Film review by Jason Day of the movie The Iron Lady, starring Meryl Street as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Co-starring Jim Broadbent and Olivia Colman.
Drama
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
DRAMA
Producers: Angelo Barbagalo, Charles Gillibert, Marin Karmitz, Nathanael Karmitz, Abbas Kiarostami. Writer: Abbas Kiarostami. Camera: Luca Bigazzi. Sets: Giancarlo Basili, Ludovica Ferrario.
Juliette Binoche, William Shimell, Jean-Claude Carriere, Agathe Nathanson, Gianna Giachetti, Adrian Moore, Angela Barbagalo.
SYNOPSIS
Author James (Shimmel) visits Tuscany to promote his latest book. Amongst his rapturous audience is single mum Elle (Binoche), who also acts as his guide around the beautiful countryside when he wants to pass the time. A chance comment from a café owner, who mistakes them for a bickering married couple, is continued as they play out an assumed life together until their false association begins to unravel.
REVIEW
A curiously satisfying Italian/Franco rural romp, curious because of the amusingly knotted-up storyline and satisfying because it looks lovely – obviously, as it stars the delectable, scrumptious French actress Binoche.
Delectable and scrumptious because (at the age of 46) she defies all known laws of human female biology with her ageless looks and incredibly firm bounteous breasts – a naturally cantilevered miracle of flesh that should be up there with the Pyramids of Giza as a wonder of the world. She’s certainly shown at her best by Bigazzi lovely photography.
Satisfying also because, with its own unique, nutty, messy intelligence this is a thought provoking film that looks around corners at the complexity and ridiculousness of human interactions, how other people’s perceptions define who we are and how they also help to construct our social world – if not the first, is this the finest phenomenological film?! Sociology theory cinema hardly weighs heavily on the annual output of movie-makers (the existential crime drama I Love Huckabees being the only other example this critic can pluck out of thin air) so as an off-beat idea this piece is to be cherished.
Kiarostami certainly has a clever central concept that also sets the scene for some searching and smart dialogue as Shimmel’s book details how copies of famous works of art legitimise and draw attention to the original piece – the parallels with the false love story are deliciously obvious. But as with other smart-arse movies, eventually the convoluted plot gingerly trips over itself and as the sole writer, even Kiarostami chickens out during the final uninspired reel, but it is certainly a fun and sensuous journey he takes us on to get there.
Shimmel’s pragmatic realism and Binoche’s sultry neuroticism run alongside each other with sexy and mysterious results – rather pointedly, they are also the only characters in the film credited with names; everyone else is a function or role, drawing further interest to them as the original, unique object . Although they jump at the comedy in the script, Moore as Binoche’s son steals their thunder in this regards with a nice line in wisecracking, perceptive teenager.
Film review by Jason Day of Fitzcarraldo, the Werner Herzog film starring Klaus Kinski.
Drama
Film review of the alien action adventure set on a council estate in Stockwell, London and starring Nick Frost and John Boyega.
Director: Joe Cornish
ACTION/ADVENTURE
Film review by Jason Day of the American version of Stieg Larrson’s thriller, directed by David Fincher and starring Daniel Craig.
Thriller/suspense/film noir
Director: Brad Bird. Paramount/Skydance/Bad Robot/FilmWorks/Stillking Films/TC Productions
ACTION/ADVENTURE/FANTASY
Producers: J. J. Abrahms, Brad Burke, Tom Cruise. Writers: Josh Applebaum, Andre Nemec. Camera: Robert Elswit. Music: Michael Giacchino. Sets: James D. Bissell.
Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Paula Patton, Michael Nyqvist, Vladimir Mashkov, Ivan Shvedoff, Anil Kapoor, Lea Seydoux, Josh Holloway, Ving Rhames, Tom Wilkinson.
SYNOPSIS
After the Kremlin is blown up, Ethan Hunt’s (Cruise) IMF agency is implicated and officially disbanded. Forced to clear their name, Cruise and his team (Pegg, Patton and analyst Renner) turn rogue to catch the real culprits and restore the lustre to the name of the Impossible Missions Force.
REVIEW
Now limping home with the fourth instalment of the blockbuster franchise, surely co-producer Cruise could have the title changed to something more factually correct – as we have now established that these missions are in fact completely and utterly possible.
One thing he should definitely get changed is the title credits sequence – sometimes these can make or break a movie, either setting the tone for what is to come with artistry the following film can sometimes struggle to match or being completely forgettable so as not to detract from the feature or the movie’s budget. Here, they are the film, summarising the whole movie. For those who don’t close their eyes, the plot on its own is somewhat superfluous.
M:I4 treads a well-worn path to audience satisfaction; the satisfaction deriving from the remarkable stunt work, a good deal of which (it is said) is performed by the star. Forget the ridiculous and overly convoluted narrative structure (employing multi-layered flashbacks), the fun as with the other films comes not from why Cruise et al solve the problems they are faced with, but more with how they do this and what gadgets and trickery they employ. Here we have a dizzying array of invisibility screens, balloon cameras and levitation chain-mail suits to fix the audience’s eyes and ensure the nonsense jibber-jabber the characters utter flies conveniently over their heads.
They also make those aforementioned stunts seem just slightly more plausible, but none the less incredible to watch. The piece de resistance here is Cruise’s stomach-jumping traverse and run around the outside of the world’s tallest building, Dubai’s mighty megalith the ‘Burj Khalifa’. If you don’t suffer from vertigo before watching this scene, pre-book yourself some Cognitive-Behavioural therapy sessions for when you have.
Cruise is looking too long in the tooth to be shilly-shallying from skyscrapers, which might explain the preponderance of ‘young uns’ supporting such silly geriatric antics: Hurt Locker‘s Renner gets second billing as the shifty analyst with a few secrets up his sleeve, sexy Patton scores well as a thoroughly self-reliant tough girl, Pegg provides the comic support and well-haired Kapoor is also amusing as an oily Indian playboy of a certain age. Lost‘s Holloway pops up briefly as an IMF agent who meets his end in double-quick time.
The series is looking as tired as its star, but there is clearly some mileage still left here – the constant product placement of a certain Apple invention (IMF systems are seemingly built around them) shows there is a lot of money still to be milked from this cash cow.
Rhames, who starred in all of the previous MI films, appears here uncredited as the same character; Wilkinson likewise eschews creditation in a brief cameo as the IMF Secretary. Monaghan, Cruise’s wife in MI3, also rears her head again.
Film review, by Jason Day, of the silent epic set during the French Revolution starring Lillian Gish and Dorothy Gish. Directed by D.W. Griffith.
Director: D.W. Griffith. United Artists.
SILENT
Film review by Jason Day about an orphaned boy who, whistle hiding from the conductor of a Paris train station, happens to find Georges Melies, the ‘grandfather of cinema’, who now mends watches for a living. Starring Asa Butterfield and Ben Kingsley.
Action/adventure/fantasy
Director: Robert Zemeckis. Warner/Universal CGI/Castle Rock et al (U)
ANIMATION
Producer: Gary Goetzman, Steve Starkey, William Teitler, Robert Zemeckis. Writers: Robert Zemeckis, William Broyles Jr. Camera: Don Burgess, Robert Presley. Music: Alan Silvestri. Sets: Rick Carter, Doug Chiang.
Tom Hanks, Daryl Sabara, Nona Gaye, Eddie Deezen, Peter Scolari.
SYNOPSIS
A little boy, doubting that Santa Claus is real, is woken one Christmas night by a magical train that trundles down his street. Along with other children who also question Saint Nicholas’ existence, he boards the train and is whisked away on an amazing night-time journey to the North Pole where his doubts are washed away.
REVIEW
Director/co-producer/co-writer Zemeckis’ contribution to mainstream movie culture cannot be underestimated – he is the man behind blockbusters such as the Back to the Future series, Death Becomes Her, Forrest Gump and Contact. All of these films are vastly different of course, but they are bound by a creeping sense of schmaltz and whimsy, wrapped up in increasingly beguiling special effects.
Polar Express duly falls in line then, featuring some of the most astonishing ‘motion capture’ animation techniques (‘motion capture’ being that which captures a live actor’s movements and performance in animation); the ‘animated’ conductor (Hanks) looks like an an eerily lifelike, computer generated version of the star himself.
There are some ovation-inducing moments, not least the train’s rollercoaster, physics-defying journey across frozen lakes and up snow-capped montains and the waiters serving hot chocolate as if auditioning for Cirque de Soleil.
It’s a simple and saccharine product (based on the book of the same name by Chris van Allsberg) – imagine a festive Coca-Cola advert elephantised to full-length. But the homespun messages about never losing faith or belief in something, no matter where you come from, are never cloyingly or embarrasingly told. The result is a cosy, comfortable film to wallow in. Imagine, just for a second, you are eight years old again and this happens to you – I challenge you not to be at least charmed.
Film review of the fantasy about an enormous gorilla on a prehistoric island and his love for the female sacrificial offering (Naomi Watts).
To like this review, comment on it or to follow this blog, scroll to the bottom of the page. Use the search function on the left of the screen to search for other reviews and movie news.
Director: Peter Jackson. Universal/WingNut/Big Primate/MFPV (12)
ACTION/ADVENTURE/FANTASY
