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. 

UNBROKEN

You can listen to a podcast review of this movie below, or subscribe to Bina007 in iTunes.

One of the less edifying revelations of the Sony hack was producer Scott Rudin's contempt for Angelina Jolie's talent as a film-maker and his bile at her leave of absence from his CLEOPATRA project to make UNBROKEN. So I approached this World War Two biopic with some interest and maybe some scepticism. What I am happy to say is that UNBROKEN is a handsomely made film about a true wartime hero, that while conventional in its approach, has so much authentic concern with the human condition that it left me with real tears, as opposed to some of those more mawkish and manipulative films that want to make you cry but don't. (THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING, I'm looking at you here.)

WOLF HALL - TV PREVIEW

Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex and
Lord Chancellor to King Henry VIII

You can listen to a podcast preview of Wolf Hall here:


I am a desperate fan of Hilary Mantel's superbly researched, intricately crafted, slippery novels, Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies. Though a Catholic, I have been surprised and fascinated by her sympathetic depiction of Thomas Cromwell and critical depiction of Saint Thomas More. Growing up in England where the history of the Tudors looms large in our school curriculum, our TV history and costume dramas, it was astounding to find someone who had a genuinely fresh perspective. What was even more impressive was Mantel's technical achievement to situate us so firmly in Cromwell's perspective and position, and to make this famous historic period seem contemporary and fresh. We don't meet Henry VIII or Anne Boleyn until Cromwell meets them. His own domestic vicissitudes loom large. Business, politics, religion - all seem vital, close, real and urgent rather than faded, distant and epic. And Mantel's great historic figures are real people with their weakness, moral failings, occasional nobilities, suffering and humour. The greatest example of this is her treatment of Cardinal Wolsey. He isn't just a rapacious, arrogant, power-hungry bogeyman but a fragile and fallen, perhaps delusional optimist who deserves our sympathy and Cromwell's fierce loyalty.

The challenge for any adaptation of the what will eventually become three novels is how to keep that sense of freshness, and how to keep Cromwell's perspective.  And in the case of the BBC's new six part adaptation of the two densely written published novels: how to condense the material without losing its sophistication, and how to present it for a prime time audience without dumbing it down.  I have seen the first two episodes of WOLF HALL and I can confirm that director Peter Kosminsky (THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR) and writer Peter Straughan (FRANK) have kept faith with Mantel and all her readers: this adaptation is dense, uncompromising, and centred firmly on Cromwell.

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING

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

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING is a well-acted but ultimately banal biopic of the famous physicist Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) as told from the perspective of his first wife Jane (Felicity Jones).  As it opens, the young couple meet at Oxford University in the 1960s and are immediately smitten with each other.  Almost simultaneous with their courtship over the first half hour of the film is the discovery that Stephen suffers from Motor Neurone disease with perhaps only two years left to live.  It is testament to Jane's courage that she refuses to be shut out of Stephen's life and drops her own studies to marry him, raise his children and nurse him as he makes his reputation as one of the great scientists of our age.  But as we move into the second half of the film, while they both clearly still love each other, the cracks are starting to show.  Jane, who has always been religious in contrast to Stephen's atheism, falls in love with her Church choir leader, an earnest widower who becomes a kind of surrogate husband and father with Stephen's apparent blessing.  And then Stephen, forced to have a tracheotomy, and before he gets the computer voice we have come to associate with him, falls for his physical therapist.

LEVIATHAN

You can listen to a podcast review of this film here:



Cinema is rich in films that tell the story of simple men who dash themselves against the rocks of misfortune:  of impotence in the face of corrupt authority and arbitrary fate.  Good men are not rewarded:  justice is not done.  In general, I find such tales uncomfortable viewing.  In fact, I find them sadistic.  You take a good man and watch him suffer for two hours with the director casting himself as the uncaring and inscrutable God of the Book of Job.  So why is it that while I found the Coen Brothers' A SERIOUS MAN and INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS unappealing I was bowled over by LEVIATHAN?  I suspect it's because there is no knowing, snide humour in LEVIATHAN, although it is sometimes funny in a low-key way.  Consequently, rather than being outside of the movie laughing at its central character's misfortune, we are inside the movie, sympathising with him. Or maybe it's because the subject matter is so much more urgent when situated within contemporary Russia, a totalitarian kleptocracy worthy of the movie's title.   At any rate, I am not alone.  LEVIATHAN has garnered critical acclaim and awards wherever it has been shown.  And in a brazen act of co-option is the official nomination of Russia for the Academy Awards.  It's featured in many a critic's Best of 2014 list and you'll be hearing more about it as awards season gathers pace.  All of this is justified.

ENEMY

You can listen to a podcast review of this film here:




Jake Gyllenhaal is Adam, a university lecturer in Toronto stuck in a repetitive job, alienated from society, and married to a woman who refuses to fuck him.  One day, despite his contempt for film, Adam watches a film and sees movie that apparently stars an actor who is his exact doppelgänger.  It starts off as an innocent infiltration.  Adam picks up Anthony's mail at the film studio.  And then he calls him up. He has a boyish excitement about finding someone who sounds like him.  It feels harmless. Except it isn't.  Meanwhile a freaked out Anthony starts googling Adam.  Anthony's heavily pregnant girlfriend thinks he's having an affair and ends up meeting Adam.  And this leads us into very murky territory indeed. Does Anthony exist? Does Adam?  Is this the story of one man with two lives?  Or is this two people deciding to escalate a battle of extreme disruption at the expense of the women in their lives?