London Film Fest 2011 Day 14 - HUNKY DORY

Minnie Driver is the only recognised name in Marc Evans' musical drama HUNKY DORY.

Welsh director Marc Evans (SNOWCAKE, MY LITTLE EYE) bravely takes on a "concept" film with his new musical coming-of-age flick, HUNKY DORY. Minnie Driver (with impeccable Welsh accent) plays a teacher in a Welsh school, putting on a musical version of Shakespeare's The Tempest that incorporates the popular music of 1976 - David Bowie, Nick Drake, The Beach Boys - the year in which the movie is set. And while Driver is the only recognised name actor, she's actually not the person carrying the film. Rather, the young cast of talented kids steal the show, with the lead schoolboy Aneurin Barnard making an impressive debut. 

I found the movie earnest, joyful, but uneven and unsure of what it wanted to be. French writer Laurence Coriat (WONDERLAND) has penned a script that isn't an out-and-out big dance number musical in the manner of GLEE or HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL. Indeed, it seems to want to be one of those authentic realist teen flicks of the US indie movement - AMERICAN GRAFFITI or DAZED AND CONFUSED. And even then it can't resist one of those plot devices that seems totally out of scale with all that preceded it - stupidly clumsy deus ex machina. Combining social realism and musical numbers is a hard trick to pull off, and HUNKY DORY is no BILLY ELLIOT.

HUNKY DORY had its world premiere at London 2011 and has no commercial release date yet.

London Film Fest 2010 Day 3 - CONVICTION

Another film fest and another disappointing, soupy Oscar-bait flick starring Hilary Swank. She plays Betty Anne Waters, a middle-aged mother who put herself through her GED, college and then law school in order to represent her brother and over-turn his murder conviction. It's a two hour film that reads like a police/court procedural, where plucky little Betty Ann digs out evidence and outs corruption with her can-do, no-nonsense attitude. She has a best-friend with a heart of gold (Minnie Driver) and understanding teenage kids with hearts of gold, and a New York injustice-fighter (Peter Gallacher) with a heart of gold. It's all so bloody banal and twee and Hallmark TV afternoon movie I wondered what the frack it was doing in a Film Festival. Neither Tony Goldwyn's direction nor Pamela Gray's script ever move beyond hammy cliche. The only, only things elevating this movie beyond utter mediocrity are a small cameo from Juliette Lewis, as usual, typecast as a skank, and a scene-stealing role for Sam Rockwell as the charismatic incarcerated brother. Avoid at all costs.

CONVICTION played Toronto 2010 and is on release in the US. It opens in Belgium on December 1st, in Germany on February 24th 2011 and in the Netherlands on March 24th.