BIG EYES

BIG EYES is a well-acted biopic starring Amy Adams as Margaret Keane, whose husband Walter (Christoph Waltz) passed off her phenomenally popular if schmaltzy portraits of big-eyed kids as his own  throughout the 1950s and 1960s.  Finally she struck up the courage to leave him and then to sue him, proving beyond doubt she was the artist when the judge asked them both to create one  of the iconic pictures. This story is retold by Tim Burton in one of his least Burton-esque pictures. It doesn't star his typical actors and doesn't have his typical trademark gothic style.  That's actually a good thing, because this is a great and claustrophobic story about a woman suckered into a lie by a good liar, and suffocated by the consequences. All you need to do is cast two good actors, stand back, and let them do their thing. And this is exactly what happens.  Christoph Waltz is perfectly cast as Walter. He's charming and his energy wraps you up and makes it convincing that a good, if shy woman could be carried along on the crest of a wave and not realise she had imprisoned herself before it was too late.  And Amy Adams has that amazing mix of vulnerability of strength so that both her complicity and then her escape feel authentic. In a sense,this is a story of a abusive marriage.  There's no beating or drinking but that tell-tale symptom - a loss of self, vanishing into oneself - is there. Apart from the beautifully enacted drama, what else is there? One trademark flash of Burtonism - a spooky gothic nightmare in which everyone Margaret meets has her big eyes - and pointed cameos from Terence Stamp as an unimpressed art critic and Jason Schwartzman as a jealous gallery owner.

BIG EYES has a running time of 106 minutes and is rated PG-13.  BIG EYES is on release in the USA, Spain, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Taiwan, Greece, Italy, Poland, Hong Kong, India and Latvia. It opens on January 15th in Israel, Malaysia, Russia, Estonia and Romania; on January 23rd in Japan; on Japan 29th in Brazil, Singapore and Iceland; on February 5th in Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Lithuania; on February 12th in Iraq and Kuwait; on February 19th in Hungary; on February 25th in Philippines, Portugal and Croatia; on March 5th in Denmark, Mexico, Sweden and Turkey; on March 12th in Chile, Peru and Finland; on March 18th in Belgium and France; on March 27th in Norway; on April 16th in Argentina; on April 23rd in Germany and on July 24th in Venezuela. 

LISTEN UP PHILIP - LFF14 - Day Three

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

LISTEN UP PHILIP has been woefully miscategorised as a comedy by the programmers of the London Film Festival - an opinion echoed by the director in an emailed statement read aloud at the start of the screening. At the time I had thought this to be a self-deprecating joke but an hour with not a single laugh out loud moment or even a wry inward smile I started to get the point. Rather, the prevailing mood of the film is one of melancholy and frustration and finally, sadly, boredom. But first, let’s step back a little.

The Philip of the title is an insufferably arrogant and self-involved author played by Jason Schwartzman as surely the most punchable character in this year’s film festival. The first act of the film sees Philip insult ex-girlfriends, old college friends and his publishers in a manner that infects the film with its meanness. I am not sure it ever entirely recovered. That is almost succeeds is down to the second act of the film, which sees Philip walk out on his long-suffering girlfriend Ashley when offered the chance of a country writing retreat by his mentor (Jonathan Pryce). The movie then takes a side street and focuses on Ashley’s grief and anger - a move that at least gives the film some heart and showcases the exceptional acting abilities of Elisabeth Moss. Unfortunately we then go back to the world of Philip and his equally narcissistic and exploitative mentor - and the subject of their callous behaviour switches to his daughter Melanie (Krysten Ritter.)

Now I realise that hating a character isn’t the same thing as hating a movie. And it’s not the movie’s fault that it has been miscategorised. But I was looking for it to succeed on its own terms - maybe in the way that THE SQUID AND THE WHALE did - a darkly comic but ultimately melancholic tale about a highly unlikeable and dysfunctional family. But Elisabeth Moss aside, there was nothing compelling about LISTEN UP PHILIP. Instead just the same snide comments - the lack of personal growth - and behind the lens the same sense of having seen all this before, and done better. Director Alex Ross Perry flits between channelling Wes Anderson and Woody Allen. We get the cute book covers photographed lined up on a table in close up and the knowing over-articulate, rushed voiceover narration that’s pure Alec Baldwin in THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS. We also get the incidental jazz score, fondness for verbose literary types in tweed jackets and attempts at relationship insight from Woody Allen. The tragedy is that given the excellent cast and often perceptive insights, that the movie doesn’t add up to more, or certainly something more unique.

LISTEN UP PHILIP has a running time of 108 minutes.  The movie played Locarno where Alex Ross Perry won the Special Jury Prize. It also played Sundance and London 2014. It will be released in the USA on October 17th.

VERONICA MARS

So I'm a massive fan of the Veronica Mars TV show, even though, like most people, I came to it too late to contribute to the actual ratings, and watched it on Netflix after it got cancelled.  It was this amazing high school detective noir, similar in tone to Rian Johnson's insanely good debut feature BRICK.  I loved the cynical vibe - the fact that high school was all about date rape, infidelity, class warfare and injustice.  And I loved that the heroine was genuinely smart, tough and witty, like Buffy but without all the fluffiness. Finally, just to make me extra-happy, as the show as set in a fictional town near La-La-Land, there was also a healthy dollop of satire at the expense of Hollywood, as well as a really ahead-of-its-time understanding about the impact of social media on teenage lives.

Of course, a TV show this smart was going to get canned, and arguably should've finished after series 1 anyways.  Like the similarly dark (although far crazier) TWIN PEAKS it never really survived the big reveal of who killed Lily Kane/Laura Palmer.  So I was a little worried about what this new kick-starter funded ten years on movie would look like? Was it going to be like friending those high school kids on Facebook years later just to see what they looked like now? Or was it actually going to have merit as a movie on its own terms?

I can't really judge the latter - what the movie feels like to someone who didn't watch the TV show. And to be sure there was a lot of fun to be had seeing how people looked and where writer/director Rob Thomas had them ten years on.  Some of the problems persisted from the original. I always felt that Veronica's high school friend Wallace Fennel (Percy Daggs III) got a bad rap from the writers who didn't know what to do with him once Veronica started dating/using Logan (Jason Dohring) as a sidekick. And even in this movie, poor Wallace seems to have grown up to be a high school coach just so Veronica can get some info on current students. It was far more satisfying to see geeky IT hacker Mack (Tina Majorino) grow up to become a spiky babe, or the humour with which they still had Veronica hitting up cop Leo (Max Greenfield) for info.  I also liked that they gave former biker-with-a-heart-of-gold a really politically provocative and all too believable sub-plot, which will hopefully also be the hub of a sequel.  

Does the movie stand up on its own, though? The murder mystery at the heart of the film is fairly mechanical and as we don't really care about the victim in the way we came to care about Lily Kane, I guess it's not that involving. I also saw who did it as soon as we realised where their career aspirations were.  Moreover, the whole Ross-Rachel aspect to the Veronica-Logan relationship felt weird and weak and a sad call for Piz (Chris Lowell) but I guess that Rob Thomas was more constrained by fan-service than most writers given the nature of his movie's funding. Still there was enough in the plot to keep me interested and provide a vessel for Veronica's and particularly Keith Mars' wit. And I would definitely watch another film? At the theatre? No.  But a a kind of extended TV movie, yes.  And it's too bad Netflix doesn't just fund another series. 

VERONICA MARS is available to watch on demand. It has a running time of 107 minutes and is rated PG-13 in the USA and 12A in the UK for strong language, moderate violence, sex, and sex references.

CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC - superficial, derivative drivel

CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC epitomises everything that is most invidious about the romantic comedies. The plot is derivative and formulaic; the characterisation is two-dimensional; the concept asks us to suspend our disbelief to the point of absurdity. 

Isla Fisher plays Rebecca Bloomwood - a klutzy girl who funds her designer wardrobe with her credit cards and dreams of writing for a Vogue-like magazine. Chased by a debt-collector, she creates a double-life as - oh the delicious irony! - a personal finance columnist. So successful are her jargon-free columns that she lands a TV spot and the love of her charmingly rich, but hard-working boss, played by Hugh Dancy. Of course, there are stumbling blocks to happiness - but how happy the addict whose hoard of illicit goods can fund an easy conversion to the straight life?

The treatment of addiction is insultingly superficial - as is everything else about this tepid film. Worse still, it can't even boast the guilty pleasure of seeing the wardrobes of SEX AND THE CITY or THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA. Rebecca may spend like Anna Wintour but she dresses appallingly. The humour is strained - zero verbal wit offset by the odd pratfall and wilfully embarassing dance scene. Where is the genuine wit and energy of LEGALLY BLONDE or, indeed, director P J Hogan's previous hit, MY BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING?

CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC is on release in Russia, Thailand, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Mexico, the US, the UAE, Croatia, Turkey and the UK. It opens next week in Hong Kong, Iceland and Italy. It opens on March 6th in Greece and Finland and on March 12th in Argentina, Australia, Germany and the Netherlands. It opens on March 18th in Belgium and Spain and on March 26th in the Czech Republic, Singapore, South Korea and Norway. It opens on April 10th in April, on May 20th in France and on May 20th in Japan.