement.
Wright has proved himself a versatile and superb director with a picture that would at first glance appear to be completely outside of his comfort zone. Capable of creating tension in quiet scenes and filming some of the most well choreographed action scenes I've seen for a while this makes the prospect of Wright moving back into costume dramas for Anna Karenina seem just a little disappointing.
The film isn't perfect, there are some odd inconsistencies in Hanna's understanding and reaction to technology (partly I expect as a plot cheat) and the Chemical Brothers soundtrack doesn't work all the way through (although kudos to the second film in a year to feature Greig's In the Hall of the Mountain King and in a way that feels more natural and plot-underlining than The Social Network 8 months ago).
This is the first must see I've seen from this years crop, highly recommended and if this doesn't make it to my top ten at the end of the year then I'll probably have to eat my hat.
Saturday, 15 January 2011
20 for 2011: 14 - Hanna
Purely popcorn entertainment at 14 with Joe Wright's Hanna.
I'm afraid you can't persuade me that Joe Wright is trying for anything other than bums on seats with his latest movie, especially after the iffy box office performance of The Soloist. Saoirse Ronan stars as the 14 year old killing machine brought up by her spy father Eric Bana purely to kill Cate Blanchett (at least that's how it ooks in the trailer). In many ways Hanna may be a slightly more realistic version of Hit Girl from Kick-Ass, although I expect there's still plenty of suspension of disbelief to be done.
Most of the plot may be obvious from watching the recent trailer but that won't stop us from watching many of the big blockbusters, so why should it stop you for this fight fest, and you never know Wright might turn out to be a surprisingly efficient action director.
Wednesday, 5 January 2011
The Way Back
2010. Dir: Peter Weir. Starring: Jim Sturgess, Colin Farrell, Ed Harris, Saoirse Ronan and Mark Strong. ●●●●○
Peter Weir makes a very odd choice in the early stages of his latest cinematic outng. During the opening credit sequence The Way Back is dedicated to the three Gulag escapees who survived the ordeal depicted in the movie and made it to India. Admittedly when you have a story that is, however loosely, based on factual events the concept of spoilers shouldn't really exist however Weir is gambling on the film succeeding in spite of the release of tension that is a result of this announcement. It's a bold move that tells the viewer that this movie is not about the result but about the attempt, it is less important to focus on who survives but on why the protagonists are making this journey.
The plot is very simple, Jim Sturgess' Janusz has been falsely imprisoned by the Soviet Government under Stalin following his wife's testimony against him - it is inferred that she must have been tortured in order to name him however no evidence of this is seen - after a brief section in the Gulag it becomes clear that most prisoners will either not survive or will lose their sanity so he organises a break with American Mr. Smith (Ed Harris), career criminal Valka (Colin Farrell) and four others. During the journey they als pick up a lone teenage girl played by Saoirse Ronan who helps the group of men to open up to each other in a way they couldn't do as fellow prisoners.
Very early on we are introduced to the hopelessness of the situation when the Prison warden explains the fences are not in themselves the wals but also are the thousand of miles of inhospitable terrain between them and civilisation. The message is clear, break out and you will not survive. Yet our ragtag group of mechanics, priests and accountants do, led by Janusz who's only one generation away from farmers.
The story telling is episodic, we follow the group from one terrain to another, icy forests, rocky escarpments, scorching deserts, with each small section ending either with the death or leaving behind of a character or a lesson learnt. All aspects of survival technique are stripped fom the telling so much so that we don't even see the method of escaping. This methodology doesn't let the movie flow as well as it should do, but it does help build the portrait of the men and reinforces the importance of why over how.
Whilst we may start the movie with the knowledge that many characters will not see the final credits that does not dim the emotions, with the first death there are fantastical images that they see, with another there's a feeling of escape. Janusz even underlines the fact that at least they die free men.
Sturgess is a subdued leading man, Janusz is almost embarassed by his status borne purely out of luck, and perhaps lacks the presence other actors may have brought to the role. The entire supprting cast are superb, Ed Harris has the biggest arc to his story - presenting a distorted mirror image to Janusz - and carries it off extremely well and Farrell is electric whenever he's on screen you can't look away. Gustaf Skarsgaard also stuck out for me as an ex-priest, his wary eyes and resigned attitude perfectly encapsulate a man who knows he has gone so far and understand what the next chapter in his life will bring.
The cinematography is as beautiful and as dramatic as you would expect from a film funded by National Geographic, and I very much doubt there's a shot in the movie that couldn't be used on the cover of the magazine.
There is an odd coda at the end which I feel doesn't work, although I can understand why it's tere dramatically and to tie up some comments and imagery from earlier in the film.
Peter Weir is a unique director in that he isn't an auteur, preferring to let the story be forefront, but at the same time you can see the mark of quality and painstaking accuracy in his movies, there's also an acceptance that the movie may be slow and that that's OK. This isn't Weir at his peak but it is still a superb movie and one that I would heartily recommend.
Monday, 12 April 2010
Saoirse Ronan
Happy Birthday to
Saoirse Ronan
16 today
Saoirse (which I always think I'm spelling incorrectly) has had a fantastic start to her career. Working with high quality directors as diverse as Gillian Armstrong, Joe Wright and Peter Jackson and picking up her first Oscar nod for the complex and undertstaed performance as young Briony Tallis in Atonement. Later this year she'll be in the hotly anticipated The Way Back and she's currently filming the assassin thriller Hanna. Which means there are at least two good reasons to keep an eye on her career.
Sunday, 10 January 2010
20 for 2010 - Way Back
Back in more traditional territory my number 8 choice of 2010 is Peter Weir's The Way Back.
Based on the discredit memoiras of Polish solider Slavomir Rawicz this covers the escape and 6,500 km trek by a group of Soviet gulag imprisonees. Note the 7 in the picture above could be that same group of escapees. The book describes the details of his original incarceration, the escape during a harsh Siberian blizzard and then the trek south through th e Gobi desert, Tibet and the Himilayas, all the while avoiding the Russian Amry and large towns.
It seems unlikely that Mr. Rawicz actually did this journey, a recent BBC investigation has found evidence that he was released by the Russian Amry as part of a prisoner trade. That is not to say it won't be a fascinting plot line, even if the most outre elements (a pair of Yeti) are including.
Peter Weir is an excellent director who always makes beautiful and thought provoking pictures, so I'm expecting some great things from this. The cast isn't too shabby either with Jim Sturgess, Ed Harris, Saoirse Ronan, Mark Strong and Colin Farrell (mmm) all with major roles.
The gulags might be a bit of a trend for 2010 as we will also get a chance to see Emily Watson going mad in one for Marleen Gorris' Within the Whirlwind.
Saturday, 9 January 2010
Film News (09/01/2010)
It's been an incredibly busy week, with rumour and counter-rumour flowing about many of the studio tent-poles of this year and next, as well as some delicious indie features. I won't bore you with US release date changes - but May 2011 was all a flurry on Wednesday - but we've still got loads to get through.
Bond 23
At the beginning of the week the news was not good - the sale of MGM meant that some high profile projects, such as the Bond franchise, were on hold until completion. Of course MGM denied it and surprisingly a day later the story leaked that Sam Mendes (Away we Go, Road to Perdition) was in negotiations to direct the next episode.
There's been no official confirmation yet, but equally none of the major players have denied it. It's an odd choice for both parties, especially coming after the last off-the-wall director choice (Marc Forster) made the underwhelming Quantom of Solace. Saying that we know that Mendes can build tension in a scene, and he's probably got enough clout to force the film to delay if he's not liking the script.
Oh, and I'm using this post as an excuse to remind everyone what Daniel Craig looks like in his Casino Royale swimming trunks... Here you go:
Read on for child killers, nuclear bombs and Soderbergh doubles.
Hanna
Killer teenage girls have been dominating the press this week with the release of the Kick Ass trailer and the casting of Saoirse Ronan in Hanna, reuniting her with her Atonement director Joe Wright. It's a story about a girl bred as pat of a secret CIA assassin experiment, sounds half Bourne, half Leon. Maybe half good.
Ron Howard/Vince Vaughn collaboration
Vaughn, who is probably desperate for a hit, has pitched a comedy about infidelity to his mate Ron Howard, probably aware that Ron says yes to everything. The concept is simple, and instantly recognisable, revolving around a guy who finds his best mates girls has been cheating but can't tell his friend. It probably sounds more like a soap opera twist than a mvie, but if it's handled correctly there could be the basis for a likeable farce of co-incidences.
The Invention of Hugo Cabret
Even though variety reported that Chris Robots Wedge was directing this childrens fantasy back in May the rumours of Martin Scorsese holding the megaphone have not died down. I guess Marty has nothing to prove at this stage of his career so there is no longer a need to make biopics or gangster dramas - see his pulpy Shutter Island for proof.
Invention concerns a small boy living in the rafters of a Paris train station and fixing the clocks, as well as a small curious device left to him by his father. I don't know what that device does so I guess that's the invention of the title.
Knockout
Steven Soderbergh's martial arts movie has been gaining some fantastic actors to support MMA fighter and cinema newcomer Gina Carano, including Ewan MacGregor, Michael Douglas, Dennis Quaid and Michael Fassbender. It's that sort of delightful mix of ators that gets so interested in Soderbergh's work, even the likely popcorn efforts such as this female Bourne rip-off. (Carano plays a Black Ops soldier who's been cut off by shadowy governement figures - yawn!)
Talking about Steven Soderbergh it's emerged in the Sydney Herald that whilst he was over in Australia directing for the stage he may have shot a quickie using the same, unknown cast. Nothing official or plot-based yet, but I'm thnking that if this is the same sort of quality as The Girlfriend Experience then we could be in for another great year of Soderbergh output.
Last Train to Hiroshima
We were all saddened to hear of the death of Tsutomo Yamaguchi, the last survivor of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombs, this monday. It's easy to forget just how awful and indiscriminate a nuclear device is and only by talking to the survivors can we understand why we must never let them be used again.
Curiously, following his death, it emerged that James Cameron had visited him to talk about his experiences in December. It look likely that Cameron was researching in order to adapt The Last Train to Hiroshima, the heavyweight non-fiction account of the afteraffects of the blasts, based on interviews with survivors. Whether Cameron has ideas of making a documentary or a fiction piece based on the transcripts remains to be seen, but we should support whatever his efforts are as this is a shameful chapter in 20th century history that has yet to be fully explored in film.
Thor
Adriana Barazza has become the latest cast member to sign onto the Norse epic due to start filming next week, as a yet to be disclosed human character. It's good to hear there will be some human characters among all the gods, it will make the drama of the story a little more interesting. Oh, and going full circle Thor is one of the films shifting it's release date in response to the Spider-man delay rumours. 
Tuesday, 2 September 2008
Death Defying Acts
2007. Dir: Gilian Armstrong. Starring: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Guy Pearce, Timothy Spall, Saoirse Ronan and Jack Bailey. ●●○○○
On Saturday I was down in London and finally got a chance to see Death Defying Acts. I'm not sure I should have bothered.
It's a fictionalised account of the circumstances around Harry Houdini's (Pearce) debunking of paranormal claims by challenging pshychics, including Zeta-Jones's Mary McGarvie, to communicate to his deceased mother and repeat her last words.
I'm not sure about the accuracy of the story. There are some elements which could be close to the truth; Houdini's obsessions with his mother and with death generally. Whereas others must be purely fanciful such as the obligatory romance between the two leads.
This mixing of fact and fiction is symptomatic of where the film fails. Armstrong couldn't seem to decide whether this was a bona fide biopic of Houdini or an expose of the lengths that fake mediums will go to, and ultimately the film manages to fall between the 2 stools.
If I were to choose which way I would have liked to have seen to film go I think I would have preferred a story about McGarvie and her daughter, played by the superb Saoirse Ronan. Their story arcs include the comedic preparation for their Music Hall show, their desperate search for clues to Mrs. Houdini's last words as a way out of poverty (although actually their home didn't appear to quite as poverty stricken as the script suggeted) and the hinted at possibility that Ronan did actually have a gift.
If we had dropped Houdini, and his mess of pyschological tics Pearce was overplaying, then perhaps we might have had a chance to delve further into the is she or isn't she able to tell the future question that was shoehorned in the films closing scenes.
The several dream sequences with floaty angels and acute camera angles were also needlessly distracting.
Perhaps with more focus on the interesting elements of the story and a greater attention to detail by the technical team would have made the 2 hours more enjoyable.
