DISOBEDIENCE

Sebastian Lelio follows up his superb A FANTASTIC WOMAN with DISOBEDIENCE - a drama based on the novel by Naomi Alderman - set in London's Orthodox Jewish community.  It stars Rachel Weisz as a Ronit and Rachel McAdams as Esti - two girls who fell in love as teenagers and realised that they were gay.  Their reactions were, however, different. Ronit left the community, went to New York, and has become a successful photographer, although has never fallen in love with anyone else.  Esti stayed in the community and married their childhood friend Dovid (Alessandro Nivola).  She lives an apparently straight life, teaches in an Orthodox school, and is trying to make the best of things.

The movie opens with Ronit's father, a revered Rabbi, making his final sermon on the idea of free will and disobedience.  He collapses and dies, and Ronit returns for his funeral, setting the events of the film in motion.  Her character is difficult - at times I winced at her unwillingness to make nice just for the few days she's back - insisting talking about business at a sabbath meal even though she knows its offensive, or playing with wearing an orthodox wig.  But as I watched the film further I realised that this was exactly the point.  Ronit can't make nice - that's why she had to leave.  That's why she isn't Esti.  And yet as the film progressed I realised that Esti was actually the more interesting character, because while she appears to be compliant, she was actually the one who contacted Ronit and precipitated her return.  And so the discovered kiss at the centre of the film that triggers its second act crisis of conscience is not an unbelievable risk, and one that stretches credulity, but once again in Esti's character.  She wants to be discovered, triggered, and is in some sense using Ronit.

Which leads me, surprisingly, to the most fascinating character of all in the film - Dovid, played beautifully in a career-best performance by Alessandro Nivola.  In a film that is very respectful of the orthodox community, Dovid comes across as an intelligent man really trying his best to understand his wife's feelings, humble and empathetic.  He's the person in the community who is welcoming to Ronit despite their suspicion of her.  He's the person who really tries to understand how to do the right thing.  It's a truly moving depiction of a religious man without judgment or hypocrisy, and so rare to see on screen.

DISOBEDIENCE is rated R and has a running time of 114 minutes. It is available to screen on demand at Curzon Home Cinema and on limited release in cinemas.

THE FAVOURITE - BFI London Film Festival 2018 - Day Ten

It's the early 1700s and Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) sits on the throne of England, but THE FAVOURITE, Sarah, Lady Malborough (Rachel Weisz) rules the country.  She does by being alternately kind but strict with the Queen, projecting herself as her protectress, appearing almost bullying. And she wields this power to keep England at war with France, her husband at the head of that army, and the Whigs in power.  But when Sarah takes pity on her young impoverished cousin Abigail (Emma Stone) she invites a viper into her nest. This apparently naive young girl is in fact an accomplished actress and manipulator and is soon working to usurp her cousin, gain her titles back, marry, and make an alliance with the opposition Tories. What's most astonishing about this story of rivals is that it's basically true. The only thing that has been added is exactly what should be in high quality historical fiction - an emotional imagination that shows us the conflicting motives and feelings of the three protagonists and what might have happened in bed.

The resulting film is by far the most mainstream that Yorgos Lanthimos (THE LOBSTER, THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER) has directed. It's a sumptuously shot, designed, framed and acted film that's highly accessible, and - with the exception of some superb swearing - is actually pretty inoffensive.  Rather than creating a sinister and claustrophobic near-horror feeling, Lanthimos has actually created a very sympathetic portrait of three women trapped in a strictly controlled courtly world, and while his trademark dark humour is still there in spades, this is his first film where I really cared about all his characters - where they were more than satirical cyphers or quasi-myths.

THE MERCY

THE MERCY is the latest in a long line of treatments of the infamous 1968/69 round the world yacht race called The Golden Globe. It captures the imagination because it's a pure challenge between man and the elements - to sail a boat with rudimentary equipment around the world single-handed over many months - a test both of the boat and man's ability to deal with extreme isolation and peril. I have long been fascinated by the type of people who are driven to face such challenges - whether climbing mountains above the "death zone" - or sailing into peril. And the Golden Globe, more than other races, epitomises the strange pull on a certain type of man to prove himself. It attracted both professional sailors and rank amateurs - and that too is one of its attractions. The idea that anyone could simply get into a boat and sail around the world appeals to a sense of old-fashioned adventure.

THE MERCY focuses on just one of the nine entrants to the Golden Globe race - the most notorious - Donald Crowhurst. It may well be best to watch it knowing absolutely nothing about him, but as the story is going to 50 years old next year, I'm going to go ahead and discuss its broad outlines in order to review the film. Crowhurst was a talented electronic engineer and weekend sailor in coastal waters. But he was struggling with his business, and was reliant on an investment from local entrepreneur Stanley Best to stay afloat. Crowhurst saw entering the race as a chance to gain the kind of fame and fortune that Sir Francis Chichester had earned when he went round the world with just one stop the year before. If he could prove the value of his pioneering electronic gadgets on board a famous voyage, regardless of winning, Crowhurst would be set up for life. But, because he was reliant on yet more sponsorship from Best to build his boat, if he failed to sail, or dropped out early, he would lose his house, boat and business. The stakes could not, therefore, have been higher.

The film shows Crowhurst in a sympathetic light - a charismatic family man with real smarts - but out of his depth in preparing for such a voyage against a very tight deadline. The boatbuilders can't always get first choice materials, his design is untested, and he hasn't got the time to build the electronics that should make a trimaran able to right itself when capsized (it's chief safety problem). Sponsors are hard to come by, but he does get recording equipment from the BBC and instructions to send back updates to his rapacious press agent. Money is tight. The stress builds, and he spends much of his final night before sailing in tears. The omens are bad - the champagne bottle won't crack against the hull, the test voyage takes two weeks rather than three days, and even when he sets sail on the race, he has to tow back to sort out his sails.

It's very clear from early on that he neither the open water sailing experience nor a suitable boat for the voyage. The early parts of the film show him to be very honest and logical in laying out the problems he has to solve. As he slips down the coast of Portugal and onto Africa his speeds are underwhelming and he spends his time manually bailing out the hulls. At some point he decides to make a simple deception - and fakes a speed record. But that does't yet mean that he's decide to fake the entire voyage. The film shows beautifully the slow slipping into fakery. But there's a moment when he takes the plunge - when he starts genuinely faking his progress, using enigmatic radio messages and refusing to give his precise bearings. At this point, though, it's a logical reaction to desperation. He wants to give us, but is in an invidious financial position. Another problem for Crowhurst, as the film so clearly shows, is that slight fakery is exacerbated by his press agent Ronald Hallworth - a man with shady ethics who takes Crowhurst's deliberately vague reports and exaggerates and firms them up with fake accuracy. This puts Crowhurst in as much of a bind as his financial problems, because he can’t very well drop out of the race in a position on the map where he’s not meant to be anywhere near! And so the film shows a man under insupportable pressure decide to fake his voyage, and because this means complete radio silence, slip into madness. I’ll say no more here, although I have written my thoughts on how this is handled below the episode notes for those who are interested.

THE MERCY succeeds because of the central performance of Colin Firth (THE KINGSMEN)- showing a range and nuance that makes this perhaps his finest performance since A SINGLE MAN. It’s a sympathetic but harrowing portrait of a good, intelligent and earnest man who desperately needs to speak to his wife in private and seek solace and advice but cannot. Yes he told a lie, but to save his family from ruin, and in the absence of any emotional support. And who then sails for months, in isolation, and becomes unmoored from reality. It’s also, despite it’s specific context, a deeply relatable story about what loneliness and stress can do to one. The film also benefits from being shot on the open sea, and on celluloid - an authenticity that’s hard to replicate in a tank - and than creates one or two really quite beautiful images. By contrast, when it comes to the land-based scenes, director James Marsh (THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING) seems to get through them in a rather workmanlike manner.

Because this is Firth’s film - rightly so - those cast in smaller roles are little more than quickly essayed character traits. Rachel Weisz (THE LOBSTER) is merely there to be deeply sympathetic as Crowhurst’s supportive wife Clare, unwilling to tell him not to proceed because she wants to support his dreams, even if it means ending up on the dole and alone. Clare is also given a rather bombastic final scene which, in its (bizarre, to my mind), condemnation of the press, felt anachronistic, and certainly didn’t happen. David Thewlis is mono-dimensionally creepy as the press agent Hallworth. And we get a cameo from Simon McBurney as Sir Francis Chichester, but he’s bizarrely unused as the film develops even though his reaction to Crowhurst’s voyage was one of the more interesting.

The film suffers from a lack of context. Crowhurst’s struggles are easier to understand and sympathise with when you realise how far the other sailors suffered from stress and isolation - the story of Moitessier in particular shows how easy it is to become unmoored. And although unprepared, he was by far not the most amateur of the sailors - that honour goes to Chay Blyth who literally had to learn to sail as he went. But perhaps that would’ve taken too much time to explore? What the screenwriter, Scott Z Burns (THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM), could’ve done quickly and easily was introduce a scene where we learn that both the pumping hose and the box of spare parts was left onshore by mistake, making Crowhurst’s voyage harder to sustain. I also feel that more time could’ve been spent on establishing Crowhurst’s philosophy of life as a kind of game before the race, to help give content to the 25,000 words of Philosophy written in his logbooks at sea. Because even as he became unmoored, there was a through line from earlier beliefs, and again that speaks to his intelligence.

Overall, I did enjoy the film, mostly for Firth’s performance, and because even when done narrowly, it’s a fascinating tale. I suspect that for people who truly want to understand the psychology of not just Crowhurst, but all the men who took part in the race, and its dramatic emotional consequences, the 2006 documentary, DEEP WATER,  reviewed here, will remain the first port of call. I can also heartily recommend reading The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst by the Sunday Times journalists Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall. This was published immediately after the race, in 1970, and benefited from the authors being able to comb over the log books and other documents that came off Crowhurst's boat, as well as interviewing those involved in the race. I found it to be an incredibly well researched and fair-minded book, deeply sympathetic to Crowhurst and quoting liberally from his writings. The makers of this film seem to disagree, which I find odd. Another valuable book is Chris Eakin's A Race Too Far. This covers the race in its entirety, looking at all the participants. It therefore goes into less depth on any one of them, and quotes liberally from the Tomalin and Hall book. It was published just last year and therefore can interview participants and their families.

THE MERCY has a running time of 101 minutes and is rated 12A in the UK for infrequent strong language. It will be released in Portugal on November 23rd, in the Netherlands on December 14th, in Australia on February 8th, in the UK on February 9th, in Poland on March 2nd, in France on March 7th, in New Zealand on March 8th and in Germany on March 29th. 

MY COUSIN RACHEL

Roger Michell has a track record in making rather ambiguous slippery stories of obsession, and after his superb ENDURING LOVE, returns to our screens with an equally ambitious if rather less successful costume thriller based on a book by Daphne Du Maurier.  The story centres on the relationship between three cousins. The elder man adopts his younger male cousin Philip after Philip's parents die. They live a pleasant bachelor live in Cornwall for many years.  We pick up the story when Philip (Sam Claflin) is a young man, and his elderly adoptive father has gone to Florence for his health. There he makes an improbably marriage to their mutual cousin Rachel (Rachel Weisz). This romance is communicated by letters back to Cornwall which Philip dutifully reads out to his godfather Kendall (Iain Glen) and his daughter (Holliday Grainger), for whom Philip seems to be intended.  But romance turns to suspicions - with the elder cousin claiming that his young wife has poisoned him for his fortune.  Philip is thus set up to hate his cousin on site, but find's himself charmed by her beauty. Indeed, realising that she has been disinherited, he even takes pity on her financial situation and makes rather a fool of himself. This comes against the advice of all involved. Meanwhile the central question for the audience is whether everyone's else's suspicions of Rachel are warranted, or whether she is a maligned woman.

As with REBECCA, the more famous of Du Maurier's novels to be adapted to the screen, the central mystery is around an enigmatic, beautiful, perhaps dastardly woman.  And while Michell cannot withhold Rachel from us forever, he does a good job of delaying her entrance to the film.  Rachel Weisz is also perfectly cast as someone who is both beautiful and communicates intelligence on screen. I also rather liked Holliday Grainger as the altogether practical spurned young woman.  But the problem with the film really lies in the source material - Philip is a far less charismatic and intriguing character than Max de Winter.  Indeed, he is rather unlikeably spoiled and petulant.  Accordingly, even as we judge Rachel, it's hard not to resent his presence both in her life and in the film.  It's a flaw that I'm not sure the film ever really recovers from.

Thus the choice of source material is a fatal flaw, and perhaps the casting of Sam Claflin.  Which is a shame because Roger Michell really does great work in liberating the piece from the banal typical camerawork of a costume drama, with absolutely superb framing and dynamic camerawork. 

MY COUSIN RACHEL has a running time of 106 minutes and is rated PG-13. It is currently on release in the UK and Ireland.

YOUTH - BFI London Film Festival 2015 - Day Nine

Oh man. Paolo Sorrentino’s IL DIVO is arguably the best movie I’ve ever watched at a film festival, and it’s the only one I loved so much I watched it twice. And his last movie, THE GREAT BEAUTY, was a work of magical visual beauty and deep melancholic investigation into ageing and art. So I came to his first ever English language film with great expectations. Expectations that were, with the exception of a few flashes of brilliance, disappointed. There are two over-riding reasons for this: first a chronic lack of narrative drive and energy; second, uneven tone that undermines rather than enhances the whole.

THE LOBSTER - BFI London Film Festival 2015 - Day Seven

You can listen to a podcast review of this film here or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

THE LOBSTER is the latest film from the fascinating Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos and his first English language feature. It’s a savage social satire on the modern pressure to date and find a perfect match - the superficial metrics upon which people find their partners - and the judgment thrown on the weirdos who stay single. Colin Farrell plays one such schlubby loner who checks into a hotel where he has 45 days to find a perfect partner. If he fails, he will be turned into the animal of his choice - a lobster. The pressure is harsh - Ben Whishaw plays a grieving widower who checks in a mere six days after his wife has passed away. As the movie passes into its second hour, Farrell’s character escapes into the woods and joins a renegade band of militant Loners, as well as the soon to be love of his life, played by Rachel Weisz. It’s credit to Lanthimos that he shows the loners to be as militant as the couples, and for exploring just how far one should go for the person one loves.

OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL

Sam Raimi's prequel to the WIZARD OF OZ is a movie in which I can see so much to admire but which bored me for all of its overlong two hour ten minute runtime.  

I loved the visual design of the black and white prologue in a turn of the century Kansas carnival, where our anti-hero conman, conjurer and lothario, Oz, escapes an angry husband by taking off in a hot air balloon that will whisk him to a land of his subconscious that he has narcissistically called Oz.  I love the riot of CGI colour and subversive naughtiness by which Oz immediately romances the credulous witch Theodora (Mila Kunis), before breaking her heart and turning her to the Dark Side. I love the costume design that sees Rachel Weisz wicked with Evanora in luscious dark green ballgowns and Michelle Williams' good witch Glenda in gorgeous shimmering white. I love the casting of James Franco - who has always been almost too handsome, and painfully wooden and uncomfortable with that beauty.  His too wide smile and slightly hammy acting perfectly suits the conman role.  Most of all, I love the idea that despite all his petty cunning, Oz is really an idealist, who is full of admiration for Edison's inventions, and wonder at the power of cinema. In fact, OZ can be read as a movie about how cinema saves lives, much like ARGO.

The problem is that the movie just takes too long to motor through its various machinations to finally get Oz into his confrontation with the newly wicked Evanora and Theodora.  It also seems too adult for kids and too kiddie for adults - in sharp contrast to Pixar who seem to be able to entertain both groups simultaneously.  How much of the target kiddie audience really get why Evanora turned wicked, and why Oz' final victory is rather ambiguous? And how many adults were squirming with boredom during the whole munchkin, quadling city scene - in fact, for much of the final 90 minutes?

OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL has a running time of 130 minutes and is rated PG in the USA.  The movie opens this weekend in Argentina, Australia, Chile, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Kuwait, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Portugal, Macedonia  Russia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovenia, Thailand, the Ukraine, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Iceland, India, Ireland, Japan, Lithuania, Mexico, Mongolia, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Spain, Turkey, the UK and the USA.  It opens next week in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Estonia, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Taiwan.

THE BOURNE LEGACY

THE BOURNE LEGACY is very much the B-team continuing a critically acclaimed and commercially successful action franchise. Instead of director Paul Greengrass and star Matt Damon, we have Tony and Dan Gilroy and director and writer, and star Jeremy Renner (THE HURT LOCKER).  The only sensible move the writers make is to avoid Renner just inhabiting the character of Bourne.  Rather he is another member of the elite programme that created Bourne, who is still at large. The US intelligence service, scared that the programme of genetic enhancement will go public, decides to shut it out, which basically involves a manhunt of all the "mutants" and the scientists who did the work.  Cue a partnership between Renner's agent and Rachel Weisz' scientist as they travel the world looking for the drug that will "lock in" Renner's enhancements.  

THE BOURNE LEGACY is a good enough "tab A into slot B" movie with solid performances from the lead actors and a good enough script and plot premise.  I remain sceptical about whether Renner is really a leading man - whether he has sufficient charisma and screen heft. I wanted more of the danger that lurked just below the surface in THE TOWN - more of the raw edginess. I also remain sceptical about Tony Gilroy as a director as opposed to a screenwriter: too many of the chase scenes felt baggy and boring. There's none of the subtlety, style and confidence that he displayed in MICHAEL CLAYTON.

Overall this film is not as bad as many had feared, but it isn't really in the same league as the original trilogy.

THE BOURNE LEGACY is currently on release in the Philippines, Singapore, the Czech Republic, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Canada, India, Paraguay, the USA, Vietnam, Ireland, the UK, Spain, Australia, Denmark and New Zealand. It opens on August 23rd in Argentina, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia and Mexico; on August 29th in Indonesia, Sweden, Bahrain, Kuwait, Peru, Russia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Colombia, El Salvador, Estonia, Latvia and Turkey.  It opens on September 6th in Hungary, the Netherlands, Brazil, Italy, Lithuania, Norway and Pakistan; on September 12th in Belgium, Germany and Israel; on September 19th in France, Finland and South Africa; on September 28th in Japan; on October 4th in Greece; on October 25th in Chile and China and on November 23rd in Venezuela.

THE BOURNE LEGACY is rated PG 13 in the USA and has a running time of 135 minutes. 

London Film Fest 2011 Day 16 - THE DEEP BLUE SEA

Jolyon Coy (Philip), Kate Ogborn (producer), Tom Hiddleston (Freddie), 
Terence Davies (director and screenwriter), Sarah Kants (Liz), 
Harry Hadden-Paton (Jackie) at the premiere of THE DEEP BLUE SEA

This review is brought to you by Professor007, long missing from these pages, and a dutiful stand-in when Bina007 was struck down by cine-flu.

It is rare these days to find a movie that captivates one for its length. It is rarer still to find a movie that keeps one in its spell well beyond the hustle of the tube on the way back home.

Terrence Davies' adaptation of Terrence Rattigan's play The Deep Blue Sea is such a masterpiece. It is beautifully set in 1950s London, yet its topic is timeless. Hester (Rachel Weisz), a young and attractive woman of simple background, who is married to William (Simon Russell Beale), a distinguished man of law considerably her senior, falls in love with the young and handsome maverick Freddie (Tom Hiddleston). In Freddie, Hester seems to find the passion, lust, and physicality that she misses in her married life. Some months into the affair, however, William finds out and Hester decides to leave William and move in with her lover. Freddie, however, seems unprepared for such co-habitation: mentally stuck in his life as hero during World War II, he struggles to find a new focus in life, and is unable to emotionally care for anyone else than himself. Despite this lack of attention by Freddie and her husband's continued attempts to win her back, Hester's love for Freddie is unbroken. She does not, however, get the committed and passionate relationship she so desires, and with every increasingly desperate failed attempt to win Freddie over, she degrades herself more and more.

What is striking in its sadness and yet utter plausibility is how the behaviour of three people, of which neither is spiteful or keen to hurt the other ones, can lead to such pain and misfortune. Rachel Weisz beautifully portrays a woman who, in her attempt to find love and passion, knowingly destroys her life. William, excellently played by Simon Russell Beale, tries to win her back, but is too restrained by his upbringing to show the emotions his wife may be longing for so much. Finally, Freddie is a man who struggles with the void of purpose in his life and at the same time is overwhelmed by the passion of his lover.

To me, an oscar candidate for best movie, best actress and best supporting actor. On vera.

THE DEEP BLUE SEA played Toronto, San Sebastian and London 2011. It will be released in the UK on November 25th and the US in December.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 1 - 360

Jude Law and Rachel Weisz as an estranged couple in 360

It has long been my experience that the most interesting and exciting films showing at the London Film Festival are those tucked away in the heart of the programme, rather than the red-carpet galas, where one suspects the programmer's hand has been forced by the exigencies of publicity and sponsorship.  Sadly, 360 proved no exception to this rule.  Worse than that, one suspects that Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles' early success with the dazzling CITY OF GOD was a fluke.  Ever since then, his films have maintained their visual style, but lost pace, energy, and tackled subject matter with a heavy handed earnestness that belies their insight.  One wishes that he would stop trying to be clever-clever with his narrative devices and just tell a good, simple story.  

The too-clever concept at the heart of 360 is to show the interweaving stories of people across the world  - the only commonality is how each of them experience a seemingly arbitrary event changes their lives.  The story takes us from a failing marriage in middle-class London (Jude Law, Rachel Weisz) to hookers and Russian mafiosi in Vienna (Moritz Bleibtrau) - from  sex offenders and grieving parents in Denver (Ben Foster, Anthony Hopkins) to forbidden love in Paris (Jamel Debbouze).  In each case, characters are introduced, their love affairs and dilemmas explained, an event occurs, its ramifications start to be explored, and the matter is dropped. Perhaps in a later strand we will meet the character again and see them from a different angle.  But by then, so much has been going on, so many characters introduced, so little time given to being able to emotionally bond with them, that we are past caring.  I left the cinema feeling totally "blah".  I had watched a parade of characters and frankly, didn't care about a single one of them.  And as for the "message" of this ponderous work, it's hardly revelatory or profound.  Some people are cynical sleazebags - some people still naively take a chance on love - the world keeps turning - and random events can change the path we move along. 

Jude Law and director Fernando Meirelles present
360 at the Opening Night of the BFI London
Film Festival 2011.

The result is a film that is utterly unmemorable and actually rather tragic when one considers the talent deployed.  To be sure, cinematographer Adriano Goldman (JANE EYRE, SIN NOMBRE, CONVICTION) creates some arresting visuals, but the rest of the talent is below par.  The actors have little to get their teeth into and are rather unforgettable, except for Anthony Hopkins hamming it up. To be fair, Hopkins is only responding to one of those awfully obvious crass Academy-Award-aspirant speeches by screenwriter Peter Morgan (THE QUEEN) when he finally comes to an epiphany in an AA meeting. 

Overall then, 360 is yet another film by Fernando Meirelles that is technically accomplished, but fails to provide us with characters that we care about and situations that are compelling.  A serious own-goal by screenwriter Peter Morgan too, moving from his typically more straightforward biopic material into some more narratively ambitious, and clearly beyond his capabilities. 

360 premiered at London 2011 and will play Toronto 2011. It will open in Sweden on October 19th 2012.

London Film Festival Day 14 - THE BROTHERS BLOOM

THE BROTHERS BLOOM is the visually delightful but ultimately self-indulgent follow-up film from writer-director Rian Johnson. His first film, BRICK, reinjected noir with a teen sensibility and seemed genuinely unique. It's tragic, then, to see Rian Johnson decide to make a film that seems to be something of a Wes Anderson rip-off. The elaborately designed sets; the anachronistic costumes; the richly choreographed sight-gags; the international jet-set milieu; the suffocating family relationships; the longing romanticism........oh, it's all there. And if the best of Anderson is present in this movie, so too is the worst. All that carefully placed beauty and absurdity does get a bit, well, boring after a while. And the layers and layers of artifice alienate the audience, and prevent us from feeling the reality of the attempted emotional ending. So much for the critique, what of the substance? THE BROTHERS BLOOM opens with a tour-de-force prologue which is narrated entirely in rhyme in a sort of Dr Seuss fashion. Two orphan brothers grow up poor in a rich town. The younger romantic boy wants to talk to a sweet girl but can't work up the courage. So his protective older brother comes up with a complex con in which he'll make some cash, his brother will impress the girl and all the kids will think they've stumbled upon a magic cave. Fast forward twenty years and the elder brother (Mark Ruffalo) is still trying to find the perfect con and the younger brother (Adrien Brody) is still looking for real love. They are joined by a female Japanese equivalent of Silent Bob (Rinko Kikuchi) and their mark, cloistered millionairess Penelope (Rachel Weisz). The first hour of the film is brilliant fun. Kikuchi steals every scene she's in and Weisz shows that she has real comic acting ability. Even Ruffalo and Brody are fine. The problem is simply that the fun and games go on too long and deaden the impact of the ending. 

THE BROTHERS BLOOM played Toronto and London 2008. It goes on release in the US on December 19th.

STEALING BEAUTY - interactive voyeurism

Disturbingly leery film in which a variety of men and women are transfixed by a virginal American teen staying in Tuscany. The voyeurism hinted at in the title begins in the opening credits when our protagonist (Liv Tyler) is stealthily photographed on a plane to Sienna. It continues as the old bohemians speculate about her losing her virginity and implicates the viewer as we're forced to watch her being deflowered. This is after we've sat through two hours of flirting with a terminally ill Jeremy Irons and a whole bunch of teen angst, condensed into mind-numbingly juvenile poems. It's all left me asking, "So what?" This being a Bertolucci film it looks fantastic, of course, but without the political context or deep psychosexual drama of THE DREAMERS and LAST TANGO it all seems rather thin.

STEALING BEAUTY played Cannes 1996 and was released that year. It is available on DVD.

A partial review of MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS

Wong Kar Wai has made some great movies in the past, not least the pantheon film, IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE. His movies are known for their lavish attention to production design; beautiful women in stunning dresses and the mesmerising control of Christopher Doyle's cinematography. They also contain some out the great performances of Asian cinema, not least Tony Leung in IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE and 2046. Sadly, MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS, his first English-language, American-set movie, is a travesty. In fact. I walked out of MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS after forty-five minutes. I had wanted to leave after ten minutes, but willed myself to keep sitting there, hoping that the movie would pick up. It didn't.

The problems are manifold. The script has no narrative drive; characters speak in banalities; Norah Jones, Rachel Weisz and David Strathairn over-act; one suspects that Norah Jones actually cannot act; Jude Law can't maintain a Northern English accent; Rachel Weisz can't do a Southern American accent; Darius Khondji's cinematography is deliberately stylised but looks cheap and amateurish (how many ways can you film someone through a window or reflected in glass, or shot from a CCTV camera?).....Net result: I had zero interest in continuing to watch Norah Jones' heartbroken waitress drifting through different bars, moping at various uninteresting characters.

Essentially, this is a movie that is badly written, badly acted and badly filmed.

MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS opened Cannes 2007 and was released in Canada, Finland, France, Belgium, Norway, the Netherlands, Greece, China, Singapore and Estonia in 2007. It opened earlier in 2008 in Hong Kong, Latvia, Turkey, Russia, Switzerland and Bulgaria. It is currently on release in the UK and opens in March in South Korea, Colombia, Argentina, Italy, Brazil and Japan. Finally, it gets a limited release in the US on April 4th.

DEFINITELY MAYBE - ho hum

DEFINITELY MAYBE is not a romantic comedy, as you might expect from the marketing campaign. Rather, it is a modestly enjoyable but perfectly forgettable drama about a rather bland but earnest young man and the three women he has loved. Ryan Reynolds tones down his trademark comic style to play political activist William Hayes, whose big plans for life scare off his high-school sweetheart (a deeply superficial performance from Elizabeth Banks). He then falls for a sophisticated writer who proceeds to skewer his career and his heart. Rachel Weisz is brilliant in this small role, and Kevin Kline is responsible for the only real humour and energy of the film as the outrageous Professor. Finally, our hero has an off-on friendship with a ditzy but well-meaning kid played by the charming Isla Fisher. They are both adorable together.

The movie rolls along at a leisurely pace and, with the exception of the college sweetheart, the characters are amiable enough to hold our interest for the run-time of the film, if not for one second more. The only real flaw in the film is the twee framing device, which has William relating his sexual adventures in flashback to an irritatingly knowing and cute daughter, played by Abigail Breslin.

DEFINITELY MAYBE is on release in the UK. It opens next week in Australia, the US, Norway and Venezuela. It opens in March in the Netherlands, Belgium, Mexico, Germany, Denmark and Turkey. It opens in April in Egypt, Singapore, Sweden and Spain. It opens in Brazil on May 9th and in Argentina and Russia on May 29th.

FRED CLAUS - great cast undone by lazy script

I think Vince Vaughn is really funny. I've thought this ever since my best friend at college, James "Fast Jimmy" Gibbons introduced me to SWINGERS. Suddenly it became clear where Jimbo's fast-talking, charming, fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants routine came from. Since then, Vaughn's career has been hit and miss. He's been hired as the light relief in a bunch of genre movies (such as MR AND MRS SMITH) and made a disastrous lead in the horrible PSYCHO remake. I think the problem is that he's usually cast rather lazily: film-makers think his innate charm will enliven weak, derivative scripts. What this means is that Vaughn, like Ryan Reynolds, is usually the only saving grace in the mediocre movies he stars in. Up till now, the one exception to this rule was DODGEBALL - a truly hillarious movie.

I'm afraid that FRED CLAUS falls solidly into that cumbersome middle ground of weak comedies in which Vaughn fans find themselves scratching their heads wondering why he didn't demand a re-write. In general, the plot is predictable and derivative, the characters are two-dimensional, and the movie is painfully thin on laughs. Worst of all, the movie is way too long for a kid-friendly Christmas flick, no matter what the quality of the picture.

Just to fulfil the basic requirements, I should clue you into the big Concept. Fred Claus is a nice kid who becomes embittered when his brother Nicholas gets all the attention. Eventually, Nick becomes Santa Claus, and as part of the deal, he and his family become immortal. Fast forward several hundred years and Fred (Vaughn) is forced to go cap in hand to the North Pole and make up with his brother Santa (Giamatti). He teaches the elves to loosen up, they fall behind on their schedule, and the big bad corporate man (Spacey) threatens to close them down. As one might expect, it all turns out for the best for the characters, which is more than can be said for the honest ticket-buying public. One can only wonder why the producers spent so much money on a high-octane cast and so little on the script.

FRED CLAUS is on release in the US, Canada, Australia, Italy, Singapore, Japan, the Philippines, Germany, South Korea, Denmark, Italy, the UK and Japan. It opens next week in Belgium, Greece, the Netherlands, Iceland, Spain, Sweden and Turkey. It opens in Christmas week in Russia, Slovenia, Estonia, France and Bulgaria. Finally, it rolls into Egypt on January 16th.

THE FOUNTAIN - intriguing/frustrating

In short, Darren Aronofsky disappearing down a dead end is still more interesting than most Hollywood hacks getting it right.

Aronofsky is a challenging director – both in terms of content and visual style. And if I found his debut feature, PI, more intriguing than perfect, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM is certainly one of my pantheon movies. Its bleak depiction of drug abuse and crass commerce was told in an innovative style and with uncompromising honesty. Not to mention the fact that Aronofsky managed to coax career-redefining performances from Ellen Burstyn and Jennifer Connelly. Where these movies succeeded was in scraping underneath the surface of a relatively closed under-ground world. Investigating the workings of mania and paranoia and addiction on a small group of individuals living in contemporary society – albeit a strand of society that most of us never interact with.

With THE FOUNTAIN, Aronofsky moves well beyond his (dis)comfort zone into the territory of 2001. He eschews contemporary settings to produce a more abstract, symbolic and richly stylised movie. At its heart is a man called Tom (Hugh Jackman) who is desperately in love with his fatally ill wife, an authoress called Izzy (Rachel Weisz). The crux of the story is Tom’s initial refusal to accept Izzy’s impending death. In the contemporary story-line, Tom chooses to spend time researching a cure rather than spending what time remains with Izzy. This choice will rack him with guilt in the futuristic story-line, which sees Tom living alone with his regrets in a sci-fi world of loneliness (another Requiem for a Dream of Eternal Love?) The film is also inter-cut with a further storyline which sees Izzy’s novel re-enacted. Tom is now cast as a Spanish conquistador on a mission from Izzy’s Queen of Spain to find a plant that can give eternal life.

The thematic content of the movie is thus profound, but also surprisingly simple, especially given the complexity of Aronofsky’s narrative structure and visual and audio stylings. The movie boasts an evocative sound-track from the Kronos Quartet and Mogwai and the production design features fairy-tale symbols and beautifully rendered old-fashioned visual effects. The problem is that at least half of it feels redundant. I am also unconvinced by the heavy-handed symbolism of the presumably deliberately under-lit opening scenes of the Conquistador? Of many examples, Christopher Nolan proved in BATMAN BEGINS that it is possible to create a dark, brooding atmosphere while actually allowing the audience to see what is going on.

The overall effect is that while powerful, the simple central question posed by the film drowns under the weight of the deliberately obscure production design, cinematography and editing. The over-complicated structure and design and abstract script also prohibit Jackman and Weisz from giving memorable performances - though they do their best with portentious dialogue. All this combines to make THE FOUNTAIN simultaneously one of the most intriguing and frustrating films I have seen in a long time.

THE FOUNTAIN played Venice and Toronto 2006. It opened in the US, Argentina, Brazil, Taiwan and France in winter 2006. It opened in Poland, South Africa, Germany and Estonia earlier this month and opens in Australia, Italy and the UK this weekend. THE FOUNTAIN opens in South Korea on Feb 8th and in Israel and Singapore on Feb 22nd. It opens in New Zealand on March 1st and in Hong Kong, the Netherland and Belgium on March 8th. It opens in Norway on March 16th, Spain on March 30th, Sweden and and Finland on April 13th and in Japan on July 7th.

THE CONSTANT GARDENER - Above average political thriller

QUICK REVIEW: Intelligent thriller about a British diplomat who, in investigating the death of his wife, stumbles on a conspiracy by big-pharma to test dangerous drugs on poor Africans.

LONG REVIEW: I should first lay out my stall. I love John le Carre. He is, to my mind, one of the finest novelists of the twentieth century and has extended his analysis of the miserable, unglamorous, morally cloudy, world of Cold War intelligence to the similarly dark underbelly of multi-national corporations. His novel The Constant Gardener, tells the story of a radical young woman called Tessa who marries a low-level diplomat called Justin, based in Nairobi, Kenya. The first scenes show her husband react to the news of her murder. The story then tells, in a combination of flashback and normal narrative, how in investigating her murder he comes to understand his wife and truly fall in love with her.

Rachel Weisz (most famous as the chick from “The Mummy” and one of Hugh Grant’s many squeezes in “About a Boy”) plays Tessa with just the right mixture of good intentions and a slightly annoying gung-ho, selfish attitude. Her character is not meant to be a paragon but a real woman who means well and tries to do right even if using odd tactics. It is refreshing to see such a multi-dimensional portrait brought to the screen. Her husband is played by Ralph Fiennes, who I think is immensely good. His character is a nice, slightly unsure diplomat, unwilling to rock the boat, but fundamentally decent. When faced by matters of global import he does not turn into James Bond, but his integrity carries him through. The penultimate scene of the movie, where he fully comes to terms with his predicament and what his wife’s life was, is outstanding.

The movie also has a decent cast of supporting actors although it is slightly irksome to see the Brit, Pete Postlethwaite, play a South African with an appallingly bad attempt at the accent. Moreover, Danny Huston, a Yank who went to school in the UK, somewhat fumbles his attempt at a Brit accent for the role of the ambassador. However, all this is offset by the scene-stealing performance by Bill Nighy (“Love, Actually”) as the man from Whitehall. His casual cruelty is unnerving precisely because he is so charming. A true villain for the age of bureaucracy.

The movie is directed by Fernando Meirelles, who had such success with “City of God” and is shot with the same saturated colours and crazy hand—held camera-work. I find it a little over-done in this context, and it is worth contrasting his hyper-active video-game style with Michael Haneke’s still, long takes in the more successful thriller, Hidden. But there is no doubt that Meirelles makes Kenya’s northern regions look stunningly beautiful. For that reason, it is worth trying to see this in the big screen rather than on DVD. Overall, while there may be one or two slightly better movies out there – notably Hidden and “A History of Violence”, this movie stands head and shoulders above most of the dross currently showing. I think the rumours of Oscars are over-done, but you could do a lot worse.

THE CONSTANT GARDENER was released in August in the US. It goes on release in the UK on the 11th November, in France on the 28th December, and in Germany on the 12th January 2006.