|
And When Did You Last See Your Father
Directed by Anand Tucker
Screenplay David Nicholls
Cast: Colin Firth, Jim Broadbent, Juliet Stevenson, Gina McKee, Elaine Cassidy, Claire Skinner, Matthew Beard, Bradley
Johnson, Justin McDonald, Carey Mulligan, Sarah Lancashire, Tilly Curtis
Running Time: 1h 32m
Based on Blake Morrison's memoir, this highly emotional story tells of a successful writer's troubled relationship with his
father. Beautifully paced, shot and acted, I found this to be an exceptional piece of work.
Blake (played over his childhood, youth and as an adult by Johnson, Beard and finally Firth) throughout his life has had
many difficulties dealing with the overpowering presence of his father Arthur (Broadbent), careering throughout his existence
taking heed of no one, performing numerous little scams, using his charm and gift of the gab to meet his own ends. Blake's
mother (Stevenson) consistently does the 'stand by your man' thing, even despite the patently obvious dilemma of him having
a fling with a family friend (Lancashire). In later years, Blake is still unable to escape his father's control, much to the
annoyance of his wife (McKee). However when Arthur is diagnosed with terminal cancer, coming to terms with everything is forced
upon everyone in the family.
Tucker's direction glides and at times is highly emotive, giving the film a thoughtful, introspective tone that allows
Arthur's excesses to emerge in sharp contrast. There is a superb sense of time and place, tracing parallel events with background
newscasts and the minutiae of period detail in the clothing and room décor is exceptional.
The cast is superb. The three actors who play Blake at various stages are uniformly excellent as are Stevenson, McKee
and Lancaster. However special note has to be made of the impeccable Jim Broadbent. He is mesmerisingly outstanding in the
key role of Arthur. His performance is nothing short of sublime expertly conveying humour, deceit, charm, sympathy and an
unparalled depiction of a man in his final moments that will have most cinemagoers in bits. He truly is an astonishing and
brilliant actor.
The semi-conclusive scene when Firth is alone with his grief is peerless and I felt such a sense of intrusion as the camera
panned down on his distraught expression. The art of acting without dialogue has rarely been more devastating in its conveyance.
Control
Cast: Sam Riley, Samantha Morton, Alexandra Maria Lara, Toby Kebbell, Joe Anderson and James Anthony Pearson
Director: Anton Corbijn
Screenwriter: Matt Greenhalgh
Producers: Anton Corbijn and Orian Williams
Running time: 122 min.
Ian Curtis, lead singer Joy Division, killed himself at the age of 23 after numerous debilitating epileptic seizures and a
gradual decline into serious depression.
Anton Corbijn's stunning debut feature tackles the immense dilemmas Ian faced in his life, and the result is an astonishing
film far removed from those typical of a rockstar's life of drugs, lies and sex although these elements feature to a slight
degree. Corbijn's atmospheric use of monochrome stock echoes the many still photographs taken by him of the band during their
short period of existence, and he admirably part-funded this outstanding piece of work too.
Curtis escapes from the mundanity of his youth, school and tedious day to day existence by relaxing in his bedroom, smoking
endless cigarettes to the strains of Roxy Music and Aladdin Sane-era Bowie, but normality extends its grip as, after enticing
Debbie, his best friend's girlfriend, into marriage, he works in an employment office while fronting his band at night. An
apparent malaise of discontent and unhappiness pervades his existence however as he becomes a dad, his day-job permeates his
gloom and the epileptic fits take hold.
Ian Curtis is portrayed as a renegade artist whose body fails to assert his inner soul's promise of talent and artistry.
Performing on stage, there's an immense sense of struggle, the monumental task of releasing his artistic impulses through
the confines of his inadequate body. As he is faced with the choice of staying with Debbie or continuing an affair with Belgian
embassy worker Annik - his lack of resolution in emotional and moral decisions sees his life fast-forwarding to the point
of exhaustion. Despite the undeniable fact that Joy Division achieved success, Control's focus is intimate and delves internally.
Sam Riley as Curtis is spellbindingly brilliant and is rarely off-screen. He possesses Ian's brooding demeanour, morose
in a way that is understandable of a character stripped of levity but heightened with dramatic tension. There's a quite wonderful
sense of humanity throughout this film and I left the screening feeling honoured I'd been around during Factory Records and
Joy Division's time - and missing Ian Curtis as I would the loss of a dear friend. If you embrace music and people matter
in your life do not pass on seeing this at any cost.
Clubland
Director: Cherie Nowlan
Cast: Brenda Blethyn, Frankie J. Holden, Khan Chittenden, Richard Wilson, Emma Booth.
Running time: 1hr 49min
Brenda Blethyn is quite astonishing as a smothering mother and has-been comedienne in this likeable mix of sex comedy and
family drama. Khan Chittenden plays Tim, a shy removal-van driver who lives in a Sydney suburb with his divorced mother, Jean
(Blethyn), and his brain-damaged younger brother Mark (Richard Wilson).
When she's not caring for the mischievous Mark, Jean is a salty nightclub entertainer. But beneath the constant banter
is a desperate loneliness. When Tim meets a forthright beauty named Jill (Emma Booth), he's terrified to tell his mother.
But Jean's maternal instincts - and the uncensored Mark - tell her that there's a threat to the domestic order, and she tries
to sabotage the budding love affair.
Chittenden and Booth produce some amusingly tempestuous sex scenes, and Wilson, unimpaired in real life, turns his potentially
twitchy role into a showcase for his wit. But Blethyn's impeccable timing ensures some frightening transitions from comedy
to drama. It's a fearlessly unguarded performance that could border on the unbearable, but director Cherie Nowlan rewards
her with the safety net of a nimble script and a sure-handed supporting cast.
Death Proof
Cast:
Kurt Russell Stuntman Mike
Rosario Dawson Abernathy
Vanessa Ferlito Butterfly
Jordan Ladd Shanna
Rose McGowan Pam
Sydney Tamiia Poitier Jungle Julia
Co-Produced Written & Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Death Proof is meant to be a rough-and-ready nostalgia trip, a slasher movie that morphs into a drag-racing picture, only
to bottom-out as a woman's revenge piece. Sad to say though, other than its grainy, 70s-inspired aesthetic, there's very little
in the film to suggest we're watching anything other than one of Tarantino's usual overblown retro-irony cocktails. His pained
obsession with being one-jump ahead 'cool' is beginning to tire. Based on this showing, he's run out of postmodern steam -
it's just one misfired retrotrip too far and he's rapidly disappearing up his own hip arse.
Death Proof is simply a cinematic mix-tape, with no real allegiance to any specific genre or tone. His deliberately bad
editing and contrived continuity error-cuts are just yawn-inducing. There are brief moments of arresting tribute - the first
appearance of the villain's car eerily mirrors Laurie's first glimpse of Michael Myers in the original Halloween - but Tarantino
lacks the focus to keep it together, his single-minded commitment to serving up skuzzy thrills. He's too in love with himself,
his reputation, his ego, his characters and, inexcusably, with the now-less-than rhythmic zing of his own heavily overwritten
dialogue.
To be fair, there are at least two spectacular set pieces in Death Proof. One is a sickeningly brutal car crash, repeated
four times in succession; the other's a sensational chase sequence, a fast and furious bit of automobile bravado, done entirely
without digital assistance. Tarantino's eye for pitch-perfect casting remains intact: as a psychotic stunt-driver stalking
a group of nubile young women, Kurt Russell delivers his best performance in years - a charming and menacing turn - he really
is quite exceptional. But these are the fringe benefits of getting on this ride.
For the most part, Death Proof fails to excite, and that's because Tarantino, for all his love of lowbrow cinema, isn't
really that kind of filmmaker. He's too enamoured with his knowing wink-wink, buzz-kill irony, too cerebral in his approach
to disreputable genre fare. He's all talk and no action - an arty film geek who'd now rather show off his knowledge of past
bad movies than make a decent one of his own. He is, in short, too good to make bad movies. It's time to throw out his conceit
and get on with making a decent film.
PS> Pedantic Music Note: Tarantino prides himself on his back catalogue soundtrack obscurity nous - just a note Quenters
old boy - the UK 1960s beat combo was Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, MICK and Tich - not "Mitch" as inaccurately uttered
by your cast prior to a blast of the group's 1966 number 4 hit 'Hold Tight'. The original member was Michael "Mick"
Wilson, later replaced by John "Mick" Hatchman. Just thought I'd throw that in.
Atonement
Director: Joe Wright
Screenplay: Christopher Hampton
Cast: Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, Romola Garai, Vanessa Redgrave, Saoirse Ronan, Brenda Blethyn, Juno Temple, Gina
McKee, Benedict Cumberbatch, Daniel Mays, Alfie Allen, Jeremie Renier
Running Time: 2hrs 3min
|
|
Following his wonderfully refreshing Pride & Prejudice, director Joe Wright again teams up with his star actress Keira
Knightley for another accomplished adaptation of a British literary work, this time Ian McEwan's sprawling Atonement. With
a beautiful treatment for the screen by playwright Christopher Hampton Atonement is a genuine pleasure of a film, compressing
McEwan's haunting tale and absorbing its devastating outcome.
It opens in a children's room within a sumptuous British countryide mansion in 1935, as the camera pans gently upwards
from a trail of animal puppets worthy of Noah's Ark on the richly carpeted floor to a chair for grownups on which the petite
13-year-old Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan) strains herself to reach all the letters on the typewriter on her desk. Accompanied
only by the sound of that typewriter and without a word spoken as yet, the director has already established some of the story's
major themes: the importance of writing, the importance of a point of view (in this case the point of view of a child who
would like to pretend she is older) and the difficulty for said child to complete the task she has set herself with the means
she has chosen, which are made for adults, not children.
As in Pride & Prejudice, in which the dance sequences were completely integrated into the story, Wright again uses
period detail to decorate the frame and injects it right into the very fabric of the story, making it an indispensable part
of the events that occur rather than an inconvenience that only the art department needs to deal with. This approach even
extends to the music, as Dario Marianelli's lush score playfully incorporates various diegetic sounds, of which the thematically
important typewriter is only the most obvious. The work of cinematography and production design is as sensuous as in Wright's
first film. In adapting the novel, Hampton stays very close to the original and finds a place for an amazing amount of detail
without making the whole seem cluttered. He also retains the decidedly British flavour of the language and even some of the
dialogues in French. Atonement is really two stories in one and these two-stories-in-one in their turn happen on two different
planes (the second plane is squeezed into the film's coda). There is the story of Briony's older sister Cecilia or Cee (Keira
Knightley), who has returned from Cambridge and feels increasingly drawn to Robbie (James McAvoy), the son of one of the numerous
maids of the Tallis household (Brenda Blethyn), whose college tuition has been generously paid for by the family. Despite
the class differences, Robbie seems to feel the same, and during the stifling midday heat of summer electricity crackles between
the two as Cee climbs out of the fountain she jumped into to recover part of a broken vase and Robbie cannot do anything but
stare.
There is also the story of Briony herself, who sees the events at the fountain from behind a window in the house, not
fully understanding what is going and made even more suspicious by a too-candidly phrased apology note Robbie writes for Cee
not much later. When events before and during dinner spin out of control, Briony will have accused Robbie of a crime he did
not commit, locking him away behind bars for years until he gets an early leave to serve in France in WWII, where the story
picks up again as both 18-year-old Briony (now played by Romola Garai) and Cecilia have become nurses in different hospitals
and Robbie makes his way to Dunkirk through war-torn France.
As in the book, the film takes care to present the early events from points-of-view close to different characters and
we are shown a different take on the same events (most notably the events at the fountain and a continuation of Cee and Robbie's
mating dance in the library not much later). Knightley is again in top form, showing that her Oscar nomination for Pride &
Prejudice was no accident, though her character is very different here. She doesn't have a great deal of material to work
with but fills the screen with a magnetic presence that nevertheless leaves her enough room to simply be the character. Saoirse
Ronan is equally impressive as the young Briony, while Romola Garai as the older Briony sustains the difficult mid-section
of the film with a restrained force that belies the fight being fought in her conscience.
But the real revelation of Atonement is Glaswegian James McAvoy, whose Robbie is so convincing that it is no wonder that
Cee doesn't care he is not from the same class as she is. His natural charm and utterly honest demeanour are a wonder to behold
and are especially noteworthy in the film's single best scene, in which Robbie and Cee meet again for the first time after
his imprisonment, in a noisy canteen somewhere in wartime London. Neither of them speaks much, but the way McAvoy and Knightley
play the crude, untold emotions of this long awaited and much dreamt about encounter is simply heartbreaking.
It is this scene, combined with the sequence at the fountain that sells their entire romance, their tragedy and everything
that follows. Even the film's rushed handling of the coda-with-a-sting cannot diminish the force of these two lovers and their
much-earned right to be together, forever.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
