The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012)

Posted on October 9, 2013 by badblokebob

2013 #19
John Madden | 118 mins | TV | 2.35:1 | UK, USA & UAE / English | 12 / PG-13

“Old fogies go to India” is the setup of this frothy comedy-drama that clearly courts the so-called ‘grey pound’ — i.e. older viewers still prepared to pay to go to the cinema. But when said fogies are played by Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy, Ronald Pickup, Celia Imrie and Penelope Wilton, it will surprise no one to learn there’s something here for us all.

Mixing gentle humour with very modern themes and the odd tragedy, it’s an affecting brew. And such a box office success that there’s plans for a sequel! Never was a more unlikely franchise born.

Once again, we have a film where no one can agree on a year. Once again, IMDb go older (2011) while Wikipedia and Rotten Tomatoes go newer (2012). Once again, Google decides: “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 2011” gives 1.12m results vs. “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 2012” at 1.38m.

In the interests of completing my ever-growing backlog, I decided to post ‘drabble reviews’ of some films — such as this one. For those unfamiliar with the concept, a drabble is a complete piece of writing exactly 100 words long.

The Debt (2011)

Posted on October 8, 2013 by badblokebob

In the interests of completing my ever-growing backlog, I decided to post ‘drabble reviews’ of some films. For those unfamiliar with the concept, a drabble is a complete piece of writing exactly 100 words long.

2013 #37
John Madden | 109 mins | TV | 2.35:1 | USA, UK & Hungary / English, German & Russian | 15 / R

Screenwriting partnership Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn vacate their usual milieu (see Stardust, Kick-Ass, etc.) for this Israeli spy thriller remake.

In a dual-pronged narrative, a team of Mossad agents are hailed as heroes following a high-value mission, only to face serious repercussions decades later. A cast led by Oscar winner Helen Mirren and nominees Jessica Chastain and Tom Wilkinson help affirm this as serious-minded Cold War drama, miles away from the Bondian world Goldman & Vaughn will next enter for Mark Millar adaptation The Secret Service.

Perhaps a little stodgy in places, it’s nonetheless an engrossingly plausible espionage drama.

The Debt is the latest in an ever-growing number of films where the internet can’t agree on its ‘year’: IMDb go with 2010, but sites like Wikipedia and Rotten Tomatoes go with 2011. On the old methodology of Google searches, “The Debt 2010 film” produces 107 million results, while “The Debt 2011 film” gives 146 million.

Les Misérables (2012)

Posted on September 30, 2013 by badblokebob

27 years after its West End debut, the long-running smash-hit musical finally makes the leap to the big screen. Such a beloved work paired with a recently Oscar-winning director and an all-star cast was pretty much a dead cert for big-name awards nominations, and so it was to be; but critical reaction was more mixed: I’ve seen people who love the film unreservedly, and others who despise it with a passion.

Let’s begin with the obvious: Les Mis* is a two-hour-forty-minute musical — some people are never going to be on board with that. “Why are they siiingiiiiing?!”, etc. Such complaints must be ignored. After that, more valid complaints do arise: the quality of said singing; the necessity of such length; whether said Oscar winning director is overrated and should he have won the Oscar in the first place; and so forth.

Les Mis is an epic tale: it spans decades, albeit in three distinct chunks. It begins when Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), freed from years of hard labour as punishment for stealing a loaf of bread, breaks his parole and disappears. Years later, we find him a wealthy man, manager of his own company and the mayor or something to boot. But his former prison guard, Javert (Russell Crowe), finds him too — oh no! Indebted to a young woman he wronged (Anne Hathaway), Valjean takes her child for a better life in Paris, where, more years later, they end up embroiled in one of the capital’s failed revolutions.

Despite its running time, Les Mis is quite brisk for much of that plot (which, sorry if you’ve never seen it, I have described a fair old chunk of). There’s no interval in the film, but on stage it doesn’t come until well into the Paris section of the tale. Such a break must help the pacing, because while I remember enjoying it all on stage (where, I might add, it’s even longer), on screen I felt the middle portion began to drag. So yes, an epic running time for an epic, but it actually moves quickly through the parts that make it an epic before slowing for a bit of a forced romance and that kind of palaver.

I noted that it’s longer on stage, which is because here some songs have been trimmed. That’s partly for time, partly for re-staging (is it “hot as hell” in a spray-drenched dock pulling in wrecked galleons? No, apparently not), and partly to squeeze in a new song so it could get an Oscar nod. That’s Suddenly, which did get its awards nom but of course lost to Skyfall. It doesn’t fit too badly into the film, as it turns out, but in and of itself is a bit insipid. How much other trims bother you will depend on whether you’re a fan or not, of course. Some of the very best numbers are left to play in full, while tonally-awkward reprises (a comedy song after the climactic massacre) are cut back to literally a couple of lines.

Much talk around Les Mis focused on the performances, with three in particular attracting discussion. As honourable wronged-man Valjean, Jackman is the star of the show, and brings his musical theatre background to bear on a clearly-sung but emotive performance. He was unlucky to be in the same awards year as Daniel Day-Lewis’ all-conquering turn in Lincoln, because otherwise those gongs might well have been his. Opposite him in the film’s central rivalry is driven letter-of-the-law lawman Javert, divisively sung by Crowe. I think the best criticism I read was that his vocal style seems at odds with the rest of the cast — whereas they’re musical theatre, he’s got a gruffer, perhaps rockier, tone. I didn’t think he was all that bad, a few moments aside, which I suppose is the advantage of hearing so much negativity in advance.

And then there’s Anne Hathaway, as much of a sure thing during awards season as Day-Lewis. To be honest, I think Jackman comes out of the film better. I can never quite escape Hathaway’s earnestness; a sense of, “look, I’m singing! And isn’t this role important and meaningful!” Her delivery of I Dreamed a Dream, so over-used in the film’s trailers, is pretty flawless, realised (if I remember rightly, which I might not) in a single shot, a soul-crushing close-up on her face. Otherwise, while she’s good really, I felt she’d stolen some of the attention that should be on Jackman.

The rest of the cast is an assortment from the can-sing (Eddie Redmayne, Amanda Seyfried) to the comedic-so-it-doesn’t-matter (Sacha Baron Cohen, Helena Bonham Carter). The best voice of the lot belongs to Samantha Barks as Eponine. No surprise, really, as she was poached from the West End… where she’d found herself via one of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s BBC talent shows, so I imagine he feels thoroughly vindicated now (as if he didn’t before).

Famously, they’re all singing live. As a viewer, this is more appreciable as a technical accomplishment than something that makes any difference to what we see on screen. It brings some extra emotion (read: odd breathing points and half-achieved notes) at times, and a knowledge of authenticity always has a way of adding authenticity, but otherwise…

There was much surprise when Tom Hooper wasn’t rewarded with a Best Director nomination at the Oscars — much of it originating from within the Les Mis camp, I felt, whereas no one else was particularly fussed. Hooper has improved a bit as a director (finally, close-ups are framed properly!) but, to be honest, I don’t particularly rate him on the whole. For every good decision (going for a grimy real-world style rather than something typically musical-y) there’s an awkward one (the decision to represent Paris almost entirely with one slightly-stagey set). For every well-staged song (realising Lovely Ladies as a montage to show Fantine’s fall over time) there’s one that’s lacking (we don’t see any empty chairs at empty tables until the song’s half over). Hooper does an above-average job on the whole, but the lack of awards nods shouldn’t be so surprising.

After so long on the stage, a film adaptation can feel redundant or insufferably inferior. Despite the negative reaction from some quarters, I think it’s fair to say the team behind Les Mis have managed to render something that is neither of those, even if I had a nagging feeling it could’ve been even better still.

* Why Americans insist on using a ‘zee’ there I don’t know — do they think it says “miss”? How do they say the word “miss”? “Misssss”? Anyway: ^

Anonymous (2011)

Posted on September 13, 2013 by badblokebob

2013 #24
Roland Emmerich | 125 mins | TV | 2.35:1 | UK, USA & Germany / English | 12 / PG-13

The director of Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, and other films which don’t imply a specific timeframe in their title, helms a film about Shakespeare? Oh yeah, that sounds like a good idea…

And it is indeed dreadful.

In fact, it’s one of those films that’s hard to criticise because I just thought it was so consistently weak. There’s a lot of middling to couched-positive reviews of it floating about, but I practically despised it. For a start, there’s the faintly ludicrous premise that Shakespeare didn’t write the works of Shakespeare. It’s a conspiracy theory that’s been around for decades, at least, and some people do believe it… but not anyone who’s serious about Shakespeare. I think the film takes it seriously, though, and that sets me against it from the off. I know there are plenty of films that tell silly stories in a silly way, but no one’s trying to convince you Avengers Assemble or 2012 actually happened.

Then there’s the confusing storytelling, which occasionally jumps around in time; the attempts at a court intrigue storyline (because the “it’s not by Shakespeare!” thing doesn’t sustain a whole plot), the kind of thing which has been done better even in something as simplistic as The Tudors; the too-dark cinematography (with occasional eye-catching images); the attempts at spicing up a period thriller with action scenes and other histrionics, which is what you should expect from the director of all those films I listed above but quite blatantly doesn’t sit right. And it’s over two hours long too, so it keeps going… and going…

Unlike Emmerich’s other films, which are hardly the height of art but are largely entertaining on some base level, Anonymous is just bad. With a quality cast and the occasional scene-redeeming moment, it’s not an unmitigated disaster. Still, this film by any other name would smell just as shit.

(If you think that one-liner was bad, try watching the film.)

(But, seriously, don’t.)

Anonymous featured on my list of The Five Worst Films I Saw in 2013, which can be read in full here.

The Tempest (2010)

Posted on September 6, 2013 by badblokebob

Film and theatre director Julie Taymor (infamous now for Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark) here brings us a radical-seeming interpretation of Shakespeare’s final play. The main character’s changed gender! There’s CGI being tossed about everywhere! It’s got Russell Brand in it! If that sounds superficial, it is. Taymor’s film is still set in the Elizabethan period, in Elizabethan dress (broadly speaking), with a cast of mostly classical actors, enacted on an island that is admittedly a stunning setting but is nonetheless where the original play is set. If it’s a “modern retelling of William Shakespeare” (per the blurb), it perhaps missed what Baz Luhrmann brought to the table 14 years earlier.

Or perhaps not. Just because a temporal re-staging worked for one adaptation doesn’t mean they all have to do it, and Taymor’s adaptation is still packed with modernist flourishes. But that’s the thing: they’re flourishes. Luhrmann reconstructed Shakespeare in a way that worked for modern audiences, leaving the text untouched but adorning it with visual and stylistic touches that made it fresh and relatable for a new audience. Taymor may throw in some cool stuff, like a three-storey high Ariel setting a ship afire in a storm, or Russell Brand speaking how Russell Brand speaks, but there’s nothing in the surrounding work to appeal to the kind of audience who might think a ship on fire in a storm or Russell Brand being Russell Brand would fit nicely into the next Pirates of the Caribbean film that they’re really excited for.

I studied The Tempest at university and rather enjoyed it. It’s not too long, it has some striking ideas, and, as I remember it, it’s not too deep or complex, really. On screen, that doesn’t come across. It goes on in the middle, a mess of scenes of characters traipsing about the island for no apparent reason. (This reminded me of A Field in England a little, actually: a group of people who don’t know what’s going on wandering through a weird supernatural landscape having tangential conversations.) When describing the plot the Shakespearean dialogue is clear enough to follow, but the story seems to be set in motion at the start and then put aside to be resolved at the end, with meandering asides in between. Either that’s Shakespeare’s fault or Taymor bungled it in her execution. Or I missed something.

It may be easy to jump on criticisms of the film — as many have, judged by its low scores on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb — but there is quality here. The cast is filled with recognisable names and faces, which naturally pays off in many instances. In the lead, Helen Mirren turns Prospero into Prospera, a transition so faultless you’d well believe it’s how it was written. She’s obviously a strong actress and delivers a powerful nuanced performance, justifying a gender change that would otherwise be labelled needless. Supporting roles are bolstered by names like Ben Whishaw (Olivier-nominated at just 24 for his Hamlet, lest we forget), Tom Conti, David Straitharn, Chris Cooper, Alan Cumming, Alfred Molina, and the latest constant-up-and-comer, Felicity Jones. If anything some of them are underused. By “some” I really mean Straitharn, who doesn’t have a great deal to tackle as King Alonso. Conti, Cooper and Cumming fare best, with Whishaw hampered by all the effects he’s buried in.

Another key role sees Djimon Hounsou as the slave Caliban, immediately suggesting a colonialist reading that isn’t exactly a huge reach anyway. And Russell Brand makes Shakespeare sound like Russell Brand talking, which at some points I’m not convinced he isn’t (I’ve no idea if Taymor allowed him to stray from the text or not). Love interest is provided by Reeve Carney. I’ve never heard of him, but he’s young and quite pretty and has a music video on the Blu-ray, so I guess he’s from that kind of arena. He speaks with an English accent, but so does everyone else (bar Caliban and the boatswain), so he may still be sourced from the other side of the pond’s teenybopper scene.

Talking of music, Elliot Goldenthal’s score also aligns itself with the film’s modern CGI-bolstered take on the material: it squeals with electric guitars and thunders with drums, evoking so many other computer-accented history-set films of recent years. It took me a while to recall what in particular it most reminded me of, but eventually realised it was 300. I checked that they didn’t share a composer, though that did lead me to notice that Goldenthal is listed on IMDb as providing uncredited stock music for 300. So there you go.

The most striking thing about the film is the visuals. Stuart Dryburgh’s cinematography sometimes offers up breathtaking imagery, aided by beautiful shooting locations in Hawaii, largely sparse and barren places with dramatic coastal settings. And then there’s the lashings of CGI, which render Ariel as a truly spiritual spirit, half invisible and jetting off into the sky on a regular basis. I found his realisation a mixed bag: it’s nice to take advantage of the medium to render the spirit in a way that’s impossible on stage, but sometimes it goes a bit far and looks a bit cheap. They’ve also tried to make him androgynous, but done it a bit weirdly: he’s always naked, occasionally making it clear he has no penis, sometimes has small breasts, but always has a moderately deep, clearly manly voice. Show it to a class of teenagers studying the play and you may illicit some confused feelings… That aside, the make-up effects are brilliant. Caliban’s patchwork skin is the best piece of work, but Ariel’s rendering as a giant crow is a fearsome sight as well. For all I know the latter may count as costume design, which is what earnt the film an Oscar nomination. But, hey, the clothes are nice too.

Taymor’s rendering of The Tempest is the kind of film you might dub a fascinating failure. It’s a bizarre mash-up of classical interpretation and modern filmmaking, and I don’t think it’s unfair to call the latter superficial flourishes rather than fundamental revelations. The story wanders, the humour isn’t funny, the visuals swing between a bit cheap and memorably staggering, there are strong performances but others that, while not out of their depth, do sit awkwardly. Some people will despise it, but I don’t know if anyone will love it. I’d have liked to, and early on I thought I might, but then it lost its way.

It would be nice to say the magic and fantasy could convert new fans to Shakespeare, much as Leo DiCaprio and swishy editing did for teens nearly two decades ago, but there’s nothing beyond that trailer-friendly neat-looking stuff to convince them it was worth their time. Meanwhile, Shakespeare traditionalists may find it all a bit much. If that leaves it stranded on an ill-located isle of terrible beauty, then at least it’s an apt fate.

The UK TV premiere of The Tempest is on BBC Two and BBC Two HD tonight at 11:05pm. Note it’s not available on Blu-ray in the UK, so if you want to see it in HD, now’s your chance.

The Imposter (2012)

Posted on August 22, 2013 by badblokebob

Some films benefit from knowing as little as possible going in; some are at their best when you know nothing at all. But that’s pretty much impossible — unless you go purely on someone’s “you’ll like this, trust me” recommendation about a film you’ve never even heard of, you’ll be aware of something. Normally this comes from a review or blurb, and you just have to trust that the reviewer or copywriter was kind enough to keep it spoiler-free.

BAFTA-winning drama-documentary The Imposter is a definite case of the less you know the better, and yet it’s been quite widely praised and pushed so that if you’ve heard of it you probably know what it’s about. Documentaries need that more than fiction films, because they have to fight to ‘cross over’. It’s arguable that Catfish suffered from the same problem of having to reveal too much in order to attract attention. But Catfish had the advantage that its Big Twist was at the end, meaning it went largely unspoiled — The Imposter’s is right at the start. I suppose this is because it’s a fairly well-documented news event (at appropriate junctures, the film is littered with clips from American media coverage), but also because it’s such an implausible story you have to be honest about it upfront.

So here’s what the film lets you in on in the opening moments: in 1993, 13-year-old Nicholas Barclay went missing in Texas. In 1997, a boy claiming to be him surfaced… in Spain. He had Nicholas’ tattoos, but he had a French accent and the wrong colour eyes. And yet the first relative to see him, Nicholas’ older sister, gave a positive ID, and upon returning to America he was accepted into the family. Why did they take in such an obvious fraud?

The blurb on the DVD/Blu-ray cover will also tell you that much. And the thing is, the film is basically that story in more detail. There’s more at the end of it, of course — when the FBI get involved; when deeper questions get asked about what really happened to Nicholas — but for a good long while it’s putting flesh on the bones of a story you’ve already had sketched. While that has its plus points (just how a set of events so ridiculous you wouldn’t buy them in a fiction came to pass is naturally a fascinating tale), there’s the odd bit of thumb-twiddling while you wait for it to get to the inevitable.

For me, this was hindered rather than helped by Bart Layton’s flashy direction. This doesn’t look like your standard documentary (even the talking heads have a different visual feel), to the point where the line between archive footage/audio and dramatic recreation is blurred. It’s quite a straightforward retelling — Layton doesn’t indulge in the game of dramatising a lie only to reveal it was indeed a lie — but, nonetheless, it makes the documentary itself feel untrustworthy, just like its participants. Is that an intended effect? Arguably the film’s main theme is lies — the lies we tell ourselves, the truths we want to believe; confirmation bias, perhaps, though that term is never mentioned — but the documentary itself never lies to us… I don’t think. It just feels like it might be.

The story comes alive in the last half hour or so. Early on it is fascinating how fake-Nicholas sets the ball rolling, but then you just wait for everyone to cotton on. As things begin to unravel, however, the story moves in a slightly different direction — in my opinion, a more engrossing one, because it’s an area of the tale that isn’t covered in the blurb! Unfortunately, it has no definite ending. This is real life, that happens, and the objectivity of not forcing a conclusion or pushing an agenda is to the documentary’s favour; but it’s nonetheless a smidgen unsatisfying.

There’s no doubting The Imposter tells a bizarre and fascinating tale, but at times I felt it was one that might be better served through a solid Sunday supplement article than a feature-length documentary film. Layton’s over-eager style also grated occasionally, particularly when it drew attention to itself over the story it was trying to tell. Perhaps he better belongs in fiction filmmaking? Perhaps that’s where he wants to go in future: as the poster prominently tells us, this is “from the producer of Man on Wire”, a film whose director went on to helm Red Riding 1980 and IRA thriller Shadow Dancer, so there’s a pathway there.

Still, for its faults, The Imposter is a tale worth hearing — a tale so unbelievable, it can only be true.

The UK TV premiere of The Imposter is on Channel 4 tonight at 9pm.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

Posted on June 10, 2013 by badblokebob

September 1881: after admiring their leader for years through cheap magazine stories, 19-year-old Robert Ford manages to hook up with the James Gang. Little does he suspect that, just seven months later, he will be responsible for the murder of his idol, Jesse James. (That’s not a spoiler, it’s in the title.)

Ultimately released in 2007, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford found itself going head-to-head in the awards season with No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. The accepted narrative of that time is about the two-horse-race between the latter two, though Jesse James fits with them in some kind of thematic and stylistic triumvirate: they’re all products of what I’d call “American mainstream art house” cinema; all classifiable as Westerns, though none in a strictly traditional sense; all more concerned with their characters and their lives than the machinations of the plot. In the end, No Country garnered most of the awards, There Will Be Blood seems to have settled in as a critical darling, but, for my money, this purest Western of the three is by far the best.

I’m not going to waste much time making direct comparisons between the three films. I suspect there’s an article in that, if someone hasn’t written it already, but it’s not one I have much interest in penning: I don’t think I’ve made much secret of my distaste for the Coen and Anderson efforts in this little threesome, both being films I never really engaged with and certainly didn’t enjoy (in fairness, I should give Blood a second shot, but even the idea of sitting through No Country again makes me shudder). The Assassination of Jesse James, however, is a film I both engaged with and enjoyed greatly.

Let’s be clear, though: this is not a film for everyone. This is not an action movie set in the Wild West, which might be what’s expected from a Hollywood studio movie starring Brad Pitt. Apparently director Andrew Dominik intended to make a film with a Terence Malick vibe, so I read after viewing, which chimed with me because “Malick-esque” was one of my foremost thoughts during viewing. This is a slowly-paced two-hours-and-forty-minutes, with more shots of crops blowing gently in the breeze or riders approaching gradually over distant hills as there are flashes of violence. Despite what the studio wanted, this is not a fast-paced action Western, it’s a considered, sometimes meditative, exploration of character and theme.

The character explored is not particularly Jesse James, but Robert Ford. As the latter, Casey Affleck was largely put forward for Supporting Actor awards, which does him a disservice — the film is largely told from Ford’s perspective, and though there are asides where it follows James or other members of the gang, it begins with Ford’s arrival and ends with his departure from this world. Affleck is superb in a quiet but nuanced performance, which I would say ranges wildly without ever appearing to change. At times he is cocky and self-sure, at others cowardly and defensive, often creepy and occasionally likeable, sometimes both worldly and naïve, a perpetual wannabe who even when he achieves something is still poorly viewed. You might think the title is stating its position on him, but it really isn’t — it’s a position to be considered, a point of contrast to the man’s motives and actions; a statement that is in fact a question.

Conversely, Pitt’s Jesse James is closer to a supporting role. We see him primarily through the eyes of others; he is distant, unknowable, his moods and actions unpredictable thanks to years of law-dodging that’s led to a paranoia about his own men — not all of it misplaced. Jesse’s mood swings are more obvious than Ford’s, but Pitt makes them no less unlikely. At times charming and a clear leader, at others he is a genuinely tense, frightening presence, without ever needing to resort to the grandstanding horror-movie grotesques offered by (Oscar winners) Daniel Day-Lewis and Javier Bardem in There Will Be Blood and No Country respectively.

Though there are other memorable and striking performances — particularly from Sam Rockwell, Paul Schneider, and a pre-fame Jeremy Renner; plus a precise, perfectly-pitched, occasional voiceover narration from Hugh Ross (who doesn’t have many credits to his name but surely deserves some more now) — the third lead is Roger Deakins and his stunning cinematography. There are many clichés to use for good-looking films, and the vast majority of the time they are trotted out as what they are and not really meant. Jesse James, however, is one most could be applied to with total accuracy. For example, there are very few — if any — films where you could genuinely take any frame and hang it as a perfect photograph; but if there is one where you could, this is it.

Deakins has reportedly said that “the arrival of the train in darkness is one of the high watermarks of his career”, and he’s right to think that. It’s a glorious sequence, made up of several shots where every one is perfectly composed and lit to create a remarkable ambience and beauty, as well as telling the story, which in this instance involves as much creation of suspense as eliciting pure artistic appreciation. Deakins did take home a few awards for his work here, but not the Oscar. I can’t remember which film did win and, frankly, I don’t care, because whichever it was this outclasses it by miles.

This must also be thanks in part to director Andrew Dominik. Every last shot feels precisely chosen and paced. Of course, every shot in every film has been chosen and placed where it is, but the amount of thought that’s gone into that might vary. Jesse James somehow carries extra weight in this department, with no frame in its not-inconsiderable running time wasted on an unnecessary angle or take that’s allowed to run even a second too long. Somewhat famously, there was a lot of wrangling over the film’s final cut (delaying its release by a year or more), with the aforementioned debate between something faster and something even slower: a four-hour version screened at the Venice Film Festival, to a strong reception. Sadly, the intervening years haven’t seen that cut, or any of its parts, resurface (to my knowledge). That’s an hour and twenty minutes of material and I’d love to know what’s in them.

One thing in there, I’d wager, would be the performances of Mary-Louise Parker and Zooey Deschanel. Both their characters have a tiny presence in the finished product, and while that may be fine for the overall story (some would criticise how much female characters are sidelined, but that’s another debate), casting two moderately major actresses creates a disjunct with the size of their roles. I was going to say this is one of the film’s few flaws, but it’s debatable if it even qualifies as that: if they’d cast less recognisable faces, their lack of presence would pass by unnoticed.

The other thread I mentioned, seven paragraphs ago, was “theme”. The film has a lot of concurrent aspects one might consider — “loyalty” being a major one, for instance — but I think the biggest is “celebrity”. Not in the modern sense, though I’m sure there are analogies for those that wish. To pick up on what I was saying before: Ford is the main character, and the main thing he wants, even if he doesn’t realise it, is fame. He joins the James Gang because he’s enamoured with the adventurous tales he’s read; because he’s obsessed with the notoriety of Jesse. Later, once the titular deed is done, he becomes an actor (not without talent, as the narration informs us) and re-performs the act that made him famous hundreds of times. It’s his legacy, however, to not be as well-remembered as his victim; to not be as well-liked, even; not even close. There’s something there about the pursuit of fame for its own sake, if nothing else.

It’s difficult to call any film “perfect”. Certainly, there would be plenty of viewers who would consider The Assassination of Jesse James to be an overlong bore. Each to their own, and I do have sympathy with such perspectives because there are acclaimed films that I’ve certainly found to be both overlong and boring. Not this one, though. From the constant beauty of Deakins’ cinematography, to the accomplished performances, to the insightful and considered story (not to mention that it’s been cited as the most historically accurate version of events yet filmed), there are endless delights here. As time wears on and awards victors fade, it deserves to elbow its way back into the debate for the best film of the ’00s.

The UK TV premiere of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is on ITV4 tonight at 10pm. It’s screening again tomorrow at 11pm.

It placed 3rd on my list of The Ten Best Films I Saw For the First Time in 2013, which can be read in full here.

The Lost Weekend (1945)

Posted on May 27, 2013 by badblokebob

Directed by the inestimable Billy Wilder, winner of the Grand Prix (forerunner to the Palme d’Or) at the first Cannes, winner of the Best Picture Oscar in 1946, and also Best Actor, Director, and Screenplay, it’s a wonder that The Lost Weekend isn’t better known. I don’t think I’d even heard of it until Masters of Cinema announced their Blu-ray release back in January 2012, and comments I’ve seen around the internet express a similar experience of prior unawareness. Thank goodness for MoC, then, because this isn’t a film that deserves to be forgotten.

Adapted from the novel by Charles R. Jackson, the entire film takes place across one particularly eventful weekend (well, that plus flashbacks), in which should-be-recovering alcoholic Don Birnam (Ray Milland) tries desperately to fall back off the wagon.

The plot may smack of a worthy social drama (perhaps why it’s been forgotten), but most every sequence is loaded with more tension than a thriller. This is Wilder’s skill as both co-writer and director: he gets us on Birnam’s side early on, so that we follow him through the almost-self-induced hell that follows; and he keeps us on the edge of our seat, as desperate for it to work out as Birnam himself is. But, right from the very first scene, hardly a one of his plans does work out; all of them thwarted at the last possible moment, when victory seems assured. The film isn’t preachy, but if it does teach us a lesson then this is how it does it.

Wilder’s direction is excellent throughout, with innumerable striking compositions, perfectly paced scenes, and the aforementioned tension ratcheted up to maximum. There are other very good directors who would’ve made a hash of a film like this — made one that screams “meaningful movie about An Issue” — but the way Wilder handles affairs means it’s more than that. It explores its issue, it exposes us to the facets of it so that we might learn something, but it does so under the auspices of a drama about a man we come to care about. It’s not an “alcohol is bad” sermon, it’s a “can this man survive it?” thriller.

Equally, the flashback structure could scupper the film, but instead it raises it, with two of the best sequences coming here. There’s the exceptional La Traviata scene — it’s very obviously a bit of Good Direction, but while you could call it showy, it works — and the scene where Wick tries to cover for his brother to his new girl, which lends weight and backstory to the opening scene where he seems ready to (and, indeed, does) callously abandon him.

Milland is astounding. The film rides on him and he really carries it. It’s easy to play a comic drunk, but Milland doesn’t sink to that. Indeed he doesn’t do one type of drunk at all, swaying back and forth across various levels of inebriation as required. I often find films of this era contain performances we assess as great, but if you put them in a film today no one would buy it; they’d find it stagey and fake. Milland’s transcends that — it fits the era, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find it would play just as potently today. I think it’s fair to say that Milland is not widely known today, but with every film of his I become more convinced that history has been unkind.

Also worthy of praise is Frank Faylen as Bim. In his featurette on the MoC release, Alex Cox says he’s the second best character in the film, and he’s probably right. Cox notes that at least one review at the time really laid in to Bim, painting him as an evil sadist. Today, I don’t think we have that perspective at all. Bim tells Birnam the truth, painting his illness like it really is. Whereas his other friends and relations all try to do their best for him, but wind up enabling his addiction to continue, Bim’s experience and detachedness means he can be blunt and truthful. Birnam may not realise the good it’s done him, but good it does ultimately do.

There’s also able support from Howard Da Silva as barman Nat and Doris Dowling as Gloria (is she a whore of some kind? Just an escort? A bar-crawler? Did I miss something?), whose slang is oddly infectious. No offence to Jane Wyman, but her lovelorn-but-strong girlfriend character only seems to really come alive in the closing minutes, when she considers abandoning Birnam to his fate.

The Oscar-nominated score by Miklós Rózsa at first seems highly unusual, a warbling horror movie score, but it quickly comes to fit very well, and not just the nightmarish daydream sequence near the film’s climax. The movie was also nominated for John F. Seitz’s cinematography and Doane Harrison’s editing. They lost to The Picture of Dorian Gray and National Velvet respectively, neither of which I’ve seen, but they must have something special to outclass the work on show here.

I think the same can be said of the whole film. Issue-focused movies from the past are often badly dated, even if we can still admire the filmmaking techniques involved. That’s not their fault — it’s the cultural climate of the time, or the shifts in understanding that have come since. I’ll admit I know next to nothing about alcoholism so can’t comment definitively on the film’s enduring accuracy, but from what I do know of other conditions of addiction and mental health, this feels as if it’s still thoroughly relevant.

Even if you don’t care about The Issue, there’s an engrossing, thrilling drama for everyone to enjoy. If The Lost Weekend is indeed forgotten, then it merits widespread rediscovery.

That concludes my reviews from 2012.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

Posted on March 5, 2013 by badblokebob

Shortly after I watched Tinker Tailor, it was announced that they (“they” in this instance being Working Title, I think) are planning a new film adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s perennially popular novel Rebecca. This news was greeted (at least on the websites where I read it) with cries in the comments along the lines of, “you can’t remake Hitchcock!” Such is the power of an adaptation to overshadow its original work, at least in some quarters — here in the UK, I’d say the novel is at least as well known as the film, and has already been re-filmed at least twice for TV.

I mention this because Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy elicited a broadly similar reaction, thanks to the beloved 1979 BBC miniseries starring Sir Alec Guinness as quiet but fiercely clever spy George Smiley. How dare anyone re-make that? Well, perhaps because it’s 30 years old (enough time to afford a new perspective, potentially) and was originally a novel — and those are ‘re-made’ all the time. Just ask Pride and Prejudice, or Oliver Twist, or dozens of others.

Personally, I watched the Guinness version just a month or two before I saw the new film, and it unavoidably colours my reaction to it. In that situation, one can only enjoy the new adaptation to an extent, while memories of the previous one crowd in. Distance is required for anything more objective. So changes between TV and film leered out at me, such as a radically different opening mission, and a radically re-arranged structure in places, and a few performances that weren’t up to the same level, and a marginally less effective denouement.

Yet, for all that, the film is excellent. It may not match the TV series in places, in my subjective opinion, but in its own right it shines. Gary Oldman does the impossible and offers a Smiley that is neither an imitation of Guinness’ nor a deliberate counterpoint, but stands apart as an equally proficient rendering of the character. The rest of the cast are equally up to task, with the exception of Kathy Burke, who stands out like a sore thumb in my opinion.

The TV series took about seven hours to tell the same story that this achieves in just over two. Interestingly, without cutting anything major, the film version still feels leisurely paced. It’s also equally as complicated — it’s an intricate plot, and both adaptations assume the viewer will keep up with it. This seems to have caused some viewers problems, particularly in America (anecdotally, at least). It does demand one’s attention, but it is possible to follow. Equally, I had a leg-up from watching and understanding the TV version.

All that said, the four-way mystery about who the villain is never seems much of a mystery. On the one hand, I know the answer; but on the other, I guessed it on TV too. I won’t give anything more away, though the shortened running time means one of the four suspects gets even less screen time than their already-minimal role in the series, and consequently downgraded casting in both instances. It’s an unfortunate side effect of a big-name cast that it helps your audience second-guess plot developments, but it’s equally unavoidable.

Another noteworthy advantage of the film is that it’s gorgeously shot. The TV series actually has its own appeal in this area, with a realism that is quite pleasing. The film occasionally goes grander (look at the depiction of meeting rooms in The Circus for a major example — while the TV series goes for any old room in Whitehall, the film offers stonking soundproof ‘pods’), but it works in its own way.

I must confess, much like my recent drabble reviews, this TV-version-centric review of Tinker Tailor was not what I had in mind, because the film has many praises to sing in its own right. But, in fairness to the blog’s stated mission of seeing a film for the first time and then reviewing it, the Guinness iteration did factor large in my reaction to the film. Now distanced from the series, I look forward to watching Tinker Tailor again with a fairer eye. Yet for all my talk of negative comparisons, I was still mightily impressed — enough to rank it in my top five films I saw in 2012, and enough to give it full marks.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy placed 5th on my list of The Ten Best Films I Saw For the First Time in 2012, which can be read in full here.

Love and Other Impossible Pursuits (2009)

Posted on February 27, 2013 by badblokebob

aka The Other Woman

It’s funny what movies sometimes pique your interest. I saw a trailer for relationship drama Love and Other Impossible Pursuits (or, as it was retitled in America, The Other Woman) on some completely unrelated US Blu-ray earlier this year (I forget which film it was, but the only connection was the disc’s distribution company) and wondered why I’d never heard of it before — after all, it looked like a Worthy Drama, starring Oscar Winner Natalie Portman and Lisa Kudrow From Friends. Turns out it was shot in 2009 but not released until 2011, when it was slated by critics (a measly 39% on Rotten Tomatoes), flopped at the US box office (it opened at an unimaginably painful 67th place (who knew there were that many films out at once?), grossing just $25,423 total), and went straight to DVD in the UK. Ouch.

So, me being me, the double-whammy combination of “that looks like it might be quite good” and “wow, that’s meant to be terrible” put it straight at the top of my rental queue.

Emilia (Portman) is the titular Other Woman, but rather than the film telling the well-trod story of an affair, that part’s long over before the film begins — she’s living with Manhattan lawyer Jack (Scott Cohen, the magnificent Wolf in underrated miniseries The 10th Kingdom), trying to build a relationship with his son William (Charlie Tahan), who’s more attached to his mother (Kudrow). Colouring everything is the fact that, some time shortly before the film begins, Emilia and Jack had a baby who died.

As I was brought to the film by its trailer, it pays to say it’s actually very different. The advert hides the baby’s death but hints at it, as if it’s a Big Reveal they clumsily didn’t want to give away. But no, it’s brought up within the first five or so minutes and actually drives a lot of the film. The emphasised “other woman” facet is present, though in a slightly different way to normal: this is how such relationships continue as a long-term status quo, rather than the immediate impact of an affair.

Or a version of that, anyway, because the presentation is a bit melodramatic. Melodrama can be fine; good, even — but it’s a style, arguably a genre; a heightened one, and that runs counter to realism. This is a film that shoots for realism and slides into melodrama, and that’s not good. There are powerful ideas for scenes, but most are badly handled. Portman and Kudrow are quality actresses who deliver some good bits, but also some that go OTT. Especially from the latter, who’s not given enough screen time to move far beyond a caricature of the vengeful ex-wife.

The single worst bit comes 13 minutes in: an extended flashback, the film’s only one (which, structurally, makes it stick out like a sore thumb), in which we see the affair I said they were doing so well not covering. Emilia and Jack fall in love. Why? Because the plot tells them to. It’s also the nadir of another irritant, the film’s sappy plinky-plonky music.

I can imagine that flashback working within the shape of a novel, where structure works differently. Indeed, I got the impression the book is probably very novelistic; maybe a character study, even. Those are two things that don’t always transfer well to film. I don’t think it’s about Being The Other Woman, despite the US title; nor do I think it’s about Being The Stepmother; nor is it about Losing A Baby. Those things are all in there, certainly, but rather than any of them be The Story, they’re elements in the exploration of the character of Emilia. I’m not sure that works for a movie; not for this one at any rate.

Not a complete disaster, but nowhere near a success. This score is perhaps a tad harsh, but any more would’ve been generous.

* Two quick notes about the UK Blu-ray. Firstly, according to IMDb, the film ran 119 minutes at the Toronto International Film Festival, but was cut to 102 by the US release. The UK BD is the shorter cut at PAL speed. Secondly, the original aspect ratio was apparently 1.85:1, but the BD has been cropped (or widened) to 2.35:1. Not sure I’ve ever seen that before, but there you have it. ^

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