London Film Fest 2011 Day 12 - TAKE SHELTER

Writer-director Jeff Nichols's psychological drama, TAKE SHELTER, has been winning rave reviews, and with screeners already sent out to the Oscar electorate, I am sure Michael Shannon (BOARDWALK EMPIRE, BUG) will be receiving Oscar buzz for his performance of a man conscious that he is losing his mind.  But to be frank, I found this movie near un-watchable - so languorous was its pace, so obvious was its plot trajectory.   

Shannon plays Curtis, a hard-working man, whose nightmares of violent storms and biting dogs start to seep into his waking life.  Convinced that a violent storm is coming he puts himself in financial jeopardy to extend and stock up a storm shelter in his garden, at the same time alienating himself from his sweet wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain).  Shannon is always committed and convincing in his performances, but has become typecast as the sympathetic insane person. I also feel that Chastain needs to move beyond roles where she is just an archetypal sweet wife to be adored and put on a pedestal. She needs to break free of this typecasting. I feel that I have yet to see her really act. But the story just moves at such a slow pace, and doesn't really go anywhere. Over-hyped tedium.   

TAKE SHELTER played Sundance, Cannes where it won the Critics Week Grand Prize, and Jeff Nichols won the SACD award for Best Feature.  It also played Hollywood 2011 where Jessica Chastain won Breakthrough Actress, and London 2011. It opened in September in the US and opens on November 11th in the UK. It opens in France on December 7th.

LAST CHANCE HARVEY - I have got nothing To offer you Just this heart deep and true, Which you say you don't need

The trailer to LAST CHANCE HARVEY makes it look like a Richard Curtis rom-com for the middle-aged. The actual movie is far more down-beat and far less funny, but still set in the Magic Movie London where lovers meet-cute, and you can get from Heathrow to the South Bank in an hour.

The first forty-five minutes of the movie sees the heroes of the romance get beat up by life. Dustin Hoffman's Harvey Shine is professionally and emotionally obsolete - writing jingles that seem old-hat, and usurped by his daughter's step-father at her wedding. Emma Thompson's Kate Walker is marginalised on a blind date, and harassed by her mother (in a redundant and under-developed sb-plot involving smoked ham). The second half of the movie sees our heroes finally meet and fall in love over a series of long conversations along the Thames. He makes her laugh: she gives him the courage to go to his daughter's wedding reception and make the mandatory schmaltzy redemptive speech.

The fundamental problem with LAST CHANCE HARVEY is the fact that, as charming as Hoffman and Thompson are, I didn't buy into them falling in love. The reason I didn't buy into it was that I didn't hear enough of their conversations and I didn't feel enough chemistry. Joel Hopkins makes the wrong choice in showing them falling in love as a series of montages set to a mediocre bouncy score. BEFORE SUNRISE and BEFORE SUNSET work as romantic dramas because we hear the characters fall in love as they discuss matters profound and trivial in an artless manner. LAST CHANCE HARVEY, which is basically BEFORE SUNRISE for grown-ups, has none of that artlessness. As a result, I simply didn't care.

LAST CHANCE HARVEY opened in the USA, Portugal, Australia, Belgium, France, Singapore, the Netherlands, Iceland, Israel, Mexico, Finland, Taiwan, Germany, New Zealand, Spain and Bulgaria earlier this year. It is currently on release in the UK, Argentina and Sweden and opens later this month in Brazil and Norway. It opens in Denmark on July 24th.

Overlooked DVD of the month - THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB

THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB is remarkably like a Jane Austen novel. It's peopled with a group of women searching for love. Althought the women face obstacles, not least their own inability to see love when it's staring them in the face, everything ends happily and order is restored. The entire process is charming and witty and involving and entirely harmless. The ensemble cast do a great job. I particularly liked Hugh Dancy is his role as a relentlessly optimistic IT-geek called Grigg. I've never been particularly impressed by Dancy before but he utterly won me over with his performance in a role which is hard to take seriously. He makes Grigg more than just a two-dimensional nice guy. The upshot is that I finished the movie in a sunny mood entirely at odds with my usual callous, cyncical demeanour.

Once the optimistic glow had subsided, my usual cynicism kicked in and the house of cards collapsed. The whole movie was contrived from top to bottom. The idea is that five women and one man meet once a month and discuss one of Austen's novels. Such is Austen's universal wit and wisdom that they can draw piquant life lessons from her novels and apply them to their own lives in contemporary California. Problem is that a lot of the lessons seem misapplied, or stretched to say the least.

Consider PERSUASION - a wonderful novel about second chances. The lessons are applied to Prudie and Dean. Prudie has delusions of a Left-Bank life; Dean is a neanderthal. Apparently having him read PERSUASION will lead to a rekindling of their romance. Sorry. Not buying it. The whole set up of the film is that they are congenitally unsuited. Reading a novel won't change that. And what about the relationship at the core of the film - between a repressed older woman, Jocelyn, and the younger man determined to win her love - Grigg. Apart from the completely predictable way in which they come together, I really hated the fact that the reasons for Joceyln to be so closed off were never explained. This made it hard to sympathise with her. She just seemed mean.

Apparently these issues are dealt with at more length in the novel and I look forward to reading it. And I suppose any movie can't be all bad if it makes you want to spend more time with its characters....?

THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB played Toronto 2007 and was released last year. It's now available on DVD.