Nativity! (2009)

Posted on April 8, 2012 by badblokebob

Yes, this is exactly the kind of review I should be posting in April. But hey, it’s Easter! That’s about Jesus too, right? (It’ll have to do, I’m not hanging on ’til next Christmas.)

Nativity! comes from writer-director Debbie Isitt, previously responsible for the entertaining part-improvised comedy Confetti, and this fits in a similar vein… albeit more family-friendly than a movie featuring Robert Webb and Olivia Colman as nudists. This one sees Confetti’s Martin Freeman as a primary school teacher charged with producing his school’s nativity, which always gets bad reviews in the local paper (do any local papers really review nativities?) while their rival private school always gets glowing endorsements. To make matters worse, the other school’s nativity director is an old friend/rival (Confetti’s Jason Watkins), and he must deal with an enthusiastic but unprofessional new classroom assistant (Confetti’s Marc Wootton), and there’s some stuff about his ex-girlfriend (Extra’s Ashley Jensen) who’s gone to LA, and it’s all quite straightforward when you watch it but I’m making a right pig’s ear of describing it. This is why I didn’t use to bother trying to include plot summaries.

It’s not wholly my fault — it’s kind of a daft plot, really. It’s played relatively straight and realist, but it goes off that beaten track at times. Which I suppose is fine — why not, after all? No one promised grim social realism — it’s a Christmas family film, with some moral messages and a sort of romance and sweet kids and a cute dog. And regular readers know how much I love a cute dog.

It’s also cheesy and silly, with an ending so packed with sentimentality it could make Spielberg look like a grumpy spoilsport. But in a feel-good Christmas-time film I think that’s mostly allowed. It’s not deep or meaningful, and it’s not cutting edge or shocking, but it has a charm and a sweetness that sit well at that time of year. The kind of film you flop on the sofa, shove your brain in to neutral, and tuck in to a box of chocolates while smiling along.

Try watching this at any other time of year (like, er, now) and you can knock a star off, but over the Christmas period it’s a fluffily entertaining diversion. Maybe I should’ve held this review back after all.

Faintheart (2008)

Posted on March 8, 2012 by badblokebob

2011 #97
Vito Rocco | 88 mins | TV | 2.35:1 | UK / English | 12

Apparently MySpace had some hand in the creation of this movie. Remember MySpace? It’s what there was before Facebook. It was always rubbish, it just took a lot of people a long time to realise that. Anyway, some reviews seem to dwell on its involvement in the production of this movie — whole articles exist asking if it’s just a gimmick — but, looking at it as a finished film, I don’t know why: if you didn’t know (and, to be frank, even if you do) you’d never tell the end product had anything to do with that antiquated social network.

Faintheart isn’t about social networking… at least, not in any modern sense. It’s about battle re-enacters; or rather, it’s a Brit-rom-com that uses battle re-enacters as its USP. “Brit-rom-com” should give you a fair idea of the territory we’re in, although this has a geekier edge than most, which plays to the sensibilities of someone like me. One character owns a comic book store, for instance. It doesn’t play an overt part in the plot, but battle re-enacting stands in for any kind of niche pursuit. And it does make for a better-than-average climax. Swords always do.

Most of the cast is drawn from the pool marked “British character actors” — you may or may not know the names, but you’ll probably know most of the faces. The lead is Eddie Marsan (Lestrade in Sherlock Holmes and A Game of Shadows; all sorts of other stuff, too much to even begin mentioning), his wife is Jessica Hynes (Spaced; all sorts), Ewen Bremner is his mate (Trainspotting; all sorts), Tim Healy (Auf Wiedersehen, Pet; all sorts), Anne Reid (dinnerladies; all sorts), Kevin Eldon (all sorts)… You may see a theme developing. And there are others, but they had even fewer things they were known for, or I didn’t recognise their names on the IMDb cast list.

Anyway.

Faintheart isn’t exceptional. Apparently it didn’t even get a theatrical release (though I remember someone coming on some chat show to promote it). Even if it was crowd-created through MySpace, that hasn’t made it something especially different, nor too stereotypical that it’s ruined. It’s not likely to be remembered in the never-ending pantheon of Brit-rom-coms, but for one with a slightly different edge I think it deserves better than it’s got.

(I originally gave it four stars. Looking back, that felt generous. For once, I tweaked it. Guess I ought to go fiddle with my stats now…)

The Brothers Bloom (2008)

Posted on December 22, 2011 by badblokebob

“Crikey, time flies!” I thought when I compiled this listing and saw that The Brothers Bloom was released in 2008. Somehow it felt like it was only last year, not three (or, if at the start of 2008, closer to four) years ago.

Then I happened to spot the UK release date on IMDb: June 2010. That explains that then.

From the director of the acquired taste that was Brick, The Brothers Bloom looks like it might be a little more mainstream: it’s got a lead cast who are all Oscar nominees, and half of them winners too, and it has a con/heist plot — always popular — and a light tone — a very funny and enjoyable trailer, I thought. But while it’s not as specialised as Brick’s near-impenetrable dialogue and considered (over-considered?) tone, it’s certainly Quirky.

The capital Q may give a clue that I think it may be too forcibly quirky at times. Genuine quirkiness can be a lot of fun, though there’ll always be people who don’t get it, but if you force it then it comes across as weird; silliness for the sake of silliness; trying to be Cool. I don’t think Bloom goes quite that far, but I did feel those involved were trying too hard.

Despite that, it can be surprisingly dramatic in places, at least more so than the trailer suggested. It’s not quite as all-out-fun as it looked… but then the job of a trailer is to sell you a film, so if the end result doesn’t match it 100% is that a failing? How are you meant to summarise the entire tone of a film in a two-minute spoiler-free sales burst anyway? That dilemma is emphasised in this case because it’s the opening that feels least like the trailer. I mean, the pre-titles is kinda quirky-fun, but then it gets a little serious and slow, and later — perhaps half-an-hour or three-quarters of an hour in — you get to all the stuff the trailer was selling. And then the last act is back to something more unusually — or, if we’re to be unkind, unevenly — paced and toned. I can imagine the marketing meetings for this were a struggle…

Despite (or perhaps because of) all those shifts, it drags a bit at times, but it still has lots of amusing, quirky and fun moments to help make up for that.

I’d heard the last act was incredibly twisty; too twisty, according to some. Perhaps it was because I read that and was prepared, but I didn’t find it to be so. It has twists, sure, but this is a con movie — con movies have twists. That’s almost the point. They weren’t all the twists I was expecting either, which is probably a good thing.

Perhaps the problem for others was that the ending doesn’t quite spell everything out. I’m certain every question you might have is answered, more or less, but it doesn’t lead you by the hand back over the film pointing everything out, as many twist-ending-ed films do. Part of me appreciates this assumption of intelligence; part of me would like it all handily explained so I don’t sit here wondering it for myself. I don’t feel completely lump-headed not wanting to do that — there’s no Deeper Meaning or Philosophical Insight gained from sorting this out, I don’t believe; just an understanding of who was being conned and when, and who knew what and why.

I score most films right after watching them, even if I don’t post the review for many months. I thought I’d given The Brothers Bloom a three, but coming to write this I find it has a four. Make of that what you will.

That Touch of Mink (1962)

Posted on December 6, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #87
Delbert Mann | 99 mins | TV | 16:9 | USA / English | U

Starring Doris Day as a regular girl who wants to marry Cary Grant’s rich businessman for love, while he just wants to get her into bed, That Touch of Mink is a sex comedy… but being a film produced in ’60s America, no one comes close to using such language. But it’s unquestionably all about that.

However, despite being all about a lewder side of life, tonally and visually it’s very light, fluffy and funny. It’s also briskly paced and constantly amusing, including some real laugh-out-loud moments. In particular, a punchline delivered by two ladies from a centre for unwed mothers was one of my favourite comedy lines for a good while. (Built as it is on a series of events, it doesn’t bear repeating in print.) While Day and Grant carry the story, there’s great support from Gig Young as the hand-wringing financial executive of Grant’s company. The subplot about his therapist pays such dividends it’s even used for the film’s final gag.

The ending perhaps pulls a few too familiar mistaken identity tricks, but that’s just a small part of the whole. As a candy-coloured confection of a film with edgier undertones, That Touch of Mink is pretty entertaining.

Holiday (1938)

Posted on November 22, 2011 by badblokebob

aka Free to Live / Unconventional Linda

2011 #79
George Cukor | 91 mins | TV | 4:3 | USA / English | U

Holiday stars Cary Grant as an everyday chap who falls in love with a girl who, it turns out, is a wealthy heiress type… but who it also turns out may not share his views on the future. Her kooky sister, played by Katharine Hepburn, on the other hand…

You already know how Holiday ends, don’t you? You may not even have heard of the film, but having read those two sentences, you know. I knew. We all know. Unless there’s a twist, of course. Sometimes there is, especially in older films where they weren’t as slavishly concerned with hitting demographics and all that. So I won’t say if there’s a twist or not.

What I will say is, I loved Holiday. I’d never even heard of it before it turned up on BBC Two in a week of similar stuff, like His Girl Friday (which I’d seen, and reviewed), Bringing Up Baby (which I saw, and reviewed) and It Happened One Night (which is still sat on my V+ box). I’d heard of all of those, but not this, but I’m glad I watched it by association.

It doesn’t have quite the hilarity of His Girl Friday, but I thought it had more substance than Bringing Up Baby (as much as I enjoyed that too). I suppose you would say it “spoke to me”, what with Grant’s character’s desire to go off and do something he wanted to do instead of get locked in to the dull corporate world, and the family’s insistence that a sensible city job where he’d earn a fortune is more appropriate. I can’t say I’m in the same situation — I wouldn’t mind the chance of a highly-paid job, if you’ve got one going spare — but I could relate well enough.

Holiday is not the funniest of comedies — though I did think it was funny — instead hitting a level of dramatic/character interest that I didn’t predict. I think it’s more a personal favourite than an objective Great Film (but then, one might argue, what is?), so the best I can do is encourage you to seek it out if this kind of film from this kind of era is your kind of thing.

Bringing Up Baby (1938)

Posted on November 7, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #78
Howard Hawks | 102 mins | TV | 4:3 | USA / English | U

A box office flop on release (which directly led to Hawks being fired from his next film and co-star Katharine Hepburn being bought out of her contract & named “box office poison”), screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby has grown massively in stature since. And deservedly so, because — aside from a first act where Hepburn is no less than irritating, and an occasionally slow middle — it has some real comic high points and can be riotously funny.

Cary Grant plays a museum curator / palaeontologist / something like that who is due to get married to his controlling co-worker, but ends up embroiled with Hepburn’s carefree rich girl and her new pet leopard (the titular Baby). If it sounds a little mad, it’s not as mad as the film itself. As noted, it’s a little awkward to start with while one warms to Hepburn’s anarchic character, and it drags its heels a little through the middle, but by the time we reach the final act — when an array of characters and situations collide in a manic run-about too intricate to describe here — it all pays off marvellously.

Also worth noting is that it is, perhaps, the first work of fiction to use the word “gay” to mean “homosexual”. Apparently the term originated in the homosexual community in the ’20s (possibly earlier) but would not become widely known until the late ’60s. Its use here was ad-libbed by Grant, though whether that makes it more or less likely to have meant “homosexual” I don’t know. I suppose no one was ever in a position to ask.

The Princess and the Frog (2009)

Posted on October 25, 2011 by badblokebob

With box office and critical acclaim sliding, Disney abandoned traditional 2D animation for their significant films in the early ’00s, switching to the computer-animated 3D that was doing so well for Pixar and Dreamworks. I don’t know if it helped the box office any, but it didn’t help with critics — it wasn’t the medium that was at fault, it was the storytelling. Notoriously, as soon as Pixar’s John Lasseter was put in creative control of the whole of Disney he instituted a return to 2D animation. The Princess and the Frog was the much-heralded first film after this change.

The resultant film is very enjoyable — not because it’s in 2D animation, but because it’s just good. Set in ’20s New Orleans, it retells the well-known story of a prince turned into a frog who needs a kiss to return to human form in typical Disney style: expanded, funny, contemporary, with songs. And that largely works. OK, so no individual song is exceptionally memorable, but their jazzy style suits the film down to the ground. There are no bad or dull ones (not something that can be said of even some classic Disneys, in my opinion) and all are certainly entertaining while they last. Though it’s a little brief, the villain once again gets the pick of the bunch. I’m biased that way though; others may well disagree.

It’s also a bit long. A tighter opening and, especially, journey through the bayou in the middle would’ve improved it. While I enjoyed sequences like the crocodiles, guiding fireflies or frog-hunters when considered in isolation, there are just too many stacked up back to back for my taste. The voodoo material seems like it might be a bit on the scary side for kids, though maybe that’s just because too many children’s films are sanitised these days — I agree with the regular argument that it was better when films and TV aimed at kids included a bit of a scare or sadness, rather than more modern entertainment’s attempts to keep them wrapped in cotton wool for too long. The death of a character in the climax also sits in the same vein.

One thing that can’t be faulted, however, is the animation. It’s beautifully done: backgrounds are gorgeously painted, character animation is fast and fluid. There are some stunning individual shots, like when the fireflies become involved in creating glorious lighting and patterns in the bayou, for instance. There’s a nice use of different styles when appropriate too: a blocky art deco rendering of Tiana’s dream restaurant during Almost There; a splash of something hallucinogenically psychedelic during Dr Facilier’s number.

Many other Disney films have stand-out sequences; things to latch an appreciation on to. The best often have several of these stacked up, in some cases non-stop from start to finish. The Princess and the Frog is missing anything like that (though some may grab on to Almost There or, like me, Facilier’s song), but what it has instead is a very consistent tone, where the musical numbers fit effortlessly into the flow of the story rather than stopping the film for a showpiece. This is also true of the very best entries in the canon — Beauty and the Beast, for arguably the greatest example — and while I don’t claim Princess and the Frog reaches such giddy heights, I think its consistency makes it entertaining as a whole film, rather than as an up-and-down collection of varying-quality set pieces.

Not Disney’s best film, then, but one I believe has come in for an unfair amount of flack. I really liked it.

~~The Princess and the Frog is on Disney Cinemagic today at 5:40pm and tomorrow at 4pm.~~

Tangled (2010)

Posted on October 21, 2011 by badblokebob

Disney’s 50th animated feature is Rapunzel in all but name, for no particularly good reason. It seemed to be met with universal praise on its release last year, critics hailing it as a return to Disney’s previous quality after a run of lacklustre releases, in particular the underwhelming return to 2D in the year before’s The Princess and the Frog.

Well, to get that comparison immediately out of the way, Tangled isn’t as good as The Princess and the Frog in my estimation. I’m not sure why it seems to have been more widely praised — it’s solid and good fun, but I thought Frog had more going for it.

Which isn’t to say Tangled is bad. It’s funny, which is its biggest asset, and exciting at times — as usual, the highly moveable camera of CG animation adds fluidity, speed and excitement to the action sequences, making them one of the high points.

It’s not all good and shiny though. The setting — a comedic-ish fantasy-kingdom world — can come across a bit like lightweight Shrek, lacking the anachronistic postmodern real-world references that made that film zing. Worse, the songs are distinctly unmemorable — I’d forgotten some of them by the time it came to their own reprise. A gang of thugs singing about their dreams is the best thanks to its comedy, but I couldn’t hum or sing any of it for you now. I especially lament the lack of a decent villain’s song, a number I usually particularly enjoy. It has one, I suppose, but it’s one of the weakest examples I’ve ever heard.

Tangled isn’t bad by any measure, but I don’t feel it should be the praise-magnet it became. There are certainly better Disney musicals — it can’t hold a candle to those; and there are better funny fairytales too — but at least it holds up as a solid addition to that sub-genre.

The UK TV premiere of Tangled is on Disney Cinemagic this Sunday, 23rd October, at 5pm and 9pm.

Easy Virtue (2008)

Posted on July 11, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #19
Stephan Elliott | 93 mins | TV (HD) | PG / PG-13

There doesn’t seem to be much love in the world for Easy Virtue, a witty adaptation of Noel Coward’s play (previously filmed in the ’20s by Alfred Hitchcock). A quick peek at some of my regular go-tos for such opinion-canvassing reveals a lamentable 6.6 on IMDb and an even worse 52% rating at Rotten Tomatoes. I don’t understand.

The plot concerns a young aristocratic Brit bringing his new American girlfriend — shockingly, a divorcee racing driver — back to his family’s stately home. The family are old money — the proper kind, where all the money’s gone. Cultural clashes and all sorts of other hijinks follow. Hilarity, with pleasant inevitability, ensues.

Obviously Easy Virtue is, primarily, a comedy. Fortunately, it’s frequently hilariously funny. You’d expect nothing less from a work taken from Coward, I suppose, and it doesn’t disappoint… well, didn’t disappoint me — as we’ve seen, others are a different matter. But hush, we’ll try to ignore them for the moment. There’s a decidedly wicked streak to the humour at times (a subplot about the fate of the family Chihuahua; lots of double entendres), which is welcome. The overall tone is light, largely, but not light in the head.

Director Stephan Elliott adds something extra to the wit with his choice of a wonderfully inventive soundtrack. (No disservice to those directly in charge of the music, but I’m certain I read somewhere — possibly in the soundtrack CD’s liner notes — that the following was Elliott’s idea.) Standards from the era are present and correct, but Cole Porter-styled reinterpretations of modern songs like Car Wash and Sex Bomb raise a smile whenever they turn up unexpectedly. It’s fabulously cheeky.

My notes also add that it is “beautifully shot [and] magnificently directed”, but unfortunately I come up short for examples after so long.

It’s not all giggles, though: there’s some surprisingly deep drama and emotions tucked in here, like the truth about Jessica Biel’s character’s past, central to the climax of the film. Naturally it falls largely on the cast to make this work, and they certainly do. The performances are frequently exceptional, especially Colin Firth, who negotiates the humour and drama with ease — his recollections of World War One being one of the darker points, for instance. I’m not entirely sure why but I have a distinct dislike of Kristin Scott Thomas, but here she’s very good as the nasty, coldly cruel mother.

I also particularly want to highlight Phillip, the awkward brother of the neighbours, and as such a minor character, played by Christian Brassington. This is the kind of character who turns up in plenty of comedies; a role that usually stops at “bumbling fool who likes the lead female but has no chance in a sweet, humours kind of way” (succinct, I know). Here, however, the character is redeemed at the end, when he tells a nasty character how cruel she’s been and aids in the ‘rescue’ of said lead female when she’s embarrassingly stranded. It’s still not a big part, nor a showy one, but those little closing tweaks left him standing out for me.

Describing Easy Virtue in a single word is easy: “underrated”. A shame that’s the word to reach for, but equally I’m not sure what other could appropriately encapsulate it. Witty, cheeky and irreverent, with surprisingly dramatic undertones — perhaps “jolly good fun” would suffice. Apart from that being three words.

Easy Virtue placed 8th on my list of The Ten Best Films I Saw For the First Time in 2011, which can be read in full here.

Funny Face (1957)

Posted on June 3, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #48
Stanley Donen | 99 mins | TV (HD) | U

Like Sabrina, Funny Face has Audrey Hepburn falling in love with someone old enough to be her dad. Fortunately, there’s enough other entertaining stuff going on to keep us distracted from that fact.

But let’s start with the negatives anyway. The plot, about a bookworm intellectual girl reluctantly being drawn into the world of high-fashion, falling in love with a photographer in the process, is as predictable as they come. It doesn’t matter, aside from the aforementioned fact that Fred Astaire is 30 years Hepburn’s senior and, though it’s obvious the characters are destined to get together, it doesn’t feel like the actors should. In fact, I’m not even really sure the characters belong together — of course they’re going to go that way, but the film doesn’t put a great deal of effort into making us believe it.

But the rest of the film does make up for that, with a surfeit of excellent humour, choreography, cinematography, light satire of both the fashion world and the intellectual world… Indeed, dishing out said satire in both directions means the film never comes across as either snobbish or anti-intellectual. It could well have dismissed the shallow world of fashion in favour of the depths of intellectual thought, or dismissed the dullness of philosophy for the glamour of couture, but it takes fair jibes at both equally — it’s not mean-spirited or cynical or dismissive, just… quite true.

All films look better in HD (when well done, naturally), but some seem to benefit more than others. Funny Face is one of those. It looks stunning — vibrant colours (especially in the opening Think Pink sequence), gorgeous location shots of Paris, the smokey confines of the intellectuals’ cafe… It’s a beautiful film. What it lacks in widely-remembered songs it makes up in the stunning visual sequences that accompany them. The opener may again be the standout, even though it features neither of the leads, but Hepburn’s barmy interpretative dance in the Paris cafe is also memorable, as is the three-way Bonjour, Paris!, or Astaire’s solo in the courtyard of Hepburn’s hotel, or their little darkroom number…

The cast are all great; specifically the three leads. Hepburn shows a perhaps-surprising affinity for dance (I wouldn’t say she’s known for it) and singing (she was dubbed in the later My Fair Lady); a rare film role for Kay Thompson as the fashion magazine editor, like Meryl Streep’s take but 50 years early (even the office looks familiar; which means they both look just like Anna Wintour’s — the more things change, etc); and Astaire is, naturally, brilliant.

Funny Face seems to have plenty of critics — mainly on the notion that Hepburn could be said to have a funny face. Pretty shallow reason to dismiss a whole film, if you ask me. While there are couple of bits that don’t wash with my appreciation — the age gap; I could take or leave the two scenes at the church — there’s far more to love about the film.

100Films.co.uk

100% movies. Except when it's about TV.

Category Archives: Romance